Cupcake styled as a unicorn Some of the best minds in the financial world are predicting a major economic depression. Ray Dalio foresees a worse economic plight than the 2008 Great Recession. World Bank Group president David Malpass concurs, forecasting that the COVID-19 pandemic will give rise to a major global recession and stated, We intend to respond forcefully and massively with support programs, especially for poor countries. Is it time to sell the farm, then? Well, maybe not just yet. Canadian investors are looking for safety as the health crisis continues to rattle the global economy. Nobody expected a market crash. The coronavirus has attacked the markets in an unprecedented manner. Many gains made on the TSX have been erased. Markets are looking for guidance, but a vaccine could be more than a year away. But people are still buying stocks. One asset class that has performed well in the last few weeks is consumer staples. Today, well look at a stock that rallied 13% this week. The stock markets are rallying amid hopes that the coronavirus pandemic is peaking. However, a COVID-19 vaccine is still at least a year away. Additionally, France and Germany now appear to be in recession. In short, investors need to start playing defence. One name could beat an economic depression This name is Alimentation Couche-Tard (TSX:ATD.B). Coincidentally, this weeks rally mirrors the grocery stocks overall decline of 13% in the past month. Still, even these losses are small compared to the biggest dips of the of the TSX Composite Index. All told, our main stock exchange is down the same amount as Alimentation Couche-Tard since the start of the market crash. This is in line with the stocks 0.85 beta. First off, look at just how geographically diversified Alimentation Couche-Tard is. Its stores can be found through North America, in Scandinavia, across Ireland, Poland, the Baltics, and even Russia. Tobacco sales are strong for this name, as are essential grocery items. Right away, youve got a sin stock and the safety of consumer staples, which are resistant to an economic depression. Story continues Theres more, though. Alimentation Couche-Tard is also a strong play for service restaurants and car services. Both areas are resistant to recession. Its business operations also include fuel and chemical supplies. Circle K is the other major string to its bow. This brings China, Egypt, and Malaysia into its spread of operations. In summary, Alimentation Couche-Tard is a strong defensive play. Its not much of a passive-income stock for recession investing, with a dividend yield below 1%. Its also not much of a value play, selling at 2.8 times its book price. However, selling at 23% below its 52-week high, the upside potential in a full-blooded market rally could be significant. The bottom line Alimentation Couche-Tard is a strong buy for consumer staple services and road transport fuel. This name is defensive and even has some passive income thrown in. Growth by consolidation has proven a winning strategy for this consumer staples name. If any asset type is going to outrun an economic depression, it would be consumer staples. The post Economic Depression: 1 Top TSX Food Stock to Buy and Hold appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada. More reading Fool contributor Victoria Hetherington has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends ALIMENTATION COUCHE-TARD INC. The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020 Australia Business Immigration leader Phoenix Business Advisory charts extensive plan for Ultra HNI & HNI migration AHMEDABAD, India, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Phoenix Business Advisory provides a detailed understanding of the plethora of advantages for the business community in India in Australia. According to their recent study on business migration, 12,000 millionaires have migrated to Australia since 2018 compared to the USA which registered 10,000 and Canada at 4,000. Another important point to be considered is the fact that an average Australian has become significantly wealthier compared to an average US citizen. The total wealth in Australia has grown by 83% compared to a 20% growth in the US in the last decade. As many as 10,000 high-net-worth individuals, with a personal wealth of US$1m or more, migrated to Australia in 2017 - mostly from India, China, and the UK. One of the most striking aspects is the fact that Australia was ranked as the safest country in the world for women, according to a global review in 2018. This has a 92% correlation to growth in wealth. The world economy in the last 1.5 years has gone downhill. Fueled by the USA-China trade war, Hong Kong-China disputes in addition to the rapidly spreading Coronavirus, which has been termed as a Global Pandemic by World Health Organisation, has engulfed developed nations like the USA, U.K and all of Europe causing loss of jobs and increase in unemployment rate across the world. Major businesses have suffered a terrible blow amidst the growing crisis in every part of the world. This has affected a large percentage of the Indian population who wished to settle abroad or invest in new business ventures. One country that still stands tall amidst the crisis is Australia with its stable economy and a diverse consumer market. It can be rightly said that Australia and a stable economy have become synonyms for each other in the last three decades. Australia has had the 28th consecutive year wherein it has registered growth in positive figures. The regulatory institutions along with their ability to respond to global challenges provide it a steady growth. Another important thing to note is the fact that it is the 14th largest economy characterised by low government debt. It is estimated that the growth rate of the average annual real GDP will be 2.7% over the next five years. This is the highest amongst the major economies of the world. As of 2018, there are 7.3 million migrants living in Australia. India is in third place with more than 6,00,000 people in Australia. Australian Financial Review listed Vivek Chaand Sehgal as the twelfth richest Australian on its 2019 Rich List with an estimated $5.5 billion. Getting an Australian PR is hassle-free and time-saving. One can get the PR without an upfront investment. The cash rate of the Reserve Bank of Australia is at .25% which provides a great opportunity for businesses to expand and new businesses to start. Further, the Australian government has introduced a number of measures through its stimulus packages amidst the COVID-19 crisis. For example, affected employers will be able to claim a fortnightly payment of INR 75,000 per eligible employee from 30 March 2020, for a maximum period of six months. Not-for-profits and small businesses with a turnover under INR 250 Cr will receive a tax-free cash payment from INR 10 lakhs up to INR 50 lakhs to help them retain staff and continue operating. Also, Australian banks are offering INR 1.25 Cr interest-free loans for six months. These are just a few out of the bunch of incentives to people across all professional sectors. No wonder, Australia has emerged as the most favoured destination for HNI of India. The free trade agreements facilitate the smooth flow of goods, services, and investments with major economies across the globe. 10 of the country's top 12 export markets are within Asia and Oceania. The two-way trade in goods and services totaled A$763 billion in 2017 and the foreign investment stock totaled around A$3.6 trillion. Australia's inward foreign direct investment stock reached A$849 billion in 2017. Mr. M.P Singh, CEO of Phoenix Business Advisory, says, "In addition to a safe business environment, 4 cities are ranked in the top 40 cities for quality of living on the global index. This makes it an ideal place for any Indian to settle down and carry on a safe business enterprise. Further, the country is ranked at the 20th position under Ease of Doing business on the international market. Its trade market is integrated on the global level. The country has operations from 9 of the top 10 fortune global 500 companies and 8 of top 10 Forbes global 2000 companies." "Australia is an ideal place for blockchain and quantum computing, and its robust startup ecosystem has strong competencies in agtech, edtech, fintech, foodtech, and medtech. Ranked 5th in the world for global entrepreneurship, it contributed to over 4% of world research publications in 2017 despite having only 0.3% of the global population. Over 40% of the workforce has a tertiary qualification with 28% of the population born overseas. Cultural diversity makes is a thriving hub for businesses from all over the world. 3.2 million Australians speak an Asian language and 1.4 million speak a European language," added Mr. M. P. Singh, CEO, Phoenix Business Advisory. Over the years, there has been a shift in the migration pattern of Indians. From the USA and the UK to Australia. A large number of Indians migrate to the land of kangaroos every year and they are highly regarded in Australia. The accepting nature of the Australian government coupled with safety and hassle-free visa procedures make it convenient for Indians. As the demand for Australian PR is increasing every year the quota for 2020 is full, and one must act quickly for 2021 quota. Settle one's Family and Business in Australia with ZERO Upfront Investment. Visit www.pcba.com.au to apply for the 2021 quota. About Phoenix Business Advisory: Phoenix is one of the world's leading business management consulting rms, where bold thinking, inspired people and a passion for results come together to make an extraordinary impact. Phoenix Business Advisory oers business advisory solutions to entrepreneurs, SMEs, MSMEs and other business owners, to diversify, expand or start a new business in Australia. Phoenix specialises in oering comprehensive business solutions pertaining business acquisition, joint ventures or setting up a new business from scratch. The business advisory solutions at Phoenix ensure transformation of client's vision of 'business expansion to Australia' into reality. Our forte lies in our in-house team of experts and an extensive partner network of marquee brands such as chartered accountants, nancial planners, legal services, banks, real estate developers, businesses and more. Contact information: Email : [email protected] Phone : +91-9964544000, +91-7948925545 SOURCE Phoenix Business Advisory There is growing concern among top conservative leaders that the Trump administration isn't addressing the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus, several sources tell Axios. One top adviser said if the recovery is bungled it could cost President Trump the election. What we're hearing: "The next 4-8 weeks is really going to decide whether Trump gets reelected," Stephen Moore, Trump's former nominee for the Federal Reserve board, told Axios. If the administration mishandles its economic recovery efforts, he said, Trump is "in big trouble." Other conservative leaders including former Congressman and Club for Growth President David McIntosh, a Pence ally who served in the same Indiana district immediately before the Vice President said they worry that there isn't enough attention being placed on the longer-term, post-coronavirus economic strategy. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been singled out for some of the sharpest criticism. "I don't think [Mnuchin] has yet started thinking about that long-term, how do we incentivize the rapid recovery or the V-shape bounce back?" McIntosh told Axios. "I understand their planning process, to deal with emergency, he said. But now it's time to start thinking of the exit strategy. Red flags are going up. We understand that there is this sort of survival phase, but there's a concern that Mnuchin is overplaying that and not looking ahead," a conservative strategist told Axios. "The emerging consensus is the next phase needs to be about economic growth, not about making government bigger through massive spending and increased regulation that stifles the economic recovery." Why it matters: Trump built his re-election pitch on the idea the U.S. has seen historic prosperity under his leadership but now the economy is in shambles. The other side: "The President wants to see this country open again so people can get back to work and every action he has taken throughout this pandemic has been to ensure we emerge healthy, stronger, and with a growing, prosperous economy," White House spokesman Judd Deere told Axios. It was under the Presidents leadership that the United States economy reached such amazing heights before it was artificially interrupted and he is the leader to take us back there again," Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment. The big picture: Trump, who is growing increasingly frustrated with the pandemic's negative impact on the economy, is preparing to launch a second coronavirus task force focused on economic recovery. But McIntosh poured cold water on the idea of a totally separate task force, warning that a second group would create "competing centers for decision making." Instead, McIntosh recommended that they instead beef up the existing task force led by Pence with outside business advisers, not more government officials, "to give them that perspective of what matters in the real world economy." The bottom line: "Scientific data will drive any decisions on reopening the country because [Trump's] number one priority is to protect the safety and well-being of the American people," a White House official said. Tampa Bay Fiber Service Coverage Area In an effort to meet the technological demands required for home schooling and remote work, Tampa Bay Fiber, a subsidiary of PBX-Change, is prepared to install and provide high-speed internet for FREE as needed within their local footprint. Tampa Bay Fiber will provide high-speed Business Internet, using a fiber equivalent ultra-fast 5G technology, to businesses in and around downtown Tampa. The ultra-fast 5G technology is available in Ybor City, Port of Tampa, Downtown, west of Downtown Tampa and Clearwater Beach. Tampa Bay Fiber has already proven to be reliable in this type of temporary requirement, for the MacDill STEAM FEST, and downtown Tampas River OGreen festival, among other events. We know that this is a stressful time for families and small businesses and reliable Internet service has never been more critical. By offering our service to people in need, we can make life a little easier for our Tampa Bay community, said Bill Heinz, VP of Sales for PBX-Change. PBX-Change has initiated, improved and developed the access to reliable high-speed Internet service using Siklu carrier grade FCC licensed equipment installed at multiple locations throughout Tampa Bay. In addition to bringing this high-speed connection to several downtown Tampa towers, Tampa Bay Fiber has built a highly dependable, optimized network to deliver its voice cloud communication system. Their network connects directly to Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, IBM, Oracle, Netflix, Hulu, Akamai, and many others. This direct connection results in the fastest internet experience for their clients. Unlike other carriers, Tampa Bay Fiber gets their clients closer to the content providers removing throttling and bottlenecks. While we are unfortunately unable to service individual residences, we certainly can provide service with the cooperation of management, to housing complexes, educational facilities, or businesses within the coverage map. Blue areas of the map may be serviceable, added Heinz. To find out if your business, housing complex or educational facility is in the coverage area that qualifies, please call 813-734-8912. Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe The CIA has privately advised its workforce that taking an anti-malarial drug touted by President Donald Trump and some of his supporters as a promising treatment for the novel coronavirus has potentially dangerous side effects, including sudden death. The warning, featured on a website for CIA employees with questions related to the spread of the coronavirus, came in late March after public discussion - and promotion by the president - that hydroxychloroquine, administered in concert with the antibiotic azithromycin, might prove effective against covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes. The politically charged debate over hydroxychloroquine - medical experts say there's still no conclusive evidence that it does what Trump has suggested - underscores a recurring phenomenon in this administration, in which the president stakes out a very public, sometimes controversial position on a subject only to have agencies within the government chart a different, more cautious approach. A CIA website for employees with questions about the coronavirus addressed the topic on March 27, noting that there had been media reports suggesting that the drug "has activity against the COVID-19 virus." "At this point, the drug is not recommended to be used by patients except by medical professionals prescribing it as part of ongoing investigational studies. There are potentially significant side effects, including sudden cardiac death, associated with hydroxychloroquine and its individual use in patients need to be carefully selected and monitored by a health care professional," the answer read, before adding in bold type: "Please do not obtain this medication on your own." A CIA spokesman declined to comment about internal workforce communications. The advice was posted as a response after an employee asked whether the employee should take the drug without a prescription. The warning came about a week after the president first touted the drug at a White House news conference. "I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer," Trump said. The president became a bigger booster of the drug as the public health crisis worsened, saying at an April 3 briefing that hydroxychloroquine is "looking like it's having some good results." A day later, he added: "What do you have to lose? I'll say it again. What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it." Trump's cause has been taken up by some of his supporters, including Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, but medical experts have sounded the same cautious note found in the CIA's advice to its workforce. On April 5, as the president's comments continued to raise alarm among medical experts, Trump added a note of caution to his praise of the drug, saying: "You have to go through your medical people, get the approval. But I've seen things that I sort of like. So what do I know? I'm not a doctor. . . . But I have common sense." Hydroxychloroquine has been used for decades to treat malaria, and has been used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. But it's not clear whether it works for covid-19. Among the few preliminary studies was one showing promise, though that result was subsequently questioned by the study's publisher. Experts have cautioned about side effects, such as heart arrhythmia, which can be fatal. A recent study in Brazil of chloroquine, which is similar to hydroxychloroquine, was halted early because a number of test subjects developed dangerous heart problems. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said the data on hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness against the virus is "really just at best suggestive." Last month, the Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval to a Trump administration effort to distribute millions of doses of anti-malarial drugs to hospitals across the country, saying that trying unproven treatments is worth it to slow the disease in seriously ill patients. NEW YORK - The coronavirus outbreak has fuelled attempts to ban abortions in some states, but providers where the procedure remains available report increased demand, often from women distraught over economic stress and health concerns linked to the pandemic. The calls weve been getting are frantic, said Julie Burkhart, who manages clinics in Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City. Weve seen more women coming sooner than they would have because theyre scared they wont be able to access the services later. Some clinics are seeing patients who travelled hundreds of miles from states such as Texas, which has banned abortions during much of the pandemic on grounds they are nonessential. Dr. Allison Cowett of Family Planning Associates in Chicago said one recent patient was a teen who drove from Texas with her mother. In Atlanta, Dr. Marissa Lapedis said her clinic accommodated a woman who received her initial abortion consultation in Texas but flew to Georgia when the Texas ban postponed a second visit to receive the abortion pill. An influx of women from Texas contributed to the upsurge of abortions at Burkharts clinic in Wichita. She said it performed 252 abortions in March, up from 90 in March 2019. Dr. Jen Villavicencio, an abortion provider in Michigan, predicts that demand for abortions will continue to increase during the pandemic. I hear it in my patients voices and questions daily, she said via email. Theyre worried about how they will make their rent, feed their family, access a ventilator if the need arises. The pandemic has prompted Planned Parenthood, the nationals largest abortion provider, to make adjustments. In New York City, the epicentre of the outbreak in the U.S., Planned Parenthood has modified medication abortion procedures to minimize travel and potential COVID-19 exposure for patients and staff. Dr. Meera Shah is chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, which serves New Yorks northern suburbs. She says her staff is expanding telemedicine as they see an uptick in patients seeking abortions, often convinced that having a child right now isnt best for them. We provided a medication abortion to an EMT while she was sitting in her ambulance, Shah said. We provided abortion care to a mother who was at home with her children running around behind her. Dr. Anne Davis, an OB-GYN at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said all services at her hospital are under stress and COVID-19 patients are numerous. In most cases, her team refers women seeking abortions to non-hospital clinics. She cited one patient who had wanted to be pregnant but requested an abortion when it became clear her medical condition would require multiple hospital visits. Davis said the woman had received comparable treatment during her first pregnancy but decided this time that the hospital wouldnt be as safe. One of the biggest challenges in counselling pregnant women, is uncertainty, Davis said. We dont know enough about this to say its going to be fine your pregnancy will proceed in usual fashion and there will be no impact from COVID-19, she said. They want us to say it will be all right. We have to say, We dont know. At Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Ill., close to Saint Louis, deputy director Alison Dreith says women are now less likely to change their minds once they schedule an abortion. Normally, 50 per cent go through with it; amid the pandemic, the rate is 85 per cent. Hope Clinic staff member Hannah Dismer said one couple decided to terminate a pregnancy they had planned. The wife worried that giving birth at a hospital might expose her to the coronavirus and create risk for the child they have. It hit me really hard that she and her husband had to make that difficult decision, Dismer said. Another concern is that abortion bans will force some women into continuing with high-risk pregnancies. Without services, very sick babies will be born and families forced to watch them suffer who would, in other times, have made a different decision, said Dr. Maryl Sackeim, a Chicago-based OB-GYN. The push for new bans has added urgency to a campaign providing information about relatively safe options for do-it-yourself abortions. Already, many abortions are induced at home with a two-drug combination, under the guidance of a health professional. Advocacy groups say home abortions using one of the drugs misoprostol can be done without professional oversight. Misoprostol is available only by prescription in the U.S. but is available online from some countries where it sells over the counter. Attorney Jill E. Adams, executive director of If/When/How, supports that option and urges prosecutors not to target women who use this method. More people will need abortions during this pandemic, she said. Targeting people who end their pregnancies at home is wrong as a matter of law and dangerous as a matter of public health. Amid debate about whether abortion is an essential service, anti-abortion protesters have mobilized outside numerous clinics in some cases triggering confrontations with police over whether theyre violating social-distancing rules. In North Carolina, eight of about 50 protesters were arrested April 4 after refusing to disperse outside a clinic in Charlotte. Even as many businesses close temporarily, anti-abortion pregnancy centres remain open. Virginia-based Care Net, which oversees about 1,100 centres, evoked the pandemic in a fundraising appeal, noting that unplanned pregnancies may rise during isolation and our centres need to find creative ways to serve these parents and empower them to choose life. BERWYN, Pa., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Annovis Bio Inc. (NYSE American: ANVS), a clinical-stage drug platform company addressing Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, announced today its CEO Maria Maccecchini, Ph.D. will share insight into the companys recent developments during an investor webinar on Tuesday April 14, 2020 at 4:05 p.m. ET. A live Q&A session with Dr. Maccecchini will follow the presentation. To participate in the webinar, please register at: https://www.redchip.com/corporate/webinar_register/56 Questions can be pre-submitted to victor@redchip.com or online during the event. About Annovis Bio Headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Annovis Bio, Inc. (Annovis) is a clinical-stage, drug platform company addressing neurodegeneration, such as Alzheimers disease (AD), Parkinsons disease (PD) and Alzheimers in Down Syndrome (AD-DS). We believe that we are the only company developing a drug for AD, PD and AD-DS that inhibits more than one neurotoxic protein and, thereby, improves the information highway of the nerve cell, known as axonal transport. When this information flow is impaired, the nerve cell gets sick and dies. We expect our treatment to improve memory loss and dementia associated with AD and AD-DS, as well as body and brain function in PD. We have an ongoing Phase 2a study in AD patients and plan to commence a second Phase 2a study in PD patients. For more information on Annovis, please visit the companys website: www.annovisbio.com . Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this press release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as anticipate, expect, believe, will, may, should, estimate, project, outlook, forecast or other similar words, and include, without limitation, statements regarding the timing, effectiveness and anticipated results of ANVS401 clinical trials. Forward-looking statements are based on Annovis Bio, Inc.s current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Further, certain forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. These and other risks and uncertainties are described more fully in the section titled Risk Factors in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and Annovis Bio, Inc. undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law. Investor Relations: Dave Gentry, CEO RedChip Companies Inc. 407-491-4498 Dave@redchip.com SOURCE: Annovis Bio Inc. As we continue to experience the disruptive effects of COVID-19, there is one thing we can count on: all Iowans will need access to food. Yet, as recent news reports have reminded us, we have an industrial food system that allows peoples fear to drive up the price of the very food theyre afraid of losing access to. While we grow feed, fuel, hogs, chickens and beef for the world, Iowa imports nearly 90 percent of its food. There are farmers near you growing beef, pork, poultry and lamb on grass the way nature intended. They would be glad to take your orders. Farmers are starting seeds to grow lettuce, broccoli, spinach, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and more for you all season long. Farmers are pruning trees and berry bushes so Iowans can enjoy fresh pears, apples, raspberries, peaches and more grown just a few miles away. Go to localharvest.org to find them, check out their websites, order online and get ready to eat some of the freshest, most natural food youve had in years. Lets show the so-called experts that there is a market for what our people and our soils can grow right here in Iowa. And lets talk about cost. These farmers dont operate on the gouging principle. Their food costs more because it takes more work to grow healthy, fresh food in a way that helps clean up the mess left behind by industrial agriculture. Just as importantly, it costs more because they farm on land close to our communities. They compete for that land with large commodity farms and housing developers, which means higher mortgages and rents than theyd pay if competing with other food farmers. If you had to pay the same mortgage or rent for your home in a small rural community as you would for the equivalent penthouse downtown Des Moines, what would your cash flow look like? Thats what these farmers struggle with every day. Lets consider public policy that sets aside a percentage of farmland around our communities just for nature-friendly, neighborhood-friendly market farms. Lets imagine an Iowa sustained by wholesome food grown on those community-based farms. Now lets imagine what our food system would look like during this crisis. Maybe those farmers who would be your neighbors and friends could afford to temporarily discount their products prices so all residents could afford the stored, canned, dried, frozen or freeze-dried food theyd have available right now and the fresh food coming in the next few weeks and months. For the sake of the community. Market farmers across the state are already instituting home delivery and safe drop-off sites. Contact them now to help them plan and grow what youll want in a few months. Suzan Erem is the executive director of the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust, a statewide nonprofit that protects land to grow healthy food. She can be reached at suzan@silt.org. Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 1 Is CTT - Correios De Portugal, S.A. (ELI:CTT) a good dividend stock? How can we tell? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. Unfortunately, it's common for investors to be enticed in by the seemingly attractive yield, and lose money when the company has to cut its dividend payments. With a six-year payment history and a 4.8% yield, many investors probably find CTT - Correios De Portugal intriguing. We'd agree the yield does look enticing. Some simple research can reduce the risk of buying CTT - Correios De Portugal for its dividend - read on to learn more. Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis ENXTLS:CTT Historical Dividend Yield April 13th 2020 Payout ratios Companies (usually) pay dividends out of their earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, the dividend might have to be cut. As a result, we should always investigate whether a company can afford its dividend, measured as a percentage of a company's net income after tax. CTT - Correios De Portugal paid out 57% of its profit as dividends, over the trailing twelve month period. A payout ratio above 50% generally implies a business is reaching maturity, although it is still possible to reinvest in the business or increase the dividend over time. Another important check we do is to see if the free cash flow generated is sufficient to pay the dividend. CTT - Correios De Portugal paid out 5.6% of its free cash flow as dividends last year, which is conservative and suggests the dividend is sustainable. It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously. With a strong net cash balance, CTT - Correios De Portugal investors may not have much to worry about in the near term from a dividend perspective. We update our data on CTT - Correios De Portugal every 24 hours, so you can always get our latest analysis of its financial health, here. Story continues Dividend Volatility Before buying a stock for its income, we want to see if the dividends have been stable in the past, and if the company has a track record of maintaining its dividend. Looking at the data, we can see that CTT - Correios De Portugal has been paying a dividend for the past six years. It's good to see that CTT - Correios De Portugal has been paying a dividend for a number of years. However, the dividend has been cut at least once in the past, and we're concerned that what has been cut once, could be cut again. During the past six-year period, the first annual payment was 0.40 in 2014, compared to 0.11 last year. Dividend payments have fallen sharply, down 73% over that time. When a company's per-share dividend falls we question if this reflects poorly on either external business conditions, or the company's capital allocation decisions. Either way, we find it hard to get excited about a company with a declining dividend. Dividend Growth Potential With a relatively unstable dividend, and a poor history of shrinking dividends, it's even more important to see if EPS are growing. Over the past five years, it looks as though CTT - Correios De Portugal's EPS have declined at around 18% a year. A sharp decline in earnings per share is not great from from a dividend perspective, as even conservative payout ratios can come under pressure if earnings fall far enough. Conclusion When we look at a dividend stock, we need to form a judgement on whether the dividend will grow, if the company is able to maintain it in a wide range of economic circumstances, and if the dividend payout is sustainable. CTT - Correios De Portugal's payout ratios are within a normal range for the average corporation, and we like that its cashflow was stronger than reported profits. Earnings per share are down, and CTT - Correios De Portugal's dividend has been cut at least once in the past, which is disappointing. While we're not hugely bearish on it, overall we think there are potentially better dividend stocks than CTT - Correios De Portugal out there. Investors generally tend to favour companies with a consistent, stable dividend policy as opposed to those operating an irregular one. At the same time, there are other factors our readers should be conscious of before pouring capital into a stock. As an example, we've identified 4 warning signs for CTT - Correios De Portugal that you should be aware of before investing. Looking for more high-yielding dividend ideas? Try our curated list of dividend stocks with a yield above 3%. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. Pakistan on Monday extended the duration of the closure of the Wagah border and the Kartarpur Corridor along the International Border with India for two weeks amid the novel Coronavirus pandemic. The Kartarpur Corridor will be sealed till April 24 while the Wagah crossing will be closed from April 16 to April 29. READ | India Issues Demarche To Pakistan On Ceasefire Violation: MEA Sources Pakistan had already shut borders with India last month when COVID-19 cases began to rise substantially in both countries. Pakistan's western border with Iran and Afghanistan had already been closed. India too had closed the border crossing points and restricted operation of international passenger flights earlier in March as part of efforts to check the spread of coronavirus. READ | Two Pilots Of Pakistan Army Dead In Plane Crash Near Gujrat; Fifth Such Incident In 2020 Coronavirus crises Pakistan has so far reported at least 5,478 confirmed cases of COVID-19 of which 95 patients have died while 1,095 have recovered. A nationwide lockdown was announced for 15 days with effect from March 22 and was later extended to April 14. Meanwhile, India entered its twentieth day of the three-week shutdown which aims to curb the spread of COVID-19. So far, the country has reported 9352 cases of COVID-19 and has seen a sharpening of the infection curve in recent weeks. 980 patients have recovered from the disease while 324 people have died. The lockdown, due to end on April 14, has been extended in several state till the end of April given the rise in infections. READ | Imran Khan's S.O.S Answered; IMF To Consider $1.4 Bn Loan To Pakistan To Deal With Covid READ | Imran Khan Delays Lockdown Decision Even As Pakistan Reports Over 5000 Covid Cases South Korea's election watchdog said Monday it will prioritize preventing those in self-isolation over the new coronavirus from having contact with other voters when they cast ballots in this week's elections. The government will allow people ordered to go into self-quarantine from April 1-14 and without symptoms of the virus to vote in Wednesday's parliamentary elections after regular voting ends at 6 p.m. Under measures revealed by the National Election Commission (NEC), self-isolators wearing face masks are to wait at designated places before being guided to make-shift polling booths after 6 p.m. Their movements and voting hours will be arranged in a way that does not overlap with those of other voters. Self-isolators will only be allowed to be outside from 5:20 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the election day. Election officials overseeing voting will wear full protective gear, including face shields, masks and surgical gloves. When self-isolators have finished voting, officials will immediately disinfect ballot stamps and polling booths. Health authorities also plan to implement stricter social distancing for such voters at polling stations. Ordinary voters are advised to stand 1 meter apart from others while waiting to vote. But people under self-quarantine should keep a distance of at least 2 meters from others. Currently, there are around 50,000 people in self-isolation over COVID-19. The government plans to send text messages asking about their willingness to vote Monday and Tuesday. Those in self-quarantine who want to vote should reply by 6 p.m. on the day that they receive the message. Authorities remain on high alert over the possibility that the temporary lifting of self-isolation rules could spark community transmission if those under self-quarantine do not cooperate. "Self-isolators should bear in mind that the government will ease quarantine rules to guarantee their right to vote," said Chun Byung-chul, a professor of preventive medicine at Korea University College of Medicine. (Yonhap) New Delhi, April 13 : The Indian Army on Monday provided financial aid and essential clothing to people injured in unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan at the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. "In its efforts to help the local people, the Vilgam Army Camp distributed Rs 100,000 in cash and essential clothing worth around Rs 50,000," said a senior Indian Army officer. In addition to this, the force ha liaisoned with the Deputy Commissioner of Kupwara, who sent essential items worth Rs 10,000 and Rs 52,000 in cash. These were distributed to the affected persons. The force also said that because of unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan earlier this month, 8-year-old Zeeshan Bashir, a resident of Tumna Village, was killed. "The Vilgam Battalion under the Rashtriya Rifles provided relief to the family of Zeeshan and to those who have been injured and lost their properties in Tumna and Hachamargi villages," said the officer, adding that in total, nine injured people were provided with relief materials. The force had rushed Bashir Ah Kataria, the father of Zeeshan Bashir who was also seriously injured, to the Srinagar government hospital. He has been provided with Rs 30,000, five blankets and clothes. The army also provided Rs 30,000, five blankets and clothes to Farooq Ah Kataria, whose house and car got completely burnt. Saiba Badana, who was seriously injured in the leg and is currently admitted to the SKIMS in Srinagar, was provided with Rs 10,000, two blankets and clothes. Laldeen Chechi, who got injured in shoulder, and Faizan Ah Khan, who was injured in the leg, were provided with Rs 5000, five blankets and clothes each. Gulaam Rasool Khan, whose house got damaged, was provided Rs 5,000 and three blankets. Tasleema Begum, whose hand was injured, was provided with Rs 5,000 and some clothes. Murtaza, whose house got damaged, was provided with Rs 5000 cash and clothes. Sajauddin Kataria, who got minor injuries in the leg, was provided with Rs 5000, blankets and some clothes. After Indian security forces eliminated five terrorists on the Line of Control and four terrorists in the hinterland in Jammu and Kashmir last week, Pakistan resorted to ceasefire violations in Kupwara Sector on April 12 in which three people, including a child, was killed. Pakistan had started heavy shelling on Sunday afternoon in Kupwara, Tumina Chowkibal and Handwara. The force had said, "Today, in a brazen unprofessional and unethical act, the Pakistan Army initiated unprovoked artillery fire targeting innocent civilian population especially the poor Gujjar villages." Indian Army said that as there is no presence of force installations or deployment, it resulted in the death of three civilians, including one woman and a child. Pakistan had also resorted to ceasefire violations on April 10. Indian Army has been befittingly responding to such violations. On April 6, Indian Army had eliminated a group of five infiltrating terrorists in Keran Sector during a hand to hand combat. Indian Army had also lost five of its elite army commandos. The US has seen a massive spike in alcohol sales reminiscent of the Prohibition as people turn to drink to cope with the lockdown. Alcohol sales were up 22% in the final week of March, not as large an increase as in the two previous weeks, but a rise that is far higher than expected. Beer, flavored malt and cider sold 17% more than in the same week in March 2019. But more staggeringly, online sales of alcohol for March increased by 291% on the previous year. Experts have warned that among the dire impacts of the lockdown on people's health, many turn to alcohol as they become depressed by their diminished quality of life. Lisa MacDonald shops for wine in a liquor store in Seattle. Many, if not most, liquor stores in Washington state are considered "essential businesses" and can stay open under Gov. Jay Inslee's stay-at-home order issued Monday in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak Buyers queue up to enter a liquor store last month in Denver, Colorado Cory Rellas, CEO of alcohol delivery app Drizly, told Yahoo Finance: 'What weve seen is just a massive mix shift from drinking at bars and restaurants, to home. 'This is a supply chain that hasn't changed a whole lot in the 90 plus years since Prohibition was repealed.' It comes as 42 states have introduced stay-at-home orders meaning the only place to drink for millions is at home. Danny Brager, Senior Vice President of Beverage Alcohol at Nielsen, told Forbes: 'Not unexpectedly, given the stunning consumer purchasing levels we saw in the two previous weeks, while sales grew significantly versus one year ago in the week ending March 28, 2020, they also dropped significantly versus last weeks levels. 'This week was an adjustment week during which consumers moved away from the same level of stocking up we saw previously.' A woman leaves a liquor store as a statewide stay-at-home order rolls into its second day of enforcement in Bergen Park, Colorado In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has allowed permit liquor stores to remain open despite him ordering non-essential businesses to close to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Essential businesses include hospitals, pharmacies, grocery stores and news media. Liquor stores were not specified in Cuomo's order, but New York's State Liquor Association quickly clarified: 'Liquor stores have been deemed an essential business and may remain open. You do not need to reduce your workforce.' A delivery man delivers wine to a liquor store in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday Market analytics firm Social Standards said that if social distancing measures continue into the summer, the market will notice shifts in consumption habits. Based on their surveys they concluded that products at risk of diminished sales include: canned wine, rose, prosecco, hard seltzer, white rum, gin, Mexican beer, pale lager and light lager. Conversely, they anticipated that the products likely to sell well include: malbec, flavored gin, gin, low alcohol beer, wheat beer, sour IPA, flavored beer and craft cider. Eight people, including four teenage students, were arrested on Monday on charges of sexually assaulting a ninth standard girl two months ago and impregnating her, police said. The victim told her parents that she has been suffering from stomach pain for the last couple of days. Following this, her parents took her for a test at the Government Hospital here on Saturday, the police said. Shocked to learn that their daughter, a private school student in the city, was pregnant, their parents lodged a complaint with the police. Inquiry revealed that four of her classmates and another four had allegedly sexually assaulted her two months ago, they said. The eight were arrested and further investigations are on, they added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pope Francis prayed for tens of thousands of coronavirus victims in an unprecedented livestream Easter Sunday message delivered from a hauntingly empty Vatican to a world under lockdown. The 83-year-old pontiff spoke softly at a ceremony attended by just a handful of priests and a small choir that was spaced out across the expansive marble floor of Saint Peter's Basilica. "For many, this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties," Francis said. The pandemic raging outside the Vatican's locked gates has killed more than 110,000 people and left billions confined to their homes. Easter in confinement Mexican Archbishop Francisco Moreno Barron celebrates Easter mass at an empty cathedral in Tijuana, Baja California state. By Guillermo Arias (AFP) Most of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics were in forced confinement as the pope spoke, and few of the world's churches were open on Christianity's holiest day. In his homily, the pope called for a global ceasefire and debt relief for the poorest countries. His message was livestreamed for the first time -- a bow to technology in the face of a new illness that has transformed society and altered the way religion is observed. Around the globe, others followed his advice and found creative solutions. In Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby -- the spiritual leader of Anglicans -- celebrated mass with thousands of followers on a video recorded from his kitchen. Panama Archbishop Jose Domingo Ulloa donned mask and gloves and toured the city in a "popemobile" used during Francis' visit to the Central American country last year. Ulloa's cavalcade halted outside hospitals as he rose to bless the sick and those caring for them. Brazilian Archbishop Cardinal Dom Orani celebrates Easter Mass at the Christ Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, where the landmark had a doctor's uniform projected onto it in honour of all the medical staff worldwide fighting the coronavirus pandemic. By CARL DE SOUZA (AFP) Rio de Janeiro priest Omar Raposo took to a helicopter to bless the Brazilian city from the sky. At Latin America's biggest Catholic sanctuary, the Basilica of Aparecida in Brazil's Sao Paulo state, Archbishop Orlando Brandes celebrated mass before an empty church and urged Brazilians to practice social distancing. "Let's stay home, let's follow our doctors' recommendations. That is an act of charity, of devotion to life," Brandes said, in a homily that was broadcast live on TV and online. In the United States, President Donald Trump, a Presbyterian, said in an Easter message that this year's celebration "comes during a sombre time for our nation." Trump followed a televised service by Robert Jeffress, the leader of a Southern Baptist megachurch. Baltimore, Maryland, Pastor Alvin Gwynn defied a state lockdown to call on parishioners to flock to his Friendship Baptist Church for his Easter service, but given fears over the coronavirus, fewer than 10 showed up. Photo combination showing Easter masses being celebrated in empty churches across Latin America on Sunday, (L-R and top to bottom) Caracas, Tlalnepantla in Mexico, San Jose and Ouro Preto in Brazil. By CRISTIAN HERNANDEZ, PEDRO PARDO, Ezequiel BECERRA, DOUGLAS MAGNO (AFP) While priests in Mexico celebrated mass in empty churches, some indigenous communities in the south defied the pandemic by holding traditional processions. Earlier, in Seville, Spain, worshipers left wreaths of flowers outside the locked churches from where festive processions had normally departed. In Italy, Europe's hardest-hit nation, the great Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli livestreamed a special concert from the deserted square facing Milan's lacelike Duomo Cathedral. A parish near the Philippines' capital Manila pasted the empty pews with family photos that the faithful had emailed to the priest. Catholics in Syria -- where celebrations had continued in Christian quarters of Damascus despite years of agonising war -- watched the Facebook Live mass posted by the country's patriarch. In Jerusalem, a few priests also gathered at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre -- under lockdown like the Vatican -- to pray at the spot where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and resurrected on Easter. The pope's message was livestreamed for the first time -- a bow to technology in the face of the pandemic. By ANDREAS SOLARO (POOL/AFP) As a solemn Easter day darkened into night in Latin America, Rio de Janeiro Archbishop Orani Joao Tempesta blessed Brazil from the city's iconic Christ the Redeemer statue, the first such ceremony since it was inaugurated in 1931. The iconic statue had a doctor's uniform projected on it, reading "Thank You" in honor of the medical staff fighting the pandemic. 'Unable to bid farewell' Bells rang across a still and completely silent Rome when the pope's mass began. Father Omar Raposo prepares to celebrate the Easter Mass at the Christ Redemeer atop Corcovado hill in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. By CARL DE SOUZA (AFP) Francis pleaded with world leaders to forget their differences and support his appeal "for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world" during a global health emergency of a magnitude not seen in 100 years. "This is not a time for division," Francis said. Health considerations required global powers to ease crippling economic sanctions imposed against their adversaries, he said -- a possible reference to those weighing on pandemic-hit Iran. He called for a "reduction, if not the forgiveness, of the debt burdening the balance sheets of the poorest nations" and for European nations to show the same "solidarity" they did in the wake of World War II. "After the Second World War, this beloved continent was able to rise again," he said. "The European Union is presently facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world." The official toll across Europe passed 75,000 moments before Francis spoke. The Argentine-born pontiff offered a special message of consolation to those "who mourn the loss of their loved ones (but) to whom, in some cases, they were unable even to bid a final farewell." burs-zak/db/to Nigeria: 4 killed at pastors home in jihadist attack Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The pastor of an evangelical church in north-central Nigeria and three members of his congregation, including a 10-year-old boy, were shot dead by radical Fulani herdsmen, according to a Christian persecution watchdog. The attack took place at the house of Pastor Matthew Tagwai of Evangelical Church Winning All in the village of Ngbra Zongo near the Miango area in Plateau States Bassa County on the night of April 7, according to Morning Star News. The attack was carried out by armed herdsmen against the community, an area resident, identified as Patience Moses, was quoted as saying. Two other Christians were also injured during the attack by the herdsmen, and they are currently being treated at a hospital at Dantako village. The deceased pastor was 34. This new attack, like the ones before it, is condemnable, said the Rev. Yunusa Nmadu, Jr., ECWA general secretary, about the killing of Christians in Plateau state and northern Nigeria. The continuing attacks on harmless and unsuspecting Christian communities without a concrete, strategic response from our duty-bearers to protect our people leaves much to be desired. Let the authorities know that people do not run forever. There comes a time when they are pressed to the wall, and in such times reactions and counter-reactions will inevitably occur. Since the start of 2020, estimates suggest that over 400 Christians were killed in the West African country. In all, not less than 410 Christian lives have been lost in Nigeria to Jihadist Fulani terrorists in the past 93 days of 2020, the Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) said in a statement. At least 50 Christians were killed in March and 10 in the first two days of April by Fulani herdsmen. This is on daily average of about five Christian deaths. On average, the Jihadist Fulani militants killed 125 Christians in January and February, respectively, and 50 in March, Intersociety reported. The killings are largely a result of increased terrorist attacks from Boko Haram splinter groups and overnight attacks carried out by Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farming communities in Nigerias Middle Belt. Since 2015, about 11,500 Christians have been killed in Nigeria, according to Intersocietys estimates. In 2019, between 1,000 to 1,200 Christians were killed by Fulani attackers. Nigeria ranks as the 12th worst country in the world for Christian persecution on Open Doors USAs 2020 World Watch List. It is one of the most deadly countries in the world for Christians. Because of the Nigerian governments inability to halt societal and extremist violence and hold those accountable responsible, Nigeria was added to the U.S. State Departments special watch list of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations for religious freedom in December. Life has come a full circle for Madakam Lakha, who would stitch uniforms for the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) commanders such as Ramanna --- he died last December --- and Madvi Hidma in the remote jungles of South Sukma in Chhattisgarh till he surrendered eight months ago. Now, he is devoting all his energy in sewing masks to combat the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. Lakha (38), a resident of Bhimapuram village under Jagargonda police station surrendered in August 2019, is lodged in Sukma Police Line, which is located about 400km away from the state capital Raipur. Follow live updates on coronavirus Lakha came to know about the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) units such as masks a few days ago and started stitching them inside Sukma Police Line. Hes making up to 90 masks a day that are being distributed by the police among the local tribal people, Sundarraj Patilingam, Inspector General of Police (IG) in South Bastar Range, said. Lakha joined the Maoists in 1998 as a member of Bal Sanhgam (child soldiers). Earlier, he used to stitch the Maoist commanders clothes, but after he surrendered hes helping the police, the IG said. Lakha, who hails from the Muriya tribe, a sub-tribe of the Gond, from the states Sukma district, feels privileged that he got the opportunity to stitch masks for the local tribal people amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Its a matter of great personal satisfaction for me that Im contributing in my humble way in this battle against Covid-19. I wanted to utilise my stitching skills to good use to help the local tribal people, Lakha said. Shalabh Sinha, superintendent of police (SP), Sukma, said that Lakha has been a goldmine of information about the Maoists. Lakha comes from that inaccessible part of Sukma, which is the core of Maoists activities in Bastar. Hes helping us with invaluable inputs and also interpreting the local tribal dialects for us, the SP said. Besides, Lakha holds the key for the police because of his access to the ultra-Left partys top brass in Chhattisgarh. Hes an asset for us because he has stitched clothes for Maoist commanders such as Ramanna and Madvi Hidma, the SP added. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Amazon has stopped accepting new online grocery customers and curtailed hours at some Whole Foods stores - amid surging demand during lockdown The Jeff Bezos owned online retail giant said Sunday it will begin to put new food delivery customers on a wait list to prioritize orders from existing customers during the coronavirus lockdown. Amazon also plans to shorten some Whole Foods stores' hours for the public so its employees can more quickly fulfill online grocery orders, the company said. It will temporarily close at least one store in New York City from April 15. Many shoppers recently seeking to purchase groceries from the Seattle-based e-commerce company found they could not place orders due to a lack of available delivery slots. Amazon said it would have to relegate all new online grocery customers to a wait list starting Monday while working on adding capacity each week. In recent weeks, it increased the number of Whole Foods stores offering grocery pickup to more than 150 locations, up from 80 previously. The company also said Monday it would hire 75,000 more people for jobs ranging from warehouse staff to delivery drivers. Harlem residents stand in line at Whole Foods during the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday Amazon has stopped accepting new online grocery customers as it closes some Whole Foods stores and cuts hours at others amid a surge in demand Amazon also plans to shorten some Whole Foods stores' hours for the public so its employees can more quickly fulfill online grocery orders, the company said. It has closed at least one store in Manhattan as it deals with demand With unemployment rates hitting record levels, Amazon is looking to fill the gap. To draw new employees, the company had said it would add $2 to its minimum $15 per hour to U.S. workers' wages through April. Amazon said on Monday it had filled all of the 100,000 positions it advertised earlier, and the new jobs are in addition to that. The moves illustrates how the world's largest online retailer, which showed its ambition to enter the grocery industry by acquiring Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in August 2017, is now leveraging its presence both online and in physical stores to handle high demand from consumers who are stuck eating at home. As of Sunday night, as many as 22,129 Americans had died from coronavirus. Amazon workers have become just as essential as first responders, providing food and other basics for millions of people who are isolating themselves under government stay-home directives. Bezos on Wednesday thanked staff at the warehouse and a nearby Whole Foods in Dallas, Texas, after employees nationwide staged a spate of strikes and sick-outs over working conditions during the pandemic. The world's richest man was filmed taking a temperature check and wearing a mask on his surprise visit. He was seen waving to staff and thanking them, telling one: 'I can't shake your hand. It's a hard habit to break.' The retail giant offers grocery delivery services Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime Now from its own warehouses and Whole Foods stores. It typically touts ultra-fast delivery within hours, with shoppers able to choose a delivery window. Last month, Amazon temporarily suspended the Prime Pantry delivery service, which sells non-perishable groceries. Amazon said its online grocery order capacity has increased by more than 60 per cent during the outbreak. Some netizens who said they used Amazon Prime, its $119-a-year subscription service for U.S. shoppers, have nevertheless complained on social media about the scarcity of delivery windows. The company said it is hiring more workers to expand capacity and that it plans to launch a new feature that will help customers secure a virtual 'place in line' to distribute the delivery windows on a first come, first served basis. It also offered higher pay to encourage its warehouse workers to work for its grocery delivery service. Currently, Amazon runs 487 Whole Foods stores in the United States. These stores have been limiting the number of customers allowed at once, and Amazon has said it conducts daily employee temperature checks and sends masks and gloves to protect workers. The first store of Amazon's much-anticipated new grocery chain, which is scheduled to open this year in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, has been temporarily transitioned into a warehouse for online orders, the company said. A spokesman told DailyMail.com: 'As we continue to face the challenges associated with COVID-19, we are constantly looking for new ways to meet the increased demand for online grocery shopping and serve more customers. 'Beginning April 15, we will temporarily convert Bryant Park store into an online-only store, focused 100% on fulfilling grocery delivery. 'During this time, customers who prefer to shop in-store can visit our Columbus Circle, Midtown East, Chelsea and Union Square stores in the NYC metro area'. Still, some employees at Whole Foods and Amazon warehouses have protested the company is not doing enough to protect them, in demonstrations that gained attention from lawmakers and unions. Over 50 Amazon fulfillment centers and several Whole Foods stores had confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to multiple reports. 'We still expect the combination of restricted capacity due to social distancing and customer demand will continue to make finding available delivery windows challenging for customers,' Stephenie Landry, vice president of Grocery at Amazon, wrote in a blogpost. 'If you are able to do so safely, we kindly encourage our customers who can to shop in-person.' Top global oil producers are considering cutting production by 20 million barrels per day under the terms of a deal to boost prices, US President Donald Trump said on Monday. Trump, who took credit for brokering the deal, said the agreement was bigger than expected and will help the energy industry recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. "Having been involved in the negotiations, to put it mildly, the number that OPEC+ is looking to cut is 20 Million Barrels a day, not the 10 Million that is generally being reported," Trump tweeted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dr. Justice Yankson General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), says is now advisable for everyone to wear the nose mask due to the increase in the numbers of COVID-19 cases in Ghana. There has been a debate about when to and when not to wear a nose mask. Many are seen walking on the streets without the nose mask which is said to be one of the ways one can protect themselves from contracting coronavirus. The World Health Organization has held off from recommending people wear face masks in public after assessing fresh evidence that suggested the items may help to contain the pandemic. READ ALSO: Here's all you need to know about using cloth masks for Covid-19 The WHO reviewed its position on masks in light of data from Hong Kong indicating that their widespread use in the community may have reduced the spread of coronavirus in some regions. Dr. Yankson said since credible institutions have all recommended the use of the nose mask it is best if Ghanaians adhere to that to help prevent the spread of the virus. "Looking at the way our numbers are going we need to start advising people to put on the nose mask as well, the truth is we are still getting a lot more details about this novel coronavirus, the literature, research is been updated from time to time because of newer things that are coming up, but if you see best practices elsewhere and the fact that credible institution have recommended then clearly there is some benefit in wearing the nose mask". But in updated guidance, WHO maintained that while masks could help limit the spread of the disease, they were insufficient on their own. There was no evidence that wearing a mask in the community prevented healthy people from picking up respiratory infections including Covid-19, it said. The Minister for Health Kwaku Agyemang Manu announced last week that some five local companies have been tasked to produce some 3.6 million face masks for the public and health workers as well. A A home had its roof torn off after a tornado ripped through Monroe, La., just before noon on April 12, 2020. (Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star via AP) At Least 34 Tornadoes Batter the South, Killing at Least 19 People Severe weather has swept across the South, killing at least 19 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains. Many people spent part of the night early Monday sheltering in basements, closets and bathroom tubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes. At least 34 tornadoes were reported in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia as of early Monday, the National Weather Service said. Eleven people were killed in Mississippi, and six more died in northwest Georgia. Two other bodies were pulled from damaged homes in Arkansas and South Carolina. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out electricity for about 750,000 customers in a 10-state swath ranging from Texas to Georgia up to West Virginia, according to poweroutages.us. The National Weather Service tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Meteorologists warned the mid-Atlantic states to prepare for potential tornadoes, wind and hail on Monday. In this photo provided by Rep. Ralph Abraham, R-La., he is seen talking on his phone in front of a destroyed hangar and damaged planes at Monroe Regional Airport in Monroe, La., on April 12, 2020. (Dianne Abrams via AP) In Georgia, Murray County Fire Chief Dewayne Bain told WAGA-TV that two mobile home parks were severely damaged, with five people killed and five others hospitalized after a line of narrow line of storms left a five mile long path of destruction. Another person was killed when a tree fell on a home in Cartersville, the station reported. Mississippis death toll rose to 11 early Monday, the states emergency management agency tweeted, promising details later in the morning. In Arkansas, one person was killed when a tree fell on a home in White Hall, about 35 miles southeast of Little Rock, the Jefferson County Department of Emergency Management said. In South Carolina, a person was found dead in a collapsed building near Seneca as the apparent tornado struck the city around 3:30 a.m. Monday, Oconee County Emergency Management Director Scott Krein said. Several apparent tornadoes spun up in South Carolina, where dozens of homes appeared damaged in a line from Seneca to Clemson. Emergency officials were working to open shelters in the North Carolina mountains, where up to 5 inches of rain fell in a few hours. Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, talks to a displaced resident after severe storms damaged homes in Monroe, La., on April 12, 2020. (Greg Hilburn/Monroe News Star via AP) In Chattanooga, Tennessee, at least 150 homes and commercial buildings were damaged and more than a dozen people treated, but none of their injuries appeared to be life-threatening, Chattanooga Fire Chief Phil Hyman said Monday morning. Its widespread damage that happened extremely fast, he said. I advise people to stay in their homes at this point. As far as safety is concerned, we still have active power lines that are down. The deaths in Mississippi included a married coupleLawrence County sheriffs deputy, Robert Ainsworth, and a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk, Paula We, a Facebook post from the county sheriffs office said. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency Sunday night after he said several tornadoes had struck the state. This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter, Reeves said on Twitter. As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together. This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter Sunday. As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together. 2/3 Tate Reeves (@tatereeves) April 13, 2020 Strong winds late Sunday toppled power lines and blew trees onto several houses in Clarksdale, Mississippi, trapping some people inside, Mayor Chuck Espy said. I know these are some tough times and Im just asking everyone to stay prayed up, Espy said. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries in Louisiana, even though the storm damaged between 200 and 300 homes in and around the city of Monroe, Mayor Jamie Mayo, told KNOE-TV. Flights were canceled at Monroe Regional Airport, where airport director Ron Phillips told the News-Star the storm caused up to $30 million in damage to planes inside a hangar. In Alabama, lightning struck the Shoals Creek Baptist Church in Priceville, damaging the roof and steeple, Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Eddie Hicks told AL.com. By Emily Wagster Pettus The CNN Wire and Epoch Times staff contributed to this report. Ghaziabad: A 25-year-old groom and his six friends were arrested by the Ghaziabad police early Monday morning while they were trying to sneak into Meerut for wedding, in violation of the national lockdown enforced to stave off the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic. The Muradnagar police arrested the seven and booked them under various IPC sections. All of them are residents of Muradnagar and were to Meerut in two cars when they were nabbed by the Muradnagar police around 1.30am on Monday. On Sunday evening, we received a communication from Meerut police about two marriages in a family based at Lisadi Gate, Meerut. One baraat was to come from Meerut and another from Muradnagar, Ghaziabad. So we contacted the bridegroom at Muradnagar and asked his family not to leave for Meerut without permission/passes since the lockdown is in place, said Neeraj Kumar Jadaun, superintendent of police (rural). Despite warning, the seven -- the bridegroom and his six friends -- tried to go to Meerut in two cars but were nabbed during checking by the police. The groom was dressed up in full wedding attire. The seven were taken to the police station and an FIR was lodged against them. The cars were also seized, Jadaun added. The police have booked the seven men under IPC section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) and 270 (malignant act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life). Now the wedding has been postponed and it will take place only after the lockdown is lifted. We were hoping to reach Meerut during night and perform wedding on Monday. We had planned to return late night. But the police stopped the groom and his friends and arrested them, said a relative of the groom. Officials said the seven men were later released on bail and sent back home. Guwahati, April 13 : Most of the 30 Covid-19 patients in Assam are recovering and their discharge from hospitals is expected to start on Wednesday. "Most patients, earlier infected by nCoV, are either stable or good. If everything remains fine, their discharge is likely to start from April 15," said Assam Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, here on Monday. Addressing the media, he said, "Of the 3,209 swab samples collected, 3,070 were found negative. Of the 1,421 samples of Tablighi Jamaat meet participants, 29 tested positive and 1,358 negative. Test report of 34 samples are awaited." Two more coronavirus cases - a 35-year-old man from Assam and a 33-year-old man from Nagaland -- were reported in Assam on Monday. The Minister said a person from Dhubri (western Assam), linked with the Tablighi Jamaat meet at Nizamuddin Markaz (in Delhi), has been found coronavirus positive. A private hospital in Dimapur (Nagaland) referred a patient to the GMCH (Guwahati Medical College and Hospital). He tested positive and was undergoing treatment at the GMCH, he said. The man from Nagaland had travelled from Kolkata to Dimapur on March 24 and when he developed symptoms of nCoV, he was shifted to GMCH on April 5. Of the 37 positive cases in five northeastern states -- Assam (31), Manipur (2), Tripura (2), Mizoram (1) and Arunachal Pradesh (1) -- 30 had attended the Jamaat meet. According to the Assam Minister, the state reported its first coronavirus death in Hailakandi district on April 10. The Covid-19 death in Assam was also the first in the northeast. In Manipur, a 23-year-old woman, who had returned from the United Kingdom last month and become the first Covid-19 case in the northeast, has been declared negative and discharged from the hospital on Sunday. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) Lawyer Harry Roque is back as President Rodrigo Dutertes spokesperson, replacing Salvador Panelo. Senator Bong Go, a former close aide of the President, told reporters about the news ahead of a scheduled noontime press briefing in Malacanang. He clarified that Panelo, a "long-time ally," will continue to work for Duterte. In a statement, Panelo said the President offered Roque to take the post again. Panelo will still be serving as the Chief Presidential Legal Counsel who will provide guidance on the President's actions, issuances and statements. Panelo vowed to work together with Roque's office "in pursuing the national policy of the government, specially on COVID-19, and thereafter." Roque last held the position in October 2018, when he resigned to vie for a Senate seat. He later scrapped that plan after Duterte said he would not win the race. He then set sights to return to the House of Representatives under the Luntiang Pilipinas party-list, a comeback of sorts after his short-lived stint as the congressman for Kabayan Partylist from 2016 to 2017. RELATED: Kabayan Partylist removes Harry Roque as member, Representative Roque eventually abandoned his political ambitions during the 2019 polls, withdrawing his candidacy due to a heart condition. Despite falling out of the political spotlight, Roque returned to the headlines as the lawyer of the whistleblowers in the alleged PhilHealth dialysis fund scam. Roque, a former House Deputy Minority Leader, was known as a human rights lawyer who represented victims of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, the kin of Palawan-based environmental advocate and journalist Gerry Ortega, who was gunned down in 2011, and the family of Filipino transgender Jennifer Laude, killed by a U.S. Marine in 2014, among others. Roque has yet to hold a media briefing as a returning Palace spokesman. 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. Tony Evans hosting virtual Good Friday to urge men to covenant with God, heal nation in crisis Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Pastor Tony Evans is issuing a clarion call to men on Good Friday to covenant with God for the advance of His Kingdom and the healing of the land amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The vision for the "Kingdom Men Calling" online gathering was originally set in motion as a result of Evans' ministry to men, in part based on his book Kingdom Man, in which he challenges men toward biblical, godly manhood. The event will be streamed on Evans' Facebook page at 8 p.m. CT. When COVID-19 hit, the longtime pastor Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas recalled the specific emphasis he placed on Exodus 34:23-24 in which God speaks of gathering men to appear before the Sovereign Lord in order to save the land. "Given that the land is in trouble, that when men will covenant with God we can get God to intervene in our situation," Evans explained in a Thursday phone interview with The Christian Post. "When men fail it opens up the door for cultural collapse," he stressed. At the end of the gathering, every man who is interested will be invited to receive free downloads to continue further study of what covenanting with God looks like, specifically as it relates to manhood. "We have plenty of religious men, we don't have covenanted men, plenty of even Christian men who are not aligned underneath this word called covenant," Evans says in a video promoting the gathering. Asked to elaborate on what he means by "biblical manhood," Evans explained that what he calls a "Kingdom man" is a man who consistently lives all of life under the rule of God, reflecting God's ways in every area of life. "And the word that God uses to signify that level of commitment is the word covenant, and a biblical covenant is a divinely created relational bond. When God established a covenant, He established it so that men would relate to Him, would come under His authority and reflect His word and His will in all of life," he told CP. Yet when men abdicate that position underneath God then the things they are responsible for become shaky, he added. When men fail in this way, every sphere of culture disintegrates. "The whole point of a biblical man is that he out-serves the woman who he is responsible for. He is not a tyrant, not a dictator. He is a superior servant. And because he is a superior servant, he is reflecting Jesus Christ and that gives him legitimate, not illegitimate authority." He also pointed that that "many men have not been fathered correctly, so they don't know how to be the right kind of husband or father." "For many men it's not their fault, because they just don't know," he lamented. "We want to serve men to be servants." Residents of Tamale Central Constituency have applauded Dr. Ibrahim Anyars, NPP Parliamentary Candidate for the Tamale Central Constituency for his outstanding contributions to the welfare of the people in the constituency. For the past weeks, Dr. Anyars has been donating sanitizers, veronica buckets, soaps, basins, and gloves to all constituents without discrimination. Whiles receiving the items, many of the residents acknowledged his continuous efforts in providing social interventions that improve the lives of the people, noticeable among them are regular free medical treatment and screening in the constituency. Media Houses, Opinion Leaders, Public Institutions, Youth Groups and Leadership of the various mosques were the first group to have received the donations as his way of appreciating the vital role they are playing to ensure all protocols under COVID-19 as outlined by Ghana Health Service are observed by the constituents. This was disclosed by Mr. Musah Mutawkil, NPP Tamale Central Constituency Secretary. All the hospitals in the Tamale Central Constituency were not left out. Items worth thousands of Ghana Cedis have also been donated to the SDA Hospital, Tamale Central Hospital, Tamale West Hospital, and Tamale Teaching Hospital. Other public institutions such as Ghana Police service and the Prisons Service received some of the PPEs to ensure their safety as frontliners during this period. Tamale Central Constituency has 50 Public pay-per-use toilets, which is patronized by a significant number of people. Over the weekend, Dr. Anyars through his constituency Chairman, Alhaji Mohammed Ibrahim, popularly known as "Shidimyinyaa" in a brief ceremony donated 50 Veronica buckets and 250 bottles of liquid soap to all the 50 public toilets in the Constituency to ensure the less privileged, notwithstanding religion, age, sex, political affiliation or economic status observes handwashing protocols in the wake of the novel coronavirus. A trader couldnt hide her joy and satisfaction. We are grateful that he is regularly paying attention to our health needs. Although it's a health need, I wouldnt have accepted it if it was coming from any other person apart from Dr. Anyars. This is because, for Dr. Anyars whether the world is sick or not, he is paying attention to our health needs. The regular checkup he organizes has helped me and my household to be health-conscious. May Allah guide him. She stated with joy. The overall development of the constituents is the utmost concern of Dr. Anyars as he has also facilitated radio broadcast of sermons to allow Islamic Clerics to reach out to the Muslim Community in this era of social distancing (no congregational prayers). Some opinion leaders have described the soft-spoken Parliamentary Aspirant as one of the first philanthropists to have come to the aid of citizens during this COVID-19 pandemic, stating that, Dr. Anyars organized buses for our sons and daughters to get home safely. This was very thoughtful considering the disruption our children would have faced. The free buses transported students from the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University of Education Winneba, University of Cape Coast and Islamic University College of Ghana to Tamale after President Akuffo-Addo announced that all tertiary institutions should be closed. As of April 12, 2020, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) reports that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases stood at 566. A swastika flag and two Chinese flags branded with the words "COVID-19" have been strung up on a phone tower in central Victoria. Police are investigating what is suspected to be a case of trespass at a property in Kyabram on April 12. A large swastika has been planted on the top of a phone tower at Kyabram. There are also two Chinese flags. Credit:Source: Nine News "It is believed three flags were hung on the Bradley Street phone tower between 12am and 6am," a police spokesperson said. The investigation is ongoing and Victoria Police is liaising with the telephone company to arrange the removal of the flag. IRVING, Texas, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Darling Ingredients Inc. (NYSE: DAR) today announced a change in the location and time for its 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the "Annual Meeting"). As previously announced, the Annual Meeting will be held on May 5, 2020. However, due to health and safety concerns related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, recommendations and orders from various federal, state, and local governmental authorities, and out of an abundance of caution to support the health and well-being of Darling's stockholders, employees, and community, the Annual Meeting will now be held in a virtual meeting format only. There will be no physical meeting, and stockholders will not be able to attend the Annual Meeting in person. Additionally, the time of the Annual Meeting has been changed to be 9:00 a.m., Central Time, on the previously scheduled date for the Annual Meeting of May 5, 2020. Stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 11, 2020, the record date, can find additional details regarding participation in the Annual Meeting at www.proxydocs.com/DAR and in Darling's additional proxy materials filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 13, 2020. A notice regarding the change to a virtual meeting (the "Notice") is being filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission together with this press release. Additional information regarding the Annual Meeting, stockholder participation and voting is provided in the Notice. About Darling Darling Ingredients Inc. is a global developer and producer of sustainable natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients, creating a wide range of ingredients and specialty solutions for customers in the pharmaceutical, food, pet food, feed, technical, fuel, bioenergy, and fertilizer industries. With operations on five continents, the Company collects and transforms all aspects of animal by-product streams into useable and specialty ingredients, such as collagen, edible fats, feed-grade fats, animal proteins and meals, plasma, pet food ingredients, organic fertilizers, yellow grease, fuel feedstocks, green energy, and natural casings. The Company also recovers and converts recycled oils (used cooking oil and animal fats) into valuable feed and fuel ingredients and collects and processes residual bakery products into feed ingredients. In addition, the Company provides environmental services, such as grease trap collection and disposal services to food service establishments. The Company sells its products domestically and internationally and operates within three industry segments: Feed Ingredients, Food Ingredients and Fuel Ingredients. For additional information, visit the Company's website at http://www.darlingii.com. For more information contact: Jim Stark VP, Investor Relations (972) 281-4823 [email protected] SOURCE Darling Ingredients Inc. Related Links http://www.darlingii.com Activist and scholar Anand Teltumbde will on Tuesday surrender before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the Elgar Parishad-alleged Maoist links case, his lawyer said on Monday. Advocate Mihir Desai said Teltumbde would surrender before the NIA's office at Cumbala Hill in south Mumbai on April 14. "This is provided Teltumbde is able to travel till the NIA office keeping in mind restrictions imposed in the city due to the coronavirus pandemic," Desai said. Teltumbde's surrender, if it materialises, will coincide with the birth anniversary of Dalit icon B R Ambedkar. Teltumbde and several other civil liberties activists were booked under stringent provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for allegedly having Maoist links and conspiring to overthrow the government. The activists were booked initially by the Pune police following the violence that erupted at Koregaon Bhima there. As per the police, the activists had made inflammatory speeches and provocative statements at the Elgar Parishad meet held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which it said triggered violence the next day. The police also said they were active members of banned Maoist groups. The case was later transferred to NIA. Teltumbde and activist and co-accused Gautam Navlakha were yet to be arrested as they were given interim protection by the Bombay High Court while their pre-arrest bail pleas were being heard. After HC rejected their applications, the duo approached the Supreme Court. On March 17, 2020, the apex court rejected their pleas and directed them to surrender within three weeks. On April 9, the SC granted the duo another week to surrender by way of last chance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, now alone has over 1,00,000 novel coronavirus cases, more than the confirmed cases in China and the United Kingdom, according to the official data. IMAGE: US Army Sgt Marlenny Medin asks a patient about his medical history at the Javits New York Medical Station which supports local hospitals during the coronavirus disease outbreak in New York City, US. Photograph: US Army/Reuters According to the data from the New York City government, an increase of at least 5,695 cases on Sunday put New York City's total number of coronavirus infections at over 1,04,410 as of April 12 and 27,676 hospitalisations. The city's death toll is 6,898. New York City now has more coronavirus cases than China and the UK. According to estimates by Johns Hopkins University, there are 85,208 coronavirus cases in the UK, 83,135 in China and 71,686 in Iran. The US has 557,300 cases and over 22,000 people have died so far. Globally the number of COVID19 cases is over 1.8 million and 1,14,185 people have died from the disease. More than 189,000 cases have been reported in New York state, the hardest-hit state in the US, and the death toll now stands at 9,385. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Sunday that the past week was a "very, very tough" one in the city's hospitals. "And we have never, ever underestimated this enemy we're fighting. Coronavirus is ferocious and has presented us with challenges that we have never ever seen before. And that certainly our nation has not seen anything like in a century." He said while it was a 'tough and painful week'for New York City, it was not as worse as had been initially expected. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said 758 more people died in the state from coronavirus in a 24-hour period, describing it as "terrible news" even as the infection rate continues to slow and stressed he will work with New Jersey and Connecticut on a coordinated plan to reopen the economy that also safeguards public health. The state is witnessing mixed results as change in total number of hospitalisations is down but the ICU admissions and intubations ticked up. "You're not seeing a great decline in the numbers, but you're seeing a flattening. And you're also seeing a recurrence of the terrible news, which is the number of lives lost, which is 758" on April 11. Cuomo said the big question on everyone's mind is when will the economy reopen. "People want to get on with their lives, people want to get out of the house. (They have) cabin fever. We need the economy working, people need a paycheck. Life has to function," he said at his daily briefing Sunday. The governor stressed that he wants to reopen the state and the economy as soon as possible. "Let's just end this nightmare right. (It's like) Groundhog Day. You get up every day, it's the same routine, you almost lose track of what day of the week it is because they don't even have meaning anymore," he said making a reference to the movie. Cuomo underscored that the 'caveat' in re-opening the economy is that one has to be 'smart in the way we reopen' and there is need for a coordinated, regional and safe approach. "Nobody wants to pick between a public health strategy and an economic strategy. And as governor of the state, I'm not going to pick one over the other, we need a public health strategy that is safe, consistent with an economic strategy." He emphasised that the last thing New York needs is an uptick in the infection rate and hospitalisation numbers that the state has worked so hard to bring down. "So we need a strategy that coordinates business and schools and transportation and workforce." Reopening the state and moving people back in the workforce would require more and faster testing as well as federal help. He said he will be coordinating with New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont later today on coming up with a reopening plan that is a public health plan, safeguards public health but also starts to move us towards economic activation. He said the state will also pass an executive order which directs employers to provide essential workers with a cloth or surgical face mask free of cost to their employees when they are interacting with the public. The governor and de Blasio also continued to disagree over when to open public schools across the state. "We're not going to open any schools until it is safe from a public health point of view. We won't open schools one minute sooner than they should be opened but we won't open schools one minute later than they should be opened either." "Am I, as I sit here, prepared to say what we'll be doing in June? No. I do not know what we will be doing in June. Nobody knows what we will be doing in June." Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an order on Sunday, extending the disaster declaration for all Texas counties in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Texas officials said on Sunday about 13,500 state residents have tested positive for the COVID-19, and 271 died. Harris County has the most confirmed cases with more than 3,500 positive tests, followed by Dallas County with over 1,600, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. "By extending disaster declaration, we are ensuring the state of Texas continues to have adequate resources and capabilities to support our communities and protect public health," Abbott said. "I urge all Texans to continue practicing social distancing and abide by the guidelines laid out by the CDC and my executive orders to slow the spread of COVID-19." Another six Coronavirus patients have been discharged in Lagos after recovering and tested negative twice for the virus. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu disclosed this on Monday, saying that the six people discharged included five male and one female. According to Sanwo-Olu, Good people of Lagos, I have more great news from our isolation facilities. Today, 6 more persons; 1 female and 5 males have been discharged to join society. The patients; all from the Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, have fully recovered and tested negative twice consecutively to COVID-19. This brings the number of patients successfully managed and discharged from our facilities to 61, he said. The governor said the results were significant and indicative of governments will power to triumph in this war against the lethal COVID19. He added that government would not be deterred and would not relent until victory was achieved. I thank you all for your continued perseverance and patience, especially at this critical time. This sacrifice of ours, I am most certain will not be in vain, he said. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates The city of Suifenhe, at the China-Russia border in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has beefed up prevention against epidemic spread as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases from overseas continued to rise. According to the city's emergency headquarters on epidemic prevention and control, Suifenhe has demanded all inbound personnel undergo a fortnight quarantine and two nucleic acid testings and one serum antibody testing in designated facilities, which are put under close-off management. They are also required to be isolated and put under observation at home for 14 days after leaving the designated facilities. Also, all the Russian truck drivers entering the city should park their vehicles and live at designated places. More local police were deployed to carry out emergency drills and patrol the border area 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, only one entrance is reserved for each community in the city, and the community staff will work in shifts at checkpoints to check the temperatures of the people entering communities. The community will provide non-contact services to those who are quarantined at home every three days, including purchasing daily necessities and collecting garbage, said Yang Yang, a community worker in the city. As of midnight Saturday, Suifenhe had reported 194 confirmed cases and more than 100 asymptomatic coronavirus carriers. Experts said the number may continue to increase. South Dakota reports highest active case count since pandemic started Tuesday's report included testing conducted over the weekend. Another 4,110 people tested positive for the disease. The Deputy Volta Regional Youth Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Kwame Asiemoah Jr., has asked the Regional Minister Dr Archibald Letsa, to beef up surveillance for COVOD-19 after the region recorded nine cases for the first time since the outbreak in Ghana. In a statement, he said: Just yesterday, Sunday, April 12, I saw a release from the Volta Regional Coordinating Council signed by your good self on initiatives the region has taken to prevent the entry of the novel coronavirus into the region. I was impressed by the actions taken to safeguard the citizens of your region and I thought it was one the areas yet unaffected could emulate. I woke up this morning thinking through the steps you wish to implement and I thought I could use my expertise to help improve it in order to achieve its intended target. But alas, I guess we were a bit late knowing how sly this virus can be. We have recorded 9 cases as of today, April 12, 2020, as part of 566 cases country-wide. It is important now more than ever to move forward in implementing such preventive measures brought forth by the Regional Coordinating Council. It is important to note that these measures such as closure of markets, screening of travellers entering the region and observation of strict guidelines for drivers as well as social distancing rules, were aimed at preventing importation of cases into the region. At this stage where we have recorded cases, it is important to beef up our efforts at preventing importation of new cases as well as preventing community spread. Below is his full letter to the Regional Minister: OPEN LETTER TO THE VOLTA REGIONAL MINISTER, DR. ARCHIBALD YAO LETSA. 12/04/2020 Dear Regional Minister, HOW PREPARED IS THE VOLTA REGION TO COMBAT THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC? Just yesterday, I saw a release from the Volta Regional Coordinating Council signed by your good self on initiatives the region has taken to prevent the entry of the novel corona virus into the region. I was impressed by the actions taken to safeguard the citizens of your region and I thought it was one that areas yet unaffected could emulate. I woke up this morning thinking through the steps you wish to implement and I thought I could use my expertise to help improve it in order to achieve its intended target. But alas, I guess we were a bit late knowing how sly this virus can be. We have recorded 9 cases as of today April 12, 2020, as part of 566 cases country-wide. It is important now more than ever to move forward in implementing such preventive measures brought forth by the Regional Coordinating Council. It is important to note that these measures such as closures of markets, screening of travelers entering the region and observation of strict guidelines for drivers as well as social distancing rules were aimed at preventing importation of cases into the region. At this stage where we have recorded cases, it is important to beef up our efforts at preventing importation of new cases as well as preventing community spread. In light of this, I would like to suggest these additional measures that will help in our collective efforts to fight coronavirus in the region: 1. An immediate closure of entry points. 2. If point 1 above would not be possible at this stage and in the absence of testing (would be most ideal) at entry points due to a lack of resources, it is necessary that detailed information of all those entering the region be acquired so that it will be easier to trace them and trace contacts immediately a case is confirmed. A simple bio-data form can be designed for example to get information on how long travelers intend to stay in the region, proper location of where they will stay, purpose of entering the region whether for business, trading or just family visit, details of all passengers in an identified vehicle, etc. 3. A two weeks complete lockdown in affected areas, a zoning of such areas within a defined radius and mass testing of all households within the zoned areas to be able to contain potential spread. This is important as a result of available epidemiological information about COVID-19. 4. If possible, nose masks should be made available to the public as a matter of urgency and people who will come out to get essential goods should be made to wear nose masks. This is important because recent data available suggest that countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore where citizens practice wearing of nose masks as compared to US, Spain, Italy where such practice was non-existent/low have performed better in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact such areas have an almost flat epidemic curve. 5. Behaviour change communication should be embarked on with rigorous education on the importance of practising all the hygiene guidelines brought out by the Ghana Health service. One of the challenges facing us as a country in areas currently under lockdown is the lack of understanding of the dangerous nature of this virus and its potential to spread fast and cause deaths. This has led to people flouting lockdown rules. 6. Current statistics suggests a differing trajectory of the spread of the virus in Temperate and Tropical countries which may suggest why the virus was struggling to take home in Africa. It is, however, important to note that we have entered into the rainy/wet season which may provide the needed temperature for the virus to thrive. As such we need to be more cautious in our approach in dealing with this pandemic. 7. It will also be important that if possible, testing may not only be limited to cases and immediate contacts just as is being done because until these cases have been confirmed, one would not know how many people they might have come into contact with within their community. As such the ideal situation would be to pick a statistically significant proportion of the population within the community of cases for testing as well. This would be in line with the ice-berg phenomena and would help rule out discrepancies in suspected vs. Actual cases. While authorities do their part, it is important that the general public adheres to preventive guidelines such as: - Hand-washing with soap under running water - Use of hand sanitisers - Avoiding handshakes and maintaining social distance - Covering our nose and mouth while coughing and disposing off tissues immediately - Remember to call emergency numbers (0558439868, 0509497700, 112) when we experience any of the symptoms of fever, flu, cough, chills, especially if we feel we have been exposed. It is important that we all adhere to these guidelines to protect lives. Taiwan should be a classical example for us as a region not to allow what is happening nationally engulf us. Let us remain United in our efforts to fight COVID-19. God Bless Volta Region and Ghana. Your Sincerely ......Signed....... Kwame Asiemoah Jr. (MPH) DVRYO - NDC 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 Kabul Frees Third Group of Taliban Prisoners in Latest Confidence-Building Step Sputnik News 10:28 GMT 12.04.2020(updated 10:50 GMT 12.04.2020) KABUL (Sputnik) - The Afghan government on Sunday released a third group of Taliban prisoners hours after the Taliban announced the handover of 20 Afghan government prisoners, Kabul's National Security Council said. The office of the National Security Council that under a decree from President Ashraf Ghani, the group of the Taliban were rounded up and handed over "according to their age, health and incarceration." This is the third batch of prisoners released by Kabul in ongoing confidence-building measures aimed at jumpstarting the intra-Afghan peace negotiations. The negotiations were set to begin 10 March after the US and Taliban signed a peace agreement earlier in February. Kabul, however, took issue with the agreement's stipulation that 5,000 Taliban prisoners would be released, which unleashed a cross-country wave of Taliban violence and suspended the talks. Three Taliban militants have been killed, and five more have suffered injuries in a preemptive strike by the Afghan armed forces in Helmand province, the country's military announced in a statement on Sunday. According to the 215th Maiwand Corps, the military received notice that Taliban militants were planning an attack on security posts near the town of Gereskh. The army launched an assault, resulting in the deaths of three militants. Five other militants suffered injuries and one member of the Taliban who tried to flee during the attack was later captured by the Afghan military, according to the statement. Troops also deactivated 15 mines in the region, the military said. Violent clashes in Afghanistan continue despite the signing of a peace deal between the Taliban and the US on February 29 that called for a reduction in violence in the country. The agreement was set to pave the way for the beginning of intra-Afghan talks between the militant group and the government, following the mutual release of prisoners, although negotiations have yet to start. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Supreme Court Monday upheld the decision of Madhya Pradesh Governor Lal Ji Tandon asking the then Kamal Nath-led Congress government to undertake floor test, but expressed concern over the trend of legislators being whisked away by rival political parties to safe hideouts. It said that if the Governor has reasons to believe that the government has lost confidence of the House, constitutional propriety requires the issue be resolved by the trust vote. The top court however expressed concern over the trend that legislators are taken away by rival political parties at safe hideouts like hotels and resorts which does little credit to the democratic politics. The spectacle of rival political parties whisking away their political flock to safe destinations does little credit to the state of our democratic politics. It is an unfortunate reflection on the confidence which political parties hold in their own constituents and a reflection of what happens in the real world of politics, said a bench comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta. The apex court, which had on March 19, asked Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker N P Prajapati to reconvene a special session the next day with a sole agenda of conducting the floor test, gave a detailed order on Monday. Nath, who had been the Chief Minister for 15 months, then resigned on March 20 -- paving the way for the BJP government led by Shivraj Singh Chauhan. The verdict on Monday further said that the decision of the Governor calling for a floor test cannot be construed to have acted beyond the bounds of constitutional authority. Based on the resignation of six ministers of the incumbent government (accepted by the Speaker), the purported resignation of sixteen more Members belonging to the Congress, and the refusal of the Chief Minister to conduct a floor test despite the House having been convened on March 16, 2020, the exercise of power by the Governor to convene a floor test cannot be regarded as constitutionally improper, the bench said. It relied upon the nine-judge Constitution bench verdict of apex court in S R Bommai case of 1994. It said that the observations made in it indicate the question of whether the Council of Ministers in an ongoing legislative assembly commands the confidence of the house is a matter which has to been determined only on the floor of the house. "In the circumstances as they have emerged in this case, the exercise of authority by the Governor was based on circumstances which were legitimate to the purpose of ensuring that the norm of collective responsibility is duly preserved. There existed no extraordinary circumstances for the Governor to determine that a trust vote was not the appropriate course of action on March 16, 2020," it said. "The Governor is not denuded of the power to order a floor test where on the basis of the material available to the Governor it becomes evident that the issue as to whether the government commands the confidence of the house requires to be assessed on the basis of a floor test. Undoubtedly, the purpose of entrusting such a function to the Governor is not to destabilise an existing government, it added. The bench said when the satisfaction on the basis of which the Governor has ordered a floor test is called into question, the decision of the Governor is not immune from judicial review. The top court said that in exercising the constitutional authority to demand a trust vote, the Governor must do so with circumspection in a manner that ensures that the authority of the House to determine the existence or loss of confidence in the government is not undermined. "Absent exigent and compelling circumstances, there is no reason for the Governor to prevent the ordinary legislative process of a no confidence motion from running its due course. It said the Governor is an appointee of the President but does not represent either a political ideology or a political view. The Governor is expected to discharge the role of a constitutional statesman. The authority of the Governor is not one to be exercised in aid of a political dispensation which considers an elected government of the day to be a political opponent. The bench said the Governor's decision is not immune from judicial review and can be scrutinized on whether it was based on relevant and germane material. It said Nath, adverting to the turmoil in the state, addressed a communication to the Governor on March 13 stating that convening of the floor test would be a sure basis for resolving the conundrum. This is a strong indication that the Chief Minister himself was of the opinion that the situation in the state had cast his government's majority in doubt. However, upon the convening of the Legislative Assembly, no floor test was conducted, and the House was adjourned till March 26 2020. These facts form the basis on which the Governor advised that a floor test be conducted, it added. The bench also dealt with the plea of Congress in which a direction was sought for granting access to the then 22 MLAs who were lodged at a hotel in Bengaluru. "Political bargaining, or horse-trading, as we noticed, is now an oft repeated usage in legal precedents. 'Poaching' is an expression which was bandied about on both sides of the debate in the present case. It is best that courts maintain an arm's length from the sordid tales of political life," it added. They have had a fictitious feud for years. And Ryan Reynolds couldn't resist trolling Hugh Jackman on Sunday, after the actor, 51, posted a tribute to wife Deborra-Lee Furness, 64, as they celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary. While many of Hugh's celebrity pals flooded the comments section with congratulatory messages, Ryan, 43, wrote: 'Hang in there, Deb'. Feud: Ryan Reynolds couldn't resist trolling Hugh Jackman on Sunday, after the actor, 51, posted a tribute to wife Deborra-Lee as they celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary Hugh uploaded a throwback family photograph of himself and Deb dressed up for a night on the town. 'These 24 years have been the best of my life! And, as far as I can see, we keep getting better,' began Hugh, as he shared the tribute to Instagram. 'I love you Debs with every fibre of my soul. Happy anniversary.' Funny: While many of Hugh's celebrity pals flooded the comments section with congratulatory messages, Ryan, 43, wrote: 'Hang in there, Deb' True love: 'These 24 years have been the best of my life! And, as far as I can see, we keep getting better,' began Hugh, as he shared the tribute to Instagram Hugh and Deborra-Lee got married on 11 April 1996, just one year after meeting. The pair met on set of Australian drama Corelli, with Hugh saying he knew he was going to spend the rest of his life with Deborra-Lee after just two weeks. They have two children: Oscar Maximilian Jackman, 19, and Ava Eliot Jackman, 14. Start of romance: In the throwback family photograph, the A-list couple dressed up for a night on the town Hugh and Ryan's hilarious rivalry began around the time Ryan starred in 2016 Marvel film, Deadpool. Hugh and Ryan previously starred together in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Back in December, Hugh was coerced by Ryan into wearing an ugly Christmas sweater and matching underwear. Hilarious: Back in December, Ryan continued his feud with Hugh as he coerced the Australian actor into wearing THAT ugly Christmas sweater, in New York The snap was made in memory of the previous Christmas, when Ryan was tricked into wearing the sweater by Hugh, 51, and mutual friend Jake Gyllenhaal for an 'ugly Christmas sweater party'. Hugh wrote in the post's caption: 'I can't believe I agreed to wear the matching underwear too,' alongside the hashtag 'the sweater returns'. The sweater saga began in December last year, when the husband of actress Blake Lively, revealed he had been tricked into thinking a party had an ugly sweater theme. This time last year: The sweater saga began in December 2018, when Ryan was tricked into thinking a party had an ugly sweater theme, by Hugh and Jake Gyllenhaal (right) Taking to Instagram at the time, Ryan shared a photo of himself in the same green, red and gold ribbon top, in front of the same white Christmas tree. The picture which saw him joined by Hugh and Jake, 39, was captioned: 'These f***ing a**holes said it was a sweater party.' The sweater saga began in December l2018, when the husband of actress Blake Lively, revealed he had been tricked into thinking a party had an ugly sweater theme. Tricked! Ryan shared a photo to Instagram at the time, and wrote in the caption: 'These f***ing a**holes said it was a sweater party' Taking to Instagram at the time, Ryan shared a photo of himself in the same green, red and gold ribbon top, in front of the same white Christmas tree. The picture, which saw him joined by Hugh and Jake was captioned: 'These f***ing a**holes said it was a sweater party.' The sweater shenanigans came after Hugh trolled Ryan, while congratulating John Legend on becoming People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive. Hugh raved on Instagram about how he had won the title himself back in 2008, despite the fact Ryan had also won in 2010. Canadians won a reprieve when the Trump administration and 3M, a leading manufacturer of N-95 respirators, struck a deal allowing the company to continue supplying customers in Canada and Latin America. Trumps threat to force the company to cease exports to Canada, while disturbing, should not have come as a surprise. The U.S. is currently the global epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing the same situation, almost every other jurisdiction including China, South Korea and the European Union applied export restrictions, and most acted more quickly. Canada was right to choose diplomacy over retaliation, which would only have made matters worse. But the accelerating U.S. health crisis will greatly complicate Canadas efforts to stabilize its own supplies of medical equipment. Starting this week, new Department of Homeland Security regulations will restrict the export of most personal protective equipment without the explicit approval of the U.S. authorities. An exception in the regulations should allow 3Ms shipments to Canada to continue. Similarly, in mid-March the EU temporarily restricted exports of personal protective equipment outside the bloc. China likewise restricted exports during the worst of its crisis, although it has allowed them to resume as it begins to emerge from the initial wave of infections. Indeed, of the worlds top 10 exporters of personal protective equipment all but Switzerland have applied export restrictions. Despite inflated warnings about growing protectionism, these measures are almost certainly consistent with international trade agreements including GATT and NAFTA, which permit exceptions to address public health emergencies. The basic problem is a severe global shortage in a range of essential medical supplies, compounded by cutthroat competition. The drama over the N-95 masks is only the tip of the iceberg. Other materials are also in short supply, from surgical masks, face shields, gowns and gloves to therapeutic supplies such as test kits, denatured alcohol, certain medications, and ventilators needed to help critically ill patients survive. International co-operation is now essential, both to boost global production and to quickly get these life-saving supplies to where they are needed most. For humanitarian and public health reasons, Canada will need to work closely with our U.S neighbours, at all levels, to stem the spread of the disease. The immediate priority, however, must be curbing the spread of the disease at home, treating those affected, and protecting front line medical and other essential workers. While procuring supplies internationally is essential, there are challenges. The global shortages in a poorly regulated market are compounded by bidding wars, dirty tricks, fraud, and price gouging. It is therefore imperative that we also ramp up domestic production of needed supplies. On the legislative front, Canada has all the tools it needs to do this. The governments COVID-19 legislation, Bill C-13, mandates unlimited spending to acquire medical supplies and allows the temporary suspension of patents to respond to the public health emergency. This gives government the ability to address any supply chain obstacles to producing or procuring medical supplies, equipment, or medications it decides are needed. Government could also invoke Canadas Defence Production Act, which grants the minister extraordinary powers to acquire designated supplies, mobilize, conserve and co-ordinate all economic and industrial facilities, and stockpile essential materials and substances to prevent shortages. According to the prime minister, nearly 5,000 firms have responded to the federal governments urgent call for suppliers to combat COVID-19. We hear stories of boutique distilleries producing hand sanitizer, university labs making masks, and companies redeploying 3D printers to produce protective visors. While these initiatives are encouraging even inspiring not nearly enough material is currently reaching front line medical workers in their time of need. A recent Canadian Medical Association survey reports that many physicians and clinics are running dangerously low on personal protective equipment, undermining the morale of doctors, nurses and other essential workers. Hopefully this unacceptable situation will be soon be remedied. But once the country begins to emerge from the crisis, there must be serious reflection on how to better prepare for future crises. Public leadership will be needed to nurture a higher degree of national resilience in meeting essential needs. Canadians should demand we come out of this crisis far better prepared to handle the next one. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:43:10|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close KIEV, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine's COVID-19 fatalities have reached 93, with confirmed cases reaching 3,102, the country's health minister Maksym Stepanov told a news briefing on Monday. During the last 24 hours, Stepanov said a total of 97 patients have recovered and 325 people have tested positive for the disease in the country, including 12 children and 85 health workers. On March 25, Ukraine introduced emergency measures across the country through April 24 to stop the spread of the disease. Gods will: President Donald Trump: Part One By Michael Moriarty While viewing the extraordinarily powerful British film, Darkest Hour, I realize that America herself is not only under the leadership of the greatest President she has ever had, Donald Trump! The 2020 President of the United States is facing the same, unequivocally intended World War that Prime Minister Winston Churchill faced with World War II! World War III is being waged right now! Almost entirely on American territory! Yes! The, by now, Far Left and unquestionably treasonous Democrat Party of the United States is unrelentingly attempting to impeach President Trump, remove him from office and, potentially, to try and imprison him for impeachable crimes! Meanwhile?! For decades, a long-nurtured and worldwide dream called The New World Order, a concept now fully hatched in the United Nations, and a governing idea to be run by the United Nations, instituting a United Nations sovereignty that supersedes and, yes, erases all other forms of sovereignty, including that of the United States of America! Such a World Government is so near unanimous consent by most of the human race that President Trumps renewal of The Traditional United States of Americathe sovereignty of the U.S. is the target of this Progressive New World Order. Yes! Americas mortal enemy! Why? The United Nations and all in love with a New World Order, they feel, quite emphatically that the Judeo-Christian civilization and its Holy Bible basically America and Israel - are, by now, an easily dismissed minority. An expendable corner of the political universe when compared to the unquestionable authority and power of both the Communist world of China and Putinized Russia, plus the Islamic Worlds domination of the entire Mediterranean and North Africa. Not to mention the Bush Family/Democrat Party Alliance! In fact, a kind of Red Islam or Muslim Communist Alliance exists, purely intended to dominate the United Nations and to, yes, basically eliminate the United States of America. As with World War II and the existence of both Prime Minister Churchill and the willingness of America to defend the World War II Alliance, guess who the rather lonely holdouts from The New World Order are: President Trumps America and the Presidents repeatedly declared and indisputable ally, Israel! The United States, under the increasingly treasonous pressure from both the Democrat Party and the Republican Partys RINOs Republicans In Name Only?! In short, the Bush Family!!! Here is a list of George H. W. Bushs declarations about the certainty of a New World Order, to be run by the United Nations. Its pure American treason, but no one is brave enough to label it such. Of course, President Trump is rather too busy now defending himself against the New World Order, the Democrat Party and renegade Republicans! Far too busy fighting impeachment threats to wage a war he must inevitably wage against an indisputably treasonous coalition of Democrats and Republicans In Name Only, such as both the Bush Family and Senator Mitt Romney. More to come, as this very real and very deadly Second American Civil War is being waged in the United States. Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty. Home Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Mon, April 13, 2020 10:09 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd179d3b 2 Food cooking,food,zero-waste,eco-friendly,environment Free It may not be an exaggeration to say that the worldwide lockdown has forced households to cook more than they ever have before. With the closure of restaurants and fast food chains, people are left mostly to fend for themselves and prepare up to three meals a day every day. With spontaneous trips to the grocery stores no longer feasible or advisable, that also means fridges may be full of wilting lettuce and milk gone bad. Theres perhaps no better time to look into zero-waste cooking than now, a philosophy aimed at reducing food waste. Not only does repurposing food scraps save you money particularly pertinent given the state of the global economy but it also helps the environment. Food waste that decomposes in landfills releases methane, a greenhouse gas that is 27 times more potent than carbon dioxide. To start, San Francisco blogger Anne Marie Bonneau of zerowastechef.com suggests letting your pantry dictate your meal plan, rather than cooking a recipe at random. Rather than allowing our whims to choose what to eat for dinner, let our pantries do it. Instead of picking a new recipe to cook from scratch every night for dinner who has time to do that? look at what you have on hand and let that determine what youll cook, reads a post on how to get started. Other tips include taking inventory of your pantry goods and fridge and making a list before heading out to the grocery store to avoid over-buying, and to create a simple meal plan. Food52 also has a column dedicated to reducing food waste called Cooking with Scraps that features creative ways to repurpose hulled strawberry tops (wash and use to flavor water) and saving wilted lettuce to make a savory lettuce jam. Read also: Five zero-waste bulk stores to visit in Indonesia Here are a few helpful reminders on how to reduce food waste at home Refrain from over-buying. Those two-for-one deals are only worth it if youre actually able to use up both bags of salad before they go bad. Stick to a shopping list at the grocery store. Many fruits and vegetables give off natural gases as they ripen, making other produce spoil faster. Store bananas, apples and tomatoes by themselves. Store fruits and vegetables in different bins. Wait to wash berries until you eat them to prevent mold. Freeze, preserve or can extra fruits and vegetables before they go bad. Salvage wilted, sad produce into soups, casseroles, stir fry, sauces, smoothies or baked goods. Reduce portion sizes. You can always go back for more. Learn the differences between expiry dates: Best before indicates the date until which the product will be at its optimum but does not indicate food safety. Sell-by dates are an indicator for the store on how long to display the product on store shelves. Use-by date is the last date recommended for product use. Chennai, April 13 : Eight Ethiopians were arrested for violating visa norms here, said police. "The eight Ethiopians - four men and four women - arrived last month. They first landed in Delhi and from there travelled to Chennai. While in Chennai they were involved in preaching activity which is against the visa norms," a police official told IANS. According to police, the Ethiopians did not attend the Tablighi Jamaat organised conference in Delhi. "They were tested for coronavirus infection at a government hospital here and found not infected. They were staying in a mosque in Mannadi here," police said. Claim: COVID19 vaccine killed 7 children in Senegal.. Rating: False ALSO READ| Fact Check: Are Himalayas Visible From Jalandhar After 30 Years? What is the rumour about? Many social media forwards stated that 7 children died in Senegal after they were given COVID-19 vaccine forcefully. In the video, one can find a crowd of people standing outside a building where a police vehicle is present. This is the video that is being circulated. Many people are forwarding the video with various types of captions. ALSO READ| Fact Check: Is Tiger King Positive For Coronavirus? Did He Contract The Virus In Prison? Who started the rumour? The claims were made by many sources on social media. Take a look at the type of forwards that are being sent by people on social media. Image courtesy: Twitter Image courtesy: Twitter ALSO READ| Fact Check: Do Kalonji Seeds Contain Hydroxychloroquine Used To Treat Coronavirus? Google Trends After an analysis of the Google Trends with respect to the COVID19 vaccine killed 7 children rumour, one can see that people have been hugely interested to know about the same. The maximum number of searches has been done on April 10, 2020. Image courtesy: Google Trends ALSO READ| FACT CHECK: Is Video Showing South Africans Looting Shops During COVID-19 Lockdown True? Republic World did a fact check on the "Senegal children dying due to COVID-19 vaccine" rumour Republic World did a fact check to dig deeper into the claims stating that COVID vaccine had killed 7 children in Senegal, and found it to be False. Reportedly, a spokesperson from Senegal's health ministry clearly rejected these claims. She clarified that there is no vaccine for COVID-19 yet, even when the findings are still going on in Dakar's Institut Pasteur. Even WHO hasn't mentioned any specific antiviral medicine for Coronavirus infection as of yet. The video showing a chaotic scene around a house is actually an old news clip from March. The video is about a rumour of a Canadian and a Senegal man claiming to be health officials. who tried to vaccinate people for COVID-19 forcefully. On March 26, there was a report of the two getting arrested in Dakar. Apparently, they had been accused of forcefully vaccinating people. But that news has no connection to 7 children dying. The people who were arrested after the March 26 incident were found to be cosmetic salesmen and were mistaken for health officials due to the logo on their shirt. People nearby had actually misinterpreted and assumed that they have come to vaccinate them by force. They were soon arrested and then released due to the misunderstanding as even the police officials couldn't find any vaccines with these two men after searching them and their bags. ALSO READ| Fact Check: Did Kathleen OMara Actually Write A Pandemic Poem In 1919? Is there any rumour you want Republic World to do a fact check on? Do you have facts about a rumour? Share your pictures or videos with Republic World on contact@republicworld.com or comment on this story itself. ALSO READ| Fact Check: Did Ratan Tata Make A Comment About India's Economic Downfall Due To COVID-19? ALSO READ| Coronavirus Fact Check: A Week Of Fake News Around The Pandemic Senior Producers, Larger-Cap Near-Term Production Royalty & Streaming Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Altius Minerals Corp ALS 1.8 C$7.89 42 $236 0.55 0.36 0.45 22.2 17.5 1.03 0.76 0.89 10.4 8.9 -- 1.6% Anglo Pacific Group PLC (UK) APF 1.6 GBP$1.45 181 $328 0.20 0.21 0.24 6.8 6.0 0.26 0.22 0.24 6.7 6.1 18.8 3.8% Franco-Nevada FNV 2.4 US$113.90 189 $21,574 1.82 2.26 2.36 50.5 48.2 3.29 3.84 4.07 29.7 28.0 44.0 1.0% Maverix Metals (CA) MMX 2.1 C$6.00 120 $513 0.09 0.11 0.16 54.5 38.1 0.25 0.31 0.34 19.4 17.4 -- 0.2% Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd OR 2.1 C$11.49 157 $1,296 0.28 0.31 0.41 37.4 28.1 0.61 0.71 0.87 16.1 13.2 48.4 1.6% Royal Gold Inc RGLD 3.1 US$105.04 66 $6,888 2.00 2.73 3.01 38.4 35.0 4.50 5.37 5.74 19.6 18.3 25.3 0.9% Sandstorm Gold Ltd (CA) SAND 2.2 US$5.82 174 $1,011 0.06 0.12 0.16 49.9 37.2 0.30 0.37 0.40 15.9 14.4 28.3 0.0% Wheaton Precious Metals WPM 1.9 US$31.98 448 $14,289 0.56 0.88 0.99 36.5 32.2 1.12 1.49 1.64 21.5 19.5 25.0 1.2% Average 37.0 30.3 17.4 15.7 31.6 Gold Large-Cap Gold Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd AEM 2.1 US$48.99 241 $11,776 0.96 1.24 1.88 39.4 26.1 3.70 4.26 5.23 11.5 9.4 15.0 0.9% Barrick Gold Corp ABX 2.1 US$22.53 1778 $40,058 0.51 0.77 0.84 29.4 26.9 1.61 2.28 2.39 9.9 9.4 13.2 1.1% Kirkland Lake Gold (CA) KL 1.8 US$35.86 287 $10,279 2.74 2.85 2.96 12.6 12.1 4.38 4.47 4.83 8.0 7.4 54.4 0.4% Newcrest Mining Ltd (AU) NCM 2.8 US$16.25 769 $12,279 0.79 0.91 0.99 17.8 16.5 1.75 1.74 1.87 9.3 8.7 10.2 1.1% Newmont Goldcorp NEM 2.0 US$57.31 808 $46,294 1.32 2.12 2.70 27.1 21.2 3.89 4.78 5.37 12.0 10.7 21.8 1.3% Polyus Gold International (UK) PGIL 2.0 RU$11,401.0 134 $20,642 769.61 1028.14 1092.20 11.1 10.4 1054.82 1244.95 1226.97 9.2 9.3 -- 2.3% Zijin Mining Group (HK) 2899 1.7 CNY$2.83 25377 $13,380 0.18 0.27 0.41 10.5 6.9 0.45 0.46 0.53 6.2 5.4 21.7 2.9% Average 21.1 17.2 9.4 8.6 22.7 Mid-Cap Gold Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Alamos Gold AGI 2.3 US$6.33 391 $2,475 0.21 0.27 0.42 23.7 15.2 0.66 0.73 1.01 8.7 6.3 15.0 0.7% AngloGold Ashanti Ltd AU 2.8 US$21.12 416 $8,714 0.91 1.95 2.32 10.8 9.1 2.50 3.58 3.92 5.9 5.4 6.8 0.5% B2Gold Corp BTG 1.6 US$4.12 1030 $4,248 0.23 0.40 0.35 10.2 11.8 0.49 0.69 0.64 5.9 6.4 13.5 0.2% Buenaventura (ADR) BVN 2.9 US$7.45 276 $2,247 (0.05) 0.43 0.57 17.3 13.2 0.20 0.94 0.88 7.9 8.5 8.8 0.6% Centamin PLC (CA) CEE 2.0 US$1.71 1156 $1,981 0.08 0.13 0.11 13.0 15.7 0.19 0.20 0.18 8.5 9.7 4.3 4.8% Centerra Gold (CA) CG 2.3 US$6.63 294 $1,948 0.62 0.99 1.10 6.7 6.0 1.14 2.05 2.18 3.2 3.1 5.8 0.0% Endeavour Mining Corp (CA) EDV 1.8 US$16.83 110 $1,850 0.67 1.38 1.89 12.2 8.9 2.75 3.72 4.37 4.5 3.8 10.6 0.0% Evolution Mining Ltd (AU) EVN 2.4 AUD$4.54 1704 $4,818 0.17 0.24 0.26 18.9 17.4 0.44 0.53 0.52 8.6 8.7 11.5 3.4% Gold Fields Ltd (ADR) GFI 2.8 US$6.19 883 $5,487 0.20 0.50 0.66 12.3 9.3 1.08 1.33 1.60 4.6 3.9 5.9 0.2% Harmony Gold Mining Ltd HAR 2.5 ZAR$47.26 543 $1,411 3.12 5.66 7.42 8.4 6.4 9.89 15.06 17.70 3.1 2.7 6.8 0.0% Kinross Gold Corp KGC 2.4 US$5.62 1257 $7,072 0.34 0.43 0.44 13.0 12.8 0.97 1.07 1.14 5.3 4.9 9.8 0.0% Lundin Gold Inc (CA) LUG 2.2 US$6.63 224 $1,487 (0.10) 0.34 0.60 19.3 11.1 (0.10) 0.57 0.97 11.7 6.8 -- 0.0% Northern Star Resources (AU) NST 2.7 AUD$11.51 740 $5,303 0.42 0.75 0.98 15.4 11.8 0.78 1.20 1.49 9.6 7.7 18.0 1.3% NovaGold Resources Inc NG 2.0 US$9.99 329 $3,286 (0.09) (0.08) -- -- -- -- -- (0.03) -- -- -- 0.0% Polymetal International PLC (UK) POLY 2.1 US$18.81 470 $8,847 1.25 1.72 1.84 10.9 10.2 1.46 2.07 2.00 9.1 9.4 13.7 3.9% Saracen Mineral Holdings (AU) SAR 2.0 AUD$4.06 1103 $2,788 0.17 0.30 0.34 13.6 11.8 0.32 0.46 0.54 8.9 7.5 50.1 0.0% Sibanye Gold Ltd (SA) SGL -- ZAR$44.33 2670 $7,646 -- (0.40) 9.55 -- 4.6 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- SSR Mining SSRM 2.0 US$14.66 123 $1,804 0.81 1.22 1.70 12.0 8.6 1.10 2.07 2.43 7.1 6.0 7.7 0.0% Yamana Gold Inc AUY 2.4 US$3.73 952 $3,569 0.35 0.16 0.19 23.3 19.9 0.55 0.64 0.72 5.9 5.2 7.2 0.8% Zhaojin Mining Industry Co Ltd (HK) 1818 1.9 CNY$7.43 3270 $3,451 0.15 0.29 0.35 25.3 21.4 0.78 0.68 0.82 10.9 9.1 19.9 -- Average 14.8 11.9 7.2 6.4 12.7 Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets. The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items. Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters. Small-Cap Gold Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Alacer Gold Corp (CA) ASR 2.5 US$4.11 295 $1,211 0.37 0.45 0.46 9.1 8.9 0.86 0.94 0.96 4.3 4.3 44.6 0.0% DRDGold Ltd (ADR) DROOY 5.0 ZAR$12.90 865 $614 0.49 0.94 0.50 13.8 25.8 1.17 1.26 -- 10.2 -- 27.3 0.0% Dundee Precious Metals (CA) DPM 1.8 US$4.10 181 $740 0.19 0.49 0.53 8.4 7.7 0.55 0.95 1.12 4.3 3.7 10.0 0.0% Eldorado Gold Corp EGO 2.8 US$6.89 165 $1,273 0.04 0.80 0.48 8.6 14.5 0.93 2.03 1.58 3.4 4.3 10.4 0.0% Equinox Gold Corp (CA) EQX 2.1 US$7.83 216 $1,686 (0.16) 0.70 0.85 11.3 9.2 0.53 1.33 1.78 5.9 4.4 -- 0.0% Gold Resource Corp GORO 2.0 US$3.56 68 $239 0.09 0.42 0.16 8.6 22.3 -- -- -- -- 0.4% Gold Road Resources Ltd (AU) GOR 2.1 AUD$1.48 880 $808 0.01 0.09 0.09 15.6 15.5 0.04 0.15 0.15 10.1 10.0 -- 0.0% Golden Star Resources GSS 2.6 US$2.51 161 $269 0.16 0.21 0.34 12.1 7.3 0.21 0.71 0.79 3.6 3.2 6.9 0.0% Gran Colombia Gold Corp (CA) GCM 2.0 US$3.39 61 $205 0.73 1.17 0.96 2.9 3.5 1.24 1.23 1.20 2.8 2.8 -- 0.0% Great Bear Resources (CA) GBR 1.5 C$6.89 46 $226 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0% Hecla Mining Co HL 2.9 US$2.10 523 $1,099 (0.13) (0.01) 0.09 -- 24.3 0.25 0.30 0.38 7.0 5.5 6.5 0.3% Highland Gold Mining Ltd (UK) HGM 2.0 US$2.84 364 $1,035 0.31 0.32 0.36 8.9 8.0 0.44 0.49 0.51 5.8 5.6 8.2 6.1% Hochschild Mining PLC (UK) HOC 2.5 US$1.71 514 $880 0.09 0.13 0.15 13.6 11.1 0.55 0.43 0.49 4.0 3.5 3.0 1.8% Iamgold Corp IAG 2.6 US$2.80 470 $1,309 (0.04) 0.20 0.22 14.2 12.9 0.78 0.79 0.87 3.6 3.2 3.2 0.0% K92 Mining (CA) KNT 1.4 US$2.59 213 $550 0.12 0.20 0.32 13.0 8.1 0.13 0.30 0.41 8.5 6.2 -- 0.0% McEwen Mining Inc. MUX 2.0 US$0.87 400 $348 (0.17) (0.03) 0.06 -- 13.9 (0.11) (0.03) 0.01 -- NM -- 0.0% New Gold Inc NGD 2.7 US$0.60 676 $406 (0.08) (0.06) 0.01 -- 82.9 0.43 0.35 0.42 1.7 1.4 3.5 0.0% Oceanagold Corp (AU) OGC 2.1 US$1.14 622 $764 0.05 0.10 0.23 11.3 5.0 0.32 0.35 0.56 3.2 2.1 3.3 0.0% Orla Mining Ltd (CA) OLA 2.0 C$2.28 224 $364 (0.16) (0.09) 0.01 -- NM (0.14) (0.06) 0.01 -- NM -- 0.0% Osisko Mining Corp (CA) OSK 1.8 C$3.08 291 $642 (0.17) (0.05) (0.05) -- -- (0.01) (0.04) (0.04) -- -- -- 0.0% Pan African Resources (UK) PAF 1.0 US$0.13 1928 $250 0.02 0.04 0.05 3.1 2.7 0.03 0.04 -- 3.1 -- 9.7 1.0% Perseus Mining Ltd (AU) PRU 2.0 AUD$1.00 1168 $724 0.03 0.06 0.12 16.1 8.5 0.15 0.19 0.26 5.3 3.8 91.6 0.0% Petropavlovsk PLC (UK) POG 2.2 US$0.29 3310 $946 0.02 0.04 0.05 6.5 6.4 0.01 0.04 0.07 7.1 4.3 7.6 0.0% Premier Gold Mines Ltd (CA) PG 1.9 US$1.20 237 $285 (0.10) (0.01) 0.07 -- 17.9 0.11 0.09 0.20 13.8 6.0 5.7 0.0% Pretium Resources PVG 2.4 US$7.23 185 $1,336 0.55 0.53 0.57 13.8 12.6 1.21 1.18 1.23 6.1 5.9 -- 0.0% Regis Resources Ltd (AU) RRL 2.4 AUD$3.97 508 $1,256 0.37 0.45 0.50 8.8 7.9 0.58 0.64 0.69 6.2 5.8 7.7 3.7% Ramelius Resources Ltd (AU) RMS 1.8 AUD$1.05 751 $500 0.06 0.10 0.13 10.6 7.8 0.25 0.26 0.28 4.0 3.7 9.4 0.8% Resolute Mining Ltd (AU) RSG 2.0 AUD$0.87 1072 $581 0.02 0.14 0.18 6.2 4.8 0.15 0.28 0.30 3.1 2.9 -- 0.0% St Barbara Ltd (AU) SBM 2.3 AUD$2.28 703 $998 0.23 0.26 0.31 8.8 7.3 0.40 0.46 0.54 5.0 4.3 5.4 2.9% Sabina Gold & Silver Corp (CA) SBB 2.3 C$1.35 297 $287 (0.01) (0.01) 0.01 -- NM (0.01) (0.01) 0.03 -- 45.0 -- 0.0% Seabridge Gold SA 2.0 C$15.15 64 $687 (0.19) (0.14) (0.02) -- -- (0.17) (2.63) -- -- -- -- 0.0% Semafo (CA) SMF 2.0 US$2.38 334 $792 0.22 0.28 0.43 8.4 5.6 0.66 0.74 0.88 3.2 2.7 5.6 0.0% Silver Lake Resources (AU) SLR 2.4 AUD$1.57 880 $857 0.06 0.10 0.12 16.3 13.5 0.17 0.22 0.24 7.1 6.6 19.3 0.0% Silvercrest Metals Inc SILV 1.8 C$7.70 109 $602 (0.67) (0.11) (0.14) -- -- (0.62) (0.11) (0.10) -- -- -- 0.0% Teranga Gold Corp (CA) TGZ 1.3 US$6.38 168 $1,067 0.01 0.30 0.61 21.6 10.5 0.93 1.18 1.61 5.4 4.0 11.8 0.0% Torex Gold Resources (CA) TXG 2.4 US$9.81 85 $835 0.79 0.41 0.66 24.1 14.9 3.51 3.04 3.31 3.2 3.0 5.3 0.0% Victoria Gold Corp (CA) VIT 2.0 C$7.55 58 $315 -- -- -- -- -- -- (0.40) 0.18 -- 43.1 -- 0.0% Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd (CA) WDO 1.8 C$9.05 138 $894 0.29 0.39 0.78 23.1 11.7 0.51 0.63 1.11 14.5 8.2 71.7 0.0% West African Resources Ltd (CA) WAF -- AUD$0.26 871 $249 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.04 -- 7.1 -- -- Westgold Resources Ltd (AU) WGX 2.0 AUD$1.84 400 $457 0.06 0.20 0.36 9.4 5.0 0.31 0.49 0.65 3.7 2.8 -- 0.0% Average 11.7 13.1 5.6 7.1 16.4 Select (Gold >US$20MM Mkt Cap) Gold Springs Resource Corp (CA)* GRC 2.0 US$0.06 249 $14 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0% Lion One Metals Ltd (CA)* LIO 2.0 C$1.29 107 $98 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0% Minera Alamos Inc (CA) MAI 2.0 C$0.26 407 $76 (0.02) 0.01 0.03 26.0 8.7 0.03 0.03 -- 8.7 -- -- 0.0% Northern Vertex Mining Corp (CA)* NEE 2.0 US$0.14 251 $34 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0% Paramount Gold Nevada Corp* PZG 2.0 US$0.80 28 $22 (0.21) (0.17) -- -- -- (0.19) (0.16) -- -- -- 0.0% Average 26.0 8.7 8.7 *includes research coverage by Scarsdale Equities. Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets. The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items. Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters. Silver Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Alexco Resource Corp* AXU 2.5 C$1.98 125 $177 (0.08) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0% Americas Gold & Silver Corp (CA) USA 1.8 US$1.76 95 $167 (0.46) 0.11 0.21 15.4 8.3 0.00 0.43 0.76 4.1 2.3 37.4 0.0% Coeur Mining Corp CDE 2.3 US$4.14 244 $1,008 (0.25) (0.06) 0.19 -- 21.3 0.42 0.66 0.98 6.3 4.2 5.8 0.0% Endeavour Silver Corp EXK 3.2 US$1.44 142 $203 (0.36) 0.02 0.02 60.6 89.9 (0.07) 0.22 0.20 6.6 7.4 5.7 0.0% First Majestic Silver Corp AG 2.8 US$7.06 210 $1,476 0.04 0.18 0.23 38.9 30.7 0.69 0.45 0.80 15.6 8.8 13.1 0.0% Fortuna Silver Mines FSM 2.4 US$2.42 160 $387 0.17 0.27 0.58 9.1 4.2 0.63 0.61 1.16 3.9 2.1 5.7 0.0% Fresnillo (UK) FRES 2.9 US$8.90 737 $6,557 0.23 0.27 0.38 33.1 23.6 0.59 0.86 0.93 10.3 9.5 7.0 1.7% MAG Silver Corp MAG 1.8 US$9.61 87 $830 (0.05) 0.13 0.38 76.3 25.5 (0.04) 0.27 0.57 36.0 16.9 -- 0.0% New Pacific Metals Corp (CA) NUAG 2.7 C$4.97 148 $524 (0.02) (0.02) (0.00) -- -- (0.02) (0.01) 0.00 -- -- -- 0.0% Pan American Silver PAAS 2.2 US$18.19 210 $3,822 0.78 0.72 1.36 25.2 13.4 1.40 2.13 2.79 8.5 6.5 14.3 0.6% Silvercorp Metals Inc SVM 2.0 US$3.84 173 $666 0.21 0.20 0.19 19.2 20.5 0.43 0.39 0.38 9.9 10.2 -- 0.4% Average 34.7 26.4 11.3 7.5 12.7 *includes research coverage by Scarsdale Equities. Platinum Group Metals African Rainbow Minerals (SA) ARI 2.1 ZAR$121.80 223 $1,496 27.33 26.65 23.04 4.6 5.3 16.23 18.19 23.92 6.7 5.1 24.8 8.6% Anglo American Platinum Ltd (SA) AMS 2.9 ZAR$878.24 270 $13,032 70.61 98.77 101.64 8.9 8.6 107.94 74.81 124.15 11.7 7.1 23.6 2.2% Impala Platinum (SA) IMP 2.1 ZAR$103.70 799 $4,914 11.85 21.89 22.09 4.7 4.7 17.63 25.91 31.06 4.0 3.3 29.4 0.9% Northam Platinum Ltd (SA) NHM 1.7 ZAR$81.91 510 $2,298 5.10 12.97 13.81 6.3 5.9 12.63 21.91 28.72 3.7 2.9 61.3 0.0% Average 6.1 6.1 6.5 4.6 34.8 Base Metals & Diversified Large-Cap Base Metals Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Anglo American PLC (UK) AAL 2.4 US$18.22 1363 $24,691 2.70 2.04 2.53 8.9 7.2 5.97 4.74 5.67 3.8 3.2 5.9 3.8% Antofagasta PLC (UK) ANTO 2.8 US$9.49 986 $9,359 0.51 0.28 0.50 33.6 19.1 2.12 1.45 1.51 6.6 6.3 7.9 2.8% BHP Billiton Ltd BHP 2.3 US$19.96 5058 $92,340 1.86 1.83 1.74 10.9 11.5 3.30 3.12 3.05 6.4 6.6 6.7 5.5% China Molybdenum Co Ltd (HK) 3993 2.4 CNY$2.11 21599 $10,032 0.09 0.09 0.12 23.7 17.1 0.08 0.13 (0.10) 16.8 -- 43.7 1.4% Freeport McMoran C&G FCX 2.3 US$8.19 1451 $11,883 0.02 (0.13) 1.03 -- 7.9 1.02 1.07 2.68 7.6 3.1 6.0 1.5% Glencore International PLC (UK) GLEN 2.2 US$1.80 13324 $24,024 0.18 0.09 0.17 20.3 10.5 0.63 0.64 0.58 2.8 3.1 5.7 0.0% Grupo Mexico (MX) GMEXICOB 2.5 US$1.77 7785 $13,749 0.29 0.19 0.23 9.3 7.5 0.51 0.31 0.34 5.8 5.1 6.5 6.1% Hindustan Zinc (IN) HZ 2.1 INR$165.50 4225 $9,210 17.60 17.66 18.71 9.4 8.8 21.02 21.27 22.95 7.8 7.2 4.8 0.0% MMC Norilsk Nickel (RU) GMKN -- RU$5,429.84 158 $44,066 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 16.9 10.7% Rio Tinto PLC (UK) RIO 2.6 US$47.99 1618 $80,487 6.36 5.03 4.55 9.5 10.5 9.15 7.82 7.29 6.1 6.6 7.2 2.7% Southern Copper Corp SCCO 2.4 US$31.12 773 $24,058 1.92 1.81 2.16 17.2 14.4 2.47 2.93 3.33 10.6 9.4 13.1 3.8% Vale SA (ADR) VALE 2.0 BRL$43.41 5284 $44,784 5.01 7.00 7.25 6.2 6.0 10.56 10.69 10.94 4.1 4.0 7.8 2.6% Average 14.9 11.0 7.1 5.4 11.0 Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets. The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items. Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters. Mid-Cap Base Metals Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Assore Ltd (SA) ASR 3.3 ZAR$315.32 140 $2,422 51.82 43.67 40.75 7.2 7.7 -- 18.27 27.33 17.3 11.5 12.1 7.7% Aurubis AG (GR) NDA 2.7 EUR$42.22 45 $2,061 3.14 3.48 4.12 12.1 10.3 5.55 5.80 6.61 7.3 6.4 5.4 2.3% Boliden AB (SW) BOL 2.4 SEK$194.60 274 $5,290 21.15 18.78 21.06 10.4 9.2 34.52 38.36 39.50 5.1 4.9 5.8 2.8% Exxaro Resources Ltd (SA) EXX 1.6 ZAR$109.50 359 $2,161 29.62 26.49 24.84 4.1 4.4 (9.28) 23.52 25.68 4.7 4.3 9.1 4.3% First Quantum Minerals (CA) FM 2.0 US$5.24 689 $3,612 0.36 (0.18) 0.19 -- 27.9 1.29 2.19 2.41 2.4 2.2 13.0 0.1% Iluka Resources Ltd (AU) ILU 2.3 AUD$7.29 423 $1,919 0.66 0.73 0.91 10.0 8.0 0.76 1.16 1.25 6.3 5.8 -- 1.4% Independence Group NL (AU) IGO 2.2 AUD$4.75 591 $1,747 0.22 0.32 0.35 14.7 13.4 0.73 0.83 0.80 5.8 6.0 16.2 2.2% Ivanhoe Mines Ltd (CA) IVP 2.1 US$1.90 1197 $2,273 0.02 (0.73) 0.59 -- 3.3 (0.01) (0.04) 0.21 -- 9.1 -- 0.0% Jiangxi Copper Co "H" (HK) 358 2.5 CNY$6.95 3463 $5,221 0.70 0.63 0.78 11.1 8.9 1.75 1.38 1.52 5.1 4.6 13.1 1.0% Kazakhmys PLC (UK) KAZ 2.3 US$4.92 472 $2,312 1.17 0.75 0.89 6.6 5.5 1.04 1.31 1.26 3.8 3.9 21.8 1.7% KGHM Polska Miedz (PO) KGH 3.5 PLN$69.34 200 $3,324 7.11 5.88 9.33 11.8 7.4 25.24 14.93 17.01 4.6 4.1 4.4 0.0% Lundin Mining Corp (CA) LUN 2.0 US$4.42 735 $3,241 0.22 0.29 0.54 15.0 8.2 0.77 0.90 1.24 4.9 3.6 6.4 0.0% Mineral Resources Ltd (AU) MIN 2.0 AUD$15.22 188 $1,786 1.36 1.56 1.39 9.8 10.9 1.41 1.87 2.04 8.1 7.5 7.1 3.3% Oz Minerals (AU) OZL 2.1 AUD$8.20 324 $1,655 0.51 0.25 0.73 33.2 11.2 1.58 1.10 1.71 7.4 4.8 7.1 2.2% Sesa Sterlite Ltd (ADR) SSLT 2.2 INR$76.80 3702 $3,745 15.11 13.74 15.89 5.6 4.8 52.20 45.04 48.54 1.7 1.6 3.3 3.8% South32 Ltd (AU) S32 2.1 US$1.29 4846 $6,125 0.13 0.09 0.14 13.6 9.1 0.30 0.26 0.30 5.0 4.3 3.3 2.2% Sumitomo Metal Mining (JP) 5713 2.1 JPY$2,437 291 $6,533 200.00 180.65 238.62 13.5 10.2 378.82 391.74 442.82 6.2 5.5 9.4 1.7% Teck Resources Ltd TCK 2.1 C$11.07 547 $4,354 2.75 1.42 2.34 7.8 4.7 6.16 4.38 6.11 2.5 1.8 3.4 0.9% Vale Indonesia Tbk PT (ID) INCO 2.2 US$0.14 9936 $1,397 0.01 0.01 0.01 19.6 13.0 0.01 0.02 0.02 7.2 6.0 8.3 0.0% Vedanta Resources PLC (UK) VED -- US$10.85 285 $3,089 -- 0.87 1.24 12.5 8.7 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Average 12.1 9.3 5.8 5.1 8.8 Small-Cap Base Metals Adriatic Metals PLC (AU) ADT 1.7 GBP$0.59 309 $236 (0.02) 0.01 0.30 54.3 2.0 (0.02) (0.01) -- -- -- 0.0% Atalaya Mining PLC (UK) ATYM 1.3 EUR$1.28 137 $192 0.27 0.10 0.45 12.4 2.8 0.27 0.12 0.30 11.2 4.3 12.1 0.0% Eramet (FR) ERA 2.0 EUR$29.15 27 $843 (6.93) (1.44) 4.42 -- 6.6 3.24 10.09 13.86 2.9 2.1 6.2 0.0% Ero Copper Corp (CA) ERO 2.2 US$8.79 86 $752 0.94 0.88 1.21 10.0 7.3 1.40 1.53 1.93 5.7 4.6 -- 0.0% Hudbay Minerals HBM 2.6 US$2.20 261 $574 (0.20) (0.40) 0.01 -- NM 1.19 0.95 1.27 2.3 1.7 2.7 0.4% Kenmare Resources (UK) KMR 1.8 US$2.35 110 $256 0.40 0.36 0.86 6.5 2.7 0.69 0.32 6.10 7.3 0.4 45.7 2.6% Mitsui Mining & Smelting (JP) 5706 2.6 JPY$1,890 57 $998 91.21 169.85 244.50 11.1 7.7 622.22 698.89 776.60 2.7 2.4 5.6 2.4% MMG Ltd (HK) 1208 2.7 US$0.18 8055 $1,476 (0.01) 0.00 0.01 NM 17.8 0.14 0.09 0.14 2.0 1.3 11.3 0.0% Nexa Resources NA NEXA 3.0 US$3.45 133 $460 (0.03) (0.74) (0.10) -- -- 0.93 2.08 2.79 1.7 1.2 -- 6.5% Outokumpu (FN) OUT1V 2.8 EUR$2.65 416 $1,200 (0.20) (0.03) 0.30 -- 8.9 0.90 0.57 0.74 4.6 3.6 6.8 3.6% PolyMet Mining Corp PLM -- US$0.23 1006 $230 (0.08) (0.01) 0.03 -- 7.6 -- -- -- -- -- -- 0.0% Sandfire Resources NL (AU) SFR 2.3 AUD$3.93 178 $436 0.57 0.60 0.64 6.5 6.1 1.45 1.67 1.49 2.4 2.6 2.5 3.5% SolGold PLC (UK) SOLG 1.6 US$0.24 1923 $453 (0.01) (0.00) (0.01) -- -- (0.00) 0.00 0.00 -- -- -- 0.0% Trilogy Metals Inc TMQ 2.2 US$1.66 141 $228 (0.20) (0.09) -- -- -- (0.16) -- -- -- -- 0.0% Turquoise Hill Resources TRQ 3.0 US$0.50 2012 $1,034 0.23 0.00 0.10 NM 4.9 (0.01) (0.02) 0.14 -- 3.5 6.1 0.0% Volcan Cia Ninera VOLABC1 3.0 US$0.08 4077 $1,842 (0.02) 0.01 0.01 6.1 6.3 -- -- -- -- -- 9.1 0.0% Western Areas NL (AU) WSA 2.1 AUD$2.06 274 $351 0.13 0.22 0.23 9.2 9.0 0.44 0.50 0.47 4.1 4.3 6.2 1.0% Average 14.5 6.9 4.3 2.7 10.4 Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets. The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items. Thomson Consensus Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters. Aluminum Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Alcoa Inc AA 2.6 US$7.41 186 $1,378 (0.99) (0.89) (0.49) -- -- 3.70 1.64 3.16 4.5 2.3 3.7 0.0% Alumina Ltd AWC 2.4 US$0.93 2880 $2,645 0.11 0.07 0.08 13.0 12.2 0.13 0.09 0.07 10.3 13.2 3.6 5.3% Aluminum Corp China Ltd (ADR) ACH 2.5 CNY$1.52 17023 $6,235 0.04 0.07 0.12 23.2 13.0 0.73 0.78 0.68 1.9 2.2 13.5 0.0% Century Aluminum CENX 2.8 US$4.12 89 $367 (1.35) (0.64) (0.08) -- -- 0.20 1.13 1.28 3.6 3.2 21.1 0.0% United Company Rusal Ltd (HK) 486 2.2 US$0.34 15193 $5,233 0.08 0.09 0.10 3.7 3.4 0.11 0.08 0.09 4.1 4.0 7.7 0.0% Average 13.3 9.5 4.9 5.0 9.9 Iron Ore Cliffs Natural Resources CLF 2.9 US$4.62 399 $1,842 1.05 (0.04) 0.23 -- 20.3 1.98 0.88 0.94 5.2 4.9 10.6 2.7% Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (AU) FMG 2.8 US$7.19 3079 $22,126 1.20 1.13 0.77 6.4 9.3 1.60 1.52 1.15 4.7 6.2 5.7 9.4% Kumba Iron Ore Ltd (SA) KIO 3.4 ZAR$344.00 322 $6,153 50.73 46.03 35.86 7.5 9.6 85.20 66.49 55.89 5.2 6.2 5.9 11.2% Labrador Iron Ore Royalty (CA) LIF 2.1 C$17.99 64 $822 3.21 2.53 2.33 7.1 7.7 3.51 2.35 2.30 7.7 7.8 11.9 5.1% Mount Gibson Iron Limited (AU) MGX 2.7 AUD$0.69 1158 $497 0.10 0.09 0.08 8.0 8.2 0.10 0.14 0.17 4.8 4.1 19.8 4.2% Average 7.2 11.0 5.5 5.9 10.8 Fertilizers CF Industries CF 2.5 US$31.01 214 $6,630 2.31 1.71 2.16 18.1 14.4 6.79 5.80 5.95 5.3 5.2 15.2 2.5% Compass Minerals CMP 2.2 US$44.96 34 $1,524 1.90 3.01 3.72 14.9 12.1 4.71 6.89 9.51 6.5 4.7 10.6 4.7% Incitec Pivot Ltd (AU) IPL 2.6 AUD$2.21 1613 $2,220 0.11 0.16 0.21 13.5 10.8 0.29 0.39 0.41 5.7 5.4 8.1 1.4% Intrepid Potash IPI 3.0 US$0.94 131 $124 0.10 0.05 0.07 21.0 13.5 0.38 0.30 0.32 3.1 3.0 -- 0.0% Israel Chemical (IS) ICL 2.4 US$3.32 1280 $4,244 0.37 0.32 0.40 10.2 8.3 0.77 0.45 0.55 7.5 6.1 6.5 3.9% K & S Aktiengesellschaft (GR) SDF 2.8 EUR$5.81 191 $1,207 0.46 (0.01) 0.59 -- 9.8 3.34 2.39 2.33 2.4 2.5 7.8 1.3% Mosaic Co MOS 2.4 US$12.97 379 $4,916 0.19 0.40 1.12 32.7 11.6 2.85 2.93 3.39 4.4 3.8 8.2 0.8% Nutrien Ltd NTR 2.0 US$36.76 573 $21,042 2.17 2.10 2.56 17.5 14.3 6.29 4.99 5.25 7.4 7.0 -- 3.7% Sociedad Quimica Minera (ADR) SQM 3.2 US$22.84 263 $5,822 1.06 1.14 1.41 20.1 16.2 1.62 1.81 1.99 12.7 11.5 8.7 4.6% Yara International ASA (NO) YAR 1.9 US$34.10 272 $9,281 3.09 3.12 3.74 10.9 9.1 7.00 6.23 6.37 5.5 5.4 7.9 4.1% Average 17.7 12.0 6.1 5.4 9.1 Coal Large - Mid Cap Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Adaro Energy TBK (ID) ADRO 2.8 US$0.07 31986 $2,060 0.01 0.01 0.01 5.9 5.9 0.03 0.02 0.02 3.2 3.2 3.3 4.2% Banpu Public Co Ltd (TH) BANPU 3.3 US$0.19 5162 $964 0.01 0.02 0.02 9.9 9.0 0.08 0.05 0.06 3.5 3.1 14.5 5.0% China Coal Energy Co (HK) 1898 2.3 CNY$2.03 13259 $6,327 0.47 0.42 0.43 4.8 4.7 1.55 1.11 1.41 1.8 1.4 10.9 4.6% China Shenhua Energy Co (HK) 1088 2.2 CNY$12.86 19890 $43,415 2.10 1.93 1.94 6.7 6.6 3.17 3.09 3.44 4.2 3.7 4.6 8.7% Consol Energy CNX 2.1 US$9.27 187 $1,734 0.60 0.41 0.37 22.5 25.0 5.12 3.84 3.90 2.4 2.4 7.7 0.0% Whitehaven Coal Ltd (AU) WHC 2.2 AUD$2.01 1026 $1,284 0.33 0.15 0.21 13.3 9.6 0.61 0.37 0.46 5.4 4.4 5.8 5.5% Yancoal Australia Ltd YAL 3.0 AUD$2.39 1320 $1,726 0.69 0.29 0.33 8.2 7.2 -- -- -- -- -- -- 11.4% Yanzhou Coal Mining Co Ltd (HK) 1171 2.6 CNY$5.58 4912 $5,156 1.91 1.48 1.47 3.8 3.8 3.58 2.59 3.47 2.2 1.6 17.0 0.0% Average 9.4 9.0 3.2 2.8 9.1 Small Cap Alliance Resource Partners LP ARLP 2.3 US$3.31 127 $421 3.07 0.32 0.53 10.5 6.2 1.81 1.37 1.90 2.4 1.7 1.7 19.8% Arch Coal Inc ARCH 1.8 US$34.77 15 $527 12.58 7.02 11.56 5.0 3.0 24.26 9.84 20.28 3.5 1.7 -- 2.5% Fushan Int'l Energy Group (HK) 639 2.3 HK$1.46 5302 $999 0.22 0.22 0.22 6.5 6.6 0.37 0.38 0.42 3.8 3.5 5.2 10.2% Natural Resource Partners LP NRP 2.0 US$13.67 12 $168 6.40 6.25 6.45 2.2 2.1 10.69 10.58 5.28 1.3 2.6 2.9 9.0% New Hope Corp Ltd (AU) NHC 1.8 AUD$1.48 832 $766 0.26 0.16 0.15 9.1 9.6 0.35 0.31 0.26 4.7 5.7 10.5 8.0% PT Tambang Batubara Bukit (ID) PTBA 2.5 IDR$1,980 11521 $1,412 371.00 302.23 305.37 6.6 6.5 383.90 330.18 330.66 6.0 6.0 6.5 0.0% Average 6.6 5.7 3.6 3.5 5.4 Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets. The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items. Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters. Uranium Price Shrs O/S Mkt Cap Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Cash Flow Per Share Price/Cash Flow EV/EBITDA Div Yld Symbol Rating 10-Apr-20 (MM) (US$MM) 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2019 2020E 2021E 2020E 2021E 2020E % Cameco Corp CCJ 2.3 C$13.00 396 $3,682 0.10 (0.01) (0.01) -- -- 1.33 0.62 0.69 20.9 18.9 8.7 0.7% Denison Mines DNN 2.2 C$0.43 597 $183 (0.03) (0.04) (0.01) -- -- (0.03) (0.03) (0.01) -- -- -- 0.0% Energy Resources Australia (AU) ERA 4.0 AUD$0.16 3691 $356 0.01 0.00 0.00 -- -- (0.19) 0.02 (0.01) 7.8 -- 21.4 0.0% Nexgen Energy Ltd (CA) NXE 1.6 C$1.28 360 $330 (0.04) (0.08) (0.06) -- -- (0.04) (0.04) (0.03) -- -- -- 0.0% Uranium Participation Corp (CA) U 2.1 C$4.29 138 $424 0.01 0.15 0.16 28.0 27.7 (0.03) (0.05) (0.04) -- -- -- 0.0% Average 28.0 27.7 14.3 18.9 15.1 Note: Currency shown is that used by the company for financial reporting. Currency does not always reflect the country/market in which the company/stock symbol trades. GAAP may differ between stocks due to countries and markets. The tables are compiled from the Thomson Reuters database of consensus Ratings & Estimates of equity analysts. The historicals and estimates of earnings and cash flows exclude non-operating, special items. Thomson Reuters Rating System: Buy (1.0), Buy/Hold (2.0), Hold (3.0), Sell/Hold (4.0), Sell (5.0) Source: Thomson Reuters. Commodity Prices Cash Price (10-Apr-20) Silver ($15.40 / oz) Palladium ($2057 / oz) Platinum ($751 / oz) Aluminum ($0.65 / lb) Cobalt ($13.38 / lb) Copper ($2.25 / lb) Lead ($0.76 / lb) Molybdenum ($8.15 / lb) Nickel ($5.20 / lb) Tin ($6.88 / lb) Zinc ($0.85 / lb) Uranium ($27.70 / lb) Democratic governors in the Northeast and along the West Coast are announcing separate state compacts to coordinate how to begin reopening society amid the coronavirus pandemic. They did not announce a timeline but said they will consider the health of residents first and will be guided by science. Cuomo said the governors would work with health officials and economic experts to create a strategy for reopening. The Northeast coalition includes Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The West Coast one consists of California, Oregon and Washington. A brief history of conservative publications in Canada updated to 2020 (Part One) By Mark Wegierski A survey of conservative publications in Canada tells a sorry tale of short-lived efforts lacking the ideological coherence and material support necessary to make a significant impact. Any group of conservative writers and thinkers needs to be aware of the struggles of those who have gone before and to learn, if possible, from their mistakes. One of the most well-known quotations by Conrad Black concerns his promise (or threat) to establish a publication in Canada which would be a National Review North. Although Lord Black certainly created a revolution in the Canadian newspaper world, whose effects continue to be felt today, he did not manage to create a publication that could play as profound a role in Canadian politics as the early National Review played in the creation of an American conservative movement. Black never allocated the funding for a profound intellectual journal of conservative opinion in Canada (although The National Post and other Black papers partially undertook such writing). In earlier decades, The Toronto Sun (descendant of The Toronto Telegraph) had carried a number of conservative columnists (some of whom were remarkably acerbic), but lacked the consistent intellectual credentials to avoid classification by critics as a tabloid. In the 1980s, with a huge Progressive Conservative majority, there was some quickening of conservative intellectual life in Canada, but all struggled to achieve a lasting impact. The businessman William A. B. Campbell launched a magazine called International Conservative Insight, but the venture disappeared when it became apparent he wasnt going to turn a profit from this initiative. There was an attempt to produce a right-leaning newsmagazine in Ottawa called Seven Days, but it failed after a few issues. Dr. Branka Lapajne had somewhat more success with a monthly newspaper called The Phoenix, which continued for a few years before closing. There was also a brief attempt to launch a right-leaning student newspaper at the University of Toronto called The University of Toronto Magazine, but the paper faced troubles right from the start, for example over name duplication, and never managed to find its feet. Launched with great fanfare, Peter Worthingtons Influence magazine collapsed after about two years. It began with a misstep billing itself as directed at men of influence-- and tried to sell itself as a magazine for wealthy businessmen, rather than for conservatives per se. The newsletters of the University of Toronto P.C.s, Rabble & Reaction, and of the young Ontario P.C.s, Blue Wave, were sometimes interesting but had nothing more than a local reach. The period was characterized by a variety of initiatives, none of which found a sustaining audience. Finally, there arose The Idler, a precocious journal of literary-artistic-cultural pretensions, with some sotto voce conservative philosophizing. It was in a non-glossy large-magazine format, with artistic covers in colour, the interior in black and white, and some interesting illustrations. It had a broad variety of contributors, many of whom were literary aspirants who avoided forthright political statements. The main problem with The Idler could be summed up by saying that it offered a tiny, frothy dessert confection as opposed to the meat-and-potatoes that many conservatives were hungering for at the time. The very title seemed redolent of affectation and political inaction. Considering that it often made a point of putting down ordinary people, it never achieved much of a circulation (apparently 8,000 at the maximum). The major conservative publications of the time were the Alberta Report/B.C. Report/Western Report of the Byfield family. Alberta Report had a circulation of about 60,000; B.C. Report about 15,000 (in the province of British Columbia); and Western Report (in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba), about 5,000. Even the most successful conservative publications were limited in their readership and impact. Some of the most long-lasting publications had an economic focus. The National Citizens Coalition put out a newsletter-type publication, and the Fraser Institute produced Fraser Forum, which continually improved in physical quality. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation also publishes a magazine. The trend of short-lived and varyingly ambitious ventures continued into the early 1990s. At this time, The Idler finally folded when foundation funding was withdrawn. William D. Gairdner, the author of the bestselling The Trouble with Canada tried to launch a newsletter-type publication called Speaking Out that failed with the first issue. In Toronto, Judi McLeod, who had been a prominent Toronto Sun columnist, launched Our Toronto Free Press, a free-distribution monthly newspaper (which has subsequently become a webzine). Torontos free-distribution monthly newspaper Transforum was open to contributions from across the spectrum. There was also a free-distribution newspaper called Toronto Westend Express, in which some conservative articles appeared. Young writer Michael Taube attempted a zine called From The Right, which lasted only three issues. It was packed with interesting articles during its short lifespan. A major magazine (glossy, full-colour) open to contributions from across the spectrum was The Next City, which was supported by the Donner Canada Foundation. Gravitas (non-glossy, black-and-white, but with high-quality paper) also funded by Donner, was a brief, brave attempt at a conservative intellectual magazine of considerably greater social and political engagement than The Idler. It too failed to take off, perhaps because it was perceived to be too narrowly intellectual. The only real success among Canadian conservative publications were the Byfield newsmagazines. By the 1990s, the magazines looked in format somewhat like Time or Newsweek (glossy, full-colour covers, although mostly monochrome inside) and contained a variety of features. In summation, the 1980s was a dreadful time for conservatives in Canada unlike in the U.S. and Britain. Living in megapolitan Toronto before the coming of the Internet, it often must have seemed to conservative thinkers that nothing belonged to them except the few cubic centimeters inside their skull (as Orwell had put it). The Idler was certainly not an answer to this dilemma. With the rise of the Reform Party in the 1990s, there was greater hope -- but attempts to create an enduring conservative intellectual magazine (Gravitas came closest to it) continued to fail. In Part Two, the author will look at how subsequent ventures fared. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home The US government had reportedly funded $3.7 million to the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan which has been at the centre of speculations surrounding coronavirus outbreak. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is believed to have conducted coronavirus experiments on mammals captured from the caves of Yunnan, China, with the US money. According to documents obtained by British media outlet Daily Mail, scientists there experimented on bats as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services responsible for biomedical and public health research. Research into the sequencing of the COVID-19 has traced the virus back to bats in the Yunnan caves. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the most advanced laboratories in China. It is situated 20 miles from the animal market from where the coronavirus is believed to have first transferred to a human. The revelation that the US government was funding the lab doing research on bats in Wuhan has added fuel to the conspiracy theory which suggests that that the Wuhan lab was the actual place of origin of the coronavirus pandemic, not the animal market. Soon after this discovery US lawmakers, pressure groups hit out at the US government for funding dangerous and cruel experiments at the Wuhan Insititute. US Congressman Matt Gaetz said, "I'm disgusted to learn that for years the US government has been funding dangerous and cruel animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute, which may have contributed to the global spread of coronavirus, and research at other labs in China that have virtually no oversight from US authorities." While Anthony Bellotti, President of the US pressure group White Coat Waste, said, "'Animals infected with viruses or otherwise sickened and abused in Chinese labs reportedly may be sold to wet markets for consumption once experiments are done." Earlier in April, a $20 trillion lawsuit had been filed in the US against Chinese authorities over coronavirus outbreak. American lawyer Larry Klayman and his advocacy group Freedom Watch along with Texas company Buzz Photos had sought $20 trillion from China claiming coronavirus is the result of a biological weapon prepared by the Chinese authorities. The United States is one of the worst countries to have been hit by the coronavirus. The country now has both the highest number of cases in the world as well as the highest number of deaths. The US has recorded 560,433 cases on coronavirus while 22,115 have lost their lives to the deadly disease. Also Read: Coronavirus India live updates: 308 people dead in the country as active COVID-19 cases near 8,000-mark Also Read: Coronavirus: Farmers demand fair price for produce before lockdown extension kicks in Pakistan has appealed to international stakeholders for urgent debt relief for developing countries so they can deal more effectively with the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, the government said on Sunday. The country has recorded 5,183 infections, with 88 deaths, and its already-struggling economy has been hit hard by nationwide preventive lockdowns. They have brought economic activity to a halt and caused widespread unemployment. Prime Minister Imran Khan, in a video message released by the foreign office, said he was worried people in the developing world would die due to the lockdowns. The country has recorded 5,183 infections, with 88 deaths, and its already-struggling economy has been hit hard by nationwide preventive lockdowns. Pictured: Women practise social distancing as they wait to get money in Lahore The lockdowns have brought economic activity to a halt and caused widespread unemployment. Pictured: Christians hold candles as they pray during an Easter service in Islamabad Khan said: 'Pakistan with a population of 220million, so far the best stimulus package we can afford is $8billion.' He added highly indebted countries lack fiscal space to spend on health and social support. Pakistan, which is over $100billion in debt to foreign lenders and spends the largest chunk of its budget on debt servicing, last week began a $900million cash disbursement programme to 12million poor families unemployed due to lockdowns. Khan added highly indebted countries lack fiscal space to spend on health and social support. Pictured: Christians over Easter weekend in Islamabad Pakistan last week began a $900million cash disbursement programme to 12million poor families unemployed due to lockdowns. Pictured: Christians in Islamabad Khan said he appealed to world leaders, the heads of financial institutions and the secretary-general of the United Nations to announce a debt relief initiative for developing countries. Pakistan will receive $1.4billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of organisation's Rapid Financing Instrument to help finance the country's response to the virus. It is also currently in the first year of a three-year $6billion IMF programme to help its ailing economy. Khan said he appealed to world leaders, the heads of financial institutions and the secretary-general of the United Nations to announce a debt relief initiative for developing countries. Pictured: Christians in the capital Islamabad Economists and business leaders have warned for decades of an impending economic crisis in New Mexico. Revenue from oil and gas the state is dependent upon is in the process of disruption with a finite expiration date, and government labs are at risk from unsustainable federal deficits and fickle politics. Despite these well-understood facts, the state has increased dependencies rather than proactively diversify its economy. During the decades these warnings were ignored, New Mexico exported several dozen tech companies just as they reached growth stage, representing billions of dollars of future wealth and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. These companies are precisely what the state desperately needs to diversify its economy and avoid a serious economic crisis. Every emerging economy must learn to create competitive businesses to mitigate poverty and reach the next level of development. Successful business clusters depend on the public and private sector coming together in a unified manner to strengthen the competitive environment relatively free of politics. Communities must support companies at critical stages, which in the case of New Mexico is necessary to avoid a major economic-driven humanitarian crisis. Startups are the easy part. Growing up is always challenging. New Mexico has several weaknesses, including a small private sector, few early stage customers, perverse tax incentives, limited business experience, lack of growth funding, and many challenges associated with poverty. We also have many strengths, including a strategic location comparable to Denver or Dallas, good infrastructure, an appealing natural environment, a comfortable climate, and competitive costs other than taxes. However, our greatest strength by far is a robust world-class research cluster with several billion dollars per year invested, including related human capital and companies. Unfortunately, the indirect benefits created by research investments have been substantially exported along with tech companies at precisely the time their region should support them. The result is that despite billions of dollars per year in federal research, New Mexico has never experienced a significant enduring business success. New Mexicos poverty, crime rate, and opportunities for youth are much worse than the states that acquire New Mexico tech companies, which influenced our decision to keep my company KYield in New Mexico. The next step was to start a group that would become the Junto Club. An independent group of tech execs working together is one of several missing ingredients that was obviously needed in New Mexico, and one challenge we could quickly solve. During our first meeting, Adam Greenhood, CEO of AdWallet, suggested the name Junto after Benjamin Franklins group, which means together in Spanish. Although our focus is narrower, the concept is similar so we adopted the name. The Junto Club has been well received with immediate support including volunteer Joshua Edwards at RiskSense who was instrumental in reaching out to local companies. We have also attracted initial regional sponsors such as REDW, Rodey Law, and Peacock Law. Our regular members now represent about 50 companies that have raised over $100 million in venture capital, are generating annual revenues in the low tens of millions of dollars, have created several hundred high paying jobs, and importantly, Junto member companies are either growing rapidly or poised to do so. New Mexico is clearly at tipping point with potential to create a sustainable tech cluster, but as of today we are still a net exporter of our most promising tech companies. Now is the time to quickly come together and take decisive action for future generations of New Mexicans. The executives desk is a guest column providing advice or information about resources available to the business community in New Mexico. the executives desk Everything hit Nick Martin when he picked up the phone. Martin, 26, had expected to start a family medicine residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center this summer, after graduating from the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS). But with a surge of COVID-19 cases expected to hit the state in the coming weeks, the school allowed Martin and his classmates to graduate on March 31, so they could begin working as first-year residents in the UMass hospital system. Thats how Martin found himself on April 8 in a white coat, calling into a coronavirus patients room and trying on a new name for the first time. I was like, Imoh, yeah, Im Doctor Martin, he says. It just gives you that next level of responsibility. Medical students across the country are in Martins shoes right now, collecting their degrees early to join the COVID-19 relief effort and ease burdens on overworked and understaffed hospital care teams. American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) records show at least 13 U.S. medical schools have allowed students to graduate early and join the COVID-19 response. For years, experts have projected a looming physician shortage in the U.S., with much of the current workforce nearing retirement. By 2032, the AAMC estimates, the U.S. may be short up to 122,000 doctors. COVID-19 has accelerated that timeline, as hospitals struggle to keep up with inflated patient numbers at the same time many health care workers are getting sick and being forced to stay home. New York statethe epicenter of the U.S. outbreakneeded about 1,200 more doctors to keep up with patient demand even before the pandemic hit, according to a WABC news estimate. With the situation suddenly even more dire, states including New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois are turning to the countrys oldest and youngest doctors to help, asking both recently retired health care workers and graduating medical students to join the front-line response. Story continues While a flurry of medical schools announced their plans in March, many newly minted doctors are not actually working yet. Schools have faced a thicket of logistical challenges, including getting plans approved by state-education and medical-licensing boards, and working with regulatory bodies to secure temporary licenses for doctors who werent planning to be in hospitals until July. Many have also had to sort out whether students would volunteer in hospitals associated with their medical schools, or join their planned residency programs early. And many new doctors have been left on their own to sort out the logistics of starting work, finding a place to live and making sure their planned residency programs are on board with the whole plan. As a result, many students who have graduated and volunteered to serve are still stuck in limbo, their sense of duty tinged with fear. Randy Casals, 28, was finishing up his last semester of medical school at Columbia Universitys Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons this spring when the COVID-19 outbreak exploded. He and his classmates saw that New York University had announced it would let students graduate early to join the fight, so he was ready when the email came from his school telling him he could choose to do the same. Starting our career in the middle of a global pandemic isnt exactly what we signed up for, but helping people navigate really scary times is what we signed up for, he says. Columbia will let students graduate April 15 and temporarily start working at New York-Presbyterian Hospital soon after that. Casals, who is set to begin a urology residency at Wake Forest University School of Medicine this summer, still doesnt know exactly what his work will look like in this interim period. Columbia has told the students they will be mostly providing relief for other doctors and performing tasks that dont put them in direct contact with COVID-19 patients. Still, Casals has been reading up about the coronavirus and closely following the updates from New Yorks overwhelmed hospitals. When he first called his parents to tell them the news, he could hear the concern in their voices, he says. His father, Wilfredo, says the family considered trying to get Randy to come home to Pennsylvania, but supports his decision to begin work early. I told him, Mijo, youre a soldier in a white uniform. This is like a biological war, and you all are like the soldiers on the frontlines of this, Wilfredo says in Spanish. Now hes going to be a real doctor who can really help others. Were scared of course, and weve told him to protect himself, to take care of himself, but well see how that goes. An old photo of Randy Casals dressed up as a doctor for Halloween when he was a teenager. Before COVID-19 caused medical school graduations to be moved online, Wilfredo Casals had planned to give Randy the photo upon his graduation. | Photo courtesy of Wilfredo Casals Beyond safety concerns, many medical students say they are nervous about diving into what could essentially be their first year of residency several months early. The intern year in emergency medicine is exhausting. And just getting through 12 months of it is a lot, says Benjamin Asriel, a fourth-year student at Mount Sinais Icahn School of Medicine who decided to graduate early but will not be going to work right away. Everyone in the health care system is trying to figure out how we can work hard and also continue to work in a way that is sustainable. Asriel is spending these weeks coordinating his schools volunteer response to the pandemic. Bernice Fokum, 28, is also wrestling with what it means to start her medical career during COVID-19. After graduating from Atlantas Emory School of Medicine, she will start an emergency medicine residency at the University of Chicago. If the hospital calls her and asks her to come before her scheduled start date this summer, Fokum says, she would feel conflicted. Shed be worried about potentially being exposed to COVID-19 and giving it to her parents, with whom she has been living since Emory canceled in-person classes. I would feel very pulled to be of service in any way that I could, she says, but definitely not without fear. Even saying that right now gives me a little shake. Fokum is also worried about translating her education to serving patients in an unprecedented pandemic. There is that feeling of, Are you sure you want me right now? she says. We cant necessarily prepare the way we would have been able to prepare for someone coming in for a heart attack. This one is so new. Even veteran doctors, she notes, dont know exactly how to handle COVID-19so how can they teach her and her fellow interns? UMMS Chancellor Dr. Michael Collins says the medical education system was designed to serve students to take on challenges like this one. Its a time-honored tradition in medicine that those who are more experienced nurture the careers of those who are less experienced, he says. They would have the exact same responsibilities as they would on day one [of a normal residency]. In Martins experience, thats true so far. Hes matched with a senior attending physician at UMass Medical Center who is teaching him the basics, before he may be given another assignment within the hospital system. Martin expects hell mostly be helping with administrative support, like writing up patient notes and calling in treatment orders, but he says thats okay. Right now, I dont have any of the clinical expertise that those senior doctors have, he says, but I can write a mean note. Still, Collins admits hes worried about sending students into situations where they might not have enough protective equipment, and says hes heard from graduates who are concerned about getting sick, potentially making them unable to start their regular residencies on time. But our students are ready to go, he says. One of the things we teach our students in medical school is to go toward the patient, not to go away. As schools on the East Coast are finding ways to manage the surge of COVID-19 patients, they are also sharing information with their counterparts around the country. Each Thursday, a group of medical education leaders from schools in the AAMC hold a conference call where they provide updates, discuss regulatory challenges and debate strategies, including how to handle the pandemic. In the Pacific Northwest, where COVID-19 started in the U.S. (but where outbreaks have not yet reached the intensity of New York), schools are preparing for their own peak. Oregon Health and Science University has had a program in place to let medical students graduate early for the past few years, but this year it wanted to let those who had matched at its own hospital system start working right away to help with COVID-19. After the school worked through funding and logistical concerns, a handful of graduates will start this month as interns in three departments: emergency medicine, family medicine and anesthesiology. If the virus keeps spreading in Oregon, OHSU may need more students to start early as interns, says Dr. George Mejicano, OHSU School of Medicine senior associate dean for education. Unlike the situation for many New York medical school graduates, these doctors will be working with the residency teams they were already planning to join in July, Mejicano says. That means they can help with the expected wave of COVID-19 patients this spring and be more experienced when the larger class of first-year residents begins this summer, potentially reducing the teaching burden then. Dr. Alix Cooper, left, with a fellow early graduate and their residency program director. The new doctors graduated early from Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine, and will begin their family medicine residency in Klamath Falls, Oregon on April 20. | Photo courtesy of Alix Cooper Right now, though, they are in a holding pattern. Dr. Alix Cooper, who just graduated from OHSU School of Medicine, will start on April 20 as a family medicine resident at the local hospital in rural Klamath Falls, Oregon. The 27-year-old studied in a special rural family-medicine program, and has been working with the hospitals staff for months, but COVID-19 has raised the stakes. I am definitely getting more and more nervous as the day for me to start is approaching, Cooper says. When COVID-19 hits Klamath Falls, Cooper knows the small towns existing health care shortages will be stretched. As soon as people start to get sick, we have a pretty small workforce here with no real backup in the community, Cooper says. Mejicano, the OHSU dean, says concerns about burnout are real, and he worries about the mental health of all health care workers right now. But hes confident that Cooper and other graduates are ready. These young doctors have already been trained on how to use the equipment, how to put on the gowns and the gloves. Theyve learned how to do this, he says. This is not like taking somebody off the street and saying, go to take care of someone. In the past few weeks, Mejicano has had leaders from Tulane University, the University of Michigan and other schools calling to ask his advice on how to best help their students join the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first days and weeks of these new residents experiences are likely to continue being a mix of emotions. Casals had been planning to reunite with friends from college and high school in the time between graduating Columbias med school and starting work, and had planned a trip to Europe. I feel the loss of all that joy and that celebration that we would have had with our class as sort of a last hurrah before we head into the workforce and scatter. But at the same time, I feel this need to act, he says. The unique situation has made everything feel surreal, like its a movie, he adds. But Casals says he wants to help his mentors and colleagues if he can. I think medical school does a good job of putting you in situations where you feel a little uncomfortable and a little unsure. And you just have to be confident and act and know that youve worked hard and you have people looking out for you, Casals says. Your overall guiding principle just has to be: do the right thing for the people in your care. With reporting by Jasmine Aguilera The Washington Post has finally gotten around to covering the allegation by an ex-Biden staffer that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. The ex-staffer, Tara Reade, made this allegation weeks ago. I wrote about it here. Hoping to debunk Reades allegation, the Post sent four reporters into the field. The four reporters failed to accomplish this mission. Instead, a friend of Reades corroborated her account of a conversation in which Reade described the incident soon after it allegedly happened in 1993. In addition, Reades brother said that, in the same year, she told him of inappropriate touchings by Biden. The friend, then an intern for another Senator, told the Post that, in Reades account to her: She was pinned up against the wall. His hands went under her skirt. . .He pushed his fingers into her, not at her invitation. According to the Post, Reades brother initially told him of parts of her experience with Biden, but not the alleged assault. Later, the brother sent a text stating that he did recall Reade telling him that Biden put his hands under her clothes. All of this is buried deep in the Posts story. The Post leads with the fact that Reade last year said Joe Biden touched her neck and shoulders. . .[but] is now accusing him of sexually assaulting her. . . . Thats an important fact in evaluating Reades assault allegation (though of much less value when it comes to a harassment claim). However, its also important that Reades friend confirms that Reade complained to her about an assault by Biden shortly after it allegedly occurred. You can bet that if Reade were accusing a public figure the Post didnt like of sexual assault, its story would lead with the corroboration. You can also bet that the Post wouldnt have waited weeks to report on the case. The Post reports that a Biden aide with whom Reade says she filed a sexual harassment complaint issued a statement denying she ever received one. This is a relevant fact. However, its not unheard of for loyalists to rally around a powerful male accused of harassment. The fact that Biden might soon become president must also be taken into account. Again, I think the Post would be more skeptical of a statement, released by a campaign, if the accused were a Republican candidate for office. Finally, the Posts report includes this gem: The Post found no other allegations against [Biden] as serious as Reades. (Emphasis added) Its heartening to read that no other woman accused Biden of attempting sexually to penetrate them. But what other allegations of sexual misconduct by Biden did the Post find? The Post isnt saying. If Biden were a Republican, it would be. Reades sexual assault may or may not be true, but it hasnt been shown with a high degree of probability to be false. If, as Biden has said, the presumption is in favor of women who come forward in cases like this, then the presumption remains in Reades favor. Moreover, misguided presumptions aside, I believe its more likely than not that Biden inappropriately touched Reade in some fashion. A crew member serving food to hundreds of passengers may have been responsible for the coronavirus outbreak on board the Ruby Princess cruise ship. The cruise liner, which departed Sydney on March 8 for New Zealand and returned on March 19, led to over 600 cases of COVID-19 cases nationwide and at least 18 deaths. 'At this stage we would think that it was probably a crew member working in probably the galley, someone who is serving food, someone who would get across a number of passengers for it to spread like it has,' NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said on Monday. 'But again, that is not proven as fact yet, but that would seem to be the most obvious point of transmission is someone who is handling food on behalf of multiple hundreds of people.' NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller (pictured) said it was 'probably' a crew member working in the galley who spread coronavirus around the Ruby Princess cruise ship NSW Health said 66 crew on board the Ruby Princess cruise ship have tested positive, while the rest are still quarantined on board the ship, which is currently docked at Port Kembla (pictured) Mr Fuller said Crime Stoppers had received 220 leads for information relating to the Ruby Princess investigation. A coronial investigation was launched after some 2,700 passengers were allowed to disembark in Sydney without adequate health checks - an action the Australian Border Force blamed on NSW health authorities. NSW Health said 66 crew on board the Ruby Princess cruise ship have tested positive to coronavirus and many are close to recovery. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement Eleven sick crew members who have been evacuated from the ship remain in Sydney health facilities. The rest of the crew are still quarantined on board the ship, which is currently docked at Port Kembla, south of Wollongong. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said it's unfortunate 2700 passengers boarded the Ruby Princess cruise ship at a time when the coronavirus pandemic was already front and centre in the community's consciousness. Mr Hazzard says the Ruby Princess' 'patient zero' remained unknown, with passenger proximity complicating contact tracing. He repeated the view of NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant who previously said more infections could have occurred if passengers had not left the ship. 'It is a very unfortunate outcome but at the time that that ship sailed, which was March 8 from memory, there was COVID-19 well and truly,' Mr Hazzard said. 'Journalists were talking about it and I as health minister was working hard on it, and it is unfortunate that people went out cruising at that particular point.' Mr Hazzard also backed the decision of authorities to release the passengers, saying their expertise should not be called into question. 'There were four very senior public health officials who, on information that was given to them, made a decision ... and they had all been making those sorts of decisions for somewhere between 10 and 30 years,' he said. The coronial investigation was launched after passengers were allowed to disembark (pictured) in Sydney without adequate health checks on March 19 NSW Health Acting Director Dr Christine Selvey on Monday said both Ruby Princess passengers who died in NSW on Monday had caught the virus on board. A 74-year-old woman died in John Hunter Hospital and a 79-year-old man died in the Northern Beaches Hospital. Last week, police in full protective gear boarded the ship and seized evidence, including the voyage data recorder, which has conversations from the bridge. The ship will remain docked at the port for up to 10 days, with no crew to be let off without permission from Mr Fuller. Some 200 crew members who remain on the ship have symptoms of the illness. Maybe thats what hurts the most - it was nobodys fault... Now its like: Huh. We really cant win. - Donny Bartch, a Perry County farmer on the effects - psychological and economic - of the COVID-19 outbreak. The hits really do just keep coming for Pennsylvanias dairy farmers. Just as it looked like they were on the cusp of pulling out of a broad dairy downturn thats already caused a more than 10% shakeout in the number of working dairy farms across Pennsylvania, the coronavirus pandemic has completely shuttered major market sectors including schools, restaurants and office cafeterias - buyers of one-third or more of many dairies milk. Thats had the effect of upsetting the just-reset supply/demand balance all over again, with expectations that milk prices are headed for the danger zones seen in 2017-18. Thats assuming the farmers are lucky enough to still have a market for their milk. In an extraordinary step earlier this month, local processor Harrisburg Dairies asked all of its suppliers to dump their milk for two consecutive milking cycles primarily because of the school closures. We lost about three states worth of school business, and that really rocks the boat for how you manage your product flow, said Alec Dewey, president of the Harrisburg plant that made headlines in 2018 for rescuing some troubled farms. Schools, Dewey said, constitute about 40% of the dairys sales by volume during the academic year. There has been some growth in grocery and other retail sales in the interim, but that was a mile away from what we lost in food service, Dewey said. In the course of a normal year, in summer months the dairy will scale back supplemental purchases from larger, regional cooperatives, and use sales to other processors like ice cream makers or butter plants to carry through with the farms it has under contract. But there was no way to make those adjustments fast enough last month with the sudden school closures. Four days in a row (April 2-5) we dumped milk for all of our farms, Dewey said. We havent had to do it since, but its probably going to be week-to-week until the summer. That seemed to be the moment that brought the pandemics reality home for Bartch and other farmers around the region. The galling part of is that it happened just as many in the business felt their fortunes were finally beginning to turn. The industry had already been going through a painful retrenchment in the past few few years. Some 470 dairy farms exited the business in 2019 alone, putting Pennsylvanias current count of working dairy farms at 5,730. That was after a nearly 20% decline in the number of farms from 2008 through 2018. But prices had rebounded in late 2019 to above break-even levels, new global export deals had been inked and some farmers were looking to a year in which they could not only catch up from the losses of the past few years, but start to get ahead. It looked like 2020 was going to be the first really strong year for dairy farmers in the last five, said Jayne Sebright, executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Dairy Excellence. Early in the year we saw milk prices ticking up towards $18, $19, $20 dollars per hundred-weight (100 pounds of fluid milk), which is above the cost of production. And then, in about a three-week period when the COVID outbreak started to happen we saw milk price futures for the coming year fall through the floor and theyre actually at the lowest level that theyve been in the last 10 years. Supply is suddenly about 10 percent over demand, by some estimates. Its not just school milk sales. Its the restaurant closures. ... Its the food service institutions that have closed due to COVID-19. Were really talking about a widespread loss of key markets for dairy, Sebright said. And just like that, any near-term prospects of profits seem to have wilted on the vine. Bartch said that where he was being paid $19 per hundred pounds this winter, May futures put the farmer price back down around $13. Compounding the problem, for some, is that because of the turning tide, many had decided to skip a federal insurance program that guarantees them the cost of production in a bad year. Hardly anybody signed up for that, said Cumberland County farmer Steve Nealy who is a member of the Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative. Right now, its looking like, man, we should have done that. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, only 15 percent of Pennsylvania dairy farmers signed up for the Dairy Margin Coverage program. We got back in the bottom of the well, and we somehow manage to dig a little deeper, said Bartch, who at 38 is part of the fourth generation to run his 1,000 acre Merrimart Farms near Loysville in Perry County. His farm made the TV news for all the wrong reasons on April 2, when Bartch, like all Harrisburg Dairies farmers, had to empty his tanks for the first time ever for purely economic reasons. Harrisburg Dairies wasnt the only one. Reading-based Clover Farms, a dairy that sells product through eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative have also been forced to ask farmers to dump milk since the outbreak started. Some other processors, including Dean Foods the national firm that produces milk through a network of plants that, in Pennsylvania, winds up in stores like Walmart and Giant and the Maryland & Virginia cooperative, had been able to avoid milk dumps as of Friday, they said. As painful as the dumping was for the affected farmers, that is actually a far better short-term solution than the alternative, which would be dairies ending their contracts with farms, and forcing them to find new places to take their milk in a depressed market where there just might not be any takers. The processor could say: Were going to cut these farms, and then that would be a long-term detriment, Sebright said. Industry leaders are also trying to re-route as much fluid milk, butter and cheese as they can into the network that provides charity food distributions through local food pantries. In both situations, most farmers can at least expect to be paid some lesser price for their products. But those arent likely to be the kind of tools that will help farmers many of whom are already in super-vulnerable financial situations because of the recent dairy depression ride out this storm for anything close to its expected duration. They will need to be supplemented, farm industry advocates and policy makers say, with some combination of other steps like paying farmers who cut milk production by 10% from their March baselines an extra subsidy for the rest of their milk; forgivable loans to dairies that keep buying from their current farms, similar to the new paycheck protection program aimed at covering payroll for small businesses. Those two measures were called for last week by two major dairy trade associations: the National Milk Producers Federation and the International Dairy Food Association. Others have called for measures like a period of forbearance on farm debt obligations; or a reopening of windows for farmers to get production cost insurance. This is a national crisis that requires a national response, state Agriculture Secretary Russ Redding told PennLive in a recent telephone interview. And the key is building a bridge that will help farmers - who are by definition in a business thats built for the long-term over the current crisis. Dairy cant just turn off cows. It cant just close dairy farms and expect them to reopen in two months. It doesnt work like that, Sebright said. She and Redding both argue the fundamentals for Pennsylvania as a dairy state remain strong: Its close to the massive Eastern Seaboard population centers; theres a critical mass of farms (5,730 entering this year) to support the needed support businesses; and theres still a good core of dairies and other processors. As soon as the channel opens to do any type of food service I think the market will respond immediately," Redding said. This is not a fundamental flaw inside of the marketing plan. Its an interruption to the marketing plan, and thats where I take sort of the hope and optimism ... that as soon as we get some new normalcy around this marketplace, people will want to eat dairy. We just have to struggle through this period, particularly to get the food service side back in some form" and, in the interim, try to prevent another cohort of farmers from making immediate decisions that have generational consequences, Redding said. Thats going to require all parties cooperation: the federal government pushing immediate cash into the system through the rescue; farmers being smart about their production levels, deferring maintenance and other costs; and communications from cooperatives and other processors to the farmers about market expectations. Its chaotic. Everyones looking for certainty at a time you cant give them any. It just makes it really difficult if youre in a business where its not just about today and this season and the year. Its about a generation. And thats what I worry about it," the Agriculture Secretary continued. "Its a generational decision that people are going to make today about: Can I stay here? Should I stay here? So the stress level on farms, it was high before, its overwhelming now to find some peace of mind in this storm. Bartch is among many family farmers who have applied to the U.S. Small Business Administrations Paycheck Protection Program for a potentially forgivable loan to cover short-term costs, and hes also exploring the early sale of some Merrimarts beef herd to other livestock producers. The farm employs the equivalent of about 9 full-time employees. One thing he is not doing? Giving up. The farm is engaged in its normal spring planting, and continuing to milk the herd as usual. Its trying to buy time, he explained in an interview last week. The economy I do believe is still strong when we get get up and rolling again. Weve been through tough times before. We kind of know how to put our noses to the grindstone and were going to try to grind it out here," Bartch said. "But how long can we last at this kind of pace? Theres a certain level here where its just like were going to have to wait and see. More: Like many of the other distortions, deceptions and outright lies in which the Republican Party has engaged, its flagrant fabrications about voter fraud have been exposed for what they are: a desperate attempt to hold on to power. For decades now, Republicans have undertaken a far-reaching effort to suppress the vote among constituencies that tend to vote for Democrats: voters of color, the poor, the young. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends widespread voting by mail to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, Republicans including the president are engaged in an all-out campaign to prevent voting by mail. The GOP knows that any initiative that makes it easier to cast a ballot will result in more ballots cast. Any genuine patriot any American who sincerely believes in the ideals of the U.S. Constitution should want that, right? Nope. While some Republicans still manage to express their efforts to suppress the vote with less explicit rhetoric using claims of protecting the integrity of the ballot as an excuse President Donald J. Trump cannot manage the same discipline. In a recent call to one of his favorite propaganda outlets, Fox and Friends, Trump complained about Democratic efforts to expand alternatives to showing up physically at a polling place on a single, specific day. They had things levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again, he said about initiatives that were removed from a stimulus bill because of GOP objections. In other words, high turnout is bad news for Republicans, or so they believe. The Grand Old Poobahs have given up campaigning for the votes of black and brown Americans. Theyve forsaken the interests of younger voters and impoverished voters. Instead, theyve doubled down on disenfranchising them. Just look at Wisconsins primary earlier this week. In the midst of a global pandemic that has shuttered businesses and restricted residents to their homes, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, proposed sending absentee ballots to all registered voters in the state. The Republican-dominated legislature reacted with rage. In a last-ditch effort to protect public health, Evers unilaterally postponed Tuesdays primary. Republicans sued. They won. The Wisconsin State Supreme Court, which is dominated by conservatives, said Evers did not have the authority to postpone the primary. In a related technical issue, the highest court in the nation sided with the right-wing power grab. In a one-sided ruling, the high courts conservatives decided that all absentee ballots submitted in Wisconsin must be postmarked by Election Day, which meant any voters who applied for absentee ballots in the last few weeks after the dangers of the plague were clear would not get the opportunity to be counted. As if the U.S. Supreme Courts partisanship were not obvious, it added hypocrisy to its sins. For the first time since the Spanish flu epidemic that struck during World War I, the nations highest court suspended oral arguments, citing public health precautions. Roberts doesnt want to be exposed to the virus, but its OK if Wisconsin voters are exposed. For those who have cared to pay attention, the phoniness of the GOPs voter fraud claims has been obvious for years. In 2012, a Republican Pennsylvania state legislator hailed a new law requiring strict voter ID checks at the polls, saying it would help Mitt Romney defeat Barack Obama. Georgias GOP governor, Brian Kemp, ran for the office when he was still the states election chief. He used that position to find countless ways to suppress black votes. Those efforts no doubt contributed to the defeat of Democrat Stacey Abrams, who might have become the nations first black female governor. Trump, the narcissist-in-chief, was so troubled over losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton that he insisted the results were mired in fraudulent voting. He installed a special commission to ferret out the fraud, but the group eventually disbanded because there was no evidence of widespread cheating to be found. Still, they persist. The president has tweeted that voting by mail is fine for the elderly and members of the military, but RIPE for FRAUD if expanded to other groups. Guess which party is usually supported by elderly voters and members of the military? Email Cynthia Tucker at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor A group of private oil services companies in Venezuela has called on the government to relax stringent rules against gasoline imports amid critical shortages of the essential fuel, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. It is necessary, but it is not viable, one of the sources said, commenting on the precarious situation that fuel retailers are in. According to Venezuelan legislation, the state is the only party allowed to sell gasoline on the local market. Fuel sales are also heavily subsidized, which makes the fuel extremely cheap--this would make it extremely difficult for private sellers to turn a profit, even if Caracas allows them to start importing the fuel. Venezuela suspended imports of gasoline from the United States last year as the political row between the two escalated, and since then, a shortage of the fuel has been building. Last month, the government started to close fuel stations across the country because of the shortage. According to an unnamed source who spoke to Bloomberg in late March, the government will leave only a few stations open to be managed by the army. These, however, will only service medical, food transport, and utility vehicles. Local production of gasoline has also been declining because of the suspension of diluent imports from the U.S. Diluents are necessary to make the superheavy Venezuelan crude more liquid and fit for refining. Refineries themselves have been suffering the effects of years of underinvestment, and run rates are low. Venezuelan refineries are currently operating at less than 10 percent of capacity, according to Reuters, because of this combination of diluent shortages and disrepair. Fuel is indispensable for the health and food sectors, and so we must temporarily deregulate the internal market and allow the importation of fuels from various external private sources, a regional chapter of the Venezuelan Oil Chamber said in a tweet last week. It was the same chapter that submitted the proposal to allow imports and sales from private companies to the government in Caracas. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ Olivia Epifano (pictured) is the owner of The Lavish Lash Lounge A makeup artist has created $15 false eyelashes that last months without needing to be replaced, and she made $100,000 in 14 days after the online website launched. Olivia Epifano, 20, first noticed a gap in the beauty market at 18, when she couldn't find a good quality, cruelty-free (meaning they didn't contain mink fur) faux lashes that would last longer than two or three wears. So, the Melbourne-based student spent two years building The Lavish Lash Lounge, a series of 10 different types of lashes, priced between $15 and $25, that suit different eye shapes and provide added confidence for those who like accentuating their makeup. 'I was asked to work for a cosmetic house as a makeup artist at 18... I was so excited and ready for the job until they told me I had to dedicate my social media pages to them,' she told FEMAIL. 'I was sitting on it for a couple of days and thought to myself why am I helping someone else grow? Why not just help myself grow? Some of her best-sellers VITA and ARIA lashes are made from synthetic silk and claim to last 30 wears, making them a very inexpensive choice (before and after pictured) After graduating high school Olivia went on to study marketing and communications at university, despite initially feeling like that would hinder the progression of her work 'That night I jumped on the internet and before I knew it it was 5am the next morning and I had to be at school by nine. I had ordered a bunch of samples so they would come in and out... I'd absolutely hate some and love others.' She would try 'breaking' the lashes to see if they were durable and practice applying them with glue. After graduating high school Olivia went on to study marketing and communications at university, despite initially feeling like that would hinder the progression of her work. She said: 'But in the end I definitely gained invaluable experience. I was then able to pay my full attention to the business and get it launched, which happened in October 2019.' Some of her customers are even claiming to have used one pair of lashes 85 times before they eventually broke (a customer pictured) 'Our lavish applicator allows you to apply lashes like a professional and its only $5,' Olivia said Some of her best-sellers VITA and ARIA lashes are made from synthetic silk and claim to last 30 wears, making them a very inexpensive choice. Some of her customers are even claiming to have used one pair of lashes 85 times before they eventually broke. Her best advice for applying them is to have a good applicator and know what to do with your glue. 'Our lavish applicator allows you to apply lashes like a professional and its only $5,' Olivia said. 'Custom designed, the curve is perfectly contoured and shaped for all eyes. Your Lavish Lashes will be able to be worn comfortably for hours when applied with the applicator. Her best advice for applying them is to have a good applicator and know what to do with your glue While Olivia managed to generate $100,000 in just 14 days after reinvigorating her website earlier this year, her aims are far higher than that (a before and after pictured) 'Another tip is to allow the glue to sit on the lashes for about 1-2 minutes before applying it to your eye as this will allow the glue to become tacky and stick straight on.' While Olivia managed to generate $100,000 in just 14 days after reinvigorating her website earlier this year, her aims are far higher than that. 'My aim from the beginning was to be able to see my product on the shelf. I want to hit one million in sales by June with the help of retail expansion in Australia first. I would like to dominate the market then expand into the US,' she said. You can find The Lavish Lash Lounge online and on Instagram. MOSCOW On April 10, the OPEC, Russia and other countries managed to reach a new agreement to temporarily cut oil production. The agreement came after an almost nine-hour video conference held by energy ministers of major oil producing countries. The new agreement, finalized April 12, involves cuts in oil production of 9.7 million barrels per day in May and June with 22 of the 23 participating countries having to cut production by 23% in comparison with the level of production of October 2018. Russia and Saudi Arabia are to reduce production from 11 million barrels per day to 8.5 million barrels per day. Mexico refused to reduce production by the proposed 400,000 barrels per day and only agreed to cut it by 100,000 barrels. On April 12, US President Donald Trump had a trilateral call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud to congratulate them on arriving a deal. Putin and Trump then spoke in a separate call. Also, before the agreement was reached, Saudi Arabia initiated a trilateral phone call between Salman, Trump and Putin that lasted almost an hour and a half. The parties confirmed their commitment to coordinate actions on stabilizing the situation in global oil trade and minimizing the negative effect of oil price volatility on the global economy, a brief Kremlin press release said. Following the conclusion of the tentative OPEC+ agreement, Trump called his Russian counterpart for a separate conversation. The presidents exchanged views on the current developments in the global oil market, including the tentative OPEC+ agreement on reducing production volumes in order to stabilize oil prices. Donald Trump shared information about his contacts with the leaders of several oil-producing countries. The presidents agreed to continue Russian-American consultations on the issue, the Kremlin said, adding that the two leaders also touched on the COVID-19 pandemic and cooperation in space. Putin then had a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss further details of Russian-Saudi contacts on the issue the first conversation between the two since the breakout of the oil price war between Moscow and Riyadh. The consensus of 22 out of 23 on certain parameters of crude (output) reduction has become an unconditional success of the efforts of OPEC+ ministers. They assumed certain obligations and reached an agreement on those obligations, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the deal. He added, "The document itself is very positive and is required for global markets. We believe that experts will manage to formalize and finalize the consensus as the work with Mexican partners is underway now." Lukoil Vice President Leonid Fedun, who was among the few who criticized the idea of Russia's breakup with OPEC in the first place, told reporters that if the new deal had not been made, global oil storage would have been full up in 40-45 days, Russia would have had to freeze its oil fields and sell oil for $15-20 per barrel. The new deal, according to the oil tycoon, is expected to keep prices within the range of $30-$40 per barrel and bring Russia $70 million to $80 million per day, which makes the deal a reasonable choice. Lukoil is Russia's largest private oil company. Still, when asked about the price Moscow was going to have to pay in cutting its production by 2.5 million barrels per day, Fedun said, Id compare the deal with the Brest Peace in 1918 when the Bolsheviks had to make an agreement with Germany, which was humiliating and hard to [accept]. The Brest Treaty, more commonly known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, was signed March 3, 1918, by the new Bolshevik government of Russia and ended Russia's participation in World War I, ceded Russian hegemony over the Baltic states to Germany, recognized the independence of Ukraine and ceded Russias province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. Some saw Trump's hand in the April 10 deal. Alexey Ilyashevich, a writer for the popular Russian right-wing leaning media outlet Svobodnaya Pressa (Free Press), wrote, The main winner of the new deal is Donald Trump. The summit of leading oil exporting nations went according to his scenario. The outlet continued, It was the US president who credited himself for that Putin and Crown Prince MBS returned to the negotiating table and demonstrated willingness to compromise. In March, Russia refused to prolong the deal that envisaged production cuts for Moscow at the amount of 1.5 million barrels per day. Now it has to cut 2.5 million to 2.8 million barrels per day. Was it worth breaking up with OPEC+ in March only to assume an even bigger obligation for the cuts? Moscow and Riyadh will have to withdraw millions of barrels from the market whereas Washington only hundreds of thousands. With that the US is a player that can react to a price change in a more flexible manner. They remain in a privileged position, the publication added. Some Russian oil market analysts are even more pessimistic over the ultimate fallout of the new deal for Moscow. Mikhail Krutikhin, a partner at RusEnergy, a Moscow-based consultancy that specializes in monitoring and analysis of the oil and gas industry of Russia and in other post-Soviet areas, said the new deal will have dire long-term consequences for the Russian economy. Therere some 180,000 operating oil wells in Russia. In order to cut production by 23% they have to shut about 14,000 wells. On average, one well produces 9.5 tons of oil per day. By comparison, in Saudi Arabia one well produces 1,000-2,000 tons per day. This means Russia has to shut 16 times more wells. Now, in order for them to be shut down, companies would have to turn off electricity to the oil wells, cease waterflooding them, etc. Technically its not very complicated but its hard to resume production at these wells afterward. If such wells stay out of operation for about two months, deposits of paraffin and stearin will form that will have to be cleaned up. In the north (where most Russian oil fields are) the wells also get frozen over, hydrates of hydrocarbon gases get formed and one would have to use solvents, take out the pumping machinery to have it cleaned, etc. Its an expensive routine, Krutikhin said. He continued, Even if some of these reserves can be made to resume their production activities, there will be no money for opening new reserves. There will be shortage of revenue and in order to satisfy domestic consumption they will have to cut down on exports. This means that even if the new OPEC+ deal has the price of oil slightly increased, there will still be less income coming to the [state] budget because of the export cuts. This is a financial disaster. The consequences for ordinary people will be gruesome." Perhaps, in order to avoid these grave implications, the Russian Energy Ministry stressed that the deal is tentative and can be adjusted. We agreed that the timeframe [for the deal] is two years. This is the timeframe that is the most effective for the market, in order to send a signal that the countries are serious about taking measures to restore the situation on the market, to restore the balance of demand and supply," Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said after the talks. He said that if the market situation improves more quickly than expected, production decisions could be changed. Novak said Russian companies were ready for the production cuts and the government was in contact with top executives of oil companies. SAN FRANCISCO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A new data-driven mathematical model of the novel coronavirus pandemic predicts that the United States will peak in the number of "active" COVID-19 cases around April 20, which marks a critical milestone on the demand for medical resources, said a University of Washington study published on Saturday. "We predict that the United States is on course to reach this point in the coming weeks," said Ka-Kit Tung, a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Washington. "It is a point of maximum strain on a country's health and medical infrastructure." For the United States, this model predicts that the number of "active" COVID-19 cases - individuals who have been diagnosed but haven't recovered or died - will peak on April 20, plus or minus four days, and will then slowly decline as the number of cases entering the medical system becomes less than the number of cases leaving the medical system. The U.S. outbreak will taper off in the first week of June with projections of 710,000 total cases but could be up to 990,000; and 28,000 deaths, but could be up to 39,000, if the current U.S. fatality rate of 4 percent holds, according to the analysis. The predictions differ significantly from the Imperial College London projections of a longer outbreak with 40 percent to 80 percent of the U.S. population infected and 1.1 to 2.2 million deaths. The results from the model used by Imperial College London differed significantly because it relied on separate assumptions about COVID-19 and the predictions were generated when key parameters, such as its infection rates, were unknown, according to Tung. The model finds that the length of outbreaks will also vary by country. Germany and Italy will take a week longer than the Chinese city of Wuhan to reach their turning point in active COVID-19 cases. The United States is projected to take two weeks longer than Wuhan considering that the United States has no national lockdown, though a majority of states have issued stay-at-home orders, said Tung. Norden Huang and Fangli Qiao, both from the First Institute of Oceanography's Data Analysis Laboratory in Qingdao, China, created the model with Tung. Their paper describing the analysis is not yet peer-reviewed but has been submitted to a journal for consideration. Their study was posted on March 30 to the preprint site medRxiv. The researchers tested the model's efficacy using COVID-19 data from China. With an accuracy of a few days, their model predicted key events in the outbreak's growth, spread and decline of COVID-19 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province and the rest of China including the peak of new cases, the peak of active cases and the subsidence of the epidemic. the study said. Former representative of the Rivers South-East Senatorial District at the National Assembly, Senator Magnus Ngei Abe has said that Jesus Christ did not consider any prize too high to pay in order to save mankind. Abe, in his Easter message titled: "HE IS RISEN" called on Nigerians to use the period of the crucifixion and resurrection to pause and reflect on the importance of the sacrifice of Christ to the salvation of humanity. In his words, Leadership without sacrifice is meaningless. He stated that Jesus Christ fulfilled his commitment to lead mankind to salvation by sacrificing his life that we may have life. He said: "As we celebrate the resurrection of Christ during this very challenging episode in human history, humanity has found itself in a novel situation created by the coronavirus, the same spirit of sacrifice is required of each and every one of us in order to overcome the pandemic. In our current situation, every Nigerian is a leader because everyone by his action or inaction can either contribute to the safety of our society and our nation or jeopardize it". The Senator further advised that we all take positive actions in the war against COVID-19. This, according to him, could be achieved by adherence to World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines to stay at home order. "By staying at home you help to protect others from harm, where you have to go out please observe social distancing, wash your hands frequently with soap and water and advise others to do the same. Even more importantly, avoid spreading fake news, false propaganda and hate". He added: "Let us spread, unity, love, and hope which is the essence of Easter. Everyone is a leader and everyone can help. You may not have enough or have the need to call a conference to show your kindness but please in the spirit of sacrificial leadership do the much you can, give something to someone and allow God who sees the heart to reward and bless. We have nothing to fear, the resurrection of Christ is our assurance that we shall rise above our present adversity". He called on Nigerians to pray that God in His infinite mercy will bless and protect the nation, particularly the health workers, emergency response personnel, and security agents who are directly at risk every day in this crisis. The national task force on COVID-19 and all state and local government agencies that are acting to protect our citizens through this Easter season and beyond". Signed: PARRY SAROH BENSON, ANIPR Spokesperson to Senator Magnus Ngei Abe April 12, 2020 Illinois announced 1,173 new known COVID-19 cases Monday, for a total of 22,025. An additional 74 people lost their lives, bringing the states death toll to 794. While acknowledging once again this his stay-at-home order is unlikely to be entirely lifted at the end of the month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday that its likely adjustments will be made as the state starts to see slower growth in number of cases of the new coronavirus. Earlier in the afternoon, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot predicted Pritzkers stay-at-home order will extend into May. I think thats going to be difficult for us to say, April 30, everything comes up, I dont expect that to happen," Lightfoot said. I think it will extend beyond that. Heres a recap of what happened April 14 with COVID-19 in the Chicago area and Illinois: 7:30 p.m.: A youth pastor from Aurora with coronavirus had less than a 50 percent chance of survival on a ventilator. Sunday he celebrated Easter with his family. Aurora pastor Andrew Coffields raspy, weak voice could be heard from his bed as he continued to sing hymns last week in the hospital battling COVID-19. The youth pastor of First Apostolic Church of Aurora who loves to sing during church services spent 13 days battling the coronavirus, including time on a ventilator in a Flint, Michigan, hospital. Im a vocal person and I made sure my nurses heard me because I wanted them to know I wasnt just there to sleep, Coffield said. I was there to do business and to fight. His wife Chelsea Coffield said Andrew, 29, is a living miracle. Doctors said he had less than a 50% chance of surviving on the ventilator, she said, but he got better and was able to leave the hospital for the Easter weekend. That is the power of God, she said. Read more here. Megan Jones 6:01 p.m.: 5 inmates that tested positive for COVID-19 in the state prison system have died A fifth inmate in an Illinois prison has succumbed from a COVID-19-related illness, state officials confirmed Monday. They were all men, the youngest in his 50s, and incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet. The fatalities occurred within a two-week span as officials with the Illinois Department of Corrections said they are working to thwart further spread of the virus in prisons across the state. The two most recent fatalities were last week. One man was in his 60s and the other in his 70s. Their names were not immediately available Monday. Read more here. Christy Gutowski 5:41 p.m.: Little Village coal plant developer acknowledged not following its demolition plan, Lightfoot says The developer whose weekend demolition of a former coal plant in Little Village sent massive dust clouds into the working-class community has acknowledged not following a plan it gave city officials that wouldve prevented the situation, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday. Lightfoot ordered Chicagos building department to stop any nonemergency demolitions this week after Saturdays demolition at the Crawford coal plant at 3501 S. Pulaski Road. The site had been shuttered since 2012 after a contentious push by activists who argued the plant symbolized environmental racism. Saturdays demolition drew an angry response from the mayor, aldermen and activists. Asked Monday why the city didnt stop the implosion despite some community opposition, Lightfoot said city departments and Little Village Ald. Mike Rodriguez had been in touch with the developer. Read more here. Gregory Pratt 5:36 p.m.: Lake County plans for alternative care should hospitals become overwhelmed, but patient populations could be flattening The number of confirmed COVID-19 patients has leveled off at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, a sign that has the hospitals chief medical officer hopeful that the pandemic may soon be under control locally. That news comes even as the number of confirmed cases hit 1,525 Monday afternoon, including 16 new deaths that brought that total to 50, and the Lake County Health Department plans for the possibility that it will need to open an alternative care site. Such a site would mean Lake County residents would go there instead of the makeshift hospital at McCormick Place in Chicago or other hospitals being reopened, said Sgt. Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Sheriffs Office who is part of the countys joint communication team on the novel coronavirus. But Lake County has not hit the point where it cannot meet the needs of patients, Covelli said. Most hospitals have expanded their ICU capacity and are also working with one another so that if one is nearing its ICU capacity, patients can be taken to a different hospital for treatment. (T)here is sufficient space in Lake County hospitals to care for critical and non-critical patients, Covelli said in an email. There is a sufficient supply of ventilators for those who might require ventilation. Read more here. Emily Coleman 5:07 p.m.: After Chicago poll worker dies from COVID-19 and others test positive, city warns voters they might have been exposed to virus at polling places The Chicago Board of Elections is notifying voters who cast their ballots in four locations around the city last month that they shared space with people who later tested positive for COVID-19 including one poll worker who has died. The poll worker, whom officials identified as city employee Revall Burke, had been at Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church at 1460 W. 78th St. during the March 17 primary. Other locations where voters or poll workers tested positive were Andrew Jackson Language Academy at 1340 W. Harrison St., Montclare Senior Residences at 1200 E. 78th St., and Dever Elementary School at 3436 N. Osceola Ave. Voters, poll workers, building owners and managers, field investigators and cartage companies that might have been present are all being notified by letter. Read more here. John Keilman 4:50 p.m.: Census Bureau wants until end of October to complete 2020 count months beyond original deadline The U.S. Census Bureau is asking Congress for more time to complete the 2020 Census because of delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. With Illinois and many other states issuing stay at home orders, the bureau in March pushed back the deadline to complete the decennial count of the countrys population from July 13 to Aug. 14. In a statement released Monday, the bureau now thinks it will need until Oct. 31 to complete the count, with field operations suspended until June 1. Originally, the bureau planned to deliver census data to the president and Congress by December. But the bureau is now asking Congress to allow it to push back that deadline as well until April 30, 2021, according to the statement. In addition, states wouldnt receive data for redistricting until July 31, 2021. In order to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau is seeking statutory relief from Congress of 120 additional calendar days to deliver final apportionments counts, the bureau stated. As of Monday, more than 52.5% of households across Illinois had responded to the census, according to data from the bureau. Thus far, a larger percentage of households in the state have responded than in the rest of the country, which had a 48.1% self-response rate. In Chicago, 41.7% of households have responded to the census either online, by phone or in mail as of Monday, according to the federal agency. In the first weeks of the count, which started in mid-March, the bureau was relying on households to respond to the questionnaire by internet or phone. Last week, the bureau started mailing out paper questionnaires to an estimated 64 million households. Elvia Malagon 4:30 p.m.: Chicago opens 100-bed isolation facility for homeless residents The city of Chicago has opened an isolation facility with 100 beds for homeless people diagnosed with the coronavirus, and the city will increase COVID-19 testing in homeless shelters, Mayor Lori Lightfoots administration announced on Monday. The city opened the facilities in partnership with A Safe Haven, Rush University Medical Center, and Heartland Alliance, and it will also have workers to give them mental health and substance abuse treatment, Lightfoot said. Cecilia Reyes and Gregory Pratt 4:24 p.m.: Pritzker says its likely adjustments will be made to states stay-at-home order While acknowledging once again this his stay-at-home order is unlikely to be entirely lifted at the end of the month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday that its likely adjustments will be made as the state starts to see slower growth in number of cases of the new coronavirus. Its not like were anywhere near herd immunity, and there isnt a treatment, Pritzker said at this daily news conference. And in order for you to get to a point where you want to start moving significantly back to normalcy, you need widespread testing. We dont have anywhere near widespread. The governor added: Nothing that happens next month or the month after that is going to be exactly the way it was four months ago or five months ago. And so the question is not really, Could you do this or that? The question is, How would you do it, practically speaking, so that you dont have many more people getting infected? Pritzkers stay-at-home order, which took effect March 21 and followed orders closing schools and dine-in service at restaurants and bars, shut down businesses deemed nonessential, while allowing grocery stores, pharmacies, and even liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries to remain open with social distancing policies in place to protect workers and customers. Pritzker said hes started having conversations with business and labor leaders about how specific industries could be reopened and what extra precautions would need to be taken to protect workers and the public. Hes also continuing to consult with public health experts, he said. I was a businessman before I became governor. I understand the challenges businesses are going through, Pritzker said. And Im also very concerned to make sure that the workers who go back to work are safe. While neighboring states like Indiana and Missouri are keeping schools closed for the rest of the academic year, Pritzker said he has yet to make that call. I promise I will tell you as soon as I know he answer to that question, he said. Dan Petrella 4:22 p.m.: Most tax forms arent due until July, but not everyone gets a reprieve. Heres who must pay Wednesday. If you pay quarterly estimated taxes, the state still needs you to get them in by the end of the day on Wednesday, even though other tax deadlines have been pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic. People who are self-employed, have second jobs or run a business often have to pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis, as well as filing returns for the full year. If they pay too little, they may have to pay penalties.Individuals, you must make estimated payments if their Illinois individual income tax liability is more than $1,000 for the year, according to the Department of Revenues web site. The filing deadline for state and federal annual tax returns has been pushed back until July 15. For federal estimated taxes, July 15 is also the new deadline for the first two quarters of tax payments, usually due on April 15 and June 15. But Illinois still wants its quarterly tax estimated tax payments by the usual deadlines, though it is offering alternative ways to calculate what they owe, said Department of Revenue spokesman Sam Salustro. Taxpayers will not be assessed a late estimated payment penalty if the amount of the installments equals 90% or more of the current years liability, according to the Department of Revenue. Taxpayers can also choose to pay the same estimated tax they paid for the first quarter of 2018 or 2019. Read more here. Mary Wisniewski 2:40 p.m.: 1,173 new known coronavirus cases, 74 additional deaths The state announced 1,173 new known COVID-19 cases Monday, for a total of 22,025. An additional 74 people lost their lives, bringing the states death toll to 794. 2:20 p.m.: Lightfoot expects Illinois stay-at-home order will extend into May Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzkers stay-at-home order will extend into May, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot predicted on Monday. Lightfoot was asked at an unrelated news conference whether April 30 looks like the last day of the stay-at-home order in Chicago. I think thats going to be difficult for us to say, April 30, everything comes up, I dont expect that to happen," Lightfoot said. I think it will extend beyond that. She added: "We are already in the process of thinking about, even when we get to a point where we feel safe from a public health standpoint, what will be the sequencing of lifting that. Thats a conversation of course we need to have with the governor and his team. Read more here. Gregory Pratt 1:30 p.m.: Addressing unemployment claims mess, Pritzker promises computer upgrades as House GOP leader says this was an avoidable problem Seeking to blunt criticisms of his administrations failure to handle the deluge of unemployment insurance claims resulting from the new coronavirus and his statewide stay-at-home order, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday said the state is bringing in outside experts to help upgrade computer systems. Pritzker announcement came as Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs and other GOP lawmakers were holding a conference call with reporters to demand immediate fixes to the problems, which have left many frustrated workers unable to secure their unemployment benefits. This was an avoidable problem, Durkin said. When we shut down Illinois businesses, the nonessential businesses, through an executive order, through the stroke of a pen, we should have anticipated that many Illinoisans would be out of a job for an indefinite period of time. Read more here. Dan Petrella 1:12 p.m.: Naperville-based Andersons Bookshops launches GoFundMe campaign as it faces tremendous threat Andersons Bookshops has launched a GoFundMe campaign to keep the Naperville-based bookseller in business as coronavirus pandemic has eliminated the in-store purchases on which they rely. After surviving through the Great Depression, recessions, the Spanish Flu, natural disasters in addition to competition from big-box stores the current situation is a tremendous threat to Andersons Bookshops, the GoFundMe page says. Its hit us all hard and stifled our world," the donation page said. "We may not all be infected, but we are all affected. We cannot thank you enough for your loyalty and helping us to thrive. Our business has relied on cash flow and foot traffic over generations as your home for books here in Illinois. Without those channels, our future is uncertain. As of Monday morning, Andersons had raised more than $26,000 since it launching the campaign four days ago. The business hopes to raise $100,000. The Andersons Bookshops locations in Naperville and Downers Grove have been offering curbside pickup orders during limited hours on weekdays, but several scheduled book signings and events have been canceled or postponed. The store also offers online orders that are shipped to customers. Read more here. Erin Hegarty 12 p.m.: Grubhub comes under fire for high fees, bad drivers and some Chicago restaurants are dropping it As youve probably heard a hundred times, now is not a good time for restaurants. To contain the spread of the coronavirus, dining rooms in Illinois are closed, which means that restaurants must now rely on pickup or delivery. For many establishments, that means that their customers are spending even more time engaging with food delivery apps like Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash and Postmates. But there are some serious questions about whether these apps treat restaurants fairly, with some prominent local restaurateurs loudly decrying the high fees and the badly behaved delivery drivers. This isn't the first time that restaurateurs have called out food delivery apps like Grubhub. But with restaurants struggling to make money during a pandemic, many are becoming more vocal in their opposition. While the amount differs slightly for each restaurant, its common for a food delivery app to have a commission fee of 20 to 30 percent of each order. In the restaurant business, where margins are already tight, that can be a nonstarter. Read more here. Nick Kindelsperger 11:45 a.m.: Immigrant rights group turns to federal court to seek release of detainees as some in Illinois test positive for COVID-19 An immigrant rights group is suing the federal government on behalf of people being held in detention as some of those in Illinois test positive for the coronavirus. The Chicago-National Immigrant Justice Center along with the Sidley Austin law firm filed petitions in U.S. District Court last week seeking the release of three people held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two of them had been held in the Jerome Combs Detention Facility in Kankakee, about an hour south of Chicago, pending the outcome of their cases. By Friday afternoon, the two men were ordered released by U.S. District judges amid concerns they were particularly vulnerable to the virus, according to court records. There have not been any confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported among those in immigration custody in Kankakee, but ICE reported Friday three confirmed COVID-19 cases among those detained at the Pulaski County Detention Center in southern Illinois. The average daily population of ICE detainees at the Pulaski jail has been 152 since October. In total, 61 people in immigration custody across the country, including one person in a Michigan jail, had tested positive for COVID-19 as of Friday, according to the federal agency. In addition, 19 ICE employees at detention centers have also tested positive for the virus. Read more here. Elvia Malagon 11:23 a.m.: Dumped milk, smashed eggs and plowed vegetables: Coronavirus pandemic leaves staggering amount of food waste In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil. After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nations largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell. The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses. The amount of waste is staggering. The nations largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week. Read more here. The New York Times 11:08 a.m.: Trump says hell decide on easing the nations social distancing guidelines, not governors President Donald Trump asserted Monday that he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to relax the nations social distancing guidelines as he grows anxious to reopen the coronavirus-stricken country as soon as possible. Governors and local leaders, who have instituted mandatory restrictions that have the force of law, have expressed concern that Trump's plan to restore normalcy will cost lives and extend the duration of the outbreak. Trump has pushed to reopen the economy, which has plummeted as businesses have shuttered, leaving millions of people out of work and struggling to obtain basic commodities. Read more here. Associated Press 10:58 a.m.: Groupon to cut 2,800 employees, adopt poison pill amid coronavirus economic fallout Groupon expects to lay off or furlough about 2,800 employees, in part because of the economic toll the coronavirus pandemic is taking on the Chicago-based deals company. Most of the terminations, which amount to about 44% of the companys employee base, should be complete by June, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company will continue to evaluate its costs, including additional layoffs. Groupon said Monday that the rights plan, commonly called a poison pill," has not been adopted in response to any specific takeover bid. Instead, the board believes it will protect shareholders interests amid the market volatility caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The poison pill will kick in if one group acquires 10% or more of Groupons outstanding common stock, or an eligible passive investor acquires 20% or more. The plan expires in 11 months. If the plan is triggered, existing shareholders can buy shares at a discount, diluting the stake of an acquiring company. Read more here. Ally Marotti 9:45 a.m.: Longtime Chicago TV news anchor Kathy Brock has lost her mother to COVID-19; her father remains in ICU Kathy Brock says her parents were virtually inseparable from the time they met on a blind date in high school more than 70 years ago. When Carol Brock was hospitalized and spent months in a rehab center, her husband Frank Brock visited her every day until visiting was banned when staff members were diagnosed with coronavirus. Soon both of her parents would have suspected cases, and Kathy, a longtime anchor at ABC7 in Chicago, couldnt visit them. Read more here. Susan Berger 8 a.m.: Trinity Catholic High School offers tuition relief for families affected by the coronavirus Trinity Catholic High School in River Forest announced Monday that it is creating a $1 million tuition relief fund for families hurt financially by the coronavirus pandemic. The all-girl, International Baccalaureate school will provide tuition grants with money from its strategic reserve fund, school officials said in a news release. The grants will provide one-time tuition assistance for the 2020-21 school year. The school is also establishing a #BlazerReliefFund, aiming to raise an additional $1 million through donations. Leaders note that the school, 102 years old, has endured through two world wars, the Great Depression and other crises. Diana Wallace 7:30 a.m.: Wisconsin clerks set to count votes after last weeks chaotic primary election Municipal clerks across Wisconsin on Monday were set to start tallying votes from last week's chaotic presidential primary, a count that was delayed for several days by the legal struggle over whether to postpone the election due to the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of voters congregated for hours in long lines on Tuesday, defying social-distancing guidelines that led to the postponement of primaries in several other states. The U.S. Supreme Court decided on the eve of the election that absentee ballots, requested in record numbers, had to be postmarked by midnight Tuesday. That overturned a judges ruling that had granted a one-week extension, forcing many residents to weigh safety concerns against exercising their right to vote. Read more here. Associated Press 6:50 a.m.: Lightfoot to announce new measures to help homeless during coronavirus outbreak Mayor Lori Lightfoot plans to announce new measures Monday to support people who are homeless during the coronavirus outbeak. City Hall did not release details ahead of the 1 p.m. news conference, but earlier this month the Tribune interviewed homeless people in the Chicago area who worried that conditions in shelters were ripe for contagion. Several said they were trying to hold onto their current accommodations as their income dried up. In the last few weeks, Chicago has readied beds in five locations to transfer current shelter residents and meet additional demand. The state has set aside $8 million toward isolation housing and homeless assistance. Advocates say efforts to limit exposure among a vulnerable population are promising, but they are not enough to meet increasing needs as the pandemic destabilizes more and more people. Read more here. Cecilia Reyes 6 a.m.: Chicago Public Schools officially begins remote learning today. Among the lessons is the pandemic itself. With more than 600 public schools in Chicago required to start remote instruction Monday, educators and leaders have been planning, communicating and troubleshooting through spring break. Educators and principals say they feel as prepared as theyll ever be to get their students through the school shutdown no one saw coming. The deadline has passed for schools to communicate their plans to families, and while the details vary, theyre all built around the same minimum structure. Many schools have posted spreadsheets with the schedules for each class and links to platforms, with each teacher still handling their own curriculum. Some school websites have added prominent sections for remote learning, yet on others, the information takes effort to find. Chicago Public Schools estimates 115,000 of its 355,000 students need a laptop or tablet to use at home. Between devices already in schools and newly bought, the district has about 100,000 its planning to distribute this week. CPS is trying to get more, but its hard, because so is everyone else in the socially distanced world, and theres a backlog. Among the lessons being taught is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic itself, with lessons varied by grade level. Read more here. Hannah Leone 6 a.m.: Coronavirus deals Springfield a triple economic blow The new coronavirus has dealt a triple-pronged blow to Springfields economy during a time when it depends on money flowing in from conventions, tourists visiting its historic sites and the General Assembly bringing people to town from all over the state. For Springfield restaurants, the spring legislative session provides a revenue boost like St. Patricks Day does for bars and the Christmas season does for retailers, said Lisa Clemmons Stott, executive director of Downtown Springfield Inc., a nonprofit business association. Some hotels in Springfield have been reporting single-digit occupancy rates, and one major downtown hotel has temporarily closed. A significant share of downtown businesses have seen more than 75% of their revenue drop off, and at least 20% of the downtown workforce has been laid off, according to Downtown Springfield Inc. Read more here. Jamie Munks 5:55 a.m.: Third inmate with COVID-19 at Cook County Jail dies A 42-year-old man is the third detainee of the Cook County Jail who has died after he tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Sheriffs Office. Nicholas Lee was hospitalized on April 6 after he tested positive for COIVD-19, the Sheriffs Office said. He was pronounced dead Sunday morning at Stroger. His official cause of death is pending autopsy, but officials believe he died of cardiac arrest, according to preliminary reports. Lees death comes three days after detainee Leslie Pieroni, 51, died and a week since the first COVID-19-related detainee death, Jeffery Pendleton, 59. The family of Pendleton filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday against Sheriff Tom Dart alleging Pendletons treatment in his final days was unconstitutional. As of 5 p.m. Sunday, there were 254 detainees with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms being treated by Cermak Health Services, a division of Cook County Health and Hospitals System, and 20 who were being treated at local hospitals, the Sheriffs Office said. Thirty-two detainees were moved to a recovery unit. Read more here. Paige Fry Saturday, April 11 and Sunday, April 12 El presidente @MartinVizcarraC, acompanado del Consejo de Ministros en pleno, informa sobre la situacion del Estado de Emergencia en el #Dia29 y las acciones que realiza el Gobierno para contener la propagacion del COVID-19. En vivo: https://t.co/YSlA0KI1jw https://t.co/1L9IEDr9P0 Chennai: DMK President M K Stalin has called for an all-party meeting on Wednesday, April 15, at the DMK headquarters to discuss the Coronavirus situation in the state. According to a statement from Stalin, the meeting will be at 10 am at Anna Arivalayam on April 15. The meeting assumes significance in the backdrop of the Tamil Nadu government refusing to entertain a request from Stalin to call for an all-party meeting and the hard-hitting statement issued by him against the chief minister Edappadi K Palanisamy on Sunday. Besides, the government banning the providing of relief material to the poor and deprived people affected by the lockdown had earned the wrath of Stalin, who called the government heartless. Downing Street has defended the decision to offer a coronavirus test to Michael Goves daughter while some frontline NHS staff are forced to wait. The Cabinet Office minister denied breaking the rules after he was spotted jogging in the park near his London home despite going into isolation last week when his daughter started showing Covid-19 symptoms. It emerged that he had been given special permission by Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, to have his daughter tested in order to allow him to return to work to lead Whitehalls response to the coronavirus crisis. But the move is likely to prompt anger over difficulties faced by NHS staff to access testing, meaning some are self-isolating needlessly while others could be spreading the virus to patients. Asked why Mr Goves family were considered a priority, a No 10 spokesperson said: The test was carried out on the advice of the chief medical officer and in line with medical guidance. The minister in charge of the Cabinet Office is a central role in the coronavirus response. Testing a member of the household ensure that Michael Gove could get back to work to drive the governments response at a difficult time. Pressed on whether this was a double standard, the spokesperson said: No, as I say it was done on the advice of the chief medical officer. The prime minister received a test when he was suffering from symptoms, as did the health secretary. Clearly the three ministers which we are talking about all perform critical roles. Some 2,630 tests of NHS staff were carried out up to 9am on Sunday, taking the tally for drive through assessments to 42,812 health workers and their families. Downing Street described the total as significant progress from a week ago and said sickness levels among NHS staff have fallen to 7.7 per cent, compared to 8 per cent last Friday. Mr Gove entered self isolation last week under guidance that states anyone who lives with someone displaying coronavirus symptoms should stay home for 14 days. He revealed his daughter had tested negative for the virus when he was spotted jogging outside on Easter Sunday. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is continuing to recuperate at Chequers, his Buckinghamshire retreat, after being discharged from hospital on Sunday. His official spokesperson said the prime minister tested negative for the virus before leaving hospital. Coronavirus: London on lockdown Show all 29 1 /29 Coronavirus: London on lockdown Coronavirus: London on lockdown A man walks down a deserted Camden High Street Photos Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Goodge Street Station is one of the many stations closed to help reduce the spread Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown An empty street in the heart of Chinatown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown People in masks in Chinatown a day after the lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A near-empty Piccadilly Circus during the first week of lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Sonja, my neighbour, who I photographed while taking a short walk. It was nice to briefly chat even from a distance Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A couple sit on the empty steps of the statue Eros in Piccadilly Circus Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Making sure I stay two-meters apart DArblay Street, Soho Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A mannequin behind a shop window. UK stores have closed until further notice Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A notice displayed on a shop window in Camden Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown As part of the lockdown, all non-essential shops have been ordered to close.Image from Camden High Street Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A skateboarder wearing a mask utilises his exercise allowance in the Camden area Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Communities have been coming together in a time of need Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A woman stands alone in a deserted Oxford Street. Up until a few weeks ago, on average, half a million people visited the street per day Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A couple walk hand in hand down a street in Soho, a day before the stricter lockdown was announced Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown During the first week of March, shoppers focused on stockpiling necessities ahead of a countrywide lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Many supermarkers are operating a queuing system to make sure only a limited amount of customers are allowed in at anyone time Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Stay Safe Curzon cinemas are temporarily closed under the new measures Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Pubs, restaurants and bars were ordered to shut as part of the lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden High Street There are fears that coronavirus could lead to permanent closure of struggling shops Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden Town is eerily silent on a normal working day Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Shops and supermarkets ran out of hand sanitisers in the first week of the lockdown. As we approach the end of the second week most shops now have started to stock up Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Empty streets around Soho Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A noticeboard on Camden High Street urges the public to stay at home Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden High Street, one of Londons busiest tourist streets turns quiet Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Thriller Live confirmed its West End run ended in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Empty and eerie Soho streets after stricter rules on social distancing announced Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A woman pauses for a cigarette on Hanway Street, behind Tottenham Court Road Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A man steps outside onto Hanway Street, that sits behind what is usually a bustling retail hub Angela Christofilou The spokesperson also told a Westminster briefing: It is standard practice in hospitals to do that and the results came back negative. Dominic Cummings, the prime ministers chief adviser, has not been tested for coronavirus after self-isolating with Covid-19 symptoms. He remains in contact with No 10 but he is not working in Downing Street, the prime ministers spokesperson said. The show is a Disney concert from last year that producers want to use to raise money for COVID relief. All the unions had agreed except for the musicians union. As musicians we have lost the opportunity to perform publicly, but this use of our recorded performance could have been a great tool to raise funds for people in our community that are in need, the petition states in part. Deadline The event, organised by the Canada-Vietnam Society (CVS), took place simultaneously in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the ceremony in Ottawa, CVS President Dang Trung Phuoc paid tribute to the legendary founders of the nation, pledging that Vietnamese people who are living in foreign countries will strive to uphold Vietnamese customs and language. In Montreal, Dr. Nguyen Van Hoang called on the Vietnamese community in Canada to support health workers engaging in the COVID-19 fight at home. A seminar was held afterwards to inform the expats of the Canadian and Vietnamese governments support policies at present. According to the State Committee on Overseas Vietnamese Affairs, there are about 4.5 million Vietnamese living across the globe, of which 250,000 are in Canada. Founded in 2015, the Vietnam Ancestral Global Day non-profit socio-cultural project aims to strengthen the great national unity and promote Vietnams intangible cultural heritage of humanity to the globe. Particularly in 2018, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc signed a decision supporting the continuous implementation of the event in countries with large Vietnamese communities. The commemoration of Hung Kings the legendary nation founders is annually observed on the 10th day of the third lunar month. This year, it will fall on April 2. The ritual was recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2012. Putin says says coming weeks crucial in fighting corona Russian President expressed that that special attention should be paid to high-risk areas such as Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday called on the country's Defense Ministry to engage in the fight against coronavirus. In a video conference with government officials, Putin said the Russian military should replicate measures other countries have adopted to stem the spread of the virus. "ALL OUR ACTIONS MUST BE AT OPTIMAL LEVEL" "The coming weeks will be crucial in many ways, which means that all our actions, including preventive measures on the ground and the organization of the entire health system, must be at the optimal level and taking into account all factors," he said. Meanwhile, head of Russia's Audit Chamber Alexey Kuprin said unemployment figures could surge from 2.5 million to 8 million due to the economic fallout of the pandemic. The death toll from coronavirus has soared to 148, with more than 18,000 cases confirmed. Last week, the work-from-home period was extended until April 30. Other measures to tackle the disease include a lockdown in Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other regions. Get AfricaFocus Bulletin by e-mail! Format for print or mobile Mozambique: Cumulative Shocks, Local and Global AfricaFocus Bulletin April 13, 2020 (2020-04-13) (Reposted from sources cited below) Editor's Note As of April 10, Mozambique had registered only 20 cases of covid-19, and was carrying out an active program of screening, testing, and contact tracing for all entering the country. The success of containment was still fragile, however. In addition, 10 of the tests were traced to a worker at the multinational natural gas company Total in Cabo Delgado province, in the far northeast. In that same province, reminding us that the pandemic comes on the top of other urgent crises, jihadist insurgents are now expanding their offensive and extending their attacks inland. Crises are rarely experienced singly and represent a complex mix of external shocks and internal weaknesses. Mozambiques history is a particularly intense illustration of this sober reality. In previous decades, as well as in the last year, Mozambiques people have experienced a succession of wars, the epidemic of HIV-AIDS, and, most recently, unprecedented storms including Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth. In each case, as all who know Mozambique will recognize, Mozambicans have shown enormous strength and creativity in responding to the most difficult circumstances. Both the pandemic and the war in Cabo Delgado are tests of the Mozambican governments capacity to respond. As of now, the response to the pandemic provides some encouragement from the prompt action. But in Cabo Delgado, Mozambicans for now face an even greater threat with no effective response in sight. The latest counter-insurgency initiative, apparently involving South Africa-based mercenaries, will almost certainly risk escalating rather than curbing the insurgency. This AfricaFocus Bulletin includes a variety of links, first to videos helpful in understanding Mozambiques current situation and its history, and then to specific sources on the Covid-19 epidemic. In the reaction to the pandemic, health authorities and civil society are being proactive and creative, as illustrated in the links below to the official Covid-19 site and to a leading civil society organization now providing both popular education and critical analysis of government actions. It also includes a long article by Joseph Hanlon analyzing the deadly insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. I opted to include this article rather than only excerpts because it well illustrates the complex interaction of local and global factors, country-specific in detail, which is common in crises in other African countries or indeed in any part of the world. From fossil-fuel companies to jihadist networks to Covid-19, global forces have profound negative impacts on countries and local communities. National and global responses of solidarity are also real, but local communities are still left bearing the burdens and finding the strength to survive. Mozambican health educators after installing a "tippy-tap" for handwashing. Credit: Carlos Serra For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Mozambique, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/mozambique.php For current news on Mozambique, visit https://allafrica.com/mozambique/ For an extensive April 10 interview (in Portuguese) with the Bishop of Pemba on the situation in Cabo Delgado, click here. ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++ First, a set of videos for inspiration and background From PBS 2008, Mozambique Guitar Hero 11-minute report on a musician and health campaigner in Niassa province, in the far northwest of Mozambique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbSHCXBaLJU The organization Estamos Mozambique, featured in the video, is still active. Their Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/estamosmozambique/ Mine-Sniffing Rats - 5 minute video inspiring film about about mine detection in Mozambique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1O_vtfX1sY Two coronavirus music videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q59BB-xIcA8 Jo Choneca Tudo vai dar certo; Everything is gonna be all right 4 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhp9GrYD7Ak GranMah Its in Your Hands 1 minute And another by GranMah (not virus-related) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP2cDeL7Wdg I Got to Move GranMah channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMb-CQSHBccWGhxiK2_QgmQ And, for more background, several longer videos portraying different periods of Mozambican history A Luta Continua - 34-minute video by Robert Van Lierop - classic film shot in 1971 and released in 1972. http://africanactivist.msu.edu/video.php?objectid=32-12F-1D Mozambique: The Struggle for Survival (1988) 55 minutes nuanced picture of the post-independence war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzZ5bAQYAYE A Luta Continua 2014 (in Portuguese with English subtitles - by Spanish television) - 40 minutes, emphasis on health - some of it may seem overdramatic, but useful commentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnoEQHsJP5o Samora Machel: The Struggle Continues - 30 minutes - summary account from liberation history to the present 2015 CCTN (Faces of Africa) thoughtful, not uncritical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpnzyY08LMg Background on Covid-19 in Mozambique Worldometers page on Mozambique https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/mozambique/ AfricaCDC Summary updates for African continent https://twitter.com/AfricaCDC Mozambique government page on Covid-19 https://covid19.ins.gov.mz/ Updated daily, in Portuguese. Center for Democracy and Development page has critical analyses and educational messages (including short videos in Portuguese and nine other Mozambican languages - see screenshot below - clickable links to videos available on site). https://cddmoz.org/stopcovid19/ Press release on April 10 statement by civil society groups (in Portuguese) The Google translation of the statement into English is very well done for a machine translation, and quite adequate for getting an overview of this very comprehensive statement. Custom google news search on Mozambique Covid-19 https://tinyurl.com/vmfb663 Custom google news search on Mocambique Covid-19 (in Portuguese) https://tinyurl.com/rq7273m ****************************************************** Notes on the evolution of the Cabo Delgado war Although the global should not be forgotten, the local is most important Mozambique News reports & clippings 469, 27 February 2020 Editor: Joseph Hanlon (j.hanlon@open.ac.uk) To subscribe: http://tinyurl.com/sub-moz [AfricaFocus editors note: For the full set of these newsletters, which appear regularly, including later reports from Cabo Delgado, see http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/news-reports-clippings-2020. For updates on the war in Cabo Delgado in Portuguese, see this custom google news search: https://tinyurl.com/cabo-delgado-pt-news. There is also a newly established FB page, edited by historian Paolo Israel, which also posts updates: https://www.facebook.com/LutarCaboDelgado/] Full pdf of this report available here. These are personal notes drawn from published sources and an http://www.iese.ac.mz/ conference 5-6 December 2019 in Maputo. The conference was conducted under the "Chatham House Rule" that "participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed." No sources are cited in this article even if these sources were not at the conference as it is impossible to identify sources without suggesting that people were at the IESE conference. I thank the various researchers for the words and insights I have used. These notes, interpretations and errors are entirely my responsibility. The best background paper is the September 2019 http://www.iese.ac.mz/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cadernos_17eng.pdf. I have not repeated much of their material here, and assume some background knowledge of the Cabo Delgado war. 1. Introduction What are labelled as Islamic fundamentalist insurgencies are occurring in several Africa countries, and there are overlaps. But in each country the armed conflicts are different and are "path dependent" - that is, they follow a trajectory that is shaped by local history and context more than external factors. In these notes I look at the roots and evolution of the Islamic insurgency or civil war 1 in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique. I will argue: The antecedents of this war go back decades. and that there are a very large number of external and internal actors and contexts. Externally, Cabo Delgado has been a playground for a wide range of religious missionaries, global natural resource companies, and traders in legal and illegal commodities. World Bank and IMF policies have set the development strategy. Internally, poverty and inequality are growing. Greed and corruption have exacerbated the inequalities and caused a growing discontent, especially from marginalised young people. External and internal actors work together. The local elite (internal) works with the natural resource companies and illegal traders (external). But at a lower level some people respond to the crisis of poverty and inequality by looking to religious leaders and sects for an explanation and solution, while religious leaders (both internal and external) try to interpret their doctrines and teachings as a solution to these crises, in order to recruit followers. Religion is presented as an answer to a development crisis. The distrust of local elites is greater that many realise and there is a history of violence, from cholera riots two decades ago to a mass invasion of ruby mines in February 2020. Following this history, it is less surprising that marginalised young people will join a violent group pledged to redress inequality. I argue that the local is most important, but the global should not be forgotten. The growing civil war does not have a military solution. Civil war is fed by grievances, which must be resolved to end support for insurgents. But external factors must also be controlled to end the war, and it needs to be remembered that external factors are not just foreign Islamic militants, but also natural resource companies and illegal traders. 2. History History matters and is a living presence in Cabo Delgado. Alberto Chipande fired the first shot of the independence war on 25 September 1964, in Chai, Macomia district, Cabo Delgado. Chai and Macomia are at the centre of the new civil war. Chipande (born 10 October 1939) remains a powerful and active politician and is still a member of the Frelimo Political Commission. Coastal Mozambique has a long history of Islamic influence and KiSwahili is an understood language along the coast from Nampula province north to Somalia. The Cabo Delgado coastal zone is traditionally occupied by a Muslim KiMwani- and KiSwahili-speaking community. As fishers, traders and seafarers along the coast, their links are as much to Zanzibar as to the provincial capital Pemba. But many Muslims backed Frelimo's independence struggle and in 1965 several leaders were executed by the Portuguese colonial power. Local leaders have always been annoyed that their role in the independence struggle was not recognised, and they see the largely Christian Makonde speakers from Mueda and Muidumbe districts dominating Frelimo and moving into the coastal areas. The KiMwani speakers have tended to vote for Renamo against Frelimo, and elections in Mocimboa da Praia have been close; when Renamo lost a close by-election in 2005 there was violence in which seven people were killed. This very local internal factor often interacts with the Cabo Delgado-wide and national factors set out below (all referred to here as "internal"), and a wide range of external factors from outside Mozambique. Frelimo at independence was strongly secular and Frelimo members were not supposed to attend religious services, although a welcome remained for those Protestant groups and a few Catholic orders which had supported Frelimo during the independence war. Frelimo nationalised religious schools and hospitals. In 1982 President Samora Machel met with leaders of all faiths to try to rebuild relations; the Mozambique Islamic Council (Cislamo) was created in 1983 and the Catholic Church regained some of its property which has been confiscated at independence. After Machel's death in 1986, the new President Joaquim Chissano improved relations further. The Pope visited Mozambique in 1988 and 2019. Mozambique joined the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 1994, and with government support, students were sent to study in Saudi Arabia. Foreign religious groups such as Christian missionary Heidi Baker's Arco Iris and the Aga Khan Foundation have built significant presences in Cabo Delgado. In the 1990s Christian fundamentalist missionaries were free to visit from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Brazil, the US and elsewhere, and Islamic preachers came from Tanzania and further north. The re-opening of the main north-south EN1 road after the 1992 peace accord led to substantial movements of people including many migrants trying to reach South Africa, as well as others looking for work in Mozambique, for example as artisanal miners. Within that traffic, little note was taken of fundamentalists Christian and Islamic missionaries. The border between Tanzania and Mozambique is porous and people have family, business and religious contacts on both sides of the border. The 1990s saw a religious revivalism in Tanzania with both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists. Indeed, in a play on the well known term "born again Christians", Tanzanians refer to "born again Muslims". There was a two-way traffic, with Mozambicans going to Tanzania to study and even further north to Kenya, Somalia and the Great Lakes, while preachers from Tanzania and beyond came south to Cabo Delgado. These networks, in turn, had links with leaders from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan and Algeria. Videos were increasingly widely circulated. Islamic fundamentalist preachers were noted in Nangade district, on the border in Tanzania, in 1990, and later in Balama and Chiure districts in the west and south of Cabo Delgado. In 2000 in Memba and Angoche in Nampula province it was noted that unemployed youth were under the new influence of "al-Sunnahs" who refused to participate in ceremonies and who organised agitation. Then, the Islamic issue was not raised because government wanted, wrongly, to blame Renamo. In reality, this was a protest led by unemployed youth who saw no future for themselves, and whose actions had the tacit backing of their elders. An interview subject identified only as "an influential person", in a prescient warning, said "there will be a war in Mozambique, a war without a leader or president, because young people feel abandoned in their own land and by their own government." By 2005 more Mozambican preachers were returning from Tanzania, along with preachers of other nationalities, and opening mosques and madrassas in Cabo Delgado. The new teaching included not going to state schools and hospitals, which was leading to open confrontations with the authorities. In several places there were meetings with the Mozambique Islamic Council, in which the new fundamentalist preachers called for religious reform. They tried to convince traditional Islamic leaders to change he way they interpreted the Koran, and challenged the Islamic Council's links to the state and Frelimo. A doctrinal issue became symbolic of the confrontation: wearing shoes in mosques. The Prophet prayed in his shoes, in part to be different from Jews and Christians who did not pray in socks or shoes. But the shoes should not have dirt on them. Later, as mosques had carpets, worshipers took their shoes off, to avoid dirtying the carpets, and this became normal custom. Thus fundamentalist preachers insisted on wearing shoes in mosques. After these meetings with local authorities and the Islamic Council, some preachers were expelled and even arrested and mosques were forced to close. Fundamentalist religious leaders and their followers went elsewhere in Cabo Delgado or to Tanzania. In other places tacit agreements were reached and fundamentalist mosques and madrassas were allowed to continue. Videos and CDs of speeches by radical preachers in Tanzania began circulating in Cabo Delgado and increasingly radical material was available on the internet. By 2013 there were already reports of jihadi sects in Mocimboa da Praia. There were the first references to "al Shabaab", which simply means "the youth" in the local Arabic; it is used by both members and the general public and has never implied a link to al Shabaab in Somalia. In 2015 there was a local confrontation in Pangane, on the coast of Macomia district, as militants tried to prevent the sale of alcohol. There were increasing reports of parents not sending their children to state schools and instead sending them to madrassas. The challenge to the state was becoming direct, in a way that had not happened since 1976. Then, at the height of the anti-religion period, Jehovah's Witnesses had demanded to be allowed to be separate from the state; many were arrested and forced to move to remote areas of Zambezia and Tete. With the opening to religion in the 1990s, the flood of missionaries were careful not to challenge the state. The Brazilian Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) has become powerful by not challenging the state. Members gained important posts in the state administration, notably in justice; IURD has a TV station and had sent missionaries to Cabo Delgado by 2000. Like the Jehovah's Witnesses four decades earlier, some fundamentalist preachers wanted a society separate from the Mozambican state, with a caliphate under Islamic law. By 2015 there was a consensus among some of the radical sheikhs that discussion would not shift the Islamic Council, Frelimo and the state, and that more militant action was required. Some of the new mosques were on normal housing compounds with a house at the front and mosque and madrassa of local construction behind. There was an open space between the buildings which began to be used as a training ground for future guerrillas. In some districts, training camps were opened in the forests. Religious groups were creating military cells. The radicalisation of followers was built on the changing situation of young people in Cabo Delgado. The saying "dry grass burns more easily" is cited. Education had improved and most young people had at least primary or madrassa schooling, and saw themselves as educated and did not want to be like their parents - farmers with nothing but a hoe, or fishers standing in the waves with a net. Corruption was increasing, and the presence of wealthy people and mining and gas contractors in 4x4s stressed the rising inequality. By 2015 there were major land concessions for the gas and mines; farmers, fishers and artisanal miners were pushed off land. Resettlement proved unexpectedly difficult because huge land concessions to the resource companies meant there was actually a shortage of good farmland and of land along the coast. Nice resettlement houses have been built with electricity and piped water, but the resettled farmers and fishers have no way to earn a living to pay the electricity and water bills. And the mine and gas projects produce few formal sector jobs. Young people argue that they were being deprived of a share of the province's natural wealth. Cabo Delgado is Mozambique's most marginalised province. It is not the poorest province, but it has the highest inequality. highest illiteracy rates, highest child malnutrition, lowest access to health facilities, worst housing, and fewest children in school. There is severe poverty and inequality, especially group inequality, and unequal access to land and jobs, which was being made worse by displacement cause by mining and gas. It was easy for radical preachers to say that a Frelimo elite was eating the wealth, and that traditional Muslim leaders were part of a Frelimo- linked elite. Fundamentalist Islam was presented as more egalitarian. Mosques and churches are important social support centres for communities across Mozambique, helping those in need. Some of the new mosques in Cabo Delgado began to give money to local people who could not get finance from banks or government to start businesses; some were successful and created desperately needed jobs. In Chiure young people were given sacks of onions or potatoes. Children attending madrassas received food and sometimes money, which was important for poor large families. 3. Cholera, vampires and lions - 'they' want us dead In 1999 there were angry local demonstrations against cholera-prevention and treatment teams, who were accused of spreading the disease rather than treating it. In Cabo Delgado province, in Montepuez two health workers were killed and in Mecufi a crowd attacked and burned a cholera treatment and isolation tent. In neighbouring Nampula province, there were attacks in 5 mainly coastal districts. In 2001 there were more cholera riots in Nampula. In Memba a local chief (regulo) was beaten and accused to having been paid to put cholera in the water to kill local people. In Nacala-a-Velha, 66 houses were burned, many belonging to local leaders who had attended an anti-cholera meeting and who were accused of having been paid at the meeting to spread cholera. Researchers were sent to coastal Nampula and they were shocked to find that many people believed the local elite wanted them dead. This linked in with the common local beliefs in vampirism - the elites want to drink their blood (shupa-sangue) or at least sell it, and that elites want to kill them to steal and sell their organs. Muidumbe district, Cabo Delgado, is one of the areas affected by the current civil war. Back in 2002-3, 24 people were lynched. They were accused of magically commanding 7 lions who ate 46 local people. All accused were important people district administrator, chiefs, members of Frelimo, and a local businessman. What is important here is that many people believe that local elites don't just want to exploit them, they want to drink their blood and steal their organs. They command lions. They want "us" dead. And the protests are against authority figures who are often only a little bit richer and more powerful than those protesting, but seen as distant, arrogant, and, most importantly, not delivering. Then in early 2009 there was another outbreak of the cholera war. In Cabo Delgado in coastal Mecufi, angry local people attacked an anti-cholera team. A nurse, a driver, and six others were beaten. In Pemba, local people burned down three tents which had been set as a cholera treatment centre - accusing the local elite of bringing cholera to Pemba to kill them. Further south but still along the coast, in Nampula province, in Moma district one person was killed by police and three injured as a crowd of 300 attacked a health post. A man called Folgado, wounded by the police, said he was proud of destroying the health post because it stopped health workers bringing cholera into the area - "we are tired of dying of cholera". In Mogincual, two Red Cross volunteers were beaten to death, and in Angoche a policeman was brutally killed. Finally police arrested 48 people and packed them into single tiny cell; 13 died of suffocation. To local people, it was a vivid demonstration that police and elites wanted them dead. Thus, in looking at the Cabo Delgado civil war, it is important to recall this violence and the sincere belief of many people that elites want them dead and they are acting to defend their lives and those of their families. In 2016 police evicted thousands of artisanal miners from the ruby fields that had been given to Montepuez Ruby Mining (MRM). The entire value chain was broken and thousands lost their income - traders, suppliers and farmers as well as the actual miners. The repression led to a radicalisation. In January 2019 Gemfields, majority owner of MRM, agreed an US$8.3 million out- of-court settlement to settle 273 claims of death, beatings and other human rights violations by mine guards. But the violence continues. Twice in February 2020 there were coordinated invasions by very large numbers - estimated 500-2000 - of artisanal miners of the huge MPM ruby mining area near Montepuez. An MRM patrol car was burned and its occupants badly beaten. MRM director Asghar Faqhr said the attackers seemed to have "military style preparation and command". 4. Rapidly changing violence The first shot of the new civil war was a large attack on Mocimboa da Praia on 5 October 2017. The date was carefully chosen - it was the day after the Peace Day holiday, and most officials were away at a Frelimo rally in Pemba, so there was no resistance. The raid targeted 3 police stations and was led by 30 armed men who killed 17 people, including two police officers and a community leader. The attackers took firearms and ammunition and told residents that they rejected state health and education, and wanted a separate Islamic state. The attackers were not all young men, and leaders included businessmen with Tanzanian links and two Tanzanian religious leaders. Funding came from illicit local networks and trade in timber, charcoal, rubies and ivory. Some attackers were people who had received money to set up businesses and were told they had to join the attack. Al Shabaab used the publicity of the Mocimboa da Praia attack for recruiting, locally through friends and informal networks. Recruitment went further afield, to poor areas of coastal Nampula, including Memba and Nacala-a-Velha, and north into Tanzania. Artisanal miners evicted from ruby and other mines joined. Initially these were young people who thought they could change Mozambique through al Shabaab. Later, recruiters made promises of cash, employment and even scholarships abroad. Al Shabaab expanded rapidly from a small group of perhaps 50 militants in local mosques to an armed force of about 300 people. This group had the ability to attack the state and sow panic among local communities. There were small attacks on villages, especially targeting people who had dropped out of al Shabaab or who had been given money but failed to join the war. The attacks sometimes targeted the richest person in the village, perhaps the family with a motorcycle or even a bicycle. Initially these were religious groups that had formed guerrilla cells. Young people whose families had lost land or suffered extreme poverty joined, sometimes with support of their families. The militants built up an intelligence network with families, giving mobile phones and small amounts of money to report on troop movements. Local safari guides showed them the best local routes. Market traders told them when soldiers were being paid so that they attack that night when soldiers were drunk in the market. Similarly they were able to time attacks after deliveries of food and weapons. Local people were paid to make replica government military uniforms so that the guerrillas could stop traffic on roads and move in disguise. The response was a large presence of the army and special police units - Special Operations Group (Grupo de Operacoes Especiais - GOE) and the riot police (Unidade de Intervencao Rapida - UIR). But it became a classic anti- guerrilla operation, in which slow moving military groups try to catch rapidly moving groups of three or four people communicating by mobile telephone. Indeed, slow-moving large military and police units were increasingly tied down trying to protect themselves and villages from attack. Violence by the police and army against communities had a radicalizing effect, building support for the insurgents. Hundreds of people were arrested in late 2017 and early 2018, held for months, and tried (illegally) in secret. Journalists were also arrested and held illegally. There is considerable fear and mistrust in Cabo Delgado. But as happened with cholera, taking up arms seems sensible to some who see no future and feel that elites want them dead. The war by "al Shabaab", as it is called locally, has shifted rapidly over two years, from religious groups turned guerrillas into a much more organised military guerrilla presence. This includes: A shift to a semi- territorial strategy, in which it dominates, but does not attempt to control, growing parts of rural areas and their roads and small towns. This allows the control of trade and the ability to tax. Control of northern Macomia district and the small coastal fishing ports such as Quiterajo allow the insurgents to control or at least tax the illegal timber and other trades from the interior to the coast. Powerful men linked to al- Shabaab already controlled much of the illegal timber trade in Macomia. There are bases but for the most part groups are small, often three or four people, living in the bush or in a community, who are brought together for military actions. Training was initially ad hoc, in part using foreigners with military experience in the Great Lakes and Tanzania, as well as people who had been dismissed from the police and border guards. But there is now evidence that demobilised Renamo and government soldiers are being paid to provide training. Some al-Shabaab recruits have been told to join the army to get military training. Recruits were initially disaffected youth, such as street traders in Mocimboa da Praia. They were joined by others, including displaced artisanal miners and army deserters saying they were not prepared to die for a miserable army salary. But it appears that the supply of willing local recruits may be drying up, and there has been a move into neighbouring provinces of Nampula and Niassa to recruit young men with promises of jobs. The government's response has been to say people should never believe such recruiters, because there are no jobs - itself a shocking admission that points to the core of the problem. Much is made by government of the insurgents being "faceless", not identifying themselves or stating demands. This could reflect the Islamic concept of Taquiyya, or deception, which is permitted in war or situations of persecution to avoid fatalities. This could include not making clear that a target of the insurgency is a separate Sharia state, and not exposing leaders and representatives to capture or attack. The war has created a large number of refugees - more than 100,000 according to UNHCR in February 2020 - many of whom have lost everything including their identity documents. The displaced complain of having no food, houses, and livelihoods. To some extent the refugees support Frelimo because government is giving them a little food and shelter - although there are continued complaints of hunger among the refugees; corruption is sometimes blamed, with refugees saying they see aid food being sold along the roads. But refugees are not trusted and sometime harassed by police and military. A repeated lament is a total lack of trust - within families and groups, and between individuals and the state and elites. 5. Global or local? Global forces have had unchecked influence in Cabo Delgado in part because it is so far from the capital, Maputo. The mining and gas companies have almost unquestioned power. Missionaries have free reign. Foreign heroin, timber and ivory traders work openly. The neoliberal economic model imposed in the 1990s and IMF spending caps have led to no support for domestic job creation and limited spending on education. At the local level, Cabo Delgado is one of the most "corrupt" provinces because local officials and local elites have more unchecked power. This has led to growing wealth and inequality. And the conflict between elites and ordinary people is demonstrated by belief in vampires and elites spreading cholera, and the willingness to take violent action to defend themselves against the belief that elites want them dead. And on both sides there is a convergence of interests and collaboration between local and global. The 1990s global message that "greed is good" is still the motto of many in Frelimo and the elite, who act on a view that the free market which makes them rich will also lead to development "trickling down" to the poor. And to a small group it does, although not to the poorest. The close links between global business, legal and illegal and from gas to heroin, benefit the elite but money passes down the chain in contracts and sub-contracts and bribes to officials and police. At the lowest level, some in Frelimo and with low civil service jobs gain enough money to be seen by their neighbours as better off even though they are relatively poor. In attacks, this is enough to make them targets. Meanwhile people facing hardship or crises often turn to churches or mosques. Fundamentalist preachers provide support and answers. The message from local and foreign sheiks is that fundamentalist Islam will support them against the elites taking all the wealth. And calls to join armed action follow the pattern of responses to cholera and vampires. Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed several of the attacks by the local insurgents, and government blames foreign forces for the attacks. There is no evidence for any involvement of Islamic State, but it seems to suit Islamic State, the insurgents, and the government to foster the belief that there is a connection. There are a number of Islamic insurgencies in Africa, some of which have continued for up to two decades. They are constantly changing, but the roots are more often local than foreign. For example, recent research shows that the drivers of Boko Haram and Islamic extremism in Nigeria are poverty, regional inequality, environmental stress, migration, youth unemployment, and state corruption and human rights abuses - exactly the same drivers as in Cabo Delgado. Some fundamentalists preachers have been called religious entrepreneurs - looking for poverty, inequality, corruption and other local grievances which can be used to mobilise and make Islam the flag to fight for truth and justice. It is useful in this context to look at military tactics and strategy. Hit and run attacks on villages and roads, and attempts to cut traffic and commerce, are reminiscent of early Renamo. This has been followed by the use of these tactics to expand the area of influence, creating large numbers of refugees and pushing out communities and government. The tactics are to attack villages and small towns to gain dominance over rural areas, and to use rare attacks on larger towns for publicity. The January 2020 attack on Bilibiza follows this pattern with a large force moving across 40km in an important area and heavily damaging government installations, without serious military challenge. Where people remain they sometimes support the insurgents, which leads to military repression and forcing people to become refugees, which in turn creates new supporters. This is the Renamo model, a domestic model of military actions. So far there have been none of the hallmarks of Islamic attacks, such as suicide bombers. Foreign mining and gas companies and heroin and ruby traders have all distorted the local economy in ways that increase inequality and discontent. Foreign fundamentalist preachers have used that discontent to promote an insurgency with the goal of creating an Islamic state. Thus there is undoubtedly a foreign role in the insurgency. But the inequality is fuelled by Mozambican greed and corruption and economic policies that increase inequality. And the sheiks organizing guerrilla forces appear to be Mozambican. Young Mozambicans are fighting for food, housing, land, dignity and a more just society, against an elite that they believe wants them dead. Islam has become the flag to follow, in their quest they see fundamentalist Islam as the way to regain dignity and redress their poverty. In 2019 there was a tendency in government to blame ISIS and argue that this was a war being waged against Mozambique by Islamic State or other "external forces". But in 2020 there has been a subtle change in rhetoric. The new Interior Minister Amade Miquidade said on 24 February that he had no doubt that "somebody from outside is financing these activities." He added that the attacks were done with "sophisticated resources" and involved "people of other nationalities". He seemed to accept that this is a local civil war, with foreign support. Is the government coming to understand that although the global cannot be ignored, the local is most important? And when it looks at the global, will it remember that the global is not just Islamic militants, but mining companies and timber traders as well? AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter. AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please write to this address to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the original source mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see http://www.africafocus.org Mexico, N.Y. An Oswego County man has been jailed after sheriffs deputies say he was armed with a knife when he raped a woman early Sunday morning. Oswego County sheriffs deputies were called to the town of Mexico around 12:56 a.m. Sunday to investigate a domestic dispute that had occurred earlier in the night. Deputies said that the victim was threatened with a knife and raped by 29-year-old Jonathan E. Cronk. Cronk was charged with first-degree rape, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, second-degree menacing, fourth-degree criminal mischief and criminal obstruction of breathing. The criminal mischief charge was in connection to Cronk breaking the victims personal property, Lt. Andrew Bucher said. He was arraigned Sunday and is currently being held in Oswego County Jail, pending his release under the supervision of Oswego County Probation with electronic monitoring. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment These are very trying times. There is an enemy out there at the microscopic level, wreaking all kinds of havoc in peoples hearts and minds and lives. The economic consequences alone of the coronavirus could possibly be felt for years to come. The big problem in life, of course, is the threat of death. But the coronavirus is not going to cancel Easter though it may cancel our traditional celebrations of it. But Easter hope defangs the threat of the coronavirus because Jesus has taken the sting out of death. After a bee stung a boy one day, his young brother was frightened as the insect continued hovering around him. But his father told him not to worry there was only one stinger in that bee, and his older brother had already received it. Jesus is our older brother, and He has taken the sting of death upon Himself. As the Apostle Paul would say, Oh death, where is thy sting? Easter hope is not just a pious sentiment. There is ample reason to believe that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, historically. For Christian television, I once interviewed Dr. Dana Harris of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the Chicago area. She told me, Christianity rests on the historical proclamation that Jesus rose from the dead. Harris added, I would say that its virtually impossible to maintain the idea that we can separate religious truths from historical facts and it has to do with the nature of Christianity. Christianity is fundamentally dependent on historical truths. In other words, if Jesus is not resurrected from the dead, then we dont have Christianity. But what about the idea, promoted by skeptics, that perhaps this was just a legend from the ancient world? One man has an interesting take on that. Lee Strobel, former legal affairs editor for The Chicago Tribune, received his legal training at Yale Law School. When his wife started going to church, he worked hard to disprove the faith, so he could reclaim her, and the two could live happily ever after, as agnostics. But his quest to disprove Christianity had an unexpected result: He became a believer in the very thing he tried to falsify. He wrote all this up in his classic book, since made into a motion picture, The Case for Christ. In an interview for D. James Kennedy Ministries, Strobel noted, One very powerful evidence is that we have a report to the resurrection of Jesus that has been dated back by scholars to within months of His death. So, what we have is, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse 3, a creed, a report of the early church that says, Jesus diedwhy? For our sins, He was buried, and the third day He rose from the dead. And then it mentions specific individuals and groups to whom He appeared. Strobel adds, And if that creed developed so early, the beliefs that make up that creed go back even earlier. Probably, one of the greatest classical historians who ever lived, A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford, studied the rate at which legend grew up in the ancient world. And he determined that the passage of two generations of time is not even enough for a legend to grow up and wipe out a solid core of historical truth. With the Christian reports of the resurrection, notes Strobel, Weve got a news flash from ancient history. So that is a very powerful bit of evidence. The interesting thing about the resurrection of Jesus is that the earliest skeptics of the event were the disciples themselves. They were only convinced because Jesus appeared to them over and over. Then they became so convinced, they went out and became unstoppable in their proclamation in some cases, even when it meant they would be put to death for their testimony. As Lee Strobel puts it, We have nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament confirming and corroborating that the conviction of the disciples is that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That is an avalanche of historical data. When you consider most of what we know from ancient history is from one or two sources, but nine ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament [corroborating the disciples conviction], that is a convincing amount of evidence that convinced me that the disciples encountered the resurrected Jesus. It changed their lives, it changed everything about them. Covid-19 may have set the worlds teeth at edge. And ultimately it is a reminder of our mortality. We are not going to escape this world alive. But thank God for Jesus, the elder brother, who has taken the sting out of death for those who believe. Nothing, including Covid-19, will ever cancel Easter. Sen. Bernie Sanders waves to supporters at a campaign rally in Chicago's Grant Park on March 7. (Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press) Jewel Hurtado first heard of Bernie Sanders when she was 17, still a high school student and trying to figure out whom to vote for in California's 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The Central Valley resident watched a video of the Vermont senator talking about challenges confronting the working class and people of color, people like many in her small agricultural town. He spoke about equality for the LGBTQ community, a group she knows well as a bisexual woman. His message about universal healthcare coverage resonated with Hurtado, who was uninsured at the time. "Yeah, maybe he was just another old white man politician," she said, "but thats not what it was about for me. It was about the fact that I felt seen." She wanted to push for those changes, too. So she ran to be a delegate with the Democratic Party when she was 18. In 2018, she launched a bid for a seat on the Kingsburg City Council and won by eight votes. Hurtado is just one of a legion of young progressives inspired by Sanders who have set out to run for local, state and federal positions to advocate issues the senator helped bring into the mainstream conversation during his 2016 and 2020 presidential bids. From the Central Valley to Lewiston, Maine, they have won public office so they could advocate changes both small and sweeping. Jewel Hurtado, 21, second from right, with Sen. Bernie Sanders after he spoke at a rally in Fresno. (Jewel Hurtado) He said no matter if its for a city council or youre running to be a delegate for the party, whatever it is get involved, said Hurtado, now 21. People have power, and we need to reclaim that. Having young people in office changes the tenor of the conversation on issues such as affordable housing, student debt and the climate crisis, said Amanda Litman, executive director and co-founder of Run for Something, which helps progressive candidates younger than 40 run for seats ranging from school boards to state legislatures. About 50,000 people from every state have reached out since the organization launched in 2017, and about 10% have run or are currently running, Litman said Wednesday. So far, of the candidates the group has endorsed, 306 have been elected, and an additional 250 are currently on ballots, she said. Story continues Youre going to get a president one day, whether its in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, who says, I first ran for city council because I was inspired by Bernie Sanders, Litman said. In his speech announcing he was suspending his campaign, Sanders encouraged his supporters to continue electing progressive candidates at every level of government. He said he would continue to collect delegates through the Democratic National Convention so his supporters could exert influence over the party. I ran for the presidency because I believe that, as a president, I could accelerate and institutionalize the progressive changes that we are all building together. And if we keep organizing and fighting, I have no doubt that that is exactly what will happen, Sanders said. While the path may be slower now, we will change this nation and, with like-minded friends around the globe, change the entire world. Young people have long aimed to wield political influence, whether protesting local school policies or marching for civil rights, said Kathryn Schumaker, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma's Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage. Shifting a political system as elected officials takes a sustained effort, she said. She noted that before Barack Obama became the first black president in 2008, major cities had begun electing the first black mayors decades earlier. The "fastest change you can see happen is at the local level, she said. "Its the less glamorous side of politics, but you can make a pretty profound difference. In Ohio, Morgan Harper, 36, is running for Congress on a platform of universal child care, universal income and support for the Green New Deal. Harper, who is challenging the Democrat who has held the seat since 2013, tapped into networks of progressive organizers, including some created as a result of Sanders' 2016 run. "It's undeniable that Bernie Sanders has changed the American political landscape for generations to come, she said. Millennials and Generation Z, shaped by economic and social crises, embraced Sanders' promise of a political revolution, and his push for universal healthcare has begun to gain broader Democratic support across more age groups. He really was able to uplift and make more mainstream these ideas of policy solutions that would impact all of us and not just those who happened to make enough money," said Sarah Audelo, executive director of the Alliance for Youth Action, a group that supports youth organizers focused on political engagement across the country. Now those young voters are "looking at the impact of the failure of our government on our communities" and realizing they must step up to find solutions, she said. Safiya Khalid was busy with college and work when Sanders first ran for president in 2016, but his call for getting rid of private prisons, enacting universal healthcare and raising teacher salaries drew her into the political fold. In 2019, she ran for a City Council seat in Lewiston, Maine, on a platform calling for smaller class sizes in public schools and more affordable housing. She faced racist comments online, but she ended up winning nearly 70% of the vote, becoming the first Somali American elected to the council. "For a long time weve been told to step aside and listen to other people, and when we do that, we get discriminated against because of our differences," the 24-year-old said. The progressive movement, she added, has room for people of color, women, anyone looking for a change. Bryan Osorio, 24, was elected to the City Council of Delano, Calif., in 2018. (Bryan Osorio) In 2018, Bryan Osorio led members of the Delano, Calif., community in a march after two farmworkers died in a car crash when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pursued them in a case of mistaken identity. The march and the young people he spoke to made him consider what else he could do for his hometown, where farmworkers started the 1960s grape strike, which was later joined by labor rights icon Cesar Chavez. By getting involved in local politics, Osorio knew he could address the poverty, unemployment and pollution plaguing Delano. So he ran for Delano City Council that year and won. Osorio, now 24, is the youngest member of the council and feels that his progressive leanings stick out in Kern County, where registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats. Like Hurtado, he sees the role he plays at the local level as part of the national push for progressive change. "I think it should be important to remember that its not just about voting for the next president but also for the next locally elected official," he said. "From there, those movements start in your area. There has never been an Easter Sunday quite like it. Cars would ordinarily have been nose-to-tail on all roads to the coast, and churches packed. This year Northern Ireland felt eerily empty. Seaside resorts were like ghost towns. That the beaches were largely deserted probably is not unrelated to the fact that the police increased the number of patrols and put up checkpoints to ensure that people stayed at home as the coronavirus crisis continues. No one in their right mind wants to risk a fine of up to 5,000 just to spend a few hours out of the house, especially when all the shops are closed anyway. The weather wasn't great, either. That surely helped put a lid on the annual exodus out of Belfast. It was still a welcome outbreak of common sense that most people chose to stay at home over the weekend. Inevitably, there will always be some idiots who think rules are for everybody else, not them, and went out anyway. What matters is that they are a pitiful minority. Staying at home is not that hard to do after all, and, when it has been shown to have a dramatic effect on limiting the spread of the coronavirus, it would be reckless to do anything else Most people in Northern Ireland have risen to the challenge of, well, doing nothing. We might not like having to change our ways, but by and large we understand perfectly well why we are not allowed to go about our normal business, and have accepted the restrictions with good-humoured forbearance. Staying at home is not that hard to do after all, and, when it has been shown to have a dramatic effect on limiting the spread of the coronavirus, it would be reckless to do anything else. Whilst every life lost is a tragedy, Northern Ireland has suffered far fewer deaths per head of population than any other part of the UK, and, despite political disagreement over different approaches to tackling Covid-19 on either side of the border, has the exact same mortality rate as the Republic. That could quickly change if people stopped respecting the ban on non-essential journeys. The virus has not hit every area of Northern Ireland equally. Urban areas with a larger population density have been more badly affected, and it would be deplorable if those who live in towns were responsible for the spread of coronavirus to other places, such as seaside resorts and beauty spots in the countryside which have, mercifully, escaped the worst, just so they could have a day out. There is no room for complacency, though. A sustained spell of good weather will sorely test people's patience with the lockdown. Ironically, we are in the rare position in Northern Ireland of actually wanting and needing the summer to be a bit disappointing. In the meantime it is worth giving credit where it's due. The vast majority of people generally do the right thing, when they know the reasons why. For nearly 10 days, Chandmal Jingar had no contact with his family while he worked as a nurse at the Covid-19 ward of the district hospital in Bhilwara, often skipping meals as he cared for people infected by the coronavirus. Jingar,41, sang songs and cracked jokes to keep everyones morale high as he looked after the patients in the hospital located in an area hit hard by the coronavirus. When his wife and children told him to get himself shifted to some other ward in the hospital, Jingar assured his family there was no need to worry and it was the duty of every health worker to take responsibility for serving the people. Sharing his experiences at the Covid-19 ward, Jingar said it was on the evening of March 17 that a doctor from Bhilwara district was admitted to Mahatma Gandhi Hospital with symptoms of being infected by the coronavirus. Three days later, he tested positive and a special Covid-19 ward was created in the hospital. The number of patients had increased by this time. By March 20, fear and panic about the virus had gripped the city as the number of positive case reached about 20 in a few days. Before the Covid-19 ward, my duty was in the OT, he said. On March 20, I met the nursing superintendent and requested him to shift me to the Covid-19 ward. The reason behind the request was that to fight any disease, you need to boost confidence and positivity among patients and I was sure I could do that. Chandmal Jingar with his colleagues inside Corona ward of MG hospital in Bhilwara. (HT Photo ) From March 22, Jingar started working in the Covid-19 ward, with his shift lasting from 7.30am to 4pm. At 7am, I would reach the hospital. The first thing I did was wash my hands, wear gloves and then the personal protective equipment (PPE) kit. By 7.30am, I would enter the ward, take readings of the patients and give them medicines according to the doctors recommendation. I would ensure every single thing inside was sanitised and cleaned at regular intervals, he said. After 4pm, Jingar would remove the PPE kit, put it in a solution of hypochlorite, and later it would be decomposed. After duty, he would go to a nursing hostel where he lived with other colleagues in quarantine. In the evenings, Jingar would talk to his family, including his wife Geeta, a teacher in a government school, his 14-year-old son Vaibhav and his 8-year-old daughter Pratibha. Initially, my kids were afraid but later they started boosting my confidence as they got to know their dad is a corona warrior and is serving the people, Jingar said. The morale of the staff of the Covid-19 ward was affected when two elderly patients died on consecutive days because of multiple organ failure, even though the cause of their death wasnt Covid-19. After the deaths, a few of my colleagues and I would sing songs, crack jokes and talk about spiritual things to make the ambiance of the ward positive. One of our videos went viral, which lightened the environment of the ward and helped us in changing the mindset of the patients, said Jingar. Within a few days the positive cases tested negative. Now, we have only one patient in the Covid-19 ward, which was once the epicentre of positive patients. I am sure this patient will also turn negative, he said. Anyone who is detected for Covid-19 shouldnt panic as it can be overcome through a combination of medicines, precaution and will power, he said. On April 1, Jingar went to meet his family after getting permission from his seniors, and he returned to his duties at the Covid-19 ward three days later. Rajasthans Bhilwara district was one of the first Covid-19 clusters to be identified in the country and was placed under total lockdown by the state government to contain the spread of coronavirus. From being a hot spot, Bhilwara, about 250km south of state capital Jaipur, is now being talked about for its ruthless containment model and administrations elsewhere are following the steps taken by the districts authorities. Cops broke up a house party after claims a group of people were drinking and partying despite strict coronavirus lockdown rules. Almost two dozen officers and four paramedics were called to the mass gathering in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham. Neighbours saw partygoers being chased away and told to return home by emergency services. Despite the summer-like weather this week, the public have been persistently urged by authorities not to be tempted to flout the rules and be out of their homes for longer than necessary. It comes as the UKs coronavirus death toll surged past 10,000 to 10,612, after the department of health reported 737 deaths in the last 24 hours. But, according to Teesside Live, a group of people were seen making the most of the bank holiday weekend at a mass house gathering fuelled with booze and loud music. A sea of police cars and an ambulance were later pictured at an address in Hardwick just after 9pm on Saturday. One man was said to have been arrested while another person refused medical treatment from paramedics. An eyewitness said: The rest were chased away and asked to go back into their homes. Around 20 officers and four paramedics were on scene. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates University of Texas Permian Basin students have been helping on the front lines and behind the scenes during the coronavirus pandemic. Nursing students have been helping at their internships, including at Midland Memorial Hospital, while some have been training with the Ector County Health Department. An engineering student has been helping 3D print supplies -- such as face shield holders and valve splitters for ventilators -- for area hospitals. Javier Salazar is a senior nursing student who is currently interning at MMH. He said he knew he wanted to go into the medical field, which pushed him to get a nursing degree. I had worked with a few nurses previously, he said. I knew I wanted to go into the medical field and after working with them I was caught between going into pre-med or going into nursing. and I thought nursing would fit better for me. He said a lot of students in the college of nursing are interns at hospitals. He has helped by screening patients with a questionnaire and doing temperature checks. Im primarily helping with interning at Midland Memorial Hospital, and Ive been going down to the ER screening people, he said. Now we have this opportunity through the health department. Well be able to be a little more hands-on with the actual public health aspect of it, which is a great opportunity to learn. UTPB College of Nursing students are also training with the Ector County Health Department. Students will soon be calling people who might have come in contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus, tracking the illness and guiding them on the next steps to take. After the 22 students who are in their fourth semester are fully trained, 17 students who are in their third semester will be trained to assist as well. The pandemic has given nursing students a unique learning experience as they are taught about collaborative care and working with epidemiologists, Salazar said. He said he has read about all of this in a textbook but actually doing it in real life is different. He said this experience has also reaffirmed the importance of nurses. It definitely puts it into perspective that we are needed in society, not just in public health and in every day, but when things get pretty bad in the world of health care, nurses are ready to help, he said. Before the pandemic, he said he wanted to do emergency nursing, which has remained his focus. This has reinforced my love for emergency nursing, he said. Salazar lived in Monahans, where he attended high school. He moved to Odessa to attend UTPB and stayed there when his parents moved to Arizona. UTPB professor Diana Ruiz, who is an assistant professor in the College of Nursing, has been following the pandemic in the classroom since before it was declared a health emergency in the United States, Salazar said. Every class time we would go over how this could develop, he said. Sure enough, within the next few weeks of development, the World Health Organization finally called it a pandemic. We were already starting to kind of shift gears toward this, and we were already shifting all the lesson plans to this type of curriculum. Salazar said he plans to stay in the area and work at MMH because they have given him a good opportunity once he graduates. Salazar said he was disappointed when UTPB first announced spring commencement ceremonies had been postponed. Im going to be the first person in my family to graduate from a university, he said. It was a bit sad, but it has also given us a lot of opportunities that most other nursing graduates wont have, and I know that the governor of Texas has extended what we can do. I think its bittersweet, definitely. Dean Lizzotte will be graduating with a mechanical engineering degree. He said it was unfortunate that the ceremony had to be postponed but he has realized its best. He has been collaborating with the art and engineering departments to assist with 3D printing supplies. Were able to take either a 3D design from Texas Tech or we could design one ourselves in the college of engineering, he said. Over in the art department we have a laser cutter to help us manufacture the actual face shields that protect the individual as well as use the 3D printers that allow us to make the headbands. Lizzotte has been working with Chris Stanley, associate professor of art, and George Nnanna, dean of the College of Engineering, for about two years with different projects, which have given him experience with printing and conceptual design. He has worked on ceramic water filters with Stanley, and on the engineering side he has worked on produced water treatment with Nnanna. Lizzotte, who was brought onto the project about three weeks ago, has been working remotely and in person with deliveries and 3D printing setup and configuration. Here I am able to take what Ive learned in school and then take it to a very necessary and applicable real-world problem, Lizzotte said. After graduation he hopes to either pursue graduate school or work in the oil field, where he currently works. He said that UTPB is a graduate school he is looking into because them university is adding a mechanical engineering graduate program. Lizzotte said UTPB is trying to be community-forward during this time. UTPB has been really involved in the community because we are bringing in different groups, such as ECISD, the nursing students and working with Texas Tech and industry partners, he said. So really, we are just being community-forward trying to help those around us. An employee is working at a photoelectric production line at a factory in Wuhan, China on April 6, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) Chinese Factories Shut as Export Orders Dry up Amid Pandemic A large number of export-oriented Chinese factories were shuttered recently after they didnt have enough orders to fill. Some home appliance manufacturers also announced that they laid off employees because of a lack of export and domestic demand due to the pandemic. As the outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, became severe in January, much of China was placed under lockdown and factories halted production for more than a month. In February, Beijing encouraged companies to resume operations as it grew concerned about an economic slowdown. But Chinese companies were worried that the virus could spread among employees; many factories remained closed. As some factories reopened in March, they realized they faced a bigger challengehaving no orders to fill. Orders were canceled as the virus spread to other countries, which also adopted social distancing measures and reduced economic activity. Stop Production In 2019, China exported 17.23 trillion yuan (about $2.44 trillion) worth in products, 8.9 trillion ($1.26 trillion) or 51.65 percent from the private sector, according to statistics from Chinas General Administration of Customs (GAC). Those products include electronics, electrical appliances, mechanical equipment and parts, textiles, and other labor-intensive products. GACs deputy director, Zou Zhiwu, said roughly 499,000 Chinese firms import or export goods. The majority of export-oriented firms are located in the south and east of China, such as the provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Shandong. Since March 31, an increasing number of factories from these regions announced that they have stopped their production, after briefly reopening. Because of the pandemic, our customers canceled all their orders, the Zhongshan Jiaya Garment Co. in Guangdong Province announced on March 25. Our whole company will stop operations on April 1, and wont reopen before July 31. Zhongshan Jiaya Garment Company notified its employees that the factory would close for three months, in Zhongshan city, Guangdong province, China on March 25, 2020. (Screenshot) Guangzhou Brightlywell Shoes Co., also in Guangdong, notified its employees to return home, as its factory halted production on April 1. From today, all resigned employees can receive their salaries for February and March in cash. Our company decided to close the factory for three months, Dongguan Good Will Watch Case Co. in Guangdong suggested that its employees resign because of a lack of orders. The company didnt say when employees would be paid if they dont resign. Wenzhou Titan Shoes Co. in Zhejiang Province stated on March 19: Because customers canceled their orders, we stopped all recruitment from yesterday. All employees can take unpaid leave from April 1 to May 30. We encourage all of you to find new jobs. A knitting company in Ningbo, Zhejiang, notified its employees that due to the epidemic, production will be suspended until Sept. 30. This is the inevitable result of the pandemic, U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan said in an interview. The Chinese economy is relying on exports. When the main consumer countries, such as the U.S., France, Germany, and the UK have severe outbreaks, few people can buy from China. No orders in the near future means more factories will close in China, and many people will lose their jobs. When lots of unemployed people dont have money to pay their mortgages or to buy goods, China will suffer a bad financial crisis. Layoffs Hisense, a major appliance and electronics manufacturer based in Qingdao, Shandong Province, addressed online speculation that it would lay off 10,000 employees. The global pandemic caused home appliances sales inside and outside of China to shrink. More than 40 percent of Hisenses income is from overseas markets. Our situation is grim, the company said in a statement on April 12. The company confirmed that it would reduce its workforce, but claimed the number circulating online wasnt true. We took methods, such as senior managers taking salary cuts, to encourage employees, the statement reads. Paying tens of thousands of employees is a difficult challenge. Hisenses chief competitor, Haier, another home appliance and consumer electronics company headquartered in Qingdao, denied that it laid-off employees, but said its CEO, president, and some managers volunteered to take pay cuts to help the business operate. Retailers and restaurants are also facing challenges due to the epidemic. Since early March, small-business owners across China have started protests in front of their local government offices to seek cuts to their rent, utilities, and other expenses. The latest figures from Chinese online databases revealed that nearly half a million businesses closed in the first quarter. Economists polled in the Reuters survey said they expect nearly 30 million jobs to be lost this year in China. Switzerland: Revision of FMG Telecommunications Act regulations Switzerland's national amateur radio society USKA was invited to comment on the new regulations in connection with the Swiss Telecommunications Act FMG A Google translation of the USKA post reads: The submission deadline was March 25, 2020. The Task Force Legal Framework of the USKA examined these regulations in detail and formulated their input points in a workshop on March 7, 2020. Our President Willi, HB9AMC, has already reported on this. The new FMG leads to a paradigm shift in radio: In future, the free use of the frequency spectrum will be a basic principle, and licensing and reporting (so-called light licensing) will be an exception. This change has already been practically implemented in recent years through many license exemptions (everyone's radio, wireless microphones, controls, etc.). Licenses still receive radio services for which OFCOM is responsible for frequency planning and also ensures that connections on the allocated frequencies are guaranteed at all times. In the case of the amateur radio service, the frequencies and the authorization for this radio service are fixed by international treaties. Therefore, all that is needed here is a message with a check as to whether all the relevant requirements have been met. OFCOM is not responsible for whether or not there are too many radio amateurs on the bands, making traffic difficult. Despite this fundamental change of principle, all conditions relevant to amateur radio could be appropriately transferred to the new regulations, namely: OFCOM is solely responsible for the acceptance of the certificate. The call sign is now a so-called addressing element, such as a telephone number or an IP address, and is therefore regulated in the Ordinance on Addressing Elements AEFV. HB9 radio amateurs may continue to build their own devices or modify commercial devices. This is stated in the Ordinance on FAV radio channels. Due to this complete conversion of the radio system, the old Ordinance on Frequency Management FKV had to be completely revised. The new Ordinance on radio frequencies VFuF proposed by the Federal Council can be viewed here: https://www.uska.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Verordnung-uber-Funkfrequenzen-VFuF-markiert.pdf Passages relevant to amateur radio are marked in yellow. In its submission, USKA has proposed a few clarifications and adjustments that are important to us, as follows: The description of the permitted operating modes was taken from the old FKV literally. However, especially in the digital operating modes, it no longer corresponds to today's conditions. A new wording has therefore been proposed. Some additional rules have been proposed to ensure orderly radio traffic on our bands. In addition, some other, smaller clarifications were proposed and justified. The detailed wording of USKA's submission to DETEC can be found on our website under the heading " Liaison with the authorities ". The new regulations are due to enter into force on January 1, 2021. It remains to be seen whether the adjustments we propose will be incorporated into the definitive regulation. We have no further influence. I would like to thank all participants of the Task Force for the very constructive cooperation. It was a very important effort for the USKA to secure the existence of amateur radio in Switzerland for the future. Vy 73 de Bernard, HB9ALH Board member responsible for authorities. Liaison with the regulator OFCOM https://www.uska.ch/die-uska/uska-fachstellen/verbindung-zu-den-behoerden/ USKA answer to Revision of the FMG regulations https://www.uska.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/USKA-Antwort-Rev_Verord-FMG.pdf Link: Ordinance on radio frequencies (VFuF) marked https://www.uska.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Verordnung-uber-Funkfrequenzen-VFuF-markiert.pdf Source USKA https://tinyurl.com/SwitzerlandUSKA Director of PGIMER, Chandigarh, Professor Jagat Ram said that the Assistant Sub-Inspector, whose hand was chopped off in an attack in Patiala on Sunday, is stable after surgery. IMAGE: Doctors perform surgery of police personnel who were assaulted in the clash with Nihangs in Patiala, in Chandigarh. Photograph: PTI Photo However, his recovery is expected to take time. "The operation theatre was kept ready as soon as I received the call from DGP Punjab. It was a very challenging surgery and took about seven-and-a-half hours. He (Punjab ASI) is stable today but recovery will take time," the director said. Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had on Sunday said that the severed wrist of assistant sub-inspector was stitched back after a 7.5-hour-long surgery. "I am happy to share that a 7.5-hour long surgery has been successfully completed at PGIMER to repair the severed wrist of ASI Harjeet Singh. I thank the entire team of doctors and support staff for their painstaking effort. Wishing ASI Harjeet Singh a speedy recovery," said Amarinder Singh. Singh's hand was chopped off and a few others were injured when a group of men dressed as Nihangs attacked them at a vegetable market in Punjab's Patiala district, police said. Nine persons were earlier arrested by the Punjab Police in the case. The incident took place amid lockdown in the wake of COVID-19. For people fortunate enough to still be working and doing that from the safety of home, there can be a blurring of time as one day bleeds into the next. University academics who rushed to get course content online and office workers now using their commuting time to work on their laptops at home are starting to wonder whether these habits will continue after the COVID-19 crisis is over. Will things return to the way they were before? A new report suggests working from home may become the "new normal" for millions in the future. But not everyone likes it. An empty trail leading to the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) The powerful energy of a waterfall teeming with spring runoff, Half Dome dusted in snow and the lines of cars filled with tourists to see it. On any other April inside Yosemite National Park, that would be the case. Not this April. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the park is closed, campgrounds are empty, and the trails are void of people. The local residents aren't complaining. The deer, bobcats, coyotes and bears no longer have to deal with the hordes of camera-toting tourists vying to capture nature. They now roam unfettered. Los Angeles Times photographer Carolyn Cole gives us an inside look at the park and its return to the wild. Open meadows Deer feed in Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park is closed to visitors due to the coronavirus, allowing the animals to roam without having to worry about crowds of people. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Merced River The Merced River flows through the Yosemite Valley, with Bridalveil Fall in the background. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Residents Dane Peterson, left, Warren McClain and Billy Sanchez take a break along Northside Drive, just east of Horsetail Fall, soaking in the bright, warm sun. The three work at the Ahwahnee Hotel. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Tunnel view Yosemite Valley seen from the Tunnel View overlook on April 11. The popular lookout, normally filled with tour buses and visitors, sits empty. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Wildlife in abundance A coyote wanders around Curry Village, looking for a meal in Yosemite Valley. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) A bobcat, left, hunts for a meal, while a squirrel roams Yosemite Valley. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Half Dome Half Dome is dusted with snow and clouds inside a closed Yosemite National Park. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Curry Village A coyote wanders through the tent camps at Curry Village inside Yosemite National Park. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Sunrise in Yosemite Valley El Capitan is bathed in light at sunrise inside Yosemite National Park. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Yosemite Falls Yosemite Falls seen from across the Yosemite Valley. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Early warning Coronavirus Outbreak LIVE Updates: The Rajasthan government said that 108 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Tuesday, out of which 83 are from Jaipur. Total number of cases in the state stands at 1,005. Auto refresh feeds The Union health ministry on Monday said that 905 new COVID-19 cases and 51 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 9,352 and deaths to 324. Maharashtra with 2,064 cases continues to be the worst affected followed by Delhi with 1,154 cases and Tamil Nadu with 1075 cases. The number of containment zones in Delhi has been increased to 47. As many as 25 staff members of Mumbai's Bhatia hospital tested positive for coronavirus and number of cases in the city has reached 1549. The number of those who have died has reached 100 in the city. "On Monday, results of 244 samples were obtained of which 228 were negative and 16 positive. Total cumulative positive cases of coronavirus in Gautam Buddh Nagar so far is 80," district surveillance officer Sunil Dohare said in a late night statement. The western Uttar Pradesh district adjoining Delhi is among the 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh where hotspots have been sealed to contain the spread of COVID-19. Sixteen more people tested positive for coronavirus in Gautam Buddh Nagar on Monday, taking the total number of cases in the district to 80, according to officials. According to a bulletin on COVID-19, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has the highest number of active cases in the state at 216. Of the total 592 cases in the state, 103 have been cured, while 472 are undergoing treatment. A coronavirus patient died and at least 61 people tested positive for the virus in Telangana on Monday, taking the number of cases in the state to 592. The virus has so far claimed 17 lives in the state. The Meghalaya Chief Minister appealed to the public to abide by the curfew and not venture out of their houses. "Meghalaya has detected its first COVID-19 case in Shillong. This situation has come despite all the measures being taken by the government. In light of this, I urge citizens not to panic. We are closely monitoring the situation and we are prepared to deal with it. We have imposed complete curfew in Shillong for the next 48 hours," Sangma said on Monday. The Meghalaya government has imposed 48 hours curfew in Shillong with the first case of coronavirus being detected in the state capital on 12 April, according to Chief Minister Conrad Sangma. Assam has reported two positive cases for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. On Monday morning, one coronavirus positive case was reported from Dhubri district. Confirming the report, Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the new case is the secondary contact of the Nizamuddin Markaz case. Assam on Monday reported one more COVID-19 positive case, taking the state tally to 31. The fresh coronavirus positive case has been reported from the Goalpara district. He said, the 14-year-old had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event at Gopalgarh Bharatpur Markaj on 9 March along with 14 others. He said after the positive case reported from the Oal village, 40 more samples were taken and sent for testing. Cluster containment measures have been intensified with sanitization of the entire area, he said. While one minor was found COVID-19 positive in Oal Village of Mathura on Sunday, a nurse of a private hospital was found positive on Monday, District Magistrate Sarvagya Ram Mishra said. They have been kept in isolation, he said. The district administration intensified its containment efforts in the area, the officials said, as the total number of positive cases in the district reached five. A nurse of a private hospital in Mathura was found coronavirus positive on Monday, a day after a 14-year-old boy also tested positive for the infection, officials said. WHO says 18,500 people died of "swine flu", or H1N1, which was first uncovered in Mexico and the United States in March 2009, but the Lancet medical estimated the toll to be between 151,700 and 575,400. "We know that COVID-19 spreads fast, and we know that it is deadly, 10 times deadlier than the 2009 flu pandemic," he said. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from Geneva that the organisation was constantly learning about the new virus sweeping the globe, which has now killed nearly 115,000 people and infected over 1.8 million. The novel coronavirus is 10 times more deadly than swine flu, which caused a global pandemic in 2009, the World Health Organization said Monday, stressing a vaccine would be necessary to fully halt transmission. On Monday, the NSE Nifty 50 index closed down 1.3 percent at 8,993.85 and the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex ended 1.51 percent lower at 30,690.02. The 10-year benchmark bond yield closed at 6.4954 percent, while the rupee settled at 76.2290 to the dollar. Indias currency, debt and equity markets will be closed on Tuesday for a holiday. Financial markets will resume trading on Wednesday, 15 April. The development comes weeks after it was announced that Shah Rukh''s NGO Meer Foundation will work with the Maharashtra and West Bengal governments for the supply of 50,000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the healthcare professionals. Rajesh Tope, Minister of Public Health and Family Welfare of Maharashtra, said the "Fan" actor's contribution will help the healthcare workers immensely. Replying to the minister, Shah Rukh said everyone is united in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Monday provided 25,000 PPE kits to the frontline medical staff in Maharashtra fighting to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic in the state. According to a recently published study in the New England Journal of Medicine, two out of three critically ill coronavirus infected patients who were on oxygen support or on ventilators showed signs of improvement when they were administered remdesivir. The ICMR said research on its efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19 is a part of WHO's "Solidarity Trial". The Indian Council of Medical Research on Monday said antiviral drug remdesivir, which was used during the Ebola outbreak, may be highly effective in stopping the replication mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he was teaming up with his counterparts in adjacent New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island to devise the best strategies for easing stay-at-home orders imposed last month to curb coronavirus transmissions. Announcements from the New York-led group of East Coast governors, and a similar compact formed by California, Oregon, and Washington state, came after President Donald Trump declared that any decision on restarting the US economy was up to him, reported Reuters. Seven Northeastern US states and the three West Coast states banded together on Monday in regional pacts to forge coordinated, gradual economic reopenings as the coronavirus crisis finally appeared to be ebbing, while stressing the need for precautions to avoid a resurgence of infections. All three new locally transmitted cases were reported in Guangdong Province, it said. China's National Commission (NHC) in its daily report on Tuesday said 89 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, including three local infections, were reported on Monday in the country. COVID-19 cases have been increasing again after the country managed to contain the first wave of infections as hundreds of Chinese nationals returned home from various countries, including European nations, US, Russia and Iran, to escape the fallout of the pandemic. China continued to grapple with imported cases of coronavirus after stamping out the disease from its epicentre Wuhan as it reported 89 infections on Monday and the rise in asymptomatic patients posed serious concern for authorities, health officials said on Tuesday. Deaths reported on Sunday numbered 1,513, the smallest increase since 1,309 died on 6 April. The largest number of fatalities, over 10,000, was in New York state with the concentration in and around New York City, the most populous US city with about 8.4 million people. The United States, with the worlds third-largest population, has recorded more fatalities from COVID-19 than any other country. There were a total of nearly 570,000 US cases as of Monday with over 1.8 million reported cases globally. US deaths from the novel coronavirus topped 23,000 on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, as officials said the worst may be over and the outbreak could reach its peak this week. "All the residents are requested to kindly cooperate and refrain from coming out of the houses to enable the Health Department officials to do contat tracing and take appropriate remedial measures," the order said. As per a press release issued by the chief secretary of Meghalaya, a doctor from Bethany Hospital, Shillong has been tested COVID-19 positive today [Monday]. "The District Magistrate Shillong has imposed curfew for 48 hours in the Shillong Agglomeration area starting from 6.00 am of 14th April, 2020 with the exception of essential services," the release said. A doctor from Bethany Hospital in Shillong on Monday tested positive for COVID-19, making it the first positive case of coronavirus in Meghalaya, say reports. Trump said that his administration will soon finalise new and very important guidelines to give governors the information they need to start safely opening their states. "I've been having many discussions with my team and top experts and we're very close to completing a plan to open our country hopefully even ahead of schedule, and that's so important, Trump told reporters at his White House news conference on coronavirus. As a result of the deadly spread of the novel coronavirus, more than 95 per cent of the country's 330 million population are under stay-at-home order. The social mitigation guidelines have been in place for a month now and will continue till April 30. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he was very close to completing a plan to reopen the country. Across the state, a total of 229 people have so far been discharged from hospitals after recovering from the viral infection. Notably, Maharashtra had crossed the 1000-mark of COVID-19 cases on 7 April. The country's financial capital now alone accounts for 1540 COVID-19 cases and 101 deaths, he said. While the number of total cases has gone up to 2334, the COVID-19 death toll increased to 160 with 11 more people succumbing to the infection on Monday. The number of COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra on Monday crossed the 2000-mark, with 352 more people, including 242 from Mumbai, testing positive for the novel coronavirus infection, a Health department official said. The United States has more than 550,000 people infected with the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The number of fatalities was similar to the previous day's toll of 1,514. The outbreak has now claimed the lives of at least 23,529 people in the US, the most of any country. The United States recorded 1,509 deaths related to the coronavirus pandemic over the past 24 hours, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University as of 8:30 pm Monday (0030 GMT Tuesday). The ministry also said that 1211 new cases and 31 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours. A total number of 10,363 cases of coronavirus have been reported in India. So far, 339 people have succumbed to the infection in the country, while 1,035 patients have been cured. There are 8,988 active cases in the country, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. A 56-year old woman, a family member of an already positive case and a 38-year-old woman have tested positive for COVID19 on Tuesday, as the total number of positive cases in Mohali rise to 56, Mohali Deputy Commissioner Girish Dayalan told ANI. Mumbai's Worli Koliwada has been declared a COVID-19 'containment zone', the movement of people is restricted here, reports ANI. University President Lawrence Bacow announced in an email to Harvard affiliates on Monday that he along with Executive Vice President Katherine Lapp and University Provost Alan Garber will each cut their salaries by 25 percent. The report in The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, said that Harvard was "instituting an immediate university-wide salary and hiring freeze, cancelling or deferring discretionary spending, and considering deferring all capital projects." Prestigious US educational institutions Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are implementing salary and hiring freeze and their top leadership will take pay cuts as part of "hard choices" to control costs in a tough economic environment resulting from the global coronavirus pandemic, according to a report. It has come to light that many people are taking the medicine or stocking it due to the coronavirus fear, he said. "We have come to know that people were rushing to medical stores to buy hydroxychloroquine after it came in news and was also mentioned as an effective medicine by US President Trump for those infected by COVID-19," Gujarat Food and Drug Control Authority Commissioner H G Koshia told PTI. India is the world's largest manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine, which is used in the treatment of malaria. But, its demand has now increased after US President Donald Trump requested the Indian government to allow its export to America to treat COVID-19 patients. People in Gujarat have been consuming and stocking up hydroxychloroquine, being touted as 'game-changer' in the fight against coronavirus, prompting the state government to issue a warning against its health hazards and a directive to chemists not to sell it over the counter. During the course of the meeting, the Prime Minister had said that there seems to be a consensus amongst the States on the extension of lockdown by another two weeks. He underlined that the motto of the government earlier was 'jaan hai to jahaan hai' but now it is 'jaan bhi jahaan bhi'. Prior to this, the Prime Minister had on Saturday held consultations with Chief Ministers through video-conferencing, during which talks were held over the need for extending the lockdown further after taking into consideration the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10 am today, on the last day of the 21-day nationwide lockdown imposed with the aim to contain the spread of the deadly COVID-19. A total of 56 cases of novel coronavirus have been reported in Odisha, after one more person tested positive for the virus on Tuesday. So far, 18 people have been recovered from the disease. There are 37 active cases in the state now, repors CNN-News18. About 48 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Jaipur on Tuesday as the total number of confirmed cases in the state rise to 945, said Rajasthan Health Department. So far, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and West Bengal have extended the lockdown until 30 April. Punjab has extended it till 1 May. Prime Minister begins his address to the nation by saying India is doing well to tackle the coronavirus nation. He thanks people on the frontline of the COVID-19 battle. "Our fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic is progressing with strength," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledges the trouble being faced by the people of India during the COVID-19 lockdown. "In our constitution, 'We the People' is written, and this fight is what it signifies, he says. Remembering BR Ambedkar, says it a symbolic remembrance to his anniversary." he said. "You have been a witness to how India has fought coronavirus as compared to other countries," he added. Modi noted that it was unfair to compare with any other country. However, we cannot deny some realities. "It is true that India is in much better position than some of the developed countries," he said. India had started screening at airports and 14-day isolation for those coming from abroad, well in advance, announced Narendra Modi while addressing the nation on Tuesday. "We decided to implement this 21-day lockdown when we had only about 500 cases." he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the lockdown has been extended till 3 May, and that coronavirus should be curbed at every level. Even if one person dies due to coronavirus, he noted that "Our tension should increase. That is why hotspots have to be surveilled with extended vigilance, and take harsh steps to curb spread of coronavirus. If new hotspots arrive, our efforts will face problems." We will be implementing lockdown even more strictly till 20 April, said Narendra Modi. Some restrictions may be eased in places where there are no hotspots after that date, he added. He also said that the government must keep a close watch on places where new hotspots may emerge. The government will put out detailed guidelines, said the prime minister. Narendra Modi assures that \there is enough ration and stock of essential commodities in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the health infrastructure has improved by leaps and bound. He said labs have come up, beds have increased, more than 600 hospitals are working for coronavirus treatment. These facilities are being added upon every day. Even with our limited resources, Modi requests young scientists to come forth and help in creating coronavirus vaccine. Narendra Modi on Tuesday issues seven guidelines asking citizens to 'stay where you are, stay safe' and to follow all guidelines till 3 May. Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended his address by asking people to be very vigilant in following the coronavirus lockdown, which has now extended till 3 May. He wished everyone good health against this coronavirus menace. Tweeting right after his national address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to follow the lockdown till 3 May with "utmost vigilance.' Six more COVID-19 positive cases and two more deaths related to the virus reported in Dharavi area of Mumbai on Tuesday reported ANI. The total positive cases in the area is now at 55 and related deaths at seven, said Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Congress leader Shashi Tharoor supported Narendra Modi's decision to extend lockdown till 3 May. Taking to Twitter, the senior Congress leader said "Can't discard the gains being made. But he should have also announced serious relief for those who cannot make ends meet. MNREGA payments, Jan Dhan accounts, GST dues to states, and aid to sweeten the pill." 45 more COVID-19 positive cases reported in Gujarat. The total coronavirus cases in the state rise to 617, including 55 recovered patients and 26 deaths, state health department told ANI on Tuesday. Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Awanish Awasthi said 80 to 85 per cent of the cases have been reported from identified hotspots. On Monday, 75 persons tested positive for coronavirus in Uttar Pradesh, taking the total in the state to 558. Joint Director-cum-State Surveillance Officer Vikasendu Agrawal of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) on Tuesday said, "A total of 657 corona-positive cases have been reported from the state. Till now, the state has reported five deaths: one each in Basti, Meerut, Bulandshahr, Varnasi and Agra." As many as 657 people have tested positive so far for coronavirus, which has claimed five lives in Uttar Pradesh till now, a state Health Department official said on Tuesday. According to estimates by Johns Hopkins University, there are 1.92 million coronavirus cases across the world and 119,687 deaths. The US has the maximum number of 582,607 cases in the world and over 23,000 people have died in the country from COVID-19. Over 180 confirmed coronavirus cases and three deaths due to the disease have been reported across the United Nations system worldwide, a spokesman for Secretary General Antonio Guterres said. Mumbai Police is back with another witty post which urges people to stay inside their homes during the lockdown. In their latest tweet, the Mumbai Police reiterated their messages on social distancing, maintaining hygiene, not creating panic by reading and forwarding fake WhatsApp forwards by borrowing a page from TV show Sarabhai V/S Sarabhai. "We have taken the decision keeping in view the extended lockdown period. More updates will be available shortly," the official said. Earlier, all passenger services were cancelled till 14 April midnight. They said the decision was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the lockdown across the country will be extended till May 3 to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The Indian Railways has extended the suspension of its passenger services till 3 May, senior officials said on Tuesday. On the other hand, nearly 80 percent of employees of traders have migrated to their villages at the time of earlier locked down while only 20 percent of employees are working with traders for the supply of essential goods Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General of CAIT said that there are about 7 crore traders in the country, out of which about 1.5 million traders deals in essential commodities, but only 40 lakh of them have been able to continue the supply chain of essential commodities across the country because of facing several difficulties in obtaining passes from the Authorities and non-availability of transport. Due to locked down in of past 21 days the country, the retail trade has suffered a loss of business to the tune of Rs.3.15 lakh crores of rupees. The CAIT termed it as a logical and extremely important step desired under the present circumstances due to COVID-19 and has assured Prime Minister that the traders under any circumstances will continue to run supply chain of essential goods in a most efficient and effective manner so that citizens of the Country may not face any difficulty in obtaining essential commodities. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), the apex organization of the business community of the country, has strongly supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to continue the lockdown in the country. "Typically, stress-related insomnia is transient and persists for only a few days," said Bin Zhang, a professor at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and study co-author. "But if the COVID-19 outbreak continues, insomnia may gradually become chronic insomnia in the clinical setting," Zhang said. According to the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, healthcare workers who experienced sleeplessness following their hospital shifts were also more likely to feel depressed, anxious, and have stress-based trauma. More than a third of medical staff responding to COVID-19 during its peak in China may have suffered from insomnia, according to a study which suggests that the pandemic is not just a physical health threat, but may also be triggering a mental health epidemic. The officials said in the declared red zones across the valley, the restrictions have been intensified as authorities have warned of strict action against anyone violating prohibitory orders. They said to enforce the restrictions on the movement and assembly of people, the security forces have sealed off main roads in most places in the valley and erected barriers at several other places. Only persons with valid passes were allowed to move, they added. The corona-led lockdown in Kashmir entered 27th day on Tuesday with the infected cases crossing the 200-mark in the valley amid the continued restrictions on the movement and assembly of people to curb the pandemic, said, officials. So far, 50 people have died in the state due to coronavirus, he said. Tikamgarh district has also reported its first case of coronavirus, the offiical said. Of these, 126 were found positive for coronavirus in the reports received till Monday night, taking the total number of COVID-19 patients in Madhya Pradesh to 730, state health commissioner Faiz Ahmed Kidwai on Tuesday. The number of coronavirus cases in Madhya Pradesh has gone up to 730 with 126 more people testing positive for the disease in the last 24 hours, a senior health official said on Tuesday. In the last 24 hours, 1,171 people were tested for coronavirus in the state. "We owe it to the poor and weaker sections of society to do everything we can, whether financially or otherwise, to help them through these tough times. Govts must take the lead but it can't be just their responsibility," he said. National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on Tuesday said the decision to extend the lockdown till May 3 was a necessary step in view of the threat posed by COVID-19. Abdullah also urged people to help poor and weaker sections of the society during these tough times. The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 473 in Andhra Pradesh, after 34 new cases were reported on Tuesday. Of the 34 cases, 16 were reported in Guntur, 8 in Krishna, 7 in Kurnool, 2 in Anantapuram, and 1 in Nellore. Two people also died from coronavirus-related complications. All domestic and international scheduled airline operations shall remain suspended till 3 May, the date till which Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the coronavirus lockdown will continue. The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Maharashtra rose to 2,455 after 121 new cases were reported today. 160 deaths have been recorded in the state so far. According to an International Labour Organisation assessment, 40 crore informal sector workers in India could be pushed deeper into poverty due to this lockdown. The workers, especially migrant labourers, are the worst among due to the lockdown as a large number of them either faced pay cut or job loss. The Prime Minister has announced extension of the nationwide lockdown til 3 May with conditional relaxation from 20 April in some areas on the basis of evaluation of the situation. The Labour Ministry on Tuesday said it has set up 20 control rooms on pan-India basis to address wage-related grievances and to mitigate problems faced by migrant workers amid the lockdown period to contain the COVID-19 crisis. At the time of this global epidemic, the prime minister has shown us the victory path by giving seven instructions, Nadda said, adding, "We have to follow these seven sentences of Modi Ji literally". BJP president JP Nadda on Tuesday urged people to follow Prime Minister Narendra Modi's seven instructions and continue sticking to the various lockdown regulations with full devotion till May 3 to win the battle against COVID-19 pandemic. "As the Home Minister of the country, I assure the people again, that there is enough stock of food, medicines and other everyday things in the country, no citizen needs to worry. I also would like to request the relatively well off people to come forward and help the poor living in their vicinity," read the tweet by the Home Minister. After the prime minister announced the extension of lockdown, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday took to twitter, to assure people that there is no shortage of anything in the country whether it is food or medicines. Despite huge and multiple challenges, India has been demonstrating unwavering commitment in its fight against the pandemic. In these testing times, the action lies as much with the communities as with the authorities and the health workforce. It is indeed time for each and everyone to contribute their best and together beat the virus. Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO said that the World Health Organization commends Indias timely and tough actions to stop COVID19. It may be early to talk about results in numbers, but a six-week nationwide lock down to facilitate effective physical distancing, coupled with the expansion of core public health measures such as detection, isolation and tracing contacts of COVID19 positive people, would go a long way in arresting the virus spread. As many home buyers avail loans to fund their real estate purchases, the resumption of construction activity will allow developers to raise demands to their existing customers who in turn will ask banks for disbursements, leading to an uptake in credit. The government needs to now look at targeted relief measures for the real estate sector to ensure the industry continues to remain a leading employment generator and the effect of the lockdown does not further hamper the prospects of this category." Kaushal Agarwal, Chairman, The Guardians Real Estate Advisory, said, "the extension of the nationwide lockdown was bound to be extended, as we are still a few days away from flattening the curve. The government's decision is calibrated and prudent. Having said that, we would welcome a gradual opening of economic activity including the resumption of construction activity at project sites. The beginning of construction activity has multiple advantages as it brings wages to labourers, cash flow to developers, much-needed credit growth for banks and resumption of economic activity in the country. Offenders are fined Rs 200 for each of the first three violations and Rs 500 for every violation after that, the officer said. A total of 1,145 vehicles were also seized on Monday, he said. The fines were imposed by the Commissionerate of Police, Bhubaneswar-Cuttack as per the state government rules which made it mandatory for people to wear masks while coming out of their houses in the twin cities, he said. The Odisha Police has fined 167 persons for not wearing masks while venturing out of their houses amid the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the spread of novel coronavirus, a senior officer said on Tuesday. It also said that no advance reservation of trains tickets, including e-tickets, will be allowed until further orders. However, the facility of online cancellation will remain functional. The railways on Tuesday extended the suspension of all its passenger trains after Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended nationwide lockdown till May 3 in view of the coronavirus spread. Customers will also get full refunds of their tickets if they are cancelling their advance bookings for trains not yet cancelled, it said. The Indian Railways on Tuesday said full refund would automatically be provided to its online customers for trains cancelled up to May 3, while those who have booked at the counters can take refund till 31 July. DMK chief MK Stalin took to Twitter to criticize Narendra Modi's announcement on 3 May. "Prime Minister's speech on extending the lockdown till 3 May is a big disappointment. It has only advice and no announcement on providing relief to people who are suffering due to the lockdown," said DMK chief on Twitter. "All the district magistrates have been directed to appoint a nodal officer at the district-level to help people from other states and foreign countries living in their district, he said. "The people from other states and foreign countries should not face any difficulty in terms of food, safety and medical treatment," he added. In a statement issued here, chief secretary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari said people should stay wherever they are and not make any attempt to travel elsewhere. The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday directed all district magistrates in the state to appoint a nodal officer at the district-level to help people from other states and foreign countries amid the ongoing lockdown. Till date 258 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed. This includes 9 deaths and 65 discharges, the department said. Two patients, a 55- year-old man from Kalaburagi and a 65-year-old man from Bengaluru urban had passed away last night. Eleven new positive cases have been reported in the state from Monday evening to this noon, including the person who died in Vijayapura. The deceased was the husband of a patient who tested positive earlier. He expired at a designated hospital in Vijayapura, the department said in a mid-day situation update. A 69-year-old man from Vijayapura became the ninth COVID-19 related fatality in Karnataka, where 11 new cases of the virus were confirmed, taking the total number of infections in the state to 258, the health department said on Tuesday. The decision to resume construction works from 15 April in Uttar Pradesh stands cancelled in view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the nation today, where he announced the extension of nationwide lockdown till 3 May, ANI reported quoting state Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. All five patients have been shifted to Jhinjhana isolation ward, she said, adding the places where these five stayed too have been sealed. The three Tablighi Jamaat members belonged to Baghpat and were residing in a mosque in Kairana from where the district adminstration was able to track them down along with two of their contacts, said Kaur, adding all five tested positive for the infection. With five more testing positive for the infection, the number of COVID-19 cases in the district has risen to 16, said Shamli District Magistrate Jasjit Kaur on Tuesday. Five more persons have tested positive for coronavirus infection in Shamli district near here with three of them being participants to the Tablighi Jamaat meet in New Delhi's Nizamuddin and the two being their contacts. "With no information when normalcy will return, when we could head back to our respective workplace is the question that remains unanswered and here, I receive an intimation from the school regarding the hike in fee. I was baffled that how would I be able to cope up? I am anxious to know about the school fee hike and transport fee hike which the school says is to meet the cost demands for the academic year 2020-21," said Pivit Joshi, whose son studies in a prominent school in Noida told PTI. While the Gujarat government had on Monday announced that private schools will not hike fees for an year, the West Bengal government had appealed schools to refrain from hiking fees. However, no clear instructions have been issued on fee hike in Delhi-NCR. While parents are waiting for a school fee waiver during the lockdown due to COVID-19 situation in the country, several schools have announced a fee hike adding to their woes. Parents have started an online petition to the HRD Ministry demanding a directive to schools for not implementing fee hike this academic session at least till schools reopen. They should step out only to buy vegetables and food grains. People should remain safe by staying at home, the minister told reporters. Drones will be used in densely-populated areas like this to give instructions to people that they should not step out of their homes unnecessarily, and cooperate with the police. Deshmukh made the announcement through a loudspeaker attached to a drone that is being used to maintain vigil in densely-populated areas like the Koliwada, a fisherfolk village, and issue government instructions to residents. Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday visited Worli Koliwada, one of the coronavirus hotspots in Mumbai, and urged locals to stay at home to contain the spread of the disease and cooperate with the police. People flout norms of social distancing at Hoige Bazaar in Mangalore on Tuesday. The total number of positive cases in the state stands at 258 including 9 deaths. The lone COVID-19 case from the district is a 38-year-old man from Lamera village who recently returned from the worst-hit Indore, he said. "With this, the coronavirus has expanded its footprint to 24 districts out of the total 52 districts in Madhya Pradesh," he said. Tikamgarh in Madhya Pradesh has become the 24th district in the state to report a coronavirus positive case, an official said on Tuesday. "The prime minister listed seven tasks that the people should implement during the extended lockdown. However, he did not spell out concretely what the government will do," it said. It further said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not lay down any plan of action that would be implemented during the lockdown. "The experience of the three-week lockdown has shown the large-scale spread of hunger and inadequate shelter for a significant section of our people. It is imperative that the government must immediately implement a Rs 7500 ex-gratia cash transfer to all non-Income Tax paying families and resort to universal distribution of free food grains to all needy people. The central government must ensure that no starvation deaths occur," the party said in a statement. The CPI on Tuesday said the extended lockdown till 3 May would further increase the sufferings of the poor and marginalised and accused the government of not laying down any concrete plans for this duration. Two more COVID-19 cases were reported in Haryana on Tuesday and both patients belong to Faridabad, reported ANI. The total number of coronavirus positive cases in the state is now at 184, including 143 active cases, 39 discharged and 2 deaths, said Haryana Health Department. "The central governemnt is about to receive the kits which have been imported, then we will get too. We will start working with it, the day we receive it," he added. Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said that the state government hasn't received the rapid testing kits from the Centre yet, and that there is "great need for them". Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to address a video press conference on Tuesday at 5:30 pm on the coronavirus situation in the National Capital. "An area where 1 or 2 positive cases are found is considered an 'Orange Zone'. It is monitored and declared a 'Red Zone' if more cases are found there," he said. "We've made the criteria more stringent now. Earlier an area used to be declared a 'Red Zone' if 10 or more positive cases were found there. Now, if three cases are found in an area it'll be declared a 'Red Zone' and contained. Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said that there are 47 'Red Zones' in the National Capital as of Tuesday. Pune health officials said that four more deaths were reported in the city on Tuesday. The patients reportedly had co-morbidity. A total of 38 people have died in Pune till now. "The labour department has issued a circular directing the private sector employers to abstain from layoffs or unpaid leaves during this countrywide lockdown. Employees would be paid wages on the due date without any deduction during this period," Labour Minister Shivaram Hebbar tweeted last night. The Karnataka labour department has directed private sector employers in the state not to lay off workers and pay them wages on the due date without any deduction during the lock down. A 34-year-old nurse working with Pune's Sassoon Hospital tested positive for coronavirus on Monday, the hospital said. "She has been shifted to an isolation ward," said Dr Ajay Chandanwale, Dean of the hospital. Reports quoted doctors of a hospital in Kashmir as saying that 13 COVID-19 patients have been dicharged, following their successful recovery. The Uttar Pradesh government said that 17,585 FIRs have been registered and 22,632 vehicles have been seized for violation of the coronavirus lockdown. In action against fake news, 12 TikTok accounts, seven Facebook accounts, two Twitter accounts and one WhatsApp account have been blocked. Meanwhile, Iran, which is one of the worst-hit countries, said that COVID-19 casualties have dropped below 100 for first time in month. AFP reported that Spain on Tuesday reported 567 deaths from the coronavirus, which is a slight increase after a one-day decline, bringing the total number of fatalities to 18,056. The BMC on Tuesday asked hospitals in Mumbai to hire medical staff like doctors, nurses, ward boys, and others on an "urgent basis" and suggested the remuneration to be given to the staff per month. He added, "5.29 crore beneficiaries have been given free ration of food grains under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana. 3,985 MT of pulses have been dispatched to various states/union territories for distribution." "As of yesterday, more than 32 crore poor people have been given direct cash support of Rs 29,352 crore under the package," said Rajesh Malhotra of the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance on Tuesday said that the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package "is being monitored at the highest level". The scheme inlcudes measures for those affected by the COVID-19 lockdown, including food security. "Additionally, we are ordering close to about 33 lakh kits for RT-PCR and 37 lakh rapid kits are expected to come at any point in time," said R Gangakhedkar of the ICMR. "(The RT-PCR kits)...are far more sufficient in numbers, which would essentially mean that we would be able to cover ourselves for a long period of time," the statement said. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Tuesday said that in addition to the COVID-19 testing kits available in India that are expected to last for 6 weeks, a new installment of RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction) kits have also been received. ICMR's R Gangakhedkhar on Tuesday said that until Monday 2,31,902 samples had been tested for coronavirus. Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Union health ministry said that so far, 1,036 people have been cured. On Monday, 179 people were diagnosed and found cured. Reports said that two more deaths due to coronavirus were reported in Mumbai's densely-populated area, Dharavi, on Tuesday, taking the COVID-19 toll in the area to seven. He added, "Under this, we are promoting the concept of behavioral change in terms of social distancing to break the chain of transmission." "Our major effort is to see how to break the chain of transmission. If no new case is reported in an area for 28 days, the last case comes negative, then we believe that chain of transmission has broken there and no new cases are coming," said Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry Health workers of the Manorama Raje TB hospital in Indore, were quoted by ANI as saying, "We are 30 people with two in each room. Our rooms don't get cleaned and sanitised. We don't get proper food. One of our staff tested positive for COVID-19 but no precautionary measure has been taken for us." News18 on Tuesday reported that the ICMR has approved the use of 'pool testing', which facilitates testing five samples together, as the number of COVID-19 cases in India crossed the 10,000-mark. Detailing the measures taken by the state government to combat the spread of infection in the National Capita, he said that he is scheduled to visit a few COVID-19 hotspots in the city on Wednesday. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, addressing a video press conference on Tuesday, said that it was painful that people were engaging in communalism in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic crisis. The Union health ministry on Tuesday said that 1,463 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in the last 24 hours, which is the sharpest ever rises in cases in India. The total tally of cases is now at 10,815, including 9,272 active cases, 1,190 cured/discharged/migrated and 353 deaths. The Odisha government said that four more people have tested positive for coronavirus in Odisha on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases in the state to 60 including one death and 18 cured/discharged. A large group of migrant labourers gathered outside Bandra station in Mumbai on Tuesday, demanding permission to return to their native states. They were later dispersed after police and local leaders intervened and asked them to vacate. Three people who had tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra's Sangli were cured and discharged on Tuesday. "25 out of the total 26 positive cases reported in Sangli have been cured and discharged so far. The one admitted in hospital is also stable," said Abhijeet Chaudhary, Sangli Collector. There are 602 dedicated COVID-19 hospitals having 1,06,719 isolation beds and 12,024 ICU beds across the country, said Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, on Tuesday. Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray is likely to address the state at 8 pm on Tuesday, India Today reported. It is likely that he will speak about the migrant workers who are still stuck in cities like Mumbai and Pune, as the lockdown was extended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier on Tuesday. Soon after Mumbai Police lathicharged and dispersed a large crowd of migrant workers who thronged Bandra station seeking to go back to their native places on Tuesday, journalists criticised the police action and said that situation was " mismanaged ". He said, "They dont want food or shelter, they want to go back home. Right from the day the trains have been shut down, the state had requested trains to run for 24 hours more so that migrant labour could go back home. CM Uddhav Thackeray ji raised this issue in the PM-CM Video conference as well requesting a roadmap for migrant labour to reach home." Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray said that the situation in which hundreds of migrant workers crowded the Bandra station seeking to go back to their native places on Tuesday was "a result of the Union Govt not being able to take a call on arranging a way back home for migrant labour." The MCGM on Tuesday said that 204 new coronavirus cases and 11 deaths were reported in Mumbai in the last 24 hours. The total number of positive cases in Mumbai rose to 1,753, including 111 deaths. The MHA said that in pursuance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement on Tuesday, the Centre issued orders prescribing extension of lockdown for containment of COVID-19 epidemic in the country, till 3 May 2020. Two doctors from Delhi's RML hospital have tested positive for COVID-19. Both are admitted at the hospital for treatment. There is a possibility that both of them were exposed to COVID-19 positive cases. Contact tracing has started, the hospital's statement said. Tamil Nadu health secretary Beela Rajesh said that the number of Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) cases tested in the last 24 hours in the state is 69 and none of them have found to be positive. However, the statement didn't provide details on how the authorities were planning to implement these measures for the migrant population stranded in the city as the coronavirus lockdown got further extended to 3 May. Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh said that the situation of migrant workers thronging the Mumbai's Bandra station seeking to go back to their native places on Tuesday has been "brought under control" and said that the state government will "ensure accommodation and food for them". Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said, "In past few days COVID-19 cases rose significantly. On 9 April, 51 cases were reported, 183 on 10 April, 166 on 11 April, 356 on 13 April. In last 2 months, many foreigners came to Delhi from affected nations. The Tablighi Jamaat event also took place. This too caused an additional burden." The West Bengal government said that as of Tuesday, there were 120 active COVID-19 cases, an increase of 10 from Monday. Seven deaths due to the coronavirus have also been reported in the state, the statement said. 14 people from Kashmir have recovered. Total number of positive cases stands now at 278 in the Union Territory. The Jammu and Kashmir government on Tuesday said that eight new cases of coronavirus were reported in the union territory on Tuesday, of which six are from Kashmir and two from Jammu. Reports also said that Home Minister Amit Shah spoke to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray over the issue and expressed concern over it. "He stressed that such events weaken Indias fight against coronavirus and administration needs to stay vigilant to avoid such incidents. He also offered his full support to Maharashtra government," News18 reported. After criticisng the Centre over the thronging of migrant workers at Bandra station, Aaditya Thackeray said, "The Centre has taken immediate cognizance of issue and is assisting state actively. We understand the catch-22 situation Centre and states face.Thankful to the Prime Minister and Home Minister for understanding the situation, while trying to ensure safety of home states of migrants." The statement added, "Local police officials went to the spot, talked to them and tried to convince them. During this, a section of the crowd turned violent so light force had to be used to bring them under control. Crowd was dispersed. Police is deployed there. Situation is normal and peaceful." Speaking on the situation of migrant workers thronging at Bandra station in which the Mumbai Police reportedly lathicharged the crowd, a statement by the police said, "Today at 4 pm, around 1,500 people gathered at Bandra railway station premises. Many of them were migrant labourers. They were unhappy with the extension of the lockdown and wanted to go back to their homes. They had placed their demand before administration." Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, addressing a video conference on Tuesday said that the state government is planning to segregate hospitals in the state. "This (Coronavirus) is a problem that has affected the whole world. Everyone is forced to observe all festivities at their homes. I want to thank Bhim Sainiks on Ambedkar Jayanti today, that they avoided gathering and observed the day from their homes," he said. Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said that he would like to thank supporters of BR Ambedkar for not gathering on his birth anniversary. He also said, "Today Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation and announced that the lockdown will be extended till 3 May. I thank Prime Minister for it, as I had suggested the same." Uddhav Thackeray said that Maharashtra is "probably" conducting the highest number of COVID-19 tests. He added, "Mumbai has tested over 22,000 samples. 2,334 positive cases reported till today morning. 230 people around 10 percent have recovered." "We have 10 districts which have zero COVID-19 positive cases. We will maintain that and we will try that all districts are COVID-free as early as possible. Mumbai and Pune are hotspots and we are increasing our testing centers at these places. Containment zones are on prime focus for testing and sampling. We are trying to remove all supply related problems even from containment zones," he added. Uddhav Thackeray said, "After COVID-19 outbreak ends, we will have an equally serious challenge which will be the revival of the economy in the state. Therefore, we have formed committees which will prepare the plans for its revival." Thackeray's address came soon after hundreds of workers thronged the Bandra station in an attempt to get back to their native places at the end of the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown. "Today what happened in Bandra was unfortunate. It might have happened because they thought that trains will start from 14 April and so they would be able to go back to their villages," he added. Addressing them, he said, "Nobody wants that you stay in lock-up without your will. Lockdown doesn't mean lock-up. It is our country. You're safe in my state and don't worry. The day when lockdown will be lifted, not only me, but Centre also will make arrangements for you." Assuring migrant workers who are still stranded in Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray said that they should stay put without fear and that the extension of the lockdown "didn't mean that they were locked up". "Since some of them were complaining about food, we have called an NGO and immediately brought food packets for them. The situation is now under control," a police officer at the spot told reporters. Hundreds of migrant workers gathered in Surat on Tuesday evening, demanding that they be sent to their native places despite lockdown, PTI reported. The migrant workers gathered in Varachha area of Surat city and sat on a road demanding that they should be allowed to go to their native places, police said. The protesting migrants allegedly resorted to arson and vandalised vegetables carts and other shops in the Laskana area in Surat On Friday, 81 people were arrested for violating lockdown and on charges of rioting in the city. "The workers resorted to violence after many of them were not paid their salaries for March and also denied permission by the authorities to go back to their native places," the report said. Migrants working in the textile industry in Surat on Tuesday protested by squatting on roads in the Varachcha area of the city as Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the nationwide lockdown which was coming to an end today, will now be extended till 3 May. This is the third such incident of migrant workers taking to the streets in Surat since the lockdown began, Hindustan Times reported , and the second such incident in less than a week. Three new COVID-19 cases were reported in Jharkhand, state health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni said on Tuesday. Two are from Ranchi's Hindpiri and one is from Simdega. The total number of positive cases in the state rose to 27. Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh said that strict action will be taken against those who spread the rumour that trains will start on 14 April. His statement is regarding the situation that occured at Bandra station on Tuesday evening, where in hundreds of migrant workers thronged to the station demanding to be sent home. Number of containment zones in Delhi on Tuesday increased to 55 after seven more areas were included in the list. The Gujarat health department said that two more deaths due to coronavirus were reported in the state on Tuesday, taking the toll to 28. Meanwhile, 33 new cases were reported, taking the total number of cases to 650 including 59 recovered/discharged. He added, "We've decided to focus on these areas to control spread of coronavirus. From 6 am tomorrow till 21 April. Curfew to remain imposed in Danilimda, Jamalpur and Dariyapur. From 1 to 4 pm daily curfew will be lifted but only women of these areas will be given this freedom." Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani said that Ahmedabad district has more than 350 coronavirus, which accounts for more than 50 percent cases in the state. "To be particular the cases are from the walled city and Danilimda area," he said. The Pune municipal corporation said that 17 health workers, including three resident doctors, of the state-run Sonawane Maternity Home have been put under quarantine after a pregnant lady being treated in the hospital tested positive for COVID-19. He said, "Labourers gathered and wanted to go back to their home states. We explained to them that lockdown is extended so no vehicular movement is possible. They also complained that they're not getting food. We called an agency which is serving food. We're requesting people to take it." DCP Surat on Tuesday said that protesting migrant workers in the city have been given food. ANI reported that a case has been registered at Bandra police station under sections 143, 147, 149, 186, 188 of IPC read with Section 3 of Epidemic Act against 800-1,000 unidentified people in connection with the incident of gathering in Bandra on Tuesday evening. The Andhra Pradesh governemnt said that the total number of coronavirus cases in the state stand at 483, including 16 discharged people and nine deaths. Nine people have passed away in the state so far, reports said, A 56-year-old doctor who tested positive for coronavirus in Andhra Pradesh passed away on Tuesday, reports said. He is a contact case, reports said. The Rajasthan government said that 108 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Tuesday, out of which 83 are from Jaipur. Total number of cases in the state stands at 1,005. Gujarat Congress president Amit Chavda said that an MLA of the party has tested positive for coronavirus in the state. The Delhi government said that 51 new coronavirus cases were reported in Delhi on Tuesday, including nine positive cases. The total number of positive cases in the National Capital now stands at 1,561, including 1,080 positive cases. The Ministry of Railways on Tuesday said that all passenger train services are fully cancelled, across the nation, till 3 May 2020 and there is no plan to run any special train to clear the passenger rush. Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that a woman from Dhubri has tested positive for COVID-19. She is wife of a COVID-19 positive person who is connected both with Nizamuddin Markaz, and Athgaon Kabristan congregation in Guwahati. The number of patients is now 32. The Telangana government said that 52 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases to 644 including 18 deaths and 110 cured/discharged The Bengaluru municipal corporation said that 38 hotspots have been declared in Bengaluru on Tuesday. According to Punjab chief Ssecretary KBS Sidhu, a COVID-19 patient undergoing treatment in Punjab's Gurdaspur is being shifted to Amritsar after the patient's health deteriorated. France on Tuesday reported 762 more coronavirus deaths, taking the total toll to 15,729, AFP news agency reported, quoting an official. The Delhi government said that 51 new coronavirus cases were reported in Delhi on Tuesday, including nine positive cases. The total number of positive cases in the National Capital now stands at 1,561, including 1,080 positive cases. I appeal to all twitter armies who tweeted, and to those who responded to bandra incident in a polarised, political or communal way, lets not do that. This is a time for focus. Join hands, were all in this together The Ministry of Railways on Tuesday said that all passenger train services are fully cancelled, across the nation, till 3 May 2020 and there is no plan to run any special train to clear the passenger rush. Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that a woman from Dhubri has tested positive for COVID-19. She is wife of a COVID-19 positive person who is connected both with Nizamuddin Markaz, and Athgaon Kabristan congregation in Guwahati. The number of patients is now 32. The Telangana government said that 52 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases to 644 including 18 deaths and 110 cured/discharged The Bengaluru municipal corporation said that 38 hotspots have been declared in Bengaluru on Tuesday. All the balcony people take a long and hard look at the ground. First it was Delhi, now Mumbai. The migrant crisis is a time bomb that must be defused before it becomes a crisis bigger than Corona. Balcony government must keep their eyes on what's happening on the ground too. According to Punjab chief Ssecretary KBS Sidhu, a COVID-19 patient undergoing treatment in Punjab's Gurdaspur is being shifted to Amritsar after the patient's health deteriorated. France on Tuesday reported 762 more coronavirus deaths, taking the total toll to 15,729, AFP news agency reported, quoting an official. Coronavirus Outbreak LATEST Updates: The Rajasthan government said that 108 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Tuesday, out of which 83 are from Jaipur. Total number of cases in the state stands at 1,005. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani said that Ahmedabad district has more than 350 coronavirus, which accounts for more than 50 percent cases in the state. "To be particular the cases are from the walled city and Danilimda area," he said. He added, "We've decided to focus on these areas to control spread of coronavirus. From 6 am tomorrow till 21 April. Curfew to remain imposed in Danilimda, Jamalpur and Dariyapur. From 1 to 4 pm daily curfew will be lifted but only women of these areas will be given this freedom." Assuring migrant workers who are still stranded in Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray said that they should stay put without fear and that the extension of the lockdown "didn't mean that they were locked up". Addressing them, he said, "Nobody wants that you stay in lock-up without your will. Lockdown doesn't mean lock-up. It is our country. You're safe in my state and don't worry. The day when lockdown will be lifted, not only me, but Centre also will make arrangements for you." Thackeray's address came soon after hundreds of workers thronged the Bandra station in an attempt to get back to their native places at the end of the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown. Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray is likely to address the state at 8 pm on Tuesday, India Today reported. It is likely that he will speak about the migrant workers who are still stuck in cities like Mumbai and Pune, as the lockdown was extended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier on Tuesday. Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray said that the situation in which hundreds of migrant workers crowded the Bandra station seeking to go back to their native places on Tuesday was "a result of the Union Govt not being able to take a call on arranging a way back home for migrant labour." He said, "They dont want food or shelter, they want to go back home. Right from the day the trains have been shut down, the state had requested trains to run for 24 hours more so that migrant labour could go back home. CM Uddhav Thackeray ji raised this issue in the PM-CM Video conference as well requesting a roadmap for migrant labour to reach home." A large group of migrant labourers gathered outside Bandra station in Mumbai on Tuesday, demanding permission to return to their native states. They were later dispersed after police and local leaders intervened and asked them to vacate. The Union health ministry on Tuesday said that 1,463 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in the last 24 hours, which is the sharpest ever rises in cases in India. The total tally of cases is now at 10,815, including 9,272 active cases, 1,190 cured/discharged/migrated and 353 deaths. The Union health ministry on Tuesday said that with 1,211 fresh cases of coronavirus reported in the last 24 hours, the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country has reached 10,363 including 339 deaths. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Tuesday said that in addition to the COVID-19 testing kits available in India that are expected to last for 6 weeks, a new installment of RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction) kits have also been received. "(The RT-PCR kits)...are far more sufficient in numbers, which would essentially mean that we would be able to cover ourselves for a long period of time," the statement said. "Additionally, we are ordering close to about 33 lakh kits for RT-PCR and 37 lakh rapid kits are expected to come at any point in time," said R Gangakhedkar of the ICMR. The BMC on Tuesday asked hospitals in Mumbai to hire medical staff like doctors, nurses, ward boys, and others on an "urgent basis" and suggested the remuneration to be given to the staff per month. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to address a video press conference on Tuesday at 5:30 pm on the coronavirus situation in the National Capital. The CPI on Tuesday said the extended lockdown till 3 May would further increase the sufferings of the poor and marginalised and accused the government of not laying down any concrete plans for this duration. Meanwhile, Rajasthan Health Department reported a rise of 72 new cases out of which 71 were registered in Jaipur and one in Jhunjhunu. Five more persons have tested positive for coronavirus infection in Shamli district near here with three of them being participants to the Tablighi Jamaat meet in New Delhi's Nizamuddin and the two being their contacts. With five more testing positive for the infection, the number of COVID-19 cases in the district has risen to 16, said Shamli District Magistrate Jasjit Kaur on Tuesday. A 69-year-old man from Vijayapura became the ninth COVID-19 related fatality in Karnataka, where 11 new cases of the virus were confirmed, taking the total number of infections in the state to 258, the health department said on Tuesday. The Indian Railways on Tuesday said full refund would automatically be provided to its online customers for trains cancelled up to 3 May, while those who have booked at the counters can take refund till 31 July. Customers will also get full refunds of their tickets if they are cancelling their advance bookings for trains not yet cancelled, it said. The Labour Ministry on Tuesday said it has set up 20 control rooms on pan-India basis to address wage-related grievances and to mitigate problems faced by migrant workers amid the lockdown period to contain the COVID-19 crisis. The Prime Minister has announced extension of the nationwide lockdown till 3 May with conditional relaxation from 20 April in some areas on the basis of evaluation of the situation. The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Maharashtra rose to 2,455 after 121 new cases were reported today. Meanwhile, airlines are railways announced suspension of services till 3 May, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered extension of the nationwide lockdown. The Indian Railways has extended the suspension of its passenger services till 3 May, senior officials said on Tuesday. They said the decision was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the lockdown across the country will be extended till 3 May to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the lockdown has been extended till 3 May, and that coronavirus should be curbed at every level. The government will put out detailed guidelines, said the prime minister. Narendra Modi assures that there is enough ration and stock of essential commodities in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10 am today, on the last day of the 21-day nationwide lockdown imposed with the aim to contain the spread of the deadly COVID-19. A total number of 10,363 cases of coronavirus have been reported in India. So far, 339 people have succumbed to the infection in the country, while 1,035 patients have been cured. There are 8,988 active cases in the country, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The ministry also said that 1211 new cases and 31 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours. Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the nation, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in a video message on Tuesday morning praised those at the forefront in the fight against coronavirus - doctors, sanitation workers, policemen - and said they were fighting the pandemic despite the lack of resources. The Meghalaya government has imposed 48 hours curfew in Shillong with the first case of coronavirus being detected in the state capital on 12 April, according to Chief Minister Conrad Sangma. The Union health ministry on Monday said that 905 new COVID-19 cases and 51 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 9,352 and deaths to 324. In what comes as a positive development on the penultimate day of a nationwide lockdown, 25 districts across 15 states which had detected COVID-19 infections earlier have contained the spread and reported no new cases in 14 days, the ministry said. The districts are Gondia (Maharashtra), Raj Nand Gaon (Chhattisgarh), Davangiri (Karnataka), South Goa, Wayanad and Kottayam (Kerala), West Imphal (Manipur), Rajouri (J&K), Aizwal West (Mizoram), Mahe in Puducherry, SBS Nagar in Punjab, Patna, Nalanda and Munger in Bihar, Pratapgarh in Rajasthan, Panipat, Rohtak and Sirsa in Haryana, Pauri Garhwal in Uttrakhand and Bhadradari Kothagudem in Telangana. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10 am on Tuesday and is likely to talk about the further course of action to deal with the crisis posed by virus. Cases in Maharashtra cross 2,000, count in Delhi up to 1,154 As many as 25 staff members of Mumbai's Bhatia hospital tested positive for coronavirus and number of cases in the city has reached 1549. The number of those who have died has reached 100 in the city. Maharashtra with 2,064 cases continues to be the worst affected followed by Delhi with 1,154 cases and Tamil Nadu with 1075 cases. The number of containment zones in Delhi has been increased to 47. New cases have been reported from several states including Kerala, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Nagaland reported its first COVID-19 case following which several localities and a hospital in Dimapur have been sealed. Uttarakhand Health Department said that no new positive COVID-19 case emerged in the state for the fifth day in a row. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said 2,06,212 COVID-19 tests were conducted till Sunday. "Of these 14,855 tests took place at 156 government labs and 1,913 tests happened at 69 private labs on Sunday," ICMR's head scientist Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar said at the daily media briefing on COVID-19 situation. "At the pace at which we are conducting tests today, we have a stock with which we can conduct tests for the next six weeks easily," the ICMR official said. He said a consignment of COVID-19 kits is expected to arrive from China on 15 April. Administrative measures The Union Health Ministry informed that 78,000 self-help group members of 27 states have produced 1.96 crore masks under the State Rural Livelihood Missions. "Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna package, over 30,000 poor people have been provided financial support of Rs 28,256 crore during the lockdown up to April 10. This includes support of Rs 19.86 crore to Jan Dhan Yojna women account holders who were transferred Rs 9,930 crores. "Under the PM Kisan Yojna, 6.93 crore farmers have been provided support of Rs 13,855 crore. Under social assistance programmes 2.82 crore widows, senior citizens and disabled have been provided support of Rs 1,405 crore," Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in the Union health ministry, said. Agarwal also said that the Core Strategy Group on COVID-19 was working on rapid and economical diagnostics as well as new drugs. "The group has been formed, based on a detailed review of COVID-19 research, undertaken by Union Health Minister Harshvardhan along with CSIR and its 38 labs. The group is working on digital and molecular surveillance, rapid and economical diagnostics, new drugs, repurposing of drugs and associated production processes," he said. In Delhi, traders at Delhi's Azadpur Mandi have been told to follow the odd-even rule according to their shed numbers to maintain social distancing. There will be staggered time for sale of vegetables and fruits in the mandis. The Chandigarh government said all government schools and government-aided schools will be having summer vacations from 15 April till 15 May. The private schools will be advised to synchronise the same. Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the state government has started a helpline through which we want to connect non-resident Assamese. "They can call 9615471547, we'll register them. Once registered, we'll transfer an amount which will help them in surviving in another state till lockdown is completely lifted. We have also started an initiative to help the people who are stuck in different countries. To those residents of Assam, we have transferred $ 1,000." He added, "Another initiative was to help critically ill patients, like those suffering from cancer, kidney and liver ailment. We have transferred Rs 25,000 each to all those patients so that they can continue to get treatment wherever they are today." Global picture The global toll of the novel coronavirus pandemic rose to 1,14,539 on Monday, according to the AFP tally. "More than 1,853,300 declared cases have been registered in 193 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China in December. Of these cases, at least 395,000 are now considered recovered," India Today reported. Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global coronavirus epidemic, on Monday started to ease tough lockdown restrictions that have kept people confined to their homes for more than a month and put a brake on economic activity, Reuters reported. Spains cumulative death toll from the coronavirus rose to 17,489 on Monday, up 517 from 16,972 on Sunday, the Spanish health ministry said. Confirmed cases totalled 169,496, up from 166,019 the previous day. However, this was the smallest proportional daily increase in the number of deaths and new infections. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is recuperating from his Covid-19 hospitalisation at his country retreat of Chequers, where he has been joined by his pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds. Downing Street has said that the prime minister would not be returning to work immediately and will be based at the sprawling 1,000-acre estate in Buckinghamshire, south-east England, for a recovery period on medical advice. UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab continues to deputise for Johnson as the UK entered a fourth week in lockdown on Monday and the country's total coronavirus death toll hit 10,612. UK ministers are required by law to review the strict social distancing measures by Thursday. In a video message issued after his discharge from St Thomas' Hospital in London on Sunday, Johnson, 55, urged the public to continue to follow the stay-at-home advice in the ongoing fight against coronavirus. With inputs from agencies A RESPECTED cafe owner died in a freak accident when her car apparently rolled forward and fatally struck her outside her Carlow home. Tributes have poured in to outgoing and vivacious cafe owner Fiona Whelan (35) who was killed last weekend in a tragic accident outside her Hacketstown residence. Gardai have indicated that the young woman died after being involved in a freak accident outside her house at 3.20pm on Saturday. Her car, which was switched off, inexplicably rolled forward as she stood in front of it and inflicted fatal injuries. The incident is being treated as a "tragic accident." Ms Whelan was pronounced dead at the scene and her body was taken to Waterford Regional Hospital where a full post mortem examination will be carried out by the Office of the State Pathologist. The vehicle has been removed for a technical examination and investigations are ongoing. Ms Whelan of Rathnagrew ran the popular Perch Cafe in Baltinglass, Wicklow. Local infomation page, Baltinglass Matters, posted a statement on Facebook. They hailed Fiona as a "very special person" who was "known, respected and appreciated by people in the area." "The unexpected loss of such a vibrant young woman has left us stunned." Ms Whelan packed a full career in hospitality and catering into her short life. She started work at just 16 years in Germaine's in Baltinglass and later worked for some years in Bia Blasta. Then she got the opportunity to run her own business, taking a short lease of DLish in Tinahely. After that she returned to Baltinglass to manage The Perch Cafe and more recently she leased the business to run it as her own. "She was an excellent businesswoman with a positive attitude towards enhancing the community in general." "Far from seeing other catering outlets as competition, she believed that mutual support benefited all." "Many people can testify to her quiet generosity, advice and support, and her caring nature. Baltinglass Fair Trade+ is one organisation that very much appreciated her help, but her kindness to individuals trickled through the community." On March 15, Ms Whelan had a meeting with her staff and they jointly agreed that The Perch should close during the pandemic for the wellbeing of all. "She especially took into account her staff members families and their safety. She opened to serve coffee on just one Saturday since then. With her innate optimism, she was looking forward to getting back to normal once the crisis had passed." "Our Fiona was a hard worker and a talented baker. Her trademark was that sunny disposition that made every day brighter. She loved the people in her life but she also had a special place in her heart for her dogs. Its hard to believe that this has happened." "We can only direct some of the positivity she possessed towards Michael, her parents Mary and Jimmy, her siblings Siobhan and Declan, her nephew Jack, her extended family, the kitchen and front-of-house staff of The Perch, and her huge circle of friends. The regular customers at The Perch are heartbroken too." Hacketstown Community Group also expressed its shock at the passing of Ms Whelan. "The surrounding community were left saddened and numb upon hearing of the untimely passing of Fiona Whelan." Knockannanna GAA in Co Wicklow has invited the local community to pay their own tribute to Fiona at the Holy Cross at the village crossroads. "You can leave a Mass card or write a note for Mick and the Whelan family. We will have cards there for people to write their messages of support." "People can leave flowers and everybody can bring a candle to represent your households support for Mick and the Whelan family at this difficult time." "One person will light all the candles at 9pm for the next few nights to remember Fiona." "We ask people to please adhere to social distancing rules when leaving your tribute . Unfortunately can we ask people to leave their candle,flowers and note and disperse .The Gardai want us to stress this is not a vigil and not to gather." Meanwhile, Rathdangan Community Council also paid tribute to the businesswoman whom they described as being "a beautiful girl inside and out always had a beautiful beaming smile and friendly words for everyone who passed her way. A girl who had so much ambition and zest for life with a mighty big heart." Funeral arrangements will be finalised in the coming days. Unfortunately the local community will be unable to turn out for the funeral arising out of a Covid 19 restrictions. Ms Whelan is survived by her partner Michael Byrne, parents Mary and Jimmy, brother Declan, sister Siobhan, nephew Jack, uncles, aunts, relatives, neighbours and many friends. [April 13, 2020] C2FO Calls on U.S. Government and Federal Reserve Bank to Save Small Business + Millions of Jobs with Small Business Supplier Protection Plan C2FO, the world's largest non-bank provider of working capital to small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), has published an open letter to the U.S. government and Federal Reserve Bank that calls for immediate action to provide relief to SMBs in the U.S. In the letter, C2FO's founder and CEO, Sandy Kemper, calls for the creation of a Small Business Supplier Protection Plan that would provide low-cost funding to Fortune 1000 companies in the U.S. to pay their small and mid-sized suppliers immediately. This plan could inject up to $580 billion of immediate relief into the U.S. economy for small businesses and the more than 60 million employees they sustain. "In this economic crisis, the greatest financial relief we can give small and mid-sized businesses is faster payment of their outstanding invoices," Kemper said. "The government and banks have stepped in with emergency lending, but much work remains to address the full needs of small and mid-sized businesses. If implemented quickly, we believe this solution could solve a significant part of the crisis for millions of businesses in need of capital in the U.S." Small businesses typically have only a few weeks of cash on hand. Yet many have significant accounts receivable, often representing 60-90 days of sales. Under the proposed Small Business Supplier Protection Plan, low cost funds would be advanced to the large customers of the nation's SMBs in order to pay the SMBs immediately, turning their accounts receivable to cash, without requiring the SMB to borrow a penny. Kemper continued, "By doing this, we would eliminate the need to credit underwrite, generate loan documents and approval processes for millions of businesses, which are already vastly overwhelming traditional finance channels." C2FO is asking business owners and individuals to reach out to their elected officials to share details of the plan today. To read more about this proposal, please visit C2FO.com/liquidity. About C2FO C2FO is working to deliver a future where every company in the world has the capital needed to grow. Our online platform matches more than $1 trillion of accounts payable and accounts receivable. Through this and our suite of innovative financial products, we connect businesses with the cash they need. Name your rate, and the C2FO platform will match your capital request with the available funds in seconds. Cash flow comes through early payment of invoices by your customers, A/R financing, and other data-driven funding options. C2FO is the world's largest non-bank provider of working capital, serving over 400,000 businesses in more than 180 countries. To learn more, visit C2FO.com. An Open Letter: How to Solve the $16 Trillion (News - Alert) Small Business Liquidity Trap by Sandy Kemper Founder and CEO, C2FO Earlier payment is better than borrowing. The greatest financial relief we can give small and mid-sized businesses in this economic crisis is faster payment of their outstanding invoices - liquidity. The lending programs being launched by the world's governments and central banks and directed to small and mid-sized businesses are extraordinary, needed and laudatory, but will fall short not just in terms of dollars, but more critically, they will not arrive soon enough for tens of millions of the world's small and mid-sized businesses in dire need. Small businesses rarely have more than a few weeks of cash on hand, yet many have considerable accounts receivable, often representing 60 to 90 days of sales that are yet to be collected from their customers. A small business with $4 million in annual sales and terms of 90 days has nearly $1 million trapped in accounts receivable. Moreover, with the pandemic, payment terms are extending rapidly as even the largest companies in the world look for ways to increase cash on their balance sheets. The World Bank estimates that there are more than 150 million small and mid-sized businesses globally, employing 60% of the world's working population and generating nearly 50% of the world's GDP. Using that data and 60-day payment terms, these businesses are owed more than $16 trillion by their customers, half of which are large companies. What if we created low-cost funding specifically for larger companies to pay their small and mid-sized suppliers immediately? We would eliminate the need to credit underwrite, generate loan documents and approval processes for tens upon tens of millions of businesses which are already vastly overwhelming traditional finance channels. Instead of borrowing, businesses would now simply be paid more rapidly by their large company customers, something that likely is much preferred over borrowing by all small business owners. Do this at scale and we can create $8 trillion of immediate relief for the world's small and mid-sized businesses without causing them to have to borrow a penny. A fund designed to move money to large buyers of small suppliers' goods and services not only eliminates the need for the small businesses to borrow, but likely more effectively protects the loans made because they are to larger, higher credit-rated businesses. Further, a typical large company has thousands of suppliers, the majority being small and mid-sized businesses. So, for one credit facility to a larger company with a sizable supply chain, you can advance funds to upwards of 1,000 small and mid-sized businesses, a 1:1000 amplifier effect. Funding help is needed even by larger companies in this crisis; central banks and government treasuries have stepped in to help stabilize the debt markets on which many large companies rely. All are being challenged by the global economic downturn. And, importantly, even before this crisis the average large company had much more accounts payable than cash, which is why a fund to pay their accounts payable more rapidly to their small and mid-sized suppliers is so necessary right now. Ten years ago, I helped found a small business that was born from the liquidity trap I had faced in another company struggling to survive in a previous economic crisis. The idea for our new business was simple: everyone's account payable is someone else's account receivable. Our vision at C2FO was to build a platform that matches accounts payable and accounts receivable, and let suppliers order their cash payment earlier from their customers at rates they name. No borrowing, no advance rates, collateral or personal guaranties; just earlier payment. Today we are fortunate to have more than 1 million businesses around the world on our platform. These businesses generate $10.5 trillion of annual sales and more than 90% of them are small businesses. Last month, we surpassed $100 billion in lifetime early payment funding to our customers, but they need much more help than we can give them, and they need it now. Over the last few weeks we have heard from so many businesses that are in such great need. I hope that this letter gives voice and a possible solution to their concerns. The Math and Mechanics of Our Proposal Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) [i] around the world are owed $16 trillion [ii] on any given day. In other words, they have $16 trillion of accounts receivable from their customers. They were owed that amount yesterday, are owed it today and they will be owed that amount tomorrow, and in the weeks and months to come. And, while there is nothing inherently bad about having accounts receivable, creating liquidity by having those accounts receivable paid immediately is a much better thing if it can be done. Our proposal is that low-cost, emergency funding be made available to the larger customers of the millions of small and mid-sized businesses, allowing for faster payment of those businesses' outstanding accounts receivable. Typical payment terms can be greater than 60 days globally. We are advocating for immediate payment of all approved invoices of small and mid-sized businesses facilitated via direct loans made to their large customers. We suggest that globally there could be as many as 20,000 large companies to which governments and central banks could loan in order to speed the payment of invoices owed to their small and mid-sized suppliers. However, this short paper will focus on the specifics of emergency funding to the Global 2000, the largest 2,000 companies in the world ranked by revenue and the Fortune 1000, the largest 1,000 companies ranked by revenue in the United States. For the year ending 2019, the average Global 2000 business generated $20 billion in sales. In aggregate, the G2000 businesses produced a bit more than $40 trillion in total sales.[iii] Typical Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), a term that describes what they buy from their direct suppliers, is 75% of total revenue for a G2000 company, or approximately $15 billion. In aggregate, the G2000 businesses spend $30 trillion with their direct suppliers. That number is even higher when you include indirect suppliers who sell goods and services that are not for resale by the G2000 (maintenance, supply and operations, computers and laptop repair suppliers, paper suppliers, cleaning services, etc.). For the year ending 2019, the average Fortune 1000 business generated $15.3 billion in sales. In aggregate, the F1000 businesses produced $15.3 trillion in total sales.[iv] Using 75% COGS, the average F1000 business spent $11.5 billion with its direct suppliers, or $11.5 trillion in aggregate for all F1000 companies. Using data from C2FO as well as public data, we estimate that the average G2000 and F1000 company spends approximately 30% of their COGS with small and mid-sized businesses. Larger companies tend to need larger suppliers to meet their purchasing and distribution scale needs, so while a broader look at purchasing by large companies will likely mirror the global data that SMBs are 50% of total worldwide COGS, the G2000 and F1000 are less. Given the data in the paragraph above, aggregate G2000 purchases from SMBs totaled $9 trillion in 2019. Aggregate F1000 purchases from SMBs totaled $3.5 trillion in 2019. The average G2000 company spent $4.5 billion with its SMB suppliers in 2019 and the average F1000 spent $3.5 billion with its SMB suppliers. Using data from C2FO and public data, we estimate that the average G2000 and F1000 company has approximately 3,000 SMB suppliers. We also estimate that the average SMB sells to 2.3 G2000 or F1000 companies. The total number of SMB suppliers to the G2000 is therefore approximately 2.6 million while the total number of F1000 suppliers is 1.3 million. Using a range of 30-50 employees per SMB supplier, the number of employees for all G2000 SMB suppliers is between 78 million and 130 million. Using that same range of employees per supplier for a F1000 SMB supplier, the number of employees for all F1000 SMBs is between 39 million and 65 million. Using 40-60 day payment acceleration of approved invoices, the emergency loans needed to support the 2.6 million SMB suppliers to the G2000 and the jobs they sustain ranges from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion ($500 million to $750 million per G2000 company). Early payment funding per G2000 SMB supplier would therefore range from $384,000 to $576,000. Using 40-60 day payment acceleration of approved invoices from the F1000, the emergency loans needed to support their 1.3 million SMB suppliers and the jobs they sustain ranges from $389 billion to $583 billion ($389 million to $583 million per F1000 company). Early payment funding per SMB supplier would be $299,000 to $449,000. The United States has created the Payroll Protection Plan for small and mid-sized suppliers; we would argue that it is time for the Small Business Supplier Protection Plan in the United States and around the world. Low-cost loan funding to the G2000 and F1000 would be completely tied to immediate payment of their outstanding approved invoices. C2FO has offered to assist our large corporate customers at no cost to achieve this goal and we will on-board for free any large corporate that will use our services to accelerate their payments to small and mid-sized suppliers in their supply chain. We will contact their suppliers and manage all their on-boarding and communications for free as well. Our platform is open and simple to use for all. All we need is a vendor file with contact information for the suppliers to be brought onto the C2FO platform. After that, a nightly file of invoices approved and outstanding is uploaded to all suppliers via C2FO for early payment if the supplier so desires. All early payment can be tracked and reported in C2FO so that funding of all SMB suppliers is transparent and validated. Note that C2FO does not have to be used to accelerate payment to small and mid-sized suppliers. Most accounts payable systems of large companies can track early payment once certain code changes are made and suppliers contacted and on-boarded if the large company has resources to do so. However, we can simplify and streamline the process as a partner in solving this financial crisis, as it is our core business function. We are not advocating for C2FO; we are simply saying that we will help in any way possible and at no cost if we are needed. We can't manufacture masks, medical equipment or other PPE, but we stand ready to help create early funding for small and mid-sized businesses, and the hundreds of millions of jobs they support.[v] [i] "Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are non-subsidiary, independent firms which employ fewer than a given number of employees. This number varies across countries. The most frequent upper limit designating an SME is 250 employees, as in the European Union. However, some countries set the limit at 200 employees, while the United States considers SMEs to include firms with fewer than 500 employees." Source (News - Alert): The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [ii] "Gross output (GO) is the value of the goods and services produced by the nation's economy. It is principally measured using industry sales or receipts, including sales to final users (GDP) and sales to other industries (intermediate inputs)," according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Dept. of Commerce. Global gross output is approximately $200 trillion. SMBs are approximately 50% of the world's total sales, producing approximately $100 trillion of annual sales. On 60-day terms for payment, $100 trillion/6 = $16.6 trillion of accounts receivable. [iii] Source: Forbes magazine annual ranking of the Global 2000. [iv] Source: Fortune magazine annual ranking of the Fortune 1000. [v] SMBs employ more than 50% of the working population (source: The World Bank).The number of jobs impacted by emergency funding to just the G2000 and F1000 total 100-200 million, based on estimates of 30-50 employees per SMB supplier. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005303/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Just nine months ago, Masayoshi Son publicly declared Ritesh Agarwal one of the star entrepreneurs backed by his SoftBank Group. The Japanese billionaire boasted that Agarwal's Oyo Hotels & Homes was poised to overtake the biggest hotel chains in the world just a few years after its founding. "It's unimaginable," Son said on stage at SoftBank World in Tokyo. "At 25, he's going to be world's biggest hotel king." Today, Oyo is freezing operations around the world and furloughing thousands of employees as it struggles to survive the coronavirus pandemic. Travel has slammed to a halt, leaving hotel rooms empty and losses rising. Ritesh Agarwal, 26, was being lauded as the world's next "hotel king" before the pandemic hit. Credit:Bloomberg Oyo risks turning into another problem startup for SoftBank and Son, still reeling from the meltdown at the shared-office company WeWork. SoftBank had booked profits on Oyo's rising valuation and may now be forced to take losses on the investment. The startup was valued last year at $US10 billion, one of the highest in SoftBank's portfolio. CINCINNATI Savannah Scott had her sights on prom and graduation since the ninth grade. The senior had a long lavender dress with roses on the train made before the coronavirus pandemic brought her Cincinnati school's planning to a halt. Scott, 18, misses attending classes at Gilbert A. Dater High School, especially since it's her last year. "I'm a cool person so I'm cool with a lot of people," she said. "I just miss the whole school environment. My AP teacher and English teacher. My after-school activity (the girls swimming club)." The outbreak of the novel coronavirus forced schools across the country to adapt on the fly to at-home learning, putting a strain on families and teachers alike. With education upended, journalists from The Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Public Radio's 91.7 WVXU teamed up to sit or phone in with six families to find out what a day of learning at home looks like and to share struggles and triumphs. Savannah Scott, 18, stands in the front of her home in Westwood on Thursday, April 2, 2020. She is a senior at Dater High School and a class officer. Homeschooling during the coronavirus: Moms, teachers share ideas, advice For Scott, the day starts around 10 a.m. when she wakes to check her assignments on Schoology, an online learning platform. Even that can be challenging for some. Students across the country have reported performance issues with Schoology. Cincinnati Public Schools officials said they're working with IT to expand the capacity of the site to keep up with increased traffic. The only thing standing between Scott and a successful high school final semester is passing her mandatory English credit this semester, she said. Then she'll be off to the University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash to study pre-health. She described most of her teachers as being responsive, especially her AP teacher who she said is "techy." Savannah Scott, 18, stands in front of her home in Westwood on Thursday, April 2, 2020. She is a senior at Dater High School and a class officer. After checking on assignments and her AP psychology calendar, Scott normally chills, watching TV and YouTube videos until the evening, when she feels the most productive. "I prefer to do it later on," Scott said of her homework. "It's better for me." Story continues As someone with access to technology and the internet, she sees this as an experience that will prepare her for the freedom from oversight that college brings. 11:20 a.m.: 'Im afraid that the coronavirus is gonna get all over the street' Rose Curtin, left, looks over Haddasha Revely-Curtin's shoulder while she does school work, Thursday, April 2, 2020, in Newport, Ky. Haddasha, 12, is a sixth-grade student at Newport Intermediate School. Haddasha Revely-Curtin, the middle of three adopted girls growing up together in Newport, Kentucky, has been confronting heightened anxiety. At about 11:20 a.m., the 12-year-old settled in on mom Rose Curtins bed for a history lesson, an iPad and a blue pencil at the ready atop her blue lap desk. This is part of the familys routine, with Curtin serving as an impromptu educator. Haddasha listened as Curtin read aloud about ancient Roman culture, her reading punctuated by the occasional flip of a page from the packet sent home by Haddashas school, Newport Intermediate. Curtin, an editor for an academic journal and, until it closed, a part-timer at a local yarn shop, adopted Haddasha in 2010. Curtin said shes encouraging Haddasha to read more, but the previous weeks have been difficult. Rose Curtin smiles at Zionnah Revely-Curtin, 7, on the porch, Thursday, April 2, 2020, at their home in Newport, Ky. We have to do kind of a triage, Curtin said. You do this much, and its not going to be everything. At one point during Thursdays lesson, Haddashas voice rose as she pleaded with Curtin to skip a section on gladiators enslavement. I know, I know, OK, listen, Curtin said. Haddasha, I know you dont do stuff about slavery so we can skip the parts about slavery if you need to, OK? A few minutes later, Haddasha started skimming the packet for answers. From left: Haddasha Revely-Curtin, 12, Christy Revely-Curtin, 13, Zionnah Revely-Curtin, 7, and Rose Curtin, spot a neighborhood on Columbia Street, Thursday, April 2, 2020, in Newport Ky. Reading on her own has been difficult for Haddasha. The virus has sapped not just hospital systems and economies but Haddashas capacity for concentration. Im really scared right now about the coronavirus, Haddasha said, adding, "Im just afraid that the coronavirus is gonna get all over the street in Covington and Cincinnati and I dont know what to do. Noon: 'I want them to keep a joyous outlook about learning' Emily Minelli, a Princeton High School French teacher, begins the day with educational work with her two sons, Nico, 3, top, and Tommy, 6, bottom, Thursday, April 2, 2020, in Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood It was a few minutes after lunchtime and the Minellis had already ticked off half their to-do list. Princeton High School French teacher Emily and her husband, Mark, spend their weekdays switching between their full-time responsibilities as parents and workers plus his studies in graduate school. Theyre also taking on the tall order of being stand-in teachers for their kids. "It's really hard to fit it into the day when he's trying to work and I'm trying to work," Emily Minelli said. "We don't want to ignore the kids when we're trying to do that, but we also need to focus on our work." An end of language teachers? Amid coronavirus, students flock to Kahoot! and Duolingo for language lessons Before noon, Emily Minelli had already built online content for her students, graded their schoolwork and taught literacy through the video conferencing tool Zoom to a group of her colleagues' kids. Throughout the week, about a dozen of her colleagues get together and rotate teaching their kids a lesson from a range of subjects. On this day it was Minelli's turn to present an attention-grabbing reading of Creepy Pair of Underwear as she took a stab at teaching literacy. As the 34-year-old held the book, her oldest son, 6-year-old Nico, sat in a kitchen chair, his small fingers dancing all around the large picture book, almost as a test of his virtual classmates' attention. Tommy Minelli, 6, peers over the edge of a book during a video conference call, Thursday, April 2, 2020, in Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood. About a dozen of his mother's colleagues get together and rotate teaching their kids a lesson from a range of subjects. "Nico, they can't see the book, son," Minelli said as she broke out of her reading tone. "Sit right there." She said her family has planned out every hour of their school day but are trying to be flexible with their sons. In the afternoons, the parents dedicated 30 minutes to Nico completing his school enrichment packets. They're trying to walk a fine line of keeping his mind sharp while also letting his creativity run wild in their front yard. "What I'm trying to show them is learning is still fun, and just because we're doing it in a different place doesn't mean that it's not a priority," Emily Minelli said. "I just want them to keep a joyous outlook about learning. So however we have to do that, that's what my goal really is." 1 p.m.: 'I'm really struggling' Winton Woods Middle School seventh grader Tene Ba just returned to his Forest Park home after spending about 10 minutes playing Fortnite outside. After his brief break, he reached for his computer to complete science homework using Google Slides. Distance learning hasn't been ideal for the 13-year-old Tene, who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but spent five years in Mauritania, Africa, where he learned French as his first language. As a non-native English speaker, he faces barriers trying to keep up with daily homework assignments, such as not having someone in his household who can guide him with demanding work or who can help him problem-solve when he experiences issues online. "I'm really struggling with this," Tene said. "I need help." Tene Ba, 13, a seventh-grade student at Winton Woods Middle School, reviews his English lessons, Thursday, April 2, 2020, in Forest Park, Ohio. Tene was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but spent five years in Mauritania where he learned French as his first language. An English Language Learner, Ba faces barriers trying to keep up with daily assignments. A Winton Woods school official said teachers are responsible for maintaining regular contact with students and families while also monitoring academic progress. But when Tene tries to communicate his troubles to teachers through email or Google Meet, he said they try to solve the problem without understanding his problem. Learning at home has left him feeling uncomfortable about his slipping grades. Hes eager to return to face-to-face learning in a classroom. "It would make me feel happy," Tene said. "I'll get my grades up." 2:40 p.m.: 'He'd be able to focus more with his own computer' Sinaca Wagoner, Sr., helps his son Sinaca Wagoner, Jr., 7, with his school work in their apartment in Lower Price Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. Sinaca Jr. is in the second grade at Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy. What does the frog eat? asked Renee Oliver, whose second grade son stood next to her. Does it eat flowers? Flies? Flies! said 7-year-old Sinaca Wagoner Jr. The exchange marked the start of another reading lesson, which was sent home by Sinacas charter school, Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy in the West End. Sinaca and every student in the school are considered economically disadvantaged by the Ohio Department of Education. At first, Sinaca offered to read, but then turned to his mother for help. They stood together at a small table near the kitchen. She read about a green frog, its eating and jumping habits. The day had already been busy. Oliver and Sinacas father drove their son and their 5-year-old daughter, Keylah, all over Northern Kentucky in search of a laptop for the boy. Renee Oliver helps her son Sinaca Wagoner, Jr. 7, with his school work in their apartment in Lower Price Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. Sinaca Jr. is in the second grade at Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy. They tried multiple Walmarts and a Target, zigzagging from city to city. But all the devices in their price range, under $200, were sold out, even though a store employee had earlier assured them otherwise by phone. Oliver fretted over the wasted gasoline. This search for a laptop, now in its third week, has been the only thing stressing me out amid the crisis, Oliver said. While other districts provided Chromebook laptops to all families, Sinaca has relied on his mothers phone for online reading lessons. Sometimes while reading, hes interrupted by calls tied to Olivers work cleaning apartments. Renee Oliver reads with her daughter Keylah Wagoner, 5, in their apartment in Lower Price Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. Sinaca would be able to focus more if he had access to a computer like he did in school, Oliver said. What about kids without internet? Quarantined worksheets, learning in parking lots After learning about the frog, Sinaca read on his own. He struggled with the word picture, but his father, who had taken over reading duty from Oliver, mimed taking his sons photograph. Picture! Sinaca said. After they finished the story, Sinaca Wagoner Sr. reached for a new one. Sinaca Wagoner, Jr. 7, works on his school work while his dad and sister watch in their apartment in Lower Price Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. Sinaca Jr. is in the second grade at Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy. His son shook his head and tried to flee into the kitchen. Thats too much reading, he said. Its OK, the senior Wagoner said. It makes your brain stronger. The younger Sinaca trudged back to his father, who held his sons hand to help him trace the words as he progressed down the page. 5:10 p.m.: 'Her goal is to have nothing but A's' Sisters Destiny Taylor, 12, and Curiah Simpson, 18, work on their school work at the dining room table in their home in North College Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. Destiny is in the seventh grade at Mt. Healthy Jr. High School. Simpson is a senior at Diamond Oaks. Curiah Simpson, cracked iPhone in hand, drew a simple graph on a sheet of notebook paper. The high school senior had agreed to help her fifth grade cousin with math. Simpson, 18, glanced at photos of worksheets on her phone while seated at the family's dining room table, marking points on the graph and plotting their positions. I love math, Simpson said. I just struggle with English. The table serves as a makeshift classroom for Simpson and her younger siblings, Destiny Taylor, 12, and R Francis Akorli, 3. Rs counting and coloring worksheets rested on the table near Simpsons unfinished English homework. As her family chatted and worked around her, Simpson focused on her cousins math assignment. Because of a learning disability, Simpson qualifies for one-on-one guidance for English lessons. When in school, the specialist read aloud to Simpson during English class, then together they read a text a second time before moving on to questions. Curiah Simpson, 18, works on her school work at the dining room table in her home in North College Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. She is a senior at Diamond Oaks. Simpson said, "I'm sad that I'm not able to graduate and walk. I've waited my whole life to graduate high school." That helps me understand by making the words clearer, Simpson said. Because I sometimes dont know how to pronounce a word and then it messes up what Im trying to think about. Since the closure, Simpson has not had contact with her intervention specialist, though her teacher has held multiple video chats each week with the teen. Is online school illegal? With schools closing from coronavirus, special education concerns give districts pause Simpson is dually enrolled in the Mount Healthy school district and Cincinnati's Great Oaks career and technical education district. Reva Cosby, the Mount Healthy superintendent, acknowledged the difficulty of providing special education services during the closure, but the district is trying our darndest to stay in contact and provide needed support for students with disabilities. There will be some things we cant do, Cosby said. If (we) cant get it done, we understand a child may be eligible for compensatory education, and thats what well do. Before helping her cousin with her math homework, Simpson viewed her current grades on her laptop. Her goal is to have nothing but As, said her mother, Lakresha Alexander. She wants to be perfect all the time. Shes nearly met her goal: all As and one B, in English. Curiah Simpson, 18, and Destiny Taylor, 12, work on their school work at the dining room table in their home in North College Hill on Thursday, April 2, 2020. The sisters expressed how much they missed being in a classroom and having teachers to help them with their work. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus online school: How families try to homeschool during COVID Oil producers from G20 have agreed to reduce their combined crude oil output by 3.7 million bpd, according to Irans Oil Minister, Bijan Zanganeh, as quoted by IRNA. G20 met on Friday to discuss oil production, but reports from that day revealed that the group had failed to agree on a specific number. To underpin global economic recovery and to safeguard our energy markets, we commit to work together to develop collaborative policy responses, the groups energy ministers said in an official statement. We recognize the commitment of some producers to stabilize energy markets. We acknowledge the importance of international cooperation in ensuring the resilience of energy systems. This is indeed way too vague for anyones comfort, although some hailed the G20s declaration of support for the OPEC+ cuts as a positive development. Such broad support for an oil production-cutting effort is unprecedented, just like the crisis that prompted it. Still, there is a figure for at least one G20 member: the United States. U.S. President Trump spoke with his Mexican counterpart on Friday after Mexico refused to sign up for cuts of 400,000 bpd under the OPEC+ agreement. Following his talks with Trump, Mexicos Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that the U.S. would implement cuts of 250,000 bpd to help Mexico, which will cut 100,000 bpd. Trump confirmed the agreement, saying Mexico will reimburse the U.S. when it can. Besides this 250,000 bpd cut, U.S. oil production could be lowered by as much as 2 million bpd by the end of the year, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said at the G20 meeting, as quoted by the Financial Times. This is a time for all nations to seriously examine what each can do to correct the supply/demand imbalance, Brouillette said in what could be seen as a departure from the official White House position until recently that the U.S. did not need to cut oil production on purpose because low prices would force a decline in production anyway. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: [April 13, 2020] The Global Smart Packaging Market is expected to grow from USD 40,018.58 Million in 2019 to USD 58,791.56 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.62% NEW YORK, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Smart Packaging Market Research Report by Technology (Active Packaging, Intelligent Packaging (IP), and Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP)), by Application (Automotive, Consumer Goods and Electronics, Food & Beverages, and Healthcare) - Global Forecast to 2025 (Cumulative Impact of COVID-19) Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05881809/?utm_source=PRN The Global Smart Packaging Market is expected to grow from USD 40,018.58 Million in 2019 to USD 58,791.56 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.62%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Smart Packaging to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: "The Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Technology, the Smart Packaging Market is studied across Active Packaging, Intelligent Packaging (IP), and Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP). The Active Packaging further studied across Antimicrobial, Corrosion Control, Gas Scavengers, and Moisture Control. The Intelligent Packaging (IP) further studied across Indicators and Tracking Devices. The Active Packaging commanded the largest size in the Smart Packaging Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Healthcare is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Application, the Smart Packaging Market is studied across Automotive, Consumer Goods and Electronics, Food & Beverages, and Healthcare. The Food & Beverages commanded the largest size in the Smart Packaging Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Healthcare is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Asia-Pacific is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Geography, the Smart Packaging Market is studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region is studied across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region is studied across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Jaan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region is studied across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. The Americas commanded the largest size in the Smart Packaging Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Smart Packaging Market including 3M , Amcor Limited, American Thermal Instruments (ATI), Avery Dennison Corp., BASF SE, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Emerson Electric Co., Huhtamaki Group, International Paper, Multisorb Technologies Inc., R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Sealed Air Corporation, Smartrac N.V., Sonoco Products Company, Stora Enso OYJ, Temptime Corporation, Thin Film Electronics ASA, UPM-Kymmene Corporation, and WestRock Company. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Smart Packaging Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on sulfuric acid offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Smart Packaging Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and their impact analysis shaping the Global Smart Packaging Market during the forecast period? 3. What is the competitive position if vendors in the Global Smart Packaging Market? 4. How Porters Five Forces define the Global Smart Packaging Market landscape? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Smart Packaging Market? 6. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Smart Packaging Market? 7. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Smart Packaging Market? 8. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Smart Packaging Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05881809/?utm_source=PRN About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-global-smart-packaging-market-is-expected-to-grow-from-usd-40-018-58-million-in-2019-to-usd-58-791-56-million-by-the-end-of-2025-at-a-compound-annual-growth-rate-cagr-of-6-62-301039555.html SOURCE Reportlinker [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] President Trump on Monday falsely claimed the authority to overrule governors and allow businesses to open in defiance of the lockdown orders that state governments have imposed to contain the Wuhan coronavirus. For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government, Trump wrote on Twitter. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect. Trump continued, It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly! While the federal government has issued guidelines for social distancing and other mitigation techniques to slow the spread of coronavirus, it has not issued any directives to close businesses. The federal government does not have the authority to implement a national lockdown featuring business closures and mandatory social-distancing efforts, which measures are instead left to be implemented by individual states. A national lockdown, I think, is pretty far out of bounds for the president, Keith Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell professor of politics at Princeton University, told CBS in an April 6 interview. Whittington said that while the president does have a certain amount of authority to enact international travel restrictions, as well as to restrict inter-state travel, any attempt to expand quarantine measures from one state to another would rest on shaky legal grounds. At any rate, state governors who have imposed shelter-in-place orders and other measures hold the primary authority to lift those measures when they see fit. Trump has sought to reopen the economy as soon as possible, although its unclear how much the spread of coronavirus will prevent businesses from operating even with a reduced number of cases in the U.S. More from National Review Santa Clara County has now recorded 54 deaths from the COVID-19 coronavirus with the reporting of three new deaths Sunday, according to the county's Public Health Department. The county on Sunday also reported 55 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, making for a total of 1,621 cases reported in Santa Clara County since the pandemic began. Of those who have died as of Sunday, 69 percent have been men, according to figures posted on the county's Coronavirus (COVID-19) dashboard (https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-coronavirus/Pages/dashboard.aspx?mc_cid=285873debc&mc_eid=a923074108). As of Saturday, Santa Clara County had recorded the most confirmed cases, and deaths, of the nine Bay Area counties. The City and County of San Francisco had the second highest number of confirmed cases, at 872. Alameda County as of Sunday had the second highest number of deaths, 23, along with 843 cases, the third highest total in the Bay Area. San Mateo County's 21 deaths were the third highest total, with its 652 total confirmed cases fourth most among Bay Area counties. The Concord City Council on Tuesday will consider slashing its own members' pay by 10 percent, in recognition of an already challenging city financial outlook made worse by the effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on area businesses and households. Also to be considered Tuesday night will be 5 percent salary cuts, plus deferred cost-of-living raises and 401(K) plan contributions, for top city executives, including City Manager Valerie Barone, City Attorney Susanne Brown and police Chief Mark Bustillos, as well as other executive management employees, non-sworn managers and confidential employees. The salary cuts, scheduled furloughs and 401(K) cuts together would amount to an approximate 9 percent cut in overall compensation through June 2021, a city report says. If the five council members each approved a 10 percent salary cut, from $1,352 per month to $1,216.80, the city would save approximately $2,200 this fiscal year, which ends June 30, and $10,570 for the 12 months of fiscal year 2020-2021, which ends June 30, 2021. The council member cuts, a city staff report says, would be made "as a demonstration of their leadership to the community and employees during this unprecedented pandemic." The savings associated with the city executives and other employees is an estimated $45,000 over the next 2.5 months and $323,000 for fiscal year 2020-2021. The California Highway Patrol is investigating a fatal accident involving a motorcyclist late Sunday afternoon near the intersection of State Highway 128 and Berryessa Knoxville Road in rural Napa County. The CHP was called about 4:55 p.m. Sunday to that intersection about two miles west of the Steel Canyon Resort at the southern tip of Lake Berryessa. The accident appears to have involved only the motorcycle and its driver. Highway 128 was closed in both directions for about 45 minutes at the accident scene, but was cleared at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday. No further information about the accident or the victim was available late Sunday night. A two-alarm fire at a home on Arroyo Drive in Orinda was contained early Sunday by crews from the Orinda-Moraga-Orinda Fire District, who were hampered by a burning car at the scene that rolled down a driveway into a district engine. The fire, first reported at 4:53 a.m. at 15 Arroyo Drive, was fully involved when firefighters arrived and grew to a second alarm, the district said. Neighbors posting on social media said it took about an hour to contain the blaze, and that explosions were heard as the fire started. No residents or firefighters were injured. The cause of the fire is under investigation. At least one person was seriously injured Sunday night when a car plunged down an embankment off Mark West Springs Road about six miles north of Santa Rosa in unincorporated Sonoma County, the California Highway Patrol said. The accident occurred at about 8:10 p.m. on Mark West Springs Road at Fox Hunt Lane, the CHP said. A Sonoma County Fire District dispatcher said the car struck a pole, rolled several times and ended up down the embankment. Firefighters had to extricate the driver from the seriously damaged vehicle. The driver was taken to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital with major injuries, the dispatcher said. Both lanes of Mark West Springs Road were closed until about 9:30 p.m. Sunday. Good news: If your pet is sick or injured, many Bay Area veterinarians are available to treat him or her, using telephone screening and curbside service to help stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. These precautions are essential to keep Bay Area pet owners and veterinary staff safe from COVID-19, according to Dr. Debra Chen, an associate veterinarian at the San Jose Animal Hospital. The hospital is offering clients a variety of options. Vets can examine pets in the car in the parking lot, or a technician can bring the pet into the examination room to be seen. Telephone consultations are also available. "It is not as ideal to do phone consultations, because we can't do full-on proper assessments," Chen said. "But we are taking the lesser evil." Appointments are limited to more urgent issues, the vet said. Along those lines, Thornhill Pet in Oakland is only accepting emergencies and sick pet exams. Dental appointments are accepted only if an extraction or other pressing procedure is needed. As with the San Jose hospital, clients call from the car upon arrival, the pet is brought in for examination and the doctor calls the pet owner with recommendations. At San Francisco Pet Hospital, appointments start with a phone consultation with the veterinarian, followed by a visit, if necessary. Clients aren't allowed inside the hospital; a technician brings the pet inside while its owner waits outside. The East Bay's Kensington Pet Hospital has an app, the PetDesk App, that clients can use to request an appointment, said Dora Pannell, the hospital's office manager and a registered veterinary technician. A Firestone Tire dealership sustained about $150,000 in damages in a Sunday night fire, the Santa Rosa Fire Department said. Firefighters were called about 8:35 p.m. Sunday to the tire dealership at 850 Coddingtown Center for a report of smoke. Three engines, a ladder truck, a chief officer and a fire investigator responded to find a "moderate amount" of smoke inside of the business, firefighters said. The fire itself was in an office at the dealership, which was extinguished quickly. There had been no one inside the building, and no firefighters were injured. The fire damage was limited to the office, but there was smoke damage throughout the building, firefighters said. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Monday will be mostly cloudy in the morning, then becoming sunny. Highs will be in the upper 50s to mid 60s. Southwest winds will be 10 to 20 mph. Monday night will be mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Lows will be in the lower 50s. West winds will be 10 to 20 mph, before becoming northwest winds at around 5 mph after midnight. Tuesday will be sunny. Highs will be in the mid 60s to lower 70s. North winds will be 5 to 15 mph, before becoming northwest winds in the afternoon. Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. However, no fresh COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Sunday. Kolkata: West Bengal reported two more COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, pushing the death toll due to the disease to seven in the state, even as the TMC government made wearing masks mandatory for people visiting public places. The total number of coronavirus cases stood at 122 in the state, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government said, even though the Union health ministry put the figure at 134. According to a health bulletin released by the state government, the total number of active cases in West Bengal is now 95. The TMC government, however, did not divulge the details of the deceased persons. Meanwhile, late in the evening, the state government issued an order, making wearing of masks mandatory for people visiting public places. The order was issued by Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha. "Mouth and nose should be covered by facial masks or any other available piece of cloth which may even include a properly folded or rolled dupatta, gamcha, handkerchief or any such material that acts as a protective cover," the order said. "It is hereby directed that it shall be mandatory to use this cover always, especially when in public places," it added. Meanwhile, at least 22 health workers of the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital were placed under quarantine after two patients admitted to the hospital tested positive for COVID-19, a health department official said. A two-day drive to disinfect Nabanna, the state secretariat in adjoining Howrah district, began on Sunday, government sources said. Norwegian Equinor company considers cooperation with Azerbaijan as a priority, a source in the company told local media The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic SOCAR and Equinor signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) on March 30. "The issues arising from the plans for the development of the Karabakh field were discussed during the meeting of SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev and Head of the representative office of Equinor company in Azerbaijan Fawad Quraishi," the source said. Furthermore, during the meeting, Equinor and SOCAR exchanged the views on potential cooperation in new spheres, including HSE. "We have several projects that we continue to work on, such as Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) and the recently discovered Karabakh fields, the source added. Today, we are cooperating with SOCAR on a project to develop the Karabakh oil field in Azerbaijan." During the meeting, SOCAR and Equinor signed a new cooperation agreement to strengthen interaction in the field of HSE. "Equinor considers cooperation with Azerbaijan a priority and we hope for further joint work with SOCAR in this sphere," the source said. SOCAR and Equinor have confirmed a discovery of the Karabakh oil field located 120 kilometers offshore, east of Baku, in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. Drilling of the first appraisal well at the Karabakh oil field was launched on December 23, 2019. The well was drilled in a water depth of 180 meters by the Dada Gorgud semi-submersible drilling rig operated by SOCARs Caspian Drilling Company (CDC). The reservoir is at a depth of approximately 3.4 kilometers. The discovered volumes of oil and gas are satisfactory for pursuing commercial development of the Karabakh field. The preliminary estimated geological reserves of the field reach more than 60 million tons. By Farai Shawn Matiashe MUTARE, Zimbabwe, April 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Zimbabwe has reopened fresh produce markets after pressure from farmers who struggled to sell their harvest under restrictions aimed at stemming spread of the novel coronavirus, Zimbabwean officials said. Markets including prominent Mbare Musika in Harare and Sakubva Musika in Mutare were closed recently when President Emmerson Mnangagwas administration put the country on a 21-day lockdown in a bid to curb the spread of the virus. Zimbabwe has so far recorded just over 10 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and three deaths. Its larger neighbour South Africa has seen more than 1,800 confirmed cases and more than 15 deaths. To deal with the threat, Zimbabwe has moved to halt many forms of transport and close facilities except for those deemed essential, including supermarkets and state-owned public transport. Under the new restrictions, law enforcement agents at first prevented farmers from selling their produce either at markets or on city streets. Those attempting sales in some case saw their goods confiscated. At Sakubva Musika market last week, police and Mutare city health officials confiscated tonnes of vegetables and fruit from more than 300 famers who had converged in the market area. The lockdown has set me back. My tomatoes are perishable, so I lost many at the farm due to that restriction of movement, said Cuthbert Chuma, a small-scale farmer from a village in Macheke District, about 110 km from the capital Harare. DROUGHT PRESSURE Many of Zimbabwes farmers have already been hit by prolonged drought linked to climate change, and the market closures have come as an additional financial blow. Paul Zakariya, an executive director of the Zimbabwe Famers Union, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that his organisation had lobbied to see the markets reopened to meet the demands of food even during the lockdown period. Nick Mangwana, an information ministry permanent secretary, said the president had exempted farmers from the initial lockdown, but the decision had not been implemented by police. He said the government could not risk people going hungry during the lockdown. Of course we have supermarkets but the government took into consideration that not everyone can afford to go there. Most people get vegetables and fruits from these traders, Mangwana said in a telephone interview. But there are worries that reopening markets could set back efforts to contain the virus as shoppers gather. Zakariya said he believed such fears could be addressed through efforts to ensure social distancing among shoppers and mandating the use of face masks. City of Harare spokesman Michael Chideme told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that police had been deployed to the markets to maintain social distancing, and that from Thursday Harare markets would be open for just three hours a day. Spren Mutiwi, a Mutare city spokesman, said markets that reopened Wednesday had seen some problem in maintaining social distance but authorities were working with the traders to try to protect both sellers and shoppers. Reporting by Farai Shawn Matiashe ; editing by Laurie Goering : Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters. KABUL -- U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has departed to Qatar to discuss with the Taliban the "current challenges" in implementing a peace deal signed by the United States and the militant group in late February, the State Department says. The April 13 announcement comes after an initial prisoner exchange between the Taliban and the Afghan government that was hailed by Khalilzad as an "important step" toward peace. The ambassador, who negotiated the U.S.-Taliban deal, departed on April 12 for talks with Taliban representatives in the Qatari capital, Doha, where the militants have a political office, a statement said. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Taliban on April 12 released 20 Afghan prisoners in the southern province of Kandahar. The move came after the Afghan government released 100 Taliban prisoners, bringing to 300 the total number of Taliban inmates freed since April 8. Khalilzad on April 13 urged both sides to "accelerate efforts to meet targets specified in the U.S.-Taliban agreement as soon as possible," adding that the exchange was more important than ever with prison populations threatened by an outbreak of coronavirus. The pact signed by the United States and the Taliban in Doha on February 29 calls for the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters as a confidence-building measure ahead of formal peace talks aimed at ending the 18-year conflict in Afghanistan. The Taliban has vowed to release some 1,000 Afghan government troops and civilian workers it is holding. But the Taliban last week recalled a three-member team it had sent to Kabul to try to finalize the swap originally set to happen by March 10. The militants blamed the administration of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for delaying the exchange "under one pretext or another, while Kabul called on the Taliban not to sabotage the process by making excuses." On April 12, the Taliban told AFP that their decision to release a first group of prisoners was "a goodwill step...to accelerate the prisoner exchange process." In return for the start of talks between Kabul and the Taliban and a series of security commitments from the militants, all U.S. troops and other foreign coalition forces are meant to withdraw from Afghanistan within 14 months. With reporting by AFP JOURNALIST in Kilimanjaro Region have been urged to be careful when disseminating information related to the fatal Covid-19 disease caused by coronavirus. The advice was made recently in Moshi, Kilimanjaro Region, by Kilimanjaro Regional Health Officer, Dr Jonas Mcharo, during a four-day training workshop on coronavirus, which had so far affected so many people and lost so many peoples lives worldwide. "AS the pandemic continues plaguing many people across the world, use your knowledge, skills and professionalism in reporting information related to Covid-19. Every person likes to have access to information on what is going on. So, make sure you provide reliable information that wont cause fear in society," he said. He also advised media practitioners to ensure they got accurate information related to the disease from appropriate sources as directed by the government. "The government has already provided guidelines on access to information related to Covid-19. I urge you to follow government directives to obtain reliable and factual information," he said. He also urged residents to cooperate with the government in providing information related to people entering the country, a move which he said would help curb the spread of the disease. If you see an alien person who has entered your area from outside the country, please, provide information to relevant authorities so that procedures in respect of those entering the country at this time of the crisis could be followed. The government's intention is to minimise the spread of the virus in the country, he said. He added that even if it were your relative, advise and inform them that there were directives, which included testing and staying in a quarantine. In this way, we will be able check the spread of the deadly virus which has affected many countries worldwide. The training workshop, which was aimed at creating public awareness on the Covid-19 disease, drew participants who included health officials from the districts of Kilimanjaro Region and journalists. Virginia-based Smithfield Foods announced Sunday that it is closing its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls until further notice after hundreds of employees tested positive for the coronavirus a step the head of the company warned could hurt the nation's meat supply. The announcement came a day after South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken wrote to Smithfield and urged the company to suspend operations for 14 days so that its workers could self-isolate and the plant could be disinfected. The plant, which employs about 3,700 people in the state's largest city, has become a hot spot for infections. Health officials said Sunday that 293 of the 730 people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in South Dakota work at the plant. "The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," the meat processor's chief executive, Kenneth Sullivan, said in a statement Sunday. "It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," he said. "These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain." South suffers deadly Easter Sunday as storm system of hail, tornadoes kills at least 18 Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment At least 18 people are now dead and hundreds of homes were damaged after several states in the South, including the coronavirus-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, were battered Sunday and early Monday by a deadly storm system of hail and tornadoes. As of Monday, 11 of the reported deaths resulting from the storm system came from Mississippi, The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced. Some 72,000 homes have also been left without power in the state. Two of the 11 people killed came from Lawrence County. The local Sheriffs Office identified the victims as Sherriffs Deputy Robert Ainsworth and his wife, Paula. It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Deputy Robert Ainsworth and his lovely wife, Paula. We, at the Lawrence County Sheriffs Office, would like to offer our most sincere condolences to the families of both of these fine individuals, the Lawrence County Sherriffs Office announced in a statement on Facebook. Robert was a United States Marine Corps veteran and a long time employee here. Mrs. Paula was a former Justice Court Deputy Clerk at the Lawrence County Justice Court and currently a Justice Court Deputy Clerk for the Walthall County Justice Court. Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs. Paula during the tornado. He was a very valuable employee and will be greatly missed. Please remember to pray for LCSO along with their families during this tragedy. Rest in Peace, Brother. We have the watch from here. Job well done, Sir. Monticello Fire Chief Lyle Berard told CNN that two tornadoes reportedly hit the area. "It's pretty bad," he said. "We have downed trees and multiple homes with major damage." Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who declared a state of emergency, lamented the deadly storm strike on Easter Sunday. "My boy's house gone, man." Shocking footage shows significant damage done to homes in a neighborhood of Monroe, Louisiana after a suspected tornado tore through the area. https://t.co/TiQP7vbu28pic.twitter.com/nSVJAqsNAx ABC News (@ABC) April 12, 2020 "This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter Sunday," Reeves said in a statement. "The state and our first responders are working around the clock and will not rest until this is over. We are mobilizing all resources available to protect our people and their property." Candice Pitts told the network that she survived the storm in a small hallway at the Soso Volunteer Fire Station. "All I had was my arms to put over my son and mother-in-law," she said. "Was near a solid glass door that blew out and the roof in many places tore off or collapsed. My car was park(ed) under a shed that is now blown over in a yard nearby. It's mangled." According to the Weather Channel, there were more than 40 reports of tornadoes as the storms ripped through Texas and Arkansas, across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia and into the Carolinas and Tennessee. At least five people were killed when storms tore through a mobile home park near the Georgia-Tennessee border. One person in the Atlanta area died after a tree fell onto a home. Mayor Jamie Mayo of Monroe, a city in north-central Louisiana of about 50,000 people, said hundreds of homes in his area were damaged by the storm. At least 200-300 houses have been damaged here in the city of Monroe alone," he told CNN. "We also have had damage throughout Ouachita Parish." In statements on Twitter, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards urged residents to stay home Sunday as the area remained on high alert for other systems emerging across the state. The images and reports of major tornado damage in the Monroe area are heartbreaking, and my prayers are with the people there. We are in contact with local officials in the area to provide support. I hope all of Louisiana is on high alert right now, he said. As coronavirus cases continue to climb in areas of the South like Louisiana, a Pew report Monday said the region will likely endure more death and economic loss from the deadly coronavirus, which has already killed more than 20,000 people in the U.S., more than any other region in the country. The report said the impact of the coronavirus would likely be more devastating because of high poverty rates, weak social welfare programs and healthcare infrastructure and the area's high black population, which has emerged as a vulnerable demographic often plagued by underlying health conditions. The wonders of the animal kingdom inspire many wannabe photographers to pick up their cameras. But these photographs prove that some of them don't quite have the natural talent. People from around the world shared their failed attempts at wildlife photography on social media and they have found their way onto Facebook group C**p Wildlife Photography. The best of the bunch were posted by Bored Panda. Some examples include a close-up photo of a blurred bee and an eagle caught in flight - but blocked by a lamppost. Another enthusiast wanted to capture a herd of sheep at nighttime but found they looked more like demons than adorable animals... This snap of a bald eagle in North America didn't work out too well for the photographer as he accidentally blurred the creature This snap of carpenter bee failed to be as detailed as the photographer wanted. Carpenter bees can be found throughout North America, where this picture was likely taken While this picture seems particularly eerie, it's not the greatest photo of sheep we've ever seen. The image appeared to be taken in Britain In the left image, the American social media user admitted that they were actually trying to get a spread wing picture of the bird but failed, while in the right picture, a snake is trying to attack the person behind the camera This photograph, believed to be taken by an American social media user, left a lot to be decided as a pole blocks the face of the bird featuring in it This image was supposed to be a remarkable picture of a deer in America, but thanks to the creature's quick movements it instead turned out to be a snap of a tree These bird images could've been magnificent, if only the winged-creatures had stayed in the right place. It is unclear where the images were taken Getting the perfect picture of a swan appears to be a lot trickier than anticipated, especially if they're taking a dive (above). It is thought this image was taken in the UK Social media users said this out of focus mantis gave them the creeps. The insects are often found in North America and central Europe Coronavirus is ten times deadlier than the 2009 swine flu pandemic and a vaccine will be needed to halt it, the World Health Organisation has said. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from Geneva the organisation was constantly learning about the bug sweeping the globe. The incredibly contagious infection has now killed nearly 115,000 people and seen over 1.8million cases globally. Tedros said: 'We know that Covid-19 spreads fast, and we know that it is deadly, ten times deadlier than the 2009 flu pandemic.' WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (pictured) told a virtual briefing from Geneva the organisation was constantly learning about the bug sweeping the globe The virus has raged through Britain, the US and Australia, killing 11,329, 22,858 and 61 respectively. Swine flu killed 138 in England, 12,469 Americans and 191 in Australia. As a percentage, coronavirus has so far killed 6.4 per cent of people who have tested positive for it, including 12 per cent of those in Britain, 0.1 per cent in Australia and 4 per cent in the US. But the swine flu slayed just 1.1 per cent of those it infected globally, according to WHO figures. The virus has raged through Britain (pictured), the US and Australia, killing 11,329, 22,858 and 61 respectively. Swine flu killed 138 in England, 12,469 Americans and 191 in Australia In the UK the death rate stood at 0.03 per cent, whereas it was 0.2 per cent in the US and 0.5 per cent Down Under. The WHO said 18,500 people died of swine flu, which was first found in Mexico and the US in March 2009, but the Lancet said it was between 151,700 and 575,400. The Lancet review included estimated deaths in Africa and Southeast Asia that were not accounted for by the WHO. As a percentage, coronavirus has so far killed 6.4 per cent of people who have tested positive for it, including 12 per cent of those in Britain, 0.1 per cent in Australia and 4 per cent in the US. But the swine flu slayed just 1.1 per cent of those it infected globally, according to WHO figures. In the UK the death rate stood at 0.03 per cent, whereas it was 0.2 per cent in the US and 0.5 per cent Down Under. Pictured: A women getting vaccinated in the US in 2010) The outbreak, which was declared a pandemic in June 2009 and considered over by August 2010, turned out to be not as deadly as first feared. Vaccines were rushed out, but in hindsight, the West, particularly Europe, and the WHO were criticised for overreacting. It was at a time when annual influenza epidemics every year killed between 250,000 and 500,000 people. Tedros said today some countries are seeing cases double every three to four days, but stressed they were committed to 'early case-finding, testing, isolating (and) caring for every case and tracing every contact' they could rein in the virus. More than half of the planet's population is currently staying home as part of efforts to stem the spread of the virus. But Tedros warned 'our global connectedness means the risk of re-introduction and resurgence of the disease will continue'. He pointed out that while Covid-19 had accelerated quickly, 'it decelerates much more slowly'. He said 'in other words, the way down is much slower than the way up,' stressing 'control measures must be lifted slowly, and with control. It cannot happen all at once.' He added: 'Control measures can only be lifted if the right public health measures are in place, including significant capacity for contact tracing.' Regardless of the efforts put in place, the WHO acknowledged 'ultimately, the development and delivery of a safe and effective vaccine will be needed to fully interrupt transmission'. A vaccine is thought to be at least 12 to 18 months away. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun attends a daily government meeting on the COVID-19 pandemic in Seoul, Monday./ Yonhap By Kim Se-jeong The government will discuss easing social-distancing rules later this week as COVID-19 infections have shown signs of decreasing, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said Monday. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 25 new infections Sunday, pushing the total number of cases to 10,537, with 217 deaths. Chung also said the administration would replace any easing of the social-distancing campaign with an enhanced personal hygiene program. He cautioned, however, that the government will take a cautious attitude toward relaxing rules because it could give mixed messages to citizens, and reiterated Korea was not immune to a second wave of COVID-19 infections. "We shouldn't forget things are still far from being normal and shouldn't lower our guard completely. It could cost us a lot. That's why the government is very cautious about easing social distancing regulations." The enhanced personal hygiene guidelines include skipping work for three to four days when falling sick; keeping a full arms-span distance when meeting people; opening windows for 15 minutes at home in the morning and evening; disinfecting lamp switches and door knobs regularly; washing hands for at least 30 seconds; and sneezing or coughing into your elbow or a tissue. A local freelance software developer created a website that aims to help H-E-B shoppers find a curbside delivery slot available in their area. Curbside delivery has become increasingly popular for grocery store shoppers during the coronavirus pandemic. At H-E-B, the demand has been high and time slots fill up quickly. It can be days before shoppers can pick up their groceries. CURBSIDE: An updated list of San Antonio restaurants offering takeout and delivery Through Brandon Howard's website, the H-E-B shopping community can type in their zip code to see which stores within 100 miles have slots available or when it will become available. Howard told mySA.com the data from his website is pulled from H-E-B's site, adding that information on time slots will be updated using the grocery store's website as well. The difference from the two is that Howard's website automatically gives shoppers a list of stores within a 100-mile radius with times available, Howard said. "You can do that on H-E-B's site as well, but with mine, you don't have to jump through the hoops of adding items to a cart or going through pages of times and locations," he said. "I admire what H-E-B does and this is just an improvement of their current process." The Good Newsletter: A weekly dose of inspiring San Antonio stories, delivered to your inbox Howard launched the website Monday and posted it on Reddit. Since then, many have commented on Howard's post, saying that the website has helped them place an order as early as Tuesday morning. To see the time slots in your zip code, visit curbside.howard.pro. Recently, Howard worked with city officials from Midland to create a tool that allows residents to text in and self-report symptoms of COVID-19. The Community Health Assessment Tool, better known as CHAT, allows hospitals and the city to act accordingly if self-reporting symptoms are increasing or decreasing. Howard, a Midland native, said he hopes he can implement that same tool in San Antonio. Priscilla Aguirre is a general assignment reporter for MySA.com | priscilla.aguirre@express-news.net | @CillaAguirre MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: By Akbar Mammadov Deputy Secretary General of NATO for Political Affairs and Security Policy James Appathurai has hailed the organizations ties with Azerbaijan as well as policies pursues by Baku. Azerbaijan is characterized by its own unique orientation: Baku is not an ally of Russia, but it does not seek membership in NATO. We have excellent cooperation with Azerbaijan. A good example is that it hosts meetings between our military leadership and the Russian top military leadership on its territory. We are developing important cooperation in this direction," Appathurai told Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Commenting on the Alliances cooperation with the South Caucasus, the official noted that NATO is more active in this region: "All three countries of the region - Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia - are striving to strengthen relations with NATO. Clear aspirations for membership in the North Atlantic alliance are characteristic of Georgia. We have a very active presence in this country. We want to help Georgia maintain political independence, sovereignty and achieve its goal. People in this country want this, and we respect their aspiration." "The example of Armenia visibly refutes the argument that we often hear from Moscow - they say that NATO wants to drag this country into an alliance, to "pull" it out of Russia's neighbors. The current Armenian leadership and all previous leaders of this republic will confirm that we have never been imposed on Armenia. Armenia is a part of the CSTO, it is a military ally of Russia, it cooperates well with Moscow, but this does not impede our good cooperation with Yerevan", D.Appathurai added. The history of Azerbaijan-NATO relationship dates back to March 1992 when Azerbaijan together with some Central and Eastern European countries, joined a newly established consultative forum the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), which was transformed into the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council later in 1997. The cornerstone of the substantive partnership between Azerbaijan and NATO was laid down on 4 May 1994 when the former Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev signed the Partnership for Peace (PfP) Framework Document. Azerbaijan actively uses relevant partnership tools to achieve goals reflected in the PfP Framework Document as well as bilateral cooperation documents. The PfP Presentation Document (1996), Planning and Review Process (1997) and Individual Partnership Action Plan (2004) Documents are the main national papers that define key principles and goals of Azerbaijans individual partnership with NATO. In these documents Azerbaijan expressed its readiness for cooperation with NATO in the areas such as defence and security sector reforms, developing military forces according to NATO standards, participation in the NATO-led peace operations, civil emergency planning, addressing the emerging security challenges as well as science, environment and public diplomacy. In the framework of its Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme based upon the PfP Framework Document, Azerbaijan has been participating annually at more than 200 events. From 1999 to 2008, troops from Azerbaijan were part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR). Azerbaijan actively supported the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan from 2002 to the end of the NATO-led operation in 2014. The country currently supports the follow-on Resolute Support Mission (RSM) to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces. Azerbaijan also contributes to NATOs Afghan National Army Trust Fund. Note that NATO has no direct role in negotiations aimed at resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which are being conducted in the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group. However, NATO encourages all sides to continue their efforts aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict. --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz London jet-setters who defied covid-19 lockdowns to take a private plane last Saturday to the Cote d'Azur were ordered to return home by French police. The aircraft carrying seven men, in their 40s and 50s, and three women, who were in their mid-20s, ignored orders not to land at Marseilles airport, according to a police official, who can't be identified in line with official policy. He said the trip was organized by a Croatian national on board. Three helicopters hired to whisk the group from the airport to a rented villa in Cannes were also sent packing by the authorities, said the chief of border-control police in Marseilles. Nine of the 10 passengers were forced to fly back to London without disembarking. The other person hired a private plane at the French airport to fly him to Berlin. "The passengers were quite clear about their intentions of holidaying in Cannes," the police official said. International travel must be for a legitimate reason such as a repatriation or for medical staff called to help, which wasn't the case in this instance, the police official said by phone. BFM TV reported the news earlier. The incident comes after skiers jetting in from London and other European capitals to mountain resorts like Les Contamines in France and Ischgl in Austria have been found to be so-called superspreaders of the coronavirus when they returned home. The group may have thought they had a better chance of falling through the cracks by landing in Marseilles instead of Nice, which is closer to Cannes, said the police chief. "They maybe thought they'd get a fine but would be able to get to their destination," he said. "But things didn't turn out that way." The helicopter pilots were fined but the foreign passengers got away without any penalty as they didn't technically enter French territory. The three French nationals on board would have been allowed to stay in the country but chose to fly back. Any attempted trip by plane would have stood out to authorities at a time when air travel has left the skies over Europe nearly empty. Air traffic out of the U.K. is down nearly 90% from a year earlier, according to the National Air Traffic Service. Elsewhere in France: - Two sick Parisians who moved to their vacation homes on the exclusive Ile de Re off France's Atlantic coast just before the nationwide lockdown have occupied all the capacity at the local intensive-care unit, according to France Bleu. - Doctor Thierry Godeau told the radio station that the nearby La Rochelle hospital has 22 ICU beds, six more than usual, but is "saturated" and can take no more Covid-19 patients. For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here. During a news conference last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly told the state's residents that internal modeling suggests California will hit its "peak" on the curve of the coronavirus pandemic sometime in mid-to-late May, despite widespread social distancing measures. "We know that the bending or flattening of the curve means two things," Ghaly said. "It means our peak comes down, but it also means it goes further out. We move that lower and further out. So our thinking around May, and late May in particular, means it follows this idea of flattening. It's not just a reduction down, it's moving it out." This projection is not in line with other models for California, including the highly influential IHME model used by policymakers at the federal level. The IHME model one that also takes into account a state's social distancing efforts projects that California's hospitals will hit peak resource use on April 13, and the state's number of daily deaths will peak on Wednesday. In addition, top-line figures for Kaiser Permanente's internal model reviewed by SFGATE shows that the managed care consortium expects peak resource use sometime in late April. That timeline is a week or two behind the IHME projections, but almost a full month ahead of the California internal projections. So why the discrepancy? SFGATE reached out to California's Office of Emergency Services for information on the science behind the state's internal model but did not receive a response. Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UCSF, said the state model uses two other models the University of Pennsylvania CHIME model and Stanford University's model to make its own projections. While Rutherford is not entirely sure how the state weighs each model, he believes that reliance on the CHIME model could lead to overstating the spread of the outbreak. "The CHIME model is exquisitely sensitive to case doubling over time, which is purely a function of testing," Rutherford said of the interactive model. "I put some numbers in with a case doubling of three days as opposed four days, and there was a huge, huge difference. Doubling times are not what you want to hang your hat on since they're a function of testing." California's testing situation has been far from ideal, as early lags and a massive backlog of unreturned tests have distorted the state's case doubling time figures. In addition to the emphasis on case doubling time, others have questioned the infection numbers the internal state model uses. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, told POLITICO last week he believes the state model is using an infection rate as high as 80 percent, an "unrealistic" worst-case scenario "based on early observations elsewhere that have since been walked back." It's unclear if the California model is extrapolating based on New York's outbreak, but Ioannidis believes that would be ill-advised since "the vast majority of the world is not as dense and intermingling." While Newsom has stated in recent days that the state's model shows a flattened curve, other models have shown the same flattening without pushing the peak of the curve into May. For example, the IHME model has downgraded the number of expected California hospital beds needed and daily deaths on multiple occasions in recent weeks while still projecting the same mid-April peak. "Models are all based on what data feeds into it," said Dr. Alexei Wagner, the assistant director of Adult Emergency Medicine at Stanford University's School of Medicine. "And so if you look like last week compared to this week [in the IHME model], the California numbers are much flatter, the peaks are lower. And I think there is a sense that the work that we've done for social distancing, social isolation is definitely starting to flatten the curve." So what's the best data to feed into models that would most accurately project both the height and expected timeline of California's peak? Rutherford believes the answer is hospitalization data, and stated that UCSF models are predicated on these figures since they are "hard numbers." The hospitalization data for the Bay Area has been flat over the month of April. Rutherford believes the Bay Area will be peaking at the beginning of this week, a tad earlier than the statewide IHME model projection. The IHME model is a blended model, it reflects what's going on in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, the Central Valley and it's not pulled apart," he said. "My best guess and these are just guesses now early [this] week is our peak, followed by Los Angeles a week later. Los Angeles cases are way higher, like ten-fold higher than San Francisco ... It went up very rapidly in Southern California largely driven by L.A. a week after statewide shelter in place, but this was a rapid rise that was not seen in the Bay Area since we went into shelter in place three days earlier. If Rutherford, the IHME modelers and Kaiser Permanente are correct in projecting that California will peak and start "moving down the curve" earlier than the state's internal model predicts, the timeline for reopening could possibly be moved up. ALSO: COVID-19 through the eyes of Bay Area Instagramers During a Friday night appearance on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," Newsom stated he would follow the actual trends the state witnesses in real time over the next few weeks when making his decision. "If over the course of the next few weeks we see this modest growth begin to bend in a different direction, then I will be in a position, based upon the expertise of our health professionals and based upon where this virus is, based on more expansive community surveillance meaning testing make that determination," he said. The governor also cautioned against "running the 90-yard dash against this virus" and "getting ahead of ourselves" when it comes to discussions of reopening, a sentiment shared by health experts. "The worry is that if, if anything changes or people start going out because the media is saying, 'Oh, it's just not as bad,' then will we see another spike or an uptick later?" Wagner stated. "Or is this going to come back in the fall? And that's why everybody's kind of like a little bit freaked out. But I do think we'll start, we won't have the significant surge that we were planning last month, but we are just very aware and vigilant that we will likely see a bump at our numbers as more and more patients get the virus, but we will have capacity to care for them." Rutherford agrees, and says he understands why California's internal model was geared towards a potential worst-case scenario. "If you want to miss, you want to miss high," he said. "If you miss low, the consequences are unbelievable. It doesn't bother me at all the numbers are higher, in an abundance of caution. You saw what happened in Italy and New York. I can guess that the state models are sensitive to things that are difficult to measure, but Im not the one having to procure a bunch of hospital beds." MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Eric Ting is an SFGATE digital reporter. Email: eric.ting@sfgate.com | Twitter:@_ericting Treasury yields climbed on Monday as investors digested an agreement between OPEC and its allies for record oil production cuts. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to price, rose two basis points to about 0.75%, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was also higher at 1.37%. OPEC and its oil producing allies on Sunday agreed a historic deal to cut production by 9.7 million barrels per day, after days of protracted negotiations in a bid to prop up falling prices as the coronavirus outbreak continues to hammer demand. The agreement also signals the end to an oil price war between OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC leader Russia, which had sent prices 40% lower since early March. The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent stimulus measures from the government and the U.S. Federal Reserve also remain in focus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, voiced cautious optimism on Sunday that the outbreak is "starting to level off" in some areas. As of Monday morning, the U.S. has more than 557,000 confirmed cases and more than 22,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. There is no major economic data due out of the U.S. Monday, but auctions will be held Monday for $57 billion of 3-month Treasury bills and $48 billion of 6-month bills. China's northeastern border with Russia has become a frontline in the fight against a resurgence of the coronavirus epidemic as new daily cases rose to the highest in nearly six weeks - with more than 90% involving people coming from abroad. Having largely stamped out domestic transmission of the disease, China has been slowly easing curbs on movement as it tries to get its economy back on track, but there are fears that a rise in imported cases could spark a second wave of COVID-19. A total of 108 new coronavirus cases were reported in mainland China on Sunday, up from 99 a day earlier, marking the highest daily tally since March 5. Imported cases accounted for a record 98. Half involved Chinese nationals returning from Russia's Far Eastern Federal District, home to the city of Vladivostok, who re-entered China through border crossings in Heilongjiang province. "Our little town here, we thought it was the safest place," said a resident of the border city of Suifenhe, who only gave his surname as Zhu. "Some Chinese citizens - they want to come back, but it's not very sensible, what are you doing coming here for?" The border is closed, except to Chinese nationals, and the land route through the city had become one of few options available for people trying to return home after Russia stopped flights to China except for those evacuating people. Streets in Suifenhe were virtually empty on Sunday evening due to restrictions on movement and gatherings announced last week, when authorities took preventative measures similar to those imposed in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the pandemic ripping round the world first emerged late last year. The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China stood at 82,160 as of Sunday. At the peak of the first wave of the epidemic on Feb 12 there were over 15,000 new cases, though that was a one-off spike following the deployment of new testing methods. Though the number of daily infections across China has dropped sharply from that peak, China has seen the daily toll creep higher after hitting a trough on March 12 because of the rise in imported cases. Chinese cities near the Russian frontier are tightening border controls and imposing stricter quarantines in response. Suifenhe and Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, are now mandating 28 days of quarantine as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests for all arrivals from abroad. In Shanghai, authorities found that 60 people who arrived on Aeroflot flight SU208 from Moscow on April 10 have the coronavirus, Zheng Jin, a spokeswoman for the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, told a press conference on Monday. China has cut the number of people crossing its borders by 90% and has tried to stop all non-essential journeys, said Liu Haitao, an immigration official, at a separate briefing. "Our border is long, and apart from the border crossings and passages, there are a large number of mountain passes, paths, ferry crossings and small roads, and the situation is very complicated," he said. Residents in Suifenhe said a lot of people had left the city fearing contagion, but others put their trust in authorities' containment measures. "I don't need to worry," Zhao Wei, another Suifenhe resident, told Reuters. "If there's a local transmission, I would, but there's not a single one. They're all from the border, but they've all been sent to quarantine. Search Keywords: Short link: China: Crosses 'higher than the national flag' removed from churches amid COVID-19 Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Chinas communist government removed numerous crosses from church rooftops during the country's coronavirus epidemic under the pretext that religious symbolism cannot be higher than the national flag. Religious Liberty Magazine Bitter Winter reported that in mid-March, crosses were removed from multiple churches in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui and in the neighboring Shandong, the prefecture-level city of Linyi. In February, officials removed a cross from a government-approved Three-Self church in Hexi village. The church was built in 2007 and has complied with state regulations, implementing the four requirements of the governments religion sinicization campaign. Additionally, it had stopped all gatherings during the coronavirus epidemic. Nevertheless, it was not spared in the crackdown. The government does not provide enough help during the epidemic but instead demolishes crosses, a local believer told Bitter Winter. Last December, at the height of the coronavirus epidemic, numerous crosses were removed from Three-Self churches in Hegang, a prefecture-level city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A member of a church in the citys Dongshan district told Bitter Winter that a local official threatened to close down the church if the cross was not removed because it was higher than the national flag. Crosses of Christ Gospel Church and Luobei Christian Church in Hegangs Luobei county were removed the same month using the same pretext. An employee in the county government explained that the crosses were too eye-catching, and they would attract people into the churches. In November, government officials ordered the removal of the cross from the Ranfang Church in Gushi county in the central province of Henan, telling believers that its the Communist Party that gives you food and money, not God. That same month, the cross of the Ranfang Church in Gushi county was taken down. A congregation member said that ahead of the demolition, the government summoned the church director for ideological work, and officials from neighboring villages were brought in to maintain order. How can we, common people, withstand these officials in power? the believer asked. We had to restrain our anger and keep silent. The outbreak of the virus, which began in Wuhan, China, sickened and killed thousands in the country. Previous reports have revealed how the Chinese communist government continued its campaign against Christianity during the coronavirus outbreak. While most of the churches across the country were ordered to refrain from physically gathering to help slow the spread of the virus, churches both underground and state-approved were permitted to meet online. However, in Chinas Shandong province, two state-run Christian organizations, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council released a statement, ordering all online preaching be ceased and churches that gather in secret be rooted out. Additionally, it ordered officials to guide Christians in other ways, with the caveat of not gathering together! China is ranked as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to persecution of Christians on Open Doors USAs World Watch List. The organization notes that all churches are perceived as a threat if they become too large, too political or invite foreign guests. In the past year, Chinese authorities have shut down a number of well-known churches, including Rongguili Church in Guangzhou, Xunsiding Church in Xiamen, and the 5,000-member Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China. A policy of 'sinicizing' the church is becoming increasingly influential because the Communist Party is relying strongly on Chinese cultural identity to stay in power, says Open Doors. The new restrictions on internet, social media and NGOsand the new regulations on religionare all seriously limiting freedom. China has also been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern for continuing to engage in particularly severe violations of religious freedom. Pastor Jian Zhu, who was raised in China but now is the director of the China Institute at Lincoln Christian University in Illinois, recently warned that Chinas persecution against house churches is now the worst he has seen since 1979. The Chinese government now has placed severe restrictions and policies on the house churches, asking neighbors to spy on one another, pressures school teachers and college professors to betray and sign a statement to denounce their faith as well as to do the same to the students, Zhu said. Now, they are trying to eliminate Christianity from public life, he said. Cameras are all over to watch church and Christians go to Sunday service. Families are threatened to not go to church or they will be punished or their relatives could be in trouble. In a departure from its previous stance, the school education department on Sunday said that private schools in the state could collect monthly fee. In a letter shared with district education officers across the state on Sunday, the education department stated that it had earlier issued orders stopping schools from charging any fee until the resumption of normal classes. The department had, however, learnt that some schools were collecting the fee for the first three months of the new academic session in April, and students unable to pay the same were being struck off the rolls. Students who are unable to pay the three-month fee right now are being deprived of online classes and their names are being struck off the rolls of the school. In light of the updates, students should not be bound to pay the fee for three months. Instead, schools should only collect monthly fee from parents and ensure that students are not deprived of online education, stated the letter. Since March, the department has issued three directives stating that schools shouldnt pressurise parents to pay any fee until normal classes resume. The last such order was issued on Saturday and stated that the department had received complaints from parents about schools that were pressuring them to pay the fee immediately. The letter had mentioned that action would be taken against erring schools. The new order issued on Sunday didnt mention what led the department to reconsider its stance. It further stated that no school could charge transportation fee during the lockdown. The department also said that parents facing financial distress due to the lockdown should not be forced to pay the monthly fee and could seek relaxation from schools. Business and livelihood of many parents have been affected due to the lockdown that has been implemented to contain Coronavirus. In such conditions, it wont be possible for them to pay the fee and they should not be pressurised to deposit fee. If such parents approach the school, administration/ principals should consider postponing the fee payment for such parents in light of the lockdown, the department said. It stated that schools could collect the fee in instalments in the coming months by adjusting the arrears. The department also wrote that parents in a stable financial situation could pay the monthly fee. The department said that parents could share their grievances as per Rule 158-A of Haryana School Education Rules, 2003, if schools were found not complying with the directive. While schools said that the new directive brought much-needed relief, parents were not happy and said that the order mentioned nothing on the annual fee hike. Colonel (retired) KR Pratap Singh, the president of the Haryana Progressive School Conference, a consortium of private schools, said that the new order would allow schools to pay teachers. There were some schools that couldnt pay complete salary to employees due to shortage of funds. Hopefully, parents will pay now. Earlier, the government had said that nobody needed to pay. If there are parents who are in financial distress, the government should compensate them, said Singh. Rashmi Malik, principal, Salwan Public School, Sector 15, said, We welcome the order. At least the salary of the teachers will keep moving and theyll get paid for all the efforts that they are putting in. Kailash Sharma, general secretary of Haryana Abhibhavak Ekta Manch, a parents body, said that parents were disappointed with the directive. The government has ruled in favour of private schools. We oppose the order and will respond to it after holding consultations with members. We have asked parents to oppose this move and not pay under any situation, said Sharma. Tripti Singh, a parent, said that they had the provision of paying monthly fee even earlier and the new order mentioned nothing about a fee hike or additional heads. Many parents are paying a monthly fee. They can opt between monthly or quarterly payments. This is not new. The crucial thing to note is that nothing has been said about additional heads such as annual fee, meal feel, whose invoice has been sent by schools. It also says nothing about the annual fee hike, which is an additional burden on parents, said Singh. The district education officer, Indu Boken, said that the department had taken into account the financial condition of parents, and such parents could seek relaxation from the school. Schools can collect monthly fee from parents, but if the financial condition doesnt allow them, they can seek a relaxation, said Boken. Cybereason, creators of the leading Cyber Defense Platform, announced today that it is hosting a live, virtual panel and Q&A with two of the worlds leading cybersecurity industry CEOs. Headlining the panel are Lior Div, CEO and Co-Founder, Cybereason; Corey Thomas, CEO, Rapid7; Ed Amoroso, CEO, TAG Cyber. During the panel, participants will be able to ask Div, Thomas and Amoroso for their advice and recommendations on how to maintain business continuity, how to handle massive shifts to remote work across global geographies and what the biggest security challenges facing companies today are, as well as what they will be in the future. Who: Cybereason, Rapid7 and TAG Cyber What: Live, virtual panel conversation When: Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 10:30 am ET Where: (Register) https://www.cybereason.com/boston-security-leaders-answer-your-qs-on-shifting-to-remote-work Panelists: Lior Div, Chief Executive Officer, Cybereason Lior Div is the CEO and Cofounder of Cybereason, one of the fastest growing cybersecurity companies in the world. In 2019, Cybereason was named a Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startup. He is an expert in hacking operations, forensics, reverse engineering, malware analysis, cryptography, and evasion. Previously, Div served in key security forces agencies as commander of cybersecurity teams, where he received a Medal of Honor. Prior to co-founding Cybereason, Lior founded a cybersecurity services company that provided services to government agencies. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades in his career. Highlights include being named a three-time finalist for EYs Entrepreneur of the Year New England Award, being named to the Boston Business Journals Power 50 Newsmaker list and receiving Brandeis Universitys Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship. Corey Thomas, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Rapid7 Corey Thomas is the CEO of Rapid7, as well as Chairman of its board of directors. In 2018, he was elected to the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) board of directors and the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Strategy Council. He also serves on the board of directors for LPL Financial, as well as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, sitting on its audit and health care quality and affordability committees. He previously served on the U.S. Commerce Department's Digital Economy Board of Advisors. Corey has extensive experience leading technology companies to the next stage of growth and innovation. Prior to joining Rapid7, Corey was VP of marketing at Parallels, Inc., a virtualization technology company; group project manager of the Microsoft Server and Tools division, steering product planning for Microsofts data platform; and a consultant at Deloitte Consulting. Corey received a B.E. in electrical engineering and computer science from Vanderbilt University and a MBA from Harvard Business School. Dr. Ed Amoroso, founder & CEO, TAG Cyber Dr. Edward G. Amoroso serves as Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for Cyber Security (CCS) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Ed is also CEO of TAG Cyber, a global cybersecurity advisory, training, consulting, and media services company supporting major organizations across the world. Ed recently retired from AT&T, beginning his career in Unix security at Bell Labs and culminating as SVP/CSO from 2004 to 2016. He was elected AT&T Fellow in 2010. Ed holds the BS degree in Physics from Dickinson College, the MS/PhD degrees in Computer Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Columbia Business School. He served previously on the Board of Directors for M&T Bank and the NSA Advisory Board. About Cybereason Cybereason, creators of the leading Cyber Defense Platform, gives the advantage back to the defender through a completely new approach to cybersecurity. Cybereason offers endpoint prevention, detection and response and active monitoring. The solution delivers multi-layered endpoint prevention by leveraging signature and signatureless techniques to prevent known and unknown threats in conjunction with behavioral and deception techniques to prevent ransomware and fileless attacks. Cybereason is a privately held, international company, headquartered in Boston with customers in more than 30 countries. Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/ Follow us: Blog | Twitter | Facebook Media Contact: Bill Keeler Senior Director, Global Public Relations Cybereason bill.keeler@cybereason.com (929) 259-3261 While the whole world has been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, China seemed to have things under control with cases plateauing and actually dipping than earlier. In fact, China had also started the process of re-opening its business complexes and factories with many people going back to work. Everything seemed to going back to normal, until a resurgence of cases over the weekend. Reuters However, a recent report by the Guardian has revealed that COVID-19 cases in China have been rising over the past few days. Chinas National Health Commission has reported 108 new infections on Sunday, more than Saturday's number -- which was 99 -- and Friday's (46 new infections) as well. However, whats more astonishing is the fact that 10 cases from these were imported, while seven of the local cases were from the Heilongjiang province in the northern region of China, which is very close to the Russian border. Authorities noticed a rise in Chinese people with COVID-19 crossing the Russian border and coming back to their homeland. In Shanghai, 51 Chinese nationals flying in on the same flight from Russia tested positive while 21 cases involved Chinese nationals travelling from Russia to the northeastern Heilongjiang province. Authorities have already ramped up restrictions and set up a Wuhan-like lockdown in the capital Harbin, as well as the border city Suifenhe. Since Russia ceased all flights and closed land border to incoming traffic in February, Suifenhe was a prominent route for people to return to China. Reuters According to Reuters, the border city of Suifenhe and Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang, said they would require all arrivals from abroad to undergo 28 days of quarantine, as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests. Moreover, authorities also intend to lock down residential units where confirmed and asymptomatic coronavirus cases (positive cases without any symptoms) are found for 14 days. In Hubei province where the whole mayhem started, authorities have reported two new deaths, but no new cases of infection. Today, the total death toll for COVID-19 related cases in China sits at 3,341 according to health officials in China. By Express News Service PATNA: Bihar has become the sixth state in the country to ban spitting at pubic places amid lockdown. Muzaffarpur district was the first to have banned it a week ago following the order of district magistrate. Principal Secretary of health department Sanjay Kumar on Monday banned the consumption of tobacco with immediate effect. Spitting at public places increases vulnerability of outbreak of diseases like encephalitis, TB, Swine flu and other contagious or air-bore communicable diseases. Thus, spitting and consumption of tobacco products have been banned in Bihar, he said. He said that violators will be booked under sections 268 and 269 of IPC which invites six months imprisonment or fines. Besides this, smoking at public places ahs also been totally banned in Bihar and strict actions allowed to be taken against whosoever is found smoking in public places. He said that decisions on such moves will help in fighting against the Covid-19 and ensure clean surroundings. The impact of COVID-19 could accentuate already existing inequalities in countries like Peru. For this reason, although this country is still only at the initial stage of the emergency, it is necessary to look towards the indigenous world as soon as possible. This includes the communities that live closest to the cities, those living in isolation and those who have had initial contact. A few days after Peru decreed mandatory confinement as a measure to try and stop the coronavirus, the first indigenous leader tested positive and was placed in quarantine. Since then, the 55 Indigenous Peoples, including some 18 groups living in voluntary isolation and those who have had initial contact, have been leading a series of measures to protect themselves. The Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP) immediately summoned more than 2,000 communities to ratify the national lockdown, closing non-residents entry to indigenous communities to control the spread of the virus. This measure has been applied in the Ashaninka territory in the central jungle. Likewise, the same federations are communicating the measures dictated by the Ministry of Health, translating the official materials into their languages. Although these peoples are organizing themselves against this global threat, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, is also strengthening its response to guarantee their health. A challenge to health systems This is important, because if we consider that the peak of this pandemic already represents a challenge for the health systems of many countries, this could be even more devastating for Indigenous Peoples in Peru. According to the latest national census, only 32 percent of these communities have health posts, of which 92 percent do not have medical staff. Only 1.7 percent of the health posts offer hospitalization. According to the Organization of Eastern Indigenous Peoples (ORPIO), based in the Loreto region, health posts are short of supplies, do not have the necessary medicines or equipment and have great limitations for the application of an intercultural approach. This approach is key for ensuring the inclusion of indigenous beliefs and visions and these are complemented by the actions promoted by the state. This concern is also relevant for peoples in voluntary isolation or who have had initial contact. Mass deaths have already occurred from diseases such as flu or measles, for which they have no immunity. Therefore, these communities exercise their self-determination by isolating themselves. This is a measure that, as we too are experiencing right now, guarantees their survival. This is why it is so important that the Ministry of Culture has already suspended entry to Indigenous and Territorial Reserves. The state is starting to implement specific actions and it is necessary to emphasize the need for these actions to be appropriate to indigenous beliefs and conceptions about diseases; as well as their living conditions. These measures must include the participation of all sectors at all stages, from providing information to ensuring adequate attention and equipment for all the health facilities attending these communities. Security protocols Likewise, emphasis must be placed on emergency care, with the establishment of security protocols that allow for rapid evacuation in the event that there is an outbreak of the virus within their communities. As the Ministry of Culture has established, communication must be in indigenous languages and must be accessible to the community. A gender-sensitive approach must also be included, considering womens role as principal caregivers for children and older adults within their homes. AIDESEP has already shared their cosmovision; "the Amazons heat and sacred plants will stand up to COVID-19, but they will not be able to stop this tragedy," if adequate measures are not taken. UNDP reaffirms its commitment to the most vulnerable populations in the country. Together with the Peruvian State and indigenous organizations, we are prioritizing a series of actions to deal with COVID-19. This includes strengthening capacities at the community and territorial level through intercultural communication materials with an analysis of territorial vulnerability and long term wellbeing. Growing numbers of indie bookstores in the U.S. are turning to GoFundMe to raise funds to pay expenses like payroll, rent, and utilities to stay afloat in the absence of customers this spring. But some bookstoress are having problems actually accessing those funds. High-profile booksellers seeking recourse have flocked to the platform, including City Lights Books in San Francisco, probably the most famous indie bookstore in the country. Elaine Katzenberger, publisher and CEO of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, launched a GoFundMe campaign on Thursday to raise $300,000 for the iconic institution, which was founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953. Its headline was blunt: "Keep City Lights Alive." By Monday morning, the campaign had raised more than $450,000, a seemingly rousing success celebrated immediately online by the literary worldjust as it previously heralded Ann Arbor's Literati Bookstore's success in raising $100,000 in just 48 hours through the platform. Yet a number of the stores that were among the first to launch successful campaigns in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic are complaining that, to date, GoFundMe has not released the funds promised them. While some of the bookstores PW contacted declined to go on the record, others are going public, hoping that the logjam around the platform's disbursements will be cleared and that they will receive the funds they desperately need. (City Lights could not be reached for comment by press time.) I Am Books in Bostons North End neighborhood was the first indie bookstore to launch a GoFundMe campaign in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Citing his Italian background and disclosing that hed heard reports from Italian friends and relatives of the devastation in that country due to the coronavirus, owner Nicola Orichuia closed I Am to customers on March 12. On that same day, Orichuia launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise, initially, $5,000. He later increased that amount to $10,000, and to date he has raised $10,195 via the platform. He said he has yet to see a dime of that money. On Friday afternoon, Orichuia wrote in response to PWs query: I've reached out to customer service several times, chatted twice with customer service representatives, and submitted all the documentation they requested twice and followed all their instructions, and I still can't seem to get it to work. Orichuia sounded more hopeful of a resolution on Monday morning, emailing PW that he had submitted the documentation GoFundMe requires for the third time, and that "it now appears to be working," although he subsequently received yet another "error message." But, he added, "it still is showing my first withdrawal should go through on April 17, so hopefully it will work now. The whole process is a bit cumbersome for businesses like ours to get the withdrawals set up. At the same time, GoFundMe has seen quite the uptick in fundraisers, so I guess their customer service reps must be slammed." Seminary Co-op/57th Street Books in Chicago launched its campaign on March 27 to raise $250,000. To date, it has raised $150,000none of which has been released, as of this morning. Like Orichuia, Seminary Co-op director Jeff Deutsch contacted GoFundMe customer service several times, most recently this morning, but still has not received any of the funds raised. Deutsch told PW that he has been assured when he contacts the platform that its just going to take a bit of time. But, he added in an email, it has been two weeks since we posted the campaign, which seems like long enough. In contrast, Nina Barrett of Bookends and Beginnings in Evanston, Ill., who launched a campaign on the same weekend as Deutsch did, reports that she has received most of the money from the campaign raised to date, i.e., $25,000 of her $100,000 goal. We got it in seven business days, she said, adding that it was not a streamlined process, due to the platform's "really wonky" messaging system to campaign organizers regarding disbursements. GoFundMe, she explained, sent her, and other organizers, a series of automated messages "that don't appear to have anything to do with your actual situationincluding one scary-sounding message they sent me that they were putting a freeze on our funds. GFM made it sound like maybe someone else had tried to withdraw them, but when I replied to that message to say it didn't make any sense and I was concerned, I got a very friendly message back saying that no, no one else had tried to access the funds and they were lifting the hold. The funds appeared in her account on April 6. GoFundMe's press relations department has not responded to PW's query. An earlier version of this story misidentified Nicola Orichuia's gender and has been corrected. Incidents of dog bites in Indore, Madhya Pradesh's most coronavirus affected city, have gone up in the past 20 days, doctors said on Monday, with activists claiming lack of food due to the lockdown may be making the canines irritable and aggressive. On Monday, 22 new COVID-19 cases were found in the city, taking the total COVID-19 count here to 328. So far, 33 people have died of the infection. "At present, 40-50 people are coming to our hospital every day after being attacked by street dogs. These numbers are unusual as curfew has been imposed and people are supposed to stay indoors. At a time when the COVID-19 infection is rampant, we have to divert some staff for treatment of dog bites," Ashutosh Sharma, in charge of Hukumchand Poly Clinic, popularly known as Lal Hospital, told PTI on Monday. "We have to give the patients four to five injections over 28 days to prevent rabies," he said. People For Animals Indore unit president Priyanshu Jain said the curfew has caused 50,000 dogs in the city to rummage for food. "They are facing problems getting food which is making them irritable and aggressive. When hungry dogs see people walking about wearing masks, they get suspicious, bark at them and attack," Jain added. He said the Indore Municipal Corporation was making 10,000 chapatis, gruel and rice for street dogs and areas where it was being served properly, complaints of dog bites have come down. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) technology This 17-year-old develops the world's largest coronavirus tracker, rejects multi-million dollar advertising revenue offer nCoV2019.live, developed by a 17-year old Avi Schiffmann, has been visited by more than 350 million people to date. Following the emergency summit, the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (Turkic Council) adopted a joint Declaration on the situation with coronavirus. The summit was attended by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbai Jeenbekov, President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, and Secretary General of the Turkic Council Baghdad Amreev and Director General of the Turkic Council Baghdad Amreev and World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhan Gebreyesus. Director of the Institute for Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan, Eldor Aripov, told Vestnik Kavkaza about the meeting, which was held for the first time in the form of a video conference, and about the steps that Uzbekistan is taking in connection with the coronavirus. - What problems were discussed at a meeting of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States (CCTS)? - The main issue on the agenda is the joint response to the coronavirus pandemic. The problem of COVID-19 faced all the member countries of the CCTS. Within the national framework, systematic and decisive measures are being taken to curb the widespread spread of infection and protect the health of citizens. In this regard, it is very important to exchange accumulated experience and knowledge in the fight against this phenomenon, especially since we have something to share. According to leading experts from the USA, Great Britain, Japan, as well as international organizations (EBRD, ADB, World Bank), Uzbekistan is taking thoughtful and verified measures to prevent the large-scale spread of infection, both domestically and at the regional level. In his speech, the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev dwelt upon them in detail. In particular, an effective strategy for maintaining strict quarantine at the national level is being implemented in the republic. In conditions when there is no vaccine against a new coronavirus and effective drugs in the world, such quarantine becomes the only effective way to prevent a massive outbreak of the disease. In this regard, the experience of China is indicative, where strict restrictive measures made it possible to quickly return the situation to normal. In addition, our medical capabilities and the potential of the healthcare system in all cities and regions of the republic have been mobilized. For example, as the head of state noted, a large quarantine zone and a modern modular medical institution are able to receive 30 thousand people in the Tashkent region. Moreover, this is done as soon as possible, in record time. - What other measures are being taken in Uzbekistan to combat coronavirus? - By the decision of the president, unprecedented measures were taken to support and socially protect medical personnel who are at the forefront of the fight against this invisible enemy and who daily risk their health in order to save people. Organized work on the open prompt delivery of information to the population related to the spread of coronavirus infection in the country. A high level of communication between government bodies and society has been established. It is very important that the disruption of the educational process in schools and universities was not allowed. According to UNESCO, today in 180 countries, schools are quarantined due to coronavirus. This affected 1.5 billion students, that is, 87% of the total number in the world. Targeted social assistance was organized for the most vulnerable groups of the population. Along with state bodies, representatives of civil society and volunteers are involved in this process. A progressive package of economic measures has been adopted to mitigate the impact of the crisis on relatively vulnerable sectors of the economy. An Anti-Crisis Fund under the Ministry of Finance has been created with an initial volume of 10 trillion soums. (more than 1 billion dollars) Business and entrepreneurship entities were granted tax holidays, a number of other tax benefits and deferred loan payments. As the president of the Geneva diplomatic circle, Robert Blum, noted, "the situation in Uzbekistan is under control thanks to the decisions and measures adopted by the country's leadership. These measures were decisive and timely, which allowed to significantly protect the population from the catastrophe." Given all this, the international rating agency Fitch has maintained a stable rating of the banking sector of Uzbekistan. In addition, from the very beginning of the pandemic, the Uzbek president repeatedly held telephone conversations with all the leaders of the countries of Central Asia and Afghanistan in order to coordinate efforts to ensure the epidemiological well-being in the region and to prevent the complication of our economic ties. The feasible humanitarian assistance was provided to our neighbors - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan. We are the only country in the region that borders all the states of Central Asia and Afghanistan. Therefore, it is so important for us to effectively interact with everyone. The epidemic knows no boundaries; it is impossible to isolate oneself from it separately. - What initiatives did Uzbekistan take to respond to the coronavirus pandemic at the summit of the Turkic Council? - Firstly, Shavkat Mirizeev proposed creating a permanent system of monitoring, analysis and forecasting of the epidemiological situation within the framework of the Turkic Council. The pandemic that we encountered showed that no one is safe from new outbreaks of infectious diseases, you need to be prepared for such situations, have well-coordinated tools for anticipation and response, including at the regional and international levels. Therefore, the initiative of the head of Uzbekistan to create an effective system for tracking any changes in the epidemiological background, data exchange and analysis, as well as the development of coordinated decisions on the impact on the current situation is so important. Secondly, Uzbekistan proposed to establish joint activities of ministries of health and leading medical institutions of Turkic-speaking countries to exchange information and experience in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of dangerous infectious diseases. The results of this work will make it possible to quickly study the main characteristics of the disease and methods of its treatment, to solve the issues of supplies and production of antiviral protection products, as well as laboratory tools for testing the population. Considering that these actions should be taken immediately, Uzbekistan proposed holding the first video conference in the near future with the participation of leading specialized experts. Thirdly, the President initiated the establishment of the Ad Hoc Pandemic Coordination Group under the Secretariat of the Turkic Council. This group should establish close working contacts with the national headquarters in our countries for countering the pandemic in order to keep abreast and be able to interact quickly. Only such solutions will save time, quickly discuss and implement joint action plans. The effectiveness of our efforts will increase at times if they are undertaken at the multilateral level. It is very important to ensure, within the framework of the activities of the coordination group, prompt and wide coverage of the efforts of our countries in the fight against coronavirus. Therefore, it was proposed to create a separate scientific and information resource on the CCTS website. The resource should not only reliably inform about the situation in our countries. It is important to exchange experience on various methods of communicating to the population the rules of behavior in quarantine, the requirements of disease prevention. In a pandemic, knowledge is a powerful weapon in the fight against the spread of infection. On these issues, one should not hesitate to adopt the most successful experience of each other. Fourthly, one of the key problems in the current crisis is the uninterrupted supply of the population with necessary food, medicines and medicines. To solve problems in the field of logistics and transport, practical assistance in the transportation of goods under quarantine and border crossing in a simplified manner, the head of state proposed to create a working group under the leadership of the CCTS under the leadership of ministers of transport. Fifth, understanding the global nature of the threat we are facing, the president separately emphasized the need to strengthen international cooperation and support the activities of multilateral organizations. In particular, he advocated further strengthening the status and mandate of the World Health Organization, establishing partnerships of this organization with the CCTS. - Following the results of the summit, a Declaration of an extraordinary meeting of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking states was adopted. What provisions are included in the document? - It is necessary to highlight the fact that all the proposals of the President of Uzbekistan were reflected in it. This means that they were supported by all member countries. This means that the initiatives of Shavkat Mirziyoyev will find their practical embodiment, will make an important contribution both to the overall fight against coronavirus infection and to the socio-economic interests of our citizens. As the president noted, we all know that no country can effectively combat this pandemic. Therefore, we must act on the principles of solidarity, cooperation and mutual concern. Together we can do a lot. This view was also supported by other Council countries, which agreed on a global level to support the efforts of the UN in the fight against the pandemic and welcomed the resolution adopted by the General Assembly on April 2, 2020, Global Solidarity in the Fight against Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the very fact of holding a meeting of the heads of Turkic-speaking states and the readiness to solve the most pressing problems together as soon as possible testifies to the maturity and relevance of this organization. In the world there are not many regional formats capable in today's conditions of quickly and effectively making joint decisions to counter the pandemic and the crisis. This once again confirms the timeliness of the decision of the head of Uzbekistan on joining the CCTS. Together, we will be able to overcome difficulties and hardships, stand shoulder to shoulder in front of them and get out of these tests even stronger and more united. ALBANY About a month before the current coronavirus pandemic threw New York government into overdrive, state officials were dealing with a different, previously unreported emergency, in the form of a massive cyber-attack that disabled some state agency information systems and took nearly a month to resolve. The attack was believed to have come from outside the U.S. and temporarily halted access to data bases that the State Police, Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Civil Service use on a regular basis. State officials stressed that no personal identification of New Yorkers or state employees was compromised. Nor did the attack actually result in the theft or exposure of information from the various data bases. With the review complete, there is no evidence that personal data of any New York resident, employee, or any other individuals were compromised or have been taken from our network, Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said. In the meantime, ITS (Office of Information Technology Services) has taken actions to further harden our network and protect the integrity of our system. The attack was discovered around Jan. 28 when technicians from ITS discovered that seven Citrix NetScalers, devices that are used to facilitate communications between computer users, had been hacked at the states main server farm at SUNYs ZEN building on the Nanotechnology school campus in Albany. Workers the next morning were kept out of the offices as security experts began isolating the computer servers that had been attacked. The hack appeared to be part of a mass cyber attack on similar devices worldwide, after news of a vulnerability in those systems had been widely reported in the industry. The attack may have come from offshore. In mid-December, Citrix put out an advisory that there was a possible security flaw with the NetScaler, also known as the Gateway, system. Industry reports said that 80,000 companies and entities in 158 countries were potentially at risk of being hacked. Citrix then sent out patches, or programs to fix the problem. This was different from the ransomware attacks that hit some local governments including Albany and Colonie, in recent months. In those attacks, computer systems can be disabled and started only after paying a ransom, usually in cryptocurrency, or web-based cyber-cash which is untraceable. Both communities had backup systems that avoided attack, however. The Albany International Airport was also attacked recently, shutting off access to items like budget spreadsheets and administrative data. Airport officials said they paid a ransom of less than six figures. Rather than ransom, the attack on the state was the kind that can create an opening for implanting malware, or computer viruses that can be used for cryptocurrency mining, a data-intensive activity in which new virtual dollars are created in cyberspace. It can also be used for phishing, or the illicit sending out of mass emails designed to obtain information like credit card numbers or passwords from unsuspecting victims. Soon after the New York attack was discovered, law enforcement including the FBI was brought in to investigate. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Additionally, the state hired the CrowdStrike computer security firm to conduct what would be a three-week forensic investigation that examined more than 40 computer servers. The attack did appear to briefly disrupt the internal help desk for state employees seeking help with their computers, according to one ITS employee who didnt want to be named. Right after the attack, those calling the number received a recorded message instead of reaching a person. But it hasnt interfered with the states response to the coronavirus pandemic. The state is now using CrowdStrikes end point monitoring system which keeps an extra cyber eye on the traffic going through its network. Azzopardi couldnt immediately say what the price tag for the attack and subsequent precautions were. But there was really no choice, he said. Its the cost of doing business these days, he said. rkarlin@timesunion.com 518-454-5758 @RickKarlinTU Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has raised the standing of his sister as a key player in the secretive state and bolstered his new foreign minister in a cadre shuffle that comes as he tries to fend off the coronavirus pandemic. Part emissary, part personal assistant, Kim Yo-jong has been reinstated to her position as an alternate Politburo member of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, state media said. Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, arrives for the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Credit:AP The move returned her to the powerful decision-making body a year after she left the post, and follows a series of roles since that included responding to overtures from US President Donald Trump. "Her media profile over the years suggests that her profile will continue to rise and that her role will continue to expand," said Rachel Minyoung-lee, a former North Korea analyst with the US government. ABINGDON, Va. Emergency crews rescued 18 people from an apartment complex off Woodby Lane near Abingdonearly Monday morning as flooding along Wolf Creek crept into residential units. All of the residents made it out safely and no injuries were reported, according to Theresa Kingsley, Washington Countys emergency management coordinator. Residents were taken to a nearby Quality Inn and are being assisted by the Red Cross, Kingsley said. In recent years, major rain events have caused flooding into parts of the complexs parking area, but waters have not entered into the units before, said Katrina Davidson, one of the residents who was displaced. Its never gotten this bad, she said. Davidson, 32, stood on the gravel entrance to the complex as she watched the water rush by around 8 a.m. Monday morning. She said the water had started receding and she was hoping it would eventually be low enough that she could get her cat, Artemis, from her apartment. Her other cat, Autumn, was saved during the initial rescue effort and was waiting in her nearby Jeep. Im talking to industry leaders about that, Im talking to economists about that, he said. Im also, very importantly, listening to the scientists and the doctors to make sure that we do this right. The last thing we want is to begin to open things up and then have a big spike in infections. New Delhi, April 13 (IANS) With the end of term of Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Harivansh on April 9, the House will have to elect the new Deputy Chairman when it convenes for the monsoon session. (File Photo: IANS/PIB) Image Source: PK New Delhi, April 13 : With the end of term of Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Harivansh on April 9, the House will have to elect the new Deputy Chairman when it convenes for the monsoon session. He was elected as the Deputy Chairman on August 9, 2018. He has been re-elected to the Upper House on the Janata Dal (United) ticket from Bihar. Harivansh could be re-elected to the post as the JD(U) is the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) an alliance partner in Bihar, which is scheduled to go for the Assembly polls this year. Harivansh is a former journalist and former aide of late Prime Minister Chandrashekhar. In a circular, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has advised the newly elected members to wait for the end of lockdown for subscribing to 'Oath or Affirmation'. Fifty-five vacancies are due to arise in the Rajya Sabha from 17 states between April 3 and APril 13. 37 members have been elected unopposed. In Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan elections have been postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It took a long while, but Motorola is finally ready to return to high-end smartphones. The Lenovo brand has announced a virtual Flagship Launch E-vent taking place on April 22nd at 12PM Eastern. There are precious few clues in the teaser video below, but you can clearly see a sharply curved screen edge a hint this may be the rumored Edge+ phone (and its more affordable counterpart) youve heard about for the past few weeks. If the leaks are accurate, the Edge+ will rely on a mix of eye-catching design and raw specs to reel you in. It would have bezel-free sides through sharply curved edges on its 6.7-inch display, and would come equipped with a Snapdragon 865 chip, 8GB to 12GB of RAM depending on the trim, and a a giant 5,000mAh battery. You might also get a beefy 108MP primary rear camera plus wide-angle and telephoto sensors. The standard Edge would scale back to a Snapdragon 765 with 6GB of RAM. Its not certain when the Edge series will ship, or how much itll cost. Rumors have the Edge+ coming to Verizon (Engadgets parent company), however, so you might not have to go far to hunt one down. Either way, Motorola is clearly bent on reestablishing itself in a market it has largely ignored as of late whether or not it can pull people away from rivals like the Galaxy S20 is another matter. TAMPA, Fla. - On the holiest Sunday of the Christian calendar, the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne was angry. Instead of delivering his Easter sermon to a packed house of parishioners, controversy surrounding the coronavirus pandemic prompted him to live-stream his service on the Internet instead of appearing personally at his 4,000-person megachurch. Howard-Browne used the opening moments of the unusual sermon - taped from his home studio with an American flag backdrop and a picture of him laying hands on President Donald Trump - to rail against government tyranny. "This is not about a virus. This is about shutting down the gospel of Jesus Christ," he preached. "And all these pastors that say, 'Well, we should just roll over and comply,' you don't understand." For nearly a month, Howard-Browne's megachurch, The River, has been at the center of a debate on how to balance religious liberty with public health. The controversy came to a head two weeks ago, when Howard-Browne was arrested after holding services packing hundreds into a sanctuary, defying a local emergency order limiting the size of gatherings to impede the virus's spread. The impact of the novel coronavirus on churches across the country has been particularly acute on Easter, the day Trump had hoped the country would reopen and church pews would be filled. Instead, Easter worshipers mainly flocked to computer monitors and cellphone screens. A handful of state officials in places like Louisiana and Texas allowed a limited form of worship by either restricting crowd size or directing parishioners to stay six feet apart. But there were some conflicts, including in Kansas, where the state's high court sided at the last minute with the governor to keep people at home. Despite Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, limiting gatherings larger than 50, Pastor Tony Spell, who leads Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, planned to host 2,000 during two Easter Sunday services, he told The Wall Street Journal. Central Police Department Chief Roger Corcoran said he saw about 330 people attend the morning service. Corcoran has charged Spell with at least six misdemeanor counts. He will report that Spell held an additional two services, he said, which may result in two more charges for the pastor. Spell, whose legal team includes former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore, told The Journal that he would sue Edwards and any police officer who tried to arrest him. "The Bible commands us to gather together," Spell said. Not all state leaders have commanded that churches close. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said churches are essential and could remain open if they keep worshipers six feet apart. "We fought to meet this way, and I know not everybody understands, because there is a lot of fear and panic out there," Pastor John Greiner told attendees at Houston's Glorious Way Church, which held two in-person services Sunday morning. The church said it would space 100 congregants across the venue, which normally holds 1,000, and offer hand sanitizer. Virginia allowed drive-in services, as long as observers stayed in their cars and no more than 10 people led the event. On Easter morning, Pastor Terry Shuttlesworth paced as he delivered his sermon outside Dominion Christian Center in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He thanked the members of his congregations who were worshiping via live stream, and the ones whose cars filled the parking lot. "For now, turn that car into your pew." But it is in Florida that the most high-profile clash between church and state has played out over Howard-Browne's decision to hold March 29 services. The pastor has been caught in the center of conflicting stay-home guidance from Hillsborough County and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. The county's emergency order banned church gatherings of more than 10 people and said they had to follow social-distancing guidelines. But that was superseded by the governor's order April 1 saying churches were essential and could host services of any size. The county's order resulted in Howard-Browne's arrest for what the sheriff called "reckless disregard for human life." The pastor posted bail, and his attorney wants the charges dropped. Howard-Browne was already a controversial figure. A native of South Africa, he founded The River at Tampa Bay in 1996 with his wife, Adonica. When their daughter died of cystic fibrosis in 2002, they vowed "to win 100 million souls to Jesus and to put $1 billion into world missions," according to their biography on the church's website. That culminated in the Tampa campus, which houses an international ministry, a Bible institute and the church. In 2017, the Howard-Brownes were among the religious leaders invited to the Oval Office to lay hands on and pray for the newly elected president. Howard-Browne is a conspiracy theorist who has appeared on Infowars, a far-right conspiracy theory website operated by Alex Jones. In 2017, he warned of "a plot on Capitol Hill to take the president out" and was subsequently visited by the Secret Service. Howard-Browne declined to comment for this report. He defended in videos released on Facebook and on his church's website his decision to hold church despite coronavirus restrictions. "We had to make a stand," he said. "I had to make a stand for the First Amendment. This whole stand was about the First Amendment. Everyone can say they don't believe that." Mat Staver, Howard-Browne's attorney who leads a legal group that defends religious organizations, said churches across the country are dealing with similar issues. "The states do these executive orders and then they amend them. And they amend them from news conference to news conference," he said. "Sometimes they refer to a previous order. Then you have counties doing the same thing." Howard-Browne insisted that he didn't take his Easter service online because of coronavirus worries. He claims that he has received death threats and that sheriff's deputies with dogs scoured The River because of a bomb scare. DeSantis was one of the last governors to issue a stay-home order, instead deferring to local control to keep as much of the state running as possible. In the Tampa region, an emergency policy group settled on a restrictive "safer at home" policy prohibiting most gatherings of more than 10 people, including church services at The River. Hillsborough County Commission Chairman Les Miller, who led the emergency group, empathized with the plight of churches, he said, because he's a deacon at a local Baptist church. But congregations tend to skew older and can be packed into a sanctuary for hours, making worshipers especially vulnerable. The largest church in Tampa Bay has 10,000 people. "We're talking about a pandemic that's killing people. And the Lord says 'Let ye not be foolish,' " Miller said. "Our deaths are growing. [On Friday] in the Tampa Bay area, we had nine deaths in 24 hours. That's the most we've had. It has not subsided. It is getting worse." But Howard-Browne has been critical of social-distancing efforts and defiant about closing church doors. "I know they don't want us to do this but just turn around, greet two or three people, tell them you love them, Jesus loves them," he said at a church service in early March. "If you cannot be safe in church, you're in serious trouble." Later, he said his church was "raising up revivalists, not pansies" and "the only time the church is closed is when the rapture has taken place." The emergency policy group enacted an order restricting large gatherings a few days later. What happened inside the church on March 29 varies depending on who is doing the explaining. Howard-Browne and his attorney said people, or at least family groups, were six feet apart in the sanctuary, and the church had invested in a hospital-grade air-filtration system to keep microbes at bay. But a sheriff's deputy who worked security at that service said the 500 people packed into the sanctuary made safety impossible, a police report says. On the pulpit was Howard-Browne, the deputy said in the report, "advising his church would not be shutting down and scheduled services would be continuing for the evening of March 29, 2020." Howard-Browne was arrested the next day, accused of thumbing his nose at the county and endangering everyone in the sanctuary - and the thousands of people with which they could interact. Bishop Thomas Scott, a former county commissioner who leads 34th Street Church of God, said conflicting orders and guidance support people like Howard-Browne. "You have the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and Trump's [coronavirus task force] saying different things. And then the president wants to put the economy back together by the end of the month," Scott said. "You've got a national conflict, you have a state conflict, and you have a local conflict all at the same time." Howard-Browne continues to spout coronavirus-related conspiracies as his church has been mired in controversy. He claimed that the response to the virus was part of a plot stoked by the World Health Organization and the Rockefeller Foundation that wanted to force vaccinations on people and murder them. "This is a bio weapon that has been unleashed upon our nation," he said. "Not only on our nation but all the nations of the Earth. And if you can't see that, if you think that is just some natural pandemic, you don't understand, there's a war going on . . . in the nations of the Earth." On Easter Sunday, Howard-Browne said "the globalist agenda has played their hand too quickly" and called for Trump to fire advisers, including Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "If the president bows to mandatory vaccines, we know that he has kissed the ring." As for The River's future, Howard-Browne would not rule out gathering in the sanctuary, regardless of critics. "In the appropriate time, when I get the release from the Lord, we will open up again," he said. "I'm just following what the Lord is telling me to do." - - - The Washington Post's Meryl Kornfield and Taylor Telford in Washington contributed to this report. Workers who may have been exposed to the virus must follow C.D.C. guidance on social distancing, remaining at least six feet from co-workers and potential customers. If they show symptoms, they should be sent home immediately and all surfaces at the workplace should be cleaned and disinfected, according to the guidelines. In addition, anyone who came within six feet of an employee with potential exposure should be notified and considered to have also been exposed. Labor advocates like Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, the co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, say the new guidelines may encourage employers to pressure workers to return to their jobs too soon, often without adequate protection or pay. Its a complete reversal of the policy that the C.D.C. has for the public, Ms. Goldstein-Gelb said. It disregards the fact that, right now, workers are dying every day needlessly in unconscionable numbers. Grocery stores are among the remaining high-risk transmission points for the disease now that many other commercial businesses have been closed. The employees are in regular contact with customers at checkout, behind counters and as they stock shelves along the aisles. Larger stores can accommodate from 800 to 1,200 people a day, and served as many as 10,000 a day just before the nation shut down in March, when panicky customers feared shortages. Mr. Perrone said he visited eight stores in Northern Virginia last week and was appalled by the hazards he saw, including many workers and customers without masks and people in close contact with one another. He said, at the very least, anyone entering a store should wear a mask. The C.D.C. recommended in early April that everyone wear cloth face coverings in stores, but the policy is voluntary. Workers are also imploring customers to take more care while in stores. They say many have been throwing used gloves and wipes in carts and on floors for employees to pick up. Many customers are still browsing with their hands and not their eyes and blaming workers for lack of goods on shelves. The fear that we feel is absolutely real, said Gregg Finch, 44, a Stop & Shop produce clerk in New York, who added that customers must help in the effort to keep everyone in all of our stores safe. My attention was recently drawn to the imagination of a group, suspected to be faceless that operates as Bauchi Discussion Circle. In a published literature that went viral on the social media, the group in clear desperation for recognition had fruitlessly attempted to ridicule reputations of some selected Bauchi State political leaders. I may not fault the group for expressing an opinion, but I challenge them to prove their allegations with convincing facts not rhetoric and wishful thinking or hearsay. I write not to defend any of those accused of corruption, stealing, diversion and looting but to stand in defence of Rt.Hon. Yakubu Dogara although, without his authority and consent and to challenge his traducers for a bout. The Group fired a careless salvo against Hon. Dogara out of crass ignorance and elements of frustration. But for a simple understanding, I boldly write to say a stark reality beyond any doubt is that journalists are writers of history while newspapers are the major source from which future historians draw their materials. Performances of government are judged either positively or negatively by what that government has been able to achieve in adding value to humanity. In his book, Descent from Xanadu, Harold Robins said, Progress can only be built upon the granite of truth not the timbers of dry rot. Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves said Walter Anderson. William Shakespeare in one of his plays, Julius Caesar said, The evil that men do lives after them, but the good are often interred with their bones.. The above dictum of the celebrated famous writer must have been inspired by his experience of how little the Russians appreciate their leaders, in spite of the beaming milk of human kindness, particularly Julius Caesar who because of his philosophy of what touches him shall be last treated, preferred to always serve the state at the expense of self and paid the ultimate price in the process with his life. As it was with Caesar so had it been with several leaders in history and the trend continues till date. Here I am talking of selfless leaders, kindhearted, large-hearted and highly patriotic individuals who at all times strive to lead their countries or state by playing down on personal interest, while prioritizing public interest. One clear example of such a leader is the former Speaker of the 8th House of Representatives, Rt.Hon. Yakubu Dogara. However, as if to testify to Mark Anthonys often quoted statement, most of the virtues that mark out Dogara as a unique leader are his most uncelebrated qualities. When he took over the mantle of leadership as Speaker of the 8th House of Representatives in 2015, he promised business unusual, the objective of which was to change the old order of legislation and administration in the 8th House, which had brought nothing over the years than stagnation and arrested development of the country. Change is the only permanent philosophy says a popular maxim. However, the road to change is always rough, strewn with thorns and very unattractive, but beneficial at the end. Little wonder, the late socialist and educationist, Dr. Tai Solarin reverberated the dictum May my road be rough on his last celebrated birth day at Ikenne, Ogun state. The tendency to bemoan change is human, for we are always pessimistic and cynical about its aftermath. The attitude of people, especially the beneficiaries of the old order to the wind of change that blew across the country of the virtuous is not unexpected as it cannot be divorced from the natural reaction of man to most changes, the world over. The similitude between change process and an uncompleted castle explains why people dont desire to live in it. Hence experience has shown that those who mouth change is all we need are always found objecting it innocently, for it comes in ugly disguise. But how long are the good people of Nigeria will continue to be arrested by the fear of change? Good governance is only possible when those at the helm of affairs know what to do to promote peace and security, avoid wastage and official stealing and corruption, place the interest of the people above those of individuals and encourage sanity to flourish in the system. Public interest is what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently- Walter Lippman, 1955. Perhaps, this explains why Dogara from 2007 decided to take the bull by the horn in tackling those identified problems of poor infrastructure and modern social amenities like education and health in his area of primary concern, Bogoro, Dass and Tafawa Balewa in Bauchi state. Infrastructure and development are like twins. The two are inter-twined and wrapped like whirlwind blowing and leaving sand on the trail. The reason is that infrastructure is a precursor to economic empowerment and other development paradigms in any society, be it developed or developing, progress and good governance are often measured or based on the number and quality of infrastructure in place. It could be road, electricity, water, building infrastructure like schools, health centres or physical plant. Basic infrastructure, to a large extent, determines the economic power of a country, state and its people. Its absence or near absence, can make or mar the legitimacy of a government in power and those behind the driving seat of government or an elected representative of the people. However, those in position of authority make conscious efforts to put some of the basic infrastructure in place be it at the rural or urban centres; they do so for a number of reasons: to make life comfortable and more meaningful for the people and to create wealth and other spin-offs that can galvanize more economic activities. The third may be to discourage rural urban migration in search of a better living standard. All these are against the backdrop of the fact that provision of relevant infrastructure has the potentials of opening up new frontiers and ultimately uphold the basic principle of good governance. To some leaders, it is to score political points or wriggle in vainglorious pride. Whatever reason Yakubu Dogara, the Speaker of the 8th House of Representatives, an apostle of good governance and a stickler of do it right has, he has not hidden his mission which he aptly encapsulates in his Economic Blue-Print and Infrastructural Development Agenda which are enunciated in the constituency. In it, Dogara is making his constituency the leading Nigerian constituency by the time he exits the National Assembly with prosperous, healthy and well educated and economically buoyant constituents, living in harmony with people and nature and pursuing their legitimate interests in freedom moderated by good governance which he helped to install in 2019 out of conviction and patriotism that is now attracting him baseless allegations from riff-raffs and spent horses on an impossible mission of sponsored character assassination. Pursuant to that vision, adopted multi-prong approaches to bring about infrastructural dividends throughout the length and breadth of his constituency. It is an undisputable fact that Dogara is changing the face of representation in Bauchi state for good and attracts him allegations from baseless opponents. He has several great things working for him. First, along with his state governor, Sen. Bala Muhammed, they belong to same political party with a robust approach to public administration. And secondly, they came into office prepared with a blue-print, which is a function of their goodwill, experience, exposure, education, orientation, courage, among other personal qualities. Thirdly, they emerged as a governor and as an Honorable Member at a time when all well meaning individuals and stakeholders within and outside Bauchi state were resolute on throwing up decent men for the jobs and same set of people extended them their unflinching support that is well deserved and steadily justified with transparency and the rule of law. Sen. Bala Muhammed and Yakubu Dogara are not leaving anyone in doubt as to their disposition to leave their state and constituency better places for envy. For instance, record shows that Bogoro, Dass and Tafawa Balewa Federal Constituency and the House of Representatives since the coming of the present dispensation in 1999, is yet to witness such developmental strides as in the tenure of Yakubu Dogara as Speaker. He kept to faith and is steadily fulfilling his electoral promises. No doubt, history will be kind to him as a leader who served Bogoro, Dass and Tafawa Balewa Federal Constituency, Bauchi State, North-East sub-region and Nigeria with passion but despite that, still pounded by political riff-raffs on sponsorship but ignored. Muhammad is a commentator on national issues In the age of programmed living, Roam is a guide to finding what else is out there and to meld it meaningfully into our psyches. This book is full of unexpected experiences in unusual places, where we tried to blend in with the rhythms of the native culture. Eileen Curtis and Pat Williams invite readers to join them as they share their adventures across the globe and reflect on the importance of self-growth and mindfulness in Roam: Mindful Adventuring Across the Globe. Selected from their visits to over a hundred countries, the authors share seven journeys they deem the best of the best. Each dramatic story crosshatches themes of history, ritual, sublime panoramas, primitive spaces, high-wire adventure and reflective ruminations of mind and heart. From swooping across Tanzanias vast Serengeti plain to huddling with shamans in New Mexico, the authors travel insights go far deeper than typical Paris and Rome travel guides. Curtis and Williams seven journeys take them to Kenya and Tanzania, the Spanish Camino, Peru, Turkey, the Galapagos, Nepal and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The narrative invites readers to live vicariously through the authors festal meals, anxious moments and zany episodes, all of which bring laughter and wonder to this theater of travel. Curtis and Williams deftly twine their knowledge of culture, art, history and spirituality throughout each enticing adventure. In the age of programmed living, Roam is a guide to finding what else is out there and to meld it meaningfully into our psyches. This book is full of unexpected experiences in unusual places, where we tried to blend in with the rhythms of the native culture, Curtis and Williams said. Through adventure, wisdom and meaningful storytelling, Curtis and Williams share with readers how mindful travel embeds ones memory more intensely and offers the gift of rich post-travel reflection. Ultimately, Roam provides readers a pleasurable gambol to hidden places across the continents while engaging in lifes deepest questions. Roam: Mindful Adventuring Across the Globe By Eileen Curtis and Pat Williams ISBN: 9781684714131 (softcover); 9781684714124 (hardcover); 9781684714148 (electronic) Available at the LuLu Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble About the author Eileen Curtis is an internationally published author and media host whose diverse writings span arts and travel documentaries, magazine covers, memoirs and business. Among her many awards are a Peabody and the Silver Medal for the Arts from the Government of Austria, with a certificate from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. To learn more please visit http://www.EileenCurtisWritings.com. Patricia Dunn Williams grew up in Costa Rica and owned a travel agency specializing in adventure trips. She is a Gold Medalist in the U.S. Senior Olympics Volleyball Games and a published author, and she is also the recipient of the Leadership Fairfax Community Trustee Award, Rotary Citizen of the Year Award, and the Lifetime Leadership Award from the March of Dimes. To learn more please visit http://www.PatsWisdom.com. Review Copies & Interview Requests: LAVIDGE Phoenix Meghan Bowman 480-306-6597 mbowman@lavidge.com Here is a list of stocks to focus today. (Image: PTI) HDFC | The Peoples Bank of China purchased 1.75 crore shares in HDFC Ltd, possibly in the March quarter. The Chinese Central Bank has bought 1,74,92,909 crore shares, or 1.01 percent of the shareholding, according to exchange data. Dr Reddy's Labs | API manufacturing plant 5 at Miryalaguda, Telangana received Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) from USFDA. (Image: Moneycontrol) ITI | Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and ITI likely to ink a deal soon to produce portable ventilators after COVID-19. (Image: itiltd.in) SMS Pharmaceuticals | USFDA requested all manufacturers to withdraw Ranitidine products from the US market. (Image: smspharma.com) OnMobile Global | Board approved proposal for buyback of shares upto 1,93,21,429 for amount upto Rs 54.10 crore. (Image: onmobile.com) VST Tillers | Power tillers sales in March down 58.6% to 1,585 units, tractors sales down 60.6% to 390 units YoY. (Image: vsttractors.com) CSB Bank | CRISIL assigned A1+ rating to proposed issue of Rs 2,000 crore each of certificate of deposits and short term fixed deposits programme. (Image: csb.co.in) Piramal Enterprises | Arundhati Bhattacharya resigned as Independent Director, and to take role as Chairperson and CEO in another company. (Image: Moneycontrol) Lakshmi Vilas Bank | D Krishnakumar resigned as Vice President & Chief Risk Officer. (Image: Moneycontrol) National Fertilizers | ICRA downgraded rating on long term-CC limits and term loans to AA- from AA and also revised outlook to stable from negative. (Image: Reuters) Godrej Consumer Products | Company will report around high teens India revenue decline in January-March quarter and sees consolidated sales declining around low double digit in rupee terms for Q4. (Image: Moneycontrol) IndiGrid | Company looks to acquire Rs 1,080 crore transmission project and intends to add solar energy in the portfolio. (Image: indigrid.co.in) SRF | Few plants belonging to essential goods value chain in Dahej Chemicals Complex, Gujarat resumed operations. (Image: srf.com) Sakthi Finance | ICRA placed ratings of programmes / debt instruments 'under watch with developing implications'. (Image: sakthifinance.com) Gulf Oil Lubricants | Board declared an interim dividend of Rs 7 per share for FY20. (Image: gulfoilindia.com) JK Paper | CRISIL reaffirmed long term rating at AA-/Stable for company's bank facilities. (Image: jkpaper.com) Godawari Power & Ispat | Company resumed partial operations by commencing mining operations in Ari Dongri iron ore mines. Cadila Healthcare | Zydus receeived tentative approval from the USFDA for Empagliflozin tablets, antidiabetic drug. Chalet Hotels | India Ratings reaffirmed rating at BBB+ and A2+ for the term loans & fund based working capital limits and the non-fund based working capital limits respectively. The outlook which was positive earlier has been placed on 'Rating Watch Negative'. ICICI Lombard | Company, Flipkart and Go Digit General Insurance come together to offer COVID-19 focused health insurance policies. IDFC First Bank | CRISIL assigned FAAA/Stable rating to fixed deposit program of Rs 50,000 crore. KSB | Company launched CHTRa, a heavy duty API pump handling petroleum, petro chemical and water transfer. GMR Infra | Company says GMR Airports received letter of award for development and operations of Bhogapuram airport. Jubilant Life Sciences | CRISIL assigned long term rating at AA and placed on 'Rating Watch with Developing Implications' for total bank loan facilities. Transgene Biotek | Company received Certificate of Patent from Australia for novel oral delivery platform technology that delivers different biologically active ingredients. Tech Mahindra: After modification, company will acquire 51% of Cerium Systems upfront for enterprise value upto Rs 245 crore and balance 49% will be acquired over the next 3 years. Sterling and Wilson Solar | India Ratings withdrew ratings on Rs 300 crore commercial paper as company has fully repaid CPs. Axis Bank | MF in March quarter raised stake to 20.51% (from 18.89% QoQ), insurance companies to 2.21% (from 1.93%), but FPIs reduced to 45.49% (from 48.35%). Future Consumer | Company appointed Sailesh Kedawat as the Chief Financial Officer. Motherson Sumi | Company is desirous of offering Rated, Secured, Listed, Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (NCDs) aggregating Rs. 500 crore in one or more tranches. Subscriber content preview WASHINGTON (AP) Consumer prices fell 0.4% in March, the largest decline in five years, revealing the downward pressure that the coronavirus pandemic is exerting on the cost gasoline, airfares, hotel rooms and other goods and services. Last month's decline was the largest monthly drop since January 2015, the Labor Department said Friday. Consumer prices rose a slight 0.1 percent in February. . . . MindNest Health, a digital health startup, raised $300k in seed funding. The funds, provided by NeuroNetworks Fund and Connecticut Innovations, will be released in tranches on achievement of milestones. Connecticut Innovations is the strategic venture capital arm for the state of Connecticut. John Puziss, Ph.D., Director of Business Development at the Yale University Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), will take a seat on MindNests board. The company, a a Yale University spinout, intends to use the funds to advance its digital parent-training program to beta testing. Founded by David Grodberg, M.D., a Medical Director at the Yale Child Study Center, and Led by Lauren Belliveau, CEO, MindNest Health is developing tools and training for families of a child with autism or other behavioral conditions. The platform teaches parents skills and techniques typically only available from these top child behavioral health centers. FinSMEs 13/04/2020 Representative Image Originating from the seafood and wild food wet market in Wuhan, China, coronavirus has already reached more than 180 countries and caused 110,000 deaths. The world will never be the same again. That said, there are a few positive signs. On April 8, the Saudi Arabia-UAE coalition announced a unilateral ceasefire in the five-year-old attack against Yemen. The Iranians were not so lucky, as US sanctions on Iran are continuing despite the death of more than 4,100 persons from COVID-19 as of April 10. COVID-19 has not been able to persuade the United States to lift the 60-years-old trade embargo on Cuba. In India, sections of the electronic and social media have been spreading communal virus, which is as deadly as coronavirus. The Indian agriculture and food processing sector has so far ensured that staple foods such as wheat flour, rice, pulses, edible oils, and fruits and vegetables are largely available across India. In most parts of India, urban centres have also not experienced any serious shortage of food items. However, despite abundant production and availability of fruits and vegetables, there has been a price rise due to restrictions on mandi operations and movement from villages. At several places, there are reports of distress sale of vegetables and fruits by farmers. Despite the Union governments clear instructions, police have been restricting movement, due to which farmers are selling in distress and consumers are paying 15-20 percent higher prices. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show According to the Solvent Extractors Association, India consumes about 23 million tonnes of edible oils, out of which only about 8 million tonnes is produced domestically and the remaining 15 million tonnes is imported. An efficient global supply chain has ensured that Indian consumers have so far not faced any shortage, nor any price rise. However, exports of agricultural commodities from India have been adversely affected. About 400,000 tonnes of non-basmati rice and 100,000 tonnes of basmati rice meant for export in March and April is stuck in the supply chain. Indias non-basmati rice is exported primarily to Bangladesh, Nepal, Benin and Senegal, etc. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran are major importers of more expensive basmati rice. The prices in these countries would increase if the supply chain in India remains broken due to the lockdown. There is also a risk of other countries capturing Indias export market if the lockdown continues to hamper the supply chain. The Government of Karnataka had closed the roads connecting Kasaragod in Kerala and Mangaluru in Karnataka. There were media reports that movement of vegetables from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to Kerala was also affected. There is a growing realisation that Kerala should make efforts to become self-sufficient for its food requirement. Whenever the threat of large scale deaths due to COVID-19 subsides, governments across the world may decide to build sufficient domestic capacity to grow (if possible) and store enough food to meet its requirement for at least six months. Food importing countries may realise that they need to invest large sums of money in creating modern infrastructure at ports. In India also, there is likely to be a greater realisation to modernise supply chains of agriculture and food. For holding government stocks of food grain, India has a silo capacity of just 6.6 lakh tonnes. The storage and movement of food grains, whether by railway rakes or by trucks, is in gunny bags which results in losses. As of January 31, about 13.2 million tonnes of wheat was stored in covered and plinth storage (CAP) in open fields, mostly in Punjab. By the time Rabi procurement ends in June, there could be much more wheat in CAP storage, some on totally unscientific and kutcha plinths. India must quickly invest in modern steel silo storage capacity in major procuring states so that wheat procured by the government is not required to be stored in CAP. Most of the mandis in India do not have facilities for assaying and grading. The commission agents decide the price on the basis of smell and physical examination of produce. Mandis can easily be equipped with modern equipment for testing. India also needs to invest in setting up modern abattoirs so that people can get hygienically slaughtered poultry and meat. Similarly, cold chain capacity (including reefer trucks), for perishable food, medicines and vaccines etc. needs to be expanded. Delhi needs to act decisively and fast as once the world puts the pandemic behind it, the government must not only ensure that there is self-sufficiency back home, but also be prepared to expand its agriculture exports to meet demands in foreign markets. Finally, a question can be asked: how to raise money for this much-needed investment in agriculture, food and health infrastructure? The government can begin by abandoning the central vista redevelopment project in New Delhi. This can provide Rs 20,000 crore. Siraj Hussain retired as Union Agriculture Secretary, and is currently Visiting Senior Fellow, ICRIER. Views are personal. This is the third article in a multi-part series, World After COVID-19 , which looks at the probable developments in various sectors: macro economy, trade, healthcare, agriculture, judiciary, international politics and sports. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday asked universities and other educational institutions to harness the power of technology to ensure continuity of the academic calendar during the lockdown. Interacting with vice chancellors of Delhi, Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Punjab and Makhanlal Chaturvedi universities via video, the vice president observed that it might take some more time for normalcy to return. The vice president is the chancellor of the Delhi and Punjab universities. Naidu urged the institutions to reach out to students, promote collaborative learning and self-learning, an official statement said. He wanted them to optimally utilise technological tools for ensuring interactive learning for all students. Ensure continuity of the teaching and learning process during the lockdown by using technology, he said. Observing that the adversity caused by the coronavirus pandemic was forcing people to search for creative solutions, Naidu appreciated the universities for taking adequate steps to ensure that the teaching-learning process was not hindered. Stating that online courses would supplement face-to-face learning, he said, This might become the new normal after we tide over the current crisis. The vice president also emphasised the need for universities and educational institutions to take measures to safeguard the health of students residing in hostels. The 21-day lockdown imposed since March 25 to check the spread of the virus ends on Tuesday amid indications that it could be extended by two weeks with certain relaxations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) When, as sometimes happens in law, precedence loses legal legs to stand on, is inappropriate or even insufficient to deal with a matter at hand, does necessity become the mother of invention and justify a judge making the law? These and other pertinent questions are adroitly dealt with in one of three recent books by Justice Professor Oagile Key Dinganke, PhD, entitled: In Pursuit of Justice Examining the intersection of Philosophy, Politics and Law. Notion Press of India published the books which are available through Amazon, Flipkart, Amazon kindle, Kobo and Google play. Every country can perhaps cite a judge who was pre-eminent in the development of the law to fit changed societal circumstances. In the United States of America, the Warren Court was considered activist and critics charged that the Chief Justice was engaged in lawmaking. In the United Kingdom, Lord Denning was accused of utilising the courts as instruments of lawmaking, especially during his tenure as Master of the Rolls in the Court of Appeal. In Botswana, lawyers still talk of spirited intellectual battles between one Justice Kirby - a reputed conservative legal mind - of the Court of Appeal in that country and Justice Dingake, a reputed liberal mind, who was often regarded by the former as too liberal. As one senior Botswana lawyer and former cabinet minister once wrote: if you need to confirm the law as it stands, the ideal judge to appear before is Justice Kirby, but if you wanted to test the boundaries of the law, then you are better off appearing before Justice Dingake. It is not possible in a newspaper review to do justice to this entire book. As a result I discuss my impressions of the book in broad terms, choosing themes that define it. This book is essentially about the workings of a judicial mind. It teases out controversial questions around whether judges make law or simply interpret it. It goes further to interrogate the question whether judges backgrounds, experiences and values matter in the adjudication process. To ask the question whether judges make law in a constitutional democracy in the context of separation of powers is to court controversy. This is so because this question often divides the legal fraternity, not least the judges. Quoting the renowned philosopher Jeremy Bentham, Justice Dingake dismisses the argument that judges do not make law as childish fiction. Interestingly, he contests the philosophical view of some judges that the law is what judges say it is, and says it is somehow misleading insofar as it may be construed to mean that judges are permitted to be the law unto themselves. Often regarded as a judicial activist around Africa, Justice Dingake unapologetically comes to the defense of judicial activists. He says that judicial activists acknowledge that novel situations may require innovative judicial thinking and the courage to depart from precedent that no longer serves contemporary challenges. He contends that judicial activists acknowledge that reliance on precedent is not always possible, or even desirable. Changes in social or political conditions sometimes require new law, and old principles may simply be entirely inappropriate for circumstances not previously contemplated. It is Justice Dingakes considered view as expressed in this book that in a world where the courts are increasingly mandated to police the exercise of public power and keep it within the limits of rationality, reasonableness, fairness and proportionality, a case can and must be made for judicial activism. In pedestrian debates and sometimes in legal tussles within the hallowed halls of the judiciary judicial activism generally has a negative connotation. It is usually understood to mean judges who may have a political agenda, are too liberal and too quick to impose their political views on society. On the contrary Justice Dingake argues that the judges who are regarded as judicial activists today are generally progressive judges who have the courage and intellectual gravitas to appreciate constitutional values and the imperative that judges must breathe life into the constitution. He goes to great lengths to point out that judicial activism does not mean judicial adventurism, which is a consequence of plodding through the law without putting forth intellectually persuasive reasoning as a basis for a decision in a particular manner. He quotes the eminent US jurist and Judge, Cardozo, and maintains that a judge is not a knight errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness. He is to draw his inspiration from consecrated principles. While acknowledging that judges often make determinations with serious political consequences such as in election disputes, Justice Dingake refutes the idea in some legal literature that judges are politicians in robes. He gives as an example of such decisions, electoral disputes in which the courts can make determinations that alter or contradict the choice of the people. In this context he discusses the famous Al Gore v Bush decision of the Supreme Court of the USA and the avalanche of criticism to the effect that President Bush was an imposition of the Supreme Court. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book relates to a discussion on the intersection of law, politics and philosophy. Justice Dingake argues that the transformation of political questions into legal ones is an inevitable feature of contemporary times. This refers to a phenomenon in which the courts are increasingly asked to determine political questions which traditionally had been thought to be the preserve of either the executive or parliament. He calls this phenomenon the judicialization of politics. He gives an interesting example of a case decided in 2004 in South Korea when the Constitutional Court in that country dismissed the impeachment of the President by the National Assembly. He says the case is perhaps the first in the history of modern constitutionalism whereby a president who was impeached by the Legislature was reinstated by the courts. He also cites the case of Fiji v Prasad in which the Court of Appeal in Fiji restored the 1997 constitution of Fiji when people believed it had fallen into disuse. Justice Dingake rigorously discusses a number of similar cases in which the courts appeared to ignore traditional boundaries, including being called upon to approve or disapprove the extension of presidential terms of office as it happened with the term of office of Colombias now former President Alvaro Uribe, Ugandas Yoweri Museveni and Russias now former President Boris Yeltsin. He ends his book by observing that the phenomenon of judicialization of politics and the politicization of law are contemporary realities that are bound to cause tension between the courts and the executive, but cautions that the executive must know that the duty to pronounce on the meaning of the law and or the constitution is the business of the courts. I highly recommend this book to parliamentarians, members of the executive and the judiciary. This is because the book shows how philosophy, law and politics may collide and collude to yield a particular judicial determination, especially in value-laden disputes such as those dealing with electoral disputes, same sex marriage and the rights of the vulnerable and marginalized groups including key populations. Students of philosophy and politics would likely also find the book very interesting. The book, like Judges by the same author which I have had the pleasure and honour to read and review, is written in simple language. -*Winner of the SADC Media Award (2008) and 10 other journalistic awards, Moses Magadza is a PhD student with research interests in framing, agenda-setting, priming and critical discourse analysis. While the Kerala government is receiving global acclaim for its efforts at fighting the coronavirus and its excellent health facilities, the border blockade imposed by Karnataka has shone a spotlight on the woeful healthcare infrastructure in Kasargod district. While the Kerala government is receiving global acclaim for its efforts at fighting the coronavirus and its excellent health facilities, the border blockade imposed by Karnataka has shone a spotlight on the woeful healthcare infrastructure in Kasargod district. Kerala may have seen just three patients pass away due to the coronavirus, but thirteen critically ill non-COVID patients have died at the Thalappady checkpost on the Kerala-Karnataka border since the blockade began. Kasargod, a COVID-19 hotspot, does not have a medical college or super speciality hospital, leaving the people of the district to rely on healthcare facilities in Mangaluru. The construction of a 300 bed medical college in Kasargod, which began in 2013, has still not been completed (the deadline was 2015). The government has turned the under construction medical college into a makeshift COVID-19 hospital. While the Karnataka government has allowed patients meeting certain criteria access to hospitals, the blockade has already resulted in thirteen people having lost their lives. On 26 March, Abdul Hameed, a middle-aged asthma patient, was being rushed to a Mangaluru hospital from Kunjathur by car when his vehicle was halted at Thalapady village due to the blockade. He was taken to a hospital in Uppala, but the doctors insisted he be taken to Mangluru. Hameed's family took him home, hoping they'd find a way to get him to Mangluru the next day. But he passed away that night. The story of a woman from Uttar Pradesh who lives in Kasargod having to give birth in an ambulance has also come to light. Aslam, an ambulance driver who has taken patients to the border, said he has seen five patients breathing their last in his vehicle. Aslam said when he pleaded with the police to let the pregnant woman through they said "we will not. Even if she dies that's not a problem." Aslam said he has been facing death threats for even attempting a dialogue with the Thalapady police. Aslam, fed up with the state of affairs, is demanding that Kerala politicians speed up the work on the medical college and is urging the people of Kasargod to come together. Ali, a resident of Thalapady's Thuminad, took his father Yousuf, who was suffering from chest pain, to a doctor in Manjeshwar. The doctor told us to get an ECG done, Ali said. He advised us not to waste time trying to get to Mangaluru. As my father was in a critical condition, he advised us to go to Kasargod or Uppala. But we didn't know any cardiologist in Kasargod. Finally, we took him to a doctor at Carewell Hospital in Kasargod town. But he breathed his last on his way in the ambulance. The doctor said had we come a few minutes earlier it could have made a difference. Alis father is the ninth patient who died due to the blockade. Ali says though there are several medical clinics in Kasargod, there aren't enough skilled professionals. Ali said there are many hospitals with excellent facilities across the border from Thuminad and that no one wants to visit the government hospital in Manjeshwar in an emergency. They only have tablets for fever and cough. Is Kasargod not a district in Kerala? Aren't we human? It seems no one really wants Kasargod, Ali said. The Kerala High Court called Karnatakas blockade a fundamental rights violation on 1 April and urged the Centre to intervene. The division bench issued the order stating that the Karnataka government was violating citizens right to move freely under Article 19. The court upheld disaster management guidelines by Central government which said travel for urgent medical treatment is permitted. Karnataka filed a petition against this order in the Supreme Court, which urged both states to reach a consensus. The chief secretaries of both states agreed to the following list of conditions that had to be met for patients to be allowed to pass: The patient must be brought in a sterilized government ambulance; a government doctor must certify that the patient is not infected with COVID-19; the hospital must be denoted; and that the patient cant access medical facility in the neighbouring district of Kannur. Mustafa Adyawar, block panchayat member of Manjeshwar, who attended the screening of a patient on 7 April, wondered about the practicality of some of the suggestions. For example, how could a patient in critical condition wait to get back the results of a COVID-19 test, he asked. Mustafa said Manjeshwar has one government ambulance at the community health centre which is being used to ferry COVID-19 patients. "The closest hospital is ten kilometres away. I tried to take a picture at the Thalapady border, but the police threatened to beat me and then shoot me. We need to set up a rapid test centre at the border to screen patients. Two patients tried to get across the border to Mangaluru today. The first was sent back. The second, a patient who'd had a heart attack, reached the hospital but no one from the facility came out to tend to the patient. The ambulance driver loaded the patient on the stretcher and took the patient inside. But the hospital authorities told the patient they could not begin treatment until a COVID-19 test had been done at another hospital." On 1 April, a notification by Dakshina Kannada district health and family welfare officer was sent to eight hospitals in Mangaluru, asking them not to admit any patient from Kerala due to CoVID-19 positive cases rapidly increasing in Kerala state/ Kasargod district. The copies were sent to district collector Mangaluru, and chief operating officer of district panchayat. Later, after the SC order, the district administration reserved an entire floor of KS Hegde medical college for patients from Kerala. But the experiences of patients attempting to get medical care shows that the notification is being followed. Despite repeated attempts, the district collector remained unavailable for comment. Rishana, a patient at KS Hegde hospital, said she was denied access to the toilet. Her husband Azhar said she was asked to urinate in the corner of the casualty ward, a clear message to other patients. Rajmohan Unnithan, who represents Kasargod in Parliament, in a petition in the Supreme Court, said Karnataka is sticking to its stand despite the courts calling this action "inhumane". Unnithan said Karnataka government is accepting patients to show it acknowledges the Supreme Court verdict. "They are humiliating Kerala government by saying that these patients are COVID-19 positive," Unnithan claimed. "Kerala government didnt have an all inclusive meeting regarding this. On Tuesday, Supreme Court considered Bar Associations petition. When the hearing began, Solicitor- General Tushar Mehta told the court that after the consensus between two states there are no issues, so the remaining petitions were not heard. The reality is, the problems remain unsolved." Kasargod's struggle for better basic health care facilities has had to contend with bureaucratic neglect. One of the recent victims of this development, Ali said the only way out is to be regionally independent. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-14 01:40:02|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Saud Abu Ramadan GAZA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The Gaza Strip, home of more than 2 million Palestinians, needs more Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) devices for coronavirus tests, said Abdelnasser Soboh, Sub-office Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Palestine. Soboh told Xinhua in a special interview on Monday that the PCR device was allowed into the Gaza Strip on Sunday through Erez Crossing Point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, adding that having such a device "is so important, but still, there is a bad need for having more." "It is good to have a PCR device that is placed at the European Hospital in southern Gaza Strip, and this will make the European Hospital the official hospital that deals with cases infected with COVID-19 virus," said Soboh, adding that "this will make it easy for the hospital to directly conduct the tests." Before receiving the PCR testing device, samples were taken at the European Hospital in southern Gaza Strip and then sent to the central laboratory of the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza City. Israeli and Palestinian officials said earlier that Israel allowed into the Gaza Strip a PCR device that is used for COVID-19 blood testing; which is a donation from Rahma International. They also said that five testing kits, purchased by the WHO, were also allowed into the coastal enclave on Monday. "There are two PCR devices; the first had been allowed into the Gaza Strip several years ago and the second is donated by Rahma International, which is the one that was allowed into Gaza on Sunday night," said Soboh, adding that "WHO is currently working on purchasing a third PCR device." Ashraf al-Qedra, the Health Ministry Spokesman in Gaza, told Xinhua on Sunday that the ministry received a PCR for coronavirus tests, adding that "it's good to have a PCR amid the severe shortage of preventive medical supplies that Gaza suffers from." Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 259 cases infected with the virus were recorded in the West Bank and 13 in the Gaza Strip, according to the director of Palestinian Health Ministry's Primary Healthcare department Kamal Shakhra. Although the cases infected with the virus in the Gaza Strip, which is a high densely populated area, are slim compared with the West Bank and Israel, health officials in Gaza warned of a disaster in case the virus spread in the enclave amid a severe lack of medical supplies. On Monday, Egypt reopened Rafah Crossing Point on the borders with the Gaza Strip for four days until Thursday to enable hundreds of Palestinians, stranded in Egypt, to return home, according to officials in Gaza Ministry of Interior, who said around 300 people, will cross in Gaza from Monday to Thursday. Eyad al-Bozzom, Spokesman of the Interior Ministry, told reporters that all those who return to Gaza through Rafah Crossing Point will be sent to obligatory quarantine for three weeks, adding that all of them will be tested while they are in quarantine. Hamas movement had finished earlier this week the construction of 1,000 quarantine units in northern and southern Gaza Strip and handed them to the health ministry in Gaza to receive those who return from Egypt to Gaza. The future of the European Union is at stake as the continent continues to grapple with the coronavirus outbreak, Pope Francis warned during his Easter address. In his Urbi et Orbi blessing delivered to an empty St Peters Basilica in Rome the pontiff urged political leaders to cast aside rivalries of the past and unite under a spirt of solidarity. The Pope also acknowledged that, for many, this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties. His words of caution come at a time of mounting political tension and mistrust in Europe, with the EU criticised for a lack of unity in its handling of the pandemic. Even as the viruss reach has been indiscriminately global, many countries have acted alone and in their own interests. These lines of division have been highlighted by Europes economic response to Covid-19. Although finance ministers last week approved a 500bn (430bn) rescue package to support the continents struggling countries, the decision not to finance the recovery fund through joint debt issuance, or so-called coronabonds, has sparked controversy. While Giuseppe Conte, the Italian prime minster, said the deal was only a first step and that he would fight until the end for the bonds, the Netherlands has made clear its opposition to the mechanism. We are and will remain opposed to #Eurobonds, Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra said. We think this concept will not help Europe or the Netherlands in the long-term. Speaking on Sunday, the Pope said that the selfishness of particular interests posed a threat to the peaceful coexistence and development of future generations, and warned that the EU is facing an epochal challenge, on which will depend not only its future but that of the whole world. Among the many areas of the world affected by the coronavirus, I think in a special way of Europe, Francis said. After the second world war, this beloved continent was able to rise again, thanks to a concrete spirit of solidarity that enabled it to overcome the rivalries of the past. It is more urgent than ever, especially in the present circumstances, that these rivalries do not regain force, but that all recognise themselves as part of a single family and support one another. Let us not lose the opportunity to give further proof of solidarity, also by turning to innovative solutions. The only alternative is the selfishness of particular interests and the temptation of a return to the past, at the risk of severely damaging the peaceful coexistence and development of future generations. The pontiff urged political leaders to work actively for the common good, to provide the means and resources needed to enable everyone to lead a dignified life and, when circumstances allow, to assist them in resuming their normal daily activities. This is not a time for indifference, he added, because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic. In Britain, the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered Easter messages that called for unity and resilience. This year, Easter will be different for many of us, but by keeping apart we keep others safe, the Queen said in an audio recording. Easter isnt cancelled. Indeed, we need Easter as much as ever. We know that coronavirus will not overcome us. As dark as death can be, particularly for those suffering with grief, light and life are greater. May the living flame of the Easter hope be a steady guide as we face the future. Archbishop Justin Welby held Britains first national digital Easter Sunday service from his kitchen in London. He spoke of a very difficult time, in the life of the nation and of the world, and said his prayers were with those who were suffering. Afterwards, he called on funeral homes and crematoria to show compassion and not to treat bodies like cattle. I say to crematoria and local authorities, dont just dispose of bodies like we did in the foot-and-mouth episode with cattle, he told The Andrew Marr Show. Human beings must be said goodbye to with dignity even when it has to be swift and with very few people there. Davie police Chief Dale Engle has been placed on administrative leave after officers at his Florida station filed a union complaint alleging that he dismissed their concerns about coronavirus protection measures and blamed the COVID-19 fatality of a Broward County deputy sheriffon his sexuality. Chief Dale Engle. (Davie Police Dept.) On April 7, amid a coronavirus outbreak at the Broward County Sheriffs Office, police officers in Davie a town in the county attempted to raise concerns with Engle about their risk of contracting COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. In response to the officers' concerns, Engle allegedly ordered them to stand in formation for inspection and berated them for raising the health issue, according to a complaint filed by the Florida State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police (FLFOP). Engle then allegedly proceeded to blame the death of openly gay Broward County Deputy Sheriff Shannon Bennett on a backstory," claiming he died because he was a homosexual who attended homosexual events." Engle also allegedly implied Bennett, a 12-year veteran of the sheriff's office, had "a serious underlying disease which aggravated the COVID-19 virus." Deputy Shannon Bennett (Broward Sheriff's Office) According to the complaint, Engle emailed staff shortly after the alleged outburst and said his "intent was to provide as much information to personnel as possible." If my comments were taken out of context, they were not intended to be derogatory, he allegedly wrote in the email. Engle did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The town of Davie issued a statement Saturday saying Engle was on administrative leave pending further review of allegations. Town Administrator Richard J. Lemack said the alleged incident will be investigated by outside counsel and that the town would have no further comment until the investigation is completed. Jonathan Frey, who was engaged to Bennett, issued a statement calling Engles reported remarks completely false, homophobic, and slanderous, saying he looked forward to the results of the investigation. Story continues Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony on Sunday told NBC News 6 South Florida that Engles alleged remarks would be offensive to me and this agency. The National Fraternal Order of Police tweeted that, if Engle's disgusting alleged remarks are true, he should be fired. In its complaint, the Florida State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police said Engle's derogatory references to homosexuality and Deputy Bennett are shameful and dont reflect the welcoming nature of Davie. NBC OUT Lisa Henning, the legislative affairs director for the Florida Fraternal Order of Police, said the union filed the complaint to better advocate for officers who are increasingly concerned about their risk of contracting COVID-19 amid wide reports of shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE. When all of this first began, the biggest complaint was they were only being given one mask per shift, Henning said. Now theyll hold on to a mask because theyre lucky to have one. The majority of the agencies in Florida are taking it very seriously and are trying to find alternate ways to ensure they have PPE for their officers, Henning added, describing Engles alleged attitude as unrepresentative. Henning said officers in the area are getting increasingly afraid as COVID-19 begins to sweep the state: Quite frankly, its getting more prevalent here, she said. Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram 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. Simran Ahuja By Express News Service BENGALURU: As work from home becomes the new normal, city-based companies are looking at ways to reinvent employee engagement. Many are hosting virtual activities involving music, comedy and fitness. According to Tina Garg, the CEO of the design and communication agency, Pink Lemonade, the idea is to bring back something thats missed the most by professionals: Water-cooler moments. Hitika Chandan The company has now ramped up its culture of incorporating fun into its work structure to a daily one-hour occurrence, from their previous monthly routine. We have conducted breathing exercises, a zumba and bhangra workshop, tambola evenings and concerts by in-house artistes. We are organising fun activities that would appeal to everyone, explains Garg. Anmol Baid, who works with the digital agency, FoxyMoron, says such initiatives have been keeping her spirits high. The 25-year-old recently took part in a virtual zumba session organised by her company. For someone who is not from the city, you tend to miss your colleagues a lot, she says. The session had about 180 of us and its fun to participate in a dance fitness routine with your account director and business head, she adds. Agrees Garg, who says she now sees her team in new light. One of the activities conducted by them was titled Life In Focus and required employees to send a picture on their WhatsApp group about what life at home was like. The result was 50-60 photographs of team members pets, their makeshift dining room office, flatmates, or cooking. It was an overwhelming experience to get this window into their lives, showing how unique each of us is, says Garg. According to Tanima Dhawan, HR director at FoxyMoron, about 80 per cent of their total workforce has turned up for their Friday sessions. Some events arent limited to the companys employees, but extend to their family as well. For instance, Khushboo Ahuja Mehta took part in her companys online zumba session with her husband, who works for a different firm. His company doesnt have any activities, so he danced alongside me. Another colleague had her child with her, says the key account strategist at Pink Lemonade. Some firms like Schbang are getting together employees on Sundays. We usually take part in pub quizzes together. This time, we conducted a Harry Potter and Friends themed quiz through a video call. We will vote for a new show for next Sunday, says Hitika Chandan, a creative strategist at the company. She adds, At least I have something to look forward to during the weekends now. Sundays are more special. A new reconnect ion Leading tech firm are turning towards online stress-busting initiatives too. Sachin Sethi, the India channel leader for services sales at Dell Technologies, has conducted two virtual happy hour sessions, wherein his team got their own beverage and snacks, and discussed non-work related matters to unwind. The video call had team members from Mumbai and Gurugram, along with Sethis senior director from Chennai and manager from Singapore, join in. Earlier, we met in person once in six months. Were trying to do things differently now. Unlearning and learning new ways of working is the mantra now, he adds. Coronavirus Crisis Unites Doctors In Bosnia's Divided City Of Mostar By Mirsad Behram April 12, 2020 MOSTAR, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- When doctors learned last month that a woman admitted for childbirth to this city's largest hospital was infected with COVID-19, they acted quickly. The expectant mother, who had been in contact with the city's first coronavirus patient, was moved from western Mostar's University Clinical Hospital (SKB) to its Cantonal Hospital on the eastern side of the city. In fact, the labor ward's entire operations and all its patients were moved there, too, for two days as the University Clinical Hospital was sanitized. "It's normal to have met our colleagues' needs. We took over their pregnancies and labor patients for a few days, until their labor ward was disinfected and their OB-GYN clinic's work was restored," Zlatko Guzin, general manager of the Cantonal Hospital, told RFE/RL's Balkan Service. "It's completely normal, and I think our colleagues are very much aware of that." Their colleagues at the University Clinical Hospital would have done the same, he added. The disruption followed the confirmation of the city's first coronavirus infection earlier in the week and the cooperation between the hospitals could have occurred in almost any city in the current pandemic. But this is Mostar, a city divided by war in the early 1990s in nearly every respect between mostly Catholic Bosnian Croats in its west and mainly Muslim Bosniaks in its east. Twin facilities have mostly served their respective ethnically homogeneous communities on both sides ever since, although the doctors cooperate through a joint medical chamber. Bosnia had nearly 950 confirmed COVID-19 cases by April 12, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center. Thirty-seven of them have died. The first case in Mostar, a city of around 115,000, was announced on March 17. Health officials here say the divided city has adopted a "new dimension" of cooperation ever since. When it comes to working closely together and joining forces in the current pandemic, they say patients are the priority, not politics. "We're really showing that, in the current situation, everything must be done for the patients, irrespective of whose hospital it is," said Ante Kvesic, general manager of the University Clinical Hospital. "We're doing everything we can." His hospital's infectious-diseases wing has been transformed into a COVID-19 facility staffed by doctors and other experts from both hospitals in the city, Bosnia's fifth-largest. Two out of three of the Cantonal Hospital's infectious-diseases doctors are now working jointly there with their colleagues from the University Clinical Hospital to treat seriously ill COVID-19 patients. "In fighting this pandemic, we've joined our forces, our doctors, in the sense of joint, day-to-day work to give each other a hand wherever possible, wherever needed," said Guzin, "because I think this is a situation in which we can only fight this huge and dangerous challenge if we join our forces." Before the 1992-95 war, a Regional Health Center named after a Bosniak communist partisan during World War II provided health care to the entire Herzegovina region of what's now southern Bosnia. That regional facility was broken up after the conflict, with its work restored in former Yugoslav Army barracks on the eastern side of the city and later renamed the Cantonal Hospital. The move made the University Clinical Hospital the city's biggest. Guzin said the staff of both hospitals collaborated before the coronavirus pandemic through a shared doctors' union and another professional association. "The reason we're talking about it now is because the world outside of our hospitals is seeing [the cooperation] for the first time," Kvesic said. Asked about ongoing increased cooperation after the current pandemic, Kvesic suggested that things would likely go back to the way they were. "That's not a question for us health workers. We're not the ones making decisions," he said. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/coronavirus- crisis-unites-doctors-in-bosnia-s-divided- city-of-mostar/30548641.html Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address A senior Iraqi cleric said the countrys people will defeat the novel coronavirus through faith and belief. AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): A senior Iraqi cleric said the countrys people will defeat the novel coronavirus through faith and belief. Ayatollah Seyed Mohammad Taqi Modarresi, a Shia source of emulation, in a message called on the people to observe health guidelines, al-Suamria TV reported. He also urged people to remain united in the face of the disease and help one another, saying Iraqis are always benevolent, especially in difficult times. Ayatollah Modarresi further urged clerics and religious preachers to promote religious teachings via the internet and social media now that people are staying at home to prevent the spread of the disease. The novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has infected more than 1.8 million people worldwide and killed some 115,000. The number of confirmed cases in Iraq is 1,352 and 76 people have died from the disease in the country so far. .............................................. End/ 257 Ray didn't make it too far, though. In over two days, he managed to move no farther than eight miles through the murky badlands before the bloodhounds caught up with him and put an end to his last-ever escape attempt. As a legacy to his daring escape escapades, people still run Ray's 8 miles in a foot race called the Barkley Marathon. And as a legacy to him being a weak-ass chump, they then keep going for another 92 miles in the same 60 hours. 1 The Dingo-Ate-My-Baby Lady Was Convicted For Murdering Her Baby "A dingo ate my baby" has become one of those iconic Australian catchphrases like "put another shrimp on the barbie" or "has your dick been bitten by a box jellyfish or are you just happy to see me?" From Seinfeld to The Simpsons, the morbid phrase has been used as a punchline so often it's hard to remember: Did a dingo actually kill a baby? It turns out that the answer to that was up in the air for over thirty years. Continue Reading Below Advertisement This long story does, sadly, begin with the death of a baby. In the winter of 1980, Lindy Chamberlain, her husband Michael, and their three children -- Aidan, Reagan and nine-week-old baby girl Azaria -- went on a large group camping trip to the outback. On the evening of August 17, Lindy rushed into the communal tent and announced that a wild dingo had carried off Azaria. Several search parties were sent out but when they returned with only a tiny, bloody coat, Azaria was declared dead. The official cause: dingoes. But the Australian people were skeptical. Dingoes were seen as harmless, adorable animals incapable of such monstrosities. Furthermore, they distrusted the calm Lindy for not grieving in that typical way you do when your child has been devoured by a pack of wild animals. When investigators then reported traces of blood in the Chamberlains' car, the trial was over before it even started. The Australian court decided that Lindy had cut her baby's throat in their car, stuffed her body in a camera bag, and dumped it when everyone else was out searching -- that scenario was more plausible than that a cute bush doggo had done it. Ken Moore/Wikimedia Commons Who's a cute feral pack predator? Yes you are! Yes you are! Continue Reading Below Advertisement After a speedy and sensationalist trial, Lindy was convicted of murder and given a life sentence in 1982. But the prosecutors were, to put it in Australian terms, a bunch of bloody drongos, mate. The blood was never officially confirmed to be Azaria's (or even real blood, for that matter), an eyewitness swore she had heard a baby scream moments before the incident, and the local ranger had warned the government several times that dingoes were becoming aggressive to humans. Despite the overwhelming evidence in her favor, Lindy spent four years in prison before, by pure luck, new evidence exonerated her when a search for another missing body discovered Azaria's missing jacket in a dingo den. Continue Reading Below Advertisement But despite acknowledging Lindy's innocence, it wasn't until 2012, more than 30 years after the baby's death, that the Crown formally declared that a dingo really had eaten Lindy's baby (several other people had been attacked and killed by dingoes in the meantime), which not only caused endless grief to the Chamberlain family but also allowed the world just enough plausible deniability to keep using a family's worst nightmare as a wacky Aussie catchphrase. Top Image: Pxfuel.com Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see. The former bureaucrat also said startups which are surviving on funds infused by venture capitalists may face tougher situations if the present scenario deteriorates Hyderabad: Indicating that prolonged lockdown to contain coronavirus spread may lead to job cuts in the Indian IT industry, NASSCOM former president R Chandrashekhar has said that the work-from-home culture may become a positive development in the long run as it opens up newer avenues and save investments by IT firms. The former bureaucrat also said startups which are surviving on funds infused by venture capitalists may face tougher situations if the present scenario deteriorates. "The larger companies may not be actually cutting jobs for two reasons," he said. "One is that they do not want to lose their employees and they have money to pay." "Many of them [big companies], even if they do shed some jobs it might be at the [level of] people who are the temporary or intern type. But they would not want regular and permanent employees to go. So as long as they have sufficient flexibility in their books, they would continue. But beyond a point that it goes on, for let us say, two months or three months, then even for them, they will feel the pressure. They may not just keep on providing subsidies to the employees." "So the key question will be how long that goes on," Chandrasekhar told PTI. He said the work-from-home systems being adopted by several firms across the globe, including India, may have a negative impact on the industry in the short-term, but in the long run it would change the work culture which hitherto was not experienced by many of the IT firms in India. According to him, the work-from-home, in the long-run results in savings in terms of employee productivity, logistics cost and office space. He said client companies offering contracts to Indian IT firms, which are also undergoing similar experiences, may not object to work remotely. "Human behaviour (adapting work-from-home culture) changing is not easy. This coronavirus has forced us to change faster than we were changing", Chandrashekhar said. On the impact of the prolonged lockdown on startups, he said it would be a big challenge for the budding enterprises as the investments they get are based on their ideas and future revenues and the present situation under which peoples movement is curbed may shackle their progress. Where will they (startups) get money to pay salaries to their employees," he asked. Venture capital investors would not pay the money or invest their money to pay salaries because they are not in the charity business, he said, adding that if the employees are not paid and if they then leave, it is difficult for the startup to come back up. "So the whole investment plan goes for a toss," he said. Founder of a mid-sized IT firm said the job cut in the IT industry is inevitable even for bigger firms if the present situation across the globe continues for a few more months. Former chairman of NASSCOM, B V R Mohan Reddy said a clear picture as to what is going to happen has not yet emerged as the situation with all respects is still evolving. Reddy said there will be a demand shrinkage for the IT industry as the entire world is under stress. "There is no economy in this world that is going to do well in this situation. All of them are in some form of stress. So, therefore, there will be a demand shrinkage," he said, indicating tougher times for the industry ahead. Saudi Arabia's state oil giant Aramco has set the May price for its Arab light crude oil to Asia at a discount of $7.3 to the Oman/Dubai average, down $4.2 a barrel from April, according to a document seen by Reuters on Monday. It has cut the May OSP of its Arab light crude oil to the United States to a discount of $0.75 per barrel versus ASCI, down $3 a barrel from April, according to the document. Aramco left its OSP for Arab light crude oil to Northwestern Europe unchanged from April at a discount of $10.25 per barrel to ICE Brent. The governors, speaking on a conference call, emphasized the importance of acting in concert so that the actions of one state did not inadvertently hurt another, or cause the outbreak to flare again. We can put together a system that allows our people to get back to work, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said. Asked whether the collaboration among the states was a rebuke to the President Trump, who has said the decision about businesses reopening was his to make, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said only that he was focused on making decisions based on facts and science, and he reiterated that an economic recovery was inextricable from a public health recovery. Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania echoed Mr. Murphys comments in responding to a similar question. The sequence, Mr. Wolf said, is youve got to get people healthy first, and then you can reopen the economy. Mr. Cuomo interviewed on CNN before and after Mr. Trump said again at a White House briefing that the decision on restarting the economy was his was more pointed in discussing who was responsible for pausing the rhythms of normal life and who would restore them. The governor flatly rejected Mr. Trumps claim that as president, his authority was total. Mr. Cuomo called the assertion aggressive and hostile. He also said that if Mr. Trump wished to be the one to restart the economy, he had to outline, in detail, how he planned to do it. The tough decisions were the closing down of the economy, Mr. Cuomo said, adding that Mr. Trump didnt do it. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: The house is still on fire," he said during a conference call with reporters. We still have to put the fire out, but we do have to begin putting in the pieces of the puzzle that we know were going to need ... to make sure this doesnt reignite. India's plans of mass screening of COVID-19 infected patients will get further delayed as China has made it mandatory to get a clearance from the National Medical Product Administration (NMPA) before exporting testing kits to other countries. So far only half a dozen manufacturers in China have the NMPA clearance (of which two are yet to start exports). They are forced or are willingly diverting orders from countries like India to other countries such as the US or other nations ravaged by the virus in the EU, reliable industry sources told Business Today. China mandates NMPA clearance for export of COVID-19 testing kits Only half a dozen firms received licences Consignments are getting diverted to the US or Europe ICMR's 5 lakh testing kit orders also not honoured Mass rapid test for coronavirus may get further delayed Prior to this, China had about 20 manufacturers making rapid testing kits for COVID-19, source informed, as the country had quickly created sizable testing capacity following the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. The pandemic is now under control in the province. Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech, Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tec, INNOVITA(Tangshan) Biological Technology, Bioscience (Chongqing) Diagnostic Technology, Bioscience (Chongqing) Diagnostic Technology Xiamen Innodx Biotech Hecin Scientific, Nanjing Vazyme Medical Technology snf Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics are the antigen based rapid kit making manufacturers listed in the NMPA website. Sources said these companies offer the rapid test kits at $6-10 per kit. NMPA mandated the new rule after some countries questioned the quality of the products and sent back the consignments. They said many Indian states and companies are planning to make rapid test kits and India's premier medical institution and nodal agency Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had placed orders from these companies. Therefore, India has not been able to start rapid covid testing so far, which was expected to begin last week. "We had ordered 5 lakh rapid testing kits and that was supposed to deliver last week. Unfortunately, that did not happen and now we expect the delivery to happen this week," said an ICMR official spokesperson. Sources said the ICMR's initial orders for 5 lakh kits included the Chinese firm Wondfo, which has the NMPA clearance. Nevertheless the firm did not honour its commitment. Wongfo's kits were also validated and approved by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune. Sources said the Chinese move has also derailed plans of many domestic and overseas companies to import and supply COVID-19 rapid testing kits. The rapid testing kits approved by the ICMR so far include Mylan, BioMedomics, Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics, Voxtur Bio, VANGUARD Diagnostics, HLL Lifecare, CPC Diagnostics and LAB-CARE Diagnostics. Indian companies Voxtur, Vanguard and HLL and Trivitron Healthcare are planning to make testing kits domestically. Now the domestic manufacturers say it will take two-three weeks for them to come out with 'Made in India' rapid kits for testing. "We had also placed orders for testing kits from our supplier in China and currently they are facing delays to execute orders. I hope to get them by this week or next," said GSK Velu, chairman and managing director of Trivitron. He said another issue is developing the re-combinent protein to use in the domestically manufactured rapid testing kits. Trivitron is trying to develop these proteins inhouse and start manufacturing within two weeks, said Velu. Meanwhile, yesterday ICMR publicised bids inviting supply of COVID-19 rapid diagnostic kits to carry out 45 lakh tests, viral transmission media for 52.25 lakh tests, Real Time PCR combo kits to conduct 25 lakh tests and RNA extraction kits for 30 lakh tests, with a view to get the supplies completed by May first week. The ICMR tender published yesterday says for those proposed to be imported from China, NMPA China approval is mandatory. Compliance to any other conditions imposed by the "source country" will remain the responsibility of the bidder and ICMR will remain indemnified from any liabilities on such account. The quotes should reach ICMR by 2:30 pm, April 14, 2020. The supplies are meant to augment India's testing capacity from May 1 or before. The ICMR spokesperson said there are many USFDA and EU's CE-IVD approved manufacturers of rapid testing kits in China, besides in countries such as Hong Kong and South Korea. Sources said some of the states were also trying to arrange rapid testing kits on their own. Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Shanmugam, while addressing the media on Saturday, had said that the state had ordered at least 50,000 kits in the first consignment and then deliver 50,000 more in the next consignment, but none have come yet, as the rapid test kits ordered by India have been diverted to the United States from China. The Centre had plans of starting rapid antibody testing on April 4, and revised the testing guidelines on April 9 to include rapid testing of all symptomatic individuals in hotspot areas. Also Read: Coronavirus lockdown: Auto sales crash 45% in March; commercial vehicles worst hit Also Read: Coronavirus outbreak: Which states have announced lockdown extension? Also Read: 'Help or we will die': Auto dealers send SOS to PM Modi amid coronavirus lockdown Former Attorney General of India and senior advocate Ashok Desai passed away on Monday morning. A Padma Bhushan awardee, Desai held office as the Attorney General of India from July 9, 1996 to May 6, 1998. Earlier, he was the Solicitor General of India from 18 December, 1989 to December 2, 1990. Desai studied at the prestigious Fergusson College in Pune and thereafter went to the Government Law College, Mumbai. He started his practice in 1956 at the Bombay High Court and was designated as a senior advocate on August 8, 1977. Desai took up several landmark cases, including decriminalisation of homosexuality, Vineet Narain case relating to investigation into allegations of corruption against high-ranking public officials in the country, Narmada Dam case and Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) (IMDT) Act in Assam, among others. In 1972, when playwright Vijay Tendulkar's contentious social commentary 'Sakharam Binder' faced a ban on grounds of obscenity, it was Desai who came to his rescue. His advocacy was responsible for striking down of censorship laws in Maharashtra. Senior lawyers took to Twitter to pay tributes to Desai and described him as the "doyen" of the bar. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal said, "Ashok Desai, senior advocate, passed away this morning. A doyen of the bar will always be remembered for his contributions to the law and for his unmatched wit. My heartfelt condolences to the family for this loss. May his soul rest in peace." Advocate Prashant Bhushan tweeted, "RIP Ashok Bhai, a doyen of the bar, former AG and a fine man, with the highest ethical standards & committed to many causes. He was a member of our Committee on Judicial Accountability which spearheaded Justice Ramaswami's impeachment & campaigned for better accountability of judges. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) TEHRAN, Iran, April. 13 Trend: Iran's National Committee on Combating Coronavirus approved that patients who are in quarantine, to be covered by insurance, Trend reports citing IRNA. "Last Iranian year (ended on March 210) was a very difficult year. It started with heavy floods. After that, we had the flu outbreak, Iranian Minister of Health Saeed Namaki said at the meeting of the managers of the Health Insurance Organization. "Before the outbreak of coronavirus, we were able to pay a significant part of the debts of governmental hospitals," he said. One of the serious problems of the health insurance organization was a budget deficit and a health insurance issue that was constantly increasing, he said adding that the financial turnover have reached an appropriate level through the resource management. "Insurance coverage for hospitalized coronavirus patients was also considered to reduce their costs, he said. He expressed hope that the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) will be launced in the current Iranian year (started on March 20). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. Iran is one of the countries heavily affected by the rapidly-spreading coronavirus. According to recent reports from the Iranian officials, over 73,300 people have been infected, 4,585 people have already died. Meanwhile, over 45,900 have reportedly recovered from the disease. The country continues to apply strict measures to contain the further spread. Reportedly, the disease was brought to Iran by a businessman from Iran's Qom city, who went on a business trip to China, despite official warnings. The man died later from the disease. The Islamic Republic only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on Feb. 19. [April 13, 2020] USRA Taps Margaret Meixner to Lead the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy Science Mission Operations COLUMBIA, Md. and WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Universities Space Research Association (USRA) announced today the appointment of Dr. Margaret Meixner to the position of Director, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), Science Mission Operations, effective April 13, 2020. SOFIA, NASA's major airborne astronomical observatory world-wide, conducts observations in the far-infrared that are unique and impossible to obtain even with today's largest, most advanced high-altitude ground-based telescopes. It paves the way scientifically for the soon-to-be launched James Webb Space Telescope, while simultaneously filling a unique scientific niche in the mid- to far-infrared over the longer term. As Director of SOFIA, Dr. Meixner will assume the leadership and management of the SOFIA Science Mission Operations. She will provide the scientific, technical and management guidance for the SOFIA team and working in partnership with the Dueutches SOFIA Institute to maximize the scientific productivity and impact of the observatory. Dr. Meixner will work closely with NASA to ensure the success of SOFIA so it remains at the forefront of research in astronomy, astrophysics, and planetary science. Dr. Ghassem Asrar, USRA Senior Vice President of Science stated, "We are thrilled to have Margaret aboard. Her scientific and technical knowledge of infrared astronomy observations and science together with her management experience and community leadership complements our existing and talented team to guide SOFIA moving forward. We are excited to have Margaret join USRA as we continue to fulfill our mission of supporting U.S. space program in science, technology and education." Prior to joining Universities Space Research Association, Dr. Meixner was at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) where she held several leadership positions since 2002. She is currently James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Project Scientist, and the former Intruments Division Deputy and former Webb Instrument Team Lead. She was promoted to Distinguished Astronomer, STScI in 2017, and since 2016 has been Community co-Chair of the Origins Space Telescope Science and Technology Definition Team. She is also a Principal Research Scientist at Johns Hopkins University, and a member of NASA's Astrophysics Advisory Committee. A recipient of several awards and honors, Dr. Meixner was named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2015 and recognized for her leadership in infrared instrumentation for astronomy. Dr. Meixner was also awarded the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) Science Achievement Award in 2009, and the 1994 Annie Jump Cannon Special Commendation of Honor. She earned her B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics in 1987 from the University of Maryland, College Park, and received her master and doctorate degrees in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. About USRA Founded in 1969, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the U.S. Government, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) is a nonprofit corporation chartered to advance space-related science, technology and engineering. USRA operates scientific institutes and facilities, and conducts other major research and educational programs, under Federal funding. USRA engages the university community and employs in-house scientific leadership, innovative research and development, and project management expertise. More information about USRA is available at www.usra.edu. About SOFIA SOFIA is an international partnership, funded jointly by NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The Universities Space Research Association (USRA) manages SOFIA Science Mission Operations (SMO) for the NASA Ames Research Center, in support of NASA's Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate. SOFIA, a major airborne astronomical observatory, paves the way scientifically for the soon-to-be launched James Webb Space Telescope, while simultaneously filling a unique scientific niche in the mid- to far-infrared over the longer term. PR Contact: Suraiya Farukhi, Ph.D. [email protected] 443-812-6945 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usra-taps-margaret-meixner-to-lead-the-stratospheric-observatory-for-infrared-astronomy-science-mission-operations-301039435.html SOURCE Universities Space Research Association [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Virtually the entire staff at an adult disability care home in Markham, Ontario walked off the job on Thursday over concerns about the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak at the facility. The workers took the job action after management announced that 10 residents and two employees in the 42-resident long-term care home had tested positive for the coronavirus. There was an audible scream in the room, and some gasps, and people were just devastated, Executive Director Shelley Brillinger of the Participation House facility told reporters. Shortly thereafter, evening and night shift workers left their posts leaving only six staff members to attend to the residents. Normally, 36 workers clock in over a 24 hour period. Emergency calls initiated by town officials eventually managed to secure eight additional attendants from the community to work at the home over the weekend after management belatedly began offering double the miserable minimum wage. The minimum-wage attendants at the home, members of the Service Employees International Union, had earlier raised concerns regarding PPE shortages. Workers were only issued minimal PPE four days before the announcement of the outbreak. Work at the home for physically and developmentally disabled residents requires close and extensive contact between caregivers and residents. Nonetheless, staff were expected to perform these tasks with virtually no protection, exposing both themselves and vulnerable residents to the potentially lethal virus. Such was the lack of protective equipment at the home that an emergency call went out over the weekend for more PPE for the newly installed skeleton crew. To date, of the 660 COVID-19 deaths in Canada, half have been residents in long-term care facilities, including seven seniors at another Markham home and 29 in Bobcaygeon, Ontario. Ontario Conservative Health Minister Christine Elliott, however, has refused to initiate the recommended testing of all residents in care and their attendants. Limited testing of those exhibiting coronavirus symptoms and those in contact with them was only initiated in late March. The events in Markham are part of mounting protests by health care workers and other sections of the working class across Canada and internationally over the unsafe conditions created by the criminally negligent response of ruling elites around the world to the global pandemic. As shortages of personal protective equipment persist across the country, nurses in London, Ontario stopped work on 11 occasions in early April, citing their right to refuse unsafe working conditions. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, established medical procedures require hospital staff to change masks and gowns before attending to each new patient. However, because of equipment shortages, London hospital authorities have allotted only four surgical or other basic masks per shift, a practice that threatens to result in the transfer of the virus from patient to patient and allow it to spread like wildfire through the medical staff. The superior N95 masks are reserved for front-line staff performing intubations and other specialized procedures. The nurses action in London follows similar refusals to work in unsafe conditions in Alberta and Manitoba medical facilities over the past three weeks. In recent days, reports have emerged that in at least two Toronto hospitals protective masks are now rationed at two per shift for most doctors and nurses. The drastic shortages of protective equipment as well as ventilators and dedicated intensive care beds are an indictment of federal and provincial governments of all political stripes over the past several decades. They have all imposed relentless cuts to health care services and the privatization of elder care infrastructure. In 2003, Toronto was among the main global clusters of the SARS epidemic, leading to 44 deaths. Yet recommendations for robust stockpiles of protective equipment and ventilators were quickly forgotten. Today, Canadians are subjected to the daily obfuscations of Prime Minister Trudeau and the provincial premiers who put on sombre faces like well-kept graves, and in earnest tones assure the citizenry that sufficient and vital equipment for medical staff are landing any minute and that minimal testing volumes will quickly ramp up. Meanwhile, medical experts, not to mention those on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic, know this to be an outright lie. At the same time as workers at Markhams Participation House were walking off the job, the horrific events that recently transpired at a privately-owned seniors care facility in Montreal came to the attention of a stunned national audience. As initially reported by the Montreal Gazette, minimum wage, poorly equipped workers at the Residence Herron, who were already grossly under-staffed and contractually restricted from divulging information, began leaving their jobs in the latter part of March after a virus outbreak was acknowledged. At least one person a day had been dying in the home since mid-March. Eventually, 31 deaths would be recorded. However, the owners claimed only two deaths were the result of COVID-19. It required court orders to force the owners to release their medical files. A criminal investigation is now underway. With most of the remaining staff departing in fear on March 29, public health authorities, alerted by workers to the unfolding calamity, entered the home and placed the facility under immediate trusteeship. Finding a veritable house of horrors, they described their experience as like entering a concentration camp. Some residents had gone unfed for days. Urine bags were overflowing and pooling on the floor. Some patients were lying in their own feces. Skin infections were rampant. Two corpses lay undiscovered in their beds. Other patients were simply lying on the floor. Some patients were so dehydrated that they could not speak. It appeared that records of medications were falsified. In an institution riddled with coronavirus infection, there were only two orderlies for the entire 134 bed facility. The Residence Herron charges up to $10,000 per month for a placement. Tauranga City Council is asking for the communitys feedback on ideas to support growth in the Te Papa peninsula, and proposed changes to the city plan. The plan is to enable more housing choice across the city. Council is working on a blueprint for growth within the area from Greerton through the city centre to the harbour bridge, called the Te Papa peninsula. This blueprint, the Te Papa Plan, aims to provide a 30-year plan for greater housing choice, safe and efficient transport options, local amenities and infrastructure needed to support healthy and connected neighbourhoods and communities. In parallel, to allow Tauranga to grow up as well as out, Taurangas planning rules need to enable more housing choice. So council is working on proposed changes to the city plan to make it easier for people to build if they want to duplexes and townhouses/terraced housing in suburban areas across the city, and apartments in more central areas like Te Papa. Tauranga is New Zealands fifth largest city and is continuing to grow and change at pace. Housing is currently falling short of demand, community and infrastructure requirements are growing and without action, these challenges are predicted to continue. This growth requires coordinated management to ensure the gradual change that comes with it delivers positive outcomes for todays and tomorrows generations. Mayor Tenby Powell is calling the community to participate in the conversation. We know growth planning is probably not top of peoples agendas right now as we find our way through COVID-19, and we dont yet know what normal will look like beyond the lockdown. But we think its important to keep working on our city building and city planning projects, even if the short-term future is uncertain. And to do this, we need our communitys feedback on the direction were proposing. Please share your thoughts with us when you feel you have the time and headspace for it, and ask the people in your bubble to contribute to this important kaupapa too. People can provide feedback from home at www.tauranga.govt.nz/shapeyourcity anytime between now and 19 May 2020. Share your views to shape your city Council is asking for the communitys thoughts on proposed ideas and priorities for the Te Papa Plan, and on the draft city plan rules and urban design guidelines for duplexes, townhouses and apartments in different zones. "Help shape the future of your city, your neighbourhood and your home read up on ideas and proposals and take the survey by Tuesday, 19 May there are some prizes up for grabs too. People can either take the full survey or pick and choose the topics theyre most interested in," says a council spokesperson. Share your views at www.tauranga.govt.nz/shapeyourcity "Council would usually provide various face-to-face engagement opportunities and printed material for this project. "Due to the current COVID-19 Level 4 lockdown, all relevant information is available online, with a survey and a form to ask questions online." People can also call 07 577 7000 with any questions. Ideas to shape the future of Te Papa Council is working towards developing the Te Papa Plan a coordinated and integrated approach over a 30-year timeframe that will assist in more efficient use of resources, including infrastructure, the way we move around, and how we live in the Te Papa peninsula. Community feedback to date has helped council shape the plan, develop a series of outcomes for Te Papa and identify the benefits expected as a result of growth. "These outcomes describe what the community want the Te Papa peninsula to be like in the future: a place that is unique, liveable, connected and healthy. "They provide guidance that allows us to work together towards achieving those potential benefits that growth can provide to the Te Papa community if it is well-planned and supported by appropriate and timely investment." Council is proposing a set of ideas (potential projects and other initiatives) to support these outcomes. These ideas and those that the community adds, will help council shape the Te Papa Plan, and help determine what council invests in and when. More on the Te Papa project at www.tauranga.govt.nz/tepapa Changing the city plan to enable more housing choice Right now, the rules in place for residential land in the Tauranga City Plan make it hard for people to build more compact types of homes like duplexes and apartments, says a council spokesperson. "This means as a city we're not using land as effectively as possible to accommodate our growth, and that people dont have much choice in the type and size of homes they can live in. "Council is proposing to make changes to the city plan rules to make it easier for people to build duplexes, townhouses and apartments where it makes sense to, to better suit their needs. "The rules also aim to ensure new builds both look good and that they create great neighbourhoods. "They address topics such as building height, setbacks, outdoor open space, fences and walls, streetscape etc." In parallel council is proposing to introduce assessment criteria for townhouses and apartments to support better urban design, and to provide more direction for residential development in the commercial zone. Change in the city through this plan change would not happen all at once. It would happen over time, as people decide to redevelop their sections in existing urban areas. More on the Housing Choice plan change at www.tauranga.govt.nz/housing-choice Grace Suttle was set to graduate from the New Jersey Medical School in mid-May. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, her graduation was pushed up and shell soon join the frontlines to battle the illness. Suttle, 25, will be one of 16,000 newly graduated doctors nationwide who will help combat the global COVID-19 outbreak. Suttle, a Jersey City native, said the growing numbers in her hometown and across the country -- are alarming, but everyone needs to do their part. Its anxiety producing, but it makes me think we have to follow guidelines with social distancing and washing our hands..., she said. We just have to try our best to keep trying. For Suttle, her part is practicing general medicine at Morristown Medical Center, where shell begin her year-long medical residency in July. As a general medicine doctor, she expects to be treating some coronavirus patients. The respiratory illness has forced practitioners like Suttle and many other medical specialists across the field into a new territory. But Suttle said she isnt waiting until July to jump in the fight. The 25-year-old said she and her classmates are working to recruit others to help with ambulance work, patient follow-ups and are mobilizing food for those who cant go out. Im very fortunate to graduate early, she said. When I do join the workforce, its a privilege to work alongside the medical professionals who are spending so much time and putting in their efforts. Suttle who wants to care for patients with brain and spinal cord injuries added that the healthcare workers who have been combatting the virus outbreak are amazing, brave and risk their life every day. She said she cant imagine the fear these physicians may have of spreading it to their loved ones. But she knows these are actual concerns that healthcare workers face, including herself, she said. I have family members in Jersey City as well and I wouldnt want to expose them, Suttle added. But once Suttle starts her medical residency, she wont be seeing her family in-person a rough tradeoff because, to her, family is everything. After her medical residency at Morristown Medical Center, she will move to Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation for three years to focus on her specialty: Physical medicine and rehabilitation. Rutgers NJMSs Class of 2020 graduated on Friday, and will have a virtual ceremony on Monday, Suttle said. When shes able to join the battle, she hopes to alleviate some of the burdens the global illness has put on the medical field. Suttle also hopes the aftermath of the virus sheds light on the inequalities in healthcare and lack of personal protective equipment. We see our minority cases who are suffering right now. Theres African Americans and Latinos who are really taking a turn with COVID-19. We have to examine this like, Why is that? she said.A lot of workers are also putting themselves through discomfort. Theres limited PPE, and thats much needed. Beignet in City Market closes abruptly Beignet at City Market // Photo by Google Maps On Sunday, Beignet in City Market announced that they were shutting their doors after 7 years of service. The New Orleans style Cajun eatery thanked the community for 2,514 days of supporting their small garage cafe. One more lament from The Pitch doesn't really offer much info but gives TKC readers another opportunity to consider the impact of this global health crisis on upscale aspirations throughout the increasingly "upscale" Kansas City downtown area. Read more: Posted on: April 14, 2020 5:52 PM An Easter Message from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, The Queen of Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and the United Kingdom; Head of the Commonwealth; and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Many religions have festivals which celebrate light overcoming darkness. Such occasions are often accompanied by the lighting of candles. They seem to speak to every culture, and appeal to people of all faiths, and of none. They are lit on birthday cakes and to mark family anniversaries, when we gather happily around a source of light. It unites us. As darkness falls on the Saturday before Easter Day, many Christians would normally light candles together. In church, one light would pass to another, spreading slowly and then more rapidly as more candles are lit. Its a way of showing how the good news of Christs resurrection has been passed on from the first Easter by every generation until now. This year, Easter will be different for many of us, but by keeping apart we keep others safe. But Easter isnt cancelled; indeed, we need Easter as much as ever. The discovery of the risen Christ on the first Easter Day gave his followers new hope and fresh purpose, and we can all take heart from this. We know that Coronavirus will not overcome us. As dark as death can be particularly for those suffering with grief light and life are greater. May the living flame of the Easter hope be a steady guide as we face the future. I wish everyone of all faiths and denominations a blessed Easter. - With the number of COVID-19 cases rising in Kenya, Olunga has partnered with La Liga and UNICEF to help send out health messages - Kenya has 191 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with the tally spiking in just days since the first case was reported on Thursday, March 26 - Olunga has also previously donated hand santisers and foodstuffs to Nairobi's Lucky Summer estate residents Harambee Stars forward Michael Olunga has teamed up with UNICEF and Spanish topflight league La Liga to produce a video message tailored for Kenyans during the coronavirus pandemic. The video will see Olunga help share important messages from the government on the guidelines to help combat the spread of the virus. READ ALSO: Ronaldinho spending house arrest in luxury hotel after he was freed from jail READ ALSO: Coronavirus: Harambee Stars defender Joseph Okumu to feed needy families during pandemic In one of the messages which has since been shared online, the Kashiwa Reysol hitman admitted "he was really concerned about what is going on." I am really concerned about what is really going on and I would like to urge everyone especially the people back in Kenya to follow all what the health officials and government are saying we need to do in order to stop the coronavirus from spreading, he said. READ ALSO: Sadio Mane: Senegal hospital built by Liverpool star set to open in months We should also wash our hands more frequently, cover our mouth and noses with the recommended masks and also generally avoid crowded spaces, he added. Olunga's message comes just days after he donated hand sanitisers and foodstuffs to Nairobi's Lucky Summer estate to help cushion the most vulnerable families during the crisis. READ ALSO: Coronavirus: WWE legend Hulk Hogan says pandemic is punishment for idol worshiping Kenya already has 191 cases of coronavirus cases, having confirmed two more cases on Saturday, April 11. 24 of the tally have already recovered from COVID-19, with seven of them tragically succumbing to the virus. Do you have an inspirational story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Tuko news. Kenyans in China speak out on the discrimination of Africans by Chinese citizens | Tuko TV Source: TUKO.co.ke Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram New York, April 13, 2020 Zambian authorities should restore Prime TVs broadcast license and cease harassing the outlet, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On April 9, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, Zambias broadcasting regulator, cancelled Prime TVs license in the interest of public safety, security, peace, welfare or good order, according to a statement from the regulator, which CPJ reviewed. The statement said that Prime TV must surrender its license and cease broadcasting immediately. It did not specify any broadcasts or actions by the stations employees that prompted the decision. On the same day, police arrived at the outlets office in Lusaka, the capital, and forced staffers to leave the building and barred them from returning, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who said that employees had not been able to return as of today. Prime TV, a popular television station known for its critical coverage of the government, had recently been covering the COVID-19 pandemic, according to that person, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. Prime TV had also covered the Bill 10 constitutional amendment under consideration by parliament, which detractors allege will keep the ruling Patriotic Front party in power indefinitely, according to news reports. Last year, authorities suspended Prime TVs license for 30 days for alleged unprofessionalism in response to a complaint lodged by the Patriotic Front, as CPJ documented at the time. The Zambian public needs credible information about the COVID-19 pandemic and other events in the public interest. Now is not the time for Information Minister Dora Siliya to retaliate against a popular private outlet that does not toe the government line, said Angela Quintal, CPJs Africa program coordinator. The Independent Broadcasting Authority should immediately reinstate Prime TVs broadcasting license, and authorities should allow the broadcaster to reopen and resume covering the news. The broadcasters suspension followed a month of heightened tensions between the government and Prime TV. On March 13, Prime TV owner Gerald Shawa, in his capacity as chairman of the Zambia Independent Media Association, a local trade group, told officials that independent outlets were not prepared to air the governments coronavirus-awareness campaign for free, because the government owed them money for airing previous advertisements and, unlike the public broadcaster, they were not subsidized by the state, according to media reports. On March 17, Information and Broadcasting Services Minister Dora Siliya accused Prime TV of being unpatriotic and banned government officials from conducting any business with it, including appearing on its broadcasts, and also barred the networks journalists from attending official events, according to local media reports and a copy of Siliyas press release seen by CPJ. On March 27, Top Star Communication Limited Company, a partly state-owned television signal carrier, informed Prime TV that it would stop carrying its broadcasts, according to news reports and documents from a complaint that Prime TV filed to the Lusaka High Court on April 1, which CPJ reviewed. Prime TV continued broadcasting on other signal carriers from March 27 until April 9, when its license was cancelled, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. The Law Association of Zambia, an independent professional body, expressed concern about the license cancellation, stating that it had been conducted prematurely without following the law, according to an April 11 statement from the group, which CPJ reviewed, and news reports. The statement said that authorities retaliation against Prime TV raises a lot of speculation and reasonable doubts about the professionalism of the [Independent Broadcasting Authority] in this matter. The statement also expressed alarm over the fact that Zambian police had taken control of an outlets premises without a court order or any evidence of criminal activities perpetrated by Prime TV. The Independent Broadcasting Authority statement did not say that the outlets facilities would be evacuated and closed. Another person familiar with the case, who asked not be named for fear of reprisal, said that the revocation of Prime TVs broadcast license confirmed that the governments aim is simply to silence a key independent media house that has at times been critical of the governments stance on governance issues. Independent Broadcasting Authority Director-General Josephine Mapoma told CPJ via messaging app that the board had cancelled the license in the public interest and had no obligation to give examples of the outlets coverage prompting the decision. She added that news about COVID-19 was still being broadcast on TV and radio stations throughout the country. When contacted via messaging app, Information Permanent Secretary Amos Malupenga declined to comment and referred CPJ to Siliya. The minister did not reply to CPJs emailed questions on Friday or a text message today. [Editors Note: This article has been corrected in its fourth paragraph to reflect that Bill 10s status in parliament.] SHARON Residents and the first selectman are objecting to an executive order to use Sharon Health Care Center for COVID-19 patients, saying the move would unfairly uproot people who now reside there and could bring the virus to an area where cases are low. In his weekly email to the community, Sharon First Selectman Brent Colley asked residents to contact the Gov. Ned Lamonts office to share their opinions on using Sharon Health Care as a designated COVID-19 facility. My personal opinion is that this is a poor decision, Colley said. What the state is planning/considering, needs more thought and more information from the people it directly impacts. Colley met with state Reps. Maria Horn, D-Salisbury, Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, and state Sens. Craig Miner, R-Litchfield, and Kevin Witkos, R-Canton, along with Torrington Mayor Elinor Carbone, Charlotte Hungerford Hospital Director Brian Mattiello and Torrington Fire Chief Peter Towey to discussLamonts executive order, which was first announced April 2 and has been in development since that time. Moving COVID-19 patients who must be isolated is driving the order, as more and more nursing homes find patients and residents are infected with the coronavirus. We had all the main people on this call, who are trying to understand whats going to happen next, Colley said. It was during that call that we were told an executive order may take place, designating facilities for patients. Then at 5 p.m., the order came. The thing is, were not involved in any dialogue or decision-making process on this, Colley said. So I did the only thing I could do. I listened hard to who was on the call, and listened for whos making decisions for us. And I reached out to the community, and told them what was happening. I told people to reach out and tell (state officials) why you think its a bad idea or a good idea. Im trying to delay the process. Much of the concern from Colley and other residents surrounds the impact moving residents now living at the center will have. They have special needs, Colley said. If you dont know them and theyre moved, its going to put them in a place where everyone involved is going to be unhappy. On the other side if it, people are concerned about exposure. Our (infection) numbers are flat. Residents sent emails to legislators and Colley this week, voicing their opinions. He shared some of the opinions with the Register Citizen. My primary concern is that IF the healthcare facility were used, we, in (Connecticut) could be overwhelmed by patients from N.Y. State, since we are on the border, and the hospital is now part of NUVANCE, and thus involved with the hospitals in Poughkeepsie and Rhinebeck. Residents of our county would not have the services which are currently provided at the Sharon Healthcare facility, wrote resident Marie Whitehead. In another message, resident Michael Zients wrote, The northwest corner is currently fortunately relatively lightly infected with people suffering from coronavirus. Even a small possibility of creating a new hot spot is unnecessary and unwise, the potential risk far outweighs the potential reward. The state should seek to treat people in or near their home towns and in areas with high incidence of the disease. This is in the best interests of the patients, their families and all the people of Connecticut. The idea of disrupting elderly residents is heartless, wrote resident Leslie Moore. Many of residents consider Sharon Health Care Center their home, and without the benefit of family visitation, the staff are the virtually family. The staff are also the link for families who cannot visit their loved ones. This seems to me a cruel and poorly thought out idea. Emails were sent to the governors office seeking comment. Horn said a Sharon Board of Selectmens meeting is scheduled for Tuesday at 3 p.m. on Zoom, to continue the conversation about relocating uninfected residents at Sharon Health Care. I have invited a long-term care ombudsman, and others involved in this plan, to attend that meeting, Horn said. Weve been on calls with groups for the last week, and when Sharon showed up as a list of potential sites, it grew out of the fact that in order to create capacity space in ICUs, our hospitals have to have places to discharge those patients who need a nursing home. Its an urgent situation. The state is trying to set up a framework quickly. Owners volunteered Horn said Sharon Health Care Centers owners volunteered to be a COVID-19 facility. The state has volunteered compensation ($600 per person) to add additional staff, supplies and to compensate for the increased risk for all involved, she said. This was a conversation between the state and a private business. She has also heard objections to the idea of paying the facilities more money to take the patients, but said it made sense. The facilities that are taking this one do need the resources, she said. Theres nothing coercive going on here. There will remain a need for accountability, transparency, to make sure the money is spent the way it was intended. We are all very much geared up to do that. For her part, Horn has had her own conversations with state officials, to make sure any chosen facilities have what they need to care for people who have the virus. Do they have supplies? What about the level of staffing? Will they have everything they need to do this? Those are the things to be concerned about now, she said. Horn said people in leadership roles at Sharon Health Care, as well as staff members, have confidentially reached out to her to discuss the idea. Thats where the conversation rests right now, she said. Ive had excruciating conversations with families, with people who have spent their lives caring for people in nursing homes. They feel caught in the middle do they move these people to save their lives, or keep them comfortable? This is about saving lives, Horn said. In the meantime, Sharon Hospital has installed a field hospital on its grounds to cope with any surges of patients that might come. That is not related to Sharon Health Care, Horn said. But like Sharon Health Care, the hospital has to be a place where people who are COVID-19 positive can go. Once theyre released, they can go to a designated place. Horn said that confusion is also on social media conversations, where people dont have all the facts. There are extensive conversations going on with ombudsmen, staff, doctors, families ... everyone wants (having a person moved) to be a voluntary decision, where residents have options, Horn said. I want to say, also, that as of April 10, Sharon Health Care had 8 virus-positive residents, and there were a large contingent of residents awaiting test results, so there may be more, she said. Its already there. If a resident tests positive for the virus, they would stay put, Horn said. Along with Sharon Hospital, Lamonts administration has named Northbridge in Bridgeport, the now-closed Wolcott Hall nursing home in Torrington, and a fourth now-closed facility in Meriden as designated places for COVID-19 patients. Keeping the virus out When the pandemic first began, Sharon assembled a group of volunteers to help people stay at home, Colley said. Weve done things for ourselves, to keep people safe, he said. Many of our residents are from Brooklyn or Manhattan, and even though theyre not elderly, they want to self-quarantine, and we have volunteers to help do that. There are people who are nervous about going out, and weve been able to help, with shopping, the pharmacy ... its worked very well. Colley is concerned about the impact on the towns resources, too. We have no police force. We have a volunteer ambulance association, a volunteer fire department. Whats the impact going to be on them, he said. (Is the state) thinking about that at all? Or is is just convenience? Baloch political activists have alleged that Pakistan's secret agencies are constituting criminal gangs and providing them weapons to target civilians and activists in Balochistan province. On April 10, a man named Haji Ahmad Khan Mirwani, his daughter Asma Marwani and son Ramzan Marwani were attacked that left them critically injured in Kathan area of Khuzdar district by ISI-backed death squad personnel. In a viral video on social media, Ahmad Khan Mirwani can be seen in the emergency ward of Khuzdar Civil Hospital. He names the assailants as Fayyaz Zangijav, Tariq Zangijav and Shahnawaz Zangijav in the video. His son Ramzan Mirwani can be seen in a state of unconsciousness, while the assailants also targeted his daughter, Asma Mirwani, who is also seen wounded in the video. Baloch National Party said in a statement, "Fayyaz Zangijav has been accused of leading a criminal group commonly called in Balochistan as "State Death Squad", which were allegedly created by secret agencies of Pakistan. Fayyaz Zangijav is also head of land mafia group in District Khuzdar". Baloch National Movement (BNM) alleges that these criminals have been constituted by the intelligence agencies against the Baloch liberation movement, and in return, they have been given weapons and impunity to commit any kind of crime. Fayyaz Zangijav is an accused in multiple murder cases, he is accused of publicly killing two brothers Ashraf and Nawaz. He is also accused of killing a person over land dispute in the Kathan area of Khuzdar. "There is also a case to be tried, in which he was arrested, but his cases have been withdrawn from the intelligence agencies", Baloch Liberation Party told ANI in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A university has won tens of thousands of pounds to launch a 'prestigious' research project - into the success of the Kenwood Mixer. The University of Portsmouth and London's Science Museum announced a student will now undertake a PhD project looking at how the kitchen appliance became so popular in British homes. The study - costing at least 68,000 of taxpayer's money - is the brainchild of the university's Professor of Design History, Deborah Sugg Ryan, who will supervise it. University of Portsmouth has won funding that will see a student undertake 'prestigious' study Other academics working on the project include Dr Laurel Forster, Reader in Cultural History, along with the Science Museum's Curator of Consumer and Environmental Technology, Dr Helen Peavitt, and Head of Libraries and Archives, Mr Nick Wyatt. Dr Peavitt described the study into why the Kenwood Chef became the most coveted appliance in 1950s households as 'unique' and 'an important project'. She said: 'The Science Museum Group is delighted to be collaborating with the University of Portsmouth on this important project. 'It provides a unique opportunity for a student to work with the two organisations and to draw together strands of material culture, Kenwood heritage and memories both local to and from within our rich object and archive collections.' The academic project's full title is 'Eye appeal is buy appeal: The design, mediation and consumption of Kenwood's kitchen appliances, 1947-2020'. 'Eye appeal is buy appeal' is a quote from Kenwood's founder, the late Ken Wood, when talking about the importance of the design and demonstration of appliances in selling them to the public. A PhD student will receive close to 17,000 a year to study the success of the Kenwood Mixer Professor Sugg Ryan couldn't hide her delight at winning the funding, saying: 'I'm honoured to have been awarded this funding to explore the history of one of Britain's most best loved and innovative product design companies.' Revealing the full scope of the doctorate work, the university said there would be special attention paid to demonstrations of the Kenwood Mixer in department stores, describing it as 'a hitherto neglected area of study'. It stated: 'The project will critically explore the design, marketing and consumption of Kenwood's products, with a particular emphasis on demonstrations in shops, department stores, trade and public exhibitions, country and agricultural shows as a selling technique, a hitherto neglected area of study. The kitchen appliance had roaring success in the 1950s and was the in-demand kitchen item 'These mediation strategies will be compared and contrasted with the actual consumer experience of Kenwood products through oral and written testimonies. 'This will be set within the broader context of domestic appliance consumption and include oral histories with Kenwood consumers.' Ken Wood's stepson John seemed to concede the founder probably never envisaged such an academic study, saying: 'I think he would be extremely proud of the fact that it is now possible to gain a PhD in studying the company and its methods that he set up in Woking in 1947.' Kenwood, which is based in Havant, Hants, and is now part of the De'Longhi group said it would make its archives available and was delighted at the launch of 'this exciting project'. The student will also have access to research material from the recent Heritage Lottery Fund enabled exhibition and documentary film 'Kenwood in Havant'. They will receive a bursary plus a grant of 16,885 per year for four years. A federal judge on Sunday ruled that Alabama cannot ban abortions as part of the state's response to the coronavirus outbreak. US District Judge Myron Thompson issued a preliminary injunction sought by clinics to prevent the state from forbidding abortions as part of a ban on elective medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thompson said abortion providers can decide whether a procedure can wait. 'Based on the current record, the defendants efforts to combat COVID-19 do not outweigh the lasting harm imposed by the denial of an individuals right to terminate her pregnancy, by an undue burden or increase in risk on patients imposed by a delayed procedure, or by the cloud of unwarranted prosecution against providers,' Thompson, a Jimmy Carter appointee, wrote in an opinion. Abortions providers in Alabama scored a legal victory on Sunday, when a federal judge ruled that the state cannot ban abortions as part of its response to the coronavirus outbreak The ruling was a victory for abortion rights advocates who are fighting efforts in Texas, Ohio, Alabama and other states to prohibit abortion services during the COVID-19 pandemic. States have argued they need to conserve medical equipment and potential hospital beds during the pandemic. Abortion clinics in Alabama said they sought the injunction after the state refused to clarify that the clinics could continue to operate. Alabama had ordered a postponement of medical procedures except in cases of a medical emergency or 'to avoid serious harm from an underlying condition or disease, or necessary as part of a patient's ongoing and active treatment.' A lawyer representing clinics praised the ruling. 'Preventing someone from getting an abortion does't do anything to stop the COVID-19 virus, it just takes the decision whether to have a child out of their hands,' said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Unions Reproductive Freedom Project. The Alabama attorney general's office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson on Sunday issued a preliminary injunction to prevent Alabama from forbidding abortions as part of a ban on elective medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic Similar legal fights over abortions during the pandemic are ongoing in Texas, Ohio and Oklahoma. Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas could enforce limits on the ability of women to obtain abortions as part of the state's policy requiring postponement of non-urgent medical procedures. The three-judge panel sided with the state on a 2-1 vote, writing that constitutional rights such as access to a termination could be overruled if there is an emergency public health measure in place. In Texas last week, an appeals court sided with Governor Greg Abbott, allowing the state to restrict abortions during the COVID-19 pandemic In March, an emergency order issued by the state's Republican Governor Greg Abbott halted abortions if they were not 'medically necessary to preserve the life of a patient', deeming terminations as 'non-essential' medical procedures in order to conserve hospital resources amid the pandemic. Texas was sued for the measure by abortion providers, who argued that abortions are time-sensitive, with the state banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, and that restrictions violate the right to abortion under the U.S. Constitution as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The suspension on abortions was initially halted by a Austin-based District Judge Lee Yeakel a week later, who argued that the measure could amount to an 'outright ban' on a woman's ability to acquire a termination in the state. The appeals court had earlier put the district judge's ruling on hold before siding with Texas last Tuesday and throwing out the abortion providers' lawsuit. As of Monday afternoon, there were 573,233 cases of COVID-19 and 22,993 deaths nationwide Court decisions in Ohio and Oklahoma last week allowed abortions to continue after the procedure was caught in the crosshairs of governors' orders suspending all non-essential elective surgeries due to the new coronavirus. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear an appeal by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost seeking to reverse a judge's temporary restraining order allowing abortion facilities in the state to continue performing surgical abortions. In Oklahoma, a judge issued a similar temporary restraining order against Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt's order, allowing clinics there to resume providing medication abortions and procedures for patients who otherwise would see their pregnancies push gestational limits after which abortion is illegal. Governors across the country have issued executive orders halting nonessential medical surgeries to free up hospitals, and Republicans have said abortions should be included under those mandates. A Carabinieri officer blocks the road traffic as a convoy of military vehicles arrives at the Monumental Cemetery in Bergamo near Milan, Italy, on March 26, 2020. (Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images) Italy Begins to Grapple With How to Ease Virus Restrictions SOAVE, ItalyWith warmer weather beckoning, Italians are straining against a strict lockdown to halt the coronavirus that is just now showing signs of ebbing at the end of five weeks of mass isolation. Italy was the first Western democracy to be hit by the virus, and now its likely to set an example of how to lift broad restrictions that have imposed the harshest peacetime limits on personal freedom and shut down all nonessential industry. Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 431 on April 12, down from 619 the day before, and the number of new cases slowed to 4,092 from a previous 4,694. The tally of deaths was the lowest daily rise since March 19. There were 3,343 people in intensive care on April 12 against 3,381 on April 11a ninth consecutive daily decline. Of those originally infected, 34,211 were declared recovered against 32,424 a day earlier. Right now, schools are closed, and children are not permitted to play in parks. Walks outdoors are limited to a distance of 200 meters (less than a quarter-mile), and any excursion not strictly a matter of necessity risks hefty fines. The official line is patience with measures that have shown success in slowing the virus spread, until there is a clear decline in the number of new cases. Still, officials have begun grappling with the question of how to manage social distancing on mass transit, re-open ordinary commerce, and relaunch manufacturing without risking another peak. The so-called Phase II is being described as a cautious reopening, as society continues to live alongside the virus until a vaccine can be developed, perhaps in 12 to 18 months. We obviously dont want to delude ourselves that everything will change, Premier Giuseppe Conte told Italians last week. On April 10, Conte extended the nationwide lockdown through May 3. That includes all nonessential industry, after which, I hope we can start again with caution, and graduallybut restart, he said. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms such as pneumonia. A technical committee advising the government is working to expand testing for COVID-19 to get a better picture of how widespread it is in Italy before measures can be eased. Preparations are also underway to launch a mobile app that will allow people to know if they have been near anyone who has tested positive, something that is expected to take at least a month. With this, you can allow people to have more freedom of movement, said Walter Ricciardi, a public health expert and member of the World Health Organization board who is advising the Italian government. The technology for the app already exists, but authorities have been working on technical details on how to deploy it. Experts in Italy are coordinating with their European partners so the tracking can be applied across borders, which have been de facto closed by the virus. The goal is to establish a common technology, which could help in reestablishing freedom of movement among EU nations. Using the app would be voluntary for anyone wanting to know whether they have come into contact with an infected person that they would have no other way of identifying. Any contacts would be tested, and if positive, they would be treated, according to the WHO initiative: trace, test, and treat. Advocates insist that anonymity would be protected and that no personal data would be at risk, likening the app to other widely used applications like Google Maps or TripAdvisor, which help users identify specific data. Italys hardest-hit regions in the north have been floating proposals for immunity certificates based on antibody blood tests, which havent yet proved reliable. Virus experts caution that such documents are a long way off. The blood test only tells us if the person has been in contact with the virus, not if the subject is actually immune, said Andrea Crisanti, an expert at the University of Padova who is helping to coordinate the coronavirus response in the northeastern region of Veneto. Significantly, he said, the tests also dont show whether antibodies are active, their quantity, or how long they might last. On a social level, the blood test would allow us to understand to what extent the virus has spread in various sectors of the population and geographical areas, where we could then test to see if the virus is active, Crisanti said. We are a very long way from immunity passports. Some regions already require facial masks, though not necessarily surgical-grade ones, which remain in short supply. Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of the epidemic, has made masks mandatory for anyone venturing outside their homebut because of the continuing shortage, scarves can be used. Veneto has distributed a basic mask to most households, requiring them to be used in supermarkets and on public transportation. The mayor of Milan, Europes first major metropolis to close because of the virus, is telling citizens that any reopening could be stop-and-go, and is discussing strategies with other European mayors. Giuseppe Sala said Milan officials are studying how to guarantee social distancing when more people begin to access public spaces, from public transportation to cinemas. Sala is considering having younger city employees return to work first, since they have generally proven less susceptible to the virus. Remote working, where possible, will continue to be encouraged. Until we have a vaccine, it will be an anomalous situation, Sala said. Public health officials warn that the easing phase could prove to be the most dangerous. The fact of pandemics is that they move in waves, and normally the second wave is more dangerous than the first, because the guard has been lowered, you think you can return to normal, and a heavier blow arrives, said Ricciardi, Italys liaison to the WHO. We need to be careful and not make vain all of the sacrifices that have already been made. The good news is that Italians beloved summer holidays dont appear to be ruled out. It will be a summer during which we will have to maintain social distance, avoid gatherings and limit movements. There will not be a lot of facility to travel by airplane or train, where it is difficult to maintain a secure distance, Ricciardi said. We need to think of making vacation plans that are more prudent. By Colleen Barry Reuters contributed to this report. NEW HAVEN The extent of how the coronavirus is hitting black and brown communities remains unknown, and some local community leaders are calling for a greater effort to find out. While the state collects demographic data on COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, local leaders say it doesnt show the whole picture because entire communities might be left out of the count. The Rev. Boise Kimber said in a Zoom press conference Monday that the city needs testing sites in predominantly black and brown neighborhoods such as Fair Haven, Newhallville or Dixwell to adequately collect data and start telling the full story. Kimber said without more local testing, they dont know the extent to which people are contracting the virus and dying in their communities. Theres a struggle with black and brown people, Kimber said. Something has to be done from a city standpoint and from a state standpoint. State Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said by making an educated guess, leaders could predict that black and brown communities would be hit harder by the virus, but the state is missing critical data to know whats really going on. If you have the data, you could refocus on how those people are going to access health care, get tested, or well have a huge portion of the state untested, Winfield said. Even though the state has released some demographic data regarding number of positive cases and deaths, Winfield said its incomplete and lacks context. Statewide, most confirmed COVID-19 cases broken out by race and ethnicity are unknown, totaling 7,141 as of Monday morning. And while the number of associated COVID-19 deaths is staggeringly higher for whites, the rate for confirmed cases and associated deaths per 100,000 population was highest for blacks. In New Haven, most COVID-19 positive cases, hospitalizations and related deaths all were highest among black/African Americans, according to city data as of Wednesday. Hispanics were second in positive cases and hospitalizations. Thinking about black and brown communities, Winfield said better data could inform better protocols, such as how to handle drive up testing sites for people who dont have cars, or how to handle testing in communities that largely dont have primary care doctors. No one is talking about putting money into these communities, Kimber said. He added that funeral homes serving black communities have anecdotally seen their numbers rise from suspected COVID-19 deaths, but without being included in official testing, theyre not counted. This is serious in our community, he said. People are dying and theres no data to show the number of black and brown who are dying. The Rev. Kelcy Steele, of Varick Memorial AME Zion Church, said in his perspective, the virus is laying bare systemic disparities that were underlying in communities long before the virus showed up. I stand of the side of the research that shows the ways that racism produced a rigged system that drives disparities in our community, he said. Not just now, but over lifetimes. Steele said pervasive discrimination is linked to higher levels of disease, such as obesity, heart disease and other underlying health conditions that put people at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. Unfortunately, African Americans fall under those categories, he said. Steele said the disparities cant be blamed on the virus, but the pandemic has made them glaring. Pre-exisiting economic disparities also put many black and brown people in front-line jobs, such as grocery store or warehouse workers, now labeled essential. So many times theyre not working jobs where theyre hooking up a laptop or telecommuting, he said. Theyre getting up to work these essential jobs. So they dont have the luxury of staying in to shelter in place. So that kind of blows the social distancing aspect and staying at home. Steele said the city and state are doing what they can for black and brown communities and not forgetting them, even answering his call when he asked for laptops for low-income students sent home for remote learning. We closed schools, but found out that 600 people didnt have computers, Steele said. It shouldnt take a virus before something like that is assessed. Steele said to help their communities, local leaders need to drive home the message the mayor and governor have been putting out because theyll be able to reach people elected officials cant. We as community leaders, pastors must be diligent to continue to remind our people that social distancing and staying at home is so important to lower the risk, Steele said. Its one thing for government to say it, but community leaders must stand up and we need to use every mode of communication that we can to preach, shelter in place, social distance, and be courteous. mdignan@hearstmediact.com FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Since 2018, PHARM CBD has been rising to the top of their field, setting the bar for the highest industry quality of CBD products. PHARM is based out of Bedford, Kentucky, where they manage every aspect of their business "from seed to sale." The company's high level of involvement at every stage of the CBD extraction process gives PHARM an edge over their ever-widening pool of competition. With an influx of CBD brands in the market today, some companies choose to cut corners, producing CBD oils with little or no potency. "One of the biggest issues in the industry is that the people who really need the relief provided from hemp products are unable to get it consistently, and at proper therapeutic levels." says Evan Ogburn, founder and co-owner of PHARM CBD. Ogburn says the lack of reliable consistency when it came to the quality of CBD currently on the market was a motivating factor in the creation of PHARM. PHARM has been the perfect synthesis of Ogburn's own background in the pharmaceutical industry, with his business partners' collective backgrounds in chemistry, manufacturing, and agriculture. Agriculture, in particular, has been a focus for PHARM CBD as they seek to bring a new cash crop to their home region. Keeping their operation local has been more than a business decision for the Kentucky company as they also practice giving back within their rural community, outside of Louisville. PHARM says their products are safe and effective for anyone, of any age group, with customers as young as five years old and as old as 93. This is because CBD, or Cannabidiol, is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid. This means that unlike its cousin, the cannabinoid, THC, or Tetrahydrocannabinol, does not produce a "high." CBD is used for its therapeutic effects to help ease tension, with rigorous, industry-specific lab testing that can certify whether or not each batch of any given CBD product contains an adequate dose to be labeled effective. Not only does PHARM have all of their products tested and certified by industry-leading, ISO 17025 accredited labs, but in the short time they have been creating CBD products, they have become a control by which these laboratories test the accuracy of the laboratories within their network. And because their products contain <0.3% THC, PHARM is able to sell their CBD products throughout the country. As of early 2020, PHARM CBD plans to expand their company, shopping their products to a greater variety of both online and in-store retailers across the United States. More information is currently available through their website, pharm-cbd.com . Please direct inquiries to: Vincent Isom (954) 399-2207 [email protected] SOURCE PHARM CBD Related Links http://pharm-cbd.com Lucknow, April 13 : With the beginning of Ramzan just about 10 days away, Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali, the chairperson of the Islamic Centre of India and the Imam of Aishbagh Eidgah has issued an advisory to people on how to observe Ramzan during the lockdown. In his appeal, the Sunni cleric, who is a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), has urged people that the holy month of Ramzan is likely to begin from April 25. The lockdown may also be extended beyond April 14. "In this case, it is advised that people observe roza (fast) and do iftar (meal to break the fast) in the evenings at their homes. There should be no congregational prayers in the mosque but only at homes. Only those who stay or are staying at a mosque should pray there and that too while maintaining adequate social distance," said Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali in a video message. The cleric, in the 12-point advisory, has asked people to fast as is mandatory in Islam and to pray for the end of the pandemic, during the month of worship. The advisory says that those who used to arrange for iftar of poor and needy persons at the mosque, should continue to do so this year as well but the food should be distributed to the needy. "Those who conducted Iftar parties in Ramzan should give the money kept for it in charity. Not more than five people should be present at any time at a mosque," the cleric added. Earlier for April 8 and April 9, both Shia and Sunni clerics had appealed to the people to stay indoors and pray on the occasion of Shab-e-Baraat, respectively. To ensure full compliance of the lockdown, the gates of several graveyards in the city were locked up by the caretakers since traditionally Muslims visit graves of their ancestors on Shab-e-Baraat--the night of Allah's forgiveness, to pray for their ancestors. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text : Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan on Monday greeted Tamil people all over the world on the eve of puthandu (new year). This new year shall bring joy and happiness to all and Tamils living across the globe and I pray that it will usher in prosperity and peace, she said in a Raj Bhavan press communique here. "On the occasion of the new year, let us pray together to the Lord to give us enough strength to combat the COVID-19 pandemic," she said in her message. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EUGENE, Ore.-- A person with access to a Eugene long-term care facility is one of two new coronavirus cases reported by Lane County Public Health Sunday afternoon, for a total of 38 cases in the county. The person had access to the Good Samaritan Society Eugene Village facility. No other information has been released about this individual. This is the second case involving a long-term care facility in Eugene reported over the weekend. On Saturday, officials reported that an employee at River Grove Memory Care tested positive for the virus. RELATED: EUGENE SENIOR CARE FACILITY EMPLOYEE TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID-19 Officials say both facilities are communicating with residents and their families. The second case reported today was a woman in her 20s from outside the Eugene-Springfield area who is medically stable in her private home. (Photo : Adli Wahid on Unsplash) Some People Are More Infectious According To Scientists; Are You Still Safe? (Photo : Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash) Some People Are More Infectious According To Scientists; Are You Still Safe? The novel coronavirus has continued to spread across the world, infecting a large number of people every day. And as the pandemic continues, no one can tell whether the person you cross paths with is carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virusor not. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, scientists discovered that there are people who are more infectious compared to others. These people are called "Superspreaders"--those who infect a disproportionate number of individuals. The reason for this phenomenon is not yet apparent. Scientists clarified that those who carry the virus could actually drive "superspreading epidemic" events and further worsen the situation. It is therefore crucial for researchers to determine how this occurs in people. However, scientists also reiterated that it is also important to identify those people who are infected but are unable to spread the disease. According to an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, Jon Zelner, identifying those people who are more contagious than others and those less infectious could make a big difference in easing the rate of spreading in a location where an outbreak is happening. Contact tracing is an essential tool in dealing with a superspreader. However, if it's conducted on a person who doesn't seem to transmit the virus to others, then it could be a waste of time and resources. "The tricky part is that we don't necessarily know who those people are," Zelner said. Some people are more infectious than others, according to scientists; are you still safe? Martina Morris, an emeritus professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington, said on the report of Chicago Tribune that two factors affect superspreaders: "There has to be a link between people in order to transmit an infection," she said. She also clarified that the link is important but insufficient. According to Morris, the second factor would be how infectious an individual is. "We almost never have independent data on those two things." The professor reiterated that exposing an individual to a public attack can easily misattribute multiple infections to that person--even if the contamination of the virus has nothing to do with the individual's infectiousness. She pointed out that if a person was the very first to be infected in a crowded room, and the spread is fast, he or she can be easily accused as the superspreader. However, there are instances where a few individuals have caused large outbreaks. Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chief executive at Resolve to Save Lives, clarified that there is no evidence yet if the individuals with silent infections are included in those people called superspreaders. Also Read: Coronavirus Quarantine Tips: Strengthening Relationships; Here's What Experts Suggest 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Its time for legacy churches to shine Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Are legacy churches relevant for today? When we started 2020 that was a common question. Should we just invest resources (people and finances) into new churches and missions? As Ive written before many legacy churches have been left behind in a missional world. Today we find all churches dealing with how to respond to a worldwide pandemic. None of us were trained or ready for this day. So what do legacy churches bring in this time of ministry? Here are a few ideas. Perspective: The church I serve is 246 years old and it has lived through some dark days and challenging times. There have been multiple times that this church could have closed. Yet we are still here. Not because of our faithfulness or the ability to make every right decision but because of Gods grace. Innovative Institutional Ministries: I know we dont put the words innovative and institutional together too often but we will require innovative institutions in the days ahead. The institution of the church has always been at its best when it responded to the needs of the day. In the 1940s Culpeper Baptist started a retirement home (now known as Lifespire of Virginia) to serve the needs of vulnerable senior adults AND a childrens day care center. We will need institutional innovation to use our facilities, volunteers, personnel and donors to help recreate the economy, non-profit sector, educational institutions, medical care and, yes, faith communities. This is an exciting time to be an institutional church because we have done ALL of that before. We started hospitals, built schools, created businesses and started church and that all came from innovative institutions. Lets do that again! Relationships: Because of our longevity we are familiar to our communities. There is a certain amount of trust that comes with that longevity. Even if your church has not been active in community conversations people probably still know you from your real estate. So lets get out meet people ask them how we can best serve them and then LISTEN. Do not use this as an opportunity to grow your church. Donor power: Legacy churches have been sustained through the faithfulness of institutional givers. These folks usually have no idea what a go fund me account is but they have a deep loyalty to the institutions that have helped shape their lives and their community. We need to use that to make great investments in our community and world again. Please do not waste the generosity of legacy givers by just keeping the church going. Meet with local non-profits, community leaders and economic development folks and help rebuild and renew your community. When this pandemic is over (and it will be over) lets not content ourselves with a we survived mission. Legacy churches have been in survival mode for TOO LONG! Our world is not looking for churches to exist. Our world needs churches to help their community rebuild. So lets not just kick back on our feet lets have a prophetic vision to bless our communities. Telangana Municipal Administration Minister K T Rama Rao said on Monday that around 74 lakh bank accounts would be credited with Rs 1,500 on Tuesday as support for the needy during the coronavirus-induced lockdown. "Total of Rs 1,112 crore has been transferred by the government to the banks," he tweeted. Rao, who is also the working president of the ruling TRS, said more than three lakh tonnes of free rice has been distributed to 87 per cent of the 76 lakh beneficiaries in the state. The state government had announced that in view of the hardships being faced by people due to lockdown, each of the 87.59 lakh food security cardholders in the state would be given 12 kg of rice. It had also said all food security card-holding families would be given a one-time support of Rs 1,500 to meet expenditure on other essential commodities. Meanwhile, Congress' Telangana unit president and Lok Sabha MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy said a meeting of all opposition parties would be convened on April 15 to discuss the coronavirus situation in the state and to review the measures taken by the government. Addressing reporters after a meeting of 'TPCC Task Force on COVID-19', Reddy said the coronavirus situation across the globe has been "turning worse with each passing day". He said it was Congress leader Rahul Gandhi "who alerted everyone on February 12 itself" about the serious threat coronavirus posed for the people and economy of India. Gandhi had also expressed apprehension that the government was not taking this threat seriously. His fears came true as the BJP government acted only after one-and-half months by calling for a 'Janata Curfew' on March 22, Reddy alleged. He claimed that the situation would have been much better had the BJP government at Centre and TRS dispensation in Telangana acted on time. He alleged that there was huge delay and several discrepancies in distribution of free rice among poor families and none of them got the Rs 1,500 financial assistance as promised by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi, April 13 : Amid the nationwide lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus, some unidentified miscreants barged into a warehouse in the national capital and stole a huge quantity of betel nuts worth Rs 20 lakh, police said on Monday. The incident took place in the outer district on Saturday night. The warehouse owner has lodged a complaint that the miscreants broke into his godown and looted all the betel nuts. DCP (Outer-North) Gaurav Sharma said, "A case has been registered in this regard. Investigation has been initiated and culprits will be arrested soon." Koala habitats in NSW and Queensland has been destroyed at a faster rate since the animal was declared vulnerable in 2012 than before, a new survey shows. In NSW, koala habitat destruction increased from an average annual loss of 11,153 hectares in the period from 2004 to 2012, to 14,695ha between 2012 and 2017, or around 32 per cent. In Queensland, the destruction increased by about 7 per cent, from an average annual loss of 16,199ha over the period 2004-12, rising to 17,323ha for 2012 to 2018, the survey found. Since 2001, Queenslands koala population has crashed by at least 50 per cent and the NSW population has declined by between 33 per cent and 61 per cent, according to two new reports by science consultants Biolink. Priscilla Shirer: Churches can no longer 'manufacture' fire of God, they must rely on the Holy Spirit Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Evangelist and author Priscilla Shirer said she hopes temporary church closures will empower ministers to rely more on the Holy Spirit instead of trying to manufacture the fire of God by using production "gimmicks" many modern churches have become dependent on. Shirer was among 50 other Christian leaders, musicians, speakers, and pastors who participated in a 10-hour livestream event called Leader Check In hosted by PULSE and Year of the Bible founder Nick Hall on Wednesday. During her segment, she preached from 1 Kings 18:21, 23 and 24. "I've been thinking about something this morning, just in preparation for the opportunity to share today with everybody who would be gathered in this particular week when we're heading into Easter when we are celebrating the sacrifice of our Lord. With the power of our Lord that He got up out of the grave, that He still lives, ever making intercession for us, ever the mediator that bridges the gap between us and the Father. So the thoughts that have been on my mind have been in and around Elijah, one of the premier Old Testament prophets, Shirer said. The daughter of Dallas megachurch pastor Tony Evans taught from Elijahs example when he proved that His God, not Baal, was the one true God. She said Elijah understood that as believers we are to provide the sacrifice and God is who provides the fire. "We're supposed to do our part but not step into the margin that's supposed to be God's part, Shirer explained. "Its the Spirits part to light the fire, the anointing, the favor that will be required for every single one of our churches' streams to be effective in the lives of people. That they reach all over the globe on this coming Sunday, when for the first time, definitely in my lifetime, maybe in history, that as many people have been reached on Easter Sunday as will be reached this Easter. She said Easter wont just be a good production or good technology, but it will be a service that will have to impact the souls of human beings. "What that means is, is that it's gonna have some fire on it. And it can't be a fire that we have manufactured in our own humanity. Emotionalism is not gonna cut it, promotion is not going to cut it, Shirer continued. All the gimmicks and the stories and the emotionalism, the veneer of actually having an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. "The charisma, the talent, all that stuff that may have been able to carry us in front of a crowd, now that we've been stripped down, one of the things that I believe the Lord is inviting us back to is this reminder that we're supposed to present ourselves, a living sacrifice to Him. That we give Him our best. That we study to show ourselves approved, that we walk in integrity, and in characters as leaders in the body of Christ. That we continue to cultivate an actual real-life friendship with God that doesn't need an audience to sustain it. The Texas native whose mother recently died of cancer said this fire is only cultivated behind closed doors during ones personal time with God. Shirer emphasized that during one-on-one time with God is when everyone gets the ability to resist the urge to do what we humans have a hard time resisting the urge to do. We refuse to manufacture our own fire. We refuse to try to set a flame for the part of our ministry that is supposed to be reserved for God and God alone. Only He can make the heart of a human be penetrated by the message of the Good News. Only the Holy Spirit can open blind spiritual eyes so that they can actually come to know, this Easter, that it's not about emotionalism, and it's not about the gimmicks and it's not about the fog machines and the spotlights and the HD screens in our churches. It's not about the cappuccino maker that we might have in a cafe nearby. It's not about the kids' ministry or the great parking lot, and all the things that we can enjoy, she added. "There's no problem with enjoying any of those things. But unfortunately, we can become dependent upon them. Until we don't even recognize the fact that we're not even depending on God to light the fire anymore because we've gotten so used to the crutches of our conveniences. She stressed that Gods Holy Fire and how He offers that to His believers is what separates Christianity from every other so-called faith on the face of the Earth. Shirer also celebrated the fact that Christians can talk to God and because of Jesus, He hears. Because of His Word, and because of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and revelation from God's Spirit, I can hear the voice of God. That means that our God is alive, Shirer declared. If we really believe that, if we really believe that this is not just some fairy tale that we've been spouting, but we actually for real believe that our God lives, then that means we will step back from trying to go into the margin that's supposed to be reserved for Him. We will trust Him to light the fire. "Please know that if you see that gap that exists where you've done the best you can, and now you recognize that unless God comes through this ain't gonna go so well. Trust me that gap is supposed to exist. God allows it. He asks us to trust Him with that margin. Because as the Apostle Paul would say, come the New Testament, it is in that gap, that weakness, that His strength is made perfect. She ended by encouraging leaders worldwide that as the Lord has stripped all of us down to not try and manufacture what He is now inviting you to let Him light an ignite in your life. By the way, can I just say, just in case you're wondering what that fire represents. It is the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Now more than ever, y'all will need a relationship with the Holy Spirit of God, Shirer concluded. If you have never nurtured a fervent and consistent relationship with the Spirit of God, I'm telling you now is the time. Leader Check-In was a joint initiative of Pulse and Year of the Bible and happened in partnership with thousands of churches and organizations worldwide. Every speaker volunteered their time to give a word from God to a hurting world. (Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, has joined with the other governors in this effort.) Pennsylvania will join with at least six other states in working together on coordinating each of their efforts to reopen their economies and get people back to work. Organized by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Gov. Tom Wolf, along with the governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts have agreed to form a council to develop plans for lifting their respective stay-at-home orders. Theyll work on getting businesses operating again while minimizing the risk of a resurgence of COVID-19. The group will include a health expert and an economic development official from each state along with each governors chief of staff. Cuomo said the expectation is to begin work immediately on developing a set of guidelines and the work is to be completed within weeks. Weve never been here before but that doesnt mean you cant ensure public confidence that you are doing everything you can to do it in a smart way, an informed way, guided by experts and data and science and not in a political way, Cuomo said. I think working together we can do that. During a conference call with reporters, Cuomo said the idea behind this coordinated effort is to address these issues in a cooperative way to avoid having neighboring states enacting policies that contradict one another. Even if a state moves toward adopting contradictory policies, at least then we see the clash and were aware of it and we try to work it out. If you cant work it out, you cant work it out. Wolf welcomed the opportunity to work together as a region, sharing ideas and plans for getting the states economies back on track. But just as it is important to come up with specific strategies for reopening schools and businesses, Wolf said it is equally critical to figure out how we are going to restore the sense of hope that this pandemic has taken away from so many of us. He indicated Pennsylvania will be represented on this newly formed council by state health secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, his Community and Economic Development Secretary Dennis Davin, and his Chief of Staff Mike Brunelle. We need to do this right and thats what were trying to do, Wolf said. We need to come up with a specific and a smarter plan for this uncertain future that lies ahead. But it is also that we are creating a plan to let our people (know), the people that we serve, the citizens of our state, that we indeed do have a future." The council will create this framework that relies on data, science, social and economic information to figure out a way to ease up the social restrictions without sparking a renewed spread, including testing, contact tracing, treatment and social distancing. This announcement from the six Democratic governors and one Republican governor comes on the same day President Donald Trump tweeted that it is his and the federal governments decision to open up states, not the governors themselves. For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020 Wolf said it was governors who had the responsibility for closing down their states so they see it as their responsibility for deciding when and how to reopen them. And were now ready to go into the next step which is to start moving back to some sense of normal, the new normal and do it as we have, working together, he said. Wolfs decision to participate in the multi-state recovery discussion was applauded by Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa of Allegheny County. COVID-19 has no borders and we are all in this together, Costa said. His decision-making thus far in the pandemic, coupled with the expertise of Dr. Levine, has undoubtedly saved lives and I trust that their work as part of this collaborative effort will be equally thoughtful. House Republicans also found it encouraging to see the governor finally take notice of the need to plan for our states recovery, said spokesman Mike Straub. However, we should never cede economic decisions to other states and we will continue to engage with Pennsylvanias residents about what exactly they need to successfully rebuild and recover from this pandemic. In a statement released prior to Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker joining in this planning exercise to reopen the economies of the states, Senate Republican spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher expressed even more skepticism about the multi-state effort. Given that the governor is already implementing a one-size-fits-all COVID-19 response for Pennsylvania, we are leery about having New York City and Newark dictate how we safety return to life in places like Huntingdon and Lewistown, said Kocher. We dont think it was a coincidence that the Republican governors of Maryland, Massachusetts and Ohio were not included in this plan despite everyone emphasizing how important a regional approach is. This is about being smart first, not political, smart," Cuomo said. He said he would welcome other states into the council. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, lawmakers are focusing their attention on other recovery ideas to speed up the re-opening of businesses. The House approved along party-lines a bill that would, among other things, establish a bipartisan inter-governmental branch cost and recovery task force. On Tuesday, the House is planning to be in session and may consider a bill that would provide pathways for more businesses to reopen and workers to get back to work. That GOP-backed legislation calls for replacing the Wolf Administrations list of life-sustaining businesses with less-restrictive guidance from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and requiring them to follow Centers for Disease Control COVID-19 mitigation guidelines. The governor has provided some businesses with waivers [to his business closure order], Straub said. If others prove they can meet those guidelines, they should have the opportunity to work rather than be forced to lose their businesses, cut their employees and their abilities to provide for their families. The GOP-controlled Senate announced on Monday evening it too is planning on coming into session this week with the intention of sending the governor legislation establishing a fair and responsible" way to re-open businesses. Throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency we have endeavored to work together in a bi-partisan manner to do what is in the best interest of our commonwealth," according to a statement from Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County. "Unfortunately, it has become abundantly clear that the governors waiver process for employers to remain open during this time has been extremely flawed and lacks transparency. We must keep our communities safe while also helping workers get back to their jobs. The decisions of how to successfully implement plans to re-open our economy will rest with the legislature of Pennsylvania and not with liberal governors from other states. The states health secretary on Monday again cautioned against a widespread reopening of businesses, saying that would be a very big mistake. Levine said, "That would cost lives and lead to the overwhelming of our health care system. Several governors during the governors conference call shared their concern about that, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. Murphy said an economic recovery only occurs on the back of a complete health care recovery and that order is essential. Getting that wrong, transposing those steps can lead to unintended consequences which could be grave. This is a fight of our lives. Let there be no doubt about it," Murphy said. "Were not out of the woods yet and reopening ourselves back up will be equally challenging beyond the shadow of a doubt. That would be so demoralizing for our economies," Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said. Thats why we want to do it on a coordinated basis, have a database that we share, establish the same protocols so we we know how were working together. *This post has been updated to include the mention that the Senate will be returning to session this week and including the comment from Senate GOP leaders. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. We know that the novel coronavirus can be spread by an infected person coughing and sneezing near others. But can the disease also be spread by just talking to people or breathing near them? Thats one question scientists and health experts were grappling with Monday as the number of COVID-19 deaths passed the 10,000 mark in the United States. Through most of March, health officials said the virus is transported only through droplets that are coughed or sneezed out either directly, or on surfaces. But on Wednesday, Dr. Harvey Fineberg with the National Academy of Sciences told the White House, "While the current [coronavirus] specific research is limited, the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing. Some scientists, however, maintain that infection by airborne SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is relatively rare. Weve seen no evidence that aerosolized virus is the primary transmission risk for everyday people in everyday settings, said Dylan Morris of Princeton University. Morris is a co-author of a recent National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases study that investigated the properties of aerosolized coronavirus under laboratory conditions. If it could easily exist as an aerosol, we would be seeing much greater levels of transmission, adds epidemiologist Michael LeVasseur of Drexel University. Dr. Robert Quigley, senior vice president and regional medical director of the medical and travel security services firm International SOS, told SFGATE on Monday that we dont have the answers yet. I have the utmost respect for all my colleagues that are making statements and certainly those that have been publishing literature, but I also have an air of caution: Weve only seen this virus since the middle of December, said Quigley, who has a Ph.D in immunology. So there are so many features of its behavior that we dont fully comprehend. And obviously the whole issue of transmissibility is one that remains to be seen. Quigley explained were experiencing a logarithmic expansion in cases because of the complicated method of transmission. It can be spread by aerosol spray, which means coughing and sneezing; it can be transmitted after surviving for days on inanimate objects under the right conditions; and it can be spread by asymptomatic patients who cough or simply exhale near others. Suffice to say, when it is airborne, its airborne, he said. What I want to dispel is the myth that it sits out there in the environment waiting for someone to walk through like a cloud of smoke for hours on end. There are so many other variables whats the wind, whats the ambient temperature? Simply being exposed to the virus does not mean youll get sick. You need to inhale a certain load, a viral threshold you need to inhale to be contaminated. But we dont know what the threshold is yet, Quigley said. If people maintain social distancing, keep their hands out of their mouth and disinfect their hands after touching an inanimate object, we will be able to get ahead of this curve, Quigley said. The problem is compliance by the public at large. Quigley also addressed the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions new guidance on covering ones face. The CDC by recommending cloth masks be worn is making the assumption that we all are infected, which is not an outrageous statement, Quigley said. If an asymptomatic patient or a symptomatic patient for that matter were to cough into a mask, the virus could make its way through the mask, but with difficulty. He said the coronavirus family cannot penetrate an N95 mask that is properly fitted. But surgical masks and home-made masks are not intended to keep the virus out. Its main purpose is to keep your hands out of your mouth We all do it, its a subconscious movement, he said. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 14) President Rodrigo Duterte said he will lift the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon once a cure against the new coronavirus becomes available in the market. Kung meron na yan, tapos makita kong ginagamit na ng tao, ili-lift ko. Tutal kung magkasakit kayo, may antibodies naman tayo mabili, he said in a late-night briefing Monday. [Translation: If a treatment is already being used, I will lift the quarantine since we can buy an antibody treatment if we get sick.] The President said a giant pharmaceutical company is developing a cure for the coronavirus disease using antibodies, adding the firm is expected to roll out the medicine soon. "Meron nang medisina, antibody ang isang giant pharmaceutical. Tapos naghahabulan sila. Sabi by May baka they would start to market it, ipagbili na nila. he said. [Translation: There is a medicine already, an antibody of a giant pharmaceutical. They say by May, they would start to sell it.] Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles is clueless as to which company Duterte was referring to because, he said, the topic was not brought up during the Monday meeting with top officials dealing with the health crisis. He added the development of a COVID-19 medicine must have been mentioned to the President. In Philippine hospitals, patients who have recovered from the coronavirus disease are donating their blood, which is rich in antibodies that could help severely-ill COVID-19 patients fight the infection. Several Filipino COVID-19 survivors, including Senator Sonny Angara, have donated their blood blood for a plasma therapy, which could potentially increase the chances of recovery and immunity of other patients from the disease. Convalescent plasma is the process that takes the antibodies from someone who has recovered from COVID-19 and injects them into a person who is sick. The World Health Organization has also backed the use of antibodies to treat a COVID-19 patient. "During the course of the illness, it will be beneficial because what hyperimmune globulin does is it concentrates the antibodies in a recovered patient and you're essentially giving the new victim's immune system a boost," Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program, said in February. Duterte approved the extension of the enhanced community quarantine from April 14 to April 30 to further flatten the curve of the COVID-19 infection in the country. The Health Department reported 284 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, bringing the total number of those who have been infected to 4,932. There are now 315 people who have died due to the respiratory disease, while 242 others have recovered. 12.04.2020 LISTEN ICRC fears that the virus will compound the suffering of conflict-affected families, who are already struggling to meet basic needs, from shelter to food, water, and medical care TUNIS, Tunisia, April 12, 2020/ -- Hundreds of thousands of Libyans are caught in an intensifying conflict as COVID-19 threatens to spread and debilitate the country's fragile health system. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) fears that the virus will compound the suffering of conflict-affected families, who are already struggling to meet basic needs, from shelter to food, water, and medical care. "The Libyan health care system was struggling before COVID-19," said Willem de Jonge, ICRC's head of operations for Libya. "Today, some medical professionals who need to be trained on COVID-19 infection prevention protocols keep being called back to the frontlines to treat the injured. Clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed caring for war-wounded and those with chronic illnesses, so their capacity to receive COVID-19 patients is limited. They need more support and resources to face this challenge." Despite international calls for a ceasefire, fighting in Tripoli has escalated, forcing people to flee their homes and damaging civilian infrastructure. Some areas in Tripoli like Abu Salim have seen their patient-load quadruple in recent months, mostly due to the influx of displaced families, many of whom live in collective centres. "Displaced Libyans, including some of our colleagues, have told us they have no choice but to return to their homes near the frontline, for fear they could bring the virus into the homes of their elderly parents or family members," said Maria Carolina, ICRC's deputy head of sub-delegation for Tripoli. "This highlights the unimaginable choices some people are now forced to make as they struggle to decide whether shelling and airstrikes pose a greater threat to their lives than COVID-19." Special preventive measures must also be taken to ensure that COVID-19 does not enter prisons, as physical distancing is impossible. Migrants in Libya are also highly vulnerable to the disease, as many have only limited access to information, health care, or income. At the same time, restrictions such as curfews and border closures, while important in curbing the spread of the disease, are creating new challenges to deliver humanitarian aid and keep the supply chains for food, medicine, and basic needs open. "Authorities must ensure that delivery of humanitarian aid is facilitated while maintaining preventive measures such as physical distancing, or those who depend on it will suffer tremendously," said Jonge. "We are already seeing the cost of food and other essential supplies increase, putting an additional strain on some of Libya's most vulnerable families. COVID-19 comes on top of years of conflict in which families have seen their public services interrupted and job opportunities vanish." About ICRC's operational response in Libya to conflict: ICRC continues to provide food and household items to internally displaced people, residents and returnees. In March, these efforts reached more than 8,200 people. ICRC's water and sanitation teams have been working with local water authorities to increase access to clean water in dozens of areas affected by the conflict. We are also working to improve sanitation by supporting sewage-processing facilities. We are also providing medical supplies to hospitals and primary health care facilities across Libya, including insulin and other medicines to diabetes centres. ICRC teams are also delivering trauma medical supplies and body bags to health workers on the frontline. About ICRC's operational response in Libya to COVID-19: Karnataka chief minister BS Yediyurappa announced on Monday a raft of measures to help resource mobilisation in the face of the states financial troubles amid the nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. The state government authorised the auctioning of 12,000 corner sites in the state capital by the Bangalore Development Authority in a bid to raise up to Rs 15,000 crore. Also, all corner and vacant sites, under the jurisdiction of all urban development authorities across the state, would be auctioned for additional resource mobilisation. The government has lost around Rs 2,500 crore in revenue after liquor sales were stopped since March 24 because of the lockdown restrictions, besides crores being lost from other key sectors. The government will take a call on Tuesday, whether it should open liquor stores in the state to tide over the revenue shortfall. The authorities have also decided to amend the law governing permission to allow sites in private and co-operative housing societies. Hundreds of societies are waiting for approval from the government for releasing their sites. Yeddyurappa, however, said that the auction of government-owned sites would be done only if they fetch a good price. Karnataka has also decided to use the Rs 1,000-crore available for Bengaluru-based Rajiv Gandhi Health University Health Sciences to upgrade its medical college hospitals. The state would continue to distribute free milk to the poor in a bid to help the dairy farmers and the needy. Yediyurappa also announced a Rs 45-crore compensation package to farmers of Raichur and Koppa, who lost their paddy crop due to a hailstorm a few weeks ago. The CM appealed to sugar factory owners to clear Rs 2,834 crore that they owe to the farmers across 11 districts and warned strict action if they failed to make the payments soon. Karnataka has reported 15 new Covid-19 cases, taking the total count to 247. The authorities said that there were six Covid-19 related deaths so far and 60 have been discharged from hospitals after they recovered. Of the remaining 181 Covid-19 positive cases, 177 are housed in isolation centres of designated hospitals and four patients are undergoing treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU). Bengaluru has reported 77 Covid-19 positive cases, Mysuru (48) and Belgavi (17) and are among the areas in the state with a maximum number of people infected by SARS-CoV-2, which causes the viral disease Hugh Vincent Dyer, a 45-year-old Catholic friar, begins his days now in a sealed nursing home in Manhattan. He celebrates Mass in an empty chapel. The service is broadcast over closed-circuit television into residents rooms. And I preach, he told me, because the people are listening, even though there are no eyes in the chapel to reflect recognition, and no heads to bow in thanks. I say a prayer of spiritual communion, because they cant physically receive the sacrament. He spends the rest of his time making phone calls to residents and their relatives, praying the rosary or stations of the cross on the closed-circuit chapel channel and sometimes sharing poetry, recorded concerts or films. Signs on doors demarcate the rooms of patients suffering from the coronavirus. Father Dyer visits these patients only at a safe distance, clad in the white habit of the Dominican Order and a pale surgical mask. He tries to help residents and the staff maintain hope, even as death has become an increasingly regular occurrence. I hear from people who want to know, Is this the end of the world? he said. And I dont know. But in some sense, were to live as though its always the end. A few weeks ago, the apocalypse didnt feel so near. Before the coronavirus began its sweep through the nation, Father Dyer spent roughly 20 hours a week at the nursing home. He lived in a community of eight Dominican friars at the St. Catherine of Siena religious house, on Manhattans Upper East Side. There, the brothers lived much as Dominican friars have since the orders founding in the 13th century: praying, eating and ministering together. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrest an undocumented Mexican immigrant during a raid in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn on April 11, 2018. (John Moore/Getty Images) Panel: Releasing Illegal Aliens Because of Virus Fears Hurts Society Releasing immigration detainees from custody based on unsupported suspicion that they might be exposed to the CCP virus while incarcerated unnecessarily exposes Americans to great risk, a panel discussion by the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) heard. There are reportedly almost 40,000 individuals in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, and activists want them released, ostensibly to reduce their exposure to the contagion. In recent weeks, federal judges across the country have been releasing ICE detainees on the theory that they are safer outside detention centers from the CCP virus, often called novel coronavirus. On April 12, U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo ordered five ICE detainees with underlying health conditions released from New Jersey jails. Citing virus concerns, on March 29, District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles ordered the government to make continuous efforts to release children in immigration detention centers. Last week, federal Judge William G. Young ordered Bristol County, Massachusetts, Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, a Republican, to release eight immigration detainees at a jail after two staffers there tested positive for the virus. The judge had previously ordered three other detainees released after a nurse at the facility tested positive. Another seven detainees there were voluntarily released by ICE, which has a contract with Hodgson and other sheriffs in the state to hold arrested detainees at county jails. The former detainees were ordered to self-quarantine and are under house arrest, local media report. Ironically, of my 850 detainees/inmates, we have had no COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, and this judge is releasing these detainees under a humanitarian claim, Hodgson said. I can think of nothing more inhumane than letting dangerous people wander around our neighborhoods, based on a claim that maybe, just maybe, they could contract COVID-19 in the detention center. The lawsuit filed against Hodgson called his countys jails a tinderbox, a word U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres used in a court order March 26, The Epoch Times previously reported. Torres released from detention 10 immigration detainees in New Jersey with underlying health conditions thought to put them at great risk if they contracted the virus. The suit was brought by a left-wing group called Brooklyn Defender Services. In her order, Torres referenced a CNN report from March 20 that warned of a tinderbox scenario as the virus spreads to immigration detention centers, and the resulting imminent risk to the health and safety of immigrant detainees and the public. The online panel discussion came April 13 after protesters in Arizona called for detainees to be freed. Detainees deserve to be housed in safe, healthy facilities, said Andrew Arthur, a CIS resident fellow in law and policy and former immigration judge at a detention facility. But policymakers must compare their situation in the facility to their safety outside of the facility, and the availability of treatment inside to that outside of the facility. And who should be making these decisions? What if a single judge says to empty the jails and detention centers completely? Judges should not be controlling policy in this manner. Policymakers must also remember that detention often serves public safety, because most of the aliens taken into detention are convicted criminals, said Dan Cadman, a CIS fellow and retired official with ICE and its predecessor agency. Once released, most of these individuals will re-offend. The irony is that, given the high hygienic standards in ICE detention facilities, detainees are safer from the virus on the inside than on the outside, he said. If they do contract the virus, they are going to tax the local system in ways that they dont if theyre kept in detention. And while that may not seem like a lot, let me put it in a really harsh context here. Doctors throughout the country have said that they are so stressed in their systems that they may have to make hard choices about who to let live and who to let die. If a physician is confronted with having to choose between a young released detainee and your elderly relative, how are you as a citizen going to feel to think that someone who was ordered released by a federal judge someplace gets preferential treatment over your elderly parent or grandparent? The all-Democratic Massachusetts delegation to the U.S. Congress, both House and Senate members, the sheriff said, sent a letter saying county jails were unhygienic and lacked basic items such as soap, as part of a campaign to free illegal aliens from detention. These politicians have chosen to use this pandemic, sadly, as a foundation to continue launching this progressive agenda to release ICE detainees, and to not hold people accountable, i.e., the people who chose to violate our immigration laws, and instead put the onus on law-abiding citizens. These members of Congress ought to be ashamed of themselves. I responded and told them so, Hodgson said. By John Burton Americans normally don't pay much attention to foreign elections. But, for several reasons, they should when it comes to Korea's National Assembly elections on Wednesday. Interest should focus on the way the election will be conducted, one of the first to be held worldwide since the World Health Organization declared the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) a global pandemic in March. Although Korea appears to have gotten its COVID-19 outbreak under control, there are fears that crowded voting places could trigger new infections. Similar concerns have forced many U.S. states to postpone from spring to summer the primary polls to select presidential and congressional candidates for the country's general elections in November. There are even increasing worries that the November elections will be disrupted by the virus crisis. The U.S. should study how Korea's National Election Commission is handling this situation. It is requiring voters to wear face masks and will check them for fevers, while providing hand sanitizers and vinyl gloves to prevent infections. Social distancing will be enforced, voting booths will be cleaned often, and the pens to mark ballot papers will be replaced frequently. These elaborate safeguards are expected to encourage a strong voter turnout. Good practices have also been seen on the campaign trail with candidates wearing clear perspex shields or masks covering their faces. Compare these measures with what happened last week in Wisconsin, one of the few U.S. states that has pressed ahead with its original scheduled primary election. Fears of the virus caused a shortage of poll workers and resulted in the closure of many polling places, with extremely long lines at those that remained open. The U.S. continues to suffer from a shortage of hand sanitizers, face masks and gloves. Some poll workers in Wisconsin weren't wearing any personal protective gear. This being America, where the car is king, one solution was to allow drive-through voting where the drivers did not have to leave their vehicles. But the general impression was of a disorganized voting process that could be repeated across the U.S. this year. The only advantage the U.S. enjoys over the Korean voting system is that many states allow the use of mail-in ballots. More importantly, American political pundits should look at how well President Moon Jae-in and his ruling Democratic Party of Korea will do in the elections and whether the U.S. can draw any lessons from the results. Korea has been widely praised in the U.S. for its response to the COVID-19 outbreak under the Moon administration. There is a growing demand that the U.S. should adopt similar policies. A majority of Americans view the Trump administration's response to the crisis as shambolic since it has failed so far to conduct widespread testing of COVID-19 cases to identify those who must be quarantined. It is U.S. governors, many of them Democratic opponents of Trump, who have been lauded for taking effective action to curb the virus and speaking frankly to the public about the challenges that must be met. So it will be of interest to U.S. Democrats whether President Moon will be rewarded for what has been regarded as his successful handling of the crisis. This could be interpreted as a sign that the Democrats could also do well in the November elections. The momentum appears to be behind President Moon, with his approval rating recently at a 16-month high of 53.5 percent in the last week of March. He appears to have overcome earlier criticism that he initially reacted late to the crisis. Both Korea and the U.S. remain deeply polarized politically. Other factors such as growing social inequality and the Moon administration's inter-Korean and foreign policies will play a role in the National Assembly election outcome. But the election will largely be regarded as a referendum on President Moon and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The same could be said for the November elections in the U.S when it comes to President Trump. Equally important, the National Assembly polls will test whether a country can hold an election in the midst of a global pandemic. If Korea proves able to do so, it will be admired not only for its COVID-19 response but also the effectiveness and stability of its democratic system. Not only the U.S., but the rest of the world, should take note of what happens in Korea this week. What would normally be dismissed elsewhere as a parochial election could have global significance. It may provide an early indication of voter behavior and the expression of public preferences for future policy directions on such issues as reviving and restructuring the economy in a world that has suddenly been upended. John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant. WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Coronavirus outbreak: How state governments in India are fighting to curb the spread of COVID-19 India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P New Delhi, Apr 13: While the Union Health Ministry on Monday said that death toll due to the novel coronavirus pandemic has increased to 308, the number of cases climbed to 9,152. However, if India had delayed in taking extra precautions, the total number of positive cases would have multiplied. There are several unsung heroes during this pandemic situation in India. Taking Kerala into consideration, the positive cases in the state has started flattening. State Health Minister K K Shailaja, who earned people's trust when Kerala successfully managed to contain the Nipah outbreak in 2018, was well aware of the situation, and got into action. COVID-19 outbreak: What is BCG vaccine? How will it help in fight against Coronavirus In Kerala, a COVID control room was put in place, six days before the first case was reported in the state on January 30. Health Minister Shailaja, who consults several experts before making a crucial decision, managed to keep her team one step ahead of the virus. This made Kerala a model for other states to follow. In Telangana, Information Technology Minister K T Rama Rao is seen leading the war against the pandemic outbreak in the state. In an attempt to avoid the blow to the economy, the IT Minister had held talks with the industry leaders and urged them not to sack their employees. Extremely active on social media, K T Rama Rao has contributed in creating awareness on the coronavirus on several occasions. With famished migrants housed in camps, KTR has visited several of them and ensured they are well fed regularly. Odisha, with 41 active cases and just one fatality, has so far been able to contain the spread of coronavirus by its proactive measures. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's trusted aide and private secretary V Karthikeyan Pandian played a major role in containing the deadly virus from spreading across the state. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts Since January, the state government was seen moving stock essentials, procuring equipment and establishing dedicated hospitals with required infrastructure. This move by the state government was able to read the situation and strategise to the pandemic accordingly. This is the man who has been charged with murdering his grandmother in Larne. Alan Gingles (32) claimed he was "seeing zombies" and expressed concerns about coronavirus when police quizzed him about Elizabeth Dobbin, who was known as Betty. The 82-year-old was found dead at the home they shared at Dromaine Drive in the Craigyhill area of the harbour town on the evening of March 30. Her death sent shockwaves through Larne because she was a much-loved figure in the community. Her relatives are still struggling to come to terms with their loss. A family member told Sunday Life: "Betty was always a loving and caring influence in not only family life but to those around her in the community. "She had a warm personality and a smile for every occasion and every eventuality. She was always seeing the bigger picture. "Betty's going to be very much missed in our family. She was always there for us." Detectives from the PSNI's major investigation team charged Gingles with murder after a post-mortem examination. The accused appeared in court earlier this week via video-link from a custody suite at Belfast's Musgrave police station due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Expand Close Elizabeth 'Betty' Dobbin found dead in Larne April 2020 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Elizabeth 'Betty' Dobbin found dead in Larne April 2020 He spoke only to confirm that he understood the single charge against him. No bail application was made during the hearing and no further details were revealed about the cause of death. Gingles' solicitor John Doran said: "This was his grandmother and it's a very tragic situation. Mr Gingles spoke of hearing voices and (of having) concerns about the coronavirus. He also spoke of seeing zombies." A defence based on diminished responsibility due to some type of psychotic episode is expected to be mounted, the lawyer indicated. He added: "That clearly will be a matter for expert medical opinion further down the line." An investigating detective was asked to confirm that the accused had accepted causing Mrs Dobbin's death "very early on" in the course of seven interviews. The detective replied: "There is no argument with that." Remanding Gingles in custody to Maghaberry Prison, District Judge George Conner ordered him to appear again by video-link in four weeks. Lala Kent said she was sad on Monday, which would have kicked off the festivities of her wedding week ahead of her now-postponed April 18 nuptials to producer Randall Emmett. The 30-year-old reality star took to Instagram with a romantic shot of herself and her fiance, opening up about the mix of emotions she was experiencing after canceling the festivities amid the shutdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. 'Today would be the day Id be heading to our wedding location to start prepping and getting settled in with my mama and mama-in-law to-be,' the Salt Lake City native wrote in the caption. 'I know people have been affected by this in much bigger ways. I do feel sad today, though. I havent experiences anything that I should have. Bachelorette party, bridal shower. Its just all very weird.' The latest: Lala Kent said she was sad Monday, which would have kicked off the festivities of her wedding week ahead of her now-postponed April 18 nuptials to producer Randall Emmett The Vanderpump Rules star said she was confident the proceedings will happen at some point, but felt a pang of sadness on the day, all the same. 'I know Ill get to, but my heart was set on April 18th,' she said. 'I hope it rains that day. Then Ill be saying thank god we didnt get married today. That would make me feel better.' Kent and Emmett announced on March 18 that they were going to push back the date amid the lockdown, which calls for people to stay at home, and keep a distance of at least six feet from others when out. They told People: 'We have decided to move the date of our wedding to July given the unfortunate circumstances of what is going on. We are obviously saddened by this but for the ultimate safety of our families and guests, we have made the decision to wait and see how everything progresses.' Safety first: Kent and Emmett announced on March 18 that they were going to push back the date amid the lockdown Tough time: The Vanderpump Rules star said she was confident the proceedings will happen at some point, but felt a pang of sadness on the day, all the same. She was snapped in Utah earlier this year The couple said that safety remained their 'number one priority' amid the troubled times, which has seen the shutdown of sporting events, cinemas and any non-essential gatherings. Five days before that, Kent had caused a bit of a social media stir with her remarks on why she felt safe from the deadly disease. 'So I may get in trouble for this, but its OK; I just dont feel that God would give me coronavirus before I get married - I just dont see that happening to me,' she said in an Instagram Stories clip. 'Lets just say I did get it before my wedding. I feel that means God is like, "B****, you need a little publicity - but thats the only way I would get it, I feel.' Kent and Emmett got engaged during a Cabo San Lucas, Mexico vacation in the fall of 2018; they've since made headlines over the past year for their back and forth with 50 Cent, who worked with Emmett on the show Power. Controversy: Kent had caused a bit of a social media stir last month with her remarks on why she felt safe from the deadly disease The rapper and producer had a falling out in April of 2009 over a $1 million debt which went viral as 50 Cent took the issue to social media, at one point sharing text messages Emmett had sent him, specifically one in which a typo led him to call the rapper 'Fofty.' The international pandemic has impacted a number of celebrities, as Lala's fellow Bravo star Andy Cohen is among the notable names who have tested positive, in addition to Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Idris Elba, Prince Charles and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Other TV personalities who have been diagnosed with the virus include The Bachelor's Colton Underwood and CNN's Chris Cuomo and Brooke Baldwin. Chef Floyd Cardoz, who won on Top Chef Masters, died March 25 at 59 from complications to the disease. As of Monday, the death total for COVID-19 was at 23,369 people in the U.S., The COVID Tracking Project reported, with 576,774 total positive diagnoses. On a global level, 118,854 people have died amid 1,911,407 positive diagnoses worldwide, Johns Hopkins University reported. A man has been arrested, after his wife mysteriously disappeared last month, with police alleging the husband sent a text message from his wifes phone, saying she had coronavirus. Police started investigating the disappearance of Gretchen Anthony, 51, on March 26 after family members reported her missing. A witness received a suspicious text message from Ms Anthonys phone on March 23, which according to CBS12, stated she had contracted COVID-19 and was being held by the Centre of Disease Control after she was checked into her local health centre. The witness did not hear from Ms Anthony after receiving the text message. Another witness also received a text message from Ms Anthonys phone, which also claimed she had COVID-19 and was sedated by the CDC. Gretchen Anthony, pictured with her husband David who she had separated from. She remains missing, while David Anthony has been arrested for her murder. Source: Jupiter Police Department/Facebook Ms Anthony had recently separated from Florida man, David Anthony, 43, and although the two were still married, Ms Anthony had filed for divorce. Jupiter Police Department found Ms Anthonys dark blue Mini Cooper at the Jupiter Medical Centre, however she was nowhere to be found in the area. It has since beed reported by various local publications Ms Anthony had not been admitted to the medical centre in a number of years. Police determined Mr Anthony was involved in his wifes disappearance and related homicide, which police believe happened on March 21. Upon conducting a welfare check on Ms Anthony, police discovered multiple bottles of cleaning products, shards of glass in the master bedroom, what looked like blood on the wall and bleach stains on the garage floor, which lead out to the driveway, according to Las Cruces Sun News. According to CBC12, a witness told police they had purchased jewellery off Mr Anthony on March 30, and he claimed the jewellery belonged to a mother or stepmother who had recently died of coronavirus. On April 8, Jupiter Police Department shared an update on the case and said Mr Anthony was found by detectives in New Mexico. Mr Anthony was arrested and charged with second degree murder and kidnapping. Story continues Gretchen Anthony's car was found at a Florida medical centre, but there was no sign of her. Source: CBS12 Neighbours place David Anthony at the home A neighbour confronted police when they were investigating the home, and asked if they were looking into the attack which happened on Saturday March 21, in the early hours of the morning. The neighbour reportedly told police they heard Gretchen scream and yell on the Saturday, Las Cruces Sun News reported. Another neighbour also confirmed they heard Gretchen scream and both witnesses claim they saw a black truck in Gretchens driveway. When Mr Anthony was arrested in New Mexico, his black Nissan Frontier was also located. This is very shocking, were in a very safe, quiet neighbourhood Jan Grandy, a neighbour told CBS12. Nothing like this ever happens here. Bleach stains were found on Gretchen Anthony's driveway and neighbours report hearing her scream. Source: CBS12 In the update provided by the Jupiter Police Department on Facebook, police said Mr Anthony would be extradited back to Floridas Palm Beach County. Police also appealed to the public for help with the investigation. Investigators are still trying to locate the whereabouts of Gretchen Anthony and are hoping the public may have seen or heard something related to this case, the Facebook post said. Ms Anthony has not been found as of April 13. Police also shared a photo of Mr Anthonys dog, a black and white husky which he would usually take out in public. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play. Welcome to Chapter Five of the Irish Examiner's #CoronavirusSolidarity diary. Every week we will be highlighting for posterity those stories which capture the unique community spirit of Ireland's response to the ongoing crisis. Please let us know about community initiatives which have been set up to offer support to those most impacted by the crisis or examples of people who are going above and beyond the call of duty. Tag us at @irishexaminer and use #CoronavirusSolidarity. Read Chapter One here. Read Chapter Two here. Read Chapter Three here. Read Chapter Four here. Sunday, April 19 Cork nursing home piloting new tech to monitor staff temperatures By Digital Desk staff A nursing home in Co Cork is piloting an early warning system to detect Covid-19 among staff. A census of mortality in Ireland's nursing homes is now underway with priority testing of staff and residents also taking place. Over half of all deaths from coronavirus have been associated with nursing homes. Diarmuid O Dalaigh, owner of Oaklodge Nursing Home, is testing the detection system from UCC and tech company, 8 West. "Each staff person here will wear a thermometer under their arm, a tiny little sensor which is connected via Bluetooth to their phone and on to a central system here. "The staff person themself and the Director of Nursing can see if there's any spike in their temperature overnight, on their days off or indeed while they're at work while they're wearing this." Saturday, April 18 Personal trainer Ray Lally V Daithi O Se The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of the dangers, physical and mental, of sedentary behaviour and low levels of physical activity in light of the restrictions currently in place in so many countries. It has recommended 150 minutes of moderate intensity, or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity per week, or a combination of both. From Monday on, personal trainer Ray Lally will be challenging Daithi O Se to a 15-minute training session in a new RTE series as part of Today With Maura and Daithi. Ray Lally and Daithi O Se Ideally, I would be looking at people who are self-isolating or cocooning or beginners, Lally explains. People of any age who are beginners and just dont know what to do so that at least every day they would have that consistent time where they can do a session. Its 15 minutes a day and there are three sessions in the show so they can get their break during the show, grab some water when they need it. I just want people to get active, people who arent that active that often. Joe Wicks, otherwise known as The Body Coach, has also connected with millions around the world with his PE classes for kids. Celebrities as diverse as the Hollywood actor Chris Hemsworth and British TV presenter Davina McCall have contributed their expertise in similar fashion. Friday, April 17 Mallow labelmakers to ship 500,000 tokens of appreciation for frontline workers A Mallow-based print firm are among the Irish-owned businesses applauding frontline workers across the country this week with a special initiative. Munster Labels, based in Mallow, Co Cork, have designed a label which will be sent to food producers nationwide to thank workers for their efforts. The labels will be sent to a number of companies to be put on food products and liquid containers, to say 'thank you' to medical workers amid the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. Speaking on C103's Cork Today Show, Patrick Whelan of Munster Labels said people can subsequently apply the label to clothing or uniforms. Whelan has said the company is starting to produce 500,000 labels, to be delivered across the country on a non-profit basis, with companies already looking for the labels in Dublin and Donegal. Hundreds of tablets donated to Covid-19 patients to help them see loved ones By Press Association Many critically-ill Covid-19 patients who are unable to see their families while in intensive care will be given access to video-conferencing equipment following a huge fundraising campaign. Restrictions on visitors mean that patients battling coronavirus can go for weeks without seeing family or friends. A number of people have died without having the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones because many hospitals in Ireland are operating a no-visit policy to curb the spread of Covid-19. After a group of friends from Dublin saw the devastating impact of Covid-19, they saw an opportunity to help allay some of the difficulties patients face, particularly the elderly. Suzanne Stewart, a medical devices specialist, experienced first-hand some of the trauma people face after her partner, an ICU doctor, was admitted to hospital with Covid-19. First batch of tablets almost ready to go to hospitals and nursing homes around the country. Thanks to @Powercity_Ltd https://t.co/d9nHO29phT please help us raise funds for more! We will be sending out 150 this weekend and demand is rising pic.twitter.com/my6VKyLVpi Suzanne Stewart (@suzannestew_g) April 16, 2020 The group have raised almost 22,000 to buy tablets for Covid-19 wards and critical care units. Ms Stewart said: It was when my boyfriend was in hospital that it was really highlighted how hard it is to communicate with someone when you cant see them, especially when theyre really sick. Lots of people who go to hospital in an ambulance dont think about their phone, tablet or charger. Also a lot of elderly people dont have those kind of capabilities, they might have a regular phone and hospitals dont have that kind of technology either. Ciara Close, an electronic engineer, said they are hoping to purchase some 300 tablets and have received over 100 donated tablets. The group are also donating tablets to nursing homes across Ireland after visiting restrictions left thousands of elderly people unable to see loved ones. Four sisters running 400 miles in four weeks in different counties for aunt By Louise Walsh Four sisters have started running 400 miles over the next four weeks in three different counties to raise 4000 for a hospice where their aunt started living in recent weeks. Deirdre Bonar (43), twins Sinead Ui Ghibne and Carol Scott (48) and Mairin Higgins (50) have already chalked up almost 60 miles since they started running in Louth, Meath and Wicklow on Easter Monday. Carol, Sinead, Mairin and Deirdre (nee McNally) who are running 400 miles in four weeks in three counties to support their aunt. The virtual running partners, who are originally McNallys from Dublins Dun Laoighaire, notch up the distances each day while keeping within the 2km Covid-19 restriction distance. Deirdre goes running around her home outside Dunleer, Co. Louth while Sinead jogs the length of Donore, Co. Meath and Carol and Mairin train near where they live in Co Wicklow (Arklow and Blessington respectively) Deirdre said they started the challenge to give back what Our Ladys Hospice in Dublins Harolds Cross has done for their aunt Cecil who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease last May. "Cecil lived on her own and was really independent and thanks to the outreach supports and day services provided by Our Ladys Hospice, she managed to stay at home until three weeks ago. Mum Ber, Mairin, Sinead, Deirdre, Carol and aunt Cecil "She now lives in the long-term extended care unit for people with palliative conditions but loads of life still in them. "Our Ladys Hospice have set up virtual visits so families and friends can call residents and patients on different media platforms, which has been of huge peace of mind to us and company for Cecil. "We were doing a bit of running anyway and putting screenshots of our distances up on a shared WhatsApp group for the sisters and we decided on Easter Monday we would do this and start straight away. "It is a bit challenging with the 2km distance but we are getting creative. We are running down old lanes we find on our journey or creating a new route around a new circuit within the limits. We are virtually running together for the next few weeks." Anyone who would like to donate can do so here. Thursday, April 16 Double celebration for garda who beat Covid-19 Paul with staff from Beaumont Hospital. By Olivia Kelleher Sgt Paul Cullen, a father-of-three from Balbriggan, Co Dublin, was initially under the impression that he had a chest infection. He had finished a course of antibiotics from his GP when his symptoms deteriorated to the point where he required hospitalisation at Beaumont Hospital. The Sergeant, who works in north inner city Dublin, went to the Emergency Department at the beginning of April with a high temperature and shortness of breath. He believes that having a public facing role as a Garda had probably put him at greater risk of contracting the virus. He said he never anticipated going from experiencing a shortness of breath to being told he required an induced coma. Paul was treated with oxygen, and then required very high intensity support with continuous positive airway pressure ventilation for five days. Thankfully he didn't need to be intubated. After 14 days of treatment Paul was recently released from hospital. Arising out of Covid-19 restrictions Paul had not seen his family for the duration. Sgt Cullen says the team at Beaumont continue to monitor him at home. I am very grateful for that and I am looking forward to getting my strength back and returning to work in a few weeks time. "I am grateful to be at home with my wife Sharon. I am looking forward to being able to spend time with my dad again as its hard to be away from him and the kids and grandkids. "As for the promotion. That was a surprise as I didn't think that would happen with all that is going on." Irish teens use time at home to fundraise for charity A group of teenagers used their Easter break to put their heads together and figure out a way to raise money for charity while staying at home. Participants in the Mustard Seed Ireland Volunteer Programme, they were unable to do the fundraising as they had planned and so they came up with a new plan. Last year, they had written a song to the tune of Billy Joel's Piano Man and so they got together on Zoom and recorded a rendition of the tune. They posted it online and are asking people to donate 4 to Mustard Seed. Mustard Seed Communities is an organization that provides lifelong care to children and adults with disabilities, children and teenagers living with HIV and supports teenage mothers in crisis in Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Malawi and Zimbabwe. "The Mustard Seed Volunteer Programme is the best thing Ive ever done and its so hard to think about the residents in Jamaica now that all the fundraising has stopped. We just want to do what we can," said Maya Scott, a fifth year student at Templecarrig, Greystones. Daniel O'Boyle from Oatlands College, Dublin said that they know that a lot of people are struggling financially at the moment but he believes that those who can support the charity will. "Irish people are really generous and this might be a way for us to help the kids in Mustard Seed while we're at home." As part of the programme, the volunteers visit the Mustard Seed Communities in Jamaica where they get to meet the residents and staff and see the farming projects, building projects, therapies, education programmes and business projects that their fundraising supports. The song they wrote was originally written as a thank you to the staff and residents in Kingston Jamaica. The group would have been preparing to travel over to Jamaica again but this changed once the coronavirus hit. The charity is something that is close to their hearts and they decided that while they could not travel, they could still do what they can to help the communities. "We can stay home but we can't stay quiet," said Conor Saunders, a student at St Benildus College, Stillorgan. Wednesday, April 15 Cork man runs around his garden for 14 hours and raises 20k for charity By Kevin O'Neill Some 80 families are set to benefit after a marathon fundraising effort from a local entrepreneur. Dan Sweeney ran around his back garden continuously for 14 hours. He set himself the target of raising 5,000 but the public interest saw him hit a whopping 20,000. The money raised will go towards supporting people staying in Edel House, B&Bs and other emergency accommodation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr Sweeney has donated the money to Good Shepherd Cork (GSC), which runs the services. Take part in the Irish Examiner family bake-in Many parents around the country have been looking for fun ways to entertain and bond with their children over the past few weeks. Baking has been one of the most popular pastimes to emerge from the Covid-19 crisis. Instagram feeds have been filled with videos and photos of the process and the finished products. If you have been getting busy in the kitchen with your kids then why not join in the Irish Examiner family bake-in competition? Send us your favourite family baking recipe that you've made with your children. Whether it's a treasured recipe passed down through generations of your family, something you came up with yourself or a recipe that you tried for the first time during the past few weeks - we want to see them! We have already received some delicious-looking entries as you can see. The McCahey family's entry The McCarthy's The Flaherty's entry Once we have all the recipes our resident baking expert Michelle Darmody will choose the winner and it will be printed in the Irish Examiner for everyone to enjoy. The overall winner will also receive a VIP family experience at Fota Wildlife Park, Cork while the runners-up will win a family ticket to Fota Wildlife Park. You can submit your recipe here Make sure you enter before midnight on Sunday, April 26. Famous Irish faces come together in musical tribute to Covid-19 heroes An Irish singer-songwriter has been joined by a raft of famous faces in his tribute to those forced to cocoon and frontline workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Come Sing With Me, written and performed by one of Irelands top country music artists, Michael English, features opening words by actor Patrick Bergin and the Kildare man is also joined by his friends from the world of show business. English, awarded entertainer of the year last year, was approached by several people in the music industry asking him to put together a song, for all of the heroes throughout the pandemic, he said. The famous faces and singers who got involved for free in the haunting lilt include, Mary Byrne of X Factor fame, Britains Got Talents Fr Ray Kelly, Sandy Kelly, Louise Morrissey and Mike Denver. Others hitting the high notes are GAA pundit Joe Brolly, Dancing with the Stars Cliona Hagan, Fair City stars and actors Johnny Ward, George McMahon, Brendan and Emily Shine along with musicians Keith and Lorraine McDonald and Johnny Carroll. So I thought about it for a while and I suppose I thought that the only way I could help was to put to pen to paper and write a song. "When I thought of the word heroes, of course I thought of all those people who are helping one another by risking their lives. But I also thought about the silent heroes. The people over the age of 70 who are cocooning, all the grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, uncles, the people providing for these people. All those who are living alone throughout this pandemic, everyone working night and day to help people survive. "The word hero covers a multitude of people. These people sometimes go unnoticed but this song is to recognise those people. The 41-year-old Kildare man thanked all of those who took part, who contacted him, wanting to get involved in the project. Everyone involved came together virtually in their homes to join me in the song. Thousands of people have already applauded all of those who gave of their time for free to recognise the work of everyone during the pandemic. One fan said: Oh My Goodness absolutely amazing. Michael English again you have outdone yourself. Another amazing song for our amazing heroes. "Thank you and all our great stars that sang with you on this. We are so lucky in this Country to have stars like you. Absolutely love this. Well done again. In an introduction to the song, actor Patrick Bergin says, Come sing with me with one voice. For those who care and make the choice. "Come stand with me and side by side - we salute them with pride. Tuesday, April 14 Rose Murphy, (left) co-owner, Murphys Pharmacy, North Main Street, Cork, and Clodagh OSullivan, pharmacy technician at the pharmacy. Picture Denis Minihane. Rose Murphy, a pharmacist operating in Cork, has seen a dramatic increase in deliveries for patients over the age of 70. She and her team are busy collecting postcodes and telephone numbers to deliver prescriptions to their cocooning clients. Were delivering to the over-70s, says Rose. We had a home delivery service anyway, but its now become manic. "We have a significant volume of patients who are over 70, so were phoning them to make sure that they have access to their medication. We deliver Monday to Saturday. Work takes longer with all the deliveries, we have up to 100 prescriptions to deliver. But really, were just doing what we do anyway. In the pharmacy profession, were meeting the same people every month, she says. We get to know people very well, which is nice. Theres a local community feel here, even though were in the centre of the city. Wed never want it to be a big place where we didnt know patients." -Liz Dunphy Couple who got married in Marymount Hospice live stream ceremony to siblings An appeal for donations last week resulted in enough iPads for the ceremony to be streamed. A couple who got married over the weekend in Marymount Hospice in Cork were able to transmit their ceremony to siblings in various parts of the world via iPads following a successful technology appeal onsite which has raised nearly 30,000. Four days ago the palliative care centre in Curraheen made an appeal online where they asked the public to donate money or old iPads and tablets to allow patients to keep in contact with their families. Patients have been cut off from their families since last month arising out of Covid-19 visitor restrictions. Cork woman makes toiletry bags for frontline staff A Cork woman and her children have made hundreds of toiletry goody bags for frontline workers, to show solidarity with those at the forefront of the Covid-19 crisis. Hilary Coughlan, who is originally from the Glanmire area, says she was cleaning out her cupboards and found lots of toiletries she could not use, so she decided to make a goody bag to donate to frontline staff. Read the full story here Food donation appeal The Good Grub initiative has launched an urgent appeal for donations to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables to disadvantaged DEIS school children in the Dublin area. DEIS students normally receive their breakfast and lunch at school but during Covid-19 their families are struggling to put enough food on the table. While DEIS continues to supply a basic food pack to thousands of families in the Dublin area, Good Grub is trying to raise at least 100K to deliver fresh food to these school children for as long as the crisis continues. Donations can be made here or via the Good Grub website. Good Grub O'Reilly family volunteers The brilliant DEIS schools programme understands that you cant feed a students mind unless the body is also properly fed, says Denis OReilly, Chairperson and Co-Founder of Good Grub. The breakfast and lunches provided to these disadvantaged children were often the only healthy meals they were getting in a day and now that schools are closed, theres a serious danger that thousands of kids are going to miss out on proper nutrition at a time when they really need it. Friendly call Yvonne Qullligan and Patricia Cotter with some of the packages of food for delivery. Friendly Call has augmented its service to fight isolation during the pandemic. - Liz Dunphy Cork County's Friendly Call has augmented its service to fight isolation during the pandemic, they are now also arranging grocery deliveries, dog walks, prescription collections, and even birthday greetings. Some 40 volunteers now serve 390 people, physically isolated in their homes but kept connected to the outside world by the Friendly Call team. Last week, a Friendly Call volunteer was reduced to tears when she saw how happy a new client who turned 93 that day was when she brought him a birthday cake and Easter egg on his special day. Some people dont have anyone, a birthday card from us is the only one theyll get, Ms Barry said. Anyone whos isolated or anxious, we can talk to them, and if they need anything practical we can help with that too. You get to know the person, and their needs. Her colleague Gary Hornibrook had dropped a donated TV to a woman who was cocooning alone with no television. Staff and volunteers from Cork City Partnership , providing a friendly call service , by doing shopping and deliveries for the elderly in Cork city. Pictured is Gary Hornibrook She has been locked in for weeks and her TV was broken, Mr Hornibrook said. So we brought her a TV along with a bag of groceries. She said shed be lost without the service. Some people havent been out of the house in four weeks because they have underlying health conditions or immunosuppressant illnesses that could make this virus fatal. A lot of people are really appreciative when were there to help. A grassroots message for health workers A community which wanted to say a simple thank you to the countrys frontline workers as they battle the Covid-19 crisis have brought out their creative sides with their lawnmowers. Residents of the Forest Hills housing estate, in Rathcoole, Co Dublin made a sign with a difference on the communitys green area over the Easter bank holiday weekend. David McGuirk, a plumber who lives in the housing estate, was driving home late one evening last week following an emergency call-out, and started thinking about all the hard work all the various frontline workers were doing and he just wanted to thank them. He explained:I just wanted to say a simple thanks to them all because the current situation due to the pandemic is obviously not easy for them to cope with." "I also wanted to bring our community together as Im very conscious of our older people and how they are coping with cocooning and I wanted them to feel included. Mr McGuirk got the idea to cut the housing estate green as the grass had grown higher than it should have. I thought if we could mow out a, thank you, to them wouldnt that be great but I honestly didnt know if people would be interested in doing it. I phoned friends Gazza Byrne and Derek Gallagher whom I knew had good lawnmowers and I floated the idea with them and they thought it was a great idea. Then other guys Stephen Conway, Anthony Talbot and Keith Farrelly got involved. The friends brought out their lawnmowers to the green and once they got the grass to a manageable height they practiced creating the letter T and four hours later they had the sign, Thank you front line staff, mowed. Once we managed to mow out the T and figured out the dimensions that were needed we kept going all within the social distancing rules. Residents both young and old then noticed what we were at and everyone wanted to help as best they could within the rules. It really got everyone communicating and it became a real party atmosphere on Saturday evening. The weather being so good was a real bonus. We wanted to get a photo of the message and as luck would have it a resident here, who is a real messer at the best of times, said he had a cherry picker to help us capture it. Well no-one believed him about the cherrypicker but we all had to swallow our doubt when he turned up with it and we managed to get some wonderful photos. But little did the group of friends know, that the Garda helicopter, which refuels at nearby Baldonnel airport, got wind of what the residents were doing. They were able to fly past several times during their work operations and capture the residents message from a better height. Everyone pulling together was just fantastic and it was wonderful for everyones psychological health no matter what age they are. It really has pulled our community together and it sent out a message too that everyone is in this fight together. Sarah Slater Cork balloon artist's bid to inflate happiness levels Jenny Murphy, Clonakilty, Co Cork of Red Balloon Cork put these balloons up in her front garden as part of a worldwide project One Million Bubbles of Joy to help bring smiles to peoples faces. Picture Dan Linehan A balloon artist was up at the crack of dawn over the bank holiday weekend adorning her colourful house in a bid to spread some positivity. For Jenny Murphy, its all designed to help make people smile. The bright display outside her house in Clonakilty is part of the worldwide initiative called One Million Bubbles, launched to help cheer people up during the current situation. Its about creating a positive atmosphere in your locality, whether you might be in an apartment, or an estate, says Jenny. More than 1,860 people have taken part so far. People have been going with stay safe or be kind, I thought the most important thing we can do is wash our hands, so I went with that instead. It was set to be lovely and bright and sunny on Monday so I went out at six oclock in the morning and started to attach the balloons to the outside my house. The balloons are fastened to a string of fairy lights, which will be turned on when it gets dark. I did it in the dark of night, throwing fairy lights out the window and I thought to myself no one really knows what Im at so I must have looked very funny, says Jenny. Everyone here is kind already. We live in West Cork, everyone is always kind, weve fantastic neighbours and theres a lovely positive vibe around the place. We need to keep our social distance of course but we also need to make sure we keep making people smile. There are so many people who are in social isolation in a house by themselves. People are so nervous and a smile can make a big difference. Especially if people are on their own right now, day and night. Like many businesses across the country, Ms Murphys business, Red Balloon, based in Ballincollig, has felt the effects of the Covid-19 shutdown due to the cancellation of many events and social distancing restrictions. Were working on a plan to do a courier delivery service because we cant deliver balloons ourselves, were a non-essential service, but we can send them out, says Jenny. Were looking at sending out balloons in boxes so people can still receive them, because even though we are in this time, people are still having birthdays and celebrations. Its important to keep celebrating events like birthdays and anniversaries, she believes. Theres two days between my neighbours birthdays, they turned 13 and 15 respectively. It was lovely being able to send them balloons. Two weeks ago, I couldnt give my mum balloons because she lives in another part of the county and I couldnt travel out to her. So I thought, ok we need to do something. Red Balloon is working on setting up the service via its website, she adds. Hopefully we will have it up very quickly. Jess Casey Irish Olympians reach out to asylum seekers and refugees Olympians, asylum-seekers and refugees are virtually coming together every week to exercise thanks to an innovative project led by former Irish Olympian Claire Lambe. A member of the Sanctuary Runners Movement, which uses running and exercise to bring together those in Direct Provision with the rest of Irish society, Lambe gives #SanctuaryStrength exercise classes online each Saturday morning with hundreds logging on to stay in shape. And whats more, shes roped in fellow Olympians to film videos in their homes and back gardens which Sanctuary Runners can access during the week. The Sanctuary Runners now has over 2,000 members across Ireland with about a quarter coming from Direct Provision centres. Normally wed meet up to run every week but because of the Covid19 crisis thats not possible so I thought why not use technology to connect people and ensure they stay fit and healthy during this even if they are living in the confined space of a Direct Provision centre. Each Saturday morning at 11am Sanctuary Runners (both Irish and in Direct Provision) log into Zoom for a half hour of energetic exercise hosted by Claire Lambe. Its incredible, we feel connected even though we are all apart, explained Sanctuary Runner Deborah Oniah. Living in Direct Provision in Cork she added: Its very difficult for many in Direct Provision to exercise during this crisis and energy levels can drop but the #SanctuaryStrength class really lifts us, makes us stronger and lets us know there are people thinking of us and loving us. You dont need lots of space to do the workout and its recorded and sent to us so we can do it over and over again during the week. Other Irish Olympians have joined the #SanctuaryStrength initiative as Claire Lambe explains: Olympic Silver medallist Annalise Murphy sent us a workout last week from her back garden which we were able to share with everyone. Thomas Barr, Sanita Puspure and Natalya Coyle have also filmed exercises and were so grateful to them. And Ciaran OLionaird is sending some exercises all the way from the States. We hope to add some more well-known names in the weeks ahead. Graham Clifford, founder of the Sanctuary Runners, said the #SanctuaryStrength initiative enables people to show solidarity, friendship and respect to those in Direct Provision during the Covid 19 crisis. For people living in Direct Provision the ability to exercise now will be greatly diminished. And people in centres are stressed because the chance of catching the virus is greater than for the rest of us. Many are living in confined spaces, sharing bedrooms, bathrooms, eating areas and so on. This enables people to exercise, to feel that virtual hand of friendship over their shoulder. "We also have all of our Irish Sanctuary Runners people exercising together as families from their kitchens, hallways, bedrooms, back gardens and even farms. Claire, and all the other Olympians, are making a massive impact to the lives of so many people through this. This is the epitome of the Olympic Spirit. If you would like to join the Sanctuary Runners, and take part in the #SanctuaryStrength exercise sessions drop us an email to info@sanctuaryrunners.ie Lions Clubs pledge to raise 100k for 'Hero Shield' visors Lions Clubs have pledged to raise up to 100,000 in order to fund 200,000 'Hero Shield' face visors. The project, led by James O'Sullivan of Macroom Lions Club, will see the visors distributed free of charge to frontline health workers around the country. It has gained the support of the 106 Lions Clubs in Ireland. So far 20,000 has been raised including 10,000 from the Cork clubs and a further 10,000 in match funding from the District Humanitarian Fund. "Twenty companies across the country are giving their time, talents and tools free of charge to produce these visors which are manufactured here in Ireland, are certified and meet EU Standards," said organiser James O'Sullivan. "Covid-19 teams North and South have already approved the Lions Hero Shields. "An Garda Siochana, Hospitals and, Care Homes North and South across the country have been contacted and are anxious to take delivery of our PPE's as soon as possible. "The need is clear as statistics show front line staff account for almost a quarter of the Covid-19 cases in Ireland." The visors are manufactured in Ireland by Hero Shield, a new not-for-profit collective of companies, and are certified as meeting all relevant EU standards. The HSE has already noted that, as the visor has no moving parts, it is easier to sterilise and reuse than many existing solutions. Lions Clubs District Governor Bernard Black said that the project enables Lion Clubs to make "a meaningful contribution to the battle against Covid-19 in Ireland." The Hero Shield will be available free to HSE and An Garda Siochana personnel in the Republic of Ireland and NHS and PSNI personnel in Northern Ireland. Cork GAA club raises thousands for PPE for hospital and nursing home A Cork GAA club is hosting a one-off gig to raise 3,000 for local hospitals. St Michael's members Sarah Carroll and Leah Coughlan have organised a Kenny Live Facebook gig this Saturday, April 18. They are hoping to raise 3,000 to help Mercy Hospital and St Luke's Nursing Home, Blackrock to buy much-needed PPE for their staff to help protect them and their patients from the spread of Covid-19. On Monday morning just one day after the GoFundMe page was set up, they had raised almost two-thirds of their fundraising goal. Sarah and Leah are asking anyone who tuned into the gig to donate a minimum of 5. "We, as a club and a community, would like to raise a few bob to help keep our critical workers - who are already sacrificing so much - safe from Covid-19," the pair said. You can tune into the gig this Saturday on the club's Facebook page from 8pm. You can make a donation on their GoFundMe page Taliban to free 20 Afghan government prisoners: Spokesman Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 10:34 AM The Taliban militant group in Afghanistan says it plans to release 20 prisoners of the Afghan government in what would be a first handover since the beginning of a fragile peace process. "Today, 20 prisoners of the Kabul administration will be released," Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, said in a tweet on Sunday, adding that the captives would be handed over to the representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern city of Kandahar. The move appears to be a major breakthrough after the militants walked out of talks with Kabul last week. It was the second time the Taliban were reversing a decision about their interactions with the Afghan government. Washington is compelled under the deal to pull out American forces and foreign troops from Afghanistan by July next year, provided that the militants start talks with Kabul and adhere to other security guarantees. The Afghan government, which was excluded from the talks and was thus not a signatory to the accord, is required to release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The militants are obliged to free 1,000 pro-government captives in return. Since Wednesday, the Afghan government has released 300 Taliban prisoners. The prisoner swap has been meant to be a prelude to peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The Taliban and the Afghan government have been negotiating for months to finalize the prisoner swap to pave the way for intra-Afghan peace talks, but the negotiations haven't been smooth. Since the US-led invasion that ousted a Taliban regime in 2001, the US has reportedly spent more than one trillion dollars on the war in Afghanistan. About 2,400 US soldiers have been killed, along with unknown numbers of Afghan troops and Taliban militants. Over 100,000 Afghans have been killed or injured since 2009 when the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began documenting casualties. About 14,000 US troops and approximately 17,000 troops from NATO allies and partner countries remain stationed in Afghanistan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address There are 11 confirmed deaths, multiple injuries and damage in 18 counties in Mississippi due to severe weather that hit the state April 12, according to an initial damage report from Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA). Governor Tate Reeves has signed a State of Emergency in response to the severe weather outbreak. In addition, Georgia Insurance Commissioner John F. King confirmed several tornadoes touched down throughout the state of Georgia, causing thousands to be without power. The severe weather also resulted in multiple fatalities and widespread damage to buildings and structures in numerous Georgia counties. Bloomberg said that tornadoes were reported Monday in North Carolina and South Carolina as well, according to the U.S. Storm Prediction Center, and multiple counties in Florida are under tornado watch today. MEMA said counties reporting fatalities include: Carroll, Jefferson Davis, Jones, Lawrence, Panola and Walthall. There are currently more than 72,000 without power in Mississippi. At the time of MEMAs initial report, 18 counties have submitted damage reports to MEMA: Bolivar 40 homes, 20 apartments, 20 roads debris, 20 roads damaged. 30 persons displaced. 40 homes, 20 apartments, 20 roads debris, 20 roads damaged. 30 persons displaced. Carroll 2 homes, 7 roads closed due to debris 2 homes, 7 roads closed due to debris Chickasaw 4 roads closed due to debris. 4 roads closed due to debris. Clarke 5 homes destroyed, 5 homes major damage, 5 with minor damage,7 mobile homes damaged Grenada 15 homes, 1 apartment, 100 roads closed due to debris 15 homes, 1 apartment, 100 roads closed due to debris Humphreys 1 home damaged, power poles down, 3 people displaced 1 home damaged, power poles down, 3 people displaced Jasper 8 homes destroyed, 6 homes major damaged, 6 homes minor damaged, 5 homes affected, 3 mobile homes destroyed, 40 displaced Jefferson Davis 100 homes, 40 roads closed debris, 40 roads closed damage, 75-80 displaced, multiple powerlines down 100 homes, 40 roads closed debris, 40 roads closed damage, 75-80 displaced, multiple powerlines down Jones damage to structures Lafayette 5 homes damaged 5 homes damaged Montgomery 10 homes, 2 roads closed due to debris 10 homes, 2 roads closed due to debris Newton 2 homes, 11 roads closed due to debris. 2 persons displaced. 2 homes, 11 roads closed due to debris. 2 persons displaced. Noxubee 5 homes, 5 roads closed due to debris and 5 roads closed due to damage. 5 homes, 5 roads closed due to debris and 5 roads closed due to damage. Rankin 1 home damaged, 2 roads closed due to damage, 2 people displaced 1 home damaged, 2 roads closed due to damage, 2 people displaced Smith 10 homes, 2 apartments, 5 roads closed due to debris, 5 roads closed due to damage. 10 homes, 2 apartments, 5 roads closed due to debris, 5 roads closed due to damage. Sharkey 1 home damaged. Approx. 250 customers without power. Power and phones outage to Courthouse and Sheriff Dept. Calls routed to dispatchers office. 1 home damaged. Approx. 250 customers without power. Power and phones outage to Courthouse and Sheriff Dept. Calls routed to dispatchers office. Tate 3 homes damaged, 7 roads closed due to flooding/debris, 1 road closed due to damage. 1 road washed out 3 homes damaged, 7 roads closed due to flooding/debris, 1 road closed due to damage. 1 road washed out Yazoo 8 homes damaged, 1 road closed due to debris, 2 people displaced The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency is working with local county emergency directors to assess the need for long-term sheltering. The statewide shelter-in-place remains in effect. We want to remind people to social distance as best as possible and if youre in a public shelter, wear some kind of mask to cover your mouth and nose to help slow the spread of COVID-19. In Georgia, WSB-TV in Atlanta said the storms produced several tornadoes, as well as damaging winds and hail. More than 100,000 people were without power Monday and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency as a result of the severe weather. Tornadoes were confirmed all over the state: Northwest Georgia in Chattooga County, Metro Atlanta in South Fulton County, and South-Central Georgia in Putnam and Upson Counties. Surrounding counties also suffered severe damage and reported fatalities as the storms passed through. These storms caused extensive damage to homes, businesses, schools, and many more structures, the Georgia Department of Insurance said. Insurance Commissioner King urged property owners who were impacted to notify their insurance company of any damages. Impacted policyholders should contact their insurance company at once to relay their status in regards to any potential claim or late premium payment as a result of the storms. This is a developing story Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Windstorm Georgia Mississippi Gantz, who had vowed never to sit in a government under Netanyahu, broke that promise amid concerns over the coronavirus last month. The opposition leader froze planned anti-Netanyahu legislation and accepted the post of parliament speaker as he began talks on a rotation agreement in which both men would serve as prime minister. The turnabout prompted Gantzs main partner the secular and middle-class Yesh Atid party to bolt, causing his Blue and White alliance to disintegrate and leaving it at less than half its original strength. How soon will America roll back its stay-at-home orders and get people back to work? The answer depends on who you ask. Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said during a press conference Monday that any mass reopening of businesses would be a major mistake that could cost lives. "That would cost lives and lead to the overwhelming of our health care system, she said. Around the same time, six mid-Atlantic governors said they are forming a committee to help tackle how they will reopen businesses, schools and other things that have been shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic. We all know that we can do anything better when we work together in this region, and we have done good things by working together, Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf said. Those sentiments countered somewhat the sentiments of President Donald Trump, who asserted Monday that he will be the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to relax the nations social distancing guidelines. One thing that might not change for a while, whether theres a rollback or not, will be the ability of Pennsylvania residents to buy liquor in Ohio. Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that liquor sales would be banned in six counties along or near the Pennsylvania border to anyone who does not have valid Ohio identification. Among some of the other PennLive coronavirus stories we didnt want you to miss: Pa. finalizes plan for deciding who gets life-saving care if hospitals overwhelmed Central Pa. hospital transforms storage area into a Radiology Annex for patients under suspicion of COVID-19 Mother of NBA star Karl-Anthony Towns dies from coronavirus Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and more join forces to create plan to reopen businesses and schools during pandemic: Today in Pa. Weis Markets cuts store hours in response to coronavirus pandemic College football to have spring season? Chris Fowlers informed speculation on potential scenario Pa. American Legion Baseball season canceled due to coronavirus pandemic First Pa. state prison inmate to die from coronavirus was a 67-year-old murderer: Corrections Department Need a job? Pa. Department of Labor & Industry launches new online COVID-19 job portal Were in the hair color phase of coronavirus panic buying, says Walmart CEO Trump friend and billionaire dies of COVID-19 Bill Gates spending billions of dollars to save months creating coronavirus vaccine Dozens of COVID-19 patients recover, get discharged from central Pa. hospitals Central Pa. attorney creates group that makes thousands of masks for healthcare workers: Coronavirus hero In this Texas county, not wearing a face mask during coronavirus pandemic could cost you $1,000: reports Restaurants turn to selling groceries - including toilet paper - to survive crushing pandemic DES MOINES Iowa lawmakers road to adjournment has rarely looked more uncertain. Normally, by April, legislators guiding the General Assembly toward its yearly session shutdown have a pretty good sense of what their state budget plan will look like and how they will accomplish most, if not all, of the priorities they set out in January. But a session that seemed on track less than three weeks ago now looks anything but normal as a global coronavirus pandemic has arrived at the closed Iowa Capitol building causing lawmakers to suspend their work until at least April 30, prompting Gov. Kim Reynolds and majority Republicans to declare their signature 2020 legislative priority on hold, and leaving them to grapple with new budget realities being reshaped by sudden economic turmoil. Im preparing myself for anything, said Senate President Charles Schneider, R-West Des Moines. While legislators expect to resume their 2020 deliberations at some point, Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, said the uncertain situation unfolding on a daily basis has legislative actions kind of in a holding phase as the state focuses on making sure Iowans are safe. Once public health measures have succeeded in flattening the curve on the pandemic and the governor and her advisers believe it is safe to open Iowa back up, Whitver expects the Legislature to reconvene to pass a budget and consider a scaled-back number of policy issues in a compressed time frame. Iowa is in line to receive the minimum $1.25 billion funding to state governments included in the $2.2 trillion federal CARES Act rescue package. Legislative and Reynolds administration officials are reviewing the 800-page document to determine their next steps. Were in a good place, but were going to be like other states were going to be impacted, Reynolds said last week, noting her management team is monitoring state agency budgets, cash flow and state tax collections. Were very grateful that we are entering into this pandemic with a very fiscally healthy state budget, she said. House Democratic Leader Todd Prichard of Charles City said the pandemic has exposed weaknesses in Iowas education and health care systems that need immediate and long-term improvements, along with support for workers and small businesses. I suspect the budget is going to be tough, Prichard said. This virus has compounded those problems, and were going to have to be creative. Schneider noted Moodys economist, who participated in a webinar for legislators from around the country, cautioned the economic downturn could impact state budgets by 15-25%. Schneider said he wanted Iowas Revenue Estimating Conference to reconvene before lawmakers return to gain a better sense of the state budget outlook. Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, agreed legislators need a fresh projection. I think its all a guessing game on how much the decline in state revenues is going to be, said Bolkcom, who doubted lawmakers would reconvene before June. I think its going to be jaw-dropping. Legislators on both sides conceded they, and Reynolds, likely will have to start from scratch in revamping the now-defunct nearly $8 billion spending plan they were starting to assemble into a revised rewrite that may or may not rely on one-time CARES fixes. Lawmakers have passed and the governor has signed a fiscal 2021 bill providing a 2.3% increase in state aid for 327 K-12 school districts. Whitver said in an interview last week it is to be determined if that $85.6 million commitment will still stand. Bolkcom said he hoped lawmakers wouldnt undo what already was a very meager increase for K-12 schools but rather use some of the federal rescue money to sustain or bolster education funding. Whitver pointed out the state currently is in a surplus position with full 10% reserves to absorb some of the hit. We were as prepared as we could possibly be for this, he said. I just hope that its enough. The same uncertainty surrounds the governors proposed Invest in Iowa Act and possible GOP alternative tax relief plans. Im sure this COVID shutdown is going to impact this fiscal years revenue and it also will have an impact on the next fiscal year revenue and that will help us determine whether or not were going to be able to move forward with any kind of a tax relief bill, Schneider said. I think we have to be prepared to maybe shelve it, but I dont think that we necessarily can definitively say that that will be the case right now. Five years ago, researchers from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) led by the CSIC Research Professor Paloma Mas made the breakthrough discovery that the circadian clocks in the growing tip of the plant shoot function in a similar way to the clocks in the mammalian brain, which in both cases are able to synchronize the daily rhythms of the cells in distal organs. From that seminal finding, plant researchers have been eager to discover the messenger molecule that could travel from the shoot to the root to orchestrate the rhythms. The answer is just being published this week in the prestigious Nature Plants journal by Paloma Mas' team and collaborators from Japan, UK, and USA. They have identified a small essential clock protein, named ELF4, as the needed messenger. Furthermore, through a series of ingenious experiments, the researchers have discovered that the movement of this molecule is sensitive to the ambient temperature. The circadian clock is guided by the activity of proteins Most living organisms, including humans and plants, have an internal biological clock that allows them to anticipate and adapt to the environmental changes produced by the earth rotation every 24 hours. In plants, this circadian biological clock is crucial to set up the time for germination, growth and flowering, among other processes. The circadian clock is built of a set of cellular proteins whose amount and activity oscillate daily. The researchers who discovered this mechanism were awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017. Every plant cell contains a circadian clock, that is, it contains all the machinery needed to adapt its responses to the 24 hour-cycle. Nevertheless, as CRAG researchers published in a seminal article in Cell (2015), plants, as mammals, have a master circadian clock, which synchronizes peripheral clocks dispersed throughout the plant. The CSIC professor Paloma Mas explains: "we knew that there was a circadian signal that moves from shoots to roots, but we did not know about the nature of this signal. It could have been hormones, photosynthetic products... Now, we have discovered that it is a core protein of the circadian clock that moves though the plant vasculature." The researchers designed ingenious grafting experiments with the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, connecting different shoots into several roots in which the clock was not working properly. These experiments allowed them to identify the clock protein ELF4, an acronym that accounts for "EARLY FLOWERING 4", as the messenger that moves from shoots to roots to convey circadian information. ELF4 delivers temperature information to the roots Anyone who has ever experienced jet lag, knows that, luckily, the circadian biological clock is able to reset itself by environmental light cues, allowing the body to adapt to the new time zone within few days. In the same way that the circadian clock can synchronize to environmental light, it can also integrate information about ambient temperature. To discern if the ELF4 protein was transmitting to the roots information about light or temperature changes, the two main regulators of the circadian clock, the researchers tested ELF4 movement under different environmental conditions. They discovered that at lower temperatures (12?C), ELF4 mobility from shoots to roots was favoured, resulting in a slow-paced root clock. Instead, when the experiments were performed at higher temperatures (28?C), they observed less ELF4 movement, which lead to a faster root clock. This newly described mechanism could provide an advantage for optimal root responsiveness to temperature variations. Knowledge to live in a climate changing world All this knowledge gathered with a small model plant, could have an impact in the near future. "Climate change and the associated higher temperatures are causing drought, which is already affecting crop productivity in agriculture. Knowing the genes and proteins that plants use to adapt their physiology to the environmental conditions will allow us to design better adapted crops, which will be key to ensure food security", explains CRAG researcher Paloma Mas. ### The work at Paloma Mas' laboratory has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Ramon Areces Foundation and by the Generalitat de Catalunya. The firts author Wei Wei Chen is financed by the Chinese Scholarship Council. The other authors are financed by public funds from their respective countries. About the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) The Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) is a centre that forms part of the CERCA system of research centres of the Government of Catalonia (Spain), and which was established as a partnership of four institutions: the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the Institute for Agri-Food Research and Technology (IRTA), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the University of Barcelona (UB). CRAG's research spans from basic research in plant and farm animal molecular biology, to applications of molecular approaches for breeding of species important for agriculture and food production in close collaboration with industry. In 2016, CRAG was recognized as a "Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence" by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Taliban Says It Released 20 Afghan Government Prisoners By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan April 12, 2020 KABUL -- The Taliban says it has released a first group of Afghan government prisoners it has been holding captive, as part of a delayed swap considered key to paving the way for peace talks between the two sides. The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid as saying that 20 Afghan troops were set free in the southern province of Kandahar on April 12. The Taliban sent photos of those allegedly released to TOLOnews, saying they were handed over to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the broadcaster reported. Afghan officials have not immediately commented. Earlier in the day, the Afghan National Security Council (NSC) said the government had released 100 Taliban prisoners, bringing to 300 the total number of Taliban inmates freed since April 8. The NSC posted several photos of the prisoners on Twitter and said that they had been freed on April 11. The council said that the health condition, age, and length of the remaining sentences were considered in choosing which prisoners to release. A pact signed by the United States and the Taliban in the Qatari capital, Doha, on February 29 calls for the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters as a confidence-building measure ahead of formal peace talks aimed at ending the 18-year conflict in Afghanistan. The Taliban has vowed to release some 1,000 Afghan government troops and civilian workers it is holding. But the Taliban last week recalled a three-member team it had sent to Kabul to try to finalize the swap originally set to happen by March 10. The militants blamed the administration of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for delaying the exchange "under one pretext or another,"; while Kabul called on the Taliban not to "sabotage the process by making excuses." In return for the start of talks between Kabul and the Taliban and a series of security commitments from the militants, all U.S. troops and other foreign coalition forces are meant to withdraw from Afghanistan within 14 months. With reporting by dpa, Reuters, and TOLOnews Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghan- government-releases-100-taliban- prisoners/30548745.html Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address If you are a Scott Morrison fan, then this is a very, very good time for you. You cant get enough? Dont worry, theres more on its way. John Howard loomed larger in the national imagination, but that was because he stuck around for such a long time. Once hed been there a decade, it was difficult to imagine Australia without him. Morrison may yet come close to achieving the same type of cultural omnipresence, only in a much, much shorter time frame. This is almost precisely the opposite of Morrisons plan. When he won last years election, there was a sense he might achieve what Malcolm Fraser had once promised to do, and take politics off the front page. And for a while he did. Little was done, little was said. A quiet prime minister for the quiet Australians. We;re seeing a lot of Scott Morrison - and that's how its going to be for a long time. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen But now, there is only one story on the front page of papers, and it is inseparable from Morrison. Every few days he makes an announcement about coronavirus. And Australians actually watch these press conferences. Tony Abbott, at the start of his own reign, adapted Fraser, saying Happy is the country which is more interested in sport than in politics. Now theres no sport to be interested in. This phase of regular announcements will pass, but Morrison isnt going anywhere. As a friend said to me this week, he is now sitting in every boardroom, in the form of JobKeeper. He is with us as we leave the house for our allotted exercise, as we decide to keep the kids in childcare, as we check our super. India on Monday issued a strong demarche to Pakistan over the killing of three civilians, including a minor, by Pakistani troops in a ceasefire violation along the Line of Control in Keran sector of Jammu and Kashmir, official sources said. The three people were killed when Pakistani forces resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation on Monday, they said. A strong demarche -- a formal diplomatic note -- was made to the Pakistan side on the killing of three innocent Indian civilians, said a source. The demarche was issued to a top diplomat in Pakistan High Commission here. In Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign Ministry summoned Indian Charge d'Affaires Gaurav Ahluwalia and lodged a protest, claiming it was the Indian side that resorted to ceasefire violation in Dhudnial, Rakhchikri, Chirikot and Baroh Sectors on Sunday. Pakistan alleged that a two-year-old boy was killed in Dhudnial Sector. Last Sunday, Keran sector was the scene of a deadly operation in which five elite army commandos laid down their lives while eliminating a group of infiltrating militants. There have been frequent incidents of ceasefire violation by Pakistani side since India announced its decision to withdraw special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two union territories in August last year. Pakistan often resorts to ceasefire violations to push militants into the Indian side. Indian troops have also been retaliating to Pakistani actions under its policy of hot pursuit. According to official figure, Pakistani troops resorted to 3,200 instances of ceasefire violations in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, which was highest in the last 16 years. Of these, 1,565 ceasefire violations took place since between August and December after the India reorganised Jammu and Kashmir. In 2018, Jammu and Kashmir recorded 2,936 instances of ceasefire violations by Pakistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EDWARDSVILLE Officials in both political parties have responded to requests that Illinois Attorney General Kwami Raoul explain why no action was taken on an investigation into allegations of improper acts by Madison County officials. On Friday Capt. David Vucich, the chief of detectives for the Madison County Sheriffs Office and a member of the task force that investigated allegations against Madison County Administrator Doug Hulme and Information Technology Director Rob Dorman, said there was an overwhelming amount of digital evidence and credible witness testimony to bring charges. He said the seven police officers involved in the investigation are puzzled by Raouls decision not to pursue the case. Also on Friday, state Rep. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, said he had sent a letter to Raoul requesting the reason why the investigation was discontinued. Raouls office reviewed questions about the use of computer data by Madison County officials but elected not to pursue charges. Late Friday, Madison County Chairman Kurt Prenzler responded to Plummers request, saying the investigation has been officially over with no charges for months. Prenzler said Plummers political ally (Madison) County Treasurer Chris Slusser actively participated in the investigation of county administrative offices. Hes (Slusser) speaking now, only after his participation is known, Prenzler said. On Monday, Robert Daiber Prenzlers challenger in the Nov. 3 election was joined by Democratic Madison County Board members in calling for the immediate dismissal of top officials in Prenzlers administration and the hiring of an outside firm to take over the countys information technology system. A criminal investigation by six law enforcement agencies has made it clear how extensive corruption and abuses of power are in the Prenzler administration, Daiber said. Madison County must act now to restore public trust by immediately dismissing the Prenzler aides who have committed these truly shocking actions. In his statement, Prenzler said the public corruption task force organized by Madison County States Attorney Tom Gibbons conducted a highly publicized police raid on the administrations offices in January 2018. Then-Chief Judge Dave Hylla decided that no Madison County judge should hear this case, and the Illinois Supreme Court appointed Visiting Judge Jerry Crisel of the Second Judicial Circuit in Mount Vernon over the case, according to Prenzlers statement. Crisel said Gibbons was conflicted and ordered the Illinois Attorney Generals office to investigate the case. After two years, Judge Crisel was informed that the Democratic Illinois Attorney Generals office decided not to file charges, and he entered an order on Feb. 5 to close the case, Prenzler said. Prenzler went on to say, I know something about public corruption. Public corruption is a scheme, over a period of time, involving large sums of money, he said. In 2006 I ran against then-County Treasurer Fred Bathon and I complained that Bathon was running corrupt tax sales. Prenzler said that, at that time, Plummer was county chairman and actively supported Bathon. Prenzler added that his campaign manager at the time, Steve Adler, called the FBI regarding Bathons tax sales. I ran again for treasurer in 2010, won, and the FBI commenced an investigation, Prenzler said. Bathon pleaded guilty to criminal bid-rigging and went to jail. These criminal tax sales cost Madison County taxpayers more than $4 million. The public elected me to cleanup Madison County government, to be a voice for taxpayers, and to be an independent voice that will fight for what is right, which is what I will continue to do, Prenzler said. On Monday, Daiber said affidavits from the investigation, made public last week, provide evidence that Prenzlers top aides: Offered a county job to a congressional staff person in exchange for the appointment of Don Weber to a U.S. attorney position. Created a plan to hack into and spy on e-mails of the Madison County judiciary and the offices of elected county officials. Compromised victim information, released legally privileged information about ongoing cases and improperly reviewed e-mails of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. Gave access to a non-employee to search county e-mails for campaign purposes. Daiber said the abuses are mind-boggling in their scope, reminiscent of the Watergate scandal. He called for the immediate removal of Hulme, Dorman and Adler. In the same release, Madison County Board Members Mike Parkinson, D-Granite City, and Chris Hankins, D-Pontoon Beach, called for stronger data security protocols by the county and hiring an outside firm to manage its county information technology system. Their cybersecurity proposal would: 1. Remove the power of the county IT Department to access e-mails. 2. Assign a compliance officer from each department to manage Freedom of Information Act requests. 3. Only use software that provides an audit trail of every search or request. 4. Require bids for all IT work in excess of $5,000 and a two-thirds board consent for all multi-year contracts. 5. Hire a security consultant. China held a launch ceremony for its first Type 075 amphibious assault ship in Shanghai on September 25, 2019. Photo: 81.cn China's first Type 075 amphibious assault ship reportedly caught on fire on Saturday at the Hudong Zhonghua Shipyard in Shanghai. Although thick smoke was seen on the ship, sources in the know said the accident was not significant and will not wield any major impact on further construction. Photos circulating on the internet showed that the stern of a Type 075 amphibious assault ship was blackened by a fire, and certain videos showed that there was fire at the stern, and columns of smoke were billowing with the wind, Singaporean news outlet Lianhe Zaobao reported on Saturday. Sources said the ship that caught fire was the first Type 075 of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, and the warship was still under construction. The ship received a grand launch ceremony on September 25, 2019. As China's first ever domestically developed amphibious assault ship, the Type 075 has strong capabilities in amphibious warfare and could conduct multiple types of missions. According to plan, the ship would conduct equipment calibration, mooring and sea trials. In line with general rules, related testing processes after the ship's launch are still under the management of the shipyard rather than the navy. Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie told the Global Times on Saturday that smoke concentrated on the middle and rear areas of the ship, judging from the photos, and the cause for the fire is likely be problems with the power and mechanical systems, sparks caused by electric welding in maintenance, a fire in the kitchen or some flammable materials on deck or in the hanger that were left unsupervised for some time. Judging from the thickness of the smoke, the fire was put under control quickly, and since no open flames were seen, the fire should have been extinguished very quickly, Li said. Echoing Li, an expert in the shipbuilding industry who asked not to be named told the Global Times on Saturday that the thick smoke indicated the emergency response was fast. Since the construction of the ship was still underway, there could be materials being placed on the ground, which could have been ignited by sparks caused by electric welding, the anonymous expert said. Sources in the know said that although the smoke seemed to be thick, the fire was not even considered a small accident, and will have no major impact on further construction. Any missed details could result in an accident in the construction of a large ship, and a small problem could potentially impact the overall construction, Li said, noting that despite this, no country could possibly avoid all accidents, so there is no need to groundlessly speculate on the origins of the Type 075's fire. Accidents taking place in the process of construction can help find out any causes and solve hidden problems in advance, before a larger accident occurs, Li said, noting that, as the amphibious assault ship will be frequently used in the future, if any major technical issues were to be found later on when the ship was being used by the military, the result may potentially be worse. Maharashtra doubled its tally from 1,000 to 2,000 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in six days as it recorded its biggest 24-hour jump in cases with 352 more patients on Monday, taking the number of infected people in the state to 2,334. The state recorded 11 deaths on Monday, the health department said, taking the toll to 160. The Maharashtra government on Monday also officially extended the lockdown, which was to end at midnight on April 14, till April 30. On Saturday, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had already said the state would extend the lockdown. The state government is also looking at allowing micro-, small- and medium- enterprises (MSMEs) to start operations in districts that are not affected or less affected by the outbreak. A proposal for allowing industries is being prepared by the state industries department. However, the state has not taken a call on colour-coding districts based on the severity of cases and relaxing curbs in regions that are not much affected. Of Mondays cases, Mumbai recorded 242 alone, taking the citys tally to 1,540. Besides Mumbai, 39 cases were recorded in Pune; 14 in Malegaon; 11 in Nagpur; nine in Thane; seven in Mira-Bhayander; six in Pimpri-Chinchwad; five in Vasai-Virar; four each in Aurangabad, Buldhana and Kalyan-Dombivli; one each in Ahmednagar, Dhule, Nashik, Navi Mumbai, Panvel, Raigad and Yavatmal. Of the 11 deaths in Maharashtra, nine were in Mumbai and one each in Pune and Mira-Bhayander. The state took 30 days to cross the 1,000-case mark on April 7, while it crossed the 2,000 mark in just six days on April 13. The state health department is not perturbed by the doubling of cases as the spread of the virus is still in stage two or the local transmission stage, where disease transmission is limited to those with travel history to affected countries or those in contact with the infected person. State health commissioner Anup Kumar Yadav said the coronavirus spread is not exponential and is under control. We are still in stage two of transmission. The spread is now in clusters, but it is not exponential. Our cluster containment plans are showing results and it is not going out of control. Any infectious disease has a growth pattern. One is the way it is growing now, and the other is it growing exponentially, which is seen in some other countries. We are confident that the measures we have taken at an early stage are well-placed; it is responding well. So it should not go out of control, Yadav said. According to Yadav, the state is conducting an average of 3,000 coronavirus tests daily, and he attributed the increasing number of cases to aggressive testing too. The state government, he said, is now awaiting antibody test kits from the Centre to carry out rapid testing. We are waiting for the kits. It would be first used by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). We do not plan to use it elsewhere in the state. Besides, we are also awaiting the Centres nod for pool testing permission, which the state had sought, he said. Malegaon in Nashik district has seen a surge in the number of coronavirus cases. On Monday, 14 cases were reported from the area, taking the tally to 29. It is being looked at as another cluster where the spread had spiked. The district authorities in conjunction with the municipal council are looking at demarcating containment areas in Malegaon. Meanwhile, the state government is considering allowing industrial operations across the state except for areas of Mumbai and Pune, which has a high number of coronavirus case. State industries minister Subhash Desai held a review meeting on Monday and had directed the department to submit a proposal on where the MSME and other industries can be reopened. Excluding the areas of Mumbai and Pune, which has a high number of Covid-19 cases, a proposal should be prepared to allow industries to start their operations with certain restrictions in the rest of the districts of the state, said Desai, in a statement. Desai further asked the department to give priority to food processing units that would provide relief to farmers. These units would also provide employment to labourers, said Desai, adding that all these things will be put before the chief minister for approval. Senior state government officials said the state has so far not decided to relax lockdown measures in the areas that are less affected by the outbreak. Senior officials also added that no decision on colour-coding districts has been taken so far. Thackeray held a meeting with divisional commissioners and senior police officials on Monday to take stock of the situation. On the lockdown extension, a notification issued by chief secretary Ajoy Mehta on Monday read It is expedient to take measures further to contain the spread of coronavirus, therefore, in exercise of the powers conferred under section 2 of the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897 the state government directs that the lockdown orders shall now be extended up to and inclusive of April 30, 2020. Officials said that the rising numbers of cases have forced the state government to extend lockdown till April 30 to prevent the state from slipping in to phase three community spread of Covid-19 outbreak. It was necessary to extend the lockdown period as the state has been the worst-hit by the pandemic and more than a hundred cases are coming per day for more than a week. The spread can be arrested only with the help of a lockdown, said a senior official requesting anonymity. We are planning to give relaxations in areas that are not affected or have minimal cases. We have advised to allow to start industries with conditions such as they will have to accommodate workforce if not at the work place, then somewhere near the workstation so that workers wont have to commute and social distancing can be maintained, said a senior official, requesting anonymity. There wont be any relaxations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune Metropolitan Region, he added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France Mon, April 13, 2020 13:01 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd186970 2 Lifestyle Clare-Waight-Keller,Givenchy,fashion,France,Meghan-Markle,royal-wedding,luxury,fashion-designer Free British fashion designer Clare Waight Keller, who created the wedding dress for Meghan Markle when she married Prince Harry, is stepping down from her role as artistic director of French fashion house Givenchy, the company said in a statement Friday. Clare Waight Keller, 49, became Givenchy's artistic director in 2017, the first woman to hold the role in the history of the fashion house, which is owned by French luxury giant LVMH. "As the first woman to be the artistic director of this legendary Maison, I feel honored to have been given the opportunity to cherish its legacy and bring it new life," she said in a statement released by Givenchy. "Focusing on a world based on Haute Couture has been one of the highlights of my professional journey," she added. Sidney Toledano, chairman and chief executive of LVMH Fashion Group, thanked Waight Keller for her contribution to "Givenchy's latest chapter". Read also: Markle's wedding dress is a big win for LVMH's Givenchy "Under her creative leadership, and in great collaboration with its ateliers and teams, the Maison reconnected with the founding values of Hubert de Givenchy and his innate sense of elegance," Toledano said. Givenchy said its new "creative organization" will be communicated at a later date. Waight Keller created the boat-necked, sculpted dress that Markle wore for her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, featuring a five-meter train embroidered with flowers from all 53 Commonwealth countries. Waight Keller made her name by turning Pringle of Scotland from a rather staid knitwear maker into a fashion brand. She has also worked for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and for Tom Ford at Gucci. She joined Givenchy after six years at the helm at Chloe. Chad Denker feels for local high school seniors and their families on two levels. One, as superintendent of David City Public Schools. Two, as a parent of a high school senior, Clayton. Both personally and professionally, he said in response to sympathizing with seniors who will miss their traditional high school swan song that includes prom and graduation ceremonies after Gov. Pete Ricketts last week directed all schools statewide remain closed through May 31 due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19. I have a senior high school and I was looking forward to watching him walk the halls one last time, going to prom and handing him his diploma. But I also understand safety has to come first. David City Public, like other school districts in Butler County and beyond, is grappling with the effects of closed classrooms and buildings, now teaching kids remotely. DCPS in mid-March shut its doors completely for a little over a week so district leaders and faculty could regroup and forge a plan to how to effectively teach students under unique circumstances. Theyve done really well, Denker said of faculty adjusting to a new normal. But thats also why we were very slow and methodical as to how we released it. Right now, the district sends out a weeks worth of materials. Kindergarten through second-grade students have take-home packets they pick up each week, while third-12th grades do all of their work using Chromebooks and laptops. Some teaching is being done through Zoom video and Google Classroom web services. Additionally, the district is utilizing IXL, considered the world's most popular subscription-based learning website for K12. Each school buildings principal meets with staff on Tuesdays and talks about things that are being done well, what could be done better and how administrators can help. Currently, students are getting about half as much work assigned to them than what they would if they were in the physical classroom, according to Denker. That was a conscious decision made by the district so that students are not overwhelmed as they adjust to a new school life without having a classroom to go to each weekday. Other area school districts are in a similar boat. For Aquinas Catholic Schools, grades six-12 are doing things online through Power School Learning, according to Father Sean Timmerman. Meanwhile, he said, K-5 at St. Marys are utilizing packets they pick up at school and take home. We will continue with the online learning at Aquinas and the packet at St. Marys. We will continue that to the end of our academic calendar year he said. I think its been going really well. Teachers are working hard. Kids are working hard. Parents have been very helpful too, very supportive of it. Obviously, its not the ideal situation to have, but I think people are making the best of it. I think learning is still happening, its just happening in a different way. East Butler Public School District Superintendent Sam Stecher said it has been a challenging time. We are hanging in there, he said. On March 5, we began planning for the possibility that face-to-face educational service could no longer become variable. I don't think it would have been possible for any district to hit the ground running but we had prepared and we were in the starting blocks. Some students and staff have adjusted quite well and I'm certain others are struggling. It's not a steep learning curve. It is an immediate wall that needed to be scaled. Grace and patience are just as important as technology and distance education strategy. Shelby-Rising City Public Schools is also adjusting. "We are doing the best we can to serve our students academic needs through a remote learning plan which combines online learning and packets We have staff on modified schedules of home and school. We want to make as much contact with our school family of staff and students to ensure they are making it through this difficult time, Superintendent Chip Kay said, making a point to praise faculty, students and parents for all working hard and providing feedback to make things work as best they can under the unique circumstances. We are doing priority learning targets and have scaled back our content and work to a learning-centered process. Right now we are focusing on student learning and less on grades. Our teachers communicate with students in several ways and we use our digital learning management system to distribute content to students. For those with limited internet, we send home packets. As for seniors, area district leaders are holding out hope they can do something for their graduating classes. In David City Publics case, Denker said talks about what could be done for the 44 seniors are ongoing. Denker said David City Public has reached out to Four Corners Health Department to see about the possibility of getting approval to give each senior a unique graduation ceremony. The idea would be for each senior (dressed in their cap and gown) and a few family members to come to the high school at a designated time on graduation day (May 16) to meet with Denker, DCHS Principal Cortney Couch and School Board President Stephanie Summers, receive their diploma and take a picture (the meetings would be limited to 10 to follow current state procedures). The whole ceremony would be live-streamed, along with senior highlight videos and pre-recorded graduation speeches, so that family and friends out of town could watch. Denker said prom organizers are also hopeful to have some kind of an event for the graduating class sometime later in the summer. At Aquinas, Timmerman said nothing has been set in stone. Were still discussing those things and havent made any final decisions yet. The challenge is Nebraska has an order out that you cant have gatherings of more than 10 people. Its hard to have any kind of musical, or vocal music concert or prom dance or graduation ceremony. Those bring in 100s of people, he said. Thats a challenge right there is figuring out if you can even have something somewhat similar to what youre trying to do and still maintain that 10 person rule. If we cant do that then we have to wait until the pandemic is over and we can have some type of graduation. For example, if we have a graduation later in the summer if thats a possibility if and when the pandemic ends. Stecher shared hope something could be done for East Butler seniors toward mid-summer. We are looking at dates in July to bring events back to our seniors that they have missed because of the pandemic, he said. As for Shelby-Rising City, the community is holding out hope that a normal graduation ceremony might still be happen just significantly later than the original May date. All school activities for the year have been canceled, except graduation. There are too many variables to reschedule some other events, Kay said, adding that all educators in the district sincerely miss seeing students in the classrooms and schools. Based on parent feedback, we are proposing to the Board of Education to move graduation from May 9th to July 31st in hopes of having a traditional graduation ceremony for the Class of 2020. For his part, Denker said he remains hopeful seniors will still get an opportunity to collectively celebrate all of their accomplishments. But regardless, he and others think of them highly. We miss them and this isnt what we were envisioning for their last quarter of their senior year, but we know theyre going to do great things in the future, Denker said. Were just as disappointed as they are. Matt Lindberg is the managing editor of The Banner-Press. Reach him via email at matt.lindberg@lee.net. Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. As the world celebrates Easter in a sombre mood due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 1.6 million have contracted the disease with more than 95,000 people dying from it. A close observation on Sunday has shown that while some countries continue to have a decline in infections, others are seeing a continuous rise in the number of cases and deaths. Here is a round-up of the coronavirus situation across the globe as of Sunday evening. 45 Nigerians recover from COVID-19 within seven days A PREMIUM TIMES analysis has shown that no fewer than 45 COVID-19 patients have recovered and have been discharged in the last week, totalling 85 since the disease broke out in February. As of 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nigeria had recorded 323 confirmed cases, 850 discharged and 10 deaths, according to official data from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Spain infection rate slows amidst rising deaths Despite the rise in the number of deaths and new cases, Spain has recorded a low rate of new cases in recent daysfirst time since March when the curve of the spread was high. The countrys overnight rise in new cases was 2.6 per cent compared with a daily average of 12 per cent at the end of March and 20 per cent in mid-March. The number of coronavirus-related deaths in Spain has risen by 619 since Saturday to a total of 16,972, Reuters reports. The countrys health ministry said the number of recorded cases had also risen, from 161,852 to 166,019 on Sunday. The latest daily jump of 4,167 new cases is the lowest the country has recorded since March 22. The outbreak has crippled its economy unsparingly but lockdown directives have been up to counter the pandemic. Pope delivers virtual Easter mass Pope Francis departed from orthodox tradition and livestreamed his Easter Sunday mass to allow the worlds 1.3 billion Catholics to celebrate their holiest holiday. In the Vatican, the pope delivered mass from a largely empty St Peters Basilica before a handful of token faithful sitting one per pew and with the choirs Kyrie hymn echoing off the bare marble floors, the Associated Press reports. He warned the European Union that it risked collapse if it did not agree on how to help the region recover. This is not a time for indifference, because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic, he said in the message, almost entirely dedicated to the pandemics effects on personal and international relations. Indifference, self-centredness, division and forgetfulness are not words we want to hear at this time. We want to ban these words forever! he said. South Africa coronavirus cases reach 2,173 South Africa announced 145 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of infections to 2,173, a health ministry statement said. The statement stopped short of specifying whether any new fatalities had been recorded, which stood at 25 as of Saturday. Libyan hospital treating coronavirus patients cases attacked Advertisements Armed fighters loyal to Libyan warlord, Khalifa Haftar, have attacked medical warehouses belonging to a hospital in the capital Tripoli that is treating coronavirus patients, the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) said on Sunday. While the country has so far reported 25 cases of the coronavirus and one death, the attack targeted depots of the Al-Khadra Hospital in al-Swani in the capital, Tripoli, with Grad missiles, and was condemned by the UN agency. It would be recalled that the UN had earlier condemned the shelling of the hospital in which at least three civilians were wounded, calling it a clear violation of international law. Frances coronavirus death toll rises to 14,393 The coronavirus death toll in France rose to 14,393 from 13,832 on Saturday, the French public health authority said. The total number of infections reached 95,403. Turkey coronavirus cases reach 56,956, deaths 1,198 Turkey coronavirus cases rose by 4,789 to 56,956 in the past 24 hours, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. The number of deaths reached 1,198 from 1,101 the previous day. So far, 3,446 people have recovered, the minister said. Canada coronavirus cases reach 23,719, deaths 674 The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Canada rose by 74 to 674 in a day, official data posted by the public health agency showed on Sunday. Meanwhile, the total number of infections coronavirus reached 23,719. Sri Lanka makes cremation compulsory for coronavirus deaths As death toll continues to rise in Sri Lanka, authorities have made cremations compulsory for coronavirus victims, ignoring protests from the countrys Muslim population which says the rule goes against Islamic tradition. Three Muslims are among the seven people who have so far died from the infectious disease in the country. Their bodies were cremated by the authorities despite protests from relatives. The corpse of a person who has died or is suspected to have died, of COVID-19 shall be cremated, Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi said on Sunday. The decision has also been criticised by rights groups. Coronavirus: Israel seals Jerusalems ultra-Orthodox areas Israel shut down some old and widely condensed areas in Jerusalem amid the Easter celebration, to curb the coronavirus spread. Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox town of 200,000 near Tel Aviv, was declared a restricted zone. The entry and exit restrictions, enforced by police roadblocks, were imposed on the same day that a government order for the wearing of masks in public went into effect throughout the country. While residents of the restricted neighbourhoods in Jerusalem can still shop close to home for essentials, synagogues have been closed to try to stem infections. Israel has reported 10,878 confirmed coronavirus cases and 103 deaths. Coronavirus: North Korea calls for tougher restrictions North Korea called for tougher and more thorough countermeasures to keep citizens safe from the fast-spreading coronavirus at a meeting where leader Kim Jong Un presided, Reuters said on Sunday. North Korea continues testing for the virus, with more than 500 people in quarantine, but has no confirmed infections yet, a country representative of the World Health Organisation told Reuters this week. The virus had created obstacles to work on the economy, but the North had enforced consistent and compulsory strict top-class emergency anti-epidemic measures to maintain a stable situation. At a meeting on Saturday, the political bureau of the central committee of the ruling Workers Party of Korea adopted a resolution to take more thorough state measures to protect peoples lives and safety against the pandemic, Reuters quoted the Korean Central News Agency as reported. By Kyle Martin Bay City News Service At least 100 full-time union-represented food service and janitorial workers were laid off after the novel coronavirus outbreak began affecting classes at Stanford University, and the workers' union along with students and alumni on Monday demanded that the university continue to pay their salaries and benefits into the summer. "These are workers with families," Denise Solis, first vice president for Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West said. "These workers have fought for benefits like health insurance." Of the roughly 230 food service and janitorial employees between Stanford's main campus and Redwood City campus, about 100 have been laid off without pay and benefits since mid-March, and at least 130 workers could be laid off by the end of this month, according to Stanford's chapter of the union. The union wants Stanford to commit to paying the wages and benefits of its workers through the current quarter into June so employees who depend on their employer for their income and health care benefits will have a "safety net" during the deadly COVID-19 disease outbreak. The union also said the employees were laid off without proper notice, as required by their labor contract. "We understand that Stanford could make some sort of a commitment to these workers so that they have some sort of a cushion before they are left just totally without wages," Solis added. The university did not immediately return a request for comment Monday. "When they're laid off like this, (for) many of them this means, since they're living paycheck-to-paycheck, they can't pay rent," Solis said. "It's a double hit, not just for the janitors and food service workers, but for their families." Solis said Stanford has tried to "wash their hands" of the situation by directing union representatives to try to mediate with UG2, the university's labor contractor. "It's so disappointing when they don't put their money where their mouth is," John-Lancaster Finley, former Associated Students of Stanford University president, said during Monday's teleconference with SEIU-USWW. California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, on Monday said she hopes her alma mater commits to continuing its employees' wages and benefits through the end of the current quarter. "We know that Stanford can help these workers that serve students and faculty everyday," Gonzalez said. "We should respect them as much as we suggest that they are essential workers." Gonzalez said it is Stanford's "responsibility" to look after the well-being of its employees by keeping them on payroll so the school's workers and their families "continue to have some sort of safety net" while much of the country remains shut down because of the effects of the coronavirus. In an April 3 email correspondence between the union and the university, Stanford's associate vice president of employee and labor relations Alex Gurza said the university is "of course, concerned about the impact of the current pandemic on all members of the Stanford University community," but that "Stanford is not the employer of any of the workers represented by SEIU USWW, and the University is not in a position to make any decisions regarding their employment status." Gurza added that in the meantime, Stanford hopes the laid-off employees can find unemployment benefits through the federal CARES Act, "including but not limited to enhanced unemployment insurance benefits. "Again, we appreciate your letter and empathize with everyone affected by this crisis," Gurza's email concludes. "We look forward to a time, hopefully in the not too distant future, when we can all return to normalcy." Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Farrah Abraham matched outfits with her 11-year-old daughter Sophia when they stepped out for a stroll in Los Angeles on Sunday. The 28-year-old Teen Mom alumna pulled in a tie-dye jumpsuit and gave a tip of the hat to Easter by accessorizing with bunny ears. She kept an eye to safety for her latest outing too, making sure both she and her daughter were wearing masks and gloves amid the coronavirus pandemic. Hand in hand: Farrah Abraham matched outfits with her 11-year-old daughter Sophia when they stepped out for a stroll in Los Angeles on Sunday. Farrah led Sophia with one arm and in the other she cradled her dog Cupcake, whose fur has mostly been dyed hot pink. Last month Farrah came in for a storm of social media backlash over an Instagram video showing Cupcake's new hair color. Cupcake was also wearing a muzzle and Farrah's Pomeranian Boo could be seen in the video almost completely dyed blue. Protective: She kept an eye to safety for her latest outing too, making sure both she and her daughter were wearing masks and gloves amid the coronavirus pandemic Her comments were flooded with Instagram users accusing her of mistreating her animals, but she did not accept their criticism. The original video's caption included the postscript: 'for those who do not know what dog training muzzles are go to your nearest pet store and learn more and why they can be helpful in training.' After receiving blowback in the comments she gave an interview to TMZ referring to the negative attention she got as 'hate speech.' What a look: Both of Farrah's dogs, Boo and Cupcake, have had their fur dyed bright colors leading to blowback on social media Farrah's other Pomeranian Blue died in 2018 and the reality star was glimpsed afterwards taking the body to a taxidermist. Like some other reality stars who went on to appear on Teen Mom, Farrah got her start in television on 16 And Pregnant. While Farrah was still expecting Sophia during 16 And Pregnant, the baby's father Derek Underwood perished in a car crash three days after Christmas 2008. Something to look forward to: Apple's roadmap for 2020 has been detailed in a new report, and it looks like the company is gradually updating the design language of its iPhones starting with this year's premium models. People who have been waiting for a new take on the classic iPhone 5 design will no doubt be pleases, as will people who are big fans of augmented reality apps and smart accessories. Foxconn's business saw a significant hit during the last quarter of 2019 as well as the first quarter of this year, but most insiders along the supply chain are confident the iPhone 12 launch schedule won't suffer any major modifications. The company's engineers are expected to travel to China next month to finalize the design process for the new devices. This year, Apple is expected to unveil its first batch of 5G phones, in the form of an iPhone 12 Pro, an iPhone 12 Pro Max, and two mainstream models that will replace the iPhone 11 - which has been 2019's second best-selling phone despite launching in the fall. Now we know a bit more about the overall aesthetics of the phone, courtesy of a Bloomberg report saying Apple will migrate the exterior design language of the current iPad Pro to the premium iPhone 12 models. However, instead of an aluminum shell, the new phones will have flat stainless steel edges with "more sharply rounded corners." The iPhone 12 Pro Max will supposedly come with a slightly larger display than the 6.5-inch panel found in the iPhone 11 Pro Max. And while the notch is here to stay until Apple finds a way to remove it altogether, the two premium iPhones coming later this year should feature slightly smaller notches. The LIDAR scanner that's used for depth sensing in AR applications on the new iPad Pro will also be a highlight of the two high-end iPhone 12 models. As for when they'll arrive, the recent disruptions in the global supply chain may lead to a launch that will closely resemble that of the iPhone X in 2017, when people had to wait several weeks until they could get their hands on it. In addition to a fresh redesign of its iPhones, Apple also has other things in store for later this year. One of them is a "mini" version of its extravagant and rather expensive HomePod, which is said to come with a lower price tag that might even cut below the $149 that Apple employees have to pay to fetch the original one. This should, in theory, help the company chip away some market share from the likes of Amazon and Google who essentially have a duopoly at this point. The other device is the elusive AirTags that have been spotted in iOS 14 code and even official support videos. Bloomberg says these Bluetooth accessories will come in a puck shape and bundled with a leather sleeve that attaches to your keychain. Their usefulness will hinge on Apple's U1 chip that uses ultra wideband technology to offer spacial awareness for location tracking applications. Reports on April 12 stated that Turkey has officially confirmed it will supply Israel with medical equipment, such as face masks, protective suits and sterile gloves, to fight the coronavirus outbreak. The equipment is expected to be shipped to Israel in the coming days, perhaps already on April 16, together with a similar shipment of medical equipment destined for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. News of the shipment was first published by Bloomberg on April 9, instigating a multitude of unofficial reactions in Israel. The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has refused categorically to comment, though medical shipments from other countries such as the United States and China were celebrated with updates from the ministrys spokesperson and associates in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office. Such was the case with a shipment of 1 million masks supplied by the US Department of Defense. Turkish sources described the double shipment to Israel and the PA as a humanitarian gesture. But a source in Israels Foreign Ministry told Al-Monitor that the transfer of medical equipment from Turkey was commercial in nature and advanced by private actors. On the other hand, the Turkish confirmation on April 12 made it clear that the transfer of these masks and gloves was indeed sanctioned by the office of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. So why the confusion? Several elements could explain these different diplomatic versions. Erdogan has long portrayed himself as defender of the Palestinians and the Palestinian cause, so it was only natural for Ankara to propose its help to the residents of the West Bank in fighting the coronavirus. Apparently, Israels willingness to facilitate the humanitarian shipment to the PA generated satisfaction in Turkey, hence the offer to ship such material to Israel, too. And while Israeli bodies might well be paying privately for this equipment, the very fact that Erdogan did not rebuff this news nor the deal itself speaks volumes. On the Israeli side, Jerusalem might be reluctant to credit Erdogan with battling the virus that causes COVID-19. But the picture seems to be more complex. With the deterioration of bilateral ties over the past decade, Israeli diplomats consider every step forward, as small as it may be, as extremely fragile and sensitive. For Jerusalem, the less publicity the better. To that we might add Israels expanding ties in recent years mostly in the energy field with Greece and Cyprus, as counterbalance axis to Turkey. News of Jerusalem and Ankara cooperating would surely stir some concerns amid Israels new allies. A Luxembourg court has blocked a long-running US request to transfer USD 1.6 billion of dollars in Iranian assets to victims of the September 11 attacks, an official statement said on Monday. The decision confirmed a claim by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani who on Sunday said the country had won a legal victory over the assets that had long been frozen on a US request in Luxembourg. The official statement in Luxembourg said that an appeals court on April 1 found the US seizure demand "inadmissible" since the type of account in question is "unseizable" according to national law. The money is held in the Clearstream clearing house, a financial company owned by Deutsche Boerse based in Luxembourg. However, the statement added that the ruling was not final and could be appealed at Luxembourg's highest court. In a separate decision, the statement said a Luxembourg district judge on April 3 blocked the transfer of funds and said Clearstream would be subject to a daily fine of 1 million euros (USD 1.09 million) if it moved the money. An attempt on April 7 by Clearstream to have the transfer ban lifted was refused by the president of the Luxembourg court on procedural grounds. Tehran and Washington have long been arch enemies and tensions have risen sharply since President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear accord and reimposed stinging sanctions. In this separate dispute, a New York court in 2012 ordered Iran to pay USD 7 billion in damages over the September 11 attacks, arguing that it had aided Al-Qaeda by allowing its militants to travel through its territory. Iran has rejected the accusation and refused to pay the money leading US authorities to demand asset seizures wherever they can. Rouhani said in a televised cabinet meeting Sunday that "our central bank, our foreign ministry [have] recently won a very good victory in a legal battle". "USD 1.6 billion of our money was in Luxembourg and the Americans had put their hands on it," he said. After trying for months, "we succeeded some days ago and freed this money from the Americans' grasp," he declared. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jacksonville City Council is scheduled to meet by teleconference no later than 7 p.m. today. The meeting will follow a workshop scheduled for 6 p.m. The meeting will be available by calling 217-479-3599 and using access code 8004. Grand Rapids, Mich.-based insurance brokerage, Hylant, one of the nations largest privately owned insurance brokerages, has hired Ken Fortier to lead business development efforts for the West Michigan division of the 16-office, more than 700 employee family owned company. Fortier is based in Hylants downtown Grand Rapids location. Before joining Hylant, Fortier was the director of sales and marketing for Deksia, a well-known Grand Rapids area marketing firm. Fortier is credited with leading Deksia through its largest period of growth from 2018 to 2020. He also served as CEO of Grand Rapids-based information services firm Quantum Leap Communications from 2003 to 2013, when he sold his business. In 2012, Fortier authored a book, NetPlus Connections, which reflected on his years as a business owner and his passion for developing authentic relationships. It was during his years as a business owner that Fortier developed a following of people looking to learn this art. After dozens of speaking engagements and group trainings, he grew his consulting business and supported hundreds of members in their sales and development growth. Fortier also has experience working with insurance agencies as a consultative partner and brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. Hylant was founded in 1935 and now has 16 offices in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia. Hylant is a member of the Worldwide Broker Network. Source: Hylant Topics Michigan Bihar and Odisha will soon allow resumption of works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employee Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the worlds biggest rural social security scheme, in an effort to provide relief to the rural poor hit by the coronavirus disease (Covid) and consequent lockdown. The nationwide, three-week lockdown ends on Tuesday, April 14, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to address the nation at 10 a.m.to outline immediate future plans to combat the pandemic and prevent its spread. On Monday, most state governments submitted their plans for the post-lockdown phase with a majority suggesting that the emergency measure continue with exemptions for agriculture and allied services and more measures to provide relief to the poor. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar told divisional commissioners and zonal inspectors general of police on Monday that a comprehensive plan was being prepared to generate employment opportunities for people. The biggest concern of the state government has been the lack of work for large number of people, including migrant workers who have returned from different states after the lockdown came into force on March 25. The state government also wants to complete flood management work before the onset of the monsoon. Officials said the second phase of the lockdown after April 14 would be different, with the government planning to allow work under MGNREGS to resume or the conservation of traditional water sources, soil conservation, environment-specific crop cycles, organic farming, drip irrigation, rain water harvesting and use of solar energy. Kumar said that all precautions must be taken to ensure the safety of labourers and farmers. After harvesting, employment generation in rural areas will be the main focus, there is no reason to be complacent at any stage in view of the Covid-19 outbreak, he added. So far, Bihar has done well to restrict the spread of Covid-19, with 27 districts still untouched by it and most of the 64 reported positive cases tracked. In Odisha, which has already announced extension of the lockdown until April 30, the government on Monday announced that work under MGNREGS and construction under Swachh Bharat (Clean India) scheme will be allowed, apart from all agricultural activities. The state government also plans to hire retired state and central police officers to enforce social distancing norms for the next six months, the police said. Odisha police have proposed to hire around 2,400 retired policemen of state and central forces as special police officers for deployment in different districts. They will help maintain law and order in different containment zones, as well as trace Covid-19 suspects, officials said. According to the order issued by chief secretary Asit Tripathy, shops and establishments selling agricultural implements, cattle feed and fish feed, and food processing and packaging units will also be allowed to remain open during the extended lockdown. The order said that activities relating to MGNREGS and construction of toilets under Swachh Bharat mission and individual houses under the rural housing scheme would be allowed. The works related to water conservation and supply of drinking water would continue, apart from procurement of rabi, or winter-sown, crops. People engaged in fishing, floriculture, tendu leaf plucking and collection of non-timber forest produce can also carry out their work, the order said, adding that e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and Big Basket will be allowed to deliver goods across Odisha. State special relief commissioner (SRC) Pradeep Jena said social distancing norms would be strictly followed while facilitating activities that were related to the peoples livelihoods. Till Monday, Odisha had reported 55 positive cases, one death and 13 recoveries. Only 2 of the remaining 41 patients are critical, said a state government statement. His charges in the case included armed habitual criminal and armed robbery both are felonies punishable by six to 30 years in prison, the sheriffs office said. He was also charged with aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated battery to a peace officer, felony possession or use of a firearm and resisting a peace officer. A judge denied bail. Subscriber content preview Apple, Google to harness phones for coronavirus infection tracking The technology might serve as a stopgap in the absence of widespread testing for the virus. But it needs to be designed so it can't be abused by governments, some warn. By FRANK BAJAK and MATT O'BRIEN AP Technology Writer Apple and Google launched a major joint effort to leverage smartphone technology to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. New software the companies plan to add to phones would make it easier to use Bluetooth wireless technology to track down people for who may have been infected by coronavirus carriers. The idea is to help national or regional governments roll out apps for so-called contact tracing that will run on iPhones and Android phones alike. . . . login or purchase a To read this story in fullor purchase a subscription. In less than a year after the WeWork fiasco, Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, is now staring at another troubled startup the Indian hospitality firm OYO. The firm has been forced to freeze operations around the world and has been furloughing thousands of employees, media reports have said. Travel has come to a halt, leaving hotel rooms empty and losses rising for the nascent company. Follow our LIVE coverage of PM Modi's address here The Ritesh Agarwal-backed company, once touted by Son to overtake the biggest hotel chains in the world, is now facing an existential crisis in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In a highly unusual move, Agarwal borrowed $2 billion to buy shares of OYO as the valuation soared, with a personal guarantee to financial institutions from Son. Amid OYO's dismal operations, Son's $2 billion promise could be in jeopardy as banks may call for more collateral if the hotel chains valuation drops any further. This could result in personal losses to both Son and Agarwal. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show Agarwal could be in trouble soon if he faces a margin call, Justin Tang, head of Asian Research at United First Partners told Bloomberg, suggesting that the 26-year-old may be forced to sell shares at a massive discount. In 2017, Son had invested $1.5 billion in OYO as a part of its $100 billion Vision Fund. Earlier this week, OYO, which is one of the biggest startups in SoftBanks portfolio, placed thousands of employees on leave and furloughs for up to three months in the US and several other markets after most countries went for travel bans due to the pandemic, cutting its revenue and demand by more than 50 percent. In a statement, Oyo confirmed the furloughs and added that the Indian market was not impacted. Son had vowed after WeWork he wouldnt bail out any more startups, but concerns have weighed on SoftBanks share price. SoftBank wrote down $4.7 billion and Vision Fund $3.5 billion on their investments in WeWork. State police can issue rule breakers with on-the-spot fines of $1,334 Queensland police have issued 660 fines to rule breakers over the past week More than $800,000 worth of fines have been handed out to people blatantly ignoring coronavirus restrictions in Queensland. Police officers have been enforcing social distancing laws in an attempt to curb the number of people infected with COVID-19. While most obeyed advice by the federal government urging people to stay home, Queensland police have issued 660 fines to rule breakers. State rules say that people who gather in groups of more than two or leave their homes for non-essential reasons, such as attending school, visiting a terminally ill relative or excising, risk on-the-spot fines of $1,334. Despite the penalties, multitudes of residents remained undeterred from leaving the house. People on the Gold Coast in Queensland flock to the beaches on April 11 regardless of stay home directives issued by the government Police question man and his fishing boat towed ton his family car at BP Service Station half way between Brisbane and the Gold Coast over the Easter weekend amid state-wide lockdown A wealthy businessman was fined twice last week after he was allegedly caught picnicking on a beach on Moreton Island - a luxury holiday destination off the Queensland south coast. Days later, police found him on the same beach with his helicopter, where he was fined a total of $2,668. 'The fellow with a helicopter who thought it would be OK to fly to an area against the requirements of the directions, not only once but twice,' Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said on Monday. 'So on both occasions actions have been taken ... that's not on.' A 27-year-old man from Cairns, in the state's far north, was also fined after driving one hour to Port Douglas for a Tinder date. 'The dinner date proved costly, with the man not only springing for the takeaway meal, but also for a $1,334 fine,' police said. Another six people were fined in Port Douglas on Friday after a group was caught drinking at the Mowbray River. A Queensland Policeman is pictured moving people on from the beach at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, Friday April 10, amid nation-wide lockdowns CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement Several people were also fined for taking rubbish to Willawong tip, south of Brisbane. Dumping rubbish was not deemed an essential trip, even though the tip remains open to the public. Anna Carter, from NSW, also appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court last week after she was caught twice breaking quarantine. The 45-year-old arrived in Brisbane via train and was ordered to spend two weeks in the Ibis Hotel at Brisbane Airport. She left the hotel the first time to find a Band-Aid for a blister on her foot, then a second time because the hotel didn't provide fresh towels each day. After spending one night in the watchhouse, a magistrate fined her $2,000. It comes as the nation was warned against going on holidays over the Easter weekend. Of the 76,000 vehicles police intercepted on the state border, 1,457 were turned around amid travel restrictions. Officers also described the amount of verbal abuse received from rule breakers as 'disappointing'. Queensland has now recorded 983 cases of the deadly virus. Council Extends Declaration, Discusses Grant Application The Hillsboro City Council met in a regular session Tuesday, April 7, and approved the extension of Mayor Andy Smiths disaster declaration through April 30. The mayor renewed his declaration Friday, April 3, to mirror the declaration issued by Governor Greg Abbott regarding COVID-19 mitigation efforts. To stay in effect, a declaration by the mayor must be approved by the city council within seven days. The council unanimously voted to extend the declaration, which will be in effect until April 30 to match the governors order. Following a closed session, the council selected a grant administrator and engineer for the city's Texas Capital Fund Grant application preparation and project administration, if awarded. After the city requested proposals, Traylor and Associates was selected as grant administrator, and Kimley Horn Engineers was selected as engineer. The city intends to apply for the grant offered through the Texas Department of Agriculture, which could provide funding for infrastructure improvements. A request to plat two lots together at 501 and 503 West Elm Street was approved by the council. Womat Bertram LLC made the request, which was recommended for approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission, to allow the development of a laundromat on the site. Other Planning and Zoning items on the agenda were tabled for consideration at an upcoming meeting. The council approved a request by Carroll Estes to close a portion of Elm Street for the annual Elm Street Rod Run car show, which is currently scheduled for June 26 and 27. Estes said that it is possible that the event will have to be postponed due to the COVID-19 situation. If it is, he said he would come back before the council with new dates for the event. City Manager Frank Johnson said that street crews plan to take advantage of the reduced traffic flow in town and begin addressing the worst areas of Old Brandon Road. Johnson said that the city obtained quotes from contractors to repair the road, but the project was not within the citys current budget. Johnson said that the work will be done in phases to allow the street department to continue patching other areas around town. The council also accepted a resolution certifying unopposed City Council candidates and canceling the election that would have been scheduled for May 2. New rule for sabzi mandis in Delhi MHA says states are working tirelessly to implement lockdown ICMR says test kits well-stocked for next 6 weeks Covid-19 test kits ordered from China to arrive on April 15 Sonia Gandhi writes to PM Modi, asks to ensure food security for poor Report says China asked Germany to speak positively about pandemic handling US CDC hopes outbreak to peak next week Several new areas put under containment zones Covid-19 continues to stagnate economies and livelihoods across the world. More than 1.8 million people are infected by Covid-19. India has seen cases cross the 9,000 mark but more than 1,000 people have recovered from Covid-19 nationwide. The country remains under a three-week lockdown. PM Narendra Modi will address the nation on April 14 at 10 AM. Here are the highlights on coronavirus outbreak: The decrease was seen in main products such as dragon fruit, banana, longan, watermelon, durian and shiitake. China continued to take the lead in importing Vietnams fruit and vegetable with over US$300 million, down 29.4%compared to the same period last year. The sharp decline was attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, other markets recorded slight year-on-year growth in January-March such as Indonesia with US$2.1 million compared to only US$164,800 in the same period in 2019, Thailand US$35.2 million as against US$7.6 million one year ago, Laos US$9.6 million compared to US$2.6 million last year, Russia US$8.2 million against US$2.4 million in the same period last year, and Cambodia US$885,300 from US$340,000 from one year ago. Last year, fruit and vegetable exports lagged behind expectations, reaching only US$3.8 billion, a year-on-year drop of 1%. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, 2019 was a tough year for the sector. China, the countrys largest importer, tightened requirements for imports from Vietnam via strict quarantine measures and origin traceability. However, growth was seen in shipments to several markets such as ASEAN (26.6%), the US (10.7%) and the European Union (32.2%). The coronavirus outbreak has infected over 18 lakh people around the world and, doctors, healthcare professionals, medical staff and researchers in the scientific community at the frontline of the pandemic have gone above and beyond the line of duty to provide care for patients. And recognising this heroic act, last week Googles last Google Doodle was a simple yet moving ode to the healthcare workers around the world who are working tirelessly at the frontlines to battle COVID-19. And the company is now continuing this appreciation of all the coronavirus helpers with a series of Google Doodles over the next two weeks. The series coincides with National Public Health Week in the United States. In a statement on their website, Google wrote, This week, were beginning a series of Doodles to recognize the many people responding to COVID-19 from doctors and nurses caring for people on the front lines to teachers and food service workers ensuring essential goods and services are still available. In the latest from the series that thanks coronavirus helpers, the Doodle shows a teacher standing before a white board, like in all the Doodles, in this as well a heart is blown from the G to the e of Google, which is dressed up like a teacher. The hover text reads, To all teachers and childcare workers. Thank you. On April 16, Googles Doodle thanked all food service workers who worked tirelessly to ensure that food is prepared and delivered properly to hungry customers. The Doodle on April 13 was dedicated to all the healthcare professionals who are at the forefront of the battle against the deadly coronavirus. The e of Google was dressed in medical scrubs and the doodle features a heart being sent over to it. The hover text read, To all doctors, nurses and medical workers; thank you. However, these arent the only heroes that will be honoured via Google Doodles, the company also wrote, Over the next two weeks, our Doodles will honour other essential frontline workers, including healthcare workers, first responders, and the many people keeping services like sanitation, food service, public transit, schools, and more up and running. Thank you to all the people who are working to save lives and keep communities safe during this pandemic. Since there are two weeks worth of doodles, Google is following the same template for the series, where the G sends love, appreciation and respect to a different themed (doctor, farmer, etc) e at the end. Here are some of the Google Doodles from the series: On April 6, the Google Doodle was an ode to the hard work of public health workers and to researchers in the scientific community (Google) The most significant frontline workers: Doctors, nurses, and medical workers were honoured via Google Doodle. (Google) On April 8, emergency services workers including those working in the Fire Department and Police were honoured via Google Doodle. (Google) On April 9, the Google Doodle paid an ode to custodial and sanitation workers. (Google Doodle) On April 10, farmworkers and farmers were appreciated for tirelessly working to ensuring there is food on our tables. (Google) Paying an ode to grocery workers who fearlessly stay out while the whole world is in lockdown, ensuring that every household gets what it needs. (Google) Over 180 countries have been affected by the novel coronavirus which was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019. As of April 13, the global coronavirus pandemic has claimed more than one lakh lives around the world, and the number of positive cases has crossed 8,000 in India, with close to 300 deaths. For the uninitiated, a Google Doodle is the temporary, customised alteration to the Google logo on the homepage of the website to commemorate a person, day, event or achievement. The first-ever Google Doodle was designed by co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (in order to let users know of their absence in case the servers crashed) and paid tribute to the 1998 edition of the long-running annual Burning Man event in Black Rock City, Nevada. Until 2001, an outside contractor designed all of the following Google Doodles, and then Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked their public relations officer Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day. Since then, a team of employees called Doodlers have organized, designed and published the Doodles. Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Europe remained the continent in the world hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, as nearly 900,000 people here had contracted the novel coronavirus and nearly 80,000 patients succumbed to the disease, according to a global tally, Trend reports citing Xinhua. Two-faced progress in fighting the virus has led to different readings of results from anti-coronavirus measures among European countries. Hardest-hit countries like Italy, Spain, and France extended their coronavirus lockdowns, while fellow European Union members including Denmark and Austria are easing their restrictions. Worldwide, the death toll related to COVID-19 was more than 114,000, and the number of confirmed cases neared 1.9 million, according to the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the COVID-19 spread in real-time. MORE SIGNS OF HOPE European countries, including those hardest-hit, have seen more signs of encouragement -- slowdown in daily new infections and new deaths, and a flattening virus curve. In Italy, 566 more COVID-19 patients had died in the past 24 hours, against Sunday's 431, taking the country's toll to 20,465. The number of total confirmed cases -- combining active infections, fatalities and recoveries -- rose to 159,516. In addition, 3,260 people are in intensive care as of Monday, down by 83. It was the tenth consecutive day that the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units showed a decreasing trend, said Italy's Civil Protection Department Chief Angelo Borrelli. In Spain, fresh figures showed that the number of both new cases and deaths in a 24-hour span dropped. The total deaths rose to 17,489, a daily increase of 517, compared with the 619 deaths in the previous 24-hour span. This was accompanied by a fall in the number of new cases: 3,477 new cases reported compared to 4,167 on Sunday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 169,496 in Spain. Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said that his country has reached the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, adding that it is still "in the lockdown phase" though people in some non-essential sectors are back to work on Monday. In neighboring France, the day-to-day growth of new cases slowed to 4,188, taking the total infections to 136,779. But Monday also saw the first increase in the daily death toll in four days. Fatalities linked to the virus rose by 574 on Monday, against Sunday's 561, raising the total deaths to 14,967. EXTENSION OF LOCKDOWN French President Emmanuel Macron, in a televised national address on Monday evening, announced that the country will extend its coronavirus lockdown measures until May 11. "The epidemic is starting to slow down. The results are there," he said. "Hope is reborn but nothing is settled ... The health system is under pressure and the epidemic is not yet under control." "We must therefore continue our efforts and apply the rules. The more we respect the rules, the more lives we save. This is why the strictest confinement must continue until Monday, May 11," Macron said. France's current confinement measure, which started on March 17, is due to end on April 15. Macron said May 11 will mark the start of a new phase in France. From then on, nurseries and schools will re-open gradually, universities will remain closed, along with restaurants, cafes and hotels. All people showing COVID-19 symptoms will be tested. The Italian government had announced the decision to extend the national coronavirus quarantine, which was first applied on March 10, until at least May 3. But the new rules allow some minor concessions, including the re-opening of stores that sell goods for children as well as those selling stationery and books, beginning April 14. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on April 9 that his government would seek to extend the coronavirus "state of alarm" beyond April 25. "I'm telling you now that in 15 days I will have to once again extend the state of alarm," Sanchez said. In London, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, also First Secretary of State, said the government does not expect to relax or lift the coronavirus lockdown later this week. "We are still not past the peak," even though there are some "positive signs" from the data that show "we are starting to win this struggle," said Raab. "We don't expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place at that point." MORE WARNINGS FROM WHO Also on Monday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates fast but decelerates much more slowly. "In other words, the way down is much slower than the way up," he told a press briefing, adding that control measures must be lifted slowly and it cannot happen all at once. "Control measures can only be lifted if the right public health measures are in place, including significant capacity for contact tracing," Tedros said. He also said WHO will soon publish updated strategic advice to support countries and regions in making decisions on when they can lift the current social and economic restrictions for COVID-19 containment. "The decisions must be based first and foremost on protecting human health, and guided by what we know about the virus and how it behaves," he said. According to the WHO chief, the new strategic advice will include six criteria for countries as they consider lifting restrictions, including controlled transmission, enough health system capacities, minimized outbreak risks, and preventive measures, among others. At a press briefing last Friday, Tedros sounded a similar warning against lifting restrictions too soon. "Some countries are already planning the transition out of stay-at-home restrictions... Lifting restrictions too quickly could lead to a deadly resurgence," he said then. _________ The word salacious has appeared in 85 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on April 1 in Animals, Sex and Guns? Eric Goode Knew Tiger King Had Potential by Dave Itzkoff: Released less than two weeks ago, the series is already a sensation, immersing viewers in the lives and rivalries of vivid subjects like Bhagavan Antle, known as Doc, the bombastic proprietor of an animal preserve and safari tour in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Carole Baskin, an animal activist and sanctuary owner in Tampa, Fla., whose former husband disappeared in 1997. And then, of course, theres the Tiger King himself, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, a flamboyant Oklahoma zookeeper, political candidate and aspiring celebrity who was sentenced in January to 22 years in prison for his involvement in a failed plot to kill Baskin and for killing five tiger cubs. Goode, who directed Tiger King with Rebecca Chaiklin, said that he had been reasonably confident the series would be successful. How can you not be fascinated with polygamy, drugs, cults, tigers, potential murder? Goode said in an interview on Tuesday. It had all the ingredients that one finds salacious. So we knew that there would be an appetite for it. _________ A landlord who rented his flat to a Chinese tourist but did not inform authorities as is mandatory under the Foreigners Registration Act now faces possible action for failing to comply with regulations amid the coronavirus pandemic, police said. Zhou Juhua (31), a native of Hunan in China has been living in a flat in an apartment complex in in Varanasis Saket Nagar Colony since March 22. Police said that Zhou arrived in Varanasi in the last week of January and stayed in a hotel in the Dashashwamedh Ghat area till March 21. Through her tourist guide, the woman contacted Sambhav Chaturvedi, a flat owner for taking an apartment on rent. Chaturvedi did not submit the details of the foreigner to the foreigners registration authorities within 24 hours of her arrival at his premises. He said he gave the flat on rent to her after her guide narrated her problems. The landlord said he could not inform the police because he is stuck in Patna due to the lockdown. Station officer Lanka, Bharat Bhushan Tiwari said the local intelligence unit (LIU) informed them about the Chinese woman on Monday following which the police went for an inspection. The Chinese woman has been found living in the flat. She is still there. The flat owner didnt inform authorities that he gave his flat on rent to a Chinese woman. Action would be taken against the flat owner as per instruction by senior officers, he said. An intelligence officer who did not wish to be named said that a case would be registered against the flat owner. Police said the womans visa is still valid. Monday brought a variety of dangerous weather to every corner of Virginia. Despite the powerful elements at work, no injuries were reported in the state. A storm system responsible for deadly tornadoes across the Southeastern U.S. on Sunday sent several waves of rain and thunderstorms through Virginia between Sunday night and Monday afternoon, leading to downed trees, scattered power outages and disruptive flash flooding. Metro Richmond escaped the most dangerous conditions, but soaking rain and persistent high winds still made for the first menacing weather day of the spring. The morning's tornado watch came and went without incident, locally. The highest gust at Richmond International Airport was 47 mph. Tree damage reports in central Virginia were generally aligned in two swaths: one from South Boston to Farmville to Louisa County; and another from Mecklenburg County to Prince George County to King William County. Dominion Energy reported a peak storm-related outage at 9:03 a.m., with 22,689 customers in the Richmond and Tri-Cities region in the dark. The outage number was reduced to 1,383 by 5 p.m. Downed power lines temporarily closed all eastbound lanes of Interstate 64 near the Broad Street exit in western Henrico County around 9 a.m. Mondays severe weather threat also prompted some local school districts to alter their meal distribution for students. Richmond Public Schools announced Monday it would cancel its mobile meal distribution but the 10 school sites would remain open. Chesterfield County Schools postponed all meal services and said it would resume regular distribution on Tuesday. Henrico County Public Schools also cancelled student meal distribution, but it is expected to resume Tuesday. Around the state In the mountains of Southwestern Virginia, rivers and creeks jumped to high levels for the second time this year after 2 to 5 inches of rain descended overnight. Water invaded low-lying roads near Roanoke, Lynchburg and Rocky Mount. Bedford County's swift water unit rescued one motorist from floodwaters. A swollen creek forced 18 people to evacuate from an apartment complex near Abingdon, according to the Bristol Herald Courier. No injuries were reported. In Nelson County, VDOT reported a mudslide blocking Route 6. To the east, high surf and coastal flooding pounded Back Bay in Virginia Beach, while winds whipped to 73 mph at Cape Henry. Communities along the North Carolina border weathered a swarm of menacing, rotating storms around daybreak. Though several tornado warnings went out around Martinsville and Danville, no sightings were reported to the National Weather Service. Radar indications also triggered a mid-morning tornado warning in Charles City and New Kent counties, and also across parts of Stafford and Prince William counties shortly after noon. In both areas, as in Southside Virginia, there were no tornado sightings or immediate reports of serious damage. For Northern Virginia, the worst storms blew through in the afternoon. Fairfax County ended up seeing one of the only reports of significant hail anywhere along the Eastern Seaboard. Even as the sun returned in the afternoon, most areas in the state experienced gusts to 40 mph as winds rushed around the vast low pressure system as it swirled from the Great Lakes region into Canada. Tuesday promises to be quieter, drier and cooler, but we'll still have evidence of Monday's storms. That heavy rain will continue to collect in the James River, resulting in minor flooding. Richmond's Westham gauge is predicted to crest at 13.9 feet late Tuesday, or 1.9 feet above minor flood stage, according to Monday afternoon's forecast from the NWS. The other major rivers east of the Blue Ridge mountains are not expected to flood. The next rainmaker from Tuesday night into Wednesday will be a gentler one than the last, though temperatures aloft could be cold enough to allow snowflakes to reach the ground in the state's higher elevations. PHOTOS: Flooding in Southwest Virginia A new study has begun to determine how many adults in the US without a confirmed history of infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 have antibodies to the virus. The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases has begun recruiting volunteers whose blood will be screened for antibodies to the virus, which would indicate a prior infection. Researchers will collect and analyze blood samples from as many as 10,000 volunteers to provide critical data for epidemiological models. NIAD is pat of the National Institutes of Health. The study's results will help illuminate the extent to which the novel coronavirus has spread undetected in the US. The "serosurvey, as it is called, also will provide insights into which communities and populations are most affected. This study will give us a clearer picture of the true magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States by telling us how many people in different communities have been infected without knowing it, because they had a very mild, undocumented illness or did not access testing while they were sick, said Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID director. These crucial data will help us measure the impact of our public health efforts now and guide our COVID-19 response moving forward. Investigators will test participants blood samples for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies , proteins the immune system produces to fight a specific infectious agent. A positive test result indicates previous infection. To date, reporting of U.S. cases of COVID-19 has mostly relied on molecular tests that determine the presence of the virus in a persons airways using a noninvasive cotton swab. While these cotton swab-based tests rapidly and effectively identify active infection, they do not determine whether a person was previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and recovered. An antibody test is looking back into the immune systems history with a rearview mirror, said Matthew J. Memoli, M.D., M.S., principal investigator of the study and director of NIAIDs Laboratory of Infectious Diseases Clinical Studies Unit. By analyzing an individuals blood, we can determine if that person has encountered SARS-CoV-2 previously. In blood samples found to contain antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, researchers may perform additional tests to evaluate the volunteers immune responses to the virus. These data may provide insight as to why these cases were less severe than those that lead to hospitalization. Healthy volunteers over the age of 18 from anywhere in the United States can participate and will be asked to consent to enrollment over the telephone. Individuals with a confirmed history of COVID-19 or current symptoms consistent with COVID-19 are not eligible to participate. After enrollment, study participants will attend a virtual clinic visit, complete a health assessment questionnaire and provide basic demographic informationincluding race, ethnicity, sex, age and occupationbefore submitting samples in one of two ways. Participants working at the NIH Bethesda campus will have blood drawn at the NIH Clinical Center. Other volunteers will participate in at-home blood sampling with blood collection kits they will receive and return by mail. Researchers have considerable experience using these at-home blood collection kits to track the spread of other infectious diseases like influenza, and this method is safe, effective and easy-to-use, said Kaitlyn Sadtler, Ph.D., study lead for laboratory testing and chief of NIBIBs Section for Immunoengineering. With a small finger-pick, volunteers can help scientists fight COVID-19 from their homes. People interested in joining this study should contact . For more information about the study, visit ClinicalTrials.gov using identifier NCT04334954. For more information on the U.S. government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, visit www.coronavirus.gov. NIAID, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, conducts and supports research throughout the US and worldwide, to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases and to improve means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. For more, to the NIAID website. As many as 16 migrants, quarantined in a college at Danpur village in Dibai area of Bulandshahar district, escaped on Sunday afternoon by breaking the window of the room they were confined into. The police, however, caught them again after an intense search and re-quarantined them. SSP Bulandshahar Santosh Singh said all the migrants were caught by the evening and they had been re-quarantined. Security of the venue has been beefed up so that no such incident takes place again, said Singh. More than 100 migrant labourers of few villages of Dibai area were first quarantined in a community centre of a village. Finding it unfit to keep such a big number of persons in a small place, few of them were shifted to a college in nearby Danpur village. 16 migrants of the group escaped on Sunday afternoon by breaking a window. The matter was reported to the police and district authorities who launched an intensified search seeking help of villagers. They were caught by the evening. Officials said that it was indeed a difficult task because people and cops were scared to go near to them and somehow managed to re-quarantine them. Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Dev on Monday set up a task force which will visit household in all districts of the city to identify suspected COVID-19 cases. The Corona Foot Warriors Containment and Surveillance Force' has been constituted at every booth level, a Delhi government official told PTI. Each team will have five members including a booth-level officer, civil defence volunteer, police constable, sanitation and anganwadi worker, the official said. According to the official, 13,750 such teams will also advise people to maintain social distancing and wear masks when going outdoors. The teams will recommend suspected cases for testing to the district health authorities, the official said, adding that anganwadi workers will be trained by the health department. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Tokyo, Japan Mon, April 13, 2020 13:40 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18955d 2 News Japan,Narita-Airport,travelers,coronavirus,coronavirus-testing,COVID-19,COVID-19-quarantine,COVID-19-travel-ban,COVID-19-test Free Japan's Narita Airport has prepared an impromptu hotel of cardboard beds and quilts in its baggage-claim area for passengers from overseas who might have to stay there while awaiting the results of tests for the novel coronavirus. Though flights at Narita are down so sharply that the airport has closed one of its runways, planes are still landing with passengers arriving from countries including the United States and Italy who are required to undergo tests for the virus before they can head home. Results can come as quickly as six hours, but delays now mean many take as long as one or two days, an official at the Health Ministry said, declining to give his name. With passengers forbidden to take public transportation, those with nobody to pick them up have to wait - and the cardboard beds have been readied in case nearby facilities currently being used to house passengers are full, he added. Developed for use in evacuation centers during disasters and any other time when temporary bedding is needed, the beds - made of heavy-duty cardboard - contain a mattress and a quilt. "There are facilities near the airport for people to stay, so as far as I know the beds haven't been used yet - or if they have, it's only been very briefly," the official said. Japan last week declared a state of emergency in major population centers to fight the spread of the coronavirus. The number of cases in the country is at least 7,400, with 137 deaths, public broadcaster NHK said. Fears of a second wave CCP virus infections in China are mounting as several areas recently re-implemented lockdowns in response to localized clusters. Since April, a county in central Chinas Henan Province, cities in the northernmost province of Heilongjiang, and parts of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have been placed under lockdownweeks after restrictions were lifted across much of the country. Meanwhile, rising numbers of asymptomatic carriersthose infected who do not show symptoms of the COVID-19 diseasehave fueled concerns of a second wave of infections. They will get a second wave, most likely, Dr. Aimee Ferraro, infectious diseases researcher and senior core faculty member for Walden Universitys Master of Public Health program, told The Epoch Times. And it will be from asymptomatic cases or imported cases from outside. Ferraro said that a second wave could see an exponential growth in infections, just like during the initial outbreak. Silent Carriers Chinese authorities only started reporting asymptomatic cases on April 1prior to this, these patients were not recorded. At the time, the National Health Commission said there were 1,541 asymptomatic cases under medical observation. Since then, hundreds of new asymptomatic cases have been reported. While the countrys chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou has said such cases accounted for 4.4 percent of total confirmed patients, classified Chinese government data showed that asymptomatic carriers could form up to one-third of those who test positive, the South China Morning Post reported. The data showed that more than 43,000 patients who tested positive in China by the end of February were asymptomatic. These patients were placed in quarantine and monitored, the outlet reported. Ferraro said that the lack of widespread testing in China, which would have detected more cases of asymptomatic carriers, meant there was likely a ghost system of disease spread in the community. Theyre [Chinese authorities] either aware of it and not telling others because of the political implications, or they just dont have the resources to do it [widespread testing], she said. New Lockdowns, Makeshift Hospitals For weeks, the Chinese regime has reported few new domestic infections, claiming that the bulk of new cases are from returnees who were infected overseas. But interviews with Chinese citizens and internal reports obtained by The Epoch Times have revealed that local authorities frequently underreport cases. For instance, a dataset from Wuhan health authorities showed that the city tested 16,000 patient samples on March 14, with 373 showing up positive. But authorities only publicly recorded four infections for that day. In Chinas northernmost province of Heilongjiang, authorities locked down the city of Suifenhe, which borders Russia, on April 7, which officials said was part of an attempt to stem the spread of imported cases from Russia. From March 27 to April 9, the city recorded more than 100 imported cases, as well as 148 asymptomatic patients that were imported cases. Only three new domestic infections were reported during that period. However, data from the provincial health commission cast doubt on the low numbers of domestic infections. The commission on April 9 announced that 1,051 people in the province went to hospitals presenting symptoms of fever on the previous day. But on April 8, the province reported only 40 new infections, which were all imported cases. It also said 878 people were admitted to hospitals due to fever on April 7, but on that day only 25 new infections were recorded, all of whom were imported cases. Meanwhile, a makeshift hospital was built in Suifenhe on April 11, with 600-bed capacity. The provincial health commission is also preparing to make available nearly 4,000 beds elsewhere in the province, according to an internal document seen by The Epoch Times. Suifenhe and Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, will now require all arrivals from abroad to undergo 28 days of quarantine, as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests. Harbin added that it would lock down any residential units where confirmed and asymptomatic virus cases are found for 14 days. In Jiamusi, another city in Heilongjiang, residents recently told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that many residential compounds in Xiangyang district of the city were placed under lockdown again on April 2, after measures were lifted on March 12. Although local authorities did not provide a reason for the change in policy, residents believed it was due to new infections. In the nearby region of Inner Mongolia, the city of Manzhouli, located along the border with Russia, said authorities were preparing a new hospital to treat virus patients, with construction to be completed on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the southern city of Guangzhou, home to a large immigrant community from countries in Africa, has seen an uptick of new infections among African nationals in recent weeks. Authorities in Guangzhou city have ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou said in a statement on April 12. Moreover, anyone with African contacts faces mandatory virus tests followed by quarantine, regardless of recent travel history or previous isolation. The U.S. consulate recommended that African-Americans or those who believe Chinese officials may suspect them of having contact with nationals of African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice. Many Africans have been evicted from their homes by landlords and left with nowhere to stay, videos shared on social media revealed. Mr. Zhou, a resident from Yaotai village, Yuexiu district in Guangzhou, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on April 7: Our village has been locked down again since two days ago. All stores except supermarkets were closed. We need to pass a body temperature screening when we leave or enter our village Police who patrol on the streets arrest African people when they see them. Zhou said the village was placed under lockdown in late January. The quarantine measures were lifted in early March. From The Epoch Times Researchers from Intermountain Healthcare and University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City have launched two vital clinical trials to test the effectiveness and safety of two drugs - hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and azithromycin - to treat patients with COVID-19. Researchers from the two health systems plan to enroll nearly 2,300 patients who are COVID-19 positive or suspected of being positive for the virus. "Results from these studies will help us to understand the value of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in treatment of COVID-19 as we seek ways to fight the virus effectively and reduce the human cost of this pandemic," said Samuel Brown, MD, principal investigator of one of the studies and a critical care researcher at Intermountain Healthcare. Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug typically used to treat some autoimmune diseases, and azithromycin, an antibiotic typically used for sinusitis or pneumonia, have been suggested as potential treatments for COVID-19, but whether they actually help is unknown. In addition, the drugs can cause significant side-effects. In some cases, hydroxychloroquine has increased the levels of a different virus present in the blood or caused problems with heart rhythm. Further, a surge in interest in hydroxychloroquine has left patients who take the drug to manage ongoing chronic illnesses at risk of losing access to their regular course of treatment. "Because COVID-19 is a new disease, we're all starting from scratch," said Adam M. Spivak, MD, a principal investigator of one of the clinical trials and an infectious disease physician at University of Utah Health. "The only way to answer the key question of 'does this drug work?' is to perform an unbiased clinical trial where we study its effects." In the first trial, patients hospitalized with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 will be given either hydroxychloroquine or azithromycin to determine whether either drug affects the severity of COVID-19 and saves lives. Researchers plan to enroll 300 patients in the clinical trial from across all Intermountain Healthcare hospitals and University of Utah Health hospitals that are treating COVID-19 patients. "The main question we're looking to answer in this trial is, does hydroxychloroquine improve the severity of illness and save lives for patients hospitalized with COVID-19?" said Dr. Brown. In the second set of trials, patients with confirmed COVID-19 who are being treated as outpatients will be given hydroxychloroquine or azithromycin to determine if either drug can prevent hospitalization. The trials will also determine whether hydroxychloroquine impacts viral shedding and prevents infection of household contacts as compared to placebo. For these outpatient trials, researchers will enroll 2,000 patients across Utah from all Intermountain Healthcare and University of Utah Health System hospitals that are treating COVID-19 patients. Patients will receive treatment and be monitored via telehealth. Brandon Webb, MD, a principal investigator of the outpatient trial and an infectious diseases physician at Intermountain Healthcare, said there's significant global interest in both clinical trials. "There's worldwide interest in these drugs, but the available clinical data have not yet shown any benefit," he added. "These clinical trials allow us to protect the safety of patients but also answer the really important question of benefit versus harm." Clinical trials typically take months or years to launch. Researchers at Intermountain Healthcare, University of Utah Health, the Utah Department of Health, and the Utah Medical Association were able to launch these COVID-19 clinical trials in two weeks. "Everyone on our research team has been working 18-hour days to make this happen," said Dr. Brown. "We've been able to be nimble and flexible while still meeting the rigorous standards of a clinical trial because the need for this knowledge is so great. We applaud all of these organizations for working collaboratively to make these clinical trials a reality and to do the right thing for our patients." Researchers acknowledge there may be pressure on clinicians to use hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients outside of a clinical trial. While it may feel reassuring to prescribe this medication in the midst of a pandemic, it may be counter-productive or even harmful until physicians better understand their impact, they say. Two weeks ago, research leaders at Intermountain Healthcare and University of Utah Health agreed to work together to help solve this problem. "Although some providers will choose to prescribe hydroxychloroquine to their patients, Intermountain Healthcare, University of Utah Health, the Utah Department of Health, and the UMA recognize the safest way to use this medication to treat COVID-19 is within the framework of clinical trials," said Raj Srivastava, MD, a principal investigator of the outpatient trial and assistant vice president of research at Intermountain Healthcare. "We believe these trials will ensure patients are provided information about potential associated risks and have consented to participate so their progress can be closely monitored by healthcare providers and research staff," added Rachel Hess, MD, MS, a principal investigator of the outpatient trial and co-director for the Center for Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Utah. ### The vast majority of Qantas' Adelaide Airport staff are in self-isolation after South Australia's Chief Public Health Officer acted to contain a growing cluster of coronavirus cases in the airline's employees. Thirty four people were part of the coronavirus cluster centred on the airport on Monday, including workers outside the baggage handling team, where the virus first spread, prompting authorities to put 750 people into self-quarantine. Qantas workers at Adelaide Airport have been told to self-isolate as authorities work to contain a growing cluster of cases. Credit:Getty Images The Transport Workers Union lashed Qantas' handling of the outbreak, saying the airline did not tell staff to stay home even though they had worked alongside baggage handlers who were confirmed to have coronavirus in late March. But Qantas said it had rigorously followed SA Health advice. "Qantas has complied fully with SA Healths directions and any employee identified as needing to self-isolate through their contact tracing process has been immediately directed to do so," a spokesman said. Amid the nationwide lockdown in India, television and Bollywood actor Hina Khan is managing to bag the attention of her fans and followers on the internet. Her quirky posts and throwback pictures are leaving her fans in the awe of her. Recently, while flipping the old albums, she shared a picture on her social media story session, in which she is posing with her Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlaata Hai co-star Mohsin Khan. READ | Hina Khan's Much-loved Daily Soaps Like 'Kasautii Zindagii Kay' And More Hina Khan and Mohsin Khan are seen striking an all smiling face for the photo. The duo is also seen co-ordinating the colour of their outfits. While mentioning that it's a throwback picture, Hina Khan highlighted that the picture was clicked on September 18, 2016. They posed for the picture when the cast and crew of Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai went to shoot a sequence in Switzerland. At the bottom of the throwback picture, Hina wrote, 'Nice one / Those wer the days / Missing Travelling'. Check out Hina Khan's photo below READ | Hina Khan Rose To Fame From Daily Soaps; Check Out Her Bio And Trivia About Her Career It is not the first time when Hina Khan expressed how much she is missing travelling. A couple of days back, the 32-year-old actor shared a hilarious video, in which she was seen cleaning her bag. The video tickled the funny bone of many when Hina found a boarding pass in it and tears started rolling down on her chicks. Meanwhile, the video had Jaane Kahan Gaye Vo Din song playing in the background. Watch Hina Khan's video below READ | Did Hina Khan Take Inspiration From Shraddha Kapoor's Holographic Dress? See Pics READ | Hina Khan Shows How To Wear A Mask Correctly; Narrates Points To Cope With Coronavirus Get the latest entertainment news from India & around the world. Now follow your favourite television celebs and telly updates. Republic World is your one-stop destination for trending Bollywood news. Tune in today to stay updated with all the latest news and headlines from the world of entertainment. Election workers Mark Bezanson, left, and Julie Olson dump ballots collected earlier in the day from drop boxes onto a table for sorting at the King County Elections office, Monday, Nov. 5, 2018, in Renton, Wash. Voters in Washington all vote only by mail. Read more President Donald Trump has called mailin voting a practice ripe for fraud. Hes said that if elections were to be carried out entirely by mail, a Republican would never be elected again. And yet, Pennsylvania voters this week got mailers from the Republican National Committee encouraging them to apply to vote by mail. The filers described the option as convenient and secure. Pennsylvanias Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill to expand vote by mail before the coronavirus was known. And nationally, Republican governors and secretaries of state have advocated for vote by mail. While the issue has become more partisan since Trump weighed in, the split is more complicated at the state and local level. I am a conservative Republican, said Christian Leinbach, chair of the Berks County Board of Commissioners, who wants his county to be able to vote entirely by mail on June 2. I have conservative Republican friends who believe thats a really bad idea. I dont. I believe we need to make voting in the current health crisis as safe as possible. Experts on voting rights say mail-in ballots have really only been politicized recently. Utah, a deep-red state, is one of five that utilizes mail-in voting almost exclusively. Kim Wyman, Washingtons GOP secretary of state, is an outspoken proponent. And Ohios Republican Gov. Mike DeWine urged an all-mail primary later this month. Up until a month ago, if you asked me what the big divide was over mail voting, I would say it was geographic, not partisan, said Lawrence Norden, director of election reform at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The method is much more prevalent in the West, while east of the Mississippi, even some deep-blue states (including New Jersey) have relatively little mail-in voting. At stake for both parties is what an expansion of mail-in voting this summer means for November. If more people vote by mail now, they may want to vote the same way in the fall, especially if the virus is still a concern. Following Wisconsins primary, where thousands of voters were unable to receive absentee ballots in time and people waited in long lines, several states shifted to all vote-by-mail primaries. Several counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania have asked Gov. Tom Wolf to conduct the states June 2 primary entirely by mail. Partisan polarization is evident. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez said Monday on a media call that Republicans are forcing voters to choose between danger and disenfranchisement. Republicans say Democrats are capitalizing on a pandemic to relax voting regulations that could be abused. Democrats are attempting to use this crisis as a way to get wholesale election changes that fit their far-left agenda, said Mandi Merritt, Republican National Committee national press secretary. While the RNC, of course, supports efforts to ensure that no voters are disenfranchised due to emergency protocols, national vote-by-mail would open the door to its own set of problems, such as potential election fraud. Trump, despite voting by mail in 2018, has said: Mail ballots, they cheat. People cheat. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because theyre cheaters. Nonpartisan voting experts have scrambled to disprove claims that vote by mail is more susceptible to fraud. Election fraud is exceedingly rare compared with numbers of votes cast. States that conduct entirely mail-in ballot elections report very little fraud. There is also no evidence Democrats have an advantage when more people vote by mail. Since the onset of the coronavirus, some experts have theorized that more elderly voters might opt for mail voting, which could benefit Republicans, given the partys advantage among seniors. In states that have vote by mail, turnout does go up, but it tends to increase among low propensity voters, said Sarah Niebler, an assistant professor at Dickinson College. Its people who arent hardcore voters, and those voters tend not to have strong partisan attachments, which almost by definition means they cancel each other out, she said. An implicit argument Trump is making, Niebler said, is that lowerincome people and people of color who dont vote regularly and who tend to align more with Democrats will vote by mail, helping Democrats. While that also has not been proven, the political party system was built to adjust, Niebler said. If there was a short-term benefit to one party, I have no reason to expect that would be a long-term benefit. Trumps comments echo a larger concern among Republicans that turnout on the whole benefits Democrats. Republicans are spending $10 million this year on legal battles against attempts to expand voter access in key states such as Michigan, Florida, Arizona, and Minnesota. Nationally, Democrats in Congress want $2 billion to expand vote by mail. Theyre arguing for automatically sending absentee ballots to every registered voter, requiring every state to offer no-excuse absentee voting, and expanding early voting. Congressional Republicans are opposed. I cant understand the resistance to empowering the average American to vote, said Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, one of the Democrats leading the push. Elected officials from two of Philadelphias collar counties Montgomery and Chester wrote to Gov. Tom Wolf last week asking that the states primary be held entirely by mail. To do that, the Republican-controlled legislature would need to pass legislation. While the legislature last month passed a bill to move the states primary, allow early counting of absentee ballots, and relocate polling places, theres no indication of support for an entirely mail-in primary. Republicans in the state House blocked a provision that would mail every Pennsylvanian an application for a mail-in ballot, pushed by Philadelphia Democratic State Rep. Kevin Boyle. It was formerly a nonpartisan issue that was more about process, Boyle said. Critics were people who believed in the value of in-person voting, that there was some civic responsibility demonstrated. Unfortunately, then the president weighed in, and you started to see Republicans fall in line. Mike Straub, a spokesperson for state House Republicans, said Republican members want to see how the slate of changes works before adding more. This all just happened the last week of March, Straub said. Locally, feelings among those who actually run elections are more nuanced. Chester Countys commissioners are in bipartisan agreement the primary should be conducted entirely by mail, but Philadelphias election commissioners are still weighing options. Montgomery Countys three commissioners are divided along party lines, with the two Democrats calling vote by mail the only responsible way to conduct an election during a pandemic, and the lone Republican, Joseph Gale, objecting. The far left has shown they will stop at nothing to remove President Trump from office, Gale said. After witnessing Democrats rally behind a completely bogus impeachment earlier this year, it would not be surprising if they resort to voter fraud to try to stop President Trumps reelection. But in Berks, Leinbach, the county chair, said the logistics of an in-person election make no sense. When essential businesses closed, Berks lost polling locations. Churches and schools have called saying they no longer want to host voters on Election Day. And Leinbach worries about elderly poll workers, some of whom he knows. Ive heard all the theories. Pray for bad weather because conservatives show up and liberals dont, Leinbach said. I think we get too caught up in, if we change this, this is going to benefit this group the foundation of our republic is the secret ballot, and the secret ballot has changed over the years. Staff writers Jonathan Tamari and Jonathan Lai contributed to this article. Aircraft carrier group's voyage shows PLA Navy's great job in virus control: expert Global Times By Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2020/4/12 17:30:15 A Chinese naval flotilla led by an aircraft carrier reportedly sailed through the Miyako Strait and headed toward the Pacific Ocean, prompting Chinese military experts to say on Sunday that the fleet demonstrated success in novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic control work. The Chinese flotilla, consisting of the Liaoning aircraft carrier, two Type 052D guided missile destroyers, two Type 054A guided missile frigates and one Type 901 auxiliary supply ship, was spotted during transit through the Miyako Strait on Friday evening, according to a statement the Japanese Defense Ministry publicly released on Saturday. The Chinese warships were headed in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, the statement said. In line with the Japanese report, media on the island of Taiwan reported Saturday that the Liaoning carrier group was spotted in waters east of the island. The Chinese mainland military has yet to announce the operation. There was nothing strange about the Liaoning and other warships reportedly conducting regular routine exercises on Friday, Xu Guangyu, a senior adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Global Times on Sunday. This was not the first time the Liaoning has passed through the Miyako Strait into the Pacific Ocean. Similar voyages took place in June 2019 and December 2016, according to reports. China's aircraft carriers would more frequently cross sea lanes, including the Miyako Strait, for deployment in the west Pacific and Indian oceans, according to an article published by Xiakedao, the official WeChat account operated by the overseas edition of the People's Daily, in June 2019. Such operations would become standard practice, the article said. Chinese analysts noted on Sunday that the Liaoning carrier group voyage came at a time when many foreign aircraft carriers were hit by COVID-19, rendering them unsuitable for deployment. The USS Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Carl Vinson and Nimitz aircraft carriers all reported positive COVID-19 cases, media reports have said. The nuclear-powered flagship of the French navy, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, also reportedly has crew members who tested positive. Through the voyage, the Liaoning showed that the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has done a great job in the epidemic prevention and control work and COVID-19 epidemic has not had an impact on its deployment and operations, Xu said. "It showed that the PLA can dispatch troops stationed anywhere at any time, with the troops always maintaining vigorous combat capabilities," Xu said, "The Chinese people can always count on them." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address As The Inquirers One Movie, One Philadelphia reached its fourth week, we looped in Punxsutawney and broadened our scope to include the whole of Pennsylvania by selecting Groundhog Day as our latest movie to watch over the weekend and weigh in on. Readers called out their favorite scenes from the Harold Ramis classic, which stars Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a weatherman assigned to cover the Feb. 2 ceremony at Gobblers Knob who ends up reliving Feb. 2. Patrick Stroup said he loves the way Phil learns to deal with a pushy insurance salesman played by Stephen Tobolowsky. If Ned Reyerson isnt your favorite part of this movie then you dont understand or deserve the beauty that is Groundhog Day. Close second: acing the Jeopardy questions Phil knows by heart, in front of an irked crowd. Jessica Franklin Broom enjoys the Nancy Taylor sequence of Phil using his time-loop skills to gather intelligence in an attempt to seduce a local woman (Marita Geraghty). Other readers warmed to Phils character arc and process of reform. New Commentator 2: I always watched to marvel at the conversion from despair to acceptance then hope arising from the depths ... Now I see the possibility of hope prevailing over the current difficulty, and enjoy it more. Andrea Massaroni Kulick contributed a gif of Phil smashing the alarm clock that wakes him up at 6 a.m. every day to remind him that hes stuck in time limbo, a feeling that many readers have. Why watch it? asked Leslie Glavin Wertz. Were living it. David Bolger chipped in with a meta quip: "Ironically enough, I have always stopped watching this movie at the same time. A commenter named Barbara threw a wet blanket on the proceedings, calling them fun for disabled old shut-inson the sofa watching 40-year-old junk eating chips drinking beer and chain smoking Camels." Cmon, Barbara. Were not eating chips. Your browser does not support the audio element. Authorities in Vietnam have found a Colombian man who escaped from a local quarantine camp last weekend. The provincial steering committee on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prevention confirmed on Monday morning it had found Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela, a 22-year-old Colombian man. Santamaria Orjuela broke out of a quarantine facility at the Hoa Co tourist villa in Cam Chau Ward, Hoi An City, Quang Nam Province, located in central Vietnam, on Saturday evening. He wandered on foot to Nui Thanh District, where he was found by officers at a COVID-19 control post in the small hours of Monday. According to Nguyen Van Son, vice-chairman of the Hoi An Peoples Committee, the Colombian man arrived in Vietnam in February and traveled to many places in the country. His visa expired on February 22 and he was eventually brought to the quarantine facility by authorities in Hoi An City. He has already been tested twice and both results came back negative for the novel coronavirus, Son elaborated. He did not have contact with any COVID-19 patient and has already finished his 14-day isolation period. The foreigner has continued to stay at the quarantine camp as he has no other place to stay, the city's leader explained. The Quang Nam Department of External Relations is working with Colombian authorities to deliberate on necessary citizen protection measures. The novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has infected over 1.85 million people and killed more than 114,200 globally as of Monday morning, according to Ministry of Health statistics. Vietnam has confirmed 262 COVID-19 cases in total, with 144 having recovered. The country has yet to record a death from the disease. Quang Nam Province has recorded only one COVID-19 patient to date, who has already walked out of the hospital free of the virus. More than 520 people have completed their quarantine in the province, while 459 others are still staying at local isolation facilities. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A major overhaul of Government policy on housing is at the centre of negotiations between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. The policy framework document soon to be agreed between the two parties contains seven key commitments aimed at addressing the housing crisis. These include holding referendums on property rights to reduce the cost of land and empowering the Land Development Agency to build social and affordable housing. The two parties have also agreed they will prioritise home ownership and introduce affordable housing schemes to allow more first-time buyers to get their foot on the property ladder. They have also pledged to build 60,000 social housing units over the next five years. The document also commits to creating a "new deal" for renters and landlords centred on giving tenants more security and choices of reasonably priced accommodation. The parties will also promise to work towards developing rental accommodation in cities, with a focus on providing more affordable rents for students. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said yesterday that he did not believe it would be necessary to extend the rent freeze introduced during the coronavirus emergency. In an interview with the 'Sunday Independent', the Taoiseach said the price cap would not be needed because rents would fall once the pandemic was over. "We've already seen an increase in properties available for rent as well as an increased level of vacancy in new developments in central Dublin," he said. "In that environment, it's hard to see any landlord increasing rents. They may be glad to have a reliable paying tenant." On homelessness, the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael joint policy document commits to expanding the Housing First strategy to help rough sleepers. Mr Varadkar and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin are examining the document over the Easter weekend before it is presented to their parliamentary parties. The document will then be sent to other political parties and Independent TDs interested in entering into government. Both party leaders have said they need a third party to ensure their coalition is stable. The Green Party has said it is not interested in joining Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in government despite winning a record number of seats in the last General Election. The party has held a number of parliamentary party meetings on the issue but continues to insist on the formation of a national unity government. Yesterday, Social Democrats co-leader Roisin Shortall said her party was open to examining the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael policy proposal. Labour Party leader Alan Kelly has said he will talk to the parties but said it was for others to form a government. Sources close to Mr Kelly say he is eager to rebuild his party in opposition. The Regional Technical Group of nine Independent TDs are still interested in entering into government. Nipping burnout in the bud When the country is deep in the throes of a health crisis, the last thing you need is a mental health crisis to make personal matters worse. If you're struggling to balance work, home, and child care responsibilities, talk to your employer about it. Explain your circumstances and ask for some leeway in the coming weeks to push back deadlines or maintain more flexibility during the workday, when your kids are most apt to demand attention. There's no shame in admitting you can't do it all, and openly asking for help could be your ticket to a lightened loan and less stress. As an employer, it pays to proactively offer to help those employees who may be struggling. For starters, that means cutting parents of young children some slack. Granted, at a time like this, it would be nice to cut all workers some slack, but start with the people who may simply not have enough hours in the day to get everything done. Along these lines, it helps to reassure your employees that their performance over the next month or so won't be the benchmark they're judged on with regard to raises and promotions. Making that abundantly clear will take a lot of the pressure off, and perhaps allow your employees to better focus on their jobs without wasting mental energy stressing about their long-term prospects. Two men posing as civic employees were arrested for allegedly peddling drugs in Maharashtra's Pune district, police said on Monday. In a bid to give police the slip, one of the accused wore a khaki uniform having the logo of Pune Municipal Corporation, while the other wore an apron generally used by conservancy staff of the civic body. "A police personnel posted at the check post near Khadakwasla dam found these two men carrying a plastic bag on Sunday evening. When the bag was checked, the police found marijuana (ganja) inside it," an official from Haveli police station said. During inquiry, it came to light that one of the accused somehow procured uniform of a civic employee who recently died, and made alterations to fit himself in it. The other accused managed to get an apron generally worn by the civic conservancy staff. The official said during questioning, the accused told the police that they came to Khadkwasla to buy the contraband. But, when they were taken to the place where they claimed to have purchased the drug, nobody was found there. "It seems the duo might have come to sell the contraband or pick up the stuff from someone in the area," the official said. The two accused were booked under relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two young sisters who had tested positive for COVID-19 in Kashmir last month were discharged from hospital on Monday after their latest test returned negative, officials said. "First two COVID-19 Positive children discharged today from JLNM Hospital Rainawari, Srinagar, along with their mother who was COVID-19 Negative but was staying with her daughters, an official spokesman said. The repeat samples of both the children and of the mother came negative for COVID-19 on Monday, he said. The sisters -- one of them an infant -- had tested positive last month, having contracted the virus from their close relative. Meanwhile, a senior doctor in charge of one of the COVID-19 hospitals here said the recovered patients were as normal as others. "There is no risk of transmission after a person has recovered, but one must remain isolated till completion of home-quarantine after hospital discharge," said Dr Naveed Nazir Shah, Kashmir's leading pulmonologist and the head of the Chest Disease Hospital, Srinagar. He said Srinagar will soon move into the stage of discharging recovered COVID-19 patients. It was important to understand that these persons are now as normal as others, he said. Shah said while it is understandable that people are scared of the virus and one must take all precautions, it is important to know that those who have recovered are just as free from it as others who don't have it. He said the stigma attached with the infection is uncalled for and it is important to end it for all in the society to live a normal life. He said there is no risk of transmission after a patient has recovered and become negative for the viral load. However, as a precaution, the recovered person must remain under quarantine for the required period after discharge from the hospital, he added. The doctor said all such persons should keep themselves isolated from others until their home quarantine - following hospital release - is completed. "Relatives and friends should also not go to visit them until their said quarantine has completed," the doctor said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Canadians are anxious. Sickness looms over us. The global economy is at a standstill, wiping away jobs at unprecedented scale. Those of us fortunate enough to have homes feel the walls more than ever, as they separate us from family and friends; those who do not face far greater peril. For Asian-Canadians, however, there is an additional reason to worry: the disturbing rise of anti-Asian prejudice. When the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Toronto in late-January, Chinatown turned into somewhat of a ghost-town. Some seemed to think that because the virus first spread to humans in China, they had to stay away from Chinese places (and Chinese food in particular) if they did not want to get sick. This insidious and irrational thinking stigmatized all Chinese-Canadians, and all Asian-Canadians who were lumped into the same category. As the number of cases grew, so too did the severity of the prejudice. In recent weeks, they have escalated into horrifying acts of hate. Weve had reports of a store clerk spraying disinfectant on Chinese-Canadian grocery shoppers in Halifax; a stranger telling an Asian-Canadian man in Montreal to go back to where youre from with your virus and spitting at his feet; a woman hitting a Chinese-Canadian ER nurse with an umbrella and spitting in her face while she waited outside of a Toronto restaurant. There is no doubt that this rise in racism is connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we have seen before, fear can be an terrible breeding ground for hate. So what can we do about it? To start with, we can be careful with our language. When the virus behind COVID-19 started its spread around the world, many disturbingly referred to it as the Wuhan virus. Labelling the virus after the region it afflicts is harmful. It stigmatizes an entire community, and dehumanizes those who were the first to suffer from the disease. Even worse is to call, or think of it as, the Chinese virus. The virus does not discern between human hosts based on nationality or ethnicity. To identify it as Chinese is to incite irrational fear and hatred of whole communities both in China and among the Chinese diaspora all over the world. For Chinese-Canadians, this is painful reminder of the discrimination we dealt with during the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s. It denies us (and other Asian-Canadians perceived to be Chinese) the Canadian part of our identity and tells us that the Chinese part is foreign and infectious. We are treated as pathogens, not people. Beyond language, all of us have to be mindful of the biases that creep (often unconsciously) into our daily actions. Every time someone lurches to avoid an Asian-Canadian wearing a mask at the grocery store or steers clear of Chinese restaurants or other businesses, that sends a message to Asian Canadians that we do not belong that we are on perpetual probation. It is a short line from these passive acts of prejudice to the hostile acts of hate that we are now seeing. Finally, for those who can be part of the solution instead of the problem, we must call out prejudice and racism at every turn. Just as COVID-19 cannot be left to spread in secret without widespread testing and tracing, the scourge of anti-Asian hate cannot be allowed to fester without societal education (where appropriate) and condemnation (where necessary). Canada has dealt with the public health and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic better than most countries. I have always been and continue to be incredibly proud to be Canadian. But recent events serve as a stark reminder that pride must be accompanied by vigilance. Vigilance in fighting prejudice. Vigilance in pushing our political leaders to protect the vulnerable, especially when the impacts of a crisis are not felt equally by all. Vigilance in ensuring that when times are tough, we come together as one body politic to safeguard that which makes Canada special: our cultural diversity and common humanity. Israel's President Denies Gantz's Request for Extension to Try to Form Gov't With Netanyahu Sputnik News 14:14 GMT 12.04.2020(updated 14:22 GMT 12.04.2020) The Middle Eastern nation has been trapped in a historically unprecedented political deadlock for over a year now, with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud nor former IDF commander Benny Gantz's Blue and White managing to achieve enough support to cobble together a ruling coalition after three rounds of voting. President Reuven Rivlin has rejected Blue and White leader Benny Gantz's request for a two week extension to try to form a grand coalition government with Likud as the deadline to do so runs out on Monday at midnight, The Times of Israel has reported, citing a statement by the president's office. Gantz requested the extension on Saturday, saying he needed more time to try to form the coalition. "The political, health and social crisis have brought me to the decision that even at a heavy political and personal price, I will do all I can to establish a government with the Likud," Gantz wrote in a letter addressed to Rivlin which was published by Israeli media. Rivlin's office said Sunday that the president made the decision not to extend the deadline after speaking to both leaders, with Netanyahu reportedly telling him that Likud and Blue and White were nowhere close to an agreement. Likud and Blue and White began talks on a grand coalition last month, after legislative elections saw Likud win 36 seats and Blue and White get 33 seats in Israel's 120 seat parliament, with neither party's allies securing enough votes to enable them to form a 61 seat majority. The unprecedented deadlock became the third consecutive time that neither major bloc managed to win a majority, with elections also held in April and September of 2019 similarly ending in a stalemate. Under the terms of the grand coalition talks, Netanyahu and Gantz would each have a year-and-a-half turn as prime minister. Gantz's effort to form an emergency government with Netanyahu has already cost him politically, with the party splintering as a result of his 'betrayal' to agree to ally with Likud. Rivlin, who has previously shown signs of his annoyance over the deadlock, warned Sunday that if Netanyahu and Gantz couldn't reach an agreement by Monday at midnight, "the task of forming the government will return to the Knesset and a period of 21 days will begin during which Knesset members can form a majority to recommend an agree-don candidate to form a government, who would have 14 days to do so." Last year, Rivlin complained that Israel's seemingly-never-ending cycle of elections was "already too much democracy," and said that Israeli politicians seemed to prefer "staying up all night and going crazy" instead of coming together and compromising to form a government in "a troubled time" for the country. A failure by the country's political forces to reach a compromise could to a fourth consecutive election later this year. The grand coalition negotiations following the March 2020 vote were the first of their kind. After the April and September 2019 elections, Likud and Blue and White instead tried to cobble together coalitions with their ideological allies, with neither proving to have enough support, particularly after former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party categorically refused to join either coalition. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 13, 2020 | 01:15 PM | METROPOLIS The Metropolis Police Department is reminding residents to remain kind to each other as many are forced to stay at home together.In his weekly crime report on Monday, Chief Harry Masse said officers responded to 54 domestic disturbance calls in March.Urging everyone to have patience with each other, he said that if necessary, "practice some social distancing inside the home as well."Noting that some officials are estimating everyone could be required to stay home through the month of May, Masse said, "We can get through this."He also dispelled some rumors by saying police are not conducting roadblocks, enacting a curfew or conducting traffic stops to learn where drivers are going.Masse said he expects everyone to heed the Governor's order by staying home unless they have to leave for essential business. Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) during a hearing on organ harvesting a hearing on organ harvesting in China in Washington on June 23, 2016. (Lisa Fan/Epoch Times) Congressman Chris Smith Receives Donation of Masks from Hong Kong Democracy Advocates Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who has consistently worked to protect Hong Kongs freedom and democracy from the Chinese Communist Partys repression, has been gifted 4,000 surgical face masks by Hong Kong Human rights activists. A non-governmental organization called Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) in Washington and Anna Cheung, founder of New Yorkers Supporting Hong Kong (NY4HK) helped coordinate the donation of personal protection equipment, or PPE. We Hong Kongers are very grateful for Congressman Smiths tireless work and support, not just for the Hong Kongers but the Chinese Dissidents, Tibetans and Uyghurs as well, Cheung said. We want to take this opportunity to thank Congressman Smith and the medical staff for their hard work. Cheung revealed that Andrew Duncan of New York donated 2,000 masks and Amanda and Johnny Ho of Freehold, New Jersey, donated the other 2,000 masks, on Friday for the Medical Center. Thank you to Amanda and Johnny Ho and Andrew Duncan for donating these much-needed surgical masks, said Smith, Senior Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC). The staff at CentraStatelike other hospitals across New Jersey and across Americaare working long hours at risk to themselves to protect those stricken by COVID-19, continued Smith. And I know that that the international Hong Kong communitywho, like Americans, struggle to contain this outbreakare our good friends. They face their own struggles with the outbreak and with China. For them to show this gesture to CentraState workers is very much appreciated. Smith a member and a former two-term chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China. Last month Smith was honored by the HKDC in Washington for his work on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019. The NGO is led by people from Hong Kong who currently live in the United States and support the democracy movement in Hong Kong. With passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, the United States Congress is making it clear that beating, torturing and jailing democracy activists is wrong, Smith said in a press release. We stand in solidarity with the people of Hong Kong. There will be strong sanctions, other ramifications, for this crackdown and abuse of power. The Chinese Communist government warns us repeatedly not to interfere in Chinas internal affairs. But the only interference I see is Beijings meddling in the democratic freedoms of Hong Kong. All I see is Beijings failures to honor the promises made in the 1984 Sino-British Declaration, an international treaty. All I see is Beijings failure to honor the promises of Hong Kongs Basic Law. The Representative has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party and its human rights abuses against the those on the mainland and those living in Hong Kong. That is the sad and disgusting reality, he said. And it is what the Chinese Communist government does bestsuppress, repress, torture and censor. On Oct. 15, 2019, the House version of The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed unanimously. The Senate version of the bill passed by unanimous consent on November 19, 2019. [April 13, 2020] Asthma Hospitalizations Dropped after Louisville Power Plants Retired Coal or Installed Better Emission Controls After four Louisville, Kentucky, coal-fired power plants either retired coal as their energy source or installed stricter emission controls, local residents' asthma symptoms and asthma-related hospitalizations and emergency room visits dropped dramatically, according to research published today in Nature Energy. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005307/en/ The study was conducted by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Propeller Health, University of California Berkeley, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, University of Texas Austin, Colorado State University, Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, Louisville Metro Office of Civic Innovation and Technology, the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Family Allergy & Asthma. Coal-fired power plants are known to emit pollutants associated with adverse health effects, including increased asthma attacks, asthma-related ED visits and hospitalizations.1-5 In 2014, coal-fired power plants accounted for 63% of economy-wide emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) in the U.S.6 Historically, Kentucky has ranked among the top five states in the U.S. for emissions from power generation.7 Starting with a pilot in 2012, the city of Louisville embarked on a project called AIR Louisville, which aimed to use data from Propeller Health's digital inhaler sensors to gain insights into the impact of local air quality on the burden of respiratory disease in the community. The public-private collaboration equipped more than 1,200 Louisville residents with asthma and COPD with Propeller sensors, which attach to patients' existing inhalers and deliver insights on medication use, symptoms and environmental factors to the Propeller app on their smartphone. "AIR Louisville brought together local government, public and private partners and residents for a common mission: to leverage local data to make our city better and more breathable," said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (News - Alert). "We are still seeing the results of AIR Louisville in this research, which demonstrates the public health impact of retiring coal as an energy source or further controlling coal-fired emissions." Between 2013 and 2016, one coal-fired power plant in the Louisville area retired coal as an energy source, and three others installed stricter emission controls to comply with regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers took advantage of these circumstances to analyze the impact of the coal-fired power plant energy transitions on residents' respiratory health, using data from Propeller and local hospitals to assess how asthma-related symptoms, ED visits and hospitalizations changed over time. The study looked at the frequency of the total number of asthma-related E.R. visits and hospitalizations per ZIP code in Jefferson County, as well as the frequency of asthma rescue medication use among 207 people. Data on rescue medication use for asthma was used as a proxy for patients' symptoms, as patients use their rescue medication for acute relief from symptoms such as coughing and shortness of breath. "This study was unique in its ability to measure asthma morbidity based on both hospitalizations and daily symptoms, and to leverage an abrupt change in environmental exposure to more directly attribute changes in asthma exacerbation to changes in coal-fired power plant emissions," said Joan Casey, PhD, led author of the paper and assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers found that energy transitions in the spring of 2015 resulted in three fewer hospitalizations and ED visits per ZIP code per quarter in the following year, when comparing areas that had high coal-fired power plant emission exposure prior to the transition to those with lower levels. This translates into nearly 400 avoided hospitalizations and ED visits each year across Jefferson County. At the individual level, the Mill Creek SO 2 scrubber installed in June 2016 was associated with a 17 percent immediate reduction in rescue medication use, which was maintained thereafter. The study also found the odds of having high rescue use throughout a month (on average more than four puffs per day) was reduced by 32 percent following the June 2016 energy transition. "This is the first study to use digital inhaler sensors to understand the health effects of reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants," said study author Meredith Barrett, PhD, head of population health research for Propeller Health. "We hope this evidence will encourage government officials to support stricter standards when regulating coal-fired power plants and encourage us towards cleaner power options, thereby protecting the health of the people who live near these facilities." The main funding for the project was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Support was also provided by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, Norton Healthcare Foundation, Owsley Brown Charitable Foundation, the American Lung Association, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The contents of the research and related materials are solely the responsibility of the grantee and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USEPA or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Lead author Joan Casey, PhD, declares no financial interest in Propeller Health. Zheng, X.-y. et al. Association between air pollutants and asthma emergency room visits and hospital admissions in time series studies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One 10, e0138146 (2015). Orellano, P., Quaranta, N., Reynoso, J., Balbi, B. & Vasquez, J. Effect of outdoor air pollution on asthma exacerbations in children and adults: Systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis. PLoS One 12, e0174050 (2017). Williams, A. M., Phaneuf, D. J., Barrett, M. A. & Su, J. G. Short-term impact of PM2.5 on contemporaneous asthma medication use: Behavior and the value of pollution reductions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 116, 5246-5253 (2019). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Integrated Science Assessment for Oxides of Nitrogen-Health Criteria, (2016). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Integrated Review Plan for the Primary National Ambient (News - Alert) Air Quality Standard for Sulfur Dioxide. EPA-452/R-14-007, (2014). Massetti, E. et al. Environmental Quality and the US Power Sector: Air Quality, Water Quality, Land Use and Environmental Justice. Prepared by: Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy, (2017). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. National Emissions Inventory, (2011). About Propeller Health Propeller Health is a leading digital health company dedicated to making life better for every person with chronic respiratory disease. Propeller creates products to more effectively treat chronic respiratory disease and improve clinical outcomes for patients through connectivity, analytics, and companion digital experiences. The Propeller platform is used by patients, physicians and healthcare organizations in the United States, Europe and Asia. Propeller Health is a wholly owned subsidiary of ResMed (NYSE: RMD, ASX: RMD). For more information, visit www.propellerhealth.com. About Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the seventh largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master's and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit http://www.mailman.columbia.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005307/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] 04/10/2020 By David Perry With the universitys mid-March shift to virtual learning in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a new, remote reality began for students, faculty and staff. One group of students might have felt social distancing harder than others, but thanks to some quick work, those enrolled in Learning in Retirement Association (LIRA) courses are thriving online. LIRA, a longtime UML partner organization, offers retired and semi-retired people educational courses and social events in collaboration with the universitys Community Relations and Alumni Relations offices. While there are no age requirements for LIRA members, most participants are older, which puts them at higher risk for COVID-19. LIRA classes had always been held in-person, but during the pandemic, that was no longer an option. Some members were not initially thrilled with the idea of moving classes online. But if you want something, says one member, you find a way to get there. LIRA President Peter Sebelius called UMLs Community Relations for help, and a week later, LIRA had moved entirely online using Zoom videoconferencing. Its first two classes drew 70 attendees each, exceeding the 60-person capacity of the classrooms used on campus. Chris Wilkinson, coordinator for government and community relations, oversaw the technological transition. The two auditioned video platforms, organized the online classes and trained users. Wilkinson, who is also an adjunct professor who has taught sessions on internet, food, bees and other subjects to LIRAs members, says after some initial fumbling, the transition proceeded smoothly. Everybody had it pretty quickly. And they were excited they were getting it right away, he says. LIRA courses cover a wide range of topics, including molecular biology, women in American history, climate change and forensics. Some meet weekly over the course of a semester. This is not just a nice, quiet book club for seniors, says Wilkinson. (There is, however, a LIRA book club that meets one Friday each month.) The main thing we get is the social interaction, says Sebelius, who leads a class called Getting Your Legal House in Order. Thats the best thing to keep us sharp, and to stave off aging. I learn a lot there, says Carol Walcik, 72, of Tyngsboro. Its fun. And the thought of not having it? I was not happy. The retired software engineer dreaded life without LIRA. It adds a lot to life. When this whole thing happened, a lot of people in the group were initially hesitant. Some of them were like, Oh, I dont like online, but the next thing you know, you see them in the online class. You can do things if you want to, she says. Walcik praised Wilkinson for helping people get comfortable with videoconferencing. He allayed a lot of the fears people had, she says. When the first class gathered electronically in late March, people were logging in from as far away as Florida, Sebelius says. Everyone was very excited about continuing online, says Kimball Rudeen. Rudeen, 70, joined LIRA six years ago, following the cue of his wife, Beverly. There were a lot of very interesting presentations on a wide variety of subjects, he says. Some by teachers at UMass Lowell, others by members. And a lot of enthusiasm. The Rudeens soon began leading courses, a common thing in LIRA. Members are encouraged to present their own classes after studying a subject. We teach one another, says Rudeen. It offers a sense of community. It creates shared interests. If you know something and are willing to talk about it, you can present it. At a time when people are isolating at home in response to the pandemic, the switch to online classes has helped preserve that sense of community. Its not quite the same as being in a roomful of people, but this is pretty close, says Walcik. The school has been really supportive. Wed like to keep going, and this way we can. Wed all be really unhappy if LIRA went away. LOS ANGELES California, Oregon and Washington have more ventilators than they can use. As the nation struggles to scrounge up the lifesaving machines for hospitals overrun with COVID-19 patients, these three Western states recently shipped 1,000 spares to New York and other besieged neighbors to the East. All NYC needs is love From CA, a worker scrawled in Magic Marker on a ventilator shipping box, shown in a video posted on Twitter by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. The ongoing effort of three West Coast states to come to the aid of more hard-hit parts of the nation has emerged as the most powerful indication to date that the early intervention of West Coast governors and mayors might have mitigated, at least for now, the medical catastrophe that has befallen New York and parts of the Midwest and South. Their aggressive imposition of stay-at-home orders has stood in contrast to the relatively slower actions in New York and elsewhere, and drawn widespread praise from epidemiologists. As of Saturday afternoon, there had been 8,627 COVID-19 related deaths in New York, compared with 598 in California, 483 in Washington and 48 in Oregon. New York had 44 deaths per 100,000 people. California had two. But these accomplishments have been largely obscured by the political attention and praise directed to New York, and particularly its governor, Andrew M. Cuomo. His daily briefings informed and reassuring have drawn millions of viewers and mostly flattering media commentary. They have established him as a daily counterpoint to President Donald Trump and even prompted Democratic daydreaming that he could be drafted as their presidential nominee. Cuomo is just extraordinary to watch: Hes so real and authentic, said Dr. Robert M. Wachter, the chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. But when this history is written, you have to look at what the mayors here did, what the public officials did, what Newsom did, and say they saved thousands of lives. This disparity in perception reflects a long-standing dynamic in American politics: The concentration of media and commentators in Washington and New York has often meant that what happens in the West is overlooked or minimized. It is a function of the time difference the three Pacific states are three hours behind New York and the sheer physical distance. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, a Democrat, found that his own attempts to run for president were complicated by the state where he worked and lived. News in this country flows east to west, always has and always will, but political and cultural movements flow west to east, said Averell Smith, a longtime Democratic strategist who how worked in campaigns nationwide and grew up in San Francisco, where his father was the district attorney. The different responses that have been on display during these difficult weeks also illustrate the cultural, political and philosophical ways in which California, Washington and Oregon are distinct from the rest of the nation, a trend that has only accelerated since Trump took office. California and Newsom have been under fire for delays in developing tests for the virus; New York has far outpaced California in testing potential victims. But the six Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, announced shelter in place orders on March 16. Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a stay at home order for the city of Los Angeles on March 19. Later that day, Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order. Cuomo, who earlier that week had resisted a call from Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York to issue a stay-at-home order, followed a day later for New York but that did not take effect until March 22. Epidemiologists said that given the speed with which the virus spread and the density of parts of New York City, that delay was troubling. I remember seeing Gov. Cuomo on TV making comments about not wanting to take away peoples civil liberties, said London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. I understand that, I totally understand that, but I dont think thats what we were doing. I know the information I had. It showed me the best-case and worst-case scenarios and provided the guidance to avoid the worst-case scenarios. I think were going to look back and see that issuing this order had a tremendous impact, she said. The West Coast is different than the East Coast in many ways. There are few cities on the Pacific with the same sort of population density as skyscraper-filled New York and other metropolitan parts of the northeast. And the mostly liberal politics of the West Coast paved the way for the kind of early interventionist policies that were until recently resisted in much of the country. Theres not a general sense that government is somehow the enemy rather than an essential part of life, said Janet Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona who is now the president of the University of California. It is a region with a heavy concentration of tech industry workers, particularly in Washington, Oregon and, of course, Silicon Valley. The tech industry, including companies like Google and Apple, took the lead in having employees work from home. Were adept at understanding and accepting science, said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown said she had been blown away by how receptive Oregonians across the political spectrum have been to the demands of the moment and she offered a theory as to why. Weve been preparing and thinking through these crises, and I do think at some level it permeates the publics consciousness, she said, citing the frequent natural disasters in her state. And the Pacific states are more connected to Asia, with a large population of Asian immigrants, so the threat of a medical calamity in the Far East did not seem as remote as it might in Maine. We saw it a little bit earlier, said Inslee. Theres just geography: Were closer to China. In Los Angeles, Garcetti said officials saw early warnings in the low attendance at the Lunar New Year parade in early February and the small crowds on the sidewalks in Chinatown. I think we had an earlier sense that this might actually touch us, he said. We have planned for a long time for a pandemic. Shutting down an economy in the face of deep concerns of workers and the business community is one of the most difficult decisions an elected official can make, as has become clear this month. Its easy now to look at Newsom and London Breed and say, of course, Wachter said. But there was a lot of pushback at the time. If they had made the wrong bet, it would have been politically disastrous. California and the Bay Area response is impressive because it was done before there were obvious and tangible risks, he said. New York acted in a more predictable way. Once it became clear it was real they took a step to lock down the place. In retrospect it was late, it was too late. Newsom said he had never thought California would be in a position where it would be giving away ventilators to other states. The idea of requiring people to stay at home was intended to slow the pace of the virus and give California officials time to find ventilators or refurbish ones in the states stockpile to prepare for a crush of patients. We never imagined wed be in that privileged position, the governor said. Had we not done what we did, we would never have been in that position. Quite the contrary, we would have been calling on other states to help us. As for the attention to Cuomo, Inslee only praised his fellow governor, calling the nationally-televised briefings from Albany really helpful to the whole country, while expressing resignation about the disparity in coverage. Were not going to change the direction the sun rises, he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. A lot of Latina celebrities often set trends in beauty and fashion, says a recent health and beauty article. For this reason, a lot of stars launch makeup lines. Some well-known celebrities have showcased an interest in the beauty industry, and their makeup brands have found success. Also, these celebrities were able to make big beauty empires with their brands. Here are some Latina celebrities and their venture in the makeup industry: Selena Gomez In February 2020, Selena Gomez announced that she will be launching her product line. Selena Gomez is one of the latest celebrities to announce a launch date for a new cosmetic line. Her brand is called Rare Beauty. Also, the Latina artist shared a video clip of a project she has been doing for two years regarding her new makeup brand. The brand was named after her 2020 album. Additionally, the beauty brand will launch via Sephora stores in North America. Jennifer Lopez In 2018, Jennifer Lopez released her makeup brand. J.Lo is famous for her timeless beauty that she gets more beautiful as she age. The Latina star's partnership with INGLOT Cosmetics has allowed her to launch her makeup line. The company includes a collection of a lot of makeup goods such as lip glosses, eye shadow palettes, and fake eyelashes. Selena Quintanilla-Inspired Makeup Line The latest makeup collection inspired by Selena Quintanilla was made in partnership with the late artist's family. Also, the first collection was released in 2016. The second collection is to be released on April 25, the anniversary of her death. Check these out: Chrissy Teigen Chrissy Teigen, a model, was doing a lot of stuff from hosting shows to launching her cookbooks, makeup brand, and cookware line. In 2018, she partnered with Becca Cosmetics. She released her makeup collection that included lip glosses, blush, eyeshadow, and highlighter. Lady Gaga In July 2019, Lady Gaga's makeup brand was launched. The makeup line was an inclusive beauty brand that is cruelty-free and vegan. The name of the brand is Hauslabs. Becky G In partnership with a modern makeup company called ColourPop Cosmetics, Becky G had launched multiple collections, and it is doing well in the market. Her most recent makeup line launch was in February. Upon the start of her latest makeup line, it sold out quickly. With her beauty, adding a bit of glam gives her total perfection. Drew Barrymore Drew Barrymore launched a collection of makeup in 2013 under the name Flower Beauty. Since then, the business venture has grown and now includes perfume and eyewear products. Camila Cabello In July 2018, Camila Cabello announced her partnership with L'Oreal for her makeup line. The new makeup brand will be named Havana, the title of her hit single and her birthplace. She was born in Cuba. Des combattants separatistes archives Derrick Forchap alias General Armoured Car believed to be loyal to the armed movement of the independence of a breakaway state called Ambazonia is now in the hands of security forces. Open sources say the member of the Non-State Armed Group was nabbed April 5, 2020 by an irate crowd at the Bonakama neighbourhood in Kumba I Subdivision, Meme Division and later handed over to elements of the National Gendarmerie at Buea-Raod Kumba . The said Derrick Forchap aka General Armoured Car from Malende Village in Kumba III Subdivision is said to have been terrorising the local population, which led to his capture. Before he was handed over to Gendarmes, the self-styled general revealed that he was in Bonakama to stop bar owners from selling Brassaries du Cameroun products. He said as an Amba general, he received instructions from one of the separatist activists abroad to make a survey of the number of bar owners selling the products which according to him have long been declared contraband in the area. Quizzed whether he has in the line of his mission killed any individual, he narrated that the story is a long one because he can't really remember the number of civilians and military whose lives he has taken away. I have been set up by one of the guys around so please don't allow the military to take me along for they will kill me, the general is reported as telling the irate Bonakama youth as he sehd what bystanders say were crocodile tears. It should be recalled that Bonakama quarters in Kumba has one of the best vigilante groups in the town. The quarter goes into the records as having arrested many Amba boys and the youths are very collaborative. Life in the area is going on smoothly as they have taken an oath to wipe out any suspected Amba elements. Common Law Lawyers in Cameroon went on strike in October 2016 to protest governments attempts to annihilate the Common Law practice in a constitutionally bilingual and bi-jural Cameroon. The strike lasted for over a year. Anglophone teachers in the country joined the strike on November 21, 2016 to uphold Anglo-Saxon values under threat in Cameroons two English-speaking regions. Same day, Mancho Bibixy staged a coffin revolution at Liberty Square in Bamenda to protest against the marginalisation and economic deprivation of Anglophones. Matters came to a head on Thursday, December 8 when the population of Bamenda took to the streets to denounce the politicisation of a strike action they consider genuine and borne of longstanding grievances. Days of ghost town have since been observed throughout the South West and North West Regions of the country. On January 17, 2017, Barrister Nkongo Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Neba, leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC) were arrested moments after the consortium had been banned along with the SCNC. Same day, internet was cut in the North West and South West Regions. The floodgate of arrests was thus open with the arrest of Mancho Bibixy on January 19, 2017. Journalist Atia Tilarious Azohnwi, Hans Achomba, Godden Zama, Penn Terence and hundreds of other Anglophones would later be arrested and ferried to detention centres in Yaounde. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, president of the self-styled state of Ambazonia was arrested in Nigeria on January 5, 2018 along with nine other members of his cabinet including Tassang Wilfred, Nfor Ngala Nfor and Barrister Eyambe Ebai with the corporatist of lawyers, teachers and civil society demands morphing into an armed conflict late in 2017. While hundreds of those arrested have been released as part of appeasement measures, many separatist fighters have been timid towards laying down their guns and joining their peers at the National Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission for ex-separatist fighters and repentant Boko Haram militants. Recommendations at last years Major National Dialogue are currently being implemented as hopes for a return to peace and normalcy remain alive. Paul Tasong and Donatus Njong were recently tasked by the Prime Minister to champion the reconstruction of the crisis hit North West and South West Regions. A patient is evacuated from the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside, Calif., on April 8, 2020. (Chris Carlson/AP) CDC Chief Robert Redfield: We Are Nearing the Peak Right Now Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the United States is nearing its peak in the CCP virus outbreak, but stressed the country needs to reopen wisely. He said that the peak, or apex, will arrive hopefully, sometime this week, he said in a Monday morning interview. Youll know when youre at the peak when the next day is actually less than the day before in terms of cases. The United States is stabilizing at the moment in terms of the rate of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cases being confirmed, deaths, and hospitalizations, the CDC director told Today.com. The Trump administration has expressed a willingness to reopen the country and economy as job losses and unemployment claims mount. More than 40 governors have issued statewide stay-at-home orders, effectively closing down schools and businesses deemed nonessential in an attempt to curb the spread of the CCP virus, which is commonly known as the novel coronavirus. But like other top health authorities in the White House, Redfield said that they will have to examine a number of different factors before the economy can be reopened. We have to substantially augment our public health capacity to ramp up testing, tracing, and identifying cases, he said, adding that the hospital and medical capacity should be bolstered in the meantime. There is no doubt that we have to reopen correctly in a step-by-step process, Redfield said. Redfield also downplayed claims that federal officials ignored early warning signs of the virus, which emerged late last year in Wuhan, China, before CCP mismanagement and coverup efforts led to a global pandemic. [It] wasnt until Feb. 28 that we saw our first community outbreak in the United States, Redfield noted in the interview, adding that all of the early cases involved people traveling from China. President Donald Trump speaks as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health Anthony Fauci (L), US Vice President Mike Pence (2L), and Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield (R) look on during a press conference on the COVID-19, coronavirus, outbreak at the White House in Washington on Feb. 29, 2020. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images) Right now, our job is getting through this outbreak, he explained. His comments come a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reported that the patients in the states hospitals due to COVID-19 increased by just 53 people on April 11, which is the lowest total in around a month. The average of daily hospitalizations has decreased over the past week, he said. This is the number that we have been watching because the great fear for us was always overwhelming the hospital system, the capacity of the hospital system, Cuomo said on Sunday. New York is currently the CCP virus epicenter after reporting its first case on March 2. So far, nearly 10,000 people have died of the CCP virus alone in the state. Of those, more than 6,300 people have died in New York City. A TV grab taken from the World Health Organization website shows WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus via video link as he delivers a news briefing on COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) from the WHO headquarters in Geneva on March 30, 2020. World Health Organization officials warned nations across the globe against lifting government lockdowns to contain the Covid-19 outbreak too soon, saying that the coronavirus spreads fast and is 10 times deadlier than the 2009 flu pandemic. "While Covid-19 accelerates very fast, it decelerates much more slowly. In other words, the way down is much slower than the way up," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization's Geneva headquarters on Monday. "That means control measures must be lifted slowly and with control. It cannot happen all at once." U.S. political leaders, from President Donald Trump to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have said they hope to reopen businesses as soon as it is safe to do so. The coronavirus, which emerged in China over three months ago, has infected more than 1.8 million people worldwide and killed at least 115,000 people. "Control measures can only be lifted if the right public health measures are in place, including significant capacity for contact tracing," Tedros said. Tedros outlined a checklist for countries before they should consider lifting social distancing measures: Transmission of the virus should be controlled. A surveillance system should be in place to detect, isolate and treat patients. Outbreaks in hospitals and nursing homes should be minimized. Preventive measures in essential locations such as schools and workplaces should be in place. The risk of importing the disease from abroad should be under control. WHO was asked about using hydroxychloroquine, which is being tested in New York state and has been touted by Trump as a "game-changer" in treating Covid-19 even though the drug has not been put through a rigorous clinical trial. WHO officials said they are "eagerly" awaiting results from randomized controlled trials seeing whether hydroxychloroquine is effective in fighting the coronavirus, adding that there is currently no evidence it works. "There is no empirical evidence," said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's emergencies program. "There is no evidence from randomized control trials that it works, and clinicians have also been cautioned to look out for side effects of the drug to ensure that we do no harm." Ryan also said it appears not all people who recover from the coronavirus have the antibodies to fight a second infection, raising questions as to whether or not patients develop immunity after surviving Covid-19. "With regards to recovery and then reinfection, I believe we do not have the answers to that. That is an unknown," Ryan said. South Korean officials have warned that hard-earned progress fighting the coronavirus pandemic could be hit by new infections at bars and leisure spots, highlighting global tensions between governments keen to maintain social distancing and citizens eager to resume their lives as economic pressure mounts. Some European nations have started tentative moves to ease their shutdowns. Hard-hit Spain, which on Sunday reported its lowest daily growth in infections for three weeks, allowed workers in some non-essential industries to return to factories and construction sites on Monday. South Koreas caseload has slowed from early March, when it was reporting around 500 new cases a day, but officials have warned of a broader quiet spread, pointing to transmissions at locations such as bars that may indicate eased attitudes towards social distancing. South Korean Prime Minster Chung Sye-kyun said officials were discussing new public guidelines that would allow people to engage in certain levels of economic and social activity while also maintaining distance to slow the spread of the virus. Social distancing was still on full display for Easter Sunday celebrations around the globe, with many Christians marking the day isolated in their homes while clergy preached to empty pews. St Peters Square at the Vatican was barricaded to keep out crowds, while one Florida church drew a large turnout for a drive-in service in a car park. Pope Francis called for global solidarity to confront the epochal challenge of the pandemic. He urged political leaders to give hope and opportunity to the millions laid off from work. US President Donald Trump in his Easter message paid tribute to the medical professionals, first responders and other essential workers striving to combat the pandemic. Story continues Back on March 24, Mr Trump had broached the possibility that the US could emerge from widespread lockdowns by Easter. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter, he said. Instead, the US is the new epicentre of the pandemic, with more than half a million cases and more than 22,000 deaths, the worlds highest. About half the US deaths have been in the New York metropolitan area, but hospitalisations are slowing in the state and other indicators suggest that lockdowns and social distancing are flattening the curve of infections. Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, said the economy in parts of the country could gradually reopen as early as next month. (PA Graphics) The Italian government said weekend police patrols resulted in more than 12,500 people being sanctioned and 150 facing criminal charges of violating lockdown measures. On the hopeful side, officials said Italy recorded the lowest number of virus deaths in three weeks, with 431 people dying in the past day to bring its total to around 19,800. But while attention has focused on the US and southern Europe, new coronavirus hot spots have been emerging in Japan and Turkey. Japan, the worlds third-biggest economy, has seen its number of new cases climb rapidly in recent days and now has 7,255 confirmed cases of the virus. Japanese companies have been slow to switch to remote-working and people are still commuting, even after a state of emergency declaration for seven prefectures, including Tokyo. In an effort to encourage citizens to stay at home, the government released a one-minute video showing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cuddling his dog, reading a book, sipping from a cup and clicking a remote control at home. Mr Abes message drew criticism that he did not understand the plight of those who cannot rest at home. Many called him an aristocrat. More than 1.8 million infections have been reported and more than 114,000 people have died worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US has the highest numbers, with more than 555,000 confirmed cases. The figures certainly understate the true size and toll of the pandemic, due to limited testing, uneven counting of the dead and some governments desire to play down the extent of outbreaks. When Kristen Scalia heard that Gov. Phil Murphy was forcing all non-essential stores to close due to the spreading coronavirus, her first thought wasnt to immediately cease operations, but to figure out a way to keep going. Scalia started Kanibal & Co., a shop in downtown Jersey City with quirky items, paintings by local artists and antique jewlery, as a website in the early 2000s. After just celebrating 10 years of the storefront, she realized she had to pivot back to her roots. We had to figure out a way where we can keep going and comply with whats right. Its about how can I keep my business alive, she said. From there, weve just had to switch our business practices to Instagram and bulked up our website. Despite 10,000 loyal Instagram followers and a supportive shopping community, its just a bandaid while the economy sinks deeper into what many economists predict could lead to a recession. Every day, the 36-year-old wakes up grateful that her store can function at least one more day. People are buying today, but they can stop buying tomorrow. There can be another executive order that mandates a legit lockdown. I think every day, this is going to be the last day, Scalia said of the new ever-changing rhythm. Small business owners fear the damage coronavirus made to the economy has been done, inevitably leaving some of New Jerseys 861,000 small businesses to close for good. Brick and mortar stores who depend on foot traffic have seen sales plunge. Stores that offer a service, like hair salons, cant operate online. And even essential stores that manage to stay open are affected by social distancing requirements. These owners already had to make hard choices, whether that was laying off their staff or taking a pay cut themselves. Already operating on thin margins, a rainy day fund can only last so long. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage "This conversation would be going a different way if we were not able to operate in a limited capacity, Scalia said. Deborah Engel of Maplewood is dealing with exactly that. Shes the owner of Work & Play, a coworking space in South Orange with childcare on site. A business model that focuses on creating a work-life balance for freelancers and remote workers is hard to turn into a Zoom conference. I just get depressed, and I cant believe we finally figured it out, and with how long these closures might last, we might not be able to reopen, she said, adding she projects to lose 80% of her revenue. While the feds have put aside billions of dollars for small businesses, the demand is so high that its overwhelmed every funding program. The state Economic Development Authority, which was accepting applications for $5 million in small business grants, received more than 32,000 submissions. No more than 2,000 grants will be awarded. Were way, way, way oversubscribed, CEO Tim Sullivan told NJ Advance Media. Were on the hunt for more money. For nearly a month, Engel applied for every grant available to her, but was only able to secure funding through Paycheck Protection Program, a federal loan from the Small Business Administration provided by the CARES Act. Engel commended the EDA, which provided a webinar and realistic expectations for how much money was available, unlike other programs that provided inconsistent dates and requirements, she said. The most frustrating was when they came out with all these programs and made these promises, but people havent gotten anything. Theres a lot of confusion, she said, noting she can keep her staff on payroll for at least eight more weeks. Theres no centralized place you can just call and ask. Businesses of every size and industry are suffering. Widespread indefinite closures have led to mass layoffs, with unemployment claims surpassing 570,000 in three weeks. Nonetheless, there needs to be more more transparency about what is available for small businesses, she said. We need information on the implementation of the funding and how the process is working or not working. The fear is that bigger companies are the ones getting the funding, and the ones in smaller communities are being left behind, she said. Scalia echoed that sentiment, stressing that theres always going to be someone left out when governments cant account for all the nuances of a small business. She urges anyone who can to support small businesses directly, even if its just a pack of cookies or nice message on Facebook. But as long as companies are being excluded from funding, the ripple effect will close some businesses to close forever, she said. People want a great downtown community, Engel said, but my fear is no one will be around when this is over, because were being left out. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. A brief look at all the news you need to start the day with during the time of social distancing. Click here for live updates on COVID-19. Indian passengers wearing a protective mask sit on a cycle van in Kolkata. (Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images) Slight but noticeable flattening of growth curve in India Just as India prepares to extend its 21-day lockdown period by two more weeks, the first indications have emerged that this measure could indeed be helping in slowing down the spread of COVID-19 disease in the country. Read More US records 1,514 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours The COVID-19 has now claimed the lives of at least 22,020 people in the United States, the most of any country. Read More Liquor shops, warehouses to reopen in Assam, Meghalaya Excise officials of the two states would supervise and monitor the business and works of these liquor shops, wholesale warehouses and permitted establishments. Read More Farmers losses seen at Rs 15000 crore Market arrivals of fruits and vegetables have sharply fallen since the imposition of the lockdown, and if it is extended by another month, losses could swell to Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000 crore, if not more, traders and economists say. Read More Oil prices rally as top producers agree on massive output cuts Oil markets have been in turmoil for weeks as lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed worldwide to combat the virus outbreak strangle demand, with a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia compounding the crisis. Read More Sourav Ganguly hints at postponement of IPL 2020 The IPL was deferred till April 15 due to the pandemic but it seems the lockdown is likely to be extended. In that context, Ganguly has claimed that the situation is not favourable for any sporting event, let alone IPL. Read More Sania Mirza celebrates 10th marriage anniversary with cheeky post The tennis ace shared a couple of pictures with her husband Shoaib Malik on social media and wished him a Happy Anniversary. Read More U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Trump administration policies on Iran, Iraq and use of force on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on Feb. 28, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) Pompeo Welcomes the Formation of New Iraqi Government Ahead of Bilateral Talks Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed the formation of a new Iraqi government. The two countries are scheduled to meet in June for a strategic dialogue to discuss various thorny issues, including the status of the U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. The United States looks forward to the formation of a new Iraqi Government capable of confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, ameliorating the countrys current economic distress, and bringing arms under state control, said Pompeo on Monday. Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the Iraqi Prime minister-designate, met with government leaders on Saturday to quickly form a cabinet, according to the Al-Monitor, a Middle East media. With my mandate to lead the Iraqi government, I pledge before my honorable people, to work to form a government that radiates the aspirations and demands of the Iraqis at the top of its priorities, safeguards the sovereignty of the country, preserves rights, 53-year-old Kadhimi said in a message on Twitter on Thursday. With my mandate to lead the Iraqi government, I pledge before my honorable people, to work to form a government that radiates the aspirations and demands of the Iraqis at the top of its priorities, safeguards the sovereignty of the country, preserves rights, #_ Mustafa Al-kadhimi (@kadhimi_mustafa) April 9, 2020 Kadhimi, who served as the director of Iraqs National Intelligence Service since 2016 and was a major opposition figure during Saddam Husseins rule, was appointed as the prime-minister designate by Iraqi President Barham Salih after Adnan al-Zurfi, a former governor of Najaf, declined the appointment on Thursday. Zurfi was unable to find support among the Iraqi political parties for his candidacy. He was labeled as a CIA agent according to another Al-monitor report and couldnt gather support from the Kurdish and Sunni political parties. Kadhimi has 30 days to form a cabinet. All political party representatives were present during his nomination ceremony and this suggests he will most likely be able to sustain his government, reported Al-monitor. Iraqi Pres. @BarhamSalih tasked @MAKadhimi to form #Iraqs new govt. Kadhimi will finally be able to form his cabinet as almost all political bloc leaders appear to be backing him and were present at nomination ceremony Hes 3rd PM nominee since resignation of PM Abdul-Mahdi. pic.twitter.com/3kFscnZHD3 Baxtiyar Goran (@BaxtiyarGoran) April 9, 2020 Pompeo said the new government that is being formed due to a consensus between the Shia, Sunni, and the Kurdish political leaders will put the interests of Iraq first. The Iraqi people demand genuine reform and trustworthy leaders. These demands deserve to be addressed without violence or suppression. We stand with Iraqi people as they seek a sovereign, prosperous Iraq, free of corruption and terror, said Pompeo. The United States and Iraqi governments are scheduled to meet each other in mid-June to discuss various issues, but the most important remains the status of the American troops already stationed in the conflicted country. As a force for good in the nation and as Iraqs closest friend, the United States has proposed a strategic dialogue with the government of Iraq to be held in [the] middle of June, Pompeo told reporters at the State Department on April 7. With the global COVID-19 pandemic raging and plummeting oil revenues, threatening an Iraqi economic collapse, its important that our two governments work together to stop any reversal of the gains weve made in our efforts to defeat ISIS and stabilize the country. From the U.S. side, the strategic dialogue will be led by Under Secretary for Political Affairs, David Hale. PHOENIX The attorney for the Arizona Republican Party says a system that allows people to sign petitions online the same one used by political candidates is highly susceptible to fraud. The new legal filings by Dennis Wilenchik come as the state GOP is urging U.S. District Court Judge Dominic Lanza to reject a bid by initiative organizers to use the existing E-Qual system to finish getting the signatures needed to put their proposals before voters in November. In essence, E-Qual allows anyone with an Arizona drivers license to sign petitions online by providing certain information. That includes the name, date of birth and the drivers license number or, in the alternative, a voter ID number and last four digits of a Social Security number. The risk of fraud in that system is obvious, the legal briefs read. The system is premised on the false notion that only the voters will have access to their own drivers license number, it continues. But as any good private investigator knows, a persons name, address and drivers license number are all public records at the DMV. The South Texas Food Bank aims to provide significant assistance to the most vulnerable populations in the county and city during times of crisis. The food banks latest efforts come in what they call their COVID-19 Emergency Food Distributions as they plan to help people every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at their distribution site at 212 Jefferson St. and other various sites throughout the city and Webb County. According to South Texas Food Bank Executive Director Alma Boubel, over 600 bags of food assistance were provided to the community at two donation sites on Tuesday. The assistance was delivered thanks in part to the help of deputies for Webb County Constable Rudy Rodriguez and the city government of Rio Bravo. In Rio Bravo, the city government has delivered 200 bags of food to the community over the past two weeks, focusing on the elderly, veterans and the disabled, Rio Bravo Mayor Gilbert Aguilar Jr. said. In total, about 200 Rio Bravo families have been assisted with the essential items donated from the food bank. Youve got rice, raisins, pistachios, canned food that is going to last them for more than just a few days, and also patties of meat and bread that comes in these food bank donation items, Aguilar said. According to the mayor, the city has a way of identifying needy members of the population based on city records. The way we are able to reach them is through trash collection contracts as everyone that is disabled, elderly, veteran or gets a discount on the trash and are on the list. This is what we are working with, even though those in need are also provided with a bag from the food bank, Aguilar said. Constable Rodriguez is doing his part with the donations along with the San Luis Rey Catholic Church. The other site is used to help other vulnerable people around the city as the South Texas Food Bank aims at reaching out to more people. Also, it allows their operations to continue smoothly and at a faster pace helping out various sectors of the city and county. Though the operations in Rio Bravo will continue to operate normally, there is speculation that they might have to hold off on holding drive-thru events like these for the safety of the city officials due to fear of getting infected themselves. I know things are going to get a bit more critical due to everything related to the coronavirus, so we might start doing it just one day throughout the week and try to get as many people as we can instead of exposing ourselves two to three days out of the week, Aguilar said. Nevertheless, he believes that the risk he is taking is well worth it for a city he just took charge of in the past couple of months. Stay safe, and if you dont have to get out, we will try to deliver these bags if they cannot come out as well, Aguilar said. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 22:50:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GAZA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Officials in Gaza said Egypt reopened Rafah Crossing point on its borders with southern Gaza Strip on Monday to allow the returning of stranded Palestinians. Spokesman of the Hamas-run ministry of interior in Gaza Eyad al-Bozzom told reporters that Egypt reopened Rafah Crossing point for four days to enable hundreds of Palestinians stranded in Egypt to return to Gaza. The crossing point had been shut down about a month ago as part the precautionary measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus to the coastal enclave. "Around 300 passengers will be allowed to cross through Rafah border crossing point to the Gaza Strip every day from Monday to Thursday," said al-Bozzom, adding that "all passengers will be taken to obligatory quarantine." In March, more than 2,000 Palestinians who had crossed from Egypt to the Gaza Strip through Rafah Crossing, were all held in quarantine centers, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. The ministry earlier said that most of those who came from abroad and were held in the quarantine centers across the Gaza Strip had returned homes. The health ministry also said that 13 Gaza Strip's citizens were infected with the virus, adding that nine had recovered. On Saturday, the Hamas movement, which has been ruling the coastal enclave since 2007, announced that it finished the construction of 1,000 quarantine units in southern and northern Gaza Strip. The movement said in a press statement that it handed over the 1,000 units to the ministry of health in the Gaza Strip which can be used to host hundreds of passengers returning to Gaza this week. Top oil-producing countries agreed Sunday to record output cuts in order to boost plummeting oil prices due to the new coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war. OPEC producers, dominated by Saudi Arabia, and allies led by Russia met via videoconference for an hour Sunday in a last-ditch effort to cement an accord struck early Friday that hinged on Mexico's agreement. In a compromise, Mexico came onboard Sunday to an agreement to cut 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to its Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels per day envisioned earlier. Kuwait Oil Minister Khaled al-Fadhel tweeted that, following extensive efforts "we announce completing the historical agreement". Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who chaired the meeting together with his Russian and Algerian counterparts, also confirmed that the discussions "ended with consensus". US President Donald Trump welcomed a "great deal for all", saying on Twitter it would "save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States". He added he "would like to thank and congratulate" Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, both of whom he had spoken to. Initial reticence from Mexico to introduce output cuts had led to a standoff that cast doubt on efforts to bolster oil prices, pushed to near two-decade lows. Oil prices have slumped since the beginning of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has sapped demand as countries around the world have put their populations under lockdown. Compounding the problem, key players Russia and Saudi Arabia had engaged in a price war, ramping up output in a bid to hold on to market share and undercut US shale producers. Rystad Energy analyst Per Magnus Nysveen said Sunday's agreement provided "at least a temporary relief" as fuel consumption was expected to fall globally by 27 million barrels per day in April and 20 million barrels per day in May. His colleague Bjornar Tonhaugen said, however, that even though the deal made "the single largest output cut in history", prices were still expected to see "renewed downwards pressure". "The oil market will see enormous stock builds in April as the deal is only in effect from 1 May, while gradual shut ins and production declines will already happen during the current month," he said. Top oil producers struggled to finalise production cuts during a virtual summit held by G20 energy ministers on Friday, despite Trump's mediation efforts to end the standoff with Mexico. The OPEC-led agreement foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual reduction in cuts until April 2022. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted by Russian news agency TASS as saying he expected oil markets not to recover before "end of the year, in the best case". 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 A $440million relief package for tenants and landlords struggling amid the COVID-19 shutdown will be announced by the New South Wales government on Monday. The six-month support package will include a moratorium or 'temporary hold' on applications for evictions of residential tenants who are struggling to pay rent due to job losses and pay cuts caused by coronavirus. Residential landlords and tenants will be required to negotiate rental payments if a household has lost at least 25 per cent of its income. Eligible renters cannot be evicted until the National Civil and Administrative Tribunal is satisfied that negotiations have concluded and taken place in good faith. If landlords grant a saving up to 25 percent, they will be able to claim that back as a land tax waiver or rebate. However the rent relief is only temporary, with renters required to repay the offset rent eventually, with amounts outstanding accruing as arrears. Residential landlords and tenants will be required to negotiate rental payments in good faith where a household has lost at least 25 per cent of its income 'We know many people are worried about meeting their financial commitments at the moment,' NSW Better Regulation Minister Kevin Anderson said in a statement on Monday. 'That is why we need for stability for tenants and landlords while the new Commonwealth income support payments are rolled out, and landlords talk to their bank about mortgage relief.' NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said it was also important that eligible tenants would not be blacklisted for the accrual of rent arrears. More than 6,320 Australians have been infected with coronavirus and 61 people have died For commercial leases, relief will be available to businesses with annual turnover of less than $50 million which have suffered a revenue drop of at least 30 per cent because of the pandemic. Commercial landlords will have to negotiate rent relief agreements with such tenants by applying principles in a code of conduct previously announced by the prime minister. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement They too will be able to claim foregone rental payments as a land tax concession of up to 25 per cent. Those who claim that concession will also be offered further land tax deferral for any outstanding amounts for a three-month period. Mr Perrottet said the rent relief only applied to landlords and tenants who had been significantly impacted by COVID-19. 'If your circumstances have not significantly changed you need to fulfil the terms of your existing agreement,' he said in a statement on Monday. More than 6,320 Australians have been infected with coronavirus and 61 people have died. Two more deaths were recorded on Monday morning but there had been only 33 new positive tests in the previous 24 hours. Hubei's severe, critical COVID-19 cases drop below 100 People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 09:49, April 12, 2020 WUHAN, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The number of COVID-19 patients in severe and critical condition dropped below 100 on Friday in central China's Hubei Province, which was hit hard by the novel coronavirus outbreak. The health commission of Hubei said Saturday that among the 320 COVID-19 patients being treated in hospital, 51 were still in severe condition and 44 others in critical condition. Twenty-eight COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospital after recovery on Friday. No new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in the province on Friday, but three new deaths were registered, including two in the provincial capital of Wuhan, the former epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China. The commission said Hubei had 673 asymptomatic patients under medical observation by Friday, after 19 cases were ruled out while 17 new patients were reported. Medical experts said the treatment of the severe and critical cases remained difficult. "Most of the severe patients (in Wuhan hospitals) have turned negative in nucleic acid testing, so the anti-virus treatment is no longer needed," said Yuan Yufeng, vice president of Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital that mainly treats severely ill patients. "Their main problems include severe organ damage caused by the disease, thus requiring advanced life support, and pre-existing health problems such as cerebral infarction, coronary disease and diabetes, which keep them in hospitals. Many of them are elderly patients and their treatment remains difficult," he said. "The reason such patients are placed in the four largest hospitals in Wuhan is that the Chinese government hopes the hospitals' medical prowess can help save their lives," Yuan said. Hubei has so far reported 67,803 confirmed COVID-19 cases in total, including 50,008 in Wuhan. The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland had reached 81,953 by Friday, including 1,089 patients who were still being treated, 77,525 people who had been discharged after recovery, and 3,339 people who died of the disease. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Republican billionaire Ken Langone praised the health-care industry, public service workers and drug companies in the fight against the coronavirus but bashed the news media. In an interview Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Langone said the media's coverage of the Trump administration's efforts against the outbreak is too aggressive because the country needs to be united. "Don't short America," said Langone, who is chairman of NYU Langone Medical Center, one of the nation's premier hospitals and has given hundreds of millions of dollars to NYU's hospital and medical school. From doctors and nurses to police officers and firefighters, "people are making sacrifices for the benefit of all of us. The least we can do is our part. Our part as citizens should be stay home, obey separation." Langone said. "It is working." The co-founder of Home Depot and founder of investment firm Invemed Associates also lauded pharmaceutical and biotech companies for devoting all their research capabilities to trying to find a coronavirus vaccine and treatments for Covid-19. Langone said there will be plenty of time for recriminations after the crisis has passed. He was particularly critical of the media for what he sees as inflammatory coverage. He said he gives the media a "big fat 'F.'" The final judgment on whether President Donald Trump acted quickly enough and forcefully enough will be the November election, Langone said. In the meantime, Langone urged "unity like never before," saying he hopes within the next month the U.S. could start seeing daily life approach a return to normal. The ongoing lockdown is giving tough time to all the people in India. However, people are doing some kind of activities at home to kill time. Like all the commoners, celebs are also doing various activities amid their quarantine period. Amidst all, there are many interesting challenges are trending in different social media platforms. Right from Roger Federer's volleying challenge to Liv Cooke's freestyle challenges, celebrities have been doing these activities with great enthusiasm. In all the challenges, the Spider-Man star Tom Holland's challenge is currently breaking the internet. Well, the challenge is to put on a T-shirt while doing a handstand. Taking up this challenge, Nakkhul Jaidev recently posted a video of himself doing the Tom Holland Challenge and his fans can't take their eyes off from him. Also Read : PHOTOS: Actor Nakul Enters Wedlock, Marriage Attended By Famous Tamil Celebrities! Sharing the video on Instagram, Nakkhul wrote, "#tomhollandchallenge #conquered in the first attempt." In the above video, Nakkhul is looking attractive in shirtless avatar. He can be seen wearing boxer shorts and doing handstand like a professional. His muscular body is setting the internet on fire. His fans can't stop praising him for his fitness. Check comments: chidananda8255 Vera level bro aasif_ashley Edhukku avalo kasta padiringa bro nindu pothalea sikirama pothuralaam la varunraghavanofficial awesome bruh samueltrajan I am still failing. Soon to progress sasi_freelance_artist You Did It Nakkhul, Smiling At The End Is Real Victory On the weekend, Rakul Preet Singh too put up a video on her page and she also did the Tom Holland challenge perfectly. Well, these activities keep people engaged and physically fit during this lockdown. Also Read : Nakul Is All Set To Unleash His New Avatar In 'Sei' What is most disturbing about the coronavirus epidemic from an international perspective is the absence of a multilateral response to the crisis. It has long been established by experts that pandemics and global health security are just that, global, in that they know no borders. Contrary to U.S. President Donald Trump's racist labeling of COVID-19 as a "Chinese virus," the disease is equally contagious and equally deadly across all races and ethnicities. As Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization has said, "The only way we will defeat this outbreak is for all countries to work together in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation. We are all in this together and we can only stop it together." The failures are on all sides. The WHO is still too beholden to member states to act quickly and boldly. After China's prevarication over the 2002-2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak, the WHO empowered itself to declare a "public health emergency of international concern" to speed up state-based and non-state-based responses to fast-spreading infectious diseases. But even here, the WHO did not declare it until Jan. 30, when the COVID-19 outbreak had already spread to 19 countries on four continents infecting 8,000 people. The WHOs deference to one state, China, in waiting to declare a pandemic was a failure of process to organize a multilateral response more quickly. China has also failed in this regard. While the media has portrayed its quarantine efforts in a positive light, its initial actions did not befit the image of a global leader that Beijing has sought to project. China not only censored medical experts who sought to raise the alarm over the virus, but it also failed to report to international authorities between Jan. 12 and Jan. 20 clear evidence of human-to-human transmission and, even worse, took no action to stop citizens from spreading the virus while celebrating Lunar New Year. Beijing has since tried to be transparent with the WHO and has offered assistance to Italy, Korea, Iran and Iraq, but at the most critical initial moment of the crisis, its short-sighted and unilateral behavior definitely made the crisis worse for the world. Despite the relative decline of U.S. power, it is at times of global crisis like this that the rest of the world instinctively looks to America to help fashion a multilateral response. In past pandemics as well as financial crises, U.S. administrations would bring world leaders in person or by video into the White House to map out strategic objectives, burden-sharing, and practical next steps in a fully coordinated response. That is completely absent today. Trump's flailing response has been at once unilateral and ineffective, blaming others rather than leading a response. That should not be surprising given that Trump's policies up until the pandemic had sought to break down multilateral cooperation. Whether this took the form of pulling out of the Transpacific Partnership or longstanding arms control treaties, Washington devalued global cooperation for "America First," which has left no platform for constituting a multi-nation collaborative response. The situation has only been made worse by the fact that the two leaders who are critical to fashioning a global response have used the crisis to deepen existing rifts rather than to mend them. The U.S. and China are locked into a petty, vindictive, and unproductive argument, in full view of the world, over the origins of the crisis (Trump calls it the "Chinese virus," while Chinese officials engage in a blatantly false disinformation campaign blaming the U.S. military), and the two have expelled journalists from each other's countries in a nasty tit-for-tat that reduces the opportunity for information when we need it most. Amid the daily tallies of deaths, citizens only hear their leaders talk about travel bans and closing borders. It is clear, however, that the only effective response is a multilateral one. First, everyone needs to share as much information and expertise as possible to create a vaccine for the virus. China should have provided the DNA sequence to all countries early on to allow all key players to start work on a solution. The recent announcement that German, U.S., and Chinese pharmaceutical companies -- BioNtech, Pfizer and Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical -- would work together on a vaccine is a welcome development. These types of partnerships should be given more attention and higher priority among world leaders and the media. News of this nature would boost people's spirits as well as business confidence. There must be a coordinated global economic response to damage wrought by the virus. In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the G20 played a key role in putting together a US$5 trillion stimulus package, rebalancing policies between surplus and debtor nations, and proposing new financial regulations. In the absence of such a response through the IMF or the G20, led by China and the U.S., countries are responding with individual, uncoordinated and haphazard policies that will not achieve the desired effects. In addition, countries should agree multilaterally to step back from the protectionist trade positions they have been receding into. These trade barriers have disrupted global supply chains and trade patterns in ways harmful to a coordinated response to the pandemic. For example, half of the world's respirators are made in China. Decoupling from this market is not the answer. G20 countries should be sharing information about national capacities to produce face masks, ventilators, respirators and personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. It is astounding that the U.S. and its allies, like Japan and Korea, have not done this already given the needs in some countries and the surpluses in others. Countries should also be coordinating travel regulations and procedures for screening travelers at ports of entry. The G8 was once at the frontline of the global fight against the AIDS pandemic, tuberculosis and malaria, saving millions of lives. The G20 played a key role coordinating a global response to the 2008 financial crisis. The U.S. was at the forefront of these multilateral efforts, and its absence, along with China's, is sadly evident today in the fight against the epidemic. Jenkintown Road closed from Monday through May Oil prices rose Monday after top producers agreed to massive output cuts, but gains were capped as doubts grew about whether the move was enough to stabilise coronavirus-ravaged energy markets. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate was up about five percent at $23.94 a barrel in Asian afternoon trade, after earlier rallying almost eight percent. Brent crude, the international benchmark, also fell slightly from an earlier strong rally to trade 4.2 percent higher at $32.83 a barrel. While the rises were healthy, they were limited compared to the double-digit jumps and falls of recent weeks, with analysts concerned there will be still be massive oversupply in the market as the virus pandemic throttles demand. OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia thrashed out a compromise deal Sunday after Mexico had balked at an earlier agreement struck on Friday. The videoconference summit agreed to a cut of 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to Mexican Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrel reduction envisioned earlier. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic" -- and the agreement appeared to mark an end to a bitter price war between Riyadh and Moscow. Oil markets have been in turmoil for weeks as lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed to combat the outbreak batter demand, while the Saudi-Russian row compounded the crisis. But analysts were left disappointed at a cut that will go nowhere near to making up for the expected demand loss due to the pandemic, forecast at anywhere between 15 and 30 million barrels a day. Storage tanks worldwide are also rapidly filling up. "The deal is a little less than the market expected," Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, told Bloomberg News. "The hard work lies ahead given that the market is very sceptical that OPEC+ are actually going to be able to come up with their near 10 million barrels a day of production cuts." AxiCorp's Stephen Innes added: "There remain concerns the agreement could be a day late and a 'barrel short' to prevent a decline in prices in the coming weeks as storage capacity brims". Private schools like Amslink should discuss tuition fees with parents, Photo: Le Toan Parents in Hanoi last week were shocked to receive school announcements about collecting tuition fee for online classes during the COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, Everest School in late March informed that it will charge VND650,000 ($28) a week for primary school and VND700,000 ($30) for secondary school students. Many parents expressed dissatisfaction with the fees, claiming they are too steep, while the quality of education is by no means guaranteed. Reacting to the protests of parents, the school adjusted the fees a week later to VND400,000-450,000 ($17-20) for primary and VND520,000 ($23) for secondary school students. If a class is too large and parents request dividing it into two groups, they will have to pay an additional fee of VND120,000 ($5) every week. Everest School representative Nghiem Nhat Anh said the charge is only 40 per cent of normal fees, which is about VND4.2 million ($180) per month. We have balanced the fee after receiving feedback from parents, and this is the most affordable amount that Everest can propose. However, parents are still reluctant to accept the proposal. Mother of a student at Everest, said that the fee should be a result of public and transparent discussion to show minimal respect to parents. Moreover, Everest should have followed the local authorities regulations. We cannot accept charges made through a process that was against the regulations, she added. The school is also a firm, and students are the customers. We should discuss and find common ground, instead of the school unilaterally pressuring us like this, she urged. However, on the schools side, Anh confirmed that private schools operate as businesses and can set the price of its products and services, and customers can choose any business they wish. In no business transaction does the customer set the price, she said. Several private schools and English centres are facing similar standoffs. Amslink English Center, for instance, started online teaching in March but has yet to come to an agreement over tuition fees with parents. In a talk with VIR, Thanh Long, the father of a Pre Starter B student at Amslink, said that the company asked him to pay VND220,000 ($10) per online lesson while direct study cost VND365,000 ($16). However, as he is unconvinced that online classes bring quality commensurate with the fee, he has not let his son join any of the classes yet. So far, only 30 per cent of students agreed to pay to study online at Amslink. Based on Decree No.86/2015/ND-CP issued by the government in 2015 spelling out the framework for collecting tuition fees by public education institutions and fee exemptions and reductions from the academic year 2015-2016 to 2020-2021, public schools are not allowed to charge fees for the months off due to epidemics, nor can they charge for classes held to make up for the disruption. However, private schools are allowed to charge tuition based on separate agreements with parents. According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), online classes during the pandemic are extracurricular, so it is necessary to factor in the curriculum and the missed workload to calculate the appropriate charges to cover the schools services. More importantly, schools have to work with parents before introducing fees. Hence, the unilateral introduction of fees by private schools is contrary to the ministrys regulations as the charges are not a result of open negotiations or communication and were not preceded by approval by parents. According to Vu Thu Huong, a lecturer at Hanoi National University of Education, like most forms of teaching, online teaching requires teachers to prepare teaching materials, turn up for classes, as well as monitor and evaluate students performance. Therefore, charging fees is entirely justified. However, the MoET should issue specific guidelines for the introduction of such fees to prevent confusion on the part of schools as well as anxiety among parents. Le Viet Khuyen, former deputy head of the Higher Education Department under the MoET, said the quality of online classes is a worry for local education because the model presupposes a certain level of economic wealth and material facilities for learners. Moreover, online teaching is very new to Vietnam, so technical difficulties and poor quality of education are unavoidable. Not all students have computers and smartphones to study online, Khuyen added. It easily causes disparity between the rich and poor. Echoing the same view, Bui Xuan Phai, lecturer at the Hanoi University of Law said that holding online classes from the university is also a lot of trouble, mainly due to the unstable internet systems. Thereby, he was of the opinion that the method is insufficient to impart knowledge to learners. The solutions of the MoET are far from enough to solve the problems to create a truly conducive educational environment for all, said Phai. A Colorado woman was arrested at New Orleans' Louis Armstrong International Airport as she attempted to book a flight... while totally naked. Mariel Vergara, 27, of Pueblo, Colorado, reportedly walked up to the Sprint Airlines ticket counter without any clothes on and upon being told that she would not be allowed to book a flight, on account of her being nude, she refused to leave. By the time police officers arrived, she had reportedly put on a dress. However, this was not long enough to cover her fully while she was not wearing any underwear, and she was therefore still violating public decency laws. Mariel Vergara, 27, attempted to buy a ticket for a flight while she was wearing no clothes at all. Upon being asked to leave, she refused, and even scuffled with the police She still refused to leave the airport when asked by both airport officials and police, and when they tried to take her into custody, she scuffled with them. The incident occurred on 3 April, and the woman has since been charged with obscenity, resisting arrest, battery of a police officer, simple battery, and remaining in place after being forbidden. While she was being held at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna, Louisiana, on a $5,000 bond, Vergara reportedly was once again arrested and charged with battery of a corrections officer, and resisting an officer by force or violence. (@FahadShabbir) Sudan has introduced a quarantine, banning its citizens from traveling across the country, as a move to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the press office of the cabinet of ministers said on Monday KHARTOUM (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) Sudan has introduced a quarantine, banning its citizens from traveling across the country, as a move to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the press office of the cabinet of ministers said on Monday. "Sudan's [Higher] Committee for Health Emergencies decided to prohibit the movement between cities and provinces as a measure to fight the coronavirus," the office said in a press release, which was obtained by Sputnik. According to the press release, the cabinet will punish anyone who attacks medical workers, loots medical facilities or engages in human trafficking into Sudan in line with the 1997 law on the state of emergency. The authorities also introduced penalties for those who spread rumors about the ongoing outbreak and those who refuse to receive medical treatment or be quarantined. As of Monday, Sudan's health ministry has registered 19 COVID-19 cases with two fatalities. Afraid of heights, Marc Hauser came up with his own "shock therapy" -- skydiving. Dubbed the "Jet Stream Superman," Swiss adventurer Hauser is the first person to skydive into the jet stream, a feat which was officially recognized by Guinness World Records last month. But he wasn't only intent on conquering his fear of heights. Hauser wanted to raise awareness about what he says is the untapped, clean energy potential of the jet stream, a high-altitude air current in the atmosphere. "So I just jump with a kind of fear," Hauser told CNN Sport as he confessed that he's only been successful in "managing" how he feels about heights. "I'm still scared of it. I think you should be scared if you jump out of a plane anyway. So it's a good thing. And I think it's protecting me. I'm absolutely fine with being a bit scared and terrified." READ: In a world gripped by fear, marble racing proves welcome distraction Entry level Before he performed his free fall jump into the jet stream in Australia in 2018, Hauser was already an unofficial record holder for the fastest horizontal speed without additional gear, reaching a top speed of 188.9 mph in 2012. Although it has not, he says, been "ratified yet" by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), Hauser's record has been validated by their most experienced GPS specialist, Brian Utley. While many elite athletes are conscious of putting on weight, the opposite is true of the six foot seven-inch Swiss, who decided to take on more adventurous pursuits after going on a skydiving course in Spain aged 19. "I really had to gain weight. I really had to become heavier because the heavier you are, the more free fall acceleration you get," the 47-year-old said. Through a combination of "good healthy food and some not so healthy -- a couple of beers," Hauser managed to put on the 12 kilograms he required to reach his ideal weight. Since then, he has maintained his weight of 110kg. "It's like when you're on a bike, and if you drive downhill, then you lose against the fat guy." READ: As well as breaking records 'Queen of Speed' is standing up to bullies 'Superhero syndrome' Hauser quickly discovered he was in a league of his own when it came to skydiving. "I didn't have any class because my suit has no wings. And so, my definition was I was 'flying with zero wingsuit.' And I was ranked number one," he said. To his surprise, he began to fall down the rankings because officials started taking tailwinds into account, which is where the idea to jump into the jet stream came from. "I said, 'Okay, let's take the best tailwind you can find,'" recalls Hauser. Jet streams are defined as "narrow bands of strong wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere" by the USA's National Weather Service. Usually located four to eight miles above ground level, winds can surpass 275 mph and temperatures can sink to as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. "To combine kind of a superman stunt with a higher cause, I have this kind of superhero syndrome," reflects the Bern native. "So I would like to fly without wings and at the same time, I would like to save the planet." With the help of director and filmmaker Claudio von Planta, Hauser's jump was immortalized in an award-winning documentary "Chasing the Jet Stream." READ: After Tokyo 2020 postponement, money has become a real worry for Olympian Putting his body on the line While Hauser's body has been through a lot -- he's had six operations on his right knee -- jumping into the jet stream pushed him to the limit. He underwent strenuous training, including experiencing minus 60 degrees Celsius temperatures, trialing a previously untested breathing apparatus and high-altitude training. And while the physical strain he put his body through was "challenging," it was the mental aspect of his preparation that really tested Hauser. "Mentally, it was really, really hard to keep the team together, to find the good weather window, to find the shoestring budget we ended up with at the end," said Hauser, who also works as a keynote speaker. "But I was really the one guy who had to push in front of the whole team. And I really learned a lot about leadership because we didn't have the money to pay the team. So all the guys, they were working just for free and it was absolutely mind blowing." READ: Experts warn lockdown could come at 'psychological cost' to footballers A bumpy ride Having already had to move the jump from Switzerland to Australia, Hauser's team spent two weeks chasing the perfect location like a "tornado-chasing team." He was assisted by hot air balloon pilot, Steve Griffin, and skydiver, Tom Naef, and after climbing to 7,000m, the problems began. The drop in temperature meant the oxygen regulators for Griffin and Naef froze open. It was so cold the hot air burners also froze, extinguishing the balloon's flame. While Hauser had anticipated complications, the number of problems "put a bit of a rush" on his exit, he said, meaning he jumped from a lower altitude than he had hoped for. That meant Hauser failed to break his own speed record but, with hindsight, he describes breaking his own record as a "silly thing anyway." "I'm still the record holder of non-supported flight over ground without tailwind. But I'm sure you can be way faster than I was," he said. Although he was terrified for the safety of the two remaining passengers in the balloon, Hauser managed to complete the skydive. Proving his point Etching his name into the record books was one of his aims, but Hauser's primary focus was to shine a light on the jet stream's potential to provide a source of sustainable energy. "It's just in the beginning. There are about a dozen start-ups worldwide and they are really at the edge in jumping into the market," he said. But to take high-altitude wind farming to the next level, the industry needs a "couple of pioneers with deep pockets." "They are all at the same point where they're now really needing substantial finance to go to the next level and to build these things for the markets and to bring the prices down," he said. "Because now they're working on prototypes, they are flying that proof of concept. But for the next step, they all have the same problem. They need substantial funding, and that's what they are all looking for. Visit CNN.com/sport for more news, features, and videos "This is a solution, I think, which is not really well known. I think most people, they just know the winter mills and with that comes the wind energy. And the high-altitude wind power is just a new phenomenon to most of us." Health experts fear Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's continuous dismissal of the global pandemic could lead to a devastating outcome. They predict the crisis could resemble that of Northern Italy and New York, where thousands died after undermining social distancing guidelines. Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the threat of COVID-19 to public health. He sabotaged quarantine measures imposed by Brazil's state governors. Many still protest by nightly pot-banging and daily media condemnations. They accuse the far-right populist of putting his political future before the lives of the people. Jair, along with the presidents of Nicaragua, Belarus, and Turkmenistan, are the only four leaders still dismissing the coronavirus pandemic. 'No one can stop me' Several media outlets reported the Brazilian leader's defiance of his health ministry's distancing recommendations after he stepped out to buy doughnuts and shaking the hands of fans. He was caught wiping his nose before shaking hands with an elderly fan. Another video showed Bolsonaro proclaiming, 'No one will hinder my right to come and go.' Public health experts and infectious disease specialists believe the president's behavior is affecting the measures that are keeping Brazil safe from a healthcare calamity. Experts say Bolsonaro's conduct may be confusing people over the need and importance of staying home and observing social distancing measures. Ivan Junior, an epidemiologist from the University of Sao Paulo, said the confusion caused by the far-right official's recklessness leads to many deaths that could have been avoided. Since March, Brazil's state governors began implementing shelter-in-place procedures in a bid to curb and slow the spread of COVID-19. However, recent reports show a growing number of people are defying the orders and are stepping out on to the streets. 'Disorder' Experts believe the failure of the measures stem from the lack of support favela residents get, forcing them to leave their homes and go to work. Brazilians are also known to be family-focused, and thus have a hard time shunning relatives. They also believe Bolsonaro's dismissal has an intense impact on the citizens' views of COVID-19. The president, a 65-year-old, could be influencing people who belong in high-risk groups not to be afraid of the virus. Despite his stance, polls show 30% of all Brazilians still support the president. In Sao Paulo, hundred turned out on the streets to denounce social distancing measures. Many, however, have called out the president. Alberti Chebabo, vice-president of a medical organization, said Bolsonaro's dismissal is throwing away the advantages of knowing which measures to take to slow the spread of the virus. Media outlets and politicians also began labeling the Brazilian leader as an ally of the global health crisis, COVID-19. A columnist for a local newspaper said Bolsonaro resembles a leader leading his followers to mass suicide. Franca Junior, an epidemiologist, believe the healthcare system will see a sudden surge of cases and will struggle to cope with the demand. "Forecast suggests this will happen in three or four weeks," he said, "by then, it will be too late." Brazil now has 22,318 cases and 1,230 coronavirus-related deaths. Want to read more? Check these out: President Donald Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, has revealed that his wife has had an easy time applying through the small business loan program to help keep her art business afloat amid the coronavirus crisis, despite others reporting big problems. My wife Judy she is a self-employed artist-painter, very distinguished one, some renowned, she could use some help for her operation, Kudlow said during an interview with POLITICO last week. (MORE: Trump abruptly removes inspector general named to oversee $2T in stimulus spending) Kudlow, whose personal assets are valued at a maximum net worth of $2 million according to a 2018 Bloomberg report, touted how simple it was for his wife to take out a loan for her business under the Small Business Administration loan program. 'She went to a local, community bank up by our place in Connecticut and apparently it's just a one-page form, that's all it is. It couldn't be easier,' Kudlow said. PHOTO: Judith Kudlow and Larry Kudlow attend the New York City Ballet's Spring 2013 Gala at David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, May 8, 2013, in New York City. (Jennifer Graylock/FilmMagic/Getty Images, FILE) Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis. While there is no indication Kudlow's wife got special treatment, other small business owners have complained in recent days that the process hasnt been that simple. Larry Kudlows wife is a small business owner and private citizen. Any speculation that there is something improper or nefarious taking place with her application is just false and more media spin, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement. The Paycheck Protection Program, created under the $2 trillion stimulus package Congress approved last month, offers small business owners federally-backed loans that will be forgiven if the money is used to keep employees on payroll. But the program, initially funded at $367 billion, hasnt worked as planned. Small business owners reported quick rejections from banks if they didnt already have an existing relationship. And banks, for their part, were unprepared for the massive onslaught of small businesses seeking loans. Story continues In an interview with Fox Business on Friday, Kudlow said more than 660,000 loans have been approved for a total of $168 billion, meaning nearly half the money in the program has already been obligated. He warned the money in the program was forecast to run out on April 17. Those are enormous numbers, Kudlow said. Thats why we would like the Congress to help us with an additional $250 billion. (MORE: Democrats want $500B more in crisis relief, setting up Senate showdown) Congress is actively seeking to add additional funds to the small business loan program, but Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate remain at a stalemate. PHOTO: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell walks to the Senate floor to try and add an additional $250 billion to small business coronavirus relief funds, at the Capitol in Washington, April 9, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) Late last week, Senate Republicans attempted to pass $250 billion in additional funds for the struggling program, but their efforts were blocked by Democrats who wanted to secure $500 billion in the legislation that would go towards not only small businesses, but also to local and state governments and hospitals. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy released a joint statement Saturday morning saying they would not agree to Democrats demands. Republicans reject Democrats reckless threat to continue blocking job-saving funding unless we renegotiate unrelated programs which are not in similar peril, the joint statement said. This will not be Congresss last word on COVID-19, but this crucial program needs funding now. American workers cannot be used as political hostages. McConnell and McCarthy claimed in their statement that the program burned through roughly half of its initial funding in the first week. The $2 trillion stimulus package prohibits lawmakers, Cabinet officials, and President Trumps family from benefiting from loans or investments from the Treasury Department. Its unclear how Mrs. Kudlow plans to use the funds granted to her business through the program and if she has any employees. ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment. The Paycheck Protection Program does allow business owners to take out a loan if they are sole proprietors. According to her website, Judith Kudlow "divides her time between New York City - where she received her art training - Washington D.C. and Redding, CT." Her painting method, according to her biography, is "based on precise drawing, careful modeling to produce the three-dimensional illusion, harmonious and accurate colors and values, and compositions based on time-honored rules." She charges between $10,000 and $20,000 for commissioned paintings, according to her website. Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that while Larry Kudlow's has applied for a loan through the program, it's unclear whether she has been approved for a loan or received any funds. What to know about coronavirus: How it started and how to protect yourself: coronavirus explained What to do if you have symptoms: coronavirus symptoms Tracking the spread in the US and Worldwide: coronavirus map Trump economic adviser's wife applies for small business loan amid rollout chaos originally appeared on abcnews.go.com India on Monday lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over the killing of three civilians in unprovoked cross-border shelling by Pakistani troops and a deliberate attack on two fishing boats that injured a fisherman, people familiar with developments said. An eight-year-old boy and a woman were among the three people killed when Pakistani troops shelled several civilian areas in Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday. The Indian Army said it responded to the ceasefire violations by targeting terror launch pads and ammunition dumps on the Pakistani side. The people cited above, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a fisherman was injured when Pakistans Maritime Maritime Security Agency (MSA) made a deliberate attack and fired on the fishing boats Omkar and Mahasagar on Sunday. The incident occurred in waters off the coast of Gujarat state, the people said. Strong demarches or formal diplomatic representations were made to the Pakistani side to protest the shelling in Kashmir and the attack on the fishing boats, the people said. A strong demarche was made to the Pakistani side on the killing of three innocent Indian civilians in unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan forces on April 12, said one of the people, speaking on condition of anonymity. A second person said: India strongly condemned the deplorable and unprofessional act by Pakistans Maritime Security Agency of firing at Indian fishing vessels and causing bodily harm to Indian fishermen. India called on the Pakistani authorities to instruct its forces to desist from such heinous acts. The people said India had protested against the deliberate targeting of civilians in cross-border shelling by Pakistani forces in Kashmir. The killing of the civilians went against humanitarian norms and professional military conduct, they said. The Indian side also called on Pakistan to adhere to the 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) and international border in Kashmir. Earlier, Indias charge daffaires in Islamabad, Gaurav Ahluwalia, was summoned to the Foreign Office to register Pakistans protest over what it said were ceasefire violations in several sectors along the LoC on Sunday that resulted in the death of a child and injuries to four civilians. New Delhi has already rejected Islamabads accusation, saying its troops only responded to shelling by Pakistani forces. Pakistans Foreign Office, in a statement, accused Indian troops of committing 749 ceasefire violations this year along the LoC and the international border. Both sides have accused each other of violating the 2003 ceasefire in recent years. Kanpur administration has directed all pharmacies to register the name, address and contact number of people buying paracetamol or medicines for cough, cold and fever or breathing problems. According to the new decision, if anyone suffering from fever, cough or cold purchases paracetamol tablets, the administration will commence their tracking because they could be a suspected case of coronavirus. Kanpur administration will test and quarantine suspected people after tracking them with the help of health department personnel. Read More.. The rules will apply to all six districts in the Kanpur division. The administration will track the purchasers with the help of health department. If anyone appears to be a suspected patient, they will be tested and quarantined at their home. Besides medical stores, doctors too have been asked to prepare a record of any patient showing Corona symptoms, and provide the details to the health department. Source: IANS Advertisement Directives in this regard have been issued by the divisional commissioner Dr Sudhir M. Bobde. ALBANY Capital Region health officials recorded six new deaths related to COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the region's known death toll due to the novel coronavirus to 49. Albany County said Monday that two more residents had died from the illness a man and woman in their 70s with underlying health conditions marking the county's thirteenth and fourteenth deaths to date. Rensselaer County lost a sixth resident on Monday. A 95-year-old woman who was living at the Diamond Hill adult care facility in Schaghticoke died, officials said. It's the third known death due to COVID-19 at the facility, where seven residents have tested positive to date. Columbia County reported that a ninth resident had died but provided no other details. Schoharie and Warren counties, meanwhile, recorded their first known deaths attributable to or affiliated with the novel coronairus. Warren County officials said a resident from the northern part of the county had died as a result of their illness, and declined to release further information. On Facebook, the Schoharie County Department of Health said a resident who was being treated for COVID-19 had died, but noted that an official cause of death had not been declared yet. "It is unknown at this time whether the official cause of death will be listed as COVID-19," the department wrote on Facebook. "Our sympathies go out to their family." Also on Monday, Albany County announced it was working to establish more COVID-19 test sites in an effort to help residents who have difficulty accessing the new test site that opened at the University at Albany last week. County officials didn't say where they hope to open the new sites, but county health commissioner Elizabeth Whalen confirmed Monday that the county is working with the state Department of Health on the issue and will have more to announce later this week. The news came as the county announced the total number of confirmed cases in the county had grown by 22 overnight to 475 cumulative cases to date. Thirty-eight residents are currently hospitalized with the virus, with 16 adults in intensive care. Roughly 45 percent of residents or 216 who have come down with the illness have recovered so far, Whalen said. It was the first time the county released those figures. I was asked this weekend if we could give the public some good news," Whalen said. State Sen. James Seward also announced Monday that he was released from Albany Medical Center Hospital after previously being critically-ill from COVID-19. In addition to the recoveries, Whalen said 1,235 Albany County residents who were ordered to self-isolate as a result of exposure to a positive person have been released from mandatory quarantine. "This is good news as well," she said. "Unfortunately...the vast majority of the population in Albany County is still not immune to COVID-19 and is therefore still susceptible to COVID-19. So while we have these numbers that do demonstrate people that have recovered and people that have gone through quarantine, we still don't have assurances that it is safe for us to resume any kind of life as we knew it before this began. So all of the precautions that we have been talking about still need to be put in place. Both Whalen and County Executive Daniel McCoy expressed dismay that misperceptions of the disease continue to circulate, such as the belief it only affects older people and people with underlying health conditions. He pointed to the recent death of 33-year-old Kyra Swartz, a Bethlehem High School graduate who lived in New York City, as an example. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. "It shows you that this does not discriminate against age," he said. "And I don't know how many times weve got to keep stressing that because these kids nowadays think that, Im not going to have it, Im not going to get it, its not going to affect me because its only people over 60s or 70s with underlying health conditions. Read the paper. Go online. Wake up. Im not trying to scare you but in a way I am." Albany County is asking anyone who was at the M & M Variety store, at 108 Lark St., between 7 a.m and 4 p.m. from March 31 to April 8 to contact the county health department at 518-447-4659. Anyone who was at the store between March 26 and March 30 and is experiencing COVID-19 symptoms is also asked to call the health department. That time period is outside of the 14-day quarantine window. The county did not provide additional information about any confirmed cases connected to the market. Child abuse Officials also took time Monday to discuss what may be higher-than-usual levels of undetected child abuse occurring within the county. Moira Manning, commissioner of the county's Department for Children, Youth and Families, said the county has seen a drop in the number of child abuse reports to the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment. Sadly, she said, it is unlikely that reflects an actual decrease in abuse. Rather, she said, it is more likely that the inability of mandated reporters such as teachers, day care workers and doctors to see children right now has led to fewer cases being reported. "This is very concerning because child abuse does not stop because of COVID-19," she said. "These are really challenging times for our families you know, schools being closed, social distancing and families together 24/7," she continued. "It can be really stressful and these high times of stress is really impacting their ability to make sound, smart choices and they often times arent thinking before they act." She urged families to visit the department's website, www.albanykids.com, for resources and programs that may help to ease stress. Anyone with questions about these issues is welcome to call the department at 518-447-7324, she said. "Parenting can be very overwhelming on a good day," she said. "So when theres additional stress and burden on a family, it can really create an unsafe situation. So when youre feeling overwhelmed, as long as the children are safe in an activity, please take a break for yourself. Take a few minutes. Take some deep breaths and really think before you act." Anyone who suspects child abuse or neglect should contact the Statewide Central Register at 1-800-342-3720, she said. Anyone who believes a child is in imminent danger, should call 911. Latest case numbers Saratoga County recorded the second highest number of positive cases in the region since the outbreak began, with three new cases on Monday, bringing its total to 224, with six patients hospitalized. Schenectady County has six new cases for a total 207, with 26 people in the hospital. Rensselaer County has 136 cases, a increase of 17, with 14 hospitalizations, including four in intensive care. Columbia County has 93 cases, up four, with eight people hospitalized, including two in intensive care. Greene County has 74 cases, Warren County has 62 cases, Washington County has 39 cases, Montgomery County has 33 cases, Fulton County has 21 cases and Schoharie County has 21 cases. The BCCI is currently not in a position to take a call on the future of IPL and it would be "too premature" to comment on whether the tournament can be slotted in place of the ICC World T20 in October-November, treasurer Arun Dhumal said on Monday. The IPL has been postponed till April 15 in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic and with the country scheduled to go for another two week extension of the lockdown, it is but natural that the cash-rich league can't be held during its dedicated April-May window. "Right now, the picture is very hazy. We don't even know when the lockdown will end and if we don't know, how can we even have a meaningful discussion. Once we get a clarity from the government, we can then sit and take fresh stock of the situation. Any speculation about it's future will be premature," Dhumal told PTI during an exclusive interaction. "Everyone wants IPL to happen but let's have some clarity first." The BCCI treasurer clarified that there was no scheduled conference call between the office bearers on Monday. "We office-bearers are in constant touch. It's not just IPL but there is huge amount of pending administrative work, legal issues that needs to be studied. But there was no conference call scheduled today as there is nothing to discuss till current situation persists," Dhumal said. He also provided some practical insight into rescheduling of IPL as speculations are rife about the October-November window. "Tell me one thing. Firstly, if Australia is under lockdown for six months, how can we conclude that they will allow their players to travel from next month right away? What if the travel restrictions for its citizens are still in place. How will they come to India then? And don't forget that other boards also need to agree," Dhumal said. "Secondly, even if the lockdown ends in India, what if some of the major cities still have those COVID 'hotspots'? Can we risk the lives of our sportspersons? Thirdly, the players are likely to go without training for months. "Even if we are in a position to conduct a tournament, for international players, we need to give them a bare minimum time to do full-fledged training before we can start a tournament. All these factors can only be clear when we are in a position to discuss," Dhumal said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is all set to consider a loan of USD 1.4 billion for cash-strapped Pakistan to boost its foreign exchange reserves in the wake of the economic slowdown due to the coronavirus crisis. The USD 1.4 billion loan is in addition to the USD 6 billion bailout package that Pakistan has signed with the IMF in July last year to stave off a balance of payment crisis. The global money lender has called its executive board meeting on April 16 to consider an extra loan of USD 1.4 billion for Pakistan to boost its foreign exchange reserves and extend budgetary support in the wake of the economic slowdown the country is facing due to the deadly viral infection, the Express Tribune reported on Monday. Pakistan in March had requested the IMF for a low-cost, fast-disbursing loan under the fund's Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to deal with the adverse economic impact of COVID-19. "We have been working with the Pakistani authorities since the request was placed. This USD 1.4 billion disbursement is scheduled to happen next week," IMF Resident Representative in Pakistan Teresa Daban Sanchez was quoted as saying by the report. The RFI is used to provide financial assistance to IMF member countries facing an urgent balance of payments need without requiring them to put a full-fledged programme in place. Sanchez said the IMF was working with the finance ministry to make sure that Pakistan has "enough resources to navigate through this difficult time". Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan has appealed for a "global initiative on debt relief" to help developing countries like Pakistan to overcome disastrous impacts of the novel coronavirus pandemic. In a televised speech on Sunday, Khan noted that the deadly virus posed unprecedented health and economic challenges and the global recession is a certainty, which could be worse than the "Great Depression". "A global pandemic cannot be contained without strong, coordinated and well-crafted global response," he said, urging the international community, particularly the United Nations Security Council and the international financial institutions, to respond positively to the dilemma confronting the developing counties in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. "In the developed world, the dilemma is coronavirus and economy. But we as a developing nation face another major dilemma, how to prevent people from dying of hunger. I implore those who walk in the corridors of power to make a stimulus package for the developing world to help them through this economic downturn," Khan said. (COVID19 Pandemic) #Global_Initiative_Debt_Relief pic.twitter.com/EfydRhfZhc Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) April 12, 2020 Pakistan has recorded more than 5,370 COVID-19 cases and over 92 people have died due to the disease. The government has already announced Rs 1.2 trillion fiscal stimulus package to offset the adverse impacts of the viral pandemic on the country's fragile economy. The country also approached multilateral donors for additional funds to fight the pandemic and its economic implications. The World Bank has earlier approved USD 1 billion and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) USD 1.5 billion for Pakistan to keep its economy afloat. [April 13, 2020] Sync1 CUSO Offers Credit Union Loan Origination System Relief Package AUSTIN, Texas, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sync1 Systems, a next-generation loan origination software provider, announced its "Credit Union 2020 Assistance Package," which will waive all monthly transaction fees until 2021 for credit unions that sign up in this calendar year. "Sync1 Systems is a CUSO (Credit Union Service Organization) and we're here to help other credit unions in times of need and crisis," said Bill Nikolauk, CEO of 1st Community Federal Credit Union and Board Chair of Sync1 Systems. Sync1 Systems' loan origination technology is designed to help credit unions streamline loan-processing workflow, increase loan revenue, and acquire new members. It can be configured and deployed remotely for any credit union via templates, conference calls, and webinar training sessions. It's also designed specifically to fit the unique processes of credit unions and the needs of their members. The software's remote implementation model is well-suited to th current situation during the COVID-19 lockdown since no travel nor on-site work is required. The system can be accessed by employees working from home via any device so credit unions can continue servicing their members during this critical time. Mark Ziegler (CEO of Y-12 FCU), Steve Webb (CEO of Neighbors FCU), and Steve Ervolino (CIO of Dupaco Community CU), fellow board members of Sync1 Systems, were instrumental in the launch of this initiative designed to support credit unions. "We want to be the technology partner for the credit union community and play a part in assisting it in the next phase of recovery." Sync1 Systems is an Austin, TX-based CUSO. It utilizes member-centric technology to promote growth in lending and membership in today's ever-changing digital landscape. Founded by credit union experts, the team understands the unique needs of credit unions and their members, as well as the credit union lending ecosystem. To learn more about Sync1 Systems and its "Credit Union 2020 Assistance Package," visit https://www.sync1systems.com/, email [email protected], or call 225.806.2418. Contact: Philip Canizaro 225.806.2418 [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sync1-cuso-offers-credit-union-loan-origination-system-relief-package-301039331.html SOURCE Sync1 Systems [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Fourteen residents of a Warren County assisted living community have died of COVID-19 and nine others have tested positive at The Chelsea at Brookfield in White Township, its parent company confirmed Monday. Eight staff members of the business at 1 Brookfield Court just off Route 519, have also tested positive, but four are returning to work, Chelsea Senior Living, of Fanwood, New Jersey, said in a news release. The Chelsea at Brookfield provides various degrees of assisted living care and 24-hour memory impairment care, its website says. The White Township operation has been dealing with a spike of COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks, the company said. There have been more than 3,600 deaths in such senior care facilities this year, the Associated Press reports from its own figures. There were 416 confirmed cases as of Monday in Warren County, with 24 deaths. As of the weekend, that included 60 cases and 16 deaths in long-term care facilities. The long-term care death figure is outdated, with the deaths at The Chelsea at Brookfield and the four at Genesis HealthCares Brakeley Park Center in Lopatcong Township. The health department didnt immediately return a phone call requesting updated figures. The company pointed out that many residents of such communities are in their 80s and 90s and often have preexisting health conditions. Even the most stringent surveillance hasnt been able to completely stop some residents from getting sick, the company said. In some cases, deaths have followed. All personnel at The Chelsea at Brookfield have proper personal protective gear, including masks, gloves, face shields and hand sanitizer, the company said. Staff, who are screened before each shift, are sent home if they dont feel well, the company said. It is up to the employees doctors if they are tested for the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, and no one can return to work without a doctors clearance, the company said. "Our policy has always been to isolate any resident with symptoms of infectious disease like the flu, followed by a building-wide quarantine if multiple patients get sick,' the company said. "This policy is in place at The Chelsea at Brookfield. "We have had a strict no-visitation policy in effect since March 12th. Communication with families is done through text, email, telephone and video venues. Our residents no longer take their meals in a communal dining room. Their meals are delivered to their apartments. The New Jersey Department of Health is constantly updated on the conditions of our residents and staff. The corporate team in Fanwood is in contact with The Chelsea at Brookfield daily -- sometimes hourly -- and is prepared to act quickly to new developments, the company said. The health and safety of our residents and employees has always been and remains our number one priority, the prepared statement read. We are deeply saddened by the passing of some of our residents and are doing everything possible to protect our residents and staff from this awful disease. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. If theres anything about this story that needs attention, please email him. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The pandemic, however, poses tougher questions still. No nation can remain locked down indefinitely. So, the key question is, will the lockdown measures be enough? If not, what may India do? Lets return to data briefly to assess this question. As India reaches the 20th day of a nationwide lockdown, positive cases of coronavirus infection crossed the 9,000-mark on Monday (9152 with 308 deaths according to government data and 9205 with 331 deaths according to Johns Hopkins University). To put things in perspective, India, a nation of 1.3 billion people, has so far been able to keep the infection under 10,000. With positive cases doubling in roughly seven days, Indias coronavirus curve is less steep compared to the US or some European nations. It is even showing signs of a mild tapering. In comparison, the US already has well over 5 million positive cases and over 22,000 deaths. Since the third week of March, its graph of positive cases has shown an exponential growth. Though New York, the epicenter, is showing signs of contraction, researchers have warned that the worst is yet to come in states such as Texas and Florida. Europe paints a similar picture. Italy, Spain, France or Germany, despite showing signs of plateauing, are still way above the danger mark in terms of daily new cases. Europes combined death toll crossed 75,000 on Sunday. Some in Britain believe UK could be the worst affected country in Europe. Bear in mind that Indias ramshackle public health infrastructure is light years away from the health systems in these nations. To arrest the spread to the extent it has so far, therefore, implies that there are certain things India did right. To begin with, India took the pandemic more seriously than the developed world did. The pandemic presents nations with a policy choice. It pits the economy against a nations health system and dares the government to gamble. Some governments, like those in the US and Europe, refused to be drawn into making this choice for as long as they could, and ended up being robbed of any choice. Had Donald Trump listened to advice from policymakers and scientists within the establishment and announced lockdown measures earlier instead of trying to protect economic gains, Americas story could well have been different. Damning reports are emerging from the US that Trump ignored public health at the cost of economic and political considerations. The Narendra Modi government deserves credit for implementing tough measures and taking those decisions quickly. Some of these steps, such as travel and visa restrictions, were imposed preemptively. The 21-day lockdown was announced when Indias positive case count hadnt touched 1000. The period will likely get extended. The economic costs of these steps are enormous, but India has chosen to save human lives instead of economy. The pandemic, however, poses tougher questions still. No nation can remain locked down indefinitely. So, the key question is, will the lockdown measures be enough? If not, what may India do? Lets return to data briefly to assess this question. Though Indias positive cases count is doubling roughly in seven days, the death count is doubling faster. Data from Worldometers shows a sharp rise in Indias daily new cases from April with 759 confirmed cases on 12 April. According to some assessments, India may have over20,000 cases in the next 7-8 days. This may pose tough challenges to our rickety public health network. Since the lockdown is already in place, India will have to rethink implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). This is where some of Indias east Asian peers offer some lessons. South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore or Taiwan have shown the way in battling the contagion with measures that have been quick and effective despite the proximity of some of these nations to China, the origin of coronavirus. South Korea continues its downtrend in positive cases, Taiwan reported just three new cases on Sunday, Hong Kong had just one more positive case compared to Taiwan while Singapore, that had done reasonably well in containing the virus early, is battling a second wave of infections ostensibly due to premature relaxing of social distancing measures. Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Koreas responses have drawn global attention and all-round praise. It may seem that their superior health system (compared to Indias) played a part in their success in flattening the curve but when nations with world-class infrastructure like the US or Italy have been struggling, it seems likely that theres something else at work. These nations possibly did some of the things differently than the rest of the world. Can India do what South Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong did? To what extent can their best practices be emulated elsewhere? What role does culture play in battling the pandemic? The answers to these questions demand a better understanding of the trade-offs at work. For instance, it is well known that contact tracing and isolation are two of the most effective policies in containing the contagion. South Koreas success has received wide publicity in India. Critics have panned the Modi government for failing to emulate Seouls practices. However, a huge part of South Koreas response has been shaped by its move to prioritize public safety over individual privacy. These have been formalized within a legal framework. In a country where an almighty storm was kicked up over an identification document meant for better distribution of subsidies and entitlements Aadhaar was touted as pure evil by privacy warriors in India can a government really implement the kind of intrusive privacy measures that South Korea did for contact tracing and isolation of coronavirus patients? Surveillance is just one of the three broad lessons that inform the responses of some of these east Asian nations against the pandemic. The moot point is, are these steps transferable? 1. The privacy versus public health debate One of the key reasons behind South Koreas or Taiwans effective response was their ability to conduct extensive and affordable tests. Lifting of this strategy straightway is impossible for a nation as populous and at this stage of development such as India. However, can we import their contract tracing and isolation policies, given the fact that cluster outbreaks often happen due to inadequate information or hiding of travel practices by individuals? Turns out this is not a straightforward issue. The SARS outbreak in 2003 and the MERS outbreak a decade later that had ravaged many of these east Asian nations have largely shaped the South Korean, Taiwanese or Hong Kongs responses. In Hong Kong, for instance, those who arrive from abroad must wear a special bracelet that tracks their movements, while those self-isolating in Singapore must send photographic proof of their whereabouts and send hourly updates to administrators. Some of South Koreas contact-tracing efforts are so intrusive that it throws open every movement of those suffering from coronavirus to the wider public. A series of mobile phone alerts about a patient lets the public know where the infected person has been in the last fortnight whether it was bar, a sexual harassment class, or a love motel, pay-by-hour accommodations favoured by couples. This, quite obviously, creates a stigma. As a BBC report points out, public even decided whether two of the infected were having an affair. The 2015 MERS outbreak killed 38 in South Korea, but more than the number of deaths, the trauma it left on society compelled South Koreans to revise their laws and embark on aggressive contact tracing. Ki Mo-ran, an epidemiologist advising the governments coronavirus response, was quoted as saying by The New York Times on the MERS experience, We did our epidemiological investigations like police detectives Later, we had laws revised to prioritize social security over individual privacy at times of infectious disease crises. It is obvious that South Koreans have accepted the trade off between privacy and public safety that led to better identification of positive cases. It is not a coincidence that countries that put a premium on individual liberty are the ones suffering the most. 2. The culture of wearing masks After advising healthy individuals not to wear masks a confusion created in no small measure by the bungling World Health Organization governments around the world are now advising, even forcing people to cover their faces in public. With good reason. In India, several states have made wearing of masks or a cloth-cover mandatory. The Indian government has even released a DIY guide on how to make these face covers at home mindful of the fact that theres an acute paucity of masks of any kind, leave alone medical gear such as N95 or N99 respirators that are needed by frontline health workers. But crucially, that tweet by Union ministry of health and family welfare was sent on 4 April, when the pandemic has already conquered the world, including India. And even when masks have been made mandatory, Indians are struggling to comply. They are being forced to comply. A quick venture out to the grocers or the markets make it apparent how onerous the task most Indians think wearing a mask is. Those who manage to wear one, keep in hanging below their chin, while most either use a loose handkerchief or nothing at all. The situation is no better in the US or Europe. After reversing the course and advising people to wear masks, US president Trump struck a defiant note in saying that he wont use one. Trump was not being headstrong he was merely expressing the cultural unease of the West in wearing masks. In contrast, nations like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea or Japan have naturalised masks as part of their culture. Once again, the SARS and MERS outbreaks had shaped in large part their responses to coronavirus. SARS had triggered enough research to support wearing of masks as a way to prevent respiratory diseases (see here and here). The east Asian nations had a natural advantage. While the public needed no persuading to wear masks, the governments were proactively monitoring and controlling the flow of these equipment. As Hilton Yip, a journalist from Taiwan, notes in Foreign Policy: Recognizing that it had to ensure an adequate supply of medical equipment, including face masks, for health professionals and the public, Taiwans government stopped exports of surgical face masks on January 24 while requesting local companies to step up production. Daily production is set to reach 10 million soon, divided between the public, medical, and industrial sectors. A Seattle-based nurse, while recounting her experience in Hong Kong during coronavirus training, was quoted as saying by BBC that in Hong Kong, occasionally people would avoid getting into a lift with her because she was not wearing a mask. Wearing of masks is a cultural and expresses different motivations. It could be to safeguard oneself from potential contagion as much as a sign of respect towards others. In hindsight, SARS and MERS better prepared these nations to handle Covid-19. Chen Yih-chun, director of the National Taiwan University Hospital Center for Infection Control, was quoted as saying in VOA News that SARS outbreak was a major turning point. Before that Taiwanese saw masks as a stigma marking them as severely ill. 3. Collectivism and faith in administration Some of the measures discussed already involves huge trade-offs on part of citizens. It includes taking decisions or implementing systems that are seemingly onerous for individuals. Part of the reason why European governments or the Trump administration hesitated in putting in place lockdown measures is that it restricts individual liberty. It has been said that China succeeded in reversing the trend in Wuhan due to very tough measures that would have been impossible in a democracy. And yet, Taiwan or South Korea are vibrant democracies that have citizens willingly suspend their liberties for greater public good. In India, Aadhaar implementation triggers an almighty backlash from civil society whereas in places such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea or Hong Kong, citizens willingly comply with onerous measures at considerable inconvenience because they trust their governments to do the right thing. This is the case even in autocratic system like Chinas where implementation of tough measures would have been impossible if the people at large were at variance with the Chinese Communist Partys purpose. No amount of penal provisions can force revolting citizens to behave. In democracies such as South Korea or Taiwan, this sense of putting national goal above self comes out to the fore in a greater way. Lee Tae-ho, Koreas vice minister of foreign affairs, wasnt far from truth in claiming that public trust has resulted in a very high level of civic awareness and voluntary cooperation that strengthens our collective effort. More to the point, the political will of the government taking tough steps in battling the pandemic, and ensuring that these steps are successful, flows from the public will, that in turn depends on the trust that citizens impose on their governments. In contrast, the government is touted as the enemy in western liberal democracies, leading to a huge trust deficit between the government and its people. In India, despite a huge mandate, the federal government (or even the ones in states) cannot claim to enjoy unmitigated trust from every strata of society. Among many lessons, the pandemic has taught us that culture shapes, to a large extent, the battle against coronavirus. The Supreme Court Monday modified its April 8 order which asked private labs to conduct free Covid-19 tests and said the benefit will be available only to economically weaker sections who are covered under a government scheme such as the Ayushman Bharat. The top court said it never intended to make testing free for those who can afford to pay. It had on April 8 directed that private labs, which were allowed to charge Rs 4,500 for Covid-19 tests, would not charge for the tests observing that they need to be philanthropic in the hour of national crisis. ... Dear, dear millennials. We get it. We messed up. We told you that if you got a college degree, and especially a graduate degree, youd be set. Youd advance in your career, make a good living and probably do better than we did. That was our hope, anyway the American dream. Now youre saddled with a ton of student debt, and its keeping you from realizing your dream, whether its traveling the world, opening your own business or starting your family. We bought big houses we could barely afford because we thought it was a sign of success and that real estate was a safe investment. But then there was a hiccup in the economy, and it got tough to make the mortgage payments. Some of us even lost those homes. You all watched the great homegression era of 2008, so its no wonder youre anxious about the housing market and often prefer to rent. We lived for today and spent money like crazy. Now the national debt is at $23 trillion and growing, as seen on usdebtclock.org. That is 23 followed by 12 zeros! And though youll hear us whining about what that might mean for our Social Security and Medicare benefits, most of us know deep down whos really likely to pay for it. Sorry again, millennials. Were probably lucky if the worst thing you do when we offer advice is roll your eyes or post an OK, boomer meme. Maybe we deserve a little disrespect. But once you get past that, maybe listen to what we have to say anyway. Because, believe it or not, weve learned a few things about life from our blunders and our bruised egos. And we do have some knowledge to impart that we hope will keep you from making the same mistakes we did, including: 1. Start saving now A little is a lot when it comes to investing. Even if you can put away just $50 a month, do it and the sooner you start, the better. For those who say its impossible, skip three $4-a-day Starbucks runs each week and that is your $50 contribution. Open a retirement account, be as aggressive as you can stomach with your investment choices, and then let it grow. You have time on your side. If the market dips, or even dives, youll have a chance to recover. This is your best opportunity to build your retirement fund. Make it automatic and you wont miss the money as much as you think. (And youll need that money before you know it. Those golden years that seem so far away? Theyll be here in a blink.) 2. Dont overlook the advantages of a Roth A Roth retirement account means that you pay the taxes first and then deposit money into a retirement account. Your money grows tax-free and after you turn 59, distributions from this account are ALL tax-free. If your workplace offers a Roth 401(k), give that selection some serious thought. The generations before yours were trained to choose tax-deferred accounts (401(k)s, 403(b)s, etc.), and were now facing a ticking tax time bomb in retirement. Given the trajectory of our nations debt and the likelihood of higher taxes in the future, it makes a lot of sense for the younger generations to contribute to Roth IRAs, said David McKnight, author of the book The Power of Zero. If your employer doesnt offer a Roth 401(k), get the employer match on a traditional 401(k). But look at opening a Roth IRA on your own, as well, to shield some of your money from future taxes. 3. Your retirement account is not an ATM There will be times when youll be tempted to tap your retirement account for education expenses, a down payment on your first home, to pay off a massive medical debt. The law says you can make withdrawals from a retirement account for these purposes without the typical 10% penalty. And the new SECURE Act also allows those who just had a baby or adopted a child to take out up to $5,000. (Which means a couple can withdraw up to $10,000 penalty-free.) Avoid this option if you can. Even if you think youll put that money back someday you wont! Plus, youll lose out on all the growth you would have had if youd left the money alone. Remember: Its unlikely youll have a company pension, like most of your parents, when you retire. That pension check your parents and grandparents received was a lifetime monthly income that was funded, invested and promised by their employer. (Most of us today wont have one, but we didnt know that. You do.) Your retirement savings will be a significant source of income when youre no longer earning a paycheck. 4. Emergencies do happen so be ready. Car repairs. Unexpected medical bills. Job layoffs. You just never know when something could happen to shake up your finances. Stashing six months worth of savings in an emergency fund in cash or some highly liquid asset should be a priority. This safety net can help keep you from falling behind on your bills or running up credit card debt in times of need. (It is not for shoe purchases, concert tickets or trips.) 5. Plan for tomorrow and live within your means today Better yet, live below your means. We bought the big houses, the big cars and the second homes, and it cost many of us big time. Make it your mission to want less on every level. Buy a reliable car you love, but also one you can afford. If youre going to carry a Yeti tumbler everywhere you go, fill it with coffee from home instead of Starbucks. If you must wear designer labels, shop at Marshalls or an outlet mall. Use apps that save you money. And pay cash whenever you can; keep your credit cards for only-when-necessary online shopping. OK, millennials, thats enough for now. But you get where were going with this, right? Financial planning is just as important when youre young as it is when youre old like us. Dont wait and try to fix things when youre 50 or 60 that can be a much harder road. Not gonna lie: The generations behind you will still roll their eyes when you offer advice. But youll be financially confident, standing on your own and you wont really care. The appearances in Kiplinger were obtained through a PR program. The columnist received assistance from a public relations firm in preparing this piece for submission to Kiplinger.com. Kiplinger was not compensated in any way. Investment advisory services offered only by duly registered individuals through AE Wealth Management, LLC (AEWM). AEWM and Vitality Investments are not affiliated companies. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. 499465 Kim Franke-Folstad contributed to this article. New Delhi/Beijing, April 13 : African countries have accused China of racial discrimination against African nationals in its drive to prevent the resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in the Asian giant. A letter written by several Ambassadors of African countries, shared widely on social media, complained to China's Foreign Minister about the mistreatment and harassment of African people. The complaint said that there was forceful testing and quarantine and maltreatment of African nationals in China and in Guangdong province in particular. "The African group of ambassadors observes with consternations the discrimination and stigmatization of Africans whereby they are made to forcefully, and in a very crude manner to undergo epidemic investigation and Nucleic Acid Test, fourteen days quarantine even if they had not traveled outside their jurisdictions, not come into contact with infected persons, not had close contact or showing any symptoms of COVID-19," the letter said. The representatives pointed out that African nationals were law-abiding and said that the Chinese authorities had not reported even a single case of violation by their people. Describing it as "singling out of Africans for compulsory testing and quarantine", the letter said, adding that it "has no scientific or logical basis and amounts to racism towards Africans in China. In a stern warning to China, the African Ambassadors said: "We would like to underscore that friendship between Africa and China should be mutual and not a one way affair. Regrettably, we received disquieting reports of inhuman treatments meted out to Africans." The letter then went on to enumerate cases of racial discrimination like incidents of African nationals being forcibly evicted from their hotels in the middle of the night, ejected along with their families and children from apartments by their landlords, selective testing for COVID-19 several times while their non-African colleagues are left out, Africans married to Chinese singled out for testing, seizure of passports and threats of revocation of visas, arrest, detention and deportation. An impression is being created as though the spread of the virus is caused by Africans, the letter said. The group of Ambassadors demanded immediate cessation of the discriminatory behavior and harassment of their nationals in China. However, Beijing has denied that there was any racial discrimination against African nationals in China. "The Guangdong authorities attach great importance to some African countries' concerns and are working promptly to improve their working method," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in a statement published on Sunday, referring to the province in which Guangzhou is located. Stella Morris, a former member of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal team, revealed Sunday that while Assange was living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, he fathered two children with her. Assange was arrested in 2019, and is now in a London prison as he fights extradition to the United States, where he was indicted on more than a dozen charges under the Espionage Act. In an interview with WikiLeaks, Morris said she is worried about Assange being in prison during the coronavirus pandemic, and his life "might be coming to an end" if he isn't released. Morris said she met Assange in 2011 and they became a couple in 2015. The pair decided to have children to "break down the walls around him" and "imagine a life beyond prison." Assange was denied bail in March, and his attorney Jennifer Robinson told NBC News that Morris chose to share her story publicly because she hopes this will help secure his release. In a statement, Morris said she can sense "an increasing fear and panic" during her phone conversations with Assange. Morris also declared that she "feared with strong reason for a long time that I will lose Julian to suicide if there is no way in which he can stop his extradition to the U.S. I now fear I may lose him for different reasons and sooner to the virus." His extradition hearing is set to resume in May. More stories from theweek.com CNN's Jim Acosta expresses concern Trump's 'meltdown' shows he's not 'in control on multiple levels' Trump adviser Peter Navarro made a bad bet 60 Minutes didn't cover pandemic preparedness under Obama Trump berates CBS reporter for noting Trump's own coronavirus video suggests he did nothing in February Two men have been charged over an alleged Easter morning burglary on the Sunshine Coast, in which they stole a man's keys and jewellery after beating and threatening him over a number of hours. Police allege the pair, aged 29 and 38, entered the Hillview Crescent home in Caloundra's Little Mountain about 4.20am on Sunday. Police have charged two men over the alleged incident. Credit:Queensland Police They allegedly assaulted the 39-year-old occupant with the stock of a gun before punching and kicking him. The two men stayed in the home for "several hours" threatening the occupant with the knife and gun before leaving in his car, police allege. Home Just In One Nepali dies of Covid-19 in US, UK each Kathmandu, April 9 Two Nepalis living abroad have died of the coronavirus infection on Wednesday. One man died in the United States whereas the other in the United Kingdom. Ngima Temba Sherpa, a permanent resident of Sotang rural municipality-4 of Solukhumbu district, currently residing in New York City in the US died in the court of treatment yesterday, according to his brother Lhakpa Yula Sherpa. He was living in the US for the past 13 years. Meanwhile, Chet Prasad Gurung, a former Gurkha soldier living in London of the UK, died of the Covid-19 on Wednesday night. He was a permanent resident of Parbat district of western Nepal. He was active in various social activities among the Nepalis living in the UK. Suffering from fever, he was self-isolated for the past two weeks. Both Sherpa and Gurung were also active in ethnic organisations of Nepalis in their host countries. Earlier in the past weeks, one Nepali in the US and three in the UK have already died of the infection. Delta, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - Desert Gold Ventures (TSXV: DAU) (FSE: QXR2) (OTC Pink: DAUGF) (the "Company") announces that it has signed an Option Agreement with Indigo Exploration Inc. for a 100% interest in its 100 square kilometre Djimbala Permit in southern Mali, West Africa. The Djimbala Permit lies immediately east of Hummingbird's 0.7 million oz Au Komana gold mine1, 21 kilometres north, along strike, of the Kodieran Mine and 28 kilometres north, along strike, from Endeavour's high grade 3.3 million oz Au Kalana gold project2. Djimbala Permit is located in southern Mali, West Africa, 220 km south of the capital of Bamako and covers a 100 km2 area. The permit is situated in the Yanfolila gold belt and is surrounded by a significant number of gold deposits, mines and prospecting permits. The bulk of the permit has not been explored. Two small soil sampling campaigns and a limited artisanal pit sampling program were completed by Desert Gold over parts of the permit with positive Au anomalies coinciding with possible favourable mineralized structures. Four north-south trending gold soil anomalies were defined, reflecting the regional structural trend. These soil anomalies also appear to correspond to the southern extension of mineralized zones drilled by Gold Fields immediately north of the Djimbala Permit. To date, several active artisanal workings were located during the soil campaigns, confirming Au mineralization. Jared Scharf, President & CEO states, "With Desert Gold's primary focus on its flagship Senegal Mali Shear Zone Project, we feel it's a sensible decision to option out the Djimbala Property to Indigo. This allows us to focus our resources on the SMSZ Project. At the same time, it is important for exploration to scale up at Djimbala on a timely basis. This transaction will ensure that this happens. Desert Gold looks forward to becoming an Indigo shareholder, and by proxy, realize additional potential value for our shareholders via this transaction and also through their exploration properties in Burkina Faso. We look forward to Indigo advancing the potential of the Djimbala Property for the benefit of both our shareholders and the country of Mali." Story continues DJIMBALA TRANSACTION The Company has signed a four-year Option Agreement with Indigo, whereby the Indigo can acquire up to 100% interest in the Djimbala Permit by the issuance of shares and completing work. Upon completing a positive title opinion and financing of at least $500,000, the Indigo would make a share issuance to Desert Gold equivalent of $50,000 of Indigo common shares at a deemed price of 5 cents per share, and three subsequent share issuances over three years totalling $300,000 at a deemed price equal to the volume weighted average price ("VWAP") for the prior 10 day trading period. With work expenditures of CAD $400,000, Indigo would earn 51% in the permit and with an additional CAD $600,000 work expenditure, Indigo would earn 100% interest in the permit, subject to a 2% net smelter royalty ("NSR") in favour of Desert Gold, where 1% NSR could be bought out at any time for USD $1 million by Indigo. This press release contains certain scientific and technical information. The Company is solely responsible for the contents and accuracy of any scientific and technical information related to it. Don Dudek, P.Geo a director of Desert Gold and a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information contained in this press release. 1 Hummingbird Komana gold resource; 0.7 million oz Au probable reserves category (2015) https://hummingbirdresources.co.uk/operations-projects/mali/ 2 Endeavour Kalana gold resource; 3.3 million oz Au measured & indicated (2020) https://www.endeavourmining.com/our-portfolio/Kalana-Project/default.aspx ABOUT DESERT GOLD Desert Gold Ventures Inc. is a gold exploration and development company that holds 2 gold exploration projects in Western Mali (SMSZ and Djimbala) and its Rutare gold project in central Rwanda. The Company's current focus is its 391 km2 SMSZ Project that spans approximately 38 km of the prolific Senegal Mali Shear Zone. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Jared Scharf" ___________________________ Jared Scharf President & Director ABOUT DESERT GOLD Desert Gold Ventures Inc. is a gold exploration and development company which holds 2 gold exploration permits in Western Mali (SMSZ Project and Djimbala) and its Rutare gold project in central Rwanda. For further information please visit www.SEDAR.com under the company's profile. Website: www.desertgold.ca CONTACT Jared Scharf, President & CEO Email: jared.scharf@desertgold.ca This news release contains forward-looking statements respecting the Company's ability to successfully complete the Offering. These forward-looking statements entail various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current expectations, are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual results may differ materially from those contained in such statements, including the inability of the Company to successfully complete the Offering. These uncertainties and risks include, but are not limited to, the strength of the capital markets, the price of gold; operational, funding, and liquidity risks; the degree to which mineral resource estimates are reflective of actual mineral resources; and the degree to which factors which would make a mineral deposit commercially viable are present; the risks and hazards associated with mining operations. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and available at www.sedar.com and readers are urged to read these materials. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such statements unless required by law. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been and will not be registered under the united states securities act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the united states or to the account or benefit of a U.S. person absent an exemption from the registration requirements of such act. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54357 A Great Dane so neglected she looked like a 'skeleton' is now living a pampered existence on a farm - with the doggy soulmate she met after being rescued. Two-year-old Cindy couldn't walk due to life-threatening pressure sores, had open wounds exposing her hip bone and weighed just two and a half stone when she arrived at the Animal SOS Sri Lanka sanctuary in December 2018. She was painstakingly nursed back to full health by the shelter's founder Kim Cooling and her team, who at times feared the plucky mutt wasn't going to make it due to the severe neglect she had faced. A Great Dane that looked like a 'skeleton' has been rescued and is living a pampered life Two-year-old Cindy was rescued by a sanctuary in Sri Lanka with a series of wounds and life-threatening pressure sores But happily, Cindy has made a full recovery and is now living in the UK with boyfriend Eddy, a one-and-a-half-year-old Jack Russel mix she became besotted with during her recovery at the shelter. The little and large duo are cared for at a farm in Marton, Cheshire by animal lover Sean Burke, 52, a company director who fell in love with Cindy while visiting the shelter and vowed to adopt her once she made a full recovery. The married dad-of-one said: 'I didn't know how she was still alive, the state she was in. 'I thought: "How can anyone allow this to happen to such a beautiful dog?" 'She was barely conscious a lot of the time, but she was so gentle and I thought if she recovered then she deserved a new life. She's a lovely, comforting, gentle giant. It was my duty to get her out of that situation.' Cindy was rescued by the sanctuary after her previous owners took the seriously ill dog, weighing less than 2st 8lbs, to the vets in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo. A friend of the sanctuary spotted Cindy at the vets and arranged with her owners for her to be adopted by the shelter, a two-and-a-half-hour drive south. Shortly after arriving, she was housed with rescue pooch Eddy, who was recovering from being hit by a car, and the two dogs quickly formed an inseparable bond. Sean, who was visiting pal Kim's sanctuary to help with the installation of a water treatment plant at the time, was so shocked by Cindy's condition he promised he would adopt her back in the UK if she survived. Cindy met Eddy, a one-and-a-half-year-old Jack Russel mix and the pair are now inseparable Kim, 63, who lives in London, said: 'Cindy's previous owners had given up on her and I assume they had no idea how to look after her. When she arrived at the shelter she was like a skeleton. She couldn't walk and she could barely lift her head, she was in such a terrible state. 'Her pressure sores were life threatening - they were so bad that you could see her hip bone. She was covered in faeces too, but she was too weak to be bathed so we ended up using two bottles of dry shampoo on her. 'We had to squirt food down her throat to keep her alive because was too sick to eat and drink on her own. She was on the brink of death for a few weeks and it was touch and go whether she was going to pull through. British businessman Sean Burke met the pair, vowing to adopt them and bring them to the UK 'At the shelter, we kept her in a room at the back of the clinic so that we could keep an eye on her and Eddy, and they became very close friends. He had come to the shelter with his hind legs paralysed after being hit by a car and we were teaching him to walk again. 'They were like little and large and they formed a very close bond. Now, they're like boyfriend and girlfriend. 'Sean was visiting at the time and he couldn't believe how ill Cindy was. He was absolutely choked by seeing her condition.' After six months of care at the sanctuary, Cindy made a full recovery, with her weight more than doubling to 7st 4lbs. She flew out to the UK to start her new life with Sean last summer, alongside Eddy. Sean paid for the duo's travel costs to the UK, which added up to 4,500, with the flights and crating setting him back 3,500 alone and rabies tests, dog passports and admin costs another 1,000. The dogs now live a care-free life on a Cheshire farm having been brought to the UK He even had to get a special crate made to transport Cindy, because the 5ft 8 pooch was too big to be flown back in a normal sized one. Cindy and Eddy are now settling into life in Sean's Cheshire farmhouse, which he recently moved to, and are enjoying playing in the four-acre grounds with his other two dogs, 10-year-old Sheepdog-Dalmatian mix, Fella, and four-year-old Lurcher, Prince. Sean said: 'I adopted them both because it would have been heart-breaking to split them up. They were fabulous from the moment they arrived. 'She can cause a real mess: she has chewed so many shoes and coats and she's always knocking things over, but I certainly don't regret the money I spent. 'I moved to a farm at the end of last year and Cindy and Eddy were awestruck at the size of the grounds. 'They were crashed out on the sun loungers within a day or two of arriving and they love the food and going on long walks.' To donate to the charity: https://www.gofundme.com/f/fedding-our-rescues-and-local-strays?utm-source=customer&utm-medium=copy-link-tip&utm-campaign=p-cp+share-sheet For more information: www.animalsos-sl.com Health officials have confirmed another 1,392 residents have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the statewide count to 26,867, according to data released on Monday. Public health officials also announced another 88 COVID-19-related deaths on Monday, bringing the statewide total to 844 since the outbreak began. At least 378 of those fatalities have been in long-term care facilities, according to the states data. Officials also noted on Monday that there is day-to-day variability in the reporting of cases based on laboratory testing results, and that no single day change is indicative of overall cases trends. Still, more than 40% of those who are reported to have died from the virus were from long-term care facilities. On Friday, Tara Gregorio, President of Massachusetts Senior Care, addressed the high death rate among the elderly, urging that there be more tests conducted of both symptomatic and asymptomatic residents of long-term care facilities. Gregorio also said caregivers need more personal protective gear, and that the facilities need emergency funding. Gov. Charlie Baker and other administration officials are projecting a surge in cases that is expected to arrive between April 10 and April 20. Black and Latinx people have been among those hardest hit by the virus, in Massachusetts and across the country. The New York Times reports that in New York City, Blacks and Latinos been dying at nearly twice the rate of white people. In Massachusetts, communities like Chelsea have seen rates of infection that have been as high as four times that of other places. The city of Chelsea is roughly 67% Latino or Hispanic, according to U.S. Census data. Explore coronavirus in Mass.: Cases, maps, charts and resources Here are the cases listed by county: Barnstable County: 502 Berkshire County: 355 Bristol County: 1,394 Dukes County: 12 Essex County: 3,413 Franklin County: 148 Hampden County: 1,694 Hampshire County: 224 Middlesex County: 5,983 Nantucket County: 9 Norfolk County: 2,838 Plymouth County: 2,141 Suffolk County: 5,579 Worcester County: 2,128 Unknown location: 447 The Department of Public Health released numbers of those by race and ethnicity that the COVID-19 pandemic has been most affected in the state. Here is a breakdown of deaths by ethnicity or race: Hispanic: 32 (4%) Non-Hispanic White: 222 (26%) Non-Hispanic Black/African American: 27 (3%) Non-Hispanic Asian: 14 (2%) Non-Hispanic Other (Reporting multiple races or that the originating reporting system does not capture the information): 16 (2%) Unknown: 388 (46%) Missing: 145 (17%) Related Content: By Express News Service As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, some doctors are moving away from using them whenever they can. Thats because some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could actually be harming certain patients. Death rates for COVID patients on ventilator 80% or more of coronavirus patients placed on the machines in New York City have died, state and city officials say. Higher-than-normal death rates have also been reported elsewhere in the US. 66% was the death rate in UK for coronavirus patients on ventilators, one report said. 86% death rate was found in a small study in Wuhan, China. What could be causing deaths? The reason for the deaths is not clear. It may have to do with what kind of shape the patients were in before they were infected it could be related to how sick they had become by the time they were put on the machines, some experts said ventilator can be damaging to a patient over time, as high-pressure oxygen is forced into the tiny air sacs in a patients lungs. Docs trying alternatives Physicians are trying other measures first. One is having patients lie in different positions including on their stomachs to allow different parts of the lung to aerate better. Another is giving patients more oxygen through nose tubes or other devices. Some doctors are experimenting with adding nitric oxide to the mix, to help improve blood flow and oxygen to the least damaged parts of the lungs. How are doctors designing treatments? Doctors are still learning the best way to manage a virus that emerged only months ago. They are relying on anecdotal, real-time data amid a crush of patients and shortages of basic supplies. Experts say that patients with bacterial pneumonia, for example, may be on a ventilator for no more than a day or two. But its been common for coronavirus patients to have been on a ventilator seven days, 10 days, 15 days, and theyre passing away, said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: A majority of residents in containment zones across the city on Sunday expressed satisfaction over the supply of essentials during complete sealing of their localities done by Delhi government to prevent the further spread of coronavirus. However, they remain sceptical about movement in case of medical emergency without any clarity on restriction order. Ailing and elderly family members, who need to see a doctor regularly or go to the hospital, are their prime concern as in several neighbourhoods especially in old Delhi, streets have entirely been barricaded with metal sheets. With no detailed order on restriction in parts of the city from the authorities, confusion among residents is resulting in panic. Abu Sufiyan, a social activist from Suiwalan, which shares its boundary with Chandni Mahal, in the Walled City, said that locals, who have a patient suffering from a heart-related ailment or chronic kidney diseases at home and require dialysis regularly, have been sending him SOS messages. The entire area is sealed. We are not facing much trouble in getting daily essentials but families with patients, who need regular medical consultation, are anxious. They dont know whether they will be allowed to take their patients to the hospital, he said. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) central Sanjay Bhatia said that in case of medical emergencies, people are allowed to ferry patients and that all necessary support would be provided. BM Mishra, district magistrate (DM) south also aid that in case, any emergency situation arises; one can always get an e-pass through the governments website. On Wednesday, the government had announced to seal 20 coronavirus hotspots containment zones where COVID 19 positive cases were reported. It later added more localities to the list. Till Sunday afternoon, the city comprises about 43 areas, where the health department officials have implemented operation SHIELD under which door-to-door health survey of people and sanitization drive is being conducted. Meanwhile, residents in containment zones appreciated the decision to seal coronavirus prone colonies and added that the supply of food items are almost normal and timings for buying daily necessities have been fixed by the authorities. We are given two hours of relaxation in the morning every day to purchase groceries. Complete lockdown will certainly help to protect people as some were not abiding by the rules, said Manish Sharma (name changed), a resident of Pratap Khand in Jhilmil Colony, one of the areas, which was sealed on Wednesday. Allu Arjun's Pushpa is undoubtedly one of the highly anticipated movies of the year. The makers of the movie recently unveiled the actor's first look poster. The unlikely look of the Stylish Star stunned many, eventually falling head over heels in love with his rough and tough avatar. The fans across the country appreciated the actor for taking an unconventional role in the action-thriller. Though fans all over are waiting for its release, the Tamil fans are more excited to feast their eyes on the movie majorly because of the content. The relatedness of the movie with Tamil Nadu is emotional especially due to the 2015 Nallamala encounter where police killed 20 daily wage workers in Chittoor's forests. Later, in a statement, the police had said that nearly 500 men were chopping red sanders in Nallamala forest at the orders of a smuggling tycoon and have attacked Task Force sleuths. The encounter was also called a fake one and people had accused that the workers were nabbed from local villages and shot at point-blank range.It is already reported that Allu Arjun would be essaying the role of a smuggler in the movie directed by Sukumar. Tamil folks are wondering if the movie has anything to do with the unfortunate encounter of 2015, which might unfold in Pushpa. Well, there is no confirmation about the story from the maker's side. Rashmika Mandanna will essay the lady love of Bunny in the movie. Bankrolled by Mythri Movie Makers and Muttamsetty Media, Pushpa will also feature Vijay Sethupathi, Prakash Raj, Jagapati Babu, Harish Uthaman, Vennela Kishore, Anasuya Bharadwaj, and Anish Kuruvilla in pivotal roles. Pushpa Movie: The Storyline Of Allu Arjun Starrer Leaked! Read Deets Inside! British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on Monday recuperating from his Covid-19 hospitalisation at his country retreat of Chequers, where he has been joined by his pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds. Downing Street has said that the prime minister would not be returning to work immediately and will be based at the sprawling 1,000-acre estate in Buckinghamshire, south-east England, for a recovery period on medical advice. UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab continues to deputise for Johnson as the UK entered a fourth week in lockdown on Monday and the country's total coronavirus death toll hit 10,612. UK ministers are required by law to review the strict social distancing measures by Thursday. In a video message issued after his discharge from St Thomas' Hospital in London on Sunday, Johnson, 55, urged the public to continue to follow the stay-at-home advice in the ongoing fight we never picked against an enemy we still don't entirely understand. I can only imagine how tough it has been to follow the rules on social distancing," he said. "I do believe that your efforts are worth it, and are daily proving their worth we are now making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus. He went on to credit the National Health Service (NHS) doctors and nurses with saving his life because things could have gone either way after he had to be shifted to intensive care with breathing difficulties with worsening coronavirus symptoms. The NHS has saved my life, no question. It's hard to find the words to express my debt, said Johnson. We will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together. We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love, he added. Symonds, who is expecting the couple's first baby within weeks, has now been reunited with Johnson at Chequers and said she felt incredibly lucky as she expressed her own thanks to all the well-wishers and the NHS. There were times last week that were very dark indeed. My heart goes out to all those in similar situations, worried sick about their loved ones, she said. I cannot thank our magnificent NHS enough. The staff at St. Thomas' Hospital have been incredible. I will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you, said the 32-year-old, who had also experienced symptoms of coronavirus while in self-isolation but later confirmed that she was on the mend. Johnson had been working remotely from his Downing Street flat after testing positive for coronavirus over two weeks ago, but had to be shifted to hospital as his symptoms persisted. After his week-long stay in hospital including a few days in intensive care, he singled out for praise some utterly brilliant doctors as well as a couple of nurses who stayed by his side through the worst period before his body started to get enough oxygen. And I hope they won't mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. They are Jenny from New Zealand Invercargill on the South Island to be exact and Luis from Portugal near Porto, he said. Jenny McGee's family said that his sister, who continues to be on duty at the London hospital, was blown away by Johnson's special mention. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the wake of COVID-19, the prospect of staying at home for a prolonged period of time may have become overwhelming, especially if youre someone who enjoys keeping fit and active. With social distancing, gym closures and lockdowns across India, exercising at home may seem a daunting task. Yet, staying active during these unusual times is more important than ever for our physical and mental health. Understanding the importance of a healthy lifestyle, Bajaj Allianz Life has rolled out a unique Fitness from Home initiative today, where fitness experts will be seen conducting virtual fitness sessions on the Companys Facebook and Instagram pages. These sessions are being conducted for the Companys customers and the people at large to enable them to stay fit while being at home, and maintain their physical and mental well-being. Commenting on the initiative, Chandramohan Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, said, We are doing our bit in providing access to fitness regimes from experts, to our employees, partners, agents, customers and many others, for them to stay physically and emotionally healthy in these challenging times. Live sessions on Yoga, Meditation, Stress Management and more, will be provided by renowned fitness experts to keep people fit and active from the safe confines of their homes. Afterall we strongly believe that sustained good health is essential for pursuing ones Life Goals which is longer than the current lockdown. The Company has roped in celebrated fitness experts known for their expertise in Yoga, Meditation and Home Workouts for its Fitness from Home sessions. Some of the names include Mandira Bedi, a fitness enthusiast who is well-known for her intense workouts, and Anushka Panjwani, celebrity trainer and Tedx Speaker. The first live streaming session will kickstart with Mandira Bedi today at 6 p.m. on the Facebook and Instagram pages of Bajaj Allianz Life. Please find below the link to join the session: https://www.facebook.com/events/s/fitness-from-home-with-mandira/670863047003161/ Ecuador said that police have removed around 800 bodies from homes in Guayaquil, the epicentre of the countrys coronavirus outbreak, after complaints of mishandling. Reports of abandoned bodies lying on the streets shocked the world last week which forced the President to announce an investigation in the management of bodies who died from the novel coronavirus. Ecuador has reported over 7,400 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 333 deaths due to the infectious disease. The COVID-19 outbreak overwhelmed the health and emergency services of the Latin American nation and the funeral homes buckled under the pressure of handling so many bodies. Pedro Pablo Duart, Governor of the province of Guayas, thanked Barcelona Sporting Club for donating coffins to help bury hundreds of deceased due to the health crisis. Jorge Wated, who has been leading a team of police and military personnel to control the situation, told Mayor Cynthia Viteri on Twitter that it is not the time for politics. Inquiry into the management of bodies On April 8, President Lenin Moreno announced an investigation into the management of bodies of people who died from coronavirus infection, especially in Guayaquil. The Ecuadorean President shared the letter on Twitter seeking an inquiry into the victims of COVID-19 disease after their families and friends bombarded the administration with complaints of mishandling. Read: COVID-19: Ecuador President Launches Probe Into Mishandling Of Victims Bodies Ecuador reported a sudden rise in the number of deaths and the backlog led to the bodies being stored in homes of relatives or were being refrigerated in shipping containers. However, Monero said that people who died, deserve a goodbye with dignity. According to media reports, country's Health Minister fired an official who asked for money in an exchange of handling of the coronavirus victim's body. Read: Ecuador Stores COVID-19 Victims In Giant Refrigerated Containers As Morgues Get Full According to the latest report, over 1.8 million coronavirus cases have been confirmed worldwide with more than 114,800 deaths, overwhelming the health care facilities across the globe. The United States, Italy, Spain and France are the worst-hit countries due to the pandemic with over 64 per cent of death toll reported from these four countries alone. Read: In Coastal Ecuador City Families Wait With The Mounting Dead Read: South Korea To Import 6 Lakh COVID-19 Testing Kits To US: Reports (Image source: AP) In recent decades, governing elites have done little to make life better for the nearly two-thirds of Americans who do not have a college degree. And they have failed to confront what should be one of the central questions of our politics: How can we ensure that Americans who do not inhabit the privileged ranks of the professional classes find dignified work that enables them to support a family, contribute to their community and win social esteem? As economic activity has shifted from making things to managing money, as society has lavished outsize rewards on hedge fund managers and Wall Street bankers, the esteem accorded to traditional work has become fragile and uncertain. At a time when finance has claimed a greater share of corporate profits, many who labor in the real economy, producing useful goods and services, have not only endured stagnant wages and uncertain job prospects; they have also come to feel that society accords less respect to the kind of work they do. The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly forced us to reconsider what social and economic roles matter most. Many of the essential workers during this crisis are performing jobs that do not require college degrees; they are truckers, warehouse workers, delivery workers, police officers, firefighters, utility maintenance workers, sanitation workers, supermarket cashiers, stock clerks, nurse assistants, hospital orderlies and home care providers. They lack the luxury of working from the safety of their homes and holding meetings on Zoom. They, along with the doctors and nurses caring for the afflicted in overcrowded hospitals, are the ones who are putting their health at risk so the rest of us can seek refuge from contagion. Beyond thanking them for their service, we should reconfigure our economy and society to accord such workers the compensation and recognition that reflects the true value of their contributions not only in an emergency but in our everyday lives. Such a reconfiguration involves more than familiar debates about how generous or austere the welfare state should be. It requires deliberating as democratic citizens about what constitutes a contribution to the common good, and how such contributions should be rewarded without assuming that markets can decide these questions on their own. For example, should we consider a federal wage subsidy to ensure that workers can earn enough to support thriving families, neighborhoods and communities? Should we bolster the dignity of work by shifting the burden of taxation from payroll taxes to taxes on financial transactions, wealth and carbon? Should we reconsider our current policy of taxing income from labor at a higher rate than capital gains? Should we encourage the domestic manufacture of certain goods beginning with surgical masks, medical gear and pharmaceuticals rather than promoting outsourcing to low-wage countries? Even when they recede, pandemics and other great crises seldom leave social and economic arrangements as they were. It is up to us to decide what the legacy of this wrenching episode will be. Our best hope is to pursue the intimations of solidarity implicit in this moment to reframe the terms of public discourse, to find our way to a morally more robust political debate than the rancorous one we have now. President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House April 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. WASHINGTON As the nation entered its third straight week of near total economic shutdown on Monday, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that it will be his decision when the nation's businesses will reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, and not a choice left to individual governors. But legal experts say Trump is wrong. For one, they note that U.S. law gives state governors wide latitude to protect the health and safety of their constituents. Secondly, they point out that Trump never declared a nationwide lockdown, so there's no mechanism by which he could order a nationwide reopening now, namely. Still, that did not prevent Trump from claiming that his power is nearly boundless. During a press briefing on the coronavirus Monday, he said, "When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total." Trump's comments on Monday evening came in response to questions from reporters about an announcement the president had made earlier in the day. Citing media reports that it would be up to governors when to "open up the states," Trump wrote, "this is incorrect. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons." TRUMP TWEET Trump did not detail the "many good reasons" this was true in further tweets. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to questions from CNBC about what the president meant by this. Asked during the press briefing about his claim, he did not detail any specific legal underpinning for his claim of power. In reality, the authority to protect the public health of U.S. citizens by directing shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders lies squarely with the nation's governors, and not with the president. "State and local governments have strong police power to protect their citizens and so I'm unaware of any way in which the federal government could basically try to override anything the states and cities have been doing to protect the public health of their citizens," said William Buzbee, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and an expert in federalism. "Since the president has mainly acted in a sort of bully pulpit sort of way, there's nothing in particular that he would be reversing or restarting," Buzbee told CNBC. "I don't know what it means for the president to 'open up the states,'" conservative legal scholar Josh Blackman told NBC News on Monday. "The president does make certain declarations about critical infrastructure and other guidelines that states generally follow. But the president cannot order the governors to do anything. I don't even think he could withhold funding from states, absent a congressional appropriation," he said. Former USS Theodore Roosevelt Captain Brett Crozier reportedly knew he'd be sacked when he broke protocol to send a memo urging the Navy to respond more quickly to a coronavirus outbreak onboard, but he'd reached 'breaking point' and seriously feared for the lives of his crew members. As reported by The New York Times, Cozier is said to have watched on helplessly as COVID-19 ravaged through the narrow corridors of Naval aircraft carrier in late March, which was housing over 5,000 sailors in shared bunks off the coast of Guam. Having been warned by doctors that more than 50 sailors aboard the vessel would die without drastic intervention, Crozier pleaded with his superiors to evacuate the boat but they eschewed his appeals, believing the measure to be too drastic. Nearly 80 percent of the ship's crew of 4,000 have been evacuated from the ship. There have been 585 positive cases on board the air carrier. After four consecutive days of rebuttals from his superiors, on March 30, Crozier took matters into his own hands and composed an unclassified email to 20 Navy personnel in the Pacific, disclosing the desperate situation on board and asking for their help. Insisting in the message that 'Sailors don't need to die', friends of Crozier told the Times the 30-year veteran would have known sending the email would likely end his career, but he persevered regardless. Surely enough, Crozier was controversially fired by acting Navy secretary Thomas B. Modly after the email leaked. Former USS Theodore Roosevelt Captain Brett Crozier reportedly knew he'd be sacked when he broke protocol and sent a memo urging the Navy to respond more quickly to a coronavirus outbreak onboard, but he'd reached 'breaking point' and feared for the lives of his crew members As reported by The New York Times, Cozier is said to have watched on helplessly as COVID-19 ravaged through the narrow corridors of Naval aircraft carrier (shown above) in late March, which was housing over 5,000 sailors in shared bunks Three weeks on and the former captain is currently quarantined in Guam, along with 584 other crew members, after they all contracted COVID-19 aboard the ship. More than 1,700 sailors who have tested negative are isolating in hotels, while the sick remain on base, Navy officials said. It's believed Sailors aboard the Roosevelt picked up the virus during a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam on March 5. Modly, meanwhile, has resigned as acting secretary. According to officials, he decided to oust the captain because he thought it was what President Trump would want. Officials told the Times Modly was hoping to avoid a confrontation with the Commander in Chief and avoid the same fate of his predecessor, but the self-serving motion was miscalculated and he was forced to step down. The Navy has conducted an investigation into the incident, the results of which are expected to be released sometime this week. Crozier was first made aware of an outbreak aboard the Roosevelt on March 24, when three sailors in the reactor department - operating the ship's nuclear reactors - tested positive for the virus. The three men were extracted from the ship by helicopter and flown to a Navy hospital in Guam. Two days later the ship docked in Guam and tests were conducted on the entire crew. It was during this time that Crozier began feuding with his superior on board the ship, Rear Admiral Stuart P. Baker. Acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly was hoping to avoid a confrontation with the Commander in Chief and avoid the same fate of his predecessor, but the self-serving motion was miscalculated and he was forced to step down Three weeks on and the former captain is currently quarantined in Guam, along with 584 other crew members, after they all contracted COVID-19 aboard the ship. More than 1,700 sailors who have tested negative are isolating in hotels, while the sick remain on base, Navy officials said Crozier believed it was necessary to evacuate the majority of those onboard, except for 400 members of the crew, quarantine them and have them tested while the ship was subject to a deep-clean. But Baker disagreed, and back in Washington Modly and other members of the Navy high command sought alternative options. Baker believed an evacuation was too drastic and Modly expressed concern that Guam could not house the carrier's crew even if they did. Instead, the Navy suggested sending the Roosevelt to Okinawa, Japan, or San Diego instead. They also suggested leaving 4,000 on board the ship and allowing 1000 to disembark. While his superiors meandered, COVID-19 cases aboard the ship continued to increase and Captain Crozier began composing a four-page letter to sent via email. Titled 'REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC', Crozier wrote: 'There are two end states T.R. could achieve...We go to war with the force we have and fight sick,' in which case he said 'there will be losses to the virus.' Alternatively, the Times reported, Crozier suggested the ship could try to 'achieve a COVID-free T.R.,' with all the necessary evacuation. 'As war is not imminent, we recommend pursuing the peace time end state,' Captain Crozier wrote. The captain showed the letter to a number of senior officers on the ship, who asked to sign the letter in solidarity with him. However, the captain declined, fearing the implication it could have on their careers. The following day, on March 31, Crozier's letter was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, having likely been leaked by one of the email's 20 recipients. Crozier's letter contradicted the Trump administration's claims that the situation aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt was under control. 'It's disappointing to have him say that,' Modly said during a press conference on April 1. 'Were doing everything we can.' Having been warned by doctors aboard the vessel that more than 50 sailors on would die without drastic intervention, Crozier pleaded with his superiors to evacuate the boat in Guam, but they eschewed his request, believing the measure to be too drastic According to the Times, Modly was fearful that Crozier's letter would irk president Trump and so he sought advice from colleagues for how he should handle the situation, with many advising him to open a thorough investigation into the incident first. But, in light of his predecessor Richard V. Spencer being fired as US Navy Secretary late last year for opposing the presidents intervention in support of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, Modly decided to fire Crozier on the spot - hoping to avoid a similar fate. Chairman on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, quickly and fiercely criticized Modly's decision, as did three other Democrats on the panel. 'Throwing the commanding officer overboard without a thorough investigation is not going to solve the growing crisis aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt,' Smith and his colleagues wrote in a statement. 'Whats more, we are very concerned about the chilling effect this dismissal will have on commanders throughout the Department of Defense.' Crozier departed the ship with a hero's farewell; hundreds of sailors and aircrew members formed a guard of honor on the hangar bay, cheering his name and applauded him as he walked down the gangway. Footage of his ceremonious exit went viral online, infuriating Modly further, and prompting him to board a business jet from Washington to Guam - at a cost of $234,000 - in a 35-hour round-trip to condemn Crozier's actions in person. Upon his arrival, Modly spoke for 15 minutes over the ship's PA system, admonishing the crew for applauding Crozier. He called Crozier 'naive' and said he'd been 'too stupid' to effectively command the Roosevelt. He then blamed China for the virus and left Guam 30 minutes later. Modly later issued a statement reiterating his views of Crozier, saying: 'I stand by every word.' The outburst further outraged lawmakers who called for Modly to be fired. Crozier was first made aware of an outbreak aboard the Roosevelt on March 24, when three sailors in the reactor department - operating the ship's nuclear reactors - tested positive for the virus Just seven hours after the statement was issued, Modly attempted to retract his comments. 'I do not think Captain Brett Crozier is naive nor stupid. I think and always believed him to be the opposite,' he said. But his about turn had come too little, too late. The following morning Modly was forced to offer his resignation. Modly was placed in quarantine after he returned from Guam but the Pentagon has declined to comment on his health status. The top Navy admiral now overseeing the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Vice Admiral Bill Merz, has revealed that its sailors are 'struggling' after their captain's controversial sacking and admitted the crew should have been told sooner about the 'true dangers of coronavirus'. Admiral Mike Gilday said on Thursday that the investigation of the USS Roosevelt matter, which he ordered last week, is now complete and he has started to go through the report. Gilday, the Navy's chief of operations, said he has not ruled out any options, including possibly reinstating Crozier, if that's where the investigation leads. 'I am taking no options off the table,' he said when asked about Crozier's fate. He said hasn't spoken to Crozier. He said he has gotten no pressure from anyone about the investigation and just wants to make sure his actions are fair. A refugee camp in Turkey is preparing to release tens of thousands of migrants sparking fears they will flee to EU member state Greece, satellite images suggest. Greek authorities have increased coastguard, air force and navy patrols in preparation for an influx of migrants. Satellite images taken in Turkey appear to show asylum seekers being moved from inland facilities to coastal regions. Satellite images taken in Turkey appear to show asylum seekers being moved from inland facilities to coastal regions A refugee camp in Turkey is preparing to release tens of thousands of migrants sparking fears they will flee to EU member state Greece , reports suggest Areas along Turkey's west coast are notoriously used by illegal people smugglers to traffic desperate refugees to nearby Greek islands by boat. The current migration fears are reminiscent of 2015 to 2016 crisis where more than one million people, mostly fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Asia, reached the EU via Turkey and Greece. Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas said authorities now 'have seen signs of activity' on the shores of Turkey. 'We will ... continue to do whatever it takes to defend our sovereign rights and guard the borders of Greece and Europe,' he said. A Greek government official told The Times: 'We have noticed some suspicious movements. Areas along Turkey's west coast (where the refugees are being transported to, pictured) are notoriously used by illegal people smugglers to traffic desperate refugees to nearby Greek islands by boat A Greek government official told The Times : 'We have noticed some suspicious movements.' Pictured: Satellite images taken in Turkey appear to show asylum seekers being moved from inland facilities to coastal regions 'As a result we have ordered a heightened alert for the next few days during the Easter holiday.' Turkey was locked down this weekend after the country reported 56,900 confirmed cases of the bug with nearly 1,200 deaths. It is unclear whether the asylum seekers included in the group have coronavirus. More than 100,000 asylum seekers are trapped in Greece with nearly 40,000 in camps on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos. Pictured: Migrants use a boat as a tent in Petra, Lesbos Under a 2016 deal, Turkey agreed to stem the tide of refugees to Europe in return for financial aid. It has since protested that the EU has failed to honour the agreement. Pictured: A migrant sits by a tent in Lesbos More than 100,000 asylum seekers are trapped in Greece with nearly 40,000 in camps on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos. Under a 2016 deal, Turkey agreed to stem the tide of refugees to Europe in return for financial aid. It has since protested that the EU has failed to honour the agreement. But on February 28, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to keep borders open for Syrian refugees headed for Europe. Since then, daily clashes between border police and asylum-seekers have broken out at the land border. The Greek islands last year were the European Union's busiest entry point for illegal migration, according to European border agency Frontex. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, just 40 migrants crossed the Agean sea last week. Other routes are still being used as dozens of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean after attempting travel from Libya to Europe. President Erdogan today rejected the resignation of the country's interior minister who took responsibility for a poorly timed announcement of a weekend lockdown that prompted thousands of people to rush into the streets to stock up on supplies. President Erdogan (pictured) today rejected the resignation of the country's interior minister who took responsibility for a poorly timed announcement of a weekend lockdown that prompted thousands of people to rush into the streets to stock up on supplies Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu (pictured), one of the most senior figures in the government, announced late Sunday that he was stepping down The 48-hour lockdowns across 31 cities - which were aimed to contain the spread of the coronavirus - were announced just two hours before taking effect on Friday night. Thousands of people rushed into the streets to stock up on goods, many without wearing mandatory face masks. Images of large, closely-bunched crowds sparked criticism of the government's planning for to top the coronavirus. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, one of the most senior figures in the government, announced late Sunday that he was stepping down, saying: 'responsibility for implementing the weekend curfew decision ... belongs entirely to me.' Erdogan's office said however that the president is not accepting the resignation and Soylu 'will continue in his duty.' Soylu, 50, was appointed interior minister in August 2016. He joined Erdogan's Justice and Development Party in 2012, having switched from the center-right Democrat Party. Since then, he has risen to be viewed by some as a potential successor to Erdogan and a rival of the president's son-in-law, Finance Minister Berat Albayrak. On Friday, Turkey began sending planeloads of emergency equipment to Britain to help medics fighting coronavirus. The first flight from Ankara took off today carrying personal protective equipment including surgical masks, N95 industrial masks and hazmat suits, with a second flight due to take off on Saturday, according to the defence ministry. The items were sent in boxes displaying the words of 13th century Sufi Poet Jalaluddin Rumi: 'After hopelessness, there is so much hope and after darkness, there is the much brighter sun.' In the past weeks, Turkey has similarly donated medical supplies to Italy, Spain - who like the UK are NATO allies - as well as five countries in the Balkans. The first flight from Ankara took off on Friday carrying personal protective equipment including surgical masks, N95 industrial masks and hazmat suits The items were sent in boxes displaying the words of 13th century Sufi Poet Jalaluddin Rumi: 'There is hope after despair and many suns after darkness.' In Greece, two migrant camps were placed under lockdown after residents tested positive for coronavirus. Officials said the camp in Malakasa, some 24 miles northeast of Athens, had been placed under 'full sanitary isolation' last week for 14 days, with no one allowed to enter or leave. A migration ministry source said the Malakasa facility currently shelters over 1,700 people. The first camp outbreak surfaced at a facility in Ritsona near Athens where 23 people - out of more than 2,500 - tested positive. In Greek migrant camps, where tens of thousands of asylum-seekers live in dire conditions, regulations had already been announced in March to keep residents in all camps as far from the local population as possible. Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi has warned that asylum seekers who attempt to break the lockdown will be prosecuted. Greece is sheltering some 100,000 asylum seekers, mostly in camps and in hotel rooms and flats. The worst congestion occurs in camps on five Aegean islands near Turkey where there are over 36,000 people for fewer than 6,100 places. A set of nine portrait photographs of the Queen which were used for Canadian bank notes have emerged on sale for 3,000. The images, taken by court photographer Anthony Buckley in 1963, capture the 37-year-old monarch as she poses in a diamond tiara with a matching necklace and earrings. The photographs were later adopted into the design of Canadian currency. Mr Buckley took a range of images with the Queen, now 93, posed from left to right so he had the greatest chance of one of his nine images being approved. The portraits, taken by court photographer Anthony Buckley in 1963, capture the 37-year-old monarch as she poses in a diamond tiara with a matching necklace and earrings The portraits were then presented to the Security Printers and the Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administrations, which distributed images of the monarch for bank notes, coins and postage stamps. The photographs, which each measure 8ins by 10ins, were donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 1995. Mr Buckley had a studio on Grosvenor Street in London in the 1960s. Earlier in his career, he worked with Dorothy Wilding, who took the original photo of the Queen which was used for postage stamps from 1952 to 1967. Mr Buckley took a range of images with the Queen, now 93, posed from left to right so he had the greatest chance of one of his nine images being approved The nine portraits are being sold by a private collection with auctioneer William George & Co, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire The nine portraits are being sold by a private collection with auctioneer William George & Co, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Alex McCormick, specialist at William George & Co, said: 'The pictures were used by photographers who worked with Security Printers and The Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administrations. 'They were both responsible for supplying images for use by British Commonwealth countries who wanted images of Queen Elizabeth for banknotes, coins and postage stamps. 'They are important and interesting as it is rare that these pictures, which were used for official purposes, come on the market. Pictured: Queen Elizabeth II attends the Commonweath Day Service at Westminster Abbey on March 9 'Anthony Buckley's archive was donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 1995 after he passed on. 'Buckley took nine different photographs as he wanted to achieve the best possible coverage Elizabeth, recognising that, if successful, the chosen image would have widespread and international usage. 'The different angles and positions were all taken at a single photo shoot and these examples were the best which were kept and saved once the Queen had approved this final group of images. 'This is probably one of a handful of examples of Buckley's prowess in private hands.' The online sale ends on April 23. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Monday said that in the last 100 hours no positive COVID-19 case has been reported in the State. Addressing the media this afternoon the CM said, "In the last 100 hours, no new case has been reported and seven patients have returned home after recovering fully." "One or two persons will also return home after their second report turned out to be negative," he added. Chief Minister Rawat was seen with a handkerchief wrapped around his mouth while he was addressing the media persons. The Chief Minister continued saying that in several cases, the symptoms of COVID-19 are not detected or they are seen very late. "We need to stay very vigil. Kindly cover you face wherever you go, it's not necessary to wear a mask, you can tie a handkerchief around your mouth. You should also wash it with warm water or iron after using it," said Rawat. Earlier today, Rawat conducted a review meeting with government officials regarding the coronavirus situation in the state. So far, the State has reported 35 positive COVID-19 cases, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Core Flytes for Home Workouts We pride ourselves in picking winning products in the market and we believe that Core Flytes should be in every home. Consumer media firm DTC ECOMM LLC announced a new partnership with exercise equipment company Flyte Fitness. The licensing collaboration which launched in February will drive further market growth of the innovative Core Flyte workout tool currently used by tens of thousands of at-home users, gym-goers, physical therapists, and athletes in over 40 countries. We pride ourselves in picking winning products in the market and we believe that Core Flytes should be in every home, said Ronald Steblea, President of DTC ECOMM. Ive seen the success of the Core Flyte over the last few years and I think its a game changer for the at-home fitness industry. Steblea previously served as president of Allstar Marketing Group, where he oversaw the development and marketing of at-home product hits, including the Snuggie and Leg Magic. The Core Flyte has attributes that make it a perfect fit for home use. Its small, portable, effective, and fun to use for all fitness levels, said Steblea. DTC ECOMM is working closely with media agency Cannella Media to leverage its strength across diverse marketing channels from Amazon, to DRTV, to social media, to retail to continue to scale this business. Jeremy Greenberg, CEO of Flyte Fitness, said, I have a lot of respect for Ron and his team. They have a powerful track record for both identifying popular products and scaling growth, using a wide range of channels and decades of marketing expertise. I want to see Core Flytes in as many homes and fitness clubs as possible, and, with DTC ECOMMs expertise, I am confident that the product will become a ubiquitous workout staple. Core Flytes provide a comprehensive workout for all fitness levels, and can be used in many different fitness platforms, including group fitness, circuit training, cardio, physical therapy, stretching, yoga, and Pilates. With 95 percent of Core Flyte customers continuing to use the product one year after purchase, customer satisfaction is high. Core Flytes use patented, ball bearing technology to enable exercisers of all levels to roll with minimal friction and in any direction on any hard, flat surface. Each Core Flyte set includes a pair of the padded, elevated platforms that move using three balls underneath, and can be used under hands or feet. Users get a full-body, core-centric workout to tone, strengthen, and improve overall fitness. About DTC ECOMM LLC: DTC ECOMM LLC is a $400 million media agency with extensive consumer marketing capabilities. The agency focuses on the DTC (Direct to Consumer) channels, with an emphasis on innovative products for use at home. DTC ECOMM is now the exclusive seller of Core Flytes and all Flyte Fitness products in the U.S., with Flyte Fitness retaining international wholesale rights. About Flyte Fitness: Flyte Fitness is on a mission to help people improve their cognitive, emotional, and physical health by developing exercise habits on their own terms. The company's flagship product, the Core Flyte, is a revolutionary stability training tool that helps users target their core muscles and build up muscle strength. The Core Flyte strengthens and stabilizes core muscles, while boosting results from traditional bodyweight exercises. Learn more at FlyteFitness.com. Vijay Deverakonda, in a video, thanked the Telanagana police force for working tirelessly during the coronavirus crisis. Vijay Deverakonda, on Saturday, visited the Telangana DGP headquarters to thank the officers, who are working relentlessly to combat the spread of coronavirus. The official handle of DGP Telangana Police posted a video with Deverakonda and expressed their gratitude for his visit. Check out the post here ThanQ Vijay @TheDeverakonda For coming to support us #InFightAgainstCovid19 on behalf of Tollywood. Where a single word of appreciation inspire us tonnes of times,ur representing here millions of hearts Industry&Audience who admire', I think there won't b perfect unit to measure pic.twitter.com/EEDgKk8FqK DGP TELANGANA POLICE (@TelanganaDGP) April 11, 2020 In the video, Deverakonda said that he visted DGP Mahendar Reddy's office to thank the officers. He said, "I came here to thank the police force on behalf of the Telugu film industry. I was in a meeting where they are helping essential service providers run their operations without any hiccups. Youre also helping keep up law and order, apart from helping us break the chain. We might play heroes on screen but you are the true heroes as you are putting your lives at risk." In addition, Deverakonda unveiled the Face Protective Sheilds that were donated by the Telangana Doctors foundation to the police officials. He said, "I thank the police for working so hard to implement this lockdown. You inspire us to be good citizens." Apart from Deverakonda, major South Indian stars such as Chiranjeevi, Mahesh Babu, Prabhas, Ram Charan are sharing the importance of social distancing. Chiranjeevi has also donated Rs 1 crore for the daily wage workers and those belonging to the lower-income groups in the Telugu film industry. Mahesh said he has donated Rs 1 crore to the CM relief fund of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. "Lauding the exemplary efforts of the government in tackling the Coronavirus and doing their best to contain it," he said. Kalyan too announced on Twitter that he will donate Rs 1 crore to PM relief fund. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during the update on the All of Government COVID-19 National Response at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on April 13, 2020. (Mark Mitchelll-Pool/Getty Images) New Zealand to Issue Guidance on Reopening Economy New Zealand officials are preparing to issue guidance on reopening the nations economy while they consider whether to extend emergency measures put into place last month to curb the spread of the CCP virus. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, causes a disease called COVID-19 that kills a small percentage of patients. New Zealands response to the illness has been one of the most successful in the world, with early action credited for 1,349 confirmed cases in the nation of 4.8 million. Only 15 people nationwide are in hospitals, with just four in intensive care units, and only five people have died; 546 patients have recovered, and authorities continue seeing more recoveries than new cases. Because the new confirmed and probable cases appeared to peak in early April, top officials are considering rolling back some restrictions, but are holding back on setting a firm date for now. Were very aware of the need to get our economy running as soon as possible, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters at a press conference April 13. We are coming around the bend but we cant quite see the finish line. (New Zealand government) The lockdown has New Zealand at level four restrictions. A decision to loosen restrictions, entering level 3, will be made on April 20. If and when we do move, level 3 will have significant restrictions also. We should consider it a waiting room. A place we move to that allows a bit more activity to occur but not so much that we risk losing all the gains that weve made, Ardern said. But several big steps are planned this week, including treasury officials releasing a series of scenarios about the potential effects of the lockdown on unemployment, GDP, and economic recovery, and Ardern releasing details on what moving to level 3 and then level 2 would entail. The guidance will be released after officials speak with leaders in sectors that include education, health, transportation, and business. Ardern said the number of cases dropping was a good sign but the fifth death from COVID-19, reported April 13, is a reminder that our battle with this virus is far from over. Our number of cases may be small but that doesnt mean that we have yet been successful in hunting the virus down, she said. A police stops a car traveling toward Christchurch at a checkpoint in Amberley, New Zealand, on April 10, 2020. (Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images) Just 1 percent of those tested for the CCP virus are testing positive, according to Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, national director-general of health. Officials are looking at the testing in each region and plan to in the coming days to make sure theyre not missing cases, potentially ramping up the number of tests done, as they remain focused on identifying clusters of cases. Nearby Australia, also hailed for early restrictions, saw its case count rise to 6,322, with 61 deaths on April 13. While the country recorded only 33 new cases, officials are being cautious. A decision on relaxing social distancing measures, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy told the Australian Broadcasting Corp., will be made in the coming weeks. We have had a continual reduction in the number of new cases each day, he said. There is no place in the world I would rather be than Australia at the moment. Having said that, as my colleagues have been saying for the past few days, we cannot become complacent. We still have some community transmission which mean[s] that there are people in the community that are transmitting this virus. The Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, says the novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has taught the world the value of brotherhood and the significance of showing love to all people irrespective of religion, race, gender, background or status. The Coronavirus has brought new consciousness to humanity, making us see ourselves as one family that is helping each other, to fight a common enemy. Each day people donate to help others. The pandemic has brought a new consciousness of brotherhood of humanity. We hope that it continues because, what is the use of having everything, when somebody is not having anything. The Most Reverend John Bonaventure Kwofie, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, while reiterating the position and recommendation of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference on COVID-19. He said although churches, individuals and corporate entities were helping deprived people already, the generosity had greatly aroused as a result of COVID-19, which was highly commendable. In his Easter message, Most. Rev. Kwofie, advised Christians not to live in fear amid the pandemic, but strengthen their faith as they celebrated the resurrection of Christ. He also urged them to seek spiritual empowerment from God and dedicate themselves to be commissioners of his good news, saying, people needed to know God the more in this trying times. The Archbishop believed COVID-19 was not a curse on humanity, and expressed optimism that God was using the challenging moment to turn things around for the better across the globe. Would we have fumigated our markets and maintained good personal hygiene if coronavirus had not set in? God is bringing the world to a new dimension. It has enhanced digitisation of our educational system, and the health system will become better after COVID-19, he said. He urged everyone engulfed in sin to mend his or her ways, saying, they died with Christ as sinners and had resurrected with him, hence the need to embrace a better and godly life. Most Rev. Kwofie encouraged the citizenry to join forces as a big family to uproot the COVID-19 by adhering to the necessary precautions set by the Ghana Health Service and the President, especially the social distancing protocol. He also prayed for knowledge and protection for frontline workers of COVID-19 cases worldwide. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Prayagraj police personnel have donated their one day's salary to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund for relief efforts towards prevention against coronavirus. "All officials and personnel of Prayagraj police willingly donate their one day's salary to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund for prevention of COVID-19," Prayagraj police tweeted on Monday. The Prayagraj police said that the total amount of this donation is Rs 74,10,129 and it is donated after a humanitarian appeal made by Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Craig Gilbert, who created what is widely considered to have been the first reality television show, An American Family, in 1973 and then all but disappeared from public view amid a storm of criticism and lasting, bitter disputes among its participants, died on Friday at his home in Lower Manhattan. He was 94. John Mulholland, a longtime friend and co-worker, confirmed the death. Mr. Gilbert spent most of his final decades living alone in a small apartment on Jane Street, relying on money he had inherited from his parents. An American Family was the last film he made. But in the early 1970s he was the envy of many documentarians, having produced well-received films about the anthropologist Margaret Mead and the disabled Irish writer Christy Brown. He was a producer at WNET, the New York public television outlet, when he came up with an even more ambitious idea, at a time when narrative journalism was on the rise: to follow a real American family for months, capturing moments mundane and emotional in an unvarnished, unrehearsed style known as cinema verite. Donald Trump is not looking to fire Anthony Fauci even after the government's top immunologist suggested the president should have acted sooner to prevent more deaths from the coronavirus outbreak. White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement Monday that Fauci will stay on the coronavirus task force as one of Trump's 'trusted advisors.' 'This media chatter is ridiculousPresident Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci,' Gidley said. 'Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump,' he continued. Rumors of Fauci's potential ousting came after he appeared on CNN Sunday morning claiming that the president should have invoked lockdown and social distancing guidelines sooner than mid-March. At the same time, Trump spent Easter weekend calling advisers and close allies to ask their opinion of Fauci and boasted that he made the doctor a 'star' by putting him at the forefront of the White House press briefings. Donald Trump will not fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House revealed Monday 'This media chatter is ridiculous President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci,' White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said. 'Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump' The comments come after Fauci said Sunday that the federal government 'could have saved more lives' if Trump ordered a nationwide lockdown sooner Fauci regularly appears at the nearly-daily briefings and also engages in several network television interviews every week. The 79-year-old immunologist is the top infectious diseases expert at the National Institute of health and he was brought on to help lead the White House charge in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gidley extinguished any remaining speculation that Fauci is on his way out the door. Fauci told CNN's State of the Union Sunday morning that the federal government 'could have saved more lives' if it had moved sooner to impose social-distancing restrictions like limiting gatherings to 10 people maximum. Following his appearance, and several media reports circulating the comments, Trump retweeted a message from a former Republican congressional candidate criticizing Fauci and calling for his firing. Trump didn't use the words 'fire Fauci' but shared DeAnna Lorraine's message in a string of Easter Sunday Twitter posts. Lorraine challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her seat in California's 12 district, which includes San Francisco. The Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield said Monday that he recommended in February some states expand mitigation efforts to combat the coronavirus spread, but lockdowns didn't begin until March. Redfield suggested on NBC's Today that some recommendations by the CDC and National Institute of Health were ignored earlier on in the coronavirus outbreak and not implemented until March. 'As February 28 as we got into March we recognized the different areas that mitigation was now important,' Redfiled told Today show host Savannah Guthrie. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas.' Although reports indicate that Redfield and NIH's top immunologist Anthony Fauci recommended the White House implement social distancing guidelines in late February, such action was not taken until at least three weeks later in mid-March. Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield said Monday morning that he recommended more states issue lockdown orders as early as February The White House issued social distancing guidelines about three weeks after the recommendations from Redfield and immunologist Anthony Fauci (right) As of Monday morning, more than 22,000 people died from coronavirus in the U.S. But Redfield excused the delay, claiming that the severity of the pandemic did not fully go into effect in the U.S. until that time. 'If you look back, in January and February, the cases we had in this country were all related to China travel,' he said Monday morning. 'It wasn't until February 28 when we saw our first community transmission where we said, 'wait a minute, where is this coming from?' 'So I think it's important when we get back, and when we get through this, we can look back at the timeline,' he continued. The 68-year-old CDC director said he recommended in February that the federal government begin to 'institute broader mitigation' efforts. Some reports indicate that the intelligence community informed the White House of the COVID-19 threat as early as November. Redfield's comments come as Fauci, a top infectious disease expert who serves on the coronavirus task force, admitted Sunday that more lives could have been saved if a lockdown were issued sooner. The 79-year-old immunologist told CNN Sunday morning that more could have been done that would have potentially slowed the spread and lessened the ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. 'Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could've saved lives, obviously,' Fauci told CNN's State of the Union. 'No-one is going to deny that,' he continued, but added 'there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then'. This sparked Trump to repost a tweet that utilized the hashtag 'fireFauci.' 'Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci' the tweet from Republican DeAnna Lorraine read. Trump reposted the tweet to his page on Sunday with the comment: 'Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN' Fauci (right, on CNN's State of the Union) said Sunday morning that if lockdowns and social distancing guidelines were implemented by the president sooner, less people would have died This prompted Trump to retweet a post calling for Fauci's ouster from the White House coronavirus task force. He did not use the term himself, but the reposted tweet used the hashtag 'fire Fauci' CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN TIMELINE CDC Director Robert Redfield said Monday he recommended certain states issue lockdown orders in February, but was widely ignored until later in the outbreak. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas,' Redfield told NBC's Today. Here is a timeline of those states' lockdown orders: MARCH 11: Washington Governor Jay Inslee bans all social gatherings over 250 people MARCH 13: Donald Trump declares national emergency over COVID-19 MARCH 16: The six San Francisco Bay counties, including San Francisco, announce 'shelter-in-place' orders MARCH 17: New York City mayor Bill de Blasio says city should follow San Francisco with a shelter-in-place order; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says it will be statewide: 'As a matter of fact, I'm going so far that I don't even think you can do a statewide policy.' MARCH 19: California Governor Gavin Newsom issues first statewide lockdown order MARCH 22: Cuomo signs statewide stay-at-home order MARCH 23: Inslee extends his lockdown to include all of Washington state MARCH 24: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issues statewide stay-at-home order APRIL 3: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' statewide lockdown goes into effect Advertisement The president's allies have also taken to slamming Fauci over his Sunday comments. Trump's 2016 campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller said Fauci should 'be more careful' during interviews, quoting the CNN headline: 'Dr. Anthony Fauci admits earlier Covid-19 mitigation efforts would have saved more American lives.' 'Dr. Fauci needs to be more careful choosing his words on #Coronavirus, & if he's going to be critical, make clear what he personally could've done better,' Miller tweeted. He suggested the Fauci take more responsibility for what he could have done better to mitigate the coronavirus threat early on. Although lockdowns and social distancing guidelines were not implemented by the White House until mid-March, several governors and local governments began taking matters into their own hands to mitigate the spread. Washington Governor Jay Inslee was the first to do so on March 11, after becoming the first state with deaths from coronavirus. He started by banning all social gatherings over 250 people. Two days later, Trump declared a national emergency. On March 16, the San Francisco Bay area, which includes six counties, issued the first real lockdown where all residents were ordered to shelter-in-place and only venture outside of their homes for essential reasons. These were limited to reasons like shopping for food or going to the doctor. While criticism emerged over the timing of national and state-wide lockdowns, Trump has often boasted his decision to ban travel from China early on in the outbreak. The White House announced a 15 days to slow the spread plan in mid-March where the Trump administration implemented social distancing guidelines. This included staying home except for necessary reasons like grocery shopping or going to the doctor maintaining a 6-foot distance from people in public and limiting gatherings to 10 people or less. At the end of March, when the 15 days were up, Trump ended up expanding the guidelines for another 30 days. The new end date for the guidelines is April 30, and the president says he plans to have the country back open and operating by May 1 a self-imposed deadline many experts claim is optimistic and 'too soon' to implement. Trump ally, and his former senior communications adviser for the 2016 campaign, Jason Miller voiced his criticism of Fauci, claiming the immunologist should 'be more careful choosing his words on coronavirus' and suggested he take more responsibility On Sunday Trump also slammed The New York Times for a piece published Saturday that claims he repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and had been warned about it multiple times by top White House officials. 'The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the 'paper' itself. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so,' Trump tweeted. The president added: ''@SecAzar told me nothing until later, and Peter Navarro memo was same as Ban (see his statements). Fake News!' the president added. Trump claimed that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar only warned him about the threat of coronavirus after he had imposed the China ban at the end of January. However, it has been reported that Azar briefed him on January 18 while the President was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida - but Trump kept interrupting because he was more interested in vaping measures. Trump imposed the China ban after senior White House economic aide Peter Navarro issued a memo in January accurately outlining how bad the pandemic would be. The president failed to mention a second Navarro memo issued in February that painted an even worse picture. Trump has been accused of not taking that seriously. There are several reports that intelligence officials told the White House that there was a virus threat coming from China as early as November, indicating that the president knew about coronavirus sooner than he let on. 'You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,' Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday morning. 'We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not.' 'But it is what it is,' he continued. 'We are where we are right now.' So far, more than 22,000 people died in the U.S. after contracting coronavirus and there are more than 561,000 cases as of Monday morning. New Delhi/Kabul, April 13 : The Afghanistan government has so far released over 350 Taliban prisoners out of the 5,000 it committed to free under the US-Taliban peace deal to end the 18-year-old war. The Taliban on Sunday claimed to have released 20 Afghan prisoners. Javid Faisal, spokesman for the Afghan National Security Council, told local media in Kabul that the government has released 361 Taliban prisoners from jail and will continue to set free up to 1,500 members. However, under the US-Taliban peace deal, the Afghan government is supposed to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, as a confidence-building measure ahead of the intra-Afghan peace talks. Sources said that the Taliban did not reveal the names and identity of the prisoners it claimed to have released in the southern province of Kandahar. The Taliban has promised to release around 1,000 Afghan government troops and civilian workers from its captivity. Welcoming the prisoner exchange, the US envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the US deal with the Taliban, tweeted, "Both sides should accelerate efforts to meet targets specified in the US-Taliban agreement as soon as possible." The release of prisoners, he added, was more important than ever with prison populations threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. However, neither the Afghan government nor the Taliban have made any announcement about the finalisation of their respective teams for the intra-Afghan talks yet. Staff file photo WASHINGTON U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro is leading more than 100 House Democrats in urging the Trump administration to automatically extend work permits for immigrants whose authorizations are set to expire in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox By Express News Service BENGALURU: Karnataka witnessed 17 fresh cases of Coronavirus on Sunday, the highest single-day spike so far. The total number of cases now stands at 232, including six deaths. However, in some cheer, 54 patients diagnosed for COVID-19 have been discharged after treatment till now. The new cases are mostly contacts of those who attended the Tabhligi Jamaat in New Delhi last month, and also contacts of those who worked in the pharma company in Nanjangud near Mysuru, the first cluster in the state. Patient 216, a 32-year-old male from Mysuru was a contact of Patient 88, a 24-year-old male who worked in the pharma company.Bengaluru saw a rise cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) with a 75-year-old woman and 76-year-old man testing positive in Bengaluru. Another case recorded in BBMP limits is of a 58-year-old man who had travelled to Indonesia and returned on March 21. Vijayapura joined the list of COVID-19-affected districts, registering six cases, including three children. These include a 60-year-old woman showing symptoms of SARI, a 13-year-old male, a 12-year-old female, a 10-year-old male, a 49-year-old male and another 20-year-old female. Tracing of their contacts is being done by the Health Department in Vijayapura. In Kalaburagi, a 24-year-old woman and a 38-year old woman, who were contacts of Patient 177, a 65-year-old male from Kalaburagi with SARI, also tested positive. Another two-year-old boy also tested positive with SARI, but no contact or travel history has been identified as yet. Three contacts of Patient 150, a 41-year-old female from Belagavi who attended the Tabhligi Jamaat, tested positive on Sunday. Four in ICU They include a 19-year old male, a 55-year-old male and a 25-year old male, all from Raibagh, Belagavi. Another 20-year-old male from Belagavi, who is a contact of Patient 128, a 38-year-old male from Hirebegawadi who had attended the Delhi congregation, also tested positive. Meanwhile, 168 COVID-19 positive patients, including a pregnant woman, are in isolation at designated hospitals and are stable while four are in the ICU. They include a 63-yearold man from Bengaluru with a history travel to South America (Brazil, Argentina), a 62-year-old woman from Bengaluru, a 63-year-old male resident of Kerala with a travel history to Germany who arrived in Bengaluru through Abu Dhabi on March 21 and a 66-year-old male with SARI symptoms and history of travel to Manipur. After I-T raids on SP leaders, petitioner questions Centre for not sending Mulayam & Akhilesh to jail UP health index worst, this is real report of BJP govt: Akhilesh Yadav Lord Krishna tells me daily in my dreams that Ill establish Ram Rajya in UP after polls: Akhilesh Yadav NCP to contest UP elections in alliance with SP: Sharad Pawar Lockdown meaningful if testing is intensified says Akhilesh Yadav India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Lucknow, Apr 13: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav said that the extension of the ongoing nationwide lockdown will be meaningful only if COVID-19 testing is intensified and people get access to essential items. "The demand to extend the lockdown will be meaningful only if COVID-19 testing is intensified, health workers get protection and the public gets access to essential items, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a tweet in Hindi. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts To end the problem of cash crunch, arrangements have to be made at village and colony level along with banks." In another tweet, the SP chief took a jibe at the state government for changing the emergency response number from 100 to 112. "Even after changing the name or the number, those who are helped, those whose lives are saved, they always remember the original motivator. The success of these public welfare systems gives immense satisfaction about our own work," he tweeted. On October 26, last year Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had launched an all-encompassing emergency helpline number '112' to access police, fire brigade, ambulance and other services under the Emergency Response Support System here. He also launched a senior citizen safety initiative 'Savera'. Dial 100 was launched by the Akhilesh Yadav government in 2016. Fake News Buster "This single helpline number 112 will reduce the response time. Route chart of 112 should be prepared and positioning at district, station level should be done," Adityanath had said at the launch event. He said people do not need to remember different numbers for different tasks now. All emergency services have been integrated for the task. WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- A new and effective global governance system has yet to be built to cope with a crisis of the magnitude of the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has said. "We don't have a very good functioning global governance so far, whether for the global economy or for global public health," Cui said in an interview with Ian Bremmer at Gzero World which began airing nationally on Saturday on U.S. public television. "I think you're right. Of course we have to recognize the G20 had a good special summit, also a video call, and they have taken a number of good decisions. Now the task is to implement these decisions," said Cui in response to a question concerning international cooperation and coordination in fighting the pandemic. "But still, I think, the current situation and the current deficiency in global governance ... I think people really have to make serious efforts to think about what kind of global governance we should be building. What should we aim at?" he said. "If we still want to build some international governance system based on a particular political model or with the dominance of one or two particular countries, I don't think we can succeed," Cui said. "If we aim at a new system of international governance that is open, inclusive, that is based on mutual respect among all countries, on the full recognition of the diversity of cultures, civilizations, political systems, economic systems, if we can do this, then I think all the things are ready for us to build a new and effective international governance system. We have to make the right choice now," he said. The world has had a number of crises in the 21st century, one could say starting with the 9/11 terror attack , then the financial crisis, and now this COVID-19 virus, i.e. security challenges, financial instability and now public health, the ambassador said. "If we can still call this a wakeup call, I think we should have woken up a long time ago, but still, if we have not started yet, we have to start real efforts to build a good international governance system for the 21st century, for the future," he said, adding that big countries, including the United States and China, have great responsibilities in spearheading the efforts. "Even for other countries, some smaller, maybe poorer countries, countries that unfortunately don't have a lot of say in international decision-making, I think they are keenly aware of their vulnerability, of the lack of an effective, efficient and equitable global governance system," he said. "It is ineffective, but they are not in a position to change it. So maybe they have hopes on us to take the lead for international efforts to build such a good governance system for everybody," he said. WHAT CHINA WANTS IS NOT SELFISH INTERESTS The Chinese ambassador pointed out that the current international institutions that were set up since WWII, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Group of Seven, the United Nations (UN), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), are "making their best efforts to reform and to improve, to catch up with tremendous changes going on in the world." For instance, since the financial crisis in 2008, the World Bank and the IMF have seen major reforms of the quota system, of how they respond to member states' needs, he said. "I think they are making good efforts. Even at the recent G20 summit, these institutions are offering their contributions. They are ready to play their due role. Of course we have to encourage them to do more," he said. "And for the WTO, it was very unfortunate that the Doha Round did not succeed. And many of the rules were set up before we have had all these new technologies. So I think there is a real need for us to support reform of the WTO, make it more up-to-date, make it better able to meet the challenge," he said. If these existing institutions can respond to the needs and aspirations of their member states, "not just a few of them, but their entire membership," "in a timely and effective manner," then they could undergo good reforms, and they could "make themselves better able to perform their function," the ambassador said. "If they fail to do that, that might force the member countries to think about the possibility of setting up new structures. But I do hope that we can carry out reforms with the existing institutions, just make them better." Actually, he said, China has been "very actively" involved in the process, even for the international response to the financial crisis in the last decade, increasing its contributions to these institutions. Now China is the second largest contributor to the United Nations' budget, the second largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, and the largest contributor of troops among the permanent members of the Security Council to UN peacekeeping operations. "So we are increasing our contribution. We are doing our best to do more for the international community, because we believe we are all part of this community of nations. We do have a shared destiny. We do have a shared future. But of course, it is very much hoped that the United States will continue to do more," he said. "But what China wants is not selfish interests. We want the purposes and principles of the UN Charter to be widely observed. If we can have all these principles implemented and respected globally, I don't think we want anything more for ourselves," he said. Workers pull dollies loaded with boxes of produce past a decontamination tent at the Centro de Abastos, the main food distribution center in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 7, 2020. The tent was set up a measure to help slow down the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte) MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexicos Labor Department said Wednesday the country has lost 346,748 jobs since mid-March due to the economic impact of the new coronavirus and distancing measures imposed to fights its spread. The biggest job losses occurred in the heavily tourism-dependent Caribbean coastal state of Quintana Roo, which lost almost 64,000 jobs. The state is home to resorts like Cancun and Playa del Carmen, which have been hit hard by recommendations that people limit travel. The department said the largest share of the job losses during the period from March 13 to April 6 almost 250,000 came at firms with 50 workers or more, rather than the smaller businesses that dominate Mexicos economic landscape. We are calling on these companies to reconsider, and recognize that the key thing at this moment is to show solidarity with workers, said Labor Secretary Luisa Maria Alcalde. Officials said there was no legal basis for firing or laying off workers because of a public health emergency, and praised smaller firms for trying to hold on to their employees. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said small businesses are holding up under the crisis, these small businessmen and women are acting responsibly and heroically, because they are caring for their employee's jobs." Lopez Obrador, whose relationship with business sector has been rocky at times, even published a list of companies that had let go of workers. Lopez Obrador had pledged to create 2 million new jobs are part of an emergency response plan, but Wednesdays figures could make that goal harder to reach. I have already said that we are going to create 2 million jobs between May and December as part of the emergency plan, and so when we issue a report like this, it is to issue a call for support, and for people not to fire anyone and preserve jobs," the president said. The International Labour Organization said in a report Wednesday that the pandemic has caused a drop of 5.7 % in the number of hours worked in Latin America and the Caribbean, equivalent to 14 million jobs across the region. We are facing a mass destruction of jobs, and that creates a challenge of unprecedented proportion in labor markets in Latin and the Caribbean, said ILO Regional Director Vinicius Pinheiro. Story continues Mexico has had 3,181 coronavirus cases and 174 deaths so far. But Undersecretary of Health Hugo Lopez-Gatell reported that Mexico has performed only about 16,700 tests, and said modelling suggests there are about eight times more cases of infections. Many people complaining of mild symptoms are sent home without testing, in part because their prognosis is good. The government officially listed 17,209 suspected cases. IT is, by all accounts, an interesting reinvention. As someone who has loved and lost more than once, a foray into an industry that promises the fairytale ending may not have seemed like an obvious move. But for those who know Mary Lowry, her new job, working for a local wedding planner in Tipperary town, is exactly what she is suited to. "She's delighted with herself," said one acquaintance. "She's working with a small business owner, a wedding planner, and she has a spring in her step. She has the personality for that type of thing too, gregarious and down-to-earth." It's been a year since the longest-running murder trial in the history of the State began in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin. The Mr Moonlight trial, a nod to the stage name of Bobby Ryan, the much-loved Cashel DJ found murdered at the bottom of a farm run-off tank in 2013, transfixed the nation. Mr Ryan had been dating Ms Lowry, Pat Quirke's widowed sister-in-law, when he mysteriously went missing on the morning of June 3, 2011, having spent the previous night with her on her farm in Fawnagowan. Quirke had been having an affair with Ms Lowry, an affair that she ended to take up with Mr Ryan, and Quirke wasn't best pleased to learn of her new love interest. In what is believed to have been a preplanned killing, Quirke decided to take matters into his own hands. The prosecution case, laid out in all its sensational detail last year, was that Quirke, the jealous ex-lover, murdered his 'love rival' and hid him in the tank on Ms Lowry's farm in a desperate bid to rekindle their romance. After a three-month trial, a jury of six men and six women returned a majority verdict of guilty on May 1 and Quirke, the unassuming farmer from Tipperary, was led from court number 13 a convicted murderer. The trial began on January 17, but national interest in the case was ignited several days later, when Ms Lowry took the stand. She was the star witness for the State, the person the crowds wanted to see, and during her four days of evidence, they came in their droves. They filed in from early morning, a mixture of curious onlookers and wannabe sleuths. There were the stalwarts with earmarked seats and the fair-weather spectators who attended sporadically. They listened with bated breath as Ms Lowry (52) told the court that she began an affair with Quirke in 2008, a year after her husband died of cancer. He is married to her late husband's sister, she explained, and helped her with the farm and finances. She sought comfort from her grief but Quirke became "overpowering" and she grew ashamed of the relationship. She ended it in 2010 and started dating Mr Ryan, calling him a "breath of fresh air". Quirke resented the part-time DJ, the court heard. He had written a "Dear Patricia" letter to 'Sunday Independent' agony aunt Patricia Redlich, complaining he was a married man ditched by his girlfriend. Mr Ryan vanished on June 3, 2011, after leaving Ms Lowry's home. Ms Lowry said Quirke later showed up at the farm looking "hot and sweaty and bothered". More than two months after her first court appearance, Ms Lowry swept back into court dressed in purple. She had returned unexpectedly to give evidence about a secret recording Quirke had made of her talking to her boyfriend at the time, Flor Cantillon. As word trickled through that she had been spotted coming through the front doors of the criminal court, a flurry of onlookers descended on court 13. "Where's Mary?" shouted one man as he appeared through the double doors. As the tape of her and Flor was played for the jury, the sound of her infectious laugh and witty chat ricocheted around the room, bringing a blast of warmth to the grim proceedings and the austere surroundings. Later that day, after Flor had also given evidence, the former lovers were spotted in a nearby bakery having lunch. Several other recordings, which became known as the sex tapes, were not played to the jury. The intimate recordings, of Quirke and Ms Lowry and Quirke and his wife, were deemed "too prejudicial" by Judge Eileen Creedon. One by one, the witnesses in the trial came to give their evidence, strands in an intricate story of murder, that, when all weaved together, left only one man standing as the killer. Mr Ryan's boss Niall Quinn said he had called to Robert Ryan's home wondering why the usually diligent and punctual employee had not shown up to drive his truck at the quarry that day. Robert, Bobby's son, was equally concerned when he saw his father's work boots and clothes still in the hallway. He sent him a text message at 10.44am asking: "Da, are you not working today?" He never got an answer because the message never reached its intended recipient. Fifteen minutes earlier, Mr Ryan's phone signal had pinged off a local mast before it was lost forever. The phone was never found. It was the last question Robert asked his father but the first of many, many more that would haunt the Ryan family for years to come. Treated initially as a missing person investigation, the forensic investigation normally activated in a murder inquiry did not kick in until 22 months later when Mr Ryan's body was found in an underground tank just yards from where he was last seen. There was no murder weapon, no murder scene, no forensics - Quirke had made sure of that. It was a circumstantial case, the hardest to prove. Although circumstantial, some of that evidence was damning. Quirke had been caught on CCTV around Ms Lowry's home, taking her underwear from her clothes line and peering in her windows - an event which led to her telling him she wanted him off the land. The jury was told the clock was ticking and Quirke's position on the farm was compromised so he staged the discovery of Mr Ryan's body fearing it would later be found by the next person to lease the land. Prosecutors said Quirke inflicted blunt force trauma on Bobby Ryan and hid the body in a disused run-off tank. In April 2013 Quirke told police he had found a body in the tank while pumping water. Prosecutors said he did so because his lease on the farm - and control over the tank - was due to expire. It was Breda Dwyer, an earthy, no-nonsense woman from the country, who blew the lid on the apparent alibi Quirke had given to gardai. On the morning Mr Ryan went missing Ms Dwyer, an artificial insemination technician, said she saw Quirke standing milking cows, not having breakfast as he told detectives. In the 15 years she had been visiting, he was always done and dusted by the time she arrived. The inference? That the small matter of a murder had held him up on June 3. There were many days of what seemed like interminable legal argument. There were the countless challenges over the evidence - the warrants for the searches of the farm, the tank reconstruction carried out by gardai, arguments over whether Quirke had said the word 'had' or 'hadn't' in a Garda interview. Most significantly, there had been days spent trying to stop the grisly contents of Quirke's computer going before the jury. In the end, Quirke's twisted suggestion that he had Googled 'human decomposition timeline' on his computer because of his son's death had been a step too far for many. As the weeks turned to months, the tired faces of the Ryan family, huddled together outside on the steps of the Central Criminal Court, said it all. Tired from travelling twice a day between Tipperary and Cork and Dublin, tired from enduring hundreds of hours of testimony, tired of waiting for justice. They sat together, Mr Ryan's daughter Michelle and son Robert, with their mother Mary and extended family members, bookended on either side of a wooden pew by two victim support staff. Behind them, sitting alone on a bench reserved for the accused's family, was Imelda Quirke. For the duration of the 15-week trial, this frail woman, the faithful companion of the man in the dock, was the loyal wife. Every morning she arrived at the court, walking by his side, her face tilted slightly upwards, just like his, as if in a small act of defiance. Even when they were separated - when Quirke took his seat on the accused bench and she retreated to her lonely perch close by - she would sneak knowing glances at him, often fiddling with her scarf. The gardai, a small team from Tipperary town, had a corner on the right-hand side of the court, close to a small room that stored the volumes of circumstantial evidence on which this trial hinged. Lastly, there was Quirke, the man on the accused bench. Always unflinching, never reacting, regularly yawning. He held the same stoic demeanour when he was sentenced to life in prison on May 1. Since then, he has been serving time in Portlaoise Prison. His appeal, set for five days in October, may now be delayed as a result of court backlogs due to the coronavirus. Imelda, his ever-supportive wife, is still standing by her man. The couple haven't seen each other in over two weeks due to restrictions on prison visits and a scheduled video call ended when there were problems with the connection. For now, at least, he remains behind bars and unable to physically see any of his family. The Ryan family, who will mark the ninth anniversary of Mr Ryan's death in the coming months, will have little sympathy for his plight. They lost the privilege of seeing their father long ago. Workers are concerned about new C.D.C. guidelines that loosen quarantine rules. Laborers who were once considered unskilled are now essential employees, even heroes to some, because they are providing the nation with food and other crucial supplies. How employers and public health officials protect these workers has become a critical issue. New guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that essential workers who may have been exposed to the coronavirus may continue to work provided they are asymptomatic, wear a mask at all times for 14 days after their last exposure and have their temperature taken before entering the workplace. Labor advocates like Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, the co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, say the new guidelines may encourage employers to pressure workers to return to their jobs too soon, often without adequate protection or pay. Its a complete reversal of the policy that the C.D.C. has for the public, Ms. Goldstein-Gelb said. It disregards the fact that, right now, workers are dying every day needlessly in unconscionable numbers. Nearly 3,000 workers of the 1.3 million people represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union have been directly affected by the virus as of Monday whether through infection, quarantine, hospitalizations and those awaiting test results and 30 had died, according to the unions research. Grocery stores are among the remaining high-risk transmission points for the disease now that many other commercial businesses have been closed, but many workers and customers do not have masks and people can remain in close contact with one another. Workers are imploring customers to take more care while in stores. They say many have been throwing used gloves and wipes in carts and on floors for employees to pick up. Many customers are still browsing with their hands and not their eyes and blaming workers for lack of goods on shelves. Malaybalay City (CNN Philippines, April 13) Residents and nonresidents of Bukidnon are now barred from entering the province, as the two-week general community quarantine took effect early Monday. Even residents travelling outside Bukidnon will be denied reentry, as part of the provincial government's stringent measures against COVID-19. On April 11, the provincial government confirmed its first COVID-19 case a resident and barangay official of Barangay Lumbayao, Valencia City. Governor Jose Maria Zubiri Jr. earlier issued an order calling on officials of 22 municipalities to follow the guidelines of the quarantine's implementation. Selected essential establishments and businesses will remain open and will continue operations, provided that they institute respective precautionary measures. There will also be a heightened presence of police and soldiers in coordination with the Provincial COVID-19 Task Force, while mayors and barangay leaders were ordered to enforce and monitor the home quarantine of all households. Only one person per household can go out of their homes to buy food and other basic necessities. He must carry a quarantine pass with him with a valid ID at all times. Public transportation is also suspended except for movement of goods, supplies and cargoes. Respective local governments will only allow a limited number of public vehicles to transport employees rendering vital services and residents who need to access food supplies and basic necessities, the order added. The executive order took effect at 5:00 a.m. on Monday and will be enforced until midnight of April 26. CNN Philippines stringer Mel Velez contributed to this report. A 40-year-old coronavirus positive patient was on Sunday booked for "attempt to murder" after he allegedly spat on a doctor treating him at the government hospital here, police said. Track live updates on coronavirus here It was a serious crime under the present conditions with so many restrictions in force to prevent the spread of coronavirus, they said. The patient, admitted to the hospital's coronavirus ward on Saturday, also removed his mask and threw it at the doctor, enraging the hospital staff and other patients. Eversince his admission in the ward, he has not been cooperating with the medical staff, they added. Also Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases Meanwhile, reports from Nagapattinam district stated that a 65-year-old doctor, running a private clinic at Kadambadi in the district has tested positive for the virus after his return from the US three weeks back. The district administration has appealed to the people who received treatment from the doctor to voluntarily come forward and subject themselves to medical examination. People could contact the officials on 9751425002 and 9500493022 to pass on information in this connection, it said. Tamil Nadu has reported the third highest number of positive coronavirus cases in the country after Maharashtra and Delhi, with a total of 969 confirmed cases, and 11 deaths so far. Health Ministry issues emergency notice on Ha Loi Village A medical worker sprays disinfectant in an ambulance before allowing it to enter Ha Loi Village on Friday. The Ministry of Health on Sunday morning issued its 13th emergency notice, asking anyone who has visited Me Linh flower market in Ha Loi Village, Me Linh Commune, Ha Noi since March 20, to immediately contact the nearest health authority or send a message to the number 8889 for medical advice. Relating to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the village, the city has recorded six infected cases so far. They are the country's 243rd, 250th, 253rd, 254th, 257th and 258th patients. The ministry sent a special task force to support the prevention and control of COVID-19 in the village on April 10. The ministry had already imposed a lockdown on the village, with a total of 11,077 people, on Tuesday afternoon. The lockdown will run between April 8 and May 5. Urgent guidelines issued over COVID-19 testing Testing conducted for residents of Ha Loi Village, Me Linh Commune, Me Linh District. Ha Noi is accelerating the process to cover all locals in Ha Loi today. The National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control has asked cities and provinces nationwide to invest wisely in testing systems to avoid unnecessary waste in the current pandemic situation. In an urgent document sent on Saturday, the steering committee asked local health departments to carefully consider procurement and investment of the equipment to avoid waste because machines and biological products are limited and expensive. The document stressed that testing is conducted by laboratories under the direction of the steering committee, not as requested services. So far, the country has had 110 laboratories with full capacity for COVID-19 testing, of which 95 are under the health sector, 15 are under other sectors such as agriculture and national defence. According to the Ministry of Health, the test method suitable to the prevention and control conditions in Viet Nam is the RT-PCR test with test kits produced by the Military Medical Academy, ensuring the ability of domestic supply, regardless of the supply from the outside. The ministry is appraising and licensing several units that have registered. Viet Nam is one of the leading countries in the world having people tested in relation to positive cases. Testing capacity reaches 27,000 samples a day. By Sunday morning, the cumulative total of tested samples was 212,800, of which positive samples were 258. Hue, a Nang set up free rice ATMs People fill in a form to collect free rice from donors in Hue City. Photo courtesy of Hue Newspaper Donors in the central city of Hue have set up a 'rice ATM' in the city to help underprivileged people that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Volunteers at colleges in the city set up the first site at the Phu Xuan private college at 28 Nguyen Tri Phuong Street on Saturday to give 2kg of free rice for each person. They said donors have been supplying free rice to poor local residents at several sites in the city to avoid large crowds gathering. Donors in Thua Thien-Hue Province also collected 4,000 face masks, 1,000 hand sanitiser bottles and 4 tonnes of rice to hand over to two provinces Salavan and Sekong in Laos to support the fight against COVID-19. The a Nang Citys Young Businessmen Association also said it would set up two free rice ATMs to help poor people in a Nang from next week. Chairman of the association Ha uc Hung said the first ATM would be installed at Trung Nu Vuong Street in downtown Hai Chau District before being spread to more locations in Hoa Vang, Cam Le, Thanh Khe and Lien Chieu districts. The association has collected 40 tonnes of rice from donors in the city, and there are plans to gather more. He said the free rice ATMs would operate till end of June. Earlier, free rice ATMs were installed in HCM City and Ha Noi to help poor people during COVID-19 pandemic. A charity in Da Nang has also presented 1,500 bottles of watermelon juice to doctors, nurses and medical workers at COVID-19 frontline hospitals in a Nang. The group said it had bought 1.5 tonnes of watermelon from farmers in Quang Ngai Province to help clear overloaded stocks at farms. No new COVID-19 cases recorded on April 12 morning A medical worker takes samples for SARS-CoV-2 tests in Ha Loi village, Me Linh commune, Me Linh district in Hanoi Vietnam reported no new COVID-19 cases on April 12 morning, keeping the national count at 258, according to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. On April 11, just one case was recorded, a 47-year-old woman from Ha Loi village, Me Linh commune, Me Linh district in Hanoi. Of the 258 patients, 144 have been recovered and been discharged from hospitals. Among 114 active cases, 12 have tested negative twice and 13, once. The authorities are urging people not to break social distancing rules, as many appear to be flaunting regulations, particularly in the major cities of Hanoi and HCM City. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called on law enforcement agencies to swiftly deal with people who are leaving their homes for non-essential reasons. He also called on the authorities to punish people seen out in public who are not wearing a face mask. COVID-19 cases in Vietnam total 258 after one more confirmed A 47-year-old woman in Hanoi is the latest person testing positive for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, raising the total number of COVID-19 cases in Vietnam to 258, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said on April 11 evening. Health workers take samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing in Ha Loi village of Me Linh commune, Hanoi's Me Linh district The new patient resides in Ha Loi village, Me Linh commune, Me Linh district. She is the mother of the 257th patient who is being treated at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases No.2 in Hanois Dong Anh district. So far, 144 COVID-19 cases in Vietnam have made a full recovery. At present, more than 72,500 people are quarantined at hospitals, their homes and other places across the country. Meanwhile, Bach Mai Hospital in the capital, a hot spot for COVID-19 infection in recent weeks, will remove quarantine barriers at the stroke of midnight following a decision of Chairman of the Dong Da district Peoples Committee Vo Nguyen Phong. For the past two weeks, staff and patients have been locked down inside the medical facility after a number of people connected to the hospital tested positive. But now regulations set by the MoH have been met, and the hospital will remove quarantine restrictions. It will continue to conduct preventive and control measures to stop any further spread of the virus. Sentencing of a man jailed for assaulting police streamed online ao Xuan Anh Doanh appears in court. Proceedings were streamed live to 13 communes and towns Court proceedings of a man who was jailed after attacking police who stopped him for not wearing a face mask, were streamed live to a number of communes and towns in Tien Yen District in northern Viet Nam. ao Xuan Anh Doanh, who also uses the name ao Xuan Anh, from Phuong Nam Village, ong Hai Commune, was jailed for nine months for resisting law enforcement as they carried out their duties. He was stopped by officers around 4pm on April 4 riding on the back of a motorcycle with no helmet and no face mask. When members of the COVID-19 prevention and control asked to take his temperature, Doanh, who had been drinking, cursed and attacked the officers. The following morning Doanh realised that his behaviour violated the law, so wrote a letter to the Tien Yen District Police to give himself up. The court was told he had a previous conviction for robbery and had served time in prison before. Men to be prosecuted for failing to observe social distancing Nguyen Van Quynh at the police station. Police in the northern province of Bac Ninh have decided to initiate legal proceedings against two men for failing to follow coronavirus prevention measures. The offenders are Nguyen Van Quynh, 34, a resident from Bac Ninh Provinces Yen Phong District, and Thai Xuan Hung, 37, hailing from Ha Nois Gia Lam District. The initial investigation revealed that Quynh failed to wear mask in public on Tuesday despite being reminded by police, who he also insulted. Hung was guilty of the same offence on Monday at a checkpoint on provincial road 295B at the boundary between Gia Lam Districts Yen Thuong Commune and Tu Son Towns inh Bang Ward. He not only ignored warnings from the police but also held them up for almost three hours. Bac Ninh Police said Quynh and Hung's actions had adversely affected the provinces COVID-19 prevention and control efforts and they should be punished accordingly. Police in Thai Binh Province have also decided to commence legal proceedings against Tran Van Manh for a similar offence. Manh, 24, a local resident, reportedly not only failed to follow the social distancing directive but also assaulted officers on duty. He was not wearing a helmet or mask when he drove through a COVID-19 checkpoint in the locality on Wednesday. Viet Nam has issued regulations making it mandatory for all citizens to wear face masks while outdoors. Fines for those who disobey the regulations are up to VN300,000 (US$12.80). In the central province of Quang Nam, an arrest warrant has been issued for Nguyen Trung Thanh, 32, on charges of stopping officials from executing their duty. Thanh is accused of assaulting a woman who works at a COVID-19 checkpoint in Phu Ninh Districts Tam Thanh Commune, where he lives, after being asked to stop for a temperature check. Last COVID-19 patient in central Viet Nam released from hospital COVID-19 patient 135 (second from left) share a photo with medical staff at a Nang General Hospital. She is the sixth and last COVID-19 patient to leave hospital in central Viet Nam. The central city released COVID-19 patient 135 after 18 days of treatment at the general hospital on Friday after she tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 three times. The female patient, 27, who flew from Bangkok, Thailand to a Nang on March 21, will be isolated at HCM Citys Cho Ray Hospital for 14 days under strict medical supervision. I was impressed by the care and treatment I received from the doctors and nurses at the hospital. They reserved the best service and treatment for me during the 18 days and saved me from the disease, she said. Im so happy to walk out of hospital today, and want to express my thanks to all the medical staff for their wholehearted care, she added. Director of the hospital, Doctor Le uc Nhan said: Its been an endless effort by a team of 45 doctors, nurses and medical staff at the tropical department since the first positive arrived at the hospital. The patient is the sixth and last COVID-19 patient leaving the city in good health after days of treatment. The hospital had received full medical assistance from the city and the Ministry of Health to help cure the COVID-19 patients, Nhan said. She is the last COVID-19 patient in the city, but its not the last case for us. Well keep fighting for any new patients in the coming days, said Doctor Pham Ngoc Ham, head of the tropical disease department at the hospital. Doctor Ham and his medical team spent 32 days at the hospital treating six COVID-19 patients two British, one American and three Vietnamese from March 7. He said the six COVID-19 patients treated at the hospital were not serious cases. They did not have cardiovascular problems, hypertension, pneumonia or diabetes before being infected with SARS-CoV-2, he added. Medical staff pose for a photo with COVID-19 patient 135 at a Nang Hospital. The patient has left a Nang for a 14-day isolation period at HCM City's Cho Ray Hospital. VNS Photo Cong Thanh All 45 medical staff will now go into isolation for 14 days at a hotel the city has reserved. However, they will be on duty if any new cases are admitted. The fight is still going on. Well try to cure all patients. Its our job and mission, Ham said. To date, 11 COVID-19 patients (7 British, one American) in a Nang, Quang Nam and Thua Thien-Hue have been eleased from hospitals since early March. Its also 17 days since the central region reported a new case of SARS-CoV-2. The coastal central provinces of Binh inh, Phu Yen, Quang Ngai and Quang Tri have yet to report any positive cases. HCM City steps up rail passenger testing A medical worker takes a mouth swab from a rail passenger arriving in HCM City on Saturday. All passengers entering HCM City via Sai Gon Railway Station will be tested for COVID-19 and must complete medical declarations. The work will be managed by the HCM City International Health Quarantine Centre, in co-ordination with the stations management board and began on Saturday morning. Nguyen Hong Tam, director of the centre, said nearly 300 passengers have already been tested and filled in the required medical forms. Tam also said there had been issues collecting samples at Tan Son Nhat International Airport due to a shortage of staff, but more have now been assigned. HCM City medical staff visit seniors at home amid COVID-19 outbreak A doctor at Thu uc District Hospital examines an older patient at home. Photo thegioitiepthi.vn People aged 60 and above with chronic health conditions in HCM City can register to receive health services at their homes, according to a policy by HCM Citys Department of Health amidst COVID-19 concerns. Twenty one city-level hospitals, 22 district-level hospitals and 13 private hospitals are offering health examination and treatment services at patients' homes from Monday to Friday. Thu uc District Hospital and Xuyen A Hospital provide services seven days a week. Patients aged 80 and above are eligible to be covered by health insurance, and patients aged 60 to 79 have to pay a partial cost of medical services. Hospitals will review health records of senior patients and send doctors and nurses to their houses for health examination and treatment, as well as drug prescriptions. Doctors can also offer examinations for patients with chronic medical conditions via telephone and prescribe medicines. The HCM City Social Insurance Agency earlier this month approved medical services at home for senior patients with chronic medical conditions during the COVID-19 outbreak. Drugs covered by health insurance for patients can be prescribed for up to two months. ang Thi Thiep, 90, who suffers from hypertension and lung disease, was recently visited by medics from Thu uc District Hospital, which is located 5km from her house. Nguyen Thi Kim Loan, her daughter, said she had previously taken her mother to the hospital for her periodic health examination and picked up her drugs, but it was now too risky for her mother to visit the hospital. We feel very happy that the medics can come to examine her and prescribe drugs, Loan said. Hoang Van Dung, deputy head of the general planning department at Thu uc District Hospital, said the hospital has assigned doctors to visit patients aged 60 and above with chronic medical conditions in the district following instructions from the citys Department of Health on April 6. Doctors and nurses work from 6am to 9pm all days throughout the week to visit patients and offer health check-ups at home or via telephone, Dung said. Most senior patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes receive health examination via telephone, while some of them are visited by doctors and nurses at home if they have unusual symptoms. Relatives of senior patients can go to the hospital to pick up medicine prescribed for one to two months if the patients health conditions are stable, he said. Hotels house doctors in fight against COVID-19 browser not support iframe. To share the burden with doctors in the fight against COVID-19 while ensuring safety, limiting risks for their family members, Ho Chi Minh Citys Health Department has worked with some businesses in the locality to use hotels as shelters for medical staff of Hospital for Tropical Diseases and a Covid-19 treatment hospital after they finish their shifts. To ensure safety, the citys Health Department has thoroughly checked and sterilised the facility and provided training on preventive measures for hotel staff. Many other hotels in Ho Chi Minh City and across the country have been called to join hands with local governments to support medical staff who are on the front line in the fight against COVID-19. Providing medical staff with shelter after they have treated COVID-19 patients will help ensure the safety of their families as well as limiting the risk of the virus spreading. It is expected that more hotels will be used to house medical staff from Ho Chi Minh Citys Tropical Diseases Hospital and the Cu Chi and Can Gio Covid-19 treatment hospitals. Face masks, hand sanitiser added to price stabilisation programme in HCM City Face masks and hand sanitiser have been added to this years price-stabilisation programme in HCM City to ensure stable supply during the COVID-19 period Face masks and hand sanitiser have been added to the list of essential goods covered by the price stabilisation programme in HCM City amid the COVID-19 crisis. Tran Vinh Tuyen, Vice Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee, has signed a decision on a plan to carry out this years programme, which will last until March 31, 2021. The list of essential products include foodstuff such as rice, noodles and vermicelli, as well as sugar, cooking oil, eggs, meat, vegetable and seasonings. The stabilised essential goods normally account for around 25-30 percent of total market demand, and up to 40 percent during Tet months. During the COVID-19 pandemic period, these goods are accounting for 35-50 percent of market demand. The city will ensure stabilised supply of 57.5 million face masks and 3.29 million of hand sanitiser bottles (1.2 million litres) for the next three months. Businesses in the stabilisation programme have to register prices of their stabilised goods with the Department of Finance. Prices of stabilised goods are 5-10 percent lower than the market price. Manufacturers and distributors have been increasing their supply of face masks. Thai PM urges people to stay home during Songkran festival A food supply area established in the yard of a shopping centre in Bangkok, Thailand Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on April 10 called on people to stay at home during the traditional Songkran festival to curb the spread of COVID-19. In his televised address, the PM recommended people stay home instead of visiting relatives before or during the festival, which is slated for April 13-15. He also warned them not to leave home or join a celebration party anywhere else. The Thai Government officially postponed the Songkran holidays and water splashing activities nationwide due to the complex developments of the pandemic. The PM also allowed some groups or sectors to be excluded from the nationwide curfew to facilitate their work. Thailand has been under an emergency decree from March 26 to April 30 to restrict travel to stop the transmission of the coronavirus. Among the orders under this decree, a nationwide curfew from 10pm to 4am has been enforced since April 3, and only authorities and their assistants on duty, health care personnel and emergency patients are exempted. However, according to the latest regulation, those working at petrol stations and public utilities, food shippers, garbage collectors, guards, fishermen and rubber tappers are also allowed to work during the curfew. Meanwhile, Phuket has become the first province in Thailand to impose a lockdown on all 17 sub-districts, from 00:01am on April 13 to 11:59pm on April 26 or until the situation improves, to prevent the COVID-19 spread. As of April 10, Thailand had confirmed 2,473 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including 33 deaths. Bangkok capital city had the biggest number of cases, 1,262, while the highest infection rate, 38.95 cases per 100,000 people, is recorded in Phuket./. COVID-19: Cambodian-Vietnamese families in Preah Sihanouk supported The Consulate General of Vietnam in Cambodias Preah Sihanouk province presents relief packages to Cambodian-Vietnamese families affected by COVID-19. The Consulate General of Vietnam in Cambodias Preah Sihanouk province on April 11 presented relief packages to 57 Cambodian-Vietnamese families affected by COVID-19 ahead of the Chol Chnam Thmey Khmer New Year Festival. The gifts were donated by the consulate generals staff and the telecom firm Viettel Cambodia (Metfone) as well as Cambodian-Vietnamese businesspeople. Consul General Vu Ngoc Ly shared the difficulties that the two countries' people are facing despite measures to actively support affected people. He also expressed his deep sympathies with Cambodian-Vietnamese people who are encountering more hardships during the pandemic. The offical advised them to not return home at this critical time but implement preventive measures of the host countrys health ministry. Earlier, the consulate general donated 3,000 face masks to disadvantaged Cambodian-Vietnamese families in Preah Sihanouk, Kep, Kampot, Koh Kong, Takeo, and Kampong Speu provinces. According to the local health ministry, as of 9:00 April 11, Cambodia reported 120 infection cases, including 75 recoveries. In Preah Sihanouk, 39 cases have been recorded so far./. Vietnamese-owned company presents 600 COVID-19 test kits to Moldova Farmacia Orient wants to contribute its efforts in helping the local government, hospitals and health facilities to cope with COVID-19 by donating the test kits. Farmacia Orient, a Vietnamese-owned company, has presented 600 made-in-Germany COVID-19 test kits to the National Public Health Agency of Moldova. A representative from the firm said the pandemic is spreading in almost all countries around the world, including Moldova. The number of infection cases in the eastern European country is increasing day by day. According to the Moldovan government's estimate, as of May 2020, more than 30,000 people of the countrys total 3 million might be infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Given that situation, Farmacia Orient wants to contribute its efforts in helping the local government, hospitals and health facilities to cope with COVID-19 by donating the test kits. Preventive measures applied by the Moldovan government, especially quarantine solutions, have been proving effective, according to the company. For their part, Moldovan authorities and representatives of the National Public Health Agency thanked the Vietnamese firm for its practical support, which they said, has helped reinforce local trust in winning the fight against COVID-19. Universities Canada pledges to support Vietnamese students People in Ottawa wear face masks The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (Universities Canada) has pledged to support Vietnamese students amid the complicated developments of COVID-19 in the host country, during the recent phone talks with Nguyen Huong Tra, Charge d'Affaire of the Vietnamese Embassy in Canada. The Canadian side said it will carry out a lot of assistance measures such as allowing Vietnamese students to stay at the dormitories till the end of the school year and providing medical support. Students who got a job after graduation but are now unemployed due to COVID-19 will be certified by schools to receive subsidies from the host governments emergency assistance packages while waiting for support from other financial resources, if they complete some required credits. Particularly, schools pledged to create favourable conditions for Vietnamese students who plan to visit Canada for summer courses from May to June to study online training programmes. Students will get credits as they do at school. Meanwhile, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will have policies to help students, foreign workers, and tourists make online visa extension. Vietnam ranks first in Southeast Asia in the number of students in Canada, with over 20,000. According to the Canadian government, as of 11am on April 10 (local time), the country reported 21,243 COVID-19 cases, including 531 deaths. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, health departments all over the world have been highlighting social distancing, especially avoiding crowded spaces like supermarkets, movie theatres, and offices. A recent study from a group of Finnish researchers reinforces these principles by providing evidence that aerosols from infected persons can spread far and wide, and remain in the air for a long time. This presents a health risk to other individuals in the same space that is higher than previously thought. The power of respiratory droplet spread Extensive research has been done on the spread of pathogens like coronavirus through social networks. Clusters of cases are found where a single person has infected several strangers in a public place. These results can be traced back to aerosol clouds, which have the potential to infect a large number of people due to their ability to spread over a considerable distance in a very short time and thus enter the respiratory tract of multiple bystanders. Epidemiologic modeling studies have also shown that the spread of a virus can be significantly slowed or even stopped by preventing crowding of people at public places like restaurants, malls, and public transport stops. How was the research carried out? The Finnish study was based on modeling the spread of aerosol particles from a person coughing in an aisle between shelves, such as one found in a supermarket, with simulated air ventilation. The study shows how pathogenic aerosols can spread over a large distance and remain for a considerable period of time at different heights in the air, thus endangering others even after the infected individual has moved on. Researchers modeled a situation in which a person coughs down a shelf-restricted corridor typical of grocery stores. Photo: Petteri Peltonen / Aalto University The research team includes around 30 members from Aalto University, Finnish Meteorological Institute, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and the University of Helsinki. They belong to diverse disciplines, including virology, aerosol physics, fluid dynamics, social networks, ventilation, and biomedical engineering. All three centers are well-versed with the way extremely small airborne particles move out from an individual's lungs during acts like coughing, sneezing, or talking and then carried through the air. These particles could carry microbes like the novel coronavirus. A new, rapidly put together study on coronavirus and air-borne particles has released first results. The study included researchers from Aalto University, the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Technical and Innovation Centre VTT and Helsinki University. Crred: Aalto University / Finnish Meteorological Institute / VTT / University of Helsinki: Animation: Mikko Auvinen and Antti Hellsten The research teams at each center carried out independent simulation modeling with the same starting point. All three models achieved the same initial result - a scenario where the aerosol diffuses in a large cloud and dilutes in the surrounding air. This cloud thus covers a large area around the infected individual. The process takes several minutes, according to Aalto University Assistant Professor Ville Vuorinen, leaving behind "extremely small aerosol particles carrying the coronavirus," which have the potential to infect others in the vicinity for several minutes after the infected person has left the space. The visualization modeled the movement of particles measuring less than 20 micrometers. This includes droplets emitted by a dry cough, a typical symptom of the current coronavirus, measuring less than 15 micrometers. Earlier studies of influenza A show that this virus may be found in the smallest aerosol particles at 5 micrometers. Studies have shown that such small particles are light enough to float in the same place where they were released or to move along air currents, instead of sinking to the floor. Thus, they remain airborne and a threat to others long after the infected person has left the area. How do confined spaces contribute to COVID-19 spread? Many researchers have examined the role of busy indoor spaces in the spread of disease. It is known, from numerous infection models, that when people stop moving around or gathering at nodal points like shops, malls, and public transport centers, viral transmission slows or comes to a stop altogether. In the same way, the current model may help focus more public attention as well as frame appropriate policies on the use of busy indoor places at this time. The presence of many people in a confined space increases the risk of droplet transmission, which is the leading cause of coronavirus spread as far as is currently known. A 3D model of a person coughing in an indoor environment how an aerosol cloud travels in the air Play Scientific cooperation, satisfying results The study depended heavily on the ability to simulate how airborne droplets of potentially virus-containing droplets could be carried from the respiratory tract of an infected individual, by a supercomputer made available by the CSC - Finnish IT Centre for Science Ltd. The results were then visualized in 3D. The first results were produced in around a week, primarily due to the computing power and the intense collaboration between the different disciplines. The research consortium looks forward to refining the modeling to more accurately predict how aerosol particles will behave in social networking areas. The results are expected to be of use to infectious disease and virology experts as they gather more information on the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Jussi Sane, Chief Specialist, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, the modeling itself is insufficient backing to issue new recommendations. However, the results reinforce the guidelines prescribed by the Institute, advising sick people to stay at home, as well as maintaining a physical distance from everyone, coughing into a sleeve or tissue, and washing or sanitizing hands frequently. "These results are an important part of the whole, and they should be compared with the data from real-life epidemic studies,' Sane adds. A 50,000-year-old piece of string has been discovered in France, increasing doubts as to whether Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans. The tiny, three-ply cord fragment measured six millimetres unearthed in Abri du Maras and is the oldest ever found. Researchers from France, the United States and Spain came across the fibres attached to a thin stone that measures 60 milimetres. It is thought the fragments could have served as a handle or have been part of a net or bag to carry the tool. A Scientific Reports study details how spectroscopy and microscopy was used to likely determine the fragments probably came from the inner bark of a non-flowering tree such as a conifer. Its discovery adds weight to claims the Neanderthals, whose species died out 40,000 years ago, could comprehend concepts such as pairs, sets and numbers. This is due to the necessity to carefully count throughout multiple operations to successfully assemble the string. The string could conceivably form the basis for clothes, bags, nets and even boats. The string now offers further context surrounding the mental capacity of the species during the Middle Palaeolithic period from 30,000 to 300,000 years ago. There is significant research to show the Neanderthals made birch bark tar, art and shell beads. While there is further evidence to suggest they controlled fire, lived in shelters, deliberately buried their dead in graves and were proven hunters of large animals. Previously, the oldest fragments discovered were around 19,000 years old and came from the Ohalo II site in Israel. Lead author Bruce Hardy, of Kenyon College in Ohio, concluded that Neanderthals has a substantial ecological understanding of trees and possessed creativity to be able to utilise them for a variety of purposes. EDWARDSVILLE In an ongoing effort to build, solidify and improve collegial and community relationships, an honest look at the past is needed, according to Bryan Jack, PhD, associate professor in Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilles Department of Historical Studies. Jack led SIUEs effort to become first Illinois school to join the University of Virginias international Universities Studying Slavery (USS) consortium. The USS consortium provides opportunities to work together to address both historical and contemporary issues dealing with race and inequality in higher education and in university communities, as well as the complicated legacies of slavery in modern American society, said Jack. At SIUE, we can both learn from what other institutions are doing and contribute to the consortium. Additionally, the USS mission fits well within the framework of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) work that SIUE is already doing. The University of Virginia started USS in 2013 to delve into its history relating to slavery, and in hopes of partnering with other universities and colleges to address racial disparities. In Jacks work with TRHT, he learned of the USS, and informed Jessica Harris, PhD, interim assistant provost and associate professor in the Department of Historical Studies. Jack and Harris presented the partnership proposal to the Offices of the Chancellor and Provost, and SIUE came on board in February as USSs 59th school. One of the powerful things about USS, is that there is not one template for how it works, said Jack. It is tailored to each individual institution, which then collaborates and shares best practices. Some universities have put together presidential commissions to study the impact of slavery at their campuses, some have housed this work in specific centers, others have housed it in their offices of diversity and inclusion, while other institutions have focused more on work with community groups. At institutions like The Citadel, The University of Virginia, Georgetown University and others, where slavery was not only historically existent on their campuses, but also was integral to the early success of the universities, much of the work has been inward-looking. The first step was acknowledgement of their respective universitys role in perpetuating enslavement of human beings. SIUE, founded nearly 100 years after slavery, is in a different position. At SIUE we will focus on the role slavery played in our region (and on the land that became the SIUE campus) before the founding of our University, added Jack. We will specifically focus on the historical legacies of slavery and racial inequality in our region. Jack is organizing a group that will map out a direction for the program, which will be under the umbrella of the TRHT. Also involved in forming SIUEs USS is Robert Paulett, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Historical Studies. Chattel slavery might be long past, but the effects of slavery are long-lasting and still affect todays world, said Jack. Chattel, race-based slavery existed in the United States and its antecedents for 246 years, while emancipation happened 155 years ago. When we consider that legal Jim Crow segregation existed for approximately 100 years after slavery, we are not talking about ancient history. We are talking about legally-codified racial inequality that existed within the lifetimes of people who are still alive today. Not to mention the de facto racism that is still occurring. President Muhammadu Buhari has extended the lockdown imposed on Lagos, Ogun and Abuja by 14 days. Mr Buhari announced the extension Monday evening in a televised broadcast. He said the extension was to further check the spread of COVID-19 which has infected 323 people in Nigeria and caused 10 deaths. READ ALSO: The 14 days extension commences from today night. The president appealed to Nigerians to obey the directive and others by different state governments. This is not a joke. It is a matter of life and death, he said. Front row, from left: the fashion designer KRIS VAN ASSCHE (class of 98), the artist ANNE-MIE VAN KERCKHOVEN (74), the fashion designer DRIES VAN NOTEN (80), the jewelry designer KATRIN WOUTERS (83) and the fashion designer PETER PILOTTO (04). Back row: the artist KATI HECK (03), the fashion designer MARINA YEE (80), the makeup artist PETER PHILIPS (93), the artist BEN SLEDSENS (15), the artist LUC TUYMANS (78-79), the fashion designer HAIDER ACKERMANN (94-97), the fashion designer and teacher WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK (80), the fashion designer and teacher DIRK VAN SAENE (81), the fashion designer JAN-JAN VAN ESSCHE (03), the jewelry designer KAREN HENDRIX (82), the fashion designer FILIP ARICKX (91), the fashion designer PATRICK VAN OMMESLAEGHE (90), the fashion designer AN VANDEVORST (91) and the fashion designer ANN DEMEULEMEESTER (81). Photographed at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, on Dec. 13, 2019. Pascal Gambarte THE CITY OF ANTWERP in northern Belgium is, somewhat confoundingly, both Europes second busiest seaport and located 50 miles inland from the nearest sea. For much of the past half millennium, its character has been defined by this geographical quirk. Sheltered in a nook of the Scheldt River estuary, it is at once quintessentially European a city of medieval cobblestone streets and Gothic Flemish Renaissance buildings and directly connected to the globe-spanning shipping routes entered by the North Sea. Accordingly, it has been one of the continents essential trade hubs as well as a prolific incubator of the avant-garde. These two identities developed in tandem in the early 1500s, when Antwerp became, briefly, one of the centers of the Wests rapidly expanding known world. As Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese merchants began traveling to and from newly encountered territories during the age of exploration, up to 40 percent of the globes trade passed through Antwerps docks, and along with silk from Turkey, peppercorns and diamonds from Africa and silver from America came immigrants and new ideas. We always know in Antwerp news of everything that goes through the rest of the provinces of the universe, the Italian merchant Lodovico Guicciardini boasted in 1567. Though this golden age was short lived (the Dutch blockaded the Scheldt from 1585, when Antwerp surrendered to Spain during the Eighty Years War, until 1795), it forged the citys rich and enduring cultural life: The economic boom created a market for art, allowing for printing shops, coffee houses and guilds to form. In 1663, David Teniers the Younger, the master of the Guild of Saint Luke, an association that had been vital to Antwerps artistic development during the 16th century, founded the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, a school whose alumni, ranging from Vincent van Gogh (1885-86) to the fashion designer Demna Gvasalia (2002-06), have continued to shape the worlds culture. The T List | Sign up here A selection of the Royal Academys alumni, photographed during their school years, clockwise from top left: the artist KATI HECK, photographed in 2002; the jewelry designers KATRIN WOUTERS (center) and KAREN HENDRIX (right) with their friend Ad Van Mierlo (left) at an academy party in 1982: It was a subversive, anarchist world in which everything was possible, says Wouters of her school years, during which she ran her own radio show called Pervers (meaning perverse) and Hendrix made jewelry for one of the director Ivo van Hoves first plays, Germs (1981); the fashion designer KRIS VAN ASSCHEs ID card from his third year at the academy, where he had an affinity for pinstriped 70s-era suits, he says: At times, I probably looked more like an accounting student. Clockwise from top left: courtesy of Kati Heck; courtesy of Katrin Wouters and Karen Hendrix; courtesy of Kris Van Assche ONCE EVERY FEW generations, there is a college or a workshop, a theater company or a lab that produces a seemingly disproportionate number of influential graduates: In the 1940s, the artists Alex Katz, Roy DeCarava and Lois Dodd passed through Cooper Union in New York; in the mid 1990s, Central Saint Martins in London nurtured Phoebe Philo, Stella McCartney and Hussein Chalayan. What is less recognized is the influence of the Royal Academy in the early 80s, when its students made work that would transform the worlds of fashion, art and theater. Even now, despite its ongoing economic might (to this day, the city is wealthy from its port and the diamond trade), Antwerp remains a sort of village, says the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, who studied painting at the Royal Academy from 1978 to 1979 and still lives in the city. Perhaps because its growth abruptly ended in 1585, Antwerp never became a metropolis like London or Paris. There is an atmosphere here of a rather small city in which a lot of people are working together, says the fashion designer Dries Van Noten. This collaborative spirit, as well as the competition inherent in a close-knit community, is partly what enabled the designers known as the Antwerp Six Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee along with fellow alumni Martin Margiela, to transform Antwerp into a capital of intellectual, unconventional fashion. While the six designers were fiercely individualistic We each wanted to be different from and better than the others, recalls Demeulemeester they were also friends who exchanged ideas from their own spheres of interest and from nearby cities. Antwerp in the early 80s was, as in the citys 16th-century heyday, a breeding ground for creativity: It was close enough to the exploding youth subcultures of Berlin and London to feel their echoes but far enough away that those influences could ferment into new forms. We look at everything with a certain distance, says Van Noten of his citys residents. Not a very far distance, but just one step back. In that way, we can rethink certain things and do things our own way. Clockwise from top left: the fashion designer ANN DEMEULEMEESTER, photographed by her then boyfriend, now husband, Patrick Robyn, in 1979; the fashion designers (from left) WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK, DRIES VAN NOTEN, DEMEULEMEESTER and DIRK VAN SAENE getting ready to go to a gig in Antwerp in 1981; the artist ANNE-MIE VAN KERCKHOVEN (left), with two of her classmates in the graphic-design program, Yol De Pelseneer (center) and Mieke Nimmegeers (right), posing in their classroom in theater costumes in 1973. Clockwise from top left: Patrick Robyn; courtesy of Dries Van Noten; Lieve Jacobs Since its belle epoque, Antwerps mercantile and artistic communities have converged in its social life. In the 80s, the citys abundant warehouses helped cultivate a thriving underground scene. Demeulemeester recalls a favorite nightclub called Cinderella where people from the academy, from the harbor and punks danced together. Tuymans remembers seeing Belgiums first punk group, the Kids, perform in Antwerp not long after they formed there in the late 70s. Within this milieu, the pioneering theater director Ivo van Hove, who was then a student in the city, met his future partner and collaborator, the set designer Jan Versweyveld, who was enrolled at the Royal Academy at the time; they later opened a brasserie to fund their experimental joint productions, reinforcing Antwerps historic marriage of art and commerce, and making use of the citys array of affordable, nontraditional venues (in 1981, they staged their first play, Rumours, in a disused laundromat). And it was in Antwerps cafes at the start of the next decade that the designer Raf Simons met many of his lifelong collaborators, including the photographer Willy Vanderperre and the stylist Olivier Rizzo. Today, the Antwerp-based artist Kati Heck captures the vibrancy of the citys social world in her large-scale paintings, such as Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (The Drinking Song of the Earths Sorrow, 2017), in which a group of her friends, including the genre-defying cellist Simon Lenski, are depicted drinking in their real-life local haunt, the Cafe De Kat. Theres something free and artistic about the life here, if one looks for it, perhaps more than anywhere else, van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo from Antwerp in 1886: Theres gusto and people enjoy themselves. For a city whose culture has depended on trade since its inception, on an openness to whatever innovation comes through its docks, the burden of tradition is less stifling in Antwerp than it might be for young artists in less changeable cities. While there is an artistic legacy Pieter Bruegel and Peter Paul Rubens both made some of their most important works here as well as the legend of the Six to contend with, there is also a desire for knowledge that is outward-facing rather than self-contented. Indeed, Van Beirendonck, who has overseen the Royal Academys fashion department since 2007, says the most important quality an applicant can possess is that they are, above all, culturally hungry. Alice Newell-Hanson is the senior digital features editor of T Magazine. Pascal Gambarte specializes in editorial fashion work. Hair: Louis Ghewy at Management & Artists Group. Makeup: Florence Teerlinck. Production: Mindbox. Photo assistants: Joe Reddy and Samir Dari. Hair assistant: Marlien Echelpoels. Makeup assistants: Marie Corbeel and Evelien de Keukeleire. South Africa: Criminal justice system is not on leave Gender-based violence and the vandalism of infrastructure during the COVID-19 lockdown will not be tolerated, President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned. To this end, in his weekly newsletter message, the President urged communities to play their part in reporting such misdemeanours. The strong message comes in the wake of reports of schools being burgled, trashed burnt, critical Eskom cables stolen while women and children were being murdered during the outbreak. When the lockdown is lifted and learning resumes, thousands of our children will have no school to return to, depriving them of the right to education. Eskom has also reported an increase in cable theft and vandalism of its infrastructure since the lockdown began, resulting in power supply interruptions and damage that will cost a considerable amount to repair, said the President. Public property is being vandalised while the entire country is experiencing hardship because of the lockdown - is a demonstration of utter disrespect and disregard for the majority of South Africans who are law-abiding, he said. Unfortunately, criminals are also preying on the weak and vulnerable, said the President. Prioritising gender-based violence Ngenzeni Zuma from KwaZulu-Natal was murdered last month by men who allegedly pretended to be soldiers to gain entry into her home. Simphiwe Sibeko, 14, from Soweto last week week suffered the same fate after her lifeless body was found dumped in bushes after having gone missing. Constable Percy Ramalepe was shot and killed while attending to a domestic violence call in Johannesburg last week. President Ramaphosa said it is disturbing that during a time of such immense difficulty for the country, women and girls are being terrorised inside their own homes, forcing them to make desperate calls for help. The number of calls to the GBV National Command Centre has increased since the lockdown began on 27 March 2020. Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, violence against women has become a global problem. Last week, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a video message that since restrictions were imposed by countries around the world to contain the Coronavirus, women and girls were increasingly facing violence where they should be safest: in their own homes. President Ramaphosa said South Africa has heeded the call for governments to prioritise gender-based violence in their national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Support services to vulnerable women and children remain operational throughout the lockdown, including psycho-social services like counselling for women and children, sheltering and places of safety, and medico-legal services in cases of sexual violence. The Gender-Based Violence National Command Centre remains operational. The President has also directed the Minister of Police to ensure that Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Units are reinforced at police stations during the lockdown and beyond. We recognise since people may not leave their homes, women and children in abusive situations are vulnerable. Survivors of violence may not have access to phones or airtime, or public transport to take them to a police station, shelter or a doctor, he said. To this effect the Interim Steering Committee on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, in consultation with civil society organisations, is developing guidelines and protocols for GBV management in the context of COVID-19. During the lockdown, 148 suspects have been arrested for gender-based violence related crimes. But there is no excuse, nor will there ever be any excuse, for violence against women, children, the elderly, members of the LGBTQI+ community, foreign nationals, not against anyone, said President Ramaphosa. Regarding the vandalism of public property and key economic infrastructure, the President said communities should report these incidences as they seldom take place in the absence of witnesses. When communities allow themselves to be passive bystanders when they witness crime, they become party to the sabotage that ultimately disadvantages ourselves, our children and our communities, he said. To criminals, the President Ramaphosa warned that the criminal justice system is not on leave and ready to deal with transgressors. You will be arrested, you will be tried and you will be put behind bars, he said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Riska Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 13:03 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd186c9e 1 Business loan-repayment,state-owned-banks,bank-mandiri,Bank-Rakyat-Indonesia,bank-tabungan-negara,Bank-Negara-Indonesia,OJK,loan-restructure,COVID-19 Free State-owned banks have collectively restructured almost Rp 29 trillion (US$1.84 billion) in loans as the COVID-19 pandemic hampers economic activities and weakens debtors ability to repay their debts. All four state-owned banks, namely Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN), Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Mandiri and Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI), have restructured their debtors loans following a new Financial Services Authority (OJK) rule that relaxes debt quality assessment and restructuring requirements for debtors hit by the pandemic. BTN finance, planning and treasury director Nixon Napitupulu said in a statement on Sunday that the mortgage-focused bank had restructured loans of more than 17,000 of almost 2 million debtors totaling Rp 2.7 trillion. Read also: COVID-19 batters Indonesias loan growth to record low The restructured debts include subsidized mortgage loans below Rp 10 billion in accordance with OJK rules, he said in a statement. Other state-owned banks also approved debtors requests for loan restructuring. The latest OJK data shows that BRI has restructured a total of Rp 14.9 trillion of loans from 134,258 debtors, while Bank Mandiri has granted requests of 10,592 debtors to restructure loans amounting to Rp 4.1 trillion. BNI, meanwhile, has restructured a Rp 6.9 trillion in loans from 6,238 debtors. As the pandemic has yet to show signs of slowing down in Indonesia, Nixon said the bank was revising down its loan growth target for this year. The bank now expects its nonsubsidized and commercial mortgage loans to grow around zero percent to 3 percent this year, while issuance of subsidized mortgage loans was expected to grow by 6 percent to 8 percent, depending on when the pandemic would end. Read also: Local banks offer relief to help borrowers and themselves in COVID crisis BTNs reduced loan growth target also took into account a decline in new loan applications all over Indonesia due to the spread of the coronavirus in the country, Nixon said. Despite the sluggish loan growth, BTN was still optimistic it would book Rp 2 trillion in profit this year, significantly higher than 2019s profit of Rp 209.26 billion. In a situation like today, we choose to increase efficiency and strengthen our provision and liquidity to survive, said Nixon. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his brush with the coronavirus "could have gone either way" as he thanked NHS staff for saving his life. Dressed in a suit, and looking and sounding assured, Mr Johnson said in a video posted on Twitter after his discharge from hospital that it was "hard to find the words" to express his debt of gratitude to the NHS. He listed a number of the frontline staff who cared for him during his week-long stay in St Thomas' Hospital in London but singled out two nurses who stood by his bedside for 48 hours "when things could have gone either way". The prime minister said Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal were the reason that "in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen". "Because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed," he said. Mr Johnson's office said he would continue his recovery at Chequers, the prime minister's country house. "On the advice of his medical team, the PM will not be immediately returning to work," the statement said. "He wishes to thank everybody at St Thomas' for the brilliant care he has received." Mr Johnson (55) spent three nights in the intensive care unit before moving back to a regular hospital ward. He was the first world leader confirmed to have the Covid-19 illness. Mr Johnson's pregnant partner Carrie Symonds said in a series of tweets that she "cannot thank our magnificent NHS enough" and that she "will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you". Ms Symonds admitted there "were times last week that were very dark indeed. My heart goes out to all those in similar situations, worried sick about their loved ones". Authorities are trying to identify a woman who they have described as armed and dangerous. The State Bureau of Investigation on Monday released surveillance photos of the woman. The investigation centers on numerous car thefts and vehicle burglaries as well as the thefts of multiple firearms. Authorities are trying to identify a woman who they have described as armed and dangerous in connection with a multi-jurisdictional theft investigation. (Alabama Law Enforcement Agency) The thefts happened in Chilton County and beyond. SBI Special Agent Jess Thornton said the woman should be approached with caution. Anyone with information on the womans identity is asked to call ALEAs Central Communications Center at 334-270-1122 or SBI Senior Special Agent Jason DiNunzio at 334-850-0910. The headquarters of paramilitary forces like the CRPF and the BSF witnessed enhanced manpower on Monday as the Union government scaled up its working strength to combat the situation arising out of the COVID-19 outbreak. The organisations, also known as the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), issued almost identical directions asking their commandant-rank (equivalent to senior superintendent of police) officers and those senior to them to attend office. "Officers who head verticals and are entitled to government-issued vehicles and drivers and are in the ranks of commandants and above reported from Monday. "The overall working strength is being maintained between 30-40 per cent," a senior Border Security Force (BSF) officer said. An officer of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police said that apart from senior officials, staffers who are picked up and dropped off by force buses from camps in Tigri, R K Puram and other locations in the Delhi-NCR have joined work. "All the officers, from director general (DG) to commandants, are ensuring all COVID-19 protocols of physical distance and proper sanitisation while attending office," the ITBP officer said. The head offices of other forces like the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) also witnessed an increased strength of officials coming to work from Monday. Last week, these forces had extended the leaves of personnel on home vacation, training and sent on other administrative works till April 15, while some like the BSF had extended the leaves till April 21, in order to contain the spread of the viral infection. Movement of personnel is strictly barred till these dates and commuting is only allowed in emergency cases, a CRPF officer said. The working strength of these forces at their field offices across the country also increased from Monday, a senior official said. These forces, with a combined strength of about 10 lakh personnel, are deployed to render a variety of duties in the internal security domain of the country like border guarding, anti-Naxal and counter-terrorist operations and VIP security among others. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) London: The Church of England has moved valuables worth millions of pounds to the Tower of London amid fears of looting during lockdown. All places of worship have been closed in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus. However, the items were gathered and transported securely to the Tower of London over the past few weeks, according to the London Telegraph. They included "rare and unusual" silver, paintings, art and artefacts from London's 400 churches. The valuables have been stored at the historic Tower of London. Church officials confirmed that "valuables from London's churches have been moved to a number of secure locations" to "ensure their safety, away from our churches, while church buildings remain closed". KC Osbourne has indicated she might like to go on Dancing With The Stars. On Monday, the Married At First Sight star shared an Instagram video of herself dancing to the Britney Spears track Oops!... I Did It Again. In the comments below the video, a fan suggested that the 31-year-old performer would be great on the dancing reality show. Dancer: KC Osbourne (pictured) has indicated she might like to go on Dancing With The Stars. On Monday, the Married At First Sight star shared an Instagram video of herself dancing to the Britney Spears track Oops!... I Did It Again When asked if appearing on the show is on her bucket list, KC said: 'Jeez that would be pretty cool.' She added, 'However I have never done ballroom' but the fan continued to encourage her. In the video, which was also shared to TikTok, KC wears a neon green crop top and shrug, and a pair of black track pants. Do it! In the comments below the video, a fan suggested that the 31-year-old performer would be great on the dancing reality show Wow: When asked if appearing on the show is on her bucket list KC said: 'Jeez that would be pretty cool' Good! She copied the famous dance moves from the original music video perfectly while in her own home She copied the famous dance moves from the original music video perfectly while in her own home. The brunette beauty is well known to be a great dancer and has danced professionally. In 2010, KC moved to LA and signed a record deal with top 40 hitmaker The Dream, and spent almost a decade there as an aspiring pop star and professional dancer. Don't cha wish your bride was hot like her? KC used to work as a Pussycat Doll in the musical act's burlesque show, and even rubbed shoulders Harry Styles and David Beckham Work it: In 2010, KC moved to LA and signed a record deal with top 40 hitmaker The Dream, and spent almost a decade there as an aspiring pop star and professional dancer She used to work as a Pussycat Doll in the musical act's burlesque show, and even rubbed shoulders with Harry Styles and David Beckham during her stint in Hollywood. She returned home to Sydney in 2019 in hopes of settling down and finding love. While she unfortunately didn't find a lasting relationship with TV 'husband' Drew Brauer on MAFS, she is now dating co-star Michael Goonan. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio were at it again over the weekend, battling over who has final say in re-opening New York City schools. We dont have time for a turf battle in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. De Blasio the other day said that city public schools would stay closed until the fall. De Blasio said that that was the best way to keep the virus from spreading. But Cuomo said that no decision had been made on schools, and that de Blasio hadnt closed the schools in the first place, and couldnt re-open them. Cuomo said his emergency powers in the current crisis make it his call. This is not a snow day, the governor said. Ouch. You can see where both de Blasio and Cuomo are coming from. De Blasio oversees the city schools. Everything good or bad that happens with the system lands on his doorstep. Cuomo, meanwhile, is in charge of managing the whole states response to COVID-19. The New York City schools, as well as the school systems in other cities, are pieces of that puzzle. Cuomo cant ignore de Blasios responsibilities and role with it comes to NYC schools. And de Blasio cant forget that no decisions can be made in a vacuum during the pandemic. And both men need to remember that getting New York back in business may not be an all-or-nothing situation. Some areas may be up and running before others, including school systems. We all know that Cuomo and de Blasio dont often see eye-to-eye. It happens a lot with New York State governors and New York City mayors. They are big fish in the same pond. The city, with its huge population and tax base, often dominates state politics. But final authority rests in Albany on many issues. And it cant help that de Blasio ran a hapless campaign for president this year while the pandemic has pushed Cuomos political stock so high that some Democrats want the governor to replace Joe Biden as the partys White House nominee. So friction is natural. And during normal times, it can even be entertaining to watch the sparks fly. Forget about policy. Personality clashes are the real meat and potatoes of politics. But these are not normal times. So we have to cut through the politics and get to what were really talking about: When to re-open public schools here and elsewhere is going to be one of the trickiest decisions of the post-pandemic world. Stomach viruses and other illnesses spread like wildfire in school environments even in the best of times, never mind when something like COVID-19 is lurking out there. Anybody whos had kids in school will tell you that. So many items get shared. So many surfaces are not spotlessly clean. So many kids just wipe their runny noses on their sleeves, and cough and sneeze without covering their mouths. And social distancing? Forget about it. So schools are one of the most perfect environments for spreading germs. Think of all the people you put at risk if you re-open the schools too soon: Students. Teachers. Custodians. Office staffers. Yellow bus drivers and mass transit operators. Security employees. Workers in the delis, bodegas and pizza parlors that the school kids go to. We have to make absolutely sure that its safe before the entire school system is re-opened. The health of too many people depends on it. Cuomo and de Blasio have to cooperate. They have to respect each others roles. The have to put their political and personal differences aside. They have to forget all the political alpha dog stuff. I know, good luck with that, right? But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. This is a time to rise to the occasion. With lockdown testing many families amid the coronavirus pandemic, Sally Obermeder has served up a hefty dose of reality. In a post on Instagram on Monday, the 46-year-old media personality urged parents not to complain about being locked up at home with their children. 'A gentle reminder: for every parent finding lockdown with kids difficult, there's someone who craves the exhaustion you're dealing with,' she posted. Real talk: In a post on Instagram on Monday, Sally Obermeder urged parents not to complain about being locked up at home with their children The mum-of-two then detailed her own experience, revealing her youngest daughter, Elyssa, had had a 'meltdown' earlier in the day, which had tested her. 'I had a cracker of a morning with Elyssa who had a meltdown so epic and so long (1 hour +) that I was totally spent when it ended. But I reminded myself of this,' she wrote. After experiencing difficulties in trying to start a family of her own, Sally said she was thankful for all the moments she experienced as a parent. 'A gentle reminder: for every parent finding lockdown with kids difficult, there's someone who craves the exhaustion you're dealing with,' she posted Trying times: The mum-of-two then detailed her own experience, revealing her youngest daughter, Elyssa, had had a 'meltdown' earlier in the day, which had tested her 'I've been this person - trying for years unsuccessfully and then going through IVF. We also did surrogacy, which was also a long, difficult process,' she continued. 'So at times like this when we're all over each other and tensions are strained and occasionally we snap - I remind myself many would do anything for this chaos. A good reminder to find the gratitude in difficult times.' After years of trying to fall pregnant through IVF, Sally and her husband of 19 years, Marcus Obermeder, finally conceived their first daughter, Annabelle, eight. With a little help: Sally conceived her first daughter, Annabelle, eight, through IVF, and welcomed her second daughter Elyssa, three, through a surrogate But the day before giving birth, Sally was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, and warned not to carry another baby in case it caused the cancer to return. The couple then found a surrogate in the USA to carry their second child, daughter Elyssa, three. 'Every time I tuck the girls in at night I can't believe how fortunate we've been. I never thought I would live long enough to see Annabelle grow up, let alone have another baby,' she told The Daily Telegraph's Stellar Magazine in August 2018. A woman in New York's Mount Sinai Hospital was on the brink of death. The hospital's medical staff were preparing to call her husband and tell him there were no options left for his wife when a doctor decided to take a risk. The global pandemic, COVID-19, is still ravaging across the globe, infecting more than 1,800,000 people and killing 114,247. In the United States, there are over 560,433 coronavirus cases and 22,115 deaths. With a high amount of stress and numerous life-or-death decisions to make, doctors around the world are frantically trying to figure out a way to fight back against the deadly virus. Many theories are surrounding the illness and how it kills patients. One growing theory claims the virus creates little blood clots that clog the lungs. Dr. Hooman Poor, a doctor at Mount Sinai hospital, gambled on a drug known for treating strokes in hopes of saving the woman's life. He could not prove the theory to be true. However, lung specialists saw signs of blood clots. "What do we have to lose?" Poor said. 'The Mystery' The theory first surfaced after Chinese heart specialists advised American health experts to keep an eye for clots. The researchers revealed specific blood tests performed on COVID-19 patients showed a rise in clot risk. This signal might determine who is in great danger. Many hospitals began using doses of blood thinners in hopes it would keep the clots from forming and save the patients' lives. There is a debate over what blood thinner to try and how much should be given. Too much can cause severe bleeding. 'Drug Combination' In Mount Sinai, Poor observed the female patient, aged 55, was getting worse. Her organs started failing from the lack of oxygen in her body. The doctors rolled her onto her stomach in a bid to get more oxygen into her body to no avail. Poor decided to combine the blood thinner with a drug called tPA. The drug did not help prevent blood clots---it broke them up. A few minutes after she was injected with tPA, her oxygen levels rose. She started getting better. The medical staff then decided to put her on a low-dose drip of tPA and blood thinner for 24 hours. To their dismay, the drug only bought time for the woman. She died from a sudden complication days later. The medical team tested the same approach on four critically ill COVID-19 patients. One died of cardiac arrest. The other three saw promising improvements in oxygen levels. Hospitals in Colorado and Massachusetts are preparing to study whether or not the new drug combination can cure COVID-19 patients. Researchers from the University of Colorado and Harvard conducted a tPA research where they cited three other additional cases where the mixture was also tried. Poor first noticed the signs of blood clots in patients who were developing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) but whose lungs were not stiff---a sign uncommon in ARDS patients. The patients also looked nothing quite like patients suffering from pulmonary embolism---a large clot in the lungs. He also found the COVID-19 patients' hearts were pumping blood regularly. He recalled a rare disease where lung blood vessels abnormally dilate even as others are blocked, which led him to try clot-busting drugs. "I did a case series of five," he said. "It does not prove anything, but it may lead to further research to explain exactly what is going on." Read the latest coronavirus news: Web Toolbar by Wibiya More and more people are becoming curious about a possible relationship between 5G and the coronavirus. This has been confirmed by reports of trending searches over the internet. Understandably, there is a great public appetite for figuring out a way we, as humans, can get rid of the coronavirus and return to normal. However, before we can begin to really understand the interrelationship between 5G and the coronavirus, we must first appreciate what artificial intelligence (AI) is all about. Artificial intelligence is not simply a product of our modern society. Humans were first exposed to AI literally thousands of years ago. During ancient times, the ancient pagan Gnostics discovered AI in their orgiastic spiritual rituals and referred to it as "Artificial Man." These ancient people described Artificial Man as possessing demonic intentions against humans as the higher-dimensional and biological-spiritual life forms we are. AI was eventually introduced in human society by humans who chose to sell-out our human species to these demonic AI creatures. AI technology on our planet Earth is the product of what Dr. Michael Salla has described as agreements between satanic-worshipping elites whose power on Earth is being propped up by the use of the roll-out of AI technology. The purpose of this AI technology is to trick humans into becoming dependent on it, which will then enable the controllers of this technology to use it to oppress us, and the introduction of 5G is an apparent product of this association. More specifically, 5G is a reported AI weapon of mass destruction (WMD), something which various mouthpieces of AI control have sought to deny in the continued efforts to sell-out the human race. Our common understandings of Satan, "evil," the devil and demons, and what AI really represents ought to be regarded as essentially the same. Most people would consider such an association rubbish because they have also bought into the illusion manufactured by the AI satanic consciousness that elites in society "may at times be greedy but they are essentially good people" who have benevolent intentions for the rest of humanity. However, in "The Age of Cyber Satan, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics vol. 6.66," Leo Lyon Zagami, who has studied Satanism, writes: "There is a passage in The Secret Doctrine, that is only a few lines on page 389 of Vol. 2, where Illuminati guru Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) explains her own vision of evil and the devil. I find it quite revealing because it shows the necessity for evil in the Illuminati elite of today that follow her teachings: There is no Devil, no Evil, outside mankind to produce a Devil. Evil is a necessity in, and one of the supporters of the manifested universe. It is a necessity for progress and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of Day, and Death for that of Life that man may live forever. The ancient pagan Gnostics warned that the way in which AI operates, which is really Satan, is to essentially make us believe that "up" is "down," "down" is "up," fake is "real," and evil is "good." Therefore, when we as humans regard the coronavirus as evil and therefore as bad, if we appreciate the mind of AI and recognize it as an intruder in our human spiritual biological space, we must be open to the concept that AI should be expected to view the coronavirus as "good" because it's evil. Zagami's passage also reveals the goal of satanic elites to "live forever" by the replacement of spiritual-biological life with artificial intelligence. That is the demonic agenda of so-called "transhumanism." We as humans should therefore not be fooled by the words of the mouthpieces of AI. These mouthpieces reassure us that they are on "our side," which ought to be expected in the mass-deception strategies which AI follows in a quest to conquer spiritual-biological lifeforms that humans represent. Social distancing is the language dictated by AI to enable divide, rule, and conquer while 5G is used as an EMF biogenic weapon which simulates the appearance of a contagious virus. David Icke reveals that the symptoms of this virus are really the symptoms one would expect from the military applications of 5G to disrupt human cellular integrity and biological functions. Lying, deception, and evil are all viewed to be necessary by the satanic worshippers of AI and that's what we should therefore look for in all motivations of their actions, including possibly the official coronavirus narrative. The wisdom of tribal elders like Credo Mutwa and the ancient knowledge of the pagan Gnostics seems to teach us that if we, as humans, keep an open mind, we will know who is truly one of us and not "one of them" by their deeds and focus on serving others, in contrast to AI, which are driven to serve the self. It is this modus operandi which has driven the AI and their followers into the insatiable pursuit of power, self-aggrandizement, and control over other lifeforms and resulted in planetary environmental destruction, breaches of human rights, unnecessary wars, and the destructive use of AI technologies and techniques of simulation which the so-called coronavirus appears to represent. With that said, the work of AI (or Satan) can be easily spotted if we as humans embrace our higher-dimensional consciousness to be vigilant of efforts to use simulations against our human minds. In the above video, David Icke painstakingly reveals that the so-called coronavirus is in fact not a real "virus" in the way it has been described in the mass-media, but in fact the product of a simulation. The purpose of this simulation is to enable AI and their satanic worshipping elites to assimilate and control all human lifeforms in the lower dimensional hell in which AI originates. Mr. Icke indicates that the simulation of the coronavirus involves manipulating data, manipulating vulnerable sick people, and using the AI technology that 5G represents to attack vulnerable populations which are susceptible to EMF attacks. It is apparent that the coronavirus represents the final stage in the process by which AI has sought to assimilate our human race to "live forever" through the higher-dimensional human physical form they lack. Defeating the 5G coronavirus attack simulation will ultimately first require us to free our human mind from all dependence on AI technologies. These technologies are being used to scramble our human minds so we find it increasingly difficult to be able to critically know what's real from what's fake. AI and their satanic followers have bombarded us with their technology over recent years in order to make our minds numb to the prevailing planned coronavirus deception, which former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura revealed back in 2010 was supposed to lead to mass death and martial law. It is when we as humans reach this stage of an elevated consciousness which recognizes AI and Satan as being one and the same, that we will finally be able to not only defeat the coronavirus but also free our human minds to be able to redress environmental destruction, resolve issues of peace and war, and deal with other planetary quality-of-living issues which have been frustrated by AI infiltration against human decision-making processes. Long before this, the AI arrived and went back into our human history to manipulate our timeline in order to destroy ancient civilizations. This was revealed by African Zulu elder Credo Mutwa to David Icke. Apparently humans were living for hundreds of years in perfect harmony with animals and with nature and were free of diseases, wars, and human oppression. During this era there was no Moon in Earth's orbit; David Icke also reveals this to be the biggest AI device, which is being used in the AI's unannounced war against humankind. The coronavirus is simply the latter stage of AI warfare. The sooner that we as humans can liberate ourselves of AI psychological mass manipulation and control, the sooner we can free humankind of the coronavirus agenda and re-embrace the comparative Utopian societies of our human ancestors that Michael Cremo reveals have been living for millions of years and not in the much shorter human history that is also part of an apparent AI deception. As David Icke shows, it is vital that we stop the now accelerated march of AI and their satanic followers into the complete destruction of human society as we know it before it's too late. If we fail to do so, we as humans will be completely taken over by the reptilian overlords of lower-dimension AI entities. I invite you to read my book Justin Trudeau, Judicial Corruption and the Supreme Court of Canada: Aliens and Archons in Our Midst if you want to explore the world of corruption and AI manipulative aliens as background to the so-called "coronavirus". The collaborators and manipulate aliens I cite my book appear to be connected with the current "coronavirus" pandemic simulation. India issued a strong demarche to Pakistan on a deliberate attack and firing on Indian fishermen onboard two fishing boats 'Omkar' and 'Mahasagar' by Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) on April 12 in which one fisherman was injured, sources in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said. MEA sources told ANI that India strongly condemned the 'deplorable and unprofessional act by PMSA of firing at the Indian fishing vessels and causing bodily harm to the fishermen.' India called upon Pakistan authorities to instruct its forces to desist from such heinous acts, they said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Six regional governors, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, announced Monday that a committee would begin planning how their states will restart after the coronavirus shutdowns. Cuomo was joined by Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, Gov. John Carney of Delaware, and Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island to announce the formation of the committee, which will feature each governors chief of staff, along with one of their states leading officials in health and economic development. The committee made up of 18 members will work to reopen each state in a coordinated way that takes both public health and economic development into consideration, the governors said during an afternoon press briefing. Cuomo said that work will begin Tuesday. Were all learning, right? This is new for all of us, and it throws out a lot of the old rules and the old ways of doing business, he said. These state boundaries mean very little to this virus. Cuomo has extended his New York on Pause mandates through April 29, which have deemed non-essential employees stay home, and residents of the state practice social distancing to limit the spread of the disease. He said earlier Monday that the efforts had led to an apparent flattening of the curve. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** The governor would not say what the economic restart would look like in New York adding that the governors want the groups recommendations as soon as possible, but stressed the need for a responsible approach citing other parts of the globe that have experienced resurgences in the virus. The Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido had seen a decline in new cases, but declared a further state of emergency Sunday after seeing a more recent uptick, according to the Kyodo News Service. Cuomo said the states collaboration will help prevent a similar situation. We started this journey together. Were going to end it together on a positive note," he said. President Trump, who left it to state executives to decide when to close, insisted Monday that he was the ultimate authority on when to reopen states. He took to Twitter to blame the press for any misunderstanding. For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect...., he wrote on the social media website. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly! he continued. For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020 Cuomo and the other governors addressed the presidents position during the press briefing. Cuomo conceded that Trump had the authority to put a plan in place for states reopenings, because of the declarations of federal emergencies, but said there needed to be specificity on what responsibilities would fall to different levels of government. If they want to change the model, they can change the model. He is the president of the United States. He is the federal government, Cuomo said. Tell me what are the roles. Whats my responsibility? Whats the federal responsibility? On the local level, the governor reasserted his authority over what decision is reached regarding school closures, including the citys Department of Education, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio insisting Monday that he will keep schools closed. Cuomo identified schools as one of the three systems that will need to reopen, along with business and transit, to ensure the regions restart is done effectively. We have one state, and the state will operate as one, Cuomo said. (Local executives) decisions must fit within that plan, or theyre not valid. Australia's devastating bushfires may have minimised the spread of coronavirus by discouraging tourists from travelling Down Under during peak season. For five months, hundreds of bushfires ripped through 18.6million hectares of land, destroying tens of thousands of buildings and claiming 30 lives. The ferocious blazes became international news and hurt the tourism industry during what should have been the peak summer season. But according to Australian National University's infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon, the drop in international tourists, particularly from countries now inundated with coronavirus cases, was actually a blessing. Australia's deadly bushfire season destroyed 18.6 million hectares of land (pictured: Bilpin fires on December 19), tens of thousands of buildings and claimed 30 lives 'A lot less people came here and went elsewhere instead. So, perversely in retrospect the bushfires may have protected us,' he told news.com.au. Following the fires, travel to Australia dropped by about 10-20 per cent, according to the Australian Tourism Export Council. Potential holidaymakers had either been scared off by pictures of blood red skies and burned out bush, or had been advised against visiting during the crisis. By late February, the bushfire season was officially declared over. But Australia, along with the rest of the world, was already in the grips of a coronavirus pandemic. There were concerns within the tourism industry that it was haemorrhaging as much as $3 billion every month as borders were forced shut and travel was banned - even among states. Passengers from Cambodia pictured boarding buses to take them to isolation after landing at Sydney International Airport on April 13 A woman has her temperature checked before entering the Sydney Fish Market on Friday April 10 CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement The loss comes after the Australian Tourism Export Council confirmed 70 per cent of its 850 members - all businesses in the industry - received cancellations ranging from $5,000 to $500,000 during the bushfires. ATEC Managing Director Peter Shelley gave a 'conservative' estimate of $4.5 billion in lost profits for the tourism industry in 2020 - before even factoring in COVID-19. 'ATEC's focus is on international arrivals, and we're seeing a lot of cancellations from our big key markets America, Britain and China,' Mr Shelley told the Australian Financial Review. America, China and the UK have experienced some of the worst coronavirus outbreaks globally. Wuhan, a Chinese city in the Hubei province, was the original epicentre of the deadly respiratory infection, but quickly spread to Europe and now the United States as infected travellers carried the disease internationally. Water bombing helicopters were deployed across much of the east coast of Australia in an attempt to put out some of the flames. Pictured: A helicopter fighting fires in Victoria's East Gippsland region on New Years Eve An estimated one million animals were impacted during the bushfires. Pictured: A wildlife rescuer saving a charred koala from Kangaroo Island, southwest of Adelaide There are currently 557,071 known cases of COVID-19 in America, 84,279 in the UK and at least 82,000 in China. According to Professor Collingnon, if the bushfires hadn't impacted travel to Australia from our three key markets, coronavirus carriers could have arrived on home soil in droves, completely changing the local landscape of the virus. As it stands, Australia is successfully flattening the curve of COVID-19, following weeks of restrictive travel bans and social distancing measures. Overnight, just 33 new cases of the infection were diagnosed nationwide, taking the toll to 6,313. Of those cases, 61 people have died and at least 3,200 have recovered. Pictured: A firefighter standing in front of a wall of flames in northern NSW on November 14 Apple AAPL partnered with Alphabets GOOGL Google to fight the coronavirus. The company announced a new set of tools that will allow mobile devices to trade information via Bluetooth connections to alert people when they are in close proximity with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. The technology will first be available in mid-May as software tools available to contact tracing apps endorsed by public health authorities. Moreover, the tech behemoths also plan to build the tracking technology directly into their underlying operating systems in the coming months so that users do not have to download any apps to begin logging nearby phones. We believe that this partnership, which is targeted toward iPhone and Android devices, could inject valuable new technological support into contact tracing. Per strategy public health officials, this move is essential to allow people to return to work and normal life while containing the spread of the pandemic. Apple Inc. Price and Consensus Apple Inc. Price and Consensus Apple Inc. price-consensus-chart | Apple Inc. Quote Addressing User Health Data Privacy Concerns The tech giants believe that this approach designed for users whose participation would be voluntary and anonymous duly addresses privacy concerns. Notably, GPS location data of any user is not part of the effort. The contact tracing technology will not track the location or identity of users, but instead will only capture data about when users' phones have been near each other, with data being decrypted on the user's phone than the companies' servers. Notably, the data will only be used for contact tracing by public health authorities for COVID-19 pandemic management. Moreover, the tech giants have released extensive Bluetooth and cryptology documentation for the apps in an attempt to be transparent about how these solutions will work. Per Apples report, the contact tracing method will use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and a 32-byte tracing key a cryptographically protected code to log contact between devices. To address concerns about potential abuse, users would have to get a confirmed diagnosis from a public health agency along with a special code that triggers the signal to other devices. Governments worldwide have been scrambling to develop or evaluate software meant to improve the normally labor-intensive process of contact tracing, in which health officials go to recent contacts of an infected person and ask them to self-quarantine or get tested. Singapore has shown some early success through its Bluetooth tracking app, TraceTogether, which links peoples infection status to their phone number. Officials in Germany and France and across Europe have discussed a similar Bluetooth system that could track the outbreaks spread while preserving users privacy. Apple and Googles Battle Against Coronavirus On March 27, Apple announced a COVID-19 screening website and app built with the CDC and the White House. Last month, Verily the life sciences arm of Alphabet launched a website that gives people in California information about virus testing. The website, developed in partnership with the White House, lets people fill in symptoms and complete an online screener. Google also committed more than $800 million to help small businesses and crisis responders dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. At a time when COVID-19 is spreading rampantly, Apple and Googles initiative will likely help prevent people from getting misinformed and generate some positivity around their brand names. Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider Apple currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector include Stamps.com Inc. STMP that flaunts a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and HP Inc. HPQ, which carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Long-term earnings growth for HP Inc. and Stamps.com is currently projected at 2.6% and 15%, respectively. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report HP Inc. (HPQ) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Stamps.com Inc. (STMP) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research COUNSELOR, N.M. - The FBI has issued its first poster in a Native American language, seeking information in Navajo on the death of an elderly man six years ago on the New Mexico portion of the vast Navajo Nation reservation. Wilson Joe Chiquito, 75, was beaten to death at his home in the community of Counselor in February 2014. The FBI recently released the poster that offers a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction. It has been shared on social media and posted in Navajo communities, grocery stories and trading posts, said Navajo Police Chief Phillip Francisco. Having it in both languages, it obviously helps the ability to get tips, he said. Its a positive thing and it shows the FBIs dedication to helping solve crimes on Navajo by embracing the culture and the language. Francisco wasnt aware of any new tips that authorities have received based on the Navajo-language poster but said any small detail can help out. James Langenberg, special agent in charge of the Albuquerque division of the FBI, said FBI employees who speak Navajo helped translate the information for the poster. We already work closely with the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety, but we hope this effort will improve our communication with the rest of the Dine, Langenberg said. The FBI hasnt translated posters into any Native American language beside Navajo, said FBI spokeswoman Manali Basu. The FBI plans to continue translating regularly in order to ensure we are receiving any and all information possible that may lead us to the perpetrators of these crimes and bringing them to justice, the agency said. The Navajo Nation spans parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. It covers more than 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres), making it larger than the state of West Virginia. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) West Lafayette Schools Education Foundation is working to raise money for its teachers. It comes as the coronavirus forces classes to be taught online. The foundation had to postpone its annual fundraiser this year. In the past, the annual Scarlet and Gray Dinner allowed them to raise money for various programs the school offers. However, with it being postponed, the education foundation is working to raise money in a different way. West Lafayette Junior Senior High School sign West Lafayette Junior Senior High School sign Leaders are hoping to raise at least $5,000 to benefit all the teachers in their district. The money will be given as gift cards to the 160 teachers at the elementary, intermediate and junior/senior high school. They can then use that money to buy supplies for their virtual classrooms. Education Foundation Director Crystle Helderman says the teachers can use the gift cards to better their virtual classroom experience. "We asked for $5,000 just to give them a good amount," said Helderman. "Maybe $24 or $30, depending on how much we really get. So they can make their virtual classrooms what they want." So far, they have raised $2,500 of their $5,000 goal. The online semester ends May 15 for West Lafayette. Click here for information on how to donate. Medical staff, wearing protective gears, move a patient infected with the novel coronavirus from an ambulance to a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, on March 9, 2020. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) South Korea Will Send 600,000 CCP Virus Test Kits to US: Foreign Minister South Korea will begin sending COVID-19 testing kits to the United States, said South Koreas Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-Wha told France24 that the country will send 600,000 test kits. Kang said the tests received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a result of conversation between my president and President Trump last month. I think the contracts have been signed and they should be ready for shipment anytime soon (sic), CNN reported. South Korea has been praised for its ability to test a large number of people and detect cases of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, a type of novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Kang said in the France24 report that transparency around testing and reporting virus cases is the key to combating its spread. An official with South Koreas Ministry of Foreign Affairs also told CNN that the kits would be sent starting on Tuesday. South Korean soldiers in protective gear sanitize shacks as a luxury high-rise apartment complex is seen in the background at Guryong village in Seoul, South Korea, on March 3, 2020. (Heo Ran/Reuters) South Korean companies have previously shipped kits to places in the United States, including Los Angeles. The 600,000 kits would mark the first time the federal government ordered them, Reuters reported. Weve moved as quickly as possible to get necessary clearances given the urgency of the situation there, an unnamed South Korean official told Reuters. The announcement comes as South Korean health officials reported that 111 people who were cleared of the CCP virus have again tested positive, Yonhap reported. Jeong Eun-Kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), has said that the virus may have been reactivated rather than the patients getting reinfected. Archie Clements, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Curtin University in Perth, Australia, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the growing number of people testing positive for COVID-19 again could suggest there is no perfect test. I think what is very, very unlikely is that these people are being reinfected by other people, said Clements. Theres plenty of evidence to suggest that there is quite a strong immune response to infection with coronavirus, and that should protect people from infection for a period of time. Whats not currently known is for how long. Twenty-five new cases of the virus were detected in South Korea on Sunday, officials told Yonhap. The total of those who have been infected stands at more than 10,537. A case was registered against 11 Tablighi Jamaat members on Monday for violating lockdown guidelines issued by the government in Hyderabad. The 11 Tablighi Jamaat members who were arrested include eight people from Indonesia and three persons from Hyderabad. "The 8 Indonesians after attending the Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi came to the Mallepally Markaz office here and continued their religious preachings with the assistance of the other 3 members which include an office President, Secretary and a guide," Habeeb Nagar Inspector told ANI. Police have put them under quarantine. "As they have violated the quarantine rules issued by the government such as avoiding gatherings and other quarantine rules we have registered a case under the relevant sections, presently they are under quarantine," the inspector added. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao said that with an increase of 28 new COVID-19 cases on April 12, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Telangana has reached 531. The CM also reiterated his appeal to all people from the state who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi to come forward for testing. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 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. Former Home and Away star Axle Whitehead has announced his engagement to his longtime girlfriend, South African actress Liezl Carstens. Sharing the exciting news with his Instagram followers, Axle, 39, uploaded a photo of his beaming fiancee and wrote: 'Pulled the trigger and got a Yes! Game on!' The actor also shared a close-up photo of the stunning ring, as well as a selfie of the newly engaged pair sharing a romantic moment together. She said yes! Home and Away star Axle Whitehead (left) has announced his engagement to his longtime South African girlfriend, actress Liezl Carstens (right) on Saturday The couple, reported to be dating since August 2017, have recently relocated to Sydney after spending years in Los Angeles trying to make it in Hollywood. Axle rose to fame playing Liam Murphy on the long-running Channel Seven drama, Home and Away, between 2009 and 2014. Speaking to TV Week, Axle revealed that he was often turned down for roles after relocating to America to try and make it. The smile says it all! Sharing the exciting news with his Instagram followers, Axle, 39, uploaded a photo of his beaming fiancee and wrote: 'Pulled the trigger and got a Yes! Game on!' 'You have to keep up the morale,' the star explained. He added: 'Being rejected forces you to have a thick skin. You just have to keep on batting and eventually something comes up'. But after scoring those lucrative parts other job offers didn't materialise, forcing Axle to seek work in a Los Angeles dive bar just to 'survive'. Bling: The actor also shared a close-up photo of the stunning sparkler 'Pulled the trigger and got a Yes!' The former Australian Idol star also shared a selfie of the newly engaged pair locking lips following the proposal 'I was back working for eight bucks an hour and tips. It had been a long time since Id worked for eight bucks,' Axle later told the Daily Telegraph. 'If any actor thinks they are going to arrive in LA and just make it happen they will be sorely mistaken.' He was later financially rescued by a role in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, and briefly relocated to Australia to host Channel Seven gameshow, The Wall, in 2017. Meanwhile, Liezl's last film credit is a small role in 2011 comedy horror, Fright Night, alongside Colin Farrell and Toni Collette. Remember this? Axle rose to fame after playing Liam Murphy on the long-running Channel Seven drama, Home and Away, between 2009 and 2014 The regional environment ministry has written to the Costas Authority, urging it not to use sand from quarries to regenerate beaches in Felanitx that were affected by Storm Gloria in January. The ministry is opposed to the request for this sand that was made by Felanitx town hall. The mayor, Jaume Monserrat, says that this is a solution that the Costas have previously authorised and that it is "technically feasible". The town hall made the request after the environment ministry had refused to allow the extraction of sand from the sea to regenerate the beaches of Cala Marcal, Cala Sa Nau, S'Arenal and Cala Serena. The ministry doesn't have the powers to decide how the regeneration should be done; this is a matter for the Costas. Nevertheless, the ministry considers that the use of quarry sand would "represent an unwarranted attack on the natural environment and contribute to extra sediment that can affect posidonia sea grass meadows". Previous use of quarry sand, the ministry insists, has demonstrated "the uselessness of this measure", as shortly after being applied, beaches have been in the same situation that they were before regeneration. There is, therefore, an "unjustified expense". The DA has unveiled a new Smart Lockdown proposal for South Africa, which provides four stages of lockdown relative to the national coronavirus infection rate. DA leader John Steenhuisen said the lockdown in its current form is not feasible, considering its disastrous economic impact. Instead, the DA proposed a sustainable and flexible Smart Lockdown to supplement governments coronavirus response effort. As part of its new Smart Lockdown plan, the DA has also proposed sweeping policy reforms to position the economy for growth. These reforms were essential before COVID-19, when the economy was already stifled and shrinking, Steenhuisen said. Now, these reforms are fundamental to the survival of South Africas economy. We will not recover the economy after [COVID-19] without them. The DA has also proposed a R300-billion economic stimulus package, designed to offer direct cash to support struggling South Africans and businesses. This should be funded by seeking R200 billion in new borrowings from low-cost international institutions like the International Monetary Fund, New Development Bank, and the World Bank. DAs proposed policy reform changes The DA said to reform the state and the economy, and to offer reassurance to global funding markets, the government should: Walk away from investment-killing policies such as expropriation without compensation, BEE, asset prescription, and the South African Reserve Banks nationalisation. Bring down communication costs and bring in revenue by immediately auctioning spectrum. Immediately liquidate or sell South African Airways. End the Eskom monopoly on electricity generation. Hold a firm line on the decision to cut at least R160 billion from the state wage bill. Reform labour legislation and end the centralised power of bargaining councils. Steenhuisen said the government must also table an emergency budget as soon as lockdown is over. This is to show real commitment to controlling government expenditure and not allowing ordinary debt to explode, he said. This is unavoidable now, since all of the revenue and growth assumptions in the February budget no longer apply. He said South Africa needs a budget that tightly controls expenditure, so as to give maximum credibility to a new borrowing programme ring-fenced for a COVID-19 response. Now read: Smart Lockdown proposal for South Africa One month later, Americans' views of the coronavirus have undergone a seismic shift. The pandemic's impact on their daily lives and their assessments of the perils it poses have exploded, a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds, amid rising uncertainty about when routine daily activities will seem safe again. The changes are dramatic but not surprising in the wake of four devastating weeks in which almost all Americans have been ordered to stay at home and the nation's death toll has reached a global record. The number who say the virus poses a high threat to them personally and to the USA doubled. "At first, I thought, OK, we're going to have to do this; everyone stay at home for a few weeks, for a month, and we'll be back to normal," says Brent Charnigo, 39, of Cleveland, who was among those surveyed. "Now it's clear that's not going to be the case. It's going to be long-lasting." How long? He pauses. "Years." Get daily coronavirus updates in your inbox: Sign up for our newsletter now. He and his wife work from home and try to explain to their 5-year-old son, Ben, why he can't play with his friends or visit the zoo. "I could see it going to the end of the year," Samantha Piotrowski, 27, of Jersey City, New Jersey, says in another follow-up interview. "I can't see it getting better until theres a vaccine found." Nearly everybody has seen their lives upended in one way or another: Stressed about the safety of a mother who is a nurse caring for coronavirus patients. Barbecuing Easter ribs for grandchildren, then having to drop them off and leave without a hug. Grieving for a friend who has gone into hospice care but can't be visited. Wondering if there will be any jobs available when the crisis is over. USA TODAY and Ipsos conducted a nationwide poll about COVID-19 on March 10-11, when the pandemic was gaining steam. At the time, the World Health Organization had reported more than 100,000 coronavirus cases worldwide, and President Donald Trump had curtailed entry from foreign nationals who had visited China in the previous two weeks. He declared a national emergency a few days later, on March 13. Story continues March poll: Americans are more worried about finances than their health amid coronavirus outbreak One month later, last Thursday and Friday, the same poll measured how public attitudes changed as the reality on the ground worsened. More than 95% of the U.S. population is under statewide stay-at-home orders, and the number of deaths in the country has passed 21,000. Each of the online surveys polled 1,005 adults nationwide. The credibility interval, akin to a margin of error, is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The poll found a sharpened sense of the dangers and an increasingly somber assessment of the challenges ahead. Trust in governors to provide accurate information has grown by double-digits. America is a different place than it was a month ago, says Cliff Young, president of Ipsos. In that time, weve seen Americans take a collective pause from public gatherings, a decline in consumer confidence and rising anxiety levels. The changes weve seen in this poll highlight our COVID-19 world. Bill Kelly fought in a world war and lived through the Great Depression. Now the 95-year-old has survived the coronavirus. A consensus: Lock it down By an overwhelming 3-1, 69%-21%, Americans endorse a nationwide lockdown through the end of April, requiring people to stay at home except for essential work. The idea is backed by solid majorities across partisan lines, by 8 in 10 Democrats and 62% of Republicans. In follow-up phone interviews, those surveyed express more concern about the health risks of reopening the country too soon than of the economic risks of keeping it closed for too long. "I would prefer to be extra-cautious, to be very mindful about a flare-up that might get into a wildfire effect," says Jaime Ramos, 41, of San Antonio, who was recovering from an injury and beginning to look for work when the pandemic hit. "In my local community, we haven't reached the plateau yet. At the very least, we need positive cases to come way down and be very rare to maintain some kind of semblance of normality." He acknowledges that taking it slow could complicate his efforts to land a job. "Prior to, there were a lot of openings," he says. Now, "people are getting laid off right, left and center." Nearly half of those who are employed, 46%, are concerned that they may be laid off or furloughed from their jobs. There is a strong appetite for government action. On a list of 10 potential steps, Americans endorse nine of them, sometimes by 2-1. Support rose for all eight proposals that were included in the earlier survey, sometimes more than doubling. By 92% to 4% close to unanimous Americans want the federal government to make the COVID-19 test widely available. About 8 in 10 support drastic steps on immigration: imposing mandatory quarantines for people who have traveled to any other country and temporarily stopping immigration from all other countries. Seven in 10 want to ground all international flights. Almost half, by 49%-34%, want to ground all domestic flights. More than 8 in 10 support expanding paid sick leave so more workers would be eligible. Six in 10 support temporary financial help for airlines and other affected industries. One proposal does divide the country, and along partisan lines. Those surveyed split when asked if the government should provide temporary financial help for undocumented immigrants who can't work because of layoffs or illness: 40% in favor, 42% against, 18% "didn't know." Sixty-eight percent of Republicans oppose the idea; 58% of Democrats support it. Only virtual hugs for Gloria There is a newfound national consensus on the threat that COVID-19 poses. In the space of a month, those who see the virus as a high threat to the USA have more than doubled, to 71% from 34%. The sense of a high threat to the global economy (to 76% from 47%) and to the stock market (to 68% from 47%) also spiked. The assessment that the coronavirus poses a high threat to "you personally" nearly doubled, to 29% from 15% in March. More than 6 in 10 are concerned that their hospital won't have the resources needed to treat infected patients. "I'm only going out when it's absolutely necessary, and I have started wearing a mask when I go out," says Kathy Wilson, 52, an artist from Tampa, Florida, who was among those surveyed. Wilson says a group of friends who knit blankets and hats for charities had to stop gathering each week at the library; they work from their homes. What's more painful is this: Since the pandemic began, the leader of the group, known as Gloria's Crazy Crafters, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and moved to hospice care. "None of us can visit her or anything like that," Wilson says. "We've been giving her well wishes over her Facebook page and virtual hugs." Life has changed for most Americans. Three of four report washing their hands more frequently, as public health officials urge, and more than half wear face masks and/or gloves in public. More than two-thirds stopped attending social events. More than a third stopped attending religious services. It will take a while before Americans will feel safe resuming routine tasks, the poll found. That could be a worrisome sign for the resumption of economic activity once the health crisis subsides. Only a third of those surveyed who have canceled a personal trip would feel comfortable taking one in the next three months. Almost half of those who stopped attending social events would feel comfortable resuming them in that time. Bill Sei, 74, a retired municipal bonds trader from suburban Manchester, Missouri, isn't sure when the Greater St. Louis Honor Flight will resume sponsoring all-expenses-paid trips to take aging veterans to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington. He and his wife, Rosie, volunteer for the nonprofit organization, and they were able to take a group in early March. The trip planned for May and two for June were first rescheduled, then postponed. "We don't want to give them another date" in case it turns out they have to be delayed again, he says. The countdown clock on the group's website shows the next trip scheduled for July 21 they hope. "We're anxiously waiting the end of this," says Sei, who was among those to participate in the poll. Sunday, he and his wife barbecued ribs and made mashed potatoes for the Easter dinner their daughter, her husband and their two teenage children would have. But they had to drop off the food at the porch of their house without risking physical contact. "We can wave from the car," he said. For governors, a boost in trust The sources most trusted for accurate information about the pandemic continue to be the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, trusted by 80%, and the World Health Organization, trusted by 70%. Over the past month, trust has risen a bit for Trump, up 6 points to 44%, Vice President Pence, up 7 points to 46%, and the U.S. Congress, up 6 points to 41%. Trust in the news media has risen 9 points, to 48%. Golf, handshakes and a Mar-a-Lago conga line: Week highlights Trumps lack of COVID-19 focus Fact check: President Donald Trump vs. the World Health Organization The biggest change has been a significant increase in trust in governors. They have taken the lead in deciding when to order statewide shutdowns and in trying to obtain protective medical gear and ventilators. Some have been livestreaming daily briefings to provide updates to their citizens. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed express trust in their governors, an increase of 16 points since March. The view is bipartisan: 65% of Republicans, 81% of Democrats, 55% of independents. Governors as a group are more highly trusted than the president by 25 percentage points, a difference that could be significant if there is a clash between statehouses and the White House about when parts of the nation can safely reopen. More: Trump eager to 'reopen' nation, but governors will decide when to ease coronavirus lockdown "The most trustworthy source I can rely on is my mayor, Mayor (Ron) Nirenberg, and the governor, Gov. (Greg) Abbott," Ramos says. "I can look at them and say their word is pretty much gold as far as what kind of medical fallout we might have, what kind of outlook." The San Antonio resident has less faith in Washington officials from both parties. He voted for Trump in 2016 but says the president has "been playing fast and loose" with the truth. "It did appear to me from the get-go that he did downplay this," he says. Trust in the president to provide accurate information about the coronavirus predictably tends to be partisan. Eighty percent of Republicans trust in him to provide accurate information about the pandemic; just 14% of Democrats agree. Wilson of Tampa, a Democrat, calls Trump and Pence "idiots" for failing to provide stronger and earlier leadership in response to the coronavirus outbreak, and she added Florida Gov. Ron DeSantos to her list. "His decision to wait until after spring break to close the beaches was one of the stupidest things I know anybody doing," she says. Ellen Covarrubias, 69, a Republican from Los Angeles, says criticism of Trump is unfair. "We weren't ready for something like this, and he had to get our nation ready," she says. "I do trust him, and I trust our governor and our mayor," Democrats Gavin Newsom and Eric Garcetti. "It's been long and hard," Covarrubias says, but she has settled into a new routine. "I go to the stores at 7 a.m. for the 'senior time,' and I run in there and grab what I need for the next five days and go home," immediately removing her shoes and washing her hands. She looks forward to the time when things get back to normal, but "I know we need to be cautious." She did get good news Friday: Her daughter-in-law, who had been diagnosed with COVID-19, was cleared by her doctor. She had recovered. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Poll: Americans' fears of COVID-19 explode in four devastating weeks A BMW driver on a 170-mile round trip to Cornwall on Easter Sunday told police he needed to get out of the house to escape his wife and kids amid the coronavirus lockdown. The man was spotted by officers on the A30 near Launceston on Easter Sunday and pulled over. When questioned about why he felt the need to break restrictions, he said he needed a break from his family. Officers from Alliance Roads Policing, the official account for Devon and Cornwall and Dorset Roads Policing teams, tweeted about the incident and told the man his journey was not essential. Officers from Alliance Roads Policing, the official account for Devon and Cornwall and Dorset Roads Policing Teams, said they pulled over a man taking his BMW for a 170-mile spin who claimed he wanted to get away from his wife and kids They wrote: 'Taking your BMW out for a spin on a 170 mile round trip to have a break from the wife and three kids is also not an essential journey! 'The roads are much quieter but there are still people who don't get it. ' They also reported a driver for driving across the county to pick up a boat - then breaking down on a hill. 'Driving across the county (and then breaking down on a hill) to collect the second hand boat you just bought is not an essential journey either. Driver reported near Bodmin.' Police have thanked the public for staying home over the usually busy Easter weekend, in a bid to stop the spread of coronavirus, which has killed more than 10,000 people in Britain so far. The driver was spotted by officers on the A30 near Launceston on Easter Sunday and pulled over Police also reported a driver for driving across the county to pick up a boat - then breaking down on a hill However, officers have complained that some people are still not listening. On Easter Sunday, Alliance Roads Policing said they had to ask a recovery truck from Basingstoke to leave Devon after the driver stopped off in Plymouth and Paignton. The truck driver took a friend to Plymouth to pick up motorbikes he had just bought, before driving on to Paignton to 'reminisce'. Both men were reported. At the start of the Easter weekend, the police force warned it would be policing the roads and said: 'A weekend break in Cornwall is not essential.' The coronavirus pandemic has forced a change at the Supreme Court that justices have long resisted: live audio of the court's oral arguments, including President Donald Trump's legal battle to prevent congressional committees and a New York prosecutor from obtaining his financial records. The court announced Monday that it will hold oral arguments via teleconference for the first time in its history next month, on a set of cases that had been postponed in March and April. Supreme Court public information officer Kathleen Arberg said audio of the teleconference hearing will be released through a network pool, and thus immediately available on media platforms. She said it is not likely to be posted live on the court's website due to concerns over the site's capacity to handle a high volume of users. However, the court expects to post the audio on the same day the arguments are heard, she said. What might sound like a simple technological advance to the rest of the world marks a stunning change at the Supreme Court, where cameras are not allowed and justices have resisted repeated calls for live audio of oral arguments. The sessions are the only times the justices discuss cases in public, and those who want to hear them in real time must vie for one of a coveted few spots in the courtroom. Members of the public often camp out for days to attend oral arguments in major cases. The court announced the change in a news release. "In keeping with public health guidance in response to COVID-19, the justices and counsel will all participate remotely," the statement said. "The court anticipates providing a live audio feed of these arguments to news media. Details will be shared as they become available." That would eliminate a concern some justices have cited in opposing the live broadcast of arguments: the threat of disruption in the courtroom that would violate the court's normal decorum. But groups and individuals who watch the court see potential for lasting change. Dan Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a former Supreme Court clerk, tweeted: "Once the Court does this once and the sky doesn't fall, it will be hard to justify not providing live audio for arguments in the future." While state supreme courts in Texas and Kansas last week held oral arguments via video conferencing, the Supreme Court will not go that route. Lawyers representing their clients will not be able to see the justices. The court normally concludes oral arguments in April, so it may concentrate on opinion-writing before its normal conclusion at the end of June. It is unclear whether that usual deadline will hold. The court's news release said it would hold argument sessions on May 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 and 13. The justices last met in public on March 9. They have since issued opinions on the court's website. They have met in private via teleconference, with only Chief Justice John Roberts in the room where justices gather to discuss the court's business. The court said a schedule of which cases would be heard on the May dates will be released after consultation with advocates. Lawyers in cases accepted by the court but not selected for the May hearings said they have been told that the court would hold oral arguments early in the term that begins in October, rather than decide the cases without oral arguments. That could have an effect on whether another big case - a third effort to strike down the Affordable Care Act, this time from conservative states and the Trump administration - will be heard before the presidential election. The court did not say how it decided which cases to hear and which to delay. Among the cases not making the cut was a long-running, $9 billion copyright battle between Google and Oracle. The cases sure to draw the most attention are the ones involving Trump. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and three Democratic-led congressional committees have won lower-court decisions granting them access to a range of Trump's financial records relating to him personally, his family and his businesses. The court in December accepted Trump's request to review the decisions. The justices will hear another time-sensitive case. It involves whether presidential electors can be required to honor their state's instructions to vote for the candidate who wins the state's popular vote. In many presidential elections, several members of the electoral college - "faithless electors," detractors call them - have voted for other candidates. States had urged the court to decide the issue now, while it is unclear how a ruling would affect a specific candidate in the fall elections. The court will hear arguments in a case that it did not reach agreement on last term, when it was heard by eight justices. It concerns whether much of Oklahoma should still be considered part of an Indian reservation, an issue with broad implications on how crimes there are prosecuted. And it has scheduled two cases of importance to religious conservatives. One concerns which employees of religious schools are exempt from federal anti-discrimination laws, and the other involves an employer's responsibility to provide women with birth control access under the Affordable Care Act. Beyond those, the court has heard argument, but not ruled, on other major cases: a challenge to a Louisiana abortion law; whether federal laws protecting workers apply to LGBT employees; and whether the Trump administration moved unlawfully to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects those brought illegally to the United States as children. Tri-State COVID cases surge, but number falls in Washington County While the number of new COVID-19 cases in the Tri-State area skyrocketed in the past week, the number cooled slightly for Washington County. Destruction: Fires in the Wicklow Mountains over the Easter weekend photographed by the Air Corps Farmers were investigated for more than 400 suspected illegal fires last year and docked support payments in 80 cases. Some farmers use burning to clear gorse and other unwanted vegetation in the run-up to the grazing season. It is illegal between March 1 and August 31 - vital for nesting birds, breeding wildlife and flowering plants - when even what is intended to be controlled burning can quickly get out of hand. Already in the six weeks since this year's ban came into effect, there have been dozens of serious fires across the country with counties Wicklow, Cork, Kerry, Donegal and Louth particularly badly affected. In Kerry, large areas of hillside in Killarney National Park and the Slieve Mish special area of conservation on the Dingle Peninsula have been destroyed. It is not known for sure whether the fires were started for agricultural purposes or through the actions of other countryside users. But it is a recurring problem for the park and many other wild and protected areas with firefighters attending to around 2,200 bog, grassland and forest fires every year. IFA Farm Forestry Chairman Vincent Nally is warning farmers to be vigilant over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend after a Condition Orange High Fire Risk has issued. The warning is to remain in place until Tuesday in all areas, unless there is significant rainfall. He cautioned farmers to be extra vigilant. Some farmers had already suffered financial losses. After such a spell of dry weather, a wildfire risk can quickly develop in areas where flammable vegetation such as grasses, gorse, and heather are present. Vincent Nally said recreational users who are within 2km of a forest will be out this weekend and that sometimes a fire can be started inadvertently. Most fires spread from adjoining land into the forest. Its important that farmers assess the risk to their forest and make sure that their firebreaks are maintained. A firebreak should consist of a six-metre-wide fuel free zone, typically around the boundary of the forest, he said. He encouraged farmers to review their fire plan for their forest, or to prepare a fire plan, especially if your forest is located in a high-risk area. Minister Josepha Madigan, who has responsibility for the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), has issued stern warnings against any activities that would intentionally, accidentally or negligently cause fire. She said last week the "full rigour of the law" would be used against those responsible. However, the statistics tell another story as her department admitted just 10 criminal prosecutions were taken in the last 12 years. Agriculture Minister Michael Creed also warned that farmers found to have burned land during the closed season would be denied money due under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS). His department said: "In 2019, 409 cases of possible illegal burning were examined by the department using satellite imagery and other information. "As a result, payments were withheld in 80 cases. The department is continuing its examination of 2019 cases and is also examining reports of recent fires." Farmers can receive up to 700 per hectare under the BPS depending on productivity, although the average is around 260. Padraic Fogarty of the Irish Wildlife Trust said that anecdotally the BPS sanctions, introduced in 2017, were having some impact but he said more action was needed. "It's nearly impossible to get a prosecution. You nearly have to catch somebody actually setting fire to the place," he said. "Docking payments is a start but we need to be more proactive about conservation and engage more with landowners. "We need to help them figure out new ways of managing the land whether it's re-wilding or high nature value farming. Until that happens I can't see the problem going away." Dr Andrew Jackson, an expert in environmental law at University College Dublin, said wildlife crime was not taken seriously enough. "If anything, the closed period in the Wildlife Act is too short since hen harriers for example may have unfledged chicks in their nests on the ground until late September." He said while prosecution data was sparse, it appeared there had been just one prosecution for wildfires since 2012 and while another was pending, it related mainly to damage to residential property. "What about the hundreds of other fires every year during the closed period, decimating wildlife and endangering lives?" he said. "The fact this is still happening, even with our emergency services so stretched, has really caused particular outrage this year." By PTI DUBAI: Saudi Arabia has asked people to perform the special 'taraweeh' prayers at their homes during the month of Ramazan in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a media report. Saudi Arabia last month suspended congregational prayers across all mosques in the country, except for the two grand mosques in Mecca and Medina where only staff members are allowed to enter inside the premises. "The suspension of performing the five daily prayers at mosques is more important than the suspension of taraweeh prayers," Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs Dr Abdul Latif Al Sheikh was quoted as saying by the Al Riyadh newspaper on Sunday. CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES "We ask Allah the Almighty to accept taraweeh prayers whether held at mosques, or homes, which we think is better for people's health. "We ask Allah the Almighty to accept prayers from all of us and protect humanity from this epidemic that hit the entire world," Al Sheikh added. Taraweeh prayers are performed by Muslims at night during Ramazan, which will start later this month. Millions across the world, including India, perform the taraweeh prayers at mosques during the month of Ramazan. In several Arab countries, the 'azaan' (call for prayer) has been amended in the wake of pandemic and now it urges people to pray in their homes. Last month, the Grand Imam Shaikh of Egypt's Jamia Al Azhar, an authority on Islamic injunctions, and the Supreme Council in Egypt, said that public gatherings, including congregational prayers at mosques, could result in spread of coronavirus and the governments of Muslim countries had full jurisdiction to cancel such events. It also remains unclear if the annual Haj pilgrimage will be held this year, amid the coronavirus pandemic which has killed more than 110,000 people and infected nearly 19 lakh others worldwide so far. The Saudi minister also said that in line with the instructions and precautions issued by the Ministry of Health and relevant authorities, five to six people from a deceased's family are allowed to perform funeral prayers for the dead. "This is a precaution in line with the prohibition of gatherings, so that funeral prayers take place at cemeteries should not exceed five to six of the deceased's relatives, and the rest pray at their homes," he said. Saudi Arabia, which reported 4,462 COVID-19 cases and 59 deaths till Sunday, has extended a nationwide curfew until further notice due to the spread of the deadly disease. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-12 23:57:19|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at a gala dinner held by the U.S.-China Business Council in Washington D.C., the United States, on Dec. 4, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) "Let's work together to respond to this global crisis, to save people's lives, to save the future of global economy, and to save the future of the global community. This is our paramount task," said Chinese Ambassador to the United States. WASHINGTON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has urged a new and effective global governance system, closer Sino-U.S. cooperation to better combat the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that all countries should also reject any attempts to politicize the rapidly-spreading disease. A new and effective global governance system is yet to be built to cope with a crisis of the magnitude of the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Cui said in an interview on April 3 with Ian Bremmer at weekly digital and broadcast show Gzero World, which was aired nationally on Saturday by American Public Television. "If we aim at a new system of international governance that is open, inclusive, that is based on mutual respect among all countries, on the full recognition of the diversity of culture, civilization, political system, economic system, if we can do this, then I think all the things are ready for us to build a new and effective international governance system. We have to make the right choice now," he noted. Workers work overtime to produce seam sealing equipment for protective clothes at the workshop of Nawon Machinery Co., Ltd. in Jimo District of Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, April 11, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) The world have had a number of crises in this 21st century, maybe starting with the 9/11 terror attack , then the financial crisis, and now this COVID-19 virus, i.e. the security challenges, the financial instability and now public health, according to the ambassador. "If we can still call this a wakeup call, I think we should have woken up long time ago, but still, if we have not started yet, we have to start real efforts to build a good international governance system for the 21st century, for the future," he said, adding big countries including the U.S. and China have great responsibilities in spearheading the efforts. The United States and China have to facilitate bilateral cooperation on combating COVID-19 to save the future of the global community, the ambassador noted. "Let's work together to respond to this global crisis, to save people's lives, to save the future of global economy, and to save the future of the global community. This is our paramount task," Cui said. "This is the time for solidarity and cooperation," said Cui. "Let's concentrate on the positive things. Let's focus on our common interests and mutual needs," he noted. The Chinese envoy listed three things to which the embassy gives priority "at this critical moment" as COVID-19 is ravaging the world. The first is to facilitate cooperation between the two countries to combat the virus, in particular medical supplies and technical cooperation between governmental and research institutions. Secondly, good efforts should be made to stabilize global market, boost global economic growth, and protect people's jobs and livelihood. The third is to ensure a supportive public opinion for cooperation between the two countries. On the economic front, there is "an even greater need for closer and more effective global cooperation" as COVID-19 has disrupted the global supply chain, Cui stressed. "This pandemic proves again this is a global challenge. The virus recognizes no national boundaries, no difference in political system, in culture, in religion whatsoever. It attacks all of us the same way. So there is an even greater need for closer and more effective global cooperation," said Cui, responding to a question concerning stability of the global supply chain under the threat of the virus. "The process of globalization was driven by economic efficiency and technology," he said. "If there is anything wrong with the past process of globalization, I think we have to make it more open, inclusive, with more equitable distribution of benefits for everybody." Cui noted that China has been doing its best to restore the supply chain and to resume production, especially medical supplies. "We are also working with other countries to make sure the global supply chain will function again," he said. " Moreover, the ambassador called on all countries to prioritize people's life and health, as well as reject any attempts to politicize the pandemic. "We really have to put people's lives and health first. This is the most important thing for us to do. And we should do it at any cost." Healthcare workers wheel a patient into the emergency room of BronxCare Hospital Center in the Bronx borough of New York, the United States, April 11, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) "We really have to reject any attempt at taking political advantage of other people's sufferings," he said, adding "unfortunately, there are still elements here, maybe elsewhere in the world, who are making such an attempt." "I think people have to give serious thinking to what is a real threat for all of us. What is our real enemy? And where lies our common interest? How we should respond globally together to such global challenges?" Cui stressed. Noting "this is a huge crisis for all of us," the ambassador dismissed the allegations of some Western politicians that China got a political agenda in helping other countries fight the virus. "What is driving our action right now is our understanding that we're all part of the community," he said. "China cannot be safe from the virus if all the other countries are still struggling ... in a sense, we are also helping ourselves by helping others." Cui also refuted the accusations by some U.S. politicians and media outlets that China concealed the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak. "For the accusations that China is hiding the numbers, just think about it, we have such a huge population, such a big country, you cannot hide the cases of a very vicious virus, because if you have patients, they are just patients. If people are infected, they're just infected. How can you hide them?" Cui said. The fact is that China started daily briefing to the press "in the very early stage of this crisis," he said, adding that China even publicized all the possible treatments. "We keep updating it, from time to time, including how to use traditional Chinese medicine to treat the patients. We made it public, all this information, all our experience," he noted. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine tablets are shown in at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute in Marseille, France, on Feb. 26, 2020. (Gerard Julien/AFP via Getty Images) Chloroquine Study Involving High Dosage Partially Halted Over Risk of Complications Half of a study in Brazil exploring how COVID-19 patients reacted to different levels of chloroquine was stopped because of potential safety hazards, researchers said. The double-blinded study was meant to assess the safety and effectiveness of two different chloroquine dosages in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at Hospital e Pronto-Socorro Delphina Rinaldi Abdel Aziz in Manaus. Patients in one group received 600 milligrams of the drug daily for 10 days while another group was getting 450 milligrams for five days, twice daily for the first day and once daily for the following days. All patients also received azithromycin, an antibiotic, along with chloroquine, which has traditionally been used against malaria, lupus, and several other illnesses. Out of 440 patients identified, 81 hospitalized patients were enrolled. About half were given the high dosage and the others were given the lower dosage. Researchers said they began noticing heart issues in patients taking the higher dose within three days and by the sixth day, 11 patients had died, prompting the premature halting of that arm. High dosage of chloroquine in critically-ill patients with COVID-19 needs to be stopped now, Marcus Lacerda, one of the researchers, who works at the Fundacao de Medicina Tropical, told The Epoch Times in an email. Researchers wrote in the study that preliminary findings suggest against high dosage of chloroquine because of its potential safety hazards, adding, Such results forced us to prematurely halt patient recruitment to this arm. This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (round magenta objects), which the Epoch Times refers to as the CCP virus, emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. (NIAID-RML) The lower-dosage arm of the study is still ongoing, Lacerda confirmed. The article is preprint and has not been peer reviewed. It was submitted to JAMA on Monday. Chloroquine and the closely related hydroxychloroquine have been widely touted as effective against COVID-19 across multiple countries but some recent research suggests the need for doctors to be cautious in what doses they give and which patients they choose to treat with the unproven treatments. Dozens of heart incidents were linked to hydroxychloroquine in patients given the drug, French officials said last week. Little research has come out yet for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine but preprint studies in France and at least one study in China suggested the drugs can be effective against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus. Multiple clinical trials are ongoing in the United States and other countries. South Dakota announced Monday it was launching the first state-wide trial of hydroxychloroquine in the nation and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said initial results from a study there are expected next month. C hinese telecoms company Huawei has defended its role in the development of 5G in the UK and said disrupting its involvement would "do Britain a disservice". The move comes after a Tory backbench attack on the companys involvement in the rollout of the advanced system in the UK. The telecoms giant has said it would be a disservice to the UK if it was stopped from being involved in the new generation of data networks, according to reports. Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images Some Tory MPs raised concerns about security issues if the Chinese firm is involved in the UK's 5G rollout. But Huawei said it was keen to keep British people connected during the coronavirus outbreak. In an open letter, Huaweis UK chief Victor Zhang said that there had been a 50 per cent increase in home data use during the course of the virus outbreak in the UK. MPs' Bid To Ban Huawei From UK 5G Network After 2022 Defeated Mr Zhang said the coronavirus crisis has highlighted how many people are "stuck in a digital slow lane", warning that excluding the company from a future role in 5G would be a mistake. He wrote: There are those who choose to continue to attack us without presenting any evidence. Disrupting our involvement in the 5G rollout would do Britain a disservice. The Government has stated that Huawei would be limited to a 35 per cent involvement in the rollout of 5G in the UK. The letter from Huawei comes after three mobile phone masts were set alight in Birmingham, Liverpool and Belfast after conspiracy theories blaming 5G for the spread of coronavirus gained traction on social media. GMR Airports Limited, a subsidiary of Limited, on Monday announced that it has received the letter of award (LoA) for the development and operations of green-field International airport at Bhogapuram in Andhra Pradesh. The state government had proposed the green-field airport at Bhogapuram in Vizianagaram district as an alternative to the existing airport in Visakhapatnam. In February 2019, the company had emerged as the highest bidder for project on a public private partnership basis. ALSO READ: Shortage of workers in clearing cargo clogs airports, ports, railways The project involves design, build, finance, construction, development, up-gradation, modernisation, operation and maintenance of the Bhogapuram Airport for the period of 40 years, extendable by additional 20 years through international competitive bidding process, with GMR Airport Limited having the right of right refusal of 10 per cent. In the calendar year 2019, the existing civil enclave at Visakapatnam Naval Airfield handled 2.78 million passengers and 4,400 tonnes of cargo. Over the past five years the passenger traffic at the Vizag airport has grown at 21 per cent CAGR while the airport ranked fifth among the custom airports in India in terms of cargo traffic. The proposed airport site lies on the border of Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram districts, and is approximately 45 kms from the port city. "We are very happy to be partnering with government of Andhra Pradsh to develop, operator and manage the prestigious Bhogapuuram International Airport. We are excited about the potential of this region," GMR Airports Limited chairman GBS Raju said. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Get to know Cleveland Indians right-hander Lenny Torres, who lives in Beacon, N.Y., and is the 23rd-ranked prospect in the Indians farm system. Name: Lenny Torres. Pos.: RHP. Age: 19. Height/weight: 6-1, 195. Bats/throws: R/R Draft: The Indians had four picks in the first two rounds in the 2018 draft. Torres was their third pick and the 41st player taken overall. They were awarded the pick via Round A of the Competitive Balance lottery between the first and second rounds. 2019: Torres did not pitch last season after undergoing Tommy John surgery on his right elbow on May 15. He started feeling discomfort in the elbow during spring training and the Indians shut him down. After agreeing to an under-slot $1.35 million signing bonus, Torres, from Beacon (N.Y.) High School, appeared in six games for the Indians rookie club in Arizona in 2018. He made six appearances, including five starts, striking out 22 and walking four in 15 1/3 innings. Outlook: Torres is a hard-throwing converted shortstop. He threw between 92 mph and 96 mph before his injury, topping out at 98 mph. He was rehabbing this spring in Goodyear, Ariz., from his 2019 surgery when camp was shut down on March 12 because of the coronavirus. The good thing is that Torres is still young and has a chance to quickly put the Tommy John surgery in his rear view mirror. In May, it will be a year since the surgery. It usually takes 12 to 15 months to recover from Tommy John surgery. The first two picks the Indians made in 2018 were catcher Bo Naylor and right-hander Ethan Hankins, another high school right-hander who slipped in the draft because of right shoulder problems. Hankins made only two appearances in 2018, but last year posted a 2.55 ERA in 14 games, including 13 starts, at Class A Mahoning Valley and Class A Lake County. So youth is on Torres side. Some reports say Torres is too small to handle the workload of a big-league starter and may have to move to the bullpen. Hes 6-1 and is pushing 200 pounds after adding weight during his rehab. 2020: Torres will continue to rehab and could see game action in the second half of the year. He would probably return to the Arizona Rookie League, providing there is a minor league season and he doesnt have a setback. Buy Indians gear: Fanatics, Nike, Amazon, Lids More Indians coverage MLB considering playing 2020 season in Arizona, Florida with radical realignment Can Delino DeShields Jr. take Indians from good to great at baserunning in 2020? What to expect from Delino DeShields for the Cleveland Indians in 2020 Jake Bauers went back to square one in the offseason; will it make a difference for Indians in 2020? Will MLB teams that train in Florida be at a disadvantage if all games take place in Arizona? (podcast) Will the Indians try to extend closer Brad Hands contract? Hey, Hoynsie! A bad omen and a new beginning: On this day in Cleveland Indians history No. 22 Sam Hentges, LHP: Cleveland Indians top prospects right now Would Mark McGwires Bud me homer reach the bleachers at Municipal Stadium? Hey, Hoynsie! What to expect from Jake Bauers for the Indians in 2020 Heres how some MLB players are staying ready during the coronavirus shutdown (podcast) Can Tyler Naquin remain platoon-proof for the Cleveland Indians in 2020? No. 24 Nick Sandlin, RHP: Cleveland Indians top prospects right now Theres logic behind MLBs 2020 Arizona plan, but the coronavirus will have final say April 13 : Ajay Devgn shares a video saluting TRUCK DRIVERS: The Unsung Heroes for their unconditional support during COVID-19 pandemic. No doubt, Corona has brought the world to a standstill, but it has also brought a sense of unity amongst the people of the world that we are all together in this and we shall fight this one together. Actor Ajay Devgn shares a video saluting the truck drivers who are the unsung heroes amid this crisis as they are delivering the essentials from one place to another by risking their lives. Singham actor shared the video on twitter and gave a thumbs up to the efforts of all the truck drivers. It is a sincere effort by Mahindra Trucks and Bus to thank and salute our truck drivers for their continuous support to the country. The description to the video says, "Sadak ke Sipahi, The Unsung Heroes. While we are at home, our truck drivers are out there, making sure that the essentials are delivered to us on time. #MahindraTrucksAndBus salutes and thanks #SadakKeSipahi who are always there for us, no matter what! #IndiaFightsCorona" Prior to this, Ajay Devgn thanked the Mumbai police with a heartfelt message for their contribution in fighting Covid-19. He wrote, "Dear Mumbai Police, you are known as one of the Best in the world. Your Contribution to the COVID-19 Pandemic is unparalleled. Singham will wear his khakee and stand beside you whenever you ask. Jai Hind, Jai Maharashtra" During this difficult time, our celebrities are doing their best and coming ahead to support each and every cause that is helping India fights Corona. Their contribution at this point of time is praiseworthy! Manitoban communities along the Red River basin are doing their best to weather a different storm amid the COVID-19 crisis. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Manitoban communities along the Red River basin are doing their best to weather a different storm amid the COVID-19 crisis. As forecasted, the river is rising toward flood levels, beginning in North Dakota, where the northward flow is anticipated to crest at most points over the week. At Pembina, N.D., the Red is expected to reach 48.17 feet by 11 a.m. today; by Wednesday, it's forecasted to surpass 49 feet, entering into the major flood stage. On the Canadian side of the border, the flow is generally projected to slightly exceed levels from spring 2019, but the typical reality of co-ordinating flood protection now encompasses physical distancing and pandemic control. The Rural Municipality of Montcalm, about 80 kilometres south of Winnipeg, is no stranger to spring flooding: the region is abutted by the Red to the east, and certain portions also straddle the Roseau River. It's not unusual for area residents to ponder evacuating for their self-protection as water encroaches. This year, however, the rising water levels coincided with provincial directives to stay home. Montcalm Reeve Paul Gilmore said for at least eight residences, that declaration had to be amended: on Sunday, the RM declared a local state of emergency to evacuate those residents safely. The homes along Provincial Road 246 and St. Mary's Road are protected by dikes, Gilmore said, although the roads in front of them have become overwhelmed by overflow. "Our main concern is (in the case of an emergency), they'd have no exit out," he said over the phone Monday. While waiting out the flood, the residents of those homes around 15, Gilmore said are hunkering down in motels in Altona and Winnipeg, where the Red's levels are forecast to peak at 19-19.5 feet between April 17 and 20. Other communities in the basin are expecting river levels to peak in the coming days, too. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. At St. Adolphe, the Red was at 758.58 feet, with a peak of as high as 764.8 expected April 20-25; St. Agathe's level sat at 763.8 Monday, and is forecasted to reach a peak of 768-769.4 feet next week. In Emerson, the levels sat at 786.38 Monday afternoon, and are forecasted to reach 789.7 slightly lower than the peak of 790.3 the community faced in the spring flood of 2011. On Saturday, the reeve of Emerson-Franklin said the flood situation should be manageable. Much the same for the Town of Morris, Mayor Scott Crick said. The community is fully contained within a ring dike, so Crick said he's "guardedly optimistic" about the town's prospects. However, a key concern for Morris, as well as other rural communities, is how the floods will affect roads, and therefore, access to goods and services during the novel coronavirus pandemic. In North Dakota, the government is advising any motorists who encounter a washed-out road or highway to turn around; Manitoba continues to advise motorists avoid all non-essential travel. ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca A relentless line of tornadoes battered the Chattanooga area Sunday night sending 21 people to Erlanger Hospital, demolishing dozens of homes, leaving a number of people entrapped, and causing other extensive property damage and widespread power outages. Two Hamilton County residents have died from the storm. One was 29-year-old Raffell Jenkins, who was in bed in a house on Wilcox Boulevard at home with his children and girlfriend when a tree fell on the bedroom. Erlanger Health System officials said the 21 patients were treated at three Erlanger emergency departments since the overnight storms. Many individuals suffered broken bones and laceration injuries from collapsed buildings and fallen trees. Erlanger Baroness Hospital received 15 patients. Childrens Hospital at Erlanger treated one patient. Five patients were treated at Erlanger East Hospital. Fire officials said there were approximately 17 injuries, the majority of which were trauma-related, and 150 structures were damaged, both residential and commercial. Beginning Monday night, law enforcement officers were being placed at intersections of the hardest-hit areas and only confirmed residents will be allowed in between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. There was widespread tornado damage in East Brainerd as well as a number of other sections of town. Grace Baptist Academy was especially hard hit with all buildings on campus heavily damaged. The second story and roof of the high school building were demolished and the main school building at the front also had substantial damage. A school sign was blown half a mile down the road into a house. Five people died in storms in Murray County, Ga., and a tornado was reported to have touched down at Halls Valley Road at Trion, Ga., leaving extensive property damage. A storm victims family reunification center was opened at the Hamilton YMCA on Shallowford Road. It was originally to be at Grace Baptist Church, 7816 Shallowford Road, but it suffered extensive roof damage. Hamilton County EMS also was responding on a number of gas leaks and flooding situations. Fire officials said, "The Chattanooga Fire Department is responding to hundreds of calls stemming from severe weather, including damaged structures and houses and reports of people trapped in their homes. We have shifted resources to the East Brainerd area and called in extra, off-duty personnel. Our crews are working to get to these scenes, dealing with downed trees and power lines. "We have firefighters on foot and using ATVs going door to door in different subdivisions, including neighborhoods on Igou Gap Road, Gray Road, and Jenkins Road- just to name a few locations. Several people have been transported with injuries. We are working to get to more than 300 addresses and we are seeing heavy damage. "Our Urban Search and Rescue teams and Special Operations Division are assisting the fire companies on the ground. A unified command post has been set up at the Lowes on Gunbarrel Road to coordinate response efforts. "Areas hit have multiple collapses, injuries, trees down, gas leaks, and power lines down. Crews are working as quickly and as efficiently as possible to help those in need while mitigating hazards. This will be a prolonged operation. "We appreciate the assistance of EPB, CPD, Hamilton County EMS, Puckett EMS, Yates Towing & Recovery, Public Works and NABCO Electric." EMS responded on collapsed buildings at: 8395 Community Place, 1009 Gillespie Road, 1725 Gray Road, 6976 Tiffany Lane, 8306 Pine Ridge Road, 2225 Peterson Drive, 2410 Hickory Ridge Drive, 3401 Campbell Street, 4037 Smith Lane, 4220 Old Woodland Drive, 2318 Bending Oak Drive, 10 Woodvale Ave., 8102 Holly Crest Drive, 2803 St. Lawrence Road, 4227 Green Shanty Road, 2027 Merlin Drive, 3512 Cathy Lane, 8249 Standifer Gap Road, 8830 Pebble Creek Road, 8081 Angie Drive, 8116 Fallen Maple Drive, 1097 North Sanctuary Road, 5601 Old Mission Road, 7634 Hurricane Loop, 2509 Sharron Drive, 6953 Glen Errol Way, North Willow Street at Oak Street, 2709 Autumn Chase Drive, 7922 Bill Reed Road, 7839 Shale Street, 8300 Harvest Oak Lane, 2883 Old Britain Circle, 7933 Shallowmeade Lane, 6736 Harbor Terrace, 2804 Wind Thrush Drive, 4044 East Freedom Circle, 7844 Legacy Park Court, 7549 Stephen Lane, 4187 Auburn Hills Drive, 825 Mount Belvoir Drive, 4000 Brock Road, 1772 Holly Oak Lane, 8341 Community Place, 2426 Jenkins Road, and 4015 Shady Oak Drive, 7510 Shallowford Road, 2517 Kimberly Ann Lane, 5057 Little Debbie Parkway, 1715 Gray Road, 2604 Tunnel Blvd., 2400-2409 Tunnel Blvd., 8210 Bill Reed Road, 3982 Buckner Lane, 3959 Auburn Hills Drive, 4221 Old Woodland Drive, 1012 Roselawn Drive, 4124 Pittman Lane, 8088 Birch Drive, 3930 Rhinehart Road, 8007 Holly Hills Drive, 2603 Allison Drive, 6101 Lottie Lane, 3936 Rhinehart Road, 7719 Shallowford Road, 4719 Pawnee Trail, 8163 Pine Crest Drive, 8202 Cicero Trail, 4856 Patten Town Road, 6127 Shadyway Lane, 4612 Dusty Trail Lane, 2815 Hidden Trail Lane, 2422 Hickory Ridge Drive, 4916 Pine Circle, 4218 Shady Oak Drive, 2502 Maplewood Drive, 213 Shawnee Trail, 8112 Angie Drive, 2325 Peterson Drive, 7301 East Brainerd Road, 2707 Autumn Chase Drive, 8250 Clipper Drive, 3340 Pinewood Ave., 8008 Birch Drive, 7755 Igou Gap Road, 3604 Whitehead Ave., 8080 Angie Drive, 5245 Lomnick Drive, 2021 Jenkins Road, 2013 Galahad Road, 4127 Lost Oaks Drive, 2515 Kimberly Ann Lane, 3604 Wilcox Blvd., 919 Charlotte Ave., 8734 Holly Crest Drive, 7114 Jarnigan Road, 4217 Patten Town Road, 2821 Bent Oak Drive, 1849 Daylong Place, 7817 Laurelton Drive, 2209 Peterson Drive, 8111 Holly Crest Drive, 8273 Elbe Drive, 6802 Glover Road, 2329 Jenkins Road, 7845 Safari Drive, 121 Andie Lane, 607 Clarendon Street, 4504 Woodland Drive, 9030 Pineview Place, 8258 Thoroughbred Drive, 2514 Jeffery Drive, 7711 Legends Way, 7932 Shallowmeade Lane, 8680 Belleau Woods Drive, 8107 Standifer Gap Road, 1618 Bush Road, 8205 Hollycrest Drive, 7807 Shinnecock Trail, 1004 Roselawn Drive, 8200-8245 Thoroughbred Drive, 9300 Messenger Lane, 1004 Roselawn Drive, 4491 Palemino Drive, 7620 Shallowford Road, 8504 Jameson Lane, 4015 Patten Town Road, 4016 Patten Town Road, 2335 Jennifer Drive, 7841 Avalon Acres Court, 2423 Baskette Way, Jenkins Road at Batters Place Road, 8113 Holly Hills Drive, 2876 Old Britain Circle, 1614 Gray Road, 2300 Peterson Drive, 2403 Jenkins Road, 1946 Jenkins Road, 4653 Dusty Trail Lane, 2403 Jenkins Road, 1810 Richmond Lane, 1805 Gray Road, 24 Frawley Road, 2500 Sharron Drive, 8126 Holly Crest Drive, 8464 Community Place, 8111 Fallen Maple Road, 4209 Auburn Hills Drive, 4029 Buckner Lane, 7845 Legacy Park Court, 7611 Ziegler Road, 2404 Jenkins Road, 7012 Palermo Drive, 25 Vista Drive, 8135 Fallen Maple Drive, 2501 Allison Drive, 2882 Old Britain Circle, 7815 Dunwoody Drive, 505 Menlo Street, 4166 Auburn Hills Drive, 1804 North Concord Road, 4049 Auburn Hills Drive, 7318 Haven Hill Lane, 8189 Bill Reed Road, 8109 Bill Reed Road, 8107 Standifer Gap Road, 1811 Terri Lynn Drive, 440 South Crest Road, 9065 Emerywood Trail, 1812 Terri Lynn Drive, 7815 Dunwoody Drive, 8005 Batters Place Road, 2507 Jeffery Drive, 2032 Gallahad Road, 304 North St. Marks Ave., 2200 Launcelot Road, 7951 Batters Place Road, 4201 Patten Town Road, 8422 Community Place, 7554 Igou Gap Road, 2212 Launcelot Road, 1316 Joiner Road, 900 Airport Road, and 743 Lanoir Street. It brought significant power outages to East Brainerd as well as East Ridge. North Chattanooga and Brainerd both had significant power outages. Ooltewah-Collegedale had moderate outages. There were scattered outages along South Broad Street. A family in Brainerd said they huddled in a hallway as they heard winds roaring overhead and trees falling outside. They afterward went out and saw a number of trees down, including a large one across the street. At a house near I-75 and the East Brainerd exit, a family raced to the basement just before their house was struck. They had extensive damage to the kitchen area. A significant storm cell reportedly hit the Bradley County area. First Responder agencies from Hamilton County continued to work rescue efforts throughout the night. Mutual Aid agencies for law enforcement were sent from Meigs, McMinn and Rhea counties. Hamilton County EMS transported 14 patients to local hospitals. Additional ambulance services assisted HCEMS with patient transports - Puckett EMS, Erlanger EMS, Ambu bus, Amerimed EMS, Lifeguard EMS and Meigs County EMS. An additional 15 units from the Tennessee Highway Patrol were assisting with search and rescue efforts. Strike teams from surrounding counties will be assisting Chattanooga Fire Department and Hamilton County Volunteer Fire Departments. These strike teams consisted of the following fire departments: Knoxville, Rural Metro, Karnes, Upper Cumberland, Putnam County, Crossville, Smithville and White County. Chattanooga Gas officials said, "Chattanooga Gas employees are on the ground coordinating with first responders following severe weather striking communities near Hamilton and Bradley counties. Based on initial inspections, we have already identified and repaired one damaged gas main, and we are working to safely and efficiently determine how many customer service lines and meters also require repairs. Throughout this process, our employees will continue to practice social distancing and, when necessary, wear personal protective equipment as part of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We encourage customers who suspect a natural gas leak to call 911 or the Chattanooga Gas 24-hour emergency phone line at 866-643-4170 from a safe location. Do not operate any machinery or equipment that might cause a spark or create an open flame." Walnut Avenue in Dalton was closed between Lester Avenue and Airport Road near the Dalton Mall due to storm damage to a large utility pole. The pole is unstable and needs to be replaced. The Dalton Police Department expects Walnut Avenue to remain closed near the mall through the morning commute so drivers should plan alternate routes. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann said, "Our area was just dealt a terrible blow, with many businesses and individuals already struggling to deal with the effects of COVID-19, we now have the added challenge of rebuilding after devastating tornadoes. In the face of adversity, we always come together to help our neighbors, no one in this community is alone in their struggle. My staff and I stand ready, at every step of the way, to help our community get back on its feet. ALEPPO The Syrian opposition coalition announced a set of sanctions that will be taken against opposition members and leaders found to be involved in smuggling people and goods from border crossings and smuggling corridors along the lines of contact with the Syrian regime and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Aleppo countryside. The coalition, which is affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said in an April 7 statement that any person who is proven to be involved in facilitating, covering up for or participating in smuggling operations shall be dismissed from the [Turkish-backed FSA] and referred to the military judiciary. According to the statement, anyone who is caught crossing the lines of contact with the regime and the SDF shall be handed over to the military police and then referred to the oppositions military court. The opposition also called on reinforcing the teams on duty at the crossings to prevent the entry of people and goods, whatever the reasons. In its statement, the opposition further called for reinforcing security on the fronts along the entire lines of contact, stopping any individuals trying to infiltrate opposition areas and setting ambushes in areas likely to be used by smugglers to sneak in people and goods. The opposition had announced on March 17 the closure of the Hamran crossing, which connects the northern countryside of Aleppo to the SDF-controlled city of Manbij in the eastern countryside, as well as the Aoun al-Dadat crossing that connects to the SDF areas. The decisions to close the crossings came amid fears that the coronavirus might reach the area. The Syrian regime has so far confirmed 19 cases of the virus in its areas of control. The oppositions decisions to close the crossings in March also came against the backdrop of warnings by the opposition-affiliated North Free Doctors Syndicate against the dangers of the continued smuggling of people and goods through the crossings. On April 6, the North Free Doctors Syndicate issued another statement calling on the opposition to follow up on the smuggling issue and stand firmly against these violations that threaten the security of 4 million people in northwestern Syria. The new measures came amid repeated popular demands in northwestern Syria to implement the previous decisions the opposition had announced regarding the closure of the crossings, which continued to operate regardless. The FSA factions were accused of overlooking said decision, as the three crossings in opposition-held areas Aoun al-Dadat, Hamran and Abu al-Zandeen continued to operate, and smugglers close to the factions continued to smuggle goods and people. Firas Mawlla, an activist in Aleppos countryside who works with local media sites whose names he did not mention, told Al-Monitor, The [FSA] leaders bear responsibility for the risks involved in not closing crossings and smuggling corridors, and if this chaos continues, the consequences will be dire. Opposition areas are full of camps packed with displaced people, and they are not medically eligible to deal with the pandemic. Journalist Farid Abu Yamen, who lives in the countryside of Aleppo and did not mention with which media outlet he works, told Al-Monitor, Smugglers and operators of crossings must be stopped; otherwise, the pandemic will make its way and a disaster will occur, as we will have to see our relatives and friends die. Opposition coalition official Abdul Rahman Mustafa told Al-Monitor, The [opposition-led] government will deal with the issue of internal crossings in a serious and rapid manner. We issued warnings about our zero tolerance with smuggling attempts and violating the relevant decisions due to the extreme danger keeping these crossings operating poses. Mustafa added, Several obstacles are hindering the complete success in controlling smuggling, but we are working to gradually avoid them. The liberated [opposition] areas are vast and the lines of contact with other areas are long, and the complete control of these lines requires great human and technical resources. It is noteworthy that no coronavirus cases have so far been recorded in northwest Syria, the opposition-led government reported on April 8. Meanwhile, the opposition announced on April 3 a general amnesty for crimes committed before April 1. The decision stated that the amnesty removes the entire sentences for perpetrators of misdemeanors, wrongdoings and prisoners over the age of 70 and those with terminal illnesses. The amnesty decision issued by the opposition in northwestern Syria coincides with the outbreak of the coronavirus in most countries of the world, as several countries have released their detainees, fearing that the virus could spread in prisons. On April 4, Anadolu Agency quoted Mustafa as saying, The [opposition-led] government has issued a general amnesty in order to reduce overcrowding in prisons, as part of the measures taken to contain the outbreak of the coronavirus. A Montgomery County distillery has found a way to help make and sell liquid hand sanitizer, which will be available for purchase this weekend in Conroe. People call us every day looking for hand sanitizer because the word is out that distilleries can make hand sanitizer, Bartletts Distillery Owner Van Bracken said. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Coronavirus live updates: Houston using private companies to test for COVID-19 One of those calls came from the Cleveland-based company, Mission Chemical, that already makes hand sanitizer in large quantities and sells it in bulk, including 265-gallon tote tanks and 55-gallon drums. But it does not have the license to receive pure ethanol. They reached out to Bartletts Distillery, which opened in Conroe in 2018 at 1303 Beach Airport Road, needing immediate temporary assistance to help get the alcohol and make the hand sanitizer. MORE FROM MEAGEN ELLSWORTH: Many Conroe businesses shift gears amid coronavirus Without a distillery license you are not allowed to receive ethanol that is drinkable, but we are because we are licensed as a distillery, Bracken said. That also meant that Bracken would have a source to connect to hand sanitizer to be able to purchase it from the company to repackage and sell it by the gallon at the distillery for customers. Mutually beneficial It would be a mutually beneficial option for the distillery that has also felt the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, including having a challenge getting the raw materials to keep making rum and whiskey and orders closing bars and restaurants that shut down the tasting room that is normally open on the weekends. Everybody has been calling us asking for and sanitizer. Since we havent been in production making a whole lot of alcohol, we really couldnt make any, Bracken said noting even selling mixed drinks to go was a tiny fracture of what the business normally sees. SIMPLE FIX: How to make your own hand sanitizer For about a week, he with the help of his wife and a worker processed about 10 trucks, which is about 60,000 gallons. The trucks would arrive with the alcohol which the distillery would denature by adding Isopropyl alcohol, which Bracken compared to adding a tank of rubbing alcohol to tone down the alcohol content. When a tanker truck rolls up youre talking about 6,500 gallons of alcohol thats at 199-proof, which is almost pure ethanol. Its drinkable and could probably make, Bracken said before pausing to calculate. Thats about 70,000 bottles of Vodka, basically the equivalent of it, per truck. By essentially adding rubbing alcohol, the ethanol would not be drinkable and the not subject to the Federal Alcohol Excise Tax. He estimated the amount of about 70,000 bottles of alcohol would be worth about $150,000 in tax to federal government if it is drinkable. After its denatured its no longer worth that amount, he said. How it works The process only takes the distillery about 30-45 minutes to process and basically involves a forklift and draining a tote tank of the rubbing alcohol. But, for his part as a distillery he has to do the paperwork that registers the amount of alcohol into the inventory and then takes it back out for denaturing so that it is accounted for legally, he said. While the company now has another source, Bartletts new connection to the company has made it possible for him to sell hand sanitizer at the distillery in Conroe. ON RENEW HOUSTON: Need help? Want to volunteer? Heres Houstons COVID-19 resource guide He began selling one-gallon jugs with a limit of two per household on Friday and Saturday for $40 each. Over the two-day period, he saw approximately 50-60 people and sold about 80-90 one-gallon jugs that he said are recommended by the World Health Organization, approved by the FDA and 80 percent ethanol with peroxide and glycerol added to it. The distillery still has bottles of rum and whiskey available for sell, including single malt, silver rum, gold rum, dark rum, and the most popular, spiced rum. He is considering offering mixed drinks again and the products are also available at some Specs stores, including on Loop 336 in Conroe behind Academy, and Total Wine. Conroe resident and Navy Veteran Elise Cook, who worked at a hospital in the past and has been making masks, rolled up to the distillery on Saturday. I think it is amazing because I have been looking for hand sanitizer for weeks, Cook said. I am almost all out and it really helps me when I go to the gas station to be able to clean my hands. Im going to give some to my neighbors, a little for myself, and I have a friend and neighbor who works for the hospital. Ill donate the jug if they need it over there. The distillery has been building its brand since opening, making about a couple of hundred bottles of month, before the pandemic hit. It has the capacity to make 1,000 bottles. Sanitizer sales Bracken will continue selling the hand sanitizer on Friday and Saturday, depending on how well it sells, and currently has about 140-150 gallons of the supply. If people keep buying it then we will keep getting it and bringing it in, at least until this crisis is over, Bracken said hoping for it to be over and to get back to business soon. If a large organization or agency, such a fire department or police department, is interested in purchasing the hand sanitizer in bulk, Bracken said he is able to serve as a middleman to help bring in a drum or tote or connect those interested to the company. We just dont have the manpower to making thousands of gallons of this stuff. For us it is very much a manual process of filling one jug at a time with a little pump, so we have enough to supply for our customers that come through here but if somebody wants a larger quantity of that then we would need to figure something else out, he said. For those who are in a similar situation and seeking an option to denature the alcohol, he is interested in helping. Bracken spent his and his wifes retirement savings to start the business after he was laid off during the downturn in the oil industry, where he worked for over 20 years, including as a mechanical engineer, and spent time talking to good ol boys from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi about distilling moonshine in the backyard. Im happy to be a part of the community and to help, Bracken said shortly after checking a hydrometer while making whiskey and marking the data down in a log of runs. When times are good and people come in, and I help entertain then when something like this comes up its good that Ive found a little way that I can help out. Its nice to be in a position where we can help like that. For more information, check out the distillerys website and social media. mellsworth@hcnonline.com (Natural News) The engineering and release of the coronavirus bioweapon was designed to accomplish two things: 1) Crash the global economy and achieve widespread starvation and depopulation, and 2) Corral the masses into vaccine mandates to achieve what the establishment literally calls herd immunity because you and I are nothing but cattle to them. The Wuhan coronavirus, which we now know was engineered by the very same Wuhan laboratory that was receiving millions of dollars in NIH funding under the Obama administration, is the ultimate dream of depopulation globalists like Bill Gates, as well as his sock puppets Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx who have staged a Big Pharma coup at the White House. This is why its now crucial for humanity to take a stand against the Big Pharma criminal cartel and reject mandatory vaccines. Its time to arrest and prosecute all those engaged in the death science industry thats the real agenda behind the vaccine industry front. The Truth About Vaccines is now a must-see docu-series that reveals stunning truths about vaccines and the globalist agenda that many people are only now beginning to truly understand. Register at this link to watch all the upcoming episodes for free. And read this astonishing story by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Childrens Health Defense: Gates Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsofts ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy. Gates obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology. Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of Indias National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain. In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the countrys Supreme Court. In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSKs experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children. During Gates 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, We are guinea pigs for the drug makers. Nelson Mandelas former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates philanthropic practices as ruthless and immoral. In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, We must make this the decade of vaccines. A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines could reduce population. In 2014, Kenyas Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a tetanus vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade. Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines. A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHOs popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually. Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHOs agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development. The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas. They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe. In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children. Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Childrens Health Defense. CHD is planning many strategies, including legal, in an effort to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those already injured. Your support is essential to CHDs successful mission. For Trump, the focus on the WHO, a U.N. entity, is an attempt to shift some blame from his own early reaction, when he dismissed the virus as no threat to the United States. The president has said he inherited a health system that wasnt up to the task and blamed Democrats and the news media for hyping the threat. But he has never offered a full accounting of what his own administration was doing to protect the country in late 2019 and the first weeks of January, the period before and during the entrance and initial spread of the virus in the United States. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 06:02:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BOGOTA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A group of enterprising young Colombians is developing an economical respirator using parts sold at a local market and 3D printing the rest, amid a global scramble for the medical devices needed to treat victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Our device is made with materials you can get at the market, which makes it very easy to replicate," team member Carlos Morales told Xinhua, saying they were inspired by similar initiatives around the globe. "We are not relying on parts that are exclusively for doctors or only available abroad, and that is a great advantage if you want to be able to make more," said Morales, manager of Abka 3D Printing, adding "we hope to make this device available as an 'open source'." Morales calls the device an "automatic resuscitator," because even though "it helps people who are having trouble breathing ... it is not the same" as a traditional respirator. It comes complete with a computerized system for checking a patient's blood pressure, oxygen levels and other vital signs. It could save hundreds of thousands of dollars, since it costs only 5 million Colombian pesos (about 1,300 U.S. dollars) to build, while a traditional respirator costs between 40,000 and 70,000 U.S. dollars on the international market, said Morales. The team is located in the Colombian city of Cali, in Valle del Cauca department, and has garnered the backing of the Cali Chamber of Commerce, several private regional universities, and a slew of other private and state entities. "The governor of Valle del Cauca, Clara Luz Roldan, donated 50 million pesos (about 13,000 U.S. dollars) so we could finish our research and project as soon as possible," said Morales. While the team has a "working prototype," the device is still very much in development, he said. "We tested it out at the Javeriana University's hospital, and we now have new tasks for improving our device," such as adding a battery in case there is a power outage so the device can keep working, Morales said. Team members hope to have a device ready in two weeks to submit to testing by the Colombia National Food and Drug Surveillance Institute (Invima). Once it passes Invima's testing, "we will begin mass production," said Morales. Colombia had 2,709 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 100 deaths from the disease as of Saturday. (Photo : ALY SONG on Reuters) China Reportedly Deletes Info About Coronavirus; Are They Hiding Something? (Photo : ALY SONG on Reuters) China Reportedly Deletes Info About Coronavirus; Are They Hiding Something? After being the epicenter of the Coronavirus, China is now getting the attention of the world again. Exclusive reports of The Guardian reveal that the Chinese government is taking down current studies related to the virus. The report said that this action is part of China's "controlling the narrative" of the pandemic. China's deleting current Coronavirus researches says report; Here's why According to the report, two recent Chinese academic papers from two leading Chinese universities focusing on Coronavirus were currently taken down by the government. Leading universities in the country like Fudan University and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) have recently published studies on their websites. After a while, the posts were suddenly deleted on their database. The content of the studies, unfortunately, were not identified by The Guardian. However, it was explained that the studies were related to the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As of now, there is still no accurate report of the origin of the virus. Most of the studies, though, point out Wuhan, China, as the place of origin since the first case was found in the province. Researches need the approval of the government to publish studies The main issue revolves around the question: Why would China delete essential studies about the origin of the virus? According to the report, it is a new rule in the country that Chinese academic research papers should be reviewed first by China's Ministry of Science and Technology before publication. No studies will be published in the country if the agency hasn't released approval. "Academic papers on the traceability of the new coronavirus must be reviewed by the academic committee of the school before publication, focusing on the authenticity of the paper and whether it is suitable for publication," as explained by the agency. "After the review is passed, the school reports to the Ministry of Science and Technology, which can only be published after the review by the Ministry of Science and Technology." The two said universities also explained the scenario of removing articles. Both websites said that researches about the virus is a very sensitive topic and needs to be regulated first by the government to prevent panic. "Research on the origins of the virus is particularly sensitive and subject to checks by government officials," said from the notices posted on the websites. China's controlling the narrative of the pandemic Prof Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London, explains why China is doing these restrictions. As said by him, the country has now given priority to the narrative of the pandemic since they are the most affected by the issue. "In terms of priority, controlling the narrative is more important than the public health or the economic fallout," he said. "It doesn't mean the economy and public health aren't important. But the narrative is paramount." Is China hiding something, though? Though there is still no basis on whether China is hiding something about the virus, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that he believes that China was "not truthful" about the outbreak. He said that "if they had been more truthful with the world, which would have enabled them to be more truthful with themselves, they might have actually been able to contain this entirely." For now, though, nothing is still proven right. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. [April 13, 2020] Phoenix American Announces Updated Brand Image and Launch of New Website SAN RAFAEL, Calif., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Phoenix American Financial Services ("Phoenix) announced today the introduction of the company's new brand image coinciding with the launch of its new company website at www.phxa.com. Phoenix, a leading fund administration provider for alternative investment funds, is currently celebrating 48 years of business and sites the unique company history and record of innovation and entrepreneurship as impetus for the refresh of the corporate brand image. Founded in 1972 by Gus Constantin, Phoenix Leasing was the sponsor of a successful series of publicly registered non-traded equipment leasing funds. For over two decades, Phoenix Leasing produced strong returns to investors, supplied essential equipment lease options to businesses, and developed advanced administrative, accounting and reporting capabilities. Phoenix American Financial Services was established in 1982 to leverage the fund administration capabilities of Phoenix Leasing as a full-service fund administrator for fellow alternative fund sponsors. STAR-XMS, Phoenix's proprietary fund administration system, designed to centralize all back office functions, has served since then as the system of record for Phoenix's third party administration services nd is used under license by self-administered investment firms to streamline their back office. Phoenix American SalesFocus Solutions ("SalesFocus) was founded to leverage Phoenix Leasing's marketing automation and sales reporting capability. SalesFocus now supports the sales teams of some of the world's largest asset management firms. The MARS system, SalesFocus' CRM, sales reporting and compliance application, which unlocks actionable business intelligence from sales and transaction data, integrates with all the most widely employed data sources and software providers. The knowledge gained from the equipment leasing business led to the creation of Phoenix Cable in 1990 to acquire, develop and manage cable television systems for subscribers nationwide and agencies of the United States government. Although the principal assets and operations of Phoenix Cable were sold in the early 2000's, the company continues to provide cable television services to the United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With the rapid adoption of the internet as essential business infrastructure in the 1990's, Phoenix FiberLink constructed and managed fiber-optic networks connecting businesses. During the explosive growth of internet startup companies that followed, Resource Phoenix provided outsourced accounting to emerging internet companies while Phoenix Venture Lease supplied capital and equipment financing to such clients as Yahoo and Netscape. In 1993, Phoenix began providing administrative support to the aircraft leasing industry. With the advent of aircraft securitizations, a dedicated division of the company was established to serve this business sector. Today, Phoenix American, including its wholly owned subsidiary, PAFS Ireland, Ltd., is the leading provider of managing agent services to asset-backed securitizations in the commercial aviation and aircraft engine leasing industry. New fund structures, distribution channels, asset classes and technologies mean that back office processes are more complex and subject to more investor and regulatory demands than ever before. Phoenix American's diverse history of innovation and entrepreneurship has primed the company for its role as fund administrator - at the crossroads of sponsors, investors, advisors, platforms and other participants in the alternative fund industry. With this in mind, Phoenix has updated the company brand with a new look that reflects the company's heritage and its timeless values in a changing and competitive investment world. Visit www.phxa.com to learn more. Phoenix American Financial Services, Inc. provides back office outsourcing, fund administration, fund accounting services and sales and marketing reporting to fund companies in the alternative investment industry. The Phoenix American aircraft group, including its Irish subsidiary, PAFS Ireland Limited, provides managing agent services for asset backed securitizations (ABS) in the commercial aircraft and aircraft engine leasing industry. The company is an affiliate of Phoenix American Incorporated along with Phoenix American SalesFocus Solutions. Phoenix American has five offices worldwide, was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in San Rafael, CA. Media contact: David Fisher [email protected] (310) 621-7822 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/phoenix-american-announces-updated-brand-image-and-launch-of-new-website-301039012.html SOURCE Phoenix American Financial Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] European nations call for sticking to restriction measures as British PM continues coronavirus recovery People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 11:31, April 12, 2020 BRUSSELS, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Lots of European countries on Saturday urged the public to stick to restriction measures during the Easter holiday as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson continued his coronavirus recovery in hospital. CONSECUTIVE DROPS Spain and France, which are among the hardest-hit European countries, embraced some signs of hope on Saturday in their fight against the coronavirus. The number of deaths in a 24-hour period from COVID-19 fell for the third consecutive day in Spain, according to data collected by the country's Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare by 21:00 hours on Friday and made public on Saturday. The total number of people who have succumbed to the virus-caused disease in Spain rose by 510 to 16,353, fewer than the 605 new deaths in the previous 24-hour period and the 683 confirmed on Thursday. It was the fewest daily number of COVID-19 deaths since March 23. However, the data should be treated with caution due to the fact that Thursday and Friday were public holidays, which could have led to delay in reporting data. Spain's tally of infections stood at 161,852 by Saturday. In neighboring France, 2,044 patients were hospitalized in the last 24 hours, bringing the country's total hospitalized COVID-19 patients to 31,320, including 6,883 in intensive care units (ICUs). The number of patients in ICUs was down by 121 on a daily basis, a third-day consecutive decline. "It is another very slight decrease in the need of (intensive care) place," which will "relieve our caregivers, especially in intensive care," said Director General of Health Jerome Salomon. Across the English Channel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is making "very good progress" as he continues his coronavirus recovery in hospital, Downing Street said Saturday. Johnson was moved to a general ward on Thursday evening after spending three days in intensive care. He was taken to the hospital on Sunday, 10 days after testing positive for the virus. The death toll of those hospitalized in Britain who tested positive for the novel coronavirus has reached 9,875 as of Friday afternoon. REMAINING VIGILANT Despite good news from Downing Street, Britain's coronavirus lockdown, like many European nations, faces its most serious test this weekend as it marks the Easter bank holiday. Wary of any excess of optimism, French Director General of Health Salomon stressed "hospital pressure remains strong." "A very high epidemic plateau seems to be emerging. We absolutely must continue to remain vigilant," he said. "The time is not for de-confinement...but perhaps even more for the strict respect of confinement, barrier gestures and social distancing." Cypriot experts also strongly warned against a premature relaxation of the lockdown measures. Leondios Kostrikis, a University of Cyprus professor of virology, who advises the Health Ministry, said "We are at a critical phase and we do not have a margin to make a mistake... Our advice is still the same, stay at home." Marios Loizou, scientific director at the Nicosia Directorate of the Cyprus State Health Services Organization, also came out in support of the World Health Organization, warning that a premature relaxation of lockdown measures could lead to a deadly resurgence. In Italy where the coronavirus pandemic has claimed 19,468 lives, Extraordinary Commissioner for the Coronavirus Emergency Domenico Arcuri warned about underestimating risks of the pandemic. "This dramatic emergency will finally be behind us only after an effective vaccine is discovered," Arcuri stressed. "Without it, there is only one antidote left: our behavior, which must all work in the direction of preventing and containing contagion." The Italian Interior Ministry issued a stern notice on the eve of Easter festivities, which for Italians would especially coincide with open-air trips and family lunches in normal times. "Police controls have been strengthened across the territory, and especially in the perspective of the weekend over Easter holidays (Sunday and Monday)," the ministry said in a statement on Saturday. In Poland, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also urged all Poles to stay at home during the Easter holidays, as the country's confirmed COVID-19 cases surpassed 6,000 on Saturday. CALL FOR UNITY Also on Saturday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for solidarity within Europe, saying that "Germany cannot emerge from the crisis strong and healthy if our neighbors are not strong and healthy." In a rare televised speech, Steinmeier said the international solidarity should bring about a global alliance to search for a COVID-19 vaccine. And that "the poorest countries in the world, which are the most vulnerable, should have equal access" to any such treatment. According to the Robert Koch Institute, almost 120,000 people in Germany have tested positive for the coronavirus, and more than 2,500 have died as of Friday midnight. Eurogroup finance ministers agreed Thursday night on a financial package worth half a trillion euros to combat the fallouts from coronavirus, but without the so-called Eurobonds. French Finance and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday that the European Union's (EU) package of financial measures is "a major step towards more European solidarity" as it supports the bloc's most affected members and helps prepare the post-pandemic recovery. "It's an excellent agreement because it shows the unity of European countries during this period of crisis. It's excellent because it allows the immediate release of 550 billion euros (602 billion U.S. dollars) to finance all the European economies, notably the most severely impacted ones," Le Maire told Europe 1 radio. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Disrupting the production of a class of lipids known as sphingolipids in neurons improved symptoms of neurodegeneration and increased survival in a mouse model, according to new research led by the joint laboratory of Robert Farese, Jr. and Tobias Walther at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The findings, published online April 13, 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could help in the development of therapies for a range of neurodegenerative diseases. "This work began in yeast, and serendipitously we discovered that mutations related to neurodegeneration in humans led to abnormalities in cell lipid metabolism. Most investigators don't look at the lipids, and we were quite excited and surprised," said Walther, professor of molecular metabolism and executive director of the Harvard Chan Advanced Multi-omics Platform. In the study, the Farese & Walther Laboratory identified a link between sphingolipid metabolism and a mutation that affected vesicle trafficking, the process by which molecules are transported to different parts of a cell. Defects in the trafficking process are known to play a role in neurodegenerative diseases, but the exact mechanism of the effect is not understood. The Farese & Walther Laboratory has previously focused their research efforts on the Golgi-associated retrograde protein (GARP) complex. Earlier studies in yeast and flies showed that mutations in GARP proteins lead to sphingolipid abnormalities and stunted cell growth, and that these effects could be reversed by inhibiting sphingolipid metabolism. Many neurological diseases are caused by mutations in genes that are involved in lipid metabolism, and changes in lipid metabolism have been reported in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. With that in mind, the Farese & Walther Laboratory investigated whether modulating sphingolipid metabolism affects cell dysfunction as it relates to neurodegenerative diseases. The research team, which included Harvard Chan scientists Constance Petit and Jane Lee, used a model known as wobbler mice, which have a mutation in a specific GARP protein called VSP54. That mutation causes motor-neuron disease similar to ALS. They found that sphingolipid molecules that were toxic to cells accumulated in spinal cords of wobbler mice, as well as in embryonic fibroblasts, a type of cell that was cultured from the mice. Furthermore, they showed that certain molecules involved in sphingolipid metabolism were misplaced in neurons from wobbler mice. The team then found that treating the mice with the sphingolipid synthesis inhibitor myriocin, which is already used as an antifungal and immunosuppressive drug, prevented the buildup of sphingolipids, reduced their toxic effects, improved wellness scores in the mice, and ultimately extended the animals' lifespan. The results indicate that compromised sphingolipid metabolism in GARP mutations are a potential cause of neurodegeneration and that correcting defects in sphingolipid metabolism might restore neuronal function. Sphingolipid metabolism may therefore be an important target for therapeutic development for neurological disorders associated with mutations in membrane trafficking. "We are cautiously optimistic," Farese said. "Perhaps targeting lipid abnormalities provides a new therapeutic angle for some diseases of neurodegeneration." ### Other Harvard Chan School researchers who contributed to the work include Sebastian Boland, Romain Christiano, Zon Weng Lai, Niklas Mejhert, Shane Elliott, and Sara Haque. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the University of California San Francisco also contributed to the study. There are certain trends that exist among the Southwest Community Health Center clients who test positive for COVID-19, according to Dr. Dara Richard, chief medical officer for the Bridgeport facility. Most of Southwests COVID patients are on Medicare and Medicaid. The majority dont have reliable transportation, she said. They also largely work in the health care field, as certified nursing assistants, home health workers and the like. The bulk of Southwests COVID-19 patients are also non-white roughly 60 percent are Hispanic and about 30 percent are black. These patients often dont have good access to care, though clinics such as Southwest try to remove some of those obstacles, and often end up waiting too long to see a doctor when they get COVID-19 symptoms, Richards said. Among those who have tested positive, about a third have been admitted to the hospital and only one has been released, she said. Theyre very sick. With schools and businesses closed in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, many low-wage employees dont have the option of staying home, safe from the virus that is spreading like brushfire across the nation. That includes many of the patients seen at Southwest, Richards said. Health care workers are unable to work from home right now or take a vacation day, she said. And when they do become too sick to work, its a major financial hardship. Gaps in data Concerns about how the coronavirus is impacting black and brown workers who are less likely to be able to work from home has swelled in recent days as cities and states for the first time began releasing the racial and ethnic breakdowns for COVID-19 infections and deaths. In Connecticut, among the 4,080 confirmed cases where race or ethnicity was known, 23 percent were Hispanic and 17 percent were black 7 and 5 percentage points higher than the share of the population these groups comprise. However, advocates and officials are hesitant to draw any sweeping conclusions that minorities are being hit harder by the disease since there is a huge gap in the data, as only about half of the test results have race and ethnicity disclosed. Connecticuts chief civil rights leader met via teleconference with officials in Gov. Ned Lamonts administration this month to press them to better track health care and economic relief efforts to ensure minorities are fairly served during this crisis. If we dont have this information, how can we make the appropriate decisions to prepare our communities accordingly? asked Connecticut NAACP President Scot R. Esdaile. Civil rights leaders and health advocates are concerned that without complete data, minorities will be disproportionately impacted, exacerbating health and economic disparities that existed prior to the pandemic. African Americans are particularly vulnerable at this moment, said Kristen Clarke, executive director of Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national advocacy group calling on the federal government to better track this data. Vigilance is required. We need to make sure that we press and demand for equitable access to testing and care and we need to sound an alarm when African Americans are excluded and left out. Spreading from rich to poor A team of doctors at UConn Health Center released research Wednesday suggesting that the early data indicates black residents in Connecticut are being hit the hardest by the virus. Perhaps this crisis has already begun to reveal an engrained racial bias that may further disempower racial and ethnic minorities, the team found, while also calling for the better collection of data. The importance of the racial and ethnic breakdowns of those affected cannot be overemphasized. The UConn Health team was able to track the race of nearly everyone who has died from the illness through April 1, and found a significant difference in what share of the death white people make up compared to the population they comprise in Connecticut. Of the 90 coronavirus deaths researchers tracked, 77 percent were white people even though they only make up 67 percent of the states population. Separate research might help explain what is happening. That research shows that minorities in Connecticut are facing challenges on the front-end of the process. The data-tracking firm Rubix teamed up with researchers at the universities of Pittsburg and Virginia to look at hospital groups and health care institutions in seven states including Connecticut and found that despite showing symptoms, many minority patients were not being tested. As the number of infected patients increases drastically, patient identification and access to testing options is paramount. Unfair rationing within distinct neighborhoods may be directly relevant to patient access to professional care during this time, a summary of the research concluded. Doctors working in hospitals in Connecticut say they believe when more complete data is available, it will show this virus is disproportionately impacting minorities and poor residents more significantly the longer the pandemic lasts. There are numerous reasons for this. People who hold white collar jobs are more likely to be able to work from home, whereas those working in nursing homes and other types of lower-wage jobs do not have that option and are more likely to contract the disease. The infection has spread now from sort of rich communities that brought it here from travel to poor communities who are sort of trapped in tight housing and are particularly vulnerable because of their age, said Dr. Howard P. Forman, a practicing clinician in the Yale New Haven Hospital emergency room who is also working with groups in Connecticut and around the country to contain the spread of COVID-19 in his role as the director of the health care management program at Yale School of Public Health. Forman pointed to the outbreak that began in Boston at a biotech conference and quickly spread to nursing homes. I think people lose track of the fact that nursing homes do disproportionately represent a poor part of the population, and typically are more likely to represent underrepresented groups and people of color, he said. Cant stay home In Connecticut, Westport was first to experience an outbreak of COVID-19. But the virus has now spread throughout the state Lamont said last week that his administration believes the virus is spreading more quickly in poor communities. Congested areas are a lot more susceptible to spread, he told reporters. That tends to impact our underserved communities. Many of the folks have bigger families and [are] living in smaller apartments, so its tougher just to social distance within your own apartment, in your own residential dwelling. He said the huge disparities also exist because minorities are less likely able to telecommute, and more likely to be the ones still working in the day cares, hospitals, and grocery stores. It does put them in a little more risk if we dont take care of them with the necessary [personal protective equipment] that they need, he said. An analysis of smartphone data by The New York Times provides some insight into who is able to stay home and reduce their risk of being exposed to COVID-19. While everyone seems to be moving around much less now, wealthier people are staying home the most. In Connecticuts Fairfield County metro area which includes Bridgeport, Westport and Greenwich the wealthiest residents have essentially halted movement, while the poorest residents stalled their movement until the workweek began. Patricia Baker, president of the Connecticut Health Foundation, which focuses on health disparities, said while the state data on who is contracting the virus in Connecticut should be taken with a grain of salt, she urges people to also remember minorities are much more likely to be impacted by various negative health outcomes such as asthma, and are more likely not to have health insurance. So access on a regular basis is already an issue, she said. Richards, at the health center in Bridgeport, said many of Southwests clients dont have cars and have to take buses something they are loath to do if they are sick or think they might be sick. Richards recalled that, before Southwest had COVID-19 tests of its own, she tried to send a patient with symptoms to Bridgeport Hospital for testing, but the person couldnt go because of transportation issues. She said Thats too far Id need to take three buses, Richards said, adding the patient lived in Bridgeport and still was unable to travel to a hospital in her own city. Neighborhoods desperately collapsing Connecticut began publicly releasing this demographic data on April 3 as calls grew for such disclosure. Several states have continued to withhold the data, and the federal government has also not released it. However, some states that have begun reporting are showing a link to higher infection and death rates among minority groups. In Illinois, black residents make up 15 percent of the population, but 28 percent of confirmed cases where race was identified. In Connecticut, where only 52 percent of confirmed infection cases showed race as of last week, Av Harris of the state Department of Public Health said the state is working to fill in the gap, calling it a top priority. Race/ethnicity are not included in the information we receive from laboratories, typically because this information might not even be received by the laboratories that are doing outpatient testing. We are working with local health departments, hospitals and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to update information on race/ethnicity of cases where possible, he said. State officials rely heavily on patients and care providers to collect this information. Paul Mounds Jr., Lamonts chief of staff, said the only way to improve reporting on racial and ethnic data is for better cooperation at all points in this chain. Connecticut officials have posted no data on the racial and ethnic breakdown of COVID-19 patients who have been hospitalized another lapse Esdaile said must be addressed. Testing and hospital services arent the only concerns of minority leaders. Lamonts Connecticut Recovery Bridge Loan Program did invite applicants to identify themselves as minority-owned, women-owned or veteran-owned businesses. The program, which was launched March 25 with $25 million, was fully subscribed two days later. Despite Lamonts doubling pledged relief to $50 million, business requests for no-interest loans quadrupled that amount. According to Department of Economic and Community Development spokesman Jim Watson, 851 out of 5,295 applicants, about 16 percent, identified themselves as minority-owned. But Esdaile said roughly 25 percent or small businesses in Connecticut are minority-owned, but in urban centers the share is more than half. Its crucial that bridge loan awards also are balanced along racial and ethnic lines, and are focused on those parts of Connecticut where poverty is most severe and the pandemic has hit the hardest, said both Esdaile and state Rep. Toni E. Walker, D-New Haven, a member of the legislatures Black and Puerto Rican Caucus. We have to make sure were putting money back into the neighborhoods that are desperately collapsing in this pandemic, said Walker, who also co-chairs the Appropriations Committee. I hope were using the statistics that we have. Hearst Connecticut Media staff writer Amanda Cuda contributed to this report. Vietnams latest patient of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an employee of a Samsung subsidiary and had direct contact with over 100 people within the one week following the onset of his illness symptoms. Patient No. 262, a 26-year-old man residing in Ha Loi Village, Me Linh District, Hanoi, was confirmed to have caught COVID-19 on Monday morning. He came into close contact with a relative who is a COVID-19 patient on March 27 and began having dry coughs on March 31. The man still went to work in the quality control unit of Samsung Display Vietnam in northern Bac Ninh Province until April 6, said Nguyen Nhat Cam, director of the Hanoi steering committee for COVID-19 prevention and control. He commuted to work on the companys shuttle buss for employees on a daily basis. Each bus had a capacity of up to 20 passengers, Cam stated. Authorities in Bac Ninh Province have shuttered the Samsung unit where the patient worked. Provincial authorities have investigated and identified 101 people in direct contact with patient No. 262, known as F1 cases, who are residents of different provinces in northern Vietnam, Cam added. Among them, about 40 people have been quarantined. The novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has infected over 1.85 million people and killed more than 114,300 globally as of Monday afternoon, according to Ministry of Health statistics. Vietnam has confirmed 262 COVID-19 cases in total, with 145 having recovered. The country has yet to record a death from the disease. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Newly Formed Medical Advisory Board to Provide Guidance on Use of C-Bond Nano-Products in the Fight Against COVID-19 and Other Pathogens HOUSTON, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- C-Bond Systems, Inc. (the Company or C-Bond) (CBNT), a nanotechnology solutions company, today announced the formation of a Medical Advisory Board to advance the breadth and use of products offered by C-Bond Safety Solutions Group, primarily its C-Bond FN Nano Coating , which is used in hospitals and other facilities to reduce the spread of pathogens including COVID-19. The founding members of the Medical Advisory Board include Sergio Moreira, Jr., M.D., and Anil Vaidya, M.D., both recognized global experts in their respective fields. Dr. Moreira is a Diplomate of the American Board of Urology and a member of the Brazilian Medical Association and Brazilian Urologic Society. He is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves. He has received numerous awards and scholarships throughout his career and is a member of several professional societies including Special Operations Medical Association and the American Urological Association, among others. Dr. Moreira is extensively published and a frequent guest lecturer. Dr. Vaidya is a multi-organ transplant surgeon with a diversified clinical, translational and academic portfolio. After completion of his surgical/urological residency, Dr. Vaidya went on to undertake an American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) accredited fellowship in multi-organ transplantation at the University of Miami. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, England-Transplant Surgery, and the Co-director of the Intestinal Transplant Service at The Cleveland Clinic, Ohio. Dr. Vaidya has authored more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed journals and his rating by Research Gate puts him among the top 3% of the surgeons in the world. We are proud to welcome trusted experts Dr. Moreira and Dr. Vaidya to our newly formed Medical Advisory Board, helping to spread awareness and use of the FN-NANO protective coating, and to rely on their expertise and advice as we look to potentially further broaden our pipeline of nano-products into the healthcare industry, said Scott R. Silverman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of C-Bond. Their collective experience, relationships and networks are second to none we strongly believe they will be invaluable assets to C-Bond as we grow the use of these important safety solutions in hospitals and other facilities. Story continues About C-Bond Systems C-Bond Systems, Inc. (CBNT) is a Houston-based advanced nanotechnology company and marketer of the patented C-Bond technology, developed in conjunction with Rice University and independently proven to significantly strengthen glass in key automotive and structural applications. The Companys Transportation Solutions Group sells C-Bond NanoShield, a liquid solution applied directly to automotive windshields, sold through distributors. The Companys Safety Solutions Group sells ballistic-resistant glass solutions and FN NANO Coating directly to private enterprises, schools, hospitals and government agencies. For more information, please visit our website: www.cbondsystems.com , Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cbondsys/ and Twitter: https://twitter.com/CBond_Systems . Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this press release about our future expectations, including the likelihood that the Medical Advisory Board will help advance the breadth and use of our products including FN Nano Coating to combat the spread of COVID-19 and other pathogens; the likelihood that we will further broaden our pipeline of nano-products in the healthcare industry; the likelihood that Drs. Moreira and Vaidya will be invaluable assets to C-Bond as we grow the use of these important safety solutions in hospitals and other facilities; constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, and our actual results could differ materially from expected results. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, C-Bonds ability to raise capital; the Companys ability to successfully commercialize its products; as well as other risks. Additional information about these and other factors may be described in the Companys filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) including its Form 10-K filed on March 25, 2020, its Forms 10-Q filed on November 14, 2019, August 12, 2019, and May 10, 2019, and in future filings with the SEC. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this statement or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. Investor Contacts: Luke Zimmerman Senior Vice President MZ Group - MZ North America 949-259-4987 CBNT@mzgroup.us www.mzgroup.us Allison Tomek VP, Corporate Communications C-Bond Systems, Inc. atomek@cbondsystems.com 832-649-5658 The City of Midland's most recent water quality report for 2019 is available online for residents and the public to view. The Annual Drinking Water Quality Report is intended to update residents on the city's efforts to ensure the safety and availability of our drinking water. The report includes information about Midland's water along with the most recent water quality testing data. "You can't tell what's in your water just by looking at it, so the report tells you all the tests we've done on it and make sure we're meeting all the drinking water regulations," said Peter Schwarz, director of the city's water services. For 2019, Midland did not have any violations, and Schwarz said Midland is fortunate to have good source water, which comes from Lake Huron. Schwarz said in addition to testing samples at the water treatment plant every day, city staff are out collecting water samples around the city, particularly one part-time staffer who collects samples at various businesses Monday through Thursday. Schwarz said it's easier to test water at businesses than homes, since it's less intrusive, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic, many of their usual testing sites are harder to access. Still, their regulation requirements for testing drinking water have not changed so to make up for it, more samples are being taken at available sites, and the city has identified new sites in close proximity to previous testing sites to remain representative of the entire city. "It's slowed us down a little bit but otherwise we're still doing everything we did before," Schwarz said. In addition, Schwarz said despite the stay-at-home order and its ripple effects, he has not noticed a dramatic change in water usage in the city since the coronavirus pandemic hit home last month. In the latest report, residents might notice a change, as all of Midland County's townships are required now to do their own testing, despite sharing a water source with the city. However, an addendum to the 2019 report states that Homer and Mills Township did not correctly collect data for lead and copper. According to the report, the violation does not pose a health threat. "Mills and Homer Townships inadvertently missed taking samples within this required sampling period," the report states. "Both Townships are making every effort to ensure this does not happen again." The townships are now required to do their own testing as part of revisions to the "Lead and Copper Rule" which was handed down by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy in late 2018. Another change shifted the responsibility of replacing lead service lines in homes and businesses to the city. As part of that, Schwarz said the city has five years to complete an inventory of all the city's water service lines and the materials they're made of, since lead pipes can cause adverse health effects over time. "We're waiting for guidance on what that looks like from the state and they're promising it by the end of this year," Schwarz said. "But we have five years to do a completely inventory. We've done a preliminary inventory - we went through our records - now we have to physically go out and verify services. But, that's quite an undertaking for us." He said there are about 5,000 service lines that need to be verified in the city, which has more than 16,000 service lines, according to the 2019 report. The 2019 report can be viewed online at: https://cityofmidlandmi.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/729 Printed copies of the 2019 report will be made available at City Hall and the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library Reference Desk when these facilities reopen. Residents can request a printed copy be mailed to them by contacting the Water Office at 989-837-3341. For questions regarding the 2019 Drinking Water Quality Report, call the Midland Water Treatment Plant at 989-837-3515. Chinese space industry insiders on Monday debunked Western media claims that attest China's recent rocket launch failures to US chip export restrictions on China, pointing out that the country's rocket control systems have mastered complete localization for a long time, and China's space development sector is independent of any Western influence. German public broadcaster DW's Chinese language channel on Saturday cited a Taiwan-based military expert, who floated a conspiracy theory alleging the rising failure rate of China's space industry as being caused by US chip export restrictions as part of the US-led trade war against China. China's space sector has recently encountered rarely-seen setbacks twice within a monthfirstly, the maiden flight of the newly developed variant of the Long March-7 carrier rocket, known as the Long March-7A on March 16 and the launch of the veteran Long March-3B carrying an Indonesian commercial satellite on April 9. An insider with the state carrier rocket developer approached by the Global Times said on the condition of anonymity that a probe into the two failures was underway, and the errors causing the failures have not been located as of yet, and therefore it has not yielded any conclusions. He also stressed that the chips used for Chinese rocket control systems "are not from the US, period." "The Chinese systems and related research have already achieved redundant capabilities [to increase reliability], and even errors of single point components will not affect overall performance," he said, noting that Western media claims were based on no evidence, and the so-called Taiwan-based expert clearly has no clue in regards to what he is talking about. Agreeing with the insider, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Monday that robust strides made in China's space development program lies greatly in its independence. "Components used in China's space sector have achieved full localization long ago, meaning they are entirely independent from Western suppliers," Song said. Insiders also shrugged their shoulders over Western media hype as well as Taiwan's pan-green pro-independence coalition's baseless claims, saying that "we just need to keep our strategic composure, and the current difficulties will only be temporary." As of April 12, there have been 27 space launches worldwide in 2020. China succeeded in 7 out of 9 attempts. In addition, a series of China's space projects are progressing well, as a trial version of China's new-generation manned spaceship has been tested at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China's Hainan Province. The experimental spaceship is expected to be launched with no crew in mid to late April on the maiden flight of the Long March-5B carrier rocket. While the US' SpaceX, despite having successfully launched a new batch of its Starlink Satellites, its Falcon 9, missed a landing on a floating platform out at sea on February 17, the first time it happened in almost four years. Another SpaceX Falcon 9 mission on March 18 also experienced a rare in-flight engine failure with one of its nine first stage engines soon after launch, with an accident causing a loss of thrust that was fortunately compensated by other Merlin engines that fired a little longer, and the launch mission was eventually pulled off despite the error. However, its first stage again missed a landing attempt on SpaceX's drone ship anchored in the Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Cape Canaveral, the second time within a month. [1] Openly violating the quarantine rules on physical distancing and wearing of face mask. Images of market buyers jostling at Carbon or crowding at lines for the mall or going around in public places with no covering of the face infuriate us who dutifully obey the stay-at-home and face-mask order. We must think, correctly or not, that the violators are prolonging the ordeal. And publicizing the violation worsens the offense. [2] Publicly complaining about not getting the subsidy from government, or not being given quickly enough or getting hardly enough for their needs. And, often, accusing officials or their subordinates of incompetence and/or corruption. Many complaints against bureaucracy are valid but the gripes from those needing help have set off a backlash against the whiners, blaming them for their poverty. That view, however, is not widespread. More people think the government can never do enough for the real victims in the crisis. [3] Public officials not acting promptly on clear problems the crisis has spawned, such as threshing out conflicting or unclear rules within an LGU and between two or more LGUs, keeping in check political biases of ward leaders, and administrative oversight on crucial details of quarantine. Many LGU heads lack messaging skill or have not hired persons equipped to handle crisis management. *** GOOD NEWS Something to smile about... [] Tentative signs of infection curves flattening. They say its an early harbinger of the turning point. Although in the Philippines, whose low number of tests still cannot tell the extent of the infection, we may not be able to share that optimism yet. [] Drugmaker Gilead's potential treatment. It is remdesivir, called by WHO the most promising candidate. Be it drug or vaccine, the maker has to thoroughly test its product in multiple medical trials before it can be marketed. Gilead is set to release clinical trial data in the next couple of weeks. [] Ying Ying and Le Le, a middle-aged couple of giant pandas at Ocean Park in Hong Kong mated for the first time in more than 10 years, obviously because of the privacy given by the coronavirus lockdown. Still, it was not an entirely private act. The love-making was recorded on cam. Story continues [] One billion-dollar donation. From Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, a pledge of a $1 billion donation to Start Small, which it will use to fund its coronavirus research. Here in the Philippines, the generous givers include Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, the SM Group and Ayala Corp. *** Way to kill boredom: here are three ways. [1] Go over your list of ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. Compare their strengths and weaknesses and see who wouldve been a better husband/wife/partner in this time of crisis. Then show it to your present companion who; to avoid a quarrel, must always top the ratings. [2] Reorganize your photo album into two two sets: one, which you would show you in your best shots; the other, which you would hide from most everyone. To make it more interesting, do your wifes album while she does yours. [3] List the things you can do from home next time around and the excuses for getting out. Its never too early to be prepared. *** Must federal government, in our case the national government, leave the local governments alone? US President Trump has washed federal governments hands off the need of such virus-plagued states as New York and New Jersey for ventilators and personal protective equipment. Stingy with its stockpiles, saying theyre ours, not the states, as if the states were not a part of, and did not comprise, the United States. That would be like our national government leaving provinces, cities and towns on their own to fend for themselves. Even on strategies, Trump and the state governors have differed. It has taken a pandemic and a Trump to bring to the surface the legal and ethical dilemma. Fortunately for the Philippines, our national leaders have not done a Trump. *** Cover your face but they cant withhold information if you are Covid-19 positive. The World Health Organization (WHO) now encourages face-mask wearing in public even if one has no symptoms. The Inter-Agency Task Force in the Philippines also requires it in areas under quarantine but leaves the LGUs ordinance or EO for the appropriate sanctions. Cebu City has the mayors executive order and it carries a penalty but he publicly says there is none. Theres also a shift on policy regarding disclosure of information about Covid-positive patients. It is now mandatory for health authorities to disclose the data without the need of getting the individuals consent. It would lead to more effective tracing of contacts, says the task force. *** Zoombombing Hackers can interrupt a geography lesson in Zoom, a video conferencing tool, and instead show obscene images, as they did in Singapore, or disrupting a public meeting online by displaying hate messages or shouting profanities, as they did in the US, prompting an FBI warning to Zoom users. Zoom has enabled news programs and radio commentaries to continue despite the quarantines. Hackers. being more mean than just bored, apparently have found Zoom users excellent prey. (SunStar Cebu) "Serving in the military changes you. The shades and degrees of change vary for everyone, but no one is ever the same as... Nepal on Monday celebrated New Year 2077 as per the Bikram Era calendar, amidst the nationwide lockdown to fight the deadly coronavirus in the Himalayan nation. The calendar, which was established by Indian king Vikramaditya, was introduced by Nepal's Shah Kings, believed to have migrated from India to Nepal centuries ago. To celebrate the occasion, people used to throng temples, greet each other, and gather at restaurants, homes and picnic spots but this year following the coronavirus pandemic, everyone is compelled to stay at home. The New Year or Baishakh 1 started with playing the national anthem. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has urged people to play the national anthem from home at 8 am on the New Year day, as a tribute to those who are on the frontline in a fight against COVID-19. "Play the National Anthem," Oli tweeted. He requested the people to extend respect to all the medics, security personnel, emergency service staff, cleaners, supermarket staff, and everyone else striving hard for the safety of Nepal and Nepalis. Stating that the country was welcoming the New Year in a very difficult situation, Prime Minister Oli also announced that the government would take patronage of people from all the sectors and classes who have gone through the hard impacts of the coronavirus. The total number of COVID-19 infections in the country has gone up to 14, including 3 Indians. President Bidya Devi Bhandari wished that the New Year would give the citizens energy to prevent the infection and subsequent crisis. In a message of New Year, President Bhandari has stressed to further intensify mutual cooperation, welfare, dedication and sacrifices at a time when hundreds of thousand people are struggling for their life by being infected from the COVID-19 while the number of death toll around the world has surpassed 100,000. She also expressed best wishes for new courage and excitement for economic prosperity in the country along with lasting peace, robust national unity and social goodwill. The ruling Nepal Communist Party's chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda', the main opposition leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and former king Gyanendra Shah among others have extended best wishes on the occasion. As the entire world is fighting a crucial battle against the COVID-19, the leaders here in their messages have wished that the country would be able to contain the outbreak of the disease and return to healthy life at the earliest. The government has imposed nationwide lockdown till April 15, which is most likely to get extended for some more time to fight the coronavirus which the Prime Minister Oli hinted during his video conference with chief ministers of all seven provinces. "The lockdown will not be lifted any time soon," he told the province chiefs. Globally, the novel coronavirus has killed 114,215 people and infected over 1.8 million people. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As COVID-19 spreads in the continent, Ethiopia postpones August vote while Guinea goes ahead with disputed referendum. Back in February, things did not look too promising for Peter Mutharika, Malawis 79-year-old president. The countrys constitutional court had just annulled the May 2019 vote that declared him the winner by a narrow margin, citing widespread irregularities. The ruling followed weeks of street protests calling for Mutharika to step aside and concede defeat. On several occasions when the police and demonstrators clashed, the army stepped in and, surprisingly, protected the protesters. With the court ordering a vote rerun within 150 days, the momentum was on the side of the opposition. Mutharikas chances of winning a second five-year term appeared slim. Then on February 14, 11 days after the court ruling, Egypt became the first country in Africa to confirm a case of COVID-19, the highly infectious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. A month later, before Malawi had recorded any infections, Mutharika shut down schools and banned large public gatherings effectively putting a stop to election campaigning. Experts now believe it could be a matter of time before the poll, scheduled for July 2, is delayed and Mutharika buys himself more time in office. A postponement of these elections for primarily public health reasons seems likely as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across southern Africa, Alex Vines, director of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera. This will obviously disappoint the opposition, but is clearly in Malawian national interest, he added. As of April 13, Malawi had 13 COVID-19 cases, including two deaths. Across the continent, more than 14,520 infections and 788 fatalities had been reported in more than 50 countries, while the number of recoveries stood at 2,570. The confirmed figures in Africa are still fairly low compared to other parts of the world, including Europe and the United States, where the coronavirus pandemic has spread wildly, overwhelmed healthcare systems and upended daily life, including politics. Already, several scheduled elections in Western countries from local polls in parts of the United Kingdom and France to several Democratic primaries in the US ahead of Novembers presidential vote have been delayed due to the pandemic. This also happened in Ethiopia. Home to almost 110 million people, Ethiopia reported its first COVID-19 case on March 13. It soon shut its borders and banned public gatherings to curb the spread of the disease and then went a step further. On March 31, the electoral board announced the postponement of Augusts highly anticipated general election because of issues related to the coronavirus. It said a new date would be given when the pandemic is over. Not a surprise The polls would have been both Abiy Ahmeds first electoral run since his 2018 appointment and last years Nobel Peace Prize win, as well as a key test of the sweeping political and economic reforms he has introduced since taking office. But analysts say the postponement did not come as a surprise. A delay was almost inevitable because of the potential risks of spreading the virus. Elections involve human-to-human interaction so holding one when there is an outbreak would have been very risky, William Davison, a senior Ethiopia analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera. Opposition parties said they supported the reason behind the postponement but expressed dissatisfaction with the way the decision was reached. We believe that the process the board has followed to reach its decision is wrong, and yet another manifestation of part of a troubling pattern, the Oromo Liberation Front and Oromo Federalist Congress parties said in a joint statement. Decisions about the new election date and issues related to that should be made after sufficient consultation and consensus among all parties and stakeholders, the statement added. But experts say the delay in the poll could be a positive development that would allow electoral authorities to better organise the voting process in Africas second-most populous nation. The electoral board was struggling to meet deadlines before the delay, Davison said. What this tragic opportunity presents is more time for the electoral board to better prepare in terms of registering voters and recruiting staff, he added. For the opposition, this delay gives them more time to be organised, join forces and be less fragmented. Abiy could benefit from this delay the same way as the opposition. Who benefits the most will depend on who uses this time productively, he added. Conversely, on the other side of the continent, Guinea went to the polls in late March to elect members of parliament and vote on a proposed constitutional reform against a backdrop of street protests and despite the threat of the coronavirus pandemic. The countrys opposition boycotted the long-delayed poll, accusing President Alpha Conde of planning to use the constitutional referendum to extend his stay in office. According to experts, the outbreak played into the hands of Guineas 82-year-old leader. COVID-19 lockdown in West Africa meant that a high-level delegation by ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] to Conakry before the referendum did not occur, Vines said, referring to the West African regional bloc. Efforts by West African leaders aimed at stopping the referendum on constitutional reform by Guinean President Alpha Conde partly failed because of COVID-19 lockdown across the region. Guinea had reported at least two COVID-19 cases before the referendum, which was overwhelmingly backed by voters and enacted last week. The new constitution still limits the president to two terms but it does not apply retrospectively, meaning Conde could seek another term in office in the upcoming election, scheduled for December. Besides Guinea, other African countries with elections due to take place later this year include Burundi, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger, Tanzania, Togo and Seychelles. Meanwhile, as the pandemic takes a firmer hold on the continent, elections scheduled for next year could also be affected. In Somalia, opposition leaders have warned the government not use the outbreak to postpone the 2021 vote. While in Uganda, the countrys High Court has been petitioned to delay next years vote for five years as Kampala grabbles with the outbreak. No decision has been made on the petition by a concerned citizen. Follow Hamza Mohamed on Twitter: @Hamza_Africa Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:20:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close VIENTIANE, April 13 (Xinhua) -- No new COVID-19 case was reported in Laos on Monday, with its total number remaining at 19. The total number of COVID-19 case in Laos remained at 19, as no new case was confirmed, Director General of Department of Communicable Disease Control under the Lao Ministry of Health, Rattanaxay Phetsavanh, told a press conference here on Monday. The confirmed cases included 16 cases in Vientiane and three cases in Luang Prabang province. The treatment is going well and all of the patients are getting better, according to the Lao official. Laos detected the first two COVID-19 cases on March 24. The new coronavirus is racing through America's nursing homes, and the impact has been far greater than the federal government has said. At least 2,300 long-term care facilities in 37 states have reported positive cases of COVID-19, according to data USA TODAY obtained from state agencies. More than 3,000 residents have died. The numbers eclipse those previously disclosed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which in late March estimated that 400 facilities had reported cases of the virus. But the new totals still represent an incomplete accounting due to the ongoing lack of widespread testing for the virus and inconsistent record-keeping from state to state. On the federal level, neither the CDC nor the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is tracking the number of U.S. nursing homes with COVID-19 cases, or the number of total cases and fatalities in those facilities. In an effort to come up with a more accurate tally of how COVID-19 is affecting nursing homes and its staff and residents, USA TODAY requested that data from all 50 states. Six states did not respond, including Florida, a retirement haven. Another six states said they were compiling numbers but declined to provide some or all of them. Thirteen states could only provide partial data, citing various reasons including that they were not tracking deaths specifically in nursing homes or couldnt separate staff and residents who have tested positive. We want to hear from you: What's happening in your nursing home? The fact that so many states and the federal government are failing to track how COVID-19 is affecting a population known to be especially vulnerable to the virus is a problem, according to experts who said collecting data specific to nursing homes is vital for officials to navigate the current crisis, and for mitigating future outbreaks. "The ultimate risk is potentially more infections and more deaths," said Kelly Reynolds, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona who has studied infection control in health facilities. Story continues About 1.3 million people live in the nations 15,600 nursing homes, according to the CDC. And most nursing homes have had problems managing infections even when there is not a pandemic. Seventy-five percent of U.S. nursing homes have been cited for failing to properly monitor and control infections in the past three years, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal inspection data published last month. Those citations have been as mild as a paperwork problem and as serious as failing to inform state officials that unmonitored workers had spread disease to patients in an outbreak. The first U.S. outbreak of COVID-19 happened in a Washington state nursing home where dozens have died, and the virus has continued to ravage similar facilities since. Such facilities are now considered "an accelerator" of COVID-19, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said earlier this month. A Maryland nursing home reported a single case of COVID-19 in late March and 64 cases the next day. In Pennsylvania, administrators at a nursing home outside of Pittsburgh last week said they would shift away from testing residents and presume all were positive. In Massachusetts, the Department of Justice has opened an investigation at a nursing home for veterans where 32 have died. Greg Kelley is president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana Missouri & Kansas, a union that represents more than 91,000 healthcare, child care, home care and nursing home workers. "Its a pretty tragic situation," said Greg Kelley, president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana Missouri & Kansas, a union that more than 91,000 workers. "And I dont believe that the public fully understands the depth of the challenge right now." The data gathered by USA TODAY illuminates the rapid and destructive spread of the virus: roughly half of the 41 COVID-19 deaths in Iowa were long-term care residents; more than half of the nursing homes in New York state have at least one positive case; the number of affected facilities in New Jersey swelled from 159 to 285 over four days last week. More than 18,300 people across 26 states nursing homes have tested positive for COVID-19, the numbers show. Most of those individuals are residents, while some states provided a number that also encompassed staff. On Saturday, the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living issued guidance to its members, recommending facilities report every positive COVID-19 test result to the state and notify all residents, families and staff when the first case is confirmed. The organization said it hopes federal agencies will use the data to target resources and testing. "Without testing it will be hard to keep state and federal agencies apprised of how this virus is spreading and get the help facilities desperately need," said Mark Parkinson, the organizations president and CEO. 'It changes rapidly The incomplete picture of what is currently known about COVID-19 in nursing homes comes from a patchwork of data collected at the local and state level. A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said nursing homes are required to follow their local and state reporting requirements, but she did not respond to questions about why the agency is not tracking the number nationally. CDC spokesman Scott Pauley said the agency used informal outreach to state health departments late last month to estimate that 400 nursing homes had positive cases. The number has not been updated. "The CDC doesnt necessarily need to track them," Pauley said. "Each state is tracking their own." USA TODAY found that is not the case. And the way states are tracking cases and deaths in nursing homes if they are doing so at all varies. In some states, such as Washington and Louisiana, nursing homes are required to report straight to the state when a resident or employee tests positive for the virus. In others, such as New Jersey, that information flows through county health departments. Several states said compiling accurate data has been a challenge. "This information is not consistently entered into our reporting system by local health departments, and we dont currently have the infrastructure within that system to collect the information and report it out," Lynn Sutfin, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email. Seven states said they are actively working to improve the data they collect and provide to the public. Each day, Virginia reports on the number of facilities with outbreaks but said it is in the process of building a tool to track other data, including deaths. South Carolina said it doesnt require reporting of positive cases from nursing homes but that the state's epidemiologists "are working to investigate and compile this information." Arizona began requiring nursing homes to report positive cases to the state this week, under the terms of an executive order from the governor. The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services which provided USA TODAY with the number of affected facilities and deaths in those facilities said one of the challenges is that the number of cases is an evolving snapshot in time. "It changes rapidly," said Candace Goehring, the departments director of residential care services. "By the time we get it and then we respond within 48 hours, it's changed." 'We were already in crisis Six states said they were tracking information on nursing home cases and deaths but not releasing some or all of it, raising questions about transparency. New Hampshire said it would release information only "if it further ensures the health and safety of the public" and suggested reaching out to individual nursing homes. Georgia wouldnt provide the number of people who had tested positive. Ohio would only release positive cases 297 as of April 8 but not deaths or the number of facilities affected, though it is tracking both. Earlier this month, two Democratic U.S. senators, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ron Wyden of Oregon, sent a letter to the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services demanding that the agency release a full list of affected nursing homes. "At a time when this information could be vital to the health and safety of Americans, it is imperative that the list of facilities with a COVID-19 case, among residents and staff, be made public and shared with relevant health care providers, authorities and Congress on a real-time basis," they wrote. In some states where the names of affected facilities have not been released, the lack of transparency has trickled down to the facilities themselves. In Illinois, where the state said it was not disclosing the names of facilities "to protect the resident's private health information," two certified nursing assistants told USA TODAY that they werent informed of COVID-19 cases in their own workplaces. Francine Rico is a certified nursing assistant at The Villa at Windsor Park in Illinois. She said the facility did not tell her when a resident she worked with tested positive for COVID-19. Francine Rico, who has worked at Villa at Windsor Park for nearly 23 years, said she found out that a resident she had worked with had tested positive for COVID-19 from a co-worker who happened to take the call from the hospital where the resident was tested. She said her facilitys administrators were not upfront. "I'm mad because we are frontline workers but we have been lied to," she said. "They put our lives on the line. They have put our residents' lives on the line." Tainika Somerville said she, too, worked directly with a resident who tested positive for COVID-19 and later died. She said no one at the Bridgeview Health Care Center in Illinois told her shed been in contact with someone who had it. Instead, she learned about it through news articles and social media. Tainika Somerville has been a certified nursing assistant for 20 years. She said the nursing home where she worked did not inform her when a resident she cared for tested positive for COVID-19. Somerville said the nursing home was understaffed and lacked communication even before the coronavirus. She said the facility also lacked sufficient personal protective equipment. (Somerville was fired April 2. She and the union said she was terminated for delivering a petition to the nursing home administrator and for speaking out about the delay in being notified about a COVID-19 case, a lack of protective gear and other issues). "We were already in crisis before the pandemic hit," Somerville said. "And since the pandemic hit, it has made it so much worse." Bridgeview Health Care Center did not respond to USA TODAYs request for comment. In a statement on its website, the facility acknowledged it has had several residents test positive for COVID-19. It said it has implemented procedures to protect residents health. In a statement provided to USA TODAY, Villa at Windsor Park acknowledged a delay in notifying staff that a resident had tested positive and said it has suspended the facilitys administrator while it conducts an investigation. Kelley, the union president, said Rico and Somervilles frustrations are shared by many workers the union represents. "They feel like they're in the dark, that they don't really know if they're in danger, if there are patients or residents there that are infected with COVID-19," he said. "They feel unprepared very often as it relates to PPE. They feel that they are just, you know, being sort of led to slaughter without proper protection." Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, said long-term care providers are doing all they can to reduce the risk of an outbreak and limit the spread of the virus. But he said they need more personal protective equipment. Experts say that better tracking will mean that limited resources can be better deployed. Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said she was on a call Thursday with the state ombudsman in Connecticut and was impressed by how they are using their data. Connecticut is one of at least four states that regularly posts online the number of cases and deaths in nursing homes. Edelman said the state communicates every day with facilities that have a positive case, including asking about staffing levels and whether they need supplies. "You cant be intelligent as a government if you dont know where it is," Edelman said. Accurate data on nursing homes could become even more important as the pandemic stretches on, said Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said that Americans are currently trying to contain the spread with a "blunt hammer approach," but that the goal eventually should be targeting interventions towards the most vulnerable. "Data and lots of testing and lots of awareness of the situation," he said, "is the key to get from the blunt hammer to the scalpel." Marisa Kwiatkowski is a reporter on the USA TODAY investigations team, focusing primarily on children and social services. Contact her at mkwiatko@usatoday.com, @IndyMarisaK or by phone, Signal or WhatsApp at (317) 207-2855. Tricia L. Nadolny is a reporter on the USA TODAY investigations team. She can be reached at tnadolny@usatoday.com or @TriciaNadolny. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus in nursing homes: 2,300 facilities report positive cases Macey Nichols stared at the wreckage of her familys mobile home in Walker County and saw both devastation and hope. Severe weather swept across the South Sunday night, leaving a swath of destruction in Walker County a storm path about three miles long and almost a mile wide. It is believed to have been an EF-1 tornado with maximum winds of 100 mph. The trailer in Carbon Hill Nichols shares with her fiance, her mother and her two younger brothers flipped multiple times and was reduced to a pile of rubble. In the midst of the chaos, Nichols found her deceased fathers Bible, which was untouched and opened and to a passage in Psalm that read, In my anguish, I cried to the Lord and he answered by setting me free. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. Though Nichols and her fiance were not home at the time the tornado hit, her mother, Amy Tucker, and two younger brothers, ages 18 and 10, were inside the now-toppled trailer. All three were taken to Walker Baptist Medical where they were treated and released with minor cuts and bruises. It was God, Nichols said. I dont see how any of them made it out alive. Macey Nichols' family home was obliterated by Easter storms, but her father's Bible was found untouched and opened to a passage of hope. Sunday nights storms killed at least 19 people across the South. Eleven people were killed in Mississippi, and six more died in northwest Georgia. Two other bodies were pulled from damaged homes in Arkansas and South Carolina. No fatalities have been reported in Alabama. Walker County was one of many communities statewide hard-hit by the storms. It got pretty intense really quickly, said Walker County sheriffs spokesman T.J. Armstrong. I was in my safe place at home and the sirens started going off. Within five minutes, the rain stopped and then there was damage everywhere. It was chaotic at times Sunday night as first responders search for injured victims. Though about a handful of residents were taken by ambulance to the hospital, no one was seriously injured or killed. Absolutely we dodged a bullet. God had his hand on us, Armstrong said. No fatalities, no life-threatening injuries, thats huge. Certainly, the people of Carbon Hill are no strangers to tornadoes and working through them, he said, and sadly theyre going to have to relive that again today. The trailer park where Nichols lives is on Nauvoo-Carbon Hill Road. Many of the homes there were obliterated. Nathan Maclaren and Tessa Bonham, both 21, were in their mobile home when they heard what they described as a whistling noise and took cover in the bathtub with two of their four dogs. By the time we got into the bathtub it hit us, Bonham said. It slung us back and forth. It threw me from the bathtub into the toilet and it broke the toilet. It was over with in the blink of an eye. The force of the storm knocked the trailer off its foundation. The trailer traveled a short distance before a tree stopped further movement. If it wasnt for that tree, I dont think we would have made, Maclaren said. Both were taken by ambulance to Walker Baptist. Maclaren suffered a broken collarbone, and Bonham received 17 stitches for a severe laceration to her arm. Not long after daybreak Monday, neighbors were helping neighbors, and several area churches were firing up the grills to feed both the storm victims and first responders. Authorities are still pleading with sightseers to stay away so they can continue with cleanup. Walker County EMA officials and Carbon Hill Police Chief Eric House met with National Weather Service representatives midday to begin survey of the damage. They said they dont yet have an exact number of those injured or an estimate of property damage. They said we definitely had a tornado, but I dont know that it was ever on the ground, House said. It covered pretty much all of our city. Yes, we do have devastating property loss, but we came through with only minor injuries, the chief said. We are definitely blessed. In an escalation of social media bickering, a Nigerian governors son publicly threatened to gang rape a senior citizen on Sunday. Bello El-Rufai, one of the sons of the Kaduna governor, issued the threat in a private message to a Twitter user following arguments about politics. Tell your mother Im passing her to my friends tonight, Mr El-Rufai said to his detractor, before adding an ethnic diatribe: No Igbo sounds please! The message, which went out at 10:21 a.m. Sunday, quickly became the basis for prolonged outrage after it was made public by its recipient about an hour later. Many Nigerians on social media have expressed outrage at Mr El-Rufai, while anti-rape activists demanded a thorough investigation for probable violation of the Cybercrime Act. Mr El-Rufai, however, dismissed calls, including from ex-minister Oby Ezekwesili, for him to apologise throughout Sunday, claiming without evidence that he was returning an insult earlier lobbed at his father. His defiance continued even as his mother, Hadiza El-Rufai, was being prodded to denounce her sons call to violence. Competent disagreement The confrontation ensued after a Twitter user, @thanos_zer, criticised a tweet posted the previous night by Mr El-Rufai as hypocritical. There is nothing as radioactive as an incompetent leader during a time of crisis, Mr El-Rufai tweeted after 8:00 p.m. on Saturday. The United States of America is a case in point. A few states in Nigeria too. This prompted @thanos_zer to wonder what Mr El-Rufai thought about President Muhammadu Buhari, who has been criticised as an absentee leader for his sparse public appearances. How about the absentee president in Nigeria?, @thanos_zer wrote. In response, Mr El-Rufai said he was sure that @thanos_zer would be from the South-east and his state governor would be grossly incompetent. Again, @thanos_zer responded, saying: I dont shield anyone whos inept. I cant say the same about you. Youre daddys boy and of course nobody attacks the finger that feeds them. Buharis ineptitude is mind-blowing. Yes I said it and youre not going to make me disappear! Subsequently, Mr El-Rufai rained a barrage of insults at his detractor. In one tweet before 11:00 a.m. Sunday, he posted sexual innuendos against @thanos_zers mother, saying he was aware of her mind blowing sexual capabilities. In another tirade laced with sexual vulgarity, Mr El-Rufai tweeted at 11:02 a.m. that he had also learnt of sexual exploits of @thanos_zers grandmother. Following the attacks, @thanos_zer told PREMIUM TIMES he stopped replying to Mr El-Rufai, and there was no evidence that he returned the offensive attacks. About an hour after the public disagreement ended, @thanos_zer posted a screenshot that contained a threat which Mr El-Rufai sent to him as a private message. This was what El Rufai's son sent before blocking me. I'm not even Igbo and none of what he said got to me. He can't call Buhari out for his ineptitude yet he's calling trump names? Did he vote Trump?@ayabie_ikem @MobilePunch @Alaye_100 @HAHayatu @AishaYesufu pic.twitter.com/jLsfCsw0Cz consigliere (@thanos_zer) April 12, 2020 The threat, in which Mr El-Rufai disclosed intention to subject @thanos_zers mother to sexual violence, carried a timestamp of 10:21 a.m., indicating that it was sent as the public attacks were ongoing. Citing potential threats to his safety and advice of his lawyer, @thanos_zer declined to be identified by PREMIUM TIMES for this story. However, he dismissed Mr El-Rufais assumption of his ethnic identity. I am not Igbo, he said. I am from Cross River. Crime committed Mr El-Rufai, who works as a legislative aide to Kaduna senator, Uba Sani, declined PREMIUM TIMES request asking whether he would like to clarify his controversial social media statements on Sunday. Mr Sani also declined comments about whether or not he was aware of the statements of his employee. Although Mrs El-Rufai, 59, said she would not condone sexual violence against women, she declined to categorically denounce her sons vulgar statements, brushing aside a barrage of social media admonition for her to do so. Advertisements The point I tried to make is for people not to @me. Why should they? Responding to insults on twitter is fair. I stand by that. I had not gone through the tweets because its really none of my business, so didn't know the details. Hes an adult not a child, after all. Hadiza Isma El-Rufai (@hadizel) April 12, 2020 In fact, she deemed all the vile statements credited to her son as fair when directed towards those who had insulted him. All you people talking about @B_ELRUFAI Dont @ me. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. All is fair in love and war. My belief: Respect everyone, but take no shit from anyone. I didn't see any threats of rape. I would never condone that. Hadiza Isma El-Rufai (@hadizel) April 12, 2020 She, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that her son should be held responsible for his tweets. The El-Rufais, a major dynasty in contemporary Kaduna politics, have regularly come under social media attacks, ranging from sensible to downright banal. The mysterious disappearance of Abubakar Dadiyata Idris, whose fate remained unknown more than eight months later, has frequently pitted the critics against the El-Rufais. Mr El-Rufai, 32, suggested on Sunday that @thanos_zers line that he did not want to disappear was a subtle allusion to his fathers purported involvement in the political activists disappearance, but @thanos_zer did not admit this. Critics said, even if his assumption were correct, it did not justify his violent disparaging of a critics mother. Bello El-Rufais tweet threatening a twitter user. By Sunday night, supporters of Mr El-Rufai started circulating the screenshot of a tweet that contained vile comments against his father claiming it was the tweet that triggered the threat to gang rape, but the tweet was not from @thanos_zers handle. Bello El-Rufais tweet threatening a twitter user. In fact, @thanos_zer quickly objected to that specific tweet, saying: This isnt right. I dont support it. This isn't right. I don't support it. consigliere (@thanos_zer) April 12, 2020 Anti-rape campaigners took strong exception to Mr El-Rufais comments, with some saying they were even more enraged that he dug his heels in. Threats to gang rape a woman should not be used as tool to get upper hand and show power, especially by people in power or with close proximity to those in power, Ayodeji Osowobi, director of Stand to End Rape, told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday. Regardless of affiliation or context, it should not be permitted. Ms Osowobi said Mr El-Rufais action appeared a violation of the Cybercrime Act. It is a huge violation under the Cybercrime Act, she said. Section 23 of the 2015 law prohibits online threats with a maximum punishment of 10 years and N15 million fine. Bello El-Rufai should be thoroughly prosecuted if Nigeria is serious about stemming the tide of gender-based violence, Ugo Ikeakor, an anti-rape activist in Lagos, told PREMIUM TIMES. He should be penalised to serve as a much-needed deterrence against unending attacks on our women. Mr Ikeakor said men, especially those from privileged backgrounds, should be sensitive to the protection of women. They should know they are there to protect women and children against violence so that they can set a lasting example, not to continue the cycle of violence that has kept us underdeveloped for decades, he said. Other activists said the statements by Mr El-Rufai underscored an entrenched culture of women victimisation in Nigeria. Like in armed conflict, women are always the target in a verbal conflict and it always has to do with afflicting sexual violence on them, gender equality activist, Fakhrriyyah Hashim, told PREMIUM TIMES. And that is dangerous for the tide women are trying to curb. As much as society has normalised these afflictions on women, verbal or not, it remains unacceptable and quite frankly atrocious, she added. Mr El-Rufai is known to live between Kaduna and Abuja. The Abuja police commissioner, Bala Ciroma, and the command spokesperson, Anjuguri Manzah, declined comments about the matter Sunday night. A spokesperson for the police in Kaduna, Sabo Abubakar, also declined comments. The activists said Sundays incident would further bolster womens determination to rid the Nigerian society of the spectre of gender-based violence. They also decried Mrs El-Rufais reluctance to take the matter seriously, saying she missed an opportunity to stand as a voice for womens rights even in a tough or awkward situation as todays development. For someone who has always described herself as a feminist, Ms Osowobi said, I think she missed an opportunity to make a bold statement by prioritising the public interest over her personal biases. Holed away in an industrial stretch of the Dogpatch, Frank E. Lawson Jr. tries to recount all of the noteworthy buildings Lawson Roofing Co. has worked on during its 113-year history. There was the Fairmont Hotel and the Ferry Building. The Exploratorium and Oracle Park. We were waterproofing the dome of Candlestick Park in 1989 when the earthquake hit, said Lawson, who has worked for the family business for 52 years and now runs the operation with his brother Richard. Started by Lawsons grandfather (also named Frank) the year after the 1906 earthquake, Lawson Roofing is the oldest roofing company in San Francisco. It has endured through everything the city and the world has thrown at them for more than a century, but nothing, it seems, compares to this current pandemic. I cant think of anything in my lifetime like it, the 70-year-old Lawson said. Its changed our life. About 80% of Lawsons 100-man roofing crew is still on hand (A number of guys felt strongly about wanting to stay home through this event, which we respect, he said), as are about 70-75% of their current projects. Requests for new jobs have also dramatically slowed (Lawson says bid requests are down by as much as 50%), and social-distancing adherence has forced them to leave many jobs only partially complete until the shelter-in-place order is lifted. Its actually a fairly rosy picture when you compare it to what the hospitality industry, public transportation agencies, or even local residential roofing companies are facing. If we were just in the residential business, wed be dead right now, Lawson said. But the balance between rose and thorn can shift with a single Facebook livestream from Mayor London Breed, as Lawson has already learned. We were doing a large pharma building in South San Francisco, a new construction project, and it was deemed essential, because the building would be producing medicine, he said. That was on March 17. Just two weeks later, that same essential project was suddenly deemed non-essential. On April 1, Breed extended San Franciscos shelter-in-place order to at least May 3, and along with that extension made some updates to the order, adding playgrounds and dog parks to the list of closures, limiting funeral gatherings to no more than 10, and restricting virtually all construction to only the most essential. Those include healthcare projects directly related to the pandemic, housing projects with at least 10% affordable housing, projects that provide services to vulnerable populations, and construction necessary to ensure that essential businesses are safe, sanitary, or habitable. Lawsons current projects? Low-income housing, a couple of hospital projects, and a restaurant with a roof leak impacting food preparation. All of which, Lawson points out, arent deemed essential in plenty of other cities. In Boston, all non-emergency construction has halted. Down on the Peninsula, Atherton and Portola Valley have banned construction entirely. Theres no uniform consistency, and a lot of decisions are not health related, he said. And it changes every day. Its hard to keep up. We work for a lot of general contractors, each one has their own specific pandemic policy, and those are different than trade organizations, and those are different than health organizations. And each municipality is different. No one is producing a universal doc we can go by. And while being in the thick of an ever-evolving pandemic has been challenging, Lawson said what comes after its over may be even more caustic for his industry. In addition to the dramatic drop in future bid requests, Lawson anticipates a lot of projects already in the pipeline are going to run into financing issues. And when that happens ... We may have to go after a different market share we didnt go after previously. We do very little public works projects, and you may see a lot more activity there. The world may get a lot more competitive than it is now, he said. Theres an aftermath to this for sure. Theres going to be a ripple effect. But for now, Lawson said its about solving that problem once they solve this one. As long as some measure of essential business remains, hell be able to keep the lights on to the citys oldest roofing company. If that goes away here, wed be shut down, and our business between the office and field operations 125 to 135 people wouldnt be getting a paycheck. Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek Six times in three weeks, Marci Rosenberg and her ailing husband and teenage children tried to get tested for the new coronavirus only to be turned away each time, either for not meeting narrow testing criteria or because there simply were not enough tests available. All the while, the Bellaire family of four grew sicker as their fevers spiked and their coughs worsened. They said they fell one by one into an exhaustion unlike any they had felt before. By March 18, Rosenberg was desperate and pleaded with her doctor for a test. Dr. Lisa Ehrlich, an internal medicine physician, told Rosenberg to pull into her office driveway. But Ehrlich warned Rosenberg, I can only test one of you. She swabbed her throat through an open car window. The result came back the next day: positive. PANDEMIC EXPERT: Coronavirus will have 5 stages. We're in stage 2 in Houston. The rest of her family was presumed to be positive but untested - and thus excluded from any official tally of the disease. As the number of confirmed cases of the potentially deadly virus continues to explode across the Houston region - tripling from 1,000 to more than 3,000 in just the past week - there is mounting evidence that the true scope of the disease here could be far worse than the numbers indicate. A Houston Chronicle analysis of testing data collected through Wednesday shows that Texas has the second-worst rate of testing per capita in the nation, with only 332 tests conducted for every 100,000 people. Only Kansas ranks lower, at 327 per 100,000 people. In cities across Texas from Houston to Dallas, San Antonio to Nacogdoches testing continues to be fraught with missteps, delays and shortages, resulting in what many predict will ultimately be a significant undercount. Not fully knowing who has or had the disease both skews public health data and also hampers treatment and prevention strategies, potentially leading to a higher death count, health care experts say. In Houston, the nations fourth-largest city, officials worry that because the number of confirmed cases is lower than other major U.S. cities, the situation here may seem less serious. The federal government announced plans to cut 25 percent of its funding to help administer the citys two testing sites and relocate six federal public health workers who help manage the sites. Dr. David Persse, Health Authority for the Houston Health Department, protested the decision as a monumental step backwards, in a letter this week to Erica Schwartz, deputy U.S. surgeon general. On Thursday, the federal government agreed to extend funding for both the city and county testing sites through May 30. The total testing volume for all four Houston-area sites, two run by city and two run by the county, has been capped at 1,000 people per day until Saturday, when federal officials pledged to double that capacity. Without robust testing we have no idea of our true numbers, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner has said. You can look at the numbers we have (of confirmed cases) and multiply them by 10. Slow to start As the pandemics march quickened, Texas was slow to ramp up testing. The first confirmed case in Texas, outside those under federal quarantine from a cruise ship, was March 4, striking a Houston area man in his 70s who lived in Fort Bend county and had recently traveled abroad. By months end, the Houston area had more than 1,000 confirmed cases. A week later, the number had pushed past 3,000. Yet it was not until March 30 that the rate of testing per 100,000 people in Texas topped 100. As of Wednesday, the state was testing 327 per 100,000, according to a Chronicle analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, which collects information nationwide on testing primarily from state health departments, and supplements with reliable news reports and live press conferences. Twenty-six states in the U.S. are testing at least double the number of patients per capita as Texas, in some cases six times more. New York, for instance, is testing 1,877 per 100,000 people while neighboring Louisiana is testing 1,622 per 100,000. Even smaller states, such as New Mexico, are testing triple the rate of Texas. Texas officials defended the states response. Weve consistently seen about 10 percent of tests coming back positive, which indicates there is enough testing for public health surveillance, said Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Department of State Health Services, in an email, If we saw 40 or 50 percent or more of test coming back positive, wed be concerned that there could be a large number of cases out there going unreported, but that has not been the case. It is unclear if that is a reliable measure. Nearly 41 percent of New York tests were positive, the second-highest rate in the country. In Texas, about 9.4 percent of tests were positive roughly the same as Washington state, where one of the largest outbreaks of coronavirus has occurred. At a news conference this week, Gov. Greg Abbott downplayed any problems with testing. The bottom line is whatever the source may be, we are seeing more testing achieved in the state of Texas, he said. The stakes for better testing could not be higher. Without widespread testing, experts said, it is impossible to fully quantify how many people have the disease and to identify hotspots. Public health officials have said they need to establish a large enough baseline to see patterns, deploy resources and ultimately calculate mortality rates. As of Saturday, the number of confirmed cases nationwide had grown to more than 526,00 with more than 20,000 deaths. The number of deaths in Texas was 271. Rural trouble to come? In early March, when the national number of confirmed cases was just reaching triple digits, University of Texas researchers in Austin began examining the virus potential spread using models originally developed when the Zika virus swept the world in 2016. In both instances, testing capacity was low and many who were infected never showed symptoms, which led to underestimates of the diseases true toll, said Spencer Fox, a research associate and data scientist at the university. We found that even if a county has only one or two cases, said Fox, whose research is currently under peer review, those cases likely signal that there is a growing epidemic in the county even if they dont detect it. That could spell trouble for the states small towns and rural areas, where even a single reported case means that the virus could already be spreading. On March 13, President Donald Trump declared the outbreak a national emergency and announced a government partnership with the medical lab industry to greatly expand testing. It was to be a rescue mission of sorts, tapping the infrastructure and expertise of the private sector to streamline the process and stave off critics who complained not nearly enough people were being tested. A week later, Houston followed other cities around the country and opened its first drive-thru testing site at Butler Stadium, reserved initially for first responders and health care workers with a promise to expand to others who were showing symptoms or considered high risk. A second city site was opened recently, bringing the total in the area to four, including two Harris County sites. The total testing volume for all four was originally capped at 1,000 people per day. Meanwhile, hospitals, clinics and doctors offices forged their own agreements with private labs or created their own tests. Almost immediately, demand outstripped resources at every step of the process. Lines at testing sites snaked for miles, testing supplies and the tests themselves grew scarce as did the protective gear needed to safely administer them. The wait for results went from a few days to up to two weeks. Meanwhile, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance has continued to shift, leading to even more confusion and delays. Quest Diagnostics, one of the two major commercial labs that won a government testing contract, said in late March it had a backlog of 160,000 tests as its labs were overwhelmed. Since then the company has said its backlog has been cut in half. LabCorp, the other major lab, said in an emailed statement Saturday it continues to do everything it can to ensure that healthcare providers and patients receive their test results as quickly as possible. The company acknowledged that in the early days some results took longer than anticipated but more recently the turnaround after picking up a specimen is usually two to four days. Other players are now entering the marketplace, with a spate of new rapid-return testing options soon to be available that come with promises to boost the number of tests given and processed. But roll out remains spotty and a timeline unclear. At Legacy Community Health, a network of clinics that serve Houstons poor and uninsured, the number of people being tested has shrunk dramatically. When testing began there March 16, as many as 160 people per day across 15 clinics could be tested. Today, at best, only 30 a day are tested, said Dr. Vian Nguyen, chief medical officer at Legacy. When testing launched, anyone with symptoms plus exposure to someone with the virus or who traveled could get a test at Legacy, she said. But as the system bogged down and supplies became tight, testing criteria became limited to health care workers and first responders, followed by high-risk patients who were exhibiting symptoms - leaving countless people, many who were also sick, shut out. It is clear that supply chain issues are driving our testing criteria and access to testing sites, rather than the need for clinical assessment and data collection, said Nguyen, adding that the criteria could broaden as more supplies become available. She and others say a more realistic option, especially amid talk of reopening businesses, is a pivot toward antibody testing to detect if a person has developed a resistance to the virus. While unknown if once infected a person can get covid-19 again, the presumption is they would be at least partly protected. As a doctor I have no idea where to tell my patients to go to get tested, said Dr. Marrie Richards, a Houston family practitioner. One of her patients, a restaurant worker in his 40s who was clearly sick, went to a testing site in Katy on March 31 and waited in his car six hours. The location closed before he reached the front of the line. Richards said he returned the next day, arriving an hour before it opened, and waited two more hours before finally being tested. His results came back positive. Richards scoffs at the idea that most people who are ill will wait nine hours for testing. They will just never know, she says. Nor will they be counted. Two negatives, one positive Back before things got really bad, before the city shut down, Courtney Scobie got her hair cut. The 42-year-old wrestled mightily with whether to keep her appointment on March 18. The rodeo had been cancelled and schools had just been closed, but like many in Houston at the time, she was not sure of her risk. She decided to proceed with caution: the salon would be mostly empty, her hairdresser had sanitized his station thoroughly, and they skipped their usual hug. Four days later, on Sunday, March 22, she got a text from him asking to call immediately. She knew. And started to cry. Her hairdresser, who during their appointment had no idea he was infected, had just tested positive. He thinks he picked up the virus from a client before Scobie, who was also asymptomatic at the time but was later hospitalized. Mostly she was mad at herself. Why did I have to go do that? she thought, I felt really dumb. I felt really guilty that I could expose my family. Later that night her fever kicked in. She called several doctors who told her she was ineligible for testing because she did not have an underlying health issue. She was to quarantine and assume she had the virus. On March 25, her husband found a physician who tested her for $60 for the office visit plus $125 for the test. The next day she learned she tested positive. Forty-eight hours later, her husband, Bruce Scobie, who has a history of asthma, began coughing. On March 28, he was tested at an urgent care clinic. The next day he was in the emergency room with shortness of breath but released. A few days later his test came back negative. Scobies husband has since been tested twice more by the same physician who tested Scobie. The doctors idea was to try to compare results because so many did not make sense. Out of his three tests, two were negative, one positive. Public health experts now warn that the typical swab tests can have up to a 30 percent false negative rate, depending on how they are administered. Tuesday morning, just after 4:30 a.m., Bruce Scobie could not breathe. He was taken by ambulance to Memorial Hermann Southwest and admitted. Doctors suspect pneumonia linked to COVID-19. Nowhere in the numbers Marci Rosenberg has no idea how her family became exposed to the virus. The best guess is it happened sometime in February when she and her 15-year-old daughter, Mimi, went to New York City. The teenager was the first to get sick, diagnosed with a bronchial infection and given antibiotics which did not fully work. She seemed to get better briefly but then fell ill again. The first time Rosenberg asked for a test for Mimi was in late February, back when the virus had landed hard in other parts of the world but had yet to find a foothold in the U.S. They looked at me like I was crazy, she said. The first confirmed case in New York was March 1. The incubation period for the virus can be up to 14 days. In the coming weeks there would be five more attempts for either Mimi, herself, or for her husband, Ben Samuels. The couples son, Ethan, also soon became ill. There is little doubt, Rosenbergs doctor said, that they all have covid-19 although only one was tested. Its certain that me, my daughter and my son are nowhere in the numbers, said Samuels, And were not certain Marci is either. After her positive result the couple scoured reports of confirmed cases, which only listed basic demographic information. Rosenberg is 52. In the immediate time surrounding her test, there was only one woman in the 50 to 59 age range but unlike Rosenberg that woman was listed as hospitalized. Further, the couple was told a public health official would call to begin the process known as contact tracing to track down those who they might have infected. To this day no one has called them, they said. So, instead they began their own backtracking, warning roughly 30 people they may have exposed. In a seven-block radius at least eight people the family had contact with are now or have been sick recently. Only one was tested, which came back negative. So none will show up in the citys count. Of course there is an undercount, said Samuels, who added his family is now slowly on the mend. The numbers you hear are totally useless. Staff writer John Tedesco contributed. jenny.deam@chron.com twitter.com/jenny_deam President Muhammadu Buhari has described as heroes, health workers who have been part of the fight against COVID-19 pandemic in the country. He said this during a broadcast to the nation on the current state of the pandemic in the country. He assured that measures to motivate the health workers to do more, will be introduced soon. At this point, I must recognise the incredible work being done by our healthcare workers and volunteers across the country especially in frontline areas of Lagos and Ogun States as well as the Federal Capital Territory. You are our heroes and as a nation, we will forever remain grateful for your sacrifice during this very difficult time. More measures to motivate our health care workers are being introduced which we will announce in the coming weeks, he said. Lockdown extension The president also announced the extension of the lockdown by another 14 days and that more isolation centres will be built near airports and land borders as part of measures to combat the disease. Using our resources and those provided through donations, we will adequately equip and man these centres in the coming weeks. Already, healthcare workers across all the treatment centres have been provided with the personal protective equipment that they need to safely carry out the care they provide. The presidents comments came in the wake of backlash on the health minister, Osagie Ehanire, for saying he was unaware if hazard allowance was paid to health workers. Mr Ehanire, at a meeting with the leadership of the national assembly on Friday, said he was not aware if health workers are being paid hazard allowance for the work they are doing. He added that whether during a pandemic or not, handling emergencies is a standard job they (health workers) do every day. At the same event, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, who is also the chairman of the Presidential Task force (PTF) on COVID-19, said he only realised how bad Nigerias health infrastructure was after he was appointed to head the team. I never knew that our entire healthcare infrastructure was in the state in which it is until I was appointed to do this work, Mr Mustapha told the leadership of the National Assembly. PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported how nurses and midwives taking care of COVID-19 patients said they had no life insurance and were not receiving any special hazard allowance different from that embedded in their salaries. The number of confirmed cases in the country has been on the increase. As at 9 p.m. on Sunday, the NCDC announced a total of 323 confirmed cases, including 10 deaths. Over 80 persons have recovered and been discharged. NEW HAVEN The state plans to open a drive-through COVID-19 testing site in the city soon, in conjunction with CVS and Abbott Laboratories, at which four lanes will be able to accommodate up to 750 cars daily. Rick Fontana, the citys director of the Office of Emergency Management, said it will be the only such site in Connecticut, with earlier models already up and running in Georgia, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The operation will use the Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 rapid-response test, which recently received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, state officials and Fontana confirmed. The site chosen for the testing is the former Gateway Community College at 60 Sargent Drive. Eric Scoville, a spokesman for the state Department of Emergency Management/Homeland Security, said the state is making a big (push) this week to get it operational, but he said there was no hard date to open. Fontana thought it could be as early as Friday. Abbott claims it can show positive results for the potentially deadly respiratory ailment in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes, according to its literature. Scoville said the program will be run similarly to those already established by CVS. Persons with symptoms that meet the criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must pre-register online at CVS.com where they will be given a time slot and a reference number, according to its website. Licensed health care providers from MinuteClinic, CVS Healths retail medical clinic, will oversee the testing. Fontana said planning for the construction of the outdoor testing facility is being done by the state Department of Emergency Management/Homeland Security, which is bringing in the 103rd Air Control Squadron of the Connecticut National Guard to put up the facility. The drive-through testing tent is planned to measure 40 feet by 120 feet, with traffic traveling through a loop behind the building. Mayor Justin Elicker said there has been a lot of talk recently about restarting the economy by having businesses reopen and employees report to work. He said to minimize threats to peoples health, you need a strong testing regimen followed by contact tracing. He said that when New Haven residents test positive for the virus, they are then told to self-isolate. After that, the local Department of Public Health gets in touch with persons who may have interacted with the infected individual to assess their risk. They should then self-isolate to further dampen the spread of the disease and help officials get a handle on potential future outbreaks. Elicker aid the CVS/Abbott site will be a significant asset. The mayor said his main concern is accessibility to the testing site for the disabled and others who dont drive. He said CVS said they cannot have walk-ups, as that would greatly increase the amount of protective clothing needed by the testing staff, equipment that is in short supply. He said the M7 taxi service has indicated its willingness to transport persons who may be positive for COVID-19. It is now doing this for homeless persons who were hospitalized for COVID-19 and need to be taken to the emergency shelter at Career High School where they can get additional medical care. A third person is due to go there today. The mayor said they are hoping other sites can be opened up for testing in neighborhoods, but Cornell Scott Hill Health Center and Fair Haven Community Health Center already can conduct tests for the virus. He said the Housing Authority of New Haven is splitting its properties between the two centers for testing purposes. There is a major concern around the country as to the high number of cases of COVID-19 among minorities, particularly African Americans. The lack of testing in the U.S. has been an issue since cases started to escalate in March. Medical professionals have been calling for greatly enhanced testing for COVID-19 across the country for accurate data on the extent of the spread and eventually to find survivors with antibodies to the disease as research continues on developing a vaccine. Fontana said there will be no cost for the test and one of the lanes might be set aside for first responders and medical personnel who are in quarantine and need test results before going back to work. He said Connecticut State Police will be part of the operation, directing traffic off Exit 46 at Long Wharf, which leads directly to the testing site. Fontana said the project has been on an accelerated schedule. mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577 UW Offers Negotiated Gas Rate to Employees and Retirees The University of Wyoming is offering employees and retirees an opportunity to choose the negotiated natural gas rate under the Choice Gas program. Employees who have not selected a supplier and rate have until 5 p.m. Thursday, April 23, to sign up for the special UW rate. UW negotiated the special natural gas rate with Wyoming Community Gas, one of eight suppliers selling gas under the Choice Gas program. The residential rate is being offered to employees in Source Gas Casper Division, which includes Laramie and Casper, but not Cheyenne and Torrington. The negotiated UW employee rate is a fixed two-year rate, which is at $0.223/therm for the term from June 1, 2020, through May 31, 2022. Therefore, you will not have to nominate again until April 2022, says Frosty Selmer, deputy director at UW Operations in charge of utilities. This price does not include the distribution charges added to all options, usually $0.20-$0.23 per therm. Employees should keep in mind that the UW option might not be the most economical. For current UW employees and retirees who want to sign up for the negotiated market index rate, enroll in the universitys negotiated rate using one of these three options: -- Make your enrollment online by going to www.wyomingcommunitygas.org. Once youre there, enter your account number and the promo code COWBOY1 (in all CAPS). Then, follow the steps to complete your Choice Gas enrollment. You will receive a confirmation email once your selection is processed. -- E-mail the Wyoming Community Gas administrator directly at WyomingCommunityGas@constellation.com. Be sure to mention you are with UW, and provide your account number and corresponding control number. -- Call the Wyoming Community Gas administrator at (785) 338-4717, and be sure to mention you are with UW. To register, you will need to have your account number and control number. Choice Gas forms will not be accepted at the UW Service Building. Longer blades, taller towers, more powerful turbines: wind energy seems to be past the peak of innovation now, improving incrementally rather than with breakthrough. And yet none other than an oil company has ventured into a new field with massive potential: floating offshore wind. The Norwegian petroleum ministry earlier this month approved a plan by Equinor to build and operate a floating offshore wind farm in the North Sea that will supply power to as many as five oil and gas platforms. The project is the first of its kind, but it would have significant implications both for offshore oil and gas and for offshore wind. The facts: the Hywind Tampen wind farm, 140 km off the Norwegian coast, will have a total capacity of 88 MW with 11 turbines that will meet around 35 percent of the electricity needs of the two Snorre platforms and the three Gullfaks platforms. However, Equinor says that "In periods of higher wind speed this percentage will be significantly higher." The $490-million (5 billion kroner) project will reduce the use of gas turbines for power generation, consequently lowering the emissions of carbon dioxide from the five platforms by some 200,000 tons annually and emissions of nitrous oxides by 1,000 tons. That's certainly a sizable undertaking. It is unlikely to score Equinor many green points since the power generated by the wind farm will be used for extracting oil and gas from the bottom of the sea, but this is not the only purpose of the project. According to Equinor, the Hywind Tampen wind farm will also be a test site for future offshore wind installations. Premium: Missiles Fired In Iraq As Proxy War Heats Up "The Hywind Tampen project will contribute to further developing floating offshore wind technology and reducing the costs of future floating offshore wind farms, offering new industrial opportunities for Norway, the licences and Norwegian supplier industry in a growing global offshore wind market," Equinor said on its website. The global offshore market is indeed growing. A recent report from Wood Mackenzie said investments in offshore wind over the next five years could exceed $211 billion as investors move their focus from oil and gas to wind power. What's more, the investment gap between offshore wind and offshore oil and gas will narrow, with capital expenditure in offshore wind rising to top $200 billion in the period. "Offshore wind projects are changing; the offshore wind supply chain will have to change with it," the Wood Mac analysts wrote. "The number of project interfaces the supply deals associated with a project is both broadening and decreasing, while the size of projects and contracts is growing." Offshore wind carries lower returns for investors but also lower risk, the report's authors also noted. Typically, there would be many investors opting for higher returns over low risk. Still, with two oil market crashes in six years, it may be safe to say that a growing number of investors would now prefer the low risk associated with wind power over the higherbut uncertainreturns of oil and gas. What's more, investors have been paying attention to what has been happening around the world in terms of changing sentiments towards oil and gas, and the push to arrest rising global average temperatures. Wood Mac is calling this energy transition risk, and this risk is present in oil and gas investments but absent in wind power projects, hence the greater interest. The fact that Equinor is far from alone in its renewables push is indicative enough that the oil and gas industry, or at least part of it, has done its homework and is following investors in their changing attitudes. Premium: U.S. Oil Production Has Already Peaked Shell, for example, has a small but growing presence in wind power, both offshore and onshore. The company has a stake in two projects in the Netherlands, one in operation and one in construction, and it is also a 50-percent shareholder in the Atlantic Shores project: a 2.5 GW offshore wind farm in New Jersey. French Total is also betting big on renewables. The company eyes some 25 GW in renewable power generation capacity by 2025. To achieve this, Total has been expanding in the industry through acquisitions. It now has a presence along the supply chain and is further expanding it. Recently, Total joined the Erebus offshore wind project: a floating wind farm off the Welsh coast that will have a capacity of close to 100 MW. Floating wind farms may well be the future: sooner or later, free space onshore and in shallow waters will run out, but the energy demand of a growing human population will continue to rise. Whether it starts as a way to reduce offshore oil and gas platforms' reliance on gas turbines for electricity, it will inevitably progress further than that. The great thing about it? Floating wind turbines are built in relatively deep water, where there is rarely a shortage of wind. This means they wouldn't need energy storage facilities, which are now becoming mandatory for the approval of some onshore wind and solar projects. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Apostle Professor Samuel Asuming-Brempong, Chairman, Great Commission Church International (GCCI), has cautioned Christians that the COVID-19 pandemic is real and must adhere to the recommended safety measures to contain it. He said measures such as maintaining social distancing, regular hand washing with soap under running water and the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers were essential for preventing the spread of the COVID-19. Apostle Asuming-Brempong made the appeal on Sunday in his Easter Message to the GCCI via Facebook, which was monitored by the Ghana News Agency in Accra. Apostle Asuming-Brempong had to resort to the use of the Facebook live to reach out to his congregants with his Easter Message, because of the band on social gathering as part of efforts to contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. He advised Christians and Ghanaians in general to adhere to the presidential directives aimed at containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Apostle Asuming-Brempong said the resurrection of Christ would put a stop all COVID-19 pandemic; stating that "with Christ in our boat, we will always smile at the storm". "Please take good care of yourselves. Observe hygienic conditions for yourselves and family. Save yourselves (from COVID-19). Stay at home." Apostle Asuming-Brempong urged Christians to do their part and God would save them from the COVID-19 pandemic. He also appealed to Christians to continue to trust in God in all things. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video By Trend Another tanker with Azerbaijani Azeri Light oil for the Belarusian Mozyr Oil Refinery has arrived at the Ukrainian port of Odessa on April 12, Spokesperson of the Belarusian State Concern for Oil and Chemistry (Belneftekhim Concern) Alexander Tishchenko told Trend. "A tanker with Azeri Light oil arrived at the Odessa port at night of April 13. Unloading of the oil is ongoing. Within a few days, oil from the tanker in Odessa port will be delivered to the Belarusian Mozyr Oil Refinery via pipeline for processing, he said. The arrival of this tanker with oil purchased from SOCAR was expected on April 11. The volume of this batch will be about 85,000 tons. The spokesperson earlier said that other deliveries are also possible, but everything will depend on the dynamics of the development of the market. Previously, SOCAR planned to send a new batch of Azerbaijani oil to Belarus from the Georgian port of Supsa on April 8. SOCAR sent previous batch of oil to Belarus in the amount of 85,000 tons from Georgias port of Supsa on March 23. First batch of Azerbaijani oil for 90,000 tons was sent to Belarusian State Concern for Oil and Chemistry (Belneftekhim) on March 5-6. Mozyr Oil Refinery started refining the first batch of Azerbaijani oil bought from SOCAR. Earlier, spokesperson for Belneftekhim concern Alexander Tishchenko said that SOCAR will send two tankers of oil in the amount of 160,000 tons to the port of Odessa, which will be further transported via the Odessa-Brody pipeline. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Fifteen new positive cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Karnataka, taking the total number of affected in the state to 247, the Health department said on Monday. "Fifteen new positive cases have been reported from last evening to this noon.... Till date 247 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed. This includes 6 deaths and 59 discharges," the department said in a mid-day situation report. Among the 15 new cases thirteen are contacts of patients already tested positive, while one from Dodabballapura in Bengaluru Rural is with a travel history to Delhi, the other from Bengaluru city has Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI). Among the 13 contact cases tested positive four are from Hubballi in Dharwad district, three each from Malavalli in Mandya district and Raibag in Belagavi, two each from Bidar, and one from Mudhol in Bagalkote district. Three out of 15 new cases are children- a 8 year-old girl from Malavalli in Mandya, 16-year old girl from Bidar and 14-year old boy from Raibag in Belagavi. From across the state most number of infections have been reported in Bengaluru with 77, followed by Mysuru (48) and Belagavi (17). Those discharged include 27 patients from Bengaluru, nine from Mysuru, seven from Dakshina Kannada, six from Chikkaballapura, three from Davangere, two each from Uttara Kannada and Kalaburagi, and one each from Udupi, Dharwad and Kodagu. Among the dead, two are from Kalaburagi and one each from Bengaluru, Bagalkote, Gadag and Tumakuru. INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: India lockdown 2.0! PM Modi to address nation at 10 am on April 14 Also read: Coronavirus: 39 doctors, staff members quarantined at Delhi's Max Hospital after 2 patients test positive Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan, North Sumatra Tue, April 14 2020 As many as 513 Indonesian domestic workers have been repatriated from neighboring Malaysia after they were given the all-clear from COVID-19. Priagung Adhi Bawono, the head of the Medan Port Health Authority (KKP), said each Indonesian migrant worker had been accounted for and confirmed free of infection after testing negative for the virus upon their arrival at Kualanamu International Airport in Deli Serdang regency, North Sumatra. The preliminary results show that none of the [repatriated] domestic workers have any symptoms [of COVID-19]. They all tested negative, Priagung told The Jakarta Post on Saturday. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login LANSING, MI -- Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer along with the governors of 11 other states is asking the federal government to open the Affordable Care Act Marketplace to citizens in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs as a result of the spread of the virus and in turn, lost their health insurance through their work. Others simply need a chance to purchase insurance during the crisis. In the letter sent Monday, the governors say now is the time to allow for a special open enrollment period so that Americans have an option to purchase health insurance on the marketplace if they can afford to do so. During this crisis, we must do everything we can to ensure access to quality, affordable health care, Whitmer said in a press release. Thats why were calling on the Trump Administration to do the right thing, reconsider its decision, and allow for a special enrollment period, and its also why were taking action in Michigan to expand opportunities for safe, quality care. We will continue to work with our partners across both state and federal government, as well as those in the private sector, to ensure Michiganders everywhere can access the care they need. Whitmer was referring to previous calls made by officials in Michigan asking for a special enrollment period. That effort also had support from Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow. The letter sent Monday was addressed to the Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma. It was signed by Whitmer and the governors of Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. We all know that more needs to be done to increase access to affordable health care during this crisis, however. To that end, we would ask that you reconsider your decision and immediately open a special enrollment period of at least 30 days on the federal health care exchange," reads a portion of the letter. A special enrollment period would ensure individuals in the 38 states on the federal exchange, in addition to those who already qualify, can purchase the coverage they need during this challenging time. Related story: How Michigan residents can get health coverage after losing jobs or income amid coronavirus outbreak By law, people who lose their insurance because of a loss of job have 60 days following their termination to use the marketplace to buy insurance. However, if a special open enrollment period were open for longer than that, they would be able to buy insurance as long as the special period was open. The federal government has offered special enrollment periods in the past in the wake of natural disasters like hurricanes. In a time of a fast-moving pandemic, taking every step possible to expand access to health insurance is not just a responsible choice for the health of the individual, but also for the health of our communities, our states, and the country, the governors continued. We as governors have done and will continue to do everything we can for our residents, and we hope that you will take all the necessary steps that only you can for them as well. PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. READ MORE Complete coverage at mlive.com/coronavirus Michigan cites possible testing lag as coronavirus cases drop Kroger, Meijer report deaths of grocery store workers in Michigan from coronavirus Michigan begins sending $600 payments, sets date for expanded unemployment eligibility Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Calif. bill aims to hide kids' abortions, transgender procedures from parents Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A California state lawmaker has introduced a bill that would hold health insurance companies criminally liable if they disclose medical information to parents or guardians about their dependents, including details about procedures that have been performed without their knowledge. Services and procedures mentioned in SB 1004, the "Confidentiality of Medical Information Act" include drug abuse and mental health treatments, abortions, and experimental gender transition hormones and related surgical procedures. In a fact-sheet released by Democratic state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, the claim is that the legislation is necessary to protect young adults who remain on their parents' health insurance until age 26 from being shamed or hurt by the policyholder who disagrees with their healthcare choices. The religious advocacy group Catholic Citizens of Illinois raised concerns, saying, "This bill not only hides the medical service used by young adults from their parents, but it also hides services for 'a minor who can consent to a health care service without the consent of a parent or legal guardian " California Family Council President Jonathan Keller said in a statement to The Christian Post that government bureaucrats should not be helping Planned Parenthood undermine parents rights to guide and oversee the healthcare of their children." Transparency matters. The owner of an insurance policy deserves to know what medical procedures they are paying for. If an adult under 26 wants insurance privacy, they can and should purchase their own insurance, he added. California state law currently allows minors to give consent to the following medical procedures and treatments in cases of: abortion; drug and alcohol related problems; HIV/AIDS; certain infectious, contagious, or communicable diseases, including sexually transmitted diseases; mental health drugs and counseling; pregnancy and birth control; and sexual assault, according to the California Healthcare Foundation. Under the new bill, insurers would be held criminally liable if they informed parents or guardians that their insurance policies were paying for any of these procedures for their children. Planned Parenthood currently says on its website that minors who identify as transgender and want to take puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones which cause sterility must first obtain parental approval. Some groups believe that a 1997 California state Supreme Court ruling might be used as the legal basis to justify permitting minors to obtain experimental drugs for transgender procedures without their parents' consent. In a press release sent to CP, Pacific Justice Institute Senior Attorney Kevin Snider highlighted the case of American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lundgren, which, he said, "emasculated" parental rights, as it overturned a law requiring parents to be notified before a minor could undergo an abortion. The California state Supreme Court held that minors have informational and autonomy privacy in terms of intimate personal decisions which trumps the rights of parents. It is doubtful that the ruling would not extend to minors ingesting cross-sex hormones, Snider said. Another factor that points toward this as a likely development is a recent policy from the California Teachers Association, the state teachers' union. The new CTA policy states that it believes "comprehensive school-based healthcare clinics are needed to bring caring and responsive services to young people. The clinics shall provide cisgender, transgender and non-binary youth equal and confidential access to decision-making rights for students and their families. The group's stated rationale for the policy is that "[c]urrent interpretation of California state law does not allow trans students to begin gender identity confirming hormone therapy without the consent of both legal guardians, however, it does allow for cis minors to receive hormones (e.g. birth control) without the barrier of parental permission." This inequity of decision-making forces some children to go through the wrong puberty and can negatively impact the childs mental health, the teachers' union claims. In December, Planned Parenthood announced its plans to establish health centers within 50 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District to offer their services to students. SB 1004 hasn't yet been assigned to a Senate committee for a hearing, and won't be assigned to a hearing until the Senate returns to session in May. California is among the states whose lawmakers have pushed for transgender medicalization of children. In 2018, lawmakers passed AB 2119, legislation that guaranteed state resources would go toward "gender-affirmative" treatments for children in the state foster care system who identify as transgender or nonbinary. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill in September of the same year. Last week, without specifically endorsing the last man standing, Sen. Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden a nearly-unimpeded path to his partys nomination. But, between Bidens first 1988 race and Super Tuesday, 2020, the day their establishment smothered Sanders primary surge, there was never a time when even most Democrats agreed Joe should be president. In fact, Biden has recently behaved in ways that, in normal times, would convince the party he cannot be. Biden has always had two fundamental problems: Hes irrepressibly loquacious, and hes not very smart. Today, add a third: age-related cognitive impairment. People who have observed them in elderly relatives recognize symptoms of advancing senility, and cannot understand why a loving family would permit Joes frequent public self-humiliations: * In January, Catholic Joe told black voters, I was raised in the black church. * In February, Joe called a female voter a dog-faced pony soldier, and in March, proud O-biden-bama Democrat Joe told supporters, We cannot win this re-election We can only re-elect Donald Trump. A week later, Joe angrily told a Detroit voter, Youre full of sh**! * Also in March, Joe drew a blank on Americas Declaration of Independence and his Creator: We [unintelligible] toself-evident, all men created by you know, you know the thing! * Last year, Joe said, China is not our problem. Now, struggling for relevance during the panic, Joe blasted President Trumps Wuhan virus strategies before plagiarizing them twice. * Then, when the teleprompter slipped during a scripted event, Joe ad-libbed, And, uh, and, and in addition to that, uh, and in addition to that, we have to, uh, make sure that we, uh, we are in a position that we are, well, lemme, lemme go to a second thing. Ive spoken enough on that. * Later, responding to a question about President Trumps coronavirus performance, Biden said, We have to take care of the cure that will make the problem worse no matter what. * Ironically billed as a voice of clarity during uncertain times, Joe recently launched prerecorded podcasts edited to remove his verbal blunders. Even so, insisting that the president was holding up millions of coronavirus relief checks, Biden issued this doozy: No American should have to wait a single minute so Donald Trump can put his signature on a physical check. * Last week, Joe told ABC: We cannot let this, weve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time correct the public health. * In another podcast, Joe said: We have to make sure everyone has access to maintain and maintain affordable health insurance coverage. We should be making it easier not harder to make sureto make senseuhlet me put another way, it makes no sense, it makes no sense. Bidens limitations are excruciatingly obvious. Courts have appointed conservators for more-coherent seniors. One suspects that selfish desperation overrides any concern his family may have for Bidens welfare. After all, their sketchy dealings and prosperity were built on Joes decades-long national/international influence. But, Democrats backing Biden appear desperate, too, because, while former-President Barack Obama hogged the media spotlight for two terms, and Hillary Clinton was so inevitable, the party never developed a national bench. If nominated, Joe will not have prevailed so much as the alternatives running were even less plausible. Lets stop pretending theres nothing wrong with Biden, and that enough people will vote for a confused, unpredictable, backward-looking, geriatric careerist who lacks even average mental capabilities, let alone the fitness to be president. Sidelining Joe would be a kindness. If Bidens family wont do it Democrats, its your move. Contact columnist Jerry Shenk at jshenk2010@gmail.com Count of known COVID-19 cases Numbers updated at 3:55 p.m., April 13 Missouri: 114 deaths, 4,388 known cases. At least 69 people in the St. Louis region with COVID-19 have died. Local officials report 1,687 cases in St. Louis County and 698 in St. Louis. There were 383 reported cases in St. Charles County. Illinois: 794 deaths, 22,025 confirmed cases. Cases include 189 in St. Clair County, 110 in Madison County and 46 in Monroe County, according to local health departments. National: At least 571,694 people across the country have tested positive for COVID-19, according to The New York Times database. At least 23,036 patients with the virus have died. Worldwide: There have been 1,776,867 cases worldwide, and 111,828 confirmed deaths, according to the World Health Organization. A southern Oregon man was arrested Sunday after stabbing another man, holing up inside a trailer and threatening to blow up the trailer if deputies approached, authorities say. The Douglas County Sheriffs Office said Sabre Eddings, 65, locked himself in his trailer before deputies showed up in response to the reported disturbance early Sunday near the small city of Winston. He refused to come outside, according to the sheriffs office, and threatened to blow up the trailer using propane if deputies approached. A crisis negotiation team responded and talked with Eddings, who exited his trailer after several hours and was taken into custody. He was jailed in Douglas County on suspicion of second-degree assault, menacing and unlawful use of a weapon, according to the sheriffs office. The agency said he stabbed another man in the forearm during an altercation. Eddings booking photo shows a mask strapped behind his ears and under his chin. A sheriffs office spokesman said deputies are providing masks to people who are taken to the jail as a precaution amid the coronavirus outbreak. -- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. By Express News Service NAGAPATTINAM: Fishers could be in imminent danger of contracting COVID-19 if they resume fishing. The Centre recently announced it is exempting fishing from lockdown restrictions. Irrespective of the possibility of extension of the lockdown, many experts states a return to fishing would be very risky, considering the number of surfaces fishers usually come in touch with. "Virus outbreaks are challenging to contain in places such as fishing hamlets. People need to be sensitised about social distancing and hand washing. Since they live in close proximity one another, it becomes more challenging. It is important to keep the virus out of fishing hamlets," said Dr K Gopala Rathinam, a retired public health officer. A study was conducted by The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society, on the surface lifespan of novel coronavirus, which has been recognised by WHO. The journal states the virus can live on surfaces for a few minutes to four days. Surfaces like paper and tissue paper, copper, cardboard, wood, clothes, stainless steel, polypropylene plastic, class and paper money are used in fishing. "The virus spreads through droplets from sneezing and coughing if an individual comes in contact with surfaces contaminated by another individual in places like boats and harbours in the case of fishers. It becomes dangerous and and makes for circumstances for easy transmission of the virus," said Dr M Shalini, Consultant Epidemiologist, Meenakshi Multi Speciality Hospital, Thanjavur. Retired public health officer Dr S Balasubramanian said, "The virus spreads through contamination in aerosol, surfaces and direct contact. It is a seventh-generation mutated virus. The risk of the virus spreading in places like fishing villages is quite high once there is an outbreak." The annual fishing ban for states such as West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry is in effect from April 15 to June 14. The ban differs for States like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, who fish in the west in the Arabian Sea. Their ban starts on June 1 and ends on July. 31. This ban applies to mechanised boat fishers, while fibreglass boat fishers are exempted from the ban. Speaking to TNIE, R Amal Xavier, Joint Director, Fisheries department, said, "We are planning to block mechanised fishers from fishing as the annual ban is only a couple of days away. We have sought opinions from representatives of fibreglass boat fishers. Some of them, particularly in southern parts like Nagapattinam taluk, have said they would refrain from fishing. Representatives in villages in some of the north taluks like Sirkazhi and Tharangambadi have expressed their willingness to go to sea." Fishers have mixed opinions. S Karthikeyan, a fisher representative from Poompuhar, said, "We cannot maintain social distancing as there would be crowds in the harbour when we land with fish. We cannot focus on work if we have to focus on washing hands every half an hour after touching surfaces." District Collector Praveen P Nair said, "We would conduct a meeting with stakeholders and participants of the Crisis Management Committee and take a call on whether to allow fishers to resume or not." Community, Charity & Cause By Andrew Hazen Published: April 13 2020 ProHEALTH Dental, with offices in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Westchester donated a total of 500 dental care packages including a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss to healthcare professionals at Huntington Hospital and the Dolan ... ProHEALTH Dental, with offices in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Westchester donated a total of 500 dental care packages including a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss to healthcare professionals at Huntington Hospital and the Dolan Family Health Center to help healthcare heroes maintain their oral health during the coronavirus crisis recently. The donations are meant to assist busy doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals spending long hours at the hospital who might not prioritize their own oral health while trying to help patients While they deserve our appreciation every day, during this crisis, when their bravery and devotion is saving lives, we wanted to thank our healthcare heroes and help them maintain good oral health, said Norton Travis, CEO, ProHEALTH Dental. Their dedication and sacrifice have our deepest gratitude and admiration. Photo courtesy ProHEALTH Dental. Pictured: Joseph T. Volavka, Sr., Administrative Director; Kathy Giffuni, RN; Dr. William Gehrhardt; Ian Gillespie, Marketing Director, ProHEALTH Dental. OPEC deal 'not nearly enough' to hasten oil recovery, says Calgary expert The oil production cut agreement between Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a group of countries led by Russia misses the mark on several levels, and recovery for the industry could be months off, a Calgary expert says. "The pain will continue. The weakest producers will be the ones that end up out of business," Richard Masson, chair of the World Petroleum Council, told CBC News Network Monday. The deal inked Sunday between OPEC and its allies to cut output by roughly 10 per cent or 9.7 million barrels a day. The move was designed to prop up the price of oil by limiting supply, since prices for crude have plummeted since the start of March, when a previous tentative agreement to cut production expired. Prices lowest in nearly 20 years Oil prices around the world have plunged to their lowest levels in almost 20 years as oil-producing nations pumped as much as they could, Masson said, drowning the market in more oil than it needed. That cut, he said, while good directionally, comes up short. "A cut of 10 million barrels a day, although it sounds very large, doesn't balance the market and it means more oil is going into tanks, and the tanks are getting full," he said. "Big reservoirs keep producing oil. It is not easy to shut them all in. OPEC does not want to give up market share. Saudi Arabia is one of the lowest cost producers in the world. Their total production was at 12 million barrels a day. They are not going to go to zero just so the world can have a better price." Alberta, which has been under government curtailment since January 2019, will effectively face a 25 per cent production cut by the end of this year, because of challenges moving the product, Masson said. "We would end up with producers having to pay people to take their oil because they don't have a place to put it," Masson said. WATCH | How Alberta stockpiled medical equipment before COVID-19 struck: Story continues A recovery could be up to five months off, he added. "I wouldn't say prices are going to go up anytime soon. We have weeks of very low prices ahead of us because of the momentum in the system and the tanks are more full," Masson said. "Until people start driving more and using jet fuel, prices are not likely to go up." Travel bans, increased work-from-home plans and physical distancing guidelines have resulted in a dramatic drop in transportation use, and a noticable decline in air pollution. The family of a six-year-old girl who only eats KFC popcorn chicken due to an eating disorder have pleaded with the fast food chain to make supplies of the snack available to them. Fearing that Akira Gujadhur, from Poole, Dorset, may starve to death during lockdown her family have appealed to KFC with a doctors note confirming the risk of their daughter suffering malnutrition. Miss Gujadhur has refused all other food apart from KFC popcorn chicken since the age of nine-months after she developed a severe eating disorder which started after a throat infection. Akira Gujadhur, six, from Poole, Dorset with her parents Raj Gujadhur (back) and Hem Gujadhur (front) who has refused all food except KFC popcorn chicken since nine-months When the lockdown was announced her worried parents had bulk-bought 10 packs of popcorn chicken from the chain expecting for it to be shut for three weeks - their supplies are now dwindling as the national shutdown continues. Before this the family depended on their local KFC in Ashley Road, Parkstone, for two portions of the snack everyday and has so far spent 16,000 on popcorn chicken. Parents Raj and Hem Gujadhur appealed to KFC today, after having obtained a doctor's note from Miss Gujadhur's consultant at St Thomas' Hospital in London verifying her condition. The note said: 'Akira has diagnoses of autism, learning difficulties and Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder(ARFID). ARFID is a specific sensory and anxiety-based feeding disorder. Kentucky Fried Chicken popcorn chicken pieces, which Miss Gujadhur likes to eat 'She has a narrow repertoire of foods that she is able to eat, and extremely high levels of anxiety about new and unfamiliar foods. 'One of the main sources of nutrition for Akira is KFC popcorn chicken. She will not accept similar sorts of chicken sold in supermarkets.' The letter asked KFC if it could sell frozen popcorn chicken to the family 'to ensure her nutritional status remains adequate'. Mr Gujadhur said: 'We invested in the same kitchen equipment that is used by KFC and cooked the KFC frozen popcorn chicken at the recommended temperature and cooking time. We were able to replicate the popcorn chicken and our daughter has been eating as normal. A letter from the families GP asked KFC if it could sell frozen popcorn chicken to the family 'to ensure her nutritional status remains adequate' 'We thought the lockdown was only going to be three weeks but it sounds like it's going to be a lot longer now. She could starve to death.' A spokesman for KFC said: 'Since Akira and her family got in touch we've been working behind the scenes to try and help out as best we can. 'We totally understand what a challenging situation it is, so we're speaking to our suppliers to try and get some popcorn chicken over to Akira, which should hopefully help until we're back open again.' Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries below are not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus. 1. Diagnostic Tests in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Narrative Review Diagnostic testing to identify infected persons is central to efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. This review from McGill University Health Centre synthesizes current knowledge of diagnostic options available to clinicians, highlights key gaps in current diagnostic capacity, and discusses potential solutions. Read the full text: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M20-1301. Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Matthew Cheng, MDCM, can be reached through Julie Quenneville at Julie.Quenneville@muhc.mcgill.ca. 2. Community Pharmacists in Taiwan at the Frontline Against the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic: Gatekeepers for the Rationing of Personal Protective Equipment Compared with other countries, Taiwan has had relatively few cases during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the many measures the government implemented was a system for rationing and distributing surgical masks to the public while prioritizing allocation of masks to health care workers. This essay from National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan describes the roles of community pharmacists in implementing the system and distributing masks to the public. Read the full text: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M20-1404. Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Yea-Huei Kao Yang, BS Pharm, can be reached directly at yhkao@mail.ncku.edu.tw. 3. Inflammatory Response Cells During Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Researchers from Beijing Institute of Hepatology, Beijing Youan Hospital, Capital Medical University describe the type of immune cells identified by imaging mass cytometry in lung tissue from 2 patients with COVID-19 and fatal acute respiratory syndrome. Read the full text: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/L20-0227. Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. To speak with the authors, please contact Lin Jia, MD, at jialin1018@yeah.net. ### Also new today: COVID-19: The Worst Days of Our Careers Chinazo O. Cunningham, MD, MS; Chanelle Diaz, MD; Deepika E. Slawek, MD, MS, MPH On Being a Doctor Free content: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M20-1715 The Congress urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to be bold in declaring a financial package of at least five to six per cent of the GDP for ensuring economic recovery after the COVID-19 lockdown. The Opposition party demanded that the Centre cleared all pending dues to the states to enable them to fight with the novel coronavirus pandemic, besides also giving each of them special economic packages. At a press conference via video, party spokesperson Anand Sharma said the government must also allow industry contributions under the corporate social responsibility to the chief minister relief funds in various states along the same lines as that granted to the PM Cares Fund. He added that not doing so would amount of discrimination and unfairness towards states. "These are extraordinary times and it required extra-rdinary actions. That is why the prime minister should be bold and declare an economic package to help revive various secctors of the economy post lockdown," Sharma said. "We expect that the economic package should be at least five-six per cent of India's GDP," he said. The Congress leader added that many countries like the UK, France and Germany had declared economic packages that were 15 per cent of their GDP, and the USA had it at 10 per cent. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chinese tech giant Huawei was blasted today after attempting to use the coronavirus pandemic as a bargaining tool in its battle to remain part of the UK's 5G network. The firm, which has close links to to the country's Communist state machinery, urged Boris Johnson to avoid doing Britain 'a disservice' by cutting it out of the next generation roll-out. In an open letter today Huawei's UK boss Victor Zhang drew attention to the work it has done keeping the UK connected during the pandemic. He said telecoms systems have faced 'significant pressure' since the virus first hit Britain, with home data use up by 50 per cent. Tory MP Bob Seely told MailOnline: 'It is pretty crass and tasteless that Huawei yet again is trying to use this crisis for their own ends and Chinese state ends. 'It is clear there is going to be a change of opinion about China after all this and Huawei is going to be part of that. A man with a mask walks under a Huawei sign using his phone in Shenyang, China, on April 2 Tory MP Bob Seely told MailOnline: 'It is pretty crass and tasteless that Huawei yet again is trying to use this crisis for their own ends and Chinese state ends' 'It is pretty crass the way it has been handing out masks. They seem to be again trying to make politics out of this crisis. 'We now hear the secret services are re-evaluating their relationship with China as well. 'If we are going to have open trade and open borders the Chinese need to be honest about pandemics in their own country and what happens in their own country.' The UK Government has faced accusations it is putting national security at risk after allowing the company in January to help build Britain's new data networks. Boris Johnson survived a major rebellion in March when 38 Tory MPs voted against Huawei's involvement amid fears over its ties to the Chinese state. Now, the company has said it is focused on keeping the UK connected during the pandemic. A woman speaks on her phone outside a Huawei store at a shopping centre in Beijing on April 1 The company added that it is working with BT, Vodafone and EE to deal with the growth and has set up three new UK warehouses to keep spare parts in supply. How the US and UK have had very different approaches to Huawei 2019 April 24: Reports emerged that Britain will allow Huawei limited access to 5G infrastructure after concluding it is a manageable risk. May 15: US President Donald Trump effectively bans Huawei in America with a national security order August 18: Mr Trump says he does not want to work with Huawei over its 'national security threat' December 16: The US passes a bill preventing country's government from buying Huawei equipment. 2020 January 14: The US urges Britain to block Huawei from its 5G network January 28: Britain allows Huawei to help build the non-core 5G network March 3: US politicians say UK must reconsider use of Huawei technology in its 5G network March 4: Nokia and Ericsson pitch themselves to US politicians as an alternative 5G provider to Huawei March 10: UK Government defeats a Tory rebellion over plans for Huawei's involvement in 5G network March 12: Mr Trump signs law to stop US rural telecom firms from using Huawei network equipment Advertisement Mr Zhang also claimed that the crisis also highlighted how many rural communities are 'stuck in a digital slow lane', and excluding Huawei from 5G would be an error. He wrote: 'There are those who choose to continue to attack us without presenting any evidence. 'Disrupting our involvement in the 5G rollout would do Britain a disservice.' Senior Tories have previously claimed the Prime Minister is putting national security at risk by allowing the Chinese firm access to UK infrastructure. The MPs attempted in March to limit the tech giant's access by tabling an amendment seeking to ban 'high-risk vendors' from the system after 2022. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden tried to persuade the rebels not to revolt by pledging to work to ensure no such high-risk vendor is in the 5G network in future. But after he refused to set a date for guaranteeing when Huawei will be out completely, 38 Tory MPs rebelled. Although the Government won the vote with a 24 majority, the size of the revolt was a sign of the challenge facing ministers when they try to push through legislation. The rebels were concerned that the Government's decision to allow Huawei to supply 'non-core' elements of the 5G network could jeopardise security. There are widespread fears across the Tory party that the decision could give China a 'back door' to spy on the UK's telecoms network. Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks from 10 Downing Street yesterday to praise NHS staff after he was discharged from hospital a week after being admitted with coronavirus symptoma The White House has banned Huawei from US networks and has been highly critical of the Government's decision, which came despite intense lobbying from America. Former Tory party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said in March that the rebels were 'genuinely concerned' about Huawei, which he described as being 'essentially almost completely owned by Chinese trade unions controlled by the state'. He said: 'The reality is that when it comes to security versus cost, my view is security wins every single time because I worry when we start compromising security. 'If defence of the realm is our number one priority then this becomes demi-defence of the realm and I am not prepared to put up with that.' BOSTON After six years at the regulatory helm of a still-emerging marijuana industry in Massachusetts, Kay Doyle has announced she will step down from the states Cannabis Control Commission in early May. Doyle, previously deputy general counsel to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, will cede her post on May 8, four months before it expires by law. She is among five members who serve as top state officials overseeing policy, business licenses, farming and outdoor cultivation in the competitive, heavily regulated industry that ramped up swiftly when recreational pot shops were green-lighted to open in this state in 2018. Progress on that front has slowed in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, which stymied business in recreational shops though medical marijuana sales continues. Throughout her time as a regulator, Commissioner Doyle has championed the interests of patients, farmers, small businesses, and veterans. In 2017, she led the Commissions efforts to draft the states first adult-use cannabis regulations by creating a transparent and fair process ... which emphasizes safety, equity, and sustainability in the Commonwealths cannabis industry, read a statement by the commission released Monday. Doyle released her own statement earlier today, saying she will return to the private sector. She did not offer more specific information. I am sad to leave, but very excited about the work I will be doing in the future, Doyle said. "I am confident that the commission will continue to regulate adult use and medical use of cannabis in a manner that focuses on public health, safety, equity, and sustainability. Doyle was among the founding members of the commission appointed through a joint decision of the attorney general, treasurer and Gov. Charlie Baker in 2017. Related content: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) on Monday announced a reduction in tariff by 70 paise to Rs 2.8 per unit under the second phase of the Central Public Sector Undertaking (CPSU) programme for development 12 GW of solar projects. Besides, the ministry has also increased the timeframe for implementation of these projects from existing 18 months to 24 months and also changed the nodal agency for conducting auctions of these projects. Now, the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) would complete the task instead of Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). The office order amending the scheme on Monday stated that the usage charge would not be more than Rs 2.8 per unit, which shall be exclusive to any other third party charges like wheeling and transmission charges and losses, point of connections charges and losses, cross-subsidy surcharge, state load dispatch centre/regional load dispatch centre charges, etc as may be applicable. Thus, all the bidders would have to bid below Rs 2.8 per unit under the auction for solar projects in the scheme. Earlier, the usage charge was fixed at Rs 3.8 per unit. Similarly, the order further states that the IREDA will be entrusted with the task of conducting bidding amongst the government producers for allocation of solar power project capacity under the scheme with viability gap funding (VGF) as bid parameter to select project proponent. It also provides that the VGF of Rs 70 lakh per MW (capacity) can be used by government producers as their equity in solar projects being set up by them under the schemer. The amendments also provide that these producers would be eligible for VGF under this scheme as well as other solar park schemes also. About the timeline to implement the project, it says that the projects with up to 500 MW capacity would be implemented within 24 months from date of letter of award. In the project of more than 500 MW capacity, the project capacity up to 500 MW would be commissioned within 24 month from the date of letter of award and balance capacity to be commissioned in next six months. Earlier, the scheme provided the timeframe of 18 months for commissioning the projects from the date of letter of award. An additional clause to the scheme also provided that the IREDA can also allot solar projects of up to 50 MW to interested entity at the L-1 rate (lowest tariff bid) discovered in mist recent auction (within four months of that auction). PTI KKS Earlier in February last year, the government had approved the proposal for setting up 12,000 MW grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) power projects with an estimated viability gap funding of Rs 8,580 crore. The proposal sought to implement the Central Public Sector Undertaking (CPSU) Scheme Phase-ll for setting up 12,000 MW grid-connected solar PV power projects, by the government producers with VGF support of Rs 8,580 crore for self-use or use by government or government entities, both central and state governments. With the implementation of the scheme, 12,000 MW or more of grid connected solar PV power projects were to be set up by government producers in four years (2019-20 to 2022-23), thereby creating an investment of about Rs 48,000 crore. The scheme aimed at providing direct employment to about 60,000 persons for about one year in pre-commissioning activities/construction phase and to around 18,000 persons for about 25 years in the operation and maintenance period. In addition, more than 1.2 lakh employment opportunities are estimated to be created for the local population by way of involvement in setting up of solar power projects and also in manufacturing of domestically produced cells and modules. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A widow has talked about how her husband died from coronavirus after spending a week in hospital. (Reuters) A grieving widow has described the heartbreaking moment nurses said her husband of 43 years would not be put on a ventilator, shortly before he died from coronavirus. She told BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Monday about his last moments in hospital before he died from COVID-19. The woman, who didnt wish to be identified and is known only as Hannah, said her husband John died last week aged 75 on the eve of the couples 43rd wedding anniversary. After he was admitted to hospital, she realised he didnt have long to live when a nurse told her he wouldnt be put on a ventilator to aid with his breathing. This is such a cruel disease, she said. Apart from the medical staff that he saw when he had to, John was alone for a week. I was alone at home and Im now alone at home. Nobody can give me a hug. My friends have rallied round, my church and everybody have been fabulous but nobody can give me a hug. Im not lonely, I want to make that clear, Im not lonely. But I am alone. Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area 6 charts and maps that explain how COVID-19 is spreading Hannah said she had contracted coronavirus before her husband, a retired accountant. After he became unwell, she said, he told her of his worries about going to hospital. He was fearful that if you went in, you wouldnt come out, she said. After he suffered a terrible coughing fit at 3am, an ambulance came to their home in 25 minutes and took him to hospital, leaving Hannah behind. As I shut the door behind him, it crossed my mind that I might never see him again, but I tried to put that aside, she said. Heartbreaking account. This is such a cruel disease. Apart from the medical staff.. John was alone, for a week.. Im now alone at home. Nobody can give me a hug. My friends have rallied round. My church and everybody have been fabulous, but nobody can give me a hug.#r4today pic.twitter.com/JIHWyIzNJ7 Damon Evans (@damocrat) April 13, 2020 A few days later, John was moved to the high-dependency unit of the hospital to be put on a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, commonly used to treat sleep apnoea, to aid his breathing. Story continues Four days later, a nurse called Hannah to say his condition had deteriorated. I then said, If he gets worse will you ventilate him?, and the nurse said We wouldnt ventilate him, we would be making him comfortable, which I know are the words they use for palliative care. This was a big shock. I had no idea he was quite that ill. She said her two sons told her they had spoken to their father by phone, and that hed said his goodbyes to them. In another phone call later from a nurse, Hannah was told John had said he had had enough, mentally and physically. Hannah said: We are Christians and he was ready to go. She drove to the hospital so they could spend his last hours together. The couple spoke via speakerphone to their rector, who informed them the next day was their 43rd wedding anniversary, and proceeded to read them prayers for the marriage vow renewal service. She said the couple then said our goodbyes and a nurse removed his CPAP mask. Watch the video below I was able to hold his hand, I was able to kiss his forehead as he got more and more distressed, said Hannah. At that point I said, Do you want anything else, or peace? And he put his thumb up for peace. The couple then spoke to their two sons one in Canada and one in India via WhatsApp. Johns breathing became really, really laboured, Hannah said. It is not a nice, quiet way to go. It is not a gentle death. I noticed a change in his breathing. It was less noisy. And I WhatsApped them, I think hes going. She then pressed the buzzer for a nurse to come in and observe her husband. She said: There was a slight exhalation, she then put her hand on his chest. And she nodded to me and said, yes hes gone. Coronavirus: what happened today Amid the COVID-19 pandemic Pope Francis says it might be time for some sort of universal basic income. "This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage" to "acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks" and to "achieve the ideal ... of no worker without rights," Pope Francis said in a letter to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, an organization representing global grassroots organizations, published on Sunday via the Vatican. The Pope acknowledged that for many workers, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns are making it difficult, if not impossible, for people to earn money. "Many of you live from day to day, without any type of legal guarantee to protect you," Pope Francis says in the letter. "Street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time ... and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable." "The ills that afflict everyone hit you twice as hard," Pope Francis said to global laborers. Talk of a universal basic income (UBI), or regular cash payments with minimal or no requirements for receiving the money, has been brought to the forefront as social distancing and economic concerns have put millions of people out of work. In the U.S. alone 6.6 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims for the week ending April 4, the Labor Department reported Thursday. And according to the government's monthly jobs report, the U.S. lost 10% of its workforce in three weeks. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries are giving residents seemingly free money: The first stimulus relief checks (for as much as $1200) in the United States went out this weekend; Canada has implemented a $1,439.80 ($2,000 CAD)-per month aid package, which Canadians can receive for up to four months; and Spain's minister for economic affairs has said the country is working to implement a kind of universal basic income payment too, to name a few. TWEET UBI proponent Andrew Yang, who helped take the idea of free cash payments mainstream during his run for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president, called the Pope's mention of a universal payment "game-changing" in a tweet on Sunday. TWEET Still, some say while limited-run cash payments to individuals may make sense in this time of crisis, the idea of a universal basic income is still unrealistic in normal times because it's too expensive. "It's entirely possible that the [U.S. government's] emergency cash payments ... might increase interest in Yang's [UBI] proposal, but there is little reason to think that they'll bring it any closer to being implemented," John McCormack, Washington D.C. correspondent at the conservative National Review magazine and a fellow at its National Review Institute, wrote in March. But "It remains unlikely to ever happen for the same reason it was always unlikely to happen: A nation already drowning in red ink simply can't afford to almost double its annual budget permanently," he said. Beyond UBI, Pope Francis also said the coronavirus pandemic could serve to dislodge humans' focus on money. "I hope that this time of danger will free us from operating on automatic pilot, shake our sleepy consciences and allow a humanist and ecological conversion that puts an end to the idolatry of money and places human life and dignity at the centre," Pope Francis writes. "Our civilization so competitive, so individualistic, with its frenetic rhythms of production and consumption, its extravagant luxuries, its disproportionate profits for just a few needs to downshift, take stock, and renew itself." Weve all heard the advice from public health officials: stay at home, wash your hands and dont touch your face! Weve cancelled sporting events, concerts and other mass gatherings; closed schools, libraries and playgrounds; and asked people to work from home wherever possible. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Weve all heard the advice from public health officials: stay at home, wash your hands and dont touch your face! Weve cancelled sporting events, concerts and other mass gatherings; closed schools, libraries and playgrounds; and asked people to work from home wherever possible. But as we enter into this extended period of social distancing (also called physical distancing), many might be wondering whether giving up in-person recreational time with friends and family is worth the potential harms to our social and emotional well-being. Some may be asking: "Can I keep seeing my friends and family, but in a safer way?" But taking a risk-reduction approach to social distancing for COVID-19 wont work. Risk reduction (or harm reduction) refers to public health strategies that minimize the risks and related harms of certain behaviours, without expecting people to stop engaging in those behaviours. Examples include using condoms during sex or wearing a helmet while bike riding; people still practise these behaviours, but they do them less often or in a safer way. When it comes to COVID-19, those considering a risk-reduction approach to social distancing may be thinking: "Is it OK to take small risks, such as visiting my parents if were all symptom-free? Or meeting up with my running group if we stay two metres apart? Or seeing my elderly grandmother in a nursing home if Ive been physically isolating for 14 days?" The short answer, sadly, is no. Understanding the risks First, COVID-19 is primarily transmitted by respiratory droplets produced when someone coughs or sneezes, and the virus can live on surfaces for several hours or even days. Even people who are practising social distancing can be exposed to COVID-19 when doing essential activities like getting groceries or exercising outdoors. This means that even if you are staying at home and practising social distancing, its still possible to have been exposed to the virus and not even know it. Because people infected with COVID-19 can be contagious before they start showing symptoms, every close contact with someone else even if they are asymptomatic risks transmitting the virus. So, no, you cant go visit your grandmother even if you have no symptoms and youve been physically isolating for 14 days. Second, social distancing will only "flatten the curve" if everyone who is able to remain physically separated does so. This will keep the number of active cases below the health-care systems capacity and increases the likelihood that those who need care will be able to get it. You may perceive your individual risk to be low, but the reality is that everyone is vulnerable to COVID-19. Social distancing protects not only you, but those in your communities who are at higher risk for severe disease, such as older adults. Even seemingly less risky social encounters with friends or family can prolong our time under social distancing measures. Third, Canada is now seeing more cases of COVID-19 that were acquired in the community, where the source of infection cannot be linked to a known case or other risk factors, such as international travel. This is why the public health response has transitioned to broad population-wide approaches like social distancing, which aims to slow the spread of the virus and prevent our health-care system from being overwhelmed. Finally, no specific treatment for COVID-19 currently exists. Unlike seasonal influenza, where we have vaccines that provide some protection and antiviral drugs that might reduce symptoms, effective therapies for COVID-19 will take months or even years to develop. About one to two per cent of people infected with COVID-19 will die of their infection (versus about 0.1 per cent for seasonal influenza), and it only takes about three to four days for the number of cases to double. Given these characteristics, loosening social distancing measures, despite how safe it might seem, can increase the number of people who will require admission to hospital or tragically die from this infection. Redefining social interactions What would a risk-reduction approach for COVID-19 look like for our more recreational social interactions? The risks of COVID-19 are not going to stop people from being social, any more than the risks of sexually transmitted infections or head injuries stop people from having sex or riding a bike. Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the metaphorical equivalent of using condoms and wearing a helmet is not to have less frequent social encounters with friends and family. Rather, we must redefine what those social interactions look like. According to public health experts, this could include virtual meet-ups with friends or colleagues, calling or texting a friend you havent seen for a while, hosting an online book club or movie night or spending family time with your household members. These types of interactions are important for everyone, but especially those members of our society who live alone, or the one in five Canadians who experience mental health problems. We should still strive to stay socially connected, albeit in a different, more virtual way. Until the virus is brought under control, practising strict social distancing, combined with other public health measures such as widespread testing and vaccine development, will be critical in controlling the spread of COVID-19. Catharine Chambers and Daniel Harris are PhD candidates in the division of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 21:33:46|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian government spokesman said Monday the United States cannot obstruct Iran's request for an emergency loan from International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight the novel coronavirus. "The U.S. is legally in no position to disrupt the activities of international institutions, and international institutions are not the private properties of the White House," said Ali Rabiee. "Iran has paid the IMF its share and now the people of Iran have a legitimate right to enjoy the facilities provided by the fund," he added. On March 12, the Central Bank of Iran announced that it had asked the IMF for a 5-billion-dollar loan to combat the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country. However, reports said later that the United States had blocked Iran's request for the emergency loan. By Azernews By Akbar Mammadov Armenia has requested Turkey for help in the fight against coronavirus, Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said on 11 April. Answering local media's questions in a live broadcast, Kalin emphasized that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed this request and the Ministry of Health coordinates the situation. "We have delivered medical assistance to many countries. This is extremely human. No political account is made here," said Kalin. "These kinds of requests (for assistance) came from Armenia. Here we did not differentiate between countries or regions, and we will not, independently from our political relations," Kalin said. In the meantime, Turkey asked China for clarification about aid packages sent to Armenia that bore a reference to Agri Mountain in eastern Turkey that borders Armenia, Turkish Anadolu News Agency said on April 12. "China's Ambassador to Ankara Deng Li said their aid packages to Armenia was prepared by a local authority and were sent by a private company to Yerevan", said Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy. "The aforementioned local authority only wrote Chinese scripts on the packs, and there was no mention about Agri Mountain. The Ambassador Deng said it was understood that referring to Agri Mountain, the statements in English were added later", Aksoy added. According to Demiroren News Agency on April 9, the following statements were written on the packages: "May our friendship higher than Mountain Ararat and longer than Yangtze River". The Chinese ambassador is currently investigating the situation, and will inform Turkey about its results. "With this incident, Deng said he has full respect for Turkey's sovereignty and unity of land," the Turkish spokesperson added. Since early 2017, when Africom (U.S. Africa Command) increased its use of armed UAVs over Somalia, there have been nearly 120 UAV airstrikes that have killed over 800 al Shabaab and ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) members. In the last six months, there have been 42 of these UAV attack missions and 235 total in Somalia in the last decade. Striking back at those air operations has long been an al Shabaab goal but the Islamic terrorists have had little success at that. So far this year there have been about 40 UAV attacks. Most of those attacks were against al Shabaab targets with a few directed at ISIL forces in the north. In 2019 there were 63 UAV attacks in Somalia for the entire year. The 2020 attacks have killed several senior leaders although most of the UAV attack missions are in support of Somali Army operations, especially in southern Somalia where the remaining al Shabaab strongholds are. Kenyan Captives Al Shabaab has been trying to solve its lack of access to technical experts, especially medical ones, by kidnapping and enslaving Kenyans who have the needed skills. In the last year at least eleven such kidnappings have occurred in Kenya, mostly in Mandera Country just across the border. The tech experts are taken to al Shabaab controlled areas of Somalia and provided good treatment as long as they cooperate. This sort of thing is nothing new as Somalis have been raiding areas to the south for centuries. The objective has usually been loot of any sort and for a long time slaves were a valuable commodity as they could be sold to traders in Somali coastal towns who would take the slaves to Arabia or Iran where there was always a market for these captives. Western nations outlawed slavery during the 19th century and that included parts of Africa controlled by European countries. The Middle East resisted this ban into the late 20th century. Some nations in Africa and Arabia still tolerate slavery. Slavery survives in Somalia not just because of corruption or local custom but also because it is an important aspect of the financial support system al Shabaab has always maintained to finance its terrorist operations. For many al Shabaab members, what they do is their profession and it pays for their living expenses. This is particularly important for older members who have wives and children. For a fifteen year old organization like al Shabaab the financial overhead is quite large. Most fundraising efforts are illegal which means that al Shabaab members spend much of their time operating like gangsters. This is one reason why radical groups like al Shabaab often evolve into criminal gang operations that have abandoned the Islamic terrorist, nationalist or whatever angle got them started. That process may be underway with al Shabaab as there is currently a feud within the organization over financial strategy and accusations of corruption. April 12, 2020: In Mogadishu, the Minister of Justice died of covid19 (Coronavirus). He was brought to the capital a week ago and taken to the only hospital in the country that can treat covid19. Tests showed that he was infected and he was isolated. A month ago the government announced that one of four Somalis who had just returned from China had covid19. This was the first such case known to be in Somalia and the man is being treated. If covid19 gets loose in Somalia the local health system wont be of much help because the local health system is largely non-existent. So far 21 Somali covid19 cases have been reported. One has died, two have recovered and the rest are still quarantined or being treated. April 9, 2020: In the south, outside the port of Kismayo and American UAV supporting army forces and local militias killed ten al Shabaab gunmen from a larger force that was operating in the area. The fighting continued into the next day when another UAV attack killed at least one al Shabaab gunman. So far in April American UAVs have carried out ten attacks. April 8, 2020: The government announced the first covid19 death in Somalia. The victim was a 58 year old man who had not been outside the country. There are currently twelve confirmed covid19 patients in Somalia. There may be more but most of the country has little or no access to modern medical care and people regularly die of undiagnosed afflictions. Since most of these involve a fever, caused by the immune system trying to fight off some kind of infection, people call many fatal conditions an unspecified fever, and such fatal fevers are common. April 5, 2020: In the southeast (Lower Shabelle region), American UAVs carried out three separate attacks against al Shabaab, killing eight of the Islamic terrorists. April 2, 2020: In the south (Jilib), an American UAV used a missile to kill Yusuf Jiis, a much wanted al Shabaab attack planner along with two of his followers. Jilib is the scene of much UAV activity. Most of the time it is surveillance, looking for people like Jiis who frequently visit this area and the many al Shabaab factions that maintain bases near Jilib. March 31, 2020: In the south (Jubaland), al Shabaab murdered six civilians they accused of being government informers. March 30, 2020: In the north (Nugal region), an al Shabaab suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest near the vehicle carrying the regional governor and several associates. The governor was killed and two others were wounded. March 25, 2020: The World Bank is restoring its relationship with Somalis, for the first time since 1990. While still the most corrupt nation in the world, Somalia has organized its finances to the point where it can negotiate to obtain loans from the World Bank. Somalia already has a national debt of $5.2 billion and a number of satisfied lenders. March 20, 2020: In Baidoa (250 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu), 400 Somali Army soldiers completed a 12 month training course operated by the British army. This was the first use of this British training method in Somalia and it created a 400 man infantry battalion in which all the personnel had been taught combat skills and spent a lot of time practicing with each other. The key element of this approach is that the troops got to know each other and what everyone was capable of. This method has often worked in the past and the British believe it will work in Somalia, at least with this one battalion. Officers and NCOs were shown how to select and train new recruits or officers and NCOs transferred to the battalion. In theory, this establishes a self-perpetuating military tradition that British trainers have implemented in many foreign countries, including India, Pakistan, and Jordan and several other Middle Eastern and African countries. (Newser) States that impose capital punishment by lethal injection have something needed to fight COVID-19. Some of the same pain relievers, sedatives, and paralytics administered in executions are used in hospitals to calm patients when putting them on a ventilator, Newsweek reports. In an open letter, medical professionals are asking state prison systems to turn those drugs over to save lives instead. "These medicines were never made or developed to cause deathto the contrary, many were formulated to connect patients to life-saving ventilators and lessen the discomfort of intubation," the letter says. There's a shortage of the sedative midazolam, for example, partly because of increased demand. In addition, Pfizer reports a delay on the manufacturing end. Fentanyl citrate, which Nebraska uses in executions, also is in short supply. story continues below States don't always publicize which drugs they have in stock, but 19 out of 28 states with the death penalty states use sedatives and paralytics in their execution protocols, per the Guardian. And Florida, Nevada, and Tennessee have said they have large amounts of sedatives and paralytics. Florida alone has enough rocuronium bromide to intubate about 100 patients, experts say. "Your stockpile could save the lives of hundreds of people," the letter pleads. "Those who might be saved could include a colleague, a loved one, or even you." The drugs the states have on hand could, in total, help save hundreds of patients, the experts said. Only Wyoming has answered the letter, saying it doesn't have any of the needed drugs. If the states give up their stockpiles, Newsweek points out, they could have trouble rebuilding them. (Read more coronavirus stories.) Even in times of adversity, there are always victories small and large we can find to be thankful for. This would be a big one for one Guntersville, Alabama family. Alabama hospital celebrates miracle coronavirus recovery. A federal judge is allowing Alabama abortion clinics to keep operating during this COVID-19 shutdown. And what this weeks weather might look like. Listen to Down in Alabama, above. Get this post and more in your weekday Down in Alabama newsletter by subscribing here. You can also hear Ike each weekday by looking for Down in Alabama on the device of your choosing. Click here for the Spotify podcast page Click here for the Alexa skill page on Amazon Click here for the iTunes podcast page Click here for the Stitcher podcast page Advertisement Tracy Morgan was seen arguing with a pedestrian in New York City, allegedly over whether the man was jaywalking when the comedian 'struck him with his sports car'. Morgan was filmed gesturing in an animated manner while talking loudly with the man in the middle of Midtown Manhattan on Sunday. The 51-year-old was driving at the intersection of 42nd and Broadway near Times Square in his red Lamborghini in a clip filmed by a passer-by. The incident occurred as the former Saturday Night Live star attempted a right-hand turn on a green light, an eyewitnesses told TMZ. The pedestrian claimed he was hit, but it was not immediately clear what had occurred, and authorities did not take a report of the exchange. He appeared to have a limp as he made his way away from the 30 Rock actor. The latest: Tracy Morgan, 51, was nearly involved in an auto accident in New York City Sunday after he came close to hitting pedestrian with his vehicle on Sunday Exchange: Morgan and the pedestrian were involved in a loud and tense discussion over who was at fault in the incident Morgan and the pedestrian were involved in a loud and tense discussion over who was at fault in the incident, as the pedestrian said he had the right of way. Police saw the men speaking and ordered them to disperse, which they did without further incident. The SNL star then got back in his $500,000 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, which has falcon-wing that open upwards. During the altercation the driver-side door was pointing upwards as Morgan remonstrated with the pedestrian. Morgan, who has a daughter named Maven, six, with wife Megan Wollover, 33, was also involved in a minor accident on the Gotham streets a year ago when he was sideswiped by a Honda CR-V SUV while he was in a $2 million Bugatti convertible he'd recently driven off the lot, according to TMZ. Moving on: The pedestrian appeared to have a limp as he made his way away from the 30 Rock actor Nice ride: Morgan was driving at 42nd and Broadway near Times Square in his red Lamborghini Nearly six years ago Morgan was seriously injured in an accident on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed his friend, comic James 'Jimmy Mack' McNair. The comedian, who was left in a critical condition in the wake of the incident on June 7, 2014, was in a coma for two weeks. He suffered a 'traumatic brain injury', went through years of rehabilitation and was forced to use a wheelchair during his treatment. Fellow comedian Harris Stanton and Ardie Fuqua were also hospitalized after the Mercedes limousine bus they were passengers in was hit by a Walmart tractor-trailer. It later emerged driver, Kevin Roper, had not slept for more than 24 hours at the time of the tragic accident. Morgan, who also suffered a broken leg, nose, and ribs in the crash, sued Walmart and eventually reached a $90 million settlement with the retail behemoth. Out and about: The SNL alum appeared at an event in LA last September Tracy Morgan was involved in a car accident minutes after buying $2 million Bugatti Veyron in New York City last year Last year, Morgan posted on Twitter about the accident on the fifth anniversary, writing: 'Five years ago tonight, me and my friends, Jimmy Mac, Jeff, @ARDIEFUQUA, @HarrisStanton, Ty, & Joceleyn were in a horrific accident. 'There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss my friend Jimmy Mac, who sadly lost his life that night. I love you Jimmy. 'I thank GOD for my family. I am eternally grateful for the love and support they give me. 'My wife, daughter, sons, and friends are what got me back on my feet. I live every day trying to do right by them and make the most of this second chance.' After his accident in his Buggati last June, Morgan reportedly complained of pain and he was checked out by an ambulance on the scene. But the actor later tweeted to tell fans he was 'totally fine' and a month later he was back in his white sports car. The limousine bus that was carrying Tracy Morgan and six other people on it's side on the New Jersey Turnpike early on the morning of June 7, 2014 Tracy Morgan during an appearance on NBC News' Today show in June 2015, when he still had to walk with the aid of a stick Both Morgan and the pedestrian filmed in New York yesterday appeared to be taking some risks with their public outings in the first place, as New York has been the tragic epicenter of the coroanvirus in the US. The city reported 9,385 deaths on 188,694 diagnoses as of Sunday, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Governor Andrew Cuomo has asked citizens to stay at home if possible amid a time-frame that has seen at least 700 people die in the state for six consecutive days. 'We believe we have hit the 'apex' - and the apex is a plateau,' Cuomo said on Twitter Saturday. 'We are not out of the woods. We are still seeing new hospitalizations and new infections. But it is stabilizing. Social distancing is working. We must keep it up.' Sri Lanka: Church offers forgiveness year after terror attacks but religious hostilities remain Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Speaking on Easter Sunday in a televised message, Sri Lankas Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said the church has forgiven the Islamist suicide bombers who killed at least 279 people and injured around 500 others, mostly Christians, at three churches and three hotels last Easter. We offered love to the enemies who tried to destroy us. We forgave them, Cardinal Ranjith said, according to the Press Trust of India. The attackers may have had some anger towards Jesus but they caused a big damage to us Catholics and Christians. In those bomb attacks, it is not only the Catholics who died. A lot of others Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christian also died. On April 21 last year, which was Easter Sunday, nine suicide bombers, including a woman, struck two Catholic churches in and around the national capital of Colombo and an evangelical church in the eastern city of Batticaloa as well as three Colombo hotels. At least 39 tourists were killed in the attack, including at least four American nationals, who among them was a fifth-grade student at a Washington, D.C., private school. Twenty-eight other foreign nationals were wounded in the bombings. Sri Lankan police arrested 135 people after the bombings, which was attributed to a local radicalized group called National Thowheed Jamath. At least one of the bombers was reportedly trained by Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, in Syria in 2014. ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombings. The U.S. and Indian intelligence services had alerted the Sri Lankan government in early April of last year about the possibility of a major attack targeting churches. Sri Lankas Christians had cordial relations with the local Muslim community, as both minorities had been under attack by fringe Buddhist extremist groups. The U.N. special rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmed Shaheed, made a visit to Sri Lanka after the bombings. Often, the Muslim communities and new Christian churches, in particular, faced a range of harassment and assaults, the special rapporteur noted in his interim report. This ranges from interruption of worship, damage to places of worship, physical assaults on clergy, intimidation, mob violence towards the community or clergy, demands for registration of the church or mosque and restricting the use of places of worship, the obstruction of religious rites such as those related to burial ceremonies or access to cemeteries, incitement to violence to the community and many other acts of intolerance. The U.N. official also noted that the right to proselytize does not appear to be respected or protected in Sri Lanka, whose Supreme Court decided in 2003 and 2017 that the right to propagate ones religion is not protected by the Constitution. The decision has affected many of those whose religion requires them to share their religion or belief with others, he said. Last month, the special rapporteur presented his latest report at the U.N. Human Rights Council, saying the government had not done enough to ensure that no such religion-related violence takes place in the future. The failure to ensure accountability for past violations and to undertake comprehensive security sector reforms to dismantle the structures that facilitated them means that the people of Sri Lanka, from all communities, have no guarantee that violations will not recur, he said. Such failure alienates victims and their communities, instilling distrust in the State, and has the potential to fuel further cycles of violence. The Buddhist nationalist group Bodu Bala Sena (the Buddhist Power Force), which has attacked and incited violence against Christians and Muslims, was formed in 2012 under the patronage of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is currently the President of Sri Lanka. Nearly 200 members of the Armed Forces are being loaned to NHS ambulance services across Great Britain to support their work during the pandemic, the Ministry of Defence has said. Personnel from all three strands of the Armed Forces will be sent to work at five ambulance trusts. Although their responsibilities will vary depending on the area, the new duties will include driving ambulances and taking calls from the public. Eighty service personnel will be sent to the South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust where they will drive emergency response vehicles and larger ambulances, and work at the response centre which covers five counties around London. In London, 21 medical personnel from the Armed Forces will form 10 critical-care transfer teams to transport patients who need to be moved between intensive care units. Engineers from the Army are also supporting the London Ambulance Service to maintain suction units used in ambulances. In Wales, 60 soldiers finished their two-day ambulance training at the Sennybridge Training Camp near Brecon on April 7, ready to be deployed across Wales to assist paramedics with non-clinical tasks. Thirty-seven military personnel have been deployed to the East of England Ambulance Service, which covers six counties including Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, to assist with tasks including driving and logistics. The group all volunteer as emergency responders in their free time and have previously trained with the service. Members of the RAF are already assisting the Scottish Ambulance Service with a trial of a medical isolation and transport system, using RAF Puma helicopters to take critically ill people to hospital. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: "Our Armed Forces always step forward at the appearance of threats to the country and its people. "Across the United Kingdom, soldiers, sailors, airmen and women have got the backs of our NHS colleagues as they confront coronavirus." Members of the Armed Forces have helped with the response to the outbreak in a variety of ways. Military personnel were involved in the planning and building of the first NHS Nightingale hospital at the ExCeL exhibition centre in east London, as well as its equivalents across the country. Armed Forces personnel comprising 39 drivers and 63 driver's mates have also been trained to fill and transport oxygen tankers to NHS facilities. The Ministry of Defence said there are hundreds of personnel delivering supplies of PPE for the NHS based at distribution centres across the country, amid reported shortages of the vital equipment. Indoco Remedies announced that the company has been part of the great initiative by the Indian government to export Paracetamol tablets to the UK in its fight against Covid 19. The first shipment of 11.70 lakh Paracetamol tablets to the UK was airlifted on 12 April, 2020 from Goa airport. The permission granted by the Indian Government is for a total air shipment of 4.48 crore tablets. The remaining quantity is ready for shipment and will be airlifted depending on availability of flights. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) What is the origin of the famous interstellar object 'Oumuamua? How was it formed and where did it come from? An article published on April 13 in Nature Astronomy by ZHANG Yun from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Douglas N. C. Lin from University of California, Santa Cruz, offers a first comprehensive answer to this mystery, which involves tidal forces like those felt by Earth's oceans and explains all of the unusual characteristics of this interstellar object. 'Oumuamua was discovered on October 19, 2017, by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1) located at Hawaii. As the first known interstellar object to visit our Solar System, 'Oumuamua is absolutely nothing like anything else in the Solar System.Its dry surface, unusually elongated shape and puzzling motion even drove some scientists to wonder if it was an alien probe. "It is really a mystery," said ZHANG Yun, first author of the study, "but some signs, like its colors and the absence of radio emission, point to 'Oumuamua being a natural object." "Our objective is to come up with a comprehensive scenario, based on well understood physical principle to piece together all the tantalizing clues," said Douglas Lin, coauthor of the study. It was generally assumed that the first discovered interstellar object would be an icy body, like comets. In effect, icy objects are constantly tossed out of their host systems. They are also much more visible due to their apparent coma. However, 'Oumuamua's dry appearance, similar to rocky bodies, like asteroids in the Solar System, indicates a different ejection scenario. "The discovery of 'Oumuamua implies that the population of rocky interstellar objects is much larger than we previously thought. On average, each planetary system should eject in total about a hundred trillion objects like 'Oumuamua. We need to construct a very efficient scenario." said ZHANG. "In space, some objects occasionally come very close to a bigger one. Tidal forces of the bigger one can disrupt these small ones, like the things happened to comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 when it closely passed by Jupiter." ZHANG and Lin ran high-resolution computer simulations to model the dynamics of an object closely flying by a star. They found that the star can dramatically split the object, if it comes enough close to the star, into extremely elongated fragments,and then eject them into the interstellar space. "The elongated shape is more compelling when we considered the phase transition of material during the stellar encounter. The long-to-short axis ratio can be even larger than ten." ZHANG said. Due to the intense stellar radiation, the surfaces of fragments melt at very short distance to the star and re-condense at further distances. Like melting chocolate beans, the surface materials stick together to maintain the elongated shape. "Heat diffusion also consumes large amounts of volatiles.These fragments become dry and have 'Oumuamua-likesurface." ZHANG added. "However, some water ice buried under the surface can be preserved. These residual water ice could be activated during its Solar System passage to causeits non-gravitational motion." "The tidal fragmentation scenario not only provides a way to form one single 'Oumuamua, but also accounts for the vast population of rocky interstellar objects." ZHANG said. Their calculations demonstrate the efficiency of stellar tides in producing this kind of objects. Possible progenitors, including long-period comets, debris disks, and even planets, can be transformed into 'Oumuamua-size pieces during stellar encounters. The inferred number density of interstellar objects is consistent with 'Oumuamua's occurrence rate. This work highlights the prolificacy of 'Oumuamua-like interstellar object population between stars. Since these objects pass through the domains of habitable zones, the prospect of transport of matter capable of generating life by these objects cannot be ruled out. "This work provides a plausible narrative that links its strange properties to the process of planet formation that is ubiquitous in the Milky Way Galaxy," said Gregory Laughlin, a professor of astronomy at Yale University. " 'Oumuamua is just the tip of the iceberg. We anticipate many more interstellar visitors with similar traits will be discovered by future observation with the forthcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory," Lin said. "This is a very new field. These interstellar objects could provide critical clues about how planetary systems form and evolve, and how life started on the Earth." ZHANG said. "This work does a remarkable job of explaining a variety of unusual properties of 'Oumuamua with a single, coherent model." said US Naval Academy astronomer Matthew Knight, co-leader of the 'Oumuamua International Space Science Institute team, "As future interstellar objects are discovered in coming years, it will be very interesting to see if any exhibit 'Oumuamua-like properties. If so, it may indicate that the processes described in this study are widespread." ### The British Pound is seen enjoying stronger investor sentiment across the board, with the Pound-to-Euro exchange rate trading up 0.17 percent ahead of the European open, quoted at 1.14850. The Pound-to-Dollar exchange rate is also in the green, valued at $1.25486. "The GBP is leading the G-10 space to start the week alongside the Japanese yen following the release of PM Johnson from hospital over the weekend after a week-long stay" says Shaun Osborne, Chief FX Strategist at Scotiabank on Monday, April 13. "The PM will not fully resume his duties as he continues his recovery at home - he characterised his hospital stay as touch-and-go at some pointwhile Foreign Sec Raab will continue to deputise. COVID19 cases (85.2k) and deaths (10.6k) in the UK nevertheless continue to rise at a quick pace and are on track to exceed those in Italy (156k and 19.9k, respectively) according to one of the governments scientific advisors; although the NHS does not yet appear overtly stretched. While Cable may get an initial boost from the PM returning to work, sentiment on the currency may turn if the virus continues to spread incessantly. The governments failed initial response to the outbreak (herd immunity) may also result in a larger number of cases and thus a slower reopening of the economy, to lag its European peers. " The British Pound appreciated in value against the Euro (but not the US Dollar) on Easter Bank Holiday Monday after sterling investors react positively to the news that Boris Johnson have now left hospital to recuperate at Chequers, after a week of treatment for Covid-19. Where next for the Pound hinges on how the UK coronavirus plays out and how well the exit from lockdown is handled by the UK Government. Coronavirus UK On Sunday, the UK death toll passed 10,000, although there has been no acceleration in the trend. If there is evidence that the numbers of new UK coronavirus cases and deaths are starting to decline, the focus will quickly shift towards the potential easing of lockdown measures, especially as economic pressures for a shift will continue to intensify. A gradual easing of measures and combination of tactics is the most likely outcome and successful management of exit strategies will be crucial for pound Sterling confidence. Image: UK coronavirus cases Vaccine or treatment would be complete game-changers Earlier this month, Prof Neil Ferguson, the key epidemiologist advising the Government, said: "The only exit strategy from this long term is vaccination or some other kind of innovative technology." Paul Hunter Professor of Medicine at the University of East Anglia said: "By autumn we may have some proven effective drug treatments that if taken early enough could reduce the severity of illness and need for hospitalisation. Effective treatment would also lessen the pressure for social distancing measures. The first strategy, therefore, would be to wait and maintain restrictions until there is a vaccine or treatment available and then build up herd immunity. Nevertheless, unless an effective treatment is found very soon, the overall time scales are unlikely to be realistic as the extent of damage from a prolonged lockdown would be too high. Containment will have to continue until then Until there is effective treatment or a vaccine, there will still need to be containment of the virus. It is important to note that all measures to ease the lockdown will not be able to take effect until there is a sharp slowdown in the rate of new infections and a large reduction in the death rate. There is also no real possibility of all restrictions being removed at once as this would risk a quick spike in cases once again, especially as the pressure of release would risk a huge increase in transmission rates amid a surge in social activity. Dr Adam Kucharski, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC; "Essentially we've got a lot of not very good options, it won't be one day and everything will change, but things could open up." Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said: "It's almost certain to be a partial release. Whatever measures are relaxed, that runs the risk that the epidemic curve will start to increase again. There will, therefore, need to be the calculation of several uncomfortable trade-offs over the next few weeks and months. The need to foster economic recovery will be balanced by mortality rates, NHS pressures and social cohesion. Options for lockdown relaxation The first option would be to gradually relax lockdown and social distancing measures, but some form of control would remain in place for months. This is the stance taken by Austria and looks likely to be followed by other European countries. In Austria, some shops will be allowed to re-open while Denmark and Norway will gradually re-open nurseries and schools. There are variations which could be adopted to lessen the overall lockdown impact. The first possibility would be to give regions breaks when they come out of lockdown measures on a rotating basis to provide relief. For example, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which feeds into the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), has proposed that parts of the country could enjoy greater freedoms for six months at a time, before returning to lockdown. A fragmentary, regional lockdown would give the NHS a series of breaks, allowing it to ramp up capacity and then enjoy quieter periods. It would also be possible to concentrate resources on potential hotspots and limit the scope for a fresh increase in national cases. There would, however, be potentially important economic disadvantages of such a policy, especially if there are relatively short periods out of lockdown. If companies and businesses re-start operations, but are then forced to close again several months later, the overall economic costs would be liable to increase sharply and undermine the potential for a medium-term recovery. There would also inevitably be the risk of people attempting to move location in order to get out of lockdown more quickly. Enhanced shielding possible A second strategy would be to engage in stronger protection for the vulnerable people in the population while allowing the healthy and immune to get back to work and effectively carry on with their lives. It would also be possible to end lockdown measures for young people given that they are generally less vulnerable to coronavirus. As soon as it is possible to have an effective and accurate antibody test, people could be given immunity certificates that would allow them to leave lockdown. Professor Hunter added; "If a large proportion - somewhere around 60 per cent - of the population become immune, the lockdown will not serve that much more purpose as herd immunity will be at a level that the disease would struggle to spread. So, lockdown over. For example, people who can prove that they had the infection and are now immune could be allowed more access to work. A key element in combatting coronavirus has to be maintaining social cohesion and fostering the perception that everyone is in this together. This is extremely important in sustaining social acceptance of restrictions. If a certain group is allowed out of lockdown measures first, this would inevitably cause resentment among the others. This would risk a widespread refusal to comply with restrictions. Any misfire on easing would also risk a huge political backlash. Aggressive seek and destroy stance The third strategy would be to wait until there is a very low number of new cases and then engage in an aggressive seek and destroy regime. In this scenario, any new cases would be tracked down through substantial testing and then also engage in aggressive tracing of contacts in order to minimise transmission rates. This might have implications for civil liberties, but potentially prove less controversial than other exit strategies. Prof Neil Ferguson, summarised: "We do want to find a collection of policies that maintain suppression of this virus. "Without doubt, measures will be targeted probably by age, by geography and we will need to introduce in my view larger levels of testing at the community level to really isolate cases more effectively and identify where transmission is happening." Markets will be watching closely There will clearly be important economic consequences of measures to ease lockdowns. As lockdowns are eased, economic activity will gradually recover and the cost of support measures will start to moderate. The re-opening of shops, for example, would provide significant relief. The re-opening of nurseries and schools would also make it easier for parents to resume normal workdays. According to Denmarks Prime Minister Frederiksen; This will probably be a bit like walking a tightrope. If we stand still along the way we could fall and it we go too fast it can go wrong. Therefore, we must take one cautious step at a time. Image: Relative coronavirus cases Europe is ahead of the UK in terms of the coronavirus outbreak and will tend to relax restrictions first. This will tend to limit near-term Sterling support against the Euro. From a medium-term perspective, if the UK moves too slowly or miscalculates and is forced to backtrack on relaxation measures, Sterling will be punished. If, however, the UK can select the most effective measures at the right time, the pound Sterling would tend to gain support. Was there more to it? Agencies set to probe motive of Tablighis India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: The Central Intelligence agencies are keeping a close watch as the number of COVID-19 cases relating to the Tablighi Jamaat cluster have surged. In Tamil Nadu alone, 133 foreign Muslim missionaries are under the scanner. Some of them even tested positive. It has been found that most of them avoided the agencies by hiding in Mosques. Delhi govt now classifies Tablighi Jamaat cases as Special Operations An Intelligence Bureau official explained that most of these Tablighis hid in Mosques after the congregation in Delhi last month. They have accounted for almost 60 per cent of the cases that the country has reported. We are finding out if they were involved only in religious work or had some other motive as well, the officer also said. It may be recalled that the Union Home Ministry had blacklisted 960 foreigners present in India on a tourist visa for their involvement with Tablighi related activities. The foreign nationals of Tablighi have been found from Indonesia, Ethiopia, France, US, Malaysia, Cameron and Thailand. The officer cited above said that they would be probing why so many Tablighis decided to take shelter in Mosques, instead of coming out and taking the mandatory tests. Scores of cases have already been booked, but we will also need to see if they had any motive, by deliberately avoiding the law enforcement agencies and the medical staff, the officer also noted. The Tablighi congregation and its after-effects have been nothing short of a nightmare for India, which is fighting the pandemic. The first big task was to evacuate the Jamaat headquarters, where there were around 2,300 people. It was at this time that the agencies learnt that several foreigners had gone missing and it was later found that most of them were staying in different Mosques across the city. Fake News Buster The police drew out a list of around 16 Mosques and sought the help of the Delhi government in locating these persons. The Delhi Police learnt that there were around 180 foreigners who had shifted to the different Mosques in the city. Apart from searching the Mosques, the police also managed to locate with the help of the local officials 600 foreigners linked to the Jamaat. The police say that they are in the lookout for 200 more. Meanwhile, the authorities have managed to place the Jamaat workers in government-run quarantine facilities across the national capital. The process of testing those found in the Mosques will be completed today. This is a crucial stage as if any of these persons test positive, then the worry is how many more would these persons have infected. This is another trail that the agencies would are on. Sorry! This content is not available in your region By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan National Art Museum has presented a video project, featuring reknown architect and art critic Elchin Aliyev. As part of the project, Elchin Aliyev and his children delighted readers with a fairy tale from his book "Magic Monuments of Azerbaijan". Notably, "Magic Monuments of Azerbaijan" is the first children's publication in the history of Azerbaijan about the country`s architectural monuments. In the book, Elchin Aliyev describes Azerbaijan`s most famous architectural gems. The book is illustrated by talented artist Nusrat Hajiyev. For more information, please visit the museum`s Facebook. From 1988 till the collapse of the USSR, Elchin Aliyev had been Chairman of the South-Caucasian Section, the USSR Society of Young Architects. His professional membership includes the Azerbaijan Union of Architects (from 1989), Board thereof, and the Azerbaijan Union of Designers (from 1998). The reknown architect has developed and implemented more than 70 architectural and design projects. He is the author of 14 books and 140 scientific articles in the field of architecture, design and town planning. His projects have been awarded in Russia, Iran, the US, Turkey, France, Germany and Georgia. The Azerbaijan Union of Architects has repeatedly recognized Elchin T.Aliyev the best architect in the country. He was awarded the Honorary Gold Badge of the Azerbaijan Union of Architects. He has also been awarded Diplomas and Letters-of-Gratitude by foreign national unions of architects and designers, the International Association of Unions of Architects, Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan, and other governmental, public and international organisations. From 2012 to 2017 he worked as the Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Azerbaijan Union of Architects. He is a member of the Commission on work with youth of the International Union of Architects. Currently Elchin Aliyev is the President of the Baku Architectural Club. He is Professor of Western University in Baku. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz NEW YORK, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Now is the time for the United States and China to put aside differences and work together to tackle the global calamity of the COVID-19 pandemic, a renowned U.S. expert has said. While countries like China and the United States are doing their best to control the problem in their own countries, it is also crucial for them to collaborate and form a global effort to contain the virus, as the pandemic is a global threat, Stephen Roach, senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, told Xinhua in a recent phone interview. "There's a lot that the United States and China can do to lead that process," said Roach, who is also a longtime watcher on U.S.-China relations. "It's a great opportunity" for both countries to put aside the differences that have developed over the last couple of years with the trade disputes and blaming each other for COVID-19, and to collaborate in the areas of science and public health, information sharing, as well as public and private sector initiatives, according to the U.S. expert. "I wish I could say that in the United States there are signs that we understand the need to collaborate with China," said Roach. The renowned U.S. scholar, who is also the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said both sides are recommended to roll back all the tariffs that were put in place in the last year and a half. "This is a time to rebuild trust, and to demonstrate through acts of good faith that we are willing to work together," Roach emphasized. He said some U.S. politicians' practice of blaming China for the pandemic "has had an unfortunate impact on the relationship and on our willingness as a nation to shift from conflict to collaboration." "When countries are great, they do great things. They put aside a false sense of pride," said Roach, adding that now is a time for both countries to join each other rather than to demonstrate some type of great-power rivalry. The U.S. expert said he remains hopeful that the United States will be able to find that collaboration is "the only way out" in dealing with the unprecedented crisis. Roach said the COVID-19 pandemic is also an important global shock, which "raises real questions about the globalization effort itself." "I think a major lesson for the world is we've ignored the quality of global economic growth," while focusing too much on the speed or quantity of growth, he said. "This is a real wake-up call that we need to look at the quality side of the growth equation much much more carefully than we have in the past," noted the U.S. expert, adding that "this is something that the world is responsible for, not one country or the other." Book by former PGC officer highlights unusual wildlife encounters Dick Bodenhorn has published a book highlighting some of the unusual encounters he had while working with the Pennsylvania Game Commision. On Sundays Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Amazon specifically the companys treatment of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic became the target of Olivers derision. Conditions at an Amazon facility in Staten Island were so bad that a walk-out was organized, for which an employee, Chris Smalls, was fired. While Amazon claimed Smalls was fired because he broke quarantine, an ulterior motive was soon discovered. According to Amazon, he was fired for putting the health and safety of others at risk by violating social-distancing guidelines and an order to quarantine, Oliver said. But leaked notes from an internal meeting days later, at which [Jeff] Bezos himself was present, show the companys leadership discussing plans to make Smalls the face of the entire union/organizing movement since, Hes not smart or articulate. Which, holy s**t that is so racist. I cant even point out how smart and articulate Smalls is without also sounding racist. Oliver also ripped Amazons paid sick leave policy, which many workers feel isnt enough. Amazon offers two weeks of paid leave for those who are diagnosed with COVID-19, but as Oliver pointed out, testing is nearly impossible to come by in many locations, like New York City. Testing in New York is so scarce, Oliver said, Amazons plan may as well have been you get double pay and healthcare for your whole family if you can guess what number Jeff Bezos is thinking. Amazon has recently moved to create their own lab for employee COVID-19 tests after the number of employees testing positive for the virus has continued to climb. Amazon will say theyve now made their sick leave policy more lenient for their heroes, which is true, Oliver said. Whats also true is that only came after they got a letter from 14 state attorneys general saying their initial policy was inadequate to protect the public health. And Oliver joined House Democrats in calling for Congress to enact more protections for all workers going forward. Story continues Congress absolutely needs to mandate all businesses provide paid sick leave in their next coronavirus aid bill on a permanent basis, as well as require they provide significant hazard pay for any worker being asked to risk their lives, because that risk is very, very real, Oliver said. Grocery store workers are dying of this disease right now, and so far, weve lost 41 transit workers in New York City alone. Last Week Tonight With John Oliver airs Sundays at 11 p.m. on HBO. Watch John Oliver torch GOP governors and Jared Kushner for their responses to the coronavirus: For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDC and WHOs resource guides. Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Kylie Mar, on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Entertainment & Lifestyle's newsletter. (Natural News) In a bombshell finding, the taxpayer-funded NIH (National Institutes of Health, where Dr. Fauci is a top official) is now known to have funded bat coronavirus research (SARS-CoV) at the very same BSL-4 Wuhan laboratory that is widely believed to have engineered and release the Wuhan coronavirus thats now devastating the planet. This stunning link, now confirmed by Natural News via the PLoS Pathogens medical journal (link below), means that the U.S. government under former president Barack Obama was directly involved in funding the very same lab that engineered the Wuhan coronavirus (covid-19). Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday show the Wuhan Institute of Virology undertook coronavirus experiments on mammals captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan funded by a $3.7 million grant from the US government, reports the UK Daily Mail: Now The Mail on Sunday has learned that scientists there experimented on bats as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments. Results of the research were published in November 2017 under the heading: Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus. That particular study, found at this link on the PLoS.org website, describes the funding of the research as follows: Funding: This work was jointly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81290341, 31621061) to ZLS, China Mega-Project for Infectious Disease (2014ZX10004001-003) to ZLS, Scientific and technological basis special project (2013FY113500) to YZZ and ZLS from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDPB0301) to ZLS, the National Institutes of Health (NIAID R01AI110964), the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT program to PD and ZLS, CAS Pioneer Hundred Talents Program to JC, NRF-CRP grant (NRF-CRP10-2012-05) to LFW and WIV One-Three-Five Strategic Program (WIV-135-TP1) to JC and ZLS. In other words, this was a joint project between Chinas bioweapons military operations and the U.S. governments bioweapons development teams operating under the Obama administration. The study was published in November 30, 2017, during the Trump administration, but was received by the PLoS journal on February 10 of 2017, meaning the paper was written based on research that took place in 2016 or earlier. This bombshell story has been covered by Zero Hedge, InfoWars and other indy media outlets. From Zero Hedge: Recent findings regarding the origin of COVID-19 continue to support our January reporting that the disease may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was experimenting with bat coronavirus found to be 96% genetically identical to COVID-19 Also disturbing is that the lab had been operating in part on a $3.7 million grant from the US government. From InfoWars: For months China had been claiming the coronavirus now known as COVID-19 originated from a wet market in Wuhan, but evidence shows that the Institute of Virology in Wuhan undertook coronavirus experiments on mammals, including bats, backed by grants from the National Institute of Health. Additionally, Indian researchers scanned the novel coronavirus genome and found unique cell identification and membrane binding proteins located in the HIV genome, suggesting the 2019-nCov is a laboratory-made chimera, but withdrew their findings after receiving pressure from China. Has there been a Big Pharma coup at the White House? Dr. Anthony Fauci, notably, is a high-level official at the NIH who helped funnel research money into projects exactly like this. With links to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Fauci is part of the Big Pharma coup that has seized control of the White House and now appears to be directing the extended lockdown thats devastating the U.S. economy. Dr. Fauci is part of the death science industry as described by Professor Francis Boyle, who has spent decades warning the world about the global pandemic that might result from the accidental or deliberate release of an engineered bioweapon. It now appears that under former president Obama, Dr. Fauci and other NIH officials were funneling money into communist China-run bioweapons research that ultimately produced this global pandemic. This should not be much of a surprise, since Barack Obama also funneled billions of dollars into the Iranian regime to fund their development of nuclear weapons (that would be used to threaten U.S. allies). Obamas Iran nuclear deal with nothing more than a cover story while Obama actively laundered money through international banks and literally landed a cargo plane in Iran with pallets of cash to fund nuclear weapons development there. This also means there is now a plausible scenario that Obama-linked deep state actors involved in the funding of Wuhan BSL-4 laboratory research may have possessed and deliberately released this bioweapon in China as a way to destabilize the world and hurt Trump in time for the 2020 election. That idea, previously a conspiracy theory, is suddenly plausible now that we know about the NIH funding of the lab and the ties between top NIH officials and Obama. After all, theres nothing the deep state wont do to destroy America, remove Trump and win the election. Even if it means releasing a bioweapon. Watch the full analysis here in this Counterthink episode: Stay informed by reading Pandemic.news. The Supreme Court will permit livestreaming of oral arguments made over the phone. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) Forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to postpone oral arguments in several cases, the Supreme Court on Monday announced that it would let the public listen in real time to oral arguments by lawyers and the revealing questions and comments by the justices. It's a welcome step, but it should have occurred long ago. The policy should be made permanent once the pandemic subsides and in-person arguments resume. And the court should take its newfound commitment to transparency even further, by following the lead of Congress and allowing television cameras to broadcast its public proceedings. If reporters and a handful of fortunate spectators can watch the thrust and parry of oral arguments, ordinary citizens should have the same access. Technology makes that possible. Before Mondays announcement, the court had postponed four weeks of oral argument in several cases, including attempts by Congress and a New York grand jury to obtain President Trumps financial records. Those cases and several others including two cases raising the question of whether members of the electoral college may defy the will of the voters will be argued in May over the telephone. Audio streams of those proceedings will be shared with the news media, which will be able to relay them live. In addition, a court spokeswoman said, the audio likely will be posted on the courts website on the same day. Usual practice is for the court to hear arguments on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays but not post the audio until Friday. (Transcripts of arguments are posted the same day.) Obviously the court reacted to the circumstances created by the pandemic. The alternative to arranging for arguments by phone would be to postpone the resolution of important cases. Also, although the court is unlikely to admit to being influenced by public opinion, a poll conducted in late March found that 72% of respondents said that the justices should convene online during the pandemic to hear oral arguments. Story continues But it would be a mistake to characterize this as an example of necessity being the mother of invention. Long before anyone had heard of COVID-19, transparency advocates urged the court to post same-day audio of oral arguments on its website. The court has done so in a few high-profile cases including the arguments in 2012 involving the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act but the practice should be routine. Public interest in arguments is likely to be at its highest on the day a case is debated. That may be why the justices prefer to delay posting the audio until Friday, when news organizations are less likely to air sound bites from the justices comments such as the late Justice Antonin Scalias famous comparison of a government mandate to purchase health insurance with a hypothetical law requiring people to buy broccoli. A related concern is that timely sharing of audio from oral arguments might tempt justices or advocates to grandstand an argument that arises with even greater force when its proposed that the courts oral arguments be televised. But the grandstanding argument is bogus. There is no jury at Supreme Court arguments, and lawyers know that the justices dont appreciate histrionics. As for the justices themselves, there is little indication that they would play to the crowd of remote listeners any more than they do to the audience in the courtroom. (And Scalia was far more flamboyant than most justices in his comments, even when audio wasnt going to be posted the same day.) Another tired argument against more transparency for the courts public proceedings is that the court is not like Congress, which long ago welcomed television cameras to its chambers and committee rooms. Yes, the court is not supposed to be a partisan political institution, a point Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has emphasized. But it is an important institution with an awesome influence on the lives of Americans that ranges from the way police enforce the criminal law to the scope of the right to marry. And while oral arguments arent the only factor in the justices deliberations, they illuminate the case for and against a legal proposition and provide some insight into how individual justices view their role. In the same poll in which a large majority said that the court should hear oral arguments remotely during the pandemic, 64% of respondents said that the court should allow television coverage of arguments. Americans should be able to see as well as hear those proceedings even in the absence of a health emergency. Washington Blood tests for the coronavirus could play a key role in deciding whether millions of Americans can safely return to work and school. But public health officials warn that the current "Wild West" of unregulated tests is creating confusion that could ultimately slow the path to recovery. More than 70 companies have signed up to sell so-called antibody tests in recent weeks, according to U.S. regulators. Governments around the world hope that the rapid tests, which typically use a finger-prick of blood on a test strip, could soon ease public restrictions by identifying people who have previously had the virus and have developed some immunity to it. But key questions remain: How accurate are the tests, how much protection is needed and how long will that protection last. The blood tests are different from the nasal swab-based tests currently used to diagnose active COVID-19 infections. Instead, the tests look for blood proteins called antibodies, which the body produces days or weeks after fighting an infection. The same approach is used for HIV, hepatitis, Lyme disease, lupus and many other diseases. Because of the relative simplicity of the technology, the Food and Drug Administration decided to waive initial review of the tests as part of its emergency response to the coronavirus outbreak. Right now, the tests are most useful for researchers studying how the virus has spread through the U.S. population. The government said Friday it has started testing 10,000 volunteers. The White House has not outlined a broader plan for testing and how the results might be used. With almost no FDA oversight of the tests, "It really has created a mess that's going to take a while to clean up," said Eric Blank of the Association for Public Health Laboratories. "In the meantime, you've got a lot of companies marketing a lot of stuff and nobody has any idea of how good it is." Members of Blank's group, which represent state and local lab officials, have urged the FDA to revisit its lax approach toward the tests. That approach essentially allows companies to launch as long as they notify the agency and include disclaimers. Companies are supposed to state that their tests have not been FDA-approved and cannot rule out whether someone is currently infected. Last week, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement that the agency will "take appropriate action" against companies making false claims or selling inaccurate tests. Dr. Allison Rakeman of New York City's Public Health Laboratory says some local hospitals are assuming the tests, which are listed on FDA's website, "have been vetted, when they have not." The danger of faulty testing, Rakeman says, is that people will mistakenly conclude that they are immune or are no longer spreading the virus. "Then somebody goes home and kisses their 90-year-old grandmother," said Rakeman. "You don't want to give someone a false sense of security." For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. For many infections, antibody levels above a certain threshold indicate that the person's immune system has successfully fought off the virus and is likely protected from reinfection. For COVID-19, it's not yet clear what level of antibodies render patients immune or how long immunity might last. Adding to the confusion is the fact that both legitimate companies and fraudulent operators appear to be selling the kits. Distinguishing between the two can be a challenge. Officials in Laredo, Texas, reported this month that some 2,500 antibody tests set for use at a local drive-through testing site were likely frauds. City officials had ordered what they were told were "FDA-approved COVID-19 rapid tests," from a local clinic. But when they checked the test's accuracy, it fell well below the range promised, the city said in a statement. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Examples of U.S. companies skirting the rules appear online and in emails sent to hospitals. Promotional emails sent to hospitals and reviewed by The Associated Press failed to include required disclaimers. Some kits sold on websites promote themselves as "FDA-approved" for home testing. The agency has not yet approved any COVID-19 home test. The blood tests have to be processed by a lab. "If you see them on the internet, do not buy them until we can give you a test that's reliable for all Americans," said Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, at a recent briefing. One of the dozens of U.S. companies selling tests to hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices is 20/20 BioResponse. The Rockville, Maryland-based company imports the tests from a Chinese manufacturer, but CEO Jonathan Cohen says his company independently confirmed its performance in 60 U.S. patients. He estimates the company has shipped 10,000 tests and has had to limit orders due to demand. He said antibody tests are not a "panacea but they're not garbage either." Cohen called them "a tool in the toolbox that will have some value along with other tests." The company's test is registered on the FDA website and includes all the required disclaimers. To date, the FDA has only authorized one COVID-19 antibody test from North Carolina diagnostics company Cellex. The agency used its emergency powers, meaning a formal review is still needed. The White House has also tried to temper expectations for the tests, while still promising that millions will soon be available. Dr. Brett Giroir, the federal health official overseeing U.S. testing, told reporters a week ago that the FDA and other agencies are working to confirm the accuracy of the antibody tests. "We're going to be very careful to make sure that when we tell you you're likely immune from the disease ... the test really said that," Giroir said. Lionel Messi has thanked the health workers for the brilliant job that they are doing in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The world might have come to a standstill, but the health workers have been working non-stop to save the lives of millions across the globe. Taking to Instagram, Messi wrote: "Yesterday the World Health Worker Week came to an end and, together with @unicef, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the work they do. Anonymous heroes who endure long days and nights away from their families, so that ours can be safe from #COVID19. "For continuing, despite everything, their noble commitment to caring for pregnant women, and keeping children and adolescents protected. #YoMeQuedoEnCasa #StayAtHome #Unicef." Sports personalities across the globe have thanked the health workers for their role in fighting the pandemic. Earlier, New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson had also praised doctors and nurses for their efforts in these trying circumstances. Writing in 'New Zealand Herald', Williamson addressed the doctors, nurses and caregivers as deadly virus continued to rear its ugly head, claiming lives globally. "Events of the past few days have made it clear we're living through a health crisis the likes of which we've never seen. There will no doubt be times in the coming days when the scale of what we're facing will seem overwhelming," he wrote. "We're so grateful you have our backs. People talk about the pressure sportsmen and women are under to perform, but the truth is we get to do something we love every day for a living. We play games," he noted. Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela, 22, who has been caught Monday after escaping from quarantine in Hoi An in Quang Nam Province, central Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Quang Nam Police. A Colombian man who escaped from a Covid-19 quarantine facility in Quang Nam Saturday was caught early Monday. Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela had escaped from the quarantine facility in the central province just a day after he was taken there. Orjuela, 22, is a vagrant and had overstayed his temporary visa in Vietnam since February 22, said the Quang Nam Steering Committee on the Prevention and Control of Covid-19. He was found by authorities and taken to a quarantine zone at a resort in Hoi An on April 10, the committee said. He later tested negative for the novel coronavirus. However, Orjuela, who was supposed to stay in quarantine for two weeks, was found to have fled from the resort at around 7 p.m. Saturday. He was found again by authorities in Quang Nams Nui Thanh District early on Monday and returned to the same resort, local media reported, citing the steering committee. The province has also contacted Colombian authorities for follow up measures, the reports said. In the central province, around 157 people are currently isolated in medical facilities and around 5,000 in their homes. Vietnam has confirmed 262 Covid-19 cases so far, 118 of whom are active cases. Globally, the pandemic has spread to 210 countries and territories and death toll has risen to more than 114,200. Virus-stricken British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thanked medics for saving his life after leaving hospital on Easter Sunday, as hundreds of millions of Christians observed the holiday under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. More than half of humanity is confined at home as governments scramble to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 112,500 lives around the world. More than 1.8 million people have been infected but glimmers of hope were emerging that the worst may be behind especially in Europe, where hard-hit Italy recorded its lowest death toll in three weeks and fatalities fell in France. Johnson, the highest-profile leader to contract the virus characterised by high fevers and coughing, voiced confidence that Britain would beat the pandemic in a candid video message after he was discharged from a state-run National Health Service (NHS) hospital. "I hope they won't mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way," said 55-year-old Johnson, who was admitted on April 5 to a London hospital where he spent three days in intensive care. In a suit and tie but visibly worn, Johnson said he was discharged after "a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question." Even as Johnson headed to a country estate to rest before returning to work, Britain passed the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths. Johnson, like US President Donald Trump, had initially resisted stringent measures such as shutting down public places. The United States has since recorded the world's highest death toll at more than 22,020. (AFP) In times of great suffering Does anyone now remember what was highly significant in England, circa 159294? Or how about 160304? No? What about 160506? Historians among you might want to say that in 1603 Queen Elizabeth I died and James I ascended the throne. That was significant for England and Scotland, but thats not the answer I am seeking. What I am thinking about here is the same event that occurred in all three instances, in other words, an event that was recurrent. And the answer is, of course, the plague. Indeed, the plague was an annual visitor to England, and London in particular; but it was particularly acute in 159294, 160304, and 160506. And this had huge consequences for Shakespeare. For when the deaths reached 30 per week, the theaters were closed, and so effectively, it would seem, Shakespeare was out of his livelihood. The plague, like COVID-19 now, was a very serious matter. London, then, had a population of about 200,000 people; in the plague visitation of 160304 alone, it is estimated that over 30,000 people died. As a percentage, that is 15 percent of the total. Imagine that in New York nowpopulation 18,804,0002,820,600 dead within a few months! And the thing is, that is just for one year: London was in a near permanent state of having plague outbreaks. A 17th-century illustration of London during one of its plague years. (Public Domain) What was the plague? According to Columbia English professor James Shapiro in 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, it was an infection caused by Yersinia pestis, a strain of bacterium transmitted either through the bite of an infected flea (invading the lymph nodes and producing painful swelling or buboes) or by an infected persons cough or breath, a mode of transmission that rapidly led to lung failure. The fleas were carried by rodents, especially rats. Perhaps what is most scary here is not so much the rats, but the cough (or even breath) of an infected person transmitted to anotherjust like the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus. Nobody, therefore, wants to pretend that the plague is a good thing; but as I mentioned in my last article on Dante and CCP virus, without the Black Death, the modern world would have been seriously deferred, if not impossible. Furthermore, from Shakespeares perspective (and ignoring the possibility that his own son, Hamnet, died of the plague in 1596), as Shapiro again puts it: We know a great deal more about how a rodent-borne visitation in 1606 altered the contours of Shakespeares professional life, transformed and reinvigorated his playing company, hurt the competition, changed the composition of the audiences for whom he would write (and in turn the kinds of play he could write) and enabled him to collaborate with talented musicians and playwrightsan outbreak of plague that may also have come close to killing him. An illustration by an unknown German engraver, circa 1890, shows William Shakespeare reciting his play Hamlet to his family. His son, Hamnet, is behind him on the left; the boy died at age 11, most likely of the plague. (Public Domain) Eh? What was that? That the plague of 1606 had many professional and commercial benefits for Shakespeare? Yes, it would seem so. Shakespeare Sheltering in Place We can look at all three plague periods and probably conclude that Shakespeare found some benefits in them. Taking all publication and performance dates from authorities Professors K. Muir and S. Schoenberg, we might note that at the end of the 1594 period, Shakespeares Venus and Adonis was published. This was the work that established Shakespeare as the leading poet of his day, and was a huge bestseller; nine editions were published in his lifetime alone. It is generally accepted that it was composed during the theater shutdown. The publications other huge benefit was that it almost certainly cemented Shakespeares famous relationship with the third Earl of Southampton. And we note, too, that in 1594, his play Loves Labors Lost was also produced which, while not one of his greatest plays, contains much fabulous poetry and dramatic inventiveness. How productive Shakespeare had been! How did the plague influence the writing of Shakespeares plays? Sir John Gilberts 1849 painting The Plays of William Shakespeare, containing scenes and characters from several of the Bards plays. Dahesh Museum of Art. (Public Domain) Note, too, that in 1594 there was a big increase in plays printed. As Muir and Schoenbaum explain it, The probable explanation of the sudden increase in printed plays in 1594 is that the companies were so disorganized by the plague that they raised money by selling their MSS. What we are saying here is probably that the survival of many plays from this period depended on the common sense of the theaters as they sought other ways of making money: Selling manuscripts obviously was lucrative. Following on the plague of 160304, we start arriving at the truly greatest period of Shakespeares achievements: Alls Well That Ends Well and Othello were produced, and the second quarto of Hamlet was published. Incredible works. Then in 160506 we got King Lear and Macbeth. Considered one of Shakespeares greatest plays, King Lear was likely written when he was sheltering down during the plague. In this 18971898 painting by American artist Edward Austin Abbey, Cordelia (center) is banished by her elderly father and king, Lear, for not flattering him, while her elder sisters (L) look on and the king of France, impressed with her honesty, kisses her hand. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Public Domain) The point is that the plague forced Shakespeare to rest, recuperate, and write moreto go from one great height to an even sublimer one. And this is the lesson we need to learn from Shakespeare. We Can Be Shakespeare! The leading UK financial journalist, Matthew Lyn, asked this question recently: What do the following businesses have in common: IBM, Disney, Uber? The answer is simple. They were all founded during a deep recession. Morgan Housel, the USA investment expert, said something similar: The Great Depression brought us bread lines. But it also brought us supermarkets, microwaves, sunscreen, radar, jets, rockets, penicillin, electron microscopes, magnetic recording, nylon, photocopying, teflon, helicopters, color TV, plexiglass, commercial aviation, most forms of plastic, synthetic rubber, nuclear fission, laundromats, and countless other discoveries. The timing of some of these breakthroughs were coincidences. But many were not. What I am getting at is that plagues and pandemics are not welcome: People will die, Gross National Product will decline, businesses will go to the wall, and fear will be endemic. And yet in such times as these, the lessons of history and of great and not-so-great human beings are clear: Here is our chance for maximum productivity, invention, creativity, and yes, greatness too. Our consumer society is like some farmer who has simply exhausted the land. In Shakespeares time, they all practiced crop rotation, which is the growing of different crops in succession on a piece of land to avoid exhausting the soil and to control weeds, pests, and diseases. Usually, as well, it involved a piece of land that is not grown in at all, so the land could recover. Think of it as a kind of Sabbath: the one day a week (or, for the land, one year in three, five, or seven) when we really mustnt work if we are to sustain our vitality. Traditionally the Sabbath allowed a periodic time to stop all busyness. Sabbath Eve, 19th century, by Alexander Johnston. Bequeathed by C. Roberts, 1965; Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries, UK. (US-PD) We are being forced now to have a Sabbath, as it were. But instead of living in fear, worry, and anxiety about itall useless and non-productive emotions in this contextwe need to embrace Shakespeares pragmatic attitude: We can develop ourselves, we can develop our people or our employees, we can develop new products and services, we can innovate and create, we can solve problems that we have not had the time to before, andheck!we can even write that book that we always said we would. We can be Shakespeare! The Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare, considered the only reliable image of the famous author, by John Taylor. It is called the Chandos portrait due to the name of a previous owner. (Public Domain) What a good month to be Shakespeare too! April 23 celebrates his birthday (1564) and his death day (1616). Thank God that in the midst of all that plague and human destruction, he kept to his course and fulfilled his mission. Now lets fulfill ours so that in years to come, people will write about the incredible creativity and inventions by those of us who lived during the pandemic. This terrible calamity may prove in the futurefor all its fear and deathto show the true mettle and greatness of the peoples who were afflicted. James Sale is an English businessman whose company, Motivational Maps Ltd., operates in 14 countries. He is the author of over 40 books on management and education from major international publishers including Macmillan, Pearson, and Routledge. As a poet, he won the first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 competition and spoke in June 2019 at the groups first symposium held at New Yorks Princeton Club. Most couples love sharing the story about how they met. But these loved-up social medias are so embarrassed by their meet-cute that they make up stories to tell their friends and family. People from around the world took to anonymous secret sharing app Whisper to reveal the weird and wonderful places where they found love. From being members of the same 'freaky sex group' to a one night stand that led to love, here are some of the best examples... This couple, from Eastlake, Ohio, met during what was supposed to be a one-night stand. They ended up accidentally 'falling for each other' and turned their hotel romp into a lasting relationship that's now so serious they're getting married This pair, from Petersburg, Virginia, met during a Tinder hook up and ended up having a child together. But when people ask how they met they're too embarrassed to admit their baby was 'the product' of what was supposed to be casual sex Her family thought her gaming days were over, but they were wrong. Little do they know she actually met her boyfriend through a video game. The couple, thought to be from the US, are still hiding the truth, however, and say they met on Tinder This romance started on a social media 'freaky sex group' but the couple, from Lakeland Village, California, tell friends and family they met at the restaurant TGI Fridays to save their blushes and preserve innocence When this couple spent time in a psychiatric hospital during matching dips in their mental health, love blossomed. The user, from Kezar Falls, Maine, reveals 'only a few people know' where they really met Too good to be true? This user, from an unknown location, revealed people rarely believe the truth behind how she met her husband. The couple say they met online because the fact they first saw each other in a JFK Starbucks sounds 'made up', she revealed When these lovers met it was in response to an advert looking for a friend. The user, from Nashville, Tennessee, admitted 'not a single soul knows' that eight years ago she was feeling lonely and put out an advert for company. They're now happily married A drunk night out led to romance for this couple when she posted a half-naked picture of herself online and her significant other slid into her DMs. The pair like to tell anyone who asks that they met in yoga class This user, from St. Paul, Minnesota, met her significant other at a swingers club. But since she doesn't regularly tell people she's into group sex sessions she'd prefer to lie about the real place they met. She twists the truth slightly and says they met at the gym Relief: Concern distributed hygiene kits containing soap, detergent and sanitary pads to 84,000 people in displacement camps in northern Iraq this month. Picture: Concern Worldwide The coronavirus has brought all the world to a standstill but it's not the "great leveller" that we have heard about. An indiscriminate virus increases the risks for those who are already vulnerable - individuals, groups and societies. Now, as the coronavirus spreads in Africa, some of the world's poorest countries are facing catastrophe. In Ireland, we responded to the virus by assuming that everyone is at risk, and everyone is a risk to others, especially older people and those with underlying conditions. The scale of that challenge in Africa - particularly in countries where malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs are widespread - is even more immense. Although Africa's population is younger than that of Europe, the health systems in almost all African countries are vastly under-equipped. Last month, the HSE ordered 900 ventilators in addition to the 1,229 machines already in use in Irish hospitals. Meanwhile, the Central African Republic, with a population of 4.5million, similar to that of Ireland, has just three. Sierra Leone, with almost eight million people, has a single functioning ventilator. Many African countries have acted quickly in implementing preventative lockdowns. However, the suspensions of movement and business bring an almost immediate economic and food security crisis. In sub-Saharan Africa, 500 million people live on less than $1.90 (1.74) a day. They are mainly dependent on the informal sector for income - if they don't earn, they don't eat. Right now, the window for action is the most important thing. Africa is estimated to be roughly a month behind Europe. While there were 10,000 recorded cases across the continent as of last week, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine predicts that most African countries will have each reached 10,000 cases by mid-May. Models vary and they are inherently speculative but they should not be ignored because the consequences of doing so could be devastating. If there is one strategy that is increasingly discredited it is "herd immunity". The UK is now suffering the devastating consequences of just considering the option for a short period. We know that this virus is most devastating in centres of dense population. London, Madrid, New York, and Dublin are the centre of their nation's outbreaks. While Africa has a far higher proportion of its population in rural areas, overcrowded settlements with no public services in cities such as Nairobi and Kinshasa leave the people little opportunity for social distancing. Even more compromised are those forced to flee their homes because of war or natural disaster - such as in South Sudan where more than six million people are already experiencing severe food insecurity, many of them still crammed into vast displacement camps. Responding in contexts like these is daunting and complex but it is possible, and it can be life-saving. In countries such as Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the same channels of community mobilisation and hygiene sensitisation used to fight Ebola are now being used to channel messaging on the coronavirus. This week, our Concern teams distributed soap, detergent, and hygiene kits to 84,000 displaced people in camps in northern Iraq; improved basic water systems and distributed safety masks in the prisons of Afghanistan; drilled wells in the Central African Republic, and intensified "wash your hands" campaigns in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Malawi. In Niger we are converting Concern vehicles into temporary ambulances. In the refugee camps of Cox's Bazaar we have initiated social distancing and hand sanitation at nutrition treatment centres and accelerated our therapeutic food rations to ensure that malnourished children experience no breaks in their treatment. In the fragile, conflict-affected countries where we work there are no government-led systems of social welfare that cover all citizens. However, ambitious humanitarian response infrastructure does exist and is designed to be scaled up quickly in times of emergency. Using mobile money technology, these systems are critical in providing basic social protection, allowing families to access vital supplies while sustaining local markets and small businesses. Two years ago, when ferocious drought hit, it was these timely cash injections that prevented millions of people from slipping into famine across the Horn of Africa. Today these are some of the practical strategies we will need to scale up immediately. Concern's efforts are part of what is now a global humanitarian response to minimise the overwhelming impact of this virus, but the timing is critical. Scaling up our operations is essential now and for that, resources will be urgently needed. We cannot afford to delay or to be defeatist. To surrender the vulnerable to this virus in Africa would not only be a moral catastrophe, it would also mean the pandemic is never brought under control. Dominic MacSorley is the chief executive of Concern Worldwide. To learn more about Concern's work and to donate visit www.concern.net The US Air Forces Thunderbirds squadron paid tribute to healthcare staff with a flyover over Las Vegas on Saturday, April 11. The flyover featured eight F-16 Fighting Falcons from the Nellis Air Force Base flying across Las Vegas for about 25 minutes. According to the air force, the Thunderbirds flew over 18 hospitals in total. The air force described the flyover as a way to show appreciation and support for the healthcare workers, first responders, and other essential personnel who are working on the front lines to combat COVID-19. As of April 12, Clark County, Nevada, officials reported 2,258 positive cases of COVID-19, and 96 deaths. Credit: Clark County, Nevada via Storyful Chandigarh/Shimla, April 13 : With the intervention of the Chandigarh Adviser, the Himachal Pradesh government on Monday said it would take back its discharged patients and emergency-related travellers. Chandigarh Adviser Manoj Parida informed this in a tweet. IANS had highlighted this human-interest issue earlier. "Good news, a communication has been received from Himachal government that they will take discharged patients and emergency death/marriage related travellers. Smiling face with smiling eyes...Seems tweets are doing wonders," Parida said. A day earlier, Parida said neighbouring states like Himachal Pradesh have refused to take their people who had undergone non-Covid treatment at the PGI Hospital here, citing nationwide lockdown. He said this would impact the treatment of coronavirus patients in the hospitals here. "Outstation patients coming from other states discharged by hospitals like PGI have no local place to go, nor transport to return home. Any solutions," Parida had informed in a tweet. "Neighboring states like Himachal have refused to take them now saying Central government has banned interstate movement. Our hospital beds remaining blocked as discharged non-Covid patients not leaving," the Chandigarh Adviser had said. Himachal Pradesh Principal Secretary (Disaster Management) Onkar Sharma told IANS over phone on Monday that the patients who have undergone treatment outside the state could come back to the state as per the medical protocol. "All the patients with their hospital discharge slips can enter the state. At the inter-state border, they will be medically examined. If they require 14 days of quarantine, they will be quarantined there," he said. The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh caters to patients from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Chandigarh. While the coronavirus outbreak continues to sweep across the globe, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, member of US task force for COVID-19, Dr Anthony Fauci has said they obviously could have saved lives if the government had started the mitigation processes earlier. Fauci made the statements while talking to an international media broadcaster after the COVID-19 death toll in the US, not only surpassed that of Italy but also showed a spike from 10,000 to 20,000 in nearly five days. On April 12, Fauci even confessed that there was a lot of pushback that took place in the initial stage of the pandemic to introduce social distancing measures and for the country to respond more effectively. Further explaining the possibility if voters will be able to go out physically and cast a ballot for the 2020 presidential elections in November, Fauci gave a mixed response while raising caution that disorganised ending of lockdown might lead to a rebound. As of April 13, the US has reported at least 560,433 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 22,115 fatalities. After originating from Chinas wet markets, the coronavirus has now claimed over 114,335 lives worldwide as of April 13. According to the tally by international news agency, the pandemic has now spread to 210 countries and has infected at least 1,857,128 people. Out of the total infections, 428,336 have been recovered but the easily spread virus is continuing to disrupt many lives. Major cities have been put under lockdown in almost all countries and the economy is struggling. Read - Fauci Says 'rolling Reentry' Of US Economy Possible In May Read - Fauci Says He Feels Safe Despite Threats, Is Focusing On Job All 50 states under disaster declaration in US Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump issued a disaster declaration for Wyoming on April 12 which implies that all 50 states will be under such declaration for the first time in history. The White House Press Secretary, Judd Deere, also said that it was the first time a US President has ever declared a major disaster in all its states at once. Donald Trump not only tweeted about the move himself but also said that the country is "winning" against the "war with the invisible enemy". The declaration came on the same day the US surpassed the COVID-19 death toll of Italy which is also one of the hardest-hit countries of the pandemic outside China, where it originated. It was Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon who was formally seeking the declaration on April 9 by writing to Trump when the state reportedly had more than 200 cases of coronavirus infections at the time. This declaration would make the funding by federal funds available for both state and local governments, as well as certain non-profit organisations amid the deadly outbreak. Moreover, they can also help the governments of the states to organise the federal resources including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Army Corps of Engineers. Read - Trump, Fauci Brace US For Large Virus Death Toll Read - Fauci Says Coronavirus Deaths In US Could Top 100,000 (Image Source: AP) Bengaluru, April 13 : Karnataka's Chikkaballapura government hospital staff celebrated the recovery of four Covid-19 patients with bouquets and applause, Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar said on Monday. "Seeing four people recover from the coronavirus, Chikkaballapura government hospital staff applauded them with bouquets," tweeted Sudhakar in Kannada. He advised people not to worry about Covid-19 but be careful. Sudhakar said the doctors and nurses were proud to see the recovered patients. The medical education minister shared a video showing a woman, followed by three mask-wearing men walking in a single line to receive their discharge farewell in the hospital. The burqa-clad woman and the men, all of them young, were presented a sapling and another unidentifiable package as they walked out. During the farewell, many hospital workers stood on either side to celebrate their recovery by clapping their hands, all of them wearing gloves, masks and maintaining physical distance. The weather forecast indicates severe storms are coming, and the heavy winds and rain that come with them could cause damage. What should you do if your power goes out? Its a good idea to pause reading here and plug in whatever device youre reading this on to ensure youll have plenty of battery life for if and when things go dark. Thats extra important due to the virtual ways in which we currently operate work, family visits, and everything else due to the coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, check the flashlight batteries, and if your car is in the garage, be sure you know how to manually open it in case the electric goes out before you put it in the driveway or out on the street. Now, grab a pen and paper and take down the information below that pertains to your power company, because the best way to report an outage, and maybe speed up the time it takes for the electric to come back, is a simple phone call. This list comes courtesy of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Citizens Electric Of Lewisburg Number to report outages or downed lines: 570-524-2231 Outage Site Duquesne Light Company (DQE) Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-888-393-7000 To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site Pennsylvania Power Company (Penn Power) FirstEnergy Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-888-LIGHTSS (1-888-544-4877) To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site Metropolitan Edison Company (Met-Ed) FirstEnergy Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-888-LIGHTSS (1-888-544-4877) To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site Pennsylvania Electric Company (Penelec) FirstEnergy Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-888-LIGHTSS (1-888-544-4877) To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site PPL Electric Utilites - PPL Customer Website Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-800-DIAL-PPL (1-800-342-5775) To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site PECO Energy Company - Exelon Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-800-841-4141 To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site Pike County Light & Power Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-855-855-2433 To Report an Outage Online UGI Utilities Inc. Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-800-276-2722 Outage Site Wellsboro Electric Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 570-724-3516 West Penn Power - FirstEnergy Company Number to report outages or downed lines: 1-888-LIGHTSS (1-888-544-4877) To Report an Outage Online - Outage Site Are we missing your provider? Email newstips@pennlive.com so we can update our list. Note that online outage reporting is available from some carriers, as well. Finally, the companies with outage sites will link to a map showing where they are having issues and when they expect service to be restored. Here are some other power outage tips taken verbatim from Ready PA: During a power outage: Only use flashlights for emergency lighting, candles can cause fires. Keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed. Most food requiring refrigeration can be kept safely in a closed refrigerator for several hours. An unopened refrigerator will keep food cold for about 4 hours. A full freezer will keep the temperature for about 48 hours. For more information about food safety visit the FEMA Ready.gov food page. Turn off or disconnect appliances and other equipment in case of a momentary power surge that can damage computers and other devices. Consider adding surge protectors. If you are considering purchasing a generator for your home, consult an electrician or engineer before purchasing and installing. Only use generators away from your home and NEVER run a generator inside a home or garage, or connect it to your homes electrical system. After a power outage: President Donald Trump is likely to announce restrictions on U.S. funding for the World Health Organization this week over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as the administration and conservative allies ramped up their criticism that the United Nations agency catered to China early in the outbreak and jeopardized global health. Trump hinted at a temporary hold on U.S. funding Friday but said he wanted to wait until after Easter to announce anything. He said his administration would discuss the organization "in great detail" this week, saying he did not want to go further "before we had all the facts." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other U.S. officials are expected to recommend to Trump how to dock or condition payments to the agency as Republicans in Congress seek documentation of WHO dealings with China, said people familiar with White House and State Department discussions who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations. "They are very, very China-centric," Trump said Friday. "China always seems to get the better of the argument and I don't like that, I really don't like that. I don't think that's appropriate. I don't think it's fair to the American people." Speaking at the daily White House coronavirus news conference, Trump focused on the level of U.S. funding and the disparity with China's contribution. The administration review is expected to be broader, to consider how well the agency responded in December, January and February as the virus began spreading rapidly inside China and then beyond its borders, said the people familiar with the talks. On Monday, Trump repeated criticism of the WHO but gave no specifics about any planned funding cuts or the review process involved. He said he anticipated a decision by the end of the week. "Those are all issues currently being worked on for the president to make a decision this week," a senior administration official said Monday in response to questions about how funding cuts would work, including whether they would come from priorities and accounts already approved by Congress. The official, like others interviewed for this report, requested anonymity to discuss a pending decision. At issue are ongoing voluntary U.S. payments to the United Nations health body, based in Geneva. The United States is the largest single donor to the WHO, with "assessed" or mandatory funding and larger voluntary contributions that often go to fund specific projects or crisis response. The United States has committed to provide the agency with $893 million during its current two-year funding period, a State Department representative said. The figure comports with donor information provided by the WHO, which lists the United States as its largest donor. Congress has ignored Trump administration budget proposals that would slash funding for the WHO, instead approving funding levels that have remained roughly $400 million or higher for several years. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., asked the administration to expand contributions to the WHO to help in the global response to covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes. In a letter to Pompeo late last month, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the United States should do more to meet the WHO's call for $675 million for pandemic response. "Given the WHO's indispensable role, it is imperative that the United States increase contributions," beyond $14.7 million pledged to date, Menendez wrote. He also asked Pompeo to address what he said is an approximately $41 million shortfall in U.S. disbursements of WHO funds approved by Congress. Republicans in Congress are seeking documents from the WHO and calling for investigations of contacts between WHO officials and Chinese government officials. The White House backs those efforts but could hold up funding before results are in. "The money is not guaranteed if WHO does not do its mission," a senior administration official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration has not decided how to proceed, said the quarrel is less with the organization's health professionals and more with its political leadership. "The problem is not the WHO system. The system has good people," the official said. "It's about comments made from the leadership - which went beyond what I am told their own staff wanted to say." The president has piled on to rising conservative criticism of the WHO, which is paired with criticism of China as deceptive and defensive during the crucial early weeks of the crisis. But this criticism ignores that Trump also was complimentary of China's efforts to combat the outbreak earlier this year - a stance that may have been influenced by his desire for a trade deal with Beijing. "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus," the president tweeted on Jan. 24. "The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!" Weeks later, on Feb. 18, Trump again complimented President Xi Jinping's efforts to mitigate the outbreak. "I think President Xi is working very hard. As you know, I spoke with him recently," he told reporters. "He's working really hard. It's a tough problem. I think he's going to do - look, I've seen them build hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that done, and he wants to get it done fast. Yes, I think he's doing it very professionally." Trump later changed his tone toward Beijing, saying it could have provided more information earlier about the spread of the coronavirus. "No, they weren't transparent. They were transparent at that time, but when we saw what happened, they could have been transparent much earlier than they were," he said on March 21. Critics of the WHO note that it has also taken a soft approach toward U.S. efforts to mitigate the pandemic despite widespread criticism of how the Trump administration has responded. The question, they argue, is whether the WHO is taking a conciliatory approach toward major financial patrons, including the United States and China, as opposed to solely favoring the communist regime in Beijing. For Trump, the focus on the United Nations entity shifts some blame from his own early reaction, when he dismissed the virus as no threat to the United States. The president has said he "inherited" a health system that wasn't up to the task and blamed Democrats and the news media for hyping the threat. But he has never offered a full accounting of what his own administration was doing to protect the country in late 2019 and the first weeks of January, the period before and during the entrance and initial spread of the virus in the United States. Accurate assessments of the risk at the outset could have given the U.S. government a jump on the need for social distancing and other preventive measures and lead time to procure additional tests, masks, respirators and other equipment now in short supply, said two people who have spoken with Trump about the WHO "We're going to have an announcement on the World Health Organization sometime next week," Trump said Friday. "As you know, we give them approximately $500 million dollars a year. And we're going to be talking about that subject next week. We'll have a lot to say about it. We'll hold it." He had started attacking the agency by name several days before, on Tuesday, when he tweeted that "The WHO really blew it," and noted the heavy share of U.S. funding the agency receives. Speaking to reporters hours later on Tuesday, Trump went further. "We're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see," Trump said Tuesday. "They called it wrong. They call it wrong. They really, they missed the call." He backed off that threat during the same press briefing, saying the decision had not been made, but has continued to criticize the agency. Accusing the WHO of being slow to react allows Trump an I-told-you-so moment. The organization pointedly dissented from Trump's decision in late January to impose severe travel restrictions on travelers from China. Trump has claimed ever since that the decision saved American lives and complained that he was not given credit for foresight. "They criticized me very strongly when I said that we're going to shut down flights coming in from China, and especially from certain parts of China, but from China generally," Trump said Wednesday. "We were criticized very badly." Pointing a finger at the WHO also fits with Trump's long-standing skepticism about the United Nations and complaints that the United States spends too much and gets too little from international organizations. On Friday, he likened the WHO to the World Trade Organization, a much more frequent target of Trump's ire, saying both bodies have routinely taken advantage of the United States. For many conservatives aligned with Trump, the issue is equally about skepticism that the WHO is bloated, ineffective or biased, and about alleged Chinese perfidy. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley appeared twice on Fox News last week to accuse the agency of covering for China. She backed a call for a full investigation from Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Risch is expected to speak by phone early this week with WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, before the Senate effort moves ahead, a Republican Senate aide said. As other conservatives have done, Haley pointed to Taiwan, which China considers a rogue province, to make the point that China was duplicitous. "I mean look at the timeline. You've got, December 30, Taiwan goes and tells the WHO 'we believe and have evidence that there's human-to-human transmission.' Then you have, January 14, the head of the WHO, Tedros, says 'we don't see any evidence of human-to-human transmission.'" Haley said Friday on "Fox and Friends." At a press briefing last week, Tedros predicted that the United States "will continue to contribute its share." "I would like to take this opportunity to thank the U.S. for its generous support so far," he said. On Thursday, several Republican members of the House Oversight Committee requested documents and other information from the WHO about its relationship with China and its response to the pandemic. "Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is in essence the Communist Party of China," the lawmakers wrote to the WHO chief. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., was among those signing the letter. In an interview Friday, he said he "100 percent" supports a holdup of U.S. funding for the WHO, which amounts to roughly 15 percent of the agency's budget. "You would stop the check," while questions are answered, he said. Comer said he and his colleagues want to know "did they drop the ball and make honest mistakes or were they going along with Chinese propaganda and taking China's word for it on what the problem was." Comer said the agency's early pronouncements on the outbreak were "completely inaccurate." Several Republican Senate aides interviewed about the WHO's response criticized it as halting and incomplete but said it is not yet clear whether the agency was complicit in any Chinese whitewash of the outbreak. In the early going, the agency was balancing its need for access to on-the-ground information from China, which would affect the effectiveness of the agency's response, with its duty to speak truthfully about the threat, one Republican Senate aide said. The WHO's complicity in any coverup will rest on whether the agency went beyond a need to publicly extend the benefit of the doubt and actively fronted for the Chinese government, the aide said. - - - The Washington Post's Carol Morello contributed to this report. Mattos, center, at a staff party in August at Cafe Altro Paradiso. Photo: Courtesy of Ignacio Mattos Were committed to keeping our readers informed. Weve removed our paywall from essential coronavirus news stories. Become a subscriber to support our journalists. Subscribe now. This article was featured in One Great Story, New Yorks reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. On Friday, March 13, as the coronavirus bore down on New York City, there was no reason to expect Estela would be busy. For the past week and a half, Ignacio Mattoss celebrated restaurant on East Houston Street had been eerily slow with diners increasingly worried about sitting near each other in enclosed spaces. Earlier that day, something jarring had happened: A series of iconic, successful New York restaurants had closed. Eric Ripert had shut Le Bernardin, his three-Michelin-star seafood temple, and furloughed his 180 employees; Danny Meyers Union Square Hospitality Group had closed its 19 restaurants and laid off 2,000 employees. The previous day, the city had mandated that all restaurants cut capacity by 50 percent. At Estela, this meant its usual 13 seats at the bar were reduced to six and its 42 dining room seats to 21. But there Estela was, humming with frenetic energy. Before the evening was out, the restaurant would serve 112 people. To fit them into half the space, managers rearranged reservations and asked customers for flexibility in giving up their tables for other diners when needed. Beautiful plates of cured fluke with uni, burrata with salsa verde and charred bread, and fried arroz negro with squid and romesco came out of the kitchen. Guests were understanding if they had to walk around the block or have a drink at the bar downstairs before their seats were ready, and the restaurant did what it could to keep the tables turning smoothly. Wed splash them a little after-dinner drink and move them to the bar, Mattos later said. There was an end-times fizz in the air, as if diners were seeking out one last hurrah before retreating into masked isolation. People were like, Im going to get out of the house, have an amazing meal, be around people I like, and have a good time. God only knows whats going to happen tomorrow, said Estela server James Hardeman, who was on the floor that night. It was mind-boggling how much people were drinking. A table of four I had, industry people, had several rounds of cocktails and several bottles of wine. At one point, I was like, How are they still okay? They said, Weve had an incredibly stressful week. There needs to be some wild abandon. A few bottles in, it was possible to imagine, for a moment, anyway, that things were back to normal. Honestly, it felt like another night in New York City, Alex Sandoval, a junior sous-chef who was working that night, said. Mattos, who had created this small gem of cooking and gathering and making merry, had missed that Friday at Estela he was home sick. I wasnt feeling good I worried I had symptoms. It would be the last full-throated night, perhaps ever, at the restaurant that had defined his career. Two nights later, Mattos made the excruciating decision to send an email informing his staff of 200 that he was closing all three of his restaurants. Hours after that, Mattos learned his agonizing had been moot: The city had just ordered all restaurants and bars to shutter. He would soon be faced with the question of what would happen to all of those who depended on him for a paycheck and, beyond that, to the skein of farms and fishermen and suppliers and customers and investors and other chefs to everyone who made up his community, so much of what made his beloved adopted city itself. When Mattos and his then-partner, Thomas Carter, a former sommelier at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, opened Estela in 2013, it was an instant success, a place where other chefs loved to eat. Set in a narrow, charming room in Nolita, it was refined but unfussy, as much wine bar as restaurant. Other than a distinct lack of discernible Latin American influence despite Mattoss upbringing in Uruguay and his long apprenticeship under Argentine grilling icon Francis Mallmann the food was Mattoss life on a plate. There was the ingredient-driven approach of the influential Bay Area kitchens hed spent years in at Chez Panisse and Zuni Cafe; a Mediterranean focus and simplicity (his Italian-immigrant grandmother had been the dominant cook in his home); and a humbleness drawn from his childhood, parts of which had been spent on his grandfathers farm outside Montevideo. The farm was a place where, if you wanted milk, you milked the cow yourself. Summers meant making fruit preserves, wine, tomato sauce, and marmalade nonstop, Mattos said. I have a bittersweet taste with it, cause I kind of wanted to play and I had to work. When a pig was slaughtered, Mattos, after hearing the animal die, would have to stir the blood while it was hot to keep it from coagulating. When a cow was pregnant, hed have to do rectal palpation, sticking his hand deep into the animal to see how far along it was in its gestation. Its not cool; theres nothing chill about it. And when your arms are short, he said, trailing off. His grandfather always had tasks to be done and was always collecting data about whether Mattos was doing them. When you see anyone doing a laborious task, Mattoss friend Laila Gohar, an artist, said of him, the more laborious and hands-on it is, the more likely he is to jump in. Its a part of me I really dislike, Mattos said. My mother would make me go and pick stones from a field if I had nothing to do. She said, You go pick stones. I want to see how many piles you have. How ridiculous. Im talking hectares. Shed go over and make sure I have the piles. For a time, Mattos had wanted to go to art school, and his platings showed an eye for composition with a pristine geometry and a fondness for circles. There was a daring aspect to his cooking, though hed dialed back the punk-rock shock instincts that had led him, when he was chef at the avant-garde Isa in Williamsburg, to serve a fried sardine skeleton. And there was also Mattoss own enigmatic contribution, the way he could combine common ingredients into something thought-provoking, pairings that on the face of it wouldnt work but in fact were delicious and surprising, as well as his strategy of physically layering the elements of a dish so that a simplelooking surface veiled some hidden ingredient. In his Estela cookbook, he likens the effect to finding a twenty-dollar bill in your shirt pocket. He became known for dishes like his steak tartare (actually bison), which was flecked with pickled elderberries and chips of crispy sunchoke, and his endive salad, with its whorl of citrusy chicory spears giving way to an understory of walnuts, croutons, and Ubriaco Rosso cheese, with which guests were encouraged to fill the leaves, taco style. Operating an independent restaurant in New York City is a bit like picking stones: It rewards compulsion and obstinance, and it is a punishing activity in the best of circumstances. Profitability depends on a small set of variables within a restaurants control, including the cost of food and wine, labor, and rent. Minimum wage has nearly doubled in the past few years, which means the labor costs for front-of-the-house employees have doubled. And rents have kept rising. Four years ago, David Chang, one of the most successful restaurateurs in America, wrote of a looming restaurant apocalypse: Noting that most restaurants dont make it to their first birthday, he complained that diners werent willing to pay what restaurants should realistically charge and that its legitimately one of the dumbest businesses you could possibly get into. It takes very little for everything to crumble, Mattos said. The margins are very thin. The space for error is tiny. By way of example, one couple who ate at Estela the night before it closed spent $151.34, not including tip. Perhaps they marveled at spending $20 for an appetizer composed mostly of burrata, or an $18 endive salad, but the restaurants rough costs for that meal were: $21 for food, $16 for wine and a cocktail, $49 for labor (from servers and sommeliers to cooks and dishwashers to salaried employees), $11 for rent, $14 for maintenance and operations (everything from HVAC maintenance to nightly cleaning teams to government-regulated maintenance of ducting and filtration systems), $17 for a miscellany of guest-facing expenses (from reservations and POS systems to flowers to upkeep and replacement of furniture, flatware, linens, and the like), and $12.34 for sales tax. If the restaurant was able to hold down all its costs to those numbers, it and its investors were left with $7, a 5 percent profit. It takes very little for everything to crumble. Yet despite its tiny size and location a flight up from the street on a forgettable stretch of East Houston, Estela made money. Mattos and Carter had thrown the decor together on the cheap, the off-center address made the rent slightly more affordable, the restaurant had industry buzz, and it gained wider renown when the Obamas ate there in 2014. Later, Estela would be named one of the 50 best restaurants in the world, and a few months ago it earned Mattos his first Michelin star. It was a unicorn, he said. Even as Mattos expanded his empire, opening Cafe Altro Paradiso in Soho and, on the ground floor of the Met Breuer, seafood-focused Flora Bar, his company, Matter House, remained a small operation. Mattos bought out Carter in 2018, after Carter was accused of harassment by several employees. Nor was it as profitable as outsiders might assume. Altro had gotten off to a rocky start with a too-expensive build-out, neighborhood construction just as the restaurant was launching, and poor early reviews from critics, who were disappointed to discover comforting Italian food instead of Estelas bold juxtapositions. More than four years after its opening, Mattos said, Altro had found its groove, but he still hadnt received a penny from its operations. Flora Bar, which this magazine declared the best restaurant on the Upper East Side, had to contend with being located underneath a museum that closed just as dinner service was getting under way. The size of Matter House left it without the buying power or economies of scale that larger restaurant groups enjoyed. And Mattos didnt charge as much as he might have. Thats what New York at its core is meant to be, he said. You have to have room for places where young, creative people can go. That kind of shit really bugs me. I feel a sense of duty to make this place accessible. In January and February, Mattos and his team had been watching what was going on in China and Italy and understood it was something that inevitably would happen in New York, too. Matter House placed mass orders for hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes, and by the end of the first week of March, the restaurants had instituted new precautions. The kitchens at Estela and the companys two other restaurants switched out the metal spoons they used to taste food for compostable, single-use wooden ones. The regular wipedowns soon included door handles after any customer used one, employee lockers, tablets, pens, menu covers, and tables after any changeover. Mattoss restaurants were particularly suited to the new regime. Well-run restaurants can be among the cleanest spaces anywhere, but even before the crisis Mattos was extreme in his attention to kitchen hygiene. He was famous among his staff for having an eye that detected dust and dirt invisible to everyone else. I see things I wish I couldnt see, Mattos said. The refrigerator would get pulled away from the wall every night; the ice machine would get broken down every night. Once, two years ago, I told him I wash my hands 40 times a day, Jeremiah Cymerman, an Altro server, said. He just lit up. He said, This is why were brothers. After that, every time wed encounter each other at the washing sink, wed smile. It was still possible in early March to hope that the spread of the virus and its attendant economic damage could be controlled by these kinds of measures, that this crisis would be only as bad as Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when some restaurants in vulnerable areas were quiet for a few days and shut down briefly. Even 9/11 had had only limited repercussions for the industry. It was tempting, at first, to ascribe the slowdown in business to the stock markets recent lackluster performance, rather than to the creeping pandemic. Then, on Monday, March 9, Danny Meyer temporarily closed the Modern at MoMA after learning that Rick Cotton, the executive director of the Port Authority, who had just eaten there, had tested positive for COVID-19. It turned out Cottons infection likely occurred after hed eaten at the restaurant, and it would reopen on Tuesday the 10th, having undergone a deep clean. But the episode got the industrys attention. As the week progressed, Mattos put more and more precautionary measures in place. Kitchen staff who already washed their hands frequently now did so every 15 minutes and later started wearing gloves. It was getting clinical, said Sandoval, the Estela cook. Im a little ashamed until this coronavirus happened, Mattos said, smiling over FaceTime, of his obsession with handwashing and cleanliness. Then Im like, Im ahead of it, I know how to do this, let me tell you how, and not looking like a freak. Mattoss restaurants eighty-sixed many of the small rituals of restaurant going: Employees no longer folded the napkin of a customer who stood up to go the restroom; coat checks were eliminated. Even the formatting of certain dishes was changed. Normally, at Estela, the mussels escabeche was served on toast cut into four bites; now the mussels were put in a bowl with a spoon, and the toast on a side plate, so you could serve yourself without putting your hand into a communal bowl. Pandemic hospitality is an oxymoron. Now guests were invaders, people from the outside coming into the staffs spaces. In meetings with managers, employees gamed out scenarios: If we see someone with symptoms of not feeling well, how do we approach the situation? (Tell your manager.) By Thursday, business was down 30 percent at all three restaurants. The same day, Mattos got a call from the Met: The museum, like many of the citys other major cultural institutions, would be closing. Flora would remain open, but with the museum closed, it got close to no walk-in traffic. At Altro that Friday, traffic was down 50 percent. Estela, it turned out, was an anomaly. On Saturday, management was still feeling out the staff: Who was comfortable working, who wasnt? But by Sunday, the health concerns were inescapable. Mattos waited until dinner service was over that night and then, at 10:25 p.m., hit send on the email to his staff of 200. In both English and Spanish, he told them the news. We are acutely aware of how much this will affect each of you Thank you all for your hard work. Thank you for making these restaurants so special. Thank you for making them magical. Thank you for everything. Everyone in the restaurant got this look on their face, Sandoval said, like, What do we do now? Back and front of the house came together. Some people cried. When everyone realized their livelihood was gone and there was zero answer for that, that was the hardest moment of the night. Its hard to watch your peers be in pain. Mattos lives alone in a Spartan apartment with brick walls and wood beams. He prefers tea with a lot of honey to alcohol. He likes to cook for other people but not particularly for himself. When he does, the food tends to be simple, like jarred tuna with beans and avocado or soup. I could eat soup every day, he said. One morning in late March, he told me hed slept four hours the night before, staying up to watch a pandemic documentary and to read Hannah Arendts Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. When I asked his friend Laila Gohar whether she thought social isolation was hard for him, she said, I dont think hes lonely at all. Hes very solitary, and hes always with his thoughts. Theres a story from Chez Panisse that if theyre interviewing a potential cook, during the interview, they start shucking fava beans, and if the interviewee doesnt start shucking favas too, they dont get the job, Cymerman, the Altro server, said. I feel like I understand Ignacio better through that story. Hes always trying to understand the world around him in ways that arent so literal. Hes looking for clues that will help him understand things. Mattos is not entirely at one with the English language, and for years I thought it was a translation thing, a staffer said. But when he speaks Spanish, its as mysterious and esoteric as in English. Punctuating an idea, Ive heard him say, a gazillion times, Its like, I dont know, you know? Words kind of fail him, Gohar echoed. Food is the way he communicates with us. She connected the elusive quality of his speech to the way he likes to hide ingredients on the plate. He wants you to discover what hes trying to say. Mattos is well aware of this quality in himself. On Instagram recently, he captioned a photograph of a composed plate from Estela a still life of duck breast alongside beets, greens, and a piece of blue cheese with a quote from Ludwig Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: What can be shown cannot be said. I have a grandmother, she never told she love me, so I give up a long time ago. Its not that important to actually say things. I think actions are more meaningful. As important as language is, when you show kindness and goodwill and good intentions you make mistakes, but youre trying your best it shows. The morning after Altro closed, Mattos was back in the kitchen. A rump staff was working reduced hours to wind down the business, help the employees whod just been furloughed, and figure out what was next. Some managers focused on getting information to those employees about how to file for unemployment, delegating to a handful of bilingual ex-staffers the job of communicating with the Spanish-speaking-only workers. The following day, Mattos started a GoFundMe for his former employees, which quickly raised more than $85,000. The company also set up an email address for staff to send anonymous tips about colleagues who were in need but werent likely to say so, like a server assistant whose girlfriend had just had a baby. Along with Sam Lawrence, his culinary director, and Zack Zeidman, the chef at Altro, Mattos had to focus on what to do with all of the restaurants food. Mattoss cooking relied heavily on fresh produce and other perishable items, and there was a sizable inventory that wouldnt last. Days before he made the decision to close, Mattos had been anticipating worst-case scenarios. His chefs had started to sketch takeout and delivery menus, while his managers had begun the process of setting up Caviar delivery, with the idea of either augmenting dwindling revenues or replacing them. In the most optimistic scenario, Mattos thought that if he could keep the kitchens going in all three restaurants, he might be able to continue to employ as many as 50 people. But it quickly became clear that, with the Met Breuer closed, preparing takeout from Flora Bar would be difficult. At the same time, Mattos was struggling with the public-health ramifications of delivery. Was it the right thing to do? Was there a safe and sustainable way to do it? He decided to put off the decision. Instead, he and his chefs cooked for their staff. The three chefs made several Uber trips to Estela and Flora to retrieve food and bring it to Altro. Before the shutdown, Mattos still constantly tasted the food his chefs made and oversaw the development of new recipes, but he rarely cooked himself. Now, for the first time in years, he got behind the stove of one of his restaurants. For three days, he cooked alongside the two other chefs, not for a demo but for themselves and their larger restaurant family. It felt really good to cook, Mattos said. We were all pretty emotionally broken at that point, even if we didnt realize that, said Lawrence. We started cooking, then realized it was bringing us a lot of comfort. I think Ig needed it. I did too. David Landgraf, Matter Houses director of operations, recalls watching beautiful pork chops and 16-ounce steaks and duck normally featured menu items cooked down into ragus to preserve them for staff. The chefs were making meals that could feed families: squid-ink black-rice soup, braised vegetables, a root-vegetable puree, a bean puree, lamb ribs, salads of herb and bulgur and beet and fennel, chicken salad. They put the food in bags along with ricotta and burrata and creme fraiche, bread, condiments, chocolate and walnut torta, citrus fruit. It was a combination of food people could eat over the next few days and food they could freeze to eat later. We did 120 bags of food the first day, Mattos said. When you think that Gods Love We Deliver provides 8,000 meals a day, you know what? Respect. They mapped out routes to the three areas of the city where most of the staff lived. A manager with a truck made 17 stops north of the city. Someone went to South Brooklyn, someone else to apartments in Bushwick. The drivers wore gloves, and a few people who came downstairs to get the food were wearing masks. Some workers said they felt undeserving and urged the managers to give the food to those more in need. It was a beautiful thing to see, Mattos said later. Nothing, he would tell me, has been as gratifying for him, since the shutdown, as cooking alongside his chefs for his work family. Almost as soon as the shutdown began, fellow restaurateurs were making baleful prophecies, saying the industry was doomed. Advocacy organizations with names like the Independent Restaurant Coalition and ROAR (Relief Opportunities for All Restaurants) formed, and federal and state legislation aimed at helping small businesses, including independent restaurants, was drafted. On March 24, a group of chefs published an op-ed in the New York Times lamenting the 10 percent profit margin in their industry. (Those are great margins, Landgraf said the next day. The Matter House restaurants yielded a profit of about 4 to 7 percent.) Tom Colicchio, one of the op-eds authors, predicted that 75 percent of New Yorks fine-dining restaurants would never reopen. When Floyd Cardoz, the pioneering chef-owner of Tabla and other New York restaurants, died of COVID-19 on March 25, it seemed a dark portent. Beyond the immediate question of near-term viability, chefs and restaurant owners have been having searching conversations about what restaurants might look like in the wake of a pandemic. There was a sense that diners would gravitate to more comforting food and that the long death dive of fine dining would only accelerate, but there were also real questions about how people would feel about restaurants of any sort. Would there be less tolerance for cramped spaces? And even if consumers tolerated them, would new regulations require more spaced-out tables? Even small changes of that sort could be devastating. If you have a model where rent is 8 percent of revenues, Landgraf said, and you have to reduce capacity by 30 percent when we come back, then rent becomes 13 to 15 percent of what were able to bring in. It wouldnt be possible, necessarily, to just pass along the cost to consumers. Would people really be willing to pay $40 for a plate of pasta? Landgraf has been using his newfound free time to clean up Matter House spreadsheets and revise training manuals, but, he said, restaurants may never be able to operate in the same way, so it seems like a laughable busy exercise to keep my mind occupied. To the Matter House staff, the potential loss of the restaurant feels more than economic. Ive always felt strongly, especially in a city like New York, that restaurants can become peoples families, Kim Whorton, a sommelier at Altro, said. Staff, yes, but even a lot of our guests. Ive seen entire families start and grow, from dating to them bringing in their kids. To lose that and possibly not get it back Tom Colicchio predicts that 75 percent of New Yorks fine-dining restaurants will never reopen. The employees were staying in touch with one another in texts, group chats, and video calls. I FaceTime with at least one of my co-workers every day, said Lauren Schofield, a pastry cook at Flora Bar. Ive talked about, How was it for you applying for unemployment? Was the website working for you? I think I applied for unemployment. A few employees were baking bread and selling it over Instagram. Schofield was baking for herself, including a focaccia made using some of Floras sourdough starter, which shed taken with her. Mainly, the workers were waiting to see what would happen. Flora, which employed 40 percent of the companys staff, seems the most uncertain. Its a management deal, and the Frick was scheduled to take over the building even before the coronavirus came along. Landgraf sends frequent emails to Matter Houses furloughed employees with updates on filing for unemployment, on applying for COBRA, on the new advocacy groups, on pieces of potential legislation that could help restaurants and workers, encouraging them to call their representatives in Congress. Soomin Yoon, an Estela cook who made $18 an hour and worked five nine-hour shifts each week, is eligible for three months of unemployment at $450 a week. Hes back in Virginia with his parents right now, but hes thinking that with his savings, he can afford to keep his apartment in New York this month and one more. But thats probably the max before I start to realize Im hemorrhaging money and cant recover, even if I start making money again. I can afford to pay Mays rent, but the clock is ticking down. He added, Many people not from this country, some on J-1 visas, arent afforded the luxury of signing up for unemployment. His co-workers from places like Canada, Australia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras have no local safety net, and in my experience, have already dipped into their savings to make it here to make the dream come true and live in New York. From my most recent conversations, its either find some other way to fund themselves or break the piggy bank and go back home. Its heart-wrenching to see people you worked with not get support. The employees livelihoods werent the only ones at stake. Restaurants exist in a much larger ecosystem downstream from suppliers, farmers, and fishermen. Chef Collective, one of Matter Houses suppliers, has pivoted to home-delivery retail, but co-owner Chris Killoran said the company is making 10 percent of its former revenue for three times the work. Chef Collective, in turn, works with dozens of small-time suppliers. Some may be nimble enough to find a new business model, but Killoran thinks larger ones that specialize in cheese or other more perishable goods will likely be wiped out. Mattos is spending April doing what little he can, bugging his contacts to get in touch with their political representatives and using his social-media accounts to push the new home-delivery services that wholesalers like Chef Collective are starting, but everything is a stopgap at best. A lot of his frustration comes from being in limbo: waiting for politicians in D.C. and Albany to make decisions. Waiting to find out if New York will delay the sales-tax payment hed soon owe. Waiting to find out if he could get certain loans. He was finding that the crisis was revealing peoples essential character. Hed reached out to his landlords, and they had promised to work with him. Meanwhile, one of his investors, whod never even been to the restaurant, sent me a very unfortunate email. It was shocking, demanding, like, Whats going on with my money? You get to see whos who. Before the shutdown, Mattos had planned to go on a several-week trip, first to Australia for some dinners, and then to Brazil for the 9th birthday of his son, Paco, who lives for most of the year with Mattoss former wife. When I spoke to Mattos on Pacos birthday, his mood was dark. He was supposed to be with him in Rio but was not. He was trying to manage his feelings because he was going to be talking to Paco that night on a 30-person Zoom call to wish him a happy birthday, and his son tended to be able to pick up on these things. Social isolation was hard for Paco, Mattos said. Hes a hugger. But the next day, Mattos sounded more optimistic. Hed spoken with a friend in New Orleans whod gone through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and had to close for 18 months. In a way, we still have power, Mattos said. Down there took it really hard. It was a good reminder that panicking and freaking out is not going to help. It wasnt in his nature to sit passively and wait for a miracle. Hed felt the need to do something, and he began talking to a charity in the Bronx about using his kitchens to feed people there. He was seeing silver linings. People were cooking more for themselves; he hoped it would cause them to better appreciate the value of what was on their plates. He hoped the pandemic would awaken people to the terrible class disparities that keep so many service-industry workers marginalized. He was looking forward to distributing the GoFundMe donations. We love what we do, taking care of people. Its in our DNA, he said. He hoped to do it again. *This article appears in the April 13, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now! One Great Story: A Nightly Newsletter for the Best of New York The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected by New York's editors. Email This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Terms & Privacy Notice By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. After beating some hit models of iPhone and Samsung and garnering over 30% of market share, One Plus is all set for OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, which is said to be the fastest Andriod smartphones. Take a look at the features and specifications of the upcoming model of OnePlus. In a days time, Carl Pei and Pete Lau will host a live stream and unveil what has become the most leaked smartphone of 2020 the OnePlus 8. In the last 6 years, OnePlus has become the darling of smartphone enthusiast culminating with last years OnePlus 7 models becoming the most popular premium smartphones in India with over 30% market share in the Rs 30,000 plus segment beating out even the iPhone and Samsungs Galaxy S series. So popular has been OnePluss star that it forced some bold moves by the likes of Apple and Samsung which has culminated in perhaps the best iPhone weve seen in over 3 years. Samsungs rebuttal has been bolder with it throwing everything just short of the kitchen sink culminating its boldest smartphone in more than 5 years. Especially when it comes down to Android smartphones the technology is commoditized and cyclical and that points towards. More so when one combines what the rumour mill has been cooking with the leaks and what weve already seen on Samsungs bold yet overcooked attempt with the Galaxy S20 series, chances are the new OnePlus phones will dazzle ravenous enthusiasts. The OnePlus 8 Pro alongside its standard model will be the fastest Android smartphones period. Thats just the way OnePlus rolls. They are obsessed with speed. Already the 6-month-old OnePlus 7T Pro is able to hold its own with the latest Galaxy S20 Plus in the pure horsepower department despite being based on older tech. OnePlus has already announced that their upcoming phone will be based on Qualcomms Snapdragon 865 chip which is supposedly going to be fiendishly fast coupled with a new 120Hz display which will be faster than the 90Hz screen on the previous models. OnePlus is also upgrading the RAM to DDR5 with UFS 3.0 storage which is tuned in tandem with a number of new software-based optimisations which will surely make these new phones the fastest Android phones around. Though the gap will not be as wide as what OnePlus has enjoyed in the past. Thats because the Galaxy S20 also now has a 120Hz screen which looks mind-blowing coupled with the fact that OnePlus has reached a ceiling to its performance advantage. One will be really surprised if these phones feel meaningfully faster in terms of daily usage from its predecessors and phones like Samsungs Galaxy S20. Sure, they will be better at gaming or at least are likely to be. Qualcomms Snapdragon 865 chip is known to be better than Samsungs Exynos 990 which powers the S20 models in India. There are phones from brands like iQOO and Realme, but lets be real for the OnePlus faithful these brands arent a competition. OnePlus also pulls ahead in because of its slick software, and hardware design. Oxygen OS is simply the best mobile software stack thats there better than Googles own original take on Android and for some, even better than iOS which powers the iPhone. When thats married to something that has a delightful display on an elegant kit of hardware youre talking about a winner. Also Read: The coronavirus pandemic will cause a massive backlash for Huawei This year, OnePlus will retain the same design as last year on the OnePlus 7 however it replaces the pop-up cameras with a more basic hole-punch notch for the selfie camera. It is also said to be adding IP68 water and dust resistance in addition to 30-watt wireless fast charging which could popularise wireless charging just the way it has popularised fast charging in the past. The bigger deal is the cameras. OnePlus has always flattered to deceive with the cameras but this year things could truly change. The top of the line OnePlus 8 Pro is slated to be using a quad-camera setup using Sonys IMX 689 48-megapixel sensor for the primary camera, the IMX 586 48-megapixel sensor for the wide-angle camera coupled with an 8-megapixel telephoto lens which will do up to 3x optical zoom and a colour filter which will elevate the white balance and low-light sensitivity for the photos. This is an interesting choice as it is a stark departure from what Samsung or Xiaomi are doing with 108-megapixel sensors on their phones. It is also contrasting to what Huawei is doing with the P40 Pro with its 50-megapixel sensor. It, however, is very similar to the setup on the Oppo Find X2 Pro which is from its sister company. Last year, the best camera sensor was the Sony IMX 586 which is now being used in the wide-angle camera for the OnePlus 8. Its CEO and co-founder Pete Lau even shared photos of this wide-angel camera on Twitter showcasing incredible low-light performance for the wide-angle camera. So far, smartphone vendors have skimmed on the wide-angle camera hardware. On the iPhone 11, it cant do night mode, on the Galaxy S20, it is using an inferior sensor OnePlus has basically used the best sensor from a year before pointing towards the best wide-angle camera thats ever been put in a smartphone. But there is more. Fundamentally most smartphones are actually shooting between 8-16-megapixel photos even when the camera resolution is 48-megapixel or 64-megapixel or even 108-megapixels. A 12-megapixel is standard for a smartphone so most phones use a technique called pixel binning which was first seen in Nokias PureView smartphones in 2012 and 2013. In this multiple sub-pixels are fused to create a superpixel. So on the 48-megapixel cameras, the pixel oversampling is done 4 sub-pixels to create 1 super pixel resulting in a more light-sensitive and attractive photo at a 12-megapixel resolution. The problem is that as the overall megapixel count of the sensor goes up, the quality of the sub-pixel goes down as most of these sensors are fundamentally quite small as they are installed on a phone hence the 48-megapixel resolution is optimal for the best images. The 108-megapixel one is perhaps the best one for having high levels of zoom like the Galaxy S20 as it gives more headroom for cropping into photos without distortion. A look at the DXOMARK score of the Oppo Find X2 Pro is also indicative of the fact that this 48-megapixel sensor will result in some great photos; better photos than most cameras out there including the iPhone 11, if tuned properly with the hardware. What it will not excel at is crazy levels of zoom which is mostly unneeded. OnePluss conviction in not needing crazy levels of zoom also hails in the fact that its using a big flagship-grade sensor for the wide-angle camera in concert with a colour filter sensor. With it based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, dont be surprised if it can even do 8K video as that the Galaxy S20 can do that. It should surely be able to do 4K video at 60 frames per second. All of this could culminate in the best, most rounded Android phone of the year. It has the makings of what someone in Samsung would characterise as stuff what nightmares are made of. There are no two ways this phone will likely reduce the gap between Android and the iPhone while elevate whats considered to be the apex for Android. And with that, it will duly be more expensive 5G or not even though in India that feature is like having a table fan in the summers. The problem is that we are in the age of the coronavirus. Indias 21-day lockdown was supposed to lift on April 14, now it seems like it is getting extended. Economists are saying that we are headed for the greatest depression since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In this environment, I cant recommend anyone to care about a phone leave alone an expensive one. Sure, OnePlus will likely have a light version of this phone which will be cheaper but at upwards of Rs 60k, the OnePlus 8 will no longer be the go-to phone of the Android enthusiast but rather a preference of a snob who doesnt mind Android. Thats going to be a reality in the post COVID19 world order. For all the latest Gadgets News, download NewsX App JERUSALEM With the negotiations over a unity government in Israel at a critical juncture, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival, Benny Gantz, asked the countrys president early on Tuesday to extend the deadline to form a joint coalition to midnight Wednesday. The two sides, hampered by discord and acrimony in their discussions over a power-sharing deal, had been unable to reach an agreement before a deadline passed at midnight Monday. The president, Reuven Rivlin, acceded to the extension request on the understanding that the two sides were close to an agreement, according to a statement early Tuesday morning from his office. If the two sides cannot resolve their differences by Wednesday night, Mr. Rivlin is expected to refer the task of forming a government to Parliament, a step that would start a countdown toward a possible new election, Israels fourth in little over a year. The Supreme Court Monday modified its April 8 order which asked private labs to conduct free COVID-19 tests and said the benefit will be available only to "economically weaker sections" who are covered under a government scheme such as the Ayushman Bharat. The top court said it never intended to make testing free for those who can afford to pay. It had on April 8 directed that private labs, which were allowed to charge Rs 4,500 for COVID-19 tests, would not charge for the tests observing that they need to be philanthropic in the hour of national crisis. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Ravindra Bhat took note of the pleas of two persons, including orthopedic surgeon Kaushal Kant Mishra, who said that if the testing is made free for all, private labs will be overburdened financially and would slow down the tests for the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. Having heard, counsel for the parties, we are satisfied that sufficient cause has been made out to clarify and modify our order dated April 8, 2020," the top court said. It added: "The order dated April 8, intended to make testing in private Labs of COVID-19 free for economically weaker sections of the society who were unable to afford the payment of testing fee as fixed by ICMR for COVID-19. We further clarify that the order never intended to make testing free for those who can afford the payment of testing fee fixed by the ICMR for COVID-19. The top court took note of the submissions of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi that according to the directive of National Health Authority under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, the COVID-19 tests were being conducted free of cost in all private laboratories even when the order was passed on April 8. We make it clear that the benefit of free testing by a person can be availed only when he or she is covered under any scheme like Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana. "We are also of the view that looking to the plight of persons belonging to economically weaker sections of the society, the Government may consider as to whether any other categories of persons belonging to economically weaker sections of the society can be extended benefit of free testing of COVID-19, it said. The court said it was conscious of the fact that framing of the scheme and its implementation were in the government's domain who are the best experts in such matters. Modifying the order, the bench said, free testing for COVID-19 shall be available to persons covered under the Ayushman Bharat scheme and any other category of economically weaker sections of the society as notified by the Government for free testing for COVID-19, hereinafter. It said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare may consider as to whether any other categories of the weaker sections of the society may be granted the facility of free testing. The Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare may issue necessary guidelines for reimbursement of cost of free testing of COVID-19 undertaken by private Labs and necessary mechanism to defray expenses and reimbursement to the private Labs, it said. The court said the central government was required to give appropriate publicity the modified directions. Rohatgi , appearing for some private labs, submitted that ICMR has fixed moderate charge of Rs 4,500 for COVID-19 tests to cover the expenses of labs and moreover, persons covered under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana' are tested for free of cost. In case the Labs are not to charge any fee for the tests, it will be impossible for them to carry on the test due to financial constraint, he argued. Law officer Mehta referred to the ICMR affidavit and submitted that the government is taking all necessary steps for conducting the COVID-19 test and as on date, 157 government labs and 67 private labs are conducting COVID-19 test. All government hospitals and government labs are conducting COVID-19 test free of cost, Mehta said. Lawyer Shashank Deo Sudhi, who had filed the PIL in personal capacity, said there are large sections of society who are unable to afford even Rs 4,500 for COVID-19 test and the government has to take responsibility of getting every person tested. Orthopedic surgeon Mishra had moved the top court seeking a modification of the courts April 8 order directing authorities to ensure COVID-19 tests in approved private laboratories be conducted free of cost. He had filed the intervention application in a pending PIL, saying that the private labs be allowed to do COVID-19 testing as per the rates stipulated in the ICMR Advisory dated March 17. The application said forcing private labs would create a sharp dip in an already below par testing rate for COVID. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Before coronavirus, drug users coming to the Harm Reduction Center in Asbury Park to exchange dirty needles for clean ones would be warmly greeted by staff, who would ask how they were doing and whether they wanted counseling or other support. It was personal, on purpose. Now, site coordinator Robert Lowry is handing kits of clean syringes and test strips through a window, separated from the population hes trying to help by a wall, gloves and a mask. At first I was feeling badly about the barriers, Lowry said. But honestly, the clients weve had have been grateful were still open. One guy earlier this week said, I used the same syringe for two weeks, so Im glad youre open. The Prevention Resource Network Harm Reduction Center, run by the Visiting Nurse Association of Central New Jersey, is one of only three syringe access programs currently open in the state during the coronavirus pandemic. Though they count as an essential service, four others in the state shut down because they didnt have a safe way to give out needles without risking their staffs health. This pandemic is going to be especially dangerous for many intravenous drug users, harm reduction advocates say, and not just because of fewer needle exchanges where they could get clean needles and naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug. Already at risk for serious health issues and homelessness, now they are even greater risk of relapsing and fatally overdosing, advocates say. And state officials have warned that opioids, methamphetamine, and alcohol can suppress respiratory function, restrict blood vessels, and aggravate respiratory distress caused by the virus. For drug users, social distancing is almost a death sentence... As drug users, community and social gatherings are kind of what keep us alive, said Caitlin ONeill, a founding member of the Harm Reduction Coalition of New Jersey, who is in recovery. It is people using drugs who are quite often the first responders (if) our friends or loved ones overdose. So removing that element of hanging out together, or a passerby who might notice somebody who has overdosed on the street, that just makes for an extremely heightened risk for not just overdoses but fatal overdoses, ONeill said. Jenna Mellor, another founding member, said they are also concerned the pandemic might lead to slower response times for EMTs or even changes in the heroin supply, which means users wouldnt know what theyre injecting. So far, state data do not show a rise in fatal overdoses between February and March. Just over 250 suspected overdose deaths occurred each month. Data for April and death numbers broken down weekly were not available from the Office of the Attorney General. Lowry worries that the closing of the four needle exchanges two of which are working to reopen on a limited basis could lead to an outbreak of HIV or Hepatitis C. He also expects more people to relapse, and people who relapse are more likely to overdose than regular users. People in recovery who are stuck at home, not able to go to their meetings, he said. This can definitely trigger a relapse. Life-saving measures Mellor said now is the time for the states clinics and doctors to step up their efforts to provide medication that prevents opiate withdrawal symptoms for those in recovery. New federal guidelines meant to keep those individuals well-supplied during social distancing measures now allow methadone clinics to give clients weeks worth of methadone so they dont have to come in daily. Doctors who previously could only prescribe buprenorphine in person are now able to do so over the phone, she said. The Harm Reduction Coalition of New Jersey is also trying to meet the need for naloxone since it is less available through needle exchanges and other support programs. Through a partnership with NEXT Naloxone, people who are likely to overdose or witness an overdose can get naloxone confidentially mailed to them by signing up online or calling or texting the hotline 1-877-4NARCAN. ONeill said theyve gotten over 500 requests from New Jersey residents. Naloxone Hydrochloride, also known by the brand name Narcan, temporarily reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. (J. Scott Park | Mlive.com)MLive Media Group Kathy Ahearn-OBrien, executive director of the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation that runs syringe access programs in Jersey City, Trenton and Paterson, said her staff gives out naloxone on request, usually at a rate of about once a week per site. But the three sites have been shut down since March 18. The bulk of the clients who come to our sites tend to be homeless or very low income and cant afford to buy [syringes] over the counter, so were absolutely worried about it, she said of the limited access. We dont have the personal protective equipment for staff and until we get that we cant risk our staff getting exposed. However, she said she was able to get enough masks to reopen two sites this week on a very limited basis: Wednesday from noon to 3 p.m. in Trenton and Thursday from noon to 3 p.m. in Jersey City. Staff at those sites can pass the supplies out a window, she said. Since the Paterson syringe access program is run out of a van, she said she wouldnt reopen it until she could get full PPE, including gloves, masks, gowns and goggles. Lowry said the Asbury Park needle exchange, run out of an old train station on Sunset Avenue, had two N95 masks that he and his coworker can each use. But the site was closed for a few days before they began the window service, he said, and now many program participants havent returned. Before a busy day meant 15 or 20 clients, but now it would be five. Their hours were reduced to 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. And while he hopes more will come as word spreads that theyre open, Lowry remains very concerned about the community he serves. People who use drugs are people, too, he said. In my mind, theyre going to be a huge victim of this pandemic. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook. The threat of a $1,000 fine did nothing to stop dozens of surfers from clambering over two-metre high barricades to catch waves at Bronte Beach on Easter Monday. Swimmers and surfers are banned from entering the water at Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The popular beaches were closed by Waverley Council - considered to be Australia's worst coronavirus hotspot - after thousands ignored social distancing guidelines. Despite large warning signs at the beach and a heavy police presence on the promenade, at least 20 surfers were spotted catching waves at the iconic beach. Photos showed surfers of all ages scaling rock faces, ignoring signs and climbing over fences to get to the water. Surfers of all ages climbed over temporary fences and ignored signs at Bronte Beach on Monday Another keen surfer slid himself and his board underneath the stair railing to gain access to the popular beach Despite large signs warning the beach is closed and police patrolling the promenade, at least 20 surfers were in the water at one time at the iconic beach Other board riders simply pushed the barriers out of their way to make a run to the water. Two surfers were even seen scaling rocks at the water's edge to avoid police detection. Another man slid himself and his surfboard underneath the stair railing to gain access to the popular beach. Officers yelled at surfers to come get out of the water and off the sand on Easter Sunday. 'Surfers, you must come to the beach! Surfers you must come to the beach!' they were seen shouting from the sand. Mayor of Waverly Paula Masselos told Daily Mail Australia it's 'disappointing' to see people disregard measures put in place by Council in the interest of public safety. 'The closures extend to everyone: swimmers, surfers and people exercising on the sand,' Ms Masselos said. 'Those who are caught jumping fences and accessing closed areas can be fined under the Local Government Act. Other board riders simply pushed the barriers out of their way to make a run to the water Two surfers were even seen scaling rocks at the water's edge to avoid police detection 'If leaving the house to exercise, we ask people to obey Council signage, respect our Lifeguards and Rangers, maintain social distancing at all times and stay away from crowded areas.' A New South Wales Police spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia no fines had been issued at Bronte Beach on Sunday or Monday. Further south at Cronulla the scene was the same, with dozens of surfers jumping off a secluded rock entrance to gain access to pumping waves on Monday. The restriction breaches comes after Sydney's iconic Bondi to Bronte walk was closed after residents ignored advice to stay home over the long weekend. Waverley Council on Saturday announced it was shutting the popular walking path after 'careful consideration and close monitoring' of the area. With gyms ordered closed by NSW Government lockdowns, dozens of joggers flocked to the 4km stroll for their daily dose of fresh air, creating a public safety issue. 'Unfortunately, closing the coastal walk was the only way the Council could help ensure that Public Health Orders could be maintained along the walk,' Mayor of Waverley, Paula Masselos said. 'Council is trying to balance the needs of our community, but we need our residents and visitors to adhere to social distancing in our public spaces.' The Council also cited 'behavioral issues' with people ignoring signs and ranger instructions to follow safety measures. Ms Masselos acknowledged the importance of being able to exercise outdoors under these unprecedented times, but encouraged residents to find new places. 'I encourage people to be a tourist in their own suburb and find places to exercise on other streets and parks,' she said. Surfers ignored large signs and barricades to jump in the water at Bronte Beach on Easter Monday Police patrolled the promenade along Bronte Beach on Easter Monday, as dozens of locals took advantage of government-mandated exercise 'If we all follow Public Health Orders then we may be in the position to reopen the coastal walk. In the meantime, I thank the community for their patience during this challenging time. We are all in this together.' Bondi is Australia's biggest coronavirus hotspot with at least 107 cases, and 167 in the local government area, out of 6,283 across Australia. Bronte, Tamarama, Bondi and Mackenzie's Bay will remain closed until further notice. Fines for flouting social distancing restrictions range state-by-state. NSW, Western Australia and South Australians will be slapped with $1,000 infringement notices, while Victorians run the risk of $1,652 penalties for breaching the rules. The delivery of the first batch of Rafale fighter jets to the Indian Air Force (IAF) from France is likely to be delayed as aircraft manufacturer Dassault's assembly facility in Merignac remained closed due to the spread of coronavirus pandemic in the country. France, which is battling with rising infections and deaths due to COVID-19, imposed nationwide lockdown after March 17 to slow the spread of the virus. The lockdown restrictions are expected to continue till the end of April. The first four Rafale fighter jets were scheduled to arrive in India by May 2020, but it likely to get delayed by few months as Dassault suspended production at its Merignac plants to comply with a nationwide lockdown ordered by France President Emmanuel Macron. Earlier in March, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said the first batch of Rafale jets would land in India in the last week of May, but the Air Force headquarters has not yet received confirmation from the French officials so far. France President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce extension of lockdown on Monday to combat the deadly virus, which has taken life of 14,393 people in France so far, news agency AFP reported. Macron will give his third prime-time televised address to the nation on the epidemic from the Elysee Palace after 8:00 pm (1800 GMT). On Sunday, France reported 315 coronavirus deaths in a single day, compared with 345 the day earlier. This was fourth straight day when the number of patients in intensive care declined with 35 fewer patients, making a total of 6,845 people needing such treatment. On April 6, the country had reported record 605 deaths in hospitals, its highest daily toll so far. The Indian government has also suspended all existing visas until April 15, barring diplomatic, official, UN officials and other international organisations. In October 2019, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, during his visit to France for the second India-France ministerial-level annual defence dialogue, had taken formal delivery of the first Rafale jet. India has signed an inter-governmental agreement with France to procure 36 Rafale jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore to strengthen the Indian Air Force's combat capabilities. As per the deal, the delivery of the jets was to be completed in 67 months from the date the contract was inked. By Chitranjan Kumar Also Read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: India lockdown 2.0! PM Modi to address nation at 10 am on April 14 Also Read: Coronavirus is invisible assassin; need to ensure seamless finance flow, says RBI MOSCOW The head of Russias coronavirus task force, Tatyana Golikova, assured President Vladimir V. Putin in mid-March that the country was ready to take on the pandemic. From masks to ventilators, she said, Russias hospitals had everything they needed to weather the crisis. There is no reason at all to panic, she said. A week later, the head doctor of one of Moscows top hospitals caring for coronavirus patients quietly wrote to a medical charity asking for help. The hospital, he wrote, was in need of disposable materials and equipment to continue to serve the critically ill. Were used to always living, somehow, in the unspoken, looking through rose-colored glasses, said Elena Smirnova, the head of the charity, Sozidaniye. They cant hide this anymore. [Analysis: Putin, Russias man of action, lets others act against the coronavirus] For weeks, the coronavirus pandemic had the makings of a Kremlin propaganda coup; even as Western countries succumbed one by one, Russia appeared invincible, recording fewer than 100 new cases a day through late March despite its tightly packed cities, global travel connections and 2,600-mile land border with China. Saudi Arabias oil giant Aramco has just announced the pricing for its oil for May, with deeper discounts for customers in Asia for the second month in a row, despite Sundays historic global production cut deal. Aramco has delayed the announcement of its official selling prices (OSPs) for May several times in the past few days while producers were trying to unlock the Mexican standoff in the talks on a 10-million-bpd production cut deal. After the deal was sealed on Sunday, Saudi Arabias state oil giant said on Monday that it would be cutting the price of its flagship Arab Light crude grade to Asia by another US$4.20 per barrel compared to April, to a discount of US$7.30 a barrel to the Oman/Dubai benchmark average, documents seen by Reuters showed. Saudi Arabias prices to Europe remain basically flat compared to the April pricing, while prices for the United States were raised. Arab Light will be sold to the United States at US$3 a barrel higher than in Aprilat a discount of US$0.75 per barrel versus the ASCI benchmark. Last month, the Saudis slashed all their prices for all regions for April, after OPECs top producer and its partner in the OPEC+ pact, Russia, broke up the production cut deal and the Saudis waged a price war for market share by discounting their oil deeply to all markets. The additional hefty discounts to Asia for May suggest that the Saudis are continuing to pay for market share there, but the rise in prices to the U.S. and flat month-on-month prices to Europe suggests that the Kingdom is trying to please U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, respectively, according to analysts. The price hike for the Saudi crude selling in the United States is likely designed to keep Trump happy, Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, told Bloomberg. Aramco is still prepared to fight for its market share. While the U.S. hike is symbolic, the real challenge, in terms of maintaining market share, can be seen through the lower OSP to Asia, Hansen said. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Ville de Buea 1 archives Armed separatist fighters killed a young lady Monday, April 13, 2020 in Bonakanda, a village in the outskirts of Buea, capital of Cameroons South West Region, local sources say. Cameroon-Info.Net learnt that Doris Kedze was killed in an early morning raid on the village by armed men seeking the independence of a country they call Ambazonia. The separatist fighters are said to have shot the deceased because she went out of her house very early Monday morning, when the gunmen were firing several rounds in the air, apparently in a bid to enforce routine Monday ghost town operations. Left to bleed to death, the armed men are said to have taken at least six villagers into captivity. A nursing mother as well as a pastor of the local Full Gospel congregation are said to be among those taken hostage. Open sources suggest that the armed men targeted those who sell alcoholic beverages in the village, apparently an attempt to enforce their ban on the commercialization of Brasseries du Cameroun products. The armed men are said to have made away with bottles of beer, emptying its contents as they fled into hiding. The empty crates and bottles are said to have been abandoned along the road. Informed, defense and security forces are said to have descended to Bonakanda apparently for a search and rescue mission. Cameroon-info.net recalls that on Tuesday, September 3, 2019, armed separatists stormed the Bonakanda Community Radio, threatened to burn down the radio station before seizing into captivity Mary Namondo, an animator at the local broadcaster. She was later freed. Clashes between armed separatists and government forces, as well as between rival separatist factions, have resulted in civilian deaths, with people either killed deliberately or caught in the crossfire, and others taken hostage against ransoms. In May last year, a video emerged showing separatists torturing a man over claims that he sells contraband drinks. The man was kidnapped, beaten, and burned in an abandoned school in Bali by armed men. The video, verified by a dozen sources including five people who recognize the school and its location, corroborates previous accounts of torture and occupation of schools by armed separatists documented by Human Rights Watch. Once again material is circulating to support allegations that armed separatists are abusing civilians, said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. Separatist leaders should immediately direct their fighters and followers to halt attacks, including torture and other abuse aimed at civilians. The footage shows at least four separatist fighters threatening and torturing the man, who is wearing only his underwear, forcing him to sit on burning pieces of paper and beating him with sticks and machetes. An analysis of the dialogue in the video revealed that the victim was a driver from the village of Bali who had been transporting products for Brasseries du Cameroun, a brewery company the separatists oppose. They have banned the marketing, purchase, and transport of its drink products within the areas they control, says Human Rights Watch. Separatists could be heard accusing the driver of selling Brasseries products in the Bali and Batibo parts of the North West region. The yet to be identified victim begged his torturers to stop, but they instead threaten to wash him with gasoline, implying they will kill him. Since late 2016, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon have been gripped by deadly violence, claiming the lives of over 1,800 people and forcing half a million to flee their homes. Last year, Human Rights Watch said: Armed separatists have killed hundreds of members of security forces and assaulted and kidnapped hundreds of people during their increasing attacks and growing calls for secession of the North-West and South-West regions. Since the crisis escalated, armed separatists have tortured dozens of people. In the past year, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of torture by armed separatists against workers of the Cameroon Development Corporation, who work in the companys banana plantations near Tiko, South-West region. The workers have been beaten or maimed because they refused to participate in a general strike called by the separatists. Cameroons international partners and the UN Security Council should impose targeted sanctions on separatist leaders who bear responsibility for abuses, including torture and occupation of schools, Human Rights Watch said. The separatists should know the world is paying attention and those responsible for torture will face the consequences, Mudge said. Armed separatists should let children return to their studies and stop using the schools to carry out their campaign. A UNM engineering professor leads a team of five universities that have been selected for a 2020 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Award. Edl Schamiloglu is Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at the University of New Mexico School of Engineering. This is Schamiloglus fifth MURI award and the third where he has been the principal investigator. The title of the project is Exploration of Fundamental Limits to High Power Electromagnetic Amplification. Schamiloglu said that the overarching goal of this research is to develop high-power amplifiers, as well as to understand what the fundamental limitations are along the way. Amplifiers are key to achieving not only waveform diversity, but waveform agility. Also on the UNM team are Mark Gilmore and Jane Lehr, both professors in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The five-year, $7.5 million grant is shared with four other universities: the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine. The team includes experts in intense beam-driven sources of high-power electromagnetics and pulsed power, as well as mathematical physicists and computationalists. Arje Nachman is the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) program officer on the project. I believe we were successful because we assembled the top researchers in this field in the nation, Schamiloglu said. MURI awards are given each year by the Department of Defense (AFOSR, Army Research Office, and the Office of Naval Research). This year, $185 million in awards were given to 26 research teams across 52 U.S. academic institutions. Edl Schamiloglu, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at The University of New Mexico School of Engineering Economy Minister Diane Dodds at the daily media broadcast in the Long Gallery at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. Credit: Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye A financial support package for tourism firms due to go live next Monday may be too late, industry representatives have warned. Announced by Economy Minister Diane Dodds last Friday, the 10-day wait for the 25,000 grant scheme may prove critical to the loss of many good tourism businesses and thousands of jobs, according to the Northern Ireland Tourism Alliance (NITA). Firms in hospitality, retail and tourism can apply for the funding on April 20 with payments due around 15 days later. The money is intended to help ease cash flow pressures as the sector suffers the catastrophic economic impact of coronavirus. But on what would have been the start of the summer season, businesses have seen their tourism income drop to zero and are desperately trying to keep afloat until the scheme goes live. NITA chief executive Joanne Stuart called for interim payments to tide firms over. "We are now pleading with banks and other financial institutions to work with the industry as they wait to submit business critical applications," she said. "Jobs are being shed now, cancellations have already happened, businesses are ready to close now. The Assembly needs to make interim payments now if these businesses and jobs are to survive." Firms are struggling to meet upfront staffing costs as they await the implementation of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, and were relying on the grant scheme to fill the gap in funding. "This meant we would have had an interim cash flow that would have plugged the gap until the furlough scheme went live," added Ms Stuart. "However, as the grants have not been distributed, businesses may not be able to survive until the end of April much less start making grant applications." In the absence of immediate cash flow relief, the NITA said companies and jobs will be lost ahead of the scheme's implementation. "The tourism industry will be an important part of our economic recovery once we start to see restrictions lifted and the impact of the virus receding," it said. "We need to ensure tourism businesses survive through these unprecedented circumstances and be in a position to provide a future for staff and deliver for the economy." Leader of Opposition in the DelhiAssembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri on Monday urged Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia to release the March salaries of teachers and other staffs of 12 city government-aided colleges, saying they were facing financial crisis during the lockdown. In a letter to Sisodia, who is also the minister in the Delhi government, Bidhuri thanked him for the release of salaries of January and February and urged him to release the salary of March as well. "The teachers and staff should not face any kind of financial crisis during the lock-down, so the Delhi government should release the salary for the month of March at the earliest," he said. It is becoming difficult for the teachers and staff of 12 colleges of Delhi University, aided by the Delhi government, to live in the crisis of epidemic, he said. Till April 12, teachers have not been able to get the salary of March, he said and appealed to the deputy chief minister to initiate necessary action. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) PARMA, Ohio -- As if having a flooded basement late last month wasnt bad enough, Parma resident Mark Taylor said someone stole his 5-year-old sons police Power Wheels police car, which was drying outside of his Belmere Drive home. That morning, my fiancee and myself were pulling things out of the basement, which is where my son, Leo, had most of his toys, like the Power Wheels car, a hover board and Xbox, said Taylor, a 2011 graduate of Parma Senior High School. The cop car wasnt fully submerged, so we thought maybe we got lucky. After we took it outside and set it down in the yard, a gentleman pulled up and was trying to take it. My girlfriend yelled that it wasnt garbage. He drove away, but about five minutes later, she noticed the car was gone. So somebody drove by and picked it up. A naturally irate Taylor went on social media posting a picture of the missing car. To his surprise, it was shared more than 300 times. Then, his sister, Brittany Sears, started an online fundraiser to help replace the car for Leo, who is currently a kindergartener at St. Charles Borromeo School. Over the next week, more than 20 people donated $831. Its wild, Taylor said. A lot of people are losing their jobs, and its kind of an uncertain time (during the coronavirus pandemic). I felt almost bad accepting help, because there are people way worse than us right now. As things get scarier, people start coming together more and more. You cant get within six feet of each other, and yet strangers weve never met are making donations. It makes you feel better, like not all hope in humanity is gone. Because the money more than covered the cost to replace Leos toys, Taylor said his family decided to donate the remaining funds to a group in need of support during these trying times. On April 3, Taylor, Leo and other family members delivered 26 dozen donuts and 11 dozen bagels to the Parma Police Station, all five Parma fire stations and the UH Parma Medical Center Emergency Room. Mayor Tim DeGeeter said he was so moved by Leos story that he shared it on social media. What started as a very sad story has turned into one of those heartwarming stories we are seeing during this coronavirus pandemic, DeGeeter said. People are stepping up everywhere in our community and paying it forward, too. We are a strong community, and we will get through this. Actually, Leos story doesnt end with his new toys and Parma first responders receiving donated food during the coronavirus pandemic. Taylor said hes paying the benevolence his family received forward in the hope that one good deed begets another. At exactly the same time all of this happened, I had a woman message me saying we could have her sons police car, which he outgrew, while another lady said her boys car had also been stolen two months ago, Taylor said. I was thinking about buying the older car for the boy who had his stolen. Instead, I like to draw and paint canvases, so we bartered. Im doing a canvas that Ill trade for the cop car to give to the kid who had his stolen. Its literally like a big circle. If someone does it for you, you do it for someone else, and it kind of goes on from there. Read more news from the Parma Sun Post. Are you looking for a job? The state has shut down many businesses and closed the doors to the public for many of them due to the coronavirus pandemic but it has also allowed a myriad of life-sustaining businesses to stay open. And many of those businesses are hiring and the state is planning to connect those employers with people looking for jobs. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry has set up a new online COVID-19 job portal. People seeking employment can visit www.PAcareerlink.pa.gov and select the green PA COVID-19 Jobs Hiring Immediately job portal banner to see the job openings. Perspective employees can select the Apply Now button for a listed position, which will lead to the employers website or email. READ MORE: The job portal will be updated daily and is part of the PA CareerLink system. Although PA CareerLink offices are physically closed, the majority of staff are teleworking and providing virtual services to both job seekers and employers. Employers can list job openings by submitting them through an online form on the L&I website. Employers must be recognized a life-sustaining business, according to the state and must have more than 10 job openings. The website already includes employers like Sheetz, Walmart and Amazon among others. Many life-sustaining businesses across Pennsylvania are hiring and this new portal will help connect them with people looking for a job, L&I Secretary Jerry Oleksiak said in a press release. A top priority of L&I is to provide businesses with access to the workforce they need to maintain their life-sustaining operations and help our workers find jobs, especially during this unprecedented and challenging time. --Sign up for PennLives newsletters Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. You can follow Daniel Urie on twitter @DanielUrie2018 and you can like PennLives business page on Facebook at @PennLiveBusiness JACKSON, Mich., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- CMS Energy announced today it will provide 2020 first quarter results along with a business and financial outlook at 9:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, April 27, 2020. A webcast of the presentation will be available on CMS Energy's website, cmsenergy.com. An audio replay will be available approximately three hours after the webcast and will be archived for 30 days on CMS Energy's website in the "Investor Relations" section. CMS Energy (NYSE: CMS) is a Michigan-based company that has an electric and natural gas utility, Consumers Energy, as its primary business and owns and operates independent power generation businesses. For more information on CMS Energy, please visit our website at cmsenergy.com. To sign up for email alert notifications, please visit the Investor Relations section of our website. SOURCE CMS Energy Related Links http://www.cmsenergy.com Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who came to power in the wake of society's dissatisfation with the Serzh Sagrsyan teams policies, pursues a completely transparent policy typical of European officials, telling about his work and meetings in social networks. Peoples Premier actively uses his Facebook account, thus receiving feedback from the electorate: under each post Pashinyan gathers from a thousand comments. Obviously, Facebook users are far from the whole people of Armenia, however, probably, this is still the most active part of the society with a clearly defined civic position. Actually, Nikol Pashinyan was guided by these people, marching across Armenia with a backpack behind him, before turning from a street tribune into the head of the cabinet of ministers. Then, in 2018, it seemed that with the new prime minister, Armenia would heal according to European standards: corruption would be eradicated, people who committed political or economic crimes would be punished, the economy would begin to come out of endless crises, etc. However, two years later it turned out that there were no changes for the better. This is evidenced not only by opposition experts and political scientists, but also by ordinary people. Vestnik Kavkaza invites readers to read only a few random comments posted under the latest posts by Nikol Pashinyan on Facebook: Neka Neka Hakopovna: We need to take measures regarding the rent. The minimum amount is 80 thousand drams ($ 160), and this is the monthly salary of the majority of the working population. Nune Matinyan: Why is the price of bread increasing? Two months ago we bought for 100 drams, and today we buy for 160-200 drams. How to understand this? Karen Zakaryan: I wanted to spit on your billion dollars allocated in connection with the coronovirus, when thousands of Armenian citizens were forced to leave for Russia to support their families, and now they are sitting at airports and waiting for the plane to return to their families. What did you do to get them back to their home? Liana Har: During the reign of Sargsyan, in fact, many left. The wealth of the country was plundered. People like Kocharyan moved from village to city, became presidents, deputies. With the money stolen by them, it was possible to support the entire population of Armenia for 10 years. SH.N.A .: Mr. Prime Minister, how long can you beat around the bush? In the two years since you came to power, one person was arrested, a stolen thief Manvel Grigoryan. But even over him you are not able to organize a lawsuit. If you are really fighting corruption, then you would pass a law in parliament on the return of all that was stolen by the previous authorities and return everything to the state treasury. Wah. Azatyan: Mr. Prime Minister, how much more should the people endure? How long? How many crimes are still uncovered? How many corrupt officials were arrested? People are waiting for answers to these questions. To be continued Pilar Mine Achieves New Record Production Turmalina Production Returning to High-Grade Orebody A Achieved Highest Consolidated Production Level Since 2017 Operational Update on COVID-19 Action Plan TORONTO, CANADA / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / Jaguar Mining Inc. ("Jaguar" or the "Company") (TSX:JAG) today announced interim gold production results for the first quarter of 2020 ("Q1 2020"). The Company is pleased to announce that it continues to show consistent quarter-over-quarter operational improvement at the Pilar Gold Mine ("Pilar") and Turmalina Gold Mine ("Turmalina") located in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Financial results for Q1 2020 will be reported and filed on SEDAR on or before May 15, 2020. All figures are in US Dollars, unless otherwise expressed. Vern Baker, CEO, commented: "Jaguar is very pleased with its results in the first quarter of 2020. The team continued sustainable quarter-on-quarter improvement with production of 21,000 ounces of gold. Performance year-on-year for the first quarter also showed significant improvement in our key measurements of ounces produced and meters developed. We operated for most of March under our own COVID-19 Action Plan, which is currently allowing us to move forward with the majority of our 2020 plans intact. It is a flexible plan that has, and will continue to allow us to adapt to the day-to-day changes that the overall pandemic is demanding of our communities and operations. The key results highlighted below, demonstrate our best production quarter since the end of 2017 and continued quarterly production improvement. Our sustainable production increase was matched by an impressive safety performance of no lost-time accidents occurring in the last two quarters." Q1 2020 Operating Highlights Consolidated production of 21,008 ounces compared to 16,365 ounces in Q1 2019, an increase of 28%, demonstrating the fourth consecutive quarter of sustainable production and the highest consolidated production level achieved since Q4 2017; Pilar gold production set a new production record with 11,521 ounces, an increase of 30% compared to 8,840 ounces in Q1 2019; Turmalina gold production of 9,486 ounces, an increase of 26% compared to 7,525 ounces in Q1 2019 Turmalina head grade increased 10% with an average head grade of 4.37 g/t Au compared to 3.96 g/t Au in Q1 2019, as the Company restarted to mine orebody A; Total development metres increased 14% to 2,041 metres compared to 1,793 metres in Q1 2019. Primary development increased 24% to 1,439 metres compared to 1,162 metres in Q1 2019. Quarter over quarter, primary development meters were consistent in Q1 2020 with Q4 2019, although secondary metres were down. A focus on extending ramp access limited the number of secondary headings utilized in the quarter. Total Definition, infill and exploration drilling more than doubled with 14,545 metres compared to 6,632 metres in Q1 2019. The additional drill rigs are expected to allow Jaguar to continue expanding Mineral Resources in 2020; Strong treasury position as at March 31, 2020, with a cash and unsold bullion balance of $15.6 million as compared to $11.7 million of cash and unsold bullion on December 31, 2019. Vern continued; "In this quarter, as the mines improved production, we began seeing improvements in grade. At Turmalina the grade improvement was driven by production from two blocks in the core part of our A orebody. Efforts to bring the A12 panel online as a production area paid off as the team mined two stopes from this critical area. The team also demonstrated the ability to effectively utilize the new paste-fill system as quick backfilling of the first stope allowed for the extraction of the second stope in the quarter. Paste-fill performance to date has exceeded expectations. At Pilar we began implementing new grade control systems at the end of 2020, and we believe we are beginning to see some benefit from those new procedures. Jaguar's performance across all operations year-on-year was stronger in almost all measurable outputs as shown in the table below. Quarter-on-quarter we performed well on safety, diamond drilling, grade and ounces. While a focus on increasing capacity by working on primary headings, limited secondary headings. This reduced completed secondary metres relative to the prior quarter. Tonnage at Turmalina continues to be limited by access to mining panels. Work on our primary development is focused on providing two mining panels with well-planned stope sequencing by the third quarter of this year. As additional stoping blocks come online at Turmalina we expect to see improvement in the consistency and level of tonnes processed. At Pilar we are working to eliminate some bottlenecks that have become apparent as production has fluctuated from 30K+ to 40K+ tonnes per month. We have a team committed to work on improving both metrics (tonnes and metres) as we move into the second quarter." The table below summarizes Q1 2020 operating results compared to Q1 2019: The following graph demonstrate Jaguar's consistent growth in production to sustainable levels: Vern also commented on the current issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the Company's COVID-19 Action Plan, which was Initiated on March 14, 2020; "No discussions surrounding the first three months of 2020 should avoid the COVID-19 pandemic issues our industry is facing. From the onset of talk surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic in January to the implementation of our own COVID-19 Action Plan in March, the dynamics of operating mines in Brazil, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter, was changed to include the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent, government and national health and safety decrees, travel restrictions, risks of supply chain disruption, risks to our people and their communities, and work restrictions due to the pandemic and quarantining. Our Action Plan continues to eliminate unnecessary travel and visitors to our operations as well as work from home protocols wherever possible. We have a structured quarantine plan for anyone who is infected or has been in known contact with the COVID-19 virus which includes, groups affected and location restrictions. Monitoring protocols have been implemented at our mine site entrances, and a significant portion of our administrative and technical staff are now working from home. These and many other measures have been implemented to minimize the potential exposure to the virus for our people and their families. The pandemic has impacted our operations, as an intense amount of energy and focus is being put into maintaining government regulations, including our own mandates for a safe and healthy workplace, while maintaining as strong an employment framework for our people as possible. We are not sure how the issue will impact our operations in the second quarter, but an engaged COVID-19 Action Plan will allow us to be quick to adapt to any changes necessary - always with the target of maintaining a strong Company with a strong and healthy team." COVID-19 Action Plan Update In March 2020 the Company announced several initiatives designed to protect its employees, their families and local communities from the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to observe and increase all protocols wherever necessary, and we are ensuring that all government health and safety protections and our COVID-19 Action Plans are implemented across all of our operations. These actions include: Company-wide health and safety protocols at the Corporate office in Belo Horizonte and at the producing operations in Minas Gerais, Brazil. At the present time, we can report that there are no confirmed or known cases of COVID-19 at any of the Company's operations, its offices in Toronto or in Brazil. In response to the health risks associated with COVID-19, Jaguar Mining has implemented several health and safety protocols on a company-wide basis. At the operational level in Brazil, site-level controls continue to include medical screening of all individuals prior to entering site, enhanced cleaning and hygiene practices, social distancing of workers by reorganizing all internal/external logistics, increased reliance on the use of technology such as hosting of virtual meetings, work from home policies for corporate and administrative staff, and the suspension of all non-essential work at, and visits to, the Company's mine sites. The Company has also adopted travel restrictions between all sites and the Belo Horizonte office, as well as quarantine rules for any person traveling in and out of local cities. Jaguar is maintaining its social licenses to operate in all sites throughout Brazil and continues to deliver on its ethical and collaborative partnerships with employees, suppliers, local communities and unions. During this COVID-19 pandemic, the Company has formulated a formal COVID-19 Action Plan which has been adopted company-wide. The Action Plan is committed to sustainability while implementing increased health and safety initiatives with all stakeholders, including the protection of employees and their employment. COVID-19 remains the largest question mark for any company. At any time, state and federal government mandates may change and any mandate that would result in the shutdown of operations will affect the Company's production. As well the virus may impact the availability of our workforce or supplies. Jaguar is not able to predict the consequences of the virus over the next several months and hence is unable to project the impact on production at the current time. Qualified Persons Scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Jonathan Victor Hill, BSc (Hons) (Economic Geology - UCT), FAUSIMM, Senior Expert Advisor Geology and Exploration to the Jaguar Mining Management Committee, who is also an employee of Jaguar Mining Inc., and is a "qualified person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). The Iron Quadrangle The Iron Quadrangle has been an area of mineral exploration dating back to the 17th century. The discovery in 1699-1701 of gold contaminated with iron and platinum-group metals in the southeastern corner of the Iron Quadrangle gave rise to the name of the town Ouro Preto (Black Gold). The Iron Quadrangle contains world-class multi-million-ounce gold deposits such as Morro Velho, Cuiaba, and Sao Bento. Jaguar holds the second largest gold land position in the Iron Quadrangle with just over 25,000 hectares. About Jaguar Mining Inc. Jaguar Mining Inc. is a Canadian-listed junior gold mining, development, and exploration company operating in Brazil with two gold mining complexes and a large land package with significant upside exploration potential from mineral claims covering an area of approximately 64,000 hectares. The Company's principal operating assets are located in the Iron Quadrangle, a prolific greenstone belt in the state of Minas Gerais and include the Turmalina Gold Mine Complex and Caete Mining Complex (Pilar Mine and Caete Plant). The Company also owns the Paciencia Gold Mine Complex, which has been on care and maintenance since 2012. The Roca Grande Mine has been on care and maintenance since April 2018. Additional information is available on the Company's website at www.jaguarmining.com. For further information, please contact: Vern Baker Chief Executive Officer Jaguar Mining Inc. vernon.baker@jaguarmining.com 416-847-1854 Hashim Ahmed Chief Financial Officer Jaguar Mining Inc. hashim.ahmed@jaguarmining.com 416-847-1854 Forward-Looking Statements and Cautionary Notes Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements and information are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's expectations and plans relating to the future. All of the forward-looking information made in this news release is qualified by the cautionary statements below and those made in our other filings with the securities regulators in Canada. Forward-looking information contained in forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "are expected," "is forecast," "is targeted," "approximately," "plans," "anticipates," "projects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "believe" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may," "could," "would," "might," or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, may be considered to be or include forward-looking information. This news release contains forward-looking information regarding, among other things, expected sales, production statistics, ore grades, tonnes milled, recovery rates, cash operating costs, definition/delineation drilling, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production, capital expenditures, costs and timing of the development of projects and new deposits, success of exploration, development and mining activities, currency fluctuations, capital requirements, project studies, mine life extensions, restarting suspended or disrupted operations, continuous improvement initiatives, and resolution of pending litigation. The Company has made numerous assumptions with respect to forward-looking information contained herein, including, among other things, assumptions about the estimated timeline for the development of its mineral properties; the supply and demand for, and the level and volatility of the price of, gold; the accuracy of reserve and resource estimates and the assumptions on which the reserve and resource estimates are based; the receipt of necessary permits; market competition; ongoing relations with employees and impacted communities; political and legal developments in any jurisdiction in which the Company operates being consistent with its current expectations including, without limitation, the impact of any potential power rationing, tailings facility regulation, exploration and mine operating licenses and permits being obtained and renewed and/or there being adverse amendments to mining or other laws in Brazil and any changes to general business and economic conditions. Forward-looking information involves a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including among others: the risk of Jaguar not meeting the forecast plans regarding its operations and financial performance; uncertainties with respect to the price of gold, labour disruptions, mechanical failures, increase in costs, environmental compliance and change in environmental legislation and regulation, weather delays and increased costs or production delays due to natural disasters, power disruptions, procurement and delivery of parts and supplies to the operations; uncertainties inherent to capital markets in general (including the sometimes volatile valuation of securities and an uncertain ability to raise new capital) and other risks inherent to the gold exploration, development and production industry, which, if incorrect, may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described herein. In addition, there are risks and hazards associated with the business of gold exploration, development, mining and production, including environmental hazards, tailings dam failures, industrial accidents and workplace safety problems, unusual or unexpected geological formations, pressures, cave-ins, flooding, chemical spills, procurement fraud and gold bullion thefts and losses (and the risk of inadequate insurance, or the inability to obtain insurance, to cover these risks). In addition, the Company's principal operations and mineral properties are located in Brazil and there are additional business and financial risks inherent in doing business in Brazil as compared to the United States or Canada. In Brazil, corruption represents a challenge requiring extra attention by those who conduct business there. Corruption does not only occur with the misuse of public, government or regulatory powers, it also can occur in a business's supplies, inputs and procurement functions (such as illicit rebates, kickbacks and dubious vendor relationships) as well as the inventory and product sales functions (such as inventory shrinkage or skimming). Employees as well as external parties (such as suppliers, distributors and contractors) have opportunities to commit theft, procurement fraud and other wrongs against the Company. While corruption, bribery and fraud and theft risks can never be fully eliminated, the Company reviews and implements controls to reduce the likelihood of these events occurring. The Company's present and future business operations face these risks. Accordingly, for all of the reasons above, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward-looking information made in this news release, see the Company's most recent Annual Information Form and Management's Discussion and Analysis, as well as other public disclosure documents that can be accessed under the issuer profile of "Jaguar Mining Inc." on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information set forth herein reflects the Company's reasonable expectations as at the date of this news release and is subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. SOURCE: Jaguar Mining Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/584803/Jaguar-Mining-Reports-21008-Ounces-Produced-in-First-Quarter BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 30 Trend: Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 24 times, Trend reports referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry on March 30. The Armenian armed forces were using large-caliber machine guns. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Despite the current grim economic news, most forecasters predict the U.S. economy will rebound quickly once the immediate public health crisis caused by the novel coronavirus is brought under control. A leading historian of the Great Depression agrees.Im cautiously optimistic that the economic effects will be severe but not nearly as long-lasting as the Great Depression, says David Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford University. Both the depth and duration are not likely to look like the Great Depression.His book,, won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2000. "It's a cliche by now but it's worth emphasizing that this is an unprecedented event in many ways," Kennedy says. "The Great Depression was a black swan as an economic event, but a pandemic is something nobody has experienced on this scale, unless they lived through the Spanish flu of 1918, and there aren't many of those people left."called Kennedy and spoke with him about the lessons from the 1930s that might matter today. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.Were better insulated today than we were in the 1930s. We saw in the headlines on Thursday that there were about 7 million more unemployment insurance applications. In 1931, 32, 33 all the way to 1935 there was no unemployment insurance. Thats a big difference. Weve put in a few more circuit-breakers as a society, maybe not enough but a lot more than were in place in the 1930s.There were 13 million people unemployed in 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated, which was 25 percent of the workforce. The demographics of the workforce were a lot different. At that time, only 9 percent of married women were working outside the house. The unemployment numbers, as bad as they are now, dont mirror exactly what they looked like in the 1930s, because many, many households have one person still working and bringing in an income.Were better equipped than we were decades ago in terms of taking up arms against this crisis. Weve changed the architecture of our institutions to give us better tools for dealing with the economic side of this. That lesson came from the Great Depression and it was reinforced by the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve was not a significant player in the 1930s.Today, its a very vigorous counterpuncher to the economic damage. As early as 1930, Robert Wagner, a senator from New York, introduced legislation to provide widespread aid to individuals. It didnt go anywhere in part because nobody knew how many people would have to be helped, whether 1 million or 2 million. It ended up being 13 million. Its a function of the anemia or weakness of political institutions at the time that there was just not any reliable data about what was happening. Herbert Hoover quite understandably thought it was another familiar downturn in the business cycle. Nobody knew, or could get their hands around this thing. We're much more committed to the idea that reliable data is essential to good policy.The states at that time loomed much larger as political actors than the federal government. As of 1930, if you look at the aggregate of all public budgets, state revenues were roughly three times the size of federal revenues. Calvin Coolidge said that if the federal government went out of business, the average person wouldnt notice for six months, except for the post office.Now, the federal government is twice the size of the states all put together. The federal government has the resources to make things happen, if theres leadership.I think the federal response so far has been pathetic. Trump and company just havent put their hands on the levers of power that I think they have. The idea that states will act and Ill back them up, as Trump has said, to me is irresponsible behavior.If ever there was a time for international cooperation, this is it. Any pandemic by definition is a global issue. Trump hasnt positioned himself as cooperative and certainly not as a leader internationally. The whole logic of America First is to step away from these engagements.Im optimistic in the sense that I dont think this is going to be a long-term depressant of economic vitality. Its a sharp shock right now. My speculation is that with the exception of some obvious sectors like hospitality and travel, other sectors are going to be poised for a pretty good snap back to economic health.But were likely to have, around the world, several hundreds of thousands of people dead. Thats not a reason to feel good about anything. Maybe people my age shouldnt be that optimistic about the future. Its going to be older people that pay the price. Were the most vulnerable and as a category were going to suffer the most. Kabul, April 13 : US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has welcomed the prisoner exchange process by both the Afghan government and Taliban as per the agreement the militant group inked with Washington to bring peace in the war-torn country. "Welcome the release of prisoners by both the Afghan government and the Taliban. The release of prisoners is an important step in the peace process and the reduction of violence," TOLO News quoted Khalilzad as saying in a tweet on Sunday. "Both sides should accelerate efforts to meet targets specified in the US-Taliban agreement as soon as possible. "The potential for COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons poses a real threat and all the more reason to move urgently," he added. Khalilzad's remarks came on the same day the Taliban released 20 Afghan security forces. Also taking to Twitter on Sunday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that the 20 soldiers were released in Kandahar province and handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Photos posted on Mujahid's handle showed the soldiers wearing traditional clothes and receiving cash and certificates from the Taliban. The release was confirmed the head of the ICRC in Afghanistan Juan-Pedro Schaerer, TOLO News reported. "Today we facilitated the release of 20 Afghan National Defense and Security Forces who were detained by the Taliban and transferred them to the Governor's Office in Kandahar," Schaerer tweeted. Earlier on Sunday, the Afghan government released 100 Taliban inmates from Bagram prison in Parwan province, bringing the number of Taliban inmates freed since April 8 to 300. On March 11, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani issued a decree to release 5,000 Taliban inmates on parole. The exchange process is part of the peace deal inked between the Taliban and the US signed in Qatar capital Doha on February 29, of which the Afghan government was not a signatory. The Taliban also agreed to launch direct peace talks with the government and accepted to free 1,000 Afghan government security force members. When Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex first announced Megxit in January 2020, they could not have anticipated that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic would bring the world to a screeching halt. As the Sussexes made their final rounds in the U.K. in early March 2020 completing their last royal engagements, they had no idea they would be spending the next couple weeks quarantining and social distancing in a Hollywood compound. Though the pair had plans to shutter Sussex Royal and announce their new Archewell Foundation, their new life outside of the British royal family has officially been put on hold. Since the duo certainly need to define who they are outside of The Firm, were certain that all of this uncertainty is making this uneasy. Still, whenever life does return back to normal, a royal source says that we may expect to see the Sussexes giving a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will have to work to remain relevant Though they are two of the most talked-about people on the planet, that can all change in an instance. Certainly, Megxit won the Sussexes many adversaries, and their move to LA has certainly left many people scratching their heads. In order to maximize their worth as public figures while garnering the best deals for a financially independent life, the pair must remain relevant while they can. If they want to achieve all the things they want to achieve, and I will come to that shortly, they need to capitalize on their current high profile, royal expert Chris Shipp explained to ITV News. Right now, it couldnt be any higher. Here is an American woman, who in the space of less than two years, joined the Royal Family and then decided she wanted to leave it. That creates a huge amount of interest in this individual. Meghan could decide to tell all, to write a book, to do a big interview. In fact, one royal source believes that they will only be on the A-list for a short time. The couples future isnt certain, The Atlantics Caitlin Flanagan explained. They are hugely appealing and glamorous. Everyone in Hollywood is eager to host them. The first few years of this plan are going to be heady. But as Harry has often said as soon as Williams three children become old enough to emerge as individual figures, the klieg lights will immediately turn to them. He is in a rush to make his mark and seems to treat life as a race, too. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle dont want to do anything to embarrass the British royal family Though the Sussexes have seemingly had some tensions with the royal family, there is still respect there. The pair have made it clear that they dont want to embarrass the royals in any way. The Sussexes have stated that they are determined to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages. Additionally, Prince Harry refuses to make fun of his family. Harry has instructed his and Meghans team to nix anything that in any way could be negative toward the royals, a source explained to Daily Mail. Essentially anything that is negative to the Queen, Prince Charles, his brother or the throne is off-limits. The Sussexes could do a tell-all interview with Oprah Still, considering the unique position that theyre in, the Sussexes could do a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, a trusted friend of theirs. Page Six is reporting that the couple has been offered $1 million for a tell-all interview. Sources close to the Duchess revealed Oprah Winfrey is a favorite to quiz Meghan on her bombshell exit with Harry from the Firm,' Page Six wrote. When [Meghan] was part of the Royal Family, it would have been unthinkable for her to do a solo interview with anyone about her life and how being a princess has changed her world. But now shes very much her own boss and it has put her under pressure feeling that the public have lost their love for her and Harry after they took the big step of going on their own. Somehow, we doubt this will go over well. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Reuters) Seoul, South Korea Mon, April 13, 2020 09:06 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd173375 2 Business Kia-Motors,Hyundai,South-Korea,car-manufacturers,plants,COVID-19,coronavirus,exports Free Kia Motors Corp told its labor union in South Korea that it wants to suspend operations at three of its domestic factories as the coronavirus outbreak weighs on exports to Europe and the United States, a union official said on Monday. The union has not yet decided whether to accept the plan - under which operations would be suspended from April 23-29 - because negotiations over pay are ongoing, the official said. Kia Motors is currently reviewing the suspension of some of its plants in Korea in response to declining global demand due to COVID-19. However, a decision has not been made at this time, Kia Motors said in a statement. Read also: From MRT to Transjakarta, here's how services have adjusted to citywide transport restrictions Kia Motors' share price fell 3.4 percent and that of affiliate Hyundai Motor Co declined 2 percent in a wider market that was 0.7 percent lower in morning trade. Hyundai Motor halted a line producing its Tucson sport utility vehicle in the southeastern city of Ulsan from April 13-17. Hyundai and Kia Motors have suspended operations at most of their factories outside South Korea and China as the coronavirus spreads fast beyond Asia. Read also: Blue Bird expands to deliveries amid COVID-19 pandemic Government restrictions on movement to slow the spread are impacting consumer spending worldwide. South Koreas exports for the first 10 days of April plunged 18.6 percent from the same period a year earlier, far below the 20.8 percent jump over March 1-10. Shipments of vehicles and vehicle components during the period tumbled 7.1 percent and 31.8 percent respectively. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-14 01:30:01|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GENEVA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- A group of scientists, physicians, funders and manufacturers, coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), has vowed to enhance their efforts and "help speed the availability of a vaccine against COVID-19." "Under WHO's coordination, a group of experts with diverse backgrounds is working towards the development of vaccines against COVID-19," WHO said in an online statement on Monday. In a joint declaration published on the WHO website, they said that while a vaccine for general use takes time to develop, a vaccine may ultimately be instrumental in controlling this worldwide pandemic. "In the interim, we applaud the implementation of community intervention measures that reduce spread of the virus and protect people, including vulnerable populations, and pledge to use the time gained by the widespread adoption of such measures to develop a vaccine as rapidly as possible," the declaration said. "We will continue efforts to strengthen the unprecedented worldwide collaboration, cooperation and sharing of data already underway," it said, adding that "we will work tenaciously to increase the likelihood that one or more safe and effective vaccines will soon be made available to all." Those who signed the joint declaration include experts with diverse backgrounds from the U.S., United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, China, Italy, Germany, France, and Italy, among others. Two more Ruby Princess passengers have died from coronavirus, taking Australia's death toll to 61. A 74-year-old woman in Newcastle and a 79-year-old man on the Northern Beaches died. There have now been 18 passengers die from the virus after boarding the ill-fated cruise from Sydney to New Zealand last month. The Ruby Princess - one of the largest ships in Carnival Corp's Princess division - had 2,647 passengers on board when several holidaymakers fell ill. The ship was controversially allowed to unload thousands of passengers at Sydney Harbour on March 19, despite passengers showing symptoms of COVID-19. More than 600 of its passengers have since tested positive for the illness. A criminal investigation is now underway. Martine Carrier, 61, who was on the cruise with four other Canadians, has slammed the company for its handling of the outbreak. The Ruby Princess - one of the largest ships in Carnival Corp's Princess division - had 2,647 passengers on board when several holidaymakers fell ill. NSW Police personnel in personal protective equipment board the Ruby Princess during the Strike Force Bast raid of the cruise ship at Port Kembla, New South Wale Martine Carrier, 61, who took the cruise with four other Canadians, has slammed the company for its handling of the outbreak 'I am extremely angry at Princess because, contrary to what Princess says, that the passengers and crew safety is of the utmost importance, they could not have done more to put our health at risk,' she told the ABC. She said as they left the ship they were handed a piece of paper advising them to go straight to a hotel and stay there until their flight home. Ms Carrier's husband Silvio Rigucci and their friend Claire Pelletier both contracted the illness but they only discovered this after they had flown home. Shine Lawyers, who are taking on a class action on behalf of Ruby Princess passengers, said members of the public in Sydney and abroad were unknowingly exposed to the virus as a result of these passengers' release. A bitter dispute was sparked between the Australian Border Force and the NSW Health Department over who is to blame for the security blunder. A criminal investigation is also underway. The Ruby Princess cruise ship is currently docked in Port Kembla, near Wollongong, as the criminal investigation begins. Police in full protective gear boarded the ship last week and seized evidence, including the voyage data recorder, which has conversations from the bridge. The ship will remain docked at the port for up to 10 days, with no crew to be let off without permission from NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller. Some 200 crew members who remain on the ship have symptoms of the illness. The Ruby Princess cruise ship is docked in Port Kembla, near Wollongong, as a criminal investigation begins The ship will remain docked at the port for up to 10 days, with no crew to be let off without permission from NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller The fiasco saw both NSW Health and the Australian Border Force blame each other for the failings. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement According to The Australian, Premier Gladys Berejiklian had told a party-room meeting of Liberals that the Australian Border Force ultimately made the decision to allow the passengers ashore. 'She said it wasn't our failing - it was the feds,' an MP at the meeting was quoted to say by The Australian, which also reported that a a second MP had described Ms Berejiklian's response as an 'a**e-covering exercise'. However, the Commissioner of the Australian Border Force said NSW Health was to blame. ABF Commissioner Michael Outram made clear that his officers are responsible for checking passengers' visas and also making sure no contraband enters Australia. He said it is not the role of police officers to check passengers' health. Mr Outram said NSW Health decided, after consulting with the ship's doctor, that the vessel did not require an on-board inspection. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Princess Cruises for comment. Adorable pets put on bunny headwear to celebrate Easter in Montreal, Canada, on April 11. Owner Melissa Trihey told Storyful that her pets love dressing up for Easter and have a friendly competition going on to see who makes the best Easter Bunny. In the video, Gemma the bulldog seems to enjoy the headwear as it plays with its toys happily; Betsy the pig chills in front of a bunch of Easter eggs and Bingo & Buster the Guinea pigs are the most confused as to what is happening when being checked-out by a bunny friend. These animals are part of Furballs Inc., which is made up of pets including dogs, pigs, chinchillas and Guinea pigs. This was not the first time the animals have dressed up. The Furballs Inc.s Instagram account features tons of adorable videos of all the pets in themed outfits. Credit: @furballsinc via Storyful DANBURY With the districts free meals for families on hold for spring break, local nonprofits and a business are filling the void. The district suspended its food distribution for this week to give volunteers a break during vacation, but connected families to other resources. There are multiple opportunities for families to connect with food providers (spring break) week, Superintendent Sal Pascarella said in a letter to the community. This includes the New American Dream Foundation, which plans to provide 300 meals to students at Morris Street Elementary School this week. Meanwhile, Texas Roadhouse is giving out meals to all students from noon to 2 p.m. each day this week. Children will be asked to show their school identification or parents will verify residency through their license. Parents are asked to place meal orders the day before by 6 p.m. by emailing Loren Daly at 574marketing@texasroadhouse.com. Home deliveries are available for the Danbury area through Hillside Food Outreach, while various other organizations are holding food drives, the school district said. United Way has partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim and Food Rescue USA to distribute meals to families with children 18 and under from 2:45 to 3:15 p.m. Monday through Friday, at 23 Eden Drive and 1 Meehan Place B. The Connecticut Food Bank had planned to distribute food on Monday, but postponed due to weather conditions. The distribution is being rescheduled for a day this week at Rogers Park Middle School, the school district said. The New American Dream Foundation, which has provided nearly $160,000 in financial support to organizations and individuals over the last seven years, purchased its 300 meals from the Amber Room Colonnade, where the nonprofit had planned to hold its annual gala. The gala, where scholarships are given out, has been postponed from Sept. 19 to June 19, 2021, due to the coronavirus. Instead, the foundations resources will go toward supporting the community during the virus. Morris Street School represents the future applicants of our scholarship program, said Celia Bacelar-Palmares, president of the foundation. In this difficult time, we want to help parents focus on helping their children by providing them with some relief in their nutrition. We will continue to look for ways to assist the immigrant community during the pandemic. We invite you to donate and support our COVID-19 response efforts. The first 150 meals will be distributed from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday at Morris Street, with the next 150 meals to be given out at the same time on Thursday. At Morris Street, 63 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, down from the 2018-19 school year, when more than 90 percent of the school qualified, according to data from the state Department of Education. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of students identify as minorities and 57 percent are English language learners, according to 2019-20 data. The foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of the Tribuna Newspaper, plans to continue its scholarship program in 2021. Nominations for scholarships for the 2020 gala will be placed into consideration for the 2021 awards. Donations are being collected online for the foundations response efforts. Today Brainsy Inc. (http://www.brainsy.com) announced launch of a value-added-resellers (VAR) partner program for digital marketing agencies and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants and service providers. The program will help their mutual clients in the increasingly competitive world of digital marketing. Brainsy offers customized and private label online social media networks to help clients elevate their brand profile, interact with existing or prospective customers, establish thought leadership and / or build engaged communities. In addition to making the customized Brainsy platform available to prospective clients or customers, VAR partners are skilled companies that can provide additional services such as SEO audits and strategy advice, keyword and keyword group research, competitiveness analysis, content curation or creation, community building, tactical link building, and reporting. Companies engaging with mass market social media platforms are investing increasingly larger portions of their marketing budgets for ever diminishing returns, stated Brian Christie, CEO of Brainsy. We hope to reverse that trend with technology that provides our clients with the most bang for their digital marketing buck. Some functions, however, are best done by skilled practitioners -- so were pleased to augment our platform with a referral network of leading digital marketing agencies and SEO service providers. As participants in the Brainsy VAR program, partners will get specialized training on the Brainsy branded media platform, marketing support, and administrative rights to help manage client accounts. Some of the service providers that have been selected to participate in the program include: All Fantastic, Auden Digital, CommonMind, Digital Nomad Designs, Digital Visibility Concepts, Direction Inc., Directive, ecrease, Eightfold Technology, Fortitude Development, From the Future, GalacticFed, GVATE LLC, IM@CS, Influence & Co., Locomotive Agency, Magnetic Ideas, Marcher Internet Marketing, Michira Marketing, Mindtap Marketing, Nimbus Marketing, Salted Stone, SEO Smooth, Simply Social NY, Social Web Tactics, TECHZO, TopFire Media, Web Content Development, Webology, WebTek, Window to Recovery, WOA Digital. Providers can be found in the Brainsy ECOsystem at: https://eco.brainsy.com/listing/c/seo-agencies-and-consultants A lot of platforms claim to be SEO friendly when it comes to supporting content creation and distribution. Usually this is some fluffy promise because they made the URLs friendly or added canonical tags, stated Nick Eubanks, Founder and Chairman of From The Future. Brainsy is different. This platform is built to actually match content types based on query intent; it really is powerful for SEO. During a time of crisis such as COVID-19, building community becomes an even more important component of a digital marketing strategy. Brainsy provides a cutting-edge platform to create communities with customers or prospects, and share content that helps solve problems, stated Will Rico, CEO of CommonMind LLC., We are pleased to add Brainsy to the services we offer our clients for their digital marketing efforts, designing and executing measurable, memorable marketing programs that perform. The Brainsy platform allows clients to put a fence around their social media audience instead of losing them to competitors in traditional social media channels, stated Chris Kirksey, CEO of Direction.com This solution will work alongside other results-driven digital marketing and web design services that we provide to businesses of all sizes to create engaging digital experiences. Firms interested in participating in the VAR program, should contact Manny Amadeo: sales (at) brainsy (dot) com ### About Brainsy, Inc.: Brainsy operates online social media micro-communities and offers Software as a Service (SaaS) to power customized branded media networks for start-ups, associations, professional societies, franchisors, membership organizations, corporations, publishers, financial institutions, and crypto sponsors. Brainsy is a portfolio company of TomorrowVentures, an investment firm co-founded by former Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt. More information is at: http://www.brainsy.com PR-Inside.com: 2020-04-13 15:46:05 KINGSPORT, Tenn., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As part of the worlds collective effort to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, Eastman is donating materials to produce protective lenses and face shields for medical personnel. Eastman donated 600 square feet of material to Purdue University. More than 40 volunteer faculty and staff members are using the schools laser cutting system to produce up to 3,000 lenses and 4,000 face shields. The protective equipment will be distributed to hospitals across Indiana. Im proud of the speed at which the Eastman team was able to get material to the teams at Purdue, said Brendan Boyd, Vice President, Specialty Plastics & Fibers Technology said. The need for more protective equipment is urgent. We value these innovative partnerships that can meet a significant community need quickly and effectively. Personal protective equipment (PPE) plays an essential role in protecting medical personnel and others on the front lines battling the epidemic. Safety glasses and face shields protect people from droplets produced by coughing and sneezing and can help prevent workers from touching their faces. Purdues Bechtel Innovation Design Center is using a pilot-scale manufacturing facility to make protective glasses and face shields. Under guidance from medical professionals, we have redesigned and manufactured complex fittings for ventilators and are actively producing laser cut, waterjet cut, and 3D-printed parts for face shields and safety glasses, said David McMillan, assistant director of the center. In addition to the Purdue donation, Eastman employees around the globe are serving an essential role in the response to COVID-19. Eastman has donated material to organizations in Tennessee , Virginia, and Brazil for the production of face shields. In Europe, the company has donated resins to customers that are making hand sanitizer instead of cosmetics. About Eastman Founded in 1920, Eastman is a global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of products found in items people use every day. With the purpose of enhancing the quality of life in a material way, Eastman works with customers to deliver innovative products and solutions while maintaining a commitment to safety and sustainability. The companys innovation-driven growth model takes advantage of world-class technology platforms, deep customer engagement, and differentiated application development to grow its leading positions in attractive end-markets such as transportation, building and construction, and consumables. As a globally inclusive and diverse company, Eastman employs approximately 14,500 people around the world and serves customers in more than 100 countries. The company had 2019 revenues of approximately $9.3 billion and is headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, USA. Learn more at www.eastman.com About Purdue University Purdue University is a top public research institution developing practical solutions to todays toughest challenges. Ranked the No. 6 Most Innovative University in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery. Committed to hands-on and online, real-world learning, Purdue offers a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap at purdue.edu. Photos and video for this story are available for download here. A State Police officer shot and killed one man and wounded another following a pursuit in Valencia County on Sunday evening. The officer wasnt injured, and the State Police Investigations Bureau is investigating the incident. Authorities have not released the names of the men who were shot or said why the officer fired on them. The name of the officer also has not yet been released. Officer Dusty Francisco, a State Police spokesman, said the incident began to unfold shortly before 6 p.m. when the Valencia County Sheriffs Office asked for help locating an unidentified female in the area of Tavalopa Road and Entrada Aragon in Los Lunas. While attempting to locate the unidentified female, a State Police officer observed a dark grey passenger vehicle driving erratically and at a high rate of speed through the neighborhood, Francisco said in a news release. He said the officer tried to initiate a traffic stop, but the vehicle fled and a pursuit ensued. Francisco said the vehicle subsequently came to a stop on Entrada Aragon. At some point after the pursuit ended, the officer deployed his department issued taser and fired his department issued firearm towards two male subjects, Francisco said. Both male subjects were struck by the officers gunfire. Francisco said the officer rendered aid until emergency medical services arrived. He added that one of the men died at the scene while the other was transported to University of New Mexico Hospital by ambulance. Lt. Joseph Rowland, a Valencia County Sheriffs Office spokesman, told the News Bulletin that State Police was coming to assist in a homicide after deputies responding to a call of a stabbing at a residence at Menard and N.M. 47 in Tome found a deceased victim. Hyderabad Police on Monday distributed food packets among the needy including migrant labourers, in city's Zeba bagh Ashique Nagar area while maintaining social distancing in view of threat of coronavirus spread. The packets were distributed among over 1000 migrant labourers who are stranded after the nationwide lockdown. The food distribution is taking place at 15 to 20 places daily. Anjani Kumar, IPS Commissioner of Police Hyderabad said, "A programme of food distribution was organised in which more than 1000 migrant labourers were provided food." "Our Chief Minister stated 10 days ago that workers and labourers in the state are economic development partners. It is our moral responsibility to see that any person does not face difficulty in getting food. Hyderabad City Police in coordination with local volunteers is distributing food packets to migrant workers," he said. "This programme is being conducted at 15 to 20 places each day. Today we had engineer volunteers distributing here," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) IFSEC Philippines 2020 - The leading security, fire & safety event for the Philippines IFSEC, the leading Security, Fire, and Safety event in the Philippines will be back on its 4th edition on 22 24 July 2020 at the SMX Convention Center Manila, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City, Philippines to continue to provide the perfect event for security professionals, manufacturers, distributors, and key industry players alike. IFSEC Philippines highlights world-class exhibition featuring globally competitive companies that showcase the latest products and innovations available in the global market. IFSEC Philippines also presents relevant and timely topics that will be presented by sought-after speakers to keep the trade visitors updated with the current news and trends in the security, fire, and safety industry. IFSEC Philippines is the largest security event to take place in the region, and the only place to meet with the entire buying chain under one roof. Meet face to face, and experience products first hand, from international suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors. Deputy Prime Minister-Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (Photo: VNA) The following is the full text of the article. ASEANs cooperation to combat COVID-19 The world is fighting an uphill battle to escape a global crisis, which has been unprecedented since the Second World War. This worst crisis stemmed from a virus that is miniscule in size, yet transboundary in nature, able to spread to every corner around the globe, threatening the lives of every person, every community, and the shared future of humanity as a whole. Combating this pandemic is a responsibility shared by all countries, governments, and regional and global mechanisms. In Southeast Asia and around the world, governments and citizens alike are taking resolute actions to fight this common adversary. In particular, ASEAN member states have offered assistance to one another, and facilitated the highest level of support for ASEAN citizens within their respective territory. This bears testament to the ever more critical role of solidarity, and international cooperation to a further extent. Given its centrality in the region, ASEAN provides a common shelter for its member states to weather the storm of COVID-19. Throughout our history of development over the past five decades, whenever challenged or faced with a crisis, we emerge stronger. This time is no difference. ASEAN shall continue this time-tested value and fulfill its mission to support its member states during this circumstance of utmost hardship. Vietnam, as the ASEAN Chair,and other ASEAN member states have identified the theme of Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN for 2020 with the aim of kicking into high gear the ASEAN Community building, and promoting ASEANs role in a world filled with uncertainties. The sudden outbreak of the SARS-COV-2 virus, and the unprecedented consequences and turbulences that followed, testified to the relevance of this theme and course of action. Since the early days of the outbreak, Vietnam, together with ASEAN, has demonstrated quick and timely responsiveness, and cohesiveness in policy and action coordination among all member states. On February 14, we issued the ASEAN Chair Statement on ASEANs joint response to COVID-19. This was followed by a number of important Ministerial-level meetings on healthcare, economy and defense to ensure coordinated actions in combating the pandemic. ASEAN has also hosted various meetings with its dialogue partners, including China, the EU and the US and important international organizations, such as the World Health Organizations (WHO), to exchange experience, provide mutual assistance and seek effective responses. ASEAN does not stand apart from the world. The well-being of our people and the performance of our economies are closely linked to the East Asian region and the world. Countries in our region have all suffered severe consequences from COVID-19. However, we have made every effort to combat this pandemic, and accumulated valuable experiences to be shared with others. Most notable examples would be enforcing early detection, implementing quarantine and social distancing, requesting the public to wear facemasks, raising awareness and encouraging peoples participation. Vietnam has engaged in various international cooperation endeavours to tackle COVID-19 in such forums as the G-7, G-20 and the United Nations. We believe strongly in a more robust and united international response, and in that connection, ASEANs efforts and initiatives are of great significance. On April 14, Vietnam will host the Special ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three (with China, Japan and the Republic of Korea) Summit on COVID-19 where leaders shall elaborate actions and initiatives to further enhance cooperation in winning the war against the pandemic, and ensuring the regions dynamic and sustainable development in the long run. Based on our exchanges and experience to date, ASEAN and its partners should focus on a number of measures in responding to and repelling COVID-19: First, urgently muster common resources, particularly the regions medical equipment stock to meet emergency needs; establish a cooperation fund for countering the COVID-19 pandemic while utilizing existing resources and assistance from partners, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Second, raise the effectiveness of coordinating policies and actions on the basis of a common framework, focusing on building an ASEAN common approaching pandemic-related situations, and in the immediate, organize online drills on pandemic response between countries. Third, understand that battling the pandemic must go hand in hand with battling economic recession and social instabilities, in which the people are placed at the heart. No country should be left alone and no one should be left behind in this battle. Fourth, develop a COVID-19 exit strategy in each country and forge regional coordination for the early suppression of the pandemic and bringing countries socio-economic activities back to their normal and stable state. Fifth, uphold and adhere to the common values on free trade, investment facilitation, avoiding the disruption of supply chains; quickly normalize trade activities and cross-border transport once the pandemic is put under control, so that all engines are utilized for inclusive and sustainable socio-economic recovery and development in the region. Now more than ever, we understand the importance of think Community and act Community. It is incumbent upon ASEAN to capitalize on its centrality to play a meaningful role in ensuring the post-pandemic region and world of continued integration, greater prosperity and sustainable development. In the past three months, Vietnams efforts as the ASEAN Chair have reflected the spirit of cohesiveness and responsiveness. With the unity among ASEAN member states and the support and close cooperation of partners, Vietnam is confident that ASEAN will join the region and the world to emerge triumphant from this pandemic. Patna, April 13 : With one more positive coronavirus case found in Bihar, the total number of such cases in the state has risen to 65, health officials said on Monday. Bihar's health secretary Sanjay Kumar said, "On Monday, one more person has tested coronavirus positive in Begusarai. He is 36 years old. We are trying to find out from where he got the infection of the deadly virus." With this the total number of coronavirus patients has gone up to 65 in the state. One person who returned from Qatar has died while 26 people have recovered and been discharged from hospital, he said. On Sunday, no coronavirus patient was found in the state. The highest number of cases has been reported in Siwan (29), followed by Monghyr (7), Patna (5), Gaya (5), Begusarai (8), Gopalganj (3), Nalanda (2), Nawada (3) and one each from Saran, Lakhisarai and Bhagalpur. The way to help your friends now is to continue to treat them the way you have all along: As adults who are capable of making choices, including gracefully accepting kindness. The covid-19 pandemic is in some respects a great equalizer. Giving and receiving: We have to get through this together. The Asian Development Bank said Monday it will roll out a massive $20 billion package to help developing member nations weather the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The fund represents the tripling of a package announced just a month ago, which the ADB decided to boost as the scale of the contagion's impact has mushroomed. Nearly simultaneous shutdowns across the global economy, with workers ordered to hunker down at home against the virus, have set the stage for a deep recession. Officially reported COVID-19 cases worldwide have topped 1.8 million and claimed around 115,000 lives globally. "The scope and the scale of the crisis make it imperative for the ADB to expand its support," bank president Masatsugu Asakawa said in a video statement. Up to $13 billion in loans will be made available to help virus-hit developing members fill in budget gaps, with another roughly $2 billion set for the private sector. Developing members of the bank range from Afghanistan and Myanmar to India and China. The ADB warned earlier this month the pandemic could cost the global economy $4.1 trillion as it ravages the United States, Europe and other major economies. Markets have been sent spinning as traders fret over the crisis's long-term impact, though governments and central banks have stepped in to ease the pain, pledging trillions to prop up economies. Kabul is one of many capital cities to impose a lockdown to try and stop the spread of coronavirus Regarding Domestic violence reportedly rising (Bay Area, April 9): While the empty streets in our cities and suburbs paint the illusion of tranquility, the ongoing domestic violence in households doesnt end. What people dont realize is that the drop in calls reporting domestic violence in the Bay Area actually doesnt indicate a drop in domestic violence but the increased vulnerability of victims during shelter-in-place. We must also recognize that children fall under the umbrella of domestic violence victims. With schools closed through the end of the school year, these children have lost what was perhaps their only safe space; not to mention that schools are effective in recognizing and helping affected children. Legislators, local officials and state governments must prioritize the women and children suffering from domestic violence by emphasizing to the public that shelters and resources remain in operation, and by allocating temporary housing for victims during this public health crisis. Samina Hoshyar, Berkeley Howling for heroes Whether folks are howling for heroes at 7 p.m. or banging on pots and pans at 8 p.m., a growing number of Bay Area households are taking the time to show their appreciation for doctors, nurses and other frontline workers. In my corner of Noe Valley, at least a dozen households have participated in the nightly ritual of solidarity since it was launched in late March. As a longtime Chronicle subscriber, I think it would be fabulous if The Chronicle ran a full-page announcement about Get Loud for Our Heroes that could easily serve as a window sign. Lita Blanc, San Francisco Support for unhoused Regarding S.F. virus plan breaks down for homeless (Bay Area, April 8): Berkeley residents who are concerned for the health of their unhoused neighbors during this crisis have one message for the city of Berkeley: you are not doing enough. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced California to recognize that homelessness poses a public health threat to all, few cities have taken appropriate action. In response to the city of Berkeleys failure to support its unhoused constituents, community-based organizations have come together to do the citys job. The Berkeley Outreach Coalition (BOC) which includes Berkeley Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution, Berkeley Copwatch, East Bay Angels, Homeless Action Center, the Suitcase Clinic and the Berkeley Free Clinic has been rapidly organizing to meet the communitys needs. Using crowdfunded money, the BOC is distributing hygiene supplies, food, tents and handwashing stations. Additionally, they are advocating for the city to maintain basic sanitation services in encampments and to enact a moratorium on encampment sweeps. Watch and learn, city of Berkeley. Laura Goy, Berkeley Limited exercise space Have the powers that be considered that closing parking lots to open-space recreation areas discriminates against seniors, people with disabilities and families with young children? I hope the decision-makers in San Francisco do not close Golden Gate Park to parking as it would appear to be the last open space I can enjoy to exercise as a 76-year-old concerned about staying healthy. It is too far away and hilly to walk there and I dont have a bicycle. I do have an underlying heart condition that already limits my options. Parking at Crissy Field is now off limits which was another exercise location I truly enjoyed. I hope the powers that be consider that it is not only the most healthy and fit among us that want to stay as healthy as possible. Don McCunn, San Francisco Online discipline Kids will be kids. Whats to dissuade the kid who doesnt like school from messing with an online class? Answer: not much. He or she could give access codes to anyone they want. Whos going to stop them? He or she can ruin an online conference, unless kicked out. Then what? Thats akin to suspension, and used to require a lot more than the push of a button. Is it possible for school administrators to come up with a protocol for online discipline, other than ejection from the session? There is also cheating. How is a teacher going to know if online assignments have not been shared? Obvious violations are not hard to spot, but most cheaters arent that stupid. The best way to deal with plagiarism is to have students complete assignments in a physical room where an in-person teacher can observe. Its not going to happen in the current environment, so get used to new forms of shenanigans. By the way, the privacy cat was out of the bag long before the current health crisis. It began the day school districts went from file cabinets to the cloud. Mark Allendorf, San Mateo Plan for next pandemic The end of the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet in sight. But its not too early to begin planning for the next one. When the next pandemic arrives, and it will, how can we respond without shutting down our government services, banking systems, public transit infrastructure and workplaces? We simply cant sustain having our socioeconomic lives turned off again and again as they have been for COVID-19. Or is our future one where face masks and surgical gloves are everyday wear? Riley VanDyke, San Francisco Wrong time to smoke Bay Area turns to cannabis for calm (April 10), which lists smoking and vaping among ways to consume cannabis, describes a potentially very unhealthy reaction to the stress from living amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a disease where healthy lungs are crucial, and smoking or vaping anything has been shown to be damaging to our lungs and not only the users lungs, but those nearby due to secondhand smoke or vapors. This is not a prohibitionist message but a potentially lifesaving one. The imperative to quit smoking or vaping any substance is now more important than ever. Help for quitting these addictive behaviors is available please seek it out, especially now. As a kid growing up in New York City, the fashion designer Mary Ping loved origami. But instead of making cranes or flowers, she preferred to transform the sheets of printed paper into utilitarian objects, like boxes. There was something about the ingenuity of a flat object being folded up to be 3-D in order to hold something, says Ping, 41. One day, inspired by Angus MacGyver, the resourceful secret agent and titular character of the 1980s television series He was always finding solutions with little more than chewing gum and a toothpick, says Ping she folded a paper tea set for her dolls. My mom was so annoyed, she says of the water-soaked mess that ensued. Another creation that stands out in Pings mind is a paper boat she made, and that her father, whod trained as a mechanical engineer, improved upon with side panels made from leftover paper suddenly, the ordinary canoe was a catamaran. It even had a canopy, Ping recalls. I was like, Oh my god. That probably informed a lot of how my brain works. That clever, utilitarian approach is today reflected in Pings clothing line, which consists of basics with an elevated twist, from squishy triple-strap slides to patent leather bodega-style bags to sweaters with playfully detached sleeves. But the deconstructed garments also reveal another side of Ping the anthropological one driving her to muse on the origins and evolution of aesthetic norms. Shes the sort to stop midsentence to wonder about the social conditioning behind red-carpet fashion, say, or why jeans are the color blue, questions that inevitably get at the counterfactual. If time had turned a different way, she says, we might be wearing green jeans. Indeed, time, and the importance of savoring it, is a central part of her worldview and business plan: Tacked on her bedroom wall is a quote by the 20th-century American ceramist Otto Heino that reads, Never hurry, never worry. She founded her label, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, in 2002, and became the youngest designer with a line stocked at the downtown Manhattan boutique Opening Ceremony that same year. But Ping never adhered to the fashion calendar, with its insistence on a ceaseless-seeming output of the new. WASHINGTON - She blew her horn at presidents, congressmen and D.C. politicians - often from between her legs. She rode a horse through city streets agitating for D.C. statehood and ran for mayor nine times, most recently when she was 91. She starred on Broadway and in a major Hollywood movie, then took the producers to court. Faith - her legal name - died April 7 at a nursing home in Washington. She was 96 and had congestive heart failure, said her husband, Jude Crannitch. Faith, her bugle, her Statue of Liberty headdress, her fabulously fruitless campaigns and her belief in the power of art to heal the ills of poverty in her adopted city enlivened D.C. politics for four decades. Born Faith Dane, she starred for many years in a stage show that spanned burlesque, jazz, dance, calypso, comedy and performance art. She hit it big in the Broadway and film productions of "Gypsy," for which the lyricist Stephen Sondheim created a role based on her long-standing cabaret act. Her tryout to be in the show, which is based on the life of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, was "one of the most spectacular auditions ever in the history of Broadway theater," John Wallowitch, who played piano at the audition, told The Washington Post in 2002. Faith appeared in a sequined gown, which she slipped out of to reveal a flesh-toned body stocking. She had performed her spoof of a stripper act hundreds of times, at variety shows and nightclubs from Nassau, Bahamas, to Miami to New Orleans to New York, and now she aimed to do it on Broadway, saluting, bumping her hips and blasting her raspy, huge voice. At the end, she doubled over, pointed her rear toward the producers, and blew her bugle at them between her legs. She got the part of Miss Mazeppa, and Sondheim wrote her a song, "You Gotta Get a Gimmick": "Once I was a schlepper, now I'm Miss Mazeppa ... With my revolution in dance / You gotta have a gimmick, if you wanna have a chance ... If you wanna bump it, bump it with a trumpet." Premiering in 1959, "Gypsy" ran for 702 performances. Faith played her role in the 1962 movie version as well. Bosley Crowther, reviewing the film for the New York Times, deemed her performance "hilarious." After she moved to Washington in 1979, Faith was a perennial presence at public events, tooting her horn and shouting slogans at candidate forums, bars, street festivals and on horseback, riding in parades even when she was specifically banned from doing so. She interrupted President Bill Clinton at a rally for D.C. statehood in 2000, playing her signature "Reveille" fanfare on the bugle and cracking up Clinton, who waved away anxious security agents when they approached her. She ran for mayor variously as an independent, a write-in candidate and a standard-bearer of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, appearing on the ballot as "Faith." She ran, most recently in 2014, because, she said: "We've become the international business brothel of the world. I feel that Washington makes Vegas look like the Vatican. And I wasn't going to be one of the people who don't do anything." Her speeches veered sharply from typical political rhetoric. She explained to The Post in 2002 that she was running because "God planted me here as a nuclear suppository up the Devil's colon." She never quite prevailed at the ballot box - she won 423 votes in 1994, 430 votes in 1998 and a personal best of 1,476 votes in 2010 - but she was a voter favorite at election forums, where her bugle calls were often greeted by a lusty mix of cheers and groans. Crowds did not, however, tend to encourage her when she'd promise to "strip for statehood." "Faith was on a mission to transform the world through art and God," her husband said in an interview. "People may have seen her as a court jester, but Faith always told the truth." Or, as Faith herself put it, "Behind every clown's mask, you may find some wisdom." On the campaign trail, she sang her platform, which included a proposal to solve the city's problems with "arts around-the-clock," a festival of free performances and an arts training program "that can lure people away from drug and alcohol abuse and crime." To the tune of "We Are the World," she serenaded campaign audiences: "We are D.C., we're getting shafted/ With no respect from Congress, no votes/ our children are getting drafted." In the 2002 election, Marlon Brando endorsed Faith for mayor. They had been friends since 1946, and a biography of Brando called the two a romantic item. Faith insisted to voters that they were "devoted friends, but we weren't lovers." Brando traced his fondness for Faith to a long-ago incident when they were together at a party and "somebody made some untoward remarks about me ... and she grabbed this guy and broke his nose." Faith Dane was born on Oct. 3, 1923, in Brooklyn, where her parents were teachers. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, Faith felt called to Christianity after she heard Bach's St. Matthew Passion at age 13, and she eventually embraced all religions, Crannitch said. After high school, Faith briefly attended college, but the lure of show business pulled her into a long series of gigs, from Neptuna the Mermaid's understudy in a sideshow at Coney Island to dancing in the chorus in New York stage shows and on early TV variety programs starring Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. She developed a cabaret act that included dance, improvised comedy, burlesque and a piano medley that included Chopin, Bach and Debussy, performed in a body stocking. But steady gigs were hard to come by, and her personal life was sometimes erratic. She was briefly married to John Fallon, who was so smitten by Faith that he left his studies to become a priest, Crannitch said. Even as she made her way in show business, Faith was politically involved. She spent years pushing to copyright her choreography in "Gypsy," claiming that the producers had taken credit for the burlesque routine she had used for decades. A judge ruled that the song "You Gotta Get a Gimmick" succeeded "only through talent and ingenuity of the song writer." In the early 1960s, while she was leading a calypso dance act in a carnival in St. Croix, she met Russell Johnson, the former attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands. They married, and in 1964, she ran for a seat in the islands' legislature. Her signature campaign tool was her bugle. She lost and moved back to New York, her marriage broken. In 1975, she met Crannitch, an artist and musician 30 years her junior. He said he fell in love as she told him about her plan to solve the problem of lions eating zebras by developing soy bean zebras. They married in 1986 and settled in Washington, D.C. Crannitch is Faith's only immediate survivor. Her two previous marriages, to Fallon and Johnson, ended in divorce. Well into her 80s, Faith was putting on a show. Underneath a gold trench coat, she attended a Broadway opening in a gold fishnet tunic worn over a body stocking, with silver ankle straps. In 2007, she tried to win back her old part in a "Gypsy" revival on Broadway. Appalled that the directors would not consider her at age 83, she filed an age discrimination complaint. The producers said they did not feel compelled to grant Faith a private audition, and she was welcome, as any union member was, to attend a public audition. Reverend Herb Lusk delivers his sermon on Easter Sunday at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church in North Philadelphia to rows of empty pews after he reversed original plans to hold in-person services amid the coronavirus pandemic. Appeals from politicians and the city's health department director helped influence his change of mind. Read more The Rev. Herbert Lusk had only had an hour of sleep. Lusk is the pastor of Greater Exodus Baptist Church who attracted a maelstrom of attention and backlash last week after his plans for in-person Easter services at his North Philadelphia church went public. But around 5 a.m. Sunday, the preacher announced on his Facebook page that he had a change of heart. I have decided that we will only have a livestreamed Easter Service 7:45 a.m., 9:30 a.m., and 11:30 a.m. today Sunday, due to the continued rise in COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia, Lusk began his Facebook post. Updated information expecting a surge of cases in the region next week and last night seeing inside pictures of the Liacouras Center right down the street from my church being converted to a hospital, led to a final decision to go all virtual to eliminate all risk or exposure. Particularly alarming, is the reported rise of cases in the African American community. He said this turnaround followed a series of conversations Saturday: a phone interview with an Inquirer reporter and calls from City Council President Darrell Clarke, First Deputy Managing Director Tumar Alexander, and Health Commissioner Thomas Farley. Lusk had previously told The Inquirer that his plan to have three Easter services, each limited to a maximum of 50 worshipers practicing social distancing, had exceeded Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus guidelines and was going "over and above the call of duty. He said he learned Saturday that his grasp of the public health recommendations was outdated. The CDC recommends that organizations serving high-risk communities cancel all gatherings of more than 10 people. White House guidelines discourage gatherings exceeding any 10 people, regardless of their risk level. Philadelphias stay-at-home order bans all public gatherings. Previously, Lusk had insisted that people who would attend Greater Exodus on Resurrection Sunday were not seniors or people with preexisting conditions, but rather worshipers who lacked digital access to services that his church was already livestreaming. Lusk said he had received threats over that decision. But, he also received messages from people who thoughtfully and respectfully disagreed with him. That helped him see things differently. Clarke called around 9:30 p.m. on Holy Saturday, Lusk recalled. He remembers Clarke telling him: 'Whatever you do, Id like you to do it differently tomorrow. But you dont lose my friendship either way. Just pray whatever God says to you.' HELP US REPORT: Are you a health care worker, medical provider, government worker, patient, frontline worker or other expert? We want to hear from you. Lusk chuckled softly at the memory. That about broke me down, the preacher admitted. After that, Alexander let him know that his plan wasnt the best idea and would conflict with the charitable deeds that Lusk has done. Still, Lusk wasnt convinced. So Alexander, according to Lusk, arranged a three-way call with Farley. The health commissioner presented a series of hypotheticals. What if someone infected with the virus breaks protocol and shows up? What if the services lead to families dying, like reports of groups of relatives all dying of the disease? The way he played that thing out, Lusk said, even though at that point I was still somewhat rebellious, it was, it was clear to me that I had to cancel this thing. The pastor, a former Eagles running back who serves as a team chaplain now, says hes still thinking through how people can gather for church safely. But this Easter, Lusk limited the sanctuary to 10 people as the service was livestreamed. Before, he saw closing Easter service to the public as impossible. Not being able to gather securely on the most important day of the year, yeah, it was difficult, he said. But you know, it's doable. The services to come at Greater Exodus will be an adjustment, but he feels good after changing his policy. I got the counsel of many people, many good people, Lusk said Sunday. And Im just very fortunate, very blessed. Scientists have identified a mid-sized black hole that could be the missing link to help us better understand these mysterious space objects. Researchers used data from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope and two X-ray observatories to find the black hole, which was in the process of destroying a nearby star. Black holes are extremely dense objects possessing gravitational pulls so powerful that not even light can escape. The newly identified black hole is more than 50,000 times the mass of our sun. It sits about 740 million light years from Earth in a galaxy containing far fewer stars than our Milky Way. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion kilometers. This is one of the few intermediate-mass black holes ever identified. It is far smaller than the supermassive black holes found at the center of large galaxies. But, it is much larger than so-called stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of huge individual stars. Natalie Webb is an astrophysicist at the University of Toulouse in France. She helped lead a study on the black hole that was recently reported in the publication Astrophysical Journal Letters. Webb told the Reuters news agency the study confirmed that the object her team first discovered back in 2010 was in fact an intermediate-mass black hole. The star it was destroying was probably about a third the mass of our sun. Webb noted that scientists have searched for intermediate-mass black holes for more than 40 years. However, fewer than 10 good examples are known. Scientists believe large numbers of the objects may exist even though they have not been discovered. So finding a new one is very significant. Also, a black hole swallowing a star happens on average only once every 10,000 years or so in any galaxy so these are rare occurrences, Webb added. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is 4 million times the mass of the sun, about 26,000 light years from Earth. The closest stellar-mass black star is about 6,000 light years from Earth. Webb called intermediate black holes the missing link in understanding the range of black holes. Scientists know a lot about the formation of stellar-mass black holes, which are about three to 100 times the mass of our sun. But they do not know how intermediate-mass black holes form. Scientists do have a theory that supermassive black holes arise from mid-size ones. However, Webb noted that without finding such objects, it was impossible to validate this theory. Intermediate-mass black holes remain difficult to find and scientists are not exactly sure why. But University of New Hampshire astronomer and lead researcher Dacheng Lin does offer one idea. The best explanation is that they are mostly in an environment that is devoid of gas, leaving the black holes with no material to consume and little radiation to emit - which in turn makes them extremely difficult to spot, he said. Im Pete Musto. Will Dunham reported on this story the Reuters news agency. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. Bryan Lynn was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story intermediate adj. occurring in the middle of a process or series significant adj. very important occurrence(s) n. something that happens range n. a group or collection of different things or people that are usually similar in some way validate v. to show that something is real or correct devoid of adj. completely without something consume v. to use fuel, time, or resources emit v. to send light, sound or energy out from a source Press Release April 13, 2020 Villanueva urges DSWD to help fundraisers on social media get legal cover for grass roots relief ops The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) should not dissuade grass roots fund-raising activities by individuals seeking to help indigent members of their communities, saying that these efforts help expand the coverage of government-funded relief, according to Senator Joel Villanueva. Instead of threatening to run after people behind fund-raising activities on social media, Villanueva suggested that the department extend leniency from the prevailing regulation and let grass roots fund-raising drives secure the necessary permits after the government has lifted the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon. The gesture, which Villanueva said is in line with the spirit of the Bayanihan Law, will likewise help provide legal cover for these relief efforts which the lawmaker described as rooted in the Filipinos' "good-natured community fellowship." "Lahat po ng ating kababayan, nais tumulong sa kapwa natin na nagigipit dahil sa krisis na dala ng COVID-19. Hindi po natin maaalis ito sa ating kamalayan, kaya po hinihiling natin sa DSWD na kung maaari, tumulong gawing legal ang mga fund-raising efforts na ganito," said Villanueva in a statement. "Imbis na takutin ang mga tao gamit ang batas, kalingahin na lang po natin ang mga nais tumulong sa pamamagitan ng pagbigay ng tamang payo sa proseso." "Ngayong panahon ng krisis, mas nangangailangan tayo ng tulong at pinapakita ng bawat fund-raising drives na ito, na kadalasan ipinaaalam sa pamamagitan ng social media, na handa ang ating mga kababayan na mag-ambag sa kahit na anong halaga upang tumulong sa kapwa," continued the lawmaker, chair of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment, and Human Resource Development. Villanueva said he understood clearly what the law, Presidential Decree No. 1564 or the Solicitation Permit law, was trying to achieve, which is to regulate fund-raising activity and prevent nefarious individuals from defrauding others. But the crisis brought by COVID-19 has made it harder for government to reach out quickly to the vulnerable, that's why some people are helping out others in the most expedient way possible, the lawmaker explained. "We hope the DSWD considers helping these individuals or groups by providing legal cover to their fund-raising efforts, instead of discouraging future efforts to provide relief to those who need our help," Villanueva said. Among the requirements under the law's implementing rules and regulations is the need to have the documents notarized. Since notary services are not readily available during this time, Villanueva said the DSWD could instead grant these individuals a 30-day grace period once the quarantine is lifted for them to submit all requirements. The lawmaker cited Section 4(ee) of the Bayanihan law which authorizes "undertak[ing] such other measures reasonable and necessary to enable the President to carry out the declared national policy subject to the Bill of Rights and other constitutional guarantees." In the meantime, Villanueva also called on the DSWD to launch a massive information drive on the Solicitation Permit Law, establish an online filing system, streamline the application process and requirements, and expedite the approval process, instead of the average three-day turn-around time of DSWD. In times of crisis, Villanueva noted, there is no time for delay, and bureaucratic processes should not hamper the Filipinos' bayanihan spirit. (Photo : www.pxhere.com) 50 sailors from the French Navy's Flagship the Charles de Gaulle test positive for COVID-19 after conducting NATO drills with their allies, including a British warship. Once the news hit about the positive cases, thousands of sailors have since then evacuated and are placed in quarantine. Read More: Coronavirus Particles Found 13 Feet Proximity From Infected COVID-19 Patients Based On Recent Study Coronavirus In The Sea About 2,100 sailors were taken off and have been placed under quarantine when the carrier docked in the southern French port of Toulon. The vessel had to shorten her voyage in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic by ten days due to the coronavirus pandemic. Sources from the French news channel BFMTV has said, 'at least 40 cases' which arrived around 3 PM on Sunday afternoon. The local authorities said that it was a very meticulous operation in which they had to remove the soldiers and ensure there was no risk for further infection. Before docking at Toulon, three sailors had been evacuated to the hospital as a 'precaution.' All of the crew and personnel will be tested, and regardless of the results, they will be placed under quarantine for over two weeks or 14 days. On top of that, there will be no physical contact allowed from friends and family, said the spokeswoman for the regional authorities, Christine Ribbe. She had this to say, "Our aim is to protect all our sailors and also their families with an unprecedented deployment," Read More: Cured Of Coronavirus? Think Again, The Virus Can Reactivate Within You Warns CDC In this case, only after the quarantine and if everything is safe, they can leave and not before then. The ship itself, Charles de Gaulle, will be up for a significant disinfection operation to ensure that the virus will not be present or, at the very least, be too minimal to cause any illnesses or add to new cases. We previously made an article about just how far infectious the coronavirus is, and you can read it all here right after this one. The vessel was already equipped with a med bay and had life-saving equipment ready but wasn't prepared to cater to that amount of cases alone, which prompted for assistance from the French government. France reported just on Sunday that there had been a lower number of fatalities over 24 hours, with only 315 deaths compared to the 345 the day before. What Comprised The NATO Led Exercise Besides the Charles de Gaulle, NATO's Maritime Group One also took part in the exercises. Accompanying them would be a force of the Royal Navy Type 23 frigate the HMS Sutherland. Charles de Gaulle has over 600 pilots and support crew, including Rafale M fighters as well as AS532 Cougar helicopters. The vessel is the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that was built outside the United States Navy. Read More: Some People Are More Infectious Than Others, Scientists Say; Are You Still Safe? 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. There was just a huge volume of water that was being held back in China, Mr. Basist added. The Mekong is one of the most fertile rivers on earth, nurturing tens of millions of people with its nutrient rich waters and fisheries. But a series of dams, mostly in China, have robbed the rivers riches. Those who depend on its inland fisheries say their catches have declined precipitously. Persistent droughts and sudden floods have buffeted farmers. Beijings control of the upstream Mekong, which provides as much as 70 percent of the downstream water in the dry season, has raised hackles, even though the Southeast Asian nations depend on trade with China. While the Chinese government has introduced a global development program that it says will benefit poorer trading partners, a backlash is growing among countries that feel they are losing out. The problem is that the Chinese elite see water as something for their use, not as a shared commodity, said Brian Eyler, director of the Stimson Centers Southeast Asia program and author of Last Days of the Mighty Mekong. [April 13, 2020] Kraig Biocraft Laboratories takes Measures to Support Furloughed Staff and Their Communities ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (OTCQB: KBLB), the leading developer of spider silk based fibers, announces that Kim Thompson, the Companys CEO and Founder, and Kenneth Le, the President of Prodigy Textiles, will be making a personal donation, on behalf of all Kraig and Prodigy Employees, to the community of Quang Nam Province Vietnam. Quang Nam is where the Company maintains a production facility and where most of the employees of Prodigy, Kraigs wholly owned subsidiary, reside. The financial gift is being made in light of the global financial and public health issues facing our world. Through this donation, direct food aid will be provided to roughly 600 families in the farming cooperatives and villages in Quang Nam. Each family will receive 10kg of rice, noodles, cooking oil, fish sauce, and other items. Additional financial aid being provided will be coordinated by Mr. Le, in partnership with local officials, to ensure that other critical needs in the community are met. In mid-March the Company took the voluntary step to furlough non-essential workers, as a precautionary step. To minimize the financial impact of this decision, on furloughed staff, Company management has committed to keep these workers on the payroll through at least the end of April. Todays announcement is a further expansion of the Companys commitment to our team members and their communities. I am thankful for the opportunity to personally support our valued team members, said Thompson. As we all work together to combat coronavirus, our team at Kraig Labs continues to make significant progress in critical aspects of our business model. Having laid a solid foundation, our tems in the US and Vietnam are preparing the Company to exit this stronger than ever. I believe that this will be a break out year for Kraig Labs, so the least our management team can do is share a little of that good fortune and spread it forward to the communities that are our home. I want to thank Mr. Ken Le for his generosity, his bold vision and his friendship. These monies will not come from the corporate treasury. Later this week we will be revealing a major research and development milestone from within our own laboratories, continued Thompson. We view this breakthrough as the most significant and impactful development in our laboratories in more than seven years. Our scientists are working tirelessly in our pursuit of commercializing natures toughest fibers, spider silk. I encourage those who are interested to join us for this live event. On April 16 at 4:30pm ET, the Company will be revealing a significant scientific breakthrough in spider silk technology during an online press conference. All interested parties can view this live event by going to www.kblbinvestors.com To view the most recent news from Kraig Labs and/or to sign up for Company alerts, please go to www.KraigLabs.com/news . About Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. ( www.KraigLabs.com ), a reporting biotechnology company is the leading developer of genetically engineered spider silk based fiber technologies. The Company has achieved a series of scientific breakthroughs in the area of spider silk technology with implications for the global textile industry. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information Statements in this press release about the Companys future and expectations other than historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are made on the basis of managements current views and assumptions. As a result, there can be no assurance that managements expectations will necessarily come to pass. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as believes, plans, expects, anticipates, foresees, estimated, hopes, if, develops, researching, research, pilot, potential, could or other words or phrases of similar import. Forward looking statements include descriptions of the Companys business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions and goals. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Ben Hansel, Hansel Capital, LLC (720) 288-8495 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Father Francis Macatangay was halfway through his Easter blessing when he froze. May he who restores you through eternal life, he said to the empty pews at St. Cecilias Catholic Church. A few miles away, Michael Baluyot stared at his computer screen, wondering if there was a problem with the livestream. There wasnt emotions had simply overwhelmed his pastor. A few seconds later, after his pastor finished the blessing, Baluyot learned why: The chapels pews were covered in photos of its members. It was a poignant moment on an Easter unlike any before it, Baluyot later said. Sometimes we take church for granted, he said. ...You dont really miss something until you dont have it anymore. Across the region on Sunday, Christians such as Baluyot celebrated the faiths highest holiday from home, tuning into livestreams and wondering what the church would look like in a post-coronavirus world. Few pastors provided specific answers. Rather, they tried to remind their anxious flocks that Christians had persevered through worse. There was no shortage of metaphors made by pastors on Sunday. Among the most common refrains: Jesus death was itself an act of social distancing; his first disciples felt similarly alone in the days after his crucifixion; and that one day, when coronavirus has passed, they would be together again. At the Fountain of Praise church in Houston, Rev. Remus Wright wove lyrics from Maureen McGoverns 1973 hit The Morning After into his scriptural exegesis. Theres got to be a morning after, if we can hold on through the night, he quoted. Isnt that exactly what were dealing with today? Good Friday, he continued, was anything but good. It was the most cruel and unjust and unimaginable death in history. The kind of cruelty that could easily cause anybody to become disillusioned in their faith. But Jesus didnt, he said. And therefore nor should Christians. This Easter marked the first major Christian holiday since COVID-19 came to the United States. By Sunday, the virus had killed more than 22,000 people nationwide and hundreds of thousands globally. The gravity of the moment was felt at church services on every continent. A world already faced with epochal challenges (is) now oppressed by a pandemic severely testing our whole human family, Pope Francis told an empty Vatican Square on Sunday. Last year, nearly 70,000 people were in St. Peters Square for his message, according to the New York Times. The Pope also urged Christians not to forget ongoing humanitarian crises that were ongoing before the global pandemic caused by coronavirus. This is not a time for indifference, Francis continued. Because the whole world is suffering and needs to be united in facing the pandemic. In Houston, some churches opted for drive-thru services that allow members to watch from their parked cars. Such events were allowed under a recent executive order by Gov. Greg Abbott that deemed church services essential and overrided restrictions put in place by local officials, including Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. At New Day Church, they took drive-through worship a step further. The congregation inherited its space from an older church that had to abandon its plans for a second story. And so, on Sunday, pastor John Wethington was able to deliver his sermon from atop the churchs roof. What was bad for the previous church, he said, ultimately allowed New Day to reach people in a time of crisis. God always has a plan, he said. robert.downen@chron.com President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Friday, April 10, 2020, in Washington. Associated Press/Evan Vucci President Donald Trump's administration wasted three key weeks between February and March that could have been spent enacting mitigatory measures against COVID-19, The New York Times reported on Saturday. By the end of February, top officials knew that time was running out to stem the virus spread, and wanted to present Trump with a plan to enact aggressive social distancing and stay-at-home measures. But on February 26, a top CDC official issued stark warnings about the virus' spread right before the stock market plummeted, which angered Trump for being, in his view, too alarmist. The Times reported that the entire episode killed off the efforts to persuade Trump to take aggressive, action to mitigate the virus' spread. In the end, Trump didn't issue stay-at-home guidance until March 16. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. President Donald Trump's administration stalled three key weeks in February that could have been spent enacting mitigatory measures against COVID-19 after Trump was angered by a public health official issuing a dire warning about the virus, The New York Times reported on Saturday. On Saturday,The Times published a lengthy investigation of all the instances Trump brushed aside warnings of the severity of the coronavirus crisis, failed to act, and was delayed by significant infighting and mixed messages from the White House over what action to take and when. The Times wrote: "These final days of February, perhaps more than any other moment during his tenure in the White House, illustrated Mr. Trump's inability or unwillingness to absorb warnings coming at him." The Times conducted dozens of interviews with current and former officials and obtained 80 pages of emails from a number of public health experts both within and outside of the federal government who sounded the alarm about the severity of the crisis on an email chain they called "Red Dawn." Story continues One of the members of the email group, Health & Human Service disaster preparedness official Dr. Robert Kadlec, became particularly concerned about how rapidly the virus could spread when Dr. Eva Lee, a Georgia Tech researcher, shared a study with the group about a 20-year-old woman in China who spread the virus to five of her family members despite showing no symptoms. "Eva is this true?! If so we have a huge [hole] on our screening and quarantine effort," he replied on February 23. At that point, researchers and top officials in the federal government determined that since it was way too late to try to keep the virus out of the United States, the best course of action was to introduce mitigatory, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like social distancing and prohibiting large gatherings. As officials sounded the alarm that they didn't have any time to waste before enacting aggressive measures to contain the virus, top public health officials including Dr. Robert Kadlec concluded that it was time to present Trump with a plan to curb the virus called "Four Steps to Mitigation." The plan, according to The Times, included canceling large gatherings, concerts, and sporting events, closing down schools, and both governments and private businesses alike ordering employees to work from home and stay at home as much as possible, in addition to quarantine and isolating the sick. But their entire plan was derailed by a series of events that ended up delaying the White House's response by several weeks, wasting precious time in the process. Trump was on a state visit to India when Dr. Kadlec and other experts wanted to present him with the plan, so they decided to wait until he came back. But less than a day later, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, publicly sounded the alarm about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in a February 26 press conference, warning that the outbreak would soon become a pandemic. "It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Messonnier said, bluntly warning that community transmission of the virus would be inevitable. The Times reported that Trump spent the plane ride stewing in anger both over Messonnier's comments and the resulting plummet of the stock market they caused, calling Secretary of Health & Human Services Alex Azar "raging that Dr. Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily," The Times said. The Times reported that the entire episode effectively killed off any efforts to persuade Trump to take aggressive, decisive action to mitigate the virus' spread and led to Azar being sidelined, writing, " With Mr. Pence and his staff in charge, the focus was clear: no more alarmist messages." In the end, Dr. Kadlec's team never made their presentation. Trump did not issue nationwide social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines until March 16, three weeks after Messonnier warned that the US had limited time to mitigate community transmission of the virus, and several weeks after top experts started calling for US officials to implement such measures. In those nearly three weeks between February 26 and March 16, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rose from just 15 to 4,226, The Times said. As of April 12, there are over half a million confirmed cases in the United States with over 21,000 deaths. Read the original article on Business Insider Jamang Abdulai Jamal-deen a post graduate student at the university of Ghana who hails from chereponi in the Northern region has donated assorted items to the aforementioned district to help combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The items included Veronica buckets, liquid soaps and tissue papers. Mr. Jamal-deen explained the move as part of his private initiative to help control and mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus considering the proximity of the district to neighboring Togo. as a proud son of the land I see it very necessary to present these items which I know will be managed and kept at vantage positions to help curb the spread of this deadly virus. As citizens it is our responsibility to complement the President's efforts in fighting COVID-19. It is my hope to donate more items in the coming days Mr .Jamal-deen stated Mr. Iddrisu Awal, Constituency Secretary of the New Patriotic party , the treasurer and the youth organizer received the items on behalf of the party, which will subsequently be handed over officially to the District Chief Executive. They Thanked Mr. Jamal-deen for his kind gesture and promised to use them for the intended purpose. Source: Jamang Abdulai Jamal-deen - contributor 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 Improved bus services in Cork is regarded as one of the factors for a decline in the popularity of the citys public bike rental scheme in Cork city last year with the number of trips down 11%. Figures provided by the National Transport Authority, which oversees bike rental schemes in the main regional cities, also shows an even more significant drop in the use of the bikes in Galway and Limerick. The number of trips taken on the Cork scheme, which provides 330 bikes across 33 stations, was down by over 30,500 to 241,064 last year. It was the third annual decline in a row for the scheme in Cork where usage peaked in 2016 with over 291,000 trips. The planned introduction of 10 new stations in Cork last year did not proceed, but the NTA said it hoped their introduction could go ahead later this year. The busiest station in the Cork scheme was at Bandfield, which is located near UCC, which handled over 24,800 rental trips in 2019. The decline in usage last year was most pronounced in Galway where the number of bike rentals fell by 30% 12 months after it had experienced record growth levels. There was also a large decrease in usage levels of the bike scheme in Limerick where journeys were down 20% with over 5,600 fewer trips in 2019. A total of 22,219 journeys were recorded in Limerick last year in the fourth consecutive year of falling usage of the scheme. In contrast, over 40,000 bike trips were made in Limerick in 2015. An NTA spokesperson attributed the decline in the number of journeys made on the bike rental schemes in regional cities to changes in bus services and timetables. We believe improved services by Bus Eireann, particularly in Cork and Galway, where there was a noticeable increase in bus passenger numbers, was a factor, the spokesperson said. Although the NTA said it would like to see more people using the bike rental schemes, it claimed the trend in switching from bike to bus was still a welcome sign that commuters were opting to use sustainable transport modes. It also pointed out that despite the reduction in the number of trips taken on the regional schemes, the overall number of annual subscribers had grown by 7% last year to 22,162. The figures would indicate there are more users, but they are making fewer journeys, the spokesperson said. Sponsorship of the regional bike rental scheme by Coca Cola Zero ended in November after a five-year deal worth 3m. The NTA said it was not seeking further sponsorship and would be using the scheme in future to promote its Transport for Ireland brand. Around 4m was spent on capital investment for the schemes in Cork, Limerick, and Galway which have a combined annual running cost of around 1.1m. The overwhelming majority of trips taken on the three schemes last less than 30 minutes which means the borrower doesnt incur any additional charge over the annual subscription of 10 or the three-day pass which costs 3. In letter obtained by Al Jazeera, chief minister of Indian state shares concerns amid coronavirus pandemic with Modi. The chief minister of Indias Kerala state has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to repatriate Indian workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) amid the coronavirus pandemic, expressing alarm over the Gulf countrys response to the health emergency. In a letter sent on April 9, Pinarayi Vijayan revealed that numerous complaints were being received over inadequate isolation and quarantine facilities in the UAE, which is currently hosting more than three million migrant workers from India, according to the United Nations. Most of these requests convey that preventive measures and quarantine methods implemented in Dubai are neither effective nor adequate, Vijayan said in the letter obtained by Al Jazeera. The letter from Kerala CM to Indias PM dated April 9 [Al Jazeera] As we know, the majority of Keralites [nearly one million in the UAE] are blue collar workers and living in crowded facilities in Dubai and therefore the probability of spreading of the disease is very high. Vijayan requested Modi to take up the issue with the UAEs government to ensure adequate food, medicines, quarantine and emergency service facilities to India diaspora in Dubai. In a second letter, which Vijayan shared on his Twitter page on Monday, the chief minister requested a favourable consideration and confirmed that the state government will undertake testing and quarantining needs of the Keralities who are returning. Wrote to Hon'ble @PMOIndia Shri. @narendramodi to bring his attention to the plight of Keralites in the Gulf region. We have assured that testing and quarantine needs of the Keralites who are returning will be undertaken by the State Government. pic.twitter.com/auLspqiF0T Pinarayi Vijayan (@vijayanpinarayi) April 13, 2020 At the earliest opportune time, Government of India may consider arranging special flights to bring these people back. On Thursday, a Dubai welfare group, the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre, filed a petition in an Indian High Court urging the government to permit chartered flights to evacuate thousands of its citizens in the UAE, Abu Dhabi-based The National reported. The petition said many Indians were running out of money and facing food shortages. We know of 10,000 people just from Kerala who want to come back home, Haris Beeran, a lawyer representing the petitioners, told the newspaper. Many workers no longer have jobs [and] some people are on visit visas that have expired. They dont have any means to live in the UAE and would rather return to their family at this time. The UAE has reported more than 4,120 cases of the coronavirus and 25 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Aiming to contain the spread of the coronavirus among foreign workers, Dubai has sealed off two commercial districts. UAE ministrys warning On Sunday, the UAE warned of possible action against countries refusing to allow migrant workers to be repatriated, Reuters news agency reported. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation said it would review labour ties with countries refusing to repatriate citizens. It added it would consider strict quotas for work visas issued to nationals of those states. Several countries have not been responsive about allowing back their citizens who have applied to return home under the current circumstances, the ministry was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. On Saturday, Indias ambassador to the UAE said it could not repatriate large numbers of nationals while trying to combat the virus at home. Once the lockdown in India is lifted, we will certainly help them get back to their hometowns and their families, Pavan Kapoor told the Dubai-based Gulf News. For cancer patients, staying safe during the coronavirus epidemic requires complete isolation - and that can make them feel more alone than ever. Houston nonprofit CanCare has launched a new support line so volunteers can still reach out to patients over the phone. President and CEO Cristina Vetrano explained that before COVID-19, CanCare volunteers were stationed in hospital waiting rooms. Those volunteers would sit in a radiation waiting room, just to talk to people, she said. We wanted to be there. The more folks we can help, the better, and people can be reluctant to ask for help - or they just dont know about us. CanCare has been around for 30 years. The nonprofit trains cancer survivors as volunteers, to share their stories and become compassionate listeners. The organization matches patients and caregivers for free one-on-one support with a volunteer - and provides a crew ready to offer support in the hospitals. But, now our volunteers cant go to the hospital, Vetrano said. Fortunately, Vetrano, who worked for years as a director and project manager at the Red Crosss ,had been working on a plan for some time, in case a major disaster occurred. I wanted to be prepared, she said. The work we do, I didnt want it to stop, because there was a flood. When coronavirus sent her CanCare team home, they continued working remotely. People going through cancer treatment are already isolated, Vetrano said. They have to be so careful. They have to self-isolate. These volunteers have been through that. They want people to stay home. Volunteers launched the new CanCare Support Phone Line and Email System in late March. Those in need of care are encouraged to call 713-364-1652 from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, or email support@cancare.org. The service is scheduled to be available until April 30. We figured out how to do it; we tested it, Vetrano said. Now we want people to take advantage of the number, to talk to folks and get the support they need. Anyone is welcome to use the service, she added. Its for any cancer type, any age, she said. It can also be a caregiver. She estimates that the volunteer force represents 75 different cancer types. We dont provide medical advice, but they can absolutely talk about how they felt, she said. Volunteers can also tell them what worked for them. In August 2016, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, volunteer Lloyd Rachal said. It was stage 2, metastatic. At the time our two boys were in fifth grade and third grade. It was a life-changer. Rachal did not know what to say to support his wife, Jennifer. As the husband, I had no idea how to make it all right, what to say, what to do, he said. I could say something, but I had no idea what it was like. My words were going nowhere. Then, the couple met CanCare volunteer Ruth Davies in the waiting room. She had survived breast cancer not once, but twice, said Rachal, who lives in Cypress. As soon as she started talking to Jennifer, there was an immediate change. A few months later they connected with a CanCare volunteer who also lived in Cypress who could talk about how she raised her children while undergoing treatment. CanCare was there when we needed them, Rachal said. Now, we want to be there for them. Jennifer and I are both trained volunteers. Jennifer has been able to support other women. Rachal has also helped husbands through their wives treatments. He said that CanCares tagline a survivor by your side is a perfect description of the service. Its support from people who know what youre going through, a family on your type of journey, and everybodys journey or story is different, Rachal said. Having a conversation or text with someone who been through something similar - but who is now on the other side, that perspective is completely different. Tapping into that unique insight is exactly what CanCare is all about, Vetrano said. Anne Turnage founded the nonprofit in 1990, with the help of a number of faith congregations in Houston including her home church Memorial Drive Presbyterian. Anne was diagnosed with cancer in 1972, and she went to treatment for 18 years, Vetrano said. In her early stages, she saw that people felt lonely. Doctors arent necessarily trained to be counselors. They dont know exactly what you feel like or what you need. When Turnage announced her plans to do something to help cancer patients feel more connected at her church, an anonymous donor stepped forward with a $10,000 gift. More support rolled in, and Turnage was able to establish a 501c3 nonprofit. Its just continued to grow since then, Vetrano said. Since 1990, CanCare has trained more than 1,700 volunteers who have supported more than 22,000 individuals. There have also been more than 160,000 hospital visits. Vetrano said there are 746 active survivors and caregivers. All of the services are confidential and free of charge. The coronavirus outbreak will not prevent CanCares one-on-one matching program from continuing.With the new phone and email support line, the nonprofit has found a way to offer more general support while its hospital and treatment center visitation program is suspended. We want people to have support the moment they need it, Vetrano said. With folks being so isolated now, we thought this was important. The goal of CanCare is to provide inspiration. Studies show that when someone has hope, they have better results, Vetrano said. People in general dont want to ask for help. They dont know who is on the other line. It takes bravery to make the call - but people want to help. Our people are well-trained and theyre ready. In fact, the volunteers enjoy the sense of purpose of answering the calls. We have people literally sitting by the phone, waiting to help, Vetrano said. Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer. Specialty insurance agencies Lawrence E. Smith & Associates (LESA) of greater St. Louis, Mo., and Scholastic Insurance of Florida (SIF) of greater Orlando, Fla., have been acquired by DOXA Insurance Holdings LLC (DOXA). The two agencies specialize in insurance programs for scholastic markets. Each agency will continue operations under the leadership of Larry Smith and his son, Lane Smith, respectively, as well as retaining their individual brand names within the scholastic insurance markets they serve in nine Midwestern and southern states. Larry Smith launched LESA in 1977, pioneering accident and health coverage within school systems throughout Missouri, eventually expanding the business to include nine states. Lane Smith joined his fathers business in 2001, and together in 2004, they acquired ownership of the Florida agency that is now the primary provider of scholastic insurance programs in the state of Florida. MarshBerry served as financial advisor to each of LESA and SIF on this transaction. DOXA Insurance Holdings is a Midwest-domiciled holding company that acquires specialty niche-focused insurance distribution companies such as managing general agencies, wholesale brokers, program administrators, and retail agencies. Source: DOXA Insurance Holdings Topics Mergers Agencies Florida Excess Surplus Missouri The Centre faced growing calls for a less sweeping curbs as an anxious nation awaited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address on Tuesday--the last day of the 21-day coronavirus lockdown--after a broad consensus emerged among states for extending the unprecedented measure by two weeks. As expectations mounted that the prime minister may dwell on plans to restart economic activities in a graded manner, Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh on Monday formally announced an extension of the lockdown till April 30 taking to eight the number of states adopting this step. The other states are Odisha, Punjab, Maharashtra, Telangana, West Bengal and Karnataka. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10am on 14th April 2020," the Prime Minister's Office(PMO) tweeted. The 21-day lockdown announced by Prime Minister Modi is in place from March 25 in a bid to halt the spread of COVID-19 and is scheduled to end on Tuesday. Lav Agarwal, a joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry, said 796 new COVID-19 cases and 35 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 9,152 and fatalities to 308. However, according to a PTI tally based on reports from states, there were 9,594 positive cases and 335 deaths. In some good news, Agarwal also said 25 districts across 15 states which had detected COVID-19 infections earlier have contained the spread and reported no new cases in 14 days. This is a positive development. Seeking to expeditiously expand COVID-19 testing facilities, the government has identified 14 Centres of Excellence such as PGIMER in Chandigarh, AIIMS, New Delhi and NIMHANS in Bangalore to mentor all government and private medical colleges in their catchment areas to create state-of-art molecular virology setups. In the wake of spurt in cases of coronavirus in India, the ICMR has taken into account the need to expeditiously expand COVID-19 testing facilities in all parts of the country and has initiated a proactive search of potential laboratories which could be enabled for coronavirus testing, a senior official said. According to an ICMR official, 2,06,212 tests for COVID-19 have been conducted so far. "Of these 14,855 tests took place at 156 government labs and 1,913 tests happened at 69 private labs on Sunday. There is no need to worry. We have enough stocks to conduct tests for six weeks,"the official said. A broad consensus has emerged that the national lockdown should be extended by at least two weeks after a meeting between the prime minister and state chief ministers on Saturday. Several chief ministers at the same time have pushed for resumption of some economic activities like in the farming sector in regions with no COVID-19 cases. With most states favouring the lockdown to be extended at least by two weeks beyond April 14, the government is broadly focusing on a two-pronged action plan--containing the spread of COVID-19 in the country and staggered resumption of economic activities, according to an official. The Centre's plan is seen as a nuanced change in strategy from saving lives a month ago to saving lives as well as livelihoods now in the fight against the pandemic. States are likely to designate districts, towns and cities as red, orange and green zones depending upon the number of COVID-19 cases as part of efforts to allow differentiated restoration of normalcy with conditions like uses of masks and social distancing in public. Union ministers and senior officials resumed working from offices in Delhi as the Centre scaled up its activities to deal with the situation arising out of the coronavirus crisis. The ministries became fully operational while following standard operating procedures (SoPs) for maintaining social distancing in offices, officials said. The Modi government is in full action on all fronts now, said Coal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi. "While an official announcement on lockdown extension is awaited, the Union government has become fully operational, an official said. Chief Minister K Palaniswami while announcing the extension of lockdown in Tamil Nadu said the move was in accordance with the recommendations of medical and public health experts. The number of COVID-19 cases in Tamil Nadu crossed the 1,000 mark on Sunday and is the second worst affected state after Maharashtra. The Centre has also sought inputs related to production, labour and logistics from clusters in five key sectors to ascertain expected output if they are made operational within a fortnight and procedural support required, official sources said. The five sectors are textiles, chemicals, electronics, steel and pharmaceutical, the sources said. Exporters body FIEO urged the Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) to implement suggestions made by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) to resume limited activity in certain identified industries like heavy electricals and telecom equipment with reasonable safeguards. Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President Sharad Kumar Saraf said the list of industries, recommended by the DPIIT, has been carefully chosen to help in slowly bringing the economy on track. The Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI) urged the government to let small shops open immediately, as the daily income flow of petty retailers has stopped completely since the lockdown, and sought compensation for their income losses. Claiming to represent four crore micro, small and medium retailers from across the country with membership of 34 retail associations, the FRAI said all the capital of these small retailers is tied up in the stocks of unsold products because of the lockdown. Industry chamber CII has suggested a "slow and staggered" approach to reopening various sectors based on classification of geographies as red, amber and green, depending upon the incidence of COVID-19 cases. Textiles and apparels, pharmaceuticals, food processing, minerals and metal, besides e-commerce, automobiles and chemicals are the key sectors that need to restart operations in a calibrated manner, a CII report said. In signs of easing some curbs, the Delhi government has decided to implement odd-even rules in all wholesale markets in the city, under which traders will sell vegetables on alternate days. Development Minister Gopal Rai told PTI that the timings for the sale of vegetables and fruits in these 'mandis' have been staggered to reduce crowds. "Vegetables will be sold from 6 am to 11 am and fruits from 2 pm to 6pm in all wholesale markets in Delhi," he said. Senior Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma urged the prime minister to be bold in declaring a financial package of at least 5 to 6 per cent of India's GDP to ensure economic recovery post COVID-19 lockdown. The current GDP is three trillion USD. Congress president Sonia Gandhi also asked the government to provide 10 kg grains per person to beneficiaries of National Food Security Act till September this year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Christians in Sri Lanka celebrated Easter in their homes on Sunday, participating in religious services through television as churches remained closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. TV stations aired the Easter Vigil and Holy Mass in all three main languages used in the Indian Ocean island nation. But there were no organised events to remember the more than 260 people, mostly Catholics, who were killed in Islamic State group-inspired bomb attacks on three churches and three hotels last Easter. Two of the churches that were attacked were Catholic, and the other was Protestant. Last year, some misguided youths attacked us and we as humans could have given a human and selfish response, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, said in his sermon at a Mass celebrated at his residence on Sunday. But we mediated on Christs teachings and loved them, forgave them and had pity on them, he said. We did not hate them and return them the violence. Sri Lanka has been under curfew for most of the past three weeks. The Church is planning a private ceremony on 21 April the anniversary of the 2019 attacks to remember the dead. Inside the empty St Anthonys church on the first anniversary of last years Easter Sunday bombings (Getty) Dushyanthan Niroshan, who works as a travel coordinator, said he participated in Holy Mass at home but looked at it positively. It was more deep and meaningful, he said. This virus is a God-given opportunity to stop and think about our past lives. Sri Lanka has confirmed 199 cases of the coronavirus, including seven deaths. AP We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset our sailors, Crozier wrote March 31. The letter appeared a short time later in the San Francisco Chronicle and other news media. Modly said the letter was inappropriate and that Crozier had failed to consult sufficiently with his immediate superior before writing it. Poll: Do you believe that Indiana's actions against COVID-19 have been too strict or not strict enough? Less than a week after the Central Railways (CR) set up a disinfection chamber at a loco shed in Bhusaval and also directed its staff not to install such (disinfection) tunnels at other railway junctions it has been decided to abandon the idea. The enclosures have nozzles that spray mist made up of a mixture of appropriate disinfectants (including sodium hypochlorite solution) diluted in water for 3-5 seconds from head to toe supposedly killing viruses. The mist is sprayed in quick intervals that ensures a person does not get wet. The technique is also used to clean large vehicles or products, and these chambers can also be set up at the back of large vans. But health experts were sceptical of the idea. We were informed that this disinfection process might be harmful for people passing through. The tunnel was immediately shut down in Bhusaval, and an internal advisory has been issued that no such tunnels will be developed again, said Sunil Udasi, chief public relations officer, CR that set up the tunnel within two days at a cost of Rs. 10,000. On April 11, the director of public health, Chennai, banned the use of such techniques in Tamil Nadu. Disinfection tunnels will create a false sense of security and people may be diverted from washing their hands. In addition, spraying of alcohol, chlorine, lysol on human beings is not only harmful but also ineffective, read a circular by Chennais public health services. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) insecticide department said they will not be installing disinfection tunnels in any of the containment zones in Mumbai. These tunnels or chambers are not advisable. Spraying disinfectants needs a minimum contact time of 10 minutes and it is not good for the clothes or skin. This is the reason BMC has not gone for any such tunnels within its jurisdiction, said Rajan Naringrekar, insecticide officer, BMC. Poddar Hospital in Worli, has set up a disinfection chamber. Everything is being managed by the BMC. This was the first disinfection chamber located at any hospital in the city using 2% sodium hypochlorite solution. We do not know how effective this is, said Narsu Patil, manager, Poddar Hospital. Similar chambers have also been set up at the Vashi Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) and Vashi police station. The Mumbai police have five disinfection vans at each of the citys administrative regions. Based on the concentration of disinfectants and health impact, we will soon take a call on whether to discontinue this, said Pranay Ashok, deputy commissioner of police (operations). Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government is planning to install more such tunnels across market places, government buildings and railways stations with the help of the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai. Tunnels that have sprung up at various locations have been designed without any scientific basis. Techniques used previously for pesticide spraying purposes are being modified to spray humans during the outbreak. This will not work, said Professor Aniruddha Pandit, ICT vice chancellor. There are World Health Organisation guidelines that mandate permissible exposure and intake of such tunnels, and it is perfectly acceptable. ICT plans to inaugurate its prototype tunnel on its campus at Matunga on Tuesday. Based on its success, we will consider placing the technology at other locations. We have a capacity to make one tunnel every three to four days, said Pandit. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Free speech in a university is a very different thing from free speech in Congress or Parliament, freedom of the press, or free speech in the street. Each milieu has its own conventions and traditions, and each must protect its freedoms for its own purposes and with a view to its own particular good. In everyday conversation, it is not as a rule advisable that all aspects of a question be openly discussed, and laws of libel, public order, and sedition protect people from hurtful or provocative language. Those laws have been radically extended in recent times, with the invention of "hate speech" as a quasi-legal category, and legislation like the UK 2006 "Racial and Religious Hatred Act," which makes it an offense to "stir up hatred" toward racial and religious groups. The emerging consensus is that, in the arena of everyday encounters, untrammeled freedom of speech has costs that might well outweigh its benefits, and the law has the right to intervene on behalf of public order. What, however, should be the rule governing free speech in a university? A modern university is very different from the medieval institution from which it descends. The medieval university contained faculties of law and medicine, and it extended its reach into mathematics and the natural sciences. But it was built around the study of the dogmas and authorities of the Church. A large part of its intellectual labor was devoted to identifying and extirpating heresies, and although you could do this only if you were free to express those heresies in words and to examine the arguments given in support of them, you were not in any real sense free to affirm them. It would be quite misleading to say that the medieval university was devoted to the advancement of free inquiry, since freedom stopped dead at the exit from faith even if that exit could be discovered only by a kind of free inquiry. There are universities in existence today that resemble the medieval pattern Al-Azhar in Cairo is an evident example, and an unusual one in that it has itself survived from the earliest medieval times and was the model for the universities that sprang up much later in Christian Europe. For the most part, however, our universities underwent a radical change in their social and intellectual agenda at the Enlightenment, when theology was displaced from its central position in the curriculum, and the humanities the studia humaniora came to replace the studia divina. Although skepticism, atheism, and heresy were still off the agenda, this was largely because they were regarded as errors rather than as crimes. By the time the University of Berlin was founded under Humboldt's direction in 1810, it was assumed on every side that universities were places of free inquiry, whose purpose was to advance knowledge regardless of where it might lead, and to make knowledge available to the rising generation. This emphasis on knowledge applied not only in the sciences, where free inquiry is in any case of the essence, but also in the humanities. Two interesting intellectual disciplines emerged during the course of the eighteenth century: the comparative study of religions and the philological study of the scriptures. While neither of those studies was directed against the tenets of the Christian faith, they both had the effect of removing some of the carefully protected certainties at the heart of it. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was only an ill-informed person who could believe the Bible to be literally the word of God, or the Christian religion to be the unique form of religious devotion. When Mill issued his famous defense of free opinion, in On Liberty (1859), it was widely accepted that the free expression of dissenting views is important in all areas of inquiry and not just in the natural sciences. To quote Mill's now famous words: The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. That is fine, so far as it goes; but what if it is not truth that people are seeking, but some other benefit, such as membership, solidarity, or consolation? Is freedom of opinion the same benefit in the search for consolation as it is in the search for truth? Clearly not. Religions, Durkheim taught us, offer membership, and that is their social function. They fill the void in the human heart with the mystical presence of the group, and if they do not provide this benefit they will wither and die, like the religions of the ancient world during the Hellenistic period. It is in the nature of a religion to protect itself from rival groups and the heresies that promote them. It is therefore not an accident that heretics are marginalized, murdered, or burned at the stake. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. Of course, we Christians no longer engage in those practices, since we have learned the art of putting our religion on hold when dealing with those who do not share it, thereby clearing as much space as possible for the free discussion of alternatives. But this ongoing compromise, between religion and free inquiry, is foreign to many other worldviews. We now have living among us people who believe that errors of religion are punishable by death and that those who carry out this punishment win special favor with the Almighty. Interestingly enough, however, it is not every error of religion that calls down this response. This fact is of the first importance in understanding our changed circumstances today. A Glasgow shopkeeper, Asad Shah, was recently savagely murdered by a young man called Tanveer Ahmed. Mr. Shah's offense was that he belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, a branch of the Shi'a that welcomes open relations with nonbelievers and extends a Sufi-like goodwill toward those who have yet to obtain salvation a fact not unconnected with Mr. Shah's status as a loved and respected neighbor of the people among whom he had settled. As the murderer was led away to life imprisonment, crowds of fellow Sunnis gathered outside the court to proclaim their support, while Mr. Ahmed himself, who openly confessed to the crime, expressed no regret for having committed it. On the other hand, Mr. Ahmed insisted that he felt no aggression toward Christians, Jews, or adherents of some other religion. He was offended by a heresy within Islam, not by the existence of a rival faith. In a peculiar way, trapped as he was by a quasi-genetic imperative of which he was merely the contemptible slave, he wished to vindicate his action in the eyes of his fellow Sunnis, and was entirely indifferent to the rest of the world. It was not error that offended him but deviation in the heart of his own inherited community. The example is one of many, and we should learn from it. The heretic offends not because he has acquired the wrong beliefs in the course of his religious inquiries. Christians, Jews, and atheists are all in error, as far as Mr. Ahmed was concerned. But their errors were not Mr. Ahmed's concern, and in no way offensive to him. Mr. Shah, however, was a heretic, one whose errors are not just errors but crimes, since they attack the group from a place within its spiritual territory. Heretics are essentially subversive: to accept what they say is to acknowledge that, in some deep sense, the group is arbitrary, that it might have been put together in another way, and that those currently regarded as members and side-by-side with you in life might have been strangers, even enemies, in the search for spiritual and geographical Lebensraum. This thought is subversive of the whole religious project, since it tells you that, after all, truth is not what religion is about, that any old doctrine might have served just as well, provided the benefits of membership flowed from it. In effect, though not in intention, the heretic relativizes what must be believed absolutely if it is to be believed at all. The fear of heresy is not exhibited only in the realm of religious belief. If you look at the history of the communist movement, you will be reminded of the often genocidal disputes over Arianism and Pelagianism in the ancient world, and of the religious inquisitions of the late medieval period, in which heresies were singled out and named sometimes for the person who first committed them or made them prominent. The Second International gave us "Menshevism" and "left deviationism," which were followed by "infantile leftism," "social fascism," and in due course "Trotskyism," all to be contrasted with the "Marxism-Leninism" that was eventually settled upon as orthodoxy. Particularly amusing is the accusation brought against Dr. Zhivago for relying on his diagnostic intuition: "neo-Schellingism." Once again the real danger was for the heretic within, rather than for the outsider who could, at the time, safely laugh at what was happening though the time came, as it is coming with Islamism today, when nobody could laugh safely. And maybe this is happening, too, in our universities, as the undefined and indefinable heresies are captured by labels and stuck with all the force required on the chosen victim: racism, sexism, ageism, speciesism, and so on, all potentially career-ending offenses. Invidious distinctions The fear of heresy arises whenever groups are defined by a doctrine. No matter how absurd the doctrine may be, if it is a test of membership then it must be protected from criticism. And the more absurd it is, the more vehement the protection. Most of us can live with false accusations, but when a criticism is true we hasten to silence the one who utters it. In just that way, it is the most vulnerable religious doctrines that are the most violently protected. If you mock the claim of Muslims that theirs is a "religion of peace," you run the greatest of risks: the Islamist proves his devotion to peace by killing those who question it. In universities today, however, students and certainly the most politically active among them tend to resist the idea of exclusive groups. They are particularly insistent that distinctions associated with their inherited culture between sexes, classes, and races; between genders and orientations; between religions and lifestyles should be rejected, in the interests of an all-comprehending equality that leaves each person to be who she really is. A great negation sign has been placed in front of all the old distinctions, and an ethos of "non-discrimination" adopted in their stead. And yet this seeming open-mindedness inspires its proponents to silence those who offend against it. Certain opinions namely, those that make the forbidden distinctions become heretical. By a move that Michael Polanyi described as "moral inversion," an old form of moral censure is renewed, by turning it against its erstwhile proponents. Thus, when a visiting speaker is diagnosed as someone who makes "invidious distinctions," he or she is very likely to be subjected to intimidation for being a supporter of old forms of intimidation. How would I find out who is right? Surely, by considering the arguments, by weighing the competing opinions in the balance of reasoned discussion, and by encouraging the free expression of heretical views. There may be no knowing in advance how the new heresies might be committed, or what exactly they are, since the ethic of nondiscrimination is constantly evolving to undo distinctions that were only yesterday part of the fabric of reality. When Germaine Greer made the passing remark that, in her opinion, women who regarded themselves as men were not, in the absence of a penis, actually members of the male sex, the remark was judged to be so offensive that a campaign was mounted to prevent her speaking at the University of Cardiff. The campaign was not successful, partly because Germaine Greer is the person she is. But the fact that she had committed a heresy was unknown to her at the time, and probably only dawned on her accusers in the course of practicing that morning's "Two Minutes Hate." More successful was the campaign in Britain to punish Sir Tim Hunt, the Nobel Prizewinning biologist, for making a tactless remark about the difference between men and women in the laboratory. A media-wide witch hunt began, leading Sir Tim to resign from his professorship at University College London; the Royal Society (of which he is a fellow) went public with a denunciation, and he was pushed aside by the scientific community. A lifetime of distinguished creative work ended in ruin. That is not censorship, so much as the collective punishment of heresy, and we should try to understand it in those terms. The ethic of nondiscrimination tells us that we must not make any distinctions between the sexes and that women are as adapted to a scientific career as men are. That view is unquestionable in any territory claimed by the radical feminists. I don't know whether it is true, but I doubt that it is, and Sir Tim's tactless remark suggested that he does not believe it either. How would I find out who is right? Surely, by considering the arguments, by weighing the competing opinions in the balance of reasoned discussion, and by encouraging the free expression of heretical views. Truth arises by an invisible hand from our many errors, and both error and truth must be permitted if the process is to work. Heresy arises, however, when someone questions a belief that must not be questioned from within a group's favored territory. The favored territory of radical feminism is the academic world, the place where careers can be made and alliances formed through the attack on male privilege. A dissident within the academic community must therefore be exposed, like Sir Tim, to public intimidation and abuse, and in the age of the Internet this punishment can be amplified without cost to those who inflict it. This process of intimidation casts doubt, in the minds of reasonable people, on the doctrine that inspires it. Why protect a belief that stands on its own two feet? The intellectual frailty of the feminist orthodoxy is there for all to see in the fate of Sir Tim. Discriminating nondiscrimination Is there any reason for thinking that universities have a special role in these matters, either to support free speech in general or to create a space where it can occur? The answer, I think, is yes, and both University College London and the Royal Society displayed, in their refusal to protect Sir Tim from the cloud of twittering morons, the sad state of the academic world today, which is losing all sense of its role as guardian of the intellectual life losing it precisely through giving way before the orthodoxies of nondiscrimination. As Jonathan Haidt has eloquently argued, at the very moment when universities are advocating diversity as a fundamental academic value meaning by "diversity" all that I have included under the term "nondiscrimination" the true diversity for which a university should make a stand, namely diversity of opinion, has been steadily eroded and in many places destroyed entirely. The reasons for the ethic of nondiscrimination, and for the moral inversion that has made it into a fierce form of discrimination, directed against whoever transgresses its fluid and unpredictable boundaries, lie deep. As Rusty Reno has eloquently argued in Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, the Enlightenment, which sought for a world in which reason had a head start over prejudice in all public debate, also sowed the seeds of its own destruction, in exalting individual autonomy above every form of obedience. I am my own author was the Enlightenment premise; I can be what I choose to be, provided I do no harm to others. Social conventions, traditional forms of life, divisions of roles and communal identities, even the differences in social status associated with the biological division of labor between the sexes all such things are of no significance compared with my free choice whether to give credence to them. Little by little, as the old authorities slipped away or lost their aura, more and more of human life was stripped of the rules, customs, and distinctions that make sense of it, and more and more did everything in life, everything that might matter to me and constitute my personal happiness, become an object of choice, in which only I have the right of action, and nobody else has the right to interfere. If a university stands for anything, surely it stands for that idea of truth, as a guiding light in our darkness and the source of real knowledge. Hence nobody now may impose upon me an identity that I myself have not chosen. My nature as a self-created being is inviolable. Your disapproval of my lifestyle is your problem, not mine; should you object to my homosexuality, that proves only that you suffer from homophobia, a disorder of the soul that is also a hangover from an outmoded form of life. There is therefore no room now for argument about homosexuality, still less for criticism. Your objection to Islam and the presence in our midst of its adherents is your problem a sign of Islamophobia, a mental disease that unaccountably swept across the Western world on September 11, 2001. Racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia all the -isms and -phobias that call down the damning tirades of the orthodox are the residue of old and vanquished forms of life, last gasps of Western civilization in its vain attempt to cling to its empire among the living. That is what Germaine Greer came up against: a new and unexpected extension of the morality of self-choice, which tells us that we are guilty of transphobia if we deny a person the right that it can decide for herself what gender he is. This is all very well, you might say, but it does not yet constitute an assault on free speech. And that is true. It is perfectly possible to accept the latest adventure in nondiscrimination while allowing others to speak out against it. However, it doesn't work that way. The furor over the "transgender" issue comes into the general category of identity politics. It is about who you are, not what you think. So thinking the wrong thing, still more saying the wrong thing, is an act of aggression, the equivalent of racist abuse or sexual harassment in the work place. The nondiscrimination movement is about extending to others the freedom to choose their own identity; to criticize this is to constrain other people in their deepest being, in those "existential choices" that determine who they are: it is an act of aggression and not just a comment. Hence it must be punished. More, it must be rooted out, with full-scale purges and witch hunts and the official purification of the language of scholarship. At this moment the Students' Union at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in the University of London, a school that was one of the pioneers in the study of oriental religion and philosophy, is agitating to remove Descartes, Hume, Kant, and the rest from the philosophy curriculum, since they were simply apologists for their "colonial context." Hence the ethic of nondiscrimination ends up as an assault on free speech in just the same way as does the ethic of religious discrimination fear of the heretic. This suggests to me that we are dealing with a feature of human nature that lies too deep for any lasting remedy. Nonbelonging is an identity-forming stance, just as much as belonging. Threaten the identity that results and you must be exposed, shamed, and if possible silenced. One of the most remarkable features of the new kinds of identity, however, is the persecution of the heretic through a gesture of self-persecution. There is an initial martyrdom moment as the would-be victims see an opportunity to "take offense" and to put their vulnerability on display. Traditional education had much to say about the art of not giving offense. Modern education has a lot more to say about the art of taking offense. This, in my experience, has been one of the achievements of gender studies, which has shown students how to take offense at behavior, at words, at institutions and customs, and even at facts when "gender identity" is in question. It did not take much education to make old-fashioned women take offense at the presence of a man in the women's bathroom. But it takes a lot of education to teach a woman to take offense at a women's bathroom that biological males who declare themselves to be women are not free to use. But the education is there, and for a mere $200,000 in an Ivy League university you can acquire it. In a similar spirit, students today are being encouraged and again gender studies is at the forefront of the movement to demand "safe spaces" where their carefully nurtured vulnerabilities will not be "triggered" into crisis. The correct response to this, which is to invite students to look for a safe space elsewhere, is not one that universities seem to consider, since after all each student is an addition to the income account, and censorship costs nothing. Saving the university as an institution This brings me, at last, to the place of the university in the exercise of free speech. It seems to me that the battles between those who unwittingly give offense and those who are experts in taking it can be conducted on the street, in the restaurant, the bar, and the family (if families are still allowed) without losing the precious thing our civilization passed on to us, which is the love of truth and the ability to face up to it, whether or not it consoles us. It is my belief hard to justify and as much the product of my experience as of any philosophical argument that an institution in which the truth can impartially be sought, without censorship, and without penalties imposed on those who disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy, is a social benefit beyond anything that can now be achieved by controlling permitted opinion. I can accept that there might be laws, conventions, and manners limiting the expression of opinion in the world at large, in those places where this or that group has staked a claim to its identity. I can accept that you must tread softly when it comes to religion, sexual mores, and the expression of loyalties that conflict with your own. But if the university renounces its calling in the matter of truth-directed argument, then we not only lose a great benefit from which all of us profit; we lose the university as an institution. It becomes something else a center of indoctrination without a doctrine, a way of closing the mind without the great benefit that is conferred by religion, which also closes the mind, but closes it around a community-creating narrative. We should recall that, when the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century began their wars and genocides, the universities were first among their targets the places where discussion was most urgently to be controlled. The behavior of the communist and anarchist student cells in Russia, and the Brown Shirts in Germany, was repeated by the student revolutionaries of May 1968 in France and by many student activists today. We are wandering in a world of utter relativity but bound by orders that are absolutes the order not to refer to this, not to laugh at that, and in the presence of all uncertain things to stay silent. Indeed, my own experience of universities has not, in this matter, been altogether encouraging. I do not think there is very much censorship in our universities, other than that imposed impromptu by the students and acquiesced in by a weak establishment. But it has been true for a long time that there are orthodoxies in a university that cannot easily be transgressed without penalty, and that the penalty is not imposed on scholarly or academic grounds but on grounds that could fairly be described as ideological. It will always be true that a public doctrine holds sway in any civilized community, and that the universities will be expected to conform to it, however obliquely. In our case, however, it is the universities that have created the orthodoxy. The left-liberal worldview concealed within the humanities as they are taught today as an unacknowledged and unquestionable premise is, as we were reminded in the Brexit vote and in the election of Donald Trump, not orthodoxy in the surrounding community. But it is an astute career move to conform to it, whether or not you agree. Moreover it endorses and is endorsed by the community of nonbelonging that is emerging among the students. The left-liberal worldview is not, on the whole, concerned with the wider situation of the world, for all its global pretensions. It is concerned with us, with the Western inheritance. It is an exercise in self-castigation, designed to show in all matters history, literature, art, religion the glaring moral faults of a civilization that has depended on distinctions of sex, race, class, orientation, and the rest in order to manufacture a false image of its superiority. At the same time, the current orthodoxy carefully refrains from any comparative judgments: gender studies will give you an earful of spite about the treatment of women and homosexuals in Western societies, but carefully pass over the treatment of women and homosexuals in Islam. After all, it is important not to incur the charge of Islamophobia. The university must become a "safe space" for Muslims, as well as for other vulnerable and marginalized groups hence the successful campaign to force Brandeis University to withdraw the honorary degree offered to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She had spoken truths about Islam and was therefore a threat to Muslim students and an invasion of the "safe space" that the university was obliged to offer them. Now I, too, would like the university to be a safe space, but a safe space for rational argument about the pressing issues of our time. In our world today, grotesque falsehoods are constantly repeated for fear of offending the vigilantes of Islam or the thought police of political correctness. We cannot freely discuss the nature of Islam, its sacred text and guiding myths, and its legal status in a secular society. The charge of Islamophobia is designed precisely to shut down debate about the matters that most need to be debated for example, whether it is true that, for a Muslim, apostasy means death, adultery means stoning, or that secular law and the nation-state mean, as Sayyid Qutb has said they mean, blasphemy against the Koran. By not discussing these things, we do a great disservice to our Muslim fellow citizens in not opening avenues to their integration in the only community they really have. Nor can we freely discuss any of the iconic issues singled out as defining political correctness such as sex, gender, orientation. We are wandering in a world of utter relativity but bound by orders that are absolutes the order not to refer to this, not to laugh at that, and in the presence of all uncertain things to stay silent. In all this we are losing our sense that some things really matter, and matter because they are true and not just because some group of benighted people believe them, or some other group has decided to enforce them. If a university stands for anything, surely it stands for that idea of truth, as a guiding light in our darkness and the source of real knowledge. Thiruvananthapuram, April 13 : Soon after the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a petition demanding evacuation of Indians from the Middle East in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a Kerala minister and a Lok Sabha member got engaged in a war of words. Hearing the news that the apex court has decided not to intervene in the matter as the Centre's directive was "stay where you are", Kerala Higher Education Minister K.T. Jaleel slammed Congress MP from Kozhikode, M.K. Raghavan, the petitioner. "The MP's attempt could well have been avoided. He was trying to score political brownie points and wanted to portray the Kerala government in poor light. And now that the apex court has come out with this decision, people stuck there (Middle East) will have to wait. We were handling this issue and the Chief Minister even raised it at the video conference with the Prime Minister," said Jaleel. Hitting back at Jaleel, Raghavan said his response of was not befitting of a minister and it was Jaleel who was trying to score political points. "The first thing what Jaleel should understand is that I was not the only petitioner, as there were many. I am hearing numerous sob tales from our people who are stuck in various Middle East countries. I have got requests from people who are even willing to charter their own flights for which they need permission from the Civil Aviation Ministry. "Today I got a request from a nurse who is nine months pregnant and wants to return. The is lockdown is about to complete three weeks, and the demand to bring our people back from the Middle East has been there for some time now. Judiciary is the last resort in this matter," said Raghavan. Ever since India closed its air space, thousands of Keralites have been demanding the state and the Centre to see that they are brought back to Kerala. There are about 2.5 million Keralites in the Middle East, of which a large number of people are labourers who are presently holed up in labour camps there. Residents wait at a rest area after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mobile station in Hong Kong on Sunday. (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Few of the citys older residents have been fully inoculated, leaving them highly vulnerable as the city battles an outbreak of the new variant. Kim Jong-un has reinstated his sister Kim Yo-jong to North Koreas key decision-making body as chief propagandist. Ms Kim represents the main appointment after the dictator carried out a significant reshuffle of the State Affairs Commission). A long-time advisor to her brother, the move completes a year-long transformation for Ms Kim since she was reportedly demoted in the aftermath of US president Donald Trump scrapping talks over denuclearisation at Hanoi Summit. After appearing to absorb the blame, she has completed numerous public rehabilitation exercises, with her promotion confirmed at a meeting presided over by Mr Kim, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The restoration is part of Kim Yo-jongs recent rise within the Norths hierarchy, Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and researcher in Seoul, said. Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un rides a horse during snowfall in Mount Paektu in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on 16 October 2019 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un visits the newly built Pyongyang Orphans' Primary School on 2 February 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a women's company under Unit 5492 of the Korean People's Army in November 2019 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects the test-fire of intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location in July 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un celebrates the successful test-fire of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location in July 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a potato at the Samjiyon Potato Factory in North Korea in October 2018 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un rides a horse through a forest in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on 16 October 2019 EPA Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a block of frozen fish at a processing facility in North Korea in November 2018 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un celebrates the succeful launch of a strategic submarine-launched ballistic missile in August 2016 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un shakes hands with Donald Trump as they meet for the first time at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore in June 2018 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump share a glance as they meet in the Demilitarised Zone in Panmunjon, Korea in June 2019 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects mushrooms at Pyongyang Mushroom Farm AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects a super-large multiple rocket launcher ahead of a test in September 2019 Reuters Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects an apple farm in South Hwanghae Province in September 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects an apple farm in South Hwanghae Province in September 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects dental wares at a newly built factory in June 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un visits Farm No 1116 in September 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un visits a motor factory in November 2017 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un rides a horse during snowfall in Mount Paektu in this image released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on 16 October 2019 AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un: Power in pictures Kim Jong-un inspects the Command of the Strategic Force of the Korean People's Army at an undisclosed location in August 2017 AFP/Getty Ms Kim, thought to be in her early 30s, was captured earlier this year on the snow-covered Paektu Mountain where she was filmed riding white horses alongside her brother. The video of the pair at the sacred location was subsequently labelled by state television as a great event of weighty importance in the Korean revolution. Ms Kims title is vice-minister of foreign affairs but she is believed to be chief of public announcements and the move follows her public condemnation of the South Korean government. She labelled South Korean leaders gangsters after protests against the Norths recent live-fire drills. As far as I know, the South side is also fond of joint military exercises and it is preoccupied with all the disgusting acts like purchasing ultra-modern military hardware, she said. They mean that they need to get militarily prepared but we should be discouraged from military exercises. Such a gangster-like assertion can only be expected from those without a normal way of thinking. Mr Kim, chairman of the SAC, replaced five of the decision-making bodys 13 members in total. Ri Son-gwon, who was declared North Koreas top diplomat in January, has also been elected as an alternate member of the political bureau alongside Ms Kim. Tens of thousands of laid-off workers in Louisiana are eligible for enhanced unemployment payments that will go out beginning today, Gov. John Bel Edwards said last week. Everyone who has qualified for unemployment insurance should see a $600 per week boost in their payments, thanks to the federal stimulus and relief package, up from the normal maximum state payment of $247 per week. Unemployed workers will be eligible for the extra $600 per week through July 31. Heres what we know and what we dont know. How many people have qualified for unemployment? A total of 216,000 had filed unemployment claims as of Thursday, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which handles unemployment claims. The commission has been receiving more than 10,000 claims a day, more than 30 times the normal average of 300 per day. How many people will receive payments today? We dont know that yet. Ava Dejoie, secretary of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, declined on Thursday and Friday to address this question. All we know is that the governor said on Wednesday that the Trump administration had sent the federal unemployment money to Louisiana and that he had instructed Dejoie to begin sending it out today. We should have more answers today on when people should begin to expect receiving the first additional $600 payment, which people will receive via direct deposit or on debit cards. How much will I receive? That depends in part on whether you reported your income on a W-2 tax form, on a 1099 tax form or on Schedule C. W-2 workers will receive the $600 on top of the state benefit. So, for instance, if you were receiving the state average of $216 per week, you would now receive $816 per week. It appears that 1099 independent contractors and Schedule C self-employed workers will receive half of the state average, $108, plus the $600, or a total of $708 per week. Im self-employed. Can I qualify for the $600 weekly payment? Yes. The federal legislation extends unemployment benefits to self-employed workers, recognizing the vast number of people who work in the gig economy. Dejoie has said that self-employed workers may find that the system rejects their initial application. She advises those folks to file their application anyway. +2 'Nothing about this is normal': Unemployment claims overwhelm Louisiana as Monday payments near Tens of thousands of jobless workers are in line to begin receiving a big boost in unemployment benefits as of Monday, according to Gov. John Does Louisiana have enough money to cover the entire $600 payment this week? Thats not entirely clear. The workforce commission says it received $86 million from the Trump administration last week. If each of the 216,000 claimants was paid $600, the cost would be roughly $130 million per week. We dont know how many people have actually qualified for unemployment insurance, but its undoubtedly less than the 216,000. And the $86 million is obviously only for one week. Presumably, the federal government will be sending more money each week to Louisiana and other states. Is the $600 weekly payment retroactive? Vaccine news in your inbox Once a week we'll update you on the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Yes, people who had qualified for unemployment insurance for the week that ended April 4 will receive payments that include that week. New Orleans trauma surgeons battle gun violence, alcohol-fueled accidents alongside coronavirus At University Medical Center, trauma surgeon Dr. Patrick Greiffenstein cracks open rib cages to fish out bullets and plugs slashed arteries. H Once Ive qualified for unemployment insurance, do I need to do anything else? Yes. Dejoie has emphasized that you need to re-certify from Sunday to Saturday of the following week to keep receiving benefits. I havent filed for unemployment insurance yet, what should I do? You file either over the phone at 1-866-783-5567, or online at laworks.net. As youve probably heard, the deluge of applicants has overwhelmed the workforce commission, freezing out applicants over the phone and online. Edwards says your chances are best if you apply online between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. The governors office also is telling applicants to make sure they say yes when asked if they have lost their job because of COVID-19. I just filed for unemployment insurance. When will I receive my first payment? Assuming you qualify, you should receive your first payment this week. Edwards has waived the requirement that newly qualified applicants wait a week before receiving their first payment. Do I need to search for work while receiving unemployment benefits? No. Edwards has waived the job search requirement. If I am receiving the $600 weekly payment, am I still eligible for the $1,200 payment from the federal government? Probably so, but it depends on your income in the last tax return you filed. The $1,200 is a separate, one-time payment handled by the IRS, which has said those payments should begin going out this month. The federal government is sending out an additional $500 per child. Whether you are unemployed or not does not matter whether you qualify for the one-time payment. What does matter was your income. You will receive the full $1,200 if you earned an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less. If you earned more than $75,000, you are eligible for a reduced amount as long as you didnt earn more than $99,000 a year (the payment amount falls by $5 for every $100 in income above $75,000). If you are on Social Security and this applies both to retirees and those on disability you are eligible to receive the coronavirus relief payment as long as your total income does not exceed the limits. More questions? The workforce commission has posted answers to 26 frequently asked questions at http://www.laworks.net/FAQs/FAQ_COVID-19_QandA.asp#answer_2 The Chinese government has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of coronavirus. According to a central government directive, academic papers on the pandemic will be subject to serious scrutiny before being approved for publication. Some online notices published by two Chinese universities on the coronavirus that were published earlier have been removed from the web site. In a new policy by the central government, it said Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra vetting and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts. This appears to be effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, over 100,000 people have died and 1.8 million people have been infected. Early findings about coronavirus cases such as when human-to-human transition first appeared raised questions over the official government account of the outbreak and sparked controversy on Chinese social media. Currently, the Chinese authorities appear to be tightening their grip on the publication of Covid-19 research. CNN reported that a Chinese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation said the move was a worrying development that would likely obstruct important scientific research. I think it is a coordinated effort from the Chinese government to control the narrative, and paint it as if the outbreak did not originate in China, the researcher said. And I dont think they will really tolerate any objective study to investigate the origination of this disease, he added. Increased scrutiny The Chinese Ministry of Educations science and technology department had issued a directive saying academic papers about tracing the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed. READ ALSO: Other papers on Covid-19 will be vetted by universities academic committees, based on conditions such as the academic value of the study, and whether the timing for publishing is right, it said. The directive is an output of a meeting held on March 25 by the State Councils task force on the prevention and control of the pandemic. The document was first posted on the website of one of Chinas leading universities, Fudan University in Shanghai. Similarly, the China University of Geoscience in Wuhan also posted a notice about the extra vetting on Covid-19 papers on its website. The page has since been deleted, but a cached version of it remains accessible. DETROIT The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit District, announces that Lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie set new monthly mean water level records for March 2020, which were previously set in 1986. All of the lakes are now in their period of seasonal rise and will continue to rise toward their peaks, which are projected to occur in the late spring or summer. March was fairly wet in the Great Lakes region with precipitation near to above average across the region. During the spring, water levels on the Great Lakes are usually in a period of seasonal rise due to increased rainfall and runoff. Water levels are expected to rise toward their seasonal peaks over the coming months and will continue to be near or above record high water levels. Significant erosion continues in many locations as water levels remain extremely high. Strong storm systems and resulting large waves have led to substantial erosion along much of the Great Lakes coastline. "After a generally drier month of February, March brought a return to wetter conditions experienced across the Great Lakes basin," said John Allis, chief of the Great Lakes Hydraulics and Hydrology Office, Detroit District. "During this period of seasonal rise for the Great Lakes, near or above record high water levels will continue to cause impacts along the shoreline." The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers urges those impacted by the high water levels in 2019 to prepare for similar or higher levels in 2020. The most recent six-month forecast of Great Lakes water levels still forecasts that water levels could peak very near last year's record levels. The Detroit District monitors and forecasts Great Lakes' water levels and provides the data and analysis on their Website https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.lre.usace.army.mil__;!!Ivohdkk!x_xbAkvuYh_jpIZsO9G3BvZpSLRYx80lhnkkA7Nsv3Vpc-WIFHuzcxLCwxjROGJq9g$ . During response operations, Detroit District, Emergency Management Office conducts emergency operations to save lives and protect specific properties (public/ facilities or services), which includes providing technical support and direct support during flood operations. Assistance is supplemental to local and state efforts and normally at the request of the state's governor or local municipality. In addition, citizens of Indiana and Michigan may decide to work on personal construction projects to alleviate erosion or flooding, which could potentially impact the nation's rivers, streams, wetlands and other aquatic resources that may require a permit from the Corps of Engineers' Regulatory Office. To find more information about Great Lakes high water, emergency management and the permit process visit this link: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.lre.usace.army.mil/About/Great-Lakes-High-Water/__;!!Ivohdkk!x_xbAkvuYh_jpIZsO9G3BvZpSLRYx80lhnkkA7Nsv3Vpc-WIFHuzcxLCwxhNbDKFDw$ which includes information about how to protect property and investments along the coast and related Corps programs and authorities. India said on Sunday its hospital network is adequately prepared to tackle the spread of the coronavirus, with over 100,000 beds ready to cater to a potential surge in patient numbers. In neighbouring Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced a relief package worth about $1.7 billion to help farmers struggling because of restrictions imposed to stem the disease's spread. The number of people infected in India rose to 8,447 on Sunday, a rapid rise from fewer than 1,000 two weeks ago. Some 273 people have died. Senior Indian Health Ministry official Lav Agarwal told a daily media briefing that the country is being "over-prepared, extra cautious", and had almost 106,000 hospital beds in 601 hospitals to cater to any surge in patient numbers. "The country is ready to fight this epidemic," he said. Indian officials have said widespread virus infections could be disastrous in a country where millions live in slums, and the health system is already overburdened. There has been mounting concern that the financial hub Mumbai, which accounts for around 1,250 cases, is becoming a hotspot for the disease. Local authorities are battling the infection's spread through the city's densely populated slum areas. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to extend a 21-day nationwide lockdown due to end Tuesday, according to a state chief minister with knowledge of discussions among top officials. The federal government has yet to make an announcement on this. States such as Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, and at least three others have already said independently they will extend lockdowns to the end of April. BANGLADESH FARMS Including India, the number of coronavirus cases in the South Asia region neared 15,000 on Sunday. The agricultural relief package announced by Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday includes $590 million for cheap farm loans and $1.1 billion for fertilizer subsidies. "Disasters come. We'll have to face it boldly ... We want to make sure that our farming sector continues its smooth production," Hasina said. Bangladesh has extended its lockdown by 11 days to April 25, a move that could exacerbate the difficulties faced by the country's hundreds of thousands of rice, fish, dairy, poultry and vegetable farmers. In Pakistan, authorities expressed alarm at a sharp rise in cases of the coronavirus in Karachi, the country's largest city. The provincial government there has decided to seal off 11 densely populated neighbourhoods in Karachi, officials said. Officials government figures on the spread of the coronavirus in South Asia are as follows: India has 8,447 confirmed cases, including 273 deaths Pakistan has 5,038 cases, including 86 deaths Bangladesh has 621 cases, including 34 deaths Afghanistan has 607 cases, including 19 deaths Sri Lanka has 203 cases, including 7 deaths Maldives has 20 cases and no deaths Nepal has 12 cases and no deaths Bhutan has five cases and no deaths Also read: Coronavirus in Pakistan: Cases reach 4,601; death toll stands at 66 Also read: Coronavirus India live updates: 308 people dead in the country as active COVID-19 cases near 8,000-mark A doctor, a nurse and a non-medical staff at Max hospital, Saket in South Delhi have tested positive for COVID-19, hospital authorities said on Monday. Meanwhile, authorities at the SirGanga Ram Hospital said COVID-19 tests have been conducted on all 115 healthcare workers who were quarantined two weeks ago and three have tested positive. One endoscopy technician and two nurses have tested positive. The rest 112 have tested negative for COVID-19 and they will be joining duties from day after tomorrow, they said. Max Hospital at Saket in south Delhi in a statement said, "So far, three hospital staffers have tested positive -- a doctor, a nurse and one non-medical staff. All of them are recovering." When asked, authorities said thedoctor, who has tested positive, was working in the flu clinic. "None of the flu patients seen by this doctor have tested positive. However, we suspect that he has mostly likely contacted the disease from outside the hospital. This is based on feedback from the doctor," a spokesperson of the hospital said. The three staff members have tested positive over the last 3-4 days. The tests were done at Max Labs, when they showed minor symptoms of the disease. All three are stable and have a mild disease, the spokesperson said. "These three affected persons have been quarantined in an isolated part of the hospital, which has been created specifically for this purpose," she said. The district surveillance officer has been informed about the three cases and contact tracing and testing is presently underway, Max hospital authorities said. Recently, two patients admitted for cardiac treatment at Max hospital had tested positive for COVID-19. "Thirty-nine healthcare workers, who were contact traced, have been quarantined with in a separate and isolated wing at Max Hospital, Saket," it said. All 39 individuals are asymptomatic and will be tested on the 5th day of exposure, which is April 14. "There are 154 employees deployed in shifts in the COVID ward of Max Hospital, Saket. None of these employees has had any exposure to the virus. They are working in shifts and are staying on the hospital premises to reduce any risk of infection to their families and neighbours. None of them has been quarantined," the statement said. All these 154 staff members working in the COVID ward were wearing full PPE kits. No untoward incident has been reported. They have shown no symptoms of the disease and are following the defined protocols. Everything is being monitored. There is no reason to believe that any of them have been exposed, the hospital claimed. The number of coronavirus cases in Delhi till Monday morning stood at 1,154 with 24 deaths. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government does not expect to relax or lift the coronavirus lockdown later this week, Dominic Raab has said. The foreign secretary, who is deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he recovers from the coronavirus, said there are some "positive signs" from the data that show "we are starting to win this struggle". But he warned: "We are still not past the peak." He was speaking at the government's daily COVID-19 press conference on Monday, which came ahead of the first review of the UK's lockdown measures on Thursday. The stringent restrictions, imposed last month in order to try to halt the spread of the virus, are widely expected to be extended. Ministers have said they want to be certain the UK is past the peak of the epidemic before they ease the conditions of the lockdown. Mr Raab said the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) would review evidence of the effectiveness of social distancing measures when it meets on Tuesday, two days before the government makes its decision. "We don't expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place at that point and we won't until we're confident, as confident as we realistically can be, that any such changes can be safely made," he said. Mr Raab also paid tribute to members of the public who have followed government advice and remained indoors over the course of the Easter weekend. The foreign secretary said the "overwhelming majority" of Britons had followed the lockdown rules and added: "By staying home this weekend, you've saved lives. "Thank you, your efforts are making all the difference. And please keep them up - we've come too far, we've lost too many loved ones and we've sacrificed too much to ease up now." The confirmed UK death toll passed 10,000 at the weekend, with a government adviser and infectious diseases expert warning the country could end up being the "worst affected" in Europe. Story continues In its latest figures released on Monday, the Department of Health said a further 717 coronavirus patients had died, taking the UK's total to 11,329. It is the lowest increase recorded over the Bank Holiday weekend, after 980 on Friday - which surpassed the worst confirmed daily totals in Italy and Spain - 917 on Saturday and 737 on Sunday. But the true number of deaths will be higher, as these figures do not include all deaths in the community. Professor Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, told Monday's news conference that he would like to see testing increased at care homes. He said 13.5% of care homes have been affected so far, with outbreaks reported in 92 of them in the last 24 hours. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser, said he expects the overall death toll to increase this week before "plateauing". He said the UK was tracking behind Italy and "following the same sort of path" when it comes to hospital deaths, although the number of people in hospital beds with COVID-19 is starting to "flatten off" in many parts of the country. With Boris Johnson now out of hospital, Downing Street has said he tested negative for the virus before being discharged and is now focused on his recovery at his country mansion. Mr Johnson will not be doing any government work and will only return to his office on the advice of his medical team, Number 10 added. :: Listen to the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker. The government, meanwhile, has insisted that its testing regime is "heading in the right direction". Downing Street has pledged to carry out 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of the month, a target which the PM's spokesman has said the UK is on course to meet. A spokesman said 18,000 had been conducted in the 24 hours to Sunday morning and "good progress" on getting to 100,000 tests was being made. On the subject of testing frontline NHS workers, he said there had been "significant progress", with nearly 43,000 staff and their families tested so far. But the government has fallen well short of the number of ventilators it planned to immediately add to the UK's stocks to treat coronavirus patients. An additional 200 machines - which provide oxygen for people suffering lung failure in severe cases - have been sent out to the NHS in the past week, Downing Street said on Monday. But Health Secretary Matt Hancock had vowed that around 1,500 ventilators would be acquired in that timeframe. As well as concerns around ventilators and testing, there have been reports of shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). The situation has prompted the Royal College of Nursing to tell its members that as a last resort they should refuse to treat patients with COVID-19 if they are not given the right PPE. Mr Raab said the government understood the "importance of getting PPE to the front line, whether it's in care homes or the NHS". The foreign secretary said more than 16 million items of PPE were delivered over the Bank Holiday weekend, adding: "We are straining every sinew to roll them out even further and even faster." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 20:58 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1a2bc1 1 National COVID-19,business-climate,KSPI,coronavirus,labor,lay-off Free Workers are questioning businesses' request to the central government to excuse them from the obligation of giving full Idul Fitri holiday bonuses (THR) to their employees, with a labor union saying that not all companies have been severely affected by the COVID-19. The Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) submitted on April 6 a proposal to the Office of Coordinating Economic Minister and the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan), asking to postpone the payment of THR for a year due to the COVID-19 crisis. Indonesian Worker Union Confederation (KSPI) president Said Iqbal said the government should make it clear that not all sectors had been equally hit by the novel coronavirus, then went on to question the Manpower Ministry's data on workers affected by the pandemic. The government should not generalize industrial sectors affected by the pandemic. There must be a clear classification of sectors that have been affected. Not all companies are unable to afford full THR, wages or severance pay [for laid-off workers], Iqbal said in a written statement on Monday. Manpower Ministry data shows that over 1.5 million workers in both the formal and informal sectors have either been furloughed or laid off as of April 9, as companies temporarily halt operations to comply with large-scale social restrictions (PSBB). While acknowledging the economic pressures brought on by the virus, Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartanto Minister reminded all businesses on April 2 that paying out Idul Fitri holiday bonuses "is mandatory", without exception. Iqbal said that according to KSPI data, businesses with the most layoffs included tourism-related companies and services, airlines, hotels, travel agents, restaurants, logistic firms, online transportation services, digital economic firms, as well as micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). However, Iqbal said he had yet to see massive outbreak-related layoffs in the manufacturing sector, including in labor-intensive and capital intensive businesses, although some workers had indeed been sent home due to PSBB measures and expired contracts. "Many laid-off workers are from tourism and the MSMEs sector [...] The public needs to know these classifications, so they don't become anxious," he said. He further raised concerns that unclear data from the government could be used by certain parties to justify the deliberation of the omnibus bill on job creation at the House of Representatives, which has been strongly rejected by labor unions. At the same time, the omnibus bills deliberation is ongoing. There is the impression that the omnibus bill will offer a solution for all the layoffs; by inviting new investors through the bill. Its better to focus on COVID-19 handling and the layoffs that follow. He added that 50,000 workers were ready to hold a massive rally against the bill in Jakarta and several other provinces on April 30 despite the outbreak. Advertisement Manipur Health and Family Welfare Department's Additional Director and spokesperson Khoirom Sasheekumar Mangang told IANS over the phone that the woman would be put under home quarantine for the next 14 days."Her family members, especially the father, were counseled by a team led by a State Surveillance Officer," the official said.Managing said that 19 close contacts of a person, who left Manipur on March 12 and tested positive in Bengaluru on April 8, are tested negative in Imphal's Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS).Besides the 23-year-old woman, another 65-year-old man from Lilong, near Imphal, had tested positive for nCoV and is undergoing treatment now at the RIMS. The man had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event at the Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi.The Manipur Chief Minister earlier announced that the state government was actively considering cash incentives or awards to those who are working in the frontline, including doctors and nurses.A Mizoram man tested positive last month after he returned from the Netherlands while a 52-year-old trader in Assam's Kamrup (Metro) district has also tested positive for coronavirus. Both of them undergoing treatment in medical colleges in Aizawl and Guwahati, respectively.Source: IANS By Express News Service NEW DELHI: With only a day left for the 21-day nationwide lockdown to end, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to make an announcement extending it any time now. During his video-conference meeting with chief ministers on Saturday, most states had demanded that the restrictions continue till the end of the month to stifle the pandemic. According to sources, the Centre is likely to recommend the extension of lockdown in hot spots and red zones while easing it in areas where the risk is lower. Some states like Maharashtra have already embraced the approach. Maharashtra, the worst-affected state, has carved the state into three zones red, where the risk is the highest; yellow, where the risk is medium; and, green where the risk is the lowest. Mumbai is part of the red zone list. Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Odisha have already extended the lockdown in their respective territories till April 30. According to the Union health ministrys bulletin released at 5 pm on Sunday, the number of confirmed cases in India stood at 8,447, while 765 people recovered from COVID-19 and 273 succumbed to the disease. The update said 918 cases and 34 deaths have been reported in the past 24 hours. The Centre on Sunday said the government is adequately prepared for the management of novel coronavirus cases. Addressing the daily press briefing on Sunday, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the Union health ministry, said, This is a pandemic and numbers can be exponential. Our effort is to take advanced steps. Meanwhile, in Punjab, a police patrol party came under attack as they tried to stop a group of Nihang Sikhs who violated the lockdown rules. The group turned violent when their car was stopped and attacked the police with swords and iron rods. In the brutal attack that followed, the hand of an Assistant Sub Inspector was chopped off with a sword. 1.86 lakh samples tested: ICMR According to ICMR, 1,86,906 samples have so far been tested across the country, of which 7,953 have been found to be positive. In the last five days, 15,747 samples were tested per day and 584 of those were positive per day There are a total of 601 dedicated COVID-19 hospitals across the country with 1,05,980 beds as on Sunday, the Union health ministry said. According to the ministry, the current estimated requirement is 1,671 beds 40 vaccines are at various stages of development Over 40 vaccines are under development but none has reached the next stage, according to ICMR. There is not a lot of good news these days, but beermakers have provided some by simply continuing to brew their products and offer sales to go. But one local brewery (and distillery) is going an extra mile (or 100) by using its facility to make hand sanitizer. Element Brewing & Distilling of Millers Falls, which has always kept an accent of the science behind brewing, is using its know-how and equipment to manufacture hand cleaner to help with the current shortage due to the coronavirus. The idea immediately inspired other companies to pitch in. Andler Bottle Co. in Springfield donated over 1,000 two-ounce bottles for the first batch of sanitizer and local cider maker Peter Mitchell of Headwater Cider in Hawley donated hundreds of gallons of cider to distill for the next batch (to make the alcohol needed for the sanitizer) and Vermont Bread Co. donated 2,500 pounds of sugar enough to ferment and distill into alcohol for several more batches. Element, which has always looked for ways to help the community such as its efforts to raise money for the local library, River Culture, and the Great Falls Discovery Center decided using the distillery to make sanitizer was an easy step. When the hand sanitizer shortage was announced, we knew right away this was something we could help with owner Ben Anhalt said. Element has begun including sanitizer with the four-packs and spirits that it sends to retailers and is also offering free two-ounce bottles with purchases at the taproom in Millers Falls. Additionally, the brewery is donating bulk containers to first responders and others on the front line. Donations have already gone out to the Community Action Pioneer Valley, Turners Falls Post Office, Montague Police Department, Hubbardston Police Department, South Deerfield Fire Department and EMTs, Shelburne Fire Department, Ashfield Fire and Police Departments, along with fielding many more requests that are coming in. Beer note As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I posted the Brewers Associations list of Massachusetts breweries that were selling beer to go, the Northampton Brewery, which had not been brewing beer for a few months while it renovated its brewhouse, wasnt on the list yet. The good news is that now the oldest continuously running brewpub in the region is back up and running, and has beer to go. You just have to call ahead and place your order by credit or debit card, and a brewery employee will bring it out to your car when you arrive. Another brewery that wasnt on the list (also in Northampton) was Progression Brewing, which also is now serving beer to go. Both venues also have food for pick-up. HOLYOKE The number of veterans living at the Holyoke Soldiers Home who have tested positive for the coronavirus continues to increase while one additional resident has died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. A dozen additional veterans have now tested positive, meaning more than half the residents at the state-run home for the elderly and infirm have contracted the virus, officials for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said. Currently 32 veterans have died from COVID-19 and 88 have contracted the virus. Six other residents have died of other causes since the first veteran tested positive from COVID-19 on March 21. When the virus was first detected there were about 210 residents at the home. Staff at the Soldiers Home has recently partnered with Holyoke Medical Center and Baystate Health to improve testing and is now getting results within 24 hours, officials said. Tests of all employees show 78 have contracted the disease while 222 employees have tested negative, officials said. After learning at least eight people had died of what was believed to have been COVID-19 in six days and more than two-dozen were suspected to be infected, a team from Health and Human Services came in to examine the problems at the Soldiers Home on March 30. Superintendent Bennett Walsh was placed on paid administrative leave that day and Val Liptak, a registered nurse and CEO of Western Massachusetts Hospital in Westfield, was tapped to take over the administrative role. Walsh has said any accusation of wrong-doing or mismanagement is outrageous. In a written statement released on Thursday Walsh said he kept state officials updated on the homes situation as it daily grew more desperate and requested help from the National Guard but was denied. Local and state officials have said they were not aware of the extent to which the virus was spreading. The Board of Trustees for the Soldiers Home was scheduled to meet on Saturday morning presumably to hold a hearing to discuss terminating Walsh. That meeting was cancelled after a Hampden Superior Court judge approved a request for a temporary restraining order to block the meeting. To help veterans at the home celebrate Easter on Sunday, three chaplains from the Massachusetts National Guard held a service that was televised to all residents who wanted to watch. The chaplains then visited staff and residents at the home, state officials said. To improve communications between residents and their families while the home continues to be closed to all visitors, the Military Friends Foundation is planning to purchase iPads for the Holyoke and Chelsea Soldiers Homes so veterans can easier communicate with families. The devices are being purchased with money raised from the organizations recently-launched COVID-19 Military Families Relief Fund, officials said. From Town & Country Andrew Cuomo, New York States taciturn and iron-fisted governor, has sprung onto the national stage recently as a source of comfort and inspiration during the coronavirus pandemic. This unlikely transformation has been chronicled by the media and a newly adoring public, which now looks forward to certain trademark moments in the governors routine. There's the Andrew Cuomo Daily News Briefing blunt, businesslike, full of terrible numbers tempered by genuine moments of hope and compassion. It's nice to hear a leader tell the truthand urge us to embrace our better angels. There's also the Andrew Cuomo TV Banter with His Cable-Host Brother : Appearances by the governor were previously forbidden by Chris Cuomos CNN bosses (for obvious journalism-ethics reasons) but the current crisis has loosened up the rules, and these conversations are full of brotherly burns, mentions of mom, and illuminating exchanges about government and COVID-19. And of course, the crowd favorite, Andrew Cuomo Gets Mad , in which the Governor let's rip with some righteous indignation at Donald Trump and the lackluster federal response (a.k.a where the hell are the ventilators); Bill DeBlasio and his ambling approach to shutting down the city, and much more. With allies and foes alike praising him and his popularity ratings higher than ever, many people wonder if Cuomo might be ready for a presidential run. I wouldnt mind running against Andrew. I have known Andrew for a long time. I wouldnt mind that, President Trump told Fox News. So, is he considering it? Well, He Told His Brother Chris "No" On air, the governor's brother asked him point blank if he'd run. "No," was the simple answer that came back. Chris followed up: "How can you know what you might think about at some point right now?" "Because I know what I might think about, and what I won't think about," came Andrew's definitive reply. Story continues Photo credit: Barcroft Media - Getty Images But This Isn't the First Time a Cuomo Candidacy Has Come Up The possibility of a Cuomo presidential run has obsessed Albany watchers for the better part of his two-and-a-half terms as governor. Speculation became particularly active after Cuomo managed to push through a law legalizing same-sex marriage in 2012 and again when he signed a bill in 2016 increasing the minimum wage in the state to $15 an hourboth progressive legislative victories in a typically conservative Albany statehouse. In his book, The Contender: Andrew Cuomo, a Biography, Michael Shnayerson explored Cuomos political rise, from his years working for his father, New york Governor Mario Cuomo, to his time as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration, his failed run for governor in 2002, and his ultimately successful one in 2010. Cuomo has always demonstrated qualities that make him an attractive presidential candidate, Shnayerson tells T&C. Photo credit: New York Post Archives - Getty Images Cuomo Has Displayed Calm Under Pressure Before Cuomo has always been at his best in times of crisis, says Shnayerson. Its a transformation that everyone from statehouse journalists to Albany politicos have watched over the years with awe, if not also a bit of eye-rolling. One recent example Shnayerson cites is the Governors response during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. He tore around flooded lower Manhattan, communicating with first responders, rattling off orders. He was a beacon of leadership. Now Cuomo is at it again, but this time keeping not just a city reassured, not just a state, but more and more the whole country as he uses that crisis skillset to coordinate a national response to the coronavirus. He Learned Early That Government Plays a Crucial Role in Times of Crisis Where does it come from, this command-and-control gene? With Andrewand, for that matter, his brother Chrisall roads lead back to Mario, says Shnayerson. As governor, the family patriarch preached a mantra that, Government, done right, could fill our needs, the more dramatic those needs the better. As a young man, Andrew carried out this sense of mission in a revealing way, points out Shnayerson, by working college vacations and summers as an AAA tow truck driver. If you were stranded at night on the New York State Thruway in the mid-1970s, chances were good that the truck that came to rescue you was driven by Andrew. But Cuomo Will Never Be Warm and Fuzzy Despite his daily briefings on the virus, no one in Albany thinks Governor Cuomo has turned into Mr. Rogers, says Shnayerson. Hes still a brutal manager, prone to fits of temper, ruthless with rivals. If Mayor DeBlasio had not kept running off to the gym for daily workouts as the virus spread, we might almost feel sorry for him, so utterly has he been marginalized by Cuomos maneuvers. Even if the governor hasnt changed, the public is getting to see another facet of Cuomo, in particular his deep dedication to family. Andrews father was like a god to the family; his mother Matilda, at 87, remains the family matriarch, and Andrews sibling ties are just as strong. If he has softened, his daughters are the reason. Most parents do soften as they watch their children grow; I think we see that in Andrew as well. Photo credit: Spencer Platt - Getty Images Presidential Trial Balloons Are a Family Tradition His father also had a penchant for agonizing over (and ultimately deciding against) running for president. Mario, who served as governor of New York State from 1983 to 1994, was frequently mentioned as a possible candidate, and Andrew was one of the biggest champions of the idea. Photo credit: Patrick McMullan - Getty Images Marios most serious flirtation with a presidential run played out in an agonizing 10-week period in 1991 when advisors and supporters pressed him to throw in his hat in for the Democratic nomination to run against President George H.W. Bush. It culminated on a night in December when he decided not to board a plane waiting to take him to New Hampshire to fill out paperwork to join the primary. Finally, What Works in New York Does Andrew Cuomos newfound fame and newly visible compassion put him closer to the presidency? If he were running for higher office right now all this new attention would certainly help, says Shnayerson. But lets not forget that the Cuomo brand, both in father and son, has never traveled very well outside the state. West of the Mississippi, Andrew still comes across as a rough-hewn New Yorker with an outer-borough accent, fierce on gun control and other issues that put him at odds with red America. My guess is that he plays out this star turn knowing exactly how well hes been doing, and then lets it go, knowing how quickly the electorate can turn. Most likely outcome? Cuomo runs for a fourth term as New York Governor in 2022. There are no term limits in the state, and a fourth term eluded his father Mario, who lost the race for his fourth to George Pataki in 1994. You Might Also Like - The tourists were found basking next to their hotel during the 7am-1pm duration that is allowed for buying essentials - When asked why they were defying the lockdown, they said they were not aware it was illegal to be outside at that time - The police boss asked his assistants to bring blank pages for them to write an apology 500 times - They wrote the apology and were warned they risked being blacklisted should they repeat the same mistake At east 10 tourists who breached lockdown directives in India have been forced to write an apology 500 times for them to be forgiven. The tourists from Israel, Mexico, Australia and Austria were caught taking a walk in Rishikesh, a historical site where the Beatles sought spirituality at an Ashram in 1968. READ ALSO: Ombudsman's office kicks off investigations over viral photo showing chief pouring liquid on woman Indian police officers overseeing the tourists writing the apology. Photo: Hindustan Times Source: UGC READ ALSO: Siaya: Uproar after man who succumbed to COVID-19 is buried in shallow grave at night Vinod Sharma, a local law enforcement officer, said the foreigners were asked to write the unusual apology to teach them a lesson on the need to stay indoors, the Hindustan Times reported. Sharma said they were asked to 'I did not follow the rules of lockdown so I am so sorry' 500 times. The officer said they had been receiving reports about the foreigners defying the lockdown orders and on Sartuday, April 11, they decided to lay a trap for them. The police had been getting reports that some foreigners were defying the lockdown and coming to the Ganga stretch from Neem Beach till Sai Ghat in Tapovan to chill. Based on the inputs, on Saturday, I along with some other personnel of my check post decided to patrol that stretch during which we found 10 foreigners strolling there, Vinod said. READ ALSO: Chief in viral photo who poured illicit brew on woman summoned by county commissioner When he inquired why the foreigners were not obeying the lockdown rules, they informed him they had come out to chill and bask as they thought they can do so from 7am untill 1pm when the lockdown is relaxed. I told them that the relaxation is meant for people to buy essential items and not for venturing out without any reason to which they said they werent aware of that," said Vinod. He then went ahead and asked one of his assistant's to rush to his office and come with 50-60 blank pages which he gave each one of them five of them. He asked them to write the apology on the spot and warned them should they violate the lockdown they will be blacklisted and won't be allowed to set foot in India. India PM Narendra Modi is expected to extend the lockdown after its expiry on Tuesday, April 14. Photo: CNN Source: UGC READ ALSO: Ruth Matete's husband dies after tragic gas accident The nationwide lockdown in India was imposed near the end of March, with residents permitted to leave their homes only for essential services such as buying groceries and medicine. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to extend the lockdown that was originally slated to end on Tuesday, April 14, for another two weeks. The Asian country has 9,240 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 331 deaths and 1,096 recoveries. Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly. Source: TUKO.co.ke Wisconsin authorities investigating fatal dog and wildlife poisonings near the border with Michigans Upper Peninsula say the death of a 3-year-old German shepherd earlier this month is the latest believed linked to the rash of cases. The dog was on a leash and being walked by its owners on public land in northern Forest County on April 1 when it died suddenly, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. While lab tests are still pending, a fast-acting toxin is suspected, similar to the poison known to have killed several domestic dogs and wildlife within a three-county area of northern Wisconsin since December of 2018. The German shepherds owners told authorities they saw some dead ravens in the area where they had been walking their dog. Authorities are encouraging pet owners in Forest, Marinette and Florence counties to be on guard. Forest County, where the shepherd died, is just across the border from Michigans Iron River area. The public is advised to use dog leashes and watch for signs - such as dead wildlife - that poison may be in the area, Wisconsin DNR Lt. Bryan Harrenstein said. Before the shepherd died, the last two casualties linked to the poisonings were a pair of beagles who died in March. In the previous deaths, lab tests have confirmed what authorities have called a dangerous toxic substance. Investigators believe its being mixed with meat and left out for animals to find. In addition to several pet dogs, there have been wildlife deaths linked to poisonings in that area. These have included raptors, coyotes, weasels, raccoons and wolves, the DNR said. Any tips can be called in or texted to 1-800-TIP-WDNR, or 1-800-847-9367. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is also investigating the poisonings, is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and charges in the cases. As many of our readers will know, Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden passed away on March 20th. While Apollo 15 marked NASAs fourth successful journey to the moon, it marked several significant scientific achievements, including the first deployment of the lunar rover, the rudimentary vehicle which Wordens crew-mates David Scott and James B. Irwin explored the lunar surface. While the two men journeyed around the Moons Hadley Rille and Apennine Mountains, Worden remained aboard the command module Endeavour as it orbited above. Aside from monitoring the spacecrafts systems, Worden also conducted his own studies aboard Endeavour, the first of its kind to have its own module of scientific instruments, which included panoramic cameras for filming the moons surface. Interestingly, Worden had to conduct a spacewalk to retrieve film canisters from these cameras, the first such extra-vehicular activities ever conducted in deep space. Altogether, Worden logged more than 295 hours in space. One of our contributors, Luigino Caliaro, had an interesting opportunity to meet the legendary astronaut and former fighter pilot last year, and conducted a formal interview at the time, perhaps the last of its kind. We thought that our readers would be interested in hearing more By Luigino Caliaro At the end of last year, during the Wings over Houston air show in Texas, I had the opportunity to meet Al Worden who very generously granted me what was probably his last official interview. Sadly, he passed away in his sleep on March 18, 2020 following a period of hospitalization. Born on February 7, 1932 in Jackson, Michigan, Alfred Al Merrill Worden studied at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, joining the U.S. Air Force upon graduation in 1955 and entering pilot training soon after. His first assignment was on the F-104 Starfighter with the 95th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Andrews AFB in Clinton, Maryland. With ambitions of becoming a test pilot, Worden went back to school, earning masters degrees in astronautical/aeronautical engineering and instrumentation engineering at the University of Michigan in 1963. Soon after, Worden received a coveted exchange spot at the RAFs prestigious Empire Test Pilots School in Farnborough, England. Upon his return to the U.S. he became an instructor at the U.S. Air Forces Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB in California. Wordens astronaut career began almost by accident as he related during our interview: At that time I was serving as an instructor at the USAF Test Pilot School and I had never thought about an astronaut career until in 1966 NASA invited test pilots to apply to the space program on a voluntary basis. Attracted by this new and stimulating opportunity, I decided to submit my application. To my surprise, I was selected in September 1966. It was not an easy period, the training was very long and required many hours of study to the point that I obtained three additional masters degrees. The training was almost exhausting and non-stop, about 10-12 hours a day for five or more days a week. The practical part of astronaut training also included a good 25% use of the simulator. This difficult period has undoubtedly had negative influences on our personal and family lives, since we (astronauts) were always away from home from Sunday to Friday with very little time to devote to the family; so it was no coincidence that the divorce rate among astronauts in the lunar program was so high. I was officially assigned to the Apollo 15 mission on March 26, 1970. It was the ninth mission of the Apollo program and the fourth aimed to land on the moon. The Mission commander was David Scott, on his third flight in space. The Lunar Module Pilot was James Irwin while I was assigned the task of Command Module Pilot (CMP) which was to orbit around the moon while the other two colleagues were carrying out the experiments on lunar soil. I consider Apollo 15 to be the most successful lunar mission. In fact, we concentrated on numerous scientific experiments and compared to other missions, we were able to complete the largest number of experiments. Apollo 15 was undoubtedly considered the most scientific mission of the entire space program. Al Worden continued: A lot of people asked me if I was disappointed that I hadnt been able to walk on the moon I always say that the Command Module Pilot pilot was more important than the role of the Lunar Module pilot. In fact, the CMP had much more important functions in the field of mission and above all it was almost an obligatory step to then become spacecraft commander. Obviously walking on the moon represented an incredible experience and opportunity, but to be honest, professionally I particularly wanted to become commander of the mission, also because automatically, it would have given me the opportunity to go and walk on lunar soil. Unfortunately, just when I was in a position to become commander, NASA canceled the latest Apollo missions. Nonetheless, with Apollo 15 I had the opportunity to experience the incredible experience of the walk in open space, when during the return to the earth I performed a 38-minute EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) to recover photographic material from the Endeavor for what was the first extravehicular activity after Apollo 9 as well as the EVA carried out by an astronaut at the greatest distance from the earth. Indeed, the Guiness Book of World Records lists Worden as the Most isolated human being from his time alone in the command module Endeavour. When his crewmates were on the other side of the moon from him during his orbit, Worden was more than 2,200 miles from the next nearest human beings and more than a quarter million miles form home. He orbited the Moon 74 times alone. As noted earlier, Apollo 15 was also important because it involved the first use of the Lunar Rover: Yes it is true, the Rover undoubtedly demonstrated its usefulness and functionality by facilitating movements on the lunar soil allowing us to explore a little further from the landing place. However, I believe that even more important than the use of the Lunar Rover, was the fact that we were able to carry out important scientific experiments and research. We also photographed 25% of the lunar surface and before our return we also left a small satellite to orbit around the moon itself, which allowed us to collect much more data than we were able to collect on the lunar surface. When asked about what it was like to be aboard a gargantuan Saturn V rocket on an Apollo mission, Worden has a clear memory to share: I have to say that thanks to the training, we were very prepared for what we would experience during the launch. However, I remember the feeling of heaviness in the initial moments of the launch Apollo 15, being the heaviest launch of the program, the weight-thrust ratio was almost equal. We were so heavy that in the initial moments of the launch we did not perceive the sense of movement, and it was mission control that communicated to us that the launch had taken place and the Saturn had detached itself from the ramp without problems. I must also say that I was positively surprised by the docking maneuver with the LEM [Ed. the lunar lander] upon returning from the moon. It was an operation that took place as smooth as oil. David Scott, once he stabilized the LEM, positioned it about twenty meters from the Command Module, and with a very fluid and slow maneuver, I simply completed the docking operation with no problems. It was much simpler than I imagined it. Without a doubt, it was due to the extensive training and simulation on the ground. Obviously I could not fail to ask the classic, if banal, question about what it was like to fly in space as part of a lunar crew. Worden responded: I must admit that, at the cost of appearing insensible, we trained so intensely and for such long periods that when the moment of the mission came, it was like carrying out another training session in the simulator. The only difference was that we were in a different environment; it was the real deal. Throughout the mission we did not encounter particular problems and everything went as planned, exactly as in training. I was also so busy and focused on my job that I didnt have time to fully realize where I was and what I was doing. Only once I got home did I realize the experience I had just lived. Unfortunately, when you are engaged in such missions, there is no time to think about anything else. I did not feel any particular sensations even when I flew into the orbit of the hidden part of the moon, despite the fact that I did not have any contact with the outside world. I really dont remember the feeling of being the loneliest man in the world as some of my colleagues experienced. I was just focused on the mission and doing it in the best possible way. When asked about not have had an opportunity to return to space after Apollo 15, Worden replied: Unfortunately, NASA canceled the next three Apollo missions and therefore the possibility of becoming a mission commander disappeared, and considering that the first Space Shuttle mission was not scheduled for about ten years, I decided to devote myself to other research tasks before I left NASA in 1975. After leaving the Astronaut Corps, Worden moved to NASAs Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He was the Senior Aerospace Scientist there from 1972-73, and then chief of the Systems Study Division until 1975. Worden was decorated by NASA with the Distinguished Service Medal in 1971 and the Ambassador of Exploration Award in 2009, and his name was entered in the International Space Hall of Fame in 1983, the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997 and International Air & Space Hall of Fame in 2016. We hope you have enjoyed this brief look at the life of Al Worden. Many thanks indeed to Luigino Caliaro for the opportunity to publish this story. MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) The North Korean legislature, Supreme People's Assembly, has tasked the cabinet with working out measures to expand the construction of hydroelectric power plants and modernize railroads, the state-owned Korean Central news Agency (KCNA) reported. The legislature had a meeting of its 14th convocation earlier in the day where it, among other things, laid out recommendations for the cabinet's priorities in the year to come, the KCNA said. In particular, the cabinet was told to "keep the power generation going at a high level and push forward with the construction of hydro-power stations" with regard to energy sector and to "make the best use of the existing transport capacity and direct efforts into modernizing the railways, forefront of the national economy" with regard to railroad sector, according to the report. Additionally, the cabinet was tasked with modernizing the "work system, order and method" of the country's trade in a way to ensure "the economic benefits of the country through the application of strict discipline and order in the import and export," the KCNA said. At the same time, the legislature discussed the progress made by the government in terms of achieving the aims set last year and came to a conclusion that most tasks were overperformed, including on electricity generation and railroad transportation, the KCNA said. Among other economic sectors that had ensured an 108 percent overperformance of the yearly general economic plan were the coal and metal industries, as well as machine building, according to the report. Actor and writer Ricky Gervais has called for an end to 'wildlife wet markets' and claims we WILL face another pandemic if they continue to stay open. The 58-year-old's words come after China banned the sale of dog meat, as he urged politicians to introduce a global ban. He told The Mirror: 'For the sake of people and animals, wildlife trade and consumption has to end, now. 'We can't carry on exploiting animals': Ricky Gervais has called for an end to 'wildlife wet markets' and warned that we WILL face another pandemic if they continue to stay open He said : 'For the sake of people and animals, wildlife trade and consumption has to end, now. We can't carry on exploiting animals, eating wildlife and trashing the planet' 'We can't carry on exploiting animals, eating wildlife and trashing the planet. The wildlife trade and markets have to close, otherwise it will be a case of when, and not if, we have another global pandemic. 'How bad does this have to get before you close down Indonesia's extreme animal markets that pose the exact same risk as the wildlife wet markets in Wuhan, China?' In the UK alone, there have now been a staggering 10,612 deaths and 84,279 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Horrific: The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has said it recognises dogs as 'companion animals' and 'not suitable' to be managed as livestock in a drafted directive. The picture shows butchered dogs being sold at a market in the Chinese city of Yulin at a festival on June 21, 2016 Globally, there have been a tragic 114,982 lives lost to the virus and rising. China has excluded dogs from farm animals in a drafted directive, which could see canine meat being barred from the dinner plate across the country. The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said it recognises dogs as 'companion animals' and 'not suitable' to be managed as livestock in the document released on Thursday. Support: Ricky has also been very vocal in thanking the NHS for putting their own lives at risk amid the coronavirus pandemic in a bid to save others Springwatch presenter Michaela Strachan, 54, said: 'I have seen the appalling conditions in wild animal markets. It's shockingly cruel, terrifyingly unhygienic, unethical and often illegal' Only the animals officially listed as livestock or poultry can be bred, raised, traded and transported for commercial purposes in China, according to China's Animal Husbandry Law. What is the Yulin Dog Meat Festival? Some claim that the consumption of dog meat has been observed in Guangxi Province, China, for hundreds of years. However, the activity was not promoted and encouraged until around 30 years ago - first by the dog meat traders, then by the Yulin government for driving tourism. The annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival can be traced back to 2009. The event has drawn waves of criticism from media and animal lovers, with influential figures leading campaigns around the world in a bid to stop it. The local government has stopped organising the festival under pressure, as it is understood, but vendors continue selling dog meat and residents carry on eating it on the summer solstice. Advertisement This means the proposal can potentially prevent around 10 million dogs being killed for their meat every year in the country. Ricky is not the first celebrity to call for the markets to be shut down. TV presenter Philippa Forrester, 51, urged governments need to do their part. She said: 'We're asking impoverished people to make a huge cultural and economic shift. 'It isn't easy for a man who has sold dogs to feed his family to just give up his income, however abhorrent we feel it is, so the support needs to come from the top.' Springwatch presenter Michaela Strachan, 54, agreed. She said: 'I have seen the appalling conditions in wild animal markets. It's shockingly cruel, terrifyingly unhygienic, unethical and often illegal. 'The pain and terror animals go through makes me feel sick to my stomach. It's like something from medieval times.' Conservationists agree that Global health bosses should urge countries to shut down wild animal markets such as the one in China where coronavirus is believed to have started. More than 200 wildlife groups worldwide issued their call in an open letter to the World Health Organisation, saying it would stop future pandemics. The evidence suggests Covid-19 has animal origins, most likely from bats, and may have come from a wet market where live and dead creatures are sold for eating in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Controversial: 'Wet markets' are now being widely discussed by conservationists, with wildlife groups writing to the WHO to urge for their worldwide closure in order to prevent pandemics Other pandemics, including SARS and Ebola, have also been linked to viruses spreading from animals to people. Dr Mark Jones, head of policy at Born Free, one of the charities involved, said: Once Covid-19 is behind us, returning to business as usual cannot be an option. We need to dig deep and reset our fundamental relationship with the natural world, rethink our place in it and treat our planet and all its inhabitants with a great deal more respect, for its sake and for ours. Evidence: It's suggested that Covid-19 has animal origins, most likely from bats, and may have come from a wet market where live and dead creatures are sold for eating in the Chinese city of Wuhan The letter also wants the WHO to raise the alarm about the risks posed to human health by the wildlife trade. The charities back initiatives to find alternative sources of protein for people who survive by eating wild animals. Dr Jones said markets selling live wild animals were found in many countries and had rapidly expanded. The trade in wild animals is also a major factor in global declines in wildlife, he added. The letter was co-ordinated by Born Free and its Lion Coalition partners. It has been backed by other groups including the Bat Conservation Trust and Zoological Society of London. Last month, a survey by wildlife charity WWF in Hong Kong, Japan, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam found 93 per cent backed official action to eliminate illegal markets. India's Charge d'Affaires Gaurav Ahluwalia was summoned by Pakistan's Director General (South Asia and SAARC) Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri on Monday. According to a statement from the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahluwalia was summoned to register 'strong protest' over 'ceasefire violations' along the Line of Control in Dhudnial, Rakhchikri, Chirikot and Baroh Sectors on April 12. The development comes after India issued a strong demarche to Pakistan for the killing of three Indian civilians, including a child, in unprovoked ceasefire violation on April 12. Pakistan resorted to unprovoked artillery fire in Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, targeting the civilian population especially in Gujjar villages, which resulted in the death of three civilians including a woman and a child. On the same day, Pakistan violated the ceasefire in Poonch district, Army sources said. Pakistani forces also fired with small arms, mortars in areas along LoC in Balakote and Mendhar sectors of Poonch. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Britain could end up with the largest coronavirus death toll in Europe, a top UK adviser has warned, as the numbers passed 10,000. Jeremy Farrar, part of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said the UK could experience "one of the worst, if not the worst" death rates across the continent. His comments came after modelling from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), based at the University of Washington in Seattle, predicted Britain's death toll could hit 66,000 - the highest in Europe - and far higher than official estimates of around 20,000. However, the figures have been widely questioned, and the IHME has already been forced to revise between 26,000 and 62,500. "We appear to be following a slightly worse trajectory than Italy and it is plausible that we might end up with the most in-hospital Covid deaths in Europe," said Professor David Spiegelhalter, from the University of Cambridge. Under the IHME figures, Italy is forecast to have the second-highest death toll, at 20,000. Spain and the Netherlands are predicted to have 18,000 each and France 16,000. The death toll in Britain rose to 10,631 yesterday after an increase of 737. But British scientists said the UK may end up with a large death toll simply because of population density, social structure and demographics. "If you look at the trajectory, we could end up worst, but it's not a macabre competition. It's probably the case that countries with cities like London are going to be hardest hit. You see the same in America with cities like New York, which have a mass transit system, a lot of people coming in and out, and a young population where the virus can spread silently for a while," said James Naismith, professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford. "And if we have high numbers of infected people we will get high numbers of deaths." More than eight in 10 people live in urban areas in the UK, and a population of 66 million makes it likely that final figures will be high. But experts said it was important to look at the death rate per million, rather than overall. Britain's death rate is 145 per million, compared to Italy at 322, and Spain at 355. Germany is much lower at 34 after beginning an intensive programme of testing, contact tracing and isolation early on. "It is likely that the UK will have one of the largest numbers of total deaths solely because we are the second-largest population in western Europe and EU countries. Only Germany has a larger population. The important figure is the death rate per million," said Keith Neal, Emeritus Professor in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham. Mr Farrar said Britain should learn lessons from Germany. "I do hope we're coming close to the number of new infections reducing, and the numbers of deaths but, yes, the UK is likely to be one of the worst, if not the worst, affected country in Europe," he said. However, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock insisted yesterday the future of the virus was "unknowable" and would depend on the behaviour of millions of Britons. Julian Brazier, a former Conservative minister, called for a trial to determine just how many people are dying "with" coronavirus rather than "from" the disease. "Currently, those dying of Covid-19 are not automatically given autopsies because of the additional risk to NHS staff," he said. "So we have little idea how many of those deaths - still predominantly among elderly people and those with other conditions - are caused by coronavirus, and how many would have sadly happened anyway, in a country where over 12,000 people die in an average week." ( Daily Telegraph, London) Insurance companies will need to return premiums to customers and business affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic by order of California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, his office announced early Monday. The commissioner's office said the shelter-in-place order across the state has reduced the overall risk of loss. "With Californians driving fewer miles and many businesses closed due to the COVID-19 emergency, consumers need relief from premiums that no longer reflect their present-day risk of accident or loss," Lara said in a statement. "Today's mandatory action will put money back in people's pockets when they need it most." Per the commissioner's decree, the premiums covered are for the months of March, April and May if the shelter-in-place order continues through then. The six categories of premiums covered by the order are: private passenger automobile, commercial automobile, workers' compensation, commercial multi-peril, commercial liability, medical malpractice and "any other insurance line where the risk of loss has fallen substantially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic." Insurance companies have until August to comply with the order -- whether through premium credits, reductions, return of premiums or other appropriate premium adjustments. The commissioner's office said Lara had previously requested a 60-day grace period for policyholders to avoid cancellation of nonpayment due to the crisis. Some companies, including State Farm and AAA, have already announced premium refunds or discounts. Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Default turned out to be a not very popular idea. People of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, trying to disrupt cooperation with the IMF, switched to a different format. Now they also say that default is bad, but restructuring is good. Rebranded. They offer that we need to look closely at our debts, choose the unimportant and refuse to pay them, calling it restructuring. Important debts, apparently, are debts to their patron Kolomoisky. This is very bad advice. And let's understand why. Actually, there are times when restructuring is a good solution. But there must be some other reason than a reluctance to pay. Which countries do the restructuring? Those who have a very high debt burden and are not able to service their debt. For absolutely objective reasons. What do we have in Ukraine? In Ukraine, over the past four years, the debt burden has been significantly reduced. If we started 2017 with a debt of 80% of GDP, then in 2020 we entered with a debt burden of 50% of GDP. This decrease is almost 2 times. Thus, our debt is absolutely under control. What debts are being restructured? Debts to the investors. The so-called market debt. The debt that is attracted through the issuance of bonds. And here's the catch. In Ukraine, this debt is not that high now. We just have nothing to restructure. This year we would have one big payout of $ 1.4 billion in September. And now, payments to investors do not exert any pressure on the budget or on the accounts of the Ministry of Finance. Because they simply do not exist. We might scare off all our partners, and it would make no sense. If the crisis develops, if everything gets worse by September, then we can talk about restructuring. And investors will understand this. But certainly not now. And certainly not because of the keen desire of one oligarch to disrupt cooperation with the IMF. All our other debts are debts to the American government ($ 1 billion in May) or official lenders. And we just cant pay them. Especially at that moment when we are urgently asking them to support us. What do proponents of the default sect talk about? Ukraine should pay half its budget on debts this year. And, of course, they find support, because people think that this year the budget should be spent on supporting the economy, supporting those who lost their jobs as a result of quarantine, supporting small and medium-sized businesses, and not giving money to the bourgeois. What's the catch? The fact that the budget does not contain the line of 50% debt repayment. This year Ukraine has really been waiting for and is still waiting for peak payments on foreign debt. But these payments are never budgeted. Debts are always repaid in all countries by attracting new debts. And Ukraine is no exception. Nobody includes the repayment of loans in the budget. Thus, everything that we give this year to the bourgeoisie, we will attract from this same bourgeoisie. But the trick is that this year we must take much more money from the bourgeoisie. Not only to give money to the bourgeoisie. But also to finance measures to save the economy from quarantine. This year, the budget deficit in Ukraine will grow by more than 3 times, up to 7.5% of GDP. In ordinary years, this would be called insanity. But 2020 is an unusual year. In this way, all the EU countries and the United States suffer from a budget deficit sharp increase. There is simply no other way. You cannot minimize the loss from quarantine. We need to attract all this money, to medicine and to help business. And we have nowhere to take them, except on credit. If we decide to print them, then tomorrow's printed hryvnia will not cost anything. Therefore, you need to attract debt. In currency. And the IMF is the only source to support the Ukrainian economy. And now the situation is that the people of Kolomoisky are telling that let's not give back $ 10 at a time when we need to borrow $ 20. They are hinting that you wont have to lend $ 20, because part of it would be used to repay your debts. And the second half you need in order not to die today. This budget deficit is a one-time event. Next year, it would be gone. All costs for which the money is directed are associated with quarantine and the virus. As already mentioned, in the past three years, Ukraine has significantly reduced its debt burden. And today, in emergency conditions, we can afford to increase our debt, which at the end of the year can reach 60% of GDP. But a stupid evil here is to start a restructuring, bashfully covering it with the word "default," which is needed only to prevent a couple of oligarchs from answering for their dark deeds. And the oligarch, along with his faithful servants, is ready to put everything at stake. Including the economy of Ukraine. And helping him in this is not the worthiest occupation. Read the original text on Facebook Manama Health Minister Faiqa bint Saeed Al Saleh has lauded HM King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa's speech on Sunday evening in which he praised the efforts of the Bahrain medical team in dealing with the ongoing challenges and the proactive steps taken by Bahrain to confront the COVID-19 responsibly and curb its spread. HM the King's words of praise are a source of great honour for all medical workers in Bahrain, she said. "HM the King's words have touched the hearts of all his sons and daughters and they are a powerful motivation to exert further efforts to achieve an advanced level of education in spite of the difficult circumstances affecting the whole world and be able to provide the best services for the Kingdom led by HM the King," the minister said. Bahrain has always placed the health, safety and protection of citizens at the top of its priorities, plans and work programs, harnessing possibilities, potential and energies to achieve this goal and to move forward to reach the highest standards of healthcare in the world, she added. The minister also commended the great efforts of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, for his wise management of Team Bahrain, which has achieved excellence and leadership for the national and medical efforts as attested by world health organizations. On one side of the conflict is the U.N.-installed Tripoli government, which is supported by a constellation of militias as well as Turkey and several other countries. Battling them is warlord Khalifa Hifter, a dual U.S.-Libyan citizen who lived for years in Northern Virginia and is loyal to a parallel government in the east of the country. He is backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, among other nations. Houston food fans: Heres your chance to enjoy a Tony's truffle pasta from or a sizzling Brennans steak while sporting PJs on the couch. Some of the citys finest restaurants are offering elegant to-go meals and delivery (some through third-party companies) for those of you celebrating special occasions while in quarantine. Of course, you dont need an excuse to dress up, splurge on dinner and create your own elevated atmosphere from the comfort of your home. Or you could also slice into that chateaubriand while donning sweatpants as you fire up a Netflix series. That's the best part of an at-home fancy feast: you set the dress code and playlist. DRIVE-THRU: Eat local at these must-try Houston drive-thru restaurants Brennan's of Houston is offering discounted wines and meals for delivery or pickup, but just this week the legendary establishment also announced that it will offer its famed snapping-turtle soup at at select H-E-B grocery stores. The stew and some other Texas-Creole classics will be up for grabs at these H-E-Bs: Montrose Market, 1701 West Alabama Heights HEB, 2300 N. Shepherd Drive San Felipe, 5895 San Felipe Street Buffalo Heights, 3663 Washington Ave. Ste 100 Bunker Hill HEB, 9710 Katy Freeway Buffalo Market, 5225A Buffalo Speedway Brennans owner Alex Brennan-Martin has also set up a crowd funding site for the restaurants staff here. Rainbow Lodge is opening on Sundays during this time to offer a seven-day takeout menu. Weekdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and weekends from4 to 8 p.m., choose from a variety of refined rustic eats and prime game dishes. Call 713-861-8666 or choose from their online menu at https://www.rainbow-lodge.com/take-out-menus. Added perk: Customers receive a $20 food gift card for your next dine-in visit. Also available: to-go cocktail kits for $40, discounted wine and its special At-Home Wine Dinner for $76 for two. The latter, usually a monthly event hosted at the restaurant, is available from the comfort of your dining room when you preorder and pickup your vino on Wednesday, April 8 from 4 - 8pm. Catch Masraff's at 1753 Post Oak before it moves to its new location. The longtime Houston spot is offering a to-go eats at its current outpost, including its famed osso buco. Keep in mind that servers aren't receiving tips right now and leave gratuity accordingly. The special link that is often created between bars and restaurants and their clients has led to different projects being started in order to help one of the sectors which is most affected by this health crisis. As an example there are adoptaunbar.com (adopt a bar) and the #SalvemosNuestrosRestaurantes movement, initiatives that aim to ease the economic losses faced by the sector. The first of these is a website where clients are invited to pay for their beers and other drinks in advance to help those who run the establishments. The people behind it explain that the aim is to put the businesses in contact with their clients so they can buy their drinks now and consume them when the business reopens. It will mean that " the bars will have the cash to be able to carry on when the crisis is over". The other project was set up by the platform El Tenedor (The Fork) and it works in a similar fashion: The client buys a voucher for between 10 and 250 euros and the business receives that money to help it pay its employees and the bills until it reopens. Once the restaurant is open again, the client can enjoy the meal they have bought. A self isolating walk along Whiterocks beach near Portrush, Co-Antrim during Easter weekend, across the bay from Co-Donegal in Republic of Ireland. Picture Margaret McLaughlin Fortunately, the vast majority of people have heeded the advice to stay at home and avoid our many beauty spots over this Easter weekend which, due to coronavirus, has been like no other. There had been fears that the good weather and the cabin fever to which we can all be prone would compel some day-trippers to ignore politicians calls to curtail their movements. The Governments apt slogan Stay at home, save lives, protect the NHS has been repeated with such mantra-like intensity since the lockdown began three weeks ago that the message finally seems to be getting through. First Minister Arlene Foster was right when she said that Easter is a special time for families and that the restrictions on movement were just that restrictive. However, she felt they were appropriate and proportionate given the grave threat we all face. It is true that those of us fortunate enough to live in largely-free democracies may chafe at any restrictions on our movements. Yet while some European countries are considering easing their lockdowns, and even in Britain some ministers minds are turning to the challenges of a post-Covid-19 society, it is vital that we make the control of the virus our first priority. Every sector of the economy here is suffering from the lockdown. There were also warnings that the Governments coronavirus grants are taking too long to reach firms in our tourism industry at what should be one of the busiest times of their year. Experts estimate that Northern Ireland could be losing almost 50 million in economic output for every day the lockdown continues, and it is no surprise that small businesses in particular are creaking under the pressure. Stark as these figures are, even more stark is the fact that 26 more lives were lost to the virus here at the weekend 15 were announced on Saturday and a further 11 yesterday, and their families have all our sympathies. However, our thoughts can only return to relaxing the restrictions on movement when the medical experts, on whose advice our politicians rely, can assure them that the virus is under control. Unfortunately, as the personal and family tragedies behind each of those statistics confirm every heartbreaking detail, we are far from getting this virus under control. With countries imposing lockdown to block the spread of the virus, the Icelandic Forestry Service has taken a weird approach to the situation. According to reports, the Icelandic Forestry Service has asked citizens to hug trees and plants while maintaining social distancing. Media reports suggest that forest rangers at Hallormsstaur National Forest in East Iceland are cleaning up the snow from roads so locals can go and hug trees. Read: Pune Police's Savage Reply To Man Who Wants To Go Out Amid Lockdown Wins Internet As per reports, forest rangers have advised people to hug different trees rather than holding the very first tree they encounter. Certain media reports quoted forest rangers as saying that hugging trees for five minutes is enough to start a day on a happy note. One forest ranger actually went as far as to explain how it feels while hugging a tree. He said that when someone hugs a tree, they feel it on their toe first and then on legs before leading up tox the chest and eventually up into the head. Read: UK: Daughter Dies Of Heart Attack While Attending Mother's Funeral Who Succumbed To Virus The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has said that the virus can stay on different surfaces, including wood. According to data by world meter, there are currently 1,701 confirmed coronavirus cases in Iceland. As per reports, eight people have lost their lives in the Nordic island country. Read: COVID-19: Canadian Family Recreates 'The Simpsons' Intro, Netizens Ask For All Episodes Coronavirus outbreak The deadly coronavirus infection has claimed more than 1,15,000 lives across the world and has infected over 18,67,000 people globally since it first broke out in December 2019. China was the most affected country until last month before Italy and Spain surpassed it to record the most number of deaths anywhere in the world due to COVID-19. The virus is believed to have originated from a seafood market in China's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the disease, where animals were reportedly being traded illegally. Read: US Records 6.6 Million Unemployment Cases In One Week, Total Number Reaches 16 Million (Image Credit: AP) 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. Salman Khan is currently in quarantine in his farmhouse, away from family. But the actor has actively been taking part in helping people in need ever since the lockdown started. Earlier, the actor had come forward to handle the daily expenses of 25,000 workers from the industry till the lockdown continued. Confirming this news, politician Baba Siddiqui posted, Thank you @beingsalmankhan @tweetbeinghuman for your generous contribution towards the daily wage workers. You are always one step ahead of everybody when it comes to helping people and you have proved that yet again. After this, Salman heard that 50 female ground workers in Malegaon were running out of essentials. He took it upon himself to help these women out instantly. Salmans manager confirmed the news and said that Salmans team is doing active research on whoever needs urgent help and the actor is providing them with essentials. Well, known for his generosity, this gesture of Bhai doesnt come as a surprise. Japan has always been on every travelers bucket list. Its one of Asias top travel destinations, and the country offers the best in cuisine, shopping, theme parks, and architectural wonders. It has numerous locations to visit depending on your travel priorities, but the top two cities many tourists visit are Tokyo and Osaka. Located three to four hours away from each other via their famous bullet train or Shinkansen, Tokyo and Osaka feature the best that Japan has to offer. While others find time to squeeze in the four-hour trip to hop on to the other city, others are faced with the challenge of choosing which city to visit. Well help you chose the best city depending on your travel goals so you can create the perfect Japan itinerary. Food Winner: Osaka Osaka is famous for its takoyaki. Photo by Koukichi Takahashi on Unsplash Osaka is hands down the best place to visit for foodies. Deemed Japans kitchen, Osaka is home to the best restaurants, street food, and traditional Japanese cuisine. Dohtonbori is a long stretch of busy road that offers scrumptious food items at every turn. It has everything to cater to every palate. Do you want to try fancy giant crab legs grilled right in front of you? Do you want to taste Takoyaki with chunks of fresh seafood inside? Theres a myriad of noodle places to try including the famous Ichiran where you wont get to see the cooks. You can eat solo atop a bar stool separated by wooden dividers. Osaka also has the best and fluffiest cheesecakes, the tastiest gyozas, and the most flavorful okonomiyaki in Japan and possibly the world. Shopping Winner: Tokyo Visit Ginza if you want to shop for high-end brands. Image credit: Archello.com Tokyo is the best place to go shopping in Japan. Its Asias Paris and is home to the worlds top brands. This beautiful cosmopolitan city is the favorite destination of shopaholics looking for the fanciest and newest in tech and designer clothing. An area in Tokyo called Ginza is world-famous as a glitzy shopping street. It is home to the biggest brands in the world. While Ginza has a reputation for being extra expensive, it is also home to some affordable brands like Uniqlo and Gap. Some stores offer insane discounts at certain times of the year, so its common to score clothes for a quarter of the original price. Culture Winner: Osaka Osaka is located in southern Japan and is a mere 30-minute train ride from Kyoto, the worlds Geisha central. Kyoto used to be Japans capital before it was moved to Tokyo, so the area is home to the oldest traditional Japanese structures and traditional Japanese art performances. Its where you should go if you want to experience traditional Japan. An area called Gion is home to townhouses that are a hundred years old, and it's also where you go to spot geishas. True geishas, not tourists dressed like one, are hard to spot and see. Many tourists spend hours roaming around Gion waiting for geishas to come out usually before night time. Another area near Gion is Ninenzaka, which is home to the worlds first tatami Starbucks. Here you can enjoy your frappuccino inside a hundred-year-old townhouse while sitting on a traditional tatami mat. The street is a charming little area lined by traditional shops inside age-old structures amidst coble-stone floors. Nature Winner: Tokyo There are many areas around Mt. Fuji that offer unobstructed views of the mountain. Photo by Manuel Cosentino on Unsplash Mt. Fuji is Japans tallest peak standing at 3,776 meters. This beautiful wonder of nature is around two hours and twenty minutes away from Tokyo by bullet train, over an hour away by car, and almost four hours away by bus. Its a majestic sight to see but youd have to plan your travel because its not always visible the entire year. Clouds can sometimes cover the mountain, so you can consider yourself lucky if Mt. Fuji shows itself to you when you visit. Visibility is generally considered better during the colder months of the year than in summer and in the early morning than in the middle of the day. There are many areas around Mt. Fuji that offer unobstructed views of the mountain, all of which are just a few hours away from Tokyo via Shinkansen. Theme Park Winner: Tokyo You can purchase a ticket that gives you access to both Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea. Tokyo Disneyland is one of the oldest attractions in Japan. What makes this special is its version of the famous theme park, Tokyo Disney Sea that is unique to Japan and is inspired by the myths and legends of the sea. So you can either purchase a ticket to Tokyo Disneyland or Tokyo Disney Sea. If youve been to other Disney theme parks we suggest you try Disney Sea while in Japan. It features a huge lagoon at the center where you can watch a fireworks display and a musical show before closing time. The place also has gondolas you can use to go around since the park is traversed by a network of waterways. Theres an erupting volcano where you can try Journey To The Center of The Earth, which is a dark thrill ride that takes you deep underground and is unique to this park. Most of the other areas and rides are nautical themed and cater more to bigger kids and adults. Osaka is home to Japans Universal Studios where you can find the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. HP fans flock Universal Osaka to experience the Flight of the Hippogriff ride and drink butterbeer. Its an enchanting themed area inside Universal Osaka where you can also have your picture taken in front of the Hogwarts Castle, shop for Harry Potter Merchandise inside HP-themed shops, and watch the Expecto Patronum Night Show. Aside from the Harry Potter park, there are so many other sections and rides to explore inside Universal like the crazy Jurassic Park flying dinosaur ride, which is considered the longest flying coaster in the world. Tokyo and Osaka are just a few of the many cities to visit in Japan. Those who have more time to spend there often ride the Shinkansen so they can explore both cities and enjoy the best that Japan has to offer in one go. If you must choose just one city to visit, youll have to think about what you want out of your Japan visit. Coronavirus: The latest updates from Spain and around the world Coronavirus Sunday's updates on the global pandemic That is all for today everyone. Make sure that you join us tomorrow for all the latest coronavirus news. Stay safe! 23:10. Another 99 people have lost their lives in Brazil due to the coronavirus. The number of confirmed cases is 22,169. 23:00. Cuba has sent more health personnel to Italy in the fight against coronavirus. A total of 38 doctors are travelling since Sunday to the Piedmont region. 22:45. President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has advised against making any travel plans for the summer. "I recommend waiting before making plans. No one can make reliable forecasts for July and August now," she said. 22:30. US president Donald Trump had taken to Twitter as the country has the highest number of deaths from the coronavirus. For the first time in history there is a fully signed Presidential Disaster Declaration for all 50 States. We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy! ? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020 22:05. The Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has handed in his resignation after a controversial curfew over the weekend, which was announced late Friday afternoon, and that led to crowds in grocery stores. 21:30. The coronavirus crisis has had terrible effects on the labour market, with the Public State Employment Service (SEPE) processing 80,000 ERTE claims a day, and it is still increasing. 21:00. With thousands of people returning to work on Monday, April 13 in Madrid, almost 1.5 million masks will be distributed between 6am and 9am in the main metro stations in the city. 20:50. A plane loaded with 54.7 tons of medical equipment from China has landed in Valencia. It contains 1,439,800 masks, 1,338,000 pairs of gloves, 137,310 PPE protective suits, 102,400 sets of protective goggles. 20:30. France has now reported a total of 14,393 deaths from coronavirus, 561 more than the previous day. A total of 315 deaths were recorded in hospitals, while 246 occurred in nursing homes or dependency centres. 18:42. Cities all over Europe have been affected by the coronavirus leaving them empty as this video shows. 18:31. A British team, led by Sarah Gilbert at Oxford University are reportedly 80 percent sure they will have a coronavirus vaccine ready in a few weeks. 17:14. The British Government have announced that they carried out 18,000 conornvirus tests on Saturday. As of 9am 12 April, 352,974 tests have concluded, with 18,000 tests on 11 April. 282,374 people have been tested of which 84,279 tested positive. As of 5pm on 11 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 10,612 have sadly died pic.twitter.com/xzxBZDmXnk ? Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) April 12, 2020 16:40. Bill Gates wants a global strategy to be put in place to fight against the coronavirus. 16:26. Madrid's metro will distribute around 1,500 masks to the network's workers. @metro_madrid repartira 1.500 mascarillas diarias para proteger a sus empleados del contagio del #COVID19. Seguimos trabajando por la salud y la seguridad de todos los madrilenos.#VamosMadrid ? Ignacio Aguado (@ignacioaguado) April 12, 2020 16:10. Madrid mayor Jose Luis Martinez Almeida has called for widespread testing so that workers who aren't infected can get back to work. 14:53. UK prime minister Boris Johnson has been allowed out of hospital and he'll now continue his recovery at his home in Chequers. 14:42. There have been a total of 1,873 people arrested for failing to abide by the confinement rules. 14:26. Monday will bring a slight change in the rules of Spain's state of emergency, but the government is reminding people that schools, leisure facilities and bars and restaurants will remain closed. 14:12. Stats have been published on how the coronavirus is affecting different European countries. 12:38. The pope has given an Easter mass, but livestreamed and without anyone attending in person. 12:25. The number of deaths in Iran has gone up in the past 24 hours, with 117 more deaths making the total 4,474. 11:52. European Commission leader Ursula von der Leyen is advising against booking holidays for this summer. 11:34. Spain had 619 deaths from coronavirus in the past 24 hours. That's 109 more than the previous day. It's now a total of 16,972 deaths, with a total of 166,019 positive cases. 11:00. Schools are to reopen in Beijing, on April 27 for older children and on May 11 for younger children. 10:45. A plane with 113 tonnes of medical supplies landed in Madrid this morning. 10:19. UK prime minister Boris Johnson has thanked the NHS for saving his life. He spent time in intensive care due to the coronavirus, but has since come out of it. 8:09. Spain's prime minister Pedro Sanchez is to hold a new meeting with the leaders of the country's autonomous communities. It should be held from 10:00 local time in Spain. 7:18. Cases went back up in China, with 99 new ones registered on Saturday compared to 46 on Friday. But the good news is that there were no deaths. 7:08. There were 1,920 deaths in the past 24 hours in the USA from the coronavirus. 7:00. Good morning and welcome along to this coronavirus live blog, bringing you all the major updates this Easter Sunday. After his battle with the coronavirus in Australia, Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson are back in the U.S. Now, amid the social distancing guidelines because of the pandemic, Hanks pre-recorded an "SNL" show at the comforts of his home while addressing his recent fight with the deadly disease. Laughing Out The Coronavirus "Saturday Night Live" has its first remote show this weekend, and there's no better person to do it than actor Tom Hanks himself. Hanks is back, and he hosted "Saturday Night Live" from his kitchen this weekend. It is the first remote "sketch" of the show in their attempt to make it work "from home. The actor then joked and asked himselfwhy he would be asked to host "SNL" at the time of the coronavirus. "Well, for one, I have been the celebrity canary in the coal mine for the coronavirus, and ever since being diagnosed, I have been more like America's dad than ever before," Hanks hilariously said. He added that he was the best choice because no one wants to be around him these days as he makes people uncomfortable. The actor furthered that people have been socially distancing themselves from him, afraid that they might contract the virus by being around him. Tom also revealed that he and his wife, who was also diagnosed with the coronavirus, are both doing well. They are in quarantine in their home just like the rest of the world. "In fact, this suit, this is the first time I've worn anything other than sweatpants since March 11," Hanks revealed. "My wife had to help me put it on cause I forgot how buttons work." The 63-year-old Hollywood icon then promised to give everyone a good show, though he emphasized that it might be different from what they are used to. "Now is it going to look a little different than what you're used to? Yes. Will it be weird to see sketches without big sets and costumes? Sure. But, will it make you laugh? Eh. It's 'SNL.' There'll be some good stuff, maybe one or two stinkers, you know the drill," Hanks shared. Strange But Funny The "Cast Away" actor opened his monologue by saying that he thought it might be a bit awkward to be laughing at this time when a high number of deaths due to the coronavirus has been recorded. However, it might be a good time to remind people to laugh to give them hope that all will be well in time. "It is a strange time to try to be funny, but trying to be funny is 'SNL'' a whole thing, so we thought 'What the heck!'" Hanks quipped while standing next to his refrigerator. At the beginning of the show, the cast all appeared together in one call via Zoom before launching the video sketches they all made from their homes. Chris Martin was the musical guest for that episode. There were also special appearances by Larry David, Adam Sandler, Alec Baldwin, and Tina Fey. "Saturday Night Life" was like any other show whose hosts have tried to produce content from their homes. The pre-recorded "SNL" show was the first in its rich 45-year history. 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. Retailers like Macy's, Gap and Kohl's are struggling to survive amid a 'catastrophic crisis' worse than 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash, according to experts. More than 250,000 stores that sell non-essential merchandise have temporarily shuttered since mid-March in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Coresight Research predicts that 15,000 U.S. stores will permanently close this year, setting a new record and nearly doubling its earlier forecast of 8,000 store closings. 'Retail has hung a closed sign on the door literally and metaphorically,' Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said. Macys, Kohls and Gap Inc. all said at the end of March that they will stop paying tens of thousands of employees who were thrown out of work when the chains temporarily closed their stores and sales collapsed as a result of the pandemic. Saunders added: 'This is the most catastrophic crisis that retail has faced worse than the financial crisis in 2008, worse than 9/11. Almost overnight, the retail economy shifted from being about things people want to things that they need.' As of Monday as many as 22,993 Americans had died from coronavirus. An empty shopping cart in an empty parking lot at a Macy's department store in a mall which is closed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, in Paramus, New Jersey A closed Kohl's department store in Alameda, California. Macys, Kohls and Gap Inc. all said they will stop paying tens of thousands of employees who were thrown out of work when the chains temporarily closed their stores and sales collapsed as a result of the pandemic A closed Gap clothing store in Oakland, California. More than 250,000 stores that sell non-essential merchandise have temporarily shuttered since mid-March in response to the coronavirus pandemic Public health experts have warned the U.S. death toll could surge to more than 200,000 over the summer if the unprecedented stay-at-home orders that have closed businesses and kept most Americans indoors are lifted when they expire at the end of the month. But long before there was a global coronavirus pandemic, brick-and-mortar retailers struggled to get people to walk through their doors instead of shopping online. Now those retailers are faced with an even more Herculean task of how to stay on people's minds and more importantly their pocketbooks when many of their store doors are closed. Around 60 per cent of overall U.S. retail square footage is currently shuttered. Some retailers have responded to the challenge by coming up with creative ways to stay relevant. Nike, for instance, introduced workout apps in China when the coronavirus first surfaced there, resulting in an 80 per cent increase in users within the quarter and a 30 per cent increase in online sales. It's now pushing a similar campaign in the U.S. and Europe. Yoga pants maker Lululemon is holding online classes in North America and Europe after gaining thousands of new followers in China on WeChat. Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald told analysts during a recent call that during its first week of closures in the U.S., it saw nearly 170,000 customers join Lululemon for its live classes. Small businesses are also pivoting in order to hold onto customers. Camp, a new toy chain that set itself apart from online retailers by doubling down on the physical experience, is hosting virtual birthday parties and creating curated gift boxes now that its five stores have gone dark. Macy's, Kohl's, Gap to furlough majority of their workers Macys, Kohls and Gap Inc. all saidat the end of March they will stop paying tens of thousands of employees who were thrown out of work when the chains temporarily closed their stores and sales collapsed as a result of the pandemic. Macys said the majority of its 125,000 employees will be furloughed this week and that it is transitioning to an absolute minimum workforce needed to maintain basic operations. Macys said it has lost the bulk of its sales due to the temporarily closing of more than 600 stores starting March 18. Kohls, based in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, said that the furloughs will apply to 85,000 of its 120,000 employees at stores and distribution centers. It will continue to ship products and do curbside pickup from most stores with a limited number of staff. Gaps spokesman Sandy Goldberg said the furloughs affect nearly 80,000 out of 129,000 employees across all brands, including Banana Republic and Old Navy. The furloughed workers will continue to collect health benefits. Advertisement Politics & Prose, a popular Washington D.C. bookstore, was also forced to temporarily close and is now starting to stream author talks online and offering a curbside pickup service. 'Many bookstores are known as havens for comfort and reassurance in difficult times,' said Bradley Graham, co-owner of the bookstore. 'But a pandemic is not like other crises. In a medical crisis like this, the idea of bringing people together becomes an anathema.' Even discounters and wholesale clubs like Walmart and Costco that remain open so customers can still buy essential items like groceries and toilet paper have had to shift their offerings to focus on household goods while ignoring the racks of trendy clothing elsewhere in their stores. But many mall-based clothing retailers like Gap, Kohl's and Macy's that were already struggling before the pandemic haven't been able to pivot successfully to online-only. Although they have been expanding their presence, with clothing accounting for about 27 per cent of overall online sales last year, their businesses aren't built for their stores to remain shuttered for such a long stretch. DailyMail.com has contacted Kohl's, Macy's and Gap for comment. With spring merchandise piled up and nowhere to go, many chains are slashing prices anywhere from 40 per cent to 70 per cent. Some like Gap and Ralph Lauren have temporarily stopped ordering for the fall season with no clear view of when stores will reopen. A slew of retailers announced late last month they would have to stop paying a majority of their employees in order to preserve cash, although they would continue to cover their health benefits. A woman, with a face mask, crosses a street with her dog on an empty Park Avenue amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in New York City on April 12 Analysts expect more furloughs to come as retailers scramble to pay their employees from fast-dwindling cash reserves. Labor is the single biggest monthly fixed cost for retailers, according to investment research firm Cowen & Co A closed Macy's retail store location in Wheaton, Maryland Forrester Research retail analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says most mall-based retailers are not embracing services like curbside deliveries, which could help them hold onto at least some sales during the pandemic. She also says they should be creating content online to lure their loyal credit card customers, although she acknowledges they're in survival mode. But even those moves will only go so far to stem the bleeding and many retailers could end up shutting their doors for good. Global brands have been looking to China, which is slowly emerging from the pandemic, to see what the future may hold. Bricks-and-mortar retailers there are gradually reopening but face a possible permanent loss of customers to fast-growing online rivals after millions of families were confined to their homes for months in a country that already is one of the biggest e-commerce markets. E-commerce accounted for 21.5 per cent of retail sales in January and February, up 5 per cent from a year earlier. By contrast, e-commerce was about 10 per cent of last year's U.S. retail spending, according to the Commerce Department. Overall, e-commerce sales in the U.S. soared 38 per cent from March 12 to March 31 compared with its March 1 to March 11 baseline, the week before the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 was a pandemic, according to the most recent numbers by Adobe Analytics. For Lee Walzer, a 56-year-old lawyer from Arlington, Virginia, shopping has been a low priority, whether it's online or in stores. He is only buying the essentials from his local grocery store and on Amazon as he hunkers down and works from home. 'I'm buying food and not much more,' Walzer said. 'Financially, no one knows what the economic landscape is going to look like in the next few months. Suddenly, the world has really shrunk. That is definitely having a big shopping impact for me.' America should brace itself for 18 MONTHS of shutdowns as US economy faces 'long, hard road' to recovery from coronavirus pandemic, Federal Reserve President warns Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari says the US economy is facing a 'long, hard road' ahead as it attempts to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic, warning Americans to brace themselves for 18 months of shutdowns. In an interview on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, Kashkari said projections for a quick economic turnaround were overly optimistic unless a vaccine for COVID-19 became available in the next few months. 'It would be wonderful if some new therapy were developed in the next couple months,' Kashkari said. 'Then potentially we would have a V-shaped recovery' a term which describes a steep market decline followed by a quick resurgence. But Kashkari, who oversaw the U.S.'s Troubled Asset Relief Program implemented in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, gloomily added: '[That] barring some health-care miracle, it seems were going to have various phases of rolling flare ups.' In an interview on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, Kashkari said projections for a quick economic turnaround were overly optimistic unless a vaccine for COVID-19 became available in the next few months Kashkari, who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the U.S. implemented in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, told Americans to brace themselves for 18 months of shutdowns (Pictured: A man crosses the street at a nearly empty Time Square on April 9) Such with a process, according to Kashkari, would involve 'different parts of the economy turning back on, [and] maybe turning back off again,' as part of an 18-month strategy. Looking ahead, Kashkari says he isn't expecting the U.S. economy to bounce back quickly. 'This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine,' he added. 'It's hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario.' A 56-year-old assistant-sub inspector of the Delhi Police has tested positive for coronavirus, police said on Sunday. The ASI is a resident of Shyam Nagar, Okhla Phase-1, they said. He is the third policeman in the national capital who has tested positive for COVID-19, police said. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Devender Arya said, "The assistant sub-Inspector posted at the Safdarjung Enclave police station was tested for coronavirus after he showed symptoms. His reports arrived today wherein he was declared positive." The ASI attended the duty last on April 9 and was on leave since then as he was unwell, a police official said. All the police personnel who came in contact with the ASI have been advised for home quarantine and will be tested for COVID-19, he said. The policeman stays at a four-storey building in Okhla and all his family members and residents of the building will be screened for COVID-19 as a preventive measure, the official said. A letter has been written to hospital authorities for screening and medical examination of his family members as well as neighbours. All of them have been advised for home quarantine and movement of people in the residential area has also been restricted, he said. Earlier, two other Delhi police personnel had tested positive for coronavirus. A 44-year-old head constable, posted in the Foreign Regional Registration Office at the Indira Gandhi International Airport's Terminal 3, and a 49-year-old police official, posted in the traffic unit in Hauz Khas, had tested positive for COVID-19. Also read: Coronavirus: Develop solutions to fight COVID-19 keeping a fixed timeframe in mind, says Harsh Vardhan Also read: Coronavirus update: After Meghalaya, Assam to open liquor shops, bottling plants The official count of those sickened 99, including employees and their contacts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health includes only those who live in that state. The true number across the United States is certainly higher. The first two cases in Indiana were Biogen executives. So was the first known case in Tennessee, and six of the earliest cases in North Carolina. Gareth Brownlee and his daughter Poppy pictured at the new NHS Heroes mural in Glendale Park, Glynn, Co Antrim. PICTURE BY STEPHEN DAVISON Northern Ireland saw a surge in coronavirus deaths over the Easter weekend as hospitals gear up for a week that is expected to test our health system like never before. A further 26 people who tested positive for Covid-19 died in a two-day period as health staff here prepare for the anticipated surge in cases over the coming days. Saturday saw the highest day-on-day increase in coronavirus-related deaths in Northern Ireland thus far with 15 recorded, followed by a further 11 on Sunday. The number of people with coronavirus who have died in hospital here now stands at 118, while confirmed positive tests in the region since the outbreak began rose to 1,806. The UK has recorded 737 new coronavirus-related hospital deaths, taking the total number to 10,612. The UK is the fifth country to surpass 10,000 deaths, following the US, Spain, Italy and France. A further 14 coronavirus-related deaths were announced in the Republic, bringing the total there so far to 334. Let me assure you that everyone across Northern Ireland is proud of you all Robin Swann On Sunday Health Minister Robin Swann paid tribute to health staff, saying they have "moved mountains" to prepare for the expected surge in coronavirus cases. In an open letter Mr Swann thanked staff for their commitment and passion in tackling the Covid-19 crisis. Expand Close Health Minister Robin Swann inspects one of the many face shields being produced by Huhtamaki in west Belfast / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Health Minister Robin Swann inspects one of the many face shields being produced by Huhtamaki in west Belfast He said: "I am very aware of the incredible work pressures you are already under and that you are facing in the immediate future with a mixture of determination, deep anxiety and great pride in the work you and your colleagues are doing. "Let me assure you that everyone across Northern Ireland is proud of you all. "I have personally known for many years just how skilled, committed and, above all, compassionate our health and social care staff are. "Many families across Northern Ireland will have experiences similar to mine, stories that involve staff from all parts of the system going the extra mile, day after day, to deliver the care that patients need." Mr Swann said that the health system has trebled its critical care capacity and freed up almost half of the bed stock. "We have trained hundreds of staff in new roles. We have increased our workforce. We have moved mountains," he added. "We have all seen the reports from Italy and Spain. We have seen the severe impact this virus can have on society. "However, there are some indications that the peak here may potentially be less severe [in] impact than at one time we had feared. "It would seem that the Northern Ireland people have risen to the challenge and that social distancing has reduced the impact of this virus - in this wave. We cannot be certain about this - no modelling can predict the future - but we can acknowledge that the unprecedented social distancing restrictions on all our lives are starting to make an impact. "Obviously, there are no grounds whatsoever for complacency across our community. "We cannot undo the efforts made to date. We all have to dig deep and keep doing the right thing - staying at home, saving lives and protecting the health service. "We also know that there will be very difficult times ahead, particularly for those of you working on the front line." Mr Swann said the actions of health staff mean that people will live who might otherwise have died, adding: "There is nothing more important than this." OTTAWA - Canadian authorities are blaming travel restrictions related to COVID-19 for a request that Iran hold off on downloading the flight recorders from a commercial jetliner shot down in January. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 12/4/2020 (639 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A woman pauses at a makeshift memorial prior to a ceremony in Montreal, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020, to remember those who lost their lives in Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 which was shot down shortly after takeoff in Iran on January 8, 2020. The investigation into Iran's downing of a commercial jetliner that killed dozens of Canadians in January has hit a snag due to COVID-19. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes OTTAWA - Canadian authorities are blaming travel restrictions related to COVID-19 for a request that Iran hold off on downloading the flight recorders from a commercial jetliner shot down in January. The Iranian military shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8. All 176 people on board were killed, including 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents. Canada and other countries who lost citizens in the incident, including Britain, Sweden, Ukraine and Afghanistan, had been pressuring Iran for months to hand over the flight recorders from the doomed flight so their data could be downloaded and analyzed. It is hoped the information from the so-called black boxes will provide a clearer picture of what actually happened and help ensure those Iranian officials responsible are held to account. Yet while Iran's civil aviation organization reached out to affected countries last week to assess when they could send representatives to participate in the process, the head of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada says it simply isn't possible now because of COVID-19. "Everyone is anxious for the download and analysis of the recorders to proceed; this should have happened without delay, shortly after the accident," TSB chair Kathy Fox said in a statement. "However, with COVID-19 and the multiple travel restrictions, travelling to attend the download of the flight recorders is currently not possible and this, for all countries concerned." As a result, she said, Canada and the other countries have asked Iran to postpone downloading and analyzing the flight-recorder data until the restrictions are lifted. "We still expect Iran will carry through with its commitment to have the recorders downloaded and, once conditions improve, we will send our experts to attend the download, wherever this takes place," Fox said. The black boxes have become pivotal to the Iranian-led flight-safety investigation and Ukrainian-led criminal investigation into the downing of Flight 752, which was shot down shortly after takeoff from Tehran on the same night Iran fired a series of missiles at neighbouring Iraq. Iran promised in early March to surrender the flight recorders within two weeks, but missed that deadline. While acknowledging the difficulties posed by COVID-19, Toronto dentist Hamed Esmaeilion, whose wife Parisa and nine-year-old daughter Reera were on the flight, said the international community needs to keep the pressure on Iran to hand over the flight recorders. "The best thing to do is to take the black boxes out of Iran to a third country like France," he told The Canadian Press. Stay informed The latest updates on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 delivered to your inbox every weeknight. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "We don't want to risk anybody's life right now and Canada can send the experts after they are sure nobody is at risk. This is a game Iran plays and I'm sure they are trying to put the ball in other countries' court to buy some time." The federal government's new adviser on Flight 752, former Liberal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale, said last month that Iran could not use COVID-19 as an "excuse" for not handing over the black boxes a position echoed by Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. Champagne's spokesman Adam Austen on Sunday did not respond directly to questions about the request that Iran postpone downloading the flight recorders and instead indicated the government's past statements that they should be processed immediately. "We continue to call on Iran to allow for the black boxes to be downloaded and analyzed in a facility with the capability to do so without delay," Austen said in an email. "Canada will continue to work with the other members of the international coordination group to ensure Iran lives up to its international obligations as we pursue justice for the victims of this horrific tragedy." This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 12, 2020. As the coronavirus pandemic throws millions out of work and devastates economies worldwide, governments are struggling with the delicate balance between keeping people safe from a highly contagious virus and making sure they can still make a living or even have enough to eat. Workers in some nonessential industries were returning to their jobs Monday in Spain, one of the hardest-hit countries in the coronavirus pandemic, while in South Korea, officials were warning that hard-earned progress fighting the virus could be eroded by new infections as restrictions ease. The decisions are complicated because each nation is on its own coronavirus arc, with places like Britain, Japan and parts of the United States still seeing increasing daily levels of deaths or infections; France and New York hoping they are stabilizing, albeit at a high plateau of deaths; and hard-hit nations like Italy and Spain seeing declines in the rates of increase. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government must balance its response to the virus crisis that threatens to destroy lives and at the same time destroy the economic and social fabric of our country. Seeking to restart manufacturing, Spains government is allowing workers to return to some factory and construction jobs. Retail stores and services remain closed and office workers are strongly encouraged to keep working from home. A prohibition on people leaving home for anything other than groceries and medicine will remain for at least two weeks under the state of emergency. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show (Spains) economy is more vulnerable to the crisis since it relies on services like tourism that are severely harmed by the pandemic. That means it will likely have a deeper recession, European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos told Spains La Vanguardia newspaper. Yet some health experts and politicians argue it's premature to ease the lockdown in a nation that has suffered 17,489 deaths and reported 169,496 infections, second only to the United States' 557,000 infections. But Spain on Monday reported its lowest daily growth in infections in three weeks. Italy recorded its lowest daily virus death toll in three weeks at 431, putting its total deaths at over 19,800. In Madrid, Jose Pardinas took a mask being handed out by police as he walked to work at a moving company that was re-starting operations after a three-week halt. The company hasnt given us any protective equipment. Im quite nervous about contracting the virus because my family cant afford more time without an income, Pardinas said. Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan, meanwhile, issued a global plea to the worlds richer countries and international financial institutions to provide debt-relief for poor countries, where forced lockdowns are crippling already troubled economies and causing widespread hunger for the poor. His government has launched an ambitious $8 billion program to help the millions near the poverty level. Khan last week relaxed his country's lockdown to allow the construction industry, which employs the vast majority of Pakistan's daily wage earners, to re-open. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has urged a cautious approach to any loosening of restrictions, will hold a video conference with regional governors Wednesday, after the governor of the state with the most infections called for a road map to return to normality. Armin Laschet, governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, said the willingness for restrictions also needs the prospect of normalization. His government came up with a plan for gradually easing the restrictions imposed on March 22, when public gatherings were limited to only two people. In South Korea, Prime Minster Chung Sye-kyun said officials were discussing new public guidelines that would allow for certain levels of economic and social activity while also maintaining distance to slow the virus' spread. South Koreas caseload has slowed from early March, when it was reporting around 500 new daily cases, but officials have warned of a broader quiet spread'' at locations such as bars, which are still open. President Moon Jae-in vowed Monday to focus on saving jobs and protecting the economy amid a sharp increase in the number of people seeking unemployment benefits. South Koreas vice health minister, Kim Gang-lip, said a quick return to normality was virtually impossible considering the threat of new infections. A premature easing (of social distancing) would come at an irrevocable cost, so we should approach the issue very carefully, and invest deep thought into when and how to transition, Kim said. In Sri Lanka, the government announced plans to reopen schools and universities in May. The pandemic's new epicenter is now the United States, which has seen more than 22,000 deaths, the worlds highest. About half have been in the New York metropolitan area, but hospitalizations are slowing in the state and other indicators suggest lockdowns and social distancing are working. U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said parts of the country could gradually reopen as early as next month. Also read: COVID-19 | How to maximise food security in post-COVID India In Britain, the death toll passed 10,600. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the first major world leader to test positive for the virus, paid an emotional tribute to the countrys National Health Service after leaving the hospital on Sunday. Johnson, who spent three nights in intensive care, especially thanked two nurses who stood by his bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. Japan, the worlds third-biggest economy, has seen new infections climb rapidly and now has 7,255 confirmed cases. Japanese companies have been slow to switch to working remotely and many people are still commuting, even after a state of emergency was declared for seven prefectures, including Tokyo. Also read: 'Force of nature' Kristalina Georgieva leads IMF through coronavirus storm To encourage people to stay home, the Japanese government released a video showing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cuddling his dog, reading a book and clicking a remote control at home but the message drew scathing criticism on social media. Infections also spiked in Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country, where President Joko Widodo pledged to be more transparent about the coronavirus. Last month, Widodo admitted he deliberately held back information about the virus' spread to prevent panic. On Monday, he asked his ministers and the COVID-19 task force to be transparent with the public. Indonesia has 4,557 confirmed infections and 399 deaths, Asia's highest recorded number of fatalities after China. More than 1.8 million coronavirus infections have been reported and over 114,000 people have died worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The figures understate the true size and toll of the pandemic, due to limited testing, uneven counting of the dead and deliberate under-counting by some governments. Dairy farmers in the southern plains of Nepals Mahottari District usually start their daily routines early, milking their cattle and delivering milk cans to nearby collection centers before the milk collection tanks arrive. Vegetable farmers in Mahottari are usually busy during the early morning, too, loading trucks with the fresh harvest that should reach the market as per the schedule. This is the story throughout the country, and this routine ensures that millions of small-scale farming families have their income in hand and can secure basic needs while other millions of people are able to provide nutrition to their families. Dairy farmers in the Mahottari District deliver their milk to a collection center in January 2020. Photo courtesy of Heifer Nepal. But while the whole country is on lockdown, and despite the governments attempt to support food supplies, small-scale farmers cant comprehend how they can continue their livelihoods, which is their only hope. The lockdown started on March 24, and farmers have been forced to throw away their produce, as they have no storage or alternative processing facilities. Most of the farmers are worried that stored feeds have already emptied, and they have no supply to feed their cattle. The worst reality is that they cannot deliver their produce to the market, as transportation is heavily reduced. In reaction, Heifer Nepal has been communicating with the communities but has not yet been able to deliver help, as the strict lockdown ceases all nonessential businesses in the country. Heifer Nepal Program Manager Dipesh Pokharel stays optimistic and said, As the government indicates to alleviate food supplies while maintaining health as a priority, I hope that we will be able to have a discussion with the ministry to acquire approval for limited mobility so that we can rapidly assess the situation and facilitate to create alternative channels to deliver farmers' products to the market and to the families in need as the markets are open and running under heavy security. Small-scale dairy and vegetable farmers in rural areas are distant from most services and markets, yet they strive to harvest and deliver their produce to urban centers in all possible ways. As of the moment, Nepal has only nine confirmed COVID-19 cases, but a pandemic like this can affect those farmers in many ways. The disease is hindering their production and could severely aggravate the whole system that reinforces such small-scale enterprises. Sushila Kumari Mahato, a farmer from Mahottari, produces vegetables as well as 10 liters of milk every day, which may not be collected during the lockdown. Photo courtesy of Heifer Nepal. COVID-19 has affected the global economy, hitting industries, trade, employment and national economies. While small-scale farming may seem small in the overall picture, the damage that is done puts food production at risk while the livelihoods and nutrition of millions of families are in jeopardy. Small-scale farming families and their agriculture production must be safeguarded to keep the local economy intact while the majority of economic activity halts and trade plummets. Story written by Rabin Niraula, knowledge management and communication manager for Heifer Nepal We have something to ask. For the families we serve, this new and changing reality could mean not being able to earn an income, or feed their children. Help us support these families and your gift will be matched doubling the support we can provide. Rebecca Drexel becomes anxious when she nearly touches a restaurant worker or customer. A full-time Postmates driver, she cant avoid daily encounters with people who loosely apply social distancing guidelines during deliveries. I sort of expected people to be a little more hesitant about contact but a surprising number of people will just come up to me, she said. Delivery drivers are among the workers deemed essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, but life for them had changed, too. Even as delivery services add features to minimize person-to-person contact, drivers like Drexel adopt strict sanitizing routines as they shuttle food from restaurants to Houstonians in quarantine. CORONAVIRUS UPDATES: Stay informed with accurate reporting you can trust Drexel, 27, sanitizes her hands two to three times while handling a single order. She also wears a cloth mask, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She said restaurants have made it easier to pick up orders without contact, but its sometimes disconcerting to see food handlers without a mask or some form of medical protection. Drive-thru transactions have also led to close brushes with employees, she said. (Delivering) does put me in contact with a lot of people, probably more people than I even realize, when you think about how many people have handled a bag that Ive picked up Drexel said. But I think I feel more assured when I see other people in restaurants where I pick up food wearing protective material. Understanding the risk Most food delivery services offer help to drivers working during the pandemic, including the option to leave food at customers doors or apartment lobbies. Companies like UberEats, GrubHub and Postmates for two weeks deactivate accounts of drivers who test positive, ensuring they stay away from customers. To help offset lost income, the companies created their own relief funds to compensate those drivers during their quarantine period. UberEats and GrubHub also are among companies sending protective masks to their fleet. The CDC urges ordering food online as long as quarantine orders continue. Theres no evidence that food or food packaging is linked to transmission of the virus, according to the agency, though people should still remain six feet away from delivery drivers. People should also wash their hands for at least 20 seconds after picking up each delivery, the CDC says. In Houston, delivery drivers know the risks, but not all of them work with anxiety. Some, like Shena Carter, are grateful to be employed when so many people have to apply for unemployment. Shes also happy to have a reason to get out of the house. Now Playing: 'COVID-19 in 60': Houston coronavirus news in a minute Video: Houston Chronicle I honestly dont know what I would do if I was truly stuck at home 24/7, said Carter, who drives in the Houston area for multiple delivery companies including GrubHub and UberEats. Still, COVID-19 has forced drivers to adapt. Carter drives around with three bottles of hand sanitizer, which she uses for each delivery. Every night, she uses sanitizing wipes to clean the inside of her car. Shes had to get used to waiting in long drive-thru lines since dining rooms closed. And when she does pick up food at a restaurant, the bags are usually 30 feet away from the nearest employee. Shes also benefited from an uptick in business. The (grocery stores) are very limited, so people are going to eat out as much as they can, she said. Bumps in the road People are more dependent now on delivery services, but the reliance on technology has given way to some frustration for drivers and restaurant owners. Marcos Mazariegos, who primarily drives for DoorDash, said some customers have been trusting drivers to find their front door without leaving a specific address in the system -- or answering the phone. If drivers cant reach a customer, they eventually have to throw out the food. Theyre not putting instructions if they want us to do something specific, he said. Those complications make Nicole Bean, co-owner of Pizaros Pizza, uneasy. She said her business has been operating mostly from pickup orders, but she does use third-party delivery services. Recently, a glitch in one companys system delayed deliveries by two hours, she said. Its very infuriating, because a lot of it is out of our hands, Bean said. We do our best to make sure we get the product prepared, but once the food leaves with a third party ... you dont know if the system is going to crash or if theyve lost the address. Keeping the connection Some local restaurants have repurposed their own servers to work as delivery drivers, in addition to using third-party delivery services. For Harolds Restaurant and Tap Room in the Heights, that means keeping a healthy stock of hand sanitizer in the building to refill drivers personal supply. That also means wiping down delivery bags with disinfectant spray and wearing new gloves with each delivery. Beyond sanitation, the pivot to delivery prompted Harolds to create an online ordering platform on its website with new deals and an altered menu. Owner Alli Jarrett, who is delivering some orders herself, said she is considering making deliveries a more permanent part of the business. So far, during the quarantine period, longtime customers have remained connected from afar, she said. I guess one of the bright lights is when youre delivering to a regular guest and they get to see you and you see them and you have that connection, she said. While it might not be in the restaurant, youre physically seeing each other that part has been affirmation that we do know who our guests are, and they care about us and we care about them. julian.gill@chron.com Infiniti Research's team of industry experts and analysts are constantly monitoring the business impact of the COVID-19 crisis across sectors to help organizations prioritize response, mitigate risk, and continuously monitor the economic adversities on their business. To help companies across sectors to make headway against the adversities of the coronavirus outbreak on business operations, Infinitipresents immediate, impactful, and in-depth insights and action plan to navigate the crisis. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005302/en/ The economic shock resulting from the coronavirus outbreak could pose as multitude of challenges to automotive manufacturers, especially those in Asia as major industrialized economies like South Korea, Japan, and Italy are among the most affected regions due to the pandemic. Furthermore, as a majority of the global auto parts supply chain is connected to China, the production shortfalls and supply chain disruptions in China as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak could have a great impact on automotive manufactures across the globe. For automotive manufacturers, surviving and emerging stronger at the far end of this crisis will require thinking beyond the next fiscal quarter. Tell us how the COVID-19 outbreak is affecting your business outcomes, and we'll get back with tailored solutions to help you minimize the business risks. According to automotive industry experts at Infiniti Research, some of the key considerations for automotive manufacturers right now include: Ensuring employee protection Safeguarding the supply chain Managing manufacturing shutdowns Managing declining vehicle sales For comprehensive insights, read the complete article Automotive companies must develop a rapid response to address the ongoing market challenges due to COVID-19. Our industry experts are helping several companies across the globe achieve this, want more insights? Request a free proposal to know how our experts can help you strategize for business continuity. About Infiniti Research Established in 2003, Infiniti Research is a leading market intelligence company providing smart solutions to address your business challenges. Infiniti Research studies markets in more than 100 countries to help analyze competitive activity, see beyond market disruptions, and develop intelligent business strategies. To know more, visit: https://www.infinitiresearch.com/about-us View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005302/en/ Contacts: Infiniti Research Anirban Choudhury Marketing Manager US: +1 844 778 0600 UK: +44 203 893 3400 https://www.infinitiresearch.com/contact-us A JUDGE has accepted jurisdiction in the case of a woman who is accused of driving over the foot of a garda during an incident last summer. Amanda Hayes, 29, who has an address at Inis Ealga, Shannon, County Clare is accused of recklessly or intentionally endangering the life of the garda at Dock Road, Limerick on July 29, 2019. Ms Hayes also face a number of other road traffic charges including five counts of dangerous driving which relate to a pursuit which is alleged to have taken place on the same date. Judge Marian OLeary was told the garda who was allegedly struck by the defendant sustained soft-tissue injuries and required surgery following the incident. Sergeant Sean Murray said the garda remains off work and is not expected back on duty for a number of months. Opposing a bail application Garda Peter Connolly said he was concerned Ms Hayes would not turn up in court if released. He said she has lived at a number of addresses in recent years and that she does not keep appointments. He told Judge Marian OLeary there is strong evidence in the case and that the he believes the defendant could receive a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. Garda Connolly also expressed concern that Ms Hayes would continue to commit crime if granted bail. Seeking bail on behalf of his client, solicitor Darach McCarthy said the mother-of-three was willing to abide by any bail conditions imposed by the court. He said Ms Hayes is concerned for the health of her family given the current public health crisis as there is a risk. The anxiety huge given the prevailing circumstances with Covid-19, it is a very trying time, he said. Upholding the garda objection, Judge OLeary commented that the charges before the court were very serious. She shouldnt have done what she did, if she did it, she commented. Refusing bail, the judge said that based on the evidence before her she had concerns that Ms Hayes would not turn up if released. World Bank Releases USD 7.6 Million For COVID-19 In South Sudan The health system in South Sudan is extremely fragile and when we see how robust health systems around the world are struggling fighting COVID-19, that makes us worry more for the people of South Sudan, PRESS RELEASE The World Bank releases USD 7.6 million to help respond to the Coronavirus pandemic in South Sudan JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN, 13 APRIL 2020 - The World Bank has released USD 7.6 million to help South Sudan respond to COVID-19. The countrys first case was reported on 5 April 2020, but the preparations started several weeks ago in anticipation of the disease to spread to South Sudan given the scale of the pandemic. Through the UNICEF and World Bank partnership, risk communication efforts will be further scaled up, ensuring the population is aware of the disease, signs and symptoms and how best to prevent transmission. The World Bank funds will also be spent on training of health personnel on effective infection prevention and control and equip them with the necessary personal protection equipment and hand-washing facilities; on improving health screening at points of entry, as well as on psychosocial support services for children. The health system in South Sudan is extremely fragile and when we see how robust health systems around the world are struggling fighting COVID-19, that makes us worry more for the people of South Sudan, said the UNICEF South Sudan representative Mohamed Ag Ayoya. We must do whatever we can to prevent and reduce the spread of the disease, and without the partnership with the World Bank this wouldnt be possible. The activities carried out in partnership with the World Bank, are all part of the endorsed national COVID-19 preparedness and response plan and will be implemented through joint UN efforts, with the UN agencies complementing each other in the COVID-19 preparedness and response plan pillars. "The COVID-19 outbreak is anticipated to overburden South Sudan's weak public health preparedness and response systems and may have a socio-economic impact on South Sudan in terms of increasing food insecurity and deepening poverty and vulnerabilities," said Husam Abudagga, World Bank Country Manager for South Sudan. "The Contingent Emergency Response Implementation Plan (CERIP) will provide emergency funds to help South Sudan to meet critical resource needs as outlined in the COVID-19 national preparedness and response plan." For years, the World Bank has been a great health partner for South Sudan and UNICEF to rebuild and strengthen the health care system so that the most vulnerable are reached. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange secretly fathered two children with one of his lawyers while he evaded espionage and rape charges inside London's Ecuadoran Embassy, Assange's partner said in court documents and a video posted Saturday by WikiLeaks and The Daily Mail. The couple conceived 2-year-old Gabriel and 1-year-old Max as Assange was wanted in the United States for leaking classified intelligence materials and in Sweden for rape allegations, an attorney for Assange confirmed Sunday. Assange's partner, Stella Moris, said she revealed the relationship because she wants 48-year-old Assange released from the London prison where he landed after the Ecuadoran Embassy rescinded his political asylum a year ago. Moris, a Swedish national living in London, said in the video and a statement submitted to a British court that she is worried about Assange as the coronavirus pandemic spreads in prison populations. Moris said Assange's health is already precarious because of a lung condition as well as mental health challenges after extended isolation. "I make this statement now only because our lives are on the brink and I fear that Julian could die," Moris said in the statement filed with the court in support of an application Assange's attorneys submitted to have him released on bail. She said "he may himself die as a result of increased risk of exposure." Westminster Magistrates Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused his bail request on March 25. Since then, one prisoner in the high-security Belmarsh prison, where Assange is being held, has died after contracting the virus, according to a tweet by BBC correspondent Danny Shaw. It is unclear whether Assange's legal team will make a second bail request. Assange is challenging an extradition request by the United States, which wants the 48-year-old Australian to stand trial in federal court in Virginia on charges that he violated the Espionage Act. Prosecutors allege that the anti-secrecy activist helped obtain and disseminate hundreds of thousands of pages of secret military documents and diplomatic cables regarding U.S. action in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, Assange helped Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, hack into government computers. It is unclear whether his attorneys will seek to augment their argument against Assange's extradition by referencing his ties to Moris and their children. The right to respect for one's "private and family life," under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, has been cited in past extradition cases in Britain. Moris said she went "to great lengths to shelter our children from the climate that surrounds him," and that "Julian has respected my wish for privacy and has sought to protect me for many years from the harm of his immediate environment and the glare of the media." Jennifer Robinson, a longtime counsel for Assange, said Moris "has not taken this decision lightly, having fiercely protected her family's privacy for many years." "She wanted to speak in support of Julian's bail application given the grave risk to his health in prison during the covid pandemic and the judge refused her anonymity," Robinson said. The Ecuadoran Foreign Ministry and U.S. officials declined to comment. Morris says in the video released Saturday that she fell in love with Assange after meeting him in 2011 and joining his international legal team, which led her to spend "almost every single day" in the embassy. "This is a person that I knew well by then," Morris said. "A person I know better than most in this world." In the video, she flips through photos of the children, a cat beside her, remarking at one point that the older boy resembles Assange: "Very Julian." The children, both British citizens, have visited their father in Belmarsh, according to The Daily Mail, which also reports that Assange watched his children's births over video and that he was able to secretly meet Gabriel in the embassy. Moris says on video that she suspected surveillance targeting her children when a guard told her someone was trying to steal one son's DNA. The Daily Mail said Moris and Assange think American intelligence was behind the attempt. Assange has argued that he is being unfairly prosecuted as a whistleblower. "I realized that I couldn't really protect my family," Morris says. "I understood that the powers that were against Julian were ruthless and had . . . no bounds to it." Assange was quickly arrested on a hacking charge after Ecuador ended his asylum last year, accusing its years-long guest of rule-breaking and "discourteous and aggressive behavior." U.S. prosecutors confirmed in 2018 that they had secretly charged him with conspiring with Manning to illegally obtain secret documents, which WikiLeaks published online. - - - The Washington Post's William Booth, Ana Vanessa Herrero, James McAuley and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report. New Delhi: India has registered a strong protest with Islamabad after Pakistan Maritime Security Agency's (PMSA) vessel attacked 2 Indian fishing boats on Sunday (April 12, 2020). The incident took place at the international maritime border at the Gujarat coast. The vessel attacked 2 Indian fishing boats -- Omkar and Mahasagar. The incident resulted in injuring one of the Indian fishermen. The ministry of external affairs in a note verbale condemned the "deplorable and unprofessional act" by PMSA vessel, calling it a contravention of international laws. New Delhi in the note verbale asked Pakistan to desist from such acts. Pakistan Maritime Security Agency is a uniform service branch within the Pakistan Navy and looks after the country's maritime interests. Earlier on Monday, India demarched Pakistan over the killing of three of its civilians in ceasefire violations. Pakistan in ceasefire violation on April 12 in Chowkibal and Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir had killed three Indian civilians including a woman and a child. India in its demarche said, that killing goes beyond "humanitarian norms and professional military conduct" and called on Islamabad to "desist from such acts immediately." Pakistan in ceasefire violation had killed 34-year-old Shamima Begum, 17-year-old Javid Ahmad Khan of Reddi Chowkibal and a 8-year old Zeeshan Bashir, resident of Tumna. Even as the world is coming together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan has been increasingly belligerent and trying their best to increase tension in the region. There have been continuous ceasefire violations over the past few months from Pakistan's side. Oil demand is down by more than double the 9.7 million barrels-a-day OPEC+ has agreed to cut. Estimates put the excess daily production of oil as high as 33 million barrels. OPINION: By James DiGeorgia, The financial markets are being gaslighted by OPEC+ once again. With as many as 33 million barrels of excess daily production, storage facilities around the world filled, and hundreds of oil tankers acting as floating storage facilities OPEC+ with the help of conman President Trump are trying to boost the price of oil by cutting just 9.7 million barrels a day in production. The production cuts agreed to by Saudi Arabia, Russia and the other countries that make up OPEC+ are set to last for about two years but will start dropping in just two months. OPEC+ is copying the approach by central banks to taper off their bond-buying with their oil production cuts by reducing the size of the reductions over time. After June, the 9.7 million barrel cut will be tapered to 7.6 million a day until the end of the year, and then to 5.6 million through 2021 until April 2022. The deal is being called historical and is being described by OPEC+ and President Trump as putting an end to the devastating price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The truth is the deal amounts to a complete farce. Oil consumption has dropped between 26% and 33% since the global pandemic has shut down much of the worlds oil-consuming economies. Economists are warning that even if the United States and the rest of the world were opened for business on June 1, 2020, the world economy would likely sustain a 20% loss in GNP. Thats a depression that will likely continue to mean daily oil production will out produce demand with these cuts between 16% to 20%. So when Ed Morse, a veteran oil watcher who is head of commodities research at Citigroup, calls this agreement in an interview with Bloomberg Unprecedented measures for unprecedented times, hes literally gaslighting his clients and the investors into believing that oil will either hold its current pricing of $23 for light sweet oil and $31 for Crude. Earlier this year, crude oil traded above $70 a barrel. The deal could push up the market or hold its current price for a few days, but the reality of the supply-demand imbalance will still exist. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told Bloomberg News in an interview minutes after the deal was clinched Im more than happy with the deal, he added. OPEC+ ministers had to race onto a video conference call on Easter Sunday, less than four hours before the oil market reopened, to close the deal. We have demonstrated that OPEC+ is up and alive. Even though Moscow and Riyadh put their differences aside to reach this oil production deal, the biggest winner appears to be President Trump, who refused and could not legally cut American oil production. Trump personally brokered the deal over phone calls with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and King Salman of Saudi Arabia and has contributed to trying to maintain artificially high oil prices. Trump on call with Putin: Russia, Saudi Arabia are close to a deal In working to maintain the artificially high prices of oil, Trump has become the first United States president to push literally for higher oil prices in more than 30 years. Reversing his opposition, and virtually all previous presidents objections to the OPEC cartel. Jason Bordoff, a former White House official during the Obama administration and now at Columbia University, said Perhaps whats most remarkable about Saudi Arabia and Russia delivering one of the largest supply cuts ever is that the person who brought them back together and pressured hardest to cut was historically OPECs harshest critic, President Trump. Trump told reporters at the White House last week I hated OPEC. You want to know the truth? I hated it. Because it was a fix, But somewhere along the line that broke down and went the opposite way. The truth is this is still an artificially price fixed market that is in the process of collapsing because it is an attempt to price fix when demand is nose-diving around the world. Trumps change of opinion, according to his critics, is because Vladimir Putin and the Crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud have enough on him to put him away in Leavenworth for 20 years to life. So will the oil market respond to this OPEC+ deal? Will it be enough to throw a floor under prices as demand for oil continues to crater? On Thursday, as the possible terms of the OPEC+ agreement became public, oil prices in New York fell more than 9% as traders thought the cuts werent large enough. Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd. Was quoted by Bloomberg on Sunday as saying, OPEC itself acknowledged the challenge, with its chief warning ministers demand fundamentals were horrifying and demand is down by more than double the 9.7 million barrels-a-day cut agreed. James Davidson, a world-famous economist, author of many books on the U.S. economy and editor of the Strategic Investment newsletter, believes that crude oil should be trading at less than $12 a barrel and U.S. Sweet Oil should be selling for less than $10 barrel. Having written the Global War for Oil: $100 and how to profit by it and being a long term oil bull for much of my life, I have to admit Im now in agreement with James Davidson. The 9.7 million barrel cut agreed to by OPEC+ isnt going to hold up the price oil even if its members dont cheat. The cuts are too small and are being phased out too quickly. Any rally we see in oil during the next few days will be fleeting. OPEC+ agree to record oil-production cut (RNS) Its difficult to look at the packed Sunday service at Joel Osteens Lakewood Church in Houston capacity 16,800 and imagine that it could ever have a cash flow problem. But as Lakewood, along with Hillsong, Willow Creek, Saddleback and other prosperous megachurches in the United States, has closed its campus for the next few weeks or months out of concern for spreading COVID-19, its finances bear monitoring to see how they withstand this abrupt disruption to their weekly rituals. The fact is that many large congregations sheer size masks a fragility that only emerges in times of crisis. The larger the gathering of worshippers, the more these places depend on the volunteering, recruitment and, of course, offerings they glean each week. What will happen when our current pandemic prohibits their most essential function? For some, the loss of public assembly may not matter much. It will become a part of the folklore of the organization. For others, though, the COVID-19 pandemic will likely be pointed to as the moment when they realized just how brittle their church actually is or was. Back in the early 2000s, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, author of The Be Happy Attitudes and Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do!, pastored a spiritual juggernaut: His Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, California, one of the largest churches in the country, stood as one of the most recognizable ministries in America. His Sunday morning broadcast, Hour of Power, had run uninterrupted for over three decades. But the 2008 financial crisis the one that gave us the phrase too big to fail was Schullers Waterloo. Nearly 50 years of building after building leveraged on big donations and even bigger loans had become a template for continual expansion. Schuller was so confident in the future of his church that he had commissioned a $50 million stainless steel-clad Welcoming Center designed by world-renowned architect Richard Meier. It was an architectural flourish so futuristic that it would serve as the headquarters for Star Fleet during the filming of Star Trek: Into Darkness. By 2010, however, the megachurch filed for bankruptcy. This came as a shock to those who considered Schuller a model for congregational growth and stability. His philosophy had fueled much of the Church Growth Movement, emphasizing the building of ever-larger facilities to accommodate expected surges in attendance, while depending on ever-larger loan obligations to fill the financial gap between current and expected future revenue. But in the first years of the 21st century, structural forces had begun to undermine Schuller. As he continued to build expensive, architecturally aggressive buildings, the growth of Southern Californias demographics shifted, while the transition to younger pastoral leadership, the accumulated weight of costs for staffing, maintenance and loan servicing, proved too much. His glass church shattered. The ministry eventually sold its iconic building to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. Adding to the ignominy, Schuller ended up suing his own ministry. The demise of Schullers church shows how an abrupt financial downturn can place unexpected pressure on ministry budgets and exert enormous pressure on pastors to reinforce the spark of charismatic excitement. The need for fresh flows of capital means a constant influx of people committed to the congregation, which, history suggests, depends on the force of communal excitement and face-to-face experiences. We are not surprised when smaller religious groups budgets are stretched, but megachurches, with their higher overhead investments and social profiles, tend to teeter more than we realize. In fact, megachurches, with their dependence on ambition and highly leveraged growth, may be vulnerable in ways that more modest organizations arent. When contingent events interrupt the rhythms and habits of congregational life, the consequences can be catastrophic. Financial strains that had existed for years will result in desperate (and often failed) fundraising initiatives and last-minute (often disadvantageous) selling of property. The COVID-19 pandemic is a good time for all religious organizations to take stock of their tithing practices, their debt as well as member recruitment, integration and sense of belonging. All will be challenged in the months to come. (Mark Mulder is professor of sociology at Calvin University and Gerardo Marti is professor of sociology at Davidson College. Their book, The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry, will be published in April 2020. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service or Christian Headlines.) READ THIS STORY AT RELIGIONNEWS.COM Article originally published by Religion News Service. Used with permission. Photo courtesy: Religion News Service/Creative Commons Mark Mulder is professor of sociology at Calvin University and Gerardo Marti is professor of sociology at Davidson College. Their book, The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry, will be published in April 2020. Advertisement Real Housewives stars from across the country have teamed up to auction off gowns they've worn to reunion episodes in order to raise funds for healthcare workers who are on the coronavirus frontlines, DailyMail.com can reveal. Former Real Housewives of Miami cast member Ana Quincoces, a lawyer and CEO of lifestyle brand Skinny Latina, launched the effort over Instagram last Tuesday, reaching out to her old co-stars and women from other franchises. She said: 'Like many of us, I found myself with some free time on my hands and while organizing my closet happened upon my reunion dress. 'It dawned on me that many of the ladies from all the different franchises must have dresses that they would be willing to donate. 'Little by little, Housewives from all different cities have agreed to donate dresses. Andy Cohen reached out to let me know he thought it was a great idea and that Bravo would help me in this endeavor.' Among the women cleaning out their closets are Denise Richards, of Beverly Hills; Monique Samuels, of Potomac; and Ex Real Housewives of New Jersey's Dina Cantin (formerly Manzo) and several others. Real Housewives stars from across the country have teamed up to auction off gowns they've worn to reunion episodes in order to raise funds for healthcare workers who are on the coronavirus frontlines, DailyMail.com can reveal. Former Real Housewives of Miami cast member Ana Quincoces (center), a lawyer and CEO of lifestyle brand Skinny Latina, launched the effort over Instagram last Tuesday She reached out to her fellow Miami Housewives alum and others from other franchises, telling DailyMail.com: 'Little by little Housewives from all different cities have agreed to donate dresses. Andy Cohen reached out to let me know he thought it was a great idea and that Bravo would help me in this endeavor' Denise Richards, of Beverly Hills, will be donating a dress (pictured at her first reunion). She said: 'My sister works at a hospital. Healthcare workers and first responders are the heroes' Real Housewives of Potomac star Monique Samuels reached into her closet immediately. 'Our healthcare workers are our soldiers right now and I'm forever grateful for the role they're playing in our survival of this pandemic. They need our support now more than ever! I'm donating my season 4 reunion dress made by Australian designer Galanni (pictured)' Quincoces is waiting for all the dresses to arrive before the auction goes live, but she's aiming for it to happen sometime in April and, after discussing with Bravo bosses, a specific beneficiary or beneficiaries will be named. She said: 'The idea is to create a fund to help healthcare workers, first responders and their families. The money that is collected and its disbursement will be very transparent. You know, like me.' Denise Richards had a personal reason for getting involved, telling DailyMail.com: 'My sister works at a hospital. Healthcare workers and first responders are the heroes.' 'They work tirelessly and selflessly to keep everyone else healthy and safe while risking their lives and families. This has affected everyone globally and it's important for us to come together and help as much as we can.' Real Housewives of Potomac star Monique Samuels reached into her closet immediately. 'I'm so excited about what Ana is doing and even happier to participate,' she said. 'Our healthcare workers are our soldiers right now and I'm forever grateful for the role they're playing in our survival of this pandemic. They need our support now more than ever! I'm donating my season 4 reunion dress made by Australian designer Galanni.' Emily Simpson, from Real Housewives of Orange County, said she had no issues parting with her season 14 reunion dress (pictured). 'I didn't hesitate one second to donate my dress to Ana to raise funds for those affected by the current pandemic. I'm happy to help in any way I can so that we can beat this pandemic together,' Simpson said Ex Real Housewives of New Jersey's Dina Cantin (formerly Manzo), is also on board. 'I'm honored to help support healthcare workers during this challenging time. My heart goes out to everyone on the front lines. A special heartfelt thank you to everyone taking care of our parents in assisted living facilities and long-term care,' Cantin said Quincoces is waiting for all the dresses to arrive before the auction goes live, but she's aiming for it to happen sometime in April and, after discussing with Bravo bosses, a specific beneficiary or beneficiaries will be named Emily Simpson, from Real Housewives of Orange County, said she had no issues parting with her season 14 reunion dress. 'I didn't hesitate one second to donate my dress to Ana to raise funds for those affected by the current pandemic. I'm happy to help in any way I can so that we can beat this pandemic together,' Simpson said. Ex Real Housewives of New Jersey's Dina Cantin (formerly Manzo), is also on board. 'I'm honored to help support healthcare workers during this challenging time. My heart goes out to everyone on the front lines. A special heartfelt thank you to everyone taking care of our parents in assisted living facilities and long-term care,' Cantin said. Former Beverly Hills housewife Joyce Giraud de Ohoven says she joined the Bravo franchise in its fourth season for charitable purposes to begin with, adding: 'Giving back has always been something very important for me as I grew up very humble in my beautiful Puerto Rico.' Former Beverly Hills housewife Joyce Giraud de Ohoven (left) says she joined the Bravo franchise in its fourth season for charitable purposes to begin with, adding: 'Giving back has always been something very important for me as I grew up very humble in my beautiful Puerto Rico.' 'In this war with a virus so powerfully inhuman, we are reminded of how vulnerably human we are, how truly connected as a species we are, and how we must support each other in every possible way to win this battle,' alum Adriana de Moura (right) said Fellow Miami castmates Karent Sierra (left) and Joanna Krupa (right) agree. 'In these trying times, we see and realize what really matters. Coming together to help one another is what will help us get through this,' Sierra said She continued: 'My charity is actually the reason why I joined the Housewives in the first place as I wanted to create awareness for my school in Senegal, Africa. 'I believe that it is our duty to help those in need and the less fortunate. Right now, our true heroes, our stars are the healthcare workers who need us so they can continue to help us and care for our peers. 'I think this is a wonderful initiative where everyone can help and on top of it, they get a beautiful dress in return!' Quincoces' former Miami co-stars were quick to join in, too. 'In this war with a virus so powerfully inhuman, we are reminded of how vulnerably human we are, how truly connected as a species we are, and how we must support each other in every possible way to win this battle,' alum Adriana de Moura said. Fellow Miami castmates Karent Sierra and Joanna Krupa agree. 'In these trying times, we see and realize what really matters. Coming together to help one another is what will help us get through this,' Sierra said. Krupa added: 'We all need to get together and selflessly care for others during this tough time and give back to the true heroes that are risking their lives on a daily basis to keep us safe.' SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) A major California labor union that claimed to have discovered a stockpile of 39 million masks for health care workers fighting the coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam uncovered by FBI investigators, according to a newspaper report Sunday. Investigators stumbled onto the scheme while looking into whether they could intercept the masks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Defense Production Act, the U.S. attorneys office said Friday. The federal government has been quietly seizing supplies across the country as the outbreak spreads. But in this case, there was no warehouse, and there were no masks to seize, the Los Angeles Times reported. City catch: What you might hook while urban fishing in Houston U.S. Attorney Scott Brady told the Times that investigators tracked the tip back to a Pittsburgh businessman, who said he had been working with the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West to secure millions of masks. The businessman had been using WhatsApp to connect with a broker in Australia and a supplier in Kuwait, who are both now the target of a federal investigation, Brady said. The union, known as SEIU, and the Pittsburgh businessman are not under investigation and both appear to be among a string of middlemen who were fooled, Brady said. On HoustonChronicle.com: Coronavirus Expert: Now's the time when you're at greatest risk' There are opportunists who are looking for any victim, he said. The promise of 39 million masks was first made public March 26, when the union announced it had found the stockpile after 48 hours of frantic phone calls pursuing leads on potential suppliers. The announcement by the union was widely covered by major media outlets and listed several hospital systems and government agencies as buyers. Behind the scenes, the deal quickly unraveled. Buyers said they failed to receive reliable information about where they could inspect the shipments. At one point, the Australian broker told the middleman in Pittsburgh that 2 million masks were located in a warehouse in Georgia and that the product had been inspected by a particular certification company. That, Brady said, was also part of the ruse. No money was exchanged in the attempts to finalize a deal, according to Brady. Experts in the global supply chain say dubious brokers and suppliers have flooded the market with suspect offers, creating an atmosphere of confusion and distrust just as hospitals are trying to stock up on the gear doctors and nurses need to protect themselves from the virus. Steve Trossman, spokesman for SEIU-UHW, told the Times that union officials had been trying to find equipment for members, and the group had no financial interest in any transactions. As far as we knew, he had legitimate masks, Trossman said of the supplier, and the people who were going to purchase those masks were going to fully vet it and check it out and do their due diligence. Brady said federal investigators had reason to suspect the arrangement. The 39 million masks were advertised as N95 masks from 3M, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer. But 3M told federal investigators it manufactured only 20 million such masks last year, making that large of a stockpile unlikely unless the product was counterfeit. A court here sent Jamia Coordination Committee media coordinator Safoora Zargar to two-day police custody, two days after she was arrested in connection with an anti-CAA protest here. Zargar, an MPhil student of Jamia Millia Islamia, was arrested by the local police on Saturday in connection with protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in northeast Delhi's Jaffrabad in February. A senior police officer said that during investigation by the local police (who arrested her on Saturday) some facts emerged and they have to be corroborated with the ongoing probe by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police. The Special Cell obtained a production warrant from a city court where she was produced by the local police. The court sent her to two-day police custody, her lawyer said. She is now in the custody of Delhi Police Special Cell. Zargar has been accused of obstructing the road near Jaffrabad metro station in February during an anti-CAA stir, police said. In the first week of April, the Special Cell arrested a student of Jamia Milia Islamia for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to incite communal riots in northeast Delhi. Meeran Haider (35), a PhD student at Jamia, is the president of RJD youth wing's Delhi unit. Following the protest at Jaffrabad metro station, clashes broke out between pro and anti-CAA agitators in the area in February-end that snowballed into a communal riot in northeast Delhi that claimed 53 lives and injured over 200 people. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) [CCP Virus] How the World Is Being Manipulated By Covid 19 Propaganda From ChinaMichael Waller Asim Alis recent article in The Print expressing fears of a Muslim apartheid in the wake of COVID-19 is a decades-old, classic approach of creating the image of Muslims as the 'other' and playing the victim card. This approach seeks to absolve the community of responsibility for any wrongful act by any of its members. At the present time, every Muslim needs to stand against the Tablighi Jamaat, and vehemently denounce its heinous act of criminality. This would contribute to restoring mutual faith amongst communities. However, grandstanding of the kind in the article mentioned above, which blames the media for the marginalisation of Muslims, is an ostrich-like approach to a real threat in front of the country. It's time to call a spade a spade. The Muslims in India are caught in a quagmire and they have only the Tablighi Jamaat to blame. The Tablighi Jamaat's congregation in Delhi was an outright criminal act, bereft of any social responsibility. The organisation has not only risked the lives of its members, but has also put at risk the health of others across the country. It is pertinent to note that the Tablighi Jamaat is not the sole representative of Indian Muslims and its action should not be linked with the larger Muslim community. The organisation preaches a narrow interpretation of Islam to the poorer sections of Muslim society. On the other hand, several Muslim social organisations in India have been critical of incorrect practices within the community. Labelling the entire Muslim community would be anti-national is unjust and goes against our democratic values. At the same time, it would be naive to dismiss all criticism of Islamic practices as Islamophobia. Instead, all Muslims should unequivocally condemn the Tablighi Jamaat and dissociate themselves from it. Muslims in India are, by and large, a marginalised community. This marginalisation has been a political issue for decades. Muslims in India have lacked a progressive political leadership which can guide and nurture them. This is evident from official data on the share of Muslims in higher education in the country. The share of Muslims in higher education in India is extremely low, government figures reveal. According to an all-India survey on higher education, Muslims constituted only 5 percent of students in higher education in 2017-18, although the community accounts for about 14 percent of the total population. Further, the share of Muslim teachers in higher education is only 4.9 percent. Further, as per a survey, in northern India, the average enrolment of Muslims in non-minority universities is around 1-3 per cent. In such a scenario, it would be wishful thinking to expect proportional representation of Muslims in government jobs. Unless political and community leaders prioritise education, we will, sadly, see organisations like the Tablighi Jamaat flourish. It is imperative for the Union government to hold the Tablighi Jamaat and its leaders responsible. At the same time, Muslims of India must unite against such malicious organisations, and come together on issues like education and greater representation in nation-building. "This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine. Its hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario," said the Indian origin Kashkari in an interview with CBS. He said that the US should be looking at an 18-month strategy for the economy and health care system based on how other countries have responded to the pandemic. A swift recovery is unlikely unless there is a "some health-care miracle", noted Kashkari, adding that the focus should now be on "finding ways of getting the people who are healthy, who are at lower risk back to work and then providing the assistance to those who are most at risk, who are going to need to be quarantined or isolated for the foreseeable future." The sobering outlook from Kashkari comes at a time when the US has already endured more than 16 million job losses in the past three weeks. Earlier this month, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had called for a nationwide shutdown in the US, when the number of COVID-19 cases had surpassed 2,00,000 in the country. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show The number of COVID-19 cases has now surpassed the half-million mark in the US, with 22,115 deaths. The country is still not under a federal lockdown even in high viral load states such as New York, which emerged as the epicentre of the pandemic in late March. Gates explained that businesses need to remain shut until the numbers of reported cases start to go down across the country, which, according to him, could take at least 10 weeks. A nursery worker who was waiting for a life-saving liver operation has died after being taken off the transplant list when she tested positive for coronavirus in hospital. Katie Horne, from Burgess Hill, was admitted around four weeks ago with a severe liver condition. The 21-year-old from West Sussex went to Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath where it became apparent she needed a transplant. Katie Horne (pictured) from Burgess Hill was taken off the transplant list when she tested positive for coronavirus She was then transferred to King's College Hospital in London, where she tested positive for coronavirus, her sister Emma told the BBC. Ms Horne then wasn't able to go on the transplant list and struggled with both the liver condition and coronavirus for 12 days. She was not using a ventilator during her stay. Her death comes as: Britain's death toll rose by 737 to surge past 10,000 with one expert warning it was set to be the highest in Europe; It emerged the Cabinet is split over when to end the lockdown, with growing concerns about the impact of school closures; Michael Gove revealed he had been granted special dispensation to have his daughter tested for the virus so he could get back to work; The Archbishop of Canterbury urged that the dead be treated with dignity; Ministers admitted that only 4,200 of 300,000 small firms had been given loans; The Royal College of Nursing told its members to refuse to treat patients if they didn't have adequate protective clothing; Some Britons flouted lockdown rules and were seen soaking up the sun in the nation's parks; Health Secretary Hancock said he did not have any update on how many NHS staff had died following the 19 he confirmed on Saturday; The Queen stressed the importance of maintaining the coronavirus lockdown, but insisted: 'Easter isn't cancelled; indeed, we need Easter as much as ever'. All organ donors are tested for coronavirus with transplants from infected patients being stopped to minimise risk. Since the measures came in on March 31, the NHS have prevented some life-saving organs from being transplanted to recipients to stop the spread of the virus. Donations are not known to transmit the killer bug, but transplant recipients are immuno-suppressed to prevent organ rejection. Ms Horne's family say they are 'completely devastated' by her death after he life ended on Saturday. Emma wants her 'bubbly' sister's tragic death to be a 'wake-up call' for people to take the pandemic seriously. She said: 'People need to understand how serious this is.' Speaking about her sister, she said: 'If anyone needed anything, you could always count on Kate to be there. She was so full of life and happy. We just can't believe it we are absolutely devastated.' Her heartbroken boyfriend, Jamie Carter, shared his sorrow on Facebook, writing: 'It's with great sadness that we have to inform all of Kate's friends that she sadly passed away this morning at 5.45am of a short illness and contributing to her death is this devastating coronavirus. She will always be loved and will forever be in our hearts.' Tilly Carter, a friend of Katie's, also wrote on Facebook: 'Heaven gained another angel. She will always be loved and will forever be in our hearts.' Hundreds of gravely ill Britons waiting for organ transplants fear they could die in self-isolation because procedures have largely been stopped because of coronavirus. Hospitals have started suspending the life-saving surgery in a desperate attempt to free up beds with operations down from around 80-a-week to less than ten, it was reported on Thursday. Health bosses have warned that the high-risk operations could be scrapped entirely within days as the NHS prepares for a larger surge coronavirus cases. A shortage of NHS workers and lack of critical care beds have already seen some hospitals suspend the procedures. Though partly-driven by a desire to protect patients' health, it will leave many facing an increased risk of death. Ana-Rose Thorpe, 29, from Manchester, who is waiting for a liver transplant, says the issue is a 'matter of life and death' for her because her health is deteriorating at home. People who undergo organ transplants are immuno-suppressed which leaves them at risk of picking up disease (stock image) She told the BBC: 'Having to go into hospital while there are coronavirus patients there is very worrying. This is a window of opportunity for a transplant without the coronavirus. Whilst my body could withstand the transplant, the longer I'm not being monitored, not being seen as often as I was, the longer I leave it, I could just get sicker and sicker. 'I feel like it's patients that are already on the transplant list, patients waiting for other operations, we have just been swept aside. It's not any fault of the NHS, no-one can help what is going on. 'They are trying to make it safe for us but we are still terrified of going into hospital. It's my life - it is a matter of life and death'. NHS Blood and Transplant said hospitals are having their capacity to carry out donations and transplants affected under the strain of coronavirus. However, the NHS urges blood donors to continue making appointments as long as they are 70 or under Professor John Forsythe, Medical Director for Organ Donation at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: 'As the situation with COVID-19 is ever changing across the country, so is the picture regarding donation and transplantation. 'Some transplant units have made the difficult decision to close their transplant programmes for now. 'This to support the NHS in treating COVID-19 patients and other patients needing intensive care. 'Every potential organ donor on an Intensive Care Unit is being tested for the virus and if someone has COVID-19 they will not be able to donate. 'NHS capacity to deal with COVID-19 at this time and the safety of organ donation and patients in need of a transplant is paramount. 'Ensuring the safety of organ donation and transplantation during this pandemic is creating substantial challenges.' Lifesaving organ transplants are still going ahead on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of local units' clinical staff. Blood donations are being encouraged despite the lockdown as they are deemed vital to vulnerable people. Donors who have had coronavirus or have self-isolated are able to give blood just 14 days after their symptoms have settled. Those who have had contact with a confirmed case of the virus can still donate as long as they are symptom-free. However, donors above the age of 70 have been asked to stay at home, in line with government guidelines. More people with medical conditions - making them particularly vulnerable to coronavirus - are being added to the Government's shielding programme, the chief medical officer for England said this week. Professor Chris Whitty said medical specialists and GPs had helped identify additional patients who were not initially included in the high-risk group, who need special protection amid the coronavirus pandemic. A woman with type 1 diabetes who was awaiting a life-saving kidney transplant last month revealed her operation was been 'suspended' as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Lara Wahab, 32, of London, has lived with her condition for 25 years after being diagnosed when she was seven. She told how she's nearly gone blind, suffered from a bone infection and been hospitalised for a month as a result of her debilitating condition. Lara was informed in April last year that her kidneys are failing and was put forward for an SPK - simultaneous kidney pancreas - transplant, which involves waiting for a deceased donor who would need to be the perfect match for her. Lara Wahab, 32, of London, has type 1 diabetes and is awaiting a life-saving kidney transplant But following the outbreak of the coronavirus, her operation is now on hold due to a lack of beds in intensive care units and her surgery being consider 'considered 'non-urgent elective'. Lara, an account manager at advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, is urging the government not to 'forget' about patients like her when putting measures in place to combat Covid-19. She added that living with a chronic illness can make you feel 'invisible' and called on people to show kindness and check in with friends and relatives during this difficult time. 'I'm still looking for answers as to how they can define a life-saving operation such as my kidney transplant as 'non-urgent elective' surgery,' Lara wrote in Huff Post. Lara has lived with her condition for 25 years after being diagnosed when she was seven 'Waiting for an operation of such magnitude is difficult. Waiting for the waiting to start again, with no idea on timeframe is unbearable. 'Will I still have a chance to find love? Will I see my sister achieve her dreams? Will I be around to support my family in times of need? Will I see my friends get married and have children? Will I live, or will I die?' Lara acknowledged that the NHS needs to take drastic measures to handle the coronavirus crisis, and praised frontline workers for the work they're doing to contain it. 'Our wonderful NHS workers can only do so much without the support and resources that are required to deliver the care system necessary not to endanger lives,' she said. Lara told how she's nearly gone blind, suffered from a bone infection and been hospitalised for a month as a result of her debilitating condition 'But, sometimes, living with a chronic illness can make you feel invisible. We carry on with daily lives hiding our internal struggles, constantly striving for normality, while our necessary care and treatment is cancelled left, right and centre. 'I want people to know that this is the real fallout of a virus like this.' Speaking about the day she was told her kidneys are failing, Lara recalled initially feeling 'angry and anxious' about missing work. Having struggled to come to terms with her diabetes, which has 'denied her' of so much over the years, Lara said she felt 'numb, confused and without hope' that it was now taking away her vital organs and threatening her life. Lara acknowledged that the NHS needs to take drastic measures to handle the coronavirus crisis, and praised frontline workers for the work they're doing to contain it Sharing this photo as part of an Instagram post about living with type 1 diabetes, Lara captioned it: 'This is what happens when you hit a vein while applying a freestyle libre' She was strongly advised to go for a pancreas transplant which would simultaneously address her kidney failure, meaning her diabetes would not threaten her new kidney. 'The thought of living out some of my life without type 1 diabetes seemed like nirvana as if I was able to go back to my seven-year-old self, and tell her that everything was going to be okay,' she said. 'I felt incredibly lucky honoured to be given this second chance.' After three months of rigorous testing and being accepted onto the double organ list, Lara likened the feeling of waiting for the phone call telling her an organ had come available to living on a knife's edge, 'surviving just long enough' to make it. 'There have been a few wobbles over the last six months on whether to accept a donation from my mum or stick out the wait, but time and time again, my amazing care team have convinced me that the long-term benefits of the operation will be worth the crippling anxiety,' she said. 'Then, a plot twist: coronavirus.' Lara said she started to fear the worst in December, knowing that when the virus hit the UK, the fact she had type 1 diabetes and end-stage chronic kidney disease meant she would be in the vulnerable category. She logged onto her patient portal and made the agonising discovery that her transplant status had changed to suspended. Lara contacted her care team and was told all SPK transplants and kidney transplants are being suspended for the time being, which 'rippled through her like a shockwave'. She received a letter the following day citing the limited number of ICU beds and the potential risk to other patients should it go ahead. Lara said in this period of self-isolation, people like her now need the love, kindness and support of others around her, adding that a call or text goes a long way. 'Don't underestimate the power of the smallest gesture to give people like me the will to survive,' she said. 'Please dont let us disappear.' The money is already flowing. Critics of the CARES Act pointed out that there could be a delay in the appointment of the special inspector general, but we were told not to worry, there would be a Pandemic Recovery Accountability Committee immediately organized that consisted of sitting inspectors general. Even better, the widely respected acting inspector general of the Defense Department, Glenn Fine, was named as its chairman. But that didnt last long: He was quickly sacked by Mr. Trump with no explanation, leaving the committee leaderless, dormant and very possibly housebroken. Because Mr. Fines dismissal came after attacks on other inspectors general (including another Pandemic Recovery Accountability Committee member, Christi Grimm, the acting inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services), a chilling message was sent and received by the watchdogs who are expected to play a crucial role in overseeing the trillions of dollars spread throughout the government as part of CARES: Criticize the programs at your peril, and think twice before even raising your hand for the task of overseeing them. Until there is a new chairperson of this commission who can operate without the fear of being fired merely for taking the position, this watchdog has been effectively neutered. And then there was a Congressional Oversight Commission, patterned on the Congressional Oversight Panel from the TARP legislation, which a then little-known Harvard professor named Elizabeth Warren turned into a beacon of transparency and accountability. But the commission, like Congress itself, is dependent on cooperation by the administration to provide access necessary to analyze and report on the programs. The recent assertions by the White House that it can ignore congressional subpoenas provide little comfort that the commission will be able to fulfill its role. Only one of its five commissioners has been named, and we are waiting for the critical chairman to be named by congressional leaders. Keep in mind that, as we wait, trillions are committed and will begin to be spent. What is the best use of Congresss leverage? It is already apparent that additional relief will be necessary. Before parting with another trillion dollars, Congress must condition any further funding on the inclusion of protections to ensure that the inspectors general overseeing the Treasury Departments actions can be removed only for cause shown, the nomination and hearing for Mr. Miller must proceed as soon as possible, provisions must be enacted ensuring that oversight bodies will have unimpeded access to the information that they need to carry out their tasks, and the seats of the Congressional Oversight Commission must be filled. Otherwise, buckle up for what oversight helped limit in TARP vast amounts of taxpayer money lost to fraud, policy decisions made in the dark with little chance of success and scandals that may make us yearn for the relative quiet of impeachment. Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is a partner at Jenner & Block. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. Journalists union leaders in Pakistan have negotiated a Covid-19 relief package in Punjab which will ensure compensation for those who contract the disease as well as the provision of protective equipment for media workers. DALLAS, April 13, 2020 -- Most blood pressure devices sold for home monitoring in Australia - and possibly worldwide - may not have been validated for accuracy and could lead to misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal. In this study, the researchers studied the online blood pressure device marketplace in Australia, including large, multi-national, e-commerce businesses such as Amazon and eBay, which was the source of over 90% of the devices examined. Validating a blood pressure device means it has gone through rigorous testing to make sure it is measuring accurate blood pressure readings. The researchers found: Only 6% of the 972 models of blood pressure monitoring devices available for purchase had been validated; More than half of the blood pressure monitors on the market were wristband models, and none had been validated; Slightly over 18% of the upper-arm cuff blood pressure devices had been validated; and Non-validated devices were cheaper than those that had been tested for accuracy. "People around the world monitor their blood pressure using home devices to help to effectively manage hypertension and to help determine their risk for heart attacks or strokes," said James E. Sharman, Ph.D., lead researcher for the study and deputy director at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania in Australia. "If the devices haven't been properly validated for accuracy, treatment decisions could be based on incorrect information. We found non-validated devices dominate the Australian marketplace, which is a major barrier to accurate blood pressure monitoring and cardiovascular risk management. "Inaccurate blood pressure measuring devices could have a major implication for public health. If blood pressure is incorrectly overestimated it could lead to unnecessary prescriptions or higher doses than needed of blood pressure lowering medications, which are usually prescribed for life. Medications are costly, have potential side effects and patients incorrectly labeled with high blood pressure could suffer unnecessarily. When blood pressure is incorrectly underestimated, people might remain at increased risk for a heart attack or stroke that could otherwise be avoided with the appropriate medication and dose, and/or lifestyle changes," Sharman said. "International policies need to be strengthened to ensure that home use medical devices are rigorously tested for accuracy before being cleared for sale by regulatory authorities. Currently, manufacturers of blood pressure devices conduct their own accuracy testing, an honor system with potential real-life consequences for patients," said Sharman. Home blood pressure monitoring is recommended by the American Heart Association for people with high blood pressure because it provides more blood pressure readings rather than the occasional measurement in a doctor's office or health care clinic. The Association recommends using a blood pressure monitor with an upper-arm cuff that has been independently validated. In addition, the Association suggests taking the device to their healthcare provider to double-check it for accuracy. The study may be limited because it only reviewed devices purchased via Australia's online marketplace. These suppliers also sell products in the U.S. and worldwide, however, the focus of this study is the Australian market, so it is not known if these same blood pressure devices are sold in the U.S. The FDA requires manufacturers to submit documentation that the devices are tested for precision before they can be available for sale in the U.S. However, the devices are not independently evaluated; rather, the manufacturers conduct their own accuracy tests. ### Co-authors are Dean S. Picone, Ph.D.; Rewati A. Deshpande, B.Med.Res.; Martin G. Schultz, Ph.D.; Ricardo Fonseca, M.D., Ph.D.; Norm R.C. Campbell, M.D., Ph.D.; Christian Delles, M.D., Ph.D.; Michael Hecht-Olsen, M.D., Ph.D.; Aletta E. Schutte, Ph.D.; George Stergiou, M.D., Ph.D.; Raj Padwal, M.D., Ph.D.; and Xin-Hua Zhang, M.D., Ph.D. This study had no reported funding sources. Additional Resources: Available multimedia is on right column of release link - https://newsroom.heart.org/news/australian-study-many-home-blood-pressure-monitors-not-validated-for-accuracy?preview=cc36f893d1d06d42d12f3acc749de633 After April 13, 2020, view the manuscript online. American Heart News: Half of U.S. adults should monitor blood pressure at home, study says. American Heart Association News Release: Monitoring at home yields better blood pressure control Follow AHA/ASA news on Twitter @HeartNews Follow news from the AHA's Hypertension journal @HyperAHA Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association's policy or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The Association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific Association programs and events. The Association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations and health insurance providers are available at https://www.heart.org/en/about-us/aha-financial-information. About the American Heart Association The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. We are dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities. Through collaboration with numerous organizations, and powered by millions of volunteers, we fund innovative research, advocate for the public's health and share lifesaving resources. The Dallas-based organization has been a leading source of health information for nearly a century. Connect with us on heart.org, Facebook, Twitter or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday directed officials to take stringent action against people who are found to be hiding information about being infected with coronavirus and spreading it "intentionally", a senior state government official said. All district magistrates (DM) and superintendents of police (SP) have been asked to thoroughly check every house and all religious places in rural areas. In case of any laxity, they will also face action, he said. "The chief minister has directed that those who are hiding information about them being infected with coronavirus and are intentionally spreading it by concealing the fact should be identified and stringent action be initiated against them. Clear cut directives in this regard have been given to home and police department," Uttar Pradesh Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi told reporters here. "The DMs and SPs have been warned that if they have not initiated checking in the rural areas despite orders given in this regard on March 29-31, then every house and religious place must be checked. "If anyone in hiding tests positive for coronavirus, then action will be initiated against that person and also the concerned district administration and police. No laxity in this regard will be tolerated," he said. Almost 85 per cent of the coronavirus cases in the state are inside the "ring-fence" of hotspots. If any person is left out, then the onus is on police and the district administration, he added. Awasthi lauded the Pilibhit district administration. With the recovery of two COVID-19 patients, Pilibhit has become the state's first coronavirus-free district, he said. The senior official said a committee has been constituted under the health minister to restart the emergency services across hospitals and it will submit its report to the chief minister. Extensive deliberations were held on how to keep private hospitals infection-free, Awasthi said. Principal Secretary (Medical and Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said, "Tele-consultation facility from helpline no. 18001805145 has started from today (Monday). People called on this number, and consulted the doctors. "Retired doctors who want to register themselves to give tele-consultancy can do so," he said. Prasad said pool testing for screening of coronavirus patients will start in the state from Tuesday. "For example, if 10 samples are mixed, and tested for presence of coronavirus, and they test negative, then it indicates that report of all 10 persons is negative and they are infection-free. If there is infection, then individual testing is done. This process accelerates the screening. Pool testing will begin from tomorrow," he said. To ensure that healthcare staff do not get infected while treating COVID-19 patients, doctors and nurses in 40 districts of the state are being trained in infection prevention protocol. Till Sunday, Uttar Pradesh had reported 483 coronavirus cases. Agra, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Lucknow, Saharanpur and Ghaziabad are Uttar Pradesh's worst affected districts. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A nurse of a private hospital here was found coronavirus positive on Monday, a day after a 14-year-old boy also tested positive for the infection, officials said. The district administration intensified its containment efforts in the area, the officials said, as the total number of positive cases in the district reached five. While one minor was found COVID-19 positive in Oal Village of Mathura on Sunday, a nurse of a private hospital was found positive on Monday, District Magistrate Sarvagya Ram Mishra said. They have been kept in isolation, he said. He said after the positive case reported from the Oal village, 40 more samples were taken and sent for testing. Cluster containment measures have been intensified with sanitization of the entire area, he said. He said, the 14-year-old had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event at Gopalgarh Bharatpur Markaj on March 9 along with 14 others. The group returned from Bharatpur on March 12, he said. Based on a report of the LIU (Local Intelligence Unit), the group was quarantined at the Chaumuha-based private Ayurvedic medical college, and their samples were sent to J.N. Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University, he said. Of the 15 samples, reports of 11 has been received. Ten of the received reports were negative, while 14-year-old boy's report was positive, he said. He said the total number of coronavirus positive cases in the district is now five. The five include a Tablighi Jamaat member from Delhi, who has was been shifted to Agra, he said. A woman from Agra and a man from Fatehpur Sikari, who were admitted at a private hospital here for some other ailments, were found coronavirus positive after they were tested, the DM stated. A nurse of the private hospital was found COVID-19 positive on Monday, he said. He said the containment measures are being implemented in one kilometer radius of the Oal village-based mosque and Andhi Kuiya Markaj Masjid Mathura. Some members of Tablighi Jamaat, before they returned to Oal village, had spent a night in Andhi Kuiya Markaj Masjid Mathura after attending Markaj in Delhi, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) Around 77,000 more families have received cash aid to cushion them from the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the Social Welfare Department announced Monday. Social Welfare Secretary Rolando Bautista said 77,244 low-income families who are not Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program beneficiaries have received cash aid, which amounts between 5,000 and 8,000 per indigent family as mandated by the Bayanihan to Heal as One law. Bautista said this totals to 424 million. This is on top of the 3.7 million 4Ps beneficiaries who have also received cash aid last week, which Bautista said amounts to 16.3-billion. Bautista also said they have transferred 48 billion for aid to local government units and social welfare development offices, and 800 million more for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Inaasahan natin na tataas pa ang bilang ng mga benepisyo na nakatanggap ng SAP (social amelioration program) emergency cash subsidy dahil tuloy-tuloy ang ating isinasagawang payout nationwide katuwang ang ibat-ibang local government units at national government agencies, Bautista said. [Translation: We are expecting that more will receive aid through the SAP emergency cash subsidy as payout continues nationwide in cooperation with local government units and national government agencies.] Among the key provisions of the Bayanihan to Heal as One law, which gave President Rodrigo Duterte special powers, is the provision of a 5,000 to 8,000 monthly allowance for two months to indigent families. Lawmakers, however, are still seeking clarity on the distribution of cash aid to poor households three weeks after they granted Duterte additional powers to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. They also want clearer guidelines on the distribution, which has so far left out some of the intended beneficiaries. The Social Welfare Department is so far letting local government units sort out the distribution of cash aid, expecting that they would know who among their constituents are part of the 18 million households who should receive assistance. Nakasaad po sa Local Government Code na ang LGU po ang nagpo-provide ng basic social welfare services sa kanilang constituents Sila ang nakakaalam at naa-identify nila kung sino ba ang low-income sector, sino nasa informal sector, Bautista said. [Translation: The Local Government Code states that LGUs should provide basic social welfare services to their constituents They know and they can identify who are part of the low-income sector, who are part of the informal sector.] Bautista said they are giving enough leeway for local governments to distribute cash aid from the Social Welfare Department, but acknowledged that certain factors may delay its distribution. Gusto man natin na mapabilis yung pagbibigay ng ayuda, kaya lang, siyempre kailangan nating makipag-coordinate sa LGU. Sabi nga natin, mayroon rin silang mga ina-assess na mga sitwasyon. Maaring security situation, maaring accessibility sa mga gamit na transportasyon, he said. [Translation: Even if we want to fast track the distribution of aid, we still need to coordinate with LGUs. As we said, they are also assessing their situation. This may be a security situation or accessibility to transportation equipment.] [April 13, 2020] WekaIO Recognized as One of CRN's Top 100 Storage Vendors for 2020 WekaIO (Weka), the innovation leader in high-performance and scalable file storage for data-intensive applications, today announced that it is being recognized by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, in its first-ever 2020 Storage 100 list. This new list, carefully chosen by a panel of respected CRN editors, acknowledges leading storage vendors that offer transformative, cutting-edge solutions. According to CRN, not only do these Storage 100 companies push the boundaries of innovation, but the list itself is also a valuable tool for solution providers looking to find vendors who can guide them through the intricate storage technology market. The Storage 100 list will become an annual reference for solution providers who are seeking out vendors offering superior storage solutions in areas such as software-defined storage, data protection, data management, and storage components. "CRN's Storage 100 list is our newest recognition of the best of the best in storage innovation," said Bob Skelley, CEO of The Channel Company. "These companies are at the forefront of storage technology advancements, delivering state-of-the-art solutions built for the future. We acknowledge and congratulate them for their investment in R&D, engineering, and innovation. Their efforts enable solution providers to offer the best technology for their customers." "Our flagship solution, the Weka File System (WekaFS), is revolutionizing the storage world by breaking through the limitations of previous generation products," said Liran Zvibel, CEO and co-founder at WekaIO. "WekaFS was uniquely built for organizations that solve big problems in their industry and demand datacenter agility. We deliver that by running on-premises, in the cloud, or with a hybrid approach; and our customers get unprecedented throughput and low latency performance with any Infiniband or Ethernet-enabled CPU or GPU-based cluster. Furthermore, we provide high security with state-of-the-art encryption, enterprise features, and the ease of use of shared NAS, including multiprotocol support for NFS and SMB." "Today's data-intensive applications, stemming from artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), analytics, and genoics workloads, have placed extraordinary pressure on IT infrastructure - demanding highly scalable storage that delivers extreme performance," added Barbara Murphy, vice president of marketing at WekaIO. "Weka delivers the industry's best performance at any scale, with 10x the performance of legacy network-attached storage (NAS) systems and 3x the performance of local server storage. The current release introduces additional security and management features: encryption that ensures that data is kept safe both in-flight and at-rest, and snapshot-to-object that facilitates workload migration, disaster recovery, and archiving." "WekaFS was purpose-built for high-performance technical computing and data-intensive applications. Our clients across industries see immediate business value in how WekaFS can get a them to the next level in gleaning value from their data," said Frederic Van Haren, CTO of HighFens, a Weka Innovation Network (WIN) Leader partner. The 2020 Storage 100 list will be featured in the April 2020 issue of CRN and online at www.crn.com/storage100. To find a WIN partner, go to https://www.weka.io/partners. For more information on HighFens, go to https://highfens.com/. About WekaIO Weka offers WekaFS, the modern file system that uniquely empowers organizations to solve the biggest problems holding back innovation. Optimized for NVMe and the hybrid cloud, Weka handles the most demanding storage challenges in the most data-intensive technical computing environments, delivering truly epic performance at any scale. Its modern architecture unlocks the full capabilities of today's data center, allowing businesses to maximize the value of their high-powered IT investments. Weka helps industry leaders reach breakthrough innovations and solve previously unsolvable problems. Follow WekaIO: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook WekaIO, WekaFS, Weka Innovation Network, WIN, and the WekaIO logo are trademarks of WekaIO, Inc. About The Channel Company The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelco.com Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook 2020 The Channel Company, LLC. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005002/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] A mobile phone has been flagged as the potential cause of a fire that destroyed a campsite belonging to an elderly pair who have been missing for more than three weeks. Russell Hill, 74, from Drouin, and Carol Clay, 73, from Pakenham, Victoria, went missing after going on a camping trip together on March 20. Mr Hill's wife Robyn, 71, had no idea her husband was with another woman when he disappeared. She said her husband had been friendly with Ms Clay for decades but she had no idea they were travelling together and now fears they are both dead. A search party found their charred and abandoned campsite in the Wonnangatta Valley, deep in east Victorian bushland, a week after they vanished. It is now believed a mobile phone found on charge at the campsite may have caused the blaze. Detectives found no evidence of an accelerant involved in the fire, which destroyed their tent, table and camping chairs and singed Mr Hill's car. Russell Hill, 74, (pictured) and Carol Clay, 73, went missing last month after going on a camping trip together on March 19 But their whereabouts remains a mystery. The initial search for the pair was suspended due to bad weather, but will recommence from Tuesday in an area north of their campsite in Billabong. Mr Hills wife Robyn telling The Herald Sun she was 'glad' the search was resuming. 'I just want them found,' she said. Police confirmed the renewed search effort will focus on more rugged terrain within the previous search area. Mr Hill was last heard from on March 20 when Mrs Hill messaged him over the radio as he entered Wonnangatta. 'I knew something was wrong because he wasn't calling in on the radio... I just wish they would find them both alive,' Mrs Hill said. Inspector Craig Gaffee, who is leading the investigation, said police are exploring the possibility that the pair are still in the valley. Mr Hill's wife Robyn, 71, said her husband had been friendly with Carol Clay (pictured) for decades but had no idea they were travelling together They are also investigating if there was third party involvement or the possibility that the couple had 'gone somewhere else' together. 'The more likely (scenarios) are that they are still in the valley, that a third person or parties are involved, or perhaps the people themselves have gone somewhere else,' Inspector Gaffee told the ABC. A day before the search party found the burnt-out tent, other campers stumbled across the site and claimed it looked normal. 'Arson chemists haven't been able to determine a cause of the fire at this stage but we don't believe that fire was deliberately lit,' Inspector Gaffee said. 'There is a gap there between the 20th and the 26th so if anyone was up in the Wonnangatta Valley during that time period we'd love to hear from them.' He said it looked as though the pair had intended to return to the site as Ms Clay's belongings were still in the car, and food was left at the campsite. Police released images of the couple's burnt out campsite with Mr Hill's car parked beside it The dark past of the 'cursed' valley: Alpine bushland where married man went missing with a 'mystery woman' has a chilling history of revenge, double murder and a mysterious disappearance Nic White for Daily Mail Australia The bushland where an elderly man and his female companion are missing has a dark history of murder and vanished hikers. Russell Hill, 74, from Drouin, and Carol Clay, 73, from Pakenham, Victoria, went missing last month after going on a camping trip together on March 19. A famous double murder took place in the same area a century earlier, and in November an experienced hiker went missing on a five-day trek. Jim Barclay, the manager of Wonnangatta Station, and his assistant John Bamford were found shot to death in 1918. Mr Bamford was notorious for his 'wicked temper' and Mr Barclay was warned not to be 'drawn into arguments' with him, but the two were said to get along fine. The pair were last seen alive in late December 1917 when they went to the nearest town to cast their votes in the referendum on conscription for World War I. Harry Smith, the nearest neighbour to Wonnangatta Station, known as the most isolated homestead in Victoria at the time, visited to deliver mail on January 22. Mr Hill's wife Robyn, 71, said her husband had been friendly with Carol Clay (pictured left and right) for decades but had no idea they were travelling together and now fears they both be dead He found no one home but 'home tonight' was scrawled in chalk across the kitchen door so he stayed two nights and went home. Mr Smith returned on February 14 and was shocked to find the station still empty, the mail he left untouched, and Mr Barclay's dog Baron starving and neglected. He returned with two other men on February 23 to search for the missing pair and found Mr Barclay's badly decomposed body. Mr Barclay's remains were buried in a shallow grave that foxes and dingoes had dug up, and he was only identified from his clothing, a belt, and a tobacco pouch. Police arrived to investigate and found Mr Barclay's shotgun had been recently fired and both the men's rooms were in 'a state of disorder'. A post-mortem revealed he was killed by a shotgun blast to the back and it was initially believed Mr Bamford killed him and fled. 'I am of the opinion that Barclay and Bamford had an argument over working matters and that Bamford loaded the gun and shot Barclay,' Detective Alex McKerral later told an inquest. Arthur Phillips of Mansfield, co-owner of Wonnangatta Station, with Jim Barclay, manager of the Wonnangatta Station (standing) The homestead at Wonnangatta Station in Victoria 'He removed his working clothes, and dressed himself in Barclay's suit, which is missing, saddled his horse and after dragging the deceased to the creek, rode the horse away.' The horse was later found running wild without a saddle and a statewide manhunt was launched with a 200 reward offered for information. In November 1918, Mr Bamford's body was found after a search party spotted a boot sticking out of a pile of logs. He had been shot once in the head. With Mr Bamford also dead, it as no longer obvious that he was the killer and the inquest found they were both murdered by unknown parties. The case has never been solved and several theories were put forward including 'that Bamford shot Barclay and afterwards Bamford was shot by some friend of the manager, in revenge, in the good old wild west manner'. A century later, experienced Melbourne hiker Niels Becker disappeared during a five-day trek through the same remote area. The 39-year-old left from Upper Jamieson Hut on October 24 and sent a message to family on October 29 saying he was headed back to his car via Mount Stirling. Experienced Melbourne hiker Niels Becker disappeared during a five-day trek through the same remote area Mr Hill and Ms Clay disappeared in However, he was near heard from again and a search party of 70 police, State Emergency Service, and volunteers failed to find any trace of him in a 2,000sqm area. Mr Becker had hiked in the area many times before and was well-prepared for his solo walk other than not having a GPS locator. Police at the time believed he could have survived weeks in the wilderness despite heavy rain and snow falling in the area. 'If he's prepared with the appropriate dry clothing he should survive it might not be at all comfortable, but it is survivable,' Senior Sergeant Damian Keegan said. 'He's a very fit person, he's been training a lot for this, and a very intelligent man so he probably has the capacity to cover quite long distances.' However, by November 12 it was believed Mr Becker died of hypothermia. His body has still never been found. 'Last week I was so optimistic and my daughter said he'll come out with an 'epic story' but I think after Tuesday and yesterday, well, we're not so optimistic,' his mother Johanna Becker said on November 7. As the country shuts over a nationwide outbreak of the coronavirus, farmers in Karnataka's Boragaon village stare at rotting crops and losses worth lakhs already, bringing their lives to a screeching halt. Be it any crisis, its the farmer who has to suffer. If the farmer wont suffer on behalf of others, how will society survive? asks 48-year-old Sanjay Barwade, a farmer from the village of Boragaon in the Chikodi taluka of Karnatakas Belagavi district. After his two-and-a-half-acre-wide field was ravaged in the August 2019 floods, Barwade took an agricultural loan of Rs 40,000 for his rabi crops. Thereon, it was going according to plan 3,000 kilograms of beans, 100 kilograms of coriander, and sugarcane would be harvested on an acre of land, which was due to mature post-November this year. However, within three days in the last week of March, he had to sell off all his produce. All he had to do was reach the nearby Shahapur weekly market in Maharashtras Ichalkaranji town (12.5 kilometres from Boragaon). The moment I reached at 3 pm (a day after the Janata curfew was announced on 22 March), the police started beating me up and asked me to go back, he says, recalling the trauma. The lockdown wasnt even declared then. After the 21-day nationwide lockdown was declared by the central government on 24 March, the farmer's troubles escalated. His only hope now was to sell 3,100 kilograms of vegetables on his bike in his village of Boragaon. Defying the police, he somehow managed to sell a meagre 80 kilogram of beans for half the price at Rs 20 per kilogram within three days. Barwade, like several other farmers from his village, couldnt buy more time due to the lack of cold storage facilities in 40C of heat. I gave 100 kilograms of dhaniya (coriander) to the goats. At least they ate it, he says. In the next few days, all his beans had rotten away. Collectively, the vegetables were worth Rs 1.2 lakhs. He now hopes to recover the losses by selling sugarcane. Who knows what will happen next? he says. Sanjay's skepticism arises due to the losses he faced in the floods last year that set him back by at least 40 tonnes of sugarcane worth another Rs 1.2 lakhs. His plans to farm another crop for the next five months are now on hold. Theres lots of water for the crops, but until the lockdown is over, we cant do anything, he says. As of 12 April, India reported over 8,000 cases of COVID-19, with 214 in Karnataka, including 6 deaths in the state. Follow our live updates on the coronavirus outbreak here. Raju Kottalage, 40, had never thought he would stop watering his crops one day. It all changed within the first week of April, he says, adding that crops of cabbage, cucumber and brinjal that he had cultivated are going to rot anyway. Usually after harvesting, the farmers of Boragaon village, which lies near the Karnataka-Maharashtra border, sell their produce within a day or two at Ichalkaranji or Kolhapur (37.5 km from Boragaon). Its the summers. The crops dont last long, he explains. Before Raju decided to cut the water supply for his crops, he had already incurred a loss of Rs 50,000, owing to a lack of access to the vegetable markets. He owns four acres of land, of which three acres are dedicated to seasonal vegetables and fodder for animals, while the remaining acre is for harvesting sugarcane. A week ago, he was left with 800 kilograms of cucumber. The wholesale vegetable vendors buy it at Rs 30-40 per kilogram, he says. However, the lockdown forced him to look for buyers within Boragaon itself, even though a market doesnt exist in the village. Cabbage and cucumber are usually planted in January in Boragaon, and harvested by the end of March or the first week of April. Barwade uses a simple analogy to explain this. If all the farmers (who usually sell their produce outside) are now selling it in the village, how will anyone get a good price? Even if the entire village buys these vegetables, there will be a surplus. At first, he distributed a sizeable portion of his cucumbers and cabbages to the villagers, eventually letting a bigger herd of goats eat the remaining produce. At least they will get to eat something, he says. However immediately after, Raju paints a starkly contrasting image that resonates with the mounting frustration of an ill-planned lockdown. There are places that do not have any vegetables, and when we have vegetables in our fields, we cant sell it to them. What sort of disease is this? In the floods last year, the latter lost nearly 60 tonnes of sugarcane cultivated on his one acre of land, which could've easily fetched him Rs 1.68 lakhs. We havent received any compensation for that; what will the government give us now? Its the farmer who has to bear it all, Raju says, visibly exasperated at his plight of having to endure two major disasters within the span of just eight months. First, it was the flood, and now this coronavirus." A strict lockdown has been imposed in Boragaon, with police brutality scaring the farmers into staying home. How many vegetables will we be able to sell from 7-10 am? What if we contract the virus? Raju asks. With information on social distancing flooding television and social media, his family members have become overtly cautious. The prices have fallen so low that the farmers cant even meet the cost of production now, he explains. Another risk is of the produce turning overripe, which reduces the rates considerably, and sometimes doesnt even fetch a single rupee. As per the Census in 2011, Boragaon has a population of 16,010, with majority being involved in agriculture and farming. Mahaveer Kottalage, 21, after dropping out of his undergraduate course in commerce, started assisting his father Jayapal on their four-acre plot of land. If we go out to sell the vegetables, the police ask us to get a permit. When we go to the Panchayat, they redirect us to the Sadalga Police Station, which is 7.5 kilometres from our village. The village borders are sealed, and there are at least two-to-three policemen everywhere. How will we reach the police station without getting beaten up? he asks. Besides farming, the dairies are also crumbling in the lockdown. The Kottalages own three buffaloes, and manage to get 13 litres of milk every day. Sometimes the dairies are functioning, while most of the times they are shut, he says, adding that the local dairies have now issued a cap on the quantity of milk they will be buying. The other day, my parents had to sell milk for as low as Rs 35 (against a market rate of Rs 54 per litre), going door-to-door in Boragaon, Mahaveer says. He himself had distributed five litres of milk for free, incurring a loss of least 12 litres in three days. The family grew cabbage, beans, brinjal and guar, besides dedicating an entire acre solely to sugarcane. The guar, which normally fetches them Rs 80 per kilogram, is now being sold at a paltry sum of Rs 20 per kilogram. At least 600 kilograms of beans were destroyed because we couldnt sell it, he says. The vegetables are now rotting in the field. Weve lost a minimum of Rs 20,000 worth of brinjals, and beans worth Rs 24,000, Mahaveer adds, estimating a total loss of at least Rs 1.5 lakhs. Of the 10,000 cabbages that their harvest had produced, a mere 600 could be sold for Rs 10 each. We lost at least Rs 94,000 over this, the 21-year-old says. The interstate and intrastate bans on travel, besides curfew in several villages, have left the transport system for farmers bruised. Like several others in their village, Mahaveer and his father now plan on abandoning the next crop. For the next two to three months, we wont be able to cultivate anything. Nobody pays attention to the farmers, he rues, as Sanjay Barwade sums up the troubles of farmers in one line: I am a farmer, and now I have nothing to eat. Bangladeshis abroad in the US are sending funds back home to help millions of poor people amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The Bangladeshi government has imposed a complete lockdown to prevent the coronavirus from spreading, but the move has brought hardship to tens of thousands of people in the South Asian nation of 160 million. The government last week unveiled a financial package worth about $8bn to stimulate the nations economy and help poor people make ends meet amid an unprecendented global crisis. However, unlike other South Asian nations like Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which transferred cash directly to the poor, Dhaka does not include such provision in its package. Reports of poor people and those who have lost work expressing their frustration over not getting any financial aid have already surfaced in the media. Mobilise funds Members of the Bangladeshi diaspora from the United States have mobilised funds to support poor families back home who have been financially hit hard by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Shafquat Rabbee, a Texas-based academic, is among those coordinating relief efforts. In a video message posted on Facebook, Rabbee juxtaposed two photos to give viewers context. In the first photo, Rabbee showed two weeks worth of supply that food delivery service Instacart delivered to his front door in Texas. The food items include gallons of orange juice, breads and even some snacks. On the other photo, he showed a few tattered bowls with rice and lentils, nothing else. This is what a large number of people in countries like Bangladesh consume on a daily basis. The absolute poor people really dont eat a lot and they dont have the luxury to eat varieties of food, Rabbee said, We, the privileged ones can help them get these in this time of crisis. As of Sunday, Bangladesh reported 621 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 34 deaths. The country has enforced a complete lockdown since March 26, which has been extended to April 25. Reports of poor people expressing their frustration over not getting any financial aid during this time have already surfaced in the Bangladeshi media [Courtesy of Mahia Rahman] Instead of distributing food en-masse, one-off, on the street, I am trying to do something a bit more sustainable. I will feed for three months 100 families who lost their livelihood during the corona shutdown, Rabbee told Al Jazeera. The US-based academic said his first target was $10,000 and it was raised within 48 hours, donated by people mostly not known to him. It was fascinating to watch peoples selfless response, he said. Distribution through volunteers Rabbee has been working with a dedicated group of individuals and small organisations on the ground in Bangladesh. They are taking great personal risks by distributing food supplies amid this pandemic. Mahia Rahman, co-founder of Resource Coordination Network (RCN), a non-profit organisation in Dhaka, is coordinating with Rabbee. She told Al Jazeera that they have volunteers on the ground to reach out to poor people. We have been receiving quite a lot of funding from Bangladeshi people living abroad. There is a movement on Facebook with a hashtag known as #bacharlorai (fight for survival), Rahman said. Many members of the Bangladeshi diaspora has been sending funds to help with coronavirus efforts in Bangladesh [Courtesy of Mahia Rahman] Under this hashtag Bangladeshi diaspora living in different countries are uniting for the cause. Shoron Rahman, a volunteer with RCN, said they use the money received from the diaspora to buy essentials like rice and lentils to distribute among the poor. We are providing them with the supply for a month so that it becomes sustainable and they dont need to reach out to others for any further help, Rahman said. Anwar Ali, a daily wage worker, said the supply of rice and lentils appeared like a lifeline. I had no income for the past two weeks. Now at least I can feed my kids with this. Raising funds for other causes Najneen Sultana, a Boston-based Bangladeshi student, meanwhile, is raising funds to donate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to doctors and health workers in Bangladesh. The South Asian nation has a fragile healthcare system and its medical professionals are in dire need of PPE to fight the COVID-19 outbreak. According to a UN situation report, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) in Bangladesh secured just 364,000 PPE sets, most of which were distributed to government hospitals. At present, the government only has 42,870 PPE sets left in stock, said the report. Sultana told Al Jazeera that she had contacted a ready-made garment (RMG) company in Bangladesh that can make a set of PPE for $4 each. I am raising $15,000. We are going to contact DGHS and some NGOs in Bangladesh for distributing the PPE among the doctors, she said. Razoana Moslem, a Bangladeshi lawyer living in Sydney, is also raising funds. I am raising it for the Bangladeshi students living in Sydney. Moslem said most of these students supported their studies and living expenses by working part-time. Now with COVID-19 outbreak, they are not able to work and in need of basic things like groceries. I am raising funds to help them. COVID-19 outbreak has affected us all. But if those of us who are in relative comfort come forward to help the people in need, then we can come out of this crisis together, said Moslem. The Army on Monday paid tributes to the those who laid down their live during the 1984 battle for Siachen Glacier, also known as the world's highest battlefield. "The gallant martyrs of Siachen were remembered by a grateful nation, on the occasion of the 36th Siachen Day, which was observed with solemnity and reverence by the Fire & Fury Corps," a defence spokesperson said here. He said Siachen Day every year commemorates the courage and fortitude displayed by troops of the Indian Army in securing the highest and coldest battlefield in the world. On 13 April, 1984, the Indian Army launched 'Operation Meghdoot' to secure Bilafond La and other passes on the Saltoro Ridgeline, from Pakistani aggression, the spokesman said. He said since then, it has been a saga of unparalleled valour in the face of a belligerent enemy, arduous terrain and challenging climatic conditions. "The Siachen Warriors continue to guard the 'Frozen Frontier' with tenacity and resolve against all odds. The 'Siachen Day' every year honours all the Siachen Warriors who served their motherland while successfully thwarting evil designs of the enemy, over the years," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Netflix has ordered the series adaptation of the popular Korean zombie webtoon "Now At Our School". Billed as a "fresh take" on the Korean zombie genre, the new show is titled "All Of Us Are Dead", reported Deadline. The streamer has joined hands with Lee JQ of "Beethoven Virus" and "Damo: The Legendary Police Woman" fame to back the new original. "All Of Us Are Dead" follows a group of high school students who are faced with an extreme crisis situation when they become trapped in their school, while a zombie virus spreads like a wildfire. The original webtoon has been successful in Korea and was also well-received in Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan courtesy the rise in popularity of digital comics. The Netflix original series is written by Chun Sung-il, and will be directed by Lee JQ and Kim Nam-su. It will be produced by JTBC Studios in association with Film Monster, and will premiere worldwide on Netflix. It is currently unknown when the show will debut. Korea has a rich history with the zombie genre, including 2016 smash theatrical hit "Train To Busan". Netflix's first Korean original, "Kingdom", also has an undead bent. The second season of the show premiered last month. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Todd Ruger, CQ-Roll Call WASHINGTON The Supreme Court will tread new ground next month with cases that were postponed because of COVID-19, deciding to hold the first-ever oral arguments by telephone during a two-week period that starts May 4. Among the cases: President Donald Trumps personal challenge to congressional subpoenas for his financial and tax records from Mazars USA and Deutsche Bank and new rules on an exception to the contraceptive mandate in the 2010 health care law. The justices and lawyers will participate remotely, part of the physical distancing mandates and stay-at-home orders across the nation aimed slowing the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus. The phone procedure means the court is looking to enter another new era when it comes to allowing public access. The Court anticipates providing a live audio feed of these arguments to news media, the Supreme Court said in its statement. When the court building closed due to the pandemic, advocates for more access to Supreme Court proceedings called for live audio as a way to balance the competing concerns of public safety and public access. C-SPAN Networks has previously tweeted that it would provide all streamed arguments live and archive them online providing the potential for Americans nationwide, staying at home amid the outbreak, to tune in as it happens. The telephone arguments will be held May 4-6 and 11-13 for cases that were scheduled for March and April but postponed. The high court also told lawyers in other cases that the remainder of the postponed March and April arguments will be conducted early in the 2020 term, those lawyers said. The Supreme Court closed its building to the public weeks ago, but before Monday had left unanswered what would happen to the cases that remain on its schedule. The court traditionally finishes all its work for the term by the end of June. The justices have well-worn defenses of why streaming or television cameras in the courtroom would be harmful to their work. Lawyers would be tempted to grandstand to have their soundbite on the evening news, they have told Congress, or justices would filter their questions at the risk of being taken out of context. The coronavirus apparently has forced their hand. -- CQ Rollcall via Tribune News Service Joe Exotic's ex-husband John Finlay left fans in shock in the new bonus episode for Netflix's smash hit documentary Tiger King. On Sunday, the streaming service unveiled a new episode of the show in which stars of the programme were interviewed about their life since the documentary, which portrayed the wild life of big cat owners in the US. The former spouse of the show's incarcerated antagonist showcased an incredible makeover, as he displayed his new dentures - after losing his teeth in the tragic throws of meth addiction and also shed his shirtless look. Wow! Joe Exotic's ex-husband John Finlay left fans in shock in the new bonus episode for Netflix's smash hit documentary Tiger King The Joel McHale-hosted episode saw stars chatting to the stars of the show about life after Tiger King, after the documentary became a surprise smash hit. Joel marvelled at John's transformation, after the former addict grumbled over his portrayal in the show. He said he was made to look like 'a drugged-out hillbilly.' Joel said: 'You look like a character out of a... a mythical cowboy', while John admitted he 'loved' the comparison. John's relationship with Joe was one of the central storylines, after he was in a 'throuple' with Joe and Travis Maldonado, who killed himself on-screen. Their wedding was depicted on the show before Joe was imprisoned for a murder-for-hire plot leading to John finding love with a woman. After appearing on the show shirtless in all his confessionals, John displayed the unfortunate cosmetic impact of his meth addiction - known as 'meth mouth'. He proudly revealed in the new episode that he is six years sober and showed off his new teeth and lengthy beard. Back again: The Joel McHale-hosted episode saw stars chatting to the stars of the show about life after Tiger King, after the documentary became a surprise smash hit Wow! Joel was a fan of the new look and praise a very pleased John Fans swarmed the microblogging site to pen: 'Why is no one talking about john finlay's transformation?! #TigerKing... John Finlay has had the biggest glow up in history! Tiger #TigerKingNetflix... I love that John Finlay got teeth... 'John finlay lowkey fine in this tiger king update Eyes... Did y'all watch the updated episode of Tiger King?? John Finlay got...hot... 'Can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about John Finlay's new teeth. They're amazing... John Finlay is adorable and I wish him well. That is all.' Star of the show: John's relationship with Joe was one of the central storylines, after he was in a 'throuple' with Joe and Travis Maldonado, who killed himself on-screen Speaking of changing his life, John said after the show: 'I used to have a lot of pent up negative thoughts and bad aura about myself. I just quit thinking about the past and the negative stuff that's happened to me... 'It's time to really think about the kids and my future and stuff and use this thing for something good not just to be, 'Hey, I have a personal gain now. It's all about me.' 'It's not all about me. It's about other people too.' Image credit: AGD DIAMONDS During the conversation, Sergei Neruchev spoke about the activities of AGD DIAMONDS. Alexander Tsybulsky noted: Pomorye is the only territory in the European part of the country where diamonds are mined. Your company is a major taxpayer, employer, it implements large-scale investment programs. Its important to understand what prospects you see and what we need to do to ensure that the company develops and expands in the region.In 2019, AGD DIAMONDS produced more than 4.7 million carats of diamonds, which is in line with the target production plan.The company's contributions to the budget of the Arkhangelsk region in 2019 amounted to 3.4 billion rubles.Moreover, in 2019, AGD DIAMONDS received licenses for geological exploration, including the study and assessment of diamond deposits in the Mezen district of the Arkhangelsk Region at the Razlomnoye, Torfyanoye and Yuzhno-Verkhotinsky sites. Another similar license for geological exploration at the Krugly site was obtained by the AGD in December 2018. In August 2019, large-scale exploration began in the licensed territories aimed at discovering new diamond deposits, the first stage comprised airborne geophysical study. A doctor on television said because of Coronavirus we should focus on inner peace. To achieve this, we should finish things weve started. I looked through my house to find things Id started and hadnt finished. So, I finished off a bottle of my favorite Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiumun scriptuns, an a box of chocletz. Ya haf no idr how feckin fablus I eel rite now. Tell all who needs iner pist. An telum u luvum. An two hash yer wands, stafe day evrybobby!!! Bunny suitcheck. Basket of candycheck. Egg huntcheck. Dress-up clothescheck. Reservations at favorite brunch spotcheck. Sounds like Easter, doesnt it? But while all these traditions are fun. Whats Easter really all about. History of Easter: Christians believe that Easter is central to their faith. In fact, one of the earliest followers of Jesus declared that without Easter there is no Christianity. What exactly does Easter celebrate thats so important? Easter is the day when Christians commemorate Jesus resurrection. This is the process by which one who is dead comes back to life. On Easter, Christians believe Jesus died some two thousand years ago, rose from the grave and lived again. Significance of Easter: Someone dying and coming back to life is certainly noteworthyeven unbelievable. Why is Jesus resurrection so widely celebrated that it has become a national holiday in many cultures around the world? Broken World: If you look around today, its not difficult to see brokenness in the world. But according to both Jewish and Christian tradition, it wasnt always this way. When God created the world, it was good. God and humanity dwelt in perfect harmony. In the end, we sometimes chose our own path, turning away from his in the process. In doing so, our relationship with God is broken. Story of Gods Restoration: The worlds not the way its supposed to be. What does that have to do with Jesus dying? According to Christian theology, since God is holy, he cannot be in the presence of unholiness; the two cannot mix, much like oil and water. Consequently, humanitys broken relationship with God has caused lasting alienation from him. And the only way to overcome that alienation is for humanity to choose Gods perfect wayto live the way we were meant to in the beginning. Because were infected with a terminal disease called sin, were incapable of living in perfection. Jesus Role in Gods Plan: The Bible suggests that Jesus was one with God. He wore human flesh and experienced what we experience. But there was one major exception: Jesus lived a completely holy and sinless life. When Jesus died, he satisfied Gods requirement of perfection. Logic of Jesus Death: God is holy; humanity is not. Holiness and unholiness cannot coexist. Because were incapable of holy living as a result of sin, God must satisfy that requirement on our behalf. Jesuswho is one with Godlived a holy, sinless life. Jesus died on our behalf, and by satisfying the requirement he reversed the effects of our broken relationship with God, making reconciliation and connection with God possible forever. Debt-Free Living: This is the beauty of Christianityhumanity does not have to pay the debt for its sin because God himself has done it through Jesus. This is what Christians mean when they say that Jesus paid it all for their sins. The government has imposed restrictions similar to those in Wuhan city to prevent a second wave from imported cases. Chinas northeastern border with Russia has become a front line in the countrys fight against a resurgence of the coronavirus, as new daily cases, while remaining relatively low compared with other global hot spots, rose to the highest in nearly six weeks. After reporting to have largely stamped out the domestic transmission of the disease, China has been slowly easing curbs on movement as it tries to get its economy back on track, but there are fears that a rise in imported cases could lead to a second wave of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. A total of 108 new cases were reported in mainland China on Sunday, up from 99 a day earlier, marking the highest daily tally since March 5. Imported cases accounted for a record 98 of those infections and half of those imported infections involved Chinese nationals returning from Russias Far Eastern Federal District, home to the city of Vladivostok, who had re-entered China through border crossings in Heilongjiang province, according to authorities. Meanwhile, the Chinese cities along the Russian frontier have been tightening border controls and imposing stricter quarantines in response to the threat. The city of Suifenhe and the provincial capital of Heilongjiang, Harbin, are now mandating 28 days of quarantine as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests for all arrivals from abroad. Our little town here, we thought it was the safest place, a resident of the border city of Suifenhe, who only gave his surname as Zhu, told the Reuters news agency. Some Chinese citizens they want to come back, but its not very sensible, what are you doing coming here for? he said. Similar restrictions to Wuhan Chinas border with Russia remains closed, except to Chinese nationals, and the land route through Suifenhe has become one of the few options available for people trying to return home after Russia stopped flights, except for evacuation, to China. The streets of the city were virtually empty on Sunday evening due to restrictions of movement and gatherings announced last week, when authorities took preventive measures similar to those imposed in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the first infections from the new coronavirus appeared in December. The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 82,160. Though the number of daily infections across China has dropped sharply from the February 12 peak, when more than 15,000 cases were reported in a day, China has in recent weeks seen the daily toll creep higher after hitting a low trough March 12. In Shanghai, authorities found that 60 people who arrived on Aeroflot flight SU208 from Moscow on April 10 have the coronavirus, Zheng Jin, a spokeswoman for the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, told a news conference on Monday. Residents in Suifenhe said a lot of people had left the city fearing contagion, but others put their trust in authorities containment measures. I dont need to worry, Zhao Wei, another Suifenhe resident, told Reuters. If theres a local transmission, I would, but theres not a single one. Theyre all from the border, but theyve all been sent to quarantine. While the majority of COVID-19 infections, deaths and media attention has been devoted to New York, the impact of the virus has been felt throughout the country, including in the Midwest state of Missouri, the geographical center. Missouri borders Illinois to the east and Kansas to the west, and has a large metropolitan center at each border. The city of St Louis has a population of 302,898 and over 2.8 million total in the extended metro area, which straddles the Mississippi river with Illinois. On the opposite end of the state is Kansas City, with approximately 491,918 residents in the city proper and over 2 million residents in the five counties and two states that constitute the greater metropolitan area. The Republican Governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, first issued a stay at home order on April 6 that limited social gatherings to 10 or fewer people and advised residents against leaving their homes. Initially the governor's order was set to expire on April 2, but it has since been extended by only two days until April 24. Missouri was the 40th state to issue a stay home order, a month after the first case of COVID-19 was discovered in the state on March 7. As is the case throughout the country, social distancing guidelines have devastated retail, hospitality and restaurant jobs throughout the state. Beginning in the two weeks ending March 14, fewer than 10,000 unemployment claims were filed with the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations; a week later 42,207 additional claims were filed. The last two weeks in which data is available ending on April 4 over 205,000 more unemployment claims have been filed. Governor Parsons stay at home order came too late to prevent a steadily rising number of cases throughout the state but concentrated in the cities of St Louis and Kansas City. The first confirmed case of COVID-19 confirmed in the state was a 20 year-old student who had been studying abroad in Italy. The student flew back from Italy the first week in March and went through the US customs without being screened, tested or quarantined. Upon arriving in Chicago, she continued her journey home aboard an Amtrak train to St. Louis on March 4. Three days later, Mercy Hospital in St. Louis confirmed its first positive case of COVID-19. St. Louis In the month since, the city of St. Louis has confirmed 645 positive cases, with 204 currently under observation and quarantine and 17 deaths within the city limits. Limited data is currently available regarding infection rates as the city is only operating two appointment-only COVID-19 testing sites and one mobile site, all of which require registering by phone before one is eligible to receive a test. The St. Louis metropolitan area encompasses over 8,000 square miles, mostly in Missouri, but also extends across the Mississippi River into impoverished East St. Louis, Illinois. Within the metroplex, the 20th largest in the US, income inequality and the social ills that follow define the region. The four wealthiest zip codes in the state, according to the St Louis Business Journal, are in St. Louis County, the suburbs west of the city. These include Chesterfield, 63005, with an average median household income of $160,354, Ladue, 63124, and a median income of $149,423, Frontenac, 63131, with an income of $144,159 and finally Glencoe, 63038, with a median income of $125,441. Comparatively the three poorest zip codes are in St. Louis city. The average median income for a family residing in 63106 and 63107, both located in North St. Louis is $15,0531 and $20,758. While those who live in the third poorest zip in the state, Pagedale, 63133, earn on average $21,983. Across the river in East St. Louis, Illinois, is where the three poorest zip codes outside of Chicago are located. 62201, 62207 and 62204, all located in East St Louis with an average median income of $15,089, $17,139 and $17,180, respectively. Income inequality this obscene has predictable and tragic results. Details have begun to emerge within the city regarding those who have succumbed to the preventable pandemic. In the lead article for The St. Louis American St. Louis health director Dr. Fredrick Echols revealed that 12 of the 17 deaths so far have been African-American. This tragic fact is seized by sections of the Democratic Party and the corporate media to blame white supremacy or structural racism, rather than the capitalist system, for the disproportionate amount of deaths among blacks. This narrative, put forward to disorient the working class, comes precisely at the time city officials predict a leap in cases and therefore fatalities within the city. The head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, Alex Garza, in a press conference this week, stated that he expects 80,000 people within the city limits to contract the disease by the end of the month. We are on the steep part of the curve right now, the next few weeks are going to be extremely difficult for the St. Louis region, Garza gravely intoned. Kansas City On the opposite side of the state, the city of Kansas City and the surrounding metropolitan area encompasses five counties: Johnson and Wyandotte in Kansas, and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri. As of this writing over 1,200 cases have been confirmed within these counties and at least 53 have died. As is the case in St Louis, those who dont have the luxury of working from home such as package delivery drivers, Amazon workers, and grocery store workers have been forced to continue to put themselves at risk providing, in some cases, essential services. Also like St. Louis, local Democratic politicians have sought to inject racial politics into discussion of the coronavirus crisis. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and his health director, Dr. Rex Archer, held a press conference this past Monday where they revealed that Kansas Citys Third Council District had the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19. Dr. Archer offered a few reasons as to why the urban center of Kansas City had more cases, compared to the rest of the rest of the state, outside of St. Louis: Often, the urban core is more affected, theres higher concentration of folks, as well as, less health insurance, less access to prevention techniques. The Third District is nearly 60 percent black and had the highest unemployment rate in the city, above 6 percent, prior to the onset of the virus. Dr. Archers limited statistics indicate that black residents have constituted 50 percent of the positive results, while only accounting for 30 percent of the population within the city. The doctor also offered another explanation as to why lower income residents are becoming infected at a higher rate, Under our stay-at-home order, a large percentage with college degrees, can work from home, he said. People of color, particularly, people of color who may only have a high school degree, their ability in their work environment to work at home is very low. As is the case throughout Missouri and the US, the lack of effective and widespread testing has resulted in public health officials offering best guesses and hypotheses as to the true extent of the contagions spread. The Kansas City Health department estimates that barely 10 percent of coronavirus cases within the city are being reported. Health officials in the Johnson County, Kansas, suburbs of Kansas City, announced back on March 20 that they would be rationing tests to those that needed to be hospitalized, while they suspected that community spread had already taken hold throughout the metropolis. In addition, no tests would be administered without a doctor's note. The Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) has called on telecommunication companies providing telephone and internet services to introduce clear guidelines and a consistent approach for dealing with customers in difficulty during the Covid-19 crisis. SVP says that these guidelines should include a ban on disconnections which would ensure that no households are left without access to vital communication services while we all need to remain at home. They are also asking that suppliers engage proactively and compassionately with customers that may be faced with large bills in the coming weeks. The charity says extending limits and caps on usage is the right thing to do in these unprecedented times. Kieran Stafford, SVP National President said: "Our members have heard from isolated older people and lone parents who have recently been issued with a disconnection notice from their communications provider. "As we are asked to practice physical distancing, it is more important than ever that vulnerable and marginalised groups can stay connected with loved ones and access up-to-date health advice. "We are also concerned that children in low income families will fall behind on their schoolwork if they do not have access to internet services. The Society has contacted the Communications Regulator, Telecommunication Industry Ireland and the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment on the issue. The Communication Regulator has told SVP that it is actively monitoring the disconnection policies of suppliers and that the industry has processes in place to deal with these exceptional circumstances. It also said that suppliers will engage sympathetically with their customers if they are in difficulty. The Minister for Communications has indicated that a Charter of Fair Practice is being developed for the telecommunications industry during the Covid-19 crisis. Kieran Stafford said: "While this is welcome, we are concerned that without clear messaging and a consistent approach from all suppliers, there is a real danger that vulnerable customer will fall through the cracks. "Publicly communicating a moratorium on all telecommunication disconnections will provide reassurance to customers and protect the most vulnerable in our communities from experiencing further distress at this very difficult time. Since the crisis began SVP has worked closely with Utility Suppliers and Commission for the Regulation of Utilities, who have put in place measures for customers on pre-paid electricity and gas meters who may be unable to top up their meters, either due to illness or self-isolation or a sudden drop in income. The measures put in place include: a moratorium on all energy disconnections; an increase in emergency credit on meters; and workable solutions for bill customers experiencing payment difficulties. "These interventions make a real difference to those that are struggling in energy poverty. We now need a similar response from the telecommunications industry," said Kieran Stafford. Nagaland Health and Family Welfare minister S Pangyu Phom on Monday suggested to Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio to impose total lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 after the first coronavirus positive case was reported in the state In a letter to the chief minister on Monday, Pangnyu said in view of the confirmation of first COVID-19 positive case in the state, it is felt that the total lockdown of the state, particularly in Dimapur district is required to prevent further spread of the virus in the state with immediate effect. He requested the chief minister to examine the case and issue necessary directives for implementation of the total lockdown in the interest of public health and safety. Earlier in the day, a man from Nagaland has tested positive for novel coronavirus, the first case reported from the state. The man with coronavirus-like symptoms was admitted to a hospital in Assam's Guwahati, where he tested positive for COVID-19, an official said. Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also tweeted that a private hospital in Dimapur referred a patient to the Guwahati Medical College Hospital after he was found with symptoms of COVID-19. He has tested positive and is undergoing treatment. Meanwhile, the Nagaland government has sealed various locations in Dimapur, including the patient's residential area and the hospital where he was initially admitted, the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Twitter users weighed in on an interesting tweet by Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor. The politician took a dig at IndiGo airlines referring to the flight ban on comedian Kunal Kamra. The exchange has divided Twitter as people post all sorts of reactions to the post - some supporting the MP and others not-so-much. It all started with a light-hearted tweet by IndiGo in which they poked fun at Vistara airlines and the latter replied in an equally witty manner. Soon other airlines joined them too. Replying to IndiGos tweet, Tharoor took a dig at the airlines by mentioning their flight ban on the comedian. Guys, it seems #COVID19 is a @kunalkamra88 ally, the MP tweeted. When you decided he couldnt fly for 3 months, the #Lockdown ensured nobody could fly during that time either. Suggest you never ban him again, for all our sakes! he added. Tharoor ended his tweet by tagging the other airlines who also imposed a flying ban on Kamra. Guys, it seems #COVID19 is a @kunalkamra88 ally. When you decided he couldn't fly for 3 months, the #Lockdown ensured nobody could fly during that time either. Suggest you never ban him again, for all our sakes! @IndiGo6E @airvistara @airindiain @goairlinesindia @flyspicejet https://t.co/cGVzlXY8K4 Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) April 12, 2020 Shashi Tharoors reply received close to 14,000 likes and over 2,100 retweets. Comments started flooding the post and people shared all sorts of thoughts. Jabardast, praised a Twitter user. Kamra or Karma, joked another. There were many who were not-so-happy with the tweet and schooled the MP for making a joke about the pandemic. PJ BN Sharma, IG (Retd) (@BholaNath_BSF) April 13, 2020 Not a right topic to joke over. Stay home stay safe! TK (@tejask9486) April 12, 2020 What do you think of Shashi Tharoors tweet? The northern Mexico border state of Baja California closed a plant run by American health care firm Smiths Medical Friday for allegedly refusing to sell ventilators to Mexican hospitals treating coronavirus patients. Baja California Gov. Jaime Bonilla said the firm refused to sell some of the machines, which are badly needed to treat patients with the deadly flu-like virus known as COVID-19. Bonilla said the firm had continued to operate its assembly plant under the argument it provided an 'essential' service, when most non-essential plants have been ordered closed to combat the pandemic. The northern Mexico border state of Baja California closed a plant run by American health care firm Smiths Medical (pictured) Friday for allegedly refusing to sell ventilators to Mexican hospitals treating coronavirus patients Baja California Gov. Jaime Bonilla said the firm refused to sell some of the machines, which are badly needed to treat patients infected by COVID-19 But Bonilla ordered Smiths Medical closed, because he argued it was providing no such essential service to Mexicans, and thus was not obeying health emergency contingency measures. The company, he added, said the ventilators assembled there are committed to other countries, reports Mexico News Daily. Mexicos medical device industry has been scrambling to meet an eleven-fold jump in demand for ventilators as patients with respiratory conditions linked to the coronavirus pandemic overwhelm hospitals in the United States and Europe, reports Reuters. Smiths Medical is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is owned by UK-based Smiths Group. In addition ti Smiths, US medical device firm Hillrom is planning to start building ventilators in Tijuana, while companies such as Vyaire Medical, Fisher & Paykel and Getinge are either boosting production of auxiliary ventilator parts or other coronavirus-linked products such as masks and protective clothing. Bonilla's demand on Smith Medical comes as Mexico now has 3,844 case of the new coronavirus, with 233 deaths nationwide. 'We said to them "if you want us to consider you essential, you have to provide some benefit to the people of Baja California, by selling us ventilators, because we need them,"' Bonilla said. Bonilla ordered Smiths Medical closed, because he argued it wasn't providing essential services to Mexicans, and thus was not obeying health emergency contingency measures. A man wears a face mask in Tijuana, located in the Baja, California, state of Mexico Mexico now has 3,844 case of the new coronavirus, with 233 deaths nationwide. A man wearing a protective suit against the spread of COVID-19 stands at the entrance to a cathedral in Tijuana Sunday after Holy Week celebrations were cancelled because of the virus 'They said "no, we are not going to sell you anything, we are just going to continue to use your labor."' Bonilla accused the company of contacting Mexico's foreign relations secretary and the U.S. Ambassador to try to stave off the closure order. But he vowed no to cave in to the pressure. The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Industry sources have argued the factory is an export-only plant that operates under special rules that allow it to import raw materials and parts duty-free, on the condition they be re-exported and not sold on the local market. Demand created: Why no country wants to take on China on the coronavirus Pak back at UNSC over Kashmir, India to respond to rant at appropriate time India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: India will respond at the appropriate time over Pakistan's latest rant on the Kashmir issue. Pakistan went back to the United Nations Security Council over the Jammu and Kashmir issue and this time it has questioned the new set of domicile rules that were issued by the Union Home Ministry last month. India hits out at Imran Khan for his remarks on Kashmir domicile law The letter by Pakistan's foreign minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi accused India over taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to change the demographics in Kashmir. India is yet to respond to the letter written by Pakistan at an appropriate time, an official told OneIndia. The letter states that the new domicile rules are aimed at changing the demographic structure of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has alleged that the action has triggered panic among the Kashmiris and could have consequences. The move is aimed at demographic flooding by outsiders, the letter also read. Last month the Home Ministry had issued rules which reserve all government jobs in Jammu and Kashmir for domiciled residents of the Union Territory. People who have lived in the UT for 15 years have been treated as domicile residents. Flash Serbian Ambassador to China Milan Bacevic said that China is making positive contributions to global public health security in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. During an exclusive interview with China.org.cn, Bacevic said: "The measures taken by China in comprehensiveness and achieved results have aroused praise from the WHO as well as many countries and their professional circles. "Not only did it show responsibility towards its own citizens, but it also took care of international health security." The ambassador said, "What is even more astonishing is that while China has not come out from the anti-epidemic struggle fully, it had rushed to help other countries, unquestionably sending assistance in terms of medical supplies and equipment to more than 80 countries. "By sending its doctors to countries that have become new outbreak hotspots, China is moving its people to another battlefield, and I think everyone should have full respect for such a Chinese sacrifice." The ambassador noted, "The global humanitarian action of China is an example of how it is becoming a force for good in the world, and the idea of broad community, in which we are all connected and sharing a common destiny. This is especially confirmed at the time of the fight against the pandemic led by China, reminding us we are the key creators of the 'community of shared future for mankind'." Underscoring the urgency of joining hands to stop the virus spread, Bacevic said: "I think it is the most important to be united, with the international community continuing to work together. "Confronting the massive challenge imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, cooperation is the only way to protect basic human rights, that is, right to live." The ambassador stressed the need to aid and support each other in the best possible way, coordinating policies and resources, as well as sharing information, scientific knowledge, diagnostic and therapeutic solutions. He pointed out that the true nature of the virus remained unknown, as were its ultimate consequences for humanity in terms of the number of casualties, adding that another unknown was the long-term impact on the European and world economy. He warned that it would be another test of the maturity of the global society as to whether countries would be able to show solidarity in the process of helping others struggling to recover from the economic fallout. As of 10:55 a.m. Beijing Time on April 13, there were 1,850,220 confirmed cases, with 114,215 deaths, reported globally, according to an interactive map maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Ironclad brothers share weal and woe China and Serbia are comprehensive strategic partners with unbreakable iron-clad friendship. Serbia was one of the first countries to offer support and help to China when China was striving to contain the outbreak, and the latter is now providing Serbia with assistance and medical supplies, and has also sent a medical expert team to support its anti-virus efforts. Serbia announced a state of emergency on March 15. It reported an accumulative number of 3,630 confirmed cases, with 80 deaths on April 13. According to Bacevic, the Serbian government has taken stringent emergency measures such as closing its borders, introducing a curfew, banning both urban and suburban traffic, and prohibiting public gatherings. It has also introduced a package of economic measures to help the economy and preserve jobs. At the suggestion of Chinese experts, the Serbian Army started installing temporary hospitals, equipping the first one in Belgrade with 3,000 beds to accommodate patients with mild symptoms, the ambassador said. "In Serbia, the number of patients is relatively stable and even a slight decline was recorded last week, which indicates that the measures produced some results," said the ambassador. "Regardless of this small positive sign, we are still on alert and will strive to avoid the scenario of the European countries that are hit hardest." The ambassador mentioned that a key relief measure in meeting the challenges posed by the virus, including the shortage of medical supplies, had been the rapid Chinese response. "In response to President Vucic's appeal, a team of six top Chinese experts arrived in Serbia along with the largest shipment of Chinese aid, consisted of medical supplies, equipment, respirators and other medical supplies necessary to fight the epidemic," he recalled. "Previously, tests for the detection of virus donated by the Mammoth Foundation based in Shenzhen were delivered as well. "Recently, 14 million masks were delivered and 14 experts arrived in Serbia to help us install two machines purchased from China's 'Health Care' company to produce masks by ourselves." "Chinese help means life to us," the diplomat said. "The donations have saved the lives of thousands of our citizens and we are deeply grateful for that." The entire world is currently fighting the COVID_19 crisis. As we all know, several Indian citizens are stuck in various parts of the world due to the lockdown issued by all major countries. As per the latest updates, Jason Sanjay, the son of Thalapathy Vijay is currently stranded in Canada, where he has been pursuing the higher studies. According to the reports, Vijay and his family are deeply worried about Sanjay, as the situation is getting more serious in Canada. Even though the country has recorded comparatively fewer coronavirus cases so far, a complete lockdown has been implied to control the pandemic. This has totally put the life of migrants, especially students in difficulty. Sanjay, the son of Vijay and Sangeetha, has been pursuing a course in filmmaking in Canada for the past one year. Recently, the star kid had made headlines by directing a few short films as a part of his college project. If the reports are to be true, Jason Sanjay is planning to pursue a career in Tamil films once he returns from Canada. Recently, it was rumoured that Jason Sanjay has already started receiving movie offers from the most sought-after directors of the Tamil film industry. According to the gossip mongers Darbar director AR Murugadoss had recently approached Vijay and expressed his desire to launch Sanjay in the industry with a new project. However, Vijay refused to take a decision on his son's behalf and has reportedly asked AR Murugadoss to wait till the star kid returns after completing his studies. The rumour mills also suggest that the master craftsman Shankar is planning to direct a two-hero project with Jason Vijay and Dhruv Vikram in the lead roles. Vijay, on the other hand, is all set to release his much-awaited upcoming project Master once the all India lockdown comes to an end. The project, which is directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj features the actor in the role of John Durairaj, the Dean of a college. Also Read: AR Murugadoss To Launch Vijay's Son Jason Sanjay? Keys: Portraits of Trials and Truth: a brilliant compilation of different journeys of realizations and witnessing Gods grace. Keys: Portraits of Trials and Truth is the creation of published author James Lloyd, a semiretired quality control and safety manager. When he was a communications specialist in the military during the Vietnam era, slow nights urged him to begin writing poems about the state of the country and the world as he saw it. Lloyd shares, Keys: Portraits of Trials and Truth is fitting as the title for this trilogy of fictional short stories because of how the grace of God unlocks the door to the goodness within the heart of each central character. Their experiences allow them to become free from the bonds of pride fullness, self-indulgence, low self-esteem, the fear of failure, as well as egomania and cynicism. In Waiting, Paul has become an impatient, status-driven millennial who seems to only be concerned about how best to advance his career after losing the one person that helped keep him morally centered. The change in his personality since losing her has alienated him from close friends and family in favor of less reputable characters. Then one day when he feels his days may be numbered, he meets an old military veteran in the most unlikely of circumstances, and what follows would change his life forever. In Will to Soar, Will Saxby agonizes over what he feels is his fatal flaw and cant get past a low opinion of himself, even though he is surrounded by friends and associates in his life that see him entirely differently. When he decides to make a last ditch effort to post for his dream job with help from his mentor and other associates, he is also aided by the dramatic appearance of characters whose own tragedies make his problem seem miniature in scope but whose testimonies and council allows him to see, in dramatic fashion, the man God also sees in him. Inside the Orchard is a story about an overachiever who also suffers from egomania. Edith is so driven that she has become one-dimensional and fixated on a romance with one of her law school professors that can never be realized. She is an A-lister and academic powerhouse by reputation, whose cynical and manipulative nature becomes her calling card. However, shes forced to see the world through the eyes of someone who is the polar opposite in appearance and disposition. Someone who is gifted in her own right who chooses to align herself with Edith, in spite of her attitude toward her, because of something quite remarkable that they both share. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, James Lloyds new book is a potent account of fictional characters whose lives have experienced the power of Gods love and grace in their own struggles and troubles in life that readers will find inspiring and enlightening. View a synopsis of Keys: Portraits of Trials and Truth on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Keys: Portraits of Trials and Truth at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Keys: Portraits of Trials and Truth, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. The Uttar Pradesh government on Monday said it has made preparations for the purchase of wheat and taking steps to ensure that farmers do not face any hardship amid the nationwide lockdown. The state government looks to buy 55 lakh metric tonnes of wheat at a rate of Rs 1,925 per quintal (100 kg) at 5,500 purchase centres, a release issued by the state government stated. The release also mentioned that an online token system has been introduced to ensure that there is no crowding at market yards, Principal Secretary Agriculture, Agriculture Marketing and Agriculture Foreign Business, Devesh Chaturvedi said. "Harvesting of wheat is taking place in the state. The government has made all preparations for wheat harvesting. Farmers do not need to worry as far as the purchase of wheat is concerned," UP Agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi said. "Online tokens have been introduced to ensure that there is no crowding in the mandis in the state. Farmers willing to sell wheat have to contact the purchase centre in-charge and give their farmer registration number. The centre in-charge will then generate an online token in a week's time, and the same will be sent to the farmer through SMS," Chaturvedi said. Chaturvedi also said that if farmers who are not registered arrive at the purchase centre along with the Aadhaar card, they can be registered by the centre in-charge on producing photo I-card, bank passbook and khatauni (land) papers. Instructions have been issued to all the centre in-charges to ensure that social distancing is strictly adhered to at the purchase centres along with use of masks. Along with this, arrangement of sanitisers, soaps and water should also be made at the purchase centres. Farmers too have been directed to cover their faces by masks or gamchaa while they come to the purchase centres, Chaturvedi said in the statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:47:55|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close CAPE TOWN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday warned against those who are seeking to exploit the nationwide lockdown over coronavirus "for their own sinister ends." "It is despicable that criminals are using this period of the lockdown as a cover to break the law at a time when our law-enforcement authorities are occupied with supporting the national effort to contain the pandemic," Ramaphosa said in his weekly presidential address. He was speaking following reports of criminal incidents ranging from destruction of public properties to gender-based violence. "It is a great indictment of our society that dozens of schools have been burgled, trashed or burnt to the ground," the president said. When the lockdown is lifted and learning resumes, thousands of children will have no school to return to, depriving them of the right to education, he said. The country has been under lockdown since midnight March 26. Last week, Ramaphosa extended the lockdown by two weeks, to the end of April. Electricity utility Eskom has also reported an increase in cable theft and vandalism of its infrastructure since the lockdown began, resulting in power supply interruptions and damage that will cost a considerable amount to repair. "That public property is being vandalized while the entire country is experiencing hardship because of the lockdown, is a demonstration of utter disrespect and disregard for the majority of South Africans who are law-abiding," Ramaphosa said. Criminals are also preying on the weak and vulnerable, the president said. "It is disturbing that during a time of such immense difficulty for our country, women and girls are being terrorised inside their own homes, forcing them to make desperate calls for help," Ramaphosa said. The number of calls to the GBV (gender-based violence) National Command Center has increased since the lockdown began, according to the president. He said South Africa has heeded the call by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for governments to prioritize gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. "We continue to implement the Emergency Response Plan to end gender-based violence that was announced last year," Ramaphosa said. Support services to vulnerable women and children remain operational throughout the lockdown, including psycho-social services like counselling for women and children, sheltering and places of safety, and medico-legal services in cases of sexual violence, he said. "I have a message for those callous criminals who think they can take advantage," said Ramaphosa. The criminal justice system is not on leave as law enforcement authorities will deal with those who transgress the law, he warned. Catherine J. Mondloch, a professor of psychology and the director of the face perception lab at Brock University in Ontario, said, If you think even about Halloween, one of the things we know about really young children, preschool age, is when the appearance of something changes, they think the thing itself has changed. For parents who are starting to wear masks, she said, Put it on, put it off a few times, so the child sees its still daddy. We are accustomed to getting lots of different information from faces, Dr. Mondloch said, ranging from the age of the person to the emotion the person is feeling to the general question of recognition and identity that is, whether weve met the person before. All of those perceptual skills improve across childhood, she said. Even if you show children pictures of pretty exaggerated expressions, young children will make more errors in reading the emotional states, she said. Children mix up emotions, look at a sad face and might say the person looks scared, or misperceive anger as disgust. And by putting on masks, she said, weve taken away some of that information and made it especially difficult for children to read emotional signals, which is, again, unsettling and disconcerting. So if you are wearing a mask, make sure to explain yourself very clearly to your child, giving directions, telling the child if theres a problem. Dr. Olivardia said that children with autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and social anxiety may be particularly vulnerable here. Dr. Harold Koplewicz, the president of the Child Mind Institute, which has extensive coronavirus resources for parents, said, I think its important to explain to kids that people are wearing masks as a way to help others otherwise they assume its because theyre dangerous. Children should think of this as an act of social responsibility, he said, and it might help to compare it to washing hands, as something you do to keep yourself safe, but also to help protect others. It is important to first validate that it can be uncomfortable when we dont know what or who is behind a mask, Dr. Olivardia said in an email. You can have a child wear their own mask, even a scary one, and recognize that they can be perceived as scary despite being a nice person. New Delhi, April 13 : The Special Cell of Delhi Police on Monday arrested the media coordinator of Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC), Safoora Zargar, for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to incite communal riots in the national capital's northeast area. Widespread violence between people supporting the new citizenship law and those opposing it had spiralled out of control in the area last month, leaving 53 people dead and scores injured. A Delhi court has now sent Zargar to two-day police custody. She was produced before the court at the end of her two-day police interrogation in another case related to organising anti-CAA protests in Delhi's Jafrabad area last year. She was arrested on April 11 in this matter. It was after the protest outside the Jafrabad Metro Station that clashes broke out in the area at the end of February. Bharti Airtel on Monday said it has teamed up with Apollo 24/7, the digital business unit of The Apollo Hospitals Group, to support India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The collaboration aims to bring together Airtel's pan-India network reach and Apollo Hospital's digital healthcare platform, Apollo 24/7, to raise awareness and break the chain of spread of COVID-19, according to a statement. Apollo 24/7 has launched a free digital self-assessment test on Airtel Thanks app to enable its customers to check their COVID-19 risk profile. "The test, which has been developed by Apollo 24/7, uses artificial intelligence-based technologies to allow users to assess their COVID-19 risk profile by answering a few simple questions," the statement added. Based on the responses, the digital tool generates a risk score and suggests next course of action including online consults on Apollo 24|7 free, dialling COVID non-prescriptive helpline from the app itself, self-care tips, social distancing guidelines and other prevention steps. "Apollo 24/7's free COVID helpline has over 100 Apollo expert doctors answering questions and clearing doubts of all those who are taking the scan. These initiatives are designed to help millions of Airtel customers alleviate any anxieties or doubts relating to COVID-19 and ensuring that the country, at large, stays safe," the statement added. The tool enables users to also check the COVID-19 risk profile of their region through an India wide heat map grading regions from high to low risk based on aggregated responses from these places. This would enable users to be more aware of situation within the country, and be more adept at maintaining social distancing to break the COVID-19 chain. "Patients at risk and falling under the ICMR approved testing parameters will be guided to the authorised testing centres for the COVID-19 test. The scan is not meant to replace a doctor and the interaction is not be taken as expert medical advice. Any information shared is to be kept strictly confidential," it added. The quick risk scan can be taken across platforms including mobile smartphones, laptops and desktops. In less than two months since national launch, Apollo 24/7 has organically acquired over 6 lakh registered users, the statement said. Also, Airtel customers will now be available to recharge their Airtel connections at over 3000 Apollo Pharmacy stores across India, offering added convenience to customers who are looking at offline recharge options. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Technavio has been monitoring the sensitive toothpaste market and it is poised to grow by USD 636.44 million during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of about 5% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005309/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Sensitive Toothpaste Market 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire) Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Latest Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Church Dwight Co., Inc., Colgate-Palmolive Company, GlaxoSmithKline plc., Procter Gamble, and Unilever are some of the major market participants. The introduction of such multifunctional sensitive toothpaste will offer immense growth opportunities. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. Introduction of such multifunctional sensitive toothpaste has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. Sensitive Toothpaste Market 2019-2023: Segmentation Sensitive toothpaste market is segmented as below: Distribution Channel Offline Online Geographic Landscape APAC Europe MEA North America South America To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download latest free sample report of 2020-2024: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR31138 Sensitive Toothpaste Market 2019-2023: Scope Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our sensitive toothpaste market report covers the following areas: Sensitive Toothpaste Market Size Sensitive Toothpaste Market Trends Sensitive Toothpaste Market Industry Analysis This study identifies increase in demand for natural and organic oral care products as one of the prime reasons driving the sensitive toothpaste market growth during the next few years. Sensitive Toothpaste Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the sensitive toothpaste market, including some of the vendors such as Church Dwight Co., Inc., Colgate-Palmolive Company, GlaxoSmithKline plc., Procter Gamble, and Unilever. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the sensitive toothpaste market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Sensitive Toothpaste Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023 Detailed information on factors that will assist sensitive toothpaste market growth during the next five years Estimation of the sensitive toothpaste market size and its contribution to the parent market Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior The growth of the sensitive toothpaste market Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of sensitive toothpaste market vendors Table Of Contents: PART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORT 2.1 Preface 2.2 Preface 2.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ PART 03: MARKET LANDSCAPE Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysis PART 04: MARKET SIZING Market definition Market sizing 2018 Market size and forecast 2018-2023 PART 05: FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition PART 06: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL Market segmentation by distribution channel Comparison by distribution channel Offline Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Online Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Market opportunity by distribution channel PART 07: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE PART 08: GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison Europe Market size and forecast 2018-2023 North America Market size and forecast 2018-2023 APAC Market size and forecast 2018-2023 South America Market size and forecast 2018-2023 MEA Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Key leading countries Market opportunity PART 09: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers Market challenges PART 10: MARKET TRENDS Introduction of multifunctional sensitive toothpaste Opinions of health experts and physicians increase product awareness Access to distribution channels through omnichannel strategy PART 11: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview Landscape disruption Competitive scenario PART 12: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors Church Dwight Co., Inc. Colgate-Palmolive Company GlaxoSmithKline plc. Procter Gamble Unilever PART 13: APPENDIX Research methodology List of abbreviations PART 14: EXPLORE TECHNAVIO 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005309/en/ Contacts: 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/ UAE-based AgTech company, Madar Farms, has partnered with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) to support the operation of the worlds first commercial-scale indoor tomato farm using only LED lights and a new research facility to help in accelerating the AgTech industry in the UAE and the region. The investment is part of ADIOs Dh1 billion AgTech Incentive Programme to accelerate the growth of the emirates burgeoning AgTech ecosystem and promote innovation in desert agriculture that is locally relevant and globally exportable, said a statement. It will be used towards developing the worlds first commercial-scale indoor tomato farm that will use only LED lighting to grow. The facility is currently under construction at Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad) and set to open by the end of this year. The facility will also see Madar Farms triple the quantity of its microgreens and grow a wider variety of products, increasing its operations in developing local food for local consumption. The investment will also support a new Research and Development (R&D) facility that will enable Madar Farms to quantify production output measured against environmental inputs (water and electricity). Currently, Madar Farms has an established R&D facility at Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. Madar Farms is one of four AgTech innovators to receive investment from ADIO in the latest award of financial packages from its AgTech Incentive Programme, established under the Abu Dhabi Governments Ghadan 21 accelerator programme. ADIO will invest Dh367 million ($100 million) in total in four AgTech companies building facilities in Abu Dhabi as part of this round. Since launching in 2017, Madar Farms has been leading a new agriculture revolution by using advanced methods to grow local high-quality fresh produce with cutting-edge farming technologies on its hydroponic-vertical systems. As well as providing a holistic approach to sustainability, Madar Farms also works with the wider industry and education authorities to support the UAE governments National Food Security Strategy 2051 that aims to solve the regions food problems and provide enough nutritious food all-year round. Abdulaziz AlMulla, CEO and co-founder of Madar Farms, said: It is a privilege to be recognised by ADIO for our efforts in tackling food and water security challenges in the UAE and the region and turning the Late Sheikh Zayed vision into reality. This shows that we are going in the right direction and with food sustainability becoming more important, we are more determined to build on this achievement. This investment will enable us to significantly scale up our operations in the UAE as well as put the skills and knowledge we have gained over the last three years into researching long-term, sustainable solutions for complex food security challenges in the region. As well as strengthening our position as a key player in the UAEs AgTech industry, our ambition is to be leading a new agriculture revolution in different countries in the GCC region and this investment is a step forward to helping us achieve this. Dr Tariq Bin Hendi, Director General of ADIO, said: We are proud to partner with Madar Farms to support the continued commercialisation of its innovative AgTech solutions in Abu Dhabi. The investment will enable Madar Farms to scale up its capabilities and contribute to expanding the supply of sustainable, quality local food in the region. AgTech is a priority sector for the Abu Dhabi Government, and Madar Farms will be a key player in the growth of the ecosystem over the coming years. - TradeArabia News Service The works on 150 sites have already started within the Great Construction project, and more than 6,000 kilometers of national and local roads are planned to be built this year. The works on 150 sites, constituting 40% of total amount, have already started within the Great Construction project. The process is already under way. The Great Construction is being carried out. Fortunately, despite the budget amendments, the spending on road fund has not been cut. Moreover, a sovereign loan of UAH 19.3 billion was provided for the fulfilment of obligations of the State Automobile Roads Agency of Ukraine (Ukravtodor), Infrastructure Minister of Ukraine Vladyslav Kryklii said in an interview with the Radio Liberty, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. According to him, this is a really landmark project as Ukraine will see the new quality of roads. In addition, it signifies the development of Ukraines economy, including the economy of the regions. In total, we plan to build more than 6,000 kilometers of national and local roads this year. And it will be an absolute record of road construction in Ukraine, the minister said. He noted that none of the regions, including Donbas, would be overlooked. ol The Chancellor is expected to warn of an economic 'tipping point' if the Cabinet does not balance the coronavirus lockdown with the financial damage it is causing. Rishi Sunak will issue ministers with internal government forecasts showing a gloomy outlook for the economy if Britons remain shut indoors. Prime Minister Boris Johnson closed the country down on March 23 to try to stem the tsunami of Covid-19 patients flooding into hospitals. But the number of daily deaths has remained high, with 737 on Sunday bringing the total dead to a staggering 10,612. Coronavirus cases have also continued to surge as 5,288 new infections yesterday brought the total to 84,279. Rishi Sunak (pictured) will issue ministers with internal government forecasts showing a gloomy outlook for the economy if Britons remain shut indoors The Chancellor and Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured) will outline a model on the potential aftermath of the crisis this week The Chancellor and Health Secretary Matt Hancock will outline a model on the potential aftermath of the crisis this week. The pair are 'taking a holistic approach in trying to find the right balance' between the health and economic impacts of the lockdown, a source close to Mr Sunak told the Telegraph. But a senior Conservative MP warned: 'If people are told to stay at home for another four weeks, it's going to be really tough. 'The tipping point is when there is no money in the economy to pay for it [the lockdown].' It is understood there will be a Cobra meeting on the lockdown on Thursday after ministers hear from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies committee. The Cabinet has divided into hawks who want to lift the shut down in a few weeks and doves who want to delay until late May at the earliest. The Cabinet has divided into hawks who want to lift the shut down in a few weeks and doves who want to delay until late May at the earliest. Mr Hancock is reportedly a dove Leading the hawks is Mr Sunak, who previously made 'robust' representations to 'doveish' Mr Hancock that the economy will suffer unless normality is restored. Mr Hancock believes the protection of the NHS should be the overarching priority, but hawks have been alarmed by the problems stacking up in their departments. Hawks hoped the lockdown could end by May 8, but doves cited the first day after the May 26 bank holiday as the earliest date for a phased return to normal. According to one report, the PM is hawkish about the lockdown, and has been taken aback by how rigorously it has been observed by the public. The Government has denied claims Whitehall officials have calculated up to 150,000 lives could be lost as a result of the lockdown. It is worse than all but the bleakest projection if social distancing measures had not been introduced. Cabinet minister Michael Gove has been described by colleagues as 'doveish' on the lockdown. A source close to the Minister for the Cabinet Office said: 'He is definitely keen on a clear path out of the lockdown, but at the right time.' A source close to Mr Hancock said: 'Lifting the lockdown depends on what the evidence shows us. We are nowhere near putting dates on things like that.' STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- As schools across the country shut down to curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), moving to remote learning, a new report states that schools should extend the next school year to make up for lost learning time. Researchers at Michigan State University created a comprehensive report analyzing state responses to school closures and remote learning. According to the report, which is a collaboration between Michigan State Universitys Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) and the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR), students may be less prepared to advance to the next grade. The school building closures have also strained school planning, financing and student testing capabilities. The report suggests that states extend the 2020-2021 school year and/or lengthen school days to allow students to catch up on lost learning time. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** State and local policymakers will need to act quickly to help mitigate the academic consequences of the pandemic and extended periods out of school, said Katharine Strunk, EPIC faculty director and professor of education policy, in a news release. Everyone is working as fast as they can, and while every state faces different constraints and opportunities, it is always better to put our heads together to come up with the best solutions for our kids. At the start of the next school year, states and school districts should revise tests to assess student progress and identify different learning levels. Those tests should be used to help educators provide targeted assistance to students, and not used for accountability purposes. To help those students at different learning levels, there should be an investment in professional development programs to help teachers and staff. With the possibility that school closures can occur next school year due to the coronavirus, states should also consider resources for school districts to improve distance learning instruction. The report compiled information about what each state is doing to implement distance learning models while schools are closed due to the coronavirus. At the time of the report, which was published Wednesday, at least 29 states required districts to implement distance learning, and no state had distributed internet-enabled devices to all students. More than 30 states provided guidance on special education, but most left it up to districts to comply with requirements for equal access. States are facing unprecedented challenges educating students in the midst of a public health crisis, but they can learn from each other, said Matt Grossmann, IPPSR director and associate professor of political science. We hope to provide actionable information to facilitate decisions despite the need for quick action. NYC SCHOOLS CLOSED Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Saturday he will keep all New York City public schools closed for the rest of the school year, but Cuomo said he has jurisdiction over such a move and hasnt reached that decision yet. Just two hours after de Blasio made the announcement that schools would remain closed on Saturday, Cuomo said that that wasnt the case. However, on Sunday, de Blasio continued to defend his decision to keep schools closed. We explained obviously why that was the right thing to do in terms of health and safety, [and] why it was the right thing to do in terms of recognizing what would be possible academically with only a few weeks in person, the mayor said during a press conference on Sunday. "But we had a reason in making that decision to know that we could keep supporting our kids, and we laid out a five-point plan of the ways that were going to support our kids, our parents, [and] prepare for this phase and beyond. Cuomo said during a separate press conference Sunday that there must be a regional coordinated plan between New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York localities to make a decision about when schools would reopen. 70 Coronavirus in NYC: Photos show the fight against the pandemic FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. The Chinese semiconductor company Unisoc introduced a new smartphone today, called Lenovo A7. The device is yet to appear on any official website, but some specs were posted on the Twitter page of the chip maker. The Lenovo A7 is obviously an entry-level handset with a waterdrop screen, two cameras and an octa-core CPU. The newly released #LenovoA7 smartphone is powered by UNISOC #SC9863A Octa-core chipset platform. The A7 comes with a 6.09-inch waterdrop display, 4000 mAh high-capacity removable battery with up to 416-hour standby time, a 13MP + 2MP dual rear camera and a 5MP front camera. pic.twitter.com/2tksgEDTGf UNISOC (@UNISOCTech) April 9, 2020 The chipset is Unisoc SC9863A which has eight Cortex-A55 units - one cluster reaches 1.6 GHz, the rest go up to 1.2 GHz. It can support resolutions up to Full HD+ (2160 x 1080), but the Lenovo A7 is likely settling for a 720p display. All we know is the panel is 6.09 with a waterdrop cutout for the 5 MP selfie camera. In other specs, the battery is 4,000 mAh and is removable - a proper rarity these days. The panel comes off, it still stays with a fingerprint scanner and two cutouts for the 13 MP + 2 MP dual camera and a single LED flash. We are yet to learn more about this device, including availability or markets, but it is highly unlikely to be more than $100. Source In an op-ed column posted on the website of the New York Times Sunday, to be published in the newspapers print edition Monday, presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden aligns himself with the campaign by big business and the Trump administration to force workers to go back to work, regardless of the dangers from the coronavirus epidemic. The headline of the column tells the story: Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America. Under conditions where more than 10,000 Americans died last week from the coronavirus, and the infection continues to spread through every state and county, threatening to drive the death toll far higher, Biden does not announce a plan to save lives or protect the population from the deadly virus. Instead, his concern is how we get our economy back on track, in other words, how the American capitalist class can resume the process of extracting profit from the labor of workers. Joseph Biden (Credit: C-Span) Thus, while Biden makes a few minor criticisms of the Trump administration for its slow and incompetent response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he shares the same political framework: the overriding responsibility of the American government is to save the wealth and profits of the financial aristocracy, not the lives of the people. The three-point plan Biden elaborates is an exercise in evasion and deception. He avoids discussing the actual obstacles to an effective response to the pandemicthe profit-driven health care system and a government beholden to Wall Streetand says nothing at all about the scale of the catastrophe that is now breaking over the heads of the American population. Point #1 is we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly before sending workers back to work. This differs only by an adverbsignificantlyfrom Trumps declaration that the number of new cases has to begin to decline, however little, before the big bang reopening of the economy can take place. The former vice president explicitly rules out a health-first approach to the crisis, declaring flatly that we cant stay home and just wait for the vaccine to arrive. Despite his claim that his plan has to start with responding effectively to the immediate medical crisis, he offers no concrete actions to supply health care workers with necessary materials like masks and gowns, or the ventilators, drugs and other chemicals now in short supply for the desperately ill. Point #2 is to call for widespread, easily available and prompt testingand a contact tracing strategy that protects privacy. Biden might as well promise the moon, or pie in the sky when you die. To implement such testing, the entire course of the US governments response to the pandemic would have to be overturned, as well as the refusal of the giant pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies to make such widespread testing possible. This demand is included without the slightest expectation, on the part of Biden and the Democrats, that any such effort will be undertaken. It is noteworthy that no state run by a Democratic governorincluding New York, California, Michigan and New Jerseyhas attempted to implement large-scale testing. On the contrary, testing has been limited to patients already experiencing severe symptoms consistent with COVID-19. Point #3 is to make sure that our hospitals and health care system are ready for flare-ups of the disease that may occur when economic activity expands again. More weasel words. Health experts are not worried about isolated flare-ups, as Biden puts it, but about second and third rounds of the disease that could well be even more catastrophic than the first. According to one of the more conservative estimates, the first round of COVID-19 will kill 60,000 people in the United States, but a second round, ignited by a premature reopening of factories, offices and other workplaces, could kill another 140,000 people. As part of Point #3, Biden adds, Reopening the right way will still not be completely safe. Translated into plain English, this means that workers will die as a consequence of returning to workplaces that are not safe, to carry out work that is not necessary from the standpoint of human survivalhealth, food, shelter, public servicesbut is needed to resume the process of profit accumulation for the financial aristocracy. It is particularly noteworthy that Biden makes no reference in his op-ed column to the $2.2 trillion bailout legislation that passed Congress last month with unanimous bipartisan support in the Senate, and an overwhelmingly favorable voice vote in the House of Representatives. This bill provides the basis for virtually unlimited financial support for corporate America from the Federal Reserve, using the full resources of the US government, while promising American workers only a $1,200 one-time check and, if they qualify, temporarily enhanced unemployment benefits. Bidens silence betokens consent. He fully supports a bailout that was enthusiastically endorsed by the congressional Democratic leadership and approved by all his former rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination who hold seats in the Senate, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The entire Democratic Party, from its most conservative senator to the self-proclaimed democratic socialist Sanders, voted to back legislation that is a far greater bonanza for the financial overlords than the bailouts that followed the 2008 Wall Street crash. Meanwhile, many of the 17 million workers laid off in the past three weeks have found it almost impossible to apply for unemployment compensation, with state systems overloaded, websites crashing and telephone calls unanswered. Biden says nothing about any of this and proposes nothing to relieve the acute suffering and deprivation in working-class neighborhoods throughout the country. Biden tacks on a few mild criticisms of the present occupant of the White House, referring to the administrations failure to plan, to prepare, to honestly assess and communicate the threat to the nation. He treads carefully, however, and avoids specifics, since on the question of preparations to meet a pandemic, Trump did nothing more than follow in the footsteps of the Obama-Biden administration, which failed even to rebuild the US disaster stockpile after it was depleted by the H1N1 and Ebola epidemics. It is revealing that Biden avoids even referring to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic until the final paragraph of his op-ed, and then only in the vaguest generalities: The American people have already paid too high a price in illness, death and economic loss. No one reading this banal tract would have the slightest inkling that the United States has just gone through the worst week in its history, from a public health standpoint, or that the weeks ahead are likely to be even worse. Floating accommodation at Tanjong Pagar Terminal. (PHOTO: Khaw Boon Wan/Facebook) SINGAPORE The first batch of 31 healthy foreign workers has moved into one of the three floating accommodations berthed at Tanjong Pagar Terminal, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said on Monday. The move is part of Singapores efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. The authorities announced last week that healthy workers would be separated from those who are infected or suspected to have the virus. Apart from the floating accommodations, healthy workers would be placed at other activated sites including SAF military camps, the Changi Exhibition Centre, as well as vacant Housing Board blocks in Tanjong Pagar and Jurong. More than 5,000 workers who are providing essential services have already been moved out of the dormitories, said authorities last Thursday. About 1,300 healthy workers will be progressively relocated to the floating accommodations in batches over the next few weeks. In a post on Facebook, Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and the Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan said on Sunday that each floating accommodation can hold a few hundred occupants and be suitably organised to achieve safe distancing. Meals can be prepared off-site and delivered to the cabins to minimise inter-mingling, he added. The 31 workers have undergone health checks including swab tests and screening for fever or respiratory symptoms before moving in and will have access to round-the-clock medical assistance. Each room will accommodate only two to three occupants, with sufficient space among workers for safe distancing. All workers will undergo temperature checks twice a day. They may leave their rooms for at least an hour each day at staggered timings for scheduled activities on the open deck. Meals will be delivered directly to their rooms. The occupants are issued care packs containing masks, thermometers, snacks and instant beverages. They have Wi-Fi access onboard and will each receive a SIM card for internet surfing and communication. Each room is also provided with a kettle and a cleaning kit. Story continues Captain M Segar, Assistant Chief Executive (Operations) of the MPA, said, By relocating healthy workers to the floating accommodations, we aim to provide a safe environment for them from the spread of COVID-19. We recognise their efforts and contributions to Singapore, and will do our best to take care of their needs and well-being amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The efforts to separate the healthy and infected foreign workers come as the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections among workers living in dormitories and working at construction sites in Singapore continued to surge, with a total of 1,193 such cases as of Monday. At least 19 COVID-19 clusters linked to foreign worker dormitories have been identified as of Monday, including the largest cluster at S11 Dormitory@Punggol, which is linked to 586 cases. Eight such dorms have been gazetted as isolation areas, including the newly confirmed cluster at Acacia Lodge and Cochrane Lodge II. Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore Related stories: COVID-19: Singapore confirms record 386 more cases, one additional death, and 4 new clusters; total at 2,918 COVID-19: 24 foreign workers permanently banned for flouting circuit breaker measures COVID-19: Work pass holder permanently banned, 30 fines of $300 over violations of circuit breaker measures Cochrane Lodge II becomes 8th foreign worker dorm gazetted as isolation area As the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the economic activities impacting employments, several terror groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) are reportedly exploiting the crisis to ramp up its recruitment. Western anti-terror observers have indicated towards the disturbing signs of heightened terror activities as the world remains focussed on fighting the pandemic. Dr Siegfried Wolf, director of research at the South Asia Democratic Front, opined that thousands of youth lose their livelihoods due to the pandemic and can become easy prey for terrorist organisations like LeT, JeM, and Hizbul Mujahideen. Speaking to ANI, Dr Wolf said that Jihadi groups have a long tradition of exploiting crisis situations for their activities, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Already facing an extraordinary challenge, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, the states and their societies are in particular vulnerable in all aspects of daily life. Being aware of this, terrorists try to exploit these conditions to produce maximum fear and to further escalate the crisis with their violent and verbal assaults, said Dr Wolf. Read: Jaish Conspiracy Exposed By J&K Police; Mobile, Sims Recovered From Central Jail Experts have warned against the infodemic that is being used by the extremist groups for their nefarious agenda. Junaid Qureshi, the director of the European Foundation for South Asian Studies, said that while it is horrific to learn about terrorists advancing their agenda during turbulent times, it not surprising since terrorist groups have an embedded character of exploitation in their modus operandi. "They exist because they exploit; religion, uneducated people, poor people, political instabilities in regions, caste, colour, and in this case, a global pandemic," opined Qureshi. Read: Want India's Covid Help? Send Terrorists Like Hafiz Saeed, Vacate PoK: Kapil Mishra To Pak Major breakthrough On April 11, Jammu and Kashmir police exposed the conspiracy hatched by JeM in a surprise raid conducted inside Central Jail Kot Balwal. During the raid, which lasted for almost four hours, police recovered 3 mobile phones, 2 sim cards, 1 charger, 1 headphone and 1 memory card each from the possession of Pakistan terrorists Abdul Rehman Mughal and two of his associates. Read: 'Lack Of Preparedness For COVID-19 Pandemic Poses Threat Of Bioterrorist Attack': UN Chief Read: Terrorists May See Window Of Opportunity: UN Warns Of Terror Revival Amid Coronavirus (With ANI Inputs) S ome people in northern India are seeing the view of the Himalayan mountain range for the first time in their lives, thanks to a drop in air pollution caused by the country's coronavirus lockdown. People living in Jalandhar in northern Punjab have been posting pictures of the mountains from rooftops and empty streets, amazed by the view which has been hidden by pollution for 30 years. India, a bustling country of 1.3 billion people, has slowed to an uncharacteristic crawl, transforming ordinary scenes of daily life into a surreal landscape. The nation is now under what has been described as the world's biggest lockdown, which started on March 25, designed to keep the virus from spreading and overwhelming India's healthcare system. Health officials have confirmed more than 9,100 cases of the virus, including at least 308 deaths. But a silver lining for the country and its residents has been the drop in air pollution, revealing new sights which were once cloaked in smog. Indians took to social media to share their photos of the Himalayas, which have not been seen for 30 years in northern Punjab. The mountain range is the worlds highest with elevations of up to 24,000ft and includes the worlds tallest peak, Mount Everest. Some posted clear photos of the mountains from more than 100 miles away, while others noted the "clear indication" of the impact of the country's pollution. India typically records five times the safe limit for air quality set out by the World Health Organisation. But the country's lockdown had resulted in a significant improvement in air quality, India's Central Pollution Control Board said. India is set to extend the strict nationwide lockdown imposed last month, which shut factories, shops and places of worship, and halted all construction work. Most of imported COVID-19 cases diagnosed during medical observation: Chinese official BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- About 70 percent of China's COVID-19 cases from overseas were diagnosed and reported when they were under quarantine and medical observation after entering the country, a health official said on Monday. Some of the imported cases were diagnosed on the day of their entry, said Wang Bin, the official with the National Health Commission, at a press conference in Beijing. But most of them were found during the 14-day quarantine, said Wang. The Chinese mainland reported 98 new imported cases of COVID-19 Sunday, bringing the total number of imported cases to 1,378, the commission said Monday in its daily report. The mainland also reported six new suspected cases Sunday, all imported, the commission said. Former First Lady Patience Jonathan has struck a deal to release her 200-bed hotel as COVID-19 Isolation and treatment centre. The Abuja hotel, which is believed to be worth about N2 billion, is under interim forfeiture secured by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at the court on April 30, 2018. The former First Lady, it was learnt, struck the deal with First Lady Aisha Buhari, which led to her release of the hotel, under litigation, for use by the government at the critical time. The First Lady, through her pet project, the Future Assured Programme, entered into separate agreements with Mrs. Jonathan and the Ministry of Health to convert the hotel into a COVID-19 treatment centre. Mrs. Buhari made an offer to the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, to equip it as a treatment centre to international standards. Although the hotel will be formally handed over to the Minister of Health on Monday, it will be managed by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) COVID-19 committee. The Future Assured Programme is providing facilities like water, furniture, beddings, fittings and modern health equipment used to manage COVID-19 cases. It was gathered that the deal between the First Lady and her predecessor was struck at a recent meeting by the duo at the Presidential Villa. A source quoted Mrs. Jonathan as saying: This is the time we must all come together, irrespective of political differences, to assist this nation to fight the pandemic. It is a time to shun politics. I will do everything to help this great country that has also given me the opportunity to serve. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates How France found itself in the middle of a coronavirus catastrophe French President Emmanuel Macron opened his official visit to Italy on Feb. 26 with a big two-cheek kiss for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Then he was off for a 20-minute round of handshaking in the streets of Naples, even though the Italian coronavirus outbreak was already big news there. In Paris on March 9, the day neighbouring Italy was locked down, Macron went strolling with his wife on the Champs-Elysees, telling restaurant patrons he wanted to "send a message of confidence to the French economy." In retrospect, it wasn't such a great idea. France is now among the worst-performing countries in handling the outbreak. The Associated Press "In France, the French president is like a king. He's a republican king," says Mathieu Magnaudeix, one of France's top investigative journalists. "It's very clear they didn't grasp how important the situation was. It's a failure of the whole system. It's a failure of French executive power and especially the president." Occasionally, the president was challenged. On a Feb. 28 visit to a French hospital, he was confronted by a doctor about how public hospitals were effectively on fire like the famous Notre Dame Cathedral and needed his immediate attention. Macron pushed back, saying, "OK, so I can count on you?" The doctor quickly responded, "Oh yes, you can count on me, but the opposite still needs to be proven." Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images There is a lot of anger directed at the French government right now, Magnaudeix says. "We basically lost two months or three months, three very important months, where we could have helped prevent this pandemic from getting bigger and bigger in France," he said. "After all of that is over, the government will have to be accountable for what they've done or not done." It wasn't all the government's fault. On March 12, Macron finally went on TV to announce he was closing schools and calling for physical distancing because France was now at war with COVID-19. Story continues The very next day, the public flooded into Parisian terraces and courtyards to enjoy the sunshine with their friends and relatives. Many people seemed to pay no attention to the possibility that France could share Italy's horrible fate. Mathieu Magnaudeix "We had the example of Wuhan under our eyes and then we had the example of Italy under our eyes," says Dr. Catherine Hill, a leading French epidemiologist. "Instead of thinking that those were examples, people just hoped for the best and they talked about the Italian scenario as if it was a Western movie made by Italians or something exotic. It's ridiculous! The same causes tend to have the same consequences." Intensive care units overwhelmed Eric Maury Sure enough, the consequences have arrived. A tidal wave of COVID-19 patients is overwhelming France's hospitals. Intensive care doctor Eric Maury estimates there are 5,000 ICU beds in France. "Actually there are more than 7,000 patients requiring ICU, so we have actually more patients than France can treat in ICU beds," he said. On Sunday, the death toll topped 14,000. France has responded to the shortage with an amazing mobilization of high-speed trains and aircraft to move patients from saturated hospitals in Paris and the eastern portion of the country to less busy hospitals in other regions, and even other countries. "They sent patients to Germany, to Switzerland, to Luxembourg because [the system] was overwhelmed," Maury said. "There were too many patients to take care of and there were no more ICU beds, no ventilators." The comparisons to other countries are astonishing. While France is reputed to have one of the best health care systems in the world, neighbouring Germany performed five times the per-capita number of COVID-19 tests. Now, France has six times the per-capita number of deaths from the disease than Germany. Daniel Cole/The Associated Press France claims to have a suspiciously low number of confirmed cases, but epidemiologists like Hill don't believe it. "My estimate is that you have to multiply the published figures by something like 50, so there's an enormous gap," she said. WATCH | COVID-19 catastrophe in France: There was a scandal in France when it turned out that a much-discussed stockpile of masks and other protective equipment was far smaller than promised. Macron toured a mask production line and promised more were on the way. Intensive care physicians like Maury say there is no sign of relief yet. "What I am telling the government is if there is no protection, we are not going to take care of patients," he said. "It's not possible to do that." Return to normal? Even as France is sending patients to other countries, the government is announcing plans to return to normal. Experts like Hill doubt that's possible without a large increase in testing. "Half of the contaminations are caused by individuals who do not know they are infectious," she said. "There are millions of people in France who are positive right now. How do you release the quarantine? You really have to start testing massively to sort out the people who are contagious and bring them aside." And like Canada, France has a shockingly high proportion of deaths in nursing homes. AP Photo/Thibault Camus It's something Macron did not seem to see coming back on March 6, when he joined the dinner table at a Paris seniors' residence and didn't pay attention to physical distancing. Today, the number of seniors who have died of COVID-19 in France is roughly 5,000. The deaths in seniors' homes are perhaps the most shocking element of France's lamentable coronavirus record. A growing number of Korean automakers are halting production here due to a sharp decline in sales in North America and Europe caused by the coronavirus epidemic. Kia is halting production at three plants in Korea for a week from April 23. Kia said Sunday that it notified its labor union of the stoppage at its two plants in Gwangmyeong and one in Gwangju which manufacture the Carnival minivan, Stinger sports coupe, K9 large sedan, Pride compact and other small SUVs. Altogether they will be making 20,000 fewer cars. A Kia staffer said, "We're halting production at three of our nine domestic plants that produce a large proportion of cars for export." The state government has thrown nearly $1 billion a week at its COVID-19 response since the crisis deepened in mid-March. But Premier Daniel Andrews says it could be months before the full cost of the emergency to the states economy and budget become clear. Premier Daniel Andrews on Monday. He says it is "pointless" trying to frame a state budget in the volatile circumstances. Credit:Chris Hopkins In a series of escalating spending announcements since March 15, about $3.7 billion, more than $925 million a week on average, has been pledged, mostly on huge packages to bolster the states health system and economy. The government, which in normal times spends between $1.3 billion and $1.4 billion each week, is also poised to announce a support package for the residential rental sector, which is expected to add several-hundred million dollars more to Victoria's cost of responding to the virus. The Megxit agreement has finally been realized and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are now free to work and do what they want to do. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex may have said their goodbyes, but it's not just their royal work they are bidding farewell to. Not Doing That It has recently been revealed that Prince Harry is refusing to teach his son Prince Archie one of the Queen's most famous skills. Since they decided to embark on a new adventure, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have emphasized that they want their child to live freely and not be confined within the bounds of royal life. In an interview with Daily Mail's Weekend Magazine, Dr. Jane Goodall revealed that Prince Harry didn't want to raise Archie with the airs and graces expected of a royal. Furthermore, the doctor said that Harry had told her that he won't be teaching his son Archie of the Queen's most famous wave. The Queen's wave is done with a vertical hand slightly bent on the wrist. It's a classy gesture that speaks of decorum but still comes with the feel of a little excitement. While Dr. Goodall suggested that Archie might learn how to do the royal wave, Harry was quick to respond saying, "No, he's not growing up like that." This is in stark contrast to all of his brother's children. The public has seen Prince William and Kate Middleton's children doing the Queen's wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace for Trooping the Colour. Last year, Prince Louis, their one-year-old son, was spotted waving at the public for the first time. Their decision to leave the royal family was fueled by their desire to raise their child in private. Prince Harry and Meghan were under the eagle eyes of the British media, and they didn't want their son to grow up in that kind of environment. Some people thought their move to Canada was a good move, but when Harry and Meghan moved to the U.S. a few weeks back, people started to ask what the couple's intention really was. Does moving to Hollywood really mean raising their child in private? Goodbye Grandmother Early this year, Harry and Meghan made their bombshell announcement through their official social media account "Sussex Royal." "After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year and are starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We intend to step back as 'senior' members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen," their statement read. The Queen, Harry's grandmother, was saddened by the couple's decision to leave. However, she said in a statement that they would "always be much-loved members of my family". On behalf of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Buckingham Palace issued a statement: "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are grateful to Her Majesty and the Royal Family for their ongoing support as they embark on the next chapter of their lives." The oil price rose just 0.46 per cent yesterday after Opec and Russia agreed the largest-ever production cuts. Supply has been slashed by more than 9m barrels per day around 10 per cent of the total after the oil price collapsed to $22.76 as global economic activity stalled. But the price failed to move significantly as the cut paled in comparison to the 25m-barrels-per-day drop in demand. Production cut: Supply of oil has been slashed by more than 9m barrels per day around 10 per cent of the total after the oil price collapsed to $22.76 as global economic activity stalled Amrita Sen, founder of analysis firm Energy Aspects, said: The headline cut is very big but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the fall in demand. Donald Trump brokered the deal, which marks a truce in the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, who are wrestling for a greater market share. The US President later claimed that Opec is looking to cut 20m barrels a day. Daily demand has fallen by between 25 per cent and 35 per cent. The world was consuming around 100m barrels of oil per day before the coronavirus crisis meaning the cuts are not likely to be enough to solve the over-supply problem alone. Please enter the email address associated with your User account. Your username will be emailed to the email address on file. Please enter the email address associated with your User account. Your username will be emailed to the email address on file. Please enter the email address for your account. A verification code will be sent to you. Once you have received the verification code, you will be able to choose a new password for your account. Please enter the email address for your account. A verification code will be sent to you. Once you have received the verification code, you will be able to choose a new password for your account. On 17 March 2020, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announced to the US Congress that the Trump administration will now negotiate a comprehensive trade agreement with Kenya. This will be done under the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which is a legislative procedure allowing the administration to negotiate trade agreements without legislative interference. Congress can approve or reject a deal, but they cannot change or delay it. For this reason, it is also known as fast-track trade legislation. This is an important development. The trade negotiations with Kenya (along with the UK and the EU) are said to count under Mr. Lighthizers top priorities now. It will be the first American Free Trade Agreement (FTA) concluded with a sub-Saharan African state. The only other American FTA with an African nation is the US-Morocco FTA, signed on June 15, 2004. It will take time to negotiate and ratify a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement. It will take even longer to start writing a new chapter in US-Africa relationships. It is too early to speculate about the full impact of this initiative, but the contours of a new debate are emerging. Readers are encouraged to quote and reproduce this material for educational, non-profit purposes, provided the source is acknowledged. All views and opinions expressed remain solely those of the author and do not purport to reflect the views of Trump: Decision Coming Shortly on Reopening US Economy President Donald Trump said Monday he will make a decision in the near future on reopening the country after conferring with governors and other officials, as the White House forms a second CCP virus task force with the intention of restarting the shuttered economy. For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government, Trump wrote Monday on Twitter. Trump said that the notion that governors are the ones who are responsible is incorrect. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons, he added on Twitter. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. Trump is able to issue federal regulations to prevent the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a type of novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. However, it is not clear if he has the authority to reverse public health restrictions put into place by state or local authorities. Across the United States, governors have implemented stay-at-home orders and shuttered nonessential businesses, impacting millions of jobs and forcing Congress to pass stimulus packages to help out-of-work Americans and closed companies. The virus, meanwhile, has infected about 500,000 people and caused more than 20,000 deaths. A patient is evacuated from the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside, Calif., on April 8, 2020. (Chris Carlson/AP) The White House has recommended people avoid nonessential travel and places like restaurants, as well as keeping in-person gatherings to 10 people or fewer until the end of April. The stimulus package included sending checks up to $1,200 for certain individuals, $2,400 for married couples, and $500 for every child. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced over the weekend that the first deposits have been made with more to come in the coming week or so. Trumps Monday morning Twitter post comes as an economic task force is slated to form inside the White House, according to news reports. Were not doing anything until we know that this country is going be healthy. We dont want to go back and start doing it over again, Trump said last week. Ive made a lot of big decisions in my life, the president added. This is by far the biggest decision of my life because I have to say OK lets go. Trumps comments were echoed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which said that the premature lifting of stay-at-home measures and other restrictions would trigger a resurgence in the virus. Meanwhile, top White House official Dr. Anthony Fauci said in weekend interviews that there have been promising signs that the virus is leveling off in the United Staes but cautioned against reducing restrictions. On Monday morning, Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the country is nearing its peak for hospitalizations, deaths, and cases. We have to substantially augment our public health capacity to ramp up testing, tracing, and identifying cases, Redfield said in an interview with Today.com, adding that the hospital and medical capacity should be bolstered in the meantime. There is no doubt that we have to reopen correctly in a step-by-step process, Redfield said. TEHRAN, Iran, April 13 Trend: The black boxes of the crashed Ukrainian plane are still in the Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) of Iran since foreign experts have postponed their travels to the country due to Coronavirus spread and thus, can not examine the boxes, said the head of Aircraft Accident Investigation Board in CAO. "At the moment, as coronavirus spread across the world, the travels have been halted, so the black boxes' information can not be downloaded and the work has stopped," said Hassan Rezaei, Trend reports citing Fars News Agency. "There have been correspondence with the other members of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board that are related to the Ukrainian plane crash incident," Rezaei added. "Iran has invited representatives of eight countries to travel to a laboratory in Europe to start process of analyzing black boxes, but these countries have asked for postponing the inspections due to the coronavirus pandemic," he said. In turn, Canada's Transportation Safety Board (TSB) Chairperson Kathy Fox also has announced the delay in analysis of the black boxes due to the coronavirus. "The concerned countries to be involved in the analysis of the recorders provided a consistent response, indicating that travelling was impossible at this time," said Fox. "The representatives or experts from the involved countries should be present when the black boxes data is downloaded; therefore, the process should be postponed until conditions improve enough to allow for safe travel," she added. The Iranian military had admitted that the Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 was shot down due to human error on January 8 in Tehran, that killed 176 passengers and crew including 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians including all nine crew members, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Britons and three Germans. The worlds health focus has shifted to battling COVID-19. But what is the fate of patients with terminal diseases, many of whom experts have said have immune systems that may be vulnerable to the novel virus? In this interview, Olanrewaju Amusat, the Executive Director of SmileBuilders Initiative, which he uses to combat non-communicable diseases, explains what patients with terminal diseases need to do to stay healthy during this pandemic. He also speaks on what the government has to do to improve the health system. Excerpt: PT: So have you experienced, first hand, the admission of a COVID-19 patient? Amusat: No. A patient with confirmed COVID-19 infection would not be made to come in contact with health workers working in an open ward or emergency unit as the case may be as the patient would have to be nursed in an isolation center or specially designated treatment unit. The possibility will be to come in contact with a suspected case. Either suspected or confirmed COVID-19, I have never experienced the admission of either. PT: So I should ask, what is your job role in the course of this? Amusat: As a health worker, even with the #StayAtHome order from the government, I still have to go to work to attend to sick people especially emergencies. Ive had to do emergency surgeries despite the pandemic which puts me at risk like other health workers. As a healthcare advocate, I have been educating people about the pandemic through social media platforms. Some have been done on a personal basis and some under the auspices of my NGO, SmileBuilders Initiative. PT: Does this also mean you deal with other emergency cases different from COVID-19 patients? Amusat: Yes. Those with COVID-19 are managed by doctors, nurses and other health workers working in the infectious diseases unit or in relevant units as the disease progresses. Other emergency cases are handled by the different specialties. For example, those who work at the adult and children emergencies of government hospitals still attend to emergencies if there are. However, the pandemic has significantly reduced the turnout of emergencies. PT: What has this been like? Amusat: Its been quite challenging especially during this pandemic. Parents who bring their sick children and are financially constrained find it difficult to source for funds or get social support since people are not working actively during this period. This causes a delay in surgical intervention. For the surgeons in some government hospitals, sophisticated personal protective equipment (PPEs) are not yet routinely available for surgeries. It is still the regular surgical gowns and facemasks (which are also PPEs) used during the pre-COVID-19 period that are used now. This may not be a major challenge except in high risk operations until a suspected case or infected patient arrives in such hospitals. We hope that the government sees this as a call to action to provide all thats needed by health workers during this pandemic. PT: So how have you been handling the situation? Amusat: From interaction with colleagues, some hospitals dont take patients with suspicion of COVID-19 until they are tested so as to prevent exposure. The issue of inadequate testing is being handled by NCDC as efforts are being made to expand testing centres across the nation. Poor tracing is also being addressed but I think we need to be more aggressive about it. The management of some government hospitals are also making efforts to source for more equipment and facilities to combat this pandemic. Some hospitals were fumigated recently as well. We as health workers are doing the best we can within the confines of resources available to work with. PT: By aggressiveness what do you mean? Amusat: The government needs to adopt strategies that are effective viz-a-viz proper orientation of the citizens as to what contact tracing means, appropriate contact listing, updating database of citizens, provision of basic amenities and relief items for those who will go into self isolation who may be detected through contact tracing, amongst others. The government is making efforts but a lot still needs to be done. PT: The focus has been largely on COVID-19 patients, whats the fate of other terminal diseases patients? Amusat: From the governments perspective, COVID-19 is the major focus for now because of its spread and consequences on our economy. Advertisements From the perspective of the health workers, other life-threatening diseases are being taken care of even amidst the pandemic. That is why it is important for the government to ensure health workers are adequately catered for. PT: But are you really being catered for? Amusat: Not as it is expected. The fact that one does not have all that is needed to work with is demoralising enough. The remuneration of health workers is also not encouraging compared to what is obtainable in other climes. PT: Are you owed? Amusat: Sometimes, it happens. A number of health workers are being owed salary arrears. Salaries are not paid promptly in some states. We hope this pandemic makes the government see the need to set things right in the health sector. PT: I learnt that the Lagos State government is rolling out a health insurance package for health workers, is this same for federal health workers? Amusat: Health insurance exists for federal health workers but the system needs an overhaul to make it more effective. PT: Whats the level of enthusiasm among health workers as of now? Is there apathy or eagerness to work based on available welfare packages for them? Amusat: Welfare packages are non-existent. What health workers get is their salaries which is even not encouraging. However, majority still offer the best of care within their purview for patients. With an improved health system through deliberate efforts from the government, the level of enthusiasm will increase. PT: How would you rate the preparedness of Oyo State, for instance, in case of a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases? Amusat: Oyo State government is making efforts. However, more still needs to be done in terms of residents obeying stay-at-home order, the state government providing relief packages for needy families, improved testing and contact tracing, provision of adequate PPEs for health workers, amongst others. PT: This is certainly a period of emotional and mental strain for health workers. How do you maintain a balance? Amusat: I must confess that its not easy. However, health workers have been trying to stay strong and dedicated despite the odds as we hope this time shall pass. The fact that people are also recovering from the disease is another motivation. We hope we get over this pandemic. PT: What should patients who have other terminal diseases do during this pandemic to maintain their health status? Amusat: They should endeavour to take their medications as prescribed and in fact, have a stock for at least one month. They can come to the hospital in case of any emergency. They should endeavour to stay mentally healthy as well. PT: How about the aged, how can they also keep safe? Amusat: The aged should ensure they imbibe all precautionary measures recommended as they are at a higher risk of having the disease. They should eat healthily and also maintain their mental health by reaching out to family and friends. They should practice social distancing but not social isolation. PT: How would you rate Nigerias preparedness for a surge in COVID-19 cases, judging by the personnel and facilities available? Amusat: The bitter truth is that our preparation is inadequate for this pandemic. We need more testing centres, more ventilators and other ICU facilities, adequate PPEs for health workers, provision of relief packages for needy families, to mention but a few. This pandemic should leave an indelible mark on our health system as we can come out of it stronger if we make all efforts to upgrade current facilities. This will reduce medical tourism and reduce premature deaths from myriads of medical conditions ravaging our dear nation. EDITORS NOTE: This interview was edited after Mr Amusat got back to say he spoke with our reporter in his capacity as Executive Director of the non-proft, SmileBuilders Initiative, and not as a staff of the University College Hospital. San Francisco Mayor London Breed delivered a stern message at a Monday press conference about the annual April 20 cannabis celebration known as 4/20 on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park. "We will not tolerate anyone coming to San Francisco for 4/20 this year," Breed said. "Police officers will be patrolling the area. We will cite people and if necessary arrest them." Kabul, April 13 : The Taliban has released 20 Afghan security forces as part a prisoners exchange process with the government in Kabul as per the agreement the militant group inked with the US to bring peace in the war-torn country. Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that the 20 soldiers were released in Kandahar province, reports Xinhua news agency. Photos posted on Mujahid's handle showed the soldiers wearing traditional clothes and receiving cash and certificates from the Taliban at an unknown location. The Taliban spokesman earlier in the day said that the insurgents would hand over the 20 to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kandahar. The Afghan Ministry of Defense officials have not responded to the report so far. Earlier on Sunday, the Afghan government released 100 Taliban inmates from Bagram prison in eastern Parwan province, bringing the number of Taliban inmates freed since April 8 to 300. On March 11, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani issued a decree to release 5,000 Taliban inmates on parole. The exchange process is part of the peace deal inked between the Taliban and the US signed in Qatar capital Doha on February 29, of which the Afghan government was not a signatory. The Taliban also agreed to launch direct peace talks with the government and accepted to free 1,000 Afghan government security force members. A mans body was found in a northeast Houston bayou late Sunday night. A passerby made the grim discovery around 11 p.m. in Halls Bayou near Jensen Drive, just north of Parker Road, police said. The man appeared to have been dead for some time before he was found. MORE FROM JAY R. JORDAN: Son questioned in fathers death in Houston's South Union There were no apparent signs of trauma on the mans body. Police believe he may have drowned in the water but await an official cause of death to be determined by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Anyone with information is urged to call Houston Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com US President Donald Trump has thanked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud for striking a "big" deal with other major crude producers to slash oil production in a bid to stabilise a market that has been jolted by the coronavirus pandemic. Global oil demand is estimated to have fallen by a third as more than three billion people are locked down in their homes in countries like India due to the coronavirus outbreak that has claimed over 100,000 lives and infected over 1,850,000 across the world. An oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic had threatened to put producers in the US out of business, jeopardising the jobs of thousands of Americans. This forced President Trump to intervene. Members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and their allies announced on Sunday that they have agreed to slash production by 9.7 million barrels a day in May and June. The slashing of the global output by about 10 per cent is among the deepest cuts ever agreed to by the world's oil producers. Trump spoke with the two leaders over phone, the White House said on Sunday. In separate readouts of the call, the White House said Trump welcomed the commitment by Russia and Saudi Arabia to return oil production to levels consistent with global energy and financial market stability. Trump thanked the two leaders for working with each other, and other oil producing states to calm global energy markets, the White House said. The top oil-producing countries on Sunday agreed to reduce output in order to boost prices that went down due to the new coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war. Trump hailed the agreement as "great deal for all". In a tweet, Trump said, "The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all!" OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo has described the cuts "historic". "They are largest in volume and the longest in duration, as they are planned to last for two years," he said. Opec+, made up of oil producers and allies including Russia, announced plans for the deal on April 9, but Mexico resisted the cuts. On Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his country would cut its output by 100,000 barrels per day. While that amount was far less than what was proposed at Thursday's meeting, Lopez Obrador added that President Trump offered to cut US production by 250,000 barrels per day to compensate for Mexico. The United States is not an OPEC+ member. America's leading oil CEOs recently urged President Trump on to grant the embattled industry access to government programmes aimed at helping companies harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. The slump to 18-year lows in oil prices was seen a threat to the very survival of many US oil companies. At his daily COVID-19 conference on Friday, Trump said he spoke to his Mexican counterpart and agreed to a cut as agreed by the OPEC, though he did not confirm the exact size. He said Mexico would reimburse the US at a later date. "It's a small amount for us, a large amount for Mexico," Trump said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It is likely the government will divide the country into different zones during the proposed extended lockdown and may permit a few services to function in safe zones. IMAGE: People carry essentials at Azadpur market in New Delhi. Photograph: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo Even as the country awaits a formal announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi to extend the nationwide lockdown, Telangana became the fourth state to extend it till April 30. The current phase of lockdown ends on Tuesday. According to finance ministry sources, the PM might address the nation once the Centre shapes the contours of the plan to revive economic activity in a phased manner. The Centre is keen to restart economic activity in 'green zones' or areas with a low incidence of COVID-19 cases. Some of the states showed how a less than total lockdown is likely to be enforced, with the Delhi government categorising COVID-19 areas, depending on the intensity of the spread, as red, orange, and green. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said containment zones had been declared as red and orange as high-risk. While a final plan is in the works, one suggestion is to classify areas with more than 15 cases as red, fewer than 15 orange, and no cases as green. The government is considering a blanket approval to all forms of farming activity with proper safety measures in place, and not just specific activities within farming as has been the case. Some states are also keen to start at least industries producing essential commodities. The Uttar Pradesh government has helped reopen 5,281 industrial units during the lockdown period. These are mostly involved in manufacturing of medical supplies and essential commodities. A senior government official in the Haryana government said the state managed to retain around 50 per cent of the labour who were migrating back to their native places. However, some of the state's industrial areas, like Gurugram and Faridabad, also fall in the 'red zone' because of the spread of the virus, and cannot be opened right now. Construction activity would also commence in Haryana, but only after approvals are taken by contractors for standard operating procedure with social distancing of workforce in mind. Officials say most of these green zones are likely to be in rural areas, as they are less affected by the pandemic compared to the cities. Hence, top priority is to restart activity in the agriculture sector, with timely harvesting of the late rabi crop being the main concern. For this, the biggest impediment is labour. The Centre is working with states on how to make agricultural manpower available, and whether limited transportation for such labour force can be allowed. "There are some hotspots or 'red zones' where nothing can be restarted. A majority of such clusters are in urban or semi-urban areas. Based on what we are receiving from states so far, rural India is less affected than urban India. Hence, reviving farm activity is top priority," said a senior official. In the green zones in urban and industrial areas, the Centre is again keen to restart activity as much as possible, with strict social distancing and health norms. These details are being worked out with states and industry representative bodies. Bodies like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Indian Industry have offered their own SOPs and road map for partial resumption of activity. On Sunday, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi cautioned against takeovers of Indian corporates. 'The massive economic slowdown has weakened many Indian corporates, making them attractive targets for takeovers. The government must not allow foreign interests to take control of any Indian corporate at this time of national crisis, he tweeted. In Haryana, the state government has tried to retain its labour force. "In consultation with industry, we devised ways so that the labour could be housed and given food and other essential items within the factory premises," an official said. This was being done in all industrial areas, including Panipat and Yamunagar. The manufacturing hubs of Gurugram and Faridabad, however, would not open up anytime soon since Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Friday that these areas fell under the state's red zone. As for harvesting, the Centre has already relaxed almost all major harvesting and sowing, repair of farm machinery, export of farm goods and also import of plant chemicals from the purview of lockdown guidelines, but even if something remains, the blanket approval will take care of that. Most big rabi-producing states of Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, UP, and Rajasthan have staggered their procurement to enable farmers to come in batches, so that there is no overcrowding. The number of purchase centres has also been substantially high, while in UP, the state government has planned doorstep-purchase of wheat from growers. Punjab has issued 2.7 million coupons to farmers for bringing wheat crop to mandis, while the number of purchase centres has also been expanded to around 3,691 in the state by involving 1,824 rice mills, against 1,840 last year to avoid overcrowding. A farmer shall be entitled to take multiple coupons each day or on different days depending on space in the purchase centre in order to avoid rush in the mandis, the official said. Similar arrangement has also been put in place in Rajasthan. The coupons with holograms will allow farmers to bring their crop to mandis in their tractor trolleys. To ensure social distancing at grain markets, the ground space at mandis has been divided into 30x30 feet for 50 quintals of crop, the official added. Curfew restrictions are in place in Punjab in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Farmers will be required to bring minimum possible persons with tractor trolley in order to avoid gathering at grain markets. Meanwhile, the vegetable market of Azadpur in Delhi, which is among the biggest in Asia, has introduced a system of odd-even, a sort of staggered timings -- 6 am to 11 am for sale of vegetables and 2 pm to 6 pm for sale of fruits -- at the mandi. The decisions were taken following reports that social distancing rules were not being followed at the mandi, which spreads over 80 acres. 'Under the odd-even rules, we will allow all the 22 sheds to operate, according to their numbers. For instance, on an even date, even-numbered sheds such as 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 will be allowed to function. This will help us maintain social distancing in the market in view of the COVID-19 outbreak,' Adil Ahmad Khan, chairman of the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee, Azadpur, told PTI. Odd-even rules may also be implemented at other wholesale markets of the national Capital. In UP, the state government has proactively resolved issues pertaining to labour, passes, and transport. Relaxing the lockdown restrictions, Kerala on April 10 notified that rubber plantation workers could set up rain guards. Besides, washing machine and other household equipment repair has been allowed on one day of the week. In related developments, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said the Centre had enough foodgrain for nine months of PDS supply to over 810 million beneficiaries. Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac said the Centre should allow states to directly borrow from the Reserve Bank of India. An Assam government order on Sunday evening allowed liquor shops, bottling plants, and breweries in the state to open for limited hours from Monday, PTI reported. The Haryana government had issued a similar order on Saturday. Its excise department had instructed district administrations to ensure operations of distilleries, bottling plants, wineries with immediate effect and full operations after lockdown is lifted. However, these will not be allowed in 'red zones'. Both Haryana and Assam are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and this could enthuse other states to start manufacturing, bottling, and sale of liquor. Meghalaya, too, decided to allow wine shops to operate in the state from Monday owing to demand from the people, said officials. With inputs from Ruchika Chitravanshi and Archis Mohan April 13 : Kriti Kharbanda is spending her quarantine days with boyfriend Pulkit Sharma. The couple, who has been quite open about their relationship, is making the most of the nationwide lockdown by spending quality time with each other, playing with their dog or playing board games. On the occasion of Baisakhi today, the Pagalpanti actress took to her Instagram handle and shared a throwback picture of her childhood. In the adorable picture, we can see little Kriti dressed in a magenta salwar suit, with a matching dupatta covering her head. She has also accessorised with loads of silver jewelleries. Earlier, in an interview, Kriti had revealed that after she had returned from an engagement in Delhi, she had started showing all symptoms of COVID-19. However, since she did not have fever, her doctor advised her to stay in isolation. She was recovered in three days. On the professional front, Kriti was last seen in Anees Bazmees film Pagalapanti along with Pulkit Sharma. The couple will be seen together again in Bejoy Nambiars revenge drama Taish. The film that also features Jim Sarbh and Harshvardhan Rane, is slated to be release in January 2021. The stock market may have a difficult time gaining traction as investors hear first-hand how the economic shutdown is hitting the bottom lines and balance sheets of corporate America. Analysts describe the start of the first-quarter earnings season as a time of transition for the market, with JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Johnson & Johnson reporting Tuesday. The market had been responding positively to signs the coronavirus outbreak was slowing, but it may now try to assess how much damage has been done. An increasing number of analysts say the late-March selling crescendo may represent the bottom for the market. Goldman Sachs analysts Monday said that thanks to a heavy dose of both fiscal and monetary policy, it appears the lows are in, unless the virus surges again after the economy reopens. Health officials have been more optimistic that the outbreak is slowing and that some parts of the country could reopen in May, but it will not be a quick return to normal. "I think we're in a new phase. The stock market bottomed when the cases in Italy seemed to peak. It's been driven by terrible, and not as terrible news on the virus, plus a tremendous policy response both on the fiscal and monetary side," said Ed Keon, chief investment strategist at QMA. "A big part of the initial phase has been reversed. What we're trying to wrestle with now is what the next couple of years look like." Peter Boockvar, chief investment strategist at Bleakley Advisory Group, said the market will get a dose of reality from corporate earnings as it looks toward the reopening of the economy. Both earnings and economic data, like retail sales later this week, should show the impact of the stay-at-home orders. "This is going to be a long slog. Any opening, and we're all hoping it happens in the next four to six weeks, is going to be drawn out and slow, and life is not going to be what we're used to. That reality we face is what's coming next," said Boockvar. "I think company balance sheets is going to be where the focus is going to be. ...The bottom line is who is going to get through this and who is not." Keon said he's not sure whether the market has reached its low, but the earnings season may be a time for the market to pause as investors evaluate what companies are saying and what they are unable to say. So far, more than 70 S&P 500 companies have withdrawn guidance and more expected to join them. For the first quarter, S&P 500 companies are expected to report at least a 10.2% decline in profits, as the virus shutdowns hit the economy hard in the final month of the quarter. According to Refinitiv's I/B/E/S data, second quarter earnings are expected to decline by 22%, and by another 10.6% in the third quarter. Financial companies are expected to see a 21% decline in first quarter profits, while consumer discretionary companies are expected to decline by 30%r, according to I/B/E/S data. The worst sector is expected to be energy, down 50%, followed by industrials, down 31%. According to Bank of America strategists, the health care and consumer staples sectors should hold up better than others and are more likely to have positive earnings surprises. Health care earnings are expected to be up just 1%, and consumer staples just about the same. "We think most of the damage is done, given the rally off the lows," Keon said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see it go up and down here probably quite violently as we have for the last couple of weeks. I just think the risk/reward equation is not compelling." The S&P 500 was off about 1% Monday at 2,761, after gaining 12.5% in the past week, its best weekly performance since 1974. The S&P 500 hit a low of 2,191 on March 23, in a 34% decline. Analysts have said the market may look past some of the earnings numbers, but the company comments and lack of ability to forecast could be troubling. "How will the economy react? How will people react Will we go back to old habits soon or will it take a year?" said Keon. "We'll see the guidance of course, but ... the companies will be guessing just as we're going to be guessing what the impact will be." Energy companies with high debt are seen as vulnerable, as are companies in travel and leisure and some retailers. "Not every company is going to survive this downturn and so trying to sort out which ones are likely to survive and which ones will thrive when this is over is gong to be a challenge for investors," Keon said. Boockvar said companies, like Johnson & Johnson and Coca-Cola have solid balance sheets, but other companies could send up red flags. "It's going to be a different type of conference call than a lot of people are going to be used to, when you're going to have equity guys asking questions about debt covenants," he said. Some companies will also be slashing dividends to preserve cash. "A good balance sheet can turn into a bad one rather quickly when you're revenues are going to zero," said Boockvar. As stocks sold off Monday, bonds were also selling off. The 10-year yield was at 0.74%, and it was reacting more to the Fed's policies, while equities keyed off of earnings, said Michael Schumacher, director rates at Wells Fargo. Typically investors buy bonds while stocks sell off. "The whole bond equity correlation is still misbehaving. We think that's a canary in the coal mine that there is still balance sheet disruptions and not everybody is focused on the same type of thing," he said. "In a month or two, it might come together." Advertisement With beaches closed all over the world due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, it has been impossible to find any cheer on the shore. But over the weekend, 7th Avenue supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio reminded her fans what it is like to feel carefree on the sand as she posted throwback photos of herself in her GAL Floripa swimwear line while modeling in Brazil earlier this year. 'Let's put a smile on and look forward to radiant days,' read the caption from the mother of two who has been in self-isolation at her home in Los Angeles for the past three weeks. Beach time: With beaches closed all over the world due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, it has been impossible to find any cheer on the shore. But over the weekend, 7th Avenue supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio reminded her fans what it is like to feel carefree on the sand as she posted throwback photos of herself in her GAL Floripa swimwear line The star had on a string bikini in royal blue with a triangle top and small briefs. The former Victoria's Secret model looked to have a very toned figure with sculpted arms, defined abs and toned legs as she made the most of the little white bikini. Her hair was worn down in mermaid beach eaves and her makeup was golden beige that highlighted her natural assets. The star seemed to relish being home in Brazil where there are plenty of sandy beaches and dazzling sunsets. Top shape: The star had on a string bikini in royal blue with a triangle top and small briefs. The former Victoria's Secret model looked to have a very toned figure with sculpted arms, defined abs and toned legs as she made the most of the little white bikini In another image where she is stretching, the catwalk queen said: 'To shine your brightest light is to be who you truly are.' And in a closeup photo where Alessandra was tummy down on the sand, it said: 'Sending love, positivity, strength and health to everyone. ' Last week the Brazilian bombshell posted a new video clip called Astral + Infinity to her GAL Floripa Instagram page where she is dancing around in a sizzling hot beige bikini. Love for all: In a closeup photo where Alessandra was tummy down on the sand, it said: 'Sending love, positivity, strength and health to everyone. ' 'In a world where everything seems finite it can be hard to truly grasp infinity,' began her message. 'In a world where every person seems to be separate from every other person, place and thing, it can be so challenging to experience the Oneness and Unity of all life. All is one. Only Oneness is infinite.' One of the captions read, 'Introducing #WAVEstyle. Energy is an inherent power. We are vibrations of energy. A process of constant change, growth and evolution.' The video by Matia Ternes has a late 60s Los Angeles surf culture vibe that is unlike most bikini promos. Dazzling: She was also seen in a video by Matia Ternes that has a late 60s Los Angeles surf culture vibe The clip was filmed months ago before the coronavirus gained speed across the globe. The 38-year-old siren modeled on the beach in Florianopolis, which is the capital of southern Brazils Santa Catarina state; the area is known for its pristine beaches. Another said, 'Energy is an inherent power. We are vibrations of energy. A process of constant change, growth and evolution.' And lastly she said: 'We are channels of a constant FLOW of unlimited energy. Every cell within our bodies is constantly changing with the flow of energy.' Beaches are her thing: The 38-year-old siren modeled on the beach in Florianopolis, which is the capital of southern Brazils Santa Catarina state; the area is known for its pristine beaches Another image saw the cover girl in the exact same bikini but this time in turquoise blue. She was resting on her hands as she closed her eyes while in a blue and green tiled swimming pool. Meaning behind the design: The line was created with 'soul sisters' Gisele Coria and Aline Ambrosio. She has said before that the line is special because it uses the geometry of the SRI YANTRA symbol The line was created with 'soul sisters' Gisele Coria and Aline Ambrosio. She has said before that the line is special because it uses the geometry of the SRI YANTRA symbol. The Shri Yantra, Sri Yantra, or Shri Chakra is a form of mystical diagram (yantra) used in the Shri Vidya school of Hinduism. It consists of nine interlocking triangles that surround a central point known as a bindu. These triangles represent the cosmos and the human body, it is explained on Wikipedia. She has been promising all month that her new swimsuits are all about 'enlightenment.': ' The #YANTRAstyle is inspired by the geometry of the SRI YANTRA symbol. Alessandra shares her daughter Anja and son Noah with her ex-fiance Jamie Mazur. She began dating Nicolo Oddi after her split from Jamie in 2018. Her website says, 'The spirit of GAL Floripa is aligned with Mother Natures essence; its many rhythms and flows, mysteries and magnificence, as well as connection of its elements with womens lives.' The siren, who was born in Brazil and came to fame thanks to Victoria's Secret and Vogue, has said her suits are made with the 'power of YANTRA.' (CNN) Passover is here, and Easter and Ramadan are approaching. Occasions that typically bring families together to pray, reflect and celebrate fellowship needed, perhaps, now more than ever will look different this year as the coronavirus pandemic continues. The loss of those traditions is added to a growing list of losses that Americans are facing as they endure at least another month of social distancing and with it an extended departure from routines, habits, social circles and normalcy. The protracted disruption to life as it was, mental health experts say, could bring feelings of anger, depression, anxiety and even grief. "There is literal grief like losing loved ones," said Dr. Vaile Wright, the American Psychological Association's director of clinical research and quality. "But there is a grief of experiences that we are losing right now. There can feel like there is a lot of loss right now, a loss of freedom, a lot of things we took for granted." The next few months may take a toll on the nation's mental health, experts say, but it is possible to mitigate the stress. Americans' collective trauma Extended isolation and stress from the pandemic can affect everyone differently, said Dr. Dana Garfin, a health psychologist. It could put strain on families, send children home to abusive situations, make those living alone feel isolated and threaten people's sense of purpose by keeping them from work, Garfin said. And those experiencing financial insecurity in the midst of the pandemic have an added stress that is difficult to resolve, said Dr. Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University. Despite those differences, the experience of staying home together through a pandemic can be considered a collective trauma, said Garfin, who studies collective traumas such as hurricanes, terrorist attacks and earthquakes. Collective traumas start at some point of impact and then ripple out to loved ones of the afflicted, witnesses to the devastation and people whose lives are disrupted. In this case, many Americans fall into one or more of those categories. People in quarantine show signs of confusion, depression and anger, Garfin said. "We necessarily run much of our lives by habit," said Fischhoff. "We know what we have for breakfast, we know how to prepare the kids for school, and that enables us to get through the day reasonably well." But now that many Americans aren't waking up and going to school and work, it can be difficult to know how to restructure even the most rote daily habits that won't be coming back for weeks yet. What life might look like on the other side of coronavirus How long the pandemic and the isolation continue will dictate how severe the effects are on people's mental health, Garfin said. Prolonged exposure to the traumas of coronavirus can activate the fight or flight response, which over time can cause cardiovascular problems, anxiety, depression and PTSD, Garfin said. And the extended isolation can contribute to fear, anxiety, headaches, muscle tension and difficulty concentrating, said Wright. For some groups, like health care workers, those in the media and people in newly deemed "essential jobs," the end result may be guilt, grief and PTSD, said Wright. But, Wright and Garfin agreed, humans are resilient. Some may forget everything they just went through and go back to their daily lives when it is all over, Wright said, but many can come out of this with stronger relationships and a better perspective on what is important. How to get through it The future is uncertain, but life will be different for at least the next month and that knowledge can be the first step to making this new, temporary reality as good as it can be. Now that it is clear the change is for more than a couple of weeks, it is important to create a new routine one that includes showering, getting dressed and maintaining family meals not treating the time as an extended snow day or spring vacation, Wright said. There is an opportunity for people to develop new habits around the disruption, which can relieve the stress of feeling like starting from scratch every day, Fischhoff said. And all three say it is important to use social media to be social, not to feed the anxiety that conflicting coronavirus information on the platform stokes. They also agree that this experience is difficult, and it is important to acknowledge that and not be too critical of what one could have done before or could be doing now. "I think that we need to recognize that this is totally unprecedented, and we really are just doing the best we can and that's OK," Wright said. And for people doing the best they can but struggling to work, study or care for their families, virtual mental health resources may be a crucial next step. And for those who are lonely and isolated, Garfin suggests reframing for a feeling of community within that experience. "We aren't in our houses alone, we are doing something for each other for our community," Garfin said. "It's a shared effort, something that we are all a part of and something we are all contributing to." "It's going to be difficult, but it's not permanent." CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the name of the American Psychological Association. This story was first published on CNN.com, "Long-term social distancing may be traumatic. Here is what to expect and what to do." The third installment of COVID and the Black Community, a weekly online community conversation series, co-hosted by New America and the Recorder, and featuring local and national experts and resources, will be 2-3:30 p.m. March 14. Exposure: How COVID-19 Amplifies Healthcare Inequities in America, will examine the racial disparities that leave African Americans especially vulnerable to COVID-19. Guests will be Carl Ellison, president and CEO of Indiana Minority Health Coalition; Dr. Erica Renee Huddleston; and Dr. Woody Myers, owner of Myers Ventures and former Indiana State Health Commissioner. Moderators are Oseye Boyd, editor of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper and Molly Martin, director of New America Indy. Across the country, Black Americans are overrepresented in frontline occupations; disproportionately grappling with poverty, lack of affordable healthcare, and a lack of paid leave; a lower rate of ability to telecommute; and disproportionately impacted by conditions that increase the risk of poor outcome (heart disease, diabetes). This inequity is, quite bluntly, deadly: Consider Midwestern communities like Chicago where 70% of COVID deaths have been among Black patients or Milwaukee where the rate is 81%. In both cities the overall Black population is around 30%. Detroit which is 80% Black is at the heart of Michigans outbreak. Against a sobering backdrop, our experts will wrestle with problems and solutions. Data indicate that Black Americans are especially vulnerable to bad outcomes from COVID-19 what can be done to combat this trend and how do we address it now and beyond the outbreak. Before this crisis, Black Americans reported unsatisfactory and, at times, traumatic experiences with healthcare providers: not being taken seriously, trouble accessing affordable care, etc. What policies and practices could help combat this inequity? Trust and credibility are challenges when dealing with a history of inequitable service: if and when a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 is available, what are ways to ensure that Black residents have timely information and access? RSVP here. At the doctors officeFerre Dollar With the sporadic increase in Coronavirus cases, people around the world are doing their bit to restrict the spread of the virus. Tenda, the leading provider of networking devices organized a nationwide campaign, an awareness drive to educate people about prevention and precautionary measures for Covid-19 outbreak. During the campaign, the company also distributed face masks, hand sanitizers, soaps, and food to the needy ones who are directly involved in containing the pandemic such as police and cleaning staff, etc.\ The awareness drive was conducted in 3 states of Bihar, Maharashtra, and Delhi. In Bihar, a massive campaign was done in the town of Siwan where Alok Verma, Head of Marketing, Tenda was heading the drive. Similarly in Delhi, heavily populated Kalkaji was selected where Virender Pratap Singh, Product Head, Tenda was heading while Sooraj Singh, Business Development Manager, Tenda was overseeing the drive in Vasai and Virar area of Mumbai city. The drive saw a participation of more than 30 volunteers, mostly employees of the company, dedicating themselves in such a critical juncture by distributing food, face masks, sanitizers and soaps. Commenting on the drive, John Dong, Director, Tenda India commented, As a responsible company, we are obliged to spread awareness about COVID-19 and help in containing the pandemic by providing essential items such as face marks, sanitizers, and soaps to those who needed them. This is our bit to stop the pandemic and we will continue to focus on such activities in a bigger way in the coming days. A daring escape attempt by a robbery suspect ended when the fleeing suspect crashed into a power pole Monday in Houstons Third Ward. Houston police officers were following two men in a blue pickup truck who were both wanted on felony charges around 3 p.m. when police pulled the truck over in the 3800 block of Old Spanish Trail. Officers were able to get the driver in custody, but the passenger wanted for robbery jumped the center console and took control of the truck, speeding off with officers in close pursuit, according to HPD Sgt. Corey Harrington. As the pandemic worsens in the United States, some people are stepping up their attacks on China as a way to deflect criticism. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been one of the most vocal critics of China since the coronavirus outbreak. Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post, argued that his insistence to associate the virus with China shows that the administration places more value on scoring a rhetorical point against China than on working with others. This obsession is dividing the world at a time when we need greater unity. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Photo/Xinhua) Pompeo, who Diehl called "among the worst secretaries of state ever" due to his pandemic performance, really does seem to be in a senseless crusade against China. While Pompeo may have dropped the stigmatizing language in public statements after President Donald Trump pulled back from associating the coronavirus with China in a push for cooperation, he continues to use every opportunity to blame China for the administration's poor response to the crisis. The dedication to affixing blame to China shows that, while there have been a few changes in words, there has been no change of heart. With much of the world in lockdown because of the coronavirus, what matters now is finding ways to come together for the good of this global battle. Slinging mud at China will not make the US immune from the virus, neither will it change the fact that the Trump administration failed to take the coronavirus threat seriously early on. The result of that failure is that the United States now leads the world in the number of coronavirus infections and deaths. While there is an aspect of competition in China-US relations, the pandemic is not a time to go on a China-bashing spree, as this creates even more problems. The threat of the coronavirus and stigmatizing language has led to an increase in racism around the world, especially toward Asians. The British science journal Nature highlighted this point in an editorial, writing that the pandemic is fueling "deplorable racism and discrimination," and it apologized for erroneously associating the virus with Wuhan and with China in its news coverage, writing, "That we did so was an error on our part, for which we take responsibility and apologize." That statement reflects more than a change in words. It reflects a change of heart, and it is an example for others to follow. Viruses infect all humans, regardless of place or nationality, and all of us must be on guard against the disease of racism. Throughout the pandemic, the World Health Organization has sounded the alarm about the dangers of associating a deadly new disease with a place or a people. Just recently, the director-general of the organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned against politicizing the coronavirus unless "you want to have many more body bags." That harsh statement by the director-general of WHO is a chilling reminder that the coronavirus presents a threat to everyone on the planet. Regardless of who you are or where you are, we are all in the same boat. The coronavirus has had a brutal impact on the world, and many countries are still fighting tooth and nail to get control of the situation. This is particularly true in the United States right now. According to data by Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking the virus, there are nearly 1.8 million confirmed cases worldwide, and the United States represents about 30 percent of that total. It is easy to play blame games, but scientists and medical experts still have many questions surrounding the origins of the new coronavirus. We should not rush to judgement for political reasons. We have all heard the old adage that correlation is not causation. As China has pointed out, being the first to report the outbreak does not necessarily mean that the novel coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China. The fact that the virus has infected a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York shows how quickly it can move around between species. It also shows how little we know about the virus. We should also keep in mind that many of the people who are eager to link the virus directly to China are the same people who are more than happy to portray China as the boogeyman of the world. Pompeo is one of them, but others also see opportunity in this crisis to cast China as the enemy. Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time, recently went on a racist rant against China over coronavirus, saying "we should blame China" and that the virus has "everything to do with China," and US Senator Tom Cotton still refuses to let go of the conspiracy theory that China may have produced the virus in a weapons lab. Emotions or agendas should not take the place of scientific conclusions, especially at a time of crisis. Politicizing the coronavirus will do nothing but worsen the already grim situation, not just in the United States, but also in the world as a whole. Viruses know no borders, thus working together is the only way that we will succeed in this fight. History has shown that China and the United States can come together in a time of crisis. In 2008, the collapse of the US' fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, created a huge economic disaster, but it also opened a door to cooperation. Henry Paulson, US Treasury secretary at the time, praised China's cooperation in taming the turmoil and expressed hope for more dialogue with China. "It is clear that China accepts its responsibility as a major world economy that will work with the United States and other partners to ensure global economic stability," he said. The financial crisis is old news now, but the coronavirus has opened another door to cooperation. It would be a tragedy if we squander the opportunity by using the coronavirus as a political weapon to score cheap points. When Israels health minister was found to be infected with the coronavirus early this month, all high-level officials in close contact with him were quarantined, including one who stood out: the director of the Mossad, the storied Israeli spy service. Mossad officers, primarily associated with covert operations abroad in the name of protecting Israel, are not normally in the business of public health. So, Israelis were immediately intrigued. Why would the Mossad director, Yossi Cohen, a widely respected figure in the country, have even been in the same room as the health minister, Yaakov Litzman? To track all live updates from the coronavirus pandemic, click here Cohens powerful agency, it turns out, has been deeply involved in Israels fight against the virus, and has been one of the countrys most valuable assets in acquiring medical equipment and manufacturing technology abroad, according to Israeli medical and security officials. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show As countries around the world compete ferociously for limited supplies during the pandemic, they are turning to any help available, and flexing their muscles unapologetically. And with the Mossad having determined that Iran struggling with its own coronavirus crisis no longer represents an immediate security threat, the agency could afford to immerse itself in the health emergency, according to multiple people knowledgeable about its operations. Initial predictions for the toll of the virus in Israel were dire, though so far they have proved too pessimistic. With nearly 11,000 cases of the virus now confirmed and 103 deaths, Israel does not rank among the hardest-hit countries in the world. The peak expansion rate has been behind us for about two weeks now, and will probably wane almost completely within two weeks, said an article published on Sunday by Professor Isaac Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University. But in early February, officials at Sheba Medical Centre, Israels biggest hospital, realised that they needed more ventilators and other gear. And around that time, Professor Yitshak Kreiss, the director general of the hospital, met with Cohen, the Mossad chief, at a private event involving a mutual friend not unusual in a small country where senior figures often move in the same social circles. By then, Cohen had already begun to assess how the Mossad could help the Israeli health system. Kreiss said he enumerated the most urgent equipment needs to Cohen, who obtained further lists from the Health Ministry, and the Mossad began activating its international network to find the items needed. In early March, a command and control centre was set up to handle the distribution of medical gear across the country, with Cohen at its head and headquartered at Sheba. There were representatives from the Mossad, the Ministry of Defence purchasing division, and the military intelligences highly secretive Unit 81, which deals with the development of advanced espionage equipment. Kreiss, a former brigadier general in the army and a former surgeon general for the military, said the Mossad had been pivotal in helping his institution secure vital medical equipment and expertise from abroad. It is only in Israel that the Sheba hospital could have enlisted the help of the Mossad, he said in an interview. Can you imagine Mount Sinai Hospital going to the CIA for help? he added, referring to the New York medical centre. Kreiss declined to say precisely how Mossad officers had helped the Israeli medical establishment or where the imported equipment came from. But according to six current or former Israeli officials with knowledge of the Mossads operations, the agency used international contacts to avert shortages that might have overwhelmed Israels health system. The six people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Mossads activities are classified, said the spy agencys contacts had proved invaluable in enabling Israel to acquire ventilators and testing material that Litzmans Health Ministry had been unable to secure. Despite those efforts, however, there is still a lack of testing capacity in Israel. These people would not confirm non-Israeli media reports that some of the items were acquired from neighbouring Arab nations with no official diplomatic relations with Israel. But at least one senior Mossad official acknowledged in an interview with Ilana Dayan, host of Uvda, or Fact, Israels Channel 12 TV news magazine, that in some instances, the agency had acquired items that other countries had already ordered. By the end of the first week of April, the people with knowledge of the operations said, Cohen was confident that Mossad operatives had ensured Israel would possess enough ventilators to cope with the worst forecasts. If Litzman, whose initially cavalier attitude toward the virus has been sharply criticised, symbolises for some the shortcomings of the governments response, for many Israelis the Mossad represents the opposite. Word of its assistance in fighting the pandemic has bolstered the Mossads image as among the countrys most admired government institutions. There was no time to waste, Kreiss recalled, praising what he described as the single-mindedness of purpose shown by Mossad agents. Part of their ethos is to execute their task at any price, he said. That ethos has helped build Mossads reputation. It is best known for the capture of the Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in 1960, its lethal response after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and the 2018 theft of secret nuclear records from Iran, which Israelis regard as their most dangerous adversary. The agency has also had some high-profile failures, among them the botched assassination attempt in 1997 on Khaled Meshal, a senior figure in Hamas. To some extent, the Mossads intervention in the pandemic is an acute embarrassment for officials of the Health Ministry, who ordinarily speak freely to the media but declined to comment on any aspect of the spy services role. That the countrys health system had to enlist Mossad was evidence that it had not readied itself to respond to the type of threat represented by the coronavirus, according to a high-ranking figure in the Israeli health system, who requested anonymity because he was criticising the ministrys directorate. Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here The first shipment acquired abroad by the Mossad arrived in Israel on a special flight on March 19: 100,000 coronavirus testing kits, said an official from the prime ministers office. Subsequent shipments included more testing kits, 1.5 million surgical masks, tens of thousands of N-95 masks, protective overalls for first-aid crews, protective goggles and a range of medications, according to a high-ranking official knowledgeable about the Mossad operation. The Mossad also helped obtain technology from outside Israel that have enabled many Israeli laboratories to conduct coronavirus tests. Mossad operatives also secured the necessary know-how to produce ventilators in Israel. Using technological expertise brought in by the Mossad, production lines that can produce 25 million protective masks a month are gradually being set up, a high-ranking security official said. According to one senior Israeli official, the Mossad knew it had to act urgently, with the demand for such equipment expected to grow and with the understanding that countries would eventually refuse to export essential medical products. The Mossads efforts were easier in non-democratic countries where intelligence agencies have more influence with the rulers, this official said. The efforts were based on prior familiarity and mutual trust between the Mossad and those agencies. In some instances, the official said, Cohen personally contacted his counterparts. Such contacts were often enough to expedite purchase of the goods. In other cases, the official said, Cohen spoke directly to the rulers of particular countries, which he declined to identify. As other countries began to hunt for the same gear, competition intensified, and the battle was not always waged fairly. While none of the people with knowledge of the Mossads operations explicitly acknowledged that the agency may have played dirty, they did not rule it out. One recipient of the Mossads imports said some had come from China, where Israels Defence Ministry also helped secure medical equipment through a network usually used to buy weapons. The Mossad has invested heavily over the past decade in developing relations with states in the Middle East and Asia that remain hostile to Israel, at least officially. There have been a number of reports that Cohen has met frequently with the rulers and spy bosses of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar. In 2018, Cohen set up an unusual public meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Sultan Qaboos of Oman, who died in January. Not all the Mossad coronavirus operations were successful. One of the people knowledgeable about the failures said Mossad emissaries had been outmanoeuvred at least once in Germany, where government couriers seized goods the Israelis were about to ship home from a factory. Another time, a load of sanitiser in India was delayed by customs officers and the Mossad abandoned the shipment. Nevertheless, the Mossad will almost certainly be remembered for coming to the countrys rescue in an unusual battle against an invisible enemy. c.2020 The New York Times Company Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin James Pheby with Thomas Urbain in New York (Agence France-Presse) London, United Kingdom Mon, April 13, 2020 17:02 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd198f39 2 Art & Culture arts,art-and-culture,art-auction,Sothebys,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,technology,Christies,Bonhams Free The coronavirus pandemic poses a huge global challenge to auction houses large and small, but those that have embraced technology could prosper as nervous investors seek a safe haven, according to experts. Major London-based house Sotheby's has closed its London, Hong Kong, Dubai, Geneva, Milan, Paris and New York offices, throwing their marquee May auctions into doubt. Main rival Christie's, meanwhile, said it was "working swiftly" to reschedule postponed auctions. "It's a threat to all of us, but I do think we'll get through it," Giles Peppiatt, director for modern and contemporary African art at fellow London-based auction giant Bonhams, told AFP. Although no longer able to hold live auctions, the pandemic has accelerated the move to online sales. "We thank our stars that we have online bidding," said Peppiatt. "When online sales first started, all the auctioneers thought it would suck the life out of the auctions. "But it's amazing that the thing we feared most at the time is probably going to be our savior." Jen Zatorski, president of Christie's America, told a media conference call that the company had responded by accelerating the reprogramming of its online sale platform using its own technology developed over the last decade. "The art market and our clients are ready and wishing for this type of digital engagement and transaction," she explained. Read also: Art in a time of crisis: Lee Man Fong's 'Bali Life' invites reflection 'Defining moment' The outbreak poses different challenges for various sized auction houses, and for different segments of the market, experts said. "I think small auction houses... will really struggle through this because they just don't have the... liquidity to ride it out," Clare McAndrew, CEO of Arts Economics, told AFP. But Pierce Noonan, the chairman and CEO of London-based auction house Dix Noonan Webb, said that nimble smaller firms could thrive. "Number one: It's going to be technology," he said. "This is a defining moment." His house, which specializes in small collectibles such as watches and jewelry, is planning to hold a live online sale next week, with the auctioneer presiding from home, if necessary. A cut of the proceeds will go to Britain's National Health Service. "Our website traffic, it's never been busier," he added, explaining that people were stuck at home with little else to spend their money on. 'Art survives' Having tangible assets could also become more attractive as other investment options collapse. A "sad truth is that art survives disaster," art economics expert Kathryn Brown, from Britain's Loughborough University, told AFP. "People continued to buy art during the First World War. You can look at correspondence between the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writing from the trenches to a dealer in Paris, telling him what art to buy." Christie's president Jussi Pylkkanen said they had not experienced "falling appetite from our buyers." A bigger issue could be supply, explained McAndrew. "The problem is people might perceive it as a poor time to sell." So those in search of a cut-price Picasso could be disappointed. "This idea of panic offers is a little bit rubbish," she said. "They tend to sell from the bottom of the pile." This seemed to be borne out by Christie's US chairman Marc Porter, who explained that "we have not seen, yet, people who need to raise capital immediately". Read also: Auction houses postpone sales for Asia Week New York due to coronavirus crisis 'Heat of the moment' The outbreak could hit different parts of the market more harshly, believes Peppiatt. "It's the areas where the market money... is a little bit more 'hot' -- in the sense this is a bit more speculation -- that could be a bit more vulnerable," he said, pointing to the mainstream contemporary market. Live auctions could even shift to Asia as it eases lockdowns. "As long as all the correct people have been made aware and all the correct people have seen the works, you should get pretty much the same price," he said. Despite shifting business online and the creation of virtual galleries, there will still be a crucial role for live auctions after the dust settles, according to the experts. "There's no doubt also that with a live auction, buyers tend to bid a bit more freely because they get wrapped up in the auction, in the heat of the moment, the drama, the theater," said Peppiatt. "I think for major works of art -- when you're talking over 100,000 ($120,000) -- people do like to try to get in front of the picture themselves." Hannah Gadsby is set to return to Netflix on May 26 with her new comedy special Douglas. Douglas comes two years after Gadsby released her genre-breaking special Nanette, in which she challenged the very nature of stand-up comedy by going beyond the tension and resolution (punchline) to introduce a third act in catharsis. Gadsby announced the premiere date of Douglas on Twitter via video. I'm excited for you to see it. It's going to be good, unless you don't like it. Then it's still going to be good, and you'll be wrong," the Australian comic said in the clip. As per the Netflix synopsis, the new special from the Emmy and Peabody winner is named after her dog who she took for a walk across the planet, finishing up in Los Angeles, and recording her second stand-up special. You can expect your expectations to be set and met by Douglas: a tour from the dog park to the renaissance and back guided by one of comedy's most sparkling and surprising minds. Gadsby has been touring the Douglas stand-up show since April 2019. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CEO of Smithfield Foods has claimed the country's meat supply is at risk as the company is forced to close one of the country's largest pork processing facilities until further notice due to the coronavirus. The facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is closing as a number of its employees have fallen ill with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and is one in a list of plants that have shut down during the crisis. More than 11 meat packing and processing plants have now been closed in North America because of the impact of coronavirus, raising serious concerns about the supply chain in the U.S. and its ability to keep shelves stocked. According to Smithfield, the plant accounts for 4 to 5 percent of the country's pork production. It supplies nearly 130 million servings of food per week, or about 18 million servings per day. Smithfield has closed its Sioux Falls pork processing plant in South Dokata after around 240 of its employees becamse infected with Covid-19 'The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,' the meat processor's CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in a statement on Sunday. 'It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain.' Sullivan said Smithfield had been operating during the coronavirus crisis because it wanted to sustain the nation's food supply. 'We believe it is our obligation to help feed the country, now more than ever. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19,' he said. Smithfield announced a three-day closure last week so it could sanitize the plant and install physical barriers to enhance social distancing. But on Sunday, it announced the plant's indefinite closure. There has been no evidence that the coronavirus is being transmitted through food or its packaging, according to the Department of Agriculture. The plant also employs 3,700 people who will now be out of work due to the plant's closure, and many of those employees have been infected with the virus. According to Smithfield, the plant accounts for 4 to 5 percent of the country's pork production It supplies nearly 130 million servings of food per week, or about 18 million servings per day The announcement came a day after South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken wrote to Smithfield and urged the company to suspend operations for 14 days so that its workers could self-isolate and the plant could be disinfected. Speaking during a news conference on Saturday, Governor Noem said that Smithfield employees accounted for more than half of the active cases of the coronavirus in the state. Of the roughly 430 active cases in South Dakota, about 240 of them are employees of the plant. She said that the mayor and herself spoke to Smithfield to recommend that the company suspends operations for at least two weeks. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem the Mayor of Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken wrote to Smithfield to urge them to close the plant as cases rose Maggie Seidel, Noem's senior advisor and policy director, said in an emailed statement Sunday that science and data support a 14-day closure to slow the spread of the virus in the community. 'Obviously, the situation is dynamic and changing by the day. The industry (like the country) needs to fight its way through this situation - and it will - and make adjustments as it changes. As a critical infrastructure industry in our nation's food supply, the Governor is committed to working with them to get through this,' Seidel wrote. Some activity will be maintained in the plant on Tuesday to process the inventory, Smithfield said, as it prepares for a full shut-down. It said that it would compensate employees for the following two weeks. Other meat processing plants across the country have also shut down due to sick employees, including processors in Iowa and Pennsylvania. Tyson, another of the world's largest meat processors, has suspended its operations at one of its plants in Columbus Junction, Iowa, after over 20 of its workers contracted Covid-19. The company said it would re-direct its livestock that was due at the plant in Columbus Junction to other plans to reduce the impact on supply. Another key meat processor, JBS USA, ceased its operations for two weeks at its beef plant in Sounderton, Pennsylvania, and plans to re-open on April 16. Several members of the plant's management team could not go into work due to experiencing flu-like symptoms, leading to the decision to close the plant. Another Pennsylvania plant in Hazleton has also paused its operations where 900 people usually work. Speaking to CNN Business, Jon Nash, North America lead for Cargill Protein said: 'This will allow us to minimize the impact of COVID-19 and continue [to] follow health department guidelines.' South Dakota has seen six deaths resulting from the virus so far. The United States of America has now seen 561,767 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and 22,129 deaths. Meat and packing plant closures across North America JBS USA shut a beef plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, until April 16, after previously cutting production. JBS reduced production a beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, due to high absences among workers, according to the local United Food and Commercial Workers union. The company said high absenteeism led slaughter rates to outpace the process of cutting carcasses into pieces. National Beef Packing Co suspended cattle slaughtering at a beef plant in Tama, Iowa, for a cleaning and planned to resume on April 13. Aurora Packing Company closed a beef plant in Aurora, Illinois, said Brad Lyle, chief financial officer for U.S. commodity firm Kerns and Associates. A security officer at the plant said it was closed due to the pandemic. The company did not respond to requests for comment. Harmony Beef in Alberta, Canada, shut its cattle slaughter operations on March 27 for two days, after a worker tested positive for the new coronavirus, prompting some federal inspectors to stay away from the site. Cargill Inc closed a plant in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, that produces meat for U.S. grocery stores. Tyson Foods Inc shut a hog slaughterhouse in Columbus Junction, Iowa, the week of April 6 after more than 24 cases of COVID-19 involving employees at the facility. Smithfield Foods, the worlds biggest pork processor, on Sunday said it is shutting a pork plant indefinitely and warned that plant shutdowns are pushing the United States perilously close to the edge in meat supplies for grocers. An Olymel pork plant in Yamachiche, Quebec, shut on March 29 for two weeks, after nine workers tested positive for the coronavirus. Maple Leaf Foods suspended operations on April 8 at its Brampton, Ontario poultry plant, following three COVID cases among workers at that facility. Sanderson Farms Inc reduced chicken production to 1 million birds a week from 1.3 million at a plant in Moultrie, Georgia. Advertisement The United States of America has now seen 561,767 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and 22,129 deaths, with hot-spots including New York, Massachusetts and Michigan With its 561,769 cases as of the 12 April, the U.S has seen more cases than any other country in the world The U.S has also now seen more deaths than any other country in the world, overtaking Italy and Spain (CNN) At Mount Sinai South Nassau on New York's Long Island, the hospital staff reportedly spins "Here Comes the Sun" on the public address system every time a coronavirus patient is discharged. Paul McCartney is set to play the upcoming "One World: Together at Home" charity special, joining a bill that includes 18-year-old superfan Billie Eilish, nearly 60 years his junior. "Yellow Submarine" has gained new resonance as an intergenerational singalong, crooned by neighbors through windows-turned-portholes, socially distant, but inextricably linked. They may have broken up 50 years ago, on April 10, 1970. But the Beatles still help us come together, especially when we need it most. So how to explain the enduring grip of a group that invaded the US in 1964 when more than two-thirds of Americans currently alive myself included had yet to be born? There are some obvious answers, starting with the music a fab force that evolved at revolution speed, going from the proto-boy band pop of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in late 1963 to the psychedelia of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" over a span of 3 years. Then there's the message, embodied in "All You Need is Love." And, of course, there's the humor, born in earthy Liverpool and channeled into family friendly movies from "A Hard Day's Night" to "Yellow Submarine" that grew on mom and pop, long hair and all. All true. But it adds up to something much bigger. A musical legacy to share The Beatles' greatest gift was giving us something to share, a legacy to pass along just as stories and songs were in days of old. We've done it with everything from vinyl records to eight-track tapes to CDs to iTunes to Spotify and back to vinyl again. And we do it as much for ourselves as for our children. Seeing and hearing the discovery of the Beatles through fresh eyes and ears is life affirming and offers a sense of renewal. Dig a little deeper, and the band's journey the struggles, triumphs, friendships, marriages, breakups and tragedies is life's path writ large, filled with lessons we'll probably ignore and pitfalls we'll stumble into anyway, because that's human nature. And their story makes John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all the more human and eternal to us. Somehow, the pop culture face of a turbulent decade that cleaved the generation gap has connected families across time. You can see it in the Boomers who bring their children and grandchildren to McCartney and Ringo Starr concerts, and flock to Cirque du Soleil's "The Beatles LOVE" spectacular. You can see it the flying fingers of the kids playing The Beatles: Rock Band video game. You can hear it in the music: Last year's golden anniversary edition of "Abbey Road" hit No. 3 on the Billboard charts, nearly 50 years after it went to No. 1. Much to the ire of British motorists, fans for decades have tried to recreate the iconic album cover showing the Beatles walking across the street outside their London recording studio. It proved both brilliant and sad that transportation officials recently grabbed the opportunity to repaint the zebra crosswalk with London, like half the world, in lockdown. Once again, the Beatles found themselves a symbol of changing times. The Beatles remain here, there and everywhere Starr postponed the spring tour that was to lead up to his 80th birthday the milestone John Lennon would have reached this October. We've been without Lennon for almost 40 years, and George Harrison's been gone nearly half that long. Still, last year's charming movie "Yesterday," reinforced that it's impossible to imagine a world without the Beatles. I was 3 years old when they broke up and they've always been here, there and everywhere for me. The woman who is now my wife of nearly 30 years and I bonded over them. We raised our daughter as a Beatle baby, and traveled in the group's footsteps through Hamburg, London and Liverpool (and one day, we hope, India). Travel seems like one sweet dream these days for the three of us, grateful to be healthy, working and home together, with the soundtrack of our lives counterbalancing the endless ambulance sirens wailing through our Brooklyn neighborhood. So no, I can't imagine my life without the Beatles. And I'm not the only one. On the first Saturday of every month, my wife, daughter and I cram into a tiny bar in Manhattan's East Village with a few dozen other obsessives, some, like me, slinging guitars. We play and sing Beatles song for five hours people from across generations and from across the universe, transported together. Last week, we took the jam online. It wasn't quite the same, but we saw one another's smiles and we heard one another's voices. When it was over, everyone said the same thing: "See you next month." Whether that will be in person or via Zoom, well, no one was prepared to say. But we'll be back together, connected by a band that split a half century ago, taking a sad song and making it better. This story was first published on CNN.com, "They broke up 50 years ago. How the Beatles still bring joy in scary times." Argentine striker Lionel Messi expressed his 'deepest gratitude' towards health workers who are risking there lives in the tough times of the coronavirus pandemic. "Yesterday the World Health Worker Week came to an end and, together with @unicef, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the work they do. Anonymous heroes who endure long days and nights away from their families, so that ours can be safe from #COVID19," Messi wrote on Instagram post. The Barcelona legend showed his support following the end of the World Health Worker Week, which concluded on Saturday. "For continuing, despite everything, their noble commitment to caring for pregnant women, and keeping children and adolescents protected. #YoMeQuedoEnCasa #StayAtHome #Unicef," he added. La Liga was suspended indefinitely last month due to COVID-19 - Messi's Barca was two points clear of Real Madrid through 27 rounds at the time of the postponement. Messi has proven himself to be a leader at the Blaugrana during the health crisis, instigating a 70 per cent wage cut among the playing squad. The infection has affected at least 1.8 million people across the globe, while as many as 1,12,241 people have succumbed to it, according to the data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have been jokingly fighting each other for years. Now, they are back at it again. An Anniversary Message Any time is a good time to make fun of Jackman, at least that is what actor Reynolds thought. The "Wolverine" star recently celebrated his wedding anniversary with his wife, and the "Green Lantern" star just had to make a joke out of it. On Friday, Jackman took it to Instagram to express his heartfelt message for his wife Deborra-Lee Furness for their 24th wedding anniversary. "These 24 years have been the best in my life! And, as far as I can see, we keep getting better," the actor wrote as a caption to a throwback photo of him and his wife. "I love you, Debs, with every fiber of my soul. Happy anniversary. #24". And yet, Reynolds took the sweet post of an anniversary message to hilariously troll on Hugh. He could not help but leave yet another hilarious comment on Hugh's message. "Hang in there, Deb," Reynolds teasingly wrote on the comment. And just like that, their feud is back on! Their feud began when the "Deadpool" star insisted that Jackman revive his "Wolverine" character so that the two of them can star in a movie together. Their rivalry is obviously just for fun. After all, both actors have spent years making fun of each other on several media platforms and fans just love it. Both Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are well-admired actors in Hollywood and their feud only makes them look more adorable to the public. Just Another Prank This was not the first time Reynolds made fun of Jackman. In December of 2019, Reynolds called Jackman an "evil person" when he appeared on the news of Jackman's native Australia. During his appearance on Today Show Australia, Ryan jokingly spoke of what he thought about Hugh. "I mean, you guys have all been duped. You think he's this benevolent ambassador to your country. People don't realize he's from Winnipeg, Canada," Reynolds said. "The Proposal" actor also added: "Truth hurts sometimes, it makes your eyes water. Hugh Jackman's a fraud!" His comment, however, only came as a reaction when Jackman hijacked Reynold's upcoming movie back then, "Free Guy." The "Logan" actor made a joke on Reynolds by photoshopping himself into one of the movie's posters. "A small edit to make this a much better promotional tool," Jackman wrote. After trying to make fun of each other whenever they can, the two called for a truce in February of 2019. In their respective social media accounts, both Jackman and Reynolds posted that their feud has come to an end. Official truce with @realhughjackman ! As a gesture of goodwill, I'm gonna make a beautiful ad for his company, Laughing Man Coffee. Can't wait! pic.twitter.com/M91iBBydO7 January 31, 2019 To help mend their "broken relationship," the actors have revealed their plans to make ads for each other's own companies -- Reynolds owns Aviation Gin while Jackman is the brilliant mind behind Laughing Man Coffee. They only expected themselves to out-do each other. "Official truce with @realhughjackman!" Ryan Reynolds wrote on the caption of a black and white photo of him and Hugh Jackman smiling as they were shaking their hands. The Congress' Karnataka unit has demanded that Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa sack Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar, accusing him of behaving irresponsibly by spending time in a swimming pool, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "When the whole world is going through a health crisis, the coronavirus in-charge Minister Dr. Sudhakar is behaving irresponsibly by spending time in a swimming pool. It's a matter of moral & ethical standards. He must resign out of his own accord & CM should sack him from the cabinet," Karnataka Congress President D K Shivakumar tweeted. Sudhakar, who is leading the government's efforts against COVID-19 in Bengaluru and is in charge of the state war room, had on Sunday had posted a picture on Twitter of him spending time with his children in the swimming pool. "After a long time joined my children for swimming hope maintaining social distance here also.. haha," he had tweeted along with the picture. While some people on social media have criticised Sudhakar for his act during the health crisis; some have opined that the Minister has a personal life too. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sam Armytage hasn't been seen on the set of Sunrise for over a month as she continues to take time off due to a 'respiratory illness'. The highly-paid host, 43, was first absent from the program seven weeks ago on February 26, claiming at the time she was 'at home sick as a dog'. Sam later returned to host the program from March 3-13, but has not been seen since. Get well soon? Sam Armytage hasn't been seen on the set of Sunrise for over a month as she continues to take time off due to a 'respiratory illness' Fans first learned of her absence via an Instagram Story post on March 17. 'Hi all... I'm taking a few weeks off work as I've had a respiratory infection (for three months) since the bushfires and it just won't heal,' she wrote. 'I don't have coronavirus, but I'm worried I'll get it if I don't get better. Thought it was a good time to lie low.' On Monday, Sam told Daily Mail Australia she was 'hoping to be back on air soon'. Illness: The highly-paid host, 43, was first absent from the program seven weeks ago on February 26, claiming at the time she was 'at home sick as a dog' Last Friday marked one month since she had last appeared on air. Sam provided an update a week later on March 23, praising the show's newsreader, Natalie Barr, for filling in so that she could 'rest and recover as quickly as possible'. There has been no update since, although recent social media posts indicate she may have made a full recovery. Back and forth: She later returned from March 3-13, but was gone again the following week. On March 17, Sam announced she would be off for 'a few weeks' due to a 'respiratory illness' she claimed to have been suffering ever since covering the bushfires last year All better? Sam seemingly confirmed her recovery in a post on April 4, posing cheek-to-cheek on the lounge with her boyfriend, Richard Lavender Sam seemingly confirmed her recovery in a post on April 4, posing cheek-to-cheek on the lounge with her boyfriend, Richard Lavender. 'Ready for Randwick,' she wrote in the caption, referencing a racing event that was being broadcast on television with no fans present. The journalist joked that the 'best bits' about enjoying the event from home were 'no queue for the loo and no heels!' On Sunday, she returned to Instagram yet again, this time to promote an opinion piece she had written for Stellar magazine. Where have you been, Sam? In recent days, fans have taken to posting comments on weeks-old Instagram posts, asking when she would be returning to Sunrise In recent days, fans have taken to posting comments on weeks-old Instagram posts, asking when she would be returning to Sunrise. 'Where have you been? We miss you on the morning show,' asked one fan last week. Others wished her a 'speedy recovery' and asked for updates on when she would be back on television. A first batch of 265 British nationals, out of the total 900 stranded in Gujarat due to the coronavirus lockdown, were on Monday evening boarded a special flight for the UK from the Ahmedabad international airport. In a tweet, the British High Commission in Gujarat and Rajasthan said that remaining lot of the British nationals will be flown back during this week. The High Commission also thanked Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for their support. "First flight of 265 British Citizens took off just now from Ahmedabad Airport bound for UK. Huge thanks to @CMOGuj and Airport Authorities for their superb assistance. Further flights planned later this week!" the British High Commission tweeted. Ahmedabad airport authorities on Sunday announced that the British Airways will operate three flights from here in the next few days to take back the 900 UK nationals stranded in Gujarat due to the lockdown. In a release, the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International (SVPI) Airport had said it will facilitate operations of three relief flights on April 13, 15 and 17 of the British Airways for transporting around 900 British nationals who are standard in Gujarat. "Two aircrafts will arrive here from the Heathrow Airport in London and leave for the UK capital on April 13 and 15. The third aircraft will arrive in Ahmedabad from Hyderabad on April 17 and depart for London the same day," the release had said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New York City was rocked by two fatal shootings that have left three people dead and another in a critical condition over the weekend. The shootings occurred within minutes of each other on Saturday evening, sparking fears of an uptick in violence amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Surveillance footage obtained by DailyMail.com shows both shootings. Shortly before 8pm, video taken from surveillance video shows about eight people gathered outside a bodega at East 112th Street and First Avenue in East Harlem. A gunman in a dark jacket suddenly appears from out of nowhere, steps up and opens fire One man who was hit is seen falling to the pavement. The gunman then chases another man across the street and shoots him as well A gunman in a dark jacket suddenly appears from out of nowhere, steps up and opens fire. One man who was hit is seen falling to the pavement. The gunman then chases another man across the street and shoots him as well. Several other people scatter, including one person who ducks back into the bodega and slams the door shut. Upon arrival, officers discovered three men at the location with multiple gunshot wounds. Two died and one was in critical condition. Minutes later in Crown Heights, a man wearing a red hoodie, jeans and white sneakers could be seen walking up behind 31-year-old Paul Hoilett of Brooklyn on Buffalo Avenue, and shooting him in the back of the head. Hoilett, wearing a black jacket and jeans, collapses to the sidewalk, as the shooter then jumps into a white Jeep Renegade SUV that pulls up beside him. He hops into the passengers seat before they speed off. Hoilett was taken to NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County where he was pronounced dead. The city has been crippled by the coronavirus outbreak, with its police force severely affected. On Friday, more than 7,000 uniformed NYPD officers - nearly 20 per cent of the force - were off sick. Saturday's first fatal shooting occurred shortly before 8pm in Harlem - where nearly a third of officers have called out sick in recent weeks. Minutes later in Crown Heights, a man wearing a red hoodie, jeans and white sneakers could be seen walking up behind 31-year-old Paul Hoilett of Brooklyn New York has been crippled by the coronavirus outbreak, with its police force severely affected. Residents were left rattled by multiple fatal shootings that occurred this weekend 'Honestly, we have enough to worry about with COVID-19. We don't need this right now,' a shocked witness to the Harlem shooting told The New York Post. A nearby deli owner told the publication: 'I didn't go outside. I was too scared. It's crazy, man. People should be helping each other.' The gunman fled from the scene on foot and is still at large. Meanwhile, just minutes later, a separate fatal shooting occurred in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood. The victim, a 31-year-old man, was fatally shot in the head. He was rushed to hospital, but pronounced dead on arrival. On Friday evening, another fatal shooting occurred, when a 23-year-old man was shot dead outside his apartment complex in East Harlem. On Friday, more than 7,000 uniformed NYPD officers - nearly 20 per cent of the force - were off sick Despite the fears of local residents, major crimes cases have dropped 33 percent since lockdown measures were put in place on March 22 Pictured: Officers detain a woman outside the Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens on March 30 However, despite the fears of local residents, major crimes cases - which include murder and felony assault - have dropped 33 percent since lockdown measures were put in place on March 22, according to a MarketWatch report. However, in poorer neighborhoods, lesser crimes are actually on the rise. In southeast Queens, there has been a 50 percent increase in burglaries and car thefts over the past two weeks. Meanwhile, in East and Central Harlem, burglaries are up 18 percent. New York City is the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, with more than 98,000 confirmed cases. Over 6,800 city residents have died from the virus. As the number of daily US coronavirus deaths climbs to new heights, a wave of articles has appeared in the press presenting the deadly impact of the crisis as the product of racism. The press coverage focuses on Detroit, Michigan; New Orleans, Louisiana; Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where African American residents are suffering from infection and death rates that far surpass the black proportion of the total population. The figures are disturbing. In Louisiana, 70 percent of total coronavirus deaths are black, though they make up just one third of the population. In Chicago, 67 percent of those killed by the virus are black, though they comprise 32 percent of the population. In Michigan, blacks make up 40 percent of the deaths and one third of positive tests, despite comprising just 14 percent of the states population. In Milwaukee County, blacks constitute 26 percent of the population but account for 73 percent of the countys deaths. Patients wear personal protective equipment while maintaining social distancing as they wait in line for a COVID-19 test at Elmhurst Hospital Center, Wednesday, March 25, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) The data shows the deadly impact of the virus on the entire working class, and especially its most vulnerable populations. Workers of all races who lack adequate healthcare, who are forced to work under dangerous conditions by their employers and who suffer underlying ailments like obesity, asthma, diabetes and heart and lung disease are most at risk of contracting the virus and dying once infected. In the four highly unequal urban areas listed above, blacks make up large portions of the impoverished working class. From this data, representatives of the ruling class, and particularly figures in and around the Democratic Party, are spinning a narrative that the catastrophic social impact of the disease is not due to the impact of decades of bipartisan social counterrevolution and Wall Streets rapacious response to the pandemic on the working class, but due specifically to racial prejudice against all African-Americans. In an April 8 opinion piece titled The Pandemics Missing Data, the New York Times asserts that addressing the health crisis means recognizing that American health institutions were designed to discriminate against blacks, whether poor or not. During an online event hosted by Bernie Sanders last Tuesday, The impact of Coronavirus on African Americans, Sanders said, The African American community is suffering at a far higher rate than the white community. Campaign surrogate Dr. Darrick Hamilton downplayed inequality among African Americans, asserting that black people a priori have low wealth. The coronavirus is a global disease and does not respect the boundaries of the nation states or the skin pigmentation of its victims. In Europe, the epicenter of the disease is in Northern Italy, where Italians of lighter skin complexion happen to live. Thus far, the impact of the disease has been far more devastating in Europe than in Africa, while within Africa the virus has hit the lighter skinned Maghreb region far harder than sub-Saharan countries, though the dismal state of health care threatens to devastate the entire continent. Nor is it the case that in the US blacks of all income levels face a higher level of risk. In New York City, 34 percent of deaths are of Hispanic people, though Hispanics make up just 27 percent of the citys population. Blacks comprise 28 percent of deaths, roughly equal to their share of the population, 27 percent. The impact on Hispanic residents is a product of the fact that many working class immigrants live in cramped living quarters due to high rent and low wages, while undocumented immigrants also avoid seeking health care and social support out of fear of deportation. Moreover, in an April 8 article titled, Coronavirus Was Slow to Spread to Rural America. Not Anymore, the New York Times reported that the virus has now begun to spread across rural areas largely populated by impoverished white people with very limited access to quality health care. Appalachia is particularly vulnerable. In addition, the Times writes, Indian reservations, which grapple daily with high poverty and inadequate medical services, are now confronting soaring numbers of cases. The real cause for the high black death toll in Detroit, Milwaukee, New Orleans and Chicago is massive poverty and inequality. Medical studies repeatedly point to the correlation not only between disease susceptibility and income, but also to social inequality overall. For example, a 2019 study titled Income Inequality and Outcomes in Heart Failure explains, countries sharing the same GDP may have quite different health outcomes, reflecting the distribution of income within those societies. That is, it appears that it is not only the wealth of a society but the distribution of wealth within that society that influences health. Among all US cities with a population over 350,000, Detroit, Milwaukee, New Orleans and Chicago rank 1st, 4th, 5th, and 11th poorest, respectively. Each city has a Gini coefficientused to measure inequalitybetween 0.46 and 0.50, worse than most Central American or sub-Saharan African countries. The working class population of each city has been devastated by decades of deindustrialization, cuts to health care, welfare and other social programs. In each city, massive levels of inequality are the product of the ruling class strategy to transfer billions of dollars from the working class to the rich. The social looting carried out by the ruling class through the Detroit bankruptcy of 2013 and response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 further paved the way for the explosion of coronavirus deaths today. But the social counterrevolution that devastated Detroit, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago was not led by the white community against the black community. In these four cities, unrelenting attacks on living conditions were either spearheaded by or implemented with the active support of African-American Democratic Party officials serving the interests of the ruling class and the corporations. Black politicians like former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former New Orleans Mayor Ray Naginboth of whom were thrown in prison for fraud and briberyepitomize the corrupt social types who rose to the top of the Democratic machines in the era of the promotion of black capitalism, enriching themselves as the cities majority-black working class lost their homes, jobs and health care. The richest 10 percent of African Americans now own 75.3 percent of all wealth owned by African Americans, while 65 percent of African Americanssome 27 million peopleown zero percent. From 2007 to 2016, the top 1 percent of African Americans increased its share from 19.4 percent to 40.5 percent. Such levels of inequality surpass that among whites and Hispanics, showing that racial politics have only exacerbated inequality, opening up positions of privilege for affluent African Americans without producing any gains for African American workers. On the contrary, conditions of life for African American workers have declined across the board in the decades of the ascendancy of racial politics. The massive growth of inequality among African Americans from 2007 to 2016 corresponds with the two terms of Barack Obama. During Obamas presidency, average family health care costs rose from roughly $13,000 to $19,000, while over 20 million Americans remained without health insurance when he left office. The affluent proponents of racial politics have no interest in improving the living conditions of workers of any race or ethnicity. Their social outlook is expressed by the fact that wealthy African Americans voted overwhelmingly in the 2020 Democratic primary for Joe Biden and exerted their social power to support the Democratic narrative that Biden was the candidate for the entire black community. This layer is willing to overlook Bidens recent praise for segregationists and his responsibility for the mass incarceration of millions of impoverished African American men, provided he protects their class position and guarantees their special access to political and business perks and privileges. Across the world, workers of all races and nationalities have launched strikes and protests against unsafe work conditions and the back to work plans of the capitalist governments. When an employer is ordering a worker to face death so he can profit, the worker is not likely to consider his employers race to be of great import. The development of a racial narrative is aimed at blocking the emerging unified movement of the working class and protecting the flow of corporate profits. Socialists fight for the unity of the international working class, for a class understanding of the impact of the disease, and for the confiscation of trillions in wealth hoarded by the rich to protect the most vulnerable populationsincluding in Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago and Milwaukeefrom the devastating physical and economic impact of the coronavirus. WEST SPRINGFIELD A Holyoke man was arrested after trying to break into an occupied home Saturday night. Jeffrey Luckern, 58, was arrested on Saturday night and charged with breaking and entering into a building in the nighttime for a felony, two counts of assault and unarmed burglary, police said in a Facebook post. The arrest came one day after the same man was released on bail on similar charges. Mr. Luckern is well known to the West Springfield Police Department and other police departments for similar charges, police said. A resident from Bacon Avenue called police at about 11 p.m. to say a man had broken into a home that was occupied by adults and children. He made it to the second floor but fled after being confronted by one of the residents, police said. The caller gave police a description of the man and responding officers searched the neighborhood with the assistance of Massachusetts State troopers, including a K9 officer. Luckern was apprehended while trying to hide in the woods, police said. Authorities in Vietnam and Laos have arrested several Facebook users on charges related to the coronavirus, with Hanoi punishing posts that challenge official reporting on the pandemic and Vientiane acting against a lockdown violation streamed live. The two arrests in Vietnam come as the Communist Party government been concerned with trying to limit the spread of what it calls rumors and fake news. One of the Vietnamese Facebook posters was accused of abusing democratic rights to infringe on the interests of others, in violation of Article 331 of the 2015 Vietnamese Penal Code. Critics say that this article is ambiguously written and has been used often to imprison dissidents in the one-party state. The Peoples Procuracy in Can Tho provinces Ninh Kieu district detained Ma Phung Ngoc Phu, 28, because on Feb. 25, she posted a status update to Facebook under the username James Ng, that said, Weve just now received information about COVID-19 deaths in Vietnam. Why is state media not publishing this news? Police added that the James Ng account posted a total of 14 stories which it said were not factual or were fake news about the epidemic in Vietnam, which constituted abuse of the state. Ma is expected to be sentenced to the maximum penalty of seven years for the offense as outlined in Article 331. Meanwhile, last week in central Vietnams Lam Dong province, police prosecuted 27-year-old Dinh Vinh Son for posting information on Facebook about a COVID-19 death in Lam Dongs capital, Da Lat. Dinh is being investigated for what authorities said was illegal posting or using information on computer networks and telecommunication networks, an offense that carries a maximum prison term of seven years. Police said that Dinh on April 1 posted news to Facebook under the username Ho Hoang Duy, saying that Da Lat had three cases of COVID-19, with one of the three dying at 4:00 a.m. and the other two in quarantine. Police reported more than 600 Facebookers have have been summoned for questioning over COVID-19 related posts on the social media platform. Many have been fined as high as tens of millions of dong (more than U.S. $1,000). As of April 13, Vietnam reported 265 confirmed coronavirus cases, 145 of which have made recoveries. Lao live-streamer Authorities in Laos charged a Facebook user for live-streaming an April 4 event that violated a stay-at-home order issued by the communist countrys prime minister to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The accused is a resident of Phoxay village in Savannakhet provinces Atsaphone district. District Governor Khampheng Phetthoumphone told local media April 6 that local police learned of the event that day. To the matter of the individual who published a live video on social media, he was handed over to the district police who will summon and charge him according to the law, the governor said. He added that the events organizers were to be re-educated and the Facebook user will be charged with violating the stay-at-home order. An official of the Savannakhet Lao Front for Construction, a mass organization overseeing religious activities, told RFAs Lao Service that the charge was unimportant because the accused person was not criticizing the government. Its not a big deal. The authorities did not restrict anything, said the official, who requested anonymity. If posting news or making live videos is about the truth, it should not be prohibited, the official said. The official explained that live-streaming itself on Facebook was not illegal, but added that it was up to the local authorities in Atsaphone to deal with this particular incident. The official explained that in general doing live video on Facebook is not illegal, if its not against the Party and government. In the case of the incident in Atsaphone District, its up to the local authorities to deal with it. But several Lao citizens told RFA they disagreed with the charge. Its not appropriate. You have to look for the people responsible for the gathering, not just punishing the person who recorded and posted it online, a resident of Savannakhet who requested anonymity told RFA. Before a festival like that, the organizers need to get permission. So they have to find the person who granted permission. Thats who should be held responsible, the resident said. It would be better if they just gave the video taker a warning. Nobody did anything wrong, the resident added. Another Savannakhet resident who also requested anonymity agreed, saying, Its not wrong. The [accused] has a right to do that. Theres nothing wrong with taking video of something that is not against the state. The second resident pointed out that laws on online media exist, and many people frequently create live videos for fun, adding that in this case the intent was to show the festivities, not to attack the party or the government. As of Monday, Laos has reported a mere 19 confirmed coronavirus cases. Cambodian detentions In recent weeks, RFAs Khmer Service reported that authorities in neighboring Cambodia have also detained people for commenting on Facebook about COVID-19. These included Sovann Rithy, a reporter had accurately posted on Facebook a comment by Hun Sen telling motorbike-taxi drivers who face bankruptcy because of the coronavirus outbreak to sell your motorbikes for spending money [because] the government does not have the ability to help. Additionally, RFA reported that Hun Sen had made a personal threat to Am Sam Ath of the LICADHO NGO, after the organization provided updates on the governments recent crackdown and arrests of at least 24 people who posted comments on Facebook related to COVID-19. As of Monday, Cambodia has confirmed 122 cases of the coronavirus. Reported by RFAs Vietnamese and Lao Services. Translated by Huy Le and Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong. A simple act of kindness can provide light and hope for those in need. This is exactly what local people in Da Nang have been doing to support those hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. Nguyen Duy Nam distributes boxes of food for poor people in central Da Nang City. At 11am everyday, Nguyen Duy Nam, a middle-aged man from Da Nang, carries boxes of food on his motorbike to Trung Nu Vuong Road in Hai Chau District, where many poor labourers are waiting for him. Nam stops his vehicle, cleans his hands and unloads the food. Labourers, mostly lottery ticket sellers and cyclo drivers, are asked to stand in a queue, keep their distance from each other, and wash their hands with sanitiser before taking the food. As many as 100 boxes of food are distributed each day. Each box contains rice, vegetables, fish, pork and a packet of instant noodles. Le Cong Toan, a lottery ticket seller who gets around in a self-modified wheelchair, said he has been forced to stay at home because no one was buying lottery tickets during the pandemic. He is lucky to receive the food because he can't make any money at the moment. This is a significant act of kindness that helps us get through these hard times, he said. Huynh Thi Lan, another lottery ticket seller, said she was grateful for what Nam is doing because it has lessened the burden of her taking care of her son, who was paralysed in a traffic accident. A charity group named Happy Food Court also offer meals free of charge for poor people in the city at 6pm everyday. Nguyen Duy Duc, head of the group, said the volunteers cooked and distributed more than 250 meals for poor people each day and distributed them on Ly Trien, Phan Thanh and Trung Nu Vuong streets. Duc said before the COVID-19 outbreak, he and his team prepared meals three days per week. In the past three weeks, the group has managed to call upon more donations and are now working seven days a week. In Hai Chau, Thanh Khe and Son Tra districts, many charity groups are also reaching out to poor people in their localities. Nguyen Binh Nam, chairman of a group named Loving Each Other, said nearly 300 meals were being distributed at five localities across the city each day. Nam said he hoped the groups work could help people overcome the crisis. Meals for soldiers at checkpoints Young people in central Da Nang City prepare chicken porridge for officers and soldiers at the city's checkpoints. Photo tuoitre.vn Officers and soldiers working at checkpoints in Da Nang have become familiar with the sight of two cars appearing at midnight everyday. The cars belong to a group of young people who prepare meals for officers and soldiers at ten different checkpoints across the city. Currently, there are 13 soldiers working around the clock at each checkpoint to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ly Tri, a group member, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the group prepared more than 100 bowls of chicken porridge for the officers and soldiers as a way of sharing and caring for them in the fight against the disease. Tran Ngoc Nam, a health worker at a checkpoint, said he was tired working the night shift, but the young volunteers had given him the motivation to do his duty. VNS Tools such as cellphone-based contact tracing are becoming increasingly important in the fight to contain Covid-19, a disease spreading too quickly and silently for conventional disease control measures to contain it, according to experts and researchers who say this could fundamentally involve some compromises on personal privacy. The problem stems from the insidious nature of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19: it can be spread by a person who does not show symptoms (thus probably unaware of the illness), and merely breathing, coughing and sneezing could pass it on to anyone close by. Tracing contacts through conventional methods, therefore, may be ineffective, require too much manpower, and take too much time for effective containment. To defeat this virus, you either need a vaccine or testing, contact-tracing, quarantine, which is the hallmark of epidemiological containment. The issue is that normally viruses dont spread as fast. Most that kill or are serious are infectious at a stage when someone gets very sick, said Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, who was one of the first prominent public health officials to raise an alarm about the virus in January when it spread mostly within China. Contact tracing only works if you trace far enough and people remember well enough. And it needs a huge manpower. In Wuhan alone, they deployed almost 10,000 people, added Ding during an interview over video. With a mobile phone-based tool, you dont need the manpower and it is instantaneous the speed is the most crucial aspect. Problems in recalling who an infected person met or where they were too get taken care of, he said. Ding led efforts to create one of the first such mobile applications back in 2014 called Germ Theory. During the Ebola crisis, we realised contact tracing is a tedious effort and people have terrible recall, he said. The idea was also floated by researchers from Oxford University in a paper published on March 31 in which they said, a mobile phone app implementing instantaneous contact tracing could reduce transmission enough for sustained epidemic suppression, stopping the virus from spreading further. On April 2, the Indian government launched its own contact-tracing mobile application and roughly a week later, Apple and Google who together dominate the cellphone software platform market almost entirely announced they are working on similar mechanism for iPhone and Android-based phones. The apps work on a simple premise: a phone will exchange details converted into a random, unique alphanumeric with another phone if the two are in the range of their Bluetooth radios. Bluetooth is a short-distance radio wave, which is picked up only when someone is close enough to, say, be in the same flat or office. The data will be shared with health authorities in the event that either of the devices users test positive for an infection, triggering an alert to all other devices that may have been in the contact chain, according to the workings disclosed by Indias Aarogya Setu (health bridge) app and the proposed Google, Apple mechanism. Union health ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal, during the daily briefing on Covid-19, said the Aarogya Setu application was downloaded by 35 million people till Monday. PRIVACY WORRIES The approach, however, has drawn questions about privacy violations. People will wonder: who profiteers from these apps? Will there by government intrusion? said Ding. Indias Aarogya Setu has drawn criticism by privacy advocacy groups such as the Internet Freedom Foundation, which says the programme has a systemic lack of auditability and transparency. [There] appears to be a much wider collection and possible sharing [of data] outside of the device, than envisioned under other apps, said a working paper by IFF, which analysed a similar application used in Singapore and one developed by researchers at MIT. Technology lawyer Rahul Matthan, who advised the Indian government in the development of the Aarogya Setu app, said the features in the application need to be looked at in the context of the circumstances of the epidemic. If we agree we need some sort of a technological solution to carry out contact tracing, we know that the only way to do that is fundamentally privacy invasive, said Matthan, a partner-lawyer at Trilegal. Our approach in designing the privacy features have been to look at what basic privacy principles are around the world, he said, adding that he supported calls for the programme code to be made public if there was a trust deficit between users and the government. Matthan said the Aarogya Setu app seeks details needed to create demographic profiles since it is crucial to understand the scale of the disease in India. Age and gender data is relevant because we know the disease stratifies by age. Location data is used to create heat maps this is crucial because in India, we are a densely populated country and not a lot of people have smart phones. If you contact only those with phones, you leave out a lot of others, he said. Matthan said the app is distinct from an operating system-level solution that Google and Apple are working on because it involves health officials. Putting too much trust in algorithmic solution is dangerous. They cannot take into account several factors that can influence the probability of contracting an infection. They may also give people a false sense of hope, he said, adding that health officials ultimately determine which people identified by the Aarogya Setu must be tested. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A single mother nurse had to leave one of her twin boys outside while she shopped in Aldi due to a store's one-child policy. Victoria Astley, 40, was not allowed to bring both her children, Harvey and Joseph, into the store with her in Fenton, Staffordshire, last Friday. She was refused entry by a security guard after waiting for 30 minutes and was forced to leave one of the seven-year-olds with another shopper in the queue. Victoria Astley, 40, had to leave one of her 7-year-old twins, Harvey and Joseph, outside an Aldi supermarket while she shopped because of the store's one-child policy The nurse, who suffers from osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and other chronic health conditions, reported the incident to a manager after one of the boys became upset. She took to Facebook to warn other single parents and Aldi have since contacted the security guards to tell them to allow parents to shop with their children. She wrote: 'Just a word of warning for single-mum Aldi shoppers with more than one child. 'After queuing for half-an-hour with my seven-year-old twin boys at Aldi, in Fenton, we finally got to the doors when a security guard told me we weren't allowed in as it's only one adult with one child entry. 'I told him that I am a single parent and there was no-one at home to watch the kids. 'Luckily a lady behind me suggested that I went in with one twin while the other waited outside with his own trolley. 'This caused one of my twins to get upset. He only waited about five minutes while me and my other twin boy were inside and we could see him. 'The supermarket cashiers were alarmed because we shop in there regularly. I reported it to the manager.' Security guards at the Fenton supermarket (above) have been reminded of Aldi's policy to allow parents to shop with their children if they are unable to reduce the number of family members with them Aldi said: 'To help with social distancing, we are encouraging all customers to try to reduce the number of family members they bring with them into our stores. 'However, where necessary, parents can of course shop with their children and we will remind the security guards at our Fenton store of our policy. 'We have spoken to Ms Astley to apologise for any upset caused.' Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) The government is confident it will eventually meet its COVID-19 testing target as more and more laboratories are accredited by the Health Department. Fifteen subnational laboratories can now conduct COVID-19 tests nationwide. The new additions are mostly located in Metro Manila namely: St. Luke's Medical Center Global/Quezon City, The Medical City Pasig, Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, Makati Medical City, and V. Luna Hospital. "Because of these developments, the DOH says we are now in a better position to reach our target of 3,000 tests per day. Then eventually 8,000 to 10,000 tests per day," Inter-Agency Task Force spokesperson Karlo Nograles said on Monday. The Cabinet Secretary added 28 institutions are undergoing DOH laboratory certification process, while 37 others have expressed intention to be certified. The national government's initial target is to be able to increase capacity to 2,600 to 7,000 tests per day after the Holy Week. By April 20, the goal is to conduct 4,400 to 9,800 tests daily. The government hopes to be able to do 13,000 to 20,000 COVID-19 tests per day by April 27. Related: PH eyes raising COVID-19 testing capacity to 20,000 tests daily Nograles said that with the gradual increase in testing capacity, the number of patients that need medical assistance will also rise. He said that the focus has also shifted to ensuring there are adequate quarantine facilities and beds to house suspected, potential, and confirmed cases of COVID-19. He said there are now 2,673 operational quarantine facilities, with a total of 165,756 beds, nationwide. Nograles also clarified the earlier pronouncement of COVID-19 response chief implementer Carlito Galvez that mass testing will begin on April 14. He said the government will prioritize testing hospitalized patients with symptoms, high-risk patients, healthcare workers, then other people with flu-like symptoms. "Hindi magma-mass testing ng walang simtomas. Kapag nalaman na ikaw ay probable due to close contact, then you become eligible. I-isolate ka na namin," he said. [Translation: There will be no mass testing for those without symptoms. If you become a probable case because of a close contact to a positive case, then you become eligible for testing. We will then isolate you.] The Philippines has recorded 4,648 confirmed cases, 297 deaths, and 197 recoveries. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Leila Macor (Agence France-Presse) Miami, United States Mon, April 13, 2020 14:03 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18aa35 2 News coronavirus,COVID-19,COVID-19-lockdown,COVID-19-travel-ban,COVID-19-quarantine,travelers,globetrotter Free They have been traveling the world for four years on an ambitious trek that has taken them to 50 countries on five continents. But the coronavirus pandemic has stopped the couple in their tracks. And now they have been stuck in Florida for two weeks, living in their car in a shopping center parking lot north of Miami, their visas about to expire. "We had a dream," said Aldo Giaquinto, a 38-year-old Italian, "and our dream was to drive around the world with a car." For four years they were able to live that dream. But then came the pandemic. The travel restrictions imposed by country after country were like doors slamming around the world. And now, Giaquinto added, "We're stuck here in Florida." He and his wife Vera Kozlovskaia, a 35-year-old Moldovan, quit their jobs in 2016 to set off on their far-flung travels in a black Toyota Land Cruiser Prado nicknamed "Toto" -- short for Toyota, but also a tribute to the late Italian comic actor. She worked in information technology in England, where they lived; he had a fish and chips restaurant. Swimming with the manatees Their ambitious voyage began with a trip through the Nordic countries. From there they made the long crossing through Russia and China and then down to Southeast Asia before touring through Australia. From there they sent Toto by ship to Uruguay. The couple spent 2018 driving slowly up through South America to Panama, before heading north through Central America, and then for the past year driving through Canada and the United States. All was going well. They went swimming with Florida's huge but gentle manatees. They were among the last tourists to visit the Florida Keys, the colorful island chain that extends down near Cuba. Then came the coronavirus. Stranded but 'lucky' And now, said Giaquinto, "we are stranded here in Florida." Still, he added, "our life has not changed. Somehow we're lucky" and have stayed healthy. With their tourist visas set to expire on Tuesday, however, the couple is growing increasingly nervous. They have applied for an extension but so far heard nothing back. So for now, their Toyota remains parked in front of a Walmart store in Hallandale, 30 kilometers north of Miami. The car has become the couple's home. They sleep and wash up in it. The "kitchen" is a stove in the trunk. Internet connection comes free from nearby stores. 'Good people' The couple normally relies on public facilities, like restrooms on public beaches, but "right now everything is closed," Kozlovskaia said. That, fortunately, does not include the nearby Walmart store. "It is a little difficult, but we try to keep positive, hoping for the best," she said. "We remember there's people in much worse situations, we are grateful with everything we have." Despite the setbacks, they have kept up their spirits and especially appreciate the support of locals who drop by to chat or offer food. "We are overwhelmed by the amount of people trying to help," Kozlovskaia said. "It's amazing how many good people are around." The couple's Instagram account, @alvetoexpedition, tells of better times: visits to California's spectacular Lake Tahoe; to the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flats, in Bolivia; to the breathtaking Cerro de los Siete Colores (Hill of Seven Colors) in the Argentine Andes; to the mosques of Brunei, Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple and the Red Square in Moscow... The plan was to send the Toyota by ship to South Africa while they fly to Johannesburg. At the end of the African leg of their trip, the couple looked forward to settling in Italy, where they have an apartment under construction. And with so many new experiences under their belts, the couple has drawn up a long list of projects they hope to undertake back in Italy to help the environment. But for now, everything has come to a halt. They hope to get their visas extended and then wait out the virus in Florida until the crisis passes and they're able to travel to Africa. "We will wait," Aldo said. "Like everybody is doing." The coronavirus has an irrefutable impact on businesses and the workforce across the country, challenging employers in the legal sphere. Dr. Oliver Masmann, general director of Duane Morris Vietnam LLC, outlines the current rights of employees during this unique and dynamically shifting situation. Dr. Oliver Masmann, general director of Duane Morris Vietnam LLC With a focus on remuneration payments to employees during this pandemic season, the following advice is provided based on current laws and, where relevant and available, government ad-hoc policy and guidance. As ever, employers are of course free to implement policies that are more favourable than the statutory minimum. Also, this is an area subject to change, potentially very suddenly. Once an employee is showing symptoms of illness or is feeling unwell and then stays at home, there are various options which should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Sick leave in Vietnam If an employee is sick and obtains a valid medical certificate evidencing the same, the employer can file this medical certificate with social insurance (SI) and that will pay sick leave entitlements to the employee. Such entitlement is equal to the lower of 75 per cent of the employees regular salary or 75 per cent of the SI cap. The SI will pay up to 30 days a year for those who have contributed to the SI fund for less than 15 years; 40 days per year for those who have contributed to the SI fund for more than 15 and less than 30 years; and 60 days annually for those who have contributed to the SI fund for more than 30 years. In short, assuming the employer has contributed in full as required to the SI scheme, then such employer is not required by law to pay salaries for employees on sick leave. Some employers voluntarily offer extra fully-paid sick leave to employees and, if such an arrangement is in place at your company, employees would be entitled to use up any additional paid sick leave entitlement before filing statutory SI claims. Strictly speaking, the SI regime will only provide salary cover for employees with certified sickness. Thus, an employee who is isolated to be assessed as to whether they are sick or not would not be covered by the SI regime as it stands now. In such circumstances, it would be recommended that the employer seeks to reach an agreement with the employee to pause work on a reduced salary. Under all circumstances, an affected employee would be entitled to apply to take their accrued paid annual leave entitlement first. Childcare salaries Regarding people who have to work from home with children while schools are closed, this reason for being home is not considered as sick leave or leave to take care of a sick child under the age of seven, both of which are permitted reasons for absence from work covered under Vietnams SI regime. In addition, as addressed above, unproven sickness would also fall under this category. Strictly speaking, unless the employee is able to work from home due to his/her job description and the employer was to agree with that, absence from work for this reason is considered either absence without permission or leave pursuant and subject to the employers specific leave regime. As such, the options for salary payments would be the below, in order of priority: Option 1: The employee applies for paid annual leave until they use up their accrued annual leave entitlement. Option 2: The employee formally pauses work as a direct result of the pandemic and following negotiation and agreement with their employer on reduction of contractual salary during such period (Article 98.3 of the Labour Code 2012). Option 3: The employee and their employer discuss and reach an agreement on unpaid leave (Article 116.3 of the Labour Code 2012). Agreement on this in principle, and length of any unpaid leave, is essentially at the discretion of the parties to agree. Workers would be advised to research their rights as companies strategise their next moves, Photo: Le Toan Employment arrangements Pursuant to Official Letter No.1064 issued by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs on March 25, employers are recommended to follow the lawful options below to arrange their employment. Option 1: Temporary transfer. If the employer faces difficulties regarding the material supply and market, causing redundancy, the employer may temporarily transfer the employee to other work rather than the contractual agreement, according to Article 31 of the Labour Code. The salary should remain the same for the first 30 days of temporary transfer; after that, the salary for the new position can be 85 per cent of the contractual salary. We further note that if the transfer is longer than 60 days per year, the employees consent would be required. Option 2: Work pause. By this approach, the employer can maintain employment relationships but negotiate reduced salaries with affected employees (such amount not to be lower than the applicable regional minimum wage) for a specific period, pursuant to Article 98.3 of the Labour Code 2012. Option 3: Temporary delay of labour contract implementation. If the work pause period under Option 2 lasts too long, which may affect the employers capability on salary payment, the employer and employee may agree to temporarily delay the implementation of the labour contract, according to Article 32 of the Labour Code. As far as our understanding, this is one kind of unpaid leave scheme where the employment is still maintained but the employee does neither work nor get paid. Option 4: Employment termination. If an enterprise must scale down its production, causing employment redundancy, the employer may conduct the labour arrangement according to Article 38 of the Labour Code (unilaterally termination by employer) or Article 44 (redundancy retrenchment due to economic reasons). Negotiating reduced salary At present, there is no real difference in practice between a temporary closure made at the decision of the employer as a result of a pandemic and one ordered by a competent authority. In both cases, the initial starting point is that it would need to continue to pay contractually agreed amounts. However, as noted below, the employer should consider discussing with employees about receiving a reduced salary, not to be lower than the applicable regional minimum wage (with no work duties to be performed). If the alternative is the (lawful) right to unilaterally terminate employment or redundancy retrenchment under Option 4 above, this may be an attractive option for affected employees. In other words, employees may be motivated to agree on the reduction because, if they do not, the employer would have legal grounds to unilaterally terminate employment or implement the labour usage plan on redundancy as a result of the pandemic. Ad-hoc directives The bottom line is that, despite the current laws, there might be a strong possibility that further ad-hoc regulation or policy may be issued by the government that will affect the current status quo in law. Right to disclose employees COVID-19 status to other colleagues Strictly speaking, this information is deemed by law to be confidential medical information of the employee, meaning that an employer is NOT permitted to disclose the fact of an employees sickness to others in the absence of the relevant employees express consent. An employer could disclose generally that an employee has tested positive for COVID-19 without identifying the specific individual affected. On the other hand, taking into account the wider public health imperative and the positive obligation of all infected individuals to isolate and identify individual contacts for checks, plus the positive obligation on employers to disclose the positive case (noting that failure to disclose the positive case of disease is strictly prohibited under Article 8.3 of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases) it can reasonably be concluded that, even without express consent, employers must provide other employees and the authorities with identifying information of affected employees that they have knowledge of in order to meet wider obligations. In other words, this is one area where it seems likely that wider public health concerns and obligations trump individual personal privacy regulations. Having said that, employers are advised to proceed in a way so as to limit, to the extent possible, the scope of privacy breaches. Right to require employees to work from home Theoretically speaking, any change to an employees workplace as recorded in their labour contract must comply with the terms of the relevant contract or be subject to express prior consent of the employee concerned. Despite this, in the current situation, we are of the view that employers are able to require employees to work from home regardless of the foregoing, should the employer determine that such change of location is necessary to protect health and/or to comply with orders or requests of competent authorities. In doing so, the employer would be entitled to expect the employee to continue to discharge regular duties and working hours. Reality does, however, dictate that this may be difficult in practice for the employer to control and/or the employee to achieve. The employee would have a reasonable expectation of being provided necessary means to discharge duties (such as a computer). It remains arguable what rights employees may have to insist on working from home where the employer reasonably considers it unnecessary for public health purposes and in the absence of any positive requirement from authorities to order work-from-home arrangements where possible. Right to screen employee and visitor temperatures The Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases 2007 generally recognises enterprises rights to prepare and implement plans to prevent and control infectious diseases on a case-to-case basis. In our view, this would provide a basis for employers to insist on temperature screening for employees and visitors entering the workplace. In fact, this is widely accepted practice by most, if not all, state authorities and state-owned enterprises in Vietnam and many private businesses as well. It would, however, always be preferable to have an actual written policy that outlines the reason by reference to the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases and procedures to implement including how to act in the case of temperatures considered to be high. Right to report on employees abnormal symptoms In principle, an employee is obliged to comply with their employers internal policies on labour safety and hygiene at the workplace. Specifically, one of these obligations is to report any potential risk where a dangerous and hazardous factor might appear at the workplace (Article 18 of the Law on Labour Safety and Hygiene 2015). Concurrently, employers are entitled to be aware of all health-related risks at the workplace and have a responsibility to keep employees and relevant authorities updated on the same (Article 23.4 of the Law on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases 2007). Therefore, it is allowable for employers to report to competent authorities and/or to update its internal management personnel in case an employee has abnormal symptoms, including without limitation to the employees temperature. VIR Dr. Oliver Masmann Floundering service sector threatens mass unemployment With restaurant and cafe chains struggling amid COVID-19, thousands of employees in the service sector could lose their jobs. More than 4,300 people were arrested over the weekend in Morocco for breaching emergency rules in place to combat the novel coronavirus, according to official figures. More than half of those detained were taken into police custody. Since mid-March, authorities have arrested 28,701 people across the North African country, 15,545 of whom have been referred to court after being held in custody, according to the country's national security force DGSN. Penalties for violating measures in place to curb the spread of the COVID-19 disease include up to three months in jail and fines of up to 1,300 dirhams ($130), or both. Morocco imposed a public health state of emergency on March 19, confining everyone to their homes except those with a permit to be out for work. Last week, authorities made wearing face masks in public obligatory. Police and security agents supported by soldiers in armoured cars have been deployed around the country, erecting road barriers and control points to enforce the measures. Morocco has recorded 1,746 COVID-19 cases, with 120 deaths and 196 recoveries. Fewer than 7,000 tests have been carried out. The largest number of arrests were made in the country's economic centre of Casablanca and the capital Rabat, according to the DGSN. Isolation measures have proved most challenging in densely populated, working-class neighbourhoods, according to local media reports. Economic paralysis brought on by the pandemic has left millions of Moroccans in a precarious existence, with the bulk of the workforce made up of informal workers dependent on odd jobs and lacking access to social safety nets. In the absence of a social database, authorities are working to identify needy families to distribute direct financial aid and food baskets. Search Keywords: Short link: The government on Monday notified Mauritius as an "eligible country", enabling its investment entities to register as Category-I foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) with lower KYC requirements. Category-I FPIs include government and government-related investors such as central banks, sovereign wealth funds, international or multilateral organizations or agencies, including entities controlled or at least 75 per cent directly or indirectly owned by such government and government related investor, pension and university funds. "The Central government hereby specifies Mauritius as an eligible country for the purposes of Regulation 5 (a)(iv) of the SEBI (Foreign Portfolio Investors) Regulation 2019," an order issued by the Finance Ministry said. Under the regulation, even the unregulated funds whose investment manager is appropriately regulated and registered as a category-I FPIs provided that the investment manager undertakes the responsibility of all the acts of commission or omission of such unregulated fund. It also specified that the category-I FPIs shall include entities from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) member countries or from any Country specified by the Central government by an order or by way of an agreement or treaty with other sovereign governments, which are appropriately regulated funds. Commenting on the order of the ministry, Amit Maheshwari, Partner AKM Global said due to the recent budget announcement, the exemption from indirect transfers was provided to FPI Category - 1 investors. Mauritius not being a Financial Action Task Force member country was not eligible to come under the FPI category-1. Through this order from the ministry, he said, funds from Mauritius have been allowed to be registered as Category-1 and hence would get the benefit from indirect transfer provisions under the Income-tax Act, 1961. Considering the size of investment in Indian capital market by overseas entities from Mauritius, this is a welcome move and goes in line with protection of the FPIs from such adversaries, Taxmann DGM Rachit Sharma said. Khaitan & Co Partner Atul Pandey said, Mauritius-based funds can now apply for Category-I licence, thereby having lower KYC requirements. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 12:41:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JAKARTA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The ASEAN Plus Three (APT) cooperation mechanism has been running in high gear since the outbreak of COVID-19, and the collective response fully demonstrates "our close neighborliness and friendship," Chinese Ambassador to ASEAN Deng Xijun said. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) plus China, Japan, South Korea (ASEAN Plus Three countries or 10+3) cooperation mechanism incorporates the 10+3 as well as the 10+1 framework. The latter stands for ASEAN's respective cooperation mechanism with China, Japan and South Korea. In a written interview with Xinhua recently, Deng said East Asian countries responded immediately by offering each other assistance and working together in the collective fight since the outbreak of COVID-19. "Our efforts have proved to be highly effective in protecting people's health and lives, maintaining normal exchanges and minimizing the impact of the disease on economy and society," he said. Ambassador Deng further said that APT health authorities have maintained close communication through the APT health development framework to find ways of strengthening cooperation in public health emergencies. According to the ambassador, the APT cooperation mechanism was set up in response to the Asian financial crisis in late 1990s and then emerged even stronger from the international financial crisis in 2008. Through mutual help under this mechanism, APT countries also stood strong against SARS, the highly pathogenic avian influenza and the Indian Ocean tsunami, he said. As an important member of APT mechanism and a major country of the region, Deng said China has been a strong advocate and productive participant of APT's collective response to the COVID-19 outbreak via medical supplies, policy coordination, information sharing and medical personnel support. With regard to the upcoming special ASEAN Plus Three Summit on COVID-19 via video conference, Deng said it will be the first leaders' meeting that covers the East Asia region in response to COVID-19 and also the first special meeting so far among APT leaders since the mechanism was born. Deng said the summit will particularly boost APT cooperation in public health and significantly enhance emergency response to major disasters in regional countries, thus further cementing the foundation of an East Asian community. Deng said that he believes that the regional impact of the pandemic is also high on the agenda and leaders will talk about how to better coordinate macroeconomic policies and stabilize regional supply chains. "Their positive message will strongly boost market expectations, invigorate the steady growth of regional economy and sustain the vigor and vitality of East Asia," he added. Deng noted that COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging globally, the world economy is facing serious downward pressure and the global challenges caused by the pandemic demand coordinated and collective response. "China stands ready to continue to strengthen communication and cooperation with all parties in East Asia, and provide assistance to neighboring countries on pandemic prevention and control," the ambassador said. China is also committed to promoting the synergy between the Belt and Road initiative and relevant regional development initiatives, he said, adding, "Through these joint efforts, we will inject new impetus into the global fight against the pandemic and post COVID-19 economic recovery." The ambassador also said that China will keep a close contact with other countries on the pandemic containment and trade-related measures, fully implement the China-ASEAN free trade agreement and its upgrading protocol, actively work with other parties towards the signing of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) this year and expand regional cooperation in emerging areas such as the digital economy. Outbreak of COVID -19 is causing significant economic turmoil across economies around the world. Across the globe, shops are closed; brands and retailers have an oversupply situation with whatever orders they have placed. They are with fear that they may not be able to sell it, so they are cancelling orders or delaying shipments of orders. There has been a sharp drop in domestic and external demand, reduction in trade, disruption in production, fall in consumer confidence, tightening of financial conditions, etc. Ronak Rughani, Chairman, the Synthetic and Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) representing the manmade fibre textile fraternity congratulate and thanked the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking swift and front-footed actions to fight against the COVID-19 epidemic. The MMF textile segment is one of the worst-hit in this epidemic. There have been huge losses incurred and a shortage of funds due to the cancellation and deferred orders and that put the industry under ventilators. Ronak Rughani informed that the Synthetic and Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) has been taking up the issues and difficulties being faced by the exporters of the manmade fibre textiles segment at various platforms. Some of the measures requested by the SRTEPC to the government are as given below: Immediate Measures: Announce a special Corona-Relief package for the textile industry including the entire value chain of the MMF textile segment to tide over the prevailing coronavirus crisis as detailed below. Special Export incentive of three per cent on fibre and yarn, four per cent on fabric, and five per cent on made-ups for at least six months or till the impact of coronavirus subsides and global markets stabilise. A separate package for the MMF textiles segment as this segment has been reeling under Inverted Duty Structure under GST. Include entire MMF textile value chain viz., fibres, yarns, fabrics, made-ups, etc. under RoSCTL and MEIS benefits. The entire MMF textile value chain is needed to be covered under the RoDTEP Scheme also. Extend one-year moratorium with immediate effect till March 31, 2021, for repayment of principal and interest amounts to the banks and NBFCs. Allow the textile industry to resume functioning of the units at least 50 per cent of the essential working staff. Include documentation/ paperwork, Certificate of Origin, Testing Reports, etc. also in the "Essential Services" category and issue e-passes to the employees, CHA, officials of EPCs, Testing Agencies/organisations, etc. who are associated with paper-work and documentation such as Testing reports, Certificate of Origin, etc. that are essential for export shipments. Compensate the full expenses incurred by the exporters due to cancellation and deferred export orders. Extend support to the industry for payment of salaries and wages to the workers during the lock-down period similar to that of the supports provided by the Government of Bangladesh to its textile units. Bangladesh Government is transferring 3 months salaries directly to the employees or workers through their commercial banks and the said amount is to be repaid @ 2 per cent interest in 18 instalments within a period of two years by the employers to the commercial banks. Extension of due date of LCs by rollover or providing fund based credit for March and April 2020. In views of this extreme uncertain and unstable payment situation, it is requested that the Ministry of Finance should help and intervene through RBI in hedging the export payment for a period of at least 180 days. Special arrangements to be made for couriering necessary export documents both international and National like LC, Agreements, etc. to the importers bank, to the companies, authorized banks on a case -by- case basis. At the Customs RMS parameters may be tweaked appropriately to reduce the number of containers getting opened for a physical examination which in turn will reduce the requirement of too many CHA, CFS and customs staff, who are otherwise required. In view of force Majeure situation, CBIC/JNPT/Mundra customs should authorise shipping lines to allow loading of export containers basis verification of LEO against specific shipping bill in the ICEGATE after CHA gives in writing through e-mail, confirming the shipping bill number, date and LEO status without insisting on shipping bill print with LEO. In Nhava Sheva port, Customs may also allow container RFID seal verification directly at each terminal gate and allow customs LEO at each terminal gate itself. This will reduce the requirement of the number of CHA staff to carry out urgent customs clearance at three different designated parking plazas for GTI, NSICT (DP world), JNPT port terminal. This system of direct terminal gate-in was in operation about two years ago prior to the introduction of a parking plaza system which was done to eliminate the massive congestion in the terminal gates. This will be a major trade facilitation measure. The period of export payment realization should be increased from 270 days to 365 days and in case of delay in payments beyond the due date, no penal rate of interests should be charged by the banks. Reduce the freight charges to the pre-coronavirus level and ensure the availability of containers for export shipments. Extend ECGC support to address the cancelled and deferred orders. Remove the list of Risky exporters. Release all pending dues under Drawback, MEIS, GST, ROSL, RoSCTL, TUFS on an urgent basis or extend soft loan equivalent to Government dues pending in the books of individual textile units that could be adjusted soon as the Government clears the dues. Waive the interest charges for a period of six months on all loans. Textile industry being a continuous process and predominantly export-oriented industry, advise the State Governments to permit the units run with prescribed pre-conditions. Allow options to all companies to restructure loans for one year without any additional charges by Banks for provisioning etc. RBI to relax NPA norms for 6 months so that no default will be eligible for being termed as an NPA account. Defer payment of ESI contributions to tide over the crisis, since the government is prepared to pay 3 months PF contributions. Longer Term Measures: Enhance working capital limit and advances for exports on a case to case basis without any collateral. Provide 30 per cent additional working capital at 7.25 per cent interest for both exports and domestic production without any collateral and margin money to meet the working capital needs, pay salaries and wages to the employees and meet the standing charges. Enhance Interest Equalization Scheme (IES) benefit for exports of entire MMF textile value chain viz., fibres, yarns, fabrics, made-ups, etc. to 5 per cent and extend 3 per cent interest subvention for working capital. Ronak Rughani, Chairman, SRTEPC informed that the MMF textiles segment has already been going through Inverted Duty Structure due to which huge amount of ITC has been accumulated which are neither refunded nor utilisable. Therefore, Rughani categorically mentioned that a separate package for MMF textiles segment. Further, giving emphasis on the introduction of Special Incentives by the Government Ronak Rughani, mentioned that unemployment is a serious concern in the Textile industry including the Manmade fibre textile segment for which the above-mentioned policy initiatives are extremely important for resuming production bringing stability to the Manmade fibre textile segment after the havoc created by the COVID-19 epidemic. Ronak Rughani also informed that the Rs 1.70 lakh crore relief package under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana announced by the Ministry of Finance will be of substantial help for the poor to fight the battle against COVID-19. Ronak Rughani further stated that in this nation-wide fighting, as a gesture of collective solidarity, the Manmade fibre textile fraternity and its groups contributed around Rs 1016 crores towards the PM CARES Fund and the CMs of various states besides providing hospital facilities, food, PPE, etc. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Badges for lawmakers of the 21st National Assembly are on display at the parliament building in Seoul, Monday, two days ahead of the general election that will make up the 300-seat Assembly. / Yonhap By Kang Seung-woo A liberal-minded political commentator's remarks predicting that the "pan-ruling bloc" could win 180 seats in the 300-strong National Assembly is emerging as a last-minute variable ahead of Wednesday's general election. The opposition is using it to rally conservative voters by calling it "extreme arrogance," while the ruling party is trying to minimize any fallout from the remarks that they believe gave ammunition to its rivals to attack its campaign that has been faring well. Rhyu Si-min, a former liberal politician and head of a foundation that memorializes former President Roh Moo-hyun, said in a social media broadcast, Friday, that it would not be unfeasible for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and other liberal parties to win 180 seats in the Assembly. The main opposition United Future Party (UFP) did not miss the opportunity to take advantage of this controversial remark, urging voters to punish the ruling side's "haughtiness" in the election. "The Moon Jae-in administration's arrogance has reached its limit," UFP Chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn said during a campaign rally in Seoul, Sunday. "Such an act is far from an attitude of serving the people." Park Hyeong-jun, co-head of the UFP's election committee, implored voters, Monday, to support his party in the election to stop the ruling party from operating the Assembly unilaterally. He stressed that the Constitutional Court, local governments and education offices have been filled with pro-government figures since the inauguration of the Moon administration in 2017, adding, "If the ruling bloc secures enough seats to independently amend the Constitution, the nation's democracy will face a critical situation." According to the Constitution, the minimum number of seats required to block any attempt to adopt a constitutional amendment is 100. A local media outlet reported earlier in the day that the UFP's think tank carried out its own poll over the weekend to find that the combined number of seats won by the UFP and its satellite party Future Korea Party would fall short of this. Despite such a forecast of victory, the DPK remains alert over any possible backlash as hasty confidence, as exhibited by Rhyu's remark, could unite conservatives and even lose it support from centrist voters. So the DPK leadership is calling for a "humble attitude" among party members, urging them to go all-out until the end of the campaign. "Based on our own analysis, our candidates are still engaged in hard-fought races in 70 out of 121 constituencies in Seoul and its surrounding area," DPK Chairman Rep. Lee Hae-chan said during a party meeting in Seoul, Monday. "Those who desperately appeal to voters down to the wire will be winners." Lee Nak-yon, a former prime minister and co-chair of the DPK's election committee, also called on the party to remain humble en route to election day. "As no one knows how the situation will unfold, I ask party members and supporters to stay vigilant and appeal to voters until the election is over," he said in a radio interview. Lee, running for a seat representing Seoul's crucial Jongno District, also said that those outside the DPK hastily predicting the election result should remain cautious. Meanwhile, surveys show President Moon's approval rating has been increasing, hitting 54.4 percent in the most recent poll, up from 47.2 percent in the second week of March a good omen for his administration and the ruling party with three days to go before the elections. According to the survey by Realmeter, the figure was a 17-month high, up by 0.7 percentage points from the previous week's 53.7 percent. The ratio of those critical of his leadership dropped by 0.9 percentage points to 42.3 percent during the same period. "The government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have contributed to Moon's approval rate rising," a Realmeter official said. POTTSTOWN A Pottstown man is accused of using an electrical cord to strangle and kill his wife as she sat in a recliner in the living room after the couple had an argument inside their borough residence. Michael Darrell Hatfield, 69, of the 300 block of North Hanover Street, was arraigned before District Court Judge John D. Kessler of Abington on charges of first- and third-degree murder and possessing an instrument of crime in connection with the April 8 death of his wife, Mary, 71, inside the apartment they shared. Hatfield is being held in the county jail without bail to await a preliminary hearing on the charges at a later date before District Court Judge Scott Palladino of Pottstown. This tragic death of Mary Hatfield at the hands of her husband by strangulation is a horrible case of the worst end result of domestic violence, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said on Monday. People living in domestic violence need to know there is help available, even in these unprecedented times. Steele said victims of domestic abuse can reach out to Laurel House, a nonprofit organization that provides crisis intervention, a safe haven, supportive programs and resources for victims of domestic abuse, or the Womens Center of Montgomery County. They can help, Steele said. Laurel House provides a confidential, 24-hour hotline at 1-800-642-3150. The Womens Center of Montgomery County, a volunteer organization that provides support to victims of domestic abuse, also provides a 24-hour domestic violence hotline at 1-800-773-2424. Pottstown police, according to a criminal complaint, responded to an apartment in the 300 block of North Hanover Street about 11:03 a.m. on April 10 after Hatfield allegedly placed a 911 call and told a dispatcher that he had an argument with his wife on Wednesday and that he hurt his wife, according to a criminal complaint filed by Pottstown Detective Anthony N. Fischer and county Detective Todd Richard. When asked what type of injury his wife sustained, Hatfield replied, strangulation,' Fischer and Richard alleged in the arrest affidavit. Hatfield allegedly told arriving officers, I strangled her. Officers found the victim lying face down on the living room floor with signs of decomposition, according to the criminal complaint. During a subsequent interview by detectives, Hatfield allegedly stated he had an argument with his wife on Wednesday evening, April 8. Hatfield said he then removed an orange colored electrical extension cord from closet and walked behind Mary Hatfield as she sat in her recliner, Fischer and Richard alleged. Hatfield told detectives he wrapped the cord around her neck, pulled it with both his hands until Mary Hatfield stopped moving. During a search of the residence, detectives recovered an orange extension cord, a bloody towel and bedsheet in a trash can in the apartment, according to the arrest affidavit. Detectives also observed blood smears on the right arm rest of a recliner inside the living room. An autopsy determined the cause of death for Mary Hatfield was strangulation and the manner of death was ruled homicide. A conviction of first-degree murder, which is an intentional killing, can carry penalties of life imprisonment or a death sentence. A conviction of third-degree murder, which is a killing committed with malice, carries a possible maximum sentence of 20 to 40 years in prison. Prison Fellowship to reach more prisoners than ever before with online Easter service Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Notable inmate ministry Prison Fellowship will be showing their annual Easter Hope event online in at least 20 states, making it available to more inmates than ever before. Every year since the early days of Prison Fellowship, the late Chuck Colson, the organization's founder, held an Easter celebration event at prisons in one of the 50 states. But due to coronavirus concerns and state lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus, Prison Fellowship had to cancel their in-person Easter Hope event, scheduled to take place in Georgia. In response to the shutdown, the ministry produced an Easter celebration video featuring music, personal testimonies, and an altar call that will air in prisons across the nation. James Ackerman, president of Prison Fellowship, told The Christian Post that unlike past years, when they focused on one state, Easter 2020 will have a broader reach in states ranging from California to Georgia. It is amazing to me that the doors the Lord is opening for Prison Fellowship at a time when the gates of the prisons are closed, said Ackerman. We want people to see that everyone has value in Gods eyes and even if you find yourself in a place like prison, even today, this weekend, Easter Sunday can be a point of new beginning for you when you step into a new beginning and step into the purpose and plan that God has always had for your life. Ackerman also told CP that his ministry is open to continuing to do online Easter Hope events each year, in conjunction with an expected return to in-person events focused on a given state. The means through which this was being handled was a video portal platform that Prison Fellowship launched earlier this month called Floodlight. It provides all kinds of inspirational videos about people who have been transformed through Jesus and stepped into healthy new beginnings and are living successfully outside of prison now. It has content to celebrate recovery, he continued. Floodlight is a really, really innovative approach that, again, the Lord has opened a door for us to be able to take content, teaching content, ministry content, inspirational content, and provide it to men and women in prison. Ackerman gave the example of California, which is one of the states that has signed up for the recently launched Floodlight platform. In California, all but four of Californias prisons have an internal television network. California is now able to distribute all of this content through their internal network to almost all of their prisons, explained Ackerman. And that happened only this last week. Due to efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, large numbers of churches have had to cancel in-person worship services and offer online alternatives. According to a study by the Barna Group, 58 percent of surveyed pastors said they plan to hold a digital service for Easter, either via livestream or a prerecorded message sent out to congregants. The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has slowed in some of the worst-hit countries, with Spain readying Monday to reopen parts of its economy as governments grapple with a once-in-a-century recession. Italy, France and the US have all reported a drop in COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours -- with Italy, the European nation most afflicted by the disease, reporting its lowest toll in more than three weeks. A patient who recovered from Covid-19 kisses the ground and another rejoices with medical staff as they leave a hospital in the city of Sale, north of the Moroccan capital Rabat. By FADEL SENNA (AFP) It came as Pope Francis delivered an unprecedented livestream message to a world under lockdown on Easter Sunday and Britain's Boris Johnson left hospital, thanking medics for saving his life. More than half of the planet's population is staying home as part of efforts to stem the spread of the virus, which emerged in China late last year and has now killed at least 112,500 people, overwhelming healthcare systems and crippling the world economy. A members of the Slovak military test Roma people for the new coronavirus in the eastern Slovakian village of Janovce. By JOE KLAMAR (AFP) Spain's death toll has fallen over recent days, but as a small bump in deaths was reported on Sunday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned that the locked-down country was "far from victory". "We are all keen to go back out on the streets... but our desire is even greater to win the war and prevent a relapse," he said, as some companies were set to resume operations at the end of a two-weeks halt of all non-essential activity. New graves at the Jardines de la Esperanza cemetery in Guayaquil, Ecuador. By Jose SAnchez (AFP) In the US -- the world's worst-hit nation with a fifth of all deaths and more than half a million confirmed cases -- the government's top infectious disease expert added to cautious optimism that the pandemic may have reached its peak. Anthony Fauci said parts of the country could begin easing restrictions in May, but warned that the world's biggest economy would not turn back on like a "light switch". Police and paramedics gather in downtown San Diego, California to show support for the frontline workers fighting the coronavirus. By ARIANA DREHSLER (AFP) "We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on?" Fauci told CNN. 'Easter of solitude' President Donald Trump had previously wanted the US to be back to normal by Easter. But most of the country remained at a standstill and churches took celebrations online. A man wearing a face mask walks along Omoide Yokocho in Tokyo. By Philip FONG (AFP) Many of the world's more than two billion Christians celebrated Easter from the confines of their homes while from a hauntingly empty Vatican, Pope Francis delivered a livestream message. "For many, this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties," he said. Municipal workers clean and disinfect walkways in a yard in Moscow, during the strict lockdown in Russia. By Natalia KOLESNIKOVA (AFP) One priest in Rio de Janeiro blessed the Brazilian city from a helicopter, while another in Portugal addressed the faithful from the open top of a moving convertible car. In the UK, which has logged more than 10,000 deaths, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday he had been discharged after "a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question", referring to the country's state-run National Health Service. A runner passes posters critical of comments made about migrants in Manchester, north-west England. By Oli SCARFF (AFP) Britain is now seeing daily death tolls to match those previously seen in Italy and Spain, after recording nearly 1,000 fatalities on Friday and Saturday. There were 737 new deaths reported Sunday. Johnson, like Trump, had initially resisted stringent measures such as shutting down public places. Spain ends 'economic hibernation' Some factory and construction workers in Spain were set to return to work on Monday, with police to hand out face masks at metro and train stations. A woman wearing a face mask walks past a sign depicting a virus in Minsk. By Sergei GAPON (AFP) The fortnight of "economic hibernation" is about to be lifted, drawing criticism from some regional leaders and unions, but the rest of the lockdown restrictions in the nation of around 47 million people will remain in place. Meanwhile there were also worrying signs the virus could be taking hold in new, and vulnerable, parts of the world. A barber wearing a facemask attends to a customer in Kolkata during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown. By Dibyangshu SARKAR (AFP) Conflict-wracked Yemen reported its first case last week, raising fears of a devastating outbreak in the war-torn country. In Mumbai's crowded Dharavi slum -- one of Asia's biggest and the inspiration for the 2008 Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" -- more than 43 cases have been confirmed. And while sub-Saharan Africa has not been as badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic as some other parts of the world, the economy is being pummelled. Governments are under pressure to keep populations safe while preventing economic collapse, amid warnings of a downturn not seen since the Great Depression. But the World Health Organization has warned countries against lifting lockdown restrictions too early. burs-kaf/hg Albuquerque-based data analytics firm RS21 is helping local communities nationwide to rapidly identify their most-vulnerable populations as the coronavirus spreads across the country. The company built interactive online maps in March to provide public officials, healthcare professionals and others in targeted cities with instant access to detailed information about local neighborhoods to help them make critical decisions on how to best allocate scarce resources and assistance during the pandemic. The project started as a local initiative with initial maps for Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, but it quickly blossomed into a national service that now offers detailed maps for 500 cities around the U.S. The nationwide network went live on April 3, said RS21 President and CEO Charles Rath. Were getting feedback from all over the country, Rath said. The demand is overwhelming. Thats why we rolled the maps out to all cities in the U.S. Users can tap on any city sector within the maps to pull-up community-specific information. That includes the local areas number of residents over 65, the zones distance from the nearest medical facility, percentage of population lacking health insurance, and incidence of chronic diseases ranging from cancer, asthma, diabetes and heart disease to stroke, kidney disease, obesity and high blood pressure. Based on that data and more, the map produces an urban health vulnerability index for each city sector to show which areas are most at-risk. As the coronavirus spreads, the need for smart resource allocation will grow, Rath said. Decision makers need to know geographically where the populations most affected are to design creative ways to get needed resources to them. The information on the maps, which are freely accessible to the public, is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Census Bureau. Were seeing thousands of visitors using the maps around the country, said RS21 communications manager Natalie Sommer. Its pretty good traffic for a tool we just developed. Our team is reaching out now to cities and states to assess how the maps can support local communities. The company has offered its maps and data analysis services to various federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security Procurement and Acquisition Innovation Response Team, Sommer said. Community groups and public officials in other states are starting to tap the maps for local coronavirus response efforts. Mooresville Schools in Indianapolis, a district just south of the city, is using them to determine which schools could serve as spillover sites to house hospital beds and medical equipment to alleviate pressure in nearby coronavirus hotspots, said Assistant Superintendent for Business Operations Jake Allen. We have large gyms we can use for hospitals, Allen told the Journal. Were sharing the information in the maps with hospitals to help out. They have so much useful data in them that users can digest in an easy format. A group of independent journalists in San Francisco and Oakland, California, is using the maps to gather empirical data for insight and analysis in vulnerable communities in the Bay Area. The group will embed the maps into a new website to serve as a one-stop site for useful information on how the coronavirus is impacting local communities, with news videos, articles, infographics and dashboards, Sommer said. Freelance journalist Solomon Moore said the group is still building the web platform. We are hoping to use RS21s tool to inform Bay Area audiences and also inspire other journalism organizations to improve their presentation of factual information about the pandemic at the community level, Moore told the Journal. What makes RS21s tool so great is that it highlights whats happening around the pandemic at the local level, which is really where we have a public information gap. It shows how pre-existing vulnerabilities in the population are exacerbating the process. RS21 is adding new information to the maps based on feedback from public officials. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for example, requested that hospital and nursing home locations be added, encouraging the company to insert that data in all its maps nationwide. Based on feedback from the City of Albuquerque, the company is adding information to show where Albuquerque Public Schools is handing out meals to students during school closures, and where city-sponsored WiFi hotspots are available for students, job-seekers and others who dont have Internet at home to access free WiFi on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. The ABQ BioPark is one such access point, Sommer said. Students can download homework assignments and job seekers can access job boards or upload applications while still practicing social distancing recommendations, Sommer said. People can use the map to find where to access WiFi on an individual and as-needed basis. RS21, which launched in 2014, specializes in packaging mounds of information into easily understandable, web-based platforms to allow decision makers to rapidly analyze the root causes of issues. The company, which employs about 50 people at a 4,700-square-foot space Downtown and at a satellite office in Washington, D.C., built its interactive maps as a public service. Its all on our own dime, because the coronavirus is affecting everyone, Rath said. I couldnt stop my people from doing it if I wanted to. These are passionate data scientists. This is what they live for. To access the maps, go to covid.rs21.io. HILLVIEW, Ky. As hymns sang out Easter Sunday from a large outdoor speaker overlooking the Maryville Baptist Church parking lot, two Kentucky State troopers placed quarantine notices on parishioners' cars and wrote down their license numbers. Inside the church, roughly 50 worshippers ignored Gov. Andy Beshear's order against mass gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic so they could attend services together on Christianity's holiest day. Several said as they left that they had no intention of abiding by the notice on their windshields that called for a 14-day self-quarantine or face the threat of "further enforcement measures." Exactly what troopers will do with those license numbers or what steps Beshear will take next wasn't immediately clear Sunday. What is clear is that the church's pastor, the Rev. Jack Roberts, has no intention of ending in-person services, joining a handful of other churches across Kentucky that have rebuffed Beshear's wishes. Roberts arrived at the church Sunday morning to find several piles of nails dumped at the church entrances to the parking lot. He said he wouldn't tell his congregation to follow or defy the orders that the governor announced Friday in his ongoing effort to hold down the spread of COVID-19. In Kentucky, the virus has killed nearly 100 and infected more than 1,800. "Everybody has to do what they feel comfortable with," Roberts said. He did cover his own license plate, as did several other parishioners. It didn't matter. Troopers took down the VIN numbers instead. Easter Sunday: New York veteran builds crosses in yard to honor every coronavirus victim in his county At some services, people remained in cars Across Kentucky, reports came in of other churches in potential violation of the mass-gathering rules and CDC guidelines on drive-thru services. Sgt. Josh Lawson of Kentucky State Police said most of the department's 16 posts responded to between two and five complaints about church services. Story continues But they hadn't found any violations of CDC guidelines or other in-person services except for Maryville. Most calls were for outdoor services, where people remained in their cars. Those services were specifically mentioned by the governor as being allowed, Lawson said. At Maryville, the people who stayed in their cars and listened to the service through the outdoor speaker did not receive quarantine notices. Were responding to those calls as we would any other calls for service, Lawson said. A masked protester criticizes Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear for directing troopers to take down license plate numbers of people attending in-person Easter service at Maryville Baptist Church in Hillview, Kentucky. Elsewhere around Kentucky, troopers used community connections to speak with pastors to advise that they can worship while doing so safely and within proper guidelines. Lawson said, adding that it has been very non-confrontational. In fact, several pastors in Eastern Kentucky who were planning to hold in-person services changed their minds and opted for drive-in services, said Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley. Mosley had said in a Facebook post Saturday that he knew of 10 churches in his county that were planning in-person Easter services. Kentucky State Troopers take down license plate numbers of people attending an in-person Easter service at Maryville Baptist Church in Hillview, Kentucky. Church vs. state in a viral pandemic The Rev. Roberts couldn't be swayed. He had been determined to move forward with the 11 a.m. Easter service at Maryville despite repeated pleas from Beshear to shift to virtual services and the governor's March 19 executive order prohibiting mass gatherings. Earlier this week, the Baptist congregation also received a state-backed order from the Bullitt County Health Department to cease in-person gatherings "immediately." The church rebuffed both, holding a Wednesday evening service that drew roughly 40 attendees. Nails, screws and carpenter tacks were found in various spots of the Maryville Baptist Church parking lot on Easter morning. April 12, 2020 Beshear's order for police to record license plates has drawn criticism from numerous Republicans at the state and federal level, including U.S. Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. Roberts has said he is "not interested in trying to defy the government" but believes his church has a constitutional right to continue to hold worship services inside his church. "If you read the Constitution of the United States, if you read the constitution of the state of Kentucky, they both say that (Beshear) is infringing on the church's rights," Roberts said earlier this week. Some of the cars parked at the Maryville Baptist Church for Easter service had their license plates covered. April 12, 2020 Most clergy support staying home for Easter Beshear has often mentioned in recent weeks that the vast majority of churches have chosen to hold virtual services to protect their members and the community from the spread of COVID-19. "To our knowledge, 99.89% of all churches and all synagogues and all mosques in Kentucky have chosen to do the right thing," Beshear said Saturday. "I'm just doing my best to save lives. And there aren't easy answers." The governor promised that the state is not going to "padlock doors or arrest pastors." Recording license plate numbers, he said, is an effort to "say that if youre going to make the decision to go to a mass gathering during this pandemic, it shouldnt affect other people." Others turn to drive-in service On Sunday morning, On Fire Christian Church pastor Chuck Salvo stood on a podium above 100 or so cars in the parking lot, starting the Easter morning service by singing God Bless the U.S.A. and waving the American flag to a chorus of honks from churchgoers. Before getting into his Easter sermon, Salvo said he recognized that government officials are up against a tremendous challenge and led the congregation in a prayer. He then recited the CDC guidelines for drive-in services. Contributing: Savannah Eadens, Billy Kobin and Chris Kenning Arizona-Mexico border is usually busy for Holy Week: This year, it's silent amid global coronavirus crisis Trump eager to 'reopen' nation: But governors will decide when to ease coronavirus lockdown This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky church holds Easter service, police issue quarantine notices (CNN) Minutes after Wuhan reopened its borders at midnight Wednesday, after a 76-day lockdown, Zhang Hai got in his car and left the city where he lost his father to the novel coronavirus. "My heart was broken in Wuhan," he said of his hometown in central China, the original epicenter of the now global pandemic. "Inside, I'm filled with grief, and anger." Less than three months ago, the 50-year-old had driven the 700 miles from the country's southern coast to Wuhan with his father Zhang Lifang, who needed treatment for his broken leg. His father had retired in Wuhan, and enjoyed free medical treatment in the city. The surgery went smoothly. But Zhang Lifang was infected with Covid-19 while recovering in hospital. He was diagnosed on January 30 and died two days later, aged 76. "Because I didn't know how bad the outbreak was in Wuhan, I took my father there -- it was basically sending him to death. Whenever I think of it, I am overwhelmed by remorse and anger," he said Wednesday, on his long drive back to Shenzhen, where he lived with his father. But Zhang will have to return to Wuhan -- because his father's remains are stored at a funeral home in the city. This week, people in Wuhan are going back to work, businesses and shops are reopening, and cars and pedestrians are back on the once-deserted streets, but for many people like Zhang, Wuhan will never be the same. The coronavirus has claimed more than 2,500 lives in the city, accounting for 77% of all Covid-19 deaths in China, according to the National Health Commission. As life starts to regain some semblance of normality, thousands of bereft families are faced with a task that has been put on hold for months: burying their loved ones. Grief put on hold On January 25, the Wuhan government banned all funerals in the city, amid sweeping lockdown measures to contain the outbreak, according to a notice by the municipal civil affairs bureau seen by CNN. Cemeteries were ordered to close, too. With most Wuhan residents unable to leave their homes, transport shut and funerals off, the remains of thousands of people who died both from coronavirus and other causes were stored at funeral homes. Families were told to await government advice on when they could be collected. Many would not get to see the body of their loved ones before cremation. To curb the spread of the virus, the authorities decreed that all bodies of confirmed and suspected coronavirus patients must be taken directly from hospitals to funeral homes for cremation, according to a notice issued by the National Health Commission. Like everything else in the city, the normal process for dealing with grief was put on hold. Late last month, as the number of new local infections dropped to zero, Wuhan residents were finally allowed to retrieve the ashes of their relatives from funeral homes and find them a resting place, reported the state-run Changjiang Daily, citing an official from the municipal civil affairs bureau. Since then, photographs of long lines snaking outside funeral parlors have circulated on social media, highlighting the tragedy facing families across the city. The scenes outside funeral homes were quickly censored on Chinese social networks and received little coverage on state media, only being reported by a handful of relatively outspoken Chinese media outlets. Zhang, the Shenzhen resident, had been anxious to bury his father, who had worked at a Wuhan university before retiring. However, he says that he was contacted by his father's previous workplace and told he could not collect the ashes from the funeral home unless he was escorted by someone from the university, or a neighborhood committee worker. In China, every residential community is managed by a neighborhood committee, a local arm of the Chinese Communist Party, charged with maintaining grassroots stability and order. Since the outbreak, community workers have been tasked with epidemic control in residential compounds, coordinating with hospitals and disease control authorities. Zhang said he was "repulsed" by the idea of strangers intruding on the last moments with his father's remains. "Taking care of my father's last affairs be it collecting or burying his ashes is something I want to do by myself, because it's an entirely private matter. Those people are not my family," he said. In the end, Zhang refused to accept the forced escort and declined to pick up his father's ashes. His account of needing an escort to collect his relative's remains was echoed by others on Chinese social media, in multiple posts seen by CNN. The arrangement has sparked anger among other Wuhan residents. "After reading about (what's happening at) the funeral homes in the past days, as a Wuhanese I feel really sad. Why are we Wuhan people not allowed the right to mourn? Are we only allowed to be immersed in the celebrations of victory?" wrote one Weibo user, referring to China's successful effort in eventually containing the outbreak. The Wuhan government did not respond to CNN's request for comment regarding the arrangement. Quiet burials Others have spoken of a strangely reserved atmosphere at funeral homes and cemeteries under these conditions. Peng Yating, a 34-year-old education consultant, rushed to the Biandanshan Cemetery in Wuhan in the first light of dawn on March 28. Every spring, Peng and her mother visited their ancestors' graves at this cemetery on Qingming Festival, the centuries-old tradition of Chinese families honoring loved ones by cleaning their graves a practice known as "tomb sweeping." But this year she went to the cemetery for a different reason. Peng was there to select a burial plot for her mother, who died in hospital in late January, when the novel coronavirus was sweeping Wuhan. When Peng arrived at the Biandanshan Cemetery to choose her mother's grave last Saturday before 6:30 a.m., there was already a long queue of grieving relatives outside. Her ticket said she was the 71st in line. "Perhaps because it was still early, today's cemetery was eerily quiet. Many family members have come, but they did not make noise, cry, or express their disaffection. They were just silently standing in line, waiting for their number to be called," she wrote in a post on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform. "The dead can no longer speak, but the living did not want to speak either." Funerals are still not permitted. One grieving mother in Wuhan, who did not want to reveal her name, said she was going to bury her daughter at a cemetery on Thursday with her husband and her niece. "There will be no ceremonies. There's no way to hold any. We can only bury (her) quietly," she said, over the phone. Hundreds of miles away in Shenzhen, Zhang returned home Thursday after passing a nucleic acid test -- all Wuhan returnees have to go to hospital to get tested for coronavirus, as required by many local governments across China. In his apartment, he could not stop thinking of his father and blaming himself for taking him to Wuhan on January 17. Back then, Wuhan officials and health experts insisted there was "no obvious evidence for human-to-human transmission" and that the coronavirus was "preventable and controllable." Zhang said he was still waiting for the Wuhan government to make an official apology. "Those officials who did not make public the information in time should be punished," he said. This story was first published on CNN.com, "As Wuhan emerges from coronavirus lockdown, residents are finally lining up to bury their dead." Whenever I pass by the Loblaws grocery store at Dupont and Christie Streets. Im reminded of when I lived just down Clinton Street from it, in a basement apartment. My second place in Toronto, I was still fresh from the Canadian suburbs and proudly counted the 50-odd steps it took to get from my door to the entrance. It was one of those wow, I live in the city moments. Walking by two weeks ago, I saw that the entrance I once breezily passed through, a place that felt like an extension of my kitchen, was barricaded by a wall of wood pallets designed to keep the lineup orderly and properly spaced out. It was the opposite of my wow moment from the early 2000s, and another sign of the city tightening up for the duration of this crisis. The everyday act of buying food has become a most unpleasant thing to do now, not just for the lineups and markings on the floor to obey, but also the built-in tension between customer and clerk: one has to stay there, one gets to leave. If there is anything constructive here its the disincentive to go to the store often. Make a list, get what you need to last as long as you and your family can, then try to stay away as much as possible. With the newfound harshness of this once-pleasant experience, Ive noticed how much time I used to spend idly consuming. Not exactly actively shopping for something, but drifting into shops by chance, and dropping unexpected money here and there, often on inconsequential things. A burrito. A pair of socks. Changes in our own patterns are windows into the greater blow the coronavirus is having on small and medium businesses. The city is a machine of consumption, and the machine is functioning on one cylinder now. In the New Yorker magazine this week, Rebecca Mead wrote that London looks not so much post-apocalyptic as post-capitalist, as if the fever of consumption that has come to characterize the metropolis had finally burned itself out. In the absence of socializing and commerce, two sometimes-intertwined pursuits in the modern metropolis, the city has become a filing cabinet of human lives with little physical interaction between the drawers. Beyond the obvious decrease in people and the closed shops, some with out-of-date signs calling for a March 30 or April 6 reopening, this fortifying of the city has continued elsewhere. Three weeks ago, some of the higher-end shops in Yorkville removed not only their window displays but all the contents of their shops. Peering in at the empty shelves and display cases felt a bit like the stories of rich people decamping to their second homes, abandoning the city in a march of Prada pantsuits. These early signs were followed by a few stores, mostly big international chains like H&M and Nike, covering their windows with plywood on Queen Street W. and along Yonge Street. The Eaton Centre has also installed concrete barriers in front of the main entrances to prevent cars from being used in looting runs. It was disturbing to see. These fortifications, though by no means widespread, added another level of looming darkness. Looting? So far, the transgressions in this lockdown have largely been social, people doing the things they shouldnt be doing right now, the very things that make city life great and not seem like a filing cabinet, but even some of those drawers are empty now. In this city of apartment buildings filled with nearly everybody home and lights blazing away in the evening, turning them into magnificent lanterns scattered throughout urban fabric, some buildings are conspicuously dark. The Airbnb ghost hotels that have dominated a number of buildings in the downtown core are now easily spotted during the pre-bedtime hours. Not all darkness is bad, and the sooner these become long term residences, as they were intended, the better. Weve reached a kind of purgatorial plateau as we flatten the curve, resigned to a new normal of restrictions on our lives. I cant help thinking of the other part of the famous 1970 October Crisis Just watch me quote uttered by Pierre Trudeau on civil liberty restrictions. Yes, well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just dont like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it is more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who dont like the looks of a soldiers helmet. No soldier helmets and guns here yet, but Im weak-kneed enough that the creeping fortification of the city is making me uneasy. When we are through this, and we rethink how our city works, we must resist the urge to keep it fortified. Shawn Micallef is a Toronto-based writer and a freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @shawnmicallef Dr. William E. Allen, associate professor of organic chemistry and recipient of the 2020 Excellence in Teaching Award by the UNC Board of Governors, is hailed not only for his teaching techniques but also his ability to inspire confidence and interest in chemistry. | Photo: ECU Allen is ECUs recipient of the 2020 Excellence in Teaching Award by the UNC Board of Governors. | Photo: Contributed Dr. William E. Allen, associate professor of organic chemistry, has been named East Carolina University's recipient of the 2020 Excellence in Teaching Award by the UNC Board of Governors.Allen's enthusiasm for the subject matter and teaching techniques are hailed by his colleagues in the Department of Chemistry , while students note his unique ability to not only explain the concepts but also to inspire confidence and interest in chemistry.said a graduate student who first took a class with Allen as an undergraduate and discovered a passion for chemistry.Allen - Toby to his colleagues and friends - is known for taking the time to work with students individually and for making large lecture classes feel like small group seminars. Whether it's a 1000-level course for non-majors or advanced organic chemistry, he tailors the material so that students feel they can use what they've learned.he said.Allen, who started his undergraduate studies intending to major in English, said that after changing his major, his chemistry instructors took it upon themselves to help him get up to speed and to make him feel valued and confident. He tries to remember that and do the same for his students at ECU.Another former student said,There are so many inspiring and innovative teachers at ECU and in the field of educators put forward for the Excellence in Teaching Award, Allen said.In the lab, Allen's research is focused on understanding and enhancing the function of small proteins with medical importance.he said.Allen graduated magna cum laude in 1990 from Washington and Lee University, where he met his wife-to-be and teaching role model, Catherine. Following graduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, he completed an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. He returned to North Carolina in 1998 to take a position as an assistant professor of chemistry at ECU.He was named a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching in 2001, received a Harriot College research award in 2003, and was granted permanent tenure and promoted to associate professor in 2004. More than 20 students have earned Master of Science degrees from his laboratory.Allen said there is such a powerful connection between the city of Greenville and the university that he could never go anywhere else.he said.The UNC Board of Governors established the Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993within the universities of the UNC System. Each year the board recognizes one educator from each university with a $12,500 stipend and a bronze medallion.UNC System Interim President William Roper wrote in his letter to this year's recipients.Visit the UNC System website for the full list of recipients of the 2020 Excellence in Teaching Award. Yemeni government Urges Al-Houthi Militia to Stop its Barbaric Crimes against Yemeni People Saudi Press Agency Sunday 1441/8/19 - 2020/04/12 Aden, April 11, 2020, SPA -- The legitimate government in Yemen has called on Al-Houthi militia backed by Iran, to review its stances and put an end to its brutal crimes against the Yemeni people. According to the official Yemeni News Agency, the call came during a video-extraordinary meeting held under the chairmanship of the Yemeni Prime Minister Moein Abdul Malik Saeed. The meeting was designed to discuss the latest developments on Yemeni arena in addition to the political, military and health aspects, in the light of the emerging of the novel Corona virus pandemic. In its meeting, the Yemeni Cabinet also was briefed on a report from the Yemeni Foreign Minister, Muhammad al-Hadrami, on international efforts, citing the call of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for a ceasefire, uniting efforts to confront the new Corona epidemic. The legitimate government of Yemen welcomed the UN call which was supported by the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its commitment to a unilateral ceasefire. --SPA 01:21 LOCAL TIME 22:21 GMT 0022 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address - Isaac Mwaura enrolled for an undergraduate course in Special Education and French at KU and graduated in 2004 - Glady's Wanga joined KU in 2002 where she studied and graduated with a Bachelor Degree of Science (B.Sc) in 2004 - The two legislators served as senior leaders in the Kenyatta University Students Association (KUSA - A TBT photo of the duo left netizens appreciating great strides they had made in bettering their lives Supporters of Nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura and Homa Bay Woman Representative Gladys Wanga have warmed up to an old school photo of the duo while they were still young students at Kenyatta University. Mwaura shared the picture on Sunday, April 12, amidst accolades directed to the institution after a section of its engineering and medicine studies students invented a perfect ventilator- a technology aimed as saving lives of patients with breathing difficulties. READ ALSO: Coronavirus: Rwanda deploys drones to spread COVID-19 awareness in neighbourhoods Isaac Mwaura (l) and Gladys Wanga served as senior leaders in the Kenyatta University Students Association (KUSA). Photo: Isaac Mwaura. Source: UGC READ ALSO: Mbunge Millie Odhiambo awafanya 'mafisi' kukanyagana waking'ang'ania mpwake The picture was captured way back in 2004 when he served with Wanga as senior leaders in Kenyatta University Students Association (KUSA). "Kenyatta University doesn't just produce ventilators only. Once upon a time with Gladys Wanga as KUSA student leaders, way back in 2004," read a caption to the photo. "This was my best suit," Wanga reacted to the picture. READ ALSO: Coronavirus: US leads world with highest number of COVID-19 deaths, infections Speaking to Tuko, the senator said that when joined KU, he enrolled for an undergraduate course in Special Education and French. After graduating with the Bachelor's degree, the lawmaker proceeded and commenced studies in Public Relations Management and Theology. He graduated with a post-graduate diploma and diploma respectively. READ ALSO: Coronavirus: WWE confirm first case ahead of Monday Night Raw Mwaura went ahead and studied for a Masters Degree in Social and Public Policy as a Ford Scholar from the University of Leeds before proceeding to the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa where he also bagged another masters degree. On her part, Wanga joined KU in 2002 where she studied and graduated with a Bachelor Degree of Science (B.Sc) in 2004. In 2010, the MP enrolled for Master of Science (M.Sc) in Health Management at the same institution and graduated in 2012. During the duo's time at the Thika Road-based institution of higher learning, Gladys served as the KUSA secretary-general while Mwaura was a special member. They were elected in the student association in February 2003. "We served for a year and I helped KUSA put in place its first constitution after several attempts had failed for 2 years. I was in charge of legal and constitutional affairs, transport and assisted in special needs affairs while Gladys ran various outreach programs," said Mwaura. Mwaura and Wanga, alongside other student leaders and supporters, are remembered for leading a strike to remove the then KU Vice-Chancellor Professor George Eshiwani. Professor Tom Namwamba, who is the brother to Foreign Affairs Cheif Administrative Secretary (CAS) Ababu Namwamba, was also on the chopping board at that time. Here are some of the reactions: Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly. Kenyans in China speak out on the discrimination of Africans by Chinese citizens | Tuko TV. Source: TUKO.co.ke The strange cigar-shaped Oumuamua space rock discovered in 2017 was ripped from a planet and sent hurtling into space after it came too close to its star. When it appeared it became the first visitor from another star system to be spotted from Earth, and astronomers have speculated on its origins ever since. Experts from National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believe it could have been ripped from a planet getting close to its star. The team speculate that it could have been part of a super-Earth sized exoplanet orbiting very close to its star, that was then destroyed by tidal forces. Astronomers say Oumuamua is is 'the tip of the iceberg' for alien visitors and expect to discovery many more rocks from other star systems in the next few years. Scroll down for video This illustration shows the tidal disruption process that can give rise to 'Oumuamua-like objects. As a planet approaches close to its host start, forces stretch and rip it apart, sending fragments hurtling out into space When it appeared in 2017 Oumuamua became the first visitor from another star system to be spotted from Earth, and astronomers have speculated on its origins ever since HOW DID OUMUAMUA FORM AND LAUNCH INTO SPACE? Researchers from China believe that Oumuamua was part of a larger body orbiting close to a star. They created a computer simulation based on the suspected size and trajectory of the alien asteroid. The simulation worked backwards to calculate what it would take to produce an object with the shape of Oumuamua and a similar trajectory. The authors say it had to have broken off from a larger body that was close to its host star. It was either: part of a 0.6 mile (1km) wide protoplanet orbiting a mid-sized star part of a super-Earth sized planet orbiting a low-mass White Dwarf The planet got too close to its star and as it approached, the tidal forces from the stars gravity caused it to stretch. Eventually as the rock orbited the star closer and closer it was split apart and pushed away into smaller fragments. The force of gravity from the star sent these fragments hurtling into deep space with one eventually arriving in the solar system in 2017. Advertisement Study lead author Dr Yun Zhang thinks the process they describe could mean that Oumuamua is just one of an army of interstellar projectiles hurtling through space. Oumuamua was discovered on October 19, 2017 by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope that was looking for comets and asteroids near the Earth. It was hurtling through space at a staggering 196,000 miles per hour (313,822 km/h) and the name is Hawaiian for 'a messenger from afar arriving first'. 'The discovery of Oumuamua implies that the population of rocky interstellar objects is much larger than we previously thought,' said Zhang. 'On average, each planetary system should eject in total about a hundred trillion objects like Oumuamua.' When astronomers first spotted Oumuamua 2017, little was known about where the perplexing rock came from and how it was formed. This study, published in the Nature Astronomy journal, has now offered the first set of answers to those questions. 'Oumuamua is absolutely nothing like anything else in our solar system,' Zhang said. 'Its dry surface, unusually elongated shape, and puzzling motion even drove some scientists to wonder if it was an alien probe. The team created a computer simulation of what would happen if a planet got close to a star and was stretched and ripped apart. They discovered it would form objects similar in shape to Oumuamua This very deep combined image shows the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua at the centre of the picture (circled). It is surrounded by the trails of faint stars that are smeared as the telescopes tracked the moving asteroid 'It is really a mysterious object, but some signs, like its colours and the absence of radio emission, point to 'Oumuamua being a natural object. 'Our objective is to come up with a comprehensive scenario, based on well understood physical principles, to piece together all the tantalising clues.' The researchers suggest that as the rock tumbled past its star, it began to spin and evaporate off most of its more volatile substances. Additionally, they suggest the 'cigar' may have originated as a tiny 0.6 mile (1km) wide planet precursor, or a close-in rocky super-Earth, orbiting a white dwarf. Oumuamua's rocky body was a surprise to astronomers who assumed the first interstellar visitor would be icy like a comet with a visible tail but the visitor's appearance is dry and similar to rocky bodies like an asteroid. The researchers ran high-resolution computer simulations to model what happens when a relatively small object flies close to a massive star. They observed that the tidal forces of the larger body were capable of tearing the smaller one apart, as happened to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet when it came close to Jupiter, the researchers explained. These tidal processes can eject some debris into interstellar space, which researchers suspect happened to Oumuamua and also explain its shape. 'The elongated shape is more compelling when we considered the variation of material strength during the stellar encounter,' Zhang said. 'The ratio of long axis to short axis can be even larger than ten to one.' A cigar-shaped object was the first from outside the Milky Way to visit the solar system. The Oumuamua asteroid (artist's impression) floated through our star system in November 2017 The team suggests their theory could also explain why Oumuamua moves in an unusual, non-gravitational way. Dr Zhang said: 'If 'Oumuamua was produced and ejected in the way we suggest, plenty of residual water ice could be activated during its passage through the solar system. 'The resulting outgassing would cause accelerations that match Oumuamua's comet-like trajectory.' The researchers also used thermal modelling to show that the cigar-like rock would have melted as it passed close to the star and reformed into a solid elongated shape as it travelled away. Since Oumuamua-type objects may pass through habitable zones, the researchers are not ruling out the possibility that they could transport matter - called panspermia - capable of generating life. Dr Zhang said: 'This is a very new field. These interstellar objects could provide critical clues about how planetary systems form and evolve.' Study co-author Dr Douglas Lin, of the University of California said that Oumuamua is just the 'tip of the iceberg.' Lin expects there will be many more similar objects found by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory currently under construction in Chile. This illustration shows Oumuamua racing toward the outskirts of our solar system. As the complex rotation of the object makes it difficult to determine the exact shape, there are many models of what it could look like. The Rubin is a wide-field reflecting telescope that can photograph the entire available sky every few nights - making it perfect for spotting 'alien visitors'. Dr Matthew Knight, of the Oumuamua International Space Science Institute team said this study, which he was not involved in, does a 'remarkable' job of explaining the Oumuamua's unusual properties with a 'single, coherent model.' The United States Naval Academy astronomer added: 'As future interstellar objects are discovered in coming years, it will be very interesting to see if any exhibit Oumuamua-like properties. 'If so, it may indicate that the processes described in this study are widespread.' In only another four years, it will pass Neptune's orbit on its way back into interstellar space. Because Oumuamua is the first interstellar object ever observed in our solar system, researchers caution that it's difficult to draw general conclusions about this newly-discovered class of celestial bodies. However, observations point to the possibility that other star systems regularly eject small comet-like objects and there should be more of them drifting among the stars. Future ground- and space-based surveys could detect more of these interstellar vagabonds, providing a larger sample for scientists to analyse. The research has been studied in the journal Nature Astronomy. Airline giants Qantas and Virgin Australia could be about to receive a bailout package to keep domestic flights in operation during the coronavirus pandemic. The funding agreement is reportedly nearing completion and is worth tens of millions of dollars. It would supplement a federal government funding package worth $1billion which has already been committed to the ailing Australian aviation industry hit hard by the crisis' impact on global travel. Scroll down for video Grounded Virgin Australia aircraft at Brisbane Airport last week. The ailing airline, along with Qantas, could be about to receive government funding to keep domestic flights running during the COVID-19 pandemic The bailout package is set to be announced after intense talks between Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and bosses at the two airlines, according to 9News. It comes after Virgin Australia announced last week it was cancelling all of its domestic flights apart from one daily return service between Sydney and Melbourne. The flight will run once per day, apart from on Sunday. A spokesman for the airline said government advice urging Australians not to travel - even between the states - had drastically slashed demand. 'As a result of Government restrictions, less people are travelling and we have made changes to our schedules to reflect this,' a statement released on Thursday regarding the changes read. Virgin will continue to offer at least one daily service, as well as continue transporting cargo locally and internationally, and would be open to reconsider should demand increase. The airline has previously asked the government for $1.4billion to survive the coronavirus crisis. Virgin Australia has suspended all but one domestic flight, weeks after grounding its entire international fleet. Pictured: Virgin Australia cabin crew greet a chartered Virgin Australia flight as it arrives at Hobart International Airport Virgin Australia wants the federal government to provide a 'statement of confidence' in the same way they may help out a bank. The price tag is to ensure the airline's continued operation and they're seeking that from taxpayer funds. When Virgin CEO Paul Scurrah asked for the $1.4billion loan late last month, he said the airline wouldn't actually require the funds unless the pandemic continued beyond six months. 'We have been in ongoing discussions with government about the support the whole industry will need if this crisis is prolonged,' a Virgin Australia spokesperson previously told Daily Mail Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison closed Australia's borders in response to the crisis after seeing figures which suggested the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 cases in Australia were brought in from overseas. The decision instantly stripped tens of thousands of airline staff, travel agents and others in the industry of their jobs. Virgin alone was forced to stand down 8,000 staff members without pay when it grounded its entire fleet of 125 planes. Qantas meanwhile has stood down most of its 30,000 staff until the end of May. Top oil-producing countries agreed on "historic" output cuts to prop up prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war, sending crude prices soaring on Monday. The US benchmark WTI climbed 7.7 percent to $24.52 a barrel in early Asian trade while Brent was up 5.0 percent at $33.08. OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia thrashed out a compromise deal via videoconference Sunday after Mexico had balked at an earlier agreement struck on Friday. In the compromise reached Sunday they agreed to a cut of 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to Mexican Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels a day envisioned earlier. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic". "They are largest in volume and the longest in duration, as they are planned to last for two years," he said. The agreement between the Vienna-based Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual reduction in cuts until April 2022. Barkindo added that the deal "paved the way for a global alliance with the participation of the G20". Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who chaired the meeting together with his Russian and Algerian counterparts, also confirmed that the discussions "ended with consensus". - 'Great deal for all' - US President Donald Trump welcomed a "great deal for all", saying on Twitter it would "save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States". He added he "would like to thank and congratulate" Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, both of whom he had spoken to. The Kremlin confirmed the joint phone call, adding that Putin and Trump agreed on the "great importance" of the deal. "This is good," Canadian Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan tweeted. "We welcome any news that brings stability to global oil markets." Initial reticence from Mexico to introduce output cuts had led to a standoff that cast doubt on efforts to bolster oil prices, pushed to near two-decade lows. Oil prices have slumped since the beginning of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has sapped demand as countries around the world have put their populations under lockdown. Compounding the problem, key players Russia and Saudi Arabia had engaged in a price war, ramping up output in a bid to hold on to market share and undercut US shale producers. - 'Temporary relief' - Rystad Energy analyst Per Magnus Nysveen said Sunday's agreement provided "at least a temporary relief" as fuel consumption was expected to fall globally by 27 million barrels per day in April and 20 million barrels per day in May. His colleague Bjornar Tonhaugen said that even though the deal made "the single largest output cut in history", prices were still expected to see "renewed downwards pressure". Other analysts were also concerned that the cuts did not go far enough with storage tanks rapidly filling up. "The hard work lies ahead given that the market is very sceptical that OPEC+ are actually going to be able to come up with their near 10 million barrels a day of production cuts," Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, told Bloomberg News. AxiCorp's Stephen Innes added that "there remain concerns the agreement could be a day late and a 'barrel short' to prevent a decline in prices in the coming weeks as storage capacity brims". Top oil producers struggled to finalise production cuts during a virtual summit held by G20 energy ministers on Friday, despite Trump's mediation efforts to end the standoff with Mexico. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted by Russian news agency TASS as saying he did not expect oil markets to recover before "end of the year, in the best case". Harry Tchilinguirian of BNP Paribas said "a sustained recovery" in the oil price was not expected "until pent-up demand is released in Q3 on the lifting of confinement and social distancing measures related to COVID-19". burs-jza/mtp/hg Nathaniel Mundle pleaded guilty last October to kidnap, rape and false imprisonment. (SWNS) A man who attacked a woman in the street before dragging her to his flat and raping her has been jailed for 17 years. Nathaniel Mundle, 23, was waiting for the victim to walk past his house before he grabbed her neck from behind and choked her until she lost consciousness then hauled her into his home at about 4pm on 25 September last year. Once inside, he raped the woman, who was in her forties, and held her captive for over an hour, before she regained consciousness and managed a to escape. She found a neighbour who offered help before police and an ambulance were called. Officers arrived at Mundles home, in Bounds Green, north London, to find him gone, but they stayed put as the investigation continued. Mundle was jailed for 17 years at Wood Green Crown Court last week after pleading guilty last October to kidnap, rape and false imprisonment. He was also given a sexual harm prevention order. (Getty) Several hours later police arrested Mundle after he returned home at about 1am the following morning. Mundle was jailed for 17 years at Wood Green Crown Court last week after pleading guilty last October to kidnap, rape and false imprisonment. He was also given a sexual harm prevention order. Police praised the victim for her escape and she was later admitted to hospital due to the brutality of the attack. Detective Constable Lydia Polydorou-Evangelou, said: This was a shocking, premeditated assault in which a woman was violently attacked." DC Polydorou-Evangelou, a Met Police safeguarding officer, added: I would like to thank the victim in this case who showed great bravery in making her escape and contacting us. "I would also like to thank her for assisting the investigating team, who made sure this dangerous individual was removed from the public domain and is now unable to hurt anyone else. The March 2020 issue of Fortune magazine focused on the "existential threat" to the Earth posed by global warming, despite the fact that no significant global warming seems to be taking place. With its appealing cover art an image of the Earth tied up in a plastic trash bag this issue is just what I'd expect from a liberal outfit. It's typical of climate alarmists to begin by assuming their premise: warming is an existential threat because, well, it is. And anyone who questions that premise is a criminal. Just what is meant by "existential threat" is a bit vague. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously announced that the Earth would come to an end by 2030. No more life on the planet, no more planet. That means that the planet somehow evaporates or shatters into a billion bits that go flying around in space. Unless we give up everything to a totalitarian socialist government headed by Ocasio-Cortez and the like. Is this what Fortune means by declaring that "our warming earth is an existential threat"? Fortune's editor-in-chief is Clifton Leaf. In addition to editorial positions at a number of other publications, Leaf has written for the New York Times and appeared on Charlie Rose, CNN, and NPR, among other places. No mention of Fox News. An untarnished resume of a life inside the liberal bubble. It would have been more convincing if Fortune had painstakingly authenticated global warming, documenting just how much and when the Earth's climate has warmed, if it has, and showing the source of that warming. It would also be more convincing if that analysis had stretched back over a reasonable period of geologic time say 40,000 years to demonstrate that current warming, if it exists, is not just a blip in Earth's history, but a significant departure, which it is not. It was warmer than now, for example, in the Medieval Warm Period (9001300 A.D.). As the illustrious historian Norman Cantor has shown, that period coincided with great advances in human civilization in Europe advances made possible by increased wealth and population resulting from warmer temperatures. The Medieval Warm Period is estimated to have been one degree Celsius warmer than current temperatures, yet there was no "existential threat." Far from it: 900 to 1300 A.D. was the period in which Europe's monumental cathedrals were built; its population expanded rapidly; and humans settled Iceland, Greenland, and, for a short time, North America. Civilization flourished as a result of global warming. (England's 11th-century population is estimated at 2 million, growing to "5 or 6 million by the end of the 13th century.") If human beings prospered during the Medieval Warm Period, why not today? Even Fortune acknowledges that many northern regions will flourish if predictions of warming come to pass. By 2100, for instance, Canada's GDP will increase by 246.7% and Russia's by 419.1%, while warmer regions may suffer. North Dakota will flourish as seniors migrate from Florida in search of cooler breezes. How, exactly, do climate scientists know that Russia's economy will expand by 419.1% by 2100 or that India's will decline by 91.8%? That estimate is taken from a 2017 article (Hsiang et al.) in Science magazine. I'm sure Hsiang et al. worked overtime to create such a precise model of the effect of climate change on economic growth. The problem is that none of those doomsday predictions has worked out in the past. In the 1970s, Paul and Anne Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which claimed that humans were on the verge of mass starvation. According to the Ehrlichs, the Earth's food production could support only 8 billion people, and we're already at 7 billion. The Ehrlichs seemed repelled by the masses of people living in China and India and at the purported wastefulness of those in developed countries like the U.S. As another example, Alvin Toffler's series of "future shock" books were taken seriously back in the 1970s Toffler, by the way, was also an associate editor of Fortune. Now another futurist is telling us that the Ehrlichs "may have underestimated" the risk: it's not mass starvation, but the planet itself we have to be worried about. David A. Sinclair is a specialist on human longevity, and he sees catastrophe ahead if we continue to consume and waste. The solution, as always for such prognosticators, is strict regulation. No more fossil fuels, no more plastic, no more big homes and big cars. According to Sinclair, even monks in the U.S. are living twice as wastefully as we need to: imagine a brown woolen robe, a bowl of roots, and a bunk in an unheated hovel. Now, that's what we need to keep things going! The reality is just the opposite. Given the evidence that exists for the benefits of warming, what stands behind the environmental movement's claims of an existential threat? "Existential" means that the Earth will no longer exist. Yet the Earth was warmer in the Medieval Warm Period than now, and it continued to exist and even thrive. The false claim of an existential threat is in fact motivated by political considerations. And those huddled masses in Bombay and Beijing they're not the risk but the solution. Every human being born on this planet is precious and is part of the solution to whatever crises we face in the future. From those beautiful children "beggars," the Ehrlichs called them will come the great minds that lead us toward a better future. As liberals see it, all human activity can be regulated and restricted on the pretext that all activity contributes to warming. Even my personal decision to build a home for my family would be strictly regulated, and not from Washington, but from some place like Brussels or Geneva. Likewise, my decision of what car to purchase, how to work, where and when to travel, and thousands of other personal matters would be decided not by me, but by the global state. Political and economic control is the real goal of environmentalism. The radical environmentalist movement is nothing more than another front for the left, whose overarching goal is totalitarian collectivism. The iconic image for leftists what leftists really treasure in their hearts is that of obedient masses marching off to work, row after silent row under the thumb of the State. Those who rule never see themselves as marching off they stand on the imperial balconies, basking in the admiration of the workers who pass by. The achievement of that godlike sense of power underlies all leftist thought. But capitalism brings economic prosperity, not collectivism. The impact of the coronavirus has temporarily halted our economic progress, but the benefits of capitalism will outlast the epidemic. Once the virus is under control, economic activity will increase, and extremely low energy prices will spur economic growth. There is no reason why the benefits of cheap energy should not continue for decades or centuries to come. The United States possesses huge reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil. Coupled with nuclear energy, these fossil fuels should render our country largely free of dependence on foreign energy suppliers that is, if the environmentalists don't shut them down, as Biden pledges to do. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for signs of the earth's demise in nine and a half years. Fortune and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assure me that the end is near. Here's my prediction: we'll still be here in 2030 most of us, anyway. And the Earth will be doing just fine. Hopefully, a bit warmer. And if global temperatures do reach the level of the Medieval Warm Period, it will be a blessing, but probably not for long. Remember the first rule of climate change: temperatures rise and fall, and change is inevitable. In one sense, Fortune is right: we are facing an "existential crisis," but it is a political crisis, not an environmental one. The future of American democratic capitalism is threatened by the left, whose members want to transform America into a socialist state. The Earth is not going to cease to exist in 11 years, but our liberty could if we fail to defend it. Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for more than thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published many books and articles on American culture and politics in national journals and newspapers. A senior dental nurse verbally abused her junior colleagues, reduced some to tears and refused to let one co-worker leave early to pick their child up from school, instead telling them 'don't worry, social services will pick him up'. Joanne Gauntlett, who worked at NHS-run Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, Hants repeatedly verbally abused junior colleagues by insulting them with 'derogatory' comments. She also lashed out at them 'disproportionately' for minor mistakes. The clinical manager, who was responsible for 24 staff, left colleagues scared to go into work, often reduced to tears and even suffered adverse health problems. But she has now been suspended following a tribunal hearing. Joanne Gauntlett, who worked at NHS-run Queen Alexandra Hospital (pictured) in Portsmouth, Hants, repeatedly verbally abused junior colleagues by insulting them with 'derogatory' comments The hearing heard how Gauntlett 'failed to treat her dental team with dignity and respect'. It comes after an NHS investigation was launched In October 2017 after 10 written complaints were made against Gauntlett from junior colleagues. A General Dental Council (GDC) tribunal in London heard colleagues fled to the staff room in floods of tears having been verbally abused or unfairly criticised by her. A report of the tribunal also showed how would 'reverse decisions with no apparent reason for doing so'. One colleague told the tribunal committee that Gauntlett had agreed that she could attend a GP appointment, but 'at the last minute' told her that she could no longer go. The GDC tribunal report also said: '[Gauntlett] unreasonably refused a colleague's request to leave work early to collect her child. '[She] said words to the effect of 'don't worry about it, social services will pick him up'. '[The colleague] expressed her distress at being put in what she thought was a dilemma of potentially losing her job or having to abandon her child at school. 'The committee heard evidence from many of the witnesses of the significant effect this kind of behaviour had on staff wellbeing and morale. 'The committee was satisfied that the evidence it received demonstrated a pattern of Mrs Gauntlett failing to treat members of the dental team at the hospital with dignity and respect.' Gauntlett was suspended for three months by the General Dental Council (GDC) after being found guilty of four misconduct breaches. Pictured: A dental nurse at work (stock image) Gauntlett was also found to have shouted at colleagues within sight and hearing of patients and insulted staff by calling them 'Tweedledee and Tweedledum'. The tribunal added: 'As a manager she should have been a role model to junior members of staff and sought to challenge swearing and the use of foul language.' Suspending her for three months, the tribunal concluded: 'It was incumbent on you, in your position of authority, to treat people with dignity and respect. 'A number of colleagues spoke of how they were afraid to go into work under your management. 'The Committee also heard that certain members of staff were, on occasion, reduced to tears and suffered adverse health consequences as a result of your behaviour.' Gauntlett, who was found guilty of four misconduct breaches, had been investigated in 2013 for similar offences but no action was taken although some concerns were highlighted. Gauntlett has resigned from her post. No concerns were raised about her clinical care. The United States has recorded a total death toll of 20,071, surpassing Italy's death toll of 19,468. It's now among the worst-hit countries by the novel coronavirus outbreak. and the situation does not seem to be getting better. Twitter To give you a sense of just how grim things are, renowned US journalist, Julio Ricardo Varela - who is also the host of In The Thick - shared a video of the obituary section in Boston Globe newspaper. Varela wrote, 'The death notices of today's Sunday @BostonGlobe are 11 pages long. #COVID19 #Massachusetts'. The obituary section in the daily ran up to a whopping 11 pages in the face of the pandemic; in the tweet thread, Varela clarified that not all deaths were owing to COVID-19, but that majority of them were. He added that this is the worst he has witnessed since the 9/11 terror attacks, which at the time hogged most of the newspapers' obituary section, and now it's the novel coronavirus. #1 Not all these notices are COVID-19 related but a majority are. So sad. Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) April 12, 2020 #2 I am a loyal @BostonGlobe reader who has gotten the paper delivered every day since the 80s. I don't ever recall seeing so many pages in the death notices section. Maybe since 9/11, which also impacted Massachusetts. But seeing this today was a real punch to the gut. Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) April 12, 2020 Varela wrote, 'The notices in today's Sunday @BostonGlobe represent 127 cities and towns across all of #Massachusetts, mostly Eastern Mass. It also includes notices from 14 other states (33 total) and 2 notices from outside of US (Greece and Venezuela) of lost lives with connections to Mass'. The stories in these notices are so sad. Real lives. Real people. Am thinking about my elderly in-laws on this Easter Sunday, who have been physically distancing but are terrified. I dropped a few masks for them this week & they are ok but I get sad that I don't get to see them. Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) April 12, 2020 'And the Globe is running daily death notices. For example, last Wednesday's paper had 5 pages. Tuesday has 4 pages. Saturday was 1 page', he added on Twitter. A similar clip of an Italian newspaper went viral last month. On March 13, a daily newspaper L'Eco di Bergamo released an issue which had 10 pages of obituaries. A Twitter user with the handle David Carretta posted a video of the paper. Reuters In the viral clip, the February 9 edition had only one page dedicated to obituaries, with photos of the deceased filling another half page. Whereas on March 13, the obituaries took 10 full pages of the newspaper. Bergamo daily newspaper pic.twitter.com/N3ECABz8dr David Carretta (@davcarretta) March 14, 2020 According to Reuters, the United States has seen its highest death tolls to date in the epidemic with roughly 2,000 deaths a day reported for the last four days in a row. Public health experts have warned that the U.S. death toll could reach 200,000 over the summer if unprecedented stay-at-home orders that have closed businesses and kept most Americans indoors, are lifted after 30 days. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In trying times, one business owner decided to give back to healthcare workers who are among this fighting coronavirus (COVID-19). Aman Singh, whose family owns and operates Family Fruit in Grant City, has prepared full meals, decorative baskets, chocolates and candy for nurses and other healthcare workers at the Heart, Lung, and Surgery Center in Seaview. The staff at Family Fruit prepared fresh meals straight from their kitchen to give nurses and healthcare workers Easter lunch and dinner. Singhs father recently recovered from triple bypass surgery and recalls that the care he received in the facility was so caring it chokes him up thinking about it. This inspired his son to prepare meals for the healthcare workers he credits with helping his father make a speedy recovery. During hard and dark times, nurses and other healthcare workers should be able to enjoy the holiday and time with family, but because of whats going on they cant, said Singh. This is my way of giving back, showing we appreciate what they do to make their lives easier. According to Singh, spreading gratitude is important during these times. He wanted this gesture to have a positive impact, even if it just makes one persons day better. Every time you turn on the news theres something depressing on, its good to know that these people are here continuing to do great work and providing outstanding service," he noted. Due to coronavirus concerns, Singh isnt able to meet with the hospital workers, but had to drop off the meals and baskets at the front desk of the building. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** Amnesty International criticized Myanmar's government on Monday, saying it has failed to safeguard freedom of expression and the rights of human rights defenders and activists. The London-based rights organization expressed disappointment that after four years in power, the government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has done little to change the country's legal framework. Myanmar is scheduled to hold a general election late this year. Myanmar remains a country where the slightest criticism of the authorities can land you in jail, the group's senior director for research, advocacy and policy, Clare Algar, said in a statement. "Environmental activists, poets and students are among those who have been arrested and prosecuted simply for expressing their opinions." In a report issued Monday, the group noted that Suu Kyi was a target of the same repressive legal system during her previous years-long struggle to end military rule and bring democracy to the nation. Amnesty International said it is especially alarming that journalists and activists are being detained during the COVID-19 pandemic. Five student activists were sent to prison for protesting against a government-ordered internet shutdown in Rakhine and Chin states in western Myanmar, it said. Critics say the shutdown hinders the provision of health information that would allow residents to protect themselves from the coronavirus. The government said it shut down internet service because of an armed conflict between its military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine armed group. Amnesty International said the authorities use vaguely worded laws, mostly predating Suu Kyi's administration, to prosecute critics. Members of the armed forces often are responsible for filing criminal complaints against activists. The armed forces, which held power for five decades before Suu Kyi's elected government took power in 2016, still wield great influence over the country's administration, in large part because of the constitution that was enacted in 2008 under military rule. "There were some positive steps in the early years of the administration - scores of prisoners of conscience were released, and Parliament abolished two draconian laws that were frequently used against dissidents when the country was under direct military rule," the report said. But it said Suu Kyi's ruling party failed to use its parliamentary majority to review and repeal other repressive laws. "As the current administration comes towards the end of its term and the country gears up for general elections in late 2020, it is vital that the authorities take the opportunity to close the door on politically motivated arrest and imprisonment, the group said. "This includes releasing all those imprisoned for exercising their rights, reforming Myanmar's repressive laws, and ensuring that the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly are respected and protected. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A young man was charged with a car-jacking in which a teen was dragged from his vehicle and then forced to hand over his car keys. Kevin Liney (25) of Beechwood Avenue, Cluain Ard, Cobh, Co Cork appeared before a special sitting of Mallow District Court in relation to an alleged incident outside Cobh on Good Friday. Judge Patricia Harney was told that Liney is charged with unlawfully seizing a vehicle by force. The charge involves an address at Hartland's Point in Cobh on April 10. Det Garda Kieran Crowley told the court a 17 year old had stopped his vehicle when he was approached by the defendant. It is alleged Liney forcibly removed the teenager from the car and then forcibly removed the car keys from him. At that point, it is alleged that Liney drove off in the vehicle. The 17 year old, who was not injured in the incident, then raised the alarm. The court was told the teenage driver was very shaken at the scene when gardai arrived. Judge Harney heard the driver knows the defendant and both reside in the Cobh area. Det Garda Crowley said the defendant was later located by gardai in an isolated area at Walterstown. The detective, when questioned by defence solicitor Stephen Foley, confirmed that no weapon was used in the alleged incident. He also confirmed that the 17 year old driver was not physically injured. The defendant had spent both Good Friday and Easter Saturday in garda custody and was applying for bail. Mr Foley said his client was willing to comply with whatever bail conditions gardai might require. Judge Harney was told that gardai require the defendant to live at his home address, observe a 9pm to 7am curfew, abstain from all intoxicants, stay away from the injured party in the case, be contactable by mobile phone at all times and sign on each Wednesday at Cobh Garda Station. Liney must also comply with all the Government's Covid-19 restrictions on movement. The defendant confirmed to the court he would comply with all bail conditions. Judge Harney granted Liney bail and remanded him to appear again before the district court on April 23 next. The Supreme Court on Monday, partially modified its April 8 order, and said that free testing for COVID-19 shall be available to persons eligible under Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana as already implemented by the Government of India. The top court also said that any other category of economically weaker sections of the society as notified by the Government for free testing for COVID-19 hereinafter will also get the benefit. The Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, may consider as to whether any other categories of the weaker sections of the society, e.g., workers belonging to low-income groups in the informal sectors, beneficiaries of Direct Benefit Transfer, etc., will be eligible for the free test or not, the apex court said. Apart from those covered under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana, others are also eligible for the benefit of free testing and issue appropriate guidelines in the above regard also within a period of one week, the apex court said today while modifying its April 8 order. The private labs can continue to charge for testing of COVID-19 from persons, who are able to make payment of testing fee as fixed by the ICMR, the SC said. The Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, may issue necessary guidelines for the reimbursement of the cost of free testing of COVID-19 undertaken by private labs and necessary mechanism to defray expenses and reimbursement to the private labs, said the top court. The Supreme Court has asked the Central government to give appropriate publicity to this and its guidelines to ensure the coverage to all thoseeligible. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) South South African President and African Union (AU) Chairman Cyril Ramaphosa speaks during an AU meeting in this undated photo. / Courtesy of frican Union The following statement was released by the office of South African President and African Union (AU) Chairman Cyril Ramaphosa. ED. The COVID-19 pandemic is already the most serious health emergency in generations, and it is far from over. The coronavirus pandemic has undoubtedly changed our ways of life, impacted on the capacities of our health infrastructure and has disrupted the economic supply value chain with attendant negative impact on global economies. As the world grapples with the challenge of the coronavirus, there is a need for solidarity, unity of purpose and better coordination to ensure that we are able to overcome this common enemy. It is within this context, that the Chairperson of the African Union (AU) and President of the Republic of South Africa, HE Cyril Ramaphosa, reaffirms his appreciation for the exceptional leadership of the Director-General (DG) of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, from the very earliest stages of this unprecedented global health crisis. The African Union has also commended the management of Dr. Tedros in leading the global response to the pandemic. Overall the AU recognizes and appreciates the good work that has been undertaken by the WHO and notes with a sense of satisfaction the various initiatives and measures that are continuously undertaken by the organization to mitigate the spread of the pandemic such as mobilizing resources, sharing real-time information and providing technical and material support. On a daily basis, the WHO has been an essential technical and scientific partner to the African Union and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), as we work to mitigate the pandemic which has now reached nearly every member state. The African Union has seen Dr. Tedros in action before when he and the world-class WHO health experts led global efforts to fight against the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In appreciation of these efforts, the African Union extends its unwavering support to the WHO and its Director-General. The AU calls upon the international community to join hands to support the efforts of the DG and the entire WHO family as they lead global efforts to fight this pandemic. If there was a time for global unity, solidarity and cooperation, this is that time. Working together, we will be able to overcome this challenge. While all our countries are facing daunting and frustrating tasks to contain the spread of the pandemic, we should avoid temptation to apportion blame to any individual, institution or any country at a time when we should all be working together. We should work together to confront our common enemy in the form of COVID-19 and we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by anything else. Our success against this pandemic will only be realized through collaboration, cooperation and most importantly through global solidarity. The most potent weapon against COVID-19 remains international cooperation and solidarity, as we have seen around the world. The African Union has seen firsthand the groundswell of international cooperation since the onset of this pandemic and wishes to commend all who supported and have pledged to support Africa's response to COVID-19 by reinforcing our health systems and helping to mitigate the social and economic impact. These partners include the G20, China, the United States, the European Union and the Jack Ma Foundation, among others. The African Union extends its appreciation to all medical personnel who are in the forefront of the battlefield for their selflessness and diligence. President Ramaphosa further calls on all African Union members and international partners to maintain and reinforce this international cooperation and collaboration in the difficult weeks and months ahead. May we all continue, as a collective, to play our part to combat this pandemic with vigour and determination in order to return our lives to normalcy. [April 13, 2020] Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 | Growing Adoption Of COB LED in Smart Lighting to Boost Growth | Technavio Technavio has been monitoring the chip-on-board (cob) led market and it is poised to grow by USD 1.73 bn during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of almost 12% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200412005005/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire) Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Latest Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., Cree (News - Alert), Inc., Lumileds Holding B.V., NICHIA CORPORATION, and OSRAM GmbH are some of the major market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. Growing adoption of COB LED in smart lighting has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 : Segmentation Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market is segmented as below: Application General Lighting Automotive Lighting Backlighting Geographic Landscape Americas APAC EMEA To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=RTNTR30882 Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 : Scope Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market report covers the following areas: Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market Size Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market Trends Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market Industry Analysis This study identifies adoption of COB LEDs in horticulture as one of the prime reasons driving the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market growth during the next few years. Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 : Vendor Analysis We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market, including some of the vendors such as CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., Cree, Inc., Lumileds Holding B.V., NICHIA CORPORATION, and OSRAM GmbH. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 : Key Highlights CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023 Detailed information on factors that will assist Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market growth during the next five years Estimation of the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market size and its contribution to the parent market Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior The growth of the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market vendors Table Of Contents : PART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORT 2.1 Preface 2.2 Preface 2.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ PART 03: MARKET LANDSCAPE Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysis PART 04: MARKET SIZING Market definition Market sizing 2018 Market size and forecast 2018-2023 PART 05: FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition PART 06: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY APPLICATION Market segmentation by application Comparison by application General lighting - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Automotive lighting - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Backlighting - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Market opportunity by application PART 07: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE PART 08: GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison APAC - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Americas - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 EMEA - Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Key leading countries Market opportunity PART 09: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers Market challenges PART 10: TRENDS Adoption of COB LEDs in horticulture Development of high-color rendering index (CRI (News - Alert)) COB LEDs Growing interest in human-centric lighting PART 11: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview Landscape disruption PART 12: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. Cree, Inc. Lumileds Holding B.V. NICHIA CORPORATION OSRAM GmbH PART 13: APPENDIX Research methodology 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200412005005/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] PR-Inside.com: 2020-04-13 12:15:34 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 963 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 SHELTON, CT / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / NanoViricides, Inc. (NYSE American:NNVC) (the "Company") a leader in the development of highly effective antiviral therapies based on a novel nanomedicines platform (the "Company"), states that its President, Dr. Anil R. Diwan was interviewed by broadcast journalist Christine Corrado of Proactive Investors, a leading, multi-media news organization, investor portal and events management business with offices in New York, Sydney, Toronto, Frankfurt, and London.The interview took place remotely, with Dr. Diwan and key staff members at the Company's Shelton, CT headquarters, on March 27, 2020. A video transcript of the interview published by Proactive Investors is now available at https://youtu.be/CLfTNbHcMzU and on the Company's website at www.nanoviricides.com Key Takeaways from Dr. Diwan's Interview:The Company has completed the synthesis of a number of nanoviricide drug candidates for testing in just a few weeks after identification of virus-binding ligands. Additionally, the polymer backbone was previously manufactured in multi-kilogram quantities.The Company has acquired and expanded two different, low-threat circulating coronaviruses in its own BSL2 lab, and has already expanded them to enable testing of drug candidates. One of these coronaviruses, namely NL63, uses the same ACE2 receptor on human cells as SARS-CoV-2, although it does not cause a similar severe disease in humans. This makes it a useful model coronavirus strain for testing nanoviricide drug candidates, relevant for SARS-CoV-2.If the Company's test candidates are effective against these cell culture studies against coronaviruses, then that would provide a strong rationale that they may be expected to be effective against the current SARS-CoV-2. Presently, the Company does not have any collaboration established for further testing of its drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2. The Company is working to establish such collaborations, and it has done so successfully in the past, on an as-needed basis.The Company has already successfully developed antiviral drug testing assays based on cell culture infection of certain low-threat coronaviruses viruses in its own BSL2 certified virology lab. Development of an assay to test the effectiveness of a drug candidate is an important milestone in the drug development process. The Company completed this milestone in just a few weeks because of the extensive experience and expertise in medium throughput drug testing antiviral assays development of its Senior Virologist, who was previously at USAMRIID.Testing of the Company's drug candidates against these BSL2 coronavirus strains is expected to begin shortly in its BSL2 virology lab.NanoViricides Company COVID-19 Efforts Update Since the Proactive Interview:Initial testing of the Company's drug candidates against the BSL2 coronaviruses has been successfully completed, and verification assays are currently in progress.NanoViricides has started scaled up synthesis of certain components, in parallel to further testing, as the Company anticipates moving to the next step of drug development.Honorable U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal visited the Company's Shelton facility on Tuesday, March 31, 2020, toured our manufacturing facility, and has pledged support to the Company's efforts, as with other COVID-19 efforts by other Connecticut companies. The Company has previously described this visit in a press release dated April 6, 2020.Dr. Diwan participated as a panelist on a virtual panel discussion entitled, "COVID-19: Current Pipeline and Innovations for Therapeutics and Vaccine", organized by BioCT, an association of biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses in Connecticut, on April 8, 2020. The panel was moderated by Dr. Mostafa Analoui, Executive Director, Venture Development & Technology Incubation Program (TIP), Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. A transcript of the panel discussion is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpTP_wnEZKw&feature=youtu.be About NanoViricidesNanoViricides, Inc. ( www.nanoviricides.com) is a development stage company that is creating special purpose nanomaterials for antiviral therapy. The Company's novel nanoviricide class of drug candidates are designed to specifically attack enveloped virus particles and to dismantle them. Our lead drug candidate is NV-HHV-101 with its first indication as dermal topical cream for the treatment of shingles rash. The Company is also developing drugs against a number of viral diseases including oral and genital Herpes, viral diseases of the eye including EKC and herpes keratitis, H1N1 swine flu, H5N1 bird flu, seasonal Influenza, HIV, Hepatitis C, Rabies, Dengue fever, and Ebola virus, among others. The Company's technology is based on broad, exclusive, sub-licensable, field licenses to drugs developed in these areas from TheraCour Pharma, Inc. The Company does not currently have a license to the coronavirus field, however, TheraCour has not denied any licenses to the Company. The Company typically begins the licensing process only after demonstrating effectiveness of some candidates in optimization stage.This press release contains forward-looking statements that reflect the Company's current expectation regarding future events. Actual events could differ materially and substantially from those projected herein and depend on a number of factors. Certain statements in this release, and other written or oral statements made by NanoViricides, Inc. are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control and which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. 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. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations include, but are not limited to, those factors that are disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in documents filed by the Ms. Eunice Attakora- Manu 13.04.2020 LISTEN A renowned journalist working with Pure FM in Kumasi, Ms Eunice Attakora- Manu is leading the charge to mobilize relief items for several needy persons towards COVID-19 prevention. Ghana is currently under partial lockdown after recording 566 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and with 8 deaths as at 12th April 2020. Ms Eunice Attakora- Manu through her NGO, Vida Victoria Foundation (VVF) has supported several individuals, deprived institutions and households with assorted food items to alleviate their plight. Ms Eunice Attakora -Manu and her Foundation with support from other partners such as TIM -UK, Mabel and Friends Project and some individuals have also given and continue' to give cash donations through MoMo to needy households. Most of the recipients of the cash and food donations continue to call to express their appreciation. One Madam Mavis Mensah, a jobless widow with four children at Kasoa testified how a timely donation of GHc200.00 from Ms Eunice Attakora- Manu on Friday, April 10th, 2020 saved her life and those of her children. "I called a toll-free number 0800800800 given out by the Minister for Gender for relief but they took my details and that was all. I tried calling them back but to no avail. Luckily, one Journalist in my area by the name Edmond Gyebi complained about my issue on social media and in less than 30 minutes I had a call from Ms Eunice Attakora- Manu and she quickly sent me GHC200.00 through MoMo. And that was a life-saving intervention for mu family", Madam Mavis Mensah disclosed. Mr Osei Mensah, President of the Ghana Wheelchair Softball Federation also received 20 bags of rice from Ms Attakora -Manu to save over 30 members of the Federation and their families from the looming starvation. Meanwhile, the Vida Victoria Foundation has also presented assorted items to the inmates of the Central Destitute Infirmary at Amoafo near Bekwai in the Ashanti Region. The items included; bags of Charcoal, boxes of Mackerel, tin Tomatoes, Beans, Gari, Fish, Salt, Frozen Chicken, Milk, Sachets of water and other food items. Ms Eunice Attakora- Manu during the presentation said: I raised funds from friends on Pure FM Women Affairs show and my Facebook wall after I received several calls from the Infirmary. I spoke to the Member of Parliament for Bekwai Hon Joseph Osei Owusu and he donated some bags of rice to the Infirmary. Today I came here to present these items to the management of the infirmary to feed the inmates she said. Expressing her gratitude to those who made it possible for her to donate the items to the infirmary, Ms Attakora- Manu, however, appealed to the public, stakeholders and NGOs to always remember Bekwai Central Destitute Infirmary. Senior Childcare Officer at the Central Destitute Infirmary Nana Akua Adutwumaa expressed gratitude to the Foundation for coming to their aid. Antonov An-225 Mriya, a cargo plane which is the world's biggest aircraft, drives along an airfield starting its first commercial flight to the Australian city of Perth, in the settlement of Hostomel outside Kiev, Ukraine, May 10, 2016. (Photo/Agencies) By Liu Xuanzun The world's largest cargo plane, the An-225, has joined the international convoy to transport medical supplies from China. Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) worldwide, foreign countries have been running short on medical supplies, and with China possessing high production capacity, sending large military aircraft to transport medical supplies has become an efficient option to help relieve supplies shortage and fight the COVID battle, experts said on Monday. The An-225 arrived in North China's Tianjin on Sunday evening to transport 400 tons of medical supplies bought from China, including seven million masks and several hundred thousand protective suits, to Poland, cannews.com.cn, a Chinese news website on the aviation industry, reported on Monday. The An-225 is the world's heaviest and largest cargo aircraft and has just been upgraded, which kept the plane grounded for nearly two years, Ukrainian media Kyiv Post reported on Saturday. "With only one flight, the An-225 can bring as much cargo from China as 10 Boeing 787 Dreamliners," the Kyiv Post quoted the Polish Ministry of State Assets as saying. Despite this, the giant aircraft may have to make two round trips to fulfill the Polish contract, because its maximum capacity is about 250 tons and the medical supplies weigh 400 tons, the report said. This is probably the reason the An-225 was chosen for this mission, analysts said. Air defense expert Fu Qianshao told the Global Times on Monday that the An-225 was originally designed to airlift a spacecraft, so it was given very strong payload-carrying capabilities, much stronger than other heavy military cargo planes like the C-5 and An-124, which are already of a class larger than China's Y-20. The An-225 was developed by the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and was inherited by Ukraine and mothballed following its collapse. It was repurposed in 2001 to a civilian cargo carrier, reports said. The German military also announced on Wednesday that it will hire the An-225 to transport medical supplies to Germany, China Central Television reported on Friday. Since the COVID-19 broke out in many countries and China's phased success in containing the disease on a domestic level and its resumption of high production capability, many foreign countries have sent military cargo planes to China to transport medical supplies back home. For instance, Russia sent an An-124 and two Il-76 cargo planes, and Algeria sent two Il-76s to Shanghai on April 4 to load supplies, including face masks, the National Business Daily reported on April 5. The Iraqi military sent a C-130 cargo plane and the Kuwaiti military dispatched a C-17 transport aircraft to Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on Wednesday to collect face masks and ventilators, the Guangzhou Daily reported on Wednesday. Fu said that military cargo planes are usually more efficient than civilian passenger or cargo planes because they possess stronger payload-carrying capabilities and have rear or even front cargo doors, enabling vehicles to directly offload cargo into the aircraft, resulting in very fast loading speed. All of these countries are engaged in an intensive fight against the COVID-19 and must want to get the supplies as fast as possible, Fu said. Medics from the Oklahoma National Guard could provide valuable assistance with COVID-19 response, including at public test sites, and are receiving training in case they are activated. Oklahoma Army and Air National Guard medics spent Friday and Saturday in Oklahoma City to prepare for potential missions with civilian counterparts in response to the outbreak, according to a news release. Its interesting to see how we do things similarly and a lot of the things we do differently, Senior Airman Jessica Brinegar, aeromedical medical evacuation technician, said of their public health counterparts in state and county offices. Representatives from the Oklahoma City-County Health Department and University of Oklahoma Medical Center were on hand to share their experiences working the front lines of the COVID-19 response. Lynnda Parker briefed the medics about procedures at the Oklahoma City-County Health Department test-collection site she manages, which has seen as many as 223 patients in one day. Parker said support from the Oklahoma City Police Department has helped the site run efficiently despite the high volume of patients. Oil in London eked out a modest gain on Monday as investors weighed whether an unprecedented deal by the worlds biggest producers to cut output could stabilize the market reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. Futures rose less than 1% after earlier surging 8% following the OPEC+ alliance agreement to slash production by 9.7 million barrels a day starting in May. West Texas Intermediate fell 1.5%, and the May-June timespread moved deeper into contango, indicating that traders see the physical glut worsening even with the output cuts. The group reached the deal following days of intense negotiations after Mexico declined to endorse the original agreement reached Thursday. While the OPEC+ deal amounts to the largest coordinated cut in history, its dwarfed by the estimated 20 million barrels a day or greater decline in oil consumption as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S., Brazil and Canada will contribute an additional 3.7 million barrels in nominal production reductions as their output declines, and other Group of 20 nations will cut 1.3 million more. The G-20 numbers dont represent real voluntary cuts but rather the impact that low prices have already had on output, and they would need months, or perhaps more than a year, to take effect. THE BIG DEAL: Oil price war ends with OPEC+ deal to cut production The scale of the demand destruction is just so large, even this historic agreement cant offset it in the short term, Daniel Ghali, a TD Securities commodity strategist, said by phone. Longer term, what it can do is ensure a strong recovery. The OPEC+ deal came after days of brokering by U.S. President Donald Trump, who spoke by phone to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, followed by a three-way conference call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are ready to cut oil production further if needed when the OPEC+ alliance meets again in June, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the oil minister, told reporters on a conference call on Monday. Trump on Monday morning asserted in a tweet that the cut would be closer to 20 million barrels per day, without getting into specifics. West Texas Intermediate for May delivery fell 35 cents to close at $22.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Mays discount to June settled at $6.85 a barrel, the biggest its been since 2009. Brent for June delivery gained 26 cents to close at $31.74 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. Saudi Aramco reduced pricing for all its grades to Asia, signaling the state companys intention to defend sales in its biggest market even while paring output. FUEL FIX: Now more than ever, you need our energy news in your inbox The global market remains very oversupplied, and Aramco is still prepared to fight for its market share, said Ole Sloth Hansen, head of commodities strategy at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen. Oil prices have been in freefall since the middle of February as some of the worlds biggest economies went into lockdown to try to stop the coronavirus from spreading. Whether the OPEC+ deal will be enough to steady a market where demand losses may amount to 35 million barrels a day and storage space is rapidly running out. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. called the agreement historic yet insufficient. The voluntary reductions by OPEC+ would only lead to an actual production cut of 4.3 million barrels a day from first-quarter levels, assuming full compliance by core-OPEC and 50% by other participants in May, Goldman said in a note. The bank sees demand losses in April and May averaging 19 million barrels a day. The scale of production cuts is a move in the right direction, but considering how badly demand is affected, it was never going to be significant enough to push the market closer to balance, said Edward Bell, senior director for market economics at Emirates NBD PJSC in Dubai. Is Russia going to cut production by 2.5 million barrels a day in two weeks? Thats a pretty steep ask. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. 98 Shares Share Graduating medical students early is not a completely novel concept. During WWII, there was a significant physician shortage, and various medical schools initiated a 3-year accelerated MD program to produce more physicians. These programs were eventually discontinued in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1918, the influenza pandemic created a similar situation. Third- and fourth-year medical students were enlisted to help treat the overwhelming number of patients, both those with influenza and those without. Today, COVID-19 resurfaces the question of graduating medical students and other trainees early. Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries, decided to cancel the final exam for its medical students and called upon 10,000 students to help with triage, to perform tests, and to support general practitioners clinics. In the United States, there have been significant discussions of graduating fourth-year medical students early in order to help buffer the front lines. Many medical schools have initiated processes to allow students to voluntarily graduate early, but this is not the nationwide standard. The debate has now centered on whether more schools should and need to do this, especially as different parts of the country face different waves of the pandemic. Pros 1. Fourth-year medical students can fill the need for providers immediately By April, most fourth-year medical students have finished their required rotations. Many had vacation or were scheduled to complete online or other electives when the effects of COVID-19 became widespread in the US. For most fourth-year medical students, the amount of new knowledge gained from those electives may not be as critical to their future success. Therefore, fourth-year medical students can fill the need for providers immediately if they are allowed to graduate early. Many fourth-year medical students are currently quarantined at home, and if healthy and able, they can be quickly mobilized to immediately provide relief in critical areas. 2. Fourth-year medical students generally have fewer comorbidities As COVID-19 continues to drain resources (including able health care personnel), there has been a push to bring retired providers into the front-lines. However, many of our retired providers have comorbidities that put them at a higher risk for more serious complications of COVID-19. While no one is exempt from COVID-19 and its potentially lethal complications, at this point, fewer comorbidities tend to indicate a better prognosis. One could then hypothesize that students with fewer comorbidities are at a lower risk of COVID-19 complications. 3. Fourth-year medical students can help free up more experienced providers A brand-new intern is not ready to take care of a critically ill patient. However, a brand-new intern can help take care of common bread and butter cases (congestive heart failure, COPD, non-COVID-19 pneumonia, etc.). The majority of medical students should have encountered these cases on their internal medicine rotation and other electives. With proper supervision, a new intern can help manage these patients and help free up more experienced providers to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients. Cons 1. Social distancing would be broken in many cases for fourth-year medical students moving for their residencies Social distancing is one of the most important weapons to fight the virus. However, by graduating early, potentially tens of thousands of students (and possibly their families) will be required to move to different areas of the country. Additionally, as it is known that COVID-19 can rapidly transmit through asymptomatic carriers, this could lead to the unintentional spread of the virus. This mass movement also puts fourth-year students and their families at risk. 2. Introducing new interns into the front-line would further deplete dwindling PPE resources PPE is critical in this fight, and unfortunately, we still do not have an adequate supply for all health care providers at risk. While new interns may not directly be the primary doctor for COVID-19 patients, they will undoubtedly need to use PPE for other cases or COVID-19 rule outpatients. While it is absolutely necessary to protect everyone with PPE, an influx of health care providers may put a new strain on an otherwise dwindling precious resource. 3. Fourth-year medical students will be brand new interns and therefore need a lot of oversight While the July Effect (the idea that teaching hospitals in July have more mistakes/medical errors because new interns start in July every year) has been variably supported and contradicted, it is without a doubt that new interns need close oversight at the beginning of their careers. In a typical environment, upper-level residents provide months of close, individualized oversight until interns are able to take on more and more responsibility. However, additional oversight will reduce the overall time upper-level residents have while they continue to juggle complex patients, including COVID-19 cases. A fourth-years perspective As a fourth-year medical student, I can see both perspectives and do not know the right answer. A big part of me wants to help and be part of the front-lines. I went to medical school to ultimately provide care, and there is no better time than the present. However, a part of me understands that there are more complex issues at hand. Could I be doing more harm than good by rushing into residency? Would my presence create an extra burden? In this time of great uncertainty, these decisions cannot be taken lightly. However, due to the evolving nature of the pandemic, it is critical that medical schools nationwide discuss this internally as well as with their local hospitals, academic institutions, governing bodies, and the CDC in order to be ready when a decision must be made. As COVID-19 permeates the country, the need for health care workers on the front-line becomes ever more pressing. Should fourth-year medical students fill that void? Nitin Agrawal is a medical student. Image credit: Shutterstock.com A Russian sniper rifle has just claimed the title of the world's most deadly rifle is now being hailed as the 'game-changer'! The new Lobaev Arms SVLK014S is said to be able to kill the enemy target from a distance of nearly two miles away! This legendary weapon costs 30,000 Pounds or about $37,000 and weighs about 22lbs and fires just one massive round at a time due to its esteemed single-shot bolt action. The Lobaev Arms SVLK014S According to The Mirror, his weapon is said to be able to fire accurately for up to 3,000m which is double the effective range of the previous L115A3, the older sniper rifle which the British Army uses that is accurate for up to 1,500m. The chief engineer of the company that produced this mean machine, Yuri Snichkin, has recently said that "This weapon was made piece by piece, just like a Ferrari or Porsche, for people who appreciate high-precision guns as well as for professional snipers." Read Also: Coronavirus: Underage Girl and 5 Adults Shot At 400 Person Party That Breaks California's Stay-At Home Order According to its specs, it fires a 408-inch Cheyenne Tactical round at about 900m per second from the very barrel itself! This is almost triple the speed of sound! Yuri Snichkin also said that "Such a bullet can pierce a rail that is 3cm thick. Imagine what will happen to an enemy. No bullet-proof vest will help him." The members of the Royal Military Police's Weapons Intelligence Section has also stated that if the rifle can actually take out a target even if the target is located two miles away, this new sniper rifle could be a complete game changer! Two things were noted by the member of the Royal Military's Police Weapons Intelligence Section. First being that a sniper has to be able to make correct judgment calls whenever he pulls the trigger. The second being that the rifle carried by the sniper has to be robust as well as in mint condition. The implications of this new gun This new gun implies that gun technology has been able to move a step forward as this new powerful weapon has broken the barriers of previous rifles capacity. 3000m is a very long stretch and can help snipers even more by providing better accuracy as well as being reliable despite the long distance. 3000m is about close to two miles which is a fairly long distance for a single rifle to be able to cover. With this new Russian technology, the user will be able to have a better shooting experience with the longer distance. Read Also: [GRIM VIDEO] Ecuador Residents Can Smell Corpses on the Street after Deaths Rise From Coronavirus The only problem that this rifle has is that it costs about $37,000 USD which is a lot of money even for hobbyists and enthusiasts. If you are interested in purchasing this gun, you might have quite a lot of saving up to do before you can actually lay hands on this rifle. For those who have the extra money and can afford to buy this rifle right away, you will be able to get your hands on the 'game-changer' itself! Seven states of the country till now have announced that they will be extending the lockdown beyond April 14 in their respective areas. The 21-day nation-wide lockdown that was initiated on March 25 will end on April 14. Odisha, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are states were the lockdown won't be ending on April 14 but will go on till April 30. While in Punjab the lockdown will go on till May 1. Most Chief Ministers had suggested Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their video conference last week that the nation-wide lockdown should be extended by two weeks. PM Modi said that there seems to be a consensus amongst the states on extending the lockdown for two weeks. Odisha Odisha was the first state to announce the extension of the lockdown till April 30. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced the decision on April 9. He had also said that the schools in the state would be closed till June 17. Punjab A day later, on April 10, Punjab CM Amarinder Singh also announced that the lockdown in Punjab has been extended for two weeks and would end on May 1. Maharashtra Soon after the interaction with all other CMs and PM, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray also announced that the lockdown would be extended till April 30. Thackeray said that the lockdown can be relaxed in certain areas while it needs to be strictly implemented in others. Maharashtra Health Minister Rakesh Tope even suggested that the lockdown be extended beyond April if norms are flouted. Telangana and West Bengal On April 11, CMs of Telangana and West Bengal both announced that they would be extending the lockdown in their respective states to curb the spread of coronavirus. Telangana CM Chandrashekhar Rao said that there is a possibility of lifting the lockdown after April 30 in a phased manner if things improved. In West Bengal, all educational institutes have been shut till June 10. Karnataka Karnataka also on Saturday announced that it will be extending the lockdown for at least two more weeks. Tamil Nadu On Monday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami announced that the lockdown in the state has been extended till April 30. India has reported 7,987 active cases of coronavirus (as of 8 am, April 13), according to the Health Ministry. Total deaths stood at 308. As many as 856 patients have been cured or discharged and 1 migrated. Also Read: Coronavirus India live updates: 308 people dead in the country as active COVID-19 cases near 8,000-mark Also Read: Coronavirus: Farmers demand fair price for produce before lockdown extension kicks in [April 13, 2020] Everstream to Donate More Than 8,850 Meals to Seven Ronald McDonald House Charities Chapters Everstream, the business-only fiber network, today announced plans to provide local Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) Chapters with a daily meal in seven of its markets for 30 days, beginning today (April 13) in several markets. Everstream will support the following seven Ronald McDonald House locations - in cities where the company has local offices, to serve an estimated 295 meals daily - feeding between 8 and 100 people at each House, including families and staff. Cleveland: Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland Chicago: Ronald McDonald House near UChicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital Columbus, Ohio: Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio Grand Rapids, Michigan: Ronald McDonald House of Western Michigan Indianapolis: Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Indiana Milwaukee: Ronald McDonald House Charities of Eastern Wisconsin St. Louis: Ronald McDonald House Charities of St. Louis Ronald McDonald House programs provide comfort, support and resources to families with ill or injured children being treated at nearby hospitals and medical facilities. Stays can range from one night to several months and sometimes extend to a year or more. There are more than 375 Ronald McDonald House programs globally. Each program compassionately addresses and directly improves the well-being of the diverse children and families they serve. "This is ur opportunity to give back to the communities we serve in a meaningful way at this very difficult time. Everstream is considered an essential business because we deliver and maintain the infrastructure our customers need to remain productive. The impact to our business has been minimal, and it's our responsibility to help where we can," said Everstream President and CEO Brett Lindsey. To further support these seven communities during the current COVID-19 pandemic, Everstream will order meals from local restaurants exclusively to assist as many businesses as possible. Everstream's local office managers will coordinate the daily order and delivery process. Everstream will provide lunch or dinner for a total of 30 days. Meals and dates will be determined by donation availability and location. Everstream selected Ronald McDonald House Charities as its corporate beneficiary for 2020, with plans to help RMHC through several regular initiatives and volunteer opportunities across its Midwest footprint. Year-to-date, Everstream team members have donated their time and resources to packing 678 individual snack packs and 50 family-sized snack packs for RMHC families to grab and go, 15 hospitality bags with personal care items, such as deodorant, toothpaste and razors, and 45 specialty bags for St. Patrick's Day with candy and novelty items. The company also has donated bulk boxed food items, including fruit and snacks, and several pounds of pull tabs to recycle. Everstream is prepared to resume these activities once it is appropriate to do so or will adapt as needed given current social distancing and shelter-in-place directives. About Everstream Everstream has raised the bar for business connectivity, delivering a business-only fiber network with the speed, reliability, scale and performance that today's enterprises demand. With more than 13,000 route miles of fiber and speeds up to 100 Gbps, Everstream's enterprise-grade network delivers robust business fiber services, including dedicated internet access, dark fiber, Ethernet and data center solutions. Through its "Do What You Say You Will Do" approach, Everstream is a valued partner dedicated to the success of business customers. For more information, visit everstream.net. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005278/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Social media has been feeling off in the time of COVID-19. Twitter is one big anxiety spiral (even more than usual). The idyllic, performative quality of Instagram doesnt always match the moment, either. Luckily, in the early days of social distancing, Marco Polo came into my life. Good morning. Ive been in a very dark place, a dear college friend said in her first Marco Polo message to our group in mid-March, as life as we knew it began to close in on itself. She was lying on the floor of her childs playroom wearing no makeup and a hoodie, already lonely and missing her normal routine. But for levity, she showed us her baby, who was blowing bubbles, and a goblet of red wine. It felt like the 2020, mid-pandemic version of a Real World confessionalexcept only for our close friends eyes. So began an ongoing, almost month-long virtual conversation in which four of us, all living in different parts of the country, have shared a daily blotter of our quarantine lives with each other via private Marco Polo messages (akin to a video walkie talkie, as early adopter Ice-T described it). In the middle of the coronavirus chaos, Marco Poloor, as the initiated call it, Polois blessedly flexible. Unlike Zoom or FaceTime, it doesnt demand users meet live at a specific time (those times are often rescheduled, in my experience). If youre a busy human, its really hard to schedule blocks of time for all of the video calls, Marco Polo co-founder Vlada Bortnik told Vogue in an interview conducted via the app. (In fact, Bortnik and her husband Michal created the app in 2012 after struggling to keep up with family in Poland, France and across the U.S. through the usual channels.) Instead, like the classic pool game of the same name, Polo fosters an easy, low-pressure kind of banter, with messages bouncing back and forth (its logo is a cheerful beach ball) at your convenience throughout the day. When Im stressed, stir-crazy, or otherwise spiraling, I Polo, and the members of my group ping back one by one when they get a chancewhether from behind their mask in a grocery store parking lot or a room in which theyre temporarily hiding from their families. Story continues Some messages are banal (announcing Cats is available to purchase, performing 90s raps, or toasting with 4:45 p.m. cocktails); others are downright gut-wrenching (tearful video messages about sick loved ones). Polo has largely replaced our text chainits so much more vivid and intimate to see each others facesand become our girls night; our mom group; our lifeline when we are crying out for connection. I would not be getting through COVID without Marco Polo, Leslie Golden, a mother of two in Alexandria, Virginia, who discovered Polo during the pandemic, told me in an interview conducted via the app. She and her mom friends share craft ideas, recipes, and hot tips on which stores are still stocked with supplies, but shes also turned to it in her toughest moments. I had to deliver some difficult news, and it was pretty amazing to just have that conversation once, she saysshe simply sent a video message to good friends in her Polo group. The Exact Moment I Had My Mom Meltdown Like me, Golden is one of the many newcomers to the eight-year-old app. In the past month, Marco Polo reported a more than 1,000% increase in new signups; activity within the app has more than doubled. At a time like this, where theres so much fear and anxiety and uncertainty, we want to hold on to our loved ones in ways that are not superficial, Bortnik said. Polo makes it possible for you to have these really rich face-to-face interactions, but completely on your own time. I dont like FaceTime because youre not really in control of itsomeone can just FaceTime you, Amy Poehler told her Polo buddy, Seth Meyers, on Late Night last week. I like Marco Polo because you can decide when you want to hear peoples messages, and also you can fast-forward peoplea reference to the 2x button that lets you speed up your friends videos, a bonus when youre playing catch-up. (2x me is a frequent, self-aware refrain in my Polo groups, when someone finds themselves getting long-winded in the middle of a message.) The asynchronicity of Polo makes it feel like FaceTime, but at your leisure, allowing friends to record and share heart-to-hearts without interruption. It means that you can communicate your thoughts and you know theyre going to be heard, Grace Loughborough, a nonprofit staffer and mother of a one-year-old in Newport, Rhode Island, who joined Polo shortly after social distancing began, told me. But you dont have to worry about the other person being free in that moment. Hadley Miller, a Pilates instructor and mom of two in Scarsdale, New York, is using Polo to stay close to friends in different countries and time zones, with totally opposing schedules to hers. My friend, who is a healthcare hero, working as a primary ICU doctor during COVID...Ive never been in touch with her more, Miller says. It speaks to Marco Polos ability to make you feel like you didnt miss the window to talk to somebody. You can jump into a conversation or answer a question or laugh at a joke that someone told five hours ago. Unlike past group texts, Miller also notes, theres no figuring out someones intention or tone, because you see it and you hear it and you feel it. Marco Polo is emerging as the happy, soothing social app the world needs now. Marco Polo is emerging as the happy, authentic, soothing social app the world needs now. People record Polos from bed, in their pajamas, or even the bath. There are no likes or other metrics that breed social comparison; no ads, no newsfeed to get you hooked or tumbling down a rabbit hole keeping tabs on people you hardly know. It is the rare social platform that feels like an oasis, a safe space. The app is designed to be for the people you feel closest to, not the world, Bortnik told me. Thats what makes it possible for people to be themselves. When only your best friends are seeing it, there isnt this pressure to perform, or impress. You get to be with people who care about you, not who you're pretending to be. Incidentally, the members of my Polo group are among the people I miss the most right now, but their daily dispatches popping up on my phone have become a source of pure joylike the most entertaining yet substantive reality show I could ever hope to watch. We are in close contact during one of the hardest times in our collective lives, making each other laugh and building each other up, one Polo at a time. Bortnik is especially proud of the way the app keeps not just one-on-one friendships, but groups, feeling close. She, too, treasures that special bond you feel when youre with a group of people you lovein her case, a Polo group of college friends. As socially distant as we must all be now, she said, its like were together again. Originally Appeared on Vogue Robotic process automation (RPA) is transforming business processes in nearly every industry by streamlining data entry and other low-level tasks. Now the technology, which populates digital forms in a fraction of the time it takes humans to do the same, is getting a long overdue upgrade. Advancement in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence is paving the way for intelligent automation (IA), a smarter brand of RPA that learns to execute entire business processes with context, rather than as a series of discrete tasks. The compute power is there, the data sets are there and the imagination is there, says Yousuf Khan, CIO of RPA provider Automation Anywhere. The future of RPA is intelligent automation. IA incorporates algorithms capable of tasks such as handling exceptions, orchestrating decisions or even looping in chatbots for conversational messaging, says Craig Le Clair, a Forrester Research analyst whose book, Invisible Robots in the Quiet of the Night: How AI and Automation Will Restructure the Workforce, chronicles the rise of software-based agents. The promise of IA By 2022, IA will generate $134 billion in labor value by enabling businesses to shift staff, skills and investment toward critical functions such as innovation, augmenting the customer experience or operational efficiency, according to Forrester data. Holistic IA will orchestrate hundreds if not thousands of events across business processes; its a Holy Grail that UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, along with dozens of startups, such as Kryon and AntWorks, are chasing. The promise of IA led Khan, who has a passion for using technology to make business processes more efficient, to join Automation Anywhere in January. Khans department serves as a guinea pig for testing the companys products to make sure they are fit for broader consumption. Automation Anywhere is among a growing group of vendors building bots that use sophisticated algorithms to manage corporate business processes, ostensibly from beginning to end. The company, which has deployed more than 2 million bots at enterprises to date, is currently seeding beta customers with Discovery Bot, an IA solution that leverages ML and AI to capture and analyze user actions in an effort to sniff out repetitive steps employees take as they switch between business applications. RPA alone can automate such tasks, but Discovery Bot prioritizes the tasks by potential value to the business and deploys RPA bots to perform them. Prioritizing the automation backlog is a key focus for many companies implementing RPA. As such, the market opportunity for Discovery Bot is potentially princely; as much as 80 percent of repetitive tasks that can be automated remain undiscovered, Khan says, adding that the tool will be available early this year. When IA kicks in, there will be an exponential impact in how works gets done and how companies can operate faster, Khan says. Computer vision to help IA see and read better UiPath is using ML to improve two challenging tasks for RPA: how bots visualize whats on computer screens and how to parse documents for processing. RPA depends on a bots ability to see elements on a webpage or user interface. However, a virtual desktop interface (VDI) doesnt present a traditional UI; rather, it streams an image of a remote desktop, making it impossible for bots to recognize elements. To solve this problem, UiPath is incorporating into its bots computer vision, which leverages ML, optical character recognition and fuzzy matching, to automatically identify elements in an application and to execute tasks, says Param Kahlon, UiPaths chief product officer, who describes such IA capabilities as hyperautomation. UiPath is also applying ML to help its bots read documents more intelligently. For example, while a human accounts payable clerk knows how to classify invoices by quickly scanning fields such as suppliers, products, due date and purchase order number, most bots are limited to rules-based extraction methods, which lean on structured data to read and automate these processes. Leveraging rules-based and ML model-based extraction, UiPaths bots identify structured, unstructured and semi-structured data elements to process documents, similar to how a human might complete such tasks, Kahlon says. The fuzzy future of IA But like its RPA predecessor, IA faces adoption headwinds, including one of an ethical persuasion. These days, bots are generally viewed in one of two ways: as digital employees designed to replace human jobs, or as agents designed to augment work performed by humans, ostensibly freeing them up from mind-numbing tasks to focus on work that provides greater business value. Forresters Le Clair acknowledges that automation will contribute to some headcount attrition, but says that when a bot or a machine takes over a task previously performed by a human, the enterprise has those labor hours at its disposal to deploy elsewhere or bank as profit. So ideally, IA wont be held up much on that account. Also unsettled is whether the majority of companies will pony up the cash for algorithm-driven RPA whose decisions are hard to qualify or explain. Even so, some tech leaders are excited by IAs potential. American Express Global Business Travel uses RPA to extract information from multiple systems to ease the onboarding process for corporate clients, says Dilip Karandikar, AMEX GBTs vice president of solution architecture and engineering. But Karandikar expects the company will eventually embrace end-to-end automation of services. Hyperautomation is the next trend, Karandikar says. That is going to become more and more prevalent. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Agustinus Hari (The Jakarta Post) Manado, North Sulawesi Mon, April 13, 2020 13:56 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18a1cd 1 National prison-riot,unrest,manado,North-Sulawesi,penitentiary,COVID-19,coronavirus,outbreak-in-Indonesia,virus-korona-indonesia Free A riot broke out at Manado Penitentiary in North Sulawesi, allegedly triggered by visitation restrictions and early release of inmates amid COVID-19 concerns, culminating in a massive fire that razed parts of the prison complex on Saturday afternoon. A propane tank inside the prison appeared to have been ruptured by an as-yet-unidentified party at around 4:30 p.m. local time, resulting in the blaze that went on to damage some of the buildings vital infrastructures. Several areas in the correctional facility were still on fire hours later at 8:30 p.m. Lumaksono, the head of the Law and Human Rights Ministry office in North Sulawesi, confirmed that a riot had taken place at the penitentiary. The inmates have been on edge because of COVID-19. We released 115 convicts yesterday, while the remaining 435 inmates were to stay in prison, Lumaksono said. These remaining inmates had also asked for parole because they were scared of [the pandemic]. Read also: COVID-19: Indonesia releases more than 5,500 inmates, plans to free 50,000 As of Sunday, North Sulawesi had recorded at least 17 confirmed COVID-19 cases and two deaths caused by the disease. Prison warden Sulistyo Ariwibowo remained tight-lipped as to what caused the unrest. Other members of the local police force who were at the scene to apprehend those involved in the riot are also yet to have any conclusive answer. We have yet to learn the exact cause [of the incident]. Right now, members of the local police force and mobile brigade are securing the premises, said Manado Police chief Sr. Comr. Benny Bawensel. Rumors have since circulated that the riot was incited by a number of drug convicts who had been complaining about the alleged restriction of their visitation privileges. The prison management had purportedly limited prison visits to prevent the distribution of illicit drugs in the building. Speculation was also rife that the incident was triggered by several inmates who envied their fellow inmates who were granted early release due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remaining inmates had reportedly thrown rocks at a number of prison guards to convey their disappointment. Read also: Jokowi against releasing graft convicts amid COVID-19 pandemic North Sulawesi Police chief Sr. Comr. Jules Abast said the police had cooperated with the prison management to investigate the cause of the unrest. Police personnel had since regained control of the building, according to him. The situation has returned [to normal], Jules said, adding that around 400 inmates had been accounted for following the riot. He went on to say that several inmates and police personnel who sustained injuries during the conflict had also been evacuated. Parts of the prison that were damaged in the fire included cell blocks for graft and drug convicts, a polyclinic, cafeteria, and workshop, acting director general of corrections at the Law and Human Rights Ministry, Nugroho, said. Hundreds of the remaining inmates had since been transferred to several other correctional facilities across North Sulawesi, he said. As many as 137 inmates have been transferred to other facilities across the province 32 were transferred to Bitung Penitentiary, 34 to Tondano Penitentiary, 30 to Amurang Penitentiary, and 41 to the North Sulawesi Police headquarters, Nugroho said in a statement on Sunday, adding that there were currently 295 remaining inmates at Manado Penitentiary. Tejo Harwanto, the directorate generals order and security division head, went on to say that 41 inmates including 18 suspects had been apprehended. We will further question them, Tejo said. (rfa) So long as there is no outward sign of spoilage (such as bulging or rust), or visible spoilage when you open it (such as cloudiness, moldiness or rotten smells), your canned fruits, vegetables and meats will remain as delicious and palatable as the day you bought them for years (or in the case of, say, Vienna sausages at least as good as they were to begin with). The little button on the top of jarred goods, which will bulge if there has been significant bacterial action inside the jar, is still the best way to tell if the contents are going to be all right to eat. Depending on storage, that could be a year or a decade. Similarly, cans of soda will keep their fizz for years, glass bottles for up to a year and plastic bottles for a few months. (Most plastics are gas-permeable.) Oils, even rancidity-prone unrefined oils, stored in sealed cans are nearly indestructible as well (as evidenced by the two-gallon tin of roasted sesame oil that Ive been working through since 2006). Oils in sealed glass bottles, less so. Oil in open containers can vary greatly in shelf life, but all will last longer if you dont keep them near or above your stovetop, where heat can get to them. How do you tell if your oil is good? The same way you would with most foods: Follow your nose. Old oil will start to develop metallic, soapy or in some cases such as with canola oil fishy smells. Dont trust your nose? Put a drop on your fingertip and squeeze it. Rancid oil will feel tacky as opposed to slick. Also from the oil-and-vinegar aisle: Salad dressings will last for months or over a year in the fridge, especially if they come in bottles with narrow squeeze openings (as opposed to open-mouthed jars). Mustard lasts forever. Ketchup will start to turn color before the year is out, but will still remain palatable. Contrary to popular belief, mayonnaise especially when it doesnt contain ingredients like fresh lemon juice or garlic has an exceptionally long shelf life. (High concentrations of fat, salt and acid are all enemies of bacteria and mold.) The international aisle is a den of long-lasting sauces, pickles and condiments. Ive yet to find the quality inflection point for oyster sauce, pickled chiles, chile sauces (like sambal oelek or Sriracha), fermented bean sauces (like hoisin or Sichuan broad-bean chile paste) or fish sauce. Soy sauce has a reputation for longevity, but I keep mine in the refrigerator to fend off the fishy aromas that can start to develop after a few months in the pantry. We all know what a rotten egg smells like, right? Why else would it be a benchmark for describing so many other bad smells? But how many times have you actually smelled one: Once? Twice? Never? Probably never, at least according to the impromptu poll I conducted on Twitter. Thats because it takes a long time for eggs to go bad. Visitors hold their mobile phones in front of exhibits showing People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's first aircraft carrier Liaoning at the Beijing Exhibition Center, in Beijing, China, on Sept. 24, 2019. (Jason Lee/File Photo/Reuters) Taiwan Says Chinese Carrier Group Drills Close to Island TAIPEIA Chinese naval flotilla led by the countrys first aircraft carrier passed by the eastern and southern coasts of Taiwan on April 12 to carry out drills, the islands defense ministry said, in the latest uptick in military tensions. Democratically-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as its sacred territory, has complained of an increased Chinese military presence near the island in the past few weeks, and has told China it should be concentrating on fighting the new CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus rather than menacing the island. Taiwans Defense Ministry said the Liaoning, Chinas first operational aircraft carrier, and five accompanying warships passed first through the Miyako Strait, located between Japans islands of Miyako and Okinawa, to the northeast of Taiwan, on Saturday. On Sunday, the carrier group sailed in waters on Taiwans east coast and then into seas to the south of Taiwan, carrying out exercises, the ministry added in a statement. Chinese Navys Aircraft carrier Liaoning takes part in a naval parade off the eastern port city of Qingdao, to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy, China, on April 23, 2019. (Jason Lee/File Photo/Reuters) Taiwans armed forces monitored the carrier groups progress throughout and completed relevant actions in response to ensure national security and protect regional peace and stability, it added, without elaborating. Taiwan typically scrambles fighter jets in response to Chinese maneuvers. There was no immediate response from Chinas Defense Ministry. Chinas two aircraft carriers are no strangers to the waters around Taiwan. A group of Taiwan Air Force technicians run behind a US-made F-16V fighter jet during an exercise at a military base in Chiayi, southern Taiwan on Jan. 15, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images) In late December, shortly before presidential and parliamentary elections in Taiwan, Chinas newest aircraft carrier, the Shandong, sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, a move condemned by Taiwan as attempted intimidation. The U.S. military has also been active in waters near Taiwan recently. A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, the same day that Chinese fighter jets drilled in waters close to the island. Taiwan is the Chinese regimes most sensitive territorial issue and a potential military flashpoint. The regime has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. By Ben Blanchard Epoch Times staff contributed to this report. The Chickamauga (Tn.) Post Office, at 7610 E. Brainerd Road is temporarily closed due to damage sustained in Sunday nights tornado. Customers may pick up Post Office Box mail and obtain other Retail services at the Eastgate Station Post Office, 711 Eastgate Loop. The Eastgate office is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. No information is available as to when repairs to the Chickamauga Post Office location will be complete. The Tennessee District serves ZIP Codes 370-374, 376-385 in Tennessee and 307 in northern Georgia. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. Vestergaards Lifestraw personal device as well as home and community use water purifiers make dirty water drinkable LifeStraw technology gets rid of viruses, parasites, bacteria and metals such as lead and chromium to make contaminated water drinkable. (Photo | LifeStraw) Chennai: Several communities across the world whose women have had to walk several kilometres everyday to fetch water for daily use would now be struggling for drinking water as their movement is restricted by the coronavirus lockdown. Offering a solution is Lifestraw, which turns dirty water drinkable. LifeStraw technology gets rid of parasites, bacteria and metals such as lead and chromium to make contaminated water drinkable. Most importantly, some LifeStraw solutions get rid of viruses. Although the coronavirus is not known to be waterborne, its reassuring to know that there is a water-purifying solution that kills viruses too. A collaboration between Vestergaard and The Carter Center, headed by former United States President Jimmy Carter, has been able to nearly eradicate the water-borne disease guinea worm in West Africa by providing 38 million LifeStraw filters to The Carter Center since 1994. Perhaps, in a similar manner, local governments, NGOs or corporate companies using their corporate social responsibility funds could provide this essential tool to remote communities with no access to clean water. The cost of a long-lasting, high-capacity water purifier such as the LifeStraw Community is USD 395 (Rs 30,000), which is hardly the cost of a mid-range smartphone. For home use, a 7-cup water filter pitcher made of BPA Plastic is available for USD 39.95 (Rs 3,000). For outdoor use for health workers in remote areas, or anyone who after the coronavirus lockdown wants to go camping, one can buy the LifeStraw advanced water filter bottle for USD 31.96 (Rs 2,400) or the LifeStraw Steel Personal Straw Filter for USD 43.95 (Rs 3,350). With every LifeStraw product you buy, the humanitarian arm of the company provides safe drinking water to a child for a school year, the website says. President Donald Trump bows his head during a Easter blessing by Bishop Harry Jackson, senior pastor at Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on April 10, 2020. (Al Drago/ Pool/Getty Images) Trumps Developer Friend Stanley Chera Dies of CCP Virus A friend and donor to President Donald Trump who the president had said was in a coma and seriously ill after becoming infected with the CCP virus has died. Stanley I. Cheras death on April 11 was reported by The Real Deal, which covers the New York real estate industry. The publication cited unidentified sources who have worked with Crown Acquisitions, the firm Chera founded and ran. Chera was in his late 70s. A White House official on Sunday confirmed Cheras identity and ties to the president. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to share details about Trumps personal friendships. Trump had spoken at recent White House briefings about a friend who had fallen ill with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which has killed more than 20,600 Americans as of midday Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Healthcare workers wheel the bodies of deceased people from the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center during the outbreak of COVID-19 in New York City, New York, on April 4, 2020. (Reuters/Andrew Kelly) Trump first spoke about his friend on March 29 as he described the viciousness of the disease. I had a friend who went to a hospital the other day. Hes a little older, and hes heavy, but hes (a) tough person, Trump said. And he went to the hospital, and a day later, hes in a coma hes not doing well. The speed and the viciousness, especially if it gets the right person, its horrible. Its really horrible, he said. The president, who is 73, alluded a day later to having friends who were ill. I have some friends that are unbelievably sick, Trump said. We thought they were going in for a mild stay. And, in one case, hes unconsciousin a coma. And you say, How did that happen? Trump had left the impression that having personally known someone who became sick with COVID-19, the disease the CCP virus causes, had influenced his decisions about how to handle the outbreak. But asked at a later briefing whether his friends case had marked a turning point in his thinking, Trump said it had not because he had been seeing the statistics and the rising case numbers. Hes sort of central casting for what were talking about, and it hit him very hard, Trump said of Chera on April 1. Ive never seen anything like it. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters following a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, at the White House in Washington on April 6, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Trump called out his friend and campaign donor at a 2019 rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as one of the biggest builders and real estate people in the world. Hes a great guy, and hes been with me from the beginning, Trump said. For most people, the CCP virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. But it can cause more severe symptoms in some people, especially older adults and people with existing health conditions. The vast majority of people recover. Trump has been tested at least twice for the CCP virus, with negative results each time, the White House said. By Darlene Superville Epoch Times staff contributed to this report. Keanu Reeves has a doppelganger in Brazil and netizens think the 49-year-old from Rio de Janeiro looks just like the Hollywood star, who has appeared in several blockbuster films including The Matrix and John Wick. In an interview with GQ, Brazilian Marcos Jeeves (not his real name) revealed that he has been told since he was a teen that he looks like The Matrix star. When asked by GQ if being Reeves' doppelganger had helped him flirt, Jeeves said, "Yes, I am single and looking like Keanu Reeves really helps me. "Some women come to praise me in the comments on my Instagram photos. But I always maintain a respect and do not use the fact of looking like him to take advantage of any situation, including my followers." Jeeves was first made aware of his lookalike status by a high school friend more than 30 years ago. "A friend of mine from high school, after watching Point Break, spoke about how it had an actor in the film very similar to me and recommended that I watch the film. Then my admiration for him began," he added. Meanwhile, Keanu, Carrie-Anne Moss, and writer-director Lana Wachowski have officially returned to The Matrix, 17 years after saying goodbye to the franchise. Reeves and Moss are returning to their iconic roles of Neo and Trinity, respectively. Moss and Reeves are being joined for The Matrix 4 by returning franchise actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who debuted in The Matrix Reloaded. OTTAWA - British Columbia Conservative MP Marc Dalton has deleted a tweet asking whether it is time to start reopening businesses if most of the deaths from COVID-19 in this country are of older people in long-term care homes. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. British Columbia Conservative MP Marc Dalton, shown in this undated handout photo from the party's public website, has deleted a tweet which questioned if it is time to start reopening businesses if most of the deaths from COVID-19 in this country are older people in long term care homes. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Conservative Party of Canada *MANDATORY CREDIT* OTTAWA - British Columbia Conservative MP Marc Dalton has deleted a tweet asking whether it is time to start reopening businesses if most of the deaths from COVID-19 in this country are of older people in long-term care homes. Dalton, who represents the riding of Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge near Vancouver, posted the tweet Monday morning. It included a link to a story in the Globe and Mail reporting signs Canada is starting to flatten the curve in the COVID-19 pandemic, with the notable exception of outbreaks at long-term care facilities in Ontario and Quebec. "Most deaths are in care homes where average life expectancy is 2 yrs & 65% usually pass in the 1st yr," he wrote. "Time to start moving Canada back to work?" The post was deleted about two hours later, shortly after The Canadian Press began inquiring about it. A statement from Dalton issued by his office via email did not address why the tweet was deleted. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the hundreds of Canadians who have lost loved ones because of COVID-19," Dalton said. "I personally have an uncle in a care home who I love dearly who has contracted coronavirus. "Conservatives are focused on how best to get Canada through this crisis and ensuring the health and safety of all Canadians. The prime minister has said that we need to prepare for a second and, perhaps, a third wave. Canadians want to know how the government is preparing to get ahead of those waves and get our economy back on track." Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer's spokesperson responded to a request for comment with the same statement from Dalton. "We have nothing further to add," said Denise Siele. Scott Duvall, the federal NDP's critic for seniors issues, was horrified by Dalton's suggestion that if it is just older people dying the rest of Canada should be able to return to normal. "I just can't believe something like that can be said," said Duvall. "It's unacceptable. It is heartless." Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Green Leader Elizabeth May was almost speechless when she heard about the comment. "What? What? What," she asked repeatedly before calling it "horrific and immoral." Governments have adopted strict physical-distancing measures to try to contain the spread of the virus, including banning gatherings of more than a handful of people and closing many workplaces. Millions are out of work but so far, hospitals have not been overwhelmed. But Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, said Monday that outbreaks in long-term care homes are the most crucial COVID-19 problem coming out of the last two weeks of the pandemic in Canada, and urged all Canadians to continue to stay home to keep older people, who are most at risk, from dying. More than 90 per cent of the Canadians who have died are over the age of 60, according to statistics Tam issued last week. On Monday she said half of the 734 deaths in Canada from COVID-19 had occurred in long-term care homes. This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 13, 2020. Liberty University Pursues Charges Against 2 Journalists for Trespassing on Campus Liberty University is pursuing criminal trespassing charges against two journalists who entered the campus against school rules to report on the the universitys decision to welcome students back to the campus from spring break. Libertys president Jerry Falwell Jr. said last week during an interview with conservative radio host Todd Starnes that he is pushing for the charges against Alec MacGillis, a reporter for ProPublica, and Julia Rendleman, a freelance photographer for The New York Times. MacGillis and Rendleman allegedly entered Libertys campus in Lynchburg, Virginia, over the past weeks to cover the situation after nearly 2,000 students returned to their dorms amid the ongoing pandemic. As universities and colleges across the country closed their campuses and ordered students to move out, Falwell announced on March 16 that Liberty would allow students who wish to live in their residence halls to do so. He said that by keeping the campus open, Liberty is able to house all the international students who are unable to return home due to travel ban, as well as commuter students who have no better place to live. In accordance with Virginias public health restrictions, Liberty has moved most of its courses online, capped gatherings in lecture halls and gyms at 10 people, and closed the campus to visitors since March 23. No Trespassing signs have been posted at the entrances to help ensure that only students, employees, prospective students and their families, and those with official university business are allowed on campus, according to a press release. People walk past the New York Times building in New York City on July 27, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) The New York Times and ProPublica published their stories in late March, which included quotes from Liberty students and employees who voiced concerns about keeping the campus open. Liberty called the the Times report false and misleading. Dr. Thomas Eppes, who was quoted in the Times story, denies he ever told the reporter that Liberty had about a dozen students were sick with symptoms that suggest COVID-19, read a press release. He gave figures for testing and self-isolation that are consistent with Libertys numbers but the New York Times preferred to go forward with sensational click-bait that increases traffic. Its so hypocritical for them to come to our campus, which is doing everything right, said Falwell on Todd Starness radio show. They come to our campus from New York, Washington, or wherever the hotspot is, and put our students at risk. So we feel like, were not only going to file defamation suits, but also have sworn warrants out for their arrest for trespassing, he added. Eileen Murphy, a spokesperson for the New York Times, argued that Rendleman should not face charges for simply performing journalistic practices. We are disappointed that Liberty University would decide to make that into a criminal case and go after a freelance journalist because its officials were unhappy with press coverage of the universitys decision to convene classes in the midst of the pandemic, Murphy said in a statement. With the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) upon us, it is inevitable that there will be changes in how we engage to get things done. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is holding Cabinet meetings and interacting with political leaders through video conferences. Last month, 82 Congress leaders discussed the partys response to Covid-19 on a video call. The Supreme Court is using video conferencing to hear cases. Government conferences are moving online. Parliament has been disrupted and the Budget session was cut short by eight days, delaying the debate on key bills. Many state legislatures such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala curtailed their sessions. Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh issued ordinances to enable them to spend money in the new financial year. It is here that technology-centric solutions can ensure work continuity in law-making institutions. Parliament has been agile in its adoption of technology through its history in three key areas. First, to empower members of Parliament (MPs) to work more efficiently, as early as 1954, a teleprinter was installed in the lobby of the Lok Sabha to enable MPs to keep up to speed with important developments. Now MPs can access wireless Internet on their phones and tablets inside the Houses. Gone are the days when MPs or their staff had to visit the Parliament House to submit notices for their interventions. Now, there is a dedicated portal where they can electronically file their questions, zero-hour submissions and other notices for participating in debates. Second, there has been rapid technology adoption in the two parliamentary secretariats. They started using computers for their work in the mid-1980s. An example of their digital prowess is the daily uncorrected debate: A transcript of proceedings in the Houses is uploaded online on the same day the debate takes place. Making Parliament an open and transparent institution is the third area where the institution has leveraged technology. The proceedings of the Houses are broadcast on dedicated TV channels and also streamed online. The parliamentary websites maintain records of all its work, and the two secretariats have also digitised parliamentary debate since 1858, and made them freely available to the public. The pandemic challenges the ability of the institution to physically assemble and debate matters of national importance. There are two occasions when MPs have to assemble in person. One, when they meet as a whole to constitute a sitting of the House. This situation will arise in July when MPs assemble for the monsoon session of Parliament. Parliaments around the world are gearing up to ensure that some parts of their proceedings can be conducted online. For example, the Scottish parliament recently conducted its question hour virtually for the first time. Meanwhile, in London, 100 MPs signed a letter calling for the creation of a virtual parliament. In response, the Speaker of the House of Commons has urged the government to ensure that some part of parliamentary proceedings can be done virtually before the house resumes next week. The second occasion when MPs meet in person is during meetings of parliamentary committees. These committees are smaller sub-groups of MPs which meet outside the House to deliberate on issues. The committees play a critical role as they are tasked with the in-depth examination of government bills. Currently, there are six bills being examined by different committees. There are international examples that our Parliament could examine to restart the functioning of committees. For example, the House of Commons has successfully completed a trial in conducting the proceedings of their committees digitally. Its treasury committee recently heard witnesses on a video conference on the subject of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In New Zealand, the Epidemic Response Committee, led by the leader of opposition, has been operating via video conferencing to evaluate the governments response to Covid-19. The proceedings of the committee are streamed on social media and on the Parliament website. The Australian Parliament also has a provision in its rules of procedure to allow for audio and video links to be used for committee proceedings. The workings of legislatures in India and around the world are marked by ceremony and rigid rules of functioning. But they also have an advantage. They can regulate their functioning, allowing them to effect institutional changes quickly. Working remotely is the new normal, and for Parliament to adapt to it is a necessity. This disruption by the pandemic is an opportunity for our Parliament. It should evaluate which aspects of its functioning are amenable to being done online. The virtual working of parliament in other countries underlines one key principle. Parliament is an institution of public trust and needs to continue its role of scrutiny of governments actions, especially in times of crisis. Chakshu Roy is head of legislative and civic engagement, PRS Legislative, Abhijit Banare is a Chevening scholar at Cambridge University The views expressed are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Kamal Haasan, the Ulaganayakan is all set to join hands with the talented filmmaker Gautham Menon once again. The actor-director duo is teaming up for the sequel of Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu their 2006-released popular movie. The Kamal-Gautham project, which has been titled as Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu 2, is expected to go on floors by mid-2020. As per the latest updates, Kamal Haasan and Gautham Menon are planning to shoot the movie in a foreign country, just like the first part which was majorly shot in the United States. Reportedly, the makers are planning to shoot the project majorly at the various locations of the UK. If the reports are to be believed, that is a major reason behind the director Gautham Menon and his team's decision to kickstart the project by mid-2020 (mostly in July 2020). However, it is yet to see how things fall in place, as the UK is going through a major crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic that has affected the entire world. The sources suggest that the Kamal Haasan starrer has been slated to be released in the Summer of 2021, mostly by the end of April or beginning of May. Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu 2, which is said to be a neo-noir action thriller, revolves around yet another episode in the life of its protagonist, DCP Raghavan. The Kamal Haasan project will also mark the reunion of Gautham Menon and Harris Jayaraj, one of the most-celebrated filmmaker-music director combos of the Tamil film industry. The songs of Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu, which were composed by Harris are still loved by the Tamil cinema music fans. Jyothika, the actress who played the female lead in the first installment, is expected to reprise her role in the sequel. Anushka Shetty, the Baahubali actress is reportedly roped in to play a pivotal role. Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu 2 is produced by Isari K Ganesh under his home banner Vels International. Also Read: Kerala Police Thanks Kamal Haasan For Posting A Congratulatory Note Shanghai (Gasgoo)- In March, GAC Group clocked a year-on-year sales drop of 39.55%, but saw a significant rebound compared to the previous month. Year-to-date sales fell 38.13%, versus 42.4% slump in China's overall sales announced by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). NEV sales in March soared 130% over a year ago to 4,111 units, of which 3,503 units (+121%) were the contribution of GAC NE. The sales volume of the Aion S reached 2,957 units, which made the model's Q1 sales total 7,038 units. According to GAC Group, GAC NE plans to roll out two all-new BEV models this year in a bid to maintain the rising momentum. GAC Trumpchi, GAC Group's self-owned PV brand, sold 17,644 vehicles in total last month. During the same period, its export volume surged 114.5% over the prior-year period to 2,714 units. Trumpchi put forth great efforts to reduce inventories, upgrade main products and improve marketing system in 2019. The second-generation Trumpchi GS4 hit the market in last November, and for the first time introduced Tencents in-car WeChat, an extremely popular instant messaging app in China. For the first quarter, the sales volume of the Trumpchi GS4 leapt 28.38% year on year to 26,220 units thanks to the driving force of the all-new version. Three Sino-Japanese joint ventures saw their sales in March remarkably pick up from February. The respective sales volumes of the GAC Honda, GAC Toyota and GAC Mitsubishi were 32,143 units, 49,480 units and 2,043 units. Among them, GAC Toyota posted a 9.9% year-over-year decline, versus 79.78% drop for February. GAC Group said the sales of GAC Honda and GAC Toyota were expected to be further increased, buoyed by the Breeze and the Wildlander, which went on sale in last November and this year's February respectively. Both of them resolve to enrich their product matrixes in 2020. GAC Honda has put the new Avancier, the Breeze HEV and the mid-cycle refresh of the Vezel onto the market at the end of March, and intends to launch the Crider HEV this year. GAC Toyota prepares to release the C-HR EV (photo source: GAC Group). live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More With his travel plans jeopardised following the COVID-19 outbreak, a distraught Pradeep Kumar had just two simple questions for the call centre employee of an airline. "If I don't travel in the next one year, will you refund my ticket? Also, you say I will have to pay the difference in the fare. I agree, if the fare is higher, I will pay the difference. But if the fare is lower, then will you refund me the remaining amount?" Both the questions evoked a similar answer from the airline's call centre employee - "I cannot predict such things....can you please mail us?" Similar is the predicament of thousands of flyers, whose plans have gone awry as the nation went on a lockdown to contain the spread of the deadly COVID-19. Kumar, a resident of Kottayam district in Kerala, had planned to fly to Abu Dhabi, along with his wife and son, and spend a fortnight with his daughter's family before returning home. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show But the flights - Air India Express and IndiGo - were cancelled as travel restrictions kicked in. While initially he was told that the tickets will be refunded, "their policy changed and I was told that my ticket fare will be saved for future travel. But then I travel seldom, and don't plan to fly again for over a year," says Kumar, who was hoping to celebrate Vishu, which falls on April 14, with his daughter. Also Read: Airlines ask leasing companies for rental holiday, but lessors play hard The lockdown effect With increasing murmurs about the nationwide lockdown getting extended, flyers are becoming increasingly edgy, taking to social media platforms to enquire about flights booked for April 15 and later. @IndiGo6E Hi team I booked ticket from Jaipur To Delhi & Delhi to Nagpur for 16th April Details as below : Name : Jyotsana & Rishi Sharma PNR : CQCZUR Flight :6E-6606 & 6E135 Could you please confirm if the flight is still Operating or not? Really appreciate ! @sharmapi1991 Prashant Sharma #StayHome #StaySafe (@sharmapi1991) April 13, 2020 But instead of getting a direct answer, they are being asked to keep checking airline websites for flight status. The airline answered: We understand that you're worried about your travel. Please visit https://t.co/BMA7Gf7kxu to check your flight status. If you wish to reschedule or cancel the booking, please visit https://t.co/wIllqdXfoN to make the required changes to your booking. Thanks, stay safe. ~Pankaj IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) April 13, 2020 Other airlines, including GoAir and SpiceJet, have also received similar queries. Some passengers also complained about their flights being cancelled. One passenger noted that even if airlines do operate flights, getting to airports in some of the cities, including in Mumbai, would be difficult. Airlines, on the other hand, point out that they are merely following government orders. Also Read: COVID-19 has triggered the early retirement of old planes "The government has said that the lockdown is till April 14. Accordingly, we need to plan our operations in advance," said a senior executive of a budget airline. All the carriers, barring Air India, have been accepting bookings for domestic travel from April 15. Many of them have opened bookings for international travel from May 1. To be sure, the government has said that a decision hasn't been taken on allowing airlines to start service from April 15. Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri himself clarified on Twitter: "News about the resumption of passenger flights in a staggered manner from April 15, is mere speculation. The correct position is spelt out in my tweet of 2nd April 2020," he had tweeted on April 5. On April 2, he had said: "The current lockdown on both international and national passenger flights is till April 15. A decision to restart the flights after this period remains to be taken. If required, we will have to access the situation, on a case-by-case basis." But then, as an executive from the airline said, "It is not as if we have been asked not to accept bookings." So who it to be blamed for the uncertainty that clouds over air travel? Yeshwant Shenoy, a lawyer and aviation safety activist, said that everyone has to share the blame. "A lot has been written about booking and cancellations during these times. And customers planning to travel from April 15, have access to information and they know the ground situation. So it's not a smart thing to book at the moment," says Shenoy. And not that airlines can't be blamed, adds the lawyer. "The airlines well know that none of the customers will take them to court for a Rs 5,000 or Rs 10,000-ticket, for cancelling a flight or rescheduling it," said Shenoy. Now everyone's eyes and ears, including that of airlines and customers, are on the address by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will address the nation on April 14. "We will get more clarity after his address," is how an airline executive put it. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press Gavin Newsom this week declared himself the leader of a nation-state. Speaking on MSNBC, the California governor on Tuesday announced his state would be amassing more than 200m medical-grade masks per month for health workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. After weeks of competing with other states for critical medical equipment, in the absence of strategy and coordination from the federal government, Newsom said he had had enough. So he harnessed the bulk purchasing power of the state of California as a nation-state to spend nearly $1bn to work with non-profits and manufacturers to deliver masks for his constituents, and possibly other states. The next morning, as #PresidentNewsom trended on Twitter, Newsom once again presented the state he leads as a global power. We need to coordinate and organize our nation-state status, he told reporters at his daily Covid-19 press briefing. California has been a catalyst to increase supply that will not only avail itself to the state of California but more broadly across this country and potentially in other parts of the globe, he added. Related: Why is California still waiting for nearly 60,000 coronavirus test results? As the leader of the nations most populous state which, Newsom often likes to point out, would have the worlds fifth-largest economy, if it were a sovereign nation the governor has often cast himself as a foil to Donald Trump. As the president and the governor bickered, critics in California have lamented that the governor often promised more than he could deliver, and was at times counterproductive by trying to appease too many groups at once. But amid the federal governments faltering response to the coronavirus crisis, Newsom is getting both local and national recognition for stepping into a leadership vacuum. After identifying its first cases of Covid-19 in late February, California became the first US state to issue a widespread stay-at-home order on 10 March. Since then, the state has seen more than 20,000 coronavirus cases and 570 deaths but the death toll appears to be rising more slowly than in hard-hit New York and New Jersey. Public health experts have credited the states foresight in enforcing social distancing. The Trump administrations response meanwhile, has lagged behind, with the president denying the crisis and delaying action even as the national death toll climbed. Story continues Newsom moved into the governors mansion in 2018, replacing Jerry Brown a prominent figure who had dominated California politics since the 1970s. At 52, he has already had a long career in politics and weathered a fair share of scandal. More than 15 years ago, as San Francisco mayor, he made headlines after he defied national law to marry same-sex couples in California. He made national headlines again in 2007 after it was revealed he had an affair with a subordinate, who was also the wife of his chief campaign adviser. At the time, Newsom was separated from Kimberly Guilfoyle now an adviser to the president, and the partner of his son Donald Trump Jr. Newsom has tried to cast himself as a young, fresh and progressive leader whose Silicon Valley-chic contrasts with Browns suits and ties. He has also presented himself as the governor of the most un-Trump state in America loudly challenging the Trump administrations policies on the environment, immigration, healthcare and gun rights often on the presidents favorite platform: Twitter. Trump, meanwhile, has relished taunting Newsom as an incompetent governor, and obsessing over narrow policies that disproportionately affect California. But amid the coronavirus crisis, rather than fighting the president, Newsom has opted to show him up, in some cases delivering on the presidents empty promises. As Trump blithely reassured, Just stay calm. It will go away, Newsom earned praise from public health experts around the country for enforcing strict, early distancing orders. While Trump beat back pleas from governors to send more of the ventilators needed to treat coronavirus patients, Newsom shipped 500 ventilators to seven states. And when the federal government sent faulty equipment, Newsom harnessed the states outsized tech industry to quickly fix them. As the federal government stepped back from the crisis, governors including Newsom, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Jay Inslee in Washington found a national audience of Americans looking for steady administration amid chaos. Governors across the country have stepped up, said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political strategist who has worked for former president Bill Clinton and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. People look for heroes in times of crisis. Americans want that figure, that hero that steps out of the mist and into the sun. Hank Sheinkopf People look for heroes in times of crisis, he said. Americans want that figure, that hero that steps out of the mist and into the sun. And among the governors, Newsom and Cuomo have shined brightest, per Sheinkopfs assessment. Newsom is almost in an attention battle with Andrew Cuomo, he said. They could be competitors for the presidential nomination in 2024. Newsom has brushed away questions about his presidential aspirations. This is not political, he told reporters in California, the day after his MSNBC interview. This is not in any way, shape or form usurping or undermining. This is all in the spirit of all of us stepping into this moment and doing what we can. While Cuomos open, emotional briefings have captivated national broadcasters, Newsoms shewed, steady strategy through the crisis could pay off, said Amanda Renteria, who was the national political director for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 and a primary challenger to Newsom in 2018. Newsom made a big statement when he made California the first US state to order all residents to stay home, Renteria told the Guardian. Theres going to be an after-review of how those actions made a difference, she noted. Already, public health officials are praising Newsoms early action. Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, has repeatedly held up California as a success story to highlight the effectiveness of distancing measures to flatten the curve. Even Donald Trump, who has singled out other Democratic governors as targets during his daily coronavirus briefings, has lauded Newsom. Gavin Newsom has been terrific, the president said at a 28 March briefing. A few days later, Trump again admitted, Theyve done a good job, California. You cannot help but be impressed by his response, said Bill Whalen, a media consultant for California politicians including the ex-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Im not by nature a great fan of his agenda. Newsoms political career going forward will hinge on how well hes able to sustain the momentum, as Californians continue to weather the pandemic. Already, the same criticisms of his lack of focus and boundless ambition are starting to catch up to him. His dramatic announcement on national television that he had secured hundreds of millions of medical masks, left many state lawmakers confused, without clarity on the total amount being spent, and without having seen the details of the contracts signed by the administration. And some of the groups that Newsom had apparently included in his deal were blindsided by his announcement. The governor has apparently done something extraordinary by making arrangements we were not privy to, Thomas Tighe, CEO of the California-based not-for-profit Direct Relief, told Calmatters. But were delighted. And while California has not seen the surge in coronavirus cases that have overwhelmed cities like New York and Detroit in the past weeks, Newsom has admitted that delays and huge backlogs in coronavirus testing have left Californians with an unclear image of how, exactly, the disease is spreading through the state. The governor said he owns the issues with testing, and has developed a taskforce to correct course. Its rare that elected leaders get real-time feedback on how well they led, Renteria noted. But now people are getting to know their leaders, and paying attention to what they do in that moment of truth. Description GIS 13 April, 2020: The Ministry of Local Government, Disaster and Risk Management, issued a communique, today, calling on the population not to dispose of bulky waste items by the roadside or in public places during this confinement period. In its communique, the Ministry points out that during the lockdown, the scavenging service offered by Municipal and District Councils is effected only once a week and prioritises the collection of household waste for public health reasons. However, the scavenging service will be back to normal after the lockdown comes to an end. Consequently, the public is requested, following household clean-up,to refrain from disposing of bulky waste such as mattresses, refrigerators, cupboards, and washing machines, among others since during this confinement period, the scavenging service does not cater for bulky waste. An appeal is made to the public to respect the guidelines of the Ministry so as to ensure good hygiene and a clean environment. #ResOuLakaz #BeSafeMoris A controversial Louisiana pastor and a Bundy militia-man brazenly flouted coronavirus lockdown orders on Easter Sunday to hold services for their parishioners. Reverend Tony Spell, 42, defiantly boasted he had welcomed more than 1,300 congregants to the evangelical Life Tabernacle Church near Baton Rouge. 'Welcome to America,' the pastor shouted to the masses. In Idaho, one of 42 states which have stay-at-home orders, Ammon Bundy, renowned for armed standoffs with federal officials over cattle grazing, preached to a few hundred. The 44-year-old claimed last week, 'I actually want the virus,' so that he can become immunized. Worshipers flocked throughout the Bible Belt despite police threats and pilgrims from as far away as New Jersey arrived to hear the words of the bold Southern pastors. Reverend Tony Spell, 42, defiantly boasted he had welcomed more than 1,300 congregants to the evangelical Life Tabernacle Church near Baton Rouge. 'Welcome to America,' the pastor shouted to the masses Libertarian activist Ammon Bundy speaks during an Easter Sunday church service he organized despite concerns over coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Emmett, Idaho People attend an Easter Sunday church service organized by libertarian activist Ammon Bundy despite concerns over the coronavirus Pastor Tony Spell receives hand sanitizer before driving a bus of congregants from Life Tabernacle Church after Easter church services on Sunday BUNDY'S CATTLE UPRISING The April 2014 revolt was sparked by a court-ordered roundup of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's cattle by agents of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) after Bundy had refused for two decades to pay fees to graze his herds on federal property. Hundreds of supporters, many of them heavily armed, answered Bundy's public pleas for support and rallied at his ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, about 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas, in a show of force to demand the return of his impounded livestock. Police and government agents, vastly outgunned, ultimately retreated rather than risk bloodshed, and no shots were fired. Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, cast the uprising as an act of patriotic civil disobedience against government excess. In October 2016, another armed standoff steered by the Bundy sons erupted at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon. Police shot one of the occupiers dead during the 41-day midwinter protest. President Donald Trump pardoned two of Oregon men improsined for arson over the standoff in 2018. Ammon Bundy said at the time the pardon was 'long overdue.' Advertisement Bevelyn Beatty, a pilgrim from New Jersey at the Maryville Baptist Church in Kentucky, told Wave 3: 'You want to kill your baby? You can kill your baby, you can kill your baby right now that's "essential." 'But me gathering for Easter Sunday to celebrate my Lord and Savior's Resurrection? No. Government or whoever or the powers that be are trying to get their foot wet and test the waters for something else, and we're not having it.' Beatty, who traveled with a friend to the service, said she felt like she was living in a Communist country. It comes as the number of cases in the United States soared over 561,000, with more than 22,000 killed, the most in the world. State troopers walked through the parking lot of the Maryville Baptist Church yesterday, placing notices on cars which told the congregants to quarantine for 14 days. Nails were also found scattered around the entrances to the parking lot of the church. In Louisiana, Spell sought to reassure his congregation, telling them: 'If you don't want to touch anyone, you don't have to touch anyone. 'I promise that before I lay hands on you or touch you that I will disinfect my hands so that you don't have to worry about me transmitting anything to you.' Im at Maryville Baptist Church, which continues to hold in-person services despite orders to cease . This morning, piles of nails have been scattered at every entrance. pic.twitter.com/WcxkqtVZQw Sarah Ladd (@ladd_sarah) April 12, 2020 Bevelyn Beatty, a pilgrim from New Jersey at the Maryville Baptist Church in Kentucky, told Wave 3 : 'You want to kill your baby? You can kill your baby, you can kill your baby right now that's "essential." But me gathering for Easter Sunday to celebrate my Lord and Savior's Resurrection? No. Government or whoever or the powers that be are trying to get their foot wet and test the waters for something else, and we're not having it' People attend an Easter Sunday church service organized by libertarian activist Ammon Bundy despite concerns over coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Emmett, Idaho Spell talks to the media as he drives a bus of congregants from Life Tabernacle Church after Easter church services In Greenville, Mississippi, Pastor Charles E. Hamilton Jr. filmed multiple police cars arriving at King James Baptist Bible Church. He said: 'If people feared God like they do this coronavirus, Revival would take place.' At the nearby Temple Baptist Church, Lee Gordon, a parishioner told WBTV: 'The police started coming up and we said, well, we think we're in our rights. And they started issuing tickets, $500 tickets, it may have been 50 - I mean 20 to 30 tickets. 'Everybody got one, it wasn't per car. Me and my wife was both in the car together and both of us got tickets.' At the Happy Gospel Church in Bradenton, Florida, about 250 people gathered in the parking lot to hear Pastor Bill Bailey's Easter sermon. Some sat in lawn chairs or on tailgates, but families stayed at least six feet apart; those in their cars occasionally honked to convey agreement with Bailey's remarks. Congregants arrive at the Life Tabernacle Church before Easter church services on April 12, 2020 in Central, Louisiana A truck with an upside-down American flag is parked in the parking lot during an Easter Sunday church service organized by libertarian activist Ammon Bundy State troopers walked through the parking lot of the Maryville Baptist Church yesterday, placing notices on cars which told the congregants to quarantine for 14 days President Donald Trump had said he planned to watch an online service led by the Rev. Robert Jeffress of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas, although the White House wouldn't confirm whether he did. The pastor, a staunch ally of the president, mentioned Trump in his remarks. 'We are going to get through this crisis with your continued strong leadership and the power of God,' Jeffress said. In their own Easter message, Trump and his wife, Melania, paid tribute to the medical professionals, first responders and other essential workers striving to combat the pandemic. In Louisiana, Spell said: 'I promise that before I lay hands on you or touch you that I will disinfect my hands so that you don't have to worry about me transmitting anything to you.' In Louisiana, Spell sought to reassure his congregation, telling them: 'If you don't want to touch anyone, you don't have to touch anyone' The majority of churches were empty, including St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, which is the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led a televised Mass, said he was pleased congregants could have a virtual celebration. 'We miss you though,' he added. 'We'd rather you be here physically.' In the morning, members of churches from across New York sang 'Christ the Lord is Risen Today' from balconies and windows. 'Even if you didn't hear everyone, God heard everyone,' said Kathy Keller, of Reedemer Presbyterian Church, who helped organize the event online. The police are here before we get started. Posted by Charles E. Hamilton Jr. on Thursday, April 9, 2020 In Kentucky, Pastor Jack Roberts forged ahead with his Easter service. He called the state's governor, Andy Beshear, 'stupid.' 'It's my life, and I feel like the Gospel is more important than anything else,' Pastor Jack Roberts told WDRB. 'I know everybody thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am. 'I might not ought to say it this way but our stupid governor says you can't get together with your family for Easter. What are they going to do stand at my front door and see how many people goes in?' asked Roberts. Roberts' church in Hillsview, Kentucky has continued to keep its doors open during the coronavirus pandemic but is encouraging older and immunocompromised worshippers to stay at home. Governor Beshear has called out Roberts and his church, which is preparing for more in-person gatherings on Easter Sunday. In Kentucky, Pastor Jack Roberts pledged to go ahead with his Easter service 'We know that it's a scientific fact that him holding this service today will spread the virus within his congregation, and at Christmas, he's going to have fewer people in his congregation,' Beshear said. Two other Kentucky churches are pledging to stay open for Easter. 'We our exercising our right as people of faith to worship,' said Rev. Wilbur Browning, the senior pastor of Centennial Olivet Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. 'And according to the First Amendment, last time I read it, the governor can't intervene to tell us how to worship our God.' Also in Louisville, at Fern Creek Baptist Church the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham is also considering saying open for an Easter service. 'I have a great respect for governmental authority; however my highest authority is Jesus Christ,' she said to WDRB. Governor Beshear believes at least three church gatherings have already spread the virus and killed multiple people in Kentucky. 'It's a scientific fact him holding this service will spread the virus within his congregation, and at Christmas, he'll have fewer people in his congregation,' said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear Major U.S. religious institutions, including Roman Catholic dioceses and major Protestant denominations, said they would hold religious services online as well as through local broadcast radio and television, with just a handful of ministers and priests preaching sermons and reading liturgies to rows of empty pews. Indeed, some major religious-liberty legal advocacy groups, whose mission is to challenge restrictions on freedom of religion, have not raised objections to the closures, saying churches have been treated the same as other major institutions and that safety comes first. Another holdout church, the evangelical Cross Culture Center in Lodi, California, about 70 miles southwest of San Francisco, said he planned another service even after its members found their church doors locked against them last weekend. Ammon Bundy, the leader of an anti-government militia, speaks to members of the media in front of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters on January 5, 2016 near Burns, Oregon Lay preacher Jon Duncan, 43, who has led the evangelical center for more than 10 years, said earlier that under city orders, his landlord changed the locks and shut them out Sunday morning. Lodi police officers was standing by the door, because they were defying both local and state 'stay-at-home' orders and a court order from the San Joaquin County Public Health Services. Instead, Duncan held brief curbside prayers with his congregants as they showed up for the 11am service. 'It is disappointing because we have a valid lease, but we won't be stopped,' he said. 'God commands us to meet and that's what we're going to do Easter.' Duncan said he expected he and his flock of about 80 regular attendees will be locked out on Easter too, so he has picked an alternate site to meet. He and his attorney declined to disclose the new location to the public for fear of becoming a spectacle instead of a holy service. The church's attorney, Dean Broyles, has lodged a complaint against the city, and implored California's governor in a letter to lift the ban on large church gatherings. Duncan said he is steadfast in his decision. 'We don't believe our rights are eroded by a virus,' he said. 'We will stand together before God even against the gates of hell.' David Iben put it well when he said, 'Volatility is not a risk we care about. What we care about is avoiding the permanent loss of capital. So it might be obvious that you need to consider debt, when you think about how risky any given stock is, because too much debt can sink a company. As with many other companies Headlam Group plc (LON:HEAD) makes use of debt. But the real question is whether this debt is making the company risky. Why Does Debt Bring Risk? Debt and other liabilities become risky for a business when it cannot easily fulfill those obligations, either with free cash flow or by raising capital at an attractive price. In the worst case scenario, a company can go bankrupt if it cannot pay its creditors. However, a more common (but still painful) scenario is that it has to raise new equity capital at a low price, thus permanently diluting shareholders. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. When we think about a company's use of debt, we first look at cash and debt together. Check out our latest analysis for Headlam Group What Is Headlam Group's Net Debt? The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that Headlam Group had debt of UK6.43m at the end of December 2019, a reduction from UK7.26m over a year. But it also has UK33.4m in cash to offset that, meaning it has UK27.0m net cash. LSE:HEAD Historical Debt April 13th 2020 How Strong Is Headlam Group's Balance Sheet? According to the last reported balance sheet, Headlam Group had liabilities of UK201.0m due within 12 months, and liabilities of UK51.1m due beyond 12 months. Offsetting this, it had UK33.4m in cash and UK117.9m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So it has liabilities totalling UK100.9m more than its cash and near-term receivables, combined. This deficit isn't so bad because Headlam Group is worth UK261.0m, and thus could probably raise enough capital to shore up its balance sheet, if the need arose. But we definitely want to keep our eyes open to indications that its debt is bringing too much risk. While it does have liabilities worth noting, Headlam Group also has more cash than debt, so we're pretty confident it can manage its debt safely. Story continues On the other hand, Headlam Group saw its EBIT drop by 3.7% in the last twelve months. That sort of decline, if sustained, will obviously make debt harder to handle. There's no doubt that we learn most about debt from the balance sheet. But it is future earnings, more than anything, that will determine Headlam Group's ability to maintain a healthy balance sheet going forward. So if you want to see what the professionals think, you might find this free report on analyst profit forecasts to be interesting. But our final consideration is also important, because a company cannot pay debt with paper profits; it needs cold hard cash. Headlam Group may have net cash on the balance sheet, but it is still interesting to look at how well the business converts its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to free cash flow, because that will influence both its need for, and its capacity to manage debt. During the last three years, Headlam Group generated free cash flow amounting to a very robust 83% of its EBIT, more than we'd expect. That puts it in a very strong position to pay down debt. Summing up Although Headlam Group's balance sheet isn't particularly strong, due to the total liabilities, it is clearly positive to see that it has net cash of UK27.0m. The cherry on top was that in converted 83% of that EBIT to free cash flow, bringing in UK28m. So we are not troubled with Headlam Group's debt use. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Headlam Group you should know about. At the end of the day, it's often better to focus on companies that are free from net debt. You can access our special list of such companies (all with a track record of profit growth). It's free. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. Kaz Crossley is determined to make the best of things after being left stranded in Thailand. The Love Island 2018 star travelled to her family's native country for her very first Songkran festival, but has been unable to leave her luxury hotel due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The 26-year-old make-up artist took to her Instagram account on Monday to update her followers about her situation. Lockdown: Kaz Crossley has been making the best of things after being left stranded in Thailand, sporting a hot pink bikini as she posed for a series of pictures on Monday Modelling a hot pink bikini with a plunging neckline, Kaz posed up a storm in her villa's private pool. Adding a pop of contrasting colour to her bright look, the beauty completed her attire with one of her own Kaz Bands hair accessories. She wrote: 'My first Songkran in thailand! 'Unfortunately I wish it was with different circumstances as we are in complete lockdown over here and all festivals and celebrations have been postponed, Stunning: Modelling a hot pink bikini and one of her own Kaz Bands hair accessories, Kaz posed up a storm in her villa's private pool 'But I am super grateful as I couldnt be in a more beautiful place with better company Happy Thai New Year everyone!' Songkran is the Thai New Year's national holiday, representing purification and the washing away of sins - symbolised by the famous water festival tradition. The festival revolves around celebrating family and reuniting with loved ones, with people often travelling from far and wide to visit. Tradition: Songkran is the Thai New Year's national holiday, representing purification and the washing away of sins - symbolised by the famous water festival tradition Meanwhile, Kaz's ex Theo Campbell slammed the star for 'selling him the dream,' before branding the other Love Island girls 'mentally unstable'. The former Islander announced: 'I got slinged!' when quizzed about his former flame during an appearance on FUBAR Radio's Access All Areas show. He said: 'I don't wanna say too much but I'm gonna say, people these days and love these days, it's confusing. It's a tricky hard world. 'I feel like with us, I kinda gave it my everything and it feels a bit underappreciated. It's a bit crazy at the moment.' Sexy: Kaz Crossley seemed to be embracing her time in 'isolation' as she shared another sizzling swimsuit snap from her trip Pressed further about what went on between the pair, Theo said: 'I don't know what to call it. What's the right way to say it? I got slinged! I don't know what to call it.' The athlete from Bath went on to claim that 'girls in general are hard to deal with,' before labelling the other women who have appeared on Love Island 'mentally unstable.' Theo said: 'That's why I never got with any of the other Love Island girls. They're too mentally unstable. They're all over the place. 'I don't wanna get with none. I'm friends with them but I will never make any of them my girlfriend.' BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 8 By Samir Ali - Trend: It is possible to consider the issue of extending the term of the special quarantine regime given the ongoing situation in Azerbaijan, Spokesman for the Cabinet of Ministers Ibrahim Mammadov said. Mammadov made the remark in Baku during the briefing at the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers on April 8. The quarantine regime term may be extended in the country while the requirements may be tightened, the spokesman said. "In accordance with the information, the requirements of the special quarantine regime are not observed by many people, Mammadov added. Today's statistics show that there are cases of sale of fake certificates and permits. If the conditions of this regime are observed, this will contribute to the positive statistics and it will not be extended. However, today's data shows that requirements may be tightened. This decision is extremely difficult for us." Public health experts on Sunday debated the question of when to reopen portions of the U.S. economy, shuttered because of the coronavirus pandemic, with several Trump administration officials cautioning that a target date of May 1 - floated by President Donald Trump, among others - may not be realistic. "It is a target, and, obviously, we're hopeful about that target, but I think it's just too early to be able to tell that we see light at the end of the tunnel," Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on ABC News' "This Week." "I think it's just too early for us to say whether May 1 is that date." The comments by Hahn and other officials came on Sunday, when the number of confirmed cases in the United States stood at 551,896 and the number of deaths reached 21,890. They also came as news spread that one of those who died after being infected was a billionaire donor and personal friend of Trump, New York real estate developer Stanley Chera. The overall picture of the virus's toll remained devastating over the holiday weekend. In New York state, the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States, the death toll approached 10,000. The Navajo Nation implemented a 57-hour weekend curfew as cases in the hardest-hit part of Indian Country neared 700. And even as Pope Francis spoke in a mostly empty St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday, one pastor in Louisiana pressed ahead with an Easter service that drew hundreds of people, defying the warnings of the governor and local police. Some experts, such as Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, argued Sunday that rather than a sudden reopening of the entire country, the United States should institute a "rolling reentry" into normal life depending on the conditions in different regions. "It is not going to be a light switch," Fauci said on CNN's "State of the Union." "It is going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak you've already experienced, and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced." The transition could "probably start, at least in some ways, maybe next month," Fauci said. But he noted that the virus could resurge later in the year. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, similarly voiced caution, warning that lifting all restrictions next month would probably mean that "by July or August, we could be back in the same situation we are now." "Maybe some states can open up mid-May," Murray, the creator of one of the most widely cited coronavirus models, said on CBS News' "Face the Nation." "But we have to be very careful and make sure that we don't sort of lose all the effort that the American people have put into closures by premature opening." One governor put the choice facing the country in stark terms. "I fear if we open up too early . . . that we could be pouring gasoline on the fire," New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said on CNN. He added: "Right now, the house is on fire, and job number one is to put the fire out." Not all governors agree. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said Friday that he plans to issue an executive order this week addressing strategies for how to reopen the state's businesses. "We will focus on protecting lives while restoring livelihoods," Abbott said, according to the Dallas Morning News. "We can and we must do this. We can do both." Trump has been pushing for resuming business activity by May 1, people familiar with the discussions have told The Washington Post, and several Cabinet secretaries have in recent days publicly expressed hope that restrictions could be at least partially eased next month. News of Chera's death was reported Saturday by The Real Deal, a publication that covers the New York real estate industry. A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak about it, confirmed Chera's death and friendship with Trump. At a White House briefing last month, Trump described a friend who was "a little older" and "heavy" who was in a coma due to the coronavirus. That friend was Chera, Vanity Fair reported. While the federal government does have the power to make recommendations, the ultimate decision on whether to reopen is up to each state. The current federal guidance to avoid social gatherings and work from home expires at the end of April. Public health experts say that for the economy to be safely reopened, certain steps will need to be taken first. Among other things, the United States should mount a large-scale effort to identify people who have been in contact with the infected and conduct widespread testing, and it should build up health-care capacity. Because the virus has a 14-day incubation period, experts also say states should refrain from moving toward relaxing their restrictions until they have seen a sustained reduction in new cases for at least that long. The president remained out of the public eye Sunday, his second straight day without any scheduled events or a coronavirus task force meeting. But in a video shared on his Twitter account, he extended Easter greetings and encouraged Americans that one day soon, "we'll be back together in churches right next to each other." "Right now, we're keeping separation," Trump said. "We're getting rid of the plague. It's a plague on our country like nobody's ever seen. But we're winning the battle. We're winning the war." Later, Trump tweeted that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's King Salman about a deal for members of OPEC, Russia and a handful of other oil-producing nations to cut production in May and June. Trump's likely Democratic opponent in the general election, former vice president Joe Biden, unveiled his own proposal for combating the coronavirus pandemic and reopening the country. He echoed the guidance of several experts on issues such as testing, hospital readiness and contact tracing. He also sharply criticized the Trump administration's response. "As we prepare to reopen America, we have to remember what this crisis has taught us: The administration's failure to plan, to prepare, to honestly assess and communicate the threat to the nation led to catastrophic results," Biden wrote in an opinion article published in The New York Times. "We cannot repeat those mistakes." While most Americans stayed away from church on Sunday, Pastor Tony Spell, who leads Life Tabernacle Church near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, planned to host 2,000 people in two Easter services, he told The Wall Street Journal. Central Police Department Chief Roger Corcoran stood outside the church and said not nearly that many attended. He counted about 330 people entering the morning service. Corcoran has already charged Spell with at least six counts of violating shutdown orders, which is a misdemeanor, but will still report that Spell held another two services to the district attorney, he said, which may result in the court charging Spell for two more counts. Spell has said he would sue Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and any police officer who may try to arrest him. Across the Atlantic, there was some good news as Italy and France reported a decline in coronavirus-related deaths and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was released from a London hospital nearly a week after entering the intensive care unit. Those developments were tempered, however, by U.K. health department figures showing 737 deaths in the previous 24 hours, raising Britain's official death toll above 10,000. And Russia reported its largest spike in new cases since the beginning of the outbreak, with 2,186 new cases confirmed in the past day. With the next steps for the United States still uncertain, a special envoy to the World Health Organization said Sunday that the public health community is "still very much on high alert," even as some countries see positive results from mitigation efforts. "The virus is still advancing in other parts of the world," David Nabarro said on NBC News's "Meet the Press." He added: "We think it's going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come, until we can all have a vaccine that will protect us." - - - The Washington Post's Meryl Kornfield and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report. Frequent flyers are sharing their most memorable flight experiences over the years - including first class seats, in-flight cocktail bars and fine dining in the sky. Many travellers have revealed their favourite memories on social media after the Australian Government banned all non-essential travel due the coronavirus pandemic. Some passengers said they got to experience first class for the first time ever, while one man who celebrated his 25-year wedding anniversary with his wife revealed he'll never forget the stunning mountain views of the snow from his window seat. Frequent flyers are sharing their most memorable flight experiences over the years (pictured of a passenger who said his favourite memory is Emirates' lavish cocktail bar in the A380) One woman said the scenic views between Rarotonga to Aitutaki in the Cook Islands (pictured) were breathtaking Another flyer who was travelling from Tokyo to Singapore said him and his fiancee got first class all to themselves 'As we approached Greenland flying from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq Airport three years ago, the view was spectacular,' he said in a Facebook group. Another traveller said she got treated to a fully enclosed suite with a bed in first class from the UK to Australia. 'Just three weeks ago "escaping" from the UK. First time ever in first class,' she said. One man said he enjoyed a fine dining experience with his wife to New York City while another flyer who was travelling from Tokyo to Singapore said him and his fiancee got first class all to themselves. 'We were the only person in first class and a completely empty business class cabin. We had two seats each in first class,' he said. One man who celebrated his 25-year wedding anniversary with his wife said he'll never forget the stunning mountain views of the snow from his window seat Another flyer travelling between Melbourne to Dubai International Airport in 2018 said she was the only first class passenger One traveller said she got treated to a fully enclosed suite with a bed in first class (left) from the UK to Australia, while one man revealed he got to experience fine dining in the skies (right) Another flyer travelling between Melbourne to Dubai International Airport in 2018 said she was the only first class passenger. 'I was spoilt rotten and took as many showers as I cared to take,' she said, laughing. One passenger said his fondest memories would be Emirates' lavish cocktail bar in the A380, saying he'll 'never get tired of that one'. And one woman said the scenic views between Rarotonga to Aitutaki in the Cook Islands were breathtaking. 'The view was amazing and my mum, who funded the entire trip (there were nine of us) slept through the stunning views,' she said. Authorities found a person dead inside a car that was engulfed in flames after a crash overnight Monday in Sharon, police said. Officers responded to a report of a car crash on Edge Hill Road around 12:45 a.m., the Sharon Police Department said in a statement. A car was totally engulfed in flames when police arrived at the scene, according to the statement. The Sharon Fire Department responded and extinguished the fire. At that time it was discovered that there was a single deceased occupant in the vehicle, the statement said. The identity of the person who died is unknown at this time, police said. The incident remains under investigation. This story will be updated as more information becomes available. KALAMAZOO, MI With all the mandated closures and cancellations to reduce the spread of COVID-19, community members are finding creative ways to support local restaurants and express gratitude to front-line workers. Essential workers, such as healthcare professionals and first responders, continue to work through the pandemic. Restaurant owners have either pivoted to offer only carry-out or delivery options or have closed. Sally Hadden, a Kalamazoo resident, created Feed the Fight Kalamazoo based on similar efforts she saw in Washington D.C. and North Carolina, according to a news release from the organization. I love that we can bring this into our community, organizer Jodi Michaels told MLive. Im happy to be able to fill this particular need. Its opening day and we are really excited. The idea is to seek volunteers and monetary contributions, then purchase takeout meals from local restaurants and deliver them to healthcare workers and first responders, the release said. The first meals were delivered from Maggies Cafe and Catering to healthcare workers at Bronson Methodist Hospital at 11 a.m. Monday, April 13. Another round of meals from Middle Eastern Appetite will be delivered at 8 p.m. Monday. When considering which businesses to purchase meals from, organizers are looking primarily at smaller, locally-owned restaurants, Michaels said. Maggies Cafe and Catering owner Chuck Rudnick said they packed up and delivered around 65 meals to the hospital Monday. Each had a Thank you Bronson team sticker on it. With the high winds and chilly weather on Monday, the biggest challenge was keeping everything warm. But Rudnick said he knew the recipients of the lunches were grateful. When they pulled up to the hospital, healthcare workers donned masks and other protective equipment, braving the cold, whipping wind to unload the meals, he said. Since they were all wearing masks, Rudnick said the delivery crew could not tell who any of the helpful workers were, but could see they were thankful. Seeing the many ways the community is rallying around our healthcare workers continues to humble and inspire us. These deliveries of meals and snacks let our frontline staff members know the community appreciates their hard work during this challenging time, Liz Semaan, executive director of the Bronson Health Foundation said in a statement provided to MLive. Meal delivery is just one of many things community members are doing to help each other during the COVID-19 outbreak, Rudnick added. In the current climate, everybody is helping everybody, Rudnick said. And thats how it should be. Since the governors stay home order was put in place, Maggies Cafe has kept up with take-out orders. But that has only been about one-third of the restaurants typical business, Rudnick said. He said he is grateful he was able to be a part of the very first delivery in the new Feed the Fight Kalamazoo program. Organizers said they are happy to bring the program to Kalamazoo, which has the same needs seen elsewhere amid the COVID-19 emergency of supporting local businesses and thanking essential workers. For more information, visit ftfkalamazoo.org or the organizations Facebook page. PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus. More coronavirus coverage on MLive: A guy who eats out a lot creates Kalamazoo Menu website to help restaurants, customers 100+ Kalamazoo restaurants, breweries serving food during the coronavirus pandemic Southwest Michigan nurse heads to New York City to fight coronavirus Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Other evidence supports this model. A recent peer-reviewed study led by a team from Erasmus University, in the Netherlands, published data from 12 patients showing that they had developed antibodies after infection with SARS-CoV-2. Several of my colleagues and students and I have statistically analyzed thousands of seasonal coronavirus cases in the United States and used a mathematical model to infer that immunity over a year or so is likely for the two seasonal coronaviruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 an indication perhaps of how immunity to SARS-CoV-2 itself might also behave. If it is true that infection creates immunity in most or all individuals and that the protection lasts a year or more, then the infection of increasing numbers of people in any given population will lead to the buildup of so-called herd immunity. As more and more people become immune to the virus, an infected individual has less and less chance of coming into contact with a person susceptible to infection. Eventually, herd immunity becomes pervasive enough that an infected person on average infects less than one other person; at that point, the number of cases starts to go down. If herd immunity is widespread enough, then even in the absence of measures designed to slow transmission, the virus will be contained at least until immunity wanes or enough new people susceptible to infection are born. At the moment, cases of Covid-19 have been undercounted because of limited testing perhaps by a factor of 10 in some places, like Italy as of late last month. If the undercounting is around this level in other countries as well, then a majority of the population in much (if not all) of the world still is susceptible to infection, and herd immunity is a minor phenomenon right now. The long-term control of the virus depends on getting a majority of people to become immune, through infection and recovery or through vaccination how large a majority depends on yet other parameters of the infection that remain unknown. One concern has to do with the possibility of reinfection. South Koreas Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 91 patients who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and then tested negative for the virus later tested positive again. If some of these cases were indeed reinfections, they would cast doubt on the strength of the immunity the patients had developed. An alternative possibility, which many scientists think is more likely, is that these patients had a false negative test in the middle of an ongoing infection, or that the infection had temporarily subsided and then re-emerged. South Koreas C.D.C. is now working to assess the merit of all these explanations. As with other diseases for which it can be difficult to distinguish a new infection from a new flare-up of an old infection like tuberculosis the issue might be resolved by comparing the viral genome sequence from the first and the second periods of infection. For now, it is reasonable to assume that only a minority of the worlds population is immune to SARS-CoV-2, even in hard-hit areas. How could this tentative picture evolve as better data come in? Early hints suggest that it could change in either direction. It is possible that many more cases of Covid-19 have occurred than have been reported, even after accounting for limited testing. One recent study (not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that rather than, say, 10 times the number of detected cases, the United States may really have more like 100, or even 1,000, times the official number. This estimate is an indirect inference from statistical correlations. In emergencies, such indirect assessments can be early evidence of an important finding or statistical flukes. But if this one is correct, then herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 could be building faster than the commonly reported figures suggest. With the increasing possibility of extention of lockdown in the country due to coronavirus disease outbreak, the government is trying its best to minimise the academic loss of students. Apart from plan to launch a web portal with study material for students from Class 1 in schools to those studying in colleges, the HRD ministry, has been encouraging schools to teach students through various methods like online classes and providing them online study materials. However, online teaching has its advantages and disadvantages. The feeling of being physically present in the school and interacting face to face with classmates and teachers is missing in online teaching. The overall development of personality of the student also happens better in the school environment. The government is therefore considering ways and means by which the loss of students due to lockdown can be brought to a minimum. As an important step in this direction, the government is considering the possibility of summer vacations being moved forward. Talking to Hindustan Times, an official of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), speaking on conditions of anonymity, said that the government is considering the possibility of schools moving their summer vacations forward. However, any decision regarding this can only come after the decision on extending lockdown is taken by the government. When HT talked to another HRD ministry official about the possibility of the decision to move forward summer vacation in the schools, he said that such decisions are taken by the state governments in which the schools are located. Meanwhile, Higher education sector regular University Grants Commission (UGC) has also formed an expert group comprising several VCs to look into academic loss incurred due to the coronavirus-inflicted lockdown and suggest ways to deal with it in the coming session. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) run by the HRD Ministry, have already preponed their summer vacations. A similar decision has also already been taken by IIT Delhi. The IITs senate is expected to approve it. A fed-up supermarket manager has penned a heartbreaking letter detailing the toll panic-buying shoppers have had on his staff during the coronavirus crisis. The long-serving manager gave a harrowing account of the challenges and shocking abuse his workers have copped on a daily basis since the deadly virus hit Australia three months ago. The anonymous letter, obtained by Westside News, went viral after being shared online by a friend of the manager who works for a Coles store in Brisbane. Woolworths staff member Jordyn Nydrle (pictured) was left in tears after a shift where she was subjected to abuse and items thrown at her because there was no toilet paper in stock The male manager, who said he had worked as a manager at a supermarket for 25 years, listed 20 facts for shoppers to read in his passionate letter. He started by revealing he had no toilet paper or hand sanitiser at home due to frenzied panic-buying by shoppers. He said he also regularly ran out of milk, eggs and meat for his family due to customers hoarding stock and leaving shelves bare. 'I promise if it's not on the shelf, it's not in a hidden corner of our back room.' 'I have been doing this for 25 years. I did not forget how to order product. I don't cause the warehouse to be out of product.' Coles customer service boss Sharon Herringe was allegedly spat on and had her eyes gouged by a customer at a store on the NSW south coast last week, which was captured on CCTV He added that his staff went above and beyond their duty to please customers, and said they had a right to be just as scared as anyone else of contracting the deadly virus. 'My team is human and do not possess an anti-virus. They are in just as much danger as you are (arguably more) but they show up to work every day just so you can buy groceries,' he wrote. 'My team is exposed to more people who are potentially infected in one hour than most of you will be in a week.' He ended the letter by giving all shoppers something to think about the next time they went to the supermarket. A grocery store manager has detailed a harrowing account of the challenges, stock shortages of basic essentials and shocking abuse supermarket workers have copped on a daily basis in recent months. Pictured are Coles customers waiting for more stock beside empty shelves 'Please pause and think about what you are saying and how you treat people you encounter,' he wrote. 'They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitiser, milk, eggs and meat. 'If the store you go to is out of them, maybe find the neighbour or friend that bought enough for one year ... there are hundreds of them ... and ask them to spare 1 or 2. They caused the problem to begin with.' SUPERMARKET MANAGER'S LETTER TO SHOPPERS I manage a grocery store. Heres some things you should know: 1. I dont have toilet paper. 2. I dont have sanitiser. 3. I run out of milk, eggs and meat daily. 4. I promise if its not on the shelf, its not in a hidden corner of our back room. These are the predictable ones. Now read this: 5. I have been doing this for 25 years. I did not forget how to order product. 6. I dont cause the warehouse to be out of product. 7. I schedule as much help as I have, working TONS of overtime, to help YOU. 8. I am sorry there are lines at the checkout. Now, the really important stuff: 9. My team puts themselves in harms way every day so you can buy groceries. 10. My team works tirelessly to get product on the floor for you to buy. 11. My team is exhausted. 12. My team is scared of getting sick. 13. My team is human and do not possess an anti virus. They are in just as much danger as you are (arguably more) but they show up to work every day just so you can buy groceries. 14. My team is tired. 15. My team is very under appreciated. 16. My team is exposed to more people who are potentially infected in one hour than most of you will be in a week (medical community excepted, thank you for all that you do). 17. My team is abused all day by customers who have no idea how ignorant you area. 18. My team disinfects every surface possible, every day, just so you can come in and grab a wipe from the dispenser, wipe the handle and throw the used wipe in the trolley or on the ground and leave it there ... so my team can throw it in the bin for you later. 19. My team wonders if you wash your re-usable bags, that you force us to touch, that are clearly dirty and have more germs on them than our shopping trolley do. (Editors note: Some supermarkets such as Coles now ask shoppers to pack their own groceries) 20. My team more than earns their breaks, lunches and days off. And if that means you wait longer, I am sorry. The last thing I will say is this: The next time you are in a grocery store, please pause and think about what you are saying and how you treat people you encounter. They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitiser, milk, eggs and meat. If the store you go to is out of them, maybe find the neighbour or friend that bought enough for one year ... there are hundreds of them ... and ask them to spare 1 or 2. They caused the problem to begin with. Advertisement Some shoppers are still not getting the message, a month after Australia's supermarket giants banded together in a national to plea to stop abusing staff due to product shortages and long queues. Coles customer service boss Sharon Herringe was allegedly spat on and had her eyes gouged by a customer at a store on the NSW south coast last week. A woman, 35, was later charged with common assault, assault occasioning bodily harm and damaging property She will appear in Nowra Local Court on June 15. 'It was disgusting what she did. It's a disgrace,' Ms Herringe told Daily Mail Australia last week. Earlier this month, Debara Nydrle shared a heartbreaking photo online of her 18-year-old daughter Jordyn after a Woolworths shift in Townsville. Ms Nydrle shared a photo of red-faced and teary-eyed Jordyn on the couch after a traumatising shift where angry customers threw products at her because there was no toilet paper left. Coles employee Hayley Evans, 16, (pictured) was also recently subjected to customer abuse Hayley Evans, a 16-year-old checkout worker at Manly Corso Coles on Sydney's northern beaches had a man three times her age berate her and call the police The confrontation left Hayley feeling left her feeling 'anxious and scared'. Her mother, Kate Munn, told Daily Mail Australia: 'He was aggressive in his demeanour.' She urged shoppers to 'treat everyone with respect.' 'All front-line, essential workers are exposing themselves to a higher risk than others to ensure that the world keeps turning during this period,' Ms Munn said. The entrance to the Etobicoke General Hospital drive-thru COVID-19 assessment centre is pictured, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on April 9, 2020. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters) Quebec Coroner to Investigate 31 Deaths at Seniors Home Near Montreal MONTREALThe Quebec coroners office announced Sunday it will investigate the deaths of dozens of seniors at a private long-term care facility west of Montreal linked to what Premier Francois Legault has described as a possible case of gross negligence. The office said in a statement that it will probe the circumstances surrounding the deaths and issue recommendations if needed. Remember that coroners intervene in cases of deaths that are violent, obscure or could have occurred following negligence, the coroners office said in a statement. A police investigation was launched over the weekend after regional health authorities were able to access patient files at the Residence Herron and found that 31 of the residences 150 or so seniors had died since March 13. Quebecs health department is also investigating. Legault said at least five of the deaths were due to COVID-19, but that number could rise. Quite honestly, I think there was gross negligence at Residence Herron, Legault said on Saturday. The authorities first inspected Residence Herron on March 29, three days after word of the first death. They found the residence deserted as staff had walked off the job. Lynne McVey, head of the health board, has said her team began assisting the short-staffed workers to feed, wash and change patients, but only learned the full scope of the problem after getting a legal order allowing them to view families contact information and patient medical files. Katasa Groupe, which owns the residence and several others, has not answered requests for comment, and the home is now under government trusteeship. The Residence Herron story is only the latest report into troubling conditions at seniors and long-term care homes, which have been linked to a large percentage of the countrys COVID-19 deaths. An elderly woman waits outside a COVID-19 assessment center in London, Ontario, on March 17, 2020. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images) That includes another residence in Laval, north of Montreal, where 21 people have died and 115 have tested positive for COVID-19. The coroners office said in its statement that it is not currently investigating other homes, but is watching the situation and could intervene if needed. In a statement on Sunday, the provincial health department confirmed it would proceed to inspect all the provinces 40 private long-term care centers in the coming days. Every effort is being made to protect seniors and avoid tragic situations such as the one observed in the Herron private residential and long-term care centre that is not covered by an agreement, the statement said. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canadas chief public health officer, on Sunday lamented the deaths that COVID-19 has caused in long-term care facilities across the country, which she described in a statement as a tragic legacy of this pandemic. These heart-breaking events underscored the need for stringent infection prevention and control measures and led to the development of infection prevention and control guidance for long-term care homes, she added. That guidance includes strict rules around who can enter such facilities and detailed instructions on how to minimize the chances of an outbreak through proper hygiene and screening. The Quebec ombudsman launched an investigation into the Residence Herron in 2017 after it received complaints including inadequate nursing care, a poor approach towards patients with cognitive difficulties, complaints over food and a lack communication with families. The investigation found that the facility was providing adequate care, but the ombudsman cautioned in its report that management needed to ensure there was enough suitably-trained staff, given its intention to increase its number of patients. In 2019, an inspection by Health and Social Services did not note any particular problems with clinical practices, but issued recommendations including the development of a policy to combat mistreatment, as well as improved communications with residents and their families, particularly in the areas of residents rights, end-of-life decisions and palliative care. By Lee Berthiaume and Morgan Lowrie Washington D.C. [US], April 13 (ANI): US President Donald Trump on Sunday (local time) hailed the 'big oil deal' with OPEC plus saying it will save 'hundreds of thousands of energy jobs' in the country. "The big Oil Deal with OPEC plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all!" tweeted Trump. According to Sputnik, earlier in the day the OPEC plus oil producers agreed to a new deal stipulating a collective reduction in output in a bid to stabilise the market. "Under the agreement, Russia will reduce its production by 2.5 million barrels per day out of total 9.7 million, with the baseline level of the reduction for Russia set at 11 million barrels per day," Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying. According to Novak, the parties to the agreement would partially restore production up to a reduction limit of 8 million barrels per day over the next half a year and 6 million barrels per year in 2021. OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo too welcomed the new deal reached during the extraordinary meeting of the OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers. "Secretary General #HEMohammadBarkindo highlighted the importance of the historic agreement reached at the 10th (Extraordinary) OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial videoconference for the benefits of producers, consumers and the global economy," the OPEC Secretariat said on Twitter. (ANI) The Coronavirus fiscal-relief package (the CARES Act) is clear on who will receive its much-needed payments, in the form of checks to individuals and expanded unemployment insurance plus relief for small businesses and certain industry sectors. But the rules governing the Federal Reserve Banks lending authority will severely limit the ability of some mid- and large-size businesses to obtain the financing they desperately need to get through the current economic shutdown. On March 23rd, the Fed committed to using its full range of authorities to provide powerful support for the flow of credit to American families and businesses. The recently passed relief bill authorizes the Treasury secretary to provide a newly created Fed facility up to a total of $500 billion as collateral (loss protection), which the Fed can leverage to make around $4 trillion in loans. These funds are meant to assist businesses that are stressed because of the shutdown but do not qualify for relief under the CARES Acts small-business provisions. On the fiscal-policy side, small businesses with less than 500 employees can access $350 billion worth (likely to soon be expanded) of contingent loans doled out by the Small Business Administration (SBA). Those loans will be forgiven if the borrowing employer keeps people on the payroll. There are winners and losers in this package as well. Carve-outs in the CARES Act include SBA-forgivable loans for large restaurant and hotel companies (with under 500 employees per location as opposed to in total). There is also a financing gap for some startups and small businesses backed by or affiliated with venture capital. Private equity still cannot access the SBA-forgivable loans because of historical SBA rules. The Fed also announced the details of its Main Street Business Lending Program to support lending to eligible small-and-medium sized businesses that were in good financial standing before the crisis, complementing efforts by the SBA to support businesses with up to 10,000 employees and less than $2.5 billion in revenue. But its unclear how good financial understanding is defined and how solvency requirements will be applied, which could lead to the Fed picking winners and losers, leaving some without access to funds. Story continues Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act permits the Fed to make emergency loans to nonbank companies. However, after the unpopular financial bailouts, the then-Democratic-led Congress in 2010 amended the Dodd-Frank Act to prohibit the Fed from making loans to borrowers that are insolvent and requiring that the Fed ensure security for emergency loans is sufficient to protect taxpayers from loss. The Fed then went a step further, subsequently issuing a regulation defining insolvency in a way that would further constrain its freedom to act. As a result, the regulations currently governing the Feds compliance with Section 13(3)s solvency requirement state that any borrower who is generally not paying its undisputed debts as they become due during the 90 days preceding the date of borrowing is considered insolvent. At a time when the government has essentially shut down the economy, that 90-day requirement will be increasingly difficult for many companies to meet. This means that far larger corporations corporations that previously were paying their bills on time before COVID-19 but now find themselves distressed may face problems thanks to new arbitrary Fed-facility rules. Only companies with publicly issued corporate bonds that, as of March 22, carried investment grade credit ratings (BBB and above) can access the Feds new Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility. Companies that dont currently have at least two BB- credit ratings from agencies are ineligible; many companies are being downgraded well below BB- due to COVID-19. As of February, about 50 percent of all investment-grade corporate bonds were rated BBB, one notch away from falling below investment-grade status. Since the shutdown, rating agencies have been fiercely downgrading companies below junk, making them potentially ineligible. By these arbitrary criteria, the Fed will now buy Ford junk bonds, which were downgraded to junk after March 22 but not AMC and Cinemark junk bonds, since their downgrades to junk happened on March 16. To expeditiously resolve these problems and expand crisis lending uniformly, the following actions should be taken. First, Congress should amend Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act to clarify solvency requirements and grant the Fed more flexibility in administering its Main Street Business Lending Program. The Fed could also use the Administrative Procedures Act to eliminate the way it previously defined strict solvency requirements for 13(3) emergency lending eligibility. Second, Congress should pass legislation that waives SBA affiliation rules to allow companies with less than 500 employees backed by venture capital and private equity to access CARES Act SBA programs conditional on not firing people. The Fed should also relax the lending requirements of its Main Street Business Lending Facility to cover loans below $1 million (giving more access to smaller borrowers), purchase 100 percent of the loans (rather than purchasing only 95 percent of each bank loan, leaving 5 percent with the bank) and consider making terms more attractive to banks and borrowers. Third, the Fed should expand its corporate bond-buying programs move to move its eligibility date from March 22 to some earlier time perhaps in February before all COVID-19 ratings downgrades and loosen current credit-rating requirements to uniformly help more corporations in distress due to COVID-19. The Fed could also loosen the current AAA credit rating requirements for credit-card, auto-loan, and small-business-loan asset-backed securities that can be bought by its TALF program. These measures may be controversial, inviting concerns over moral hazard. But the unprecedented and unique nature of a once in a century pandemic requires an unprecedented and unique response. The Federal Reserve should also want to avoid the mistake it made during the outset of the Great Depression when it contracted the money supply, prolonging the depression (as Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz showed in their classic book, A Monetary History of the United States). As each day passes, previously solvent businesses that were paying their bills before the shutdown and could survive the downturn are laying off or firing employees. They are unsure whether they will have access to credit sufficient to remain in business during this crisis. Many of those employers will need assistance to get through the shutdown without laying off or terminating those employees. That initial unemployment insurance claims over the past three weeks exceeded 15 million only heightens the urgency. More from National Review A special credit bank where students can deposit their academic achievements and convert them into corresponding course credits and non-academic certificates has been set up in southwest Chinas Chongqing municipality, in a bid to encourage vocational training and foster the habit of lifelong learning. Local residents learn knowledge at the Yangjiaping community in Chongqing. (Photo/Peoples Daily) Shao Taotao, a teacher with 15 years experience in early childhood education, was frustrated when she received the evaluation: Your professional competence is not weak. She was concerned that her educational background could become the only barrier to her career development. While taking an adult education course at Chongqing Radio and TV University, Shao found out by chance that the qualifications she obtained during her work can be deposited into the credit bank and converted into corresponding credits after certification. "These credits can be used to offset the corresponding courses and improve my learning efficiency," said Shao, noting that "more importantly, it will encourage me to keep learning." Students can deposit the achievements made during their studies in the "credit bank", whose management center is located at Chongqing Radio and TV University, as savings and convert them into course credits and qualification certificates. To "open an account" and obtain the relevant learning outcomes, students have to go to the website of the Chongqing Academic Credit Bank for Lifelong Learning, click the "Add results" button and upload their corresponding qualification certificates, and post training experience and proof of online course attendance. "Within 15 working days, the certification results will come out." Shao Taotao went on to explain that as she never stopped learning after graduation, the kindergarten principal qualification certificate she obtained in the past can now be converted into credits for the "teaching and research work management" course in her preschool education major. Meanwhile, Shaos preschool teacher qualification certificate can also be converted into credits for the "children's game activity design and organization course. "Your formal school record is no longer the only criterion for measuring talent, as knowledge, skills and abilities acquired can be certified and transferred into the credit bank," stressed Wu Nanzhong, deputy director of the management center of the Chongqing Academic Credit Bank for Lifelong Learning. Social distancing is impossible in prison, and is even more difficult for elderly and infirm people, who rely on other inmates for toileting, to eat and dress, and to get and from dialysis and other medical appointments, said Jennifer Soble, the groups executive director, on Monday. Unless Governor Pritzker and the Department of Corrections act quickly to protect elderly and medically vulnerable prisoners by relocating them out that congregate setting, I am afraid that these five deaths will be the tip of the iceberg. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has announced the signing of a management agreement with Shanghai 21st Century Hotel Co., Ltd. for its iconic Regent property located in Lujiazui, Shanghai, China. From May 16, the hotel will be officially branded as Regent Shanghai Pudong and ready to welcome guests with a truly unique and luxury experience, which the legendary brand is famous for. All existing reservations will be automatically forwarded and honoured by Regent Shanghai Pudong. Guests will be able to experience the understated luxury and intuitive service brought by Regent seamlessly. Under the deal, IHG will also take over the management of its luxury apartments, which sit above the hotel in the same tower. Expanding its luxury footprint, IHG announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Regent Hotels & Resorts in March 2018 and brought the much-loved brand into the top end of its portfolio. Since then, IHG has worked quickly to combine its expertise in luxury with Regents deep heritage and revered legacy, relaunching the brand by evolving it to appeal to the modern luxury traveller. Set amidst the magnificent skyline of the Lujiazui financial district, Regent Shanghai Pudong will be the first Regent hotel opened globally after the acquisition. Meanwhile, renovation is already underway to rebrand the iconic InterContinental Hong Kong into a Regent hotel in 2021, bringing the hotel back to its roots as it first opened its doors as a Regent in 1980. In addition, the brand is also expecting new openings in Phu Quoc, Vietnam later this year, Bali, Indonesia in 2021, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as well as Chengdu, China in 2023. Justin Channe, managing director, Regent Hotels & Resorts, IHG, remarked: Welcoming Regent Shanghai Pudong to the Regent family represents a significant milestone for the brand not only in Greater China but also in the world. Since acquisition we have been committed to making the brand a real leader within luxury hospitality and taking it to the worlds best destinations. We are excited to team up with Shanghai 21st Century Hotel Co., Ltd., our long-term strategic partner, to bring Regent to Shanghai in such a prime location. We look forward to working closely with the owner to proudly bring Regent hallmarks to life in the hotel. - TradeArabia News Service Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday asked the government to provide 10 kg grains per person to beneficiaries of National Food Security Act till September this year. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she also demanded that 10 kg grains per person be provided free of cost for 6 months to those who may be facing food insecurity, but are not holding ration cards. These, she added, were primarily migrant labourers who did not have ration cards. She said lakhs of vulnerable people across the country face chronic food insecurity due to the lockdown. This is tragic given that India has large buffer stock of food grains precisely for exigencies like the current pandemic, she said. "The current crisis has pushed many relatively food secure families into food insecurity and poverty," she wrote to the prime minister. "In our fight against the pandemic we must ensure that no one faces hunger," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the number of new deaths and rate of hospitalizations falling in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday that the worst is over in the coronavirus pandemic, and he announced an alliance with six other Northeastern governors to explore how to eventually lift restrictions a move that appeared to be an implicit rebuke to President Trump. The governors from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island said they would begin to draw up a plan for when to reopen businesses and schools, and how quickly to allow people to return to work safely, although the timeline for such a plan remained unclear. If you do it wrong, it can backfire, and weve seen that with other places in the globe, Mr. Cuomo said. What the art form is going to be here is doing that smartly and doing that in a coordinated way. The joint effort was the first of two announced on Monday: The governors of California, Oregon and Washington, three Western states that were among those that felt the impact of the virus before it spread rapidly in the Northeast, announced a similar pact. All but one of the 10 governors on the two coasts are Democrats. Leading stock exchange NSE on Monday said it has contributed Rs 26 crore towards PM-CARES Fund and a few state government funds in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic Mumbai: Leading stock exchange NSE on Monday said it has contributed Rs 26 crore towards PM-CARES Fund and a few state government funds in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic. The employees of the NSE Group are also separately contributing one day's salary towards the PM-CARES Fund for this purpose, a release said. ''''NSE is committed to supporting the government in the nation's battle against the pandemic and in providing assistance to alleviate the difficulties faced by the ecosystem due to COVID 19, the release said. Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak The Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES Fund) was set up on March 28 to raise money for combating the coronavirus outbreak and to provide relief to the affected people. Political leaders, corporates, defence personnel, employees of PSUs such as railways, and Bollywood personalities have made a contribution to the PM-CARES Fund. So far, the pandemic has claimed 308 lives in India, while the number of cases has climbed to 9,152, according to the Union Health Ministry. About one in four Canadians are not following social distancing recommendations from publicnhealth officials to their full extent, according to an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Global News. Social distancing involves staying at home as often as possible, such as by avoiding non-essential gatherings, to help slow and contain the spread of COVID-19. When going out in public, Canadians are urged to avoid contact with others by keeping a distance of at least 2 arms lengths, according to the federal governments website. "Enough is enough. Go home and stay home, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as far back as March 23. Despite the constant encouragement by all levels of government, 26 per cent of Canadians arent doing their part to slow the spread of the fatal virus, according to the Ipsos poll that interviewed 1,006 Canadians who were at least 18 years old, between April 3-7. Among the 26 per cent, people are not following social-distancing measures to various extents. A press release by Ipsos says that: 3 per cent say theyre carrying on as normal, going to work, socializing and interacting as normal. 3 per cent are reducing contact with others, but still going out and socializing in person with friends or family. 20 per cent are limiting personal contact to just a few people outside of their home, and going out a few days a week to shop or get food. Of the rest, roughly 60 per cent said they only go out once a week to get groceries, and about 15 per cent arent going out at all. Twenty-six per cent of people continue to go out, despite the fact that provinces around the country have enacted states of emergency acts, which give their police services the power to enforce new rules throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In Quebec, their provincial police force said they handed out over 100 fines over the weekend to people not obeying social distancing rules. In Toronto, people who dont live together can be fined up to $1,000 if theyre within two metres of each other in public spaces, which can lead to a $5,000 conviction. Story continues The Ipsos poll suggests that were seeing younger demographics to be the most likely to not follow social distancing measures. Of those 18-34 years old, 32 per cent said theyre not practicing social-distancing. Twenty-seven per cent of people aged 35-54 are not doing their part; 19 per cent of people 55 years or older said theyre fully taking the advice of public health officials. Twelve per cent say they know someone whos been infected, but that increases to 16 per cent among those 18-34 years old. Despite the age, the poll suggests that when someones knows a patient, theyre actually less likely to practice social distancing. Thirty-four per cent of people who know someone with COVID-19 are not fully practicing social distancing measures, and eight per cent arent doing it all, according to the press release by Ipsos. Of those who dont know a patient, 24 per cent of them said theyre not fully obeying measures, and two per cent said theyre carrying on with their normal routines. Ninety-five per cent of Canadians strongly or somewhat agree that physical distancing can be effective, but only 63 per cent are confident that others are also taking the measures seriously. As of April 8, there are over 18,000 cases of COVID-19 and over 400 deaths across the nation, while at least half of the provinces in Canada reporting signs of community spread. According to Prime Minister Trudeau, we should be ready for weeks more of social distancing. In order to avoid further repercussion by the disease, health officials are urging people to follow measures as soon as possible. Under strong international pressure, China on Sunday vowed to improve the treatment of Africans in the southern city of Guangzhou following accusations of discrimination linked to the coronavirus pandemic, and said it rejected all racist and discriminatory remarks. Africans in the industrial centre of 15 million say they have become targets of suspicion and subjected to forced evictions, arbitrary quarantines and mass coronavirus testing, particularly as Beijing steps up its fight against imported infections. The African Union expressed its extreme concern about the situation on Saturday, calling on Beijing to take immediate corrective measures. The United States, meanwhile, denounced what it called xenophobia towards Africans by Chinese authorities.- A recent cluster of coronavirus cases linked to the Nigerian community in Guangzhou, southern Chinas largest city, sparked the alleged discrimination by locals and virus-prevention officials. Several Africans told AFP they had been forcibly evicted from their homes and turned away by hotels. The Chinese government has been attaching great importance to the life and health of foreign nationals in China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in a statement. The Guangdong (provincial) authorities attach great importance to some African countries concerns and are working promptly to improve their working method, he added. Among the measures Zhao announced were non-discriminatory health management services and hotels for foreigners who are required to undergo medical observation, to be offered at reduced rates for those in need. He said officials in Guangdong rejected all racist and discriminatory remarks. The first reports of heightened discrimination came after local authorities said at least eight people diagnosed with the illness had spent time in the citys Yuexiu district, known as Little Africa. Five were Nigerian nationals who faced widespread anger after reports surfaced that they had broken a mandatory quarantine and been to restaurants and other public places. China has made massive investments in Africa over the past 20 years and maintains positive relations with most countries there. China-Africa friendship is unbreakable as it is deeply rooted in this land, Zhao said. China has largely stemmed its coronavirus epidemic, but remains on alert over the threat of reinfection from individuals arriving from abroad who could cause a second wave of the virus. SOURCE: AFP Representative Image. Soon, industries in Maharashtra's 'green zones' may get the green light to start manufacturing subject to them following certain precautionary measures, sources told CNN-News18. State Industries Minister Subhash Desai, at a high-level meeting today, reportedly gave the directions to classify areas into 'green', 'orange' or 'red' zones. This process of classification into zones based on the number of COVID-19 positive cases in an area is likely to be completed in two days, sources told CNN-News18. Track this blog for LIVE updates on the coronavirus outbreak Permission will be granted to industries across Maharashtra, barring those located in Mumbai and Pune. Earlier, reports had suggested that the Centre is likely to categorise the country into similar zones on the basis of the number of COVID-19 cases, in order to allow limited services to function in the relatively safer zones. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show The manufacturing sector in India, in general, and in Maharashtra, in particular, has taken a hit due to the novel coronavirus outbreak and the consequent nationwide lockdown. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, on March 24, announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown, a move aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19. The lockdown is supposed to conclude on April 14, although many states have already announced an extension, including Maharashtra. Also Read: PM Modi's address on April 14: Total withdrawal, partial lifting or extension of lockdown? Here are a few possibilities Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray explained the contours of the plan in a live webcast, adding that while the restrictions would be eased in certain areas in the state during the extended period, they would become stricter in others. Maharashtra has reported more than 2,000 active COVID-19 cases. The Ontario governments effort to fight COVID-19 includes a plan to bring artificial intelligence innovators together with health researchers to study a vast new pool of public health information. That information will include anonymized data from OHIP billings, prescription drug claims, hospital discharges, ER visits and claims for home care and long-term care, which will be gathered in a secure platform, according to a Ministry of Health statement released Sunday. The statement was issued after the Star posed questions about a confidential government document it obtained, outlining plans for the new data platform known as Pandemic Threat Response (PANTHR). According to the document, the platform could eventually grow to incorporate data from other sources outside the public health system, such as location data from Ontarians mobile phones, vehicles and smart devices. However, the document notes that no Canadian province is currently using such data to combat the spread of COVID-19 and says it is an ongoing policy discussion for the province, which is weighing the potential benefits and privacy concerns. A Health Ministry spokesperson told the Star that no decisions have been made about the collection or use of mobile data to track contacts or any other personal information of citizens. The purpose of the new PANTHR platform is to allow artificial intelligence and machine learning experts to analyze a large pool of data in order to: Improve the detection of COVID-19 cases and predict where future outbreaks might occur Identify risk factors for infection among vulnerable populations Assess the effectiveness of prevention and treatment measures Predict demands on the health-care system and better deploy resources The project could potentially save countless lives by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to the document obtained by the Star. Better access to integrated data will improve modelling and research to determine how COVID-19 is evolving, ensuring front-line staff are as prepared as possible in these unprecedented times, Health Minister Christine Elliott said in the news release on Sunday. Groups involved in the project include the non-profit Compute Ontario, which will manage the platform; provincial superagency Ontario Health; the health research institute ICES; the Toronto-based Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence; and Queens University. The Centre for Advanced Computing at Queens will host the platform, the Health Ministry said. The confidential document notes the new platform represents a fundamental change in collection, use and disclosure of public health information in Ontario. To lay the groundwork for the project, the government made initial changes to both the Personal Health Information Protection Act and the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act several weeks ago. Those changes included expanding the definition of who is able to responsibly access provincial health information, and introducing strict measures on how extra-ministerial entities can handle data. More severe penalties for data breaches and contraventions of the provinces health privacy laws were also introduced, with the maximum fine for an offence raised to $200,000 for individuals and $1 million for corporations. Brian Beamish, the provinces information and privacy commissioner, praised these changes, writing in a blog post that the government (made) significant changes to our access and privacy laws that, for the most part, strengthen data protection in our province. The confidential document recommends that the final agreement with partnering groups contain provisions for cybersecurity mechanisms that meet or exceed industry standards and best practices, as well as the creation of a cybersecurity advisory body, an ability for the province to audit the project, and a pledge that the data of Ontarians will remain secure at all times. Health Ministry spokesperson Hayley Chazan told the Star on Sunday that the government will be consulting with privacy stakeholders, including the provinces information and privacy commissioner, to ensure this initiative is designed with the best interests of Ontarians in mind, including privacy protections for Ontarians. The province will appoint a special adviser and also form a round table to guide the project. According to government estimates in the document obtained by the Star, the platform will cost $47 million over five years, with $15 million required in the first year. Chazan confirmed the $15-million figure to the Star, but said the government has yet to determine future funding. Chazan said the money will come from either internal ministry reallocation, or federal or interprovincial COVID-19 financial resources. When asked what Health Canadas role in the project would be, a spokesperson told the Star that it is working with provincial and territorial partners, as well as key national data agencies, to support greater patient access to health data while ensuring the protection of personal health information. With regard to the use of artificial intelligence and big data, the proposal seen by the Star suggests an ethical use framework be developed specially for the project. The confidential document cites a medium risk related to the security of information and data stored in the program, and notes the increasing frequency of cyberattacks. The document discloses that there were more than 500 health information privacy breaches in 2018 across Ontario, and says that harnessing artificial intelligence could help lower that number. The proposal for the new data platform notes there is interest and potential to integrate data held by private companies in order to strengthen the provinces response to COVID-19. For example, the proposal reads, geolocation data from personal mobile devices, vehicles, and transit and credit card transactions have the potential to be paired with public health data. It also cites the potential to incorporate data from household and wearable smart devices. The Ministry of Health told the Star on Sunday that credit card data will not be collected. This proposal comes in the wake of an article published by tech-focused news outlet The Logic, detailing comments made by Mayor John Tory that the city of Toronto was obtaining cellphone data from wireless carriers to help it identify where people have assembled in groups. Torys spokesperson and city staff said later that they were not collecting such data, and that Tory was instead talking about an offer made to him by various companies. So far, no provinces have implemented the intrusive measures seen in countries such as China, where cellphones are tracked and citizens scolded for disobeying public health guidelines. But one page from the governments proposal includes a chart showing Ontarios handling of the pandemic compared with stricter approaches taken by countries in Europe and Asia. As of Sunday, the provinces 34 regional public health units were reporting a total of 320 deaths among 8,021 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19. The battle against the coronavirus is still to be won and we will have to accept that we will have to do our part in this battle for some time to come, writes Fergus Finlay IM a member of the board of the HSE. I applied for it, and was appointed. Itss a small board, and were all an awful lot busier than we thought wed be. We work to a chairman, Ciaran Devane, who works even harder than the rest of us to ensure that proper accountability and leadership applies. And we work alongside a CEO and a senior management team that has got to be the most impressive group of people Ive ever seen in the midst of a crisis. We had rows with them before this started, and no doubt well have rows again, but I would trust this team with my life. They have really, truly, mistakes and all, warts and all, risen to the biggest challenge our health system has ever seen, and one of the biggest crises our country has seen. I havent asked their permission to say what I want to say here. I dont want you to think that Im just spreading a message on behalf of the HSE. Its never been an organisation above criticism, and its not above criticism now. The State, in all its different ways, is trying to do its best. But its not perfect, and needs to be always challenged to get it right. Sometimes, for example, communication is clear and simple. Sometimes and it has happened a couple of times recently there has been far too much confusion about what were trying to say. But heres what I believe to be absolutely true. I think I know the future. Its scary, but doesnt have to be that scary. Its economically serious, but doesnt have to be devastating. It doesnt, if youll pardon the expression, have to mean the end of the world. It is all summed up in one key sentence. Its the core of the future. The core of the problem. And the core of the solution. The sentence is this. And right now, it is the absolute truth. The complete bottom line. We are living every day alongside a highly contagious virus which is really dangerous for a lot of the people we love and value, and for which there is no vaccine and no immunity. The sentence as a whole is almost a cliche now, isnt it? But every single word of that sentence is equally important, and equally true. No vaccine. No immunity. Really dangerous. Highly contagious. And it can kill the people we love most. Because that sentence is the core of the problem, it means that all the guff about this being no worse than the flu, or the cure being worse than the disease, or the important thing being the economy, is all poisonous rubbish. At least, right now it is. We cannot re-imagine that sentence right now. It is here now. It is killing people now. We are all potential victims and carriers and spreaders. The virus gives us all the potential to kill the people we love. Weve been asked to do sensible things to protect the people we love. Wash our hands. Keep our distance. Stay indoors. Avoid unnecessary travel. Every day I talk to people who are chafing in the face of these restrictions. And I am too. But when you think that every time you wash your hands you improve someones chances of staying alive, its not a lot to ask. Give up your Easter weekend even if it means missing your grandkids for the first time since they were born and all youre doing is your duty. And that sentence also means that its too soon to start speculating about how we end the war against the virus. Were the foot soldiers in the war, those of us who stay at home and wash our hands. The people on the front line the nurses and doctors, the cleaners and ward orderlies, the paramedics and drivers are every one of them a hero. The generals are the managers, the policy makers, and the politicians. Theyre the ones we look to win this war. And then there are the armchair generals, the ones who really know best. I read one of them in one of Sundays newspapers I wont name him in case he was misquoted, but he was fairly typical who said there were only two choices eliminate the virus like China or New Zealand, or try to flatten the curve like Boris Johnson. How anyone gets taken seriously when they say things like that baffles me. Because we cant beat the virus. Only a proper vaccine can do that. We have only one choice ultimately, and thats to manage life alongside the virus. And were not there yet, not by a long shot. Think back for a second. If our government was led by Boris Johnson, wed have gone ahead with the St Patricks Day Festival, because thats exactly the sort of feckless thing he was doing. A fortnight later, on March 31, our intensive care capacity, and our hospital system, would have been entirely overrun. A fortnight after that which is where were are right now the deaths from the virus would have been far in excess of where they are, as bad as that is. But there would have been a lot more death on top of that. Because when your hospitals and intensive care capacity are overrun, people die from all sorts of things they shouldnt die from things that have nothing to do with the virus at all. By closing down when we did public policy decisions saved an awful lot of lives, because no hospital was overrun. SO how do we get beyond the virus if we cant beat it? By accepting that there are some preconditions we have to meet before we can call a truce in the war. The first is to acknowledge that the virus will continue to make people sick until a vaccine is ready. So it remains absolutely essential to maintain and improve the capacity of our hospital system. The second precondition is testing and tracing. If were going to get back to business alongside a virus that has no vaccine or immunity yet, we will each need to know if and when were infected, and who we might have infected. That means real-time testing, and open and intrusive tracing. Technology is emerging now that will enable the tracing, but it will take weeks more for testing to be at the level it needs to be. When we get the testing right, well know the rate at which the virus spreads each day or not. Until those preconditions are met, we remain at war with a virus that can kill our loved ones. When the preconditions are met, we can move into an uneasy truce with the virus. We can, and we will, rebuild the strength of the economy then. But until then, lets stop the talk of moving on. Were at war and you never win a war by deciding to walk off the battlefield. We cant beat the virus without a vaccine but we can win the war against the virus by sticking together and by fighting for each other. Medical workers take a patient under intensive care into the Columbus Covid 2 temporary hospital, newly built to fight the COVID-19 epidemic, in Rome, Italy, on March 16, 2020. (Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images) Italys COVID-19 Death Toll Spikes But New Infections Drop Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 566 on Monday, up from 431 the day before, officials said. But the number of new infections slowed to its lowest level since April 7, dropping to 3,153 from a previous 4,092. The total death toll, since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21, has risen to 20,465, the Civil Protection Agency said. The number of officially confirmed cases in Italy now stands at 159,516, according to the agency. Italy has been under lockdown since March 9, with most shops, bars, and restaurants closed. People are forbidden from leaving their homes unless it is for essential things like getting food or medical attention. Officials have repeatedly said the infection rate can only be brought down if strict social distancing measures remain in effect. On Sunday in Vatican City, which is an independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Pope Francis called for global solidarity to confront the epochal challenge posed by the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, has spread aggressively across the world, with a Johns Hopkins tally noting over 1.8 million infections globally. The number of fatalities attributed to the CCP virus worldwide stands at over 115,000 as of April 13. 109 of Italys Doctors Have Died Fighting Pandemic In Italy, 109 doctors have died on the frontlines of the outbreak, according to an Italian doctors association. The editorial board of the Italian Association of Doctors (FNOMCeO) updated on April 9 its running tally of doctors who died amid response efforts to the pandemic. Unfortunately, the sad list of doctors who have fallen during the COVID-19 epidemic is growing, FNOMCeOs board wrote in a note accompanying the tally, to which six new names were added on April 9. The dead do not make a noise. Yet, the names of our dead friends, our colleagues, put here in black and white, make a deafening noise, said Filippo Anelli, FNOMCeO president, in earlier remarks to The Financial Times. The association did not specify how directly the deaths of the 109 doctors could be attributed to COVID-19, noting that many doctors die suddenly, even if the cause of death is not directly attributable to the virus, because theres no buffer. The association said it would update the tally regularly, hoping it will serve as a warning, a lesson for all. Anelli earlier made urgent calls for more personal protective equipment for frontline medical staff, telling The Financial Times that Italian doctors were being sent into a war against the virus unarmed. According to an April 13 count (pdf) by the Italian Higher Health Institute (ISS), a total of 16,050 healthcare workers in Italy have contracted the virus. Reuters contributed to this report. Pat Allerton, the vicar of an Anglican church in London's fashionable Nothing Hill district, isn't one to let a nationwide lockdown get in between him and a message of hope. Armed with two loudspeakers, Allerton left his vicarage at St. Peter's church and got on his bicycle to deliver his Easter Sunday sermon - onto the backstreets. Allerton, like other Church of England clergy members, has had to be ingenious at finding ways to spread the word during the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. The Church of England has closed all its churches. For Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, that involved giving his Easter Sunday sermon in his kitchen from behind a makeshift altar. Allerton said he needed to come up with an Easter alternative, too, as we were told we couldnt gather in churches for obvious reasons. Britain has been under effectively a government-ordered lockdown since March 23, a state of affairs that is expected to be extended later this week. So a plan was hatched to take the church to the people. In conversation with my bishops, we decided that, yes, this ministry could continue, should continue, but that it could be part of my daily exercise, Allerton said. So now I go on a big bike ride," he continued. "Im carrying quite a bit of weight, as you can see, with the speakers and the generator so Im fully independent, and I just get out and cycle and get around the parish and round about local streets looking to bring a bit of hope. During his two-wheeled ministry, the vicar plays hymns such as Amazing Grace through the speakers and gathers passers-by in song followed by some prayer for people suffering during the battle against the coronavirus and for front-line health workers in the National Health Service. For Dan Pratt, a Notting Hill local, a chance encounter delivered exactly what Allerton wanted to give, much-needed hope two days on from his grandfather's death from the coronavirus. The family have obviously been a bit torn up about it. We can't be together, we can't give my nan a hug, Pratt said. And worst of all, we can't give him a funeral or send-off or anything like that at the moment." So he decided to go on a run to release a bit of energy, and by chance he came across the bike-riding vicar and his loudspeakers. It was a bit emotional for me, but it was really, really good," Pratt said. "That has really really helped me, I say, given the loss of my grandfather and whats going on. Is there anything more a man of faith would wish for? The government confirmed Sunday that the UK became the fourth European country after Italy, Spain and France to reach the grim milestone of 10,000 virus-related deaths. It said 737 more people who tested positive for the coronavirus had died, taking the total recorded in the UK to 10,612. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. (Image Credit: AP) BEIRUT, Lebanon Qatar has locked down tens of thousands of migrant workers in a crowded neighborhood, raising fears it will become a coronavirus hotbed. Companies in Saudi Arabia have told foreign laborers to stay home then stopped paying them. In Kuwait, an actress said on TV that migrants should be thrown out into the desert. The oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf have long relied on armies of low-paid migrant workers from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to do the heavy lifting in their economies, and have faced longstanding criticism from rights groups for treating those laborers poorly. Now, the coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse, as migrants in Gulf States have found themselves locked down in cramped, unsanitary dorms, deprived of income and unable to return home because of travel restrictions. Some are running out of food and money and fear they have no place to turn in societies that often treat them like an expendable underclass. An ambulance arrives at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Ga., on Oct. 15, 2014. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) Domestic Violence Cases Spike Amid Shelter-In-Place Orders As people across the country are confined together amid stay-at-home orders, domestic violence cases have seen an upsurge nationwide, experts and police departments said. Survivors are trapped with their abusers at this point, and with social isolation, they dont have a lot of means for escape or for support, said Stephanie Brown, executive director of Casa Myrna, a group that supports domestic violence survivors in the Boston area, in comments to WBUR. She said the economic repercussions of business shutdowns and employee layoffs have made things even worse. The emotional and financial abuse of survivors is going to increase and heighten, and we also expect to see physical violence increase, she said. The San Antonio Police Department reported a 21 percent increase in family violence calls between Jan. 1 and April 7, compared to the same time period last year, according to local news outlet KSAT. A department spokesperson said school closures, shelter-in-place requirements, and added financial strain were all exacerbating factors. Theres no more school. Theres limited child care because employees are being furloughed, and it will just continue to add to the immense amount of financial stress that was already there. And on top of that, communication may not be optimal, said Alisia Pruneda, public information officer for the San Antonio Police Department. Aileen Robinson, domestic violence operations coordinator for the Chicago Police Department, told The Hill that Chicago saw a 14.6 percent rise in the number of domestic violence complaints in the first week of April compared to the same period in 2019. We already know that abusers are using this as a tool to manipulate not only victims, but law enforcement, Robinson said of abusers weaponizing the virus itself, such as threatening to throw out victims if they test positive. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, has spread aggressively across the United States, with a Johns Hopkins tally noting over 558,000 infections across America as of April 13, while the number of fatalities attributed to COVID-19 standing at over 22,000. A total of 18 out of 22 law enforcement agencies across the country that responded to requests to provide domestic violence case information told NBC they saw a rise in such complaints in March. The financial stress alone creates a ticking time bomb for some families with a history of domestic violence, said Steve Mueller, sheriff of Cherokee County, South Carolina, according to the report. Mueller said the county saw a 35 percent month-over-month spike in allegations of domestic violence in March. Unfortunately many of these domestic violence cases occur in front of children and often the children become victims of abuse and assault, as well, Mueller said. The United Nations called the phenomenon of increased domestic violence against women and girls amid COVID-19 a shadow pandemic. Globally, 243 million women and girls aged 15-49 have been subjected to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in the previous 12 months, the agency wrote in a report (pdf). The number is likely to increase as security, health, and money worries heighten tensions and strains are accentuated by cramped and confined living conditions, it added. Officer Pruneda told KSAT that help is often there for victims of domestic abuse, but they first need to muster the courage to reach out. But we cant do anything about it unless they call, someone calls, Pruneda said. And sometimes that takes a great act of bravery. President Donald Trump is likely to announce restrictions on US funding for the World Health Organisation this week over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as the administration and conservative allies ramped up their criticism that the United Nations agency catered to China early in the outbreak and jeopardised global health. Mr Trump hinted at a temporary hold on US funding Friday but said he wanted to wait until after Easter to announce anything. He said his administration would discuss the organisation in great detail this week, saying he did not want to go further before we had all the facts. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other US officials are expected to recommend to Mr Trump how to dock or condition payments to the agency as Republicans in Congress seek documentation of WHO dealings with China, said people familiar with White House and State Department discussions who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations. They are very, very China-centric, Mr Trump said Friday. China always seems to get the better of the argument and I dont like that, I really dont like that. I dont think thats appropriate. I dont think its fair to the American people. Speaking at the daily White House coronavirus news conference, Mr Trump focused on the level of US funding and the disparity with Chinas contribution. The administration review is expected to be broader, to consider how well the agency responded in December, January and February as the virus began spreading rapidly inside China and then beyond its borders, said the people familiar with the talks. At issue are ongoing voluntary US payments to the United Nations health body, based in Geneva. The United States is the largest single donor to the WHO, with assessed or mandatory funding and larger voluntary contributions that often go to fund specific projects or crisis response. The United States has provided the agency with $893m (715m) during its current two-year funding period, the health news website statnews.com calculated last week. Funding varies year by year. Chinese contributions are a fraction of that. Republicans in Congress are seeking documents from the WHO and calling for investigations of contacts between WHO officials and Chinese government officials. The White House backs those efforts but could hold up funding before results are in. The money is not guaranteed if WHO does not do its mission, a senior administration official said. The official, who requested anonymity because the administration has not yet decided how to proceed, said the quarrel is less with the organisations health professionals and more with its political leadership. The problem is not the WHO system. The system has good people, the official said. Its about comments made from the leadership which went beyond what I am told their own staff wanted to say. The president has piled on to rising conservative criticism of the WHO, which is paired with criticism of China as deceptive and defensive during the crucial early weeks of the crisis. But while the WHO has been criticised for not taking a more sceptical approach towards China, critics of the organisation note it has also taken a soft approach towards US efforts to mitigate the pandemic despite widespread criticism of how the Mr Trump administration has responded. The question, they argue, is whether the WHO is taking a conciliatory approach towards major financial patrons, including the United States and China, as opposed to solely favouring the communist regime in Beijing. For Mr Trump, the focus on the United Nations entity shifts some blame from his own early reaction, when he dismissed the virus as no threat to the United States. The president has said he inherited a health system that wasnt up to the task and blamed Democrats and the news media for hyping the threat. But he has never offered a full accounting of what his own administration was doing to protect the country in late 2019 and the first weeks of January, the period before and during the entrance and initial spread of the virus in the United States. Accurate assessments of the risk at the outset could have given the US government a jump on the need for social distancing and other preventive measures and lead time to procure additional tests, masks, respirators and other equipment now in short supply, said two people who have spoken with Mr Trump about the WHO. Were going to have an announcement on the World Health Organisation sometime next week, Mr Trump said Friday. As you know, we give them approximately $500m a year. And were going to be talking about that subject next week. Well have a lot to say about it. Well hold it. He had started attacking the agency by name several days before, on Tuesday, when he tweeted that The WHO really blew it, and noted the heavy share of US funding the agency receives. Speaking to reporters hours later on Tuesday, Mr Trump went further. Mr Trump has relentlessly attacked the WHO for its approach to tackle coronavirus (AFP) (AFP via Getty Images) Were going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. Were going to put a very powerful hold on it and were going to see, Mr Trump said Tuesday. They called it wrong. They call it wrong. They really, they missed the call. He backed off that threat during the same press briefing, saying the decision had not been made but has continued to criticise the agency. Accusing the WHO of being slow to react allows Mr Trump an I-told-you-so moment. The organisation pointedly dissented from Mr Trumps decision in late January to impose severe travel restrictions on travellers from China. Mr Trump has claimed ever since that the decision saved American lives and complained that he was not given credit for foresight. They criticised me very strongly when I said that were going to shut down flights coming in from China, and especially from certain parts of China, but from China generally, Mr Trump said Wednesday. We were criticised very badly. Pointing a finger at the WHO also fits with Mr Trumps long-standing scepticism about the United Nations and complaints that the United States spends too much and gets too little from international organisations. On Friday, he likened the WHO to the World Trade Organisation, a much more frequent target of Mr Trumps ire, saying both bodies have routinely taken advantage of the United States. For many conservatives aligned with Mr Trump, the issue is equally about scepticism that the WHO is bloated, ineffective or biased, and about alleged Chinese perfidy. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley appeared twice on Fox News last week to accuse the agency of covering for China. She backed a call for a full investigation from Senator James Risch, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr Risch is expected to speak by phone early this week with WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, before the Senate effort moves ahead, a Republican Senate aide said. As other conservatives have done, Ms Haley pointed to Taiwan, which China considers a rogue province, to make the point that China was duplicitous. I mean look at the timeline. Youve got, 30 December, Taiwan goes and tells the WHO we believe and have evidence that theres human-to-human transmission. Then you have, 14 January, the head of the WHO, Tedros, says we dont see any evidence of human-to-human transmission, Haley said on Friday on Fox and Friends. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has told countries to test, test, test citizens for coronavirus (AFP) (AFP/Getty) At a press briefing last week, Dr Tedros predicted that the United States will continue to contribute its share. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the US for its generous support so far, he said. On Thursday, several Republican members of the House Oversight Committee requested documents and other information from the WHO about its relationship with China and its response to the pandemic. Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is in essence the Communist Party of China, the lawmakers wrote to the WHO chief. Representative James Comer, R-Ky., was among those signing the letter. In an interview Friday, he said he 100 per cent supports a holdup of US funding for the WHO, which amounts to roughly 15 per cent of the agencys budget. You would stop the check, while questions are answered, he said. Mr Comer said he and his colleagues want to know did they drop the ball and make honest mistakes or were they going along with Chinese propaganda and taking Chinas word for it on what the problem was. Mr Comer said the agencys early pronouncements on the outbreak were completely inaccurate. Recommended Trump retweets post calling for firing of coronavirus expert Dr Fauci Several Republican Senate aides interviewed about the WHOs response criticised it as halting and incomplete but said it is not yet clear whether the agency was complicit in any Chinese whitewash of the outbreak. In the early going, the agency was balancing its need for access to on-the-ground information from China, which would affect the effectiveness of the agencys response, with its duty to speak truthfully about the threat, one Republican Senate aide said. The WHOs complicity in any cover-up will rest on whether the agency went beyond a need to publicly extend the benefit of the doubt and actively fronted for the Chinese government, the aide said. Mr Trumps escalating confrontation with the WHO over its connection to China comes as he is attempting to complete a massive trade agreement with Beijing. He expressed optimism about the pact Friday while noting that he has not dropped 25 per cent tariffs on some Chinese goods. Comer said the pandemic is not likely to affect the outcome of negotiations, but he predicted that the Chinese response to the coronavirus pandemic gives the president leverage. If we can prove theyve misled us on something thats by all accounts led to a loss of American lives and certainly disrupted the American economy, I think the presidents got more credibility and a greater potential for success, Comer said. The Washington Post Covid-19 is the crisis of the moment but many commentators have pointed to the opportunity it presents to reimagine a better future for India. In the last of their three-part series, economists Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian suggest new permanent social contract to ensure that no Indian should ever have to face in the future the plight that millions are facing today. Read it here. In other opinion, writers examine the consequences of an extended lockdown and the impact on the financial sector. Kanika Datta sums up the views. With the extension of the lockdown, the ... OPEC+ has agreed to remove 9.7 million bpd of oil from the market, OPEC said in a press release Sunday, with the cuts beginning next month and remaining in effect until the end of June, after which the group will start to ramp up production gradually. From 9.7 million bpd in May to June, the cuts will decline to 7.7 million bpd for the period July to December 2020, and then further to 5.8 million bpd until the end of April 2022. OPEC and its partners led by Russia had been discussing the cuts for four days with all big players agreeing to cut deep. Somewhat surprisingly, however, Mexico refused to sign up for a cut of 400,000 bpd like OPEC+ had asked. The country, which is not part of OPEC but is part of OPEC+, said it would only cut 100,000 bpd from its daily production, throwing a wrench into the works of the agreement. Then, on Friday, Mexico said it had struck a deal with the United States to pass on to it most of the cuts. Mexicos President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he had spoken with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday and the United States agreed to cut 250,000 bpd for Mexico to help it reach the 400,000-bpd cut OPEC+ is asking of it, the Mexican president said at a news conference on Friday, noting that he had informed OPEC+ of this development. Previously, OPEC+ had agreed in principle cuts of 10 million bpd, with Saudi Arabia and Russia contributing the most, from a baseline level of 11 million bpd. The rest of the members of the group would cut from a baseline level equal to their average daily output rate from October 2018. However, prices have failed to respond as many have expected. Although Brent crude and WTI improved on the news, the improvement was modest because although historically high, the agreed cuts fell short of expectations based on the loss of demand, which some have estimated at 30 million bpd. Since it is unrealistic to expect producers to remove 30 million bpd of oil from markets even for a month, the reaction of prices was expected. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: By Rania El Gamal DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's energy minister said on Monday that effective global oil supply cuts would amount to around 19.5 million barrels per day, taking into account the reduction pact agreed by OPEC+, pledges by other G20 nations and oil purchases into reserves. OPEC and allies led by Russia, a group known as OPEC+, agreed on Sunday to a record cut in output to prop up oil prices amid the coronavirus pandemic in an unprecedented deal with fellow oil nations, including the United States, that could curb global oil supply by 20%. Measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus have destroyed demand for fuel and driven down oil prices, straining budgets of oil producers and hammering the U.S. shale industry, which is more vulnerable to low prices due to its higher costs. OPEC+ said it had agreed to reduce output by 9.7 million bpd for May and June, after four days of talks and following pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to arrest the oil price decline. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told reporters via a conference call that G20 nations outside the OPEC+ alliance had pledged to cut about 3.7 million bpd of oil supply, while oil purchases into reserves (SPRs) were seen at 200 million barrels over the next couple of months, according to the IEA. Prince Abdulaziz also said the kingdom could cut oil output below its current quota of 8.5 million bpd if there was a need by the market over the coming months and if any reductions were done collectively with other producers on a pro-rata basis. OPEC+ meets next in June via teleconference to decide on output policy. "We have to watch what is happening with demand destruction or demand improvement, depending on how things may evolve," Prince Abdulaziz said. "This is a situation where every day the numbers change ... you have to maintain being vigilant about how these things may progress," he said, adding there was still "uncertainty related with the virus and its impact". The biggest oil cut ever is more than four times deeper than the previous record cut in 2008. Producers will slowly relax curbs after June, although reductions in production will stay in place until April 2022. Story continues Oil demand has dropped by around a third because of the coronavirus pandemic. Oil prices jumped more than $1 a barrel in Monday trading after the agreement, but gains were capped amid concern that it would not be enough to head off oversupply with the virus hammering global demand. But the minister downplayed the drop in oil prices on Monday, saying that the cuts were the reason for the rally in oil prices before the meeting in anticipation of the cuts. "It's the typical deal you know: buy the rumour, and sell the news." (Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Alison Williams and David Evans) A group of 14 Milwaukee-area residents filed a federal lawsuit Monday seeking at least a partial re-vote of last weeks election, which due to the coronavirus pandemic was marred by long voter lines in Green Bay and Milwaukee and last-minute uncertainty over due dates for absentee ballots and whether in-person voting would proceed as scheduled. The class action suit filed in U.S. District Court in Madison names Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, both Republicans, as defendants, along with the state individually, the Legislature and the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Due to the dangers to voters from the COVID-19 outbreak, the Legislatures failure to postpone the April 7 election disenfranchised thousands of state electors who could not vote because of health concerns or issues with absentee balloting, the plaintiffs said in a statement. Attorneys Jay Urban and Joseph Goode said plaintiffs first choice would be to have a judge order the entire election be re-held, but in the absence of that want to see those who wanted to vote but couldnt be allowed to mail in their ballots. The latter option would apply to those they allege were disenfranchised by Republicans refusal to go along with postponing the election. That includes people who requested an absentee ballot but didnt receive one and those who mailed in absentee ballots that will be disqualified under a last-minute ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that reversed a lower courts decision to extend the deadline for the ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that clerks must accept ballots received after Election Day that were postmarked by April 7, which has confused local officials who have received ballots without postmarks marking any date. The Wisconsin Elections Commission hasnt provided any guidance on whether ballots arriving after Election Day without clear postmarks should be counted. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin urged the elections commission to count ballots that arrived on April 8 without a postmark; assume ballots received on April 9 to have been mailed on time unless proven otherwise; and count ballots received on April 10 or later if theres reason to believe they were mailed on time. The lawsuit comes as national and state Democrats say they are exploring legal options to address last Tuesdays statewide election. Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman Ben Wikler said the partys legal strategy centers around making sure the election was as fair as possible and to seek relief for voters who may face problems voting in future elections. The clear imperative is both to make sure that justice is done related to last Tuesday and to make sure we never go through this nightmare scenario again, Wikler said. He said its likely other groups will bring lawsuits, particularly some of the more than 3,800 local candidates across the state on last Tuesdays ballot, which also included a state Supreme Court race and the states presidential primary. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said Monday before votes were tabulated that the election was a mess that could have been avoided. With the lawsuit filed and more expected, he said, At the end of the day this will be resolved in court and then we can move on. Not partison The Milwaukee plaintiffs say they intentionally filed their lawsuit in advance of Mondays 4 p.m. start to counting votes because they want to show the court that the suit is not partisan ... but rather a challenge to the fundamental unfairness of the Legislative Defendants intentional act to force voters into an unreasonable, unfair, and unconstitutional choice between (a) exercising their fundamental right to vote in an in-person election during a pandemic; and (b) forgoing their right to vote in order to preserve their life and health and the lives and health of those close to them and the public overall, according to the suit. The lawsuit alleges that several of the plaintiffs were at risk by voting in person because of their or family members underlying medical conditions, including diabetes, spina bifida, asthma, respiratory conditions, multiple sclerosis and mobility issues. Wisconsins election took place Tuesday after the state Supreme Court struck down Gov. Tony Evers executive order the day before postponing it until June 9. Evers had in the weeks leading up to April 7 supported holding the election as scheduled, but as the date grew closer and public health officials warned that people massing at polling places would accelerate the spread of the virus, Evers first asked the Legislature to mail every voter an absentee ballot, then tried to postpone the election. The Legislatures Republican leaders rejected sending all voters absentee ballots as unfeasible and filed suit to overturn Evers order delaying the election. Four of the state Supreme Courts conservative-leaning justices ordered the election to go on as planned, its two liberal-leaning members dissented and Justice Dan Kelly, a conservative on Tuesdays ballot, did not participate in the decision. In a separate ruling also the day before the election, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that voters absentee ballots must be postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted, partially overturning a federal district court ruling that extended the deadline for receiving absentee ballots to 4 p.m. on April 13. In the 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the conservative justices sided with Republican state lawmakers who challenged the later deadline. Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney said the commission is not likely to provide a response to the lawsuit until its lawyers file a formal response in court. Vos and Fitzgeralds offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Health officials have warned that holding the election Tuesday, which was marred by long lines at some polling locations where sites were consolidated due to poll worker shortages, could increase transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic. The election also raised concerns that some residents were unable to vote due to fear of contracting the disease. We will continue to work with (Republicans in the Legislature) so they understand how important it is to balance safety and health against the constitutional right to vote, Evers said Monday. We do have an opportunity to take some time and make sure that the issue of mail-in ballots is handled better than it was last time. Ballot delays Just under 1.3 million absentee ballots were requested for Tuesdays election, shattering the record for the most such ballots requested in any past election. As of Friday, local clerks had gotten back just under 1.1 million of them. But even before the election, there were reports of people not getting ballots they had asked for two or three weeks prior to Election Day. After the election, three tubs of undelivered ballots were discovered in Oshkosh and Appleton, and the Milwaukee Election Commission was asking the U.S. Postal Service to investigate what happened to absentee ballots that never reached voters in that city. The postal service has since announced it has launched an investigation into missing or undelivered ballots. Meanwhile, there were reports of completed ballots returning to clerks without any clear postmarked date. Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez said the DNC is exploring legal options related to Wisconsins 7th Congressional District special election May 12. Perez wants the state to send an absentee ballot to every registered voter in that district. State Journal reporters Riley Vetterkind and Mitchell Schmidt and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Photos: Wisconsinites vote in spring primary despite COVID-19 dangers Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 1 Dilkens was working at the Canadian Consulate in Detroit on Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States unilaterally closed its northern border. Even after it was reopened, he said, Canadian nurses trying to get to their jobs in Detroit were delayed for hours. Their absence was so worrying that hospital leaders in Detroit debated commandeering helicopters or ferries to get them to work. They eventually set up a bus system. Two deadly crashes that left its 737 Max airliner fleet grounded. An aborted mission of its new spacecraft. Problems with a tanker it makes for the Air Force, a depressed stock price and the abrupt dismissal of its chief executive. Boeing faced serious problems largely of its own making long before the coronavirus crisis wounded the US economy and led Congress to put hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate aid on the table. But that has not kept the nation's largest aerospace company from putting its hand out. Boeing was beset with problems before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the travel industry. Credit:AP If the Trump administration obliges, the company whose prospects have been further clouded by the virus-induced travails of the airline industry could become one of the top recipients of federal aid in the most sweeping economic program in American history. That could give a new chance to overcome its recent struggles, even as businesses without such flaws are fighting for assistance to survive. Boeing is now engaged in a delicate dance with an administration that wants to keep the American industrial base strong but aims to avoid charges of handing out corporate welfare. Only weeks ago, the company signalled a reluctance to accept the conditions that might come with aid, including the possibility of handing over an ownership stake to the government or limiting layoffs. But it is still trying to work out a deal. By Khalil Ashawi IDLIB, Syria (Reuters) - Thousands of displaced Syrians have begun moving back to their homes in war-torn Idlib province despite the risk of renewed conflict, some driven by fear that the new coronavirus could wreak havoc on crowded camps near the Turkish border. About one million Syrians fled Idlib and its surrounding countryside in northwest Syria this past year after Russian-backed government forces stepped up a campaign to retake the last rebel stronghold after nine years of war By Khalil Ashawi IDLIB, Syria (Reuters) - Thousands of displaced Syrians have begun moving back to their homes in war-torn Idlib province despite the risk of renewed conflict, some driven by fear that the new coronavirus could wreak havoc on crowded camps near the Turkish border. About one million Syrians fled Idlib and its surrounding countryside in northwest Syria this past year after Russian-backed government forces stepped up a campaign to retake the last rebel stronghold after nine years of war. Fighting has calmed since March when Ankara, which backs some groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, agreed a ceasefire with Moscow, which has supported Damascus with heavy air power. Syria's northwest does not yet have a confirmed case of coronavirus, but doctors fear the area's ravaged medical infrastructure and overflowing camps would quickly turn any outbreak into a humanitarian disaster. As the tentative peace holds, displaced Syrians are weighing up grim options: remain in tightly packed camps with few services where a viral spread could be lethal, or return to homes still at risk of getting caught in renewed bloodshed. "Our lives go from danger to danger as we flee from bombing, the regime, and conflict, to overcrowding and coronavirus," said Abu Abdo, 45. On Sunday Abdu returned with his family of seven to a village in Idlib's countryside. "Here it's agricultural land and the air is clean and there's no congestion, but it's still a dangerous area," he said. Vans and trucks stacked with mattresses and household appliances choked a road snaking south through Idlib province on Sunday as families driven out just months earlier by air strikes sought to return. "We fear there will be a regime escalation again but life in the town, in our home, is better than displacement and poor conditions," said Fayez al-Assi, 49, who fled Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib's southern countryside two and a half months ago. The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a northwest Syria relief agency, said 103,459 Syrians had returned to towns in the Aleppo and Idlib countryside since the ceasefire. "Even if there is bombing we aren't afraid of it. We've gotten used to it," said Zakaria Shawish, 25, from the town of Ariha, south of Idlib. "Sitting here under the bombing is better than being displaced in the camps and not having a home." (Reporting by Khalil Ashawi; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Giles Elgood) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. (Photo : Pixabay) Microsoft and Samsung have been working closely for several years now. The applications of the Redmond giant has also been pre-installed on Samsung smartphones. At the same time, the work between the development teams of the two companies makes it easier to manage and operate significant operations between Windows 10 and Samsung smartphones. To underline the fruitful partnership work between the two giants, Microsoft announces a critical function: the drag & drop of files between Samsung smartphones and PCs with Windows 10. The latest Windows 10 insider build allows you to surely drag and drop files wirelessly to and from any supported Samsung smartphones like the Galaxy S10 or S20, as spotted by SamMobile. ALSO READ: Microsoft Begins Testing 'Your Phone' App On Windows 10 That Casts Your Phone To PC Drag & drop with Windows 10 Microsoft has already started making it simpler to work among Android/Samsung gadgets and PCs. The arrival of the 'Drag & Drop' feature amplifies the work done by owning a Samsung smartphone and a PC with the latest Microsoft OS. The United States company declares that all types of files are supported and that it is based on the latest version of the Microsoft Your Phone application. Last month, it delivered copy-pasting from Windows 10 to Samsung phones, and it already allows notifications and even answer calls from any Android phone. Third-party apps have supported similar capabilities for years, including Microsoft's ActiveSync for Windows Mobile. But this new feature will make it easier for mainstream users. Drag & drop requires the latest Link To Windows 1.5 or higher application and the newest insider version of Windows 10. Obviously, there is no need for a cable connection between the smartphone and the PC, but both are under the same Wi-Fi network. However, provider calls for Samsung's Link to Windows 1.5, are not necessarily supported on all Galaxy devices. ALSO READ: Is Google's Version of Airdrop Actually Reliable? Limitations and first use Support is valid for all Samsung Galaxy series smartphones. To drag and drop from a PC, simply open the Microsoft Your Phone application, navigate in the Gallery application, or manage the files and, from there, start transferring the files of your interest. Warning, though: minimizing the icon window app causes blocking of the file transfer. In case you want to transfer files from your PC to a Samsung Galaxy series smartphone, you need to select the files and drag them into the Microsoft Your Phone app. Here the mouse cursor will show the text "Copy" when it will be possible to copy - in fact - the files inside the smartphone. These will be transferred to the 'Downloads' folder of the smartphone. Transfers are also restricted to 100 files, so sending a big batch of photographs from your cellphone to PC also won't be absolutely seamless. The function should already be available from now on at the Play Store badge below; otherwise, you can download the APK here. Conclusion Still, you can think of dozens of ways this selection will make your life less of a hassle, considering some of you have a Galaxy S10 and Windows PC. As mentioned, the function is only out on the modern-day Windows 10 Insider build for now; however, it ought to roll out to everyone in the next widespread release. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Pidilite Industries on Monday said it will contribution of Rs 25 crore towards relief funds to fight the coronavirus pandemic Mumbai: Pidilite Industries on Monday said it will contribution of Rs 25 crore towards relief funds to fight the coronavirus pandemic. This contribution will be made to the central as well as other emergency state relief funds, the company said in a statement. Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak Pidilite Industries Ltd Managing Director Bharat Puri said, We stand in solidarity with the people of India and our government''s efforts to overcome this unprecedented pandemic." He further said that the company will continue to care for the health and well-being of its partners and employees while constructively supporting the various relief efforts announced by the government. Every public school building in Washington D.C. stands empty today. But some have stood empty for years, because elected officials are defying a law that requires that they offer the buildings to charter school operators. The human cost of their intransigence: hundreds, perhaps thousands of D.C. children who fail to graduate from high school and never go on to college. And now that Congresss stimulus bill includes $725 million less for D.C. than for the smallest state, making our coming fiscal crisis that much deeper, the financial cost of that intransigence will be particularly painful. If the mayor were willing to turn the empty buildings over to charter operators rather than let them rot, she would generate significant rent, plus tax revenue as the operators paid to renovate them. The previous two mayors handed 12 and 14 buildings to charters, each in just one four-year term. In her fifth year in office, Mayor Muriel Bowser finally agreed to release one last summer, after angry citizens launched a campaign demanding that she end the list of almost 12,000 students on charter waiting lists by turning over empty buildings. (Charters are public schools, operated by nonprofit organizations and authorized by a board appointed by the mayor. They do not charge tuition and they are not allowed to select their students.) Consider just the eight available school buildings in D.C.s three poorest wards, 5, 7, and 8: Fletcher-Johnson, Kenilworth, Langston, Malcolm X, Marshall, Springarn, Wilkinson, and Winston. (Malcolm X, Wilkinson, and Kenilworth are partially used by other D.C. government departments.) Given their square footage, they could easily educate 5,000 students, without displacing the other departments. How many of those 5,000 would graduate from high school? Lets compare graduation rates from the citys district and charter high schools. But lets do it fairly: Lets eliminate the districts selective schools, which get to pick the strongest studentsplus Wilson High School, whose affluent zone is selective by geography. And lets eliminate all alternative schools, which educate many over-age students. Finally, because so many of D.C.s low-income students are behind their grade levels and need an extra year to finish high school, lets compare how many graduate within five years. The eight remaining high schools in D.C. Public Schools (DCPS), which had 1,348 students in the cohort that began ninth grade in 2014-15, had an average five-year graduation rate of 72.9 percent by 2019. The 16 chartered high schools, with 1,107 students in the cohort, averaged 88.4 percent. If the 1,348 DCPS students had attended charter schools and that 88.4 percent average had held, 209 more students would have graduated. Virtually all of them would have been accepted to college, and more than six in 10 would have enrolled. The other 3,652 empty seats in those three wards could go to chartered elementary and middle schools. Charters in wards 5, 7 and 8 vastly outperform district schools on every measure, so these 3,652 students would have entered high school with a much better shot at graduation and college. One can look at PARCC scores, where almost twice as many ward 5, 7, and 8 charter students as DCPS students (in non-selective schools) are proficient. Or one can look at the citys new five-star rating system for schools. In Wards 5, 7, and 8, there are 19 charter schools rated four or five starsthe equivalent of A and B or good and excellent. Only four non-selective DCPS schools in those three wards earned such ratings. And empty buildings arent the entire story. As of 2017-18, 14 DCPS schools were more than half empty, all but three of them in wards 5, 7, and 8. In the past, DCPS has allowed only a few charter schools to co-locate in its buildings. Those 14 schools have an estimated 6,500 empty seats. By encouraging co-location and releasing the eight available school buildings, Mayor Bowser and DCPS could almost eliminate the charter school waiting list. Meanwhile, they could charge rent to the co-locating charters, increasing DCPS revenues at a time when the city will desperately need the money. If 1,348 more seats in high schools would result in 209 more students graduating from high school, imagine what 11,500 seats throughout PreK-12 would do. Given the performance gap between charters and district schools in low-income wards, such a change might eventually allow a thousand more students to graduate from high school and go on to college, every year. This is the price D.C.s low-income children are paying for their elected officials bias against charter schools. Those officials might argue that opening up all this space to charter schools would drain children and dollars from DCPS. But are the mayor and city council elected to protect DCPS or to educate the citys children? An effort to rush fresh assistance to U.S. small businesses struggling against the coronavirus outbreak stalled in Congress on Monday, as the health emergency failed to overcome partisan differences between Republicans and Democrats. Senate Republicans, who are pressing lawmakers to agree to$250 billion in additional small business aid, chose not to bring the measure forward during a brief Senate session after Democrats reaffirmed their own demands for broader legislation. "It's time for the Republicans to quit the political posturing by proposing bills they know will not pass either chamber and get serious and work with us towards a solution," House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. The standoff began last week with a skirmish on the Senate floor, where Republicans failed to pass their narrower measure over Democratic opposition. Republicans then blocked a Democratic measure that included the same $250 billion but set aside some of the lending for community banks to aid minority-owned and rural businesses, and provided further aid to hospitals and a federal food program for the poor. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy declined to comment on the Democrats' statement. But Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, who presided over a Monday proforma session lasting less than one minute, said the Republican bill is needed now because money for small business is beginning to run out. "Will there be an opportunity to talk about the other programs? Yes, but a lot of us havent even spent any of the money at all," the Republican lawmaker told reporters. The Democrats' latest push for broader legislation cited Republican President Donald Trump's hopes of starting to reopen the U.S. economy on May 1, by underscoring the need for additional national coronavirus testing. "We all desire an end to the shutdown orders so we can get Americans back to work and back to normal. However, there is still not enough testing available to realistically allow that to happen," Pelosi and Schumer said. "It cannot wait." The United States has recorded more fatalities from COVID-19 than any other country, nearly 22,000 as of Sunday evening according to a Reuters tally. The $250 billion in small-business loans would be in addition to $349 billion already allocated by Congress in a $2.3 trillion relief measure passed last month following an earlier partisan standoff. Search Keywords: Short link: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday enquired about the heath of the ASI whose hand was chopped off in an attack by a group of 'Nihangs' in Patiala. Meanwhile, a Patiala local court sent 10 of the 11 accused to 11-day police remand. One of the accused is currently undergoing treatment at a local hospital after he suffered a gunshot injury in a police action on Sunday. DGP Dinkar Gupta said they will seek a fast-track trial after completing the probe within 10 days. Assistant Sub-Inspector Harjeet Singh (50) is recovering at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh after doctors reattached his hand in an over seven-hour-long surgery on Sunday. Spoke to ASI Harjeet Singh, who is recovering after his operation, to enquire about his health. The composure & bravery with which he spoke today is truly worthy of admiration. Wishing him a speedy recovery, the CM tweeted on Monday. Assistant Sub-Inspector Harjeet Singh's hand was cut with a sword while three other Punjab policemen and a mandi official sustained injuries when the Nihangs attacked them after being asked to show curfew passes at a vegetable market in Patiala district on Sunday morning. The CM on Sunday had strongly condemned the attack and warned that anyone violating the curfew, imposed in the state since March 23 to check the spread of COVID-19 , would be strictly dealt with. Commenting on the issue, DGP Dinkar Gupta tweeted, Will complete probe in 10 days & move for trial on fast track to ensure quick & deterrent action in this case, Gupta tweeted. The DGP said that such acts would not be tolerated. All 11 accused had been booked under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, Disaster Management Act, Explosives Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Arms Act. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On Sunday, Easter ceremonies looked as they never have before, with coronavirus restrictions discouraging or banning large-scale gatherings, including at churches. Some pastors are going forward with in-person services. At the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke in a mostly vacant St. Peter's Basilica as church bells clanged across Rome. "For many," Francis said, "this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing." British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was released from St.Thomas' Hospital on Sunday, nearly a week after he was admitted into intensive care for covid-19. A special envoy to the World Health Organization said the virus may be a health threat that "stalks the human race for quite a long time" until the release of a vaccine. The United States is nearing peak infection, but the time frame to reopen the country remains a moving target, a Food and Drug Administration official said. The coronavirus is killing about 1 in 10 hospitalized middle-aged patients and 4 in 10 older than 85 in the United States. Japan marked a fifth day of record high daily jumps. With or without the blessing of state and federal officials, some pastors across the country are leading their Easter Sunday services in person, risking the spread of the coronavirus within their faith communities. After President Donald Trump expressed hope that the country would be reopened and churches "packed" by Easter, he called that goal "aspirational" at a news conference last week and said he would watch an Easter service online. Vice President Mike Pence also said he would watch a live-streamed service and discouraged religious gatherings of more than 10 people. But decisions about whether to allow in-person church services fall in the hands of states. Louisiana is limiting how many people can attend services, but Tony Spell, who leads Life Tabernacle Church near Baton Rouge, planned to hold an Easter Sunday service for 2,000, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said the number of people Spell plans to gather could land the pastor in legal trouble, but Spell, whose legal team includes former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore, told the Journal that he would sue Edwards and any police officer who tries to arrest him. "The Bible commands us to gather together," Spell said. Not all state leaders have commanded that churches close. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said Texas churches are essential and can remain open if they keep worshipers six feet apart. Houston's Glorious Way Church is holding two services Sunday morning, one of which will be streamed, the Texas Tribune reported. The church plans to space 100 congregants across the 1,000 seats and offer hand sanitizer. In Kansas, Republicans objected to Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, including houses of worship in her expanded stay-at-home order and attempted to overturn her decision in the legislature. The state's high court sided with the governor late Saturday. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned his country that the state of emergency and confinement due to the pandemic would continue, even though the nation's strict lockdown ends Monday. "I want to be very clear: We are not entering the second phase, what the experts have been calling the de-escalation phase," Sanchez said Sunday in a nationally televised address. "The general confinement continues. The only thing that is ending is the extreme measure of hibernation." Sanchez had imposed the "hibernation" two weeks ago to stop nonessential activity through Easter. He said the broader lockdown, which began March 13, will extend until at least April 26. Spain's coronavirus tally continues to climb 3 percent daily, with 4,167 new cases announced Sunday, bringing the total to 166,019. Spain also announced a 24-hour death toll of 619, to reach a total of 16,972. The country leads in the number of deaths worldwide per 100,000 inhabitants, with 35.54 deaths, compared with 32.22 for Italy and 6.25 deaths for the United States. Security forces have started distributing 10 million "hygienic" masks throughout Spain for anyone using public transportation, reversing earlier guidelines that deemed general public use of masks unwarranted. The Navajo Nation is under a 57-hour weekend curfew as officials look to slow the spread of the coronavirus in what has been the hardest-hit part of Indian Country. The curfew took effect at 8 p.m. Friday and lasts until 5 a.m. Monday, according to the emergency order. It mandates that all residents stay at home during the curfew, except for emergencies and essential employees. The Navajo Nation, which has more than a quarter-million members and is spread across three southwestern states, had at least 698 confirmed coronavirus cases and 24 deaths. Health disparities make those in Indian Country especially vulnerable to the outbreak. High rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and asthma combine with insufficient housing, infrastructure and health-care access. Meanwhile, homes on reservations are often small and crowded, with multiple generations living under one roof. They may lack electricity and running water. "This could be like a wildfire on a reservation and get out of control in a heartbeat," Kevin Allis, chief executive of the National Congress of American Indians, previously told The Washington Post. "We could get wiped out." The curfew was enacted after officials observed many people ignoring the Navajo Nation's existing stay-at-home order. Police are enforcing the curfew with fines and other penalties. Indian Country officials said additional 24-hour or weekend curfews may be implemented in the future. Earlier efforts to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus "could have saved lives," but there was a lot of initial "pushback about shutting things down," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday. "Obviously, no one is going to deny that," he said on CNN's "State of the Union" when asked whether earlier countermeasures could have lowered the death toll. "But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated." Anchor Jake Tapper asked Fauci about a New York Times report that he wanted to recommend social distancing as early as the third week in February but was rebuffed by the White House. The guidance was issued in mid-March. Fauci said a "better head start" would have been "nice" - "but I don't think you can say that we are where we are because of one factor." "We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it's not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now," Fauci said. Fauci said the country will need a "rolling re-entry" into normal life after the ongoing period of mass quarantines and warned that a premature transition would bring health risks. "It is not going to be a light switch," Fauci said. "It is going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak you've already experienced, and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced." Fauci, the nation's top expert on infectious diseases, said the transition could "probably start, at least in some ways, maybe next month," depending on the circumstances - but also said there's a possibility the virus will come back later in the year. "We are hoping that at the end of the month, we could look around and say, 'OK, if there's any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on - if so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down.'" There will be no one-size-fits-all solution, Fauci said, warning against taking action "prematurely and precipitously at the same time you pay attention to the need to try to get back to normal." A special envoy to the World Health Organization said Sunday the coronavirus is still "advancing" around the world and may be a health threat that "stalks the human race for quite a long time" until the release of a vaccine. Speaking on NBC News' "Meet the Press," David Nabarro said the public health community is "still very much on high alert," even as some countries see positive results from mitigation efforts. "The virus is still advancing in other parts of the world," Nabarro said. "We are not so sure it will come in waves in the way that influenza does. We think it's going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come, until we can all have a vaccine that will protect us." Nabarro predicted "small outbreaks that will emerge sporadically" and called for "every community" to develop a "defensive shield" to identify and isolate cases as they arise. "It's going to be necessary for every single country to have that capacity," he said. Nabarro pushed back on criticism from Republicans that the WHO has mishandled the response. "We believe that we've had the best information coming to us that can come under the current circumstances," he said, urging world leaders to move forward with the "best possible cooperation." The United States is nearing peak infection in the coronavirus outbreak, but the time frame to reopen the country remains a moving target, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said Sunday on ABC News' "This Week." "This has been a really fast-moving outbreak, so we really have to take this day by day," Hahn said. More than 530,000 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the United States, and more than 20,600 people have died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. President Trump has suggested reopening the country as soon as May 1, but health officials have cautioned that abandoning social distancing measures prematurely could worsen the outbreak. Hahn said it was "too early" to know whether a May 1 reopening was realistic and that the "safety and welfare" of Americans had to come first. "It is a target, and, obviously, we're hopeful about that target, but I think it's just too early to be able to tell that we see light at the end of the tunnel," Hahn said on ABC. "I think it's just too early for us to say whether May 1 is that date." Widely available testing will be key in reopening the economy, Hahn said, acknowledging that in some parts of the country, "it's very easy to get a test, and in others, it's not." "We need to do more, no question about that," he said. The FDA has authorized an antibody test that can show whether a person has been exposed to the virus. But on NBC News' "Meet the Press," Hahn said he was "concerned" about potentially inaccurate antibody tests on the market that have not undergone the necessary scientific reviews, and he cautioned that having "wildly inaccurate" tests is "much worse" than having no test. Boris Johnson will continue to recover from covid-19 at his country home, 10 Downing Street announced Sunday. "The PM has been discharged from hospital to continue his recovery, at Chequers," the prime minister's office said in a statement. "On the advice of his medical team, the PM will not be immediately returning to work," the statement continued. "He wishes to thank everybody at St. Thomas' for the brilliant care he has received. All of his thoughts are with those affected by this illness." The news came shortly before the health department reported 737 more deaths from the virus causing covid-19 in the past 24 hours, raising Britain's official death toll above 10,000. Johnson was admitted to St. Thomas' Hospital a week ago, 10 days after falling ill with covid-19. His condition worsened Monday, when he was transferred to the intensive care unit. He was released from intensive care on Thursday and had remained hospitalized since. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will continue to deputize for Johnson while he recovers. In a video shared after his hospital release, Johnson thanked the National Health Service, Britain's state-run health system, for saving his life. He personally praised the NHS doctors and nurses who cared for him and, in particular, cited the lifesaving work of "Jenny from New Zealand" and "Luis from Portugal." They monitored his oxygen levels and "stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way," the prime minister said. Amid lockdown for the coronavirus outbreak, private schools in Gujarat will not hike fees in the coming academic year and will offer flexibility to parents to pay March-May fees over six months at their own convenience, a senior state government official said on Monday. The decision was taken after state Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama held a meeting with representatives of the associations of private schools, Ashwani Kumar, secretary to the chief minister, said. Kumar said it was decided in the meeting that private schools will not raise annual fees and will offer flexibility to economically weaker parents to pay fees for the months of March to May as per their convenience. Class X and XII board exam answer sheets will be checked starting April 16, and the board will make arrangements for it and take responsibility of the teachers involved in the exercise, he added. Kumar said colleges and universities in the state will be on vacation between April 15 and May 15, and their annual exams will held as per guidelines that will be issued by UGC and AICTE. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ekiti State Government has declared as mandatory the use of face masks as additional measures to curb the ravaging coronavirus. It also extended the restriction on movement within the state for another two weeks. The first two-week order given by the state governor, Kayode Fayemi, on the lockdown was issued on March 30 and expired on Monday. The new directive will expire on April 27. The new directive has also designated the use of face masks in public places compulsory, implying that those who would be going out into public arenas must use the protective equipment. A statement by the Secretary to the State Government, Biodun Oyebanji, on Monday, said the extension became necessary following the progress made and efforts of other neighbouring states in the fight against the virus. He said the restriction of movement would be suspended for eight hours, (between 6am-2pm) on Thursday, April 16 and Thursday, April 23rd, to allow the people re-stock essential goods. Mr Oyebanji explained that only people offering essential services and the market for food items were exempted from the restriction, adding that all boundaries would remain closed for the two weeks. After careful consideration of available evidence on progress made to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Ekiti State and in recognition of similar efforts by neighbouring states and the Federal Government of Nigeria, the governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi, has directed the extension of restriction of movement and curfew in Ekiti State for two weeks, until 23:59 Monday, April 27, 2020, the statement said. Restriction of Movement of Persons and Goods. Only exceptions allowed are for the purposes of obtaining food, seeking emergency, life-saving, or chronic medical attention or obtaining social security grant. Persons performing essential services will be allowed to move around, particularly health workers, but must be duly designated with an identity card by the Head of their Institutions. He declared that the government has made compulsory the use of face masks in public places across the 16 local government areas of the state. In compliance with recent findings on causes of the spread of COVID -19, wearing of facemasks in public places will be compulsory from April 14, 2020, the statement further said. Government is finalising arrangements to make facemasks available to persons on essential duties, including foodstuff sellers in markets. The government further directed that all businesses and other entities will remain closed. Oja Oba and Oja Bisi markets shall remain closed. Except for any business or entity involved in the manufacturing, supply, or provision of an essential good or service. In facilities where essential goods are sold, all directives in respect of hygienic conditions to prevent the exposure of persons to COVID-19 must be adhered to, the statement said. Any gathering in Ekiti State remains prohibited save for gathering in respect of a funeral, which shall be limited to 20 people. All boundaries of the State shall remain closed during the period of extension, except for transportation of fuel, and essential goods. All commuter transport services including bus services, taxi services, motorbikes (Okada) and tricycle services (Keke NAPEP), are prohibited. In compliance with recent findings on causes of the spread of COVID -19, wearing of facemasks in public places will be compulsory from 14th April, 2020. Government is finalizing arrangements to make facemasks available to persons on essential duties, including foodstuff sellers in markets. The schoolon- air programme for primary and secondary school students will continue during the period. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has been directed to continue to improve on the modalities for ensuring effective delivery of this programme. READ ALSO: Government is making efforts to set up a COVID 19 test centre in the state. This is one of the major tasks of the Covid-19 Response Resource Mobilisation Committee, recently set up by the government to mobilise funds and manage projects to prevent the spread of this pandemic. Government will continue to intensify on going measures specifically in response to the hardship being experienced by people across the state. Governments strategy is made up of three parts- an intensified public health response to slow down and reduce infections; comprehensive package of economic support measures to assist businesses and individuals affected by the pandemic and a programme of increased social support to protect poor and vulnerable households. Advertisements The state had its index case of the corona virus on the March 18 and had its second case confirmed in the first week of April. Its index case had since been discharged after undergoing treatment and a repeat test confirmed him negative. Ekitis neighbour, Ondo State, also tightened its restriction measures last week after a second case of the disease was confirmed in the state. Although the governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, had relaxed measures to allow Christians celebrate the Easter Sunday, the new case jolted the government to cancel the agreement with the Christian Association of Nigeria, Ondo State Chapter and it restored the restrictions. Both states had also stepped up their enforcements of the restriction order with the arrest of several persons in the process. The total number of confirmed cases of the virus has climbed to 232 as at the close of Sunday, April 12, as five new confirmed cases were reported. The NCDC said the 323 cases have been confirmed, 85 cases have been discharged and 10 deaths have been recorded in Nigeria. The five new cases, according to the NCDC, are reported from three states, namely, Lagos, 2; Kwara, 2; and Katsina,1. New Delhi: Baisakhi, also known as Vaisakhi, marks the Sikh New Year. It is a spring harvest festival celebrated in Punjab and other parts of North India. It falls on April 13 (Monday) this year. Baisakhi marks the birth of the Khalsa way of living in the Sikh religion and commemorates the formation of Khalsa Panth of warriors under Guru Gobind Singh Ji in 1699. On this day, temples, gurudwaras are decorated, bhajans, devotional satsangs are organised to spread the message of God. However, this year, the celebrations have been marred by the coronavirus outbreak and will be restricted to homes due to the lockdown. Baisakhi also marks the time for the harvest of rabi crops. On this day, farmers thank God for the good harvest they have had in the previous year and also pray for the same in the coming year. Hindus celebrate the festival by taking a holy dip along the banks of river Ganga, visit temples and meet friends. Wishing our readers a very Happy Baisakhi! PR-Inside.com: 2020-04-13 20:49:45 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 654 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / JNC Resources Inc. (CSE:JNC) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed its Initial Public Offering (the "Offering"), by issuing 3,033,000 common shares of the Company $0.10 per share for gross proceeds of $303,300. The Company's common shares had been listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "Exchange") on April 9, 2020 and immediately halted pending closing of the Offering. Following the closing of the Offering today, trading in the Company's common shares is expected to resume at market open on April 14, 2020 under the symbol "JNC".Pursuant to the agency agreement dated January 13, 2020, Mackie Research Capital Corporation (the "Agent") acted as agent for the Company in connection with the Offering and received a work fee, and a cash commission equal to 10% of the gross proceeds of the Offering. The Company also granted the Agent and members of its selling group non-transferrable warrants to purchase up to an aggregate of 303,300 common shares of the Company at a price of $0.10 per share until April 13, 2022.The Company expects to use the proceeds from the Offering to complete the initial work program on its Triple 9 Property as recommended in the 43-101 technical report on the Property, and for working capital.Following the closing of the Offering, the Company now has 19,183,000 common shares issued and outstanding.The Management and Board of Directors of the Company consists of Michael Mulberry, CEO/Director, Jonathan Younie, CFO, Warren Robb P.Eng, Director and Yana Bobrovskaya, Director, who collectively have over 75 years of experience in mining from exploration to production. Currently, JNC's portfolio consists of the The Triple 9 Project, which has two (2) mineral claims covering approximately 717 hectares in the Kamloops mining division, British Columbia, six (6) kilometres northwest of Sicamous, British Columbia, with the Corporation having carried out an initial exploration program in May, 2019."The Company's goal is to engage in mineral exploration for the purpose of land acquisitions and further progress mining operations. We are very excited at the opportunity that is given to us at JNC. Our strong management team brings a wealth of experience in the mineral exploration and development process and we are looking forward to executing our model with JNC," stated CEO Mr. Michael Mulberry.Additional information on the Company, the Offering and the Triple 9 Property can be found in the Company's final prospectus dated January 13, 2020 as filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com About JNC Resources Inc.JNC Resources is a North American mining exploration company. Our goal is to develop under-explored properties, benefit from deal flow generated by our strategic partnerships and growth opportunities. Currently JNC is developing our 100% optioned project in South Central British Columbia. The Triple 9 project consists of Gold properties with a new discovery of high levels of base metals, located 20 km's outside the town of Sicamous. JNC will be actively exploring new projects and expanding its portfolio with projects that fulfill the requirements of our seasoned leadership team and continue to maximize shareholder value.For further information please contact:Michael MulberryT: 778-855-5001info@ jncresources.com Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law. 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 applicable 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 and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in such statements.NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.SOURCE: JNC Resources Inc. Mumbai, April 13 : Slamming the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena on Monday said that the IPS officer - who allowed the scam-tainted businessmen, the Wadhawan brothers to hop between two hill-stations - was appointed to the post by former Chief Minister and now Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis. Terming it as a 'conspiracy' which failed, the Sena said it is now clear who could be actually behind the IPS officer and Home Department Principal Secretary (Special) Amitabh Gupta for granting the permission on his letterhead (on April 8). "There was a plot to sully the name of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government and all its achievements in the past four months, but it did not succeed," the Sena said in an edit in the party publication, 'Saamana' on Monday. After the matter blew up last week, Fadnavis had claimed that "it was not possible for a senior IPS officer on his own to commit such a grave error while knowing the ramifications". Amid the Opposition's clamour for the scalps of Gupta and Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, the latter immediately sent the officer on 'compulsory leave' and set up a probe by a senior bureaucrat to be completed in 15 days. On Sunday, April 12, the brothers - Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan, named in the Yes Bank scam - released a detailed statement through their lawyers claiming they shifted from Khandala (hill-station in Pune) to their ancestral home in Mahabaleshwar (hillstation in Satara) to avoid the scourge of Coronavirus pandemic. Defending the MVA on the issue, the Saamana edit said that Gupta was appointed to the crucial post since Fadnavis obviously had faith in his efficiency. "Now, that officer showed special favour to the Wadhawan family and tried to create problems for the state administrationa. It is getting exposed who was actually behind Gupta's decision to create a crisis for the MVA government," the edit said. The 'Saamana' pointed out that if the MVA government indeed wanted to favour the Wadhawans and their 21 other family members, "then why should the Satara authorities stop them, send them into government quarantine and seize their (five) vehicles". The edit made it clear that Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's government makes no distinction between the wealthy, powerful persons or the poor, ordinary persons who are tolerating the lockdown with great difficulties. "Since the IPS officer comes under the centre's jurisdiction, let's see what they do about this. Those in Maharashtra asking who is the real 'mastermind' in this episode should ask this question to the central government," the edit said sharply, even as the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate entered the scene. Dismissing it as a failed conspiracy, the Saamana said this is no time to play politics as the state government is fully immersed in tackling the Coronavirus pandemic which is raging across the state. Thousands of Victorian renters facing possible eviction as a result of the COVID-19 crisis are being forced to haggle with their real estate agents and landlords, who are demanding they provide sensitive and personal financial information. Five rental and social lobby groups want the Andrews government to better protect renters by swiftly providing promised new rules on residential evictions. The coronavirus pandemic has put a financial strain on many renters and landlords Credit:Dean Osland And a group representing the nations largest developers has warned that asking landlords and renters to negotiate without strict rules was a recipe for chaos. Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared a six-month moratorium on evictions on March 29. Premier Daniel Andrews has consistently cited this moratorium despite no new laws being put in place. New Delhi, April 13 : The Supreme Court on Monday, while delivering a detailed judgement on ordering a floor test in the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly, said the exercise of power by the Governor of the state to "convene a floor test cannot be regarded as constitutionally improper", therefore he could ask the Chief Minister to prove majority. A bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and comprising Justice Hemant Gupta said the Governor has in fact not intervened in the authority which is entrusted to the Speaker to either decide upon the voluntary and genuine character of the resignations or any issue of disqualification within the meaning of the Tenth Schedule. The Congress assailed the communication of the Governor to convene a floor test, whereas the BJP supported the de jure head of the state. On March 19, in a major development amid the political crisis in Madhya Pradesh, the apex court ordered "the floor test in the Legislative Assembly should be held on the next day and the proceedings be completed before 5 p.m." "Faced with the communication of the Governor for convening a trust vote immediately after the Governor's address, the session of the Legislative Assembly was adjourned till 26 March 2020 despite the House having already convened. "This would have allowed the state of political uncertainty in Madhya Pradesh to continue and furnish avenues for political bargaining on terms which cannot be regarded as legitimate," observed the bench. The top court also junked the contention of the Congress that no trust vote should be conducted until by-elections are held for the twenty-two seats and termed it "misconceived". The top court also did not pay heed to the Speaker's counsel argument that holding of a trust vote would short-circuit the jurisdiction of the Speaker on a matter of resignation and disqualification. The bench also observed that the Speaker accepted the resignations tendered by six of the 22 MLAs on March 14. "All of the Members sailed together. No explanation was forthcoming in the submission of Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi (counsel for the Speaker) on what, if any, was the distinction between the six members whose resignations were accepted with alacrity and the remaining sixteen on whose resignations, no decision has been taken," observed the court. Emphasizing on the significance of the trust vote at the earliest, the bench noted it is required to obviate illegitimate and unseemly political bargaining in the quest for political power. "The idea underlying the trust vote in the ultimate analysis is to uphold the political accountability of the elected government to the state legislature. "Assertion of accountability is a mirror image of the collective responsibility of the government to the legislature. The requirement of the trust vote fulfils that purpose in the present case," said the bench. However, the bench observed it is important to note that in directing a trust vote, the Governor does not favour a particular political party. "Whether or not to remain present is for the individual members to decide and they would, necessarily be accountable for the decisions which they take, both to their political party and to their constituents,, observed the court. The resignation of the 22 MLAs in former Chief Minister Kamal Nath's government had created a political upheaval and threatened the stability of the Congress government in the state. Finally leading to Kamal Nath's resignation ahead of the floor test. The crucial ventilating equipment used to save the lives of coronavirus patients are becoming a commodity much sought after by many countries, including Vietnam. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has requested the Ministry of Health (MoH) and related agencies to speed up producing medical equipment to fight against the pandemic, which originated in China over 100 days ago. One of the first scientists who met the governments appeal is Tran Ngoc Phuc, an overseas Vietnamese scientist living in Japan. Phuc and his colleagues have been co-operating with Vietnamese partners to transfer technology to produce ventilators in Vietnam. Phuc is now president of Metran Co., Ltd., which manufactures ventilators and artificial respirators. Metran has headquarters in Japan and a plant in Vietnams Binh Duong province. According to Phuc, the product selected for manufacturing in Vietnam is a simple and low-cost breathing machine model that can be used by both children and the elderly. Due to its small size the machine can be even used in remote areas. Phuc said that there will be around 2,000 ventilators produced in the next six weeks, with an increase to 10,000-15,000 after that time. Vietnam is desperately in need of ventilators. I needed to take action right away before it was too late to help the country to cope with the pandemic, Phuc said. Van Thinh Phat Holding Group and Van Lang University have signed a contract with Metran to provide finance for manufacturing the 2,000 ventilators. Currently, 16 countries have contacted Metran to transfer the technology for manufacturing ventilators including the United States, France, Italy, Spain, and India. The company is also working with McKinsey & Company to carry out technology transfer for other clients. Meanwhile, Vingroup has also started to produce ventilators and body thermometers to serve the domestic market. According to its plan, the group will provide the MoH with 5,000 non-invasive ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients in Vietnam. For production, Vingroup signed a licence agreement with US-based Medtronic to use its design for the PB560 ventilator, and also began researching a non-invasive ventilator based on the community-shared design by MIT University. The ventilators components will be sourced externally and internally. Vingroups vice chairwoman Le Thi Thu Thuy said that the group has an advantage of having both the VinFast automobile factory and VinSmart electronics factory. We can manufacture both large and mechanical parts as well as rare, smaller parts at the same time. We also have excellent design engineers to transform the conceptual and 2D designs into detailed and complete designs required by the manufacturers, Thuy said. It is expected that the further batches of components for the non-invasive ventilator will arrive imminently. VinFast said the cost of components for each thermometer was VND16 million ($700), much lower than other machines on the market. The group estimated the component cost for a non-invasive ventilator at about VND22 million ($950) and for an invasive ventilator at VND160 million ($6,950). With the capacity of VinFast and VinSmart, the group can produce up to 45,000 non-invasive ventilators and 10,000 invasive ventilators per month and support the countrys urgent need to prepare for the worst if the coronavirus spreads to a larger scale. VIR Bich Ngoc Vingroup to produce ventilators, body thermometers Vingroup announced on April 3 that it would produce ventilators and body thermometers to serve the domestic market amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic. South Africa: School vandalism: Learners will be hardest hit Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, has condemned the incidents of vandalism, burglary and destruction of schools across several provinces since the COVID-19 lockdown started. This follows break-ins at three schools in KwaZulu-Natal in the last 24 hours, where expensive learning equipment was stolen. The eThekwini Primary School in Durban is the latest in a string of schools that have been damaged in recent weeks. The latest burglary happened on Sunday evening, bringing the number to 183 schools vandalised around the country since COVID-19 lockdown was put in place. Gauteng has reported 55 vandalised schools, 72 in Mpumalanga, seven schools in North West and two schools in KwaZulu-Natal. Motshekga said she is working with Police Minister Bheki Cele to get to the bottom of these incidents. It is quite disheartening that criminal elements in our communities could destroy the infrastructure of their own children with such apparent impunity. I am in constant touch with the Minister of Police, and with the assistance of the state intelligence forces, we are following leads to the immediate arrest and prosecution of every single criminal responsible, Motshekga said. The Minister said communities are supposed to be caretakers of the infrastructure that government had put in place for the education of children. It is extremely disappointing for criminals, who are part of the community, to randomly destroy the same infrastructure meant to provide decent spaces of learning and teaching meant for our children, the Minister said. She urged community members to assist the police in identifying the culprits and to not buy items stolen from schools. These criminals must be reported to the police immediately. Let us work together to safeguard the future of our children by exposing these criminal elements, Motshekga said. The learners from the affected schools will be the hardest hit, she said, as there could be delays in the implementation of the curriculum recovery plan when school finally reopen. The Minister urged members of the community to be on the look-out for people vandalising schools or any public property. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. NORWALK Since yesterday, four more have died from coronavirus and six more have tested positive, according to Mayor Harry Rilling. In an update sent out to residents, Rilling said 712 residents are confirmed to have the virus and 31 people have died as a result of it. In Fairfield County, he said the number of new positive cases went from 5,407 to 5,534. The news of four residents dying makes my heart ache. I cant imagine the grief and pain these families are feeling. I am deeply sorry for their loss and offer my condolences to their loved ones, Rilling said. These are trying times. During Passover and on this Easter Sunday, I want to thank residents who made the right call not to celebrate together. These were not easy decisions, but the efforts we make together as a community will help us tomorrow and the weeks ahead, Rilling said. In light of National Public Health Week coming to a close, the mayor said he wanted to thank the Norwalk Health Department and all of the public health professionals in the community. I am grateful for everything they do, not just during this COVID-19 pandemic, but each and every day, Rilling said. On behalf of the entire City of Norwalk - thank you. Rilling also said the 2020 census is ongoing, and encouraged residents to fill out the survey online, by phone or by mail. To date, the national response rate is about 47.9 percent, and in Connecticut, 49.7 percent. In Norwalk, the response rate is at 48.5 percent, Rilling said, adding that the response rates can be viewed online. Mayor Rilling said the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection (DCP), the Better Business Bureau Serving Connecticut, and state Attorney General William Tong issued a warning to families about work from home scams that may be targeting vulnerable workers during the pandemic. He said the DCP has received numerous complaints since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Connecticut, and said more information could be found on its website. For any residents looking to volunteer during these trying times, Rilling said the city has launched a portal where residents can submit their information and be matched with a local nonprofit in need of volunteers. Rilling encouraged residents to sign-up for the citys CodeRED Emergency Alert Notification System at norwalkct.org/codered. He said updates on city services, hours, and community resources will be routinely published at norwalkct.org/citynews. The latest health updates can be found at norwalkct.org/coronavirus. New Taxation on Harmful Products in the UAE Posted by Publisher Internet The UAE Government wants to protect their citizens from harmful goods. Since 1 December 2019, the UAE has imposed an excise duty of 100 percent on electronic smoking devices and liquids used in such devices and an excise tax of 50 percent on sweetened drinks. Other harmful products have been subject to excise duties since 2017. The UAE does not levy personal income tax. However, it introduced VAT on 1 January 2018 and excise tax on 1 October 2017. What is excise tax? Excise tax was introduced across the UAE on 1 October 2017.?Excise tax is a form of indirect tax levied on specific goods which are typically harmful to human health or the environment. The aim of excise tax is to reduce consumption of these commodities, whilst also raising revenues for the government that can be spent on public services (see also ?Rates of Excise Tax in the UAE?). These goods are referred to as ?excise goods?. When considering whether a product is an excise good, the following definitions apply: Carbonated drinks include any aerated beverage except for unflavoured aerated water. Also considered to be carbonated drinks are any concentrations, powders, gels, or extracts intended to be made into an aerated beverage. Energy drinks include any beverages which are marketed or sold as an energy drink and contain stimulant substances that provide mental and physical stimulation. This includes, among others: caffeine, taurine, ginseng. Tobacco and tobacco products and devices. From 1 December 2019: Electronic smoking devices and tools, liquids used in such devices and sweetened drinks. Businesses required to register for excise tax Registering for excise tax is the responsibility of any business engaged in (see also ?Registration, Cost and Effect of Excise Tax in the UAE?) the import of excise goods into the UAE the production of excise goods where they are released for consumption in the UAE the stockpiling of excise goods in the UAE in certain cases anyone who is responsible for overseeing an excise warehouse or designated storage space There is no registration threshold for excise tax. Therefore, any corporation which intends to be involved in any of the activities listed above must register and account for excise tax, explain the experts from Ecovis. For further information please contact: Bayhas Al Kudaimy, Manager ? Legal & Advisory, ECOVIS Fuller International CPA (a member of ECOVIS International), Dubai, United Arab Emirates www.ecovis.com/uae Ecovis is a leading global consulting firm with its origins in Continental Europe. It has over 7,500 people operating in over 75 countries. Its consulting focus and core competencies lie in the areas of tax consultation, accounting, auditing and legal advice. The particular strength of Ecovis is the combination of personal advice at a local level with the general expertise of an international and interdisciplinary network of professionals. Every Ecovis office can rely on qualified specialists in the back offices as well as on the specific industrial or national know-how of all the Ecovis experts worldwide. This diversified expertise provides clients with effective support, especially in the fields of international transactions and investments from preparation in the client\-\-s home country to support in the target country. In its consulting work Ecovis concentrates mainly on mid-sized firms. Both nationally and internationally, its one-stop-shop concept ensures all-round support in legal, fiscal, managerial and administrative issues. The name Ecovis, a combination of the terms economy and vision, expresses both its international character and its focus on the future and growth. Pandemic or not, Border Patrol intends to award the contract to construct the initial 32 miles of border wall in the Laredo area by mid-May. Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection held a virtual town hall for Laredoans who had questions about the wall. Paul Enriquez, acquisition, real estate and environmental director of the Border Wall Program Management Office, said when construction begins will depend on how much land is acquired. So we wont necessarily be acquiring all of the land to start the project, but we need to acquire sufficient real estate to allow the project to start, he said. Federal agents have been working to convince local landowners to sign right of entry documents so that they can survey their properties without having to go through court proceedings, saving time and possibly leading to a speedier condemnation or acquisition of land. Carlos Flores, an attorney representing landowners in this fight and a member of the No Border Wall Coalition, said he has the sense that at this stage, property owners may be in a better position to negotiate the right of entry agreement with the government instead of saying no outright and ending up in court. Landowners have basically no power at all to fight this ask by the feds, Flores said. But if they choose to negotiate the terms of the right of entry, they can control the amount of time the government has access to their land, for example. This also keeps property owners from being liable to pay court costs. Were simply trying to understand what the government wants in the right of entry letter and addressing any client concerns in the negotiation. The government has not been completely closed off to that negotiation, Flores said. They have made some concessions before. However there remains a cohort of property owners who on principle will not sign over the right of entry and would rather take the case to federal court. These hearings are not being postponed due to the coronavirus, Enriquez said. He noted that some courts are allowing landowners to call in to the proceedings. Tony Medina, who owns about three acres right off Santa Isabel Creek adjacent to the Rio Grande, has a pre-trial hearing set for May 21. And Manuel Perez, whose late parents built a house just south of what is now Father McNaboe Park and a neighboring subdivision, has a pre-trial hearing set for June 8. He has been hunkering down at home during the pandemic. He hasnt seen his grandchildren or gone out to this property in weeks, Perez said. Now hes worried about picking up the virus in the courtroom. My daughters dont even want me to go to the grocery store, Perez said. He has blocked the phone numbers of the feds who had been calling him to request he sign the documents. They moved on to start calling his sister, who lives in San Antonio, Perez said. According to the Webb County Appraisal District, the title of the property is still in their mothers name. The property, purchased by his parents decades ago, was once a 16-acre ranch surrounded by nothing but other ranches. Perez remembers his father paying him and his friends 50 cents over the weekends to gather hay and harvest onions, watermelons and tomatoes. With that they could go to the movies and to the thrift store, Perez said. This was about 60 years ago. And on days like today, the whole family would gather at the ranch for an Easter picnic. His aunt and uncle had 15 kids; Perez had a lot of family. They would always hang around, it was a lot of fun. But now it is very disappointing, he said, recalling the border wall fated to run through the property. That really boils my blood, you know? I dont think its fair. Really I hate it, I cannot stand it, just thinking about it now. Perez believes there is no way the feds can build a wall on this land. Previous hard rains have created large holes in the ground, and water from Flecha Lane rushes into a nearby ravine. Hes afraid that the house will end up between the river and the wall because of this. No wall can put up with the strength of the river water. It comes hard, he said. His parents couldnt afford a lot, but they lucked out and were able to purchase this property, Perez said. Now he would rather sell it and end the headache, he said; but now thats impossible too. Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com Spain allows businesses to reopen after lockdown The countrys overnight coronavirus death toll falls to 517, total at 17,489. Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global coronavirus epidemic, on Monday started to ease tough lockdown restrictions that have kept people confined to their homes for more than a month and put a brake on economic activity. SOME BUSINESSES WERE REOPENED Spains cumulative death toll from the coronavirus rose to 17,489 on Monday, up 517 from 16,972 on Sunday, the Health Ministry said. Confirmed cases totalled 169,496, up from 166,019 the previous day. However, in a sign that the situation was taking a turn for the better, some businesses, including construction and manufacturing, were allowed to reopen. But most of the population are still confined to their homes, and shops, bars and public spaces will remain closed until at least April 26. Lockdown restrictions have helped slow a spiralling death rate that reached its peak in early April, but they have tested the resolve of people cooped up inside their homes. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday the decision to restart some sectors of the economy was taken after consulting a committee of scientific experts. Any further winding down would depend on gains made against the virus, he said. Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. announced an order Monday requiring employees of public-facing businesses to wear masks during the COVID-19 outbreak. Augustus said most businesses in the city are already complying with the order. While it was publicly introduced Monday night, he expects the order to be in place within 48 hours. Augustus hopes the responsibility will fall on the businesses for supplying the masks. The order is only for employees. It does not require customers to wear masks, although Augustus said the Massachusetts Department of Public Health last week issued an advisory recommending that people wear face masks or other face coverings in public. Augustus said the measure is an effort to protect both the public and employees. He stopped short of requiring customers to wear masks because he didnt want individuals to avoid getting food or medicine when needed. Its for the employees, the thinking being the employer could help provide the masks, Augustus said. ... I dont want people not being able to access getting their groceries. The order will include penalties for businesses that dont comply. However, Augustus doesnt anticipate any issues. There are mechanisms for fines, but were really trying to start by informing and asking people to comply, Augustus said. Well only go to the fines as a last resort. Under the state public health advisory, people should wear a mask or face covering in public when social distancing is not possible. The executive branch issued similar guidance to state employees on when masks or face coverings should be used on the job. Worcesters order was announced as the city said it had 29 new cases of coronavirus on Monday increasing the overall total to 715. The city, Augustus said, has experienced 600 positive coronavirus cases in April. While the cases continue to increase, Worcester Public Health Director Dr. Michael Hirsh said the hospitals have yet to be overwhelmed. Eight patients are at the DCU Center, which meant to handle less serve cases of coronavirus and alleviate stress on the citys two hospitals. Their occupancy rate has not been overwhelming, Hirsh said of Worcesters two hospitals. But its definitely steadily going up. They are expecting the wave is coming this weekend." Related Content: GFH Financial Group today announced the appointment of two new directors to it board - Ali Murad and Ahmed Alahmadi effective April 1. The new directors bring a wealth of experience and strong track records in regional and international investment and finance to the groups board, GFH said. Ali Murad is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Pinnacle, Bahrain and serves on the boards of companies including C5 Accelerate, EAT App and Wavepoint Publishing. He commenced his career at Arab Banking Corporation where he spent five years in a variety of positions including credit analyst at ABC Islamic Bank EC, money market dealer and deputy manager of the Treasury and Marketable Securities Department. Murad then joined Unicorn Investment Bank (now Bank Alkhair) in the Investment Development and Distribution Department and later First Energy Bank as a director in Investment Placement. In 2010, Murad established Pinnacle, a holding company that acquires and holds stakes in various sectors including technology, music publishing and real estate, to name a few. He holds a Bachelor of Science and Business Administration in Marketing from Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts. Ahmed Alahmadi is an Associate at Mubadala Investment Company working in mergers & acquisitions, where he assists teams across the company in sourcing deals and executing transactions. Previously, he worked for over three years at Mubadala and Rothschild & Co on deals in the Energy and Power space globally. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Shuaa Capital and was previously a board member of Integrated Capital between 2017 and 2019. Alahmadi is a CFA charterholder and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from University College London and a Master's degree in Risk Management and Financial Engineering from Imperial College London. - TradeArabia News Service Omicron variant of COVID-19 identified in Antrim, Charlevoix counties The omicron variant of COVID-19 has been identified in one Antrim County resident and one Charlevoix County resident. COVID-19 has done for the justice system what political promises could not it has shoved the Luddite sector into the age of modern technology. The slow-moving, bulky system where cartloads of documents are still wheeled into courtrooms is reinventing itself as a virtual space compliant with physical distancing. Going from a paper-based, antiquated system to Zoom Court in two weeks is no easy matter, says Justice Anthony Leitch, the administrative judge overseeing Hamiltons Ontario Court of Justice (OCJ) matters. Im pretty proud of what weve done Were ahead of the curve. The normal bustle at the John Sopinka Courthouse ground to a halt when ministry directives ordered limited access to all courthouses in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. Trials are postponed at least 10 weeks. The OCJ is still processing in-custody guilty pleas and bail hearings, authorizing search warrants and doing judicial pretrials. There is a goal to safely and efficiently release qualifying inmates from detention centres, knowing those overcrowded facilities are bracing for high COVID-19 rates. There has been a real surge of people wanting to plead guilty, says Leitch. By April 2, 16 per cent of remand prisoners had been released for time served, he says, adding that more inmates are flowing out than in. In those first chaotic days, when a skeleton staff was still working from two courtrooms, judges were sitting until 7 p.m. Now most work is done remotely. Hamilton was the regions first OCJ to go virtual. Judges take turns going into the courthouse to handle cases from chambers while their staff are in the courtroom. The setup of a courtroom typically puts the judge at the centre of the staff, often less than the recommended COVID-19 distance away. Also, there is much passing of papers records to be read, documents to be signed mundane tasks that are now dangerous. For years, the OCJ has promised to make court documents electronic, says Leitch. Now in just weeks we are trying to get to the point where we dont have to exchange any paperwork. Justices are receiving emailed documents from staff. Clerks have authority to sign documents on behalf of judges, so that is now routine. Judges are typically older than their staff, and for some, their age puts them at increased risk. The reality is the clerks are 30-somethings and the seven judges are 50 and over, says Leitch. Judges over 70 were given the choice of presiding at the courthouse or not. One justice opted to stay home. We are working toward presiding from home, Leitch says. The OCJ is using a hybrid technology system. Zoom, a remote conferencing app, is used for video, bringing together the judge from their chambers, staff in the courtroom, the defence and Crown from home and via video conferencing from detention centres the inmate. Because of the potential for hackers, court turns its volume off and only uses the video feed from Zoom. To get audio, everyone joins a secure, government conference line that records the proceedings. The jerry-rigged system is slow and cumbersome, says Leitch. There are two bail courts, one intake court and a guilty-plea court running. Superior Court where the most serious matters are heard is barely functioning. Bail reviews and in-custody guilty pleas are available and some family matters are being processed. At the Crown office, nearly all 28 assistant crowns and 12 administrators are working from home, some preparing for future trials. Head Crown Todd Norman says, by next week, everyone will work from home. A few years ago, an electronic records system for Crowns was implemented. Currently, Hamilton is in a disclosure portal pilot project where digital documents can be shared between Crowns, defence and police. We were well-positioned to deal with the current situation, says Norman. Everyone recognizes this is a crisis and every justice system participant is making it work. Defence lawyer Peter Boushy had his last day at the courthouse March 19. He Zooms in for in-custody guilty pleas at OCJ and meets with jailed clients using a secure Bell Canada phone line. They want out. You hear the panic. They are anxious to take guilty pleas, so there is a concern clients are pleading guilty when theyre not guilty. Boushy says they are more likely to recollect their culpability now than pre-pandemic. The crisis is changing the law in Ontario as judges set new precedents by taking COVID-19 into account when making custody and sentencing decisions. The takeaway for anyone who thinks now is a good time to commit crimes? Now is not the time to get arrested, says Boushy. Youre going to be in custody waiting for a bail hearing longer than usual. CORRECTION: This story was updated April 15. It originally said that in-custody guilty pleas were not taking place. In fact, the Superior Court of Justice has been hearing in-custody guilty pleas throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Defense cost-sharing talks face prolonged deadlock The already-tense defense cost-sharing talks between Seoul and Washington are expected to face a prolonged deadlock after U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly rejected South Korea's proposed payment increase of 13 percent. The rejection will certainly have negative implications on the bilateral alliance. There are concerns that the failure to reach a cost-sharing deal could undermine the allies' joint defense readiness against North Korea's potential military threats. The North has continued to test-fire short-range ballistic missiles and other strategic weapons. The stalemate was mainly attributed to Trump's refusal to compromise over his excessive demand that Seoul should pay $5 billion this year for the upkeep of 28,500 U.S. troops stationed here. The sum is more than five times the $900 billion paid last year by Seoul. It is irrational for President Trump to describe Korea as a "free rider" in the defense alliance in an attempt to extort as much money as possible from Seoul. According to a Reuters report last week, Trump turned down the Korean government's proposed double-digit increase from last year's cost-sharing deal. The rejection was made after consultation with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. It poured cold water over an upbeat statement March 31 by South Korea's top negotiator Jeong Eun-bo that the two sides had tentatively reached a deal. It is regrettable that Trump rejected the deal struck between negotiators of the two countries for this year's Special Measures Agreement (SMA). To the eyes of the self-centered U.S. president, Seoul's 13 percent hike proposal seems to be too low. But he should realize that it was the best offer from the Moon Jae-in administration, compared with the 8.2 percent hike in 2019 from the previous year. But the rejection comes as no surprise, given Trump's America-centric stance which values money over alliances. He has repeatedly made excessive and unreasonable demands that Korea should pay much more for the U.S. Forces Korea. He even asked for Seoul to pick up the entire bill. It is apparent that Trump wants a steep increase in the South's burden to show off as one of his achievements to boost his chances for re-election. But he should not have nixed the tentative deal when Seoul and Washington need to step up their cooperation not only in defense and security but also in response to the coronavirus pandemic. For its part, the Moon administration cannot avoid criticism for being too optimistic about the deal. It should have taken a more careful approach to cope with any reaction by the unpredictable and egoistical U.S. leader. Now Washington should give up holding hostage the salaries of about 4,000 South Korean workers on U.S. bases to force Seoul into agreeing to an unfavorable deal. These workers have been furloughed since April 1 due to the botched talks. We call on the Trump administration to drop its unwarranted demand and reach a mutually acceptable deal with Seoul as soon as possible. The newly detected cases are all Egyptians, except for one foreigner, the health ministry said. Ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said in a statement that 21 Egyptians have fully recovered from the virus and left isolation hospital on Sunday. He noted that the number of people who have retested negative so far has reached 589, of whom 447 have fully recovered and left isolation hospital. Egyptian Health Minister Hala Zayed held a meeting on Sunday, via video conference, with the administrative and medical staff of six isolation hospitals: Negela, Baltim, Kafr El-Zayat, Tama El-Amid, Mallawi and Qaha. Egypt has allocated 94 hospitals across the country to deal with the coronavirus virus. They include 12 isolation hospitals and 82 fever and pulmonology hospitals, which will carry out triage and referral of coronavirus patients. According to the Sunday statement, the minister ensured during the meeting the availability of strategic necessities for medical staff, such as single-use protective suits, gloves, and face masks. She responded to their requests to provide high-speed internet to facilitate their mission and also gave directives to accommodate their other needs and act immediately on any challenges that they may face, in recognition of their exceptional efforts. She called on the mental health team to be continually present in the isolation hospitals to provide the staff with active psychological support. The health ministry has previously trained 150 mental health specialists to provide psychological support to health care workers, patients and members of the public. The minister also instructed the Preventive Measures Follow-up Committee to appoint a representative to be continually present at those hospitals. The committee was formed to enhance the protection of medical staff at isolation hospitals and was tasked with supervising the infection control measures. Search Keywords: Short link: USI Strengthens Ohio-Based Employee Benefit and Retirement Planning Expertise VALHALLA, N.Y., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- USI Insurance Services (USI), a world leader in risk management, employee benefit and retirement consulting, today announced the acquisition of Cleveland, Ohio-based Chapman & Chapman. Founded in 1886, Chapman & Chapman is a regional employee benefit and retirement consulting firm. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Commenting on the announcement, Walter Chapman, CEO, Chapman & Chapman, stated: From Chapman & Chapmans founding, our firm has earned an exceptional reputation for delivering innovative solutions and service to businesses and individuals. Throughout our more than 130-year history, twelve members of our family have joined the firm, spanning the past five generations. This partnership with USI marks an exciting milestone for our firm and one that will advance our longstanding legacy for delivering client-centric solutions built on a shared sense of commitment, innovation and integrity. USI is an established leader in the risk management, employee benefit and retirement consulting market, known for their best-in-class solutions, added Kristin Chapman, partner, Chapman & Chapman. The cultural fit for our internal teams and the aligned approach to exceptional client service is our priority. We are excited about the depth of resources USI provides to enable us to deliver the most innovative and customized solutions to our clients. Thomas Cassady, USI regional CEO, stated: We are thrilled to welcome Walter, Kristin and the talented professionals from Chapman & Chapman to the USI family. Partnering as one, we look forward to strengthening USIs employee benefit and retirement consulting expertise in service to our current and future clients throughout northern Ohio and beyond. About USI USI is one of the largest insurance brokerage and consulting firms in the world, delivering property and casualty, employee benefits, personal risk, program and retirement solutions to large risk management clients, middle market companies, smaller firms and individuals. Headquartered in Valhalla, New York, USI connects over 7,000 industry-leading professionals from approximately 200 offices to serve clients local, national and international needs. USI has become a premier insurance brokerage and consulting firm by leveraging the USI ONE Advantage, an interactive platform that integrates proprietary and innovative client solutions, networked local resources and enterprise-wide collaboration to deliver customized results with positive, bottom line impact. USI attracts best-in-class industry talent with a long history of deep and continuing investment in our local communities. For more information, visit usi.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Story continues ### Timothy Denton USI Insurance Services 914-747-6339 timothy.denton@usi.com Edward J. Bowler USI Insurance Services 914-749-8504 ed.bowler@usi.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) A lawyer has urged the Supreme Court to compel Malacanang to release all of President Rodrigo Dutertes health records since he assumed office and for the chief executive to undergo confirmatory medical tests. In his 42-page petition filed Monday before the high court, lawyer Dino de Leon argued that the Office of the President is duty-bound to disclose the state of Dutertes health as mandated by the Constitution. The illnesses acknowledged by the President come within the meaning of serious illness under the Constitution," De Leon pointed out, "and given the gravity of the illnesses openly acknowledged by the President, the public release of his medical bulletins becomes a ministerial duty upon request from any concerned citizen." In the same petition, De Leon said he first filed a freedom of information request for Dutertes medical records before the Office of the President on March 12. The Malacanang Records Office, however, told him the next day that his request is not among the records available on file nor in the possession of the office," he claimed. De Leon said he was prompted to seek information on Dutertes health following his recent press conferences and addresses on COVID-19 where he barely finished a single full sentence, and a lot of people had difficulty following what he was saying. He contended that his request for Dutertes health records is in line with the publics right to be informed of matters that affect them. How can the public be assured that the President is physically well to handle the COVID-19 pandemic? De Leon said. When everyone's safety is in peril, the Filipino people should at least have information on the health of the main decision maker. He also argued that Duterte has a minimal expectation of privacy when it comes to his physical and mental health. At any rate, there is no harm if the health records of the President are disclosed," De Leon noted. "There can only be two scenarios. The first scenario is that the President is actually physically and mentally healthy. The other scenario, which is the worst case, is that the President is actually suffering from serious illnesses, which means that the public should be informed of the situation, as commanded by the Constitution. Malacanang has yet to issue a statement on the matter. Serious illness? Article VII, Section 12 of the Constitution mandates that the public should be informed of the presidents state of health in case of serious illness. Duterte himself has admitted to facing several health woes, including myasthenia gravis, daily migraines, Buergers Disease, Barretts Esophagus and gastroesophageal reflux disease. He also said that he had undergone a biopsy, wherein he said he tested negative for cancer. The President also revealed that he is taking sleeping pills and needs additional oxygen to breathe while sleeping. The Presidents public admission[s] paint a picture of a President afflicted with various serious illnesses, which at the minimum will cause serious inconvenience to and prejudice the discharge of his official duties, De Leon said. Malacanang, however, said De Leons petition should be immediately dismissed, supposedly for having no factual or legal basis. There is no evidence submitted before the high court that the President is suffering from a serious illness, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said. The suit may have been a product of petitioner's boredom as a result of the enhanced community quarantine. A January 2019 poll revealed that more Filipino adults were worried about Dutertes health and more of them also believed that the President has health problems. Despite widespread concern, Malacanang has been adamant about needing to release medical bulletins on Duterte, insisting that all is well with the Presidents health. Two UW Colleges, Central Wyoming College Offer New Entrepreneurship Program Central Wyoming College (CWC) and the University of Wyomings College of Business and College of Engineering and Applied Science are extending their partnership to support Wyomings entrepreneurial ecosystem, continuing a statewide education program called Entrepreneur Essentials. After hosting a successful pilot program this past fall throughout the state, Entrepreneur Essentials is ready to provide educational tools to help statewide entrepreneurs build a solid foundation for launching and growing successful businesses. Entrepreneur Essentials is a hybrid version of the highly successful CWC Start-Up Intensive (SUI) program, with in-person sessions and online learning. The four-week program will start Friday, May 15. Offered two weekends and one evening a week, the program will be entirely online with the possibility of an in-person meeting for the final weekend. Due to the current economic environment, this first course will launch at a significant discount to its normal stated course fees. Regularly priced at $995, the cost of the spring 2020 program will be discounted to $584 for in-state participants and $780 for Idaho and other Western states. Wyoming Workforce Training grants may apply to those who qualify and apply by April 14. Students can receive four CWC college credits, which address the CWC Bachelor of Applied Science degree. The current economic uncertainty across Wyoming will give birth to many entrepreneurs and challenge existing businesses that need to pivot to survive, says CWC Dean Lynne McAuliffe. We aim to help them do this with solid practical educational content, terrific instruction and a group of peers who are navigating similar waters. Entrepreneur Essentials was developed from the 10-week Start-Up Intensive, says Sandy Hessler, SUI instructor. One hundred Wyomingites have graduated from SUI, one of the most successful entrepreneurial education programs in the state. We are excited to offer this modified course that still allows for a collaborative, interactive experience for entrepreneurs in cities across Wyoming. Entrepreneur Essentials will teach participants to: -- Communicate a business vision based on an identified customer problem and solution. -- Develop an idea into a business concept. -- Identify a core customer set. -- Research the market opportunity and competition. -- Develop a sound financial model for the business. Why this partnership? Why now? Through the ENDOW initiative, we learned about the economic challenges and opportunities facing Wyoming today and in the future, says Peter Scott, a professor of entrepreneurship at UW. To grow the Wyoming economy, Wyoming residents need access to entrepreneurial education. The Entrepreneur Essentials program fits with our new strategic plan that has a goal of deeper engagement with the state, says UW College of Business Dean David Sprott. Start-Up Intensive has a proven, six-year track record in the education space, with many successful businesses launched and relaunched. We believe that this new partnership will allow us to expand entrepreneurial education around Wyoming with CWC. Of the 100 entrepreneurs who graduated from SUI in the last six years from Wyoming, about 100 jobs, at an average annual salary above $40,000, have been generated. SUI has added $4 million worth of income to Wyomings northwest regional economy. For program dates/times and more information about the Entrepreneur Essentials program, go to www.cwc.edu/essentials, or email Liza Millet at lmillet@cwc.edu or Scott at pscott5@uwyo.edu. New Delhi, April 13 : According to the Prime Minister's intructions, all ministers of the Narendra Modi cabinet went back to their ministries on Monday physically, to resume work that was so far being done from home through video conferencing, in wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Among the notables was Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. She posted a photo wearing a mask on Twitter to say: "Back to working in North Block office with a home-made mask this morning." Union Information & Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar too reached his office by 10 a.m. and held a meeting with I&B Secretary Rajiv Mittal and two additional secretary rank officers, say sources. The I&B ministries work on dissemination of information on the coronavirus at a time when fake news has been rampant was reviewed. It is learnt, a list of all employees of the ministry is asked to be prepared so they can be deputed on rotation basis. All cars reaching ministries in Shastri Bhawan, that houses a host of ministries were properly sanitized before they were allowed to enter. This included the car of ministers. Among others who visited their ministry were Union Culture Minister Prahlad Patel and Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank. Both of them were properly in masks. In fact, Patel held a meeting with his official where training of hotel staffs that are being used to house doctors was on the agenda. Taj group, Lalit among many have thrown their hotels open for housing medical staffs. Social distancing measures were kept in mind. Space was maintained between two chairs, shows a video of the meeting that IANS has access to. They resumed their work with around one-third of the essential staff members in every ministry to maintain social distancing norms of the lockdown to contain the spread of novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic. However, all the ministers as well as the officials and their staff had to go through thermal scanning before they entered in their respective ministries in North Block, South Block and Shastri Bhavan-based offices. Minister of State for the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region and Minister of State for Prime Minister's Office; Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Jitendra Singh first time arrived his office at North Block with bare minimum staff. These Ministers were working from home since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced three-week lockdown from March 24 midnight. The rejoining comes in the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking ministers to physically go to ministries starting Monday and keep their officials on rotation basis. India's 21 days shutdown to contain spread of the coronavirus ends on Tuesday, but is likely to be extended. Meanwhile, there have been few ministers who have been regularly visiting their ministries, even while most ministers worked from home, using video conferencing. Both minister of states for Home - G. KiShan Reddy and Nityanand Rai have been regularly visiting the North Block to take stock of situation. Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar too, have been visiting his ministry during the shutdown. Michael Lewellen faced the biggest milestones and struggles of his life with his best friend, Herman Strickland, by his side. The two friends grew up together in Jonesboro, Arkansas, graduated from the same high school and college and were groomsmen in each others weddings. Strickland was there to comfort Lewellen when he lost his parents. And when Lewellens son, Elliott, died suddenly in 2008 of a heart defect, Strickland dropped everything to stand by his friend at the funeral. But Lewellen wasnt there when Strickland, 60, was laid to rest Saturday. Strickland, a prominent banker and civic leader in Memphis, Tennessee, died suddenly in his sleep on April 5. But with public gatherings in Tennessee limited to just 10 people due to the coronavirus pandemic, Stricklands family held a private funeral. Lewellen mourned the death of his best friend from his home in Portland. My best friend was there with me all three times, when each of my parents died and when my son died, Lewellen said. Now, when its my turn, our lives are very different. With the virus and all the restrictions, Im not there to stand with family. It hurts." Governors across the country, including Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, have enacted stay-at-home orders and banned large gatherings during the last month to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Those measures appear to be working, but they have had devastating effects on funerals. Visitations and burials in Oregon have been limited to 10 or fewer people, if they happen at all, as the rituals associated with honoring and mourning the dead have all but been put on pause. Funeral homes and cemeteries throughout Oregon, like those across the country, have adjusted their policies to adhere to the states order. Some cemeteries are no longer allowing graveside services, while others have asked immediate family members to sit in their cars to witness burials from afar. While most funeral homes and cemeteries are still allowing immediate family members to be present for visitations and burials, they are enforcing strict social distancing measures, requiring family members to stand six feet apart at gravesites. The Department of Veterans Affairs has discontinued services and the rendering of military funeral honors at its national cemeteries, including the Willamette National Cemetery, Roseburg National Cemetery and Eagle Point National Cemetery. Up to 10 immediate family members can still request to witness an interment. It feels like were not really doing what we want to do, which is to celebrate the persons existence and meaning, said Dennis Wood, a funeral director at Mt. Scott Funeral Home in Portland. Were really restricted to caring in an immediate way for the deceaseds physical body, whether its a burial or cremation, whatever the family chooses. While public visitations have been discontinued, Cameron Holmes, general manager and funeral director at Holmans Funeral and Cremation Services in Portland, said that the funeral home was still doing what it could to accommodate the needs of families. Small ceremonies, including those with a religious officiant, can still take place, as long as no more than 10 people are present. That is less restrictive than some other states. Washington state has prohibited funerals entirely and directed cemeteries to restrict interment services to delivery only. Were still having outdoor graveside services, but its very small, Holmes said. Its immediate family only, sometimes less if the immediate family is more than 10. Its difficult, but we are able to have these graveside services. Jewish families can still do their custom of putting the earth on the casket at the cemetery. Catholic families, if we can get a priest, can still do a blessing at the cemetery before burial. Were trying to do the best that we can, but its very, very limited. Marc Lund, owner of Sunset Hills Funeral Home in Eugene and Smith Lund Mills Funeral Chapel in Cottage Grove, said that he now speaks to families over the phone to set up arrangements for their loved ones, whenever possible. Meetings are only conducted in person when arrangements cant be made over the phone, and those meetings are limited to three people. Lund said that explaining the new restrictions had not been easy, although most families have been understanding. Funerals can be particularly dangerous events, in terms of the potential transmission of the coronavirus. In February, a person who was unknowingly infected with COVID-19 attended both a funeral and birthday party in the Chicago-area over a three-day span. Sixteen people were infected with COVID-19 following the two events and three later died, according to a case study published last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With services limited to 10 people in Oregon, Lund has seen an increase in family members turning to technology to stream services for those that are unable to attend. But he said there was no substitute for having family and friends come together to mourn their loss. He said he has encouraged families to plan larger services in the future, once restrictions have been lifted. Oftentimes, when its a family member or a longtime friend, even if youre at high-risk for COVID-19, I think theres a lot of pressure for people to come and say goodbye, Lund said. Thats a tragedy of COVID-19, how its keeping people from coming together to grieve. Lewellen has watched from afar over the last week as the communities in Memphis and Jonesboro have mourned Strickland. Arkansas State University, Strickland and Lewellens alma mater, had its bell tower lit up in red to honor Strickland. Members of the Jonesboro community drove past the house of Stricklands parents to show their respect. And the New Olivet Worship Center, the church where Strickland was a deacon, posted a video of Strickland singing in the churchs chorus. Stricklands wife, Rhonda, and two daughters shared a video tribute with friends and family as well. Those tributes have provided some comfort, but Lewellen still longs for a time when he can celebrate Stricklands life alongside family and friends and visit his best friends grave to say goodbye. Best friends are hard to find, especially somebody that you can look back at and know that all those milestone moments in your life, that they were part of that, Lewellen said. We shared every single milestone moment in our lives together and because of circumstance, now Im not there to say goodbye. -- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. New Ebola Case in DR Congo Sets Back Hoped for End to Epidemic By Lisa Schlein April 12, 2020 The World Health Organization says it remains committed to ending the Ebola outbreak in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo following discovery of a new case of the disease days before DRC authorities had hoped to declare the epidemic over. An Ebola epidemic is declared over after two incubation periods or 42 days have passed without a confirmed case of the disease. After 52 days without a case of Ebola, a 26-year-old man died of the disease in the city of Beni. WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says this is not welcome news, but adds it was not unexpected. "We have been preparing for, and expecting, more cases. Unfortunately, this means the government of DRC will not be able to declare an end to the outbreak on Monday, as hoped. But WHO and all partners remain on the ground and committed as ever to working with the government, under the leadership of the government and with affected communities and other partners to end the outbreak," he said. WHO reports 3,456 cases of Ebola, including 2,276 deaths since the outbreak was declared August 1, 2018. This is the second-worst outbreak, after the historic 2014 epidemic in West Africa, which infected more than 28,000 people, killing 11,300. The head of WHO's health emergency committee, Michael Ryan, says the positive news to emerge from this setback is that the international operation tracking the Ebola epidemic was on the alert and responded quickly. "Every day, we investigate 2,600 alerts across the two affected provinces still. We take thousands of samples every single week and we will continue that active surveillance right the way through. We will just have to go again for another 42 days," said Ryan. WHO reports efforts are underway to find everyone who may have been in contact with the infected person. It says everyone will be offered the protective vaccine and their health status will be monitored. It says the international response team will continue to trace and track every case in North Kivu and Ituri provinces until this epidemic is brought to an end. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address National Academy of Plastic Surgeons recognizes Dr. Swartout as a Top 10 Plastic Surgeon for 2020 Less than 1% of plastic surgeons nationwide qualify for this exclusive award. Dr. Benjamin G. Swartout, a highly-esteemed facial cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon in Beverly Hills, is honored to be listed as one of California's top 10 plastic surgeons in 2020 by the National Academy of Plastic Surgeons. Less than 1% of plastic surgeons nationwide qualify for this exclusive award. A multi-phase selection process examines the credentials and artistry of each candidate to ensure that only the most skilled plastic surgeons are selected for this prestigious designation. To create their list, the National Academy of Plastic Surgeons identifies surgeons who demonstrate the highest degree of excellence and also give back to the community. Dr. Benjamin Swartout is a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon who specializes in otolaryngologyhead and neck surgery. Dr. Swartout qualified for this prestigious honor based on his career achievements, outstanding reputation, professional experience, patient satisfaction, and community impact. The surgeon has a 5-star rating on Google and Healthgrades.com and is dedicated to his patients well-being. Dr. Swartout attended college at Harvard and medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He completed his internship in general surgery at New York University and then completed a specialty residency focused on otolaryngology, also at New York University. After completing his specialty training, Dr. Swartout completed a fellowship in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Swartout teaches nasal surgery to Harbor UCLA residents, contributing to the education of future doctors and giving back to an underserved community. Dr. Swartout focuses on aesthetic and reconstructive facial surgery, including: Eyelid surgery - Blepharoplasty corrects aging, droopy eyelids by tightening and removing excess skin, fat, and muscle. Otoplasty - Cosmetic ear surgery corrects and balanced overly large or protruding ears. Rhinoplasty - Rhinoplasty (nose job) restores facial symmetry, removes a nasal hump, addresses breathing issues, and meets other personal goals. Ethnic rhinoplasty - Ethnic rhinoplasty is personalized to match the patients natural facial structure so that the results look authentic. Revision rhinoplasty - Revision rhinoplasty is a complicated procedure that restores breathing and repairs the appearance of the nose after a failed nose job. Facelift - Rhytidectomy creates more youthful contours along the jaw and lower face and may be combined with Botox or eyelid surgery to reduce signs of aging around the eyes. Dr. Swartout's special interests include the development of exceptional rhinoplasty techniques for long-lasting, natural-looking nasal shapes and unrestricted nasal breathing. He also sees many patients seeking rhinoplasty revision to repair a prior nose job, as this complex procedure requires years of specialized training and experience to avoid complications. Dr. Swartout is a member of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and the American Rhinologic Society. ### To schedule a private consultation with Dr. Benjamin Swartout in Beverly Hills, CA, call (310) 274-6005 or visit lafacialplasticsurgery.com. Taliban Free 20 Afghan Prisoners By Ayaz Gul April 12, 2020 The Taliban released a first group of 20 prisoners on Sunday, effectively moving forward a crucial swap with the Afghanistan government aimed at kick-starting peace talks between Afghan parties to the war. The insurgent move follows the release of 300 Taliban prisoners over the past few days, including 100 freed on Sunday, by the government. "Today, 20 prisoners of the Kabul administration will be released by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and handed over to ICRC in Kandahar," Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen tweeted. The prisoner exchange is part of a landmark February 29 deal the United States signed with the Taliban in Qatar with a goal to finding a negotiated end to the Afghan war, now in its 19th year. The agreement requires Afghan authorities to set free up to 5,000 insurgent inmates and the Taliban to free 1,000 detainees, mostly Afghan security forces, before intra-Afghan peace negotiations could begin. The prisoner swap was to be completed before March 10 when peace talks were supposed to start. But reluctance on part of the Afghan government, which was kept out of the deal, prevented implementation of the two key elements in the agreement. Critics say the extremely slow pace of the prisoner swap means it will be weeks if not months before intra-Afghan talks could begin. The much-awaited visible progress in the prisoner swap follows Friday's meeting between General Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Taliban leaders in the Qatari capital of Doha, which hosts the insurgent group's political office. "General Miller met with Taliban leadership last night as part of the military channel established in the agreement. The meeting was about the need to reduce the violence," a U.S. military spokesman told VOA on Saturday. Taliban spokesman Shaheen while sharing details of the meeting said the U.S.-Taliban agreement's "violations, particularly attacks and night raids in non-combat areas, came under serious discussion." He added that the Taliban delegation "called for a halt to such attacks." The U.S. military denies the allegations as baseless, saying the agreement allows foreign troops to act in defense of Afghan security forces if attacked by the Taliban. The accord requires insurgents not to attack U.S.-led foreign forces, who have committed to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan by July 2021, ending Washington's longest overseas military intervention. In additional to engaging in peace and reconciliation talks with other Afghan groups, the Taliban is also committed under the agreement not allow translational terrorists to use Afghan soil for future attacks against America and its allies. Progress toward ending hostilities in Afghanistan is considered crucial because of the looming coronavirus outbreak. The war-ravaged country confirmed Sunday the pandemic has infected more than 600 Afghans and killed at least 18. The Kabul government and the Taliban have launched separate counter COVID-19 campaigns in areas under their control but international stakeholders have called for both to cease violence and work together to fight the deadly disease. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address During this time of social distancing, the search for new and interesting things to do at home can be extremely difficult. If you've been looking for something unique that the whole family can get involved with, The Culinary Center of Kansas City has just the solution: online cooking classes hosted by some of the cooking school's expert chefs. Former President John Dramani Mahama has expressed worry over the community spread of the novel Coronavirus in Ghana. From the latest statistics and escalation in numbers, it is clear we are in a difficult spot in the battle to contain COVID-19. But together we can overcome the uncertainties of the moment. The latest revelation that 57.1% of infected persons have no history of foreign travel is particularly worrisome. It implies that we may have begun to experience community transmission of the virus, he stated in a write-up to wish Ghanaians a happy Easter. The former President in the write-up also reiterated calls for government to establish a COVID-19 research centre in northern Ghana. I have previously stated that given the opportunity, I will ensure that we establish another medical research centre with capacity like the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) in the Northern part of Ghana as part of the Response Plan, he added. Ghana currently has only two research centres for testing for COVID-19. These are the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR). At the time the former president released the write-up, the COVID-19 cases were 408 but the case count has increased to 566. Below is Mahamas full piece: John Mahama writes on Day 14 of Lockdown Happy Easter my fellow countrymen and women. Today is day 14 (two weeks) since the partial lockdown declared by the President in some parts of Greater Accra and Ashanti regions, and Kasoa due to the deadly Coronavirus pandemic. So far, Ghana has confirmed 408 people as having been infected with the virus. Out of this number, four (4) have recovered and eight (8) dead. I pray for God's mighty healing on the sick, including our compatriot Ambassador Papa Owusu Ankomah, and consolation for the families of the deceased. I also wish to extend my condolences to the family of Professor Jacob Plange-Rhule, the Rector of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons and the entire medical fraternity for his untimely death after he was infected by the COVID-19 virus. Plange-Rhule exuded humility. He was a medical luminary, affable, warm and knowledgeable. His death is an irreplaceable loss. As we mourn the dead from COVID-19, meningitis is reported to have killed 37 people in the Upper West Region, out of hundreds who have contracted the illness. Even as we focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not take our eyes off endemic diseases that have a tragic history of annually exacting a significant toll on our people. I call on Government to offer the regions in the north the needed attention in order to address the silent deaths and infections occurring as a result of meningitis. Last week I received a briefing from the head of our COVID-19 technical team and I am satisfied with the level of collaboration they have with the National COVID-19 response team. As has been said by many, we must continue to be guided by science in our response to this dreadful pandemic. It is, therefore, necessary for experts to guide the decision-makers with the appropriate models of the trajectory the disease is likely to take. It will be a reliable guide on decisions relating to extensions or otherwise of restrictions on movement and border closures. This will also require setting up additional testing sites in order that the backlog of samples awaiting testing can be cleared. Enhanced surveillance and increased efforts at contact tracing will help to give a clearer picture of where we are in the deadly journey of this virus. We need to project quickly, what the expected peaking of infection will be, and when we will begin to see a flattening of the curve on new infections and hospitalizations. From the latest statistics and escalation in numbers, it is clear we are in a difficult spot in the battle to contain COVID-19. But together we can overcome the uncertainties of the moment. The latest revelation that 57.1% of infected persons have no history of foreign travel is particularly worrisome. It implies that we may have begun to experience community transmission of the virus. While our minds are focused on fighting COVID-19, I would like to start a conversation about strategic plans and investments that will address future pandemics. As I have already suggested there is the need for a National Infectious Disease Response Plan that clearly sets out the specific steps to be taken to prevent the entry of such diseases, quickly arrest them at a very early stage even if they do enter our shores and reduce their impact to the barest minimum. I have previously stated that given the opportunity, I will ensure that we establish another medical research centre with capacity like the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) in the Northern part of Ghana as part of the Response Plan. Under the plan, we will double the bed capacity of the 37 military hospital and build an Infectious Diseases Centre there to cater for the Southern sector in order to help manage infections like Ebola and COVID-19 I wish to reiterate my call for government to provide adequate PPEs to health workers, ensure testing of as many people as possible for the COVID-19 virus as we stay home during the extended lockdown period, observing social distancing protocols and washing our hands with soap under running water, regularly. A Happy Easter to all of us. It is my prayer that this Season will offer our dear nation God's unfailing Mercy and Grace to overcome the surge of our present pain. Together We Will Win the Fight Against Coronavirus! ---citinewsroom Severe weather has swept across the South, killing at least 19 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains. Many people spent part of the night early Monday sheltering in basements, closets and bathroom tubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes. Eleven people were killed in Mississippi, and six more died in northwest Georgia. Two other bodies were pulled from damaged homes in Arkansas and South Carolina. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out electricity for about 750,000 customers in a 10-state swath ranging from Texas to Georgia up to West Virginia, according to poweroutages.us. The National Weather Service tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Meteorologists warned the mid-Atlantic states to prepare for potential tornadoes, wind and hail on Monday. In Georgia, Murray County Fire Chief Dewayne Bain told WAGA-TV that two mobile home parks were severely damaged, with five people killed and five others hospitalized after a line of narrow line of storms left a five mile long path of destruction. Another person was killed when a tree fell on a home in Cartersville, the station reported. Mississippi's death toll rose to 11 early Monday, the state's emergency management agency tweeted, promising details later in the morning. In Arkansas, one person was killed when a tree fell on a home in White Hall, about 35 miles southeast of Little Rock, the Jefferson County Department of Emergency Management said. In South Carolina, a person was found dead in a collapsed building near Seneca as the apparent tornado struck the city around 3:30 am Monday, Oconee County Emergency Management Director Scott Krein said. Several apparent tornadoes spun up in South Carolina, where dozens of homes appeared damaged in a line from Seneca to Clemson. Emergency officials were working to open shelters in the North Carolina mountains, where up to 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain fell in a few hours. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, at least 150 homes and commercial buildings were damaged and more than a dozen people treated, but none of their injuries appeared to be life-threatening, Chattanooga Fire Chief Phil Hyman said Monday morning. It's widespread damage that happened extremely fast, he said. I advise people to stay in their homes at this point. As far as safety is concerned, we still have active power lines that are down." The deaths in Mississippi included a married couple Lawrence County sheriff's deputy, Robert Ainsworth, and a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk, Paula We, a Facebook post from the county sheriff's office said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Wesgro, in partnership with the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town, has launched a tool to help South African businesses find funding. The tool, called the COVID-19 Support Finder, is aimed at making it easier for businesses to navigate the various packages available to them. The tool asks the user five questions, ranks the answers against predetermined criteria, and provides a list of relief measures the business can apply for. While this tool was developed by the Western Cape Government, it is open to all businesses in South Africa. The lockdown is essential to stop the spread of COVID-19, but we know that times are tough for business, said the Western Capes Minister of Finance David Maynier. That is why, now more than ever, we want to support businesses by giving them trusted information that will help them get through this, stay safe, and stay resilient. Support for businesses There has been several support measures for businesses launched from both the private sector and government departments recently. The government has established a Solidarity Fund, which includes private donations and seed capital from the state, to help businesses. The Rupert family and Remgro have established a R1-billion fund called the Sukuma Relief Programme to assist SMEs with grants and loans. Nicky and Jonathan Oppenheimer have also established the South African Future Trust (SAFT), with R1 billion in funding. The SAFT will transfer funds directly to employees of participating SMMEs, via interest-free loans where employees themselves carry no liability. Mary Oppenheimer, along with her daughters, has donated R1 billion to the Solidarity Fund to assist struggling South Africans. Additionally, Patrice Motsepe and associated companies have pledged R1 billion which will be used to assist providing medical equipment to assist with the crisis. Naspers has donated R1.5 billion to combat the coronavirus in South Africa and help businesses, too. R500 million was donated to the Solidarity Fund, and the rest will be used buy personal protective equipment and other medical supplies. Helping businesses to find the best option Wesgro CEO Tim Harris said their tool makes it easier for businesses to navigate the various packages available to them. Were here to help businesses navigate the complex funding environment in a unique and user-friendly way, said Harris. Together with our government partners, we will constantly keep the tool up to date to help companies adapt in this time of crisis. The interview below provides more details about the COVID-19 Support Finder tool for businesses. Now read: South African businesses will start to receive money from Tuesday As the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak remains unknown, the virus poses questions for how Connecticut should conduct elections in November. To prepare for a potential second wave in the fall that affects election day, the General Assembly must act now to enhance ballot access and protect the right of every Connecticut voter to cast their ballot on-time, securely, and in a safe environment. In a March 20 letter to House and Senate leadership, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons highlighted the introduction of the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020 and the urgency to act now for inclusion within the (now stalled) $2 trillion federal stimulus legislation. In light of the threats that this virus poses, every American should be able to cast a ballot by mail without excuse, they wrote. That means states will have to scale their vote-by-mail processes in a way that hasnt been done before. This will require the federal government to provide swift assistance to states so that they can begin to purchase the supplies and equipment necessary to ensure every American can safely vote in 2020. The Brennan Center has estimated the cost to fully implement vote-by-mail solutions nationwide will approach $2 billion, but the $2.2 trillion CARES Act only included $400 million for election support. Thats better than nothing, but it only helps states move vote-by-mail forward in November about as much as finding $20 on the sidewalk helps you purchase a new car. Vote-by-mail solutions are championed as a means of ensuring electoral stability and are already in wide use. Colorado, Oregon and Washington already conduct their elections entirely through the vote-at-home model. To ensure vote-by-mail is ready by November, Congress must act now. Funding for printing costs, equipment, training, processing, tabulating, and ballot security all need to be dealt with immediately. Though time is short, its not too late to start the implementation process. Ohio, which has led throughout this crisis, set a good example. Following Ohios cancellation of its March 17 primary, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (a Republican) proposed the Ohio Voters First Act to the Ohio General Assembly. The bill calls for the state to mail a postage-paid absentee ballot request form to every eligible Ohio voter in time to cast their vote by Ohios proposed primary make-up date (except those who already voted early). The measure, which Ohios Republican Governor Mike DeWine supports, demonstrates the ability of conservative leaders to move swiftly and decisively in the face of unprecedented electoral challenges. Connecticut would be wise to follow Ohios lead. Ohios Voters First Act proposal is also an answer to the fears some in Congress have over federalizing the nations elections. The states are already addressing the issue of voting-by-mail, either through extended early voting periods or no excuse absentee voting, in a manner that makes sense for their states. In other words, Connecticut does not need, nor should it want, a one-size-fits-all federal solution. It needs only the funding to keep both its electoral process and voters safe. Yet many conservatives believe vote-by-mail programs favor Democratic candidates by encouraging younger voters, minority voters, and lower income voters to vote. But there is little empirical evidence to support this. (How many young people even know how to mail a letter?) In fact, the opposite is likely true. Older voters, and especially older rural voters in the northeast and west of the state, are far more likely to actually fill out and return mail-in ballots, which will generally benefit Republican candidates. For all these reasons, Congress needs to allocate only a very small percentage of the behemoth stimulus bill to fully fund and guarantee the right of every American to safely and securely exercise their franchise this November. Chris Gagin is a practicing attorney and a legal advisor to Republicans for the Rule of Law. Since the advent of COVID-19, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has taken full advantage of the crisis to strengthen his hold on power in Hungary. In the past days, the Hungarian Parliament has passed measures that allow Orban to rule by emergency decree indefinitely, suspend by-elections, and threaten those who spread false information (as defined by the government) with jail time. International condemnation was swift, with U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, calling the move an affront to democracy. Yet the response from European leaders has largely been muted. Despite the European Unions relative silence, there are measures the EU can take to punish Orban. In truth, the lackluster response to Orbans seizure of power in Hungary stems from the fact that it is actually quite difficult to punish member states who fail to uphold the EUs values. There is no straight forward path to expel a member state, as suggestedby former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Member states can vote to suspend a member states voting rights through infringement proceedings, such as Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union. Indeed, the European Parliament already votedin 2018 to trigger a rule of law investigation of Hungary. Yet stripping Hungary of its voting rights would require a unanimous vote by the European Council, which consists of heads of state of EU countries. Undoubtedly, this measure would be vetoed by Poland, which faces separate Article 7 proceedings. Yet the EU has other policy options to punish Orban for the illiberal path he has taken. Not using them now risks encouraging what is a burgeoning autocracy in the EUs ranks. First, the European Union and key national leaders should condemn Hungarys recent moves. In her statement on emergency measures, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen failed to criticize Hungarys recent law or even mention Hungary. Similarly, 13 EU member states issued a joint statement underscoring their concern that emergency measures taken to combat coronavirus could infringe on the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights, without mentioning Hungary. A strong statement from the European Union would only be strengthened by similar condemnations from member states. Several members of the European Peoples Party (EPP),the European political grouping for Orbans Fidesz Party, have denounced Hungarys emergency decree. However, there are notable absences; Germanys Christian Democratic Union have failed to speak out against Hungarys illiberalism. Second, the EPP must expel the Fidesz Party immediately. In February 2020, the EPP agreed to suspend Fidesz indefinitely. This decision allowed Fidesz to remain in the EPP, in hopes thatkeeping Fidesz close would allow the EPP to maintain some influence with Orban. Not only did this strategy fail, but it now runs the risk of signaling to other illiberal political parties they can receive cover by the EU by joining a popular political bloc. The EPP needs to send a clear message that they will not tolerate the Orban governments illiberal measures and will no longer support Fidesz politically. Thirdly, the European Union should make all futuredisbursements of EU funds conditional on the rule of law.EU member states are currently renegotiating the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2021-2027, the EUs long-term budget.An important component of the EU budget is the allocation of agricultural and development funds to EU member states. Despite his rejection of European values, Orban has been content to pocket European funds, often using them to enrich friends and punish political enemies. Development funds in particular amount to 4% of Hungarys GDP and thus provide significant leverage for the European Union. Hungary will already face a reduction in cohesion funds in the next EU budget due to Brussels need to pinch pennies post-Brexit. The renegotiation process, however, provides anopportunity for the EU to attach rule of law conditionalities to its funds. It is important to ensure that the implementation of these measures cannot be blocked by the countries it targets. For example, Hungary and Poland could take advantage of a recent proposal put forward by European Council President Charles Michel. The proposal gives them the opportunity to create a coalition of like-minded countries to prevent the approval of funding cuts proposed by the Commission. Instead, the Council should act quickly and consider the regulation backed by the European Commission, which minimizes Hungary and Polands ability to coordinate. Finally, the European Commission should pursue a case in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) against Hungary. The Commission should provide a reasoned opinion to Hungary outlining how the new emergency decree fails to uphold theEUs values of democracy and the rule of law. If Hungary fails to implement changes, the Commission can escalate the case to the ECJ, which can require a state to end the infringement and/or can impose a financial penalty for non-compliance. The Commission used this mechanism when Poland failed to suspend legislation lowering the retirement age for judges, which led to the laws suspension and a change in Polands behavior. With the Article 7 process in gridlock, the EU must explore creative solutions to deal with democratic backsliding. The clock is ticking on turning back the erosion of democracy in Poland and Hungary, where the rule of law has further decayedsince European Parliament triggered the Article 7 procedure.With expulsion off the table, there are steps the European Union can take to show they are serious about safeguarding the rule of law. Carisa Nietsche is a Research Associate at the Center for a New American Security. Sam Denney is an Analyst in European Affairs at a Washington think tank. The views expressed are the authors' own. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Smithfield Foods Inc. said it will idle its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, pork-processing plant indefinitely, the latest disruption in the U.S. food supply chain as manufacturers close facilities to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The plant is one of the largest pork-processing facilities in the U.S., accounting for at least 4% of production in the country, the Smithfield, Virginia-based company said in a statement. Smithfield says it will reopen the plant when it receives further direction from local, state and federal authorities. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:34:28|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TAIYUAN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- After a trip of a little over five hours, 27-year-old Pakistani student Imran Ali arrived at his university in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province. "I finally made it," Imran said with excitement. It has been the longest winter vacation since Imran came to Taiyuan University of Technology for postgraduate study. In January, Imran visited his brother in Xi'an, a city 600 km away from Taiyuan, for a short stay. However, schools in China postponed the opening of the new semester due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. As a result, his short stay in his brother's dormitory was extended to three months long. "I was worried at the beginning. But as China has initially contained the epidemic, my concern was soon shifted to my study," said Imran. He is going to graduate this spring semester, but all of his research data and materials were stored in his laptop back at school. At first, Imran thought the whole semester would be suspended. "I was surprised that China had contained the spread of the virus so fast. Now that I'm back, I'm happy that my graduation will not be affected," he said. Taiyuan University of Technology was among the first universities to resume classes in Shanxi. From April 10 to 16, more than 9,000 students in their final year were scheduled to come back from all over the country. Imran called a taxi in the morning on April 10 to Xi'an North Railway Station, and that was his first time to leave his brother's campus over the past three months. Before that, no one was allowed to pass through the school gate unless he or she had a compelling reason. "I spent five hours on the way. It was also a unique opportunity for me to witness and experience how China implemented its strict epidemic prevention and control measures, which made me realize why China was able to contain the outbreak," Imran said. "From the railway station to the dormitory, there were always people who took my temperature. If someone's temperature was high, medics would take over immediately," Imran said. What's more, travelers were required to present their personal "health code" on Alipay, Alibaba's online payment service, to demonstrate their health conditions. "Everyone was wearing masks and social distancing. In a country with a population of 1.4 billion, it is unimaginable. But everyone does follow the government's suggestion," Imran said. "We're still not allowed to leave campus freely, but canteens, stores and barbershops on the campus are open, so I can concentrate on finishing my thesis and applying for a PhD," he said. Last semester, Imran was considering applying for a PhD in Australia, but he changed his mind recently. "China has initially contained the spread of the virus, which makes me feel safe," said Imran, who has reached out to Xi'an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. In Imran's motherland Pakistan, the novel coronavirus is still spreading. Fortunately, no one in his family was infected. "My grandfather and mother asked me for advice, and I told them what I have seen and done in China," Imran said. "China's achievement has proven that the virus is not invincible. The international community should adopt China's experience." "The number of confirmed cases is surging globally. The virus is the common enemy of mankind, and we should put aside political prejudice and fight it as a whole," Imran said. Imran has recorded what he has seen in China over the past months and planned to publish after graduation. "There were some misunderstandings towards China during the outbreak, and I want people around the world to see what is going on here," he said. SPRINGFIELD The heads of the police and fire departments had some good news to share in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic Monday, with both saying their staffing numbers remain strong and some of their ill members are returning to work. Police Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood and Fire Commissioner Bernard J. Calvi shared the news during the weekly coronavirus update conducted at City Hall, and at a separate remote meeting with the City Council. I greet you with no complaints or issues, which is strange, but Im glad to tell you that, Clapprood said. On Monday, there were 21 police officers out of work due to the coronavirus or virus-related issues, Clapprood said. A week ago, there were 24 officers out sick, including those awaiting results. Fourteen officers have tested positive for COVID-19, the department said. But I do have five officers who did test positive for COVID who are back to work, Clapprood said. And I believe within 24 to 48 hours, two more. So hopefully seven officers back to work who did test positive and thankfully their symptoms were mild and they recovered at home which is good news for our law enforcement family." The positive news is tied to the precautions that were taken at the Police Department, as recommended by the Health Department and hospital officials, Clapprood said. The preventive steps taken included stationing the officers at five different location, having just one officer in each cruiser rather than two officers, cleaning the cruisers, and wearing personal protective equipment, Clapprood said. She praised Mayor Domenic J. Sarno for making a public appeal for protective face masks for police officers and firefighters, resulting donations of thousands of masks and other protective equipment from businesses, organizations and individuals. She described the equipment as desperately needed by officers do their job adequately and safely. The donations came from the CRRC railroad manufacturing company, Holyoke Medical Center, MassMutual, Merrill Lynch, Titeflex, the Hampden County Sheriffs Department, and others. CRRC donated 10,000 KN95 masks, 5,000 garments and additional goggles for the city police, firefighters and local hospitals. The department is also grateful for the food donations that are distributed to the officers, including lunches and dinners, as well as the Breakfast for Heroes being provided at the Springfield Boys and Girls Club, Clapprood said. She also praised and thanked the state National Guard and state police for assisting the Police Department. It has been a really, really, well-working team effort going on here, Clapprood said. The women and men are working hard and diligently every day for you. In the Fire Department, there are six members out of work, including one that tested positive for COVID-19, Calvi said. Three of the six firefighters should be returning to work this week, he said. So manpower wise, were in good shape at the Fire Department, Calvi said. Emergency calls continue including a weekend fire in the Liberty Heights area that was extinguished quickly, Calvi said. A second fire involved a porch on Dickinson Street, and was also quickly brought under control, he said. Calvi said the Fire Department is starting a food drive, and people can leave donations of food at the fire stations. The stations are closed to the public, but people are asked to donate non-perishable food items by ringing the bell and leaving the items that will be distributed to those in need, he said. Calvi praised the firefighter union for their support of the food drive and in helping those in need. The Badaun district administration has initiated action against a village head for allegedly failing to furnish information about a Tablighi Jamaat member who tested positive for coronavirus, an official said on Monday. According to the official, the village head also failed to make arrangements for a quarantine facility. So far, two coronavirus cases have been reported from the district. One of the infected persons was a Jamaat member who was allegedly hiding in a mosque in the village. District Magistrate Kumar Prashant said the administration had been continuously seeking information about Jamaat members and quarantine centres from villages, which the village head did not furnish. The DM said instead of making arrangements for a quarantine centre, the village head opposed the person who had offered land for it. The DM said action is being initiated against him under the Epidemic Diseases Act and the Indian Penal Code. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Six people have been wounded after a gunman sprayed nearly 100 bullets into a California house party where more than 400 were gathered despite the coronavirus lockdown. Police rushed to the scene where they found five men wounded as well as an adolescent girl. Paramedics took them to hospital where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The suspects were described as four black men driving in a white sedan who left 94 shell cases at the apartment complex in Bakersfield. The 3500 block of Pioneer Drive in Bakersfield where the 400 - 500 strong party took place on Saturday night before at least 94 shots were fired at the scene, leaving six wounded Kern County Sheriff's Lt. Cesa Ollague said of the party: 'Unfortunately it came to a bad end.' Deputies who responded to the scene said the party was large, Ollague said, but he didn't know exactly how many people were in attendance. ABC reported that there were between 400 to 500 at the party. Kern County officials said 377 people have so far tested positive for coronavirus, including three fatalities. Since March 19, California's social distancing order has banned nonessential gatherings of any number of people. Governor Gavin Newsom said previously: 'Theres a social contract here. People, I think, recognize the need to do more and meet his moment' The state's 40 million residents are told to only leave their homes for 'essential' reasons, such as to get medications, shop for groceries and supplies, care for family members and exercise outdoors. Governor Gavin Newsom said previously: 'Theres a social contract here. People, I think, recognize the need to do more and meet his moment.' The state has more than 21,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 600 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. I conducted these interviews April 3, the first day that a small-business portion of the $2 trillion CARES Act went live. The Paycheck Protection Program allocated $349 billion for two-year loans to small businesses, defined as under 500 employees. Employers who maintain payroll numbers through the upcoming eight weeks and who use the loan proceeds to pay for payroll as well as, in a limited way, for mortgage interest, rent and utilities may have their loans forgiven. Seemingly every shut-down bar and restaurant owner, in addition to myriad other small-business owners, hopes to access the PPP. Participating banks started accepting applications April 3, although many banks indicated that they would limit their application support to existing customers only. Nonbanked or underbanked businesses have had few avenues for submitting an application for the PPP. Independent contractors or self-employed individuals could have first applied for PPP funds beginning last Friday. The first owners: Damien and Lisa Watel, married, co-owners of Bistr09 at 6106 Broadway. Lisa closed Bite, a restaurant on South Presa, in January. On closing Bite, just prior to the COVID epidemic: Lisa: We made the hard decision to close Bite when a new landlord took over the entire building, canceled everyones leases and indicated he would raise rents. The hardship of the restaurant business is pretty specific. The more sophisticated your menu, the harder it will be to stay in business. On their business now: Damien: Currently, we do takeout and curbside. That represents about 10 percent of the business we normally do. The margins of a restaurant being about 6 to 8 percent. That means we operate at a large loss right now. The rent is just going to accrue. Same with utilities. If I can make something from this, its money I didnt have yesterday. I figure Im better off with the extra $1,000. We havent fired everybody. Were just working people with very low hours. We applied this morning (for a PPP loan). And my employees are better off staying on the payroll, as the government says they will be covering it. On the PPP, and why it is not enough: Lisa: For us in the restaurant community, its been a blow. As it is, 25 percent of us will not reopen. If people have been around for 20 years, maybe, but if youre a startup, youre wiped out with this. Its a tough deal. Damien: You can only borrow 2.5 times payroll. But you have to pay 90 percent of the previous payroll for all employees. So you would be paying out all of the money, but not rent. That will run out after 2.5 pay periods, so the covered period is only through June 30. Do I pay the employees, or do I pay the rent? Because (with PPP) they are not letting us pay more than the payroll. I dont know how to figure that out. I think we are going to get (a PPP loan), and I think the employees are better off staying with us (than going on unemployment). But the worry is after (June 30). Unless the government comes out with a second package, what comes after is worse than this. Its a deep recession if it stays as is. A majority of small businesses wont be able to sustain this. If they loosen up another trillion dollars, it is more debt, but is that better than 20 million businesses closing? We expect if were opening sometime in May, were open minus $100,000 from where we were in March, when we open the doors. This stimulus will only work if they have a second one. It will be a waste of time doing this, for the same thing happening three weeks from now. Another week of this will be pretty tough. A number of big decisions will be made by all small businesses. Every day that passes will be another blow. Three weeks will be too late. The second owner: Rob Martindale, owner of Big Hops Beer, at 226 Bitters and 11224 Huebner. Martindale franchises Big Hops Beer to a third location, 7915 W. Loop 1604. On the impact of COVID-19 on Big Hops: We were two weeks from starting construction on two new franchise locations, with bank approval and everything for the build-out. The SBA lender notified us Monday (March 30th) that these would be put on immediate hold for at least six months. 2020 started out looking amazing for us, a game-changer for Big Hops. I had plans in 2020 to have five locations open, and then another five locations in 2021. On the decision to not do takeout service and to lay off all employees: Ninety-six percent of our business is on-premise. Were just a bar. Theres a small amount of to-go, filling growlers and crowlers. With it being that small amount of our business, that would not sustain business. We do not serve food, so I had to close. I decided we would not make enough money to be profitable, or to sustain employees. I think we would all be worse off, and I would be digging further into a hole. Plus, employees would not be able to sustain themselves versus unemployment payments. I decided its better off for the business and the staff if we all hunker down. On discussions with landlords: I have two, at the two locations I operate. Both are excited for me to get relief from the government, and they are still hoping Ill be able to pay it. One of my landlords I have to give them credit contacted me within two days of me being shut down to offer a break on rent for April. But he asked me to keep it confidential, as this was only being offered to tenants on a case-by-case basis. On applying for PPP: As of the morning of April 3, despite the national press conference the night before (with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and President Donald Trump), banks didnt have enough information. Ive filled out the paperwork. At midday, my banker (at Broadway bank) just emailed me an update with word that we can accept the application. On employees filing for unemployment, versus going back on payroll: I have five employees at each of my two locations, plus five at the (separately owned) franchise for a total of 15 as part of the Big Hops family. We have to figure it out. I think my employees are better off not going back on regular payroll. Its very fluid. Employees have to report cash tips. Our payroll reports credit card tips, but the employee individually declares cash tips. Now thats a tricky thing, obviously. In unemployment, you get a percentage of previous payments. (As tipped employees), they have a $2.13-per-hour minimum wage. Servers weekly payroll for 25 hours then amounts to about $50 for a weekly payroll, which is enough to maybe only cover the taxes. My employees are going to fall into this category (of tipped employees). The entire industry falls into that category. Thats why I dont know exactly what were going to do next. Ideally, I would (put them back on payroll), if it was good for them. And then find them projects while the bar is shut. But it may not be worthwhile. Im excited about when we do get back to work. My employees have been unemployed for two weeks. I communicated with them to file (for unemployment) immediately. They havent received a first check yet, I know that. The third owner: Denise Aguirre, co-owner with her husband of the Point at 24199 Boerne Stage Road in Leon Springs. They are also partners in a co-located coffee roaster on premises called Just the Drip SA as well as partners in Dignowity Meats at 1701 E. Houston St. On staying open for to-go orders: Even if I make a couple hundred dollars per day, thats something, and were trying to help staff members. The money were making every day is helping them with groceries. Were not paying ourselves, but we still are using the same electricity, and I can still pay the water bill. Weve already suspended a lot of services, like the dumpster service. Ive had a very hard time wondering, do I continue to do this? If I had to pay somebody else to do the to-go service, it wouldnt be worth it. On discussions with the landlord, and being a landlord: I think the biggest thing weighing on us is our rent. Our landlord wasnt particularly helpful. And each of our three businesses has the same landlord. Weve been with him for many, many years. Hes been a really good landlord. Hes always tried to help us when we needed help. The first year, when we started the project in 2010, he didnt charge us rent. I came to him recently with, I want to pay you. I just dont know how right now. Im worried. If he decides to evict us, thats a business decision that he could make. At the Dignowity Meats location, he responded to our partner along the lines of You could do delivery, and orders to go. That was disappointing, because it showed he didnt understand the full situation. We also charge rent to our resident food trucks (at the Point) because theyre paying for space, and we have three on a semi-permanent basis. The food trucks have said, We cant afford to pay you, and weve said, I wouldnt even think of charging you. On applications for PPP loans: I dont even know what I applied for, to be honest. I think it was the rent and payroll loan. We did the application, we got a confirmation number, and they said, Well contact you. On employee layoffs: We have four part-timers. Two of them are students, and one is an 18-year-old, and shell bounce back. Another one works for a school district full time. But at Dignowity Meats, (our partner) had to lay off his people there. There is the unemployment process, which people need to take advantage of. Michael Taylor is a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and author of The Financial Rules for New College Graduates. michael@michaelthesmartmoney.com | twitter.com/michael_taylor We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is docked at Naval Base Guam in Apra Harbor on April 10, 2020. At least 416 sailors aboard the aircraft carrier, or 8.6 percent of the ships crew of 4,800, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, with the numbers increasing daily. WASHINGTON A U.S. Navy sailor assigned to the coronavirus-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier died Monday from the disease after testing positive last month, the service confirmed in a statement. "At approximately 8:30 a.m., Apr. 9, the Sailor was found unresponsive during a daily medical check. While Naval Base Guam emergency responders were notified, CPR was administered by fellow Sailors and onsite medical team in the house. The Sailor was transferred to U.S. Naval Hospital Guam where the Sailor was moved to the Intensive Care Unit. The Sailor was declared deceased April 13," the Navy wrote in a Monday statement. The sailor's death is the first for one of the U.S. Navy's vessels at sea and comes as nearly 600 sailors on the ship tested positive for the coronavirus. "Our thoughts are with the family of the USS Theodore Roosevelt sailor who lost his battle with the virus today," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in a statement. "We remain committed to protecting our personnel and their families while continuing to assist in defeating this outbreak." Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, said in a statement that "We mourn the loss of the Sailor from USS Theodore Roosevelt who died today, and we stand alongside their family, loved ones, and shipmates as they grieve. This is a great loss for the ship and for our Navy. My deepest sympathy goes out the family, and we pledge our full support to the ship and crew as they continue their fight against the coronavirus." The growing outbreak threatening the crew aboard the Roosevelt was foreshadowed in a leaked letter penned last month by the ship's captain. The coronavirus lockdown put migrant workers and poor people in a fix and left them without the means to fend for themselves. In order to make sure that those in need in don't starve, several NGOs and restaurants across the country are pitching in and doing their best to serve free meals. One of them is Desi Masala, a restaurant in Bengaluru's Banaswadi area. It is running a campaign called Food for Needy to feed the hungry. Their efforts have only increased as they went from serving 700 meals a day, to over 10,000. According to Bangalore Mirror, the restaurant has managed to serve more than 1 lakh meals to daily wage workers in the area. The team is led by Desi Masala's Directors, Sachin Jain, Sandeep Jain and Manish Jain and they are selflessly working towards feeding the needy. The meals are prepared in the restaurant and friends and families of the team are working as volunteers to help the cause. Ever since their initiative gained popularity, volunteers from around the city joined in to help the team out. Even local police officials and NGOs are participating in the restaurant's cause to provide to the poor. Bangalore Mirror The meals manage to feed slum dwellers, orphanages, daily wage and migrant workers, old age homes and as well as Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike workers. The team told Bangalore Mirror, We were trying to help the people around us, little did we know that this family initiative will become this big. We are blessed to have this opportunity to help the people in need and do our bit. The people around us have been tremendously supportive and generous. Every contribution that we have received, big or small, has made a huge difference in upscaling this event. Without the help of our team and volunteers, this task would not have been possible. One of the brothers, Manish Jain, added, "Nothing is more peaceful than going back home after being blessed by numerous people who you barely know. This has been the most fulfilling journey and I am amazed at the level of support that we have received from officials and volunteer teams." AFP (IMAGE FOR REPRESENTATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY) Good Samaritans like them are helping the community in their maximum capacity and all of us stand to learn something from them. It doesn't matter if you can't provide 10,000 meals a day - you can provide one or help in some other way. If we want to get through this, we have to do so together. H/T: Bangalore Mirror The Hospitality and Tourism Committee at the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), headed by Jihad Amin, recently held a meeting with representatives of four-star hotels to probe the challenges facing the sector in light of the coronavirus pandemic. The meeting deliberated about the difficulties facing hotels, means of ensuring the sustainability of work, and discussed availing of the support packages offered by the government. The meeting also made a number of proposals with regard to reviving the sector, which will be raised to BCCI's board. In this regard, Amin said: "The hospitality and tourism sector is one of the worst hit sectors by these exceptional circumstances due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is important to prepare for all possible scenarios and take swift actions to mitigate the negative economic impact." "As a committee representing this vital sector, we will spare no effort to ensure the revival of the sector at the soonest, he added. "We are proud of all the measures taken by the government to combat the spread of the coronavirus and ensure the health and safety of the people of Bahrain, and we urge all to adhere by the directives and take responsibility, he said. - TradeArabia News Service Till now, there was not a single COVID-19 case in Satna and Rewa districts except for these NSA detainees A worker constructs sanitising tunnels in Bhopal amid nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. PTI photo Bhopal: Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath has expressed concern over shifting of some NSA detainees from one district to another despite the lockdown, as some of them later tested positive for coronavirus. Nath expressed apprehension this could spread the viral disease in other districts. After a couple of such prisoners were shifted to a Rewa-based medical college, people and local politicians protested there and some pharmacies closed their establishments, saying the threat of the viral infection had increased in the district. "It is surprising that while there is lockdown in the state, many districts are under curfew and their boundaries sealed in view of the coronavirus scare and people not being allowed to move from one district to other, in such a scenario those detained under NSA in Indore were sent to Satna and they were found coronavirus positive," Nath tweeted on Sunday. "This way corona infection will spread in other districts also," he further said in a tweet in Hindi. Some persons who indulged in stone-pelting and misbehaviour with health workers and police in Indore were recently booked under the National Security Act (NSA). After some of accused under the NSA were shifted out of Indore, two of them tested positive for coronavirus in Satna and one was found infected with the disease in Jabalpur, causing panic in the two districts. Satna Collector Ajay Katesaria on Sunday said two prisoners, arrested under NSA in Indore and shifted here, tested positive for coronavirus. Otherwise, there was no COVID-19 case in Satna district so far, the collector said. The prisoners who tested positive for coronavirus have been shifted to the Rewa-based Medical College and those who came in contact with them have been quarantined, he said. As a precautionary measure they were kept in the isolation cells, he added. The Satna administration has requested the authorities concerned not to send prisoners there from Indore and Bhopal, which have been severely affected by coronavirus. Jabalpur Collector Bharat Yadav said an NSA detainee out of four prisoners shifted from Indore to Jabalpur Central Jail tested positive for coronavirus before his admission to a local jail. The prisoner has been shifted to a government-run hospital, he said. The other three NSA detainees have been lodged at an isolation ward in the Jabalpur Central Jail, he said. Meanwhile, some people in Rewa protested against the government's decision to shift NSA detainees who tested coronavirus positive to the Rewa Medical College. As a mark of protest, some medicine shop owners announced indefinite closure of their establishments. "There is an atmosphere of fear prevailing now. We used to open our medicine shops for people, but now the threat of virus has increased, so we will keep our outlets closed indefinitely," medical store owner Rahul Gupta said. Rewa-based Congress leader and former state minister Pushpraj Singh said people have religiously followed guidelines during the lockdown, but this decision has totally changed the situation. "These coronavirus patients shifted from Indore to Satna should not have been brought to Rewa. People of Vindhya region will never pardon them. They should be shifted to Bhopal or Indore," he said. State Congress' working president Kavita Pandey, who is also based in Rewa, criticised the authorities for shifting such prisoners. "BJP leader and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has not done the right thing for people of Rewa. We will protest it strongly," she said, and asked BJP MLAs and local MP to talk to Chouhan over the matter. Till now, there was not a single COVID-19 case in Satna and Rewa districts except for these NSA detainees, an official said. London, United Kingdom The theories have spread almost as fast as the new coronavirus: Chloroquine is a proven cure, children are immune and 5G caused the pandemic. From the seemingly plausible to the predictably untrue, fake news about COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is flooding the internet as we scramble to make sense of a crisis that has wrought havoc around the world. Unchecked, this so-called infodemic threatens to hamper the worlds collective best efforts to curtail the coronavirus, which has killed more than 115,000 people in a little more than 100 days since news of its emergence in Wuhan, China, consumed the worlds media. Were we to view this [pandemic] as a conflict, then we could talk about two fronts, Carl Miller, research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at United Kingdom-based think-tank Demos, told Al Jazeera. The first is the public health reaction, and the second front are the waves of social and political chaos that have been caused by the virus and our response to it this is a key battle on that front. So much misinformation While millions of us remain cooped up in our homes under strict lockdown laws, on WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube and elsewhere, a range of bogus stories and half-baked conspiracy theories concerning COVID-19 have gained considerable global momentum. Top tips for tackling misinformation * Stop and think. If you have any doubts about somethings accuracy, dont share it. * Check the source. The most reliable sources of information on coronavirus are public health bodies, such as the World Health Organization. * Pay attention to quality. Reputable sources have high standards when it comes to grammar and presentation. Typos and odd formatting may be an indicator of inaccuracy. * Beware emotional posts and consider biases. We are more likely to share content that corresponds with our own opinions or that excites powerful emotions, but that doesnt necessarily mean its accurate. * Ask a pro. Several reputable media organisations offer fact-checking services free of charge, or have fact-checking teams tasked with identifying misinformation on social media. In the UK alone, nearly half of all adults have been exposed to false claims or misleading information online about the virus, according to research published last week by the countrys media watchdog, Ofcom. Some 35 percent have seen claims that drinking more water can help flush out the disease, for example, while around a quarter have seen advice suggesting the infection can be treated by gargling salt water both of which have been rubbished by the World Health Organisation and contradict UK public health guidelines. Among those to have personally witnessed the pernicious advance of misinformation is Ahmed Aweis, a business owner in London, itself the epicentre of Britains coronavirus caseload. For weeks, he has seen fake news spread freely on WhatsApp and Facebook. Towards the end of March, Aweis said, up to 25 videos a day spouting mistruths were being shared across a handful of his online groups of friends and relatives all while COVID-19 tightened its grip on swathes of Western Europe. Despite his best efforts to rebut the claims, everybody was just sharing stuff left, right and centre, he said, including content that purportedly proved coronavirus was man-made, or caused by the rollout of 5G mobile technology. It was frightening and infuriating because you know this information is false, but the people who are sharing it have the confidence this will help or save humanity and other people pick up on that, Aweis told Al Jazeera. I am very, very worried; there is so much misinformation being spouted around. Platform to platform, country to country According to the Ofcom survey, which was based on a weekly poll undertaken by around 2,000 people, some 40 percent of adults in the UK are finding it hard to know what is true or false about the virus. Professional fact-checkers said the widespread confusion partly stemmed from the overwhelming amount of available content online concerning COVID-19, which has had an impact on every continent except Antarctica. Every country in the world is talking about this, Claire Milne, deputy editor at UK-based fact-checking charity Full Fact, told Al Jazeera. And so a large number of false claims are starting off in one place and then being translated into lots of different languages, and moving from platform to platform and spreading from country to country. Full Fact has so far debunked a slew of incorrect stories and claims, and it expects more to emerge. Among some of the more notable stories to be disproved were reports shared on Facebook suggesting Russia had unleashed 500 lions to prevent people from going outdoors, and Twitter posts claiming UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who recently spent several days in hospital after contracting coronavirus was dead. Above all others, Milne said, one particular thread of misinformation had been especially prominent online in recent weeks the theories linking the pandemic to 5G mobile technology. The meta conspiracy theory Anti-5G conspiracy theories are not new. For decades, every successive generation of mobile phone technology has attracted baseless claims about supposed associated health risks. But at the beginning of this year, Belgian doctor Kris Van Kerckhoven breathed new life into the claims when he claimed there was a possible link between 5G and coronavirus. Van Kerckhovens comments went public in January in an article published online and later deleted by a Belgian news website. Within weeks, his words had been seized on by the anti-5G movement, which in turn sent conspiracy theories racing through the internet. Now, Demoss Miller said, the scale of the crisis is unlike anything seen before. My very strong sense is that this completely blows anything out of the water that we have seen before, just in terms of sheer volume and virality across social media. Carl Miller, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media We are seeing the emergence of the meta conspiracy theory, he said, citing the congealing together of QAnon, a set of right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 9/11 truther, as well as pre-coronavirus anti-5G movements, among others. My very strong sense is that this completely blows anything out of the water that we have seen before, just in terms of sheer volume and virality across social media. Telecommunications masts in the UK have been vandalised, such as this one damaged by fire in Sparkhill, Birmingham, amid conspiracy theories linking the coronavirus disease and 5G masts [Carl Recine/Reuters] On YouTube, the 10 most popular 5G coronavirus conspiracy videos posted in March were viewed millions of times. Meanwhile, content linking the pandemic to mobile technology continues to spread on Twitter, and Facebook groups still active today are filled with misinformation of the same sort. Milne said Full Fact had identified three broad strands around which the 5G theory appeared to be coalescing; one stating it weakened peoples immune systems, another claiming the pandemic had been invented to cover up the health impact of the rollout of the mobile technology, and the third suggesting 5G was accelerating the spread of the virus. Theres no evidence for any of these, she said. Crackpot 5G claims Despite being refuted by scientists as complete rubbish, the theories over 5G and coronavirus have been amplified on social media platforms by a string of celebrities including British boxer Amir Khan and US actor Woody Harrelson. And in an even more worrying turn, the conspiracies have now started spilling out into the real world. In Britain, where the claims over 5G appear to have particularly resonated, dozens of phone masts and other pieces of critical communications infrastructure have been vandalised since the beginning of April. The Netherlands also reported several instances of cellular broadcasting towers being damaged by arson or sabotage last week. Meanwhile, footage of UK telecoms engineers among those designated by the British government as key workers during the coronavirus outbreak being harassed by members of the public has surfaced online. You know when they turn this on its going to kill everyone, an unidentified woman featured in one such clip posted on April 2, and since viewed millions of times on Twitter, can be heard telling technicians laying fibre-optic cables. Do you have children, do you have parents? she asked the pair of workers. Are they paying you well enough to kill? @ashindestad come and see omg ????? pic.twitter.com/jzUF3Z2Q2E ahwahyasay (@aaqua_mel) April 2, 2020 UK government officials said such incidents appeared to have been fuelled by crackpot theories circulating conspiracies that were separately branded by Stephen Powis, national medical director of the National Health Service, as the worst kind of fake news. We have received several reports of criminal damage to phone masts and abuse of telecoms engineers apparently inspired by crackpot conspiracy theories circulating online. Those responsible for criminal acts will face the full force of the law. The facts https://t.co/QWYcc4bOEg DCMS (@DCMS) April 5, 2020 Calling tech giants to account Taken together, the litany of falsehoods spread about COVID-19 are a prime example of how bad information can ruin lives, Full Facts Milne said. People are relying on the information they are seeing to keep themselves safe at this time, she said. In a situation where online falsehoods could directly result in offline harm, we all have a responsibility with what we choose to share, she said. Senior British politicians have meanwhile aimed their scrutiny elsewhere, and called on the tech giants to do more in combating misinformation on their platforms. Julian Knight, a member of the UK Parliament who leads a committee investigating coronavirus-related online misinformation, recently urged social media companies to play their part and stamp out deliberate attempts to spread fear about COVID-19. It is right that they are being called to account, he said in a statement issued on April 6, a week after the UK government announced it was pressing social media firms to crack down on fake news and harmful content online. A spokesperson for Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, told Al Jazeera the company was taking aggressive steps to stop misinformation and harmful content from spreading on our platform. This includes false cures, false claims that 5G technology causes the symptoms or contraction of COVID-19 and posts encouraging attacks on 5G masts, the spokesperson said, adding that Facebook was also focused on promoting official guidance from local health authorities. As for the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp, the spokesperson said moves were being made to reduce and address virality on the platform including reducing users capacity to forward messages to large numbers of people. Twitter, which has previously announced taking action against misleading and harmful content about the illness, and YouTube, which has banned all conspiracy theory videos falsely linking coronavirus symptoms to 5G networks, were yet to respond to requests for comment at the time of publication. A wake-up call But despite these moves, misinformation continues to spread online, raising the spectre of official public health guidance aimed at curbing COVID-19 falling on deaf ears, with possibly fatal consequences. Complicating matters further, tech giants decisions to censor inaccurate content linked to COVID-19 risks feeding into the narrative that conspiracy theories have in the first place, Miller warned, creating a kind of negative online feedback loop. They see it as when theyre getting close to the truth, the establishment will react, he said. And the burning of 5G masts is a wake-up call, he added. It very clearly tells us this is not something we can ignore, and I am dreadfully worried that unless we can find some kind of effective response we will see a breakout into at least some significant public disobedience. But Aweis, for his part, thinks the tide can be turned. Since the end of March, the amount of misinformation spread on his WhatsApp and Facebook groups has dropped sharply. Part of the reason, he thinks, is his refusal to let a falsehood lie. He knows he wont win over everyone, but hes already had some success convincing several friends and relatives not to share bogus claims or to buy into baseless conspiracies and instead heed potentially life-saving official public health advice. My wife always asks me why I waste my time with it, and why on earth I stay in the groups, Aweis said. But I say to her that if I dont challenge them, I dont see anybody else doing it, he added. My motto is if they have the time to constantly spout fake stuff, Im going to make the time to challenge it. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:40:06|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close MOSCOW, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Russia has registered a total of 18,328 cases of COVID-19 as of Monday, with the number of infected rising by a new daily record of 2,558, latest official data showed. The death toll is now 148, with 1,470 people having recovered so far, including 179 in the last 24 hours, Russia's coronavirus response center said in a statement. Moscow, the worst hit part of the country, confirmed 1,355 new cases in the last 24 hours, with the total number of infected rising to 11,513. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, President Vladimir Putin extended paid leave for all residents until the end of April. Nearly all regions have introduced mandatory self-isolation for all residents. Some regions have slightly eased isolation rules in recent days, with the Moscow region on Monday introducing passes for people wishing to go out for any other reason than walking their dog or visiting the nearest supermarket or pharmacy. Scientists are said to be only a few weeks away from concluding trials of drugs to treat coronavirus. Australian researchers have been investigating whether existing antiviral drugs could be used to improve survival rates for patients in intensive care. While experts across the world are racing to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, it is expected to be months or even years before one is ready and in the shorter term scientists are working to develop treatments to make the disease less deadly. The timeline for antiviral drugs and knowing whether they work or not is much shorter than for vaccines, Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, told reporters on Monday. Because these studies are using existing drugs, so we know their safety, we know how to use them. We just dont know if they lead to clinical benefit, she added, in comments reported by The Guardian. Professor Lewin, who also leads collaborative university studies at the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Diseases Emergencies (Apprise), was speaking after the countrys health minister announced A$3m (1.5m) government funding to help fast-track research into coronavirus treatments and diagnosis. A third of the money will go to a project run by University of Western Australia in Perth that is looking at giving antiviral and immune-modulating drugs to patients in intensive care. Prof Lewin said the study builds on a pre-existing network that was established before we ever knew coronavirus existed to research treatments for severe pneumonia. The remaining A$2m funding will be spread over nine projects led by Apprise, including research to establish the prevalence of immunity to Covid-19. Many of you would have heard about the concept of herd immunity, or people becoming immune to the virus without ever getting sick, Prof Lewin said. We still have no idea how commonly that occurs. Recommended Australia threatens fines and jail for gatherings of more than two The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 33 in Australia on Monday, the slowest rate in a month and less than a tenth of the daily rate two weeks ago. Australia has now recorded 6,322 cases and 61 deaths. But Greg Hunt, the health minister, said it was too soon to relax restrictions, Now is the time to stay the course, to continue with these, self-isolation and social distancing, he told televised briefing. These are producing real reductions in the rate of growth. Australia deployed its toughest crackdown yet over the Easter bank holiday weekend, with helicopters, police checkpoints and hefty fines used to deter people from breaking the travel ban or breaching public gathering rules. Engraved, painted and embellished with ivory, precious metals and faience fittings, decorated ostrich eggs were traded and exchanged as luxury items around the Mediterranean during the Bronze and Iron Ages. As ostriches are not indigenous to Europe, decorated eggs must have been imported from the Middle East or North Africa, where these big birds were indigenous during these periods. Interpretations of the provenance of the eggs, how they were exchanged and who decorated them have relied upon iconographic analysis and comparison with other worked media. Uncertainty, however, continues to prevail as to where exactly the eggs originated. A new study, led by University of Bristols Dr. Tamar Hodos, reveals secrets about their origin and how and where they were made. Dr. Hodos and colleagues examined decorated ostrich eggs from the collection of the British Museum. Using state-of-the-art scanning electron microscopy, they were able to investigate the eggs chemical makeup to pinpoint their origins and study minute marks that reveal how they were made. The entire system of decorated ostrich egg production was much more complicated than we had imagined, Dr. Hodos said. We found evidence to suggest the ancient world was much more interconnected than previously thought. Using a variety of isotopic indicators, the researchers were able to distinguish eggs laid in different climatic zones (cooler, wetter and hotter, drier). What was most surprising to the team was that eggs from both zones were found at sites in the other zone, suggestive of more extensive trade routes. The study authors believe eggs were taken from wild birds nests despite evidence of ostriches being kept in captivity during this period. This was no ordinary egg-hunt ostriches can be extremely dangerous so there was a tremendous risk involved in taking eggs from wild birds. We also found eggs require time to dry before the shell can be carved and therefore require safe storage, Dr. Hodos said. This has economic implications, since storage necessitates a long-term investment and this, combined with the risk involved, would add to an eggs luxury value. The findings are published in the journal Antiquity. _____ Tamar Hodos et al. The origins of decorated ostrich eggs in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. Antiquity, published online April 9, 2020; doi: 10.15184/aqy.2020.14 Obviously, a stay-at-home order assumes that people have a home to stay in, Arwady said. "From the beginning of this crisis, folks at (public health), with so many partners across this city, have been calling out to make sure we do not forget the people who dont have a home to be able to stay in at all. At least one of the military services says it's looking for members of the Individual Ready Reserve to come back into the fold -- and the call goes beyond just those who served in medical specialties. As the country faces a potentially monthslong emergency over the novel coronavirus crisis, the military services could turn to a pool of veterans who thought their days in uniform were behind them. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month giving the Pentagon the authority to recall some members of the IRR to active duty -- a move that likely sent many veterans rushing to check their discharge papers. Veterans can typically be recalled to active duty for eight years after the start of their service contracts, even once theyre out of uniform. Most of the services say they're still assessing their needs in the wake of Trump's new order. But Lt. Col. Mary Ricks, a spokeswoman for Army Human Resources Command, said they're seeking volunteers who served in at least four fields outside medical jobs. "The Army is also looking for soldiers who served in the areas of logistics, aviation, as drill sergeants or recruiters," Ricks said. "Protecting our citizens from coronavirus is a whole-of-nation call, and we need the help of our Individual Ready Reserve and our Retired Soldiers to maximize this critical effort." Related: Trump's IRR Recall Order: What You Need to Know The global pandemic caused by the coronavirus, she added, is an "extraordinary challenge [that] requires equally extraordinary solutions." The Navy and Marine Corps are still reviewing whether there's a need to recall members of the IRR, spokesmen for those services said. The Air Force expects to target medical personnel for mobilization first, but it could expand to other specialties. That includes command-and-control elements and logistics personnel, said Sean Houlihan, an Air Force Reserve Command spokesman. While there's not an immediate plan to tap former airmen who served in those fields, Houlihan said the Air Force has the authority to do so. "[Air Reserve Component] members must be prepared for mobilization at any time," he said. This wouldn't be the first time the military has turned to voluntary or involuntary recall to carry out a critical mission. The Army notified around 21,000 members of the IRR they were needed during Desert Storm, Ricks said. About 18,000 of them reported for duty. The Marine Corps got the authority in 2006 to recall up to 2,000 members of the IRR for a one-year period, said Maj. Roger Hollenbeck, a Marine Corps Forces Reserve spokesman. That was in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S., when combat missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq ramped up. The military services have activated at least a portion of the Reserves to carry out missions tied to the coronavirus pandemic. The Army Reserve has several sustainment, logistics and civil-authority units providing services in Utah, as well as New Orleans and other U.S. cities. The Navy has nearly 200 reservists serving on hospital ships in New York and California, said Lt. Cmdr. Ben Tisdale, a Navy Reserve Force spokesman. Dozens more Navy reservists are serving on COVID-19 response missions across the joint force, he added. If the pandemic requires a large-scale military response, officials say there are a host of benefits to being able to tap into the IRR to recall service members. "It is a pre-trained pool of manpower that is available for recall on short notice to fulfill service requirements," Hollenbeck said. "This means that most IRR Marines will require only minimal screening and training in order to return to active duty." Ricks said former soldiers and retirees possess the skills, training and education to augment the Army's COVID-19 responses. That could prove invaluable, she added, "to ultimately win this fight." The likelihood of involuntary recalls being used will probably depend on how many veterans who recently left the service volunteer to fill in-demand requirements. The Army over the last several weeks has seen an influx of volunteers after asking medical professionals in eight specialties to return to service to backfill hospitals after troops were called on to fill emergency field facilities in areas hard hit by coronavirus outbreaks. More than 25,000 retired and former soldiers have offered to return to their former uniformed roles. Editors note: This story has been updated to clarify the timeframe during which members of the IRR can be recalled to service. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Read more: More Than 25,000 Former Soldiers Have Now Volunteered to Return to Duty Nagaland on Monday reported its first COVID-19 case following which several localities and a hospital in Dimapur were sealed. The man has been admitted to a hospital in Guwahati, Assam for further treatment. After the person was found positive the entire Marwaripatti and Ghorapatty areas in Dimapur were sealed. As a precautionary measure, Zion Hospital, Dimapur where the patient was earlier admitted has also been sealed. Doctors, nurses, support staff and their family members who came into direct and indirect contact with the patient to be quarantined. Family members of the patient have already been shifted to the government quarantine centre. "A man from Nagaland has tested positive for COVID-19. He travelled from Kolkata to Dimapur on March 24, after which he was home quarantined," the state government said in a statement. The statement added that the wholesale market at GS Road Dimapur and retail shops at Marwaripatti and Ghorapatty will be closed until further orders. The parents and family members of the patient who are presently in Guwahati are undergoing necessary tests. The government has also started contact tracing for all passengers who were on the same flight taken by the patient on March 24. Assam Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma earlier tweeted, "A private hospital in Dimapur, Nagaland referred a patient to GMCH after he was found with symptoms of #COVID19. He has tested positive and is undergoing treatment". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) I Owe Them My Life: Boris Johnson Praises NHS Staff Who Treated Him for CCP Virus British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on April 12 expressed his thanks to the National Health Service (NHS) staff who treated him for COVID-19, saying he owes them his life. Johnson, 55, praised the exemplary care he has received from staff at the state-run NHS at St. Thomas Hospital in London, where he was admitted on April 5 and spent three nights in intensive care until April 9. I have today left hospital after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question, the prime minister said in a five-minute video posted to Twitter on Sunday, adding that his treatment for COVID-19 could have gone either way. It is hard to find the words to express my debt to the NHS for saving my life. The efforts of millions of people across this country to stay home are worth it. Together we will overcome this challenge, as we have overcome so many challenges in the past. #StayHomeSaveLives pic.twitter.com/HK7Ch8BMB5 Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives (@BorisJohnson) April 12, 2020 Johnson said it was hard to find the words to express his gratitude to the frontline NHS staff members who looked after him during his week-long stay, naming two nursesJenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugalwho he said remained by his bedside for 48 hours at a critical time. The reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed, the prime minister said. I cant thank them enough. I owe them my life, he continued. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers a speech to British citizens after being discharged from hospital, in London, Britain, April 12, 2020 in this screen grab taken from social media video. (Twitter/@BorisJohnson via Reuters) Johnson described the NHS as this countrys greatest national asset, and an organization powered by love. At least 19 NHS staff have died after contracting COVID-19, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday. Portugals president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, contacted 29-year-old NHS nurse Luis Pitarma after hearing Johnsons praise, and congratulated him for receiving special recognition from the prime minister for his work and vigilance. According to local newspaper Expresso, Aveiro-born Pitarma moved to the UK in 2014 and became a senior nurse at Londons St. Thomas Hospital last year, where he has been part of the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation program. Meanwhile, the brother of 35-year-old Jenny McGeeborn in the South Island town of Invercargilltold the New Zealand Herald she had been blown away by Johnsons praise. Whilst she is blown away by Boris recognition, she is just really pleased to see the public recognition for the amazing work the NHS is doingthat made her really proud, Rob McGee told the news outlet. Johnson will not immediately return to work, his office said, but he will, until further notice, continue his recovery at Chequers, the official prime ministerial country residence northwest of London. I cannot thank our magnificent NHS enough. The staff at St Thomas Hospital have been incredible. I will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you. Carrie Symonds (@carriesymonds) April 12, 2020 The prime ministers pregnant fiancee, Carrie Symonds, who also displayed symptoms of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, also expressed her gratitude to NHS frontliners. There were times last week that were very dark indeed. My heart goes out to all those in similar situations, worried sick about their loved ones, Symonds said on Twitter. Today Im feeling incredibly lucky. I cannot thank our magnificent NHS enough, she added. The staff at St Thomas Hospital have been incredible. I will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you. The death toll in the UK on Saturday rose to 10,612, up 737 over a 24-hour period, with Hancock describing Sunday as a sombre day. The nation saw a record rise in daily deaths on Friday and Saturday, with daily increases of 980 and 917. The alarming rise in figures came as one of the governments leading scientific advisers said the UK could see the worst CCP virus death rate in Europe. The UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst-affected if not the worst-affected country in Europe, Jeremy Farrar, director of health foundation the Wellcome Trust and a member of a scientific panel advising the government, told the BBC. Johnson concluded his video message by thanking the public for the efforts they are making to follow government advice and practice social distancing in order to slow transmission of the CCP virus. I want you to know that this Easter Sunday I do believe that your efforts are worth it, and are daily proving their worth, Johnson said. Because although we mourn every day those who are taken from us in such numbers, and though the struggle is by no means over, we are now making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus. Turkey President Recep Tayyip ErdoGan Sunday refused to accept interior minister Suleyman Soylus resignation few hours after the cabinet member announced he was stepping down after thousands of citizens flooded shops and bakeries across Turkey following the announcement of a curfew in over 31 urban provinces, Daily Sabah reports. The office of the president issued a statement noting that Soylu will continue his duties. Suleyman Soylu, who was appointed as the Minister of the Interior immediately after the July 15 coup attempt, has gained the appreciation of our nation with his successful work so far, the statement the Presidential Communications Directorate said. President Erdogan also praised his minister for his excellent work in many areas including curbing terrorist attacks across the country and his success last month over the coronavirus outbreak in ensuring that there were no problems with public security and that anti-virus efforts were carried out successfully. Soylu came under fire after around 250,000 people flooded shops and bakeries across Turkey on Friday after he announced the curfew. The critics who lambasted the timing of the measure said it served to increase the risk of spreading the virus at a time when social distancing and isolation are encouraged. Turkey grappling with the contagious covid-19, has imposed restrictions on the daily life across the country as part of measures to reduce the spread of the disease which has already killed 1,198 people and contaminated 56,956according to the health ministry. Posted by North Africa Post North Africa Post's news desk is composed of journalists and editors, who are constantly working to provide new and accurate stories to NAP readers. The city of Hayward announced Monday that it will move its novel coronavirus testing site from Hayward Fire Station No. 7 to the California State University East Bay campus. The testing center will open at the new site Tuesday at 9 a.m., according to city and university officials. The new site will allow for more vehicle and foot traffic and make it easier for disabled people to access the testing center. People with a fever and who show symptoms of coronavirus, such as coughing and shortness of breath, can get tested for free and without a doctor's referral at the Cal State East Bay site, according to the city. Tests are available to patients regardless of place of residence or immigration status. Health care workers can also call ahead at (510) 583-4949 to schedule testing appointments. The testing center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. or until all tests for a given day have been administered. Insurance companies will need to return premiums to customers and business affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic by order of California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, his office announced early Monday. The commissioner's office said the shelter-in-place order across the state has reduced the overall risk of loss. Per the commissioner's decree, the premiums covered are for the months of March, April and May if the shelter-in-place order continues through then. The six categories of premiums covered by the order are: private passenger automobile, commercial automobile, workers' compensation, commercial multi-peril, commercial liability, medical malpractice and "any other insurance line where the risk of loss has fallen substantially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic." Insurance companies have until August to comply with the order -- whether through premium credits, reductions, return of premiums or other appropriate premium adjustments. Licensed health care facilities in Contra Costa County will have to screen all staff and visitors for high temperatures and must wear masks under a new health order that goes into effect Tuesday, Contra Costa Health Services officials said. County health officer Dr. Chris Farnitano issued the order Monday as part of Contra Costa County's attempt to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The order applies to residential care sites such as nursing and senior care homes, psychiatric facilities, group homes, recovery houses and homeless shelters. Anyone who is not a patient or resident at the facility will have to undergo temperature and symptom screening, and cannot enter if they've had a respiratory illness or fever in the past seven days or a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. Staff and visitors to the facilities must also wear surgical masks or cloth ones if surgical masks are not available, and staff will have to log the screenings to help keep track of any possible illnesses. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $42 million statewide effort Monday to support Child Protective Services casework during the novel coronavirus pandemic. With schools closed during the pandemic and statewide orders to remain indoors as much as possible, Child Protective Services activities like in-person visits and responding to referrals from teachers and others who frequently interact with children have been significantly limited, Newsom said. The funding will support things like social worker outreach, family resource centers, county-level child protection programs and more resources for state Health and Human Services workers in order to support the roughly 86,500 children in the state's welfare system, including about 59,000 in the foster care system, according to Newsom. At least 100 full-time union-represented food service and janitorial workers were laid off after the novel coronavirus outbreak began affecting classes at Stanford University, and the workers' union along with students and alumni on Monday demanded that the university continue to pay their salaries and benefits into the summer. Of the roughly 230 food service and janitorial employees between Stanford's main campus and Redwood City campus, about 100 have been laid off without pay and benefits since mid-March, and at least 130 workers could be laid off by the end of this month, according to Stanford's chapter of the union. The union wants Stanford to commit to paying the wages and benefits of its workers through the current quarter into June so employees who depend on their employer for their income and health care benefits will have a "safety net" during the deadly COVID-19 disease outbreak. The union also said the employees were laid off without proper notice, as required by their labor contract. The university did not immediately return a request for comment Monday. The San Mateo County coroner's office has confirmed the identity of an Antioch man who was fatally shot in South San Francisco early Sunday after allegedly attempting to steal vehicles from two people and trying to flee in a patrol car. Justin Silvernale, 35, died after South San Francisco police officers responded to reports around 5:35 a.m. Sunday of two men fighting at the Chevron gas station on Hickey Boulevard. Silvernale allegedly attempted to steal vehicles from two different people at the gas station, stabbing one of them with a knife. An off-duty San Francisco police officer attempted to intervene in the attempted carjackings but was also stabbed, according to police. The officer then shot Silvernale before he attempted to flee. South San Francisco police made efforts to subdue Silvernale, including using Taser stun guns, but he attempted to flee in a patrol car. Silvernale drove to the Kaiser Permanente medical facility on Hickey Boulevard and exited the patrol car, threatening officers with a knife. According to South San Francisco police, officers then shot Silvernale and immediately attempted first aid. However, He was pronounced dead at the scene. The Contra Costa County coroner's office has confirmed the identity of an Antioch woman who died Friday night after getting hit with a brick that crashed through a window of the car in which she was a passenger in Concord. Margarita Erostico Ruiz, 63, was sitting in the front passenger seat of a 2004 Volkswagon Jetta on state Highway 242 near state Highway 4 around 9:30 p.m. when a brick smashed through the car's window, according to the California Highway Patrol. First responders attempted live-saving measures but Erostico Ruiz was pronounced dead at the scene. The car's 20-year-old male driver and two children in the back seat were unharmed, according to the CHP. The origin of the brick is still under investigation. People with information can contact the Contra Costa-area CHP office at (925) 646-4980. A 29-year-old man was arrested after authorities responded to his burning Mission District residence Sunday morning and found him naked and covered in blood on a patio with a female family member dead inside, San Francisco police said Monday. Daniel Antonio Gudino is in custody after officers responded at about 9:20 a.m. Sunday to a home in the 1300 block of Natoma Street regarding someone possibly suffering a mental health crisis, according to police. Officers learned firefighters were already on scene extinguishing the fire and found a body in a bedroom. Officers found Gudino on the patio and were able to take him into custody, police said. Police said the 56-year-old woman who died is believed to be a family member of Gudino's, but they did not elaborate on what led to her death. The San Francisco medical examiner's office is not yet releasing her name. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced Monday that he shut down a nightclub allegedly operating illegally in the city's Bayview District amid the novel coronavirus-related stay-at-home order, which mandated the closure of all non-essential businesses. According to Herrera's office, the club was operating out of an industrial building at 2266 Shafter Ave. An investigation between April 4 and April 6 showed more than 150 people enter and exit the building during the early morning hours. Investigators didn't observe any of the patrons practicing social distancing of at least 6 feet, and at certain times, between 20 and 30 cars were seen arriving or departing outside of the building on an hourly basis. Then last Wednesday, an investigator again witnessed multiple cars coming and going from the building, and groups of people not practicing social distancing entering and exiting. Additionally, loud music and strobe lights could be heard and seen from inside, Herrera's office said. In addition to the illegal gatherings, a witness reported hearing at least five gunshots near the club during the early hours of March 15. The shooting is currently under investigation by San Francisco police. Civil rights attorney John Burris said Monday that he's considering filing a lawsuit against a Hayward facility where an 87-year-old man recently died of the COVID-19 coronavirus even though he didn't have any symptoms when he was admitted. Referring to the April 4 death of Costell Akrie at the Gateway Care and Rehabilitation Center at 26660 Patrick Ave. in Hayward, Burris said, "We want to know if they followed proper standard of care procedures and operations to make sure residents and employees didn't contract COVID-19." Akrie's wife Dianne Akrie said she and her husband were married for 65 years, lived in Oakland most of their adult lives and until recently lived independently in their own apartment in San Leandro. She said her husband developed issues with his blood sugar in February after his doctor at Kaiser Permanente's San Leandro Medical Center discontinued his diabetes medication. Akrie said her husband suffered a loss of mobility as a result of Kaiser's error and he was sent to Gateway in March to be rehabilitated. She said Akrie didn't have any COVID-19 symptoms at the time, but tested positive for them on March 28 after he developed a low-grade fever and died alone on April 5. Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. OKLAHOMA CITY Additional members of the Oklahoma Army and Air National Guards have been put on active status, bringing the total to 175, a public affairs officer said Monday. The figure includes 29 Guard members already on active status and is a fraction of the 7,500-member force, Lt. Col. Geoffrey Legler said. He said members will be working with the 11 identified COVID-19 regional health administration locations. They will work as couriers to the state-run testing sites but will not perform any of the tests, Legler said. They will deliver new kits and take used kits out for testing, he said. National Guard members will be supporting mobile test sites, Strategic National Stockpile logistics and distribution, and the construction of alternate care facilities, said Charlie Hannema, a spokesman for Gov. Kevin Stitt. Noting that National Guard members are Oklahomans themselves, Hannema said they are dedicated to serving the state and helping its people get through the COVID-19 pandemic. The activated members will be on duty for at least 31 days, Legler said. At least 41 people, including 23 minors, have been arrested after police broke up a house party despite a ban on large gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic. Despite a nationwide quarantine order due to the coronavirus global pandemic, that bans non-essential residents from leaving their homes except for trips to the supermarket, pharmacy or hospital, a mother and her daughter decided to host a bash at a private location Saturday night. Residents in Villa Mercedes, a town in the province of San Luis, Argentina, called the police to complain of loud noise and music at a home at about 3am local time on Sunday. Cops broke up a party at a private home in the Argentine province of San Luis and arrested 41 people, including 23 minors, on Sunday. They were charged for breaking the country's nationwide quarantine order that was imposed March 20 as a preventive measure to combat the coronavirus pandemic A mother and her daughter hosted a private party with 41 guests in Villa Mercedes, a town in the Argentine province of San Luis. The party was broken up at about 3am when residents called the police to complain Law enforcement agents discovered that at least 23 attendees were minors According to local Argentine media outlets, invitations were sent via WhatsApp and Facebook for the booze-filled get together. Invitees received their confirmations to the bash privately. Images distributed on the Municipality of Villa Mercedes Facebook account showed several partygoers kneeling with their hands crossed behind their heads. Another individual appeared to be sleeping on the ground as officials questioned the group. Other images taken outside the party house showed a bevy of males lying face down on the ground while at least seven female attendees faced a wall. At least 37 of the party guests tested positive for alcohol consumption As of Sunday morning, only one person who attended the party remained detained, a man who had a criminal background At least 37 of the party guests tested positive for alcohol consumption. All of the party guests were released by the authorities Sunday morning, except for a man, who had a criminal record. More than 41,000 people have detained by law enforcement for violating the stay-at-home order since it was issued by the government March 20, according to Argentine newspaper Cronica. To date, authorities have questioned 1,952,503 people for not obeying the quarantine guidelines. A sign in front of the Willingboro Senior Center reads PLEASE STAY HOME in Willingboro, NJ on April 12, 2020. Read more It is a township filled with veterans and seniors, with a predominantly African American population. Its residents go to work in New York City, leaving via a bus stop at the town center, and to nearby Philadelphia. Along the Route 130 corridor, vast distribution centers remain open. Now, that unassuming place, Willingboro, population 31,887, is seeing an alarming spike in coronavirus cases that has officials worried and searching for answers, even as they work to head off what they fear will be a burgeoning hot spot in this Burlington County bedroom community. Im concerned about the trends Im seeing," said U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, whose district office is in Willingboro, in the same complex as the towns senior center. It worries me," he said in an interview Sunday. "Willingboro has a large senior community and a large veteran community, which would be very vulnerable to this. I worry for them. Confirmed coronavirus cases in Willingboro, as reported by Burlington County, have grown from 58 on April 3 to 110 on April 6 to 184 as of Saturday. On Sunday night, Burlington County said there were now 193 cases in Willingboro. There have been five deaths: two men, ages 58 and 79, and three women, ages, 59, 65 and 68. At a rate of 57.7 cases per 10,000 population, Willingboro outpaces every municipality in South Jersey, according to an Inquirer analysis of numbers through Saturday. And that rate is behind only Ambler and Springfield in Montgomery County in a comparison of municipalities with more than 5,000 residents in the entire Philadelphia region. Kim said that surge is being felt by those on the ground. Ive talked to a physician in the area who says without a doubt theyve seen a surge in recent days in numbers in our areas," Kim said. Hes also worried about Burlington Township, which had 96 cases as of Saturday, for a rate of 42.6 cases per 10,000 population. The more affluent Moorestown, with a population of 20,355, had reported 58 cases by Saturday, for a rate of 28.5 per 10,000 population. Willingboro Mayor Tiffani A. Worthy said she has continued to stress social distancing in her township, as well as steps to help with economic distress. She said that police have stepped up their presence on the streets, and that she herself has called the police to report the beginnings of a gathering. Worthy, a combat veteran who teaches project management at Drexel University, sees several contributing factors in her towns coronavirus surge. She cautions that the data set is still small and could therefore present an incomplete or misleading picture. In addition to Willingboros seniors, many retired veterans who have settled in an area that is near the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Worthy said the township is home to many who continue to work during the shutdown. We have a large contingency of people in Willingboro who work as essential workers, and are on the front lines of COVID-19, Worthy said in a telephone interview Sunday. She said many have been faced with the decision to risk exposure in order to provide for their family. In addition to Virtua Hospital in Willingboro, Amazon has a one million-square-foot fulfillment center on the border of Burlington City and Burlington Township that employs upward of 600 people. The township is also home to commuters to both New York City, a current focus of coronavirus cases, and Philadelphia, which by one White House measure could be the next hot spot. Its population in the 2010 census was about two-thirds African American, a demographic that has been disproportionately impacted by coronavirus in many places. Its a bedroom community, Worthy said. People are going outside the community. There are people who work in New York City, theyre going back and forth to New York. They catch the commuter buses straight from Willingboro." . Kim, who appeared with Gov. Phil Murphy last week to call on FEMA to bring a testing site to South Jersey, said he was alarmed at the proximity of Willingboro and Burlington Township, which also showed higher levels of cases, to both Philadelphia and New York City. There is a county-run testing site in Westampton, by appointment only. This just is exactly the reason Ive been pushing for more testing, to have a third FEMA site, Kim said. We need to get ahead of this." He is also pushing for more personal protective equipment for local hospitals. Kim said he was concerned with all of the countys townships that are closest to Philadelphia. Its the townships closest to Philadelphia, he said. "The part of Burlington County closest to Philadelphia accounts for the bulk of positive tests so far that we see in the county. We need more testing, he said. As we do more tests well see the numbers pick up. It helps us to have a sense of where the spread is and where we have to put resources. He said places such as Willingboro, with senior communities and long term care facilities, These are the types of places that could be disastrous. We need a lot of resources to stay ahead of it and protect those most vulnerable, Kim said. We dont want to see what happened in the New York metropolitan area happen here. [The numbers] definitely are warning bells. This is something weve been concerned about for a number of weeks," Kim said. "We are literally on the outer edge of the biggest coronavirus hot spot in the world, New York City. And now right next door to what the White House is saying is the next hot spot [Philadelphia]. That puts us right in the line of fire, he said. "We should learn our lessons and do it better. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: Turkeys export of leather goods to Turkmenistan dropped by 19.09 percent from January through March 2020, amounting to $825,000, Turkeys Ministry of Trade told Trend. In March 2020, Turkeys export of leather goods to Turkmenistan dropped by 70.54 percent compared to March 2019 and amounted to $152,000. In 1Q2020, export of leather goods from Turkey to world markets dropped by 5.4 percent compared to the same period of 2019, amounting to $415.2 million. Over the reporting period, Turkeys export of leather goods amounted to one percent of the countrys total export. In March 2020, Turkey exported leather goods worth $130.2 million to world markets, which is 26 percent less compared to the same month of 2019. In this month, export of leather goods amounted to 1 percent of the country's total export. From March 2019 through March 2020, Turkeys export of leather goods exceeded $1.6 billion. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu New Delhi: Indian government on Monday (April 13) issued a strong demarche to Pakistan over the killing of three Indian civilians in unprovoked ceasefire violation in Jammu and Kashmir. "A strong demarche was made to the Pakistan side on the killing of three innocent Indian civilians in unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan forces on April 12," Ministry of External Affairs sources told PTI. The development comes a day after three civilians, including a minor, were killed at Keran sector along the Line of Control in shelling by Pakistani forces. The incident happened when Pakistani troops initiated an unprovoked ceasefire violation targeting the civilian population. Demarche is a diplomatic note, generally issued to lodge protest over any action of development. Earlier on Monday, Pakistan opened fire and shelled forward posts and villages along with the Line of Control and International Border in Poonch and Kathua districts, drawing retaliation from Indian troops, officials said. Pakistani Rangers also violated the ceasefire by targeting forward posts and villages in different villages of Hiranagar sector overnight. The firing from Pakistan started in Chandwa and adjoining areas around 9.45 pm on Sunday and continued till 4 am, the officials said, adding the BSF retaliated effectively. There was no report of any casualty in the firing, the officials said. UPDATE (4/14): Coronavirus cases in Pa. pass 25K as COVID-19 death toll spikes again; Lehigh Valley nears 50 dead Pennsylvania coronavirus cases rose to 24,199 on Monday as 17 more people died from COVID-19, including some in and around the Lehigh Valley. The number of cases increased by 1,366 from the prior day, according to the daily update from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. (Is the above map not displaying? Click here.) Its a slight uptick in daily new case counts, which had dropped for three straight days signaling a leveling-off. Tuesdays report may be a stronger indicator that is typically when lagging weekend data from labs and hospitals are accounted for, the health department has noted. (Is the table above not displaying? Click here.) Health officials anticipate Pennsylvania will reach its peak this week, though they have repeatedly noted the exact timing will vary from region to region depending on how closely people adhere to social distancing guidelines amid the statewide shutdown. Social distancing works and the shutdowns are saving lives, Health Secretary Rachel Levine said in Mondays COVID-19 briefing. Lifting them too soon, she said, would be a mistake. The COVID-19 death toll in Pennsylvania stands at 524. (Is the above map not displaying? Click here.) In the states daily update, Lehigh County reported its 19th death, up one from the prior day. No one else died from the virus in Northampton County. Combined, the coronavirus has claimed 42 lives in the Lehigh Valley. More deaths were reported in adjacent counties. Four people died in Bucks County, where the toll now stands at 36. Berks County and Monroe County each reported one more death, the 21st in Berks and the 24th in Monroe. Montgomery Countys two additional deaths bring the toll there to 65, second most in the state behind Philadelphia, where 127 have died. (Is the above map not displaying? Click here.) Eight counties have more than 1,000 cases each, all in the east: Philadelphia, its suburbs, the Lehigh Valley, Berks to the west, Monroe to the north in the Poconos, and Hazletons Luzerne County. The health department does not release data on recoveries the definition can change based on whos reporting, and it is difficult to track people recovering at home. However, 105,593 Pennsylvania residents have tested negative for the virus since the first cases were identified in the state March 6. Of the states approximately 24,000 positive coronavirus cases, 1,179 are in health care workers and 1,688 are in 215 of Pennsylvanias long-term care facilities, like nursing homes, Levine said in the daily briefing. About 10 percent of overall cases have been hospitalized. Of those, 665 have required a ventilator. The Wolf administration says its official case count is almost certainly an undercount. Some people with mild symptoms may recover at home and never get tested. Perhaps further impacting local numbers, LVHN, which operates COVID-19 test centers throughout the region, last week announced that it will only test people 65 or older who have symptoms. That age group accounts for half the states COVID-19 hospitalizations and most of the deaths, the health department says. Levine said the health department is working with LVHN to identify what testing materials it is missing and working to resupply them. Meanwhile, Northampton County is requesting a mass testing site for the Lehigh Valley. Levine said a site in northeastern Pennsylvania has been chosen, but said more details will be announced this week. (Is the table above not displaying? Click here.) For more information on the coronavirus, consult your state health department at health.pa.gov and the CDC website. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. If theres anything about this story that needs attention, please email him. Follow him on Twitter @SteveNovakLVL and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SouthGobi Resources Ltd. (TSX: SGQ, HK: 1878) (SouthGobi or the Company) announces that it has agreed to a deferral of the payment obligation which is due and payable to CIC on April 19, 2020. Reference is made to the announcement of the Company dated March 19, 2020 (the "Announcement"). Capitalized terms used herein, unless otherwise defined, shall have the same meanings as those defined in the Announcement. On April 10, 2020, the Company and CIC entered into an agreement (the 2020 April Deferral Agreement) pursuant to which CIC agreed to grant the Company a deferral of deferred cash interest and deferral fees of $2.0 million (the April 2020 Deferral Agreement Amount) which is due and payable to CIC on April 19, 2020 under the 2019 Deferral Agreement. The effectiveness of the 2020 April Deferral Agreement and the respective obligations, covenants and agreements of each party under the 2020 April Deferral Agreement are subject to the Company obtaining the requisite acceptance thereof from TSX. The terms of the April 2020 Deferral Agreement are substantially similar to the terms of the prior deferral agreements dated February 19, 2020 and March 10, 2020 (the Prior 2020 Deferral Agreements) between the Company and CIC. The principal terms of the April 2020 Deferral Agreement are as follows: Payment of the April 2020 Deferral Agreement Amount will be deferred until June 20, 2020. As consideration for the deferral of the April 2020 Deferral Agreement Amount, the Company agreed to pay CIC a deferral fee equal to 6.4% per annum on the April 2020 Deferral Agreement Amount, commencing on April 19, 2020. The Company agreed to provide CIC with monthly updates regarding its operational and financial affairs. The Company agreed to comply with all of its obligations under the 2019 Deferral Agreement and the Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement, as amended by the 2020 February Deferral Agreement. The Company and CIC agreed that nothing in the 2020 April Deferral Agreement prejudices CICs rights to pursue any of its remedies at any time pursuant to the 2019 Deferral Agreement, the Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement and the Prior 2020 Deferral Agreements, respectively. Story continues As previously disclosed in its press release dated February 19, 2020, the Company anticipates that a deferral will likely be required in respect of the monthly payments due and payable in the period between May 2020 and June 2020 under the 2019 Deferral Agreement and Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement. The Company and CIC have agreed to discuss in good faith a deferral of these payments on a monthly basis as they become due. There can be no assurance, however, that a favourable outcome will be reached either at all or on favourable terms. The Company will make further announcements with respect to these discussions as and when appropriate. Forward-Looking Statements Certain information included in this press release that is not current or historical factual information constitutes forward-looking statements or information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, forward-looking statements), including information about discussions with CIC regarding a deferral of certain payments under the 2019 Deferral Agreement and Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as plan, expect, project, intend, believe, anticipate, "could", "should", "seek", "likely", "estimate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions may or will occur. Forward-looking statements are based on certain factors and assumptions including, among other things, the Companys ability to successfully negotiate a revised repayment schedule in respect of certain payments under the 2019 Deferral Agreement and Amended and Restated Cooperation Agreement and the TSX accepting the Companys notice application in respect of the April 2020 Deferral Agreement and other similar factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from what the Company currently expects. Actual results may vary from the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue importance on forward-looking statements, which speaks only as of the date of this disclosure, and not to rely upon this information as of any other date. While the Company may elect to, it is under no obligation and does not undertake to, update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, further events or otherwise at any particular time, except as required by law. Additional information concerning factors that may cause actual results to materially differ from those in such forward-looking statements is contained in the Companys filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and can be found under the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . If there is any inconsistency or discrepancy between the English version and the Chinese version, the English version shall prevail. About SouthGobi SouthGobi, listed on the Toronto and Hong Kong stock exchanges, owns and operates its flagship Ovoot Tolgoi coal mine in Mongolia. It also holds the mining licences of its other metallurgical and thermal coal deposits in South Gobi Region of Mongolia. SouthGobi produces and sells coal to customers in China. Contact: Investor Relations Kino Fu Office: +852 2156 7030 (Hong Kong) +1 604 762 6783 (Canada) Email: kino.fu@southgobi.com Website: www.southgobi.com Ireland still faces some of its darkest days in the coronavirus pandemic, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned. Mr Varadkars remarks, in a special Easter message, came as health chiefs revealed that 14 more people died from the virus, bringing the toll to 334. Read More More ominously, 430 new cases were confirmed by Irish laboratories, and with a further 297 cases identified by a German laboratory, the total number of new confirmed cases is 727. The total number of infections in the Republic now stands at 9,655. And despite talk about moves to potentially unwind the current lockdown after the extended deadline of May 5, there was a further warning from a key government adviser that change must come very slowly. Professor Philip Nolan said there was a real danger of a second wave of Covid-19 virus infections if any easing was not done with extreme caution. Dr Nolan said if things were done incorrectly, Ireland could see a rapid re-emergence of the virus that could rise to a very dangerous peak. However, he did hold out the prospect of a phased relaxation of controls after May 5, providing all went well. If it is confirmed in the coming weeks that the very strong measures currently in place have controlled the disease, then it is reasonable to think about changing the behaviours and regulations, he said. But he sounded a note of extreme caution, warning: There is a real danger at that point that if we dont do it very, very carefully that we will get a second wave of disease. What we do after May 5 is criticalto determining whether we are past a peak or facing into a new and dangerous peak," the Maynooth university academic told RTE. Another key government adviser, Dr Cillian de Gascun, a consultant virologist and director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory (NVRL), said the State's coronavirus testing capacity should "probably" rise to 15,000 in the next two weeks. He expected 5,000 to 7,000 people would be tested for coronavirus each day this coming week. In his Easter message video message, Mr Varadkar said Ireland would face some of its darkest days ahead due to the coronavirus threat. He said the Covid-19 peak may happen later this month. "The number of hospitalisations and sadly the number of deaths continues to rise," Mr Varadkar said. The Taoiseach warned that people must not lessen their efforts nor lose their focus. "In fact, we need to redouble them for the next few weeks. It's more important than ever that we persevere. It's possible that we haven't seen the peak yet," he urged. "When it comes, perhaps later this month, we will experience some of our darkest days. So we need to maintain our discipline and resolve in the knowledge that better days are to come," Mr Varadkar added. In an exclusive interview with the 'Sunday Independent', Mr Varadkar also held out an olive branch to the smaller political parties as the slow process of coalition formation drags on. Both he and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin will later this week try to persuade the Green Party, and/or Labour, along with the Social Democrats to join government. Mr Varadkar insisted the new coalition would nurture economic recovery and it would avoid sudden welfare cuts and offer tax incentives instead of increased taxes. In the ongoing anti-coronavirus battle, the Government's aim is to dramatically increase testing to some 15,000 tests per day. The authorities continue efforts to clear a test backlog. Health Minister Simon Harris said he hoped this could be achieved by the end of this coming week. Dr de Gascun said he hoped significant progress could be made towards the 15,000 tests per day goal with up to 7,000 in the coming week. Ideally there were hopes the target of 15,000 tests could happen by the middle of the following week. "We are still expecting new equipment to come on stream and that hasn't arrived yet so there's still a number of steps that we're expecting but certainly our capacity has increased dramatically," Dr de Gascun told Newstalk radio. He said fundamental changes were being implemented and this accounted for time lapses, including the target of getting test results back within 48 hours. Dr Tom Ryan, an intensive care specialist at St James's Hospital in Dublin, agreed with the Taoiseach's Easter message that there may yet be "dark days ahead". He said intensive care patient numbers showed "a slow build-up rather than a surge". "I suspect the surge hasn't happened because the population at large has stayed at home and behaved themselves," Dr Ryan told RTE. Meanwhile, the persistently high number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK is a continuing cause of concern for the Irish authorities. These will continue to condition any decisions on potential relaxation of controls in the Republic of Ireland given the proximity to Northern Ireland under British jurisdiction. Yesterday it emerged that 11 more people have died from the coronavirus in Northern Ireland. These new figures bring the total number of Covid-19 related deaths in the North to 118 with the total number of cases to 1,806. Janhvi Kapoor's new picture will make all relate to her mood as it fits into the quarantine mood. Janhvi Kapoor who has been seen sharing her pictures of lockdown with sister Khushi Kapoor and father Boney Kapoor has dropped one new picture on her social media account. Janhvi Kapoors new picture will make all relate to her mood as it fits into the quarantine mood. Janhvi Kapoor who has been seen sharing her pictures of lockdown with sister Khushi Kapoor and father Boney Kapoor has dropped one new picture on her social media account. In the picture, she looks dull and confused as she has nothing to do and she is bored at home. She looks so adorable in the picture that no one can get of their eyes from her. And her picture is totally relatable as everyone is feeling the same. Since March 25 everyone is following the lockdown and it is going to be very difficult for everyone to start at home and not meeting the family but it is the basic precaution that one can take. Although earlier Janhvi Kapoor shared a photo in which she was looking so happy and excited. She shared a video where her sister Khushi Kapoor was biting her and not let her go. They were giving the typical sister goals and indeed they look so cute together. Well, there are changes of lockdown to get extended and it would be declared tomorrow after Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10 am on April 14. Talking about Janhvi Kapoor, she has started her career with the Hindi remake of Marathi film Sairat. She performed in Dhadak and gained a lot of popularity. She was expected much as she is Sridevis daughter but many people are not satisfied when it comes to her mothers ground. Well, her soli projects are also lined up, lets see what will happen after lockdown crises go over. For all the latest Entertainment News, download NewsX App Covid 19 has been bad news for the smartphone industry. The pandemic has led to many phone makers pushing back the launch of their phones, while others have had to face disruptions in supply and manufacturing, adding up to more delays. But amid all this, Samsung appears to be on track to launch its next foldable phone on time, the Galaxy Fold 2 which as per Korean publication ETNews now has a finalised design and has even completed trial manufacturing. The report adds that the company is reportedly planning to start manufacturing components in May, and is looking at starting mass-producing the device in June/July. The Galaxy Fold 2 is rumored to be unveiled alongside the Galaxy Note 20, at Samsung's mid-year Unpacked event, which may very well end up being an online-only event. The phone will be the company's third foldable Android handset and will come after the company announced the Galaxy Z Flip and the Galaxy Fold. Talking about the phone, Samsung's Galaxy Fold 2 is tipped to be more affordable than the original Galaxy Fold with a 265 GB model also in the works. Reports suggest the phone could be available in two models with a more affordable 256GB one and a slightly expensive 512 GB model. As for the specs, there is little known about the device right now, yet, the general expectation is that the phone will fix many of the flaws of the Galaxy Fold. As such, there will be a larger secondary display along with the a bigger screen inside too. The phone is also expected to get a punch-hole instead of a notch, with main cameras also likely to be an upgrade over the previous generation's set-up. Other rumours suggest there could be 5G and also support for Samsung's S-Pen with the phone. ALSO READ: | Vodafone will give you cashback if you recharge for someone in need: Everything you need to know Jayanth P By Express News Service What is more important to break the chain of COVID-19, the pandemic that has brought the entire world down to its knees? Citizens responsibility coupled with government strategies, says Dr PV Ramesh, the additional chief secretary (to CM) of Andhra Pradesh. In an interview with Express, the physician-turned-bureaucrat explains why the world, let alone the State, is in the fight against COVID-19 for a long haul, how coronavirus would change how the civilization behaves for months (or years) to come and how the concerted efforts of the government in the last ten months in strengthening the public health deliveries helped in stabilising the situation in Andhra Pradesh. Exactly a month ago (March 12), AP recorded its first COVID-19 case. In four weeks, we saw a significant spike with 420 cases, seven deaths and 14 recoveries. What is the situation now in AP? We have a stabilised situation now. But, the problem is the virus is known only for three months. Whatever information we have now may not be relevant tomorrow as the behavioural dynamics of the virus changes. That said, an essential prerequisite to effective control of an epidemic, or a pandemic in this case, is a robust public health system. AP had a poor public healthcare system, much of which was privatised in the last five years. After the change of guard last year, the government has taken various steps for strengthening the public healthcare system through Navaratnalu programme. Secondly, we put in place a decentralised governance system: village/ward volunteers, a revolutionary programme. These things we have done in the last 10 months helped us and will continue to help in the time of crisis. Then, we have started tracing and testing foreign returnees much before the Centre asked us. In fact, we are one of the first states to have started screening international returnees and identified over 1.1 lakh returnees and their contacts. And since the first case was reported, we stepped up our tests. We have since undertaken two door-to-door surveys. Then, our functionaries identified another 5,000-cluster of Delhi returnees and their contacts. But, there is a small number of cases that dont fall in either of the above two categories. Does this mean community transmission has begun in the State? What about the much-talked-about curve? I believe that we should not be fixated if community spread is there or not. It is inevitable that a large number of people would be affected in one way or the other. When there is a large cluster like Delhi or foreign returnees, it is relatively easier to identify, isolate, test and treat them. But, when you have somebody who is not known to have contracted the virus from either source but still has an infection, we have to assume from some source. It does not really matter if we have community spread or an internal spread as management protocol is essentially similar. Several States have changed their guidelines regarding usage of masks and AP also seems to have changed it now. There are conflicting studies regarding the usage of masks. At one time, the WHO said those with infection, their contacts or the healthcare professionals treating them only needed masks. Some demonstrated that masks necessarily do not stop virus transmission. But, the fact is that those who wear masks are preventing virus transmission as asymptomatic cases are there. However, the most important thing here is its disposal. There has been an advisory from the Centre that States should stop procurement of critical equipment like masks, ventilators and testing kits and that they would be supplied by the Centre. What is APs stand on it? Our countrys capacity to produce critical equipment is limited. Domestic production has begun only recently. Maintenance of quality in procuring them is essential. It has to be of a specific design and standard. So monitoring of a centralised agency, especially when the entire globe is trying to source it from the same places as there is a global demand, will help. We will have a price advantage, diplomatic outreach and many other advantages. But the downside is delayed procurement and delivery. Large supplies mean small deliveries. The State government will bank on both. We have already placed orders. We have taken advanced action for the requirement and are working through various channels. Now that the GOI advisory has come in, we will weigh all our options. How often are we getting supplies from the Centre? We have stocked enough equipment. PPE is to be used by those who are treating positive cases. We have also started making them locally. We have given local workers specifications, designs and other needs for preparation. So, we are well stocked. What about rapid testing? We are expecting at least 2 lakh rapid test kits, which are essentially antibody tests. These have to be used strategically as antibodies appear only 10 days after being infected. There is no way we can test the entire State as it is not practical. How are village volunteers helping in combating the pandemic? Village and ward volunteers did a splendid work along with the government functionaries. They should be appreciated for tracing foreign and Delhi returnees, by going home to home. Also, in terms of delivery of services such as pension, essential services and others, they have played a much bigger role. That is why we devised a distinct strategy for rural and urban areas. More than 4,000 ASHA workers, 23,000 ANMs, more than 2 lakh volunteers have become crucial in the containment of the pandemic in rural areas. In urban areas, we adopted a slightly different strategy. We pooled in all migrant workers, homeless to one place and are taking care of them. What are the challenges ahead for the government? The government thus far has done whatever needs to be done, although there could always be scope for betterment as we constantly seek to improve. But citizens responsibility is crucial. This diseases chain will be broken only with citizen participation. This is a war where we dont know how the enemy comes or its strategy. So, citizens role is paramount. We have to limit our movement, maintain physical distance. Till a vaccine is found, the virus will be lurking around somewhere. This pandemic will change our behaviour fundamentally. We cant be unhygienic. Everything changes. We are in this for the long haul. Is the availability of doctors and healthcare professionals also a challenge? I think we, right now, are in a better place in rural areas with MEPMA, self-help groups and volunteers available. We need a similar system in urban areas, which have communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases. So when you put them together, we need a much stronger healthcare system. Aarogyasri works in that direction. When can normalcy be expected? What we know now may change tomorrow as the situation is dynamic. We cant really assess it. Normally, in a pandemic of this nature and magnitude, like Spanish Flu, these infections were contained only after the vaccine was found. Every virus behavioural dynamics are different. All we can hope for is that there will be a vaccine soon. It usually takes 12-16 months. Lets keep our fingers crossed. Rameshs appeal to people Maintain physical distancing, which is different from social isolation and is essential for breaking the chain of virus transmission Immediately seek medical help if symptoms like cough, loss of sense of smell/taste, shortness of breath are observed Wash hands regularly Those with comorbidities like diabetes, blood pressure and respiratory issues should take more precautions Never touch the front of the mask, remove it from behind. There are three ways of the disposal: putting in a soap solution for certain hours, burn it, third is to bury it People may become restless due to the lockdown. Call 104 or 1902, there are counsellors available. There is nothing wrong. All of us get depressed, worried and anxious. There is no stigma attached. Va. governor, once accused of supporting infanticide, eases state abortion restrictions Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, who was accused of supporting infanticide in a 2019 interview, has signed a law that eases restrictions on abortion access in the Commonwealth. Northam signed the Reproductive Health Protection Act into law last Friday, which, among other things, repeals measures mandating an ultrasound and a 24-hour waiting period prior to an abortion. No more will legislators in Richmondmost of whom are menbe telling women what they should and should not be doing with their bodies, said Northam in a statement. The Reproductive Health Protection Act will make women and families safer, and Im proud to sign it into law. Also known as Senate Bill 733 and House Bill 980, the legislation was passed due to the General Assembly recently becoming majority Democrat. In late January, the state Senate narrowly passed the bill, with a 20-20 tie vote being broken by Democratic Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. The Virginia Society for Human Life, a pro-life group, denounced the signing of the bill, calling it dreadful and finding it only more tragic that it was signed on Good Friday. Now the only information women will receive is what the abortionist is willing to tell her, stated VSHL President Olivia Gans Turner. Abortionists who are making money from the same women for every abortion performed are not likely to share the dangers of abortion or tell women that her child has a beating heart and brain waves. Turner added that she believes the Democrat-controlled legislature has made it very clear that they intend to strip out every rational and protective pro-life law in Virginia. Last year, Northam garnered outrage when, in an interview with WTOP, he defended a recently proposed pro-choice legislation and appeared to endorse infanticide in his comments. When discussing third-trimester abortions, Northam gave the hypothetical example of a mother who gives birth to a baby that has severe deformities or is not viable. In this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, Northam told WTOP at the time. It would be resuscitated if thats what the mother and the family desired and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother. The governors comments generated much outrage from pro-life groups and politicians, including a denunciation from United States Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska on the Senate floor. Let's be clear what we're talking about. We're talking about killing a baby that's been born. We're not talking about some euphemism, we're not talking about a clump of cells, stated Sasse. Everyone in the Senate ought to be able to say unequivocally that killing that little baby is wrong. This doesn't take any political courage. In response to the outrage over his comments, Northam, a professional pediatrician, took to social media to denounce the claim that he was supporting infanticide. I have devoted my life to caring for children and any insinuation otherwise is shameful and disgusting, tweeted the governor in January 2019. Arizonas top prosecutor has ordered a Phoenix, Ariz., dispensary to stop marketing its products as treatments for the coronavirus. Attorney General Mark Brnovich says he sent a cease-and-desist letter to YiLo Superstore Dispensary on Friday over claims of having a Coronav Immunization Stabilizer Tincture. Brnovichs office had been alerted to promotional text messages as well as a website tying the product to the novel coronavirus. Brnovich said in a statement Monday that attempts to exploit consumers during a public health crisis will not be tolerated. Brnovichs office says the Food and Drug Administration has not approved any vaccine to immunize against, prevent or treat COVID-19. The marketing of the product could be a violation of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act. The web page has since been taken down. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics COVID-19 Arizona All acts of bullying and mockery of the victims of the coronavirus are dangerous and totally unacceptable, said Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar, the world's most prestigious seat of Sunni Islamic learning. His remarks came after a crowd of people gathered earlier this week in a Nile Delta village to prevent the burial of a physician who died from coronavirus, prompting police to fire teargas to disperse them. "I felt sorry to see some people refuse to receive the corpses of those who passed away from this virus or refuse to allow them to be buried in their own cemeteries," El-Tayyeb said in a televised speech on Sunday evening. "This is religiously forbidden and morally and humanly criminalised, he said, adding that the Islamic sharia law calls for honouring the dead by quickly burying them and praying for them. Dozens of people gathered on Saturday in front of an ambulance carrying the late doctors body to stop it from reaching the Daqahliya villages burial grounds over concerns that the body could spread the virus. The health ministry later categorically dismissed the notion that the virus could be transmitted in this manner. Twenty-three people were arrested over the incident and were later ordered detained for 15 days over charges of terrorism, rioting, blocking roads and disrupting traffic. The grand imam described the incident as a "blatant and inhumane violation of the sanctity of the dead." "The people affected by this pandemic are part of us and we should support and assist them," he said. El-Tayyeb urged all Egyptians to strictly abide by the instructions issued by the authorities and health officials regarding handling deaths from the pandemic. Following the controversial incident, health ministry officials emphasised that bodies do not transmit the virus as long as precautionary measures are taken during handling. The burials of coronavirus victims in Egypt are often held under police supervision with the attendance of a few close family members. Search Keywords: Short link: Railroads are clamping down on rising demand from oil companies to store crude in rail cars due to safety concerns, sources said, even as the number of places available to stockpile oil is rapidly dwindling. Oil demand is expected to drop by roughly 30% this month worldwide due to the worsening coronavirus pandemic, and supplies are increasing even as Saudi Arabia and Russia hammer out an agreement to cut worldwide output. Storage is filling rapidly as refiners reduce processing and U.S. exports fall. Globally, storage space for crude could run out by mid-2020, according to IHS Markit, and most U.S. onshore storage capacity is expected to fill by May, traders and analysts said. Safety Issues However, railroads including Union Pacific and BNSF, owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, are telling oil shippers that they do not want them to move loaded crude trains to private rail car storage facilities on their tracks due to safety concerns, three sources in the crude-by-rail industry said. The railroads are telling clients that tank cars are not a prudent long-term storage mechanism for a hazardous commodity such as crude, and do not want to put a loaded crude oil unit train in a private facility and potentially create a safety hazard, they said. Federal rules typically only allow crude in rail cars to be stored on private tracks. There is no federal data on how much oil is regularly put in rail storage, but analysts said it is very little. Most federal regulations require rail cars loaded with crude oil to be moved promptly within 48 hours. Therefore, federal regulations discourage shippers and railroads from leaving crude oil in transportation for an extended time, transportation lawyers at Clark Hill LLC wrote in an article Thursday. BNSF did not respond to several requests for comment. Union Pacific declined to comment. Nearly 142 million barrels of crude moved via rail in the U.S. in 2019, representing about 10% of what is transported via pipelines, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Unit trains, made up entirely of tank cars, can carry around 60,000-75,000 barrels. Even on smaller or mid-sized railroads, known as shortlines, there may be capacity constraints or insurance coverage may not be adequate, the railroads have said, advising rail companies not to store oil. It is arbitrary, and is happening at a time when it (storage) is an option being heavily considered by all companies that have access to crude by rail right now, one of the sources said. As of September, there was enough crude storage capacity in the U.S. for about 391 million barrels of out of about 700 million working capacity, excluding the strategic reserve, according to the U.S. Energy Department. However, U.S. stocks have risen by 32.5 million barrels in just the last 4 weeks, including a 15-million-barrel gain in the latest week, the most ever. Crude-by-rail shipments were not economic when oil prices were high but are expected to rise as prices have plunged. Loadings out of the Permian basin, the biggest in the country, slumped to about 12,500 barrels per day (bpd) in January, the lowest in at least a year, before rising to about 13,200 bpd in February, according to data from Genscape. Demand is falling so swiftly that rail cars loaded with crude may not be accepted by the time they reach their destination three-to-five days later, leaving barrels orphaned without a storage option, one trader said. Rates to lease rail cars have dropped sharply due to the crash in oil prices, making them more attractive for storage. Lease rates for rail cars have fallen from about $800 per month to about $500, said Ernie Barsamian, founder and CEO of The Tank Tiger, a terminal storage clearinghouse. (Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar, Laura Sanicola and Laila Kearney in New York Editing by Chris Reese) Topics USA Energy Oil Gas Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said Monday that the recently launched small business loan program has been beset by challenges that could impact the long-term outlook for companies. "Banks are playing themselves. They're being banks and they're trying to determine if the credits are good and that's leading to a lot of small businesses that are left out in the cold," Cuban said on "Squawk Box." "We are at an inflection point" to get money into the system for businesses of all sizes, he said. Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said the companies he's invested in as part of "Shark Tank" have faced challenges in applying for the loans. Cuban said some banks have questioned a company's gross margin and was therefore uncertain about making the loan. "I've tried to call the banks and say, 'No, that's not the point behind the [Paycheck Protection Program] loan.' This is not about that. This is a guarantee by the government and this is supposed to turn into a grant if you retain all your employees," Cuban said. Cuban said banks have "implemented all these hurdles" that were not supposed to be a part of the program, which was established by the government's $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that was passed in late March. "Until we get through that friction, there's going to be a lot of issues and there's going to be a lot of people laid off and a lot of companies that go out of business," he added. While there was initially $350 billion set aside for the small business loan program, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said the government will supply more funding, if necessary. The government turned to banks and other financial institutions such as credit unions to help it distribute the small business loans. Additionally, fintech players such as PayPal and Intuit QuickBooks said Friday that they were granted approval to participate from the Small Business Administration. Cuban said he hopes the distribution of the PPP loans improves like what happened after the stumbled launch of health-care exchanges from the Affordable Care Act. "Hopefully it will be the same way here, that we'll get another tranche of money and the second tranche will have clearer rules and banks will recognize that this is not a typical credit environment where you're supposed to analyze each application as it was a new loan," Cuban said. "This is a hurry-up environment where we need to get money in small business' hands so that they can retain their employees," he said. Cuban been particularly outspoken during the coronavirus pandemic. He has put pressure on Washington lawmakers to prioritize workers in economic stimulus legislation. He's argued any company that receives government aid in such legislation should be prevented from buying back its stock. Cuban has also advised business leaders against sending their employees back into the office too soon, warning that doing so could "define their brand for decades." Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to "Shark Tank," on which Mark Cuban is a co-host. Late last month, a group of migrants in an immigration detention center in the Mexican town of Tenosique lit mattresses on fire to protest conditions in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic: overcrowding, the inability to carry out preventive measures like social distancing and sanitation, a lack of medical services and information, and potentially indefinite periods of confinement. One person, a migrant from Guatemala, died as a result of smoke inhalation, and 14 others were injured. The demonstration followed similar protests at other immigrant detention centers in the country, all responding to a lack of regular medical attention and other basic services. As Doctors Without Borders noted in a recent press release, immigration detention centers like the one in Tenosique are breeding grounds for the spread of disease outbreaks, COVID-19 among them. In response, shelters, universities, and other organizations in Mexico and elsewhere in the world have demanded that the Mexican government release migrants from detention centers and assist with their voluntary return to their countries of origin, should they desire (a process complicated by border closures). Similar demands are also being made in the U.S., where advocates are calling for the government to shut down immigration prisons in order to save human lives and protect public health. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Still, detention centers arent the only places migrants face an elevated risk amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Report after report has detailed the threat the pandemic poses for migrants, particularly those in makeshift border camps. This is complicated by shelters lack of capacity, particularly in the face of the Trump administrations Remain in Mexico policy and rapid removal of migrants (including asylum-seekers) who cross into the U.S. between ports of entry. This dynamic is playing out not only in Mexico and the U.S. but throughout the world. In an article published April 6, the World Economic Forum noted the pandemic is on track to exacerbate the vulnerabilities of some of the 272 million international migrants worldwide. Specifically, the WEF highlighted the impact of government policies such as border crossing restrictions, the suspension of resettlement travels, and the slowing of migration processing and assistance programs. Those problems are exacerbated by social conditions such as the widespread presence of distrust and misinformation, a lack of access to health care and resources for preventive measures, and the overcrowding of unsafe living spaces. Advertisement Advertisement Given all this, migrant shelters face a difficult dilemma: Do they stay open and continue providing services to the people who need them now more than ever? Or do they close their doors in an effort to protect the people they already have inside? Advertisement I spoke with officials from three migrant sheltersone each in north, central, and southern Mexicoabout how theyve responded to the pandemic and their concerns for the future. (Some of the conversations have been translated from Spanish to English. Because each shelter faces a dynamic situation, its possible some population numbers have changed since our conversations.) Tenosique La 72, a migrant shelter in southeast Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, has received nearly 75,000 migrants over its nine-year history. The shelters recent and difficult decision to go into quarantine was a first for Ramon Marquez, the director of La 72, and his team. The quarantine means that residents who have decided to stay in the shelter can only leave and reenter under extreme circumstances, like in the case of a medical need or an immigration process. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But the shelter is still opening its doors to new residents, with conditions. We decided there needed to be a specific space for isolation for people who continued arriving from the migration route and who wanted to stay in La 72, Marquez said. The shelter has equipped five separate spaces to isolate new residents for a period of two weeks, as well as anyone who presents symptoms of COVID-19. Advertisement Advertisement The shelter, which currently houses about 120 people, is also reinforcing procedures for health screenings, connecting people to appropriate physical and mental health care, ensuring access to preventive resources, coordinating health talks and workshops, increasing sanitation of common spaces, and making sure people have access to information. (La 72 collaborates with Doctors Without Borders to provide health care access.) Advertisement Advertisement Were trying to manage this more from awareness than fear, said Marquez. Because of the pandemic, the shelter lost six or seven short-term volunteers, who had to return home. Only two new volunteers have arrived, though theyre both currently in isolation. Typically, the shelter has a minimum of at least 10 volunteers, plus a base staff of seven. The staff has divided into three teams, each working 24-hour shifts. Between shifts, staff members can leave the shelter to go homeand often must leave the shelter to do things like buy new suppliesbut they try to limit their movements as much as possible and follow sanitation guidelines upon reentry. The pandemic has also significantly reduced the number of new migrants La 72 is seeing. This time of year, wed [normally]be receiving an average of 50 to 70 people per day, and in the last few weeks weve practically received no one, Marquez said. So for now, his main concern is for the migrants in detention centers around the country, whose precarious situation was recently demonstrated by the detention center fire in Tenosique. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement For people sitting at home wanting to help, Marquez recommends focusing on whats happening in our own communitiesrecognizing that migration is an interconnected chain and that the local (for example, how much money someone can earn to send back to their community) cascades into the global. Mexico City When the Casa de Acogida, Formacion y Empoderamiento de la Mujer Migrante y Refugiada, a migrant shelter in Mexico City, decided to enter into a quarantine in late March, there were 76 people housed in the shelter, among them newborns, children under 5, and some older people with medical conditions, said Omar Ortega, CAFEMINs coordinator of local integration and institutional partnerships. Those people were the minority, but theyre the ones at greatest risk. Advertisement We try to avoid this sort of mass panic among the people in the shelter, because that could be a time bomb. Omar Ortega The shelters decision to close its doors was motivated by the desire to protect the vulnerable people in its population. But it meant that residents with jobs outside the shelter (think things like food service, private security, cleaning, or administrative work, positions where if youre there, they pay you, and if youre not there, they dont) had to stop working. Now, the only people who can come and go are the 10 staff members and five nuns. Where possible, in order to limit exposure, theyve divided shifts so that a staff member stays in the shelter for an entire week before switching with someone else. (Some team members, because of personal risk, have stopped coming to the shelter at all. Others, because of family obligations, are coming to the shelter only a couple days a week.) On any given day, Ortega said, there are about five people working, with two of them being those on the weeklong shift. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Since entering into quarantine, the shelters population has dwindled down to about 55 people, Ortega said. Some people have left as part of migration processes (one family was relocated to Canada, for example), and CAFEMIN helped some residents find housing outside the shelter so they could continue to work. Advertisement Advertisement The shelter has done the best it can to keep residents informed and engaged, but the situation is fragile. We try to avoid this sort of mass panic among the people in the shelter, because that could be a time bomb, Ortega said. Our greatest ally in that is that [residents], in communication with their immediate networks, have seen the realities in other places. Talking with people in their home countries or places like the U.S., Ortega said, residents have witnessed firsthand the gravity of the pandemic and the actions being taken elsewhere to contain it. Advertisement For Ortega, one big concern is the situation of migrants left outside closed shelters, who may now be forced to live on the streeta problem that existed even before the pandemic. Tijuana The Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana decided in mid-March to cut its original maximum capacity of 160 residents to 80, and then, following national restrictions on gathering sizes, to 50. (Currently, the shelter has just under 50 residents.) To limit exposure, said the Rev. Pat Murphy, the shelters director, existing residents have to remain inside. The only exception to this rule is for the 17 residents currently working, who are allowed to leave the shelter for their jobs (with stricter sanitation measures upon reentry). Advertisement Advertisement In the past few weeks, the shelter has also hired a doctor, who works for four or five hours a day, five days a week. The doctor cares for current residents and gives preventive health talks, and is also in charge of examining any new people who come to the shelters door, determining whether its safe to admit them. But when we talked, Murphy told me few new people have come seeking admission to the shelter thus farjust two or three in the previous 10 days. Advertisement The shelter has 22 staff members, 16 of whom are working at home. The other sixwhose jobs, like laundry and purchasing supplies, cant be done from homeare working reduced hours. (Five full-time volunteers have also continued to work with Murphy from the shelter.) Advertisement I just cant keep everybody at home. Somebody has to be here to work with the people, said Murphy, who has been trying to limit his contact in the complexs common areas, because he68 years old and with diabetesis particularly vulnerable to the virus. What keeps Murphy up at night is a simple question: What happens when it really hits, and people cant work, and people stay at home, and then people are hungry? he asks. Advertisement Advertisement Violence against migrants is already common. Murphy worries it could get even worse. A little over a week ago, one of the shelters residents was forced into a car at gunpoint while walking home from work, robbed of his cellphone, his documents, his jacket, and the about $30 in his possession. They were even going to take his shoes, but he convinced them not to, Murphy said. And then they beat him up. So Im afraid this will become the new norm. Advertisement Were in a moment of crisis, and for many migrants and the organizations that serve them, concerns are immediate. But those concerns stem from larger, more systematic problemsproblems with the way we treat certain migrants and the existing conditions that transform migration, for many, from what should be a choice to what becomes a last resort. I keep going back to a worry Ortega shared with me: the idea that, once we get through the pandemic, there will be no meaningful change in governments policies toward migrant populations. If that happens, the burden to provide access to basic services like health care and housing will continue to fall on organizations like his. I think that if when this is over, we return to the same, particularly talking about mobility, migration, refugees, if no action is taken that has a subsequent effect, then it will have been for nothing, he said. It will be like Yes, an emergency, yes, its over now, yes, how awfulbut nothing else. That would worry me a lot. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. The moon rises over Joshua trees inside Joshua Tree National Park, (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Joshua trees face the risk of extinction after decades of development, drought and more frequent wildfires due to climate change in their Mojave Desert stronghold, according to state wildlife authorities who are recommending that the trees be considered for listing as an endangered species. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife on Monday said it based its recommendation on a review of a petition submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity, which argues that the western Joshua trees spindly desert woodlands are "likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future" without protection under the California Endangered Species Act. The fate of Joshua Tree National Parks namesake plant is now in the hands of the state Fish and Game commissioners. They are to decide in June whether to accept the departments recommendation and declare the tree a candidate for listing. If the trees are listed, the law requires state wildlife managers to devise a recovery plan for them, which could limit development on some of Southern Californias sunniest real estate. A final decision is expected sometime next year. Public announcement of the department's recommendation was delayed several days due to a teleconference with the commissioners on Thursday that descended into chaos after they were overwhelmed by hundreds of angry anglers participating in the call. Many of the critics who labeled the commissioners "fascists" and shouted make fishing great again! mistakenly believed they aimed to cancel the entire fishing season statewide. Conservationists see Mondays announcement as a triumph of state environmental law. Critics, however, describe it as misguided overreach because Joshua trees are already protected under many city and county ordinances, and within the 800,000-acre national park. Were elated that Joshua trees are a step closer to protection, said Brendan Cummings, the centers conservation director and a resident of the community of Joshua Tree. We urge the state to finalize these protections quickly so Joshua trees can survive and thrive in California for generations to come. Story continues But the prospect of offering more protection to Joshua trees concerns some residents in struggling high desert communities such as Yucca Valley, about 10 miles northwest of the main entrance to the national park. The town of 21,000 residents, which sits along California 62 about 25 miles north of Palm Springs, has a median household income of about $45,200, compared with about $60,100 countywide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In my opinion, Joshua trees are as majestic as redwoods, said Bob Armstrong, a real estate broker and resident of Yucca Valley for 40 years. But it would be ridiculous to make it tougher than it already is for citizens to move a Joshua tree in order to improve their property by, say, building a swimming pool. Local jurisdictions in Joshua tree habitat that currently have plant protection ordinances include Hesperia, Palmdale, Victorville, Yucca Valley and Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. The petition argues, however, that existing state laws and ordinances that require permits to harvest or sell native desert plants may help protect individual trees but are largely inadequate at protecting the species from habitat loss. In addition, since Joshua trees are not listed as threatened or endangered species, it is uncertain whether the potential environmental effects of a large-scale development or highway project would be adequately mitigated, the petition says. Researchers for decades have warned that time is running out for the trees, which reach about 40 feet in height and live about 200 years. Many desert species rely on the trees' blossoms, roots, inner chambers and decaying husks to complete their life cycles: yucca moths, bobcats, termites, skipper butterflies, desert night lizards, kangaroo rats and 20 species of birds, including Scott's orioles, ladder-backed woodpeckers and great horned owls. Recent studies show the trees range is contracting at lower elevations, and its reproduction has all but come to halt. Joshua trees were once dispersed across landscapes with help from ancient pack rats and elephant-size giant ground sloths, a finding based on the abundance of seeds found in fossilized dung. But these sloths went extinct about 10,000 years ago, taking away the tree's Johnny Appleseed. Today, rodents are its main agents of seed dispersal. Beyond their ecological value, Joshua trees are cultural mainstays for movies, fashion shoots, advertising campaigns and wedding ceremonies. The tree was named for the biblical figure Joshua by a band of Mormons traveling through the Cajon Pass back to Utah in 1857. They imagined the trees as prophets, their outstretched limbs pointing the way to their promised land. During the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Joshua trees were replaced by development in desert boom towns. Many more were removed later to make way for transmission lines and renewable energy facilities. In the 1990s, heavy rains triggered explosive growth of exotic grasses throughout Southern Californias desert regions. Feeding off nitrogen-laden smog wafting in from the Los Angeles area, the grasses left Joshua tree forests vulnerable to large-scale brush fires. Now, the trees are failing to reproduce at hotter, drier lower elevations and scientists project they could become functionally extinct in California by the end of the century. Prolonged droughts, which are expected to occur with greater frequency and intensity over the coming decades, will lead to higher death rates for mature Joshua trees, scientists say. The western Joshua tree is one of two genetically distinct species that occur in California. It has a boomerang-shaped range that extends from the national park westward along the northern slopes of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains, northward along the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada and eastward to the edges of Death Valley National Park. About 40% of the western Joshua trees range is on private land where state endangered species law would apply, according to the petition, and includes the cities of Palmdale, Lancaster, Hesperia, Victorville and Yucca Valley. The eastern Joshua trees range in California is centered in the Mojave National Preserve and eastward into Nevada. Unfortunately, federal wildlife and public land managers are doing little to address the realities of climate change," Cummings said. "If the Joshua tree is to survive in California, it is essential that the state step in and lead recovery efforts before its too late. Advertisement Dominic Raab tonight confirmed the UK's coronavirus lockdown will remain in place for the foreseeable future and warned Britain is yet to hit the peak of the outbreak as official statistics showed a further 717 deaths. The First Secretary of State, who continues to deputise for Boris Johnson while the PM recovers from his fight with the disease, said there were now 'positive signs that we are starting to win this struggle, but we've still got a long way to go'. The latest death toll figures took the overall UK number of victims to 11,329 but the daily total of fatalities has now dropped for three days in a row for the first time since the epidemic began. Speaking at the daily coronavirus press conference in Downing Street, Mr Raab described the figures as 'grisly' as he said Britain was 'still not past the peak of this virus' and the government could therefore not ease social distancing measures. Earlier, Mr Raab was gazumped by Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, who revealed at lunchtime that the UK was likely to extend the lockdown in what was the latest example of the SNP leader moving before Number 10 during the outbreak. Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance added that this week would be 'difficult' and that he expects the daily numbers of deaths to increase before they plateau, continue to plateau for some time and then, eventually, start to fall. Today's figures come after Britain yesterday became only the fifth country to pass the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths - the only other countries to declare this have been the US, Italy, Spain and France. NHS England said its 667 hospital victims announced today were aged between 17 and 101, and 40 of them had no existing health problems, the youngest of whom was 37 years old. The death toll today is a drop on yesterday and the lowest figure since Monday last week, but a pattern has emerged of fatalities falling on Sundays and Mondays and then surging later in the week, so it should not be interpreted as a definite trend. Government scientists have said they expect the number of deaths being reported each day to keep rising until the peak of the country's epidemic has passed. Numbers of new cases and hospitalisations will fall before deaths do. It takes days or even weeks for a fatality to be put on record, so if the country is in the peak of its outbreak now - as was predicted in the lead-up to Easter - death numbers are unlikely to drop significantly for at least another week. In other coronavirus news: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been confirmed to have tested negative for COVID-19 - he had been proven to be virus-free before being discharged from St Thomas' Hospital and is now recovering at Chequers, his official home in Buckinghamshire; Statistics show one in seven people hospitalised with the coronavirus in the UK will die, and survival odds in intensive care are 50/50; China has diagnosed 108 new coronavirus cases today. The number is the country's highest for more than five weeks and more than 90 per cent of them have been diagnosed in travellers from other nations; France's president, Emmanuel Macron, said France must prepare for its lockdown to last 'well into May'; NHS staff may have to start giving people over the age of 65 'scores' based on their health to determine where they sit on the waiting list for intensive care if units become overloaded; Former Bank of England governor, Lord Mervyn King, said he was 'worried' that only 4,200 companies in the UK have been given crisis loans compared to 725,000 companies in the US; Millions of people in Spain have been allowed to return to work as the country eases its lockdown just days after it was at the centre of one of the world's fastest growing COVID outbreaks. Today's Government briefing was given by chief medical adviser, Professor Chris Whitty (left); Foreign Secretary and stand-in Prime Minister, Dominic Raab (middle); and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance (right). The trio said there are promising signs that the UK's lockdown is working but it was too soon to say for sure, and people must continue to stay at home The lockdown measures have now been in place for almost three weeks and Mr Raab said government experts will now assess the latest data on the outbreak in the coming days before presenting their findings to ministers. A Cobra meeting is then expected to be held on Thursday when a final decision on an extension will be made. Speaking at today's press conference, Mr Raab said: 'This week SAGE [Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies] will review the evidence of the effectiveness of the social distancing measures that we have taken and we will consider their assessment based on the evidence at that point. 'I should say we dont expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place at that point and we wont until we are confident, as confident as we realistically can be, that any such changes can be safely made.' The de facto PM added: 'Keep following the guidance to stay home, save lives and protect the NHS. 'If we let up now, the virus will only take full advantage. It will spread faster and it will kill more people. 'If we refuse to give in to it, if we keep up this incredible team effort, we will beat this virus and we will come through this national test.' Today marks the first time in a month that the majority of announced deaths have not been in London, with the Midlands counting 170 compared to 158 in the capital. Outside of those two regions, the North West recorded 102 more victims, the East of England 83, North East & Yorkshire 79, the South East 48 and the South West 27. Ms Sturgeon had said there are 'optimistic signs' the coronavirus lockdown is working but that restrictions must continue to prevent the outbreak spiralling out of control. She said in a briefing earlier today: 'There are early optimistic signs that the steps we are taking are working but until we know more, until we have solid evidence, we must stick with it.' Ms Sturgeon's comments were echoed by a University of Oxford professor who said the fact that the figures represent both a weekend and a bank holiday was cause for caution about pinning high hopes to them. The number of people being diagnosed with the coronavirus each day appears to be plateauing - after hitting a high of 5,903 on April 5 it has not reached that level again despite more widespread testing Professor James Naismith said: 'Although the number of deaths in hospital announced today is lower than would have been expected were deaths still following an exponential pattern, the bank holiday and the weekend could have exacerbated the known volatility in these numbers. 'We will have to see further data before making any firm judgement as to trends. 'There are inevitable and variable delays between deaths and the report of their deaths which also make it very hard to judge the peak number of daily deaths for the UK for the first wave until we have gone past the peak. 'I expect that hospital admissions will continue to show social distancing is now clearly reducing the number of infections. We should remember that the number of deaths will increase as the deaths in care home and wider community are added. These are harder to measure quickly but are of course just as tragic. 'We are, I hope, approaching the peak of the first wave of COVID-19 but this is going to be marathon not a sprint.' The number of people being hospitalised with the coronavirus appears to be levelling off, data presented by the Government shows. Experts said hospitalisations would be one of the first statistics to plateau when the peak of the outbreak was reached EUROPE ON LOCKDOWN: GERMANY UNDER PRESSURE AS SPAIN RETURNS TO WORK BUT FRANCE PREPARES TO EXTEND QUARANTINE Coronavirus lockdowns are in different stages of progress across Europe, with many countries putting strict measures in place before the UK did and now emerging at different speeds. Here is the latest: SPAIN Spain is starting to return to work today as non-essential workers such as factory and construction personnel were allowed to resume their jobs after a two-week ban. Police were handing out millions of masks at Spanish metro stations today as some people returned to work, although the wider coronavirus lockdown remains in force. The people returning today include metalworkers, builders, cleaners, factory and shipyard workers and people involved in sanitation and security. One construction union said the resumption in the materials, wood and furniture industries would lead to at least 1.7million people returning to work, although today is a public holiday in some regions of Spain. The two-week 'hibernation' of non-essential business was imposed on March 30, making the lockdown even tougher than in Britain where people have always been able to travel if they cannot work from home. There was further encouragement for Spain today as the number of new cases fell to 3,477, the fewest since March 20. The daily death toll also dropped back to 517 after jumping sharply to 619 yesterday. FRANCE President Emmanuel Macron is today expected to warn France its lockdown to combat the coronavirus must go on for several more weeks at least, while also outlining how the country will recover from the crisis. At just after 8pm tonight, Macron will give his third prime-time televised address to the nation on the epidemic from the Elysee palace in Paris. In his last, he announced the nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the virus from March 17. This speech will come after the first indications of a tentative easing of the crisis in France and that the lockdown is starting to have an effect, with the epidemic starting to plateau, albeit at a high level. Yesterday's death toll of 561 marked a fourth successive day of decline, although France's figures have been highly erratic with data from nursing homes only partially included. GERMANY German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing pressure to ease the lockdown and reopen schools as the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths in the country continues to fall. Germany reported 2,537 new cases marking the third consecutive day of decline. The country saw 4,133 new diagnoses on Saturday and 2,821 on Sunday with the total number of infected hitting 123,016. The death toll is also on its third day of decline after it rose by 126 to 2,799. The promising figures follow shocking reports that groups of thugs attacked German police with iron bars and threw stones when the officers tried to disperse them. The groups were breaking Germany's strict lockdown rules in Frankfurt on Friday. One group member broke the window of a police car after throwing a stone at it when an officer got out to ask them to leave. Another group of 20 attacked an officer just moments later while wielding stones, roof tiles and iron bars, Deutsche Welle reported. ITALY, DENMARK & AUSTRIA Italy will allow bookshops, stationery shops and stores selling children's clothes to re-open tomorrow in the first loosening of Europe's longest lockdown. In Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday, allowing some parents to return to work. Austria will start to loosen restrictions from Tuesday, with non-essential stores smaller than 1.5 tennis courts (4,300sq feet) allowed to reopen, along with hardware stores and garden centres, Deutsche Welle reported. Other larger businesses and restaurants will have to wait until May to get back into business. Advertisement There had been fears in the government that people would start to break the stay at home rules over the current bank holiday weekend due to the sunny weather and so-called 'crisis fatigue' potentially setting in. But, in a video recorded after his discharge from hospital yesterday, a recovering Mr Johnson said he had been amazed by how well people had stuck to the social distancing measures. He admitted the NHS had saved his life and said: 'It's hard to find the words to express my debt - but before I come to that I want to thank everyone in the entire UK for the effort and the sacrifice you have made and are making. 'When the sun is out and the kids are at home; when the whole natural world seems at its loveliest and the outdoors is so inviting, I can only imagine how tough it has been to follow the rules on social distancing 'I thank you because so many millions and millions of people across this country have been doing the right thing - millions going through the hardship of self-isolation - faithfully, patiently, with thought and care for others as well as for themselves. 'I want you to know that this Easter Sunday I do believe that your efforts are worth it, and are daily proving their worth. 'Because although we mourn every day those who are taken from us in such numbers, and though the struggle is by no means over, we are now making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus. 'A fight we never picked against an enemy we still dont entirely understand. We are making progress in this national battle because the British public formed a human shield around this countrys greatest national asset - our National Health Service.' Mr Johnson was confirmed to be virus-free before he left St Thomas' Hospital on Sunday, Downing Street said today, and he will now recover in the Prime Minister's official country home, Chequers, in Buckinghamshire. He has travelled there with his pregnant fiancee, Carrie Symonds, who has also recovered from the virus, albeit milder symptoms, and their dog Dilyn. Number 10 said the PM spoke to Mr Raab 'over the course of the weekend'. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said at lunchtime that Mr Johnson is 'not immediately returning to work' and that he will be 'guided by the advice of his doctors'. The Cabinet is divided on when the premier should return to work and some senior ministers are already said to be pushing for him to be involved in the decision - expected on Thursday - on whether the UK's lockdown will be extended. An extension of the social distancing restrictions had been viewed as a formality but the duration is still up for discussion with some adamant it must be Mr Johnson's decision. However, medical experts have warned the PM must not return to work too soon or he could risk a relapse. Some MPs have expressed concerns about asking someone who has only just come out of intensive care to make major decisions, insisting he must be 'firing on all cylinders' when he does come back. Only the sickest patients are admitted to intensive care and audits of NHS units have found that survival in the units is no better than 50/50. Mr Johnson himself admitted that at times he felt he 'could have gone either way'. Although he never had to be ventilated - a sign of life-threatening illness - Mr Johnson was seriously ill and required round-the-clock care for at least 48 hours during his darkest period. Statistics show that one in every seven people with COVID-19 in UK hospitals will die of the disease, while the death rate in ICU is more like 52 per cent. Up until yesterday, Britain had recorded 10,612 deaths from COVID-19 in NHS hospitals out of a total of around 75,774 inpatients - a death rate of 14 per cent. Reports from intensive care units (ICU) show the death rate for critically ill patients, many of whom need ventilators, is considerably higher at 51.6 per cent. Thousands of COVID-19 patients in British hospitals end up in intensive care, and the most common life-threatening problem they face is lung failure in which the body cannot draw enough oxygen into the blood. Patients also suffer shock and heart or kidney failure in up to a third of cases, scientists have found. Since March 12, when the Government stopped routinely testing people outside of hospitals, some 75,774 hospital patients have tested positive for the coronavirus and 10,602 have died, leading to a death rate of 13.99 per cent. Wales is being hit harder by the coronavirus than Scotland and Northern Ireland, figures suggest, with nearly one in 600 people being diagnosed with the virus This is not a true reflection of how deadly the virus is because hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Britons are expected to have caught it and got only a mild illness, recovering at home as if they had the flu. Experts, including scientists at Imperial College London and Professor Chris Whitty, the Government's chief medical adviser, expect the true fatality rate to be below one per cent if the real number of infected people is ever counted. While the vast majority of hospital patients can recover with just support to manage their symptoms or treatment for other infections, some need intensive care. According to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC), there was information available for 3,883 COVID-19 ICU admissions up to Thursday, April 9. Of those patients, 871 had died and 818 had been discharged alive, meaning more than half (51.6 per cent) of the people whose hospital treatment had ended had not survived. 108 NEW CASES IN CHINA SPARK FEARS OF A SECOND WAVE China has recorded 108 new coronavirus cases, marking its highest daily tally for more than five weeks and fanning fears of a second wave. More than 90 per cent of these infected people entered the country from abroad after the country lifted its travel restrictions earlier this month. The northeastern border with Russia has quickly become an access point for the virus to enter, and a frontline in the fight against a resurgence of the coronavirus epidemic. China has now closed all entry and exit points on its 2,670 mile border with Russia after cases began creeping up in the nearby city of Suifenhe. China has recorded 108 new coronavirus cases, marking the highest daily tally for more than five weeks and fanning fears of a second wave Elsewhere, authorities have been slowly easing curbs on movement as it tries to get its economy back on track, including in Wuhan, where the coronavirus first emerged. But officials are treading a fine line between granting more freedom of movement and guarding against a second wave of infections. Figures coming from China suggest the country has largely stamped out domestic transmission of the disease. But it has been accused of covering up the true scale of its epidemic and lying about key information during virtually every stage of its coronavirus response. The 108 new cases reported on Sunday are up from 99 a day earlier, marking the highest daily tally since March 5. Cases shot up by 143 on March 5, but have been dwindling ever since, reaching a record low of 11 new cases on March 13. The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 82,160 as of Sunday, and 3,341 people have died. On the worst day of China's outbreak, on February 12, there were over 15,000 new cases recorded after officials changed the way data was recorded. Though the number of daily infections across China has dropped sharply from that peak, China has seen daily new cases creep up again. It's largely been blamed on international travel. Imported cases accounted for a record 98 of the 108 reported on Sunday. Half involved Chinese nationals returning from Russia's Far Eastern Federal District, home to the city of Vladivostok. One resident of Suifenhe, named only as Zhu, said: 'Our little town here, we thought it was the safest place. 'Some Chinese citizens - they want to come back, but it's not very sensible, what are you doing coming here for?' Advertisement Most of them - 2,194 people - were still in hospital at the time the report was published. Of people who required ventilators - life-support machines which pump air into the lungs when they stop working by themselves - only around one in three survive their stay in hospital. Commenting on the high fatality rate for those needing lung support, intensive care medicine at the University of Oxford, Professor Duncan Young, said: 'The relative ineffectiveness of artificial ventilation might suggest that COVID-19 causes a particularly treatment-resistant form of pneumonitis. 'It is also possible that in some patients COVID-19 is causing multi-organ failure of which the respiratory failure is the presenting problem but may not always be the cause of death but there are no data on this yet.' Analysis of UK COVID-19 statistics has revealed that Wales is being hit twice as hard by the coronavirus as Scotland and Northern Ireland are. The UK's second smallest nation has almost double the number of infections per person, compared with the other home nations outside of England. As of yesterday, a total of 5,610 people out of Wales' 3.1million population had been diagnosed with the life-threatening infection. It means more than one in 600 people have caught the virus in Wales, compared to one in 1,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Even England - the centre of Britain's crisis, with more than 10,000 deaths and most of the cases - has a smaller infection rate than Wales, with roughly one in 900 people catching the disease. Experts say Wales' close proximity to England, as well as a more stringent testing regime, are probably behind the heightened infection rate. Despite having a population of 5.5million - far greater than Wales - Scotland has recorded 6,067 cases, just 400 more. A total of 1,882 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus in Northern Ireland, which has a population of 1.9million. The true number of infections is likely to be higher in all of the UK because only patients hospitalised with severe symptoms are being tested. Experts say Wales' high infection rate could seem higher than the rest of the UK because the country is testing more people per population. Or it may be that Wales is suffering more imported cases from England, which is bearing the brunt of the pandemic in the UK. Wales is testing roughly one in 150 people compared to England, which is screening approximately one in 200 people, Scotland, one in 175. Northern Ireland is testing the most amount of people per capita - with roughly one in 140 people getting a swab. Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases professor at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline: 'It may reflect different testing strategies in Wales... Or the Welsh really do have a higher risk of contracting the infection. 'Possibility one is certainly plausible especially if testing was not done as often due to pressure of patients in London where the major risk was occurring which would suppress the England figures as a whole. 'If possibility two is correct then I am struggling to explain why. Explanations could include things like people importing the infection from England. 'Or just even London (with an infection rate of 1.9 per 1,000) - if many of the "London Welsh" returned home early in the epidemic or if visitors looking for their last trip went to Wales. Alternately people and families mixing more in Wales after the outbreak.' Boris Johnson is given 'all clear' from coronavirus as he is spotted walking with Carrie and Dilyn the dog in Chequers garden - as No10 reveals he has ALREADY been in contact with Dominic Raab but insists he is not 'immediately returning to work' Boris Johnson tested negative for coronavirus before he was released from hospital, Downing Street confirmed today, as the Prime Minister starts his road to recovery at his Chequers country estate. Number 10 said the PM spoke to Dominic Raab 'over the course of the weekend' with the First Secretary of State continuing to deputise for Mr Johnson. The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said at lunchtime that Mr Johnson is 'not immediately returning to work' and that he will be 'guided by the advice of his doctors'. Mr Johnson was today spotted walking in the grounds of Chequers with his partner Carrie Symonds and pet dog Dilyn. The Cabinet is divided on when the premier should return to work given that he is under strict doctors' orders to rest at his grace and favour home in Buckinghamshire. Some senior ministers are already said to be pushing for him to be involved in the decision - expected on Thursday - on whether the UK's lockdown will be extended. An extension of the social distancing restrictions is viewed as a formality but the duration is still up for discussion with some adamant it must be Mr Johnson's decision. However, medical experts have warned the PM must not return to work too soon or he could risk a relapse. Some MPs have expressed concerns about asking someone who has only just come out of intensive care to make major decisions, insisting he must be 'firing on all cylinders' when he does come back. The updates on the PM's condition came amid warnings that the UK's GDP could crash by up to 30 per cent in the current quarter, potentially costing millions of jobs, because of coronavirus disruption. The decision on whether to lift lockdown restrictions in Britain is likely to draw heavily on the situation in Italy and Spain which appear to be past the peaks of their outbreaks and are tentatively starting to loosen their lockdowns. Boris Johnson, pictured delivering his Easter message yesterday after he was released from hospital, is now recovering at his Chequers country estate Mr Johnson is under strict doctors' orders to rest at the PM's grace and favour Buckinghamshire home Boris's long road to recovery? New study shows 70 per cent of intensive care patients suffer long-term health problems Most patients admitted to intensive care suffer long-term physical and mental health problems, scientists have claimed in a new study, as Boris Johnson begins his long road to recovery from coronavirus. Seven in ten ICU survivors end up with post intensive care syndrome, which can include fatigue, frailty, anxiety or difficulty holding a conversation, a Norwegian study found. Researchers said their findings are likely to apply to critically-ill COVID-19 patients. Mr Johnson's father Stanley revealed his son was so seriously ill at one point he 'almost took one for the team' - athough Downing Street has declined to say how seriously ill the Prime Minister was during his time in intensive care. But it comes amid fears the PM is preparing to rush back to work before he is fully fit - and as one senior Tory MP questioned the wisdom of involving him in key decisions so soon after his ICU battle. Other coronavirus sufferers in the UK have also revealed how the crippling illness left them weak, breathless and coughing even long after they had officially 'recovered'. Getting over the virus takes more than just waiting for the infection to heal, and people emerging from their ordeals say it left them totally beaten. The Prime Minister was moved from an intensive care unit back to a ward on Thursday night last week. He then spent two-and-a-half more days at St Thomas' Hospital in central London before he was allowed to leave yesterday. Downing Street confirmed he tested negative before he was released and went to his Chequers country estate to continue his recovery. The World Health Organization says a coronavirus patient can be discharged after two negative results taken 24 hours apart. Scientists say patients can recover as soon as their antibodies start to successfully fight the life-threatening infection, regardless of how ill they were. Antibodies are substances made by the immune system in response to an infection, and eventually destroy an invading pathogen. How well people recover from COVID-19 - a coronavirus that is closely related to the bug behind SARS - is not well understood yet. With many viral illnesses, such as measles, the body builds up immunity after it has been infected with them once, and this may last for a lifetime. Immunity means the body remembers how to fight a virus so well that it can destroy it before symptoms begin if someone catches the bug. Scientists are still not certain that people will develop total immunity to SARS-Cov-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, after they have had it. But the overwhelming belief is that people will not catch it twice, prompting hope of using antibody tests to work out who is immune. The fact that so few people appear to have fallen ill a second time appears to prove people only get ill once. Tests on monkeys have also backed the theory. Fears have been raised that people can be struck down twice after reports in China, South Korea and Japan of patients being reinfected. Some experts believe this was down to unreliable tests, while others say similar coronaviruses induce immunity for around three months. Advertisement The government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) will weigh up data relating to the lockdown and the spread of the disease in the coming days. A decision on extending the UK's restrictions is then due to be taken by Thursday this week - likely at a COBRA meeting - with the current measures now having been in place for almost three weeks. The lockdown has hobbled the UK economy and that is why some ministers believe it must be Mr Johnson who signs off on what happens next by dialling into discussions later on this week. One Cabinet source told The Telegraph: 'The prime minister has to take that decision. 'Any lockdown will have huge implications, and the PM will be responsible for it, so he's got to be the one taking that decision.' However, not everyone in the Cabinet agrees. Some ministers are of the view that First Secretary of State Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Mr Johnson, can take the decision without involving the PM. A source said: 'I don't think the Cabinet wants to be pulling the prime minister out of his recovery and risking him getting worse.' Downing Street said today that Mr Johnson is focusing on his recovery as the PM's spokesman also confirmed reports that the premier had tested negative for the deadly disease before he was released from hospital. Number 10 described the picturesque Chequers countryside retreat as a 'suitable place for the Prime Minister to continue his recovery'. Mr Johnson is not currently receiving his daily ministerial red box containing briefing papers from officials as Mr Raab continues to run the country. A new study has shown the majority of patients admitted to intensive care suffer long-term physical and mental health problems. Research found that seven in 10 ICU survivors end up with intensive care syndrome which can include fatigue, frailty, anxiety or difficulty holding a conversation. The findings, based on 1,300 people, are the first from an ongoing five-year study across hospitals in the Netherlands. Scientists believe the findings are likely to apply to critically ill coronavirus patients. A senior Tory MP questioned the wisdom of the PM potentially being involved in big decisions so soon after his ICU battle. The MP told MailOnline: 'There is a concern about that and I think that he has got to listen to medical advice. 'But subject to him listening to that medical advice I am pretty sure he will want to be the one to make that decision. 'Every report I have read from survivors indicates that it knocks them about tremendously so he does have to watch his own health.' The MP added: 'Irrespective of what the medics say he will probably want to be involved in that decision and to give the sign off on it. 'I think he understands the buck stops with him.' The World Health Organization says a coronavirus patient can be discharged after two negative results taken 24 hours apart. Scientists say patients can recover as soon as their antibodies start to successfully fight the life-threatening infection, regardless of how ill they were. Antibodies are substances made by the immune system in response to an infection, and eventually destroy an invading pathogen. Some ministers believe Dominic Raab, pictured in Whitehall today, can make the decision on extending lockdown and that Mr Johnson should focus on resting Survivors reveal how the crippling illness left them breathless and weak for weeks after recovery Coronavirus sufferers in the UK have revealed how the crippling illness left them weak, breathless and coughing even after they had recovered. More than 84,000 people have been officially diagnosed with the infection since Britain's outbreak began in February - 10,612 of them have died but many more have recovered. Getting over the virus takes more than just waiting for the infection to heal, however, and people emerging from their ordeals say it left them totally beaten. Dani Schuchman, a 40-year-old cyclist, said he no longer has the energy to go out on his bike and can only walk around 2.5miles at a time. Primary school teacher Brian Mephin, said in a breathless video he was 'wiped out' and even struggled to walk up the stairs after he was discharged from hospital. And a Manchester man known only as Andrew admitted he has been 'left breathless' after recovering from the illness. Recovering from the virus also takes a psychological toll on those who become seriously ill. Pregnant mother-of-three Karen Mannering said being hospitalised with COVID-19 was her 'darkest hours'. Advertisement Meanwhile, Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke told MailOnline those demanding Mr Johnson set a timetable for coming back needed to 'grow up' as he said the PM needs to be 'firing on all cylinders' before returning full time. 'I am just concerned that the PM takes the time he needs to recover,' he said. 'At the end of the day we now know he has been very, very seriously ill. He said himself it could have gone one way or the other. 'He doesn't need to rush back. He has got the entire support of the country behind him. People recognise how serious it was, how hard he was working.' The Conservative Party vice-chairman added that Mr Johnson should be taking it easy for 'at least a couple of weeks'. 'I think politicians who say 'what's going on' almost pushing the pressure for him to come back need to grow up a bit because the public want him to make a full recovery,' Mr Shelbrooke added. 'I don't want to see him rush back into things. I want to make sure he's OK.' Pressure is mounting on the government to lift at least some of the social distancing restrictions after it was reported that Mr Sunak is estimating the lockdown will have a massive impact on the economy. Deliveries of PPE from China 'faulty and wrongly labelled' Delivering lifesaving protective gear to frontline health staff has become 'hand to mouth', an NHS leader has revealed. The Government is airlifting in crates from China on a daily basis but some are being removed from planes before take-off by officials who want to test them. Other boxes are reaching the UK only for NHS officials to discover that they have been wrongly labelled. Rather than containing much needed protective gowns, they are filled with masks. Even worse, much of the kit from China the world's main supplier is unusable because it fails UK safety checks. The astonishing revelations come from Chris Hopson of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, ambulance services and mental health trusts. He said: 'It's all been a bit hand to mouth. 'The heart of the problem is that getting that stock that was ordered weeks ago from China is proving somewhat erratic.' He said China was the only country with access to the right materials and manufacturing capacity to produce protective equipment. More than 30 NHS staff are believed to have died from coronavirus and campaigners say some of the deaths were a direct result of a lack of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Advertisement The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) think-tank last week suggested 25 per cent of the UK economy could be lost by the summer due to the current controls. According to the Times, Mr Sunak has told colleagues the consequences could be even worse with GDP falling by a third in the second quarter. Experts have said it is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty how quickly the PM could make a full recovery. Duncan Young, professor of intensive care medicine at Oxford University, told The Times: 'No one knows how long it takes to fully recover from Covid-19 infections because as yet it has not been studied.' Meanwhile, Julian Tang, Honorary Associate Professor at the Department of Respiratory Sciences at the University of Leicester, said the speed of Mr Johnson's recovery would be largely dictated by his overall health. The PM was effectively 'stepped down' from ICU and then allowed to go to Chequers but there are fears a lack of rest could result in him having to be 'stepped up' again. Dr Tang said: 'There have been patients who later had to be stepped back up to intensive care again.' Mr Johnson said in a video statement released after he left hospital yesterday that the NHS 'has saved my life, no question'. The PM said he believed 'things could have gone either way' for him as he praised the nurses and doctors who treated him. 'We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country,' he said of the nation's ongoing coronavirus battle. 'It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.' Europe goes back to work: Millions of Spaniards are allowed to resume their jobs after industrial lockdown is lifted Europe is beginning its return to work today as factories and construction sites re-open in Spain while Italy takes its first steps towards easing the lockdown. Police were handing out masks on Spanish metro trains today as some 'non-essential' workers were allowed to resume their activities after a two-week ban. Italy will allow bookshops, stationery shops and stores selling children's clothes to re-open tomorrow in the first loosening of Europe's longest lockdown, although most restrictions have been extended until May. Meanwhile in Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday, allowing some parents to return to work. Passengers keep their distance riding the metro in Madrid as non-essential workers are allowed back to work today Spain is lifting its ban on non-essential business despite concerns from some regional leaders and trade unions. The ban was stricter than in Britain, where people can still go to work if they cannot work from home during the lockdown. The people returning today include sanitary, security and telecommunications workers, customs officials and those involved in gas and electricity supplies. They and their companies will have to adhere to strict regulations to make sure they don't get infected by the virus. Non-essential workers had been sent home on March 30 but the Spanish government has not extended the measure despite a surge in new deaths yesterday. Another 619 deaths were announced on Sunday, 109 more than on Saturday, putting an end to three days of declining deaths. It brought the country's coronavirus death toll to 16,972, the third-highest in the world after the United States and Italy. A 26-year-old Somerville man faces charges after authorities said he fatally stabbed a man as the two fought Saturday night. In a release, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said Washington Assis-Rodrigues, was taken into custody Saturday night near the scene of the stabbing and he was with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury. The victim, 27-year-old Kesner Junior Lubin, also of Somerville, died shortly after he was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital. Lubin and Assis-Rodrigues were having a verbal dispute outside an apartment complex on Alewife Brook Parkway in Somerville when the dispute became physical. Rodrigues allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed Lubin. Assis-Rodrigues remained at the scene of the altercation and was taken into custody by police. He will be arraigned in Somerville District Court Monday. San Francisco Police busted an alleged speakeasy operating in an industrial part of the Bayview neighborhood. Above is a clip of surveillance video that the city attorney's office says shows more than 150 people going in and out of the building. Not only is there a shelter-in-place mandate in San Francisco, the building apparently isn't permitted as a nightclub nor up to fire safety standards for that kind of use. From SFGate: Over the weekend, officers from SFPD's tactical unit and the Bayview Station seized "DJ equipment, two fog machines, nine gambling machines with $670 in cash inside, two pool tables, bins of liquor, cases of beer, bar furniture, and other nightclub-related items[] According to court documents, the building tenant who has been allegedly operating the club told the property owner that he was using the building for storage. Police are also separately investigating a report of shots fired inside the building on March 15. In line with its commitment to the health and well-being of Nigerians especially during this challenging period of the COVID-19, TG Arla Dairy Products LFTZ Enterprise, makers of Dano Milk has announced an intervention worth N150 Million Naira to support the efforts of the Federal Government of Nigeria in combating the spread of the global pandemic. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers in supporting them to stay healthy and safe during this period. According to the Managing Director of the company, Peder Pedersen, this gesture is in line with the philosophy of the company especially during a period like this. Pedersen commended the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and most importantly the health workers who are at the forefront of efforts aimed at containing and managing the spread of the virus. Pedersen disclosed that the 100 Million Naira donation by the company would be disbursed through Tolaram group to the private coalition committee established by the Central Bank of Nigeria to raise funds from the private sector to fight the pandemic. As part of the private corporate organizations operating in Nigeria, we are pleased to support the Federal Government and Nigerians during this very challenging period , he said. Also speaking, the Head of Marketing, Ifunanya Obiakor explained that about 50,000 households would benefit from the donation of the 50 Million Naira worth of products. She disclosed that the Lagos food bank initiative would be used in distributing the products directly to the consumers not leaving out border towns like Badagry and the inhabitants of Lekki free trade zone where its factory is located. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers. The intervention includes a donation of N100 million through Tolaram group to the Private sector coalition fund and distribution of N50 million worth of products free to its consumers. Obiakor stated that the company is deeply concerned about the well-being of Nigerians at this particular trying period especially with certain cities under lockdown and people forced to stay at home. She added As one of the food companies offering essential products to the populace and exempted from the Lockdown order, critical measures are in place to ensure that in compliance with the WHO and local regulations, operations are ongoing in order to deliver our nutritious products to the Nigerian consumers. READ ALSO: She further stressed that the company has also embarked on an enlightenment and awareness campaign to educate consumers on Covid-19 based on WHO guidelines for safety at this period using its website and brand-owned social media platforms. About TG Arla & Dano TG Arla Dairy Products LFTZ enterprise is a joint venture business between Tolaram Group, the Singapore-based business conglomerate behind several household brands in Nigeria and Arla Foods of Denmark. Dano Milk, a premium milk brand in Nigeria is available in different product ranges; Flavoured Milk (Chocolate and Strawberry), Plain Milk Powder (Full cream, skimmed and filled milk), Ultra High Temperature (UHT) Milk and Dano VitaKids. Other products sold by TG Arla include Arla salted and unsalted butter, Spreadable butter, Cooking cream, Whipping Cream, Burger Slices, Sandwich slices, Cheesy Spread and Mozzarella. It is rightly said that superheroes dont wear capes. Given the situation we are in today, staying at home and staying safe has turned everybody into a superhero. While you are doing your part, &pictures is all set to keep you company along with the neighborhood superhero as it airs the Hindi Television Premiere of Spiderman: Far From Home. Directed by Jon Watts, the movie showcases how Peter Parker finds himself in a whirlwind of situation as he uncovers the mystery of the Elementals. Starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Spider-Man, alongside an ensemble cast comprising of Samuel L. Jackson, Zendaya, Cobie Smulders and Jake Gyllenhaal, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming will have its Hindi Television Premiere on Tuesday, 14th April 2020 at 11:30 am. Spiderman: Far From Home is considered to be the first highest grossing Spiderman film worldwide. The movie revolves around Peter who is still reeling with the thought that his mentor Tony Stark is no more, takes a break from his superhero duties and goes on a school trip to Europe along with his classmates. However, his plans are scrapped as a major threat follows him as the Elementals, a group of giant creatures from another dimension of Earth spells destruction across continent. Thinking about what his mentor would do in this given situation, Peter steps up to take on these new threats and join forces with Nick Fury to uncover this mystery and save the world. To see how Spider-man will save the day, tune into &pictures to watch the Hindi Television Premiere of Spiderman: Far From Home on 14th April at 11:30 am. Oil benchmarks surged in early Asian trade, with WTI climbing nearly eight percent and Brent up five percent Hong Kong: Asia markets fell Monday with investors cautious on news of an international deal to shore up oil prices and tentative signs of progress in efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic. OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia thrashed out a compromise deal on Sunday to cut production by nearly 10 million barrels per day from May. Oil benchmarks surged in early Asian trade, with WTI climbing nearly eight percent and Brent up five percent before lunch. The rally followed months of slumping prices after the COVID-19 outbreak sapped demand as countries around the world have put their populations under lockdown. A Saudi-Russian price war also saw the ramping up of production as both countries bid to hold on to market share and undercut US shale producers. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic" in size but analysts said the measures may not go far enough to secure a long-term rebound. "There remain concerns the agreement could be a day late and a 'barrel short' to prevent a decline in prices in the coming weeks as storage capacity brims," said AxiCorp chief market strategist Stephen Innes. Investors are waiting for signs that the world is winning the battle against the disease, which has now infected more than 1.8 million people and claimed more than 112,500 lives globally. The weekend saw glimmers of hope that the crisis may have peaked in some of the hardest-hit countries. Tokyo was down 0.8 percent in early trade, while Shanghai fell 0.2 percent and Singapore fell 0.1 percent. Hong Kong, Sydney and Wellington were closed for a public holiday. More whirlwind sessions are likely this week, with new economic data to reveal the extent of the economic havoc unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic on the world's top two economies. Analysts are predicting S&P 500 companies to report a drop in profits ranging from six to 15 percent, with worse declines in the second quarter. A healthcare worker collects a swab sample of a man for COVID-19 test from the swab collection booth during the nationwide lockdown in the wake of coronavirus pandemic, in Vijayawada. (PTI) Amaravati: Showing no signs of abating, the COVID-19 cases continued their upward trend in Andhra Pradesh, adding 12 since Sunday night and taking the overall tally to 432. Guntur district has now taken the top spot in the state with 90 cases, with the addition of eight since Sunday night, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Health Department on Monday. Kurnool district has now fallen to second place with 84 cases. Guntur and Kurnool districts had the largest number of delegates who attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi last month. Overnight, two cases were added in Chittoor district and one each in Krishna and West Godavari. With 12 patients discharged and seven deaths in the state so far, the number of active cases touched 413, according to the bulletin. So far, since the coronavirus outbreak, a total of 8,755 blood samples were tested in AP of which 8,323 turned negative. At 432, the percentage of positive cases was 4.9, according to the COVID-19 dashboard. China on April 8 issued a circular calling for intensified detection and prompt responses to people infected with the novel coronavirus but who show no symptoms. Zeng Guang, a member of the National Health Commission's senior-level expert panel and chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, recently received an interview with Peoples Daily Online, in which he addressed the most pressing questions surrounding asymptomatic infections. Zeng noted that asymptomatic infections had already been brought under effective management by the third edition of the Protocol for Prevention and Control of COVID-19, and this circular further tightens control over this group. Asymptomatic cases have always existed, and management of this group has become our priority in epidemic prevention and control as the general situation evolves, he noted. The circular divided asymptomatic infections into two categories. The first one includes those who do not develop any symptoms after 14 days of quarantine, and the second is the group which is only asymptomatic during the incubation period. According to the circular, asymptomatic carriers are still infectious and pose a risk of spreading the virus to others. However, they are less infectious than those with symptoms, Zeng said. Responding to concerns that the coronavirus will be transmitted by carriers in Wuhan after the city ended its lockdown, Zeng told Peoples Daily Online that he sees very little possibility of this happening, and people should not be worried about this. However, he said this possibility cannot be totally ignored, as knowledge of this virus is still lacking, and people should be prepared for special occurrences. Further research and observation is required to find out if asymptomatic carriers will bring a resurgence of the pandemic and how long that might last, he added. He stressed that the stricter management over the asymptomatic group indicates the attention the government is paying to the issue, and that there is no need to panic. Zeng reminded people to remain cautious and maintain healthy habits developed during the pandemic, such as frequent hand-washing, wearing masks, social distancing, maintaining good indoor ventilation, and avoiding congregating. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 22:03:45|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China on Monday said it appreciates Russia's objective and fair stance concerning the World Health Organization (WHO), and is willing to work with the international community, including Russia, to support the WHO's leading role in global anti-pandemic cooperation. According to media reports, the Russian Foreign Ministry on Sunday said Russia sees U.S. accusations against the WHO as an attempt of Washington to shift responsibility for the epidemiological situation in the country, adding that such attempts were causing concerns. When commenting on the reports, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing that China had said many times that in the face of the serious threat posed by the coronavirus, the international community can only win the battle by establishing the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind and responding together with unity. "Countries should transcend ideological differences, refrain from peddling unfounded accusations and suspicions, and, in particular, avoid politicizing anti-pandemic cooperation, shifting blame, and projecting responsibilities and contradictions onto other countries," he said. Zhao said that since the outbreak of COVID-19, the WHO had maintained an objective, scientific and fair position and actively performed its duties. The organization has played an important role in assisting countries to respond to the pandemic and promote international cooperation in the anti-virus fight. He noted that recently, the UN Secretary General, many countries' leaders and heads of international organizations have expressed support for the WHO. A few days ago, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution by consensus, affirming the role of the WHO. "At present, the pandemic is spreading globally. The international community should be united and coordinate with each other to overcome our common enemy COVID-19," said Zhao. A longtime San Antonio priest died on Easter Sunday after testing positive for COVID-19. Patrick Terence Nolan, 78, retired from active ministry in February following decades as a pastor and administrator at the Archdiocese of San Antonio. READ MORE: The latest news and features about coronavirus in San Antonio He had recently been diagnosed with viral pneumonia and later tested positive for the coronavirus, the archdiocese said in a statement. Nolan's cause of death is listed as natural causes, the archdiocese said. "We pray for his family and brother priests who are in mourning," said Auxiliary Bishop Michael Boulette. "May the blessing of our dear Lord bring comfort during this time of sorrow." A native of Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland, Nolan was ordained in Ireland in 1966 and came to San Antonio shortly thereafter. He served as a parochial vicar at a number of parishes, as well as pastor at St. Dominic, St. Joseph in Honey Creek and Our Lady of Grace. Nolan earned a degree in canon law from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. At a retirement celebration for Nolan in February, Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller said that while some priests retire when they actually retire, others continue to minister throughout the archidocese. "That will be the case for Msgr. Nolan, as he will continue to assist at Masses, as he has for many decades," said the archbishop. "I, and we, thank (Monsignor) Nolan for his fidelity and commitment; for spending his life in dedicated service of the Lord and His people." Funeral arrangements are pending and will respect all COVID-19 protocols, the archdiocese said, noting that larger memorials may be celebrated at a future date when social distancing restrictions are eased. The Border Security Force is undertaking massive mobilisation of logistics and sanitisation equipment along the Indian borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh to ensure that farmers, involved in tilling of fields across the fence, are protected from coronavirus during the upcoming harvesting season, officials said on Monday. The 553-kms long Punjab frontier of BSF, which has maximum farming lands along the Pakistan front that also runs across Jammu, Rajasthan and Gujarat, had distributed 3,000 face masks till now to villagers and those who go for tilling the land across the fence. Over 22,000 hand-made masks have been prepared by the wives welfare association of the force in the frontier. These masks will be distributed to the personnel, farmers and villagers in the coming days as the harvesting work will gather momentum from the next week, the officials said. "The distribution of masks will increase once farmers start moving ahead of the fencing for harvesting. BSF posts that man these gates are being sent adequate number of sanitisation items, masks and other logistical goods," a senior BSF officer said. The force, the officials said, has deployed trucks to transport digital thermometers, wooden tables, chairs and plastic tanks to erect hand sanitisation and wash points at various fence gates so that the farmers and other farm labourers can use them while entering and exiting the fields. The border fence is erected about 150 yards on the Indian side from the Indo-Pak international border and the farmers have to go to designated iron gates to access their fields. The Punjab frontier has about 400 such gates, of which about 180-200 gates, are opened for farmers in different shifts during peak harvesting or sowing season, the officer said, adding the agricultural equipment are also being sanitised. Some of these farming gates are also in Jammu, Rajasthan (over 50) and Gujarat (over 270), another official said. He, however, said those who cross over the fence will also be frisked as usual with a hand-held metal detector as these areas are vulnerable to narcotics and arms smuggling. Over two dozen awareness programs about the coronavirus pandemic have also been conducted by the BSF personnel in border villages, informing the residents about the importance of hygiene, physical distance between people and other medical protocols. Along the international border with Bangladesh, the security force has initiated similar measures to ensure that the virus, which has killed thousands and infected over 10 lakh people across the globe, does not spread among the farmers and those who live across the fence. Various units of the force are also running special camps providing cooked food, grains, pulses, rice, water and masks to the border population. At the Petrapole crossing at India-Bangladesh international border in West Bengal, the force has been providing food and other essentials everyday to truck drivers and their associates who have been stranded on the Indian side since the countrywide lockdown was declared, the officer said. In the South Bengal frontier of the force, which secures over 900 kms of the 3,096 km long border, there are about 450 fence gates. The North Bengal frontier has about 600 such gates, out of which about 300 are operational. Farmers are being provided with all COVID-19 related sanitisation materials before they go to their fields beyond the fence but before the international border, an officer of the force posted in the region said. Union Home Minister Amit Shah had also recently reviewed security measures at these two sensitive border fronts. He had directed the force to enhance vigil and ensure no cross-border movement takes places, especially in the non-fenced areas. The minister had also asked the force to spread coronavirus awareness among farmers by launching more and more civic action work. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Arrival of five foreign nationals at a locality in Assam Guwahati raised concerns among residents on Sunday night over fears of contracting coronavirus. The foreigners - three French, one Italian and one Spanish - had entered Assam from Manipur and had checked into a guest house in the Beltola area of the city. As soon as local residents came to know about it, they informed the Hatigaon police station. The police rushed a team to the spot and took them to the station and conducted their health check-up. Additional DGP (Law and Order) Assam Police, GP Singh, took to Twitter to inform that the foreign nationals reached Guwahati from Manipur and are on their way to Delhi. Urging the public not to panic, he added that the foreigners had completed their quarantine period in Manipur and they have approval from the external affairs ministry to travel to Delhi via Assam. 3 French, 1 Italian, 1 Spanish nationals have reached Guwahati, Assam from Manipur enroute Delhi. They have approval of ministry of external affairs to travel from Manipur to Delhi via Siliguri (West Bengal). They have completed their quarantine in Manipur. Theres no need to panic, he tweeted. According to reports, the foreign tourists had entered India via the Moreh border with Myanmar in Manipur prior to start of the 21-day lockdown. Sources said that Assam Police will take the foreigners by road to the Srirampur border with West Bengal and will hand them over to authorities of the neighbouring state. The total number of Covid-19 infected people reached 9,152 in India on Monday after 620 fresh cases were reported in the last 24 hours. The health ministry said that 35 more people died of the disease in the last 24 hours. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Lauren and Geung Kroeker-Lee with their two-year-old, Sula, and newborn, Lena, by their new house in Wolseley. Moscow restricts Easter week church service as coronavirus cases mount Vehicles spray disinfectant while sanitizing a road to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease in Moscow By Andrey Ostroukh and Dmitry Madorskiy MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Sunday reported 2,186 new coronavirus cases, the largest daily increase since the start of the outbreak, as authorities announced restrictions on Easter services to contain the spread of the disease. Moscow and many other regions have been in lockdown for nearly two weeks, but the number of cases reached 15,770 as of April 12, while deaths rose to 130. The Russian Orthodox Church, which observes Easter this year on April 19, ordered churches in and around Moscow to close their doors to large groups during the Holy Week leading up to the holiday. Moscow authorities also clamped down on those venturing outside without a reason, such as to buy food or medicine, get medical treatment, walk the dog or take out the rubbish. The capital issued 1,358 fines for breaking the rules on Saturday, its coronavirus crisis centre said. Around 3.5 million people in Moscow, a city of 12.5 million, left their homes for more that 6 hours on Friday, according to a track analysis of their cellphones, TASS news agency reported on Sunday, citing the crisis centre. Moscow is preparing to introduce digital permits next week to control movement to help enforce the lockdown. An increased number of traffic police accompanied by armed officers were checking cars heading into Moscow on Sunday, a Reuters witness said, and some drivers with non-Moscow plates were refused entry to the capital. Russia will not defeat the coronavirus in time to lift restrictions by May 9, when the capital normally hosts an annual military parade to celebrate victory in World War Two, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova told state TV. "Should we be disciplined, able to listen to ourselves and those recommendations applied today, then we'll successfully get out of this situation and will shake each others' hands by the summer," Golikova said in an interview released on Sunday. (Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh, Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Peter Graff, Katya Golubkova and Giles Elgood) KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) The Taliban announced Sunday it will be releasing 20 Afghan government prisoners the group has been holding, in the first phase of its commitment under its historic peace deal with the United States. The deal calls for the government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 government officials held by the Taliban insurgents. The Afghan government released its first 100 Taliban prisoners last week and Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for Afghanistans national security adviser, said the government has thus far released 300 Taliban prisoners overall from government custody. Suhial Shaheen, a spokesman for the Talibans political office, said in a tweet that the first government prisoners will be handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Kandahar province. The exchanges come after the Taliban met with the head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to call for an end to what they say is an increase in American attacks since a peace deal was signed in February, allegations the U.S. military denied. On Saturday, a U.S. military spokesman called on the Taliban to stop attacking Afghan security forces whom he said American troops would continue to come to their aid in accordance with the agreement. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The peace deal is aimed at paving the way for the U.S. to extricate itself from the 19-year war, Americas longest. The spokesman confirmed that Gen. Scott Miller met with the Taliban as part of the military channel established in the agreement to discuss ways to reduce the violence. According to the Taliban's Shaheen, the meeting was held late Friday in the Gulf nation of Qatar, where the insurgent group maintains a political office. Shaheen tweeted that the two sides held serious discussions. He said the Taliban called for a halt to attacks against civilians. The U.S. military says it does not target non-combatants. Story continues At the meeting with Miller, the Taliban accused the U.S. of bombing its insurgents in their homes, contrary to the U.S.-Taliban peace deal. Earlier last week, the U.S. State Departments Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs tweeted a harsh statement expressing frustration at the continued political turmoil roiling Kabul. The State Department tweeted: As the world gets slammed by COVID-19, with devastating economic consequences for all, donors are frustrated and fed up by personal agendas being advanced ahead of the welfare of the Afghan people. Afghanistan has imposed a lockdown in several cities to curb the spread of the new virus and has so far recorded 607 confirmed cases and 19 deaths. This is the bizarre moment a naked woman jumps on top of a police car after being released following a court appearance for flouting Spain's coronavirus lockdown. The unnamed blonde stripped off and made her colourful protest after appearing before a judge in the Costa del Sol resort of Torremolinos. She was held at around 8pm on Saturday after annoying neighbours who had applauded emergency services for their work in the fight against coronavirus - as happens on a daily basis in Spain. She was filmed resisting arrest with her clothes on at first, but stripped off as she got to court. The unnamed blonde stripped off and made her colourful protest after appearing before a judge in the Costa del Sol resort of Torremolinos She also took her clothes off after being released on bail by a judge and getting on top of the police vehicle. After being hit with a truncheon and pinned to the ground, she was taken to a waiting ambulance. She has been described as a 41-year-old Spanish national. She has been described as a 41-year-old Spanish national. Left: the woman also appears to sit down on the police car at one point Her whereabouts this yesterday evening were not known. On Thursday a man was filmed dressed only in black pants climbing onto an underground track as a tube approached. Transport bosses had to suspend underground services in the area after the unnamed man sat on the edge of a platform and ignored the desperate attempts of a security guard to get him on his feet. After being hit with a truncheon and pinned to the ground, she was taken to a waiting ambulance Local reports said he was eventually persuaded to desist by the same security guard before being taken away by police and paramedics. The incident happened at Madrid tube station Tirso de Molina. It was not immediately clear why the man had stripped off to his underwear and got on the platform. He had left his clothes beside him. A woman could be overheard saying in Spanish: 'He wants to throw himself over the edge' before adding, 'No, no, no, no' as he clambered onto the tracks and stood with his arms folded in front of him as a tube train edged closer to him. The same woman then said with an obvious sense of relief in her voice, 'The train has stopped.' He was taken to a private hospital named as the Fundacion Jimenez Diaz after the emergency services were alerted. Spain is starting to return to work today as non-essential workers such as factory and construction personnel were allowed to resume their jobs after a two-week ban. Police were handing out millions of masks at Spanish metro stations today as some people returned to work, although the wider coronavirus lockdown remains in force. The two-week 'hibernation' of non-essential business was imposed on March 30, making the lockdown even tougher than in Britain where people have always been able to travel if they cannot work from home. There was further encouragement for Spain today as the number of new cases fell to 3,477, the fewest since March 20. The daily death toll also dropped back to 517 after jumping sharply to 619 yesterday. Baisakhi festivities in the streets and rush of devotees in gurdwaras were missing across Punjab on Monday as people largely celebrated the festival indoors amid a curfew in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Baisakhi is one of Punjab's biggest festivals and it marks the foundation day of the 'Khalsa Panth' (Sikh order) by the tenth Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh. It also marks the start of harvest season. The Golden Temple in Amritsar, one of Sikhism's holiest shrines, saw very few devotees turn up to offer prayers. Normally, nearly two lakh devotees visit the Golden Temple on the occasion of Baisakhi. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which manages gurdwaras in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh, has also deployed task force staff to discourage people from assembling. SGPC Chief Secretary Roop Singh said the committee has never stopped anyone from coming to the Golden Temple but one should not violate the government orders. Barricades have been put up at all roads leading to the Golden Temple to prevent overcrowding, a police official said. A similar scene was witnessed at the Takht Kesgarh Sahib in the holy city of Anandpur Sahib, where the Khalsa Panth was founded in 1699. Managements of several other gurdwaras across Punjab and state capital Chandigarh politely refused to let devotees inside. They appealed to them to offer prayers at homes and listen to 'Gurbani' by tuning in to their YouTube channels. "In the morning, 'sangat' (devotees) came to pay obeisance but we requested them to offer prayers at their homes and also asked them to listen to 'kirtan' on our YouTube channel. "We have shared a link of the video of 'kirtan' with devotees on our WhatsApp group," said an official of Gurdwara Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib in Chandigarh's Sector 34. He said normally, 60,000 to 70,000 devotees visit the shrine on Baisakhi every year. "It is for the first time that we could not enter the gurdwara," a disappointed devotee said. The management of a gurdwara in Ludhiana said it will reach out to those on the frontlines of the fight against coronavirus on the occasion of Baisakhi. "We will distribute 'langar' among frontline workers, including policemen and medical staff," a gurdwara official said. Earlier, the Akal Takht (the highest temporal seat of Sikhs) had asked members of the Sikh community to offer prayers at home on Baisakhi and directed Sikh organisations not to organise religious gatherings on the festival in the view of the COVID-19 outbreak. On Sunday, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had also appealed to people not to step out of their homes on the occasion of Baisakhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) TAMPA, Fla., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Home Furnishings retailer Ashley HomeStore has teamed up with Feeding America to ensure that neighbors in need have required food and resources. As COVID-19 continues to impact the many communities we call home, there is a growing need for the services Feeding America provides. Ashley HomeStore, along with their licensee retail store owners, have come together to donate over $448,000, providing more than 4.4 million meals nationwide. In addition, there was a match provided for Ashley HomeStore's contribution through the Tony Robbins challenge, bringing the total amount to more than 8 million meals donated throughout the nation. Ashley HomeStore "Ashley HomeStore is proud to be able to come together, across our network of retail stores throughout the U.S., to help others in a time of great need," stated Todd Wanek, President and CEO, Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. "COVID-19 is having a major impact around the world, and it truly hits home when you see the impact firsthand in our own communities. During these unprecedented times, we are proud to partner with Feeding America, joining in their fight to combat hunger and aid our communities across this great nation." Starting in 1979, Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States, serving more than 40 million people each year. As the second-largest nonprofit in the United States, Feeding America is a highly-rated, efficient organization that puts 99 percent of all donations directly back into programs and services. Due to the increasing effects of COVID-19, 98% of Feeding America food banks are experiencing an increase in demand, with an average increase of 63%. School closures, job disruptions, lack of paid sick leave and the coronavirus' disproportionate impact on adults age 60 and older and low-income families are all contributing to the unprecedented demands placed on food banks across the country. Ashley's contribution will help feed these individuals in need during this trying time. Since the pandemic of COVID-19, Ashley Furniture has implemented the below efforts to aid our communities throughout the country. These efforts include, but are not limited to: Donation of over 4.4 million meals through Feeding America. Donation of thousands of Ashley manufactured medical gowns for hospitals. Ashley has transported essential goods, comprised of medical supplies, masks, grocery items, water, agricultural supplies and more on their transportation fleet. Donation of over 1,200 mattresses and hundreds of bed frames to various children's organizations, churches, medical shelters and non-profit organizations throughout the nation. Ashley HomeStore is the largest retail furniture store brand in North America and one of the world's best-selling furniture store brands with more than 1,025 locations in 60 countries. Giving back to the communities in which they serve is at the center of the company's purpose statement, "To inspire the love of home and enrich the lives of those around us." To join our mission in feeding America, please visit www.feedingamerica.org/ashleyhomestore. Ashley HomeStore is committed to being your trusted partner and style leader for the home. This commitment has made Ashley HomeStore the largest retail furniture store brand in North America and one of the world's best-selling furniture store brands with more than 1,025 locations in 60 countries. Start designing your dream home today. Visit Ashley HomeStore online at www.ashleyhomestore.com. "Like" Ashley HomeStore on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or see our design-focused boards on Pinterest. Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. (Ashley) feels that every person deserves more value for their money. Established in 1945, Ashley is the largest manufacturer of home furnishings in the world, and was named one of America's Best Employers by Forbes in 2017. From design through fulfillment, Ashley is committed to delivering the world's best home furnishing values, selection and service, and earning the loyalty and trust of its customers every day. Visit Ashley online at www.ashleyfurnitureindustriesinc.com and "like" Ashley Furniture Industries, Inc. on Facebook. Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States. Through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, we provide meals to more than 40 million people each year. Feeding America also supports programs that prevent food waste and improve food security among the people we serve; educates the public about the problem of hunger; and advocates for legislation that protects people from going hungry. Individuals, charities, businesses and government all have a role in ending hunger. Donate. Volunteer. Advocate. Educate. Together we can solve hunger. Visit www.feedingamerica.org, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Related Images ashley-homestore.jpg Ashley HomeStore SOURCE Ashley HomeStore Related Links https://www.ashleyfurniture.com BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr.13 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: Kazakhstans KazakhExport Export Insurance Company JSC has supported 37 Kazakh exporters since the beginning of 2020, 10 of which received insurance support for more than 1 billion tenge ($2.3 million) during the period of the emergency state, Trend reports with reference to its parent company Baiterek National Management Holding. According to the results of 1Q2020, the volume of obligations undertaken by KazakhExport amounted to about 19 billion tenge ($44 million), which is three times more than in the same period in 2019, the amount of contingent deposits on pre-export financing and trade financing reached 10.9 billion tenge ($25.2 million, and the amount of supported contracts amounted to more than 50.7 billion tenge ($117.6 million). In addition, projects worth 29 billion tenge ($67.2 million) for 22 exporters in various industries and regions of Kazakhstan have been approved and are at the stage of concluding insurance contracts. For example, the largest domestic producer of cable and wire products, Kazenergokabel JSC is among the companies supported this year. The insurance contracts with the plant were conducted under three export contracts for the supply of Kazakh products to Uzbekistan and Russia. Thanks to the insurance support of KazakhExport, a domestic exporter can safely ship its products to foreign counterparts with deferred payment, while significantly increasing the volume of supplies. The amount of insured export contracts amounted to about $21.5 million. This year, for the first time, such enterprises as Fidelis Global LLP, which specializes in the production and sale of pipes and fittings, and Novus Polymer LLP, the largest plastic extrusion and molding company, which was provided with insurance coverage for the financing Bank under the loan Insurance tool, used KazakhExport support tools. Food producers were also supported in the framework of the projects launched since the beginning of 2020. For the first time, KazakhExport tools were used by CG FOOD Central Asia LLP, which is part of the large international corporation CG Corp Global LLP comprising 122 companies and 76 representative offices in many countries. As part of the expansion of its production network, the corporation opened a factory for the production of instant noodles in the Turkestan region in December last year. CG FOOD Central Asia LLP received insurance of export credit agreements with respect to three foreign buyers in Russia. Now the exporter can safely ship its products to foreign partners with deferred payment, while significantly increasing the volume of supplies. The plant began supplying Kazakhstan instant noodles in early 2020 and plans to gradually expand the geography of exports to Russia and Uzbekistan. --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian says people who test negative to COVID-19 will now receive their results within hours via text message, allowing people out of self-isolation earlier. Ms Berejiklian said patients who registered for the service would receive "an automated SMS test result within six hours of the completion of the laboratory test", which is likely to be the same day the test is conducted. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced a text service for negative coronavirus results on Tuesday. Credit:Nick Moir "If you are positive, we need to contact you to see whether you need medical attention or also in relation to tracing your contacts," Ms Berejiklian said. "But if you're negative, there will be an SMS service available and hopefully, if you are going through the public system, you will get that result on the same day that you're tested." Ms Berejiklian said more than 142,000 people in NSW had been tested and cleared. It's Easter, or so I'm told. In quarantine, all the days blend together and the only thing that seems to offer any differentiation is how late I allow myself to stay up mindlessly scrolling Instagram. Oh, and Homeland is on Sunday nights. We're nearing the end of this season but I'm having some cognitive dissonance in that regard: It's like my brain knows, factually, that there are only three episodes left (now two), but it just doesn't feel like that. Either the stakes of this season aren't high enough (although I'm not sure how they could be any higher than a pending nuclear crisis) or nothing means anything anymore. This episode ("Designated Driver") opens with Carrie jumping into her designated driver's Arman, from the beginning of season 8 truck and performing some highly impressive memory recall after being drugged, carried back to her hotel room, and sleeping off said drugs, she scribbles down everything she can remember from the flight recorder before Yevgeny took off with it. They head off to Bagram Airport, a journey that will involve a potentially sheisty border crossing into Afghanistan. At the White House, President Hayes and Hot Evil Hugh Dancy are bullying the ambassador to Pakistan over finding Jalal Haqqani. The ambassador is very measured when he tells them that if their troops cross the border, they will launch those missiles everyone panicked over last episode. David Wellington steps in to offer some more measured insight into the situation, and suggests that Pakistan lets the special ops team (you know, the ones that Carrie got arrested as a distraction for her black box search) go as a show of good faith for future negotiations. Meanwhile, Jalal rallies the troops everyone except for Balach, Haqqani's former right hand man and the only person present who doesn't want to reign terror down on Afghanistan. Jalal wants to plan an attack, but Balach believes it will only bring more American troops (and there's also the fact that he was on board with the peace plan). Not surprisingly, he gets overruled and Jalal orders him to get a plan in action, and make it snappy (and deadly). Story continues Carrie makes it to Bagram, where she sneaks into the airport hangar an alarming moment, given the fact that not only does she not have any credentials with her but she's actually persona non grata at the present to show the helicopter mechanic what she heard on the black box tapes. The tech's analysis of her post-drugging scribbles is that there was metal in the engine oil, which would have required an immediate landing an impossible feat given the mountainous terrain the Presidents were flying over. She calls Saul to brief him on the accident (in every sense of the word) and also has to tell Saul that she doesn't exactly have the black box, but simply the aforementioned scribblings. The real problem is that the Russians have the black box (and all the intel that comes with it), and Carrie has zero credibility with which to convince anyone at the CIA that she heard what she heard. The solution is that Saul will have to make a deal with the Russians to get the box back and Carrie will have to turn herself in to Kabul station. Saul goes to the Russian ambassador (who pretends like he doesn't know that Yevgeny has been cavorting all over the Valley with Carrie, or that the Russians now have the evidence of the helicopter crash do we believe him?) and implores him to find out what exactly the Russians want in exchange for all of it. Sifeddine Elamine/SHOWTIME At Kabul station, Jenna plays dumb, like she didn't get a phone call from Carrie convincing her to give up the location of the CIA safe house. She tells Mike she'll put a team together to find Carrie (and arrest her) and also gets a major case of the hand-shakes. I don't think they're going to find her, because Carrie has a larger plan and also because Jenna doesn't seem to be capable of doing much of anything successfully. The next step in Carrie's plan is to go to the Kabul apartment that Yevgeny used before he fled to Moscow with his loot and it's completely empty. The Russian ambassador gets an answer from Moscow mighty quickly, and the answer is: There is no price for the black box. He tells Saul that he's, how you say, "Barking up the wrong tree," and that Moscow refuses to admit that any part of Carrie's Yevgeny story is true. Even given the dire implications of this deal falling through Pakistan readying its nuclear devices, America readying for an attack on Pakistan because they still think the country is harboring the man responsible for the President's murder Russia refuses to play ball. Apparently the exact message from Moscow was "We have what we want," which means that the Russians' whole M.O. is to keep the evidence of an accidental helicopter crash secret and allow the other countries to wreak havoc on each other in the meantime. How very puppet-master-y of them! Lots of ominous music plays as Saul hangs up the phone after this exchange, just in case anyone was unsure of how serious it is. As Carrie and Arman wait in mind-numbingly extreme Kabul traffic, some of Yevgeny's henchmen pull her from the truck to arrange a hasty secret meeting. Yevgeny explains that while there was no price they would accept from Saul for the flight recorder, they do have a little proposition for Carrie (hereee it is!). He claims that Saul has an agent inside the Kremlin, who has been running Russian secrets back to the CIA a fact that Carrie disputes, seemingly because she doesn't know about this double agent (if the double agent exists). Russia wants the name of this person, or they'll let this insane nuclear escalation continue and Carrie going behind Saul's back seems to be the only way to get it. Presumably to get a read on the situation, she gives him a call before turning herself in at the station Saul tells Carrie that the Russians told him that they "don't know anything about a black box," which both Carrie and we, the audience, know is kind of a lie. He also says that he thinks they're lying, which is true? Carrie lies back, telling Saul that Yevgeny didn't say anything to her when he stole the recorder and also failing to mention that they just had a rendezvous. Saul tells her, "The truth isn't much good if no one will listen." Arman offers to get Carrie out of the country to Dubai, to hide out but she's going to make-good (or try to) on the offer from the Russians. She ditches her phone and heads straight to the entrance of the station. Her actual turning-herself-in is not nearly as climactic as I thought it would be after all this time, but Homeland is saving the, er, climaxing, for other moments. Mike Dunne announces to his team that the Pakistani government, in a show of good faith, is going to release the special ops team after all. They'll be bussed to the border and allowed to return to Kabul. Jenna begs Mike to accompany the handoff at the border, which will allow her to keep her safe house faux pas under wraps for a bit longer. Back at Taliban HQ, they've got a literal plan of attack in place: A car bomb at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. And Jalal has a bit more evil up his sleeve: He captured Balach's family and is only going to keep them alive if Balach himself commits the suicide mission. I'll spare you description of the scene that seals Balach's fate as the driver because no one needs to hear about that right now. Carrie convinces the FBI to arrest her and send her back to the States (which is clearly part of her master plan), where Wellington is trying to convince Saul to sever ties with their newest atomic blonde (see what I did there?). Saul doesn't take the duplicitous bait, instead telling Wellington about the black box findings and the little Russia problem and also reminding David what Carrie has sacrificed for the country thus far. Her Russian jail time seems a distant memory, now, doesn't it? As the FBI agents escort Carrie to the airport for her official deportation, we see what we know is the bombing begin to unfold at the border. The troops arrive on the Afghani side, waiting for the convoy to arrive the special ops team will be dropped off in buses and then walk through the border crossing. Balach, too, arrives at the crossing, trunk explosives at the ready, tragic goodbye video for his wife and children taped and sent through the airwaves. The FBI jet starts to gas up, the special ops team pulls up to the crossing, and one of the agents gives his fellow former-captors an ominous "Almost home, boys." We all know how this is going to go, but what we don't know are the implications. Will Carrie's plane turn around, now that the region has been completely destabilized? Will Russia's plan remain? Will anyone at the border crossing survive? I truly can't think of a scene more terrifying this season than the soldiers trying desperately (and in vain) to stop Balach's car as it speeds toward the barriers, bringing an explosion that everyone including the special ops team locked on the bus like sitting ducks knows is coming. It's not quite the stress that I need right now. The only thing that can solve this, until next week, is Gilmore Girls. Related content: Femi Fani-Kayode, social commentator and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has attacked Melinda Gates for saying she s... Femi Fani-Kayode, social commentator and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has attacked Melinda Gates for saying she sees dead bodies all over African streets over the Coronavirus outbreak. During an interview with CNN, Melinda, wife of billionaire businessman and Founder of Microsoft had expressed fears that Africa may not be able to handle a Coronavirus situation as it were in Wuhan China. I see dead bodies all over Africa, Melinda Gates had said. She said that her worst fear was when she saw what China had to do to isolate enormous part of its population. My first thought was Africa. How in the world are they going to deal with this. I have been in townships all over Africa and slums. When we talk in country physical distancing and hand-washing, if you live in slums who cant physical distance, you have to go out and get your meals. You dont have clean water to wash your hands. But Fani-Kayode blasted Melinda, adding that the agenda of Satan for Africa shall not stand. The former Minister of Aviation tweeted, I see dead bodies all over Africa Melinda Gates. Horrendous vision from a horrendous lady with a horrendous husband. We reject it and return it to sender! The agenda of Satan for Africa shall not stand. Those that have dug a pit for us shall fall into that pit themselves. Slate is making its coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism. Start your free trial. During an interview on March 24, reporters asked San Francisco Mayor London Breed about President Donald Trumps hope to see packed churches on Easter Sunday, April 12. Breeds response: Why are we still listening to the president? she asked. She went on to explain that the federal government had downplayed the threat of the virus while cities were busy preparing for it: We had to jump into action and make this work without federal support. Local governments have been on the front line of the nations defense against the spread of the virus, making hard but necessary decisions and setting the example that their own states and federal leaders followed only much laterif at all. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Obviously, such a decentralized response to a pandemic is not ideal, even with the heroic efforts of many local governments and despite what some politicians might suggest. It gives us a patchwork of inconsistent policies, full of holes in those places where officials are unable or unwilling to do whats needed. But a decentralized response is what we have, and tragically, many state and federal politicians are actually undermining localities that are trying to contain the virus. Trump, true to form, is using the federal response to foster patronage and demand fealty, replacing the trusted watchdog for the federal stimulus with a crony and threatening to snub officials who dont suck up to himif they dont treat you right, I dont call, he said. And some states are blocking the containment efforts of their own cities. For example, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued executive orders exempting religious services from local shelter-in-place directives. Abbott also banned local governments in Texas from releasing inmates on no-cost bonds despite the risks of coronavirus transmission in overcrowded jails. And Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves effectively quashed local efforts to enforce social distancing, designating most businesses essential. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement These conflicts may look like familiar ideological clashes: red states reining in the progressive policies of their blue cities. But they are actually exemplary of a different and more troubling phenomenon: state governments captured by ideological factions and self-serving special interests hindering the cities that are our firstand all too often onlyline of defense against dire threats to health and safety. This is an inversion of the relationship the Framers expected between centralized and decentralized government. In Federalist 10, James Madison wrote that centralized governmentthe extended spherewould be a remedy to the mischief of faction; he predicted that centralized government would encompass a greater number of factions than smaller governments, and these multiple factions would effectively cancel each other out so that no faction could capture government and distort policy. This hypothesis has been conventional wisdom ever since. And, of course, its true that local governments are often captured by factions, just as Madison feared, but unfortunately centralized government is hardly immune. Conversely, because local governments are faced directly with a host of practical problemslaw enforcement, public safety, and public healthlocal policy is often more pragmatic, less subject to capture by special interests and less ideologically driven than policy at higher levels of government. For example, federal immigration policy is currently driven by optics and ethno-nationalist dogma with little attention to practicalitiesa problem that began with the Bush administration, continued under Obama, and has dramatically worsened under Trump. A handful of liberal cities made a big show of becoming sanctuaries to signal their ideological opposition to the crackdown, but many of the hundreds of local governments that resisted or refused to participate in aggressive federal deportation efforts did so to ensure public safety for all of their residents by preserving the trust between police and immigrant communities. So it is with the coronavirus threat: While state or federal officials can indulge in ideological dogmatism, local governments faced with the prospect of overrun emergency rooms and mass graves are less likely to prioritize such pandering over combating a pandemic. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement We have plenty of safeguards against corrupt or inept local government. But cities cant push back when a faction captures state government. Because the legal relationship of federal, state, and local government reflects the Madisonian insight, we have plenty of safeguards against corrupt or inept local government. But cities cant push back when a faction captures state government. Under the federal Constitution, local government is a creature of the state and has only the authority and autonomy delegated to it by state constitutions and state legislatures. Consequently, local governments have been stripped of power, subsumed in other cities, put into receivership, or even dissolved by state government. And local laws are routinely preempted by state legislatures or governors. Preemption can ensure a necessary uniformity and consistency of laws (imagine a patchwork of different local laws determining when a contract is valid or setting different local standards of responsibility for accidents), and it allows states to coordinate efforts in time of crisis. But all too often preemption reflects the influence of a special interest or faction at the state level, to the detriment of common-sense solutions to pressing problems faced by cities. Advertisement Advertisement Many preempted local laws addressed pressing and distinctively local problems that state legislatures either werent aware of, were slow to notice, or just ignored at the behest of well-connected special interests. For instance, during the financial crisis in 2001, the city of Oakland, California, sought to regulate the predatory lending that was causing mass foreclosures in its most troubled neighborhoods, leading to abandoned properties that became magnets for crimecourts deemed the regulation preempted by a weaker state law governing mortgages. When the city of New Orleansby far the most expensive market in Louisianaamended its charter to include a living wage provision of a mere $1 per hour over the federal minimum wage, the modest guarantee was struck down as preempted by the state. When Texas cities like San Antonio declined to devote scarce law enforcement resources to deportation, the state of Texas tried to force them to do so. Alabama, Ohio, and many other states bar cities facing epidemics of violence from regulating the sale of firearms and ammunition, leaving what are typically much weaker state laws. Perhaps it should not surprise us that today many of the same states preempt local restrictions on public gatherings over the objection of cities at the greatest risk from the coronavirus pandemic. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The founders of American democracy worried that narrow-minded localities run by people morally and temperamentally unfit for public service and captured by ideological zealots and self-interested factions were a threat to both good government and individual rights. Their solution was a centralized federal government that would attract enlightened and public-spirited people who could temper and counteract the excesses of mob rule. Today, the worst fears of the founders have been realized, but often the roles are reversed: The threat comes from the highest levels of the extended sphere. Meanwhile, hope of redemption lives in the humble public servants of our city and county government. The Health and Safety Authority has urged farmers to be extra vigilant as it fears a spike in child deaths on farms could occur this year. Two people were already killed on farms in just one week this month a child in Roscommon and a 64-year-old man in Cork. As more children are at home throughout the Covid-19 lockdown, HSA inspector Pat Griffin warned that we could see a further increase in fatalities, specifically in child deaths, on farms this year. We would urgently appeal to farmers to please, please look at child safety, Mr Griffin told RTE. Children are at home for an extended period of time and may want to get out and down the yard. We would appeal to farmers to go down the yard with their children, look at the risks, and eliminate them if possible. Agriculture is the most dangerous employment sector in Ireland, with the young and the old the most vulnerable to accidents. Last year, the HSA, which investigates all workplace fatalities, recorded 18 farm deaths nationwide a 20% rise from the 15 deaths recorded in 2018. The HSA is now concerned that this year could see a further increase in the number of child deaths. Farms are by far the most dangerous places of work in Ireland that we are concerned about this year, in that we may get a spike in child deaths in 2020, said Mr Griffin. He also warned that the elderly and those who usually work off-farm may be around farms much more than usual during the current lockdown, further increasing the potential for accidents. Mr Griffin said that to keep children safe this year, farms must follow the rules. These include banning children under seven from riding on tractors or other farm machinery. The most vulnerable people on farms are young children and older adults, HSA statistics show. Last year, 13 of the 18 people who were killed on Irish farms were aged over 60. Wexford had the most deaths in the country in 2019 with seven fatalities, Dublin had the second-highest number at six, followed by Cork which recorded five farm deaths across the county. This month, a five-year-old boy died after falling from a trailer on a farm in Co Roscommon on April 5. Earlier that week, a 64-year-old farmer was killed by a bull on his farm in Charleville, Co Cork. He was found unconscious by a neighbour and the emergency services were called. They tried to save his life, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The man, who was aged 64, had been working on his own in a shed at the farm in Tullylease, near Charleville, on April 2 when one of the bulls attacked him. Kerrie Leonard, a para archer and Paralympics hopeful, who was paralysed from the waist down when she fell from a tractor aged six, also called for increased vigilance on farms. You could do something 10 times, and nine times out of 10 it will be fine, and it is the 10th time there will be an issue, she told RTE. That can be because of complacency, or just a freak of nature. Ms Leonard, from Co Meath, fell out of a tractor which then ran over her legs in 1997. Everyone was very vigilant with there being children on the farm, it was just one of those things that happened, she said. Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light was recently announced to screen in Europe on May 16 as a replacement special for the cancelled Eurovision Song Contest. And organisers want fans to help. The special will be broadcast live from the Netherlands with the planned Eurovision hosts, Chantal Janzen, Edsilia Rombley and Jan Smit. All 41 songs that had been chosen to take part in the contest will be honoured in a non-competitive format. Participants from the past will also be invited to perform Love Shine a Light, 1997s winning song by by Katrina and the Waves, from their respective home countries. Clips of fans singing along to Whats Another Year by Aussie-born Johnny Logan, will be shown as well. If you want to make it onto the official show from your lounge room check out the details here. The deadline to submit your video recording is Friday 24 April 2020 (my tip to be included: add some Australiana to your vision, or also some movement). Cornald Maas, Creative Advisor of Eurovision 2020, said that he saw the video of Italians singing from their balconies and it became his inspiration. At that time, I was already at home, working on my documentary and I was already feeling nervous about the possibility of cancellation. This made me emotional because it shows the power of social media. At the same time I was also thinking. Sietse and I had already been contacted about this, how beautiful it would be Eurovision was founded in 1956 with the idea of uniting post-war Europe through music. In corona times, every country is mostly busy with its own policies, with its own battle, with its own worries, its own deaths And especially through Eurovision, whether you are from Bulgaria, Croatia or the Netherlands, you might be able to create something through music, which can be a great alternative. SBS is yet to confirm it will screen the special but has previously hinted it hopes to nod to the annual event in May. The show will also be broadcast on YouTube at 21:00 CEST on on 16 May. State lawmakers voted Monday to extend New Jerseys fiscal year through September and grant taxpayers a three-month extension to pay and file their state taxes. The bill (S2338), once signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, would make official Murphys earlier remarks that tax day in New Jersey would be pushed back to July 15 in response to the coronavirus crisis. Murphy said he will sign the bill Tuesday. As we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that we give both the state and our residents every opportunity to endure financially, the governor said in a statement. Pushing this deadline into the summer will give us additional time to combat the virus and get as many taxpayers as possible back on sound financial footing. The IRS postponed the federal tax deadline last month, followed by most states that levy personal income taxes. Thirty-seven states already have bumped tax day out to July 15 and eight more extended to some date other than April 15, according to the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants. New Jersey was the last holdout. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage The states fiscal year ends June 30, and the state collects a lot of tax revenue in April. But in agreeing to extend the fiscal year end to Sept. 30, officials said the state is able to give taxpayers more time to file and pay their taxes. The CPA group warned the bill falls short of its recommendations to provide extensions for all tax-related filing and payment deadlines. In contrast to the state tax extension, the IRS has made clear its extension applies broadly to all taxpayers with filing and payment deadlines between April 1 and July 15 and includes estate tax returns, and nonprofits, according to NJCPA. It is impractical, if not impossible, for taxpayers and their advisors to operate under different sets of deadlines for federal and state filings, and no ones life should be risked to meet tax filing obligations, Ralph Albert Thomas, executive director of the NJCPA, said in a statement. Taxpayers and their advisors need clarity and consistency." The group has asked that the state postpone deadlines for all tax filings and payments due after March 12, including sales tax, payroll taxes and partnership taxes. Its also urging the Division of Taxation suspend much of its enforcements and collections during the state of emergency. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, has called these steps taken by the governor and legislature unprecedented. Were doing a lot of things that we never would have dreamed of doing, but weve got to get through this crisis, Sweeney said. The prolonged budget year also buys the governor and state lawmakers more time to get a handle on tax collections and hash out a government spending plan for the next fiscal year, as business closures and stay-at-home orders hit state revenues hard. The impact on the state budget is significant, theres no other way to put it, Murphy said last week. Weve been crushed with expenses that are skyrocketing as we deal on the front lines with people who are sick, people who have lost their jobs, small businesses, you name it. The Legislature will need to pass a supplemental bill to fund state operations into September, the governor has said. Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter@samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Piers Morgan put his faith in wife Celia Walden on Monday evening by reluctantly agreeing to let her cut his hair as they self-quarantine at their London home. With all hair salons currently closed as Great Britain enters a fourth week of government mandated lockdown in the fight against coronavirus COVID-19, Piers allowed Celia to give him a much-needed trim. Taking to Instagram, the Good Morning Britain presenter, 55, looked somewhat apprehensive as he sat with a towel covering his shoulders while his wife cheerfully went to work with a pair of scissors. In your hands: Piers Morgan put his faith in wife Celia Walden on Monday evening by reluctantly agreeing to let her cut his hair as they self-quarantine at their London home Captioning the shot, he wrote: 'The words "Dont worry, Ive watched a YouTube video..." do not fill me with confidence.. #HairHorror.' Sharing the shot with her own Instagram followers, Celia joked that she had an ulterior motive when putting herself forward to cut her husband's hair. She wrote: 'I dont know whats funnier: that he believed me when I said I could cut hair - or that I just shaved my initials into the back of his head #homehairdressing #nofoollikeafurryfool.' Uncertain times: The Good Morning Britain presenter admitted he wasn't filled with confidence when agreeing to let his wife cut his hair Funny: Sharing the shot with her own Instagram followers, Celia joked that she had an ulterior motive when putting herself forward to cut her husband's hair The presenter's haircut came after he hit out at a social media user over a 'disgusting' post written about the NHS amid the coronavirus crisis. Piers took to Twitter on Easter Sunday to comment on a post that read: 'NHS worship is going to be even more insufferable once this is done than it was before, isn't it?' He quoted the post before describing it as the 'most disgusting tweet of the #coronavirus crisis so far - & the bar was very very low.' Not happy: The presenter's haircut came after he hit out at a social media user over a 'disgusting' post written about the NHS amid the coronavirus crisis Furious: Piers took to Twitter on Easter Sunday to comment on a post that read, 'NHS worship is going to be even more insufferable once this is done than it was before, isn't it?' The exchange took place hours after the number of NHS staff to die with coronavirus reached 31. Millions of households across the country have been taking to their doorsteps on Thursday evenings to clap for NHS staff and key workers to thank them for their efforts during the outbreak. Piers recently changed his social media photo to the NHS logo as well as publicly offering to pay for frontline staff's parking tickets. Ex-chief of Russian penal colony detained in torture case flickr.com/ J P Davidson 10:59 13/04/2020 MOSCOW, April 13 (RAPSI) A court in Russias Republic of Karelia has ordered the former chief of a local penal colony Ivan Savelyev to be put in detention in a torture case, the victims lawyer Roman Masalev has told RAPSI. His former deputy Ivan Kovalev has been placed under house arrest. The defendants are charged with abuse of authority. They could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. According to investigators, in February 2014, Savelyev and Kovalev beat a convict. A criminal case was opened 5.5 years later, when a torture video was published on the Internet. Moreover, in the fall of 2019, several inmates accused then authorities of the penal colony of tortures, but the both officials continued their employment activity. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13 By Huseyn Safarov Trend: The fact that Azerbaijan initiated holding of extraordinary Summit of the Turkic Council as the chairing country is positive, economic expert of Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies (Parasat) Naila Almukhamedova told Trend. The expert noted that holding of the emergency summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States through videoconferencing on April 10 showed the commitment of these countries to act cohesively and jointly in critical situations, thereby demonstrating in practice the solidarity and friendship of the Turkic nations. "The organization of the emergency summit once again shows that the Turkic Council is gradually becoming a multilateral platform that strengthens its international authority. This thesis is also supported by the fact that the President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, as an invited guest, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, as the head of the observer state, as well as the Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus took part in the summit," she said. According to her, analyzing the speeches of the heads of states at the summit, the countries are willing to provide the necessary assistance to each other and coordinate actions for the exchange of information, the use of new methods of diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. "In particular, the emphasis was made on both current, and long term cooperation in the field of healthcare. Namely thats why Kazakhstans President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed including issues of health and healthcare system as a separate direction into the Turkic Vision - 2040 program. Therefore, in the future, we should expect the strengthening of cooperation of the Turkic Council countries in matters of social development, she said. As the expert noted, the long-term cooperation is also confirmed by the fact that the Turkic Council Summits agenda addressed issues of trade and economic cooperation. We can see that the coronavirus pandemic has put the countries of the world before a great choice in matters of citizens' security, politics and the economy. Many countries take tough protectivet measures, which in the future may adversely affect foreign economic cooperation. However, even in the new difficult economic conditions, our countries are interested in adapting to them, strengthening mutual cooperation after passing the peak of the spread of coronavirus. So, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed the development of a joint Action Plan, she said. In this regard, the need to intensify work of the Turkic Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Turkic Investment Fund will increase. Here, of course, a proactive approach and initiatives by Azerbaijan, as the chairing state of the Turkic Council, will be important, she said. Therefore, significant and complex work is ahead to find investors and coordinate the actions of the business community representatives. For Kazakhstan, as a member country of the Turkic Council, as before, issues of increasing bilateral trade, as well as strengthening transit through our joint transport corridors, will be important," she stressed. Commenting on the actions of the Azerbaijani government to fight against the spread of coronavirus infection, Naila Almukhamedova noted that they are largely similar to the measures taken by the government of Kazakhstan. Azerbaijan focused on the social distancing of citizens, thereby slowing the rate of spread of COVID-19 coronavirus infection and reducing the burden on the healthcare system. That is, Azerbaijani government considers the safety of citizens and the prevention of a high percentage of deaths as the priority, she stated. This, of course, affected the business activity, which in the future will lead to a slowdown in the economy. Therefore, Azerbaijan is taking measures to reduce the negative impact on the economy by paying compensations to citizens, alleviating the tax burden of entrepreneurs, and stimulating lending, the expert stressed. Along with this, its already advisable today to develop instruments of the long-term impact, which should also correlate with the joint Action Plan within the Turkic Councils framework," added Almukhamedova. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @C8NTINENT Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tambri Housen, Amy Elizabeth Parry and Meru Sheel (The Jakarta Post) Canberra Mon, April 13, 2020 09:32 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd175539 3 Health The-Conversation,infectious-diseases,COVID-19,coronavirus,mask,cara-penyebaran-virus-corona,health Free As the coronavirus pandemic stretches on, a small proportion of Australians infected have now died, while most have either recovered, or are likely to recover over the next few weeks. One thing many of us want to know is for how long people who have SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are able to pass it on to someone else. Lets look at what the science tells us so far. How long does it take to get sick? The incubation period is the time between being exposed to the virus and the onset of symptoms. For COVID-19, the incubation period ranges from 1 to 14 days. But most people who develop COVID-19 symptoms do so 4 to 6 days after exposure. How long are you infectious? The infectious period means the time youre able to spread the virus to someone else. For COVID-19, there is emerging evidence to suggest the infectious period may start 1 to 3 days before you develop symptoms. The most infectious period is thought to be 1 to 3 days before symptoms start, and in the first 7 days after symptoms begin. But some people may remain infectious for longer. Commonly reported symptoms for COVID-19 such as fever, cough and fatigue usually last around 9 to 10 days but this can be longer. Why are some people infectious for longer? Typically with viruses, the higher the viral load (the more virus circulating in the body), the higher the risk of transmission through known transmission pathways. A study conducted in Hong Kong looking at viral load in 23 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 found higher viral loads in the first week of illness. Another study from China looking at 76 hospitalized patients found that by 10 days after symptom onset, mild cases had cleared the virus. That is, no virus was detectable through testing. However, severe cases have much higher viral loads and many continue to test positive beyond the 10 days after symptoms start. So the more severe the illness and the higher the viral load, the longer you continue to shed the virus and are infectious. When are you no longer infectious? If someone has been symptom-free for 3 days and they developed their first symptoms more than 10 days prior, they are no longer considered to be infectious. But were not sure whether people are infectious when they have recovered but the virus can still be detected in their bodies. One study from Hong Kong found the virus could be detected for 20 days or longer after the initial onset of symptoms in one-third of patients tested. Another study from China found the virus in a patients fecal samples five weeks after the first onset of symptoms. But the detection of the virus doesnt necessarily mean the person is infectious. We need more studies with larger sample sizes to get to the bottom of this question. Should you get tested again before going back into the community? Due to a global shortage of coronavirus tests, the Commonwealth and state governments have strict criteria about who should be tested for COVID-19 and when. People who have been self-quarantining, because they had contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 and have completed their 14-day quarantine period without developing symptoms, can return to the community. There is no requirement to be tested prior to returning to the community. It is, however, recommended they continue to practice social distancing and good hygiene as a precaution. The requirements are different for people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19. At present, re-testing people who have experienced mild illness, and have recovered from COVID-19 is not recommended. A person is considered safe to return to the community and discontinue self-isolation if they are no longer infectious. This means they developed their first symptoms more than 10 days prior and have not experienced any symptoms for at least 3 days (72 hours). For people who have been hospitalized with more severe illness, the testing requirements before discharge are different. They will have two swabs taken 24 hours apart to check if they have cleared the virus. If the swabs are both negative, they can be discharged and dont require further self-isolation. If one or both tests are positive but the person is well enough to go home, they must continue to self-isolate for at least 10 days since they were discharged from hospital and they have not experienced any symptoms for at least 3 days. There are also different testing requirements for people working or living in high-risk settings. If you work or live in a high-risk setting you should consult with your health care provider on re-testing requirements. *** Tambri Housen is an epidemiologist and Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University. Amy Elizabeth Parry is an epidemiologist and PhD Candidate, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University. Meru Sheel is an epidemiologist and Senior Research Fellow, Australian National University. This article was first published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. File Photo: Filipino doctor Rafael Bundoc (front R) from the University of the Philippines medical school, along with nurses, prepares one of the cadavers for a spine surgery workshop at the anatomy room of the university in Manila on June 26, 2019. (Photo: TED ALJIBE/AFP via Getty Images) MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines has stopped doctors, nurses, medics and other healthcare workers from going abroad while it needs their skills to meet the threat of the coronavirus spreading at home, a foreign affairs official said. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration issued the order on April 2, though it was only made public on Friday. The aim is "to prioritize human resource allocation for the national health care system," according to the resolution posted on Twitter by Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Brigido Dulay. The ban will remain in place until the Philippines ends its state of emergency and countries that would hire the medical personnel lift their coronavirus-related travel restrictions. As of Friday, the Philippines had recorded 4,195 cases of coronavirus, with 221 deaths. The government has also suspended negotiations for bilateral labour agreements covering government-to-government deployment of health workers. (Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz) The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released recommendations on interoperability of Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) for digital TV broadcasting services. The regulatory body recommends that every STB in India must support technical interoperability. Currently, the same STBs cannot be used interchangeably across different service providers. The recommendations say that Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) may include a suitable clause/condition in the permission/registration/cable television network rule mandating all DPOs to compulsorily facilitate service provisioning through interoperable STBs either provided by DPOs or procured by the customer in the open market. Since there are technical and commercial constraints to universal STBs, TRAI has mandated DPOs to consult the existing clause/condition as prescribed in the DTH/cable segment to know where interoperability is applicable. MIB may notify stakeholders of the new provision either through a change in licensing conditions or as an amendment in Cable Television Network Rules 1994 as per Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act, 1995 or through any appropriate mechanism where mandatory use of DVB C+ 2.0 standards (with USB CAM) as per ETSI TS 103 605 standards both for DTH STBs and STBs being used by MSOs from a prospective date. A period of 6 months may be given to both DTH operators and MSOs to adopt the new standards from the date of MIB notification. MIB may also coordinate with BIS so that suitable amendments are brought during this time frame. The authority recommends mandatory provisioning of USB port based Common Interface for all digital television sets in India and setting up of a Coordination and Implementation Committee. PALMETTO, Fla. Mounds of harvested zucchini and yellow squash ripened and then rotted in the hot Florida sun. Juicy tomatoes were left to wither unpicked in farmers' fields. Thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to rot because farmers can't sell to restaurants, theme parks or schools nationwide that have closed because of the coronavirus. Other states are having the same issues agriculture officials say leafy greens in California are being hit especially hard, and dairy farmers in Vermont and Wisconsin say they have had to dump a surplus of milk intended for restaurants. With most of its harvests in the winter months, the problem is acute in Florida. For example, a few dozen people clamored to buy 25-pound (11- kilogram) boxes of Roma tomatoes direct from a packing plant over the weekend in Palmetto, a city on the western coast. The cost per box? Just $5. "This is a catastrophe," said tomato grower Tony DiMare, who owns farms in south Florida and the Tampa Bay area. "We haven't even started to calculate it. It's going to be in the millions of dollars. Losses mount every day." Florida leads the U.S. in harvesting tomatoes, green beans, cabbage and peppers this time of year. While some of the crops are meant for grocery stores, many farmers cater solely to the so-called food service market restaurants, schools and theme parks hit hard as cities and states have ordered people to stay home and avoid others. The loss has created a domino effect through the farming industry, Florida's second-largest economic driver. It yields $155 billion in revenue and supports about 2 million jobs. Many growers have donated produce to food banks, but there's a limit on what the charities can accept and storage is an issue for perishable fruits and vegetables. DiMare said some central Florida food banks are full after theme parks shuttered and donated massive amounts of produce. "We gave 400,000 pounds of tomatoes to our local food banks," DiMare said. "A million more pounds will have to be donated if we can get the food banks to take it." Farmers are scrambling to sell to grocery stores, but it's not easy. Large chains already have contracts with farmers who grow for retail many from outside the U.S. "We can't even give our product away, and we're allowing imports to come in here," DiMare said. He said 80% of the tomatoes grown in Florida are meant for now-shuttered restaurants and theme parks. In the past week, 20 federal lawmakers from Florida and state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried sent letters urging U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to include Florida farmers in federal food purchase and distribution programs so the surplus crops can help feed the hungry and food insecure. Some 37 million Americans struggled with hunger before the pandemic, according to Feeding America, a nationwide network food banks. The federal coronavirus relief act contains $9.5 billion in aid to farmers. Some farmers have tried to branch out and sell produce boxes directly to customers, an approach taken in many places as the pandemic slams the restaurant and catering industries worldwide. Wholesalers in London who usually sell fruit and vegetables to restaurants have pivoted to home deliveries. But large-scale farmers know selling harvest baskets won't do much for their bottom line. On the U.S. West Coast, farmers who grow lettuce and other leafy greens are feeling the pinch. "The tail end of the winter vegetable season in Yuma, Arizona, was devastating for farmers who rely on food service buyers," said Cory Lunde, spokesman for Western Growers, a group representing family farmers in California, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. "And now, as the production shifts back to Salinas, California, there are many farmers who have crops in the ground that will be left unharvested," particularly leafy greens. He said a spike in demand for produce at the beginning of the outbreak has now subsided. "People are staying home and not visiting the grocery stores as often," Lunde said. "So the dominoes are continuing to fall." In southern Florida, Paul Allen, president of R.C. Hatton Farms, took a video last week of row after row of vibrant green beans that were scheduled to be shipped to the restaurant industry. "You can see this is a huge field of green beans," he said, lifting his cellphone camera to show a tractor plowing all the healthy plants and their beans into the soil. Allen, who farms about 12,000 acres in Florida and Georgia, is praying that things improve by the time crops in north Florida and Georgia are ready to be harvested over the next two months. "You just hope you can live another day," Allen said. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 (Photo : REUTERS/Max Ross) A street artist performs in downtown Rome February 17 , 2015. Huge tech organizations are still hiring as they take advantage of a world shifting to the digital world as a result of the coronavirus amid mass lay-offs worldwide. As several Silicon Valley's startup companies ax employees, tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Amazon.Com Inc. are looking for software program engineers, data scientists, and others. Facebook Inc. Says utilization has spiked in the course of the coronavirus disaster. It's far dedicated to policing platforms beforehand of the 2020 presidential election so that it will hire more than 10,000 people this year for crucial roles on its product and engineering teams. ALSO READ: Silicon Valley Tech Titans: How Can They Help Solve Poverty And Inequality? Company stability is a selling point amid COVID-19 outbreak The current situation may supply well-off tech agencies a risk to poaching skilled employees who have been gravitating to smaller upstarts, veteran era recruiters say. Martha Heller, chief executive of tech recruiting firm Heller Search Associates, told The Wall Street Journal the situation "is a great time" for the industry's players. Heller explained that company stability is a selling point now to employees. "The big, 500-pound gorilla has always come in and hired from smaller, less-stable companies-you're just seeing the beginning of an increase in that," she said. Financial Times reported tech companies --- in California alone --- have been trying to fill at least 15,000 jobs in the second week of March. The same report said there were more than 2,400 new tech jobs that were posted a day after six counties in the Bay Area announced a "shelter in place." "The job patterns are pretty much what we'd expect if there were no coronavirus," Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter's labor economist, told Financial Times. As corporations "significantly rethink" how they perform, the need for software skills would also increase beyond the tech sector, said Stuart Carlaw, leader researcher at ABI Research. Carlaw said the market for technology jobs is likely to remain strong in the face of coronavirus outbreak. "Labor-intensive companies have to embrace digital components to remain solvent increasingly," he added. Resume Go Peter Yang, chief executive officer of a professional resume writing service, ResumeGo, has found that job seekers have recently been focusing on submitting their resumes to larger, more established companies. ALSO READ: COVID-19 vs. Technology: Here's How Silicon Valley Companies Find a Solution for Coronavirus Outbreak Distance interviewing Interviewing amid the era of coronavirus lockdowns means getting to know companies from a distance, tech experts say. Slack Technologies Inc., based in San Francisco, previously introduced candidates to its workplaces for 4 or 5 hours with hiring managers, a company official said. Now, the company conducts interviews by videoconference and is breaking apart meetings in multiple days. Recruiters inform candidates that it's okay if a child appears on the video conference or the background isn't quiet. "All of us understand," Robby Kwok, Slack's senior vice president of people, told WSJ. Slack, that is experiencing a surge in usage, says it is sticking to staffing plans made before the pandemic. The organization has more than 200 open positions and is seeing "noticeable" growth in programs and employee referrals for those, Mr. Kwok says. Recruiters say technology roles exist at plenty of non-consumer-facing groups, too. Cybersecurity organization CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., which provides cloud-primarily based security generation, is hiring for a lot of engineering and income positions. Applications have risen for a number of its kind of 250 job openings, says Alexis Neville, vice president of skills acquisition. Companies in a function to lease may advantage in the long run, according to veterans beyond financial downturns. One tech recruiter cited Google has published many new openings in the past few weeks. "If you have a lot of resources and you're hiring, and other companies are struggling, that's when you pick off the right people," Laszlo Bock, the former head of human resources at Google, who now runs behavioral-change startup Humu Inc., says. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A total lockdown has been imposed in Borno by the state government which shut its borders to non-essential movements in a bid to contain influx of COVID-19. The Deputy Governor of Borno, Alhaji Umar Kadafur, announced this in a statement on Sunday in Maiduguri. Kadafur said that the order would take effect from from Monday, April 13, by 6 a.m, adding that movement in and out of the state would be completely restricted. The border between Borno and Yobe States would be shut down completely, only persons on essential duties and vehicles conveying food items, petrol, drugs and other essential commodities would be allowed into the state. This painstaking decision became imperative as part of the measures to prevent spread of the virus into our dear state, following discoveries of some suspected cases in some northern states, Kadafur said. The deputy governor, therefore, warned the general public to comply, pending the outcome of further directives. Kadafur said that the state government regretted any inconvenience the decision would cause the general public. He said that the state government had adopted the proactive measure to protect its citizens in a bid to curb the spread of the pandemic into the state. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the economic slowdown has weakened Indian corporates and urged the government to ensure that no foreign interests take control of any such corporate at a time when the country is fighting the COVID-19 crisis. His concerns came following reports that some foreign institutions had bought stakes in Indian companies in the wake of the stock market downturn. "The massive economic slowdown has weakened many Indian corporates making them attractive targets for takeovers. The government must not allow foreign interests to take control of any Indian corporate at this time of national crisis," Gandhi tweeted. There were also reports that China's central bank has bought 1.01 per cent stake in Housing Development Finance Corporation, India's biggest housing mortgage lender. Beijings iconic Summer Palace tourist resort is the home of a huge new ice rink thats opened just ahead of the Winter Olympics. The rink measures 300,000 square meters and consists of two areas designed for different types of activities. The city has opened seven municipal ice rinks and four snow resorts to the public. Since 2014, ice and snow activities in municipal parks have attracted nearly 2 million visitors, according to the Beijing Municipal Administration Center for Parks Jan 11, 2022 07:26 PM Many health insurance policyholders have a common grouse: their covers fall short when it comes to certain medical expenses as they are excluded. For instance, pre-existing diseases are excluded from coverage. This apart, policyholders and their families have to pay for their commute as well as food, from of their pockets, during hospitalisation. Moreover, the premium they pay every year does not help them build a healthcare kitty that they can dip into in times of need. From May onwards, however, you could get to buy a product that will aim to plug these gaps, albeit as part of an experiment. ICICI Prudential Life will unveil a Health savings pilot plan within the insurance regulators sandbox framework that facilitates testing of innovative products. A part of the premium for the product will be used to pay a fixed sum if the policyholder is hospitalised and the balance invested to create a health savings fund. The sandbox framework allows insurance companies to experiment with products either in terms of their offering or the way they can customise them for a group of people features that are otherwise not permitted in regular products. After approving 33 sandbox proposals in February, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has come up with a sequel: 16 products and services from eight insurers have been sanctioned for roll-out. Earlier, non-life insurers such as Digit and Star Health launched Corona Virus Disease-focussed (COVID-19) policies on the basis of the approval they had received for need-based products. This second tranche of approvals will be valid from May 1 to October 31, 2020. Once this period comes to an end, the regulator could extend it by another six months. "We have received conceptual-level approval for our sandbox proposals. The finer details will be chalked out in due course, with final approval from the regulator. These products will be offered to customers after complete disclosure that these products will be available for a short period of time, says Madhu Burugupalli, Head-Products, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. Once launched, the tenure for policies could extend to one year. Lets take you through the most exciting products and their features coming your way in May. Health Savings An ICICI Prudential Life product, it intends to reimburse policyholders hospitalisation expenses as also create a fund to pay for expenses not covered by health insurance policies. In India, more than 60 per cent of the health expenses are self-funded because people either do not have a health insurance plan or the coverage is not adequate, says Burugapalli. Patients have to meet this huge chunk of healthcare expenses out of their pockets or, worse, borrow for the purpose, potentially leading to disruption of other goals. The life insurer says this product will be an antidote to this challenge faced by policyholders. Fixed or defined benefit policies hand out a pre-agreed sum to settle the claim. Now, you can use the amount to meet hospitalisation expenses. But, if you have already been reimbursed by an indemnity plan, which pays for actual expenses to the extent of the sum insured, you can use the money to take care of your recuperation costs, attendant fees in case bed-rest has been advised or even to make good your loss of income, if any, during the period. So, on one hand it will offer hospital cash - where a fixed sum is handed out to the policyholder in case of hospitalisation. A part of the premium will be directed towards this cover. The rest will be invested, so that your money can grow, he adds. If you incur medical expenses that are not covered under health insurance, the insurer will allow you to dip into this accumulated savings kitty to fund your healthcare expenses. Dynamic Term Cover A term insurance cover is the most basic insurance policy that promises to pay your dependants a large lump-sum, if you die. This is to get over the financial loss. Typically experts recommend this cover till you retire because after your retirement your income stops anyway. For example, if you are buying a policy at the age of 35, you would generally choose a tenure of 25 years or at least 20 years. But what if you need to cover your dependants only for a specific time? ICICI Prudential Lifes sandbox term policy will offer dynamic tenures. For example, during an adventure holiday. Likewise, they might need it only for specific event or period of time. They could feel the need for the protection cover only when they make a large purchase on EMIs only till the loan is paid off. This is aimed at younger customers. A lot of them want flexibility, convenience and on-demand coverage. So, they may not want a cover for the next 30 years. They would need it for, say, a specific activity or an event, explains Burugapalli. Standalone Own Damage Agreed Value Two-wheeler policy The product from Tata-AIG General will charge premiums for the own-damage component of motor insurance cover without taking the age of the to-be insured two-wheeler into account. The, premiums depend on the age of the vehicle, model, geographical zone, engine capacity, discounts and insured declared value (IDV) that is, the vehicles sum insured calculated after subtracting applicable depreciation from the ex-showroom price among other things. As a vehicle grows older, its IDV comes down in line with the age-wise depreciation grid prescribed by the IRDAI. However, it is likely that the actual market value is lower than this IDV. Yet, policyholders will be paying premiums as per the IDV. Therefore, our sandbox product proposes to arrive at the IDV through an agreement with the policyholder, explains Parag Ved, Executive Vice President and Head, Consumer Lines, Tata-AIG General Insurance. This agreed IDV will be lower than the value calculated after factoring in age-wise depreciation and, therefore, the premium too will be lower. Renewal rates are low for certain set of two-wheeler customers. To encourage this set of customers to renew policies, we decided to make the process simpler. We secured permission from IRDAI to offer a product that charges the same premium for two-wheeler vehicles of the same make and geography, irrespective of their age, says Parag Ved, Executive Vice President and Head, Consumer Lines, Tata-AIG General Insurance. The policy will take into account the city in which your two-wheeler is registered. Premiums would be comparable only among vehicles in similar geographies. This will help owners of older two-wheelers to pay lower premiums. Loyalty Programme As opposed to just covering your hospital costs, ICICI Prudential has received approval for a loyalty programme that promises to give you reward points. ICICI Prudential is yet to finalise details on how the reward points can be redeemed. The earlier set of sandbox approvals included health products that allow policyholders to redeem these points against vouchers, which, in turn, could be used to pay for doctors consultation or medicines. It remains to be seen what shape this loyalty reward scheme would take. According to ICICI Prudential Life, the objective behind rolling out its product is to engage with customers throughout the lifecycle of the policy, not just at the time of purchase, renewal and claim settlement. While details are being worked out, this will involve letting policyholders earn reward points for, say, using our online self-help services instead of visiting a branch, updating us about their life stage changes (for example, marriage, kids) and so on, explains Burugapalli. Since it is of the nature of a service, policyholders will not have to incur any expenses for enrolling in this programme. Moneycontrols take The purpose of putting a sandbox framework in place is to offer a fertile ground for innovation in insurance products and services. On cue, insurers life as well as non-life will unveil such products. If you find the offerings compelling, you can buy these products or avail of services. However, ensure that like insurers and the IRDAI, you, too, treat them as experiments, whereby these policies or services may not be around after six months. Once the validity period expires, the insurer may choose to withdraw the product, citing unviability or the insurance regulator might deny an extension. For your regular protection needs, you must buy a simple health insurance cover and an adequate term policy. The period before Khmer New Year in mid-April is traditionally a busy time for monks. Chanting at numerous ceremonies across the districts, they receive donations for their blessings, and villagers from surrounding areas bring food to the pagoda to honor their Buddhist faith. But this year is different because of the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic. VOA Khmer's Sothea Ines and Phorn Bopha have more. DYER Dyer business owners will no longer have to worry about a $300 fee for registering or renewing their business license after March 31. During its Thursday meeting, Dyer Town Council members unanimously agreed to suspend the late fee for business licenses until the end of the year. Councilman Robert Starkey said the suspension was a goodwill gesture to rally behind Dyer businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. "This was our way of saying whatever red tape that government typically has in front of you, this is what we can do for you," Starkey said. "We can remove that late fee so that's not something you have to worry about." Starkey added the Council recognizes that the business community in Dyer is primarily made of smaller businesses, which the town needs and wants to keep. "We recognize that Dyer doesn't have the big box stores that Schererville or Highland has, that St. John is getting now and will get more of in the future," Starkey said. "We really have that small mom-and-pop-centric business community here. That was just our way of saying, 'We're in it with you.'" live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More State-owned ONGC has been forced to cut natural gas production by over 15 per cent as factories shut down following the unprecedented nationwide lockdown have refused to take supplies. Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), which produced 64.3 million standard cubic meters of gas per day (mmscmd) prior to the lockdown imposed on March 25, has reduced the flow to 53.4 mmscmd, sources aware of the development said. Gas sales are down to 40 mmscmd against 50 mmscmd previously, they said. The difference between production and sales is due to the fact that some of the gas is also used by ONGC for internal consumption purposes such as power generation and re-injection into wells. Sources said the company received requests from customers for a reduction in gas supplies while some supply reduction requests have been lodged with the gas transporter GAIL. The customers refusing gas supplies are mostly small companies whose business has been completely shut because of the lockdown, and city gas distributors who have seen volumes vanish after CNG vehicles went off the road. In the most far-reaching measure undertaken by any government to check the spread of coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a three-week-long nationwide lockdown, with effect from March 25. The lockdown meant offices and factories, barring those involved in essential supplies business, were to be shut and people were to stay at home. There are indications that restrictions on the movement of people and goods are likely to continue after April 14 when the lockdown ends. So far, 9,152 persons are reported to have infected with the virus and as many as 308 killed. The national capital and some states had imposed lockdown and placed restriction on movement of people even before the nationwide lockdown was declared. This had impacted fuel consumption and demand. A separate source said GAIL, the nation's biggest gas transportation and marketing company, had seen volumes drop to 76 mmscmd from about 115-120 mmscmd prior to the lockdown. "There is about 30 per cent hit in the gas that is being transported through GAIL pipelines," he said. While factories across sectors have been shut down following the lockdowns, the ones seeking stoppage or reduction in gas intake are mostly in the Gujarat region. Gas is used as a fuel in a variety of industries - from glass to fertilizer plants. Large factories such as fertilizer plants continue to use gas as they have been classified as essential commodities. The demand for gas has also been hit as all vehicles, barring the ones used by law enforcement agencies and those used in maintaining essential supplies, have gone off the road. This meant vehicles run on compressed natural gas (CNG) too have gone off the road in cities ranging from Delhi to Mumbai to Ahmedabad. Lesser CNG vehicles meant lesser need of gas and so city gas distributors too have sought a reduction in the volumes they used to take from GAIL/ONGC, the sources said. Indraprastha Gas Ltd, the company that retails CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in the national capital and adjoining cities, has already shut two-thirds of its CNG dispensing pumps in view of the demand constraints. The UK is reviewing the evidence on face masks again, Number 10's top scientific adviser revealed today. Sir Patrick Vallance claimed Downing Street would 'definitely' change its stance on wearing masks if the science became stronger. Britain has repeatedly insisted that healthy Britons do not need to wear face masks to try and protect themselves. But US health chiefs have taken a completely different stance, and say the public should wear them when out and about. And leading German scientists have said 'every citizen should in the future have this type of protection for their mouth and nose'. The World Health Organization (WHO) last week reviewed the evidence and stuck by its original stance that widespread use of masks is not necessary. And the UN agency raised concerns there could be a shortage of masks for medical workers if they are bought by the general public. Sir Patrick Vallance claimed Downing Street would 'definitely' change its stance on wearing masks if the science became stronger Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's Covid-19 envoy, said that people would need to become accustomed to a 'new reality' of always wearing a face mask Discussing the UK's stance on masks in Downing Street tonight, Sir Patrick said: 'We would give new advice if we saw new evidence. 'As you know the WHO has stayed with their recommendation around masks, we look at this and update our view from time to time.' He added the UK was 'actually looking at it again now', suggesting Number 10 could U-turn on its policy in the coming days or weeks. Sir Patrick said the evidence on masks is 'much more persuasive' for them stopping infected patients spreading the virus. He added: 'We are continuing to look at new evidence as it emerges and if there is evidence that looks like we should change our advice we would do so.' Two men wearing a protective face mask are seen in St James's Park, on April 12, as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues to spread South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have issued millions of masks to their people and managed to prevent full-scale outbreaks, despite being in such close proximity to China. Critics say masks don't work because China still suffered more than 80,000 cases How to make your own coronavirus face mask: Online DIY tutorials detail method for vacuum cleaner bag or T-shirt to create protection that leading scientists say is effective against bug Not all masks are created equal: Single-use masks and surgical masks have larger pores which the coronavirus can easily slip through. A more expensive N95 mask is the gold standard for healthcare workers fighting infectious diseases THE TRUTH ABOUT FACE MASKS: WHAT STUDIES HAVE SHOWN Research on how well various types of masks and face coverings varies but, recently, and in light of the pandemic of COVID-19, experts are increasingly leaning toward the notion that something is better than nothing. A University of Oxford study published on March 30 concluded that surgical masks are just as effective at preventing respiratory infections as N95 masks for doctors, nurses and other health care workers. It's too early for their to be reliable data on how well they prevent infection with COVID-19, but the study found the thinner, cheaper masks do work in flu outbreaks. The difference between surgical or face masks and N95 masks lies in the size of particles that can - and more importantly, can't - get though the materials. N95 respirators are made of thick, tightly woven and molded material that fits tightly over the face and can stop 95 percent of all airborne particles, while surgical masks are thinner, fit more loosely, and more porous. This makes surgical masks much more comfortable to breathe and work in, but less effective at stopping small particles from entering your mouth and nose. Droplets of saliva and mucous from coughs and sneezes are very small, and viral particles themselves are particularly tiny - in fact, they're about 20-times smaller than bacteria. For this reason, a JAMA study published this month still contended that people without symptoms should not wear surgical masks, because there is not proof the gear will protect them from infection - although they may keep people who are coughing and sneezing from infecting others. But the Oxford analysis of past studies- which has not yet been peer reviewed - found that surgical masks were worth wearing and didn't provide statistically less protection than N95 for health care workers around flu patients. However, any face mask is only as good as other health and hygiene practices. Experts universally agree that there's simply no replacement for thorough, frequent hand-washing for preventing disease transmission. Some think the masks may also help to 'train' people not to touch their faces, while others argue that the unfamiliar garment will just make people do it more, actually raising infection risks. If the CDC does instruct Americans to wear masks, it could create a second issue: Hospitals already face shortages of masks and other PPE. Advertisement Scientists are split on masks. Some believe they may help stop asymptotic patients spreading the disease before they know they're ill. Others say surgical masks - the most popular - are too thin, loose-fitting and porous, which make it easy for the tiny viral particles to pass through. It comes after a top WHO figure said this morning that wearing facial masks will be the new norm in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Dr David Nabarro, the UN body's COVID-19 envoy, claimed people would have to get accustomed to a 'new reality' of always wearing a facial covering. He told the BBC: 'Some form of facial protection, I'm sure, is going to become the norm, not least to give people reassurance. 'But, I would say, don't imagine that you can do what you like when you are wearing a mask.' Dr Nabarro stressed that people must become used to a new way of life in wake of the pandemic. He said: 'We don't know when we will have a vaccine. So, what we are saying is get societies defended. 'Yes, we will have to wear masks. Yes, there will have to be more physical distancing. Yes, we must protect the vulnerable.' Last week Oxford University researchers ruled there was nothing to be lost in using face masks, despite a lack of evidence to show it reduces spreading. While another team of British scientists said the evidence is not strong enough to recommend widespread use of masks in the general population. A review of literature by the University of East Anglia found the masks have a 'small protective effect' that could shield the vulnerable in crowded places. Therefore, the researchers advised that vulnerable people wear one on public transport, at the supermarket or in hospitals. South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have issued millions of masks to the public and, thanks to strict public health measures, managed to prevent large outbreaks, despite being in such close proximity to China. George Gao, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, last week said the 'big mistake' in the US and Europe was that 'people aren't wearing masks'. The head of the German National Academy of Sciences told newspaper Der Spiegel that masks should be rolled out for citizens in future. More than 1.85million cases of the coronavirus have been reported worldwide, and almost 115,000 deaths. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, considering millions more would of had the infection and never been tested. It comes after MailOnline revealed last week that outdated masks are being issued to staff at a hospital with one of the highest rates of coronavirus deaths in the country. Front line medical workers at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow say that their lives are being put at greater risk by being forced to wear the older surgical masks. Known as EN14683 2005, they were issued in 2005 but withdrawn in 2014 and replaced with masks that are tested to a higher standard that offer more protection against droplets entering the body, the primary way in which coronavirus is spread. How to make your own coronavirus face mask: Online DIY tutorials detail method for vacuum cleaner bag or T-shirt to create protection that leading scientists say is effective against bug The worldwide coronavirus pandemic has led to a shortage of protective face masks, leading to a deluge of online tutorials ion how to make your own using a t-shirt or pillowcase. Homemade masks offer significantly less protection than the N95 medical masks, which are made of a thick, tightly woven material that fits over the face and can stop 95 per cent of all airborne particles. Public Health England still does not recommend Britons wear face masks, unless in a medical setting. But there are good reasons to think DIY masks could be effective in tackling the pandemic, as they have been widely used in Hong Kong,Mongolia and South Korea -countries that largely have the disease under control. The World Health Organisation also currently does not recommend that people without the illness wear face masks, but it could be about to reverse its decision due to evidence from Hong Kong that they may be effective in fighting the virus. And in a further sign that attitudes about masks are changing, LA's mayor, Eric Garcetti, yesterday told all four million of the city's residents that they must wear face masks at all times to slow the spread of the deadly pandemic. MailOnline has investigated how you can make your own face mask using everyday household items such as a t-shirt, kitchen towel or vacuum bags. How to make a face mask from a t-shirt A YouTube tutorial by Runa Ray shows how to make a face mask without any need for sewing, using just a plain t-shirt. First of all you need scissors, pencil and a ruler, and a t-shirt you don't mind being used to make a face mask. Cut out a 16' by 4' rectangle from the middle of the t-shirt, then fold it in half, and measure four inches on either side. Then mark the t-shirt with an even number of tassels on each side and use scissors to cut them. Turn the t-shirt inside out and separate the corner tassels, but tie the remaining ones in-between. Then with the remaining t-shirt material cut some ear straps using the hem of the shirt. Attach the straps to the remaining outer tassels and you have yourself a face mask, with no sewing involved, and using an old t-shirt. A slightly more complicated method has been perfected by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh also managed to design a face mask that could be used if 'commercial masks' are not available during a virus outbreak. A woman wearing a mask walks past a closed shop window display during the pandemic lockdown in Manchester They used a regular cotton t-shirt, which was boiled for 10 minutes and then air-dried to sterilise the material, but also to shrink it. The researchers used a marker and ruler to measure out what they wanted to cut and then formed the mask using an outer layer and then eight inner layers covering the nose and mouth. The mask does not require any sewing, and instead involves it being tied multiple time around the face. How to make a face mask from vacuum cleaner bags By following the simple steps in the graphic, you can create your own face mask from a T-Shirt or vacuum cleaner bag, Even UK politicians have got in on the act, with Gillian Martin, who is MSP for Aberdeenshire East, describing how she made a face mask from vacuum cleaner bags and elastic. She told the Daily Record: 'I live in a small village and have been here for over 20 years. I don't want to worry or offend people when I go out. 'I started researching what other countries have been doing and came across a chart with the best materials to use to make a mask out of just about anything.' 'Just below medical material was a hoover bag. I have loads of them lying around and found Hepa-Flow bag that just goes on your Henry hoover'. The chart the MSP is referring to from a University of Cambridge study which shows the materials that work the best against virus sized particles. The top three are a surgical mask, vacuum cleaner bag and tea towel. She added: 'I cut it up the bag and secured it with elastic. I live with my family of three who have all been self-isolating so I made one for each of us'. Gillian Martin posted about her mask that she made from a vacuum cleaning bag 'I made it because I'm nervous of people coming up to me when I'm out walking the dog. I don't want to have to run away from them.' Another popular YouTube method shows how to fold up a scarf, using hair ties at either end, to make a simple and easy no-sew mask. The same method can be used with a handkerchief and doesn't involve any sewing. How to make a face mask from kitchen towel For this you need two layers of kitchen towel and one of tissue. You cut it in half, and then use masking tape on each end to ensure the mask is stiff. Then you punch holes through either end of the mask and thread elastic bands through the holes. Some Japanese women have even been posting instructions about how to make a face mask from a bra. The method is simple and involves cutting off one cup with scissors and then sewing the bra straps on, so they can be attached to your face. Do masks have to be complex to be effective? The idea that masks do not have to be complex to be effective does have some support from recently published studies. A University of Oxford study published this week concluded that surgical masks are just as effective at preventing respiratory infections as N95 masks for doctors, nurses and other health care workers. It's too early for there to be reliable data on how well they prevent infection with COVID-19, but the study found the thinner, cheaper masks do work in flu outbreaks. Two elderly women wearing protective face masks walk in Westminster on Wednesday The difference between surgical or face masks and N95 masks lies in the size of particles that can - and more importantly, can't - get though the materials. N95 respirators are made of thick, tightly woven and molded material that fits tightly over the face and can stop 95 percent of all airborne particles, while surgical masks are thinner, fit more loosely, and more porous. This makes surgical masks much more comfortable to breathe and work in, but less effective at stopping small particles from entering your mouth and nose. Droplets of saliva and mucous from coughs and sneezes are very small, and viral particles themselves are particularly tiny - in fact, they're about 20-times smaller than bacteria. President Trump publicly signaled his frustration on Sunday with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal governments top infectious disease expert, after the doctor said more lives could have been saved from the coronavirus if the country had been shut down earlier. Mr. Trump reposted a Twitter message that said Time to #FireFauci as he rejected criticism of his slow initial response to the pandemic that has now killed more than 22,000 people in the United States. The president privately has been irritated at times with Dr. Fauci, but the Twitter post was the most explicit he has been in letting that show publicly. The tweet came amid a flurry of messages blasted out by the president on Sunday defending his handling of the coronavirus, which has come under sharp criticism, and pointing the finger instead at China, the World Health Organization, President Barack Obama, the nations governors, Congress, Democrats generally and the news media. (New York Times) Featured stories U.S. leads world in deaths from the coronavirus with nearly 22,000 (NBC News) Beijing tightens grip over coronavirus research, amid U.S.-China row on virus origin (CNN) Despite encouraging signs, coronavirus is advancing worldwide, WHO envoy warns (NBC News) Fauci says rolling re-entry of U.S. economy possible in May (ABC News) All 50 states under disaster declaration for first time in U.S. history (The Hill) South Korea to ship 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to U.S. on Tuesday (Reuters) Spikes in demand from coronavirus patients are creating shortages of asthma drugs and sedatives for ventilator patients (Washington Post) National news Rolanda Robinson calls family and friends from her brother's damaged home Sunday in Monroe, La., after a tornado ripped through the town. (Nicolas Galindo, The News-Star via AP) Stanley Chera, friend of President Trump, dies of coronavirus (Politico) Cuomo says he wants New York to reopen as soon as possible (The Hill) Veteran NYPD traffic enforcement agent dies of COVID-19, 20th member of force to succumb to virus (New York Daily News) Unimaginable pain: Coronavirus robs Michigan woman of whole family (Detroit News) GOP pushes voting by mail with restrictions while Trump attacks it as corrupt (Washington Post) Woman broadens claims against Biden to include sexual assault (NBC News) U.S. nearing brink of virus-linked meat shortage, major producer says (Associated Press) Deadly tornadoes in the South cause catastrophic damage (CNN) 6 people shot at a California party held despite states stay-at-home order (CNN) World news Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks Sunday from 10 Downing Street praising NHS staff in a video message after he was discharged from hospital a week after being admitted with persistent coronavirus symptoms.Pippa Fowles/10 Downing Street via AP Coronavirus: Boris Johnson says it could have gone either way (BBC) Kim Jong-uns sister returns to key role in North Korean reshuffle (The Guardian) Japan government: No plans at moment to extend state of emergency to other regions (Reuters) Taiwan says Chinese carrier group drills close to island (Reuters) Israeli president refuses extension of deadline for new coalition deal (The Guardian) Turkish president rejects ministers resignation over virus (Washington Post) 25 years ago: Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 people Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma On April 19, 1995, two right-wing terrorists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring a further 680. The attack destroyed over a third of the building, ruined hundreds of buildings on the surrounding blocks, and caused $652 million in damage. Until the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, it was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. The bombing was a conscious political act. McVeigh was a disillusioned Gulf War veteran, inspired by The Turner Diaries a fascist book published in 1978 in which a violent race war engulfs the United States, exterminating the non-white population. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it the bible of the racist right. McVeighs stated motivation was revenge against the federal government for the siege of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, just two years prior. McVeigh was convicted on 11 counts, and eventually executed by lethal injection in 2001. The ruling class deliberately cultivated a psychopathic element inside the military. A former soldier who fought with McVeigh in Iraq recited his units daily chant for reporters: Blood makes the grass grow. Kill! Kill! Kill! The attack was also an indictment of the trade unions. The growth of right-wing and fascistic paramilitary groups in deindustrialized areas like Buffalo, New York, where McVeigh grew up, was a result of the inability and refusal of the trade unions to provide a way forward for the working class. From the standpoint of the fascists who carried it out, their present lack of popular support was all the more reason for an outrage of huge proportions. It was their way of announcing their arrival on the political scene. They hoped that after the initial shock and revulsion dissipated, growing numbers of people would see them as a force to contend with. US President Bill Clintons reaction to the bombing was a further lurch to the right, including the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995, introduced by Senators Joe Biden and Tom Daschle. The revised version of the act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, was passed. The International Workers Bulletin, the predecessor of the World Socialist Web Site, wrote in 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing raises starkly the danger of the growth of right-wing and fascist forces. But it does not mean they are about to take power. Ahead lies a protracted period of political and social struggle. The class contradictions which grow sharper by the day can find a progressive outlet in the form of a broad political movement of the oppressed against an economic system which breeds poverty and injustice. Or they can assume the malignant forms of racism, fascism and homicidal violence directed against the victims of that system. 50 years ago: Apollo 13 spacecraft avoids disaster The Crew of Apollo 13, from left: Swigert, Lovell and Haise, the day before launch. The week of April 13, 1970 millions of people around the world learned that the Apollo 13 spacecraft, headed for a landing on the moon, had suffered a significant mechanical failure that put the lives of the crew members, James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise in danger. The originally planned lunar mission would have to be abandoned and a struggle began to return the astronauts safely to Earth. The damage to the spaceship was caused by a faulty wire insulation inside an oxygen tank. During a routine stir of the oxygen tank, the wire ignited and caused an explosion that shot the contents of the critical oxygen supply into space. The explosion also caused damage to the ships electrical systems, meaning the astronauts had to perform operations with reduced power. After informing the Mission Control team in Houston, Texas, of the explosion, the crew was advised to enter and remain in the lunar module, which could be sealed off from the service module where the explosion had taken place. The lunar module however, was designed for two astronauts to travel down to the surface of the moon for two days and return, not to be the main transportation vessel of the full three-man crew. Making precise calculations, the Mission Control team was able to instruct the crew of Apollo 13 on how to make the necessary adjustments to the ships normal operations in order for them to survive in the lunar module until they could return to Earth. This presented great challenges to the crew members as it would give them limited access to drinking water. They also had to improvise a way to adapt the carbon dioxide removal system from the damaged command module to function aboard the lunar module. The Mission Control team rapidly ran tests to assist Lovell, Swigert and Haise by calculating solutions to the carbon dioxide problem with lists of all the materials aboard the spacecraft that could be used to adapt the command module systems to work aboard the lunar module. The solution ultimately involved tearing out the covers of procedure manuals and using duct tape to seal in the improvised system. Instead of immediately turning the ship around and returning to Earth, fear that the propulsion of the main engine could also be severely impacted by the explosion led to a longer but safer rescue strategy to be implemented. The ship would continue toward the Moon and use its gravity to loop around and then head back to Earth. The plan proved to be a success. On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 landed in the Pacific Ocean near American Samoa and was recovered by the US Navy. The only injury to the crew came in the form of a urinary tract infection that Haise developed because of the low water consumption. Otherwise, the three astronauts returned to Earth in good health and spirits. 75 years ago: Soviet armies liberate Vienna Battle of Vienna On April 13, 1945, the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts of the Soviet Unions Red Army, accompanied by divisions of Bulgarian troops, liberated Vienna from the Nazis at the conclusion of a successful offensive that had begun on April 2. German dictator Adolf Hitler had entered the city and declared an Anschluss, or joining of Austria to Nazi Germany, seven years earlier in March 1938. The move had been supported by the Austrian military and the countrys political establishment. It set the stage for horrific crimes against Viennas 200,000-strong Jewish population, including a brutal Kristallnacht pogrom in late 1938 and the later deportation of tens of thousands to the death camps. The Soviet offensive targeting Vienna was prepared by sweeping Allied advances over the preceding months on the eastern and western fronts. The 2nd Ukrainian Front approached the city having played a key role in the liberation of Hungary. It was able to cross that countrys border with Austria largely unopposed, after the failure of Germanys Operation Spring Awakening, the last Nazi offensive aimed at regaining lost ground on the eastern front. The German SS 6th Panzer Army had retreated within the walls of Vienna and established defensive positions within, but it was isolated and incapable of any prolonged repulsion of the Soviet attack. Beginning on April 2, two Red Army fronts surrounded the city and initiated a siege. They rapidly secured the citys eastern suburbs, before making advances in the heavily-fortified southern suburbs by April 8. Over the following days, the focus was particularly on the western quarters, which were home to the main railway station and other strategic official buildings. After days of heavy fighting, including close urban combat in some areas, the 6th Panzer Army retreated from Vienna, while the Red Army began a push further into Austria in the direction of Linz. The liberation of the city, which had played a central role in the intellectual and cultural life of Europe, was welcomed by workers and resistance fighters around the world. It coincided with the beginning of the Red Army campaign to secure control of Berlin, the German capital, which would mark the defeat of the hated fascist regime. 100 years ago: San Remo conference divides Middle East among imperialist powers Imperialist politicians of Japan, Britain, France and Italy divide the Middle East at San Remo On April 19, 1920, the San Remo conference opened in Italy. It was the last of the major peace conferences sponsored by the League of Nations and its forerunner, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, to establish the imperialist division of the world after World War I. The conference focused on the breakup of the former Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany in the world war that had surrendered to the Allies in 1918. Participants included representatives from British, French, Italian and Japanese imperialism. The Americans sent a delegation only as observers. The conference also addressed the Allied attitude toward Soviet Russia and the obligations of Germany under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. By the time the conference closed on April 26, it had decided to give Syria, including modern Lebanon, to the French under a mandate to oversee independent Arab states. The British received a mandate for Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, which allowed the Zionist colonization in Palestine, was ratified. The British also granted the French a 25 percent share of Iraqi oil production. The division followed the lines of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1917 between the British and the French, which the young Soviet state had made public to the world in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Mass movements in all the regions of the former Ottoman Empire had arisen against imperialism. In February, in Turkey itself, a national movement led by Kemal Ataturk had expelled the French from the city of Maras and was making military inroads throughout the country. In Syria, Arab nationalists had declared the Arab Kingdom of Syria, and in Palestine, nationalists agitated against British rule and the Zionist colonization. The Kurds were denied a state of their own and the imperialists failed to set up an Armenian bourgeois state, although the Bolsheviks founded a Soviet Armenia in December. The division of the Ottoman provinces at the San Remo conference laid the basis for a series of bourgeois states in the aftermath of World War II 25 years later, including the establishment of Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Leer en espanol WHEN LICETT MORILLO, now 23, left the Dominican Republic for Milan in 2018, she had little time for self-doubt. A month earlier, on the streets of Santo Domingo, her stately face had caught the eye of a modeling scout as she rushed to her immersive English class. Shortly after, Morillo landed her first casting call for Prada. There, surrounded by hundreds of other girls, she recalled thinking, No, this isnt going to work. But it did. Morillo was selected to close the spring 2019 Prada show an honor and over the last few years, her rise has been replicated many times, as Dominican (and Dominican-American) models such as Annibelis Baez, Luisana Gonzalez, Melanie Perez and Dilone have appeared on runway after runway, from Valentino to Saint Laurent. They are one part of a greater industrywide shift: In the past fall season alone, nearly 40 percent of models who walked in London, Milan and Paris were women of color, up from 17 percent in 2014, when the fashion news site the Fashion Spot began tracking runway racial diversity. In New York, nearly 46 percent of the models walking the runway were women of color. Fashion has long elevated (or in some cases, fetishized) certain ethnic groups, whose sudden prominence and ubiquity are usually attributable to a single standout face. In the aughts, the Russian Natalia Vodianova was part of a wave of former Eastern Bloc models celebrated for their angular features and near translucent skin; the growing economic might of China helped give rise to Liu Wen and Fei Fei Sun. Every phase was reductive in its own way. But the idea of blackness and beauty has always been particularly so; black models of the 70s, for example, were generally favored if they were light-skinned or possessed seemingly European features. That definition expanded in the 80s and 90s with the arrival of the British-Jamaican Naomi Campbell and the South Sudanese-British Alek Wek, but there were rarely more than a few representatives. Diversity came with a strict quota attached. MARTHA MASSIEL in a Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello top, $2,690, and shorts, $5,490, LICETT MORILLO in a Prada top, $1,260, and skirt, $1,830, MELANIE PEREZ in a Chanel top, $8,000, (800) 550-0005, and Louis Vuitton skirt, price on request, LISSANDRA BLANCO in a Prada top, $1,260, and skirt, $2,110; ANNIBELIS BAEZ in a Louis Vuitton dress, price on request; LUISANA GONZALEZ in a Celine by Hedi Slimane top, $2,450, (212) 226-8001, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello shorts, $950, and Chanel shoes, $850; AMBAR CRISTAL in a Prada dress, $1,910, tights, $270, and shoes, price on request; HIANDRA MARTINEZ in a Prada dress, $1,910, tights, $495, and shoes, price on request; LINEISY MONTERO in a Prada dress, $2,110, tights, $270, and shoes, price on request; and ANYELINA ROSA in a Celine by Hedi Slimane top, $1,050, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello shorts, $950, and Chanel shoes, $850. Photographed at Little Grand Studio in Aubervilliers, France, on Jan. 24, 2020. Clockwise from top left:in a Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello top, $2,690, and shorts, $5,490, ysl.com in a Prada top, $1,260, and skirt, $1,830, prada.com in a Chanel top, $8,000, (800) 550-0005, and Louis Vuitton skirt, price on request, louisvuitton.com in a Prada top, $1,260, and skirt, $2,110;in a Louis Vuitton dress, price on request;in a Celine by Hedi Slimane top, $2,450, (212) 226-8001, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello shorts, $950, and Chanel shoes, $850;in a Prada dress, $1,910, tights, $270, and shoes, price on request;in a Prada dress, $1,910, tights, $495, and shoes, price on request;in a Prada dress, $2,110, tights, $270, and shoes, price on request; andin a Celine by Hedi Slimane top, $1,050, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello shorts, $950, and Chanel shoes, $850. Photographed at Little Grand Studio in Aubervilliers, France, on Jan. 24, 2020. Photograph by Willy Vanderperre. Styled by Olivier Rizzo Today, black African models of very different skin, hair and appearance from Adesuwa Aighewi, an American who has Thai, Chinese and Nigerian roots, and Anok Yai, an American born in present-day South Sudan, to the South Sudanese-Australian Adut Akech and the hijab-wearing Somali (by way of Des Moines) Ugbad Abdi reflect, in their diversity of presentation and origins, a more authentic identity in fashion. But Latin Americas own racial and ethnic heterogeneity has failed to receive the same treatment. The surge of Brazilian models in the 1990s, for example, almost wholly favored white and tan-complexioned models like Gisele Bundchen and Adriana Lima. Which is why the women coming out of the Dominican Republic, most of whom are Afro-Latinas, finally offer a more expansive view of Latin Americas racial diversity. WHILE MODELS LIKE Morillo have come to represent social progressiveness in the American and European fashion worlds, their identity in the Dominican Republic (and elsewhere in Latin America) is more complex. The Dominican Republic was colonized by the Spanish in the 15th century and is where the first Africans were enslaved in the New World, but it was once the land of the Taino indigenous group, who, though largely wiped out by the Spanish, are still inseparable from the countrys mythos and history. Dominicans have always been proud of this inherent mestizaje, or mixed ethnicity. In the Dominican Republic, said Anyelina Rosa, 19, we dont use that language of whether were white or black, because my color is very common and normal. Nearly 90 percent of the islands population is either mixed race or black (only about 13 percent identify as white) according to a recent population survey, and though most Americans or Europeans would label these models as black, a person in the Dominican Republic might choose to describe them as morena, triguena, jabada or india all common words used to denote different gradations of blackness but not necessarily blackness itself. To some extent, too, the nations cultural identity was forged in opposition to Haiti, the decidedly black country on the other side of the island, which briefly held Santo Domingo under its control in the 1800s and has historically been derided by the Dominican ruling class, to the extent that Dominicans celebrate their Independence Day on the day of secession from Haiti, rather than Spain. (Never mind that it was under French and Haitian rule that the abolition of slavery was achieved twice first in 1801, and then later in 1822 or that traces of the Dominican Republics African roots were already present in nearly all of its culture.) Unsurprisingly, this layered colonial past has also complicated Dominicans own sense of what beauty looks like and is. Several of the models say, for instance, that they struggled with self-image in their home country, which, like much of the rest of the world, favors fair skin, long, straight hair and European features but also a certain body type my own cousins in Santo Domingo call un cuerpo tropical, a voluptuous figure that is generally considered much more desirable than thinness. Efforts to fight against anti-black beauty standards have intensified in recent years, but many women are still strongly discouraged from wearing naturally curly or kinky hair to school or work because its widely viewed as unkempt and inelegant. This was true for Rosa, who, when she lived in the Dominican Republic, relaxed her hair; she now usually wears it in cornrows or in an Afro. Originally rejected by local designers, her international work in fashion has broadened her perceptions of beauty. Now I have self-love, she said. I dont say, I cant, that Im ugly, that they wont pick me. The T List | Sign up here One of four covers of Ts April 19 Culture issue. Clockwise from top: AMBAR CRISTAL, in a Prada dress, $1,910; LINEISY MONTERO in a Prada dress, $2,110; and HIANDRA MARTINEZ in a Prada dress, $1,910. Photograph by Willy Vanderperre. Styled by Olivier Rizzo It is perhaps ironic that an industry often responsible for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards is also helping people embrace traits they were long told were undesirable. Its both a reflection of the evolution of fashion, the ways in which its understanding of inclusivity not just in matters of race but in gender, sexuality, age and size has expanded, as well as the specific value of a global black diaspora in elevating conversations around the black, post-colonialist experience. Even if these models are not necessarily labeled black by their compatriots, to the rest of the world, and in the context of an international diaspora, they are and their success in the fashion world is a boon to representation in general. Their presence is having an effect in the Dominican Republic, too, where local media regularly boasts about their successes, even while revealing their biases. In one TV interview, right after Morillos Prada debut, a host asked her if she had felt beautiful before becoming a model in a way that seemed to imply she shouldnt have. But Morillo simply smiled and said, Yes. My self-esteem is very high. Last September, Vogue Latin America featured four Afro-Dominican models, including Morillo and Baez, on their cover. Lineisy Montero, at 24, arguably the best-known of this generation of Dominican models, had already been featured on several magazine covers, having become an industry favorite in 2015 when she debuted on the Prada runway wearing a short, immaculately trimmed Afro. Its easy to be skeptical of racial progress when only a singular person is celebrated as representative of broader institutional shifts. But in this case, these models have created a space for change because of their plurality. That so many Dominican girls are here is synonymous with improvement, Morillo said. Ninety percent of us are from humble families, and that were here giving our best, it fills me with pride. Not pictured: Dilone, Yorgelis Marte and Sculy Mejia Escobosa. Concepcion de Leon is a reporter covering literary news and culture for The New York Times. Willy Vanderperres most recent show, Hurt, Burn, Ruin and More, opened in March at Londons 180 The Strand. Models: Martha Massiel, Licett Morillo and Lissandra Blanco at IMG Model Management; Melanie Perez and Anyelina Rosa at Society Model Management; Annibelis Baez at DNA Model Management; and Lineisy Montero, Hiandra Martinez, Ambar Cristal and Luisana Gonzalez at Next Model Management. Hair by Anthony Turner at Streeters. Makeup by Lynsey Alexander at Streeters. Casting by Nicola Kast at Webber Represents. Manicure: Liza Papass. Producer: Entree Libre. Praising doctors is the rising theme among the trending topics of pop songs in the time of the coronavirus Romantic song themes are regressing during the time of the coronavirus as Egyptian musicians join the battle against the pandemic with patriotic and hopeful songs. Until today the COVID-19 has infected approximately two million people and claimed the lives of close to 120,000. With mainstream media and mega advertisers boosting awareness campaigns against the disease, songwriters are competing in following "the trends" with new topics becoming the main themes of pop songs. While some songs are sarcastic and funny, hope has got to be the winning card of song themes, with messages such as Stay Home and Wash Your Hands, alongside religious and patriotic themes of course. The rising trend now, however, is odes to doctors. Songs that praise and show gratitude to doctors and medical staffs are gradually becoming the main trend now across the Arab world as well, with songs such as Lebanese Ragheb Alama's Entou Amalna (You're Our Hope), Kuwaiti Nabil Shuail's Thabtah Hal-Deirah (This Country is Solid). With many other songs of the same topic already out or in the making, the following are three Egyptian songs released this week, selected to represent main dominating music scenes in Egyptian playlists: pop, indie, and shaabi. The three songs are boosted by various sponsors. Aziz El-Shafei's composition in Gb Kurd scale (Phrygian mode), Medhat Saleh sings Yabo Balto Abiad (You in the White Coat). Lyrics written by Omar Taher warmly symbolise doctors as brave, religious warriors, in a typical Egyptian popular maqsoum form. Again in Phrygian but from C, Wust El-Balad's star Hany Adel appeared in Ahmed Tarek Yehia's anthem in which he uses acoustic and electric guitar riffs, boosted by orchestral hit sounds and clap beats and Ezz Tarek's lyrics, entitled Beyhnouga Edaamouhom (They Protect us, Support Them). Once antagonised for inappropriate lyrics in his top chart Mahragan Bent El-Giran, Hassan Shakoush released Geishna El-Abiad (Our white army), with a popish approach from arranger Saso, of course in Phrygian but in E key, with Mostafa Hadouta's lyrics. (For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture) footer 'Geishna Labiad' Search Keywords: Short link: On the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The companys new Alzheimers drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher Boston: On the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The companys new Alzheimers drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher. Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston, Vounatsos touted the drugs remarkable journey. Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the companys big plans, Vounatsos said no. So far, so good, he said. But even as he spoke, the virus was already silently spreading among Biogens senior executives, who did not know they had been infected days earlier at the companys annual leadership meeting. Biogen employees, most feeling healthy, boarded planes full of passengers. They drove home to their families. And they carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread. The Biogen meeting was one of the earliest examples in the US of what epidemiologists call superspreading events of COVID-19, where a small gathering of people leads to a huge number of infections. Unlike the most infamous clusters of cases stemming from a nursing home outside Seattle or a 40th birthday party in Connecticut, the Biogen cluster happened at a meeting of top health care professionals whose job it was to fight disease, not spread it. The smartest people in healthcare and drug development and they were completely oblivious to the biggest thing that was about to shatter their world, said John Carroll, editor of Endpoints News, which covers the biotech industry. The official count of those sickened 99, including employees and their contacts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health includes only those who live in that state. The true number across the United States is certainly higher. The first two cases in Indiana were Biogen executives. So was the first known case in Tennessee, and six of the earliest cases in North Carolina. All the people outside Massachusetts that The New York Times has connected to the cluster have recovered. But its impossible to say for certain whether anyone became gravely ill or died from the spread out of the conference. In hindsight, many people have criticised Biogens decision to continue with its leadership meeting in late February, which was attended by vice-presidents from European countries already hit by the virus. Others in the industry fault Biogen for being too tight-lipped about the outbreak. At least two of the companys senior executives have tested positive. Citing privacy concerns, the company has declined to name them, even as other chief executives in biotech have disclosed their positive tests. Responding to questions from The New York Times, Vounatsos refused to say even whether he had been tested for COVID-19. He is completely focussed on employee safety, supplying medicines to patients, and leading the company, said a Biogen spokesman, David Caouette. This takes precedence over his personal health status. The company has defended its handling of the leadership meeting and its aftermath, saying it made the best decisions it could with the information available at the time. For a company whose mission is to save lives, it was very difficult to see our colleagues and community directly affected by this disease, Vounatsos said in his first public comments about what happened at Biogen. We would never have knowingly put anyone at risk. Founded in 1978 and based near Boston, Biogen helped pioneer the biotechnology industry, specialising in multiple sclerosis drugs. The company is best known now for its work on a promising treatment for Alzheimers. Its experimental drug was seen as a potential holy grail until the company announced about a year ago that the drug appeared to be a failure in large-scale trials. Patients were devastated. The companys stock nose-dived. But last fall, in a stunning reversal, Biogen announced that further analysis of the data suggested the drug actually worked at higher doses. Vounatsos said the company planned to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible. The stock soared; the company pulled in record annual revenues of about $14.4 billion. By the time of Biogens annual leadership meeting on 26 and 27 February, spirits were high. So was the pressure to deliver. Although some other companies cancelled international meetings around that time, Biogen never discussed doing so. The outbreak was raging in China but had not yet been declared a worldwide pandemic. As of 21 February, the Friday before the meeting, the United States had only 30 confirmed cases, according to data compiled by The Times. Biogen executives in Germany, Switzerland and Italy where there were just 20 known cases packed their bags. On the first night, about 175 executives gathered for a buffet dinner and cocktails at the Marriott Long Wharf overlooking Boston Harbour. Colleagues who hadnt seen one another in a year shook hands and vied for face time with bosses. Europeans gave customary kisses on both cheeks. Its unfortunately the perfect breeding ground for a virus, said one former vice president, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his ties to Biogen. Two days later, the senior executives returned to their offices. One drove to a manufacturing centre in North Carolina. Others flew back to Europe. Peter Bergethon, the head of digital and quantitative medicine at Biogen, went home to his wife, an infectious-disease doctor. A Biogen vice president in the Alzheimers franchise and her husband attended a party the following Saturday night at a friends home in Princeton, New Jersey, with about 45 other people. They celebrated a holiday in the Greek Orthodox calendar, the end of the Carnival season, with special sweets and traditional dances that involved holding hands in a circle. Although celebrations in Greece had been cancelled, the party in New Jersey went forward, since White House officials had just pronounced the virus in the United States to be under control. That night, Allana Taranto, a photographer who covered the leadership meeting for Biogen, celebrated her 42nd birthday with her boyfriend and another couple. Over that weekend, though, some people in the company had already started feeling sick. Jie Li, a 37-year-old biostatistician who worked on the Alzheimers drug team, had chills, a cough and aches. She was too junior to attend the companys leadership conference, but her boss went, and showed up at the office afterward. On 2 March, the following Monday, the companys chief medical officer sent an email informing everyone who attended the leadership meeting that some people had fallen ill and telling them to contact a health care provider if they felt sick. We moved quickly, Caouette said. Still, that same day, the companys four top executives attended a huge health care conference hosted by the investment firm Cowen. At another Marriott in Boston, they held meetings in hotel rooms with potential investors. Another attendee who met some of the same investors said he heard that members of the Biogen team looked sick. At the conference, concern about the coronavirus mounted as word spread that some companies, including Vertex and Seattle Genetics, had canceled their appearances. By Tuesday, the second day of the conference, many attendees had stopped shaking hands. Later, investors were informed that two of the four Biogen executives at the conference tested positive for the virus. In defence of his companys decision to attend the event, Vounatsos said, When we learned a number of our colleagues were ill, we did not know the cause was COVID-19. That Tuesday, Biogen contacted the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and reported that about 50 employees in the Boston area and overseas had flulike symptoms. Biogen employees began showing up at the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital, demanding tests. They were told their cases didnt satisfy the testing criteria at the time, since none had travelled to a hot spot or had known exposure to someone who had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day, confirmation of the worst arrived. Two Biogen executives who had returned home to Germany and Switzerland, where tests were more widely available, had tested positive. On Thursday, the company held a call with its staff and shared the news. All office-based employees were directed to work from home. Yet on that same day, a Biogen executive visited the Washington office of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, the industrys top lobbying group. Soon after, that executive tested positive, prompting the group to close its headquarters for deep cleaning. The next few weeks turned into a blur of Biogen employees leaving casseroles on one anothers doorsteps and trading news about who had fallen ill. Bergethon infected his wife, the infectious-disease specialist. While their symptoms were manageable, the scariest part was the uncertainty, Bergethon recalled recently at a virtual event hosted by the University of Rochester. We didnt know we were going to recover, he said. We didnt know what was coming next. Taranto, the photographer who had been at Biogens leadership conference, unknowingly gave the illness to a friend at her birthday dinner. She had felt healthy at the time. Of the four dozen people who attended the party in New Jersey, at least 15 later tested positive, according to public health authorities. A Biogen executive, Chris Baumgartner, became the first COVID case in Tennessee. I was patient zero, he wrote on Facebook. He added: Imagine having to confront a virus so feared, it now has the entire world on the brink of mass hysteria. The earliest cases in Indiana and North Carolina were tied to the company. One Biogen employee even carried the virus back to China. After falling ill with flulike symptoms, Li called an ambulance and was given a coronavirus test, according to a public health official in Belmont, the upscale Boston suburb where she lived. But before she received the results, she booked a flight to Beijing, boarding a plane with her husband and son, leaving behind their house, a white BMW and other trappings of the life they had built in the United States over 15 years. They must have been desperate, said Dr. William Q Meeker, a statistics professor at Iowa State University who had worked closely with Lis husband, Yili Hong, also a statistician. The couple worried most about their 2-year-old, who would be far from relatives if they both fell ill, according to a former graduate school classmate. Li took medicine to conceal her symptoms, and did not reveal her health condition to flight attendants on board the flight, Air China and Beijing disease control officials said last month. After she landed in China, authorities placed her under investigation for obstructing the prevention of infectious diseases, a crime that reportedly carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison. In Beijing, the couple suffered from high fevers and lung infections and were hospitalised, Meeker said. He recently received an email from Hong that said they were recuperating, but that their lives will be different in the future. It appears that all of Biogens employees who fell ill have recovered. Aside from Li, who was fired, all have returned to work, Caouette said. Biogen has since joined the fight against the virus. The company donated $10 million to expand access to testing and to provide emergency food and protective gear for hospital workers. Company officials said its struggle against the pandemic is just beginning: Biogen, for instance, has also entered into talks with Vir Technology about manufacturing a potential treatment for COVID-19, another pharmaceutical holy grail that could make untold amounts of money. Farah Stockman and Kim Barker c.2020 The New York Times Company American actor Olivia Munn said she's a little different from some of her friends when it comes to wanting a big wedding. According to Fox News, the actor recently spoke to Variety about her latest film 'Love. Wedding. Repeat,' which is currently streaming on Netflix. The film is about the antics at a wedding, and while talking about the movie Munn said that she isn't a fan of weddings. The 'Iron Man 2' actor shared "You know what's funny is, I've only gone to, I want to say, four weddings in my life. Maybe five, total. Definitely no more than one hand. But the weddings I have gone to, I do find boring." Munn continued explaining that felt that weddings themselves were for only a specific few people, while "you only see the backs of your friends' heads." Munn also explained that she never planned on being in a wedding herself. The 'X-Men Apocalypse' star said, "No. I never have ever been that girl. And, I'll hear about friends who have, and I've just never been the person that's like, 'Oh, I can't wait to get married...'" She continued, explaining that the idea of having a wedding made her feel "like, 'It's hot in here, right?'" Munn also shared that regardless of whether she'll have her own wedding in the future or not, she worked on 'Love. Wedding. Repeat' with a specific goal in mind. She said "We wanted it to be this really light, fun romantic comedy," noting that she hoped people received it as escapism. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Florida police chief has been suspended for allegedly saying a deputy died from Covid-19 because he was gay. Davie Police Chief Dale Engle allegedly said Broward Sherrif's Office Deputy Shannon Bennet contracted and died from the virus because he was "a homosexual who attended homosexual events", according to a complaint from the Florida State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council Committee. Mr Bennet, 39, died on April 3. At a patrol meeting on April 7, Mr Engle allegedly berated several Davie officers who raised concerns about protection from Covid-19 while on duty. In response to those concerns, Chief Engel allegedly yelled a backstory claiming Mr Bennett was a victim of the virus due to his sexual orientation. "He intimated that it was because of the homosexual lifestyle that Deputy Bennett first contracted a serious underlying disease which aggravated the Covid-19 virus and lead to his death," the complaint said. Davie Town Administrator Richard Lemack issued a statement on Saturday saying Chief Engle was placed on administrative leave pending further review of the allegations. "The allegations will be investigated in accordance with the Town's Equal Employment Opportunity compliance policy by outside counsel," Mr Lemack said in the statement. "The Town will have no further comment until the investigation is completed to protect the integrity of all involved." Florida's Fraternal Order of Police Chief of Staff Mike Tucker told The Independent in a statement that they support Mr Engle's right to due process and a full investigation. Officers believe the comments were an attempt to "minimise the concerns they had, the dangers they were facing, by using Deputy Bennett as an example". "We hope that at the end of the day a full investigation would reveal and determine that maybe this was perhaps a huge and terrible misunderstanding or some sort of terrible miscommunication," Mr Tucker said. "But, if true and remarks were made to somehow correlate the sexual orientation of deputy Bennet to his passing from Covid-19, it's something that remains confusing for us and frankly would be inappropriate at best and at worst discriminatory and absolutely unacceptable, and obviously warrants an investigation so we can get clarity as to why the chief thought that was relevant to brief his members on." The order is seeking an external investigation from a third party due to fears an internal investigation would not be impartial. The complaint alleges that Mr Engle sent an email after the incident in an attempt to walk back the comments, saying they were "taken out of context" and were an attempt to "provide as much information as possible". The National Fraternal Order of Police said in a statement on Twitter that Mr Engle should be stripped of his rank if the allegations are proven true. "If these allegations are true, the disgusting insinuation made by Chief Engle is not becoming of the badge he wears," the statement said. "He should be stripped of his rank for making such divisive comments that do not reflect the inclusive values of America's law enforcement." New York City in the United States, which is the epicentre of Coronavirus disease in the country has now more confirmed cases than the United Kingdom and China. According to reports, New York City has so far recorded over 1,00,000 Coronavirus cases, compared to China's 82,160 and UK's 84,279. Health experts have warned that the city could soon run out of Coronavirus test swabs. Read: COVID-19: Canadian Family Recreates 'The Simpsons' Intro, Netizens Ask For All Episodes Media reports suggest that the cases in New York City recorded a surge of over 5,000 infections on April 12 to put the total number of Coronavirus infections at over 104,410 on Sunday. As per reports, a total of 9,385 people have lost their lives in the hardest-hit state in the United States. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on April 12 while talking to the press said that 758 people lost their lives due to COVID-19 on Sunday alone. Read: US Records 6.6 Million Unemployment Cases In One Week, Total Number Reaches 16 Million The United States is the most affected country in the world with over 5,60,000 confirmed Coronavirus cases and more than 22,000 deaths so far. According to data by worldometer, there are currently 5,05,684 active infections in the country with over 11,000 critical cases. The North American nation has successfully treated 32,634 patients as of April 12. Read: UK: Daughter Dies Of Heart Attack While Attending Mother's Funeral Who Succumbed To Virus Coronavirus outbreak The deadly Coronavirus infection has claimed more than 1,15,000 lives across the world and has infected over 18,67,000 people globally since it first broke out in December 2019. China was the most affected country until last month before Italy, Spain, US, UK, Iran and France surpassed it to record the most number of deaths anywhere in the world due to COVID-19. The virus is believed to have originated from a seafood market in China's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the disease, where animals were reportedly being traded illegally. Read: Pune Police's Savage Reply To Man Who Wants To Go Out Amid Lockdown Wins Internet (Image Credit: AP) Its hardly likely that UN peacekeepers are deployed in Donbas in the near future under current conditions in Ukraine. The issue of peacekeeping operation remains open. Is it relevant? Yes, it is. Can we say that such an operation can start in the near future under the conditions on which the former and the incumbent presidents of Ukraine and the partners of Ukraine have insisted? No, it's hardly likely, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. He also added that Russians had a different understanding of a peacekeeping operation. "The UN peacekeepers do not parachute down and do not begin to force someone to peace as the Russians understand this. And we saw peace-enforcement operations through the examples of Georgia, Transnistria and other countries. Therefore, we do not need a peacekeeping operation on Russian terms, and such an operation on the terms of Ukraine and its partners is now impossible as the Russian Federation has veto powers at the Security Council, Kyslytsya stressed. ol A surge in "spear phishing' scams has caused trouble for the military as many Defense Department personnel switch to telework, DoD cyber security officials said Monday. "They get you to click on websites that redirect you to compromise yourself," Air Force Lt. Gen. B.J. Shwedo said of the scammers who work cyber cons aimed at getting usernames and passwords or inserting malware by posing as trustworthy entities. Shwedo, the chief information officer for the Joint Staff, declined to name any top officials who had been targeted. Related: Sailor From Carrier Theodore Roosevelt Dies of COVID-19 "That would give the bad guys insight on who we're tracking," he said Monday at a Pentagon briefing. Russia and China have frequently been singled out in the past by DoD and other government agencies as sources of major cyber attacks on U.S. institutions and the business community. But Dana Deasy, DoD's chief information officer, also declined to say who was responsible for the spear phishing. One of the main factors in keeping DoD's workforce cyber secure "is the fact that we don't publish where we get the attack vectors from, because that would just give insight to the adversary to know how to vector and pivot and change their tactics and techniques," Deasy said. At the briefing, Deasy and Schwedo outlined a huge increase in telework at DoD and across the service branches that mirrored the efforts of American society as a whole to rely to the extent possible on working remotely during the COVID-19 crisis under government guidance on social distancing. "The way we work has changed dramatically within the last month" in the effort to achieve "maximum telework capability," Deasy said, and a "COVID-19 readiness task force" has been set up to oversee the process. In addition, laptops, tablets and network security equipment have been distributed to about 2,000 teleworking DoD personnel, Deasy said. As an example of how the task force has confronted networking problems, Deasy cited the two military field hospitals that were set up in New Orleans. He said the site needed a one-gigabyte capacity that normally would have taken months of planning. "The job was completed in one day," he said. The efforts to expand opportunities to work remotely has resulted in huge increases in telework in the service branches, Shwedo said. "The Army alone has roughly 800,000 telework-enabled members on the DoD networks and the overall demands are increasing daily," Shwedo said. "The Navy, for instance, which just had 100,000 remote workers on its network before the pandemic, currently has 250,000 workers, and planned improvements in the next two or three weeks will bring the total [in the Navy] to 500,000 remote users," he said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. Read More: Coronavirus Pandemic Could Mitigate the Air Force's Pilot Shortage, General Says WASHINGTON -- One of the questions being asked by pollsters about President Trump is whether he will ever be able to achieve a 50% job approval rating. A recent headline in an online analysis by the New York Times this week asks this question: "Can Trump Break a 50 Percent Approval Rating?" "More than nine in 10 voters nationwide are concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. And roughly that share of all Americans consider it a major threat to the economy," according to a recent Pew poll, the Times reported last week. Democrats, too, "feel this way almost unanimously, and Republicans overwhelmingly agree. That bipartisan consensus applied to people's impression of their state governments, which have received broadly positive marks in various polls," wrote the Times' Giovanni Russonello. "But as usual, it dries up wherever President Trump is concerned," he added. "As he responds to the pandemic, Mr. Trump has seen a small uptick in his approval rating, which hit record highs in surveys ... by Gallup (49%), Fox (48%), Monmouth University (46%) and Pew (45%)," Russonello reported. "Still, his approval rating remains stubbornly lodged below 50% across the board. That's a barrier Mr. Trump has not been able to breach in most credible polls throughout his term, with Americans on both sides generally steadfast in their feelings about him." Indeed, Trump "gets slightly better ratings for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak than for his job performance over all -- but even on this, his approval is stuck around the 50-yard line. Three-quarters of Democratic voters give his response to the crisis negative marks, according to the Fox poll, while 86% of Republican voters say the opposite." Others have managed to break the 50% average job approval score over their presidencies. Ronald Reagan averaged a 52.8% job approval rating over the course of his presidency. George H.W. Bush's average was 60.9%. Bill Clinton, despite his sex scandal, averaged 55.1%. The Gallup Poll, one of the nation's most respected polling organizations, pointedly noted Trump's problem in a headline over a recent poll that said, "President Trump's Job Approval Rating Up to 49%." "Trump may be enjoying a small rally in public support as the nation faces the COVID-19 pandemic," Gallup reported. "Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults, up from 44% earlier this month, approve of the job Trump is doing as president. "Trump also had 49% job approval ratings -- the best of his presidency -- in late January and early February around the time of the Senate impeachment trial that resulted in his acquittal," Gallup said. Historically, past presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush, have seen their job approval rise by at least 10 points when our nation has been faced with a serious threat. "Bush's 35-point increase after 9/11 is the most notable rally effect on record," Gallup points out. But it now says that "significant rally effects appear to be a relic of the past as political polarization in presidential approval ratings has reached new levels." "Presidential approval ratings today are characterized by consistent, exceedingly low approval ratings from opponents of the president's party. As a result, neither Barack Obama nor Trump saw rally effects as big as those of their predecessors, because their usual opponents were reluctant to approve of them regardless of what was happening in the country," Gallup concluded. Nevertheless, Trump has recently declared that he has a 50% job approval, a boast The Associated Press maintains "may not fully comport with reality." The reason, AP says, is the poll was conducted by the Rasmussen polling group, which "stands alone among frequent pollsters in finding such a high rating for Trump, and its findings are often seen as less reliable because of the automated calling method it uses." "It's against federal law to have computers dial cellphones, so a big chunk of U.S. adults who don't have landline phones -- many of them young people -- cannot be reached using the survey's phone interview," according to the AP. So Trump's job approval rating remains at 49%. Donald Lambro has been covering Washington politics for more than 50 years as a reporter, editor and commentator. ALTON The Alton Fire Department on Monday took delivery on its first brand new firetruck since 2010. The truck is a custom-built model ferom Precision Fire Apparatus of Camdenton, Missouri. The truck delivered Monday was the first of two new trucks that were ordered by the department about a year ago. Before the new trucks were ordered, the city had purchased used trucks. They were rotated in and out of the city garage, depending on their needed repairs. It was time for new fire trucks, according to Alton Deputy Fire Chief Brad Sweetman. Its just a basic workhorse, Sweetman said. He said the truck cost $445,000, but the city ordered features it needed and declined features it does not need. The new truck includes a 750-gallon tank and a hydraulic generator. It has the ability to pump 1,500 gallons of water per minute and can carry four firefighters in its cab. The citys other new truck is scheduled to be delivered in several weeks, Sweetman said. The new trucks are red, as opposed to bright yellow as was the custom a few years ago. Sweetman said members of the fire department are excited about the new trucks, although the one which arrived Monday will not go into service immediately. Each firefighter will have to go through training on the use of the apparatus before the truck can be employed by the department. Delhi Police on Monday arrested Jamia Coordination Committee media coordinator for his alleged role in a case related to planning a conspiracy to incite communal riots in northeast Delhi. A Delhi Court remanded Safoora Zargar, Jamia Coordination Committee media coordinator, to two days police custody in the matter. Special Cell of Delhi Police arrested Safoora Zargar after she was presented before a Delhi court on expiry of her two-day police custody in another case related to organising anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in the Jaffrabad area. Earlier Safoora Zargar was arrested in a matter related to organising anti-CAA protests in the Jaffrabad area where the agitators, majority of whom were women, had begun protests against the amended Act last year. Violence had later broken out between the protesters and CAA supporters this year in which at least 53 people including IB official Ankit Sharma and Head Constable Rattan Lal were killed. Earlier on April 6, a Delhi court had extended the police custody of a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, who was arrested in a case related to alleged planning of a conspiracy to incite communal riots in northeast Delhi for nine days. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The devastated daughter of a coronavirus victim urges Britons to take isolation advice seriously after she saw her mum for the last time in the back of an ambulance as the doors closed. Candice Blythe, 33, saw her mum for the last time as the doors closed with her mum in the back of an ambulance before she died of multiple organ failure a week after being taken to Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow. 'I never believed or thought for a moment that when the paramedics were shutting the door on me as I waved goodbye to my mum in the back of an ambulance it would be the last time I ever saw her,' said Candice. Candice Blythe, 33, (left) saw her mum, Anne Blythe, 58, (right) for the last time in the back of an ambulance outside their home in Harlow, Essex, as the doors closed before she died in the coronavirus ward from multiple organ failure The single mum-of-three, Anne, 58, started showing symptoms of coronavirus, with a cough and tiredness, a week after her and two daughters celebrated Mother's Day early on March 14. Anne was taken to hospital from her home in Harlow, Essex, after her youngest daughter found her complaining she was cold with blue lips and a red, hot body. Fearing Anne had coronavirus paramedics would not let Candice into the ambulance with her mum on March 28 . 'I just didn't think this virus was going to get her, because she has been through and survived so much with her back and even survived a cervical cancer scare,' said Candace. Anne tested positive for coronavirus three days later and was moved to a ward where she had no phone signal to keep in touch with her family. The family were given daily updates from the hospital who reported that Anne was showing signs of improving until April 3 when Anne's organs started to shut down and she was put on a ventilator with oxygen levels to 100 per cent. Anne died on the same day at 7pm from multiple organ failure. Anne has left behind her own mother, three daughters, two grandchildren and five siblings. Candace is begging people to take isolation and social distancing advice seriously 'We had plans to go to Vegas for her 60th next year and I still have all her Mother's Day cards up because I can't bring myself to take them down,' said Candice Candice said: 'I know people lose their parents eventually, but in normal circumstances you would be able to be at their bedside and say goodbye to them. 'We didn't get any of that and my mum was still so young. 'Our 88-year-old nan has outlived her own daughter, she's absolutely beside herself.' Anne has left behind her own mother, three daughters, two grandchildren and five siblings. Anne's death comes as: Britain's death toll rose by 737 to surge past 10,000 with one expert warning it was set to be the highest in Europe; It emerged the Cabinet is split over when to end the lockdown, with growing concerns about the impact of school closures; Michael Gove revealed he had been granted special dispensation to have his daughter tested for the virus so he could get back to work; The Archbishop of Canterbury urged that the dead be treated with dignity; Ministers admitted that only 4,200 of 300,000 small firms had been given loans; The Royal College of Nursing told its members to refuse to treat patients if they didn't have adequate protective clothing; Some Britons flouted lockdown rules and were seen soaking up the sun in the nation's parks; Health Secretary Hancock said he did not have any update on how many NHS staff had died following the 19 he confirmed on Saturday; The Queen stressed the importance of maintaining the coronavirus lockdown, but insisted: 'Easter isn't cancelled; indeed, we need Easter as much as ever'. Candace is begging people to take isolation and social distancing advice seriously. She said: 'I can understand that people feel like they are going stir crazy, but I would rather never see the sun on my face again and to have my mum for another 20 years. 'Is a bit of sunbathing really worth losing your loved ones for? 'I think people need to realise how serious it is before it hits them.' Candice paid tribute to her mum describing her as a 'beautiful and kind' woman who everybody loved. 'We had plans to go to Vegas for her 60th next year and I still have all her Mother's Day cards up because I can't bring myself to take them down. 'We are so grateful to the hospital staff and we are still trying to find out who was with her in her last moments so we can thank them for not letting her go on her own,' said Candice. Sea Watch says a vessel capsized, three others with more than 150 people in distress in the Mediterranean Sea. A vessel has capsized while at least three other boats carrying more than 150 migrants and refugees are in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, Germanys Sea-Watch International said. The German group said no state wants to rescue them after Libya, Italy and Malta shut their borders amid the coronavirus pandemic. Sea-Watch and Europes coastguards were at loggerheads about the fate of the vessels, as well as the fate of up to 85 migrants potentially lost at sea after setting off from the coast of Libya. Sea-Watch had earlier reported that the little rubber boats, which are often unsuitable for the journeys and overcrowded, were carrying 258 people. It said it lost contact with one boat carrying 85 people somewhere between the territorial waters of Libya and Malta. For days, at least 3 boats with more than 150 people are in distress in the #Mediterranean Sea, a fourth sunk already. No state wants to rescue them, only @maydayterraneo's #AitaMari rushes (out of transit and without medics on board) to help a boat with six unconscious people. https://t.co/VXocQlhOfn Sea-Watch International (@seawatch_intl) April 13, 2020 On Sunday, the UN refugee agency told the AFP news agency it was very worried about the fate of those on board. Europes coastguard service, Frontex, told AFP it was also looking for one of the four boats on Sunday, but on Monday it said all four boasts have been accounted for and there had been no shipwreck in the Mediterranean. Two arrived in Sicily and two remain in the Maltese search and rescue area, Frontex said. Today, Frontex received information that the missing rubber boat first spotted on Friday arrived in Porto Palo, Sicily. A Frontex airplane based in Malta is currently on patrol to make sure that no other vessels in distress are in the area, it added. Search needed for missing boat! 24h ago, we lost contact to a boat with ~55 people. Based on their last GPS position, we created this drift model. We cannot guarantee the boat is there, we dont even know if they are still alive, but we demand a large-scale search operation! pic.twitter.com/U5EeaDZdDT Alarm Phone (@alarm_phone) April 13, 2020 Frontex explained that there was a separate deflated rubber boat in the Libyan search-and-rescue area. Italian authorities later confirmed that this boat correlated with an old incident, where the migrants were rescued and the rubber boat was left adrift empty, Frontex said. Italys coastguard said the Libyan coastguard had left the boat drifting empty, rescuing the migrants who were on board after carrying out a rescue. Libya acts as a major gateway for African migrants hoping to reach Europe. Currently, there are close to 700,000 refugees and migrants in the war-torn country. More than 16,700 people have died crossing the Mediterranean for Europe since 2015, including at least 241 this year. Italy has long established itself as the primary European port of entry for migrants and refugees. But it shut down its ports and said it would quarantine any undocumented migrants because of the coronavirus pandemic. 200409222037636 Libyas internationally recognised government in Tripoli last week declared its ports unsafe for the disembarkation of migrants. Malta has also closed its ports to migrants because of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Its foreign minister issued a statement on Facebook criticising rescue agencies inaccurate information. The allegations come in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which has exacerbated the long-standing impasse which has governed migration within the European Union since as far back as 2008, Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo wrote. Before the crisis, rescue ships operated by NGOs regularly patrolled the coast of Libya looking to rescue migrants from flimsy boats. Cab aggregator Ola on Monday announced the Ola Emergency' service in Gurgaon for non-COVID-19 related medical travel to over 100 hospitals in the city. Launched in collaboration with the Haryana government, the service will have a dedicated network of cars equipped with masks and sanitisers that will be operated by specially trained drivers, it said. Users can select the Ola Emergency' category on the Ola app and enter the drop location from a list of available hospitals in the city. The service is only for medical travel that is non-COVID-19 related and doesn't require an ambulance, like dialysis, chemotherapy, scheduled check-ups and physical injuries among others, it said. Customers will be charged a nominal fare according to the rate card to compensate the drivers-partners for their services, it added. Trips to hospitals for medical urgencies are unavoidable, even in the current times. With Ola Emergency, we are able to facilitate trips to and from hospitals across the city through the Ola app, the statement said. With over 100+ Hospitals in the city mapped, ''Ola Emergency'' will be available 24x7 and will provide citizens with a reliable, convenient and safe transport solution for medical trips that do not require an ambulance," it added. The service has already been launched in Bengaluru, Vizag, Bhubaneshwar, Nashik and Varanasi, and will be launched in other major cities soon, the statement said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A BANKER has donated 1million to the Royal Berkshire Hospital to support it during the coronavirus pandemic. Andrey Borodin, who paid 140million for Park Place Estate near Henley in 2011, made the donation with his wife Tatiana to help staff at the hospital in Reading. It will be used to create a facility where they can rest and access wellbeing services. The couple, whose children attend school in Berkshire, said they hoped the money would "contribute in a way which helps and supports" staff "now and in to the future". They said: "We sincerely thank the brave and selfless NHS workers for their hard work and commitment. "We understand that there are thousands of NHS workers in our local community who go above and beyond in their patient care, and at this time more than ever. Steve McManus, chief executive of the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, said: "This is an incredible donation at a very challenging time, and we are extremely grateful to Andrey and Tatiana for their generosity and thoughtfulness." Mr Borodin fled his native Russia and arrived in London in 2011 after being accused of fraud. He feared he would not receive a fair trial in his homeland and was granted political asylum in 2013. Just days after two Huntsville synagogues were vandalized with swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti, a local rabbi has vowed the local Jewish community will rally and grow stronger. If the intention of the hate crime was to bring hate and division in our midst, he failed miserably, Rabbi Mushka Cohen said in a statement. Instead, we have a wonderful showing of togetherness and love that I know to be the true character of our community. Our friends and neighbors have been wonderful, and the community at large has certainly turned an act of hate into an outpouring of love. Cohens home, which is also a Jewish house of worship called the Chabad of Huntsville, was one of two synagogues spray-painted with racial slurs last week on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The first vandalism case happened at Etz Chayim, a Conservative synagogue on Bailey Cove Road, on the first day of the Jewish Passover holiday. The Chabad was targeted the next night. As the vandalism was happening outside his home, Cohen said, his family was inside celebrating with their Seder, which is a ceremonial meal for the beginning of the Passover holiday. Passover is an annual commemoration of the story of Exodus. Jewish families gather in homes and retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. [Read more: As Passover begins, Huntsville synagogue is vandalized] One minute before this person began his destructive, hate filled actions, we opened the door with a prayer that the whole world come together in peace and brotherhood, Cohen said. City and law enforcement leaders have vowed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the vandalism. Images of a suspect were captured by surveillance cameras, and a reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest. Huntsville police have released photos from surveillance footage of a suspect. Not great quality, but its what they have. Anyone with info about the vandalism at the synagogues is asked to call crime stoppers at 256-532-7463. pic.twitter.com/TD2e34sHQe Ashley Remkus (@aremkus1) April 10, 2020 Huntsville police Lt. Michael Johnson today said the department is working tirelessly to catch the perpetrator. Cohen thanked Mayor Tommy Battle, HPD and the FBI for their work on the case. The Huntsville area, Cohen said, has rallied in support of the Jewish community. In truth, hate crimes are crimes against all of us, not just against my home or my personal family, Cohen said. Our message to the amazing community is one of love for everyone we meet and respect for all mankind. Speaking outside the Chabad last week, Battle called the vandalism thoughtless, senseless and stupid. The graffiti included swastikas, slurs that refer to Jewish people and Holohoax, a term used by Holocaust deniers. 6 Huntsville Jewish synagogue vandalized Religious leaders in Huntsville have spoken out against the vandalism. Community members from different walks of faith volunteered to wash away the graffiti. In response to the vandalism, the Chabad of Huntsville has started an online campaign to raise money for the local Jewish community. Cohen said the funds will be used to protect Jewish houses of worship with things like security systems, guards and cameras. He said the money will also pay for Jewish pride activities around north Alabama. We are not slowing down, he said. If anything, now we are going to be doing even more. Advertisement Europe took its first tentative steps towards a return to normality on Monday as some countries re-opened businesses. And several other nations have announced they are preparing to ease their lockdown restrictions in the coming days. Spain and Italy the two European countries worst-hit by the coronavirus outbreak have re-started some industries while Germany is considering opening schools from Monday. Millions of Spanish workers returned to their jobs on Monday after Madrid lifted the curbs on non-essential industries. Builders, cleaners, construction, factory and shipyard employees were allowed back to work, as police handed out millions of masks on the country's metro, train and bus networks. Non-essential industries were shut down two weeks ago as the virus peaked and deaths hit more than 900 a day. But the relaxation came as it recorded its lowest number of new infections 3,477 for more than three weeks, with its daily death toll down to 517. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said social distancing and the ban on nonessential travel will remain, but that there could be a 'progressive and very cautious' relaxation of measures 'in two weeks'. Europe took its first tentative steps towards a return to normality on Monday as some countries re-opened businesses. Pictured: Policemen wearing protective masks walk at the city market in Lienz, Austria Policemen hand in masks to commuters at the train station in Alcala de Henares, Madrid. The Spanish capital has now lifted the curbs on non-essential industries This graphic shows the various restrictions in place in six European countries. Sweden is the only country which still has pubs and restaurants open, allows public gatherings of any size and keeps primary schools open as usual. The UK has no special border restrictions, but several countries are only allowing residents to enter. Spain is not allowing exercise as an excuse to go out. Italy does allow a walk near the home, but not cycling Deaths in Spain and Italy account for nearly a third of the global toll. But today, Italy also begins a phased return to normality after its rise in new infections fell to just 2 per cent. Its death toll topped 20,000 after 566 died on Monday down from a peak of 919 just over two weeks ago. The country will consider relaxing further measures after nonessential shops, such as book stores and children's clothes shops, reopen today. Social distancing measures, bans on non-essential travel and the closure of non-essential industries will remain in place. On Monday night night, French president Emmanuel Macron announced that the country's lockdown would last until at least May 11. In a public television address, from the Elysee Palace in Paris, French president Emmanuel Macron announced that the country's lockdown would last until at least May 11 In an address to the nation from the Elysee Palace in Paris, he insisted 'hope is coming back', with the situation having improved in some regions. Admitting the country had not been ready for the pandemic, he said: 'Were we ready for this crisis? Clearly not enough, but we stood up to it.' He said the country had been short of gloves, hand sanitiser gel and masks, but that the government has begun to get the virus under control. He added: 'In the next four weeks the rules put in place by the government have to be respected. They are not being strengthened or lightened.' German chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure to ease lockdown measures. Experts urged her to open schools from Monday, and called for shops and restaurants to re-open if social distancing measures are observed. Germany has managed to keep its mortality rate down to just over 2 per cent due to its superior testing capacity. By contrast, Italy's is nearly 13 per cent. Several other European countries, such as Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic are also set to loosen their lockdowns. World Health Organisation chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said restrictions must be lifted gradually as the virus 'decelerates' slowly. Millions of Spaniards are allowed to resume their 'non-essential' jobs as 'industrial lockdown' is lifted and lowest number of cases for 24 days is announced - while Italy prepares to open some shops tomorrow Spain is allowing some factory and construction work to resume after two weeks of 'hibernation' Police were handing out millions of face masks to returning workers at metro stations this morning The number of new infections fell to 3,477, down from 4,167 and the fewest in Spain since March 20 Spain is starting to return to work as non-essential workers such as factory and construction personnel were allowed to resume their jobs after a two-week ban. Police were handing out millions of masks at Spanish metro stations on Monday as some people returned to work, although the wider coronavirus lockdown remains in force. The people returning include metalworkers, builders, cleaners, factory and shipyard workers and people involved in sanitation and security. One construction union said the resumption in the materials, wood and furniture industries would lead to at least 1.7million people returning to work, although Monday was a public holiday in some regions of Spain. The two-week 'hibernation' of non-essential business was imposed on March 30, making the lockdown even tougher than in Britain where people have always been able to travel if they cannot work from home. There was further encouragement for Spain as the number of new cases fell to 3,477, the fewest since March 20. The daily death toll also dropped back to 517 after jumping sharply to 619 yesterday. Meanwhile, Italy will allow bookshops, stationery shops and stores selling children's clothes to re-open tomorrow in the first loosening of Europe's longest lockdown. In Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday, allowing some parents to return to work. Austria is also opening some shops this week, but France's president Emmanuel Macron is expected to warn later that the lockdown there will last weeks longer. A police officer hands out a face mask - while also wearing one himself - at a Madrid metro station on Monday as some workers were allowed to resume their jobs in Spain This graph shows the daily number of coronavirus deaths in Spain, which fell back to 517 on Monday after an alarming spike of 619 yesterday The number of new infections announced on Monday was 3,477, the lowest figure since March 20 and a record low increase of 2.1 per cent Passengers keep their distance riding the metro in Madrid as non-essential workers are allowed back to work on Monday Spain and Britain's lockdowns compared Spain entered a full lockdown on March 14, with Britain following nine days later on March 23. In both countries there is a general ban on leaving the home except in specific circumstances. In the UK, these include one form of outdoor exercise per day, which is not a valid excuse in Spain. Both governments allow people to go outside to buy essential goods, seek medical care, obtain money or care for vulnerable people, or escape an immediate risk of harm. Spain toughened the restrictions on March 30 with a two-week ban on travel to non-essential jobs, which expired this week. Britain has never imposed such a ban, although people must work from home if it is 'reasonably possible'. Pubs, bars, restaurants and public gatherings are shut down in both countries, with all sports events cancelled. Schools are completely closed in Spain, whereas Britain is keeping them open on a limited basis to provide childcare for key workers. Both countries have a specific list of essential shops that can stay open, including supermarkets and pharmacies. The UK border remains open with no special restrictions, whereas Spain is only allowing residents or people in transit to enter. Spain's state of emergency is currently running until April 26, although it could be extended again. Britain's is due for review this week, but that process has been derailed by Boris Johnson's sickness and recovery. Advertisement Spain is lifting its ban on non-essential work today despite concerns from some regional leaders and trade unions who fear a resurgence of the outbreak. The country has been under a general lockdown since March 14, but the measures were toughened even further on March 30 when all non-essential business was shut down for two weeks until Easter. The wider lockdown remains in force and is likely to be extended, but the government has not extended the business shutdown. Watched by a world keen to temper the economic impact of the lockdown, workers and their companies will have to adhere to strict regulations to make sure they are not infected by the virus. One company, Burgos-based industrial group Nicolas Correa, said it would take measures to prioritise the health of its staff. 'We will continue to work in shifts, with staggered entries and exits to avoid concentrations of staff,' it said, adding that all workers would be provided with protective equipment. Police were also handing out face masks at train stations, including on the Madrid metro system. But only a few commuters came in and out of the main entrance of Madrid's usually bustling Atocha train station on Monday morning. Road traffic was light too, with mainly public buses passing by. Easter Monday is a public holiday in some Spanish regions including Catalonia, although not Madrid. Some workers voiced a reluctance to go back. 'You finally convince yourself that we are at home for a good cause,' said Benito Guerrero, a 28-year-old communication consultant in Madrid. 'I wouldn't want to go back to work again until it is strictly necessary since that would put my health and others at risk.' Workers at a construction site in Madrid on Monday after some non-essential economic activities were allowed to resume after a two-week suspension Health workers wearing masks console each other during a tribute for a colleague called Esteban who died of coronavirus, outside a hospital in Leganes in Spain on Monday Several workers stand at a construction site this morning in Madrid, which has been the worst affected part of Spain since the epidemic began A man takes a face mask from a police officer before boarding a bus to go to work in Valladolid in northern Spain this morning Carlos Mogorran Flores, a 27-year-old civil engineer in Extremadura, was planning to return to work on Tuesday after the holiday although he said that was still risky. 'I would have preferred to wait 15 more days confined to home or at least one more week and then come back. You are always afraid of catching it and even more so knowing that your life may be in danger, or your relatives,' he said. Dutch destroy 140m tulips as demand wilts Dutch farmers have been forced to destroy 140million tulips after the virus decimated demand. The three months from March to May, which include Mother's Day and Easter, are usually among the best for growers in Holland, with sales of up to 23.5million a day. But last month alone 400million flowers in total 80 per cent of all stock headed straight for the crusher. Mountains of tulips, roses and chrysanthemums went unsold last month at the world's biggest flower market in Aalsmeer where 20million plants are usually sold daily. Frank Uittenbogaard, director of a 110-year-old family farm in Noordwijkerhout, near Amsterdam, destroyed 200,000 of his tulip stems. He said: 'It's very painful because you start all the way back in July digging the bulbs. We had very good quality tulips this year.' Advertisement 'I live with my parents and sister and they don't leave the house. That's what scares me the most.' The returning workers are being advised not to share equipment, wear gloves and masks, keep 6ft apart and practise social distancing on public transport. Other businesses including bars, nightclubs, pubs and restaurants are still closed and may remain so for weeks. Food stores, pharmacies and medical centres, tobacconists, gas stations, pet food and technology shops, internet commerce and laundries have always remained open. The loosening comes despite a surge in new deaths yesterday. Another 619 deaths were announced on Sunday, compared to 510 on Saturday, putting an end to three days of declining deaths. However, the figures improved again on Monday when the death toll fell back to 517 and the number of new cases reached its lowest for 24 days. The 3,477 new cases marked an increase of just 2.1 per cent, the smallest since the crisis began. It brings the total number of infections from 166,019 to 169,496, while the 517 new deaths take the tally from 16,972 to 17,489. The regional leader of Catalonia - the second-worst hit part of Spain after Madrid - had asked for the business shutdown to be extended for two more weeks. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez warned that the country was 'far from victory' over the epidemic. 'We are all keen to go back out on the streets... but our desire is even greater to win the war and prevent a relapse,' he said. A woman wearing a mask accepts another one from a municipal police officer at a metro station in Madrid this morning Passengers sit at a distance on board a Madrid metro train this morning after some workers were allowed to resume their jobs Italy opens bookshops, stationery shops and children's clothes stores A handful of shops will open in Italy tomorrow despite the wider lockdown being extended until May 3. Prime minister Giuseppe Conte says bookshops, stationers and shops selling children's clothes can re-open from Tuesday after the Easter weekend. However, factories will remain closed, dashing the hopes of industry chiefs who have warned of economic catastrophe. There is also some disagreement among regions. The governor of Lombardy says bookshops in his hard-hit region will remain closed, but the leader of Liguria wants some construction sites to re-open. Italy has been under a nationwide lockdown since March 9, longer than any other European country. The quarantine measures will continue until at least May 3 after Conte extended them for a second time on Friday. 'This is a difficult but necessary decision for which I take all political responsibility,' Conte told a news conference. Conte said he would continue to assess the daily trend of COVID-19 infections and 'act accordingly' if conditions allowed it. Sunday's death toll in Italy was 431, the lowest since March 19, offering fresh hope that the worst may be over in Italy. The number of new cases has been rising by around 2-3 per cent per day in the last week, compared to a regular 20-25 per cent at the peak of the crisis. This graph shows the daily number of deaths in Italy, which fell to 431 yesterday - the lowest figure since mid-March Denmark will re-open schools and daycare centres on Wednesday Denmark, one of the first European countries to shut down, will re-open day care centres and schools for children in first to fifth grade on Wednesday. The schools and childcare centres have been shut since March 11 along with cafes, restaurants and gyms, which will remain closed. A ban on gatherings of more than 10 people will remain in place until at least May 10, while larger gatherings will be banned until August. 'This will probably be a bit like walking the tightrope. If we stand still along the way we could fall and if we go too fast it can go wrong. Therefore, we must take one cautious step at a time,' prime minister Mette Frederiksen told a media briefing. Before the crisis, the country was near to full employment with an unemployment rate of 3.7 per cent, the lowest in over a decade. But even with emergency economic measures in place, Denmark, like many other countries, is still seeing a spike in unemployment. Since the introduction of the country's containment measures in mid-March, twice the usual number of people are registering for unemployment every day, according to the Ministry of Employment. The Confederation of Danish Industry already estimates that there are about 10,000 more unemployed in the country than at the height of the financial crisis. Young people speak to each other at a distance during a drive-in Easter service at Aalborg airport in Denmark yesterday, where some schools will re-open this week Angela Merkel will discuss lifting Germany's restrictions on Wednesday Angela Merkel will speak to the leaders of Germany's 16 states on Wednesday to discuss a possible loosening of the lockdown. The current restrictions are due to expire on April 19, and the government has yet to say what will happen next. Merkel has played down the prospect of schools opening after the Easter holidays, saying it would be difficult to maintain social distancing. The chancellor said last week that a loosening would depend not only on the latest figures, but also on other criteria including healthcare capacity. Many of the early lockdown measures such as closing schools were imposed by the states rather than the federal government in Berlin. Recent figures showed only 2,537 new infections in Germany, the smallest increase since March 22 and the third straight day of decline. The death toll was also marginally down, from 129 to 126, after it had reached a peak of 266 in Friday's figures. Germany's mortality rate of 2.3 per cent - 23 deaths per 1,000 confirmed patients - is conspicuously lower than that in Britain, France, Spain or Italy. 1. Yes. The downtown area needs a good draw. Some quality taverns would be a plus. 2. Yes. Too many storefronts are vacant. Bars could help to bring in needed revenue. 3. No. Putting a number of bars downtown is just asking for trouble. Dont change things. 4.No. Several churches have located downtown. Putting bars close by would be a bad fit. 5. Unsure. It would depend on how the law is written and what standards are enacted. Vote View Results Construction and factory workers in Spain return to work on Monday as the government lifts some of the most stringent lockdown measures, but opposition parties caution against an "imprudent" relaxation of the rules. Spain, one of the worst-hit nations by Covid-19, has allowed some factories to reopen as well as some construction work to restart, after the sectors were ordered to stop production two weeks ago. However, the message from government officials is that the country remains in lockdown mode. Schools, bars, restaurants and other services continue to be closed to the public and Spaniards are meant to stay at home. The decision to loosen some of Spain's lockdown restrictions has been challenged by political opponents, at a time when Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wants a "great pact" to boost the economy. "We must start the de-escalation in political tension now and give way to unity, dialogue, consensus and agreement as soon as possible," Sanchez said Sunday. "We need a great pact for the economic and social reconstruction of our country," the prime minister added. The Spanish government is formed by Sanchez's Socialist party and the anti-austerity group Unidas Podemos. The coalition gained enough parliamentary support in January thanks to the abstention of smaller parties. The executive also faces some frictions with regional governments, including in Catalonia. Tweet 1 As of Monday, more than 166,000 people in Spain had contracted the coronavirus, with 17,209 deaths nationwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Spain has recorded the most cases of the virus in Europe and is second-only to the U.S. for the total number of infections. Opposition parties have criticized the government's decision to reopen factories and construction businesses, saying it is an "imprudence" and "temerity" to relax some of the lockdown measures. The pandemic is taking its toll on the Spanish economy. Jobless claims rose by 302,265 last month, according to the Spanish labour ministry. This represented a 9.31% increase from February. WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb today announced a support program designed to help ease the financial burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on its small business clients in the United States and provide direct support to healthcare workers and other front-line responders. Chubb's U.S. small business clients whose policies renew between April 1 and August 1, 2020 will receive an automatic 25% reduction in the sales and payroll exposures used to calculate their premium as well as a 15% reduction in premiums for their commercial auto insurance. In addition, Chubb will purchase $1 million in gift cards from small business clients around the country, which will be donated to healthcare workers and other first responders on the front lines of the pandemic in their communities. "Chubb is committed to serving America's small businesses," said Jim Williamson, Division President, Chubb Small Business. "We are proud to do our part to support clients and their communities at this time when they need it most." About Chubb Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries and territories, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London, Paris and other locations, and employs more than 30,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: chubb.com. SOURCE Chubb Related Links https://www.chubb.com/us-en Val McDermid, 64, has sold more than 16 million books and seen her work adapted into the long-running ITV series Wire In The Blood, starring Robson Green. She lives with her partner in Edinburgh. It sounds like a hippy-dippy platitude, but Ive learned to see a challenge not as a problem but as an opportunity. The potential for failure is enormous but, on the other hand, the reward for success can be tremendous. It goes back to when I went off to Oxford at the age of 17, the first Scottish state school pupil to go to St Hildas College. I look back now and think, How did I find the nerve to do that? Val McDermid, 64, (pictured) lives in Edinburgh with her partner. She has sold more than 16 million books and seen her work adapted into the long-running ITV series Wire In The Blood I spent most of my teens feeling like an outsider, and I thought that was because I was going to be a writer. I thought writers had to have detachment, that splinter of ice in the heart as Graham Greene called it. I wanted to spread my wings. I read the Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer and, when the girls at the Chalet School grew up, they went to the Kensington School of Needlework, Oxford or the Sorbonne, which I knew I wasnt going to because my French wasnt good enough! So that left Oxford. My school didnt even want me to apply. But I had one supportive teacher and parents who realised that education was the way to a better life. My parents were both very bright people who never got the chance to make the most of their intelligence because their families couldnt afford to send them to high school. Not shying away from challenges has continued to lead to interesting opportunities: from going on Question Time to doing Have I Got News For You and reworking Jane Austens Northanger Abbey. A couple of years ago, I did a multimedia installation in Edinburgh at new year. I wrote a story that was split into 12 sections and projected on buildings round the city centre. It was called Message From The Skies. Over the years, this kind of thing has come along and there have been times when Ive thought, Im mad, why did I say yes? but, when Ive actually done them, its been immensely satisfying. How the Dead Speak by Val McDermid (8.99, Little Brown)is out now. Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Sunday lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts to combat the deadly Coronavirus crisis and said that all political parties stand with him in the fight against the virus. He said, "In the near future, whatever programme is announced by Prime Minister Modi, along with the people of Assam, all political parties will stand with the PM to defeat COVID-19." Meanwhile, the Chief Minister held an all-party meeting over the Coronavirus situation. Currently, there are 29 positive cases of coronavirus in Assam, out of one person has reportedly died. 'Team Assam' Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Sunday during the all-party meeting decided to proceed unitedly as 'Team Assam' to tackle the challenges posed by Coronavirus. Apart from the BJP and its ruling alliance partners AGP and BPF, all major opposition parties such as the Congress, AIUDF, CPI(M), CPI, CPI (ML), NCP, RJD and the Trinamool Congress put forward suggestions in combating the crisis situation. Taking to Twitter, he also offered gratitude to the frontline personnel in this battle, including the health workers and police. I am glad to share that leaders of all the political parties have taken a joint resolution to thank frontline health workers, security forces & all those who are leading our fight against #COVID19. In this hour of crisis, we are together as #TeamAssam, serving the people. Sarbananda Sonowal (@sarbanandsonwal) April 12, 2020 Read: 'India's situation would have been similar to Europe, US if lockdown was not imposed': JDU India under lockdown Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 had announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown to check the spread of deadly coronavirus, stating that "social distancing" is the only way to contain the disease which is spreading rapidly across the world. Meanwhile, India has suspended all visas and barred travel from Afghanistan, Philippines, EU, UK, China, Malaysia and mandatory 14-day quarantine from several other countries. PM Modi on Saturday held a video conference with the states' Chief Ministers to discuss the situation and get their feedback on whether the 21-day shutdown should be extended. Following the meeting, Telangana, Maharashtra and West Bengal became the latest states to extend the lockdown period by two weeks, after similar moves by Odisha and Punjab earlier this week. Read: Jharkhand: Ranchi locals defy lockdown to allegedly protest 'burial of COVID-19 patient' According to the latest update of the Union Health Ministry, about 8,447 cases of COVID-19 infection have been reported in the country including 7,409 active cases. While 273 deaths have been reported overall, around 765 people have been cured/discharged/migrated. Currently, the highest number of cases have been reported from Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Read: Rahul Gandhi warns Centre of 'foreign interests taking over Indian cos' amid COVID crisis Read: Nagaland registers first COVID-19 case; patient undergoing treatment at hospital in Assam (With ANI Inputs) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) says it will look at claims from people who claim they should be included in the government's cash aid program. DSWD Spokesperson Irene Dumlao said Monday, individuals could file an appeal which would be submitted to the authorities. "Ang atin pong mga kababayan na palagay nila sila ay eligible, maaari po silang mag-apela sa kanilang mga local social welfare and development offices, at ang mga LSWDOs naman po ay magsusumite ng listahan sa ating field offices. Our field offices will validate the list of eligible beneficiaries outside the target number or the indicative number of target beneficiaries. Iva-validate po ito ng DSWD at ibabahagi po sa ating mga economic managers upang mapag-aralan at mapagplanuhan," she said. [Translation: Our countrymen who bnelieve they are eligible may file an appeal at their their local social welfare and development offices, and the LSWDOs can submit these to field offices. Field offices will validate the list of eligible beneficiaries outside the target number or the indicative number of target beneficiaries. This will then be given to economic managers to study and plan for.] Dumalo said this process was created specifically to address concerns regarding the social amelioration program (SAP). Speaking to CNN Philippines earlier, DSWD Undersecretary Camilo Gudmalin said they have given aid to 3.8 families as of April 12. "At sa reports na aming natanggap, mga schedule ng payouts ng mga local government units, from April 13 to April 18, nagtatarget tayo na makaabot sa pagbayad ng mga 9 million families," he said. [Translation: From the reports we've received, the schedule of the payouts of the local government units, from April 13 to April 18, we are targeting to reach 9 million families.] This number, he added, was in addition to the 3.8 million families who already received cash aid. "Yung kulang, tinataya natin na matapos, mabigay lahat ng subsidy sa the following week, covering the days of April 20 to 25. So ang aming pagtataya na bago matapos ng buwan ng Abril, mabibigay na nating lahat yung ating social amelioration subsidies sa 18 million families," Gudmalin said. [Translation: The remaing, we are looking to finish, to give the subsidy, by the following week covering the days of April 20 to 25. By our estimates, before April ends, we will be able to give all the social amelioration subsidies to all of the 18 million families.] RELATED: Around 77,000 more families receive COVID-19 cash aid The Congress's Karnataka unit has demanded that Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa sack Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar, accusing him of behaving irresponsibly by spending time in a swimming pool, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "When the whole world is going through a health crisis, the coronavirus in-charge Minister Dr Sudhakar is behaving irresponsibly by spending time in a swimming pool. It's a matter of moral & ethical standards. He must resign out of his own accord & CM should sack him from the cabinet," Karnataka Congress president D K Shivakumar tweeted. Sudhakar, who is leading the government's efforts against COVID-19 in Bengaluru and is in charge of the state war room, had on Sunday had posted a picture on Twitter of him spending time with his children in the swimming pool. "After a long time joined my children for swimming hope maintaining social distance here also.. haha," he had tweeted along with the picture. While some people on social media have criticised Sudhakar for his act during the health crisis; some have opined that the minister has a personal life too. Joe Biden had a message for Sen. Kamala Harris at one of his recent virtual fundraisers: "I'm coming for you, kid." Harris, once an archrival of Biden's during the Democratic primary race, was a special guest to that event and has become one of the early favorites to be chosen as the former vice president's running mate against Donald Trump. Harris and another former contender, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, have been working behind the scenes to help Biden overtake Trump in a campaign that has been forced to go virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic. The two separately endorsed Biden after they dropped out of the race and have since been in legislative efforts to ease the effects of the coronavirus. Their work on behalf of Biden includes voter outreach and virtual fundraising events. They are also looking to make an appearance on Biden's podcast and are trying to help Democrats making runs for the GOP-controlled Senate, their campaign aides told CNBC. These advisors were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about how Harris and Klobuchar are trying to assist Biden in the wake of Sen. Bernie Sanders' departure from the presidential race last week. Biden has said he's been working with his team to whittle down a list of potential vice presidential choices and is putting together a committee that would be responsible for the vetting. Betting markets say Harris is the favorite over Klobuchar and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has become a star in the Democratic Party by leading her state's response to the coronavirus. Biden previously told MSNBC that Whitmer is on his list of possible VP picks and has not officially named anyone. Trump has found a way to remain in the national spotlight, despite his administration being criticized for its handling of Covid-19. Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee announced on Monday that they combined to raise more than $63 million in March alone and have $240 million on hand. Biden has been trying to stay on voters' minds by showing how he would handle things differently if he were in charge, making the Harris and Klobuchar efforts to assist him even more imperative. While he has yet to announce his March fundraising totals, having Harris and Klobuchar donors aligned with him could be a crucial boost for his campaign. Biden's allies in the business community have been pushing his team to look at these three women, plus Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Rep. Val Demings of Florida. A Wall Street executive backing Biden, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation, told CNBC late last week that, along with Harris and Klobuchar, he believes New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan and Sen. Elizabeth Warren will be on the VP list. "I think it will be a decision between whether he will make a geographic choice, will it come down to what's going on in the Midwest, for example, or doing something with Harris where it becomes more of a national campaign," the executive said. Still, the two former primary opponents of Biden have been using their resources to help the Democrats retake the White House and make inroads in Congress. Klobuchar has been helping the Biden campaign raise money through telephone calls and plans to participate in virtual fundraising events and his digital town halls, one of her aides said. There are also plans in the works for the Minnesota Democrat to join Biden's new podcast, a platform that has already features Whitmer. Klobuchar is looking to conduct "direct voter contact" in regions of the country Biden will need to overcome Trump in November, especially the Midwest, the aide said. Targeted states will include Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, plus women, seniors, rural and suburban voters. Klobuchar said in a recent SiriusXM interview that she has yet to speak with Biden about her becoming his VP and that she's primarily focused on voting rights during the coronavirus outbreak. Harris is likely not done taking part in virtual fundraisers for Biden and will get back on the campaign trail advocating for Biden in person once her home state of California fully lifts its stay-at-home order, an aide said. She's been a vocal critic of Trump's handling of the coronavirus. She is also putting much of her political clout into helping Democratic Senate candidates win in 2020. Harris recently started a "Meet the Candidates" series in which she touts various Senate candidates and the reason voters should back them over their Republican counterparts. Her first episode was on Thursday with Jaime Harrison, a Senate candidate in South Carolina taking on Sen. Lindsey Graham. Cook Political Report recently predicted a likely Graham victory. In the episode said Harris talked about how Harrison lives by his values and why someone like him is needed in the Senate. "He is someone that believes all publicly elected officials should give back, and [Harris] highlighted Harrison Helps," one of her aides told CNBC in describing the discussion with voters. "Harrison Helps" is a volunteer organization that focuses on service projects around South Carolina, his website says. Many more events featuring other Senate candidates are planned for the series, although the aide would not say who's up next. Harris could be targeting states where Democrats are considered to have a shot at winning Senate seats, such as Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina. Another decision Harris has made is to start a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee, a move that often is reserved for candidates running in national elections. Biden and the DNC have started to lay the groundwork for a joint fundraising committee. Harris' allies with knowledge of her efforts believe the efforts are intended to help Biden break through the near-lock of media attention by Trump, governors and members of Congress because of the pandemic, especially after Sanders dropped out of the presidential race. "With the benefit of Bernie standing down, Kamala has recognized there needs to be an all-hands-on-deck effort to help the VP breakthrough the noise and raise money, given that Covid issues are going to be with us through the fall to some degree," one of Harris' top financiers told CNBC, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak openly. A spokesman for Biden did not return a request for comment. Health ministers of 10-member ASEAN hold a joint video conference, April 7, to discuss responses to COVID-19 pandemic / Courtesy of ASEAN The following is a joint statement on special video conference of the ASEAN health ministers in enhancing cooperation on COVID-19 response. ED. We, the Health Ministers of ASEAN Member States, representing Brunei Darussalam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Republic of Indonesia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, the Republic of the Philippines, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, convened the Special Video Conference of the ASEAN Health Ministers in Enhancing Cooperation on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Response, on April 7, 2020; Recognizing the rapidly evolving outbreak of COVID-19 which was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Jan. 30, 2020, as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), and later as a pandemic on March 11, 2020; Acknowledging the Chairman's Statement on ASEAN Collective Response to the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 from ASEAN Chair Viet Nam which emphasized the importance of ASEAN solidarity and the spirit of a "Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN Community" in facing the outbreak of COVID-19 and similar challenges; Affirming the commitments in the Joint Statement of the 14th AHMM on Aug. 29, 2019 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, with a theme of Accelerating Health for All in ASEAN, for an effective cooperation of ongoing activities for the preparedness, prevention, detection and response to communicable, emerging and re-emerging diseases, including pandemics and neglected tropical diseases, and other public health emergencies or health impacts of disasters, and health security threats; Noting the complementary joint statements on COVID-19 from other relevant sectors in ASEAN, including the defense, foreign affairs, tourism and economic sectors; Recalling the outcomes of the Special Video Conference of ASEAN Plus Three Senior Officials Meeting on Health Development (SOMHD) on COVID-19 on Feb. 3, 2020, the Special Video Conference of the ASEAN Emergency Operations Centre Network for public health emergencies (ASEAN EOC Network) with Health Experts of the People's Republic of China on the Clinical Case Management of COVID-19 on Feb. 20, 2020, and other related follow-up activities, and the Special Video Conference of the ASEAN SOMHD in Enhancing Cooperation on COVID-19 on March 13, 2020; Appreciating the active engagements and ongoing cooperation among ASEAN Member States, with various stakeholders through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, and the pro-active and timely action of the ASEAN Health Sector in the collective response towards COVID-19; Commending the valuable efforts of various medical professionals, researchers, scientists, healthcare workers and other front-liners who are responding to COVID-19; Expressing deep condolences and sympathies to the loss of lives and those suffering due to COVID-19; Being mindful of the urgency to address the continuing threat of COVID-19 in the region, and its significant regional impact to populations, public health, socio-cultural aspects and economy; We, the ASEAN Health Ministers, agree collectively in: 1. Further enhancing the exchange and sharing of timely data and information on COVID-19 on the prevention, detection, control and response measures, epidemiologic surveillance updates, risk assessment results, epidemiological and clinical studies on the virus and the disease, and technical guidelines, through the existing ASEAN Health Sector Cooperation mechanisms such as the ASEAN SOMHD, the ASEAN Plus Three SOMHD, the ASEAN EOC Network, the ASEAN Plus Three Field Epidemiology Training Network (FETN) and the ASEAN Bio Diaspora Virtual Centre; 2. Strengthening regional cooperation in risk communication on COVID-19, in collaboration with relevant sectoral bodies of ASEAN, to avert misinformation and fake news; 3. Utilizing digital technology, including video conferencing and social media applications, as well as artificial intelligence, in addition to the existing official and formal platforms for efficient exchange of information which will facilitate the timely implementation of public health responses; 4. Coordinating cross-border public health responses, such as contact tracing and outbreak investigation, where appropriate, through existing bilateral and regional cooperation mechanisms; 5. Enhancing cooperation within ASEAN-led mechanisms and with external partners or stakeholders in capacity building interventions on public health emergency preparedness and response; sharing of critical lessons learned and good practices; resource mobilization including technical assistance; and, policy dialogues on the latest development on COVID-19 including drug and vaccine development, and security and self-reliance; 6. Ensuring that all persons infected by COVID-19, including migrants and other vulnerable groups, can access essential health care services; 7. Supporting the timely provision of assistance that are critical in sustaining affected national health systems in the region and improving the readiness of others, including the sharing of interventions to aid in transitioning national health systems to recovery; 8. Combating the outbreak in ASEAN, hand-in-hand with Dialogue and Development Partners, and other regional and global entities such as the WHO, as well as collaborate with the academia and private sector to promote research and development on the disease, and strengthen the exchange of the latest available knowledge, as well as sharing of evidence-based management and the appropriate and innovative tools and interventions that will help to stem the outbreak; and, 9. Committing to continue, after overcoming the challenges related to COVID-19 and after revitalizing national health systems, the collaboration in learning from the regional and national experiences in responding to COVID-19 challenges, as well as in further strengthening and institutionalizing preparedness, surveillance, prevention, detection and response mechanisms of ASEAN with other Dialogue and Development Partners, such as the WHO, on public health emergencies and other crises. Advocates for survivors of domestic violence and the programs that assist survivors are worried about the unintended side effect stay-at-home orders could have on those living in dangerous situations. With nearly everyone stuck at home in close quarters for most of the day thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, and with the additional stress the situation causes, advocates are concerned that violent situations could escalate. The general mantra thats being put out is that home is your safe place, said Sarah Ellis, fundraising and development coordinator for Shelter For Help In Emergency, the local family and intimate partner violence shelter. For victims of domestic violence thats probably not true. In your home is probably where youre least safe when youre living with your abuser. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in four women and nearly one in 10 men experience sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes. Elizabeth Irvin, executive director of Charlottesville-based The Womens Initiative, said that one of the main components of domestic violence is an abuser isolating their victim and limiting their contact with others so they cannot seek help. Frankly people in domestic violence situations feel trapped anyway, she said. They dont need a pandemic to feel trapped. Alesha Durfee, a domestic violence advocate and professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, said statistics arent available in the U.S., but in all countries reporting data, domestic violence has dramatically increased with stay-at-home orders. You are in a confined area with your abuser 24 hours a day. Its very difficult in those situations, she said. If its getting heated at home you cant take the kids down the street to the playground. Durfee said many of the coping mechanisms that victims have developed arent available because many were outside of the house. The pandemic has also added emotional and financial stress that can make the situation escalate. Some of the responses they have just arent available, she said. That means there isnt some kind of break for the survivor. If they no longer have those informal tools, that has to take a toll on how theyre able to deal with these situations. Ellis, Irvin and Durfee, who was once a volunteer with the Seattle Police Departments Crisis Advocacy Team, offered several options for victims to escape their abuser. First and foremost, one should develop and maintain a safety plan that focuses on what to do if violence occurs and where they can go. When you are in danger you walk out, Durfee said. You dont pick up your keys. You dont pick up your phone. You simply walk out the door and you dont go back. For example, Durfee recommended staying in rooms with multiple exits and avoiding dangerous areas like kitchens and bathrooms as much as possible. Durfee said victims should have a go bag with as many clothes, documents and other items needed to get out of the house. Normally, that bag might be stored at home. However, Durfee recommended leaving it at someone elses house because the abuser will have more time to find it if theyre confined at home. In situations that arent violent, but have the threat of violence, J. Nile Wagley, a local clinical psychologist, recommended creating physical space and boundaries in the house since options to leave home arent as available. Its the same problems that existed before, just without the ability to get away from the person, he said. Ellis and Durfee said survivors are resilient, but emphasized that every situation is unique and what may help one person might not work for another. They recommended calling the local shelter to work through a specialized plan. It could be that the plan they had to get out isnt mangeable now under the restrictions we are all under, Ellis said. Our message is: if you can reach out to us, do. And if youre not able to, is there a friend or a neighbor you can get a message to call us? Ellis said. Were there if you need us. Perhaps most importantly, those in violent or potentially situations should know that resources are still available and shelters remain open despite the pandemic. Courts are still providing emergency protective orders. You may feel trapped, but youre not, Irvin said. There are still ways to reach out for long-term and short-term help. There are people out here and will believe them and they can get the help they need. If someone wants to save the numbers for resources without the abuser finding them, Durfee recommended saving them under a family members name and changing the 800 number to the local area code. I think COVID just adds that much more barriers to getting help, leaving a relationship, the ability to find help because they can monitor you all time, she said. Know that even though theres a stay-at home order it doesnt apply to domestic violence. It doesnt apply to sexual assault. Its still OK to leave and your safety is the most important thing. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, the Shelter For Help In Emergency operates a 24-hour hotline at (434) 293-8509. The Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance maintains a 24/7 hotline at 1-800-838-8238 or by text at (804) 793-9999. Ellis said the shelter serves about 200 women and children a year in its emergency shelter, another 300 to 400 with general services and receives 1,200 to 1,500 calls a year on its emergency hotline. The shelter welcomes financial support or donations of cleaning items, gloves and paper goods. Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Amid the rising coronavirus COVID-19 cases in Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday (April 12) urged the global community, the intrnational financial institutions and the UNSG to launch an initiative to help the developing nations in their fight against the deadly virus. It is to be noted that around 450 fresh cases were reported in Pakistan in Sunday, bringing the total number of the cases in the country to 5,230. "My appeal to the international community, the UNSG & international financial institutions to respond positively to the dilemma confronting developing countries in the face of the COVID19 pandemic," PM Imran said in a video message. My appeal to the international community, the UNSG & international financial institutions to respond positively to the dilemma confronting developing countries in the face of the COVID19 pandemic. #Global_Initiative_Debt_Relief pic.twitter.com/EfydRhfZhc Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) April 12, 2020 In his video message, the Pakistan prime minister also highlighted that highly indebted countries are facing a "lack of fiscal space" that was proving to be major hindrance in their efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus and at the same time, providing relief to people. According to Imran Khan, strong, coordinated and well-crafted global response is needed to control the global pandemic. "The Global Initiative on Debt Relief will bring together stakeholders on a platform to promote coordinated health and economic response," he said. The Pakistani prime minister remarked that COVID-19 posed unprecedented health and economic challenges and the global economy is set to face a recession worse than the Great Depression. Imran Khan also talked about the relief packages announced by the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the last few days, including initial relief packages of USD 1.4 billion by the IMF and USD 1 billion by the World Bank. The Pakistani prime minister appealed to the UN Secretary-General to work with him in advancing the objectives of a coordinated response. "The proposed Global Initiative aims to lay the ground for urgent debt relief to the developing countries, at their request, and without onerous conditionalities," he said. Imran Khan also mentioned that his Government had provided stimulus package worth USD 8 billion to help the most vulnerable people in the country. The NSW Health Minister is warning people not to go to work sick adding there are potentially disastrous consequences. Brad Hazzard told reporters on Monday an aged care worker at the Anglicare Newmarch House aged care facility at Caddens, in Sydneys west, who was unwell went to work for six straight days. Coronavirus live blog: Latest news and updates from Australia He wouldnt go into details other than she had symptoms of illness. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said people can't go into work if they feel sick. Source: AAP (file pic) No doubt she thought she was doing the right thing, he said. She was unfortunately not doing the right thing and the message for all of us is don't go to work. If you're feeling sick and you're working in an aged care facility, you are working with some of the most vulnerable people in our state, please don't go to work. The potential is disastrous consequences if you're working with some of our most vulnerable people. Twenty-one of NSWs cases came from Dorothy Henderson Lodge aged care facility and four came from Opal Aged Care Bankstown, according to NSW Health. When asked if he blamed the workers actions on pure ignorance, the minister replied it is difficult to blame in that sense. A medic performs coronavirus testing at a drive-through facility in Bondi, Sydney. Source: Getty Images Instead, he reiterated his message. I don't have mum and dad any more but if they were in an aged care facility and it was in lock down, I would want to know that the aged care facility was taking every possible step to keep them safe, Mr Hazzard said. The message here is to aged care facilities, you need to step up and make sure your staff understand the message but also the staff need to understand you have chosen this very honourable profession to work with our older citizens who are vulnerable, please listen to the health message - don't go to work if you're feeling sick. It is pretty simple. As of Monday, 26 NSW residents have lost their lives to COVID-19. Story continues The states also has nine news cases of the virus taking the states total to 2,863. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play. We are pleased to be honored by Super Lawyers Magazine particularly because it means that other attorneys in Colorado recognize the high quality of our work and how we take care of our clients, said Kristi Wells. Two members of Denver-based Wells Family Law, PC, have been recognized by Super Lawyers Magazine. Firm founder Kristi Wells was named as a 2020 Colorado Super Lawyer and a Top 50 Woman Super Lawyer. Senior Associate, Zac Roeling, was selected as 2020 Rising Star by the magazine. Only 2.5% of young attorneys are recognized as Rising Stars in the Colorado legal community. Zac Roeling has been practicing law for 5 years and is a graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He is a member of several professional organizations including Denver Bar Association, the Colorado LGBT Bar Association and National LGBT Bar Association. Kristi Anderson Wells, President and Managing Shareholder of Wells Family Law, P.C., is a Colorado Super Lawyer for 2020. Only the top 5% of attorneys in Colorado are selected as Colorado Super Lawyers, which requires an attorney to be nominated by peers, validated through third-party research, and reviewed by other attorneys. Wells has also been selected to the Top 50 Women Lawyers list. We are pleased to be honored by Super Lawyers Magazine particularly because it means that other attorneys in Colorado recognize the high quality of our work and how we take care of our clients, said Kristi Wells. I am very pleased that our peers have also recognized Zac Roeling. He is an outstanding young lawyer. We are fortunate to have him as part of our team at Wells Family Law. Kristi Anderson Wells has been practicing law for 23 years and is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law where she earned both her law degree as well as a Masters in Tax. Ms. Wells serves on the Colorado Bar Association's Family Law Section Executive Council, is a Fellow of the Academy of Collaborative Divorce Professionals, is the immediate past President of the Board of Colorado Collaborative Divorce Professionals, and is a member of both the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals and the American Bar Association. Ms. Wells' book, The Executive Compensation Handbook: Stock Option Awards, Restricted Stock Grants, Cash Bonuses, Incentives, and Other Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation in Divorce was published by the American Bar Association in 2018. Wells Family Law, P.C. is a Colorado family law firm focused on providing practical solutions for people navigating the complex path of divorce, legal separation, unmarried partner break-ups, child custody, child support and maintenance issues. Wells Family Law is located at 1660 Lincoln Street, Suite 1525, Denver, Colorado. To learn more about the firm go to https://wellsfamilylawcolorado.com/ or call 303-309-1077. [April 13, 2020] New York's Largest Biofuel Plant Supplies Ethanol for Sanitizer to U.S., Canadian Corporations as Novel Coronavirus Persists MEDINA, N.Y., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Western New York Energy (WNYE), New York's first and largest operational ethanol facility, has adapted operations to supply distillers, manufacturing, technology, and personal care corporations across the Northeast and Canada with ethanol to produce 80% antiseptic alcohol sanitizer amidst the COVID pandemic. The plant is producing over 100,000 gallons a day of tech-grade ethanol for businesses that halted operations to meet the urgent sanitizer needs of hospitals and at-risk communities. WNY Energy generates over 60-million gallons of biofuel annually, using 20-million bushels of corn. The $90-million facility was the first biofuel company in the northeastern U.S. Tim Winters, WNYE President & CEO, said, "Along with New York's corn growers, WNY Energy has been proud to supply ethanol to the distilleries and companies that first responded to the alarming lack of sanitizer due to COVID-19. And while many upstream chemicals used in sanitizer products are manufactured in China, WNYE has also established a manufacturing and distribution network that will exponentially increase the production of antiseptic sanitizers made from our farmers' corn. All the sanitizer and sanitizer products will be made in Westrn New York and the United States." Winters emphasized, "We could do none of this without support from farmers, our partners for the past 13 years. Corn ethanol is the key ingredient in making 80% antiseptic sanitizer. Farmers are as essential to WNYE's operation as they are to America's food supply - their contributions sustain this nation." Colleen Klein, NY Corn and Soybean Growers Association Executive Director, said, "WNY Energy is a respected industry partner and a critically important, reliable market for our corn growers. In usual circumstances, our crop is used in the Medina facility to make clean, renewable fuel but these are not usual circumstances. We applaud WNYE's ability to pivot and provide needed sanitation resources while maintaining the market for our growers during uncertain times." Jim Whipple, Orleans County IDA CEO, said, "WNY Energy has become one of the most important industries in Orleans County and NY State. The economics tied to the operation not only support local farmers but WNYE is the largest taxpayer in Orleans County. It's important that products made in farm communities be given purchasing priority in times like this." Winters and 50 employees produce ethanol 24/7 using hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls. The renewable energy reduces the GHG footprint for every gallon, earning WNYE an EP3 designation from the EPA. Gil C. Quiniones, NYPA president and CEO, said, "With virtually all WNYE's 5-megawatt electric load being met with hydropower from the Niagara Power Project. We, at NYPA applaud WNYE's ingenuity in adapting its business to fit the needs of New Yorkers during this horrific pandemic." Klein added, "New York farmers are going to show up to do their part -whatever it takes. We're happy to have a friend in WNYE who shares this mentality. Whether you're farm tough, New York City tough, or anywhere in between - we're all stronger together." Western New York Energy Proud to be partnering with New York's farmers to produce domestic, clean, renewable energy For more information WNY Energy contact Andina Barone | Mindful Media Group (917) 484-2336 direct (call/text) [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-yorks-largest-biofuel-plant-supplies-ethanol-for-sanitizer-to-us-canadian-corporations-as-novel-coronavirus-persists-301038992.html SOURCE Western New York Energy [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Gardai investigating the disappearance of six women in the 1990s are monitoring the movements and habits of a range of suspects in some cold-case reviews. The names of Annie McCarrick, JoJo Dollard, Fiona Pender, Ciara Breen, Fiona Sinnott and Deirdre Jacob are familiar to us, but for all the wrong reasons. Although they never knew each other, they are connected to each other in our minds because they all vanished from the Leinster area between 1993 and 1998, never to be seen again. Gardai have identified suspects in some of the cases, and even more than 20 years later they are still being monitored, often with the help of police forces in other jurisdictions if the suspect is abroad. This is the job of the Serious Crime Review Team of An Garda Siochana, now headed by Detective Superintendent Desmond McTiernan. His team has taken over the cold-case investigations from what was initially an investigation called Operation Trace, which was set up by then garda commissioner Pat Byrne in 1998. Cold case review gives us hope - JoJo's family The sister of missing Kilkenny woman JoJo Dollard has said the Serious Crime Review Team is actively investigating the disappearance of the 21-year-old back in 1995 as part of a new cold-case review. A team of investigators is examining all the evidence with fresh eyes, and JoJo's sister Kathleen Bergin has appealed for it to re-interview everyone who was interviewed in an effort to find the body of the young restaurant worker. "JoJo was in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody saw an opportunity and acted on it," said Ms Bergin. "The meetings with the gardai over the last while have been good. There's a whole new team in there now and they're actually working on JoJo's case at the moment. "Me and my husband met Commissioner Drew Harris last year, and the meetings went well. He told us they were going to start the review. We are trying to keep an open mind on it." She said gardai were doing an in-depth review, and won't be speaking to anyone who was working on it in the past. "It will be a new set of eyes. We are hoping they will come across something, but we really need people to come forward," she said. "Someone has that information, and for whatever reason they've been withholding it and we urge them to come forward now because this is an opportunity for them to do this. "Maybe their circumstances have changed in 24 years. It has been a long time. It must be an awful burden for them to have to hold information like this, to keep it to themselves over the years. "We just want our JoJo back, that's all. It would be a gift to us, to be able to put all the pieces together and bring JoJo home. That's all our family wants." She wants to give the review team a chance and see what comes out of it. "We are hopeful. This is an in-depth investigation and maybe they will see something that could be done in a different way using today's techniques," she added. Ms Bergin remembers her last interaction with JoJo. It was a phone conversation on the day before she vanished. "It was on the Wednesday evening. I was speaking to JoJo on the phone. She had moved down to Callan and she was working in Grainger's restaurant there. She said she was going to Dublin in the morning," she said. "She wasn't fully sure, and I said, 'If you don't [go] we can meet up for a cup of coffee when my lads are gone to school' and she said, 'If you don't hear from me Kathleen you'll know I'm gone on the early bus'. "So when I didn't hear from her that Thursday morning I thought, 'OK, she's gone up to Dublin'." It is known that JoJo missed her last direct bus home on the Thursday evening, and had got as far as Moone in Co Kildare by getting a bus to Naas, and then hitched a lift to Kilcullen and another lift to Moone. While in Moone she phoned her friend Mary Cullinane from a phone box to tell her where she was. "When she was on the phone to her friend Mary Cullinane a car had passed and she went out and she obviously flagged him down, and she just came back to Mary and said, 'God, I have a lift. I'll phone you again at my next stop'," said Ms Bergin. "Thank God she made the phone call in Moone, because it was from that phone call we were able to verify she was there. "We are 100pc [sure] she got to Moone. It's for after Moone that we are trying to put the pieces together." JoJo and Ms Bergin's other sister Mary spent years campaigning for JoJo, and never gave up her fight up to her own death from cancer two years ago this month. "Mary always felt that JoJo is near to where she went missing. She had never budged from that. She just felt like she was coming up against a brick wall and felt very let-down and disheartened by everything," said Ms Bergin. "Mary was determined, God love her. It took a toll on her. She had given so much of herself to try to find out what happened to JoJo, it took everything she had. It wore her down. "That became her life. She wanted to bring her back home, even up to the very end, in the last moments of her life. "JoJo's picture was beside her. I know she's with her now but she would still want her brought home. "I see the two of them together. Mary has her answers now. We need hope. We need something to believe in. Help us fulfil Mary's wishes. There is a confidential helpline if someone just wants to leave a message." She said finding her would be enough for them. "Just to bring her back home. We won't judge anyone. We just want to put her with mam and dad, and to be able to sit down beside her knowing she's not out there on her own any more," she said. "I think JoJo deserves that after all this time. She's out there too long now on her own. We know we'll never be able to hug her again. "A crime has been committed somewhere, and they are still out there. As time goes on the fear is they will strike again. You just don't know, and that's frightening. "I often wonder what her life would have been like if this had not happened. She was 21 and her life was just taken from her. She could be married now with her own family. "All her dreams and hopes were taken. Ireland is such a small country, but to have someone vanish without a trace, it's unbelievable." The Crime Review Team The persistence of JoJo's family was the driving force behind the setting up of Operation Trace by then garda commissioner Pat Byrne in 1998. Its focus was on finding out if there were any common threads to each case, and if it was possible there was a serial killer on the loose. In the passing years Operation Trace has been subsumed into different garda cold-case investigations, and now it falls under the umbrella of the garda Serious Crime Review Team (SCRT) overseen by Det Supt McTiernan. As well as looking at the cases of the six missing women from the 1990s, the SCRT is also carrying out work examining the case of Gormanston couple Willie Maughan (43) and his 20-year-old partner Ana Varslavane, who disappeared in April 2015 and were believed to have been murdered. It is looking into the murder of Kenneth Fetherston (26), whose body was found in the Dublin Mountains in 2010 after he went missing four months earlier. The Hawe review is looking into the garda investigation into the murder of Clodagh Hawe (39) and her three sons Liam (13), Niall (11) and Ryan (6) by their father and husband Alan Hawe in their home in Co Cavan, in August 2016. The team is also casting eyes over the Kerry babies controversy in 1984 which began when the body of a baby washed up on a beach with stab wounds. Det Supt McTiernan said any cold-case team would look at an unsolved case with fresh eyes, and hope that with new technology and advances in forensic science it could help to solve them. There is one other hope, and it is an important one - that people who may not have come forward with information in the past, or who may have supplied information while under threat or pressure, might come forward now. "With the passage of time people are in a different place and their consciences bother them. I suppose as human beings, as we get closer to meeting our maker, regardless of our beliefs, we have that anxious sort of nervy feeling in the background," said Det Supt McTiernan. "You would be hoping that people who might have something to say would see that would be the time they would want to reveal these sort of things. "You have to accept people at face value, and people have very genuine reasons for not talking at the time. And being an investigator you have to understand that part of it." He said the reason they did not talk in the past could have been the influence of someone in their lives. "Ireland back in the past was a different place compared to what it is today, in the sense that people couldn't really talk back then and you were expected to stay quiet, and for genuine fearful reasons," he said. "But I would say if there are people out there, and I would always be appealing to people, rest assured they won't be judged. "There can be a very genuine reason why people don't talk at the time." People shouldn't fear they would be accused of withholding information if they provided a lead now, he added. "There is a confidence that people can have that they won't be judged. They won't be prosecuted and they won't be charged and they've nothing to fear." It seems incredible that between 1993 and 1998 Annie, JoJo, Fiona Pender, Ciara, Fiona Sinnott and Deirdre all disappeared. That so many women could be murdered is incredible, but for no trace of them to be found is unimaginable. "I've often thought about it myself, how these young women could vanish in quick succession," said Det Supt McTiernan. "In each investigation there was an awful lot of work done by the gardai at the time. "One thing that does strike me is that the level of investigation was very intense and very deep back in the early 90s "And right through, there was a lot of great examples of old-fashioned police work in trying to get people to talk and tell the truth, and I have to say in all those cases they were passionately pursued by the gardai at the time. "And that would be in the absence of the forensics we have today, the mobile phone and CCTV evidence." Finding a body would obviously help an investigation. But without help and evidence, the team is working in the dark. Tal al-Mallouhi has spent years suffering behind bars in Syrian prisons, either on falsified charges or without a warrant or judicial decision writes Brocar Press. Tal al-Mallouhi, born in Homs on Jan. 2, 1991, lost her youth behind prison bars after the Syrian intelligence fabricated lies against her on charges of disclosing information for the benefit of a foreign country. One cant but ask, what kind of information did a 19-year old girl disclose? Why wasnt she released when the criminal court in Homs decided to exempt her from the remaining sentence and release her for good behaviour on Oct. 24, 2013? And why did General Ali Mamlouk, the head of the National Security Office, order her arrest again while she languished in Adra prison, and kept her handcuffed her all the way to the National Security office cells in the al-Rawda neighborhood of Damascus? Why did he return her, after several months, to Adra prison? And why didnt the head of the prison release her after her five-year prison sentence was over? Why did he keep her detained contrary to the provisions of the law that obliged him not to keep any detainees without a warrant or a judicial order? Article 358 of the Penal Code clearly states that prison directors and guards, disciplinary institutes or penitentiaries, and any employee who according to his post is entitled to certain powers shall be sentenced to between one to three years in prison if they hold any individual without a warrant or judicial decision, or keep him/her detained beyond the specified period. Tal al-Mallouhi spent four years and 45 days in Adra prison without a warrant or judicial order, that is from Dec, 27, 2014 to Nov. 22, 2018, when she was moved from Adra prison to the anti-drug unit after she was accused of possessing drugs for self-use while she was in Adra, a fabrication that was conducted to cover up for her baseless arrest. She was referred to the Criminal Court in Damascus countryside, which issued another prison sentence against Mallouhi for a period of two years from Nov. 2, 2018 to Nov. 2, 2020. Since she was pardoned in September and March for the sentences which she already served, her second sentence should have ended two months ago, however, Assad insists on keeping her detained without any judicial warrant. What is it about Mallouhi that keeps her detained? What kind of threat does she pose to Assad, his regime and his security services, if she were to be released? I have frequently asked myself about her continued detention despite serving all her sentences, including those which reportedly came upon the personal directives of Bashar al-Assad, even though he himself issued pardons for the sentences that were fabricated against her. I have found no reason for Assad to keep Mallouhi imprisoned, except because of some personal grudge. It is likely that Assad has hard feelings for Mallouhi because she dared to confront him at the age of 15 when she addressed him through a blog, to accelerate the process of the democratic transformation in the country, as the president of Syria. Then, she told Assad that he was obliged as a president to put an end to the rampant corruption in Syria and reminded him of the promises that he had previously made in his speeches. Later, she was put under investigation three times, before having to move with her family to live in Cairo where she stayed for three years. In the summer of 2009, she and her family returned and it took the security officers only a few months to arrest Mallouhi on Dec. 27, 2009 and refer her to the State. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:19:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close XI'AN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- At the break of dawn, a gray-haired Wei Bing receives a call from his colleague about finding drugs in a walnut parcel at a logistics station in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. "Everyone, attention please, get ready for the crackdown," said a decisive Wei. Wei is an anti-drug police officer with a division of the logistics drug criminal investigation team under the Public Security Bureau (PSB) of Xi'an. But there is something unique about the division: All the police officers are in their 50s and 60s. "We have more than 10 members in the division, and all of us are aged," said Wei, 50. "I am actually the youngest one." The average age of the division is about 55, and people usually call them the "Old Men's Team Against Drugs," he said. Wei said that the age thing was not intentional and that he and his colleagues were randomly allocated into the division. The division was established in July 2015 to manage the safety of the logistics industry in China. In recent years, the industry has skyrocketed in China, but a comprehensive supervising system is still in a developing stage, and some drug dealers are increasingly using parcels to transport drugs, highlighting the importance of Wei's job. During the coronavirus epidemic, the "Old Men's Team Against Drugs" intercepted 6,524 grams of heroin and more than 13 kg of methamphetamine, according to official figures. "NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN" Wei started working for the division in 2015. Before that, he had served many years as an ordinary police officer with a local public security bureau, without much anti-drug experience. "I started out by learning from my colleagues," he said. "After all, they say you are never too old to learn." Some of Wei's colleagues were railway police officers, and some were professional anti-drug policemen. "Some colleagues have many, many years of experience, and I learned a lot from them," he said. The anti-drug job is a tricky one. Wei said that after confiscating the drugs, they try to find clues from the drug-containing parcels to hunt for the suspects. The job was especially tough during the epidemic when an increasing number of drug dealers resorted to parcels to transport drugs, as many Chinese cities imposed restrictions on population flow. "During the epidemic, there were very few people on the streets, and the suspects could be on high alert for us," he said. "Besides, as many residential compounds had closed off, we had to show our police identities during the investigations to enter the compounds, which could alarm the suspects." Wei said their workload increased greatly during the epidemic. TOUGH FOLKS Wei said their job is a tough one because most of the time, they have to work at night, when parcels typically arrive from key supervised areas such as southwest China's Yunnan Province, a major front in the country's battle against drug crimes, as it borders the Golden Triangle known for its rampant drug production and trafficking. "I am always on the night shift; a time when most elderly people have gone to bed," he said. Wei and his peers usually sift through suspicious parcels that may contain drugs in transportation vehicles, big and small. "Some drug dealers are quite alert, and they try various ways to circumvent our inspection," Wei said. "We have to be extra careful." One of Wei's colleagues, Wan Yuetian, had three organ transplants more than a decade ago. Wan will retire at the end of this year as his age requires, but he is still fighting at the frontline with Wei against drugs. While he is tough on the drug dealers, Wei has a soft spot for his family. At the beginning of this year, Wei cut short his vacation in his hometown in neighboring Gansu Province and joined in the anti-drug battle in Xi'an. Before saying goodbye, his daughter, who had just entered college, cried. Wei held back his tears and patted her on the shoulder. "I am fighting for the country; it is a great thing," he said. "These old folks, they are tough guys," said Wang Xiaofeng, a PSB official. "After five years of experience, they have built a strong team that threatens the criminals. They are truly the embodiment of perseverance." With a busy working schedule, Wei said he does not have much time for relaxation. But his colleague Wan Yuetian does find some time out of work for his hobbies typical of many senior citizens in China: painting and calligraphy. "I have to keep fighting crime," Wei said. "If I can find one more parcel containing drugs, dozens of families could be saved. It is worth it." Phuket wakes to silent Songkran PHUKET: People across Phuket woke this morning (Apr 13) to the quietest Songkran in living memory, with the streets deserted as the COVID-19 health regulations are being observed and enforced and the 14-day Tambon Lockdown coming into effect. COVID-19Coronavirusculturehealth By The Phuket News Monday 13 April 2020, 10:24AM Roads in usually bustling Patong are empty. Photo: Patong Police No water play is allowed for the Thai New Year and Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavitpatana has repeatedly urged people to stay in their homes during the 14-day lockdown. The Ministry of Culture has issued an advisory reminding people that any behaviour that may spread the virus is punishable under the Emergency Decree. The advisory urges people to conduct traditional blessing ceremonies on Buddha statues at home and offer traditional wai blessings at home with their father, mother and relatives but cautioned people to be careful to maintain distance of one to two metres. The notice also suggests, What you can do to show your father, mother and relatives that you are a good person is offer your blessings by phone call, video call or online. All 17 subdistricts (tambon) in Phuket came under lockdown at 00:01am today, with no non-essential travel beyond subdistrict borders permitted. In announcing the lockdown last week, Governor Phakaphong urged all people on the island to remain in their places of residence as much as possible during the lockdown in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Governor Phakaphong noted that people are still allowed outside their homes, but must stay inside their subdistrict. Also during the fortnight, teams of officers and volunteers will conduct door-to-door checks of households to check the temperatures of residents in the hope of identifying infected people early and hence prevent the virus from spreading further. Officers will check the temperature of all people in each area. If any person is suspected of being infected, they will be sent to a hospital specified by the province, Governor Phakaphong said in the order issued. So far the proactive campaign, which launched in Patong a week ago, has identified 37 people confirmed as infected with COVID-19. The Governor on Friday also banned the sale of alcohol anywhere on the island, even among wholesalers, with the ban coming into effect at 00:01am Saturday (Apr 11). The ban will remain in effect until further notice. Police in Patong and elsewhere across the island are patrolling the streets and checkpoints have been set up across the island to prevent people from travelling outside their subdistricts. Roadblocks with concrete barriers have even been set up on some main roads to prevent travel between subdistricts. The national nightly curfew from 10pm to 4am and many other provincial orders issued (see here) remain in effect also until further notice. The Phuket News wishes one and all a happy, safe Songkran. CAIRO - Forces allied with the U.N.-supported government in Libya said on Monday they wrested control of a key town that served as a base for rival forces launching a yearlong offensive on the countrys capital. The fighting for Tripoli has been raging for nearly a year between military commander Khalifa Hifters forces, which are allied with a rival government based in eastern Libya, and an array of militias in the west loosely linked to the U.N.-supported authorities in Tripoli, the capital. The escalation in the fighting fighting comes despite increased international pressure on both sides to halt the violence over concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus. Libya reported at least 25 cases of the virus and one fatality. Col. Mohamed Gnounou, a spokesman for the Tripoli-allied forces, said they captured the city of Sabrata, around 75 kilometres (45.5 miles) west of Tripoli. He said on his forces official Facebook page that they also took the town of Sorman, 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of the capital. There was no immediate comment from Hifters self-styled Libyan Arab Armed Forces. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Libya meanwhile condemned an airstrike that hit an ambulance near the western city of Misrata, killing a paramedic. It said the attack was the eighth on health facilities this year. The International Committee of the Red Cross on Sunday said it fears that the coronavirus pandemic would compound the suffering of many Libyan families who are already struggling to meet basic needs amid the conflict. Clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed caring for war-wounded and those with chronic illnesses, so their capacity to receive COVID-19 patients is limited, said Willem de Jonge, the ICRCs head of operations for Libya. Hifter forces, which control much of the county, launched the offensive on Tripoli last April. The offensive has led to a military stalemate, killed hundreds of civilians and displaced more than 200,000 people, according the U.N. The chaos in the oil-rich country has worsened in recent months as foreign backers increasingly intervene, despite pledges to the contrary at a high-profile peace summit in Berlin earlier this year. Turkey has sent armoured drones, air defences and more recently Syrian militants with links to extremist groups to prop up the embattled U.N.-backed Tripoli government. Russia, meanwhile, has deployed hundreds of mercenaries to boost Hifters assault. The United Arab Emirates and Egypt also back Hifter with fighter jets, drones and mine-resistant vehicles. "Farmers are the soul of the nation, respect them," was the advice given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by his predecessor H D Deve Gowda, who also suggested measures to mitigate the impact of lockdown on them and the working class. The JD(S) patriarch alleged that the lockdown was imposed in the country without forethought, putting farmers, agricultural labourers and daily wage earners to a lot of hardship. However, he also appreciated Modi for taking all round measures and issuing directions to state governments and the general public to combat the deadly virus. He noted that the first reported incidence of COVID-19 was on January 30 and that the lockdown was imposed about two months later, "without any forethought and proper planning." Before imposing the lock down, its impact on farmers, who are mainly small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and daily wage earners should have been discussed with states, experienced and honest citizens,committed officers,progressive farmers, organizations functioning for farmers' welfare and whole sale dealers of perishables, Gowda said. "Without proper planning, preparations and forethought, the decision taken to impose lock down in the country has put farmers and dependent workers in financial hardship,"he added. The Former Prime Minister had last week written a similar letter to Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa. He pointed out that when the lockdown was announced, no one rushed to buy gold, land, cars, expensive cellphones or dresses, but only vegetables, fruits, milk, rice, ragi and wheat "Farmers are the soul of the nation.Respect them,he said." He suggested that arrangements be made to procure produce at the farm gate at a reasonable price (as in case of milk) and market them through organisations like Karnataka Horticultural Federation (KHF) HOPCOMs, among others. He said there should have been no ban on perishables procurement, transportation and marketing and that all food processing units of Agriculture / Horticulture products and related activities should have been exempted from lock down. Calling for facilitating all agricultural extension activities at field level, Gowda said those involved in supply of inputs and agricultural extension must be permitted to travel freely to the farmer's field. Government should have facilitated the free movement of fruits, vegetables and other agricultural commodities from producing areas to markets anywhere in the country, he said, and suggested that a National Grid be created to move these items from surplus to deficit areas in the country. Advocating that MNREGA schemes must be allowed to be utilized in agricultural and food processing industries, he said this would boost investment in the processing industry at rural areas and benefit producers, generating employment potential. He said if the suggestions are implemented,marketing problems of perishables can be solved to a great extent. Otherwise the government should compensate farmers for their crop harvested. If these are not done, there would be a drastic redution of production of fruits and vegetables and an acute food shortage would be created,he said. This might result in farmers and agricultural labourers rising in 'revolt,' and the loss may be much more than the impact of the coronavirus, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EVART -- The former Star Truck Rentals property, 901 W. 7th St. will become the newest medical marijuana retail facility in Evart, if things go according to plan. James Blais, co-owner and CEO of NBB Holdings, LLC, a Michigan based marijuana processing and distributing company, updated the Evart City Council on the project at its meeting on April 6. "We are still moving forward at full speed with our operations to build a marijuana processing and provisioning center in the city," Blais said. "Our phase one application has been approved by the state, and we have submitted our application for phase two." The phase two application has been approved, pending inspection of the facility once the build out is completed, he added. "We will have the construction drawings completed this month," Blais said. "We hope to have the renovation of the building completed and the facility fully operational by the end of this year." After working with the city of Evart and the former Evart Local Development Finance Authority (LDFA) to purchase property in the airport industrial park for more than a year, NBB Holdings executives previously determined the property there was not suited to their needs. In order to move forward with their plans to build a marijuana processing and provisioning center in the area, they decided to purchase the former Star Truck Rentals property, which they are now in the process of renovating. NBB Holdings has a licensing agreement to produce, distribute and sell AltMed's MUV product line in Michigan, according to the business plan they submitted to city administrators. "We hold a processing and a provisioning license with the city, as well, which will allow us to establish a retail store, and produce products and distribute them throughout the state to other retail locations," Blais said. The business plan states that NBB Holdings, LLC plans to develop a 50,000-square-foot facility that will employ up to 60 full-time workers, with no less than half of the workers coming from the local community. In other business, the council approved a recommendation for city manager Sarah Dvoracek to extend five current marijuana licenses with the city until May 18. The license holders have applied for renewals with the city and are awaiting review. "During this coronavirus crisis, all five of the current marijuana license holders expired," Dvoracek said. "We have five renewal applications right now that need to be reviewed, but because that has not been a priority during this pandemic, I am recommending the council extend the current licenses until May 18, to give the city staff and others time to do a thorough review." Dvoracek said the license renewals must be reviewed by administration staff, the city attorney, the fire chief, the city treasurer and the zoning administrator before they can be approved. If the licenses are allowed to expire, the businesses would no longer be able to legally operate until the renewals are approved. "The extension is because of the pandemic and is not the fault of the holder," Dvoracek said. "I don't think we can shut someone down because the city hasn't had an opportunity to review their application. They shouldn't be penalized for that. "I think it is a good business partnership to extend the five licenses until we can review them," she continued. Evart Mayor John Joyce agreed, saying, "To hurt a local business just because we couldn't get to the review process is just bad business." The motion to extend the current licenses until May 18 was approved by a vote of 4-1. Eight crew members on a Fred Olsen cruise liner anchored in the Firth of Forth have contracted coronavirus while test results are being awaited on six more. The treatment of the employees is being managed on board the 28,600-tonne vessel Black Watch and there are no plans for anyone to disembark. The ship is one of four vessels from the Norwegian-owned company based in Ipswich, Suffolk, which are anchored in the Forth while sailings are suspended. Four of the Fred Olsen Cruise Lines ocean fleet which have taken up temporary residence in the Firth of Forth, just outside the Port of Rosyth, are pictured today Its sister vessel, Braemar, also in the Forth, hit the headlines last month when it became stranded in the Caribbean with ten people on board testing positive. A spokesman said: 'Fred Olsen Cruise Lines can confirm that a number of crew members aboard its ship Black Watch have tested positive for Covid-19 coronavirus. 'Eight crew members have tested positive, and we are awaiting the results for six others.' She added that the ship was operating under the current public health guidance, saying: 'Each crew member is occupying their own cabin, each with a balcony. One of the Fred Olsen ships is pictured in the Firth of Forth today during the company's pause in cruise operations during the coronavirus pandemic 'There are no social gatherings on board. Crew are only leaving their cabins to perform essential duties, which includes bridge watch, engine watch and the preparation of food. 'Those who have received a positive diagnosis or who are feeling unwell are not undertaking any duties.' Forth Ports said it was providing safe anchorage in the River Forth for the four liners while they were out of operation. A spokesman said: 'As the statutory river authority we have instructed that the vessel remains at the anchorage until the appropriate period of self-isolation is complete. 'The ship's owners, Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, are taking care of the welfare of the crew on board.' Fife Council is also understood to be monitoring the situation. Passengers from the virus-hit MS Braemar wave on the steps of a plane at Havana Airport in Cuba on March 18 before being flown to the UK on a British Airways repatriation flight When Fred Oslen confirmed its ships were anchoring in the Forth, it said each would retain a small team on board for essential operations. Last month, British tourists on another Fred Olsen ship, the MS Braemar, were flown home on charter flights from Cuba to the UK after being stranded in the Caribbean for over a week on the virus-hit vessel. Almost 700 passengers flew out from Havana on four charter flights. Those taken ill onboard the ship flew on the fourth plane. It is thought than ten people who were on the cruise tested positive for the virus. Cuba allowed the ship to dock in the country after the UK was rejected permission by a number of Commonwealth governments, including Barbados and the Bahamas. WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly 231,000 U.S. bridges need major repair work or should be replaced, according to an American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) analysis of the just released U.S. Department of Transportation's 2019 National Bridge Inventory (NBI) database. That figure represents 37 percent, or more than a third, of all U.S. bridges. If placed end-to-end, the length of these bridges would stretch over 6,300 mileslong enough to make a round trip across the country from New York City to Los Angeles and back again to Chicago. American drivers cross these bridges 1.5 billion times per day representing one-third of all daily bridge crossings, according to the data. More than 46,000 of those bridges are "structurally deficient" and in poor condition. They are crossed 178 million times a day. An additional 81,000 bridges should be replaced, says ARTBA Chief Economist Dr. Alison Premo Black, who led the team conducting the analysis. One third of Interstate highway bridges (18,177 spans) have identified repair needs. The report comes as Congress and the Trump administration continue working on measures to respond to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. ARTBA says once policy makers shift from a rescue focus to economic recovery, robust transportation infrastructure investments have comprehensive benefits. "Economic recovery from coronavirus begins with strategic road and bridge improvements," ARTBA President Dave Bauer says. "Increased transportation investments support direct job creation and retention, while putting in place capital assets that will enhance U.S. productivity for decades to come." Bauer notes the transportation construction industry is not seeking federal assistance, but it should be part of the solution. He says the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee's July 2019 unanimously approved five-year highway reauthorization bill should be the starting point for discussions. "The sooner we invest in robust new transportation improvements the sooner the American people will experience the economic benefits," Bauer says. ARTBA estimates the cost to make the identified repairs for all 231,000 bridges in the U.S. at nearly $164 billion, based on average cost data published by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA.) The number of structurally deficient bridges declined by 900 compared to 2018. "At the current pace, it would take more than 50 years to repair America's structurally deficient bridges," Black, the chief economist, says. "Our bridge network is underfunded and should be modernized. State and local government just haven't been given the necessary financial resources to fully address the problem." Structurally Deficient Bridges Notable structurally deficient bridges include New York City's Brooklyn Bridge; Washington, D.C.'s Theodore Roosevelt bridge; the San Mateo-Hayward bridge crossing San Francisco Bay the longest bridge in California; Florida's Pensacola Bay Bridge; and the Vicksburg Bridge in Mississippi. State and congressional district-specific information is available: https://artbabridgereport.org/ Established in 1902, the Washington, D.C.-based ARTBA advocates for strong investment in transportation to meet the demand for safe and efficient travel. SOURCE American Road & Transportation Builders Association Related Links https://artbabridgereport.org/ But Lake County has not hit the point where it cannot meet the needs of patients, Covelli said. Most hospitals have expanded their ICU capacity and are also working with one another so that if one is nearing its ICU capacity, patients can be taken to a different hospital for treatment. Whats always struck me about your work is your interest in intellectual worlds that wouldnt seem funny on their face. I like working with a subject that is quite serious or maybe even highbrow or maybe even what someone might call boring, like literature or science. But actually, quite often, the jokes are pretty silly. Theyre kind of dressed up in the clothes of cerebral stuff, but I feel like that its my job to do the funny part. My favorite ones mix up a reference like Finnegans Wake and just some really silly joke, which you dont need to know the details of Finnegans Wake to get. But with the science cartoons in particular, dont you have to have some knowledge about a subject matter thats quite specialized? You have to know it, not deeply, but you need to know it at a certain level in order to make jokes about it. I dont think nearly as deeply as people imagine, having read the cartoon. But yeah, that was a challenge. So I sort of went on a self-education project. Ive now been doing that for five years. Scientists and writers arent that different. And quite often the same jokes about frustrating publishers or fear of failure apply to both. This interview has been condensed and edited. Produced by Erica Ackerberg. Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast. Todays guest blog is written by Thomas R. Guskey, senior research scholar, University of Louisville, and professor emeritus, University of Kentucky. The coronavirus pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to educators throughout the world. Schools have had to change entire instructional programs in widely varied contexts with inequitable access to technology and other vital resources. School closures and requirements for social isolation have created untold hardships for students and their families, especially those with multiple children at different grade levels, whose parents cannot stay at home, whose English may not be the primary language, and where the parents are also teachers. In making these changes, educators recognize that we cant do everything we did before. We must examine our purposes, establish priorities, and decide what is truly most important. When it comes to assessments and grading, two major needs influence these decisions. First is the need to encourage and support student learning. We need to provide the best possible learning experiences for students under these constrained and demanding conditions. We also must do our best to ensure all students learn well, achieve important academic goals, and are not hindered in their learning progress. Second is the need to document and quantify student learning for the purposes of accountability. Schools need to verify the success of these alternative instructional programs. For students, we also need to complete report cards and fill in transcripts. For graduating seniors in many schools, we need to calculate class ranks, identify the top 10 percent, distribute academic honors, and name a valedictorian. Unfortunately, under the adverse circumstances we currently face, these two needs pull us in different directions and prescribe different courses of action. To accomplish one means sacrificing aspects of the other. This brings new importance to establishing our priorities, especially in light of issues related to fairness and equity. For educators who make encouraging and supporting student learning their priority, however, the direction is clear. Assessments When it comes to assessments, supporting student learning means focusing on feedback instead of a score or grade. It means helping students to see assessments as learning tools that have an integral role in the learning process, rather than as evaluation devices that mark the end of learning. It means making clear to students that the primary purpose of assessments is to verify what theyve learned and to identify any learning problems so we can work together to remedy those problems. Hence, cheating on an assessment serves no purpose other than to delay our efforts to help all students learn well. An emphasis on feedback also means we must plainly articulate our learning goals and the criteria we use to determine when students meet those goals. We need to be clear about how we will know if students get it and not worry about quantifying their performance on a scale with 101 different levels. Most important, we need to plan alternative approaches to help students when they dont get it. This change eliminates the need to distinguish formative and summative assessments. If our focus is on feedback, then all assessments are formative until students get it. When results show they get it, then the assessment becomes summative. Grading When it comes to grading, encouraging and supporting student learning means ensuring grades accurately reflect what students have learned and are able to do, not when or how they learned it. As schools physically close and move to online learning, most attempt to accomplish this in one of two ways. In schools required to give grades for the current term, even when not all students have adequate online access, grades are typically based on evidence of student learning gathered up to the time of school closure. But then they do three things: Add an asterisk to the grade to indicate it is based on the portion of the course completed up to the time of school closure. Develop specific procedures that allow students to improve that grade by redoing assignments or assessments, even when the grade remains based on only a portion of the course. Develop additional procedures for students to fulfill all course requirements and complete the course, with assistance from teachers, in order to remove the asterisk from their grade. Schools vary in the timelines they set for both #2 and #3 because the length of school closures remains uncertain. Ensuring fairness and equity for all students remains paramount in making these decisions. Other schools, however, recognize the extraordinary nature of our current situation and are taking the same path as many elite colleges and universities: They are shifting temporarily to pass/fail, satisfactory/unsatisfactory, or credit/incomplete grading for the current school year. The University of Chicago, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, along with many others, all recently decided to temporarily shift to pass/fail grading after switching to remote learning this semester in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The key to successful pass/fail grading rests in establishing clear criteria for pass and making those criteria challenging, rigorous, and attainable. This doesnt mean lowering standards. Rather, it means being clear about the standards and doing all we can to ensure students meet them. Excellent examples of similar pass/fail grading include certification examinations in medicine, nursing, law, military, or civil service. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates said, Desperate times require desperate measures. What he meant is that in adverse circumstances, actions that might have been rejected under other circumstances may become the best choice. And these are certainly desperate times. Pass/fail or credit/incomplete grades may prove to be the fairest and most equitable grading option available to educators in these desperate times. By making student learning our primary focus; helping students share the same focus; ensuring the criteria we establish for passing or earning credit are clear, rigorous, and attainable; and then doing everything we can to help ALL students meet those criteria; we will make the best of these difficult and trying times. Connect with Tom Guskey on Twitter . Photo courtesy of Getty Images. Ford to Produce Powered Air-Purifying Respirators, Masks for COVID-19 Protection in Two Michigan Facilities; Scaling Up Production of Gowns and Testing Collection Kits Ford, with design and testing consultation from 3M, has developed a new powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR). Production of this PAPR starts Tuesday, April 14 at Fords Vreeland facility near Flat Rock, Mich., with paid UAW volunteers, with the ability to make 100,000 or more Ford, in collaboration with the UAW, is now producing face masks at Fords Van Dyke Transmission Plant for internal use globally and pursuing certification for medical use To help further protect health care workers, Ford is leading efforts to manufacture reusable gowns from airbag materials with supplier Joyson Safety Systems Ford is lending its manufacturing support to help Thermo Fisher Scientific quickly expand production of COVID-19 collection kits for patient testing DEARBORN, Mich., April 13, 2020 Ford is expanding its efforts to design and produce urgently needed medical equipment and supplies for health care workers, first responders and patients fighting coronavirus. In addition to the current production of more than 3 million face shields in Plymouth, Mich., Ford-designed powered air-purifying respirator production begins Tuesday, April 14. Ford also is now producing face masks and leading an effort to scale production of reusable gowns for health care workers. Lastly, Ford started providing manufacturing expertise to help scientific instrument provider Thermo Fisher Scientific quickly expand production of COVID-19 collection kits to test for the virus. We knew that to play our part helping combat coronavirus, we had to go like hell and join forces with experts like 3M to expand production of urgently needed medical equipment and supplies, said Jim Baumbick, vice president, Ford Enterprise Product Line Management. In just three weeks under Project Apollo, weve unleashed our world-class manufacturing, purchasing and design talent to get scrappy and start making personal protection equipment and help increase the availability and production of ventilators. Ford and 3M Collaboration Leads to New PAPR Since late March, Ford manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain experts have been embedded at 3M manufacturing facilities to help increase production of urgently needed products. With this additional help, 3M and Ford were able to increase the output of PAPRs and N95 respirators at 3Ms U.S.-based manufacturing facilities. 3M is dedicated to helping to protect our heroic health care workers and first responders globally, including sharing our scientific expertise to increase supply of needed PPE, said Bernard Cicut, vice president, 3M Personal Safety Division. We are proud to stand together with Ford in this effort, as they have helped us increase manufacturing of existing 3M PPE products and, together, we have rapidly designed a new PAPR to help protect these heroes. Ford will start producing an all-new PAPR design to help protect health care professionals on the front lines fighting COVID-19. Rapidly designing components and prototyping in accordance with federal guidelines and with 3M expert support and guidance, Ford teams reduced PAPR development time to less than four weeks. By working collaboratively with 3M to quickly combine more than 100 years of Ford manufacturing and engineering expertise with personal protection equipment design and expertise, were getting much-needed technology into the hands of frontline medical workers to help when they need it most, said Marcy Fisher, Ford director, Global Body Exterior and Interior Engineering. Approximately 90 paid UAW volunteers will assemble PAPRs at Fords Vreeland facility near Flat Rock, Mich., with the ability to make 100,000 or more. The newly designed PAPR includes a hood and face shield to cover health care professionals heads and shoulders, while a high-efficiency (HEPA) filter system provides a supply of filtered air for up to 8 hours. The air blower system similar to the fan found in F-150s ventilated seats is powered by a rechargeable, portable battery, helping keep the respirator in constant use by first-line defenders. The development team expects the respirator design will meet the pending National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) limited-use protocol to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency, with approval anticipated by the end of April. Pending approval, 3M will distribute the newly designed PAPRs through its U.S. network to help bring these technologies quickly and efficiently to health care workers who urgently need them. 3M and Ford will donate any profits they earn from the sale of the PAPR to COVID-19 related nonprofit organizations. Face Mask Production Meanwhile, Ford is now manufacturing face masks for internal use globally and pursuing certification for medical use its Van Dyke Transmission Plant. Face masks can help slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others. The CDC is now encouraging all U.S. residents to use masks to curb the spread of the virus. Fords global manufacturing and purchasing teams quickly sourced the necessary materials and equipment from its network of equipment manufacturers around the world. Production began earlier this week. Approximately 30 UAW paid volunteers will start making masks in the plants ISO Class 8 cleanroom, which is a controlled environment with extremely low levels of pollutants, enabling the safe production of face masks for medical use. Eventually, approximately 80 UAW paid volunteers will make masks as production increases. UAW Ford members continue to step up and volunteer to work during this difficult time as we expand at the facility across from Flat Rock to make respirators and at the Van Dyke Transmission Plant to make face masks for medical use, said Gerald Kariem, vice president, UAW Ford Department. The UAW also continues to work with Ford to follow stringent CDC guidelines and go above and beyond protections for these members who are so proudly volunteering to serve their communities and their nation. Gown Production To help further protect health care workers, Ford is leading efforts to manufacture reusable gowns with airbag supplier Joyson Safety Systems. The go-fast project has created re-usable gowns manufactured from material used to make airbags in Ford vehicles. Production of gowns will reach 75,000 gowns a week by Sunday and scale up to 100,000 gowns for the week of April 19 and beyond. By July 4, Ford-supplier Joyson Safety Systems will cut and sew 1.3 million gowns, which are self-tested to federal standards and are washable up to 50 times. Ford worked with Beaumont Health in Metro Detroit to quickly design the gown pattern and test for sizing during fit and function trials. More than 5,000 gowns have already been delivered to the hospital. The need to protect our medical teams is heightened Fords gown production could not come at a better time during this crisis, said David Claeys, president of Beaumont Health hospitals in Dearborn and Farmington Hills. Our front line health care workers are working around the clock to treat COVID-19 patients and we need the necessary supplies to support them. Collection Kits for COVID-19 Tests Ford is helping scale production of collection kits for COVID-19 tests at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Thermo Fishers engineering team at the companys site in Lenexa, Kansas, realized their expertise, combined with the manufacturing expertise of Fords nearby Kansas City Assembly Plant engineering team, could help set up additional collection kit production machinery. The Ford team also helped Thermo Fisher adapt machinery that currently runs glass vials for other products to run plastic vials required in drive-through coronavirus test collection. Ford's engineers brought a fresh perspective to production expansion, and together, we'll more than triple the number of collection kits we can deliver each week starting April 20, said John Reuss, senior director, microbiology business for Thermo Fisher. Its great to see different industries coming together to solve a common problem." Additional Efforts We are doing all we can to expand production and availability of personal protective equipment to help keep the true heroes medical personnel and our communities safe in the fight against COVID-19, said Adrian Price, director, Global Core Engineering for Vehicle Manufacturing. Ford also is continuing to manufacture transparent full-face shields for medical workers. As of April 13, Ford had produced more than 3 million face shields for medical personnel and first responders. Besides the U.S., face shield production also has started globally at Ford facilities in Canada and Thailand and with Ford joint venture partner Mahindra & Mahindra in India. Work at Rawsonville (Mich.) Components Plant is underway to transform a portion of the plant to manufacture a third-party ventilator, in collaboration with GE Healthcare, with production expected to start the week of April 20. Built by paid UAW volunteers, the goal is to produce 50,000 Model A-E ventilators by July 4 to help COVID-19 patients. Ventilator pre-production activities are also underway in the U.K., where Ford and an industry consortium are preparing to make ventilators from Penlon. Ford is providing manufacturing engineering capability, project leadership, purchasing support and assembly of the ventilators at its Dagenham engine plant. This production will help meet demand for 15,000 ventilators ordered by the U.K. government. Additional companies and individuals who are interested in contributing to this effort can submit their information here at www.fordnewideas.com. # # # About Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company is a global company based in Dearborn, Michigan. The company designs, manufactures, markets and services a full line of Ford cars, trucks, SUVs, electrified vehicles and Lincoln luxury vehicles, provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company and is pursuing leadership positions in electrification; mobility solutions, including self-driving services; and connected services. Ford employs approximately 190,000 people worldwide. For more information regarding Ford, its products and Ford Motor Credit Company, please visit corporate.ford.com. About 3M At 3M, we apply science in collaborative ways to improve lives daily. With $32 billion in sales, our 96,000 employees connect with customers all around the world. Learn more about 3Ms creative solutions to the worlds problems at www.3M.com or on Twitter @3M or @3MNews About Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with annual revenue exceeding $25 billion. Our Mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. Whether our customers are accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, improving patient diagnostics and therapies or increasing productivity in their laboratories, we are here to support them. Our global team of more than 75,000 colleagues delivers an unrivaled combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and pharmaceutical services through our industry-leading brands, including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services and Patheon. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com. BRISBANE (BCN) Already reaching out to their community with weekly "Virtual Town Hall" online events, Brisbane City Council members say they will get even more personal. Starting Sunday, with a letter from Councilwoman Madison Davis (https://spark.adobe.com/page/uqFTiFckXmDgH/), the five Brisbane City Council members will take turns writing weekly letters to the community as the novel coronavirus pandemic puts increasing stresses on individuals, communities and local governments. The letters will appear on the city's website each Sunday. "We hope you find it useful as well as uplifting as we begin the week ahead. #BrisbaneStrong," a Sunday news release said. The council members' Virtual Town Halls take place each Wednesday starting at 7:30 p.m. To access them, contact ipadilla@brisbaneca.org for further instructions. Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. UNDP Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen hands over the surgical masks to representatives from the Ministry of Health. (Photo: UNDP Vietnam) Handing over the masks to the Ministry of Health, UNDP Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen congratulated Vietnam for its success in combating COVID19, with more than half of the COVID-19 patients fully recovered. She reiterated the UNDPs commitment to support this effort, building on the existing memorandum of understanding signed between UNDP and MoH supporting the health sector on readiness in response to climate change and capacity building for centralised procurement. The global COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a shortage of critical personal protective equipment, putting health care workers at risk, she said. UNDP is helping the Ministry of Health procure critically needed personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical supplies to support doctors, nurses and health staff at the frontline of this crisis. We highly appreciate UNDPs present of 20,000 masks for health and its assistance in procuring N95 masks for the disease prevention and control work, said Nguyen Nam Lien, Director General of the MoHs Department of Planning and Finance. UNDP has been working closely with relevant ministries and UN organisations to support Vietnam to respond to COVID-19, as part of its mission to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and build resilience to crisis and shocks. In response to COVID-19, the UNDP is working with the Ministry of Health and WHO in the communication campaign 'Spreading the word #LeaveNoOneBehind' to reach out to ethnic minority people and people with disabilities. The campaign promotes COVID-19 prevention messages through animation and other communication means in ethnic minority and sign languages. In addition, UNDP in collaboration with UNWomen is conducting a rapid assessment of economic impacts of the crisis by surveying about 600 vulnerable households and 500 micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). This will contribute to the COVID-19 Impact Assessment led by the National Centre for Information and Forecast of the Ministry of Planning and Investment. In the longer term, UNDP will look at innovative ways to support Vietnam to better prevent and manage such crises and ensure the country makes full use of the lessons learned from this crisis to build back better. A new coronavirus testing site is finally ready to open after weeks of delays and failed efforts to secure testing kits. The site will be on the campus of Camden County College in Gloucester Township. It will open Wednesday and offer testing for first responders, essential employees and Camden County residents. "These are historic times; our community needs to work together as one unit pulling in the same direction to defeat this virus and get to the other side of this pandemic, Freeholder Director, Louis Cappelli Jr. said in a statement Monday. This is part of our efforts to keep building critical infrastructure to fight the virus and provide us with more data to make informed public health decisions. The testing site will have three lanes of traffic for first responders, essential employees and Camden County residents and will operate from noon to 4 p.m. daily from Monday to Friday on Peter Cheeseman Road. It will not accept drive-ups without an appointment. All visitors must make an appointment and have a prescription from a healthcare provider to be tested. Appointments can be made at (844) 542-2273. The site is a joint effort with Jefferson Health New Jersey, which operates two hospitals in South Jersey. The county also partnered with Cooper University Health and Virtua Health for another testing site at Coopers Poynt in Camden. The hospital systems were able to acquire testing kits. The countys effort to get them through the state was not successful. New Jersey now has at least 64,584 coronavirus cases and 2,443 deaths as the outbreak continued to escalate on Monday with 3,219 new cases announced. The latest numbers include 94 new deaths reported in the last 24 hours. Gov. Phil Murphy offered condolences to the families of the 2,443 deaths. The states tracking website shows 118,097 tests have been reported with a 46.2% positive rate. There were 7,781 patients hospitalized as of 10 p.m. Sunday with coronavirus or suspected of having the virus. Of those, 1,886 were in critical or intensive care, and 1,611 are on ventilators. Thats about 55% of the states capacity for ventilators. Another 556 patients have been discharged in the last 24 hours. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. [April 13, 2020] NASA TV to Air Landing of NASA Astronauts Meir, Morgan, Crewmate Skripochka WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan, who has spent nine months living and working on the International Space Station, will join fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and Oleg Skripochka of the Russian space agency Roscosmos for a scheduled return to Earth on Friday, April 17. Live coverage of their Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft's undocking and station departure will begin at 6 p.m. EDT Thursday, April 16, on NASA Television and the agency's website. Coverage of the deorbit burn and landing will begin at 12 a.m. Friday, April 17. Soyuz and station hatches will be closed at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 16, and the trio will undock from the aft port of the station's Zvezda service module at 9:53 p.m. A deorbit burn at 12:22 a.m. Friday, April 17, will put the Soyuz on course for a parachute-assisted landing at 1:17 a.m. (11:17 a.m. Kazakhstan time) on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan. A change of command ceremony, which will see newly arrived astronaut Chris Cassidy of NASA accept station command from Skripochka, will air live at 4:55 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, on NASA V and the agency's website. At the time of undocking, Expedition 63 will begin aboard the station, with Cassidy and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner comprising a three-person crew until the planned arrival of NASA's Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon on the Demo-2 flight test, becoming the first astronauts to launch from American soil to the space station since 2011. Morgan's 272-day mission began on July 20, 2019, with launch aboard the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft, along with Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) and Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos. His flight spanned Expeditions 60-62, a total of 4,352 Earth orbits and a journey of 115.3 million miles. During his first spaceflight, he contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development. He also conducted seven spacewalks, totaling 45 hours and 48 minutes, four of which were to improve and extend the life of the station's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer as it looks for evidence of dark matter in the universe. Meir and Skripochka, who launched on the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft on Sept. 25, 2019, will land with Morgan after 205 days in space, 3,280 orbits of Earth and a trip of 86.9 million miles. During her first spaceflight, Meir conducted the first three all-woman spacewalks with crewmate Christina Koch of NASA, totaling 21 hours and 44 minutes. Skripochka is completing his third spaceflight for a cumulative 536 days in orbit. After landing, the crew will return by Russian helicopters to the recovery staging city in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where they will split up. Morgan and Meir will board a NASA plane located in the adjacent city of Kyzlorda, Kazakhstan, for a flight back to Houston. Skripochka will board a Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center aircraft in Baikonur to return to his home in Star City, Russia. Full NASA TV coverage is as follows (all times EDT): Wednesday, April 15: 4:55 p.m.: Space station change of command ceremony, during which Chris Cassidy will accept command from crewmate Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos. Thursday, April 16: 6 p.m.: Farewell and Soyuz hatch closure coverage (hatch closure at 6:30 p.m.) 9:30 p.m.: Soyuz undocking coverage (undocking scheduled for 9:53 p.m.) Friday, April 17: 12 a.m.: Soyuz deorbit burn and landing coverage (deorbit burn at 12:22 a.m. and landing at 1:17 a.m.) Get breaking news, images and features from the space station on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-tv-to-air-landing-of-nasa-astronauts-meir-morgan-crewmate-skripochka-301039408.html SOURCE NASA [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno has threatened to end the deployment of his troops beyond national borders, a move freighted with potential consequences for the campaign against Islamist insurgents in the Sahel. His announcement came at the end of a reprisal offensive against Boko Haram jihadists from neighbouring Nigeria, who on March 23 killed 98 Chadian soldiers -- the worst single-day loss in the country's history. "Our troops have died for Lake Chad and the Sahel. From today, no Chadian soldiers will take part in a military mission outside Chad," Deby said in remarks broadcast on Friday. A thousand jihadists and 52 troops were killed in the operation, which Deby personally oversaw, according to the Chadian authorities. Why is Lake Chad a hotspot? Lake Chad is a vast body of water where the borders of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon meet. Its western shores have been hit by jihadists crossing from northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram launched a bloody campaign of violence in 2009. The four countries bordering the lake on 2015 set up a formation called the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), also including Benin, to fight Boko Haram. But Chad has shown frustration with the MNJTF, saying it is doing all the heavy lifting. "Chad is alone in shouldering all the burden of the war against Boko Haram," Deby complained publicly, a few days before the end of the counter-offensive. "What happened on the shores of Lake Chad (on March 23) was the straw that broke the camel's back," says Jean-Bernard Padare, former secretary general in the president's office and spokesman for the ruling party. "We would have liked to have the help of countries concerned, notably Niger and Nigeria, but we unfortunately observed that they did not move." Where is Chad's army posted? Chad is relatively speaking a military power in the Sahel. Its troops have high prestige in this impoverished region, playing a key part in Deby's web of developing regional and bilateral alliances. They are stationed on the borders with Sudan to the east and the Central African Republic to the south, as well as far to the west beyond Niger in Mali, two nations hard-hit by jihadist activity. In addition to the MNJTF, Chad also provides troops for MINUSMA, the UN mission in Mali. Chad's President Idriss Deby, himself a former soldier, oversaw a major jihadist operation last month. By Ludovic MARIN (AFP) It is also a member of the G5 Sahel -- a scheme backed by France aimed at easing the Sahel's dependence on French troops to fight the jihadists. The G5 Sahel plans a 5,000-man force of troops from Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali and Niger as well as Chad, but has run into major problems of funding, training and equipment. "The fact is that the Chadian army is one of the best in the region," said a Sahel diplomat working in Burkina Faso. "Deby knows this and uses it to pressure his partners." Fallout for the Sahel? How far Chad intends to realign its troops is unclear. In the past, threats to withdraw troops from sub-regional operations have not been carried out, although this time frustration at the perceived failures of allies seems strong. The withdrawal of Chad's MINUSMA contingent has been swiftly ruled out, and the authorities have been blowing hot and cold about the G5 Sahel. "While heads of state can't agree on the principle of solidarity, it will be very difficult henceforth to commit ourselves alone, in the G5 Sahel framework and in the sub-region in general," Chadian government spokesman Oumar Yaya Hissein told AFP on Saturday. The main jihadist groups in the Sahel. By (AFP) But the following day, the foreign ministry spokesman said: "There has never been any question of Chad disengaging" from the G5 Sahel force. In contrast, the spokesman, contacted by AFP, was not specific about the future of a scheduled Chadian deployment of 480 men, promised by Deby in January. The battalion-strength unit would be deployed under the G5 Sahel to the "three borders" region of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Already criticised for a lack of impact, the G5 Sahel force "has just taken another symbolic blow," an observer in Mali's capital Bamako said. "The joint force is a shell that gets emptier and emptier." ah-yas-dwi-js/nb/pma/ri Ukraine's parliament passes amendments to 2020 state budget, triples deficit: main figures 16:00, 13.04.20 7731 Relevant bill No. 3279-d was backed by 252 MPs as a basis, as well as by 249 MPs as a whole with the required minimum of 226 votes. Unfortunately, there are stubborn, unresolved problems with all four. It will be catastrophic if the next phase unfolds with the kind of chaotic supply shortages and lack of leadership we have seen over the past few months. Diagnostic tests, to see whether people are sick, have been running at about 140,000 a day reported by the states, only a fraction of what is needed for phase two. Serological testing, to see who has recovered with antibodies that might confer immunity from reinfection, has never been done at this scale. Many tests are in the works, but technical and biomedical uncertainty remain, including regarding how long the antibodies last and how strongly they may protect. Former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb and former FDA chief of staff Lauren Silvis have suggested that employers ought to take on some of the burden for testing, bringing it into workplaces, making it more routine and widespread. Downed trees, power lines and flooding conditions have closed a number of roads in Connecticut. Among the closures: NEWTOWN - Route 34 at Upper Chestnut Road is closed due to a tree down with wires. Reported at 3:23 p.m. Berkshire Road CLOSED from upper Chestnut Hill Road intersection to lower Chestnut Hill Road intersection due to downed tree and wires partially blocking roadway. Eversource called to take tree off wires. Reported at 1:42 p.m. GREENWICH - Lower Cross Road, North Porchuck Road, Indian Chase Road, Westview Place, Stanwich Road (near Area 543), and Hillcrest Lane are all closed. Zacchues Mead and Cliffdale Road are both one-lane traffic. Reported at 3 p.m. REDDING - Route 107 at Little Boston Lane is closed because of a tree down with wires. Reported at 2:50 p.m. STAMFORD - The West Main Street Bridge will be closed until weather conditions improve. The bridge has been closed off with fencing and the city advises residents to avoid using the bridge at this time. BARKHAMSTED - Route 219 Road CLOSED between Route 179 and South Road because of a tree and wires down. Reported at 11:20 a.m. SHARON - Route 343 CLOSED between Sharon Valley Road and New York state line because of a tree down in wires. Reported at 11:38 a.m. NEW MILFORD - Route 109 Road CLOSED by Sterling Drive because of tree and wires down. Reported at 11:49 a.m. CORNWALL - Route 4 CLOSED between Route 63 and Route 43 because of Trees in wires. Reported at 12:18 p.m. NORTH BRANFORD - Route 80 CLOSED in both directions at Sunset Road because of wires down in roadway. Reported at 12:22 p.m. TORRINGTON - Route 8 northbound Exit 46 off ramp CLOSED due to wires down. Reported at 12:24 p.m. WESTPORT - Debris in roadway on northbound I-95 between Exits 18 and 19. The right and center lanes are closed. Reported at 12:25 p.m. TORRINGTON - Route 183 CLOSED at house No. 240 because of a tree down across roadway. Reported at 12:26 p.m. WASHINGTON - Route 199 CLOSED near 322 Roxbury Road. Reported at 12:57 p.m. For latest updates, click here. Nearly 30 tourists evicted from Tulum cenote, failing to comply with municipal quarantine Tulum, Q.R. Authorities in Tulum say a group of tourists were evicted from a cenote after failing to abide by municipal restrictions regarding social distancing and non-essential travel. The municipal government closed an abandoned ranch, which is located about six kilometers from the town along the road to Coba. They say it was shut down after they discovered nearly 30 Argentine tourists visiting a cenote located on the ranch. The Saturday afternoon operation was led by Vicencio Mendez, the Director General de Seguridad Publica, who instructed the site shut and the tourists evicted for not complying with the coronavirus quarantine and for violating mobility restrictions. Cleanup efforts are underway this morning in Boaz, a north Alabama city where storms left two people injured and dozens of buildings damaged on Easter Sunday. Two people suffered injuries that werent considered life-threatening, said Anita McBurnett, director of the Marshall County Emergency Management Agency. The extent of the damage isnt yet known. McBurnett said the damage to an undetermined number of buildings in the area ranges from minor to destroyed. Boaz police Chief Josh Gaskin estimated that more than 50 homes and buildings were affected. [Related: Easter storms kill at least 19 in Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, South Carolina] I just want to let the people who were affected know theyre in our prayers, said David Dyar, the mayor of Boaz, a city of about 9,600 people. The city, which is located in in both Marshall and Etowah counties, is about 50 miles southeast of Huntsville. We will clean this up, the mayor said. It may take a couple weeks, but were working on that as we speak. The National Weather Service and EMA officials from Marshall and Etowah counties will assess the damage this afternoon. The Boaz Police Department reported significant damage along the following roads: U.S. 431 near Denson and Waterline roads, Alabama 205, Coosa Road, Bethsaida Road, Pleasant Hill Road, Reedy Circle, Ellis Road and Lee Avenue. Elsewhere in Marshall County, flooding has been reported in Arab and Guntersville. McBurnett said multiple county roads were washed out by the flooding. [Related: Storms damage multiple Alabama churches] At least 400 people had been without power in the area during the storms, but officials said much of it was restored as of Monday morning. Utility companies were working to restore service to the remaining customers. Local officials are urging the public to stay away from the damaged areas so first responders can work safely. Crews are working amid the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. Weve got some challenges that might slow things a bit, McBurnett said. But were working as hard as we can. Anyone who wants to volunteer to help with cleanup is asked to contact the American Red Cross or United Way, rather than showing up at the scene. Walter Colbert, assistant Chief of the Boaz police department, said officers from nearby agencies have been helping with cleanup and assessment since Sunday night. Mayor Dyar said the city has received calls of support and help from Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, who is a Boaz native, plus state lawmakers, mayors from nearby cities and leaders of state agencies. Dyar praised the citys first responders for their work. Its a total team effort, the mayor said. We hope to be back up and running in a couple weeks. Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth (left), state Sen. Clay Scofield (center), and Boaz Mayor David Dyar (right) view storm damage on Monday, April 13, 2020 in Boaz, Ala. (Photo courtesy of Mayor Dyar) Praying for my home town of Boaz has it got hit by a tornado tonight. Will Ainsworth (@willainsworthAL) April 13, 2020 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jon Afrizal and Belseran Christ (The Jakarta Post) Jambi/Maluku Mon, April 13 2020 The Jambi Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA Jambi) has launched an investigation into the death of a 4-meter-long saltwater crocodile in Teluk Dewan village, East Tanjungjabung regency, Jambi. The crocodile was found dead on Thursday when local residents were cleaning an artificial canal using an excavator, BKSDA Jambi head Rahmat Saleh said on Friday. The residents, he added, claimed the machines operator had hit something upon cleaning the canal. When he raised the excavators arm, he found a saltwater crocodile in it. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Spains non-essential workers, from sectors such as construction and industry, will today return to their workplaces after a two-week hibernation of the economy. For companies located in regions that observe Easter Monday, the return will be pushed to Tuesday. On March 30, the Spanish government introduced even stricter measures to the confinement put in place on March 14 in a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and ordered the cessation of all non-essential activity in a bid to slow the movement of citizens down to a crawl. Offices, carpenters and factories, among others, all downed tools. Today, Monday, however, many are returning to work, despite the reticence of some health experts and the opposition of some politicians. Catalonia is radically opposed to the idea and Madrid has doubts about the risk of a spike in infections. The debate among the scientific community, meanwhile, is seeking to balance this risk with the impact that, in public-health terms, it would have to maintain economic activity at a minimum. The majority of the population of Spain remain in their homes schools, bars, restaurants, cultural venues and leisure centers all remain closed The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, insisted on Sunday during a televised press conference that Spain is not yet at the deescalation phase. The confinement will continue, but will return to the original conditions when the state of alarm was implemented on March 14. That means that the majority of the population of Spain remain in their homes schools, bars, restaurants, cultural venues and leisure centers all remain closed but the economic activity that was halted with the hibernation decree will restart. The coalition government, led by the Socialist Party (PSOE) with junior partner Unidas Podemos, is reactivating these sectors while strengthening protection measures, including the distribution of 10 million masks on points such as public transport and the publication of a guide to safely return to work. But the debate about ending the hibernation period remains on the table. The Catalan regional government, for example, considers the move imprudent and reckless. The Madrid regional premier, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, voiced doubts about the strategy on Sunday during a conference call between the prime minister and regional governments, demanding to know the how, where and when of the planned distribution of masks. Another wave [of infections] would be unforgivable, she said. The experts admit that the move comes in the midst of uncertainty. No one knows if prolonging this five days more will have a huge benefit or if the economic impact will be more important, explains Toni Trilla, an epidemiologist and member of the scientific committee that is advising the government. No decision can be fixed or radical. The major reduction in movement already came when the state of alarm was introduced, when the government limited journeys and ordered residents of Spain to be confined to their homes. From the moment it was announced that people had to stay home, urban mobility was reduced by 70%, Trilla explains. With the total confinement, it fell by another 10%. So we are not going from white to black. There could be 10% increased movement now and more infections, but the other 70% has to maintain the same conditions from before and not leave their homes, Trilla says. Epidemiologist Joan Ramon Villalbi agrees: Going from extreme confinement to a less extreme confinement involves a risk, but its a modest one, he says. We are going to deescalate the confinement without knowing how many people are affected nor how many people there are without symptoms Maria Jose Campillo, Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions Other experts, however, have their doubts. Margarita del Val, a virologist from the CSIC public research institute, calls the restarting of industrial activity premature. Health unions are also not keen on the idea. We are still in the dark, complains Maria Jose Campillo, the treasurer from the Spanish Confederation of Medical Unions (CESM), in reference to a lack of widespread testing among the population. We are going to deescalate the confinement without knowing how many people are affected nor how many people there are without symptoms. Doctor Benito Almirante, the head of infectious diseases at the Vall dHebron Hospital in Barcelona, believes that the debate is more political than scientific, and points to the fact that the population is now more aware of the protection measures needed to curb the spread of the coronavirus. He also explains that the communicable viral load is lower compared to two weeks ago. That is, there are fewer people who can spread the virus. What is needed, in his view, is to find out where the more than 4,000 daily infections still being registered in Spain are coming from. Where are they? he asks. If they are in senior residencies, the control measures need to be different from confinement. If they are inter-familial infections, confinement is actually having a negative effect. If they are happening between essential workers, there is probably no way to avoid it. Whatever the case, the return to work either today or for everyone will not be the same as it was two weeks ago. The public is now conscious of the dangers, and citizens are aware of the hygiene measures needed. There will be a return to economic activity, but lower than before and in more prudent and restrictive conditions in order to reduce contagion, Trilla states. The government will be distributing the aforementioned masks and in the guide that it has published it recommends home working where possible, social distancing, and the disinfecting of objects that have been used outside the home, such as glasses and cellphones. It also calls for the use of masks among staff who work closer than two meters to one another, and that companies allow flexible timetables to avoid overcrowding at rush hour on public transport. There are people who are living from day to day and after so much time with no activity, will not have money to buy food Epidemiologist Joan Ramon Villalbi However, the spokesperson from the CESM has doubts about whether safe distances can be maintained on buses, trains and the Metro. Jesus Cubero, the president of the Spanish association of senior residences, Aeste, is concerned that people will let their guards down with the false sensation of safety from the use of a mask. But for the experts, the economic impact on health of continuing to halt activity is also of great importance. The extreme confinement has serious consequences, says Villalbi. There are people who are living from day to day and after so much time with no activity, will not have money to buy food. This is also going to have consequences on health in the medium term and the psychological suffering will have an impact. This effect cannot be understated. Health experts also warn of the need for a return to normality in hospitals. We are reaching a situation where there is a higher death and morbidity rate for things that arent coronavirus than for Covid-19, Almirante explains. At some point the country has to start working again. Society is in a situation where the economic problems will be more difficult to solve than the medical ones caused by the coronavirus. Im worried, for example, about the health of children and adolescents, who havent left their homes in a month. Maintaining the hibernation will not defeat the coronavirus, the experts insist. Even if it was for longer, the population remains susceptible to the virus, says Javier Arranz, from the infectious diseases group at the Spanish Society of Family Medicine. When [the economy] is opened, there will be more infections. We have made an effort to stop the wave, but life goes on. We have chronic patients in their homes that we have to see, hospitals that have stopped operating. And we need to get all of this moving. When the future is uncertain, there is always a risk, Trilla admits. But it can be a controllable and revisable risk. There are no magic formulas, he concludes. English version by Simon Hunter. All five main banks as well as vulture funds are set to extend the Covid-19 mortgage payment breaks to six months from the current three months. It comes as the main banking industry group revealed a significant number of hard-pressed home borrowers have already applied for a payments deferral. Brian Hayes, chief executive of the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland, said at least 45,000 mortgage borrowers 5% or 6% of all home-loan borrowers had already applied for payment breaks. He expects more to apply, even as the crisis adds a massive cost for lenders. The former Fine Gael MEP and junior finance minister, who has led the banking industry group since last year, also defended the banks for their handling of customers during the crisis, saying that other businesses, such as utilities, have not been called on to do as much. He told the Irish Examiner that the banks he represents are in talks with the regulator about extending the breakage period for a further three months. Mr Hayes said he expects the likely agreement to include mortgage-servicing firms and non-bank entities, which have bought large amounts of non-performing mortgage loans from the main banks in the last 18 months. Mr Hayes said the figure of 45,000 borrowers is a minimum, as it doesnt include owners of mortgages outside of the five mortgage lenders. He wouldnt comment on how many applications the banks have budgeted for in terms of projecting the peak number of mortgage breaks and their costs in handling the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis. A lot of this will be predicated on where the economy will be in in a few months time. If you took your break out in April, May, [or] June then you have got a decision on whether to extend this or whether or not you have a job to go back to, he said. We have to see whether an extension is agreed with the regulator, and we are in discussions on that right now about a second payment break. But, as of now, the figures do suggest a significant cohort of people have sought support on this, and it is impossible to know the total and final number. The peak number of people who apply for the mortgage breaks will be closely watched as Government and Central Bank officials figure out the financial strains that banks will face in the coming months. Following the recession 10 years ago, the lenders went into the Covid-19 crisis with strengthened defences but are not fully back to financial health. Economists warn they will inevitably be damaged under a prolonged shutdown of the economy. The economic toll will become clearer in the next few days when new numbers may show close to 800,000 people are receiving some sort of temporary payment from the Government, or are already on the official unemployment count, only a month into the crisis. On SMEs, Mr Hayes said the banks had given around 14,000 payment breaks and had 3,200 applications for working capital loans. He also responded to critics who say the banks should be doing more. If the banks are being asked to do this amazing deal for people, where are all the other businesses being asked to do the same, I would ask. Are the same critics asking the utility firms or every other public utility in the country, are they applying the same discounts? Banking is a business, it is an economically viable business that has to be sustainable. There is a massive cost to the banks for this. The banks will take a significant hit as a consequence of this. So asking people to pay a slightly higher mortgage over a slightly longer period is the way it is done here. The five main banks are AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, Ulster Bank, and KBC Bank. Elsewhere, a credit union group said it has received requests to alter payments for mortgages and car loans. It is clear to see that even six months may not be enough, said Core Credit Union. [snippet1]987600[/snippet1] Virus-stricken British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thanked medics for saving his life after leaving hospital on Easter Sunday, as hundreds of millions of Christians observed the holiday under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. More than half of humanity is confined at home as governments scramble to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 112,500 lives around the world. More than 1.8 million people have been infected but glimmers of hope were emerging that the worst may be behind -- especially in Europe, where hard-hit Italy recorded its lowest death toll in three weeks and fatalities fell in France. Johnson, the highest-profile leader to contract the virus characterised by high fevers and coughing, voiced confidence that Britain would beat the pandemic in a candid video message after he was discharged from a state-run National Health Service (NHS) hospital. "I hope they won't mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way," said 55-year-old Johnson, who was admitted on April 5 to a London hospital where he spent three days in intensive care. In a suit and tie but visibly worn, Johnson said he was discharged after "a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question." Even as Johnson headed to a country estate to rest before returning to work, Britain passed the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths. Johnson, like US President Donald Trump, had initially resisted stringent measures such as shutting down public places. The United States has since recorded the world's highest death toll at more than 22,020. - 'Easter of solitude' - From the Vatican to Panama and the Philippines, there were unprecedented scenes of empty churches as the world's two-billion plus Christians celebrated Easter from the confines of their homes. Speaking from a near-empty Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Pope Francis offered prayers for the ill and urged "solidarity" to fight the outbreak. "For many, this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties," he said in a live-streamed message beamed around the world. On the outskirts of Rome, one devout follower held a video session with friends to mark the holy day in lieu of being able to gather in church. "Before lunch, six of us connected online for the Angelus prayer," said Rosa Mastrocinque, adding that her "spirituality has increased" during her weeks-long confinement. The pope had earlier urged creativity to mark the holy weekend -- a call that was met by many. In Panama, an archbishop blessed his nation from a helicopter, while one priest in Portugal addressed the faithful from the open top of a moving convertible car. In one church north of the Philippine capital Manila, hundreds of pictures of parishioners were taped to pews as a priest led a Sunday service in a near-empty sanctuary. "We also feel their presence virtually," said Father Mark Christopher De Leon. "This is our way of being with them, praying for them spiritually, praying for them, praying for their safety." - 'Far from victory' - Unlike France and Italy, Spain reported a slight spike in deaths with 619 fresh fatalities after declines over three straight days. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned there could still be tough times ahead, even as the number of new infections continued to slow. "We are still far from victory, from the moment when we will recover normality in our lives," Sanchez said in locked-down Spain. "We are all keen to go back out on the streets... but our desire is even greater to win the war and prevent a relapse," he added. New York, the epicentre of the virus in the United States, has gradually seen the public health crisis stabilise after a devastating week. "You're not seeing a great decline in the numbers, but you're seeing a flattening," Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters. "And you're also seeing a recurrence of the terrible news, which is the number of lives lost, which is 758," he said of the past 24 hours across the state of New York. - Questions on reopening - The World Health Organization has warned countries against lifting lockdown restrictions too early. Governments are under pressure to keep populations safe while preventing the collapse of their economies, amid warnings from the International Monetary Fund of a downturn not seen since the Great Depression. Trump had earlier voiced hope at returning to normal by Easter but backtracked after dire warnings from public health experts. Anthony Fauci, the White House's top advisor on infectious diseases, said Sunday that parts of the world's largest economy may be ready to reopen by May 1 -- but warned it would not be like a "light switch" with the entire country ending restrictions together. In Turkey, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu offered to resign over a 48-hour nationwide shutdown that was announced Friday night with just two hours' notice. The abrupt declaration sparked panic buying at markets -- defeating the aim of social distancing. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to accept Soylu's resignation. There were also worrying signs the virus could be taking hold in new -- and vulnerable -- parts of the world. Conflict-wracked Yemen reported its first case last week, while in Mumbai's crowded Dharavi slum -- one of Asia's biggest and the inspiration for the 2008 Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" -- more than 43 cases have been confirmed. "We have been running extensive medical camps in Dharavi and other areas of Mumbai to test more people for coronavirus and make sure carriers are not ignored," said Mumbai official Khabale-Patil. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari urged all residents to stay at home and wash their hands -- but has not said whether stay-at-home orders due to end Monday in three major cities will be extended. Bucking the global sports shutdown, Taiwan opened a new baseball season on Sunday in front of empty stands. burs-jv-sct/bgs/to Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 20:44:01|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SHANGHAI, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Buick on Sunday held an online launch of its all-new GL8 Avenir family, as part of the automobile brand's efforts to offer products better tailored to the needs of the world's biggest auto market, according to General Motors (GM). The newly released GL8 Avenir multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) models include a new four-seat flagship variant, a new six-seat variant and an upgraded seven-seat variant, which are only available on the Chinese mainland. Leading technologies were used to develop the GL8 Avenir MPV. It is equipped with 20 advanced intelligent driving features, such as lane centering control and steering wheel hands-off detection, to make the driving experience safer and tailored for various road conditions in China, the company said. Buick has sold over 10 million vehicles in China since its introduction by SAIC-GM, a joint venture between Shanghai-based SAIC Motor and GM, in 1998. China remains the world's largest auto market. About 25.77 million automobiles were sold in 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 8.2 percent, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Sitting in bed, not long after his wife said goodbye to him at the hospital in Burlingame on March 14, Ken Loo gripped the telephone and pleaded with her, Babe, dont let me die. Do whatever you can to save me. Clarissa Rivera-Loo choked back tears as a doctor came on the line and asked if she was authorized to make medical decisions on her husbands behalf. COVID-19 was killing Loo, the doctor said, and he couldnt be sure the 38-year-old father of two would live to walk out of the hospital. He did. But Loo still gasps for air when he talks on the phone too long. He cant walk more than a few dozen feet without feeling exhausted. And like other coronavirus patients with serious symptoms, Loo also developed pneumonia. Though his condition has improved, Loo continues to test positive for the coronavirus and he hasnt seen his family since his wife dropped him off the hospital. I just want to hug my family, Loo said softly from quarantine at a Burlingame hotel. I miss them so much. Besides all that emotional stuff, Id like to have a fat juicy steak. Testing negative for the coronavirus and finally returning home to his wife and two daughters, 11 and 19, is only the start of what doctors said may be a long road to recovery. COVID-19 attacks the lungs. Not enough data exist yet on the lasting impacts of the virus that first struck 4 months ago. Doctors say the virus manifests differently in each patient. In Loos case, his diabetes may have exacerbated his symptoms. Some patients become seriously ill while others do not. So much of it has to do with the individual persons circumstances, said Rosny Daniel, an emergency medicine physician at UCSF. We have to remember how new of a disease this is. We dont really know what a typical COVID case looks like because its not clear yet. It is so individualized. Daniel has unique experience with COVID-19. He tested positive for the virus on March 14. Daniel also has Type 1 diabetes and is asthmatic. He had body aches, fever, headaches and a cough. By March 25, Daniel recovered and was back at work. His experience with the virus is vastly different from Loos. Some people never get better from COVID and they die after being on ventilator for a month, Daniel said. Some people feel sick for four days before getting better. My illness (lasted) for 10 days. During the 16 days Loo was at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, he lost nearly 30 pounds. He couldnt breathe. He had severe body aches. On top of his symptoms, he was isolated and away from his family and friends. The only people around were doctors and nurses. Hes petrified of hospitals, Rivera-Loo said. Hes been alone already for so many days, and then to be going through things on his own, youre bound to feel lonely. When Loo arrived at the hotel, walking the 15 steps from the bed to the bathroom felt nearly impossible. He couldnt sit up in bed without getting winded. And after spending so many days in a hospital bed, he said he had trouble walking because he felt like he lost muscle memory. Now, hes practicing walking in the hallway outside his room with the help of nurses and trying to hold a conversation for longer than 15 minutes without losing his breath. He has to use an inhaler and a spirometer, a medical device that measures how much air he can breathe. Its weird as an adult to feel like you have to relearn how to walk and coordinate your breathing, Loo said. Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Loo first felt sick on March 7. He returned to his Daly City home after working a graveyard shift at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car at San Francisco International Airport and fell into bed. I thought maybe it was the flu, Loo said. I just didnt think this was the coronavirus. He woke up several hours later burning with fever and feeling as if his body were being crushed by a heavy machine. At the time, only four cases of coronavirus had been confirmed in San Mateo County with no deaths. As of Friday, the county had 683 cases and 21 deaths. Two days later, Loo was in agonizing pain, and Rivera-Loo rushed her husband to the emergency room. A doctor checked Loos lungs and said they sounded clear. Others asked if hed left the country recently or had been in touch with anyone who had. He hadnt. So Loo got a flu test and was sent home with a prescription for Motrin. His flu test came back negative. His cough felt slightly better and his fever broke. On the night of March 12, Loo poked his head out of the bedroom and called to his wife, Can I join you guys for dinner? Rivera-Loo said no. He could still have cooties, she joked, and instead hurried to bring dinner to his bedside before he could leave his room. In less than a week, Loos condition worsened. On March 14, Rivera-Loo found her husband unresponsive. When she tried to sit him up in bed, he fell backward. His cough was so intense, she said, that it sounded like he was choking on his own breath. Rivera-Loo wrapped her husband in a blanket. She helped lift his 6-foot, 190-pound body out of bed. He leaned on her 5-foot-4 body as he limped out of the bedroom, breathing heavily. It took 10 minutes to walk down 12 steps to the front door. Rivera-Loo guided him, ensuring that he didnt fall until finally, they reached the car. You dont know how strong you are until you need to be, Rivera-Loo said. At the emergency room, doctors wheeled Loo through a side entrance and took him to an isolation room hospital rules for patients with breathing problems. A doctor, wearing a mask and gloves, took a chest X-ray and drew Loos blood before leaving the room. Rivera-Loo noticed that when the doctor walked back toward their room, he stopped to put on a protective gown and face shield. Within three minutes, I had to go, she said. That was the last time she saw her husband. The next day, Loo tested positive for COVID-19. Its pretty devastating to get that test result, he said. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Loos condition quickly deteriorated. Three days after he arrived at the hospital, doctors told his wife that they expected to have to put Loo on a ventilator, an artificial breathing machine. But Loo said he mustered whatever energy he could to keep himself from getting put on a ventilator. I begged him to listen to the doctors and to let them take him to ICU, Rivera-Loo said. He told me, No babe, Im going to fight this, I know I can fight from going to the ICU. He feared the outcome if he had to be intubated. A debate is emerging among doctors about whether ventilators cause more harm than good for COVID-19 patients. There were times at night I was sitting up in the hospital bed and I would cry, Loo said. What happens to my family if I die? I couldnt bear that thought. Im not ready to go. I need to fight for my family so that Im around for them to continue to watch my kids grow up and be there for my wife. The view from his window is a boarded-up building, but Loo spends most of the day FaceTiming with his family. Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle Doctors told Loo that it could take him three months to recover from his pneumonia. Adding to Loos stress is an unstable economy and thousands of dollars in medical bills. Several family members organized a GoFundMe campaign to help offset the cost of Loos care. Loo is on family medical leave, but Enterprise laid off everyone else on his team at work. His medical leave lasts until June, and he said he doesnt know what will happen if he isnt able to return work by then or if hell have a job at all. His wife and youngest daughter, fortunately, never developed symptoms during a two-week quarantine; his oldest daughter was away at nursing school in Southern California but has since returned. Loo had hoped to return home to his wife and daughters by Sunday to have Chinese takeout for Easter dinner. But that wont happen Loo tested positive again on Thursday. Now, Loo said he hopes to be home by the end of the month for both his daughters birthdays. They have a family tradition of going to Millbrae Pancake House for their birthdays. Thats not an option this year. Instead, Rivera-Loo said she will re-create the Pancake Houses festive brunch for her daughters birthdays: omelets, pancakes, sausage and bacon. She said Loos help will be needed. And Loo has made a promise to his daughters: They will get to cut his overgrown hair when he finally comes home. Ken is proof that miracles do exist, Rivera-Loo said. I tell him, Youre strong. And he says, Youre strong. And I say, OK, we are strong together. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani Looking to buy your first home? Some are hoping that the recent slowdown in Torontos real estate market may provide an opportunity. With sales starting to wind down open houses have been cancelled and in-person showings are discouraged this is the right time to get your financial ducks in a row so youre ready to jump in when the market picks up again, says Rafey Aleem of Trimaxx Realty Ltd., who focuses on educating first-time buyers. The key is to be prepared, with the money youll need on hand and a keen understanding of how the process works, so you can move quickly if you spot a bargain. Sales are still possible during the crisis, as COVID-19 doesnt affect real-estate agreements, according to Mark Weisleder, senior partner of Real Estate Lawyers.ca LLP. The land registry office, financial institutions and real-estate lawyers have all been deemed essential services and therefore transactions are able to close, he told the Star, noting that buyers can be sued if a real-estate settlement isnt reached. His own firm is able to complete all aspects of a closing remotely, without having to meet a client, Weisleder adds. Aleem says step one is to understand what the closing costs will be and to budget accordingly. Closing costs are all the fees, taxes, adjustments and other one-time expenses that have to be paid on top of the down payment when you take legal possession of your new home. Financial expert Jared Ksenica promotes a prudent approach to home-buying, keeping a sharp eye on closing costs, which vary depending on what you buy, where you buy and whether its a new build or resale. Ksenica, regional vice-president of mortgage sales at BMO, recommends setting aside between two and five per cent of the purchase price. On a $500,000 home, that would range from $10,000 to $25,000. Aleem, who suggests allowing between 1.5 and four per cent, provides the following breakdown of the most common closing costs, and the approximate amounts due on a $500,000 townhouse, house or condo: Legal fees: $1,500 Title insurance: $250-$300 Ontario land transfer tax: $6,475. First-time buyers may be eligible for a rebate of up to $4,000. Toronto land transfer tax: $6,475. Applies to homes in the City of Toronto. First-time buyers may be eligible for a rebate of up to $4,475. Property tax adjustment: Varies, depending on property taxes already paid by the seller. Adjustments for utilities, condo maintenance fees: Varies, depending on amounts prepaid by the seller. Buying a resale home may also involve pre-closing costs, such as $300 to $400 for a property appraisal if the bank doesnt cover it, and $300 to $400 for a home inspection, Aleem adds. Buying a pre-construction or new home from the developer involves additional costs such as Tarion warranty fees (about $1,100 on a $500,000 house) and development charges, which the developer pays to help fund infrastructure. The developer passes a portion on to the buyer so its crucial to cap the amount during purchase negotiations or risk getting dinged for many thousands, Aleem emphasizes. The realtor, who covers the entire GTA, urges home hunters to talk money with their agent and lawyer well in advance to ensure they have sufficient funds ready, particularly if theyre using an RRSP or loan/gift from an individual. That advice came in handy when Muneeb Azeem, a 28-year-old IT analyst, recently bought a two-bedroom condo in Scarborough using Aleem as his agent. When he closed the deal, he had to pay thousands more than the $370,000 purchase price. But thanks to Aleems advice, he was well-prepared for the additional costs. He had not only stashed away $40,000 for a down payment, but also the estimated $7,000 for land transfer tax, lawyer fees, title insurance and other closing expenses. Without his realtors guidance, Id be super overwhelmed, for sure, says Azeem. He helped a lot, keeping me in a cool mind frame. Would-be buyers looking for a complete rundown on costs and affordability issues can tap into the expertise of mortgage specialists and advisers at their financial institution, Ksenica says. A good rule of thumb is beginning the process 30 days in advance of the closing day, he says. This should provide adequate time to make sure everything goes smoothly. Purchasers shouldnt be afraid to ask questions, he adds. CV Carola Vyhnak is a Cobourg-based writer covering home and real-estate stories. She is a contributor for the Star. Reach her at cvyhnak@gmail.com (Bloomberg) -- The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed aging, inflexible computer systems at the heart of the U.S. economy -- and a shortage of experts to fix the problem. This is slowing the governments effort to get billions of dollars in stimulus checks to millions of newly unemployed citizens. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in late March includes a $600 weekly increase in unemployment benefits. That money wont reach anyone until state agencies update technology systems to reflect the law and handle the flood of new applications. Oklahoma is trying to implement CARES as quickly as it can, but some claims are taking as long as two weeks to process because of a mainframe computer that runs on a 60-year-old programming language called COBOL. It is the largest issue with regards to implementation in the CARES program, said Robin Roberson, executive director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission. Our mainframe is literally over 30 years old. Its very difficult to program, it doesnt do much. COBOL programmers are somewhat scarce.Roberson started her job nine weeks ago with a mandate to upgrade the system, but the pandemic hit before any real progress was made. Other agencies in Oklahoma and beyond are suffering from similar problems, she said. The Connecticut Department of Labor is telling people to be patient as it works with experts to update COBOL code to implement the government relief program. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy appealed for COBOL programmers to help the state with its computers earlier this month. This talent shortage has been building for years through a combination of techno-snobbery, limited formal training, an aging pool of experts, and a lack of employers willing to pay up for the few people who are still willing to do the work. Its a disaster, said Mahmoud Ezzeldin, 75, who worked for decades on COBOL computer systems for insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Internal Revenue Service. COBOL is difficult to learn and was not designed for the internet. College graduates like to learn something easier. I cannot blame them. Story continues Ezzeldin, who lives near Washington D.C., is willing to volunteer to help ease the CARES computing crunch. But hes retired. Thats a familiar tale. The average COBOL programmer is over 60, Gartner Inc. estimates. When the research firm counted in 2004, it found 2 million experts in the language and estimated that number was falling 5% a year. That compares with about 25 million software developers in total, according to UBS. Usually, the technology industry adjusts when demand for a programming language outstrips the supply of capable coders. Computer science courses have multiplied at colleges in recent years, and there are coding boot camps that quickly train people in Java, Python and other languages. But COBOL is different. The Common Business Oriented Language emerged at the end of the 1950s, before computer science was taught at universities. Without the embrace of academia, many COBOL programmers learned on the job at government agencies and in fields such as insurance, banking and airline reservations. Theyre considered the blue collar workers of the tech industry.I cannot really recommend current students study COBOL. All the work would be maintenance and wouldnt be very inspiring, said Gio Wiederhold, a retired professor from Stanford University, which educates thousands of computer scientists who go on to work at Silicon Valley tech giants such as Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google. Wiederhold said Stanford never taught COBOL from the time he moved there in 1979. Last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office mentioned COBOL 26 times in a report that urged multiple agencies to modernize critical legacy technology. There are 240 billion lines of COBOL code still being used, according to Phil Teplitzky, chief technology officer of HP Marin Group LLC, which helps companies make better use of old computing systems. Theres little documentation explaining how these systems were built decades ago, so government agencies and companies often relied on programmers remembering how it was done -- COBOL folklore, Teplitzky calls it. Many of these experts arent around anymore, and now that the CARES Act requires major code changes, few people know how to do it, he said. The way old COBOL code was written also makes it hard to update. Modern computing languages break programs into chunks, each with a specific purpose. COBOL programmers often weaved everything together, which means code changes can damage or disable other parts of the program. This phenomenon, known as spaghetti code, is more of an issue than any inherent difficulty in learning the language. But it makes the work hard and time-consuming. Most of the mainframe computers that run COBOL are made by International Business Machines Corp. The company has been trying to help customers find COBOL experts and convince new trainees to take over for years. Last week, it announced a new training course to teach COBOL to beginners and refresh experienced professionals. A light is being shined on the fact that there are some critical systems that may not have been focused on, said Barry Baker, an IBM vice president. Its a case of selling COBOL and older technology to kids as a means to work on stuff that makes a difference. This is stuff that matters. Gartner analyst Thomas Klinect thinks companies and other organizations must do a better job recruiting people to keep these machines running. That includes paying more. If you look at the postings, they have been entry-level positions which needed 20 years of experience, he said. They wanted to pay you $35,000. Chuck Robbins, the 53-year-old chief executive officer of Cisco Systems Inc., said he started his career as a COBOL programmer for the predecessor of Bank of America.The good news is that, as I recall, COBOL wasnt one of the more difficult languages, he said. Im sure some of these younger kids could figure it out. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. Irvine, Calif., April 13, 2020 - Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have architecturally designed plate-nanolattices - nanometer-sized carbon structures - that are stronger than diamonds as a ratio of strength to density. In a recent study in Nature Communications, the scientists report success in conceptualizing and fabricating the material, which consists of closely connected, closed-cell plates instead of the cylindrical trusses common in such structures over the past few decades. "Previous beam-based designs, while of great interest, had not been so efficient in terms of mechanical properties," said corresponding author Jens Bauer, a UCI researcher in mechanical & aerospace engineering. "This new class of plate-nanolattices that we've created is dramatically stronger and stiffer than the best beam-nanolattices." According to the paper, the team's design has been shown to improve on the average performance of cylindrical beam-based architectures by up to 639 percent in strength and 522 percent in rigidity. Members of the architected materials laboratory of Lorenzo Valdevit, UCI professor of materials science & engineering as well as mechanical & aerospace engineering, verified their findings using a scanning electron microscope and other technologies provided by the Irvine Materials Research Institute. "Scientists have predicted that nanolattices arranged in a plate-based design would be incredibly strong," said lead author Cameron Crook, a UCI graduate student in materials science & engineering. "But the difficulty in manufacturing structures this way meant that the theory was never proven, until we succeeded in doing it." Bauer said the team's achievement rests on a complex 3D laser printing process called two-photon lithography direct laser writing. As an ultraviolet-light-sensitive resin is added layer by layer, the material becomes a solid polymer at points where two photons meet. The technique is able to render repeating cells that become plates with faces as thin as 160 nanometers. Bauer said the team's achievement rests on a complex 3D laser printing process called two-photon polymerization direct laser writing. As a laser is focused inside a droplet of an ultraviolet-light-sensitive liquid resin, the material becomes a solid polymer where molecules are simultaneously hit by two photons. By scanning the laser or moving the stage in three dimensions, the technique is able to render periodic arrangements of cells, each consisting of assemblies of plates as thin as 160 nanometers. One of the group's innovations was to include tiny holes in the plates that could be used to remove excess resin from the finished material. As a final step, the lattices go through pyrolysis, in which they're heated to 900 degrees Celsius in a vacuum for one hour. According to Bauer, the end result is a cube-shaped lattice of glassy carbon that has the highest strength scientists ever thought possible for such a porous material. Bauer said that another goal and accomplishment of the study was to exploit the innate mechanical effects of the base substances. "As you take any piece of material and dramatically decrease its size down to 100 nanometers, it approaches a theoretical crystal with no pores or cracks. Reducing these flaws increases the system's overall strength," he said. "Nobody has ever made these structures independent from scale before," added Valdevit, who directs UCI's Institute for Design and Manufacturing Innovation. "We were the first group to experimentally validate that they could perform as well as predicted while also demonstrating an architected material of unprecedented mechanical strength." Nanolattices hold great promise for structural engineers, particularly in aerospace, because it's hoped that their combination of strength and low mass density will greatly enhance aircraft and spacecraft performance. ### Other co-authors on the study were Anna Guell Izard, a UCI graduate student in mechanical & aerospace engineering, and researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Germany's Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. The project was funded by the Office of Naval Research and the German Research Foundation. About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu. Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists. Halifax, Nova Scotia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - Sona Nanotech Inc. (CSE: SONA) (OTC PINK: SNANF) (the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on the development, manufacturing arrangements and pre-orders for its Covid-19 antigen test. The Company this past week has: Progressed from feasibility and prototype testing to the optimization stage for its Covid-19 antigen rapid response test; Commenced work with two, third-party laboratories to prepare validation protocols; Signed a memorandum of understanding to manufacture its test with a second contract manufacturer in North America; Accepted pre-orders for a further 1,250,000 of the Company's antigen detecting, rapid-response test; and Secured approval for its common shares to trade on the OTCQB Marketplace under the symbol "SNANF" at the opening of trading today, April 13, 2020. The Company continues to trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange under "SONA". The Company continues to advance the performance of its Covid-19 antigen test. This past week, the Company tested a working prototype in a hospital laboratory environment with live, Covid-19 patient samples, achieving positive results. Accordingly, Sona's prototype test progressed to the optimization stage during which work will be done to ensure it attains maximum performance in both quality and accuracy. "Development work on our test is largely complete and we have moved to an optimization stage utilizing a third party for the optimization process. In recent weeks, many antibody detecting tests have entered the market generating concerns over performance and applicability. These serological tests detect IgG and IgM antibodies which are not necessarily unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and should not be used as a predictor for immunity against Covid-19. Sona is therefore dedicated to getting an antigen test in the field as quickly as possible, but not at the expense of accuracy or quality," stated Darren Rowles, CEO Sona Nanotech. "Considering that neither the virus antigen nor specific virus antibodies existed until recently, we are extremely pleased with where the Company's rapid, point-of-care test now stands," added independent director, Dr. Michael Gross, MD, FRCSC. The Company has begun to work with independent third party test validators to help direct test optimization and to identify key test performance factors. The Company's optimisation protocols involve maximizing test sensitivity and specificity, while mitigating for cross-reactivity and interference. The Company cautions that its Covid-19 test is still in development and will provide updates as appropriate. The Company also completed its second manufacturing MOU arrangement for its point-of-care, Covid-19 antigen test. The agreement with a North American based manufacturer will simplify the supply chain and provide added capacity to the existing agreement with its European based supplier. Ongoing discussions with other manufacturers will continue to ensure that additional manufacturing capacity is available. Under the previously announced arrangement with its European manufacturer, the Company has made an initial milestone payment towards the set-up and transfer of its test technology for test kit manufacturing. All pre-orders received to date are in the form of letters of intent for the purchase of the Company's Covid-19 antigen rapid tests, following the validation of the test at which point deposits will be due to the Company. The Company currently has pre-orders for over 3 Million (3,000,000) test kits. Finally, development of the Company's product portfolio of other proprietary lateral flow tests will continue upon completion and commercialization of the Company's Covid-19 antigen test. These other tests leverage the Company's proprietary gold nanorod technology's highly sensitive ability to detect various biomarkers in the Pico gram range. Contact: Sona Nanotech Inc. David Regan Strategic Advisor +1.902.448.1416 About Sona Nanotech Inc. Sona Nanotech Inc. is a nanotechnology life sciences firm that has developed two proprietary methods for the manufacture of rod-shaped gold nanoparticles. The principal business carried out and intended to be continued by Sona is the development and application of its proprietary technology for use in multiplex diagnostic testing platforms that will improve performance over existing tests in the market. Sona's gold nanorod particles are CTAB (cetyltrimethylammonium) free, eliminating the toxicity risks associated with the use of other gold nanorod technologies in medical applications. It is expected that Sona's gold nanotechnologies may be adapted for use in applications, as a safe and effective delivery system for multiple medical treatments, pending the approval of various regulatory boards including Health Canada and the FDA. NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This press release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. 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. Sona disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54361 [April 13, 2020] Tencent Cloud Launches International Anti-COVID-19 Service Package, Aiding the Global Fight Against the Pandemic SHENZHEN, China, April 13, 2020 /CNW/ -- On April 13, Tencent Cloud launched an international anti-COVID-19 service package to help support the global fight against the pandemic. The package will help companies, medical institutions and governments worldwide tackle the unique challenges presented by COVID-19. This is the latest step taken by Tencent to assist in the global campaign against the pandemic, beginning with the establishment of a US$100 million global anti-COVID-19 fund and the rollout of a global COVID-19 information platform. Products launched in the first phase can be used in a wide range of scenarios including enabling remote collaboration, facilitating online medical consultation and helping governments promote access to reliable information. Tencent Cloud will also provide free credits for some cloud service purchases to help companies and organizations in need, which can be accessed through Tencent Cloud's official website. VooV Meeting, the international version of Tencent Meeting, has already been rolled out in more than 100 countries and regions, and is available to users free of charge. The service can support meetings of up to 300 participants, which makes it a crucial tool for helping companies to work remotely, educational agencies to teach online classes and medical institutions to provide online consultations. With the help of Tencent Cloud's live broadcast service application, Tencent Real-Time Communication (TRTC), databases, Global Application Acceleration Platform (GAAP) and subtitling solution (AITransfy), schools, hospitals and other institutions can also quickly set up their own live broadcast capabilities for remote consultation and teaching. The timely publication and distribution of information surrounding COVID-19 prevention is of critical importance during the epidemic. Tencent Cloud's SMS service is available in more than 200 countries and regions and through more than 1,000 operators, which can help government agencies quickly communicate COVID-19 prevention information to the public. Previously, Tencent launched a global platform for healthcare information amid the epidemic. This service has also been launched in English, including a section for "COVID-19 Epidemic Info", AI-powered COVID-19 self-screening tools, We Doctor and Dingxiangyuan, which gives users worldwide access to epidemic updates, medical knowledge, self-diagnosis tips, online voluntary clinics and more. Tencent has furthermore made a technological contribution to the global fight against COVID-19 by open-sourcing the international module in its COVID-19 Mini Program (TH_COVID19_International) on March 27, making it an important information resource that is available for free to users around the world. Government agencies, healthcare institutions, media organizations and developers worldwide can access the Mini Program to develop their own pandemic-related services. On April 3, Tencent open sourced the COVID-19 Self-triage Assistant, a program that allows anyone to conduct a self-assessment about potential coronavirus symptoms. The service helps educate the public with prevention tips, thus reducing the risk of cross-infection caused by panic and minimizing the load on medical providers. Tencent has been helping businesses and government agencies fight against the epidemic with a series of products and services in China. A variety of pandemic-related Mini Programs provided by third parties have been developed to give the public seamless access to information and updates. Products such as VooV Meeting, WeChat Work and Tencent Document provide tools through which businesses can efficiently work together remotely. Tencent's integrated online education solution enables over 100 million teachers to continue teaching, and students to continue learning during school disruptions. Tencent has also helped scientific institutions accelerate the R&D of new drugs with cutting-edge AI and computing technologies. Tencent is committed to aiding the global fight against the virus with its experience, technologies and products. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tencent-cloud-launches-international-anti-covid-19-service-package-aiding-the-global-fight-against-the-pandemic-301039240.html SOURCE Tencent Cloud [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Malaysian scientists have created a barrel-shaped robot on wheels that they hope will make the rounds on hospital wards to check on coronavirus patients, reducing health workers' risk of infection. "Medibot" is a 1.5 metre tall (five foot) white robot, equipped with a camera and screen via which patients can communicate remotely with medics. The invention, built by scientists at the International Islamic University Malaysia, is also fitted with a device to check patients' temperatures remotely. It is aimed at helping nurses and doctors working on the wards with social distancing, Zulkifli Zainal Abidin, a member of the team behind the invention, told AFP. It cost about 15,000 ringgit ($3,500) to develop, and the university plans to trial it soon in their own private hospital, which does not treat virus patients, said Zulkifli. If that proves a success, the scientists hope it can be used in government hospitals where people with COVID-19 are sent. Malaysia has reported 4,683 coronavirus cases, including 76 deaths. From Thailand to Israel, robots are being used in the fight against the coronavirus, which has killed over 110,000 people worldwide. They are being increasingly relied on as fast, efficient, contagion-proof champions in the war against the virus. 'Medibot' is mounted with a camera and screen via which patients can communicate remotely with medics The robot was built by scientists at the International Islamic University Malaysia The invention is also fitted with a device to check patients' temperatures remotely The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says aggressive antibody testing is needed in order to safely reopen the country step by step and that social distancing has saved the United States from a death toll of up to one million. In an interview with NBC's Today on Monday, Dr Robert Redfield said that the antibody testing was central to keeping the country open and preventing a second surge of coronavirus cases. 'We're going to need to have that aggressively employed as we begin to reopen because again, central to the success of that so we stay open, is to be able to do early case identification, isolation and contact tracing... to basically prevent the opportunity for community transmission to come back into the system,' he said. In response to claims the White House and President Donald Trump ignored early warning signs of the outbreak, Dr Refield said the CDC recommended social distancing after the first case of community transmission was reported on February 28. In an interview with NBC's Today on Monday, Dr Robert Redfield said that the antibody testing was central to keeping the country open and preventing a second surge of coronavirus cases 'In January and February, the cases we had were all related to China travel - 14 cases throughout the country,' Dr Redfield said. 'It wasn't until February 28 that we saw our first community transmission. Our initial response was containment.' He said that after February 28 and into early March the CDC recognized that 'mitigation was now important'. 'The CDC sent recommendations to Washington, California, New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas,' he said. The White House didn't issue social distancing guidelines for the country until three weeks later. Dr Redfield's comments came after he was asked whether he agreed with Dr Anthony Fauci's candid statements on Sunday that American lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, Dr Redfield said that officials were assessing different parts of the country to see if it was feasible to reopen on May 1 when the current social distancing measures expire. 'There's no doubt that we have to reopen correctly. It's going to be a step-by-step, gradual process. It's got to be data driven, and as I said I think it will be community by community, county by county,' he said. HOW DO 'STRIP' BLOOD TESTS FOR CORONAVIRUS WORK? Simple blood tests for coronavirus, like Premier Biotech's, work much like pregnancy tests. After the sample of blood is collected, a technician injects it into the analysis device - which is about the size of an Apple TV or Roku remote - along with some buffer, and waits about 10 minutes. The blood droplet and buffer soak into the absorbent strip of paper enclosed in the plastic collection device. Blood naturally seeps along the strip, which is dyed at three points: one for each of two types of antibodies, and a third control line. The strip is marked 'IgM' and 'IgG', for immunoglobulins M and G. Each of these are types of antibodies that the body produces in response to a late- or early-stage infection. Along each strip, the antibodies themselves are printed in combination with gold, which react when the either the antigen - or pathogen, in this case, the virus that causes COVID-19 - or the antibody to fight are present. Results are displayed in a similar fashion to those of an at-home pregnancy test. One line - the top, control strip - means negative. Two lines - the top control line and the bottom IgM line - in a spread-out configuration means the sample contains antibodies that the body starts making shortly after infection. Two lines closer - control and IgG - together mean the person is positive for the later-stage antibodies. Three lines mean the patient is positive for both types of antibodies. Advertisement 'We've all sacrificed a substantial amount and I do want to thank the American people. The potential mortality of this virus on our nation could have easily been 250,000, 500,000, a million - I think the social distancing that the American people all embraced... led to the mortality rate, sadly still too high, was far less than we anticipated.' His interview came after Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr Fauci after the nation's top expert on infectious diseases said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the outbreak. Trump retweeted a message Sunday from a former Republican congressional candidate who cited Dr Fauci's comments during a television interview on Sunday and tweeted 'time to #FireFauci.' Trump in the past has repeated critical tweets of officials or enemies rather than make the criticism himself. The retweet fueled speculation Trump was running out of patience with the popular scientist and could conceivably fire him. Dr Fauci has assumed national prominence as a leader in the fight against the coronavirus. He has contradicted or corrected Trump on scientific matters during the crisis, including whether the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective against it. Fauci was asked on CNN's State of the Union about a New York Times report documenting early warnings issued to the White House about the novel coronavirus. The scientist acknowledged shutting the country down sooner could have saved lives, but cautioned that a number of factors were involved. 'Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor,' Fauci said. 'It's very complicated.' Trump also claimed that he was 'criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so' Trump's (right) apparent dig at Fauci (left) came just hours after the doctor suggested Sunday morning that more lives could have been saved if Trump had initiated a coronavirus shutdown earlier than mid-March Already a target of the far-right for his contradictions of Trump, Dr Fauci drew more opprobrium after the comments. Trump also denounced the New York Times story in several tweets on Sunday, calling it 'A Fake.' Last week during the daily White House coronavirus briefing, Trump stepped in and prevented Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine. Dr Fauci has led the federal infectious disease agency since 1984 under Republican and Democratic presidents. Republican George W. Bush honored him with the presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. Some polls during the public health crisis have shown Americans trust him more than Trump. Marc Piscotty / Getty The Florida sheriff whose territory includes Carole Baskins exotic-animal sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue, has told TMZ that he has suspicions that she may have been involved in the disappearance of her second husband, Don Lewis, who mysteriously vanished 23 years ago. Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister also told TMZ that he is not yet ready to say that Baskin is a person of interest in the cold case. Tiger Kings Carole Baskin Denies Murdering Second Husband, Mincing Him and Feeding Him to Big Cats The Baskins have used their website to strongly deny allegations made in the Netflix show Tiger King by the documentarys antihero, Joe Exotic, that Carole murdered Lewis and fed his body to their big cats. As viewers of the series will know, Exotic is in prison, serving 22 years for plotting to murder Baskin. Chronister told TMZ: Im extremely suspicious, but not just of her, of this whole circle here. I dont want to allude to the fact or insinuate that shes a person of interest and that this is who we are focusing on. Im not comfortable saying that yet. Listen, theres normally not one person that commits a homicide, its always a couple of people. This had to be extremely planned out, this had to be well thought out, theres someone else involved in this, there is someone who is paid to do it, there is someone who helped do it. Im hoping that person wants to come and get this off their chest and help law enforcement do the right thing. Chronister said there would be a possibility such a person would be given a deal, saying: You start talking about different things with immunity, you know. Deals are cut and every deal is on the table right now. Help us solve this case. Last week, Chronister tweeted a message seeking new information on the disappearance of Lewis in August 1997, fanning the flames of rumors that Baskin was involved in his vanishing. Baskin said in her post that she believed Lewis had Alzheimers disease and admitted he was not easy to live with. Story continues Three months before his abandoned van was found at a small airport near the couples home in Tampa, he had sought a domestic-violence injunction against Baskin, which a court rejected. However, Baskin has long maintained that she had nothing to do with the disappearance of her former husband. The Baskins claim their sanctuary is grossly misrepresented in the hit Netflix docuseries, which lifts the lid on the bizarre world of backyard tiger-keepers, zookeeper rivalries, blackmail, and betrayal in the exotic-animal trade. The Baskins have slammed the directors of the series, Eric Goode and Rebecca Chalking. They said they agreed to co-operate because the pair told them they wanted to make the big-cat version of Blackfish [the documentary that exposed abuse at SeaWorld] that would expose the misery caused by the rampant breeding of big-cat cubs for cub-petting exploitation and the awful life the cats lead in roadside zoos and backyards if they survive. There are not words for how disappointing it is to see that the series not only does not do any of that, but has had the sole goal of being as salacious and sensational as possible to draw viewers. As part of that, it has a segment devoted to suggesting, with lies and innuendos from people who are not credible, that I had a role in the disappearance of my husband Don in 1997. The series presents this without any regard for the truth or in most cases even giving me an opportunity before publication to rebut the absurd claims. They did not care about truth. The unsavory lies are better for getting viewers. The interview will be aired as part of TMZ Investigates Tiger King: What Really Went Down? at 9 p.m. Monday on Fox. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. By Lee Min-young Eone Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC), genome-based shared economy platform MyGenomeBox (MGB), Korea Blockchain Entrepreneurs Association (KOBEA) Group and Korea CIS Entrepreneur Association (KOCEA) signed an agreement on Friday to export blockchain-based bio-education platforms to Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations. Starting from Uzbekistan, the four companies EDGC, MGB, KOBEA Group, and the Korea CIS Entrepreneur Association will link to expand the blockchain-based bio-IT business to other CIS nations soon. EDGC, the parent company of COVID-19 test kit maker Solgent, recently signed a contract to supply test kits to multiple countries including Canada, Japan and Ukraine. EDGC will use Friday's agreement as an opportunity to export its products based on DNA technology to CIS nations and carry out joint research with government bodies. MyGenomeBox, an EDGC affiliate company, provides a shared economy platform based on global personal genome data and has completed developing blockchain technology that will soon be introduced in a 4.0 version. Through its new platform, MGB will seek to introduce to CIS countries a customized education program based on DNA analysis. KOBEA Group is technical adviser to the government of Uzbekistan on the growth of the blockchain ecosystem there. In Dec. 2019, KOBEA Group was granted the first license to conduct crypto-exchanges activities issued by the Uzbek government's National Agency of Project Management (NAPM). KOBEA operates the Uzbekistan cryptocurrency exchange UZNEX. By Keith Zhai and Aleksandar Vasovic SINGAPORE/BELGRADE (Reuters) - Last month, six Chinese medical professionals stepped off an Air Serbia jet in Belgrade to a red-carpet welcome from President Aleksandar Vucic and an array of cabinet ministers. After elbow-bump greetings, Vucic kissed Serbia's flag, then China's. In Serbia, one of Beijing's closest European allies, and a handful of other friendly countries, China is providing on-the-ground guidance to help battle the coronavirus that has swept around the world. The outreach is part of a wider push by Beijing to assert global leadership in battling COVID-19 after facing criticism from Washington and elsewhere that it fumbled its early response to the outbreak, believed to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. [nL4N2AX2O2] These efforts by Beijing come as western governments, already wary of China's rising influence around the world, including through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, are struggling with their own mounting coronavirus death tolls. They are part of a long-running effort by China to strike a benevolent posture abroad to offset worries about its growing economic and military might, while presenting alternatives - such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank it set up in 2016 - to Western dominance of global institutions. "There is no doubt that China will use the COVID-19 outbreak to further what China views as acting in its own national interest," said Gordon Houlden, a former Canadian diplomat and the director of the University of Alberta's China Institute. "That will include pushing its own governance model, in this case its methodology of epidemiology," he said. That methodology is based on the aggressive and comprehensive approach China took to combat the virus, including the lockdown of Wuhan, and the know-how it has built as the first country to suffer an outbreak of the disease. China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, at a press conference on Thursday, said the aim of sending medical teams was to share China's experiences combatting the virus, not to export its governance model abroad. Story continues In addition to Serbia, Beijing has sent medical teams to Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Pakistan, Venezuela and Italy, the only G7 nation to join the Belt and Road Initiative and which has been devastated by the coronavirus. Last week, a 12-member Chinese medical team arrived in the Philippines to aid in the fight against the virus. The outreach is on top of the donation or sale of supplies to some 90 countries, including rivals such as the United States, as well as numerous videoconferences with countries and international organisations to share its know-how, according to the China International Development Cooperation Agency. "We hope that other countries will not repeat China's tragedies," Peng Zhiqiang, a specialist from the Guangdong Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and head of the Chinese team in Serbia, said by phone from Belgrade. 'TRUST CHINESE EXPERTS' Chinese medical teams are advising some host countries on building makeshift hospitals - evoking the 1,000 bed hospital China built from scratch in eight days in Wuhan - and rolling out virus management measures similar to those that helped it slash new infections at home, according to Peng and Liang Wenbin, a member of a Chinese team sent to Cambodia last month. Those practices include the quarantine or isolation of people with mild symptoms to curb the early spread of the virus, methods of treating complications and widespread temperature checking for entry into public places. On the Chinese team's advice, Serbia began quarantining people with mild symptoms and deploying troops to build field hospitals for patients with mild symptoms. Serbian officials said they welcomed the input, which they say has helped slow the spread of the virus. "We changed our approach, and with the support of Chinese experts, we went for more widespread testing," said a source close to the Serbian presidency, who was not authorised to speak with media and declined to be named. "Chinese doctors have welcomed the measures taken by Serbia, and we have embraced the Chinese model, which is to reach and treat as many people as possible - all who are infected," the person said. QUARANTINES AND VISA CURBS In Cambodia, which has been a loyal supporter of Beijing in Southeast Asia, the issuance of visas for international visitors was sharply curtailed at the suggestion of the team. The country is bracing for an influx of returnees for the Khmer new year this month. Cambodia is also considering the team's advice to refit hotels and schools for possible quarantine of returnees, said Liang, the member of the Chinese team. "The latest restrictions to limit the mobility of personnel and to ban foreigners from coming to the country are the control measures China used," she said. The Cambodian government did not reply to requests for comment. 'THANK YOU, BIG BROTHER XI' Despite its medical outreach efforts, China has faced sharp criticism in Washington and elsewhere for suppressing early information on the virus and downplaying its risks. "I am sceptical that many countries will soon forget China's early missteps that contributed to the global spread of the virus," said Ryan Hass, a senior Asia director in the Obama administration's National Security Council who is now at the Brookings Institution. The response to the outreach from China in countries like Serbia, however, has so far been positive. In Belgrade, the Chinese team visited a memorial to those killed in 1999 when American bombs hit China's embassy there in what Washington apologised for as an accident. After the team's arrival, a placard was mounted on a central Belgrade street with a picture of China's leader and big letters in Chinese and Serbian: "Thank you, big brother Xi". (Reporting by Keith Zhai in Singapore and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade. Additional reporting by John Geddie in Singapore and Prak Chan Thul in Phnom Penh. Editing by Tony Munroe and Philip McClellan) Head of Russias Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin said that the number of unemployed in Russia due to coronavirus could temporarily increase from 2.5 mln to 8 mln people. "According to the forecast for this crisis, which has now started in Russia, the number of unemployed for a certain period will increase from 2.5 to about 8 million, possibly by the end of the year," he said in an interview with the RBC TV channel on Monday. Like public health officers around the state and country, Dr. Brian Gees role wasnt terribly demanding before the COVID-19 outbreak. Gee, a longtime physician who specializes in emergency care, mainly spent his time as a frontline provider, seeing patients at the Lander Medical Clinic. His Fremont County Health Officer role, which he assumed following appointment by the county commission in 2018, occupied about 20-30 hours a month, he said. In that capacity, he advised community entities about issues like flood potential or influenza tracking, and kept tabs on public health matters. Pretty benign stuff. Then a global pandemic struck down in Gees county, and everything changed. Gee, like public health officers around the nation, suddenly became a key cog in a dizzying logistical machine, a crucial liaison between the healthcare community and government officials, and a person many look to for answers in what is likely the most serious public health crisis theyve ever experienced. With 12-hour days that are now packed with meetings and decision making, its safe to say that the health officer gig has become his full-time job. Dr. Gee hasnt seen patients for weeks. With a level-headed frankness that has defined his style through the outbreak, he acknowledges that his life is far from the only one thats been upended by the pandemic. This has been a whirlwind, absolutely, he said. Its definitely a tectonic shift in how to think about your day-to-day life. New normal Like most healthcare professionals, Gee was more aware than the general public that the outbreak held the potential for major disruptions. He started watching it carefully in February, he said, and began initiating discussions with regional hospitals, schools and officials about precautions. (Initial recommendations were focused on travelers from China and called for patients to be examined in a reverse-isolation room. Those guidelines have long been thrown out the window in favor of updated protocols.) Like everyone else, Gees personal life started seeing impacts. He had international travel plans, including a volunteer medical trip to Nepal. As he watched COVID-19 spread around the world, he said, its gravity began to sink in. And then once you start to see it in the U.S., you realize, OK, its here, were going to have to change our plans personally and professionally, he said. On March 11, a resident of the Showboat Retirement Center in Lander tested positive, the first of what would quickly blossom into a hotspot in the state. Gee spent that weekend with State Health Officer Alexia Harrist and her team investigating the case. Then it kind of took off from there, Gee said an accelerated trajectory of education, preparation, communication, adaptation and reaction that has all become a bit of a blur. By the end of March, he said, his routine had transformed. Its pretty much, I get up and from 7 oclock to probably 7 oclock theres conversation either in my car or at my house or here at the Incident Command Center with doctors, business leaders, healthcare professionals, government officials or other groups, trying to network and problem solve. Gee has helped manage medical-equipment supply chain logistics for the county (he said this week he feels the current supply is adequate, but providers are really trying to conserve. Its always on everybodys mind.) Hes funneled information to schools and church groups and weighed in on decisions around emergency declarations and closures. Hes turned into the public face of the countys effort, taking questions at press conferences, appearing in public service announcements and acting as a spokesperson for proper precautions. He helps fields the questions in a website devoted entirely to COVID-related queries from the community. Hes been a vocal advocate for social distancing, self-quarantining and most recently, wearing masks while out in public. Its been, yeah, quite a bit different than my day-to-day clinical life, Gee said. Obviously its changed me from clinical provider to thinking about planning and bigger picture contingency stuff, while still trying to be in touch with the clinical providers on a daily basis, trying to facilitate their needs. Hes also been instrumental in an effort to convey the scope of the problem more accurately than the states limited testing numbers are able to. The incident management team has started tracking the number of patients with COVID-19-like symptoms who healthcare providers direct to self isolate at home. While the county has just 38 confirmed cases, the number of patients directed to self isolate is around 750 a number officials use to convey the outbreaks seriousness. What were doing now in Fremont County I think will be used by other counties in terms of number crunching and getting a sense of what the illness really is in the community, Fremont County Commissioner Mike Jones, the incident management teams public information officer, said. Jones gives a lot of credit to Gee. We couldnt have been luckier, Jones said. The guy is tireless and hes unflappable. Stresses With suspected community spread and widespread infection in Fremont County, Gees pace has been non-stop. Does he ever get a chance to stop and contemplate how its upended his own life? I think like probably anybody, theres that underlying thought of you wanting to rest and exercise and eat well and be with the people you care about, I think thats hard, he said. I think all of us are dealing with that. He does worry, he said. He worries about his healthcare provider friends who are exposed to the virus, about his elderly parents in the Midwest and about all the people experiencing hardship. Theres job loss for some people, theres anxiety about that, theres stress about illness and potential loss, Gee said. I think those factors are going to be ongoing during this and probably afterward. Bottom line: Its a new virus that none of us have ever been exposed to, and we really dont know the eventual consequences until everythings all said and done. The Mizoram government is mulling to extend the ongoing 21-day lockdown in the state and the Cabinet is likely to take a decision on this matter on Monday, officials said. The nationwide lockdown was imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25 to break the chain of coronavirus transmission and it was scheduled to be lifted on April 15. The PM held a video conference with chief ministers of all states on extending the lockdown on Saturday but no formal announcement was made in this regard. "Though the Centre is yet to make a final decision, the state government is planning to extend the ongoing lockdown with new guidelines to exempt some sections," Health Minister Dr R Lalthangliana told PTI. The state cabinet would meet on Monday to discuss the matter, he said. The minister said Mizoram, which reported one COVID-19 case so far, is vulnerable to the deadly virus due to spike in cases in neighbouring countries and states. Mizoram shares inter-state boundaries with Assam, Manipur and Tripura and also 722-km international border with Bangladesh and Myanmar. Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Lalnunmawia Chuaungo said the state government is concerned about the Mizo people, who are stranded in different parts of the country due to the 21- day nationwide lockdown. He said discussions are being held among top officials to step up measures to bring them home safely. Official sources said Mizorams lone Lok Sabha member C Lalrosanga, who is currently in the national capital, was making efforts to ensure safety of 600 odd Mizo people stranded outside the state. The sources said he has personally spoken to the authorities of at least 20 states, where students, workers, travellers and patients along with their attendants from Mizoram are stuck due to lockdown. The MP has also written to chief secretaries of these states, imploring them to ensure the safety of the stranded Mizos and to protect them from racial attack, the sources said. Pennridge to vote on one textbook; further review on other one The widely popular restaurant chains Haidilao and Xibei, who found themselves in controversy after hiking prices amid the COVID-19 pandemic, have apologized and restored their original prices. Haidilao issued an apology, stating that "the decision to raise prices was an error by the company's executives" and had "harmed the interest of our customers." China Securities Co. estimates that COVID-19 will result in a 5.04 billion-yuan ($716 million) loss for Haidilao. After reopening some outlets on March 12, the chain had raised prices but soon met backlash online. Following customer complaints, a representative of Haidilao initially told the media that the price hike would be limited to within 6% of pre-epidemic prices. However, after the apology on Friday, the hotpot chain announced that they would retract the decision to raise prices. Meanwhile, Jia Guolong, chairman and founder of Xibei, directed all of his restaurants to restore their original prices. Jia also issued an apology: "yes we did hike our prices, and yes I did receive your criticism. It's not the right time to raise prices." But Jia still stressed that the company continues to struggle and that he hoped customers could come back to support his business. He previously estimated the monthly losses around the Spring Festival would be around 700 million to 800 million yuan. Jia stated that: "if the situation continues, our company's cash flow will only be able to support the company for three months." China's catering industry has suffered heavy losses due to the shutdown of nearly all restaurants during the epidemic. According to statistics from China's National Bureau of Statistics on March 16, catering sales plunged by 43.1% during the first two months of the year. However, some have defended the decision to raise prices, including in an editorial published by the Southern Metropolis Daily. "The saying 'no price hike during the epidemic' is not applicable to the catering industry and lacks basic common sense. It is an unreasonable moral kidnapping to threaten businesses against price hikes in this way, and threatening those that do to apologize is even more outrageous." An editorial in the Guang Ming Daily further reiterated the point: "Perhaps under the influence of public scrutiny, some top catering companies, in consideration of the brand's images, will seek to survive a wave of public relations crisis by apologizing and giving out discounts. However, the number of catering enterprises with such strength is still few after all. Many small and medium-sized enterprises, with weak pressure resistance, cannot adjust the balance of their costs and benefits through market behavior. It is not a simple public relations crisis, but a survival crisis." TANZANIANS have been urged to pray for other Christians worldwide who didnt have the opportunity to celebrate Easter as a result of Covid-19 caused by coronavirus. Giving his homily during Easter Sunday Mass held at Christ the King Cathedral in Moshi, Kilimanjaro Region, Bishop Ludovick Joseph Minde (ALCP/OSS) said: There are our brothers and sisters in Christ in various places across the world who need our prayers due to the fact that we have been granted the grace to celebrate Easter directly from the houses of worship, he said. He noted that: We received the gift from God to observe Easter proceedings as from Thursday, Good Friday and today, including Easter Eve. Let use this gift then to pray for those who didnt get this opportunity. Bishop Minde noted that prayers by Tanzanians during this year's Easter would help those who didnt get the opportunity to observe Easter in churches to know that God had not forsaken them and that he was still with them. "The situation is not good for some of our brothers and sisters outside there. I spoke to the Archbishop of Mombasa in Kenya who told me that the situation there was not good and he asked me and you to pray for them. He reiterated his appeal to believers to continue following directives provided by the government and health experts to avoid coronavirus. Bishop Minde also urged believers to use the Easter celebration to return to God in repentance while focusing on the values in their social positions, including in the workplace. "It is true that we have completed Lent, but repentance is not over. Let us continue with it to cultivate good values in ourselves and this is the real meaning of Easter," he said. In this Jan. 30, 2018, file photo, Ji Seong-ho, a North Korean defector, holds up his crutches after his introduction by President Trump during the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Donald Trump had previously condemned the cruelty of North Korean government, but after his historic summit on Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump seemed to play down the severity of human rights violations in North Korea. / AP-Yonhap The crutch-wielding North Korean lauded by Donald Trump in a State of the Union address is seeking a seat of his own in the South's parliament to defend other defectors who have fled their reclusive homeland but often find themselves marginalized. Ji Seong-ho was stealing coal to feed his starving family during a devastating 1990s famine when he fell from a train wagon. The drop knocked out the then 13-year-old and a train ran him over, severing his left leg and hand. He was rushed to hospital and operated on without anaesthetic. "My father was given a bag with his son's hand and leg" to bury, Ji recalled in an interview with AFP. "This was what he got for being loyal to the Party." A quarter of a century later and on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean peninsula, Ji is running for South Korea's main opposition, the conservative United Future Party, in legislative elections. The vote takes place on April 15, the same day the nuclear-armed North will celebrate the 108th birthday of its late founder Kim Il Sung. Ji's father was a loyal rank-and-file member of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party. But that did nothing to protect his son from frequent beatings by guards who said his disabled body was "a disgrace to the Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il Kim Il Sung's son, and father to current ruler Kim Jong-un. "I was crippled... because of a problem in the government, but they blamed us and tortured us," said Ji, who fled the North in 2006. Swimming across the Tumen river to China with his brother's help, he went on a 10,000-kilometre (6,200-mile), six-month odyssey through Laos, Myanmar and Thailand to reach South Korea, where he was given a prosthetic leg and hand. "I was able to walk again," said Ji, who went on to study English, typing with one hand as he eventually obtained a master's degree in law. Ji, now 38, works as a rights activist running an organization that has helped around 500 North Koreans make their way clandestinely through China and into third countries from where they can travel to the South. His office is lined with photos with top officials including Trump, who in his 2018 speech to Congress called the defector's story "a testament to the yearning of every human soul to live in freedom". Next to Ji's desk stand the wooden crutches made for him by his father that he waved in the air in front of the world's cameras. His father also tried to flee shortly after Ji's departure but was caught and tortured to death, he says. Ji, who is standing for a proportional representation seat, feels the 33,000-odd defectors in the South have been neglected by the current government in Seoul. The dovish President Moon Jae-in held three summits with North Korea's Kim in 2018, including a meeting in Pyongyang, but human rights issues have largely been off the table. "The entire society of North Korea is a prison," Ji says. "When the peninsula is reunified, are we going to shake hands with the North Korean regime? How are we going to look the North Korean people in the face?" Last year, the South's government forcibly repatriated two North Korean sailors suspected of killing 16 fishermen a move that defectors and activists say amounted to a death sentence. Next week's vote does not affect Moon's position as he is directly elected, but it is largely a referendum on his performance after nearly three years in power. And with negotiations at a standstill, North Korea has barely figured as an issue. Meanwhile Pyongyang's propaganda outlet Uriminzokkiri has called Ji "cruel and brutal human scum" who fled after committing numerous crimes. He was plotting against Pyongyang and "cheating his dirty deeds in order to get a little more money from the hostile forces", it said. Defectors who do reach the South sometimes struggle to adjust to their new life in a democratic, capitalist society. Last year, a 42-year-old woman and her six-year-old son were found dead in their home along with an empty fridge and unpaid bills two months after their deaths. The incident sparked outrage among the defector community, who called on the South's government to improve support programs for new Northern arrivals. "Successful resettlement would show the North Korean people that free democracy is good," Ji said, adding: "If we can't settle, Kim Jong-un will be laughing at us." (AFP) Though robberies and some other categories of crime have dropped since residents in the District began social distancing practices, shootings and other assaults have gone up over the past month. Authorities have said the novel coronavirus pandemic hasnt stopped assailants from targeting rivals. Deciding when to comment on someones behavior in societys shared spaces has always been complicated. If someone doesnt pick up after their dog, do you point it out? If someone cuts you off on the highway, do you yell out your window? What about that smoker on the cornerdo you tell them cigarettes are bad for you? What if the smoker is a pregnant woman? The line between righteous and self-righteous is hard to discern in the best of times, and now theres a pandemic. New rules about physical distancing and personal hygiene mean new questions about what to do when someone isnt following them. Nowadays, if someone stands too close to you at the grocery store or coughs into the air on the bus or is walking around without a mask, do you say something? If a non-essential business is continuing to fill its shop with customers, do you call it out? TIME asked several experts in medical ethics and health policy. The upshot: yes, it can make sense to respond when people arent following orders that have been put in place to protect oneself and others. But the way you do it really matters, for the sake of decency and results. At least for now, we dont have treatment or vaccines. All weve got is behavior. And there is evidence that the behavior works, if were diligent about it, says Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Universitys Grossman School of Medicine. We shouldnt be obnoxious, we shouldnt get nasty, Caplan says. But in this day and age, I think you can speak up. It could, directly or indirectly, save lives. When it comes to changing peoples minds or behavior, shame and blame generally dont work as well as empathy and the benefit of the doubt. And a pandemic is a time when extenuating circumstances are widespread. Everyone is stressed out and fearful for their own health, says Northeastern University law professor Aziza Ahmed, an expert in health law. We have to be sensitive to what other people have the capacity to do. Story continues Keep up to date with our daily coronavirus newsletter by clicking here. Studies on disaster preparedness have found that one of the best ways to get other people to adopt new habits is to model them. The literature shows that people will change their behavior if there are three conditions in place: they know what to do, why to do it and they see other people like themselves also doing it, says Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. A crucial part of this, she says, is that authority figures, from political leaders to pastors, are all repeating the same message, to the point that people are swimming in a sea of it. Those waters are murky in the United States, where the response to the pandemic has been politically polarized and messages have been mixed. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered residents to wear masks when visiting essential businesses that remain open; on Twitter, he posted a new profile picture in which hes wearing one. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump has said he wont be wearing a mask because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended it, not ordered it, and I just dont want to. The absence of clarity and consistency from leaders gives individuals more reason to spread the message about best practices themselves (including, yes, wearing a mask). It also gives them more reason to reserve judgment when they do it. Youre trying to frame it in a way that will motivate peoples behavior, where its not like youre calling them stupid or accusing them of indifference, Caplan says. What youre trying to do is appeal with carrots, not sticks. The changing guidance around masks helps illustrate why unwillful ignorance is possible. The CDC at first recommended that only sick people and those caring for them wear masks. Then, as it became more clear that people could spread the disease without appearing sickmaking their coughs and sneezes just as dangerousthe CDC recommended everyone wear them. That why to do it message goes against our general understanding of what masks are for, and public health experts have had trouble getting it across. Youre not wearing the mask to protect you, youre wearing the mask to protect others, says Stuart Finder, director of the Center of Healthcare Ethics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. And there are a lot of people who still dont understand that. New Yorkers heed advice to wear masks to help control the spread of the coronavirus as they sit in Central Park in New York City on April 11, 2020. | Cindy OrdGetty Images Even if people have read the latest guidelines, there could be personal reasons theyre not abiding by them. You cant assume you know what is inhibiting someone from engaging in the correct behavior, Schoch-Spana says. Some black Americans, for example, have reported that concerns about being associated with gangs or perceived as criminals have made them reluctant to wear face coverings. A homeless person has an understandable reason for not being home by curfew. Someone could be failing to stay six feet away from you on the sidewalk because they are blind. You might also encounter a person who doesnt believe in science and dismisses the risks. Among the tactics experts suggest for handling these situations is the its not you, its me approach: If youre at the grocery store and someone is standing right behind you, dont yell, Move back! Instead, emphasize that since you or anyone could have the virus without knowing it, its best to stay six feet apart, in case they hadnt heard. Use cues where you can, like the tape many open businesses have started putting on the floor to show customers how to line up at a proper distance. If you live in a place like Michigan or Laredo, Texas, where the government is issuing $1,000 fines for violations of social distancing rules, position your reminder as an attempt to protect their wallet. If you live in a state like Hawaii, where at least three people have been arrested for flouting quarantine orders, position it as an attempt to protect their liberty. In general, says Finder, you want to find ways that reinforce that were in this together, versus Youre not doing what I want you to do. In rare cases, people have gotten violent during such encounters. At an emergency room in New York City, an 86-year-old woman reportedly lost her balance and grabbed the IV pole of another patient, a 32-year-old woman, thereby violating the social distancing rule to stay six feet away from others. The younger woman allegedly pushed her, causing her to fall, sustain a head injury and die. Not following the guidelines is dangerous. Not coughing into ones sleeve can endanger someone elses life. But, Finder says, If I respond with a kind of violent or authoritative approach, there is actually danger there too. However tactfully one approaches the situation, these kinds of interactions carry risks of escalation. In New Jersey, a grocery store worker asked a customer who was standing near her to move back. Instead, he allegedly stepped closer and coughed toward her, laughing and saying he had the coronavirus. The man is now among the many people that the New Jersey attorney general has issued charges against, as people continue to violate executive orders relating to COVID-19. There is a difference between being a good neighbor and being a vigilante who takes it upon themselves to inform every person they can, on the street or on Instagram, about what they should and should not be doing. As Caplan puts it, You dont have to be the town watchman. We dont need public health crossing guards. There are law enforcement officials for that. Shoppers keep their distance from one another as they wait to enter Costco in San Francisco, Calif., on April 8, 2020. | Liu GuanguanChina News Service/Getty Images Schoch-Spana, of Johns Hopkins, says it is reasonable to handle the situation yourself when there is an invasion of your personal space. It makes sense to say something when someone is encroaching on your health and well-being, she says. You have every right to try and correct that behavior, but it should be done politely and with knowledge-sharing and with positive modeling. What about a non-essential business that is continuing to operate despite orders to shut down? In places like Casper, Wyo., residents have been reporting them to the police. There is a spectrum of offenses, from a bike shop that is technically non-essential and continuing to do individual repairs to a church or club that is encouraging scores of people to congregate in a small space. The latter, Schoch-Spana says, is a public health threat of a graver nature. In such cases, where local rules are being violated, it makes sense to let authorities know, health experts say, but people should keep in mind that law enforcement officials are overworked as it is. States, like individuals, have a tricky balance to pursue. Officials dont want to do more harm than good by being too harsh, says Northeastern Universitys Ahmed. But they also want to send a message that following orders is a mortally important business. The troubling thing about these public health emergencies, she says, is it does give governments really wide latitude to enact and enforce laws that we might otherwise see as violations of privacy or civil liberties. In times of pandemic, the normal rules dont apply. And it isnt easy to figure out the best way to turn new ones into community norms overnight. But reminding people that abiding by them is their best way to contribute is one tack. If you want to protect your policeman, your ambulance driver, your nurse, the person who is working in the grocery store, the truckers, thats what you can do, Caplan says of being serious about physical distancing and personal hygiene. If you want to contribute in the pandemic, its not just protect yourself, its protect others. Its the best gift you can give to those who really have to take risks. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, researchers have been studying how long the virus can live on surfaces, from stainless steel to cardboard. The virus is primarily a respiratory illness and it is believed to spread through droplets from an infected person's sneezes or coughs. It might also be transmitted to you from objects if you grab something that has virus particles on it and then touch your face. The research about the virus has been growing, and it is used as a guide to educate the public on how they can protect themselves from COVID-19. Coronavirus can live in a surgical mask for days A new research was published in Lancet and it studied the stability and the amount of virus present overtime on different surfaces, including wood, tissues, and cloth. The researchers were surprised to find the virus on the outside of a face mask a week later. However, the researchers did not study whether someone could be infected with the virus they found on the surgical mask. The researchers wrote that a detectable level of infectious virus could still be present on the outer layer of a surgical mask after 7 days. Face masks, particularly N95 and surgical masks, have been in high demand and short supply since the start of the outbreak. Also Read: Sweden Refuses to Go on Lockdown, Draws Criticisms After the White House recommended that the public must wear face coverings at all times, officials are suggesting now that people craft their own out of bandanas, scarves or T-shirts to save face masks for medical workers. There is no scientific evidence that masks help prevent infection from spreading, except when you put them on people who are already sick. However, a fair number of coronavirus patients could be either asymptomatic or presymptomatic and still transmit the virus to other people. Because of this, the CDC is now recommending people to cover their faces when they are out in public places, like the grocery store, to prevent infecting others. Scientists are all agreeing that staying at home and social distancing are the best ways to decrease the number of infections. Properly wearing and taking off face masks is key The researchers stated that their findings show how important it is to properly wear and remove masks. Malik Peiris, one of the researchers, said that it is important that you wear a surgical mask and that you do not touch the outside of the mask. This can contaminate your hands and if you touch your eyes, you could be transferring the virus. The CDC recommends wearing cloth face covering that goes over your nose and mouth, and that you wash it frequently in a washing machine. When you take it off, avoid touching the front of the mask where it is dirtiest, and wash your hands directly after. The research team also found that the coronavirus was more stable on smooth surfaces. Coronavirus can live on copper for 4 hours, on cardboard for 24 hours and on plastic for three days, but the lifespan of the virus is also impacted by different factors like humidity and temperature. This is why health officials recommend regularly disinfecting household objects that people touch often. Related Article: New Jersey Students Donate 3D Printed Face Masks for Health Care Workers @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. King Mohammed VI of Morocco suggested the setting up of an initiative by African heads of state to elaborate an operational framework to help African countries manage the coronavirus pandemic. The proposal was made during phone talks between the King and President Alassane Dramane Ouattara of Cote dIvoire and President Macky Sall of Senegal, the Royal Office said. The initiative put forward by the King aims at facilitating joint action, experience and best-experiences sharing as well as cooperation to mitigate the health, economic and social impacts of the pandemic. African countries confirmed so far nearly 11,000 cases and 600 deaths, with scientists warning that the continent may become the worlds new epicenter. Egypts Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait has stressed that African continental cooperation must be enhanced in order to counter COVID-19s consequences on African countries economies. Maaits comments were made during a videoconference held on Monday with the members of the Committee of 15 Ministers of Finance (F15) to discuss COVID-19s repercussions. According to a statement, the meeting addressed the health, social, economic, and financial measures that member states have adopted to contain COVID-19. The minister also discussed setting an African strategy to contain and alleviate the economic impact of COVID-19 and taking a united African stance in this regard in global gatherings, especially the anticipated spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund scheduled be held from 17 to 19 April. The meeting reviewed the required operational steps for activating resolutions issued by the African Unions General Assembly Bureau to set an African fund for countering COVID-19s harsh impacts. The attendees to convene periodically through teleconference to discuss anti-COVID-19 measures. The F15 is mandated to participate in the preparation of the African Union (AU) Annual Budget, provide oversight in its implementation; and participate in the development and administration of the AU scale of assessment for member states contribution and related sanctions regime. It also provides oversight on the AU Reserve Fund, participates in audit matters, and provides general guidance on the implementation of executive and assembly decisions on financing the AU. According to Tralac, a public benefit organisation that develops technical expertise and capacity in trade governance across Africa, some key sectors of the African economy are already experiencing a slowdown as a result of the pandemic, including tourism, air transport, and the oil sectors. On the other hand, McKinsey and Company, in its latest report, set different scenarios for Africas growth in the wake of COVID-19. It underlined that before the COVID-19 outbreak, Africas 2020 estimated growth was 3.9 percent. In the least-worst case, characterised by the outbreak being somewhat contained both globally and in Africa, growth drops to 0.4 percent. In other scenarios, including a lack of containment globally and in Africa, the rate drops as low as -3.9 percent. The pandemic is likely to have a significant economic toll in Africa. For Egypt, the national GDP is expected to fall by between 0.7 percent and 0.8 percent (EGP 36-41 billion or $2.3-$2.6 billion), and household incomes are likely to fall, particularly among the poor, according to the US International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Search Keywords: Short link: Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 20:11:40|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers reported their first attempt to measure the vertical carbon dioxide distribution by using a non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) gas sensor, according to a recent study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The miniaturized sensor, co-developed by experts from the academy's Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the University of Maryland, was carried in a giant aerostat, a helium-filled tethered balloon rising to 1,000 meters, to measure the vertical carbon dioxide distribution during a week-long experiment in January 2019, at a suburban site in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province, also a city with serious air pollution. Among all greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide accounts for the largest share. Since the 1970s, scientists have conducted long-term global monitoring of greenhouse gases. However, data of carbon dioxide in its vertical distribution are insufficient. Compared with traditional instruments, such as high towers and aircraft, the use of gas sensors based on NDIR technology has a lower cost. "It enables researchers to achieve a more accurate assessment of the distribution and changes of the greenhouse gas concentration, which is crucial for the climate policy formulation and climate change predictions," said the institute researcher Han Pengfei, who led the study. The study showed that the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere within 1,000 meters displayed a decreasing trend with the increase in height. Furthermore, the levels of the vertical greenhouse gas concentration varied from morning to afternoon, which were affected by weather conditions and carbon dioxide emission sources, including human activities and the burning of fossil fuels. The researchers also found that the sensor produced data consistent with the traditional method, indicating the instrument is feasible for high spatial density carbon dioxide monitoring, Han said. The results were published in the April 8 issue of the journal Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters. Hebei Province, together with its neighbors Beijing and Tianjin, topped China in carbon emissions intensity due to massive emissions of pollutants from factories and vehicles. Chinese scientists have intensified carbon dioxide monitoring efforts in this region in recent years, to offer anti-smog measures. The institute has obtained data of carbon dioxide concentration by using greenhouse monitoring satellites from space, airships in the air and tower stations on the ground. Researchers also installed monitoring instruments atop cars to acquire mobile measurements during the experiment last year. According to Han, vertical measurements can be realized by using high towers, giant balloons and aircraft. However, the tower measurements are restricted by tower heights, which are generally lower than 500 meters. Though aircraft can measure greenhouse gases at higher altitudes, up to 13 km, they have a higher cost and a lower vertical resolution than a tethered balloon. Compared with other vertical carbon dioxide observation methods, tethered balloons, therefore, are cheaper and easier to operate. The study, using a sensor carried by a tethered balloon, will help us to understand the vertical distribution of carbon dioxide and provide data for the modeling of the greenhouse gas transport, Han said. Front line: Ron Dennis,'s daughter Charlotte Hall (pictured), is an NHS anaesthetist Delivering meals to hard-pressed NHS staff is a long way from the glamour of motor racing, but former McLaren boss Ron Dennis, 72, is throwing himself into the project with his daughter Dr Charlotte Hall, an NHS anaesthetist. He has joined forces with Tesco, Yodel and luxury catering company Absolute Taste to supply a million meals to doctors, nurses and other professionals through a new scheme, SalutetheNHS.org. The Dennis family foundation is donating 1million in seed funding and 500,000 to match donations by others. 'I wanted to get involved because of Charlotte,' said Ron. 'She told me so many staff find it hard to have meals or coffee while they are working, so they go home, have a bowl of cornflakes and go to bed. 'Here I am trapped in my house, so I can take a lead. 'I phoned Dave Lewis from Tesco on a Saturday evening and 20 minutes later he said he was in. 'This has been like building a start-up business in a fortnight. Now it has a momentum. I will create a legacy project that will benefit the NHS.' Charlotte, 32, said: 'We came up with this idea on a family Zoom call. 'The meals are packed full of good food, and always a flapjack or a brownie that is a little bit naughty as well.' Iraq's New PM-Designate Vows to Uphold Sovereignty as US Deploys Patriots Sputnik News 13:37 GMT 12.04.2020 The nomination of Mustafa al-Kadhimi as prime minister has become Iraq's third attempt in 10 weeks to break a political deadlock that has lasted months. He is set to prove that he is better-equipped than two previous nominees, and the caretaker prime miniestr, to navigate the relationship with Tehran and Washington and tackle social unrest. The Iraqi prime minister-designate, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, has vowed to defend his nation's national security as the United States is deploying additional weapons to the country. Al-Kadhimi, Iraq's intelligence chief since 2016, was chosen to form the government on Thursday. Iraq hasn't had a full government since Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi resigned in the wake of violent anti-government protests in December. Two previous picks for the post, Communications Minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allaw and Adnan al-Zurfi, the head of the Nasr parliamentary coalition, withdrew their candidacies over pressure from Shia parties. Al-Kadhimi, who appears to have won Shiite support, said on Thursday that national sovereignty would be his "top priority" according to local media. The Iran Press news agency quotes him as saying that "weapons should be in the hands of the government only, not individuals and groups, and we will take action in this regard." "We will never allow any Iraqi to be insulted by domestic or international parties on charges of foreign dependence," he added. Discontent has seemingly grown in the country with the presence of coalition forces, resulting in January in a parliamentary resolution demanding foreign troop withdrawal and Shia-led anti-US rallies numbering in the thousands. Both the resolution and the protests came in response to the killing of powerful Iranian commander Soleimani just outside of Baghdad on 3 January. While 17 years have passed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by US forces plunged Iraq into a period of political instability, corruption and weak democratic institutions, many Iraqis feel increasingly disenfranchised by the government and the foreign forces remain. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The doctor was choking for breath, just like the others. Cedar Wang was standing outside the emergency room of Holy Name Medical Center when she spotted a physician from the hospital. He was in a wheelchair, flanked by two health care workers who were rushing him inside. His nose and mouth were covered by a surgical mask. But Wang saw the look in his eyes, one that has become all too familiar to the nurse practitioner during the coronavirus pandemic. His eyes were wide and flitting, revealing naked fear as he desperately gasped for air. It was a look shes seen on countless patients over the past month at the Teaneck hospital. You see it. You kind of feel it. The stare the fear, Wang said. COVID-19 had infected one of Holy Names own, just as it has with countless other doctors and nurses as the pandemic continues to sweep across the state and the nation. The 65-year-old physician survived and is recovering at home, the hospital said. But that expression the terror on his face as he struggled to breathe, his chest heaving rapidly haunts her. Its one of those images that you cant get out of your head, Wang said. A month has passed since the first coronavirus cases began to flood New Jerseys hospitals. Two remain at the center of the crisis: Holy Name and University Hospital in Newark, which serve two of the states largest hot spots. Health care workers at the two medical facilities offered NJ Advance Media an inside glimpse into their worlds as they face the impending peak of cases. Their experiences reveal the strain, stress and danger doctors and nurses face each day on the front lines as they battle the pandemic and try to save lives. Their hospitals are overrun with patients. They are exhausted. People are dying. Yet they return each shift despite the threat the deadly and highly contagious respiratory disease poses. The pandemic has already resulted in 61,850 cases and 2,350 fatalities across the state as of Sunday afternoon. Its devastating to see so many sick people," said Dr. Lewis Nelson, chief of services of Universitys emergency department. "The number of sick people is overwhelming. Despite signs that infections are slowing, the onslaught of COVID-19 patients continues at these facilities, located in some of the hardest-hit regions in the nation. If there are signs of improvement, these doctors and nurses have yet to see it in their emergency rooms and critical care units. There is always an alarm going off somewhere, whether a phone, IV pump, patient alarm, said Dennis Boos, director of emergency management at University. "There is a constant flow of EMS coming in with patients. Its almost like a city within a city. Its the emotional toll of being at work, but also not being home. It takes its toll. Surge tents set up in the parking lot of University Hospital in Newark to handle the flood of COVID-19 patients. Rapid declines The woman was sitting upright in a hospital bed in the crammed emergency department at University, the only public acute-care hospital in the state. A sea of people filled the unit. Almost all of them were COVID-19 patients. She was breathing very quickly, the way you would see someone breathing after a race, said Dr. Erin Muckey, a physician in Universitys emergency department. But despite the patients suppressed breath, the woman was otherwise responsive. She was speaking to us. She was answering questions, Muckey said. Fifteen or 20 seconds later, the woman was slumped over, unconscious. She tried to readjust her position to breathe a little easier, and all of a sudden she stopped breathing altogether, Muckey said. A handful of doctors and nurses rushed over and began performing CPR. You pull in the whole team. You pull in all of your nurses. Everyone drops what theyre doing, she said. They scrambled to revive her. She was intubated and transferred to another unit. Relief settled among the staff after saving the woman. But with a room filled with patients just as sick, it had to move on to the next emergency. Muckey was struck by the speed in which COVID-19 is killing patients. Some patients are alert and responsive one minute, unconscious and dying the next. Its really jarring, she said. Muckey is hardly alone. Doctors and nurses have been baffled by patients swift declines. It only adds to the strain medical workers feel. The virus doesnt just kill. It doesnt just separate loved ones, forcing patients into isolation. It kills people so quickly it shocks even the doctors and nurses responsible for their care. These patients, their respiratory status declines rapidly," said Shazam Bacchus, an ICU nurse at University. You watch these patients being able to breathe normally, and then within a few hours, theyre choking. The past few weeks are unlike anything Bacchus has seen. Many of the patients are vastly sicker than regular ICU patients, he said. Holy Name is witnessing the same phenomenon. Were still getting the patients coming in, as they say, hot and heavy hot and fast," said Dr. Suraj Saggar, chief of infectious disease at Holy Name. Basically (theyre) coming in with, unfortunately, respiratory distress and then needing to be intubated. General scenes in the COVID-19 ICU at\rHoly Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, during the first weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic. 04/06/2020 Photos by Jeff Rhode Mandatory photo credit, and please use only with permission from Jeff Rhode and Holy Name Medical Center. \rIf you need ID's or detailed captions please call 201-543-8067 or email jrhode@holyname.orgJeff Rhode Holy Name is staying just ahead of the curve with bed capacity and its stock of personal protective equipment, according to Saggar. At University, the resources are already stretched thin because every patient in the ER right now is incredibly sick, Muckey said. Saggar recalled a patient who came in late last month with only moderate symptoms. The man lay in a hospital bed, watching television, looking bored. I wasnt even sure that the patient really had COVID, Saggar said. This was back in the time where it took a long time to get tested. And he asked, Doctor, do you really think I have COVID?" At that point, Saggar wasnt sure. He told him they were being "extra cautious. About 10 days later, the patient was dead. That still haunts me, Saggar said. It just shows me what a wide spectrum of disease that this virus can cause and how tricky it can be to diagnose. Exhaustion and death The battle has taken its toll. The doctors and nurses are sleep deprived. Overcaffeinated. Overstressed. All the adrenaline, all the patients and all the death theyve witnessed despite their best efforts have left scars. Once in their scrubs, medical workers emotions are tucked away, hidden just like their faces behind protective masks. But they carry the suffering and death with them. Many are isolated from their own families when they go home. The only real contact Saggar experiences these days comes at work, when he puts his hands on the sick and dying. He wont touch his wife or 11-year-old son for fear of infecting them. Before leaving the hospital, Saggar changes out of his soiled scrubs and decontaminates himself, his stethoscope, cellphone and even his pen. Anything that I'm taking home with me, he explained. When he arrives home, he enters through his garage. Even in the garage, I have a little ritual where I kind of take everything off, hang it up on the hooks and then kind of wipe my body down, and then run into the house and take a shower before interacting with my family, he said. Even so, he sleeps on a couch. Dr. Suraj Saggar inside the ICU of Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey, during the first few days of the COVID-19 Pandemic.Photo by Jeff Rhode Sleepless nights have followed endless shifts as the strain eats away at Saggar. "Id be lying to you if I told you that you can just leave it at the door and go home, he said. He added: The emotions come in, and I think a lot of us have some anxiety or insomnia at night, Saggar said. He and other medical workers try their best to distract themselves when their shifts are done. The Netflix series Tiger King, has been a godsend for hospital staff. Youd be hard-pressed to find a health care worker who hasnt watched it, he said. It offers the perfect escape. Its so bizarre, Saggar said. But the distractions only take them so far. Most of the time, their days are filled with a sort of mental and emotional exhaustion that most of these workers have never experienced. You try and disconnect a little, but its very hard to find any joy like what you normally do. Youre just exhausted," Saggar said. "You try to exercise a couple times a week to stay healthy and eat healthy, but its really like rinse, wash, repeat. COVID, sick people, death. All day, every day. Even the sounds of the pandemic have become embedded in their consciousness. The beeping machines. The sounds from the ventilators pumping air into the lung of patients clinging to life. The alarms and codes blaring over the speaker, sending doctors and nurses sprinting to the next dying patient gasping for breath. That swooshing sound of ventilators has stayed with Bacchus. All of his patients are on the breathing machines. Youre constantly hearing air pushing into their lungs, he said. But thats not what keeps Bacchus up at night. Its the sound of patients family members on the other end of the phone, the grief and anguish rising in their voices when he tells them their loved one is dying. When you receive a phone call from the family asking if they can come see their loved ones, and you have to tell them, Unfortunately, its not allowed... he said, his voice dropping. Hospital workers try to connect loved ones with the dying, even if the patients are not conscious. The University ICU team did so earlier this month while trying to resuscitate a patient. "We called the family and let the family know the situation, Bacchus said, and it was emotional because they couldnt be at the bedside to say anything to him or how they feel or the love they have for him. Staff members took a phone, put it in a plastic bag and put it on speaker. "But at least the family was able to talk to him on his last breath, Bacchus said. University Hospital in Newark. May 8, 2019 (Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) Patti Sapone | NJ Advance MediaPatti Sapone | NJ Advance Media Breaking point Wang needed to hear her husbands voice. It had all become too much last week after COVID-19 claimed the life of a Holy Name colleague: Jesus Villaluz, a 75-year-old patient transport worker. Wang had reached her breaking point. That was the first day in the last number of weeks that I felt like I just need to call my husband, and I couldnt hold it together just to say hello, she said. Wang couldnt remember the last time she called her husband, Peter, during a shift. But on that day, she needed him. Tears are now as common as masks and ventilators on the hospital floors. I remember one of our senior nurses was telling me she would cry for the first couple of days, would cry during the shift because she didnt know if she would make it back home with her family, Bacchus said. They each have found their coping mechanisms, to get them through the next moment, the next hour, the next shift. But what will the long-term effect be? I think right now were just focused on our patients, honestly, and just taking care of them, Muckey said. After a slight laugh, she added: And then well deal with ourselves later. Some mental health experts say everyone will be left scarred, but health care workers most of all. The COVID-19 ICU at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.Jeff Rhode I think that we really want to be focusing on the front line health care workers, said Dr. Thomas Hollenbach, a clinical psychologist in Metuchen. They are being traumatized. They are real trauma victims. "And Im particularly worried about the mental health of doctors who are used to succeeding at everything in their life, like young residents, and who patient after patient after patient is dying on them. Bacchus worries as well. "Maybe one of the biggest things this country has to deal with in the coming months is mental health, he said. I think were going to have a lot of health care workers who (will have) some degree of mental illness, Bacchus added. Those who work in a hospital are used to seeing suffering. But its the volume of suffering, the constant barrage of it that could inflict long-lasting damage. People suffer a lot. Families suffer a lot," Bacchus said. "Not only the patient breathing their last breath, but the family at home cannot see their loved ones or not even being able to go to the funeral. No one is immune to the anguish, to witnessing death, to hearing the torn voices of family members unable to be with loved ones in their final moments. Wang finds a few minutes in the car on her drive home to try to process what shes just seen. But those moments are short-lived. She again puts on a brave face when walking into her home, where her husband and kids are waiting. The world of death and the novel coronavirus do not exist there. But its hard to leave them at the hospital. Normally, I decompress on the way home, Wang said. I might have a tear on the way home. But I just kind of try to recenter myself before I walk in the door to my family. Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Mike Godson posing with VP Osinbajo Popular Nollywood actor, Mike Godson has begged Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo for help as he is going broke because he has no money for food. According to him, he is down to his last pot of soup and theres no hope for another as he cant work at the moment due to the Coronavirus lockdown in Nigeria. He added that he cant go out to look for food, for fear of being arrested by the task force. He wrote: Your exellency the vice president federal republic of NIGERIA. Dear sir, My name is Mike Godson Im a Nigerian Actor with the Nigerian film industry. Sir, We have been instructed by the federal and state government to strictly avoid social gatherings and stay in our various houses, due to the spread of the virus. I must commend the federal and state government levels for the aggressive measures put in place to ensure the countrys safety. But sir, the hunger in the land has finally reached my house. As I write this letter, I have just finished eating my last pot of soup and theres no hope for another one as my source of income has been put on hold until further notice. Your exellency sir, i have no more money to feed. If you were in Lagos, I would have walked straight to your house and ask for food because I stay in the same estate with you. I know I will be arrested by those mobile police officers in thier hundreds, assigned to your residence after I must have shouted your name 3 times. But sir, as long as I see you and ask for food to eat, I dont mind being purnished for hunger at this point. Finally sir, I just want to know if the relief packages sent out in envelopes by the federal government will reach this side of Lagos, because your exellency sir, The Hunger on the way will be more than corona virus O! Please help O! Thank you Sir. @profosinbajo Yours sincerely! For those that reached out to offer me a new pot of soup, thanks alot. But my post was for the vice president and not for you. I was asking for my own share of the 15billion sent out to Nigerians to help keep them at home. NEW YORKThe worried doctors stood together after their rounds, weighing the risks. A 31-year-old pregnant woman was in peril, her lungs ravaged by the coronavirus. If they delivered her baby now, it might reduce the strain on her body and help her recover. But it was more than two months before the due date, and the infant would probably have difficulty breathing, feeding and maintaining temperature and be at risk for long-term health problems. The surgery itself, a Caesarean section, would be a stressor for the mother. In the end, the three obstetricians agreed: Neither the mother, on a ventilator, nor the child in her womb was getting enough oxygen, and the best chance to save both was to bring the baby into the world. Today. We needed to do something, said Dr. Erroll Byer, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, reflecting on that morning nearly two weeks ago. The woman, Precious Anderson, was one of three critically ill expectant mothers at the same time in the community hospital, an unusual circumstance. Byer walked back and forth between the maternity floor and the intensive care unit, checking on her. The obstetrics unit, which delivers about 2,600 babies a year, is typically a place of celebration and fulfilled hopes. But amid the pandemic, it has been transformed. Nearly 200 babies have arrived since the beginning of March, according to Byer. Twenty-nine pregnant or delivering women have had suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. They have been kept separate from other patients, and medical workers wear protective clothing when attending to them. Hallways where women walked as they endured labour are empty, with the mothers-to-be confined to their rooms. Multiple doctors and nurses in the department have fallen ill. Even healthy pregnant women are anxious. They dont feel the happiness and joy that many people experience at this time of life, Byer said. Worse, some pregnant patients who become sick are so scared of coming into the hospital citing fear of the virus or of being alone that they have delayed doing so. A few of them have become dangerously ill. As at other New York hospitals, the surge of new patients with COVID-19 flattened this past week. But the intensive care unit at the Brooklyn hospital had to keep expanding, to nearly three times its original size, and deaths remained high. Nearly 90 patients confirmed or suspected to have the virus had succumbed since March 1. From Monday to Friday last week alone, 30 died. Five staff members have also died. The crisis is not over, Byer and other physicians warned. But he is grateful: So far, not one mother or baby has been lost. There have been no confirmed cases among newborns, though doctors are awaiting results for one, according to the chair of pediatrics, Dr. Noah Kondamudi. Andersons case has been particularly harrowing. She had been a patient of Byers for years. He counselled her on getting pregnant after a miscarriage and delivered her sisters children. Day after day, as she struggled for survival, he kept asking himself: Is she going to lose the baby she tried so hard to have? Will her child be left motherless? During her ordeal, her mother, Doris Robinson, came to Byers office. Do you think shes going to make it? she asked. Please be real with me. A doctor and his community When Anderson, a substitute teacher, finally got pregnant, prenatal visits became a family affair. The babys father David Cirilo, who works in security and often Andersons mother joined her to watch the ultrasound examinations. The baby was due in June. Byer was fond of his patient a beautiful personality, he described her who asked questions about her health and how she could address several issues, including obesity, that could affect her chances of getting pregnant. She was very diligent, he told a reporter. On Thursday, March 26, when she was feeling sick, she called Byer. He asked her to visit the obstetrics clinic, but she said she was frightened to come to the hospital. Besides, she told him, it was probably just her asthma acting up. A day later, she had little choice. She arrived at the hospital coughing and laboring to breathe, unable to get out a full sentence. Byer told her she probably had COVID-19 she was classic and admitted her to a special area of the labour and delivery unit where four rooms at the end of a hallway had been designated for pregnant patients who were infected with the coronavirus or believed to be. By the next day, the maternity team was unable to keep her oxygen levels high enough, and she was transferred to the ICU. She was just getting too short of breath, said Dr. James Gasperino, head of critical care. Within 24 hours, she was on a ventilator. She tried for so many years, and now shes finally pregnant and happy and things are going well, and it just happens that this pregnancy takes place with this epidemic, Byer lamented. Those are the things you have no control over. Byer, 51, is the son of an obstetrician-gynecologist with whom he delivered babies and operated many times, starting when he was a resident at the nearby Long Island College Hospital, where his father practiced. His mother is a nurse. One of his sisters is a midwife. His wife is a pharmacist. He studied at Howard and Syracuse universities and has worked at the Brooklyn Hospital Center for 20 years. He was drawn by its academic programs, he said, and because he liked being part of the community. Growing up, he had attended a high school for a while near Fort Greene Park, just around the corner from the hospital. Byer wakes up at 5:30 a.m., preparing for his day dealing with the coronavirus crisis. On his iPad, he checks what has happened overnight looking at the websites for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University and the New York Health Department to see if there are any new recommendations and assess whether the city is reaching its peak patient load. He keeps an eye on the data. Several small studies have been published about the coronavirus in pregnancy. Babies have been found to be infected in a small minority of cases but have generally fared well. While some hospitals separate new mothers with COVID-19 from their infants, others, including the Brooklyn Hospital Center, allow mothers to be with their newborns and nurse them; the virus is not believed to be transmitted through breast milk. They are instructed to take precautions such as wearing masks and gowns and keeping their hands clean when having contact. Pregnant women are thought to be at a similar risk for severe illness from COVID-19 as other people. But Byer said that more research was needed particularly in communities, like Brooklyn, where obesity, diabetes and hypertension are common among expectant mothers. The sound of a heartbeat Last Monday, three doctors in his unit were out sick. One tested negative for the virus and would be back soon. Byer and others discussed whether they had enough staffing and supplies, particularly protective equipment. Its this constant feeling: Is this shipment going to be enough for the next few days? he said. Its really a day-to-day thing. He had two operations that Monday: a planned C-section and assisting with surgery on a patient with a large mass in her abdomen. Before that he had rounds, on which all the cases in the obstetrics and gynecology service were discussed. One of the in-patients on the maternity floor with COVID-19 was Basharrie McKenzie, who had been on a ventilator in the intensive care unit, overlapping with Anderson and a woman who was 28 weeks pregnant and later recovered without an early delivery. McKenzie, 36, was born in Jamaica and came to the United States as a teenager. She has three children and works in medical coding at another Brooklyn hospital, where she believes she picked up the virus. At first, she thought she had a cold. Her 11-year-old daughter brought her juice made from carrots and beets to treat it. Nearly three weeks ago, on a Tuesday, she was having trouble breathing. Like Anderson, she was prodded by her obstetrician to come to the hospital when she fell ill, about three months before her due date. The physician, Dr. Amber Ferrell, was alarmed when McKenzie called and was so short of breath she could barely speak. Ferrell alerted the intensive care team. McKenzie was admitted to the hospital and was scared to sleep for fear of never waking up. She watched staff members go in and out of the room next door for a patient she believes died. By that Friday, she had developed acute hypoxic respiratory failure not enough oxygen was getting into her blood, which meant the same was true for her baby. She was put on a ventilator. A day later, drifting in and out of consciousness, she felt certain that the medical staff was trying to kill her. In a panic, she pulled out her breathing tube. The doctors decided to see if she could maintain her breathing off the ventilator. In Room 11 of the ICU two days later, she saw a physician in a white coat, Gasperino, pass by and give her a thumbs-up. It gave her hope. She returned the gesture with two thumbs and a smile. But she was still breathing rapidly and had a tube under her nose delivering a high flow of oxygen. Im a little worried, one of the ICU doctors told Gasperino when the team gathered to review patients that morning. The physicians agreed to give McKenzie another day to improve in the ICU. McKenzie praised God, she later said. Her sister, a pastor in Toronto, asked for prayers to be said for her. Slowly, her condition improved. She eventually left the ICU, where the great majority of COVID-19 patients have not survived, and was moved to a special isolated room in the maternity ward. Alone no visitors were permitted except for women giving birth, who can have one she kept herself occupied by browsing Instagram and FaceTiming with her children, including her 3-year-old, Aaliyah McKenzie. It had been a tough year for the family, with four relatives dying in the previous six months. Last Monday night, Angela Lewis, a maternity nurse who has worked at the hospital for three decades, put on an N95 mask, a blue plastic gown, gloves, booties and a face shield to enter McKenzies room. She said she had received no specialized training for caring for coronavirus patients. Years ago, we were taught how to use the PPE and the handwashing and everything. COVID is the same; you have to apply it. You just be a little bit more careful, she said. And pray, pray. The nurse strapped a monitor around McKenzies belly. The sound of her babys heartbeat filled the small room. Lewis returned 30 minutes later, put on protective gear again and checked McKenzies vital signs. She was breathing without assistance. Her temperature was normal. No contractions? No cramping? the nurse asked. She folded up the printout of the babys heart rate. The next afternoon, McKenzie gathered her belongings. As she headed out of the unit to go home, one of about 80 coronavirus patients discharged last week, she caught sight of Byer and the nurses. Keena Samuels, the charge nurse of the maternity postpartum unit, said goodbye as McKenzie wept. Youre going to be just fine, Samuels said. Youre going to come back and deliver a healthy, beautiful baby. She added, You made it! What more can we do? In the ICU, Andersons condition was tenuous. Youre seeing her not really getting significantly better, even though shes intubated and ventilating, and we had to figure out what we could do, Byer said. He conferred with two other doctors, specialists in both obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine. Continuing her pregnancy, they concluded, could further compromise her lung function. I was thinking: What more can we do? Is she going to see her baby? Byer recalled. The ICU doctors also believed that delivering the baby might improve Andersons condition. My gut feeling was that she would have more of her lungs to fight with, Gasperino said. They prescribed two doses of steroid medications, given 12 hours apart, to help reduce the risk of breathing problems in her baby. At the ICU morning report two weeks ago, a doctor presented her case: Shes going to go for C-section. The surgery took place around midday. Not long after she was wheeled in, Anderson became a mother. Her baby boy weighed 3.7 pounds. A team from the neonatal intensive care unit immediately began tending to him. He could not breathe well on his own and required a ventilator. Anderson, unconscious all the while, was taken back to the ICU. There was no significant improvement for days. Byer and Andersons family were deeply worried. Because COVID is such a new and novel virus, the doctor said, there is no way to know what the outcome will be in an individual patient, even though youve tried everything you possibly could. The ICU staff received special approval to try the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir with Anderson, according to Gasperino. In a study of 58 severely ill patients published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, the majority of those given the drug showed improvements, but there was no comparison group, so the significance was unclear. Last Monday afternoon, Byer went to see his patient in the ICU. Hows Ms. Anderson doing? he asked one of the critical care doctors. She no longer needed the ventilator, which had just been removed, he was told. Very nice, the obstetrician responded. Very, very nice. When he stood outside Andersons room, she opened her eyes and patted her belly as if she thought she was still pregnant. He gave the still-groggy patient a wave. He called her mother, Robinson, to report the good news. She knows she had a baby, right? Robinson asked. Two days later, Anderson would tell Byer her babys name: David, after his father. On a tablet, Byer connected her from the ICU by video to the neonatal intensive care unit. The infants condition had been improving. Oh! Anderson said. Hes asleep. Hes taking the bottle well, sucking well, Mary Godineaux, senior director of nursing for maternal-child health, said from the babys bedside. Hes so handsome, Precious. Anderson asked when he could go home, and Byer said he had to gain weight. Looking at her son, the new mother smiled and cried at the same time. Hey, she said. The child opened his eyes and wriggled. There you go. Hi. ADDITIONAL police and barangay forces will be deployed in public markets to ensure that social distancing and wearing of face masks under the enhanced community quarantine are enforced, a police official said on Monday. Lieutenant General Guillermo Eleazar, Philippine National Police (PNP) deputy chief for operations and Joint Task Force Covid Shield (JTF-CV Shield) commander, said PNP Chief Archie Gamboa has directed all police chiefs to implement measures that would limit the number of people at one time in public markets. On the part of Secretary of the Interior and Local Government Eduardo Ano, he had already tasked barangay officials to assist in this effort to make sure that there would be no more violation of the Enhanced Quarantine guidelines on social distancing, he said. Eleazar made the statement amid reports and social media posts on non-observance of social distancing especially in public markets. Among the photos circulating online showed crowded markets in Balintawak, which prompted Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte to temporarily halt retail operations in the following markets: Cloverleaf, North Diversion, Riverview I, Riverview II, Pilsons, MC and Edsan Bagsakan. Wholesale selling and drop-off operations in these markets are still allowed. Eleazar said there should be limited entry and exit points manned by law enforcers including barangay force multipliers in the public markets. He urged village watchmen to go around with megaphones and remind the people to observe proper physical distancing. In Cagayan, policemen regularly walk around the public market with a portable sound system with pre-recorded message and announcements about social distancing and other quarantine rules. At the Mega Q Mart in Quezon City, uniformed personnel of the Cubao Police Station have been roaming inside the market and constantly reminding marketgoers to observe social distancing to avoid contracting the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory infection called coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Story continues Limiting the number of people going inside the public market is a way of ensuring that social distancing is observed inside. The same concept is already being implemented in supermarkets and grocery stores, Eleazar said. The police official also assured continuous monitoring in other public areas and residential sites for the maintenance of peace and order and for the strict enforcement of the stay at home rules. The real purpose of the Enhanced Community Quarantine which we have been doing in almost one month now would be put to waste if we continue to allow people to violate home quarantine rules especially social distancing, he added. Eleazar also urged the public to immediately report to the JTF Covid Shield any quarantine protocol violations that they would observe in their barangays through the following hotlines: 0998-849-0013 for Smart users and 0917-538-2495 for Globe users. The JTF CoViD Shield can also be reached through its email address: ncovmonitoring@gmail.com. He urged local government units to either innovate or follow the good practices being implemented by other local officials such as mobile palengke to avoid convergence of their constituents in the public markets. (Third Anne Peralta-Malonzo/SunStar Philippines) Organize the effort Re: Support our leaders, Your Turn, Thursday: I couldnt agree more with the letter writer. The trouble is identifying our leaders and who is actually in charge. President Donald Trump claims its the states responsibility, and governors claim its a federal responsibility. For certain, we are operating with more of a revolving door philosophy at the national level: Here today, gone tomorrow. A more stable, organized environment along with meaningful, daily briefings similar to those by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff would help. John Kepler History repeated Capt. Brett Crozier was the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt but was relieved of his command by now former acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly. Croziers infraction? He made us aware that COVID-19 was spreading on his ship and the higher-ups in the chain of command were dragging their feet responding to the problem. Croziers case reminds me of what happened nearly 100 years ago when Gen. Billy Mitchell warned of the need to build a strong air force. Mitchell was reduced in rank to colonel and faced court-martial for insubordination. Some might compare Crozier to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was fired by President Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. I dont buy that comparison. Crozier was doing his best to protect the men and women under his command. MacArthurs defiance of authority could have led to war with China and World War III. Mitchell was vindicated. After his retirement, he was promoted back to general. The B-25s that bombed Japan in 1942 were named Mitchell Bombers in his honor. Crozier stands a much better chance of being remembered for his candor than former acting secretary of the Navy whats-his-name for firing someone who just wanted to protect his sailors. David H. Plylar On ExpressNews.com: Esper defends firing of Navy ship captain over virus warning DAR ES SALAAM Tanzania has on Monday April 13, confirmed 14 new cases that have tested positive for the Covid -19 infection, bringing the total number to 46 cases. In a televised address on Monday morning, health minister Ummy Mwalimu, said the patients tested positive were in Dar es Salaam and Arusha. She further said that all the patients were receiving treatment at designated hospitals. she however didnt mention their ages as the case has been in the recent past The number now stands at 46 with nine cases in Zanzibar and the other 37 on mainland. The minister further urged Tanzanians to observe the directives by the health ministry such as social distancing and to avoid unnecessary congregation. On Friday Tanzania recorded two deaths bringing the number of those who have succumbed to the virus to three. On Easter Sunday, Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority announced a suspension of all international passenger flights due to the coronavirus pandemic. Cargo flights are exempt from the suspension, but crew members will be quarantined at Tanzania government facilities during their stay, the TCAA said. President John Magufuli in a televised announced that the country will not be closing its borders due to humanitarian concerns, as the closure would impact land-locked countries in the region dependent on its ports. Elsewhere in East Africa Uganda on Easter reported its 54 case, Rwandas stands at 120, whereas Kenya has 197 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Related Continue Reading A police constable is battling for life after an auto-rickshaw that he had seized for violating the lockdown toppled in northern Bengaluru on Sunday. K V Nagesh, posted at the Peenya police station, had stopped the auto while manning a checkpoint at 8th Mile, Tumakuru Road. The auto driver failed to produce a curfew pass, and Nagesh seized the auto. He sent the driver away and got at the wheel of the auto. Nagesh lost control of the auto while driving to a parking lot nearby, and it toppled. He suffered serious head injuries. He was taken to a private hospital in Nagasandra where he has been put on a ventilator. Bommai visits hospital Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai and Bengaluru Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao visited the hospital on Sunday evening and spoke to doctors and Nagesh's family. "He has suffered a serious head injury and is on a ventilator. Doctors are doing their best, said Bommai. "The accident occurred when he was on duty. He has two small children. We pray for his speedy recovery." N Shashikumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North), said Nagesh's condition was critical. The constable had joined the Peenya police station three years ago. Following the lockdown, he was posted at a checkpoint near 8th Mile. Nagesh hails from Koratagere, Tumakuru district, and lives in Bagalagunte. Our Midland Mayor, Patrick Payton, has recurrently used the story of Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl to illustrate how our power and control over events is simply based on how we react. Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: its the last of human freedoms -- to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way, Payton said in a forum. Between stimulus and your response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. When I first heard these words from our mayor, I wondered how an individual, treated so inhumanely, can still have a grip on their humanity. What does that person look like? How do they carry themselves? How do they treat people or total strangers? Are there Viktor Frankls among us? It turns out, there are. I recently met a Viktor Frankl. His name is Bawi Cung pronounced boy-chung the father of three who was attacked in a local Sams Club alongside his children on March 14, the date which commemorates the start of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Texas. Deemed a hate crime by government officials, the suspect believed the Burmese family was Chinese and that the Cungs were spreading the virus to the community despite the well-known fact that this virus attacks without prejudice or regard to race or ethnicity. On April 1, my wife and I went to give Cung a check from a GoFundMe fundraiser I had set up by the request of his childrens teacher, who was also there, and we were met by District Attorney Laura Nodolf, who was there to guide him legally. When the four of us arrived, he walked outside with a big grin, which concurrently took me by surprise and eased me. We caught our natural impulse to shake hands or embrace, tapping elbows in effort to be conscious of our current state of social distancing. Cung is a well-fit man of average height, with caramel-colored skin and a short-cropped haircut. The fresh scar across his cheek had barely begun to blend into his natural skin tone. He invited us into his home, and we all took seats inside the living room, keeping as much distance as possible. We had learned more of the family, and Cung, who immigrated to America about five years ago. Since the beginning of his arrival, he had worked as a stocker for Walmart before attending a program to become a certified commercial truck driver, hoping to find employment in the oil industry. I learned about his children. The older two, who attend a local elementary school, are highly intelligent and speak English fluently. The youngest, a toddler, is an adorable burst of energy. Through these personal conversations, I learned more about the man, with a similar character to Frankls, who chose to react based on his principles and his faith. As Nodolf walked him through the process, he would interject with a question or comment. He said it hurt to know his children were severely injured that he himself could take any injury, but to see his own child with the most vicious of scars hurt. One child was sliced from the right side of his eye, through his ear, ending two inches passed it. The other received a wound in his lower back. As a result, he said that he struggled early-on with the desire to seek revenge, while also knowing his faith would expect differently. Nodolf agreed that he was doing the right thing by not retaliating. After that comment he asked questions, hoping to understand the man who committed such an act. He said he thought it was a terrible way for a young person to lose their freedom. He said he never thought this would happen in America. He had left Burma for freedom of choice and safety. To address his question as to the why this happened to his children, I could only reference Scripture, as we both are followers of Jesus Christ. I told him my son has autism and when I was confronted with the why question, John 9:1-12 was my comfort. As I was finishing the Scripture, he completed the lines before I could utter them. To display the glory of God, he said with a grin stretched across his face. That glory has begun its display with the generosity of our local community and nation with the GoFundMe. It has also been displayed by Asian-American associations, which have donated medical supplies to their local hospitals. After an hour and a half of discussion, I stayed to assist with paperwork for the victims compensation. As he described how his son received his wound, I could see how upset he was. He didnt cry or shake but he grabbed a bottle of water and took long gulps after describing what he witnessed. Weeks before, I had asked a friend, Jessica McClure, if she had words to share with him. McClure was the worlds first 24-hour news story in the world: the Midland toddler who had fallen down a water well in 1987, was unable to be retrieved for 56 hours. She had many years of surgeries and the scars for proof. I shared her story with Cung and showed some pictures. The advice she had wanted to share was: Lean into God and their families and trust that all will work out as it should. She added that he and his children should never let the scars be an embarrassment to themselves. They proved they fought, and they lived, McClure said. Another one of his now-signature grins stretched across his face, and he immediately asked me to send her a message. Thank you for your words and God Bless you! I typed on the keyboard and sent. She replied immediately, Thats sweet to hear and thank you. As we departed, he thanked me for my help, though I was still hoping that he understood this is not how we treat our neighbors here in Midland. We are a people of faith who try our best to live out that faith perhaps imperfectly, but not without a lot of effort. I now hope if am ever confronted by a circumstance similar to Viktor Frankls or Bawi Cungs, I hope I can carry myself with the same amount of grace and become a better version of myself as I have witnessed with this first-hand example. TEHRAN,Iran, April 13 Trend: Iran continues to implement its smart social distancing plan step by step, as businesses resume work following health precautions, said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Trend reports citing IRNA. He said the smart social distancing plan has been developed upon the Iranian lifestyle and according to the World Health Organization's instructions. "The plan was the result of the National Headquarters to Fight Coronavirus to control the disease and it continues to be implemented," he said. He urged the citizens to avoid unnecessary travels, public gatherings. "The Health Ministry and Vice Presidency for Science and Technology are tasked to boost and support knowledge-based companies and medical science universities to produce and test possible vaccine against the coronavirus," he said. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. Iran is one of the countries heavily affected by the rapidly-spreading coronavirus. The country continues to apply strict measures to contain the further spread. Reportedly, the disease was brought to Iran by a businessman from Iran's Qom city, who went on a business trip to China, despite official warnings. The man died later from the disease. The Islamic Republic only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on Feb. 19. HALIFAXIf we werent in the throes of a global coronavirus pandemic, Glen Creaser, a fourth year student at Queens University, would be chipping away at his final papers at Stauffer Library, dipping into Kingstons bars with his buddies, and soaking in the last days of his undergraduate degree. Instead, the Nova Scotia native has been left in the lurch. Like countless other university students, hes trying to navigate a dwindling summer job market while figuring out how, exactly, hell safely move into a new house at the end of the month. Pretty well everything to do with this move is up in the air and itll be full of paranoia, Creaser said. The house will be filled with six people, all from different places, who have come into contact with different things. Even though its a month away, the stress is most definitely weighing heavily. Isabelle Roach, a fourth-year student at the University of Kings College in Halifax, is in the same boat. Roach says that even though shes subletting from a friend come May 1, shes absolutely worried about the health risks. Im confident in her being a clean and healthy person, but I cant trust anything in all this. I dont know who shes been in contact with, I dont know who her roommates have been in contact with therell definitely be some deep-cleaning happening before I settle in, Roach said. Typically scaled to the school year, most one-year student leases start and end on May 1. Usually, cleaning up after past tenants isnt an issue: You give the washroom a scrub, mop the floors, spray down the fridge and celebrate your new-found cleanliness with a beer on the porch. But times have changed. With the threat of COVID-19 seemingly looming on every door knob, banister and cupboard, students are stressed and, maybe rightfully so. When asked about how long COVID-19 could viably live on household surfaces, Dr. Jeff Kwong, an epidemiologist and Professor at the University of Toronto, cited a study from March, which found that COVID-19 can exist on certain surfaces (plastic and stainless steel, for example) for up to three days. On cardboard boxes ever-present on moving day there was no trace of the virus after 24 hours, and on copper, after around four hours. Importantly, the authors note that the virus, and its viability, gets considerably weaker as time progresses. Perhaps more worrying for students who are on the move is the reported presence of silent spreaders. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. suggested last week that nearly 25 per cent of COVID-19 carriers could be asymptomatic meaning that, without a test, these people wouldnt necessarily know theyre carrying the virus, or that they simply have very mild symptoms. One related study, published last month, found that 18 per cent of the passengers who tested positive for COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were asymptomatic. As a result, students are wondering how theyll be able to totally disinfect their new homes, and if the past tenants were unwitting, asymptomatic virus carriers. My plan, if its an option, is to let the house stand with nobody living in my space for a few days before moving in, since I certainly do not trust myself to wipe down every single inch of the room, said Creaser. Harry Fine, a paralegal in the Toronto area, says that its the new tenants responsibility to clean and disinfect the space. If its a sublet, approved by the landlord for a fixed period of time, the sublessee needs to make sure they clean the place thoroughly In a sublet, the landlord (owner) keeps all his or her obligations. The subtenant takes on the identity of the tenant. Fine says that landlord isnt responsible for cleaning the subtenants unit for cleanliness and health, but that the landlord is required to clean common spaces like entryways and shared laundry rooms. The flip side of the fear around moving is that some students cant find a subletter and have to absorb the costs of an empty room for months, compounding the financial misery of losing a summer job. Zoey Richards, a third-year student at McGill University in Montreal, was studying abroad in Bogota, Colombia, until she fled to be with her parents in Italy on March 19. After being forced to spend thousands on a plane ticket out of Colombia, Richards said her subletter, who had planned on arriving from France, cancelled over travel restrictions and health fears. Richards says her landlord hasnt said anything about rent relief and since half the city has left, there are very few potential subletters looking. Shes been in touch with McGill about a travel bursary, but says everything is still up in the air. Her roommates are still in Montreal and are all self-isolating. But as the end of their lease approaches, Richards says theyre all pretty stressed about how theyll move their stuff into the new apartment. Everything is closed, and the new apartments too far to carry everything over on foot. Right now their options are renting a car or U-Haul, but those are both expensive and everyones stressed about money. Read more about: USS Theodore Roosevelt Jackie Hart/US Navy Senior officers aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier reeling from a coronavirus outbreak offered to sign a revealing letter about the dire situation, only to be denied by the ship's commander, Capt. Brett Crozier. Crozier feared for their careers and denied their request, according to The New York Times. Crozier was eventually fired for sending the letter by the Navy's top official, who berated him to his former crew in controversial remarks that led to the official's resignation. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Senior officers aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier reeling from a coronavirus outbreak offered to sign a revealing letter about the dire situation, only to be denied by the ship's commander, Capt. Brett Crozier. Crozier, who has since been relieved of command for sending the four-page letter out to over 20 recipients, was asked by senior officers on the ship to sign the letter, according to a New York Times report published Sunday. Crozier reportedly feared for their careers and denied their request. In his letter, which was first obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle, Crozier urged Navy colleagues to implement a "political solution" and take "immediate and decisive action" as the ship dealt with a coronavirus outbreak. Crozier is in quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus. Over 580 of the USS Theodore Roosevelt's crew of 4,800 tested positive as of Sunday, according to the Navy. Nearly 4,000 of the crew members have since evacuated the ship into Guam, where many of them are under quarantine in hotels. The captain was eventually fired on April 2 by then-acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly. According to Modly, Crozier violated military protocols, circumventing the chain of command by sending the letter to a group of people. Modly said that while he did not know how the letter got to the media, there was a "proper way" for Crozier to handle his concerns. Story continues "If he didn't think ... that if he didn't think that information wasn't going to get out into the public, in this information age that we live in, then he was either A: too naive, or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this," Modly said of Crozier. "The alternative is that he did this on purpose." Modly has since apologized for his remarks and resigned on April 7. Read the original article on Business Insider Brenna Nan Schneider of 99 Degrees shows off an isolation gown being manufactured by her activewear company at Monday's COVID-19 update. Baker Announces $10M Investment for Manufacturers Pivoting to Protective Gear BOSTON Brenna Nan Schneider of 99 Degrees flipped a shapeless blue gown around on Monday at the governor's daily COVID-19 update. This nondescript item and materials similar to it are now vital to health-care centers across the state because of the highly contagious novel coronavirus. The simple gown also marked a pivot for manufacturers in Massachusetts as a "Manufacturing Emergency Response Team" helps businesses retool to produce much-needed personal protective gear. "Understand that very little PPE is made in the US," said Schneider, founder and CEO of the performance activewear company. "We've learned a new industry involving hospital needs, FDA regulations, and a supply chain by drinking from a fire hose." Schneider's company employs 150 in Lawrence in designing and producing a range of wearable products including technology applications. When she first learned of COVID-19, the first reaction was fear, and making contingency plans to address needs of the company, its employees, and its suppliers and customers. "And then, almost immediately, we learned that first-responders in the medical community had an urgent need for critical personal protective equipment, also known as PPE," she said. "I felt a responsibility to put our manufacturing model to work." 99 Degrees first worked with the state's emergency team on making masks. Then with MERT on other critical needs. Now it's manufacturing one million, level one isolation gowns for the medical community. "They provided focus and direction to pursue the PPE that we could best make and scale," Schneider said. "And they provided credit clarity and rigor, to ensure that we weren't building just to make something, but to make FDA-compliant products that protects." Scheider said the collaboration with MERT was critical in determining what the company could make and how it could do it, including developing new procedures and training to ensure the safety of its workers. "The collaboration, even among competitors, has been one of the most inspiring and authentic parts of this chance. The state not only called on its manufacturers to respond in a time of need, but has also shown commitment to supporting us," she said. Gov. Charlie Baker announced that more than $10 million in funding is being invested in the initiative to produce personal protective equipment and other materials and equipment including ventilators, sanitizers and thermometers. The COVID-19 outbreak has been devastating for the state economy, he said, and especially for small businesses that have had to temporarily shut their doors or operate under difficult social distancing guidelines. "We are blown away with the resiliency imagination and creativity of many of our entrepreneurs," he said. "There's incredible work going on behind the scenes in our local businesses and companies, and through some unique partnerships, we've created and funded a program to assist local manufacturers, so that they can make PPE, even if it's not in their business model." MERT includes representatives from MassTech Collaborative, Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its Lincoln Labs, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and other industry partners. MassTech and Advanced Functional Fabrics of America will administer $5.6 million in funds through the existing Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Institute program. Another $4 million has been made available through the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, with an additional $1 million for workforce training contributed by the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development and the Commonwealth Corporation through the existing Workforce Training Fund Program. "Some companies are already making face shields, test swabs and medical gowns," the governor said. "FormLabs in Somerville is 3D printing diagnostic swabs, Merrow [Manufacturing] in Fall Fall River is making gowns they're one of the first companies to reach out to us. LovePop here in Boston is going from making greeting cards to face shields, gowns, coveralls, hoods, and shoe coverings. The New Balance factory in Lawrence is working to make shoe coverings, gowns and masks." Also at the update, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders clarified the point system for crisis standards of care announced last week. "It's important to reiterate that these guidelines are voluntary," she said. "And at their core is to mitigate against unconscious bias in making critical medical decisions during a pandemic or crisis where there are scant medical resources." Some hospitals already have standards, she said, but others did not so these guidelines were promulgated to provide them with templates. The guidelines call out the factors that should not be used include race, gender, immigration status, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation or disabilities. "They are irrelevant. And not to be considered by providers, making difficult decisions, if that time comes," Sudders said. "We must work to mitigate these long-standing institutional barriers in order to improve equitable access to care and treatment." The state currently has about half of its available beds occupied, although this number varies from region to region. The current number of patients the step down centers at Boston Hope is about 36 and at the DCU in Worcester, about 10. Officials have been preparing for a predicted surge in patients over the next couple weeks that could range from 47,000 to 172,000 positive cases and 2,500 deaths. The current count is 26,867 confirmed cases (with the caveat that an unknown number may be infected but not tested) and 844 deaths from complications of COVID-19. "I would remind everyone we are seeing 2,500 new confirmed cases a day, so we won't know the full impact of whether individuals are hospitalized until the next seven and 10 days," Sudders said. "So this is just the eye of the storm." More than 3,600 deaths nationwide have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks. The latest count of at least 3,621 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago, according go the Associated Press, which has kept its own count because the federal government has not been releasing its own tally. But the true toll among the 1 million mostly frail and elderly people who live in such facilities is likely much higher, experts say, because most state counts don't include those who died without ever being tested for COVID-19. Outbreaks in just the past few weeks have included one at a nursing home in suburban Richmond, Virginia, that has killed 42 and infected more than 100. More than 3,600 deaths nationwide have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks. A patient at the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside, California, is evacuated on April 8 Wheelchairs are stacked at the curb outside PruittHealth Grandview nursing home where at least 10 patients who were previously tested presumptive positive for COVID-19 have passed away on Wednesday, in Athens, Georgia Another outbreak occurred at a nursing home in central Indiana that has killed 24 and infected 16. A third took place at a veterans home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, that has killed 38, infected 88 and prompted a federal investigation. This comes weeks after an outbreak at a nursing home in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland that has so far claimed 43 lives. And those are just the outbreaks we know about. Most states provide only total numbers of nursing home deaths and don't give details of specific outbreaks. Notable among them is the nation's leader, New York, which accounts for 1,880 nursing home deaths out of about 96,000 total residents but has so far declined to detail specific outbreaks, citing privacy concerns. Experts say nursing home deaths may keep climbing because of chronic staffing shortages that have been made worse by the coronavirus crisis, a shortage of protective supplies and a continued lack of available testing. And the deaths have skyrocketed despite steps taken by the federal government in mid-March to bar visitors, cease all group activities, and require that every worker be screened for fever or respiratory symptoms at every shift. But an AP report earlier this month found that infections were continuing to find their way into nursing homes because such screenings didn't catch people who were infected but asymptomatic. There are more 561,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States with more than 22,000 deaths A sign is displayed at the Bethany Pointe Health Campus on Saturday in Anderson, Indiana, where multiple residents at the nursing home have died from COVID-19 A refrigeration truck sits outside of the Holyoke Soldiers home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where an outbreak has killed 38, infected 88 and prompted a federal investigation Several large outbreaks were blamed on such spreaders, including infected health workers who worked at several different nursing home facilities. This past week, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that regulates nursing homes issued recommendations urging nursing homes to use separate staffing teams for residents, and to designate separate facilities within nursing homes to keep COVID-19 positive residents away from those who have tested negative. Dr Deborah Birx, who leads the White House coronavirus response, suggested this past week that as more COVID-19 tests become available, nursing homes should be a top priority. 'We need to really ensure that nursing homes have sentinel surveillance. And what do I mean by that? That we're actively testing in nursing homes, both the residents and the workers, at all times,' Birx said. News of the surge comes just days after NBC reveled that at least 2,489 care homes across the US have confirmed cases of coronavirus, a 522 per cent increase from a federal 'estimate' released just 12 days ago - meaning that there has either been a recent explosion in cases or a drastic underestimation by the US government. The NBC report was the first to confirm that the federal government is not keeping a record of the total number of nursing home deaths. The lack of cohesive data has prompted outcry from experts, given that elderly people much more likely to be impacted by COVID-19, and mass deaths can occur at care homes if the virus infiltrates the facilities. 'It's impossible to fight and contain this virus if we don't know where it's located. You could see where it could be headed next,' David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, told NBC. Medics transport a patient from an ambulance into Life Care Center of Kirkland, the long-term care facility linked to confirmed coronavirus cases in Washington state Many nursing homes across the country ramped up their health and safety measures after an outbreak at Washington state's Life Care Center of Kirkland back in February. A resident is pictured in the Kirkland facility back in February The shocking report about the lack of federal government data follows separate revelations out of New York, where paramedics have revealed they have not been testing people for coronavirus if they die at home or on the street. It suggests that the soaring death toll from the virus could be much higher than currently reported. Of the 36 states that did unveil their figures, New York was the most affected. UNDER REPORTING OF DEATHS AND A LACK OF CLEAR DATA The fact that the federal government is not keeping a record of the total number of nursing home deaths has sparked outrage, but there are other examples where data is not being cohesively obtained by authorities. A disturbing new report out of New York asserts that bodies being recovered from homes and streets are not being included in the coronavirus death count - even if the deceased person was suffering from symptoms of the virus. Data from the NYC fire department shows that 1,125 people died in their homes or on the street in the first five days of April alone It suggests that the soaring death toll from the virus could be much higher than currently reported This has alarmed researchers who say that obtaining accurate data is crucial in order to gain an proper understanding of COVID-19, which is needed to help fight the virus in the coming months. Advertisement A total of 452 nursing homes across New York state have recorded residents with COVID-19. Meanwhile, Illinois rank second with 213 separate nursing homes battling coronavirus, while Texas came in third with 195 affected care homes. Numbers were far lower in more rural states. Wyoming and Montana only have one infected nursing home each. States that did not reveal their data include Florida, Michigan and Ohio - which have all been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Many nursing homes across the country ramped up their health and safety measures after an outbreak at Washington state's Life Care Center of Kirkland back in February. The nursing home was the original epicenter of the COVID-19 virus in the US after dozens of residents became infected back in mid-February. A total of 37 people connected to the Life Care Center of Kirkland have died from COVID-19 in the past two months. 'For better or worse, we got to sound the alarm for other nursing homes across the state and across the country,' nursing home spokesperson Tim Killian recently stated. . In early April, the Life Care Center of Kirkland was fine $611,325 for 'inadequate care'. Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases throughout the US continues to skyrocket. As of Sunday evening, more than 561,000 Americans have tested positive for the contagious virus. Boris Johnson tested negative for coronavirus before he was released from hospital, Downing Street confirmed today, as the Prime Minister starts his road to recovery at his Chequers country estate. Number 10 said the PM spoke to Dominic Raab 'over the course of the weekend' with the First Secretary of State continuing to deputise for Mr Johnson. The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said at lunchtime that Mr Johnson is 'not immediately returning to work' and that he will be 'guided by the advice of his doctors'. Mr Johnson was today spotted walking in the grounds of Chequers with his partner Carrie Symonds and pet dog Dilyn. The Cabinet is divided on when the premier should return to work given that he is under strict doctors' orders to rest at his grace and favour home in Buckinghamshire. Some senior ministers are already said to be pushing for him to be involved in the decision - expected on Thursday - on whether the UK's lockdown will be extended. An extension of the social distancing restrictions is viewed as a formality but the duration is still up for discussion with some adamant it must be Mr Johnson's decision. However, medical experts have warned the PM must not return to work too soon or he could risk a relapse. Some MPs have expressed concerns about asking someone who has only just come out of intensive care to make major decisions, insisting he must be 'firing on all cylinders' when he does come back. The updates on the PM's condition came amid warnings that the UK's GDP could crash by up to 30 per cent in the current quarter, potentially costing millions of jobs, because of coronavirus disruption. The decision on whether to lift lockdown restrictions in Britain is likely to draw heavily on the situation in Italy and Spain which appear to be past the peaks of their outbreaks and are tentatively starting to loosen their lockdowns. Boris Johnson, pictured delivering his Easter message yesterday after he was released from hospital, is now recovering at his Chequers country estate Mr Johnson is under strict doctors' orders to rest at the PM's grace and favour Buckinghamshire home Boris's long road to recovery? New study shows 70 per cent of intensive care patients suffer long-term health problems Most patients admitted to intensive care suffer long-term physical and mental health problems, scientists have claimed in a new study, as Boris Johnson begins his long road to recovery from coronavirus. Seven in ten ICU survivors end up with post intensive care syndrome, which can include fatigue, frailty, anxiety or difficulty holding a conversation, a Norwegian study found. Researchers said their findings are likely to apply to critically-ill COVID-19 patients. Mr Johnson's father Stanley revealed his son was so seriously ill at one point he 'almost took one for the team' - athough Downing Street has declined to say how seriously ill the Prime Minister was during his time in intensive care. But it comes amid fears the PM is preparing to rush back to work before he is fully fit - and as one senior Tory MP questioned the wisdom of involving him in key decisions so soon after his ICU battle. Other coronavirus sufferers in the UK have also revealed how the crippling illness left them weak, breathless and coughing even long after they had officially 'recovered'. Getting over the virus takes more than just waiting for the infection to heal, and people emerging from their ordeals say it left them totally beaten. The Prime Minister was moved from an intensive care unit back to a ward on Thursday night last week. He then spent two-and-a-half more days at St Thomas' Hospital in central London before he was allowed to leave yesterday. Downing Street confirmed he tested negative before he was released and went to his Chequers country estate to continue his recovery. The World Health Organization says a coronavirus patient can be discharged after two negative results taken 24 hours apart. Scientists say patients can recover as soon as their antibodies start to successfully fight the life-threatening infection, regardless of how ill they were. Antibodies are substances made by the immune system in response to an infection, and eventually destroy an invading pathogen. How well people recover from COVID-19 - a coronavirus that is closely related to the bug behind SARS - is not well understood yet. With many viral illnesses, such as measles, the body builds up immunity after it has been infected with them once, and this may last for a lifetime. Immunity means the body remembers how to fight a virus so well that it can destroy it before symptoms begin if someone catches the bug. Scientists are still not certain that people will develop total immunity to SARS-Cov-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, after they have had it. But the overwhelming belief is that people will not catch it twice, prompting hope of using antibody tests to work out who is immune. The fact that so few people appear to have fallen ill a second time appears to prove people only get ill once. Tests on monkeys have also backed the theory. Fears have been raised that people can be struck down twice after reports in China, South Korea and Japan of patients being reinfected. Some experts believe this was down to unreliable tests, while others say similar coronaviruses induce immunity for around three months. The coronavirus appears to be slow-mutating and only to have developed into a few strains since it first jumped to humans. On the flipside, the flu mutates so fast that human immune systems cannot keep up, meaning people need a new vaccine every winter. Advertisement The government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) will weigh up data relating to the lockdown and the spread of the disease in the coming days. A decision on extending the UK's restrictions is then due to be taken by Thursday this week - likely at a COBRA meeting - with the current measures now having been in place for almost three weeks. The lockdown has hobbled the UK economy and that is why some ministers believe it must be Mr Johnson who signs off on what happens next by dialling into discussions later on this week. One Cabinet source told The Telegraph: 'The prime minister has to take that decision. 'Any lockdown will have huge implications, and the PM will be responsible for it, so he's got to be the one taking that decision.' However, not everyone in the Cabinet agrees. Some ministers are of the view that First Secretary of State Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Mr Johnson, can take the decision without involving the PM. A source said: 'I don't think the Cabinet wants to be pulling the prime minister out of his recovery and risking him getting worse.' Downing Street said today that Mr Johnson is focusing on his recovery as the PM's spokesman also confirmed reports that the premier had tested negative for the deadly disease before he was released from hospital. Number 10 described the picturesque Chequers countryside retreat as a 'suitable place for the Prime Minister to continue his recovery'. Mr Johnson is not currently receiving his daily ministerial red box containing briefing papers from officials as Mr Raab continues to run the country. A new study has shown the majority of patients admitted to intensive care suffer long-term physical and mental health problems. Research found that seven in 10 ICU survivors end up with intensive care syndrome which can include fatigue, frailty, anxiety or difficulty holding a conversation. The findings, based on 1,300 people, are the first from an ongoing five-year study across hospitals in the Netherlands. Scientists believe the findings are likely to apply to critically ill coronavirus patients. A senior Tory MP questioned the wisdom of the PM potentially being involved in big decisions so soon after his ICU battle. The MP told MailOnline: 'There is a concern about that and I think that he has got to listen to medical advice. 'But subject to him listening to that medical advice I am pretty sure he will want to be the one to make that decision. 'Every report I have read from survivors indicates that it knocks them about tremendously so he does have to watch his own health.' The MP added: 'Irrespective of what the medics say he will probably want to be involved in that decision and to give the sign off on it. 'I think he understands the buck stops with him.' The World Health Organization says a coronavirus patient can be discharged after two negative results taken 24 hours apart. Scientists say patients can recover as soon as their antibodies start to successfully fight the life-threatening infection, regardless of how ill they were. Antibodies are substances made by the immune system in response to an infection, and eventually destroy an invading pathogen. Some ministers believe Dominic Raab, pictured in Whitehall today, can make the decision on extending lockdown and that Mr Johnson should focus on resting Survivors reveal how the crippling illness left them breathless and weak for weeks after recovery Coronavirus sufferers in the UK have revealed how the crippling illness left them weak, breathless and coughing even after they had recovered. More than 84,000 people have been officially diagnosed with the infection since Britain's outbreak began in February - 10,612 of them have died but many more have recovered. Getting over the virus takes more than just waiting for the infection to heal, however, and people emerging from their ordeals say it left them totally beaten. Dani Schuchman, a 40-year-old cyclist, said he no longer has the energy to go out on his bike and can only walk around 2.5miles at a time. Primary school teacher Brian Mephin, said in a breathless video he was 'wiped out' and even struggled to walk up the stairs after he was discharged from hospital. And a Manchester man known only as Andrew admitted he has been 'left breathless' after recovering from the illness. Recovering from the virus also takes a psychological toll on those who become seriously ill. Pregnant mother-of-three Karen Mannering said being hospitalised with COVID-19 was her 'darkest hours'. Advertisement Meanwhile, Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke told MailOnline those demanding Mr Johnson set a timetable for coming back needed to 'grow up' as he said the PM needs to be 'firing on all cylinders' before returning full time. 'I am just concerned that the PM takes the time he needs to recover,' he said. 'At the end of the day we now know he has been very, very seriously ill. He said himself it could have gone one way or the other. 'He doesn't need to rush back. He has got the entire support of the country behind him. People recognise how serious it was, how hard he was working.' The Conservative Party vice-chairman added that Mr Johnson should be taking it easy for 'at least a couple of weeks'. 'I think politicians who say 'what's going on' almost pushing the pressure for him to come back need to grow up a bit because the public want him to make a full recovery,' Mr Shelbrooke added. 'I don't want to see him rush back into things. I want to make sure he's OK.' Pressure is mounting on the government to lift at least some of the social distancing restrictions after it was reported that Mr Sunak is estimating the lockdown will have a massive impact on the economy. Deliveries of PPE from China 'faulty and wrongly labelled' Delivering lifesaving protective gear to frontline health staff has become 'hand to mouth', an NHS leader has revealed. The Government is airlifting in crates from China on a daily basis but some are being removed from planes before take-off by officials who want to test them. Other boxes are reaching the UK only for NHS officials to discover that they have been wrongly labelled. Rather than containing much needed protective gowns, they are filled with masks. Even worse, much of the kit from China the world's main supplier is unusable because it fails UK safety checks. The astonishing revelations come from Chris Hopson of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, ambulance services and mental health trusts. He said: 'It's all been a bit hand to mouth. 'The heart of the problem is that getting that stock that was ordered weeks ago from China is proving somewhat erratic.' He said China was the only country with access to the right materials and manufacturing capacity to produce protective equipment. More than 30 NHS staff are believed to have died from coronavirus and campaigners say some of the deaths were a direct result of a lack of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Advertisement The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) think-tank last week suggested 25 per cent of the UK economy could be lost by the summer due to the current controls. According to the Times, Mr Sunak has told colleagues the consequences could be even worse with GDP falling by a third in the second quarter. Experts have said it is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty how quickly the PM could make a full recovery. Duncan Young, professor of intensive care medicine at Oxford University, told The Times: 'No one knows how long it takes to fully recover from Covid-19 infections because as yet it has not been studied.' Meanwhile, Julian Tang, Honorary Associate Professor at the Department of Respiratory Sciences at the University of Leicester, said the speed of Mr Johnson's recovery would be largely dictated by his overall health. The PM was effectively 'stepped down' from ICU and then allowed to go to Chequers but there are fears a lack of rest could result in him having to be 'stepped up' again. Dr Tang said: 'There have been patients who later had to be stepped back up to intensive care again.' Mr Johnson said in a video statement released after he left hospital yesterday that the NHS 'has saved my life, no question'. The PM said he believed 'things could have gone either way' for him as he praised the nurses and doctors who treated him. 'We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country,' he said of the nation's ongoing coronavirus battle. 'It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.' Europe goes back to work: Millions of Spaniards are allowed to resume their jobs after industrial lockdown is lifted Europe is beginning its return to work today as factories and construction sites re-open in Spain while Italy takes its first steps towards easing the lockdown. Police were handing out masks on Spanish metro trains today as some 'non-essential' workers were allowed to resume their activities after a two-week ban. Italy will allow bookshops, stationery shops and stores selling children's clothes to re-open tomorrow in the first loosening of Europe's longest lockdown, although most restrictions have been extended until May. Meanwhile in Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday, allowing some parents to return to work. Passengers keep their distance riding the metro in Madrid as non-essential workers are allowed back to work today Spain is lifting its ban on non-essential business despite concerns from some regional leaders and trade unions. The ban was stricter than in Britain, where people can still go to work if they cannot work from home during the lockdown. The people returning today include sanitary, security and telecommunications workers, customs officials and those involved in gas and electricity supplies. They and their companies will have to adhere to strict regulations to make sure they don't get infected by the virus. Non-essential workers had been sent home on March 30 but the Spanish government has not extended the measure despite a surge in new deaths yesterday. Another 619 deaths were announced on Sunday, 109 more than on Saturday, putting an end to three days of declining deaths. It brought the country's coronavirus death toll to 16,972, the third-highest in the world after the United States and Italy. NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio -- It seems everyone is jumping onto a web-based video conferencing tool called Zoom. Several area chambers of commerce, all under the umbrella of Power of More (POM), got busy and hosted their very first Zoom networking conference April 9. The tool, according to the companys information, defines Zoom as a product in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat and webinars across mobile devices, desktops, telephones and room systems. The tool has a free version; it can be upgraded with additional features for a fee. The free program, however, seems to be working well. The key limitations, according to the company, are a maximum of 40 minutes for a meeting and a maximum of 50 conference attendees -- both fitting the bill for a lot of smaller businesses. In essence, the POM session was not much different than a regular, in-person networking meeting, even though the coronavirus stay-at-home directive from Gov. Mike DeWine is still in force. About 25 members attended, and all introduced themselves and their businesses. An onscreen chat session was included for comments during the meeting, and some were looking very comfortable as they sipped wine. The surprise was how upbeat and comfortable everyone seemed to be -- even to the extent of making some quite humorous remarks. One attendee said he and his wife had stocked up with about three weeks worth of food in advance of the statewide community shut down. But the pitfall was they ate it all within one week -- clearly a built-in hazard of being so close to a refrigerator night and day. Mark Boepple, vice president of POM and owner of Next New Customer Marketing Agency in Westlake, said the easy-to-use teleconferencing tool is a case in point of the best defense is a good offense. He noted that businesses today, especially now, are vigorously using a combination of many possible communications methods in addition to Zoom -- such as LinkedIn, email, video and text messages -- to reach out and stay in touch with customers and colleagues. When asked for his view on what the members of POM think of what will happen to local businesses as the COVID-19 shutdown continues, Boepple expressed passionate optimism. This is America, he said. We are going to come out of this stronger, and the business community, including the members of POM, will be leading the way to restart the economy. There are people out there who are worried, and we will all look back and say it was tough. But we have faith in our country and ourselves, and we will do what it takes to make it happen. POM defines its organization as an award-winning association of chambers of commerce working together to help you build your business on Clevelands west side and beyond. Though the POM headquarters is in North Olmsted, the group includes the following area chambers: West Shore Chamber of Commerce (Westlake, Bay Village); North Ridgeville Chamber of Commerce; Parma Area Chamber of Commerce; North Olmsted Chamber of Commerce; Olmsted Chamber of Commerce; North Coast Chamber of Commerce (Avon, Avon Lake, Sheffield, Sheffield Lake); Fairview Park Chamber of Commerce; Cuyahoga Valley Chamber of Commerce; Berea Chamber of Commerce; and Oberlin Business Partnership. Boepple said POM, launched in 2010, welcomes businesses that want to grow and serve the communities. For more information, visit https://www.powerofmorechambers.org/ or contact Executive Director John Sobolewski at contact@powerofmorechambers.org. Read more from the West Shore Sun. UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has tested negative for coronavirus before being discharged from hospital on Sunday, a government spokesman has said. He said Johnson was continuing his recovery at Chequers, his official country residence. Asked why he was there rather than his primary residence of No 10, the spokesman said it was considered to be a suitable place. The prime minister had spoken to Dominic Raab, who is deputising for him, over the weekend. The PM is focusing on his recovery and not currently carrying out government work, the spokesman added. According to BBC, separately, the government has denied that Cabinet minister Michael Goves daughter being tested for coronavirus was an example of double standards, after controversy about a lack of testing for frontline staff. The spokesman said the test was carried out on the advice of the chief medical officer and in line with medical guidance. The test ensured Michael Gove could get back to work to help drive the governments response at a critical time, the spokesman said. Among all the questions to ask Michelle O'Neill about Sinn Fein's health policy concerns is her new-found enthusiasm for the World Health Organisation (WHO). Here are just a few. How does she feel about the WHO's disastrous failure to inform the world of the coronavirus threat in early January? Why did it repeat the Chinese Government's lie about there being no evidence of human-to-human transmission? Why did its director general Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus praise China for its transparency when there was no doubt of a cover-up and the silencing of whistleblowers? Why, as late as March, was Ghebreyesus saying that the "stigma" of calling this virus Chinese - which it was - "was more dangerous than the virus itself"? Last week, with the world convulsed by the pandemic, with governments tearing up rulebooks and peoples and commentators crying that things will never be the same, Sinn Fein, which markets itself as the party of change, reminded us that it remains as backward-thinking as ever and plays only the tunes of the past. As usual, Gerry Adams set the tone in his blog. While the Queen praised the common endeavour of all nations around the world to defeat this fearful challenge, described this Easter period as one that united all religions and spoke of how light and life were greater than darkness and death, Adams made only a cursory reference to coronavirus in his Easter message. He took his readers, instead, down the dreary Mope ( most oppressed people ever) laneway of old grievances and futile violence: 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, 1916, the Anglo-Irish war that used to be called the War of Independence and is now being rebranded the Tan war, the Civil War and what he euphemistically refers to as "the more recent decades of conflict". Not that Adams and the Boys of the Old Brigade, who, in normal times, hang out in Connolly House and the Felons Club, are ignoring the present. In mid-March Mrs O'Neill was forced to make a U-turn to follow a policy lead of the Republic of Ireland, in early April there was the farcical saga of Conor Murphy and the non-existent deal with Dublin over PPE, and then there was the public fuss she made about Robin Swann's request for help from the British Army to distribute urgently needed lifesaving equipment. This caused the SDLP and the Alliance Party to join forces with the two unionist parties: "15 people died of coronavirus overnight in the north," tweeted SDLP leader Colum Eastwood. "I'll support anything that gets PPE and ventilators to where it needs to go. Let's stop playing politics and do whatever it takes to save lives." "Could not agree more," responded Naomi Long. "@RobinSwannMOH has my and the @allianceparty's full support for taking extraordinary measures to try to save people's lives. All and any help is welcome at this critical time." Mrs O'Neill's explanation seems to have been crafted by a particularly verbally constipated adviser: "The Health Minister has a responsibility to exhaust all options, including the use of other blue light public services and civilian contractors, to ensure that ventilators and lifesaving equipment are moved swiftly to where they're needed most." "Community sensitivities" were involved. Er, this means that to keep republican fanatics happy the Executive should pay a ton of money for services that would be provided free and immediately by the armed forces. And let's not even get onto the issue of Mrs O'Neill's queasiness about the Army constructing an urgent Nightingale hospital along the lines they have so successfully achieved in London. We know about the 1916 leaders and the Kaiser's Germany, we know about the IRA and the Nazis, we know about more recent IRAs and friends and arms suppliers like the Soviet Union, Libya and Iraq. These days, now that they crave respectability, republicans abrogate responsibility to the EU, the UN and, most recently, the WHO. The simple truth is that republicans would rather be in alliance with Old Nick than the United Kingdom. The Bay Area may never be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic ground our daily lives to a halt. For almost a month, the San Francisco Bay Area has dealt with a new reality thanks to the coronavirus. On March 17th, six Bay Are counties instituted shelter-in-place and social distancing orders to protect the public and mitigate the spread of the virus. With restrictions in place, the new normal limited most interactions between friends and the community to be only online. From wearing masks in public, taking photos of businesses boarded up, many shared images on Instagram shared how daily life has changed by the dangerous pandemic. Some shared their new routines living at home. For others venturing outside for some much-needed exercise and avoiding cabin-fever, they snapped images of their new reality in San Francisco and throughout the region. Many of these Bay Area photographers tagged their images with @SFGATE so we could "regram" them on our Instagram page and share them with you. We edited through the pictures and compiled a select gallery of their photographs you can view up above. Want to submit your Instagram photos? Follow the SFGATE Instagram and tag us (@SFGATE) in your image. First Quarter 2020 Revenue - Solid numbers in challenging environment Strong actions to face current global crisis April 13, 2020 Q1 reported net revenue up 17.1%, with the contribution of Epsilon Organic growth at -2.9%, in line with expectations established prior to the pandemic North America coming back to growth; China and Europe already impacted by Covid-19 Exceptional measures to face the coming recession and preserve solid balance sheet 500M cost reduction plan to adapt to new context and be recovery-ready Proposed dividend to be reduced by 50% to 1.15 per share and to be paid in September 30% reduction in fixed compensation for both Supervisory Board Chairman & Groupe CEO, 20% for the Management Board members Taking into account the magnitude, the complexity and the probable length of the crisis, no guidance given Q1 2020 2020 Net revenue 2,481m 2019 Net revenue 2,118 m Reported growth +17.1% Growth at constant rate +15.4% Organic growth -2.9% Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe: It is slightly awkward to share encouraging news at a time when we are preparing ourselves for tougher days. But we actually had a good start to the year, meeting our internal objectives despite the impact of Covid-19, with an organic growth at -2.9%. At the end of February before the pandemic started to spread, we recorded almost flat growth, despite double-digit decline in China, mostly driven by 5% organic growth in the U.S. on our creative and media business. It is worth noting that Epsilon 2.0 was also growing at +5% growth at the end of February. The month of March was seriously affected by the continuous decline in China and the abrupt deterioration in Europe, due to Covid-19 confinement measures. This strong negative impact was largely compensated by North America returning to growth, including Publicis Sapient which is slightly positive in the US. This performance demonstrates that our model is working. But we are now all facing a crisis that will be unparalleled in terms of magnitude, complexity, and probably length. In these uncertain times, we havent waited to define our three priorities. Story continues First and foremost, we have been focusing on protecting our people. We immediately acted to put in place the necessary infrastructure to enable all of our employees to work safely from home. We took a series of measures for their health and well-being, to keep everyone supported. We advanced the launch of our global AI platform Marcel, as it has never been so important to keep our teams across the world connected and fight the effects of isolation. Second, we have worked around the clock to help our clients adapt to this situation. We reviewed their current and future commercial and corporate messages. We realigned their media plans to be much more dynamic, deliver short-term ROI and proposed some outcome-based products we have developed for this new market context. We are also helping them accelerate their digital capabilities to drive growth and efficiencies. Last but not least, we are taking exceptional measures to face the coming recession and preserve a solid balance sheet. We are implementing a 500 million euro cost-reduction plan with full impact in 2020, to adapt and be recovery ready. We are asking our shareholders for solidarity with our company and our people by cutting dividends by 50% and exceptionally delaying payment until the end of September. At the same time, the Groupes management team has decided to reduce its fixed remuneration. There is no doubt that we are going through an unprecedented health crisis that will lead us to the greatest recession in living memory. It is too early to predict the full impact it will have on our clients and our business, so we will not provide any guidance. All of our countries, all of our activities will be impacted to varying degrees. So our response to this situation needs to be structured, multi-faceted and rigorously executed. Our experience in managing cost and cash in times of crisis, our country model and our strong balance sheet will help us to stand firm in this storm and prepare ourselves for recovery. Let me take a moment to say that our thoughts are with all of those currently suffering with the virus. I would also like to thank our clients for their partnership. And finally, I would like to express my gratitude to our people, who have demonstrated in the last weeks that we have an incredibly diverse and united team, to come out of this crisis even stronger. * * * Publicis Groupes Management Board and Supervisory Board examined on Friday 10th April the following topics: the performance of the first quarter of 2020; the early economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and of government containment measures in several countries or States; the decisions taken by management to face this situation and its possible developments, as well as the 2019 dividend, payable in 2020. The Supervisory Board declared : We were very impressed by the strong measures implemented by the Management Board to get through the crisis, by the exceptional mobilization of the teams around the world, the demonstration of solidarity and the spirit of collaboration at all levels, and wish to express our warmest thanks to everyone. We want to reiterate our full support to the Chairman of the Management Board and to the Group's management teams, who were able to make the right decisions very early on. On Friday, the Supervisory Board endorsed the decision of the Directoire to ask shareholders for solidarity with the company, by cutting the proposed dividend by 50% from 2.30 euros to 1.15 euro, to be paid exceptionally on September 28th, and encouraging shareholders to reinvest the dividend in the company by choosing the option of payment in shares. The dividend will be submitted to shareholders vote at the next AGM on 27 May 2020. On top of that, individual and voluntary decisions to temporarily reduce remuneration have been proposed. Arthur Sadoun has decided to reduce his fixed remuneration by 30% for the second and third quarter of the year, the members of the Management Board and of the Management Committee have decided to reduce their fixed compensation by 20% for the second and third quarter of 2020. Maurice Levy has decided to reduce his annual compensation by 30 %. * * * NET REVENUE IN Q1 2020 Publicis Groupes net revenue in Q1 2020 was 2,481 million euros, up 17.1% from 2,118 million euros in 2019. Exchange rates had a positive impact of 33 million euros. Acquisitions, net of disposals, accounted for an increase in net revenue of 393 million euros, reflecting the contribution from Epsilon, and to a lesser extent Rauxa, partly offset by the disposal of PHS and Proximedia. Organic growth stood at -2.9%, an encouraging number supported by the performance in the U.S and despite the impact of Covid-19. Breakdown of Q1 2020 Net revenue by region EUR Net revenue Reported Organic million Q1 2020 Q1 2019 Growth Growth Europe 578 633 -8.7% -9.2% North America 1,555 1,139 +36.5% +0.5% Asia Pacific 219 207 +5.8% -1.9% Latin America 54 66 -18.2% -10.9% Middle East & Africa 75 73 +2.7% +0.6% Total 2,481 2,118 +17.1% -2.9% Net revenue in Europe was down 8.7% or down 9.2% on an organic basis. Several countries in the region were up against tough comparables from the previous year, and experienced abrupt decline in March as the pandemic spread and lockdowns extended. France and the UK recorded declines in organic net revenue, at 12.9% and 9.6% respectively in the quarter. Italy and Germany were down 6.1% and 7.1% respectively. North America net revenue was up by 36.5% in Q1 2020, including the contribution of Epsilon. On an organic basis, the performance was +0.5%. This includes a resilient performance in the US, up 0.2%, and good performance in Canada with a 3.1% organic growth. The underlying trend is encouraging, particularly in the first two months of the year, when creative and media operations were up 5% in the US. Beyond this good performance, Publicis Sapient was slightly positive in the US in Q1, driven by the first effects of its repositioning around full digital business transformation. It is worth mentioning that Epsilon 2.0, the core data and tech expertise representing 80% of their revenue, was flat during the quarter, after a solid start to the year at +5% in the first two months. Net revenue for Asia Pacific was up 5.8% on a reported basis, and down 1.9% on an organic basis. China, which was the first country impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic throughout most of Q1, was severely impacted and was down by 15.3%. This negative growth has been compensated by a strong performance in other countries of the region, notably India with +12.7% organic and South East Asia countries as Thailand and Singapore. Latin America recorded net revenue down 18.2% on a reported basis, and down 10.9% on an organic basis. Most countries in the region were down, but Brazil at -20.5% organic explains the majority of the decline in the region, due to 2019 contract losses, client campaigns that have been delayed and the closure of an agency in H1 2019. The Middle East & Africa region reported a rise of 2.7% in net revenue, or +0.6% on an organic basis despite the strong comparables in the previous year, notably at Publicis Sapient. Breakdown of net revenue at March 31, 2020 by sector On the basis of 3,078 clients representing 91% of net revenue Net debt and liquidity Net debt totaled 4,094 million euros at the end of March 2020, compared with 2,713 million euros at year-end 2019 and 885 at the end of March 2019, increase compared to last year is mainly due to the aquisistion of Epsilon in July 2019. The Groups average net debt stood at 3,486 million euros in the first quarter 2020, compared to 229 million euros in the first quarter 2019. The Groupes liquidity position remains very solid, at 4.7 billion euros, which is a similar level as one year ago, before the acquisition of Epsilon. The Groupe is managing actively its cash and preventively drew its 2 billion euros revolving credit facility, with no impact on the net debt at end-March, to face any potential short-term impact of the global pandemic on its activity. Acquisitions and disposals There were no major acquisitions or disposals during the period. Outlook The health crisis facing the world will result in a severe recession, the consequences of which are difficult to reliably predict. We could experience rebound situations but also more difficult moments. The Groupe is organized and ready for such events. As already announced, the Groupe will not provide any indication on its guidance, as this would be random and volatile by nature. New business During this quarter, Publicis Groupe continued to win significant New Business, such as Bank of America global creative with Leo Burnett, ADNOC in Middle East, US Cellular, Tailored Brands and also Castorama in France. Most recently, Publicis Groupe won the biggest part of the creative and media assignment for FCA in China, which demonstrates the relevance of our model there, at the beginning of the recovery period. Of course, the overall pitch activity has slowed down in the last weeks, but it has not stopped. Publicis Groupe recorded a series of wins all over the world despite the lockdown, that it largely conducted through videoconference such as Enel creative in Italy. Nominations In Q1 of 2020, Publicis Groupe continued to attract key talent and promote a new generation of leaders in strategic positions, across its most iconic brands, within its biggest countries and for its top clients. Highlighting Publicis Groupes commitment to the strength and breadth of its successful PO1 model for clients, Publicis Groupe UK promoted David Hackworthy to the newly-created CSO position, where he is responsible for helping clients unlock new ways to grow. Further recognising the importance of creative firepower for clients across Publicis Groupe UK, several creative appointments were made this year including Stephen De Wolf, CCO, BBH London; Remco Graham, Creative Director of BBH London ; Rodrigo Castellari, Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi London; and Mark Elwood, ECD of Leo Burnett London working closely with CCO Chaka Sobhani. Again to strengthen its country model, Publicis Groupe UK also appointed Marcos Angelides, as Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Strategy, Spark Foundry, responsible for combining the agencys data technology capabilities with designers and creatives. Publicis Groupe Spain appointed a new CEO for Zenith, Abelardo Ibanez, who, with strong data-driven and digital expertise, is charged with leading the agency to a new level of personalisation at scale. Gaston Guetmonovitch was promoted to CCO for Leo Burnett Spain and Miguel Esteban promoted to Chief Strategy Officer for the Power of One, responsible for unlocking the growth of agencies and clients by re-engineering their business models and customer experience. Highlighting the Groupes focus on providing end-to-end solutions in the country model, Publicis Groupe Italy appointed Massimo Baggi, Chief Commerce Officer, to support clients with driving the critical processes of omnichannel, digital innovation and the presence of their brands across various online sales channels. In Germany, we promoted Olivier Korte and Katja Reis to the respective roles of CEO and COO, Publicis Media Germany. As we start to see our teams in China fully back at work now, we have prioritised appointing leaders who focus on key products and expertise to support our clients and drive optimum business impact for them in these markets, through cross-team solutions that bring together the power of data, creativity and technology. As a result, Publicis Groupe has appointed Sapna Nemani, to the newly created role of Chief Product & Solution Officer, Publicis Groupe APAC, to lead the product, solution and data-lead intelligence initiatives for clients; Ching Ian, takes on the role of CEO of PMX APAC, and is tasked with expanding our regional media partnerships and investment practices. Ed Booty, currently Chief Strategy Officer of Publicis Communications APAC, will take on the newly created role of Chief Strategy Officer of Publicis Groupe APAC. In his role he will lead our strategic engagement with clients, bringing together the talents of our strategists from across the Groupe. He will continue to be based in Singapore. Publicis Groupe has also appointed new country leadersip teams in North Asia for Japan and Korea: Nicole Roe, former Managing Director of Leo Burnett Korea has been promoted to CEO Publicis Groupe Korea and Gareth Mulryan has been appointed as CEO, Publicis Groupe Japan and is charged with the acceleration of digital, commerce, data and business transformation consulting solutions for our clients. Publicis Groupe APAC has made further leadership appointments across the region including: Unny Radhakrishnan, CEO, Digitas India, Nick Keenan, CEO, Starcom Australia and Ian Loon, CEO, Publicis Media Singapore. Publicis Groupe US further grows its creative leadership talents with the appointments of Rafael Rizuto to CCO, BBH NY, and Daniel Lobaton, Chief Creative Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi New York. Publicis Groupe has further grown its global experience team at Publicis Sapient with Karin Giefer and Quinnton Harris appointed to the respective roles of SVP, Experience, and Global Creative Director, Experience. The global experience team blends data, machine learning and creativity to craft customer-centric experiences that deliver value to clients and support their digital transformation efforts. Additional US creative hires include Nathalie Huni, who previously held creative leadership roles at R/GA London, McCann NY and Huge, joining as EVP, Head of Design, NA, Digitas USA, leading product design, brand experiences and identity and visual narrative as well as Dwayne Koh, previously with Huge, joining as SVP/ECD, West Coast, Digitas USA; and Adriano Matos, formerly with Grey Brazil, appointed EVP/ECD, Leo Burnett Chicago. Other US C-suite appointments through elevations include Ronnie Dickerson Stewart, prior SVP of Career Advancement & Inclusion at Digitas USA, appointed Chief Diversity Officer, Publicis Groupe US, and Susan Manber, previously Chief Strategy Officer at Digitas Health, appointed Chief Patient Officer, Publicis Health North America. In addition, Jodi Robinson elevated to CEO, Digitas USA and Jonathan Tatlow to Chief Strategy Officer, Digitas USA; Loch Rose, to Chief Analytics Officer, Conversant USA; Chad Peplinski to Chief Media Officer, Epsilon USA; and Maureen Glure to Chief Client Officer, Starcom USA. * * * Disclaimer Certain information contained in this document, other than historical information, may constitute forward-looking statements or unaudited financial forecasts. These forward-looking statements and forecasts are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These forward-looking statements and forecasts are presented as at the date of this document and, other than as required by applicable law, Publicis Groupe does not assume any obligation to update them to reflect new information or events or for any other reason. Publicis Groupe urges you carefully to consider the risk factors that may affect its business, as set out in the Registration Documents filed with the French Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) and which is available on the website of Publicis Groupe (www.publicisgroupe.com), including an unfavorable economic climate, an extremely competitive market sector, the possibility that our clients could seek to terminate their contracts with us at short notice, the fact that a substantial part of the Groups revenue is derived from certain key clients, conflicts of interest between advertisers active in the same sector, the Groups dependence on its directors and employees, laws and regulations which apply to the Groups business, legal action brought against the Group based on allegations that certain of the Groups commercials are deceptive or misleading or that the products of certain clients are defective, the strategy of growing through acquisitions, the depreciation of goodwill and assets listed on the Groups balance sheet, the Groups presence in emerging markets, exposure to liquidity risk, a drop in the Groups credit rating and exposure to the risks of financial markets. This press release contains inside information as per the definition of article 7 of Regulation n596/2014 About Publicis Groupe - The Power of One Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris FR0000130577, CAC 40] is a global leader in communication. The Groupe is positioned at every step of the value chain, from consulting to execution, combining marketing transformation and digital business transformation. Publicis Groupe is a privileged partner in its clients transformation to enhance personalization at scale. The Groupe relies on ten expertise concentrated within four main activities: Communication, Media, Data and Technology. Through an unified and fluid organization, its clients have a facilitated access to all its expertise in every market. Present in over 100 countries, Publicis Groupe employs around 83,000 professionals. www.publicisgroupe.com | Twitter:@PublicisGroupe | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | Viva la Difference! Contacts Publicis Groupe Delphine Stricker Alessandra Girolami Corporate Communications Investor Relations + 33 (0)6 38 81 40 00 + 33 (0)1 44 43 77 88 delphine.stricker@publicisgroupe.com alessandra.girolami@publicisgroupe.com Brice Paris Investor Relations + 33 (0)1 44 43 79 26 brice.paris@publicisgroupe.com Appendices Net revenue: organic growth calculation (million euro) Q1 Impact of currency at end March 2020 (million euro) 2019 net revenue 2,118 GBP (2) 3 Currency impact (2) 33 USD (2) 33 2019 net revenue (1) at 2020 exchange rates (a) 2,151 Others (3) 2019 net revenue before acquisition impact (b) 2,088 Total 33 Net revenue from acquisitions (1) 393 2020 net revenue 2,481 Organic growth (b/a) -2.9% Acquisitions (Digitas AffinityID, Soft Computing, Rauxa, E2 Media, Epsilon, RDL, SearchForce, McCready Bale Media, Sapienti7, Third horizon), net of disposals EUR = USD 1.102 on average in Q1 2020 vs. USD 1.136 on average in Q1 2019 EUR = GBP 0.861 on average in Q1 2020 vs. GBP 0.872 on average in Q1 2019 Definitions Net revenue or Revenue less pass-through costs: Pass-through costs mainly concern production and media activities, as well as various expenses incumbent on clients. These items that can be re-billed to clients do not come within the scope of assessment of operations, net revenue is a more relevant indicator to measure the operational performance of the Groupes activities. Organic growth: Change in net revenue excluding the impact of acquisitions, disposals and currencies. Net Debt (or financial net debt): Sum of long and short financial debt and associated derivatives, net of treasury and cash equivalents. Average net debt: Average of monthly net debt at end of month. Five vessels from Philippines, Vietnam caught fishing illegally in Indonesian waters by Ghina Ghaliya April 13,2020 | Source: The Jakarta Post Indonesia's Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has seized five foreign-flagged vessels caught fishing illegally in Indonesian waters as sea patrols remain vigilant during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ministry's Marine and Fisheries Resources Supervision Directorate General seized three Philippines-flagged vessels and two Vietnamese-flagged vessels in the North Natuna Sea and Sulawesi Sea on Saturday, Minister Edhy Prabowo said. The arrests were conducted by three vessels of the directorate general in two different locations that were monitoring the area. He said the intensity of monitoring remained the same despite the coronavirus pandemic, as the ministry aimed to uphold the sovereignty of fisheries management in the country. We are prepared for any increase in illegal vessels operating in [Indonesian waters] amid the spread of COVID-19. That is why we are not decreasing our operations as illegal fishing is still rampant, he said in a statement on Sunday. In Sulawesi waters, the three Philippine-flagged vessels raised Indonesian flags to trick patrols, but personnel managed to detect them, he added. Officials apprehended 34 Filipino crewmen from the three vessels. Six Vietnamese crewmen were apprehended from two Vietnam-flagged vessels caught in the North Natuna Sea. The arrests came just a week after the ministry arrested two illegal foreign vessels from Vietnam in the North Natuna Sea. Edhy explained that the arrests were the result of cooperation between personnel of the directorate generals control center and the technical unit, which monitor and inform the location of illegal foreign vessels to the joint Supervision Unit that conducted the raids. As part of efforts to strengthen protection of the countrys maritime resources, Edhy said he was considering adding operating days to eradicate illegal fishing. 2016 - 2020 PT. Niskala Media Tenggara Theme(s): Fishing Craft, Gear and Fishing Methods. Taizhou Water Group (HKG:1542) shareholders are no doubt pleased to see that the share price has had a great month, posting a 46% gain, recovering from prior weakness. Longer term shareholders are no doubt thankful for the recovery in the share price, since it's pretty much flat for the year, even after the recent pop. All else being equal, a sharp share price increase should make a stock less attractive to potential investors. While the market sentiment towards a stock is very changeable, in the long run, the share price will tend to move in the same direction as earnings per share. So some would prefer to hold off buying when there is a lot of optimism towards a stock. One way to gauge market expectations of a stock is to look at its Price to Earnings Ratio (PE Ratio). Investors have optimistic expectations of companies with higher P/E ratios, compared to companies with lower P/E ratios. Check out our latest analysis for Taizhou Water Group Does Taizhou Water Group Have A Relatively High Or Low P/E For Its Industry? Taizhou Water Group has a P/E ratio of 5.68. As you can see below Taizhou Water Group has a P/E ratio that is fairly close for the average for the water utilities industry, which is 5.3. SEHK:1542 Price Estimation Relative to Market April 13th 2020 That indicates that the market expects Taizhou Water Group will perform roughly in line with other companies in its industry. So if Taizhou Water Group actually outperforms its peers going forward, that should be a positive for the share price. Further research into factors such as insider buying and selling, could help you form your own view on whether that is likely. How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios Earnings growth rates have a big influence on P/E ratios. When earnings grow, the 'E' increases, over time. And in that case, the P/E ratio itself will drop rather quickly. Then, a lower P/E should attract more buyers, pushing the share price up. Taizhou Water Group shrunk earnings per share by 14% over the last year. But it has grown its earnings per share by 18% per year over the last five years. Story continues Remember: P/E Ratios Don't Consider The Balance Sheet One drawback of using a P/E ratio is that it considers market capitalization, but not the balance sheet. That means it doesn't take debt or cash into account. Hypothetically, a company could reduce its future P/E ratio by spending its cash (or taking on debt) to achieve higher earnings. While growth expenditure doesn't always pay off, the point is that it is a good option to have; but one that the P/E ratio ignores. How Does Taizhou Water Group's Debt Impact Its P/E Ratio? Taizhou Water Group's net debt is considerable, at 181% of its market cap. If you want to compare its P/E ratio to other companies, you must keep in mind that these debt levels would usually warrant a relatively low P/E. The Verdict On Taizhou Water Group's P/E Ratio Taizhou Water Group has a P/E of 5.7. That's below the average in the HK market, which is 9.5. When you consider that the company has significant debt, and didn't grow EPS last year, it isn't surprising that the market has muted expectations. What is very clear is that the market has become less pessimistic about Taizhou Water Group over the last month, with the P/E ratio rising from 3.9 back then to 5.7 today. If you like to buy stocks that could be turnaround opportunities, then this one might be a candidate; but if you're more sensitive to price, then you may feel the opportunity has passed. When the market is wrong about a stock, it gives savvy investors an opportunity. If it is underestimating a company, investors can make money by buying and holding the shares until the market corrects itself. Although we don't have analyst forecasts you might want to assess this data-rich visualization of earnings, revenue and cash flow. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking at a few good candidates. So take a peek at this free list of companies with modest (or no) debt, trading on a P/E below 20. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. The Sikh festival of Vaisakhi will not be marked with large gatherings and melas in different parts of the UK this year as the community has been urged to stay safe amid the coronavirus pandemic as events stand cancelled. Vaisakhi, which this year falls on Monday, commemorates the creation of the Khalsa, a collective body of Sikhs. Virtual kirtans and shabads being streamed from gurdwaras are aimed at supporting the UK government's stay-at-home message for a festival usually marked by large gatherings and festivities across different parts of the country. As households come together over the coming days for family celebrations, we will be also thinking about how we can support our incredible NHS [National Health Service] people as they care for people through this global health emergency, said Prerana Issar, NHS Chief People Officer. Our NHS staff are doing extraordinary things at this extraordinary time. The best thing we can do is to protect them by following government guidance and staying indoors and washing our hands. Together we can then focus on respecting and celebrating the important upcoming dates and festivals, safely with our families, she said. Under the UK's ongoing social distancing measures to try and curb the spread of Covid-19, gatherings of more than two people in public, including religious gatherings and except for funerals, are banned. Police forces have the power to fine or even arrest individuals breaking that ban as the government has been urging the public to stay the course during what is a long Easter holiday weekend in the UK, including Monday. London's annual Vaisakhi on the Square held at Trafalgar Square, scheduled for next Saturday, was cancelled as Mayor Sadiq Khan took measures to enforce the lockdown measures in the UK capital. The London Mayor said: Our Trafalgar Square celebrations are key moments that bring communities together from across the capital, but the government has advised that large gatherings should not take place so we will be cancelling them until further notice. It is vital that we take all necessary precautions to ensure the health of all in our city. A similar mega Vaisakhi event held at Handsworth Park in Birmingham, one of the cities with the UK's largest Sikh population, stands cancelled amid the lockdown, with celebrations in Leicester, Southall and Gravesend also called off. "No event in the Sikh calendar should endanger lives," said Southall Gurdwara in west London. The events at annual Vaisakhi events, including colourful street processions in the form of nagar kirtans, feeding the community with langars as well as cultural activities including the traditional Sikh martial art of Gatka, have been replaced by a focus on community service to help the vulnerable during the lockdown. Our amazing selfless volunteers are dedicated in helping those in need during this difficult time, said the Khalsa Aid charity, which has been working on food deliveries and other community support initiatives through the pandemic. In social media, an @SikhAssembly initiative is aimed at involving British Sikhs in a Virtual Vaisakhi as part of a worldwide celebration including sharing texts, poems, art, photos, video clips. The Sikh Council UK said that special food production guidance compiled by the Sikh Doctors Association had been issued to gurdwaras during the pandemic to aid the production of healthy langars. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An ambulance arrives at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Ga., on Oct. 15, 2014. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) Broadway Star Nick Cordero Is in Very Critical Condition, Wife Says Broadway actor Nick Cordero is in very critical condition as he battles COVID-19, according to his wife in an update over the weekend. The actors wife, Amanda Kloots, wrote on Instagram that my whole world has stopped and asked for prayers and positive thinking. She added: He is fighting for his life right now. Cordero, a Tony Award-nominated actor, is hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, a type of coronavirus that emerged in China in 2019, Kloots said. Two negative COVID tests. Doctors are convinced though that it is COVID so they did a third test, she wrote in another social media post, according to People magazine. The third came back positive for the CCP virus. We had really great progress and then yesterday, I got a phone call saying that [Cordero] had an infection in his lung, a new infection that caused his fever to spike way above normal, which caused his blood pressure to drop, which caused his heart to go into irregular patterns, said Kloots in a video, reported People magazine. He lost consciousness, he lost his pulse and they had to resuscitate him, she added. It was very, very scary. They had a very hard time getting him back. We were waiting again and this afternoon we got a phone call that things were really moving in the right direction and that his life was being saved, which was huge. And we all kind of celebrated for a minute until we got a phone call shortly right after saying one of the cannulas for the ECMO was stopping blood flow to his right leg and they had to go into immediate surgery to save the blood flow to his leg, Kloots said. Kloots added that she has been waiting minute by minute as things were, again, going in a smooth way, Fox News reported. I got a phone call at 2:30 in the morning, they needed my consent to put him on dialysis to assist with his kidneys, she said. Now hes on a ventilator, dialysis and this ECMO machine. Later, she said that her husband required more surgery. I just got a phone call that hes out of surgery, he made it out of surgery. He is alive Kloots said. He is still in very critical condition. He is struggling, every minute counts right now. Hadiza Isma El-Rufai, wife to Governor Nasir El-rufai, has insisted that her son, Bello did not threaten to gang-rape the mother of a ... Hadiza Isma El-Rufai, wife to Governor Nasir El-rufai, has insisted that her son, Bello did not threaten to gang-rape the mother of a Twitter user. According to Hadiza, she would never condone that from Bello, adding that her belief was to respect everyone but will take no nonsense from anyone. Bello had stirred controversies on social media after he threatened to gang rape the mother of a Twitter user. During an argument on Twitter over the weekend, a user by the handle name @Thanos_zer had slammed the present government, describing President Muhammadu Buharis alleged ineptitude as mind-blowing. He had also described Bello as Daddy boy, saying: I dont shield anyone whos inept. I cant say the same about you. Youre Daddys boy, and of course, nobody attacks the finger that feeds them. Buharis ineptitude is mind-blowing. Yes, I said, and youre not going to make me disappear. The comment might have angered the Governors son, who responded to the surprise of other Twitter users, including a former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili. Bello, whose father is currently undergoing treatment for COVID-19, responded: This Daddys boy has heard your mothers ability to take dick is mind-blowing. Especially one dipped in Kerosene from Abia land. Sounds about fair. Despite the ineptitude, he is completing a bridge your Ebele couldnt. You are stuck with PMB and cant do sh*t. Hows failed, Daddy? Oh, and tell your mother that Im passing her to my friends tonight. No, Igbo sounds, please! Tueh. Reacting to the development, Hadiza, in a tweet on her official Twitter page, wrote: All you people talking about @B_ELRUFAI. Dont @ me. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. All is fair in love and war. My belief: Respect everyone, but take no sh*t from anyone. I didnt see any threats of rape. I would never condone that. However, in a new development, the first lady of Kaduna apologised for her reaction, stating that she had only mistaken the issue for a minor Twitter scuffle (gbas-gbos). When I posted the tweet below, I assumed it was just the usual Twitter gbas-gbos. Having read the tweets chronologically, I have had conversations with Bello, the governors wife wrote. Never ever should sexual abuse be employed as ammunition in public/ private exchanges, no matter the provocation. I can see how my tweet may have come across, and I apologise to those who were offended by it. I say, once again, that Id never condone sexual abuse in any shape or form. When I posted the tweet below, I assumed it was just the usual Twitter gbas-gbos. Having read the tweets chronologically, I have had conversations with Bello. Never ever should sexual abuse be employed as ammunition in public/ private exchanges, no matter the provocation. https://t.co/db4W44bWzJ April 13, 2020 Federalism and the Socialist Democrats By Robert T. Smith As a byproduct of the Wuhan Virus response in the U.S., a civics lesson has demonstrated the divide between the Americans and the Socialist Democrats. Democrats Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and even the Mayor of New Orleans Latoya Cantrell seem to believe that President Trump is directly responsible for their respective State/City response to the Wuhan Virus, based on their recent public statements. In addition, many of the questions by the Democrat propaganda arm, the White House Press Corps, center around holding the President responsible for every level of the response, and at times it seems by inuendo apparently being responsible for the Wuhan Virus being in the U.S. at all. Following our countrys Revolutionary War, the initial document governing the operation of the new country was the Articles of Confederation that was adopted by the Continental Congress in November 1777, soon after the end of the Revolutionary War. As a consequence of the revolution being against an overbearing unitary system of government practiced by Great Britain, the Articles of Confederation naturally provided for a very weak federal government. Addressing the conflicts that arose between the States under the Articles of Confederation was a major debate as a part of the Constitutional Convention that gave rise to our current form of representative republic and Constitution. Our Constitution established a system of federalism where the U.S. government was to be limited to those specifically enumerated powers in the Constitution, while the State governments were to hold the governing power over their respective State. The federal governments role is the overarching concerns for all U.S. citizens, mostly related to individual rights, interactions between the States, and interactions between our country with other countries, including defense. The obvious benefit of this form of federalism is, for example, the citizens of Butte, Montana are not required to abide by the same rules and regulations as those in New York City. In addition, the citizens of each State have the ability to set the rules and regulations that appeal to their desires, in essence, our form of federalism provides the most enjoyment of government to the most people. An overbearing Democrat Socialist unitary government directed form Washington D.C. for the entire country is what the Democrat party typically advocates. Centralizing power in such a fashion never ends well, as history has demonstrated. While it might be appealing to our sense of emotions in this Wuhan Virus emergency for a single authority to dictate the entire countrys response, the consequences of ceding that authority to a single person is antithetical to our countrys form of government. Consequently, it is not up to President Trump to be responsible for each area or State response, but to be the backup system to the States. As example, it is not President Trumps responsibility to cancel Mardi Gras in New Orleans, close businesses or require shelter-in-place rules in each State. From the federal level, the Presidents team has provided guidelines and recommendations to the individual States on how to respond. The State Governors have tailored their response to best fit their citizens, and exercised their authority and responsibility to address the Wuhan Virus within their jurisdiction, with noted Democrat Socialist exceptions who seem to believe it is the federal governments responsibility. Most detestable in this emergency has been the Democrat Socialists actions in congress. Lead by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, they have busied themselves blackmailing the country in an attempt to put in place their form of Democrat Socialism that they cannot otherwise pass in normal times. Federalism is once again under assault by the Democrat Socialists who are more than willing to hold the countrys health and economic well-being hostage to their odious demands. Robert T. Smith is an environmental scientist who spends his days enjoying life and the pursuit of happiness with his family. He confesses to cling to his liberty, guns and religion, with antipathy toward the arrogant ruling elites throughout the country. Home COLUMBUS, Ohio A man has been arrested after police say he spit in the face of a public bus driver, claiming he had the COVID-19 coronavirus. WCMH Channel 4 reports Walter Caldwell, 44, of Columbus, is charged with assault and misconduct involving public transportation system. According to WBNS Channel 10, police say Caldwell was on a COTA bus at about 8:10 p.m., reportedly intoxicated and shouting obscenities. He was ordered off the bus. Before leaving, he told the driver he was infected with the coronavirus and spit in the drivers face. A COTA spokesman tells WCMH that the driver has started a 14-day quarantine. Reports did not say if Caldwell, who was detained by police, has been tested for the coronavirus. More crime-related stories on cleveland.com: Akron sex offender faces federal child pornography charges Two people accused of stealing from Brunswick Giant Eagle, violating stay-at-home coronavirus order, police say Woman shot in officer-involved shooting in Wickliffe, police say Man killed by off-duty Cleveland police officer identified BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 By Elnur Baghishov - Trend: As many as 500,000 tons of fruits and vegetables were exported from the port of Bandar Abbas in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan to the port of Sur in Oman in the recent days, said Hamid Zadboum, Deputy Minister of Industry, Mining and Trade of Iran and Chairman of the Trade Development Organization, Trend reports citing official website of Organization. Zadboum added that this export line is considered the second line in addition to the export of fruits and vegetables by sea from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to the port of Sultan Qaboos. "Efforts are being made to open another export line from the port of Bandar Abbas to the port of Khasab in Oman," he said. The official also said that discussions are underway with Qatar to export dairy and food products. From April 4, the products were shipped by containers for the first time from Bandar Abbas port of Hormozgan province in southern Iran and Sultan Qaboos port of Muscat city in Oman," Deputy Minister of Industry, Mining and Trade of Iran and Chairman of the Trade Development Organization Hamid Zadboum said. On April 8, the first container of fruits and vegetables arrived at the port of Sultan Qaboos. Previously, Iran's exports of fruits and vegetables to Oman were carried out through the port of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa today held a review meeting with his cabinet colleagues and senior officials regarding prevailing coronavirus situation and several other important issues in the state. Chief Secretary TM Vijay Bhaskar was also present at the meeting. The possible situation once the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted was discussed along with the financial status of the state government and how to mobilise additional resources, sources said. The Chief Minister also appealed to sugar factory owners to clear the pending payment to the tune of Rs 2834 crore to farmers in 11 districts. He also said that the government has released Rs 45 crore compensation to farmers for loss of paddy crop in Raichur and Koppal District due to hailstorm based on a report submitted by District Collectors. Amid the lockdown distribution of free milk to the poor will also be continued for one more week, sources added. The meeting also decided to speed up disposal of cases related to the regularisation of unauthorised constructions which are pending before the High Court and Supreme Court. In addition to this, the government is planning to auction more than 12,000 corner sites lying idle in Bengaluru. An amendment to the law governing permission to allow sites in private and co-operative housing societies will be made. Hundreds of societies are waiting for approval from the government for releasing the sites, sources said. It was also decided to utilise Rs 1,000 crore available at Rajiv Gandhi Health University to upgrade medical college hospitals. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Muhammadu Buhari may have been caught in a seeming mix-up over the government responses to containing the spread and deaths from coronavirus in Nigeria. The president in a tweet on Sunday disclosed that his administration is adopting two approaches in combating coronavirus in the country. The president identified the two approaches as ensuing the security of lives of the people and easing the effect of coronavirus on businesses in Nigeria. President Buhari made the revelation at a time world leaders are focusing on timely eradication of coronavirus, immediate palliatives for all citizens, then, post-corona virus policies for socio-economic recoveries. The Presidency, however, in a tweet on Sunday, declared: In Nigeria, we are taking a two-step approach. First, to protect the lives of our fellow Nigerians and residents living here and second, to preserve the livelihoods of workers and business owners. Protection of lives is a primary responsibility of government; but President Buhari considers it a policy of health crisis emergency. The spread of coronavirus has been on the rise, though, comparatively marginal, what is the President doing to reverse the trend and end the lockdown order? The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) had at the update briefing, disclosed the detection of 13 new coronavirus cases. Then, additional 5 cases were detected on Monday. The death rate has risen to 10 while over 80 patients have survived. That people are surviving is much better record the President should emphasise more and strengthen the medical facilities for more results; not incoherent media hype. Survival of coronavirus is more rational achievement than unnecessary self-praise. PV: 0 New Delhi, April 13 : In fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has adopted a national level poster making challenge to contain the deadly virus. The community collaboration initiative targets the students with "Bal Sena Fights Corona" to help close the awareness deficit- an important gradient in the people's fight against the virulent virus. With the theme Covid-19, the challenge is open to all the students from class 1 to 12 in three class-wise categories, said a CRPF statement. The entries could be in the form of a hand painting, drawing or sketch with appropriate tagline and slogan. The entries adjudged the first, second and third in each of the three categories will be rewarded with cash prizes of Rs 50,000, Rs 40,000 and 25,000, respectively. In addition, 10 motivational prizes Rs 5,000 will also be given in each of the three categories. The cash prizes are tagged with an array of inventories that would empower them further. "The entries are being invited through the Twitter account of the Force @crpfindia till April 25, 2020," said the statement. The CRPF, a paramilitary force which is mandated to provide internal security in Jammu & Kashmir, and Maoist-affected areas, has adopted the method when the nation rallied against the ongoing pandemic which has so far claimed 324 lives and over 8,000 confirmed cases in India. Besides sticking to its core competence in ensuring law and order during the 21-day lockdown, the CRPF has gone beyond its professional domain to serve the people in myriad ways - from distributing food, medicine, sanitisers and other essential items to making masks and a lot more. LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Sunday it was pledging 200 million pounds ($248 million) to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and charities to help slow the spread of the coronavirus in vulnerable countries and so help prevent a second wave of infections. More than 1.6 million people are reported to have been infected by the novel coronavirus globally and deaths have topped 100,000 according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in 210 countries since the first cases were identified in China in December last year and British aid minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said assisting the poorest nations now would help prevent the virus returning to the United Kingdom. Britain has reported almost 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus so far, the fifth highest national number globally. "While our brilliant doctors and nurses fight coronavirus at home, were deploying British expertise and funding around the world to prevent a second deadly wave reaching the UK," Trevelyan said in a statement. "Coronavirus does not respect country borders so our ability to protect the British public will only be effective if we strengthen the healthcare systems of vulnerable developing countries too." The British government said 130 million pounds would go to United Nations' agencies, with 65 million for the WHO. Another 50 million pounds would go to the Red Cross to help war-torn and hard to reach areas, and 20 million pounds going to other organisations and charities. The cash would help areas with weak health systems such as war-ravaged Yemen, which reported its first case on Friday, and Bangladesh, which is hosting 850,000 Rohingya refugees in crowded camps, it said. Britain's support for the WHO contrasts with the view of U.S. President Donald Trump who has criticised its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic with suggestions his administration might re-evaluate U.S. funding "The United Kingdoms generous contribution is a strong statement that this is a global threat that demands a global response," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO's Director General said. "We are all in this together, which means protecting health around the world will help to protect the health of people in the UK." (Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) Idlib: Thousands of displaced Syrians have begun moving south back to their homes in war-torn Idlib province despite the risk of renewed conflict, some driven by fear that the new coronavirus could wreak havoc on crowded camps near the Turkish border. About 1 million Syrians fled Idlib and its surrounding countryside in north-west Syria in the past year after Russian-backed government forces stepped up a campaign to retake the last rebel stronghold after nine years of war. An aid worker with the Turkish humanitarian group IHH distributes instructions on how to avoid coronavirus infection to Syrian women at a camp for internally displaced persons in northern Syria. Credit:IHH/AP Fighting has calmed since March when Ankara, which backs some groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, agreed a ceasefire with Moscow, which has supported Damascus with heavy air power. Syria's north-west does not yet have a confirmed case of coronavirus, but doctors fear the area's ravaged medical infrastructure and overflowing camps would quickly turn any outbreak into a humanitarian disaster. ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959) Stream on the Criterion Channel. Jimmy Stewart stars in this acclaimed courtroom drama by Otto Preminger as Paul Biegler, a folksy small-town lawyer who is called upon to defend an Army lieutenant charged with murder (Ben Gazzara). The officer says it was a revenge killing for the rape of his wife, Laura (Lee Remick). Biegler is hopeful that he will be able to successfully argue that the lieutenant is innocent because his actions were the result of an irresistible impulse. But the case proves difficult to make. The prosecution is tough and Laura appears unsympathetic and unreliable. THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF (2009) Stream on Mubi. The director Pietro Marcellos film Martin Eden was supposed to open in theaters in the United States this month, but its release was postponed because of the coronavirus. While we wait for Martin Eden, the Italian directors adaptation of Jack Londons 1909 novel, his first two full-length films are available to stream. One, The Mouth of the Wolf, is a hybrid documentary and drama that follows Vincenzo Motta after his release from prison, as he readjusts to life in Genoa and reunites with his companion, Mary. The other, Crossing the Line, is a documentary: a journey through Italy on the countrys long-distance express trains. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Evan A. Laksmana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 08:46 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1710ce 3 Opinion COVID-19-in-Indonesia,coronavirus,CSIS,Insight,#COVID19,#coronavirus,COVID-19 Free Indonesia was and remains utterly unprepared to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. Many have argued that the pandemic is Indonesias biggest strategic surprise in decades. A strategic surprise is simply an unpredicted development or event with decisive and transformative, sometimes revolutionary, effects. Some might even argue that it is an unforeseen magical black swan event. But by uncritically painting the pandemic as an unforeseen strategic surprise, some analysts may implicitly or inadvertently absolve the government of any responsibility. After all, they argue, COVID-19 was a non-natural disaster that many states could not have predicted. Clearly this claim is wrong. Scientists, epidemiologists and global health scholars have warned about a pandemic for years. Various public health outbreaks, from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) to Ebola, over the past two decades should have driven this point home. More importantly, research shows that events deemed as strategic surprises are not inherently surprising by nature. Political scientists Charles Parker and Eric Stern note in the journal Political Psychology (2002) that strategic surprises such as 9/11 or Pearl Harbor might be seen instead as the victims lack of preparedness based on erroneous judgements of whether, when, where and how it would be attacked. Military analyst Ephraim Kam argues in Surprise Attack: The Victims Perspective (1988) that a strategic surprise consists of three elements. First, the event (or attack) seems inconsistent with the victims expectations and assumptions. In other words, how surprising and disruptive an event is depends on the nature and depth of the assumptions guiding the victims assessment. Despite ample warnings from dozens of countries hit by COVID-19 outbreaks throughout February and early March, Indonesian policymakers were in denial. They publicly clung to unfounded assumptions about the saving power of Indonesias temperature or humidity. Some even implied that traditional herbs or dishes could be antidotes to the virus while others suggested that prayers would be sufficient to stem any viral tide. Part of the problem stems from ignorance of public health and science. Consider the fact that many policymakers still refuse to examine Indonesias avian influenza outbreak a few years ago as a public health emergency. Instead, they parrot conspiracy theories about the role of great powers in weaponizing and commercializing the virus. Another part of the problem is the recent securitization of public health including the pandemic. When security officials manage a problem, transparency, data reliability and open communication critical requirements in public health emergencies are rarely part of the equation. That the current administration remains untested in national emergencies and obsessed with infrastructure and investments further suggests there was a lack of incentives in seeking out dissenting voices on a possible outbreak. The pandemic itself, in other words, was not literally surprising but it took us by surprise because policymakers held faulty and erroneous assumptions. Second, a strategic surprise implies there is a failure in advance warning. The strength of the surprise is often in reverse proportion to the timing and clarity of the early warning. On this front, it is ironic that some officials are citing intelligence modelling as a basis to make public health decisions, even though the intelligence community should have warned us earlier about the pandemic. If we look at public statements by former government and intelligence officials as well as observers over the past two months, many hinted at conspiracy theories about the novel coronavirus as a biological weapon. Consequently, rather than boosting our medical intelligence, our energy is spent on separating noise from signal. Nevertheless, President Joko Jokowi Widodo acknowledged that he relied on an intelligence approach in managing the outbreak to prevent the public from panicking. While it is unclear what that approach entails, it is plausible that the intelligence community warned political leaders about the pandemic but they failed to respond, or they ignored the assessment provided. Either way, if we accept the pandemic was a strategic surprise for Indonesia, we have to ask difficult questions about our intelligence assessments in the near future. Finally, a strategic surprise lays bare the lack of adequate preparations by the victim. From this benchmark, even if the administration had the right assumptions about the pandemic and had listened to the best intelligence warning, Indonesia may still not have had the capacity to respond rapidly. Almost every major indicator from hospital beds, isolation wards and ventilators, to doctors and more tells us that Indonesias health system is seriously unprepared. The 2019 Global Health Security Index ranked Indonesias emergency preparedness and response planning as well as its health capacity in clinics, hospitals and community care centers at 67 and 69 out of 195 countries respectively. The same index also scored Indonesias major risks political and security, infrastructure adequacy and public health vulnerabilities quite poorly. This should not be surprising. Indonesias healthcare expenditure in 2016 was only roughly 3 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP), according to World Bank data. By comparison, South Korea spent around 7 percent and Australia about 9 percent of their GDP on health care. These three benchmarks show the pandemic was not some magical black swan. It was a disaster in the making one that was foreseeable and manageable, even if not necessarily preventable. The government is absolutely responsible for the unfolding catastrophe. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. The situation surrounding the coronavirus outbreak continues to develop quickly. To keep you up to speed, the Star-Tribune will update this page throughout the day with the latest news regarding coronavirus in Wyoming. All of our coronavirus coverage which can be found here is free to read. The numbers: Confirmed cases in Wyoming: 272 272 Probable cases: 94 94 Fully recovered patients: 138 (110 confirmed, 28 probable) 138 (110 confirmed, 28 probable) Tests completed: 5,571 (as of Saturday afternoon: 3,010 at Wyoming Public Health Laboratory, 2,560 reported to state by commercial labs, one at CDC lab) Our resources: Latest updates: County press conference 3 p.m. Cities mull fines to enforce state orders 1:03 p.m. The city of Casper is set to consider an ordinance that would create fines for people who ignore the state's coronavirus-related closure orders. The fine structure is similar to other misdemeanor offenses: a $250 fine for the first violation, a $750 fine for a second violation and a $750 fine plus the potential for up to six months of jail time for any subsequent offenses. Cheyenne is considering a similar ordinance, but it would impose civil, rather than criminal penalties. Casper's mayor said at a recent press conference that several businesses in the city had violated the closure orders and had been given notice by the local government to comply. Wyoming's first death reported 12:30 p.m. A Johnson County man has died after becoming infected with coronavirus, the Wyoming Health Department reported. The older, Johnson County man is the first person in Wyoming to die from the disease. The man had been hospitalized and had health conditions that had put him at higher risk of severe illness and complications, the Health Department said. "I am saddened to learn that we have lost our first Wyoming citizen to COVID-19. This one was close to home and sadly serves as a grim reminder of the importance of following public health orders and guidance so we can reduce the number of serious illnesses and deaths in our state," said Gov. Mark Gordon, who hails from Johnson County." Jennie and I extend our thoughts and prayers to this gentlemans family and friends." Wyoming was the last state in the country to suffer a coronavirus death. Feds expand transportation declaration 10:56 a.m. Local authorities implement 911 video chat service 10:38 a.m. The Casper-Natrona County Public Safety Communications Center will use a live video response service over the next month to continue its typical functions while still social distancing. Callers can request the optional service, called 911eye, as can the tele-communicator. Any smartphone user can share live video, texts, pictures and GPS coordinates with the center through the service. It does not require the caller to download an app. The service, which does not eliminate face-to-face responses, is in place from now until May 13, unless extended. An announcement from the Casper Police Department said there is a possibility it would consider a permanent purchase in the future. The news release did not say how much the service cost the department. The department shared this video that shows how 911eye works: New Natrona County patients self-isolating 9:26 a.m. The Casper-Natrona County Health Department says the county's five additional COVID-19 patients confirmed over the weekend are self-quarantining, as are other members of their household. The health department is working to trace the contacts of each of these patients. "This process includes interviewing the positive patients, gathering travel history or possible places of exposure, and identifying and reaching out to any possible contacts as soon as possible," a Monday announcement said. "We assure you, we are working rigorously to identify and locate anyone else who may be ill or at risk from exposure and recommend they take the necessary precautions." The county has 33 confirmed patients and eight probable patients. The county has a news conference at 3 p.m. today. Return to this page then to find the video. Wyoming Arts Council announces grant 9:20 a.m. The Wyoming Arts Council has announced a $500 grant for individual Wyoming-based artists whose incomes have been affected by COVID-19. Applications are now open and will be reviewed on a rolling basis in the order they're submitted until grant funds are expended. Artists across the state are sharing their work with the community in some of the most creative ways during these times of isolation," Wyoming Arts Council Executive Director Michael Lange said in a statement. "Folks everywhere are turning to the arts for comfort, solace, and entertainment now more than ever. The Wyoming Arts Council believes that artists must be able to maintain their livelihood during this time in order to continue to create and contribute to the creative economy in our state and this is one way in which that livelihood can be maintained. Applicants will be required to show some proof of income loss. For more information, please visit the Wyoming Arts Council website or contact Taylor Craig at taylor.craig@wyo.gov or 307-274-6673. Florida man tests positive in Wyoming Overnight A Florida man traveling through Wyoming has tested positive for COVID-19 and is self-isolating in Rock Springs. The man in his 50s won't count toward the county or state total, but local officials are attempting to contact trace. Health care agencies in Sweetwater County, which has nine cases, were made aware of the case Sunday. Three of the countys patients have fully recovered, and the rest are in good condition in self-isolation. Today's stories: Food truck helps out truckers during coronavirus crisis On Wednesday night the food truck served 100 barbecue meals to truckers driving through The Pilot Truck Stop in Grand Junction. On Thursday night, they followed it up again with an even bigger showing. Have a question about coronavirus that you want answered? Send us an email at editors@trib.com. You can find all of our daily rundowns here. Photos: Casper copes with COVID-19 Some say volatility, rather than debt, is the best way to think about risk as an investor, but Warren Buffett famously said that 'Volatility is far from synonymous with risk'. So it might be obvious that you need to consider debt, when you think about how risky any given stock is, because too much debt can sink a company. We can see that SITC International Holdings Company Limited (HKG:1308) does use debt in its business. But the more important question is: how much risk is that debt creating? When Is Debt Dangerous? Generally speaking, debt only becomes a real problem when a company can't easily pay it off, either by raising capital or with its own cash flow. If things get really bad, the lenders can take control of the business. While that is not too common, we often do see indebted companies permanently diluting shareholders because lenders force them to raise capital at a distressed price. Having said that, the most common situation is where a company manages its debt reasonably well - and to its own advantage. The first step when considering a company's debt levels is to consider its cash and debt together. View our latest analysis for SITC International Holdings What Is SITC International Holdings's Debt? As you can see below, SITC International Holdings had US$282.0m of debt at December 2019, down from US$313.7m a year prior. But it also has US$421.3m in cash to offset that, meaning it has US$139.3m net cash. SEHK:1308 Historical Debt April 13th 2020 How Healthy Is SITC International Holdings's Balance Sheet? We can see from the most recent balance sheet that SITC International Holdings had liabilities of US$396.3m falling due within a year, and liabilities of US$333.7m due beyond that. On the other hand, it had cash of US$421.3m and US$71.6m worth of receivables due within a year. So it has liabilities totalling US$237.1m more than its cash and near-term receivables, combined. Since publicly traded SITC International Holdings shares are worth a total of US$2.49b, it seems unlikely that this level of liabilities would be a major threat. Having said that, it's clear that we should continue to monitor its balance sheet, lest it change for the worse. While it does have liabilities worth noting, SITC International Holdings also has more cash than debt, so we're pretty confident it can manage its debt safely. Story continues Also positive, SITC International Holdings grew its EBIT by 24% in the last year, and that should make it easier to pay down debt, going forward. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But ultimately the future profitability of the business will decide if SITC International Holdings can strengthen its balance sheet over time. So if you want to see what the professionals think, you might find this free report on analyst profit forecasts to be interesting. But our final consideration is also important, because a company cannot pay debt with paper profits; it needs cold hard cash. SITC International Holdings may have net cash on the balance sheet, but it is still interesting to look at how well the business converts its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to free cash flow, because that will influence both its need for, and its capacity to manage debt. During the last three years, SITC International Holdings generated free cash flow amounting to a very robust 95% of its EBIT, more than we'd expect. That positions it well to pay down debt if desirable to do so. Summing up While it is always sensible to look at a company's total liabilities, it is very reassuring that SITC International Holdings has US$139.3m in net cash. And it impressed us with free cash flow of US$214m, being 95% of its EBIT. So is SITC International Holdings's debt a risk? It doesn't seem so to us. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. But ultimately, every company can contain risks that exist outside of the balance sheet. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for SITC International Holdings that you should be aware of before investing here. When all is said and done, sometimes its easier to focus on companies that don't even need debt. Readers can access a list of growth stocks with zero net debt 100% free, right now. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. Director Matt Reeves has revealed that the team of "The Batman" was able to complete a quarter of its shooting before the production took a hit due to the coronavirus pandemic. The filming on the DC-Warner Bros picture halted around mid March when the crew was planning to change locations from London to Liverpool. "We're not officially editing right now. We've actually shot a quarter of the movie and I have been poring through dailies, looking at takes, and what's to come," Reeves told Deadline. The director said it was "way too early" to talk about what will happen when production resumes. Asked if the film, fronted by Robert Pattinson, will be shot outside London as a safety measure, Reeves said, "I can't imagine we wouldn't finish in London. The situation is fluid." "... And it's a very specific mystery noir that's been really thought-out by me and my partners," he added. But the one thing that will have to be given a rethink is "the tone of things" in his approach to shooting the majority remainder. The movie is scheduled for a June 2021 release. "It happens any time you shoot anything... It feels like there might be an opportunity to explore some of that unexpected tone that we found. With these movies, you never have enough prep time, because they're so complex and so enormous in so many ways. "It also gives me a moment to think about the larger sequences that have yet to come up and how I want to realise those," Reeves added. "The Batman" also stars Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright and Andy Serkis. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on April 13, 2020 2020/04/13 Premier Li Keqiang will attend the Special ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN Plus Three countries or 10+3) Summit on COVID-19 Response that is scheduled to take place on April 14 via video conference, chaired by Vietnam in its capacity as ASEAN Chair 2020. CCTV: The Russian Foreign Ministry wrote on Facebook on April 12 that "attempts of some states to shift responsibility to others for the worsening epidemiological situation within their borders are worrying. We believe that this is how the recent high-profile accusations by the US leadership against the World Health Organization should be assessed". It added that Russia considered such a position nonconstructive and such statements untimely and counterproductive. "At all stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, WHO acted within its mandate, in strict accordance with the guidelines of member states and based on available scientific data". What is your comment? Zhao Lijian: Russia has expressed an objective and fair position. China commends that. China has said on many occasions that in the face of the grave threats posed to mankind by COVID-19, the international community can only prevail by upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind and working together to address it. Countries should transcend ideological differences and refrain from groundless accusations and suspicions. In particular, they should avoid politicizing anti-pandemic cooperation and shifting blame to others. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the WHO has upheld an objective, scientific and just position, actively performed its duties, and played an important role in assisting countries in responding to the pandemic and promoting international anti-pandemic cooperation. Recently, the UN Secretary-General and many heads of state and representatives of international organizations expressed support for the WHO. The UN General Assembly adopted a consensus resolution which recognizes WHO's role in countering the spread of COVID-19. The statement of the recent Extraordinary G20 Leaders' Summit on COVID-19 stressed that member states fully support and remain committed to further strengthening the WHO's mandate in coordinating the international fight against the pandemic. This highlights the common position of the international community. At present, the pandemic is spreading all over the world. The international community should work together to defeat this common enemy. China will continue to work with the international community, including Russia, to support WHO's continued leadership in global anti-pandemic cooperation. Xinhua News Agency: You just announced Premier Li Keqiang will attend the Special 10+3 Summit on COVID-19 Response. What is China's expectation for this meeting? Zhao Lijian: China, Japan, the ROK and ASEAN countries are friendly, close neighbors, looking after and supporting each other since the COVID-19 outbreak. The Special 10+3 Summit, an important meeting for the East Asian region's COVID-19 response taking place after the G20 Extraordinary Summit, demonstrates the resolve of the regional countries to jointly fight against the pandemic and maintain economic development of the region. China hopes that 10+3 countries will have a thorough exchange of views on stemming the spread of the pandemic and keeping up economic development, and strive to achieve positive results on strengthening coordinated pandemic response, improving health-sector cooperation in East Asia, promoting regional practical cooperation and trade exchanges and advancing regional economic integration. Voice of Vietnam: What do you think of ASEAN-China anti-pandemic cooperation? In which areas does China hope to enhance cooperation with ASEAN? Zhao Lijian: China and ASEAN member states are friendly, close neighbors. We've had fruitful cooperation in fighting COVID-19. We will never forget the assistance provided by ASEAN countries after the epidemic broke out in China. After securing an initial victory against the virus, China, relating deeply to ASEAN countries' difficulties, has provided medical supplies to them, sent out medical experts and assisted in their purchase of anti-epidemic supplies. All these speak of our two sides' tradition of mutual assistance in trying times. We hope ASEAN countries will defeat the virus at an early date. China Daily: Seven US Senators have written to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opposing the appointment of Jiang Duan, Minister of Chinese Mission in Geneva to the UN Human Rights Council Consultative Group. They said that China should not occupy the position of prestige or influence on the Council because of its "willful deceit of COVID-19 outbreak" and "human rights abuse" in Xinjiang, asking the Secretary-General to intervene and suspend this appointment. What's your comment? Zhao Lijian: China has actively participated in the work of the UN Human Rights Council and other multilateral human rights institutions. The appointment of Jiang Duan, the minister of the Chinese Mission in Geneva, to a seat on the Consultative Group of the United Nations Human Rights Council as the representative of the Asia-Pacific states, again demonstrates the international community's recognition of China's progress in human rights development and active role in exchange and cooperation in the international human rights sector. With a notorious human rights record, the US has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council. But a handful of anti-China US lawmakers are now poking their nose into the election rules of the UN agency, criticizing and meddling in the Human Rights Council's affairs and other countries' human rights situation. It's nothing short of absurdity. We advise these lawmakers to work in real earnest to address human rights problems at home, such as racial discrimination, proliferation of firearms, violation of the rights of migrant children, stop politicizing the pandemic, take concrete actions to improve the human rights and well-being of American people, and work with China and the larger international community to promote anti-pandemic cooperation. China Review News: A US State Department spokesperson said on April 11 that there has been discrimination towards Africans in places like Guangdong in the process of epidemic prevention and control, adding that "it's unfortunate but not surprising to see this kind of xenophobia towards Africans by Chinese authorities". The spokesperson also claimed that "anyone who watches Chinese engagement in projects across Africa recognizes this kind of abusive and manipulative behavior", that "promises made to Africans are never kept as advertised", and that "to treat people especially students this way during a global public health crisis says everything about how the PRC views their so-called 'partnership' with Africa". What's your response? Zhao Lijian: We note the remarks by the US State Department spokesperson. At a moment when the international community urgently needs to work together to fight the pandemic, the US side is making unwarranted allegations in an attempt to sow discords and stoke troubles. This is neither moral nor responsible. We suggest that the US had better focus on domestic efforts to contain the spread of the virus. Attempts to use the pandemic to drive a wedge between China and Africa are bound to fail. During our fight against the coronavirus, the Chinese government has been attaching great importance to the life and health of foreign nationals in China. All foreigners are treated equally. We reject differential treatment. China and Africa are good friends, partners and brothers. During our most difficult times fighting the virus, Africa offered us strong support. As the situation is getting more severe in Africa, the Chinese government and people have urgently delivered batches of supplies to the continent, which has been highly acclaimed by African countries and the African people. There is no change whatsoever in China's policy of friendship towards Africa. Nor will there be any change in African countries and people's friendly sentiments towards China. We will never discriminate our African brothers. As a matter of fact, when China was struggling to contain the virus at an earlier stage, of all more than 3,000 African students in Hubei Province and the city of Wuhan, only one was infected and then quickly cured. The rest have all been safe and sound. Regarding the concerns of some African citizens in Guangdong Province, the local authorities have looked into them and adopted a series of new measures. I'm sure the issue will be properly resolved with the two sides' joint efforts. Sputnik: The Chinese government sent a team of medical experts to Russia on April 11 to help fight COVID-19. We noticed there was also a team sent to Kazakhstan earlier. Do you have further plans to send medical teams to other countries? Could you give us the schedule? What's your consideration behind such decisions? Zhao Lijian: Thanks for your interest in China's participation in the global anti-pandemic response. After the outbreak of COVID-19, China, at the request of relevant governments and taking into consideration the epidemic situation and needs on the ground, has sent groups of medical experts to many countries including Italy, Serbia, Cambodia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Myanmar and Kazakhstan. The Chinese experts shared experience with local medical workers, helped them enhance prevention, control, diagnosis and treatment capabilities, and boosted shared confidence in a final victory. Their work has been commended by the governments and peoples of all host countries. As you mentioned, we recently sent a team to Russia, too. Going forward, while strengthening domestic prevention and control efforts, we stand ready to send more medical teams to countries that request such assistance based on their epidemic situation and containment needs. RIA Novosti: I want to ask about a flight from Russia to Shanghai. According to official statistics, 60 Chinese citizens, who last Friday arrived in Shanghai from Russia by plane, are positive for novel coronavirus. But as far as we know, there were no regular flights between Russia and China for more than 10 days. Was that a special chartered flight organized for Chinese people who wanted to come back home? Also, there are some reports in Chinese media that this flight was operated by Aeroflot. Could you confirm this? Are you going to organize more such flights? Zhao Lijian: Based on my information, to date, there are still regular flights between Beijing, Shanghai and Moscow. We will continue to work with the Russian side to contain the spread of COVID-19. Reuters: According to reports, the G20 is planning to offer low-income countries a moratorium on bilateral government loan repayments to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Can you please confirm if there is such a plan and is China on board with it? Zhao Lijian: I'm not aware of the situation for the time being. If you are interested, I will try to gather more information from my colleagues in charge of G20 related affairs and come back to you later. The following questions were raised after the press conference: Q: A commentary published by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun on April 12 said that the spreading pandemic is the man-made result of the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China. It also accused China of refusing to admit its mistakes in dealing with the pandemic. What is your comment? Zhao Lijian: The Yomiuri Shimbun article has nothing in it but malicious attacks on the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China, With its ignorance, prejudice and arrogance against China, it seriously misleads the opinion of the international community, including those of the Japanese people, towards China. It shows not the slightest respect to the professional ethics of journalism, moral standards and basic conscience of mankind. The Chinese side will not accept such slander and has lodged solemn representations with the relevant person in charge of the newspaper. I need to stress that China made tremendous sacrifice in fighting COVID-19. The measures we've taken have the support and endorsement of all Chinese people. Our initial success in containing the virus bought precious time and offered meaningful experience for other countries. This is an indisputable fact recognized by the whole international community. No one could deny this. Faced with this common challenge, we human beings need to work together more than ever, instead of attacking each other. We strongly urge the relevant side in Japan to immediately correct its mistake, earnestly assume its due social responsibilities, and play a constructive role in advancing China-Japan anti-pandemic cooperation and improving bilateral relations. Q: African envoys to China recently said that China has taken measures such as mandatory testing and quarantine on Africans in the prevention and control of the epidemic. What is China's response? Is China concerned that China-Africa relations will suffer as a result? Zhao Lijian: Last night, I issued a written statement on the prevention and control of the epidemic in Guangdong involving African citizens. This morning, Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong met with some African diplomatic envoys in China. The Guangdong authorities have also held a news conference saying that they attach great importance to African friends' concerns, and will adopt a series of measures, including to improve medical observation and health management measures related to foreign citizens as relevant epidemic response procedures require, treat them without differentiation, and provide more public health service and guidance tailored for foreign citizens; to take further measures to accommodate African nationals caught in difficulties; to establish an effective communication mechanism with foreign Consulates-General in Guangzhou; to firmly oppose any racist and discriminatory words or deeds. At the meeting this morning, Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong expounded on the position and work of the Chinese government, reiterated China's friendly policy towards Africa, and stressed that the unbreakable friendship between China and Africa has taken root in the hearts of people in China and Africa. After the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Africa once again stood together to overcome the difficulties. China will continue to increase support for Africa within its capacity and work with Africa to fight the epidemic until the final victory is achieved. The African envoys said that the great success of the Chinese government and people in fighting the epidemic has provided experience, confidence and hope for the global response to the pandemic. They thanked China for taking good care of African nationals in China and extending a helping hand to Africa while overcoming difficulties at home in the fight against the epidemic, which they believed fully demonstrates the brotherly friendship in difficult times between the Chinese and African people. They found Assistant Foreign Minister Chen's briefing on China's position is reassuring as it serves to enhance mutual understanding and consolidate China-Africa friendship. They will immediately, faithfully and thoroughly report it to their government and get the message across to their nationals in Guangdong, and cooperate with China to urge their nationals in China to comply with Chinese laws and regulations to ensure prevention and control. The envoys also stressed that Africa and China are good brothers and partners, and the problems arising in Guangdong are things between brothers, which can in no doubt be settled through friendly talks. No external force, no matter for what intentions or through which means, can stop the development of Africa-China friendly relations. Google announced Sunday night it is giving $1 million to help families in the San Francisco Bay Area, with CEO Sundar Pichai contributing another $1 million. The goal is to fundraise another $3 million from employees and others through GiveDirectly, which would allow 5,000 families to receive $1,000 each. Why it matters: Google's home region remains one of the most expensive in the country and, for those not able to work from home, the COVID-19 outbreak is a financial crisis in addition to a health crisis. In 2007, she tried to win back her old part in a Gypsy revival on Broadway. Appalled that the directors would not consider her at age 83, she filed an age discrimination complaint. The producers said they did not feel compelled to grant Faith a private audition, and she was welcome, as any union member was, to attend a public audition. BirchTree Bread Company joined a growing movement in Worcester where small businesses are closing temporarily as the city braces for a surge in coronavirus cases. The bread company and restaurant announced last week that it will be closed until through April 28 beginning on Monday. It plans to resume curbside pickup on April 29. With the virus hitting its peak over the next two weeks we feel its our responsibility to ensure everyones safety and health and close up shop for the next two weeks, BirchTree Bread Company said in a Facebook post. Officials in Worcester have been predicting a surge in coronavirus cases for weeks. Last week, Worcester Director of Public Health Dr. Michael Hirsh said he anticipates the city experiencing a peak in cases around April 19. BirchTree Bread Company joined Georges Coney Island and Niche Hospitality Group, who each announced last week that that they were closing for at least a few weeks as the city braced for the surge. We felt that it was just a matter of time with the expected surge next week, we said why dont we be ahead of this a little bit and before people do have symptoms that work with us, before they get sick, lets go ahead and close preemptively, Mike Covino of Niche Hospitality said. Related Content: Anti-national in the US An NRI in the US has got into trouble for making supposedly anti-US comments. Swathi Devineni, who is from Telangana, was booked by the New Jersey Police for making a video in which she said the United States had failed to curb the coronavirus pandemic while India had prevented it successfully. America is a rich country with enough mechanism. But they could not (anticipate) the coronavirus outbreak. However, India forecast it wisely and was able to prevent it, she said in the video, which went viral on social media. It ... EFG Hermes, a leading financial services corporation in Frontier Emerging Markets (FEM), has announced that it has entered a strategic partnership agreement with PayTabs, an award-winning global fintech solutions provider, to launch PayTabs Egypt. PayTabs Egypt will build a cutting-edge platform to facilitate financial inclusion, catering to both the online and digital payment needs of multiple consumer segments in the country, whether the mass affluent or the emerging affluent segments. It will carry out financial transactions remotely, quickly, and seamlessly be it purchases, money collection or paying bills, online or offline through a simple, user-friendly interface that onboards users in a few easy steps. Walid Hassouna, CEO of EFG Hermes Finance & Group Head of Debt Capital Markets, said: Our partnership with PayTabs a global player renowned for a longstanding track record of innovative fintech solutions is not only part and parcel of our goal to expand our portfolio of NBFI companies but central to our strategy to bolster financial inclusion in the nation. As the world grapples with the effects of COVID-19 on daily financial interactions at brick-and-mortar facilities, we feel like this partnership will bring to market a platform that will facilitate financial interactions safely, securely, and effectively all while closing the gap between the formal economy and the unbanked. PayTabs Egypt aims to launch several innovative fintech solutions, payment-processing platforms and interoperable systems in the short term. The state-of-the-art hybrid digital payment platform will enable one-click payments and comprehensive solutions for merchants and consumers alike. It also plans to step in to provide merchants and businesses with several progressive payment acceptance methods such as QR codes and payment gateways. Our goal is to empower cashless payments in every sphere of the Egyptian customers life cycle. Alternative payment methods are on the rise, especially at this time, to meet the needs of online consumers, led by e-wallets and bank transfers. This transformation, paired with todays technology and Egypts thriving fintech culture, will allow the company to promote cashless payments that adapt to todays e-commerce progression, added Hassouna. PayTabs founder and CEO Abdulaziz Al Jouf said: We are excited to announce this venture, which creates synergy between two powerful global brands to create more ground-breaking payment solutions that facilitate financial inclusion and greater convenience for millions of customers in Egypts financial ecosystem. The primary objective of our partnership is to fuel and drive the digital economy by capitalizing on EFG Hermess extensive know-how, local intelligence and regional leadership to ensure scalability, simplicity and adaptability. PayTabs Egypt has appointed industry veteran Hany Soliman as General Manager. Soliman brings to the company 17 years of diversified expertise in financial services, business development, strategic management and a wealth of experience in digital innovation and strategic alliances. TradeArabia News Service His doctors and nurses have fallen sick, one by one. Dr. Daniel Varga has watched many of his health care workers at Hackensack Meridian Health contract the coronavirus as the pandemic rages across New Jersey. It has led to manpower shortages at a time when hospitals and their patients can least afford them. Varga has battled life-threatening contagions before, working in Dallas in 2014 when a man who traveled there from West Africa became the first in the United States to test positive for Ebola. But I gotta tell you, as crazy as Ebola was, Ive never seen anything like this," HMHs chief physician executive said of the COVID-19 outbreak. The coronavirus poses such a grave threat to health care workers that it has forced Vargas hospital network to rethink the lifesaving measures it takes with dying coronavirus patients. As medical facilities struggle with a growing number of workers getting sick or forced into quarantine, Hackensack Meridian hospitals are among the New Jersey care centers that have established Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNAR) policies. They aim to mitigate the transmission risks inherent in lifesaving measures, such as CPR and intubation when patients stop breathing or their hearts cease beating. The decision, some experts say, is necessary as hospitals around the state face shortages in personal protective equipment and health care staff. But it is a sensitive and nuanced issue, especially when coronavirus patients are in isolation and family members have not physically seen them or been able to monitor their condition for days, in many circumstances. Hospitals have been hit with a surge of COVID-19 patients, which has exposed hundreds of emergency room and ICU doctors and nurses to the life-threatening respiratory disease, state officials have said. The pandemic is responsible for more than 61,850 cases and 2,350 fatalities in the state. Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jerseys largest hospital network, implemented a DNAR policy earlier this month necessitated by the number of staff members who became patients themselves. St. Josephs University Medical Center in Paterson also changed its policy. It designated all patients who have either tested positive for COVID-19 or are suspected of being infected on a no CPR list, a hospital official told NJ Advance Media. Other hospitals around the state are at least discussing the possibility of adopting DNAR policies during the crisis, interviews with health officials revealed. A DNAR directs a health care team to withhold resuscitative measures. Because the coronavirus is highly contagious, doctors performing lifesaving tactics can be especially susceptible, health officials say. The crisis in New York has reportedly forced doctors to calculate the slim survival odds for patients saved by CPR versus the chances of viral transmission to their embattled workforce. And now some New Jersey hospitals are facing the same dilemma. Coronavirus infectious nature forced Hackensack Meridian to enact its DNAR policy, according to Varga, the top medical officer for 17 hospitals, nursing homes and urgent care centers throughout the state. The measure is similar to policies established by other hospitals around the U.S. If the doctor can say that they dont think the patient will be likely to achieve the return of spontaneous circulation, or that theres a high likelihood of (another) cardiac arrest, the physician has the option to not resuscitate," Varga said. Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center and the founding director of its division of medical ethics, said the new DNAR policies make sense." Were not in normal times," he said. "The ethical standards shift, just like the medical standards shift. Put it this way: Were allowing students to graduate early to practice in the hospital. Theres talk about splitting ventilators to share because theyre scarce. There are orders to reuse some of your medical protective gear. And there are demands for (medical personnel) who are sick to come back early to work because were short-handed. None of that would happen in normal times. Varga understands people could be alarmed if a patients life-saving wishes are ignored without discussion. The big thing for the public to understand is this particular situation isnt something where its a criteria-driven thing," he said. "This is a clinical judgement based on the physicians decision and in consultation with the care team. Its not like saying, If youre over the age of 70, you dont get anything. Its not like that at all. This is still continuing to defer to the clinical judgement of the physician and the health care team, who are making their best assessment. The policy is a week-to-week assessment" based on the realities that were facing with respect to (a shortage in) PPE," Varga said. It seems like the prudent thing to do as we assess patients and look at whos likely and whos not likely to survive an arrest," he said. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage Difficult decision Lives are at stake and not just those of the patients, hospital officials said. Pamela Garretson, a spokeswoman at St. Josephs Health, said its Crisis Level of Care policy is consistent with applying best practices in medicine and is in accord with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services, which uphold the dignity of the human person." We recognize that even with supportive care (including ventilator support) many critically ill will succumb to multi-organ failure, sepsis and cardiac complications," she said in a statement. Garretson added St. Josephs will follow state guidelines on end-of-life care for all patients. She called it morally inappropriate" for doctors to make universal decisions of DNR on patients who are COVID-19 positive." Instead, decisions are based on patient-hospital information, treating each of the sick as a unique individual, she said. Ideally, state officials would be tasked with setting clear policies that deal with lifesaving methods in a time of crisis, Caplan said. But I dont think the state wants to practice medicine. The result? Most hospitals are left to implement some sort of policy, he said. Judy Persichilli, the New Jersey commissioner of health, said the state would unequivocally" not implement a blanket DNAR for COVID-19 patients. We have always promoted advanced directives for everyone in New Jersey, no matter who you are, your age, or anything else," Persichilli said last week. An advanced directive, which says specifically your desires in certain periods of your health life, is the right thing to do. Rebecca Smith, a spokesperson for RWJBarnabas Health, said its policy is to defer to the states Department of Health for guidelines on resuscitation and other lifesaving procedures for all patients. including those with COVID-19." Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck has not changed its policy. But Dr. Adam Jarrett, its chief medical officer, said he understands why other hospitals are implementing new DNAR policies. Every hospital is struggling with an enormous number of critically ill patients, he said. Holy Name, which is located in one of the most heavily infected pockets in the state, has enough PPE and ventilator capacity to not have to make these decisions at this point," Jarrett said. Im not getting pushback from my medical staff or my nursing staff," he said. Health care workers do take risks. They deal with needles on a day-to-day basis, and theyre around patients who have tuberculous and other infectious diseases like flu. So we dont think that at this point we should do anything different than our normal process. But there are a lot more (end-of-life) conversations being had." A vital conversation The grim reality for hospitalized coronavirus patients is nearly as cruel as COVID-19 itself. They have to be placed in isolation, away from loved ones as they fight to survive. Their families cannot visit them, relying on phone calls for updates. Its a scene that has played out across New Jersey, where 7,604 people were hospitalized with the virus, including 1,914 in critical care as of Saturday night, according to the state Department of Health. Adelisa Perez oversees the Conversation of Your Life program for the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, an independent advocacy organization that promotes accountability and transparency in health care. A registered nurse who has worked in hospital settings, she is an advocate for the need to designate a health care proxy who understands a patients wishes at all stages in life. Its kind of a scary situation thats becoming even scarier because now you lose that connection to your loved ones (in isolation)," she said. It speaks to the importance of having that conversation beforehand." Just because some hospitals have temporarily changed their DNAR policies, there still needs to be a conversation between doctors and patients to understand the treatment options, according to Perez. Even if a DNR order isnt placed, or regardless of who put it in place, its important for their families to know the reality of whats happening so it can match their expectations and end-of-life goals," Perez said. Varga said the conversations are often difficult, but necessary. They are even more essential in the age of coronavirus. I would tell you that, particularly in this crisis, when were having the doctor-patient conversation, a lot of folks are saying they dont want to be resuscitated or I dont want my mom resuscitated," he said. To be quite honest, these are the conversations we should be having all the time. But because we dont have the exigency of a crisis like COVID, where folks can deteriorate so terribly quickly, sometimes those conversations just dont happen." Perez says the conversations should be happening with all patients 18 and older not just within the older population. There are a large amount of patients who either dont have a health care proxy or a family member, and so its a decision that falls on the clinical team," she said. Oftentimes, if theres not an advanced directive in place or these conversations havent happened, the family members will defer to the health care provider." The American Medical Associations medical ethics opinion states physicians should not permit their personal value judgments to obstruct implementation" of whether a patient declines or accepts medically appropriate resuscitative interventions. Normally, you expect that you or your family or your decision-makers are going to negotiate decisions about your health care with your doctors, said Caplan, who serves on Johnson & Johnsons Compassionate Use Advisory Committee, which decides who receives life-saving treatment in short supply. We fought, in my field of bioethics, for many decades to get that right established, that you have informed consent, that youre given choices, that you are told whats going on, whether its Do Not Resuscitate orders or a decision to put you on a ventilator. But Caplan said ethical standards in resuscitation requests need to shift in order to protect our doctors and nurses so they can stay healthy and protect the most." Resuscitation is too dangerous,'' he said. (The medical personnel) are in intimate body contact with fluids. Sometimes they have to open up the chest. Theyre face-to-face with breathing, excretions. Theyre are all over the bedding, which could be infected too. You may not have the time to sterilize all the equipment that youre going to use adequately. And we dont have enough protective gear. Peak in sight? The worst is yet to come. As hospitals battle shortages in PPE and life-saving ventilators, Varga is concerned about the models that show New Jersey has yet to hit its peak number of hospitalizations. Persichilli said Thursday the state is expected to peak at 14,400 people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases, and it could happen as soon as this week. The onslaught of patients and infected doctors and nurses has forced many hospitals in Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Middlesex counties to go to divert status the past two weeks, meaning theyre temporarily not accepting new patients. At least eight hospitals were on divert Sunday, citing patient volume or epidemic outbreak. Im struck by the number of people that require hospitalization and decline very quickly, Persichilli said. When youre looking at 15,000 people in critical care on any one day, Ive never quite seen that. Varga hasnt either. And its why Hackensack Meridian put its DNAR order in place, especially with the peak surge of cases yet to hit. I think we have a ways to go yet," he said. Theres just so little agreement right now on the modeling." The University of Washington model indicates the state may be at the peak now. The COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics says New Jersey cases will peak April 24 or 25. The difference could be monstrous for hospitals, Varga said. NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. A small study in Brazil was halted early for safety reasons after coronavirus patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia. Chloroquine is closely related to the more widely used drug hydroxychloroquine. President Trump has enthusiastically promoted them as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus despite little evidence that they work, and despite concerns from some of his top health officials. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency approval to allow hospitals to use chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine from the national stockpile if clinical trials were not feasible. Companies that manufacture both drugs are ramping up production. The Brazilian study involved 81 hospitalized patients in the city of Manaus and was sponsored by the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It was posted on Saturday at medRxiv, an online server for medical articles, before undergoing peer review by other researchers. Because Brazils national guidelines recommend the use of chloroquine in coronavirus patients, the researchers said including a placebo in their trial considered the best way to evaluate a drug was an impossibility. Despite its limitations, infectious disease doctors and drug safety experts said the study provided further evidence that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which are both used to treat malaria, can pose significant harm to some patients, specifically the risk of a fatal heart arrhythmia. Patients in the trial were also given the antibiotic azithromycin, which carries the same heart risk. Hospitals in the United States are also using azithromycin to treat coronavirus patients, often in combination with hydroxychloroquine. ABOUT 10 civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country have pledged to help intensify public awareness on the fight against the deadly Civid-19 disease and donated 79m/- for the cause. Foundation for Civil Society (FCS) President Stigma Tenga said the amount was handed over to Prime Minister Kassim Mjaliwa in support of the government to control the disease in the country. She explained that CSOs had always been promoting development, thus they were ready to support the struggle against coronavirus, a disease that derailed development and peoples wellbeing. The major focus of CSOs is to support the government in its development agenda and coronavirus is a thorny issue because it affects all sectors of the economy, she said, adding that the CSOs promised the Premier that they would intensify public awareness on the disease. She said CSOs had a big role to educate members of the public on the deadly disease, noting that there was a need for more efforts since the disease was very dangerous. According to the FCS boss, the CSOs will continue engaging people to understand the problem, saying the government cannot do it all alone without support from other stakeholders. She noted that as people advocates, especially marginalised groups in society, they had appealed to the Prime Minister to ensure the government gave special attention to special groups like women, children and the disabled during this trying moment. For her part, Tanzania Women Lawyers Association (TAWLA) Executive Director Tike Mwambipile noted that as CSOs, they understood that Covid-19 had grossly affected the world and appealed to the government to consider reducing taxes, levies and rents. It is a fact that the pandemic has affected the whole world and it is our role to ensure that women and children get best services during this time. It is women who are mostly affected as their incomes go down, she said. She called on the government to empower women, reach those affected by the disease whose incomes had gone down or lost what they had because of the disease. We appeal to the government to keenly look at taxes, especially rents since peoples incomes have been affected by the disease, she said, adding that women and children should be considered more. As key players and partners in development, we have decided to support the government to tackle the pandemic and we are looking at how best we can do this to help save lives, said Legal Services Facility (LSF) Chief Executive Officer Lulu Ngwanakilala. Harpreet Bajwa By Express News Service CHANDIGARH: Foreigners stranded in Punjab after the lockdown was imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic are now returning home. A special flight evacuated 134 Bhutanese students while 271 British nationals were also flown back to the UK. Meanwhile, a Punjab Police officer has tested positive for the virus and villagers are demanding that the entry of migrants be stopped to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Sources said that 134 students from Bhutan flew to Thimphu by a special plane from Amritsar Intentional Airport which was arranged by the Bhutan Government. Of these, 122 are studying at Lovely Professional University (LPU) near Jalandhar and eleven in other institutions. They were checked by health department officials before being flown back. The university campus has been sealed after a student tested positive. CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES Deputy Commissioner of Kapurthala Deepti Uppal said special buses arranged by the LPU dropped these students at the Amritsar airport. KBS Sidhu, Special Chief Secretary (Revenue), Punjab, said, "The students were stranded in hostels of the university ever since the start of lockdown in the state." He added, "The British High Commissions special chartered rescue flight operated by British Airways took off from Amritsar International Airport today afternoon carrying 271 passengers. "The Jammu and Kashmir administration has also finally agreed to take back 1,400 stranded Kashmiri migrants who had been put up in relief camps at Pathankot. The Deputy Commissioner of Pathankot is waiting for a final green signal from his counterpart in Kathua to repatriate them at Lakhanpur barrier. This will also open the way for the return of Kashmiri students stranded in Amritsar, who have already completed their quarantine period, said Sidhu. "A 52-year old gazetted officer of Punjab Police posted in Ludhiana has tested positive for coronavirus and he had been unwell for the past week and has been put on the ventilator, he added. Meanwhile, a few residents of Nagra village in Sangrur demanded strict action against villagers who had brought migrants for the harvesting of wheat. "We are not allowing any outsider in our village, but some farmers have brought migrants for harvesting wheat and they could spread infection in our village. We are not allowing even our relatives to come to our village so how can these migrants come. If any farmer has to harvest wheat, they can take the services of locals, said a villager. The pandemic has also cast a shadow on Baisakhi celebrations at the Golden Temple, Takht Damdama Sahib and Anandpur Sahib which were a low key affair this year due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Texas continued to brace Saturday for a surge in hospital visits driven by the coronavirus pandemic as the states death toll rose to more than 250. Officials in Harris County unveiled a temporary overflow hospital that will be able to help take on patients during a heightened onslaught of COVID-19. Medical workers and journalists were taken on a tour of the as-yet-unopened facility on the day the U.S. eclipsed Italy for the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world, surpassing 20,000. Harris County is the states most populous with more than 4.2 million residents. We still havent reached the peak, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the countys highest elected official, told reporters Saturday. Hidalgo added the field hospital wont be used until a sharp increase in coronavirus patients starts taxing existing hospital systems, which she expects to become an issue in the Houston area in two or three weeks. The overflow shelter at Houstons NRG Park, where the Houston Texans play, will initially have 250 beds with a capacity of 2,000. Officials are setting up a similar overflow unit in Dallas. Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that Texas is beginning to slow the growth of the coronavirus. He said he would issue an executive order next week laying out how Texas will eventually reopen for business. It is unclear when a loosening of restrictions might happen. Abbott put Texas under what amounts to a stay-at-home order until April 30. As of Saturday, Texas officials confirmed about 12,500 people had tested positive for COVID-19, and 254 had died. Around 1,600 people have recovered from the disease. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. Secretary says at least 12,000 tourists still stranded in Cancun, Riviera Maya Cancun, Q.R. The secretary of state tourism says around 12,000 national and international tourists remain stranded in the state of Quintana Roo due to border closures and travel restrictions. Marisol Vanegas Perez, the Secretaria estatal de Turismo says the stranded tourists will surely stay until the end of the coronavirus pandemic. She said that on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week, flights opened mainly to Peru and Argentina. She noted that before that, there were approximately 15,000 stranded tourists in the state. Vanegas Perez said that many of the tourists are staying in hostels and in the 28 low-cost accommodation centers that have been authorized by the state government for visitors during the duration of the health emergency due to force majeure. She said they have a campaign launched by the State Secretary of Tourism (Sedetur) called Tu vuelo aun no sale y buscas hospedaje? (Your flight has not yet left and you are looking for accommodation?) which includes 28 very low cost hotels and two that are hostels hosting tourists for free. When the tourists no longer have resources, we take them to a hotel-hostel free, she explained adding that most of these places are located in mainland Isla Mujeres, Puerto Juarez and central Cancun. Vanegas Perez said that although the airport is still open to service flights, there are some delays. She said on Wednesday, a flight to Ecuador left, on Thursday another for Argentina and another Friday for Peru. We calculate that we are going to end up with 12,000 to 13,000 tourists during the time the contingency is extended. Most are in Benito Juarez (Cancun), Solidaridad (Playa del Carmen) and Tulum, she noted. Newe Cannabis will a have a Soft Opening on April 18, the opening will comply with the intent of Governor Sisolaks Order to recognize social distancing in the safe manner. Im writing to you with facts for your readers about how the Elko Band Council of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Tribal Nation arrived at the decision to pursue this business, as well as to publicly repeat our desire to work cooperatively and collaboratively with the Elko Mayor and City Council to address any concerns. In 2000, 65.38% of Nevadans voted to legalize medical marijuana in our State. Further in 2016, 54.47% of Nevadans voted to legalize recreational marijuana in our State. Most recently, in 2017 Governor Brian Sandoval signed a Nevada law which allows Tribal marijuana operations to work with other state-licensed cannabis businesses. So, like the City of West Wendover, the Elko Band Council has decided to open and operate a retail store which will be located at 1555 Shoshone Circle, property that is in Federal Trust, designated for our peoples use and under our Tribes legal jurisdiction. Recommended for you In fact, our Tribal Government has followed all applicable laws and worked especially hard with the Nevada Legislature, the Governors Office, the Attorney Generals Office, the Department of Taxation, and the newly created Cannabis Compliance Board to ensure the good standing of Newe Cannabis, despite our legal status as a sovereign nation. Further, we have contracted with experienced professionals to ensure the Newe Cannabis is the first-rate operation that strictly follows all required safety and security laws. Please know that for thousands of years, native American people have always found value and medicinal uses of plants and roots. Now, the State of Nevada has passed laws which encouraged our tribe of 2,000 people to connect our culture with a potentially profitable business, a business which will employee 39 people. Most importantly, the Elko Band Council wants to be good neighbors, especially with the City of Elko and other surround areas. We pledge to do our best not just to ensure customer satisfaction to all who patronize Newe Cannabis, but to uphold the highest business standards which will benefit not just our Tribe, but the entire Elko Community. Davis Gonzales, Chairman Juan Arevalo, Vice Chairman Elko Band Council Love 94 Funny 5 Wow 3 Sad 3 Angry 40 One food supplier is warning of a nationwide meat shortage as it temporarily closes one of its processing facilities due to novel coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns. On Sunday, Smithfield Foods Inc. announced that it would be shutting down its plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, until further notice. According to the company, the location is one of the largest pork processing facilities in the United States and accounts for 4 to 5 percent of the nations pork production. The plant is said to supply some 130 million servings of food per week 18 million servings a day and employs 3,700 workers. It also works with more than 550 independent family farmers for its livestock. In a press release about the decision, Kenneth M. Sullivan, president and CEO of Smithfield, cautioned that COVID-19 shutdowns are leading perilously close to a widespread shortage of meat in grocery stores. The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply, said Sullivan. It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. Added Sullivan: These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nations livestock farmers. These farmers have nowhere to send their animals. RELATED: These Organizations Are Feeding Health Care Workers and First Responders Across the Country Stephen Groves/AP/Shutterstock Employees and family members protest outside a Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on April 9. Never miss a story sign up for PEOPLEs 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 company said it will pay employees for the next two weeks and will reopen once given the okay from local, state and federal officials. Story continues Unfortunately, COVID-19 cases are now ubiquitous across our country. The virus is afflicting communities everywhere. The agriculture and food sectors have not been immune, said Sullivan. Numerous plants across the country have COVID-19 positive employees. We have continued to run our facilities for one reason: to sustain our nations food supply during this pandemic. He continued: We believe it is our obligation to help feed the country, now more than ever. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19. RELATED VIDEO: Georgia Bar Owner Removes Over $3,000 From Bar Walls to Give to Her Employees Georgia Bar Owner Removes Over $3,000 From Bar Walls to Give to Her Employees The Sand Bar owner Jennifer Knox tells CNN "we're all in this together" RELATED: Should You Be Wiping Down Your Groceries When You Get Home from the Store? Experts are Divided Other meat suppliers have halted production at several locations across the country. Tyson Foods Inc. announced earlier this month that it would suspend production at a Columbus Junction, Iowa, pork plant after employees tested positive for the coronavirus. Were working hard to protect our team members during this ever-changing situation, while also ensuring we continue fulfilling our critical role of helping feed people across the country, Tyson CEO Noel White said in a statement last week. White added: While these are challenging times, we remain committed to protecting our people while continuing to meet the needs of our customers and consumers across America. As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments. To help provide doctors and nurses on the front lines with life-saving medical resources, donate to Direct Relief here. Somewhat perversely, for the near term, at least, the ravages of the novel coronavirus have led to an unintended blessing: great buying opportunities for wine consumers. Deep discounts abound around town when we order bottles to go from restaurants that are using creative takeout food and takeaway beverages as a lifeline in what can only be described as an existential crisis. However, if youre a small importer/distributor, especially one lacking the license to retail your wines, these are the worst of times. Theres no sugarcoating the bind theyre in and will continue to be in long after the virulent virus spread is contained. The new normal will be apocalyptic for many, a near-certain endgame. And, truth to tell, it figures to ultimately turn out badly for consumers, too, when wines from boutique producers, the raison detre for the mom-and-pop importers, start disappearing from the market. Well never fully recover the business weve lost, said Philip Cusimano, who represents Vinifera Imports in Houston and has been selling wine locally for more than four decades. Its bad. Ive never seen anything like it. Even if we could open up again tomorrow, (no restaurants) would want to see us. Nobodys going to be buying for a while. Under normal circumstances, Vinifera would fill 10 to 12 restaurant orders of varying sizes around the first of the month in the Houston market. This year? Only one had come in by April 5. And then theres importer-distributor Douglas Skopp, who launched his Dionysus Imports about 20 years ago. Skopps sales to restaurants are down 90 percent, and he doesnt have the license required to deal directly with consumers. At least his retail sales, particularly to the Specs stores across Texas, are up about 50 percent because, obviously, folks cant go out to eat. French Country Wines near Rice Village, in turn, has gone from being primarily an on-premise wholesaler accounting for 70 percent of the business at the first of the year, owner Jean-Philippe Guy says to hyper-focusing on retail. Guy has even begun selling online, something he long swore hed never do (frenchcountrywines.com). Its not making up for our wholesale losses, he said, but its helping. (Overall business) isnt nearly as bad as I was expecting. We had to canceled one order, but we got a shipment recently of 15 palates, so were pretty well stocked. When the restaurants that manage to stave off Armageddon do start buying in bulk again, however, theyre mostly going to shop for the deepest available discounts, which only the big boys RNDC, Southern Glazers, etc. are going to be in a position to offer. Theres simply too much wine inventory backed up in the system. Price pushback is going to be fierce, Cusimano predicts. Selling will require lots of daily heavy lifting. Its not a crazy reach to draw a parallel with whats happening in the horribly depressed Texas oil patch except, as he points out, Wine goes bad. Oil doesnt. Tony Elsinga serves as the chief operating officer for the Medallion Global Wine Group and is a 35-year veteran of the wine world, having been both a floor sommelier and a retail salesman. He calls the current environment challenging and, for sure, unprecedented. Up is down, down is up and forward is backward. I guess youd have to go back to (World War II) to find a comparison to kind of challenging restrictions were facing. Elsinga and Medallion Globals CEO, Chris Rew, made the fortuitous decision in 2018 to obtain the kind of permitting required by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) that allows them to sell directly to consumers. In essence, they had to declare themselves a winery, then produce a tiny bit of wine every year. If that sounds odd, well, yes, it is. But such is Texas byzantine three-tiered system for selling adult beverages. Although, pre-COVID-19, Medallion Global had intended to eventually focus on retail over wholesale, it had gotten behind on the administrative details because the on-premise business was going gangbusters. The company is working to make its website, medallionglobal.com, fully user-friendly for online customers. For now, email info@medallionglobal.com to peruse the portfolio, which is heavy on French and Italian wines. But domestic producers were already being added because of the new tariffs on European imports that had ruined many a nights sleep even before the pandemic belatedly got Americas undivided attention in mid-March. By comparison, even the mid-February threat of 100 percent levies on top of the 25 percent tacked onto many French wines last fall seemed a minor obstacle compared to the current one. Guy, Skopp and Elsinga are all in the same boat when it comes to pricing. Their already narrow margins make deep discounting untenable. Were not going to fire-sale our product, Elsinga said. We cant slough off 80 or 90 brands and just give them away at cost. Our wines that sell quickly arent being reordered right now. Many of the wines youre seeing (sold so cheaply by restaurants to accompany takeout orders) are wines that have been sitting around for two, three years. But were covered on inventory at our end, and I remain an inveterate optimist. Weve built up a lot of good will, and were here to stay. If theres a silver lining for the long term, this will get rid of all the cowboys, (quick-buck wholesalers) who werent serious about what they were doing. Guy, for his part, is essentially a one-man band today, forced to lay off his French Country Wine sales team a month ago. He handles administrative tasks in the morning and deals with curbside pickups from 1 to 5 p.m., then makes deliveries. He charges $12 for the latter outside the Loop unless you happen to live out west, where he does. If you are close to being on his way home, hell happily drop off your order, no payment required. Guys neighbor, TuttiLili, which focuses on small-production Italian wines, has also gone all in on online shopping (tuttililionline.com) and offers free delivery in a two-day window. At the time I wrote this, Skopp had completed his application for an emergency government-backed loan, intending to use the money to retain his 14 employees statewide, and Guy said he intended to do the same in order to bring back his furloughed staffers as soon as the funds arrive. The $349 billion Coronavirus Paycheck Protection Program offers small-business owners 1 percent financing, a six-month grace period and loan forgiveness if they use at least 75 percent of the money to keep their employees on salary. Still, its hard to imagine a tougher operating environment. Few businesses have been as thoroughly impacted by the pandemic as the hospitality industry. Social distancing and self-quarantining fly in the face of its very essence. The heart and soul of any restaurant, Elsinga said, is people getting together over great food and wine. Cusimano conceded theres no way, at least for now, to put any kind of positive spin on what lies ahead for his industry. Theres too much wine in the market, and the oversupply problem is exacerbated by the loss of time to move it prior to the next harvest, Cusimano said. In Houston, we have over 40 wine distributors while two companies (RNDC and Southern Glazers) probably do 80 percent of the total business. Its possible that in the immediate future well have lower wine prices, but, sadly, well see many distributors and restaurants go under. sportywineguy@outlook.com twitter.com/sportywineguy Virus blocks international program, but not companionship By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-04-13 09:20 The coronavirus pandemic has blocked many international programs, but the friendship formed has proved unstoppable. For teenagers from Shanghai and Victoria, Australia who shared an unforgettable togetherness when participating in the Victorian Young Leaders to China Program (VYCL), the outbreak has made them more concerned about each other. (The letter Chinese students sent to their foreign companions) This year, due to the disease outbreak, the program, usually held twice a year in Spring and Autumn, has been stranded. Thus, students from the International Department of Shanghai Foreign Language School, one of Shanghais participating schools, sent an encouragement letter to their program companions.We should stay at home and take online lessons, which reminds us more of the unforgettable times with you. Wish you are well during this challenge and you are welcome to come to our school and class again when the disease is completely defeated,it reads. Organized by the International Education Association Shanghai (IEAS) and Australian Department of Education and Training, the program has accepted more than 400 Australian students since 2014 to come to China for a study tour in Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing. During their stay in Shanghai, the foreign students stayed in some middle schools and conducted various campus academic, cultural and sports activities. Hopefully, the foreign friends will come back to Shanghai soon again. Tensions flared again in disputed Kashmir, with shelling across the de facto border between Pakistan and India killing three civilians and wounding 13, according to the two sides. The sporadic exchanges of mortar and artillery fire along the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the Himalayan region began on April 11 and continued into April 12. Police in Indian-administered Kashmir said shells fired from the Pakistani Army hit homes in the Kupwara area, killing three civilians and wounding five. Pakistans military said eight civilians were wounded due to shelling from India. Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-led India have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, two of which were over control of Kashmir, which is claimed in full by both countries. A decision by New Delhi in August to revoke the special constitutional status of India-controlled Kashmir and impose a security lockdown sparked new tensions between the South Asian rivals. Based on reporting by Reuters and AP At least 34 people died and hundreds of thousands were left without power after violent storms swept through the South on Sunday and Monday. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi all declared a state of emergency in response to the storms, which included several powerful tornadoes, flash flooding and large hail. In Mississippi, at least 12 residents died due to the storms, including four in Jefferson Davis County, three in Jones County and two in Lawrence County. MORE: Severe weather lingers in Southeast as cold blast moves East The two Lawrence County victims were a sheriff's deputy and his wife, the county sheriff's office announced late Sunday night. Deputy Robert Ainsworth was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, and his wife, Paula, was a Justice Court deputy clerk, officials said. "April is our historically most dangerous month of the year," Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Executive Director Greg Michel told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America" Monday. "What happened yesterday is certainly an indicator of how dangerous these storms can be, so we'll do the cleanup efforts and get ready for what we anticipate to be a very busy and active tornado month here in April." Executive Director of Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Greg Michel tells @GStephanopoulos how coronavirus has complicated their relief and rescue efforts following the deadly tornado outbreak in their state. https://t.co/QTtkeUmHZL pic.twitter.com/e7ovAneObx Good Morning America (@GMA) April 13, 2020 In South Carolina, nine deaths have been reported due to the severe weather. Georgia has eight confirmed fatalities: seven in Murray County and one in Bartow County. Story continues Tennessee has three reported deaths, and both Arkansas and North Carolina have reported one fatality. PHOTO: In this image made from video provided by WLBT-TV strong storms pound parts of the Deep South, including this house and shed in Yazoo County, Miss., Sunday, April 12, 2020. (Mike Evans/AP) All flights out of Louisiana's Monroe Regional Airport have been canceled until further notice after private planes and a hanger were damaged. MORE: Lab workers are unseen warriors fighting the coronavirus As of Tuesday morning, over 560,000 people in 16 states had lost power due to storm damage. Arkansas had more than 100,000 residents without power. Kentucky had nearly 53,000 residents without power, and North Carolina and South Carolina each had more than 40,000. Nearly 60,000 residents in Massachusetts, 45,000 in New York and 39,000 in Maine were also without power after severe storms hit the East Coast Monday. PHOTO: Survivors and family friends dig through the remains of Deer Park trailer park after a deadly tornado in Murray County, April 13, 2020, in Chatsworth, Ga. (Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) "This storm was as bad or worse than anything we've seen in a decade," Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said on social media Monday, noting that there were at least 12 tornadoes "affecting almost every region." "We are used to tornadoes in Mississippi. No one is used to this. Winds topped 200 MPH. The trail was long and devastating." During his daily White House briefing Monday, President Donald Trump expressed his condolences to the lives lost and people displaced by the storms. He said FEMA is on its way to assist them. "My administration will do everything possible to help those communities get back on their feet," he said. ABC News' Elizabeth Thomas contributed to this report. At least 34 dead, half a million without power after storms, tornadoes batter South originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Monday conducted a review meeting with government officials regarding coronavirus situation in the state. "Action will be taken as per the guidelines given by the Centre. As of now, the situation is under control in the state," the Chief Minister said. "We have to maintain caution and alertness and focus on the treatment of those affected with coronavirus. We have to maintain coordination among the district magistrates in the state. People have cooperated with the state government. We have to ensure that people do not have unavailability of essential commodities and services," he added. The meeting was conducted at the Chief Minister's Office in the Secretariat. The Uttarakhand Health Department on Sunday said that no new positive COVID-19 case in the state emerged for the fourth day in a row. The total number of positive cases in the state remains at 35. Seven persons have been cured/discharged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) IF ARNOLD Clavio were a Facebook user in Cebu, he wouldve been taken by the police before Gov. Gwen Garcia or Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella and publicly reprimanded for publicizing unverified, possibly false, information. But Clavio is a national journalist of 32 years, a radio-TV newscaster and host, tabloid columnist and multi-awarded trans-media practitioner. The Department of Health (DOH) merely said they talked with Clavio and would investigate the issue further even as it flatly denied the charge of suppression of facts about coronavirus infections and deaths in a Manila hospital. Heres what Clavio did, which pictured him as either a violator of protocol during the emergency or a hero who braved sanctions to help the truth out. April 13 post Last April 13, Clavio posted on Facebook the information that an unnamed hospital in Manila had its hallway filled with corpses of coronavirus victims and was pressing its supplier for body bags, one of its wards was occupied with 15-20 positive cases of Covid-19, 10 people died in the hospital every day, and all that was concealed from the public. The post, by itself, tends to stir controversy. Coming from a widely known media personality, it lit up code red signals in government bureaucracy. DOH Chief Francisco Duque quickly issued a formal denial, saying no ban on reporting of admissions and treatments has been imposed on hospitals and clinics and restating the department policy of full disclosure and transparency. No reprimand, threat or any planned action against Clavio from the government. Demand for evidence But there was the expected demand and chiding from some netizens who said Clavio shouldve known better, being with mainstream media, schooled in journalism (University of Sto. Tomas) and trained on verification and fact-checking, and well-aware of the rules on fake news in the time of an extraordinary emergency. They asked Clavio to produce evidence of the publicized accusation. Story continues Not really evidence, within its meaning in a court of law. Actually, just the basis for his report in Facebook. He reproduced in his second post (after the first post was taken down a few hours from time of posting) some screen-grabs of the messages from the supposed front-liners who fed him the information. What werent done But he didnt show if he had checked the tip, which was what it was, knew the tipsters, grilled them further to test truthfulness, probed other sources, and confronted DOH and the Inter-agency Task Force. Which was what he wouldve done if he were writing a news story for his media outlet. Which was what his editors wouldve required him to do before theyd run his story. Apparently, the safeguards were not taken because of the platform he was using, social media. There was no pressure of any kind, no filter hed usually get in a newsroom. The reporter and editors are duty-bound to know the sensitiveness of the material and the possible harm it could inflict in a time of crisis. But then apparently Clavio had no editor looking over his shoulder when he posted the information on FB. Like many or most FB users, he just tapped away on phone keys to tell the world what was on his mind at the time. Argument vs. backlash A published spin on Clavios bravery in exposing what could be a serious anomaly in the fight against coronavirus was preceded by his argument in posting the hospital data. The broadcaster prepared for a backlash by emphasizing in his posts that (1) it is a serious and worrisome issue that needs quick response from the government; (2) it is not intended to frighten or panic the public; and (3) the public has the right to know from the government the true situation in the Philippines. No one disputes Clavio on the nature of the problem and the publics right to know. As to his intent, the public can grant him the benefit of doubt that his intention is noble. Yet he couldve done better as an experienced journalist, especially in the peculiar setting of a calamity of such magnitude as this pandemic. He couldve slowed down a little and verified a bit more. That he took down his two posts not long after he put them up on his wall should tell us he couldve waited until more facts were in. After all, social media is never known as the ideal platform for thoroughly-thought-out action. Good intentions But those who suggest that Clavio be prosecuted for his posts rest on weak ground. Neither Republic Act 1132, on surveillance and response to notifiable diseases and epidemics, or RA 11469, on the presidents special powers under the Bayanihan To Heal as One law, covers his case squarely. Maybe Art. 154 of the Revised Penal Code, which punishes unlawful utterances, but even that law requires that public order be clearly and presently endangered. Clavio has pleaded good intentions. And the government, which may really have something to hide, may choose to pick on the coronavirus instead, not a popular whistleblower. On Friday, April 17, Alex Hohman, 21, of Queensbury, will become one of the very few college students in the country to graduate this spring in an on-campus ceremony. Hohman attends the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Wanakena, on the western edge of the Adirondack Park, about half an hour west of Tupper Lake. Since mid-March, he and his 51 classmates have been restricted to campus, along with the teachers and staff, but have continued classes on an accelerated schedule. Spring break was canceled, Saturday classes were added and graduation was moved up by four weeks. Reached by phone on Friday, Hohman had just emerged from a final exam, which went well, he said, despite the rushed spring schedule and a lot of cramming. Almost all other colleges nationwide, including other SUNY schools, sent students home in the face of the pandemic and have not recalled them. Hundreds of thousands of students have been attending classes online. But at least half of Hohmans coursework entails fieldwork such as timber cruising taking inventory of trees in the forest; trail and road maintenance; and logging. None of that can be done online. Hohman is enrolled in a one-year forest tech program in which students attend classes in the morning and go into the field in the afternoon. He will graduate with an associate in applied science degree and has already taken the state Civil Service exam for the job forest ranger he wants to pursue. The college allows students to get their general education credits somewhere else, which Hohman did at SUNY Adirondack, then take the intensive single-year program in Wanakena. The schools small population of students and staff and its isolation in the Adirondack wilderness have allowed it to self-quarantine successfully from the COVID-19 outbreak sweeping the country. No one has been allowed to leave or visit campus since mid-March, and deliveries of food and other supplies are dropped off outside, then collected by staff. Not leaving campus hasnt been a great hardship or even much of a change, Hohman said. The campus includes 2,800 acres of woods that borders on the 5 Ponds Wilderness Area, and students can still go exploring and camping. No ones sick, he said. Will Doolittle is projects editor at The Post-Star. He may be reached at will@poststar.com and followed on his blog, I think not, and on Twitter at @trafficstatic. Love 41 Funny 7 Wow 5 Sad 1 Angry 0 Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. "I think most family physicians in my situation would have done the same," said Krebs, a solo family physician at a federally qualified health center in Lebanon, Ohio. "We make sure to take care of patients. They're scared. They need our help, and that's our job." Krebs' job on a recent weekend was to take telemedicine calls, along with about two dozen other physicians and nurse practitioners in her community health center's organization. After a fairly busy Friday night, things intensified when she took about 70 calls on Saturday and 60 more on Sunday. In all, she handled more than 150 patient calls in three days. "That was my worst call since residency," said Krebs, who completed her training at Miami Valley Hospital's Family Practice Residency in Dayton in 2007. "I've never had anything close to that. The phone just kept ringing. Everyone who gets upper respiratory symptoms is concerned. We're trying to keep people at home and not send them to the ER unless they really need to go." What those patients who were worried about the spread of SARS-CoV-2 didn't know was that Krebs had already diagnosed herself with COVID-19. Soon the whole nation would know what she endured. In March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, the $2 trillion relief bill that included funding for community health centers. Around the same time, the Ohio Association of Community Health Centers pitched a story about Krebs to The Wall Street Journal, and the newspaper chronicled how she worked from home during that chaotic weekend in mid-March with a 101-degree fever, cough, fatigue, body aches and mild shortness of breath. Since then, Krebs has been contacted by ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NBC and others. "It's been overwhelming," she said. "It's nuts. I'm not a big fan of doing interviews, but I think a lot of people -- administrators, government, patients -- don't realize all the things family physicians do. It's important to get this story out. All these folks should know what we do, especially the people who make policy and pass laws to protect us and patients." There have been multiple news accounts of health care workers being fired or threatened with termination for speaking publicly about issues such as lack of personal protective equipment during the pandemic. But Krebs said physicians and others should continue to share their stories. "I don't know what the answer is, but I want to be part of it," she said. "People need to know what family physicians do and how important we are." Krebs and her husband, family physician Donald Gronbeck, M.D., have both recovered from COVID-19 and are back at work after staying home on their farm in rural Xenia, Ohio -- along with four dogs, 21 sheep and hundreds of chickens and ducks -- for two weeks. Krebs will put her rural health expertise to good use outside her clinic next month during the AAFP's Rural Health Livestream, which is scheduled for May 14-16. As the course chair, Krebs collaborated on the development of the course, including participating in faculty selection and curriculum creation. She said the three-day course, which is approved for up to 18 AAFP Prescribed credits, is designed to help members implement the latest evidence-based guidelines on a range of topics pertinent to rural practice and to help rural physicians manage more patient needs without referrals. "Rural patients can't always go two hours away to see a cardiologist or orthopedist," said Krebs, who also is chair of the Academy's Commission on Quality and Practice. "We have to be able to do more for patients." The livestream course will cover topics that include management of hepatitis C disease, autoimmune disorders, insulin pumps, pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV infection, chronic pain, obesity, wound care, care of cancer survivors, mental health, substance abuse and maternity care. "I'm really excited," Krebs said. "We have great topics. It's designed for rural, but you don't have to be rural." At a time when most live medical conferences are being canceled because of the pandemic, Krebs said she also hopes the virtual conference will give members a chance to connect with colleagues who share common interests. Physicians who register by April 30 save up to $220. "We started planning this a long time ago," Krebs said. "It worked out well, given the situation." The decarbonization of electricity production around the world today may be seen as part of a technological shift. Everyone wants electricity or its immediate benefits like cell phone charging. And until relatively recently, most consumers didnt care how it was produced as long as it was affordable and accessible. But environmental or political movements aside, we are also witnessing a technological shift. The production of electricity on a commercial or wholesale scale is moving away from big-and-complicated machines and systems to small-and-less complicated forms of production. This implies no more gigantic projects that take 10 years to complete with costs that tally into the tens of billions. Whats interesting is that we seem to be witnessing a reversal of the idea of economies of scale with respect to both production of electricity as well as the optimal size of the distribution grid itself. This seems like a fairly radical departure that may shape the industry for decades. Years ago, we had a discussion with one of the last centuries most fabled engineers. We asked, If economies of scale really prevail was that a good reason to upsize electric power plants? He replied that economies of scale did in fact prevail and utilities should go forward with big projects as long as they were certain about four key aspects relating to the project: 1) the ultimate completion costs; 2) duration of construction; 3) total capital costs (equity plus debt); and 4) expected market or demand for electricity at time of completion. What this asks, to borrow a phrase is, if you build it will they comeat the prices you ultimately have to charge? Our readers know that recent nuclear new build has pretty much failed thoroughly on points one through three. And bringing it up in this context feels like piling on at this point. But this past week also saw the cancellation of a proposed gas fired base load project by a wholly reputable builder. Somehow this feels different in that perhaps we can no longer assume base load natural gas will be the bridge fuel as we transition away from fossil fuel based electricity production. With these facts in mind, we believe the concept of economies of scale for utilities might be ripe for revision. A recent study by a sextet of European and Canadian academics supported this view (Science, 3 April 2020) by examining the trade-offs of costs versus complexity concluding that in their terms granularity has advantages over lumpiness. Premium: A Global Oil Cartel? Our take on the key, statistically significant findings, from a business standpoint: - Risk of cost overrun is smaller for small projects and that should reduce their cost of capital. - Smaller projects generally have shorter lifetimes and that leads to more rapid modernization of asset base and lower cost per unit of capacity. - Small projects are less complex technologically and that leads to lower costs. - Small projects create more jobs. - Unit cost per kw rises with size for both energy supply and energy end use projects. In a detailed analysis made for presentation at a regulatory conference this spring now cancelled (to be found on blog page, lenhyman.com), we argued total decarbonization of electricity production would spur a rather large increase in industry capital expenditures but at a cost that would have little adverse impact on consumers. In our evaluation we did not consider that reduction in technological size or scale would lead to lower overall costs or and this is vital lower cost of capital. As we go forward capital cost becomes even more important given the size of contemplated industry expenditures as well as the eventual disappearance of fossil fuel as an operating expense entirely. Even if the findings only applied to cost of capital, savings would be significant. We calculate that a one percentage point reduction in pretax cost of capital reduces prospective electricity prices five percent in twenty years assuming the transition to decarbonization were completed by then. How would we translate these findings into more concrete business policy? Decarbonization technology creates business benefits for two obvious reasonsits cleaner and cheaper (with zero fuel costs). And there is the possibility of reaping these benefits at far smaller, less capital intensive scale. The bigger is better/economy of scale thinking still pervades much US utility industry thinking and capital planning. This seems to be changing slowly. What we believe accelerates this change is a growing recogition that the traditional concept of a spoke and hub grid system is simply no longer necessarily an optimal business model. By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Deloris Lucas, founder of the We Keep You Rollin Bike and Wellness Group, said she was a little saddened that the bikes were not coming yet to her Far South Side Riverdale neighborhood. But she said it would give the city more time to prepare, and add new infrastructure such as protected bike lanes. Dear Amy: My daughter is disabled. She is unable to do much for herself, and needs an aide to help her with everything -- including going to the gym. She loves going, but needs help getting onto/out of the equipment, and cleaning the equipment after use. The aide never uses the equipment; she is there solely to assist my daughter. The gym, however, wants to charge my daughter an extra fee for bringing "a guest." This gym is part of a national chain. Several of their (very young) employees said that they must charge a fee for the aide for "liability reasons." I explained that their policy is discriminatory to persons with disabilities, and therefore illegal. My daughter is using an aide as another disabled person might employ a support animal. Their response was, "Well, her aide is not an animal. If your daughter brings a guest, she must pay for it." I spoke to a manager a few weeks ago, who told me I would get a call from a regional manager. A month has now gone by and now, due to the coronavirus, the gym is closed. I never received a call back. When this crisis passes, however, I must deal with what to me, is discrimination. Should I engage an attorney? -- Furious in Virginia Dear Furious: I don't think you need an attorney -- yet. When the gym reopens, you should go in, work your way past the younger employees, and educate the manager about your daughter's rights. Yes, call the regional manager again, discussing the gym's responsibilities to accommodate her and her aide. You can contact the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (dredf.org) to research this issue. An email address and phone number are listed on the website. I am aware that charging an extra fee for aides has been an issue with some gyms (shame on them). At least one national fitness chain has been pressured by a lawsuit in New York State to drop this "guest" fee, and I assume other national chains have already (or will) follow suit. Dear Amy: My husband passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last year. This was a second marriage for both of us, so we both had kids from our previous marriages. Our wills were done about 18 months prior to my husband's death. At the recommendation of the attorney, the wills were set up so that if I died first, he got everything, and if he died first, everything was mine. If we died at the same time, our estate would be split between all of our children. One stepchild was kind at first -- even after reading the will, but then after about a month, wanted my husband's vehicle. When I refused to give in to the demands, this stepchild turned on me, sending nasty text messages. I figured it was grief spilling out for the loss of a parent. However, several months later, when I was trying to sort things out and give this stepchild items that were part of their family, again, the response was nasty. This stepchild constantly blew off their father while he was alive, only calling when they wanted or needed something. The rest of my husband's family has grown more and more distant as well. I keep trying to reach out to the family with calls, texts and sending cards for birthdays, Christmas, etc. My kids have told me to leave it alone, but it still nags at me that after all these years, this is what it comes to. Should I be trying to mend fences or leave it alone? -- Hurt Widow Dear Hurt: You are already trying to mend fences, but in the absence of a positive or even receptive response, these fences will remain broken. Over time, you may carve out a renewed friendship with one or more of these family members, but unfortunately some may have actually been waiting for a reason to exit the relationship, and the (legal) disposition of their father's will has handed them the excuse they've been seeking. Dear Amy: "Ignored" was upset not to receive any follow-up after job interviews. Managers talk to each other about what talent they are looking for. A candidate may have talents not suitable for one position, but useful elsewhere in the business. A follow-up "thank you" about what the interviewee got out of the meeting ALWAYS causes a second look at the resume and the interview notes. -- Experienced Dear Experienced: Great advice. (You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.) COPYRIGHT 2020 by AMY DICKINSON. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC. Read more advice: Ask Amy: Separated soulmates are eager to connect Dear Annie: Looking to hop off the hamster wheel Dear Abby: Children cut off stepmother with dads power of attorney United Future Party Chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn, candidate for the Jongno district, speaks during a campaign trail in the central Seoul district, April 8. The main opposition party is vowing to reverse most of President Moon Jae-in's policies on North Korea and foreign affairs. Yonhap By Do Je-hae Diplomacy and national security issues are being sidelined in the lead up to the April 15 general election as voters focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The global outbreak has aggravated voters' concerns about where the country's economy is headed and how the parties are preparing to deal with the socio-economic challenges that lie ahead. Nonetheless, parties have announced their election pledges to inform voters about where they stand on core issues regarding foreign affairs and national security. Their pledges are poles apart, particularly regarding North Korea. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is still showing a heavy focus on advancing ties with North Korea, despite the current deadlock in denuclearization talks. Much of the DPK's pledges regarding North Korea reflect President Moon Jae-in's dedication to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Despite the failed summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump in February 2019, Moon has continued to maintain hope for the revival of Pyongyang-Washington negotiations. To support Moon's push for the improvement of inter-Korean ties, the DPK said it would focus on joint economic projects, including the resumption of tourism to Mount Geumgang and activities at the joint industrial complex in the North Korean city of Gaeseong. To realize Moon's "peace economy," the ruling party has also pledged to build special economic zones in regions near the border with North Korea, in Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces as well as Incheon. The DPK will also push for cooperation in the areas of culture and sports, such as the joint hosting of the 2032 Olympic Summer Games. The main opposition United Future Party (UFP) is vowing to reverse Moon's policies on foreign affairs and North Korea. "Under the Moon administration, our national security is unstable and our diplomacy has become isolated," said UFP Chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn, a candidate for Jongno, one of the most coveted constituencies. "At the beginning, the Moon administration held talks with North Korea. But as time has passed, it has become clear that they have not produced any real outcomes. North Korea's nuclear capabilities have only advanced, and it has continued to threaten us with missile tests." One of the UFP's key election pledges regarding North Korea is to scrap the joint military agreement signed on Sept. 19, 2018, aimed at reducing military tension between the two Koreas. It is the main outcome of Moon's trip to Pyongyang for a summit with Kim Jong-un. The UFP says that North Korea has violated the agreement. The rival parties also clash on crucial foreign affairs issues, such as the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan, signed at the U.S. initiative during the Obama administration in 2016. The Moon administration reversed its earlier decision to scrap the pact in November 2019, under the condition that Tokyo cancel the trade restrictions it imposed a few months earlier. But with no changes from Tokyo on the trade issue, GSOMIA could emerge as a point of contention between the two countries again. The UFP, which has criticized the Moon administration for hampering ties with not just Japan but also the U.S. with the decision to scrap the pact, will push for an official extension of the agreement. "We will seek an official extension of the GSOMIA and strengthen national security through stable Korea-U.S.-Japan security cooperation," Shin Beom-chul, the UFP candidate in the Cheonan-A district in South Chungcheong Province and a national security expert, said in a media interview. In light of the impact of COVID-19, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) and the Government of Flanders have announced that the 6th UNWTO World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism, scheduled to take place 1-3 June in Bruges, Belgium, will now be held in June 2021 (date to be announced). In light of the impact of COVID-19, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) and the Government of Flanders have announced that the 6th UNWTO World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism, scheduled to take place 1-3 June in Bruges, Belgium, will now be held in June 2021 (date to be announced). The Forum has been co-organized by UNWTO and the Basque Culinary Center since 2015 with the aim of bringing together experts from across tourism and gastronomy to identify good practices and promote gastronomy tourism as a contributor to sustainable development. The Basque Culinary Center in Donostia/San Sebastian, Spain hosts it every two years. The city of Bruges in Flanders, one of Europes gastronomic centers, will remain the host destination for 2021. The Forums organizers invite all partners and participants to continue their engagement with this event and look forward to welcoming them to Bruges in 2021. The event will represent a unique opportunity to share experiences of facing up these challenging times and place the two sectors at the center of plans for recovery. Meanwhile, UNWTO and BCC Start-up Competition on Gastronomy Tourism is still open to all innovative ideas until 30 May. More Information: Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Travel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2022 Travel Industry Wire The police in Ho Sunday arrested leaders of a prayer group at the Ahoe market for disobeying the social distancing protocol and for illegal assembly. They are, Emelia Dzah, Edem Afedo and Seth Dogbefu out of the group of 27. Mr Anthony Danso, Ho Municipal Police Commander, told the Ghana News Agency that the same group was dispersed and warned by the taskforce of the Municipal Assembly, a day preceding their arrest. He said the group by their action had disrespected the President's directives and the imposition of restriction law, which carried a sentence of between four to 10 years and a fine of between GHC6,000 to GHC12,000 in penalty units when found culpable of the offence. The Municipal Commander said the three had been granted bail and would be arraigned before court soon. Mr Danso appealed to the citizenry to abide by all directives towards containing COVID-19. The Volta Region on April 12, 2020, recorded nine cases of the Coronavirus disease with the total national figure rising to 566. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said President Abdel Fattah El Sisi directed the government to increase the area of the agricultural lands in Sinai, especially in North and Central Sinai. Madbouli's remarks came on Monday during his meeting with Irrigation Minister Mohamed Abdel-Ati and Agriculture Minister El Sayed El Quseir. After finalising the projects of waste-water treatment plants in Sharqiya and Ismailia governorates, new lands will be prepared for agriculture, the premier noted. The prime minister pointed out to a preliminary report about the viability of new lands for cultivation in North and Central Sinai. He assigned the two ministers with conducting detailed studies about these lands to be reviewed by President Sisi. Search Keywords: Short link: System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04824c1300)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f048256a1b8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04824c1300)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f048256a1b8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f04820ab830)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f048256a1b8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f048256a1b8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f0481b67748)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04825becb0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f04825becb0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 This browser is no longer supported at MarketWatch. For the best MarketWatch.com experience, please update to a modern browser. Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global CCP virus epidemic, on April 13 started to ease tough lockdown restrictions that have kept people confined to their homes for more than a month and put a brake on economic activity. Spains cumulative death toll from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus rose to 17,489 on Monday, up 517 from 16,972 on Sunday, the Health Ministry said. Confirmed cases totaled 169,496, up from 166,019 the previous day. However, in a sign that the situation was taking a turn for the better, some businesses, including construction and manufacturing, were allowed to reopen. But most of the population are still confined to their homes, and shops, bars, and public spaces will remain closed until at least April 26. People at main transport hubs were handed masks as they went to work on Monday morning. The health of workers must be guaranteed. If this is minimally affected, the activity cannot restart, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told Cadena Ser radio station. Lockdown restrictions have helped slow a spiraling death rate that reached its peak in early April, but they have tested the resolve of people cooped up inside their homes. Only a few commuters came in and out of the main entrance of Madrids usually bustling Atocha train station on Monday morning. Road traffic was light too, with mainly public buses passing by. Police handed out millions of masks early in the morning across regions that are not observing a public holiday. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday the decision to restart some sectors of the economy was taken after consulting a committee of scientific experts. Any further winding down would depend on gains made against the CCP virus, he said. We are still far from victory, from the moment when we can pick up our normal lives again, but we have made the first decisive steps in the path toward victory, Sanchez said. However, some regional leaders criticized the moves, fearing a resurgence of the outbreak. One company reopening, Burgos-based industrial group Nicolas Correa, said it would take measures to prioritize the health of its staff. We will continue to work in shifts, with staggered entries and exits to avoid concentrations of staff, it said, adding that all workers would be provided with protective equipment. European Central Bank Vice-President Luis de Guindos said Spains reliance on tourism would likely leave it exposed to a worse recession than the rest of Europe. The CCP virus is weighing heavily on the Spanish economy, with some 900,000 jobs lost since mid-March. Were talking about the worst economic situation since the [1936-39 Spanish] Civil War, the former Spanish economy minister said in Sundays La Vanguardia newspaper. Traditional festivals have also been disrupted by the epidemic. NTD staff contributed to this report. . , " ". , - . , ... The city of Jersey Village confirmed seven cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic, as of April 12. An update posted to the city website on April 13 confirmed the cases and explained that Jersey Village is not running COVID-19 testing sites, pointing residents to Harris County testing resources. The drumbeat to turn America's lights back on is approaching a crescendo, even as the virus is in the opening stanza. The big picture: Preempting President Trump, two groups of states are working on regional plans to lift their lockdowns as conditions permit. The eastern group: New York, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. New York, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The western group: California, Oregon and Washington. California, Oregon and Washington. Both groups say they'll use metrics to guide reopening, with more details expected over the coming days. Why it matters: Trump claimed today that he is the decider on when states reopen. His tweets undermined GOP talking points and are constitutionally dubious. But the underlying truth: States that are in the early stages of the outbreak are relying on his leadership to convince people to stay at home. States that are in the early stages of the outbreak are relying on his leadership to convince people to stay at home. That includes major swaths of Trump country, and the president's bully pulpit could play a decisive role in ending lockdowns too soon to flatten the curve. Between the lines: Lessons from New York, which has suffered America's worst outbreak, will form a template for rolling back restrictions in parts of the country with later projected peaks. "The worst is over" in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today. in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today. That could change if New Yorkers don't keep up their social distancing, he emphasized. if New Yorkers don't keep up their social distancing, he emphasized. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio noted recent declines in three key metrics: 1) positive tests; 2) patients admitted to the hospital; 3) patients admitted to the ICU. The bottom line: More than 10,000 people have died from the coronavirus in New York alone. It's a very sad day when only 671 recorded deaths is good news. The state is following surveillance, containment, increasing testing facilities, and ensuring essentials at people's doorstep, among other strategies. T E Narasimhan reports. IMAGE: A policeman wearing a coronavirus themed helmet distributes pamphlets to raise awareness about COVID-19 at a residential area in Chennai. Photograph: PTI Photo Kalu, along with others, finished his brief stretching exercise, and sat on one of the benches placed in rows on the cement ground. Their physical instructor came down from the podium and a white screen and projector were placed for the next routine activity of watching a movie. In the meanwhile, a few of his fellow villagers from Odisha started reciting poems in their language through a microphone. His life has taken a different turn with industry coming to a grinding halt with the pandemic-induced lockdown and he is left with no income to support even himself. Some migrant workers were able to board a train to their hometown just before the lockdown. He, however, was stuck in Guindy, a neighbourhood of Chennai, and food and daily expenses became a big question. Officials of the Chennai Corporation took them to the premises of a college about five days ago and they were given rooms to stay in, food and refreshments, a short stretch-out time in the evening, followed by performance by some of their fellow-dwellers and a movie before dinner. He, along with another 376 migrant labourers, mostly from Ganjam district in Odisha, are staying at the college for the past couple of weeks. "Here we are well taken care of. We have no complaints, but the only worry is how we can go back to our hometown," he said. Manjit Singh Nayar, general secretary and correspondent of Guru Nanak College and a member of the State Minorities Commission, said: "We are arranging for their food and other necessary things such as soap, hand wash, and towels. We are getting supplies from many kind people." As the number of positive coronavirus cases is increasing, the Tamil Nadu government has started taking hard measures to control the spread of the virus, while ensuring all the basic essentials are available. On March 11, Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar declared the state 'coronavirus free' as the lone patient in Chennai was recovering fast. Almost a month later, on April 12, the number of positive cases soared to 1,075. The deaths in the state stand at 11 as of April 12. Five doctors have so far tested positive. The state has created facilities, including 19 (12 government) testing centres. Tamil Nadu has around 29,074 isolation beds and 3,371 ventilators ready as of now. The state government has ordered 4,00,000 rapid test kits from China, which could give results in 30 minutes, said Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami. The state is following surveillance, containment, increasing testing facilities, and ensuring essentials at people's doorstep, among other strategies. To keep surveillance, the state has invoked the Public Health and the Disaster Management Laws and Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. 12 teams headed by senior officers have been set up to implement and monitor all the activities related to the pandemic. All points of entry and exit in all the districts are sealed. Even within the districts, cities, towns and villages, gates made of iron sheets have been built to stem the movements of people. While in many places the police, with folded hands, appealed to people not to venture out unnecessarily, to spread awareness about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, they have made a unique 'Corona' helmet to dissuade commuters from coming out on the streets during the nationwide lockdown. In some places, however, they had to use the baton. Omanthurar Medical College Hospital in Chennai and ESI Medical College Hospital in Coimbatore have been declared dedicated COVID-19 hospitals. One hospital in each district has been identified and provided treatment facilities. It has also roped in 25 private medical colleges and 110 private hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients. Self-help groups across the state have been used for manufacturing masks and sanitisers. More than 45,000 volunteers, who include 1,100 doctors and 3,500 paramedical staff, have registered so far. The chief minister has also announced incentives, a guaranteed offtake of anti-malarial, anti-viral drugs, invasive ventilators, intensive care unit monitors, masks and personal protective equipment (PPE). Incentives for manufacturing them include 30 per cent investment subsidy of up to Rs 20 crore, spread equally over five years. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Saritha Rai, Pavel Alpeyev and Takahiko Hyuga (Bloomberg) Mon, April 13, 2020 09:31 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd174ce5 2 Business OYO-Hotels-and-Homes,SoftBank-Group-Corp,Masayoshi-Son,travel,hotel-reservation,COVID-19,coronavirus,tourism,India Free Just nine months ago, Masayoshi Son publicly declared Ritesh Agarwal one of the star entrepreneurs backed by his SoftBank Group Corp. The Japanese billionaire boasted that Agarwals OYO Hotels & Homes was poised to overtake the biggest hotel chains in the world just a few years after its founding. Its unimaginable, Son said on stage at SoftBank World in Tokyo. At 25, hes going to be worlds biggest hotel king. Today, OYO is freezing operations around the world and furloughing thousands of employees as it struggles to survive the coronavirus pandemic. Travel has slammed to a halt, leaving hotel rooms empty and losses rising. OYO risks turning into another problem startup for SoftBank and Son, still reeling from the meltdown at the shared-office company WeWork. SoftBank had booked profits on OYO's rising valuation and may now be forced to take losses on the investment. The startup was valued last year at US$10 billion, one of the highest in SoftBanks portfolio. Read also: Indias OYO taps into Indonesias growing rooming house industry The OYO situation could prove particularly messy. In a highly unusual move, Agarwal, now 26, borrowed $2 billion to buy shares in his own company as the valuation rose, and Son personally guaranteed the loans from financial institutions, including Mizuho Financial Group Inc. Banks may ask for more collateral if OYO's valuation drops, and the two men could face personal losses. Agarwal could be in trouble soon if he faces a margin call, said Justin Tang, head of Asian Research at United First Partners. He might need to sell shares at a massive discount. OYO, SoftBank and Mizuho declined to comment. Son vowed after WeWork that he wouldnt bail out any more startups, but concerns have lingered and weighed on SoftBanks share price. OYO would be complicated because Sons personal financial interests, as a guarantor of Agarwals loans, would be somewhat different from SoftBanks. The Japanese companys board may ultimately have to get involved if SoftBank has to determine whether to rescue OYO. An indefinite furlough must mean OYOs earnings and cash flow have deteriorated extremely, said Daisuke Seki, chief executive officer at IB Research & Consulting Inc. in Japan. Agarwal, in a video last week, told employees that furloughs will keep jobs safe and help the business long term. OYO has more than $1 billion of cash in the bank and is exploring options to remain viable for at least the next 36 months, a person familiar with the matter has said. Read also: SoftBank to sell $41 billion in assets to buy shares, reduce debt Agarwal founded OYO after traveling around India on a budget, seeing first-hand the opportunities in the industry. At 19, he set up a reservation website and began working with small hoteliers on service, design and standardized accouterments like bedding and toiletries to draw more travelers. He took a 25 percent cut of sales. The concept was a hit in India. The reassurance of basic quality fostered trust with customers and brought in extra revenue. Enamored of the idea and Agarwal, Son invested in 2015, two years after founding. But as SoftBank started its $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017, Son encouraged Agarwal to dream bigger. He put about $1.5 billion into the company and suggested the young founder challenge the worlds largest hotel operators. Getting to No. 1 by room count would have meant surpassing Marriott International Inc., founded in 1927. The business model that worked so well in India wasnt such an easy fit in markets like the US and Europe, with more established hotel chains. Yet Agarwal pushed ahead overseas, rapidly building teams around the globe and buying a few properties, including the Hooters Casino Hotel in Las Vegas. The aggressive expansion proved particularly ill-fated as the coronavirus stopped most travel, first in China and then Europe, the US and the rest of Asia including India. One way OYO recruited hotel owners was by guaranteeing a minimum amount of revenue, essentially betting that its online booking system and brand name would draw enough extra business to bump sales. Instead, revenue plummeted and OYO has had to pay hotel owners anyway. OYOs problem is that theyre not just an aggregator; they have minimum guarantees to pay or they have to tell owners they cannot make those payments, said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research Inc. The pandemic is coming in waves and that makes it even more difficult for them. OYO has recently pulled back on such guarantees. Read also: OYO provides rooms for 'healthcare warriors' battling COVID-19 in Jakarta For Son, OYO risks dealing another blow to his reputation as a startup investor. For years, the Japanese billionaire could rely on his profitable telecom operation for stability and win renown for dabbling in venture capital, with a few enormous hits like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo! Inc. But with the Vision Fund, by far the largest fund of its kind ever, Son staked his reputation on his startup bets and every setback is magnified by the billions invested and the antipathy of Silicon Valley rivals. While WeWork was the highest-profile misstep so far, Brandless Inc. has closed, Zume Pizza Inc. cut jobs and OneWeb just filed for bankruptcy. The wins and losses are uncomfortably visible each quarter with SoftBanks earnings. Early on, the Vision Fund reported a steady rise in the value of its startup holdings. Son would highlight them as evidence of the fortunes to come, though they were often profits only on paper a practice criticized by accounting experts. OYO contributed to those apparent profits. The Vision Fund put $250 million into the Indian firm in 2017 and led a $1 billion funding round in 2018, pushing the Indian companys valuation to $5 billion. Sequoia India and Airbnb Inc. also invested in OYO. Now, the Vision Fund has been reporting losses since the WeWork fiasco, contributing to the negative sentiment among SoftBanks investors. The fund lost about $11 billion in the past two quarters. There may be more damage in the period ending in March as SoftBank reassesses the value of holdings from OneWeb to OYO. They will have to revalue OYO after such a crisis, said Forresters Meena. Biden? Seriously? By Andrew Levine April 13, 2020 " Information Clearing House " - Donald Trump is a paradoxical creature. On the one hand, he resembles nothing so much as a dumbass teenage boy, and, on the other, a barfly, long in the tooth and good for nothing but mouthing off. This from an obese septuagenarian who doesnt drink and who, unlike Richard Nixon, his only near rival in political depravity, is as unconflicted and intellectually shallow as they come. Nixon was good at many things. In politics, Trump is good at only two. One is using corporate media to his own advantage. To be sure, Trump has Fox News and talk radio, propaganda assets Nixon could hardly have dreamed of, in his pocket, but they were in place, dumbing down and otherwise doing harm, long before he came onto the scene. What Trump has managed to do is to get the ostensibly respectable cable networks, CNN and MSNBC, to offer him their platforms for free. This, as much as Hillary Clintons politics and her failures as a candidate, helped him get elected in 2016. It is helping him stay afloat now, even as the utter incompetence of his handling of the on-going covid-19 crisis that he did so much to exacerbate becomes stunningly clear to anyone not hellbent on denying the obvious. CNNs and MSNBCs hatred of the Donald is as palpable as it is justified, and yet he plays them like a fiddle. The other thing he is good at is turning the GOP into an instrument of his will. Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter The Republican Party was already unspeakably odious before Trump waddled into the scene, but, by giving a large and growing segment of its base its mainly male, mainly rural, mainly geezerly, poorly educated, socially dislocated and economically stressed component permission to give their most noxious impulses free rein, Trump has turned the Republican Party into a personality cult for him to manipulate as he sees fit. Meanwhile, playing on their rank opportunism and mindless disregard of values and principles, he has brought the God Squad, rightwing Christian evangelicals and their Jewish counterparts, into the Trumpian fold, along with many of the most base and shamelessly venal plutocrats and plutocrat wannabes in creation. And what does the other duopoly party offer in response? Joe Biden. Seriously. Biden is a doofus who, even in his prime, could actually make the Clintons look good. That was surely one of the reasons why Barack Obama picked him to be his running mate; the future President Drone and Deporter-in-Chief, anticipating taking up where Bill Clinton left off, wanted to look good too. Another reason was to reassure Wall Street. They had already vetted him out the wazoo, but with serious money involved, they were still a tad worried. Team Obama therefore felt it expedient to set their minds at ease. Biden on the ticket would seal the deal. In those bygone days of yesteryear, Democratic Party honchos still knew what they had to do to win elections that werent handed to them on a silver platter. Where, then, are they now, those savvy Party grandees? And why dont their paymasters intervene? Why are they being so stupid? Whatever the answer, it hasnt made them too stupid to hold onto their power. Sad to say, though, that they were still clever enough to realize that Sanders, and maybe Elizabeth Warren as well, were everything they didnt want Obama to be. And so, aided and abetted by CNN and MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and the whole motley mess of liberal corporate media, they quashed their candidacies well. Sadder still, after the powers that be pulled off the South Carolina and Super Tuesday fiascos and then promptly got the other moderates to throw in the towel all at once, it became clear that the old regime would win again. All doubts about that ended when the pandemic made door to door canvassing, rallies and nearly all the other usual forms of electoral politicking impossible. Almost overnight, the only two candidates in the Democratic field worth taking seriously had no chance at all of making the Democratic Party anything more than a lesser evil. The bad guys had won. But still the question remains: why are the winners being so stupid? Even if all they want is a colorless stooge whose only virtue is that he is not Trump, or Pence or any of the other kakistocrats in the Trumpian fold, surely they could at least do better than taking on the Trumpian juggernaut with a second-rate dodo leading the charge. [Kakistocracy, for those who still dont know, is an old word that has lately become timely. It means: rule of the worst, the most vile, corrupt, and incompetent.] In a saner political environment, or even in the one we knew before Clinton, the Queen of Ineptitude, blew a sure thing in 2016, Trump and his minions could be counted on to defeat themselves. In the actual world, the chances are good that this will still be the case. Corporate media give Trump precious airtime, but they also display his and his administrations mind-boggling awfulness day by day. With the economy collapsing and the corpses piling high, and with rural America about to feel the pain along with the urban centers, it is hard to imagine that at least some of the lost souls in the Trump cult wont see the light and defect. But Democrats these days are born to lose; it might as well be in their genes. Therefore, like the Wall Street financiers in 2008 whose minds were set at ease when Obama put Biden on the ticket, voters who get what Trump is about could still use some reassurance. Trump may advertise his awfulness with every breath he takes, but with our electoral institutions being what they are, and with his base still standing by their man, the chances that Democrats will blow it again can seem greater than trivial. One would think that mainstream Democrats would have learned something from 2016 about the wisdom of fielding a stalwart of the ancien regime, a moderate she called herself a progressive pragmatist against a buffoonish, sociopathic liar, a reality TV conman, who promises to drain the swamp. But leave it to Democrats and Democratic voters to draw precisely the wrong lesson from that debacle. Leave it to them to field a candidate who is even worse than Clinton this time around. Needless to say, better a President Biden than a President Trump; better by far. But even befuddled moderates should be able to figure out that a Biden presidency will be a disaster in its own right. There is a certain irony in what Democrats are now saying about that prospect, now that, barring a miracle, Biden is the presumptive nominee. They are saying just what people were saying about Trump when his more thoughtful supporters were starting to anticipate and then to experience voters remorse that, however awful he may be, however much out of his depth in the Oval Office, the adults in the room will be there to keep him in line. That by running Biden, they are squandering an historically unprecedent opportunity to make basic, urgently needed, structural changes in the economy and society, and to transform the Democratic Party, presently part of the problem, into a force for genuine progressive change, at least to the extent that it was in the more radical phases of the New Deal and then later before the Vietnam War undid the Great Society, doesnt seem to matter to a large segment of the Democratic electorate not yet, anyway. If they have qualms, they comfort themselves by telling themselves that, unlike Trump, Biden will appoint good people to run the show. And when that thought doesnt quite suffice, the default position seems to be that at least he, like Obama, will be a No Drama president, which is, they claim, just what the country now needs. These wrong-headed but cheery bromides are not entirely without merit. With Trump gone and Democrats eager to take over from the kakistocrats he empowered, the national government probably will become not exactly great again, it never was even close to that, but at least not stunningly abominable. And although Biden, unlike Sanders and Warren, has hardly comported himself in a way that suggests competency or, for that matter, a fully functional mind, and although Andrew Cuomo and other governors have far outshined him since the corvid-19 plague erupted, at least he is not a narcissist, a sociopath, or a barely constrainable maniac. But whats wrong with Democrats? Why dont they dump him while they still can? Even Kirstin Gillibrand, scourge of womanizers who like Al Franken couldnt keep his hands enough to himself, seems OK with Joe, notwithstanding the fact that he is credibly accused of having done far worse than Franken ever did. By almost any relevant standard, Franken was a far better Senator than Biden or, for that matter, than nearly every other Democratic Senator, Gillibrand included. By almost any relevant standard, Biden, even in his prime, was a dunce. But no matter. Anything for banalitys sake; anything not to field a candidate worth supporting. And at a time when the homeland, as we now call it, is facing a crisis the likes of which has not been seen on these shores for more than a hundred years, how can it still be that, for so many Democratic voters, it is practically axiomatic that only a paragon of banality can defeat the most inept and villainous president that the United States has ever had to endure? The Democratic establishment is incapable of redemption. They have demonstrated time and again that they will do anything to maintain their own power, and the power of the forces they represent. That would be the obscenely rich; the beneficiaries of an increasingly inegalitarian distribution of income and wealth that, regardless the intentions of a few kindly billionaires, puts nearly everything on earth that is worth saving in mortal jeopardy. But Trump is their enemy too. They could at least stop helping him out to the extent that they are. Lately, for whatever its worth, Democratic Party honchos have been floating the idea of running Warren for Vice President. I suspect that they are just blowing air, and I would be surprised and more than a little disappointed in her if she would go along with that; Id expect her to have more integrity. But some good come of that possibility. After all, while there is death and the twenty-fifth amendment there is hope. Not much, though; not anyway in this one nation under (Mike Pences) God. I, for one, have been waiting for nearly four years for cholesterol and a sedentary lifestyle to relieve us of the clear and present danger we face. Now there is the corona virus as well. But here we are. I would say, though, that were the Donald to follow the lead of his British counterpart and soul-mate, Boris Johnson, and then go one step beyond, I might almost start believing in that (alleged) divinity. In ancient Greek dramas, a deus ex machina would sometimes be enacted; a god, wheeled in on a mechanical contraption, would appear upon the stage and go on to set an otherwise intractable situation right. It is too late now for Sanders and probably for Warren as well, even if she does become Bidens running mate. It probably always was; the fix was in too deep. What those two wanted to do was obviously better than any of the moderates nostrums. But the dodos calling the shots would not abide Democrats doing the right thing or even some pale semblance of it. Those bastardly dodos won. But, even if only out of self-interest, and also in order to make the demise of Trump and Trumpism more likely than it already is, they surely ought to be able to bring themselves to pull off something like a deus ex machina trick by dumping the doofus for another moderate, one less retrograde, less risible, and less likely to inspire potential anti-Trump voters to stay home. They could put Biden back out to pasture where he so plainly belongs. As Trump might say what have they got to lose? Of course, when Trump says it, the answer is always everything. In this case, it would be nothing at all. But I wouldnt hold my breath. It is more likely by many orders of magnitude that we will have a Clintonesque, Obama-inflected, deja vu all over again in our future. But even with the Forces of Darkness running the Democratic show, the forty or fifty percent of Democratic voters who favored Sanders or Warren still have leverage over where the Democratic Party goes. They could and should use it to push Biden and the Democratic Party establishment as far to the left as they can. They should also insist on at least two things. The first is obviously in the interest of all Democrats, the ones who are, for whatever reason, still wedded to the status quo. as well as those who understand the need to transform the lesser evil party fundamentally. That would be to defeat Republican efforts at voter suppression. It is plain as can be so plain that even Trump has said as much that if the black, brown, and youth votes are not suppressed, Republicans would have hardly any chance of electing anybody, much less Trump himself. Anyone paying attention to the April 7 primary election in Wisconsin, conducted at great peril to voters in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, could hardly fail to understand how important this is. Republican lawmakers in the heavily gerrymandered and therefore Republican led Wisconsin state legislature, and so-called conservative but actually radical rightwing Republican judges in the Wisconsin and then the U.S. Supreme Courts put peoples, mainly black and brown peoples, lives at risk in order to secure the electoral victory of one Dan Kelly, a retrograde state Supreme Court Justice whom they can count on to ease their way. In light of that, who knows what mischief Trump and the cult around him have in store for November. The problem is especially acute now that, thanks to the machinations of Mitch McConnell, arguably the most malign figure in the entire Trumpian firmament, the judicial system is so profoundly compromised. Congressional Democrats must therefore, first and foremost, guarantee the right to vote for everybody eligible to vote. This means, among other things, making voting by mail an option that even troglodyte Republican judges cannot refuse to honor. Surely, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the other party leaders can do that much. If they have the sense they were born with, they will do everything in their power to make the November election a referendum on Trump. If it is, Trump will surely lose. On the other hand, if it devolves into a choice between him and Biden, Trump will only just probably lose, the probability depending on how the corovid-19 virus is doing by then, the state of the economy, and the extent to which the good citizens of the United States of Amnesia keep in mind even just a tiny fraction of all the harm that the Trump presidency has done. In any event, the less Biden is exposed to the public, the more he stays bunkered down in Wilmington or wherever he has been hiding out, the better. The more voters see him as the only feasible alternative to Trump, the more electable he will be. The more they reflect on his merits, the more reason there is for concern. The other non-negotiable demand should be to insist on holding Trump and his factotums accountable. That will require riding herd over the doofus because, having attached himself to Obamas legacy, letting it all go has become his default position. Obamas Original Sin, and also Eric Holders, was to let the war criminals in the upper echelon of the Bush administration off scot-free. I fear that just as Trump takes his cues from Fox News, Biden will be taking his from what Obama did a dozen years ago. Back then, Obama said that he wanted to look forward, to let bygones be bygone. Because that is precisely what he did, the Bush-Cheney perpetual war regime became his own. It is still with us too, and Biden is no doubt itching to take up where his Best Friend Forever left off. Does anyone doubt that, left to his own devices, a President Biden would repeat Obamas and Holdens mistake? Banality and the absence of drama are his trump card, after all; letting bygones be bygone is his thing. Were that to come to pass, the countless, legally actionable crimes that Trump and his kakistocratic minions have committed, now including the depraved indifference to human life and the menace to public health that Trump has been exhibiting daily since the corvid-19 crisis broke, would go unpunished, setting an even worse precedent than the one set by Obama. When that comes back to haunt us, as it surely will with Biden continuing the political line that made Trumpism all but inevitable, it wont be pretty. With the bar now set so low, the next demagogue in the Trumpian role is likely to be a lot smarter and more capable than Trump, and therefore a lot more dangerous. Surely, even the moderates in the House and Senate Democratic caucuses could at least force the dodo they are inflicting upon us to pre-commit, as it were, not to stoop so low as to give get-out-of-jail-free cards to the likes of Trump, his family and inner circle, and the most criminal of the base and servile sycophants he has inflicted upon us. The judgment of history is sure, but it is inevitably slow in coming, and the time for guarantees that Trump et. al. will be held to account, just as soon as Trump vacates the premises at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is now. Not many days ago a group of doctors were assaulted in an area in Indore when they had gone to screen people for coronavirus symptoms. Stones were pelted at the healthcare workers and they were also assaulted and beaten up. Several got injured and it was not a pretty sight. But what did they do? Did they back off? Not a chance! They put duty before safety and went back to work. They knew they had a job to do and one should appreciate their courage. ABP Well the tone changed a few days later. According to ABP, when the doctors arrived in the same area of Tatpatti Bakhal, there was a reaction again, but a total contrast. No stones or assaults, this time it was cheers and clapping as the locals applauded those who had come to help them in tough times. ABP This gesture was in gratitude to those who were putting their lives on the line to help in the fight against coronavirus. This is a complete change of heart and a total turnaround. Earlier assaulted, now the doctors were being applauded. ABP These people are putting duty ahead of their own lives so let's give them their due. The death toll in India has already gone over 300 and more than 9000 people are infected. Worldwide over 110,000 are dead with at least 1800,000 affected. The spread of the Covid-19 virus among Indian citizens in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is posing a new challenge to the Union and some state governments. Reports say the migrant population, said to be about 8 million, has been affected in their thousands and the healthcare systems there are unable to cope with it. That most of these people are unskilled or semi-skilled workers, and live in residential systems where social distancing is virtually impossible, makes the situation really grim. Indian migrants to the GCC countries need urgent intervention by New Delhi on two counts. First, ensure proper medical attention is given to those need it. At present, Indian voluntary organisations and business establishments which operate there are active in attending to the demands of their compatriots, arranging quarantine facilities and sourcing medicines. But they have their limitations. The government must immediately direct the Indian missions to take over the coordination of such efforts and ensure that every Indian who needs a helping hand is extended one. The government has started the process by sending a medical team to Kuwait; there must be more such efforts. The government must also explore the possibility of extending financial aid to those who might need it. The second concern to plan for is the uncertainty over the future. Many of the migrants would want to fly back home. They must be counselled and convinced that it would be impractical to fly all of them home. They must also be told that it would be an unlikely choice for them, as a return to a region which is going through tough financial crisis due to an unprecedented crash in the oil price, would be nearly impossible. Most rulers of the GCC nations are favourably disposed towards Indians for their contributions to their nations progress. Some of them share an excellent personal relationship with Indian leaders, such as prime minister Narendra Modi. This should work to India's advantage in ensuring the well-being of Indians, who are responsible for a big chunk of remittances from abroad. US President Donald Trump on Sunday (local time) hailed the 'big oil deal' with OPEC plus saying it will save 'hundreds of thousands of energy jobs' in the country. "The big Oil Deal with OPEC plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all!" tweeted Trump. According to Sputnik, earlier in the day the OPEC plus oil producers agreed to a new deal stipulating a collective reduction in output in a bid to stabilise the market. "Under the agreement, Russia will reduce its production by 2.5 million barrels per day out of total 9.7 million, with the baseline level of the reduction for Russia set at 11 million barrels per day," Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying. According to Novak, the parties to the agreement would partially restore production up to a reduction limit of 8 million barrels per day over the next half a year and 6 million barrels per year in 2021. OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo too welcomed the new deal reached during the extraordinary meeting of the OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers. "Secretary General #HEMohammadBarkindo highlighted the importance of the historic agreement reached at the 10th (Extraordinary) OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial videoconference for the benefits of producers, consumers and the global economy," the OPEC Secretariat said on Twitter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. BEIJING, April 13 -- The task group of Chinese PLA Navy's aircraft carrier Liaoning recently sailed through the Miyako Strait and Bashi Channel and headed toward the relevant waters of South China Sea for training, according to a written statement by the PLA Navy Spokesperson Senior Captain Gao Xiucheng on April 13. This is a routine arrangement within the PLA Navy's annual training plan, and also conforms to international law and related conventions. In the future, the Chinese PLA navy will continue to conduct such training activities as planned, in a bid to accelerate the upgrading of aircraft carrier task group's combat capability, said the statement. The province's Department of Health has announced changes to testing protocols for COVID-19 in New Brunswick. Dr. Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, announced Monday that testing would be recommended for people exhibiting at least two of the following five symptoms: Fever above 38 C A new cough or worsening chronic cough Sore throat Runny nose Headache Russell said the testing criteria has evolved based on the changes in risk. It was originally based around travel outside of Canada, then travel outside the province, and then higher risk populations. But throughout, community transmission has not been as high as seen in other provinces. "Our indicators around the percentage of the population that would be affected most severely, we would see those people pop up in the hospital setting and we only have a small number of people hospitalized and in ICU right now. So we know in other jurisdictions that severely affected percentage usually is a reflection of the total number of cases in the population." Russell said expanded testing will ensure no one is being missed but added it would be hard to say if more cases of community transmission will be found. "We're trying to be cautiously optimistic but we don't want to rest on our laurels. We're being prudent with the information we know today and the resources that we have that this is the right direction to go in according to the evolution of the risk." She confirmed all sentinel testing done to date in hospitals and emergency rooms has resulted in negative test results. 2 new cases The province has announced two new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number of cases in New Brunswick up to 116. Dr. Jennifer Russell said one of the new cases is in Zone 3, in the Fredericton area, between the ages of 40 and 49. The second is a person between the ages of 50 and 59 in Zone 5, which is the Campbellton area. CBC The number of recoveries hovers around 74 people. Story continues "That is good news but it's not time to relax," Premier Blaine Higgs said. Of the 116 cases, 66 are travel-related, 36 are close contacts of confirmed cases, seven are the result of community transmission and seven remain under investigation. During the pandemic, 12 people have been hospitalized and seven have since been discharged. Three of the five patients remaining in hospital are in an intensive care unit. 26 tickets issued This is the first COVID-19 news conference since Russell and Premier Blaine Higgs urged residents to stay home and avoid family gatherings over the Easter weekend. Submitted by the Government of New Brunswick Higgs said the majority of New Brunswickers were doing what Public Health was asking of them to flatten the curve and slow the spread of COVID-19. There have been 26 tickets issued since the province's emergency declaration has been issued, with 17 of them issued over the past seven days with fines ranging from $292.50 to $10,200. "A small number of people are still violating the rules," Higgs said. But the premier said he was still more interested in educating people before giving them a ticket. "That's not the goal to fine people more. The goal is to have people adhere to the rules now in place." The premier said it will take two weeks to see if compliance over the Easter long weekend will help stop the spread of COVID-19. Higgs also confirmed the province's state of emergency, set to last another week, will continue and will be done in two week increments. "It'll be a decision that's made collectively by my co-committee colleagues, the leaders of the other parties and my cabinet. But it will be done in two week intervals upon any extension." Restrictions eased? Asked what it would take to begin easing restrictions, Higgs said restrictions could be eased or made stronger depending on the level of adherence to government measures and the results of expanded testing for COVID-19. "Am I looking for a positive change? Am I hoping for a positive change? Absolutely." Higgs said if the numbers stay the way they are and the caseloads stay down, he's hopeful it can happen. "Getting our economy back up and running, it's all about a balance and that's what we're in right now. I'll remain optimistic." Here is a roundup of other developments. Nursing home protection Higgs said caring for seniors remains a priority for the government. Early on, the government closed nursing homes to all visitors. Staff now have to follow a screening process prior to entering work including taking their temperature and answering screening questions. Staff are receiving ongoing training on the proper use of personal protective equipment. Nursing home residents with health issues are treated at the nursing home when possible to avoid any unnecessary transfers to hospitals. Higgs said they are in constant communication with the N.B. Nursing Home Association "We are continuing to monitor the situation in our nursing homes, and we will take additional measures if needed as the pandemic continues," said Higgs. Nature Conservancy of Canada properties closed The Nature Conservancy of Canada has closed all its properties to public access and is urging people to stay home. In New Brunswick, some of those properties include the Johnson's Mills Shorebird Interpretive Centre near Sackville, the Musquash Estuary Nature Reserve near Saint John and the Grand Manan Migratory Bird Sanctuary In a release, NCC said while "nature is important in our lives and good for our health and well-being, especially in stressful times", they are asking people to enjoy nature from home. "Please stay home, and enjoy nature virtually. Watch our website for updates." More people seeking mental health support Since the COVID-19 outbreak first started, counsellors are seeing a jump in new clients looking for emotional support. While some counsellors have decided to close their offices, others are finding creative ways to work with their clients. This could include everything from online Zoom conferences, creating YouTube channels or simply picking up the phone and having a conversation. "We're trying to do as much as we can," said Joan Wright, senior psychologist and owner of the Joan Wright & Associates and MindShift clinic in the Fredericton area. The Canadian Psychological Association is also offering mental health support to front-line health service providers. A number of psychologists from each province have volunteered to provide psychological services to those individuals. Meanwhile, the Canadian Mental Health Association of New Brunswick is providing a number of free services for people struggling to maintain their mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak. Those include live webinars about topics such as self-compassion, coping with anxiety, having a healthy work-life balance and talking to children about COVID-19. Theatre company asks for letters from self-isolation Theatre New Brunswick wants people to share how they're coping with self-isolation during the COVID 19 pandemic. The project is called, Dear Rona - Letters from Lockdown. "Personally I'm getting to sewing projects I always wanted to do I think a lot of us are doing stuff like that, which is nice," said Natasha MacLellan, Theatre New Brunswick's artistic director. "Rediscovering your own house. All the books on your bookshelf you thought you would read someday." The theatre group has plans to use those stories in a future performance project. People can send their letters to Theatre New Brunswick's address or email dearrona@tnb.nb.ca What to do if you have symptoms? People concerned they might have COVID-19 can take a self-assessment on the government website. Symptoms of coronavirus include fever, a new or worsening cough, and breathlessness, as well as sore throat, headache and runny nose. People with symptoms are asked to: People are having heart attacks at home instead of going to emergency departments amid fears they will overburden hospitals, while others who are chronically ill are forgoing potentially lifesaving pathology tests. Cancer diagnoses and monitoring of immuno-compromised people with chronic health conditions has declined, medical experts warned, as Australia's pathology sector recorded a 40 per cent drop in routine testing in recent weeks. Adrian Caramia. Credit:Chris Hopkins In one case last week, a Victorian man stayed at home for five days with severe chest pain. He suffered a life-threatening heart attack and required emergency resuscitation. He later told doctors he did not go to hospital sooner because he did not want to be a burden to busy hospital staff. Australia could run out of rice because of mismanagement of the water supply during the coronavirus pandemic, an expert has warned. Vietnam - one of Australia's major sources of the food staple - suspended all of its rice exports on March 25 as countries around the world closed their borders in an attempt to shore up their own food security. To make matters worse, water expert Maryanne Slattery said rice producers in the Murray Darling Basin are unable to make their own produce because the government is selling water to the highest bidder. Scroll down for video Pictured: Rice fields in the Murray Darling region unable to grow their produce because of the region's zero-water allocation - which experts say is putting Australia's food supply in danger The Southern Murray, which stretches across the south-eastern states, is normally responsible for 60 per cent of the country's grain and dairy production. It is widely regarded as 'Australia's food bowl' but with the Murray in a state of zero-water allocation for the past two years, rice and dairy farms aren't growing produce. 'Rice is definitely a big risk because we haven't been using the water we've got to grow rice,' Ms Slattery, a former employee of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, said. Rather than the water being provided to dairy and grain farmers though, it is being sold to almond and nut plantations who can afford the prices further down the river system. 'We really should be seriously having a look at what were using our water for and what were growing with the water we've got,' Ms Slattery said. Pictured: New flow in a parched Darling Barka River in Louth, northern New South Wales in February. A lack of water being funneled towards the Southern Murray rice fields means not enough rice is being made to feed the Australian population, an expert has warned Water expert Maryanne Slattery said rice producers in the Murray Darling Basin are unable to make their own produce because of the government selling water to the highest bidder Pictured: Flows returning to the Murray-Darling basin at Louth in NSW in February. As countries around the world stop exporting food, there are growing calls for more water to be given to the rice industry to protect food security during the COVID-19 crisis CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement 'I would advocate that our food security is paramount and that we should be doing everything we can to ensure our food security.' She said it would take a great deal of of political manoeuvring to move the water away from nut farms and to the ailing rice and dairy producers. But the Slattery and Johnson water consultant said such a move was necessary, especially considering the nut products were mostly being exported. Nationals senator Perin Davey has also pinpointed Australia's rice industry as one for concern during the coronavirus pandemic. She said while there is enough food to supply 75 million people in Australia, the drop in rice production in recent years because of drought to 55,000 tonnes per year meant supply was no longer enough to feed the population. Ms Davey said Australians eat 300,000 tonnes of rice a year. 'Because of COVID-19 a lot of countries are protecting their own interests, which is their right and is sensible to do,' she told Sky News. 'We've got to look at out internal policies to make sure we get a good rice harvest next year and start producing our own rice.' 13.04.2020 LISTEN Adom Fm 106.3, which is one of the best multimedia platforms in Ghana, must be told to detach mockery, Ananse-stories, jokes and unnecessary information from the News. The radio station has a lot of listeners including high-profile government officials, Kings and University Professors, who normally have limited time to listen to an hour-long News that is full of jokes and little childrens recreational stories. I know that media platforms are meant to educate, inform, entertain, and to make profit. However, cracking jokes during news hours, especially when something serious has happened, depicts that the station is full of satirists and must not be taken seriously. The drama group that was created by former comedians like Kofi Adoma Nwanwanii and Afia Pokua has been revitalised by Kofi Adu Kumi and his compatriots. Sometimes, the type of contents that are posted at adomonline.com and adom facebook platforms are either to sustain pain or unnecessary humour. Accident scenes for example, must be sanitised. I entreat adom fm presenters (journalists) to learn something more about News reporting from the CNN, BBC, DW TV, Aljazeera and other foreign media. Please add your comments. Gardai say that there is no prospect of the reactivation of the notorious McCarthy/Dundon gang - despite the emergence of the gang's connections to the Drogheda feud and the murder of hitman Robbie Lawlor. According to sources in the city where gardai fought a 14-year battle to smash the notoriously treacherous Murder Inc, they are a "spent force" with no power after their associates deserted them following the murder convictions of the gang leaders, brothers Wayne and John Dundon. "We can assure the people of Limerick and Steve Collins, whose family suffered so much at the hands of the McCarthy/Dundons, that they don't have the people or the resources to get off the ground again and if they try the gardai will ensure that it doesn't happen," said a senior garda. "There is peace in Limerick and that's how it will stay. The few remaining loyal associates are kept under watch. "They are a spent force with the main players, including Wayne, John and Dessie Dundon and their brother-in-law Nathan Killeen, serving life sentences for murder. They were the driving force behind the murderous campaign and without them the gang is a spent force. "Nobody trusts them, which is why it did come as a surprise when they popped up in the Lawlor killing. In Limerick their gang imploded when some of their own members and relatives broke ranks to testify against them; and then their former associates and foot soldiers, who lived in fear of them, were happy to see them put away so they could be free of them. "A lot of young lads were forced to carry out murders, shootings and bombings out of sheer fear and then ended up serving long jail sentences. Not even the criminals want to see the gang return in any guise." Until last week Murder Inc had faded from public memory following the convictions of Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen for organising the murder of Roy Collins on Holy Thursday in 2009. Dundon issued the orders to commit the murder from his prison cell while Killeen forced gang member James Dillon (23) to do the killing and also drove the getaway car. But news of the apparent involvement of the gang in Lawlor's murder is the first time in six years it has featured in the spotlight. Gardai and the PSNI are still trying to establish the full extent of the involvement of the gang in Lawlor's murder, who they believe set him up as part of a double-cross. It is suspected the Dundon brothers sent instructions from prison to people on the outside to help set up Lawlor for one of the factions in the Drogheda feud, associates of the gang led by Owen Maguire and Cornelius Price. The youngest brother Ger, a teenage relative and a third associate from Limerick, had travelled with Lawlor to the house in the Ardoyne where a gunman was waiting. According to prison sources Wayne and Dessie Dundon openly celebrated news of Lawlor's killing last Saturday week. The following Monday, suspicions were confirmed when Dessie Dundon's partner and another woman were arrested after collecting 50,000 from a member of the Maguire/Price group which was seized by gardai. Steve Collins, Roy's father, last week told the Irish Independent he was "sickened" when he heard the gang's name featuring in the news again - especially as it coincided with the 11th anniversary of his son's murder and the death of Carmel, his mother, on Easter Sunday 2019. He said that it made him concerned for the safety of his family who have returned to Limerick in the hope of rebuilding their lives after being forced to leave Ireland as part of a witness relocation programme eight years ago. Mr Collins said he will seek a meeting with senior gardai to discuss the developments and any possible implications for his family's security. "When I read about the involvement of the Dundons in a high-profile murder, with Wayne openly celebrating in prison and some of his relatives being arrested and then gardai lifting the money they had supposedly been paid, I was sickened," Mr Collins said. "Wayne Dundon and his brothers are still organising murders from behind bars and then celebrating them just like they did with our Roy, Shane Geoghegan and many others and they are obviously as treacherous now as they ever were. "Our kids have been rebuilding our lives and Steve junior now owns a very successful business in Limerick and that was of some comfort to Carmel before we lost her," he added. "Limerick is a safe, peaceful and prosperous city again and that was only achieved when we all worked together and told these scum that we would not tolerate them any longer." Investigation Launched After Miami Police Officer Handcuffs Doctor Who Tests Homeless for CCP Virus The Miami Police Department on April 12 launched an internal investigation into why an African American doctor, known for testing the citys population of homeless for the CCP virus, was detained by a police sergeant outside his home. News of the investigation was announced after security footage circulated online of 34-year-old Dr. Armen Henderson being handcuffed on Friday in the citys Flagami neighborhood. In a video posted on Twitter Saturday, Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina said his department doesnt condone or accept profiling of any kind. He added that Henderson, who works for the University of Miami Health System, was detained temporarily after an officer patrolling the area received complaints of illegal dumping in the area. The City of Miami Police Department does not condone or accept profiling of any kind, Colina said. Im making that statement because Ive been made aware of a video that has been circulating of an encounter that occurred on Friday, April 10, in the Flagami neighborhood. Henderson shared the security footage of the incident captured at his family home with the Miami Herald. He told the news outlet he was unloading items from a van when a police sergeant stopped outside his home and handcuffed him when he didnt show him identification and turned back toward his vehicle. He said, You should refer to me as sir or sergeant when talking to me. I never said I was a doctor. But I didnt cuss. He just grabbed my arms and cuffed me, Henderson told the Herald, adding that he was wearing a protective mask during the ordeal, but the sergeant was not. He said he was released after he screamed for his wife, who then produced his identification. He put me at risk, Henderson told ABC News on Sunday. Now, I feel like I should get tested, honestly. Most likely, I will because he definitely was spitting in my face. I could feel it while he was yelling at me. He didnt apologize. He just got in his car and drove away, Henderson added. Colina, in his video statement, referenced a cargo van parked in front of Hendersons home. It appears to be trash getting off-loaded, Colina said. That is the genesis of the stop. What happens after that, whats being discussed, the actions taken, etc., all that needs to be investigated. And it will be investigated. Henderson told ABC News the supplies he was unloading at the time were for a homeless outreach group he works for in the city. Weve been out there once or twice a week for the last four weeks, handing out tents, toiletries, masks, socks, he explained. Weve been testing individuals for COVID-19 because its the most vulnerable population. If you want to control the spread, you have to go right to the source and take care of these individuals first. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Madrid: Spain - one of the worst-hit countries in the world by coronavirus - came under heavy criticism on Monday for "recklessly" easing lockdown without sufficient protection for workers. Commuters ride the metro in Barcelona on Tuesday. Credit:Bloomberg The accusations came as Europe's leaders debated how far and fast to lift confinement amid signs the epidemic was slowing, and with pressure increasing to restart paralysed economies. The latest figures suggest that Spain's lockdown is stemming infections, which grew by only 2 per cent on Monday, the lowest daily rate so far. Almost 170,000 Spaniards have now contracted the virus. The Health Ministry reported 517 deaths in a day, also a drop, taking the total toll to 17,489. The Assam government on Monday decided to provide financial assistance to those people from the state stranded in other areas due to the nationwide lockdown, Finance and Health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. A helpline number has been given where the people hailing from the state can give a missed call. Once that is done they will be provided with a link to provide their details, including bank account numbers, the minister said at a press conference here. "We have been receiving many distress calls to bring back people from across the country but it will not be possible now as inter-state connectivity is unlikely to be restored immrdiately," he said. The exact amount of the assistance will be announced later after taking in consideration the number of calls received, he said. However, he clarified that those who were working outside the state but returned home before the lockdown are not eligible for the assistance. "We are reaching out to poor students and workers who are not getting salaries due to the lockdown," he said. Piramal Foundation along with over 400 students of Assam Engineering College (AEC), Cotton University and Gauhati University have volunteered to engage themselves in helping with the application process, Sarma said. The process will also lead to the creation of a database which will later "help us in ascertaining the number of people who will return to the state in future and we have to take precautionary health measures accordingly", the minister said. After the applications are received, necessary verification will be made by the deputy commissioners and if found valid, the amount will be transferred to their respective bank accounts, he said. The state government had earlier announced financial assistance to cancer, kidney, heart and liver transplant patients from Assam who went for treatment outside the state and got stranded. "Family members of 919 patients have contacted the call centre and we decided to pay Rs 25,000 to each patient," Sarma said. Money has already been transferred to the family members of 213 patients while the others found eligible will also receive the amount soon, he added. The Assam goverment has also offered financial help to those stranded abroad while on an official or educational tour at the time the lockdown was announced. "We have already transferred the first instalment of one thousand dollars to 21 persons who had applied and the second instalment will be paid by April 25," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The DA has unveiled a new sustainable and flexible Smart Lockdown proposal for South Africa, aimed at protecting the economy while fighting the coronavirus. Realistically, South Africa may have to contain the coronavirus right up until a vaccine is widely available in 18-24 months time, said DA leader John Steenhuisen. Steenhuisen said considering its economic impact, the lockdown in its current form is not a feasible approach to contain the coronavirus in South Africa. Regardless of when the lockdown ends, South Africa cannot immediately go back to business as usual, he said. We need a phased and flexible approach to ease the lockdown while ensuring that we contain the spread of the coronavirus. Steenhuisen added that South Africa simply cannot afford a hard lockdown, as the economic repercussions will be disastrous. South Africa does not have the fiscal space necessary to accommodate the severe assault a hard lockdown will unleash on our economy, he said. This is why the DA has devised an alternative Smart Lockdown plan to supplement the governments coronavirus response effort. How the Smart Lockdown will work The DAs Smart Lockdown functions similarly to a load-shedding grid, or the different stages of water restrictions previously seen during the Western Cape drought. It provides four stages of lockdown relative to the national coronavirus infection rate for every sector of the South African economy and society. Red: Stage 4 (hard lockdown) Stage 4 (hard lockdown) Orange: Stage 3 (soft lockdown) Stage 3 (soft lockdown) Yellow: Stage 2 (soft open) Stage 2 (soft open) Green: Stage 1 (open) The DA said the plan can be amended in conjunction with stakeholders and government officials. The details of each stage can be found in the image below (click to expand). Additional measures In addition to the introduction of the Smart Lockdown, the DAs COVID-19 strategy for managing lives and the economy includes: Moving between lockdown stages in response to what the data is telling us about new daily infections and hospital capacity. Massive rollout of testing, tracking, tracing, and treatment coupled with transparent reporting of data. Massive build of healthcare capacity coupled with transparent reporting of progress data. Enabling and strict enforcement of the wearing of protective face masks in all public areas. The roll out of a comprehensive public education campaign: hygiene, diagnosis, handling. This includes health protocols for public spaces and workplaces. Assistance to the high-risk group to continue isolating where possible. Strict border control. Bold economic stimulus and relief package. Sweeping reforms in the government and to South Africas economy. The DA said it will submit it Smart Lockdown working paper to President Cyril Ramaphosa today. Now read: South African businesses will start to receive money from Tuesday The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), front. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Anthony J. Rivera A US Navy sailor assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt has died of coronavirus-related complications, the Navy announced Monday morning. The sailor tested positive on March 30, was hospitalized on April 9, and died on Monday. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. A US Navy sailor assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt died Monday from novel coronavirus-related complications, the Navy announced in a statement. The sailor, who tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday, March 30, was taken to the US Naval Hospital Guam on April 9 and placed in an intensive care unit. Immediately prior to hospitalization, the sailor had been found unresponsive in isolation during the daily medical check, and CPR was administered by fellow sailors and medical personnel. "The entire Department is deeply saddened by the loss of our first active duty member to COVID-19," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in a statement Monday. "Our thoughts are with the family of the USS Theodore Roosevelt sailor who lost his battle with the virus today," he added. "We remain committed to protecting our personnel and their families while continuing to assist in defeating this outbreak." The Navy announced the first three coronavirus cases aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt on March 24. The outbreak sidelines the port in Guam, where nearly 4,000 sailors have since been evacuated. As of Sunday, the number of sailors who had tested positive for the coronavirus aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt was 585. Reportedly among the positive cases is the carrier's former commanding officer Capt. Brett Crozier, who was relieved of command after a letter he wrote raising alarms about a coronavirus outbreak onboard leaked to the media. The same day the deceased sailor tested positive, Crozier sent out a letter warning that "the spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating." In his plea, he called on the Navy to take decisive action and evacuate the overwhelming majority of the crew. "Sailors do not need to die," he wrote, adding the Navy does not act, "there will be losses." Story continues "If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset our Sailors," the ship's captain wrote in the letter that cost him his command. The name of the sailor who died is being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin. Monday's death marks the second coronavirus-related death of a US service member. A New Jersey National Guard soldier who had been hospitalized since March 21 died on March 30. This post has been updated with the SECDEF's comments. Read the original article on Business Insider United Nations Amateur Radio Club News The following was posted on April 11th, on the United Nations Amateur Radio Club (4U1UN) FaceBook page: James, K2QI, President of United Nations Radio Club 4U1UN reports that as part of the STAY HOME movement, during the UN HQ building lockdown, UNARC was granted special permission to utilize a very limited remote operation possibility. Considering the demand for DIGI modes for 4U1UN - operation will be limited to FT8 mode only. Please be advised that there is only low power operation possible at this point. Therefore no Fox/Hound is possible as channel power division will not allow any long-distance stations to be worked. The operator at the keyboard is James K2QI As the coronavirus keeps shoppers from visiting brick-and-mortar stores, they've turned to the web even more than before to buy what they need. One Charleston technology firm says that's been a positive for its business. Atlatl Software makes three-dimensional visualizations for creators of complex machinery and other manufacturers. The application fits into e-commerce platforms, giving customers the ability to view products in augmented reality. The tools let shoppers explore how products would work in their space. Because website traffic is up, the King Street-based company is seeing greater demand, said Justin Scott, Atlatl's new CEO. Only around 10 percent to 15 percent of its customers have put a pause on purchases from the company, Scott said. It is one of the few winners of the coronavirus pandemic. About 181,000 South Carolinians have applied for unemployment in the past three weeks. Atlatl employs between 50 and 60 workers, all from home for the moment. Scott said some of its customers have decided to quickly pivot and expand their use of firm's software as in-person sales have plummeted. Scott, who moved from New York City to Charleston about three years ago, is an alumnus of well-known tech names such as Zillow (real estate) and Tumblr (social networking). He also worked for FiscalNote, which helps businesses evaluate how changes in government will affect them. He joined Atlatl last summer as chief growth officer. Announced last week, his elevation to CEO follows several years of leadership by Marc Murphy, a veteran of Charleston's startup community. Scott said the pandemic reminds him of working for Zillow during the mid-2000s housing crisis. While a disaster struck the real estate market, Zillow saw an opportunity to provide users with real-time data and a robust mobile platform. The company would complete its initial public offering in 2011. Atlatl, meanwhile, has kept its focus on the manufacturing industry in order to be best-in-class. The visualizations it creates have practical uses for many businesses. And the higher quality the image, the more likely people will be to engage. "It's got to be as good as reality, or people won't buy it," Scott said. Atlatl also collects data on how customers interact with the virtual model, which can then inform marketing decisions. For instance, it will know how long users spent looking at a product and what camera angles they chose. It plans to grow its workforce this year, though Scott said its current office on upper King is plenty big enough to accommodate. The company was founded in 2013 as a spin-off of another startup. Its name comes from the word for an ancient spear-throwing device. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 22:00:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOGADISHU, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Humanitarian agencies operating in Somalia have expressed concern that further spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could have a devastating impact given the lack of capacity to prevent, detect and respond to such a pandemic. The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cautioned that a full-scale outbreak in Somalia would also disrupt the ability of humanitarian agencies to respond to existing humanitarian needs, thus compounding the situation. "Before COVID-19, an estimated 30 percent of the population (about 5.2 million people) required some form of humanitarian assistance, and this number will sharply increase if the virus spreads," OCHA said in its latest report, released on Monday. So far the Horn of African nation has confirmed 25 COVID-19 cases, two deaths and one recovery. Most of the cases have no travel history, signifying the extent of local community transmission. According to the UN, less than 20 percent of health facilities have the required equipment and supplies to manage epidemics. "Millions of people are vulnerable within the Somali population, and the risk of illness and death is significant due to pre-existing illnesses and malnutrition," OCHA said. It said internally displaced people, who are estimated at 2.6 million, and the urban poor face the greatest risk, given crowded living conditions, insufficient hygiene facilities and lack of access to medical care. The other vulnerable groups, the UN agency said, are the elderly, who represent about 2.7 percent of the population. The UN agency warned that the pandemic could also hurt communities that are already food insecure or live in areas with high malnutrition rates, as well as the 35,000 refugees and asylum-seekers mostly living in Somaliland and Puntland, as well as returnees. Somalia on Sunday imposed night-time curfew on Mogadishu from Wednesday as part of measures to prevent the spread of the virus. It has also closed schools, banned large gatherings and suspended international and domestic passenger flights. (Bloomberg) -- Israels president rejected Benny Gantzs request for more time to put together a government, improving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus chances of holding on to power. President Reuven Rivlin took the rare step of refusing an extension on Sunday after understanding from Netanyahu that he and Gantz werent close to the power-sharing agreement they committed to pursue to help the country weather the coronavirus outbreak. Unless both men jointly request to extend Gantzs coalition-building brief before it expires at midnight Monday, then Rivlin has said hell give parliament three weeks to nominate someone for the task. Israel Set for Unity Government as Anti-Netanyahu Bloc Splits Netanyahu would assuredly be that person because no one else in Knesset can draw the kind of support he can. Under the current circumstances, three alternatives exist, and all of them favor Netanyahu, despite his looming graft trial: A couple of weeks ago we felt quite certain that we were going to get a government and avoid another election, said Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Now, we are back to the multiple-option waiting game instead of waiting for a government to be formed. Netanyahu Camp Lead Narrows in Snag for Coalition Building (2) If Israel heads to its fourth election since April 2019, then polls show Netanyahu strengthened enough since last months vote to win the election outright. Surveys havent favored the prime minister this much since the inconclusive election cycle began, and now he has no serious challenger. By agreeing three weeks ago to team up with Netanyahu in government despite the bribery and fraud charges against him, Gantz broke up a broad political alliance that fought the prime minister to a draw in each of the votes. Yoram Meital, a professor Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, gives equal odds to a unity government and another round of balloting. Story continues Rivlins decision reflects political reality: Gantz cannot form a government, Meital said. Prime Minister Bibi was once again revealed in his full capacity to dismantle a political opponent, he added, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. Talks on a power-sharing deal faltered after the prime minister demanded veto power over the appointment of judges, a tool he could use to control which justices are involved in his three corruption cases. Netanyahu is accused of illicitly accepting gifts and scheming with media moguls to influence legislation to their benefit in exchange for sympathetic coverage. The urgency to form a governing coalition and avert a fourth round of elections has grown as the toll from the virus mounts. The number of confirmed cases has topped 11,000, with more than 100 dead. A near-lockdown has crippled the economy, which is forecast to shrink by 5.3% this year, according to the Bank of Israel. Israel Boosts Crisis Aid to 80B Shekels With New Package With the clock running down, Netanyahu supporters in parliament have asked Rivlin to assign the coalition-building task to the prime minister after Gantzs mandate expires. Tasking someone with indictments hanging over his head may be an obstacle to Rivlin, whose ties with the prime minister are already tense. Former Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, whose Telem faction split from Blue and White after Gantz cast his lot with Netanyahu, urged the general on Monday to abandon his negotiations with the prime minister. Benny, its already clear that your naive intention to be drafted to an emergency government has come up against the cynical nefariousness of a fugitive from justice, Yaalon wrote on Twitter on Monday. Its not too late to correct your navigational error. (Updates with former partner urging Gantz to abandon unity government talks in last two paragraphs) For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK Noida, April 13 : The Noida district authorities and health officials have been scrambling for a month to find out how many people had come in contact with a UK-based auditor who was on a visit to the city for a Noida-based company. Noida District Magistrate Suhas LY said, "Today results of several samples have come. It is very difficult to tell the exact number as to how many people came in contact with the UK-based auditor. But according to my information, there are at least 40 people who got the infection from the auditor out of a total of 64 positive cases in the city." The UK-based auditor, who works for Ceasefire Industries Pvt Ltd, landed at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport and went to Uttarakhand for two days before coming to Noida where he stayed in a hotel in Sector 135 and left for England on March 19, a few days before the lockdown began in the country. Coronavirus cases in Noida began to rise in the third and fourth week of March and authorities believe this auditor has a big role to play in this. Those who have been infected belong to Ceasefire company or people who came in contact with them. The first coronavirus positive case in Noida was reported on March 8 and till March 21 five more cases were found. The UK-based auditor went back on March 19 and then there was a spurt in cases. Till March 27, the number of Covid-19 cases rose to 17. On March 23, a woman residing in Sector-137 informed the health officials about Covid-19 symptoms. She said her husband was in touch with a UK-based man in his office. On March 24, the woman and her husband tested positive for the virus, following which the society was sealed for three days. On March 25, their daughter also tested positive. The same day, another couple from Noida's Sector 50 was also examined, who tested positive after coming in contact with the Sector-137 couple. This is how the virus spread in Noida. Internship leads to job offer 04/13/2020 Michelle Swartley turned an internship into a job offer experience, encouragement leads to accounting position with Progressive Insurance When looking at colleges, Michelle Swartley 20 recognized she would be more successful attending a small school, and Bluffton Universitys size and encouraging professors and students led her to move almost nine hours from home. The Cedar Falls, Iowa, native recently finished an internship at Progressive Insurance, where she was then offered a full-time position after graduation. I know that if I went to school anywhere else, I probably never would have had the courage to go out and get an internship at a company like Progressive, explained Swartley, an accounting and economics double major. The fact that I had multiple professors and friends encouraging me to go after an opportunity like that is the reason I took that leap and decided to apply. Swartley spent her internship working in the HR Control Group and with People Analytics at Progressive. She was able to gain a variety of professional skills, which landed her a job offer. Upon graduation, Swartley will be moving to the Cleveland area to work in Progressives accounting rotation program. This program allows employees to spend time gaining experience in various departments over the course of two years. On campus, Swartley enjoyed being part of academic organizations like the Investment Club and the Bluffton University Business Leaders (BUBL). My favorite part of the Investment Club was when we invested fake money to learn how investing works in the real world, said Swartley, who was the secretary of the Investment Club and president of BUBL. BUBL provides students with opportunities to meet and learn from alumni, practice professional skills and gain broader perspectives and insights into the business field. As president, Swartley was able to plan those events. At Bluffton, Its all about relationships, and Swartley affirms this. The biggest takeaway I have is the importance of relationships, said Swartley. The main reason I learned so much at Bluffton was because I was able to connect with all of my professors. I felt comfortable going to them with any question, and they were always willing to help me with whatever I needed. Swartley names Dr. Jonathan Andreas, professor of economics, as her mentor. He helped her discover her interest in economics and analytics work that isnt directly related to accounting. She also credits Dr. Jason Swartzlander, professor of accounting, for encouraging her to push herself and attend the career fair where she learned of the Progressive internship. Jason helped me through the whole process and got me prepared for each step of the interview and hiring process, said Swartley. Im extremely grateful for that. Swartley firmly believes Bluffton has prepared her for a job in the real world. In a lot of my classes I feel like my professors would teach us something, but then apply it to how they have used it in a real life situation. They also encourage us to get internships which is the biggest thing that prepared me for a real job. A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed on Monday expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of Prime Minister Imran Khan-led government in tackling the coronavirus outbreak in the country. The Supreme Court has directed the federal government to remove Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza. According to the Dawn, the court, in its order, sought a reply from all four provincial governments and the Gilgit-Baltistan government regarding steps taken to curb the spread of the virus. The order, however, made no mention of Mirza's removal. The detailed order is expected in two days. Responding to the Chief Justice of Pakistan's (CJP) comments regarding dismissing Mirza, Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan said that removing the PM's aide at this point of time would be disastrous. "Do not change him mid-flight," he said, urging the court to leave the matter up to the federal government. The Dawn has reported that the court also took the Sindh government to task over the decision to cordon off 11 union councils, observing that there were no arrangements in place to provide the people with food and medicines. The court directed the Sindh government to present a report regarding ration distribution in the province. The hearing was adjourned till April 20 Earlier in the hearing, the SC had questioned the performance of the federal government in tackling the coronavirus situation. "I cannot understand what kind of a team is working on the coronavirus outbreak," the CJP remarked, adding that there was an entire army of advisers and ministers but work was still not being done. The CJP also said that corrupt people have been made advisers, and subsequently given the same status as federal ministers. There are serious allegations against many top government officials, the CJP observed. Pakistan's coronavirus cases have reached 5,374 with 334 new infections reported, while seven more people have died due to the disease, taking the toll in the country to 93, health officials said on Monday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With hundreds of bodies left decaying in homes for days due to lack of space in the city's overwhelmed morgues and hospitals, the coronavirus has struck a blow to Ecuador's economic capital Quayaquil, now a symbol of the chaos the pandemic can unleash among Latin America's poor. The Pacific port city has become the epicenter of South America's struggle as the pandemic gradually tightens its grip on the region. In Guayaquil, the stench of death floats around the hospitals. Long lines of vehicles form outside the cemeteries, loaded with cardboard coffins. For days, hundreds of bodies were left at home, or in the streets where they fell, wrapped in black plastic. Hampered by a strict 15-hour curfew, funeral services were overwhelmed and the health sector, lacking funds and personnel, simply collapsed. Nearly 800 corpses have been removed from homes in the city over the past couple of weeks, a government official announced late Sunday. The grim task of removal has been handed to a special force of troops and police hastily set up last week, in response to videos posted on social media by panicked residents of bodies lying in the streets. "The number that we have collected from homes with the special force has exceeded 700," said the head of the force Jorge Wated, who is also the government spokesman. Wated wrote on Twitter later that the number was 771. Added to 631 bodies in hospital morgues, that makes more than 1,400 awaiting burial. And worse is to come. Authorities in this small South American country of 17.5 million predict up to 3,500 deaths from COVID-19 in the coming months. Guayas province, of which Guayaquil is the capital, has 73 percent of Ecuador's more than 7,500 cases and 335 deaths. - Vulnerable port - Guayaquil, the center of the country's economy and a key Pacific port, appeared vulnerable to the virus from the start. As a key hub, travel to and from Europe and the United States is especially intense in February and March, the main school holiday period. It was there that Ecuador's first case was detected in February, in an elderly woman returning from Spain. Some half a million Ecuadorans reside in Spain and Italy, which are among the countries worst hit by the virus. Many emigrated to Europe during the country's financial crisis in the 1990s. -Negligence - The problems were compounded by government negligence. Ecuador "reacted late" to the pandemic, according to Daniel Simancas, an epidemiologist at the Equinox University of Technology in Quito. "This led to the devastating consequences that we have seen. The authorities themselves have apologized for the lack of strategies in the management of corpses, and of forecasting of what was needed in medical materials," Simancas told AFP. There were also delays in purchasing test kits, coupled with a weak epidemiological surveillance plan. The "cultural broth" of the port city aggravated the crisis, he said. - Inequality - Although Guayas is the most productive province in the country, more than 11 percent of Guayaquil's population is living below the poverty line, according to official figures released in December. Unemployment and under-employment affects 20 percent of the working age population. "The people want to go to work and this is due to informal employment," where there is no social safety net, according to economist Alberto Acosta Burneo. Guayaquil native Carlos Tutiven, a sociologist at the University of Casa Grande, points to massive inequalities in the city. No government policy "has been powerful enough to solve the inequity" in a city where the villas of the wealthy exist cheek-by-jowl with shantytowns, he said. - Indiscipline - Authorities in Guayas province said that more than 3,000 people had violated the 15-hour daily curfew. Despite soldiers being deployed in the streets, it is common to see street vendors plying their trade, without masks, and lines of people ignoring social distancing recommendations outside shops. Tutiven highlights the "weakness" of government communication on recommendations to fight the spread of the coronavirus. "Not everyone can show obedience and discipline because the vast majority of people live in very precarious conditions," Tutiven told AFP. "Locking yourself in a four-square meter apartment, in a room where there are four, five, six people, is suffocating," he said. And the poor are not the only ones to ignore the "stay at home" regulations. "Many families with a lot of money and power have underestimated the power of this virus and have not respected the quarantine measures," according to Simancas, the epidemiologist. The government of President Lenin Moreno and local authorities have been forced to admit serious flaws in their approach. "Everyone" is responsible, said Guayaquil mayor Cynthia Viteri, who herself was infected and has recovered. "We see our dead fall in silence every day; we hear the neighbor cry for her deceased loved one... a pregnant woman with no hospital to give birth in, and a hundred people dying because they were unable to undergo dialysis. "It wasn't only the health system that has collapsed here, but also the funeral services and mortuaries." burs-db/ft Mortuary workers in the Pacific port city of Guayaquil have been unable to cope with a backlog New graves are seen in a cemetery in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on April 12 2020 Workers build new graves in a cemetery in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on April 12 2020 A soldier patrols in Guyaquil, a city which resisted the socialism of ex-president Rafael Correale DUSHANBE -- A Tajik court has postponed the trial of a journalist who is facing what international media-freedom watchdogs call "absurd" extremism charges. A court in Dushanbes Shomansur district was scheduled to hold a hearing on April 13, but a lawyer for Daler Sharifov told RFE/RL that the session was postponed for two days because the state prosecutor was absent. A large group of journalists and civic activists had gathered outside the courthouse in the hope of attending the hearing. However, it remained unclear whether the trial would be open to the public, said Sharifov's lawyer, Abdurahmon Sharifov, who is not related. The 32-year-old Sharifov, who writes about domestic politics and religious issues, was arrested on January 28. Police also searched his apartment in Dushanbe and confiscated a computer and several books. Sharifov was later charged with inciting ethnic, racial, and religious hatred. He could be jailed for up to five years if found guilty. The Prosecutor-Generals Office says the case is based on "more than 200 articles and commentaries containing extremist content" aimed at "inciting religious intolerance" that were published on social media between 2013 and 2019. Sharifov's relatives, human rights organizations, and media-freedom groups have rejected the accusations as unfounded and demand his immediate release. Calling the incitement charges "absurd," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have said Sharifov's arrest was aimed at silencing a critical journalist ahead of parliamentary elections in March that were won, as expected, by President Emomali Rahmon's ruling party. The European Congress of Tajik Journalists and Bloggers has called Sharifov's arrest illegal and emphasized that the journalist regularly opposed religious extremism and terrorism. Writing for the independent news website Ozodagon from 2013 until its closure last year following "years of harassment," Sharipov often commented on violations of human rights and religious freedoms, according to RSF. Eight years ago, the journalist spent several days in hospital after being beaten in a still unpunished attack. International human rights organizations have repeatedly criticized authorities for suppressing dissent and independent media in Tajikistan, which is ranked 161 out of 180 countries in RSFs 2019 World Press Freedom Index. Please register or log in to keep reading. No credit card required! Stay logged in to skip the surveys. Devotees on Monday violated social distancing norms while visiting the Digiana Gurdwara here to offer prayers on Baisakhi amid coronavirus lockdown. They violated the lockdown guidelines despite request from officials to not venture out of their homes on Baisakhi. "We are ensuring that people maintain social distancing while offering prayers," said Amrik Singh, head of the gurdwara. Baisakhi marks the Sikh New Year and is a spring harvest festival celebrated in Punjab and other parts of north India. With 21 new COVID-19 cases reported in Jammu and Kashmir, the total number of patients in the Union Territory has climbed to 245, Rohit Kansal, Principal Secretary (Planning), informed on Sunday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By PTI BERLIN: Elderly people may have to be kept isolated until the end of the year to protect them from the coronavirus, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said in comments published Sunday. "Without a vaccine, we have to limit as much as possible contact with the elderly," she told the Germany daily Bild. "I know it's difficult and that isolation is a burden, but it is a question of life or death, we have to remain disciplined and patient," she added. "Children and young people will enjoy more freedom of movement earlier than elderly people and those with pre-existing medical conditions," she said. She said she hoped that a European laboratory will develop a vaccine towards the end of the year. To ensure that people can be quickly vaccinated, authorities are already in talks with producers on gearing up for world production, she added. Researchers are able to detect and measure things they could not before, while many species flourish amid the silence. The world has gone quiet in recent weeks. Busy highways that once rumbled with traffic and packed sidewalks that overflowed with fast-moving, chattering pedestrians have suddenly emptied out. There are fewer airplanes taking off, hardly any boats on the water, and no school buses to be seen. It seems as if the entire world has been put on pause, and, while the resulting silence may be eerie for some, it's exhilarating for others. Many scientists are taking advantage of the sudden silence to do unprecedented research. Perhaps most interesting is that seismologists can now detect minute rumblings beneath the Earth's surface that were previously masked by city sounds. Greek researcher and seismology professor Efthimios Sokos told Reuters that it's like being an astronomer in a city where the lights have just been turned out. Researchers in Brussels, Belgium, have found the same thing. Following a national lockdown, urban noise dropped to a level equivalent to Christmas Day, making it far easier detect seismic activity. Paula Koelemeijer, a seismologist from London, UK, told The Atlantic, April 13 : Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt and Janhvi Kapoor applauds Kartik Aaryans YouTube show Koki Poochega and he replies revealing his next Guest! Kartik Aaryan strikes back on our virtual world and takes it by storm. The actor after his hard-hitting #CoronaStopKaroNa monologue has now launched his own show Koki Poochega. As he turns host, the actor interviews the real heroes of Coronavirus and survivors of this fatal virus. The first episode has been out since last night and the fun interview has gone viral. The first guest on Koki Poochega is Sumiti Singh, one of the first survivors of COVID 19 in India and the fun conversation is quite insightful. He shared a glimpse of it on his Instagram account and got the netizens talking about it. While his fans started praising his big move and yet another clever act in such critical times, actresses like Janhvi Kapoor and Alia Bhatt too were impressed by the interview. Alia Bhatt dropped a comment saying, How nice this is, and inserted a red-heart emoji. The actor and host soon replied to her comment, thanking her and also revealing the next guest on the show. He said, @aliabhatt Thank you. It has been very insightful talking to so many Frontliners. Next eps with a very Inspiring Doctor, and inserts a lady doctor emoji. Now thats something we really cant wait to watch. Kartik Aaryan as a host is doing an amazing job and him in conversation with Corona warriors is surely going to be something to watch out for. Kartik Aaryans first episode with Sumiti Singh has got a great response. The episode is not just informative and insightful, its also entertaining as he makes us feel that not to panic and practicing social-distancing and acting on symptoms instantly can cure the fatal disease. Hats off to the youth icon of Bollywood for doing so much in such critical times and make us feel responsible and safe! Prasanta Mazumdar By Express News Service GUWAHATI: Age comes with its treasure of wisdom and generosity. Pi Nghakliani, 95, is being the generous and sacrificing granny that she is as the world fights COVID-19 pandemic. This elderly woman has not only donated her measly monthly pension to Mizoram Chief Ministers Relief Fund but is also stitching masks for the poor. Chief Minister Zoramthanga was among the people touched by her goodwill gesture. Here is an incredible story of Pi Nghakliani (95), w/o Pu Lalrinliana (L) Ex-MLA; whos not just yet done with donating her 1-month pensioners salary to the Chief Ministers RF, yet still sew face masks and handing them out to whoever needs it! Zoramthanga tweeted. Sangpuii, the elderly womans daughter-in-law, said the nonagenarian stitches around 10-20 washable masks a day. There is an acute shortage of masks in Mizoram and they are expensive too. The Chinese masks, which cost Rs 10 earlier, are now being sold at Rs 100-200 apiece. So, she thought it would be nice to donate in the cause. Its a very small gesture. She said Nghakliani was faced with a scarcity of materials as the shops dealing in the items were all closed. Despite her falling age, the woman has no problem with her vision. She says she had seen World War-II and the insurgency movement in Mizoram. Nghakliani and many others had to take refuge at a village in Assams Haflong in 1966 and hide there for two years during the Mizo insurgency movement. My mother-in-law says she had never seen a situation like the one created now by COVID-19 pandemic, Sangpuii said. She said her mother-in-law felt there should not be any political boundary in this hour of need and challenging times. It is a time to ask what we can do, nothing too small or too big, she said, quoting the granny. The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) transits Apra Harbor as the ship prepares to moor in Guam on Feb. 7, 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Terence Deleon Guerrero) Sailor on Stricken Carrier Dies of COVID-19 A sailor assigned to the virus-stricken aircraft carrier in the Pacific has died, four days after being found unresponsive and being admitted to intensive care. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is currently sidelined from its mission in the Pacific while the nuclear carrier is systematically evacuated and cleaned after an outbreak of COVID-19 on board. The death of the sailor from the carrier underscores a dramatic warning by the captain in a memo to senior leaders that was leaked to the press. That memo that sparked a controversial series of events, including the captains dismissal, and culminated in the resignation of the acting Navy secretary. Five hundred and 85 members of the crew of over 4,000 have so far tested positive, according to a statement on April 12, with 92 percent tested for the CCP virus, commonly referred to as the novel coronavirus. The death of one of the carriers sailors todaywhose name is being withheld until a day after his kin is notifiedmarks the first death of military personnel on active duty from the CCP virus. The sailor tested positive for COVID-19 March 30, was removed from the ship and placed in an isolation house on Naval Base Guam with four other USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) sailors, the Navy said in a statement. Like other sailors in isolation, he received medical checks twice daily from Navy medical teams. The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is seen while entering into the port in Da Nang, Vietnam, on March 5, 2020.(Kham/File Photo/Reuters) On April 9, the sailor was found unresponsive during a check. He was taken to an intensive care unit in Guam, but died on April 13 of COVID-related complications, according to the Navy. The USS Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Guam on March 27 for a scheduled port visit for resupply and crew rest. However, it has been waylaid by the outbreak onboard. The plight of the carrier has been held under the spotlight by a controversial series of events. First, a dramatic memo from the captain to the leadership, in which he said the ship needed to be evacuated or crew members would die, was leaked to the press. Then, the captain was fired by the Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly sparking anger from many quarters and from the crew. Modly then flew out to the carrier and gave a speech to the crew, hoping to justify the decision to fire the captain. But his speech was recorded and also leaked, with Modlys criticisms of the captain, particularly his choice of the words stupid and naive, fueling yet more anger. After mounting public criticism, and after President Trump had hinted he might get involved, Modly finally apologized, before then abruptly resigning. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 3, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Modly had said previously that he believed the captain penned the note knowing it would be leaked, that he effectively broke the chain of command. He also said that the Pentagon had already taken action by the time the captains note was made public. Aircraft carriers are key pieces in the geopolitical and military chess game with China. However, analysts told The Epoch Times that if push comes to shove in the Pacific, the Navy could shrug off any strategic disadvantages of having a single carrier sidelined. If more carriers are struck by outbreaks, however, it could have some impact on U.S. military clout in the region. Pentagon leaders say that despite the carrier being out of action, in aggregate the readiness of the military remains undiminished by the pandemic, although they admitted that it could degrade in the coming months. If our adversaries think this is our moment of weakness, they are dangerously wrong, said Deputy Defense Secretary David L. Norquist on April 9. To those who wish us harm, make no mistake: even with the challenges that this disease has brought to our shores, the Department of Defense stands ready to meet any threat and defend our nation. This wasnt supposed to happen. The British people have responded to a draconian lockdown the Government-directed measure to stamp out coronavirus infection with good humour and fortitude. Not only that, we have been significantly more observant of the rules than most other nations in similar lockdowns. Saturdays Daily Mail reported a poll conducted by YouGov, in conjunction with Imperial Colleges Institute of Global Health Innovation, of almost 15,000 adults in the UK and 13 other such countries. This wasnt supposed to happen. The British people have responded to a draconian lockdown with good humour and fortitude. Pictured is Boris Johnson last night thanking NHS staff after he was discharged from hospital It showed that almost two-thirds of Britons (62 per cent) said they had not been within the mandated minimum 6ft of anyone outside their household over the past week. Across the other 13 countries, the average figure was only 46 per cent although Spain and Italy had marginally higher rates of observance. The poll also showed that 88 per cent of Britons had left their house no more than once on the previous day, compared with an average figure of 80 per cent across the 13 other nations in lockdown. DRACONIAN Apparently, these figures have amazed the Government, which had not anticipated anything like this level of public acceptance of the measures introduced by the Prime Minister on March 23. According to The Spectators impeccably well-informed editor, Fraser Nelson: Government modellers didnt expect such obedience The stay-at-home exhortations were issued with such vigour because it was assumed wrongly that Brits would not really listen. But why was that the view in government? They had been listening to their team of behavioural psychologists, who had assured Downing Street that research indicated the British people would not put up with the sort of lockdowns which had already been set in place elsewhere. The originator of nudge theory is the Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein (pictured), whose 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, was put by David Cameron on a list of required reading for his top team This explains why, on March 9, after Italy ordered a national lockdown, Boris Johnson refused to follow suit, telling the nation: We are doing everything we can based on the very latest scientific and medical advice. The Governments Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies, SAGE, had recommended that day, with no internal dissent recorded, that the Cabinet reject a lockdown. As an epidemiologist involved in these discussions revealed (in a superb investigation by the Reuters news agency): We had milder interventions in place because no one thought it would be acceptable politically to shut the country down. We didnt model it because it didnt seem to be on the agenda. The switch to more draconian measures has been widely attributed to the paper from Imperial College, published on March 16, suggesting that a quarter of a million Britons would be wiped out by Covid-19 if the Government had stuck to its less interventionist policies, or half a million if there was no social isolation at all. But as Reuters points out: Imperials prediction of half a million deaths was no different from the report by the Governments own pandemic modelling committee two weeks earlier. What had changed was that as other nations notably Italy started lockdowns, the public pressure on Downing Street to follow suit became too great to resist. David Cameron was very taken with this and, as a result, set up a Behavioural Insight Team in Downing Street Opinion polls showed sharply waning support for the Governments handling of the crisis support which rocketed upward after it introduced the lockdown, and which still remains high. This might change as April turns to May, and as more and more businesses face imminent bankruptcy. But as things stand, the events of recent weeks come as a devastating rebuke to the so-called nudge theory of behavioural psychology, which has held a strange fascination for the British Government throughout the past decade. Essentially, it argues that the best way to get the public to take health-based decisions in their own interests is to nudge them, rather than tell them on the grounds that people are more likely to take the necessary actions if they believe they are doing it voluntarily. David Cameron was very taken with this and, as a result, set up a Behavioural Insight Team in Downing Street. Its successor in todays Government, known as the Nudge Unit, had advanced the theory of behavioural fatigue the idea that people eventually get bored of doing one thing and start engaging in another to argue against the viability of an early lockdown. It claimed that if such measures were introduced too soon, then the public would be in full-scale revolt when the virus reached its peak. IMPACT Yet if a lockdown, with all its undesirable social consequences, is to have a serious impact in reducing mortality from Covid-19, it needs to come sooner rather than later because of the exponential nature of contagion from a highly infectious disease. The public seems to get that. The originator of nudge theory is the Harvard law school professor Cass Sunstein, whose 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, was put by David Cameron on a list of required reading for his top team. But Professor Sunstein seems to have been caught out by the coronavirus. On February 28, he published a piece entitled The Cognitive Bias That Makes Us Panic About Coronavirus. It argued: As of now, most people in North America and Europe do not need to worry much about the risk of contracting the disease. Thats true even for people who are travelling to nations such as Italy that have seen outbreaks of the disease Many people will take precautionary steps (cancelling vacations, refusing to fly, avoiding whole nations) even if there is no adequate reason to do that. Dr Caroline Kamau (pictured) herself a psychologist at Londons Birkbeck College, wrote two days before Downing Street abandoned its non-interventionist approach: You may be wondering whether there is published evidence showing that applying nudge theory to something like coronavirus is empirically accurate. The answer is no' A month later, Sunstein had turned around 180 degrees. His next article, published on March 26, was entitled, This Time The Numbers Show We Cant Be Too Careful. It concluded: Extensive precautions, not ending soon, are amply justified. It did not refer to his earlier recommendation that there was no need for precautionary steps. To be fair to behavioural psychologists, a number of them thought and said that their colleagues advising the Government had greatly underestimated the ability of the British people to handle a lengthy lockdown. In mid-March, a group of behavioural psychologists wrote an open letter to the UK Government regarding Covid-19. They declared: Current Government thinking seems to crucially involve the idea of behavioural fatigue. If behavioural fatigue truly represents a key factor in the Governments decision to delay measures [involving social distancing] we urge the Government to share an adequate evidence base in support of that decision. ABANDONED That is the point. What, actually, was the experimental evidence for its assessment of the character of the British public in the circumstances of a pandemic? As Dr Caroline Kamau, herself a psychologist at Londons Birkbeck College, wrote two days before Downing Street abandoned its non-interventionist approach: You may be wondering whether there is published evidence showing that applying nudge theory to something like coronavirus is empirically accurate. The answer is no. This means that the mathematical modelling is based on assumptions from nudge theory about how people will behave, but the assumptions are unlikely to be accurate. In other words: rubbish in, rubbish out. If there is a single person who has been instrumental in capturing the British peoples mood in this moment, it is not a policeman or a behavioural psychologist. That person is Her Majesty The Queen (pictured during her special broadcast last week) Of course, not all Britons are dutifully obeying the new policy of mandatory, rather than voluntary, social isolation. And the police (or at least the chief constable of Northamptonshire) can enrage even the most docile by threatening such absurd measures as checking individual shopping bags to ensure the public are entering supermarkets only to purchase essential items. If there is a single person who has been instrumental in capturing the British peoples mood in this moment, it is not a policeman or a behavioural psychologist. That person is Her Majesty The Queen. In her televised broadcast last week, the monarch declared: I want to thank all of you who are staying at home, thereby helping to protect the vulnerable I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow feeling still characterise the country. That is the mightiest nudge of all. Have you ever had a crack at getting into the hot seat on Britains most lucrative quiz show, by dialling the premium-rate number to register for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Lord knows I did, many times, when the TV phenomenon launched in 1998, offering the biggest jackpot in small- screen history. Telly quizzes before that used to offer Teasmades, Betamax players or silver-plated chequebook-and-pens. Suddenly contestants had the chance to play for a seven-figure sum. No wonder we all made a grab for our phones as the credits rolled. Those were more innocent times. No one imagined that entry to the contest could be rigged by ambitious quizzers. Starring Michael Sheen as Millionaires host Chris Tarrant (right), Quiz tells the story of hapless Army major Charles Ingram and wife Diana who plotted to swindle the high profile game show Monday nights real-life drama Quiz (ITV) exposed the scam, in the first of a three-parter that continues on Tuesday and Wednesday. Starring Michael Sheen as Millionaires host Chris Tarrant, its the story of hapless Army major Charles Ingram and wife Diana who plotted to cough and swindle their way to the top prize. But weve barely seen the main scheme get going yet. The opening episode was all about a separate scheme concocted by other avid quiz addicts to enhance their chances of getting on the show. Based on the stage play by James Graham, Quiz alleged that would-be contestants calling themselves the Syndicate who claimed to have not broken any rules pooled their expertise. Thats how a small group of people managed to get so many tilts at the jackpot ... and why the likes of you and me never stood a chance. In the end, it was ordinary viewers who were swindled. Quiz opened with the media scrum at Southwark Crown Court as the Ingrams and their fellow conspirator, a South Wales college lecturer named Tecwen Whittock, faced charges of fraud. A pretentious quote by Pablo Picasso flashed onto the screen, something about art being a kind of lie that reveals the real facts. This appeared to be a hint that the script was taking plenty of liberties with la verite. Charles Ingram appeared shifty and nervous on the show as he conned his way to the top But the truth, as Chris Tarrant pointed out in Saturdays Daily Mail, is simple enough. Major Charles Ingram and his wife were a pair of greedy cheats who ruined their own lives by trying to defraud the show, and public, out of a huge sum of money. No, any sympathy for the Ingrams is not based on any grudging admiration that all of us would love to trick our way to a million quid. It stems from the fundamental kindness of the British people. As criminal masterminds, they were pitiful. Matthew Macfayden, as Charles Ingram, conveys this with pathetic charm. The actor has a gift for making weak, ineffectual men seem lovable. Watching him flounder through a succession of questions he barely understands will be a treat. Fleabags Sian Clifford is excellent too, as the brittle wife frustrated by the stupidity of all the men around her. But the honours on the first night go to Michael Sheen for his performance as bullish Chris Tarrant. The actors ability to look like real people is practically supernatural: Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams, David Frost, Tony Blair ... you might imagine they have nothing in common but in fact they all looked exactly like Michael Sheen. This time, he captures Tarrants nasal laugh, his wolfish smile and that air of cynicism, like a man who was fooled long ago by his own publicity and will never fall for it again. Matthew Macfayden, as Charles Ingram, conveys the greed of the man with pathetic charm Last time I interviewed him, he told me that when Quiz was first staged he went in disguise to a try-out at a provincial theatre. He left more convinced than ever that the Ingrams were lucky to escape a long jail sentence. The TV version bears many hallmarks of a script that was originally written for live performance such as the way Nicholas Woodeson as the prosecuting barrister addresses his remarks directly to the camera, making us feel that we, the viewers, are the jury. And so we are, in a way, a jury facing a multiple-choice question:Was Major Charles Ingram... A) The rightful winner B) Too stupid to cheat properly C) The worlds biggest chancer D) Guilty as sin? Watch it all before you give your Final Answer... Cialfo Launches Free Version to Help Students Apply to College During COVID-19 WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In light of school closures globally, Cialfo today announced that their college and career readiness platform is available free of charge to all high schools worldwide. The free plan launches next week and is currently accepting registrations. This announcement comes after Cialfo hosted its first Online University Fair in March. Taking place over a span of 3 days, over 18,000 students and counselors attended 138 sessions hosted by 96 institutions. Schools represented included Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, Indiana University, Arizona State University, The University of Hong Kong, Trinity College Dublin, and Swarthmore College. "At Cialfo, we're constantly working towards new ways to increase access in education. The Online University Fair was our first step towards making it as simple as possible for high school students to talk to admissions officers," said Rohan Pasari, co-founder and CEO of Cialfo. "Making Cialfo free for everyone is the second step. This will allow every high school, regardless of resources, to engage their students in college and career readiness." Cialfo offers powerful college and career readiness planning to all schools for free "We're hearing from schools that are using WhatsApp or Facebook groups to manage their counseling, and it's overwhelming for both staff and students," said William Hund, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Cialfo. "These platforms are not built for distance counseling. By releasing Access, we can help these schools that desperately need a counseling solution." Features of the Access plan at launch will include: - Connecting with colleges: Schedule virtual college visits, promote informational webinars, or join online college fairs with students and parents - Seamless collaboration: Schedule meetings, send broadcasts, share notes and in-app messages, or chat on the Cialfo mobile app - Simple college planning: Give students access to a rich college search database where they can research schools, discover tuition fees, and plan applications To register an account on Cialfo, visit https://cialfo.co/access. About Cialfo Cialfo is a one-stop solution that brings together people, software, and data to simplify college and career counseling workflows. With Cialfo, anyone can access postsecondary planning and readiness. Founded in 2017 in Singapore, Cialfo now powers hundreds of high schools across 60+ countries. We're on a mission to make higher education accessible for 100 million students by 2025. Contact: Dee Mirai, Cialfo Phone: +65 8749 1379 Email: dee@cialfo.co (Disclaimer--Features may vary depending on the regions; subject to change without notice.) Monday, April 13, 2020 at 2:04PM You might have noticed this heartwarming thing when you opened Google lately. The company is sending its thanks to all essential frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Google said in a statement, "This week, we're beginning a series of Doodles to recognize the many people responding to COVID-19 from doctors and nurses caring for people on the front lines, to teachers and food service workers ensuring essential goods and services are still available." You can check out the different Google Doodles under the cut. April 6: Public health workers and to researchers in the scientific community April 7: Doctors, nurses, and medical workers April 8: Emergency services workers April 9: Custodial and sanitation workers April 10: Farmworkers and farmers April 13: Grocery workers And then Google said you could also expect to see gratitude extended to the following sectors: "Over the next two weeks, our Doodles will honour other essential frontline workers, including healthcare workers, first responders, and the many people keeping services like sanitation, food service, public transit, schools, and more up and running. Thank you to all the people who are working to save lives and keep communities safe during this pandemic." Source: 9to5Google Westlife Development announced that McDonald's India and Paytm joined hands to distribute safe and hygienic food to health care workers in Mumbai, as a small token of gratitude towards these warriors. The two companies collaborated to distribute close to 600 McDonald's burgers in a safe and contactless manner to the healthcare workers at Cooper Hospital, Juhu. McDonald's restaurants in West and South India are operated by Westlife Development (WDL), through its wholly owned subsidiary Hardcastle Restaurants (HRPL). Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 11:11 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd17c1bb 1 National Natuna-sea,Sulawesi,edhy-prabowo,fisheries,maritime-affairs-and-fisheries-ministry,seize,illegal-fishing,COVID-19,coronavirus Free The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has seized five foreign-flagged vessels caught fishing illegally in Indonesian waters as sea patrols remain vigilant during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ministry's Marine and Fisheries Resources Supervision Directorate General seized three Philippines-flagged vessels and two Vietnamese-flagged vessels in the North Natuna Sea and Sulawesi Sea on Saturday, Minister Edhy Prabowo said. The arrests were conducted by three vessels of the directorate general in two different locations that were monitoring the area. He said the intensity of monitoring remained the same despite the coronavirus pandemic, as the ministry aimed to uphold the sovereignty of fisheries management in the country. We are prepared for any increase in illegal vessels operating in [Indonesian waters] amid the spread of COVID-19. That is why we are not decreasing our operations as illegal fishing is still rampant, he said in a statement on Sunday. In Sulawesi waters, the three Philippine-flagged vessels raised Indonesian flags to trick patrols, but personnel managed to detect them, he added. Officials apprehended 34 Filipino crewmen from the three vessels. Six Vietnamese crewmen were apprehended from two Vietnam-flagged vessels caught in the North Natuna Sea. The arrests came just a week after the ministry arrested two illegal foreign vessels from Vietnam in the North Natuna Sea. Edhy explained that the arrests were the result of cooperation between personnel of the directorate generals control center and the technical unit, which monitor and inform the location of illegal foreign vessels to the joint Supervision Unit that conducted the raids. As part of efforts to strengthen protection of the countrys maritime resources, Edhy said he was considering adding operating days to eradicate illegal fishing. Family:Stella Moris,the partner of Julian Assange with their sons Gabriel and Max. Photo credit should read: Juan Luis Passarelli/PA Wire Wikileaks founder Julian Assange secretly fathered two children while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fighting extradition. South African lawyer Stella Moris (37) revealed in an interview yesterday that she has been engaged to Mr Assange since 2017. The couple have two sons, one-year-old Max and three-year-old Gabriel, both conceived while Mr Assange was in the embassy. The newspaper interview showed pictures of Mr Assange with a baby, identified as the older son, who it said had been smuggled into the embassy to meet him. Both of the children have British citizenship. Australian-born Mr Assange, who watched the births of both boys on a video link, was dragged out of the embassy last year after a seven-year stand-off. He is now jailed in Britain fighting extradition to the United States on computer hacking and espionage charges. His supporters say the US case against him, due in court on May 18, is political and he cannot receive a fair trial. Ms Moris said she had chosen to speak out now because she was worried about his susceptibility to the coronavirus in jail. "I love Julian deeply and I am looking forward to marrying him," she said. "I have discovered that love makes the most intolerable circumstances seem bearable but this is different - I am now terrified I will not see him alive again." In a video on YouTube, Ms Moris said she met Mr Assange in 2011 when she helped out legal team and they got together in 2015. She said in a statement last month in support of Assange's bail application that she had gone "to great lengths to shelter our children from the climate that surrounds him." More coronavirus cases recorded, school suspensions extended, more equipment moved by the US, and testing machines arrive from Kurdistan. Catch up on everything that happened over the weekend. 1. Six new cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) were registered in Syria on Saturday, bringing the total number of the cases to 25, the Health Ministry said, according to SANA. So far, four of the registered cases have recovered and two others died, the first of which was registered on Mar. 29, 2020. Later, the ministry announced that one patient with coronavirus has recovered, raising the total number of recovered patients to five. 2. The government team in charge of confronting the coronavirus (COVID-19) decided to extend the suspension of schools and universities until May 2, 2020, SANA reported. During its meeting on Saturday chaired by Prime Minister Imad Khamis, the team stressed the need for the strict implementation of the curfew in all areas, to restrict movements and limit gatherings that endanger public health. 3. US occupation forces continued their violations of international laws, transporting tens of vehicles loaded with military equipment and logistical equipment to their illegitimate bases in the Hassakeh countryside. According to Al-Watan, a convoy of US occupation forces headed from Hassakeh to the southern region along a road connecting Hassakeh and Deir ez-Zor provinces. 4. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham executed four people in Syrias rebel-held Idleb province on Saturday after accusing them of murder, theft, and kidnapping, Al-Masdar reported. Social media pages of people close to Tahrir al-Sham said that the executions had taken place in the town of Mahambel, after the condemned people had been found guilty of kidnapping and murdering the owner of a money exchange office in 2018. 5. This week, two PCR testing machines arrived in northeast Syria from the Kurdistan Region, which will help the Syrian-Kurdishled authorities to test for coronavirus infections. Utmost thanks and appreciation to the President of Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, the Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces General Mazloum Abdi tweeted on Sunday, according to Kurdistan 24. 6. The crews of two Russian warships are being placed under quarantine after completing their Syria mission, the newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Zvezda, said on Friday. The crews of frigate Admiral Makarov and the frigate Admiral Essen, which arrived in Crimea, have been placed in quarantine amid fears of the coronavirus spread. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 16:49 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd198296 1 Health UNICEFIndonesia,unicef,COVID-19,#COVID19,coronavirus,#coronavirus Free UNICEF Indonesia has shared some tips on staying safe when you venture outside during the COVID-19 pandemic. Berdiam dimerupakan salah satu langkah untuk menekan penyebaran virus corona. Akan tetapi, kalau memang diharuskan untuk keluar rumah, ada beberapa petunjuk agar lebih aman sebelum keluar rumah dan ketika kembali masuk ke rumah. Simak dan bagikan petunjuk berikut pic.twitter.com/hDYQX9eWuR UNICEF Indonesia (@UNICEFIndonesia) April 11, 2020 If you have to go out, it is recommended that you wear a jacket or other long-sleeve top and a mask, use tissue to touch surfaces and discard the tissue afterward, opt for cashless payments and maintain a 1-meter distance from other people. You should also refrain from touching your face until your hands are clean, avoid public transportation if possible and go without accessories. When coughing or sneezing, cover your mouth with your elbow. Read also: Think you know how to wash your hands? Doctors say use this method at 9 specific times After touching any object or surface, always wash your hands properly with soap and running water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer. When you get home, make sure to immediately take off your footwear and clothes. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises that clothes worn outside should be washed immediately with the warmest appropriate water along with high-quality detergent, as quoted by the South China Morning Post. If you do not have the time to promptly wash your clothes, it is advisable to store the clothes in a clean bag or hamper until laundry day. Clean and disinfect the hampers and bags after they are emptied. Wallets, bags and keys are to be put in a separate box near the entrance door, while glasses and smartphones should be cleaned with disinfectant. You should also take a shower straight away before touching any surface in your home to prevent further contamination. If thats not feasible, clean any surface of your skin that has been exposed to outside weather. (wir/wng) Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore has warned the state government's plan to allow more intensive development in Pyrmont must not be used to justify a revised proposal from The Star casino for an "inappropriate" tower. Cr Moore was among the majority of councillors who last year opposed the casino group's controversial bid to build a 66-storey hotel and residential building above its casino west of Darling Harbour. An artist's impression of The Star's proposed tower. Existing (left) and proposed (right) south east view from Sydney Observatory. Taken from the Department of Planning and Environment Star Casino Modification Assessment Report, July 2019. It became a lightning rod for debate about planning in Pyrmont, triggering another dispute between Cr Moore's City of Sydney Council and Gladys Berejiklian's government over development controls in the inner city. The Independent Planning Commission sided with the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment's negative assessment of the plan when it rejected The Star's $500 million tower. Chile's government on Sunday reported a total of 7,213 people have tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and 80 have died of the disease since the start of the outbreak, Trend reports citing Xinhua. In the past 24 hours, 286 more cases of infection were detected and seven patients succumbed to the disease, which can cause pneumonia. Of those infected, 2,059 have recovered, and of the fatal victims, six suffered from "pre-existing health conditions," the Health Ministry said. Chileans who have recovered from COVID-19 will soon be eligible to receive a type of "discharge card" that will exempt them from lockdown measures, according to the ministry. Meanwhile, Chile's government plans to build up a supply of 3,315 respirators. The country currently has 553. Chile has imposed stringent measures to contain the outbreak, including a nationwide curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., closing its borders to foreign visitors, and closing schools and non-essential businesses. Madrid, April 13 : Spain eased its economic restrictions on Monday allowing thousands of workers to return to their posts amid a debate between politicians, unions and scientists over the risk of a coronavirus rebound. The Spanish government ordered the suspension of all non-essential activity on March 30, which meant an almost total paralysis of the country's economy, Efe news reports. The measure was imposed in reaction to the advance of the pandemic, which saw a spike of infections and deaths of between 15 and 20 per cent the previous week. A total of 166,831 confirmed cases and 17,209 deaths have been reported in Spain since the start of the outbreak, making it the one of the worst affected countries in the world. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a public appearance on Sunday that the restarting of economic activities on Monday would not mean a relaxation of confinement measures ordered on March 14. He added that the country was not entering the de-escalation phase of its lockdown. Police officers were distributing masks at major transport hubs, including train and metro stations, in large cities from the early hours of Monday morning. The government announced the distribution of 10 million masks at logistics points throughout Spain for those who have to use public transport to travel to work. Police officers were also monitoring trains and buses to make sure they did not become overcrowded. Distancing measures have also been imposed for employers, such as in the construction industry work in occupied buildings has been prohibited. Images from Spain's Directorate-General for Traffic on Monday showed empty roads and a small number of vehicles in large cities, with a similar picture in Madrid's main metro stations. The resumption of economic activity has been criticised by some regional leaders, such as Catalan President Quim Torra, who on Sunday described the move as "absolute recklessness". A number of union representatives have also questioned the relaxation of the measures and raised concerns about the risk it could pose for workers. A tradesman has been captured on camera diving into the tray of his ute as it was being stolen by thieves outside his house. Greg Hamill posted dramatic CCTV footage of the brazen theft at Kanimbla in Cairns in the early hours of Monday morning. Two thieves were seen entering Mr Hamill's home at 2.21am through his front door before his keys were stolen. The footage showed him leap on to the back of his white ute as the bandits began to speed out of his driveway. 'So my house was broken into last night, while I was asleep... again,' his post reads. Greg Hamill posted CCTV footage of two burglars attempting to steal his car from his home in Kanimbla in Cairns on Monday morning on his Facebook page 'They tried to steal my car, so I went for a ride.' Mr Hamill was captured bashing at the window of his car from the tray as the thieves took him on a wild high speed joy ride through town. 'Joy ride lasted about 20 minutes and they probably hit 200km/hr with me in the back,' his post continues. Mr Hamill said the thieves tried to stab him multiple times as he tried to break in to his car and tried to launch him from the tray with their aggressive driving. 'It was a pretty heated discussion while they drove crazily around the suburbs,' he posted. 'They kept telling me to jump and I kept trying to break the window. 'They pulled over a couple of times where one tried to stab me and I had to kick him away. Then they'd take off again swerving and trying to throw me.' Mr Hamill jumped into the tray of his ute to stop the thieves, who tried to throw him from the tray of his car with aggressive driving After the terrifying journey, Mr Hamill was able to convince the men to leave his car. 'Between yelling at them, kneeing and punching the drivers side passenger window, dodging them trying to stab me and throwing stuff, we came to an agreement where they'd ditch the car and bolt and none of us would get hurt,' his post reads. A Queensland Police spokesman told Daily Mail Australia Mr Hamill's car was found abandoned nearby in Manoora. 'Around 2.30am a ute was stolen from a McFarlane Drive residence in Kanimbla,' the spokesman said. 'The vehicle was later located abandoned in Manoora. 'The victim climbed into the back of the ute to prevent the vehicle being stolen. 'Investigations are continuing to identify the two male offenders.' Oil prices rallied Monday after top producers agreed to slash output and shore up coronavirus-ravaged energy markets, but some analysts were concerned the cuts did not go far enough. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate was up 7.7 percent at $24.52 a barrel in Asian trade while Brent crude, the international benchmark, put on 5.0 percent to $33.08 a barrel. OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia met via videoconference for an hour Sunday in a last effort to cement a deal struck early Friday. It still required Mexico's agreement and in a compromise reached Sunday they agreed to a cut of 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to its Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels per day envisioned earlier. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic". Oil markets have been in turmoil for weeks as lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed worldwide to combat the virus outbreak strangle demand, with a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia compounding the crisis. While Monday's price rises were healthy, they were not as strong as the double-digit jumps and falls of recent weeks in a highly volatile market, and analysts were sceptical the deal went far enough. The amount being cut was slightly lower than had been expected, and observers said it would not make up for expected demand loss due to the virus outbreak. Some analysts are putting this at about 25 million barrels per day in April. In addition, storage tanks worldwide are rapidly filling up. "The deal is a little less than the market expected given that Mexico has gotten off easy," Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, told Bloomberg News. "The hard work lies ahead given that the market is very sceptical that OPEC+ are actually going to be able to come up with their near 10 million barrels a day of production cuts." AxiCorp's Stephen Innes added that "there remain concerns the agreement could be a day late and a 'barrel short' to prevent a decline in prices in the coming weeks as storage capacity brims". Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-14 03:09:09|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 13 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is concerned about the fighting in Libya, including the latest shelling of Tripoli, and the first signs of COVID-19 infection, a spokesman said on Monday. "We are concerned about the fighting from whichever side, including, of course, the latest shelling," said the secretary-general's deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq. "We, as you know, have been asking for the parties to cease fighting." "It's very clear that right now there are the first signs of COVID-19 infection in Libya and we need to make sure that they can set aside all military offensives and work together in terms of being able to allow for us to deal with the pandemic before that comes out of control," he told correspondents at a virtual briefing. "That is where our priority lies." Haq said UN colleagues in Libya report that hostilities in the western region of the country have continued to cause civilian casualties and triggered new displacement. Heavy shelling was reported in parts of Tripoli and shelling also hit residential areas in Tajoura and struck an ambulance near Misrata, killing a paramedic. He said it was the eighth attack on health operations this year. Despite Guterres' appeal for a global COVID-19 ceasefire, Haq said about 3,700 people have fled their homes in the Abusliem District of the capital in the last few weeks because of the hostilities. Also, more than 2 million people, including 600,000 children, who live in Tripoli and surrounding towns and cities, have suffered from water cuts for more than a week, he said. The water cuts have coincided with a serious power outage in the western region. The humanitarian coordinator for Libya, Yacoub El Hillo, said that water should never be used as a pressure card nor as a weapon of war, especially now when Libya is fighting the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, the spokesman said. Queensland police say while almost 500 fines have been issued under public health laws so far over the Easter long weekend, the message to stay home had been "getting through" to residents. Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski, who also serves as the state disaster co-ordinator, said 496 infringement notices had been handed out over the long weekend. Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski. Credit:Jono Searle/Getty A total of 289 of the fines had been issued as of midnight on Thursday. "When you consider over a long weekend like Easter, with nearly 5 million people, overall the community has been fantastic," Mr Gollschewski told Sunrise on Monday morning. Dubai: Spelling trouble for Indians workers, the UAE plans to impose strict restrictions on countries reluctant to take back their nationals working in the Gulf country in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak and restructure its cooperation and labour relations with them, a state-run media report said on Sunday. Kuwait has also asked illegal migrants and those whose visas have expired during this pandemic period to leave the country by April 30. Amnesty has been granted till that date; meaning there will be no penalty. Indian government sources say Indian embassy in Kuwait is in touch with Kuwaiti authorities over the matter. Indian expatriate community of nearly 33 lakh is the largest ethnic community in UAE constituting roughly about 30 per cent of the country's population. Among the Indian states, Kerala is the most represented followed by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The options being considered by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation include "imposing strict future restrictions on the recruitment" of workers from these countries and activating the "quota" system in recruitment operations, state-run WAM news agency reported, citing an official. It said the options also include suspending memoranda of understanding signed between the ministry and concerned authorities in these countries. Citing the unnamed official, it said these options are being considered after many countries did not respond to requests by their nationals to return home following the coronavirus outbreak. The official made it clear that all countries of foreign workers in the UAE should be responsible for their nationals wishing to return to their countries as part of the humanitarian initiative launched recently by the ministry. Earlier this month, the ministry launched the initiative to enable residents who work in the UAE and wish to return to their countries to do so during the period of precautionary measures undertaken in the UAE to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Employees will be asked to submit their annual leave dates or agree with their employers on unpaid leave. UAE's Ambassador to India Ahmed Abdul Rahman Al Banna has said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MOFAIC) had sent out a note verbale to all the embassies in the UAE, including the Indian mission, during the past couple of weeks on the issue. We have sent the note verbale and all the embassies have been informed including the Indian embassy in the UAE and even the Ministry of External Affairs in India, Al Banna told Gulf News over phone on Saturday. He said the UAE has offered to test those who want to be evacuated. We are assuring everybody that we have the best of the facilities, the best of the testing centres and we have tested more than 500,000 people, he said. We are assuring them also of our cooperation to fly those who got stranded in the UAE for some reasons. Some got stuck because of the lockdown and closure of airports in India. Some were visiting the UAE. We are offering our system and making sure that they are good (to fly) by doing all the tests and transport them according to the request of their own government, he said. The envoy said those who test positive for COVID-19 will remain in the UAE. They will be treated in our home facilities, he added. The Kerala High Court on Saturday sought the central government's response to a petition seeking a direction to bring back Indians stranded in the UAE in view of the coronavirus outbreak in the gulf nation. Considering the plea by Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC) in Dubai, the court directed the Centre to file an affidavit on the steps taken by it to ensure the safety of Indians living there and bring back those stuck in the Gulf countries. In its plea, KMCC, the organisation for non-resident Indians from Kerala, sought directions to the Ministries of External Affairs and Civil Aviation to provide exemptions in the international air travel ban to bring back those Indians stranded in the UAE. For over two weeks, a woman in Texas laid in a hospital bed fighting for her life after testing positive for the coronavirus. She spent 10 days on a ventilator to help her breathe. But she fought the virus and was released from the Austin hospital after 16 days. To celebrate her recovery, staff at St. David's South Austin Medical Center lined the halls and cheered for her as she was being discharged. Scenes like this are occurring at hospitals across the nation symbolizing hope in such a dark time. At Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, the song "Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles plays over the speaker system every time a Covid-19 patient is discharged, according to a hospital official. "Little darling, the smile's returning to their faces," the lyrics for the song read. "Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here." New York is one of the major epicenters for the American coronavirus outbreak with more than 181,000 confirmed cases and at least 8,650 deaths. Another New York hospital, this one in Hudson Valley, is also using music to bring a little joy to medical staff and patients who are battling the pandemic. Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus told a local radio show that the song "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey plays when a Covid-19 patient is released. Other hospitals, just like in Austin, are lining the hallways and sending off their released patients with claps and cheers. In Arkansas, a veteran, who staff named their "first miracle patient," waved to staff as he was greeted with signs of encouragement and applause as he was being escorted to his family waiting outside of the hospital. The Intensive Care Staff at Yale New Haven Hospital Saint Raphael Campus in Connecticut cheered, clapped and held signs of encouragement for a patient that was being transferred out of the ICU and to a regular room. Moments like these are being shared on social media and giving hope to others as the cases across the US top 530,000. European Governments Weigh If Its Time to Let Some Airlines Disappear Many European airlines spent much of the past two decades asking governments to leave the airline industry. Now, many are begging for help, and most will get it, even if all may not deserve saving. It is different than in the United States. The U.S. government is bailing out airlines because the country needs a robust transportation network, but if one carrier doesnt make it, life will go on. Other airlines, perhaps even new ones, will fill gaps. In Europe, bailout discussion is more fraught. In this crisis, governments are not always thinking about how much capacity markets need, but instead about national pride. Regardless of market conditions, lawmakers may not want to see national airlines go bust, for reasons of politics, nostalgia, and even national security. In the coming weeks, politicians will leverage state aid rules that allow them to help national carriers in a crisis. Some airlines will get loans, while others may get the ultimate saving re-nationalization. Just as in the United States, many larger airline groups deserve aid. In recent years, International Airlines Group, owner of British Airways, and Lufthansa Group have shed bloated pasts, even if they still might operate more brands than necessary. Air France-KLM is behind, but is improving, and deserves help, as do Ryanair and EasyJet, two behemoths of pre-Covid 19 Europe that set standards for low-cost airlines everywhere. What about the rest? Amid the chaos, some European countries may boost airlines that probably dont need to exist. Italys Alitalia tops every list, but there are others. Does Scandinavia need two airlines? Does Austria need one? What about Belgium? How about Portugal? Consider that the European Union is a single market, and an airline from one member state can fly any route from or within another. If policymakers seek air service, they can entice any EU-flagged airline to fly. Yet, that may not matter now, with many governments poised to rescue airlines that fly their flags. Story continues You are going to see significant state involvement, said Samuel Engel, senior vice president and head of the aviation group at ICF, a consulting firm. It is less likely to look like the national carriers of the pre-privatization era. But it will have many of the same effects. The governments may be on the hook for their debts, or may justify a level of service. Its an interesting reversal of recent trends, said Engel, who has advised airlines on how to privatize to get away from government interference. We are in an extraordinary situation, arent we? he said. I dont think anyone thought governments would have to go back in. How Are These Airlines Still in Business? With five strong airline groups, Europe probably would look like the United States, where six carriers control the vast majority of market share. Travelers may not love the arrangement some complain about lack of competition but it served consumers well through much of the past decade. Thats unlikely to happen, however. Just look at Alitalia. It has been a mess for years, and each time it appears to be on the brink of liquidation, the Italian government, or an arm of the Italian government, steps in. The EU limits how much state aid airlines can receive, so insiders figured eventually the airline would disappear. But the Italian government decided not to let a good crisis go to waste, so it re-nationalized Alitalia. The funny thing is before the crisis there were lots of insolvencies in Europe and since the crisis there is no insolvency, said Martin Gauss, CEO of Air Baltic, a state-owned Latvian carrier. Other airlines have similar situations. Norwegian Air was in trouble before the novel Coronavirus pandemic, and might have failed in a typical recession. Now, the airline has appealed to Norways government, which approved up to $290 million in guarantees last month for the airline, but Norwegian said it needs much more from private markets. Its an interesting juxtaposition for an airline that two years ago argued against government interference. After Norway sold its shares in its national airline, Scandinavian Airlines, Norwegian CEO Bjorn Kjos told Skift the government made the right decision. Some countries have gotten to their senses and they are trying to get out of these legacy airlines, said Kjos, who retired last year. You dont need it. Its just a waste. You should concentrate on totally different things. These days, Scandinavian Airlines, or SAS, is not in much better shape. It Iong has been undersized, and as the national carrier of three countries Norway, Sweden and Denmark its limited resources have been stretched across three hubs, rather than one strong one. SAS also lacks a strong transatlantic joint venture partner, so it underperforms on U.S. routes. You would not invent an airline owned by a government, never mind by two or three governments, said John Strickland, a UK-based airline consultant. Another airline in a similar predicament is TAP Air Portugal. It has built a decent franchise with flights to the United States and Brazil, but lacks the breadth of larger groups. The government already owns half of TAP, but could have to provide further assistance. Will these airlines go away? Norwegian might, because it lacks the rich history of the others and already was struggling. The others are more likely to survive, though Strickland asked if governments might give up if the climate worsens. In a worst-case scenario, more governments might be OK with running an airline Poland, Romania, Finland and Latvia already control their national carriers but others may find it to be too much, considering how many other elements of their economies may need assistance. There is national pride, and if we put in the unquantifiable effect of populist governments, it makes it even more challenging, Strickland said. But we have never faced a crisis like this one. There are so many elements about how this will turn out. Group Airlines Have Own Issues Broadly speaking, the five major European groups have major advantages over independent airlines. But some groups also have issues. As the weakest among them, Air France-KLM was in some peril before the crisis, with CEO Ben Smith wrestling with how to compete on short-haul routes with low-cost-carriers and domestic routes with high-speed trains. Given the importance of the company for France and the Netherlands both nations own part of Air France-KLM the airlines should make it, but it could be expensive for each nation. It is now clearer than ever that support from our both Dutch and French governments is needed to meet our cash requirements and enable us to continue our operations once the crisis is over, Smith said last week. There are bigger questions about some Lufthansa Group brands. Lufthansa, the German airline, probably is continental Europes most successful carrier, and its government will help it. Swiss International Air Lines, a Lufthansa Group airline, also is a robust carrier with a successful hub in Zurich. But Lufthansa Group also owns Brussels Airlines and Austrian Airlines, and each is in some danger. To the Austrian people and politicians, the airline remains a patriotic symbol that carries the nations flag around the world and provides vital air links. But Austrian, founded in 1957, is no longer a real airline, as Ryanair, which has its own Austrian arm, made clear after the government signaled it might pump as much as 800 million euros into it. We do not believe that Lufthansa should receive state aid from Austrian taxpayers in exactly the same way we do not believe that Ryanair should receive state aid from Austrian taxpayers, Andreas Gruber, a Ryanair Group executive, said, according to Reuters. In effect, Gruber said, Austrians would be assisting a German company. Brussels Airlines has been a poor performer for Lufthansa Group and likely could disappear without hurting consumers. Presumably, Lufthansa could take over the airlines most profitable routes. But the Belgian government may provide assistance nonetheless. Are Flag Carriers All Bad? If the goal is to get people from point A to point B, perhaps not every country needs an airline. If demand exists, some carrier will fill it, even if the airline is not based in that country. Ryanair and Wizzair have made a fortune filling in gaps on short-haul routes, and someday, people in Austria might get used to flying Lufthansa to New York or Los Angeles rather than the national airline. But even in 2020, some arguments remain for why a country needs a flag carrier. Over the past month, many flag airlines have been repurposed by governments, flying medical cargo and repatriation flights. Governments could contract that flying to outside entities, but perhaps there is something comforting about sending the national airline abroad. We are seeing governments around the world take drastic and quick actions to sustain their people, Engel said. National airlines may also help in recovery. Eventually, the economic and public health climate will improve and airlines will benefit. But short term, governments may need airlines to fly money-losing routes to get people where they need to go. There are other ways to do this the Italian government could offer subsidies to an outside carrier like Ryanair but propping up the local airline may be a better move, politically. Still, Air Baltics Gauss said he expects not every flag carrier will make it. His said his airline works as a government-owned enterprise because Latvia has limited connections with the rest of Europe. But other countries dont have these limitations. There might be some states like Italy who say, OK, we now definitely need a state-controlled airline but the other countries may be OK with their air infrastructure being served by other carriers, Gauss said. I dont think that we will see this coming back where every country has its own airline. Subscribe to Skift newsletters for essential news about the business of travel. At Adler Planetarium the space visualization team has repurposed its array of computers that normally project detailed images of the cosmos onto the institutions domed theater. Now the machines aim is much smaller and closer to home: Theyve joined computers nationwide to form a virtual supercomputer thats helping scientists understand exactly what the coronavirus looks like in order to aid in the fight to come up with a vaccine. As the Saudis and Russians were pushing and refusing to submit to their share of cuts, Mexico countered the agreement of 10 million oil barrels per day. This has threatened to elevate the initiative, even if a rapid decline in manufacturing activity has become unavoidable as demand waves due to the coronavirus pandemic and the storage capacity. The output of Mexico is as high as that of Nigeria and Venezuela, which are members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). On Thursday, the alliance of oil producers and its partners declared record supply cuts, however, the proposals were called into question following Mexico's cuts. President Donald Trump ended up offering what seems like winks and nods about his perpetual targets, the Mexicans, in the shameful disorderly deal to the production of global oil. President Trump mentioned that he had proposed to "help Mexico along." He stated that the United States would cut back its production and that Mexico could then repay the U.S. He also stressed that he was uncertain of the acceptance of the agreement. In a Thursday telephone conversation, Trump said Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has agreed to reduce the production by 100,000 barrels a day and that in return, the U.S. will also reduce 250,000 barrels. Mexico, which the final agreement is relying on, had questioned the scale of reductions it was asked to make. Check these out! The President of Mexico "did have some political difficulty with it, frankly, and I understand that too," Trump had stated. "And it's a small amount for us, it's a large amount from Mexico, but it's a very small amount for the United States... We're number one in the world, and we want to keep it that way. So we're helping Mexico out. We will be reimbursed in a form sometime in the future," he added. Trump, who wishes to support American manufacturers in the promotion of the prices of oil, had asked the Saudis and Russians previously that they will have to embrace market-driven cuts in the United States production rather than their favored technical quotas. Although, in Moscow, with plenty of grumbling, they seemed to be able to do so. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette informed the G-20 countries on Friday morning that at the end of the year, U.S. output will decrease by around 2 and 3 million barrels per day. Trump said that that demand would protect employment in the U.S. oil industry. Since taking office in December 2018, Lopez Obrador has sought to strengthen Mexico's state oil giant, Pemex, and ramp up production, which has fallen for years. The leftist leader has maintained a cordial relationship with Trump despite substantial policy differences. Lopez Obrador, ever since he assumed office in December 2018, has been trying to improve the national oil company in Mexico, Pemex, and increase the output that has plummeted for several years. This story was originally published by Grist and has been republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Every day when Carmelita finishes her shift in the strawberry fields of Californias central coast, she sprays herself down with Lysol, takes off the handkerchief she uses to protect her face, and tucks it in a plastic bag before getting in her car. Shes the sole provider for her two young sons and cant afford to miss a day on the job. Advertisement But these days, with the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the country, thats getting much tougher. Carmelita carefully follows the safety precautions recommended by health experts, but thats especially difficult in the fields. The farm where she works in Oxnard isnt enforcing safety protocols, the 44-year-old farmworker told Grist. (Carmelita requested that her last name be withheld because of fear of reprisals from her employer.) Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement To make matters worse, her co-workers dismiss her repeated pleas that they maintain the expert-recommended 6-foot distance from her. They laugh and tease her: Nothings going to happen. They tell her that, if she doesnt want to work, she should just go home. Carmelita, whose sons are 7 and 13, doesnt have that luxury. Every afternoon when she picks up her youngest from the babysitters house, the first thing he does is run into her arms for a hug. The last thing Carmelita wants to do is infect him with the virus, but every day she runs that risk just to put food on the table for her sonsand the rest of California. Advertisement Advertisement Youre trying not to get exposed, but unfortunately we dont have the ability to stop working, Carmelita said in Spanish. The state calls us essential workers, but theyre not demonstrating our value. Were putting ourselves at risk to feed the country. The state calls us essential workers, but theyre not demonstrating our value. Were putting ourselves at risk to feed the country." Carmelita As strawberry-picking season kicks into high gear in April and May, farmworker advocates fear that a lack of worker safety protections, combined with a lack of access to health care and crowded living conditions, could lead to a major COVID-19 outbreak in farmworker communities across California. As other crops are harvested throughout the spring, much of the rest of the country faces a similar risk. For a working population particularly vulnerable due to economic insecurity, exposure to pesticides, higher incidence rates of respiratory illnesses such as asthma, and chronic conditions such as diabetes, COVID-19 could be devastating. Advertisement Advertisement If we dont do something to address the living, working, housing, and transportation conditions of farmworkers immediately, we are setting ourselves up for a tremendous impact in the agricultural sector because these crops cannot be picked without farmworkers, said Andrea Delgado, director of government affairs for the UFW Foundationa nonprofit sister organization of the United Farm Workers unionwhich provides a range of services to farmworker and immigrant communities. Advertisement Advertisement At the federal and state level, the UFW Foundation has urged Congress and state governments to address the unique needs of farmworkers by providing relief that can both prevent the spread of the virus and help workers survive the challenges ahead. There are more than 2.4 million farmworkers across the country, and its estimated that about half are undocumented. In the most recent economic stimulus package, Congress earmarked $9.5 billion for the Department of Agriculture and $14 billion in loans for the agricultural industry, but Delgados concern is that none of this funding is specifically directed at farm laborers. Advertisement Advertisement The UFW Foundation is calling for Congress to provide farmworkers with hazard pay, financial support for child care, and sick leave, among other benefits. Farmworkers on average earn about $10.60 per hour and have a median annual income between $17,500 and $19,999. Just 47 percent of farmworkers reported having health insurance, according to the latest National Agricultural Workers Survey. Advertisement Advertisement Right now their situationtheir legal status, their access to benefitscreates the conditions in which these workers are going to have to choose between going to work and making a living so that they can pay for a house, food, and child care for their children, or staying home and taking care of themselves, said Delgado. Farmworkers dont just work side by sidethey often share living quarters to cut costs, doubling or tripling up in apartments, mobile homes, and houses. Many also carpool to work together, traveling long distances to reach orchards and fields in rural areas. Advertisement You can imagine what the implications are for transmission, and their ability to stay healthy and safe, and provide for their families, said Delgado. As Americans have complied with stay-at-home orders, theyve also rushed to stockpile groceries. One of the side effects is that farmworkers are facing an increased level of food insecurity. By the time workers finish their shifts, staples like beans and rice are sold out at grocery stores. Food pantries are also running out of food, according to farmworkers and advocates who spoke to Grist. Advertisement Farmworkers in Californias Central Valley have watched this unfold. After 15 years of picking grapes and blueberries near her home in Delano, Susana stopped working about a month ago out of fear that she would get COVID-19. Her husband, who works on a dairy farm, is exposed to similar risks. But without Susanas salary and with three children to feed, the couple cant afford to have him stay home. Advertisement Advertisement We never expected to go through something like this, and were really worried about whats happening. We dont go anywhere. We stay at home with our children, Susana, who requested that her last name be withheld because she is undocumented, told Grist in Spanish. The family of six, which also includes Susanas mother, is now struggling to make its money last on just one income. On some days, Susana cant afford to shop at the grocery store. She relies on local food banks, but they too run out of key staples quickly, she said. The fruit, milk, and lunch meals provided twice a week by her childrens schools go a long way toward helping the family survive. Advertisement But with school closures, low-income students who once received free breakfast and lunch meals on campus now get lunch just twice a week in areas such as central California. To assist those in need, two schools that primarily serve the children of farmworkers in Delano are now offering breakfast to students and their parents, said Nancy Oropeza, a Delano-based organizer with the UFW Foundation. To survive, some families are now rationing or going without food, she said. Advertisement Advertisement Unfortunately thats a fact, Oropeza told Grist. Maybe they had enough food for the last week, but now theyre running out. Organizations such Lideres Campesinas, a network of women farmworker leaders, are urging state leaders to take action, describing farmworkers as one of the most vulnerable links in our nations food supply chain, labor force, and citizenry. In a letter sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, the Oxnard-based organization pressed state officials to prioritize the needs of farmworkers by addressing the inadequate levels of health education on COVID-19, the lack of access to health care, and food insecurity. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advocacy organizations that serve farmworkers have been closely tracking the coronavirus, which has quickly spread to low-income, densely populated areas. In Californias Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, advocates have watched with concern as COVID-19 cases have surged in cities like Santa Maria and Oxnard, where many farmworkers work and live. If there is a major outbreak among agricultural worker communities, it can spread really, really quickly, said Lucas Zucker, policy and communications director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), which advocates on behalf of immigrant, indigenous, and undocumented communities throughout Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Advertisement I really worry about whats going to happen as peak strawberry season coincides with this peak outbreak of COVID-19, he added. You cant pick strawberries over Zoom. Advertisement That collision will deal a blow to a segment of the population that largely lacks not only health care but also sometimes even the information on how to best protect oneself before or after exposure. Advocates have been encouraging growers to take meaningful steps to protect farmworkers from coronavirus exposure by promoting workplace practices that prioritize workers health and safety, but they say that many companies are not responding. The United Farm Workers union polled farmworkers via social media networks to determine whether employers are providing any coronavirus-related information. The union found that few are doing so, according to Armando Elenes, the organizations secretary treasurer. Certain employers operating under union contracts have issued new guidelines, such as picking practices that require social distancing. But across the industry, the UFW said, it has learned through its members that companies are not actually enforcing these best practices. In its March 30 letter to agricultural employers, the UFW called for extended sick leave and easy access to medical services as well as screening, testing, and treatment for nonunion farmworkers who lack health care. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Among farmworkers that CAUSE has surveyed, workers report that employers are providing safety measure briefings at the start of work shifts and staggering people in the field rows. But even with these measures in place, Zucker pointed out that the nature of the work makes it difficult for the workers to comply. For example, during peak season, employers pay workers by the box, creating a strong incentive for farmworkers to skip breaks. Things like taking 20 seconds to wash your handsit sounds like not that long. But when youre washing your hands its a really long time, especially when you feel like you have to get out there to make a dollar to survive, said Zucker. Beate Ritz, an occupational epidemiology expert at the School of Public Health at the University of CaliforniaLos Angeles, said its very likely that the coronavirus will spread into working-class farming communities, based on existing transmission patterns. Advertisement The impact of the coronavirus will be determined by how seriously the agricultural industry takes this health threat, whether it enforces safety measures, and what resources are directed at addressing issues such as health care access. You can have either a large outbreak and the whole system breaks down, or, as were trying to do now by what they call the leveling of the curve, so that it doesnt peak too much, you can have it spread over time, said Ritz. Advertisement The Economic Policy Institute also warns that the peak in farm employment, which increases from spring through July, will overlap with the coronavirus peak. The nonpartisan think tank, which conducts economic research, concluded that employers will need to provide health insurance, paid sick days, and adequate safety equipment. The think tank argues that growers should also implement social distancing measures, even if some of these safety measures reduce productivity. Advertisement Advertisement Farmworkers already labor under what can sometimes be dangerous and unhealthy conditions, and now COVID-19 presents an additional challenge, the report stated. Many of the areas that employ farmworkers tend to be rural and lack the health care and other infrastructure to respond to a potential outbreak. In Washington state and California, the UFW Foundation is concerned that farmworkers wont seek medical attention even if they have symptoms because they lack health insurance or fear being deported. Some have never been treated by a medical doctor. These are folks that need to be working and cant afford not to work, even if they get sick, said the UFW Foundations Delgado. In Oxnard, thats the case for Carmelita, who plans to continue picking strawberries. Her sons depend on her, and nobody will forgive the payment thats due on the room she rents in a shared mobile home. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement To make ends meet, shes gotten creative. When school closures forced her to find alternative child care for her sons, she couldnt afford the new expense. So she bought a video camera, installed it in the bedroom she rents, set up a study schedule for her 13-year-old, and started monitoring him via her cellphone during the day. What weighs on her is the possibility that she might get sick with COVID-19 and no longer be able to care for her sons. So she takes precautions at work to minimize the risk. In her free time she volunteers with Lideres Campesinas, ensuring that other farmworkers have access to potentially lifesaving information. I know the risks that you face working in the fields due to pesticides, said Carmelita, a native of Mexico who began picking grapes at the age of 13 during winter and summer breaks in her homeland. So Im aware of the risk. But this type of risk, no. These risks are what motivated her to work with organizations like Lideres Campesinas so that she could learn how to properly protect herself and others. Now, she just needs to convince her co-workers to do the same. The reality is that any of us can be exposed, she said. Sudhir Suryawanshi By Express News Service MUMBAI: As Indias coronavirus cases surged past the 9000 mark, it became clear that the state of Maharashtra is facing the worst of the pandemic in the country with confirmed cases nearing the 2,000 mark. According to a report by Maharashtras Medical Education and Drug Department dated April 11 the mortality rate in Maharashtra is at 6.98 per cent, which is higher than the world average of 6.10 per cent and more than double the national average of 3.1 per cent. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation commissioner Praveen Pardeshi has said that Mumbai alone may see 3,500 coronavirus cases in the coming days. With 221 more people testing positive in Maharashtra on Sunday, the states tally of such patients has reached 1,982, a state health official said on Sunday. Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said that they have formed teams to conduct door-to-door screening of suspected patients. I have been monitoring Maharashtra and Mumbai closely. We are putting extra effort to contain the spread. We have decided to bring the coronavirus patient count to zero, only then will the war against coronavirus be won, Thackeray added. Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said that their main concern is Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan, Pune and Nagpur metropolis region. To mitigate the intensity of the spread in other sectors, as per directives of PM Narendra Modi we have decided to divide Maharashtra into three zones red, orange and green. If the number of coronavirus patients is more than 15 then that district or ward will be declared as a red zone. If the number of patients is less than 15, then the district or ward will be called orange, while a green zone will have no cases of coronavirus, said Tope. Manufacturing and other activities may be permitted in green zones but the owner will have to take the responsibility of their employees, the health minister added. We will seal the borders of the green and orange zones so no one can enter another safe zone. Besides, companies will have to follow lockdown in policies where once employees are inside the company, no one should be allowed to enter from outside. They will have to follow social distancing and other hygiene guidelines. We are likely to get clear guidelines and directives from the Centre, Tope said. There is no end to political bickering in the state with former CM Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday asking the state government to borrow money from the cash-rich Mumbai civic body and MMRDA to buy the equipment required to fight coronavirus. Money should not be an excuse for the delay in procurement of such items, he said speaking to a Marathi news channel. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) have bank deposits worth thousands of crores, which can be utilised for raising money during the ongoing fight against the coronavirus outbreak, the senior BJP leader said. The BMC is controlled by the Shiv Sena, which is headed by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. 92 fined for not wearing masks A total of 92 people in Aurangabad were on Sunday fined`46,000 for not wearing masks in public places, civic commissioner Astik Kumar Pandey said. Wearing of masks in public is mandatory in the state. Maksats sexual orientation as a gay man has cost him the chance of having a family and living in his home country, Turkmenistan, where homosexuality is a criminal offense and a strict social taboo. Beaten and blackmailed by police, the 23-year-old from Ashgabat recently found sanctuary in another country, but he says the ordeals he faced at home still haunt him. RFE/RL changed Maksats name at his request to protect his family in strictly controlled Turkmenistan, where the government has targeted the relatives of dissidents and activists. Growing up in Ashgabat, Maksat said he had to hide his homosexuality even from his family and friends. In the predominantly Muslim Central Asian country, same-sex relationships are shunned by people even in more progressive urban areas. HIV Positive Families often force their gay sons to marry a woman and live a normal life to avoid becoming a social pariah or ending up in prison. Maksat found relative freedom when he moved to Russia to study business management at the age of 18. The happiness, however, was short-lived. In fall 2019, Maksat tested positive for HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS, a status that effectively ended his legal residency in Russia. Russia is one of 19 countries -- along with Saudi Arabia, China, and North Korea -- that deports HIV-positive foreigners. Not waiting for his deportation, Maksat abruptly returned to Turkmenistan and his closeted life. Desperate to hide his sexual orientation in Ashgabat, Maksat said he even deleted all the contacts and files on his mobile phone that could give away his homosexuality. He was also unable to seek moral support from family and friends or share his fears about his newly diagnosed HIV-positive status. Maksats situation took a turn for the worse when he took a blood test at the AIDS-HIV Center in Ashgabat to register himself for potential medical treatment in December 2019. When he returned to the center for a follow-up appointment at the doctor's office two days later, Maksat saw two police officers waiting for him. Maksat doesnt know whether the medical facility had reported his test results to the authorities. The officers asked me how I got infected [and] I told them I didnt know, Maksat told RFE/RL. Admitting the truth that he contracted the virus through a homosexual contact was out of the question, Maksat said, as such an admission would mean a prison sentence. Article 135 of Turkmenistans Criminal Code deems a same-sex relationship among men an act of sodomy, punishable by two years in prison. Beatings, Blackmail The following night three police officers knocked on the door of Maksats small, rented apartment in Ashgabat. They took me to the police station, Maksat recalled. First they questioned me. Then began to beat me badly. They told me: We know where you got HIV. Youre gay. I told them that its not true. But they kept beating me. The officers demanded that I sign some documents admitting [being gay]. I refused but they said if I dont sign it they would tell all my relatives that Im gay. I had to sign the papers, although I dont know what exactly was written in them, Maksat said about the late December incident. WATCH: 'If I Disappear, Forgive Me': Missing Gay Turkmen's Plea The admission paved the polices way to open a criminal case against him on the sodomy charge. Maksat also feared that he might face a second, trumped-up charge of knowingly infecting others with HIV, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, according to Turkmen law. The officers ordered Maksat to report to his area police station after the New Year. Offices in Turkmenistan close for several days over the New Year festivities and it provided a window for Maksat to escape from Turkmenistan and the pending criminal case against him. With a small amount of money in his pocket, Maksat returned to Russia. A friend in the city of Voronezh helped him get assistance from some groups that champion the rights of sexual minorities. They helped Maksat find refuge in a third country before Russian authorities found out about his HIV-positive status that would have put him under the imminent risk of being deported to Turkmenistan. Despite currently living in a free country where the LGBT community is generally accepted, Maksat is still unable to be completely open about his sexuality. He said he still hasnt told his friends and relatives in Turkmenistan about his sexual orientation as it would bring shame to his parents. Maksat said he is now a wanted man in Turkmenistan and police could question his family about his case and try to ascertain his whereabouts. With the criminal charges hanging over his head, Maksat said he doesnt know if he will ever be able to go back to Turkmenistan or see his parents anytime soon. Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Sergei Khazov-Cassia Click here to read the full article. This story appears in the May 2020 issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands May 5th. On March 1st, New York reported its first confirmed case of COVID-19, after a Manhattan health care worker in her late thirties, who had visited Iran, tested positive at a hospital in the city. Six days later, that number had jumped to 89, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency. More from Rolling Stone Two days later, Donald Trump tweeted, So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that! As the country faces a national emergency that is graver, for most of us, than any in living memory, a surreal split-screen response has been unfolding in Washington and Albany, via Queens. The daily public briefings held by Cuomo, 62, the governor of the hardest-hit state, have become appointment viewing, not just for New Yorkers, but for all Americans feeling terrified, unmoored, and hungry for something resembling competent national leadership. For a politician never especially renowned for his bedside manner, Cuomo has emerged as an unlikely source of comfort in these supremely unsettling times, the blunt-talking adult in the room. The debasement of standards in the Trump era has made even minimal gestures of statesmanship appear positively Churchillian, of course, and so the mere fact that Cuomo relies on data and scientific opinion and has the ability to display human empathy can feel disproportionately soothing. Though New York is unique among American cities in terms of population density and its status as an international travel hub that, combined with a shambolic federal response, even after Trump declared the pandemic a national emergency, would have made any state- and city-level attempts at containment difficult Cuomos decisions to close schools and issue a stay-at-home order came later than other states with less-significant outbreaks. Ohio, for example, closed its public schools three days before New York, despite having only five confirmed cases, and Californias shelter-in-place order came three days before New Yorks, though New York had six times the number of confirmed cases. Story continues But as a communicator, in particular, Cuomo has risen to the occasion, proving especially adept at walking viewers through the nuances of the daily barrage of bad news, offering realistic glimmers of hope but never magical thinking. Hes shared personal anecdotes about his family, including his younger brother, Chris, the CNN anchor, who has tested positive for the coronavirus, and displayed a surprising degree of warmth and humor for someone who acknowledged in his own memoir that the Albany media referred to him, alternately, as the Prince of Darkness and Darth Vader. Andrew has always had these two sides, says Michael Shnayerson, author of The Contender, a 2015 biography of Cuomo. One is charming and comes out in a time of crisis he was brilliant during Superstorm Sandy, racing around the city late at night, checking each hot spot and earning the acclaim of people on either side of the aisle but this is also a governor known for being brutal with underlings and ruthless with his rivals. His father, Mario Cuomo, the late three-term governor of New York, was considered one of the great political orators of his generation, an intellectual whose bookshelves contained works by Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, and Teilhard de Chardin. Andrew, on the other hand, favors short, declarative sentences and unvarnished imagery, Jonathan Mahler wrote in a 2010 profile for The New York Times Magazine, when the younger Cuomo was on the verge of winning his own first gubernatorial race. In contrast with his father, he doesnt articulate values, summon ideals, or transmit visions. Like a mechanic poking his head out from under the hood of your broken-down car, he tells you whats wrong with your engine and how hes going to fix it. The second of five children, Andrew Cuomo grew up in Hollis, Queens, a middle-class neighborhood where his grandparents, immigrants from the Campania region of southern Italy, settled and owned a grocery store. Like Trump, Andrew went into the family business, managing his fathers first campaign for governor and, once Mario was elected, serving as his top adviser at a salary of $1 per year. He was 21. Shnayerson says they had an almost Shakespearean father-son relationship: Andrew was, from the beginning, trying to earn his fathers approval, and his father didnt really give it to him. In 1990, Cuomo married Kerry Kennedy, one of Robert F. Kennedys daughters. (They had three daughters and divorced in 2005; again, in shades of Trump, the messy split played out in the New York tabloids.) He became the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Bill Clinton. As governor, Cuomo embraced Clintonism, eschewing his fathers big-government, New Deal-informed liberal philosophy for a more transactional, triangulated Third Way. Critics on the progressive left loathe his austere budgets and aversion to raising taxes, pointing to the troubled New York subway system, which Cuomo effectively controls, and cuts in hospital reimbursements that have contributed to closures. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out the governor for responding to the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic with a three-month freeze on mortgage payments, but no similar cancellation of rents. (The governor did enact a three-month moratorium on evictions.) Still, Cuomos approach to governance micromanaging, single-minded, ruthless has resulted in a number of substantial wins, including pushing a marriage-equality bill through the GOP-controlled state senate in 2011, as well as a fracking ban, tighter gun laws, raising the minimum wage, and making tuition for state colleges free for families making less than $125,000 a year. Rebecca Katz, a political consultant who worked closely with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a longtime punching bag of Cuomos, and who later served as a top strategist for the actress Cynthia Nixon when she challenged Cuomo in the 2018 primary, has never been a fan of the governor. Still, Katz acknowledges, Cuomo benefits from understanding how communication works in a way that frankly no other elected official does right now. Trump understands why its important to be on TV. Cuomo understands how to tell people whats actually going on in a way thats both sobering and soothing. Shnayerson sees political calculus: Cuomo saw right from the beginning that Trump is incapable of empathy, he says. And instinctively or deliberately Id suggest deliberately he set out to carve out this turf, where on a daily basis hed show how incompetent and downright dangerous Trump is. And Trump cant really do anything about it. He cant fire him! All he can do is grumble about how Andrew isnt grateful enough about what hes getting. For all of his manifest ambition, the governor had surprised political observers by not entering the 2020 Democratic primary, instead all but officially endorsing Joe Biden quite early in the process. Now that the pandemic has positioned Cuomo as the perfect foil to Trump, and at the same time left Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, struggling to break into the news cycle, some are indulging in Draft Cuomo fan fiction, picturing how an abrasive New Yorker of their very own might work on a debate stage against the abrasive New Yorker-in-chief. Whatever his political future, Cuomo has become a trusted voice in a world of uncertainty. His homely PowerPoint slides are routinely memed. The slow, booming cadence of his sentences, once grating, could probably be marketed as a meditation app if we end up surviving this thing. Somehow, hes connecting with millions of people at this time of extraordinary crisis and unimaginable loss. Cuomo spoke with Rolling Stone by phone from his office in Albany on Saturday, April 4th. __________________________ The country has gotten to know you through your daily briefings, but can you walk us through what the rest of your days have been like during the crisis? Are you getting briefed at all hours of the day and night? Yeah. A situation like this is pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week, if youre going to do it right. Because its evolving all the time. So, you work until you cant work anymore, and then you close your eyes for 20 minutes and then you work again. Who have you been consulting with? You talk to everyone. Obviously, I have my state team, which manages things on a day-to-day basis. But then the federal government relationship is important, so the president and the vice president. And the health experts, so the World Health Organization, NIH, international health experts. And then you talk to the local officials, because you want to keep them calm and coordinated. The business community. You know, youre doing two basic things, right? Youre managing the operation, which is a health operation. There are operational decisions like closing schools, closing businesses. And then the second dimension is a communication dimension. People need information. They need correct information. Everyone is out of control, right? Your life is out of control. Youre at a place youve never been before. Youre worried, youre anxious, youre out of work. Youre literally afraid of going out of doors. Youre afraid of contact with other human beings, which is probably the most isolating experience youve ever had. A hug now becomes a dangerous act. Right? Youre at a place youve never been. Whos going to help me? Whos managing this? Whos in control when Im out of control? With the briefings, was there a point where your team realized, We have the responsibility to get the facts out and provide some reassurance, not only to New Yorkers but to Americans, period, and a realization that you were filling a certain you might not put it this way leadership void at the national level? No. No. There never No, Mark. I did the briefings the way I would always do the briefings. I understand your question. But I have done nothing different than I have always done. Forget the whole national perspective. The death toll in New York has been soaring. Even in terms of best-case scenarios, were talking about unfathomable tragedy. And your primary role is to keep the number of deaths as low as possible. But have you thought about how your job is also to comfort people but in this case, you cant do things you would normally do as a leader, like go to funerals or hug the families of the deceased? Well, look, nobodys been here before, right? These are all uncharted waters. So you use your experience, you use your knowledge, you use your instincts, and you feel your way through the situation. Nobody can give you a chart. They cant tell you the depths of the water. They cant tell you where the rocks are. But if youve navigated for years, you develop an instinct that helps. But also keep it simple. Tell the truth. Give people facts. Explain what youre doing, why youre doing it. I dont go out to impart confidence. You can appear confident, but youre not going to fool New Yorkers, right? Theyre going to hear what youre saying and watch what youre doing. Theyll make their own decision whether or not it makes sense. Heres where we are, heres what Im doing, heres what Ive done, heres what I plan to do, this is why Im doing it. These are dramatic actions. Im going to close the schools. What? Why are you closing the schools? I want my kid to go to school. I mean, thats a normal reaction. Well, this is why Im doing it. OK, that makes sense. Or they think it doesnt make sense. But its the actions and the facts that ultimately win or lose here, right? Theyve been watching what Im doing for five, six weeks. So far, I think people think the actions weve taken make sense and are logical. But I think its a function of the merits and the substance in the actions more than anything else. I dont care how many times you go out and brief. If what youre doing doesnt make sense to them, they will lose confidence very quickly. You know, confidence is earned. Its not declared. The pandemic reminds me of the response to climate change, in that it seems difficult to get people to change their behavior for a threat thats looming but still largely invisible. Was there a tension between scaring the hell out of people so they would stay inside versus not wanting to create a mass panic? Well, look, theres no doubt that government is only as effective as people allow it to be, unless you criminalize behavior. This is a democracy, and people have free will. And theyll hear what the government says. And if they agree, theyll follow it. If they dont agree, they dont follow it. What could counterbalance it? Criminalization could counterbalance it [laughs]. If you do it, youre going to go to jail. But short of that, they make their own decision. But youre right, this virus, it was hard to communicate, hard to accept, the reality. Because weve never seen it before. Well, its like the Spanish flu of 1918. OK, but I wasnt there, really. And they have different medications now than they had in 1918. I cant believe that what happened in 1918 is going to happen again. Well, remember Ebola! Yeah, but Ebola turned out to be nothing. Well, remember H1N1. Well, that turned out to be nothing. Nah, I think Im a little cynical and skeptical, and I think this is going to be overblown. And, by the way, there were voices out there saying this is all overblown, that it was a political conspiracy. In hindsight, do you second-guess yourself as far as the speed of your response to the crisis? You and Mayor De Blasio initially resisted the calls to close the schools. And when the mayor began calling for New Yorkers to stay home, you held out a couple of days longer. What are your thoughts looking back now? No, every action, Mark, that I took, I was criticized for being hypercautious and premature. I decided to close the schools. It was very controversial at the time. And people criticized me. I did the containment zone in Westchester, which had a bad name. Containment was supposed to mean containment of the virus. It was interpreted to mean containment of people. They thought that they were being imprisoned in the geographic area. It was the number-one cluster in the country, and people criticized me. I closed the playgrounds last week in New York City, and people criticized me. So my way has always been to err on the side of safety. I would always rather be accused of having an unnecessary economic loss than an unnecessary death. So even in all the past situations, past storms Ive closed roads, Ive closed subways, Ive closed businesses. And sometimes the storm happens, and a lot of times the storm didnt happen. And I was criticized. But I can live with that. Id much rather live with that than Had I moved sooner, we could have saved lives. What would you say about the federal response so far? Yesterday, the president was asked if he could assure New Yorkers that they would have the ventilators they need, and he said, No, they should have had more ventilators. Whats your reaction when you hear things like that? Unless I can talk to you off the record, I cant talk about this now. Understood. Well, on the record, what can you say? Trump is somebody youve known for 30 years. Do you have a personal rapport with him, when its just the two of you talking, that has helped you in terms of getting New York the help it needs? Look, theres no governor in the United States whos been more critical of this president than I have. Theres no governor in the United States whos been more criticized by this president than I have been. What I said to him in this situation is, this is a bigger situation than politics, its biggerthan partisanship. Its going to take the state doing everything it can, and its going take the federal government doing everything it can. Because, hes right, when he says, we only have 10,000 ventilators. He doesnt have the capacity. So its going to take federal efforts and state efforts. I said if hes a good federal partner, I will say that. And if he doesnt fulfill the federal partnership role, I will say that, Mark. And I have said both. And depending on the action of the day, I will say both, or either. And thats the relationship. Its transparent, open, and honest. Have you, as governor, done enough to stop the closing of hospitals? Sixteen hospitals in the past two decades have closed in New York City, and the state has lost something like 20,000 hospital beds. Youve been criticized from the left for cuts youve made to Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals. What would you say to that? More people have health insurance in this state than almost any state in the United States. Were at 95 percent covered. We had too many hospital beds in the health system. We still do. The health system has transitioned to more of a holistic system that focuses on wellness, community-based care, as opposed to hospital beds that are only intensive care. Thats where the health system is going. Now, to close a hospital is very hard. It employs a lot of people, it becomes an institution within the community. So its hard to make that transition. But its inarguable that you have too many beds in hospitals, and you need more ambulatory programs, community-based programs, et cetera. In Brooklyn, we started a national demonstration program, where we were closing hospital beds, opening community-based clinics focused more on wellness and on continuing health care. In other words, health care is not supposed to be that you get so sick that you need a hospital bed. Health care should be, Im going to keep you healthy so you dont go into a hospital. And that is a nationwide reorientation that were doing here in New York, and its the current thinking across the country. Thats inarguable. Its very hard to do. Medicaid we have more people on Medicaid now than ever before. Supporters of Medicare for All would argue that the way Obamacare depends on employee health plans doesnt look good when millions of jobs have disappeared overnight. Look, people can use the crisis to make whatever point they want. But these facts dont show anything other than the number of people who are now infected in this pandemic exceeds the capacity of the health care system, not the design of the health care system, or the funding of the health care system. The very capacity. We have 50,000 beds statewide. This is a multiple of that. Now you can argue, well, the 50,000 beds should have been paid for by Medicaid for All. The problem is the 50,000 beds in this crisis. Well, why didnt you have 100,000 beds? Because you never should have needed 100,000 beds. And you probably will never need 100,000 beds again. I hope. And its not even the beds. The beds, we found. Its these damn ventilators. Which, you normally never needed anywhere near this volume, until you have a pandemic that happens to hit the respiratory system, and if you dont have a ventilator, you cant really provide adequate care. But this is five times the number of ventilators the health care system has ever needed. How do you prepare for that, Mark? As governor, your father never had to deal with a crisis at this level. Are there things you learned from him that have been useful over these past weeks? Let me do it the other way. There is nothing that I learned from him that wasnt useful [pauses]. No challenge is too great. Believe in the inherent goodness of people. Believe government done well is an art form. Believe government is the mobilizing vehicle for our better angels. Find support in family. I have my daughter here working with me the way I worked with my father. Speak honestly. Tell people the truth. They will respond to the truth, and logic, even if they dont like it. The trust between an elected official and the people they serve is everything. Trust and respect is everything. If you have to make a tough decision and you believe its right, make it, and if people resent you for it, so be it, because you have to act in a way that fits your conscience and your heart. Yeah, thats all my father. Thats everything Im doing. And when youre tired and you cant work anymore, work harder. He famously said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, and its fair to say youve generally landed on the prose side of things. Have the briefings shown a more personal side? Were you thinking about your fathers ability to communicate? No, my father did not communicate that way, Mark. My father communicated aspiration, but he did it in a formal sense. He did not speak personally, in terms of himself or his family or his life or his experiences. He was a formal speaker. The expression I used to use was: Hes a big-room speaker. Hes a podium speaker. He spoke to large audiences, right? That was his art form. He would not talk about family experiences the way Ive spoken about them here. You understand the distinction Im trying to make? Definitely. The way youve spoken about family experiences in the briefings, for instance, talking about what your brother has been going through, theres less mystery when you have a face attached to these things. Yes. All Im saying is, my father did not do that. Hes not comfortable with that. Thats not the way he communicated. You started by saying poetry-prose he was a great speaker. Yes. The best. But not in what youre talking about. Right. The reason I did that is, this is stressful and disorienting in a lot of ways. But its probably most impactful on a human level. Yeah, youre afraid about your job and your paycheck. But its the human level that is shocking here. The social level. And I want you to know youre not alone in that. Its not you. Dont blame yourself. Dont think that you are misperceiving the situation, or youre hypersensitive, or youre deficient in not being able to handle the situation. Youre not alone. Everybody feels what youre feeling. I feel what you feel. Im afraid. Im hurt. Im having trouble with the situation. Its not just you. I believe that, and its important and helpful to communicate it. And by my relaying my feelings, I think it may have helped you to understand that your feelings are not unique in this situation. Whats been personally hardest for you? Outside of obviously the incredibly difficult job you have. But on the personal side, are there people you havent been able to see? I havent been able to see my mother. Im not with one of my daughters. That on a personal level is very taxing. And I constantly say to myself, what else should I be doing? What else could I be doing? People are dying every day, and I dont know what else to do. And I know that tomorrow more people will die. And I dont know what else to do. And that is a terrible weight, and just an oppressive burden. Another thing about this tragedy thats been very surreal is that, with disasters like a plane crash or an earthquake, you see faces and names. But here, because of medical privacy issues and because of the scale, so many of the people dying are somewhat invisible. Its very haunting. How have you been processing this level of death? Have you reached out to families of those who have died? Yes, I have. Yes, I have. All of the above. And look, my daughter says to me the other night, Why dont you go to sleep? Why dont you close your eyes? You look tired. And I said to her, Because theres more to do. Theres more to do. Im just doing my best to fight to save as many lives as possible. Ive accepted that people are going to die. This virus is very effective at what it does. Its an expert killer, and its a killer of the vulnerable. Thats why its a coward in some ways. It doesnt attack the strong. It attacks the vulnerable. And Im here to protect the vulnerable. Thats my job. I fight for the vulnerable. I fight for people who need a voice. I fight for people who need justice. And they are being attacked by this virus. And I just spend every minute of every day saying, What else can I do? What else can I do? You endorsed Joe Biden very early in the Democratic primary. Have you been in contact with him during the crisis? Yeah, I never endorsed Joe Biden. I never endorsed anybody. I said what I thought about him, which is that hes an extraordinary man, hes an extraordinary leader. I speak to him quite frequently. He gives me advice. I bounce ideas off him. This is not the time for politics. Im sure hes talking to other governors and other mayors. Just be helpful. Just be helpful. This isnt the time for anything else. Just be helpful. Youve rejected any talk of national political ambition right now. But the discussion has been thrust upon you by the moment. Have you been hearing from Democrats trying to draft you for a role in the November election? I have real things to do, and real things to talk about. And that is not a real thing. I am governor of New York. Its a job that I asked for. Its a job that I believe I am prepared for. I believe I can make a difference in it. And everyone assumes, well, a politician just wants to take the next step on the ladder. Well, politicians always arent in it for themselves. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes theres an elected official who actually means what he says. Or is going to do what he says hes going to do. Wouldnt that be refreshing? I said if elected, I will serve four years as governor of the state of New York. Period. And thats what Im going to do. Period. Its all simpler than we make it. Say what youre going to do. Do what you say. Do it with honor. Do it with integrity. Do it with skill. And thats it. And youll sleep well at the end of the day, even if it is a very long day. Do you worry about politicians in this country taking advantage of this crisis in a dangerous or unconstitutional way? Its happening in Hungary with Viktor Orban. I worry about politicians taking advantage of people, manipulating people, manipulating opinion, manipulating feelings. I worry about that all the time. You mentioned my father [chuckles]. My father used to say, As a class, I dont like politicians. And I know what he means. Some politicians I respect, and others I dont respect. But am I wary of political power? Yeah. It can be abused, and manipulated. But it can also be used to do good. So we do what we can, and we give it our all, and thats all we can do, Mark. I cant save everybodys life. But I can do everything that I can to save as many lives as I can. What could a return to normalcy look like? What do you see happening once we get past the apex and head into the summer? I think the economy reopens. The economic re-entry strategy is tied to a public-health strategy. So theres a public-health strategy that has rapid testing, where people who are negative or had the virus and are immune start to go back to work. Younger people start to go back to work. We protect the vulnerable population. So its a public-health strategy and an economic strategy. And they both dovetail. I dont think its a question of saving lives or making money. I reject that as a false choice. You have to do both. Best of Rolling Stone See where your favorite artists and songs rank on the Rolling Stone Charts. Sign up for Rolling Stones Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Riza Roidila Mufti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 17:48 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd19be54 1 Business motorcycle-taxi,ride-hailing-application,Gojek,Grab,transportation-ministry,Luhut-Binsar-Pandjaitan,health-minister,public-policy,regulation,Jakarta-governor Free The governments guidelines on transportation controls during the implementation of large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) to contain COVID-19 have sparked criticism for being ambiguous and clashing with other regulations, leaving many confused. On April 9, the Transportation Ministry issued ministerial regulation No.18/2020 on transportation controls to slow the spread of COVID-19. Among other things, it allows app-based ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers to serve passengers, so long as they comply with health protocols, which include wearing masks and gloves, disinfecting vehicles before and after use and not driving when not feeling well. Civil groups and politicians were quick to lambast the regulation, signed by acting Transportation Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, as it clashes with Health Minister Terawan Agus Putrantos regulation on PSBB guidelines, meaning enforcement will be challenging. According to Health Ministerial Regulation No.9/2020 on PSBB guidelines, app-based ojek drivers can only transport goods, not passengers, said Djoko Setijowarno, a transportation observer from the Indonesia Transportation Society (MTI) on Sunday. The Transportation Ministry regulation also contradicts Jakarta Gubernatorial Regulation No.33/2020 on PSBB status, which permits app-based ojek to transport goods only, he added. Incoherent regulations have left law enforcement officers, transportation operators and the public confused about whether ojek drivers are still permitted to transport passengers during the two-week PSBB period in Jakarta, which started on April 10. PSBB status will be enforced in Jakartas satellite cities of Bogor, Depok and Bekasi in West Java beginning April 15. Djoko also questioned how the Transportation Ministry could monitor and ensure all app-based ojek drivers and passengers complied with the health protocols. On a practical level, who is going to monitor whether the health protocols are being followed by the drivers and passengers? How will the temperatures of drivers and passengers be checked? he said. On a practical level, this regulation is hard to monitor. Public policy observer Agus Pambagio also highlighted the inconsistencies in the regulations, and argued that permitting ojek drivers to carry passengers would undermine the effectiveness of the large-scale social restrictions. COVID-19 will continue to spread if passengers are allowed to be transported using two-wheel vehicles, both for commercial and personal purposes. Thus, I beg the Transportation Ministry to revoke or revise ministerial regulation No.18/2020, as soon as possible, said Agus. Tulus Abadi, the chairman of the Indonesia Consumers Foundation (YLKI), also called on the government to scrap or revise the regulation on the grounds that it did not take into account the safety and security of customers during the pandemic. Responding to the criticism and confusion, the Transportation Ministry held an online press conference on Sunday. Spokesperson Adita Irawaty said the ministry maintained the point stated in the regulation that motorcycles could still be used to transport passengers, both for personal or commercial reasons, so long as health protocols were followed. However, we will monitor the situation in the field and may evaluate and make changes to the regulation, said Adita. Ride-hailing service providers such as Gojek and Grab disabled their ojek services on Friday in Jakarta, the first day of PSBB implementation in the capital. Gojek chief of corporate affairs Nila Marita said the company welcomed the Transportation Ministry regulation and is waiting for the regulation to come into effect to make adjustments. The issuance of the regulation will help people to travel and do [certain] activities that are still allowed under the PSBB terms. On the other hand, it can also help our driver partners to maintain their income to support their families, said Nila on Monday. Gojek has provided its driver partners in Greater Jakarta and other cities with health equipment packages. Grab Indonesias head of public affairs Tri Sukma Anreianno said that company was making preparations to ensure its driver partners were ready to comply with the health protocols stipulated in the Transportation Ministry regulation once it was implemented. We are still waiting for the regulation to be officially implemented. On behalf of our driver partners, we want to thank the government for listening to our input and our drivers input regarding the regulation, he said. Last August, the chief executives of 181 of Americas largest corporations signed a document pledging their commitment to run their companies for the benefit of workers and communities, and not just for shareholders. Some pundits celebrated the statement from the Business Roundtable as a historical milestone, the moment when corporate executives demonstrated sensitivity to public anger over economic inequality. But others dismissed the document as a canny public relations move: So long as executive pay remained tied to stock prices, shareholder interest would remain supreme. Today, with the planet under assault from a pandemic that has delivered the most profound economic pain since the Great Depression, key signatories are furloughing employees, paying dividends to shareholders and provoking complaints from workers that they arent adequately protected from danger. Their actions expose the reality that the rhetoric of the Business Roundtable did not alter the decisive question of American capitalism where the money goes. In the run-up to the crisis, many companies used cash to buy back their shares and pay out dividends, rewarding shareholders, while leaving themselves with fewer resources to aid workers when disaster struck. New Delhi, April 13 : The Aam Aadmi Party government's flagship 'Happiness Classes' have entered the homes in the times of the coronavirus lockdown with about eight lakh families getting instructions on the phone and participating in daily classes. "Happiness Class enters homes in the times of corona lockdown. Approx 8 lakh families of students upto grade 8 are getting instructions on phone and participating in the Happiness Class," Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia said on Monday. Sisodia, also the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, had said parents of students studying in classes up to Class 8 will receive audio calls (IVR) from the Education Department to guide them on how to take on the role of teachers at home. "Step by step activities will be shared through pre recorded audio messages on how to conduct Happiness classes at their homes," Sisodia had said last week. The purpose behind the Happiness curriculum, according to the Education Department, was to make children introspect and get to know themselves better. "Mindfulness is practiced by all students everyday in our schools. We are all gripped with anxiety today. These are unusual times and we do not know what to do as a fun activity. We cannot go out, can't go for movies, or sit in the parks, we are confined to our homes, with our family. In such situations, it is possible to get irritated with one another, and we don't know how to refresh our minds as we are still restricted to our homes," Sisodia said. He said under these circumstances, the Happiness class is all the more important. "The activities of Happiness class would now be conducted at home everyday by the parents. We will support around 8 lakh students and their families to practise mindful meditation with the help of the teachers. It is important to turn the atmosphere positive in our homes and make the families spend quality time together," he added. The Happiness Curriculum was launched in July, 2018 where over 10 lakh students between Class 1 and 8 and about 50,000 teachers share the 45 minute Happiness Class, which connects knowledge to life outside the school. During the Happiness Classes, the students are asked to express their thoughts freely and creatively. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Monday visited sealed Mansara Apartment in Vasundhara Enclave with Ashok Nagar Police Station SHO Tejram Singh to take stock of the ground situation in the area. "I am visiting areas which are sealed under Operation SHIELD. We had sealed Mansara Apartment in Vasundhara Enclave 16 days before as there was a COVID-19 patient in the apartment. Now, I am happy that he has recovered and none of his family members is infected with the virus," Sisodia told ANI. "Police and the civil administration have done a commendable job. They ensured the supplies of essential commodities and followed other guidelines under Operation SHIELD," he added. SHO Tejram Singh said that people are cooperating with the police. "Following orders from the DCP, we had sealed this apartment. The people are very cooperative here. We are providing every service listed under Operation SHIELD," he said. Saurabh, secretary of the society, said that the people living in apartments and the areas which are sealed should not worry and panic. "A person who came from the UK tested positive on March 29. Now, he has recovered. Doctors are regularly visiting us. There is no problem here now. I want to tell all apartments and the areas which are sealed that they should not worry and panic," he said. The Delhi government has announced Operation SHIELD, in which 'S' stands for sealing of localities, 'H' for home quarantine, 'I' for isolation and tracing, 'E' for essential supplies, 'L' for to local sanitisation, and 'D' for door-to-door checking. Sisodia also visited a government school in New Ashok Nagar and appreciated the work being done by teachers in fight against COVID-19. "Teachers are helping us to the fight against COVID-19. I have also inspected ration shops and the ration distribution is satisfactory. The registration to provide Rs 5,000 to auto drivers has also started," he added. The Delhi government on March 2 said that it would provide financial assistance of Rs 5,000 to each of the drivers of public transport vehicles including autos, taxis and e-rickshaws in the city. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EAST SYRACUSE, NY -- A new mobile testing site for COVID-19 is being set up in the Walmart parking lot in East Syracuse. The new testing site is being operated by Quest Diagnostics in conjunction with Walmart, according to a spokesman for Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Its not operating yet, according to Walmart employees. There are questions about the new testing site - who can use it, is it authorized by the state health department and will it collaborate with the county? Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon expressed concern about the mobile site Monday afternoon, saying Quest hadnt communicated with the county about it. He said he was alarmed initially that neither Quest nor Walmart contacted county health officials to coordinate how the new test site would fit into the countys coronavirus management plan. At McMahons request, Gov. Andrew Cuomos office has arranged a conference call for Tuesday between county officials, Quest and Walmart to discuss the test site. McMahon said he hopes to match the test sites capacity to specific testing needs identified by the county. When he learned of the Walmart plan, McMahon said, he was concerned that the site might offer COVID-19 tests based on more liberal criteria than what that county uses at its triage site at the Syracuse Community Health Center. McMahon said he was also concerned that Quest had not arranged to share data with the county. Either scenario could disrupt the countys efforts to track the progress of the disease, McMahon said. But additional testing for COVID-19 could be helpful if its done in cooperation with the county health department, McMahon said. There will likely be a need for more extensive mass testing, especially after officials begin lifting restrictions on economic activity and more people return to work. McMahon said he believes the testing site will require people to fill out an online assessment tool and then get an appointment for the testing through the Walmart pharmacy. Its not clear if anyone could go there to be tested or if a person would need to show symptoms and need a prescription. Editors note: This story was updated Monday evening. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Social distancing in CNY: Hundreds of calls, police try to teach people to obey crackdown Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Elizabeth Doran covers education, suburban government and development, breaking news and more. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact her anytime 315-470-3012 or by Email. The Congress party on Monday demanded the resignation of Karnatakas Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar for tweeting a picture of himself swimming with his children in a pool. In the tweet, which has since been deleted, Sudhakar said: After a long time joined my children for swimming hope maintaining social distance here also..haha.(sic) Follow live updates on coronavirus In response to this, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President DK Shivakumar has called for Sudhakar to step down. When the whole world is going through a health crisis, the corona in-charge minister Dr Sudhakar is behaving irresponsibly by spending time in a swimming pool, said Shivakumar in a tweet that included a screenshot of Sudhakars now-deleted tweet. It's a matter of moral & ethical standard. He must resign out of his own accord & CM should sack him from the Cabinet. In a subsequent statement that Shivakumar issued, he said that he was aghast that Sudhakar, being a doctor, posted a picture of his personal life during the crisis. Not just those from my party, BJP leaders themselves called me to ask why I have not demanded Sudhakars resignation yet, he said. Still, I will not press for his resignation. Even the CM or Governor should not sack him. According to me, Sudhakar himself will take moral responsibility and step down. According to sources, a Congress delegation is expected to meet Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and seek Sudhakars sacking on the grounds that he violated the lockdown. Track state-wise confirmed coronavirus cases here In response to Sudhakars tweet, activist Leo F Saldanha said that the ministers children deserved all the time that they could get with him. But you need to ask yourself, as Minister of Medical Education, if it is right for you to claim a swimming pool provides social distancing? A quick check would have revealed swimming pools spread infections quite a bit, he said. Sudhakar hit back strongly at the Congress on this matter. As a father, I was attending to my kids after three months of rigorous work to contain the Covid-19. Am I not supposed to discharge duties as a father to my children? he told DH. I have not gone outside on picnic or tour. But stayed at home and joined them in their kids' pool inside the house. Before meeting them, I had quarantined myself and only after the successful completion of quarantine that I spent a few hours with my children which I could not do since February as I was busy attending to all Covid-19 related emergencies, he said, daring the Opposition to point out flaws in his work instead. 1 of 2 Nikon is offering free online Photography Classes in India during quarantine period Nikon has announced that it will be introducing free online photography classes until the end of this month. The company has collaborated with award-winning photographer Raghu Rai alongside many renowned photographers to encourage people to learn new skills amid the lockdown across the country. The classes will be based on various themes and topics including Wedding, Wildlife, Effects of Focal Length, Interior & Architecture, Street, Portrait, Food & Pet Photography, etc. According to Nikon, Each class will be hosted by a professional photographer to offer in-depth photography knowledge while some of the classes will be followed by a Q&A session to address all the queries and doubts. Apart from providing guidance from experts, the aim of these classes is to assist the community with tips and tricks on photography and videography. All the classes will be available through live videos streaming on Nikons official handles of Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Commenting on the initiative, Sajjan Kumar, Managing Director, Nikon India said, Nikons mission has always been to empower the photography community. In light of the continuing outbreak of Coronavirus (COVID-19) across the country, Nikon India has taken a step to help people enhance their photography skills with classes that are tutored by professional photographers. Read More... The FBI has issued its first-ever poster in a Native American language, seeking information in Navajo on the brutal keeling of an elderly man six years ago on the New Mexico portion of the vast Navajo Nation reservation. Wilson Joe Chiquito, a 75-year-old medicine man, was beaten to death at his home in the community of Counselor -population 500 - on Valentine's Day in 2014. The FBI recently released the poster that offers a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the cold-case homicide. It has been shared on social media and posted in Navajo communities, grocery stores and trading posts, said Navajo Police Chief Phillip Francisco. This image shows the first poster the FBI has issued in a Native American language, seeking information in Navajo on the murder of Wilson Joe Chiquito six years ago in New Mexico This image shows the English-language version of the poster. Chiquito, 75, was beaten to death at his home in the small community of Counselor in February 2014 'Having it in both languages, it obviously helps the ability to get tips,' he said. 'It's a positive thing and it shows the FBI's dedication to helping solve crimes on Navajo by embracing the culture and the language.' Francisco wasn't aware of any new tips that authorities have received based on the Navajo-language poster but said 'any small detail can help out.' James Langenberg, special agent in charge of the Albuquerque division of the FBI, said FBI employees who speak Navajo helped translate the information for the poster. 'We already work closely with the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety, but we hope this effort will improve our communication with the rest of the Dine,' Langenberg said, using a term that means 'Navajo people.' Counselor is located on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico and has a population of just over 500 people The FBI has not translated posters into any Native American language beside Navajo, said FBI spokeswoman Manali Basu. 'The FBI plans to continue translating regularly in order to ensure we are receiving any and all information possible that may lead us to the perpetrators of these crimes and bringing them to justice, the agency said. Chiquito, a traditional healer, was found dead outside his cottage by his grandson. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to his head. 'We just want justice for my grandpa,' Chiquito's granddaughter, Marshie Pablo, told Navajo Times on the eve of the first anniversary of the man's killing in 2015. The Navajo Nation spans parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. It covers more than 27,000 square miles, making it larger than the state of West Virginia. Marylou Armer, a 43-year-old detective with the Santa Rosa Police Department, died on March 31 after contracting coronavirus A Northern California police detective who died of COVID-19 was twice denied a coronavirus test by her health care provider because doctors told her that her age and lack of underlying medical condition meant she was not at risk. Marylou Armer, a 43-year-old detective with the Santa Rosa Police Department, began complaining of a fever, aching body, and shortness of breath beginning in mid-March. She twice sought a coronavirus test from the Vallejo Medical Center, a facility run by the Kaiser Permanente health care consortium. Her older sister, Mari Lau, told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that she was turned away each time. Finally, Armer was tested on March 23, but by that point it was too late already, Lau, 47, said. Armer, who was a resident of American Canyon in Napa County, walked into the emergency room that day and was quickly sedated and intubated. Doctors scrambled to hook Armer up to a ventilator in order to raise the oxygen level in her blood, which was dangerously low at the time, according to the Press Democrat. The test for coronavirus came back positive, and Armer was then placed into a medically induced coma. Armer began experiencing symptoms in mid-March and twice asked for a coronavirus test, but was denied Armer, who was on life support for five days, never woke up. She died on March 31. Doctors were hopeful that being in a coma would allow Armers body to recuperate and her lungs to restart. She is survived by a husband and stepdaughter; her sister, Lau; her mother, Susan Hernandez of Carlsbad, California; and her brother, Ronnie Hernandez of Carlsbad. Lau told the Press Democrat of the hospitals refusal to test her: It is very frustrating. A person knows their body and knows when something is wrong. Kaiser confirmed to the newspaper that Armer was denied a coronavirus test. Dr. David Witt, Kaisers top infectious disease expert, said Armer was in regular contact with her physician. Officials at Vallejo Medical Center, a facility run by the Kaiser Permanente health care consortium, said that Armer was denied a test because of national testing guidelines that confined testing to those with underlying health conditions and who were of advanced age Witt said doctors were adhering to public health authority testing guidelines, which have been based on a very limited availability of tests. We offer heartfelt sympathies to Detective Armers family and loved ones at this profoundly difficult time. Witt said that as federal guidelines for testing have expanded since last month, so have those of Kaiser. Those guidelines for testing have evolved over the past several weeks, whereas a month ago, testing was limited to those with symptoms and who had primary contact with a COVID-positive person, Witt said. Policy at this time is to prioritize testing of first responders and healthcare workers. These are the heroes who serve, protect and care for our communities. When she started feeling sick, Armer told her sister that she thought she was coming down with either a cold or the flu. Lau said her sister was experiencing a fever, body aches, chills, and shortness of breath. Days later, Armers fever and body aches subsided a bit, but she still had difficulty breathing. She said shed never felt this kind of sickness in her body before, Lau said. Armer was the first peace officer in California to die from COVID-19. She was also the first fatality from Napa County. As of Friday, a total of nice police officers from Santa Rosa tested positive for coronavirus. Lau, a resident of Riverside County in Southern California, described the agony of being some 500 miles away from her sister, whom she would never see again. It was horrible, Lau said. I didnt know how bad she was until that day. While Armer was hospitalized, no one from her family was allowed to see her. Lau, Armers husband, her stepdaughter, her mother, and her brother sent voice recordings of themselves for hospital staff to play for Armer while she was in a coma. When they played that, they said that her heartbeat kind of went up a beat and her oxygen went up a little, which was good news, Lau said. But that evening (before she died), her condition just got really bad. Santa Rosa officials do not know how she contracted the virus. California Governor Gavin Newsom this past weekend addressed the state's downfalls in coronavirus testing and admit he 'owns' the lapse California Governor Gavin Newsom admitted he 'owns' the state's lapse in COVID-19 testing and announced a new task force will work to increase testing sites. Newsom, 52, shared the revelations with residents in a video released to social media on Saturday. He said: 'The testing space has been a challenging one for us and I own that. And I have a responsibility as your governor to do better and do more testing in the state of California.' 'I own that, you deserve better and more,' he added. Newsom added that only 126,700 of the nearly 40 million Californians have been tested for coronavirus. Of those who have undergone testing, 13,000 are awaiting results. As of Saturday, the Golden State has 13,647 confirmed cases and 319 deaths. Los Angeles has at least 4,500 infections and 91 residents have died. Public health officials have called for widespread coronavirus testing in an effort to stop the spread, but the United States has continuously lagged. Law enforcement agencies around the country hit hard by coronavirus The pandemic has taken its toll on police departments and sheriff's offices around the country - most notably in New York City, the epicenter of the virus. New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea announced on Sunday that a traffic cop, William Hayes, died after contracting coronavirus. Hayes, a traffic enforcement agent who spent more than 31 years in the NYPD, is the department's 20th fatality. The NYPD, the countrys largest department with more than 36,000 officers, has more than 7,000 officers out and more than 2,000 diagnosed with COVID-19. The department said some 2,318 uniformed members and 471 civilian members had tested positive for the coronavirus. In Detroit, some 14 per cent of the city's force of 2,500 police officers were in quarantine last week. New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea announced on Sunday that a traffic cop, William Hayes, died after contracting coronavirus. Hayes, a traffic enforcement agent who spent more than 31 years in the NYPD, is the department's 20th fatality from COVID-19 Three police chiefs in the metropolitan Detroit area - Detroit Police Chief James Craig, Royal Oak Police Chief Corrigan O'Donohue, and Highland Park Police Chief Hilton Napoleon - have all tested positive. In Chicago, at least two Chicago Police Department officers have died from COVID-19 and some 170 have tested positive, according to officials. As of last week, some four dozen members of the Los Angeles Police Department tested positive for coronavirus. That includes both civilian employees of the department as well as uniformed officers. Crime drops around the country as coronavirus keeps people inside The coronavirus pandemic that has crippled big-box retailers and mom and pop shops nationwide may be making a dent in illicit business, too. In Chicago, one of Americas most violent cities, drug arrests have plummeted 42 per cent in the weeks since the city shut down, compared with the same period last year. Part of that decrease, some criminal lawyers say, is that drug dealers have no choice but to wait out the economic slump. The feedback Im getting is that they arent able to move, to sell anything anywhere, said Joseph Lopez, a criminal lawyer in Chicago who represents reputed drug dealers. Overall, Chicagos crime declined 10 per cent after the pandemic struck, a trend playing out globally as cities report stunning crime drops in the weeks since measures were put into place to slow the spread of the virus. Even among regions that have the highest levels of violence outside a war zone, fewer people are being killed and fewer robberies are taking place. Still, law enforcement officials worry about a surge of unreported domestic violence, and what happens when restrictions lift or go on too long. Its rare for a city to see a double-digit drop in crime, even over a much longer period. During New York Citys 1990s crime decline, one of the biggest turnarounds in American history, crime dropped about 40 per cent over three years. That makes the drop-offs occurring now - in a period of just a couple of weeks - even more seismic. New York saw major crimes - murder, rape, robbery, burglary, assault, grand larceny and car theft - decrease by 12 per cent from February to March. In Los Angeles, 2020 key crime statistics were consistent with last years figures until the week of March 15, when they dropped by 30 per cent. Theres a lot fewer opportunities for criminals to take advantage of, said Joe Giacalone, a former New York Police Department sergeant who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Most burglars, they wait for you to leave the house. Policing has also changed in the face of the pandemic. And U.S. authorities say theyre issuing citations instead of making low-level arrests, policing social distancing and putting detectives into patrol cars - which could, in turn, bring down crime rates. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the citys aggravated assaults were up 10 per cent in the last three weeks, and half of those were domestic violence, a significantly higher proportion than normal. Calls to Missouris child abuse and neglect hotline dropped by half as the virus first struck the state. Advocates said the calls arent made because the kids arent in school. And Chicago did see a spike in gun violence this week, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported 60 shootings 19 fatal between Sunday and Thursday. San Jose, California, Police Chief Eddie Garcia hopes the downward trend will continue after the pandemic is over. But his officers are preparing for the worst. The longer were in a lockdown, he said, the more were playing with fire. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia. More than 1.5 million cases have been diagnosed worldwide. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Mardika Parama (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 13:17 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1882a2 1 Business OVO,pre-employment-card,cash-benefit,Airlangga-Hartarto,state-owned-banks,Bank-Negara-Indonesia,bni Free Digital payment service provider OVO has partnered with state-owned Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) to distribute cash benefits to recipients of the governments preemployment card program. Under the partnership, OVO will disburse Rp 600,000 (US$38) monthly cash benefit for four months to the e-wallet accounts of program participants after they finish their training courses. The participants will also receive Rp 1 million worth of training courses from the programs digital education platform partners, such as Sekolah.mu and Ruangguru. OVO is committed to distributing the governments cash benefits to improve Indonesias workforce skills and competitiveness, OVO CEO Karaniya Dharmasaputra said as quoted in a press release on Saturday. Read also: 1.4 million people register for preemployment card in a day as pandemic hits economy Five OVO engineers and two Bareksa UI/UX designers are also working alongside the government to improve the preemployment card system, he added. Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto officially launched the preemployment card registration on Saturday after launching the program at the end of March. The first registration period will end on Thursday with a quota of 164,000 participants, as the government plans up to 30 registration periods this year. The government has allocated Rp 20 trillion out of this years budget for the program and targeted 5.6 million people aged over 18 who do not attend school or college, particularly those who have yet to receive any social assistance, to join the program. It expects to cushion the countrys workforce hit by business disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We will disburse the participants cash benefits through their bank account or e-wallet account such as LinkAja, Gopay and OVO, Airlangga said during the livestreamed preemployment card registration launch on Saturday. Read also: Indonesias e-signature start-ups gain traction amid pandemic Unemployed citizens can access the preemployment card by registering on the programs website, prakerja.go.id, before picking their preferred training program. Statistics Indonesia data show that out of the countrys workforce of 133.56 million, 7.05 million are unemployed and more than 55 percent of those employed work in the informal sector. Manpower Ministry data released on Tuesday show that over 1.2 million workers from 74,439 companies in both the formal and informal sectors have either been told to stay home or have been laid off as a result of the pandemic. NYS Workers' Comp: Special Validation of Medical Visit to DPRK or Comfort by Limin Wang April 12, 2020. Sunday Today is Easter. I am not a Christian, but I do have faith and do hope and request for help from real human messiahs and salvation army. On April 06, 2020, I sent the following letter to the U.S. Department of State, and even contacted the White House for President Donald J. Trump about my urgent need of medical visit to DPRK or Comfort. Sorry, Jesus, I have not seen you anywhere or have not learned how you have achieved resurrection. When I am still alive with my residual strength, I still believe in the fight for recovery. 136-09 59th Ave Flushing, NY, 11355 Tel:---------- Special Validation, U.S. Department of State CA/PPT/L/LA 44132 Mercure Circle, P.O. Box 1227 Sterling, VA 20166-1227 April 06, 2020, Monday RE: Special Validation of Medical Visit to North Korea or Hospital Ship Comfort Honorable U.S. Department of State, I am a victim of a series of premeditated and coordinated murder attempts veiled as workplace accidents (including my fall from the perpetrators meticulously-set trap stepladder (8-ft) on January 16, 2018) and then as medical diagnoses and treatments (including their hidden spraying of metallic powder to my face area prior to the X-ray imaging and MRI scan; electrical shocking while an electrode was attached also to my forehead during a Somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP) test; sudden violent rotating my head and neck while I was told to rest prone and relaxed for chiropractic treatment; and prescribing many medications with some grave (side) effects). The employer, its Workers Compensation (WC) insurance administrator, the employer/carriers defense law firm, their Independent Medical Exam physicians, the hardly available treating physicians, the MRI facilities, my former WC case attorney/law firm, as well as New York State Workers Compensation Board (NYS WCB) and NYS DOH Office of Professional Medical Conducts all have acted together with their respective roles to directly or indirectly harm me further and inflict injustice to this WC case. Therefore, by their premeditated and coordinated actions, the medical records in this WC case have been laundried by them pretty clean, while the sequelae of my head and spine (including neck) trauma have shown a plethora of severe symptoms on almost all my vital systems and all over my body. Just like many other treating or IME physicians, the last remaining treating clinic wouldnt even have the patience to listen to me the patients complaint of symptoms, but would include or exclude whatever in their medical reports at their discretion. For example, their most recent medical report about my February 27, 2020 visit wrote complete disability due to cephalgia, temporary impairment 100% and follow-up appointment in 2 months, but the actual follow-up was unchangeably made for FOUR months later, while WC law requires a follow-up visit within 90-days for continuing treatment. The personnel from NYS WCB and these WCB-authorized clinics all know the WC rules, but would even knowingly and coordinatingly play on the medical appointments or WCB hearing schedules to taunt and torture me. The most recent WCB hearing was scheduled on March 27, 2020, 9:00 AM, 30 Min. Due to NY Governor Cuomos order on the COVID-19 pandemic, the WCB has been closed to the public. I called (844) 337-6301 to attend the REMOTE hearing by phone, because it is written as one of the legitimate ways. I was told to wait for the WCL Judge to call me back. The WCLJ never called me. When I called a 2nd time about 3 hours later, I was told the hearing had been completed. A week later, I got the Decision in mail, which included such FAKE-RECORD lines, The carrier has raised the issue of labor market attachment as the claimant has been found to have a partial disability. and The Claimants absence is excused due to COVID-19 emergency. What creditability such an evil system has on facts, truth, and justice to the injured worker? The defense law firms attorney lady had multiple times attended such WCB hearings remotely over the phone while I had been attending in person. The NYS governmental agency WCB has been functioning as such a ruthless, corrupt, and murderous ruler to me on this injury case. Instead of the expected health recovery, criminal justice, and financial compensation, these conspirators have been delivering their continuous murder attempts to me. Some specifics have been written and made available to this NYS WCB case G2029240 and my online blogs such as blog.wenxuecity.com/myoverview/58770/ and blog.mitbbs.com/wanglimin. Some of my recent documents/posts are titled as The Power of Evil, How Alpha 3T MRI Fouls Even on the DVDs, Youtube Video of the Nov. 08, 2019 IME by Dr. Robert S April, The Pursuit of Truth. More to come. The symptoms from my sensory, motor, cognitive, physiological, psychological aspects have generally gradually worsened and broadened since the workplace injuries at the last employment. Simple long sitting, standing, or walking can exacerbate the symptoms to an extreme level. I was never so in pain, feeble, dizzy, drowsy, numb, etc. I was given and taking two full-time slaves toil with one entry-level slaves legal minimum wage plus the pay of six or seven hours overtime every week. My wife has been psychiatrically sick and unemployed since her twice desertions in year 2014 seduced by her elder sister and other conspirators, including some from governments. My children are still too young to earn a living in such a realistic cannibalism environment. I have to recover from my injuries, but I have been left this way to die quickly or suddenly with the current price-tag of a meagre ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS PER WEEK compensation rate retroactive back to February 02, 2019. I live in the costly New York City, and the whole family of four depend on my income. Although the Social Security Administration has reconsidered my SSD benefit application and I am also currently receiving $860 per MONTH on the SSD, I expect the federal government to help me on the pursuit of three justices: health recovery, investigation and punishment on the perpetrators as in a criminal case, and financial compensation. Due to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, the naval hospital ship COMFORT has been deployed to New York Harbor to help on patients. Is it a frantic inquiry whether I can board COMFORT to have an honest and high-resolution MRI done on my head and the whole spine and thus to have a true medical base to set out for the justices under the related Departments authority? The perpetrators diagnostic imaging of X-ray and MRI so far on me has shown many kinds of their blatant fraud such as deleting key images, making images blurry, giving blank or dysfunctional or malfunctional CD or DVDs, claiming in their findings of no fracture or no intracranial bleeding. If boarding COMFORT for MRI is impossible to me, then I ask DOS for the Special Validation of medical-needed travel to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Although I am a Chinese naturalized into an American since September 2018, the Chinese government would not help me despite my repetitive requests for help and regardless of my Chinese or American citizenship. The DPRKs UN Mission answered me over my phone inquiry that I must ask DOS for permission first. Here I come. Very Truly Yours, Limin Wang Leavened bread, which is bread containing yeast, is forbidden during Passover because God gave Moses instructions to avoid yeast during the first Passover in Egypt and remove all yeast while celebrating Passover in the future. This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel (Exodus 12:14-15). What Was the First Passover? The first Passover occurred the night before the Israelites left Egypt during the Exodus. Pharaoh resisted letting the people of Israel leave Egypt. So, God sent a final devastating plague, the angel of death was to pass over the land and the first-born sons of every family in Egypt would die, unless blood from a lamb was on the doorposts of the house (Exodus 12:12). Before the Passover, each family was to kill a lamb to provide blood for their doorposts and food. Along with the lamb, they ate unleavened bread and bitter herbs (Exodus 12:8). The Israelites were to eat this meal with haste. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORDs Passover (Exodus 12:11). God gave Moses instructions for the people of Israel to prepare to leave Egypt. When Pharaoh finally permitted the Israelites to leave Egypt, God did not want anyone to be held back because they had to wait for their bread to rise. Unleavened bread is a symbol of the Israelites haste when they left Egypt. The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. For otherwise, they said, we will all die! So, the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing (Exodus 12:33-34). Why Do People Still Celebrate Passover? The annual Passover celebration is a symbolic reenactment of the Israelites last night as slaves in Egypt. The Passover is a time of remembrance for Gods people. God gave Moses specific instructions regarding the annual celebration of Gods deliverance from their slavery in Egypt. After the Israelites escaped Egypt, Moses said to the people, Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand. Eat nothing containing yeast (Exodus 13:3). God commanded that his people celebrate the Passover to memorialize their deliverance from bondage. Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread (Exodus 12:17-20). The Passover was designed by God to be an interactive celebration for all family members, particularly children. During the traditional Jewish Passover meal, four questions are asked by the youngest person at the table. The second question is, On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah, and on this night only matzah? Asking questions about the special meal of unleavened bread provides a means of teaching history and a tangible way to experience Gods provision. The annual celebration of Passover is a reminder of God's deliverance and a means of teaching future generations about God's power. Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, What does this ceremony mean to you? then tell them, It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians. (Exodus 12:24-27). What Is Unleavened Bread? Unleavened bread is bread made without yeast. The Hebrew word matstsah means unleavened bread. We get the English word matzah from the Hebrew. Traditionally, matzah is hard thin square wheat crackers or a softer thicker matzo bread made by hand from a watery wheat batter. Other grains used to make matzah include barley, spelt, rye, and oats. Matzah bakers roll and pierce it with many small holes to limit the dough from rising. Jewish rabbis have determined cooking time for matzah should be precisely 18 minutes because, after that point, the bread will begin to rise. What Is the Significance of Leaven? When Jewish people celebrate Passover today, they will clean their homes of all leavening agents like yeast. Removing yeast from the house has become symbolic of removing sin. In the New Testament, leaven and yeast were often a symbol of sin. Leaven in Scripture, with the single exception of the Parable (Matthew 13:33; Luke 13:20-21), is always a symbol of evil (1 Corinthians 5:6-8; Galatians 5:9), especially insidious evil, as it is for the most part also in the Rabbinical writers. Jesus warned his followers about Herod and the Pharisees by using yeast as a metaphor for sin. Be careful, Jesus warned them. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod (Mark 8:15) Paul the Apostle compared leavening to malice and wickedness. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthian 5:6-8). What Is the Significance of Unleavened Bread to Christians? As Christians, we see additional significance of unleavened bread during Passover. Our communion ceremony comes from Jesus final celebration of Passover with his disciples. When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me (Luke 22:14,15, 19). Jesus broke unleavened Passover bread and gave it to his disciples, and he commanded them to do this in remembrance. In a traditional Jewish Passover Seder dinner, It is customary to have three pieces stacked on the table. Two are traditional for Sabbath and festivals (when we usually use two challot), as a reminder of the double portion of manna (food from heaven) the Israelites gathered before every day of rest in the desert (Exodus 16:11-22). We need the third on Passover to break at the beginning of the [seder] service. Some Christians see the significance of the three pieces of matzah. The two traditional pieces of matzah are for God and the Holy Spirit. The third piece is symbolic of Jesus. Just as unleavened bread does not have yeast, Christ lived a life without sin. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Many Christians see the significance of the stripes and holes in traditional matzah crackers. Just as Christ suffered beating, his brow was pierced by the crown of thorns, a sword pierced his side and nails were driven in his hands and feet, matzah is pierced. Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:4-5). What Does This Mean? At the beginning of a traditional Jewish Passover meal, there is mention of the bread of affliction. Later in the dinner, the unleavened bread is referred to as the bread of freedom. Christians believe that Jesus suffered affliction because he bore our sins and failures on the cross. He has taken our sin and slavery through his sacrifice. Through his suffering, Christians can celebrate in the freedom that He bought with his body and blood. Jesus replied, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:34-36). It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1). iStock/Getty Images Plus/photovs Penny Noyes, M.Ed. is the author of Embracing Change - Learning to Trust God from the Women of the Bible and two books about Hezekiah. You can follow Penny on her blog and on Instagram @pennynoyes. Just over two months ago, the Jinyuan Fucheng Beef Hotpot restaurant in northern Beijing had a long line of customers waiting outside its doors almost every night of the week. Now, the restaurant that can seat 800 barely fills 20 tables a day, with most people still wary of dining out after the contagious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus killed more than 3,300 people in China and infected almost 82,000. The sharp slowdown in business in China's once-booming hotpot chains, barbecue restaurants and steakhouses is hitting the global beef industry hard, after top exporters had ramped up supplies to meet surging Chinese demand. China is the world's No. 2 beef market after the United States and fastest-growing, thanks to rising incomes that have driven imports up at least 20% a year for the last five years. Though the Chinese are much bigger consumers of pork, the viral African swine fever epidemic, first detected in August 2018, slashed the country's pig herd by around 50% and also got consumers switching to more beef. Imports in 2019 hit 1.7 million tonnes, up 60% on the prior year, with about 70% consumed in restaurants, according to analyst and industry source estimates. Expand Close A chef wearing a face mask prepares beef as a waitress sorts tableware at a beef hotpot restaurant in Beijing, amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country, China April 7, 2020. Picture taken April 7, 2020. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A chef wearing a face mask prepares beef as a waitress sorts tableware at a beef hotpot restaurant in Beijing, amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country, China April 7, 2020. Picture taken April 7, 2020. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang Now, demand is "very weak", said a trader with a state-owned company that sources beef from Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, and is buying about 30% of last year's levels. Imports were flooding in just as the flu-like virus emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, coinciding with the country's most important holiday and a major shortage of pork. Much of those are still sitting in cold storage after many restaurants were forced to close for at least six weeks from early February amid lockdowns in some cites and widespread travel restrictions. Foodservice sector income plunged 43% in the first two months of the year to 419.4 billion yuan ($59.6 billion), statistics bureau data showed last month. Beef demand from restaurants has probably dropped 70-80%, said Ambrose Cheung, Asia commercial manager at major Australian processor Bindaree Beef. Though retailers are purchasing much more, consumers typically buy cheaper cuts such as brisket and shin shank and eat less overall when cooking or ordering home than when they go out, Cheung said. "Not many people order a tenderloin online," he said. Exporters in Argentina, one of China's top suppliers last year, say March beef exports slumped to around 15% of levels seen late last year. Demand could remain tepid until June, said Bindaree's Cheung, with people still wary about eating together. Hotpot, in particular, is popular among large groups and usually involves boiling meat and vegetables in a shared pot of broth. "People are not confident about gathering and eating together," said Lin Haipeng, chairman of the Baheli Haiji hotpot chain that specialises in Guangdong-style beef hotpot. Business is expected to bounce back when people feel safer about venturing out to dine again but a sharp slowdown in China's economy could curb spending power for pricy beef, said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank. Fitch Ratings said it expects China's economic growth to fall to less than 2% this year, down from 6.1% in 2019. Meanwhile leading hotpot chain Haidilao, which was given a 2.1 billion yuan loan last month to help it weather the plunge in business, said it has been forced to raise prices to offset the effects of the epidemic. Overall beef consumption in China may even drop slightly this year, said Rabobank's Pan, in what would be the first year-on-year decline since 2011. Even Fucheng's "special price fatty beef" option costing 52 yuan for half a kilo is not selling well, said manager Yuan Yuzhu. About half of the restaurant's beef is imported, largely from Australia, but the cheaper meat comes from China, he said. "We're selling less than 20 servings (a day), which is around a tenth of our normal business," he said. Gardai do not believe the murder of hitman Robbie Lawlor in Belfast marks the return of the notorious Mc- Carthy-Dundon gang. Fears were voiced that the Limerick mob were back in business after it emerged they may have had connections to the Drogheda feud and Lawlor's murder. Sources in Limerick, where gardai fought a 14-year battle to smash the gang, said they are a "spent force" with no power after their associates and foot soldiers deserted them following the murder convictions of leaders Wayne and John Dundon. "We can assure the people of Limerick and Steve Collins, whose family suffered so much at the hands of the McCarthy-Dundons, that they don't have the people or the resources to get off the ground again," a senior garda said. "If they try, the gardai will ensure it doesn't happen. "There is peace in Limerick and that's how it will stay. The few remaining loyal associates are kept under watch. "Nobody trusts them, which is why it did come as a surprise when they popped up in the Lawlor killing. "In Limerick, their gang imploded when some of their own members and relatives broke ranks to testify against them. "Then their former associates and foot soldiers, who lived in fear of them, were happy to see them put away." Until last week, the mob had faded from public memory following the convictions of Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen for organising the murder of Roy Collins on Holy Thursday, 2009. Dundon issued the order to commit the murder from his prison cell, while Killeen forced gang member James Dillon (23) to do the killing and also drove the getaway car. Tricked News of the apparent involvement of the gang in Lawlor's murder is the first time in six years they have been in the spotlight. Gardai and the PSNI are still trying to establish the full extent of their involvement Lawlor's murder. They believe they tricked him in a classic double-cross. It is suspected that the Dundon brothers sent instruc- tions from prison to relations on the outside to help in setting up Lawlor for one of the factions in the Drogheda feud, associates of the gang led by Owen Maguire and Cornelius Price. A man in his 30s, a teenage relative and a third associate from Limerick had travelled with Lawlor to the house in the Ardoyne where a gunman was waiting. Prison sources said Wayne and Dessie Dundon openly celebrated news of Lawlor's killing last Saturday week. Last Monday, suspicions were heightened when Dessie's partner and another woman were arrested after collecting 50,000 from a member of the Maguire-Price group which was seized by gardai. Roy Collins' father, Steve Collins, told the Herald he was "sickened" when he heard the gang's name featuring in the news again, especially as it coincided with the 11th anniversary of Roy's murder and the death of Carmel, his mother, on Easter Sunday last year. He said it made him concerned for the safety of his family, who have returned to Limerick hoping to rebuild their lives after being forced to leave Ireland under a witness relocation programme. Australia has piled pressure on the World Health Organisation after it backed the reopening of China's wet markets despite them being the likely origin of COVID-19. The WHO last week claimed China's wet markets could be made to sell safe food with increased hygiene practices and refused to support their closure as they are an important source of food and income. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke out on Monday to demand transparency in understanding the origin of the disease and protection from the global threat of China's notorious open marketplaces. 'Australia and the world will be looking to organisations like the WHO to ensure lessons are learned from the devastating coronavirus outbreak,' Mr Morrison told The Australian. Australia has pressured the World Health Organisation's decision to allow the reopening of wet markets in China despite strong evidence they were the origin of the coronavirus Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded transparency from the organisation to prevent another global scale outbreak from occurring in the future 'There must be transparency in understanding how it began in Wuhan and how it was transmitted. We also need to fully understand and protect against the global health threat posed by places like wet markets.' While there has been no consensus reached on the origins of the virus, studies have indicated that the epicenter of the virus may have been Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a wet market in the city where the coronavirus is thought to have originated. COVID-19, which has infected 1,872,000 people and killed 116,000, is one of a family of coronaviruses commonly found in bats. A working theory is that the virus was passed from bats through another mammal, possibly pangolins - the most trafficked animal in the world for their meat and scales believed by some to have medicinal properties - before infecting humans. The public concern was great enough that the Chinese government banned the sale and consumption of wild animals, but with Wuhan's reopening vendors have started to return to the city's market stalls. The WHO claimed China's wet markets could become safe spaces to buy and sell food by increasing hygiene procedures. Pictured: a vendor chops dog meat on the ground at a market in Guangxi Povince Mr Morrison's comments came after he called wet markets a 'real and significant problem wherever they exist' in an interview with Alan Jones in early April. 'This virus started in China and went round the world. And that's that's how it started. We all know that,' Mr Morrison said. 'And these wet markets can be a real problem when it comes to what can occur in those markets. And I think from a world health point of view, this is something the World Health Organisation should do something about.' Both sides of Australian politics have been critical of the WHO's advice, and Labor MP Peter Khalil said wet markets should be closed unless they can be proven safe. 'Unless they can demonstrate that the regulations, the health and safety measures, are so strict that they can completely cut off the risk factors, they're going to have to shut them down,' he said. 'It's happened with SARS. It's happened with avian influenza. It's happened with COVID-19. Next time it might be an even worse virus.' Shoppers wearing face masks in Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne on Saturday during the coronavirus outbreak There is strong evidence coronavirus originated from a wet market in Wuhan, with scientists discovering viruses similar to COVID-19 in horseshoe bats and pangolins in wet markets in the region. Pictured: a vendor waits for customers at refrigerator chests in Wuhan in April Liberal MP Andrew Hastie told Daily Mail Australia the WHO has badly let Australia down in response to the coronavirus crisis. 'The WHO has been glacially slow in its decision-making,' Mr Hastie said. 'When Beijing shut down travel from Hubei to the rest of China on January 23 - but strangely not from Hubei to the rest of the world - why didn't the WHO act decisively then? 'It could've prevented the mass global exportation of COVID-19 then by declaring a pandemic and alerting governments around the world of the danger ahead. 'Closing borders then could've saved lives and a lot of economic hardship.' Fellow Liberal MP Dave Sharma also criticised the WHO on Wednesday. He told the ABC: 'I think the WHO's revealed some serious shortcomings, and I think they've revealed themselves to be a politicised organisation. 'They have been too willing to accept Chinese explanations for this virus and the source and the causes.' He said it was right for the world to respond to China with 'anger and consternation and demand some sort of transparency and accountability in future.' World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands in Beijing on January 28 ahead of their meeting to discuss how to curb the spread of a new pneumonia-causing coronavirus [The stream is slated to start at 11 a.m. ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.] World Health Organization officials are holding a press conference to update the public on the coronavirus outbreak, which has now infected more than 1.8 million people and killed at least 115,000 across the globe. WHO last week asked the United States and China for "honest leadership" on the coronavirus pandemic, warning global leaders against politicizing the Covid-19 outbreak "if you don't want to have many more body bags." President Donald Trump has criticized the international agency's response to the outbreak, saying the WHO "really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong." He also threatened to withhold U.S. funding for the WHO. Without unity, even more developed nations will face "more trouble and more crisis," WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week. "No need to use COVID to score political points. No need. You have many other ways to prove yourselves." Read CNBC's live updates to see the latest news on the COVID-19 outbreak. Sex workers of Kolkatas Sonagachhi and other red-light areas in West Bengal will confront their biggest threat of contracting the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) when the lockdown is lifted and customers start visiting their brothels again, medical specialists said. The brothels are shut until the end of May -- a month beyond the end of April when an extended lockdown is expected to be lifted -- and relief materials in the form of rice, lentils and potatoes are being supplied to those who may be in need by government agencies, elected representatives and non-government organisations. Relief will stop coming once the lockdown is over. But it would be of great danger if the sex workers are allowed to operate as soon as the lockdown is lifted. Due to their nature of work and the congested way in which they live, one single case can infect a hundred, said Smarajit Jana, a doctor and chief advisor of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), the biggest NGO working with Bengals sex workers. DMSC, which has about 65,000 members all of them sex workers spread across 50 red-light areas in the state, has launched a social media campaign to raise money so that sex workers can be supported even after the lockdown and avoid having to accept customers. The minimum house rent in Sonagachhi is Rs5,000 per month. Besides, most of the sex workers families depend on them. If we failed to make an arrangement for them for the month of May, they will start accepting clients and it could lead to a disaster, said Bishakha, a sex worker based in Sonagachhi in Kolkata, Asias largest red-light area with about 11,000 sex workers. On average, Sonagachhi draws 35,000 footfalls per day. Most houses in the area that function as brothels have 30-35 residents. At Kalna in East Burdwan district, a local social organisation working for sex workers put up blockades at both entrances of the red-light area after some clients tried to enter the area last week. There would be huge crowds the moment the lockdown is lifted. It would be impossible for sex workers to identify people carrying the virus. And if they are not provided with some monetary relief apart from foodgrains, a section of them would accept clients and that would create a great risk, said Mafizul Rahman of Aamra Padatik, an organisation that works with the children of sex workers based in Kalna. He said the organisation had requested the police to ensure the area remains under lockdown until the end of May. How the 450-odd sex workers living here would be provided for in May remains to be decided, Rahman said. Organisations working in the industrial towns of Burdwan and Asansol have taken similar decision of keeping the red-light area out of bounds for the clients of sex workers until the end of May. It depends a lot how much support we get from the governments, NGOs and social organisations. Without help, sex workers may not listen to us, said Nilkamal, who works with sex workers in Durgapur. The red light area has about 800 active sex workers. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday asked the police commissioner of Kolkata to provide food to the sex workers and transgender communities in the city. Similar instructions were also issued to the Howrah police commissioner. I have asked Anuj Sharma, commissioner of Kolkata Police, to provide food to the sex workers, transgenders and the dwarf people in Kolkata. I have tried to help them as far as I could with volunteers. But police will have to see that they dont face any problem, Banerjee said. A senior officer of Kolkata Police said they had already been providing food to all red-light areas and other underprivileged communities in the city. We will rope in the local NGOs, clubs and volunteers to provide food to the sex workers, said an officer of Siliguri police station in north Bengal where the red-light area of Khalpara is home to more than 1,000 sex workers. Severe storms that rolled across Alabama on Sunday and early Monday left a trail of flooding and damage in their wake. The National Weather Service offices in both Huntsville and Birmingham spent Monday looking at storm damage and have been able to confirm nine tornadoes so far -- six in north Alabama and three in central Alabama. That number could climb, as additional storm surveys will come in the following days. Here are the tornadoes confirmed so far: 1. Marshall County (Boaz): EF2, top winds 132 mph. 2. Cullman County (Walter): EF2, top winds 115 mph. 3. Blount County (Oneonta): EF2, top winds TBD. 4. Cullman County (Johnsons Crossing): EF1, top winds 100 mph. 5. Walker County (Carbon Hill): EF1, top winds 100 mph. 6. DeKalb County (Shiloh/Higdon): EF1, top winds 95 mph. 7. DeKalb County (Collinsville): EF0, top winds 80 mph. 8. Cullman County (Welti): EF0, top winds 80 mph. 9. Blount County (Locust Fork), EF0, top winds TBD. The strongest tornado confirmed thus far is the EF2 with winds estimated at 132 mph that hit the Boaz area in Marshall County. The preliminary report on the storm was released Monday afternoon. The Boaz tornado had a path that was 9.21 miles long. The tornado was 440 yards wide at its peak. It is blamed for two injuries. It touched down at 6:22 p.m. west of Highway 431 south of Denson Avenue, the weather service said. It was on the ground for 11 minutes. It quickly intensified to its peak strength and hit a neighborhood north of Roden Road. The weather service said nearly every single home in that neighborhood had some sort of damage. One single-family home was destroyed and was mostly taken off its foundation, the weather service said. Only two small interior rooms were left standing, where the residents had taken shelter. The weather service noted that the home didnt appear to be anchored well. Another homes exterior walls collapsed, the weather service said, likely after the roof came off. Heres more detail on the other confirmed tornadoes: An EF1 tornado hit Carbon Hill in Walker County with top winds of 100 mph: NWS Storm Survey update from Carbon Hill in Walker County: So far, we've found EF-1 tornado damage, with max winds of 100mph. The survey is still ongoing. #alwx pic.twitter.com/2uAhdx62Ck NWS Birmingham (@NWSBirmingham) April 13, 2020 The weather service also has found an EF0 tornado track in Blount County near Locust Fork and another tornado track with a narrow area of EF2 damage near Oneonta. The weather service in Huntsville has six tornadoes confirmed so far, including the two EF2 tornadoes. Details about some of those tornadoes were available Monday evening. The Collinsville tornado touched down at 10:22 p.m. just east of North Valley Avenue near Collinsville in DeKalb County. It had peak winds of 80 mph, a path length of 3.56 miles and a path width of 110 yards. It did minor tree damage along its path and destroyed a small barn shed along County Road 853. Another tornado, this one an EF1, hit DeKalb County near Higdon, touching down at 9:50 p.m. about a half-mile west of Shiloh Community Church. Large sections of the churchs roof were damaged and a covering over a walkway was ripped away, the weather service said. It had peak winds of 96 mph, a path length of 1.95 miles and a path width of 154 yards. The tornado also did minor damage to several mobile homes as well as trees along the remainder of its path. The weather service said the tornado intensified after it crossed the state line into northwestern Georgia. Storm surveys are continuing and the weather service said updates will be periodically released. The weather service in Huntsville has also released a look at rain totals in north Alabama from Sunday. DeKalb County got the most, with 6.73 inches reported near Sylvania, 6.36 inches near Crossville and 5.68 inches near Fort Payne. The weather service said earlier this morning that a record crest has been reported along Big Wills Creek in Fort Payne, and multiple reports of flooding have come in from that county. [10:37 am] Widespread 3"- 4" with pockets of locally heavier amounts of rainfall fell across northern Alabama and southern middle Tennessee yesterday. Our highest report so far is 6.73" near Sylvania, AL in Dekalb County #HUNwx pic.twitter.com/xAE4ykPxEu NWS Huntsville (@NWSHuntsville) April 13, 2020 Winds were gusty overnight. The weather service in Birmingham overnight issued a rarely-used high wind warning for several central Alabama counties as a line of showers moved through with wind gusts as high as 60 mph. That warning has since expired. The weather service in Huntsville released a list of wind gusts from Sunday and overnight. Some of the higher gusts were 51 mph in Huntsville, 47 mph in Trinity, 46 mph in Muscle Shoals and 40 mph in Decatur. At least 11 people have been killed in Mississippi and five near the Tennessee-Georgia border from Sunday storms, according to The Weather Channel. Mumbai, April 13 : Actor-comedian Vir Das says there are many layers to his character in the upcoming show "Hasmukh", and that different accents play a crucial part. The series traces the story of an unusual character who is timid and awkward till he commits a murder. Killing gives him a high. "Hasmukh is born in a different family and is adopted into a different family. There are many layers to the character and different accents play a crucial part. Being in Saharanpur for a long time, helped catch and perfect how people spoke in the area," he said.A "I have spent a considerable amount of my childhood in Bihar, so I know how people speak in the region. There are such interesting cultural layers in Hasmukh," he added. Also featuring Ranvir Shorey, Manoj Pahwa, Ravi Kishan, Amrita Bagchi, Suhail Nayyar, Inaamulhaq and Raza Murad, "Hasmukh" is directed by Nikhil Gonsalves and will release on April 17. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Assam: Anusuchit Jati Yuva Chatra Parishad urges Assam Govt. to compensate farmers & fishermen April 13,2020 | Source: The Sentinel Assam Anusuchit Jati Yuva Chatra Parishad, Assam has urged the government to compensate the farmers and fishermen who have incurred losses due to the lockdown. Addressing a press meet here on Friday, the bodys president Rubul Das said that, In Assam there are 5 lakh Scheduled Caste people who earn their livelihood by selling fish. Due to the lockdown, they are not being able to catch fishes and thus their businesses have been halted. They are in a state of crises and the Fishery Department and Fishery Minister have not taken any step to uplift their condition. Thus, we appeal to Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal to provide financial assistance to these people. Slamming the Fishery Department, Das further said that the former has failed to implement the Matsya Gandha scheme through which the fishermen can get financial assistance of Rs. 20,000. He appealed the government to implement the scheme at the earliest for the betterment of the community. Further speaking about the agricultural workers, he stated, During the lockdown farmers are not being able to sell their products. The Agricultural Minister has not yet given any assurance to these workers and the State does not have enough cold storage, thus they have incurred huge losses. These farmers should be helped and compensated. Additionally, the body also appealed the government to release the scholarships for SC students. Benny, it is clear that your genuine willingness to join an emergency government faces the cynical deceitfulness of a defendant trying to avoid a trial. If you agree to his terms for the consolidation of his rule, placing him above the law, you will betray the principles that united us. It is not too late to compensate for losing your direction. Moshe Yaalon, former military chief of staff and defense minister, tweeted this personal appeal to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz on April 13 in light of renewed negotiations between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on forming a power-sharing emergency government. It was Yaalon's way of telling Gantz that he can still change his mind about fracturing Blue and White and abandoning the anti-Netanyahu alliance. Gantz is unlikely to do an about-face and attempt to reunite the alliance, which fell apart in one stormy moment on March 29 when he decided to join a Netanyahu-led government. For now, Yaalon and Yair Lapid, Gantz's former leadership colleagues in Blue and White, appear to have been right. They broke from Gantz, taking with them 16 Knesset members, about half of Blue and White's original 33 seats, warning him that he would fall victim to Netanyahus manipulations and become yet another statistic on the prime ministers political hit list. Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman warned Gantz that a coalition with Netanyahu would signal the end of his political career, calling the former army chief a political rookie. Gantz did not listen. Instead, he did what he believed to be right, making the courageous decision to see through all efforts to form a unity government with Netanyahus Likud in order to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and its fallout. The proposed deal would have had him replacing Netanyahu as prime minister in October 2021, but coalition talks blew up on April 8, on the eve of Passover, after Netanyahu pulled the emergency brake, leaving Gantz with only half of his party, without a coalition agreement and knowing that he would have to return his mandate to President Reuven Rivlin on April 13 and concede defeat in his effort to form a new government. Gantz's 28 days to form a government end April 13 with the stroke of midnight. Meanwhile, Netanyahus poll numbers continue to climb under the auspices of the coronavirus crisis, breaking his own popularity records. Polls show his Likud winning more than 40 Knesset seats if elections were held today, providing him with a favorable launch pad for a fourth round of elections after three inconclusive rounds since April 2019. Nonetheless, one of Gantzs top aides told Al-Monitor that he is at peace with his decision and does not regret it for a moment. Benny Gantz felt that Lapid together with Liberman were managing him, not allowing him to make decisions, the aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He did not like the direction in which they were leading and preferred to take the risk that a unity government might eventually fall through. If that happens, he will face the public with a clear conscience. Netanyahu will be blamed for a fourth round of elections, and the voters will judge. That is also why Gantz associates are ridiculing Yaalons impassioned appeal. The attempt to portray Gantz as a political novice who naively fell prey to a devious swindler has only strengthened his belief that his former party colleagues never accepted his leadership and thought they were better than he was. They ignored that he was their strongest brand and voter magnet. Of note, polls conducted after Blue and White disintegrated show most party voters backing Gantzs decision and not giving Lapid points for refusing to go along and join a unity government. Gantz has been at a political nadir in recent days, the target of venomous criticism from the center-left political camp and accused of single-handedly dismantling the only viable alternative to emerge to Netanyahus rule in the past decade. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to view these latest developments as Gantzs political demise. The exact opposite may, in fact, be the case. On Passover eve, Netanyahu reneged on the understandings he had reached with Gantz and pressed his demand for a greater say in the decisions of the Judicial Appointments Committee. Gantz rejected his condition but nonetheless maintained a dignified stance and did not burn his bridges. He has avoided attacking Netanyahu publicly and being dragged into a blame game, which Netanyahu would have liked. Down the line, he may well be given credit for the calm fashion in which he dealt with Netanyahus machinations. Meanwhile, April 12 marked an important development for Gantz when President Rivlin informed him that although he would not grant an extension of his 28-day mandate, which he received based on the endorsement of 61 of 120 Knesset members, he would also not hand the mandate to Netanyahu, who does not have the required Knesset majority to form a government. That means that unless Blue and White and the Likud somehow put together a governing coalition by the close of April 13, Rivlin will hand the mandate to the Knesset. Gantz is the Knesset speaker, and he could push ahead with proposed legislation to ban an indicted politician, such as Netanyahu, from heading a government. Rivlins move has pushed Netanyahu into a corner, forcing him to make a quick decision: veer back on course toward a unity government with Gantz or plunge Israel into new elections in August. Netanyahu has in recent days probed the possibility of putting together a 61-seat Knesset majority without Gantz, but so far without any luck. If Netanyahu walks away from the negotiations, both he and Gantz will have three weeks to try and cobble together Knesset majorities. If they both fail, elections will follow as the default. Slamming the door in the face of a possible partnership with Gantz carries numerous risks for Netanyahu. His own internal polling indicates that a majority of voters, including those on the moderate right, would like to see a unity government to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. Netanyahu also knows full well the fickleness of polls and the risks of the harsh economic forecast for the country. This is a lethal combination that could bury him politically in the next few months, after more than a million unemployed voters realize their circumstances will not be improving anytime soon and point the finger of blame at Netanyahu. Although Netanyahu currently enjoys strong public approval for his handling of the health and economic crises, public sentiment could shift to his detriment. If Israel is dragged into an expensive and wasteful fourth consecutive election, he will bear most of the blame, and many voters, including in the Likud, could turn their back on him. Gantz, on the other hand, would look like the responsible adult, as the man who placed the interests of the state above his own. The coronavirus pandemic continues to cause chaos around the UK and across the world. Heres your morning briefing of everything you may have missed overnight. Prime minister discharged from hospital after being admitted for coronavirus symptoms Boris Johnson was discharged from hospital on Easter Sunday, seven days after being admitted for coronavirus symptoms and following a spell in intensive care. The prime minister will continue to recuperate at Chequers - his official country retreat - and will not return to work immediately following advice from his doctors, Downing Street said. In an emotional video message, Mr Johnson said the NHS saved my life, no question and singled out two nurses for praise who were at his bedside when things could have gone either way. British public back tighter lockdown restrictions if needed to beat disease A new poll found the British public backs unprecedented coronavirus lockdown restrictions and are willing to accept tighter controls if experts deem them necessary to beat the disease. The BMG survey for The Independent found voters are prepared to see parks closed and tighter limits placed on workers travelling to non-essential jobs, and would regard an extension of the current lockdown to the start of July as reasonable. But there were indications support will wane if orders to stay indoors and avoid social contact stretch too far into the summer, with an extension to the start of August regarded as unreasonable by 41 per cent and the start of September by 48 per cent. Transport staff could be among first sent back to work when lockdown is lifted Sources revealed transport staff would be one of the first sent back to work if ministers decide to lift lockdown restrictions on a sector by sector basis. It would be part of a drive to get the economy moving again that could also see schools re-opened. The government is due to review the coronavirus lockdown restrictions later this week, however there is no expectation they will be lifted for weeks. UK could be worst-hit country in Europe, experts warn, as sombre day sees death toll pass 10,000 The UK endured a sombre day in its battle against coronavirus as the death toll soared beyond 10,000 on Sunday amid warnings the UK could be the worst-hit country in Europe. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, confirmed that some 737 people had died in hospital from the virus, taking the tally of UK deaths from Covid-19 to 10,612 on Sunday. The news came as one of the governments most senior scientific advisers warned that the UK was likely to be one of the worst, if not the worst, affected countries in Europe by the outbreak. More than a thousand Bahrainis, most of them pilgrims visiting religious sites, have been stranded for months in Iran. Gulf Air, Bahrains state-owned national carrier, has begun flying to Iran to repatriate Bahrainis stranded there amid the coronavirus pandemic, the airline has said in a statement. More than a thousand Bahrainis, most of them pilgrims visiting Shia Muslim religious sites, have been stranded for more than two months in the Islamic republic, which is the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East. Gulf Air has begun operating direct flights to Iran to expedite the safe return of citizens, the airline said on Monday. There have been no direct flights since January 2016 between Bahrain and Iran, which have no diplomatic ties and long-standing differences. Manama alleges Tehran has stoked unrest in the island state, a charge Iran denies. Bahrain, which has recorded 1,348 coronavirus cases and six related deaths, has struggled to find other airlines willing to fly to Iran and has managed to repatriate only a few hundred people, prompting criticism by some citizens. Bahrains initial cases of the coronavirus were among Bahrainis returning from Iran via third countries, which caused Manama to rebuke Tehran over not stamping their passports. Many Bahrainis go to Iran to visit Shia holy cities such as Mashhad and Qom, where the coronavirus outbreak in Iran began. Bahrain, where the Shia comprise a majority of the population, has no restrictions on travel to Iran, unlike its neighbour and ally, Saudi Arabia. Gulf Air cancelled most of its services in mid-March due to the spread of the virus, but is still flying to and from London, Paris, Frankfurt and Manila, the statement said. Gulf Air has successfully returned Bahraini citizens from the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of Turkey, the statement said. Other Gulf Arab states are using their national carriers to bring their citizens home. Kuwait said on Monday it would start another repatriation process next week for 50,000 Kuwaitis around the world. Last month Kuwait said it had flown home more than 2,700 citizens. 1. ECOWAS continues to closely monitor the evolution of the Coronavirus pandemic in the world and particularly in West Africa. As of 5 April 2020, the 15 Member States are affected by the pandemic with 1 739 confirmed cases of contamination, 55 deaths and 328 persons who have fully recovered. It should be noted that approximately 95% of deaths are patients with comorbid conditions. 2. In light of the spread of the pandemic, the ECOWAS Commission reaffirms its solidarity with Member States and welcomes all the measures already taken to contain the spread of the pandemic and care for the sick. It remains committed to supporting Member States in the fight against this pandemic. In this regard, the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), its specialised health Institution responsible for coordinating the response at the regional level, has drawn up a Regional Strategic Plan with all Member States. 3. Thus, to address the emergency at hand, ECOWAS has immediately made available financial support from its own resources, in addition to assistance from international partners, for the purchase of medical supplies and equipment essential for the fight against the pandemic. 4. WAHO has already purchased and dispatched to the 15 Member States: - 30 500 diagnostic test kits; - 10 000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) (Coveralls, Aprons, gowns, gloves, goggles, boots); - 740 000 prescription tablets (Chloroquine and Azithromycin); 5. Orders have been placed to acquire for Member States, the following items: - 240,000 diagnostic kits; - 240,000 extraction kits; - 250,000 viral sample transport equipment; - 285,100 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); - 268,1000 masks for medical personnel (face masks, surgical masks, full face masks); - 120 ventilators; - Several thousand litres of alcohol gel and disinfectants. 6. WAHO is also working, in close collaboration with the specialised services in Member States, to deploy personnel and epidemiological surveillance and data collection tools, strengthen the capacity of reference laboratories and train technical personnel. 7. ECOWAS and its Institution, WAHO, continue both internal and external resource mobilisation, with a view to increasing the availability of medical materials and equipment necessary to prevent, monitor and combat this pandemic. This will expand its scope of support to supplement Member States own efforts. 8. In addition, ECOWAS is working to complement its intervention as part of a Short and Medium Term State Assistance Plan (humanitarian assistance and support for economic recovery). 9. This is the place to thank all our partners with whom we work, for their financial and technical support to the Community in these difficult times. 10. The ECOWAS Commission is taking this opportunity to urge people to continue to implement the measures recommended by the Health Authorities, and to comply with the prescribed hygiene guidelines. Together, we will win the fight against COVID-19. Long live ECOWAS! Long live the ECOWAS Member States! H.E. Jean-Claude Kassi Brou President, ECOWAS Commission Beijing, April 13 : China reported the highest number of new coronavirus cases in nearly six weeks on Monday, as it tried to prevent a second wave of COVID-19 infections, a media report said. Having largely stamped out domestic transmission of the disease, China, where the pandemic originated last December, has been slowly easing curbs on movement as it tries to get its economy back on track, but there were fears that a rise in imported cases could spark a second wave of the pandemic - especially among Chinese citizens returning from abroad, said the South China Morning Post report. Authorities repoted 108 new coronavirus infections over the past day, including 98 cases among travellers returning from abroad, according to data released on Monday by the National Health Commission. This is the highest number of reported infections since March 6, when authorities reported 143 new cases. Beijing on March 28 banned the entry of foreigners into China. Around 300 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the city by Saturday, including 100 infected people who did not appear to be showing any symptoms, the South China Morning Post reported. China has so far reported 82,160 coronavirus cases including 3,341 deaths and 77,663 recovered patients. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Supplies are unloaded after being delivered to Golo. By Zhang Yandong, Hao Zhaojian and Yu Hao AL-FASHIR, Sudan, Apr. 13 -- A helicopter with the marking of UN and the national flag of China from the 3rd China Medium Utility Helicopter Unit (CMUHU03) arrived at the mission point in Golo of Darfur after one-and-a-quarter hours' flight. The helicopter brought 1.7 tons of urgently needed living and medical supplies for the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) personnel stationed in Golo. The mission has greatly improved the local pandemic prevention and control capability and is highly recognized by peacekeepers from various countries. The helicopter is in flight. It is learnt that Golo, being located in the northeastern part of the Marrah Mountains, is the highest mission point in Darfur with severe shortage of supplies. It is inaccessible to ordinary traffic and can only be supplied by air transportation. At present, as the pandemic continues to spread overseas, the UNAMID has suspended the transportation of ordinary passengers to reduce the risk of infection, only carries out the much-needed supplies support and non-infectious personnel medical evacuation and preparation tasks. Peacekeepers complete disinfection after the flight. Colonel Chu Zhiqin, commander of CMUHU03, said: "As the only military aviation force of UNAMID, we carried out the pandemic prevention and control work while resolutely completing missions. By now, we have firmly ensured zero infection. " Nearly three months after the first confirmed coronavirus case on United States soil, hospitalizations and deaths continue to grow daily by the thousands. Sadly, projections indicate we are far from out of the woods. However, amid an endless cascade of missteps and missed signals by federal decisionmakers, Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, offers an example of how science-based, decisive leadership in the fight against the coronavirus can save lives. On Jan. 23, three days after the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in the U.S., the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, led by Dr. Sara Cody, established an incident command center. This proactive step, eight days before the countys first confirmed case, was the first of many examples of public officials in Silicon Valley demonstrating forward-thinking leadership driven by data and science. Dr. Cody made a difficult decision on March 13 to cancel most public gatherings of over 35 people. Two days later she was confronted with a much more dire reality. New results from a county public health study estimated 8% of all patients at area health clinics suffering from respiratory symptoms had COVID-19. This discovery showed what scarce testing could not: The coronavirus was more widespread than we initially thought. Shutting down one of the most economically prosperous regions in the world was not an easy call. However, county officials were faced with a deadly virus spreading at an exponential rate. Each day of delay could endanger thousands of lives. On a tense Sunday night call, they made the decision to halt all essential travel and operations in the area. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that if New York City acted in the same way a week sooner than it did, it could have reduced its death toll by up to 80%. The next day, March 16, Santa Clara County collaborated with five other Bay Area counties to announce an unprecedented shelter-in-place order affecting 6.7 million residents. At the time of the order, Santa Clara County was considered one of the nations coronavirus hot zones with 138 cases and four deaths. Since then, the number of national cases and deaths have grown more than 10 times faster than county figures. California finally issued its own statewide stay-home order four days later and, in part due to the delay, has seen its cases grow more than four times faster than the countys cases. Dr. Codys bold action when every hour counted protected the Bay Area from the overflowing hospitals and mobile morgues we see in some cities around the world. Santa Clara County lies in the heart of the science and technology revolution, and our local leaders demonstrated the same qualities that launched the region to prosperity: reliance on data, deference to experts and commitment to collaboration. Dr. Cody recently told me she believes acting early may have caused disruption, but it also saved lives and reduced long-term harm. Waiting to act still would have led to eventual disruption, but without any of the benefits. That is the kind of forward thinking that we need from our public servants. We need federal leadership that is willing to listen to experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates who also called for a unified national stay-home order. We need federal leadership that analyzes data to assess national readiness, and then proactively uses authorities like the Defense Production Act to fill the gaps in vital supplies like testing equipment and protective gear. We need federal leadership that solves problems by convening and empowering experienced public servants, expert academics and private sector leaders. It isnt hard to see why Silicon Valley exhibited a model public health response in the face of the coronavirus 19 crisis. The evidence is clear. But the truth is this: Smart governance can be replicated anywhere. It just takes public officials who are committed to listening to experts and collaborating with others. This moment calls for innovative and decisive leadership. Federal decision makers need to look no further than Santa Clara County for the blueprint on how to take the lead and save lives. Ro Khanna represents District 17 (Silicon Valley) in the U.S. House of Representatives. This is an opinion column. Take this as a warning, Alabama lawmakers. You, too, elected officials. From the governors mansion to the town council, be warned. If you break Alabamas ethics laws, you may go to prison. It doesnt matter how much power you have. Nearly four years after a Lee County jury convicted Mike Hubbard of breaking ethics laws he helped pass, the former Alabama House speaker lost his last appeal mostly. In a messy opinion, with two justices recusing, and others concurring or dissenting for their own reasons, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld enough of the counts against Hubbard that he will have to spend some time in prison. The opinion kicks the case back to the Court of Criminal Appeals to figure out just how long hell be there. Thats significant. Five years ago, Hubbard was the most powerful politician in Alabama. Soon he will be an inmate in one of the prisons the Legislature has spent decades neglecting. Hubbard used his office to advance his personal business interests. Thats a fact now. Theres no allegedly attached to it. Theres no footnote saying if this survives appeals. He did it. Hes a crook. Hes guilty. And now hes going to jail. But theres another warning embedded in this ruling that elected officials need to heed, even though its much more obscure. Its a cipher hidden in the counts the court reversed. Under Alabamas ethics law, its illegal for a principal to give a thing of value to a public official. A principal is any person or any business that hires a lobbyist. And that definition has caused business folks a lot of heartburn. The question has been this: When a company employs the lobbyist, are the people who run that company also principals? Because, otherwise, it would only be the company itself, which is just a piece of paper on file with the Secretary of State not anybody who could do time in jail. The jury in Lee County found that, when Will Brooke, who was then a board member of the Business Council of Alabama, helped Hubbard with his business, Brooke had been a principal. Brooke was never accused of a crime, but he and other principals got subpoenaed to appear before grand juries and were compelled to testify against Hubbard. Jimmy Rane, the CEO of Great Southern Wood, was another. Rob Burton, president of Hoar Construction, was another. In its verdict, the jury said they were principals who had done Hubbard favors. The Supreme Court disagreed. The court found that Brooke was too far removed from hiring and firing of lobbyists at BCA to be a principal, even though he served on the board that supervised the CEO who did hire and fire lobbyists. The court declined to say whether Rane and Burton were principals. Instead, it nixed the charges involving them for another reason. When Rane and Burton gave Hubbard money for his business, they received stock in return. In effect, they were buying something at full-value from Hubbard, not doing him a favor, the court found. You can wrinkle your nose at the courts argument if you want, but those guys are free and clear. In the future, others like them could be, too. And thats the danger if youre an elected official. Thats the other half of the warning. Unlike federal bribery charges, where every bribe requires a briber, state ethics are only certain to snag the public official. Governor, mayor, county commissioners all of you. If you break Alabamas ethics laws, you may face the music. And like Hubbard, youll probably face it alone. Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. You can follow his work on his Facebook page, The War on Dumb. And on Twitter. And on Instagram. More columns by Kyle Whitmire Finding meaning in the ruins of coronavirus and Legos This is the most dangerous election. And the most important. Alabamas governor went on Twitter for a coronavirus Q&A. It was a disaster. Alabama is stuck on autopilot What Ill take from the quarantine: My daughters first steps Stop with the California comparisons, Kay Ivey Lieutenant governor demands Alabama coronavirus task force do its job If Alabama has to go back to work, so should the Legislature In grief for normal life The truth will tell itself TDT | Manama His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa delivered a speech yesterday to Bahrains students, amid national efforts to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The royal address was aired through a video call during the Be Aware programme on Bahrain TV. In his message, His Majesty the King said: In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. My sons and daughters, the students; Gods peace, mercy and blessings be upon you. At the outset, I would like to laud the good efforts of those in charge of this purposeful programme that is distinguished by its presentation and addressing of topics that concern us all as we face this God-willing temporary epidemic. On behalf of everyone, it gives us great pleasure to renew our sincere thanks and profound gratitude to our faithful Crown Prince for his diligent follow-up and management of Team Bahrain in dealing with the current circumstance, by anticipating many highly effective remedial and precautionary measures, and continuing to confront responsibly the risks of the epidemic to eliminate it with Gods help. We also highly appreciate the Bahraini medical team for its endless efforts and for achieving results that rise to the challenge. We also express appreciation to our esteemed government, headed by His Royal Highness the Prime Minister, which is exerting great efforts in the service of our beloved nation. My sons and daughters, this is a good opportunity to communicate with you from my position as a caring parent through this video call provided by this programme, to be reassured about the progress of your educational process and results in light of these exceptional circumstances across the whole world. Our country is addressing them with determination, fortitude and steadfastness, and I have learned that your academic status is fine, praise be to God. You, dear sons and daughters, have been, since the outbreak of this pandemic, at the top of our priorities to protect you, keep you safe, and take every necessary measure to help you complete your school year smoothly, safely and successfully, and to continue to do your duty diligently and assiduously. I am confident you will achieve the set results as expected from you. This is also a good opportunity to pay tribute and express appreciation to the distinguished school teachers and administrators for their sincere endeavour to continue the educational process remotely, and in the best possible way. Remember, our dear sons and daughters, that the members of Team Bahrain were one day students like you, and the day will come, with the grace of God, and as a result of your diligence, you will take over from them and continue their journey in the service of the homeland and across all areas. In such circumstances, it is imperative that we adhere to our straightforward national approach to protecting and prioritising the high interest of our country. This is evident in the behaviour of the honourable people of Bahrain, through their sincere efforts, self-discipline and responsible awareness in order to, with Gods help, reach safe shores, achieve a full recovery and return to our life as we know it before the virus. After taking and complying with all the measures, we rely on God the Almighty. We resort to Him, we strengthen our faith in His ability to lift this scourge from Muslims and all people, and we pray to Him to save everyone from evil and harm, and to bless our country and our people with further goodness and serenity. In conclusion, we extend our sincere congratulations to all on the advent of the Holy Month of Ramadan, in which we look forward to goodness and joy, even though its circumstances this year are different. We pray to God to bestow on us the grace and blessings of the holy month, and to make it auspicious for us, the Islamic nation, and everyone. Peace and Gods mercy and blessings be upon you. First Minister Arlene Foster last night welcomed the news that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had left hospital after his battle with coronavirus. Mr Johnson left St Thomas' Hospital in London yesterday, a week after being admitted with symptoms. The DUP leader tweeted: "Wonderful to see our Prime Minister back in front of the camera and making such progress. "Let's keep the human shield around our greatest national asset, the NHS. Who knows which of us will need our fantastic health service staff next. Play your part. Stay at home." UUP leader Steve Aiken also welcomed the news of Mr Johnson's discharge, tweeting: "Good to see him out of hospital." In a video posted yesterday on Twitter, the Prime Minister called the NHS "unconquerable" after seeing first-hand how it was dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. "The NHS has saved my life, no question," Mr Johnson, who was wearing a suit, said. He admitted there was a 48-hour period when things "could have gone either way". In a tweet following her fiance's release from hospital, Carrie Symonds said there had been some "very dark" times in the past week. Mr Johnson admitted he had personally seen during his seven days in St Thomas' the "pressure the NHS is under". But he said the NHS had the resolve to get the country through the emergency. He said: "We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. "It is the best of this country. "It is unconquerable. "It is powered by love." Heralding the "personal courage" of everyone from doctors to cooks, he mentioned by name the nurses who watched over him all night while he fought severe coronavirus symptoms in intensive care - Jenny from New Zealand and also Luis from Portugal. He added: "The reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed." Mr Johnson praised the country's efforts in following the "tough" social distancing measures over the Easter weekend and said the measures were "proving their worth" in protecting the NHS. The public comments from the Prime Minister yesterday could be the last for a number of days as he prepares to head to his country residence, Chequers in Buckinghamshire, to convalesce. A Number 10 spokesman confirmed Mr Johnson "would not be returning to work immediately" after being told to rest by his doctors. Following his discharge Ms Symonds, who is expecting the couple's baby, tweeted: "I cannot thank our magnificent NHS enough. The staff at St Thomas' Hospital have been incredible. "I will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you. "There were times last week that were very dark indeed." This is not the job market Alex Hochman envisioned for graduating seniors at the University of San Francisco. Hochman, senior director of USFs Career Services Center, knows how abruptly and dramatically the coronavirus pandemic changed the landscape. On Feb. 28, the school held a sold-out career fair, with 76 employers cramming the largest room on campus. Most schools around the country have since canceled similar fairs. USF held smaller virtual events recently, with only three employers participating in one and seven in another instead of the usual 10 to 15. Soon-to-be college graduates, after four weeks of adapting to shelter-in-place orders and the sudden transition to online classes, are starting to realize the challenges of diving into a devastated job market. We feel like theyre really waking up now, Hochman said. Theyre thinking, Oh, I also have to get a job. We had empty appointments previously and (last) week the schedule filled up. The U.S. officially lost 701,000 jobs in March, according to the U.S. Labor Department, but nearly 17 million people filed initial unemployment claims in the three-week period ending April 4. Some experts predict the unemployment rate will soar past 20% in the months ahead. Thats hardly ideal timing for the more than 1.3 million students expected to graduate from a two-year or four-year college. They typically absorb the harshest blow: Unemployment was nearly twice as high for young workers (ages 16 to 24) during the recession of 2008 and 09. Till von Wachter, a UCLA economics professor who has done extensive research on the subject, hopes the economy will recover more quickly this time, given its robust state before the virus struck. He also described the recent unemployment numbers as staggering, and he understands the lessons of the past. Seniors graduating in a recession suffer earnings losses that last 10 years, and theyre at risk of faster declines in health and mortality later, von Wachter said. But theres a chance well snap back quicker from this recession, if layoffs arent pervasive and we can solve the virus fairly soon. Not all the numbers are bleak. According to data released Friday by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 64% of employers are not revoking offers to full-time recruits and summer interns. Only 14% are definitely revoking offers (mostly for interns), and the other 22% are considering it. Still, notable companies such as Disney and Yelp canceled their internship programs because of the pandemic. And several industries are experiencing massive tumult: 77% of travel and transportation companies have imposed hiring freezes or layoffs, according to the job consultancy candor.co, followed by 64% of educational institutions and 62% of retail companies. UC Berkeley senior Carmel Lee knows the new reality all too well. Lee, a business major, started her job search in November and soon connected with an energy efficiency company in San Francisco for a sales development role. She went through several phone interviews, completed a sample project and spent three hours doing in-person interviews. Company officials gave Lee glowing feedback, then called her primary references and later her secondary references. That was on March 13. Three days later, Bay Area officials announced shelter-in-place orders, effectively smothering the local economy. Lee didnt receive the job offer she expected; the company didnt explain its reasoning, but she suspected it imposed a hiring freeze. I think it was mainly the timing of everything, Lee said. Another company with whom she interviewed also retreated in mid-March, focusing on moving its business to the new work-from-home dynamics. Lee, frustrated, paused her job search she plans to resume soon and applied for an accelerated business administration masters program she had been considering. Ethan Dixon, another senior at Cal, similarly took a break from his job hunt when the school shifted to online instruction. Dixon, with a double major in data science and economics, had been sending out applications every few days, seeking a business/data intelligence analyst position in New York or San Francisco. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Hes not hugely nervous, as he put it, because he will graduate with marketable skills from a prestigious school. But Dixon also knows several friends who had summer internships canceled, so hes bracing for months of post-graduation unemployment. Its definitely very complicated, Dixon said. I think my parents are nervous, but at least to me theyre trying to be optimistic. They know Im worrying about it plenty. UCLAs von Wachter suggested graduating seniors stay flexible in light of the evolving market. Maybe take jobs in other occupations, or move to a different city where better jobs might be available. Hochman, the USF adviser, finds hope in his daily checks of Handshake, the social network geared to helping college students find jobs. He saw more than 10,700 jobs and internships listed the other day, nearly 3,000 of them in the Bay Area. Hochman expects the Bay Area to recover more quickly than the rest of the country, given its abundance of technology companies. Even so, this crazy-fast reversal from rampaging job market to ravaged one made Lee ruefully think about the joke she made to her housemates a few months ago. At the time, she was hearing back from companies and feeling optimistic. Wow, Im so glad were not graduating into the 2008 recession, she said then. As it turns out, unfortunately, theyre graduating into its encore. Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick THE founder of a cross-country race for children says his latest scheme will unite the community when the coronavirus outbreak is over. Stephen Lamacraft, who organises the annual Childrens Challenge on the Culden Faw estate near Hambleden, is launching a network of expedition societies which will host treks, outdoor activities and skills workshops for primary schools. Shiplake primary, which his four children attend, has signed up alongside the Robert Piggott junior and infant schools in Wargrave, Nettlebed Community School, Peppard, Sonning Common and Crazies Hill primaries and the independent Rupert House and St Marys schools in Henley. Mr Lamacraft, 42, hopes the towns five state primaries will follow and is seeking corporate sponsors to subsidise the scheme. Parents will pay for their whole family to enjoy hikes in the Peak District, Exmoor, the Brecon Beacons, the Wye valley and other destinations. These will include activities such as rock climbing, abseiling and canoeing, all supervised by professional instructors. There will also be classes on topics such as healthy eating, positive thinking and first aid and there is financial help for those on free school meals. Some activities will just be for one school while others would mix families from two or more, helping the children to forge links before they meet again at secondary school. The schools pay nothing and Mr Lamacraft will visit to demonstrate equipment such as climbing harnesses and ice axes. The scheme should help them achieve favourable Ofsted reports as they are judged on building pupils character and working with neighbouring schools. More than 300 people were due to take part in the first expeditions, a hike across Exmoor in May and another in the Peak District in June, but these have been cancelled because of the global pandemic. Mr Lamacraft, a former investment fund manager who lives in Northfield Avenue, Shiplake, has refunded everyones money and promised to reschedule the trips. He said: Weve had no choice with the ban on gatherings but its the right thing to do in these difficult times. People are disappointed, of course, but Ive had loads of messages asking when the new dates are. When this period of isolation ends, there will be huge demand for bringing people closer together. Weve seen so many examples of people helping each other recently and this will be a chance to keep that community spirit going. Mr Lamacraft, who started the Childrens Challenge in 2017 and now runs it full-time, came up with his latest scheme after arranging several one-off treks which raised tens of thousands for charity. These included a hike up Pen Y Fan, the highest mountain in South Wales, involving 50 pupils from Trinity Primary School in Henley and Shiplake primary, and a 21km trek across Exmoor for about 70 children from Trinity, Shiplake and the Piggott schools. These were first held in 2018, a year after Mr Lamacraft and family friend Tom Cary climbed Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in Britain, with their seven-year-old sons Alexander and Alfred. Mr Lamacraft said: Children always love walking together and its a chance for the parents to socialise. It feels like a real accomplishment getting your kids to the top of the hill rather than just doing it with friends. However, the old model didnt allow the schools to get the benefit. They dont have the resources to organise these activities but if theyre up for taking part, they can take ownership by setting up their own web page and newsletters. Its very much their expedition and it helps families get to know each other better. Theres no better way to bond than to go up the Brecons for five or six hours in winds of 60mph, then enjoy a few beers by a wood-burning stove. You feel closer to people when youve shared a testing but enjoyable experience. If children go hiking with just their own family, they might complain about being cold, tired and hungry. Being in a large group with their friends gives them the confidence to push themselves. The trips will give the children a solid foundation as they become more independent and will be good experience for future challenges like the Duke of Edinburghs Award. They could also tie in with subjects like geography as there are fascinating rock formations in the Peak District and pupils could learn about them before they go. Were thankful to every school which is taking part as theyre giving their pupils some wonderful memories in their formative years. One summer in the mid-1970s, there was a knock on the great oak front door of Knockdrin Castle in Mullingar, Co Westmeath. The current owner, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, then in his twenties and studying at Trinity, opened the door to find an American couple outside. They were castle buffs who had read about the neo-Gothic pile and decided to tip up on a whim. Could they, they asked, have a look around? Ferdinand obliged, and they came to a halt at the bottom of the great oak staircase that is one of the castle's show pieces. "The man," says Ferdinand now, "asked me if I would sell him the staircase. Just the staircase." He proposed to disassemble it, take it back to the US and build a house around it. And he would - at his own expense - have a precise replica made to replace the original at Knockdrin. "That was 1976 and he offered me US$100,000 for it," says Ferdinand, "I kicked myself later that I didn't say yes to that one." If that American couple were to return today, they could purchase the entire castle, stairs and all, plus 500 acres for somewhere in excess of 5m. Expand Close Novel gothic: Knockdrin Castles distinctive style has a lighter touch than some of its contemporaries, and the showpiece carved oak staircase is top-lit with a central glazed dome that highlights the decorative plasterwork / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Novel gothic: Knockdrin Castles distinctive style has a lighter touch than some of its contemporaries, and the showpiece carved oak staircase is top-lit with a central glazed dome that highlights the decorative plasterwork The 12-bedroom property originally came to market in 2017 with a price tag of 13.5m, which then included c1,000 acres. It was relaunched in February this year, asking in excess of 5m with 500 acres, something of a bargain when you consider that this historic slice of Irish architecture costs less than either of the two D4 redbricks currently for sale on Ailesbury Road. The early 19th century Gothic Revival castle is believed to have been built around 1810 by Sir Richard Levinge, then Lord Lieutenant of Westmeath. The first Sir Richard Levinge had come to Ireland during the Williamite wars and had wrested ownership of the 12,000 acre estate from the Anglo-Norman Tuite family around 1700. Although Sir Richard Morrison was commissioned to carry out the design, the castle is thought to have been built to drawings by James Shiel, assistant to Sir Francis Johnston, the architect known for some of the best Gothic Revival buildings in Ireland. According to architectural historian Peter Pearson, Knockdrin is one of the best preserved and finest of these mansions in a county rich in them. Unlike some examples of the period, however, Knockdrin's Gothick-ry is embellished with a light hand, and the place is surprisingly bright. The carved oak staircase that is such a feature of the house is top-lit with a central glazed dome that lights up the delicate plasterwork and arched niches of the first-floor gallery. Expand Close Knockdrin Castle / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Knockdrin Castle On the ground floor, a line of south-facing full-length windows floods light into the linked reception rooms which include a drawing room, library, dining room and ballroom. The accommodation extends to some 1,800sqm with seven main bedrooms, and 12 in total. Knockdrin Castle has another claim to fame besides its architecture. British wartime prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill was a regular visitor as a boy when his parents would stay with the Levinges to hunt with the Westmeaths - this is prime hunting country. Later on, during the War of Independence, says Ferdinand, "he wanted to find a bit of quiet so he asked the Levinges whether he could come and stay there for a bit. I gather he was there for about three months alone in Knockdrin." The Crown bedroom is where he took up residence. It was 1961 when industrialist Hans von Prondzynski, his wife, Irene Countess Grote, and their four children moved to Knockdrin from Germany. At the time the Berlin Wall was going up. "But we left because my father had health issues at the time," says Ferdinand, "and he was advised that he should change his lifestyle and should maybe go into farming. He couldn't afford to buy a farm in Germany but prices in Ireland were much cheaper." Expand Close Knockdrin Castle / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Knockdrin Castle He remembers that Knockdrin had "one curiosity", the entire place was painted top to bottom in a peculiar shade of light green. The previous owner, Irish actor Paddy Dunne-Cullinan, had bought the house during the ''National Emergency'' and that was the only paint he could get. The next few years, says Ferdinand, were ones of great freedom - he learnt to drive a tractor at the age of nine, and he and his three sisters roamed the estate, learning to speak English from the children on the farm, before he went to board at Headfort School in Kells. You develop a few odd habits, growing up in a big house, he says. "If I'm in a house, instead of looking for someone, I shout. In Knockdrin, you'd no hope of looking around to find someone - you could be doing that half the day. So you'd stand in the hall and just shout - and I've kept that habit." His parents didn't stay long at Knockdrin. "My father only stuck with it for five years and then he got totally bored with farming and went back to Germany and into industry." But they kept the property and Ferdinand would often spend time there when he was studying law at Trinity, or later when he was moved into academia. Ferdinand went on to become President of DCU from 2000 to 2010. "I had an extraordinary time there," he says. He met, for example, three consecutive American presidents, George Bush senior and junior - "you mightn't fancy their politics," he says, "but they were extraordinarily nice people" - as well as the Clintons, with whom he became friendly. Expand Close Knockdrin Castle / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Knockdrin Castle His parents retired back to Knockdrin in the 1980s, and lived there until their deaths - his mother passed away three years ago. Ferdinand now lives in Aberdeen, retired from his role as Prinicipal and Vice-Chancellor at the Robert Gordon University, though he continues to be involved in mentoring young academics. "I am sad [to be selling]," he says, "it is a place that has been a big thing in my life for so much of it. But I have to be realistic. It doesn't make sense for a middle-aged couple to live in that on their own. You have to accept the inevitable." Knockdrin is, he says, in good structural condition. A new kitchen was installed a few years ago. However, new owners would no doubt want to put their stamp on the place, modernising the bathrooms and upgrading the services. Selling agent David Ashmore says: "What's remarkable is how private Knockdrin is and how protected the vistas are, the castle is deep within the estate, and there are lovely rolling hills, and with the stands of old mature woods, and newer commercial coniferous timber, it is very well protected." The entire estate, which runs to more than a thousand acres, is available at a price in excess of 10m, and comprises roughly 600 acres of arable land, 425 acres of woodland, and 100 acres of lakes. Four estate cottages are also included in the sale. All fishing and hunting rights come with the purchase. Knockdrin is about an hour's drive from Dublin and its airport, and the nearest M4 junction is five minutes' drive. The closest town is Mullingar, with the village of Crookedwood just over 3km away. 12 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms Era: Early 19th century Size: 1,800sqm Agent: David Ashmore, Ireland Sothebys International Realty (01) 905 9790; 087 251 2909 Viewing: Strictly by arrangement New Delhi, April 13 : Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' on Monday held a meeting with students and teachers of colleges, universities and schools through video conferencing and discussed the prevailing situation in the academic world after the lockdown in the country. The Union Minister assured the teachers and students of all possible help if someone falls ill due to coronavirus. "Contact your Vice-Chancellor or Principal if any of you catches coronavirus," said Pokhriyal. He listened to their problems and appreciated their efforts in creating awareness about the steps taken by the government to fight Covid-19. "I thank 1000 universities, 46000 colleges, 15 lakh schools, more than 1 crore teachers and 33 crore students who have extended their support in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Their contribution in creating awareness among the masses about the deadly virus is immense," said Pokhriyal. It is due to the resolve by the teachers that online learning and classes have begun across the country amid the lockdown, which is benefiting crores of students, he added. "The HRD ministry is aware of the problems faced by students and teachers in the lockdown and I assure all students and teachers that even Prime Minister is standing with them," Pokhriyal said. Azerbaijan's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Russia Polad Bulbul oglu appealed to the citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan temporarily residing in the Russian Federation in connection with the COVID-19 outbreak and border closure. "As you know, the global situation remains tense due to the widespread of the coronavirus; most countries, including Azerbaijan, have closed their borders. The entry into the country is prohibited until April 20. In this regard, I urge you not to travel to the Russian-Azerbaijani border. While there, you are creating problems for yourself, the Russian side, the government of Dagestan, the Azerbaijani side. I beg you not to complicate the situation," Polad Bulbul oglu said. He explained that since large Russian cities are remote from the border (65 km to Derbent, 185 km to Makhachkala), the embassy will not be able to provide the necessary assistance to those who are near the Russian-Azerbaijani border. "In this regard, I ask you to be understanding of my request. I understand that its difficult, but you need to show restraint, muster up and wait. There is no other way out in the current situation," the ambassador said. According to him, a decision will soon be made whether the borders will be opened after April 20 or remain closed for some time. "I ask you to keep in touch with the Azerbaijani Embassy in Moscow, call the hotline, send us your documents. We are compiling lists of people planning to leave for Azerbaijan. At the earliest opportunity, the embassy staff will contact you and let you know when and how we can send you home. I wish you all good health! Thank you for your understanding!" Polad Bulbul oglu said. The spread of the coronavirus in Iraq has modified Iraqi customs and traditions that show personal affection through physical touch. This is in addition to the banning of social gatherings of Iraqis in celebration of joyful events or even for condolences. Greetings between Iraqis involve three kisses on each cheek as an expression of affection or longing, but this practice is no longer acceptable with the pandemic. Many Iraqis are now practicing social distancing even with their dearest ones, fearing transmission of the coronavirus. Men no longer kiss each other's cheeks and women no longer hug each other, essentially ending timeless traditions, even if only temporarily. Iraqi authorities enforced strict measures on March 13 because of the growing number of coronavirus cases. They also banned religious gatherings and visits, funeral services and wedding parties. But some Iraqis are not sticking to these measures. Jasseb Latif, director of the Ministry of Healths department in the Karkh district in Baghdad, reported that a person infected with the coronavirus had organized a banquet for about 80 people to celebrate his return from Iran. Latif doubts authorities can track the 80 people who attended the banquet and were in close contact with the infected person. He urged people to isolate themselves when returning from travel. Until the end of February, Iraqi authorities permitted funeral and wedding celebrations. Some tribes, however, decided to prevent kisses and handshakes and ordered those attending the celebrations to keep a safe distance between each other. In Iraqi culture, especially in the central and southern provinces, the families of a deceased person would set up tents to receive people paying their condolences. Arab coffee and two meals are usually served during these funeral celebrations. Dozens of those attending the funeral procession would drink from the same cup without washing it. But the tribes, who enjoy wide social influence, banned this tradition. Disposable plastic cups were used, and some tribes even refrained from serving coffee. Meanwhile, some Iraqis find it shameful not to hold a funeral celebration for their deceased loved ones. This is degrading to the deceased and his or her family," said Hamza Yahya, whose grandfather died in Baghdad at the end of March. Security authorities in Shula in Baghdad's Karkh district did not allow Yahya's family to set up condolence tents on the corner of the street. The family received mourners inside their house, where they placed spaced chairs and cleaned and sterilized the doors. Mourners were only served bottled water. Yahya told Al-Monitor, It was sad. My grandfather was a very well-known man, but not many people attended his funeral because of the curfew. Only the neighbors showed up. But peoples health is more important. We do not want the funeral of my grandfather to turn into an epicenter for the pandemic. We only served the mourners water and tried to sterilize everything. The burial of the dead is an honorable ritual in Iraq. Several Iraqi proverbs stress the sanctity of burying the dead. Iraqis often repeat an Arab proverb affirming that no deceased person should be left unburied. But the spread of the coronavirus seems to be putting an end to this well-entrenched ritual. The families of persons who died of the coronavirus are baffled and do not know what to do with the bodies of their loved ones. Cemetery workers refuse to receive the bodies, fearing they will transmit the virus to them. Add to this, residents of the homes adjacent to the cemeteries also refuse the burial of any person who died of the virus. The Health Ministry and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq had to intervene to allow the families of the deceased to find places and ways to bury their dead. Just like funerals, weddings in Iraq are attended by a large number of well-wishers, and parties are mainly held on the streets or in wedding halls. Iraqis often have bands playing loud, rhythmic folk music at these parties, but since the end of February, this music has rarely been heard. Ammar al-Kaabi, who lives in Talbiyah, east of Baghdad, chose the date of April 10 to celebrate his wedding. But he told all his friends and acquaintances he had invited earlier that the wedding was canceled until further notice. "I wished the circumstances were better to be able to hold my wedding celebration, but the danger of the coronavirus has become serious. I do not want to hold a celebration in an atmosphere of fear," Kaabi said. Since March 22, security forces have tightened the curfew imposed on residents and imposed sanctions on those breaking it, sometimes confiscating vehicles or motorbikes. But in one case, these same forces helped a couple from Diwaniyah province who wanted to marry despite the prevailing circumstances. They allowed them to drive their decorated car through the streets, all the way to the hotel where they spent their wedding night. Kaabi refused to hold his wedding under these circumstances. "I want everyone to be present, he said, adding, "My wedding celebration after the coronavirus will be a big party because I will be celebrating my wedding and salvation from the coronavirus at the same time. I will be kissing everyone. In southern Iraq, many tribal elders and leaders suspended their council meetings. Others who held their council meetings set forth measures aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus, including obligating visitors to wear masks and preventing handshaking and kissing. They also banned anyone who feels sick from attending meetings or making contact with other tribe members. While the pandemic has modified many Iraqi traditions and rituals, everyone still appears ready to immediately resume these traditions once the coronavirus is defeated. On April 13, Iraq registered 76 deaths and 1,352 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Spaceflight, like every sector, is feeling effects from the spreading coronavirus pandemic , and that holds true in Russia as well, where manufacturing of its workhorse Soyuz rocket has halted, officials said. One of those rockets, a Soyuz 2.1a booster, most recently flew on April 9 to carry three astronauts to the International Space Station in a launch that was essentially unaffected by the pandemic. The news of the pandemic's impact on its production comes from an English-language transcript released on April 10 by Russia's government of a call held by President Vladimir Putin and a group of space center leaders. During that call, Putin cautioned against using the pandemic as a scapegoat for issues within the industry. "Clearly, the fact that we have to fight the coronavirus is forcing us to make adjustments in our country, the economy in general and Roscosmos specifically," Putin said at the end of the public portion of the call, according to the transcript . "At the same time, I would like to warn you against the temptation to blame unresolved issues and loose ends which are still in abundance on the coronavirus." Related: Coronavirus pandemic and spaceflight: Complete coverage More: Coronavirus prevention measures take their toll on astronomy Russian space manufacturing has raised concerns since a small air leak on a Soyuz spacecraft docked to the space station in August 2018 and a failed Soyuz rocket launch in October 2018 sent two astronauts tumbling back to Earth during an emergency abort (they landed safely). Since then, all crewed launches have gone smoothly, and last week's launch relied on a different model of the Soyuz 2 rocket than the version that failed. But for now, Soyuz 2 production is on hold, Dmitry Baranov, general director of the Progress Rocket and Space Center where the rocket is built, said during the call. Baranov said that decision was made because 52 completed Soyuz 2 rockets are on hand at the facility and at launch sites worldwide. (Both the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the European company Arianespace launch Soyuz vehicles.) "Here, we have a certain degree of safety," he said. Other aspects of rocket work are continuing as usual, including maintenance and testing of completed Soyuz 2 rockets and production of the Soyuz 5, a heavy-lift launch vehicle planned to make its first flight in late 2022, Baranov said. The facility will also consider restoring the full workforce with protective measures in place sometime after next week, he said. However, the coronavirus pandemic may also begin having more severe effects on launches, Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin said during the call. Of 39 launches planned for the year, five have taken place and nine are "at risk," Rogozin said, citing the pandemic and two related issues: the bankruptcy of satellite internet company OneWeb and the delay of the launch of the ExoMars mission , a joint project of Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA). "This problem is rather serious, Mr. President, because the spacecraft we were supposed to launch from our cosmodromes simply cannot arrive in Russia," Rogozin said. "Roscosmos is perhaps the only space agency in the world today that continues working." (NASA and ESA have both implemented coronavirus responses that do not entirely shut down the agencies but do strictly curtail on-site work , particularly for non-essential missions.) As of today (April 13), Russia has reported more than 18,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University . One of Roscosmos' key launch sites, particularly for missions related to the space station, is located in Kazakhstan, which has reported nearly 1,000 cases. Arianespace launches Soyuz rockets from French Guiana, which has reported 86 confirmed cases. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . Among the most important pre-requisites of working from home is reliable, fast broadband. My son, an animator and video editor for a financial multinational, found his ability to work at speed changed dramatically recently when he was supplied with an ultra-fast broadband router at the behest of his employer. The lockdown has underlined the value of connectivity. This week, for instance, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank hold their first ever virtual Spring meetings. Broadband boost: The lockdown has underlined the value of connectivity as Britain turns to working from home Arguably, with global output in free fall, the worst recession since the Great Depression on the cards and a desperate need to get assistance to the poorest countries, the gatherings will be the most significant ever held. But they can only achieve the bold goals being set if the technology works. It has been unhelpful that when the world needs the best connectivity, 5G next generation mobile networks are being demonised. The threat is on two fronts. At the surreal level, 5G networks have become a target of conspiracy theorists such as David Icke who fear the networks could be a device for controlling our lives and might be responsible for the rapid spread of Covid-19. Some serious people take this stuff literally. A friend who is an experienced health professional is convinced we have been rendered vulnerable to the virus by radioactive waves. BT boss Philip Jansen attacked the mindless vandals who have verbally or physically assaulted 39 BT engineers involved in erecting 5G masts and vandalised 40 of the new pieces of equipment. The second threat to 5G is rooted in realpolitik and technology theory. The Chinese firm Huawei, which claims not to be in thrall to the state, is at the forefront of rolling out 5G. Britains telecoms providers lobbied for it on price and speed of roll-out. Many doubt the wisdom of giving Chinese entities access to infrastructure which could be used for spying. The pandemic has given new velocity to the case. Politicians on the Right have talked about a reckoning for Beijing for its role in the epidemic. A more cogent criticism is the way Chinese authorities used mobile telephones to monitor citizens in the Wuhan lockdown and to control all activity, down to what citizens accessed at stores. The idea that Huawei is the only realistic choice is questionable. Nokia and Ericsson are thought to have the capability but could be slower and more expensive. But there is another technological aspect to this. Huawei represents the traditional way, using dedicated masts and systems dominated by existing cell phone providers such as O2, Vodafone and BTs EE. There is an alternative favoured by the Japanese tech-provider Rakuten and in Silicon Valley. This group advocates fully virtualised mobile networks using economical hardware and controlled by software similar to that used in cloud computing. Rakuten already has a 5G network up and running. Some tech analysts argue that its kit could be as revolutionary as the adoption of cloud computing by pioneers Salesforce and Amazon. There might also be the advantage of keeping the Chinese at bay. Even the silver generation, who find technology a mystery, have adapted to all manner of connections during the lockdown. What is lacking are stable and fast systems, whether using wi-fi or mobile. We should not assume that Chinas Huawei 5G offers the right answer to improved connectivity. From making PPE and delivering food to donating sanitiser and setting up temporary morgues, UK Muslims are mobilising. London, United Kingdom From producing protective gear for health workers and donating food to vulnerable communities, to helping families pay for funeral costs and even setting up temporary morgues, Muslims in the United Kingdom are stepping up efforts to support those in need during the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic has so far led to the deaths of more than 11,000 people and seen over 88,000 infected the UK. As a national conversation turns to a shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for NHS staff, with a rising number of doctors and nurses succumbing to the COVID-19 disease, the Green Lane Mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham, is involved in a project launched by Loft 25, a furniture and garden brand, by providing 350 volunteers who have been producing PPE. At the mosque itself, an additional cold storage facility able to house up to 36 bodies has been set up as other facilities struggle to accommodate victims waiting to be buried. Kamran Hussain, head of the Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre, told Al Jazeera: We get direct contact from families to pick up loved ones from the morgue and arrange for burial services. In line with protective measures and health policies, we have agreed with the imams to not wash the bodies of the dead, due to the safety of the volunteers and their families. On the advice from the Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England, We decided that there would be significant risk if volunteers wash the body, and we would not put our volunteers or staff in any risk, Hussain said. The Green Lane Masjid is being supported by organisations including Morrisons, Macmillan and Ummah Welfare Trust. Together, they also run a service delivering food to those in need. The Muslim Community are really stepping up their efforts to support with the pandemic and will continue to do so in times of need, said Hussain. Meanwhile, Muslim Hands, a UK-based charity, has set up appeals to deliver thousands of free meals and launch a multilingual hotline for elderly people who are self-isolating. Individuals are also working on grassroots initiatives in their local communities. During the early stages of the epidemic, for instance, Asiyah Javed and her husband Jawad, a Scottish Muslim couple, donated hand sanitiser to elderly customers at their grocery shop. They also delivered hundreds of packages to vulnerable people at home. British Muslims have also rushed to support families who have lost loved ones amid the crisis, often setting up crowdfunding pages to help pay for funeral costs or raise money for charities in the name of the victim. After 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed recently died in a London hospital, Muslims contributed to a fund that has now raised 71,600 pounds ($89,400) well over an original target of 4,000 pounds ($5,000) to pay for the burial. There are an estimated 3.4 million Muslims in the UK. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, weve seen incredible work in Muslim communities, from repurposing mosques to create facilities to alleviate pressure on the NHS to grassroots initiatives supporting those who are vulnerable and in need, a spokesperson from the Muslim Council of Britain told Al Jazeera. It is great to see so many Muslim communities playing their part in the national effort to combat COVID-19 and support one another. Medical team sent to NE China's border city to combat imported COVID-19 cases People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 15:49, April 12, 2020 BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A team of 15 medical experts on Sunday departed from Beijing for the city of Suifenhe, at the China-Russia border in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, to aid the city's fight against imported COVID-19 cases, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The experts, specializing in laboratory testing from the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention under the CDC, will bring the total number of CDC experts sent to the city to 22. The team will set up a mobile negative pressure lab upon their arrival, which will facilitate them in conducting nucleic acid tests and scientific research. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan on Monday summoned an Indian official to protest over cross-border shelling from its neighbour that it said had killed a child and wounded four civilians. India and Pakistan have accused each other of mortar and artillery shelling along the de facto border known as the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed Kashmir region. The sporadic exchanges began on Saturday. The two South Asian nuclear powers both claim the Kashmir region in full, but rule only parts, and often accuse each other of breaching a 2003 ceasefire pact by shelling and firing across the LoC. The Pakistani foreign ministry said in a statement that Islamabad had summoned an Indian ministry official to lodge a protest over ceasefire violations by Delhi. Kashmir remains divided between the two countries since they won independence from British rule in 1947. The neighbours have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir. India said at the weekend that Pakistani shelling had killed three civilians, while the Pakistani foreign ministry said Indian firing had killed the child and wounded four others. "This year, India has so far committed 749 ceasefire violations to date," the ministry said, and it condemned the targeting of innocent civilians. Tension between the two countries was renewed when New Delhi withdrew the autonomy of its part of the Kashmir region in 2019 and split it into territories federally administered by India. Until then, it had had autonomy over all matters except defence, communications and foreign affairs. India accuses Pakistan of training and sending militants across the border to launch attacks and support a Kashmiri separatist movement against Indian rule. Pakistan denies giving material support to militants in Kashmir but says it provides moral and diplomatic backing for the self-determination of Kashmiri people. (Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Hugh Lawson) By Associated Press WASHINGTON: Bernie Sanders endorsed his former rival Joe Biden for president on Monday in a joint online appearance. I am asking all Americans, Im asking every Democrat, Im asking every independent, Im asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, Sanders said. The backing is a crucial development for Biden, who must bridge the Democratic Party's ideological divide to unify voters against President Donald Trump in the fall. ALSO READ | US 2020 Presidential elections: Democratic party nominee Joe Biden accused of sexual harassment Biden and Sanders, a leading progressive, clashed throughout the primary over policy issues such as the Medicare for All universal health care plan. The endorsement stands in contrast to the extended 2016 fight between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who became the nominee that year. Sanders endorsed Clinton, but only after the end of a drawn-out nominating fight and amid a bitter fight over the Democratic platform that extended to the summer convention. Sanders did not immediately address Monday whether he would continue to fight for delegates at state conventions around the country or whether hed simply use his newfound alliance with Biden to influence the nominee and the policy slate that he will present voters. Appearing in a split screen with Biden, Sanders said there's "no great secret out there that you and I have our differences. But he cited ongoing work between the two camps on several policy matters as a reason for the endorsement. And he said the biggest priority was defeating Trump. Weve got to make Trump a one-term president, Sanders said. I will do all that I can to make that happen. George Stephanopoulos has tested positive for coronavirus, less than two weeks after his wife revealed she had 'never been sicker' as she quarantined at home with the illness. On April 1, Ali Wentworth shared a photo of herself suffering in bed with high fever, body aches and a heavy chest while enduring what's regarded as mild symptoms of the illness. But on Monday as he revealed on Good Morning America that he too had COVID-19, Stephanopoulos shared that he was asymptomatic and feeling fine. Discussing Wentworth's progress with his co-hosts Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan, Stephanopoulos said 'she's doing much, much better', and was 'going into her fifth day with no fever and slowly getting out of bed a little bit more each day'. Scroll down for video George Stephanopoulos has tested positive for coronavirus, he told GMA Monday On April 1, Ali Wentworth shared a photo of herself suffering in bed with high fever, body aches and a heavy chest .@GStephanopoulos says he's tested positive for COVID-19: "I'm one of those cases that are basically asymptomatic. I've never had a fever, never had chills, never had a headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath. I'm feeling great." https://t.co/Qi2CeQPinh pic.twitter.com/n3IM8p09kC Good Morning America (@GMA) April 13, 2020 'I also learned over the weekend that my test came back positive for COVID as well which is really no surprise given that I've been here for a couple of weeks,' Stephanopoulos said. 'But I'm one of those, I guess, cases that are basically asymptomatic.' Coronavirus infections have a wide range of symptoms. Mild cases can cause cold-like symptoms including a sore throat, headache, fever, cough or trouble breathing. Severe cases can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory illness, kidney failure and death. Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure. He added in a segment later in the show that in hindsight he believes he may have felt some mild symptoms that he associated with side-effects from physical exercise. 'I've never had a fever, never had chills, never had a headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath. I'm feeling great,' Stephanopoulos explained. 'I actually thought it was from a hard workout that day, and it cleared up the next morning.' 'I've never had a fever, never had chills, never had a headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath. I'm feeling great,' Stephanopoulos (right) explained. Pictured left is Michael Strahan and center is Robin Roberts The couple has been isolating at home with their two children Elliott Anastasia Stephanopolous and Harper Andrea Stephanopolous (pictured June 2017) Why are some COVID-19 cases asymptomatic? @DrJAshton weighs in on asymptomatic cases after @GStephanopoulos tells us he has tested positive for COVID-19 yet has no symptoms after his wife Ali Wentworth also tested positive. https://t.co/PLhEP1OIMr pic.twitter.com/DACO1U7fbw Good Morning America (@GMA) April 13, 2020 Some people have reported losing their sense of taste and smell but Stephanopoulos only experienced one day where his senses were affected. 'Several days after that I had one day where I had a diminished sense of smell but that's really been it for my symptoms over these last several weeks,' Stephanopoulos continued. 'I was taking the test fully expecting it was going to come back negative, but in fact, it did come back positive.' The CDC had estimated that one in four people who are infected with COVID-19 show no symptoms at all, which is one of the reasons the government has urged everyone to stay at home to slow the rate of infection, even if the individual is now experiencing symptoms. Medical commentator Dr. Jen shared that recent data out of Iceland, where testing has been much more thorough due to the small population, showed that 50 percent of people who are infected with COVID-19 show no symptoms at all. 'It's affected Ali and I in such different ways and you read all kinds of things on the internet, maybe it has something to do with blood type or something else. What is the science on that or is it too early to tell?' Stephanopolous asked. But Dr. Jen replied it's 'too early to tell'. 'It's affected Ali and I in such different ways and you read all kinds of things on the internet, maybe it has something to do with blood type or something else. What is the science on that or is it too early to tell?' Stephanopolous (left) asked. But Dr. Jen (right) replied it's 'too early to tell' 'We have to remember this virus is just about four months old so literally we're learning things about the way it behaves and the way it transmits and causes disease every day, but one of the theories is that it has to do with how much of the actual viral particles or the viral load someone gets exposed to,' the doctor shared. 'That may be one part of it. Your immune reaction to the virus may be another part. Where the virus actually lodges, we know it attaches to cells in the respiratory tract but exactly where may have something to do with it.' WHAT ARE THE CORONAVIRUS SYMPTOMS? The virus, called COVID-19, is transmitted from person to person via droplets when an infected person breathes out, coughs or sneezes. It can also spread via contaminated surfaces such as door handles or railings. Coronavirus infections have a wide range of symptoms, including fever, coughing, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. Mild cases can cause cold-like symptoms including a sore throat, headache, fever, cough or trouble breathing. Severe cases can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory illness, kidney failure and death. Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure. Advertisement The doctor added that Stephanopoulos, 59, 'got lucky' that he didn't suffer more from the disease. Even in 'mild' cases, the symptoms can be horrific, as Wentworth herself said in an Instagram post earlier this month where she called it 'pure misery' being quarantined from her family in another room and feeling 'high fever', 'horrific body aches' and a 'heavy chest'. 'In terms of the symptoms it's important for people to understand, when we say about 80% of the cases are mild, that doesn't mean pleasant,' Dr. Jen said. 'Ali's case clinically was defined as mild because she didn't need hospitalization but it certainly wasn't pleasant, so you got lucky for sure.' Dr. Jen told Stephanopoulos's co-host Strahan that it's still unclear whether a person becomes immune after experiencing COVID-19 once. 'Every time we're exposed to a virus, yes, we develop some immune reaction or protection, but when that occurs, how strong it is, how long it will last? All unknowns,' she shared. 'And remember, there are slightly different strains of this virus just like any other coronavirus or cold virus, so you could be exposed to a different one and get sick. 'So we're still learning that. It really will be important information.' Thousands of people in the US have already taken part in trials for antibody tests. But Dr. Jen admitted that for a while, it will still be unclear how effective they are. 'In order to ease up on the social distancing and kind of re-opening as we hear Dr. Fauci talk about, we need to be able to test people very quickly in 5 or 15 minutes and try to get an idea whether they've been exposed, whether they've recovered or whether they're actually infected, just almost like a home pregnancy test, and that needs to be done quickly and it needs to be done accurately,' she explained. 'We don't know how accurate those tests will be yet.' Pope Francis, at Mass on Easter Monday at Casa Santa Marta, urges prayers that governments, scientists and politicians may find just solutions to the Covid-19 crisis, in favour of the people. This task, he said in his homily, will depend on their choice between the life of the people and the god money. By Robin Gomes At the start of the Mass, Pope Francis announced the days Mass intention. Today, let us pray for government leaders, scientists and politicians who are beginning to study a way out of the pandemic, though its 'aftermath' has already begun. May they find the right way, always for the good of their people. Later in his homily, the Pope reflected on Easter Monday's Gospel from Matthew where the Risen Lord exhorts some women to ask his disciples to go to Galilee where He will meet them. Meanwhile, the priests, aware that the body of Jesus is missing, decide to bribe the soldiers into saying that the disciples of Jesus stole His body at night while the guards slept. Choice between God and money The women in todays Gospel, the Pope pointed out, present us with a human choice that applies even to our times, namely the choice between the joy and hope of the resurrection of Jesus, and nostalgia for the tomb. It is better not to live with the empty tomb of lifes many problems, the Pope said. There is also another choice, the Pope said, recalling Christs warning that one cannot serve both the Lord God and the lord of money. When we decide to hide facts, we serve the god of money, which is what the priests and the doctors of the law chose when they decided to hide the evidence and the truth of the resurrection by buying the silence of the witnesses. In fact, the Holy Father pointed out, when Jesus died, one of the guards confessed: "Truly, this man was the Son of God! Corruption The Pope described this hiding of truth as pure corruption. If you do not confess Jesus Christ the Lord, it is because of corruption. Many people, he said, dont confess Jesus because they dont know Him, which is our fault because we have not announced Him consistently. Where there is clear evidence, the Pope said, we take the road of the devil and of corruption and pay to keep the mouth shut. Tomb of the god of money The Holy Father said that in the post-coronavirus pandemic, which he hopes will come soon, we have the same choice before us. "We will either bet on life, in favour of the resurrection of our people, or we will bet on the god of money, turning back to the tomb of hunger, slavery, war, the making of weapons, of children without an education. he said. The Holy Father concluded praying that the Lord help us in our personal life and social life, to always choose the good of the people, without ever falling into the tomb of the god of money. It's been the birthplace of the world's most famous ship, the Titanic; a base for the world's most iconic TV series; and a home for world-renowned ice hockey stars in a venue which doubles as a stage for the world's most celebrated singers and bands. But away from the shipyard, Game Of Thrones and the SSE Arena, Belfast Harbour is in a little world of its own, having quietly, and with the minimum of fuss, acted as a lifeline for Ulster for over 400 years. It's been the entry point for countless ships bringing vital supplies all day and every day into the port, which handles 20% of all of Ireland's seaborne trade. And rarely before has the busy harbour played a more important part as it rises to the challenges presented by the coronavirus, which has threatened to bring the world to its knees. While many other businesses have been forced to shut, the show still goes on at Belfast's docks, where officials won't let any storms outside the port deflect them from their crucial role. A spokesman for Belfast Harbour told the Belfast Telegraph: "Ferry, freight and cargo services at Belfast Harbour are continuing to operate as normal, as we work with our freight partners to maintain the flow of essential goods and efficient running of supply chain operations." The spokesman said officials have introduced a number of changes to working practices to ensure that social distancing and other health guidelines are followed, enabling port operations to continue to run smoothly. Expand Close Belfast Harbour BBC NI / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Belfast Harbour Now a new TV series is to draw back the curtain on the work that's undertaken in the harbour, a vast sprawl of Belfast that few people really know - a "secret world", as the producers are calling it. The three-part documentary on Belfast's heartbeat was filmed last year before the onset and onslaught of Covid-19. It was shot at a time when tourism was booming and cruise ships were queuing up to release thousands of disembarking visitors into Belfast. The mighty floating hotels are gone for the moment, but the BBC Northern Ireland series - Belfast Harbour: Cruises, Cranes And Cargo - is still a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes in the harbour estate, which covers an area of 2,000 acres. The statistics for 2019 - a record year for the harbour - were impressive, with 27,000 people working in the area back then and nearly two million people arriving in or leaving the port, with 24 million tonnes of goods passing through, too. The 2020 figures will, obviously, be down come the end of this difficult year, but harbour bosses are hoping that the end of the coronavirus, whenever that comes, can be the start of a renewed beginning. Expand Close Control room manager Craig Meldrum watches over port movements BBC NI / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Control room manager Craig Meldrum watches over port movements The TV series shows exactly what makes the harbour tick, seeing life at the port through the eyes of its operational managers, crane drivers, pilots and even its colourful tour guides. Narrated by actress and playwright Marie Jones, who was born and bred not far from the famous Harland & Wolff cranes in east Belfast, the documentary goes into the hub that controls the flow of the massive ships, which bring 130,000 containers a year into the harbour. Many of the container vessels that are sent to Belfast acquire their goods from "mother ships" which come into other European ports, like Rotterdam or Antwerp. Craig Meldrum, the control room boss, manages the ins and outs into the port with military-style precision from his nerve centre overlooking the harbour. And it's probably easier to say what's not in the cargo than what is. The containers are loaded with anything and everything, from rally cars to Christmas trees and from frozen meats to furniture, with Northern Ireland importing a lot more than it exports, according to Craig, who is in constant touch with crane drivers like Ryan Munn, whom the cameras follow as he unloads hundreds of containers from a weekly visitor to the harbour, the Dutch-registered Helga. Expand Close The MSC Meraviglia BBC NI / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The MSC Meraviglia Ryan says that driving a crane isn't easy. "You're constantly watching around you to see who's below you, what you're lifting and how you're lifting it," he adds. He also reveals that the wind is another regular challenge at the harbour, where a 40m investment package saw the arrival of new state-of-the-art cranes from China to replace ageing lifting gear, and the opening of a new terminal. A large part of the first programme in the series is devoted to the massive explosion in business at the harbour from cruise liners, which it's hoped will make a return once the Covid-19 crisis has passed. Last year 145 cruise ships visited Belfast, compared to the two that came back in 1996. The documentary looks at how the harbour last September accommodated its biggest ever ship, the HSC Meraviglia, which weighs nearly four times as much as the Titanic did. The cruise liner is the last word in luxury, with 15 levels, three swimming pools, a 900-seat theatre, 12 dining venues and 20 bars and lounges. Expand Close Harbour pilot Peter Gates BBC NI / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Harbour pilot Peter Gates The documentary shows Neil Scott, the port controller, preparing to make sure that the ship gets to and from its berth, negotiating the narrow and restrictive Victoria Channel. Pilots Dougie Rennie and Peter Gates, who are both ex-ship's captains, are the men charged with going out to meet the Meraviglia and guiding her into Belfast. Just like crane driver Ryan, Dougie says the wind can be the trickiest factor standing in the way of making it plain sailing for the cruise ships. He recalls how one wayward vessel once put a marker beacon out of commission for two years when it hit it on its way into the harbour after its autopilot failed. The Meraviglia has to swing round 180 degrees before it backs down into its berth, but it docks without incident. And that is the cue for the next phase of its frenetic day in Belfast to begin, overseen by shipping agent Gary Hall, who has responsibility for a myriad of duties, including offloading 35 tonnes of waste generated on board the Meraviglia in the 24 hours it's taken the massive liner to get from its last stop in Southampton. But the disposal sometimes isn't as simple as it sounds because, as Jones says, time and tide wait for no man. And, in the case of the Meraviglia, the cameras show that the shell door through which the waste is due to be brought out is below the level of the quay. So, officials have to wait for the tide to rise again to be flush with the dockside. Gary knows to expect the unexpected from cruise liners, like the last-minute demand from the Meraviglia crew for a massive order of two-and-a-half tonnes of striploin beef. Gary says: "It's a tall order to get it in Northern Ireland at short notice. But that's what makes the job interesting, fun and exciting." As Gary is trying to organise for the beef to get on board the Meraviglia, its 5,300 passengers are getting off to go on bus tours to the Giant's Causeway, the shooting locations for Game Of Thrones, and Belfast itself. Last year 250,000 people from cruise ships visited Northern Ireland. Larger-than-life Billy Scott is a tour guide veteran, who breaks into song just as quickly as he rattles off his patter about Belfast on his bus. Billy fuels up for his tours with an Ulster fry at one of Belfast's best known cafes, Benny's, near the entrance to the harbour estate and which was a location for Neil Jordan's 2005 movie Breakfast On Pluto. Between mouthfuls of his gargantuan breakfast, Billy marvels at the transformation in tourism in Belfast, adding: "If you had said to us a few years ago that you'd be getting cruise ships coming into Belfast, you'd have been taken away by the men in the white coats and locked up somewhere very quiet where people come and pay and giggle at you." On his tour, fry-lover Billy jokingly tells his clients that he's been a body double for actor Jamie Dornan - while the name doesn't ring too many bells, his movie Fifty Shades Of Grey is instantly recognised, particularly by the women on the bus. The documentary also focuses on another famous name, Harland & Wolff, as shipyard workers take to the picket line as part of a campaign to save their jobs after the firm announced they were calling in the administrators. Back on the bus, the tourists from right across the world are told about the industrial past of Belfast, including the building of the Titanic, but they also hear about the Troubles, as Billy takes them along the Falls and the Shankill, where he laughs as he urges them to desist from saying the rosary. They also see the peace walls - and in nationalist areas, Billy asks his guests to call him Liam instead of Billy. Gary, meanwhile, succeeds in accessing the beef needed by the Meraviglia. And with the shell door back down below the level of the quay, thanks to the falling tide, it's all hands on deck from the ship as the crew unload the mountains of meat up the gangplanks, racing against time to beat the ship's departure en route to Iceland and New York. A relieved Gary reflects on a job well done. But his busy day isn't quite over as he takes a phone call from his wife, who wants him to bring home... a red grapefruit. Belfast Harbour: Cruises, Cranes And Cargo, BBC One Northern Ireland, Tuesday, 10.45pm South Korea on Monday saw its daily number of coronavirus infections fall below 30 again as the country enforces strict social distancing to curb the pandemic. The 25 new cases, detected Sunday and down from 32 a day ago, brought the nation's total infections to 10,537, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). It is the second time since late February that the country's new virus infections have fallen below 30 after it reported 27 new cases Friday. Monday's new virus cases marked a sharp drop from the Feb. 29 peak of 909 new cases, according to the KCDC. The country's daily number of new virus cases has been below 50 in the last five days. But health authorities remain on high alert over cluster infections at churches and hospitals, as well as new cases coming from overseas. Of the newly reported cases, 16 cases were from overseas. The nation's death toll from the new coronavirus, which emerged in China late last year, rose by three to 217, according to the KCDC. The number of patients released from quarantine after making full recoveries reached 7,447, up 79 from a day earlier. The southeastern city of Daegu, the nation's worst virus-hit region, added three new cases. Its surrounding North Gyeongsang Province reported four new cases. Other major provinces and cities also reported infections, with Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province adding eight and three new cases, respectively. The country also detected six new cases coming from overseas at border checkpoints. The total number of imported cases is now at 929. Since April 1, South Korea has enforced mandatory 14-day self-quarantine for all travelers coming from overseas to better contain imported cases. Starting Monday, all arrivals from the United States have to be tested for COVID-19. Previously, only those with symptoms had undergone tests. Seeking to reduce the daily number of new infections to below 50, South Korea has extended strict guidelines on social distancing by two weeks to Sunday. South Korea has vowed to show no leniency toward those who breach quarantine rules. Violators could face up to one year in jail or a fine of up to 10 million won ($8,200), and they will be asked to wear electronic wristbands for the rest of their quarantine period. Foreigners could be deported if they break quarantine rules. (Yonhap) Ohio food banks got a financial boost to the tune of nearly $5 million from the state. Gov. Mike DeWine signed an executive order April 10 giving $4.97 million in emergency funding to the Ohio Association of Foodbanks through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Of that allotment, $1 million is earmarked for the Agricultural Clearance Program. That program allows food banks to purchase surplus agricultural products from Ohio farmers. Ohios 12 food banks will use the money to buy nonperishable goods, as well as locally produced items like milk, meat and eggs. More importantly, this funding will keep some very cash-strapped foodbanks from running out of food and supplies as they see close to double and sometimes even close to triple the demand for their help, the association said in a statement. The Ohio Association of Foodbanks requested $25 million emergency funding from the state April 3, a move supported by the Ohio Dairy Producers Association and the American Dairy Association Mideast. Food assistance programs experienced an unprecedented increase in a need for services since COVID-19 mitigation measures began in March. The closure of nonessential businesses and slowdowns in other industries meant many people became suddenly unemployed and food insecure. NEW YORK False-negative results from coronavirus tests are becoming an increasing concern, say doctors trying to diagnose patients and get a grip on the outbreak, as a surprising number of people show up with obvious symptoms only to be told by the tests that they dont have the disease. While still more research is necessary to determine the true prevalence of such false-negative results, experts agree that the problem is significant. False negatives not only impede the diagnosis of disease in individual patients and an accurate understanding of the extent of its proliferation, but also risk patients who think they arent ill further spreading the virus. Some doctors described situations in which patients show up with clear symptoms such as a cough and fever, test negative, and then test positive later on. Its a particular issue in New York, where the disease has likely infected far more than the 174,000 people confirmed through limited testing. At Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, Dr. Jeremy Sperling says so-called false-negative tests are now a frequent occurrence in the emergency room. If a patient presents with classic COVID symptoms, but tests negative, theyve still got COVID, said Sperling, who is the chair of emergency medicine at the hospital. There is just nothing else it could be in New York City in 2020. Concerns about false negatives arise from a mix of factors: quickly created tests from dozens of labs and manufacturers that havent been extensively vetted by federal health regulators; a shortage of supplies and material for the tests that may impact results, long incubation times for the infection, and the challenge of getting an adequate sample from a patient. Most tests rely on a nasal swab that penetrates deep into the pharynx, the mucous membrane behind the nose and mouth. Even for a trained health worker, it can be difficult: Its an invasive procedure that often causes patients to squirm. With a shortage of staff to conduct such widespread testing, in many cases people not typically trained to do so are collecting samples. Dr. Ryan Stanton, an emergency medicine physician in Lexington, Ky., said that most people likely arent swabbing patients correctly. Theyre not getting far enough back there to get a good sample, he said. The Food and Drug Administration has loosened rules for getting the tests out on the market. While a new test marketed by a major manufacturer would typically undergo a rigorous approval process with the FDA, including studies to confirm its accuracy, the agency is instead using a shorthand version of that process. Under whats known as an Emergency Use Authorization, or EUA, manufacturers can begin making and distributing tests for use in patients without the usual, more thorough process. The FDA has cleared more than 40 different COVID-19 tests through EUAs, according to the agencys website, reflecting the need to get as many tests out into the field as possible. We have in this country a really robust system for pre-market approval, said Erika Lietzan, a professor of law at the University of Missouri. Emergency use authorization is not the same thing as approval. It is based on many fewer data. Similar measures have been taken around the world, as the U.S. and other health authorities race to build diagnostic capacity and get a handle on the outbreak. That haste, however, may have come at a cost. One study out of China published online prior to peer-review found that for the nasal-swab tests most commonly administered, as many as one in three tests may produce a false-negative result. In some cases, lacking tests or not trusting the results, doctors have turned to chest X-rays or CT scans to diagnose patients by looking for signs of infection in the lungs. A clinical diagnosis is a lot more useful than the test in many cases, Sperling said. Though its nice to clinch the diagnosis. The ramifications of false positives are not just medical, but political. Especially as we talk about reopening the country prematurely, there is a serious risk of people who think they are negative contributing to a second round of the virus spreading, said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, who on Thursday issued a call for more data on the accuracy of results. The majority of tests rely on a technique known as PCR to process samples, which involves extracting ribonucleic acid, or RNA, from the virus samples taken from a patient. RNA, however, is especially unstable: Enzymes that break it down exist all over the place, including on our bodies. Amid a scarcity of supplies, hospitals have reported splitting the liquid that preserves samples in testing kits, or using supplies from flu and strep kits. Shortages of the right swabs have led some clinics to use alternatives; some are even attempting to validate Q-tips. Shortages of chemicals to process samples have also led to experimentation with substitutes. All of these situations could potentially lead to an inaccurate result. Also unknown is the best time in a patients illness to conduct a test. For the flu, for example, tests are effective when a person exhibits early symptoms because the virus has a short incubation period. COVID-19 appears to have a much longer incubation period, and there is a dearth of data about when in the course of the disease a test is most likely to be positive, said Catherine Klapperich, director of Boston Universitys Precision Diagnostics Center. Right now, we dont have enough data or knowledge of how this disease goes through a population to make those guidelines, she said. Were making those guidelines on the fly. This could account for why a patient suspected to have the virus might test negative several times before testing positive. One case study posted this week described a 34-year-old man who tested negative four times before finally testing positive five days after being admitted to a hospital. Like the doctor in the Bronx, researchers suggested using chest X-rays for earlier diagnosis. Under typical circumstances, said Jeffrey Gibbs, the director of Washington, D.C., law firm Hyman, Phelps & McNamara, the FDA would evaluate not just the test itself but how it performs in the real world. The FDA really cant assess as they would in a normal scenario right now, he said. We dont have time for a 100% perfect test that works every time. The Trump administration has appointed Brett Giroir, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services, to oversee U.S. testing efforts, which are crucial to attempts to reopen the economy, track cases and stop new infections. False negatives are always a concern, Giroir said in an interview with Bloomberg News. The tests that we have we think are really pretty good. Giroir said that a 90% accuracy rate or better, including false positives and false negatives, is the goal. With any test, theres always false positives and false negatives, thats just the reality of testing. Giroir said that doctors and nurses should continue using their judgment, especially when patients show up with clear COVID-19 symptoms in an area with lots of cases. If a person comes in today in New York with interstitial pneumonia, coughing, with fever, you dont even need a test to tell you thats likely COVID, Giroir said. With the combination of long waits for results, tests being given only to the sickest patients, and the concern over false negatives, some jurisdictions are changing how they characterize their outbreaks. At Reid Health in Indiana, the healthcare network now includes the number of patients in containment areas rather than simply positive and negative results. The small town on the Ohio border where Reid is headquartered has about 36,000 residents. At least 6,900 cases have been confirmed in the state. This data will no longer include the number of negative tests results as studies are showing a relatively high false negative outcome of testing, the health system said on its website. Our infectious disease experts think that about 30% of patients we believe have Covid are testing negative, said Thomas Huth, the health networks vice president of medical affairs. We have tested some again, but they remain negative. Attorney General Nessel Joins Coalition in Defending ACA Birth Control Coverage Mandate in Supreme Court Attorney General Nessel Joins Coalition in Defending ACA Birth Control Coverage Mandate in Supreme Court April 13, 2020 LANSING Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently joined a coalition of 21 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court supporting Pennsylvania in its case defending contraceptive coverage and counseling mandated under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In the brief filed in Donald Trump et al. v. Pennsylvania, the attorneys general explain that states have an interest in safeguarding the ACAs birth control coverage requirement, which has benefited more than 62 million women across the country. The coalition argues that access to affordable birth control is critical to the health, well-being and economic security of the states residents. "For millions of women across this country, contraception is a critical part of their health care, Nessel said. The Affordable Care Act provides for this preventative care, and employers shouldnt get to substitute their interests in place of a doctors professional judgment. The federal government should look for ways to support and promote women, not create barriers that affect a womans health and well-being. In 2017 and 2018, the Trump administration issued rules that ignored the ACAs birth control requirement and allowed employers to deny birth control coverage to their employees based on religious or moral objections. That action was challenged in the Ninth Circuit and Third Circuit courts by a coalition of attorneys general, which led to injunctions that protect the birth control coverage mandate. However, the federal government, Little Sisters of the Poor, and March for Life filed petitions in the U.S. Supreme Court. The petitions from the Ninth Circuit decision are pending, but the Supreme Court granted those from the Third Circuit, of which Michigan is involved. In the brief, the attorneys general argue the states have a vested interest in providing women seamless contraceptive coverage. Tens of thousands of women will lose their cost-free contraceptive coverage if employers are allowed to exempt themselves from the ACA requirement. This loss of coverage could result in a reliance on state-funded programs that could increase the states costs associated with the provision of reproductive health care, and would likely lead to an increase in unintended pregnancies. Nessel filed the brief with the attorneys general of California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia. ### Ryan Jarvi 517-335-7666 Attorney General New Delhi: The income tax department on Monday (April 13) said employees will have to inform their employers about their intention to opt for the new optional tax regime to enable the latter to deduct TDS while paying salaries. The new income tax regime announced in Budget, provide an option to individuals and Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) to be taxed at lower rates if they do not avail specified exemptions and deductions, like house rent allowance (HRA), interest on home loan, investments made under Section 80C, 80D and 80CCD. Under this, total income up to Rs 2.5 lakh will be tax-exempt. A 5 per cent tax will be levied on total income between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, 10 per cent on Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7.5 lakh, 15 per cent on Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, 20 per cent on Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12.5 lakh, 25 per cent on Rs 12.5 lakh to Rs 15 lakh, and 30 per cent on above Rs 15 lakh. In a circular, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said an employee intending to opt for concessional rates of income tax as provided in the Budget 2020 may intimate the deductor or his employer of such intention. "The deductor shall compute his total income and make TDS (tax deducted at source) thereon in accordance with the provision of Section 115 BAC of the (Income Tax) Act. If such intimation is not made by the employee, the employer shall make TDS without considering the provision of Section 115 BAC of the Act," it said. The CBDT has, however, said that the employee can change the option of tax structure at the time of filing income tax return and the amount of TDS payment will get adjusted accordingly. Nangia Andersen Consulting Director Shailesh Kumar said there was no clarity to the employers, whether they should deduct TDS under the new option or should continue deducting TDS under the old regime, since there was no corresponding change in the TDS provisions enabling them to deduct TDS under the new option. This circular will remove the confusion amongst employers and will also ensure there are a minimum mismatch in the TDS and ITR (income tax return) of employees if they adopt a consistent position while making a declaration to the employer as well as in their ITR, regarding option (new or old) opted by them. AKM Global Partner Amit Maheshwari said, "Now, it's clear that the employee (only those not having income from business or profession) cannot change the option once exercised for the purpose of getting TDS deducted but can always change it at the time of filing the tax return." Under the old tax system, income up to Rs 2.5 lakh is exempt from personal income tax. Income between Rs?2.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh attracts 5 per cent tax, while that between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh is levied with 20 per cent tax. Income above Rs?10 lakh is taxed at 30 per cent. N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad's government said on Sunday that its army would continue to participate in regional taskforces targeting jihadist groups, as well as the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, following President Idriss Deby's suggestion it might withdraw its troops. Chad is a key contributor to a multinational force in the Lake Chad basin fighting Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, and another farther north in the Sahel zone that counters militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State. N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad's government said on Sunday that its army would continue to participate in regional taskforces targeting jihadist groups, as well as the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, following President Idriss Deby's suggestion it might withdraw its troops. Chad is a key contributor to a multinational force in the Lake Chad basin fighting Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, and another farther north in the Sahel zone that counters militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State. It is also the largest troop contributor to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, with more than 1,400 soldiers there as of January. In a speech broadcast on Friday that followed heavy fighting between the army and Boko Haram, Deby said: "From today, no Chadian soldier will take part in an external military operation." However, in a statement on Sunday, Chad's foreign affairs ministry said Deby's remarks had been misinterpreted and only meant the army would no longer conduct unilateral operations beyond its borders in the Lake Chad basin. "It was never a question for Chad of disengaging from the (anti-Boko Haram) Multinational Joint Task Force or from the G5 Sahel joint force, much less from (MINUSMA)," the statement said. Chad's armed forces are among the most respected in the region, a reputation forged during decades of war and rebellions, and honed in a 2013 campaign against al Qaeda-linked Islamists in the deserts of northern Mali. The members of the G5 Sahel and its main backer France are desperately trying to bolster the force, which has done little to reverse deteriorating security across the semi-arid strip of land beneath the Sahara Desert. The Boko Haram insurgency, which erupted in northeast Nigeria in 2009, continues to grind on, with attacks frequently spilling over into Chad, Cameroon and Niger. In late March, Boko Haram carried out its deadliest-ever attack on Chad's army, killing nearly 100 soldiers in an ambush. The army said on Thursday that it had killed as many as 1,000 Boko Haram fighters in a subsequent military campaign. (Reporting by Madjiasra Nako; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Alex Richardson) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Four new coronavirus cases were found in Aurangabad on Monday, taking the total number of such cases here in Maharashtra to 24, an official said. During the weekend, no new COVID-19 case was reported from the district. But, on Monday morning, two men, aged 33 and 70 years, a 30-year-old woman and an 11-year-old girl tested positive for the viral infection here, the official said. They contracted the infection from those who tested positive for coronavirus earlier, civil surgeon Dr Sundar Kulkarni told reporters. So far, one person from the district has died due to the disease while one has been discharged after recovery. Of the other 22 patients, 20 are undergoing treatment at a dedicated hospital for coronavirus cases. Besides, one person is admitted at the Aurangabad Government Medical College and Hospital while another patient is undergoing treatment at a private hospital, an official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Royal Gold, Inc. RGLD has issued an update for its third-quarter fiscal 2020 (ended Mar 31, 2019) operations. During the quarter, RGLD Gold AG the fully-owned subsidiary of Royal Gold sold 62,000 gold equivalent ounces consisting of 50,000 gold ounces, 466,000 silver ounces and 1,900 tons of copper related to its streaming agreements. Stream sales during the fiscal third quarter were in line with guidance. The company ended the fiscal third quarter with 27,000 gold equivalent ounces in inventory, including 22,000 ounces of gold and 436,000 ounces of silver. The average realized price of gold and silver was $1,569 and $17.79 per ounce sold, respectively, in the quarter. Notably, the same for the prior quarter was $1,482 and $17.38 per ounce, respectively. Average realized copper prices were $5,493 per ton, down from the previous quarters $5,920 per ton. In the fiscal third quarter, cost of sales was around $355 per gold equivalent ounce compared with the prior-quarter figure of $349 per gold equivalent ounce. The cost of sales is based on the quarterly average silver-gold ratio of roughly 94 to 1 and copper-gold ratio of 0.28 tons per ounce. Mining Operations on Suspension Several operating counterparties of Royal Gold have announced the temporary suspension of their mine operations due to the coronavirus pandemic. On Apr 1, Mount Milligan mines operator Centerra Gold Inc. ("Centerra") declared to cut the mines manpower and throughput to 50,000 tons per day for a 14-day period effective Apr 6. Royal Gold has the right to purchase 35% of Mount Milligans payable gold for cash price for $435 per ounce of gold or the spot price at the time of delivery, whichever is less. It also has the right to purchase 18.75% of copper production from Mount Milligan for a cash payment of 15% of the spot price for copper, at the time of delivery. During the quarter ended Dec 31, 2019, the company recognized revenues of $30.6 million, or 24.8% of total revenues from the mine. On the same date, Newmont Corporation NEM announced to ramp down the Penasquito mining operations due to the Mexican federal governments mandate to temporarily suspend all non-essential activities in the country until Apr 30. Royal Gold holds 2% net smelter return (NSR) royalty on production from the Penasquito mine. Notably, the mine contributed 6.1% of total revenues to the company during the December-end quarter. New Gold Inc. NGD announced the ramp-up of the Rainy River mine operations has started, following the completion of a voluntary 14-day suspension. Royal Gold holds 6.5% of the gold produced from Rainy River until 230,000 ounces have been delivered, and 3.25% of the gold thereafter. Apart from this, the company owns silver production of 60% from the mine until 3,100,000 ounces have been delivered, and 30% thereafter. The company pays 25% of the spot price per ounce of gold and silver at the time of delivery. Rainy River contributed to 6.1% of Royal Golds total revenues in fourth-quarter 2019. Previously, other operators, Vale S.A VALE, Agnico Eagle Mines and Calibre Mining temporarily halted their mining operations, in which Royal Gold has royalty interests. Financial Position Recently, the company drew an additional $200 million on the revolving credit facility, resulting in a total of $305 million outstanding with a remaining available credit facility of $695 million. The drawdown is a precautionary measure to support the companys financial liquidity and business activity during this crisis. Royal Gold believes its current financial resources will be adequate to cover the anticipated expenses associated with debts, general and administrative costs and capital expenditures in the near term. Gold prices have been up 14.3%, so far this year, fueled by the slowdown in manufacturing activities, rate cuts, lower oil prices, geopolitical tensions and uncertainties related to the coronavirus outbreak. The combination of lower mined-gold supply and higher demand, and geopolitical tensions are likely to drive prices north. This, in turn, will boost Royal Golds margins. Share Price Performance Royal Gold currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The companys shares have gained 13.3% over the past year compared with the industrys growth of 40.7%. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Story continues Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report VALE S.A. (VALE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Newmont Corporation (NEM) : Free Stock Analysis Report New Gold Inc. (NGD) : Free Stock Analysis Report Royal Gold, Inc. (RGLD) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. The US could face a meat shortage amid the coronavirus pandemic after multiple processing plants have shut down over hundreds of staff testing positive for Covid-19. Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based company and the worlds biggest pork producer, announced on Sunday its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, would close until further notice. The move came after nearly 300 plant workers tested positive for the coronavirus. But a Smithfield Foods official warned this could lead to a meat shortage as the Sioux Falls plant makes up 4 to 5 per cent of US pork production and supplies about 130m servings of food per week. The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply, Smithfields Chief Executive Officer Ken Sullivan said in the statement. It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. Initially, the plant announced a three-day closure last week to sanitise the facility after it became a hotspot in South Dakota for the novel virus. But it would now be closed indefinitely. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nations livestock farmers, Mr Sullivan added. Other meat processing plants have limited production or closed for a period of time after a surge in cases caused concerns worker safety was at risk. JBS USA shut beef plant Cargill Meat Solutions in Souderton, Pennsylvania, after 130 workers tested positive for Covid-19 and one union leader from the plant died. The plant was expected to reopen on 16 April. Another JBS facility that has faced outbreaks among workers was a beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, which saw at least 50 employees testing positive for the virus. The plant has since been closed and officials were working to open it again this week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis said. Health officials have found no evidence Covid-19 could spread through food or on food packaging, according to the Food and Drug Administration. But that has not stopped food processing plants in states like Colorado, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Georgia from being mpacted by the novel virus. For the Sioux Falls meat plant, the company said it would continue to pay its employees for two weeks and follow local, state, and national officials guidelines about reopening the location. (Newser) Strong storms pounded parts of the Deep South on Sunday, damaging buildings and toppling trees in northern Louisiana, the AP reports. The National Weather Service reported multiple tornadoes and damaging winds over much of the northern part of the state. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries. Utility companies reported thousands of power outages. The city of Monroe, Louisiana, said the storm damaged commercial buildings and homes in multiple neighborhoods. Flights were canceled at Monroe Regional Airport, where siding was ripped off buildings and debris was scattered on runways. Airport director Ron Phillips told the News-Star the storm caused up to $30 million in damage to planes inside a hangar. For more: story continues below As of Sunday afternoon, the weather service said the greatest risk for strong Easter Sunday storms covered much of Mississippi, Alabama, and western Georgia. That area was at "moderate risk" while much of the rest of the South was under at least a "marginal" risk, the weather service said. The weather service said a broader area, from east Texas to the East Coast was also under at least a "marginal" risk of storms. "This could be a very difficult day weatherwise," Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves told residents in a live Facebook presentation. "Please be weather aware. Pay attention. ... We can see significant winds. We can also see significant tornadoes coming through Mississippi today." In Morgan County, Alabama, a church roof and steeple were damaged by lightning Sunday afternoon, Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Eddie Hicks told AL.com. (Read more severe weather stories.) Six contacts of the Delhi Nizamuddin Markaz attendees have tested positive for coronavirus infection in Nagpur in Maharashtra, an official release stated on Monday. While three of them tested positive on Sunday late night, reports of as many others came positive on Monday. They all belonged from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, it said. "All the six patients have been admitted in the government hospital in Nagpur," stated the release issued by the District Information Office. With detection of fresh cases, the number of COVID-19 affected people has gone to 47 in Nagpur with eight recoveries. A congregation of Tablighi Jamaat held at the Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi last month had emerged as a major hotspot for the spread of coronavirus infection across the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It's thought to be the oldest example of textile technology (NN) An ancient piece of string dating from 40,000 years ago could put to rest the idea that Neanderthals were grunting, stupid cousins of ancient humans. The tiny piece of twine found on a flake of flint in the south of France proves that Neanderthals knew how to make fibres from plants. It was made from the fibrous interior of a tree, and is thought to be the oldest known evidence of textile making. The researchers write that the find proves "it is difficult to see how we can regard Neanderthals as anything other than the cognitive equals of modern humans." Read more: Inbreeding and small populations could have led to Neanderthal extinction An international team, including researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, discovered the cord on a flint fragment from the prehistoric site of Abri du Maras in the south of France. Over the last two years they have been using microscopic analysis to show that these remains had been intertwined - proof it had been put together by humans. It was found in a Neanderthal dwelling in France (NN) Photographs revealed three bundles of twisted fibres, plied together to create one cord. In addition, analysis revealed that these strands were made of cellulose, probably from the inside of coniferous trees. Read more: Suspected Neanderthal footprints have been found in Gibraltar Dr Marie-Helene Moncel, director of research at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, said: "We were able to uncover details about these fibres and we observed that they're different, twisted fibres. It was not possible in nature to find this kind of fibre. "Now we are sure that these twisted fibres are not due to a natural process. "We can imagine that this twisted fibres could be the remains of a cord of something you could use it for making bags." Dr Moncel said that knowing enough to harvest the fibres would have required advanced knowledge of the plants in their environment. She said: "Neanderthals are different but had the same capabilities. He was able to survive in different climates and environments for a long time. Story continues "It's not surprising for me that Neanderthal is able to use the plant world. "Now we have a lot of information about the mineral world and stone tools because that's whats preserved at Neanderthal sites but we are starting to see that the plant world was a large part of their world. "In my opinion, different things can be related to this discovery; obviously the ability to make cord but also a huge knowledge about the trees and different parts of trees. "They had a huge knowledge about the vegetation around the site and the clever behaviour to use everything around the site - the plants, the trees, and to use these different parts of the environment." "The cord fragment from Abri du Maras is the oldest direct evidence of fibre technology to date. A burglar was left tied to a street lamp after he was caught breaking into a home in central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Christopher Daniel Chayoga and several other accomplices were chased through the Irapuato neighborhood of Villa de Lourdes on Sunday morning, after they were seen leaving the residence with a bicycle and a pair of sneakers. Mexican newspaper El Sol de Irapuato reported that the owners of the home were not present at the time of the robbery. Christopher Daniel Chayoga was busted by neighborhood residents running out of a home he and several other accomplices robbed in Guanajuato, Mexico, on Sunday morning. Chayoga was the only suspect the dwellers were able to capture and tie to a street pole before the cops arrived Neighbors caught Chayoga and a video of the citizen's arrest showed him leaning against wooden pole on a street corner with his entire body, minus his face, wrapped in plastic. Tied to him was a sign proclaiming what he'd been caught for. Chayoga was placed under the custody of the Public Ministry pending official charges. The other suspects are still on the run as of Monday. "It's hard because to the government, we don't exist," said Contreras Lopez, who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years and has four grown children who are U.S. citizens. That includes Carmen Contreras Lopez, a 48-year-old housekeeper who, though she earns low wages, files a tax return each year. Since the virus took hold, she has lost most of her clients and is getting by with help from her oldest son. But she won't see a penny of the money promised to most Americans in response to the pandemic. The US$2.2 trillion package that Congress approved to offer financial help during the coronavirus pandemic has one major exclusion: millions of immigrants who do not have legal status in the U.S. but work here and pay taxes. The government expects to begin making payments to millions of Americans in mid-April. Anyone earning up to US$75,000 in adjusted gross income and who has a Social Security number will receive US$1,200. The payment steadily declines for those who make more. Legal permanent residents, or green card holders, are expected to benefit. Roughly 4.3 million mostly unauthorized immigrants who do not have a Social Security number file taxes using wha's known as a taxpayer identification number, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Many say they pay federal taxes because they hope it will one day help them achieve legal residency and because they feel it's the right thing to do. "We made that decision because we're living in a country that's welcomed us with a lot of love," said Ingrid Vaca, a house cleaner in the Washington, D.C., area. Vaca said immigrants take care of communities, children, the elderly and homes, but they will not receive any help themselves. Also left out are the workers' 3.5 million children, many of whom are American citizens. "This is a nightmare to me and many of my colleagues," Vaca said, lamenting the lack of income for rent and basic necessities. "We need for us to be respected." Asked how immigrants without legal status will survive the pandemic's economic toll without any aid, President Donald Trump acknowledged the difficulty but said many citizens without work need help first. "It's a really sad situation, and we are working on it. I will tell you I'm not going to give you a hard and fast answer because I just want to tell you it's something I think about," Trump said. Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation last week in the House and Senate that would allow immigrants to access relief funds. "COVID-19 does not care about your immigration status, so neither should our response," U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, said in a statement. Maria Zamorano, a day laborer in the Los Angeles area, has also been left without work. Until recently, she worked seven days a week cleaning houses, earning roughly US$700 weekly. But all of her employers canceled services. After she did an interview with The New York Times about her situation, two of those employers decided to keep paying her, she said, but she doesn't know for how long. She's still short on cash for food, rent and bills. "Like thousands of others who don't have legal status, we are left empty-handed in this crisis," Zamorano said. "I pay taxes, but the government doesn't consider that we should get help." In rural Massachusetts, Jose Martinez said a pandemic stimulus check could have helped cover at least a month's worth of expenses, if he had qualified. The 34-year-old Mexican crossed the border illegally about 15 years ago and lives near the Vermont state line with his 4-year-old American-born daughter. Martinez, a house painter, says work has dropped off during the pandemic. His boss still owes him more than US$500 for recent jobs, and the restaurant where he washes dishes part-time has also been temporarily shuttered. "The check would have given me the opportunity to stay at home, avoid sickness and keep my family safe," Martinez said, referring to the stimulus money. "But I have to keep looking for work and exposing us to risk. I don't know what else to do." Luis Jimenez, a 35-year-old Mexican who takes cares of calves in New York, near Canada, said he feels forgotten by the government even though his work is vital to feed Americans. "We are essential to the economy and to feed this country, but we don't get any help or support," said the father of three, who has lived in the United States without legal status for 16 years. Jimenez, who lives with his kids and spouse, said he makes about US$38,000 a year and pays about US$6,000 in taxes annually. He has been paying them since 2005, he said. "Every day we go to work and we are exposed to everything. In the farm, there are hardly any protection measures" against coronavirus, he said. BRUSSELS - The coronavirus pandemic is sending U.S. unemployment figures to levels that could rival the Great Depression. In Washington, that might feel like the inevitable consequence of a health crisis that has forced a sudden halt to much of the economy. But the situation across the Atlantic suggests that the dramatic rise in U.S. unemployment - with 17 million people filing for benefits in the past four weeks - is a choice. Q: But isn't Europe also on lockdown? A: The economic situation in Europe is just as grim. The French Central Bank estimates that its country's economy contracted by 6% in the first quarter, the worst plunge since 1945, for instance. But so far, workers are largely protected. Many governments have stepped in with costly programs to subsidize their wages to avoid layoffs. The consequences have been dramatic. Prominent German economic institutes anticipate a bump in Germany's unemployment this year ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 percentage points. The Ifo Institute for Economic Research thinks the unemployment rate in Germany will peak around 5.9% midyear before subsiding. (In most European countries, official unemployment figures aren't released as quickly as in the United States, so many numbers remain estimates for now.) Compare that to the United States, where JPMorgan Chase estimates unemployment could hit 20% in the second quarter. In Europe, demand for the government subsidies have been enormous, offering a strong clue that - if it weren't for the programs - layoffs would be dramatically higher. In Germany, for instance, 650,000 employers had notified employment agencies by last week of their intention to make use of the country's short-time work program. Under the system, employees have their hours scaled back, and the government pays them up to two-thirds of their normal salary, while the employer pays little or nothing. Once the employer is ready to pay full wages again, everything returns to normal - there are no layoffs. Many economists credit the system for having enabled Germany to come roaring back after the 2008 global financial crisis since its companies didn't lose the expertise of their workers and were ready to zoom to full capacity once the recovery started. This time, many European countries have imitated their neighbor. Q: Isn't that expensive? A: It certainly is. But so is a major economic contraction. And ordinary unemployment benefits in Europe also tend to be more generous than those offered in the United States, so the difference between subsidizing employment and cushioning the blow of layoffs is more limited. Germany's employment agencies have already asked for an extra $11 billion to help address the demand. The French system, meanwhile, is already covering 8 million people - a third of the country's private sector workers. The French government will cover up to 84% of a worker's salary, and the Labor Ministry estimates the costs will be $21 billion over the next three months. But, as in Germany, the payoff will be that French unemployment increases will likely be fairly limited. One private analytics firm, Xerfi, estimates that the rate will rise to 9.6% this year, up from 8.5% in 2019. The bump - though it will be painful - is a relative hiccup compared to the size of the economic disruption. French Labor Minister Muriel Penicaud has said that half the country's economy has come to a halt. In Britain, the government has promised to subsidize up to 80% of workers' salaries so long as they are not laid off, but it is struggling to get its program up and running. The Institute for Employment Studies estimates the cost of the British program could be $50 billion over three months. The institute believes that unemployment has already doubled, from 3.9% to 7.5%, which is above the highest point during the crisis that started in 2008. Hard-hit Italy, meanwhile, has simply banned its companies from making layoffs for 90 days. Q: Could something go wrong? Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. A: The wage-subsidy programs will work best if the pandemic-related shutdown is relatively short. If that happens, then companies will be well-positioned to speed back to business with their old workforce in place - and, of course, the workers will have suffered far less economically in the meantime. If the shutdowns drag on - into 2021, for example - then the programs will be far more costly, and they may also be significantly less effective. The longer the economy remains in a coma, the more likely it will have changed in major ways once it reopens. If people start traveling less, for instance, it may not be sustainable to keep subsidizing the wages of airline or hotel workers whose industries may not bounce back to pre-pandemic levels. But European governments have committed to this approach for the time being. "We have one of the strongest welfare states in the world, and we have built up reserves for difficult times during good times," German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil said last month. Q: Could the United States do the same thing? A: A lot of damage has already been done in the United States. Companies that laid off their workers may not take them back. In Europe, many governments had programs in place as part of their safety nets already, and simply expanded them to meet the size of the crisis. Still, there are some suggestions coming from unlikely quarters that Washington try something similar. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a strong Trump backer, said that the United States should copy the British program and cover 80% of wages. "The goal must be to get unemployment down - now - to secure American workers and their families, and to help businesses get ready to restart as soon as possible," he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. WHO is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus? 3 things you need to know Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is not a physician but has been leading the World Health Organization's new coronavirus response, has come under severe criticism, including from President Donald Trump, for not holding China accountable for concealing the truth about the disease. Here are three things about him that have surfaced. Tedros, the first African and non-medical doctor to become director-general of the United Nations health agency and who will be in office for two more years, is being blasted for sounding the alarm too late even as numerous reports point to the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party in putting millions of lives and the global economy at risk as it downplayed the coronavirus outbreak initially. In late January, Tedros met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing and then praised the Chinese government for setting a new standard for outbreak control and its openness to sharing information. However, anonymously speaking to Bloomberg, three officials recently said the U.S. intelligence community noted in a classified report to the White House last week that China lied about the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak, under-reporting the number of infections and deaths. The reality is that we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming, Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN recently. What appears evident now is that long before the world learned in December that China was dealing with this, and maybe as much as a month earlier than that, that the outbreak was real in China. Despite the WHOs purported mission to operate as an apolitical international institution within the United Nations, recent media reports suggest that the WHO helped Beijing disseminate propaganda, downplayed the extent of the disease, and possibly delayed ordering a public health emergency, Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform committee wrote to Tedros last week, according to The Hill. Given the actions and statements of WHO officials during the past few months, we are concerned that the WHO is no longer serving the needs of the world and is instead taking its cues from China. Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is, in essence, the Communist Party of China, they added. Here are three things about Tedros, who holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Community Health from the U.K.s University of Nottingham and a Master of Science in Immunology of Infectious Diseases from the University of London. Tedros was accused of covering up cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia, Sudan Tedros, who is Ethiopian by nationality, served as Ethiopias health minister between 2005 and 2012 and was accused of refusing to record cholera epidemics three times in 2006, in 2009 and in 2011. The allegation was made by Prof. Larry Gostin, now the director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights. Dr. Tedros is a compassionate and highly competent public health official. But he had a duty to speak truth to power and to honestly identify and report verified cholera outbreaks over an extended period, The New York Times quoted Gostin as saying in May 2017, before Tedros was elected to lead the organization. The WHO might lose its legitimacy if it was led by someone who has been accused of covering up epidemics in his home country. In September 2017, about four months after Tedros, 55, was elected as WHO director-general, some U.S. doctors specializing in infectious diseases, wrote an open letter to him, holding him and the WHO responsible for refusing to classify a cholera outbreak in Sudan in an attempt to guard its global reputation. Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan daily becomes more reprehensible, they wrote. Your failure to transport stool samples from victims in Sudan to Geneva for official confirmation of cholera makes you fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread, out of control, with daily new reports confirming that this is indeed a cholera epidemic. The inevitable history that will be written of this epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light. Tedros has denied the allegations, calling them attempts to harm his reputation before his election. Tedros was part of the Ethiopian regime during gross human rights violations When Tedros was Ethiopias minister of Foreign Affairs between 2012 and 2016 and was part of the governing partys and coalitions leadership committees, the country was accused of human rights violations, including the killing of protesters and political targeting of opponents and journalists. Large-scale and unprecedented protests swept through Ethiopias largest region of Oromia beginning in November 2015, and in the Amhara region from July 2016. Ethiopian security forces cracked down on these largely peaceful demonstrations, killing more than 500 people, the Human Rights Watch said in a report during the time. Scores of people fleeing security force gunfire and teargas during the annual Irreecha festival died in a stampede on October 2 in Bishoftu, Oromia region. On October 9, following the destruction of some government buildings and private property by youths, the government announced a draconian and far-reaching six-month countrywide state of emergency, which prescribes sweeping and vaguely worded restrictions on a broad range of actions and undermines free expression, association, and peaceful assembly. The report added, The protests occurred against a background of nearly non-existent political space: in parliament, the ruling coalition has 100 percent of seats, there are restrictions on civil society and independent media, and those who do not actively support the government often face harassment and arbitrary detention. When the Ethiopian government proposed expansion of the municipal boundary of the capital, Addis Ababa, in 2016, protests followed in which security forces arrested tens of thousands of students, teachers, opposition politicians, health workers, and those who sheltered or assisted fleeing protesters. The HRW also said the government at the time sought to control and gag the media and forced many journalists to choose between self-censorship, harassment and arrest, or exile. Tedros was given the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award in 2011 Tedros was the recipient of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award in 2011 when he was Ethiopias minister of Health. A pioneer in malaria research, Dr. Tedros has devoted his life to public service and scientific research, it was noted at the time. Dr. Tedros is recognized for his leadership in the rapidly evolving field of global health, and has worked to enhance Ethiopias active engagement in major international forums Through all his appointments and activities, he has kept his eye on the prize: Bringing about a real and lasting improvement in the health conditions of his own country. In his five years as Ethiopias Minister of Health, Dr. John Hardman, president and CEO of The Carter Center, said at the time, Dr. Tedros has embarked on an ambitious effort to improve the health of Ethiopians through efforts to address specific diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, and to improve the structure and capacity of Ethiopia for health services, with a special emphasis on maternal care. The Army on Monday paid solemn tributes to the soldiers who laid down their lives to capture the icy heights of Siachen 36 years ago, a senior official said. The occasion was the 36th Siachen Day that commemorates the courage and fortitude displayed by Indian Army troops in securing the highest and coldest battlefield in the world, a defence spokesperson said. The Indian Army, this day in 1984, launched 'Operation Meghdoot' to secure the Bilafond La and other passes on the Saltoro ridgeline, from Pakistani aggression, he said. "Since then, it has been a saga of unparalleled valour in the face of a belligerent enemy, arduous terrain and challenging climatic conditions at the glacier," he said. The Siachen warriors continue to guard the 'frozen frontier' with tenacity and resolve against all odds, the spokesperson said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) (@FahadShabbir) Beijing, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Apr, 2020 ) :Although China is claiming success in its battle against the coronavirus, millions have lost their jobs in the economic fallout, throwing into jeopardy an ambitious target to eradicate poverty this year. Beijing has been working to fire up the economy again after bringing it to a near standstill to curb the spread of COVID-19, but many firms have had a bumpy restart and workers are bearing the brunt of the pain. Despite being a country of skyscrapers and high-tech innovations, China still has millions of people on meagre incomes. About 5.5 million rural Chinese live in poverty, defined by the government as surviving on less than 2,300 Yuan ($326) a year. A slowing economy puts pressure on a key Communist Party goal to become a "moderately prosperous society" by the end of 2020, an ambition in place long before the virus emerged. It also threatens a long-held tacit agreement between people and party that freedoms can be sacrificed in return for economic progress, an understanding that largely forms the basis of the authoritarian government's legitimacy in the absence of elections. China has little in the way of social security benefits and workers who lose their jobs have an inadequate safety net, meaning mass unemployment often brings a fear of unrest. Official statistics show jobless numbers have soared, with roughly five million more people out of work between December and February. Data firm Caixin said its services purchasing managers' index, a key indicator of activity in the services sector, showed companies cut staff at the quickest pace on record in March. Hu Fangdi, 23, lost her job as a saleswoman at an airport retail store two weeks ago and has had no luck finding a new role. "No one was buying things during the outbreak and the company laid us off," she told AFP. Lily Han, who lost her sales job at a tech firm last month, said she needs a new job within two months just to make ends meet. The 24-year-old has applied for over 300 positions but has come up empty handed. Even though the Central government has yet to officially announce an extension of the 21-day nationwide lockdown which is set to end on Tuesday, various state chief ministers, including Arvind Kejriwal, BS Yediyurappa, Captain Amarinder Singh, etc have hinted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has agreed to extend it. BCCL But unlike the first 21 days where everything except essential services were suspended, the Lockdown 2.0 is set to be a more relaxed one. Read more River Ganga's Water Quality Has Improved So Much During Lockdown That Now It's Fit To Drink Since March this year, since the country went into lockdown, which also forced the closure of the industries along its banks, the water quality has been improving dramatically. BCCL According to reports, the quality has improved so much that now it is fit for drinking. Read more Haryana & Bengal Join The Growing Number Of States Making Face Masks Mandatory In Public In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 more and more states across the country are making it mandatory for all those who are stepping outside their homes to cover their faces when they are in public. BCCL Haryana, Gujarat where wearing face masks in public was already mandatory in some areas have extended it to across the state. Read more This Former Maoist From Chhattisgarh Is Now Busy Making Face Masks For Cops On The Frontlines Of COVID-19 From holding guns and fighting against them to stitching face masks to keep them safe during the COVID-19 outbreak, that is how life has changed for Madakam Lakha, a former Maoist Guerrilla from Sukma Chhattisgarh. BCCL These days the former Maoist fighter is busy making masks for police personnel in Sukma, one of the strongholds of the Maoists in the state. Read more Two Men Arrested In Mohali For Allegedly Spitting On Currency Notes Before Buying Dairy Products Two men have been arrested in Mohali for allegedly spitting on currency notes before buying dairy products during the coronavirus lockdown. . According to a report in India Today, both the men were from Bihar and they spit on the notes before handing them over to the shopkeeper. This claim was made by another customer who then raised the alarm. Read more Earlier Assaulted, Now Applauded - Indore Has Change Of Heart As People Clap For Doctors Not many days ago a group of doctors were assaulted in an area in Indore when they had gone to screen people for coronavirus symptoms. Stones were pelted at the healthcare workers and they were also assaulted and beaten up. BCCL Several got injured and it was not a pretty sight. But what did they do? Did they back off? Not a chance! They put duty before safety and went back to work. They knew they had a job to do and one should appreciate their courage. Read more By Lauren Theisen New York Daily News Theres been a massive increase in demand for online grocery shopping during the coronavirus pandemic, and some users of the Instacart app have resorted to underhanded tactics in order to lure delivery workers into taking their orders. According to CNN, multiple Instacart workers have been victims of what they call tip-baiting. With so many customers struggling to secure deliveries, some have taken to including large tips as a means of enticing workers to take their order. But because Instacart allows users to modify their tip after an order is delivered, some have employed a bait-and-switch, shrinking tips once the groceries have arrived. Its very demoralizing, said Annaliisa Arambula, an Instacart worker from Portland who told CNN she saw a tip go from $55 to $0 after delivery. When you know that its somebody whos just doing it to game the system and to get their order when they want it, its really frustrating. Other workers have had similar experiences, and though this act would be sneaky and immoral in the best of circumstances, in the midst of a pandemic, with workers putting their lives at risk, it becomes downright malicious. Its truly evil to bait and switch in this type of environment, said Bryant Greening, a Chicago attorney who told CNN that several Instacart workers had reached out to him over tip-baiting. Their livelihood and well-being are on the line. When these shoppers and drivers see a high tip, its an opportunity for them to put food on the table, so theyre more willing to take a risk on their health to achieve that goal. The tip-baiting practice has created a lose-lose situation for workers. Some are now distrustful of orders with large tips, but unless they want to take a chance that a cash bonus is waiting for them upon delivery, orders with small tips arent a better alternative. We always say: No matter what, never trust a tip, one worker said. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Social distancing in CNY: Hundreds of calls, police try to teach people to obey crackdown Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com The district administration in Uttar Pradeshs Badaun has put 14 villages under quarantine after a man tested positive for coronavirus disease Covid-19. The man from Andhra Pradesh was staying in a mosque in Bhavanipur Khali area of the district, reported news agency PTI. He tested positive on Saturday. He had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhis Nizamuddin last month, PTI further reported. After the man tested positive for corona, the district administration has sealed 14 villages in the radius of three kilometres from the village where he was staying. Fourteen villages have been quarantined, news agency PTI quoted District magistrate Kumar Prashant as saying. Watch | Woman throws her five children into river after argument with husband Meanwhile, 30 more Covid-19 cases were reported in Uttar Pradeshs Agra on Monday, taking the tally of cases in the district to 134. Of the 134 cases, at least 60 people are from Tablighi Jamaat, District Magistrate Prabhu N Singh said. As per the website of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of positive cases of coronavirus in Uttar Pradesh are 483 as of now, while five people have died due to the disease. And 46 are cured, discharged or migrated. The total number of Covid-19 positive cases across India reached 9,152 on Monday, said the health ministry. It further said that the death toll due to the pandemic rose to 308 after 35 new fatalities were reported. Of the total 308 deaths, Maharashtra tops the tally with 149 fatalities, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 36, Gujarat at 25 and Delhi at 24. Punjab and Tamil Nadu have registered 11 deaths each, while Telengana reported nine fatalities. China is beginning to offer a glimpse into the near future for some countries, as the economic superpower tries to pick itself back up slowly following major lockdowns in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. Tan Thanh is one of the auxiliary border gates in the northern province of Lang Son. Photo: VNA The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) recently proposed to the prime minister to permit customs goods clearance across all secondary border gates in the northern province of Lang Son on the Chinese border. The goal of the move is to improve volumes of import and export goods between the two countries, currently only hitting around 50-60 per cent of pre-pandemic numbers. Lang Son alone boasts 10 secondary border gates. Two of them, Tan Thanh and Coc Nam, were reopened recently as China tries to pull itself out of the COVID-19 mire. According to the ministry, current clearance capacity at Tan Thanh is exceedingly limited, with only up to 150 trucks moving goods to China, accounting for half of the goods set for export on a daily basis. Remaining items are stored at the border gate. Lang Son, along with Chinas Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, has agreed to ensure the required conditions to help restore clearance of goods at the border, involving strict utilisation of disease prevention procedures. The MoIT added that Chinas control of the pandemic has improved recently, demonstrated by Yunnan and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region lowering the emergency response level from one to three. These two provinces have been partially restoring trade between residents of the two sides to meet the increasing production and consumption demands. This attempt to reopen borders, especially with Vietnam, is part of a wider effort by China to jump-start its economy. It is a huge juggling act determining the correct amount of time to ensure lockdowns, while increasing economic activity in a way that does not trigger a second wave of coronavirus infections across the country. Nevertheless, Chinas moves will provide clues for other countries. The crisis may have started there, but simply through that fact, China may be best placed to gain in the long term as nations worldwide attempt to recover economically. What were initially seen by many as drastic measures by China are now being viewed as perfectly sensible in trying to control the virus. Now, locally-transmitted cases have plummeted, and a shutdown of most of Hubei province, where the pandemic originated, was lifted last week. But the lockdown also halted activity for around two months, likely to result in Chinas first contraction in decades. Goldman Sachs analysts have predicted that the countrys GDP may fall by 9 per cent for the first quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year. The Chinese government understood that its actions to contain the virus came at the expense of economic health, just as the Vietnamese governments timely moves illustrated in this country. The task now is for leaders to figure out how to dampen the consequences and get working again, which will have knock-on effects for the rest of the world but particularly bordering nations. Chen Xingdong, chief China economist for BNP Paribas told CNN, The economic losses have become intolerable, adding that the government has to balance resuming work while remaining vigilant. I dont think it is right to restart business and production only when the virus has totally disappeared. Learning from others Vietnam and China hold a colourful history together, and have strived to build a successful trade relationship over the years. It only took a few years after Vietnam introduced the Law on Foreign Investment in 1987 for their northern neighbour to begin seriously looking at pumping money in the country. Funding was relatively limited in the 1990s, but saw a significant increase after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, with a main focus on real estate, agriculture, and labour-intensive manufacturing. In Vietnam, local producers over the years have depended on exported materials from across the border but amid warnings that depending on one other market is risky, and with Vietnams increasing stature among other economies in the form of free trade agreements, the country has forged its own image as a safe and profitable destination for investment. Yet, similarities of course remain when it comes to fighting against a common enemy in the coronavirus. Chinas economic solutions rest on policies and campaigns attempting to get people back to work, while encouraging business confidence both at home and abroad, protecting as many companies from failing as possible. Many countries after China will strive for the same and while Vietnam is currently tightening movement of people within their daily lives, it is likely the country will follow suit with policies akin to China, especially if they work. But these actions might only provide so much help for Western markets that are less-centralised in control. The Chinese are resuming some large infrastructure projects which are largely funded by the state, said Xiaobo Lu, a professor of political science at Columbia University, adding that industries served by those ventures are fairly simple to kick-start, and can absorb idle labour. While its true the crisis isnt over for China, lessons can be learned from it, said Helge Berger, the International Monetary Funds assistant director of Asia-Pacific. China is also demonstrating importance that policymakers have to be ready for what is an unavoidable slowdown in growth. The economic fallout from the virus is going to be severe. This is meaningful and requires our attention. Future winners In fact, despite suffering first, the country could ultimately benefit and move ahead on the global economic chessboard, outmanoeuvring the United States. Europe is also watching on, and in a few months could find itself in the middle of a tug-of-war between the worlds two biggest superpowers. The Chinese are in a much stronger position than they have been coming out of any recent global crisis, Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, told MarketWatch. China owns most of the global medical supply chain, and theyve leveraged this containment success by providing aid to Europe and emerging markets. Carl Weinberg, founder and chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said in one interview Chinese leaders simply seem to have a better handle of the issue. The Chinese built a hospital with 2,000 beds in 10 days from start to finish, he said. This happened in January before the pandemic was fully recognised. The US is way behind the curve on this. Increased tensions could result in further dents in the already-fractious US-China economic relationship. This may not only help continue the acceleration of businesses relocating to regional countries, but also push Europe into the arms of China. The pandemic is going to reinforce that the US is simply not the highly functional, advanced role model it used to be, said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank specialising in Americas foreign affairs. The Europeans have, in the past, looked at the US with a fair degree of awe, because of its innovative companies, strong university system, and the ability to attract highly skilled immigrants. Now, Alden warned, the US is on a course to suffer a worse outbreak than Italy. The consequences for a Chinese revival, and the US not sufficiently dealing with COVID-19, could be deep for American businesses, according to Eurasia Groups Bremmer. This will accelerate the de-globalisation trend in data and manufacturing, and it means that the Europeans are less likely to follow the US on some issues, Bremner said, explaining that it also increases the ability of China to happily continue with its ambitious global development strategy initiatives. Meanwhile, for Vietnam, it may be a waiting game to capitalise on global movements, but the country was already seemingly on the right track as the US-China trade dispute unfolded. Global companies have been testing Vietnams capabilities for several years even before the added impetus from the US-China trade wars, explained Min Zhou and Vivian Chen, research analysts at global asset management firm AllianceBernstein, in a recent report. Labour costs in Vietnam, with its younger workforce and ample supply, are about 40 per cent lower than in China. Many popular clothing and sportswear brands, including Nike and Adidas, already have a large manufacturing presence in Vietnam. The key for Vietnamese plants is to meet the strict standards of these major companies, and Zhou and Chens report found that, in general, managers are taking a step-by-step approach by introducing simpler product lines before moving onto more complex items. Risks in this area are unlikely to stop the shift. If anything, the coronavirus crisis will accelerate moves by global companies into Vietnam, the report added. VIR Quang Bao Will phone exports bounce back as Samsungs production in China slows? Samsung is believed to have great advantages over its rivals as its production base is in Vietnam, not in China, where the Covid-2019 has forced a series of factories to close down. Researchers pushing the limits of magnets as a means to create faster electronics published their proof of concept findings today, April 10, in the journal Science. The University of Central Florida is the lead university in the multidisciplinary university research initiative (MURI) project, which is funded by a $7.5 million grant from the Department of Defense. The team exploring methods for creating machines that operate at trillions of cycles per second includes the University of California, Santa Cruz and Riverside, Ohio State University, Oakland University (Michigan) and New York University, among others. Today's computers rely on ferromagnets (the same kind that stick to your refrigerator) to align the binary 1s and 0s that process and store information. Anti-ferromagnets are much more powerful, but their natural state, displaying no net measurable magnetization, makes it difficult to harness their power. The laboratory of Enrique del Barco, Ph.D., and collaborators at the University of California, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Chinese Northeastern University are successfully overcoming that natural resistance using electrical currents passed through anti-ferromagnets on the nanoscale. The results are groundbreaking because they represent proof of concept showing that antiferromagnetic devices can operate on the terahertz level -- or calculations completed in a trillionth of a second. Not only does that hold potential for everything from guidance systems to communications, but it brings devices closer to mimicking the way the brain operates. "What we're seeing now is that operating at this level is possible and doable," del Barco said. The next steps will require close collaboration between the theory, experiment and materials groups within the MURI. Creating devices on the nanoscale (with lateral dimensions below half a micron) takes a fundamental understanding of the appropriate materials. Both theoretical and experimental study will follow this proof of concept with the intention of finding creative ways to scale down anti-ferromagnets. The United States is committed to countering a surge of white supremacist terrorism that has occurred over the past several years, including in places as diverse as Europe, New Zealand and the United States. On April 6, the State Department designated the Russian Imperial Movement, known as RIM, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, or SDGT. In addition to the group itself, three RIM leaders -- Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, Denis Valliullovich Gariev, and Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov were also designated as SDGTs. At a recent press briefing, U.S. Coordinator for Counterterrorism Nathan Sales noted that these designations are unprecedented: This is the first time the United States has ever designated foreign white supremacist terrorists. RIM, as Ambassador Sales explained, provides paramilitary-style training to neo-Nazis and white supremacists and plays a prominent role in trying to rally likeminded Europeans and Americans into a common front against their perceived enemies. The group has innocent blood on its hands, he said, noting how two Swedish men who participated in a series of terrorist attacks in the Swedish city of Gothenburg in 2016, were given paramilitary-style training by RIM at a camp in St. Petersburg. The prosecutor who successfully handled the case blamed RIM for radicalizing them to terrorism and for providing the training that enabled the attacks. Ambassador Sales said the SDGT designation for the group and its leaders has practical ramifications: the first is to limit their access to the United States financial system. Any assets that they had in the United States or that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, he explained. We think that thats going to make it substantially more difficult for them to move money throughout the international financial system. Another consequence is that it is now easier for U.S. officials at the borders to stop RIM-related individuals from traveling to the United States. Ambassador Sales said the designations also send an unmistakable message: That the United States will not hesitate to use our sanctions authorities aggressively; and that we are prepared to target any foreign terrorist group, regardless of ideology, that threatens our citizens, our interests abroad, or our allies. Ambassador Sales called on all countries, including Russia, to join the United States in taking decisive action to counter such threats to international security. One of Julian Assange's lawyers, Stella Moris, has made a shocking revelation that the that the WikiLeaks founder has secretly fathered two children with her while hiding out at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange has been facing extradition to the United States and rape charges. Assange's partner, in court documents and a video posted on Saturday by WikiLeaks and the Daily Mail, said that the couple conceived two-year-old Gabriel and one-year-old Max as Assange was wanted in the United States for leaking classified intelligence materials and in Sweden for rape allegations, an attorney for Assange confirmed the news to Washington Post on Sunday. Moris, according to the attorney, said that she revealed the relationship because she wanted 48-year-old Assange to be released from London prison, where he landed after the Ecuadorian Embassy rescinded his political asylum a year ago, amid the coronavirus outbreak which is spreading among the UK's prison population. In the documents, Moris further said that Assange's health is already precarious because of a lung condition as well as mental health challenges after extended isolation. "I make this statement now only because our lives are on the brink and I fear that Julian could die," Moris said in the statement filed with the court in support of an application Assange's attorneys submitted, to have him released on bail. She added, "He may himself die as a result of increased risk of exposure to the COVID-19 virus." Westminster Magistrates Court judge Vanessa Baraitser refused his bail request on March 25. Since then, one prisoner in the high-security Belmarsh prison, where Assange is lodged, has died after contracting the virus, according to local media reports. It is, however, unclear if Assange's legal team will make a second bail request. Moris said in the video that she fell in love with Assange after meeting him in 2011 and joining his international legal team, which led her to spend "almost every single day" in the embassy. In the video, she flips through photos of the children, a cat beside her, remarking at one point that the older boy resembles Assange: "Very Julian." The children, both British citizens, have visited their father in Belmarsh, according to British media. It also reported that Assange watched his children's births over video and that he was able to secretly meet Gabriel in the embassy. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian foreign ministry and US officials have declined to comment on the matter. Assange is challenging an extradition request by the United States, which wants the 48-year-old Australian to stand trial in federal court in Northern Virginia on charges that he violated the Espionage Act. Prosecutors allege that Assange helped obtain and disseminate hundreds of thousands of pages of secret military documents and diplomatic cables regarding US action in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, Assange has also helped Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, hack into government computers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Tata Starbucks to launch drive-through outlets and home deliveries India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: Tata Starbucks is planning to launch drive-through outlets and home deliveries as it works on a new business model to mitigate the economic impact of coronavirus pandemic, according to a top company official. The company, which is a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Consumer Products Ltd (formerly known as Tata Global Beverages) and Starbucks Corporation, termed the ongoing situation as "something our businesses have not experienced in many decades". Coronavirus: Govt approves export of hydroxychloroquine to 13 countries The coffee chain is also confident of old patrons coming back once the lockdown is over even as it is working on a new business model to "thoughtfully expand" into areas with potential customers. "In the next few weeks, we are looking at announcing our first Drive Thru store in India. This will allow customers to engage with the brand in new and innovative ways," Tata Starbucks CEO Navin Gurnaney told PTI in an email interview. Besides, it is also increasing its focus on digital solutions like digital payments and transacting through mobile app. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts Tata Starbucks is also working on home delivery option to reach consumers' doorsteps. According to experts, post-pandemic people would prefer lesser visits to crowded places such as stores and QSRs. "In the current conditions, one of most convenient ways to engage with our customers is through home deliveries, which allows them to enjoy their favourite beverages and food from the safety of their own homes," he added. Tata Starbuck is planning to expand its e-commerce play as part of its omni channel retail strategy. "We are currently using e-commerce for our gift cards. Going forward we will certainly have new and exciting announcements to make in this space," Gurnaney said, adding that the current situation is going to drive digital, new ways of working and connecting with customers. Over expansion plans, Gurnaney replied Tata Starbucks would continue its growth with "optimism" in the Indian market by adding more stores and also introduce international best sellers and innovative offerings inspired by India cuisines in its menu to delight its customers. "Expansion is key component for our growth and ranks high in our business plan. Each year, our aim is to thoughtfully expand into cities/ neighbourhoods where we feel our customers want to see us. Fake News Buster "Our optimism and commitment to the long-term growth potential in India remains intact during the crisis period. We are confident we will be back to business and serving the Starbucks Experience once the lockdown period is over," he said. Tata Starbucks presently operates 185 stores across 11 cities in the country. On the impact of pandemic on the business, Gurnani said: "The economic impact of the pandemic is something we cannot escape, and we understand that our customers may also take time to recover from". The company is confident about its relationships with its loyal customers, who not only come for the coffee but stay for the experience. "We are certain the Starbucks Experience will bring them back. We are continuing our efforts using the power of digital mediums and new business models to ensure that we are in touch with our customers through this difficult time," he added. The company has also asked its property owners to waive the rentals due to closure of stores and impact on the business. "The position we are in today, is something our businesses have not experienced in many decades." "We are very appreciative of everybody's sensitisation towards this scenario and look forward to putting this phase behind us and moving on to strengthening our partnerships," he said. Tata Starbucks has also announced grants for its partners (employees) and offering benefits to support them and their families in response to COVID-19. This includes pay and access to medical assistance. Any partners diagnosed with COVID-19 will be granted paid leave until they recover fully and are medically cleared to return to work. Moreover, if partners who need to self-quarantine will be granted an additional 14 days paid leave. "We are committed to ensuring that our partners (employees) should never have to choose between work and taking care of themselves. We are closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and following all government directives in this regard. In this unprecedented time, we all must support each other, our customers and communities," said Gurnani. India is presently going through an unprecedented complete lockdown of three weeks, ending on April 14, to prevent the spread of the virus. President Donald Trump has rhapsodized in recent weeks about how special Easter is for him. He never quite specified why that is, but for a while it was the date he had in mind for ending the national shutdown - the day on which he envisioned Americans crowding the church pews once again. And yet he spent much of the holiest weekend on the Christian calendar in an uproar over crushing news reports that make it clear his early response to coronavirus warnings was a failure - that cost thousands of human lives. On April 4, The Washington Post reported that it took 70 days from the time Trump was first notified of the seriousness of the coronavirus threat for him to treat it "not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America's defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens." The Post detailed how that ten-week period "now stands as critical time that was squandered." This landmark piece of reporting was followed a week later by a New York Times investigation based in part on a stunning chain of emails from dozens of experts in government agencies, health organizations and universities. The so-called Red Dawn emails make it undeniable that the alarm was raised months ago, while Trump was assuring the nation that the virus was nothing more serious than the flu and would soon disappear. These two pieces of journalism "are the real-time Pentagon Papers of this administration's pandemic disaster," wrote journalist James Fallows. In other words, they are the historic documentation of devastating failure at the highest level. At some level, the president knows just how bad they make him look. And so he lashed out in all directions, relying on his tried-and-true technique of trying to shoot the messengers. The Times reporting, he tweeted, was "fake, just like the 'paper' itself." He took aim at Fox News's well-respected Chris Wallace (who had cited the Times report on his Sunday show) in juvenile terms that compared him to other Sunday hosts and his journalist-father, Mike Wallace. He managed a shot at The Washington Post, and at Fox News overall. In short, he was on a tear - badly rattled by what he knew of the reporting, whether he had read it himself or not. As the weekend came to a close, CBS's "Sixty Minutes" aired another tough piece of reporting. This one drove home the appalling spectacle of American health care workers who lack the basic protective equipment that they need to do their front-line jobs - some of whom have been issued a single mask for the entire week or are forced to wear garbage bags instead of surgical gowns. It featured an interview with Peter Navarro, Trump's top trade adviser, who gushed about how the government is moving on "Trump Time" - that is, swiftly and efficiently, at least in Navarro's rosy view. He dismissed the reports of the administration's lengthy delay on coronavirus response as "fake news," and demanded that interviewer Bill Whittaker "show me the money." CBS apparently didn't have the smoking gun in time for Whittaker's sitdown with Navarro, but there it was on Sunday's broadcast - a late-January memo from Navarro himself warning that the coming pandemic could cause $5.7 trillion economic loss and the deaths of "half a million souls" in America. Historians will turn to this documentation when they evaluate how the administration responded. The president doesn't seem to care about that, or may consider it a lost cause. What he hopes is that Americans - voters - will believe him when he says the news is fake. But the history of the Trump administration has shown that the loudest cries of "fake news" accompany the most damning journalism. Coming from him, the phrase now dependably has another meaning: "all-too-accurate reporting that damages my reputation." A sizable segment of the nation has been willing to believe the president who tells them to believe only him, even when the proof is right there before their eyes. A memo, an email chain, dozens of sources inside government - for some, none of it matters. In January of 2016, at an Iowa rally, Trump famously quipped that his base of loyalists would stay with him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. He wouldn't lose one voter, he predicted. His constant disparagement of the traditional news media has been a key element of that loyalty: Journalists are the enemy. They are to be hated, not believed. Now that more than 22,000 Americans have died of the virus, with slow response and denial at least partly to blame, "fake news" has gotten all too real. Americans who care about the truth would do well to remember what president's favorite phrase really means. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 23:29:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TIRANA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- A set of new regulations entered into force in Albania on Monday, as the government announced the extension of lockdown during weekends, according to an order of the Ministry Health and Social Protection. Health Minister Ogerta Manastirliu signed an order according to which citizens are allowed to go out of their houses between 5 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. local time daily. All pharmacies, banks and markets across the country can operate between the same time period. However, according to the new regulations, the country will be in total lockdown in the weekends, starting from 5:30 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Monday. Residents are required to apply for an authorization to leave home for buying groceries and it will be given to only one person per household for 90 minutes a day during the daily curfew. During the past two weeks, residents were allowed to leave their homes between 5 a.m. until 1 p.m. from Monday to Saturday after receiving an authorization via a text message or by using the online platform e-albania. On Monday, Albanian State Police said it will start to use drones to identify people who break the quarantine or curfew rules. A total of 253 people were fined with 10,000 Albanian lek (around 86.4 U.S. dollars) for breaking curfew regulations, and 16 drivers had their vehicles blocked and driving licenses revoked for driving without authorizations in the past 24 hours, state police reported. Speaking at a press conference, Director of Public Health Institute Albana Fico confirmed 21 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 467 with 23 fatalities. For the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak, the total number of recovered patients surpassed that of the positive cases. So far in Albania, health authorities have reported 212 positive cases and 232 cured patients. Enditem United States Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday, declared support for Joe Biden as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. ... United States Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday, declared support for Joe Biden as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. He made the declaration in a livestream event on Periscope. His support will now calm nerves as Biden will go into the nomination, coming up in a few weeks, unopposed. The Dems have been working towards ensuring a united front against President Donald Trump. Trump is the Republican Party candidate for the U.S. 2020 Election. We need you in the White House, Sanders told Biden. Biden, in response, said Sanders endorsement meant a great deal to him. In April 2019, Trump predicted that the duo would be the two finalists of their party. I believe it will be Crazy Bernie Sanders vs. Sleepy Joe Biden as the two finalists to run against maybe the best Economy in the history of our Country (and MANY other great things)! I look forward to facing whoever it may be. May God Rest Their Soul!, Trump tweeted. One week later, Trump mocked Biden after the former vice president launched his campaign. Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!, he tweeted. Calibrated and zone wise lifting of lockdown on the cards India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: The government has intensified efforts to finalise the guidelines to ahead of April 14, the last day of the lockdown. While it is clear that the lockdown would continue, several measures are being taken to also revive the economy. The idea is to make the lockdown more calibrated when compared to the first phase, officials working on the guidelines tell OneIndia. Allow limited activity in select sectors, services with safeguards: DPIIT's lockdown extension plan One of the major concerns was raised by the Ministry of Commerce. The Ministry has raised concerns with the Ministry of Home Affairs regarding the movement of vehicles carrying essential supplies. There is a need to enable such movement if the lockdown has to continue and remain successful the MHA was told. Further, the Commerce Ministry has said that several manufacturing units need to be opened up. These would include automobiles, textiles and industries manufacturing electronic goods. Further, a suggestion to open up smaller companies with export commitments was also made. However, the Ministry said that these industries must operate with minimal staff and proper sanitation has to be in place. In all probability, the Centre may classify the country into three zones while announcing the guidelines. Chief Minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar said that the state would be divided into three zones while lifting the restrictions. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts The PM has held several meetings with the top brass in the past one week to discuss the lockdown and the measures to be taken post-April 14. Two key considerations were considered during these deliberations, officials familiar with the development told OneIndia. There is the question of life and there is livelihood and both are equally important. Officials said that the lockdown needed to be lifted in a staggered manner as it had to be ensured that India goes not go into negative growth. Most officials said that a balance had to be struck in a situation such as this. Lives have to be saved, but it was also important to revive economic activity, officials told the PM. Fake News Buster Officials suggested that in order to revive economic activity, the nation had to be divided into three zones. The red zone would be the one with the most number of coronavirus cases and these zones would remain locked down. In the yellow zone, where a limited number of cases are reported, activity would resume, but the movement would be heavily monitored. In the green zones, where no coronavirus activity is reported, the officials suggested that normalcy should return. Police officers have slammed a group of 15 people who told them they 'should be out fighting real crime' instead of breaking up their street party. Officers were scrambled to Woodville in Burton, Derbyshire on Saturday night after concerned neighbours reported the gathering. They found around 15 people, including children, gathered around a fire pit in the middle of the road, breaking social distancing rules just after 10pm. But instead of accepting they were in the wrong, the revellers bombarded the officers with abuse. Police officers discovered around 15 people having a street party, gathered around a fire pit in Woodville, Burton, Derbyshire on Saturday night Derbyshire Police put out a tweet an hour after the Woodville street party A Derbyshire Police spokesman shared a picture on Twitter with the caption: 'Seeing as though we got quite a response from our post the other day regarding the party in the street with the fire pit we thought we'd share a snapshot of what our two officers were met with. 'A number of people had already retreated to their dwellings. We'd just like to add that while on the scene, our officers were met with some infuriating comments like, 'you should be out fighting real crime' and that we have 'better things to be doing'. 'Thank you sir, we know! But this needed sorting out.' The original tweet from the force said: 'Group 2 have attended a very bizarre job tonight in Woodville... 'A street party; involving about 15 people including children, surrounding a fire pit IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!! 'This was subsequently shut down and everyone sent back to their homes. This is not acceptable!' Police are handing out fines to anyone found outside their house unnecessarily, with 60 for a first offence at 120 for a second one. This Easter weekend thousands of people were still seen on beaches, parks and alongside rivers and canals during the hot weather. Officer patrols have been stepped up in green spaces to make sure people are sticking to the guidelines, but many are continuing to flout the rules. The incident in Burton comes after one earlier this month Staffordshire Police had to break up a house party where eight people were playing dominoes - and a banjo. Officers discovered eight visitors at a house in Hanley at 1am on April 4. The guests, who did not live at the property, were breaking social distancing rules. Revellers are seen crowding Brighton's beachfront on Easter Sunday It comes as emergency services across the area pleaded with people to stay at home in a bid to help stop the spread of coronavirus. Commenting on the Burton street party, one person said: 'It's heartwarming to read the comments on here how you're all doing what you are told as we are but fuming that others aren't. Let's hope we don't have more idiots on our doorstep. 'I know of five people who died of it in Burton so it's here. Stay home, stay safe.' Mandy Pearson added: 'Sadly the only way some people will take this seriously is when, and I mean when, they or a family member experience the tragedy this virus brings first hand.' Veronica Hackett said: 'The more people do these things the longer the rest of us have to stay inside and away from our families.' Walkers and cyclists were also having trouble obeying the two-metre social distancing rule while walking along the canal path at Hertford Union canal in east London on Sunday Ann Chamberlain said they were 'stupid people that think they are above everyone else'. She commented: 'Putting themselves and everyone else at risk of catching the virus. 'I don't know what is so hard for people to understand!! We can have plenty of parties when this is all over.' Lesley Hill said their actions were 'absolutely shocking' and called the virus a 'monster'. This weekend the number of coronavirus deaths in the UK surpassed 10,000 with 84,279 cases nationwide. Businesses around the world are facing tremendous stress as countries curb travel, close their borders and shutter their factories. As such, its probably fair to say that few businesses remain unscathed. These companies may be in industries that are recession-resistant or have natural monopolies that make them more resilient during a downturn. Given the favourable characteristics, investors should actively seek out such companies as they stand a very strong chance of getting through the pandemic without significant adverse effects. With that in mind, here are three such pandemic-resistant stocks that investors can consider for their portfolios. Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX: S68) Singapore Exchange Limited, or SGX, is Singapores sole stock exchange operator. Last month, SGX announced that it will stay open during the COVID-19 circuit breaker period. Keeping the exchanges open will allow investors and fund managers to continue using its risk management tools and a vast array of derivatives and securities to manage their portfolios. And with heightened volatility in stock markets around the world, SGXs suite of products continues to see a surge in demand. For its securities division, market turnover increased by 124% year on year in March to S$48.2 billion, while securities daily average value (SDAV) jumped 114% year on year. Total derivatives traded volume rose 41% year on year to 33 million contracts. With this pandemic unlikely to abate anytime soon, SGXs securities and derivatives division could continue to see a healthy level of interest. As more trades are made on its platform, SGX could gain higher revenues, profits and cash flow for the group. Raffles Medical Group Ltd (SGX: BSL) Raffles Medical Group Ltd, or RMG, is an integrated healthcare provider. The group owns the flagship Raffles Hospital located in Bugis and a chain of clinics offering private family medicine and health screening services. Story continues Being in the healthcare industry, RMG directly contributes to the fight against COVID-19. Beyond Singapore, RMG is one of the few pre-qualified private hospital operators in China, underscoring the need for quality medical care in China. RMGs new hospital in Chongqing, China has started operations since January 2019 and has been included in Chinas social health insurance scheme Yibao. That said, the virus could delay the opening of RMGs other hospital in Shanghai. RMG CEO Dr Loo has mentioned that the completion of the hospital could be postponed to sometime during the third quarter of this year. The groups China hospitals will also incur start-up losses during their first three years of operation but for long term investors, it may be well worth the wait. Top Glove Holdings Berhad (SGX: BVA) Top Glove is the worlds largest manufacturer of gloves. The group has 2,000 customers worldwide and exports to more than 195 countries. As of 19 March 2020, Top Glove has 44 factories and a glove production capacity of 73.4 billion pieces per annum. The pandemic has greatly increased demand for nitrile gloves to be used in the healthcare industry. As a result, Top Gloves order book has increased, with strong sales orders coming from Europe and the USA along with the Asian region. At the moment, Top Gloves factory utilisation rate is now close to 100%, but the group is expanding its capacity by building three new factories and installing more production lines. When completed, the new facilities should add an additional capacity of 8.2 billion gloves per annum by end-2020. Further down the road, another 9.5 billion gloves per annum of new capacity is expected to be available by the end of 2021, bringing Top Gloves production capacity to a record 91.1 billion. As demand is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future, Top Gloves order book should continue to see healthy growth. With share prices battered to multi-year lows, many attractive investment opportunities have emerged. In a special FREE report, we show you 3 stocks that we think will be suitable for our portfolio. Simply click here to scoop up your FREE copy before the next stock market rally. Disclaimer: Royston Yang owns shares in Singapore Exchange Limited and Raffles Medical Group Ltd. The post 3 Pandemic-Resistant Stocks for Your Watchlist appeared first on The Smart Investor. April 13 : One of the most awaited festivals of happiness in Kerala is Vishu 2020 . This auspicious festival will be celebrated on April 14, 2020, thereby signifying the commencement of the New year (according to the Malayalam calendar ). The people of Kerala welcome good luck, new prosperous beginnings, and happiness through various prayers. Also, the famous Vishu Kanni plays a significant role in ushering prosperity into ones family. Image Source: Prokerala.com Vishu kanni posts This year, celebrate this festival along with loved ones far and wide with your prayers and also by sending wishes. You can send beautiful Vishu Kanni images. Vishu Messages in Malayalam, greeting cards and lots more messages that spread the true essence of Vishu. Browse further and pick a couple of cards that can be shared with all your Malayali friends, relatives around the world. Image Source: Prokerala.com May Vishu bring happiness May peace and positive hope be with you always Happy Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Vishu 2020 greetings cards Let Vishu remove the bad and bring in the good in life Learn and move on in life Praying that your Vishu is blissful this year Ennumennum nanmakal mathram nirayatte Puthuvalsara Aasamsakal Image Source: Prokerala.com Welcome good luck on Vishu May your life be filled with joy May the New Year make you happy Have a great Vishu The government must reform immigration rules for foreign-born medical staff working in the NHS during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a top professional body for doctors in the UK. The British Medical Association (BMA) has called on the home secretary, Priti Patel, to grant indefinite leave to remain to all international doctors, which would remove restrictions on their ability to stay in Britain. It came as health secretary Matt Hancock paid tribute to NHS staff from other countries, acknowledging that a disproportionate number of workers born overseas had died since the start of the outbreak. I think its fair to say that my admiration for those who work in the NHS, whether they come from overseas or were born here, it doesnt matter, my admiration is unparalleled, he said during Sundays Downing Street press conference. In a letter to the home secretary, BMA council chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul called for the Home Office to grant indefinite leave to remain to the families of all overseas medical staff who die in the pandemic. He also said that many international doctors and healthcare staff may have to pay a surcharge for their own healthcare due to their immigration status. The BMA chair said: It is unfair to expect doctors currently outside of the UK who are willing to come to help in the crisis and other international doctors and healthcare workers already in the UK, who are prepared to risk their lives while providing care in the NHS, to pay for that care should they themselves need it. Dr Nagpaul also asked the government to grant special dispensation to medical students and healthcare workers to allow them to change employers and work in different areas without requiring another visa. Mr Hancock announced on Saturday that 19 NHS workers had died from the coronavirus, and said he found the high proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds who had lost their lives working on the front line really upsetting. In a video message recorded and shared on Sunday, Boris Johnson personally thanked several health workers from overseas by name as he admitted that things could have gone either way while he was in intensive care. They included two nurses who stood by his bedside for 48 hours Jenny from Invercargill in New Zealand and Luis from Porto in Portugal. ONS figures released in December showed that around half of the increase in the health and social care workforce over the last decade has been from workers born outside the UK. A House of Commons briefing published last year also found that 13.1 per cent of NHS staff in England say they are not British. Around 153,000 staff self-reported their nationality as non-British, with 21,000 people reporting their nationality as Indian and more than 18,000 saying they were Filipino. Some changes to immigration rules have already been announced. A visa allowing doctors, nurses and other health professionals from overseas to work in the NHS was introduced last month after a new points-based immigration system was also announced, with points awarded for specific skills and professions. The health secretary said the new visa for overseas medical staff was introduced precisely as a reflection of the respect shown to those that had come to work for the health service. Dr Nagpaul welcomed guidance from the Home Office which will allow medical professionals to extend their visa for a year without charge. The extension will apply to about 2,800 migrant health professionals who are working for the NHS and have UK work visas which are due to expire before 1 October. 2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning -- 4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS. We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover. We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come. WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is pushing to reopen much of the country next month, raising concerns among medical experts and economists of a possible covid-19 resurgence if Americans return to their normal lives before the virus is truly stamped out. Behind closed doors, President Donald Trump - concerned with the sagging economy - has sought a strategy for resuming business activity by May 1, according to people familiar with the discussions. In phone calls with outside advisers, Trump has even floated trying to reopen much of the country before the end of this month, when the current federal recommendations to avoid social gatherings and work from home expire, the people said. Trump regularly looks at unemployment and stock market numbers, complaining that they are hurting his presidency and reelection prospects, the people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions. Trump said at his daily briefing Thursday that the United States was at the "top of the hill" and added, "Hopefully, we're going to be opening up - you could call it opening - very, very, very, very soon, I hope." Multiple Cabinet secretaries in recent days have publicly expressed hope that the various government orders directing residents to stay at home and forcing nonessential businesses to close could be eased at least partially next month. Asked Thursday during an appearance on CNBC whether he thought it was possible that the country could be open for business next month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, "I do." A day earlier, Attorney General William Barr had called some of the stay-at-home orders and other restrictions "draconian" and suggested they needed to be reevaluated next month. "When this period of time, at the end of April, expires, I think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have, and not just tell people to go home and hide under their bed, but allow them to use other ways - social distancing and other means - to protect themselves," Barr said on Fox News. The White House cannot unilaterally reopen the country. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued federal guidance advising people to avoid social gatherings, work from home and use pickup and delivery options for food, it is state officials who have put the force of law behind those suggestions. The CDC guidance is set to expire April 30, but the states are free to choose their own paths. Already, the state directives have varied in timing and in severity, and that is certain to continue as they are rolled back. White House advisers have contemplated scenarios in which some "hot spot" states will not be ready to reopen as quickly, the people familiar with the matter said. There have already been vigorous debates, with public-health experts and some presidential advisers warning against reopening too soon, while key members of the president's economic team - and some conservatives in the vice president's orbit - push for a quicker return to normality. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top expert on infectious diseases, said Thursday that some places might reopen sooner than others, and that hard-hit New York, for example, shouldn't loosen its restrictions until there was a "very steep decline" in infections. "It's not going to be one-size-fits-all," he said. The president, said one senior administration official with direct knowledge of the conversations, asks regularly: "When can we reopen?" Health experts say ending the shutdown prematurely would be disastrous because the restrictions have barely had time to work, and because U.S. leaders have not built up the capacity for alternatives to stay-at-home orders - such as the mass testing, large-scale contact tracing and targeted quarantines that have been used in other countries to suppress the virus. Even one of the most optimistic models, which has been used by the White House and governors, predicts a death toll of 60,400, but only if current drastic restrictions are kept in place until the end of May. There have been nascent signs that the aggressive social-distancing measures imposed by state and city governments have slowed the spread of the infection, which has killed more than 16,000 Americans. Federal officials have noted that Washington state and California were among the first states to see cases of the virus but have not experienced the high levels of infection and death that others, such as New York and New Jersey, are enduring. Pence said Thursday that officials were beginning to see "stabilization" in some of the hardest-hit areas. "It's working, America," Pence said. More for you Europe is looking at several more weeks of virus lockdowns New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said Thursday that hospitalizations and intensive-care admissions in the state have fallen, suggesting progress. But he stressed that he did not know when New Yorkers would be able to begin a return to normal life. "We're not going to go from red to green; we're going to go from red to yellow," Cuomo said. Trump aides internally have taken note of New York's stabilizing hospital numbers, and some believe that the modeling projections are excessively high. The comments from Barr, who is not a member of the White House's coronavirus task force, and Mnuchin, who is, seem to indicate the growing recognition in the administration that the steps meant to stem the spread of the coronavirus have inflicted economic pain that is likely to last for many months. On Thursday - as the Labor Department tallied another 6.6 million Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy was deteriorating "with alarming speed" and called for a national discussion about what will be required to reopen it. Trump is preparing to announce this week the creation of a second, smaller coronavirus task force aimed specifically at combating the economic ramifications of the pandemic, according to people familiar with the plans. The task force is expected to be led by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and include Larry Kudlow, the president's chief economic adviser, and Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, along with outside business leaders. Others expected to play a role are Kevin Hassett, who has been advising Trump on economic models in recent weeks, and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, administration officials say. Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who advises the administration informally and has pushed for the country to reopen more quickly, said he believed the task force was a good idea to help expedite that process. "You have to figure out: How do you do it? Where do you it? When do you it? What areas of the country? What industry?" Moore said. "His presidency depends on getting that right." Barr, the nation's top law enforcement official, noted that the economics of the shutdown could cost lives. For example, he said, cancer researchers were probably at home, not doing their critical work. "We will have a weaker health-care system if we go into a deep depression," Barr said. "So, just measured in lives, the cure cannot be worse than the disease." Barr's comments came in response to repeated questions from Fox News's Laura Ingraham about the civil liberties problems created by government-imposed shutdowns. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. Barr, a person familiar with his thinking said, has known Ingraham for many years and agreed to the interview some time ago. The attorney general repeatedly lauded Trump and said states were, at least for now, within their rights to impose such measures. The person familiar with his thinking said he was focused on what happens after the CDC's guidelines on social distancing expire this month. The person said Barr has been informally talking with associates about how businesses could reopen, including having more equipped with personal protective equipment or on-site testing. "He was trying to say once we're through this period, it's not sustainable to live in fear," the person said. Health experts and economists have said that reopening prematurely could backfire and lead to another shutdown if coronavirus cases begin surging again and a long-term solution is not found. Past pandemics have offered clear warnings of what can happen. A 2007 study funded by the CDC examined the fate of several U.S. cities when they eased restrictions too soon during the 1918 flu pandemic. Those cities believed they were on the other side of the peak, and, like the United States today, had residents agitating about the economy and for relaxing restrictions. Once they lifted the restrictions, however, the trajectory of those cities soon turned into a double-humped curve with two peaks instead of one. Two peaks means overwhelmed hospitals and many deaths, without the flattening benefit authorities were trying to achieve with arduous restrictions. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, notably did not advocate a May reopening, saying such steps were more likely after July. And even some close to Trump seemed wary of supporting an early date. Pence on Thursday did not put a firm date on a possible reopening but said the decision would be guided by medical experts and that Trump wanted it to be done "responsibly." "No one wants to reopen America more than Donald Trump," Pence said. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally, said an early reopening was "an aspirational goal." "The real fear is that you do it too quickly and you create a spike in the disease, which is likely to come back in the fall," Graham said. "It has to be a science-based assessment, and I don't see a mass reopening of the economy coming anytime soon." Even some of those most affected by the economic downturn expressed fear of a premature return to work. "If restoring the economy means restoring transit systems back to full-throttle schedules, before covid-19 is defeated, it's just going to expose more transit workers to harm's way, and it's something we would not be in favor of," said John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union. "Public transit systems are the most effective disperser of the virus. An evil-genius engineer could not have engineered a better system than the New York City transit system to spread covid-19." Zack Hershman, 27, has been out of work since mid-March, when he was laid off as a server at Suraya, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood. The layoff was profoundly unsettling, he said, but he nonetheless commended his employers for leveling with the staff early on about why the closures were necessary. "As much as I would love to get back to work," he said, "it's not the right thing to do long-term in terms of the safety of people working and eating at restaurants." - - - The Washington Post's Devlin Barrett, Heather Long, Brittany Shammas and John Wagner contributed to this report. The Anambra State Government on Monday said it had established contact with 29 persons including health workers, relations, friends and business associates of the COVID-19 index case in the state. The state Commissioner for Health, Vincent Okpala, made the disclosure at a news briefing in Awka, the state capital. Mr Okpala noted that the index case was currently in a protective care centre equipped with ventilators and cardiac monitors. Presently, the index case is being treated at a protective centre and he is receiving the best of treatment ever. He has every facility he needs and is also provided with whatever he wants, he said. The commissioner said the state COVID-19 Response Team established contact with the index case at about 3:21a.m. on Saturday after leaving the hospital where he was first admitted. He said the index patient left a hospital where he was being managed on April 10, while awaiting his test result from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). We were managing the case until we got the notification that the patient tested positive around 7p.m. When I called the doctor managing him and he told me the man was not in the hospital, we had to go look for him. The team went to places we would not have been. We knocked at doors until we located him with the help of technology, Mr Okpala said. The commissioner said that the COVID-19 Response Team had already traced 29 persons, who were potential contacts of the index case. READ ALSO: These contacts were in the facilities that the patient visited; they include family and friends, business associates. We have interacted with them and my team is following up on them, he said. He also said that the state government had decontaminated the facilities which the index patient had contact with based on World Health Organisation (WHO) and NCDC guidelines and were safe for use. Mr Okpala, who urged the people to remain calm and follow governments advice, said the social distancing and lockdown directive were measures to prevent heavy fatality in the state. I want Anambra people to know that right now we have no problem with testing. Anybody that qualifies to be tested has either been tested or will be tested, he said. (NAN) Saudi Arabia and Russia managed to set aside their differences and agree on major cuts to support the price of oil. Mexico threatened to de-rail the deal but concessions were made. Oil prices failed to rally and even fell to $22 while USD to CAD exchange rate held steady just above support at 1.394. Most European markets are closed on Monday for the Easter break but US markets will re-open after their long weekend and commodities and Forex are trading in light volume. There is a slight shift to risk off in stock futures as the S&P500 is lower around -1.5%. In context of last weeks large rally this drop is hardly significant but could be the start of a reversal if there is a weak close later in the session. Awful US jobs numbers will likely get a reaction from risk markets soon and Covid-19 cases in China have jumped over the weekend suggesting the re-opening of the economy may face some difficulties. The big news over the weekend was the success of the OPEC+ meeting which managed to deliver a deal on cuts. Surprisingly OPEC+ managed to agree on sizeable production cuts, with the plan to cut oil output by 10MMbbl/s for two months starting in May. These cuts will then be reduced to 8MMbbls/d from July through until the end of this year, and then finally from January 2021 through until the end of April 2022 the group will cut by 6MMbbls/d, report ING. A Done Deal Continued disagreements between Saudi Arabia and Russia were thought to be the main sticking point ahead of the meeting, but both made concessions and the need for higher oil prices forced them into a deal. However, the deal was nearly de-railed by a surprise dissident: Mexico. Mexico had been asked to cut 400Mbbls/d, but they refused to cut any more than 100Mbbls/d. The US were pushing hard for a deal and it was thought they could make up for the shortfall through organic declines, but in the end Saudi allowed Mexico to cut less than their OPEC+ peers. This actually means the overall cuts are slightly lower than the headline figure of 10m but it did allow the deal to go through. Perhaps the Mexico issue could come back to haunt the group as some will claim unfair treatment, but for now all can claim success. President Trump was keen to take some credit and tweeted The big Oil Deal with Opec Plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. It was President Trump who surprised the market on April 2nd as he tweeted that a large cut was coming in a deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia. This caused a 30% jump in oil prices which rallied from below $20 to $29 in less than a week. Perplexing Price Action For the casual observer, the price action in oil could be regarded as strange. Following the confirmation of the deal, oil futures made a small gap higher on Sunday open but soon plunged from $24.73 to just over $22, a decline of around 20%. The news should be positive for oil prices, and in the long-term it is, but since President Trumps tweet on April 2nd warned the markets a cut was coming, it was nearly priced in already. In fact, the decline into $22.06 on Monday morning tested the exact price where oil was trading when Trump originally tweeted on April 2nd. Prices could now start to climb higher again, but for a sustainable recovery traders would need to see demand turn back higher, and this may be some time away. The USD/CAD exchange rate had a very slight reaction to the OPEC+ deal and even Trumps original tweet on April 2nd. The pair is resting on support at 1.394 and positive oil news should really help the Canadian Dollar make some gains and push USD/CAD lower through this support. The next level on the downside is the gap from 6-9th March at the 1.34-1.35 level. The Aarogya Setu app has been downloaded more than 10,000,000 by Android users from the Google Play Store. It remains at the very top of the popularity listings on the Play Store as well as Apples own App Store for the iPhone family of smartphones. Banks are sending SMSes urging you to download and install the Aarogya Setu app on your phones. Your mobile service provider is doing the same. The Department of Telecom is sending messages. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of India is sending messages too. You just cannot miss the existence of the Aarogya Setu app. Your child's school may have also sent a communication urging the entire family to sign ups for the Aarogya Setu app. That is before you even get to Twitter. But why is it such a big deal and why is it being pushed so aggressively? The biggest push perhaps came over the weekend, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to the Aarogya Setu app and said there is a possibility that the app could subsequently be used as an e-pass to facilitate travel from one place to another. One would believe this could be a reference to enabling essential travel as the lockdown continues in India, particularly for urgent or essential movement of people. How the Aarogya Setu app started out Let us take a look at the very reason why Aarogya Setu app came into existence. It was designed as a Coronavirus, or COVID-19 contact tracing app that uses the Bluetooth and location tracking technology in phones to note when they are near another user who also has the Aarogya Setu app installed on their phonesand this is consistently happening. This data is then matched and kept, and in case someone you have come in close proximity to is confirmed as infected by the Coronavirus, the health authorities will alert you to get yourself checked. In my understanding, Aaroga Setu app is trying to accomplish two roles - one, is to enforce social distancing using Bluetooth-enabled app-installed devices coming in proximity of each other; and two, a post-facto contact tracing (over say, the last one week or event-based like his departure or arrival from an infected region) if a person is identified COVID-19 positive. In addition, may be used as an COVID-19 information App, says Prof Rajan K S, Head of Lab for Spatial Informatics at IIIT Hyderabad, or International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad. Contact tracing is critical in curbing the Coronavirus spread around the country and indeed around the world. A person who may be infected with the COVID-19 virus may not show any signs or symptoms for as many as 14 days more but can spread the infection in the meantime through cough, for instance. As and when a confirmed COVID case is taken in for treatment, health authorities scramble to track as many people this infected person may have met in the past few days. Apart from potential contact tracing, the Aarogya Setu app does what one would expect in times like theseinform users about the best hygiene, protection and cleanliness practices to protect against the Coronavirus. The data generated from the app could play a key role in the post lockdown strategy of the government. Understanding the hotspots, movements of people can provide swift, data driven policy interventions that could save us precious time, and help us recover better and faster as a country, says Kazim Rizvi, Founder, The Dialogue, an independent policy think tank. Aarogya Setu is an important step in our fight against COVID-19. By leveraging technology, it provides important information. As more and more people use it, its effectiveness will increase. I urge you all to download it.https://t.co/VaiPIjhxM2https://t.co/8Irj6ApmOQ pic.twitter.com/L91vaLlCCq Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 8, 2020 The government is confident, though That is perhaps to be expected. And a part of that surely comes from the fact that Aarogya Setu is popular among smartphone users in India. The Play Store and App Store data surely suggests as much. And parallels are being drawn with the partnership that tech giants Apple and Google announced a few days ago, which confirmed that the two companies are working on integrating tech for contact tracing apps to work better on their phones. India leads the way in contact tracing for COVID-19: privacy-first by design, secure, robust and scalable to billion users. Glad to see Apple and Google joining hands to develop contact tracing on the lines of #AarogyaSetu, said Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Ayog on Twitter. The World Bank has also praised the Aarogya Setu app. Digital technologies can also be used to monitor the spread of Covid-19. Such initiatives, largely voluntary, have been successful in helping combat the pandemic in East Asia. Incentives also can be provided to those who report symptoms. India recently launched an app, Aarogya Setu, that uses location data from persons smartphones to tell users if they have been near someone who tested positive for Covid-19, says the World Banks latest South Economic Focus report. India leads the way in contact tracing for COVID-19: privacy-first by design, secure, robust and scalable to billion users. Glad to see Apple and Google joining hands to develop contact tracing on the lines of #AarogyaSetu @tim_cook @sundarpichai pic.twitter.com/JDoSl0A5Qa Amitabh Kant (@amitabhk87) April 11, 2020 There are concerns about the privacy policy Head over to the Google Play Store on your Android phone or the App Store on your Apple iPhone, and the application download page of the Aarogya Setu app welcomes you with a rather vague description of what it can and cannot do. The description readsAarogya Setu is a mobile application developed by the Government of India to connect essential health services with the people of India in our combined fight against COVID-19. The App is aimed at augmenting the initiatives of the Government of India, particularly the Department of Health, in proactively reaching out to and informing the users of the app regarding risks, best practices and relevant advisories pertaining to the containment of COVID-19. "Understanding the hotspots, movements of people can provide swift, data driven policy interventions that could save us precious time" - Kazim Rizvi, Founder, The Dialogue Make of it what you will, but it doesnt talk about the potential use of tracking technologies, what data is being collected, where the data is being stored, how secure is the data and what the government intends to do with the data. All this is before the user downloads the Aarogya Setu app. You need to download the app to delve a bit deeper into the Privacy Policy, which reveals a bit more. This App uses Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, GPS and Bluetooth technology to identify a users interaction with other people. The Privacy Policy of the app itself states that it can be used by the Government for the purpose of generating reports, heat maps, and other statistical visualizations for the purpose of the management of COVID-19 in the country, says Virag Gupta, Cyber Law expert and Supreme Court Advocate. Gupta also points out that worryingly, India still doesnt have a Personal Privacy Law which would set down guidelines for how data is collected and stored as well as safeguard against the misuse of the collected data. This App is said to have been developed in 3 weeks, but the government failed to legislate a Privacy Law despite the Puttaswamy judgment given by nine judges of the Supreme Court, many years back. As per existing IT Act and rules, health records are classified as sensitive personal data and need to be secured with the highest level of protection, he says. There is no clarity on this particular clause in the Privacy Policypersonal information may also be shared with such other necessary and relevant persons as may be required in order to carry out necessary medical and administrative interventions. We do not know who these third parties might be, whether only government agencies will have access to this data or whether it may be shared with private entities too. This App is said to have been developed in 3 weeks, but the government failed to legislate a Privacy Law despite the Puttaswamy judgment given by nine judges of the Supreme Court, many years back" - Virag Gupta, Cyber Law expert and Supreme Court Advocate The Privacy Policy says that this one-time data is stored on the server/cloud, anonymized and a unique ID generated (DiD), which is then used for all the transactions. Two other points to note are that the data is stored on the device till the user is identified as positive; and that data older than 30 days are purged both on the device and on the cloud, if any, says Prof Rajan K S. And genuine concerns about social stigma Prof Rajan K S does point out the possibility of stigmatization, signs of which we are already seeing in the instances of harassment of doctors and health workers. Personal privacy point of view, what is disturbing is the open-ended wording on sharing the personal data (once identified as positive) with other necessary and relevant persons. And how these persons or agencies will use them. Any stigmatization of individuals publicly may infringe on individual rights and needs to be guarded, he says. "Any stigmatization of individuals publicly may infringe on individual rights and needs to be guarded" - Prof Rajan K S, Head of Lab for Spatial Informatics at IIIT Hyderabad Is it more than just a contact tracing app and is it here to stay? There is a definite opinion that we will not see the back of the Aarogya Setu app once the world is a better place and the Coronavirus is gone. The PMs hints at this being used to facilitate travel during the lockdown could also be an indication at a much wider scope for the app, in the post-COVID world. This creeping expansion of uses is unsurprising, especially when the official purpose described on the App Store has been notoriously vague. Also, the governments 3rd April Circular already revealed that the government was moving towards a centralized Citizen App that would be used for a range of COVID-19 related purposes, says Amba Kak, Director (Global Strategy & Programs) at the AI Now Institute at the New York University. The circular that Kak is referring to talks about creating a single nation-wide technology platform for on-boarding all citizensthe timely peg being it will be a powerful tool in fighting a pandemic. The 7-member committee includes Chairman of TRAI R.S. Sharma, Mahindra & Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra and N. Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons. This creeping expansion of uses is unsurprising, especially when the official purpose described on the App Store has been notoriously vague" - Amba Kak, Director (Global Strategy & Programs) at the AI Now Institute, NYU Anivar Aravind, the Founder Executive Director of Indic Project believes that the latest push as a travel facilitator comes because the previous attempts to popularize this app didnt really do the job. Since pushing their solution to states is failed, now we are seeing integrating same idea of e-passes for data capture for limited mobility scenario due to #covid19 via Arogya Setu, using PMO, Niti Ayog access, he says in a tweet. He also says that, Travel industry solutionism for smartphone users is now getting integrated with e-passes for travel during health emergencies violating both citizens rights and federal structure, and says that we should expect more identity integrations and also more protocol integrations for limited mobility. Aarogya Setu and WeChat in China: Are there any similarities? Are there any parallels with how China uses apps including WeChat to enable the access to multiple services, including travel permissions? The Chinese government has used the WeChat app as well for colour coded health tags to all citizens, which allowed authorities to enable movement and access to services as and when required. China is using colour coding patterns to identify individuals and their proximity to a COVID affected area. WeChat also has features where users have to input their temperature at certain times during the day. This App presently requires name, gender, age, profession and travel history. As it uses Bluetooth and location data, it can surely become a facilitator for travel in the post COVID world, says Gupta. Weve seen similar mobility applications in China. Various health code apps have been developed by local authorities where an algorithm gives users a color code (green or red) based on a questionnaire and location tracking. This decides whether you can enter your workplace, or leave city and state borders, says Kak. The Chinese government has used the WeChat app as well for colour coded health tags to all citizens, which allowed authorities to enable movement and access to services as and when required. The specific concerns of Aarogya Setu, particularly as a travel facilitator, is causing more privacy queries. People's lives can be at the mercy of non-transparent systems that don't allow you to understand, let alone question, their decisions. In China, there have been reports of complaints that peoples health code apps are flipping between green and red with no explanation. A false positive in this app can impact your ability to work, earn a living, or care for family, warns Kak. Rizvi believes that the Aarogya Setu app will not be used like how WeChat is used in China, simply because India is a democratic country governed by rule of law. The right to Privacy has been enshrined as a fundamental right after the Puttaswamy judgement. The judgement lays down the principles of proportionality and necessity as conditions precedent for processing of data. We may argue that the pandemic is one of those situations where community interests are a priority. That being said, this does not waive the fundamental right to privacy, he says. The matter of consent and the challenges in times of a pandemic Contact tracing apps are being used in many countries already, including China, Singapore and Vietnam, to name a few. Those who dont have it are quickly working on getting one ready. We are seeing globally, and not just with India, that contact tracing technologies are a work in progress when it comes to overcoming the challenges associated with obtaining true consent from the user, says Rizvi. In an unprecedented time like this, drastic steps are vital to protect the community at large and the government has a legitimate right to conduct targeted surveillance to fight the pandemic, with proper checks and balances, he adds. The numbers, either way, are mind boggling. According to market research firm techARC, India has already crossed the 502.2 million smartphone user mark as of December 2019, a number that has seen a significant boost in the past few years because of more affordable smartphones arriving in stores, as well as faster 4G data prices reducing significantly. There are reports that the Aarogya Setu app will also be rolled out for feature phones, which helps widen the potential user demographic significantly. Find all of our Lessons of the Day here. Lesson Overview Featured Article: Heres How Those Hot Jigsaw Puzzles Are Made The coronavirus has sent puzzle businesses racing as demand surges past levels seen at Christmas. In this lesson, you will learn how jigsaw puzzles are made and why companies that create them see the sudden surge in interest in their products as a double-edged sword. Warm Up How are you spending your time at home these days? What new hobbies have you discovered? What familiar pastimes have you found yourself pursuing now that you have more time? Have you worked on or completed a jigsaw puzzle in the past several weeks? If so, where did you find the puzzle? On that issue and others, Mr. Barr clashes with the facts and the record, as carefully laid out, among others, by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who delved into the Russia probes origins and conduct and released his own report last year. He found that the FBI had material that reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring, and that there was enough to examine at least four Trump campaign officials. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions, Mr. Horowitz noted. (Newser) The attacks are so frequent that Cathy Park Hong has begun bookmarking stories about them from across the USverbal and physical assaults on Asian Americans because of the coronavirus. Frequently, they involve the slur "Chink," Park Hong writes in a New York Times op-ed. "The word was supposed to be as outdated as those sinister little Chinamen saltshakers I saw in thrift shops," she writes. "It still thrived among bottom feeders on the internet, but I hadn't heard it directed at me since I was in my 20s." The virus has changed that, and Park Hong is trying to wrap her head around the fact that Americans are now using the slur "so openly and with such raw hate." Prior to all this, she tended to minimize the "unspoken" racism directed at Asian Americans, but the virus has revealed the vicious nature behind it. story continues below This new brand of racism is different than what she grew up with because it "carries the stench of late-19th-century xenophobia." Chinese people were seen as a "degraded" race back then, and the sentiment seems to be returning. Park Hong says she feels it every time she dons a face mask in her New York City neighborhood to venture out. "The everyday racialized experience is not so much being the target of hate more than the anticipation of it," she writes. But the hate is all too real: In the first week of April, an Asian woman in Brooklyn was severely burned when an assailant doused her with what was believed to be acid. Park Hong is both "enraged" and "scared," she writes. "In addition to fears of catching the virus or of being unemployed or of loved ones dying, we now have to worry about having acid thrown at us?" Read the full op-ed. (Read more coronavirus stories.) London, April 13 : The UK's gross domestic product (GDP) could fall by 25 to 30 per cent in the second quarter amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said. Sunak made the remarks when discussing with his colleagues about the virus's impact on the economy as members of the cabinet pressed for easing lockdown restrictions next month, reports Xinhua news agency. City analysts have forecast an average 14 per cent contraction in the economy caused by the coronavirus lockdown, but some banks have predicted a drop of 24 per cent. The Treasury is conducting its own analysis which is yet to be completed. Ten cabinet ministers are now pressing for the easing of the lockdown next month because they are concerned that the "cure" for the disease Meanwhile, the coronavirus death toll in Britain has increased to 10,629, while the number of confirmed cases reached 85,208. Prime Minister Boris Johnson "has been discharged from hospital to continue his recovery at Chequers", a Downing Street spokesman said Sunday. "On the advice of his medical team, the Prime Minister will not be immediately returning to work. He wishes to thank everybody at St Thomas' for the brilliant care he has received," the spokesman said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 24) The bill that would grant President Rodrigo Duterte several special powers to act on the COVID-19 pandemic is now up for his signature. After 17 hours of deliberations, the House of Representatives adopted past 3am Tuesday Senate Bill 1418, declaring the existence of a national emergency and granting Duterte additional powers to address the outbreak. This paved the way for the speedy passage of the bill, also known as the "Bayanihan to Heal as One Act," as the Senate and House set aside holding a bicameral conference on the measure and officially ended the special session early this morning. The bill was certified as urgent by the President. Under legislative rules, once the House and Senate have agreed to reconcile their versions of the bill, its enrolled form will be printed and will be submitted to Malacanang in order for Duterte to sign it into law. Under the approved measure, Duterte will be given the power to reshuffle savings within the executive department in the 2020 General Appropriations Act to address the crisis and deliver aid to the affected communities. He will also be given authority to provide an emergency subsidy to 18 million low-income households worth between 5,000 and 8,000 for a month to two months, and provide compensation of 100,000 to public and private health workers who may contract severe COVID-19 infection while in their line of duty. Health workers who may die while fighting the pandemic will be compensated 1 million. Duterte will also have the power to "direct the operation" of any privately-owned hospitals and medical and health facilities including passenger vessels and other establishments to house health workers, assign quarantine areas, and give medical relief, provided that the owners of the enterprise will be retained, and only when the public interest requires. Those who refuse to cooperate according to his directive will be penalized. However, the measure still states that the President may still "take over" their operations if these enterprises are no longer capable of operating "subject to the limits and safeguards enshrined in the Constitution." Duterte may now also ensure that local government units are acting in line with the national government's policy and may impose corresponding penalties if they disobey directives on quarantine protocols. Duterte's powers will be in full force for only three months, unless extended by Congress, or withdrawn sooner via a concurrent resolution. Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea earlier assured that the President "has no intent" to abuse his special powers to address the crisis once granted full authority by both chambers. Over 400 people in the Philippines have contracted COVID-19, with 33 fatalities to date. A total of 18 people have already recovered from the disease. ArjunPadmakumar BHPian Join Date: Feb 2020 Location: ERNAKULAM Posts: 29 Thanked: 263 Times Re: Japan to spend $2.2 billion to get Japanese companies to exit China This pandemic causing widespread chaos and anger throughout the world, especially in Europe, Australia, US and Japan has actually exposed the lack of commitment (in almost all nations) towards healthcare, its research and allied facilities as well as self reliance on at least on essential materials. Also around the world, especially large countries like US, EU, Brazil and our own nation have realized not to be very dependent upon Manufacturing giants on both Nationalistic spirits as well as in bad times like what our planet and all of humanity is facing right now. I feel this is best lessons for countries and not to bluntly blame China for the calamity but instead conduct nation building in their own countries. This pandemic will definitely bring a big boost to exercises like Make in India and Make America great again which from a strictly non political viewpoint, will bring good growth to Manufacturing and its allied industries as well as tertiary industries and subsidiary infrastructures like Railways, Roads and seaports. For these reason I believe and hope it turns out that after the inevitable recession for an year or two, our nation, politicians and industry stakeholders as well as the general public should focus on the factors and support an all out growth on competitive spirits to attract local as well as international entrepreneurs and provide them the support they need. Our nation has already proved it in one sector, Pharmaceutical industry. And many nations from the USA to Brazil have approached our country for help, which we have and should provide. The Corona-virus chapter will turn out to be a important lesson for India, China and the world. Hope we take it in the right manner and learn from it. From an economic viewpoint we have a lot to learn from our neighbor, China who despite all its failures have succeeded to built a formidable economy in a few decades.This pandemic causing widespread chaos and anger throughout the world, especially in Europe, Australia, US and Japan has actually exposed the lack of commitment (in almost all nations) towards healthcare, its research and allied facilities as well as self reliance on at least on essential materials.Also around the world, especially large countries like US, EU, Brazil and our own nation have realized not to be very dependent upon Manufacturing giants on both Nationalistic spirits as well as in bad times like what our planet and all of humanity is facing right now. I feel this is best lessons for countries and not to bluntly blame China for the calamity but instead conduct nation building in their own countries.This pandemic will definitely bring a big boost to exercises like Make in India and Make America great again which from a strictly non political viewpoint, will bring good growth to Manufacturing and its allied industries as well as tertiary industries and subsidiary infrastructures like Railways, Roads and seaports. For these reason I believe and hope it turns out that after the inevitable recession for an year or two, our nation, politicians and industry stakeholders as well as the general public should focus on the factors and support an all out growth on competitive spirits to attract local as well as international entrepreneurs and provide them the support they need.Our nation has already proved it in one sector, Pharmaceutical industry. And many nations from the USA to Brazil have approached our country for help, which we have and should provide. The Corona-virus chapter will turn out to be a important lesson for India, China and the world. Hope we take it in the right manner and learn from it. Last edited by Gannu_1 : 12th April 2020 at 12:00 . Reason: Spacing after punctuation marks. Update: This article has been updated to reflect where user data is sent. It previously incorrectly stated that data was sent to Apple's servers. Last week, Apple and Google announced an interesting partnership. Both companies will build technology into their mobile operating systems that will allow for large-scale contact tracing. It's a pretty big deal for two reasons: The first is that the two companies are fierce rivals, but are working together to solve a problem that affects all of us. Second, it might actually work, since the two companies power almost all mobile devices worldwide. People understandably start to get nervous when they hear their mobile phones could be used for any kind of tracing, especially if they're not sure what that means. The basic concept is you would be able to download an app that would ping off other mobile phones you come into proximity with. If you were to later test positive for Covid-19, you could indicate as much on the app, which would then notify the owners of the other devices you came in contact with they were potentially exposed. Most experts agree contact-tracing is one of the most important factors to "reopening" society. That's because it will allow new cases to be isolated while pinpointing others who might have been exposed early enough that the spread can be limited. But contact tracing during the height of a pandemic is almost impossible because it's such a manual process. What Apple and Google are building is a way to do it at scale in an automated manner. And no, the companies aren't uploading your information to some government server to identify who has the virus. That's the other reason it's so important that Apple and Google are both involved. Apple has a reputation for protecting user privacy in a way that not many other companies can claim. It doesn't monetize your personal information by showing you ads based on your activities, unlike Google or Facebook, for example. Here's the thing: The Bluetooth technology that Apple and Google are working on isn't that different from what Apple already is using for its Find My service. That service uses Bluetooth to send out signals, even when your device has no service or isn't connected to the internet. Those signals are relayed by other close-by devices, which then forward them to public health organizations. Since the entire system is end-to-end encrypted, not only can't bad guys get access to your location or personal information, not even Apple could identify your device location. Chandigarh, April 13 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday spoke to the Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) of Punjab Police whose left hand was severed in a clash by Nihang Sikhs in Patiala. The hand of ASI Harjeet Singh was successfully re-implanted in an eight-hour surgery by doctors at the PGI Hospital in Chandigarh on Sunday. "Spoke to ASI Harjeet Singh, who is recovering after his operation, to enquire about his health," the Chief Minister said in a tweet. "The composure & bravery with which he spoke today is truly worthy of admiration. Wishing him a speedy recovery." The PGI said this was technically very complex and challenging surgery, which was successfully done. It was evaluated at the end of surgery that hand is viable, warm with good circulation, it added. Eleven people, including a woman, were arrested for the crime after several hours of stand-off and many rounds of talks between the police officials and Nihang Dera head Baba Balwinder Singh, asking them to surrender. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Riza Roidila Mufti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 17:45 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd19b6ac 1 Business Indonesia,tourism,COVID-19-Indonesian-patients,layoffs,pre-employment-card,registration,PHRI,CreativeEconomy Free Nearly 190,000 former tourism workers will join the governments preemployment card program, which was established to help terminated employees find new jobs, a minister has said. Indonesias tourism has been hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak, which has shut down borders and put a halt to global travel. The data on people who previously worked in hotels and other tourism-related companies across Indonesia is taken from related business associations and organizations, Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Wishnutama Kusubandio said in Jakarta on Sunday. The data consists of workers, informal workers and laid-off workers in tourism, as well as workers from the creative economy, such as artists, performers and members or employees of various television and film associations, he said. According to the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister, which spearheads the national committee for job creation, the preemployment program had garnered 1.4 million applicants just a day after registration opened on Saturday. The government has doubled its budget for the program to about Rp 20 trillion (US$1.27 billion) to upskill about 5.6 million workers who have lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants of the preemployment card program will undergo training for four months and each will receive Rp 3.5 million; Rp 1 million for training costs, monthly pocket money worth Rp 600,000 for four months and Rp 150,000 for survey expenses. The money will be transferred to their bank accounts or to their digital wallets, such as GoPay and LinkAja. The COVID-19 pandemic has left tourist destinations across the county empty of visitors. Many hotels have been temporarily closed due to a lack of guests. As of Wednesday, 1,266 hotels have temporarily halted operations, according to Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHR) chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani. Of those, 844 hotels have registered 74,100 of their former employees for the preemployment card program. Many hotels have not provided data on their former employees. Were worried that many hotels dont really care about their former employees, who really needed help getting new jobs, Hariyadi said. He added that collecting data on affected workers in the hotel and restaurant industry alone was challenging as many businesses were lagging in providing the PHRI the necessary information. Meanwhile, the association also needed time to review and verify the data before submitting it to the government. So, the data collection process has been pretty slow, he said on Wednesday. Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA) chairman Nunung Rusmiati also said that ASITAs 7,000 members had been trying not to lay off workers, even though the outbreak had crippled their business. Many association members have decided to keep their workers but carry out extra cost-efficiency measures, such as cutting salaries by 50 percent, in order to survive. If we dont cut their salaries, we would really struggle [] We are also offering employees unpaid leave, Nunung said. According to Hariyadi, who is also chairman of the Indonesia Employers Association (Apindo), amusement parks and zoos have also been greatly affected by COVID-19. With almost no visitors, many have not been able to operate, which leaves their workers and animals at risk. We hope that this sector will also receive attention from the government. A shadowy Islamist group that has terrorised northern Mozambique for more than two years has suddenly become more brazen, unmasking its fighters and openly declaring its goal of turning the gas-rich region into a caliphate. In recent weeks, the jihadists have seized government buildings, robbed banks, blocked roads and hoisted their black-and-white flag over towns and villages across Cabo Delgado province. "We want everyone here to apply Islamic law," a Kalashnikov-wielding group member told terrified residents in a video that appeared to have been shot in Mocimboa da Praia after a recent attack. Mocimboa da Praia is where the militants staged their first attack, back in October 2017. Until recently, the identity of the assailants had remained unclear and their declared intentions unknown. But the latest videos, the jihadists no longer bother covering their faces. "We don't want a government from unbelievers, we want a government from Allah," the group member added, speaking in the local Kimwani language to residents rounded up for a rally. For more than two years the jihadists mainly targeted isolated villages, killing more than 700 people, according to the French aid group MSF, and displacing at least 200,000, according to a local Catholic archbishop, Dom Luiz Fernando. Last month the group grew bolder and ventured back into Mocimboa da Paia, bursting into the town before sunrise to ransack government and military institutions. They have since emerged from their hideouts and openly taken control of three Cabo Delgado districts. Locally they are known as Al-Shabaab, although they have no known links to the ruthless jihadist group of that name operating in Somalia. Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP), affiliated with the Islamic State group, has claimed the Mocimboa attack, as it has in a few previous attacks since last year. "From the images and from what the insurgents said, we know that these men are from the town of Mocimboa da Praia and that they belong to the group that made the first insurgents attack in October 2017," said African history expert Eric Morier-Genoud, a senior lecturer at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. "We hear them again lay out their ultimate objective: the establishment of an Islamist state regulated by Shari'a rule." Thousands of people have escaped to the port city of Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado, seeking refuge among friends and relatives. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) FLAME University, the pioneer of liberal in India, has reached out to students with SAT or ACT scores and who were planning to study abroad to apply to its interdisciplinary undergraduate program for the academic year commencing in 2020 in the wake of COVID-19. FLAME understands the challenges students and their families face during this unprecedented time and is working tirelessly to safeguard the well-being of its stakeholders. "The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is likely to impact the study plans of a large number of Indian students who aspired to go abroad for their undergraduate studies," said Dr Dishan Kamdar, Vice Chancellor, FLAME University. "FLAME University invites these bright young students with SAT or ACT scores to apply to our liberal anchored undergraduate program. With an unmatched student - teacher ratio of 9:1, the widest major-minor combinations, three unique experiential immersions and taught by a group of exceptional Indian and international faculty, our undergraduate program offers a world class and experience that is comparable to the leading global universities," he added. "About 20 per cent of applicants to our undergraduate program apply with SAT or ACT scores. As the pioneer of liberal education in India with strong international partnerships, FLAME University is uniquely positioned in giving students the right global exposure to build their future," he further mentioned. Approximately 25,000 students take the SAT or ACT in India with aspirations to study abroad. The global coronavirus pandemic is expected to have an adverse effect on inward and outward student mobility. Initial reports coming from the Institute of International Education (IIE) and European Association for International Education (EAIE) foreshadow the adverse ripple effects on student mobility in light of COVID-19. Additionally, with growing economic uncertainties, income inequalities, volatile currencies and dwindling job prospects, studying abroad is expected to become even more taxing for students and their families. In keeping with its commitment to promote academic excellence, and to attract the brightest amongst the students seeking admission to its undergraduate program, FLAME University offers an array of merit scholarships and need-based financial support. Most prominent amongst these scholarships and support avenues are the full program fee scholarships, which can be awarded to most outstanding students joining the University. Approximately 25 per cent of FLAME University students currently are on scholarships or need-based financial aid. In addition to the scholarships provided by FLAME University, College Board also provides a one time scholarship to limited number of students from low and mid income backgrounds who take the SAT, score a minimum of 1350 and get admitted to FLAME University's undergraduate program. FLAME University is a founding member of College Board's India Global Higher Education Alliance. The Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is a standardised undergraduate university admission test conducted by College Board. The ACT is the American College Testing. These tests measure university readiness and predict likely future academic success of a student seeking admission to undergraduate programs. Any student who has appeared for these tests, can apply to FLAME University's undergraduate program. FLAME University's admissions process considers parameters like entrance test scores (FLAME Entrance Aptitude Test or SAT or ACT), past academic record, essay, personal interview performance, extracurricular achievements and statement of purpose for selection to its undergraduate program. FLAME University offers are three-year BA, BA (Hons), B Sc, B Sc (Hons), BBA and BBA (Communications Management). The liberal education anchored undergraduate program at FLAME University is an effort to revolutionize higher education in India. FLAME endeavours to deliver an education rooted in life-skills development accompanied with breadth and depth of knowledge. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the Covid-19 restrictions having a seismic effect on the Irish economy, the Government has brought in a number of measures to help. For people who remain in work but whose income is being supported by these measures, the arrangements are largely being made between the employer and the State. This can lead to worry and confusion for workers, so I spoke to HR and employment law expert Caroline McEnery, managing director of The HR Suite, about the key points of the various support options. The options available to an employer are to put the employee on short-time, which is reduced hours of three days or less, or put them on lay-off, which pauses their contract of employment, Ms McEnery explains. If you are placed on lay-off, you can apply for short-time work support to help compensate your loss. When an employee has been placed on lay-off, the employer can put the employee on the Covid-19 emergency payment, which is a flat rate of 350, or can put the employee on the wage subsidy scheme. If the employee is on lay-off, that means they are not working, while on the wage subsidy scheme the employee needs to be available for work. The payment of the wage subsidy scheme is done via the payroll of the employer. The employer gets a subsidy of up to 70% of the employees wages up to a maximum of 410 (depending on what the employee earns). The employer is encouraged to top-up this subsidy with the employees full wages, where practical. She suggests that, depending on the scheme you are put on, employees should be asking their employers: How does this affect their tax now or at year-end? How is their payment being calculated? Why might my pay be different, despite receiving my full salary? Most employers will have proactively communicated, and some information for example tax etc may be difficult to definitively answer however, good communication between employer and employee will mean both parties are well informed during this uncertain time, she said. Is there somewhere for employees can go for assistance or advice if they feel their employer is not handling the current situation as they should? It is important to understand this is an uncertain and upsetting experience for employers as they navigate uncharted waters, she says. My experience is that employers are very proactive in terms of how they are handling the situation, both procedurally and empathetically. Patience and understanding is required of both parties If this is not resolved satisfactory, then you should formally write to your employer to outline your grievance and invoke the grievance procedure. Given that the current situation is tricky even for large companies with dedicated HR departments, it must be even more so for small businesses. I asked Ms McEnery if there is somewhere for these small employers to get advice and assistance? It is, without doubt, a very difficult position for business owners and small businesses in particular, she says. There is a lot of support available to small businesses via the Local Enterprise Office, industry bodies eg. Failte Ireland and Enterprise Ireland. We at the HR Suite have been inundated with requests for help and guidance. We have also been providing lots of webinars, newsletters, and industry-specific advice to help guide and direct employers in relation to their specific queries. The Revenue website and Gov.ie are also useful, and Ms McEnery believes it is crucial that people get accurate up-to-date information. It is also really important to ensure we are proactively communicating with our employees at this time and are ensuring we keep a positive connection with employees, she adds. Where a small business does not have an external HR support or an employment law solicitor to advise them at present, then they should seek to get guidance from any of the relevant Government bodies such as Revenue on how to navigate these payments with employees. DEAL OF THE WEEK While we are all focussed on the Covid-19 crisis, the climate crisis is still a real and pressing issue. Reducing waste is one of the ways we are all being asked to help, including the waste from toiletries. If you are like me, it could be one of those areas where you would like to help but dont really know where to start. I am open to the idea of using shampoo and conditioner bars but inevitably end up chucking the usual bottles in my trolley during the supermarket run. Aldi are giving us a chance to try these products out this week. The Specialbuy range on Thursday is focused on being eco-friendly and includes a Eco Starter Pack of toiletries for 7.99. Each tin includes a Shampoo Bar, a Conditioner Bar and a Body Bar. and the retailer promises all are made from natural oils, butters, and vitamins to benefit your body and hair. A low-cost way to give something new a try. For those using the extra time at home to do some spring cleaning, the range also includes a wide array of eco-friendly cleaning products. All on sale in 142 Aldi stores nationwide from Thursday, April 16 while stocks last. Blue Cross is working at full capacity to process claims to the health care delivery system. In March alone, Blue Cross made payments of nearly $800 million to physician and hospitals, including more than 50,000 new claims for COVID-19 testing and care, totaling approximately $10 million. Additionally, Blue Cross is accelerating payments to provider groups participating in its Alternative Quality Contract (AQC). Under normal circumstances, these incentive payments would have been made in late 2020 or early 2021. This direct financial support is intended to assist providers with the financial pressures associated with the COVID-19 public health emergency. "We want to do everything we can to support our members, employer customers, and clinician partners under these extraordinary circumstances," said Andrew Dreyfus, president and CEO of Blue Cross. "Telehealth is a critical resource - it's allowing clinicians to continue caring for their patients, and it's also helping limit the spread of contagion by keeping people out of emergency rooms and doctors' offices unless absolutely necessary." In support of Governor Charlie Baker's order to expand access to physician services, Blue Cross has also developed a new expedited credentialing and enrollment process for practitioners, designed to speed health plan approval within 72 hours. The Public Health Emergency Provider Credentialing and Enrollment Process includes a simplified, one-page application and essential documentation requirements consistent with conditions for licensure with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine. Approval under this expedited process is time-limited and in effect for the duration of the Massachusetts public health emergency. "Simplifying this process to remove potential barriers to providing access to hospital-based clinicians will help meet the growing demand for care during this pandemic," said Bruce Nash, MD, chief physician executive and senior vice president of health and medical management at Blue Cross. "We want clinicians to be able to focus on patients rather than paperwork." The expedited process supports clinicians responding to this crisis, including behavioral health practitioners seeking to provide services via telemedicine (phone or video) to Blue Cross members during the public health emergency. Blue Cross has taken several additional steps to ensure that our clinician partners can focus on the care of our members during the COVID-19 emergency. These steps include: Removing administrative barriers, such as prior authorizations and referrals, for medically appropriate testing, counseling, vaccines (when available) and treatment for COVID-19, consistent with the Centers for Disease Control and Massachusetts Department of Public Health guidelines. Covering all medically necessary covered services via phone (telephonic) or virtually (telehealth) with in-network providers at no cost to members, and reimbursing these visits at the same rate as face-to-face care for any provider, for both medical and behavioral health care, as long as they meet clinical standards, for the entire period of the Massachusetts public health emergency. Telehealth is allowing many clinicians to continue providing care and services to patients remotely throughout the pandemic. In fact, the latest data from a Blue Cross/MassINC tracking poll found a more than 200% rise in the use of telemedicine in recent weeks. public health emergency. Telehealth is allowing many clinicians to continue providing care and services to patients remotely throughout the pandemic. In fact, the latest data from a Blue Cross/MassINC tracking poll found a more than 200% rise in the use of telemedicine in recent weeks. Removing prior authorization requirements and moving to a notification-only requirement for inpatient levels of care including Acute, Long Term Acute (LTAC), Acute and Subacute Rehabilitation (Rehab), and Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) admissions. Medical necessity reviews will not be performed for these inpatient levels of care through June 23, 2020 . This is being done to facilitate inpatient capacity across the health care system during the state of emergency. . This is being done to facilitate inpatient capacity across the health care system during the state of emergency. Suspending prior authorization requirements for scheduled surgeries or admissions at hospitals (notification only, to coordinate patient care management and ensure that Blue Cross members are protected from balance billing). Suspending concurrent and retrospective review for hospital inpatient services. Ensuring prompt, efficient payment of claims: Blue Cross is committed to meeting the state's prompt pay law requirements during this time and is working at full capacity to ensure we process claims quickly. Publishing and sharing a detailed guide clearly outlining Blue Cross' coding and billing policies. For more information on how Blue Cross is responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency, please click here. About Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (www.bluecrossma.com) is a community-focused, tax-paying, not-for-profit health plan headquartered in Boston. We are committed to the relentless pursuit of quality, affordable health care with an unparalleled consumer experience. Consistent with our promise to always put our members first, we are rated among the nation's best health plans for member satisfaction and quality. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. SOURCE Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Related Links http://www.bluecrossma.com T he UK has entered its fourth week of coronavirus lockdown, with the Government set to review the measures this week. Ministers have said they want to be sure the UK is past the peak of the outbreak before easing the restrictions, but 10 members of the Cabinet are reportedly urging lockdown conditions to be eased amid concerns about the impact on the economy. The Times quoted an unnamed minister as saying it was important not to do more damage, and measures could be eased after another three weeks. Scientific advisers will meet on Tuesday ahead of the formal review of the strict social distancing measures on Thursday, the deadline set out in law. It comes as the UK's virus death toll passed 10,000 on Sunday. The UK has the fourth-most Covid-19 related fatalities in Europe after Italy, Spain and France. But a Government coronavirus adviser warned on Sunday that the UK could end up with the worst death toll among European countries. Loading.... Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and a member of the SAGE committee which advises the Government on Covid-19, told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "The UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst, if not the worst affected, country in Europe." Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson came out of hospital on Sunday afternoon, after several days in intensive care with Covid-19. Mr Johnson and his fiancee Carrie Symonds thanked the "magnificent" NHS - and several nurses by name - for saving his life as he battled the virus. He is now recovering as his country retreat, Chequers. Boris Johnson's fiancee Carrie Symonds hailed the 'magnificent' NHS / PA At least 19 NHS staff members have now died of suspected coronavirus, and probably several more. And the debate about the safety of NHS staff treating coronavirus patients rages on after Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers in England which represents hospital trusts, said there were concerns about a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) in some hospitals. Mr Hopson said on Monday that although "the vast majority" of preparations for coronavirus have gone well, a shortfall of gowns was becoming a problem. He added: "No trust, as far as Im aware, has actually run out but some of the stocks are very very low. "This is all really hand-to-mouth in terms of gown delivery, and we need to get to a more sustainable supply." There are major concerns over NHS staff safety / REUTERS Mr Hopson's comments come after several Government ministers have been criticised for comments regarding PPE after Health Secretary Matt Hancock called it a "precious resource" and urged NHS staff to use it within Government guidelines. But Royal College of Nursing general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair dismissed his comments. Ms Kinnair told the BBC's Today programme on Saturday that no PPE was more precious a resource than a healthcare workers life, a nurses life, a doctors life. Business Secretary Alok Sharma and Home Secretary Priti Patel both refused to apologise for PPE shortages. Alok Sharma dodges apology over PPE When Mr Sharma apologised for "the loss of any life in this pandemic" on Sky News, he was pushed again on whether he wanted to say sorry specifically to healthcare workers "who feel that they dont have the right protective equipment to do their jobs". He replied: It is our job to make sure we get that health care equipment, that PPE, out to them." South Korea will send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States on Tuesday in the first such shipment following a request from U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a new report. A U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency cargo plane carrying the equipment is scheduled to leave at 10:30pm on Tuesday, the official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue. The first shipments will be handed over to and paid for by the U.S. government, the official said. South Korea will send 600,000 COVID-19 testing kits to the United States on Tuesday and an additional 150,000 will come from a. unspecified retailer The United States has recorded 561,767 infections and 22,129 on Monday COVID-19 test kits are still limited An additional 150,000 kits will be exported in the near future and will be sold through an unspecified local retailer, the official said. President Trump made the request for testing kits in a telephone call on March 25 with President Moon Jae-in, as the United States was grappling with fast-growing outbreaks in many states. As of Monday, the United States has recorded 561,767 confirmed COVID-19 cases and a death toll of 22,129. President Trump (left) ordered the 600,000 test kits after a March 25 phone call with President Moon Jae-in (right) The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) kits will be sourced from three companies that secured preliminary approval late last month from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to export kits to the United States, the official said. He declined to name the two companies that will provide the shipments on Tuesday. However, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, on condition of anonymity, that one of the two firms is Osang Healthcare and the company will provide 300,000 kits. This shipment is the United State's first bulk order of COVID-19 test kits from South Korea. Pictured: A sign reads 'FHMTC Test Site' at a drive through COVID-19 testing site amid the coronavirus pandemic in California South Korea's foreign ministry said it did not have information to share immediately. Calls to Osang Healthcare for a comment were not answered. South Korean companies have previously shipped test kits to U.S. cities including Los Angeles but this would mark the first bulk order from the U.S. federal government. Once struggling with the first large outbreak outside China, South Korea has largely managed to bring its coronavirus cases under control without major disruptions thanks to a massive testing campaign and intensive contact tracing. Pictured: A New York state trooper standing outside a COVID-19 testing site in Staten Island Pictured: A driver in a vehicle drops his COVID-19 test into a bin at a coronavirus mobile testing site at Lincoln Park in Los Angeles, California South Korea credits part of its success to moves by government officials and private companies to develop and secure regulatory approval for tests, allowing the country to quickly test thousands of people. 'We've moved as quickly as possible to get necessary clearances given the urgency of the situation there,' the South Korean official said. In the United States, 42 states have enforced strict stay-at-home orders and social distancing practices in an effort to curb the still growing COVID-19 numbers. The Trump administration has received backlash over its coronavirus response, with particular focus on the lapse in available test kits and testing sites. In areas where residents can get tested for COVID-19, some results are being delayed and backlogged in laboratories. States like New York, Washington, Georgia and Pennsylvania said they all received just one testing kit in the early days of the outbreak. State officials, including New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo, slammed the President and the CDC for testing delays. The CDC was the subject of criticism in early March when they had not approved private laboratories to conduct testing. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo slammed the CDC over coronavirus testing delays during a press conference in March (pictured) It's a move that some believe could have curbed the spread of the coronavirus. 'CDC, wake up. Let the states test. Let private labs test. Let's increase as quickly possible our testing capacity so we identify the positive people, so we can isolate them,' Cuomo said during a press conference. New York currently has seven private labs that could begin running automated tests immediately - processing as many as 2,000 samples per day, Cuomo said. That's a significant improvement on the current rate of roughly 100 per day with manual tests. He also took a shot at Donald Trump over the president's remarks that 'anyone who wants a test gets a test'. 'We can't say to people in this country or this state anyone who wants a test can have a test. It's just not true,' Cuomo said. 'That's what causes the panic and fear.' During a press conference in late-March, the White House claimed the United States has done more testing than any other nation worldwide, including South Korea. Trump (pictured) and the White House coronavirus task pointed out during press briefings that the United States completed more COVID-19 tests than South Korea 'We now have 370,000 tests that have been done. The majority of those -- over 220,000 in the last eight days, which, those of you who have been tracking the South Korea numbers, put us equivalent to what they did in eight weeks that we did in eight days,' said Dr. Deborah Birx, a coronavirus response coordinator. Trump later tweeted: 'Just reported that the United States has done far more 'testing' than any other nation, by far! In fact, over an eight day span, the United States now does more testing than what South Korea (which has been a very successful tester) does over an eight week span.' He would continue to tout this finding several times in subsequent press briefings. CNN reported that while the United States did administer more COVID-19 tests than South Korea, it is amiss to not point out the vast difference in population. South Korea has around 51million people, while the United States dwarfs that number around 328million citizens. Cities like Los Angeles have also struggled to increase COVID-19 testing and test sites. Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted he 'owns' the state's lapse in testing and announced a new task force will work to increase testing sites. He said: 'The testing space has been a challenging one for us and I own that. And I have a responsibility as your governor to do better and do more testing in the state of California.' 'I own that, you deserve better and more,' he added. The task force, Newson said, is in partnership with universities like UC David and UC San Diego, laboratories, hospitals and testing companies to create more testing sites. On Sunday, Trump told governors that it is their responsibility to test residents and there's 'no excuses' for inaction on Twitter. 'Governors, get your states testing programs & apparatus perfected,' Trump ordered in a tweet on Sunday evening. 'Be ready, big things are happening. No excuses! 'The Federal Government is there to help. We are testing more than any country in the World. Also, gear up with Face Masks,' he continued. President Trump has told governors it's their responsibility to start testing residents for coronavirus, warning there's 'no excuses' for inaction despite several states warning the test kits provided are virtually useless Trump unveiled the plan to distribute the Abbott Laboratories testing machines about two weeks ago - calling them a 'whole new ballgame' in the fight against the pandemic. Every state except for Alaska was given 15 machines, regardless of its population or severity of its outbreak. However, excitement among Governors who had lauded the prospect of being able to run up to 3,000 tests per day quickly dissipated shortly after the machines arrived. Trump unveiled the plan to distribute Abbott testing machines about two weeks ago - calling them a 'whole new ballgame' in the fight against the pandemic. Every state except for Alaska was given 15 machines, regardless of its population or severity of its outbreak However, excitement among Governors who lauded the prospect of being able to run up to 3,000 tests per day quickly dissipated shortly after the Abbott Laboratories testing machines arrived - because they weren't given enough supplies to use them The frustrated parties said the machines are actually sitting idle because they weren't given enough supplies to use them, with many of the machines arriving with only 120 cartridges, enough for about 100 tests. 'There was a lot of talk about this device, a lot of hype on it nationally, and it's wonderful, and when they showed up, expectations were really high,' New Hampshire Gov Chris Sununu told a news conference on Wednesday. 'But to actually have 13 of these devices and have no way to use them - I'm banging my head against a wall. I really am. It's really frustrating.' Public health officials including top members of the White House coronavirus task force have acknowledged the testing failures, while President Donald Trump has maintained that the system is the strongest in the world. California is touchy, and yet still remains confused, about incomplete data showing that the 40-million-person state, as of Sunday, April 12, reportedly had 23,777 cases of residents who have tested posted for the COVID-19 illness. The number of infected by the 12th includes 674 deaths, resulting in a fatality rate of about 17 deaths per million of population. That is among the lowest rates of the larger American states (Texas has 10 deaths per million), and lower than almost all major European countries, (about half of Germanys 36 deaths per million). No doubt there are lots of questionable data in all such metrics. As a large state California has not been especially impressive in a per capita sense in testing its population (about 200,000 tests so far). Few of course believe that the denominator of cases based on test results represent the real number of those who have been or are infected. There is the now another old debate over exactly how the U.S. defines death by the virus versus death because of the contributing factors of the virus to existing medical issues. Certainly, the methodology of coronavirus modeling is quite different from that of, say, the flu. The denominator of flu cases is almost always a modeled approximation, not a misleadingly precise number taken from only those who go to their doctors or emergency rooms and test positive for an influenza strain. And the numerator of deaths from the flu may be calibrated somewhat more conservatively than those currently listed as deaths from the coronavirus. Nonetheless, the states population is fairly certain. And for now, the number of deaths by the virus is the least controversial of many of these data, suggesting that deaths per million of population might be a useful comparative number. As I wrote in a recent NRO piece, the state on the eve of the epidemic seemed especially vulnerable given the large influx of visitors from China on direct flights to its major airports all fall and early winter until the January 31 ban (and sometime after). It ranks rather low in state comparisons of hospital beds, physicians, and nurses per capita. It suffers high rates of poverty, wide prevalence of state assistance, and medical challenges such as widespread diabetes. Story continues Two weeks ago, I also suggested that California therefore was a mystery, and I reviewed some possible explanations that others had raised to explain it. Were the current, rather surprising numbers a result of late and poor data, the recently enacted March 18 Draconian stay-at-home order of Governor Gavin Newsom, the fact that large rural areas of California are not densely populated, the temperate weather, or simply premature speculation given a huge, often promised spike to follow in days? Among these alternatives, I also listed the more controversial possibility that the virus might have been present in the state earlier than late January, when it was officially noted in the U.S. a possibility that had been raised by others. In the article, I noted the pessimism of the Governor Newsoms March 18 prediction that 25.5 million Californians would be infected over an eight-week period, given Californias status at the time. Nevertheless, I ended the NRO essay on a cautious note, without expressing any sort of expertise that would suggest a definite exegesis of the California paradox. In the meantime, for a few days at least, we are left with the California paradox. As with the apparent outliers of Germany, South Korea, and Japan, it reminds us that there are endless known unknowns about the origins, lethality, infectiousness, and patterns of travel of the coronavirus and that todays latest frightening statistical model is often superseded tomorrow by more realistic appraisals and theories, and then again rendered naive by even more frightening new backlash models. Until now, without either widespread antibody or current-infection testing, the number of people who die from the virus in proportion to a given population base is about all we can rely on to determine the lethality of the disease. And in that regard, at least for a few days or weeks longer, California remains a mystery. Certainly, both then and more recently, there have been a number of anecdotal accounts, media stories, and small isolated studies suggesting that more people than once thought, both here and abroad, have been infected with the virus and developed immunity, that the virus may have reached the West and the U.S. earlier than once or currently admitted by Chinese researchers so, inter alia, California in theory could weather the epidemic with much less death and illness than earlier models of an eventual 25.5 million infected had suggested. Since then, a number of models, including Governor Newsoms projection of 25.5 million infected Californians over an eight-week period, have been questioned. Controversy exists over exactly why models are being recalibrated downward. One explanation is that the shelter-in-space orders have been more successful than expected; others point to various flawed modeling assumptions. For some reason, a number of California news outlets took my NRO story as suggesting that somehow I not only stated that herd mentality alone was the cause for Californias relative moderate exemption from the epidemic, but also that I was part of a medical team conducting research. Of course, nowhere did I say any such ridiculous thing. Apparently, some local station initially confused my presence at the Hoover Institution with proposed and ongoing antibody studies centered at Stanford Universitys medical school. As most know, discussion of the virus in 2020 is often no longer just a public-health issue but a political one as well, and the argument from authority is often enlisted in the fray. Within hours, I was bombarded with furious phone calls and emails alleging that I was feigning medical credentials, that I was undermining the governors quarantine protocols, that I was a stooge for Donald Trump, and, from Chinese media, that I had perhaps proved that China could not be culpable for the virus given its presence in 2019 in the U.S. Some contacted the Hoover Institution and the medical school, and even the Stanford alumni association, voicing furor over my supposed impersonations and subversive views. I issued a note that news accounts were false, but the conundrum continued. A particular sloppy story in Slate, by one Jane C. Hu, accused me simultaneously of being wrong for suggesting that arriving Chinese visitors, on direct and indirect flights from China to the U.S., at a time when the Chinese government was aware of the viruss infectiousness, spawned its appearance here (limiting Chinese nationals access to the U.S. wouldnt have prevented those transmissions, or the cases that entered the U.S. via other countries, like Italy), and of being racist for even suggesting it (the trope of the Chinese as disease harbingers has been used to justify anti-Chinese travel bans and dehumanization for centuries, and the coronavirus lends a new opportunity to revive those arguments). If the author really does not believe there were any epidemiological consequences of flying directly from Wuhan to SFO, then she should at least have the courage now to advocate that we lift all such anti-Chinese travel bans and stop such dehumanization, given that theres supposedly even less risk now from Chinese arrivals than during the initial peak outbreak that she believes posed little risk through travel. And according to her own strange logic, if a writer of non-Chinese ancestry is racist for suggesting that direct flights from China to the U.S. sparked an epidemic, then one could just as stupidly suggest that someone of Chinese ancestry is racist for exempting the Chinese government from obvious culpability in allowing its citizens to fly into the U.S. from Wuhan at a time when it was already forbidden to fly from that city to other Chinese destinations. So, there was no infectious danger from Wuhan residents arriving in the U.S., but the Chinese government itself believed there was a danger from these same residents visiting other Chinese cities? Are the Chinese then racists for stopping their own citizens travel, while the Americans were not racist for still allowing it? The author did not seek to verify her sources, although she warned in the following that it might be worth considering the source: So whats really behind this theory? It might be worth considering the source. KSBWs piece begins by mentioning Stanford Medicines research, then quotes Victor Davis Hanson, a Stanford-affiliated source; the piece reads as if Hanson is one of these aforementioned Stanford Medicine researchers. But Hanson is a military historian, not a doctor or scientist; he is affiliated with Stanfords Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.* (I reached out to Hanson for comment, but he has not responded; we will update this article if he does.) The piece makes no effort to clarify what the Hoover Institution is, and it delves into Hansons theory as a prelude to a brief explanation of Stanford Medicines study. Hansons recent work, published in National Review, suggests he is eager to reopen the American economy. It would be quite convenient, then, to claim that the virus has already torn through the U.S. and granted us immunity. (In that article, Hanson also claims that much of the virus modeling is nearly worthless and refers to it as science, in scare quotes.) Hanson also (incorrectly) suggests that the viruss spread in California came from Chinese nationals visiting California. Looking more closely at his recent work reveals a potential political motive for that claim; in a recent op-ed for Fox News, he argues that we already have too many Chinese nationals visiting, studying, or collaborating in the U.S., and that post-coronavirus America should wake up and make changes. Most of what she writes in the essay is either sloppy, incoherent, or character assassination. Her information came from a Monterey station, not me. When the station called, I told the reporter explicitly that I was a historian who had considered various theories about the viruss slower spread in the state, and I directed her to the NRO article. Hu has no information that I have written or stated anything close to what she implies. She suggests that I might have returned her inquiry of which, at a time of a general lockdown of Stanford University, I have no knowledge. Certainly, she did not contact me on my personal email or phone at home as others frequently have. I did not write an op-ed for Fox News, but a syndicated column for the Tribune Content Agency, which alone determines its dissemination to a wide variety of regular and ad hoc subscribers. I raised possibilities but did not advance concrete conclusions about why California so far has experienced less viral morbidly than other, smaller states: And in that regard, at least for a few days or weeks longer, California remains a mystery. In melodramatic fashion, Hu seems to think that one should not have legitimate worries about the science of modeling, though such modeling has been subject to increasing criticism if not outright skepticism; that it is telling that I work at a conservative think tank and am a military historian; that I think too many Chinese students are studying at American universities; and that I think U.S. policy should be radically altered toward the Chinese government. According to her own logic, should I now investigate her own purported political beliefs and affiliations, or question her academic credentials, rather than what she actually wrote, and thereby ferret out her own potential political motive for her claims all based on what a local outlet says she wrote? The debate over public policy concerning the epidemic is not the sole domain of epidemiologists or modelers or even the medical community. Its of interest to all Americans who wish to weigh in on matters economic, social, historical, military, and strategic that will factor in any medical decision to formulate a government response. As a classical scholar, who has written books on the Peloponnesian War, including the plague, I certainly do not resent non-classicists weighing in nearly every day on the 43029 b.c. outbreak in Athens, and I can often learn from their non-historical and non-philological interpretations of the contagion. If anything as we have seen in the modeling fiascos, the debate over the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, the role of the FDA in delayed initial testing, the WHOs echoing of Chinese talking points, the CDCs and surgeon generals confusion over the epidemics initial threat, and the changing advisability of wearing masks the arguments from authority are not always persuasive. I certainly have posed questions about the need for huge numbers of unvetted Chinese students, but in a context that American universities charge them premium tuition rates while American students owe over $1.5 trillion in student debt a point Hu left out. I should have added that U.S. intelligence and investigatory agencies have many legitimate national-security concerns about unvetted Chinese students in American universities, and that a large percentage of these students are the children of Chinese elites with connections to the Chinese Communist government. In the latter context, Hu should direct her insinuations of racist motives to Slate itself, where her article appeared, since in the past it has published alarmist warnings over a supposed sinister danger of princelings or elite children of top-ranking Chinese Communist officials enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities. After all, Slates own Washington bureau chief wrote: Some people will find something sinister in Harvard giving a generation of Chinese leaders tips on how to govern. They have a point. In her piece, Hu says it is impossible that any Californian was infected prior to December 21 her title is No, You Did Not Get COVID-19 in the Fall of 2019. She supports the impossibility of any U.S. infection in 2019 by citing Western researchers data that must rely in part on Chinese gene sequencing and transmission information, and the notion that the even if the virus was apparent in Wuhan by mid-November, it would have been impossible for it to reach the United States in the remaining six weeks of 2019. Perhaps, but that is yet another theory, not a fact, and one under medical contention, given that thousands of Californians, in the weeks when the virus was active but undisclosed in China, may have gotten the virus, were not tested and have never been tested. Moreover, for those who had or have COVID-19, no one yet knows when they were infected. Front-line physicians who see sick patients do not necessarily agree with researchers in the lab. For example, a Los Angeles Times story was widely picked up by other news outlets that quoted Dr. Jeff Smith, the chief executive of Santa Clara County. Smith reportedly now believes that the virus arrived in California much earlier than often cited, at least in early 2020: The severity of flu season made health care professionals think that patients were suffering from influenza given the similarity of some of the symptoms. In reality, however, a handful of sick Californians that were going to the doctor earlier this year may have been among the first to be carrying the coronavirus. The virus was freewheeling in our community and probably has been here for quite some time, Smith, a physician, told county leaders in a recent briefing. The failure of authorities to detect the virus earlier has allowed it to spread unchecked in California and across the nation. This wasnt recognized because we were having a severe flu season. . . . Symptoms are very much like the flu. If you got a mild case of COVID, you didnt really notice. You didnt even go to the doctor. . . . The doctor maybe didnt even do it because they presumed it was the flu. Given the radically changing data, we simply do not know whether any of these hypotheses will stand hence my original conclusion that California remained a mystery, but an enigma at least deserving consideration of lots of competing exegeses. And who, after all, could necessarily believe any data that comes from Chinese researchers at this late date? China has serially lied about the origins, the transmissibility, the chronology, and epidemiology of the virus. It continues to lie about COVID-19s current morbidity inside China. It has punished, or done worse to, any dissident scientist whose research did not comply with Chinese Communist Party agendas. It has destroyed initial data about the early epidemic. Unfortunately, we should have little confidence in anything that the Chinese government and its research institutes publish whether medical, scientific, or political in regard to this China-inspired debacle. Tragically, we still do not know when the virus originated, only that the Chinese government has serially changed the purported date of its genesis and may well again if political realities make the current narratives unsustainable or politically incorrect. In short, I stand by everything I wrote, but by nothing that was written about me. More from National Review Reporters interview a citizen keeping the security distance at the Atocha Station on April 13, 2020 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images) Does regional location and political views affect who is more likely to contract COVID-19? A recent report on Macleans examines Google data on social distancing efforts in Canada and the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. To obtain this information, the multinational technology company gauged anonymous individuals' mobile activity to locations like restaurants, grocery stores, public transportation and work. When it comes to reduction of mobility in both countries, by province or state, Quebec and Ontario are the most successful, despite having amongst the highest number of cases of the virus in the country. Washington D.C, Vermont and New York, which has the highest number of cases in the U.S., also rank towards the top on the list. So, how does population density play a role in this? Philippe J. Fournier, the author of Macleans article, says its not the whole story. Google itself warned that comparing different jurisdictions (like urban and rural) was a little tricky, but each state and each province was compared to its own baseline from January to February, he wrote in an email to Yahoo Canada. So it was interesting to see that, for instance, Nova Scotia was among the worst in mobility reduction, but Newfoundland and New Brunswick were near the middle of the pack. As for American states, Fournier found that many traditionally Republican and conservative states were also low on the list, partly because of their rural status. However, Vermont, which most would consider a rural state, was amongst the highest in mobility reduction. When we cross this data with recent polling regarding the perception of the pandemic, we see that many Republicans say that the crisis has been exaggerated, Fournier says. Therefore is it so surprising that states where mobility has not gone down much are clearly Republican states? It cannot be a coincidence in my view. Ken Denike, a medical geographer at the University of British Columbia, says there are other factors to consider that can impact social distancing. If you look at areas of high density living, lower income demographics have a harder time staying inside for longer periods of time or have no where to go, and therefore are more susceptible to exposure. But cultural affinities can also play a factor, especially where its the norm to have large multigenerational families living together. Story continues Additionally, trust in government can directly influence a regions mobility. There's an entitlement issue., says Denike. Those who dont trust the government arent going to follow the rules. D.C. is right at the top, which isnt surprising since the government is a whole life in Washington. He adds that largely rural areas tend to follow the pattern of high mobility reduction more than would be expected. You can speculate that farmers and ranchers are a significant part of the population, he says. They tend to be concerned about their own well-being to the point where they understand that travelling is not a good thing. (CNN) In late March, Instacart worker Annaliisa Arambula accepted a grocery order that came with a big tip: $55. The store was just down the street, everything the customer wanted was available, and the order seemed to go off without a hitch. But an hour later, Arambula checked her earnings on the Instacart app and the entire tip was gone, with a message saying the "customer modified the tip post-delivery." She ended up making just $8.95 from Instacart on the order. "I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it," Arambula told CNN Business. Demand for grocery delivery is surging amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and many customers are struggling to get the items they want or even a time slot for a delivery. Some people are dealing with that by offering big tips, as high as $50 or more, to entice Instacart workers to pick up their orders. But some of those people have turned the tactic into a bait-and-switch, offering up the big tip and then taking it away as soon as the person who risked their health to get them their groceries has made the delivery. Before accepting a "batch" -- which can consist of one or a few orders from different customers -- workers can see the items requested, the store location, the payment Instacart provides workers for the job, and the tip being offered. Instacart allows customers to change a tip for up to three days. Some workers told CNN Business tips can make up half of their income or more. CORONAVIRUS IN OREGON: THE LATEST NEWS Its very demoralizing, said Arambula, who lives in the Portland area and has worked full-time for Instacart since June 2017. I dont pretend to be a hero, like a nurse in a hospital ... but I literally am exposing myself [to coronavirus] and when I return home, exposing my own family to the possibility of transmitting this disease. When you know that its somebody whos just doing it to game the system and to get their order when they want it, its really frustrating. Arambulas husband is currently unemployed and at high risk for COVID-19 because he has diabetes, so they are relying on her work for Instacart to pay their bills. Instacart is one of several delivery companies now expanding rapidly due to demand spurred by the pandemic. Last month, the company announced plans to bring on another 300,000 full-service shoppers in North America to service the increased demand. An Instacart spokesperson told CNN Business the vast majority of people in March adjusted their tip upward or did not adjust their tip after delivery. Moreover, the spokesperson said, the company recently removed the "none" tip option for people, so users who want to tip nothing must manually change a tip to $0. The spokesperson said this could deter users from doing so. People can also leave feedback and rate a worker in the app, something Instacart claims typically happens if and when a person removes a tip. Detached customers In addition to having their tips slashed at the last minute, some Instacart workers are also the target of seemingly tone-deaf remarks from customers. Carilyn, who started working for Instacart about one month ago and asked to be identified by first name only for fear of retribution, told CNN Business she also had a recent experience with tip baiting. When dropping off an order recently, she said the customer told her it was "unethical" that she wasn't able to find toilet paper and updated her tip to $0. "I tried my best. A lot of people are detached from the situation going on," said Carilyn, who is based in Florida. "They really don't see what we see. We know things are a no-no, like soap, and toilet paper, you barely find eggs if you're lucky." (Because workers tend to be tipped a percentage of the total order cost, when high-demand items can't be found in store -- in this case, toilet paper -- the tip shrinks accordingly. But in other cases, customers enter a custom tip amount and then take it back after the delivery.) Fortunately for some, the majority of recent tips have been authentic. Carilyn said she took home more than $360 in cash and in-app tips last week alone -- a good week for her. Jenifer G. also noted that she's had people leave cash tips in envelopes at their door. While some workers said they have grown wary of large tips because of tip baiting, others sometimes risk picking up low tip orders in the hopes the person will pay more in cash. It doesn't always work, though. Jenifer G. said she recently picked up a 112-item order from Aldi for a person who put a $1 tip in the app and there was no cash tip waiting. We always say: No matter what, never trust a tip, she said. By Sara Ashley OBrien and Kaya Yurieff/CNN Business Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Reuters) Washington, United States Mon, April 13, 2020 19:30 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd19ff58 2 World trump,COVID-19,AnthonyFauci,CNN Free US President Donald Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the nation's top expert on infectious diseases said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the novel coronavirus outbreak. Trump retweeted a message Sunday from a former Republican congressional candidate who cited Fauci's comments during a television interview on Sunday and tweeted "time to #FireFauci." Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020 The Republican president in the past has repeated critical tweets of officials or enemies rather than make the criticism himself. The retweet fueled speculation Trump was running out of patience with the popular scientist and could conceivably fire him. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Trump is unhappy with Fauci. Fauci has assumed national prominence as a leader in the fight against the coronavirus. He has contradicted or corrected Trump on scientific matters during the crisis, including whether the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective against it. Fauci was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" about a New York Times report documenting early warnings issued to the White House about the novel coronavirus. The scientist acknowledged shutting the country down sooner could have saved lives, but cautioned that a number of factors were involved. On #CNNSOTU with @jaketapper, Dr. Anthony Fauci says that an earlier shutdown "could have saved lives" https://t.co/sG4EffrSUa State of the Union (@CNNSotu) April 12, 2020 "Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor," Fauci said. "It's very complicated." Already a target of the far-right for his contradictions of Trump, Fauci drew more opprobrium after the comments. Trump also denounced the New York Times story in several tweets on Sunday, calling it "A Fake." Last week during the daily White House coronavirus briefing, Trump stepped in and prevented Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine. Fauci, 79, has led the federal infectious disease agency since 1984 under Republican and Democratic presidents. Republican George W. Bush honored him with the presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. Some polls during the public health crisis have shown Americans trust him more than Trump. Badaun : , April 13 (IANS) One man has sent 14 villages into forced quarantine in Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh. The man, who comes from Andhra Pradesh, was staying in a local mosque Bhavanipur Khali area and tested positive for Coronavirus on Saturday. He had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi's Nizamuddin last month. District magistrate Kumar Prashant said, "After the man tested positive for Corona, the district administration has sealed 14 villages in the radius of three kilometres from the village where he was staying. Fourteen villages have been quarantined." The official said the limits of the villages have also been sealed, and zonal and sector magistrates have been deployed in the area. Essential items are being provided in the village and tests of suspected cases are being carried out, he added The Doyle Hotel, in Duncannon, Pa., is a mainstay for Appalachian Trail hikers passing through. With the trail closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, its owners fear business won't recover until next year. Read more Long-distance hikers often dream about a cheeseburger and fries, only to awake in their tents to the same old granola bars day after day. To many Appalachian Trail hikers, the Doyle Hotel in Duncannon, Perry County, was the place where that dream came true, a greasy beacon by the Susquehanna River. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, however, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and nearly all of the 31 maintenance clubs that help keep the 2,193-mile trail functioning asked the U.S. Department of the Interior to officially shut it down on April 1. The conservancy has already told through-hikers to cancel their trips and day hikers to stay home, and has shut down the shelters and privies it manages on the trail. An ATC spokesman said that the Department of the Interior has not yet responded to its letter and that the ATC would reconvene on April 30 to see where things stood. While an Appalachian Trail shutdown wouldnt be permanent and would be difficult to enforce the owners of the Doyle fear that many through-hikers who start at Springer Mountain in Georgia in the spring and finish atop Maines Mount Katahdin in late summer, along with section hikers who do the trail piecemeal, would likely go home and aim for next year. At the Doyle, which was set to celebrate its 115th birthday later this month, hikers make up nearly 50 percent of the business. They are strongly recommending that hikers get off the trail, said Vickey Kelly, owner of the Doyle. Its pretty much just killed our northbound season. Were looking at a loss of our whole season. Kelly said shes given up on takeout, for now, because of her husband, Pat Kelly, who is 77 and therefore vulnerable to the virus severe complications. It got to the point where I had to worry if Im killing my husband by staying open, Kelly said. READ MORE: Owner of Pennsylvanias graffiti highway in Centralia shuts it down for good Approximately three million people visit the Appalachian Trail each year, according to the conservancy. A few thousand try to do the whole thing in one trip, but not all of them make it. The majority are simply hiking a small section of the trail, perhaps as short as a few miles. At 1,100 miles, Pine Grove Furnace, in Cumberland County, is the trails halfway point for northbound through-hikers, or NOBOs. Duncannon is just 35 miles to the north of Pine Grove, one of the few trail towns in Pennsylvania where hikers can resupply. Its small, with a population of about 1,500, and sits at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers. Its visible to motorists heading to Harrisburg or State College, but often sleepy until summer, when the hikers arrive. Winters here are very rough as far as business goes, Kelly said. Jeffrey Kirkhoff, president of Duncannons borough council, said its too soon to say whether the pandemic will cause the cancellation of the hiker festival in June, but its on the mind of every business owner in town. One irony of the pandemic, a situation seen across the country, is that more people are going outside, into nature. The borough closed a parking lot to the trailhead to Hawk Rock, a local landmark that shares trail with the AT. Since Pennsylvania issued its stay-at-home orders, this small parking lot had seen a large uptick in usage for this time of year, Kirkhoff said. A borough employee counted over 60 cars at one point. Kelly said the Doyle depends on day hikers, too, the outdoors crowd from Harrisburg who come in on the weekends for Hawk Rock and other scenic views. The through-hikers usually stand out, she said. Theyre often grimy. The men always have gnarly beards. Their families often meet them there for a halfway celebration. A hotel was first built in the 1770s where the Doyle now stands, but was later destroyed by fire. Charles Dickens is believed to have slept there. The current brick building was bought by the Anheuser-Busch family in the 1800s, and it opened as the Doyle in 1905. Kelly, 65, said she and her husband bought the hotel in 2001 because opportunity knocked and we were too stupid to not answer." The Kellys live in the Doyle and still offer up to a dozen rooms for hikers passing through. The burgers are why they come. Were known for having the best burger on the trail, she said. Many businesses in town depend on hikers, including convenience stores and a local breakfast joint. Kelly said the Doyle has a partnership with Mutzabaughs Market, a Duncannon grocery store that offers a free shuttle back and forth from the hotel, so long-distance hikers can resupply. Some days it can be one or two hikers, other days it can be 12 to 15, said Andy Arnold, director of operations at Mutzabaughs. "Weve only had a few come through this year, but it usually didnt get heavy until June and July. " FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered. Mutzabaughs, like most groceries, is seeing unprecedented business. Arnold said he worked 21 days straight. The hikers make up a small piece of the puzzle, he said, but a piece they dont want to lose. "They buy a lot of beef jerky, trail mix, and granola, he said. The community does a lot for hikers. We love having them. As the trail runs through 14 states and countless state and federal parks, enforcing who comes and goes could be difficult, if not impossible. Knowing that many through-hikers want their names added to the list when they reach the end, the ATC said it would not recognize any through-hiker who continued on and into areas that have closed access to the trail. Hikers who voluntarily left the trail before March 31 will be given an additional 12 months to pick up where they left off, when they choose, once social distancing is over. A smaller number of southbound hikers, known as SOBOs, begin their journey at Katahdin and hike south to Georgia. Kelly said they generally get started in the summer and finish in the fall, and she hopes more hikers take that route to salvage their dream of hiking the AT. We do have hope for southbound season but that doesnt even start until June, she said. Its usually one-third of the hikers, but that might grow. Two Naxals who surrendered in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district have extended a helping hand in the fight against coronavirus by preparing masks for police personnel and local people. Madkam Lakkha (31) and Reena Vekko (30), who worked with Naxals in the forests of south Bastar, surrendered before police in the last couple of years after realising that "violence brings nothing except pain". They have now joined the war against the coronavirus pandemic as they have realised that "helping people gives ultimate happiness". Since the last 10 days, Lakkha and Vekko, along with a policeman, have been engaged in stitching cloth masks in Sukma town, located around 450 km from state capital Raipur. "We have stitched around 1,000 masks so far. These masks are not only being used by local people but also police personnel," Lakkha told PTI over phone. Lakkha, who surrendered in August last year, worked with Maoists in various capacities, including militia commander-in-chief since joining the outlawed outfit in 2008. He also mentored a tailoring team of ultras and used to stitch uniforms for senior cadres active in South Bastar and neighbouring Telangana. "I am using my old skill and trying to support the police personnel who are working day and night during the lockdown. It is not a big contribution, but I am happy that I can be useful to society in some way, he said. Lakkha also works with police in translating Maoist communications, that are mostly in local dialects, into Hindi which has helped the security forces in gathering vital intelligence for counter-insurgency operations. Vekko, who quit the banned outfit in 2018 after being active as a hardcore rebel on Odisha-Chhattisgarh border for about a decade, voluntarilyjoined Lakkha in producing masks. She was not familiar with tailoring work, but was trained in it as part of the government's rehabilitation programme for surrendered rebels. "We stitch around 100 to 120 masks in a day. The raw material for it is provided by local police, Lakkha said. Hailing their contribution, Inspector General of Police (Bastar range) Sundarraj P said the two surrendered cadres are playing their part in the battle against the pandemic, and setting an example for other such people. "These little things are giving us hope that not all is lost and goodness remains," the official said. The masks prepared by them are being distributed by police free of cost among local people, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) For Sahan Khan and one lakh other truck drivers like him hailing from Nuh-Mewat region of Haryana, coronavirus has turned out to be a 'curse', inflicting agony, hardships and unjustified social stigma. Speaking about his ordeal, Khan, 35, says that he was in Bengaluru when the 21-day lockdown was imposed by the Centre. "It all was a nightmare ... I was in Bengaluru when the lockdown was announced. Immediately about 100 of us who were in Bengaluru parked our trucks and crammed into one truck driving non-stop to Nuh," Khan told PTI over the phone from his village in Mewat in Haryana. The Nuh-Mewat region is home to thousands of truck drivers and helpers whose livelihood depends on the transport sector. The region has emerged as hotspot for COVID-19. As soon as Khan and thousands others reached their villages from different parts of the country, they were isolated in schools and government buildings for 14 days, he said. "However, even after completing the isolation period, we are facing social stigma in villages as we are drivers and often being accused of bringing diseases with us," Khan narrated his plight, adding they and their families are passing days in acute poverty and facing pangs of hunger. "I was employed for Rs 10,000 a month...this is the average salary we get but now we have nothing to eat ... we cannot go out ... we do not know what to do," he rues. Echoing the plight, another driver Hanif said despite checkups they are facing 'social-stigma' and are also being accused of promoting 'Tablighi Jamat' activities. Hanif said thousands of drivers from the Mewat region are also stranded at various places in the country and facing acute hardships including shortage of food and water. All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) President Kultaran Singh Atwal warned that the supply crisis in Delhi and National Capital Region was going to deepen as drivers here mostly belong to Mewat region who are either confined in the region, a coronavirus hotspot, or stranded elsewhere. "There are more than one lakh drivers from the Mewat region who are employed by transporters under AIMTC. A large number of them are trapped in the hotspot zone while others stranded at various places across the country are facing severe hardships," Atwal said. He rued that despite claims of sanitisation and availability of food and water for stranded drivers, about three lakh are still stuck and no sanitisation facilities are available to them. "The days are going to be extremely tough. Trucks have been abandoned at parkin g lots and other places. Many of these were carrying raw material for medicines on the way to places like Mumbai and Gujarat. Many have electronics and other goods," Atwal said. He added that despite Home Ministry orders for ensuring smooth movement of goods, the message is yet to percolate in the states. "We are facing many problems in the North East and states like Telangana," he said and demanded immediate intervention of the government to address the issues. He urged the government for an immediate relief package for the transport sector saying about one crore truckers were facing livelihood issues. The outbreak of coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdown to contain its spread have led to the idling of more than 90 per cent of about one crore truckers, the AIMTC said. It said that about 3 lakh truckers with goods under non-essential categories are still stranded across India while goods worth about Rs 40,000 crore are lying in vehicles in the absence of unloading mechanism as well as reluctance on part of godowns, owners and others. Nuh district in Haryana is one of the most impacted areas by COVID-19. With Nuh emerging as a hotspot, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar last week appealed to Muslim religious leaders in Nuh-Mewat region to extend their cooperation in the fight against coronavirus. Khattar also made a reference to Battle of Khanwa, in which a famous ruler from Mewat, Hasan Khan Mewati, had extended full support to Rajput ruler Rana Sanga in the fight against invading forces of the first Mughal ruler Babur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As part of the new agreement on the block of Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli fields, the international partners transferred the second bonus payment worth $450 million to the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ), local media reported referring to a report on the activity of the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers in 2019. In accordance with the report, the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), which is an important part of the Southern Gas Corridor project, increased the average daily gas supply from the Shah Deniz field to Turkey by 11 million cubic meters. Some 3.8 billion cubic meters of gas were transported through this important pipeline in 2018-2019. The opening ceremony of the second part of TANAP was held on November 30, 2019. The construction of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline - TAP is underway. The project has been fulfilled by more than 90 percent and its commissioning is scheduled for 2020. In accordance with the report, after the implementation of the project, for the first time in the history, Azerbaijans natural gas will be transported to the European markets through the Caspian Sea basin via the South Caucasus, TANAP and TAP pipelines. Azerbaijan will receive the status of a new gas supplier in Europe. The election was also the last competitive contest of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, with Mr. Biden easily capturing the Democratic vote over Senator Bernie Sanders, who dropped out of the race last week. The Wisconsin vote, held at in-person polling sites last Tuesday after an 11th-hour court ruling that voting should proceed despite the virus, came amid a pitched outcry from Democrats in the state and across the country that Republicans were making Wisconsinites choose between imperiling their health and exercising their constitutional right to vote. Wisconsin Democrats spent the last week in a state of fury, angry that Republicans had forced in-person voting and risked spreading the coronavirus. In Wisconsins 10 largest counties, Ms. Karofsky improved on the 2019 liberal Supreme Court candidates performance by at least five percentage points in nine of them. She flipped two such counties, Winnebago in the states Fox Valley, and Brown, which includes Green Bay. Democrats spent the hours before results were released Monday afternoon bracing for a defeat and making the case that the Wisconsin contest was illegitimate. It was voter suppression on steroids, said Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. They tried to steal this election in Wisconsin. Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said many lawsuits would be filed by voters who were unable to cast absentee ballots, or by candidates in the nearly 4,000 local races that were on the states ballot. There are at least eight pending lawsuits seeking partial revotes of the election, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Allentown, PA (18103) Today Mostly sunny and bitterly cold. It will feel like it's in the single digits and low teens.. Tonight Partly cloudy and extremely cold. Wind chills around or below 0 degrees. A video of actor Arvind Trivedi, who played Raavan on the massively popular television show Ramayan, watching a recent re-run of the series during the coronavirus lockdown has been shared online. Doordarshan has been running the mythological epic, along with several other popular old shows, during the lockdown. In the video, Arvind watches the scene in which Raavan kidnaps Sita. As she calls out to Lakshman for help, Raavan laughs maniacally and flees with her on one of his flying contraptions. At one point in the video, Arvind is seen clasping his hands together and emotionally reacting to the scene. Earlier, actor Dipika Chikhlia, who played Sita in the show, shared a cast photograph on Instagram. Ram Arun Govil, Hanuman Dara Singh, and the actors who play Lakshman, Sumitra, Kaushalya, Kaikeyi, Urmila, Jamvant etc are also a part of the photo, and were joined by creator Ramanand Sagar. Previously, a picture of Arun Govil watching a re-run of the show with his family was also shared on social media. The actor had told Hindustan Times in an interview, The fact that it is coming in its entirety again is making us feel wonderful. It will make viewers feel happy. People have a lot of time at hand right now, and they can use it fruitfully to watch Ramayan, which can give them new learning. Also read: Ramayan: Sita Dipika Chikhlia shares epic throwback photo of entire team, says many of the cast are no more Based on Valmikis Ramayan and Tulsidas Ramcharitmanas, the series had originally aired in 1987-88. Such was its success that both Govil and Chikhlia, along with Sunil Lahri, who essayed Lakshman, were catapulted to idolatry status. Follow @htshowbiz for more The Syrian government has shut borders and forbidden movement between provinces among measures to curb the spread. As Europe and the United States struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic, experts warn that disaster looms in war-torn Syria, where hospitals are unable to meet existing needs and hygiene conditions are dire. The outbreak has infected more than 1.8 million people and killed more than 112,000 around the world since emerging in China in December last year. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assads government has closed borders, forbidden movement between provinces and shut schools and restaurants in an effort to stem the spread of the virus. Official numbers are low, with two deaths and 19 confirmed cases, but only 100 patients are being tested a day, with half of the testing carried out in the capital, Damascus. 200412043630783 And while the government has regained control of most of the country after almost a decade of civil war, some areas are still held by rebel forces. Experts accuse Damascus of minimising its death toll for political motives. Medical staff believe that there are many people who are dying in Syria with the symptoms of the virus, said Zaki Mehchy, senior consulting fellow at London-based think-tank Chatham House. But the security agencies ask them or order them not to mention it, especially to the media, he added. Impossible physical distancing Aid groups are sounding the alarm on the potentially devastating consequences of a severe outbreak in Syria, where nine years of war have hit hospitals hard, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with a pandemic. There is a disaster in the making, said Emile Hokayem, Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London (IISS). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), less than two-thirds of hospitals were up and running at the end of 2019, and 70 percent of healthcare workers have fled since the war began in 2011. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that physical distancing is impossible in displacement camps in Idlib, the last rebel-held province, which was already enduring a humanitarian crisis before the pandemic started. A lack of food, clean water and exposure to cold weather have already left hundreds of thousands of people in poor health, making them even more vulnerable, said Misty Buswell from aid group International Rescue Committee (IRC), adding that the devastation in Idlib could be unimaginable. The IRC said almost all the 105 intensive care beds and 30 adult ventilators in Idlib were already in use. The WHO had said testing would start in Idlib at the end of March, but little help was to be expected from Damascus, according to Mazen Gharibah, associate researcher at the London School of Economics. One cannot simply assume that the regime which was systematically targeting the hospitals three weeks ago is going to provide the same hospitals with medical equipment next week, he said. About one million Syrians fled Idlib and its surrounding countryside in northwest Syria this past year after Russian-backed government forces stepped up a campaign to retake the last rebel stronghold after nine years of war. Fighting has calmed since March when Ankara, which backs some groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, agreed a ceasefire with Moscow, which has supported Damascus with heavy air power. Indoco Remedies has said that the central government has granted it permission to export 4.48 crore paracetamol tablets to the UK. In a disclosure, the company also said that it had sent the first shipment of 11.70 lakh tablets on April 12. Indoco Remedies has said that the central government has granted it permission to export 4.48 crore paracetamol tablets to the UK. In a disclosure, the company also said that it had sent the first shipment of 11.70 lakh tablets on April 12. Indoco has been part of the great initiative by the Indian government to export paracetamol tablets to the UK in its fight against Covid 19, the company said. It added that the remaining tablets would be airlifted depending on availability of flights. Indoco has also donated Rs 1 crore to the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES) fund in the fight against coronavirus. Indoco is a research-oriented pharma company which manufactures and markets Formulations (Finished Dosage Forms) and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). The central government has recently lifted restrictions on exports of 24 pharmaceutical ingredients and medicines made from them, including anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and paracetamol, an anti-pyretic. Ministry of External Affairs in a statement had said, In view of the humanitarian aspects of the COVID19 pandemic, it has been decided that India would licence paracetamol and hydroxychloroquine in appropriate quantities to all our neighbouring countries who are dependent on our capabilities. In view of the humanitarian aspects of #COVID19 pandemic, it has been decided that India would licence paracetamol & Hydroxychloroquine in appropriate quantities to all our neighbouring countries who are dependent on our capabilities: Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) pic.twitter.com/W7Vox2sd2E ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2020 India had imposed a ban on the exports of 26 ingredients and medicines, including Paracetamol and its formulations on 3 March. BRISTOL, Tenn. For the past few months, water has been accumulating on the pavement near the Volunteer Parkway and Anderson Street intersection even on dry days but a Bristol, Tennessee utility services manager said the city suspects an oversaturated groundwater table is the cause, not a waterline leak. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Will Witcher, utility services manager for the city, said the city became aware of the issue in early February, and the city has done tests and investigated but found no signs that indicate there is a leaking waterline. He said the likely cause is that the frequent and often heavy rain the area has experienced in the last several months has saturated the groundwater table and that water is now seeping through the pavement. To confirm their suspicions, the city is taking steps to bring onboard a firm that specializes in leak detection. Witcher said he was hesitant to reveal the name of firm at this point in time because they hadnt finalized contract details yet. He added that tentatively the city wants to have the firm start looking into the cause of the water accumulation toward the end of April. The firms services would cost less than $10,000 and therefore not require the approval of Bristol Tennessee City Council, he said. Once they are sure its a groundwater issue, Witcher said the city will work with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to find a solution that will stop the seepage and potential damage to the pavement. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. A Massachusetts husband used a bucket truck to visit his wife of 61 years at her nursing home after the couple was separated for more than a month during the coronavirus outbreak. Nick Avtges, 88, of Watertown, and his wife Marion, 85, have been married more than six decades after they wed around 1960. 'It was love at first sight. And the rest is history,' Nick told WTRF. His daughter, Suzanne, agreed and said: 'My parents have been the rock of our family. The way theyve dealt with a lot of different situations.' Nick Avtges (pictured) was lifted to the window of Marion's nursing home Pictured: Marion Avtges (left) and Nick Avtges (right) have been married for 61 years in Waterfront, Massachusetts The couple, who had four children, saw each other every despite Marion living in a local nursing home, but the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly pulled them apart. 'I was generally there every day from about 10-11 oclock in the morning until 7 at night,' Nick said. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up in two to three weeks. But it can cause more severe illness in some people, especially older adults and people with health conditions. It had been one around month since the sweet couple had been together, prompting their son, Chris Avtges, and his lifelong friend, Peter Tzannos, to mastermind a plan. Zanos said: 'I knew I could help here. I just needed a few minutes to figure out a plan.' With the help of Ryan Donnellan Tree Service, the two men secured a bucket truck and parked it outside the Maristhill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Nick (pictured) explained that he usually visits Marion at her nursing home each day, but the coronavirus outbreak suddenly separated them Nick (pictured) wore a New England Patriots face mask and brought a handwritten note that read, 'I love you, sweetheart' That's when they placed Nick - armed with a New England Patriots face mask - inside the bucket truck crane and lifted him three stories to Marion's window. As Nick saw his wife again, he held a handwritten sign that read, 'I love you, sweetheart.' 'When he got up top there, they kind of put their hands on the screen of the window. At that point, I teared up,' Chris said, Meanwhile, Nick and Marion were finally face-to-face again. Nick said: 'When I got up there, she said, "Its dangerous. Get back down again". I asked... "How much do you love me?" She said, More than you know.' When asked to describe the first time he met Marion (center), Nick (right) said 'It was love at first sight' Pictured: Marion Avtges (left) and Nick Avtges (right) celebrating with loved ones on their wedding day As of Monday, Massachusetts has the third highest number of COVID-19 cases in the United States. There are 25,475 confirmed cases and a death toll of 756. Massachusetts, as well as Alabama, began giving the addresses of people diagnosed with COVID-19 to local law enforcement. Each day, daily lists are sent over to police forces and ambulance crews across the state. The information is supposed to be given to officers when they go out on calls. The state said that no information will be kept about who was known to be sick once the crisis is over. Two employees at the Soldiers' Home (pictured) in Massachusetts, where at least 18 residents have died after contracting the coronavirus, are still working out of fear for their job despite testing for positive for the virus At the same time, federal authorities launched an investigation into the conditions at a Massachusetts veterans home where at least 18 residents have died from coronavirus after it emerged that infected employees were still showing up to work. The Department of Justice announced on Friday that it would be investigating the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke to determine if the facility was providing adequate care for its residents amid the coronavirus pandemic. It comes after two employees who tested positive for coronavirus were still showing up for work out of fear of losing their jobs. The federal investigation is separate from a state investigation that is currently underway. Andrew Mills / Santa Cruz Police Seven men from Fremont on a road trip to Santa Cruz were cited tickets totaling up to $7,000 for violating shelter-in-place orders, police said. In a Twitter post on Saturday, Santa Cruz Police Chief Andrew Mills said that the men came from Fremont "to get some 'essential' drinks." The police did not indicate where the men were arrested, although the photo posted by Mills shows them sitting outside a 7-Eleven store. Pangolins, not snakes, may be the missing link for transmission of the new coronavirus from bats to humans. Since its initial outbreak at Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, COVID-19 has since infected more than a million people across the globe. To understand and control the transmission of COVID-19, scientists are racing to study the coronavirus causing the disease: SARS-CoV-2, previously named 2019-nCoV. SARS-CoV-2 is zoonotic, which means that the virus originated in animals and jumped to humans. A critical challenge is to determine which animal transmitted the virus to humans. We are a team of bioinformaticians and we feel it is our responsibility to the global community to investigate the origin of this virus. Based on the research in our lab, we believe that pangolins, as opposed to snakes, may have served as the hosts that transmitted the coronavirus to people and caused the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The pangolin, also known as a scaly anteater, is the only known mammal with scales and is found in Asia and Africa. Mystery of zoonotic transmission Since January 2020, the current consensus among the scientific community is that SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats; however, its unlikely that bats directly gave the virus to humans based on whats known about transmission of earlier zoonotic coronaviruses. Instead, scientists suspected that the bat coronavirus infected another animal, an intermediate host, which subsequently transmitted the virus to humans. For example, SARS-CoV, which is the coronavirus that caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2003, is a close relative of SARS-CoV-2. It was also found to have been transmitted from bats to an intermediate host the masked palm civet which subsequently infected humans. Similarly, MERS-CoV, the coronavirus that caused Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012, jumped from bats to another intermediate host, the dromedary camel, before infecting humans. The identity of the intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2 is therefore a mystery that many researchers hope to solve, as knowing the intermediate host is very helpful for prevention of further spread of epidemic. An early study claimed that snakes such as the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra were likely to be the intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2. Yet, this conclusion quickly drew skepticism, partly because there exists no previous evidence that coronaviruses can jump from a cold-blooded animal, such as snakes, to human beings. Snakes make unlikely host The early claim that snakes transmitted SARS-CoV-2 was based on an analysis of the viruss genetic sequence. For both viruses and animal cells to function, genetic sequences (RNA or DNA) must be translated into proteins, which then carry out many tasks of the virus and the cell. These proteins exist as linked chains of single amino acids; each amino acid in a protein is encoded by a group of three nucleotides, also known as a codon, in the genetic sequence. Since there are 64 possible different codons but only 20 amino acids, several codons can correspond to the same amino acid; different organisms will have different preference for which codon is used for a given amino acid. The early study hypothesized that for the coronavirus to effectively grow inside an animal cell, the codon usage preferences of the coronavirus should match that of the host cell. The researchers compared the codon usage in the SARS-CoV-2 virus against that of the cells in eight animals at the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. That study found that the snakes share the most similar codon usage pattern to SARS-CoV-2, thereby declaring that snakes were the most likely intermediate hosts. However, their central hypothesis that coronaviruses and their animal hosts share similar codon usage was never verified. Our team at the University of Michigan scrutinized this hypothesis, and performed a more systematic analysis that we published in a recent follow-up study. We compared the codon usages of three coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV) to those of more than 10,000 different kinds of animals. To our surprise, we found that the codon usage of a coronavirus is not determined by its hosts. For example, the codon usage of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV is much closer to frogs and snakes than to their real animal hosts (civets and camels, respectively). This shows that it is not possible to use only codon usage in animals cells to infer the hosts of coronaviruses, suggesting that the early claim of snake-borne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is likely to be incorrect. Discovering the pangolin as a likely missing link Our follow-up study also found that the genetic sequence of a coronavirus, discovered in lung samples of Malayan pangolins, was highly similar to SARS-CoV-2. The two viruses shared 91% of their genetic sequence. There is a particularly strong similarity between the spike proteins of these two viruses. The spike protein, which is on the surface of a coronavirus, is used by the virus to get into an animal cell. The bat coronavirus, which was the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, has 19 amino acids on the spike protein that are different from SARS-CoV-2; the pangolin coronavirus only has five amino acids that are different from SARS-CoV-2. Meanwhile, several other research groups have found further experimental evidence of pangolins being infected by coronaviruses highly similar to SARS-CoV-2. While pangolins are now our top suspect as the intermediate host, our study concludes that other potential intermediate hosts should still be considered. A coronavirus can use more than one kind of animal to infect humans: For example, while civets are best known for transmitting SARS, other animals such as raccoon dogs and ferret badgers are also able to carry SARS. Similarly, cats and ferrets can also be infected by SARS-CoV-2; it is still unknown whether humans can get infected by the coronavirus residing within these animals. [You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversations newsletter.] Yang Zhang, Professor of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics, University of Michigan; Chengxin Zhang, PhD Candidate in Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, and Wei Zheng, Postdoctoral Fellow of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Courtesy Photos / Courtesy Photos The Grogans Mill Village Association is seeking applicants for the associations annual student scholarship program. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials with the association have extended the deadline for college scholarship applications to May 15. The scholarships are scheduled to be awarded in June, GMVA Member Bruce Cunningham says, and will honor five recipients. In addition to the new deadline, Cunningham said the scholarships have been expanded. Now four students will receive $2,500 each, and one person will receive $5,000. The World Health Organization on April 8 made public a timeline of its fight against COVID-19 following an accusation by U.S. President Donald Trump that it was too slow to sound an alarm about the novel coronavirus. It was on April 7 that Trump first unleashed a tirade against the WHO. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, however, praised the organization as "absolutely critical" to wiping out COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The WHO defended itself on April 8 by arguing that it had alerted the world to the COVID-19 threat in a timely manner and that it was "committed to ensuring all member states are able to respond effectively to this pandemic." The agency also claimed that it exerts limited power over individual governments and that it has worked at full stretch in handling the public health threat. Technavio has been monitoring the electric vehicle transmission system market and it is poised to grow by USD 68.39 billion during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of almost 46% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005254/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire) Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Latest Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact The market is concentrated, and the degree of concentration will accelerate during the forecast period. AISIN SEIKI Co., Ltd., BorgWarner Inc., Eaton, GKN (Melrose Industries PLC), OC Oerlikon Management AG, and ZF Friedrichshafen AG are some of the major market participants. The adoption of multi-speed transmission will offer immense growth opportunities. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. Adoption of multi-speed transmission has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market 2019-2023: Segmentation Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market is segmented as below: Type Multi-speed Transmission Single-speed Transmission Geographic Landscape APAC Europe North America South America The Middle East Africa To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download latest free sample report of 2020-2024: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR30932 Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market 2019-2023: Scope Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our electric vehicle transmission system market report covers the following areas: Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market Size Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market Trends Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market Industry Analysis This study identifies use of light-weight transmission design as one of the prime reasons driving the electric vehicle transmission system market growth during the next few years. Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis We provide a detailed analysis of vendors operating in the electric vehicle transmission system market, including some of the vendors such as AISIN SEIKI Co., Ltd., BorgWarner Inc., Eaton, GKN (Melrose Industries PLC), OC Oerlikon Management AG, and ZF Friedrichshafen AG. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the electric vehicle transmission system market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Electric Vehicle Transmission System Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023 Detailed information on factors that will assist electric vehicle transmission system market growth during the next five years Estimation of the electric vehicle transmission system market size and its contribution to the parent market Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior The growth of the electric vehicle transmission system market Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of electric vehicle transmission system market vendors Table Of Contents: PART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORT 2.1 Preface 2.2 Preface 2.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ PART 03: MARKET LANDSCAPE Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysis PART 04: MARKET SIZING Market definition Market sizing 2018 Market size and forecast 2018-2023 PART 05: FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition PART 06: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY TYPE Market segmentation by type Comparison by type Multi-speed transmission Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Single-speed transmission Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Market opportunity by type PART 07: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE PART 08: GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison APAC Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Europe Market size and forecast 2018-2023 North America Market size and forecast 2018-2023 South America Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Middle East and Africa Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Key leading countries Market opportunity PART 09: DECISION FRAMEWORK PART 10: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers Market challenges PART 11: MARKET TRENDS Use of light-weight transmission design Integration of transmission system with other electric powertrain components to form electric drive units Growing adoption of power-split CVT systems PART 12: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview Landscape disruption Competitive scenario PART 13: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors AISIN SEIKI Co., Ltd. BorgWarner Inc. Eaton GKN (Melrose Industries PLC) OC Oerlikon Management AG ZF Friedrichshafen AG PART 14: APPENDIX Research methodology List of abbreviations PART 15: EXPLORE TECHNAVIO 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005254/en/ Contacts: 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/ The government is actively working on making a gradual loosening of the current lockdown measures possible, the ministry of state told RTL. A government spokesperson explained that the gradual lift of restrictions depends on a number of key criteria such as the future spreading of the virus, the number of infections, and the capacities of Luxembourg's healthcare system. Immunity tests will eventually also play a role. The government is also taking in account that a very long complete lockdown could cause serious damage on different societal levels. Officials are reportedly joining efforts with experts and working groups from different ministries to devise various scenarios and corresponding action plans for the coming weeks. The key goal, for now, is to collect as much information as possible and to minimise the health risks for the population. The government reportedly plans on presenting a first plan detailing the gradual lockdown lift mid-April. For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME. Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire. Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever. Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation. View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union. Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history. Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words. Queensland's Health Minister Steven Miles has promised to provide more detailed information on locations of COVID-19 infections as some communities get nervous and spread rumours about infections. Redland City mayor Karen Williams on Monday asked Queensland Health for a greater breakdown of figures rather than simply providing a block COVID-19 infections figure for Brisbane's large Metro South and Metro North region. Cr Williams said she had recently written to Mr Miles about what she described as a "void in information". "What happens is that our communities start to create their own information," Cr Williams said. "I had lots of rumours floating around that people had COVID-19, or people did not have COVID-19, that people were self-isolating." Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - Beleave Inc. (CSE: BE) (OTCQX: BLEVF) ("Beleave" or the "Company"), a licensed producer of cannabis and cannabis-derived products, provides an update on internal operations and leadership changes at the Company. Key Highlights Beleave CEO Kevin Keagan announces resignation, remains on Board Branson Corporate Services retained to assist with CFO function Beleave adds Advisor to the Board Beleave responds to the COVID-19 pandemic Leadership Updates and CEO Resignation Beleave announced today that Kevin Keagan has resigned from his position as Beleave's CEO, effective immediately. Mr. Keagan will remain on the Board of Directors. Bill Panagiotakoplous, COO, has been named acting CEO, while the Board has begun a search for Mr. Keagan's successor. "The Board is thankful for Kevin's service and leadership," said Andrew Steane, Chairman of the Board. "He has contributed significantly to where we are today and helped chart a course for Beleave's future. We understand and respect his decision to step down and wish him the very best." CFO Position Update Beleave has retained the services of Branson Corporate Services, a provider of outsourced corporate services, to provide interim CFO and financial services until such time as operations require otherwise. Keith Li of Branson has been appointed as Interim CFO. Advisor to the Board Beleave welcomes Douglas Fowles as a Special Advisor to the Board. Mr. Fowles brings a wealth of expertise on leadership, operations, and governance and will be assisting in the search for a permanent CEO. Doug will also conduct a detailed business review and provide recommendations to the Board for implementation. Doug previously held the position of President and CEO of Mascan Corporation, developer of the Mississauga City Core and builder of the Square One Shopping Centre. In 2018, he was named Mississauga Citizen of the Year. Douglas is currently the Treasurer of Legends Row, Mississauga's Walk of Fame. Story continues Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Beleave has followed all recommended guidance provided by provincial and federal authorities to ensure the safety and health of its employees and customers by implementing recommended policies and procedures. The processing and packaging facility continues to be in use, however at a reduced level of activity due to physical distancing practices that are in place. Beleave has implemented a "behave like you are infected" policy, is monitoring the situation daily, and will continue to abide by government and health regulations as they are updated. The Company is meeting all delivery and customer order fulfillment expectations and is on track to continue uninterrupted. About Beleave Inc. Beleave is an ISO certified, Canadian cannabis company headquartered in the Greater Toronto Area that cultivates high-quality cannabis flower, oil and extracts for medical and recreational markets. Beleave is fully licenced to cultivate and sell medical and recreational cannabis and is leading the way through research partnerships with universities to develop pharma-grade extracts and derivatives. Beleave is developing new product lines, including cannabis-infused products, oils, vape pens, and other novel cannabis delivery methods for 2020. Beleave has developed a network of medical cannabis clinics in Ontario and Quebec under the Medi-Green banner. Investor Relations Contact: Bill Panagiotakoplous Interim Chief Executive Officer Phone: +1 (905) 979-4835 Email: bill@beleave.com Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law ("forward-looking statements"). The use of any of the words "plan", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur are intended to identify forward-looking information. These statements are only predictions. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, by its very nature it involves inherent risks and uncertainties. This information speaks only as of the date of this news release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents, which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54362 Photo: The Canadian Press A police officer is shown at Maison Herron, a long term care home in the Montreal suburb of Dorval, Sunday, April 12, 2020, as COVID-19 cases rise in Canada and around the world. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes The latest news on the COVID-19 global pandemic (all times Eastern): 6:45 p.m. Alberta is reporting four new deaths from COVID-19. The province says two were residents at the McKenzie Towne continuing care facility in Calgary, bringing the home's coronavirus death toll to 20. The other two were residents at Manoir du Lac, an independent living and assisted living facility for seniors in McLennan, in northern Alberta. It brings the total number of deaths at Manoir du Lac from COVID-19 to four. Alberta's total number of COVID-19 cases now stands at 1,651, including 44 deaths. --- 1:50 p.m. A man is apologizing after facing a backlash over a video of him appearing to spit on a Vancouver condo elevator. The video, posted to Twitter, shows the man spitting on the elevators control panel before disembarking. In a statement released by his lawyer, the man says the incident was fuelled by a dispute he had with other owners in the building. The man who has not been identified says the incident occurred eight days ago and he has no health issues related to COVID-19. He says he will also seek counselling. --- 1:25 p.m. Quebec has registered 39 new deaths due to COVID-19, for a total of 328. The province reports 554 new cases, for a total of 12,846. There are a total of 824 in hospital in Quebec, including 217 in intensive care, while 1,745 people are listed as recovered. The Quebec government has not scheduled a briefing today, after weeks of daily updates on the progression of COVID-19. --- 1 p.m. Health officials in Newfoundland and Labrador are reporting one new confirmed case of COVID-19, bringing the province's total to 242. The new case is in the province's Eastern Health region. Seven people are currently in hospital due to the virus, with three of those patients in intensive care. To date, the province has tested 4,812 people and registered three deaths, while 129 people have recovered after contracting the virus. --- 12:20 p.m. Public health officials in New Brunswick are reporting two new cases of COVID-19, bringing the provincial total to 114. The new cases involve a person in their 60s and a person in their 70s both in the Saint John health zone. Officials say 12 people have been hospitalized and five have since been discharged, with three of the remaining seven patients in hospital in intensive care. To date, 70 people have recovered. --- 12:10 p.m. Nova Scotia is reporting 17 new cases of COVID-19 for a total of 445 confirmed cases. Health officials say the province has registered 14,295 negative test results and two deaths. Nine people are currently in hospital, with four of those patients in intensive care. Officials say 97 people have now recovered and their cases of COVID-19 are considered resolved. --- 11:15 p.m. The Quebec coroner's office will investigate the deaths of 31 seniors at a private long-term care facility west of Montreal. The office says in a statement that it will probe the circumstances surrounding the deaths and issue recommendations if needed. Premier Francois Legault said yesterday that at least five of the deaths at the Residence Herron in Dorval, Que., were due to COVID-19. A police investigation was launched after regional health authorities obtained an order to access patient files at the residence and learned of the dozens of deaths that had occurred since March 13. --- 10:45 a.m. Ontario is reporting 401 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the province's total to 7,049. The province now has 274 deaths after 21 were reported today. Ontario says 261 people are in intensive care, while 3,121 cases have been marked as resolved. Union minister for minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Monday urged the Muslim community to follow the social distancing protocol and adhere to the lockdown guidelines during the holy month of Ramzan starting later in April. In a statement, Naqvi asked the people to pray and practice rituals such as breaking the fast inside the safety of their homes instead of congregating in mosques and other public places. Naqvi told Hindustan Times on Monday that he would reach out to the State Waqf Board members, custodians of various mosques and Ulemas to drive home the message of adhering to the lockdown guidelines and also stress the importance of breaking the chain of coronavirus pandemic. Naqvi said on behalf of the Central Waqf Council, of which he is the chairperson, messages urging the community members to desist from congregating have been issued. There are seven lakh registered mosques and Imambaras and dargahs under the Central Waqf Council. In the wake of restrictions imposed on public meetings during the lockdown, religious activities and festivities in temples, mosques, churches and gurdwaras have been cancelled. Queenslands regions could see a relaxing of coronavirus-related restrictions earlier than other parts of the state. But every region is still facing months of lockdown, despite the state confirming just seven new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, the ninth day in a row with fewer than 15 new confirmed cases. The increase brought the state's total number of cumulative cases to 987. Five Queenslanders have died from the disease and 442 people have recovered, including a number who were ventilated in intensive care. Speaking on Monday, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk again praised Queenslanders for maintaining their social distancing efforts to prevent new infections. 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. in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, April 1939 *** The rapid spread of the coronavirus in the United States is revealing the consequences of decades of ruling-class policy, which have left the center of world capitalism completely unprepared for a significant health care emergency. At the same time, the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic is exposing the reality of widespread poverty and insecurity. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, breadlines became a symbol of social distress. Such scenes are reemerging in the form of massive line-ups for emergency food assistance in every state and community. On Thursday, 6,000 cars lined up for five miles at a food bank drive-through in San Antonio, Texas. Some families arrived 12 hours early to ensure they received some aid. In Inglewood, California, south of Los Angeles, 5,000 cars lined up to receive food on Friday. Food bank usage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has increased by 543 percent in recent days. Boxes of food are distributed by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, at a drive thru distribution in downtown Pittsburgh, 10 April, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar] Those who are lining up are not just the poorest workers, who typically rely on food banks in hard times, but also broader sections of the working class and middle class families who have never had to rely on such aid in their lives. Ive never had to go to a food pantry in my life, Shanell Gray, a recently laid off hotel worker, told the Columbus Dispatch at a food distribution in Ohios capital city this weekend. This just went really fast. I was able to pay my rent for this month. May is the struggle. Nearly 17 million workers have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks, the highest number ever recorded. Even this figure, however, underestimates the scale of layoffs. Millions more are either ineligible for benefits or have been unable to apply due to overloaded websites and call centers. The vast majority of the population has yet to receive any financial assistance. Just 10,000 people had received a direct deposit to their bank account as of Friday, and most states still have not established a means of sending out the $600 weekly increase in unemployment for four months. While trillions have been handed over to the banks and gigantic corporationswith no requirement that they wait in linesevery obstacle is being put in place to prevent workers from getting anything and to cut off aid as soon as possible. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, son of the late arch-reactionary Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has done everything in his power to limit payments, including by excluding gig workers who use phone apps to find work and making it easier for companies to avoid paying sick and family leave. We want workers to have work, not to become dependent on the unemployment system, Scalia declared in an article posted last week on Fox Business News. The comments mirrored Trumps outraged response to the fact that were paying people not to go to work. The consequences will be catastrophic. According to one survey, nearly three-quarters of all workers live paycheck to paycheck. Almost three in 10 American adults have no savings. With so many hanging on by their fingernails before the pandemic, the often-individual experience that one missed paycheck spells personal disaster has become a mass phenomenon. Already, one-third of Americans missed paying rent in the first week of April, a figure that is sure to be higher in May as millions deplete their savings accounts to get by without a paycheck. If they are not immediately being evicted, due to a patchwork of local and state level moratoriums, then millions will eventually be thrown into the streets because they cannot afford to pay back the rent they will owe when workplaces reopen. If the promised stimulus money does arrive from the federal government, it will count for little. The one-time $1,200 payment will not cover the cost of rent in most cases, let alone food and other essentials. The stopgap measures included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act passed by Republicans and Democrats last month are woefully inadequate to meet social need. While so many are hungry for food, the anarchy of the capitalist market has been exposed by the fact that farmers are destroying crops of staple foods as orders and prices fall. No measures have been taken to redistribute and process food for consumption even as stores struggle to keep up with demand for basic food items such as milk and eggs. Instead eggs are smashed by the tens of thousands, countless tons of green beans mulched and plowed into fields, onions buried by the tens of thousands of pounds in trenches to rot. Five percent of the countrys milk supply has been dumped, and it could rise to ten percent with the continued closure of schools, restaurants and hotels. The massive economic devastation that is unfolding will be exploited by the Trump administration to agitate for a return to work, creating conditions in which those who are unable to find work or refuse to endanger their lives are cut off from unemployment and other aid. The working class, however, will have its say. Over the past several days, worried comments have begun to appear on the likelihood of mass social unrest. Bloomberg editorial board member Andreas Kluth warned Saturday that the pandemic will lead to social revolutions, which the ruling elites must be prepared to confront. Kluth explains that countless Americans simply do not have the option to stay home to avoid the coronavirus, putting them at risk of getting sick or infecting their families. He notes that the situation is even worse for the millions who live in slums in countries like South Africa and India, where social distancing is not an option, handwashing is impossible without running water and there are no emergency supplies of face masks. In this context, it would be naive to think that, once this medical emergency is over, either individual countries or the world can carry on as before. Anger and bitterness will find new outlets In time, these passions could become new populist or radical movements, intent on sweeping aside whatever ancien regime they define as the enemy. Capitalism is being exposed to a degree without precedent in modern history. Workers must draw the lessons. A system that funnels trillions to a handful of financial parasites while condemning millions to poverty and death must be swept aside. WASHINGTON Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden's presidential campaign on Monday, encouraging his progressive supporters to rally behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in an urgent bid to defeat President Donald Trump. "I am asking all Americans, I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse," the Vermont senator said in a virtual event with Biden. The backing came less than a week after Sanders ended his presidential campaign, which was centered around progressive policies such as universal health care. It's a crucial development for Biden, who must bridge the Democratic Party's entrenched ideological divides to put together a coalition that can beat Trump. Democratic disunity helped contribute to Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in 2016. Perhaps eager to avoid a repeat of that bruising election year, Sanders offered his endorsement much earlier in the 2020 campaign. Sanders backed Clinton four years ago, but only after the end of a drawn-out nomination fight and a bitter dispute over the Democratic platform that extended to the summer convention. Biden and Sanders differed throughout the primary, particularly over whether a government-run system should replace private health insurance. Biden has resisted Sanders' "Medicare for All" plan and has pushed instead a public option that would operate alongside private coverage. Appearing in a split screen with Biden, Sanders said there's "no great secret out there that you and I have our differences." But Sanders said the greater priority for Democrats of all political persuasions should be defeating Trump. "We've got to make Trump a one-term president," he added. "I will do all that I can to make that happen." The coronavirus prevented Biden and Sanders from appearing together in person on Monday. But they made clear they would continue working together, announcing the formation of six "task forces" made up of representatives from both campaigns to work on policy agreements addressing issues including the economy, education, criminal justice and immigration. Biden, 77, has already made some overtures to progressives by embracing aspects of Sanders' and Sen. Elizabeth Warren's policies, like much of Sanders' student debt forgiveness proposal and Warren's bankruptcy plan. Sanders, 78, is sure to remain a force throughout the campaign. When he ended his candidacy last week, he said he would keep his name on the ballot in states that have not yet voted in order to collect more delegates that could be used to influence the party's platform. He didn't say Monday whether he would continue to fight for those delegates. Still, Sanders and Biden emphasized their mutual respect for each other on Monday. Sanders referred to the former vice president as "Joe." Biden answered him repeatedly as "pal." The two men asked the other to give regards to their wives, Jill Biden and Jane Sanders. Biden told Sanders: "I really need you, not just to win the campaign but to govern." Even with Sanders' dozens of campaign stops for Clinton a record he brought up repeatedly to push back at the idea that he was partly to blame for her defeat Monday's conversation was something voters never saw between the 2016 rivals. Whether that translates to how Sanders' progressive base sees Biden is not yet clear. Indeed, Sanders will be a key ally for Biden not just in winning over skeptical progressives but also in appealing to young voters, a key Democratic voting bloc that has long supported Sanders over his former primary rivals by huge margins. Biden and Sanders on Monday both emphasized the need to address the challenges confronting young people during the pandemic, with Sanders describing "a generation of young people who are experiencing crisis after crisis." Several people were held on Sunday after Delhi's Excise department carried out a raid at a club in Punjabi Bagh area. Amid the lockdown in the capital, the department received information that Raftaar club is allegedly selling liquor. The excise department has also claimed to have recovered non-duty paid liquor being sold at high prices. According to the excise department, the club was operating with an extra bar counter that was serving beer. The club also allegedly failed to provide documents and stock registered. A FIR in this regard has been registered against the club's owner. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sabir Durrani says he offers prayers almost every day at a mosque in the central Pakistani city of Multan. He says that often a dozen or more men are in attendance - none of them wearing protective face masks. Durrani, 52, is among thousands of devout Muslims flouting Pakistan government orders issued late last month banning religious congregations of five or more people to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The disease has so far infected more than 5,300 people and killed 93 in the worlds second-most populous Muslim country. Our prayer leader told us that the virus cant infect us the way it does Western people, Durrani told Reuters. He said we wash our hands and we wash our face five times a day before we say our prayers, and the infidels dont, so we need not worry. God is with us. The Islamic lobby holds immense clout in Pakistan, a country of over 200 million people. Religious parties have not been successful in electoral politics but they are able to whip up large, often violent, crowds on matters pertaining to religion, such as in support of the countrys harsh blasphemy law. Religion and prayers are an emotional issue for many people in Pakistan, and the government has to be sensitive to that, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan, told Reuters. More than 60% of the coronavirus cases in Pakistan have so far been linked to Muslims returning from pilgrimages in the Middle East and followers of the Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox proselytizing group. But the worry is of a big spike coming from the congregational prayers held in mosques, especially on Fridays, the Islamic sabbath. The numbers in attendance at prayers are likely to increase with the onset of the holy month of Ramadan within two weeks, and authorities are struggling to cope. While the Council of Islamic Ideology, a body that advises the government on religious issues, has called on clerics and the public to cooperate with government measures, several priests and local leaders have opposed the ban. A prominent leader of a religious party told a crowd of hundreds of people gathered for a funeral last week that government orders to limit congregations were unacceptable. If you do this, we will be forced to think that mosques are being deserted on Americas instructions, Mufti Kafayatullah told the crowd. Were ready to give our lives, but not ready to desert our mosques. BLIND EYE In Karachi, Pakistans largest city, police were attacked for a second straight week as they attempted to halt prayers at a mosque last Friday. A policewoman was injured in the clashes, and in the previous week, police fired shots in the air to quell an angry mob. In other cities, police seem to be turning a blind eye to some mosque gatherings. Last Friday, one of the top Twitter trends in Pakistan was Muslims, the mosque is calling you. In the capital, Islamabad, hundreds gathered on Friday without any hindrance at one of the citys largest mosques, located just two miles (three km) from the seat of Pakistans government, including parliament and the prime ministers secretariat. On March 27, authorities filed 88 cases against mosque administrations in Karachi and arrested 38 people for defying restrictions on Friday congregations, but charges were dropped a day later, and the people were released. I think its partly appeasement and partly the fact that Pakistans governments and politics are locked permanently in an electoral framework in which they dont want to lose support of the religious elite and religious proletariat, Pakistani author and defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa told Reuters. Akbar, the special assistant to the prime minister, said most mosques were cooperating with the government. He added however: This is a sensitive matter, we dont want to impose it using a stick. And even if we wanted to, there arent enough sticks to implement it across Pakistan. By Heather Elliott, Alumni, Class of 36 Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law It is welcome news that Charles Graddick, the Director of the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, is continuing discussions with the Governors Office in an effort to restart pardon and parole hearings as safely and efficiently as possible. He should work swiftly: the Board should resume hearings as soon as possible. As the Alabama Department of Corrections has recently concluded, Alabamas prisons are likely to see dramatic spread of the coronavirus and, as a consequence, many deaths. Social distancing is impossible due to overcrowding. Proper hygiene is impossible due to lack of supplies and prohibitions on certain hygiene products. Prisons are not islands. If an outbreak starts among prisoners, it will spread to correctional officers and other staff, who will take the virus home to their families and our communities. Given the Covid-19 pandemic, Alabamas prison overcrowding has become a tremendous threat to the health of the people of Alabama. One remedy to the overcrowding is to release prisoners who are eligible for parole. As of April 1, nearly 4,000 people (15 percent of those incarcerated in Alabama prisons) were eligible for a parole hearing. Yet the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, which already faces a crushing backlog of cases, has canceled hearings scheduled through May 28. The Board had contended that it is forbidden to proceed because Alabama law prohibits electronic hearings (other states, including Mississippi, conduct parole hearings electronically as a matter of course). Director Graddick today announced that he is considering virtual hearings, given the State of Emergency. The State of Emergency permits the Board to proceed with virtual hearings. Under Alabama law, the Governor may declare a state of emergency and, during that emergency, suspend laws and regulations that would ordinarily apply. In Governor Iveys First Supplemental Proclamation of the State of Emergency (issued March 18), she suspended the requirements of the Open Meetings Law and permitted state agencies to proceed using telephone conference, video conference, or other similar communications equipment if necessary for the agency to conduct essential minimum functions or respond to the pandemic. The Proclamation thus contemplates virtual hearings, even when otherwise forbidden by law, if necessary in the current emergency. And there is no doubt that restarting parole hearings is necessary to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. Governor Ivey has authorized the Board to proceed with virtual hearings. Director Graddick should seize on that authorization to restart parole hearings as soon as possible. Without steps to address the impending coronavirus catastrophe in Alabamas overcrowded prisons, we are all at greater risk of falling victim to the disease. A total of 133 Bhutanese students stranded in Punjab due to a lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 were airlifted to their country through a special flight from Amritsar on Monday, officials said. The students were studying in different parts of the state, they said. Kapurthala Deputy Commissioner Deepti Uppal said the students, who had been stranded in their hostels, were allowed to leave for Bhutan through a special flight arranged by the Bhutanese government only after getting tested for the virus. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The United States is the new epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic with over 20 thousand fatalities. But President Donald Trump is convinced his administration is winning against the epidemic despite governors being cautious about lifting the lockdown. We're very, very ready for this, declared United States President Donald Trump, on 26 February, about his country's capacity to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, a month and a half later, the USA is the new epicentre of the epidemic. It is the first country to record more than 20,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University on Monday. There are currently more than 525,000 confirmed cases in the country. Three states in particular have been badly affected: New York, New Jersey and Michigan account for three out of every five deaths in the country. Dr Anthony Fauci, the US government's top infectious disease specialist said he was "cautiously optimistic" as admissions into hospitals and intensive care had begun to decline. Fauci, who has advised six successive presidents, told CNN on Friday that "Now is no time to back off. Now is the time to actually put your foot on the accelerator, because we're going in the right direction." #FireFauci Meanwhile, President Trump tweeted on Sunday: "We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy!" Trump is eager to restart the economy, which has stalled because most Americans are under orders to stay at home to help slow the spread of Covid-19. Social distancing guidelines from Trump are set to expire on 30 April. Rather than flipping a switch to reopen the entire country, Fauci said a gradual process will be required based on the status of the pandemic in various parts of the U.S. and the availability of rapid, widespread testing. Once the number of people who are seriously ill sharply declines, officials can begin to think about a gradual reentry of some sort of normality," Fauci said. He believes that in some places that might occur as soon as May. President Trump retweeted a call by Republican DeAnna Lorraine to fire Dr Anthony Fauci ('Time to #FireFauci') as he rejected criticism of his slow initial response to the pandemic. Gasoline on fire Unlike in many Western countries, lockdown decisions in the United States are primarily up to local governments, not the president. Governors will have a lot to say about when to ease restrictions in their states and leaders of a number of hard-hit, densely populated states have vowed to act as long as necessary. The leaders of Maryland and New Jersey indicated Sunday that they are not likely to do so until widespread testing is available. Phil Murphy , New Jersey's Democrat governor, said that an economic recovery depended on a "full health-care recovery." He told CBS that if we start to get back on our feet too soon, I fear, based on the data we're looking at, we could be throwing gasoline on the fire. South Korea testing kits South Korea is planning to send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States. South Korea's Foreign Affairs minister, Kang Kyung-wha, told RFI's sister TV station, France 24, that President Trump made the request for testing kits in a telephone call with President Moon Jae-in last last month. "The contracts have been signed and they should be ready for shipment any time soon," Kang Kyung-wha told F24. "We are also sending test kits to many other countries as well." A U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency cargo plane carrying the equipment is scheduled to leave at 13:30 GMT on Tuesday according to an official who spoke to Reuters news agency. An additional 150,000 kits will be exported in the near future and will be sold through an unspecified local retailer, the official said.. A judge in Willacy County, Texas, has issued an order that anyone over the age of 5 who does not wear a face mask in public during the coronavirus pandemic can be fined up to $1,000, according to the Houston Chronicle. Judge Aurelio Guerra also ordered that there may be no more than two adults per vehicle in the county. He asked that children stay at home unless medically necessary, according to valleycentral.com. According to chron.com, the county has five positive cases of coronavirus. The order says that people are to wear some form of cloth face covering (such as a homemade mask, scarf, bandana, or handkerchief) over their nose and mouth at all times including when entering into or inside of any building open to the public (such as a grocery store, convenience store, and pharmacy) and when pumping gas. The order goes on to say that the face coverings should NOT be surgical masks or N-95 respirators. Those are critical supplies that must continue to be reserved for healthcare workers and other medical first responders. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf on April 3 asked everyone to wear a face mask when out in public. He also urged residents to only go out when necessary. State Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine also said people who are not in healthcare should not use the N-95 masks so they can be reserved for healthcare workers. A mask isnt a pass to go back to work, or go visit friends, or go socialize," Levine said. A mask is one more tool in our toolbox to protect ourselves against COVID-19. Staying home is the most effective way to protect yourself and your family against COVID-19," Levine said. As of noon on Easter Sunday, Pennsylvania has 22,833 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 507 deaths. MORE CORONAVIRUS NEWS ON PENNLIVE Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. Airport Show Dubai, the worlds largest annual airport industry B2B platform, has been rescheduled to take place from October 26-28 at the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), where it was scheduled earlier for June. The new dates reflect the aviation industrys confidence of normalcy returning to global markets by then and the lifting of extensive travel restrictions around the world following the Covid-19 pandemic. Organised by Reed Exhibitions Middle East under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman of Dubai Airports and Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline and Group, the event is supported by Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA), Dubai Airports, Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects (DAEP) and dnata, amongst a host of global and regional aviation bodies, suppliers associations and working groups. Mohammed Abdulla Ahli, director general of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and CEO of Dubai Air Navigation Services (dans), said: Every industry has come to a standstill due to the unforeseen circumstances we are faced with. Our past experiences of handling crises will help us to bounce back into the aviation business, once the crisis is contained. We shall all play our part in the recovery. Airport Show is expected to attract 375 exhibiting companies and over 8,500 visitors coming from almost 100 countries. Now in its 20th edition, the event showcases the most advanced global aviation technologies and allows attendees to participate in a series of conferences, matchmaking programmes and workshops. The collocated Global Airport Leaders Forum (GALF) and Women in Aviation General Assembly will host over 1,500 delegates and 100 speakers, covering the latest industry developments across four key themes of Air Traffic Control, Airport Security, Airport Passenger Experience and Ground Handling. Last years show hosted 351 exhibitors on 15,599-sq-m exhibition space and attracted 7,100 attendees from 89 countries. Daniyal Qureshi, group exhibitions director, Reed Exhibitions Middle East, said: Global air transport supports almost $3 trillion in global economic activity, with the worlds airlines carrying more than 4 billion passengers and 60 million tonnes of freight every year. Aviation's contribution during periods of global emergencies such as we are facing today is critical, delivering thousands of tonnes of food, medicines and essential supplies to the worst affected and enabling world leaders and experts to efficiently collaborate and support rehabilitation efforts. There is no doubt that Covid-19 has and will severely affect our industry. However, we are confident that once we are through these challenging times, aviation will once again play its important role in supporting economic recovery efforts around the world. - TradeArabia News Service The decision is due to restrictions imposed to combat the spread of COVID-19 and making it difficult for experts to arrive. Canada and several other countries whose citizens died as a result of the downing of the Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) plane flight PS752 near Tehran have asked Iran to postpone the decryption of flight recorders to a later date. As explained by the Canadian Transport Safety Council on Sunday, April 12, the decision was caused by restrictions imposed to combat the spread of COVID-19 and making it difficult for experts to arrive, Deutsche Welle's Russian service reports. Iran contacted interested parties a few days earlier to find out when experts would arrive to help decrypt data from black boxes. In response to a request, Canada assured the Islamic Republic's authorities that it is looking forward to downloading and deciphering data. However, this requires the actual presence of experts from several countries so the decryption should be postponed until there are sufficient conditions for a safe trip, the Canadian side said. Read alsoUkraine not to let Iran shun responsibility for downing of UIA flight PS752 FM Kuleba As UNIAN reported earlier, Kyiv-bound UIA flight PS752 crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport in the early hours of January 8. It was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew members on board. Two passengers and the crew members were Ukrainians. There were also 82 citizens of Iran, 63 citizens of Canada, 10 citizens of Sweden, four citizens of Afghanistan, three citizens of Germany and the United Kingdom each. There were no survivors. On January 11, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani officially admitted that the Ukrainian airliner had been shot down by accident as a result of a "human error" and that those responsible would be held accountable. On February 2, intercepted communications between Tehran Airport's air traffic control tower and the second pilot of Iran's Aseman Airlines flight at the time of the crash of flight PS752 were released by TSN.Tyzhden. Tehran blamed the Ukrainian authorities for leaking what it described as confidential evidence, and said it would no longer share investigation materials with Ukraine. On February 14, the Iranian Foreign Minister said Iran did not plan to hand the black boxes over but it would not decrypt their data without the participation of the parties concerned. On March 23, representatives of Ukraine and Iran agreed on a further interaction algorithm to establish the causes of the tragedy and bring the perpetrators to justice. (Photo : REUTERS/Yen Duong) People get rice from a 24/7 automatic rice dispensing machine, 'Rice ATM', during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, April 11, 2020 Rice is one of the most important food crops in Asian countries. So when this COVID-19 pandemic arrived in some countries, probably, one of the priorities of most Asians is to stock sacks of rice. In Vietnam, rice is not an issue for its people because of the rice ATMs--it gives rice for free! READ ALSO: COVID-19 Superspreaders: Some People Are More Infectious Than Others, Scientists Say READ ALSO: Coronavirus Has THREE Distinct Strains, According to Study; US Suffering From Original Variation In a report by CNN, the rice ATMs have been set up to some areas in Vietnam to provide free rice for those who need it most. Unlike its neighboring Asian countries, Vietnam has lower numbers of COVID-19 cases--265 cases and zero deaths. Although they have lower numbers of cases, its government ensure that the virus will not spread across the country by ordering many small businesses to stop their operation, leaving thousands out of work. Some people are affected by the shutdown of business operations, leaving them without income. With that, "businessmen and donors have set up machines that dispense free rice at several cities across Vietnam." According to state-run news agency VNA, in Hanoi, there is a schedule in getting the free rice (from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. each day), and the residents get them from a large water tank. Just like other countries, Vietnam government ensures that its citizen practices social distancing. People who will get a sack of rice should wait in line and required to stand six feet apart from each other. To ensure they will not pass any germs, they must use hand sanitizer before receiving their rice, according to the local newspaper Hanoi Times. In the central city of Hue, a rice ATM is located at a college. It provides 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of free rice for local residents. In Ho Chi Minh City, a rice ATM is available 24/7; Two rice ATMs are expected to be installed next week in Da Nang. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Anyone who would like to be tested for COVID-19, whether they have symptoms of the disease or not, will now be able to receive a test at either of the Houston Health Departments's two testing sites, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced at a Monday afternoon press conference. People wishing to have a test must first call 832-393-4220 to receive a unique identification code and directions on where to go. New Delhi: Delhi Police on Monday (April 13) nabbed a man pretending to be an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) during a vehicle-checking drive conducted in northeast area of the national capital. According to the police, the accused when intercepted by the cops for violating the lockdown prohibition came out of his car and got into an argument with the police team. He went on to claim that he was a senior official in the Ministry of Home Affairs and showed a sticker of 'Delhi Police' on his car to the police team. Also, the 'Government of India' mark was present on the front and backside of his car. When the police team inquired about his documents, he took out a file and claimed that he was a 2009 batch IAS officer. However, he got exposed after SHO Keshpuram suspected his action and inquired him strictly. Taking cognizance of the matter, the police arrested the man and seized his car and registered a complaint against him. The accused has been identified as 29-year-old Aditya Gupta, son of a contractor. He had come out on the street during the lockdown to enjoy his leisure time. Its a simple rule, designed to protect both homeowners and taxpayers: If you want publicly subsidized flood insurance, you cant build a home thats likely to flood. But local governments around the country, which are responsible for enforcing the rule, have flouted the requirements, accounting for as many as a quarter-million insurance policies in violation, according to data provided to The New York Times by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the flood insurance program. Those structures accounted for more than $1 billion in flood claims during the past decade, the data show. That toll is likely to increase as climate change makes flooding more frequent and intense. Local governments are responsible for enforcing the requirements, but almost none have been penalized for failing to do so. Theres no negative consequences for violating the rules, said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Rachel Sears, director of FEMAs floodplain management division, said her offices strategy was to avoid immediately pursuing penalties, and to instead encourage towns and cities to do better. We work with the communities and property owners to directly remedy the specific violations, she said. The National Flood Insurance Program covers homeowners in flood-prone towns and cities, often at rates below what private insurers charge, if they offer it at all. In return, FEMA requires local officials to ensure that the ground floor of every new or repaired building is at least as high as the expected peak of a major flood. Yet as many as 112,480 structures nationwide fail that test despite being built after the rules took effect, typically decades ago, according to FEMA data analyzed for The Times by Naomi Kalman, a geographic information specialist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues. Those structures account for 249,049 flood insurance policies, each representing a separate household or business. (Some buildings, like condominiums, have several units.) More than 2,000 counties nationwide have buildings on the list. The greatest numbers are in Ocean County, New Jersey; Pinellas County and Monroe County, both in Florida; Charleston County, South Carolina; and Galveston County, Texas. Each has more than 3,000 structures with ground floors that are too low, despite being built after the rules took effect. Another 18 counties have at least 1,000 structures that are listed as being in violation of the rule. Taken together, the owners filed 29,639 flood insurance claims between 2009 and 2018. Those claims led to federal payouts of more than $1 billion, an average of $34,940 per claim. Its not just a coastal problem. Many counties with a high share of properties are well inland, a reminder that flooding is a nationwide threat. FEMA said some of the properties on its list were probably incorrectly categorized, though it doesnt know which ones or how many. For example, local building inspectors might have recorded a ground floor as lower than it actually is. Or a home might have been outside the flood zone when first built, but the zone later expanded. Not all minus-rated policies represent a failure to comply with local floodplain ordinances, Sears said, using FEMAs term for properties that are too low. The only way FEMA can verify which places are breaking its rules, and why, is to conduct a local audit. Of the more than 22,000 communities that participate in the insurance program, FEMA audited just 610 last year, or fewer than 3%, according to the agency. Thats down from about 1,500 a year in the early 1990s. Every federal program has to use the resources available to them, Sears said. We have a set budget. Roy Wright, who ran the insurance program until 2018, offered another explanation: FEMA is hesitant to enforce its own rules because its only enforcement tools are so severe. In short, punishment can make the homes all but unsellable. The first punishment is to put a city or town on probation, a step that entails a $50 annual surcharge on insurance policies. But the next step is the big one: suspension. That amounts to expulsion from the program preventing homeowners or businesses from getting federal flood insurance. Without flood insurance, a homeowner in a floodplain cant obtain a federally backed mortgage, which is what can make a property hard to sell. In the five decades since the program was started, only 77 communities had been put on probation as of last November, according to FEMA. Only 12 have been suspended for failing to enforce the rules. Sears said communities that fail to enforce the minimum-elevation rules are already penalized, because homeowners in those structures have to pay higher insurance premiums. These premiums can be quite high, she said. The individual policyholder, not the taxpayer or the NFIP, pays for this additional risk. And throwing communities off the program wont reduce that risk, Sears said. The goal is not to remove communities, Sears said. Our goal is to make sure that theyre enforcing the requirements. In interviews, officials from places nationwide that have run afoul of the requirements defended themselves, describing the myriad ways a community can end up on the wrong side of FEMAs rules. In Kirkland, Illinois, Ryan Block, the village president, said a resident in the 1990s who owned marshland filled it in to build houses, ignoring warnings from FEMA and state officials. They continued to build homes until the subdivision was basically done, Block said. FEMA spent more than 20 years warning Kirkland to fix the problem, Block said, before putting the village on probation in 2016. He said he doesnt know why the agency waited so long to act, but once it did, local officials began making the fixes that FEMA requested, spending $600,000 to restore the wetlands. Other places have faced no consequences. In many cases, local officials reported having never even been told by FEMA that they were doing something wrong. In Chesapeake, Virginia, which, according to FEMAs data, has 650 structures built below the flood level, permit director Jay Tate said he didnt know which homes were in violation of the rules. He said the city joined the program in the late 1970s, but didnt start enforcing the rules for perhaps a decade or more. It probably wasnt until about 1990 that we had a robust review of building plans to make sure it was in accordance with that, Tate said. In nearby Poquoson, which FEMA shows as having 469 homes that fail to meet its provisions, about 10% of all homes in the city, floodplain manager Ken Somerset said the agency hadnt alerted him to the issue. I would be interested to see that list, Somerset said. In Pinellas County, Florida, which has almost 4,000 structures that are too low, floodplain manager Lisa Foster said there were different possible explanations, including inaccurate elevation measurements. She said the county would have no way of knowing how many structures were built in violation of the rules without doing a detailed analysis of the data for each, and said she wasnt aware of FEMA contacting the county about the problem. Pinellas County has a very active floodplain management program, Foster said in a statement. In the Florida Keys, Christine Hurley, assistant administrator for Monroe County, likewise said she had no knowledge of FEMA warning officials about the countys more than 3,000 structures that are too low. One of the counties with the greatest number of affected properties in the country is Cape May, New Jersey, where FEMA data says 3,308 structures are too low. When asked about the figures, Martin Pagliughi, the countys emergency management director, said he had never heard the term minus-rated that FEMA uses to describe structures that are too low. When told what it meant, he said FEMA must be wrong. I dont believe the numbers, Pagliughi said. Thats way out of whack. KATHMANDU, Nepal - When COVID-19 came to Nepal, attention turned to an unlikely group of victims: hundreds of monkeys, cows and pigeons. Normally, the animals are fed by thousands of devotees at the countrys most revered Hindu temple, Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu. But last month Nepals government ordered a complete lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus. People were forbidden from leaving their homes. Temples closed. And the animals risked starvation. Now, every morning and evening, a few guards, about a dozen staff and some volunteers come out to ensure that the animals survive. We are trying to make sure that these animals are not starving and they are taken care of, said Pradeep Dhakal, an official of the Pashupatinath Development Trust, which controls the temple and surrounding areas. Nepal has nine confirmed cases of the coronavirus and one person has recovered. The lockdown, imposed March 24, banned all flights and ground transport, and closed markets, schools and offices. It is common for devotees to feed cows, which are sacred and worshipped by the Hindus, and monkeys, which are believed to be descendants of the Hindu god Hanuman. Cows line up the path leading to the temple and the banks of the Bagmati River, while monkeys roam freely around the forested hill next to the shrine. Dry corn is spread out on the banks of the river for pigeons while a dough is made for cows from grain. Hundreds of monkeys mostly line up to receive food from volunteers wearing masks and rubber gloves. Each meal takes about four to six sacks of food. The monkeys have not attacked the volunteers, said one, Nivesh Dugar. Minutes later, a large monkey snatched the plastic basket full of freshly cut-out dough. In this difficult time, said Dugar, an environmental engineer, we are just trying to help the animals survive. ___ While nonstop news about the effects of the coronavirus has become commonplace, so, too, have the stories about the kindness of strangers and individuals who have sacrificed for others. One Good Thing is an AP series reflecting these acts of kindness. Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul says another 14 convicts are infected with COVID-19, with one critical. Three Turkish prisoners have died from COVID-19, Turkeys justice minister has said, as he announced the first cases of convicts diagnosed with the disease. A total of 17 convicts in five open prisons have contracted the virus, Abdulhamit Gul told reporters in the capital, Ankara, on Monday. Three of them, unfortunately, died during their treatment in hospital, he said. Some convicts are sent to open prisons towards the end of their sentences to serve out the remainder of their punishment as the state prepares them for release. Thirteen of the sick convicts were in a good condition in hospital, Gul said, but one prisoner with chronic diseases remains in intensive care. He did not give any further details on where the prisoners were, but insisted the necessary precautions had been taken in every prison. There are no positive cases in closed prisons, he added. Turkey has nearly 57,000 COVID-19 infections and approximately 1,200 people have died, according to health ministry figures published on Sunday. Bill to release prisoners The confirmation of positive cases came as Turkish MPs were expected to continue debating on Monday a draft law to release 90,000 inmates from overcrowded prisons. Human rights groups have criticised the proposal because it will not include political prisoners charged under Turkeys controversial anti-terrorism laws. 200412193938580 The Turkish interior minister said he would resign on Sunday, after Turkey on Friday announced weekend lockdowns in a number of provinces just hours before they were due to go into effect, with many people rushing out to panic-buy food and drinks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected Suleyman Soylus resignation, keeping him in his cabinet. If his resignation had been accepted by Erdogan, Soylu would have been the second Turkish minister to leave his post since the coronavirus pandemic was declared. Transport Minister Mehmet Cahit Turhan was removed two weeks ago after the ministry drew criticism for conducting a tender process amid the outbreak for the construction of a large canal on the edge of Istanbul. Australian universities have committed more than $110 million to hardship support funds for their students but warn the country's reputation is on the line and the government needs to step in with extra help for international students. More than 570,000 foreign students who are ordinarily expected to support themselves during their time at universities and other education providers remain in Australia and find themselves without work and facing barriers to return home amid the global COVID-19 crisis. International students, seen here queuing for food, are not eligible for government support. Credit:Penny Stephens Like other temporary visa holders, the students cannot access social security payments or the JobKeeper wage subsidy, and the government has so far outlined limited support for them, allowing some early access to accumulated superannuation but maintaining that government support payments should prioritise Australian citizens. Universities have announced student hardship funds worth at least $110 million, led by a $25 million fund established at Deakin University. Other commitments include an estimated $21 million in support from the Australian National University, Monash University's $15 million, Flinders University's $12.5 million and RMIT University's $10 million. As the country records a daily rise in Covid-19 cases, 42 people, all evacuees from Iran, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus at the Indian Armys two quarantine facilities in Rajasthan, two government officials said on Monday on condition of anonymity. Figures released by Rajasthan government on Sunday show that a total of 52 evacuees --- 25 lodged in a facility at Jodhpur and the remaining 27 housed in the one at Jaisalmer --- are among the 796 people who have tested positive for the disease. However, the two officials cited above said that 51 people housed in the two quarantine centres had tested positive and nine of them had been cured, bringing down number of cases to 42. Evacuees from Iran arrived in Rajasthan in batches between March 15 and March 29. Those who have tested positive are being treated at tertiary care hospitals in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. While the army is an important institutional pillar in the countrys fight against the pandemic, the force is also taking aggressive steps to tackle the spread of the disease within its ranks. Two soldiers, including an army doctor, tested positive for Covid-19 last month. Shelley Davies waits for her delivery at Plants and Friends./Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate Grocery delivery services have been overwhelmed in recent weeks by orders from people avoiding long lines and person-to-person contact at stores amid the coronvirus crisis. Amazon has seen such a significant surge that it's now putting new customers on wait lists for Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market delivery. Amazon shared in a statement that amid stay-at-home orders, "customers have generated unprecedented demand for grocery delivery." "We are temporarily asking new Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market delivery and pickup customers to sign up for an invitation to use online grocery delivery and pickup," the statement said. "Were increasing capacity each week and will invite new customers to shop every week." In the past month, Amazon hired 100,000 new people to help meet demand. Whole Foods grocery pickup has been expanded from about 80 stores to 150. During the week of March 2, Instacart, Amazon, and Walmart grocery delivery services each saw at least a 65-percent sales increase compared to the same time last year, according to estimates from Earnest Research. In the first week of April, order volume at Instacart was up more than 300 percent year-over-year and the number of shoppers signed up with the app-based service grew to more than 350,000 active shoppers, according to a statement from the company. In mid-March the number was 200,000. Some Instacart workers went on strike on March 30, demanding hazard pay and protective gear, among other demands. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Prince Harry is finding life a bit challenging following his move to North America, his friend Dr Jane Goodall has revealed. The 86-year-old primatologist has been in touch with Harry after he quit frontline royal duties to live in Canada and then Los Angeles with wife Meghan, 38, and baby Archie, 11 months. The couple are both fans of the world-renowned activist and invited her to their Frogmore Cottage home in Windsor last summer. Dr Goodall believes she may have been one of the first people outside the family to hold Archie. She is currently in lockdown in Bournemouth where she opened up about Harry and his new life. I dont know how his career is going to map out, but, yes, Ive been in touch though I think hes finding life a bit challenging right now,' she said, speaking to Radio Times. Dr Jane Goodall, 86, told Radio Times she had 'been in touch' with Prince Harry since he quit royal duties and moved to Los Angeles (pictured together in 2019) At the suggestion that Harry and his brother William are champions of the natural world, she added: Yes except they hunt and shoot. But I think Harry will stop because Meghan doesnt like hunting, so I suspect that is over for him. Last week Dr Goodall, who is best known for her studies on chimpanzees, told how the prince had hinted at stepping away from the Royal Family months before the bombshell announcement last year. She recalled a conversation she had with him last summer at an event to raise awareness of her Roots & Shoots education programme at Windsor Castle. Dr Goodall said: I made Archie do the Queens wave, saying, I suppose hell have to learn this. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are both fans of the world-renowned activist and invited her to their Frogmore Cottage home in Windsor last summer. Pictured, at the Commonwealth Day Service 2020 on March 9, 2020 in London, Harry said: No, hes not growing up like that. The veteran anthropologist added she was currently enjoying being at home, but replying to emails was more tiring than travelling the world. Asked whether she was getting restless, she said: No, I hate travelling the way I do, but I still have a message to get out. With all the emails and requests Im getting, this is actually more exhausting than travelling. Prince Harry and Meghan are currently living in Los Angeles with their baby son Archie. Pictured, on September 25, 2019 during their royal tour of South Africa Dr Goodalls latest documentary The Hope on National Geographic examines her 60-year legacy of fighting to save the planet. It also features Harry, who champions environmental issues. At one point during the 90-minute programme, Dr Goodall is seen mimicking an intimate ape greeting with the prince. Last September Harry interviewed Dr Goodall for British Vogue magazine, which was guest-edited by Meghan. During that interview he said he wanted two children maximum and admitted he found what was happening to the environment terrifying. This follows reports Harry (seen with Meghan last September) is feeling torn over the relocation, and is keen to 'fly the nest' and make a more private life with his own family, but is also 'racked with guilt' This follows reports Harry is feeling torn over the relocation, and is keen to 'fly the nest' and make a more private life with his own family, but is also 'racked with guilt'. Prince Harry is said to be struggling with feelings of helplessness after discovering Prince Charles tested positive for coronavirus, a source claims. The Duke of Sussex, who officially stepped down as a senior royal this week as he strives to give 11-month-old son Archie, and his wife Meghan a more private life in LA out of the spotlight, is said to have had an emotional phonecall with his father, 71. According to an insider the father-of-one feels 'helpless', and is trying to keep regular contact with Charles and the Queen, but the time difference is making it difficult. A source told Us Weekly: 'Despite their ups and downs, hearing that his dad is sick with a potentially life-threatening illness is a huge wake-up call. And he's overwhelmed with feelings of guilt for not being closer to home while this is all going on.' Charles reportedly tried to calm Harry down bY explaining that he is only suffering from 'mild symptoms', but the diagnosis is said to have been a 'huge wake-up call'. According to the source the royals are trying to 'rally together' amid the pandemic, but are struggling due to the physical distancing rule. The Duchess of Sussex, 38, who has relocated to LA with Prince Harry, 35, and their son Archie, 11 months, was reportedly always keen on living among the A-listers and being able to earn her own keep. They are seen at the Lion King premiere last year At the beginning of the month further reports claimed Meghan always had dreams of living the Hollywood lifestyle, an insider claiming to be a lifelong friend has said. The Duchess of Sussex, who has relocated to LA with Prince Harry, 35, and their son Archie, 11 months, was reportedly always keen on living among the A-listers and being able to earn her own keep. And according the source, Harry is so 'smitten' he was open to relocating, having his own 'fascination' with movie stars. A source told The Sun: 'I think she always wanted to be back here, she always dreamed of the full-blown Hollywood lifestyle and this kind of clout. And I don't think it was even that hard to persuade Harry. 'He was smitten and star struck over the whole thing. I don't think she had to twist his arm to move to Hollywood.' 'Now she is back home, near her mom, her friends and her PR team. She doesn't have to ask for permission from the royal family in how she chooses to live her life and she can acquire income in all sorts of fields.' The source claimed that she has had the 'ideal result' as she 'gets to return with a Prince' and choose who she 'works and socialises with'. Harry and Meghan are seen in London last month Over the weekend unconfirmed reports surfaced claiming Harry and Meghan have bought Mel Gibson's 12million ($15million) mansion in Malibu. The royal couple moved to California from Vancouver at the end of last month and were said to be interested in the five-bedroom home. In a now deleted Instagram post, local LA estate agent Andrea Pilot last week posted 'Big news Prince Harry & Meghan buy Mel Gibson's house.' The firm selling the property have not confirmed news of a royal purchase, but a source claimed to the Sun the property, in one of Los Angeles' glitziest enclaves, had been sold. However a source close to the couple has since claimed the reports are 'categorically untrue' and that the couple did not purchase the property. A source said the home is ''fabulously beautiful, so maybe they took one look in there and wanted to have it. It's very private. There's nothing on the market like it' Jane Goodall: The Hope airs on National Geographic and National Geographic WILD 22nd April at 8.00pm Walt Disney World is planning to layoff about 43, 000 of its workers. According to a report by Forbes, the layoffs are to take effect from April 19. The layoffs are said to be due to the outbreak of coronavirus in the US. The US has recorded over 500,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and about 20,601 deaths. Reports say the Mouse House is to layoff workers and allow them keep their health benefits up to one year. Only 200 people with essential duties are to now serve the park. Already, Orlandos Magic Kingdom has reportedly reached an agreement with its workers union and will begin the layoffs on April 19. The Orlandos Magic Kingdom has been closed since March 16 this year. Reports say the majority of those to be laid-off are security guards and those engaged in operating the facilities. Disney has accordingly accepted to pay for coronavirus testing for any employee who needs it. According to Forbes, Disney World is the largest single-site employer in the US. ---Daily Guide A doctor wears a mask as he walks outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan during the outbreak of the CCP virus in New York City, New York on April 1, 2020. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters) New York Governor Orders Employers to Provide Essential Workers With Masks New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered employers to provide essential workers with masks free of charge. Cuomo said Sunday he is signing an executive order directing companies to give cloth or surgical masks to all workers for use when they directly interact with the public. They should provide those masks cost-free, Cuomo told reporters in Albany. He was following an order issued by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. Both governors are Democrats. Officials also said the state would be issuing masks for public sector employees. What were saying is, youre an essential worker, you should be protected, you shouldnt have to go out and put yourself in unnecessary danger, and continue the spread of the virus, Melissa DeRosa, Cuomos secretary, said. Were putting it on the employers. So if youre a state employee and youre an essential servant who is interacting with the public in some capacity, yes, it is up to the state to provide that mask. People in New York wear masks while walking in New York City on April 13, 2020. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images) New York state has not issued an order requiring workers to wear masks, but New York City over the weekend said starting Monday all city workers who interact with the public will be required to wear a mask. The city is providing masks to every worker who needs one and has already distributed 1.4 million face coverings, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters in Manhattan. We will provide as many more as are necessary for our city workers to consistently have a face covering on when they interact with the public, de Blasio said, adding that workers will be protecting others by wearing the masks. Some other cities and counties are requiring workers and/or shoppers to wear masks, including Washington, Los Angeles, and Montgomery County, Maryland. For months, public health officials said the only people who should wear coverings were sick people and healthcare workers, later adding other frontline workers before reversing the stance and saying all people should don coverings when leaving their home. Studies showing evidence of asymptomatic or symptomatic transmission prompted the shift. Officials have encouraged the general public to make their own masks, use scarves or other materials, or buy masks that others have made, reserving medical and surgical masks for frontline workers. Dr. Archibald Yao Letsa, Volta Regional Minister, has called for calm in the Region after it recorded nine cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, April 12. He said, "relevant stakeholders" had started contact tracing in affected districts and called for support from all. The Ghana Health Service (GHS) on Sunday, April 12, reported that the Region recorded nine positive cases of the Coronavirus disease, with the total national figure rising to 566. The Regional Minister in a press release issued Monday dawn said all cases were in quarantine and that six of the cases were travellers who entered Ghana through unapproved routes along the Ghana-Togo Border near Aflao. He said they were apprehended and had been under mandatory quarantine for the past 14 days with no symptoms yet. Dr. Letsa said the remaining three cases were picked from routine surveillance and charged people in the Region to observe preventive measures to stop the spread of the disease. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video As many as 134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University near Jalandhar, were evacuated by a special flight arranged by the Bhutanese government. "134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-Jalandhar, were allowed to leave for Bhutan through a special flight arranged by Bhutanese government," Punjab's special chief secretary (disaster management COVID-19) KBS Sidhu tweeted on Monday. Last week, Bhutan had thanked India for facilitating the evacuation of Bhutanese nationals stranded in India due to coronavirus lockdown. Bhutan has evacuated many people residing in India in the past few days. The Himalayan country has sealed its border with India last month to stem the spread of coronavirus. India is under a 21-day lockdown till April 14 and has suspended all flight operations. So far, Bhutan has reported five coronavirus cases. India has cleared the first list of 13 countries to export hydroxychloroquine including Bhutan. Informed sources from the government told ANI on Saturday that Bhutan will get two lakh tablets of hydroxychloroquine, which is an anti-malarial drug. Meanwhile, Thimphu has committed USD 100,000 to the SAARC emergency fund proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help combat COVID-19 in the region. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China's border cities escalate health steps Global Times By Liu Caiyu Source:Global Times Published: 2020/4/12 21:53:40 While most regions in China have seen a significant drop in the number of confirmed COVID-19 patients, some border cities with Russia returned to a state of tension. At least two border cities - Suifenhe in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and Manzhouli in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region - escalated their anti-epidemic measures amid increasing imported cases from Russia. Russia has become China's main source of imported cases as the pandemic in the country continues to worsen, and some Chinese nationals chose to return home via land ports after most flights between the two countries were halted. On Sunday, Suifenhe, one of the most popular entry ports for Chinese national to return from Russia, said it will start carrying out patrols along the border 24 hours a day, vowing to strictly guard every inch of it. All gatherings will be forbidden. As of Sunday, Suifenhe had reported 194 confirmed patients from Russia. All travelers entering Suifenhe will have to take two nucleic acid tests as well as a serum antibody test, apart from 14 days of medical observation and 14 days of home quarantine, said the government. Public venues such as gyms, kindergartens and hotels will be closed and only places that offer daily necessities are allowed to open, the government said. Manzhouli, China's largest land port with a population of 170,000, which borders Russia in the north, faces similar mounting pressure. On Sunday, Manzhouli reported 34 imported confirmed patients who entered China via the port from Russia, a whopping rise compared with the first case reported on April 6. The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region had reported a total of 114 imported cases as of Sunday afternoon. In a statement sent to the Global Times on Sunday, the Manzhouli government said "it is tapping all potential and will use the power of the whole city to win the battle against the virus imported from abroad." Its inspection and quarantine capability was over-stretched, as an increasing number of people entered China via Manzhouli, the government said on April 8. The city is preparing at least three hospitals, including a standby hospital that can accommodate more than 340 beds and is expected to be put into use on Tuesday, the statement said. As increasing confirmed cases are reported at the Manzhouli port, the government requires all the inward passengers to undergo body temperature checks and nucleic acid tests as well as declare their health status when entering. They will all be quarantined upon arrival, and if they display symptoms of COVID-19, they will be sent to hospitals for observation. China reported 97 newly confirmed imported cases on Sunday, the highest in a single day since the outbreak began, China's National Health Commission said. Besides the two border cities, Shanghai reported 51 newly confirmed patients returning from Russia. They are Chinese nationals who departed from Russia on April 10 on the same flight, according to the Shanghai health authority. Facing an influx of Chinese nationals, land border cities are stuck in a dilemma - they must guard against an inflow of infections but they cannot shut Chinese nationals out, Chinese experts said. The epidemic in Russia is likely to reach its peak in the next two weeks and Chinese nationals, including students and businessmen, will continue to return due to their increasing worries over the epidemic, Li Yonghui, a research fellow from the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. There are about 150,000 Chinese citizens living in Russia with more than 10,000 employees in Chinese-funded enterprises and about 60,000 self-employed businessmen and 27,000 students, said Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui in an interview on April 10. "Despite the Russian government advising the public to follow quarantine rules, many are seen outside and reportedly do not the follow the rules," Meng Kun, a student in Moscow, told the Global Times, noting the lack of strict anti-epidemic rules may be one reason that more Chinese decided to return. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many markets in Russia have been suspended and some Chinese businessmen have been considering to return to China, a businessman working in Moscow's Sadovod market told the Global Times. Besides, three passenger ports on the highway between China and Russia - Pogranichny-Suifenhe, Kraskino-Hunchun, Portavka-Dongning- remain closed, the Chinese Consulate General in Vladivostok said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Bloomberg) Mon, April 13, 2020 10:09 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd179a71 2 Business China,exports,imports,COVID-19,global-trade,coronavirus Free The contraction in Chinas foreign trade is set to continue through the second quarter, as global demand remains depressed by measures to curb the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. Both exports and imports are forecast to have slumped 10 percent or more in March, with data due Tuesday expected to show a continuation of the declines seen in the first two months of the year. The outlook is grim too, with the World Trade Organization now saying that 2020 could see the worst collapse in international trade since the Great Depression. Chinas shipments plateaued in 2019 due to the trade war with the US and slowing global growth, and the virus outbreak then caused the weakest start for any year since 2012 with exports dropping 17.2 percent from a year earlier in the first two months. Trading partners like the US potentially face many more months of shutdowns before consumption and manufacturing can return to normal. If Chinas major export markets including the EU and the US suffered in the second quarter due to the pandemic, its very likely that Chinas exports will be hit hard during the period, said Betty Wang, senior economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group in Hong Kong. It wont be surprising to see Chinas exports fall year-on-year in double digits in the second quarter, even if an increase in medicine-related shipments offsets the loss a little, she said. Her estimates are echoed by others. UBS economist Ning Zhang expects exports to decline by 20 percent between April and June, citing the coming recessions in the US, Europe, Japan, and some emerging economies. Macquarie Group Ltd.s Larry Hu thinks its certain that export growth could fall further in the second quarter and a 13 percent decline in the whole of 2020 is his base case. The WTOs optimistic scenario last week saw a 13 percent drop in the volume of international goods trade in 2020. The last such drop was in 2009, when trade volumes fell by 12 percent during the financial crisis. Their pessimistic scenario sees the volume of global goods trade dropping by as much as 32 percent this year. If that pessimistic case happens, Chinese exports could fall much more than 13 percent, according to Macquaries Hu. While much of the weakness in Februarys data was due to Chinas domestic measures to curb the initial outbreak, the irony is that companies are now getting back to work and nearing full capacity just as their overseas markets are closing. A majority of Chinese exporters have resumed over 70 percent of production capacity by March 30, according to the Ministry of Commerce, but factories are already seeing order cancellations. Policymakers across the globe have rushed to introduce stimulus to help their economies over the shutdowns and social distancing necessary to stop the spread of the virus, but theres little sign of a peak in infections yet. In China, the State Council has ordered more measures to stabilize trade including building more cross-border e-commerce zones and moving the main trade fair online. However, with the world facing its worst recession since the 1930s this year and half the member nations of the International Monetary Fund already seeking aid, theres little prospect of the trade situation improving soon. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer released their new demands for the next coronavirus stimulus package after Democrats blocked a $250 billion expansion of the paycheck protection program last week. In a joint statement Monday morning, the Democratic leaders demanded more money for the programs passed in the CARES Act at the end of last month, as well as expanding the federal food stamp program and a hike in the production and distribution of personal protective equipment to health care centers. 'We have real problems facing this country, and it's time for the Republicans to quit the political posturing by proposing bills they know will not pass either chamber and get serious and work with us towards a solution,' the House Speaker and Senate Minority Leader wrote in their joint statement. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed an expansion on the paycheck protection program (PPP) for small businesses a provision that was included in the CARES Act. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (left) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (right) released a joint statement Monday demanding their provisions be passed in a new far-reaching coronavirus relief bill Democrats say that testing needs to continue to be expanded before the country can reopen. Here a healthcare worker prepares a rapid testing kit for a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site in Florida They also want millions to help the production and distribution of person protective equipment like n95 masks, which several companies have converted their factories to produce The demands come as the death toll from coronavirus in the U.S. surpassed 22,000 by Monday morning He said the $350 billion was being dried up fast as thousands of small businesses applied for the $10 million loans to keep their employees on the payroll and prevent their businesses from shuttering in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. McConnell proposed the number be heightened to a total of $600 billion and requested unanimous consent in the Senate but Democrats blocked the measure since it did not include their demanded provisions. 'Small businesses, hospitals, frontline workers and state and local governments across the country are struggling to keep up with this national crisis,' Pelosi and Schumer lamented in the plea for more money. The PPP is meant to help small businesses shuttering by the thousands to stay open and keep their employees on the payroll as unemployment claims in the U.S. reached an all-time-high by spiking to more than 15 million in the last three weeks. The loans will be forgiven if the businesses do not layoff their employees and use the money to keep paying their workers. Democrats, however, didn't want the expansion to pass without getting more from Republicans. Pelosi and Schumer say more money should go to help minority communities that are being affected at a higher rate by coronavirus and claim that the PPP expansion should also be directed more towards minority and women-owned companies. 'While the Trump Administration struggles to figure out how to distribute the funds provided for in the CARES Act, it's clear that those appropriated amounts will not be enough to cover the tremendous need,' they wrote, making it clear they are more interested in passing another massive wide-spread bill rather than a small provision to expand relief for small businesses. The statement comes as $1,200 checks started going out to Americans this week as part of a direct check measure included in the CARES Act to help stimulate the economy and help those struggling financially in the wake of the outbreak. As of Monday morning, when the statement was released, more than 22,000 people in the U.S. died after contracting the virus and there are more than 560,000 confirmed cases, which is more than any other nation has reported. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's request for unanimous consent was blocked by Democrats on Thursday when trying to pass a measure that would increase the payment protection program by $250 billion to prevent more layoffs and small businesses from shuttering Pelosi and Schumer claim that they will not let a new bill pass unless it includes funding for PPE 'We Democrats demand adequate funding for the production and distribution of national rapid testing and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) it cannot wait,' they asserted. 'Finally, we all desire an end to the shutdown orders so we can get Americans back to work and back to normal. However, there is still not enough testing available to realistically allow that to happen,' the leadership duo continued, demanding more focus be put on getting Americans tested for COVID-19 before the wide-spread lockdowns can cease. Donald Trump has shared a new self-imposed deadline to reopen the country May 1, which is when the expanded lockdown ends. Labour party officials opposed to Jeremy Corbyn worked to lose the 2017 general election in the hope that a bad result would trigger a leadership contest to oust him, a dossier drawn up by the party suggests. A huge cache of leaked WhatsApp messages and emails show senior officials from the partys right wing, who worked at its HQ, became despondent as Labour climbed in the polls during the election campaign despite their efforts. The unreleased report, which The Independent has seen in full, was drawn up in the last days of Mr Corbyns leadership and concerns the conduct of certain officials, including some who were investigating cases of antisemitism in the party. Labour has confirmed the document is a genuine draft, though it is not clear who it was commissioned or written by. The 860-page document claims that an abnormal intensity of factional opposition to the party leader had inhibited the proper functioning of the Labour Party bureaucracy and contributed to a litany of mistakes in dealing with antisemitism, which it admits was a serious problem in the party. But the Campaign Against Antisemitism said the document was a desperate last-ditch attempt to deflect and discredit allegations and amounted to an attempt to imagine a vast anti-Corbyn conspiracy. Left-wingers in the party called for new leader Sir Keir Starmer to launch an investigation into the behaviour detailed in the report, including the possible misuse of funds by officials. Tactics by anti-Corbyn staff evidenced in the report include channelling resources to candidates associated with the right wing of the party, refusing to share information with the leaders office, and coming into the office and doing nothing for a few months during the election campaign. The report says hostile staff created a chat so they could pretend to work while actually speaking to each other, with one participant stating that tap tap tapping away will make us look v busy. An election night chat log shows that 45 minutes after the exit poll revealed that Labour had overturned the Conservative majority, one senior official said the result was the opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years, describing themselves and their allies as silent and grey-faced and in need of counselling. Another said: We have to be upbeat and not show it, while a third told the group that everyone needs to smile, describing the result as awful. Another very senior party official said it was going to be a long night. The senior officials keenly watched polls during the election campaign and hoped that the party that employed them would fare badly. When one YouGov poll showed the party up during the campaign, one said: I actually felt quite sick when I saw that YouGov poll last night. Another official argued that the polling bounce for the party was actually great, stating: I shall tell you why, it is a peak, and the polling was done after the Manchester [terror] attack, so with a bit of luck this speech will show a clear polling decline and we shall all be able to point to how disgusting they truly are. The report also details large volumes of abusive discussion by senior officials about colleagues and activists from the partys left wing. In one exchange a senior official said a young activist had mental health issues, to which another official chimed in: I hope [name of activist redacted] dies in a fire. A third said: Thats a very bad wish [name redacted]. But if he does I wouldnt piss on him to put him out. The second official then adds: Wish there was a petrol can emoji. The partys resources paid for by party members were often utilised to further the interests of one faction and in some cases were used to undermine the partys objectives inter Leaked Labour internal report Some senior staff also joked about hanging and burning Jeremy Corbyn, and suggested that another staff member who cheered a speech by the party leader should be shot. In another exchange, one senior official laments that political advisers working for members of the shadow cabinet have stopped wearing bras and that there are nipples out at the PADs [political advisers] meeting and not a single tie. The official then names the adviser and describes her outfit, before suggesting that a male MP only speaks highly of the adviser because of her appearance. One exchange shows a senior official described another from the left of the party as pube head. In another, months later, they called her a smelly cow and comment that she had the exact same clothes on yesterday. Party staff around the unit were also documented regularly describing people, including colleagues they regarded as not sufficiently opposed to the leadership, as trots short for Trotskyites, or disciples of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Chat logs show that some colleagues who denounced trots themselves were in turn themselves privately regarded as trots by other staffers for being seen as insufficiently critical. During the 2015 and 2016 leadership contests a large number of staffers at Labour HQ appear to have worked to exclude those they regarded as trots from voting in the election believing that they would vote for Jeremy Corbyn. The report says staffers trawled social media to find reasons to exclude voters from the contest, work which was referred to on numerous occasions by staff as variations of trot busting, bashing trots and trot spotting. One staffer described themselves as being trot smasher in chief, while another said during the 2015 leadership election that the priority right now is trot hunting. In 2015 two officials discussed the fact that they were playing trot or not while the real work is piling up. A senior official described this work as saving the Labour party. New Labour leader Keir Starmer faces a decision over what to do with the report (Getty) Senior officials from the right of the party spoke of their opposition to policy positions adopted by the party under both Jeremy Corbyns leadership, but also that of his predecessor Ed Miliband. In one 2015 exchange, a member of staff said: Brace yourself. [Shadow chancellor John] McDonnell just called for corporation tax to go up. Another replied: Youre kidding me. I cant quite believe it. Commenting after this portion of the report was posted on social media, former shadow health secretary and leadership candidate Andy Burnham said: Seems right to me. Always felt like the party machine opposed my pro-public NHS and social care policies between 2010 and 2015. Not sure I had even-handed treatment from them in either the 2010 or 2015 leadership elections. In one 2015 WhatsApp conversation, one senior official expressed the opinion that despite being s***, Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith was better than most of our shadow cabinet at a time early in Mr Corbyns leadership when the Labour front bench contained MPs from a relatively broad cross-section of the party. The report claims that The partys resources paid for by party members were often utilised to further the interests of one faction and in some cases were used to undermine the partys objectives. Ahead of the 2017 election officials spoke of channelling resources to candidates critical of the leadership, with one telling colleagues we need to try and throw cash at the seat of then-deputy leader Tom Watson, a persistent Corbyn critic. It is claimed that officials operated a secret key seats team based in Labours London region office in Ergon House, from where a parallel general election campaign was run to support MPs associated with the right wing of the party. Officials appeared to try and hide some of their activities, with the same person stating during a different exchange: We need to stop digital campaign budgets going to [a named left-wing senior staff member] for approval, he cant see what we are doing with digital spend. We have to be upbeat and not show it Senior Labour official on morning after partys unexpectedly good result In 2017 senior officials in the party discussed making preparations for another leadership election, hoping that one might be triggered by the party losing the Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central by-elections. Chat logs show one said if we lose these elections we could have another leadership election. We should set up at some stage a discrete WG [working group] to go over rules, timetable scenarios and staff servicing the process. Just so were prepared. A very senior official approved the process, dubbing it Operation Cupcake and suggesting that Tom Watson could be interim leader. The leadership election would have been the partys third in three years. Sky News, which first reported the existence of the dossier, reports that Labour party lawyers have decided against sending it to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is currently holding an investigation into antisemitism in the party. It is understood that the report may have been drawn up to help the party understand how its own disciplinary processes operated in recent years and not intended for submission to the EHRC. Labour was put under investigation by the EHRC after the body received a number of complaints about the partys response to complaints about antisemitism. The party has moved to expel members accused of anti-Jewish racism, but has been accused by critics of not doing so fast enough or making the wrong decisions in some cases. Critics of Mr Corbyn say his politics, and particularly his support for Palestinian liberation, has attracted antisemities to the party though the Home Affairs Select Committee found no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party. The parliamentary committee however warned at the time that the leaderships lack of action risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally antisemitic. The EHRC, which launched its investigation in May 2019, is investigating whether the party has broken equality law, whether it has taken steps to improve its processes after internal reviews, and whether it has responded to complaints of unlawful acts in a lawful, efficient and effective manner. A statement from Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, argued that the material should be submitted to the investigation, but said: In the dying days of Jeremy Corbyns leadership, the Labour Party appears to have invested in a desperate last-ditch attempt to deflect and discredit allegations of antisemitism. Rather than properly dealing with cases of antisemitism and the culture of anti-Jewish racism that prevailed during Mr Corbyns tenure, the Party has instead busied itself trawling through 10,000 of its own officials emails and WhatsApp messages in an attempt to image a vast anti-Corbyn conspiracy and to continue its efforts to smear whistleblowers. It is a disgrace that the 450,000-word report, which itself claims to prove the scale of antisemitism in the Party and serves an exhibit of the Partys failure to address the crisis, is being kept secret. Sir Keir Starmer has the report and should ensure that it is immediately provided to us and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, so that it can be considered as part of the Commissions statutory investigation in which we are the complainant. Labour MP Charlotte Nichols said that this document should be published in full and that Jewish members have a right to know what has happened and to see the evidence. Labour shadow minister Alex Sobel said: To read the messages and emails that our own staff conspired to undermine our candidates and starve those in marginal seats of resources is a disgrace. To further read how complaints of antisemitism, Islamophobia, sexual harassment and other complaints were mismanaged due to a toxic internal culture highlights why the EHRC were right to investigate and vindicates the complainants. He criticised the leaker of the report for exposing a huge amount of sensitive personal information and said that the partys culture needed to be yanked out by its roots. Momentum, a group which organises on the left wing of the Labour party, called for a full inquiry into the report, including the possible misuse of funds. Labour came so close in the 2017 general election. Winning 40% of the popular vote, we were less than 2,500 votes away from forming a government. Had we pulled together, we could have won. A Labour government could have revived crucial public services, built a more resilient economy, and saved lives by giving our NHS the resources it needs, Momentum national coordinating group member John Taylor said. Instead, leaked WhatsApp messages suggest that party headquarters undermined Labours chances in 2017 and were disappointed when the Tories lost their majority. For the activists who gave everything working for a Labour government, and for those whose lives depend on Labour winning power, we can never let this happen again. Protests against Labour antisemitism Show all 14 1 /14 Protests against Labour antisemitism Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters clashed during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of the Jewish community hold a protest against Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism in the Labour Party AFP/Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters hold placards and flags during a demonstration, organised by the British Board of Jewish Deputies for those who oppose antisemitism, in Parliament Square Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Hundreds of people gathered in Parliament Square to protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP Luciana Berger speaks during the protest PA Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester blows through a shofar during the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of London's Jewish community protest in support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outside parliament EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP John Mann speaks during a protest against antisemitism PA Protests against Labour antisemitism People protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party as Jewish community leaders have launched a scathing attack on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming he has sided with antisemites again and again PA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour politicians Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna leave after attending the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A pro-Jeremy Corbyn protester holds a placard during a counter-protest Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A support of the Labour Party hold up a placard during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Jeremy Corbyn supporters during the demo Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester holds up a sign reading For the many, not the Jew AFP Our party can build a better future. But to do this we need an open, hard-working, professional party committed to winning a Labour government. Thats why were calling for Keir Starmer to announce a full inquiry into the report, including into the possible misuse of funds. Those responsible must be held to account, and anyone found to have worked against a Labour victory must never again be allowed to hold a senior party position. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which is affiliated with the Labour party, called for disciplinary action to be launched against the officials named in the report. This is clear evidence of what many party members knew all along that whilst Jeremy Corbyn was trying to deliver a Labour government, senior Labour officials were conducting a vicious sabotage campaign against him, he said. This abuse which included repeated attempts to weaken Jeremy Corbyns position was taking place at the very same time that Labour activists were knocking on doors day and night to try and deliver a Labour government. Particular shame should be felt by those who were planning to oust Jeremy Corbyn less than four months after he had won a second leadership election. This consistent pattern of corrosive behaviour prioritised damaging the left of the party over both winning elections and dealing swiftly with complaints of antisemitism and other forms of racism it cannot be allowed to fester any longer in the Labour Party. Keir Starmer has said he wants a united party. He should therefore use his new mandate to urgently address this issue, including taking disciplinary action, as appropriate. These people should never again be in senior positions in the Labour Party. Without this internal wrecking, the hung parliament in 2017 could have instead been a Labour government those involved should wear that for the rest of their professional lives. A Labour Party spokesperson said: The party has submitted extensive information to the EHRC and responded to questions and requests for further information, none of which included this document. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:57:36|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) China and Indonesia share broad common interests at bilateral, regional and multilateral levels and enjoy tremendous potential for cooperation, Xi said, adding that China will continue to work with Indonesia to prevail over the COVID-19 epidemic. BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages on Monday with his Indonesian counterpart, Joko Widodo, on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of China-Indonesia diplomatic relations. Noting that the friendly exchanges between China and Indonesia boast a long history, Xi said bilateral relations have made great progress since the establishment of diplomatic ties. In recent years, in particular, Xi said, the two countries have continuously lifted their relations, expanded the areas of cooperation, achieved fruitful results from Belt and Road cooperation, and worked closely on international and regional affairs, bringing benefits to the two peoples and contributing to regional and global prosperity and stability. China and Indonesia share broad common interests at bilateral, regional and multilateral levels and enjoy tremendous potential for cooperation, Xi said, adding that China will continue to work with Indonesia to prevail over the COVID-19 epidemic. An officer of Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management (BNPB) check medical supplies provided by China at Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, March 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Du Yu) Xi said he attaches great importance to the development of China-Indonesia relations and stands ready to work with Widodo to enrich the China-Indonesia comprehensive strategic partnership and add new impetus to regional development. For his part, Widodo said that Indonesia and China possess longtime historic and cultural ties, while close contacts between the leaders of the two countries and between the people of various sectors have forged a solid friendship. Over the past 70 years, bilateral ties have matured day by day, which is a remarkable strategic achievement of both sides, he said, adding that the two countries have continuously created cooperation opportunities in various fields, benefiting the two peoples and deserving the pride of both sides. Within the framework of a comprehensive strategic partnership and upholding the spirit of cooperation, the two sides will surely bolster the continuous progress and prosperity of the two countries and contribute to regional and global peace, stability and prosperity, said the Indonesian president. Australian experts will pick through poo in a trial they hope will allow them to detect disease outbreaks early and inform the road out of the coronavirus lockdown. Researchers at the Australian National University hope to replicate results out of the Netherlands that found coronavirus traces in sewage long before cases of the virus were officially reported. Sewage could soon be used to identify coronavirus outbreaks early on. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The study comes as Health Minister Greg Hunt identified early tracing as key to relaxing social distancing measures, saying the study had the potential to improve Australia's "rapid response capability". An ANU epidemiologist working on the project said it could become a crucial data point in debates over what type of social distancing measures to relax, and where. People sing in their cars at a drive-in Easter service in the car park at Aalborg Airport in Denmark USA: A worshipper at the Friendship Baptist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, where the pastor decided to keep his church open for Easter despite an order from the governor to remain closed France: A chaplain of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes sweeps as he prepares for an Easter Sunday service, livestreamed on social media, at the empty Grotte de Massabielle The coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 1.7m people worldwide and an estimated 100,000 deaths have been recorded. Here is the latest on the situation from around the world: SPAIN: Yesterday reported its lowest daily growth in confirmed coronavirus infections in three weeks as it prepares to loosen its strict lockdown measures and let some workers return to their jobs. The country today will allow workers in industry and construction to return to work after a two-week shutdown of economic activities other than healthcare and the food industry. AUSTRALIA: Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy has said the country is "in a good place" in its fight against the coronavirus as the death toll rose by three to 59. Australia now has 6,289 confirmed cases. EUROPEAN UNION: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has recommended people hold off on booking summer holidays for now, pointing to uncertainty surrounding the pandemic. She added that "no one can make reliable forecasts for July and August at the moment". ISRAEL: The health ministry has documented over 10,000 cases and over 100 deaths. Roughly a fifth of all cases in Israel are in Jerusalem. A large percentage of the Covid-19 cases are in the country's largely insular ultra-Orthodox community, which for weeks did not adhere to government orders to maintain social distancing. JAPAN: Healthcare facilities are getting stretched thin amid a surge in coronavirus patients. Workers' groups the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine issued a joint statement warning about a "collapse of emergency medicine" which may lead to the collapse of medicine overall. UNITED STATES: Walt Disney World plans to stop paying wages to 43,000 workers in about a week while allowing staff to keep their benefits for up to a year in what is the largest wave of furloughs since the theme park resort closed in mid-March. Maria, the nurse in London, who feared that publishing her last name could jeopardize her green card, was turned away by American officials a second time when she tried to board a plane early this month, even though she said that she would be treating Covid-19 patients. A few states that are facing major outbreaks have issued executive orders that allow some foreign health care workers who are already in the state to see patients. New Jersey, for example, is granting temporary licenses to doctors residing there who are licensed and in good standing in foreign countries. In New York, graduates of foreign medical schools are being permitted to treat patients after completing one year of residency, instead of the usual three. However, the federal government has not broadly opened the way for foreign-trained workers to begin working. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, demand for registered nurses in the United States was projected to grow from 2.9 to 3.4 million between 2016 and 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau had said an additional 203,700 nurses would be needed each year to fill new positions and replace retiring workers. However, only about 170,000 new nurses were licensed in the United States in 2018, the latest year for which data is available. There is no guest-worker or nonimmigrant visa category for nurses. As a result, they must come to the United States with approved legal permanent residency, or a green card, a process that can take years to complete. Meanwhile, hospitals in New York, New Orleans and elsewhere have been overwhelmed with patients, a backlog that sometimes forces people to wait hours to be admitted or to be sent home, potentially with life-threatening consequences. Kaley Cuoco and her husband Karl Cook have purchased a large home in Hidden Hills, California where their new neighbors are Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner. The first photos of the very large estate were seen on Monday giving a look at just how sprawling the property really is with a swimming pool, hot tub and even a cute guest house. This comes after the 34-year-old star told Jimmy Kimmel that she is finally 'forced' to live with Karl in their new mega mansion for the first time ever because of self-isolation from COVID-19. Big home: Kaley Cuoco and her husband Karl Cook have purchased a large home in Hidden Hills, California where their new neighbors are Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner Now living together: This is the first time the 34-year-old star has lived with her new husband Karl because of self-isolation from COVID-19 The house is nestled in the very exclusive neighborhood of Hidden Hills, which is not far from Calabasas, where Khloe and Kourtney Kardasian live. The area is gated and has a security guard at the entrance with several patrol men in the area. The location is perfect for horse lovers as there are horse paths along the sides of the houses and several of the properties have stables. After nearly two years of marriage, Kaley and Karl moved in together in mid-March, just as social distancing and self-isolation due to coronavirus was getting underway. Safe and secure: The house is nestled in the very exclusive neighborhood of Hidden Hills, which is not far from Calabasas, where Khloe and Kourtney Kardasian live For horse lovers: The area is gated and has a security guard at the entrance with several patrol men in the area. The location is perfect for horse lovers as there are horse paths along the sides of the houses and several of the properties have stables 'So, we've been married for a year and a half, been together for almost four years,' she told Jimmy during a video chat. A makeup free Kaley continued with a smile: 'This quarantine has forced us to actually move in together. It's been great for our relationship. And we like each other we realized, which is even better.' Just last month, Kaley revealed that she and her 29-year-old husband had finally moved into their new $12M home after living separately for the first two years of their marriage. While chatting with Jimmy, Kaley showcased her impressive and quirky collection of mugs for the late-night hosts amusement. At home: The two were seen kissing in their new kitchen last week for social fans 'He's okay with all the mugs,' she quipped about Karl. 'You know, he's got his weird stuff too.' Kaley and Karl officially moved in together at an odd time, as they are now not only cohabiting, but under quarantine. 'I was shooting in New York and got sent back here, obviously, 'cause of everything that was going on and we got to move into the house together,' she told Kimmel. She added that the 'house is great' but joked that her husband would 'love it if I found my makeup at some point.' Living together: Kaley Cuoco was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel's at-home version of his late night talk show on Monday night where she dished on finally being forced to live with Karl in their new mega mansion 'So, we've been married for a year and a half, been together for almost four years,' she told Jimmy during a video chat. 'This quarantine has forced us to actually move in together. It's been great for our relationship. And we like each other we realized, which is even better.' Big change: After nearly two years of marriage, Kaley and Karl moved in together in mid-March, just as social distancing and self-isolation due to coronavirus was getting underway Cuoco had been in NYC working on The Flight Attendant last month when she hopped on a flight back to Los Angeles with her sister Bri because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, she's been holed up in her new home doing what most people are doing during self-isolation. She told Kimmel: 'This is all we've been doing. You know, a lot of drinking and trying to keep the dogs occupied. 'You know, we don't have kids. We just have 17,000 animalsalways trying to keep them occupied and happy.' Too funny! Kaley showcased her impressive collection of quirky coffee mugs during the interview where she rocked a pink pajama shirt Kaley and Karl began dating in late 2016 and got engaged on her 32nd birthday, November 30, 2017. Since marrying in June 2018 the couple has been dedicated to building their dream home in Los Angeles with plenty of land for their dogs, rabbits, goats and horses. When she revealed they continued to live separately, back in August, fans were quick to jump in calling out the unconventional nature of their relationship. 'Everyone was so crazed that we didn't live together, they couldn't believe [it]. I didn't understand it,' she told Access Hollywood. Finally! Since marrying in June 2018 the couple has been dedicated to building their dream home in Los Angeles with plenty of land for their dogs, rabbits, goats and horses In March, the Big Bang Theory actress took to social media to share the good news that the couple had finally moved into their dream home. 'Home,' she captioned a portrait she shared on Instagram Sunday of herself and Cook relishing in the long awaited move-in day. The celebration continued on Cuoco's Instagram story, where she documented every moment from the flight to Los Angeles to a full on house tour of the couple's Hidden Hills mansion. Special treat: 'First #KarlFashioned in our new home,' wrote Cuoco who later captured footage of her hubby concocting his own rendition of the old fashioned cocktail In one clip, Cook, could be seen carrying the Big Bang Theory alum in his arms as they gallivanted from room-to-room. 'Carrying me over the threshold for the first time lol,' captioned Cuoco in the clip shared with her nearly 6million Instagram followers. 'We're home! We're home!,' exclaimed the star before planting a kiss on her adoring husband. Kaley's new neighbors: Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner are their neighbors 'First #KarlFashioned in our new home,' wrote Cuoco who later captured footage of her hubby concocting his own rendition of the old fashioned cocktail. Following their big move, Kaley was finally able to unload her previous six-bedroom, 8K-square-foot Tarzana mansion for $3.95M in the beginning of April. The star lost a good chunk of change on the sale which came nearly a year after putting in on the market for $6.9M. That mansion had been owned by Khloe Kardashian and was purchased by the sitcom star for $5.5M back in 2014. Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) continues to be in the controversy. This time after a Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) clarification mentioned that the amount contributed towards the PM CARES Fund will qualify as CSR expenditure but not if donated to Chief Minister's Relief Funds. This has evoked sharp reaction from many quarters especially from non-BJP ruled states, which see it as a clear bias and politics of opportunism by the BJP-led Union government. Key highlights: Donations to PM CARES Fund and State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) qualify as CSR, but not to CM's Relief Fund PM CARES and SDMAs are governed by central laws, while CM's Relief Funds are governed by state laws Lack of clarity around PM CARES continues to invite criticism from many quarters Unlike PM National Relief Fund, PM CARES, CM's Relief Funds and SDMAs are not dependent on donations SDMAs are funded through a joint corpus of the Centre and sates. Centre's contribution to the corpus is 75%. Annual CSR spending over the last three-four years has been around Rs 13,000-15,000 crore Mohua Moitra, a Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament, criticised the move to allow CSR donations in PM CARES. In a tweet she said: "Opaque PM CARES is CSR but not CM Relief Fund." Further, the MCA circular clarifies that contributions made to State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs) will qualify as CSR expenditure. However, it seems like an afterthought as it's only on March 23 that the MCA issued a circular, allowing contributions to SDMAs for fighting COVID-19 as CSR expenditure under item no (xii) of Schedule VII of the Companies Act 2013. So, why do donations or contributions made in PM CARES and SDMAs qualify as CSR, but not CM Relief Fund? The Schedule VII of the Act lists the activities and areas, which qualify as CSR spending. Initially, there were 10 items in the Schedule VII. Expenditure on coronavirus-related activities, the 12th Item, was added to the list by a circular on March 23. Slum development is the 11th item. Exclusion of CM Relief Funds Although there is no explanation from the government as to why CM Relief Funds are excluded but SDMAs are not, one possible explanation is that SDMAs have been constituted under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, a Central government Act. The CM's Relief Funds are public charitable trusts governed by the public trust Act of that state and the Indian Trusts Act, 1882. Most CM Relief Funds are governed by state trust acts, for example, Maharashtra CM's Relief Fund is governed by Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950. Gyaneshwar Kumar Singh, joint secretary, MCA, while talking to Business Today said that CM Relief Funds were never (in the CSR law) eligible for CSR donations. "Only PM National Relief Fund was eligible earlier, and now we have allowed PM CARES and SDMAs," he says. Pavan Kumar Vijay, founder and CEO, Corporate Professional, a corporate advisory firm, echoes Gyaneshwar Singh's views. He says donations under CSR were only allowed in centralised funds not in CM relief fund. Item number 8 of the Schedule VII specially mentions contributions made to PM National Relief Fund will be eligible as CSR expenditure. Item number 8 also mentions contribution to 'any other fund set up by the Central government for socio-economic development and relief and welfare of the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes, minorities and women' will also qualify for CSR. The MCA clarification uses this provision (Item number 8) to justify contributions towards PM CARES Fund as CSR expenditure. Preeti Malhotra, who is currently chairing the ASSOCHAM National Council on Corporate Affairs, corporate governance and CSR, says that SDMAs are governed by Central government rules unlike CM Relief Funds, which are charitable trusts run by handpicked office-bearers with little or no government scrutiny. SDMAs, a special case As mentioned earlier donations to the State Disaster Management Authorities were allowed as CSR spending only through a circular issued on March 23. Unlike PM National Relief Fund, PM CARES and CM Relief Funds, SDMAs are not dependent on donations. SDMAs draw their funds from State Disaster Mitigation Fund in accordance with the Disaster Management Act. The Union and state governments both contribute to the SDRMF corpus, with Centre contributing 75 per cent and states 25 per cent towards the fund for general states. For North-East and Himalayan states, the ration is 90:10. However, there are instances where some SDMAs have sought permission from the Centre to use CSR funds in the past. For example, in May 2019, the central government allowed Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) to receive CSR funds and act as an implementing agency. Rules allow a corporate entity to undertake CSR activities through 'a company established under section 8 of the Companies Act or a registered trust or a registered society, established by the Central government or state government or any entity established under an Act of Parliament or a State legislature'. But can't this rule be used in favour of allowing CM Relief Funds to use CSR funds? Parul Soni, Global Managing Director, Think Through Consulting, an advisory firm providing support to sustainable development, says if CM Relief Funds are allowed to take CSR donations, corporate will be under pressure from the state government to divert the CSR funds to state funds. Some experts, on the condition of anonymity, said that the same argument can be made against PM CARES Fund, which has suddenly seen a spurt in CSR contributions. PM CARES Fund has invited criticism for the lack of transparency around it. There is no clarity as to under which law or act the fund has been created and the amount of money has been collected. There is no dedicated website either. Besides, questions are being raised on the need to have a separate fund when PM National Relief fund is already there. On this, MCA Joint Secretary Gyaneshwar Kumar Singh says that several representations were made to have a special fund (to fight the coronavirus pandemic). Much ado about nothing Though the controversy around CSR donations to PM CARES is getting a lot of attention, it remains a fact that the total annual CSR spending is barely Rs 14,000-15,000 crore. Pavan Kumar Vijay says that CSR spending every year is only around Rs 15,000 crore and it would take lakhs and crores of funds to fight the ill effects of coronavirus. Besides, companies have their own running CSR projects, and they cannot suddenly divert full CSR amount to PM CARES or SDMAs to fight against Coronavirus. Therefore, the controversy is for a small pie of the CSR fund. Anil Sharma, head, corporate communication and CSR, Havells India, says: "Since all our projects are closed now, we are diverting some of our existing resources and infrastructure to the fight against coronavirus. We offer mid-day meal to 60,000 kids every day. We have offered the district administration of Alwar, where we have our kitchen, to provide 60,000 meals. The district administration has asked for 2000 meals, which we are providing." But Sharma says that Havells has so far not made any contribution to PM CARES or PM's National Relief Fund. Last year, Havells' CSR budget stood at Rs 20 crore. The Companies Act, 2013 requires companies with net worth of at least Rs 500 crore, turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or more, or a minimum net profit of Rs 5 crore during the immediately preceding financial year, to mandatorily spend 2 per cent of their previous year's net profit on social cause. The law - Schedule VII -- clearly mentions the areas and activities eligible for CSR spending. The law came into effect in 2014-15. Also Read: Coronavirus outbreak: Which states have announced lockdown extension? Also Read: 'Help or we will die': Auto dealers send SOS to PM Modi amid coronavirus lockdown China dismissed on Monday allegations leveled by African and U.S. diplomats that foreigners of African appearance in the city of Guangzhou were being subjected to forceful testing for coronavirus, quarantine and ill treatment. "We do not have discrimination in China against African brothers," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily news briefing, accusing the United States of trying to exploit the issue to harm Beijing's relations with African nations. A group of African ambassadors in Beijing had written to China's State Councilor Wang Yi drawing attention to the discrimination that Africans were encountering in Guangzhou, capital of the southern Guangdong province, after which the U.S. consulate in the city also issued an alert to citizens. The alert advised African-Americans to stay away from the Guangzhou metropolitan area, warning that the city's authorities had told bars and restaurants to refuse to serve people who "appear to be of African origin" and launched mandatory tests and self-quarantine of anyone with "African contacts." Denying any such discrimination, the foreign ministry spokesman reiterated that China treats all foreigners equally. "It is irresponsible and immoral for the U.S. to sow discord," Zhao said. "Its attempt to drive a wedge between China and Africa will never succeed." The ambassadors' note highlighted a number of reported incidents, including that Africans were being ejected from hotels in the middle of the night, having their passports seized, and threatened with revocation of visas, deportation or arrest. Ghana's foreign minister and the leader of Nigeria's lower house of parliament have also separately met with the Chinese ambassador to their respective countries last week about the reports of mistreatment of Africans in Guangzhou. Zhao did not directly comment on the ambassadors' note, but said Guangdong has rolled out "new measures" and that Beijing is working with the relevant African nations to resolve the issue. He did not elaborate on what the new measures were. Having largely stamped out in-country transmission of the coronavirus, authorities in China are worried that one of the biggest risks of a second wave in the epidemic stems for infected people coming from abroad. Imported cases of the virus have largely involved Chinese citizens returning home, rather than foreigners. On Sunday, China reported 108 new cases - the most in almost six weeks. Over 90% were imported cases, of which Chinese returning from Russia accounted for about half. Search Keywords: Short link: HANOI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries have stood shoulder by shoulder with one another as well as with China to curb the spread of COVID-19, showing their strong determination and political commitment to battle the global pandemic. Since early this year, ASEAN countries have been holding a number of meetings, both offline and online, with the participation of high-ranking officials, including ministers and heads of state or government, to discuss measures to bolster coordination and cooperation within the block as well as with its partners, especially China on fighting against COVID-19. The Special ASEAN Summit and the Special ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN Plus Three countries or 10+3) Summit on COVID-19 Response are scheduled to take place on April 14 in video conference, with the chair of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in his capacity as ASEAN Chair 2020, Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung told an online press conference Thursday in Hanoi. Heads of state or government of the 10 ASEAN member states, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and those of the three countries, China, Japan and South Korea are expected to adopt two separate joint statements on COVID-19 response reaffirming their high commitment and determination in eliminating the pandemic's risks which threaten people's lives and socio-economic stabilization of the nations, Dung said. Also on Thursday, the ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC) held its 25th meeting at which foreign ministers of ASEAN countries agreed to submit to heads of state or government their recommendations regarding COVID-19 response which focus on three aspects, he said, noting that the aspects include containing and preventing the spread of COVID-19; supporting people in the countries hit by the disease, including providing consular assistance to ASEAN citizens living, working and studying in other ASEAN nations or a third country; and minimizing socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic. On March 20, the ACC held its 24th meeting to discuss measures to beef up collaboration and coordination within the ASEAN and with its dialogue partners. Emergency response mechanisms in the regional bloc and its partners, China, Japan and South Korea, were established right after the COVID-19 broke out. The ASEAN Chair 2020, health, economic and defense ministers, and ministers in charge of tourism have issued statements, agreeing on closer coordination and cooperation with specific measures to effectively curb the spread of the pandemic. On April 7, at the end of a special video conference of the ASEAN health ministers in enhancing cooperation on COVID-19 response, the ministers adopted a joint statement, agreeing to collectively enhance the exchange and sharing of timely data and information on COVID-19 on the prevention, detection, control and response measures, epidemiologic surveillance updates, risk assessment results, epidemiological and clinical studies on the virus and the disease, and technical guidelines. The health ministers also agreed to strengthen regional cooperation in risk communication on COVID-19; utilize digital technology, including video conferencing and social media applications, as well as artificial intelligence, in addition to the existing official and formal platforms for efficient exchange of information which will facilitate the timely implementation of public health responses; and coordinate cross-border public health responses through existing bilateral and regional cooperation mechanisms. Besides, they reached consensus on enhancing cooperation within ASEAN-led mechanisms and with external partners or stakeholders in capacity building interventions on public health emergency preparedness and response; ensuring that all persons infected by COVID-19 can access essential healthcare services; supporting the timely provision of assistance that is critical to sustaining affected national health systems in the region and improving the readiness of others; combating the outbreak in ASEAN, hand-in-hand with dialogue and development partners, and other regional and global entities; and continuing the collaboration in learning from the regional and national experiences in responding to COVID-19 challenges. On March 10, ASEAN economic ministers (AEM) gathered in Vietnam's central Da Nang city for the 26th AEM Retreat, resolving to strengthen regional information sharing and coordination and collaboration efforts in responding to the economic challenges brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak, and to leverage on technologies and digital trade to allow businesses, especially micro, small and medium enterprises to continue operations amidst the outbreak. On Feb. 20, foreign ministers of ASEAN and China met in the Lao capital of Vientiane for a Special ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers' Meeting on COVID-19, agreeing to step up cooperation in the region against the disease by sharing information and best practices in a timely manner, and strengthen cooperation within ASEAN-led mechanisms and with external partners to address COVID-19 in a comprehensive and effective manner. They also vowed to foster cooperation in risk communication and community engagement readiness and response; accelerate policy dialogue and exchanges on the latest development of COVID-19 through existing mechanisms such as the ASEAN-China Health Ministers' Meeting and the ASEAN-China Senior Officials' Meeting on Health Development; and mitigate supply chain disruptions of urgent medical goods and promote research and development of medicines and vaccines. On Feb. 19, ASEAN defense ministers issued a joint statement on defense cooperation against disease outbreaks after a meeting. According to the statement, the ministers resolved to enhance practical cooperation among ASEAN defense establishments to organize information and best practice sharing activities, and leverage the Network of ASEAN Chemical, Biological and Radiological Defense Experts to enhance professional linkages, and promote scientific cooperation to manage infectious disease outbreaks. On Feb. 14, the ASEAN Chair 2020 issued the Chairman's Statement on ASEAN Collective Response to the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), reaffirming ASEAN's commitment to collectively respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, heads of state or government of ASEAN countries resolved to further strengthen the coordination of national and regional efforts in ensuring ASEAN's readiness and responsive measures to mitigate and subsequently eliminate the threats of COVID-19; intensify timely sharing of information, experiences and best practices among ASEAN member states, between ASEAN and China, other partners, the World Health Organization and international organizations, on the prevention, detection, and treatment of COVID-19 infections; and encourage the continued utilization and strengthening of regional mechanisms for coordination and cooperation in response to this threat. "We are determined to work closely and actively with ASEAN's partners and the international community to mitigate the adverse impacts of the COVID-19. We pledge ASEAN's high priority in dealing with this dangerous disease and urge the international community to support ASEAN in this effort," read the statement. Care homes across Britain are appealing for help in testing staff and patients so they can assess the scale of the coronavirus crisis Hundreds of coronavirus deaths in care homes are going unreported in an attempt to airbrush out the true numbers of elderly people who have died, care bosses have claimed. Care England the leading body of care providers in England estimates that the coronavirus death toll in care homes across the country is likely to be close to 1,000, but such deaths are not included in headline figures. It has prompted warnings that ministers are underestimating the impact of COVID-19 on the most vulnerable sectors of society. Professor Martin Green, chief executive at Care England, told Yahoo News UK: Without testing we cannot know the scale of the coronavirus threat and we cannot make adequate plans to tackle it effectively. We are seeing underreporting of the number of deaths due to lack of testing. Professor Martin Green has warned that without testing for coronavirus in care homes, operators cannot plan adequate care for residents during the crisis. (Paul Martyniuk/Care Home Professional) Deaths might not be in the thousands yet, but it is coming up to that level. We need a proper analysis of death rates occurring across care homes, and the government should be collecting this data. Without testing we cannot be sure how many people have died as a result of coronavirus. We need to test staff, residents and those that are dying. Based on what we are seeing, the figures do not reflect what is happening. Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area 6 charts and maps that explain how coronavirus is spreading Many care homes have implemented a blanket ban on visitors to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Julie Ding, 56, has not been able to see her dying mother for more than a month. Ding, from Allerton Bywater, West Yorkshire, has been a full-time carer since her mother Roberta, 83, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in 2018. After Dings only sibling Susan died aged 49 in 2010, she has no family other than her mother. Robertas condition rapidly deteriorated and soon she was unable to walk or speak and could only breathe through a tracheostomy with the help of a ventilator. Story continues Roberta Ding and her daughters Susan (left) and Julie. Roberta, now 83, is being looked after at a care home and Julie hasn't been able to see her for more than a month (PA) She was in hospital before the coronavirus outbreak reached the UK and was subsequently taken to a nursing home on 2 March. Ding has only been able to contact her mother via through video calls since then. Ding is desperate for Roberta to return home as she worries her mothers condition will worsen and that she will die at the nursing home alone. I made a promise to my mum that I will always be by her side, Ding said. Read more: What's happening in UK care homes is a scandal our grandchildren will ask about But Im only going to be allowed in when shes in the last throes of death. The manager will decide. Matthew Reed, chief executive of charity Marie Curie, said it should be possible for care homes to allow visitors for people who are dying. But he added: The lack of PPE and testing means workers at care homes are not well equipped to support a number of people dying in quick succession. The life of a care home worker is just as valuable as people working in intensive care. Reed said the hospital death numbers published by the government each day are lagging behind the big number because care home deaths are not included. We therefore risk not recognising the human cost of COVID-19, he said. His sentiments were shared by Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, who said the lack of PPE and testing is leading to the disease running wild in care homes. Abrahams said on Monday: The problem is theres not enough of either, and what there is is going to the NHS, which is the right decision but it is leaving care settings in a difficult position. We were underprepared for this, we are playing catch-up on getting enough PPE and testing. Im wondering if the needs of care homes were taken seriously early on. Abrahams, Reed, Green and executives from Independent Age and the Alzheimers Society have written a letter to health secretary Matt Hancock demanding a care package to support social care through the pandemic. As well as PPE and testing, they are asking for the care package to include palliative and end-of-life care for people dying in the care system, as well as a daily update on the number of deaths. Nearly 1,000 deaths leaves social care as the neglected front-line, the letter reads. Abrahams said: The current figures are airbrushing older people out like they dont matter. It comes after Hancock said he can guarantee regular coronavirus testing for the care sector. Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference on Sunday, Hancock said measures are being taken but that the process is nuanced and complicated. Across the country, care homes are reporting increases in deaths. More than 120 residents of MHA, the UKs largest charitable provider of care homes, are thought to have died from the virus. An Essex care home has lost 13 residents during the pandemic, with the disease so contagious that relatives have been banned from retrieving jewellery from their dead loved ones, and 15 residents at the Castletroy Residential Home in Luton have also died, with at least five testing positive for COVID-19. More may have carried the virus, but blanket testing is not conducted as standard procedure in postmortems of people dying in care homes or in the community. Health secretary Matt Hancock has said measures are being taken to account for care home deaths and introduce testing, but that the process is 'nuanced and complicated'. (PA) Last week The Guardian reported that around 70% of residents in one Yorkshire care home for people with dementia, operated by MHA, were suspected of being infected. Thirteen people have died in another of MHAs Yorkshire homes and 11 have died in a home in Northamptonshire. MHA believes at least half of its care homes have cases of infection. Three care homes in Scotland announced 30 deaths between them earlier this week and press reports in the last week have catalogued at least 36 other care home deaths. Scottish Care, the largest group of social care providers in Scotland, told Yahoo News UK: From our ongoing engagement with our care home members, it is our estimation that around half of our members are dealing with COVID-19 cases. Either residents with confirmed COVID-19 case, residents with suspected COVID-19, or staff members unable to work due to confirmed or suspected COVID-19. We welcome moves to more comprehensively report on COVID-19 related deaths as we need this information in order to effectively plan Scotlands health and care services. The spokeswoman told Yahoo News UK that Scottish Care is also exploring options to allow relatives to safely be with loved ones during end-of-life care. She said: We must never forget that each death is not a statistic but a person, for whom families, friends and care home staff will be grieving. We must therefore also use data to develop compassionate solutions and are working to explore how loved ones can safely be with care home residents at end of life. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care told Yahoo News UK: We are completely transparent about how we are collating data. DHSC publishes daily figures to show the number of deaths of patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 in hospital. This is the best way to get consistent, up-to-date and reliable daily figures so that people can track the development of the coronavirus outbreak in the UK. Our figures are now complemented by the ONS who are able to draw in data on deaths outside of hospital from death certificates, which takes longer to compile." Coronavirus: what happened today Maharashtra Housing Minister Jitendra Awhad on Monday said he has decided to quarantine himself as he came in contact with a police officer who tested positive for coronavirus. The minister in a message said his first test has come out negative for coronavirus, but as a precaution, he has decided to self-quarantine for 14 days. "A police official who used to travel with me has tested positive for the infection. Thus, I have decided to remained quarantined. I will miss thousands of people whom I was supporting on a daily basis during the lockdown period, Awhad said. The NCP leader further said he underwent a test which came out negative for coronavirus. But, as advised by doctors, he will remain quarantined for next 14 days, he said. "My first test for COVID-19 has turned negative. I would be required to undergo a similar test after eight days and I hope it also comes out negative," he said. The minister said he would come out to serve people once he tests negative and completes the mandatory quarantine period. Awhad represents Thane district's Kalwa-Mumbra Assembly constituency, where several coronavirus cases have been found in the last couple of weeks. He recently urged residents of his constituency to stay indoors or else it could prove fatal. He is the first state minister to quarantine self. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Kazeem Ugbodaga Another six Coronavirus patients have been discharged in Lagos after recovering and tested negative twice for the virus. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu disclosed this on Monday, saying that the six people discharged included five male and one female. According to Sanwo-Olu, Good people of Lagos, I have more great news from our isolation facilities. Today, 6 more persons; 1 female and 5 males have been discharged to join society. The patients; all from the Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, have fully recovered and tested negative twice consecutively to COVID-19. This brings the number of patients successfully managed and discharged from our facilities to 61, he said. The governor said the results were significant and indicative of governments will power to triumph in this war against the lethal COVID19. He added that government would not be deterred and would not relent until victory was achieved. I thank you all for your continued perseverance and patience, especially at this critical time. This sacrifice of ours, I am most certain will not be in vain, he said. On Sunday, Lagos discharged five Coronavirus patients after the tested negative twice. Lagos currently has 179 confirmed Coronavirus cases, out of which 61 people have been discharged, five dead, two others evacuated to their countries and three others transferred to Ogun State where they live. The state currently has 108 active cases of Coronavirus after it discharged six on Monday. Since early March, when coronavirus began to appear in Texas, weve been checking in with Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher who lately has become a familiar bow-tied presence on national cable news channels. Hes a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and co-director of the Texas Childrens Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. His lab developed a vaccine to protect against SARS, a deadly strain of coronavirus, but in 2016 wasnt able to get money to test it in humans. Now theyre racing to create a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus thats wreaking global havoc. Earlier this week, on Twitter, he wrote: There's a misunderstanding out there that America just hunkers down for a year, then a #vaccine magically appears, and everyone goes out to have a nice picnic on the National Mall. It would be nice, it's not impossible, our lab working 24/7, but I think a low probability scenario. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Could you talk about those tweets and the expectation that we'll have a coronavirus vaccine within the next year to 18 months? That's certainly the aspirational goal. That was the charge from Dr. Anthony Fauci, whos advising the president. And that's what we're all working toward. Our scientists are in the lab day and night trying to make this happen and trying to accelerate it, but it's a tough goal. Sometimes people forget how long it really does take to make a vaccine. Dr. Fauci knows this as well as anybody: He's devoted his life to the HIV AIDS vaccine the development of which has taken 30 years and counting. Most vaccines take 10 to 25 years. That's the timeframe. My colleague Paul Offi points out that the record is probably four years from start to finish in terms of developmental licensure. That was for the mumps vaccine. The time horizons are huge for vaccines. So then you say, Okay, well, how do you stack that up against a year to 18 months? It's going to be very tough. We're clearly putting a lot of resources into it. A lot of smart people are thinking in innovative ways about how we could do more things in parallel. But we have to also set some realistic expectations that we might not have that vaccine in a year or 18 months and maybe not for two or three or four years. So how do we manage? How do we manage expectations and what our country looks like during that time? Do you have any idea where that goal of a year to 18 months comes from? I don't know. There's a new international organization called CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, that's been charged to fix the long timelines of vaccines and to come up with new ways to accelerate. And there are some theoretical reasons to say we can do more things in parallel. The regulatory agencies are all looking at this. So we're all going to try, but the the history says that's not a high probability. I'm listening to some of the cable news networks saying, Well, we just got to hunker down for a year and then we'll have the vaccine. That's not a wise strategy. Or maybe we can have that as one strategy, but don't put all of our eggs in that basket. Let's have another strategy with a more realistic timeframe for vaccines. This disease may come in waves, like the flu pandemic of 1918. That came in several waves between the beginning of 1918 and the end of 1920. That was a three-year pandemic, and that's a possibility for us as well. Figuring out a plan for the country in the event that we don't have a vaccine is going to be very important for us. Some people are not happy that I said that because it sounds so pessimistic. It isn't. I do think we will have other technologies coming out. We've already got the convalescing the antibody therapy. We've got some new drugs that will come online. But let's consider a realistic timeframe too, in case the vaccines are not out, and figuring out if this virus comes in waves. MORE Q&AS: Disaster expert Angela Blanchard on COVID-19 and the Houston economy What would that look like in terms of getting people to back to work? How would we manage that? That includes mental health aspects. Will people have PTSD in terms of going back to work? Well also have governors from some states unwilling to go back to social distancing once we're off that first hook. Even in this month, when things are so dire in the country, you've got about a third of the governors who are pushing back against aggressive social distancing. What's it going to be a year from now if we're off social distancing, then we have to go back on? And who organizes it? Who organizes the response? Who charts the plan for us? How do we figure this out as a nation? How do we look at all the models and say, what's a realistic model? And and if this virus does show a waxing and waning course, how do we deal with that, working with governments, working with businesses, and working with health systems? This is going to be a very complicated situation. Right now we're going mainly state by state, and looking at things like closing state borders or at least requiring self-quarantine for people traveling to Texas from Louisiana. How do you think that works? It doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. COVID-19 is in every state in the country right now. Travel restrictions sound appealing because they make it seem like, Well, it's over. We just shut that travel down, and that will prevent the virus from coming in. The president has said that he slowed things down by closing down travel with China. But we have reports now, based on the genetic sequence of the virus, that the virus in New York came in from Europe. At this point, we have to recognize that the virus is probably everywhere. There's a diminishing return at this point of cutting down traffic between states. I've seen estimates that we are maybe two weeks away from the peak here in Houston or maybe I should say, our first peak. Thats according to the IHME model from the University of Washington. So what should Houstonians be doing right now? Now it's crunch time. Now's the time when you're at greatest risk of contracting the virus by being in crowds or being with people outside your home. We're trying to do everything we can to minimize the number of people that have to be brought into the hospital, who need ICUS. Its really important now that we aggressively pursue social distancing, especially to prevent a surge on Texas Medical Center. Even though the leaders of the TMC been meeting daily, we need to do our part as citizens of Houston to minimize the number of people that go into the hospital. It's easier for some than others. Weve talked before about the poor neighborhoods in Houston, and how social distancing is more complicated in areas of poverty and crowding, or for families where lots of people live in one house or one apartment. Its one thing to say, Okay, everybody now has to social distance. I don't know how we do that easily in Fifth Ward or in Acres Home or in northeast Houston. I know the mayor's worried about it, and so is the county judge and our congressional delegation from Texas. Everyone's trying to think hard how to deal with this problem. Right now, without a vaccine, we unfortunately have to use a 14th-century approach. Thats quarantine. Assuming that its a long time until we get a vaccine, what sorts of things do you see happening? Between waves of the virus, could we begin loosening restrictions and starting the economy up again? The models say, as we move through the month of May, the number of transmissions will go way down. Maybe at that point we could begin opening things up. I don't know, though. At what point do we risk the disease immediately coming back if we do that? We're starting to hear that from Singapore and elsewhere. MORE Q&AS: Texas A&M pandemic expert: Coronavirus will have 5 stages. Were in stage 2. We're going to need outside help here in Houston, getting advice about that. Hopefully the federal government will provide some support. Then let's say the levels of transmission continue to stay down for the next few months. When are the predictions this virus might return? Is in the fall of this year? Is it January of next year? April next year? Getting guidance about that will be really helpful. Other questions are, who goes back into the workforce? Is that only people that have been infected and have antibodies that make them resistant to infection? Or is it or is it everyone? I certainly don't have the answers to that. We're going to have to have some meaningful dialogue and convene some of the best minds in the country. I suggested on CNN that bringing in the National Academy of Sciences, or a similar organization, would be very helpful. We need some of the best scientists in the country around the table, looking at the models and charting a path. Adding to the problem is the fact that we're in an election year. Things will be so heated politically that decisions made both on the Republican side and the Democratic side may put political expediency over public health. How do you deal with that? It's really hard. Im hearing from people who look at the relatively low number of people hospitalized in Houston, or the small number of deaths here. Theyre asking whether the cost of social distancing has been worth it, and whether we should continue staying at home. What would you say to them? First of all, I don't know that we really know the number of people in ICUS or of deaths. And remember, we still have another two weeks before we reach our peak. So we're certainly not out of the woods by any means. If it turns out that the data are not as high as we thought then the question always comes: Did that happen because of what we did? Or in spite of what we did? We had this discussion before about Zika. I met with Houstons mayor and strongly recommended cleaning up the tires that breed Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes in places like the Fifth Ward. He did it. Then we didn't have Zika. Was that because of my recommendation? We have no idea. You cant prove a negative. But based on the experience we're seeing elsewhere, we know social distancing is really important for the next few weeks. What else is on your mind these days? What are you watching? Im really scratching my head figuring out what the next two and three years look like. That's a big one. We've also now heard a lot about health, about COVID-19 as a health disparity among the African American and Hispanic communities in the southern parts of the U.S. I put that out there about almost three weeks ago: This is going to be a concern. And thats turning out to be the case, unfortunately. Fighting that in Houston is going to be really important . How are you doing personally? Oh, we're hanging in there. I'm spending a lot of time writing papers, and documents related to getting our vaccine off the ground, and writing some thought papers also about what the ideal characteristics are for the vaccine and how we advance the Global Health vaccine. Im also trying to raise the funding to make it happen. Vaccine developments are expensive. And Im also talking to people like you, to get the word out, so we get good accurate science messaging. I'm going on CNN or MSNBC and Fox News, and sometimes I'm not telling people good news. I've been getting a bit of pushback from people I've known for years, people who are not happy that I'm not painting a very rosy picture of things. Its taken me time to figure out how to tell real information without alarming people. I veer a little too much on the rosy. Sometimes I veer a little too much on the dark side. The best critic of all is my wife, who lets me know about it. How is she doing? I think good. She sees how stressed I am. It's not just me it's our whole group, and Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi, my science partner for 20 years. I'll text her at 4 a.m. when I wake up, and find out that she's already texted me at 3:30 a.m. when she's woken up. It's crazy. I'll wake up in the middle of the night and send a text, not expecting an answer to the next morning, and she's responding right away. We're all kind of sleepless. lisa.gray@chron.com, @LisaGray_HouTX Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jocelyne Zablit (Agence France-Presse) Los Angeles, United States Mon, April 13, 2020 18:06 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd19c630 2 People Tik-Tok,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,dance,doctor,Jason-Campbell Free A US doctor's dance videos posted on social media have proven just the right medicine for hundreds of thousands of people, including health care workers, who are cheering him on for lifting their spirits during the coronavirus pandemic. Dubbed "Tik Tok Doc" after the popular short-form video app, Dr. Jason Campbell has taken the Internet by storm with clips featuring him and colleagues doing the "corona foot shake", "the cha-cha slide" and other dance moves. No hand shaking allowed but that wont stop us. We present to you, live from @OHSUNews and @OHSUDoernbecher, the Corona Foot Shake! #CoronaFootShake pic.twitter.com/gUHSZ7dI1P Jason Tik Tok Doc Campbell, MD (@DrJCoftheDC) March 18, 2020 The 31-year-old anesthesia resident physician at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital told AFP he has been overwhelmed by the positive response, including from health care workers in New York, the country's epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. "When you're in medicine, you see a lot of serious, sad things all the time," Campbell said. "And so we too need a way to remain human, stay sane and a chance to just smile or laugh, even if it's just five minutes out of a 12-hour day." Campbell said he initially began posting the videos to encourage teens, especially African-American youths, to pursue their dreams and know that they too could become physicians. The clips, however, quickly went viral, resonating with a much wider audience clearly in need of cheering up during these dark times. His "corona foot shake" video alone has been watched four million times. "I got a message today (Friday) from someone who said his wife was a cardiologist working with COVID-19 response teams and found the videos so refreshing," Campbell said. Another message came from a lung cancer patient who thanked him for making his quarantine more bearable. "The overwhelming response has been, 'Hey, I work in New York City and I love seeing your video after my long day,'" Campbell said. "Others say, 'Hey, my family member has the virus and we watch these videos together while they recover'." Read also: TikTok's time: Video platform sees appeal growing during lockdowns Campbell said fellow doctors and nurses at the hospital in Portland were initially reluctant to appear in the videos, but after seeing the positive reactions have joined in the fun. Hospital officials have applauded the initiative. "Dr. Campbell's energy and charisma is infectious," said Dr. Renee Edwards, the hospital's chief medical officer. "A skilled physician, he's found a unique way to incorporate the power of positivity into his daily work, helping to lift the spirits of patients and co-workers alike." The videos have been hailed by the state's governor and even caught the attention of popular recording artist Janet Jackson, who retweeted one of the doctor's TikToks. Campbell, who has posted about a dozen videos since the beginning of March, said his next dance routine, currently being rehearsed, was in response to a special request from his co-workers' kids. "It's going to be a slow-motion challenge with one of my colleague's daughter," he said. "It's multiple moves where you go slow at first then speed it up back to real time." As for his plans once the pandemic is over, Campbell said he has no intention of stopping his dancing. "The focus will remain on connecting with the black youth," he said. "And working to enhance diversity in medicine long-term." Societies in which men are the majority are more stable as they are on their best behaviour to impress potential partners, psychologists claim. Researchers found that when women outnumber men, the men become more competitive, take more risks and act more violently to attract the opposite sex. But when men are in the majority this pattern reverses. The American research suggests that when women are in short supply, men are more likely to become doting husbands and fathers to keep relationships afloat. Societies in which men are the majority are more stable as they are on their best behaviour to impress potential partners, it has been claimed by psychologists And when women are in the majority, they are more likely to adopt behaviour typically associated with men such as casual sex. Experts believe whichever sex is the majority faces more competition when finding partners. This alters behaviour, with both sexes shifting their mating strategies. Florida State University Professor of psychology Jon Maner said: When men outnumber women in a given ecology, intuition might suggest that rates of violent crime would skyrocket, marriages would destabilise and many children would be born out of wedlock. Intriguingly, the opposite has been observed. The study, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, was based on a review and analysis of previous work by Dr Maner and others. The case of a sick tiger shows cats can catch COVID-19, but there is no evidence yet that they can pass it to humans. Last week, a four-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York tested positive for coronavirus. The tiger, named Nadia, is thought to have contracted the virus from a zookeeper who was showing no symptoms of the illness. Nadia, her sister Azul, as well as two Amur tigers and three African lions showed symptoms, including a dry cough, after exposure to the employee. The zoo, which is now closed to the public, is monitoring the big cats progress and says they are all doing well and are expected to make a full recovery. They hope, in time, to share their findings with other zoos and scientists. The news comes as a domestic cat tested positive for the COVID-19 virus in Belgium. The cat showed symptoms of diarrhoea, vomiting and coughing. The owner, who had recently returned from a trip to northern Italy, started showing symptoms of the illness five days after their cat. It is thought the owner infected the cat in the first documented case of human-to-cat transmission of the COVID-19 virus. The cat made a full recovery nine days later. According to studies by veterinary scientists on the subject, there have been no cases of cats transmitting the virus to humans it has only happened the other way around. However, this news highlights the ever-changing information about the COVID-19 virus, as it was previously thought that animals and pets could not carry the virus. The coronavirus (called Sars-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19) is thought to have originated in wildlife and been passed to humans via a live animal market in Wuhan. Since then, its main method of transmission has been human-to-human not via animals. A Chinese study found that the virus replicates poorly in dogs, pigs, chickens and ducks, but more efficiently in ferrets and cats. It found that the virus transmits in cats via respiratory droplets. So, what is it about cats in particular that makes them so susceptible to the virus and not other animals? The answer lies in the receptors the virus needs to bind to in order to get inside cells and start replicating. It is thought that when the coronavirus enters the human body, it attaches to proteins on cell receptors called ACE2 proteins. These allow the virus to enter the cell and reprogramme it to make more viruses. Felines are known to have similar ACE2 proteins on the cells that line their respiratory tract. The virus can bind to them and gain access to their airways, thereby infecting them. The same is true for ferrets. The study also showed that dogs were not susceptible to the virus, despite there being reported cases in Hong Kong of dogs having tested positive for it. Previous studies looking at another type of coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), showed it to be infectious for cats as well, so it may be no surprise that the same is true of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. As cats do not transmit the virus to humans, there is no need to change the way you handle your cat. However, if the cat is in a household where somebody has symptoms, it is a good idea to keep it indoors to stop it from infecting other cats and making them unwell. If the cat is from a household where there are no symptoms, it should be free to roam as normal. I think it is fair to say, in the ever-changing world of COVID-19, we humans are more of a danger to cats than they are to us. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global IVD quality control market size is expected to reach USD 1.24 billion by 2026, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is projected to witness a CAGR of 4.1% over the forecast period. Continually evolving technology-oriented changes in the diagnostics field and growing need to ensure patient safety necessitate the implementation of quality assurance programs in various medical disciplines including radiology and Point-of-Care (PoC) devices. Patients rely on self-testing IVD devices for long-term disease management and hence it is important for such devices to be checked, in terms of result reproducibility and validity, to guarantee patient safety. Rising number of certified clinical laboratories offering dependable IVD-based diagnostic services directly correlates with increased patient confidence, thus driving the market. In addition to quality assessments, amendments to the regulatory framework are made intermittently to enhance the existing standards with the main objective of safeguarding qualitative superiority of the diagnostic services. In May 2016, the European Union passed an agreement to update the pre-existing regulations pertaining to IVD devices, wherein the updates were in concern with raising the patient safety levels, particularly for disabled persons. The presence of third-party agencies for independent assessment of the IVD devices is expected to elevate the current safety standards, which will drive the In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) Quality Control market further. Further key findings from the study suggest : In 2018, the clinical chemistry was the second-largest application segment of the global IVD market, in terms of market share Demand for preventive medicine and rapid transformation of clinical laboratories into highly automated and efficient businesses are some of the factors for the segment's growth Molecular diagnostics is projected to be the fastest-growing segment due to increasing technical complexity of molecular diagnostic testing and need for quality evaluation to ensure standards These tests are of prime importance as the outcomes enable healthcare practitioners make critical treatment decisions Hospitals was the largest segment in 2018 due to the presence of advanced technology-based devices like Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and microarrays, and rising applications of the optimized quality-control procedures North America was the dominant regional market in 2018 due to the presence of over 150,000 registered diagnostics labs and is likely to maintain the dominance throughout the forecast years Siemens Healthcare GmbH; Roche Diagnostics; Alere, Inc .; Abbott Laboratories, Inc .; Qiagen NV; Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc .; Quidel Corp .; Becton, Dickinson and Company; bioMerieux, Inc .; Sysmex Corp .; Sero AS; and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. are some of the key companies in the global market Request a Sample Copy of the Global In Vitro Diagnostics Quality Control Market Research Report @ www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/in-vitro-diagnostics-ivd-quality-control-market/request/rs1 Grand View Research has segmented the global IVD quality control market on the basis of application, type, end use, and region: IVD Quality Control Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2026) Immunochemistry Hematology Clinical Chemistry Molecular Diagnostics Coagulation Microbiology Others IVD Quality Control Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2026) Quality Control Quality Controls, by Type Plasma-based Control Serum-based Control Whole Blood-based Control Others Quality Controls, by Application Immunochemistry Hematology Clinical Chemistry Molecular Diagnostics Coagulation Microbiology Others Quality Assurance Services Immunochemistry Hematology Clinical Chemistry Molecular Diagnostics Coagulation Microbiology Others Data Management Clinical Chemistry Immunochemistry Hematology Molecular Diagnostics Coagulation Microbiology Others IVD Quality Control End Use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2026) Hospitals Laboratories Home-care Others IVD Quality Control Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2026) North America US Canada europe UK germany france spain italy Russia Asia Pacific japan china India South Korea Singapore Australia Latin America brazil Argentine Middle East & Africa South Africa UAE Saudi Arabia Access full research report on global in vitro diagnostics quality control market: www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/in-vitro-diagnostics-ivd-quality-control-market India on Monday lodged protests with Pakistan for the killing of a woman and 2 minors in firing by Pakistani forces in Jammu and Kashmir in unprovoked cross-border firing and shelling by Pakistani forces on Sunday. A second demarche was issued soon after over Pakistani maritime security forces firing at Indian fishermen in two fishing vessels off the Gujarat coast. One fisherman was injured in this firing that New Delhi described as a deliberate attack at its nationals. The two demarches, or formal diplomatic representation, were sent electronically. The standard diplomatic practice has been to summon foreign envoys to the External Affairs Ministry, convey the governments displeasure at the events concerned and hand over the demarche, or the formal diplomatic note. Since it was not possible to summon the Pakistan envoy to the foreign ministry due to the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, a phone call from the external affairs ministry to Pakistan Deputy High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah preceded the demarche, a top government official told Hindustan Times. Also read: Imran Khan rushes back to UNSC over Kashmir, this time over domicile law In the demarche over the Jammu and Kashmir violation, India condemned in the strongest possible terms the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians that had led to the killing of Shamima Begum, 35, and Javid Ahmad Khan, 17, residents of Reddi Chokibal and 8-year-old Zeeshan Bashir of Kupwaras Tumna village. The demarche, people familiar with the developments said, underlined that Pakistani forces continue to resort to unprovoked firing and ceasefire violations and asked Islamabad to probe such heinous crimes against civilians. In the second demarche, officials said, New Delhi lodged its strong protest at the deliberate attack and firing on Indian fishermen on board two Indian fishing boats Omkar and Mahasagar by Pakistan Maritime Security Agency vessel on 12 April. In this incident, one Indian fisherman was injured. Also read: Spike in ceasefire violations by Pakistan amid Covid outbreak Islamabad had, earlier in the day, summoned Indias charge daffaires Gaurav Ahluwalia to the Foreign Office to register Pakistans protest over what it called were ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC) in several sectors on Sunday. To be sure, both countries have blamed each other for violating the 2003 ceasefire pact. Pakistan accuses the Indian Army for 708 ceasefire violations in 2020. The Indian Army has counted 1,144 ceasefire violations by Pakistan Army between January and March, with the highest number of violations (411) being recorded in March. Terrorists often sneak into Jammu & Kashmir under cover fire from the Pakistani army. This task of coordinating the launch of terrorists is reported to be overseen by Pakistan Army Brigadier Faisal Qaadeer. Counter-terror operatives said there was information that he had died due to a heart attack on Monday. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo believes the worst of the coronavirus outbreak is behind us, but urged continued caution going forward at his Monday press briefing. He echoed the nations medical experts who have said repeatedly that the battle against the virus will continue until a vaccine is developed in an expected 12 to 18 months. I think you can say the worst is over, because the worst here are people dying -- thats the worst, Cuomo said. I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart, and I believe that we can now start on the path to normalcy. Cuomo hopes that path to normalcy involves incremental change in coordination with other states as they work to reopen systems like businesses, schools, and transportation. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** He will be making an announcement at 2 p.m. on coordinated plans with Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, Gov. John Carney of Delaware, and Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island. Were talking to a number of states, and again we want to coordinate as much as possible, he said. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have differed on who will make decision whether or not to reopen they citys school system. De Blasio announced Saturday that he will keep the citys public schools closed for the rest of the school year, but Cuomo said he has jurisdiction over such a move and hasnt reached that decision yet. On Monday, the governor acknowledged that the states approximate 700 school districts operate with relative autonomy in normal times, but that needed to change during the crisis to ensure a coordinated effort. Right now, all the school districts basically make their own decisions, I know, but in a situation like this you cant allow 700 school districts to make their own decisions, he said. We have to have one plan at the end of the day. NEW DELHI : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday discussed the challenge posed by the covid-19 pandemic to the global economy with his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Xuan Phuc. The conversation is in continuation of the regular high level exchanges that Modi has been having with world leaders over the past weeks. Separately, foreign minister S. Jaishankar spoke to his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, the former said in a Twitter post. This conversation too was one of the many calls that Jaishankar has either received or put through to his counterparts in countries across the world in the context of the pandemic that has sickened 1.86 million people and claimed more than 115,000 lives since it first emerged in China in December. The two leaders discussed the situation arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the steps being taken to address this challenge," a statement from Modis office said. The leaders agreed on the potential for bilateral collaboration in fighting COVID-19, including for facilitating supplies of required medical equipment. They also committed to provide necessary support to each others citizens present in their territories," the statement added. The two countries also agreed to coordinate positions on a response to the pandemic, it added. The past few weeks, Modi has spoken to many different world leaders including US president Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President. The covid-19 pandemic was also the subject of the conversation between Iranian foreign minister Zarif and Jaishankar. Welcomed a call from FM @JZarif of Iran. Discussed respective responses to the #Coronavirus challenge. Also exchanged views on regional developments," Jaishankar said in a Twitter post. Iran has been one of the countries seriously hit by covid-19 infections in Asia with more than 73,000 infections and more than 4,500 infections. India has brought back more than many hundreds of its people from Iran while some found to be infected with the SARS-CoV2 virus have been housed at a wellness centre in Qom. Iran's FM and his Indian counterparts held telephone conversations on the latest political situation in Afghanistan, illegal sanctions against #Iran , status of the #CoronavirusOutbreak, and weighed plans for collective measures to contain the disease, Irans embassy in New Delhi said in a Twitter post Peace talks in Afghanistan have stalled after Afghan president Ashraf Ghani refused to let off 5,000 Taliban prisoners a key element of the 29 February peace deal between the US and the Taliban, that will allow the start of the intra-Afghan peace talks and Washington to wind up its more than 18 year long stay in the country. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Never miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint. Download our App Now!! Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriza Pinandita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 17:18 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd199fc0 1 World Indonesia,China,chinese-embassy,Indonesian-Embassy,Foreign-Ministry Free Indonesia and China have jointly launched special designs for stamps and covers in celebration of the seventh decade of diplomatic relations between the two Asian countries. The special designs were launched online on Monday by the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing and PT Pos Indonesia in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta and China Post. One of the stamps features the logo of the 70th anniversary with the illustration of a golden panda, China's national symbol, and the Garuda, the national emblem of Indonesia. The three other stamps showcase culture and historical landmarks of the two countries, including one with a Balinese barong and Chinese barongsai (lion dance) as well as others featuring Indonesia's Borobudur temple and the Great Wall of China. The logo of a golden Garuda embodies the values of strength and glory, while the golden panda embodies peace, according to a press release from the Indonesian Foreign Ministry on Monday. Meanwhile, the Balinese barong and barongsai embody the richness of Indonesian and Chinese civilization and the close cultural influence between the two nations. The designs of covers and stamps, featuring cultures and historical landmarks of Indonesia and China, have been produced especially to commemorate the 70th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Jakarta and Beijing. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Indonesia/Handout) "The incorporation of these symbols represents a close friendship between citizens of the two [nations], which has contributed positively to the worlds peace and prosperity," the statement read. The ministry noted that the Indonesia-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, based on the two nations' "historical relations that date back hundreds of years", has brought about concrete achievements for the progress and national development of each country. China is Indonesia's largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at US$72.6 billion in 2018. The East Asian economic giant is also the third-largest foreign investor in the archipelago, with total investments having reached a value of $2.3 billion in 2018. An increase in people-to-people exchanges has also marked closer ties between Indonesia and China, the statement said. According to the ministry, the celebration of the 70 years of diplomatic ties is to be enlivened by numerous events scheduled throughout this year, both in Indonesia and China, which will "uphold the spirit of friendship, synergy and collaboration to welcome stronger bilateral cooperation in various sectors." The banking industry is divided on whether to offer a moratorium on payments to the NonBanking Finance Companies (NBFCs) in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic that has raised concerns about a fresh surge in bad loans. According to a report in The Economic Times, some private and foreign banks have decided to forgo repayment till May 31. However, state-run banks have been reluctant to do the same and even those which did are now retracting. Citing sources, the daily claimed that financial institutions, including Kotak Mahindra, IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank and Standard Chartered, have granted the moratorium on principal repayment to select shadow banks. The State Bank of India (SBI) is said to have barred NBFCs from benefits. Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report. We have received moratorium on principal repayments from select private sector and foreign banks, an NBFC chief told ET on condition of anonymity. We are now paying only the interest on credit we availed from them. The RBI on March 27 allowed borrowers to put off repayment of term loans by three months, a move designed to alleviate economic pain brought by the viral outbreak. However, the central bank left it to the banks to decide on the borrower who were to be granted relief. A separate ET report claimed that more than 80 percent of the NBFCs in the country have sufficient liquidity in terms of assets to furnish repayments. Sources told the daily that concerns over repayments were unfounded and the Rs 65,000-70,000 crore repayment amount due in June "is quite manageable". The Indian government is in touch with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates over reported moves to repatriate expatriate workers, people familiar with developments said on Monday even as some 2,500 Indians approached the missions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai for help to return home. The UAEs official WAM news agency reported on Sunday the government was considering possible restrictions on countries that refuse to cooperate for the evacuation of expatriate workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The report triggered alarm in Kerala, home to many of the more than two million Indians living in the UAE. Kuwait has announced an amnesty till April 30 for illegal migrants and workers whose visas expired after travel restrictions were imposed to contain Covid-19. Migrants who overstayed their visas or are undocumented will be allowed to leave Kuwait without paying fines. Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic There is no clarity on the number of Indians who could benefit from the amnesty, with estimates ranging from 20,000 to 40,000, the people cited above said. We are in touch with the UAE and Kuwait to get clarity on these issues, said one of the people, speaking on condition of anonymity. Some 2,500 Indians have approached the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai to seek help to return home amid the Covid-19 lockdown, Gulf News reported on Monday. This includes a request from an employer who laid off around 1,000 Indian workers, the report said. Indias ambassador to the UAE, Pavan Kapoor, was quoted by the daily as saying the missions havent been bombarded with mass requests by people wishing to fly home immediately, and most individuals who expressed an interest in returning are stranded visitors and those who had lost their jobs. The consul general in Dubai, Vipul, said the mission had received almost 1,000 requests from people most of them visit visa holders who want to return to India. On Sunday, the consulate learnt about 1,000 Indian workers who had lost their jobs and the employer got in touch to know the options to send them back home as early as possible, he said. WAM news agency had reported that UAEs ministry of human resources was looking at revising current partnerships concerning labour relations with nations refusing to cooperate with evacuation measures undertaken by the UAE to repatriate private sector expatriates who wish to return home. The ministrys move came after a number of countries didnt respond to requests by their nationals to return home. The options being studied include the halting of MoUs between the ministry and non-cooperative countries and the introduction of restrictions or quotas for future recruitment, the report added. The Indian government had already said flights cannot be operated for some 20,000 Indians stranded around the world during the lockdown, which is now expected to be extended beyond April 14. Officials have also said the issue of evacuating Indian nationals would be taken up in a phased manner, possibly in May. Meanwhile, in a related development, the UAE has offered to fly stranded Indians wishing to be repatriated if they test negative for Covid-19. The UAEs ambassador to India, Ahmed Al Banna, told Gulf News that the foreign ministry had sent a note verbale or unsigned diplomatic correspondence on this issue to embassies of all countries in the UAE over the past few weeks. We have sent the not note verbale and all the embassies have been informed, including the Indian embassy in the UAE and even the ministry of external affairs in India, Al Banna said, adding there was no official response from India so far. The UAE has offered to test those who want to return. We are assuring them also of our cooperation to fly those who got stranded in the UAE for some reasons. Some got stuck because of the lockdown and closure of airports in India. Some were visiting the UAE, he said. Those who test positive for Covid-19 will remain in the UAE for treatment, he said. During his telephone conversations with world leaders on the Covid-19 crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it a point to reach out to leaders of several West Asian states, including the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, that are home to millions of expatriates. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rezaul H Laskar Rezaul H Laskar is the Foreign Affairs Editor at Hindustan Times. His interests include movies and music. ...view detail A motorist who was stopped during a 170-mile round trip on Easter Sunday told police he had needed to have a break from his wife and children. The BMW driver was spotted by officers on the A30 near Launceston, Cornwall, who pulled him over and asked the reason for his journey. When he explained his urge to get out of the house during the Bank Holiday, he was reminded of the rules. Devon, Cornwall and Dorset Roads Policing teams tweeted about the incident, writing: Taking your BMW out for a spin on a 170 mile round trip to have a break from the wife and three kids is also not an essential journey. The roads are much quieter but there are still people who don't get it. The same force later reported an incident in which a motorist drove across the country to pick up a boat, and then broke down on a hill. Driving across the county (and then breaking down on a hill) to collect the second hand boat you just bought is not an essential journey either. Driver reported near Bodmin. Police and ministers have otherwise thanked the public for staying at home over the Easter weekend. Beaches and parks were largely deserted for most of the balmy Bank Holiday, with popular beauty spots and motorways largely deserted as Brits respected lockdown restrictions. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sundays Downing Street press conference that the future path of the Covid-19 pandemic would be determined by how people act, adding: Im really glad that at the moment the British people this weekend are doing their bit. Listen to The Leader: Coronavirus Daily podcast And Mr Hancock reiterated the importance of complying with lockdown regulations as he wished the nation a Happy Easter. He posted a video on Twitter urging people to continue following the social distancing rules. Virginia passes law to extend discrimination protections to LGBT community Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Virginia has passed a law that extends anti-discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity, reportedly the first southern state to do so. Governor Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Values Act, also known as Senate Bill 868, into law on Saturday after it was passed by a Democrat-controlled legislature. In a statement released last Saturday, Northam said that the new law sends a strong, clear message that Virginia is a place where all people are welcome to live, work, visit, and raise a family. We are building an inclusive Commonwealth where there is opportunity for everyone, and everyone is treated fairly, he said. No longer will LGBTQ Virginians have to fear being fired, evicted, or denied service in public places because of who they are. Democratic Senator Adam Ebbin, who sponsored the bill, said in a statement he believed the new law was necessary during times of crisis like these. When jobs are scarce and housing unaffordable, the reality of who you are must be an additional hurdle to putting food on the table or providing shelter for your family. This law provides important new protections, stated Ebbin. Critics of the legislation argued that, if enacted, the Values Act might threaten the religious liberty of those who are morally opposed to homosexuality and transgenderism. Victoria Cobb of the Family Foundation, a socially conservative group, previously denounced the passage of the bill earlier this year in a statement. In his dissent to the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision inventing a right to marriage, Justice Alito warned that some would use that decision to 'stamp out every vestige of dissent, stated Cobb, as reported by WTVR. The Virginia General Assembly today passed legislation that empowers the Attorney General to do just that. The Family Foundation is already preparing to defend religious Virginians who are attacked for their faith. In addition to the Values Act, the state government also recently passed a law banning sexual orientation change efforts therapy for LGBT minors. The measure, also known as House Bill 386, was signed into law by Northam in March. In previous General Assembly sessions, when Republicans held a majority, the proposed legislation had failed. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ardila Syakriah, Asip Hasani and Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta/Tulungagung/Bandung Tue, April 14, 2020 08:32 637 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18e093 1 National #Puskesmas,puskesmas,COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,#COVID19,healthcare,#healthcare,coronavirus,#coronavirus,public-health Free Soon after he took office in October 2019, Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto highlighted the urgency for puskesmas (community health centers) to focus on preventing disease and promoting heath to help reduce the burden on the country's deficit-stricken National Health Insurance (JKN) program. Only a few months later, community health centers across the country are doing both while conducting public health surveillance and providing treatment, but for a whole other reason: the COVID-19 outbreak. Puskesmas staff are now expected to educate people on the disease, trace contacts, monitor suspected cases and administer rapid tests, all the while treating COVID-19 patients without sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE), risking greater exposure to the invisible threat. "At first, we had to use thick [rain jackets and pants]. We had to maintain our distance, without physical contact with our patients," said general practitioner Christine Yulius, 40, the sole resident doctor at a puskesmas in Tasikmalaya, West Java. It was only recently that PPE was distributed to the health center, although the supply did not include medical gowns or hazmat suits. PPE shortages have also been reported at many puskesmas across the country, according to the Health Ministry's healthcare services director general, Bambang Wibowo. Bambang said last week at a teleconference that amid the apparent "limited availability" of protective gear, community health centers were expected to use the equipment efficiently [...] to save [the equipment] while being protected from the risks of COVID-19 exposure" amid their prominent role in Indonesias fight against the epidemic. "Puskesmas have a very big and necessary role [...] from prevention to screening to response," he said. With a population of some 267 million people across the vast archipelago, puskesmas had been the backbone of the national healthcare system even before the outbreak, dealing with the triple burden of disease: communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, and reemerging infectious diseases like malaria. According to the Health Ministry's 2018 data, the country has 2,813 hospitals, some of which are currently overwhelmed by a surge in patients, and 9,993 puskesmas, many in remote coastal villages and inland regions. Community health centers typically have a couple of general practitioners, at least one dentist, a few nurses and a midwife, and have limited facilities and equipment compared to hospitals. The data shows that 3,623 puskesmas also provide inpatient care. Read also: COVID-19 fast response team calls on dentists, ENTs to stop operating amid pandemic Despite the long waiting time, people flock to puskesmas where they can seek free treatment for 144 types of disease and obtain hospital referrals if necessary under the JKN program. The national health insurance covers some 80 percent of the population, or around 222 million Indonesians. The COVID-29 epidemic, however, has affected virtually every way puskesmas operate, particularly in regions that are now treating persons under monitoring (ODPs) and patients under surveillance (PDPs). Medical staff have been split into teams for public education, contact tracing and patient treatment, while some puskesmas have set aside space in their limited facilities to treat COVID-19 patients in isolation from patients with other respiratory illnesses. Read also: Non-coronavirus patients grow wary as hospital crisis looms Several puskesmas doctors told The Jakarta Post that they were now prescribing medicines to outpatients based on their reported symptoms without a routine examination to avoid inhaling oral or nasal droplets, through which the coronavirus is transmitted. In some regions, puskesmas periodically run posyandu (community health posts) to provide basic pediatric care, immunization programs, antenatal care, as well as health and hygiene programs. These posyandu and other public health programs have now been suspended to prevent large crowds that could help spread the virus. A puskesmas doctor in Sidoarjo, East Java, who requested anonymity, told the Post that it had advised patients not to visit the centers unless absolutely necessary. This was not only to prevent transmitting the virus, but also because some medical workers had been reassigned to contact tracing and were thus unavailable to see patients. Sidoarjo Health Agency's disease prevention and control head, M. Athoillah, who now heads the regency's 22-strong contact tracing team, said that it was not easy to trace contacts, and that involving puskesmas was central to approaching community leaders for better reach. Athoillah said that puskesmas staff were expected to trace and monitor people who had been in direct contact with COVID-19 patients or who had traveled from regions with local transmission to prevent public panic. In some cases, the patients home addresses were inaccurate, owing to the stigma targeting people with COVID-19. The heads of neighborhood and community units [RT and RW] have become paranoid, he said. When residents return home from Malaysia or Japan, they ask us if they needed to report [them] to the police, said Deborah Johana Rattu, who heads a puskesmas in Bandung, West Java. Our challenge is to for [grassroots] people to be on the same page in how they view COVID-19, she said. The social stigma surrounding COVID-19 has led communities to cast out medical workers from their midst and refuse the burials of people who had died of the disease in local cemeteries. Meanwhile, hoaxes and misinformation on the disease were circulating easily online, prompting the country's COVID-19 task force to counter the infodemic by sending messages asking the public to be accepting of these burials The looming issue of mudik (exodus) has also raised concerns among puskesmas staff in smaller regions. If the government does not impose a domestic travel ban, the annual practice of people returning to their hometowns to celebrate Idul Fitri with their families could spread the disease even further. Read also: COVID-19: Central Java governor thanks residents for forgoing 'mudik' this year Dina Nofitria, 36, one of two doctors at a puskesmas in Tulungagung, East Java, said that it was a challenge to maintain morale among fellow medical professionals, especially when dozens of doctors and nurses in other regions had died of COVID-19. "Some asked for leave, when they were really just afraid. When any of us feel down, we like to lift each other up so we can brave this situation," she said. Dina and other puskesmas staff are also tasked with monitoring ODPs and PDPs throughout the virus incubation period, which they try to do online to minimize physical contact. With the heightened risk of exposure to the virus, Dina said she also had to maintain physical distance at home, including her 6-year-old child, who kept wailing, wanting a hug from her. Jittery Boris Johnson addresses the nation after leaving hospital Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 5:32 PM Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has addressed the nation for the first time since he was taken into intensive care following a marked deterioration of his coronavirus infection. In a jittery performance, Johnson heaped praise on the National Health Service (NHS), whom he credited with saving his life. In a nervous video on twitter, the PM claimed he had witnessed the "personal courage" of NHS staff on the frontline of the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Johnson, who contracted COVID-19 (the disease caused by coronavirus) over two weeks ago, was admitted to London's St Thomas' hospital on April 05, where he spent three nights in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) before returning to the general ward on April 09. The PM has now been reportedly discharged from St Thosmas' even though he doesn't look fully recovered from COVID-19. Johnson's praise of the NHS will ring hollow to many British medical professionals who complain of a lack of personal protection equipment (PPE) for staff working on the frontlines against the deadly COVID-19 disease. Shortage of PPE is believed to have directly contributed to the death of at least 19 British medical workers during the coronavirus outbreak. Furthermore, Johnson's uneasy performance is unlikely to rally the nation, especially as the death toll continues to rise with no respite in sight. Indeed, just before Johnson released his video on twitter it was announced that a further 737 people have succumbed to COVID-19 across the UK, bringing the national death toll to 10,612. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address By PTI SABROOM (TRIPURA): A middle-aged woman, who is reportedly mentally-challenged, has been stranded on an islet in Feni river along the India-Bangladesh border in south Tripura district since April 2, officials said on Monday. She was stranded after Bangladeshis, with help of the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), tried to push her into India, while the Border Security Force (BSF) resisted their attempts, they said. "People of Bangladesh are providing food and water to her after attempts by local Bangladeshis and the BGB to push her into India failed," a BSF official at Kathalchhari border outpost told PTI. Residents of Kathalchhari and Amtali villages along the border claimed the BGB personnel along with locals have tried to push the woman into the Indian territory from three different places since April 2. "On the afternoon of April 2, we heard a lot of noise near the river opposite our house. We saw 20 Bangladeshis trying to push a woman into India from the other side of the river and BGB personnel were encouraging them," Rupam Basak (26), a resident of Kathalchhari, told a group of journalists. Tripura shares an 856-km long boundary with Bangladesh. A 67-km stretch along the Tripura Frontier is unfenced, including three km along Kathalchhari and Amtali villages, according to BSF officials. Another villager, Sushanta Basak, said the bid to push the woman into the Indian territory took place right in front of the BGB's Ramgarh border outpost. Jharna Chakraborty, another local resident, said the woman appears to be a Bangladeshi national. "A few women from Amtali village spoke to the stranded woman by shouting out to her. Apparently, she is Bangladeshi as she calls water 'paani' whereas Indian Bengalis call it 'jol'. Moreover, she gave a reference of Mirpur in Dhaka and said she was in love with a man named Faruk who recently married another woman," Chakraborty said. She said Bangladesh should admit the woman to a mental asylum on humanitarian grounds. A BSF spokesperson said he visited the area and conducted an extensive inquiry. "There is no doubt that the woman is from Bangladesh and the neighbouring country should take her back," he said. Meanwhile, the BSF officials said two other mentally-challenged persons, who were pushed into India on Sunday, were sent back to Bangladesh. "A mentally-challenged young woman and a middle-aged man were identified at two different places along the border. They were handed over to Bangladeshi authorities after a meeting was held between sector commanders of the border forces of the two countries," a BSF official said. The official claimed that there has been a clear pattern of Bangladeshis pushing mentally-challenged persons from their country into India. "Perhaps they want the mentally-challenged persons to be treated in mental asylums in Tripura as there are many such patients from the neighbouring country admitted to the lone mental hospital in Agartala," he said. At least 18 mentally-challenged persons from Bangladesh are being treated at Agartala's Modern Psychiatric Hospital. Such persons are handed over to Bangladesh from time to time after their recovery, Dr. Jyotirmoy Ghosh of the hospital said. One such patient, Bithi Akhter, was handed over to her family in Bangladesh after being treated for eight years in Tripura, he said. Amaravati: The Andhra Pradesh government will distribute 16 crore masks to state people and expedite the third survey. During a review meeting held here on Sunday, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy instructed the officials to distribute 3 masks each to the 5.3 crore people in the state. A total of 1.43 crore people were mapped during the third survey out of 1.47 crore people. During the survey, 32,349 people were referred to medical examination by field staff. The doctors were asked to carry out tests on 9,107 among them. However, the Chief Minister directed the officials to conduct tests on all the 32,349 members. "There should be special focus in the zones where COVID-19 is prevalent," the Chief Minister said and sought details on the clusters, red zone, and hotspot areas in the state. He also instructed the officials to prioritize high-risk patients such as senior citizens, BP, diabetic, and other patients with ailments. To assess the level of virus infection in the state, the health department is going to conduct 45,000 tests across the state prioritizing the COVID-19 prevalent zones. The Chief Minister further directed the officials to ensure fulfilling qualitative treatment and train every medical and paramedical personnel in the treatment of COVID-19. As of 9 am on Sunday, 417 positive COVID-19 are active in the state. Among the active cases, 13 are foreign returnees, 12 are infected from the foreign returnees, 199 are Markhaz returnees, 161 are those who came in contact with Markhaz returnees, and 32 cases are of those who returned from other states and other means. In India total number of coronavirus cases, stands at 8,447 out of which 7409 are active cases, 764 discharge and 1 migrant patient and the death toll at 273 as per Ministry of Health data at 7.30 am IST on Monday(April 13, 2020). Melinda Gates, wife of billionaire businessman and Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has warned that there will be dead bodies all over t... Melinda Gates, wife of billionaire businessman and Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has warned that there will be dead bodies all over the streets of Africa if the world does not act fast enough. The billionaire wife stated this while speaking on the effect of the Coronavirus disease in the third world countries on CNN. Melinda said her heart was in Africa, adding that she is worried that the continent might not be able to handle the devastating effect of the virus. Its going to be horrible in the developing world. Part of the reasons you are seeing the case numbers still do not look very bad, is because they dont have access to many tests. Look at what is happening in Ecuador, they are putting bodies out on the streets, you are going to see that in countries in Africa, Mrs Gates noted. Melinda fears things will get worst for Africa once cases peak due to poor health care systems and lack of humanitarian supports in the continent She pointed out that her worst fear was when she saw what China had to do to isolate enormous part of its population. My first thought was Africa. How in the world are they going to deal with this. I have been in townships all over Africa and slums. When we talk in country physical distancing and hand-washing, if you live in slums who cant physically distance, you have to go out and get your meals. You dont have clean water to wash your hands, she added. Six individuals in Mississippi died, and many structures in Louisiana were damaged on Easter Sunday by ground-breaking storms seethed across the Deep South. One individual in Mississippi's Walthall County, two in Lawrence County and three in Jefferson Davis County, were killed by the storm, Emergency Management Agency director Greg Michel said. Different parts of Mississippi strong winds were moving through, and close to the Alabama state line, a tornado showed up National Weather Service authorities said. Over parts of Louisiana, multiple tornadoes appeared, and the weather service reported damaging winds. Utility companies had a vast number of blackouts. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries. The storms damaged somewhere in the range 300 homes in and around the city of Monroe, West Monroe and the rest of Ouachita Parish, Jamie Mayo said, the mayor of Monroe, La., interviewed in a local station. Appointees at State Fire Marshal are conveying to the Monroe area in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) assistance with their Shreveport-based USAR accomplices to Ouachita Parish fire agencies. Their teams will likewise be offering Incident Support team assets to local responding agencies. Police are asking that individuals not go driving around to look at the damage that the storm caused. Electrical cables and trees are down in parts of the Ouachita Parish territory. Emergency crews and responders are attempting to carry out their responsibilities and they need the streets clear so they can reestablish power lines and survey the damage to the city. Read Also: Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary May Shed Light on What Really Happened During Coronavirus Lockdown Monroe Regional Airport canceled flights, the storm ripped the siding off structures and dissipated debris on runways. Almost $30 million were the total cost of the damaged planes inside the hangar, airport director Ron Phillips told the News-Star. The hangar belongs to AV Flight. In Texas, two tornadoes were confirmed. Lighting damaged a church roof, and steeple in Morgan County, Alabama. Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Eddie Hicks informed AL.com, also in Priceville, Shoals Creek Baptist Church, around 12:45 p.m., firefighters from Priceville and Somerville were able to put out the flames. Though no injuries were reported around the said churches. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said that the incident could be a tough day weather-wise. They advised individuals to be aware of the weather. There are significant winds and tornadoes which can be dangerous that come through Mississippi. He also declared a state of emergency to ensure the safety and health of Mississippians in the response to what happened. Authorities are working around the clock and will not rest until it's over. They deploying all resources available for their people and their property. Climate trackers said to the individuals living in Mississippi, Alabama, and western Georgia should make a considerable risk for intense storms that may come. At the same time, a significant part of the remainder of the South was, at any rate, a peripheral chance. Related Article: Fact Check: Harvard Scientist Arrested for Creating Coronavirus, Selling it to China? @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. President Donald Trump at the daily briefing on the CCP virus in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on April 6, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) Trump Campaign Sues TV Station Over Manipulated Audio Ad on COVID-19 President Donald Trumps reelection campaign filed a defamation lawsuit on April 13 against an NBC-affiliated television station for airing an ad falsely claiming the president called the COVID-19 outbreak a hoax. The ad was cut by super PAC Priorities USA, which the complaint (pdf) filed by the Trump campaign identified as far-left. The advertisement, entitled Exponential Threat, does not just contain false and defamatory statements about President Trumpit is far more insidious and, ultimately, far more dangerous, the complaint stated. Naming the defendant as Wisconsin-based WJFW-NBC, the complaint alleges: The advertisement was produced through the use of digital technology by taking audio clips from Trump Campaign events and piecing those clips together to manufacture a blatantly false statement that was never said by President Trump: The coronavirus, this is their new hoax.' The campaign said in the complaint that the deceitful alteration of the audio made it seem as though the word this referred to the virus, while it instead refers directly to the Democrats politicization of the pandemic. The CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, has spread aggressively across the United States, with a Johns Hopkins tally noting more than 558,000 infections across America as of April 13, while the number of recorded fatalities attributed to COVID-19 stands at more than 22,000. The words The coronavirusthis is their new hoax, identified in the complaint, came from a Trump rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Feb. 28, according to multiple fact-checkers, including Snopes and PolitiFact, which provided the full context of the presidents remarks. Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, theyre politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, Hows President Trump doing? They go, Oh, not good, not good. They have no clue. They dont have any clue. They cant even count their votes in Iowa. They cant even count. No, they cant. They cant count their votes, Trump said at the rally. One of my people came up to me and said, Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didnt work out too well. They couldnt do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was not a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. Theyve been doing it since you got in. Its all turning. They lost. Its all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax, he said. The audio referred to in the complaint appears to have spliced disparate parts of Trumps remarks from that rally. On Feb. 29, the day after the rally, Trump explained his remarks in a press conference. Im not talking about whats happening here; Im talking what theyre doing, he said, referring to Democrats. Thats the hoax. The Trump campaign sent the Wisconsin station a cease and desist letter on March 25, the complaint stated, after which WJFW-NBC allegedly aired the ad 36 more times over 11 days. It is disappointing that WJFW-NBC would knowingly continue to broadcast this blatantly false ad and perpetrate falsehoods on the American people, even after the Trump campaign provided proof in good faith of the ads falsity, Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement from the campaign. Baku, Azerbaijan, April 13 Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend: A seasonal fishing moratorium has been announced in Azerbaijan, Hikmat Alizade, director of the State Environmental Safety Service of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan told reporters, Trend reports. Alizade noted that the protection of fish stocks existing in natural pools is one of the most pressing issues on agenda. He called on all individuals and legal entities involved in fishing not to fish during the prohibited period, and to comply with the rules. The residents of Damwaateon and Mwaakpa in the Wa West District, have appealed to the government to extend the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme to benefit people in the communities. They said there were vulnerable people in the community who could be enrolled unto the programme to help alleviate their plight and improve their livelihoods. Mr Yiso Soonye, a member of the Damwaateon community made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the community on Monday. We have heard that government has been helping the vulnerable people by giving them money, but we have not seen anything like that here, nobody in this community is benefiting from that, but we have so many vulnerable people here, he said. He noted that in some places, even strong people were receiving those monies and could not fathom why the government had neglected their community in the LEAP programme. Mr Soonye, therefore, appealed to the Wa West District Chief Executive, Mr Edward Laabiri Sabo and other stakeholders in charge of the LEAP programme to come to their aid by ensuring that the vulnerable and disadvantaged people at Damwaateon community also benefited from that laudable initiative. Madam Soyeon Diriye, a member of the Mwaakpa community, said the LEAP programme would have been of great relief to them as they would channel those monies into productive ventures such as shea butter processing and farming. Meanwhile, Mr Yussif Gizuure, the Assembly Member for the area, encouraged the people to persistently demand such social interventions from duty bearers, especially whenever they came to their communities to campaign. He assured them that he would also engage with those duty bearers to extend those interventions to the communities and called for their support in that regard. The LEAP Programme is the Government of Ghanas flagship Social Protection intervention, which was initiated in 2008 to reduce poverty among the extremely poor and vulnerable households in the country. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Veteran Army officer Lt Gen (retd) K P Dhal Samanta, who had played a valiant role in 1971 and Kargil wars, died at a hospital in New Delhi on Monday following a prolonged illness. He was 70. Samanta, who hailed from Odisha, was undergoing treatment in a private hospital in the national capital, breathed his last on Monday, family sources said. One of the most illustrious military generals that Odisha has produced, he is survived by wife and a son. A host of dignitaries including Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Union Petroleum and Steel Minister Dharmendra Pradhan mourned the demise of the former Army officer, who was very proud of his Odia legacy. "Odisha mourns the loss of one of its most illustrious sons, Lt Gen (retd) KP Dhal Samanta. He was a veteran of 1971 War, Op Blue Star, Siachen & Kargil War. A proud alumnus of Sainik School, BBSR retired as DG of Rashtriya Rifles Indias main counter insurgency force in J&K," Patnaik tweeted. Pradhan said on twitter: "Pained to learn about the demise of retd. Lt Gen KPD Samanta. A proud proponent of Odisha, its culture and values within the Armed Forces, Shri Samanta was one of the finest military generals that Odisha has produced. A veteran of military operations, his death is a huge loss." BJP national vice president Baijayanta Panda also expressed grief and conveyed condolences to the family of Dhal Samanta. "Very saddened to hear of the passing of Lt Gen KP Dhal Samanta. After a distinguished career, he continued to be active in society & was a passionate, reasonable & principled voice for the good of India," Panda said on twitter. Many others including Odisha ministers, academicians, researchers and defence analysts also expressed deep grief over the demise of Lt Gen Samanta and said his death was a big loss for the country. A product of the first batch of Sainik School Bhubaneswar, Lt Gen Samanta had retired as Director General of the Rashtriya Rifles, Indias premier counter insurgency force deployed in Kashmir. Commissioned at the young age of 19 to the Regiment of Artillery, Gen Samanta fought in the 1971 war on the eastern front and was awarded the Poorvi Star. He was among the veterans invited regularly to Bangladesh as a mark of honour for their valiant efforts in the liberation of Bangladesh. Later in his career, he participated in Operation Blue Star and the larger fight against terrorism in Punjab. He then went on to command an artillery regiment in the worlds highest battlefield the Siachen Glacier. During the 1999 Kargil war, Samanta was instrumental in helping deploy the 155 mm Bofors guns in difficult conditions. The act tilted the course of the war in Indias favour. Gen Samanta earned a considerable reputation in roles involving aid to civil authority. As Sub Area Commander of Bihar, Jharkhand & Odisha, he contributed immensely in providing aid during various disasters and formulating policies on disaster management besides managing military assets in the three states. In his last military assignment as DG Rashtriya Rifles (2007-2010), he was instrumental in leading, managing and modernizing the then 92,000-strong counter-insurgency force. On retirement, he was made Member of the then newly created Armed Forces Tribunal in Kolkata before setting down in Bhubaneswar 2014 onwards. Besides this, Gen. Samanta was a specialist in Group Behavioural Science and a trained Interviewing Officer. He remained associated with the Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR) on related issues besides being in the expert panel with the UPSC. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Switch the Market flag Open the menu and switch the Market flag for targeted data from your country of choice. for targeted data from your country of choice. Hikers in Anchorage, Alaska, were positioned dangerously close to a massive glacier collapse on April 11. Jason R Rouch Jr said he was enjoying the beautiful weather and decided to hike out to the Portage Glacier before the incident. I wanted to get a photo fairly close but still in a safe spot so I walked over to land next to the glacier. Very shortly after I got to land, I heard the ice begin to crack, and each second it grew more intense, Rouch wrote in a Facebook post. A giant piece of ice the size of a house weighing probably tens of thousands of pounds fell right in front of me! he added. Hey Sue, get off of there. Get off the ice! Get off the ice! a man can be heard yelling in the video to a fellow hiker. In his Facebook post, Rouch said this would most likely be his last time on the ice this season. Standing 10 stories tall and miles long, Portage Glacier is described as one of Alaskas most accessible glaciers and most popular attractions. Credit: Jason R Rouch Jr via Storyful Subscriber content preview Photo by Brian Miller [enlarge] The Grand Central Buildings signature through-block arcade will be preserved, though the Grand Central Bakery, which has operated there since 1972, has ended its lease. Early last year, Unico Properties sold the Grand Central block in Seattle's Pioneer Square for about $45 million to a Goldman Sachs-related LLC. Unico apparently still retains a share in the new ownership. . . . NEW YORK, April 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Marubeni Corporation ("Marubeni" or the "Company") (OTCMKTS: MARUY). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980. The investigation concerns whether Marubeni and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices. [Click here for information about joining the class action] In November 2019, Marubeni reported a loss of 3.9 billion yen ($35.85 million) related to inappropriate recognition of loss from its U.S. agribusiness Gavilon's trade in Italy and Spain in the last business year. Then, on March 16, 2020, Reuters published an article entitled "Exclusive: Flying blind - Marubeni's Gavilon ignored Brazilian red flags." The Reuters article reported, among other issues, that "Brazilian risk controllers at Gavilon do Brasil raised red flags as early as June 2016 about lax accounting that ultimately let the company book inaccurate estimates for freight costs, boosting its profits and masking losses"; "an Ernst & Young audit flagged to Gavilon do Brasil managers that its processes left room for fraud"; and that "it was only in 2019 when Gavilon adopted a new accounting methodology that major discrepancies were revealed between actual shipping costs and the freight costs recorded in Gavilon's books, leading to an internal investigation." On this news, Marubeni's share price fell $2.00, or 3.96%, to close at $40.56 on March 16, 2020. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP swilloughby@pomlaw.com 888-476-6529 ext. 9980 A controversail church leader from New Jersey, who was sentenced to serve 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing the churchs funds, died from coronavirus earlier this month, the church said in a letter. Jermaine Grant, of Burlington Township, who led the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ church in Harlem, was 44. He was known to his devout followers as the Holy God Sent Comforter and Chief High Priest Tazadaqyah, but some members who have left the church described him as a cult leader who gained complete influence of his followers lives through manipulation and belittlement. At the time of his death, Grant was awaiting to begin serving his sentence. (Grant) was a devoted and committed father and spiritual and religious leader, who dedicated his life to his family, the ICGJC, and helping those in need, his attorney, Gerald B. Lefcourt, said in a statement. The Daily News first reported his death. Raised in the Bronx, Grant dropped out of school at the age of 14 and was drawn to the extremist Hebrew Israelite movement, which asserts that African Americans are Gods true chosen people and are the real descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Grant quickly rose through the ranks of the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ. After a reported trip to Israel and Egypt in the early 2000s, Grant returned and told members he was the only appointed teacher of the bible on earth, though former members dispute if the trip actually happened. The leader at the time deemed Grant as being the Holy Spirit in the flesh, allowing him to take the reigns of the church, according to Nicholas Johnson, who left the church in 2019 after 20 years. (It) was easy for him to get control after that, Johnson said. Grant soon casted great influence over the movement across the country. In 2008, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described Grant as the man with the most power over the extremist Hebrew Israelite movement. He preached that black Jesus would return to earth to enslave and kill white people, according to the Law Center, which is why the organization has classified the church as a black nationalist hate group. As his influence in the movement grew, federal authorities launched a wide-ranging investigation in 2007 into Grant and his handling of the churchs money, which he had complete control over, authorities said. Members of the church were subjected to 20 percent tithes and other annual and monthly fees, including a monthly fee for all ranking men over the age of 12, the former members said. Prosecutors said from at least 2007 to 2015, Grant, and the churchs treasurer, used a variety of methods to carry out a multi-faceted scheme, which helped Grant pay for vacations, luxury items and private school tuition for his children. Grant, and Lincoln Warrington, of Teaneck, were eventually charged by the U.S. Attorneys Office of New Jersey on multiple tax evasion charges and a conspiracy to defraud the United States. Authorities said Grant failed to report $5.3 million to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of which he took from the church to enrich himself. Grant pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States and was sentenced in January to 18 months in federal prison. Lefcourt, his attorney, said after the sentencing that he thought it was inappropriate that federal authorities investigated the black church for nearly a decade, while white televangelists often splurge on items such as private jets. I have never seen a church prosecution like this, Lefcourt said. At Grants sentencing, assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret A. Mahoney said Grant fooled the members of his church and used its funds like a piggy bank. Jermaine Grant is surrounded by members of his church after he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison earlier this year. But members of the church continued to support Grant and 100 turned up to greet him after his sentencing in Newark federal court. They cheered and chanted as he made his way through the crowd. At the back of the courtroom during his sentencing were a handful of former members of the church who recently left and have described Grant as a fraudster whose church operated as a cult. They told NJ Advance Media that church members were unaware of the charges levied against Grant and the sentence that came with it because they were forbidden to read news about Grant, the former members said. The church described his death as a tremendous loss." The letter advised members to process the loss by watching video clips of Grant since the church cannot gather due to the coronavirus pandemic. Satan made his move and now we will patiently wait for the Lords response, the letter said. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Joe Atmonavage may be reached at jatmonavage@njadvancemedia.com. Follow on Twitter @monavage. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. The coronavirus lockdown has reportedly allowed cyber criminals more opportunities to engage in fraudulent activities and dupe people off their finances. They are doing this by making them give out bank details or in some cases, transferring money to false COVID-19 relief accounts. The coronavirus lockdown has reportedly allowed cyber criminals more opportunities to engage in fraudulent activities and dupe people off their finances. They are doing this by making them give out bank details or in some cases, transferring money to false COVID-19 relief accounts. The Union Home Ministry had earlier recommended people to follow Cyber Dost Twitter handle and National Cyber Crime Porting Portal - cybercrime.gov.in for info on cyber-crime amid a rise in social media use and online transactions. Home Ministry, through @CyberDost, is sharing cyber security tips for work from home and also against financial crimes; please follow the handle and use the resources on national cyber crime reporting portal https://t.co/Q1NcHiLt2j#IndiaFightCorona pic.twitter.com/iXWj2s5FHo PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) April 12, 2020 Banks, too, have taken it on themselves to make customers aware of such fraudulent Unified Payment Interface (UPI) IDs. State Bank of India had tweeted, warning users of fraudulent practices. Beware of the fake UPI IDs that are making the rounds in the guise of Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance & Relief in Emergency Situations a.k.a. PM Cares. Make sure your monetary donation to fight against the global pandemic is going into the right hands. @PMOIndia #PMCaresFund, SBI posted. Beware of the fake UPI IDs that are making the rounds in the guise of Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance & Relief in Emergency Situations a.k.a. PM Cares. Make sure your monetary donation to fight against the global pandemic is going into the right hands. @PMOIndia #PMCaresFund pic.twitter.com/3QcFeSbML0 State Bank of India (@TheOfficialSBI) March 30, 2020 Axis Bank sent an email to its customers stating that imposters may try to contact bank users to help them postpone their EMI payments and ask for their OTP, CVV, password or PIN related to their banking accounts. The bank urged customers to stay aware since sharing such details could allow fraudsters to have unwarranted access to one's banking information and lead to the loss of finances. ICICI Bank sent out an email to its customers saying, In such a pandemic, when there is a general fear, fraudsters wait for an opportunity like this to break into the systems using different fraudulent methods. The bank urged customers to check if the senders email address looks different from their display name and check if the email contains attachment or creates some type of urgency or is asking reply or act immediately. ICICI also asked customers to look if the mail has spelling mistakes or has grammatical errors or is unprofessionally drafted and verify if the mail is send from unknown source/person or mail has unknown URLs. HDFC issued a series of tweets to increase awareness on EMI moratorium frauds and educate general public on ways to keep money safe from fraudsters. It is important for all to note: @HDFC_Bank will never ask for your #OTP, #NetBanking/#MobileBanking password, #CustomerID, UPI PIN for deferring your #EMI payments, the bank tweeted. In the current situation, the 21-day lockdown already seems to be going on for an eternity. And, given that the spread of the contagion isnt going to slow down in the next couple of weeks, it will be wise if we brace ourselves for an indefinite extension of the lockdown. iStock With that being said, people are already planning on how they are going to splurge on themselves, once the lockdown is lifted. And boy, do we have to say, that some of the ideas seem bonkers. We spoke to 6 people and asked what they planned to do after the lockdown: 1. 'Revenge' Shopping iStock Says Ritwik Ghosh, a final year economics student in Delhi, I had a trip planned to Belgium for a week because this is the only time that I can actually take a proper vacation. The lockdown and the pandemic was really a bummer for a number of students. We also missed our farewell. "So, I have planned to go on a mad shopping spree, once things get back to normal. I intentionally plan on going for the more expensive stuff, things that I would usually not go for. I have the money that I had saved, plus, I missed out on a lot of shopping anyway. Think of it like avenging my now dead vacation plans. 2. Going To A Fancy Spa/Salon iStock Dharmesh Kanojia, a graphic designer at a notable publication house in Delhi, says that he will be going to a high-end salon. I am also considering visiting a fancy spa, and just go bonkers. I have never been to a spa before and would normally get my hair cut at the local barbers. The lockdown made me realise that I had actually often wondered what happens at those fancy places. Now I am just curious. And because it will be a one-time thing, I should be able to afford that, says Dharmesh. 3. Buying A New Phone, TV & A Laptop iStock Ankur Raj, a desk editor, at a notable economic and financial news website in Kolkata, says, I will be buying a couple of personal gadgets and upgrading some electronics for my home. The lockdown made me realise that it has actually been ages since I upgraded my television and laptop, and the current that I use, is just hopelessly outdated. "I would not have realised this, had I not been forced to use them for a prolonged time. Since there really isnt a good time to make a purchase like this, I will just wait a month or so to see where my finances stand, and for any upcoming new models to be launched. 4. A Month-Long Vacation iStock Paras Verma, who works as a content strategist in a Noida-based start-up says, We have been working way harder it seems during the lockdown. I need to take some time off from work. I plan to take a short vacation to Bhimtal, or Sattal for a month or so, otherwise, I think I will just lose my mind. On the other hand, a week-long trip to Laos or Cambodia also seems to be a great option. 5. Checking Into A Resort For A Week iStock Remember when Indian bowler Yuzvendra Chahal said that he wouldnt come back home for 3 years after the lockdown? It seems that has inspired Sahil Garg, a trade analyst from Gurugram. He says, I will check into a resort for a week. I will go to my office in the morning and go back to the resort in the evening. I live alone and have had to live all this while without coming into contact with another human being. It feels like it has been ages since I actually met a human being face to face. 6. A Multicourse Dinner At A Fancy Restaurant iStock This lockdown has been especially hard on people who are in a relationship but couldnt stay together. Inadvertently, for most of these people, this is turning out to be a long-distance relationship. Aroop Dasgupta, an entrepreneur based out of Bengaluru says, My partner and I love to eat. We would go out to eat regularly and would often eat at new places. Our long drives and trips would also revolve around food. After the lockdown is lifted, we will be going to possibly the fanciest and the most high-end restaurant in the city, and have a multicourse meal. This will, of course, be following a thorough spa session, but the restaurant will be the key. Seems like people have their plans all laid out and waiting eagerly for the day to come when the lockdown ends. We only wish that this lockdown ends soon enough. Australian software startups are gearing up to lure GPs and allied health professionals away from hosting online consultations on Zoom and Skype, pitching their platforms as safer alternatives. Healthcare practices must do their due diligence to ensure theyre using a telehealth platform that meets patient privacy and security standards, chief executive of video platform Coviu, Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, said. Coviu CEO and co-founder Dr Silvia Pfeiffer. While the use of video conferencing services like Zoom has skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic, legal experts have raised concerns about the privacy risks posed by these services. "Certain legacy teleconferencing platforms do not use end-to-end encryption, which is critical when dealing with sensitive patient data," Dr Pfeiffer said. The commerce ministry on Monday said it has relaxed time period for submission of physical copy of application for availing benefits under Transport and Marketing Assistance (TMA) scheme for agri exports amidst lockdown due to COVID-19 outbreak. In a public notice, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), under the commerce ministry, said that the physical copy with prescribed documents can be filed manually by October 30 this year. "Provision for submission of physical copy of application with the concerned RA (regional authority) has been relaxed," DGFT said. In April last year, the directorate had laid out a detailed procedure for claiming benefits under the Transport and Marketing Assistance (TMA) scheme, which aims at boosting agricultural exports. In March 2019, the government announced this scheme for providing financial assistance for transportation and marketing of agriculture products to boost exports of such commodities to certain countries in Europe and North America. Under the TMA plan, the government reimburses a certain portion of freight charges and provide assistance for marketing of agricultural produce. The scheme covers freight and marketing assistance for export by air as well as sea (both normal and refrigerated cargo). As per the procedure, application for claiming assistance can be filed online by a registered and eligible exporter having a valid RCMC (Registration Cum Membership Certificate), issued by export promotion councils or commodity boards. Last year, the government approved an agriculture export policy with an aim to double the shipments to USD 60 billion by 2022. It is aimed at boosting exports of agriculture commodities such as tea, coffee and rice and increase the country's share in global agri-trade. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Vice President Joe Biden, check his watch during a commercial break as he participates in a Democratic presidential primary debate at CNN Studios, Sunday, March 15, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Associated Press Former Vice President Joe Biden is lagging behind a pair of Democratic governors and three of President Donald Trump's public health experts when it comes to trustworthiness on handling the coronavirus, according to a new Insider poll. We asked respondents: "When it comes to the official advice regarding coronavirus, please rate how much you trust the following messengers on a scale on 1 to 5." Biden's average came in at 2.69, which is in the "somewhat distrust" territory, coming short of a 3 for "neither trust nor distrust." Back in late-March, Biden was at 2.76. Now, he's about even with Vice President Mike Pence at 2.67, and is not too far ahead of Trump at 2.48. Only 28% of respondents said they trust Biden to handle the pandemic response. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Consistently billed as a steady hand who can unify the country, former Vice President Joe Biden gets low marks from Americans on how much he can be trusted to handle the defining issue of the moment. Now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Biden is lagging behind Demorcratic Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York in a new Insider poll on the coronavirus, and running about even with Vice President Mike Pence. Biden, 77, has been confined to a home TV studio in Delaware, forcing him to toe the line between offering a contrast to Trump but not backseat driving as a candidate not holding political office for the first time in his near half-century career. Insider asked poll respondents to rate Biden along with top Trump administration officials and governors on trustworthiness in handling COVID-19. We asked respondents: "When it comes to the official advice regarding coronavirus, please rate how much you trust the following messengers on a scale on 1 to 5." According to our poll, 1 means strongly distrust, 2 means somewhat distrust, 3 means neither trust nor distrust, 4 means somewhat trust, and 5 means strongly trust. Participants were asked to mark "NA" if they were unfamiliar with the person. Story continues Biden came in at 2.69, down from 2.76 in late-March. That's right about where Pence sits in the latest poll at 2.67 well within the "somewhat distrust" territory and shy of "neither trust nor distrust." Cuomo and Newsom, on the other hand, are atr 3.31 and 3.15, respectively. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they "strongly distrust" Biden on the coronavirus, with 43% overall indicating they have some degree of distrust in what Biden says about the pandemic. Conversely, only 28% overall said they trust what Biden says, with only 10% indicating they "strongly trust" the former VP. SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weigh its sample based on race or income. A total of 1,109 respondents were collected on April 10-11 with a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points and a 95% confidence level. Read the original article on Business Insider Emirates Post has opened its new international operations hub in Dubai International Airport to provide global e-commerce, parcel and logistics brands a gateway to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and regional markets. In the wake of Covid-19 and the restrictions imposed on regional and international travel, the postal, parcel and logistics industries face a series of setbacks including lack of access to key markets, cancelled flights and delays in delivery. In response, Emirates Post is using the new hub at Dubai International Airport to facilitate the shipment, sorting and delivery of goods from around the world. The system allows the postal operator to provide the fastest, most consistent and cost-effective entry points to the Middle East market that partners and third-party companies can also effectively tap into, said the statement from the company. Emirates Post uses new and easy-to-use API connectivity tools that seamlessly transfer data from anywhere in the world into local operations, customs and domestic systems, enabling them to process orders quickly and efficiently, it added. Group CEO Abdulla Alashram said "Despite the disruption caused by Covid-19, Emirates Post Group Company is constantly taking measures to provide essential services. "We are the largest domestic player in the UAE and continue to operate international premium outbound services to over 210 destinations, including a full range of postal services to Saudi Arabia and other key countries," he added. Emirates Post already possesses one of the leading express domestic delivery operations in the UAE, which it has further expanded to keep up with demand. Throughout the process, it will adhere stringently to government directives on sanitation and social distancing, with contactless deliveries and staff members wearing masks and gloves as well as maintaining the minimum mandated distance, stated Alashram. "Emirates Post is committed to connecting people around the world and with our DXB airport base, we are bolstering the system to ensure that delivery is not disrupted by current events," he noted. "With demand for domestic deliveries from both local and international e-commerce and parcel companies, this has accelerated our efforts in meeting requirements whilst growing as a company," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Live COVID-19 updates: Cases on USS Theodore Roosevelt rise to 550 -- Navy People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 13:37, April 12, 2020 BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The world is now in a battle against COVID-19, a disease caused by a previously unknown coronavirus that has spread to over 200 countries and regions. The following are the updates on the contagious disease. - - - - WASHINGTON -- The number of COVID-19 cases on USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, has risen to 550, the U.S. Navy said on Saturday. In an update, the U.S. Navy said 92 percent of the USS Theodore Roosevelt crew members have been tested for COVID-19, with 550 positive and 3,673 negative results, and that a total of 3,696 sailors have moved ashore. - - - - NEW DELHI -- India has recorded 31 new deaths and 827 new cases due to the coronavirus on Sunday, according to the federal health ministry. The death toll reached 273 and the total number of confirmed cases stood at 8,356, with 7,367 active cases in the country. - - - - WASHINGTON -- The United States and China have to facilitate bilateral cooperation on combating COVID-19, which is affecting over 180 countries and regions, to save the future of the global community, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has said. "Let's work together to respond to this global crisis, to save people's lives, to save the future of global economy, and to save the future of the global community. This is our paramount task," Cui said in an interview on April 3 with Ian Bremmer at weekly digital and broadcast show Gzero World, which was aired nationally on Saturday by American Public Television. - - - - SAO PAULO -- The Brazilian Ministry of Health said Saturday that the country registered 68 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 1,124. Brazil has the highest number of deaths and cases in Latin America, with a mortality rate of 5.4 percent, according to the ministry. In the last few hours, 1,089 new cases have been registered, bring the count to 20,727. - - - - ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's confirmed COVID-19 cases have risen to 5,011 with 86 deaths, according to the data updated by the country's health ministry on Saturday night. The country's eastern Punjab province continued as the most affected area with a total of 2,414 cases followed by southern Sindh province which has 1,318 confirmed cases. - - - - GENEVA -- The COVID-19 pandemic has hit over 22,000 healthcare workers across 52 countries and regions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday. According to its daily situation report, 22,073 COVID-19 cases among healthcare workers have been reported to the WHO as of Wednesday, April 8. - - - - BEIJING -- Chinese health authority said Sunday that it received reports of 99 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Saturday, of which 97 were imported. Two new domestically transmitted cases were reported, both in Heilongjiang Province, the National Health Commission said in a daily report. No death was reported Saturday. And 49 new suspected cases, all imported ones, were reported on the mainland. - - - - NEW YORK -- The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States topped 20,000 Saturday afternoon, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. A total of 20,071 people have died of the disease among 519,453 confirmed cases in the country as of 4 p.m. local time (2000 GMT), the CSSE said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address John William Kirby Kelley, 19, is set to enter his plea in Alexandria on May 8, according to a weekend court filing. The plea hearing could not be scheduled earlier because of the public health crisis, Assistant U.S. Attorney Carina Cuellar wrote. The U.S. Navy is reporting the first COVID-19 related death of a sailor onboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a crew of 5,000 that has in recent weeks been ravaged in recent weeks by the virus. The U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs Office on Monday morning issued a statement that said the sailor died Monday at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Guam. The sailor had been in intensive care since April 9. The name of the deceased is being withheld until family can be notified. The sailor was one of four other sailors on the Roosevelt who had been removed from the ship on March 30 and place in isolation. The four received medical checks twice each day from medical personnel. On April 9, he was found to be unresponsive during one of these checks and was taken to the naval hospital. The Roosevelt made headlines in recent weeks when the captain, Brett Crozier, authored a letter pleading for help as coronavirus swept through the ship. In it, he wrote "We are not at war. Sailors do not have to die. When the letter was made public, it generated a good deal of outrage across the country. The Roosevelt was ordered to Guam where the crew could begin receiving treatment once it dock on March 27. Crozier was removed as captain shortly afterward, despite being wildly popular with the crew, because Navy higher-ups expressed a lack of confidence in his ability to lead the ship. Published remarks had the acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly calling Crozier too stupid and too naive to command the ship. Modly resigned a few days later in the face of criticism. The Navy announced late last week that nearly all of the crew had been tested for COVID-19, and 416 sailors had tested positive for the virus, compared to 3,1`70 who had not. Some 2,600 members of the crew have been moved ashore, and just enough sailors are on board to sustain essential services while the entire ship is sanitized. 68 pct of Hanoi Covid-19 cases have no or few symptoms People wait to have samples taken for Covid-19 tests at Ha Loi Village in Me Linh District, Hanoi, April 10, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy. Some 68 percent of Covid-19 patients in Hanoi are either asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms, the Center for Disease Control said on Monday. Only a third of infections could be found if authorities rely just on clinical symptoms, Nguyen Nhat Cam, director of the Hanoi CDC, said, warning even asymptomatic people could spread the disease. "Monitoring and testing are vital in preventing Covid-19." Hanoi's strategy from the very beginning has been to detect and monitor cases early, including through performing Covid-19 tests, so that outbreaks could be extinguished quickly, he said. "Thanks to this strategy of actively collecting samples for testing, Hanoi has detected several sources of infection in the community such as in Ha Loi Village." Ha Loi, with nearly 11,000 residents, was placed under a lockdown on April 7 after at least three people tested positive for the virus. As of Monday morning at least 10 people in the village have been confirmed positive. The village has emerged as the second biggest hotspot in the capital after Bach Mai Hospital. The hospital, linked to at least 45 cases, went into a two-week lockdown, which was lifted on Sunday. Hanoi leads the nation in the number of Covid-19 cases, 125, of whom 58 have recovered and been discharged. The capital has performed mass rapid testing at several locations since March 31. Vietnam has had 262 confirmed cases, 117 of them active. The pandemic has so far spread to 210 countries and territories and claimed more than 114,300 lives. Farm Stores Franchising launches a New Cow in Town campaign to attract new franchisees throughout the state of Georgia. The 63-year-old Miami-based company is a unique pickup drive-thru specialty concept providing groceries, baked goods and select beer & wine, all without leaving ones car. The franchise also provides its franchisees with a special turn-key business model utilizing sustainable shipping containers making for a lower cost of entry for franchisees. Area Representative for Georgia, Kate Stroth is recruiting franchisees for both single and multi-unit ownership in the Atlanta and surrounding areas. The New Cow in Town campaign invites candidates to learn more about the Farm Stores brand and business opportunity while being introduced to Stroth as a supportive player and liaison to corporate offices in Miami. The campaign includes an introduction to ownership, an off-ramp course, as well as downloadable guides to learn about costs associated with franchise ownership. Stroth says, Whether you are leaving a longstanding career or have many years of experience in franchising, making the leap to your own and operate your own business can be quite daunting. We want our prospective franchisees to know we are there for them and will guide them every step of the way not just at opening, but on a continuing basis. Their success is intrinsically tied to our success. To learn more about the qualifications and areas of opportunity with Farm Stores of Georgia, go to: http://www.farmstores.com/georgia-theres-a-new-cow-in-town/ About Farm Stores: Farm Stores is a multi-generational brand with over 65 years delivering a unique neighborhood and community experience. A combination of grocery store, bakery and cafe, Farm Stores gives our customers the freshest products in the most convenient manner without ever having to leave their car! Although Farm Stores has evolved to best serve the needs of todays busy consumer, our brand integrity has remained intact. A nostalgic experience for multiple generations of Floridians, we are now franchising our beloved brand, bringing the Farm Stores experience to communities across America and beyond. ### Iranian officials have welcomed the appointment of Mustafa al-Kadhimi as the new prime minister-designate of Iraq. Abbas Mousavi, spokesman for Irans Foreign Ministry, said the Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes the agreement between all of Iraqs political parties to introduce Khadhimi as the prime minister and sees it as the correct path and step. Irans ambassador to Iraq, Iraj Masjedi, tweeted a similar sentiment, saying that Iran will support whoever is selected by Iraqs parliament. Kadhimi, the head of Iraqs National Intelligence Service, is the third Iraqi prime minister asked to form a cabinet after Adel Abdul Mahdi resigned in December due to anti-government protests. The previous candidate, Adnan al-Zurfi, withdrew after failing to create a cabinet, citing domestic and foreign issues. Gen. Ismail Ghaani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, was in Iraq before Kadhimis nomination. According to Iraqi parliamentarian Hossein Fadaam, who belongs to the political bloc led by Ammar al-Hakim and enjoys close relations with Iran, Ghaani told Iraqi officials in his meetings that Iran will not interfere in Iraqs domestic affairs or in choosing a prime minister. Fadaams comments to an Iraqi television station were reprinted by a number of Iranian media outlets. Ghaani's statement, however, can be construed as an admission that what happens to Iraq is very important for Iran. Iran and Iraq share not only a long border, but also deep religious and cultural ties. Furthermore, since the US invasion of 2003, Irans primary focus has been to expand its influence in the country and prevent the formation of a hostile government such as that of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who in invaded Iran, leading to an 8-year war and costing hundreds of thousands of lives. The Tasnim News Agency predicted that Kadhimi will be successful in forming a cabinet within the mandated 30 days, given that a number of representatives of Iraqs largest blocs were present at his introduction ceremony, something the two previous prime minister candidates did not have. Its article also stated that Kadhimi appears to have the support of Kurdish and Sunni blocs as well. Mehr News Agency reported, Some believe that Kadhimi can help decrease tensions between the US and Iran coming from such a sensitive position as director of national intelligence. However, the article stated that some in Iraq have accused Kadhimi of not fulfilling his duties when the United States assassinated Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Popular Mobilization Units deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Baghdad. Kadhimi says he was not informed and had no knowledge of the decision. The article stated that Kadhimi knows how to be a friend to two sides who do not have a relationship with one another, explaining that Kadhimi had accompanied former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Saudi Arabia and greeted Saudi officials warmly. He is also well aware of the cultural and religious ties between Iran and Iraq and Irans help in Iraq getting through a crisis. According to Irans former ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaeifar, Kadhimi has many challenges ahead of him, including the price of oil, the novel coronavirus and US demands about keeping troops stationed in the country after the parliaments vote to have them removed. (HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Massachusetts resident Douglas Leighton for a scheme in which he allegedly acquired discounted shares in a microcap company, knowingly failed to disclose his holdings and sales, and manipulated the public market for those shares. Leighton, two entities he controlled, and six investors he directed agreed to settlements ordering them to pay nearly $1.5 million in civil penalties, disgorgement, and prejudgment interest. The SECs complaint, filed in federal court in Boston, alleges that Leighton orchestrated the fraud after acquiring millions of shares in MassRoots, Inc., a cannabis-social-media company now based in Los Angeles, California. As alleged, when MassRoots began selling its shares to the public in April 2015, Leighton directed Michael Sullivan, David Hall, Zachary Harvey, Paul Dutra, Jason Harman, and Jessica Geran to manipulate the public market for MassRoots stock, including by making open-market purchases at specific volumes and prices to create an appearance of active trading in and increase the price of MassRoots stock. According to the complaint, Sullivan also used accounts at two separate broker dealers to further create an appearance of volume in and affect the price of MassRoots stock. The complaint further alleges that Leighton acquired and sold shares through Dutchess Opportunity Fund II LP, Azure Capital Corp., and Bass Point Capital LLC, which along with Leighton and the other defendants never disclosed to the investing public, through required SEC filings, their sales and significant ownership of MassRoots stock. Leighton, Azure Capital, Bass Point, Sullivan, Hall, Harvey, Dutra, Harman, and Geran have agreed to settle the matter by consenting, without admitting or denying the SECs allegations, to the entry of final judgments, which are subject to court approval. The judgments would permanently enjoin all of the defendants from violating the beneficial ownership reporting provisions of Sections 13(d) and 16(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 13d-3 and 16a-1 thereunder; Leighton, Bass Point, Azure, and Sullivan from violating the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933; Leighton, Bass Point, and Azure from violating the antifraud provisions Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder; and Leighton and Sullivan from violating the market manipulation provisions of Section 9(a)(2) of the Exchange Act. In addition, the judgment would bar Leighton from serving as an officer or director of a public company and order him to pay a civil penalty of $160,000, and would bar Leighton, Azure Capital, and Bass Point from trading in penny stocks, impose a conduct-based junction restricting their future trading in any stock, and order them jointly and severally to pay disgorgement plus prejudgment interest of nearly $1 million. Leighton has also agreed to settle a follow-on administrative proceeding that bars him from the securities industry. Sullivan has agreed to be barred from trading in penny stocks for five years and to pay a civil penalty of $40,000 and disgorgement plus prejudgment interest of $63,228. The final judgments would order Hall, Harvey, Dutra, Harman, and Geran to pay civil penalties of $15,000 each, and would order payments of disgorgement plus prejudgment interest of $67,080 by Hall, $32,720 by Harvey, and $28,906 by Dutra. As one of the world's most densely populated regions, eastern China has been plagued by air pollution. The future projection of atmospheric diffusion conditions conducive to extreme haze events over eastern China is therefore of great importance for government emission regulations and public human health. "Under the RCP8.5 scenario (a high emissions scenario), while the warming caused by the increase of greenhouse gases dominates, the effects induced by aerosol emissions reduction cannot be ignored. The effects of global change on China's atmospheric diffusion conditions have been widely studied in recent years. But, studies on the effects of aerosol emissions reduction on atmospheric diffusion conditions is still lacking," explains Weiyang Feng, from the group of Prof. Minghuai Wang, Nanjing University. In order to fill this knowledge gap, Feng and her coauthors studied the changes of atmospheric diffusion conditions under the RCP8.5 scenario on the basis of three sets of single-model ensemble experiments from 2006-2100, and further explored the contributions from aerosol emissions reduction and increased greenhouse gases. The results have been recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters. "Output from the Community Earth System Model large ensemble experiments allows us to examine the changes of extreme events under different future emission scenarios," Feng says. They found that the relative strength of haze events in the North China Plain region have increased under the RCP8.5 scenario, induced by a stronger and longer-lasting anticyclone anomaly in eastern China. The strengthened anticyclone anomaly is mainly induced by increased northern wave train convergence and the longer duration of the anticyclone anomaly is mainly induced by stronger local feedback from the basic state. It was found that the climate effects induced by aerosol reduction plays a leading role in the anticyclone change in eastern China, while the effects from increased greenhouse gases are small. "Future aerosol emissions reduction can induce deteriorating diffusion conditions, suggesting more stringent regulations on aerosol emissions in China are needed to meet air quality standards," Feng concludes. ### Boris Johnson discharged from hospital Boris Johnson has paid tribute to the unconquerable National Health Service as he was discharged from hospital to recuperate from the coronavirus. In an emotional statement, the Prime Minister said the NHS had saved my life, no question, as he heaped praise on frontline staff who saw him pull through a stint in intensive care at St Thomass hospital. Downing Street on Sunday announced that Johnson would continue his recovery at his official country residence after being discharged from the south London facility, two days after being taken out of intensive care. His fiancee Carrie Symonds meanwhile said Johnson had faced a very dark time as she paid tribute to magnificent NHS staff. Downing Street said: The PM has been discharged from hospital to continue his recovery, at Chequers. On the advice of his medical team, the PM will not be immediately returning to work. He wishes to thank everybody at St Thomas for the brilliant care he has received. All of his thoughts are with those affected by this illness. In his first statement since being admitted to intensive care at the start of this week, Johnson said: I have today left hospital after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question. And he said efforts to fight the coronavirus - a fight we never picked against an enemy we still dont entirely understand - were working because the British public formed a human shield around this countrys greatest national asset, our National Health Service. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love" - Boris Johnson on the NHS He said: In the last seven days I have of course seen the pressure that the NHS is under. I have seen the personal courage not just of the doctors and nurses but of everyone, the cleaners, the cooks, the healthcare workers of every description, physios, radiographers, pharmacists - who have kept coming to work, kept putting themselves in harms way, kept risking this deadly virus. It is thanks to that courage that devotion, that duty, and that love that our NHS has been unbeatable. The Prime Minister said he would be grateful for the rest of my life to utterly brilliant doctors who had take crucial decisions a few days ago for which I will be grateful for the rest of my life. And he singled out two nurses who stood by my bedside when things could have gone either way - Jenny from New Zealand, and Luis from Portugal. And the reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for everyone second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed, he said of the pair. So that is how I also know that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second of every hour, there are hundreds of thousands NHS staff who are dancing with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis. Johnson added: That is why we will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together. We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. The Tory leader was first admitted to St Thomass hospital last weekend after struggling to shake off the virus, and was placed in intensive care after his condition worsened. He was moved from the intensive care unit on Thursday night and placed on a ward. Responding to news of the PMs discharge from hospital, Symonds, who is carrying the couples first child, said: I cannot thank our magnificent NHS enough. The staff at St Thomas Hospital have been incredible. I will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you. She added: There were times last week that were very dark indeed. My heart goes out to all those in similar situations, worried sick about their loved ones. And, speaking at the Governments daily press conference, Health Secretary Matt Hancock - who was himself forced into self-isolation after being diagnosed with the illness - said: It is great news that the PM has been discharged from hospital and is now continuing at Chequers. The Cabinet minister added: I hope everyone has seen his message of love, and thanks to all those who've supported his recovery and to the NHS colleagues who have cared for him so brilliantly at St Thomas' hospital. I know that they have cared for him as they would care for anybody in this country. And it is one of the things that makes me so proud that the NHS is there for us all and can give its very best to every single person and has been able to throughout this crisis. Chequers, located in Buckinghamshire, is the official country house of the Prime Minister, and the move means the Prime Minister will be far removed from the Governments base in Whitehall. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been deputising for the PM in his absence, and has chaired daily meetings of the Covid-19 committee leading the response to the outbreak. UPDATED The nations largest school system will not reopen its doors to students this academic year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Saturday. But a few hours later, New York Mayor Gov. Andrew Cuomo threw major confusion into the situation. He contradicted the mayors announcement saying theres been no decision on schools. He called de Blasios decision to keep school buildings in the city closed for the remainder of the year an opinion. The governor said schools would not reopen anywhere in the greater New York City area without coordination with public school systems outside the city, such as Westchester and Suffolk counties, as well as nearby districts in Connecticut and New Jersey. The mayors office governs the citys school system. De Blasio said shutting down schools for the remainder of 2019-20 year was not an easy decision, but was a crucial and necessary step in containing the spread of the coronavirus and saving lives in hard-hit New York. The citys public schoolswhich serve more than 1 million studentswill continue with remote learning through the summer, Chancellor Richard Carranza said. Optimistically, we want to get students together and have them with their teachers as soon as humanly possible, Carranza said at a Saturday morning briefing. Realistically, we are going to be in a remote learning phase through the summer. New York City joins at least 21 other states and three U.S. territories that have also ordered or recommended that school buildings remain shut down for the remainder of the academic year. De Blasio said that as the weeks have passed since the school system shut down and began distance learning, access to learning and participation by students has gotten better. What weve asked from our educators is almost like a military situation, he said. We asked the teachers to mobilize in a weeks time. This will get better each week. With every passing week, more devices are in the hands of kids and educators will come up with new and better ways to engage them and keep track of what they are doing. Carranza said schools are paying close attention to the students who have not yet been in contact with teachers. He said a survey of families has helped accelerate the distribution of devices and printed learning packets to students. He said the district had mailed over 40,000 packets to families who dont yet have devices and that some 175,000 school devices have been provided to students. He said that about 70,000 WiFi-equipped iPads had been shipped to students. Read more: Coronavirus and Schools Handout Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) endorsed former Vice President Joe Bidens presidential bid on Monday afternoon. Weve got to make Trump a one term president and we need you in the White House, Sanders said in a joint livestream event with Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe. Its imperative that all of us work together. The Vermont senators endorsement comes as Biden has in recent days promised to make a concerted effort to woo Sanders progressive base. Sanders dropped out of the 2020 race on April 8 after lagging in the delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Biden, 77, and Sanders, 78, are longtime Senate colleagues and regularly refer to each other as good friends. Throughout the presidential primary, the two jousted on the debate stage but largely avoided hitting each other as hard as other rivals. In their joint appearance on Monday, both Democrats acknowledged that they dont always agree on every policy issue, with Biden preferring a more traditional moderate approach to Sanders brand of Democratic socialism, but that they are united in their effort to defeat President Donald Trump in November. Your endorsement means a great deal, Biden, who referred to Sanders as the most powerful voice for young progressives, said. Im going to need you, not just to win the campaign but to govern. Top Biden officials, senior Sanders aides and outside allies were quick to surface the endorsement as a positive step in helping to push out Trump after his first term in office. It takes both wings to fly. Thanks @BernieSanders and @JoeBiden for your commitment to bring all shades of blue to the table. This is how we win while reforming the party, Jane Fleming Kleeb, a board member for the progressive organization Our Revolution that was backing Sanders bid, wrote shortly after the announcement became public. But not everyone was equally enthusiastic. Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders former National Press Secretary, was among the first to express her displeasure over the endorsement by her former boss. Story continues With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don't endorse Joe Biden, she wrote in a series of tweets. Joe Biden should also consider reaching out to his supporters and the supporters of other candidates, who have been more toxic, racist, and misogynistic than anything I have ever seen from a person purporting to back Bernie, she wrote in another tweet. This is not how unity is forged. One of the most prominent voices in Sandersworld used fewer words, but appeared to be just as upset. Shoot Me Now, RoseAnn DeMoro, a close friend of the senator and the former leader of the National Nurses United union, wrote minutes after the endorsement. DeMoro was considered to be one of the leading voices who had urged Sanders to stay in the race. Other figures, including Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, who endorsed Sanders before effectively taking it back, hedged. There has to be something in between endorsing a candidate & saying you're going to vote for them. @BernieSanders ran for president in Democratic Party, so I guess he had to endorse Biden, which he just did. For my purposes, I might vote for him without saying I endorse him, he wrote. Read more at The Daily Beast. Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is working closely with international partners to respond to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. CDC provides technical assistance to help other countries increase their ability to prevent, detect, and respond to health threats, including COVID-19. This document is provided by CDC and is intended for use in non-US healthcare settings. The value of building permits Bismarck issued in 2019 decreased 19% from the previous year, and the number of commercial permits issued dropped 26%. The total value of building permits issued in North Dakotas capital city last year was just under $206.9 million, compared to about $254.7 million in 2018. The city issued 201 commercial building permits in 2019, compared to 272 in 2018. Costcos upcoming 157,400-square-foot facility in Bismarck made up 9% of the citys building permit value last year, while Evangel Churchs expansion and renovations made up 7%. Both projects are under construction. They're among the top contributors to the total value of building permits last year, said Brady Blaskowski, a city building official. Bismarcks school construction projects in 2018 -- such as Bismarck High Schools renovations and the construction of the Gateway to Science Museum -- along with other commercial construction projects that year influenced the drop in building permit values the next year, Blaskowski said. Commercial developers have been having a "tough time" dealing with a shortage of businesses willing to rent space, according to Scott Ritter, a commercial Realtor with Aspen Group Real Estate. "Theres no question that weve seen somewhat of a slowdown in the commercial industry. I mean, its tough to build things when weve got things to fill," Ritter said. "Weve got a lot on the market, and theres only so many buyers and tenants that are going to fill these things." Bismarck issued 185 permits for single family homes in 2019, compared to 151 in 2018. The city also issued 52 building permits for townhouses in 2019, compared to 45 building permits the year before. "I wouldn't say slow, but I wouldn't say booming. I would say just pretty steady," said Jeran Thomson, owner of JE Homes. "I think the (housing) market just needed to kind of readjust." The South Meadows housing development in south Bismarck, and the Boulder Ridge and Eagle Crest developments in northeast Bismarck, were significant residential housing projects completed in the past two years, Thomson said. Residential remodels and additions accounted for about $4.3 million in building permit activity in 2019, compared to $3.5 million in 2018 -- a 23% increase. Commercial remodels and additions accounted for about $86.7 million in 2019, compared to about $100.5 million in 2018 -- a 14% decrease. The value of building permits Bismarck issued last year is the third-lowest since 2010. The number of building permits for single family and two-family homes are both the second-lowest in the past 10 years. The four highest values in building permits over the past 10 years were between 2012 and 2015 -- a result of the North Dakota oil boom, Blaskowski said. Coronavirus woes Home builders are bracing for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the housing market, Thomson said. "Somebody just backed out of (buying) a house of someone just yesterday because oil prices are down, and Doosan (Bobcat) laid people off," he said. "These things are going to affect the home building market, the residential real estate market, now this year, I think." Thomson said he was expecting an increase in activity in the housing market in 2020. The number of houses on the market began to fall below 1,000 in the past three months, which "usually is an indicator we need to build more houses," he said. Ritter said interest from businesses in renting commercial property was "incredibly encouraging" moving into 2020. "Then, of course, this thing hits, and then the stock market hits, and the oil prices hit," Ritter said. "It's going to be a tough April, and hopefully it's weeks and not months." Reach Andy Tsubasa Field at 701-250-8264 or andy.field@bismarcktribune.com. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 1 Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to sign an executive order this week to reopen parts of the state's coronavirus-ravaged economy, but President Donald Trump says the decision is his to make. Before Abbott made his announcement Monday, Trump said on Twitter that the authority to "open up the states" rests with him and the federal government, not with the governors. Trump added, however, that "the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue." "A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!" he said. At a news conference where he announced $50 million in loans to small businesses suffering under the pandemic, Abbott didn't directly address the president's tweets. Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak But Abbott insisted that he spoke with both Vice President Mike Pence and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, about the need to "safely reopen the state for doing business." "This is not going to be a rush-the-gates, everybody-is-able-to-suddenly-reopen-all-at-once" situation, Abbott said. "Our ability to open businesses in Texas will be tied to our ability to contain the spread of the coronavirus. ... We want to expand those that are able to open." The Constitution provides the states not the federal government with the "police power" to require businesses to close during public health crises. The president doesn't have the authority to direct governors, mayors or other local officials to lift their emergency orders. Asked how much guidance he's getting from Washington, Abbott said this is "something where the White House and White House team has been communicating with governors for weeks now." The goal, Abbott said, is to "slowly, strategically, smartly and safely" reopen private businesses. "Both the president and vice president were talking strategies," he said. Story continues But it's not a one-size-fits-all strategy, Abbott said. "What may work in Nebraska may work different for New York, et cetera," he said. So far, 286 deaths have been reported in Texas, and 1,176 people remain hospitalized, Abbott said Monday. Of the 133,000 people who have been tested, 13,827 have tested positive. Abbott said the numbers offer "glimmers of hope with a bunch of red flags attached." "The number of deaths reported yesterday was a three-day low," Abbott added. "Those are exactly the numbers we need to see to show that we are bending the curve in the state of Texas." Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak The governor spoke out a day after he extended the state's disaster declaration, which went into effect March 13 and allows Texas to do things like tap the Strategic National Stockpile for medical supplies and go after price-gougers for 30 more days. But Abbott hasn't extended his stay-at-home order, which expires April 30. Abbott has faced criticism for being slow to respond to the coronavirus crisis, although it was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's suggestion that senior citizens would be willing to die for the U.S. to "get back to work" that made headlines. 3. Taxation and flavor bans just encourage internet sales. Chemists that design flavors to achieve nicotine addiction in children, manufacturers, and distributors of vaping products sold to children, should be charged with felony child endangerment. This would discourage vaping products from entering Montana and we will have done all we can effectively do. The addition of marijuana to vaping products is suspect in the death and illness rates from vaping. Those that give, sell, or procure, marijuana used in vaping should be held civilly and criminally responsible for the health issues they have caused. 4. Governor Bullock allowed this bill to become law. Apparently he thought it was constitutional as he would never violate his oath of office, especially the 2nd amendment. Ha! As a strict constructionist I will honor my oath and protect the plain wording of our Constitutions. If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down our statute I will vote to allow parents to choose the best option to educate their children within that ruling. We must allow flexibility to parents, and fund our public schools, to ensure a world class education and entrance into the global economy for all Montana children. 5. 1(a) I shall advance options to fund the environmental remediation of the Colstrip ash ponds that do not burden NWE ratepayers or Montana taxpayers. Resolving this $1B (estimated) funding conundrum will not only protect rate payers but also remove the uncertainty thus allowing future investment in the area. 1(b) And, yes, I shall continue to advocate for Montana resident primacy over non-resident hunters for access to Montanas wildlife resources. Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 4 THE Catholic Church has returned 10,000 to the Government after it was wrongly awarded a coronavirus small business grant for one of its properties. The cash was paid into the Larne parish account by the Department for Economy on April 3. It was only when the matter was raised by independent Bishop Pat Buckley, who has been at loggerheads with the church hierarchy for years, that the mistake was realised. When pressed further by Sunday Life, the Down and Connor Diocese accepted the "error" and paid back the money. Bishop Buckley, who lives at the Rectory building in Larne which is owned by the church, spoke of his shock after receiving a confirmation letter saying the 10,000 had been paid to him. He described as "immoral" any attempt by any religious organisation to cash in on the virus crisis. "I was stunned because I had not applied for the Covid-19 small business grant," said Bishop Buckley. " "What was also of concern is that the grant was in my name and address, but the bank details it was paid to were those of the Catholic parish in Larne. "The obvious question for me was, if my ministry here is 'business', then why did the grant go the Larne parish and not me?" At first a spokesman for the Down and Connor Diocese said it was not aware of any Covid-19 small business grant applications being made. But 24 hours later, after being told this newspaper had confirmation the 10,000 had been lodged in the Larne parish account, he admitted a "mistake". The spokesman said: "The Diocese of Down and Connor can confirm that on April 3 as part of the Government's Covid-19 response, an automatic small business grant of 10,000 from the Department for Economy was received by the parish of Larne in error. Within the diocese, this was an isolated incident. "Having become aware of this mistake, the Diocese of Down and Connor immediately contacted Land and Property Services to draw this oversight to their attention and to arrange the safe return of the grant." In earlier correspondence with Bishop Buckley, the parish priest for Larne, Fr Francis O'Brien (below), insisted he had no knowledge of the 10,000 Covid-19 small business grant application. He said: "I am unaware of any application for a grant of any kind but have forwarded your correspondence to the Diocesan Finance Office for their attention." The Government's Coronavirus business support grant Scheme offers a one-off payment of 10,000 to firms currently in receipt of small business rate relief, subject to a number of exclusions. This is to help them through the financial crisis caused by Covid-19. Northern Ireland's other main churches, the Presbyterian and Church of Ireland, told Sunday Life that none of their parishes had applied to the scheme. Pauline Hanson has slammed coronavirus restrictions as 'ridiculous' and 'over the top'. The One Nation leader said Australians should be allowed to go the park for a picnic or walk on the beach without being fined. 'It's ridiculous. People who were going to have a picnic can't even sit on the grass. You can't sit on a park bench,' she told the Today Show on Monday morning. Pauline Hanson (pictured today) has slammed coronavirus restrictions as 'ridiculous' and 'over the top' 'You can't sit on the grass and have a picnic with your kids, you can't go to the beach, you can't go for a walk - it's completely over the top.' Queensland Police has handed out 491 fines worth a total of $662,000 since restrictions were enforced. The fines included a businessman from Brisbane who was twice caught flying his helicopter to a secluded beach on Moreton Island and having a picnic. Senator Hanson's comments contradict Australia's medical experts who say restrictions should remain in place to prevent a spike in cases and deaths. During Monday's interview, Senator Hanson also said Australia should cut funding to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations. The WHO has come under fire from US President Donald Trump as well as several Australian MPs for its handling of the pandemic. Senator Hanson was asked if an increase in general sales tax should help pay for the government's extraordinary coronavirus measures such as the JobKeeper plan to pay people's wages. She said: 'I would totally oppose it. The average Australian cannot afford any more taxes.' A police officer asks people to move while patrolling during the Easter Long Weekend at Bondi Beach in Sydney Ms Hanson said Australia could save and raise money in other ways. 'Get rid of this foreign aid to countries, stop paying the WHO and the UN and start up industries and manufacturing here in Australia,' she said. Senator Hanson also argued that Australia should re-introduce tariffs on Chinese goods, even though this would make items more expensive for Australian shoppers. Under the 2015 China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, 100 per cent of Chinese goods can enter Australia tariff-free and 98 per cent of Australian goods can enter China without tariffs. More than 6,300 Australians have been infected with coronavirus and 61 people have died. Two more deaths were recorded overnight but there were only 33 new cases in the past 24 hours. While the coronavirus infection curve is flattening, Professor Brendan Murphy says it is still too early to relax strict social distancing rules. NSW Police ask people to move on while patrolling during the Easter Long Weekend at Bondi Beach in Sydney "The scale of measures at the moment are something that we clearly do have to review ... but it's not now, it's within the next few weeks," he told ABC radio on Monday. "I think we need to look at all of the data, look at our preparedness, and the national cabinet will be making a lot of decisions about what if anything can be relaxed in the coming weeks." The low number of new infections may be due in part to less COVID-19 testing over the long weekend. Professor Murphy said he would be very concerned if social restrictions were relaxed before public hospitals were fully prepared and the country had enough personal protective equipment. "The thing that worries us most at the moment is complacency," he said. "Every single community transmission that's undetected can infect a lot of people, and that's why it is so important that we do maintain measures for the time being." An online petition is calling for Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, to resign and is now estimated to have nearly one million signatures. People around the world are now clamoring to the actions of the World Health Organization, most notably its Director-General. Tedros is being accused of allowing China to underreport the impact of the virus. Tedros is an Ethiopian politician who has led the United Nations-backed health body as the Director-General since 2017. However, he is now under fire due to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to infect more than 1.8 million people and has reportedly killed more than 144,000 people around the globe. PETITION CALLING FOR THE RESIGNATION OF GHEBREYESUS Online website Change.org is spearheading the call for the resignation of the WHO's Director-General. At this time, the petition has reached more than 910,000 and is set to reach one million in a few hours after this writing. According to the website, they firmly believe that Ghebreyesus is not fit to be the head of WHO, and many are very disappointed by his actions. This apparent lack of action is the reason that they are calling for his immediate resignation. The website also stated that "We believe WHO is supposed to be politically neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus solely believes on [sic] the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government provided with them." A DEMAND FOR GHEBREYESUS TO DISCLOSE HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH CHINESE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS Aside from the website calling on Ghebreyesus to resign, United States lawmakers have also been one of his harshest critics. A group of Republican lawmakers from the House Oversight Committee wrote to Ghebreyesus, demanding full disclosure of the nature of his relationship with the Chinese government. In the letter, Republican lawmakers wrote that they have observed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, that the WHO has avoided blaming the Chinese government. They also added: "You, as leader of the WHO, even went so far as to praise the Chinese government's 'transparency' during the crisis, when, in fact, the regime has consistently lied to the world by underreporting their actual infection and death statistics." The Republican group also stated that on a Twitter post from the WHO in January, it was written that Chinese authorities had found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmissions of the virus, which added to the speculations that Ghebreyesus could be protecting China. This assumption might be one of the factors as to why the number of COVID-19 cases around the globe started to rise since the late days of January. As for Peter Navarro, the White House Economic Adviser, he described Ghebreyesus as "one of the Chinese government's proxies." PRESIDENT TRUMP PLANNING TO CUT FUNDING Navarro also said that President Donald Trump is now seriously planning to cut the country's funding of WHO following the accusation against Ghebreyesus and on how the organization handled information regarding the COVID-19 situation. Navarro explained: "It all tracks to China's view of the world and how they want to control different types of international organizations, even as they don't play by the international rules. So it's going to be up to the president to look at this." GHEBREYESUS' RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT TRUMP Meanwhile, Ghebreyesus criticized Trump and accused the U.S. President of politicizing the pandemic after Trump said that he might cut government funding for the organization. During a press conference, Ghebreyesus said: "If you don't want many more body bags, you refrain from politicizing it - please quarantine politicizing COVID." As you may recall, Ghebreyesus just last month commended Trump on how he is leading the country and his response to the pandemic. Read related articles: Parents have been urged to take their children to hospital if they are sick and not keep them at home for fear of catching Covid-19. Parents have been urged to take their children to hospital if they are sick and not keep them at home for fear of catching Covid-19. In a video by the South Eastern Trust, Ulster Hospital children's doctor Bernadette O'Connor said child and adult patients were being kept separate to protect them. She said: "We know that you are very worried about keeping your children safe from Covid-19 but we know that children are getting sick for different reasons. "If you're worried about a sick child - please don't stay at home. Come and get some medical assessment, we are here for you." Last week UK health specialists warned the NHS that children were dying because their families were afraid to bring them to hospital in the Covid-19 crisis. Senior GP Colin Fitzpatrick said parents should contact health services "as soon as you're worried". Dr O'Connor added: "Yes we are busy at the hospital. We do look a little scary in our PPE but it is designed to protect ourselves and your child." Meanwhile, the Western Health Trust cardiology service issued an urgent message, urging the public not to put off seeking hospital treatment if they are experiencing common cardiac conditions such as a heart attack, and to seek immediate medical treatment. Dr Paul McGlinchey, consultant cardiologist at the Western Trust, said: "We have noticed that the number of patients coming to hospital with common cardiac conditions such as heart attacks has fallen away dramatically and this is a pattern that has been seen in all regions affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. "We know the public are listening to the public health messages to stay at home and away from hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, we don't think that there are any less patients suffering from these common cardiac conditions. "We think that patients are avoiding seeking medical attention for their complaints because of the public advice given or perhaps because of a fear on being exposed to Covid-19 if they attend the hospital. "We want to assure patients that there are excellent treatment options available for treating common cardiac conditions." Dr McGlinchey said a failure to access healthcare professionals may have "significant consequences for patients and their loved ones". He added: "We are asking patients with chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations and blackouts to contact our service by telephone for initial assessment. This is a 24 hours per day, seven days per week service. "An experienced cardiac nurse will assess the history over the telephone. They will have full access to previous records." Last week the Southern Health Trust's chief executive said the admission rate to Craigavon Area Hospital's non-Covid emergency department is lower than normal. Shane Devlin said that closing the emergency department at Daisy Hill has not placed an undue burden on the non-Covid emergency department at Craigavon. He acknowledged the effect the current coronavirus crisis is having on the public's desire to attend hospital. "People are concerned and scared at present," Mr Devlin said. "They don't wish to come to hospital at the minute. The number of people travelling through our normal system is lower." He said other factors included less road use and fewer accidents. Germany is considering how to implement a gradual recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, the country's health minister, Jens Spahn, told CNBC on Monday. "We are thinking about step by step, that is important ... going back to a new normal," Spahn said on "Closing Bell." Spahn, who was speaking from Berlin, stressed that it will indeed be a new normal because "all the measures we have taken like keeping distance, wearing masks, no parties ... are definitely measures that need to be there in place for months to come." But Germany is in a place to begin considering what a recovery looks like because its rate of new infections has continued to slow, Spahn said. He cited the effectiveness of social distancing measures and applauded the country's residents for taking them seriously. There are more than 128,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Germany and around 3,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. Spahn said the German government is now seeking to find "the right balance" between health and economic considerations. "I would say it's not the health of people versus the economy because they are very much interlinked," Spahn said. "You need a strong economy to have a well-equipped health system, for example. Or unemployment, a recession, is harmful for the mental and physical health of people, too." Germany has received praise, albeit with some caution, for its response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Spahn said he was "humble" but not "overconfident" about how Germany has handled the spread of the coronavirus. He cited the strength of Germany's health-care system, in particular its high number of intensive care unit beds, as one reason why the country was well equipped to respond to the pandemic. The country also placed an early emphasis on testing capacity, Spahn said. He said the the country had a strong network of labs, and he noted that the first diagnostic test for Covid-19 was developed in Germany in January. "It's like pointing a flashlight into the dark," Spahn said of testing. "If you don't do it, you'll just see different shades of gray. With extensive testing, you can really see what's going on. You don't just see the symptomatic cases, but the mild and asymptomatic ones, too." Read all of CNBC's coronavirus coverage here Revealing the clandestine interactions between environmental activists and left-leaning state officials who are promoting climate change lawsuits is a challenge, but a clear, disturbing picture has emerged regarding climate litigation filed in Rhode Island. Make no mistake; leftist politicians in Rhode Island who are suing energy companies are only in it for the money. As way of background, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin initiated a lawsuit using the legally dubious public nuisance statute against just 14 energy producers in 2018, holding them alone financially responsible for climate change and for related damages not only alleged to have occurred, but for damages that may or may not be sustained at some point in the future. Never mind that the state itself is a major direct emitter of greenhouse gases through its state buildings, fleet of vehicles, and public works projects. Using a Narragansett sea wall as a backdrop for his photo-op announcement of the lawsuit, Kilmartin spared no rhetoric vilifying Big Oil for supposedly concealing the dangers of global warming to promote their ever-increasing revenues in their pockets. But thanks to some astonishingly candid remarks made by a high-ranking state official, we now know this had little to do with sea walls, ocean levels or climate, and everything to do with revenue lots of it for the small state with an enormous budget deficit. Director of Rhode Islands Department of Environmental Management Janet Coit bluntly admitted that her state was looking for (as) sustainable funding stream. This startling confession was made at a July conference sponsored by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, backers of the climate change shakedown effort from the beginning, according to notes from two different sources attending. The damning notes were obtained by the watchdog group Energy Policy Advocates and submitted within a memo in March accompanying an Amicus brief filed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The organization supports the argument that federal court is the proper venue for hearing the case rather than an activist state court and argues that the suit should be dismissed. Coit conceded that efforts to get the publicly elected General Assembly of the cash-strapped state to fund global warming-related projects had failed, according to the typed and handwritten notes obtained under a state open records law. The apparent answer was to circumvent the appropriate legislative channels and seek jackpot justice through lawsuit abuse. In suing oil and gas companies, Rhode Island hopes to score a windfall of multiple billions of dollars a sustainable funding stream indeed. The trial lawyers who shopped this lawsuit to Rhode Island and a number of financially troubled states and cities across the country on a contingency basis stand to cash in on millions, if not billions. Ultimately, lawsuits employing the public nuisance tactic typically fall apart up in appeals process. And for all practical purposes, the Rhode Island lawsuit was rendered moot even before it start because of the U.S. Supreme Courts 8-0 ruling in the 2011 American Electric Power v. Connecticut case. The Court found that the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress alone retain the rightful regulatory authority on matters concerning greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. That determination precludes entities such as Rhode Island from usurping executive and legislative prerogative in suing private corporations for purported global warming impacts. Cookie-cutter lawsuits by New York City and San Francisco/Oakland ran into that same jurisdictional brick wall when federal judges dismissed their cash-grab attempts in 2018. There can be little doubt as to the outcome of Rhode Islands bid to shakedown oil and gas companies. The only question is how much the companies will have to spend defending themselves, and how much of Rhode Island citizens resources will be wasted. Mama was a striking, petite woman who wasnt afraid to speak her mind. She was kindhearted and warm, but when she needed to be mean, she had no problem going there. Her assertive nature was akin to Sofia Butlers in The Color Purple, who ended up in jail for saying hell no to a white woman who asked if shed like to be her maid and then socking the womans husband in the face. The COVID-19 crisis may lead to domestic instability in Russia which may force it to limit its presence in the region. Over the past two weeks, the spread of COVID-19 in Russia has accelerated. The country currently has more than 18,000 officially registered cases and 148 deaths. Although these numbers are well below what is being announced in European countries like Spain, Italy and the UK, the outbreak appears to be still in its early phase and has the potential to expand to a much higher level. Although the Kremlin is trying to project international soft power by sending medical supplies and staff to Italy and Serbia, and selling equipment to the United States, there are increasing concerns that the situation in the country will worsen quickly and will have severe political and economic consequences. Already, many government hospitals in the capital, Moscow, have reached capacity and are not able to care for all patients streaming to their emergency units. This will certainly affect the countrys foreign policy initiatives, and more specifically, its projection of power in the Middle East. A looming economic crisis The outlook on the Russian economy was not good even before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. As the impact of the global downturn is still being evaluated, the prognoses for the country are getting grimmer. In late March, Standard & Poor estimated that Russias economy is likely to shrink by 0.8 percent this year, while in April, Fitch said it expected this number to go up to 1.4 percent. The Russian government itself projects that in the worst-case scenario its GDP would contract by as much as 10 percent. Although the Russian Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov claimed that the government is ready to tackle the effects of the pandemic, he also pointed out that the prosperous times for the Russian economy are over, as the country is unlikely to see again the high oil revenues it enjoyed during the 2000s. The recent OPEC+ deal was touted as a success across the Russian state-run media, but it will not be enough to boost oil prices and prevent this years recession. Furthermore, due to some technical challenges Russia may struggle to fulfil its obligations of cutting oil output. Future economic recovery will also likely be inhibited by Russias inability to borrow abroad due to the Western sanctions. During the G20 video-summit on March 26, President Vladimir Putin proposed a moratorium on sanctions related to essential goods. A few days later, Russia put forward a proposal on easing unilateral sanctions at the UN, which was rebuked by Western countries and met with fierce opposition from Ukraine. In March, Putin told TASS news agency that according to some estimates, the country had lost as much as $50bn because of foreign sanctions. The number, however, may be much higher, according to Bloomberg. A staunch supporter of fiscal conservatism, Putin is unlikely to follow the path of many Western nations and allocate funds accumulated during the oil boom to help small businesses or provide a safety net for the general population. In his latest address, the Russian president announced rather meagre support for small private companies, including a six-month deferment on social security payments and some taxes, and ordered the government to draft an additional relief programme. A potential surge of unemployment combined with the decline of real wages for the sixth consecutive year will likely stir more social discontent in Russia. Putins approval and trust ratings have already been falling since his last re-election in 2018, and the recent announcement of constitutional amendments that would allow him to stay in power past 2024 have caused public polarisation. A March poll by the Levada Centre, the independent pollster, found that Russians are divided on the proposed changes: 47 percent opposing and 48 percent supporting it. Further economic hardship will likely translate into more political polarisation that could spill into opposition street protests, as has happened in the past. Reconsidering foreign policy Growing domestic socioeconomic and political crises could force the Kremlin to reconsider its foreign policy as well, which itself has been driven by domestic considerations of potential political instability. One of the regions where Russian soft and hard power has been on the offensive since 2015 has been the Middle East. Many consider Russias intervention in Syria to be an attempt to force the West into negotiating on Ukraine and lifting the sanctions, which have crippled the Russian economy and caused social discontent. But today, almost five years after Russian troops were deployed in Syria and helped the Assad regime turn the tide in the civil war, Moscow does not seem any closer to reconciliation with the West. Thus, its objectives and long-term plan for its presence in the region remain unclear. True, Moscows projection of hard power and the vacuum left by the US in the Middle East have helped it regain some positions in Arab capitals and allowed it to shake off international isolation, but that has not necessarily impressed the Russian citizenry. Polls are consistently showing growing fatigue among the Russian public with the Kremlins foreign policy adventures. According to an August 2019 poll by Public Opinion Foundation, 42 percent of Russians see the countrys foreign policy as successful, down from 60 percent in 2017; 27 percent consider it a failure, up from 17 in 2017. Just 10 percent see the war in Syria as a success. A May 2019 poll showed that 55 percent of Russians want the Russian army to withdraw from Syria; 37 percent fear that Syria could become Russias new Afghanistan the Soviet Union was bogged down helping a friendly regime in Kabul fight off a rebellion for 10 years in which hundreds of thousands were killed, including more than 15,000 Soviet soldiers, before withdrawing without a victory. Amid a major health and economic crisis, it is likely that support for foreign ventures would slump even lower. At the same time, Russias successes so far do not appear guaranteed and are vulnerable to spoilers. The escalation in Idlib earlier this year demonstrated the growing tensions between Iran and Russia in Syria. Both are vying for influence over Damascus, which tries to play them against each other. Although Moscow succeeded in striking a deal with Ankara and reining in the regime forces, despite Iranian opposition, it did face challenges in doing so. Some reports have even suggested that apart from Iran, the UAE too sought to undermine the deal by trying to bribe the Assad regime into renewing its offensive. In the absence of significant economic benefit from the war, Russias inability to bankroll the reconstruction and the stalled peace process may eventually freeze the conflict, confining Russian strategic interests to the Latakia region. Last year, the Kremlins growing engagement in the Libyan conflict seemed to be further expand its power play in the region. Nonetheless, recent developments have demonstrated that its role has its limits. In January, Moscow failed to compel the Libyan General Khalifa Haftar to sign a ceasefire with the UN-recognised Libyan government in Tripoli. Likewise, Russias charm offensive in the Gulf, which was accompanied by high-level visits over the past three years, has seemingly reached its limits. Many of the multibillion-dollar contracts which were promised during official meetings never materialised. With the collapse of oil prices, Gulf monarchies will likely increase levels of fiscal conservatism and resort to greater caution in their foreign spending. Thus, massive investments in Russian assets are unlikely in the near future. All of this may push Russia to reconsider its presence in the region. Although it will remain an influential regional player, it will probably be forced to scale down its involvement militarily, politically and economically. This will mean freezing its involvement in Syria to a few strategic assets, while retaining sway over the Assad regime, maintaining some role in the Libyan conflict, but not expanding it, and recalibrating its engagement with the Gulf. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. Confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease have been recorded in over 185 countries of the world after the first case was recorded in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Coronavirus also known as COVID-19, is a respiratory illness that can be transmitted from droplets of body fluids, such as mucus and saliva. However, Naija News understands some countries are yet to report any case of the COVID-19 infection. About seventeen countries are yet to record any case of the Coronavirus disease. The countries include; Comoros Kiribati Lesotho Marshall Islands Micronesia Nauru North Korea Palau Samoa Sao Tome and Principe Solomon Islands South Sudan Tajikistan Tonga Turkmenistan Tuvalu Vanuatu Meanwhile, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University, more than 1.8 million people have been infected worldwide by the virus. Scientists are yet to discover any cure or vaccine for the infection but health experts encourage citizens to practice social distancing, wash their hands regularly and maintain high level of personal hygiene. Share this post with your Friends on President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Nanono and other key players of the sector to join the already existing 12-member Presidential Task Force (PTF), as a strategy to minimise the impact of COVID-19 on the years farming season. President Buhari disclosed this on Monday while addressing Nigerians for the second time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The president directed the ministers to develop a comprehensive policy for a Nigerian Economy functioning with COVID-19. I am also directing the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the National Security Adviser, the Vice Chairman, National Food Security Council and the Chairman, Presidential Fertiliser Initiative to work with the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 to ensure the impact of this pandemic on our 2020 farming season is minimised, he said. To ensure our economy adapts to this new reality, I am directing the Ministers of Industry, Trade and Investment, Communication and Digital Economy, Science and Technology, Transportation, Aviation, Interior, Health, Works and Housing, Labour and Employment and Education to jointly develop a comprehensive policy for a Nigerian economy functioning with COVID-19, he said. He said the ministers will be supported by the Presidential Economic Advisory Council and Economic Sustainability Committee in executing this mandate. Before now, the chairman of the PTF, Boss Mustapha, had announced the presidents directive to release 70,000 metric tons of grains from the strategic grain reserve for distribution to vulnerable groups in the country. According the statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Nanono announced the commencement of the grain and other food items distribution. He said his ministry had handed over 12,500 metric tons of food rations to the minister of humanitarian affairs, Sadiya Farouq, from the National Strategic Food Reserve Silo in Minna, Niger State. He said over 2,500 metric tons of garri was evacuated by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for distribution to vulnerable Nigerians in the three states affected by the lockdown Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory. India: Centre exempts marine fishing from lockdown curbs April 13,2020 | Source: Daily Pioneer Amid the prevailing gloom due to the coronavirus pandemic, fish lovers have something to cheer them up. The Centre has allowed activities in the fisheries sector, including the sale of fish by exempting it from the lockdown rules. The 5th addendum exempts from lockdown restrictions the operations of the Fishing (Marine)/Aquaculture Industry, including feeding and maintenance, harvesting, processing, packaging, cold chain, sale and marketing; hatcheries, feed plants, commercial aquaria, movement of fish/shrimp and fish products, fish seed/feed and workers for all these activities, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in a statement on Friday. Briefing the media on Saturday, Ministry of Home Affairs spokesperson Punya Salil Srivastava said that district authorities would oversee the functioning of the activities in the marine, aqua culture and sale of fish in the markets. Social distancing norms should be maintained in the markets and States and District administrations will organise and monitor. For the past few days, all Chief Ministers from coastal states were demanding the exemptions citing the plight of crores fishermen communities and fishing industrys troubles due to the lockdown for the past 18 days. They pointed out that Covid-19 has not yet affected the coastal zones till date. In Assam, the Kamrup district administration has allowed a door-to-door sale of fish to the residents but banned its sale in the open market. The Fisheries sector is said to provide livelihood to around 1.6 crore people in the country and seafood exports brought in $6.7 billion to the countrys exchequer in 2018-19. The government of eSwatini is refuting media reports that the nations King Mswati III - the last absolute monarch in Africa is critically ill with COVID-19. Reports began to circulate after the king did not appear for a Good Friday service. The King is not ill, Foreign Minister Thuli Dladla told VOA via WhatsApp message when asked about the reports on Monday. He is very much fine and directing Cabinet from the Palace. He meets the PM and Minister (of) Health now and again. We don't want him to be exposed. He is very well." She also called the media reports a very sick joke and very defamatory. The World Health Organization says the landlocked nation of 1.1 million people, formerly known as Swaziland, has reported 12 cases of the virus, and no deaths. The tiny nation wedged between South Africa and Mozambique is Africas last absolute monarchy, co-ruled by King Mswati III and his mother. The nation is technically a democracy, though political parties are banned, and the king is the top executive who rules for life. The 51-year-old monarch has ruled since he was 18. He has at least 15 wives and 23 known children. In 2018, he suddenly changed the countrys name to eSwatini. News outlets based in eSwatini or in neighboring South Africa have in recent days raised questions about the kings whereabouts. On April 11, journalist Zweli Martin Dlamini, editor of the online Swaziland News, published a report that the monarch was in a critical health condition at Manzana Royal Hospital after the king did not appear for services Friday. A rights group, the Swaziland Solidarity Network, reported that day that royal police raided Dlaminis home and harassed his family. His newspaper has subsequently reported that he is missing and wanted by police. In addition to reporting on the kings health, Dlamini has also published several critical articles on the king, whose lavish lifestyle is in stark contrast to the dire poverty faced by most Swazis. Swazi activists in South Africa say they believe the reports of the kings illness are true. South Africa-based activist Lucky Lukhele, spokesperson for Swaziland Solidarity Network, said the king is seriously ill in the hospital. He said his information comes from close contacts within the royal family. He also said his network had received reports that other members of the royal family are ill. Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, we are living in the United States of Propaganda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices American Airlines said this week it will extend the existing elite status of its AAdvantage members into 2022 and will ease status qualifications for 2020. United and Delta Air Lines issued new protections for their elite flyers a week ago. Alaska Airlines did the same late last week, so with Americans announcement, the largest carrier yet to be heard from on the issue is Southwest. "What we can share is that to date the core of the Rapid Rewards programs has not changed," a Southwest official told us when we inquired about elite status and Companion Pass. "Please know we are working around the clock to keep our commitment to our members, and will follow up with next steps regarding the Rapid Rewards program soon." Alaska Airlines said last week that its Mileage Plan members will have their elite status levels extended through Dec. 31, 2021. All the perks of its status tiers will continue to apply, Alaska said, except for the 50,000 bonus miles previously awarded to those who achieved 75K status. The airline has also extended the validity of companion certificates that were due to expire this year; they can now be used for travel through Nov. 26, 2021 if it is booked by the end of this year. Alaska noted that Mileage Plan members will be eligible for more new benefits in the summer of 2021 once the airline formally joins Americans Oneworld global alliance. Alaska hasnt reduced the requirements for achieving elite tier status in 2020, but said it plans to release more information over the coming weeks on ways you can earn additional elite-qualifying miles this year. According to American, AAdvantage members currently holding elite status will have it extended until January 31, 2022, and customers who have purchased memberships in its Admirals Club airport lounges or one-day lounge passes will get six-month extensions on the validity of those purchases. The extension of their elite status should show up in members accounts in a few weeks, American said. The airline is also offering AAdvantage elites a one-time credit of $400 to be applied toward an American Airlines Vacations package. Travelers who hope to achieve elite status in AAdvantage during 2020 wont have to travel or spend as much as before to make the grade. The spending requirement for AAdvantage Gold status in 2020 has been cut from $3,000 to $1,500, while the Platinum requirement is now $4,000 instead of $6,000. Spending required for Platinum Pro is reduced by 33 percent, to $6,000; and the Executive Platinum requirement is down 40 percent, to $9,000. In addition to meeting the spending requirement, aspiring elites in 2020 must accumulate a certain level of qualifying miles or flight segments. The mileage requirements have been cut by 40 percent across the board; the new levels are 15,000 for Gold, 30,000 for Platinum, 45,000 for Platinum Pro and 60,000 for Executive Platinum. Flight segment requirements in 2020 have all been cut in half, to 15, 30, 45 and 60 respectively. Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE weekly email alerts. The airline is also giving AAdvantage members more flexibility in changing award travel bookings this year. You can see all the details of AAs new AAdvantage policies here. Read all recent TravelSkills posts here Chris McGinnis is SFGATE's senior travel correspondent. You can reach him via email or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Don't miss a shred of important travel news by signing up for his FREE weekly email updates! SFGATE participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. Western anti-terror observers are seeing disturbing signs of terror groups like the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and others like the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) exploiting the COVID-19 turmoil including the economic disruptions to ramp up their recruitment of jihadi foot soldiers. Dr Siegfried Wolf, director of research at the South Asia Democratic Front, a Brussels based think-tank said, "Jihadi groups have a long tradition of exploiting crisis situations for their terrorist activities, recruitment and propaganda campaigns in South Asia, especially in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region" as thousands of youth lose their livelihood in the economic turmoil brought about by the coronavirus. Such youth are easy prey for the LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammad, HM and others who are offering them food and some money in these difficult times. Also Read: Coronavirus: Delhi Police ASI tests positive He added, "Already facing an extraordinary challenge, like the current COVID-19 pandemic, the states and their societies are in particular vulnerable in all aspects of daily life. Being aware of this, terrorists try to exploit these conditions to produce maximum fear and to further escalate the crisis with their violent and verbal assaults." Further, Wolf told ANI, "Jihadists in Pakistan also use the crisis to undermine the government, for example by ignoring lockdown and social distance regulations. The fact that Pakistan's administration shows once again its total incompetence to handle a civilian crisis situation and brings out the most unfortunate features of the country's political culture and patters help the religious fanatics to step up their efforts in spreading jihadist propaganda." Pakistan is home to various Islamic jihadi outfits like Lashkar-e Taiba, Haqqani Network, the Taliban, Jaish-e Mohammad and others. Taha Siddiqui, a Pakistani journalist in exile living in France said, "During this pandemic, there is also an infodemic and this is an example of that. Far right-wing groups and Islamist extremists are joining the infodemic bandwagon to achieve their evil and nefarious agendas." Since the outbreak of coronavirus, people globally are feeling insecure, and looking for answers or a way out, and such groups exploit these insecurities to radicalise the naive population. He told ANI, "While far-right groups are spreading conspiracies about how the virus has been unleashed on purpose, Islamists are calling this a divine punishment and urging Muslims to come back to the so-called righteous path which usually entails violent behaviour." Taha said, "Security agencies and social media networks need to work together to expose such groups and stop them. Already the world is in chaos because of the virus itself. It cannot afford further instability." Speaking to ANI, Junaid Qureshi, the director of Amsterdam-based European Foundation for South Asian Studies said, "It is, of course, horrific to learn that while the world is fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, terrorist groups are trying to exploit this turmoil and turbulent times by advancing their agenda and recruitment policies. However, it is not surprising as terrorist groups have an embedded character of exploitation in their modus operandi." He added, "They exist because they exploit; religion, uneducated people, poor people, political instabilities in regions, caste, colour, and in this case, a global pandemic." The tactic of terrorist groups is exploitation followed by subsequent weaponising their so-called success of exploitation. The same is happening now as some may exploit and weaponise the pandemic, while others will exploit by weaponising those who have been tested positive or otherwise been a victim of the pandemic, whether economically, politically or socially. Junaid said, "Currently the world is focused on how to deal with this pandemic in terms of healthcare and slowly but steadily there is also discussion on its economic impact, but what remains equally important is that counter-terrorism discourse and counter-terrorism operations should, at the same time, also evolve in this new environment." "We cannot, and must not, expect morality in these hard times from terrorists and terrorist organisations, and as such we must ensure that these elements do not get emboldened by the fact that our attention might drop as we fight the coronavirus." Junaid said that the world will find a medical solution to COVID-19 in the course of time. Terrorism will still be there, and the only solution is to continue keeping a hawk's eye focus on the changing dynamics of terrorist organisations and its supporters and keep adapting, in order to counter it. (ANI) Also Read: Coronavirus: Pets not spreading Covid-19 to humans, says AIIMS Director Karnataka Chief Minister on Monday said the COVID-19 situation has thrown the state into a deep financial trouble and there is a need to to find ways to overcome the present crisis, as he announced certain measures aimed at resource mobalisation. He said the state government was awaiting guidelines from the Centre regarding the implementation of lockdown during the next two weeks, and noted that discussions were on regarding relaxations on the sale of liquor and the decision will be taken after April 14. Yediyurappa on Monday held a meeting with officials of various departments along with his cabinet colleagues and the Chief Secretary. "The possible situation once the lockdown is released, was widely discussed in the meeting. Discussion was also held about the financial situation of the state government and how to mobilise resources. Many suggestions were given and it was decided to implement those suggestions," the Chief Minister said. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said, "...the COVID-19 situation has thrown our state into deep financial trouble and there is a need to to find ways to overcome present financial crisis." Yediyurappa said it was decided to speed up the disposal of cases related to regularisation of unauthorised constructions which are pending before the High Court and Supreme Court, during the meeting. "If the court decides the matter, thousands of people who own unauthorised houses will be relieved," he said, adding that this will also help government in mobilising resources for fund starved development works. He said in addition to this the government is planning to auction more than 12,000 corner sites lying idle in Bengaluru, and it was also decided to allow auction of corner and vacant sites in respective urban development authorities across the state. "By auction of corner sites in Bengaluru, we plan to mobalise about Rs 14,000-15,000 crore. BDA is preparing for it, only if we get good market value we will sell or else no," he added. It was also decided to amend the law governing permission to allow sites in private and co-operative housing societies, the Chief Minister further said, adding that hundreds of societies were waiting for approval from government for releasing the sites. Yediyurappa said it was decided to use Rs 1,000 crore available in Rajiv Gandhi Health University to upgrade medical college hospitals. It was also decided to distribute free milk to slums and poor for one more week, the Chief Minister said while appealing to sugar factory owners to clear the pending payment to the tune of Rs 2,834 crore to farmers in 11 districts. The government has also released Rs 45 crore compensation for the loss of paddy crop in Raichur and Koppal District due to hailstorm based on report submitted by Deputy Commissioners, he added. Responding to a question, Yediyurappa said, still no guidelines have come from the Centre on lockdown implementation for next two weeks, we are waiting for it. Once the guidelines come it will help us to speed up the process of lockdown, and also relaxations if any. Asked what plans does the government have if states are asked to decide on relaxation, he said, already Prime Minister has said that guidelines will be given, if they say on certain matters states can take decision, we will decide on what needs to be done to improve the state's economy. To a question on relaxation on sale of liquor through Mysore Sales International Ltd (MSIL) outlets, he said, discussions are on, after April 14, we will take decision in this regard. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday that the World Health Organization should commit to an "after-action report" on what China "did and didn't tell the world" about the coronavirus outbreak. Why it matters: Gottlieb, who has become a leading voice in the coronavirus response outside the Trump administration, said China may have been able to contain the virus entirely if officials were truthful about the extent of the initial outbreak in Wuhan. What he's saying: "There is some growing evidence to suggest that as late as January 20, [China] was still saying there was no human to human transmission, and the WHO was validating those claims on January 14, sort of enabling the obfuscation from China," Gottlieb said. "I think going forward, the WHO needs to commit to an after-action report that specifically examines what China did or didn't tell the world, and how that stymied the global response to this." The other side: WHO special envoy David Nabarro said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that the organization is not in a position to cast doubt on the health information that countries provide, including China. "We don't have in the World Health Organization the power to go and inspect beyond what countries tell us," Nabarro said. "That's been made clear in the treaty that governments agreed in 2005 on how nations work together and how the WHO operates. We believe what we've got. We work with what we've got." The big picture: Gottlieb dismissed President Trump's suggestion that the U.S. should cut funding to the WHO, pointing out that it will be needed when the coronavirus hits countries in the Southern Hemisphere and parts of the world that don't have adequate health resources. He also encouraged the WHO to give membership to Taiwan and allow it to attend the World Health Assembly, saying the country's exclusion at the behest of China has hampered the global response to the pandemic. Go deeper ... Timeline: The early days of China's coronavirus outbreak and cover-up The nationwide lockdown has left a lot of people looking to buy alcohol since state governments did not list it under essential services. So, finding this a great opportunity for business, a man from Bengaluru used the curfew to his advantage and came up with a plan to sell liquor on social media. According to a Times of India report, the man named Kiran, used Instagram as a platform to sell alcohol to customers at thrice the MRP. It also goes without saying, he violated the rules of the lockdown. The excise department came to know about the man also delivering alcohol to his customers and that is how he came on their radar. AFP (Image for representational purposes only) The report further adds that the accused acquired the alcohol from the defence canteen with the help of a retired employee. His sole purpose was to earn money during this period of lockdown. Reportedly, the man's only way to contact his customers was with the help of social media and he also did not deliver the booze to them directly. The report mentions that he used to accept the payment over Google Pay and PhonePe before the delivery. Once the payment was made, he would call the customer to a designated spot where he would hide the alcohol before their arrival. Once he had hidden the alcohol, he would closely observe his customers and only inform them of the exact spot once he was sure that there was no trap laid out for him. DNA (Image for representational purposes only) The accused was picked up by plainclothesmen when he arrived to the spot for a delivery. Facebook image used for representational purposes only. Sen. Bernie Sanders formal endorsement of Joe Biden for president marked a major step toward unifying the Democratic party in its drive to defeat President Trump and sharply reduced the risk that Democrats will be as weakened by intraparty tensions as they were four years ago. Sanders endorsement came far earlier and was seemingly more heartfelt than in 2016, when he did not back his rival, Hillary Clinton, until July and then without the personal rapport he has shown for Biden. I thought wed play some chess, Sanders said jovially to Biden at the end of the amicable endorsement event, which was a split-screen appearance in a live stream billed as a talk on the coronavirus crisis. Sanders (I-Vt.) urged Americans to join him in supporting Biden to make certain we defeat someone I believe is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country. The two announced they were establishing several task forces made up of advisors from both camps to hash out policy agreements on issues such as the economy, education, criminal justice, immigration, healthcare and climate change. Sanders endorsement ends any doubt that lingered in the wake of his announcement last week that he was abandoning his bid for the presidential nomination, in a speech that fell short of a full-throated endorsement of Biden. Today, I am asking all Americans I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse," Sanders said to Biden. Sanders' move came almost exactly three months earlier than in the far-more-acrimonious 2016 primary campaign, allowing more time for the party to rally for the general election battle. Aides said Biden and Sanders had always enjoyed a better personal relationship than Sanders did with Clinton. That sometimes made Sanders more reluctant to attack Biden during the primary campaign than some of his supporters would have liked, and, indeed, even in the aftermath of the endorsement some of Sanders' prominent backers declined to follow suit. Story continues Briahna Joy Gray, Sanderss campaign press secretary, for example, wrote on Twitter: With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don't endorse Joe Biden. I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like # MedicareForAll , cancelling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those. The rapprochement of the two candidates was also hastened by the fact that Trumps threat to Democrats values and agenda is more vivid now than it was four years ago, when few thought he would win the election. Senior advisors to Biden and Sanders have been meeting for weeks to find commonalities on policy and lay the groundwork for an endorsement. Biden, who has struggled to win support from the progressives and young voters who flocked to Sanders, expressed gratitude to the senator. Its a big deal, Biden said. Im going to need you badly. The two erstwhile rivals, speaking from their respective homes where they are confined during the pandemic, had a lengthy conversation that emphasized their shared views on many issues. They avoided engaging on differences over issues such as Sanders signature proposal to expand Medicare to all Americans. I know we share the same goals on many of these things, said Biden. We've had different ideas on how to accomplish them. But on some issues we're going to continue to disagree respectfully, but not in any substantive way. For the Biden campaign, the high-profile endorsement provided a welcome change of topic from reports that surfaced over the weekend that a former Senate staffer had accused Biden of sexually assaulting her during the early 1990s when he was a Delaware senator. The Biden campaign flatly denies the allegation. The detente with Sanders came after Biden took a series of steps to reach out to the partys left wing. Last week, Biden proposed an expansion of Medicare and student debt relief in proposals that fell short of what Sanders proposed, but marked movement in his direction. But the fact that some Sanders supporters saw Biden's proposals as inadequate points to a big remaining question: Will Sanders endorsement bring along the young and progressive voters Biden needs in sufficient numbers to beat Trump? Many of Sanders supporters are independents, not Democratic party regulars, so it remains to be seen how thoroughly their political heros endorsement will lure them into the Biden camp. While some of Sanders supporters may stay home rather than vote for Biden, others could defect to Trump. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that if Biden were the Democratic nominee, 80% of Sanders supporters would vote for Biden, and 15% would go to Trump. Typically, however, in past elections, the number of people who defected from the party's nominee in the fall was considerably smaller than the number who said they would do so in the spring. Sanders also faces the challenge of helping Biden motivate young voters who did not turn out for the Democratic primaries. Sanders has acknowledged that, for all his appeal to young voters, he was disappointed that their turnout still fell short in this years primaries. "Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in? The answer is no," Sanders said at a news conference in early March. "I think that will change in the general election, but I will be honest with you, we have not done as well with bringing young people into the process. Flash Before the Chinese anti-epidemic medical expert team boarded a returning plane back to China on Sunday, Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong told Chinese and Lao media that the team, joining their local counterparts, have helped improve the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Laos. Ambassador Jiang said at the Wattay International Airport that the Chinese medical team has "assisted the Lao side, according to local conditions and situation, in developing a complete set of anti-COVID-19 solution, that is resisting the imported cases and containing the domestic spread, which has improved the scientific and standardized level of pandemic prevention and control in Laos." The Chinese ambassador also believed that under the strong and powerful leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and the Lao government, with the joint efforts of all the people, Laos will surely overcome difficulties, control the epidemic and maintain sustained and healthy socio-economic development. As a community with a shared future, China and Laos will keep helping each other, sailing through the difficulties with the Lao side, as to continue to provide full support and assistance according to the needs of Laos, said Jiang. Laos detected its first two confirmed COVID-19 cases on March 24, and only after five days, the Chinese anti-epidemic medical expert team arrived in Vientiane on March 29. The Chinese medical team includes experts in various fields such as infection prevention and control, intensive care, epidemics, and laboratory testing. They also brought along with medical treatment, protective supplies and a batch of Chinese and Western medicines. The Lao Health Ministry said at its daily press conference that the country has detected 19 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Sunday afternoon. The Navigli district of Milan, one of the area of night life in Milan, is almost deserted after most bars were closed by the last decisions of the government trying to face the coronavirus emergency AP In New York alone, ACT UP has included thousands of members and alumni since its inception in 1987; for this photograph, T gathered 98 of them. Front row, from left: CARLOS AITCHESON-VALENTIN , MICHAEL PETRELIS , SHARON TRAMUTOLA , LARRY KRAMER and ASANTEWAA GAIL HARRIS . Second row: NANETTE KAZAOKA , JAMIE LEO , TIMOTHY LUNCEFORD-STEVENS , ROBERTA DEGNORE , ALEXIS DANZIG , LAURIE ARBEITER , KEN KIDD , SCOTT GORENSTEIN , MARIA MAGGENTI , KATE BARNHART , CHIP DUCKETT , NANCY BROOKS BRODY , JAMIE BAUER and GEORGE PLAGIANOS . Third row: ANGELA PETRELIS , KEN BING , BEN SHEPARD , DEB LEVINE , JULIE TOLENTINO , CATHERINE GUND , IVY KWAN ARCE , IDRIS MIGNOTT , JOE FERRARI , ANNIE FUREIGH , ALAN KLEIN , JOY EPISALLA , GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA , DAVID WEBSTER , BARRY HOGGARD and RAY BLACK . Fourth row: ELLEN NEIPRIS , MELVIN STEVENS , JODY RHONE , TOM MCKITTERICK , GONZALO ABURTO , GILBERT MIGUEL MARTINEZ , MARK MILANO , FERNANDO MARISCAL , JENNIFER FLYNN WALKER , BILL BAHLMAN , BLANE CHARLES , MOLLY GINGRAS , AMANDA LUGG , SUSANNA COLE , BRIAN HOWARD , AVRAM FINKELSTEIN , RON MEDLEY , JAMES WAGNER and BILL BYTSURA . Fifth row: NAOMI BRAINE , BC CRAIG , RON GOLDBERG , LUIS SANTIAGO , DAVID KIRSCHENBAUM , CESAR CARRASCO , STEVIN AZO MICHELS , JETON ADEMAJ , KEVIN FROST , DAN WILLIAMS , EDWARD BALL , JASON ROSENBERG , JAY BLOTCHER , ERIC RHEIN , JOHN VOELCKER and JASON CHILDERS . Sixth row: BOB LEDERER , JONATHAN BERGER , JIM EIGO , MARGARET MCCARTHY , ANN NORTHROP , CHARLES STIMSON , BRIAN GRIFFIN , PAUL TEELING , RICHARD FERRARA , LEE RAINES , STEVE NESSELROTH and MICHAEL SPIER . Seventh row: VINCENZO AIOSA , FRANK JUMP , ALDO HERNANDEZ , ERIC SAWYER , TONY ARENA , RON GRUNEWALD , JAN CARL PARK , BILL DOBBS , JOHN WEIR , ANER CANDELARIO , REED VREELAND , TASSOS PAPPAS , CHIP CORDELLI , SEAN STRUB , MICHAEL GOFF and WALTER ARMSTRONG . Photographed at Manny Cantor Center in New York City on Feb. 28, 2020. In New York alone, ACT UP has included thousands of members and alumni since its inception in 1987; for this photograph, T gathered 98 of them. Front row, from left: CARLOS AITCHESON-VALENTIN , MICHAEL PETRELIS , SHARON TRAMUTOLA , LARRY KRAMER and ASANTEWAA GAIL HARRIS . Second row: NANETTE KAZAOKA , JAMIE LEO , TIMOTHY LUNCEFORD-STEVENS , ROBERTA DEGNORE , ALEXIS DANZIG , LAURIE ARBEITER , KEN KIDD , SCOTT GORENSTEIN , MARIA MAGGENTI , KATE BARNHART , CHIP DUCKETT , NANCY BROOKS BRODY , JAMIE BAUER and GEORGE PLAGIANOS . Third row: ANGELA PETRELIS , KEN BING , BEN SHEPARD , DEB LEVINE , JULIE TOLENTINO , CATHERINE GUND , IVY KWAN ARCE , IDRIS MIGNOTT , JOE FERRARI , ANNIE FUREIGH , ALAN KLEIN , JOY EPISALLA , GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA , DAVID WEBSTER , BARRY HOGGARD and RAY BLACK . Fourth row: ELLEN NEIPRIS , MELVIN STEVENS , JODY RHONE , TOM MCKITTERICK , GONZALO ABURTO , GILBERT MIGUEL MARTINEZ , MARK MILANO , FERNANDO MARISCAL , JENNIFER FLYNN WALKER , BILL BAHLMAN , BLANE CHARLES , MOLLY GINGRAS , AMANDA LUGG , SUSANNA COLE , BRIAN HOWARD , AVRAM FINKELSTEIN , RON MEDLEY , JAMES WAGNER and BILL BYTSURA . Fifth row: NAOMI BRAINE , BC CRAIG , RON GOLDBERG , LUIS SANTIAGO , DAVID KIRSCHENBAUM , CESAR CARRASCO , STEVIN AZO MICHELS , JETON ADEMAJ , KEVIN FROST , DAN WILLIAMS , EDWARD BALL , JASON ROSENBERG , JAY BLOTCHER , ERIC RHEIN , JOHN VOELCKER and JASON CHILDERS . Sixth row: BOB LEDERER , JONATHAN BERGER , JIM EIGO , MARGARET MCCARTHY , ANN NORTHROP , CHARLES STIMSON , BRIAN GRIFFIN , PAUL TEELING , RICHARD FERRARA , LEE RAINES , STEVE NESSELROTH and MICHAEL SPIER . Seventh row: VINCENZO AIOSA , FRANK JUMP , ALDO HERNANDEZ , ERIC SAWYER , TONY ARENA , RON GRUNEWALD , JAN CARL PARK , BILL DOBBS , JOHN WEIR , ANER CANDELARIO , REED VREELAND , TASSOS PAPPAS , CHIP CORDELLI , SEAN STRUB , MICHAEL GOFF and WALTER ARMSTRONG . Photographed at Manny Cantor Center in New York City on Feb. 28, 2020. Rosie Marks SUBMICROSCOPIC INFECTIOUS agents have a way of revealing the worst in us, and the best. That is the story of the AIDS epidemic generally, and in particular of ACT UP the 33-year-old radical direct-action group formally and loftily called the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. For nearly a decade in the 1980s and 1990s, ACT UP was a ubiquitous and unnerving presence, not only in America but in 19 countries worldwide. At its peak, it claimed 148 chapters, and though its ranks remained relatively small numbering perhaps no more than 10,000 it terrified and angered much of the population, whether by halting rush-hour traffic and taking over public spaces with die-ins and kiss-ins, at which members laid on the ground or made out with one another, or by disrupting scientific conferences and political affairs with foghorns, fake blood and smoke bombs (even, in one instance, overturning banquet tables). Generally, the news media didnt think much of their work, branding the group both vulgar and counterproductive. Far from inspiring sympathy, The New York Times said of ACT UP in 1989, their methods were another reason to reject both the offensive protesters and their ideas. Coverage wasnt much warmer in some gay newspapers, which were owned by older and more conservative types who saw them as churlish mobsters, spoiled and rude. ACT UP didnt entirely disagree. They were, as their motto goes, united in anger. The T List | Sign up here And there was much to be angry about. Its hard to remember now how criminally inept the establishments reaction was to a disease that disproportionately affected gay men. It took four years after the viruss discovery for President Ronald Reagan even to mention AIDS in public, in 1985, and almost 600 American deaths for The Times to give it a front-page headline. Congress, barely acknowledging the problem, attached anti-queer provisions to public health budgets while some states considered proposals to quarantine those who were H.I.V. positive. Its also hard to remember that on the night ACT UP was founded, in 1987 six years into the epidemic and 15,000 American deaths later there was still not a single pill on the market to prescribe. It sure seemed likely that every gay man would perish without a tear from the rest of the world. At least that was the nightmare scenario of the playwright Larry Kramer. In New York in those days, Kramer had a certain reputation for screaming about AIDS when everyone else was crying about it. While so many of us were caring for the dying and mourning the dead, he ranted at the White House and City Hall and lashed out at his beloved gay community, whose members he denounced as useless sissies incapable of fighting for our own survival. His fury did little to galvanize people behind him. Instead, it got him removed from the board of Gay Mens Health Crisis, an AIDS services agency hed co-founded in 1982, and frozen out of gay society. But it wasnt long before more people were ready to listen to him: By the time he was asked to give a talk at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in 1987 he was a substitute that night; Nora Ephron had canceled the virus had found a second generation. These younger queers, many of them in their 20s, had a certain feeling of entitlement that eluded people whod come of age before Stonewall, and they were furious shocked, even to realize how the health establishment had forsaken them. The ACT UP protester Kendall Morrison in New York City in 1989. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times In New York City, their weekly meetings quickly became the epicenter for all information about the disease, the World Wide Web for rumors and facts about new drug compounds and warnings about political perils, the text thread for strategizing our collective survival. Doctors and researchers from neighborhood hospitals made sojourns to ACT UPs run-down meeting hall at the center on West 13th Street with news from the front. Elected officials and community organizers market-tested new policies there. And ordinary people mostly white gay men at first, but always alongside a strong contingent of lesbians and people of color came looking for ways to respond. They soon diversified as their numbers grew, from 50 to 350 to 800 and more. They had little in common beyond what political scientists call a linked fate: Everyone in those meetings knew someone who was dying or had died, or else they were marked for death themselves. This brought a ferocious urgency into the room. With no formal leadership (unlike many civil rights movements that came before, but much like most of todays protest groups), ACT UP was the kind of chaotic public square that Hollywood screenwriters might dream up, an unruly Athenian democracy where ideas were aired and debated and where people thought and screamed, and cried out loud. It was where anger was converted to action. Protests were planned for nearly every week, against targets ranging from City Hall to Wall Street, hospitals to homeless shelters. Brandishing instantly iconic banners and posters like the arresting one-sheet that warned that Silence = Death the groups members took over evening news broadcasts and shut down Grand Central Terminal and St. Patricks Cathedral in highly photographed interventions that proved the effectiveness of their methods and their design-driven messaging. Not even Cosmopolitan magazine was spared, not even the Mets (the former for telling young women they werent at risk, and the latter more opportunistically: showing up at the stadium got their point Men, Use Condoms or Beat It! on national television). ACT UP was a place to find a sense of empowerment, if not always power itself. DESPITE THESE MUTINOUS mobilizations, little changed in those first years. Just one pill materialized called AZT and released in 1987, it was the most expensive medication ever marketed but it did nothing to extend life. Congressional spending was woefully inadequate. Pharmaceutical companies lacked the necessary urgency. The nations leading Catholic cardinal still inveighed against condom use and gay rights. Televangelists still welcomed our deaths. In the face of frustration, ACT UP pivoted brilliantly. Instead of demanding action from others, they took on the work themselves. Breaking down the myriad problems inhibiting the response to AIDS, the group spun off into committees to address them one by one: a womens committee, because women were excluded from drug trials and disease statistics; a needle-exchange committee, because no one else was trying to prevent the spread of disease among IV-drug users; a committee concentrated on minorities, because cases were growing in those communities; a housing committee, because so many lost their homes after lengthy hospitalizations; even a science committee, because the labyrinthine research institutions lacked a cogent agenda. Each group functioned autonomously, but all were bound together by ACT UPs belief that, through deep self-study, its members could bring the pandemic under control. ACT UP protesters on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France, on Dec. 1, 1994. AP Photo/Laurent Rebours ACT UP protesters outside St. Patricks Cathedral in New York City on Dec. 10, 1989. Dith Pran/The New York Times And that is indeed what they did. Members went on to write (and help push through) legislation redirecting federal funding, change the ways insurance companies function and build housing for the homeless. Eventually, ACT UP and its spinoffs proved to be full partners in bringing effective antiretroviral drugs to market in 1996. Along the way, they revolutionized how pharmaceutical sciences are practiced and health care is provided. Today, patients of most diagnoses are involved in research through formal advisory boards, a legacy of ACT UPs citizen-science activism. Roughly 23 million people are alive today thanks to the drugs that members helped pioneer; few human beings can claim such a massive humanitarian impact. They did this not by being nice oh, they were never nice but by being right. And by helping their adversaries find their way as well. Many people the organization targeted because of their inaction, from Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health (now back in the news, with Covid-19) to politicians like Jesse Helms and drug companies like Merck & Co., had an eventual change of heart. Even President Reagan came around, though tepidly, and not until he was long out of power and more than 90,000 Americans had already died. In the meantime, ACT UP had also turbocharged the L.G.B.T.Q. movement in ways that no one dreamed possible, fueling one of the fastest social transformations in human history. When the group began, homosexuality was illegal in half of U.S. states and much of the world. Today, marriage equality is legal in 28 countries. We saw there was a degree of possibility in life that we didnt expect as a community of queers, says the New York artist Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, who attended his first ACT UP meeting in 1988. We saw that things could change. WHAT LESSONS CAN these alumni, most now in their senior years, pass along to people craving change today? For starters, please remain calm. (Coincidentally, Please Remain Calm is the title of early member Peter Staleys upcoming memoir.) In a piece of good timing, new books are impending from several ACT UP veterans, including Garance Franke-Ruta, Mark Harrington, Sarah Schulman and Ron Goldberg, who was responsible for ACT UPs most memorable protest chants. Inside the chaos of this mass-death experience, people found that being a part of a group steadied their minds. ACT UP didnt just save lives of people with H.I.V., to the extent that it did that, says Franke-Ruta, who joined ACT UP in 1988 and is now a political journalist. It also saved a lot of other people who otherwise would have been overwhelmed by the times. It wasnt always easy to keep levelheaded in ACT UP meetings, which could devolve into fractious infighting and bitter turf wars. But for eight years, the groups members managed to come together again and again, keeping a steady focus on the plague. Its worth noting that ACT UP never did stop meeting. Though only a handful of chapters remain active, the core New York group still gathers every Monday night in the same West Village space, now glamorously renovated. And many original members continue to fight AIDS in numerous related ways as leaders of powerful agencies like amfAR, Housing Works and Treatment Action Group and even unrelated ones: Sean Strub, who went on to found POZ magazine in 1994 and publish his own book, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival, in 2014, now battles AIDS stigma as the mayor of Milford, Pa. Their work is not over. ACT UP protesters at a rally in Manhattan in June 1987. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Which leads to a second lesson: Be patient. And to a third: Dont be intimidated by experts; anybody can become an expert. These principles have certainly influenced the Black Lives Matter movement, which has continued to evolve since 2013. Like ACT UP, it brings together people tackling a waterfront of disparate issues: everything from voting rights to gender justice, health care, decarceration and immigration, says the Columbia law professor Kendall Thomas, whose ACT UP bona fides date to 1987. The movement for black lives would look very different if its thought leaders many of whom are self-identified black queer people hadnt been able to draw on the example of ACT UP, he says. Black activists and their allies now understand that the struggle for black freedom has to make connections across many different constituencies and concerns that used to be seen as different and disconnected. You can find ACT UPs DNA in other contemporary movements as well. The ill-fated Occupy Wall Street protests that began in 2011 have regrown into an array of splinter groups battling income inequality, student debt, the gun lobby and climate change. How much does the Greta Thunberg effect owe to ACT UP in its success in launching a global student movement to fight carbon-dioxide emissions? Like their forebears, Thunberg and her followers mostly teenagers know the scientific literature thoroughly, leaving detractors little to attack them with besides ad hominems. Add to ACT UPs offspring the gun-control activists whose numbers grew following the Parkland massacre in 2018, the growing global movement to end transgender murders, the Womens Marchers and even those working independently across nations to develop safety strategies during the current Covid-19 pandemic. Progressive activism owes a debt to these survivors of the AIDS crisis, these stalwarts from ACT UP, for their legacy has left us all better equipped to challenge and reconfigure power imbalances, as Thomas sees it. We have this archive of a political practice that is available to everybody. ACT UPs veterans, aging as they may be, arent yet finished unleashing power. David France is the author of How to Survive a Plague and the director of the forthcoming documentary Welcome to Chechnya. Rosie Marks is a documentary photographer. Her first book, 08.14-10.19, will be published this year. Photo assistants: Evie Shandilya and Tucker Wyden. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. Patient Access Solutions Market Size, Share, key Trends, Top Leaders and Analyzed information by Global Patient Access Solutions Market Service (Support & Maintenance and Implementation), Software (Eligibility Verification Software and Medical Necessity Management Software,), End User & RegionGlobal Forecast till 2024 Patient access solutions can be used by patients to gain access to their records, prescriptions, reports, and bills in a centralized location. The software helps in identification, management, and collection of data. The global patient access solutions market report by Market Research Future (MRFR) uses industry insights accumulated from experts by analysts for the compilation of pertinent drivers and challenges in a comprehensive manner. Market Overview The global patient access solutions market is predicted to accrue revenues at a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period (2019-2024). The market can thrive by minimizing the amount of staff required for management of patient data. The increase in healthcare expenditure by nations globally can drive the adoption rate by hospital chains globally and provide the market a much-needed boost. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total healthcare expenditure was reported to be USD 831.5 billion. Technological advances in software which have culminated in accuracy, portability, and affordability can ramp up the adoption rate significantly. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the software to assist patients in their search can bode well for the global Patient Access Solutions Market growth. Additional functions of health economics management and patient record management, as well as integration of real-time management models, can influence the growth patterns of the market. Segmentation The global patient access solutions market is segmented by delivery mode, software, service, and end-user. By delivery mode, it is segmented into on-premise solutions and web & cloud-based solutions. By software, it is segmented into eligibility verification software, pre-certification & authorization software, payment estimation software, medical necessity management software, medical claims payment processing software, claims denial & appeal management software, and others. By service, it is segmented into training & education, support & maintenance, and implementation. By end-user, it is segmented into laboratories & research institutes, hospitals & clinics, and healthcare providers. Regional Analysis The Middle East & Africa (MEA), Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), and North America are the main regions considered during the compilation of the market report. The Americas accounted for the lions share of the market due to presence of well-established hospital chains, reputed personnel, sophisticated infrastructure, and high healthcare expenditure. Europe accounted for the second-largest market share due to increased support for research and development. Furthermore, the integration of the latest technology as well as upgradation of current equipment can drive the global patient access solutions market demand till 2023. Investment of capital as well as the large healthcare expenditure allocated for the well-being of patients can augur favorably for the market in the region. The APAC region is estimated to grow at a robust pace due to rapidly growing economies as well as the large patient pool. Awareness among patients of mobile applications as well as large disposable income levels has led to the integration of the latest automated solution at major hospitals. This can prove fruitful for the market looking to expand in the region. Furthermore, the improving economies other than large ones of China and India can be lucrative areas for investment. Competition Outlook Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Optum, TeleTracking Technologies, Inc., TransUnion LLC, SCI Solutions, Inc., GAFFEY Healthcare, Experian Information Solutions, Inc., Genentech USA, Inc., PokitDok, Inc, nThrive, Inc, Stericycle Inc, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Availity, LLC, UNITED BIOSOURCE LLC, KYRUUS, Cerner Corporation, MEDHOST, and FormFast are prominent names in the global patient access solutions market. Industry News Patient Access Solutions, Inc., has decided to try out a new strategy of acquiring local clinics in order to expand its services. It will establish Integrated Health Centers in its place and focus on patient care. Table Of Contents: Chapter 1. Report Prologue Chapter 2. Market Introduction 2.1 Definition 2.2 Scope Of The Study 2.2.1 Research Objective 2.2.2 Assumptions 2.2.3 Limitations Chapter 3. Research Methodology 3.1 Overview 3.2 Primary Research 3.3 Secondary Research 3.4 Market Size Estimation Chapter 4. Market Dynamics 4.1 Drivers 4.2 Restraints 4.3 Opportunities Continued OBTAIN RESEARCH REPORT DETAILS WITH TOC @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/patient-access-solutions-market-7811 Related News Sex Cord Gonadal Stromal Tumor Market Bariatric Surgery Devices Market About Market Research Future: At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/ Queen of England gives first-ever Easter speech: Take heart in hope of risen Christ Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Queen Elizabeth II spoke of the hope of Christ in a first-ever Easter address amid unusual circumstances for many Christians in that many were unable to attend church due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "As darkness falls on the Saturday before Easter Day, many Christians would normally light candles together. In church, one light would pass to another, spreading slowly and then more rapidly as more candles are lit. It's a way of showing how the good news of Christ's resurrection has been passed on from the first Easter by every generation until now," she said. "This year, Easter will be different for many of us, but by keeping apart we keep others safe." Yet Easter is not canceled, she added, it is needed as much as ever. "The discovery of the risen Christ on the first Easter Day gave his followers new hope and fresh purpose, and we can all take heart from this. We know that coronavirus will not overcome us," she said. "As dark as death can be particularly for those suffering with grief light and life are greater. May the living flame of the Easter hope be a steady guide as we face the future." Last Sunday, in another rare address, the queen spoke specifically about the COVID-19 pandemic that has besieged the world, killing over 116,000 people so far and infecting over 1.8 million around the world, particularly in Europe, and the ongoing response to the disease outbreak. "Together we are tackling this disease, and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it. I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge, and those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any, that the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet, good-humored resolve, and of fellow feeling still characterize this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future," the queen said. "Across the Commonwealth and around the world, we have seen heartwarming stories of people coming together to help others, be it through delivering food parcels and medicines, checking on neighbors, or converting businesses to help the relief effort. And though self-isolating may at times be hard, many people of all faiths and of none are discovering that it presents an opportunity to slow down, pause and reflect in prayer or meditation." Queen Elizabeth first ascended to the throne in 1952. She is England's longest-serving monarch since Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother. She is the longest-serving female head of state in world history, surpassing Queen Victoria's reign on Sept. 9, 2015. The queen will turn 94 next week. CDC has updated isolation and quarantine recommendations for the public, and is revising the CDC website to reflect these changes. These recommendations do not apply to healthcare personnel and do not supersede state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations. Testing is very important to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. Types of COVID-19 Tests COVID-19 tests can detect either SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, or antibodies that your body makes after getting COVID-19 or after getting vaccinated. Tests for SARS-CoV-2 tell you if you have an infection at the time of the test. This type of test is called a viral test because it looks for viral infection. Antigen or Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (NAATs) are viral tests. Tests for antibodies may tell you if you have had a past infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. Your body creates antibodies after getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 or after getting vaccinated against COVID-19. These tests are called antibody or serology tests. Viral Tests A viral test tells you if you are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. There are two types of viral tests: rapid tests and laboratory tests. Viral tests use samples that come from your nose or mouth. Rapid tests can be performed in minutes and can include antigen and some NAATs. Laboratory tests can take days to complete and include RT-PCR and other types of NAATs. Some test results may need confirmatory testing. Self-tests are rapid tests that can be taken at home or anywhere, are easy to use, and produce rapid results. COVID-19 self-tests are one of many risk-reduction measures, along with vaccination, masking, and physical distancing, that protect you and others by reducing the chances of spreading COVID-19. Antibody Tests An antibody test (also known as a serology test) can detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in your blood. Antibodies are proteins that your immune system makes to help fight infection and protect you from getting sick in the future. Antibody tests should not be used to diagnose a current infection, but may indicate if you had a past infection. Antibody tests help scientists learn about how human immune systems defend against the virus, as well as learn about population-level protection. Antibody testing is not currently recommended to determine: If you have a current infection. If you have immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following COVID-19 vaccination. Whether you need to get vaccinated if you are not fully vaccinated. Whether you need to quarantine after a known or suspected exposure to COVID-19. You should always discuss your test results with your healthcare provider. Even when the Strokes were a brand-new band, nostalgia was a big part of their appeal. In many ways, theyll miss the good old days/Someday, Julian Casablancas sang on Someday from the Strokess 2001 debut album, Is This It. At the time, the Strokes were already being hailed as a second maybe third or fourth coming of a terse, hardheaded, jaded but hopped-up New York City rock lineage running from the Velvet Underground through the New York Dolls and the Ramones. Now, 19 years after the Strokes released their first recordings and seven years after their previous full-length album, Comedown Machine, the band has released The New Abnormal. (They announced the album title in early February, weeks before the new abnormal became a familiar description of life during the Covid-19 pandemic.) Its the sixth album by the Strokes, always a supremely self-conscious band. And as the band completes its second decade, its invocations of nostalgia have folded in on themselves: on the music the Strokes chose as their foundation, on two decades of the Strokess own catalog and on the conflicting pressures of enjoying flexing their strongest instincts and moving ahead. I want new friends but they dont want me, Casablancas complains, resignedly, in Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus. Toshiba Elevates Larry White to Chief Operating Officer Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS) today announces the promotion of Larry White to chief operating officer effective immediately. The highly respected industry leader and 24-year Toshiba (News - Alert) executive previously served as the company's chief revenue officer. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005029/en/ Toshiba Elevates Larry White to Chief Operating Officer (Photo: Business Wire) White assumes more oversight and strategic planning responsibilities across the TABS business. He will specifically oversee the company's sales, customer service, supply chain, innovation, professional services and solutions marketing operations throughout North and South America. "Larry White has consistently led his teams to deliver high levels of revenue growth throughout his tenure at Toshiba," said Toshiba America Business Solutions President and Chief Executive Officer Scott Maccabe. "Expanding Larry's responsibilities will help Toshiba achieve our overarching P&L objectives while accelerating our strategic expansion within software solutions, and professional services." "I'm truly looking forward to my new rolein leading and mentoring our diverse teams to fulfill the organizational goals we've set," White said. "More importantly, I strive to increase the value Toshiba's product and solutions portfolio delivers to our loyal client and reseller community." As TABS' chief revenue officer, White was responsible for achieving revenue objectives by successfully developing and implementing profitable growth strategies for the company's direct and independent sales channels. He joined Toshiba in 1996 as the vice president of operations and acquisitions for Toshiba Office Products Acquisition Company, which is currently Toshiba Business Solutions, the company's direct sales channel. White is a three-time ENX Magazine 'Difference Maker' and selected to The Cannata Report's: Cannata Watchlist 2018 as an executive poised to make a positive impact. He holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from Texas Tech University. About Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc. Toshiba America Business Solutions delivers multifunction printers, managed document services, point-of-sale and thermal barcode printers as well as digital signage for businesses of all sizes across the United States, Mexico, and Central and South America. The company's award-winning e-STUDIO multifunction printers combine quality performance with the security businesses require. TABS provides displays, content creation, integration, installation and project management services as well as financing for solutions ranging from a single screen to the biggest arenas and stadiums. For additional information, please visit business.toshiba.com. Follow TABS on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005029/en/ Jack Johnson lives. Well, not exactly. On May 24, 2018, inside the Oval Office, President Donald Trump issued a posthumous pardon to Johnson. Such a notion had been pushed forward by others, but it had always died. Now Trump had someone he knew in his corner. That would be Sylvester Stallone, whose quick fists led him to star in five Rocky films. Ive known Sly for a long time, Trump went on. I love his movies. Then Trump appeared confused whether he meant Rocky or Rambo. Which is better, he wondered aloud. Stallone stood by smiling. As did Lennox Lewis, also a world champion heavyweight. A small woman with bright eyes stood by watching the event happily. She is Linda Bell Haywood. Turns out she is Johnsons great-great maternal niece. Trump told reporters that Johnson had been treated unfairly because the famed boxer had violated the Mann Act. Created by white politicos in the last century the law was meant to prohibit sex trafficking but once used as weapon of racism. This strange ruling was invented only to penalize Johnson. The result was 10 months in a federal prison. Afterward, Trump announced that he was considering a pardon for Muhammad Ali. Employees of Howard K. Hill Funeral Services lined up for a photo Saturday morning on Chapel Street in New Haven, in front of the casket of one of their own, Gerald F. Brown Sr., a funeral director at that very location. At the center was Hill himself in a medium-brim black hat, who also owns funeral homes in Bloomfield and Hartford. It was a pivotal moment in more ways than one as Hill, his company and his community struggle to cope with a crisis that lays bare the stark differences in health outcomes and economic standing between white Americans and people of color. The people in predominantly minority neighborhoods, and businesses such as Hills, which mostly serves African American families, already know all too well what early reports from Connecticut and other states are starting to show. The coronavirus crisis is hitting black and Hispanic communities harder than the population as a whole. Just how hard, no one can say yet. But the disparity builds on a familiar American structure of lower incomes; more meager financial assets and equity as a cushion against crisis; less access to health care, which now affects coronavirus testing and treatment; more underlying medical conditions; and a higher proportion of the black community in front-line health care, food service and other jobs that leave them exposed to the contagion of COVID-19. The question is, Hill told me later Saturday, are we going to acknowledge it and are we going to do something about it? Hill takes his role seriously, in the tradition of black funeral directors who led the civil rights movement, holding meetings and sometimes shuttling leaders such as Martin Luther King to events safely in hearses. Hes co-chairman of the statewide Minority Business Initiative and is chairman of Hartford Communities That Care, an anti-violence group, among many other affiliations. On a conference call with 75 black business owners on Friday, announcing a small fund for minority-owned companies, Hill delivered a strong message. Its critical for us to start banding together. Collectiveness is where the power is going to come from, Hill said on the call. In the past weve been competing with one another. Far from a forum for grievances, Hill and other leaders in the black community view the coronavirus crisis as a vehicle for change. Yes, some people, some businesses, are hurting especially the restaurants, barbershops and small stores that are temporarily out of business. Barely mentioned is the cash economy in all lower income neighborhoods, which makes collecting unemployment and other government makeup benefits impossible. Yes, more people are dying as a share of the whole state. Sen. Douglas McCrory, D-Hartford, co-chairman of the Minority Business Initiative, said he knows of five people who have died with COVID-19 in Bloomfield alone, three of them personal acquaintances. State data as of Friday shows that 61 black Connecticut residents have died with COVID-19 among 424 whose race was known. Thats slightly higher than the 12 percent of the population represented by black people, but neither McCrory nor Hill believes those numbers. Hill alone hes had about 45 funerals in the last few weeks, up from 30 or so that he might normally see in that time. And hes seen death certificates marked natural causes that appear to be COVID-19. Theres a flu out there in the state and we have pneumonia, said Yvonne Renee Davis, a consultant who helped organize the call to business owners, in both a literal and figurative view of the picture. They can see whats happening across the country in places like Louisiana, where African Americans represent one-third of citizens but 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths. And yet, theyre not expressing anger or frustration. Theyre mobilizing. This pandemic, while its a horrible thing, is a huge opportunity, Hill said. Youve got businesses that are making a boatload of money as a result of this pandemic and then there is the other side. ... Most often the black folks are on the negative side. His own business, despite the larger number of funerals, feels the strain. Many families, now out of work, cant afford a burial and even if they could, no one is doing large funerals anyway because of social distancing. The disease has also claimed indigent people at nursing homes, often with no family, and when Hill does those burials, the state pays him $1,350, he said. He listed duties required and believe me, hes taking a loss for each one of those sacred rituals. But hes fine. His own business pressures are not the point other than as an emblem for the much deeper wounds this virus inflicts on a minority community that struggles at the best of times. On a personal level, Hill buried his own father on April 3, not due to COVID-19 and one day later came word that Gerry Brown had died. Three of his employees have been hospitalized with the illness. And so, at the moment of that memorial on Saturday, none of these big national, racial worries stood dominant. Hills concern was honoring Brown who, as it happens, was white. Hill and Browns family had mounted a sidewalk commemoration so people who knew and loved Brown could drive by, honk, wave and keep moving. The mourners included five New Haven Fire Department vehicles, hundreds of others and at least 15 funeral homes, some direct competitors all of them understanding, as Hill told me in the middle of it, that rivalry ends when they bury one of their own. Nobody hugged. It was a tribute we would never have imagined five long weeks ago. Hill lifted Browns casket into a hearse. Just then, Browns daughter approached Orsella Hughes, a pastor and former Hill employee who still works with the funeral service, to thank her and her colleagues at Hill. He talked so highly of you all the time, Browns daughter said. That was my guy, said Hughes, who read Scripture at the burial. Race mattered not in the slightest at that moment. And yet on Monday morning, when hundreds of black-owned businesses try to collect their share of the $350 billion in federal Payroll Protection Program money, they will have a harder time than their white counterparts. A lot of the banks are requiring that you have an existing loan or an existing relationship, said Glendowlyn Thames, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development. And thats just one way the age-old inequities grow worse. That is part of the reason we did this fund, Thames said, explaining the program that will offer forgivable loans of up to $20,000 for a small number of companies. Hills 15-year-old daughter was born on the day his New Haven business received its state license, as he served his first customer there. He lives in a connected world and he sees whats happening as part of a very complex puzzle. I want to acknowledge whats going on but I also want to send inspiration and encouragement to black-owned businesses, he said. I want to remind them...that they can deal with anything. Were strong people and we can get through this if we work together. dhaar@hearstmediact.com Policeman stand around a graffiti painted on a road to raise awareness about the COVID-19 coronavirus during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Chennai. (AFP) Chennai: The war of words between chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Leader of the Opposition, M K Stalin, escalated on Sunday with Stalin urging Palaniswami to stop belittling the principal opposition party, the DMK, and to take all parties along in the fight against the dreaded novel Coronavirus to save the people of Tamil Nadu. In a hard hitting statement, as a reply to the CMs lengthy rejoinder to his letter on Saturday, Stalin urged Palaniswami to come out of his cheap mentality and stop playing uncivilised politics. Taking exemption to Palaniswamis charge of opportunism by Stalin, he asked: Cant I ask questions as the Leader of the Opposition? Where is the opportunism in this? I was only raising the questions at the opportune moment. Stalin asked if the government had taken preventive steps by setting up check posts on the state borders and subjecting international passengers to tests at the airports. Why did the chief minister call upon all those who came from abroad to voluntarily come for testing? he asked. He wondered why the chief minister on March 30 should say that they needed 1.5 crore masks, 25 lakh N90 masks, 10 lakh face protection masks, 2500 ventilators and 30,000 testing kits if the government, as claimed by him, has placed orders on time for testing kits, full body protective gear, medicines and so on with a visionary outlook? Was it a visionary thing to reject the DMKs demand to adjourn the State Assembly, saying that all efforts were being taken on a war footing and also to say that it was natural for diseases to strike but the people would be without fear only if the House was in session? Stalin said. Stalin said that the government without understanding the potency of the coronavirus allocated just Rs 60 crore in the beginning and then raised it to Rs 1000 crore and asked if it was foresight on the part of the government to know the virulence of the disease. He listed a series of inconsistencies by the government, like announcing relief only for construction and auto sector workers on March 24 even after he had demanded a relief measure for all workers in the unorganized sector, and then announcing it for all workers. He alleged the same happened in the announcement of Rs 1000 relief for those holding rice ration card at the Assembly on March 25 and then expanding it to all ration card holders the very next day during the television address. Another example he gave was the chief minister holding a meeting with all religious leaders on April 3 after dismissing a demand from him (Stalin) on March 29 for an all-party meeting saying that coronavirus was a health issue and not a political issue. Then, Stalin said, the chief minister first made the chief secretary announce the opening of 13 types of industries on April 7 and then cancelling the order using the Industries Secretary. Similarly on April 9 the chief minister said that the pandemic was on the verge of entering the third stage of spread and the next day the chief secretary said that it was still in the second stage itself. He criticized the chief minister for not objecting to the Centre cancelling the MP Local Area Development Fund by playing opportunistic politics and also for taking Rs one crore from each of the MLAs area development fund unilaterally. Stalin said that the State government was reluctant to extend the curfew beyond April 14 even after many state governments like Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab have done it because it was afraid of antagonizing the Centre. The chief minister, to protect his post, had sacrificed the rights of the State through his selfishness and cowardice, leading to Tamil Nadu losing a lot of things. Now it could be loss of lives, Stalin alleged. He said the chief minister was asking the people for contributions to his fund and taking away the MLAs funds because he lacked the courage and guts to demand the states share from the Centre. It was the DMK that has been demanding for the States share of funds, he added. Police arrested a Florida man in connection with the death of his estranged wife, whose friends had received mysterious text messages from the missing woman's phone saying she had been hospitalized with COVID-19, officials said. Jupiter resident David Anthony, 43 was being held without bail at the Dona Ana County Detention Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, following his arrest on April 1, jail records showed on Monday. David E. Anthony (Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office) The body of his estranged wife, Gretchen Anthony, 51, has not yet been found, a Jupiter police representative told NBC News on Monday. Anthony and the suspect were still married but had separated and were in divorce proceedings, police said. Several friends told police they had received odd text messages from Gretchen Anthony's cell phone last month, claiming she had tested positive for coronavirus and was being hospitalized. One of those witnesses even told police that Gretchen Anthony's mother had received a text, purportedly from the then-missing woman, "saying she is on a ventilator," according to a probable cause affidavit filed by Jupiter police. No hospital or insurance records showed any COVID-19 patient named Gretchen Anthony, police said. She was last spotted at work on March 20 and she appeared to be healthy and in good spirits, police said. "As the investigation progressed and further evidence [was] collected, it is believed David E. Anthony is responsible for her disappearance and related homicide which was determined to have occurred on" March 21, according to a police statement. Anthony's dark blue Mini Cooper was found in the parking lot of the Jupiter Medical Center, officials said. Security video showed that car was driven into the hospital by a "taller white male" who exited the vehicle's driver side on March 24, according to the affidavit. David Anthony is 6-foot-7, according to jail records. Gretchen Anthony's neighbors told detectives they heard a woman screaming from her home on March 21. One witness recalled the cry of, "No. No, it hurts!" according to the affidavit. Story continues Neighbors also recounted seeing a black truck, closely resembling the suspect's, at the scene that day. Inside the victim's home, police said, they found bleach stains on the garage floor, a rag and bottles of cleaning agents on the kitchen island and towels in the washing machine with a "reddish substance on the that appeared to be blood," the affidavit said. A Palm Beach County Sheriff's cadaver dog "displayed a positive indication at a particular location of the floor in the garage" of Gretchen Anthony's home," according to the police affidavit. David Anthony was eventually captured in Las Cruces, New Mexico, after signals from mobile phones belonging to the suspect and Anthony "were hitting off of cellular towers in Texas," the affidavit said. There was no record of Anthony retaining a defense lawyer yet, officials said Monday. The Associated Press Two NASA astronauts said Friday they expect it will be tough returning to such a drastically changed world next week, after more than half a year at the International Space Station. Andrew Morgan said the crew has tried to keep atop the pandemic news. But its hard to comprehend whats really going on and what to expect, he noted, when his nine-month mission ends next Friday. It is quite surreal for us to see this whole situation unfolding on the planet below, said Jessica Meir, who took part in the first all-female spacewalk last fall. We can tell you that the Earth still looks just as stunning as always from up here, so its difficult to believe all the changes that have taken place since both of us have been up here. As an emergency physician in the Army, Morgan said he feels a little guilty coming back midway through the medical crisis. Its very hard to fathom, Morgan told reporters. Meir said it will be difficult not being able to hug family and friends, after seven months off the planet. She anticipates feeling even more isolated on Earth than in space. Were so busy with so many other amazing pursuits and we have this incredible vantage point of the Earth below, that we dont really feel as much of that isolation, Meir said. From 250 miles above, the crew of the space station extends their heartfelt thanks to doctors, nurses and medical professionals everywhere during challenging times on Earth. pic.twitter.com/HxOEGWGUP3 Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) April 10, 2020 So well see how it goes and how I adjust, she said. But it will, of course, be wonderful to see some family and friends, at least virtually and from a distance for now. Morgan flew to the space station last July, and Meir last September. They will return in a Soyuz capsule with Russian Oleg Skripochka, landing in Kazakhstan. Their departure will leave three astronauts, who arrived Thursday, on board. The three will return exactly 50 years after the Apollo 13 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific. An oxygen tank explosion aborted the moon-landing mission. Once again, now theres a crisis and the crisis is on Earth, Morgan sais Also Read: Five astronauts give us their best tips on finding joy, calm in self-isolation Helen Esposito answers the phone in the NY state unemployment office, then pauses before she speaks. She knows the caller probably has been hitting redial, sometimes more than 100 times, day after day. Each time, they reach a computerized voice that eventually hangs up on them. She knows each caller has lost a job and has lined up with millions of Americans sheltering from the deadly coronavirus. They are frustrated and scared. Esposito speaks: I go, Hi. Theres a human on the other end,' Esposito said. All you hear is somebody scream and start laughing and thats when you get the call going. There are also plenty of tears, she said. More than 800,000 New Yorkers jammed the NYS Labor Departments website and phone lines in March to apply for unemployment benefits. During the same time last year, only 52,500 people needed the labor departments help. The department was too understaffed and its technology too outdated to handle the volume, she said. On Thursday, the state upgraded the website to allow people to file a claim without calling a representative. Theyve also added hours, a call center and stopped hanging up on everyone. But it took a month. Apologies came from the top. I apologize for the pain. It must be infuriating to deal with, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during one of his daily coronavirus briefings. As soon as the pandemic hit, Esposito and hundreds of others anybody with a voice moved from regular jobs to answer the phones. Esposito, 59, is a labor service representative in the labor department. She is a member of the New York State Public Employees Federation, the union that also represents thousands of nurses on the front lines. Esposito says she works with more unsung heroes. She reports to work in the Binghamton office at 8 a.m. and stays until 7:30 p.m. She works six days. At night, she hits the one grocery store still open and forages for dinner on the picked-over shelves. She says hi to her son, the dogs, the cats and turns on the TV. I make it 20 minutes into a show and next thing I know, its 4 in the morning, she said. On her day off, she said she cant stop thinking about work and the calls she could be taking. Esposito has worked in the unemployment office since 1993. Shes been through two recessions and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This is all of those times 10, she said. Past recessions happened over time. The coronavirus sent every non-essential worker in the state into a government-ordered shutdown in the course of a week. Thousands of workers were sent home from factories, shopping malls and even hospitals. Tens of thousands of the lost jobs are in hotels, restaurants and retail workers who already live paycheck to paycheck. They reach Esposito on the phone and she doesnt let them go until she is sure they understand their benefits and when the money is coming. Her goal is to get them to smile. She said she talks to them like shes known them her whole life. They talk about the jobs they lost, the virus, the people they are caring for, bills coming due. People break down and she gives them the time. She knows another caller is waiting. Take a breath and know that youre going to be OK, she says. I dont give a darn if people are recording the call. Im going to make sure youre OK before you get off the phone. One client said her father passed away. Another said her mother was in a nursing home with dementia and doesnt understand why family cant visit. Esposito shares stories about her own fathers death until both ends of the phone are in tears. Youre hearing stories of people that are worried how their next bill is going to be paid, she said. Theyre afraid they arent going to be able to feed their kids. Some callers say they have worked their whole lives and they are embarrassed to take unemployment. They see it as charity. Try to see it like insurance, she tells them. A 21-year-old college student called from Buffalo. She lives on her own with no support from her parents. She didnt know how she would make her car payment. Esposito stepped into her Mom role. She explained how much money the woman would be getting and when. She told her to call the bank and ask for an extension on the car loan. You can try. If not, youll have the money to pay it, she said. Youre not going to lose your car. Youre not going to lose your livelihood. Esposito said she loses herself in the phone calls. She has to get up, walk the empty halls, listen to some music, then come back. Shes close to retirement and could even leave now with a small penalty. She wont. There are some days that I go home and I just want to cry because I feel good because I know I accomplished something, she said. This is what reminds me why I stayed and why I love the job. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Social distancing in CNY: Hundreds of calls, police try to teach people to obey crackdown Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Contact Michelle Breidenbach | mbreidenbach@syracuse.com | 315-470-3186. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 18:36:29|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China has stepped up its fight against illegal border crossings amid mounting efforts to prevent the importation of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases, an official said Monday. "Illegal border crossings during the outbreak increase risks of importing COVID-19 cases," said Liu Haitao, a division head of the National Immigration Administration, at a press conference Monday. Residents at border regions are urged to report signs of illegal border crossing to authorities in a timely manner, Liu said. Among illegal border-crossing cases, he spoke of the investigation of three major cases of organized illegal border crossings by border authorities in southern China's Yunnan and Guangxi, which led to the interception of a number of people attempting to cross the border illegally. Drivers transporting travelers that illegally cross the border and hotel managers failing to register their information have also been held to account by the law, said Liu. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:41:52|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China on Monday refuted the U.S. accusation that the Chinese province of Guangdong has taken discriminatory practices toward Africans in the process of epidemic prevention and control, and said the United States was provoking confrontation, which was not only immoral but also irresponsible. Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a news briefing when answering a question regarding the accusation from a U.S. State Department spokesperson. Zhao said China urges the U.S. side to focus on its own pandemic prevention and control. Attempts to provoke confrontation amid China-Africa friendly relations will never succeed. "During our fight against coronavirus, the Chinese government has been attaching great importance to the lives and health of foreign nationals in China. All foreigners are treated equally, and we reject differential treatment," said Zhao. China and Africa have always been good friends, good partners and good brothers, said Zhao, adding that African countries had supported China during China's most difficult times fighting the epidemic. As the situation is getting more severe in Africa, the Chinese government and people have swiftly delivered aid to Africa, which has been highly acclaimed by African countries and their people. "China's friendly policy toward Africa will never change, our friendship with African countries and their people will never waver, and we will never discriminate against our African brothers," said the spokesperson. He noted that of the more than 3,000 African students in Hubei Province, only one was infected when the coronavirus epidemic was at its severest time, but this student received prompt treatment and recovered quickly. All the others are in sound conditions. The Guangdong authorities have carried out investigations and implemented a series of new methods regarding some African countries' concerns, Zhao said, adding that he believed the issue will be properly handled with the joint efforts of the two sides. Hong Kong: Online dispute resolution effective Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng In view of the severe economic repercussions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic globally and locally, the Government announced another package of measures to support the affected individuals and businesses last Wednesday. Two of which are particularly relevant to the legal and dispute resolution sector - the LawTech Fund and the COVID-19 Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Scheme. The LawTech Fund was briefly introduced in this blog a few days ago. Today, I would like to give an online explanation of the COVID-19 ODR. In anticipation of an upsurge of disputes arising from or relating to COVID-19, the scheme aims to provide speedy and cost-effective means to resolve such disputes, especially for those involving micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that may be adversely affected or hard hit by the pandemic. The scheme will engage eBRAM (electronic Business Related Arbitration & Mediation system) to provide ODR services to the general public and businesses, in particular MSMEs, involved in low value disputes. The scheme plans to cover COVID-19 related disputes with the claim amount for each case to be capped at $500,000. Either one of the parties (claimant or respondent) must be a Hong Kong resident or company and they will only be required to each pay $200 registration fees. Under the scheme, the parties are required to enter into a dispute resolution agreement to record their consent. The process to be adopted is a multi-tiered dispute resolution mechanism where the parties will first attempt to negotiate their disputes, followed by mediation and if that does not result in settlement, then subsequently to arbitration for a final and binding award. This is in line with the "Mediate First" policy that we have been advocating under our "Mediate First" Pledge Programmes. The scheme aims to offer a fast and effective means to resolve disputes among parties. Each tier of dispute resolution will be conducted within a limited time. The tiers are devised with a view to avoiding disputes and differences from being entrenched. If the disputes can be resolved successfully and amicably through negotiation or mediation, we hope it will help build and reinforce a harmonious society and enable the parties to preserve their long term business relationship. We also hope the scheme will have the benefit of job creation and job advancement for mediators and arbitrators (including their pupils). Parties are at liberty to appoint the third party neutral of their choice and if no agreement is reached, there will be a mechanism for appointment. The third party neutrals and the parties or their representatives can still handle cases under the social distancing measures online and indeed to practice on the handling of cases online. We would like the scheme to be launched in June if funding is provided in April. It is a global trend to develop and use ODR to provide reliable and efficient platform to facilitate alternative dispute resolution. The scheme is in line with the development under Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's Collaborative Framework on ODR (APEC Framework), with MSMEs as the major beneficiary. The mechanism of adopting negotiation and mediation in the first stage under the APEC Framework is also to prevent entrenched views on the conflicts, thereby helping to create harmony in society. Some forms of alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation, are a more cost-effective way to resolve disputes. The costs of mediation are almost always lower than the disputed amounts, making it an economical way to resolve disputes. Mediation can save time too. Some cases may be resolved following just one day of mediation. LawTech has greatly helped the development of dispute resolution services. The establishment of a safe, reliable and credible platform to provide enterprises with convenient and cost-effective online dispute resolution will become a new trend. It is one of the major long-term policy objectives of the Department of Justice (DoJ) in recent years to enhance and promote Hong Kong's status as an international legal hub for deal-making and dispute resolution. A further promotion of the use of ODR will help consolidate Hong Kong's position as an international business and financial centre. The social media accounts of the DoJ's IDAR Office have been introducing the procedure, characteristics and benefits of mediation and arbitration. You may wish to visit the dedicated pages of the IDAR Office to keep abreast of the dispute resolution services. In addition to the relief measures announced by the Government, the DoJ has also taken the initiative to speed up payment of fees to counsel. Counsel engaged by the DoJ could submit their interim fee notes together with the interim case reports after certain work has been completed. Each case will be considered individually on a case-by-case basis and interim payments could be made. I have enquired and am also glad to learn from the Legal Aid Department and the Duty Lawyer Service that they made similar arrangements. We are confident that Hong Kong can weather the storm with our fundamental strengths and resilience. We also trust that we would overcome this unprecedented challenge by standing in solidarity. Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng wrote this article and posted it on her blog on April 13. This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Baku has expressed its readiness to support a historic agreement reached earlier this week that would see Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other non-OPEC oil-producing countries cut production in an effort to stabilize an ailing oil market. As Caspian News reports, a statement released by Azerbaijan's energy ministry on Friday revealed that the country is one of the ten non-OPEC states that have agreed to deal. Under the new agreement, Azerbaijan would be expected to reduce its output by 164,000 barrels per day for the next two months. During this period, Azerbaijan should keep average daily crude oil production at a level that not exceeds 554,000 barrels, the ministrys website quoted the document as saying, adding that the country would have to maintain daily oil production at the level of 587,000 barrels during the July-December period and 620,000 barrels between January 2021 and April 2022. News of Azerbaijan's commitment to the deal came after OPEC and its non-member partners, also referred to as the OPEC+ alliance, held a virtual meeting, which resulted in participating countries reaching a much anticipated deal to reduce oil production by 10 million barrels per day in May and June, the biggest output cut made by the cartel to date. The recent deal is expected to put an end to a brutal price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that started in early March after officials in Moscow rejected the OPECs demand to further cut production. Russias refusal caused the end of the three-year partnership between OPEC and major non-OPEC providers and prompted a crash in Brent crude prices of more than 30 percent. Yet, the global oil deal faces the risk of collapse after Mexico refused to commit to its full share of cuts. Mexican officials said the country could only reduce its production by 100,000 barrels per day a figure that is significantly lower than the amount of 400,000 barrels per day which was proposed by other oil producers. As a result, meeting participants acknowledged in a statement that the final agreement is conditional on the countrys consent. On Friday, energy ministers from G20 countries again tried to push Mexico towards oil production cuts at an emergency meeting. Mexicos quota, however, remained unresolved, with very scant details about concrete output cuts and any specific actions towards the countrys position. We commit to take all the necessary and immediate measures to ensure energy market stability. We recognize the commitment of some producers to stabilize energy markets, S&P Global cited G20 as saying. The oil prices, however, tumbled after Mexicos statements and because of doubts that the deal would not be enough to overcome the collapse caused by the coronavirus pandemic. International benchmark Brent crude fell 2.5 percent to close at $31.48 per barrel on Friday as US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) lost 7.6 percent to settle at $23.19 per barrel. Some believe the deal will help oil prices recover once it comes online. In general, the deal itself is a plus for all parties, because Azerbaijan, Russia and other countries would lose more at low prices, said Gulmira Rzayeva, a Research Associate at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES), adding that everything above $40 per barrel is good for Azerbaijan. Better to gain by oil prices than by export volumes, she said in an interview with Vesti.Az. Azerbaijan, a country located on the western edge of the Caspian Sea and bordering Russia to the north and Iran to the south, is rich in oil and natural gas. According to data compiled by the U.S. government its proven oil reserves are estimated to be seven billion barrels or about one billion metric tons, putting it at number 18 globally and ahead of Mexico, India, Norway, Sudan and the European Union. The field is critical to Azerbaijans economic and national security, as more than 50 percent of the state budgets revenues come from oil and gas sector of economy. According to government data, the output from the giant Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field brought Azerbaijan nearly $135 billion in revenues from 2001 to 2018. Earlier this week, Kazakhstan which is the worlds ninth-largest crude oil exporter and a non-OPEC country announced that the government would support any OPECs decision. At the same time, there were no official statements from the country after the agreement was reached on Thursday. Along with some other countries, Kazakhstan agreed to reduce output for six months beginning January 1, 2017 extendable for another six months. After Russia broke the three-year partnership with OPEC in March, officials in Nur-Sultan said was not planning to make any changes to the countrys oil output quotas. Have you got a dog with star quality? Well, here's the chance you've been waiting for to show it to the world - without leaving the comfort of your own home. Join dog-loving Derry Girl star Saoirse-Monica Jackson today as Portstewart-based Big Telly Theatre Company hosts a dog show with a difference. Hosted on Zoom, an internet video chat service, the dog show goes live this morning, the theatre company said. Jackson - who plays Erin in the smash hit comedy show - will be a celebrity judge. Big Telly posted: "We're inviting you and your star dog(s) to join our amazing Dog Show on Easter Monday at 11am. It's LIVE, online, on ZOOM!! "There could be 50 of you, and your dogs - all together EEK!!! Show categories include 'best dressed' and 'dog that looks most like its owner'. "We must be barking mad!!" a Big Telly spokesperson said on social media. "Our utterly charming and charismatic human host will guide you through the show, announcing best in show categories, sorting out any shenanigans, and generally keeping a tight leash on you all! "Massive craic, quite possibly massive chaos ... this show is not to be missed. "All you need is you, the family and the star of the show - your DOG!" Big Telly Theatre Company is based in Portstewart and is Northern Ireland's longest established theatre company. With a reputation for innovative work and a mischievous, irreverent approach, the company loves to play in unexpected places as well as theatres. In addition to many innovative adaptations of Irish literary classics, Big Telly has devised and written original pieces of theatre for touring and site-specific work. Rantoul, IL (61866) Today Sunny and windy. Temps nearly steady in the mid 30s. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. Low 28F. Winds SW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. New Delhi: "Do attend this class of our young Corona Warriors of CRPF soldiers", was an appeal Prime Minister Narendra Modi made after he attended the new form of A-Z lessons from an anti-COVID-19 'Pathsala' (class) being run by the children of the paramilitary force. The 'Pathsala' concept clicked in the mind of a mother of four-year-old Aadiv and two-year-old Anaya when she was teaching them English alphabets. Ashwariya, whose husband is an Assistant Commandant in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deployed in Kashmir, then shared the thought with others and it turned into reality on April 11 with the help of the children of other CRPF personnel of class 3 to 12. "The genesis of the anti-COVID Paathshala is the young mother teaching her child the rules to be followed to prevent COVID-19. She then tried to teach ABC to her children and the idea was born," CRPF DIG (Jammu and Kashmir Zone) Nitu told IANS. "The thought is floated to the older children who then make an interesting way to remember the basis. The CRPF family bonds together." The officer said that it was a joint effort of several children of the CRPF personnel. Not only the Prime Minister, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) also suggested to join the 'Pathsala', tweeting: "Let's learn about COVID-19 from the "Anti-Covid Pathshala". Let's keep ourselves and others protected." The first-of-its-kind initiative was taken by a group of children of the CRPF personnel -- a 3.5 lakh force which is mandated to provide internal security in Jammu and Kashmir, and Maoist-affected areas -- that has earned applause even from the Indian Embassy in Turkey for "helping the nation to fight COVID-19". The online Pathsala recommends fighting the pandemic together by following the dos and don't which keep everyone safe. All the 26 letters in the alphabets teach a precaution necessary to contain the pandemic, which almost crippled every sector across the world causing deaths to over 1 lakh people and infections to more than 17 lakh. "Anti-Covid Pathshala by children of CRPF personnel: A-Z of dos & don'ts to keep yourself safe from COVID-19. Let's fight corona together. For any assistance 24x7 call CRPF Madadgaar on 14411," the CRPF said. So, it has: avoid gathering, be alert, conquer covid, distance of three feet, exercise daily, fake news alert, greet with namaste, handwash regularly, increase immunity, joint activity at home, keep busy, learn new things, masks are important, no to going out, online contact, practise your passion, quarantine, relax, sanitaize everything, take care of your elders, untilize time, volunteer work at home, wear a mask -- and x expresses extra precaution, y yoga and z zero face. So far, the 'Pathsala' on social networking site YouTube has attracted over 1,326 viewers, and over 8,000 retweets on Twitter. CRPF Director General A.P. Maheshwari calls it an adorable initiative taken by the children of the CRPF personnel, asking all to "let's learn the A B C of the fight against corona". The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared a new image of the Pillars of Creation captured by the Hubble Space Telescope focusing on the infrared radiation in which the human eyes normally cannot see. The once colorful Pillar of Creations has now appeared like ghosts behind a kaleidoscope of newborn stars within the dust. The pillars are five light-years in length and has become a natural incubators of star formation due to their dense pockets of hydrogen gas. Pillars of Creation The 'Pillars of Creation' was first photographed in 1995 using the Hubble Space Telescope-the same equipment used in capturing its new image surrounded by newborn stars. Located around 6,000 light-years away from Earth, these tendrils of dust and gas have become a Milky Way landmark. The blue colors seen at the pillars are oxygen, while the red is sulfur, and green represents both hydrogen and nitrogen. The cluster of young stars outside the frame of the pillars bathed it with the scorching ultraviolet light. The Pillars of Creation is about 4 to 5 light-years and is somewhat small feature of the entire Eagle Nebula that spans between 70 by 55 light-years. It was Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux, a Swiss astronomer who discovered the nebula that is located 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens. Read: New Images of the Sun Reveal Incredible Fine Magnetic Threads Filled with Extremely Hot Million-Degree Plasma Stars destroy the pillars Now, a new image of the Pillars of Creation shows that the most active star formation glows brightly with a hazy blue radiation that lies in the region of the tip of the biggest pillar. NASA scientists explain that the lower reaches of the pillar were able to maintain their long, stalk-like appearance because these dusty regions shadow and cool the gas below them. According to Paul Scowen, a NASA astronomer who led the initial Hubble Space telescope exploration of the Eagle Nebula in 1995, the radiation that the stars give off as they become bigger also gets stronger which destroys the gas around them and ultimately the Pillars of Creation. "The gaseous pillars are actually getting ionized, a process by which electrons are stripped off of atoms, and heated up by radiation from the massive stars. The stars' strong winds and barrage of charged particles are literally sandblasting away the tops of these pillars," Scowen said in a statement in 2015. Hubble Space Telescope's 30th Anniversary Originally launched in 1990, the Hubble telescope has made more than 1.4 million observations of many stars, planets and galaxies. After three decades of capturing some of the most stunning sights in space, this year marks Hubble Space Telescope's 30th anniversary. In celebration of this important milestone, NASA has is giving stargazers around the world the chance to know what the telescope captured during their birthdays. Just go to the website of NASA and select the month and date of your birthday. You might find something interesting happening in space while you were cutting your birthday cake! Read Also: LARGEST! 1 Million Square Kilometer Hole Opens in Ozone Layer Above the Arctic Renewable energy jobs a priority The renewable energy sector employs almost 27,000 (ABS, 2018-19) Australians. I hope after the lockdown Australia increases the manufacturing and installation of solar panels to help the economy recover with a sustainable long-term growth industry. Also, free electricity for struggling Aussie families. Wendy Swaine, Croydon Hills Harking back to self-sufficiency How ironic that the Federal Government is looking at making Australia self sufficient again. As a wife and mother in the '70s, my gas, electricity and water were provided by the state and they trained apprentices as well. I made calls on a telephone owned by the Federal government. The trains and trams I used, were built locally and belonged to the state government. My fridge and washing machine were manufactured in Australia and lasted forever. My children ate food all made locally. The pandemic has shown just how dependent we have become on imports. Olivia Manor, Coburg Time for a better way to live While this COVID-19 virus has paused life as we have known, it is a once in a century opportunity to think about a better way to live. Many will want to get the economy moving as quickly as possible, but we know that is the trajectory for climate change catastrophe. What if global leaders took this opportunity to set a new course where GDP was not the goal, but sustainable progress was. Rampant free market economics, has created a chasm of inequality and human misery. Irene Zalstein, East Doncaster THE FORUM Imports hit local jobs It seems it has taken a disaster, which has upset foreign supply chains, for our government to realise that we rely far too much on imports. A walk around a supermarket will show large numbers of imported foodstuffs, all of which could be made here. Not only do these imports add to our balance-of-trade figure, but they also deprive Australian workers of jobs. And while we are at it, let's also completely ban another "import" the use of overseas call centres. In most cases, they are used by highly profitable companies, such as banks, insurance companies and energy suppliers, who could easily afford to employ locals. Mike Trickett, Geelong West Hands off the GST Highly likely that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the Coalition will argue it needs to widen and increase the GST to pay for the debt incurred during the coronavirus crisis. Given that the GST is a regressive tax that places a greater burden on people with lower incomes, this would exacerbate the hardship of those who have already borne the financial brunt of the crisis. Phil Alexander, Eltham Fly the VFL flag Given the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of holding a full AFL premiership season this year, might it be possible for Victoria to hold an old-fashioned VFL premiership with the winner having its name added to the official VFL record? To add to the retro VFL flavour, the matches could be held at surviving VFL grounds. Essendon's Windy Hill, for example, would be more than adequate because there would be no fans. Bill Anderson, Surrey Hills Hope for change Thank you to Deputy State Coroner Caitlin English ("Coroner refers death in custody to prosecutors", 10/4) for her diligent work on the inquest into the death of Tanya Day after being detained at Castlemaine Police Station. Ms English's findings and recommendations have given me hope that the systemic racism Indigenous Australians face do not have to go unopposed. Here's hoping that this inquest is a seed that sprouts into meaningful change and better lives for Indigenous Australians. I urge every organisation mentioned in the inquest's report to fully implement each of its recommendations to ensure that unnecessary tragedies such as this are avoided in future. Adam Ford, Chewton Vulnerable singled out The Morrison government's decision to single out one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, which includes international students, temporary migrants and asylum seekers, and then tell them to "go home" during a global health and economic crisis lacks both compassion and economic foresight and is totally unAustralian. We have an estimated 2.2 million people stranded in our country without access to any support except for the goodwill of Australians, who are themselves facing unprecedented hardship. We had little difficulty in welcoming the economic and cultural benefits resulting from the contributions made to our society by this group before the COVID-19 pandemic but all that seems to be forgotten. The Morrison government and the people of Australia will be judged on the level of support given to all members of our society during these challenging times. Soula Bennett, Moonee Ponds Hidden ideological agenda Paul Keating's scathing rebuke (13/4) of Tony Shepherd's proposal to suspend 9.5 per cent wage contributions to Australian's individual superannuation accounts is a timely reminder of the power and influence of businessmen such as Shepherd to recalibrate public policy underpinned by "ideology". COVID-19 pandemic or not, this is no time to attack retirement savings. Indeed, Tony Abbott's "captain's pick" as the former chairman of the National Commission of Audit resulted in a radically altered Australian Public Service. So, Keating is right in warning Australians that Shepherd's spin "Super is for a rainy day but we are in a cyclone" is masking a hidden ideological agenda of indefinitely suspending Australia's national superannuation savings scheme. John Fitzsimmons, Mornington Value our artists Konrad Marshall's story ("For Goodness Sake", 11/4) is a timely reminder of how much we are depending on the performing arts to maintain our mental health throughout this period. People should stop and consider how they would be coping without access to the performing arts. How are workers in these industries existing without an income and without access to wage subsidies? This is an industry that contributes $111.7 billion to GDP and is seven times the size of the aviation industry. Isn't it time we started valuing our artists and what they contribute to our lives? Sue Lyons, Carlton North Turn to science heartening It is heartening to see how our government has turned to medical science to assist in formulating its policy on COVID-19. The data set is incomplete but it is the best option for policy-making that exists. Once this crisis is over, let's hope that our government leaders will also turn to science in order to face the looming disaster of climate change. Carmel McNaught, Balwyn North Ship in muddy waters There's no need to be an expert to know that Aurora Expeditions cruise ship the Greg Mortimer should not have set sail on March15 ("Experts slam cruise ship decision to set sail", 13/4). Of 217 people on board, 128 have tested positive for COVID-19 but defending the action to sail, an Aurora spokesman says the decision "was done on the basis of best information available to us at the time". Which information was that? That 150,000 people globally had already been infected with the virus, that passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were trapped off the coast of Japan, that in January WHO had declared a global emergency, and that the government had an entry ban on flights from China and recommended all Australians avoid non-essential travel? Deborah Morrison, Malvern East Time to fix faults While our halls and recital centres are closed, we have an excellent opportunity to fix some of their more egregious design faults. Let's start with the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall in the Melbourne Recital Centre. I have enjoyed many a music event in this theatre and usually find myself in the stalls. When the theatre is being loaded, I join the other concert-goers hugging the walls to let the inner seats fill. There is barely room for someone to squeeze past if a seat is occupied. For both comfort and safety reasons, there has to be a middle aisle. To do this, seats need to be removed to give people a chance of escaping in an emergency. Brian Fitzgerald, Mitcham Plenty to be thankful for Our family is grateful that our son was finally able to board a flight home from Laos after three failed attempts. We appreciate the efforts of the reassuring staff at the Australian embassy in Laos. They maintained contact with the stranded travellers and communicated with families. They also cobbled together flight options including the one our son returned on. Thanks to DFAT for being accessible to concerned families at such a high-demand time. Thanks to the Australian government for finding creative and costly solutions to previously unheard-of challenges Cathy Benger, Fairfield Winter ordeal exacerbated One wonders what will happen to us if we have to stay in isolation over the coming Melbourne winter months. With or without the spectre of COVID-19, a southern winter is an ordeal. September could see us emerging 10 kilograms heavier, hairier, cross-eyed and neurotic. Margaret Skeen, Point Lonsdale Where are the specials? Being a long-time Woolworths customer, I have noticed a reduction in "specials" on everyday items since the COVID-19 pandemic and wonder why? Surely in these difficult financial times, discounts would be appreciated, especially given the rise in sales and profits in recent months. Susan Nash, Preston Not all cruise lines equal Last month while on a cruise of the Chilean fjords, we were advised by the captain that a passenger had tested positive to COVID-19 following his transfer to hospital. On the fourth day of being confined to our cabin, arrangements had been made to transfer most passengers to an airport to board three repatriation flights. In our case, the cruise company chartered a Boeing Dreamliner direct to Sydney for the 16 Australians. We were fortunate to have sailed with a cruise operator who co-ordinated with local authorities, and placed the welfare of their passengers ahead of commercial considerations. Graham Ross Pegram, Applecross, WA Vaccine price point That there are as many as 115 vaccines in development across the world provides hope for a way out of this pandemic. It is a testament to scientists' hard work not just on COVID-19 in recent months, but on decades of vaccine development. However, of Dr Richard Hatchett's three principles of "speed, scale and access", access is perhaps the one we need to work hardest on. A COVID-19 vaccine must be sustainably priced for governments and health systems to purchase. It must be available to all and it must be free at the point of delivery so that individuals are not deterred by the cost of the vaccine. COVID-19 is a global problem and can only be solved if we ensure no one is left behind. Tessa Marshall, medical student and Universities Allied For Essential Medicines member AND ANOTHER THING Coronavirus Don't bother ringing me to buy raffle tickets if first prize is a cruise. Marcel Colman, Albert Park Whose interests are being served by the Institute of Public Affair's assault on measures taken to protect life? Brandon Mack, Deepdene Having flattened the curve can someone explain why we need to go to stage 4 restrictions. Michelle Leeder, Seddon The rising clamour to ease restrictions upon the first indications of "flattening of the curve" reminds me of many past government initiatives. At the first signs of success, declare the policy has achieved its aims and scrap it. Geoff Payne, Mornington 2020: the year the world realised all that matters is the health of our planet and its people. Michael Dillon, Woodend I could manage without Belgian chocolates and Iranian caviar but not Swiss cornflakes (available at Coles). Ian Powell, Glen Waverley Thank you to all the health workers, but also to all the comedians who make us laugh. Vale Tim Brooke-Taylor. Don't cry for me Marge and Tina. Myra Fisher, Brighton East When even the Pope sees the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity for change, it is time for the PM to snap out of his "snap back" to business as usual mindset. Bernd Rieve, Brighton I note rice growers saying we will run out of rice if we don't allocate them water. I have no problem with that provided it is for Australian consumption. David Kitchen, Violet Town Politics NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / As the numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths continue to climb amid upsetting warnings that UK could be the "worst affected" country in Europe, experts are eagerly looking for technologies that could help the fight against the pandemic. Artificial Intelligence, according to researchers from Coventry University, could be one of the "killer technologies" that would make a difference. AI-based CT Imaging: Possible solution to the bottleneck "UK doesn't have sufficient testing." Said recently Professor Chris Whitty, the UK's chief medical officer, pointing to an increasingly apparent "bottleneck" that could hamper the efforts to screening potential Covid-19 patients. Since the UK government has identified the need for massive Covid-19 testing, researchers are racing to fill the big capacity gap. Among them is Professor Dingchang Zheng, theme lead of Centre of Intelligent Healthcare at Coventry University, also an advocate for AI-based CT imaging as possible solution to the UK health system overwhelmed by large influx of patients. "CT chest imaging screening has been used as a primary supplement tool in China and other epidemic areas in stratifying risk in patients," Says Professor Zheng, whose research involves collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, "but up till now, CT imaging has not played a big active role in early screening of suspected COVID-19 patients in the UK." Attempting to transform AI-based CT imaging analysis technologies into efficient diagnostic assessment of UK's Covid-19 patients, he is actively pushing for a cooperation between the Coventry University and Huiying Medical, a tech startup whose AI-assisted solution has been deployed in 20+ Chinese hospitals for more than 126,000 screenings in the campaign against Covid-19 . As unfamiliar as its name may be to the UK public, Huiying Medical has firmly established itself as one of the leading international AI medical imaging players since its founding in 2015, successfully building collaborations with world class institutes including Stanford University, Tsinghua University and Intel. Story continues "Early detection and isolation play a very important role in the control of Covid-19," says Dr. Xiangfei Chai, CEO of Huiying Medical "based on tens of thousands of Covid-19 cases data in the past two months, our AI screening model has accumulated rich experience and we believe its recognition and diagnosis capabilities will help the doctors a lot." This former Stanford postdoc then goes on to note that the classification performance of the AI system is approximate to an "an ordinary doctor with 4 years of experiences". AI-based decision optimization: UK localized application strategy "There are many uncertainties during the treatment of a Covid-19 patient, such as what treatment should be applied or when the patient should be sent to the ICU," Says Dr. Chai, "this type of tough decision making is where AI could be of tremendous help." Tailored to the specific needs of UK doctors, a CT-based disease tracking & treatment AI recommendation system has been developed by teams from Coventry University and Huiying Medical. "The system can track the patient's condition according to the proportion of lesions, and predict the patient's late course of development based on the lesion volume's rate of change" says Dr. Chai, "thus appropriate treatment decisions can be made based on that information." Thanks to the joint effort of Coventry University and Huiying Medical, the AI solution for Covid-19 has already been deployed in the Affiliated Hospital of Coventry University. Made possible by cloud deployment, the AI solution can be installed within 24 hours with quick server-CT equipment connection and real-time result return, which would for sure facilitate the work of clinical process. Based on the training of more than 4,000 new CT images, the system's algorithm has an accurate sensitivity performance of 0.96 for classification of Covid-19 and has been widely welcomed by local doctors. As the cooperation moves on, Professor Zheng notes, a team from Coventry University will be in charge of developing clinical relationship with local NHS hospitals trust to correctly identify unmet clinical needs on COVID-19 for the UK healthcare setting, and also invite clinical experts & radiologists to evaluate the efficiency and reliability of this AI solution. "In addition, to ensure successful implementation of AI solution in the UK, and to maximize the societal impacts," says Professor Zheng, "an expanded network will be developed by us based on existing connections with other NHS trusts, guideline makers, and local authorities, which will provide additional resources for the adaptation of the AI-based technology, invite more hospitals for the large scale evaluation, and ultimately explore the best implementation strategy for the UK healthcare system to achieve smooth adoption of Huiying Medical's solution to help our NHS to win the combat with COVID-19. " According to recent news, The NHS has also confirmed it is teaming up with tech firms, including one AI company, to ensure the victory against Covid-19. "In UK, AI technology can be used as an automatic diagnostic decision support tool to flag future clinical coronavirus severity among those confirmed Covid-19 patients admitted to the hospitals," remarks Professor Zheng, "better decisions can be made about assessing which patients really needs beds and these who can safely go home."Ultimately, Professor Zheng hopes that the deployment of AI solution will provide references for updating the diagnosis and treatment guidelines of COVID-19. Needless to say, the adoption of AI-based technology to the UK healthcare system requires international collaborations with multidisciplinary experts: the UK clinicians, data scientists from Coventry University and AI developers from partners. According to the MoU of Coventry University and Huiying Medical, the two parties will "further develop and evaluate Huiying Medical's AI-assisted Medical Imaging Solutions for COVID-19" and " discuss joint technology localization and implementation of AI screening and diagnostic solutions in the UK and other European countries". "Our research centre of Intelligent Healthcare at Coventry University shares a common mission with Huiying Medical," says Professor Zheng, " We are aiming to research and develop innovative healthcare technologies and solutions to address unmet healthcare needs and improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities, by conducting interdisciplinary research with different partners and stakeholders along the pathway of technology development, adoption, and commercialization." (By Perry PANG) Contact: Company Name: HY Medical Person:Wendy Jia Phone:400-890-9020 Website:http://en.huiyihuiying.com/ SOURCE: HY Medical View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/584822/UK-expert-eyes-AI-technology-as-coronavirus-sweeps-the-nation The Daily Beast Fox News White House correspondent and perpetual nemesis of Jen Psaki thought he had Joe Bidens press secretary cornered on Monday when he asked her why the president is still referring to COVID-19 as a pandemic of the unvaccinated when so many people are getting breakthrough infections. He was wrong.I understand that the science says that vaccines prevent death, Doocy began, before undercutting that basic truth. But Im triple-vaxxed, still got COVID. Youre triple-vaxxed, still got COVI A village in Indonesia has resorted to a rather novel way of making sure people stay at home and practice social distancing by unleashing a team of ghosts upon its residents. A youth group in Kepuh village, on the island of Java, reportedly coordinated with local police to set up a team of volunteers who dressed as mythical pocong a spirit originating from folklore that represent trapped souls of the dead. Pocong (poh-chong) are also known as shroud ghosts, and are typically pictures as being wrapped a long white shroud tied over the head, around the neck and under the feet. According to Reuters, the team hoped to use the superstition to scare people into staying indoors as coronavirus continues to spread rapidly throughout the Southeast Asian archipelago. On Monday, Indonesias Health Ministry announced a total of 4,557 infections nationwide, with 399 deaths. Anjar Pancaningtyas, head of Kepuhs youth group, said: We wanted to be different and create a deterrent effect because pocong are spooky and scary. However, the ghostly figures had the opposite effect of scaring villagers into staying at home when they first began appearing this month. After curious residents started coming out to catch a glimpse, organisers have been forced to change their strategy to launch surprise pocong patrols. Although the virus has spread to all of the archipelagos 34 provinces, president Joko Widodo has resisted a lockdown similar to those imposed by neighbouring countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. He has urged people to practice social distancing and good hygiene, but regional administrations are calling for the government to impose larger scale restrictions as the number if infections surges, reported The Jakarta Post. Village head Priyadi said: Residents still lack awareness about how to curb the spread of Covid-19 disease. They want to live like normal so it is very difficult for them to follow the instruction to stay at home. Jakarta is the hardest-hit region in the country by the virus, with over 2,000 cases and nearly 200 deaths. It was the first region to impose strict social distancing restrictions and went into a partial lockdown last Friday. A similar ghostly prank to scare teenagers into staying at home in Malaysia turned out to be a success. Muhammad Urabil Alias, from the state of Terengganu, posted several photos of himself dressed head to toe in white on Facebook and wrote: Are there any vacancies in RELA or the police department tonight? Bored of sitting all alone. Mr Alias, 38, told local newspaper Harian Metro that he dressed as a ghost to prank teenagers who stayed out at night in the area, violating a movement restriction order imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus. He said: When I uploaded the photos on Facebook, a lot of people panicked and became scared to leave their houses. Recommended Police officer wears coronavirus helmet to urge people to stay inside Netizens reached out to me and asked whether the photos were real or not. I thought I made it obvious from the light-hearted tone in my post. I was clearly joking, but so many people thought that I was an actual ghost when I was just dressed up as Gandalf, he added. Malaysia has recorded 4,817 coronavirus cases, with 77 deaths. The country has been under lockdown for over three weeks now, and are not allowed to go outside even for exercise and only one person per household can go to supermarkets for essentials. A classic motorcycle which George Lazenby used to ride to the set of his only James Bond film has emerged for sale for 30,000. The actor bought the BSA Rocket III in 1969 and rode it on his 17-mile commute from Bayswater, London to Pinewood Studios near Slough, Berkshire during filming for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Mr Lazenby, now 80, went on to sell the motorcycle after the release of the sixth James Bond film later that year. The Australian actor was the second to play the British secret service agent after Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice, who took on the role again in the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever. A classic motorcycle (pictured) that George Lazenby used to ride to the set of his only James Bond film has emerged for sale for 30,000 Mr Lazenby (left as James Bond and right with Telly Savalas) went on to sell the motorcycle after the release of the sixth James Bond film later that year The bike's most recent owner, a collector based in Kent, has now fully restored the bike, with an engine and gearbox rebuild, new chrome and a repaint (pictured) Little is known about what happened to the bike after it was sold by Mr Lazenby until it was bought by its current owner, a collector based in Kent, in 2007. The unnamed vendor only discovered the machine was previously owned by the actor when he approached the BSA Owners Club, who revealed Mr Lazenby bought the motorcycle new in the 1960s. The collector has now fully restored the bike, with an engine and gearbox rebuild, new chrome and a repaint. During the restoration, a sidecar which had been installed after Mr Lazenby sold the bike was also removed. It will now be sold by Charterhouse Auctions in Sherborne, Dorset - who say they are expecting a huge amount of interest from James Bond fans. During the restoration, a sidecar which had been installed after Mr Lazenby sold the bike was discarded Richard Bromell, of Charterhouse, said: 'Today the market for Bond films is bigger than ever, with many fans waiting patiently for the now postponed release of No Time To Die. 'We all have our favourite Bond actor. Having watched from a young age, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one on my favourites.' A spokesman for the auctioneers added: 'Living in an apartment in Bayswater, Lazenby bought the bike to commute to Pinewood Studios for filming the new Bond film. The bike will now be sold by Charterhouse Auctions in Sherborne, Doreset who say they are expecting a huge amount of interest from James Bond fans Pictured: The 1969 BSA Rocket III which was bought from new by Mr Lazenby after restoration 'He was a keen motorcyclist and this was one of the very first new Rocket IIIs to be sold. 'Not much is known about its history after Lazenby sold the bike until it was bought by our vendor 13 years ago - although at some point a sidecar was added. 'The current owner is a collector of British motorcycles and purchased the Rocket with a view to restoring it to its former glory. 'The BSA underwent a full program of restoration and was subject to an engine and gearbox rebuild, new chrome, and a repaint. 'During the restoration the sidecar was discarded and it is now in great condition for the new owner.' It was the first state to report a positive case but since then it fought hard to beat down the curve Medical staff collect samples from people at a walk-in sample kiosk (WISK) to test for the COVID-19 coronavirus at the Ernakulam Medical College in Kerala. (AFP) Kochi: Of all of Indias states, Kerala is the best poised to win the fight against the novel coronavirus. As things stand, theres a clear indication of a flattening of the infection curve in the state. The number of fresh cases has fallen to the least in the country and the number of cured patients is escalating every day. On Sunday, only two fresh Covid-19 cases were reported form the state, the least number in the past few weeks. On the same day, 36 patients recovered and emerged from quarantine. If the state continues to maintain for another two weeks the current trend of fewer new cases and higher number of cured patients, it will have come out triumphant from the jaws of this killer epidemic. The state of 35 million people is already being touted internationally as a model for fighting Covid-19. The difference is stark when one compares Kerala and Maharashtra. At the beginning of the lockdown period, both states started out with almost the same number of Covid-19 cases. On March 26, Maharashtra had 122 corona positive cases and Kerala 120. In the three weeks since then, the number of corona positive cases in Kerala has risen to 375 positive cases, with 179 cured patients and two deaths, while Maharashtras numbers ballooned to 1895 cases and 127 deaths. Keralas success is evident from several epidemic indices. Mortality rate Though the first Covid-19 case in Kerala was reported on January 30, the death rate has been only 0.54 per cent, which is way below the global average of 6.12 per cent. Only two deaths have been reported in the state so far though the number of confirmed cases is 375. As of April 12, Madhya Pradesh had the highest death rate of 7.65 per cent (562 cases/43 deaths) in India followed by Maharashtra with a mortality rate of 6.70 per cent (1895 cases/127 deaths) and Gujarat with 4.66 per cent (493 cases/23 deaths). In contrast, worst-hit countries like Italy have a mortality rate of 12.78 per cent while in the US the fatality rate is 3.94 per cent. Though Kerala was the state with the highest number of positive cases in the country for a couple of weeks, the state has since then kept the infection and death rates relatively low despite aggressive tracing and testing. Ratio of positive cases to number of tests As of April 12, Kerala sent 14,989 samples for the Covid-19 diagnosis test, of which 13,802 came back negative. The state tests at the rate of 400 per million, which is much higher than the test rates in most of the other states. Delhi also has a high number of Covid tests. Best rate The recovery rate in Kerala also is the highest compared to other states and countries. Of the 375 corona positive cases confirmed in the state, 179 patients have been cured and discharged so far. Thats a recovery rate of 47.73 per cent, which is the highest in the country. According to data from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of confirmed cases in India is 9152 while the number of cured patients is 857. The recovery rate is only 9.36 per cent. Globally, with 18,50,220 confirmed cases and 4,30,455 recovered patients, the global recovery rate is 22.86 per cent. In the US, the recovery rate is as low as 5.82 per cent and 21.87 per cent in Italy. Number of hotspots In Kerala, seven districts were initially identified as Covid-19 hotspots: Kasargod, Kannur, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Thrissur, Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram. However, some districts like Ernakulam have not recorded even a single fresh case in the past one week. There has been a considerable decrease in the number of persons under observation as well. Currently, Kasargod and Kannur have the highest number of patients under treatment and both these northern districts are under tight restrictions. Health and police authorities say the active cooperation and support of the people was crucial in Keralas corona success story. Initially, all those returnees from abroad and from other states and their contacts strictly complied with the quarantine guidelines. Subsequently, adherence to health advisories like social distancing has been very good. Keralas performance has received worldwide attention with several international media and experts citing the Kerala model as worthy of emulation. The measures taken by the Left-ruled government such as free rations for all, exclusive shelters and facilities for several lakhs of migrant workers and temporary rehabilitation of the destitute during the national lockdown have also attained appreciation. Campus News Faculty find creative ways to teach amid distance learning By MARCENE ROBINSON The new term is academic preparedness. The tools and skills that faculty are learning now will help them meet the needs of a generation of students that are far more electronic. The tools and skills that faculty are learning now will help them meet the needs of a generation of students that are far more electronic. This type of environment has forced us all to collaborate and take a hard look at our preparedness for education in the future, adds Myers, also a member of the UB Educational Design Collaborative and an Open SUNY fellow. The new term is academic preparedness, says Jeanne Myers, a learning designer in the School of Management who has played a critical role in helping faculty transition to online courses. From crafting homemade document cameras to arranging cross-country tutoring, faculty are adapting quickly to the digital learning landscape caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As educators and students across the nation rapidly adjust to distance learning, UB faculty members have developed innovative tools and turned to non-conventional methods to continue teaching their students. Igor Jankovic and Todd Snyder channeled their inner-MacGyver to build a document reader that faculty can use from home. Jankovic bought more cameras online and the pair manufactured five additional camera stands to distribute among other faculty. Snyder is also creating a guide for faculty to build their own homemade document cameras out of a range of materials, including wood, joints and screws. The beauty of these webcams, in addition to having a high-quality lens and microphone, is that they are old enough so that the drivers come installed on Windows 10, says Snyder. We tested it on my desktop PC, and the camera worked immediately and appeared instantly as an input for Panopto. After quickly constructing a prototype, they formed an improved working model for less than $30 that functioned seamlessly with Panopto, a software for streaming and recording lectures. Working with Todd Snyder, instructional support specialist in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the pair channeled their inner MacGyver to fashion a stand for the camera using scraps of 80/20 aluminum framing. So when Igor Jankovic, associate professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, found an old web camera in a box of junk at his home, he decided to put the forgotten lens to use. For some faculty members teaching from their homes, the document camera is a missed technology from the classroom. Many faculty use handwritten notes to guide students through problem-solving steps. Without the equipment, students lose a critical piece of their learning. Igor Jankovic and Todd Snyder fashioned a stand for an old web camera from scraps of 80/20 aluminum framing. Transferring tech for teens to the college campus War and American Memory, an upper-level course in the Department of History, does not have a final exam. Instead, students are tasked with learning historical figures, passionately debating that characters ideologies and swaying their classmates toward their political faction in a role-playing game. While the discussion-based project worked well in the classroom, Sarah Handley-Cousins, clinical assistant professor of history and course instructor, had to quickly find a way to move the assignment online while maintaining engagement. Handley-Cousins found her solution in Flipgrid, a video-sharing app primarily aimed at young students. Similar to the photo-sharing app Instagram, Flipgrid allows students to share short videos and comment on their classmates posts. Class communication also takes place on the messaging platform Slack. I hesitated to hold live discussions because I didnt know what each students living situation was like. This method preserves the face-to-face component and gameplay of the project, Handley-Cousins says. She is also using the software for her course Historical Writing, where students are required to present oral presentations on class materials. To accommodate the limits of the app, presentations will be shortened from 10 to five minutes. The last few weeks have shown me that flexibility is okay, she says. It has shaken my way of digging my claws into the way things have to be. Some things from the course can get cut. Some things can get changed. The students are still going to learn. No classroom, no problem Many students enrolled in pre-K12 schools across the nation lack the access to technology that enables consistent online communication with their instructors. For teacher candidates enrolled in the Graduate School of Educations Teacher Education Programs, classroom experience is essential to their certification and preparation for the field. With most learning transitioned online, the Graduate School of Education encouraged candidates to become inventive in how they connected with their students. Christina Turowski, a former lawyer pursuing a teaching certification in social studies, created a website on U.S. history for her seventh-grade class in one weekend. The website includes lesson plans for parents to use to supplement their childrens education, virtual tours of museums and national landmarks, games and a podcast. Every weekday, Turowski adds content to the site, which is accessed by hundreds of people. I made this website because there are parents out there who may not have the resources to teach their children moving forward. This is the whole reason I wanted to be back in the classroom, to help students, she says. Another group of candidates enrolled in the Early Childhood/Childhood teacher certification program is privately tutoring students online across the nation, connecting with families in New York, Massachusetts and Nevada. Everyone in the cohort wants to work with the kids. We came to the masters program to make an impact in childhood education, says Kaleigh Kenefick, who is tutoring a pair of young children in Massachusetts on telling time, writing and social interaction. There are so many kids not in school that could use our help. We felt an internal drive to help them get a better education, no matter where they were. Program clinical supervisor Grace Maylin reached out on social media to mothers who needed tutoring for their children. After being matched, the educators performed meet and greets with the families to learn areas of need and formed lesson plans. We normally have little say in the classrooms on the curriculum. This is a unique opportunity to use everything we learned to keep these kids engaged in what we know and love, says Emma Janicki-Gechoff, who is tutoring science and planning backyard learning activities for elementary school children in New York. Libraries race to go digital When the university announced that it would transition to distance learning, the University Libraries toiled around the clock to move course materials online for dozens of faculty and digitize hundreds of books. With only the week of spring break available, Libraries Education Services worked with more than 50 instructors in the Department of English and English Language Institute who were teaching Writing and Rhetoric a course delivered to 60% of the undergraduate population to move remaining information literacy lectures, assignments and quizzes online. Libraries Education Services also partnered with the Center for Educational Innovation to provide faculty with virtual assistance on using online video or instruction software, such as Blackboard, Webex, Panopto and Respondus. Other university librarians worked to place research guides, textbooks and course materials online before access to physical materials became limited. University librarians remain available through virtual chat services. The libraries had the grand task of putting everything online in just a week, says Cynthia Tysick, director of education services in the UB Libraries. One hundred sixty people became one driving force, working at all different hours. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: Taking into account the rapid spread of coronavirus in the world and the relevance of the problem in Azerbaijan, Baku Media Center has prepared new video footage within the center's social responsibility projects, Trend reports referring to Baku Media Center. The video footage emphasizes the importance of supporting the activity of the representatives of the law enforcement agencies, in particular, the police officers, in ensuring public order, as well as the necessity to comply with the special quarantine regime to reduce the risk of infection and the need to stay at home. The spread of Covid-19 has forced more and more people in Vietnam to stay home. Students haven't gone to school for two months. Businesses have turned to remote operation and restaurants have closed since the 15-day social distancing campaign commenced on April 1. Under such conditions, the pressure of being stuck at home is sure to build. GREENWICH When the Board of Estimate and Taxation holds a budget hearing, its typically standing room only, with residents often waiting in the hallway for a chance to speak about the towns fiscal priorities. And with hot-button issues included in the plan for the next fiscal years budget funding for special education, the ongoing debate over the Central Middle School field, and money for continued work on the new Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, a new municipal ice rink and Cardinal Stadium improvements the next hearing was expected to attract a crowd. But these are not typical times. Like all other town boards and commissions, the BET has gone digital through use of Zoom video conferencing. That means no typical public hearing leading up to the finance boards vote on the $459 million proposed 2020-21 municipal budget. There will still be a public hearing, though, just not in person. Rather, Zoom will include the 12 members of the BET along with the public when the hearing is held at 7 p.m. April 21. According to BET Chair Michael Mason, the public can speak in two ways. The first is to log into the meeting on April 21, provide a name and use the raise hand feature to be recognized to speak. People are going to have a chance to express their views, Mason said. I do expect a lot of people to take part. I think theres a lot of discussion in the community beyond the usual feelings of supporting one item or not supporting another about what the impact of this crisis is going to be on the town budget this year and in the future years. Members of the public can also present written statements via email that will become part of the public record. The official comment period for written statements opened up last week and the comment form can be accessed at www.greenwichct.gov/virtualBET. Comments can be submitted through April 21. The full BET will vote on the 2020-21 budget on April 27 during a public meeting over Zoom that will begin at 9 a.m. Links to the April 21 and April 27 meetings will be posted at www.greenwichct.gov/virtualBET. Residents are expected to speak out on concerns over the economic impact of the coronavirus that could result in extra belt-tightening at the April 27 vote. When the budget was first unveiled by First Selectman Fred Camillo in January, parents of special education students turned out in force to call for reforms in the system and ask for more funding. Town parent Jennifer Kutai said Monday she expects the case to be made again, and she urged the BET to review the last nine months of Board of Education meetings and listen to Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones to understand how vast the problems are with funding and delivery of services. We wont accept any more excuses, Kutai said. The time is now, not one year from now. The (BET) needs to address the severe underfunding. We have been told very clearly that the State Attorney General's office has been paying particular attention to what is going on with Special Education in Greenwich. This crisis should remind us that public education is a vital public good. We must rethink the way we measure it's value. Greenwich government has been slowly returning to full operation, albeit through digital meetings. Town Hallis closed to the public except by appointment for vital documents and most employees working from home. Last week, the Representative Town Meeting ran a mock meeting to test the new digital structure, and on Thursday the Board of Selectmen held a full meeting that included public comment. The RTM will allow public comments at its April 20 meeting, along with its May and June meetings.when the budget will be discussed and voted upon. A virtual sign up sheet has been set up for Aprils agenda items, including the institution of a tipping fee, at https://www.greenwichct.gov/FormCenter/RTM-ALL-Forms-82/RTM-Speaker-Form-for-April-20-2020-Meeti-243 . RTM Moderator Tom Byrne expressed optimism Monday that the public would continue to have a voice at the meetings. It appeared to me (at last weeks mock meeting) that once we have a list of names of interested speakers, we could give them the floor one at a time using our webinar platform, Byrne said. It doesn't seem to be a problem at all. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com President Muhammadu Buhari will address Nigerians at 7pm today. The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, made this known in a statement. Though the statement gave no hint on what the President would be speaking on, we however assume it cant be unconnected with the coronavirus crisis. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates Bonomi says that most of the drivers he dealt with had no regard for the food. Id put it at over 70% had issues, says Bonomi. Theyd walk in without the warmer bag for the pizza. Id ask them politely to grab a warmer bag, and then you get an attitude. Theyd say, Other restaurants arent as strict as you. But why does my food have to suffer because you dont do things correctly? Bonomi knew that if a pizza arrived cool, customers wouldnt blame the delivery person, he or she would call the restaurant. Every night there was something, says Bonomi. I cant spend my life in the office instead of out front, just to fix your orders. Rats are turning to cannibalism and warring over territories as coronavirus shutdowns create a shortage of food scraps, an expert says. Urban rodentologist Bobby Corrigan has described how the COVID-19 pandemic is sending America's rats into survival mode as stay-at-home orders prompt thousands of restaurants and other businesses to close, cutting off vital vermin food sources. Ravenous rats are now turning on each other in the fight to stay fed - engaging in cannibalism, infanticide and death matches during gruesome turf wars. Scroll down for video Rats are eating each other and warring over territories as coronavirus restaurant closures create a shortage of scraps, according to urban rodentologist Bobby Corrigan. A rat is seen in New Orleans on March 23 Rats invaded the streets of New Orleans (pictured) after stay-at-home orders turned the city into a ghost town and cut off the rodents' regular food supply 'A restaurant all of a sudden closes now, which has happened by the thousands in not just New York City but coast to coast and around the world, and those rats that were living by that restaurant, some place nearby, and perhaps for decades having generations of rats that depended on that restaurant food, well, life is no longer working for them, and they only have a couple of choices,' Corrigan told NBC News. When hungry rats move to areas where food is still available, carnage ensues. 'It's just like we've seen in the history of mankind, where people try to take over lands and they come in with militaries and armies and fight to the death, literally, for who's going to conquer that land. And that's what happens with rats,' Corrigan said. 'A new "army" of rats come in, and whichever army has the strongest rats is going to conquer that area.' The fierce turf wars extend beyond just fights over grub - often driving rats to eat each other. 'They're mammals just like you and I, and so when you're really, really hungry, you're not going to act the same you're going to act very bad, usually,' he said. 'So these rats are fighting with one another, now the adults are killing the young in the nest and cannibalizing the pups.' Corrigan (pictured) said that rats who rely on homes for their food supply are still faring well under stay at home orders Some rats are faring better, says Corrigan, who consults with several city health department and businesses such as airports and shopping malls. 'If you take rats that have been established in the area or somebody's property and they're doing well, the reason they're doing well is because they're eating well,' Corrigan told NBC News. 'Ever since coronavirus broke out, not a single thing has changed with them, because someone's doing their trash exactly the same in their yard as they've always done it poorly.' The rodentologist cautioned that some people might see an increase in rats near their homes given the consistent food supply. 'Rats are designed to smell molecules of anything that's food-related,' Corrigan said. 'They follow those food molecules like heat-seeking missiles and eventually you know they end up where those molecules are originating.' Several cities including New Orleans, Baltimore and Washington, DC, are taking aggressive action to curb rat populations as the animals turn to newly-emptied streets as a new source of food. In New Orleans, viral videos have emerged of swarms of rats taking over roads and sidewalks in usually-bustling neighborhoods like the French Quarter - a sight local officials attributed to social distancing. 'What we have seen is these practices are driving our rodents crazy,' Mayor LaToya Cantrell said at a news conference late last month. 'And what rodents do, they will find food, and they will find water. That puts our street homeless in dire, dire straits. And that's why I'm so laser-focused on it right now.' Claudia Riegel, director of the New Orleans Mosquito, Termite and Rodent Control Board, said the city is working hard to decrease the rat population while stay at home orders are in place. 'These rats are hungry, so we want them to eat our bait,' Riegel told The Times-Picayune. In New Orleans, viral videos have emerged of swarms of rats taking over roads and sidewalks in usually-bustling neighborhoods like the French Quarter (pictured) New Orleans officials are taking aggressive measures to curb rat populations Washington, DC, is also fighting to curb its rat population as officials see a surge in rodent-related 311 calls. When implementing stay-at-home orders for all non-essential employees last month, Mayor Muriel Bowser made a point to designate pest control workers as essential. Forty miles away in Baltimore, city officials have seen a similar increase in rat-related complaints - with roughly 11,000 million 311 reports in the last month. But Corrigan cautioned that people do not need to panic about any sort of movie-like rat invasion, emphasizing that each city's situation is different. 'There's no one behavior that's going to fit all,' he said. 'This is not going to be a case where all of a sudden the rats are doing invasions everywhere, and it's not going to be exactly as we saw on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.' Alan Cameron waves to people driving by his Pearl River, New York, home to congratulate him on his 101st birthday April 13, 2020. PEARL RIVER, N.Y. Alan Cameron celebrated his 101st birthday in the age of social distancing. But the World War II veteran was not alone. Monday, vehicles paraded by to wish Cameron well. His birthday was Sunday. "He and all of us were surprised," his daughter, Debbie David, said. "We thought, 'Where are all of these cars coming from?' " Police helped to organize the procession; the Pearl River Fire Department and neighbors participated. Cameron served in France, his daughter said, then he headed to Germany after the war to help investigate war crimes. He remained in the Army Reserves for years after, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. After the war, Cameron worked in New York City in marketing, "for brands that no longer exist," David said. Later, he worked as a real estate agent, then brushed up on the court reporting skills he had used in the Army and worked for municipalities. He retired in the early 1980s. "He's amazing," said Michael Finer, his neighbor for about 40 years. Cameron has talked little about his service in the war, said Finer, 68. "They're a different generation. He is an unbelievable gentleman." On Easter: New York vet builds crosses in yard to honor every coronavirus victim in his county People wave to Alan Cameron as they drive by his Pearl River home to congratulate him on his 101st birthday April 13, 2020. Cameron was originally from California. While stationed at Camp Shanks in New York, waiting to be shipped out, he went to a dance and met Jane Bocket. They knew each other for about a week, David said, then communicated by mail when Cameron was overseas. Cameron vowed to come back when the war was over and marry Jane. And he did. Jane died in 2009. Her husband still resides on Bocket Road, named for her family. Cars drive by Alan Cameron's home in a long line to congratulate him on his 101st birthday April 13. Cameron has had his health challenges, but David said her dad is doing well. Nowadays, "his walk is up and down his driveway," she said, but Cameron remains active and alert. And he appreciated his neighbors' birthday greetings. Follow reporter Nancy Cutler on Twitter at @nancyrockland Snowbirds can leave under Florida's safer-at-home order: But can they get home? This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Coronavirus social distancing can't stop birthday salute for WWII vet Go back to the dawn of 2020 and the notion of everyone downloading an app to track our encounters with other people would have been worrying if not absurd. Today, with cases of COVID-19 ballooning in the US, its becoming increasingly probable that this kind of surveillance will be a key component in restoring society to normalcy. The proposal is to use our smartphones for digital contact tracing. In the journal Science, a key paper by University of Oxford researchers recommends the technique. Even the European Data Protection Supervisor has advocated for an EU-wide app. Meanwhile, after Singapore and South Korea used tracing apps as part of their strong response to the spread of COVID-19, governments in France and the UK (through its National Health Service) are developing their own tracing apps. And the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the method is under aggressive evaluation as projects in the US sprout up from coast to coast. The unprecedented collaboration on an interoperable infrastructure between Apple and Google which came together in two weeks and was announced last Friday has now set the stage for a robust, potentially global contact tracing system. The idea of contact tracing is straightforward. When someone contracts a disease, public-health workers need to know who that person has had recent contact with to be able to locate, test and possibly isolate those contacts to stop the disease spreading even further. For decades, this technique has required painstaking drudgery interviewing patients about their every move, calling airlines and managers of restaurants, examining hotel records to determine everyone thats been exposed. This was the case in tracking the paths of HIV, Ebola and measles. The challenge is that tracing each case typically takes many days. In Wuhan, China, more than 9,000 epidemiologists performed this task, working in teams of five, according to the WHO. Latest figures show there are about 83,000 cases of COVID-19 in China. In the US, there are currently tens of thousands of new known cases every day; a former CDC director has said the country would need an army of 300,000 people for effective contact tracing. Story continues Right now, most of the US is under stay-at-home orders because we dont know who has COVID-19 and who hasnt; to be safe, were presuming that anybody could. This is where digital stalking comes in. All that detective work could happen in an instant, using a tracking app. Anyone who has had contact with a patient shared an elevator or office, bus or train gets a message to instruct them on how to get tested. In one UK survey, about three in four respondents said theyd definitely or probably install this sort of app. Right now, most of the US is under stay-at-home orders because we dont know who has COVID-19 and who doesnt; to be safe, were presuming that anybody could. In San Francisco and Massachusetts, local authorities are beefing up their contact-tracing capabilities, but for the most part, experts say, weve missed the boat on tracking the exact path of virus transmission for now. However, effective tracing paired with widespread testing will be pivotal in containing COVID-19 after social distancing ends. For people to work and congregate again, we need to continuously identify and test people so they can be individually quarantined if they have contracted the virus. Knowing who does and doesnt have it could allow us to separate the safe from the vulnerable, allowing society and the economy to gradually sputter back to life. Heres the first catch: For contact tracing to be effective, a lot of people need to opt in to tracking. David Bonsall, an Oxford researcher and co-author of the Science paper, has placed a lot at about 60 percent of a countrys population. And while smartphone ownership in the US is just over 80 percent, the question is How do you get three quarters of the nations smartphones to all persistently share locations? Enter Apple and Google. Unlike startups, NGOs and university initiatives, these companies already have a critical mass of users. With nothing but a software update, about 3 billion phones globally could have contact-tracing functionality. Around now, alarm bells might start ringing. Consenting to this kind of global surveillance appears to fly in the face of everything weve learned about sound data hygiene. Trust in the technology industry was in decline before COVID-19. In a worst case scenario, privacy experts fear contact tracing could create the architecture for a more invasive surveillance state and new norms that cant be rolled back. Consider that Google has hardly covered itself in glory when it comes to being honest about its use of our location. Separately, the US Department of Homeland Security has reportedly bought cellphone location information from private companies for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) to detect undocumented immigrants. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Israel has tapped cell phone data from its domestic intelligence agency to identify people potentially exposed to the virus. In Korea, mobile alerts broadcast information which might include family name, age and recent locations about nearby people who have COVID-19. In some areas of China, an opaque algorithm built into wallet app Alipay determines someones health risk, which in turn determines their ability to take public transport. Theres no question that civil liberties have to give way when it comes to a public health crisis like this, but any incursions on civil liberties have to be necessary, they have to be effective and they have to be proportional. The location-based data initiatives weve seen in the US so far have relied on aggregated, anonymized location data the kind you might rely on in everyday apps like Google Maps released by companies like Facebook, Google and Foursquare. The CDC and regional governments have also reportedly been using this data to see trends of where people congregate. But this data doesn't give away individual locations. Theres no question that civil liberties have to give way when it comes to a public health crisis like this, said Jay Stanley, a Senior Policy Analyst at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. But any incursions on civil liberties have to be necessary, they have to be effective and they have to be proportional. With GPS location data considered too revealing, the safe solution that projects like COVID Watch and the Pan-European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) have been pushing for uses Bluetooth. The system would have every opted-in phone regularly emit anonymous beacons via Bluetooth. Other phones in the vicinity receive and store those unique beacons which frequently change and emit their own. This creates a record of two phones in proximity to each other, but only known by the two phones. Should one person later test positive for COVID-19, a health official could ask the patient to send their records to a server that broadcasts to other phones and alert any phone whose records indicate theyve recently encountered a person with the virus, perhaps encouraging them to get tested. Based on the details so far more are still forthcoming this is, for the most part, the system Apple and Google have thrown their weight behind. contact tracing apple google contact tracing apple google First, they will introduce an interoperable API on both Android and iOS for Bluetooth-based contact tracing on public-health apps. This should be ready by mid-May. Then, theyll add their own contact-tracing functionality into their respective operating systems. But this is months away and would still require a public-health app for a full range of functions. There are some potential downsides to Bluetooth it doesnt track transmission of the virus via surfaces (the reason were all sterilizing our deliveries) and could create false positives, depending on the range of a phones Bluetooth signal and the amount of time apps determine you need to be close to someone to register an encounter. But from a privacy perspective, the key idea is that there will be no recording of where you were or when. The only thing you know is whether youve encountered someone who tested positive in the last 14 days, and there would be no revelation of who that person was. It would be opt-in only and minimize the data that goes to a central server. Apple and Google say they cannot see users encounters and have published early technical specifications for scrutiny online. The fact that the two major smartphone giants have built this architecture means that every NGO, academic and government health department is now incentivized to work within it. What version are you on? One issue not addressed in Google's announcement of the partnership is Android-version support. The company has long had a problem with Android-version fragmentation; because manufacturers each have their own quirks when it comes to customization and support, billions of Android devices, globally, run thousands of slightly different software configurations. While a source of annoyance to both developers and users, though, this hasn't generally been a catastrophic problem. But when it comes to developing a system that needs to be opted into by 75 percent of all smartphone users, this presents a major challenge. The latest version of its mobile OS, Android 10, is used by a proportionally low number of people. Google no longer publicly shows the breakdown of Android version use, but third-party statistics from StatCounter suggest that only around 31 percent of devices run Android 10, while 65 percent of devices in the US run Android 9.0 or later. Google told us that its contract-tracing system will be released through a Play Store Services update and will support all devices running Android 6.0 or later. This will cover, according to StatCounter, 94 percent of devices in the US or 91 percent of devices worldwide. Apple does not have such a big problem. It has near-complete control over its devices, and just supporting back to iOS 13 would reach 80 percent worldwide, or 85 percent in the US. As with Android, we have little more than anecdotal information about who is using what device, but a better sense of how many devices are at least capable of running which OS version. All iPhones newer than the 6S support the latest version of iOS, while the 6 and 5S are on 12.4 but are still receiving critical updates. We've asked Apple to clarify which of its devices will support contact tracing. The issue with just looking at usage statistics is that they don't reveal the demographics that feed into them. As the gulf between US and worldwide figures suggest, the more affluent a person is, the more likely they are to have a recent smartphone or to have purchased a sufficiently high-end device that continues to be supported with updates. Anecdotally, it's probable that many elderly people, who are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19, are using low-end or outdated smartphones. Apple and Googles announcement looks to address two important challenges: making contact tracing available to as many people as possible and institutionalizing strong privacy practices. But its still unclear if people will opt in both to the system and to the eventual public-health apps. The main challenge here is not necessarily the tech Apple and Google probably have more granular location data about us in their stores than a new system of Bluetooth signals would reveal. The challenge is to make the technology respectful of privacy, then prove it to enough people that 60 percent sign up. Everyone from hacker collectives to privacy advocates to new coalitions of technologists during the pandemic have listed their best practices for what that should look like. We all have a natural incentive to comply with an ambitious public-health measure to stay healthy and get the right people treated said the ACLUs Stanley. But to buy into a new level of surveillance takes the kind of public trust in the tech industry that has been eroding in recent times. This kind of approach cannot succeed unless it achieves wide adoption. And in a country like the United States, which is very suspicious of authority and government, being able to assure people that this is not any kind of broader tracking device will make it more successful as a public-health measure, he said. This is a situation where privacy and public health are very aligned. Aaron Souppouris contributed to this report. MADRID (AP) As the coronavirus pandemic throws millions out of work and devastates economies worldwide, governments are struggling with the dilemma between keeping people safe from a highly contagious virus and making sure they can still make a living. Workers in some nonessential industries were returning to their jobs Monday in Spain, one of the hardest hit countries in the coronavirus pandemic, while in South Korea, officials were warning that hard-earned progress fighting the virus could be eroded by new infections as restrictions ease. The decisions are more complicated because each nation is on its own coronavirus arc, with places like Britain, Japan and parts of the United States still seeing increasing deaths or infections; France and New York hoping they are stabilizing at a high plateau of deaths; and hard-hit nations like Italy and Spain seeing declines in the rates of new deaths and infections. There are more than 550,000 confirmed cases in the United States and almost 115,000 deaths worldwide. Live coronavirus tracker Coronavirus news in the U.S. IRS deposits first wave of stimulus checks (CBS News) Virus may dash Trumps plan for a big bang economic opening (CNN) How Congress may proceed in the After Coronavirus era (Fox News) Alarming surge in coronavirus deaths at nursing homes nationwide (Associated Press) Report: Stockpile of 39 million masks exposed as fake (ABC News) Coronavirus mortgage relief poses risk to housing industry (The Hill) Coronavirus news around the globe FILE - In this Saturday, April 4, 2020 file photo a couple hug and laugh as they have lunch in a restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)AP Sweden imposes stronger lockdown measures after backlash (Express) Where Germany had success fighting coronavirus, Britain stumbled (Washington Post) China reports six-week high in virus cases (Al Jazeera) New Zealand, Australia say too soon to ease restrictions despite coronavirus slowdown (Reuters) Despite encouraging signs, coronavirus is advancing worldwide, WHO envoy warns (NBC News) Russia reports record daily rise in new cases (CNBC) Emergency Declared In Japanese Prefecture Hit By 2nd Wave Of Coronavirus Infections (NPR) Israels Not-So-Secret Weapon in Coronavirus Fight: The Spies of Mossad (New York Times) India police tell foreign visitors who violated coronavirus lockdown orders to write apology notes, report says (Fox News) Latest local coronavirus news Read complete prior coronavirus coverage. New Rochelle, NY, April 13, 2020--A new study has shown substantial variability in access to guideline-recommended hormone therapies for older transgender individuals insured through Medicare. The variability in Medicare coverage and out-of-pocket costs for feminizing and masculinizing therapies are detailed in an article published in LGBT Health , a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the LGBT Health website through May 12, 2020. The article entitled "Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Coverage of Hormone Therapies Used by Transgender Individuals" was coauthored by Michael Solotke, Yale University (New Haven, CT) and colleagues from San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center (CA), University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System (West Haven, CT), Yale School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN), Yale School of Public Health, and Yale-New Haven Hospital. Medicare coverage and out-of-pocket costs can vary widely depending on the medication regimen. Access to care and to certain medications may be limited to those with adequate means. The study showed that in 2018, the proportion of Medicare plans offering unrestricted coverage ranged from 5%-75% for masculinizing therapies and from 13%-100% for feminizing therapies. Out-of-pocket costs ranged from $180-$2,176 for masculinizing therapies and from $72-$3,792 for feminizing therapies in that same year. "It is unfortunate when drug costs stand in the way of optimal treatment," says LGBT Health Editor-in-Chief William Byne, MD, PhD, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY. "To minimize this problem, prescribers should be prepared to direct low income and inadequately insured patients to assistance programs, when available, to defray costs, particularly for the gonadotropin releasing hormone agonists for which generic preparations are not yet available." ### About the Journal LGBT Health published 8 times a year online with open access options and in print, facilitates and supports the work of researchers, clinicians, academics, and policymakers to address barriers to care and advance efforts to improve the health, well-being, and clinical outcomes of all LGBT and other sexual and gender minority persons. Led by Editor-in-Chief William Byne, MD, PhD, Columbia University, New York, NY, the Journal spans a broad array of disciplines and publishes original research, review articles, clinical reports, case studies, and legal and policy perspectives. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the LGBT Health website About the Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Transgender Health, AIDS Patient Care and STDs, AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, Journal of Women's Health, and Population Health Management. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's more than 90 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website. When 97-year-old Brazilian Gina Dal Colleto was hospitalized on 1 April with coronavirus symptoms, few could have thought she would survive the deadly virus. Rio De Janeiro: When 97-year-old Brazilian Gina Dal Colleto was hospitalized on 1 April with coronavirus symptoms, few could have thought she would survive the deadly virus. On Sunday, however, Dal Colleto was pushed in a wheelchair out of Sao Paulos Vila Nova Star hospital to applause from doctors and nurses, becoming the oldest known survivor of COVID-19 in Brazil, the Latin American country worst-hit by the outbreak. Her unexpected recovery was a ray of hope in Brazil, where the coronavirus has laid bare a stretched public health system and exposed fierce political debate over how to best tackle the virus spread and prop up the countrys economy. The sole survivor of an Italian family comprising 11 siblings, Dal Colleto lived alone in the port city of Santos, Rede DOr Sao Luiz, which controls the Vila Nova Star hospital, said in a statement. Even with almost a century of life, Gina has a very active routine and enjoys walking, shopping and cooking, the statement said. She has six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. While she was hospitalized, Dal Colleto was put on oxygen and admitted to intensive care, the statement said. On Sunday, Brazils health ministry said 1,223 people had died as a result of the outbreak, 99 more than the previous days total. Brazil now has 22,169 confirmed cases. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain, has chafed at social distancing measures imposed by state governors and even his own health officials. He wants the economy restarted, arguing that extended shutdowns pose a greater risk than a disease he calls a little cold. However, that stance has cost him in the polls and most nights, in cities across Brazil, quarantined Brazilians are banging pots and pans in protest at his handling of the crisis. On Sunday, Bolsonaro said he thought that the coronavirus was on its way out of Brazil, although he gave no explanation. In its place, he added, was coming further unemployment. It seems that the virus issue is starting to go away, but unemployment is coming ... hard. We must fight these two things, he said in a televised call with religious leaders. Jon Tse and Kevin Garcia from Karst Stone Paper. (Source: Supplied, Karst) This is part of our Pivot Series, where Yahoo Finance tracks stories of small business survival tactics during the coronavirus crisis. Entrepreneurs, childhood friends and luxury stationery brand Karst Stone Paper co-founders Jon Tse and Kevin Garcia are no strangers to spotting good business opportunities. In 2016, Garcia was travelling through Asia when he spied waterproof, tear-resistant food packaging that was made from stone paper. Marvelling at the papers durability, he thought the material made from construction rubble, the waste left over from industrial, mining and construction quarries would make for sturdy notebooks, and was stunned that it hadnt yet been turned into a consumer product. Garcia was working at a watch brand at the time and learning the nuts and bolts of the then-emerging e-commerce landscape. But when he came across this new paper form, he couldnt get it off his mind. He nailed down the president of a paper-making facility in Taiwan, and also told Tse about the idea. Back then, Tse was based in Singapore working on his own start-up, Zookal, Australias first online-based textbook rental platform for university students. I had a crazy idea of [Tse] coming along with me to see this factory making this stone paper out of recycled waste. He thought it was too good to be true, Garcia told Yahoo Finance. It was a no brainer. The opportunity presented itself pretty well. Karst aims to make notebook production sustainable. (Source: Karst) The two booked a flight to visit the paper-making facility and discuss their notebook idea and the president loved it. After that, it was just about finding out whether other people would like the idea of the product as much as Tse and Garcia did. The pair launched a Kickstarter campaign as a platform to test the market. In the first 20 days, the Kickstarter project had raised $150,000. It was then that we decided, lets turn this product into a brand that people can resonate with. That's kind of where Karst was born. (Source: Karst) While Tse was primarily working in an advisory capacity, he ended up leaving behind Zookal to turn his sights to Karst full-time. Slowly but surely, helping from the sidelines since 2016, I basically fell in love with the business. Story continues Between when he first laid eyes on the stone paper food packaging in Asia in early 2016, and when he made his first sale on 25 July 2017, it took Garcia nine months to launch Karst. Things have moved quickly since then. More than two years later, and in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, Garcia and Tse managed to turn around an opportunity to sell hand sanitiser within a week. Launching an in-demand product in seven days On Wednesday 25 March, Garcia received a call from a friend and fellow entrepreneur Nick Benson. As the co-founder of E xD, a tech platform that leverages supply chains for skincare and beauty products, Benson initially contacted Tse and Garcia in an attempt to pass on the hand sanitiser to the government. But by Thursday, frustrated by the governments slow response, Garcia decided to take matters into his own hands. Twelve hours had passed; we didn't hear a word. I said nup, this is no good. Lets do this ourselves, he told Yahoo Finance. I rang Nick. Here's the money. Lets buy the hand sanitiser. Lets do this straight away. By now, Karst had sold in more than 80 countries. Garcia knew Karst had all the necessary elements in place to successfully launch and sell the product. We've got the brand, we've got logistics, we've got warehousing, we have an online customer portal we've got everything. But not both founders were on board initially. Tse admitted Garcia freaked [him] out at the huge order for hand sanitisers at first: more than $100,000 was spent buying the hand sanitiser. It was expensive, but we knew it was the right thing to do; no one else is gonna purchase this stuff, Tse said. The second reason why the founders were quick to help was because Benson had also just created an impromptu new venture of his own, Rescue. The new collective leverages Bensons other business and hires recently unemployed workers to supply items such as hand sanitiser, anti-bacterial wipes and face masks to facilities like hospitals and aged care facilities. We paid a hefty premium because the majority of the money goes to people who lost their jobs, said Garcia. Most of the revenue generated goes back to people who work for Rescue. Karst hand sanitisers sell for $22 per 500ml unit. For comparison's sake, a 50ml bottle of Dettol hand sanitiser is $7.50. (Source: Karst) After putting in the order on Thursday, the founders were faced with a different challenge: Karsts website which features its iconic stone paper. We didn't want people going to our stationary website and freaking out that there was sanitiser all over it. Timing was on their side. The brand was in the middle of a website relaunch, so during a virtual workshop on the same day, Garcia and Tse pitched the idea of a brand new website to its Melbourne-based web design agency, Love + Money. This is gonna sound crazy, but have we got 24 hours to turn around a website? Garcia asked. They said, yeah sure, let's do it. So it was eight of us on the phone on a Google Hangouts [call]. Everything happened on Thursday. The next few days were a frenzy of figuring out website content and development, advertising, finalising the packaging, and rushing the product onto the production line. The web developers at the agency ended up dedicating their own weekends to preparing the new site. Come Monday, nearly all the ducks were in place: the focus now was just on getting the word out. Tse reached out to the press, hoping to get some air time amid the deluge of coronavirus news, and made a few accidental sales just by contacting some journalists. Not that they needed help. Tuesday morning, we clicked launch. We sent an email to our circle and our Instagram and social channels. We sold a few thousand pretty quickly. Within the week, Karst sold more than 150,000 units of hand sanitiser, and Tse and Garcia have since launched a donation initiative, where organisations in need such as schools and daycare centres can reach out if they are in urgent need hand sanitiser. Although it doesnt seem intuitive, the founders saw the launch of hand sanitiser as a natural move for their ethical brand. For the past year sustainability has been a big challenge for the world. Now we're facing an even bigger crisis, Garcia said. We just felt compelled; we were able to turn this around in a week where many people couldn't. To other people it makes no sense to go from paper to hand sanitiser. But the world is a different place now, he said. We felt we should step up where other people weren't able to. Make your money work with Yahoo Finances daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, news and tech news. Follow Yahoo Finance Australia on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Nepal reported two new coronavirus cases on Monday taking the total number of infected persons in the country to 14. The Ministry of Health said a 65-year-old woman from Kailali district and a 19-year-old man from Rautahat district had tested positive for COVID-19. Of the 14 virus cases, one patient has recovered. So far 5,691 people have been tested for coronavirus in the Himalayan nation with 519 tests conducted in the last 24 hour. Meanwhile, 14 Nepali citizens have so far died of coronavirus abroad. According to the Non-Resident Nepali Association (NRNA), eight Nepali citizens have died in the UK, five in the US and one in the United Arab Emirates. In total, 665 Nepali citizens living in foreign countries are infected with the virus. Among them, 500 are in the US, 100 in the UK, 18 in Spain, 10 in the UAE, nine in Australia, eight in Portugal, five in Kuwait, four each in Germany and Saudi Arabia, and one each in Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar and Hong Kong, the NRNA said, adding that the data does not include those living in India. The Nepal government has imposed nationwide lockdown till April 15, which is most likely to get extended. "The lockdown will not be lifted any time soon," Prime Minister KP Oli said during his video conference with chief ministers of all seven provinces. Globally, the novel coronavirus has killed 114,215 people and infected over 1.8 million people. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The half of the red zones in Telangana are declared only in Hyderabad. The CM has ordered a strict vigil in Hyderabad. The positive cases in Telangana have already crossed 500 and 17 deaths were recorded. Even though the government of Telangana takes very strict measures, the cases in Telangana are steadily raising, Hyderabad in particular. So that more than half of the red zones in Telangana are declared only in Hyderabad. The CM has ordered a strict vigil in Hyderabad and said the government employees in the whole state dont have any other work than arrest the spread of coronavirus. The positive cases in Telangana have already crossed 500 and 17 deaths were recorded. All violators of lockdown have now been booked under the Epidemic Diseases Act, and other sections of the Indian Penal Code. According to the state health minister, 85 per cent of the positive COVID-19 cases in the state are linked with the Nizamuddin Markaz religious congregation. Chief Minister Of Telangana K Chandrashekhar Rao has instructed officials concerned to pay more attention to Hyderabad city (under the GHMC jurisdiction area) as patients with Corona Virus are more in numbers in there. He wanted Hyderabad city to be divided into Zones and each zone should be treated as one unit and each unit should have a special officer. He also wanted the Containment centers with positive cases should be managed properly. He wanted officials and people to be more cautious in the backdrop of an increase in the positive cases within the state and in the neighbouring states. He instructed the medical and health department to be more vigilant and should be ready in all aspects. The CM held a high-level review meeting on measures taken to contain the spread of Coronavirus, implementation of lockdown and other issues on Monday at Pragathi Bhavan. Medical and Health Minister Etela Rajender, Chief Advisor Rajiv Sharma, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, DGP Mahender Reddy, Principal Secretary S Narsing Rao and others participated. The officials informed the CM that there were 32 new Corona positive cases and one death took place on Monday. In the backdrop of an increase in positive cases, all laboratories and hospitals were kept ready. They said the measures were taken up and infrastructure was ready so that every day 1000 to 1100 tests can be done and treatment can be given any number of patients. The CM reviewed the efforts is put in to prevent the spread of Corona Virus in Hyderabad city and other districts, implementation of lockdown, procurement of paddy. The CM spoke directly to some of the district officials and made several suggestions. More cases are getting registered in the Greater Hyderabad area. In Hyderabad, there are more chances of the persons with positive cases quickly spreading it to others. Hence there should be a special strategy for Hyderabad. Divide 17 Circles in the city as 17 Units. In every Unit appoint a special medical officer, municipal officer, police officer, revenue officer. The entire Municipal administration department should involve themselves in the prevention of the Coronavirus programme. As on date, there is only one DM&HO in Hyderabad City. Appoint Senior medical Officers to the 17 Circles the CM said. Based on the positive cases, we have created 246 Containment Centres. There are 126 Containment Centres in Hyderabad alone. Manage these Centres more effectively. Do not allow people from the Containment Centre to go out and dont allow others to enter into these Centres. Appoint a Special Nodal Officer and Police Officer at the centers. Under their supervision maintain a strict vigil. The government machinery should supply the essential commodities to the people in these Centres, the CM said. The CM said it should be treated with seriousness on the increase of positive cases in the GHMC area where there is a high density of population. He wanted Medical and Health Minister, Municipal Administration Minister and other senior officials to review GHMC Circle wise every day morning from Pragathi Bhavan. Necessary action should follow based on the review. The CM has once again requested people not to come out of their homes and be more cautious as they were a spike in the Corona Virus Positive cases. For all the latest National News, download NewsX App Shocking footage shows the moment a camper goes to strike a 60-year-old man over the head with a stick after he confronts him about pitching up at a Welsh beauty spot during coronavirus lockdown. One of the two men, believed to have travelled 190 miles from Hull to camp at the area, thinks twice just before hitting him and backs down, as the man's daughter shouts 'we've got you on camera'. The incident, which happened at Llyn Cowlyd, Conwy, north Wales, was reported to the police, who turned up to the scene and issued a fine to the campers before tracing their number plate to ensure they returned home. Shocking footage shows the moment a camper goes to strike a 60-year-old man over the head with a stick after he confronts him about pitching up at a Welsh beauty spot, Llyn Cowlyd Locals said two campers turned up on Friday night and started a fire, leaving mess strewn on the ground. They were asked to leave but took no notice before locals decided to take action and remind the pair of the rules of the government's lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. The daughter of the 60-year-old in the footage said: 'My dad was with the owner of the land and all they did was ask them to leave and said that the police were on their way. 'Then the man threatened to hit my dad in the head with the stick.' Mess strewn across the ground by the camper, they were asked to leave as per government advice 'When the police arrived, the campers said they were from Hull. The officers were mortified' Her father added: 'It was unbelievable that they travelled all the way...to the top of a mountain to camp when the whole country is on lockdown and the government clearly has instructed everyone to stay home unless necessary. 'They were asked to move the night before and were told they weren't supposed to be there, but they decided to ignore that and the police had been informed. The pair of campers were fined and had their number plate traced to ensure that they returned home 'The police arrived the following morning and dealt with the situation. 'It was an intimidating situation to be in because they were being so aggressive and threatening without any need.' A police spokesman said: 'We were informed of two males camping on farm land above Trefriw. The camper is seen threatening the man as he approaches him to tell him he needs to leave the land due to the coronavirus lockdown 'Officers attended and spoke to the men, who are currently living locally with family. 'They were given advice regarding not being at their home address, and requested to return home or face prosecution. 'The men apologised and left, and we consider the matter closed.' North Wales Police tweeted: 'For now North Wales is closed to visitors. 'Our tourist attractions, mountains, beaches, pubs, restaurants, caravan, holiday parks and campsites are all closed.' Quiz viewers branded Michael Sheen's portrayal of Chris Tarrant 'brilliant' in tonight's episode of the new hotly anticipated drama, Quiz. During the first episode of the three-part dramatisation of the 2001 'coughing' Who Wants To Be A Millionaire scandal, it was revealed that Major Charles Ingram's brother-in-law Adrian Pollock, played by Trystan Gravelle, had created a Fastest Finger machine in his garage. However, despite the shocking revelation he had the machine in a bid to increase his response speed for when he got a place among the real contestants competing to get in the chair, it was Michael Sheen's impression of Chris Tarrant that really got viewers talking. ''Is it just me or is Michael Sheen doing a better job of portraying Chris Tarrant than Chris Tarrant does?' joked one, while a second penned: 'Can't believe how much like Chris Tarrant Michael Sheen is in Quiz. Brilliant.' Viewers branded Michael Sheen's portrayal of TV presenter Chris Tarrant 'uncanny' in tonight's episode of ITV's hotly anticipated drama, Quiz (pictured) Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant arriving at Southwark Crown Court, central London, to give evidence at the trial of Army major Charles Ingram, who was convicted of cheating to win the show's top prize Taking to Twitter, one viewer joked: 'Is it just me or is Michael Sheen doing a better job of portraying Chris Tarrant than Chris Tarrant does?' And with his convincing orange tan and blonde hair, a third commented: 'Jeepers creepers. Michael Sheen is so much like Chris Tarrent it's unreal,' while a fourth added: 'They even got Michael Sheen to do the Chris Tarrant Phone A Friend repeat greetings move. Quiz did their research...' During the opening episode, it was revealed that Major Charles Ingram, played by Matthew Macfadyen, was never a fan of quizzes, while his wife Diana, played by Sian Clifford, and her brother Adrian, were quite the opposite. After television producer Paul Smith (Mark Bonnar) put everything on the line to make the ITV quiz show, a much-loved pub-quiz hobby soon turned into outright obsession. But as Diana and Adrian's repeated attempts to get into the hot seat fell short, all eyes turned to an unsuspecting Charles to win the million-pound prize. Chris Tarrant, played by Michael Sheen (pictured), not only took on Chris Tarrant's voice, but also his appearance Taking to Twitter, one viewer wrote: 'Can't believe how much like Chris Tarrant Michael Sheen is in Quiz. Brilliant' (pictured) When Adrian and Diana both make it into the hot seat and failed to scoop the big prize, they turned to Charles as a last resort. Pictured Chris Tarrant, played by Michael Sheen During the opening scenes, ITV's new director, David Liddiment, attempted to form the premise of a new quiz show that would grip the nation, and it soon turned into the award-winning programme hosted by Chris Tarrant, played by Michael Sheen. But the opportunity to win 1 million proved too tempting for pub quiz lovers from across the globe, who quickly tried to find a way to hack the system and become contestants on the quiz show. THE REAL STORY Ingram notoriously cheated his way to win 1 million on gameshow Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2001. The ex-military officer, then aged 38, amazed audiences when he scooped the top prize on the ITV primetime show while answering erratically to host Chris Tarrants questions. But while Tarrant does hand over a cheque to winners on-screen, the money was withheld by production company Celador after concerns were raised over the possibility he had cheated. It later emerged that accomplice Tecwen Whittock, who was a future contestant, had coughed to indicate correct answers throughout the show. Ingram, Diana and Whittock were convicted of deception in a 2003 crown court trial, and Ingram was given a 20-month suspended prison sentence. His two accomplices were given 18-month suspended sentences for their part in the scam. And in August this year, he and wife Diana had to declare themselves bankrupt for a fourth time. Advertisement Diana Ingram and her brother Adrian were among the quiz fans hoping for a chance to become millionaires, and reached out to a group of elite pub quizzers known as 'The Syndicate,' who claimed they could help individuals get onto the show in return for a fee. Later, Adrian headed to a secret meeting with Paddy Spooner, played by Jeremy Killick - who managed to get in the chair three times - despite the rules saying you can only sit in the hot seat once. 'It was three different versions, three countries - Australia, Ireland and the UK,' explained Paddy. 'They don't check. There's a lot they don't check.' 'I've been working with some people - an underground community has sprung up. 'They are fans of the show who have grown into a quiet little resistance in the quiet little villages of England, but the perfect place to plan our attack.' He continued: 'In the world of quizzing, the man who has the questions may be King, but the man who has the answers is God.' 'Thousands of people call the hotline, the show selects a random hundred numbers to call back with a question that's all but impossible to get exactly right. 'What the makers haven't predicted was what people tend to do - talk to each other. 'The fools are using the same "closest to" questions, in rotation, time and again. All you need is a network, or, as we call ourselves, "The Syndicate." The experience quizzer advised Adrian that when he got the callback from the producers, he should pretend to be someone else and say that Adrian is out, to give them time to prepare and for Paddy to mobilise - before helping him with the answer. The first episode of ITV's three-part dramatisation of the 1997 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? revealed Major Charles Ingram's wife Diana and brother-in-law Adrian were big quiz fans It also became apparent that the brother of the coughing Major's wife, Adrian Pollock (played by Trystan Gravelle, pictured) had a Fastest Finger machine in his garage Paddy then added that once in the chair, there was a final highly bespoke service they could offer on their phone a friend. 'There's a room in London where we gather - the finest pub quizzers in the land - secretly, silently, in solidarity,' he explained. 'If you give the producers one of the dozen special numbers we have around the country, they are all diverted here, to this one phone.' After hearing Paddy was expecting 25 per cent in return, Adrian replied: 'I am grateful for all the hints and tips and things, but I'm not sure whether I need your services.' However, when Adrian and Diana both made it into the hot seat and failed to scoop the big prize, both walking away with 32, 00, they turned to Charles as a last resort. 'You must go on - onto the show,' Diana told him. 'I've been on, Adrian has - it's your turn.' A frustrated Charles replied: 'It's my turn is it, to join the family business? I warned you of these bad schemes. I don't even like quizzes!' Quiz will continue to air on Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th April at 9pm on ITV As Diana and Adrian's (pictured together) repeated attempts to get into in the hot seat fell short, all eyes turned to an unsuspecting Charles to win the million-pound prize Adrian and Diana sat down to watch the popular ITV quiz show together in a bid to get tips on how to make it into the real studio The following is a summary of one of many cases across the country compiled in a Hearst Connecticut Media investigation of sexual abuse connected in some way to local affiliates of Boys & Girls Club of America, their staff, volunteers, members and/or attendees. Boys & Girls Club of America said that it does not keep a public list of sexual abuse incidents connected to clubs. If you have a story to share, or have information related to this or other incidents, contact us here. A former youth counselor at the Boys & Girls Club of Martin County in Indiantown, Florida, who was assigned to a local middle school is facing charges of soliciting a child for sexual conduct online. Jose A. Valentin, 26, was arrested Dec. 19 after he allegedly sent explicit private messages to two children asking them if they masturbated and if they could describe their genitals or send him photos, according to an arrest affidavit filed in Martin County Court. Database: Child sexual abuse at Boys & Girls Clubs Additional charges - including three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct - were added this year after several children, including at least one from the Boys & Girls Club, said they had similar experiences with Valentin. One boy told police he stopped going to the club to avoid having contact with the counselor, according to the affidavit. He is also charged with several counts of transmission of material harmful to minors by electronic device and unlawful use of 2-way communication device, according to court records. Anthony Davis Sr., executive director of the Martin County Boys & Girls Clubs, said Valentin is no longer associated with the club and that the club took swift action as soon as it was made aware of the arrest and the allegations of inappropriate communications with youth. Valentin had been stationed at a local middle school, Davis said. We were and remain both shocked and saddened by this very serious matter as no child should ever be put in this situation, and there is no place in our Clubs for this type of behavior or action, Davis said, adding that the club will continue to cooperate with authorities throughout the investigation. As always, we remain dedicated to keeping kids physically and emotionally safe and upholding a trusted environment where they feel free to come forward with concerns of any nature. Valentin is being held in Martin County Jail in lieu of $150,000 bail. A no-contact order bars him from having contact with anyone under 18 years old. He is due back in court April 22. Valentin did not respond to a mailed letter seeking comment. Investigations are being continued for possible further charges against the two suspects as they have not paid the rental company for continued use of the vehicle, and also possible violation of the Immigration Act, he said. Times [April 13, 2020] Textron to Hold Annual Shareholders Meeting Virtually Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) will hold its 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders virtually to comply with restrictions on in-person gatherings in effect in Rhode Island due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as to support the health and well-being of shareholders and company personnel. As previously announced, the Annual Meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 29, 2020 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. Shareholders will not be able to attend the Annual Meeting in person. As described in the proxy materials for the Annual Meeting previously distributed, shareholders as of the close of business on March 2, 2020, the record date, are entitled to participate in and vote at the meeting. To be admitted to the meeting at http://www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/TXT2020, a shareholder must enter the 16-digit control number found on the proxy card, voting instruction form, notice of internet availability of proxy materials or email, a applicable, previously sent or made available to shareholders. Online access to the audio webcast will open 15 minutes prior to the start of the meeting. The meeting's virtual attendance format will provide shareholders the ability to participate and submit questions during the meeting. Shareholders may vote in advance of the meeting at www.proxyvote.com and may vote during the meeting by following the instructions available on the meeting website. Whether or not they plan to attend the meeting, we urge all shareholders to vote in advance of the meeting by using one of the methods described in the proxy materials. The proxy card or voting instruction form included with the previously distributed proxy materials (or notice of internet availability) will not be reissued and may continue to be used to vote your shares in connection with the meeting. For additional information regarding how shareholders may attend, participate in and/or vote at the virtual meeting, please refer to the Company's supplemental proxy materials filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. About Textron Inc. Textron Inc. is a multi-industry company that leverages its global network of aircraft, defense, industrial and finance businesses to provide customers with innovative solutions and services. Textron is known around the world for its powerful brands such as Bell, Cessna, Beechcraft, Hawker, Jacobsen, Kautex, Lycoming, E-Z-GO, Arctic Cat, Textron Systems, and TRU Simulation + Training. For more information visit: www.textron.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005340/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Fans of the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival are awaiting their cue on the future of the 2020 event. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Fans of the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival are awaiting their cue on the future of the 2020 event. Fringe festivals in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, which take place prior to the Winnipeg fringe (set for July 15-26), have already been cancelled due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival (Aug. 13-23) announced Monday it was also calling off this year's event. On April 1, Edinburgh, Scotland where the fringe theatre concept originated called a halt to its 2020 event. Winnipeg fringe organizers say on the event website they continue to plan for the original dates, but are monitoring recommendations from government and health officials, and will adapt as needed while considering options. Performers are also awaiting word, says Tim Gray, a member of Hunks, a Winnipeg improv comedy group that is one of the mainstays at the local fringe. "So much is unknown," said Gray, who also runs comedy shows at Wee Johnny's, an Exchange District nightspot scheduled to be one of the festival venues. "The fringe fest has been our flagship event of the year." Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Bars and comedy clubs such as Wee Johnny's have been shut due to government restrictions on public gatherings. Hunks performed Saturday nights at the bar prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and have since taken to YouTube to bring some laughs to internet audiences. Some major Manitoba festivals have already chosen to postpone 2020 events. Dauphin's Countryfest announced April 9 it will shutter the annual music jamboree until June 2021. Pride Winnipeg declared in March it will move its 2020 date to Sept. 4-13, from May 22-31. The Manitoba 150 concert on the legislative grounds, which was to include Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings on June 27, has also been postponed. Other major events, such as the Red River Ex (June 12-21), Winnipeg Folk Festival (July 9-12) and Folklorama (Aug. 2-15 have yet made no public decision. alan.small@freepress.mb.ca Twitter:@AlanDSmall The Mexican coastal state of Veracruz has long been covered in the blood of homicide victims amid ongoing tension and wars between cartels. Marcela Zurita, a resident, has been digging numerous wells in the past three years in search of her missing son's body. Her 30-year-old son, Dorian, disappeared six years ago. She has taken it upon herself to clear wells in hopes of finding her son's body. She has since found more than 100 mass graves---none of them Dorian's. The wells are infamous body dumping grounds for the Mexican drug cartels. Local authorities hadn't shown much effort in trying to locate or investigate cases. Most victims are never found. In May 2018, over 93 people were murdered each day, with the death toll reaching 2,890 by the end of the month. It was the bloodiest month ever recorded since the Mexcian government began releasing homicide data in 1998. The government deployed military forces to combat the rising crime. Authorities were also sent out to investigate the killings, some of which were committed by the very people investigating. 'Killed in Broad Daylight' Local journalists continuously expose numbers of murder cases in the country. The number of those working in Veracruz, however, is dwindling. Veracruz is considered the deadliest place to be a journalist. In 2019, more than 12 reporters were found killed. Some were stabbed, while others were shot in broad daylight. Victor Fernando Alvarez, a Mexican journalist, was found Saturday after disappearing on April 2. On March 30, a female reporter named Maria Elena Ferral was shot while leaving a public notary office. She was hit at least eight times before the culprits drove away. Threatening and killing journalists in Veracruz became a common occurrence. Reporters often reveal receiving death threats from high-ranking political figures. Many are kidnapped without ransom. Some of the missing who turn up bear signs of torture before ultimately getting killed. An estimated 99% of homicide cases involving reporters go unpunished. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to combat violence in Mexico when he came into office. However, he is often recorded criticizing media, calling it a weapon for the opposition---a statement mimicked by state and local government officials. '2019 Massacre' On April 19, 2019, more than 14 partygoers were gunned down---including a one-year-old baby. The victims were attending a family celebration in Veracruz when six armed men opened fire. Local authorities suspected two regional leaders from the Jalisco Cartel New Generation gave out orders for the slaughter. In August 2019, an armed gang kidnapped a nightclub owner, sealed off all exits, and burned down the establishment, killing 26 and gravely injuring a dozen others. 'Exposing the murders' A current affairs channel, known for producing documentaries, recently visited the Mexican state of Veracruz, where they uncovered the murder of Pedro Tamayo. This journalist was murdered in 2016 in his home in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, despite being under police protection. The team visited the local publishing office, El Pinero, where they met Betillo Carmona---the outlet's last crime reporter. Carmona received threats on two separate occasions. Unidentified men also took his work equipment at one time. During their short interview, cartel members repeatedly circled the block, with some reportedly gathered at the entrance of the establishment. In Coahuila, Los Zetas cartel members murdered and disappeared more than a thousand people, with the Piedras Negras Prison serving as a dumping ground. An anonymous man said to be a go-to gunman for local cartels for a dozen years. He claims he was hired by a police chief for whom he has claimed the lives of 30 people. He said the victims were never politicians as only fellow politicians ordered the assassination. Politicians are no stranger to death threats and killings. A mayoral candidate in Tenancigo shared an audio clip where an unidentified caller threatened to kill him and his family should he continue his campaign. 'Taking action' Mexico faced its most violent year in 2018 when Lopez Obrador took office. The year ended with over 36,600 murders. The homicide rate surged during Enrique Pena Nieto's administration. AMLO promised a reform when he was elected president. However, there is very little progress in the crackdown of cartel-related violence and crime in the country. In his first year in the position, gangs openly mocked his authority and committed atrocious acts of violence. Through it all, Lopez Obrador has remained silent, presenting neither a concrete plan or coherent approach to deal with the root of the crimes and corruption within the system. "The situation we have is a lot worse than what we had then," PRI Deputy Hector Yumes, a member of the lower house of Congress, said. "If the government doesn't recognize its errors, this will be the most violent presidential term in Mexican history." Check these out: KV Navya By Express News Service CHENNAI: Speculations about the extension of lockdown have escalated the nervousness of many. Mental fatigue, anxiety and stress could see further spike in the upcoming days, say psychiatrists. Due to extensive exposure to apocalyptic movies, news and social media, a lot of people tend to associate the extension of lockdown with the end of the world. One must understand that by staying at home, they are preventing something alarming. We are in a better place and doing this as a protective measure. These kind of positive thoughts can help us fight anxiety and other mental health issues, says psychiatrist, Dr R Vasanth. Another mental health expert Dr Vivian Kapil says practising a dedicated worry time for some 30 minutes at a particular time every day would help one ensure that these worrying thoughts do not take up too much personal time and space. Abnormal reactions to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. Its okay to feel not okay at these times of crisis. Learning to accept, embrace this feeling would be an important step, he said. Vivian suggests that not much change needs to be made to ones work pattern. Work for the same number of hours at an organised place, like working at an office. Dr Vasanth says among children, its vice versa. Instead of asking the child to study all the time since schools are shut, life skill training must be imparted to them. They must be kept engaged, he said. Mental health expert Dr Sivabalan says that when the lockdown extends there would be two kinds of issues-- economical and psychological. Plan and schedule your time in such a way that you are engaged all the time. For economical issues, it is perfectly ok to seek help. Dedicated worry time Mental health expert Dr Vivian Kapil says practising a dedicated worry time for some 30 minutes at a particular time every day would help one ensure that these worrying thoughts do not take up too much personal time and space. Vivian suggests that not much change needs to be made to ones work pattern. Pretoria (South Africa) 13 April 2020 (SPS)- South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release Today responding to Moroccan official press agency, MAP, misleading report on South Africas and indeed the United Nations Security Council recent debate on the occupied territory in the Western Sahara, which attempts to portray South Africas principled positions on these matters as being out of step with the majority of nations in the world. The Press release pointed out an article that was published online in mapnews.ma, which translated into English is the Moroccan Press Agency, has put out a misleading report on South Africas and indeed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) recent debate on the occupied territory in the Western Sahara. To answer this Moroccan misuse of official medias to distort the South African stance, the South African Ministry stressed that its approach on Western Sahara is guided by the position of the African Union, which has consistently supported the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, in line with the relevant AU decisions and UN Security Council resolutions. The African Union has also consistently appealed to the parties to the conflict to urgently resume negotiations without pre-conditions and in good faith, under the auspices of the Secretary General of the United Nations, whose Security Council is seized of the matter. Following is the full text of the Press Release: 13 April 2020 South Africa Reiterates its Position on the Recognised Right to Self-Determination of the People of Western Sahara An article that was published online in mapnews.ma, which translated into English is the Moroccan Press Agency, has put out a misleading report on South Africas and indeed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) recent debate on the occupied territory in the Western Sahara. The article in the online French language platform has since been picked up by the local media. This statement serves to correct the attempt to again, caricature South Africas principled stance on anti-occupation and decolonisation issues. Also, and without disclosing the outcomes of a closed session of the UNSC, the statement will correct the attempt to portray South Africas principled positions on these matters as being out of step with the majority of nations in the world. South Africas stance resonates with most countries who have experienced colonialism and occupation. That being said, even if South Africas principled position was indeed a minority view in some forums, which is not the case, our foreign policy in relation to occupation, decolonisation and human rights abuses will always be based on principle and not, expediency. The United Nations Security Council held a closed video teleconferences to discuss the situation in the Western Sahara on 9 April 2020. The focus of the meeting was to consider recent developments in the Western Sahara as well receive a report on the work of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). MINURSO, which was created in 1991 to primarily monitor the ceasefire between the two sides, the Kingdom of Morocco and the Frente POLISARIO and organise and ensure a free and fair referendum in the territory. As the meeting was closed, South Africa is not at liberty to disclose the details of the discussions. We regret that unlike the Security Councils recent practice of issuing elements to the press following video teleconferences in order to ensure transparency in its work, the Council was not able to agree to an outcome after the Western Sahara consultations. This is unfortunate, and we trust that the Council will deal with Western Sahara in an even-handed and transparent manner as has done with other meetings held through video-teleconferences. South Africa particularly regrets that the Security Council has not been able to move the peace process forward. This is unfortunate as the people of Western Sahara continue to endure the occupation and their struggle for their right to self-determination is prolonged. However, we hereby briefly outline South Africas position on the matter which of course we articulated at this meeting. The issue of Western Sahara has been on the agenda of the United Nations for decades as Western Sahara remains the last colony on the African continent, listed as a non-self-governing territory by the United Nations. It needs to be noted that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has made findings to the effect that the Western Sahara is an occupied territory and the Morocco is an occupying force in that territory. As an elected member serving on the UN Security Council, South Africa utilised the opportunity to once again reiterate our established commitment to efforts to achieve a peaceful solution, which will provide for the long-established principle of self-determination of the people of Western Sahara. This is in line with the approach of the United Nations and the Africa Union. South Africa unequivocally and strongly supports the work and mandate of MINURSO and urges the UN Security Council to take up its responsibility and ensure that through a neutral and balanced approach it assists the parties in moving towards a mutually acceptable negotiated settlement. South Africa looks forward to the appointment of a new Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General and we trust that the political process would be advanced to ensure continued, direct, substantive negotiations between the two parties to the conflict, the Frente POLISARIO and the Kingdom of Morocco. South Africas approach on Western Sahara is guided by the position of the African Union, which has consistently supported the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, in line with the relevant AU decisions and UN Security Council resolutions. The African Union has also consistently appealed to the parties to the conflict to urgently resume negotiations without pre-conditions and in good faith, under the auspices of the Secretary General of the United Nations, whose Security Council is seized of the matter. In the context of the global crisis brought about by the novel COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa supports the call for a global ceasefire by Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General. Consequently, we therefore urge both the Kingdom of Morocco and the Frente POLISARIO to strictly abide by the terms of the ceasefire agreements, such as Military Agreement No 1, to avoid violence that could lead to a rise in hostilities in the territory. Furthermore, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and with many countries under lockdown, self-isolation or quarantine, South Africa calls on the international community to support efforts in the occupied territories and refugee camps, where the health care system is poor and medical supplies and equipment are limited. In this regard, South Africa calls on the Kingdom of Morocco, to fulfil its responsibility as the occupying power by ensuring the necessary access, and unhindered passage of humanitarian and medical supplies, to the territories that it occupies. Enquiries, Lunga Ngqengelele - 082 566 0446 ISSUED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND COOPERATION". (SPS) 090/500/60 (SPS) New Delhi: As the world reels under the deadly coronavirus outbreak, the Google Doodle on Monday lauded the selfless service of medical professionals with a thank you note for them. To all doctors, nurses and medical workers, thank you, the doodle says. The colourful doodle on its homepage also has a heart emoji, for those who are helping in the fight to contain the disease. According to reports, Google will honour the coronavirus fighters with a series of news doodles over the next two weeks. Check out todays doodle here: Last week, with a tagline Stay Home. Save Lives, the search engine giant had dedicated its doodle to the preventive measures that could help to curb the spread of coronavirus. The doodle had animated letters of the word Google engaged in different activities, including reading, singing, working-out that one could take up while confined in their homes. The coronavirus outbreak has brought the entire world into a standstill. In India, the number of COVID-19 cases jumped to 9,152 and the death toll touched 308 on Monday morning. It has also been reported that coronavirus has spread to at least 80 more districts in just four days. President Trump on Sunday retweeted a call from one of his supporters to fire Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor on the Trump administrations coronavirus task force. The tweet came from former congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine, who accused Fauci of downplaying the danger of the coronavirus outbreak. Lorraine launched an unsuccessful primary challenge last month against House Speaker Nancy Pelosis seat in California. Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he couldve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large, Lorraine wrote. Time to #FireFauci, she added. Trump then retweeted the call to fire one of the top members of his coronavirus crisis response team. Sorry Fake News, its all on tape, Trump wrote. I banned China long before people spoke up. Earlier on Sunday, Fauci admitted that the virus outbreak could have been slowed sooner if measures to stop the spread had been put in place earlier. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives, Fauci told CNN. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. In a statement later on Monday, the White House pushed back on speculation that Trump is considering firing Fauci. The media chatter is ridiculous, the statement read. President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci. Trumps tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history, the White House said. It was Democrats and the media who ignored Coronavirus choosing to focus on impeachment instead, and when they finally did comment on the virus it was to attack President Trump for taking the bold decisive action to save American lives by cutting off travel from China and from Europe. Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump. Story continues Fauci himself has insisted there is no daylight between him and the president on the administrations response to the coronavirus response and has called on the media to stop suggesting otherwise, calling it unfortunate. I would wish that would stop because we have a much bigger problem here than trying to point out differences, Fauci said last month. The president has listened to what I have said and what the other people on the task force have said. When I have made recommendations he has taken them, he said. The idea of just pitting one against the other is just not helpful. More from National Review 'Going to Be Bad': Trump Administration Ignored Warnings About Potential COVID-19 Outbreak Report Sputnik News 04:19 GMT 12.04.2020 The first infection case with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States was registered on 21 January in Washington, six weeks before the Trump administration took what they have referred to as "aggressive" measures to slow the spread of the disease currently ravaging the country and the world. Despite US President Donald Trump's claims that the COVID-19 crisis in the US could not have been foreseen in the early stages of its spread, a report by The New York Times has revealed that the Trump administration received and ignored warnings against a potential outbreak of the virus in the country, one week after the first infection was detected. Carter Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, was reportedly the first to issue warnings to a group of top health officials at the administration via email, one week after the first case was registered. The expert called on officials to prepare for a potential crisis and take "drastic actions". He cautioned them "the projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe". "Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad," wrote Mecher in an email dated 28 January. "You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools. Now I'm screaming, close the colleges and universities". Although some top officials, including White House advisers and experts in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies started sounding alarms about the potential threat to the nation, Trump continued to downplay the seriousness of the virus. Only on 31 January did the administration restrict entry into the US from China, where the coronavirus first appeared in December 2019 in the province of Wuhan, one day following a declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) of the novel virus as a 'pandemic', a global health emergency. On 26 January, the US registered the first case of local transmission of COVID-19 in California, and three days later the first death was reported in the state of Washington. The situation worsened at the beginning of March, prompting the president to declare a national emergency in the US. By 17 March, coronavirus infections had been registered in all the 50 states. Days later, New York City was declared the epicenter of the US outbreak after infection cases in the city topped 15,000. As of Saturday, the total number of COVID-19 patients in the US has come close to 530,000, with over 20,604 fatalities and 32,001 recoveries. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address A young woman gave birth to her new baby while in a medically-induced coma after she fell ill with coronavirus. Having complained of symptoms she believed were the result of allergies, Angela Primachenko, from the Washington state city of Vancouver, decided to get tested for the virus. Obviously nobody expected that I was going to get that sick, so absolutely I did not expect to deliver my child, she told NBCs Today programme, of her arrival at the hospital. After all the medication and everything I just woke up and all of a sudden I didnt have my belly anymore! It was just extremely mind-blowing. Ms Primachenko said she began feeling sick March 22. She was 33 weeks pregnant and had no underlying health issues. After she went to hospital her condition worsened dramatically and she had to be placed on a ventilator. Doctors then put the 27-year-old in a medically-induced coma, as part of the treatment that would also protect her unborn child. Ms Primachenko was taken off the ventilator on April 6, and realised she had given birth. While she was released from the Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Centre at the weekend, she had not been able to hold her daughter, Ava, who remains in the facilitys neonatal intensive care unit. However, she has been able to see her daughter via video chat, and doctors told her the newborn had tested negative for the virus. Her husband and 11-month-old daughter have also been cleared. She said when she was wheeled out of the intensive care unit in her bed, people began to cheer. Everyone did a standing ovation and just clapped me out of the ICU, which is so amazing and such a huge thing to be able to leave the ICU and go to the floor its just the grace of God, she said. Theres hope. That even in the hardest days and the hardest times that theres hope and you can rely on God and people and community. The amount of community and people that were praying for me is just unbelievable. I was blown away, and Im so incredibly thankful. Jackie 'O' Henderson has been staying away from the dating scene since announcing her split from ex-husband Lee in October 2018. But it seems the KIIS FM radio host, 45, may have found her Prince Charming in handsome veterinarian Dr Chris Brown, 41. The pair have been 'privately' meeting up in Sydney's Bondi Beach, where they both live, a source told New Idea on Monday. Scroll down for video Love in lockdown! Jackie 'O' Henderson (left) and Dr Chris Brown (right) have been 'privately' meeting up in Sydney's Bondi Beach, where they both live, a source told New Idea on Monday 'Word is they've been hanging out in Bondi,' the insider claimed. '[Coronavirus lockdowns] have actually been perfect timing for them, because they have months to explore things in private without the added stress of being busted out in public together.' The source claimed COVID-19 had been a 'blessing in disguise' for the pair because it had allowed their romance to develop under the radar. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Jackie 'O' Henderson and Dr Chris Brown for comment. 'It has actually been perfect timing for them': A source claimed COVID-19 had been a 'blessing in disguise' for the pair because is had allowed their romance to develop under the radar It's not the first time the media personalities have been the subject of romance rumours. In February last year, Jackie's radio co-host Kyle Sandilands asked her point blank if she was dating the I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! presenter. Jackie struggled to find an answer before Chris interrupted to say: 'Lost for words! I get that a lot in love, it's a sure sign of love.' However, they both denied being anything more than friends. Gossip: It's not the first time the media personalities have been the subject of romance rumours. In February last year, Jackie's radio co-host Kyle Sandilands (left) asked her point blank if she was dating the I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! presenter Earlier this month, Jackie revealed on air she had been inundated with flirty messages when she announced her split from Lee in October 2018. 'When I was single, straight away my DMs lit up like crazy,' said Jackie, who shares a nine-year-old daughter, Kitty, with her ex-husband. Jackie admitted that one famous man in her social circle had contacted her 'literally within two hours' of announcing her marriage split. She refused to name the mystery celebrity, but said he 'actually has a profile'. Jackie said she had declined the offer at the time because she wasn't ready to 'jump into bed' with another man. The Rajasthan Government is soon going to amend the Rajasthan Prisoners on Parole Rules, 1958, in order to release inmates who have been granted parole in the past. On March 23, the Supreme Court told the states to form a committee under the chairman of State Legal Services Authority and including principal secretary of the home department and director-general of jails, to decide on prisoners who could be released on parole or interim bail to decongest jails. According to the apex courts order, prisoners facing a sentence of seven years or less, or undertrials facing trial in offences that are punishable with a sentence of seven years or less may be considered for a release. Director-General, prisons, NRK Reddy said that following the orders of the Supreme Court, the high power committee had a meeting on Wednesday. In order to implement the decision of the top court, the government is going to amend the parole rules and is planning to add provisions of extraordinary parole so that the inmates who have been granted parole in the past could be released on parole again, the prisons department chief told. Reddy added that according to Rajasthan Prisoners on Parole Rules, 1958, a prisoner who has completed with remission, if any, one-fourth of his sentence and subject to good conduct in the Jail, may be released on first parole for 20 days including days of journey to home and back, and for 30 days on second parole provided his behaviour has been good during first parole and for 40 days on third parole provided his behaviour has been good during the second parole. Once the rules are amended, those who have been given parole three times in the past and whose behaviour was good, can be given parole for four weeks. We have prepared a list of 1300 such people. However, the decision to give parole will be taken by the government, the DG, prisons said. Reddy further said that the jails are not overcrowded. Our occupancy rate is only 91.47%. In March, around 2,000 inmates were shifted to other jails where occupancy is low so that social distancing could be maintained. Also, Rajasthan High Court, in suo moto versus State DB Civil Writ Petition, had ordered the registrar judicial to not list bails, appeals, applications for suspension of sentence in appeals and revisions in the category of extreme urgent matters. In the past also, the prisons department had taken multiple steps to contain the spread of coronavirus as a result of which till April 9, no inmate was found positive. The prisons department had done 100% screening of the inmates and also interviewed them to know their travel history. The department had also created two new wards and one isolation ward. Every inmate coming from outside is initially kept in the new ward where he is kept under observation of doctors for three days and after clearance, they are sent to their normal wards. Also, the isolation ward is kept for suspects. All meetings between prisoners and their relatives in the jails have been stopped to avoid any spread of novel coronavirus. If necessary, a mobile or landline phone would be made available to needy prisoners, the officer said. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Monday ordered imposition of a curfew in Banbhulpura area of Haldwani, a day after people gathered on a street to stop health department officials from quarantining the imam of a local mosque. Taking a serious view of the incident, Rawat ordered the chief secretary and the secretary (home) to impose a curfew in the area, according to an official statement. People had come out on the street in Banbhulpura area on Sunday when health officials were trying to quarantine the imam of a local mosque who had come in contact with members of the Tablighi Jamaat, Nainital SSP Sunil Kumar Meena said. However, the matter was resolved with the intervention of police, the imam himself and the ulemas, he said. The imam has been quarantined at the mosque. A number of Jamaat members have tested positive for coronavirus after they attended a religious congregation in Delhi last month or after they came in contact with those who attended it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) We reached out to land owners and all the stakeholders to see if there is interest in the community, Samoteskul said. We see there is a big demand for solar in Indiana. This project especially in Northern Indiana where there is a lot of activity, a lot of manufacturing will be well positioned to be contracted and built." CHATSWORTH, Ga. - Storms that killed more than 30 people in the Southeast, piling fresh misery atop a pandemic, spread across the eastern United States on Monday, leaving more than 1 million homes and businesses without power amid floods and mudslides. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Sarah Cook looks at the remnants of houses and mobile homes in this Bassfield, Miss., neighborhood, Monday, April 13, 2020. The neighborhood, nicknamed Harper Town because of the same named relatives that lived on the street, was almost completely demolished by a tornado. The community was one of many in Mississippi swept by a series of tornadoes, Sunday afternoon and evening. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) CHATSWORTH, Ga. - Storms that killed more than 30 people in the Southeast, piling fresh misery atop a pandemic, spread across the eastern United States on Monday, leaving more than 1 million homes and businesses without power amid floods and mudslides. In Alabama, people seeking shelter from tornadoes huddled in community shelters, protective masks covering their faces to guard against the new coronavirus. A twister demolished a Mississippi home save for a concrete room where a married couple and their children survived unharmed, but 11 others died in the state. About 85 miles (137 kilometres) from Atlanta in the mountains of north Georgia, Emma and Charles Peewee Pritchett laid still in their bed praying as a suspected twister splintered the rest of their home. I said, If were gonna die Im going to be beside him, the woman said Monday. Both survived without injuries. Nine died in South Carolina, Gov. Gov. Henry McMaster said, and coroners said eight were killed in Georgia. Tennessee officials said three people were killed in and around Chattanooga, and others died under falling trees or inside collapsed buildings in Arkansas and North Carolina. Sky Kriner, 5, a neighbor to the family with the two damaged mobile homes, looks on after a tornado hit, Monday, April 13, 2020, in Chatsworth, Ga. Severe weather has swept across the South, killing a multiple people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains. Many people spent part of the night early Monday sheltering in basements, closets and bathroom tubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) With a handful of tornadoes already confirmed in the South and storms still raging up the Eastern Seaboard, forecasters fanned out to determine how much of the widespread damage was caused by twisters. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said the storms were as bad or worse than anything weve seen in a decade. We are used to tornadoes in Mississippi, he said. No one is used to this. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said some storm victims already were out of work because of shutdowns caused by COVID-19. "Now they have lost literally everything they own, he said. Striking first on Easter across a landscape largely emptied by coronavirus stay-at-home orders, the storm front forced some uncomfortable decisions. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey suspended social distancing rules, and some people wearing protective masks huddled closely together in storm shelters. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out electricity for nearly 1.3 million customers in a path from Texas to Maine, according to poweroutages.us. Three walls are all that remain Monday, April, 13, 2020, of the home of a Wathall County, Miss., family who took shelter in the bathroom during a tornado on Sunday, April 12, 2020, as the rest of their home fell around them. (Caleb McCluskey/The Enterprise-Journal via AP) As much as 6 inches (15 centimetres) of rain fell over the weekend in the Tennessee Valley. The Tennessee Valley Authority said it expected to release water to regulate levels in swollen lakes and rivers in Tennessee and Alabama. In southeast Mississippi, Andrew Phillips crowded into a closet-sized safe room with his wife and two sons hours after watching an online Easter service because the pandemic forced their church to halt regular worship. Then a twister struck, shredding their house, meat-processing business and vehicles in rural Moss, Mississippi. The room, built of sturdy cinder blocks, was the only thing on their property left standing. Im just going to let the insurance handle it and trust in the good Lord, said Phillips. The National Weather Service tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Meteorologists warned the mid-Atlantic states to prepare for potential tornadoes, wind and hail. The storms knocked down trees across Pennsylvania. In northwest Georgia, a narrow path of destruction 5 miles (8 kilometres) long hit two mobile home parks. A terrified David Baggett of Chatsworth survived by cowering with his children in the bathtub of his mobile home, which was cut in two by a falling tree. It got quiet and then the wind started coming in really fast, said Baggett, 33. To the north in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at least 150 homes and commercial buildings were damaged and more than a dozen people treated, but none of their injuries appeared to be life-threatening, Fire Chief Phil Hyman said. It wasn't clear whether the combination of destroyed housing and social distancing requirements would lead to problems for tornado survivors, some of whom said they planned to stay with relatives. The deaths in Mississippi included a married couple Lawrence County Sheriffs deputy Robert Ainsworth and a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk, Paula Reid Ainsworth, authorities said. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs. Paula during the tornado, said a Facebook message by the sheriffs office. In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards said it was a miracle that no serious injuries or fatalities resulted from the Sunday tornadoes that damaged hundreds of homes around Monroe and in other parts of north Louisiana. But he lamented that because of coronavirus-related mandates, he felt he had to keep his distance from victims whose properties were devastated. In north Alabama, where lightning struck Shoal Creek Baptist Church shortly after noon Sunday, catching the tall, white steeple on fire, pastor Mahlon LeCroix said the building would have been full of more than 200 people at the time had the pandemic not forced him to switch to online services. It turned out to be a blessing, he said. ___ Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama. AP photographer Rogelio V. Solis in Carson, Mississippi; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; and Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, New Jersey, contributed to this report. Harpal Singhs worst fears came true when his mother, Pritam Kaur, 72, tested positive for Covid-19 four days after he was diagnosed with the disease on March 22. He was more worried about his mother since she is diabetic and more vulnerable. But luckily for them, the two were admitted to the same isolation ward at Civil Hospital in Punjabs Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar. This helped them at least to keep each others morale high. Harpal Singh, 48, has since recovered but he continues to stay back at the hospital to look after his mother, who doctors say is stable and likely to be discharged after she is retested this week. He said it is their faith that helped them stay strong. They would listen to religious hymns on their phones and talk to their family over video calls. Initially, I was worried because I had heard that people suffering from chronic diseases [like diabetes] and those aged may not survive [if infected by coronavirus], Singh said. Harpal Singh, whose Pathlawa village was on March 22 declared Punjabs first Covid-19 containment zone, was one of the 27 people infected by super-spreader preacher Baldev Singh. The preacher died on March 18 and was tested positive for the disease a day later. Baldev Singh, 70, had returned from Germany via Italy on March 7. He visited several places before his death that triggered a scramble for identifying all the people he had come in contact with. At least 14 members of his family were infected along with four in Jalandhar and five in Hoshiarpur. In Pathlawa, 19 people contracted the disease and 14 in nearby villages of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district, which were sealed within days. Harpal Singh is among the 13 people from his village to have been recovered. At least 10 of them have been discharged. As of Monday, Punjab had 176 Covid-19 cases. The state has reported 12 deaths related to the pandemic while 23 patients have recovered. Harpal Singh said he is grateful to the doctors and medical staff at the civil hospital for providing them moral support and counselling as well as the best possible treatment. Singh said given his mother was in the isolation ward with him gave him much solace and would not leave the hospital without her. Dr Harwinder Singh, the Civil Hospitals senior medical officer, said Harpal Singh has been asked to remain under home quarantine for two more weeks after his discharge. He added they are taking extra care of Kaur because of her age. We focused on their counselling so that patients should be mentally strong. By Express News Service KOCHI: The Ernakulam Rural police on Sunday arrested three persons who were involved in illicit brewing in the lockdown days due to the non-availability of liquor. Sun George, an NRI, his friends Shalaj and Vipin were arrested by the police. The brewing was done at the residence of George, who returned from Canada recently, at Aluva. The police seized equipment used for brewing from the possession of Vipin during a vehicle check conducted at Vayalakkad. Subsequently, the others were arrested, said the police. In another incident, the Excise sleuths arrested two persons for brewing illicit liquor at Kumbalam on Sunday. Rajesh M R, 40, and Paul K J, 50, were arrested following a tip-off received by the officials. The Kochi City Police on Sunday arrested Ansari A M, a Vazhakkala native, with 150 gm of ganja. The city police registered 28 cases and arrested 31 persons for lockdown violation. As many as 15 vehicles have been seized. The Ernakulam Rural police registered 125 cases and arrested 123 persons for lockdown violation and seized 57 vehicles. CHATSWORTH, Ga. Storms that killed more than 30 people in the Southeast, piling fresh misery atop a pandemic, spread across the eastern United States on Monday, leaving more than 1 million homes and businesses without power amid floods and mudslides. In Alabama, people seeking shelter from tornadoes huddled in community shelters, protective masks covering their faces to guard against the new coronavirus. A twister demolished a Mississippi home save for a concrete room where a married couple and their children survived unharmed, but 11 others died in the state. About 85 miles (137 kilometers) from Atlanta in the mountains of north Georgia, Emma and Charles Peewee Pritchett laid still in their bed praying as a suspected twister splintered the rest of their home. I said, If were gonna die Im going to be beside him,' the woman said Monday. Both survived without injuries. Nine died in South Carolina, Gov. Gov. Henry McMaster said, and coroners said eight were killed in Georgia. Tennessee officials said three people were killed in and around Chattanooga, and others died under falling trees or inside collapsed buildings in Arkansas and North Carolina. With a handful of tornadoes already confirmed in the South and storms still raging up the Eastern Seaboard, forecasters fanned out to determine how much of the widespread damage was caused by twisters. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said the storms were as bad or worse than anything weve seen in a decade. We are used to tornadoes in Mississippi, he said. No one is used to this. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said some storm victims already were out of work because of shutdowns caused by COVID-19. Now they have lost literally everything they own, he said. Striking first on Easter across a landscape largely emptied by coronavirus stay-at-home orders, the storm front forced some uncomfortable decisions. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey suspended social distancing rules, and some people wearing protective masks huddled closely together in storm shelters. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out electricity for nearly 1.3 million customers in a path from Texas to Maine, according to poweroutages.us. As much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell over the weekend in the Tennessee Valley. The Tennessee Valley Authority said it expected to release water to regulate levels in swollen lakes and rivers in Tennessee and Alabama. In southeast Mississippi, Andrew Phillips crowded into a closet-sized safe room with his wife and two sons hours after watching an online Easter service because the pandemic forced their church to halt regular worship. Then a twister struck, shredding their house, meat-processing business and vehicles in rural Moss, Mississippi. The room, built of sturdy cinder blocks, was the only thing on their property left standing. Im just going to let the insurance handle it and trust in the good Lord, said Phillips. The National Weather Service tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Meteorologists warned the mid-Atlantic states to prepare for potential tornadoes, wind and hail. The storms knocked down trees across Pennsylvania. In northwest Georgia, a narrow path of destruction 5 miles (8 kilometers) long hit two mobile home parks. A terrified David Baggett of Chatsworth survived by cowering with his children in the bathtub of his mobile home, which was cut in two by a falling tree. It got quiet and then the wind started coming in really fast, said Baggett, 33. To the north in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at least 150 homes and commercial buildings were damaged and more than a dozen people treated, but none of their injuries appeared to be life-threatening, Fire Chief Phil Hyman said. It wasnt clear whether the combination of destroyed housing and social distancing requirements would lead to problems for tornado survivors, some of whom said they planned to stay with relatives. The deaths in Mississippi included a married couple Lawrence County Sheriffs deputy Robert Ainsworth and a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk, Paula Reid Ainsworth, authorities said. Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs. Paula during the tornado, said a Facebook message by the sheriffs office. In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards said it was a miracle that no serious injuries or fatalities resulted from the Sunday tornadoes that damaged hundreds of homes around Monroe and in other parts of north Louisiana. But he lamented that because of coronavirus-related mandates, he felt he had to keep his distance from victims whose properties were devastated. In north Alabama, where lightning struck Shoal Creek Baptist Church shortly after noon Sunday, catching the tall, white steeple on fire, pastor Mahlon LeCroix said the building would have been full of more than 200 people at the time had the pandemic not forced him to switch to online services. It turned out to be a blessing, he said. ___ Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama. AP photographer Rogelio V. Solis in Carson, Mississippi; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; and Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, New Jersey, contributed to this report. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 02:22:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Keren Setton JERUSALEM, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Israeli President Reuven Rivlin turned down a request on Sunday by the Blue and White party leader to extend his mandate to form a government. In his rejection, Rivlin set the Monday midnight as the deadline for Benny Gantz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, to form a unity government. Failure to reach an agreement would most likely lead Israel to a fourth election, after three consecutive ones within the past year led to inconclusive results. Gantz received the mandate to form a government last month, days after Israel's third election. At the end of March, he and Netanyahu announced they were close to forming a unity government considering an emergency state amid the novel coronavirus crisis. However, a few days ago, in yet another twist of events, negotiations between the two sides were halted in an apparent disagreement on judicial matters such as veto-power in appointments for judges and prevention of legislation that would bar Netanyahu from ruling under indictment. Nestled in the potential agreement was a rotation on the premiership, in which Netanyahu would step down after 18 months and hand over the reins to Gantz. It was a difficult pill for Netanyahu to swallow and many believed he never intended to take the pill in the first place. On Saturday night, Gantz asked for a two-week extension for his mandate. In his response statement released on Sunday, Rivlin refused by saying "no extension would be possible under the current circumstances." The president's decision came after a conversation with Netanyahu who "did not confirm ... that the parties are close to signing an agreement that would lead to a unity government." Rivlin departed from protocol and tradition in which candidates who have asked for an extension have always received approval. If there will be no change by Monday midnight, the mandate will be returned to Israel's parliament for 21 days. If no parliament member receives the much coveted 61 signatures to form a government, a new election will be scheduled. By returning the mandate to the parliament without giving another candidate Netanyahu a shot first, Rivlin is racking up the pressure. "Rivlin wants to push Blue and White and the Likud party (led by Netanyahu) to reach an agreement quickly," said Assaf Shapira, a researcher at the Israeli Democracy Institute. "It also leaves the option open in the 21 days to still reach an agreement for a unity government," he added. Looming amid the political deadlock and the COVID-19 crisis are Netanyahu's legal woes. As Israel's first prime minister to be indicted for corruption, his first appearance in court was delayed for COVID-19 restrictions that shutdown the judicial system. The Israeli law on handing the mandate to a candidate under indictment is unclear. Should Netanyahu be tasked with government formation, there will likely be several petitions to the Supreme Court to prevent him from doing so. When Gantz announced he would be heading to a power-sharing agreement with Netanyahu, his party immediately collapsed. Two of his main partners were against his U-turn on his leading campaign promise not to sit with an indicted prime minister in the same government. "Gantz is at a dead end. Politically, Netanyahu made a fantastic move as he usually does. He dismantled the opposition for a very long time," said Eran Vigoda-Gadot, a professor of political science and governance at the University of Haifa. "Gantz received the mandate to form a government, and with this mandate he essentially formed a government for someone else," Vigoda-Gadot told Xinhua. As Israel's longest serving prime minister, the political instincts of 70-year-old Netanyahu are still sharp. The COVID-19 crisis has elevated his status as the nation's caretaker, as many perceive him as the country's most skillful navigator in troubling times. Recent polls by Israeli media showed his approval ratings sky-rocketing and his party winning 42 seats, way ahead of Gantz's 18 in a presumed election. The Israeli prime minister might have toyed with the coalition negotiations because he felt another election would solidify his position. "Gantz lost a lot of his public image and credibility. Netanyahu's options look much better, including heading to a fourth election. But because of Gantz's weakness, he might concede to Netanyahu's demands and enter a unity government," said Shapira. Here in Hollywood, where many are employed because of Chinese capital (like the good folks at the WHO), they are collectively celebrating the fact that Bill Maher's hope for a recession is here. These leftists can hardly believe the good fortune the coronavirus is heaping upon America. They eagerly lock themselves down while anticipating the day they can download a "GULAG" app that will allow them to snap and upload photos of anyone (like me) not obeying the latest martial law directive from Governor Gavin Newsome or Mayor Eric Garcetti, who last week promised "rewards to snitches." Only four weeks ago, Hollywood and the left were in the throes of a three-year-long tantrum, hounding Americans with endless arguments as to why they should surrender their freedoms, constitution, money, and very lives to their control with slogans such as: The sky is falling (according to our climate models)! Some people make less income than others! Gun violence! There is free health care in Sweden! Jim Crow laws were in the South back in the 1950s! America is not a perfect Utopia; it's just not fair! Englishmen brought slaves to North America in 1619! All of these arguments in fact have succeeded in mobilizing large portions of the electorate to vote for Democrats and resulted in their intermittent control of the U.S. House, governorships, and even the White House. However, after eight years of fraud and abuses of the Constitution by the Obama administration, America revolted by electing Donald Trump. Trump proceeded to fight back, exposing every detail of the left's fraudulent arguments, reducing them to nothing but echoes in the wind. Donald Trump clearly was and is, as Nancy Pelosi often repeats, "an existential threat." While she typically ends this phrase with "to the United States of America," she really means "to a socialist United States of America" as well as "to globalism." Arguably, Donald Trump, a single individual, by sheer power of personality, willpower, chutzpah, skepticism, and love of country, has the left in retreat. In response, Democrats desperately tried to remove the existential threat by using the tools of state, critical to all leftist regimes, to achieve their goals. They demanded America surrender by way of a special counsel and Congress because: Russia helped Trump win the election! Trump mentioned something or other about Biden's corruption to the president of Ukraine! These efforts fell totally flat. And then, at last, the left stumbled upon an argument for American surrender, to which the American people, and even President Donald Trump, capitulated without a fight: Because you might catch a virus! America has indeed surrendered to the left, without even realizing it. That's how Democrats like it, because that's what works. As I pointed out in my film, Dreams from My Real Father , Barack Obama succeeded as much as he did by using "stealth socialism." The idea was for America to wake up one day in a socialist state, without ever realizing how it happened. That is the only realistic path to socialist success when you have a bunch of church-going, freedom-loving, gun-toting free-marketeers as far as the eye can see. That's why candidate Obama ran in 2008 as a moderate, promising to cut the deficit in half and proclaiming, "I believe marriage is between a man, a woman and God" and "I will obey the Constitution." Once elected, the radical Obama betrayed the voters and imposed, often by fiat, the radical leftist agenda he was known for his entire life, with a big assist from a mainstream media whitewash of his past. Then, during the Obama presidency, the media worked 24/7 to paper over and misdirect all of Obama's radical policies and abuses of power. Because of the coronavirus, the endgame of the leftist agenda is suddenly upon us. It's not even the "soft left" Scandinavian-style socialism that Bernie Sanders would have us believe was his newly found passion (replacing his lifelong Stalinist aspirations). No, what is happening today in America is the Maoist totalitarian leftist model that Barack Obama's pals in the Weather Underground preached for years. "Maoism" was the centerpiece of the ideology of Obama's "accidental neighbor," terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers, who wrote the American communist manifesto in 1974 entitled Prairie Fire, inspired by Mao Tse-Tung's saying, "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire." Ayers argued, as did Mao, that an entire communist revolution and subjugation of society could be sparked by a single event. This idea rings true. Think about the Tunisian street vendor who self-immolated after receiving a citation for selling food without a permit that ignited the Arab Spring, leading to the fall of almost every Arab leader. Think of...the coronavirus. And think of what Chinese communist society looks like today: Government invents and dictates laws on a daily basis as it pleases Fines and imprisonment for disobeying No right to assembly House arrests No freedom of worship Total government control of the economy No freedom of movement without identity papers Does this sound familiar? Rather than follow the Swedish model of government response to the coronavirus, which was simply to recommend that the population take extra care, the United States followed the draconian communist Chinese example of Maoism apparently based on the recommendations of Democrats Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. As a result, Maoism is becoming a reality for all Americans. Leftist politicians are drooling with glee now that their collective fantasy of being elevated to leadership in a distant far-off Utopia has become a present reality. Democrat leaders are barely able to contain themselves; their authoritian nature is bursting out at the seams. Cloned characters (think de Blasio, Newsom, Northam, Garcetti, and Cuomo) are reveling in inventing new laws every day as they place new restrictions on movement and assembly while offering up threats and punishments against those who don't cooperate. "Virus free" identify cards and big tech tracking schemes are being floated. And just like in communist China, there are no checks and balances, and our courts are conveniently closed. Conservatives and patriots are warily observing all of this, along with President Trump (shadowed by Fauci and Birx), hoping the Maoism will clear up along with the virus in a few weeks. However, Democrats and their media allies are doing everything they can to keep status quo Maoist America in place and will try to sabotage any attempt to eradicate the scourge. Governors are declaring lockdowns in some states for months to come, and Pelosi is poised to prevent any further government relief to keep businesses afloat. Meanwhile, the left's media allies feature on almost every channel images of funerals, new graphic models showing a likely resurgence of the virus, racial disparities of fatalities, and experts who say "it may last a year or two" basically anything they can say to get Americans who surrendered so easily to "you might catch a virus" to agree to prolong their imprisonment in Maoist America. Make no mistake: the dream of the Left is that the Maoist authoritarian state will never leave us. The one last obstacle in their way, the existential threat to their Utopian agenda (as depicted in my film There's No Place like Utopia), is a 73-year-old "unfit" reality TV buffoon who colluded with Russia and then Ukraine to keep them out of power. Donald Trump is the one man, perhaps the only thing, standing in the way of Democrats living out their fantasy as social engineers and gods of paradise on Earth. The left has many powerful allies: Hollywood, the entire mainstream media, the federal bureaucracy, the intelligence services, big tech, Canada, America's European allies, and China. All of these have a shared interest in making sure Donald Trump does not win re-election. They will work together feverishly in the coming weeks, sometimes loosely and sometimes directly, to stop Donald Trump. If they are successful, Maoist America will be entrenched as a permanent reality based upon "Because you might catch a virus!" Hollywood film director Joel Gilbert @JoelSGilbert is president of Highway 61 Entertainment. Among his many films are political documentaries including The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America, Trump: The Art of the Insult, There's No Place Like Utopia, Dreams from My Real Father, Atomic Jihad, and Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam. The largest banks in the United States are preparing to seize the assets of shale companies across the West Texas Permian Basin. What was once the epicenter of the U.S. shale revolution is now ground zero for bankruptcy and sweeping layoffs numbering in the tens of thousands of jobs. Now, according to reporting by Reuters this week, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc are each in the process of setting up independent companies to own oil and gas assets [...]. The banks are also looking to hire executives with relevant expertise to manage them. The banks are preparing to move into an industry where oil and gas companies working in shale basins from Texas to Wyoming are saddled with debt. The Reuters article continues: The industry is estimated to owe more than $200 billion to lenders through loans backed by oil and gas reserves. As revenue has plummeted and assets have declined in value, some companies are saying they may be unable to repay. The U.S. shale industry is just one small part of a global energy industry crisis as we experience a historic oil price crash. Last month the economic devastation wreaked by the spread of the coronavirus drove down oil demand around the world, leading to a spat between the OPEC+ leading members Russia and Saudi Arabia as to how to proceed. This soon turned into an all-out oil price war and a severe international oil supply glut, leading to a devastating dip in oil prices, which fell over 60 percent. Although oil prices may get some support from the agreement Thursday between Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut production, few believe the curtailment can offset a 30% drop in global fuel demand, as the coronavirus has grounded aircraft, reduced vehicle use and curbed economic activity more broadly, says Reuters. The global oil glut remains at an oversupply level of about 10 million barrels per day. Premium: U.S. Oil Production Has Already Peaked Some experts, however, say that the United States will be able to maintain its energy dominance if it plays its cards right. In the face of economic and political uncertainties, a number of initiatives and policy changes today could help sustain our energy industry and keep us globally competitive tomorrow, Bernard L. Weinstein wrote in an opinion column for The Hill last week. Weinstein is associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute and adjunct professor of business economics at Southern Methodist University in the Cox School of Business. Weinstein opines that if the United States wants to maintain the energy dominance and near self-sufficiency that it won in with the shale revolution in recent decades and avoid becoming a net energy importer in the near future, certain policy and private sector changes need to be implemented immediately. The first of these changes, according to Weinstein, is that President Trump (in conjunction with other world and energy industry leaders) must convince Saudi Arabia and Russia that theyre playing a negative-sum game in which everyone including America loses. Despite the fact that both countries have sizable financial reserves that can cushion the blow from low oil prices this doesnt change the leverageable fact that those resources would be better allocated to diversifying their economies. This angle is particularly salient as oil markets have become increasingly volatile in recent years and even Saudi Aramco had to admit that peak oil will likely arrive by mid-century. Despite that fact, oil and gas are still going to be a key sector of the global economy for the next 50 or 60 years, and the U.S. needs to plan ahead to stay competitive in that window of time, says Weinstein. Once the global economy starts to recover from the coronavirus, the demand for energy will grow quickly. To ensure America is able to meet that growing demand we should use this downtime to improve the infrastructure for transporting and processing our oil and gas resources. For example, in recent years serious mid-stream bottlenecks have occurred in the Permian because of a lack of pipeline takeaway capacity. In the meantime, the U.S. should think about diversifying as well. Oil and gas will remain key for the next 50 years, but on a longer timeline, supporting the U.S. renewable energy sector is vital as well. Going forward, it seems that the most resilient (and ultimately dominant) energy economy will have to be a diverse one. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Simon Harris has said that he is conscious that our country is making progress during the coronavirus crisis. In his Easter message, the Minister for Health acknowledged that the country is slowing down the number of people being infected with Covid-19. Fourteen more people have died from Covid-19, bringing the total number of deaths in the Republic to 334. The total number of cases now stands at 9,655 - including the total from German laboratories. Simon Harris says even though Irish people are making great efforts, families are losing loved ones: "I'm also conscious that no matter how difficult the sacrifices we're making, in terms of putting off seeing family and friends, as challenging as that is, it is absolutely completely and utterly insignificant compared to the families today in our country that are grieving the loss of their loved ones," he said. The comments come as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said Ireland faces some of its darkest days in the coming weeks as coronavirus deaths continue to mount. The number of hospitalisations and, sadly, the number of deaths continues to rise. So we cannot lose focus. We cannot lessen our efforts. In fact, we need to redouble them for the next few weeks, he said. Its more important than ever that we persevere. Its possible that we havent seen the peak yet. "When it comes, perhaps later this month, we will experience some of our darkest days. So we need to maintain our discipline and resolve in the knowledge that better days are to come. [snippet1]987600[/snippet1] Malak al-Zubeidi says she was lit on fire by her husband and prevented from visiting her parents for eight months. The alleged burning and abuse of a young Iraqi woman at the hands of her husband and his family has caused outrage on social media, with activists and commentators calling for laws to protect women from domestic violence. Videos circulated of Malak Haider al-Zubaidi, 20, bedridden in a hospital in the holy city of Najaf and screaming in pain, her face swollen from burns and her entire body bandaged. Al-Zubaidi is the second wife of Mohammed al-Mayahli who, according to her family, had forbidden her from visiting her parents for eight months. Al-Mayahli, a police officer, wrote on his Facebook page that al-Zubeidi has a mental illness and had set herself on fire. She burned herself with petrol and accused me and my family, he wrote. There are sponsored accounts that are posting these lies just to slander my family. https://twitter.com/dareenalhabsi/status/1249570356907651073?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Activists reacted with scorn to his words, and some shared an unverified statement from his family, saying that as sons of an important colonel in the army, the law cannot touch them. While Iraqs constitution prohibits all forms of violence and abuse in the family, the countrys penal code allows husbands to discipline their wives, and there is no law criminalising domestic violence. There are also no updated national figures for domestic violence in Iraq, where the most recent data available is from 2012, but there are estimates that one in five women are victims. Within hours, a hashtag reading Malak_Haider_AlZubadi in Arabic trended in Iraq. #__ In Iraq,this girl has been burned,the psychological stress experienced by women are great and many,Domestic violence,killing in the name of customs and traditions,early marriage,absence of a law for holding men accountable,no law to limit childbearing,etc. pic.twitter.com/77Gfw6iNYu (@yaaaAllahyarab) April 12, 2020 One Twitter user said: No law against domestic violence is yet activated in Iraq. Even if it is activated, it may remain ink on paper in a country crippled by Islamists, militias and tribes, the user, Balsam, continued. Iraqi law as a result only gives lighter sentences of prison to men accused of killing their wives or daughters. No law against domestic violence is yet activated in Iraq. Even if it is activated, it may remain ink on paper in a country gripped by Islamists, militias & tribes/ Balsam (@M_Balsam) April 12, 2020 Another user, Tara Shwani, called the incident an intense violation of human rights. On a daily basis physical and mental abuse is practiced against women in our society, Shwani said. Most of the people are claiming that it was self-immolation When are we going to stop blaming the victims and focus instead on the perpetrators! On Sunday, Najafs governor, Louay al-Yasiri, ordered an investigation into the incident. The governors media office said in a brief statement that al-Yasiri had called for a specialised investigation team regarding the burning of a Najaf woman and to present the report within 24 hours. The Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement that al-Zubeidi filed a formal complaint with the Najaf Investigation Court against her husband for allegedly beating her, leading her to burn herself as a result of the violence against her. However, al-Zubaidis mother told local Iraqi news channel al-Sharqiyah that it had, in fact, been her daughters father-in-law who signed the complaint. My daughters fingers are all burned and swollen, she said. The affidavit is null and void, because it was signed by her father-in-law, who told the lawyers he was her father. Mohammed Jumaa, an Iraqi lawyer, said he has seen hundreds of cases where the rights and lives of abused women such as Malak were wasted and those responsible were not brought to justice. Hundreds of abused women were killed or committed suicide and the law simply just stood there watching, Jumaa said on Twitter. If it wasnt for social media in this case, then the governor would not have said anything, he added. In our country, you have no rights if social media did not sympathise with you. B razil's iconic Christ the Redeemer statue was illuminated to look like a doctor on Easter Sunday to commend medics fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Recognising frontline workers around the world, the statue in Rio de Janeiro was also illuminated with flags of countries affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. Images and video clips of frontline workers wearing face masks and scrubs also urged people to stay at home. "Fique Em Casa", meaning "Stay at Home", was projected onto the statue's arm, along with thank you in different languages. The statue was illuminated to recognise medics across the world / Getty Images The city's archbishop, Dom Orani Tempesta, held a mass at the base of the statue during the light show, in which he called for unity and paid tribute to healthcare workers. The statue, recognised worldwide as a symbol of Christianity, was also illuminated with rainbows and hearts during the light show, projecting the words "everything will be fine". Mass was held at the base of the statue during the light show / Getty Images The Archbishop said: "We are all praying for families that are hurt and that have sick family members, or the families who have loved ones who died. "It is not time for divisions but unity, we are united against a common enemy that transmits the virus that is contaminating so many people." Dressed in face masks and scrubs, images of medics were projected onto the 38m tall status in Brazil / Getty Images As of Monday, Brazil had reported 22,318 cases, and 1,230 deaths. This is the second illumination of the Christ the Redeemer statue during the coronavirus pandemic. The statue was previously lit up with flags of countries affected by the outbreak. BJP president Jagat Prakash Nadda has urged party workers to distribute ration kits and face masks to the poor to mark the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar on 14 April. BJP president Jagat Prakash Nadda has urged party workers to distribute ration kits and face masks to the poor to mark the birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar on 14 April. Nadda asked party members to garland the photo of Dr Ambedkar at their homes and share it on social media. Chief ministers and party unit heads have been told to release video messages to the public. The BJP tweeted that Nadda has asked party workers to distribute ration kits to every home in at least two poor settlements under the #FeedTheNeedy program. The BJP workers are to distribute face covers while following public hygiene and social distancing norms in view of coronavirus. In his message, Nadda said party workers should take a pledge to uphold the ideals of the Constitution and obey the advisories of the government to fight COVID-19 as well as write essays, articles and op-eds on Dr Ambedkar. He also requested them to share and spread on social media the measures and decisions taken by the government, party and leadership for the emancipation of the lesser fortunate sections of society. Dr BR Ambedkar was a social reformer, jurist, economist and author and the principal architect of Indian Constitution. He was also independent India's first law minister. Ambedkar was appointed the chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee on 29 August, 1947. His contributions towards forging a modern inclusive country were recognized posthumously with a Bharat Ratna, Indias highest civilian award, in 1990. TDT | Manama His Royal Highness the Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa has affirmed that the pre-emptive steps and measures taken by the Kingdom to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) have contributed to achieving positive and fruitful results, as well as spreading reassurance among everyone. There is great hope to overcome these urgent circumstances, thanks to the awareness and solidarity of all Bahrainis and residents, HRH the Premier said. HRH the Prime Minister expressed deepest thanks and appreciation to His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his sound directives, which, he said, consolidated social awareness and strengthened resolve to confront the current crisis. HRH the Premier paid tribute to His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Premier, for his continuous efforts in the fight against COVID-19 and prevent its spread. HRH the Premier gave directives to ministries and the relevant government departments to step up their preparedness and precautions to contribute to making the general health situation reassuring. He called for adopting effective measures that prevent the spread of the virus, especially among expatriate labour groups through tightening control and regulatory procedures in their accommodation and places of living. HRH the Premier made the statements while receiving deputy premiers, HH Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, HH Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa and Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, at his palace in Riffa yesterday. The Prime Minister reviewed the latest developments regarding the governments efforts to combat the coronavirus at the health, economic and service levels. HRH the Premier also followed up on the implementation of his directives regarding the support of the educational process, private schools cooperation with parents, provision of various consumer goods and controlling prices, as well as examining expatriate workers and meeting the citizens needs across various fields. The Prime Minister lauded the existing community partnership, and the positive response of the citizens and residents with the precautionary measures taken so far to make a coronavirus-free Bahrain, stressing that the ultimate goal of all measures and decisions taken in this regard is to protect the safety and health of the citizens and residents. We value highly the Bahraini citizens cooperation, awareness and commitment to precautionary measures. They deserve all thanks and appreciation, he said. HRH the Prime Minister lauded the steps taken by ministries and state departments to confront COVID-19. He hailed the efforts exerted by the Health Ministry and all its medical and nursing staff, and praised the sacrifices they are making for the sake of protecting the health and safety of the citizens and residents. Two men have been arrested in Mohali for allegedly spitting on currency notes before buying dairy products during the coronavirus lockdown. PTI According to a report in India Today, both the men were from Bihar and they spit on the notes before handing them over to the shopkeeper. This claim was made by another customer who then raised the alarm. Remember, the nation is in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic which has extended to the end of April at the moment. PTI Those accused ran away at that time but were later caught by the police. The shopkeeper alleged that they also rubbed the notes on their bodies. He promptly threw them away and closed the shop. PTI The Kharar police has filed a case based on that complaint. According to Kharar police station SHO Bhagwan Singh, the duo is being questioned and both are booked under the relevant sections. India has lost over 300 people and more than 9000 have tested positive. Worldwide the death toll is over 110,000 and more than 1800,000 are affected. Outage no picnic Sydneys power supply may suffer at peak periods because a Newcastle powerhouse employee did not buy a picnic ticket. Conciliation Commissioner Mr L.P. Austin described the dispute as ludicrous and without justification. A deputation from the powerhouse day staff announced that employees would stop work for 24 hours because fitter M. Tsolakis did not buy a picnic ticket. Mr Tsolakis offered to pay the price of a ticket but was still denied. Ship fumigated The P&O liner Mooltan has been fumigated and her sailing delayed for a week until April 28 so that the effect of the fumigation can be studied. A passenger from Sydney died of smallpox aboard the Mooltan shortly before reaching London on April 2. Since then three others have died of smallpox, two others are suffering from the disease and five are under observation. Australia House hope that all intending passengers will be vaccinated. Cooks feel the heat A team in Hong Kong has also been appointed, with Zaid Alrifai as head of Architas Asia, as well as responsible officer for Type 1, 4 and 9 regulated activities. Dr Mai Khanh Vo is the firms chief investment officer and responsible officer for Type 4 and 9 regulated activities. Beatrice Jiang has been appointed as head of legal and compliance. Meanwhile, Architas global head of client group, Nicolas Deschamps, and global chief investment officer, Jaime Arguello, were designated as offshore responsible officers. Additional appointments in Hong Kong have been made to support the growth of the business, the company said. The Architas businesses have grown strongly in recent years with assets now reaching over 35 billion, said Matthieu Andre, CEO of Architas. Architas is fully committed to the long-term support of the AXA Groups unit linked strategy in Asia. The launch of our Hong Kong business is a key milestone in our mission to drive growth of open architecture investment solutions. In October 2017, Architas launched three Irish-domiciled globally diversified multi-manager funds as part of its regional offering in Asia. Since April 2018, the funds have been authorised by the SFC for sale in Hong Kong, and are currently distributed through AXAs insurance products in Hong Kong and in other Asian markets. Pakistan uses fake Islam is in danger narrative as main theme of its terror indoctrination How Pakistan used almonds to fund terror and back-stab Indias good-will on LoC trade Ceasefire violations by Pak on the increase despite COVID-19 India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P Srinagar, Apr 13: While the nation is witnessing a massive battle against the deadly COVID-19, tension prevails between India and Pakistan forces along the Line of Control (LoC). The two countries, exchanging ceasefire at the LoC, has left several civilians in Jammu and Kashmir homeless and three people, including a child, dead in north Kashmir's Kupwara region. It can be seen that the lockdown, that was called due to the outbreak of coronavirus has not reduced Pakistan terrorists from making infiltration attempts. It can also be seen that both countries have been affected by COVID-19. Watch: Indian Army inflicts heavy damage after Pakistan violates ceasefire at LoC In 2019, the number of ceasefire violations was 919 and 802 in 2018. In March 2019, the number of ceasefire violations increased to 267 and 201 in 2018. However, in 2020, the number of ceasefire violations by the Islamic country is higher than in 2019 and 2018. On April 12, ceasefire violations were reported in multiple sectors along the LoC. In Kupwara. Several homes suffered heavy damages while some houses were gutted on fire due to shelling. Pakistan's defence in Kupwara came after the Indian Army targeted terror launch pads and Pakistan army installations aiding infiltration in the same sector last week. Also, five Pakistani terrorists and five Indian soldiers were killed in the battle after the Indian Army thwarted a major infiltration bid. The Supreme Court on Monday declined to pass any interim order on the plea of a Muslim body seeking to restrain a section of media from allegedly spreading bigotry and communal hatred by linking the spread of coronavirus with the recent Nizamuddin Markaz incident, saying it would "not gag the press". The apex court also asked Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, which has alleged that a section of media is spreading communal hatred over last month's Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi, to implead the Press Council of India (PCI) as a party to the case. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, which heard the matter through video-conference, said it would not pass any interim order in the matter at this stage and posted the plea for hearing after two weeks. "We will not gag the press," the bench, also comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao and M M Shantanagoudar, told the counsel appearing for the petitioner. The bench was hearing a plea filed by Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind which has sought directions to the Centre to stop dissemination of "fake news" and take strict action against those responsible for it. The plea has alleged that unfortunate incident of Tablighi Jamaat was being used to "demonise" and blame the entire Muslim community. At least 9,000 people had participated in the religious gathering at Tablighi Jamaat's headquarters in Nizamuddin West last month and the congregation became a key source for the spread of COVID-19 in India as many of the participants had travelled to various parts of the country for missionary works. During the hearing on Monday, the counsel appearing for the petitioner claimed that media reporting and government reports are constantly talking about Tablighi spreading coronavirus in the country. "We think you add the Press Council of India as a party to the case," the bench said, adding, "Press Council of India is a necessary party to the case. Implead them and thereafter we will hear this". When the petitioner's counsel claimed that people were being attacked because of media reports, the bench observed, "We want to make solid long term measures about the items. Once we take cognizance people will understand." "If it is a question of killing or defamation, then your remedy lies somewhere else. But if it is a question of larger reporting, then Press Council of India has to be made a party," the bench said. The plea has sought directions to the Centre to stop dissemination of fake and take strict action against the section of the media spreading bigotry and communal hatred in relation to the Nizamuddin Markaz issue. "It is submitted that such reporting has triggered communal antagonism and has also perpetrated hatred, resulting in fissiparous tendencies gaining foothold, undermining and affecting communal harmony," the plea has said. The petition further stated that this "demonisation" of the community has led to serious "threat to life and liberty of Muslims", and has thus led to the violation of their "right to life under Article 21" of the Constitution. It has also sought direction to all sections of media to strictly comply with the Supreme Court directions asking them to maintain strong sense of responsibility and ensure that unverified is not disseminated. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Bank of England governor Lord Mervyn King has warned 'something has gone wrong' with the Government's emergency bailout loans system. The 72-year-old admitted he is 'worried' about the workings of the scheme which has seen just 4,200 firms in Britain get the payment out of 300,000 applicants. The worrying figures have emerged despite the system already being overhauled earlier this month after firms complained they could not access the cash. Former Bank of England governor Lord Mervyn King told Sky News yesterday that 'something has gone wrong' with the Government's emergency bailout loans system Around 800million has been handed out in total a figure which pales in comparison to the 146billion handed to 725,000 companies in the US. Lord King, who was governor of the Bank of England during the financial crisis in 2008, said the survival of businesses was key to a rapid economic recovery. Racing car maker owner says dealing with high street banks has been 'catastrophic' Tim Colman, owner of racing car maker Chevron Cars, is among those fearing for the future of his company which is struggling to get a loan. He has written to the British Business Bank, which is administrating the loans, after failing in his attempts to get any of the money available so far. Mr Colman, whose business is based in Basingstoke, Hampshire, said his experience of dealing with the high street banks during the process has been 'nothing short of catastrophic'. He told the Sunday Telegraph: 'If the lack of funding continues for long I will simply be unable to trade and my 55-year-old business will have to shut its doors.' Chevron was founded by Derek Bennett in 1965 who designed and built the cars until his death in 1978. Advertisement He told Sky News: 'The economy will recover quickly only if we can keep the businesses that existed at the beginning of it still functioning and still able to pick up the reins when the epidemic is over. 'If we find so few business loans being granted, something has gone wrong.' He added that local bank branches should not have been closed because they could have helped answer questions of businessess trying to apply for the loans. Business owners have warned the failure of the loans system means they will not be able to pay staff at the end of the month and will go bust. Tim Colman, owner of racing car manufacturer Chevron Cars, said: 'If the lack of funding continues for long I will simply be unable to trade and my 55-year-old business will have to shut its doors.' Chancellor Rishi Sunak last month said he would do 'whatever it takes' to protect jobs as he promised 330billion in state-backed loans. Banks have been overwhelmed by demand since the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans Scheme was launched on March 23. They have been accused of refusing loans due to firms failing to meet complex eligibility criteria. Critics have questioned why the pool of lenders was just 40 and why more support was not given to banks to keep local bank branches open to tackle the workload. Chancellor Rishi Sunak (picured at a Downing Street press conference on April 8) said he would do 'whatever it takes' to protect jobs as he promised 330billion in state-backed loans The Government hopes that by protecting firms from going bust and laying off staff the UK will recover quickly from coronavirus with a V-shaped recession. More than two-thirds of the loans, 2,500 in total, have been approved by state-owned bank RBS which is understood to be the only business offering loans worth below 25,000 to small businesses. In a sign of the panic in Whitehall, Richard Sharp, Mr Sunak's former boss at Goldman Sachs, has been parachuted in to oversee the Government's rescue package. Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: 'I have spent the last couple of days talking directly to some of the largest lenders who are part of this scheme. Concerns over grants scheme for small firms There are also grave concerns over the Government's grants scheme, designed to help the smallest business, who are not eligible for the 12-month business rates holiday. Local councils, who are administering the grants, have handed out more than 1billion helping to keep 100,000 small businesses afloat, according to the Local Government Association. A British Chambers of Commerce survey conducted earlier this month suggested that twice as many businesses are being rejected. Councils have struggled to get paperwork to businesses, while some owners, including those who operate their business from home, have found they are not eligible for grants. Advertisement 'I have been very clear to say to them that we need to get money out of the door as quickly as possible. We have set this up at pace and everyone is literally working around the clock.' Last week experts predicted that the UK economy was declining at its fastest rate since the 1920s. More than 1.2million people have applied for Universal Credit in the UK since the start of the pandemic. The lockdown, initially implemented for three weeks, is expected to be extended into May - putting more strain on companies who have closed and seen their income evaporate. There are fears in Whitehall that as many as four million people could become unemployed. Labour's Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: 'Those schemes currently aren't working quickly enough, or comprehensively enough. 'Those businesses and workers are dealing with the situation in real time, and every day counts.' In a YouTube video released by WikiLeaks yesterday, Stella Moris, a 37-year-old lawyer, revealed that she has been in a personal relationship with Julian Assange since 2015 and that they have two infant children together. Moris powerfully defended the WikiLeaks founder, whom she is engaged to marry, spoke movingly about the close bond of their young family and called for Assanges immediate release from Londons maximum-security Belmarsh Prison. Assange and Moris in the Ecuadorian embassy (Credit: WikiLeaks) In accompanying comments to the Daily Mail, the South-African born lawyer explained that she was speaking out publicly for the first time, because Assanges life is on the brink. She warned that Julians poor physical health puts him at serious risk, like many other vulnerable people, and I don't believe he will survive infection with coronavirus. Over the past five years I have discovered that love makes the most intolerable circumstances seem bearable but this is different, I am now terrified I will not see him alive again, she said. Moris had filed a statement in support of an application last month for Assange to be released on bail. It was callously rejected by Judge Vanessa Baraitser, despite the fact that the WikiLeaks founder has not been convicted of a crime and suffers from a raft of health issues, including a chronic lung condition. This means that the COVID-19 pandemic poses an imminent threat to his life. Currently, 150 Belmarsh Prison staff are now infected with the virus or self-isolating. There are two known deaths of inmates, but Assange told a friend last week that there had been other fatalities. Baraitser has also decreed that the May court hearings for Assanges extradition to the US will proceed, even though Britain is in a national lockdown, there are mass coronavirus deaths and the WikiLeaks founder has no prospect of consulting with his lawyers. This underscores the fact that Baraitser is working to a predetermined timetable dictated by those orchestrating Assanges dispatch to the US, where he faces life imprisonment for exposing American war crimes. In a particularly vindictive move, Baraitser rejected an application from Assanges lawyers for the identity of Moris and her children to be protected. They had warned that Moris had already been harassed because of her relationship with Assange. The calls by senior US politicians and intelligence officials for Assange to be silenced, or even killed, clearly place her in danger. Baraitser was unmoved, declaring that it was in the public interest to expose the identities of Assanges vulnerable family members. In the WikiLeaks video, Moris explained that she first met Assange in 2011, after answering an appeal by Jennifer Robinson for Oxford graduates to join his legal team. A fluent Swedish speaker, she was involved in defending Assange from a sexual misconduct frame-up orchestrated by that countrys state and judiciary, doubtless in collaboration with the US. Moris worked closely with Assange in Ecuadors London embassy, where he was forced to seek political asylum in 2012. She said that they grew closer, beginning a relationship in 2015. Hes the person I know most in the world, Moris explained. Hes extraordinary. Hes tender and loving. The lawyer said that they had made a deliberate decision to form a family, while Assange was a political refugee in the embassy building. They had wanted to break down those walls around him, to see a life, imagine a life beyond that prison. For many people it would be insane to start a family in those circumstances, but for us it was the sane thing to do. It is what keeps things real...When he sees the children, it gives him a lot of peace and nurturing and support. Moris further explained: Just like in war, when people fall in love and decide to live their lives, in an act of rebellion, I think falling in love is a kind of act of rebellion in a context where theres a lot of attempts to destroy your life and your reason for doing what you are doing. Their first child, Gabriel, now two-years-old, was born in 2017. His brother, Max, is one-year-old. A screenshot from the WikiLeaks video showing Moris with her and Assange's sons Moris spoke of the extreme pressure that she and her family have been under. She noted that because of his role as a public figure targeted by powerful governments for his publishing activities, everything about Assanges life is liable to be used against him. Commenting on the impact of the US-led pursuit of Assange on their young children, she said: I think theyre both traumatised by whats happened over the last few years. I compare it to being in a war-zone. Constant, relentless attacks. That there are operations underway, and its not some crazed conspiracy. Its part of the context in which everything to do with Julian exists. Moris concluded by stating that she had to speak publicly, Because I feel like Julians life might be coming to an end. Its been ten years of breaking someone down, of trying to destroy his life, and its a well-known pattern with whistleblowers, people who expose the powerful, they destroy them... Somehow everyone has failed Julian, they have taken every negative angle. They can do that to anyone. In May last year, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer found that Assange showed medically-verifiable symptoms of psychological torture, as a result of his decade-long persecution. A group of almost 200 medical professionals, organised in the Doctors For Assange organisation, have repeatedly warned that Assange could die behind bars, as a result of the British governments refusal to provide him with adequate medical care. Those dangers have only been heightened by the unprecedented pandemic, which is tearing through the countrys prison system. Moriss comments expose still further the lawlessness of this treatment. Assange is not only an award-winning journalist and publisher, but also the father of two infant British children. The rights of the two boys, moreover, have already been trampled upon by governments and the intelligence agencies. Moris confirmed that employees of UC Global, a Spanish company employed by the Ecuadorian government to provide security at the London embassy, had plotted to steal one of Gabriels nappies, to test his DNA. At the time, UC Global is alleged to have been secretly working in collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency to spy on Assange. Moris told the Daily Mail: I knew there was spying but this felt ruthless, as if there were no boundaries. It wasnt just an invasion of Gabriels privacy, it made me think he wasnt safe. Assange first met the younger child, Max, in Belmarsh Prison last year. He had been unable to see the baby while he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy, because of the repressive conditions placed on him by that countrys new administration in early 2018 as it prepared to renege on the WikiLeaks founders political asylum and hand him over to his persecutors. Video footage of Maxs birth was among Assanges possessions that were stolen by the Ecuadorian authorities, after they expelled him from the embassy last April. Along with all of his other property, it was illegally handed over to the US government. Moriss comments underscore the brutality of the protracted pursuit of Assange. They demonstrate the immense stakes in the defence of the WikiLeaks founder, for the democratic rights of the working class, but also for his young family. Her intervention is a powerful refutation of the incessant attacks on Assange, which have been aimed at dehumanising him and legitimising the abrogation of his rights. The video has won a warm response from tens of thousands around the world. Predictably, a number of tabloid newspapers have run salacious stories, absurdly presenting the decision of a then 45-year-old publisher to enter into a personal relationship and father children as something unusual or even scandalous. As has so often been the case, representatives of the Guardian, the house organ of the smug British upper-middle class, staked out the most despicable position. One of the papers reporters, Hannah Jane Parkinson, tweeted, above a particularly moving picture of Assange with Gabriel as a newborn baby: Excuse me while I vomit for the foreseeable future. When Assanges mother Christine protested, Jane Parkinson blocked her. The Guardian reporter claims to be an authority on mental illness and the complexities and contradictions of being ill. Her sensitivities clearly do not extend to a persecuted journalist or his baby. In their boundless malice and vindictiveness, such individuals reveal that there is no line they will not cross to further the interests of the corporate elite and the state and to attack those that challenge the status quo. Well after the likes of Jane Parkinson and her miserable ilk are forgotten, Assange will continue to be seen by millions as a hero who has risked all for the truth. I had a crazy year where I was a closeted bond trader by day and a radical AIDS activist by night. It ended when my CD4 count [the number of T cells in the body that fight infection and are the primary target of the virus] crashed in early 88. I walked into my bosss office the next morning, told him everything and dedicated myself to AIDS activism from that point on. I felt like I had entered the movement for very selfish reasons I was desperate to buy myself some time but within months of being part of this extraordinary response from a community that was filled with love and passion and determination and anger, I realized I was a part of something far larger than myself, something that could change the lives of millions of people. I got totally swept up in that. ACT UP became my church, my social life, what I did every moment of the day its where I found all my boyfriends! And its where I became an activist, which has been my title ever since. ERIC SAWYER, 66 Joined in 1987 (founding member) I got involved with ACT UP mainly because I knew that there were a lot of homeless people with AIDS and I wanted to try to develop housing for them. In 1987, I called Larry Kramer, who had been a friend of mine since 1980 he helped me find doctors when I got sick, and helped my partner, who died in 86, with access to medical care and he told me about this speech he was going to give at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, in which he was going to call for a group to be civilly disobedient. He asked me if I would be a plant in the audience and bring some attractive friends to encourage other people to come. So my initial attendance was driven by a request from Larry to come and help form a group. But the experience of organizing that first demonstration at the center was empowering: It allowed me to turn my feelings of anger at the loss of my partner into some type of action. I became hooked after that. ROBERT VAZQUEZ-PACHECO, 64 Joined in 1988 In September 1980, my boyfriend at the time, Jeff, whom I was living with, was diagnosed with Kaposis sarcoma. So, my relationship with the epidemic started early on. After his death in February 1986, I started to figure out what I would do with my life. I became a facilitator in my gay male consciousness-raising group, which met on Mondays in one of the rooms at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center. When my friend, the activist David Kirschenbaum, and I left each week, we would walk downstairs and through the ACT UP meeting. We entered the meeting one day, and the room was filled with mainly white gay men. Im a person of color, and I have to get my bearings when I walk into an overwhelmingly white space. David asked me, Well, where do we stand? I looked around and found that, in that old ACT UP room, the power brokers were in the right-hand corner at the back. So I said to David, Thats where we stand. I think the group had done its first Wall Street protest by then, and we were trying to figure out whether we wanted to get involved. Of course, I did. After having dealt with what Jeff went through, I was certainly pissed off enough. I thought, This is a good way for me to deal with what Im feeling now. Recently, Ive been trying to write an account, in my own words, of the racial politics of ACT UP and about the whitewashing thats going on. A lot of academics of color are actually now starting to write about this. Its very important, because there were so many people of color who were part of ACT UP, even at the beginning who were there and then died. The mayor of a Victorian city is under police investigation for allegedly breaching social distancing measures as well as traffic rules after being photographed drinking beer with business owners in the town's main street. Tony Herbert, the mayor of Warrnambool in the states south-west, was captured on camera last week drinking outside the Whalers Hotel while talking with three other people amid the states COVID-19 restrictions. Warrnambool mayor Tony Herbert is under police investigation for allegedly breaching social distancing regulations. The image shows Mr Herbert drinking a beer outside the Whalers Hotel in the main street of town with a number of others. He is standing alongside his mayoral car, which is parked facing the wrong way. Credit: Supplied by Carol Altmann/The Terrier The picture, taken about 9pm last Tuesday, shows Cr Herbert standing next to his mayoral car, which appears to be illegally parked and facing oncoming traffic. In a statement sent to The Age, Cr Herbert said he stopped for a brief and "unplanned encounter" with three business owners after seeing them as he drove along the main street on his way to buy groceries. Virginia-based Smithfield Foods announced on April 12 that it is closing its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls until further notice after hundreds of employees tested positive for the CCP virusa step the head of the company warned could hurt the nations meat supply. The announcement came a day after South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken wrote to Smithfield and urged the company to suspend operations for 14 days so that its workers could self-isolate and the plant could be disinfected. The plant, which employs about 3,700 people in the states largest city, has become a hot spot for infections. Health officials said Sunday that 293 of the 730 people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in South Dakota work at the plant. As a critical infrastructure employer for the nations food supply chain and a major employer in Sioux Falls, it is crucial that Smithfield have a healthy workforce to ensure the continuity of operations to feed the nation. At the same time, employees need a healthy work environment, Noem and TenHaken wrote to the plants operators. Smithfield announced a three-day closure last week so it could sanitize the plant and install physical barriers to enhance social distancing. But on Sunday, it announced the plants indefinite closure. The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply, Smithfield president and CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in a statement. It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nations livestock farmers. The Sioux Falls facility is one of the largest pork processing plants in the U.S., Smithfield said. It supplies nearly 130 million servings of food per week, or about 18 million servings per day. There has been no evidence that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus is being transmitted through food or its packaging, according to the Department of Agriculture. Other meat processing plants have also closed temporarily because of outbreaks of the CCP virus, including a Tyson Foods facility in Columbus Junction, Iowa, where more than two dozen employees tested positive. Sullivan said Smithfield had been operating during the CCP virus crisis because it wanted to sustain the nations food supply. We believe it is our obligation to help feed the country, now more than ever. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19, he said. Maggie Seidel, Noems senior adviser and policy director, said in an emailed statement Sunday that science and data support a 14-day closure to slow the spread of the CCP virus in the community. Obviously, the situation is dynamic and changing by the day. The industry (like the country) needs to fight its way through this situationand it willand make adjustments as it changes. As a critical infrastructure industry in our nations food supply, the Governor is committed to working with them to get through this, Seidel wrote. Smithfield said there will be some activity at the plant on Tuesday to process product thats already in inventory. It will resume operations in Sioux Falls after receiving further directions from local, state and federal officials. The company said it will continue to pay its workers for the next two weeks. For most people, the CCP virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. There had been six deaths attributed to COVID-19 in South Dakota as of Sunday. NTD staff contributed to this report. Ansarullah says Saudi-led coalition's ceasefire merely aimed at misleading world Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 3:36 PM A high-ranking official from Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement has roundly rejected as fraudulent a two-week ceasefire declared by the coalition led by the Saudi regime, saying the declaration deceitfully targets the world public opinion. Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the spokesman for Ansarullah, said in a post on his official Twitter page on Sunday that Yemen has seen an escalation in fighting and airstrikes carried out by the coalition at the same time as the siege of Yemen continues. "The declared ceasefire is deceitful and meant to mislead the world public opinion. If there were a serious intention and sheer willpower towards peace, the UN Security Council should have passed a formal resolution to stop the absurd war on Yemen and lift the unjust siege; rather it sufficed to a worthless statement in order to appease the (Saudi-led) alliance," Abdul-Salam added. On April 9, the senior Ansarullah official reiterated in an exclusive interview with the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television news network that the announced ceasefire was a publicity stunt. "The ceasefire announcement by Saudi Arabia is a ploy indeed as it is pressing ahead with raids on Yemen, and conducts operations on various fronts, including areas where there were no clashes at all." He added, "The Saudi ceasefire is just a political and media maneuver. It pursues more than one goal. It seeks to undercut the ongoing serious negotiations with the United Nations and burnish the blood-stained image of Saudi Arabia in this critical moment when the world is facing the coronavirus pandemic." Army, allies thwart Saudi mercenaries' attacks in central Yemen Separately, the Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Saree said army troops and allied fighters from the Popular Committees had fought off three armed attacks launched by militiamen loyal to Yemen's former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, in the central provinces of Ma'rib and Bayda. Saree said in a brief statement that the mercenaries carried out two attacks against Yemeni army lines in the Qaniya district of Baydha, triggering hours of intense fighting in the area. He added that another group of the Saudi-paid militiamen attempted to attack Yemeni army troops and their allies in the Sirwah district of Ma'rib. Riyadh and its allies have been widely criticized for the high civilian death toll resulted from their bombing campaign in Yemen since early 2015. At least 80 percent of the 28 million-strong population of Yemen is reliant on aid to survive in what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Winners of the 2020 POSCO TJ Park Awards pose with POSCO TJ Park Foundation Chairwoman Kim Sun-uk, right, during a ceremony at the POSCO Center in Seoul, April 8. From left are Korea Institute of Atmospheric Prediction System director Hong Song-you, Don Bosco Vocational Training School principal Yoon Seok-ryeol, Solidarity for Asian Human Rights and Culture director Yi Ran-joo, Silicon Mitus CEO Huh Youm and Kim. Courtesy of POSCO By Nam Hyun-woo The POSCO TJ Park Foundation has honored atmospheric scientist Hong Song-you for his contribution to the development of Korea's numerical weather prediction (NWP) modeling. The foundation gave its Science Award to Hong during the 2020 POSCO TJ Park Awards ceremony held April 8. Along with Hong, three organizations and individuals each won awards and 200 million won ($164,122) in the categories of education, community development and philanthropy, and technology. Hong is director of the Korea Institute for Atmospheric Prediction Systems (KIAPS), which has been mandated to develop Korea's own NWP modeling. An NWP model is a method of forecasting future weather by computing governing equations for atmospheric conditions using a high-performance computer and various numerical patterning methods. The model developed by KIAPS has been used by the Korea Meteorological Administration since the start of the year. Also, a separate weather algorithm developed independently by Hong during his tenure as a researcher in the U.S. at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is widely used for weather and climate research across the world. The algorithm has been cited over 16,600 times in more than 150 relevant papers. Don Bosco Vocational Training School won the Education Award at the ceremony, in recognition of its vocational training for young people. Since its foundation in 1965, the school has trained more than 3,000 former students of state-run mechanical engineering educational courses. Yi Ran-joo, the director of Solidarity for Asian Human Rights and Culture, won the Community Development and Philanthropy Award, and Silicon Mitus CEO Huh Youm was recognized with the Technology Award. The POSCO TJ Park Foundation is a scholarship foundation established to honor POSCO founder Park Tae-joon. It set up the POSCO TJ Park Awards in 2006 to recognize individuals and groups for their scientific, educational and social achievements. "The POSCO TJ Park Foundation will spare no efforts to honor persons with distinguished achievements in science, technology, education and social services," said Kim Sun-uk, chairwoman of the foundation. "With public spending experiencing difficult times due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we hope the achievement awards for this year will be a consolation." March 30 At 2:10 p.m., Texas Childrens Hospital Investigator L. Buzo arrived at Bellaire Police Department to make a report for theft. Buzo stated that on or about Friday, March 27, 2020, an unknown Hispanic male was caught on surveillance cameras stealing a Bluetooth speaker from 6330 West Loop South. Buzo provided the internal report he completed as well as still photos of the suspect. Officer Baylis completed this report. At 6:40 p.m., Officer Baylis was dispatched to 5130 Bellaire Blvd. in reference to a theft call. Upon arrival at 1845 hours, Officer Baylis made contact with the reportee and determined an unknown suspect stole a container of Organic Spring Mix Salad. Officer Baylis completed this report. March 31 At 5:55 p.m., Officer Andrade was dispatched to 4301 Bissonnet St. in reference to a welfare check of a resident. Upon arrival, Officer Andrade and the Bellaire Fire Department entered the apartment unit and located the subject deceased. April 1 At 11:50 a.m., Officer Carson was approached by an HEB employee who advised she had her backpack stolen from the employee locker room at 5106 Bissonnet St. on March 28. April 2 At 11:53 a.m., Corporal D. Clawson observed the defendant traveling south in the area noted above while having an illegally tinted front windshield and matching the description of a suspect vehicle in recent jugging cases. Clawson conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle in the area of 500 South Third Street. During the investigation, it was determined the defendant was in possession of a marijuana which was confiscated for destruction. The defendant was identified, photographed, and later released. His vehicle was towed and a report completed. Ofc. Carson and Lopez assisted at this scene. April 3 At 10:45 a.m., Officer Jenkins received a report over the Bellaire Police Department phone system of an identity theft in the 4900 block of Bellaire Blvd. The victim stated he was checking his bank statement last night and noticed 8 charges he did not make. Someone used his name and credit card to make purchases over the computer and have them items shipped to a different person to an address in Houston. At 5:24 p.m., Officer Baylis met with the reportee at 6565 West Loop South in reference to possible theft. Upon further investigation the case was determined to be forgery. Officer Baylis gathered the information for this report. At 10:33 p.m., Officer Younger responded to a single vehicle accident in the 5200 block of IH 610 southbound. During the investigation it was determined the driver was under the influence and placed into custody for driving while intoxicated. Officer Schwausch and West University Place Police Officer Cirlos assisted with this investigation. April 4 At 1:52 p.m., Officer Liccketto was dispatched to the Bellaire Police Department in reference to an identity theft in the 4600 block of Mimosa Street. Officer Liccketto called the reportee who stated an unknown suspect had used their credit card to make online purchases. Maharashtra housing minister Jitendra Awhad has decided to go under self-quarantine, after coming in contact with a police officer who tested positive for coronavirus disease Covid-19. Awhad is an MLA from Mumbra-Kalwa assembly constituency which is under complete lockdown due to the increasing number of Covid-19 positive cases. Hence, as a precautionary measure Awhad decided to self-quarantine himself for few days. The final reports are yet to arrive, it is suspected that Awhads bodyguards are also at high risk. He has decided to self-quarantine after the police officer was tested positive. He had come in contact with the police officer, said Sandeep Malvi, PRO, Thane Municipal Corporation. Awhad was unavailable for comment. He is the first minister in Maharashtra to quarantine self. Awhad had recently urged citizens of his constituency to stay indoors or else it could prove fatal. Moreover, a reporter and cameraman from a regional channel in Thane has also been tested positive on Monday. Total coronavirus positive cases in Thane is 51 till now. Eighty-two more cases of Covid-19 have been reported in Maharashtra on Monday, taking the total number of coronavirus cases in the state to 2064. According to Maharashtra Health Department, out of the 82 new cases of Covid-19, three are from Pune, 59 from Mumbai, 12 from Malegaon, five from Thane, one from Vasai Virar, and two from Palghar. Indias tally of positive COVID-19 cases rose to 9,152 following an increase of 796 cases in the last 24 hours, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday. Patients with COVID-19 could be quarantined in 'medi-hotels' instead of at home in a bid to prevent family members and housemates from being infected and ensuring compliance with isolation requirements. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt he was "very open" to the medi-hotel concept, which is being trialled in Tasmania at the behest of the state's peak medical body and is based on the Singapore government's approach. Australians who test positive to Covid-19 could be isolated in specially designed 'medi-hotels'. Credit:Justin McManus Instead of being trusted to stay home for 14 days, patients with the coronavirus who are not sick enough to be admitted to hospital would be housed together in a quarantined section of a hotel or facility and monitored daily by a medical team. "I think this is a positive initiative," the minister said. YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan -- Japan and Taiwan kept watch on the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and its strike group as they steamed through the Miyako Strait and past Taiwan over the weekend, according to the Japanese Ministry of Defense and published reports Monday. The Liaoning and five accompanying warships passed through the 155-mile-wide strait halfway between the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Miyako on Saturday, turned south and passed east of Taiwan on Sunday, according to reports. The strait is wide enough to qualify as an international waterway. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force tracked the Chinese aircraft carrier, two guided-missile destroyers, two multi-role warships and one supply-class fast combat support ship as they passed 262 miles southwest of Nagasaki's Danjo Islands about 7 p.m. Friday, according to a defense ministry Joint Staff official. Related: Man Tried to Sell Nonexistent Face Masks to VA in $750 Million Scheme, Feds Say About 4 p.m. Saturday, the carrier and its group steamed through the strait, according to the official. Some Japanese government spokespersons traditionally speak under the condition of anonymity. "We continuously checked those ships by the sea and air," the official said. The Taiwanese navy also sent ships from Suao to monitor the strike group as it passed the island on Sunday, according to the South China Morning Post, which cited the Taiwan Ministry of Defense. The six vessels sailed east of Taiwan, according to the Japanese outlet Sankei News, which also cited the Taiwan defense ministry. The Liaoning is the only aircraft carrier currently in the Western Pacific, however the USS America, a smaller amphibious assault ship that carries F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters, is underway in the East China Sea, according to its official Facebook page. The U.S. carriers Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan are in port, both dealing to some extent with the novel coronavirus. The Roosevelt is sidelined in Guam, where much of its crew are undergoing isolation to stem a coronavirus outbreak. The ship meanwhile is being sanitized before it can return to sea. As of Sunday, 4,309 Roosevelt crewmembers had been tested for the virus, of which 585 tested positive, according to a Navy update. About 400 sailors awaited testing. The positive cases aboard the Roosevelt account for more than half of the total 890 sailors who have tested positive for the virus across the Navy. Meanwhile, the Reagan, undergoing maintenance at its homeport of Yokosuka Naval Base since November, is preparing for deployment. Officials with Task Force 70, the battle force of the 7th Fleet, in a post Sunday to its official Facebook page, said sailors with the task force are undergoing 14 days of sequestration prior to departing on patrol. More than 1,000 sailors assigned to the Reagan and its accompanying strike group were bussed to Yokota Air Base and Naval Air Facility Atsugi over four days last week to sequester themselves prior to deployment, according to the Task Force 70 post. "Once 14 days are complete, every sailor will provide a nasal swab sample that will be processed and returned. This process will take an additional 2-3 days before our COVID-free team embarks on Reagan," according to the post, referring to the disease caused by the virus. The Navy does not announce its plans for the Reagan and its task force, which includes warships based at Yokosuka. The guided-missile destroyers Barry, Mustin and McCampbell and guided-missile cruiser Antietam have kept the virus from their vessels by remaining at sea or keeping their crews on board while in port. The ships deployed from Yokosuka in February, about a month before the virus grew to pandemic status. Keeping sailors healthy is "key to our lethality" and ability to be "sentinels ready to respond to crisis," The Task Force said. -- Stars and Stripes reporter Aya Ichihashi contributed to this report. Read more: The Latest on the Military's Response to COVID-19 (Newser) Easter Sunday closed in a fury in the South, where strong storms left at least seven people dead in Mississippi. Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency there, citing tornadoes that had hit. He tweeted, This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter. As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together. ... We are mobilizing all resources available to protect our people and their property. The deaths occurred in three counties, all of which sit south of Jackson and are located near the Louisiana state line. The AP reports on two on the victims: Lawrence County Sheriff's Deputy Robert Ainsworth was killed with wife Paula We, a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk. story continues below CNN puts the current death toll from the weather at 14, with six dead in Georgia and one fatality in Arkansas. The Weather Channel reports at least 39 tornadoes were reported. Some 750,000 woke to no power Monday across 10 states reaching from Texas to West Virginia, and those in other states are bracing themselves, with upwards of 150 million people under a wind advisory or warning on Monday. The Weather Channel cites NOAA's Storm Prediction Center, which has issued a tornado watch in effect until noon across parts of Virginia and North and South Carolina. (Read more storm stories.) BOSTON Humans cant always recognize each other in face masks, so imagine the confusion that wild animals in captivity must feel. At the New England Aquarium in Boston, workers who feed and train Atlantic harbor seals have been donning masks as a safeguard to avoid the unlikely scenario of unknowingly infecting the animals with the coronavirus. Concerns rose last week after a tiger at New Yorks Bronx Zoo tested positive for the virus. And the New England Aquarium is next door to the harborside hotel where Biogen, a Boston biotech company, held a conference in February where dozens of people became infected with the virus. Everyone who is working currently at New England Aquarium is wearing a face mask, said the aquariums marine mammals supervisor, Patty Schilling. But getting the seals used to the masks takes some doing. We want them to be comfortable with the fact that we have this on. So initially we do a process called desensitization, and basically that just means that we teach them to get used to something in small steps, Schilling said. During a recent training session, a handful of passersby reveled in the distraction of watching seals getting their teeth brushed, eating, clapping their hands and dancing playfully in the water. Underscoring how intelligent the animals are, one seal even made a vocal attempt to mimic a trainer saying, How are you? The most important thing that we do initially is build a relationship with them so that they have trust in us, Schilling said. KV Navya By Express News Service CHENNAI: With paracetamol the wonder drug not being sold over the counter after the outbreak of coronavirus, many are turning to traditional medicine to combat the common cold, cough and fever. Over the last two weeks, demand for kashayams to treat cold and cough has increased manifold. I am selling at least 10-15 bottles per day. Some are even buying syrups for wheezing, said Gopalakrishnan, who owns a traditional medicine store in Adambakkam. Lehyam to treat cold and cough are selling like hot cakes. Also, sale of Kapasura Kudineer (claims to increase immunity) is also on the rise, said Vani, owner of a traditional medicine store in Nanganallur, However, doctors say this poses a huge risk. In case the self medicating persons are infected with coronavirus, they will put both themselves and people around them in a huge risk. When you take a medicine, the symptoms might reduce. But you will continue to infect others. This can lead to community spread, said Dr Sivakumar, HOD of Medicine, Villupuram Medical College. Echoing the sentiments, Dr R Valayapathy who practices general medicine in Guindy said hospital must be the first place to go if anyone feels unwell. Once it is established as a normal flu, they can go for any kind of medicines they want, but COVID-19 must be ruled out, he said. Despite being housebound because of the novel coronavirus, a League City woman has found a way to help protect those on the front lines of the pandemic. Beth Hubbert and several of her friends in Gateway Community Churchs Prayer Quilt Ministry have been hard at work using their skills to make reusable face masks for several hospitals and the League City Volunteer Fire Department. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Coronavirus live updates: Appeals court reopens access to early-stage abortions in Texas Hubbert said her group has made about 300 masks so far, with the latest batch of 125 earmarked for League Citys emergency medical technicians. When that project is finished, she said the group will move on to the next one. Theres a list (of organizations that want the masks), she said. Im kind of hold until I finish these before I take on any more. CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Jail inmates sew face masks for fellow inmates Hubbert said the prayer quilt ministry was first contacted by HCA Houston Healthcare Clear Lake, which inquired about getting masks. After that, the Webster branch hospital of the University of Texas Medical Branch and Kelsey Seybolds Clear Lake unit followed with requests. At that point, Hubberts husband, Trent, reached out to the League City Fire Department to see if it needed any. It was a natural thing to do. Hes a volunteer firefighter and works out of Station No. 4. Trent also gives a hand in making the face masks. Ive been helping her, he said. She does all of the sewing. I do some of the cutting, the basic stuff that I can help her with. The masks have two layers. The inner layer is made of thin cotton and has a stabilizer ironed on. The outside layer is made of quilt-quality cotton. The masks also come with a pocket. The EMTs have bought HEPA air filters and cut them up and put them inside the pocket; so that if they cant use their N95 masks, they will have something, Beth said. Others have been using her masks in conjunction with an N95 mask, a type of mask that can filter small particles but that is in high demand because of the pandemic. Theyre starting to use them over their N95 masks so they can have those last longer, she said. Beth said the group is making an effort to make the masks festive by using different quilt material. Weve had Superman and Batman, she said of themes used for the masks. Weve got a lot of firefighter (themed) fabric for the firefighters. Weve had cats and dogs and all kinds of novelty stuff. The materials used have come from her personal stockpile. Im taking it out of my stash, she said. Lots of quilters have a stash. It will take a long time for the material supply to dwindle. Beth owns Little Bit of Fabric, an online fabric store. John DeLapp is a freelance writer. He can be contacted at texdelapp@gmail.com. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday ordered release of an additional Rs 50 crore from the Chief Ministers Relief Fund for providing assistance to natives stranded in other states due to the nationwide lockdown prompted by coronavirus. Reaching out to the people who could make to homes due to curbs imposed across the country on March 24 last to break the chain of virus transmission, the Bihar government has been supporting the needy by teansfering a special assistance of Rs 1000 each in their bank accounts and also running relief centres in different parts of the country where people are given shelter, food and ration. Earlier on March 26, 2020, the chief minister had released a sum of Rs 100 crore from the chief minister's relief fund for catering to the needs of the distressed migrants hold up outside. The amount would be utilized by the disaster management department for the purpose, an official release said. Lakhs of grounded citizens have been provided help in at least 47 state-funded relief centres operating in far-off places, including Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Sikkim. Kumar held a review meeting through video-conferencing with Divisional Commissioners, Inspector Generals of Police and Deputy Inspector Generals of Police to take stock of measures taken to contain the spread of Coronavirus in the state. The officials apprised the CM in detail about strictly enforcing lockdown, intense checking at inter-state borders, sealing of Indo-Nepal borders, maintenance of social distancing in markets besides monitoring those living in quarantine centres, the release said. We all are collectively working to fight against coronavirus. Everyone is playing its important role in it. Divisional Commissioners should ensure coordination with districts under their jurisdiction, Kumar said. People must practice social distancing for which they (officials) need to make the people aware, the CM said and gave a direction to publicise about social distancing with the help of mike. Intense checking of vehicles should be carried out at (inter-state) borders, Kumar asserted. Intense screening and testing of people coming from outside (other states) should be ensured so that not a single suspected COVID-19 patient is left unidentified, he said. He again appealed to the people having even a little apprehension of having been infected by COVID-19 to visit testing centre in order to ensure safety and security of their family members and others living in their surrounding. Employment opportunities should be created in rural areas, Kumar said adding that any individual willing to work be issued passes for the purpose from an official nominated by the District Magistrate. Chief Secretary Deepak Kumar, Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey, CMs Principal Secretary Chanchal Kumar and other senior officials of CM secretariat were present during the meeting at CMs official bungalow 1, Aney Marg. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Even as the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases crosses the 1000-mark in Tamil Nadu the total number of cases currently stands at 1173 and chief minister E Palaniswami on Monday announced that the lockdown in the state will continue till April 30, the delay in procurement of rapid testing kits (RTKs) continues to play spoiler in the states efforts to flatten the curve in the spread of coronavirus. The state awaits 400,000 RTKs or antibody tests from China in order to scale up testing across the state, as 34 districts have been affected by the virus. RTKs return results on the presence of antibodies in the blood within hours as compared to the RT-PCR (Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction) tests that are currently being used and which take up to a day to provide results of nasal and throat swabs. Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic The consignment which was to come to India is not for Tamil Nadu alone. Unconfirmed reports from the vendors side suggest seven lakh kits were supposed to be shipped out, of which five lakh was for the government of India, one lakh for Tamil Nadu and another one lakh for other states. Unfortunately, due to some issues, these never made it out of China, a state official in the know of the matter and who did not wish to be named, said. Tamil Nadu health secretary Beela Rajesh on Monday said that kits are expected to reach the state within two days, but Tamil Nadu has already expanded its testing pool using existing RT-PCR tests. We have ordered rapid test kits that will serve as a screening and surveillance tool. We have already ordered four lakh kits, and they will reach us in a day or two. But we are not waiting for that [to scale up screening]. The confirmatory test is our PCR test and that is now deployed as part of a large-scale massive testing. We are testing Influenza-Like Illness cases, SARI cases, those in containment zones who are high risk and low risk. Everyone is being tested using a confirmatory test, she said. On Saturday, Tamil Nadu chief secretary K Shanmugam told reporters that China had diverted kits meant for India to the United States of America. Perhaps you can make a few thousand kits here and there, but we cannot match the volume of our requirement. We will need at least 10-15,000 kits per day. If we have to screen Thoothukudi town alone, we will need at least 5000 kits immediately, the official quoted above said. Thiruvananthapuram-based HLL Lifecare Limited, which is expected to start making antibody test kits from its Manesar, Haryana plant this week, has received an order of 200,000 kits from the Centre. Doctors and infectious disease specialists that HT spoke to agreed that the current scale of testing was nowhere near what is needed to flatten the curve. We need at least 50-60 million tests if we are looking at mass screening across the state which is nowhere near what we have, one expert who did not wish to be named said. While acknowledging the lockdown has had an effect on flattening the curve, experts said that the challenge is the spurt in cases that will come in after the lockdown lifts. Ram Gopalakrishnan, an infectious diseases specialist at Apollo Hospital, said that RTKs were useful epidemiological tools as they helped detect the prevalence of disease, especially when looking for a disease in an area in which no disease has been reported, it is very useful. However, social distancing remained the primary way to flatten the curve, he said. These two things (lockdown and testing with contact tracing) the government is doing, and it just needs to be done more efficiently and for longer to flatten the curve. There is no new technology or tests or strategy, just focusing on doing what was already recommended, much more efficiently that is all that is needed. V. Ramasubramanian, consultant infectious diseases at Apollo Hospitals said: Even if we dont do tests, the emergency ward will start to see people coming in sick which we havent started seeing yet, and that is reassuring. This is because it looks like we have flattened the curve but how long is the curve going to last like this? The COVID-19 pandemic is a threat to all of us. Even if you are spared the illness itself, you will be affected by its substantial economic impact, by the trauma inflicted on our collective mental health, and by the fear created in our communities. Its effect will depend on many factors, but it will certainly be felt by all Canadians. As the CEOs of three smaller Jewish community federations in Canada, we are lucky. For now, our families are safe, and our communities continue to function (albeit in an abbreviated fashion). For that, we are grateful. But we are not resting easy. Indeed, because our positions provide a vantage point from which to observe the pandemics impact on some of our most vulnerable, we are increasingly uneasy. For those who were already struggling people with disabilities, with mental illness, the elderly, the poor and food insecure this pandemic is a disaster of unfathomable proportions. There are challenges in serving these communities in a big city but, in a smaller community, those challenges are compounded. In Hamilton, we have already been forced to lay off several front-line employees. The evolving situation has put us face-to-face with the very real possibility that we will not be able to support the 12 beneficiary agencies that deeply depend on the support we, through donations to our annual campaign, are able to provide them. In Edmonton, where COVID-19s potential economic damage will endure in the context of the now exacerbated challenges facing the oil and gas industry, there are many more who require assistance. As generous as our relatively small cadre of donors is, they will not be able to support our efforts on their own. And, across the Atlantic provinces, with its geographically remote population, many of whom are seniors whose children are not nearby, the work to support these vulnerable residents is daunting. Organizations that feed the hungry, support the elderly, the mentally ill, the homeless, victims of violence, or other vulnerable Canadians desperately need support to continue their work. Many have built trusted relationships with those who are hardest for government agencies to reach. For many clients, the programs delivered by front-line social service delivery agencies is their lifeline. The cost to deliver these vital services, however, is increasing just as our resources are decreasing. Following consultations with our colleagues from social service agencies across the country, we know the situation many charities face is dire, particularly in small communities. We must manage the potential loss of millions of dollars from depressed investments, a precipitous drop in revenue from individual and corporate donations, and fixed costs that are increasing. From Halifax, to Hamilton, to Edmonton, and to all places across Canada, that means cuts to services for the elderly, children, and the hungry. To keep these vital organizations operational and allow them to continue delivering their essential services to Canadians, we joined other leaders from across our sector and called on the government to take action. They listened and have delivered programs that will help our sector. We are encouraged with the wage subsidies announced last week, and we are looking forward to learning more about the program as it is rolled out; we take comfort knowing that charities and non-profits are indeed eligible for elements of the stimulus funding, including low-cost emergency business loans. These are fine programs. But they are not enough. There are other options that the government should immediately consider that will carry minimal short-term cost and deliver immediate near-term benefit. Canadian charities depend on the generosity of Canadians, many of whom have had to re-evaluate their giving. As people who regularly engage with generous donors of all levels, shapes, and sizes, we know that Canadians want to be involved and be part of the solution. Government can incentivize that behaviour, either by matching funds donated by Canadians or by enhancing the charitable tax credit. Both approaches would reduce the cost of giving which would be a win across the board. It would reward donors, many of whom are eager to help during this crisis. It would be a win for agencies who would be able to retain staff, keeping them off of employment insurance. It would be a win for governments who can share the burden with a sector well-positioned to help. It would be a win for our communities who rely on non-profits. And, most importantly, it would be a win for the most vulnerable in our community, who will continue to receive assistance. Canadians want to be part of the solution, and our government should help them. Enhancing the charitable tax credit or matching donations to charities are concrete actions that governments should take today to empower Canadians to lend a helping hand to the most vulnerable among us. Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Monday said out of the 58 'missing' Tablighi Jamaat members from Maharashtra who attended the group's religious gathering at Nizamuddin in Delhi last month, 40 have been traced and quarantined. The remaining 18 members of the Islamic group are still missing and efforts are on to trace them, the minister told PTI. Till last week, 58 members of the Islamic group from the state were missing. Some of them switched off their phones, hence it was difficult to trace them, he said. "However, the police diligently followed every information and traced 40 of them. They all have been kept under institutional quarantine and their swab tests for coronavirus will be carried out as per the health departments advisory," Deshmukh said. Further commenting on the 40 Tablighi Jamaat members traced by the state police, he said, "They are Indian citizens. We have convinced them about the need to stay quarantined. If they do not show any symptoms or test negative for coronavirus, the government will release then after completing the due procedures." He said the state authorities have already traced 156 foreign nationals who attended the congregation at Nizamuddin in New Delhi, and they have been booked for various offences, inluding misuse of visa. The religious congregation organised by Tablighi Jamaat in the national capital last month emerged as one of the major COVID-19 hotspots in the country, prompting various state authorities to trace all those who attended the event and quarantine them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Richard Ginsburg, President and CEO of Alert 360 As an essential services provider, the dedicated Alert 360 team across America is manning our workstations or behind the wheel of our national fleet, said Richard Ginsburg, president and CEO, Alert 360. In response to COVID-19, Alert 360, one of the nations largest providers of home and business security and automation, announced precautions it is taking to provide uninterrupted service to its customers, following CDC guidelines along with a new, Limited Touch security system packages and installation for new customers. The company is taking the following steps to ensure the safety of its customers during security consultations, service and installations. Alert 360 technicians, installers, and security consultants will: Perform remote security reviews via phone or video conference; Utilize electronic paperwork, contracts and signatures; Wear disposable gloves and masks throughout appointments; Maintain a 6-foot distance with anyone at the property; Disinfect tablets and phones before and after every visit; Limit conversations to system, service or installation subjects only; Have and use hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes; Pre-disinfect all equipment; and Wipe down and sanitize door handles and/or anything touched at the home or business. The company also has introduced a new, Limited Touch security package that provides top-rated security and home automation along with a free garage door controller for a limited time, which enables a customer to remotely open or close a garage door. With Limited Touch, Alert 360 sales professionals will perform a detailed security review with customers via telephone or tablet, look at satellite imaging of the home or business to determine security vulnerabilities and sensor placement, and utilize electronic paperwork for all customer onboarding. Now, more than ever, we are here to ensure the safety and security of those we help protect, said Richard Ginsburg, president and CEO, Alert 360. During this time, our customers have asked for a robust, easy-to-use system, including a safer consultation and installation. By offering new Limited-Touch security packages and approaches to security sales, installs, and service, we continue to provide valuable security to home and business owners. These new packages provide state-of-the-art security, with the added convenience of a remote garage door controller to assist customers with safer delivery and access options. For more than 45 years, our customers safety has been our top priority, and we will continue to focus on that as we navigate these unique times. Alert 360 operates branches and offices across the country as well as a company-owned, 24/7 alarm monitoring center in Tulsa, Okla. In addition to its residential customers, its commercial security clients include essential businesses, such as healthcare facilities, oil and gas, restaurants, retail and more. To ensure Alert 360 can continue critical security services for homes and businesses, the companys Business Continuity Plan also includes measures to keep its employees safe, including: Limiting non-critical travel for Alert 360 employees; Ensuring employees have and use proper sanitizing products to protect customers and themselves; Establishing remote work procedures, where available; Taking the temperature of employees prior to shifts; and Separating its workforce to minimize risk of exposure. As an essential services provider, the dedicated Alert 360 team across America is manning our workstations or behind the wheel of our national fleet, said Ginsburg. Our hearts go out to everyone who has been impacted by this pandemic, and we offer immense thanks to all first responders, healthcare providers, truckers, childcare providers, sanitation personnel, grocery and pharmacy workers and everyone still providing support through this." Alert 360 also encouraged customers to be aware that some companies are taking advantage of this time, trying to gain access to alarm customers properties, security systems, or bank accounts. Alert 360 asks its customers to keep in mind: Alert 360 will not come to your home or business without your request or an appointment; Customers should call Alert 360 if someone attempts to access their security system; Many Alert 360 systems include a medical/panic alert on the keypad if customers require medical help 24/7; Its 600+ employees across America are #hereforyou. See a video of the team here; and The company has posted COVID-19 and Scam Alert information at Alert360.com. Alert 360 provides a full line of home security, business security, energy management, and home automation services. These products and services include home security cameras and video; smoke alarms; carbon monoxide detectors; glass break and motion sensors; flood protection; a free mobile app; keyless entry; smart thermostats; garage door control; intelligent lighting; live video footage; recorded clips; indoor and outdoor cameras; doorbell cameras and more. Alert 360s certified security technicians also offer professional installation or integration of smart home devices, such as sprinkler systems, sound systems, Amazon Echo and Google Home. Alert 360 has a network of branches from coast to coast, providing local security services for nearly a quarter of a million home or business security customers. Find a local Alert 360 home and business security office here. About Alert 360 Founded in 1973 in Tulsa, Okla., Alert 360 is the nations fifth-largest provider of security and smart home solutions to homes and businesses in the United States. Alert 360 operates its own monitoring and customer service centers in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Irving Texas. Alert 360 has branch offices in 17 metropolitan cities as well as 100s of authorized dealers serving customers coast to coast. The company has achieved the Five Diamond alarm monitoring designation from The Monitoring Association and has been named a 2016 Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Privately Held Company in America and a Best Places to Work in Oklahoma in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. In 2019, Alert 360 was voted as the top winner for Best Home Security by The Journal Record Reader Rankings poll. (Natural News) People who test negative for the coronavirus may not be out of the woods just yet. Despite the lack of scientific data regarding this, medical doctors in the U.S. and around the world are noticing a surge in false-negative results from coronavirus tests, which, together with undiagnosed asymptomatic cases, may be helping the deadly virus spread like wildfire across the globe. Some people are showing symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19 but are testing negative. Then, a few days later, they end up in the hospital and stay there for a long time. Dr. Chris Smalley, a primary-care doctor at Norton Healthcare in Kentucky, shared this observation with The Wall Street Journal. But Smalley is not the only doctor that has encountered cases like these. Last month, a 16-month-old boy in Florida tested positive for the coronavirus, then tested negative after a few days. The testing was done by two different labs. According to Dr. Craig Deligdish, an oncologist at OMNI Healthcare in Florida who ordered the tests, in cases like this, the positive result is likely to be the correct result. He also said that a false-negative poses a huge problem to public health because it tells the patient they dont have the virus. Chinese study reports false-negative results, links them to sampling Medical experts who have picked up on the erroneous results of some coronavirus tests now believe that one in three infected patients in the U.S. is getting false-negative results. Writing for The New York Times, Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale University and the director of Yale School of Medicines Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation (CORE), said that some experts in laboratory medicine are worried that the false-negative rate in the U.S. could be higher than what has been reported in China. On February 17, a study posted on the pre-print server medRxiv reported three confirmed coronavirus cases whose upper respiratory samples, namely, throat swabs, nasal swabs and sputum, returned with negative results. Chinese researchers identified these cases after analyzing a total of 866 respiratory specimens from 213 COVID-19 patients, who were hospitalized in Shenzhen Third Peoples Hospital between January 11 and February 3. The researchers detected viral RNAs in both upper and lower respiratory samples (bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, BALF) from all severe cases except for three. On the other hand, the researchers found a similar, albeit opposite, pattern in mild cases, with three patients getting negative results from their BALF samples but testing positive from their upper respiratory samples. These findings suggest that the coronavirus may be localized in specific parts of the respiratory tract relative to the severity of disease symptoms. The researchers also noted that the three severe cases with no detectable viral RNAs in their throat or nasal swabs showed lung abnormalities in their chest scans consistent with viral pneumonia. This led them to conclude that CT scans should also be used to complement laboratory findings when testing for the coronavirus. Experts blame low sensitivity and rapid validation for erroneous results According to former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistician Tom Taylor, new coronavirus tests that are currently being used rely on a genetic method called reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), a technique widely used in research to study gene expression. RT-PCR measures the expression levels of RNA, the type of genetic material some viruses, like the novel coronavirus, carry with them. RT-PCR is also used in clinical settings to diagnose genetic diseases. Taylor told The Wall Street Journal that the method can detect over 90 percent of positive cases accurately. However, while RT-PCR is highly specific meaning a positive result almost certainly means theres an infection Krumholz says it may also have a particularly high rate of missing infections. Dr. Michael Lozano, senior vice president at Envision Physician Services in Tampa, agrees with Krumholz, estimating that currently available tests are only about 70 percent sensitive. This means that for every three truly positive patients, one walks away with a false-negative result. This reality not only troubles medical experts, it also raises doubts about how reliable the new tests that are coming out really are. In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will allow certain laboratories to begin testing immediately, even without approval. This meant that they could use validated diagnostics before the agency has finished reviewing its Emergency Use Authorization requests. Prior to this, the FDA required labs and testing companies to submit applications for new tests, saying that it was required by law. Since the FDAs announcement, hundreds of academic medical centers and a few large community hospitals have started operating with minimal regulatory oversight, as the agency has given them leave to submit their internal studies at a later time. This decision by the FDA was a response to the public health emergency that the abrupt rise in coronavirus cases in America has presented. The whole testing field is in flux, noted Ohio State University epidemiologist Dr. Bill Miller, who doubts that any of the new tests are more sensitive than the one used previously by CDC-certified labs. The thing that is different this time is most of these tests are going through a really rapid validation process. As a result, we cant be completely confident in how they will perform. Miller also said that the unknown rates of false-negative results may be endangering the public and allowing the coronavirus to spread uncontrollably since they give some infected patients unjustified confidence that they could go back to business as usual without posing any threat to the health of others. In New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, doctors have begun taking coronavirus test results with a grain of salt. According to Dara Kass, an emergency-room doctor at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who is currently working from home after testing positive in March, all patients with symptoms are now being treated as positive, regardless of their test results. This is because the disease is so widespread in the city. A negative is not clearing anybody who is symptomatic, she told The Wall Street Journal. Krumholz echoed this sentiment, saying that with limited information regarding the performance of coronavirus tests, doctors and patients would do well to put test results in the context of all the other information available to them. He suggests looking at the big picture, not just a single piece of data. Even with more testing, we are likely to be underestimating the spread of the virus. For now, we should assume that anyone could be carrying the virus. If you have had likely exposures and symptoms suggest [COVID-19] infection, you probably have it even if your test is negative, explained Krumholz. We should all continue to practice the behaviors rigorous hand washing, not touching the face, social distancing that impede its spread. Sources include: WSJ.com 1 WSJ.com 2 TheWeek.com NYTimes.com MedRxiv.org [PDF] BioCompare.com A virtual Parliament should be recalled. We should welcome this for two reasons. First, protection of democratic tradition is essential, particularly during emergencies. Second, it is time for us to adapt our institutions to the new realities. Parliament must show the way. Times of emergencies can bring out the best in us, or the worst. Throughout history, there are multiple examples of great actions during difficult times: political leaders uniting for the greater good, and ordinary citizens acting with great courage. However, there are also examples of leaders taking advantage of emergencies to consolidate their power, undermine human rights and attempt to weaken their opponents. In Israel, because of COVID-19, the attorney general cancelled the trial of Benjamin Netanyahu and police interrupted a car protest in front of the Knesset. Liberty, the British Civil Liberties watchdog, warns that the British Parliament has enlarged police powers of detention and powers of covert surveillance for two years, without much oversight. The temptations are great in times of emergency to limit oversight and bypass ordinary laws. Governments remind us that the right to life is the right that allows all other rights to be enjoyed. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, leaders around the world also used the duty to protect the life of their citizens to adopt a range of drastic security measures, many eventually found unconstitutional, and many more causing great injustices. The legislative wording certainly violated our civil liberties, but it was the cultural transformation that caused the most damage. Security forces internalized the message that the ends justified the means. They were empowered to do as they saw fit, with little accountability. Maher Arar was tortured in Syria because of false information. Civil libertarians worry that in times of emergencies, the democratic space shrinks, privacy protection is weakened, over-punishment becomes rampant and inequalities are intensified. There are examples of governments using anti-terrorism tracking technology to locate people who are carrying the virus without much protection that this information will not be shared or used for a different purpose. Steep fines are imposed on people who may not be able to pay. Vulnerabilities and social inequities are dramatically accentuated. The first step in ensuring that the right balance between public health protection and human rights is struck is to invest in political accountability and recall Parliament and provincial legislatures. There are no reasons why we cannot have virtual Parliaments like we have Zoom meetings and online birthday parties. It demands creativity and adaptation, but this is the new reality. All our institutions, big and small, must be retooled to ensure physical distancing and minimize spreading the virus. All must act quickly and should not stay dormant. Parliament, our court system, privacy commissioners and human rights commissions are essential services to our ability to fight emergencies the right way. Its high time that Parliament and legislatures reconvene. The majority of patients admitted to intensive care suffer long-term physical and mental health problems, scientists claim. Seven in ten ICU survivors end up with post intensive care syndrome, which can include fatigue, frailty, anxiety or difficulty holding a conversation. The findings, based on 1,300 people, are the first from an ongoing five-year study across hospitals in the Netherlands. The study comes amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused a surge in the number of people being treated in intensive care. Researchers said their findings are likely to apply to critically-ill COVID-19 patients, who can spend weeks in hospital battling the killer infection. Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent three nights in intensive care in a central London hospital before he was discharged at the weekend. The findings follow Prime Minister Boris Johnson's discharge from St Thomas's Hospital, after spending three nights fighting for his life in intensive care. Yesterday, Johnson said he had left hospital 'after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question' The MONITOR-IC is a large study which started in 2016 - three years before COVID-19 began spreading in China last December. Some 6,000 patients have been enrolled so far. Another 6,000 will be involved in the next step, some of whom will have COVID-19. The first findings, published in the Journal of Critical Care, were based on results of 1,300 patients who were followed for one year after ICU admission. Data was collected in face-to-face interviews and questionnaires that patients and their families fill out when they are first admitted to ICU, and again five years later. Seven in ten patients complained of moderate to severe consequences in the year after their ICU experience, The Times reports. That included 25 per cent of planned ICU patients, due to elective surgery for example, and 42 per cent of unplanned patients, who had been taken in to IC due to incidents like an infection, heart attack or accident. The term frail relates to mobility, weakness, muscle mass and cognitive function. It's often referred to as post intensive care syndrome. The syndrome also covers a long list of mental symptoms, ranging from difficulty concentrating, fear and anxiety, and trouble problem solving. The NHS says lingering problems from ICU can last 'several months'. These can include weakness and stiffness, loss of appetite, sleep and mental problems, like being forgetful. It's the result of a combination of medications used in ICU, which can fog the brain, the medical conditions themselves, and exposure to a life or death situation. Physically, a survivor may be frail or be fatigued more often, normally because they have lost muscle mass while being cared for. Patients needing intensive care can also have underlying health conditions, which may be exacerbated by their hospital stay. 'We see that patients still have moderate to severe complaints after a year,' says Mark van den Boogaard, lead-author of the Radboud University Medical Center study. The team noted that 26 per cent of patients were already regarded as frail when they went into ICU. They spent an average of four to five days in intensive care. 'But we see clear differences in the severity of the residual complaints between people who are in IC for one or two days after surgery and emergencies that are between four and seven or eight days,' Mr Van den Boogaard said. 'The latter group of patients is much more troubled by all kinds of complaints.' Coronavirus victims are in hospital for around six days before their death, a study published in the British Medical Journal found. It's a little more for those who recover and are discharged. They spend between two and three weeks in hospital, and many will be in intensive care during that period. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF DEATH ONCE A PATIENT IS IN INTENSIVE CARE? Two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator will die from the illness, official NHS data suggests. A report from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Center (ICNARC) found ventilated patients succumb to the virus 66.3 per cent of the time. That is double the mortality rate of non-virus patients who were put on breathing support between 2017 and 2019, before the outbreak. The ICNARC report looked at the first 775 patients who had fallen critically ill with COVID-19 across 285 intensive care units. Of the 98 patients who needed advanced respiratory support when their lungs started to fail, just 33 patients lived (34 per cent). 'The truth is that quite a lot of these individuals [in critical care] are going to die anyway and there is a fear that we are just ventilating them for the sake of it, for the sake of doing something for them, even though it won't be effective. That's a worry,' one doctor told The Guardian. The report broke down the risk of death from coronavirus by age, with the over-70s unsurprisingly being the most at-risk group. Patients in this age range die 73 per cent of the time if they fall seriously ill after contracting the disease. For critically ill patients aged between 50 and 69, the mortality rate is just over 40 per cent. And a quarter of over-16s succumb to the disease, the figures show. Advertisement 'It seems obvious to me that COVID-19 patients will suffer from all kinds of residual complaints because they have been in IC for so long,' said Mr Van den Boogaard. 'That's a logical assumption based on the data we have now, but it still needs to be proven that it is.' Health chiefs fear 7.9million people will need hospitalisation for the coronavirus in the next year alone. A document from Public Health England said: 'As many as 80 per cent of the population are expected to be infected with COVID-19 in the next 12 months, and up to 15 per cent (7.9m people) may require hospitalisation.' The findings come as Boris Johnson spends his first day in the comfort of his country home in Buckinghamshire after a stint in intensive care with the coronavirus. He was taken to St Thomas' in London on Sunday April 5 - ten days after testing positive for the coronavirus - and was moved to intensive care on the Monday. He spent three nights receiving round-the-clock care before being moved onto a normal hospital ward on Thursday night. Yesterday, Mr Johnson said he had left hospital 'after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question'. Despite being out of hospital, he won't immediately return to his duties, No10 confirmed. Experts say he will face between one and two months off work even if he makes a full recovery because he will be physically drained from fighting the virus. A 'period of inactivity' in intensive care would result in the Prime Minister suffering a significant loss of muscle mass and strength. Professor Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia said: 'I would expect most people who were that ill, to need at least a month or possibly two to be sufficiently back and to be able to function.' Professor Mike Grocott a consultant in critical care medicine at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and vice president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists said: 'On average a person who spends a while in intensive care on oxygen therapy alone, but basically immobile, would have a decrease in physical function for a period of time, that was likely to extend into weeks. 'A period of inactivity will have an effect on physical function, typically characterised by a loss in muscle mass and strength. 'It depends on how bad the duration and magnitude of illness was and it also depends on the quality and amount of time invested in rehabilitation. 'We underestimate the value of just getting up and walking around and activity in normal life.' Richard Brodsky, who persuaded his fellow state legislators to impose a monitor over 700 quasi-public authorities that had borrowed $150 billion on behalf of New Yorkers with no oversight, died on April 8 at his home in Greenburgh, N.Y. He was 73. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Emilyn said. He had shown symptoms of the coronavirus, she said, but also had a heart condition. Test results received after he died showed he did not have the disease. A 14-term Democratic assemblyman from Westchester, Mr. Brodsky was regarded as a sometimes discordant, sometimes quixotic conscience of the State Legislature. Representing the Lower Hudson Valley from 1983 through 2010, he was a champion of the environment, a critic of safety precautions at the Indian Point nuclear power plant and a supporter of universal internet access. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 19:49 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1a0755 1 Business pre-employment-card,unemployment-benefit,COVID-19,coronavirus,business,tourism,lay-off,furlough Free Indonesias preemployment card program, a social safety net offering aid similar to unemployment benefits, saw an immediate spike in interest within a few days of its launch, as 2.8 million people have lost their jobs nationwide as a result of businesses temporarily halting operations. Just a day after the program was launched on Saturday, 1.4 million people applied for benefits worth a total of Rp 3.5 million (US$223) to be given for four months in the first registration phase, according to data from the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister. The program, which was part of President Joko Jokowi Widodos campaign pledge, initially aimed at providing Indonesian workers the necessary skills training for work. Our objective is slightly shifting, Denni Puspa Purbasari, the president director of the programs management, told an online talk on Monday. We initially wanted to reduce youth unemployment, but now we were also focusing on furloughed workers, those who have lost their jobs or small entrepreneurs who have lost customers. Read also: Indonesia advances pre-employment card program to tackle pandemic impacts With a budget of Rp 20 trillion, the program will cover 5.6 million participants aged 18 years or above who are currently not attending university, particularly those who have yet to receive any social assistance. As many as 2.8 million people have lost their jobs as of Monday, according to data from the Manpower Ministry and the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan). More than half were furloughed and place on paid or unpaid leave. Employment data from August 2019 shows that 7.05 million people are unemployed in Indonesia, representing a 5.28 percent unemployment rate. The scope of the preemployment card needs to be widened, eased and accelerated, said Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Indonesia research director Piter Abdullah. With limited data, theres a risk that disbursement will not be well-targeted but its better than nothing. Therefore, its important that social aid is not politicized. Many businesses have been laying off or furloughing workers as they temporarily shut down operations in line with the governments large-scale social restriction (PSBB) measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. Read also: COVID-19 impacts across Indonesias business sectors: A recap Introduced earlier this month, the policy mandates the suspension of schools and offices, as well as religious and public activities, with only essential businesses allowed to operate. Domestic factory activities have contracted to a record-low level in the first quarter of this year at 45.64 percent, according to Bank Indonesias Prompt Manufacturing Index. Our employment conditions are very concerning, said the Manpower Ministrys training and productivity supervision director general, Bambang Satrio Lelono. Therefore, we hope recipients [of the preemployment card program] can choose courses that will open up job opportunities, either in the same industry or a new one. They can use the training according to their needs or opportunities in the future job market. The program can help them develop their own businesses. Nearly 200,000 workers in tourism, which has by far been the hardest-hit by the outbreak, are set to apply for the program, according to data from the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry. More than 1,200 hotels in 31 provinces have temporarily closed, according to the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI). Of those, 844 have registered their 74,100 employees with the preemployment card program. Were worried that many hotels and restaurants dont care enough to register their employees, but workers in this sector highly need the social aid, PHRI chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani told a teleconferenced briefing on Wednesday. Many hotels have yet to give us their employee data. Read also: Tourism will take at least a year to recover from COVID-19 outbreak: Economists Around 7,000 travel agents in the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies (ASITA) have been forced to take measures such as cutting salaries and furloughing workers in order to avoid layoffs, said ASITA chairman Nunung Rusmiati. We are trying very hard not to lay off our workers, but we would struggle if we dont cut their salaries, Nunung said at the same online event. So, some of the measures were taking include cutting workers salaries by 50 percent and giving them unpaid leave. The preemployment card program offers 900 courses, including English for tour guides, accounting, information technology and business management, in partnership with eight institutions, such as online learning platform Skill Academy and e-commerce platforms Tokopedia and Bukalapak. Eligible recipients who have registered at prakerja.go.id will receive their benefit via bank transfers or e-wallet platforms GoPay and LinkAja to ease the disbursement process. Riza Roidila Mufti and Adrian Wail Akhlas contributed to this story St. Maarten will have to accept conditions for financial assistance from the Netherlands PHILIPSBURG:--- Patients that are suffering from diabetes and hypertension and are running out of food supply should call 711 to get emergency delivery says Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs in responding to questions posed by SMN News. Dr. Felix Holiday Medical Director of St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) said that treatment for diabetics, hypertension and cancer patients remains on schedule despite the lockdown on St. Maarten to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Holiday said doctors (GPs) and pharmacies are on call to deliver medication for those persons that are most at risk during this pandemic. Dr. Holiday said that since the outbreak on St. Maarten the SMMC has been in constant contact with the government, he said only patients that are very ill are hospitalized. Holiday said one of the focus is to ensure there are early detection and containment of the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Holiday urged the residents of St. Maarten to continue with proper hygiene and to maintain social distancing in order to flatten the curve on the spread of COVID-19. Students that remained overseas and need any kind of assistance from the government of St. Maarten should contact their social worker directly, so said Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs said so far she had not heard students are having problems because they have the necessary health insurance where they are attending schools. Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs called on the residents to use some patience when it comes to food deliveries, she also asked the people to exercise compassion when ordering and to allow those most in need to get their supplies first. Jacobs also called on community council leaders to combine lists of people that are vulnerable and in need in their communities and to also call 711 to get those persons on the list at CPS. The Prime Minister said community council leaders and members could also volunteer to assist with the delivery of these food boxes. On the situation with financial assistance from the Netherlands, the Prime Minister said that the Netherlands approved the budget support for 2018/ 2019 to the tune of NAF. 50.2M for St. Maarten. She said that money was transferred to the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten which is now available to the government. Jacobs said the government used up money from its unforeseen budget for food supply and other medical supplies during this pandemic and to even fix the medical pavilion at the SMMC. She said the government has already surpassed its budget limitations thus hindering the way they had intended to attack the COVID-19 pandemic. Jacobs said the Netherlands still did not make a decision on the support they will give the island for the fight against the COVID-19. She said the Minister of Finance requested NAF245M to cover the first three months since the outbreak. Jacobs said if the Netherlands placed conditions on the assistance they will provide for St. Maarten then the government will have to accept the conditions as long as it does not place the people on their knees at the end of this crisis. The Prime Minister said the NAF245M is for the first 3 months in the fight against COVID-19, she is hopeful that by the end of the third month St. Maarten will be able to reopen its borders and to begin allowing visitors back to the island. Jacobs had lots of praise for the people of St. Maarten whom she said are resilient people that did extremely well post IRMA. Jacobs also advised persons that are home to think of things such as business ideas or plans they could do after this pandemic or even during the lockdown. Secretary-General of the Ministry of VSA Joy Arnell said ESF 7 has been working diligently to get the needed help to the residents. She asked the residents to allow those most in need to get help especially since the government is not in a position to provide assistance to the entire population. Arnell said the volunteers have been working from very early in the morning to 7 pm in the evening preparing boxes for distribution. She said thus far some 1200 boxes have been distributed and delivery will continue this week. Arnell also urged those that desperately in need to call 711 for assistance, she said this is the most effective way for CPS to identify or consider persons that will obtain assistance. Arnell also explained that the 711 numbers can also be used when the negotiations with the banks are finalized. She said persons that need to change their checks would be able to call 711 to obtain a waiver to go to the bank. Valya Pantophlet of the Ministry of TEATT said discussions are underway with the banks, while discussions are also taking place with supermarkets to provide different packages with essential items. Pantophlet said the feedback they are getting from the supermarkets is that people are ordering more luxury items instead of essential items which is what is delaying the delivery process. There are over 30 supermarkets that are onboard providing online shopping, with over 200 drivers doing deliveries. Eva Lista de Weever head of CPS in her statement said St. Maarten has 52 confirmed cases of COVID 19 with 9 deaths. As for the testing in hotspots, de Weever said that was placed on hold last week due to the lack of testing kits, however, it is expected those kits will arrive on St. Maarten this week and the testing will begin. She said last week the kits could not reach St. Maarten due to the lack of flights. WASHINGTON As Republican Gov. Greg Abbott weighs reopening parts of Texas' economy, President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to make that decision for the states and said his decision "will be made shortly!" In a series of tweets, Trump said its his call to make not governors on when to open up the states. The president said a decision would be made soon in conjunction with the Governors and input from others. Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government, Trump tweeted. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect........It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. Trumps tweets come days before Abbott is expected to lay out a plan for how Texas might begin to reopen after many parts of the state have spent weeks in lockdown in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Abbott said Friday that measures can be taken protect lives while restoring livelihoods. WIDESPREAD TESTING NECESSARY? Pandemic expert says coronavirus outbreak will have five stages. Were in stage two. Trump cant actually override state shelter-in-place orders, said Bobby Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who called it Federalism 101. The president doesnt get to pick up the phone and command governors to change their policies, Chesney said. Federal law supersedes state laws, but theres no existing law giving Trump the power he claims to have, Chesney said. Still, Trump has a lot of power especially over Republican leaders like Abbott, he said. Make no mistake, if he decides to declare that hes ordering this and starts turning on all the ample rhetorical power hes got and the followers hes got, he can put huge pressure on governors, Chesney said. Itll be hard for Gov. Abbott to stay the course if the White House goes the other way. Trump for weeks has teased plans to move away from the social distancing efforts in place, at one point saying he would do so after Easter, though he later backed off that timeline, saying nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won. At a 5 p.m. press conference on Monday, Trump doubled down on his earlier comments. If some states refuse to open, I would like to see that person run for election, Trump said. Theyre going to open. Theyre going to all open. COVID-19 COVERAGE: Catch up on the latest coronavirus news The virus peak may still be weeks away in parts of Texas, including Houston and San Antonio, where officials have estimated it could happen in May. Were not at the peak yet," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said on CNN on Monday when asked if Houston would be ready to open up in a week or two weeks. Were a long way from having the testing that we need across the city of Houston. But there is growing pressure from some conservatives, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, to start reopening parts of the economy. Unemployment claims have reached historic levels and a federal loan program to help small businesses stay afloat during the shutdowns is rapidly being depleted as a crush of applications hits the banks in the programs first days. ben.wermund@chron.com Dhangadhi, April 13 Nepal has confirmed its 13th coronavirus positive case on Monday. A 65-year-old woman in Kailali district of Sudurpaschim tested positive for the virus, according to health officials. The woman was quarantined at Lamki Multiple Campus in Lamki Chuha of the district for the past two weeks. The woman had a teashop in Birgunj, where three coronavirus positive cases were confirmed recently, and she had gone to Kailali three weeks ago to meet a relative, it has been learned. A few days back, she had undergone a rapid diagnostic test for the virus, but the result had come negative. Following that, she was sent home from the quarantine site. However, the officials had sent her swab samples for a PCR test that showed a positive result. With the new result, authorities are preparing to bring all the persons who were sent home from quarantine sites back. The World Health Organization called on African states to do more tests to better deal with a peak in infections expected in the upcoming weeks. The number of infections in the continent has already doubled and some countries may face a huge peak very soon, Michel Yao, the WHO Africa program manager for emergency response, told reporters. African countries confirmed so far nearly 11,000 cases and 570 deaths, with scientists warning that the continent may become the worlds new epicenter. WHO advised African states to boost testing capacity beyond capital cities. So far, South Africa is the African country that has done more tests with 60,000 but still not enough to have a clear idea of the spread of the virus. The more tests that can be conducted, the more confident the continent can be in its data and the systems it has in place to fight the rising tide. More than 30 nations can still prevent a larger outbreak by testing, contact tracing and isolating patients, said Michel Yao. The World Bank has projected that a recession is coming to sub-Saharan African for the first time in 25 years due to an economic downturn caused by the pandemic. The WB Africas Pulse report said the regions economy will contract 2.1 percent to 5.1 percent from growth of 2.4 percent last year, and coronavirus will cost sub-Saharan Africa $37bn to $79bn in output losses this year because of trade and value chain disruption, among other factors. Bengaluru, April 13 : Veteran Congress leader and former Union Minister M.V. Rajashkharan died at a private hospital here after prolonged illness, a party official said on Monday. He was 91. He is survived by his wife Girija, two sons and two daughters. "Rajashekharan has been ailing in the hospital for some weeks with age-related symptoms. His end came earlier in the day," party's state unit spokesman Ravi Gowda told IANS. Son-in-law of late Congress President S.N. Nijalingappa, Rajashekharan was Minister of State for Planning in the Manmohan Singh government (2004-09). Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, state Congress unit president D.K. Shivakumar, former Prime Minister and Janata Dal-Secular supremo H.D. Deve Gowda and several leaders mourned the departed leader. "I am saddened by the demise of Rajashekharan. His concern for rural development and his value-based politics will always be remembered. May God give his family strength to bear his loss. Om Shanti," said Yediyurappa in a condolence message. Born on September 12, 1928 in Ramanagara district, about 60km southwest of Bengaluru, Rajashekharan was a Gandhian and well-known for his simplicity, humility and helping nature. The Congress paid rich tributes to Rajashekharan at a homage at the party's office in the city, where party's leaders and cadres also condoled his death. Iran has delayed the much-anticipated download and analysis of flight recorders recovered from the wreckage of a downed Ukrainian passenger jet due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to CBC News. The report notes that Hassan Rezaeifar, the head of the Iranian investigation team, said he invited representatives from eight countries to travel to a laboratory in Europe to start the process, but had to postpone because of the pandemic. "At this moment, planning [a] trip is impossible for some states due to COVID-19," Rezaeifar said. Kathy Fox, chair of the Transportation Safety Board, said countries want their own representatives to attend the download in person. "As such, the download and analysis of the recorders should be delayed until conditions improve enough to allow for safe travel. At this point, it is not possible to predict when that might happen," she said. The Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) plane (Flight PS752) heading from Tehran to Kyiv crashed shortly after taking off from the Imam Khomeini International Airport at about 06:00 Tehran time (04:30 Kyiv time) on January 8. There were 176 people on board nine crew members (all Ukrainians) and 167 passengers (citizens of Ukraine, Iran, Canada, Sweden, Afghanistan, Germany, and the UK). They all died. Last month, an Iranian official at the International Civil Aviation Organization agreed to hand over flight recorders to France or Ukraine for analysis, but this has not been done so far. op Thousands of firefighters across the country are in self-isolation, leaving brigades ability to react to emergencies on a knife-edge, a union has warned. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) warned it would be increasingly difficult for crews to respond to calls unless the government begins testing frontline staff for coronavirus. Nearly 3,000 fire and rescue staff are in self-isolation and unable to work. Almost 2,600 of those are firefighters or control room employees, about 5.4 per cent of whom are currently off duty. The FBU said it was inevitable this would impact on brigades ability to provide fire cover and respond to other emergencies. Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, said: The Westminster government is playing with fire by not testing firefighters and control room staff for coronavirus. Currently, crews are maintaining services, but this will become increasingly difficult as the virus spreads. There are already thousands of firefighters and control staff in self-isolation, only a fraction of which will have the disease. If we arent able to find out exactly who is infected, and more staff isolate unnecessarily, services will be put on a dangerous knife-edge. In London, 472 firefighters and control staff nearly 10 per cent of the workforce are in self-isolation, according to the FBU. The capitals rate of absence is second only to Bedfordshire, where 12.2 per cent have been forced off work. A London Fire Brigade spokesperson said it had contingency plans in place and was confident that we can maintain a good level of service to London despite the challenges Covid-19 may present. In Northern Ireland, 7.5 per cent of brigade staff and 6.5 per cent of firefighters and control workers are currently quarantined. A total of 2,997 brigade employees 2,591 of those firefighters or control room staff across the UK are in self-isolation, according to figures published by the FBU. The union said firefighters were at increased risk of contracting Covid-19 as they came into contact with the public during emergency calls and their coronavirus support work. Firefighters have been drafted in to drive ambulances, assist paramedics, deliver food and medicine to vulnerable people, and help police to retrieve dead bodies during the crisis. Last week it was also agreed they would fit face masks for NHS workers and deliver personal protective equipment and medical supplies to clinical staff. Some firefighters have been redeployed in to help the NHS and police during the coronavirus pandemic (AFP via Getty Images) Mr Wrack acknowledged that testing medics for coronavirus has to to be a priority but said the very safety of the public relies on other emergency services also continuing to function. He added: There needs to be a clear and deliverable testing strategy for all workers required to continue at work. The government failed to secure test kits in sufficient numbers early in the pandemic and now frontline services are paying the price. The Scottish government has begun limited testing of firefighters and control staff, some 5 per cent of whom are in self-isolation in Scotland. Fifty employees of the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service who showed coronavirus symptoms have also been tested. But the FBU said James Brokenshire, minister of state for security, had made no commitment to testing fire and rescue personnel in isolation in England, where 2,300 staff are self-isolating. A government spokesperson said: Firefighters and our frontline emergency services are doing incredible work responding to the coronavirus outbreak, and are leading community efforts to support the most vulnerable. We are prioritising the testing of the most acutely ill and vulnerable patients in hospitals and those on the frontline to help them get back to work as soon as possible to support our NHS. We are working very closely with fire chiefs to ensure they have the resources and support they need to carry out their vital roles and to keep people safe. The government has faced prolonged criticism over its failure to step up coronavirus testing for NHS staff and care home workers. Boris Johnson had initially promised the government would carry out 250,000 tests daily, before health secretary Matt Hancock downgraded that target to 100,000 a day by the end of April. Only 19,000 tests were being conducted daily as of Friday. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Applications for unemployment benefits continue to roll in due to coronavirus-related shutdowns and layoffs, breaking records every week in Ohio as the COVID-19 crisis affects more and more jobs across the state. As of Friday, more than 696,000 people had applied for unemployment compensation in the state of Ohio in the three weeks since state officials ordered businesses to close to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Laid-off restaurant workers make up a big chunk of that number. The dining rooms and bars of Ohios restaurants have been closed since mid-March, throwing thousands out of work. For many people seeking unemployment checks, the process has been frustrating. Many have had to deal with misunderstandings with the unemployment office, long waits on the phone and, once they are finally approved, inconsistent or low payouts. Below are three Northeast Ohio service industry workers stories about job layoffs, unemployment applications, and other ways coronavirus has affected their daily life. (Photo courtesy Conor Byers) Conor Byers, bartender at Craft Collective at the Van Aken district Conor Byers spent weeks filing for unemployment after he was laid off from his job as a bartender at Craft Collective in March. Since then, he said hes received inconsistent payments. Some weeks I get paid, and others I dont, Byers said. We are creeping up on a month of this lockdown. The monotony can be almost maddening, and the stress of not knowing how I will pay for things when the money runs out is always present. So far, Byers said hes received two payments of $350, making $700 total in the past month -- normally the amount of money hed earn in a good week as a bartender, he said. Byers says he has had trouble paying bills, rent, groceries and other expenses -- including a $13,500 medical debt. He and his roommates, who are also service-industry workers, carefully plan trips to the grocery store and cook at home to save money. That home cooking, Byers said, has been a helpful distraction. We are all service-industry employees with culinary backgrounds so we are still eating fairly well, he said. With nothing but time on our hands my other laid-off roommate and I have been treating cooking and working-out as our jobs, which definitely helps distract us from how desperate things are getting. The hardest part for Byers has been disconnecting from his family and friends, and he said the coronavirus crisis has also affected his mental health. Depression and anxiety about the uncertainty of what life will be like after this, and all the people I miss, literally keeps me up at night, Byers said. Not going out. Not seeing friendly faces. The juxtaposition of boredom and panic is a daily struggle. (Photo courtesy Samantha Stockhausen) Samantha Stockhausen, bartender at Two Bucks For some service-industry workers, layoffs affect more than their pocket book. For Samantha Stockhausen, a bartender at Two Bucks in Middleburg Heights, its potentially pushing off marriage. "Im getting married on June 13 this year, hopefully, Stockhausen said. With everything going on, we have no idea if the wedding will even be able to be performed. Honestly, if my fiance didnt have such a good job, I would be completely screwed right now as a single mom, and would probably have to move back in with my parents. Stockhausen and her fiance, Brandon Shultz, both have four children to entertain while schools have been closed in the state of Ohio. We used to spend our days outside or at the zoo, or the Science Center; now we cant, Stockhausen said. The couple is dependent on Shultzs income, and Stockhausen said that they have been lucky to not have to dip into savings yet. Stockhausen said her unemployment request has not been processed yet. Im still pending for unemployment, and have been for the past three weeks, Stockhausen said. I havent been able to get through to the unemployment line, and Ive essentially given up calling. Two Bucks may open up for takeout with a limited menu in May, offering laid-off workers the opportunity to make some extra money, Stockhausen said. Before it closed, Two Bucks also gave employees perishable food, which Stockhausen said helped make ends meet for her family. (Photo courtesy Ericka Danielle Mandarano) Ericka Danielle Mandarano, busser at First Watch Misunderstandings and endless phone calls plagued Ericka Danielle Mandaranos unemployment experience, after being temporarily laid off from her job as a busser at First Watch. A misunderstanding listed Mandarano as an out-of-state worker, since the First Watch chain is based in Florida, she said. Mandarano said she has worked at a Northeast Ohio location for eight years. Recently, she was approved for unemployment, but only after having to call the states unemployment office many times to clear up issues, she said. As far as unemployment goes, its kind of a nightmare trying to get a hold of somebody sometimes; you even have to use two cell phones. Youll eventually get somebody on the line, and they just hang up on you after youve been on the phone for over an hour, she said. I was able to get through; it took me from 7 a.m. untll 12:30 p.m. Mandarano is unable to find new work right now, out of fear of contracting the coronavirus and passing it along to immunocompromised family members, she said. My mom has no immune system; she has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)," Mandarano said. My moms primary physician advised me not to look for a job because that would basically be like giving my mom a death sentence. In the meantime, Mandarano is scraping by, with the help of unemployment. Shes worried about making her car payments and other bills, and even though she said that shes lived paycheck-to-paycheck her whole life, the coronavirus has presented a new challenge. Read more stories in this series: (Natural News) At least 51 patients in South Korea are confirmed to be positive again for coronavirus after leaving quarantine, said health officials this week. According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the patients were already given a clean bill of health following an earlier diagnosis for COVID-19, with the agency sending them home in batches between March 26 to April 1. In a report carried by the Yonhap News Agency, KCDC Director-General Jeong Eun-kyeong said that the unusual results may have been due to the reactivation of the virus. The patients, she added, tested positive again for COVID-19 a relatively short time after they were first cleared of the disease. The agency has since sent epidemiological investigators to Daegu and the North Gyeongsang region to investigate the results further. Were viewing these as examples of reactivation, not reinfection, added Jeong. We have yet to confirm any cases of second-generation transmission occurring from patients whove been released from quarantine, but well consider the extent to which we should tighten surveillance [of people released from quarantine] after seeing the results of the epidemiological survey. Can reinfections trigger new outbreaks? As the world grapples with the coronavirus, which has infected over 1.6 million people and caused over 95,000 deaths across the globe as of writing, researchers are also still learning more about this deadly virus. In particular, its still unclear if people who recover from the disease will be immune to reinfection. We dont know very much, explains Matt Frieman, a microbiologist and coronavirus researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. What Frieman and other experts do know is that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the global pandemic, is related to the four seasonal coronaviruses that cause up to 30 percent of common colds. But if the way that these viruses behave is any indication, that means people who have recovered are still prone to reinfection. I think theres a very likely scenario where the virus comes through this year, and everyone gets some level of immunity to it, and if it comes back again, we will be protected from it either completely or if you do get reinfected later, a year from now, then you have much less disease, he added. In the case of the coronavirus, experts are also worried that reinfections could mean that the virus may lie dormant in the body before reaching the lungs to wreak havoc to the system. The varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox, works similarly. After an initial bout with chickenpox, the virus can reactivate several times and cause shingles in adults. Once you have the infection, it could remain dormant with minimal symptoms, explains Philip Tierno, Jr., a pathology professor at New York University. And then you can get an exacerbation if it finds its way into the lungs. The lingering question of whether a person can get reinfected with coronavirus is a cause for concern in countries like South Korea, where a scenario like this could present a vector for community-based transmissions. (Related: Second wave of coronavirus lockdowns return to China, shattering narrative that Beijing has it all under control.) The period of time after COVID-19 patients are [released from quarantine] and discharged from the hospital could be a chink in the armor of our efforts to combat the disease, explained Kim Woo-ju, and infectious disease expert at Korea University Guro Hospital. In Japan, a person tested positive for the disease again in February after showing signs of recovery, while in China, where the outbreak originated, around 14 percent of patients in the Guangdong province also tested positive again for the disease after they were released from quarantine. Learn more about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic at Pandemic.news. Sources include: The-Sun.com English.Hani.co.kr TheEpochTimes.com Coronavirus.JHU.edu NPR.org TheHill.com 1 MedicalNewsToday.com TheHill.com 2 The governors of Oregon, Washington and California pledged Monday to coordinate plans to reopen their states economies, pushing back after President Trump said earlier in the day the decision was his to make. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown joined Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and California Gov. Gavin Newsom in agreeing to work together to develop what they described as a regional framework that would be guided by data and science, not by politics. The West Coast will flip the script on COVID-19, the governors said in a joint statement, with our states acting in close coordination and collaboration to ensure the virus can never spread wildly in our communities. Six Northeast states New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Connecticut announced a similar coordination plan earlier Monday. The announcement from the West Coast governors was short on details, leaving the next steps for reopening the economy unclear. They said in a joint statement they want to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening, and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this. Still, they said each state would develop its own plan. And in Washington, Inslee and an advisor said the deal was non-binding and wouldnt require all the states to act in unison, The Seattle Times reported. Brown told KGW the first restriction to be lifted would be the ban on elective surgeries and medical procedures. When a restriction is lifted, KGW reported, Oregon will study it for two weeks to ensure that cases dont increase. A spokesman said more details would be announced Tuesday. Reopening Oregon is not a process that will happen overnight or statewide all at once, said Browns spokesman, Charles Boyle. We will only reopen Oregon if the data shows we can do so without jeopardizing public health. State epidemiologist Dean Sidelinger said this weekend that Oregons shutdown would last through at least mid-May. State health officials declined to answer questions on Monday, referring them to Browns office. Brown had earlier said she wanted to see no deaths for 10 days before reopening -- as well as an increase in testing. Oregons testing capacity has not grown for two weeks, averaging about 1,350 tests per day. In a weekend update, the Institute for Disease Modeling, which has developed projections of Oregons coronavirus caseload, stressed the urgent need for enormously increased testing capacity" before the state considers easing social distancing efforts. Oregons latest modeling shows that cases have plateaued here, though the state isnt expected to see a drop-off in numbers for at least six weeks. As of Monday, 53 people had died from the coronavirus and 1,584 had tested positive. Even if Oregon returned to the moderate restrictions in place in mid-March, which included school closures and bans on gatherings of more than 25 people, active infections will rapidly increase, the institutes researchers concluded. Chunhuei Chi, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, said the state needed between 400 and 1,000 people to administer testing and trace the contacts of known positive cases to be able to effectively control the spread when restrictions are gradually loosened. By comparison, Multnomah County, Oregons most populated county, had a pre-pandemic staff of seven people to trace contacts and has since added 15 more. Deborah Kafoury, chairwoman of the Multnomah County commission, said the county is currently calculating how many more will be needed. Plans to reopen must proceed slowly and in phases, she said, and are likely to include continued recommendations for using masks, physical distancing, restrictions on large gatherings, hand washing and staying home when sick. We dont want to open too quickly, and risk a second wave where a yo-yo effect could cause even greater damage to our economy and our mental health, Kafoury said. In short, a return to business as usual is unlikely anytime soon. Chi said if Oregon follows the worlds best example of controlling the virus -- Taiwan, which has fewer than 400 cases among its 23 million residents -- then new cases found here should fall to the low single digits per day before restrictions are loosened. Oregon announced 57 new cases Monday, 80 on Sunday. That could drop to the single digits by mid- to late-May, Chi said, if Oregon continues its stay-at-home order and ensures masks are worn in public places like grocery stores and by delivery people who have frequent contact with others. Im hopeful if were doing a good job, Im not looking at May, Im more looking at June -- but I could be wrong, Chi said. If we do a superb job, it could be feasible to reopen in May. But Chi cautioned that reopening the economy shouldnt be treated as an either-or. The more suitable question is: To what extent can we gradually reopen our economy, our work? he said. Browns spokesman said decisions would be made in consultation with local leaders. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who pushed Brown to issue Oregons March 23 stay-home order, said through a spokesman that he would continue looking to county and state health officials for recommendations. We want to get the economy up and running again as soon as possible, Wheeler said in a statement. We also dont want to do that until were confident weve moved into a place where we know we wont give the COVID-19 virus a chance to make a comeback." Rob Davis rdavis@oregonian.com 503.294.7657; @robwdavis Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. DOCTORS have warned that positive cases of the deadly coronavirus in the country are set to rise sharply in the final days of the current lockdown, as the disease will have blossomed locally by then, the Daily News reports. it has not done enough so far to combat the spread of the lethal virus in the country. This comes as the government has admittedit has not done enough so far to combat the spread of the lethal virus in the country. It also comes as there are growing calls for President Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend the current 21-day national lockdown, to allow for more testing for Covid-19 across the country. The secretary of the Zimbabwe Association for Human Rights Doctors (ZAHRD), Norman Matara told the Daily News at the weekend that the total number of people who have contracted the virus in the country which currently stands at 14, after just 547 tests was likely to rise significantly in the coming days. He said this was because the maximum incubation period for the virus which is the time it takes before it becomes fully blown was about 21 days. Taking a cue from global trends, the figures should start to rise exponentially before it reaches its peak, given that we are entering the final week of the 21-day lockdown. Going forward, the graph is expected to start flattening and eventually fall. However, the fact that we are not doing enough testing makes it difficult to tell what will happen, because we may be misled by the figures. We wait to see what the coming week has in store, Matara told the Daily News. On his part, the secretary-general of the Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA), Arron Musara, said the country had not done enough testing for the virus to correctly project the extent of infections. On his part, the secretary-general of the Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA), Arron Musara, said the country had not done enough testing for the virus to correctly project the extent of infections. Our biggest challenge is that the surveillance and contact tracking has not been robust, if we consider the number of tests being done per day, where we have had no tests on some days. This confirms our inability to catch the disease. We are certainly not out of trouble because the figures could increase in the coming weeks. The government should consider extending the lockdown, while at the same time taking into consideration our economic circumstance, Musara said. This is something they must seriously look into because honestly, we are in trouble, he added. The deputy minister of Health and Child Care, John Mangwiro, said the government was working on a mapping scenario and would soon release its findings. A team of our health experts are still compiling the data, and we will make it public as soon as this is through, he said. Government spokesperson Nick Mangwana warned there were huge challenges ahead, urging people to heed the lockdown measures. As we ramp-up our testing, the number of #Covid19Zim positive cases keeps creeping up. Out of 547 tests, we have now recorded 14 positive cases and three deaths. As curves elsewhere are flattening, we are not out of the woods. #SocialDistancing has helped flatten the curve elsewhere, he said on twitter. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the incubation period for the virus can be as long as 24 days, although the average is about three days. The 2020 sowing campaign is already underway at all enterprises of the UkrLandFarming agriculture holding owned by Oleg Bakhmatyuk. Only in some farms did the sowing campaign start later due to weather conditions. "We have started the sowing campaign in Kherson and Mykolayiv regions. We will be sowing for another two and a half days in Kherson region. On April 8, we completed sowing sunflower in Mykolayiv region. According to plan, we allocate five to eight days for sowing sunflower seeds to get more or less the same shoots in each region. We have allocated 10 to 15 working days for maize. Thus, we plan to complete the sowing campaign before May 1," Head of the Department of Development and Innovation of UkrLandFarming Volodymyr Fantukh told Latifundist.com. According to him, the company has changed the structure of sown areas this season. About 60% of the area is taken by maize, about 30% is sunflower and 10% is soy. "Winter wheat in the fields remains in good condition. Frosts have affected crops, but the tillering node has not been broken. Winter rape is severely damaged by frost. Frost was up to -10C in some areas. To remove the damage to rapeseed and reduce the development of bacterial and fungal infections, we use fungicide based on the active substance called carbendazim, which activates at +5C," Fantukh added. Given the situation with soil moisture, or rather, its absence, Fantukh believes it's impossible to get anything without the use of nitrogen fertilizers so the company has made some changes to the program and also differentiated fertilizer use. UkrLandFarming is one of Ukraine's largest agricultural holdings engaged in growing cereals and oilseeds, other seeds, as well as in livestock farming, and production of eggs and egg products (Avangardco IPL). The enterprises that are part of the group of companies operate in 600 settlements across 22 regions of Ukraine. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for stricter and more thorough measures against the coronavirus. The topic was discussed at a meeting without acknowledging whether the country had reported any coronavirus infections. According to the Korean Central News Agency or KCNA, the virus has created obstacles to North Korea's effort in its economic construction, and the government described the pandemic as a great disaster threatening the whole of mankind regardless of borders and continents. However, KCNA reported that North Korea has been maintaining a very stable anti-epidemic situation because of their strict top-class emergency anti-epidemic measures and they practice consistent nationwide protective measures that is compulsory all over the country. Experts have pointed out that North Korea is particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus because the country has a weak healthcare system and defectors have accused Pyongyang of covering up the real numbers of the virus outbreak. Government officials have insisted that the North is virus-free. North Korea coronavirus measures The World Health Organization or WHO stated that 709 people, 698 nationals and 11 foreigners, have been tested for the virus on April 2, while more than 24,800 people have been released from quarantine. The KCNA said that the officials at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korean called for a strict and thorough check of the infiltration of the virus on April 11. Also Read: Dead Bodies Pile Up in Philippine Hospital Hallway As COVID-19 Death Toll Increases The KCNA also reported that a joint resolution was adopted on more thoroughly, taking national measures for protecting the safety and the life of the citizens of North Korea in order to cope with the worldwide epidemic disease. The joint resolution also included goals of intensifying the nationwide emergency anti-epidemic services continuously and pushing ahead with the economic construction that the government had planned for years. The North Korean government will increase its national defense capability to help stabilize the livelihood of its citizens this year. However, pictures released by North Korea's state media showed that none of the committee members who attended the meeting was wearing a mask nor practicing social distancing, including Kim Jong Un. North Korea has closed its borders with China in January after the first coronavirus cases were detected. It also put thousands of its own people and hundreds of foreigners into isolation and mounted disinfection drives. Suppressing COVID-19 In March, Daily Mail U.K. reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced that the country has no positive case of COVID-19. The North Korean government said that it is due to their strict implementation of quarantine for 30 days as they closed all of their borders and the suspension of North Korea's trade with China made the country coronavirus free. However, several news sites published stories in February that the real reason why North Korea has zero cases of COVID-19 is because Kim Jong Un resorted to a disturbing strategy. The country was criticized worldwide when reports stated that the government killed the first COVID-19 patient by shooting him. Due to these reports, experts are skeptical about the statements that Kim Jong Un published and they believe that implementing quarantine and closing their borders are not the only steps that his government took. A former CIA analyst on North Korea, Jung H. Pak, told Fox News that Kim Jong Un might be covering up the real numbers of COVID-19 cases in order to protect his dignity as a leader and to stop all the talks about human rights violation and economy problems in the country. The analyst added that North Korea is a closed-off nation and no one really knows what is going on in the country. There are rumors about Kim Jong Un's order to assassinate COVID-19 patients, however, there are no concrete evidence. Experts are certain that North Korea has more coronavirus cases than they want to admit. Closing the borders Nearly every country in the world has reported coronavirus cases. Aside from China, the country where the virus originated, the USA, Spain, Italy and South Korea have reported the most cases. According to the tally done by the Johns Hopkins University, coronavirus cases across 193 countries and territories now exceed 1.7 million, with more than 108,000 deaths. North Korea has demonstrated in the past how effective they are in stamping out viruses. The World Health Organization in 2018 praised the country for eliminating measles successfully. If the coronavirus has spilled into North Korea, lead Kim Jong Un can use his authoritarian power to round up and isolate the infected, lock down the affected regions and seal off information about what is really going on. Related Article: Viral Video Shows Dead Bodies Disposed from Wuhan Hospital Late At Night, After Reporting Zero Cases @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Maharashtra doubled its coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases to 2,000 in six days, recording its biggest 24-hour jump on Monday, as 11 more deaths in the state vaulted the number of fatalities in the pandemic to 160, prompting the Uddhav Thackeray government to extend the lockdown until the end of April. The state said 352 more people tested positive for Covid-19, taking the number of patients confirmed to have the infection to 2,334. Of Mondays cases, Mumbai, the Indian city worst hit by the disease, alone recorded 242, taking its Covid-19 count to 1,540. Of the 11 deaths in Maharashtra, nine were reported by Mumbai and one each by Pune and Mira-Bhayander. Thirty-nine cases were recorded in Pune; 14 in Malegaon; 11 in Nagpur; nine in Thane; seven in Mira-Bhayander; six in Pimpri-Chinchwad; five in Vasai-Virar; four each in Aurangabad, Buldhana and Kalyan-Dombivli; one each in Ahmednagar, Dhule, Nashik, Navi Mumbai, Panvel, Raigad and Yavatmal. The Thackeray government on Monday extended the lockdown, which was to end at midnight on April 14, until April 30, even as it looks at allowing micro-, small- and medium- enterprises (MSMEs) to start operations in districts that are not affected, or relatively less affected, by the outbreak. A proposal for allowing industries to reopen is being prepared by the state industries department. It was necessary to extend the lockdown period as the state has been the worst-hit by the pandemic and more than a hundred cases are coming per day for more than a week. The spread can be arrested only with the help of a lockdown, said a senior official, requesting anonymity. On the lockdown extension, a notification issued by chief secretary Ajoy Mehta on Monday read: It is expedient to take measures further to contain the spread of coronavirus; therefore, in exercise of the powers conferred under section 2 of the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897 the state government directs that the lockdown orders shall now be extended up to and inclusive of April 30, 2020. Maharashtra took 30 days to cross the 1,000-case mark on April 7 and exceeded the 2,000 tally in just six days. The state health department isnt perturbed because it is still in stage two or the local transmission phase, where the spread of the disease is limited to those with a travel history or are in contact with infected people, and not entered stage 3 or community transmission in which the source of the infection cannot be traced. State health commissioner Anup Kumar Yadav said the coronavirus spread was not exponential and under control. We are still in stage two of transmission. The spread is now in clusters, but it is not exponential. Our cluster containment plans are showing results and it is not going out of control. Any infectious disease has a growth pattern. One is the way it is growing now, and the other is it is growing exponentially, which is seen in some other countries. We are confident that the measures we have taken at an early stage are well-placed; it is responding well. So it should not go out of control, Yadav said. According to Yadav, the state is conducting an average of 3,000 coronavirus tests daily, and he attributed the increasing number of cases to aggressive testing. The state government, he said, was now awaiting antibody test kits from the Centre to carry out rapid testing. We are waiting for the kits. They would be first used by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). We do not plan to use it elsewhere in the state. Besides, we are also awaiting the Centres nod for pool testing permission, which the state had sought, he said. Malegaon in Nashik district has seen a surge in the number of coronavirus cases. On Monday, 14 cases were reported from the neighbourhood, taking the tally to 29. It is being looked at as another cluster where the spread has spiked. District authorities and the municipal council are looking at demarcating containment areas in Malegaon. The Maharashtra government is considering allowing industrial operations across the state except in Mumbai and Pune. State industries minister Subhash Desai held a review meeting on Monday and directed the department to submit a proposal on where MSMEs and other industries can be reopened. Excluding the areas of Mumbai and Pune, which has a high number of Covid-19 cases, a proposal should be prepared to allow industries to start their operations with certain restrictions in the rest of the districts of the state, Desai said in a statement. With two more cases of coronavirus on Monday, the number of confirmed cases in Nepal has gone up to 14 as reported by Nepalese Health Ministry spokesperson Dr Bikash Devkota. Of the two new patients, one is a 65-year-old woman from Kailali and the other is a 19-year-old boy in Rautahat. This takes the nation-wide tally to 14 with one recovery and zero deaths so far. Nepal has been under a complete lockdown since March 24 to curb the spread of deadly virus. Monday also marks the first day of the Nepalese New Year 2077 when people perform various rituals and welcome the New Year. All these celebrations have been cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. People have been asked to mark the occasion in their homes only. Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in a nation-wide address said, "At this time we should have been welcoming New Year with fervor and happiness bidding farewell to the bygone year, learning lessons from it and making resolutions but we are now welcoming this year in an unpleasant situation." The Prime Minister said that the situation would be assessed again on April 15 and steps that have to be taken thereafter to control the spread of the virus would be taken. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here. Bank of America said Saturday its expanding the list of customers eligible for a government-sponsored stimulus program designed to provide loans to small businesses hard-hit by the country's pandemic-related economic collapse. The move follows intense criticism by Bank of America clients that the nation's second-largest lender was failing to properly process applications when the program commenced Friday morning. In a statement, Bank of America said it had essentially scaled back the eligibility requirements to apply for loans that initially confused and angered many clients. The bank will now accept applications from small businesses if they had an individual or business checking account as of February 15 of this year as long as they have no borrowing or credit relationship with another bank. As FOX Business has reported, Bank America clients say that they were turned away from the program if they didn't meet stricter requirements, such as having a business relationship and a credit card with the bank. WEST VIRGINIA BANK CLOSES OVER 'LONGSTANDING ISSUES' FOX Business reported earlier in the week the turmoil among the bank's customers, who said they were being improperly rejected from the $350 billion small business loan program. The small business loans are considered an integral part of the $2 trillion government pandemic stimulus efforts since companies with less than 500 employees comprise nearly 50 percent of the American workforce. The confusion at the bank level was heightened by a bottleneck inside the government on lending rules. The Treasury Department, the lead agency in overseeing the loan program, had not delivered guidelines to the banks until Thursday night, just hours before lending was set to start on Friday morning. President Trump, however, praised Bank of America's efforts in a tweet later Friday afternoon, saying officials at the bank were doing a "great job" doling out the loans despite the widespread complaints. Story continues It is unclear why the president singled out Bank of America among the nation's top banks other than the possibility that the company was the first major financial institution to open the program Friday morning, while others like JPMorgan Chase began making loans later that day. Small businesses have been ravaged by the economic slowdown that followed the country's massive quarantining to prevent spread of the novel coronavirus; the quarantines have continued as the death toll from the virus mounts, increasing unemployment to levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. WILL CORONAVIRUS BE THE END OF PAPER MONEY? In order to prevent a complete economic collapse, the small business loans are designed to keep salons, restaurants and other such outfits open while retaining much of their workforce until the virus's spread abates and the economy can begin climbing back to normal. Under the plan, these businesses can apply for federal subsidized, low-interest loans for the lesser of $10 million or a percentage of their payroll. The government will pay off the loans made by the bank in their entirety if the business maintains its workforce. A Bank of America spokesman would not comment on its about-face on eligibility other than saying the lender is operating with new criteria that will expand the number of clients eligible for loans. "Now that SBA and Treasury have shared key implementation details and made important changes to the program, I expect banks of all sizes will participate and provide this important financial lifeline to small business customers," American Bankers Association President Rob Nichols tells FOX Business A spokesman for the Treasury Department declined to comment beyond highlighting the unprecedented nature of the program and pointing out that billions of dollars in loans were registered on its first day. But even as Bank of America expands eligibility for its loans, other more systemic problems are cropping up across the program. And many have to do with the halting guidance coming from the Treasury Department. People at Bank of America tell FOX Business that the Treasury guidelines on eligibility remain unclear. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS Another potential problem: Business owners have been given no insight into when they may actually get their hands on the money that theyve been promised. And even bank officials arent completely sure what the answer is. We dont want to fire people but we might not get this money in time, one small business owner tells FOX Business. Theres a deep lack of clarity about the timeline. As a result, while the bill is supposed to offer immediate economic relief, it could actually take weeks or maybe a month or more for money to reach the businesses in need of financing. Other business owners tell FOX Business they worry the money isn't enough to support their current staff levels, since the loan terms are based on 2019 payroll numbers, and their workforce is significantly larger this year. Of course, handing out $350 billion in small business loans -- which is the target number in the government's pandemic economic relief effort -- was never expected to run seamlessly. According to one person familiar with the policymaking process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, there will be issues initially given the program was rolled out so quickly, but that doesnt mean it will turn into Healthcare.gov," the controversial website created to handle President Obama's health-care initiative, which was plagued by technical errors during its launch in 2010. Even as questions swirl about the effectiveness of the small business loan plan, White House officials are considering another round of small business loans, meaning possibly tens of billions of dollars more will be added to the program because the demand is so large. By Saturday afternoon, several thousand applications had been processed for about $2 billion in loans, the Wall Street Journal reported, but that amount understates the size and scope of demand, people with direct knowledge of the matter tell FOX Business. GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE Related Articles New Delhi, April 13 : The Tower & infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) has urged the Union Power Ministry to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply to telecom towers across the country during the lockdown period. In a letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Power, Sanjiv Nandan Sahai, the industry body said: "While the necessary support has been extended by the various state electricity distribution companies so far, we would further like to seek your support in ensuring uninterrupted electricity supply for telecom towers, which is critical for continued operations of telecom services." TAIPA said that as telecom is classified as critical service during the present lockdown and amid work-from-home situation in the country, it is serving as the backbone for various other services such as e-commerce, banking and finance, e-governance, e-education, healthcare among others. It asked the ministry to advise all the state governments and state electricity companies for ensuring availability of '24x7' uninterrupted electricity supply for telecom tower operations. "All state electricity distribution companies to give electricity connections on 'priority' for telecom tower sites in view of present situation to make them operational for telecom services," it said. TAIPA also said that no penalty should be charged or any coercive action such as disconnection should be taken on account of any delay in electricity bill payment of telecom towers since bill receiving and collection and payment is impacted due to lockdown. Further, it sought a grace period of at least 45 days for telecom infrastructure companies to pay electricity bills. T.R. Dua, Director General, TAIPA said: "Needless to mention, telecom infrastructure is the backbone to ensure the availability of critical telecom services needed in this emergent situation arisen due to COVID-19 outbreak in the country. TAIPA requests for an urgent intervention and support from the Ministry of Power, in order to expedite the rollout of the telecom network at the faster pace in the states during this crisis situation and thus help in combating the impact due to coronavirus pandemic." The members of TAIPA include Indus Towers Limited, ATC Group Companies, Bharti Infratel, GTL Infrastructure, Reliance Infratel, Tower Vision, Sterlite Technologies and Space Teleinfra. - Ghana's COVID-19 cases have moved to 566 - 158 new cases were confirmed on Sunday, April 12, 2020 - Ghana has been fighting the deadly virus for the past one month Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in Ghana has recorded 158 new cases of the deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the total has now jumped to 566. This was confirmed by the Ghana Health Service on Sunday, April 12, 2020. Before the aforementioned date, Ghana's total cases were 408. This is due to the introduction of enhanced surveillance and a host of measures introduce to control and prevent the spread of coronavirus. So far 37,954 persons have been tested in Ghana with 566 testing positive to the virus. Four persons have been treated and recovered, 552 cases have been categorized as mild disease and are receiving treatment, two severe cases, and eight deaths. There are no patients on ventilators currently. YEN.com.gh earlier reported that Ayawaso North had confirmed some 31 cases of Coronavirus with 10 in critical condition. The Municipal Chief Executive for Ayawaso North, Aminu Mohammed Zakari confirmed this in a live broadcast on Sunday afternoon. In the video sighted by YEN.com.gh, the MCE indicated that 10 of the recorded cases are in critical condition. Some of the areas around Ayawaso North that have been affected by the coronavirus are Newtown, Mamobi, and Nima. Nana Addo shouldn't share the food to the kayayo's only - Market women cry out | #Yencomgh Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page. Enjoyed reading our story? Download YEN's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news! Source: YEN.com.gh Online Learning Rice Converts Summer School to All-Online Delivery To take advantage of the momentum created by a quick switch from face-to-face courses to online version, one Texas university is ramping up plans for a major online summer session too. Rice University, which switched to distance learning in March in response to coronavirus, has decided to offer all of its summer courses online. Those will be made available with a "significant discount" for current students and the general public. University administration has asked its schools and faculty to deliver many of the institution's "high-caliber courses," especially those that would be "strategic and in high demand." The institution switched nearly 2,000 spring classes to online formats in 10 days. Now the goal, according to Caroline Levander, Rice's vice president for global and digital strategy, is to "build as balanced and compelling a catalog as possible." Levander said each course would go through "a careful process of design and development to ensure optimal learning outcomes for students." Classes are expected to be offered in business, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. There will be six summer sessions, delivered in six-, seven- and 10-week block formats, the dates of which overlap each other. The courses begin in early May. People who aren't already students must be accepted into the university. (The application is online.) Pricing has been considerably modified. Classes usually offered at $1,000 per credit hour will be $500 per credit hour for members of the general public admitted as "visiting" students. Most courses are three credit hours. Those who take more than six credit hours will receive an additional 50 percent discount for the third course. Current Rice undergraduate students may take summer school classes for $250 per credit hour. Those receiving need-based aid can get an additional 50 percent discount for nine credit hours during summer school. "We recognize that Rice students have experienced a lot of disruption and disappointment in their summer plans as well, so this is one way we can support them," noted Dean for Undergraduates Bridget Gorman, in a statement. Summer session information is available on the Rice University website. First it was toilet paper. Then flour. Then eggs. Will meat be next? Over the past few weeks, weve witnessed consumers hoarding food and panic buying in supermarkets. Experts were quick to reassure us that our supply chains are strong and that missing items would soon find their way back onto the grocery shelves. This has largely been true. The toilet paper, the flour and the eggs are slowly reappearing. However, it is growing increasingly clear that the challenge to food availability is not only consumer anxiety and increasing demand. Cracks are emerging on the supply side. COVID-19 has shone a light onto the invisible labour that gets our food from farm to fork. The temporary foreign workers who harvest our food, the employees at processing facilities who prepare and package our food, the truckers who transport it, the grocery store clerks who run the cash and stock shelves. Also caught in the COVID-19 crossfire are workers in Canadas abattoirs and meat processing plants. Over the past few weeks, a series of COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported in slaughter facilities across the country. Several have temporarily closed their doors. For some consumers, a disruption to the meat supply will simply mean reaching further into the pantry and honing their bean cooking skills. Indeed, now may be the perfect time for everyone to reduce their meat consumption. We know eating less meat is healthier for our bodies and also the planet. But eating less meat does not mean we should not be paying attention to how the meat we do eat is produced. For years, local food advocates have been sounding the alarm bell about the centralization of slaughterhouses in Canada. Fewer facilities are controlling the majority of the meat processed in the country while local slaughterhouses continue to close, causing longer wait times, longer distances for transport and increased costs. Now, as COVID-19 forces larger facilities that process thousands of animals at a time to shut down, a bad situation is becoming even worse. When vulnerabilities are exposed in the supply chain, it is common for consumers to seek alternative sources for their food, avoiding grocery stores and instead purchasing directly from farmers they know and trust. Farmers markets are now experimenting with shifting sales to online platforms and membership-based food baskets are running at full capacity. However, while demand for local meat will certainly be on the rise in the coming weeks and months, many will be disappointed to learn that producers have nowhere to send their animals for slaughter. COVID-19 is bringing into focus how the erosion of local slaughterhouses has jeopardized the quality and reliability of our meat supply. If we want to support a more ethical and just food system when this is over, we are going to have to rethink how we raise and slaughter animals for food. By PTI HOUSTON: Three Indian-Americans, who were hospitalised in a critical condition for COVID-19 here, are showing signs of recovery after being transfused with plasma from the recovered coronavirus patients, hospital sources have said. As the vaccine for COVID-19 is not expected for months and new cases are increasing daily, doctors in Texas and around the country are experimenting with a new treatment based on an old technique, but aren't sure if it to be fully effective. The Convalescent Plasma therapy is a process in which blood plasma from a patient who has recovered from COVID-19 is infused into a critically ill patient so that the specific antibodies present in the blood of the recovered person can help fight the infection. Antibodies are proteins in the blood that fight specific bacteria and viruses. In the absence of a vaccine, doctors and scientists are looking to convalescent plasma because they consider it low risk and because it has been effective during past epidemics. Five patients at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center in Houston, part of the Baylor College of Medicine, have been treated with convalescent plasma, said Ashok Balasubramanyam, vice president of academic integration and associate dean of academic affairs at the Baylor College of Medicine. The school has also been authorised to conduct a clinical trial, expected to start within a couple of weeks. Three Indian American COVID-19 patients -- IT professional Rohan Bavadekar, Lavanga Veluswamy and Sushm Singh, are being treated at St Luke's Medical Center in Houston, and have found recently recovered donors with same blood groups for plasma transfusion. According to hospital sources, they are showing positive signs of recovery and waiting for more donors for new rounds of plasma transfusion. "Vaccines for broad use would take about 12-18 months, and we don't have time to wait," said Lola Adepoju, a health services researcher at the University of Houston College of Medicine. "While those vaccines are being developed, what can we do? (Convalescent plasma) therapy definitely is one of those things we can actually pursue," said the researcher. The Food and Drug Administration is yet to approve the treatment but is allowing initial clinical trials. Because those trials are limited, doctors nationally can also request for the FDA's permission to use the treatment for severe COVID-19 cases. Last week, the FDA tapped the Mayo Clinic to lead and coordinate the effort and evaluate the treatment's effectiveness. Since then, hospital systems around the nation have registered through the Mayo Clinic to start treating patients with convalescent plasma. On Thursday, a patient in Austin received a convalescent plasma infusion, the first in the city, said Jeff Yorio, a haematologist and oncologist at Texas Oncology who helped get the programme started in Austin. "Of course we all want to be very hopeful about a treatment like this," Yorio said. "But at the same time, we don't truly know how effective it's going to be compared to other types of things we're already doing. "Yorio said the programme has identified at least five other Austin patients with severe or life-threatening cases of COVID-19 whom doctors want to treat with plasma. The FDA has approved patients within hours of receiving a request," he added. "We're identifying the absolute sickest patients first," Yorio said. "If we're able to get more plasma out there that's available, then maybe we'd be able to expand that further to other patients." "The plasma came from Austin's blood bank, We Are Blood, which has connected with more than 20 potential plasma donors who have recovered from COVID-19 and that number should grow as word about the program gets out, said Nick Canedo," a spokesman for We Are Blood. Donors for convalescent plasma must have received a lab-confirmed positive test for the coronavirus or test positive for COVID-19 antibodies after recovery and be symptom-free for at least 28 days before donating, Canedo said, adding that many potential donors have been unable to get tested for the coronavirus because their symptoms were not severe enough to qualify for one. Someone who initially tests positive and then has a second test for the coronavirus that comes back negative can donate after being symptom-free for 14 days, Canedo said. Plasma recipients must be of the same blood type group as the donor. This is not the first time physicians have used plasma to combat infectious diseases before a vaccine is developed. The technique was used to treat hemorrhagic fever in 1979 and Spanish influenza in 1918, Adepoju said, and it helped reduce mortality in both epidemics. But when convalescent plasma was used to treat Ebola in 2014 in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the research didn't find it to be effective. With the FDA's blessing, doctors have also been trying to treat COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, a drug typically used to treat malaria and lupus that has shown in limited research potential to speed recovery. But it comes with risks: Administered in high doses, the drug can cause heart arrhythmia and cardiac arrest, said Kristin Mondy, chief of the division of infectious disease at the University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School. Globally, the novel coronavirus has killed 114,215 people and infected over 1.8 million people globally. The US has the highest number of infections at 557,300, according to Johns Hopkins University data. For most journalists, producing accurate, reliable reporting in the public interest is a daily job requirement, and one that is no more paramount than in times of crisis. Yet producing accurate reporting often demands that journalists rely on sources who may not be authorized to speak to the press. Working with such sources presents a particular challenge in the case of the current pandemic, when most journalists are being forced to conduct all of their work remotely. While these health precautions are crucial, journalists unused to an all-digital reporting process may be unwittingly putting themselves, their sources, and their work at risk in other ways. One type of protection for vulnerable sources is anonymity, but journalists must recognize that this term means something very different in the newsroom than it does in the context of technology. When it comes to digital communications, true anonymity is only possible when its impossible to trace which two parties (or devices) were connected; this is impossible with apps and services that typically require a phone number or email account. The metadata generated by the use of these servicesi.e. how frequently one party speaks to an other, when, and for how longis precisely what was used to prosecute James Risens alleged source for his book State of War, Jeffrey Sterling, making even encrypted services a poor choice when anonymity is really what you need. There are only two strategies for trying to protect sources that might be at risk for even speaking to you: first, you can look to services like Jitsi Meet (https://meet.jit.si/), which create ephemeral, browser-based video chats that dont require any accounts or device information. Instead, the service creates randomly-generated room names which exist only for the length of your call. Its anonymous because only someone with the room name can connect; the only way for an outsider to know who was in the room is to find the room name and connect themselves. This approach still suffers from the so-called first contact problem: you still need a way to let your source know the URL of your chat room and when to meet you there. In ordinary circumstances, this could be done through a note, a letter or even word-of-mouth, but those channels are also highly curtailed at the moment. If you want to pursue this option, your best bet might be to call a general number (of a hospital, say) and share the information about your room. A more intuitive approach may be to create so much noise in your communication patterns that identifying your source becomes nearly impossible. This means communicating securely (via an encrypted phone or messaging service) with many people who could credibly be the source for potentially sensitive information, with about the same frequency and durationfor example, a daily 5-minute phone call or exchanging 20 messages per day with many credible sources. The reason this matters is that metadata about our communications can quickly become at least as revealing about our relationship with them as the contents of our exchanges. When it comes to choosing how to connect, most of us will to rely on whatever tool is most comfortable and accessible for our sources. Since the metadata about who you are communicating with is always accessible to a service provider (and is not protected by privacy laws, at least in the US), journalists will want to protect the contents of communications (e.g. the calls and messages themselves) as much as possible. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Start by choosing tools and platforms that encrypt the contents of your exchanges. In almost all cases, this rules out email altogether. Instead, opt for phone and messaging apps that support end-to-end (E2E) encryption if possible; this means that even the service provider/owner cant see the contents of your exchange. Tools like Signal, iMessage and WhatsApp are E2E by default; platforms like Facebook Messenger and Skype can support it, but you will have to review your messaging configuration to make sure its enabled for a given conversation. From a journalistic perspective, video interviews may be preferable to chat and voice-only options, but be aware that true E2E video is very difficult to implement. Most video servicesincluding Zoom, Google Hangouts, BlueJeans, and Wirerely on a protocol called WebRTC, and end up effectively disabling E2E in order to improve call quality. One exception is Whereby, which does use E2E video for free accounts; Apples FaceTime also promises E2E encryption, but the implementation has not been independently reviewed. Jitsi also uses WebRTC, but does not offer E2E encryption. Its protection comes primarily from the ephemerality of its connections and fact that it doesnt require downloading an app or registering an account. Youll need to decide which companies and platforms you or your sources trust most before choosing them, as almost any service provider you use technically could view your calls. If you can make do with a voice-only connection, many E2E chat apps also support phone calls, and even an old-fashioned telephone call can be a good option. This is an excerpt from the Tow Centers short guide to reporting during a pandemic, available here. Susan E. McGregor, assistant director Tow Center: How is coronavirus affecting the newsroom, broadly? Jim Bernard. Senior Vice President, Digital at Star Tribune: Well, the newsroom has had to move out of the office, so its been a substantial cultural and technical shift. I think we have pretty much everybody no longer going into the office. And the production of the paper in particular, but all of our products, without anybody being in the same space, has probably been the biggest change from a culture standpoint. Then obviously theres the coverage standpoint, which I think were well suited to do. The newsroom is very good at a story of this complexity. Whats the revenue picture for you right now? Well, at the executive and strategy level, were talking a lot about it. And weve had substantial advertising cancelations in the last two or three weeks. We have an incredibly aggressive, smart strategic ad team thats pivoting to help people who need to help their customers, who actually need to be bold and get into it right now. Weve been through this, weve been through million dollar cancelations. The contracting of the retail economy is basically a series of one million dollar cancellations for us. And were very creative about how we respond to that while maintaining a very healthy newsroom. I mean, obviously, if six months from now its breadlines and soup lines and theres people dying outside of their houses that the ambulances cant pick up, thats a different ballgame. But if this is a recession and a six month or 18 months business operation interruption, Star-Tribune will be fine. Were smart, were well-funded, were aggressive. Were rooted in our community. So I dont want to belittle it or even suggest that its not a very, very substantial thing to do. But I come to it with a sense of confidence because of our underlying fundamentals. We are important to our consumers and our advertisers seek our advice and assistance to make their marketing plans work. Were not an alt weekly without one hundred bucks in the bank. Were a 150 year old institution owned by a local billionaire with steady leadership. And were gonna get through it. And in some ways, the thing that I worry more about is over steering. Like, I need my team to stay focused on getting stuff done. We need a better checkout system. That was true on January 1st, and it will be true until we launch the better system. And our CEO is not suggesting that I should slow down. Hes told me, dont be buying a bunch of t-shirts, dont be going out to fancy meals, dont travel. Were cutting discretionary expenses, but were gonna make sure that our priorities are still around having a healthy institution. Excerpt from an interview by Nushin Rashidian, edited and condensed for clarity. An update on how Platforms and publishers are reacting to the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the news industry. The New York Times reports that more than 28,000 journalism workers have been laid off, furloughed, or taken a pay cut in the last month. According to the chief economist at the job listings search engine Indeed.com, new listings for jobs in the media and communications sector [have] fallen 35 percent in the 60 days before April 3, compared with the same period last year. A small number of large media companies are still growing their staffs through the pandemic: As Digiday reports, the New York Times continues to hire across the organization, with 174 roles open, 20 which were posted within the last week. The Washington Post has 54 open job rolespredominantly in product design and engineeringnine of which were posted within the last week. Bloomberg Media has been hiring across sales, product and marketing. Politico, emerging from record-revenue growth in 2019, has added new editorial staff. Time, backed by billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, is in expansion mode. In the same, Ashling OConnor, head of European media practice at global executive search firm SRI, tells Digiday, The longer-term view is that media companies have been around for hundreds of years, the existential threat of digital has been around for the last 20: This is more of a hiatus. For many local news publishers, however, short-term setbacks are enough to prevent long-term survival. On the platform side, Facebook and Google continue to announce initiatives to fund journalism and combat misinformation amid the pandemic. Last week, Facebook announced the full list of 400 North American newsrooms receiving $5,000 in emergency funding for coronavirus reporting, noting that the company doubled the total grant pool to $2 million after more than 200 publishers applied in the first 48 hours after the application launched. In a sign of how deeply entrenched tech money is in local news, one of the newsrooms that received a grant from Facebook was in fact originally launched in collaboration with the Google News Initiative. Applications open today for the Facebook Journalism Projects COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program, a different program than the one above, which offers larger grants ranging from $25,000-$100,000. The selection committee for the grants will consist of representatives from Institute for Nonprofit News, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Local Independent Online News Publishers, Local Media Association, Local Media Consortium, National Association of Broadcasters, and Facebook. Additionally, Facebook announced an investment of $3 million for a series of similar grants to European newsrooms to be administered through the European Journalism Centre, with plans to open applications in the coming days. As Facebook continues to battle COVID-related misinformation, it has announced the WhatsApp Coronavirus Information hub while struggling to contain Instagram grifters hawking face masks. Meanwhile, a conspiracy theory that has proven especially resilient across social media is the false claim that 5G technology is linked to COVID-19. Elsewhere, Google updated its tools and resource hub for journalists to include COVID-specific insights and data. The company recently pledged $6.5 million to fight Coronavirus misinformation around the world primarily through funding fact-checking organizations, but it has yet to announce any plans to directly support newsrooms. Finally, when Digiday asked Snap U.K. general manager Ed Couchman how Snap is supporting publishers through the pandemic, he replied, We are providing incremental revenue for them. We keep promoting the benefits of Discoverbrand safe, curated by humans, et cetera. Other stories of note: To fight viral misinformation, WhatsApp is adopting measures recommended by the Tow Center in a piece by Harsh Taneja and Himanshu Gupta in August 2018 and limiting message forwarding. The recommendations come after a piece in Mother Jones by Sinduja Rangarajan calling the platform a petri dish of coronavirus misinformation in which she interviewed our authors about their proposal. David Smith at the Guardian calls the relationship between Trump and Fox News dangerous. The conservative TV network has been widely condemned for downplaying the threat of Covid-19 even as it took measures to protect its own staff. And with the projected death toll poised to avoid the worst-case scenario, some hosts are resuming their gung-ho attitude, Smith writes. At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs Fauci and Birx and say, were opening on May 1, Laura Ingraham tweeted this week. Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer. Speaking of the president, his response to critical coverage of the coronavirus crisis has been to elevate media even further to the right than Fox News, notably conspiracy-promoting cable network OANN (which he cited in a quote of a tweet recommending Fauci be fired). Watching @FoxNews on weekend afternoons is a total waste of time, the president tweeted on Sunday. We now have some great alternatives, like @OANN. Motherboards Jason Koebler points out that the popular study on Medium about runners spreading coronavirus is not a study at all but a Google Translate translation of a Belgian newspaper article based on a computer simulation by a team of engineers led by Bert Blocken from the Eindhoven University of Technology. [T]his is aerodynamics work, not virology, Blocken told Koebler. The Medium post was picked up by popular news outlets including the Daily Mail and promoted widely. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today George Civeris, Susan E. McGregor, Nushin Rashidian, and Sam Thielman work at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, a research and teaching center based at Columbia Journalism School. WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alion Science and Technology announces today that its subsidiary Commonwealth Technology Innovation (CTI) has been awarded a $12M task order for Engineering Research and Maintenance Support for the Plasma Physics Division of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). CTI will support the Laser Plasma Branch Programs at NRL and related work in the Plasma Physics Division in the areas of experimental and theoretical physics, numerical simulations, and the design and development of advanced high-energy lasers. The majority of this work will involve support of research related to laser fusion and high energy density plasmas. CTI will also provide research and development support to the NIKE and ELECTRA high energy excimer laser systems and to other smaller laser systems used in the Laser Plasma Branch research. "The Laser Plasma Branch was looking for a partner who can complement the Government research team in their specialized laser-plasma areas," said Greg Yadzinski, Vice President of Operations for CTI. "We believe we were chosen based on a combination of our value and experience as CTI has delivered on-site expertise and specialized engineering support to NRL for more than four decades." This task order was awarded under the Navy Seaport NxG contract and has a 60-month period of performance. ABOUT COMMONWEALTH TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION Commonwealth Technology Innovation (CTI), an Alion company, has over four-plus decades providing specialized hardware and mission support for its Intelligence, Defense, and Security customers' leading edge requirements. CTI is an agile, responsive company focused on providing global solutions in a "quick-reaction-capability" (QRC) environment. ABOUT ALION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION Solving our nation's most complex national security challenges, Alion works side-by-side with our defense and intelligence communities as we design and deliver advanced engineering solutions to meet current and future demands. We go beyond the superficial and dive deep into the root of the engineering complexities, and bring innovation to reality. With global industry expertise in Big Data, Analytics, and Cyber Security; Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning; Live, Virtual, and Constructive Training; Electronic Warfare and C5ISR; and Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing, Alion delivers mission success where and when it matters most. To learn more, visit www.alionscience.com. SOURCE Alion Science and Technology Corporation Related Links http://www.alionscience.com Advertisement Harrowing photos allegedly taken at a Detroit hospital where coronavirus patients have died in emergency room hallways show bodies stored in vacant rooms and piled on top of each other in a mobile morgue, CNN reports. An emergency room worker at Sinai-Grace Hospital shared the shocking images with the outlet, which published them on Monday. In one photo, two victims in white body bags are seen lying side-by-side on a bed and a third is propped up in an arm chair. A second photo allegedly shows multiple body bags stacked on the floor of what is believed to be a portable refrigerated storage unit parked outside the hospital. Two other ER workers confirmed to CNN that the shots are an accurate portrayal of what took place at Sinai-Grace during an overwhelming 12-hour shift earlier this month. That shift was in the midst of the hospital's busiest period to date, which saw staff scrambling to treat up to 130 patients at a time as COVID-19 killed around five people every 12 hours. At least two patients were reportedly found dead after being left in emergency room corridors, sources claimed as they described a constant shortage of staff, supplies and space to store bodies. A hospital spokesperson told DailyMail.com that they will soon release a statement about the photos. An emergency room worker at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit shared harrowing photos with CNN which were purportedly taken inside the facility as it scrambled to treat an overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients earlier this month. In one photo shown above, two victims in white body bags are seen lying side-by-side on a bed and a third is propped up in a chair. Two other ER workers claimed that the photo was taken in a room that is typically reserved for studying sleep habits but was temporarily used to store bodies one night when the morgue reached capacity A second photo shows multiple body bags stacked on the floor of what is believed to be a mobile morgue parked outside the hospital. Two ER workers said they have personally witnessed victims being placed inside the refrigerated units in this manner due to space concerns with the growing number of bodies needing storage. The workers said that the blue bags in the photo contained personal effects belonging to the deceased Two ER workers told CNN that the photos are an accurate portrayal of what took place at Sinai-Grace Hospital (pictured) during an overwhelming 12-hour shift earlier this month The workers, who spoke to CNN reporters Ryan Young, Jake Carpenter and Paul Murphy on condition of anonymity out of concern for their jobs, claimed that the first photo was taken in a room that is typically reserved for studying sleep habits but was temporarily used to store bodies one night when the morgue reached capacity. 'All I know is we ran out of beds to keep our patients on so we couldn't spare any for the bodies,' one of the workers, who personally saw the bodies in the room, said. 'It was because we hadn't gotten our outside freezers yet, so those rooms had beds and the morgue people don't work over night.' The ER workers said the incident prompted hospital officials to order portable refrigerated storage units to house the bodies when the morgue was full. Five units could be seen in the hospital parking lot over the weekend. The second photo purportedly showed the inside of one of the units - where body bags had been piled on top of each other. Two other ER workers said they have personally witnessed victims being placed inside the unit in this manner due to space concerns with the growing number of bodies needing storage. 'Bodies are definitely double stacked on the floor. There is no lift to help put the bodies on the shelf,' one worker said. Blue bags seen on top of a few of the bodies were filled with personal effects belonging to the deceased, the workers said. In a statement last week - before the body bag images emerged - the hospital's director of communications and media relations told CNN: 'Like many hospital systems, the demand to care for the ever-increasing number of patients is putting a strain on our resources and staff. 'Surge plans are in place at our hospital to handle the increase in patient volumes to ensure we provide the safest and most appropriate care for our patients.' Six ER workers told CNN that the case load has finally slowed down in recent days. They said they are now treating about 50 patients daily - down from the peak of up to 130 in early April. ER workers said that hospital officials ordered portable refrigerated storage units to house bodies after the night when staff had to leave several in the sleep studies room because the morgue was full. Similar portable refrigeration units are seen outside the Wayne County Medical Examiner's office in Detroit Sinai-Grace Hospital has one of the highest mortality rates in the country - with an average of five people dying every 12 hours Several staffers have previously spoken out about the chaos at Sinai-Grace, describing warlike conditions in the ER as a high fatality rate led to dire shortages of body bags and space to store victims. 'All three coolers are filled, the morgue and the viewing room next to the morgue are full and right now, we're taking bodies to the sleep lab to store them,' Jeff Eichenlaub, a weekend day-shift emergency room nurse at the for-profit hospital, told The Detroit News last week. 'We initially had to double bag each patient, but we started to run out of body bags and began scrambling floor-to-floor to find places to take them.' One worker described the hospital as looking like a 'third world country in a war zone'. Another said patients 'we know are going to pass' have been taken off monitors to free it up for 'someone else that needs it'. 'Last week,' a nurse said, 'I did witness one patient who had expired that was on a stretcher bed in the hallway next to someone in a chair'. Healthcare workers told The Detroit News that patients lining the hallways are mostly from the local nursing homes, who staff say can not be helped to beat the virus. Families are called to grant a do-not-resuscitate order and patients are then left to die alone. 'The "non-breathers" sitting in the hallway are a lot of our DNRs dying by themselves, and there are times where it's so busy we don't have time to even call families to inform them they've passed,' Eichenlaub said. 'Their families would call two days later and we'd have to say "let me find a physician for you". 'It's disheartening because you can almost see someone and know they're going to die. Then have to tell a family member "I know they were completely fine when they came in, but now they're dead because the virus is so rampant".' Sinai-Grace staff members pose for a photo while they work a 24-hour shift in support of night-shift workers who walked out in protest of the conditions in the hospital Nurse Kenisa Barkai said she was fired after posting a video of her protective gear on Instagram. Emergency room attending Sal Hadwan said he too was dismissed, telling The Detroit News: 'We need more help because we've been working under extreme conditions. We told them we need additional staff and went to check on patients.' He said that the hospital has been receiving between 110 and 120 coronavirus patients a day for the last three weeks and that staffing levels are inadequate. 'They need oxygen, ventilators and multiple medications drips just to keep them alive and stable,' said Hadwan, a DMC nurse three years. 'It's unsafe for patients to have one nurse tending to 25 or more patients. It's unrealistic and dangerous to try to keep up.' Nurse Kenisa Barkai , left, said she was fired after posting a video of her protective gear on Instagram. Emergency room attending Sal Hadwan, right, said he too was dismissed, telling The Detroit News: 'We need more help because weve been working under extreme conditions. We told them we need additional staff and went to check on patients' The hospital is the only one in northwest Detroit and happens to have the highest amount of EMS traffic, a spokesperson said. The hospital is also in close proximity to 14 nursing homes. 'Our top priority is the safety of our patients and our staff,' spokesperson Brian Taylor said Thursday. 'Out of respect for the privacy of patients and their family members, we don't provide any details regarding the care of any particular patient. 'Among the patient population served by Sinai-Grace, there are extremely high rates of underlying medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, which puts people at higher risk for COVID-19,' he added. 'In addition, there are a large number of nursing homes in the area surrounding the hospital. The spread of respiratory illness and COVID-19 among that population places even more pressure on hospital resources as those patients are sicker and in many cases require ICU level of care.' The high number of dead at the facility has caught the attention of federal officials, however. Earlier this month, Detroit Medical Center officials had a conference call with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because of concerns that Sinai-Grace had the highest coronavirus mortality rates among hospitals in the nation, staff were told last Wednesday. Wayne County, which includes Detroit, leads Michigan in per capita coronavirus cases with 11,648 infections and 760 deaths as of Monday. Michigan has the third-highest number of coronavirus cases in the US, with 24,600 reported to date, including 1,487 deaths. GLICO Life Insurance Company Ltd (GLICO LIFE) has offered free Hospitalization Benefit to all its existing and prospective policyholders with effect from 10th April to 31st July 2020. GLICO LIFE appreciates the hardship that the COVID-19 pandemic could have on its policyholders and has therefore offered the free Hospitalization Benefit to alleviate the financial and emotional burden that the policyholders may suffer during the period. All policyholders of GLICO LIFE who may be hospitalized as result of COVID-19 infection, shall be paid an amount up to GH500.00 per day for each day the policyholder remains hospitalized for a maximum of thirty (30) days. Terms and conditions however apply. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, GLICO LIFE, as a responsible corporate body and in line with its corporate social responsibility and also in support of the Presidents effort, has given support to a section of the society including food items to the less privileged and PPEs to the Ghana Prisons Service. The free Hospitalization Benefit for its policyholders is one of the many provisions the company is making to support its policyholders and the people of Ghana during this difficult time. For more information on the free Hospitalization Benefit, please contact GLICO LIFE on 020- 2222-113 or visit the companys website: www.glicolife.com GLICO LIFE urges all its numerous policyholders and the general public to keep safe, stay healthy and practice social distancing. GLICO, we cushion you for life! 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 OPECs top producer and the worlds top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, may soon tap the international debt market to raise money as the oil price crash and the historic oil production cut deal are hitting the Kingdoms primary source of external revenues oil income, four banking sources told Reuters on Monday. Saudi Arabias oil revenues were already hit by the plunge in oil prices in March after the Kingdom went on a price war with Russia to claim more market share. The Kingdom reduced government expenditures last month to save money as oil income crashed. The historic oil production cut deal from Sunday, with OPEC+ agreeing to cut their overall crude oil production by 9.7 million bpd in May and June, will be putting additional pressure on Saudi finances because the Kingdom will have to cut a lot from its current production. According to an analyst who spoke to Reuters, the Saudi cuts in production would reduce the government revenues by almost US$40 billion in 2020 if oil prices average $40 per barrel. A day after the Sunday deal was announced, Brent Crude prices were barely in the low $30s, erasing early Monday gains to fall by 0.70% to $31.23 at 8:20 a.m. EDT, as the market appears to see the deal as not enough to respond to the demand loss. Middle East oil producers have already started to tap the debt markets amid growing fiscal pressures on their economies and wealth funds. Qatar sold at the start of last week US $10 billion in three-tranche bonds, which received four times as many offers. Qatars bond issuethe first in the Gulf region since oil prices crashed and the pandemic battered economies and oil demandwas viewed as a test for investor interest in bonds from Middle Easts oil producers amid collapsing oil prices. Abu Dhabi also sold US$7 billion in bonds after Qatars debt issue, sources told Reuters last Wednesday. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The General Secretary of Resident Doctors' Association, AIIMS, Dr Srinivas Rajkumar T said the judgement by Supreme Court regarding free COVID-19 tests at private labs was in public interest, but there should be a proper mechanism wherein private labs should be reimbursed at an appropriate time. Asked whether there should be a mechanism for reimbursement of the entire testing process of COVID-19 patients, Dr Srinivas told ANI, "Definitely. There should be a proper mechanism which should be transparent for the private labs and anybody for that sake should be reimbused at appropriate time so that testing can continue unhampered." "The judgement by Supreme Court is in public interest, but there has to be mechanism by government to follow the Supreme Court order for the best interest of everybody," he said. A petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Saturday seeking directions to modify its earlier order which had directed all the private laboratories to conduct free tests for COVID-19. The plea filed by former AIIMS RDA President Dr Kaushal Kant Mishra, prayed the apex court to modify the order dated April 8, 2020, to allow private labs to carry out COVID-19 testing as per the rates stipulated in the ICMR's March 17, 2020 advisory. On this, Dr Srinivas said, "It is very important that though the intention of the Supreme Court is at the public interest for the benefit of the entire Indian population, it is important to note that private labs cannot afford to do a test which is so expensive. Even the sample collection is very expensive. So, it is important to note that either the government should reimburse immediately or government can even think about reimbursing beforehand." The Supreme Court had, on April 8, directed that the tests relating to COVID-19 whether in approved government laboratories or approved private laboratories shall be conducted free of cost. The tests relating to COVID-19 must be carried out in NABL accredited labs or any agencies approved by WHO or ICMR, the apex court had said in its order. The ICMR had earlier capped the cost of COVID-19 tests by private labs at Rs 4,500. Dr Srinivas also said, "This is definitely a testing time for India. Both the healthcare setup and economic policies will have to step up to face this demand. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) File image Senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath has accused the Centre of deliberately delaying the imposition of the nationwide lockdown to topple his government. Lashing out at the Centre over the rising number of COVID-19 cases, he said the Centre did not take early measures to curb the number of novel coronavirus infections in the country, to make sure the Bharatiya Janata Party comes back to power in Madhya Pradesh. For live updates on coronavirus, click here Holding the BJP government at the Centre responsible for the 36 novel coronavirus deaths and 532 infections in the state, the former CM said: The Centres engagement in toppling the (state) government led to delay in taking steps to tackle the crisis. Notably, early last month, several Congress MLAs defected to BJP, making Kamal Nath lose majority support, and eventually letting the BJP come back to power in MP. Meanwhile, the new government is yet to appoint ministers for health and home ministries both of which are even more crucial portfolios in such testing times. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show Coronavirus pandemic | Mental illness cases rise in India after COVID-19 outbreak: Study Kamal Nath has said Madhya Pradesh is the only state without a minister for Home or Health at present. He also pointed out that the lockdown in India was imposed 40 days after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had raised concerns about the gravity of the situation. The veteran leader added: The centre's engagement in toppling Madhya Pradesh government (has) led to delay in taking steps to tackle (the) COVID-19 (outbreak). He further said that the people of MP have been fooled, given the Cabinet is yet to be formed and key ministries are vacant during a global pandemic crisis. Coronavirus impact | Lockdown to hit state govt's finances worse than Centre MP is among the worst-hit states in India, with its COVID-19 patient count crossing 500. The only other states that have breached this mark are Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan. (With inputs from Agencies) On Saturday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that New York has reached the apex of COVID-19 hospitalizations, as new hospitalization numbers continue to decrease, but that doesnt mean the states lockdown will soon be over. Without proper widespread testing with fast results and comprehensive contact tracing for the infected, or a vaccine, the state will continue to have outbreaks. And its unlikely that the virus will ever be completely eradicated, according to public health experts. There are only four ways the state can really suppress the virus, Sherry Glied, the dean of New York Universitys Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, told City & State. The first option is herd immunity, when a high percentage of the population develops an immunity to a virus. This can happen if an individual contracts a virus and recovers from it or if they receive a vaccine for the virus. Experts have estimated that 40% to 70% of the general population would need to become immune to COVID-19 to reduce its spread. The second is developing a vaccine. The third is developing a dramatically more effective treatment for the virus, such as antiviral drugs that can eradicate the virus quickly, similar to drugs used to treat the flu. Other options include immune system boosting therapies or developing an effective drug cocktail with existing medication to tackle the virus. While researchers are busy trying to figure out what will extinguish the virus, its likely that many will become infected with the disease as they assess what treatments work. The fourth option is rapidly deployed widespread testing. Of all those options, Glied believes that the most realistic and effective option for New York to pursue is testing. If you can test quickly and accurately, then you can begin allowing some restrictions to lift, according to Glied. But she warns that once another outbreak occurs then the state would need to return to being on lockdown. On Friday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that without large-scale testing lockdown measures cannot be lifted. Even with our high capacity and high performance on testing, it's still not enough, Cuomo said during his daily briefing on Friday. It's not enough if you want to reopen on a meaningful scale and reopen quickly. South Korea is currently able to contain COVID-19 with a national program to test anyone who might have contracted it, including everyone seen in recent days by anyone who has tested positive. Any hope of ever getting close to completely eradicating the virus relies on better medical treatment and a vaccine, without which the state will not be able to return to normal. Once you get things under control, with a lot of targeted surveillance, there are ways of locally relaxing restrictions and returning to some level of activity, Aris Katzourakis, a professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford, told Time. Targeted surveillance means that individuals can be surveilled by the government by hacking into their phones data or using facial recognition technology to track their movement. This would be necessary to trace contacts of anyone who tests positive. It will never be the same, until there is a cure or a vaccine. Returning to normal simply isnt something we should expect to see for a very, very long time. While a vaccine probably wont be available for another year or so, efforts are being made across the globe to find more effective medical treatments for COVID-19. One of the perversely positive things about this being a global pandemic is that there are scads of researchers everywhere around the world, Glied said. And scads of patients everywhere who are willing to try new drugs because there isn't anything (available now). Perhaps toward the summer we will start to see some more effective treatments that could change things some. Even if the virus does appear to have been successfully suppressed, its very probable that well see its return this fall and it will be even more disastrous, according to The Atlantic. This is exactly what happenedduring the influenza pandemic in 1918. It was presumed that the virus had been stamped out in the spring before it wreaked even more havoc upon its return in the winter and in the spring of 1919. And if the virus resurfaces, lockdown restrictions will once again need to go into effect. Stephen Kissler, a research fellow at Harvard University, told The Atlantic that we need to be prepared to do multiple periods of social distancing. Its doubtful that the virus will ever be eliminated, as people continue to travel throughout the country, according to Glied. We don't think we can actually eliminate the virus in the United States, because there's just too many people moving all over the place within the country, she said. We certainly cannot eliminate the virus in New York City, as long as there are people moving around the country. Aside from frequent lockdowns, mental health issues may become a more prominent issue in the future, due to social distancing and other lockdown measures. The one thing that I think about are people who suffer from mental health conditions: people who suffer from depression and anxiety disorders and other kinds of mental health conditions. Dustin Duncan, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, told City & State. How do you know if social distancing really impacts them? I would say it probably impacts them to a large degree. One outcome of this public health crisis, however, might be that people will start to realize the importance of public health. After 9/11, anti-terrorism became a major priority in New York, as well as nationally, so its possible that the COVID-19 pandemic could result in prioritization of public health. Duncan also hopes that this crisis will make medical research more of a priority moving forward. I think research is an incredible system that allows us to answer questions that improve society, Duncan told City & State. And I think that through research, we could determine who's at risk and understand the many different aspects of the coronavirus and (other) diseases more broadly. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Xiao Qian (The Jakarta Post) Tue, April 14 2020 China and Indonesias 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations fell on April 13. To celebrate this joyous occasion, President Xi Jinping and President Joko Jokowi Widodo exchanged congratulatory letters and both countries launched commemorative stamps and envelopes. Both China and Indonesia are ancient Asian civilizations. Through the ages, people of our two nations have traded goods, shared knowledge, and exchanged cultures along the ancient Maritime Silk Road. Together, they have composed one piece after another of beautiful music about their exchanges and interactions over the centuries. Our peoples sympathized with and supported each other in their respective struggle for national independence and liberation in the early 20th century. In 1950, Indonesia was among the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with China shortly after its founding. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Home health aides, nannies, and other care workers are stepping up amid the hardship When New York started shutting down in the midst of a pandemic, Magueda St. Jeans first thought was that now more than ever she had to be strong, especially for her patients. I had to be strong and take life by its horns. I knew, at this timenowIm needed more than anything, said St. Jean, a home health aide who has been working with Royal Care in New York City since last December. Caring for others has been a lifelong passion of St. Jeans, who was previously a nanny for children with autism, and a patient companion for older patients with autism at the Long Island Jewish Hospital. Home health aides help patients who need to stay at home with a variety of things, including preparing meals, bathing, light housework. These infirm and elderly patients are a vulnerable population, so aides are required to take additional steps during this time, as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus commonly known as novel coronavirus is widely contagious. Driven by Compassion Just as important as the physical health and safety protocol St. Jean abides bydonning a mask and gloves, sanitizing, not sitting while she commutes by subway or trainis the emotional support that St. Jean provides the patients she helps during this time. Their reactions in general have been quite frightening unfortunately, she said. St. Jean currently cares for one patient with dementia and another with Alzheimers, and watching the news has become a great source of fear for them in recent weeks. Her own level of calmness and presence becomes a barometer for the patients, having great influence over their emotions. So St. Jean says she has been driven by compassion more than ever at this time, in order to stay present for them. I make it a priority for me to come in, at a time like this, and put away all my gadgets, books, and newspapers and just be fully present with them going through this, and being sensitive to their emotions and how they feel about it, she explained. Just today she visited a patient, and after fixing breakfast and taking his medication as usual, he got very upset at the television and she quickly switched the program to something lighter that let him remember the good old days. Its something thats worrisome, with their psychological, mental, and emotional states. Its not just about doing tasks and getting them ready for their day. But sometimes patients do want the news, and St. Jean does not want to keep them in the dark, and sometimes dementia patients need to be reminded why they should not leave the house. She will sit with them and read the news together, trying to make it a calming and enlightening experience rather than a stressful one or keep them in the dark about bad news. Even if theyre quarantined, I like to let them know theyre not the only ones going through it, and theres a lot of activities that you can do at home, even if you want to be out, or you just want everything to be back to the way it was, St. Jean said. St. Jean is one of hundreds of aides in the city who continue to commute to visit the homes of home-bound, often elderly patients who need care. I feel honored to be a part of this and help and push America through, she said. (Courtesy of Magueda St. Jean) Have the Heart to Help One Another Persaud Salita, another home health aide with Royal Care, has actually had a patient who tested positive for COVID-19. On the 23rd I went to work and saw that my patient was not feeling good, Salita said. The patient seemed feverish and her temperature turned out to be 102 degrees, and had to go to the ER. Because it was the contagious CCP virus, Salita could not go to emergency room with the patient. Later that day, Salita got a call from the patients niece telling her the patient tested positive for COVID-19. It was shocking news, but Salita was not very moved, because she had been keeping up with the news and knew how pervasive the virus has been. She felt no fear for herself. Salita ended up having no symptoms, so hospitals told her she did not need to be tested, but to self isolate for 14 days. Since then, the patient has been at the hospital and is currently on oxygen, and Salita communicates with her regularly by phone, and has daily calls with her patients niece. Salita returned to work on April 6 after being restless to do so. (Courtesy of Persaud Salita) I feel 100 percent fine, she said with a laugh. I need to get back to work, I would like to get up out of my bed and get on out there with my job. Salita has had a passion for helping others ever since she helped take care of her brother as a child, and feels especially called to work with the elderly. She says her support system through this time has been her frequent calls with her many family members. She hopes others can help each other out during this time as well, so as to not be overcome by fear. To be honest with you, Im sad. I know a lot of people are going through a lot, and if theres one thing everybody could come together to do right now is to just have the heart to help one another, she said. We never know whats going to come today, whats going to come tomorrow. I wont stress out over it, but the news is very sad, and my heart goes out to all the family members that lose their loved ones, Salita said. This Has Been So Wild Nannies are also essential caregivers during this time, though the rules vary by state. This has been so wild, I mean I could never have predicted in my life that it would be like this, said Katie Proviziano, founder of Westside Nannies, the largest nanny agency in Los Angeles. Things have been changing constantly since Februrary, and Proviziano feels like shes working three jobs now, as she keeps up with updating regulation and passing on information and best practices to all the nannies and families in her network. Weve seen just dramatic changes in our business, Proviziano said. Her agency provides services across the board, from babysitting to part-time, full-time, live-in, and many families have requested their nannies to switch to live-in, so they can self-quarantine together, which is generally safer, but also because nannies are not considered essential workers in California right now unless they are either live-in, or working for parents who are essential infrastructure workers like ER doctors. Changes began even before state mandates were settled on, with uncertainty and parents working from home and changing their regular schedules. Then schools closed. And then that was huge, Proviziano said. Some parents could work from home but some wouldnt, and not everyone can work from home and handle childcare as well. And then about a week after that, the governor said, dont expect schools to open again, your kids probably wont physically in school until the fall. And that was like a bomb that dropped across every single parents radar. It was such a stark reality. And I think families are just wondering, how am I going to work myself? How do I work while taking care of my kids, while making sure theyre doing their virtual schoolwork, she said. And then at a point, the stay-at-home order is going to be lifted, and parents are going to be able to go into an office, but yet their kids are still not going to be in school. Summer tends to bring an uptick in childcare need anyway, and California is currently dealing with a childcare conundrum as most facilities cant operate (just try social distancing small children). So now were seeing families saying, I need to find a nanny from now until the fall, which is a much longer time period, and its also much higher costs for families because you require care longer, Proviziano said. Not every family who needs it can afford childcare and business has decreased as a result. Many parents are working at home and foregoing nanny services, or have been furloughed or lost their jobs and cannot afford childcare anymore. Many people in the industry are out of a job. Theyre worried, theyre scared about everything thats going on, but were also seeing such bravery, Proviziano said of the nannies. Theyre really stepping up and accepting that theyre going to take of the kids while the moms and dads are out fighting this thing. Providing Stability Its important that kids arent sharing the fear, Proviziano said, which is something the agency talks about. We talked about how to talk about this age-appropriately, and also the big thing is to not have the kids sense the fear and the anxiety that were all experiencing. Kids shouldnt have that burden on them, Proviziano said. Jacqueline Castro is a nanny for a family in LA where the mom is an ER doctor and the dad is an acupuncturist. Castro has been focusing on creating new routines for the second-grader she takes care of. Hes super smart, Castro said. Hes aware of what his parents do, and what his mom is dealing with, he knows what a virus is, what a pandemic is. Hes even asked me, Are you afraid of my mom? Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid of my house? And I told him Im not afraid, but I need to take extra precautions, so Im extra aware of where were at, what were doing in the house, and how clean were being. He is, just like every child, they feed off their parents energy. And a lot of parents are stressed out because this is a new for everyone. Everyone is learning how to adjust and they can feel that anxiety. Children can just feel that, she said. Usually, when Mom gets home, they see her enter the house, in her scrubs, and greet her with a hug. Now the scrubs dont enter the house at all; she changes in the garage where there is an extra set of clothes, and Dad opens all of the doors for her until she makes it into the shower. So we dont even see her until shes done with all of that, and I feel like that takes 30 to 40 minutes, she said. Everyone is very aware of new routes and patterns in the house, and Castro has a set of nanny clothes she only wears at work as well, and her shoes stay outside. Shes [Mom] not allowed to come into the little boys room. We have to go and out like its very, very different now. Castros own schedule has changed dramatically as well. She is not living with the family, but her hours have doubled, as her mornings used to be free while the boy was in school, but now his mother is working many more hours than usual. Castro is a certified teacher and normally spends mornings preparing a curriculum and now she spends it at the familys house with the boy while the parents are at work. We have a different kind of routine now, Castro said. I basically have to resort to pure creativenessthis is how were going to come up with sounds and instruments, this is the next arts and crafts activity, and this is how Im going to keep creative and just keep some kind of stability in his life. Hes missing his regular schedule, hes missing his teachers, his friends, his regular piano, and all these things hes had, and hes aware, and I think that affects a lot of children at home, she said. We try to keep a curriculum and a schedule and always something thats just like we always did: we always have lunch at this time, we always have recess, this is piano time. Castro says she is the strict teacher sort of nanny, always there to provide academic structure. But during these times, she has found herself trying to play a more comforting role. Because Im aware of his feelings, and Im aware he might have some kind of fear for his parents or his friends. So Im finding myself being more nurturing, she said. Now she might watch a show together with the child, even though she would never have done that before. I think parents are feeling guilty because theyre letting their kids have iPads and TV time, and I think its perfectly fine. Im the one who never did that, but I now needed to give him some kind of sense of comfort and we can still go together and do this. Its okay. I think its part of what he needs right now, and maybe all of us. We all need something that makes us feel better. For Castro, being with the child and coming up with activities to do together has been a grounding force during this crisis. That makes me feel good. The fact that were laughing on a daily basis with little games and scavenger hunts to just keep us both going. That keeps me going every day: childrens laughter, she said. A Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles employee in the headquarters office died April 7 from COVID-19, the agency said Monday in response to an inquiry from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Four employees at DMV headquarters at 2300 W. Broad St. have tested positive, as did two employees at DMVs Dahlgren weigh station in King George County, according to DMV spokeswoman Jessica Cowardin. DMV learned on March 30 that a headquarters employee tested positive, Cowardin said by email. The agency communicated that to all headquarters employees, she said. The employee worked in an isolated area, but DMV closed an entire work area, told employees there to stay home, and deep-cleaned the area. Operations in that area of the headquarters building were discontinued until April 6, she said. In all known instances in which a DMV employee tested positive for COVID-19, employees were informed through agency-wide emails reporting each situation and the agencys response, Cowardin said by email. In those instances, the respective work areas were closed, associated employees were sent home to self-quarantine for the recommended time-period, and those areas were thoroughly cleaned and sanitized. Metro Manila (CNN Philppines, April 13) The administration's flagship infrastructure program "Build, Build, Build" will be a steady force in the Philippines' recovery plan amid the COVID-19 crisis, with a top official saying it will be the country's "fuel" for an economic "bounce back." Finance Secretary Carlos "Sonny" Dominguez III told CNN Philippines Monday that the government should likewise focus on infrastructure developments as a way of pump priming the economy. "We have not downgraded our Build, Build, Build. That is going to be the fuel that will push, that will fuel our bounce back," Dominguez said in an interview with The Source. The governments Build, Build, Build program went through a major overhaul late last year, with several big-ticket infrastructure projects dropped from the original priority list. Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar earlier said authorities had to be efficient and prioritize those which are economically feasible. READ: 'Build, Build, Build': New projects dominate in overhaul of priority list The flagship program was unveiled by President Rodrigo Duterte's administration back in 2016, with the plan touted to usher the country's "Golden Age of Infrastructure." RELATED: Build, Build, Build not a failure - Public Works chief Loans to close gaps The COVID-19 crisis is meanwhile expected to result in job losses not only for local workers, but also for overseas Filipinos around the world. A recruitment and migrant expert said the global pandemic may displace around 50,000 to 100,000 OFWs, which will in turn lower OFW remittances. Lockdown measures imposed in Luzon and different other regions of the country also prompted grace periods and extensions of bills payments, including taxes. With gaps seen in the national funding, Dominguez said the government, in the meantime, will lean on loans. "We will close the gap by our borrowing," the Finance Department chief said. The World Bank earlier approved a $500 million (about 25 billion) loan to support the country's efforts in the fight against COVID-19. Dominguez also raised the possibility of borrowing from the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Dominguez, however, stressed the government will only seek help from the commercial market if funds generated internally and from the loans are still not enough. 100 years ago 'Mermaid' taken home A n Albany business owner named "Terry" believed he saw a mermaid on the banks of the old Bleecker reservoir two nights in a row as he observed a scantily clad woman sitting on the bank both nights just before dark. He never ventured close to her, but finally consulted Policeman John Bain, who agreed to watch for the return of the "mermaid" with the man. As the sun set, she appeared again dressed this time in a nightgown. She sat down, bending her hands as if in deep meditation. The two men approached her and soon discovered she was a woman who had become mentally disturbed following the recent deaths of two family members. Officer Bain escorted her home and alerted her family to her actions. Times Union, April 13, 1920 50 years ago Literacy group seeks volunteers The call was out seeking literacy volunteers, community-minded citizens who would help others to read and write. Literacy Volunteers Inc., a non-profit organization with headquarters in Syracuse, had been established three years ago to meet the problem of illiteracy among adults. In New York state, more than 785,000 men and women ages 25 or older had less than five years of schooling. The lack of basic education prevented men from advancing at work and created problems at home such as a mother not being able to read notes her child brought home from school. Volunteers would take a one-to-one approach with length of study time involved depending on the need for help. Times Union, April 13, 1970 For questions about this feature or to submit information about historic events, contact Tim Blydenburgh, 518-454-5421 or tblydenburgh@timesunion.com. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that he recommended some states adopt more stringent quarantine measures as early as February, three weeks before the White House issued its social distancing guidelines. His comments follow a report in The New York Times that reveals how Donald Trump largely ignored several attempts by members of his administration over several weeks to alert the president about the seriousness of the impending pandemic, which ha now claimed more than 22,000 lives in the US. The president dismissed the report as fake news. On Monday, Robert Redfield told NBCs Today that by 28 February, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health had recognised the different areas that mitigation was now important and began sending recommendations to several states to adopt efforts to combat the spread of the virus. He said: The CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas. His remarks also follow Dr Anthony Faucis admission that earlier social distancing efforts would obviously have saved more lives if lock downs were in place right from the very beginning, he told CNN on Sunday. It may have been a little bit different, he said. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then. The report and comments from the top health official leading the White House coronavirus task force prompted the president to retweet a message calling for the president to sack Dr Fauci, who has repeatedly contradicted the presidents more optimistic and misleading claims about the outbreak and treatment. Reports suggest that the White House was warned about the likelihood and necessary preparation in the wake of an outbreak as early as November. In January, a National Security council memo warned that the virus spread in the US could claim the lives of thousands of people without mitigation efforts. The presidents secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services also warned the president on a phone call later that month, to which the president reportedly said Alex Azar was being an alarmist, according to The New York Times. In February, the department announced a medical surveillance plan in five cities to measure the outbreak, though it was delayed for several weeks. At the end of that month, the administrations top health experts has warned that the president should establish national guidelines to slow the spread of the virus, while Mr Trump was diminishing the outbreaks impact in several public appearances and the virus was spreading in several communities undetected. On Monday, director Redfield defended the administrations response: If you look back, in January and February, the cases we had in this country were all related to China travel ... it wasnt until 28 February when we saw our first community transmission where we said, Wait a minute, where is this coming from? ... So I think its important when we get back, and when we get through this, we can look back at the timeline. 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #15 Posted on 12 April 2020 by John Hartz Story of the Week... Fridays for Future News... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... Coronavirus puts Arctic climate change research on ice Coronavirus lockdowns have been touted on social media as helping to fight climate change. But in the Arctic Circle the virus is disrupting climate science. It could leave important gaps in our understanding. East GRIP research facility in Greenland Every year 150 climate scientists fly far into the wilderness and bore deep into Greenland's largest glacier. Their work is complicated and important. The EastGRIP project is trying to understand how ice streams underneath the glacier are pushing vast amounts of ice into the ocean, and how this contributes to rising sea levels. But this year the drills will be silent. The ice streams will go unmeasured. The reason is the coronavirus. The fallout from measures to contain the outbreak have made the research impossible. Greenland is closed to foreigners. Its government is worried any outbreak could be particularly dangerous to its indigenous population and rapidly overwhelm its health services. Even if the country were open, it just isn't practical to bring an international team of scientists together, 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away from the nearest airport, in case one of them is sick. The transport planes that normally fly in the teams and resupply them have also been grounded. Nobody wants to be responsible for bringing small, isolated communities into contact with the virus. Coronavirus puts Arctic climate change research on ice by Alex Matthews, Deutsche Welle (DW), Apr 12, 2020 Click here to access the entire article. Fridays For Future News... Shifting Gears: The Climate Protest Movement in the Age of Coronavirus Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Fridays for Future, the youth climate campaign, was seeing numbers of protesters decline and its calls for action falling short of its goals. Now, the movement is recalibrating its strategies to try to usher in the next phase of a global campaign. Youth climate activists at a Fridays For Future protest in Berlin, Germany on September 20, 2019. MAJA HITIJ/GETTY IMAGES For more than a year, just about every Friday at noon, Invaliden Park in downtown Berlin was transformed into a vivacious, noisy, swarming hubbub with teenage speakers, bands, and live dance acts as well as Germanys top climate scientists all sharing a makeshift stage and a microphone. Several thousand mostly school-age pupils waved banners and placards proclaiming There is no Planet B, School Strike for Climate, and Were on strike until you act! Their chants against fossil fuels and for swift, decisive action on global warming echoed against the granite facades of the federal ministries for economy and transportation, both adjacent to the square. The happening was the weekly school strike in Berlin of Fridays for Future (FFF), the climate crisis movement that began in 2018 with the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg skipping school once a week to protest her countrys half-hearted response to climate change. The movement then ricocheted across the globe, mobilizing school-age young people in wealthy countries as well as poor as never before. Last year, the campaign culminated in international demonstrations of millions in cities and towns from Cape Town, South Africa to Anchorage, Alaska, all with the same goal: to force their nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon-neutral by 2050. There was a brilliant logic to the school strikes that drew people in, explains Bill McKibben, author and co-founder of the climate action group 350.org. If [the adult world] cant be bothered to prepare a liveable world for me, why should I be bothered to sit in school and prepare for that future? That basic idea really hit home. Shifting Gears: The Climate Protest Movement in the Age of Coronavirus by Paul Hockenos, Yale Environment 360, Mar 26, 2020 Click here to access the entire article. Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... With climate and coronavirus, 'the broad shape of the story is the same' (Peter Sinclair) (Peter Sinclair) Coronavirus doubters follow the climate denial playbook (Dana) (Dana) SkS New Research for Week #15 (Doug Bostrom) (Doug Bostrom) How does the way we define methane emissions impact the perception of its effects on global warming? (Justine Wickman) (Justine Wickman) 'What's the best kind of car for the climate?' (Sara Peach) (Sara Peach) 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #16 (John Hartz) (John Hartz) 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #16 (John Hartz) Climate Feedback Claim Review... Global data contradict claim of no acceleration in sea level rise CLAIM: "The long-term tide gauge datasets are all in agreement that there is no acceleration" VERDICT: SOURCE: Looking For Acceleration In All The Wrong Places bY Willis Eisenbach, Watts Up With That (WUWT), Mar 8, 2020 KEY TAKEAWAY: Peer-reviewed global analyses of both tide gauge and satellite data have demonstrated that sea level rise has, in fact, accelerated in recent decades. Global data contradict claim of no acceleration in sea level rise, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Apr 1, 2020 SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... The administration of United States President Donald Trump is using a public health law to limit the number of people who can seek asylum in the U.S. People seeking safety in the U.S. from Mexico are quickly returned to Mexico without the chance to ask for asylum. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that nearly 10,000 Mexicans and Central Americans have been expelled to Mexico since the rules took effect on March 21. Mark Morgan is the agencys acting leader. He said the changes were not about immigration. Morgan said there was a public health crisis from the coronavirus pandemic. He added that there is a national emergency declared by this president to protect the health and safety of every American in this country. Mexico is providing important support. It has agreed to take migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. More than 50 percent of all people arrested at the U.S. border last year were from those countries. The Trump administration has not released a lot of information about the rules. They have not been challenged in court. The change got little attention when it was released to the public on March 20. That was the same day Trump announced he was closing the southern border to unnecessary travel. The administration used a law permitting the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ban foreigners if their entry would create a serious danger related to the spread of disease. CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield banned foreigners for 30 days. He said he may extend the ban. The administration is able to do what they always wanted to do. I dont see this slowing down, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. He is with the American Immigration Council, which has criticized the Trump administration. Mexico said it will reject children who are alone and other vulnerable people. Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez is Mexicos consul general in San Diego. He said that includes people who are over 65, pregnant or sick. A congressional assistant said the U.S. also is returning Central American children who travel with grandparents, brothers and sisters or other relatives. The assistant received information from Customs and Border Protection officials and asked not to be identified because the information was not supposed to be made public. Until recently, children without their parents were immediately put on the path to asylum, the Associated Press says. Redfield wrote that the health danger of holding migrants at detention centers is the reason for the order. Morgan said some cases for asylum would be considered. ProPublica is an independent organization of reporters. It has a Border Patrol document that explains when asylum should be considered. For example, when an agent decides a migrants fears of being tortured are reasonably believable, the migrant can ask for asylum under the U.N. Convention Against Torture. It is a lower level of asylum that is more difficult to receive. Under the rules, agents take migrants to the nearest border crossing in ways that reduce the risk of exposure to the virus. Those not sent to Mexico are flown to their home countries. CBP said it is currently holding fewer than 100 people. Last year, the agency was holding more than 19,000 as a wave of people tried to cross the border. During the first 11 days of the new rules, 6,375 people were expelled at the Mexican border and 20 at the Canadian border. Ten Senate Democrats sent a letter to acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. He supervises border agencies. They wrote, A public health crisis does not give the Executive Branch a free pass to violate constitutional rights, nor does it give the Executive Branch permission to operate outside of the law. Im Jonathan Evans. The Associated Press reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr.was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story expel v. to remove someone from a school, club or country pandemic n. an illness that spreads to other countries challenge v. to question the authority of someone or something vulnerable adj. able to be hurt consul n. an official who works with visas The Shiv Sena on Monday said the IPS officer, who gave permission to scam accused DHFL promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan and 21 others to travel to a hill station amid lockdown, was appointed in the state Home department by previous chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. It is now clear who is actually behind IPS officer Amitabh Gupta's decision and on whose instructions he would have put the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government into a "crisis", an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said without taking any name. "This clearly indicates a "conspiracy plot, which could not succeed," it said. After Home department's special principal secretary Gupta allegedly gave the Wadhawans a letter which facilitated their travel to Mahabaleshwar hill station in Satara district last week, Fadnavis said "it is not possible a senior IPS officer would do such gross mistake knowing the consequences on his own". Following a row over the issue, the MVA government (comprising the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress) on Friday sent Gupta on compulsory leave and ordered a probe in the matter. Defending the government over the issue, the Shiv Sena on Monday said, Amitabh Gupta was appointed in the state Home department by previous chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. He must have trusted the efficiency of Gupta before appointing him into the Home department." "It is now clear and self-explanatory who has been actually behind Gupta's decision and on whose instructions he would have put the MVA government into a crisis," the Marathi publication said. It is the same officer (Gupta), appointed by previous chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who has "created trouble for the state government by favouring the Wadhawan family," the Shiv Sena said. "It seems some conspiracy was being hatched but could not be successful," it said. One of the leaders from opposition party says there should be immediate action against Amitabh Gupta, while Fadnavis claimed the IPS officer would not do something like that on his own, the Sena said. "It clearly underscores a conspiracy plot, which could not succeed," it claimed. If this government had any plans to help the Wadhawan family, why would Satara district collector seize their vehicles and put them under quarantine, the Sena argued. "The opposition in the state should ask its questions to the Centre that who was behind Gupta in issuing the letter (to Wadhawans) and what exactly has the Centre planned in the Wadhawan case, it added. Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan are under the scanner in the Yes Bank and Punjab and Maharashtra Co- operative Bank scams. The CBI registered an offence against Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Yes Bank's then Managing Director and CEO Rana Kapoor and others on March 7, an official earlier said. Since then Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan were absconding, he added. A court issued a non-bailable warrant against both on March 17, but they did not appear, he said. The Enforcement Directorate also issued summons to the Wadhawan brothers in the Yes Bank case and asked them to appear on March 17. The duo reportedly cited the coronavirus pandemic and skipped the appearance, officials said. INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: After PM Modi's order, ministers resume work from office; tally at 7,987 Also read: Escaping coronavirus, not absconding; Wadhawans clarify on breaking lockdown US Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will meet with Taliban members in the Qatari capital on Monday to discuss challenges in the bilateral agreement, State Department said in a statement WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) US Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will meet with Taliban members in the Qatari capital on Monday to discuss challenges in the bilateral agreement, State Department said in a statement. "In Doha, Ambassador Khalilzad will meet with Taliban representatives on April 13 to discuss current challenges in implementing the US-Taliban Agreement," the statement said on Monday. Getty A series of tornadoes ripped through multiple states on Easter Sunday with severe storms expected throughout much of the southern US, according to reports, potentially causing destruction as the nation battles the global coronavirus pandemic. In Texas, the National Weather Service confirmed at least one tornado nearly 50 miles east of Austin, as another more dangerous tornado moved towards the town of Monroe, Louisiana at 45 mph. The weather service said the greatest risk for strong storms ran from northeast Louisiana and southeast Arkansas, across wide swathes of Mississippi and Alabama and into western Georgia. "This could be a very difficult day weather-wise, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves told residents in a live Facebook presentation. "Please be weather aware, he added. Pay attention. I know that these storms that are coming through can be dangerous. We can see significant winds. We can also see significant tornadoes coming through Mississippi today." At midday, the weather service in Birmingham said radar showed strong storms moving into Alabama from Mississippi. The weather service said a broader area, from east Texas to the East Coast was under at least a "marginal" risk of storms. The severe weather potentially impacting as many as 95 million Americans nationwide comes as the US death toll for the coronavirus pandemic surpasses more than 20,000. Much of the country was meanwhile living under some form of stay-at-home orders, with southern states like Florida having recently announced shutdowns of restaurants and businesses in an effort to slow the rate of transmissions and keep local hospital systems within capacity. Severe storms also brought recent tornadoes to Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, as local officials reported dozens of injured residents. The storms also destroyed multiple farm buildings and damaged at least two houses near Sherrill, Iowa and Potosi, Wisconsin. There were no injuries reported, but some livestock were killed when barns were knocked down at one farm. Story continues In northern Illinois, a tornado that touched down in rural Ogle County near the town of Oregon was on the ground for roughly 10 minutes, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Gino Izzi. No injuries were reported. High winds and a possible tornado damaged homes in the southwestern Indiana town of Newburgh. One person was hospitalised for minor injuries, according to Warrick County Sheriff Mike Wilder. Additional reporting by AP Read more Extreme weather season could be made worse by abnormal sea temperature BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13 Trend: Extraordinary Summit of the Turkic Council, held through videoconferencing on April 10 at the initiative of the Azerbaijani President, Chairman of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States Ilham Aliyev, is of particular importance, MP Tamam Jafarova told Trend. Jafarova said that the summit demonstrated the steadfastness, solidarity and strength of the Turkic states and peoples in this difficult time. The Turkic Council is the first international organization that held a summit on the COVID-19 pandemic at the level of heads of state, she said. Jafarova noted that this summit has great economic and political significance. At present, the preservation of economic ties amid border closures, especially the implementation of cargo transportation through transit lines, plays an important role in providing food and other products. Under these conditions, the initiative of the head of state on convening an emergency summit has become one of the important measures aimed at combating the problem that the whole world has encountered, the MP stressed. Speaking about changes in international relations in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Jafarova noted that international relations are experiencing a new stage. The viral pandemic, originating from China, has become a test not only for this country, but also for other countries. In these realities, the president of Azerbaijan convened an extraordinary summit of the Turkic Council. This shows that the head of state not only cares about the citizens of his country, but also solves the crucial issues of the world, calling for unity and solidarity in the fight against threats, said the MP. The coronavirus pandemic requires a global solution, and countries more than ever need solidarity and cooperation. I believe that the final declaration of the summit is an important contribution to this cooperation," Jafarova noted. NEW HAVEN Ferraros Market, the Grand Avenue supermarket which has been in business for more than 60 years, has drastically reduced the number of hours it is open during the week. Customers received email over the weekend notifying them that, starting Monday, the store would be open only on Saturdays, as opposed to the shops usual Monday through Saturday schedule. Ferraros will be closed for a short period to provide their employees with a much needed and well deserved rest, the email said in part. But the duration of the limited opening wasnt detailed in a post on the suprmarkets Facebook page. Julia Ferraro, who lists herself as a purchasing specialist for the store on her Facebook profile, said the store will keep its new, limited hours in place until further notice. Al Lauro, the supermarkets general manger, was not available for comment Monday regarding the reason for Ferraros new limited schedule. Ferraros successful The Meat King delivery business will continue during the week, according to the email. The service, through which customers place their meat orders online and thenpick them up at one of 13 locations in the New Haven area, got its start in early 2016. The email makes a referrence to home delivery coming soon, but doesnt indicate whether it will involve just meat or a full selection of Ferraros other grocery offerings. David Cadden, a professor emeritus at Quinnipiac Universitys School of Business, said clear and coherent messages are an important part of crisis communication, even if the company in question isnt at the center of the crisis. If they are reducing the number of hours they are open, they need to provide some sort of clear explanation, Cadden said. Otherwise, people tend to fill in the blanks with negatives. Supermarkets and how they operate have come under increased focus during the coronavirus pandemic, he said People are worried they are going to run out of basic food staples in times like these, Cadden said. And some are worried about the ability of the supply chain to keep up with the demand. I think there is a new level of respect for the people that work in these stores, who are out there on the ramparts, making sure people have what they need. luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com Nerves, glamour, family and logistical nightmares. Weddings will never go out of fashion as fertile ground for romantic-comedy mayhem. Besides more obvious examples such as the matchless Four Weddings and a Funeral and recent Gallic contender, the excellent C'est la Vie!, even cinema-of-cruelty auteur Lars Von Trier got in on the act with the enjoyably calamitous Melancholia. In the search for a new instalment to the wedding comedy genre, Netflix throws money at the task and comes out with something that while fully looking the part and equipped with a fetching cast and lush setting, cannot stake out its own identity like those aforementioned classics. Making his directorial debut, screenwriter Dean Craig borrows liberally from Four Weddings' blueprint. Sam Claffin plays Jack, brother of bride Hayley (Poldark's Eleanor Tomlinson). He is essentially the Hugh Grant-ish protagonist; nice, posh, excruciatingly hesitant and, naturally, unlucky in love. Besides the duty of walking his sister down the aisle at her lavish Italian ceremony, he assumes the responsibility of fixer when chaotic variables arise. The main one is the crashing of the wedding by an ex-lover of Hayley's who is not of sound mind, shall we say. A hair-brained idea to spike the interloper's Champagne with a sedative - a plot turn that drags things into irretrievably cartoonish waters - goes predictably askew. Keeping Jack on his toes is acrimonious ex-girlfriend Amanda (Freida Pinto) and will-they-won't-they American beauty Dina (Olivia Munn). And then there is the sidebar of "zany" types who seem ignorant of normal social cues and decorum. This ensemble includes Kildare comedienne-turned-actress Aisling Bea and fellow stand-up Tim Key. Even they struggle to get the laughter fully motoring given what they have to work with. Added to all this is a bizarre plot device whereby the dynamic of a table setting is rearranged to show how different it could all have been if so-and-so hadn't sat next to what's-her-face. A breezy and pretty diversion, for sure, but this is just not really funny enough where it needs to be. Hilary A White Tigertail Cert PG, on Netflix now Video of the Day To describe the emotional expression in Taiwanese-American drama Tigertail as understated is an understatement. This is almost by necessity in this quietly affecting story of an older man now living the effects of his locked-away emotions. Alan Yang writes and directs a thoughtful and thought-provoking story about living with the choices we make. Growing up in rural Taiwan, Grover is repeatedly told, as his mother was, that crying solves nothing. As a young man in the 1970s, (Lee Hong-Chi) he is free and fun-loving, happy to be reunited in the city with his mother (Kuei-Mei Yang) and he falls in love with his childhood friend, Peijing. But Grover has always wanted to go to America and takes a chance to do so, although it means leaving Peijing and marrying Zhenzhen (Kunjue Li) a woman he doesnt love. Forty years later, after the death of his mother in Taiwan, Grover (Tzi Ma) is divorced and his relationship with his daughter Angela (Christine Ko) is strained. But maybe there is distance because they are alike. The story goes back and forth between three time periods all centering round Grover finally taking responsibility. It is understated and it will work best for people who feel an affinity with the sentiments that lie within. Aine OConnor Storm Boy Cert N/A, streaming now An older man sits in the back of a car dreaming of his youth. Going back and forth between past and present, director Shawn Seets Storm Boy (screenplay by Justin Monjo from the novella by Colin Thiele) unfolds into redemptive nostalgia, a male-bonding film with pelicans that despite being a bit too long makes a nice family film. In a debate over the future of their family business Mike (Geoffrey Rush) tells his story to his teenage granddaughter Maddie (Morgana Davies) and reconnects with his past. In flashbacks we see him as a lonely boy (Finn Little) on an isolated Australian beach with his hermetic father (Jai Courtney). Only when the boy makes a friend in Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson) and rescues some baby pelicans, does his lonely heart open. The story has been updated with an environmental element, it is about 20 minutes too long and theres no real drama, but children who love animal films should especially enjoy it. Aine O'Connor Trolls World Tour Cert G, available on-demand Some are saying the success of Trolls World Tour will be an indicator as to how a mooted paradigm of on-demand cinema might fare in this strange new world. Given the tight spaces families are forced to live in these days, however, all that matters today is if it can make bored youngsters sit still for 90 minutes. On that front, this fizzy jamboree works. With its all-star voice cast (everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to George Clinton), elasticated animation, and relentless sugar-rush pace, there isnt a moment to reflect if this is time well-spent or not. Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) traverse a troll world split up into six musical tribes. The rockers are the bad guys, the classicals are posh, etc. They must unite everyone or bad stuff will happen. Got it? The plot is a mere device for breakneck medleys of chart hits with lyrics tweaked to serve the narrative. Best advised to stick this on and leave the little ones to it. Hilary A White Sulphur & White Cert 15, curzonhomecinema.com The enduring trauma of child abuse is laid bare in this bruised but redemptive real-life saga about a hotshot London trader who skirted complete implosion due to emotional scarring. David Tait (Game of Thrones Mark Stanley) grows up in South Africa, the son of a physically abusive father (Dougray Scott) and overwhelmed mother (Anna Friel). As a boy, he is abused by his store-owner boss but keeps the horror a secret. We flash forward and back between this nightmarish time out on the veldt and his high-flying days on the trading floor, where his success is mercurial. Outside the all-consuming frenzy of the markets, meanwhile, his personal life is a blizzard of hedonism and self-loathing, which, as ever, is at the expense of those closest to him. The promise of a new start with colleague Vanessa (Emily Beecham) is threatened by the demons David carries through life. These raise their ugly head just as the couple welcome a new baby into their leafy London homestead. While not a barrel of laughs, Susie Farrells sensitive screenplay has much to say about trauma, masculinity and the power of love. Hilary A White Leaders are quickly adjusting to a transformed work-environment. Suddenly, entire teams and organizations are working remotely under immense professional and personal stress due to the spread of coronavirus. Business leaders need to maximize their motivational ability in order to build trust with their employees and get their best performance. There's a reason leadership speakers often focus on relationships--they're foundational to achievement in business, especially during tumultuous times. It's useful to remember the remember the motivational adage of carrots and sticks, which dates back to the days of horse-drawn carriages. Drivers had to judge when to use rewards, or carrots, to compel horses to move, and when to punish them with a riding crop, or stick. All leaders must strike the balance need both effective incentives and thoughtful, constructive feedback to lead their teams. This doesn't just mean knowing when to use each, but also understanding which types of rewards and sanctions are most effective. Start with these guidelines: Connect personally Everyone mutually beneficial professional relationship is built on trust and respect. Employees will be more motivated if they feel you're invested in them, first as a person and second as an employee. Make sure to schedule regular, one-on-one time with your direct-reports. Show that you care personally by asking how they are adjusting to the current environment and get their thoughts on which projects they've most excited about tackling. If you have any performance concerns to address, you can address them in the context of a personal connection, rather than as an absent boss scolding a fearful employee. Every employee is currently facing more isolation than usual, and most of them are at least somewhat worried about their future under this economic uncertainty. Personal connections make your team feel more secure. Use meaningful rewards Connecting personally with your employees not only will make your employees more engaged, but it will also allow you to reward their performance with incentives that matter to them. Not only does giving personally tailored incentives have a bigger impact with the recipient, but it also will show other employees you're willing to go the extra mile to reward top performers. At our company, we run a dream-granting campaign where we ask our employees to submit their most important goals and choose 10 to 20 that we help fulfill, announcing the recipients at our annual AP Summit. In the past, we've given employees seeking financial security meetings with a financial planner, helped an employee travel to Greece to visit her grandmother, and even hired an investigator to help and employee find her long lost brother. There's no one-size-fits-all incentive that will resonate with everybody in your organization equally. Instead, find what will bring the most impact to the employee you want to reward, and choose that option. Be clear about performance issues You'll certainly have employees for whom potential rewards aren't enough to motivate them. Whether these employees are disengaged, or trying their best but not performing well, the number one rule is to address problems clearly and proactively. First, it's most crucial to address any performance issues immediately as they occur. If your employee makes a significant mistake or misses a crucial deadline, don't just save those topics for an eventual performance review--bring them up in your next one-on-one meeting before the drop in performance becomes too entrenched to fix. When the conversation takes place, be clear, empathetic and direct. Explain your expectations, and identify where the worker is falling short. Ask the employee if there is an external factor that is causing their performance to slip--it could be a result of a personal challenge you're unaware of, or even that the employee is disengaged with their portfolio and wants to do something different. While you shouldn't abruptly spring consequences on an employee, be clear about what steps you'll need to take if performance doesn't improve. Especially in the current economic environment, when workers are on high alert, they'll appreciate the transparency and directness. Africans living in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou say they have been evicted from their apartments and refused entry to restaurants as part of a xenophobic campaign against black people that is ostensibly aimed at curbing the transmission of coronavirus. Other black residents in a part of the city known as "Little Africa" are being forced to remain inside their apartments - even if they have not traveled anywhere that would warrant quarantine - and required to submit to coronavirus tests. The Chinese authorities' actions triggered protests from African governments - an embarrassment for Beijing as it seeks to woo African states with promises of loans and investment - and prompted U.S. diplomats over the weekend to warn African Americans to avoid the Guangzhou area. "People are not happy because they're being forced out of their apartments and into hotels where they have to pay [$30] a night for 28 days," said Maximus Ogbonna, the president of a Nigerian community group in Guangzhou. Ogbonna is in quarantine - for a second time - in his apartment, with a camera installed over the door so police can monitor him. He completed a 14-day quarantine in March after returning from Nigeria but was told by local officials on April 8 that he had to do another 14 days in isolation, although he had tested negative for the virus and had not traveled elsewhere. The focus on African residents comes amid broader restrictions on foreigners in China as officials, having curtailed the coronavirus outbreak that began in the central city of Wuhan in November, grow concerned about a second wave of infections from abroad. China last month banned entry to all foreigners, although some 90 percent of new cases had been Chinese citizens returning from places such as Italy, Iran and the United States. Among the 98 new infections from abroad reported Monday, all but a few were Chinese nationals arriving from Russia. In Guangdong province, of which Guangzhou is the capital, 183 people have returned from abroad with the virus since it began spreading outside China. Twenty-two were from Africa, according to official figures. Some 30,000 foreigners live in Guangzhou, including about 4,500 Africans. The Chinese government appears conscious of the need to be acting against a second wave, analysts say, and foreigners are an easy target. Residents in Beijing and Shanghai have reported incidents of bars and restaurants refusing entry to foreigners. But in Guangzhou, home to the largest African diaspora in Asia, it appears to be wider and more systematic. Photos and videos posted on social media over the weekend showed Africans sleeping on sidewalks or waiting under shop awnings after being ordered out of their apartments and hotel rooms. Others showed Nigerian diplomats delivering food in the pouring rain to evicted compatriots, and Chinese police in riot gear herding African men down a street. One widely shared video showed a McDonald's employee holding a sign stating that "from now on black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant." "If this is about the virus, then why aren't all foreigners being treated the same?" Ogbonna said. A McDonald's China spokeswoman confirmed that black people were refused entry to a Guangzhou restaurant on Saturday evening. "McDonald's China apologizes unreservedly to the individual and our customers," said the spokeswoman, Regina Hui, adding that the restaurant had been ordered to stop such actions. These incidents prompted the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou to warn African Americans about discrimination. Police had ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, it wrote in an advisory to Americans in China. Local officials were implementing mandatory coronavirus tests followed by mandatory self-quarantine "for anyone with 'African contacts,' regardless of recent travel history or previous quarantine completion," the consulate wrote. Recent developments appear to have inflamed anti-foreigner sentiment in China. Five Nigerians reportedly tested positive in Guangzhou last week and, according to Chinese state media, they broke their quarantine and infected the owner of a local restaurant and his eight-year-old daughter. A Nigerian man who tested positive for coronavirus after arriving in Guangzhou was accused of assaulting a nurse while trying to escape from quarantine at a hospital. Governments across Africa, as well as the African Union, have been summoning Chinese ambassadors for remonstrations about the treatment of their citizens. "As a government, we will not allow Chinese or other nationals to be maltreated just as we will not allow Nigerians to be maltreated in other countries," the speaker of Nigeria's House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, wrote on Twitter after complaining to the Chinese ambassador in Abuja, Zhou Pingjian. Ghana's Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, condemned the "ill-treatment and racial discrimination" against Ghanaians and other Africans in China. In Beijing, Chinese officials said that the actions were motivated by concern for "the life and health of foreign nationals in China." "We treat all foreigners in China equally and we reject discrimination," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Monday. "In response to the African side's concerns regarding their citizens in Guangdong, provincial authorities have rolled out new measures and we believe that by working together, we can resolve this properly." While Zhao talked about China and Africa as "brothers and friends," this view is not shared by many in Africa. "Kenya and the rest of Africa feel deeply betrayed by China," the country's Daily Nation newspaper wrote in an editorial, saying that Africa supported China during the coronavirus outbreak yet Chinese people had "turned against Africans in their midst." "This is the height of treachery and defies social relations and human rights, let alone international protocols. It is racist and objectionable," the paper wrote. China's ruling Communist Party has been courting African nations as part of its global effort to win political influence and commercial contracts. In addition to promoting its Belt and Road infrastructure projects on the continent, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced $60 billion in aid and loans for Africa during a summit in Beijing in 2018. Hit by the coronavirus outbreak, African nations are now pushing China to forgive some of the debt they have built up in recent decades. Beijing is likely to endorse a temporary freeze on debt payments by African countries as part of an expected agreement by the Group of 20 major economies this week, Reuters reported Monday. CORTLANDT, N.Y. Some nurses at a New York hospital who had just been lauded for their work during the coronavirus pandemic ended their stress-filled overnight shifts to find their tires had been slashed while they worked. New York state police reported that the tires of 22 vehicles were found slashed Friday morning outside New York-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital in Cortlandt. Daniel R. Hall, 29, was arrested on charges including criminal mischief and possession of a controlled substance. Police said he had a small amount of PCP when he was arrested. Hall is due in court May 18. It's not clear whether he has an attorney who can speak for him. Hospital officials said they would pay for the damage. We were shocked to hear of this incident, especially at this time when our employees are working tirelessly and courageously" through the COVID-19 pandemic, the officials said in a statement to the Journal News. Before the tires were slashed, dozens of police officers and firefighters had gathered outside the hospital Thursday night to applaud the health care workers, who like their colleagues across New York state have been treating patients stricken by the coronavirus, the newspaper reported. What our hospital is focusing on today is the beautiful tribute given by our first responders last night, the hospital statement said. Related Video: Click here to See Video >> A Colombian man who fled from a COVID-19 quarantine facility in Hoi An city, central Quang Nam province, on April 11, was found and returned to the facility on April 13. The passport of Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela from Colombia. He has escaped from a quarantine site for COVID-19 in Hoi An city (Photo courtesy of Quang Nam Police Department) Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela, 22, came to Hoi An in late March 2020 after travelling through many localities in Vietnam. The man, whose visa already expired on February 22, was taken to a quarantine facility in Hoi An. After he tested negative for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 for the first time, he was moved to another quarantine facility at a resort in the city on April 10, according to the provincial Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. However, Orjuela left the resort without approval at around 19:00 on April 11. He was found again by authorities in Quang Nams Nui Thanh district early on April 13 and returned to the same resort for quarantining as regulated by the health ministry. The provincial Department for Foreign Service is contacting relevant agencies of Colombia to implement citizen protection. Quang Nam has so far quarantined 6,116 people at health centres, hotels and homes, of whom 2,603 have completed their quarantine periods. Out of the 2,608 samples taken, 2,591 have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. Three COVID-19 patients (No 31, 33 and 57) found in the province have already been released from hospital after treatment and quarantine. Earlier, an American woman also fled from a hospital in the central city of Da Nang on March 30. She was then captured by local police and later tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. Colombian flees isolation area in Hoi An A Colombian man has left a quarantine area in Hoi An without being given the all clear, the COVID-19 steering committee said on Sunday. As questions mount why the US didn't act sooner to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the White House's infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci has confirmed there was "a lot of push back" against proposals to shut the US down in the third week of February. The US has recorded more than 21,000 deaths and more than half a million cases of infection - more than any country in the world. Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at a briefing last month with President Donald Trump. Credit:AP The New York Times reported on Saturday that President Donald Trump ignored advice to recommend strict social distancing in late February because of the damage it would do to the US economy. Fauci told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, local time, that lives could have been saved if aggressive social distancing had been adopted earlier, instead of in mid-March, when the President finally agreed to the measures. Portland Public Schools in Oregon will pay $410,000 to a former employee who said she was fired for raising red flags over a lack of safety for seventh-graders working with dangerous equipment including band saws and nail guns. The Portland school board unanimously approved the settlement last week, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Only $60,000 of that settlement will be covered by the districts insurance while the rest will come from the general fund, district spokeswoman Karen Werstein said. Marie Tyvoll sued the district for $930,000 in 2018, alleging she was fired for being a whistleblower. Tyvoll was hired in 2016 and ran a program which allowed students to spend time at off-site career experiences including the ReBuilding Center,a local nonprofit. Over the next year, Tyvoll said she and Joe Crelier, the school districts director of risk management, saw students at the ReBuilding Center wearing loose clothing around band saws and drill presses, putting their fingers too close to saw blades and a lack of ReBuilding Center supervision. Tyvoll said she and Crelier intervened when they witnessed unsafe behavior. She and Crelier submitted their concerns to various district officials. Tyvoll claimed officials told her to stop documenting those concerns. In November 2017, she suggested Jackson Middle School Principal Kevin Crotchett might wish to choose an alternative job site, given her concerns. Crotchett agreed. The next day, Tyvoll said, she was placed on administrative leave for insubordination. District officials called her claims of unsafe woodshop practices unsubstantiated. She appealed the decision and was fired. The district does not have a current contract with the ReBuilding Center. While we are settling this case, we stand by denial of the allegations in the complaint and other court documents, Werstein said. Tyvolls settlement is among the largest the district has paid out in recent years. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Education Oregon Funding NEW YORK, NY (April 13, 2020)--Researchers from Columbia University have launched CovidWatcher, an app that surveys users about their exposure to the new coronavirus, symptoms, access to medical care, and impact on daily life. The data will be used to track the spread of the coronavirus in New York City, giving citizens real-time information about hot spots and enabling health care officials to deploy resources where needed most. The app takes a citizen-science approach to filling in some critical gaps in our knowledge of COVID-19 including: At what point do mild cases start to become more severe? Do specific medications like ibuprofen and estrogen therapy prolong or protect against symptoms? How do other medical conditions affect the progression of symptoms? "We know that certain groups, like the elderly and those with preexisting conditions, are at greater risk, but we don't know much about those with mild symptoms who are self-isolating at home," says infectious disease physician Jason Zucker, MD, a co-leader of the project. "The app will allow us to zoom in on these populations so we can figure out how to better serve them going forward." The data collected through the app will help guide decisions about how to organize the city's response during the pandemic: What are the obstacles to social distancing that New Yorkers experience? Which neighborhoods are becoming the next hot spots? When the first wave of the pandemic subsides, what are the patterns of recurrence of symptoms throughout the city? How is the pandemic affecting the emotional well-being of New Yorkers? "We're asking the citizens of New York City to become scientists and join our team by using the app to report their symptoms, daily activities, and concerns. In return, we will give them insights about the impact of the pandemic on the city," says Noemie Elhadad, PhD, biomedical informatics expert at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and project leader. CovidWatcher differs from other coronavirus apps and trackers because it encourages them to update their status daily or weekly, providing critical information as the pandemic continues to evolve. The app also includes surveys on concerns about education, access to resources, transportation, and mental health. The app asks users to provide information about their *location, symptoms, and other top concerns. For users with certain fitness devices, the app can capture users' steps, heart rate, and body temperature. CovidWatcher offers web-based surveys for those who do not have the app. Surveys are anonymous and offered in multiple languages. Data collected by CovidWatcher will be used to construct interactive visualizations in real time, mapped onto census tracts in New York City and accessed via the CovidWatcher website. Infectious disease experts at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and public health officials can use the visualizations to monitor trends and plan accordingly. Ester Fuchs, urban and social policy expert at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and co-investigator on the project, is working with community organizations that represent the city's high-risk and underserved populations to ensure that the data are reliable and inclusive. This will enable city officials, policy makers, and medical centers to better coordinate their response during and immediately after the pandemic. *The app employs several measures to protect user privacy, including a geofence that provides a rough estimate of the user's location and determines if a person is within 200 meters of their home location or has traveled outside the 200-meter perimeter. ### The CovidWatcher Principal Investigators: Noemie Elhadad, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and member, Columbia University Data Science Institute Olena Mamykina, PhD, Florence Irving Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and member, Columbia University Data Science Institute Nicholas Tatonetti, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics in systems biology and medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and member, Columbia University Data Science Institute Jason Zucker, MD, instructor in medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians Co-Investigators: Suzanne Bakken, PhD, RN, Alumni Professor, Columbia University School of Nursing, and professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Ester Fuchs, professor of public affairs and political science and director of the urban and social policy program at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, and member, Columbia University Data Science Institute Columbia University Irving Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Irving Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cuimc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org. PR-Inside.com: 2020-04-13 15:00:28 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 505 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 SANTA ANA, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / Allied Universal, a leading security and facility services company in North America, is seeking to hire more than 30,000 security professionals and administrative staff to fill positions located throughout the nation over the next two months. In spite of the uncertainty that COVID-19 has caused, there are still many industries, such as security services, that are currently hiring to fill essential roles.Allied Universal is offering regular and temporary, full-time and part-time opportunities, and these open positions include security professionals, client and account managers, site supervisors, and other functional roles within human resources, sales, finance and IT."Our clients, and the public at large, rely on us to keep our communities and businesses safe and secure especially during these challenging times," said Steve Jones, Chairman and CEO of Allied Universal. "Our security professionals play a pivotal part ensuring facilities can continue business as usual and other businesses that had to close, can rest assured that their assets will remain protected." Allied Universal employs a virtual interview process where applicants can complete the company's online application from the comfort of their home through highly advanced video interviewing technology. The company is looking for individuals with superior customer services skills, who are dependable and trustworthy. Someone with security experience is always a plus but not mandatory.For full time positions, company benefits include medical and dental coverage, life insurance, 401(k), holidays and more. Allied Universal is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce."Our #1 priority is to keep our employees safe and healthy in the workplace," said Jones. "We have a dedicated safety team constantly monitoring all COVID-19 developments ensuring we continuously educate our employees to understand and follow the CDC guidelines." Allied Universal offers careers and long-term growth in the thriving security industry. The company has countless examples of individuals that began their career as a security professional and today are in senior leadership positions.Applicants are encouraged to apply online anytime at this link: https://jobs.aus.com/ About Allied UniversalAllied Universal, a leading security and facility services company in North America with more than 235,000 employees and revenues over $8.4 billion, provides unparalleled security services and technology solutions. With offices located throughout the nation as well as internationally (Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom), Allied Universal is responsible for protecting client sites covering multiple specialty sectors such as higher education, healthcare, retail, commercial real estate, government and corporate campuses, etc. Supported by vast experience gained from being in business for over 60 years, Allied Universal provides proactive security services and cutting-edge smart technology to deliver evolving, tailored solutions that allow clients to focus on their core business. Through world-class customer service, highly advanced systems and cohesive technology solutionsAllied Universal is There for you. For more information, please visit www.aus.com Media Contacts:Vanessa Showalter, Allied Universal/PR Manager Phone: 714-619-9744 Email: Vanessa.Showalter@aus.com Nancy Thompson, Vorticom Public Relations Phone: 212-532-2208 Email: nancyt@ vorticom.com SOURCE: Allied Universal This is the moment inmates set fire to their prison to protest against the lack of precautions against coronavirus. The riot took place at Neiva prison in Rivera in the Huila Department in south-eastern Colombia and reportedly saw 400 inmates involved. The footage shows a prisoner shouting as he holds onto the metal bars while a fire can be seen blazing in the courtyard of the prison. Neiva prison inmates rioted in protest of the lack of precautions against coronavirus put in place for prison workers entering the facilities According to local media, 400 prisoners started the riot to protest against the cut of the water supply and prison workers not taking precautions to stop the spread of coronavirus when entering into facilities. The prisoners reportedly started a hunger strike at the same time as burning mattresses from some of the prison cells. Reports state the prisoners also demand the Colombian government enact a decree announced some days ago promising to release some prisoners and they authorise prison visits. Inmates started a hunger strike and burnt mattresses after the cut of their water supply, with more than 400 prisoners reportedly involved in the riot The National Penitentiary and Prison Institute stopped the riot with the help of the police and firefighters, local media reported. No injuries have been reported. This comes after a deadly riot broke out in La Modelo prison in Colombia's capital leaving 23 inmates dead last month, as tensions rise over the spread of the coronavirus. Justice Minister Margarita Cabello described the events at the La Modelo prison in Bogota as an attempted prison escape. But advocates for La Modelo inmates said officials had cracked down on inmates staging a peaceful protest over conditions they feared would exacerbate infections with the virus. Coronavirus fears continue to rise as there are 2,776 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Colombia, with 109 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Authorities did not provide a detailed account of how the inmates died, saying only that seven jail workers had also been injured, two critically. The attorney general's office, among other institutions, found inmates have trouble accessing basic services like clean water. 'Colombia should take urgent action to mitigate the risks in the jails,' said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch. According to the latest data from the Johns Hopkins University, there have been 2,776 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Colombia, with 109 deaths. This simulation depicts the interstellar object 'Oumuamua as a mass of fragments forced into an elongated shape by stellar tidal forces. Our solar system's first known interstellar visitor may have a very violent origin story. The mysterious object 'Oumuamua , which was spotted zooming through the inner solar system in October 2017, is probably a fragment of a larger body that was torn apart by gravitational forces during a close flyby of its native star, a new study suggests. This "tidal fragmentation scenario not only provides a way to form one single 'Oumuamua but also accounts for the vast population of asteroid-like interstellar objects," lead author Yun Zhang, of the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement. Related: 'Oumuamua: Our 1st interstellar visitor explained in photos The hypothesis explains 'Oumuamua's weirdness as well, according to Zhang and study co-author Douglas Lin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. That weirdness is extreme and multilayered. For example, 'Oumuamua is highly elongated, like a big space cigar (and may be somewhat flattened as well). Astronomers had never before seen a cosmic object with that shape. In addition, 'Oumuamua displayed "non-gravitational acceleration" during its trek through our neighborhood motion that can't be attributed to tugs by the sun, Jupiter or other big bodies. Such motion can be caused by cometary outgassing, which pushes an object this way and that like thrusters on a spacecraft. Image 1 of 2 An artist's illustration of the evolution of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua, whose weird, elongated shape may have come from tidal forces. (Image credit: YU Jingchuan from Beijing Planetarium) Image 2 of 2 This illustration depicts the stellar tidal disruption process that may have changed the interstellar object 'Oumuamua into a strange, elongated shape. (Image credit: ZHANG Yun) But 'Oumuamua displayed no signs of outgassing no visible tail or coma even though most astronomers thought the interloper was likely to be a comet . (Comets tend to reside far from their host stars and are therefore easier to boot into interstellar space.) Finally, detecting 'Oumuamua at all is odd, and quite informative. Considering how vast space is, how long it takes to cross interstellar gulfs and how half-hearted our hunt for such bodies has been thus far, stumbling onto even a single 'Oumuamua implies a truly huge population of similar objects. "On average, each planetary system should eject in total about 100 trillion objects like 'Oumuamua," Zhang said. This combination of characteristics has spurred some scientists most prominently, Avi Loeb, who chairs Harvard University's astronomy department to propose that 'Oumuamua might be an alien spacecraft . The available data are consistent with a light-sailing probe, perhaps a defunct one, Loeb has said, stressing that researchers should at least be open-minded about this possibility. Related: Could life on Earth have come from another star system? The new study, however, posits a natural explanation. Zhang and Lin used computer simulations to investigate how objects are affected by flybys of their native stars. This modeling work revealed that very close encounters can rip these bodies into elongated fragments, which are then ejected into interstellar space. Extreme heating during the flyby and the cooling that follows it causes these fragments to develop a surface crust, which helps support and maintain their odd shape, the results further indicate. "Heat diffusion during the stellar tidal disruption process also consumes large amounts of volatiles, which not only explains 'Oumuamuas [reddish] surface colors and the absence of visible coma but also elucidates the inferred dryness of the interstellar population," Zhang said. ("Volatiles" are elements and compounds that are easily lost to space, such as water.) Nevertheless, some high-sublimation-temperature volatiles buried under the surface, like water ice, can remain in a condensed form," he added. These hidden volatiles could be "activated" during encounters with other stars like our sun, causing outgassing and non-gravitational acceleration, the researchers said. The parent bodies of such interstellar objects are a diverse lot, suggests the new study, which was published online today (April 13) in the journal Nature Astronomy . The ejected fragments could be pieces of long-period comets , planetary building bodies or even "super-Earth" planets that strayed too close to their stars. (And those stars don't necessarily need to be alive; superdense stellar corpses known as white dwarfs could do the required disruption as well.) "These interstellar objects could provide critical clues about how planetary systems form and evolve, Zhang said. 'Oumuamua is not the only interstellar visitor we know about. In August 2019, astronomers spotted a second interloper, known as Comet Borisov (and it is quite clearly a comet). And they should start seeing many more such objects soon, especially after the Vera C. Rubin Observatory comes online in the mountains of Chile. "'Oumuamua is just the tip of the iceberg," Lin said in the same statement. Studying many more such objects may be our best bet to understand 'Oumuamua, which has long since sped out of sight into the dark depths of the outer solar system. (That said, sending a probe out to rendezvous with 'Oumuamua is not out of the question .) "As future interstellar objects are discovered in coming years, it will be very interesting to see if any exhibit 'Oumuamua-like properties," U.S. Naval Academy astronomer Matthew Knight, co-leader of the Oumuamua International Space Science Institute team, said in the same statement. "If so, it may indicate that the processes described in this study are widespread," added Knight, who was not involved in the new study. Mike Wall is the author of " Out There " (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate ), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook . Defendants in theater embezzlement case contest against trial during pandemic RAPSI, Kirill Ryabchikov 12:37 13/04/2020 MOSCOW, April 13 (RAPSI) Defendants in the Seventh Studio embezzlement case involving the Gogol Center theater director Kirill Serebrennikov have argued against hearings during the coronavirus outbreak, lawyer Irina Poverinova has told RAPSI. The defendants believe it is not necessary to hold hearings during the epidemic. Moreover, according to legislation, only urgent cases are to be considered at this period, the attorney has said. The next hearing is scheduled for April 20. Earlier, Moscows Meshchansky District Court decided that the trial is to be conducted in the ordinary course, without the use of videoconference, despite the quarantine restrictions. In late 2019, the court commissioned the third complex financial and economic, and art valuation examination. A previous evaluation in 2018 failed to establish a fact of embezzlement. Defendants in the case along with Serebrennikov are producer Alexey Malobrodsky, ex-head of Seventh Studio stage company Yury Itin, ex-official of Russias Culture Ministry and current director of the Russian Academic Youth Theater Sophia Apfelbaum. Ex-chief accountant of Seventh Studio Nina Maslyayava is tried separately. She admitted guilt in full. Other defendants pleaded not guilty calling charges against them pointless and absurd. Moreover, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky lay the blame on Maslyayeva. One more defendant, producer Yekaterina Voronova has been put on the international wanted list and arrested in absentia. According to investigators, defendants in the case stole 133 of 214 million rubles ($3.3 million) of budget funds allocated to the Seventh Studio company in 2011-2014 for development and popularization of contemporary art in Russia as part of the project Platforma. Serebrennikov was arrested in late August 2017 and then placed under house arrest. In early November, Moscows Basmanny District Court seized assets belonging to Serebrennikov including apartment, car, and money in the amount of more than 360,000 rubles ($5,300), over 60,000, and $4,000. Investigators believe that he was an organizer of the budget money embezzlement. He allegedly created Seventh Studio stage company to actualize Platforma project for promotion of art and called alleged accomplices into the organization. It appears some Ghanaians still do not appreciate the effort of government especially the hard work of his Excellency the President of the Republic of Ghana Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo - Addo to ensure Ghana Limit And Stop The Importation Of The Virus; Contain Its Spread; Provide Adequate Care For The Sick; Limit The Impact Of The Virus On Social And Economic Life; And Inspire The Expansion Of Our Domestic Capability And Deepen Our Self-Reliance. Surprisingly, some Ghanaians seem not worried about the devastating nature of the COVID-19 disease which has brought the whole human activities including that of the world superpowers to a compulsory stand still either through total or partial lockdown of cities and villages. Even with automatic calls for observation of social distancing where ever we are, some Ghanaians are rather testing the pulse of front line security officers enforcing laws and the directive on the subject matter. Though I understand how humorous my people are I think this is not the time to ride at the back of comedy to pitch law-abiding Ghanaians against the forces in the frontline ensuring that the preventive measures are adhered to. I believe also that this is not the time for punching holes into the intervention by the government instead we must work with them and improve upon it. Those who feel aggrieved or think they are not getting their own share of the national cake should be concerned about their wellbeing. To me, using mostly unconnected videos and audios tapes to create the impression that human rights of people are being violated by the security forces in the name of fighting covid-19 is a misplaced priority now that the focus of the world which Ghanaians are not in isolation is on how right to health could be realized. Certainly, in times like this some human rights to freedom of movement, not to be tortured, freedom of association and right in work may be affected. That is not to say someone is violating the others rights. We must admit that where one right ends marks the beginning of the others hence our right to the movement should not affect others' right to health as it is the Case in these difficult moments. It is important therefore to recognize that one needs to live hence the right to health so we can enjoy all other rights. Therefore lets us at this time of covid-19 work towards our right to health by supporting our frontline health officials and security agencies through observation of social distancing without giving many problems to ourselves and the security agencies especially where they have told us that their approach to the operation COVID-19 was humanitarian. It must also be understood that mechanism for the promotion of human rights includes laws and legalities, media and all arms of government especially the executive, so, therefore, lets all now ensure our right to health by allowing the executive to at least enforce social distancing to fight COVID-19. It is in view of this that I urge Ghanaians to stay at home for government to engage the 14-day worldwide pandemic to pave way for our normal life. All must now speak common language to support government intervention to prevent covid-19. First I think Ghanaians should stop trying to push themselves to the streets and stay at home as evidence abounds that prevention of COVID-19 with lockdown and social distancing has resumed daily activity of some cities to normalcy including the Chinese city of Wuhan after three months. Therefore we must put a stop to the controversy about the intervention by the president for health worker to enjoy tax free on their salary with addition 50% pay increase to all from line health workers as if not addressed now may linger on even after the elimination of the disease . Are the health officials telling us that, their first time of hearing the word frontline to qualify health workers was only after the announcement of the intervention? If yes I would be surprised at that as all health institutions world over knows their frontliners including a definition of who critical care persons are. Does the controversy emanate from the normal greediness couple with corrupt practices making it difficult for the health directorate to define who front line health workers are? Or it is because of the fear that other people in the health institution may not be captured? We must know that COVID-19 wouldnt wait for us to finish our struggle to define who a front line worker to continue its infecting galore. In as much as I commend our health officials for their boldness in handling the prevention of covid- 19 from increasing spread I urge them not to allow the intervention to overshadow their good work so far. They should stop the 10% Ghanaian calculation game and tell us who front line health workers are to ensure that the president's quest to end this COVID-19 attack is realized soon. Maybe after COVID-19, heath directorate must be under one umbrella to stop the so many associations ranging from a registered nurse, professional nurse, private nurse, public nurse, to medical doctors, pharmacists, lab technicians midwives, mortuary men just to mention but a few. They must deal with the perceived discrimination among them anytime they embark on their strikes to demand more money from the government. Another government intervention that I think shouldnt have generated any argument has to do with the presidents announcement of free water for all for the next three month directing Ghana Water Company Ltd and the Electricity Company of Ghana to ensure a stable supply of water and electricity during this period including the arrangement of public and privately-owned water tankers to ensure supply of water to all vulnerable communities. Yet, my People who hitherto had lived with the same water system in place for a fee demanded free electricity connection of water into their homes saying water isnt expensive as compared with electricity. Here again, I wondered if my people werent being greedy of their demands or they were just behaving like Oliver twist thinking the president should be father Christmas for the next three months? Thorough to our demands, Governments further announced the absorbing of the electricity bill for the poorest of the poor and 50% reduction for those on high consumption which I thought would have stopped the controversy at least from water producers and sellers. Yet the further argument is that pre-paid users will suffer so government should come clear, even after the explanation that the calculations would be done to ensure all get the intervention so announced by the presidents. Still, controversy is already on about the governments intervention for its citizens especially the vulnerable communities in the partial lockdown areas Greater Accra and Kasoa and Greater Kumasi and Obuasi to be delivered with dry food packages and hot meals by the Ministries of Gender, Children and Social Protection and Local Government and Rural Development, and the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), working with MMDCEs and the faith-based organizations on who is a vulnerable from some quarters including media even before the exercise survives it's first two days. Even there is a doubt about the involvement of NGOS, churches, and mosques who until covid- 19 food distribution exercise were held in high esteem based on their impartiality in feeding the poor in the street which in normal times was made up of some petty traders, beggars, shoeshine boys, Kayayei and truck pushers. I therefore need no economist, banker or a business man to tell me that a daunting task awaits us on deciding which experts to be assembled to disburse the Governments collaboration with the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Business & Trade Associations and selected Commercial and Rural Banks roll out of a soft loan scheme up to a total of six hundred million of cedis (GH600 million), for micro, small and medium scale businesses. The question is, what then we are doing to ourselves at the time we should rally our support behind the front liners to fight covid-19 as its being done elsewhere. We cant continue to arguer whiles the disease is spreading with its obvious adverse effect after its arrest and perpetual incarceration. Im saddened by this unwarranted development at a crucial time like this where Ghana needs our contribution from a united front and not what we can take from it or has for us. All we need to do to help mother Ghana is for once observe the health protocols announced including observation of social distancing in our markets and to stay at home. It's important we accept the call that we are not in normal times, therefore, the need to avoid further spread of the disease by supporting the government with our inventions such as the leg- pumping -running water machines by one of our own. as good citizens fighting a pandemic deadly as COVID-19, Lets try to avoid action and inactions which may be interpreted as uncooperative per the way we respond to government's intervention aimed at preventing covid-19. Hole punching in government approach, for now, should be the least to think of as countries, organizations, and individuals outside Ghana has already recognized the governments of Ghanas role in the fight against covid-19 as commendable. For once lets us fill the holes to save lifes and avoid some inherent attitudes that do not help the whole country but ourselves alone. David Fianko-Okyere [email protected] Bolgatanga-UER Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:48:25|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close KATHMANDU, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Many Nepali nationals took part in "Play the National Anthem" and clapping activity on Monday morning to express solidarity with the front-line workers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Residents in the capital city Kathmandu took to their terraces, balconies and windows with family members at 8 a.m. local time to sing national anthem followed by clapping. It was a special occasion for the Nepali nationals as Monday also marked the beginning of Nepali Year 2077 BS as per the lunar calendar. Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Sunday evening called on the public to participate in the campaign initiated by the organization "Global Compact Nepal". The activity aimed to encourage and extend respect to those on the frontline including doctors, nurses, security personnel, emergency service staff, delivery workers, cleaners, supermarket staff, and everyone else keeping Nepal safe and stocked at the time of the crisis. Many people including government officials, celebrities and individuals posted videos on their respective social media accounts showing support for the efforts of medical staff and others in fighting the COVID-19. "Let's start the New Year with happiness by protecting self from COVID-19 and protecting others," Anil Keshary Shah, CEO of Nabil Bank, said while sharing his national anthem video in Facebook. KP Timalsena, who runs an educational consultancy, sung national anthem along with his family members in the terrace at his home in Balaju. "We expressed our respect to the frontline workers and health professionals by singing and clapping. Hope we will soon win over this battle," he told Xinhua. In video clips posted by netizens, national anthem singing followed by clapping and cheers lasting for few minutes was heard from different residential buildings and major junctions across Kathmandu valley. Many security personnel also joined the activity from streets. In her special message on the occasion of New Year 2077, President Bidya Devi Bhandari wished for peace, prosperity, brotherhood and unity, overall development and progress of all Nepalis. The president stressed intensifying mutual cooperation, welfare, dedication and sacrifices at a time when people are struggling for their lives due to the COVID-19. Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun, Prime Minister Oli, Speaker of House of Representatives Agni Prasad Sapkota issued separate statements and expressed best wishes to all Nepalis at home and abroad, also wishing for victory over the COVID-19. In his message, PM Oli announced that he will not receive his salary until the COVID-19 crisis ends, and the salary will be deposited in the government fund established to handle the outbreak. The Himalayan country is in a nationwide lockdown since March 24 till April 15, including the halt of all domestic and international flights and closure of border points, to prevent the further spread of the virus. Nepal has recorded 12 cases of COVID-19 infection so far, including nine Nepali nationals and three Indian nationals. The first infected person has been recovered while others are under medication, according to the Ministry of Health and Population. BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) - A shooting broke out at a party in central California, sending six people to the hospital on Saturday and launching a search for four suspects, authorities said. The party, happening amid statewide stay-at-home orders intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, may have gone unnoticed until frantic witnesses called 911 shortly after midnight from an apartment complex in Bakersfield, Kern County Sheriff's Lt. Cesa Ollague said. "Unfortunately it came to a bad end," he said. Deputies who responded to the scene said the party was large, Ollague said, but he didn't know exactly how many people were in attendance. The victims, including one juvenile and five adults, suffered gunshot wounds but they were expected to survive, he said. Investigators found 94 shell cases and three live rounds at the scene. The partygoers reported seeing four men driving away in a white car, the lieutenant said, and investigators were trying to determine whether they attended the party or were participants of a drive-by shooting. Since March 19, California's social distancing order has banned nonessential gatherings of any number of people. The states 40 million residents are told to only leave their homes for "essential" reasons, such as to get medications, shop for groceries and supplies, care for family members and exercise outdoors. The state has more than 21,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and nearly 600 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On April 11, 2020, at 12:26 a.m., Kern County Sheriffs Office deputies responded to the 3500 block of Pioneer Drive in Bakersfield for multiple shots fired and several victims of a shooting. When deputies arrived, they discovered a large party had been occurring at this apartment complex prior to the shooting. A total of six (6) victims were shot and treated at a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The victims include a juvenile female and five adults (four females, one male). The shooting suspects were described as four black males driving a white sedan. No arrests have been made at this time, and the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is urged to call Kern County Sheriffs Office at 661-861-3110 or Secret Witness Line at 661-322-4040. Case# 2020-00053581 A DNALINK researcher conducts analysis with its coronavirus test kits. / Courtesy of DNALINK By Baek Byung-yeul DNALINK has been seeing soaring demand for its COVID-19 test kits overseas as many countries are scrambling to contain the rapidly spreading virus by increasing the number of tests, the biotech company said Monday. The Seoul-based company said it recently signed a deal to export 7 million COVID-19 test kits to Argentine pharmaceutical company Alfarma SRL, enabling the company to use its test kits for Argentinians. "We inked a contract with Alfarma SRL to supply two kinds of coronavirus test kits including 4 million real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing kits and 3 million rapid test kits," a company official said, Monday. DNALINK added the company is also negotiating with importers from many other countries in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. The company, which marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment this year, has conducted numerous kinds of genetic research projects in collaboration with both domestic and overseas researchers to help advance research for diseases such as cancer, dementia, Parkinson's disease and other chronic diseases. "DNALINK is taking part in the United States' National Institute of Health-supported whole-genome sequencing project to analyze genomic data of 4,000 Koreans to map features of Korean-specific diseases," the official said. Thanks to its technological capability, the company is seeing increasing demand for its test kits as the coronavirus is rapidly spreading across the world. "We already sent samples of our test kits to buyers from North, Central and South America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. We will be able to secure additional contracts for our test kits," the company said. The importance of having a sufficient number of COVID-19 test kits has become a top priority for all countries as it is important to conduct early diagnosis on as many people as possible in order to control the virus spread. As seen in DNALINK, Korean-made coronavirus test kits have been flying off shelves. The Korea In Vitro Diagnostics Association said Monday the export amount of Korean-made diagnosis kits in 2019 was $216.63 million, down 45 percent year-on-year, but the figure is soaring this year after the coronavirus outbreak. "After the virus outbreak, the export value of diagnosis kits was $17.8 million in January, an 18 percent increase compared with the same period in 2019. The February figure was increased by 50.7 percent to $22 million and the March figure was more than doubled, which was at $48.65 million, up 117.1 percent month-on-month," the association said. Even as state health officials tout the bending of the COVID-19 case curve as a result of good social distancing, Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine on Monday warned the state's battle with the virus is far from over. "We do not think we've hit the surge, or the peak, at this time," Levine said during the department's daily news conference. Levine said the state has been successful at bending the curve and it is seeing a plateau of new cases, but officials believe the surge is yet to come. Levine's comments come after drops and small rises of new daily cases over the last week, showing a pause in the exponential growth of COVID-19 in the state. On Monday, the Department of Health reported that there were 1,366 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the statewide total to 24,199. That's a little more than the 1,178 cases reported Sunday, but still down from Saturday's reported increase of 1,676 cases. The clearer picture may be with Tuesday's report, which will compile Monday's numbers following an Easter weekend. Whatever those numbers show, Levine warned residents to not get complacent about the disease. She urged residents to stick to Gov. Tom Wolf's stay-at-home order, and she backed Wolf's continued shutdown of non-life-sustaining businesses, despite protests from some in the GOP. As a push to reopen businesses grows across the state and the country, Levine unequivocally said "to do it now would be a mistake." She said that with the surge still projected to come, reopening businesses would "cost lives." She said Wolf had already been moderate in his shutdown order she had argued for something stricter and involving other types of businesses. But she said the closure of businesses is a necessity in keeping the disease from spreading beyond control. About 0.19% of Pennsylvania's population has tested positive for COVID-19, which is more than the United States average of 0.17%, but far less than New York's 0.97% of the population. Comparatively on a global scale, about 0.26% of Italy's population, 0.36% of Spain's population, and about 0.14% of France and Germany's populations have been infected by COVID-19. Locally, Cumberland County has 122 cases as of Monday, which equates to about 0.048% of its population. Lancaster County is the hardest hit of the region with 828 cases, which has affected 0.15% of that county's population. The largest number of cases in the state remains in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions, along with growing numbers in the Northeastern part of the state. With different parts of the state affected on an unequal basis, Levine said residents should expect any relief from the governor's shutdown order to also come in a piecemeal fashion. "It won't be one opening," she said. "We will be progressively opening up different businesses in different areas." Any such reopening of businesses will be paired with the department continuing to monitor cases of COVID-19 to ensure a second wave doesn't hit the state. While Levine did not give a timetable of when such openings would take place, she said the discussion will be had using factors such as the number of new cases, number of total cases, percentage of positive and negative tests. Reopening and restoring the economy will also be on the plate of a regional coalition involving Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island, Wolf announced Monday evening. The governors announced the creation of a multistate council that will work on getting people back to work. The group, which will be comprised of a health expert, economic expert and respective chief of staff from each state, is to work together to develop an integrated, regional framework to gradually lift the states' stay-at-home orders, while minimizing the risk of spreading the coronavirus. "While my administration continues to take critical steps to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, I also recognize that we must look ahead and take a measured, careful approach to prepare for the future while ensuring that we don't undo all of our efforts," Wolf said in a statement Monday. "Pennsylvania will work collaboratively with our partners both in state and in surrounding states to develop a comprehensive strategy that first focuses on health but also addresses the need to gradually restore our economy." Posted earlier on Cumberlink: The number of new COVID-19 cases was up slightly from Sunday's numbers, which could mean another rise in cases Tuesday, which has historically shown higher number of cases coming off the weekend. The Pennsylvania Department of Health on Monday reported that there are 1,366 additional COVID-19 cases in the state, bringing the statewide total to 24,199. These cases are mostly what were reported out by laboratories on Sunday, with the department collecting information through midnight Monday morning. Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine previously noted that Tuesday's reports with Monday's numbers tend to have higher numbers due to a lag time in reporting from labs. Along with the new positive cases, the department also reported 17 new deaths, bringing the state total to 524. COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise in Pennsylvania, and even though the daily increases are not exponential, now is not the time to become complacent, Levine said. We must continue to stay home to protect ourselves, our families, our community. If you must go out, please make as few trips as possible and wear a mask to protect not only yourself, but other people as well. We need all Pennsylvanians to continue to heed these efforts to protect our vulnerable Pennsylvanians, our health care workers and frontline responders. There are 105,593 patients who have tested negative to date. Locally, cases continue to creep upward, with Franklin County being the only county in the Midstate without a reported COVID-19-related death. Cumberland County rose by 12 cases to have 122 positive COVID-19 cases. The county has three deaths associated with the disease, with a new one having been reported on Saturday. All other counties reported increases, including Perry County, which inched up by one to 17 cases. Dauphin County rose from 229 cases to 240 cases of COVID-19, as well as another death bringing its total to four, while Franklin County rose only by two cases to 66, and Adams County rose from 48 to 56 cases. Lancaster and York counties remains the hardest hit, with Lancaster getting a reprieve with reporting no further deaths, but its cases did rise from 772 to 828 in one day. York County's cases rose from 307 to 331 in Monday's report from the DOH. Email Naomi Creason at ncreason@cumberlink.com or follow her on Twitter @SentinelCreason Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Grandmothers' recipes are as exciting as the stories they narrate. Whether it is an heirloom recipe or something completely new that's whipped by them, there's always something to look forward, and this is what the Great Big Story explores in its new short film - Learning to Cook From Grandmothers Around the World. Featuring grandmothers from as far as Japan, Lithuania to Peru, Portugal and Iowa, the heartwarming stories will leave you elated while you learn a new recipe. "At Great Big Story, we've eaten a lot of weird, wild (wonderful) foods. But nothing beats the taste of home. In August 2019, we put a call out to our YouTube community asking them to share theri favourite meals they cook with their grandmothers. We received over 600 responses. Here are a few of their stories," says a statement on the official website. Romas helps his grandma Biruta at the latter's house in Kaunas Romas who is from Kaunas in Lithuania says he is always happy to peel potatoes when he visits his grandma, Biruta. She makes his favourite dish cepelinai with the potatoes he has peeled. Bonnie, who is from Des Moines in Iowa, remembers the first dish she ever learnt to bake was an apple crisp. She is passing down this recipe to her grandson Jack. Stefano's favourite dish is his grandmother's signature spaghetti red sauce. Ana Maria, his grandmother who lives in Lima, Peru, whips up this sauce while her grandson helps grate carrots for it. Stefano watches his grandmother Ana Maria In Yamanashi in Japan, Shizuko cooks onishime and stewed beef and lotus for her grandchildren. While Aida, who lives in Lisbon in Portugal, cooks codfish and cornbread for her granddaughter Sofia, whenever the latter visits her. Stories such as these are part of the film that's streaming on the Great Big Story website. You not only get to know the stories behind these recipes, you could also try at making these at home with the step-by-step guide that's posted on the website. Watch the film and find the recipes here: https://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/learning-to-cook-from-grandmas?storylist_type=playlist&storylist_id=2291 JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel locked down mainly ultra-Orthodox Jewish areas of Jerusalem on Sunday to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus from the densely populated neighbourhoods where the infection rate is high. The entry and exit restrictions, enforced by police roadblocks, were imposed on the same day that a government order for the wearing of masks in public went into effect throughout the country. Residents of the restricted neighbourhoods in Jerusalem can still shop close to home for essentials but synagogues have been closed to try to stem infections, an edict in force across Israel. JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel locked down mainly ultra-Orthodox Jewish areas of Jerusalem on Sunday to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus from the densely populated neighbourhoods where the infection rate is high. The entry and exit restrictions, enforced by police roadblocks, were imposed on the same day that a government order for the wearing of masks in public went into effect throughout the country. Residents of the restricted neighbourhoods in Jerusalem can still shop close to home for essentials but synagogues have been closed to try to stem infections, an edict in force across Israel. The neighbourhoods are home to large families living in close quarters. Compliance with social-distancing guidelines has been spotty. Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox town of 200,000 near Tel Aviv, was declared a restricted zone on April 2 and police have limited access to the area. Israel has reported 10,878 confirmed coronavirus cases and 103 deaths. Palestinian officials listed 268 cases in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, with two fatalities. In the West Bank, Palestinian Finance Minister Shukri Bishara said the Palestinian Authority (PA) asked Israel to help it grapple with economic hardship caused by the coronavirus crisis. Bishara said he requested Israel transfer a minimum of 500 million shekels ($140 million) a month to the PA as part of tax revenues that Israeli authorities collect on behalf of the Palestinians. In all, Israel usually collects some 700 million shekels ($195 million) a month, in return for a 3% commission, in tax revenues for the PA from imports that arrive via Israeli ports. But the PA expects such revenues to decline by more than 50% due to reduced trade during the coronavirus crisis. "If Israel agrees to pay us 500 million shekels a month, we can add another 200 million shekels ($56 million) monthly aid from donor countries, in addition to 100 million shekels ($28 million) from local revenues," Bishara told reporters via a video link. "That would make us 200 million shekels short (of normal figure), a sum we can make up for through taking (bank) loans," he said. "That should keep us going that way for six months." He said there was no immediate official word from Israel on the request but indications were positive. (This story corrects name of Palestinian finance minister, paragraph 7.) (Reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/13/2020 ADVERTISEMENT LISA AND USMAN ADVERTISEMENT GEOFFREY AND VARYA ADVERTISEMENT ED AND ROSE ADVERTISEMENT STEPHANIE AND ERIKA ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT DAVID AND LANA ADVERTISEMENT AVERY AND ASH DARCEY AND TOM ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. : Before the 90 Days featured Geoffrey Paschel admitting to Varya Malina that he used to be a drug dealer, Lisa Hamme not receiving Usman Umar 's mother's approval, David Murphey searching for Lana in her hometown, Stephanie Matto and Erika Owens fighting again, and Tom Brooks feeling regret over how he had treated Darcey Silva during Sunday night's Season 4 episode on TLC.Like : Before the 90 Days' first three seasons, the fourth season follows Americans who started online romantic relationships with overseas partners as they travel overseas hoping to get engaged to someone they've never met in person and then begin the K-1 Visa immigration process.Along the way, they'll encounter challenges that include large age gaps, language barriers, cultural issues, and questionable pasts.The couples who appeared on Episode 8 of : Before the 90 Days' fourth season were Darcey, a 45-year-old from Middletown, CT, and Tom, a 39-year-old from Nottingham, United Kingdom; Ed Brown , a 54-year-old San Diego, CA, and Rosemarie Vega , a 23-year-old from the Philippines; Lisa, a 52-year-old from York, PA, and Usman "SojaBoy," a 30-year-old from Nigeria; Avery Warner , a 32-year-old from Seattle, WA, and Ash Naeck , a 38-year-old from Australia; Stephanie, a 29-year-old from Yonkers, NY, and Erika, a 24 year-old from Australia; Geoffrey, a 41-year-old from Knoxville, TN, and Varya, a 30-year-old from Russia; and David, a 60-year-old from Las Vegas, NV.Yolanda, a 51-year-old from Las Vegas, NV, did not appear in the episode. And viewers have yet to discover whether Yolanda's boyfriend Williams, a 40-year-old from England, and David's girlfriend Lana, a 27-year-old from Ukraine, actually exist.Below is what was shown on the latest episode of : Before the 90 Days.Lisa and Usman were recovering from a huge fight, and Lisa was proud of how she and her fiance were able to talk through their issues.It then became time for Lisa to meet Usman's mother, but first, she stopped to buy a goat as a sign of respect for Usman's mother. Lisa hoped gifting a goat would help her in receiving a blessing from Usman's mother, who was apparently going to struggle accepting her son getting married to a Christian white woman from the United States.Usman said his mother was going to use the goat for a while but then kill it for its meat.Usman bought Lisa traditional Nigerian attire called Hausa to wear for her meeting with his mother. Usman acknowledged the deck was stacked against him since Lisa is a white, older woman who's from America, but he hoped for the best and maintained optimism.Usman's mother apparently believed Lisa was bringing her son to the United States to be a slave, so Lisa said she needed to impress Usman's mother and make her believe that Lisa truly loved her son and wanted to be with him forever.Lisa needed Usman's mother's blessing in order to get married, so she was nervous and anxious.Lisa then finally met Usman's mother and his elders, and they were shocked to see how old Lisa was. Usman told his mother that Lisa was a doctor in America although she's a hospice caregiver.Usman's mother ideally wanted him to marry a local Muslim woman, but Usman assured his mother that Lisa loved him and they wanted to get married. Usman revealed his intentions to move to America, and his mother shook her head, "No."Usman's mother excused herself from the conversation, and Usman said her walking away was one of the worst signs that she didn't approve of his relationship."I disagree with his choice to marry Lisa. That's why I left the gathering earlier. It scares me because Lisa is obviously much older and also that she will take him abroad," Lisa's mother told the cameras."I'm afraid of how they will treat him since the whites don't like the blacks over there."At this point, Lisa and Usman couldn't get married, and Lisa wished Usman had better prepared himself for this conversation with his mother.Lisa was very frustrated and noted, "At this point, our relationship could be over."Varya was excited to show Geoffrey around her Siberia hometown, but Geoffrey could tell Varya's mother didn't want him to take Varya away and bring her to America.Geoffrey was worried about his future with Varya, however, because he previously went to jail for dealing drugs."I'm afraid if I tell Varya the truth, she'll never speak to me again," Geoffrey told the cameras. "It's time. I've got to tell Varya about my past."Varya wanted Geoffrey to get to know about her, the good and the bad, so it seemed she might be understanding of the mistakes Geoffrey had made in his past.While showing Geoffrey around and sharing some of her memories, Geoffrey finally came clean and told Varya he had spent some time behind bars."I went to prison for a while," Geoffrey revealed. "For a couple of years, for selling drugs."Varya said she couldn't believe that Geoffrey had never told her that, and she appeared shocked and distraught. Varya said he had just met her mother and they were in a deep relationship, but Geoffrey explained he was poor growing up and needed the easy money.Varya pointed out Geoffrey had hurt many families through his actions and she had lost her own cousin to drugs. Varya couldn't believe Geoffrey had been involved with getting people hooked on drugs, but Geoffrey could do nothing other than apologize."I don't like thinking about the people I could have hurt. It was a poor decision," Geoffrey told his girlfriend, adding that Varya had a unique perspective on drug dealing since she had lost a family member.Geoffrey insisted he was totally against drugs now and his children knew all about his past. His kids had visited him in prison, and Geoffrey cried about how his past affected his whole family."If you had told me, I would have never, ever talked to you," Varya admitted to Geoffrey.Geoffrey asked Varya to consider the man he is now and not the man he used to be, but Varya wasn't sure what to do and asked for some space and time to think about things.Ed had been in the Philippines for a few days, but he and Rose had just arrived to their hometown.Ed was worried about where he was going to sleep because there were no windows and not much space. Given there was a storm outside, Ed couldn't leave. He wasn't looking forward to sleeping on a mattress pad on the floor under a leaky roof.And to make matters worse, Rose's father Freddie insisted he sleep with them.Freddie didn't feel comfortable with her daughter sleeping alone with Ed, so he figured he could keep an eye on them and find out whether Ed really respected and cared for his daughter.However, right before bed, Freddie announced he was going to leave the pair alone.Ed was thankful for that, but the 1000-thread count sheets he had shipped Rose never arrived. Ed shared how her bed might present a problem for his skin since he suffers from atopic dermatitis.Ed was clearly scared to fall asleep, and Rose joked about how he's a bit of a baby."After seeing Rose's village and how she lives, it makes me wonder: Who wouldn't want to come to America for a better life?" Ed asked the cameras."I already have questions about money and her sister Maria, who asked me for money. Is that what it's all about for Rose... Am I just her meal ticket and her way out?"The next morning, Ed revealed it was one of the worst nights in his life and he hadn't slept at all. Ed was sweating, uncomfortable and wet, and he said he felt "broken" and probably wouldn't be able to spend another night with her in her family's home.Ed suggested to Rose they get a hotel together, but Rose didn't want to leave Prince behind and she desired that her son spend more time with her boyfriend. However, Rose seemingly knew how important it was to Ed that they get to know each other better.Freddie then suddenly showed up and revealed he wanted to shower with Ed. Rose explained it was normal for her family members to bathe together, but Ed was a little caught off-guard.Ed and Freddie stood in separate buckets and rinsed themselves with buckets of cold water. After soaping themselves down, Rose sprayed both men with a hose.After Ed bathed, he discovered a rat near the water bucket, and Ed was disgusted and terrified.Later that day, Ed, Rose and Freddie took a ride to a local pig farm, and Ed tried to stir up conversation with Freddie so that Rose's father would like him, but there was definitely a language barrier.Freddie's passion was big farming and he apparently lived on the farm with the pigs. Ed then asked Freddie if he could take a vacation with Rose for a couple days because he was so hot sleeping at her family's place. Freddie agreed to the vacation and told Ed to take care of her.Ed said he needed alone time to determine whether Rose truly loved him and he could put a ring on her finger.Stephanie had been in Australia for three days, but things weren't going as planned. For example, she and Erika fought over the fact Erika was reluctant to delete a dating app on her phone.Stephanie briefly considered packing her bags and going home, but she said she didn't want to throw her relationship away after a couple of arguments. Erika therefore intended to still introduce Stephanie to her friends, and the couple attempted to move forward.Erika told her friend over the phone Stephanie had jealousy issues, and she had apparently felt "trapped and backed into a corner" during their date the night prior when Stephanie had promised to treat her like a princess.Erika was starting to question the person Stephanie really is, especially after Stephanie asked Erika to not share their problems with her friends.Erika said Stephanie had to learn how to trust her or else their relationship was not going to work out.After nearly four hours of driving, Erika told Stephanie that she seemed to have some control issues, which scared Erika since she's a free-spirited person.Stephanie shared that she probably came across as controlling because she lacked stability in her life, like when it comes to her health crisis. Stephanie promised to do her best to trust Erika going forward despite her own personal issues.Stephanie and Erika's romance had been plagued with problems so far, so Erika decided to invite her friend Clair, an overall positive and happy person, to the outgoing to hopefully lift everyone's spirits.Stephanie admitted she was nervous to meet some of Erika's friends because Erika had hooked up with some of them before, such as her friend Adam. Stephanie told the cameras that "didn't sit well" with her, and Stephanie was clearly getting jealous again.Clair could tell Erika was being quieter than usual at the restaurant they went to, and Erika let Clair know she was a bit disappointed in her relationship with Stephanie, especially due to their lack of physical affection."What do you think is going to happen?" Clair asked."I have no idea," Erika replied.Stephanie said after dating Erika for four months, being together was a lot different than she had anticipated. Erika cried, saying she wanted her girlfriend to be excited about being around her and Stephanie never wanted to hold her or kiss her.Stephanie didn't want Erika to think she wasn't attracted to her. Stephanie hadn't been intimate with a person in over a year, so she didn't want to rush into anything.Erika argued that everything seemed "too hard" for Stephanie so maybe she shouldn't have traveled all the way to Australia to begin with.Erika pointed out how Stephanie claimed they had just met and needed to get to know each other better before making love and being affectionate, but at the same time, Stephanie had already asked her to move to New York."You're not trying to work with me. You're trying to make me feel bad about it," Stephanie said. "We're not seeing eye to eye, and I feel like you don't understand me at all."Erika was annoyed Stephanie was making it seem like her struggles were tougher than her own, and so she stormed out and left Stephanie alone in Erika's apartment. Stephanie wasn't sure where she had gone wrong, and she cried.David was desperate to find and talk to Lana, because he thought their relationship would go back to normal once they were able to talk to each other again. David was confused because Lana had said she wanted to marry him and move to America.David traveled about 400 miles to find Lana, who had no idea David was on his way to see her."I put seven years into this relationship and I flew halfway across the world to see her, so I need to talk to her in person and find out what's going on," David said in a confessional.David said he was tired of Lana's games and would stop talking to her if she asked him to stop.Almost 300 miles into his journey, David had car trouble and caught a flat tire. David had been warned the streets to Lana's alleged hometown were dangerous, so he tried to fix the tire quickly.David believed what he and Lana had was real, and he apparently still planned to propose to his love upon their meeting.After five days in Ukraine, David had yet to hear a word from Lana, and he was both upset and frustrated. David had arrived in her hometown to hopefully talk to her, but David didn't want to scare Lana. He decided to walk around her city on the off-chance they may bump into each other.David walked around and showed people in little shops Lana's picture, asking if anyone recognized her. No one could say they knew Lana, which surprised him since Lana had said she stopped at these stores once in a while.David wandered around for a while and then returned to his hotel, where he suddenly saw a message from Lana online that read, "Do you still want a meeting for a photo and start a relationship and visa?""God yes!" David gushed to the cameras.David felt beside himself with happiness, but in order to process a K-1 visa, they needed to obtain evidence they're in a relationship together. Half of David's trip was over, but he didn't care and was ready and willing to start fresh.After a few days together in Australia, Ash was whisking Avery away for a romantic getaway.Although the pair had great chemistry, Avery wasn't sure Ash was being honest about the struggle he would have moving his son Taj to the United States. Avery wanted Ash to be real with her and tell her the truth, even when it hurts.Avery and Ash kicked off the day with an airboat ride, where they viewed crocodiles and other wildlife in The Outback. Avery was trying to figure out if Ash was going to be her lifelong partner, so she needed more answers from her man.Avery knew Ash's decision to move to America would be very difficult for his ex-wife Sian because she'd have to say goodbye to her son. Ash shared that he was still working on that situation and was trying to get Sian to come around.Knowing Sian is a very honest person, Ash feared what she might say to Avery. Avery realized there might be more to the situation that Ash didn't want her to know, because he seemed far from thrilled to introduce the girls to each other.Tom couldn't believe how his conversation with Darcey ended, and he admitted he was frustrated with himself because he had said some really rude things to her. Tom, for instance, pointed out Darcey's alleged weight gain and said his life would be much better without her in it.Tom then FaceTimed with his sister Emma to share how he was feeling about the breakup.Emma didn't think Darcey was right for Tom and that the pair weren't a good fit for each other. Tom admitted Darcey had stormed out on him and he never went after her.Tom told the cameras he spoke out of anger and hurt with Darcey and so he owed her an apology. Tom thought it would be "a real shame" for his romance with Darcey to end so badly.Meanwhile, Darcey told the cameras her relationship with Tom was "all gone."Darcey decided to stay in a hotel after her split from Tom so that her daughters wouldn't have to see her so upset. Darcey said she just wanted to feel loved and thought Tom was going to be The One."He always promised me he was never going to hurt me the way [my ex Jesse Meester ] did, but my biggest fears came true -- Tom is Jesse in disguise," Darcey told the cameras.Darcey felt "backstabbed" and "taken advantage of." She said Tom threw things in her face, including the blonde woman he was seeing, and she felt "used" and "played for a fool."Darcey decided to block Tom so he couldn't text, call or reach out to her. Darcey insisted she'd be fine if she never talked to Tom again and she was "so ready" to move on from this chapter in her life and find love with somebody else.Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage! Editor's Note: With so much market volatility, stay on top of daily news! Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news and expert opinions. Sign up here! (Kitco News) - SilverCrest Metals (TSX:SIL) announced Monday a non-brokered private placement of 10,000,000 common shares of the company at a price of C$7.50 per share for gross proceeds of C$75 million. The common shares issued under the private placement will be purchased by accredited or institutional investors. A month ago Silvercrest announced a bought-deal financing with National Bank. In that deal the underwriters would purchase 9.1 million common shares at a price of C$8.25 per share for proceeds of about C$75 million. After the markets plunged in mid-March National Bank sought to terminate the deal based on the "disaster out" clause of the agreement. No students will receive failing grades on their spring report cards, Los Angeles school officials announced Monday, taking an assertive step on student assessment decisions confronting school systems across California. The bold move is the latest decision to reshape education in response to the coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered California schools and forced distance learning for about 6.2 million students. Actions have included canceling "mandatory" standardized tests, relaxing college admission requirements and turning Advanced Placement tests into take-home exams. Concern over the ability of all students to access and benefit from online coursework tipped the scales for the L.A. Unified School District's no-fail decision. In a concurrent move, officials said that a student's grade will be no worse than what it was on March 13, the final day of campus-based instruction. But it could improve: Teachers are expected to devise reasonable opportunities for students to improve their grades. "Many of the examples we see of successful video learning have a significant selection bias," said L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner. "Affluent families with resources at home, schools with years of training and limitless budgets and students with demonstrated aptitude to learn independently. Public schools have in their DNA the commitment to serve all students, irrespective of circumstance, and it will not be so simple." With its Monday announcement, L.A. Unified moved out in front of many school systems still grappling with grading. Long Beach Unified on Monday said the district was not yet ready to announce what it would do. Parents and principals in Santa Monica have provided mixed feedback to officials there. Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified will stick with a traditional grading system for now, but the matter remains under review, said Supt. Alex Cherniss. Other districts are moving forward in different ways. In South Pasadena, high school students must choose either a letter grade or Credit/No Credit format by May 29. Story continues At Fresno Unified, where about 87% of students are members of low-income families, officials have adopted a plan that shares common features with L.A. Unified's. Fresno uses the quarter system, and the third-quarter grade will be extended into the fourth quarter. But students must be provided with opportunities to raise their grade based on content that was taught in class prior to campus closures. However, it still will be possible for students to fail a class if they already had a failing grade. The lowest grade will be a "D" in L.A. Unified, and avoiding a "D" should be motivation enough for students to apply themselves, said Chief of Schools David Baca, who provides support to the district's regional clusters of schools. In L.A., officials said they decided to err on the side of compassion and equity balancing academic rigor and the need to motivate students against the sobering knowledge that family hardships would inevitably compromise the ability of thousands of students to learn, especially in a school system where 80% of students are members of low-income households. The no-fail policy was widely, but not universally, applauded. "Students shouldn't be expected to give their 100% during this time," said Frances Suavillo, a Carson High senior who represents students as a non-voting member of the Board of Education. "This situation is beyond our control and it's relieving to know that we won't get penalized for it." But a high school principal said he's worried about what will happen with students who are not intrinsically motivated to push forward academically, especially under challenging circumstances. "This policy makes it feel like school ended on March 13," said the principal, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak. He worried that students would abandon valuable academic work that also was giving them reason to remain safe at home. Some teachers also expressed reservations. "I dont see how a student who was failing and now doesnt respond to any online learning assignments would ever deserve class credits," said Stephen Cordova, an English teacher at Dorsey High in the Crenshaw/Baldwin Hills area. The teachers' union, United Teachers Los Angeles, supports the district's position. "Students who werent doing well March 13, when this unprecedented crisis began, still had three months of school where they could have accessed in-person intervention to improve their grade," said union President-Elect Cecily Myart-Cruz. "That is no longer available. Students improve, often dramatically." L.A. Unified's decision on grading quickly reverberated beyond the district's borders. Gary Grayson, a teacher in the Conejo Valley Unified School District, said that in his 11th grade U.S. History class, individual student patterns simply replicated themselves in the new setting. Previously diligent students remain so, while students who "rarely" turn in work are not doing so now. But even when everyone is doing their part, the situation for students and families can be difficult. A month after campuses closed, Elizabeth Chavez said their family still does not have a broadband connection at home for her daughter Alondra, a second-grader at Stoner Avenue Elementary in Del Rey. She called a local provider offering free service, but installers might not be available for weeks. Beutner used his emergency powers to authorize $100 million in spending on technology both computers and broadband hot spots but the hot spots had yet to reach all schools before spring break. The challenges to keeping up academically vary from student to student. Julissa Alvarado, a 9th-grader at Venice High School, said last week that she is trying to maintain a focus on her studies, but she finds the distance learning "boring." Her parents don't speak English, making it harder for them to help her navigate schoolwork, and the crisis has increased the family's economic stress, resulting in reduced work hours for her father, a gardener, and her mother, a housekeeper. Last week at the Mar Vista Family Center, she was the oldest among a group of six standing in line for free meals provided by L.A. Unified. She carried her 1-year-old sister, Allison, and supervised her cousins, some still in pajamas, who ranged in age up to 11. In his video address from his home Monday, Beutner acknowledged that worries about failing a class should not add to the pressure that so many students are dealing with. "It was made very real for me late one evening last week," he added, "when I received a message from a student having suicidal thoughts because of the pressure she was feeling about school and all the chaos around her," he said. "The fast actions of a team from Los Angeles Unified got her to a hospital where she's receiving care." But her hardship indicated how many students and families are in need of help, he said. Even before the recent economic meltdown, the district had estimated that 17,000 students are part of homeless families. In all, the district serves about 482,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. In his remarks, Beutner also confirmed what many had anticipated: L.A. campuses would remain closed for the remainder of the school year. He added that closures would continue through the summer, but summer school offerings would be expanded even as students continued learning from home. Sonali Kohli contributed to this report. The Supreme Court of the United States began hearing oral arguments in a slate of cases via teleconference in light of the coronavirus Monday. Listen above via an NBC News livestream. In keeping with public health guidance in response to COVID-19, the Justices and counsel will all participate remotely. The Court anticipates providing a live audio feed of these arguments to news media. Details will be shared as they become available, said a release April 13, which added, The Court Building remains open for official business, but most Court personnel are teleworking. The Court Building remains closed to the public until further notice. Six of the nine justices are over 65 years old. The CDC says that seniors and people with pre-existing conditions are more vulnerable to the virus. Among the cases being heard are 19-635, Trump v. Vance, 19-715, Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP, and 19-760, Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG, involving President Donald Trump. Also Read: Fox News Contributor Bill Bennett Inaccurately Says Coronavirus 'Is Not a Pandemic' (Video) In December 2019, the Supreme Court justices agreed to decide whether Trump is able to block the release of his financial records. The decision has been expected to be made in June and will set the stage for a historic ruling on the power of presidents relating to demands for information from prosecutors and from Congress. The Supreme Court joins a number of other industries implementing telecommuting now, as news anchors host their shows via Skype and Zoom Video Communications, an online video conference company, has seen its business flourish amid the coronavirus pandemic. Read original story Supreme Court Begins Hearing Oral Arguments Via Teleconference (Audio) At TheWrap (@FahadShabbir) Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishusting and the head of the Belarusian government, Sergey Rumas, on Monday discussed price for Russian gas given the recent global trends, the press service of the Belarusian Council of Ministers said MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishusting and the head of the Belarusian government, Sergey Rumas, on Monday discussed price for Russian gas given the recent global trends, the press service of the Belarusian Council of Ministers said. "During the conversation, the sides discussed a number of pressing energy cooperation issues, including the price of the Russian gas for Belarus considering the trends in prices for energy sources on the global market," the press service said. Rumas and Mishustin also discussed export of some foods and medical supplies from Russia to Belarus. [April 13, 2020] Siyata Mobile Wins Initial $600K Contract to Supply Healthcare Workers Managing the Battle Against COVID-19 MONTREAL, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Siyata Mobile Inc. (TSX-V:SIM / OTCQX:SYATF/ FRA: WK3D) announces it has won an initial $600k contract for its rugged Push-to-Talk (PTT) devices to supply hospitals, healthcare workers and ambulances to help manage the battle against COVID-19. The Siyata devices are running third party Command & Control software which allows medical units to speak to entire teams; displays their real-time locations and their zones of operation; visually categorizes hospital beds according to severity; and uses artificial intelligence to automatically manage workloads, identifying teams that are inactive and allocating them to where they are needed most. Medical staff in the hospitals current COVID-19 department need to communicate with their teams, with supervision control rooms and logistical control rooms, and navigate areas exposed to the virus, as well as areas designated as clean zones. Now, personnel can see the real-time location of doctors and nurses on the network, and beds are categorized into severity levels after hospital staff adapted the system for medical needs. Marc Seelenfreund, CEO of Siyata Mobile, comments, Healthcare workers continue to maintain the nations safety amidst the significant pressure of the Covid-19 outbreak. In regard to the crisis at hand, our innovative push-to-talk devicesare designed to provide advanced technologies to ensure better connectivity and safer communication when it matters most. We are very proud to be the vendor of choice for this project, and anticipate additional orders as other hospitals adopt this platform. About Siyata Siyata Mobile Inc. is a global vendor of in-vehicle cellular IoT solutions for first responder and commercial fleet vehicles. The flagship UV350 is the worlds first 4G/LTE in-vehicle IoT cellular solution, incorporating voice, data, push-to-talk over cellular, fleet management, and other public safety software to increase situational awareness, and save lives. Siyata also offers rugged phones for industrial users and signal boosters for homes, buildings, and fleets with poor cell coverage. Siyatas customers include cellular operators, commercial vehicle technology distributors, and fleets of all sizes in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. Visit www.siyatamobile.com and http://www.unidencellular.com/ to learn more. On Behalf of the Board of Directors of: SIYATA MOBILE INC. Marc Seelenfreund CEO Investor Relations: Arlen Hansen Kin Communications 1-866-684-6730 [email protected] Sales Department: Glenn Kennedy, VP Sales Siyata Mobile Inc. 416-892-1823 [email protected] 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 include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. 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, continued availability of capital and financing, 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. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable laws. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Dr Shyam Pingle By The current global crisis due to the coronavirus has brought the healthcare community and its work-related problems into focus. While the prime minister has rightly lauded their contribution, the occupational health problems of healthcare workers have always been neglected not only by authorities but also by doctors themselves. They are the most vulnerable group on whose health the Covid-19 control strategy rests. In current times the problem has become serious. According to FNOMCeO, Italys main doctors association, at least 100 doctors in that country have already died of Covid (as on April 9). In Spain, more than 10% of diagnosed Covid cases are doctors or nurses. The National Health Commission of China reported that up until February 24, 2,055 healthcare workers had been confirmed infected with Covid, with 22 deaths in that nation. According to reports, more than a dozen doctors have contracted the disease in five Indian states. Recent reports indicate that 48 healthcare workers including four doctors of two prominent hospitals in Mumbai have tested positive. In a recent study of 4,357 healthcare workers in Wuhan, the main concerns reported by health workers were: infection of colleagues (72.5%), infection of family members (63.9%), protective measures (52.3%) and medical violence (48.5%). And 39.1% of healthcare workers had psychological distress. The data on the morbidity and mortality experienced by healthcare workers in India is lacking as reliable statistics are not available. Even large teaching hospitals and medical colleges do not have an occupational health department. Hospitals are also not required to collect and report data on hospital-acquired infections in its staff. There is no specific legal requirement for comprehensive occupational health services in hospitals in India. Even the medical community and unions have seldom made demands for protecting their health and safety except for protection from violence in recent years. Workplace violence has emerged as an important threat in healthcare over the last few years. Though agitations by doctors forced the government to enact a nationwide law, it has failed to significantly change the situation on the ground so far. Occupational health problems can be prevented with the help of universal precautions. The risk of infection increases due to lack of sufficient PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and inadequate training further amplifies the risk of infection in healthcare workers. Proper PPE plays the most important role. It has been reported from Wuhan that the Covid protective gear was so cumbersome and expensive that healthcare workers were forced to use adult diapers during their shift so that they do not have to take off the PPE. Training and education of healthcare workers and extensive medical surveillance are very crucial. Long-time exposure to large numbers of infected patients directly increases the risk of infection. Also, pressure of treatment, work intensity and lack of rest indirectly increase the probability of infection. It is essential to identify, monitor and control exposures of healthcare workers and also offer them preventive immunisations on priority as and when available, e.g. for Hepatitis B. Stress management plays a major role considering the enormous pressure to which healthcare workers are exposed. Videos coming out of Chinese and Italian hospitals are graphically showing how much more stressed health workers can be due to the overwhelming pandemic. Dealing with life and death, and round-the-clock work are the hallmark of healthcare jobs and both are stress generators. The development and implementation of mental health assessment, support, treatment and services are crucial in the health response to the coronavirus outbreak. Our healthcare set-ups in the state sector are perpetually saddled with manpower shortage and perceived lack of support from the state. The new trend of outsourcing/on-contract workers in various industries has been extended to healthcare not only in the private sector but also in the government. The savings come at a tremendous cost in terms of quality of manpower and consequently the quality of care. There is a strong need to improve the monetary compensation and working conditions of staff in health facilities. Besides respectable and attractive salaries, proper on-campus accommodation, timely promotions and non-monetary recognition are essential, and changes in the system are required. Every large hospital should have a dedicated and qualified occupational health professional. The occupational health of healthcare workers is not yet a priority for stakeholders. This has resulted in increased risk and decreasing attraction in medicine as a career. Given our huge population and shortage of healthcare workers, the situation needs to be addressed by improving working conditions, using innovative human resource policies and structural reforms. Health departments should regularly report the number of infected and dead healthcare workers along with the total Covid-19 infections and deaths. Each incident of a healthcare worker being infected should be investigated and the flaws that led to it should be immediately fixed. This is essential for a healthy India. Dr Shyam Pingle Senior Occupational Health Advisor, Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar. Views are personal Email: shyampingle@iiphg.org MIAMI, April 10, 2020 (Morning Star News) Intelligence officials in Cuba have increased harassment of an independent journalist, summoning the Christian and his mother twice in the past two weeks to threaten harsh consequences if he continues reporting on human rights issues, sources said. As part of his Christian calling, Yoe Suarez has reported for non-state media outlets in Cuba since 2014 about human rights and freedom of religion issues, including the imprisonment of husband-and-wife pastoral team Ramon Rigal and Adya Exposito. They were imprisoned in April 2019 for homeschooling their children. Following a series of interrogations and threats by Cubas Department of State Security (DSE, the inland intelligence branch) over the past year, an intelligence official identifying himself as a second-in-command-for-the-press summoned Suarez and his mother on April 3 to the Siboney Police Station, Playa municipality in Havana, according to Suarez. The official, who identified himself as Captain Jorge, issued a series of implied threats to Suarezs mother about consequences her 29-year-old son would suffer if he continued working as a reporter outside of Cuban intelligence controls, Suarez said. He told us, You dont know what a dungeon is, or what it is to have a patrol in front of your house, Suarez told Morning Star News. Suarez added that the official said, The Office of the Prosecutor and Minors can intervene, suggesting they could take him into custody and also take custody of Suarezs less than 2-year-old son. Cuban civil laws Family Code states that both parents, or one of them, will lose custody over their children when they are convicted as a sanction for a final sentence issued in criminal proceedings. This time they were much less kind than the last, Suarez told Morning Star News. He mentioned to me an article of the penal code under which I qualified for the crime of mercenarism. Cubas mercenarism law (Law 62, Section Eight, Article 191, Subsection 1 of the Cuban Penal Code) calls for prison of 10 to 20 years, or death, for a Cuban citizen who, in order to obtain payment of a salary or other type of material retribution, is incorporated into military formations fully or partially integrated by individuals who are not citizens of the State in whose territory they intend to act. Subsection 2, Article 191 provides similar penalties for anyone who collaborates or executes any other act aimed directly or indirectly at achieving the objective indicated in the previous section. Cuban intelligence has a historical precedent of accusing Christians of being CIA agents on pretexts ranging from receiving a Christmas card from abroad to receiving offerings from Christians in foreign currency. The official told him that he shouldnt underestimate the DSE, Suarez said. Adding another level of pressure, he told me that he had many contacts, and that through them he could spread the word that I was a State Security agent, to discredit me, Suarez said. After that, and in front of my mother, he had no qualms about asking me if I wanted to join DSE as an informant, apparently within [Cuban newspaper] Diario de Cuba, Suarez said. I told him that my work is strictly journalistic, that I do not do police or intelligence work. Then he says to me, Well, Im not a police officer, and this is not a recruitment because that takes longer; State Security does not jump into a pool from a fifth floor without first measuring the depth, width and temperature of the water. Suarez said the official told him he does not care if a journalist works for a non-state media outlet as long as he does so under the control of the State Intelligence. When Suarez declined to promise that he would work under intelligence controls, the officer said he had power to make him look like a government agent, causing him to lose credibility as a journalist and in his personal life, Suarez said. He warned the journalist that this would be the first and last time he would talk with him, and that the next time they saw each other would be in an operation against Suarez. The April 3 encounter took place a day after two DSE agents summoned Suarezs mother to a travel agency office near her home to interrogate her. All they seek is to put pressure on me through my family, Suarez told Morning Star News. My mother is very disturbed fearful for me and for the consequences I may suffer. Right now, she is not able to even speak. The previous week, on March 27, two government agents summoned Suarez to Siboney Police Station and, while interrogating him, said they could save him from intelligence punishment that he still had time to correct his ideological course. They asserted that the dialogues of recent interrogations represented a first phase, but that other, harsher phases would come if he continued to report for Diario de Cuba and other enemy media outlets. Reporting on Rights Issues Suarez, a member of the Cuban Evangelical League, said authorities are targeting him not for anything specific but due to a cluster of anger about my work. The anger stems from the visibility his reporting has given to cases sensitive for the communist regime, he said. Along with the pastoral couples imprisonment for homeschooling, such cases include evangelical church protests against a new constitution approved in February 2019, and the governments rejection of attempts by several denominational leaders to register the Alliance of Cuban Evangelical Churches. Suarez has also covered another taboo topic: The Military Units of Aid to the Production (UMAP), euphemistic name for concentration camps to which the government, from 1965 to 1968, sent those considered a social scourge. Among them were artists, homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, priests, pastors and lay evangelicals. Suarez wrote about UMAP in an award-winning report that records pastor Alberto Gonzalez describing how he was subject to more than 12 hours of work, torture and humiliation for being a student of a Baptist theological seminary. Recently the independent Diario de Cuba published Suarezs extensive article on violations of religious freedom in Cuba, particularly harassment and detention of leaders of the Apostolic Movement, one of the most punished Christian organizations on the island. In the most recent of his books, The Breath of the Devil: Violence and Gangsterism in Cuba, Suarez shares the account of gang members who have converted to Christianity. Cuban officials say that this doesnt exist, that there are no gangs, Suarez said. Suarez has also reported for Newsweek and Univision, along with Christian news sites Evangelico Digital and Evangelical Focus. Regularly targeted by authorities as a result of his work, in 2016 Suarez was expelled from the Latin American Press Agency, Cubas official state news agency. Prior Summons On Feb. 5, DSE officials summoned Suarez and his mother to a police station in Havana. A captain identified only as Enrique interrogated him for three hours, threatening that his family would suffer consequences if he continued reporting outside state controls, Suarez said. The official also informed him of an indefinite restriction on travel outside the country. Cubas list of people put under such travel bans has grown to more than 200 Cubans, including 15 religious leaders, according to a list updated by Patmos Institute. The government typically imposes the ban on freedom of movement to citizens who communicate through unofficial channels. Suarez published his findings on this topic. State security agents are very upset when data is offered, he told Morning Star News, because it is not an opinion, and thus increases the credibility of journalistic work. The last three summons Suarez has received from state security officers have come as authorities demand social distancing to prevent further spread of the novel coronavirus. Critics on social media have lamented that authorities dont care if those summoned for questioning become infected or die from the pandemic. Previously, on Aug. 9, 2019, joint forces of State Security and the National Revolutionary Police arrested Suarez in Guantanamo while he was on his way to conduct an interview, according to Evangelical Focus. At the provincial headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, he was interrogated and threatened with prison if he ever returned to the city. Officials filed a report of alleged counterrevolutionary activity, and he was handcuffed and deported from the city of Guantanamo. Suarez had intended to interview members of the Rigal-Exposito family and journalist, lawyer and Catholic Roberto Jesus Quinones, who also ended up in jail for trying to defend the pastoral couples efforts. In late March Pastor Exposito received a commute to serve the rest of her sentence at home. Her husband remains in prison. Shortly after the trip to Guantanamo, Suarez and six other Christians, along with artists and intellectuals, addressed an open letter to the Cuban government demanding freedom for pastors Rigal and Exposito, freedom of expression, press and movement and opening of the Cuban educational model that is under strict state control. On Sept. 14, 2019, upon arrival at Jose Marti Airport from Spain, Suarezs passport was taken by immigration officers, according to the Havana-based Association for Freedom of the Press. They led him to an office within the terminal, where a Political Police (DSE) officer who identified himself as Danilo questioned him about the event he attended. Suarez later received back his passport. Since then authorities have been increasingly antagonistic toward him, culminating in the April 3 summoning of him and his mother. In that interrogation, he said, the official told him he was putting on a shirt that was too big for him, and that his attitude typifies the crime of mercenarism. If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved. If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at https://morningstarnews.org/donate/? Article originally published by Morning Star News. Used with permission. Photo courtesy: Jonathan Buttle Smith/Unsplash Detectives hunting the killer of a retired midwife found her battered body covered in plastic sheeting on the floor of her conservatory, an inquest has heard. Police launched a murder inquiry after Wendy Ann Morse, 71, was found dead in her home on Mother's Day - hours before the UK went into coronavirus lockdown. The 'sorely missed' grandmother, who had been involved in a dispute with a builder working at her detached bungalow, had suffered a 'severe blunt trauma head injury'. Details of the death come as officers stepped up their efforts to extradite a 42-year-old man who was arrested in Sweden days after the pensioner's death. Police launched a murder inquiry after Wendy Ann Morse, 71, was found dead in her home on Mother's Day - hours before the UK went into coronavirus lockdown. The inquest heard Mrs Morse had been reported missing by her daughter on Sunday, March 22 after she failed to get any response when she knocked on the door of her home in Knypersley, Staffordshire. North Staffordshire assistant coroner Sarah Murphy told the inquest: 'The circumstances reported to the coroner's court are that the deceased lived alone and was having building work done at the house. 'She was not satisfied with the builder and another contractor was due to start. 'On March 19 via social media she last had contact with her family. Her daughter later sent her a message but it was not replied to. Her daughter became concerned and visited her on March 22. 'There was no reply to her knocking on the door and she found flowers on the doorstep sent by her brother. She became concerned and contacted the police and reported the deceased as a missing person. 'Police arrived and checked the property and while at the back they noticed a curtain hanging from the window of the conservatory. They saw there was furniture covered and on the floor it looked like there was a body covered in plastic sheeting. The 'sorely missed' grandmother, who had been involved in a dispute with a builder working at her detached bungalow, had suffered a 'severe blunt trauma head injury' (Pictured: Police at Mrs Morse's Staffordshire home) Details of the death come as officers stepped up their efforts to extradite a 42-year-old man who was arrested in Sweden days after the pensioner's death 'They found the deceased on the floor in the conservatory. The deceased had a severe blunt trauma head injury. There were signs of a disturbance as there was glass and a bottle smashed on the floor.' Six days after officers discovered Mrs Morse's body, a man, who has not been named, was arrested in Sweden and appeared before Stockholm District Court. According to a court document, the suspect is accused of killing Mrs Morse between March 18 and March 22. Officers have now secured a European Arrest Warrant as part of their attempts to extradite the man, who is from Sneyd Green, Stoke-on-Trent. The coroner told North Staffordshire Coroner's Court: 'We don't have a cause of death. A post-mortem examination has been requested and there is reason to suspect that the death was violent and unnatural and therefore an inquest is necessary. 'The family will be updated and a date for the inquest will be set administratively in due course should this be necessary. The body has been released for funeral purposes.' After Mrs Morse's body was discovered on March 22 her heartbroken family paid tribute her and appealed for help tracing the killer. In a statement, they said: 'We are devastated at the loss of our mum, who was a very bubbly person and full of character, who will be sorely missed by her children and grandchildren. 'We would appeal to any member of the public with any information, however small, to contact Staffordshire Police in connection with the death of our mum.' Police have appealed for sightings of a green Honda Civic - registration number OK62 AMS - which was driven from Biddulph to Sneyd Green, between midday and 3pm on Thursday, March 19. Over 25,000 two-wheeler riders were penalised in Mumbai amid lockdown between March 23 and April 10 for not wearing helmets, a senior traffic police official said on Monday. Another 6,821 people were penalised for disobedience to official orders under the Motor Vehicles Act, Mumbai Traffic Police Joint Commissioner Madhukar Pandey said. "We have booked 25,420 people for riding two-wheelers without wearing helmets. A total of 3,913 people have been penalised for failing to produce valid driving licence and another 2,737 for riding without licence," Pandey said. He said the traffic police action took place between March 23 and April 10 amid the lockdown in force in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) She is in lockdown in New York City with her twins and boyfriend during the coronavirus pandemic. And on Sunday evening, Mariah Carey tweeted video showing her standing on her rooftop terrace and applauding the city's healthcare workers. She wrote: '7pm in NYC on Easter. Clapping for our heroes. Thank You.' 7 p.m. shoutout: She is in lockdown in New York City and on Sunday evening, Mariah Carey tweeted video showing her standing on her rooftop terrace applauding medical personnel The pop superstar, 50, wore pretty floral patterned pajamas and bunny ears. The view from her apartment showed the setting sun and the city skyline. Earlier she had also shared images of herself with her eight-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan on the same rooftop terrace. The youngsters had baskets filled with colorful eggs suggesting they'd been enjoying an Easter egg hunt at home. Awesome sight: The pop superstar, 50, wore pretty floral patterned pajamas and bunny ears and the view from her apartment showed the setting sun and the city skyline Her pride and joy: Earlier she had also shared images of herself with her eight-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan on the same rooftop terrace after an Easter egg hunt Bunny ears: Even the dog couldn't escape the Easter feeling On Saturday, the five-time Grammy winner celebrated her boyfriend Bryan Tanaka's 37th birthday. The Hero hitmaker tried her hand at baking the backup dancer a cake, with mixed results. 'Making a surprise cake... trying at least Lolololol,' she shared on social media alongside a photo taken in her kitchen showing her with her handiwork. She also posted a sweet selfie with Tanaka. Mariah revealed in 2017 that she was dating him after breaking off her engagement to Australian billionaire James Packer, 52. Homemade with love: On Saturday, Mariah celebrated her boyfriend Bryan Tanaka's 37th birthday. The Hero hitmaker tried her hand at baking the backup dancer a cake We already know the kind of chaos COVID-19 is causing in the entire world. With over 18 lakh cases worldwide, claiming lives of over a lakh people, it seems things are getting worse day by day. Reuters The whole world is under lockdown, and amidst all this internet is helping many people keep their sanity while helping many work from home and take care of their families. However, recently, situations in the US havent been positive. More and more people are filing for unemployment in the last two months. However, whats astonishing is that the number that has generated in the last two months is more than what America witnessed during the great depression of 2008. And a recent report by the New York Times suggests that over 20 million Americans will be unemployed by the end of this month. Reuters While there are many problems in the way that are causing this, unavailability of broadband internet is one big reason. We might wonder that the US is such a developed nation, so it would have access to the internet almost everywhere across the country. However, that isnt really the case. Pointed out by Business Insider, According to data by Microsoft, 162.8 million Americans arent using broadband internet. High-speed internet equals jobs Now you might be wondering, so what theres no high-speed internet, doesnt mean it should affect peoples employment, but thats not the case. Studies have shown that where high-speed internet is installed, businesses make use of tools to make their processes more efficient, bring new services that result in a spike in customers as well as jobs. A 2018 Microsoft study has found a straight correlation that tells exactly that --countries with highest unemployment rate also had the lowest broadband internet availability. FCC relying on private companies FCC had been relying on private companies to help bridge this gap. The Federal Communications Commission last year promised to auction off $20bn worth of incentives for rural broadband access. But the FCC itself estimates it will cost as much as $80bn to get fibre optic cable to every household in the US. On the other hand, the consultancy firm Deloitte predicts it could cost as high as $150bn. Reuters India's high speed internet story The news for India is a bit mixed. India has managed to cast a stronger net of internet connectivity across rural parts of the nation. As a part of Phase I of Bharat Net -- an initiative to connect rural India to the internet -- Fiber connections have been extended to 250,000 (2.5 lakh) rural villages in India so far. The Delhi-based BBNL data revealed that 432,952 kilometres of optical fibre cable has been laid to connect 1,51,729 village blocks making as many as 138,409 blocks service-ready as on March 31, 2020, with 2,148-gram panchayats in remote areas having satellite-based connectivity of the total projected 6,407 blocks. And while this might be a good thing, recent reports have sadly revealed that the Phase II which was supposed to get completed by this year is now pushed to August 2021 -- due to BSNLs poor performance. Moreover, India's Internet speed seems to be in decline since January 2020, according to a recent report by internet speed test giant Ookla. India has dropped in its internet speed ranking around the world. In March 2020, India ranked at 130th for mobile -- 2 spots down as well as 71st (again, two spots down) in fixed broadband category globally. By The Associated Press Apr. 12, 2020 | 08:31 PM | JACKSON, MS Severe weather swept across the South on Easter Sunday, killing at least 19 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains.Many people spent part of the night early Monday sheltering in basements, closets and bathroom tubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes. Eleven people were killed in Mississippi, and six more died in northwest Georgia. Two other bodies were pulled from damaged homes in Arkansas and South Carolina. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out electricity for about 750,000 customers in a 10-state swath ranging from Texas to Georgia up to West Virginia, according to poweroutages.us. The National Weather Service tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Meteorologists warned the mid-Atlantic states to prepare for potential tornadoes, wind and hail on Monday. Several apparent tornadoes spun up in South Carolina, where dozens of homes appeared damaged in a line from Seneca to Clemson. Emergency officials were working to open shelters in the North Carolina mountains, where up to 5 inches of rain fell in a few hours. The deaths in Mississippi included a married couple Lawrence County sheriff's deputy, Robert Ainsworth, and a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk, Paula We, a Facebook post from the county sheriff's office said. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency Sunday night after he said several tornadoes had struck the state. This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter, Reeves said on Twitter. As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together. Strong winds late Sunday toppled power lines and blew trees onto several houses in Clarksdale, Mississippi, trapping some people inside, Mayor Chuck Espy said. I know these are some tough times and Im just asking everyone to stay prayed up, Espy said. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries in Louisiana, even though the storm damaged between 200 and 300 homes in and around the city of Monroe, Mayor Jamie Mayo, told KNOE-TV. Flights were canceled at Monroe Regional Airport, where airport director Ron Phillips told the News-Star the storm caused up to $30 million in damage to planes inside a hangar. In Alabama, lightning struck the Shoals Creek Baptist Church in Priceville, damaging the roof and steeple, Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Eddie Hicks told AL.com. Jehirul Islam, a coronavirus disease patient, made a final call on April 10 from his hospital bed in Maharashtras Akola to his family in Assam. He sounded grim, fearing something he imagined to be far worse than dying of Covid-19. The next day, hospital staff found him dead, his throat slit, in an apparent suicide. He was worried he wont be able to make it back home and that, if he were to die, his body would be cremated, rather than buried in a Muslim cemetery, his brother Moinul Islam said from Singimari, a village in central Assams Nagaon district. Two suicides have been driven by stigma, rumours and slurs directed toward Indias 200-million Muslims. To some Muslims, the war on coronavirus has begun to look like a war on the community itself. The community finds itself blamed for the spread of the coronavirus. This followed a global religious congregation in New Delhi in mid-March, held by Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic movement of preachers, which met in defiance of official restrictions. The gathering of nearly 2,500 delegates, some from Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan, led to a dramatic spike in Covid-19 cases in the country, with Indian attendees presumably infected by the foreigners then going on to infect people across the country. At one point the congregants or their contacts accounted for a third of the total cases. Fears of cremation of Muslims, based on rumours, were unfounded. The governments guidelines state that Muslim Covid-19 victims should be buried at a cemetery closest to the place where the patient died, Maharashtra minister Aslam Shaikh said . The religious event led to outrage among both Muslims and non-Muslims. However, Muslims then began to be accused on social media sites of deliberately spreading the virus as part of a jihad. The hashtag coronajihad was circulated 300,000 times, according to Equality Labs, a digital advocacy group, quoted by Time magazine. Ordinary Muslims say the Jamaatis were irresponsible and condemnable, but the incident has given rise to reprisals. There have also been several reports of them misbehaving in quarantine, including at Delhis LNJP hospital where the police had to be called in. In Delhis Bawana, a mob attacked Mehboob Ali, who had attended a similar Islamic gathering in Madhya Pradesh, leading to three arrests, according to the Delhi Police. On April 4, Mohammed Dilshad, who had a connection to Tablighi Jamaat, hanged himself in Himachal Pradeshs Una Bangarh village, allegedly because of social boycott. In Assams Nalbari district, Hindu shopkeepers refuse to serve people from a Muslim village, according to Rehmat Ali, a farmer of the area. In another instance of Islamophobia, an official of the State Foreigners Tribunal in Assam on April 7 wrote a letter to the states health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma that shocked Muslims. In it, Kamalesh Gupta, the official, said he and his colleagues had made donations to the states coronavirus fund. However, he urged that help may not be extended to Muslims linked to Tablighi Jamaat, who he labelled jihadi, a synonym for terrorists. Crucially, officials like Gupta are tasked with deciding the fate of people stripped of citizenship in the state on suspicion of being illegal foreign migrants. It is true that the Tablighi Jamaat congregation led to a steep spike in the number of Covid-19 cases. A senior health ministry official, Lav Agarwal, addressing reporters, said on April 5 that the number of days it would have taken for Indias coronavirus cases to double had quickened to 4.1 days from 7.1 due to the congregation. The Jamaat people should have deferred their meet. They have brought miseries on the community, said Maulana Asghar Ali, the imam of a mosque in Delhis Kotla Mubarakpur. The government seems to have been slack too, said Naved Hamid Moemin, the chief of All India Majlis-e-Mushwarat, a Muslim advocacy organisation. The police made no effort to separate foreigners from Indian preachers at the gathering despite serving a notice on them, Moemin said. Last week, the Union home ministry issued an advisory on preventing social stigma attached to Covid-19 patients or their communities. It said certain communities and areas are being labelled purely based on false reports, adding that such prejudices need to be countered urgently. The federal health advisory urged officials to never spread the names or identity of those affected. However, in Assam, health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma publicly released names of all of the states 29 patients -- one Hindu and the rest Muslims. The minister, addressing reporters, said: Generally, we do not reveal the names of patients suffering from diseases like HIV. Yet, the Covid patients names are being released with an honest intention of making people aware and stopping the spread of Covid-19. Theres also an argument for releasing the names -- it helps those who may have come in contact with them knwo that they could be infected. Maulana Mahmood Madni, a former Rajya Sabha MP and leader of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, Indias oldest Muslim faith-based outfit founded in 1919, said he had urged all mosques and Muslims to follow official lockdown guidelines. The shame over what Tablighi Jamaat did is collective and so is the religious hatred that followed, said S Irfan Habib, a Delhi-based historian. The police have registered a criminal case against Maulana Saad, the leader of Tablighi Jamaat, who made an egregious sermon posted on YouTube. In it, he urged Muslims to flock to mosques and said social distancing was nonsense. Saad has since gone into hiding. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Qld Ex-chief Scientist Remanded in Custody Queenslands ex-chief scientist and convicted fraudster Suzanne Miller has surrendered herself into custody in a bid to get home to her family in the UK. Miller, 55, pleaded guilty to using her government-issued credit card to buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of personal items between 2013 and 2017. A scooter and private health insurance worth AU$45,000 ($28,600) were among the items dishonestly obtained. Miller, a dual-national, requested her bail be revoked in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday so her sentence hearing would not be delayed. Her husband and daughter reside in Scotland. It is her desire to return home as soon as possible, her lawyer Remy Kurz said. That is why she is surrendering herself into custody today. Any delay in sentencing proceedings could impact the time until she can return home. Kurz said that Miller could be released in May when she is due to be sentenced. Miller was appointed chief scientist in December 2016 and was the first woman to hold the post. She drew a salary of more than AU$400,000 ($254,000) a year from her dual roles as chief scientist and chief executive of the Queensland Museum. Police charged her in July 2017 after an investigation by the states corruption watchdog. She was convicted on March 12 of a single charge of fraud after dozens of the allegations concerning her use of taxpayer money were either dropped or rolled into the one offense. She is due to reappear in the same court on May 1. By Aaron Bunch Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 21:03:08|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The appointment of a Chinese official into the Consultative Group of the UN Human Rights Council demonstrated once again the international community's recognition of China's achievements in human rights development, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday. The appointment of Jiang Duan, minister of the Chinese mission to the United Nations in Geneva, also showed the world's recognition of China's active participation in international human rights exchanges and cooperation, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing. China has been actively engaged in the work of the UN Human Rights Council and other multilateral institutions on human rights, Zhao said, commenting on a letter sent by some U.S. senators to United Nations expressing opposition to the appointment. With the poor human rights record of the United States, which has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, it is ridiculous that the U.S. senators meddled in the affairs of the council as well as the human rights situations of other countries. The Chinese side advises them to prioritize solving the human rights problems of the United States, and promote the human rights and well-being of the American people through practical actions, the spokesperson said. Advertisement Candid photographs snapped from a motorcycle capture how New York City has transformed into a ghost town as the Big Apple is shut down in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Today the city doesn't resemble it's normal buzzing, if not dizzying, energy. Times Square usually glows, Penn Station pulses with people, Wall Street teems with the ambitious and streets are jammed with trucks, taxis, Ubers and Lyfts. Today, New York City is dizzying in a different way, prompting Associated Press photographer Wong Maye-E and photo editor Enric Marti to drive a motorcycle through the city to capture the quiet, eerily empty streets. Over the course of 12 motorcycle rides from mid-March to last week the duo captured the phantom city by crisscrossing all boroughs from Greenwich Village to Gowanus, Lower Manhattan to Harlem, Red Hook to Elmhurst - all empty of its daily hubbub. The pair found the city has been thrown off kilter by the coronavirus, an invisible adversary that has already infected 561,000 and claimed the lives of 22,000 across the nation as of Monday. Candid photographs snapped from a motorcycle capture how New York City has transformed into a ghost town as the Big Apple is shut down in light of the coronavirus pandemic. A man waits at a crosswalk outside the Elmhurst Hospital Center in the Queens borough of New York on Sunday March 29 Associated Press photographer Wong Maye-E and photo editor Enric Marti took 12 motorcycle rides through the empty boroughs of New York, capturing how the bustling Big Apple has come to a standstill in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Steam rises from chimneys as a woman runs across the street in New York, on Saturday March 21 as the state is on lockdown The duo photographed people practicing social distancing while waiting to cross a street in Brooklyn while wearing masks on March 25 after the governor issued stay-at-home orders A man sits on the ledge of a freeway in Queens on April 2. Much of the New Yorkers the duo photographed were by themselves, following government orders to isolate and practice social distancing A grocery store worker pictured wearing a face mask while serving customers on a street corner in Brooklyn on March 29 A cyclist rides down the center of Hudson Street, free of traffic, as a woman crosses in New York on March 22 Riding solo: A man stands next to a freeway exit as a cyclist rides past in the Bronx borough of New York on Tuesday March 31 As the city sleeps, the trains keep running at the 9th and Smith Street station in Brooklyn as captured on March 21 Eerie Times Square: Times Square, usually bustling with life, is shockingly empty in light of the pandemic. A woman pictured wearing a mask while waiting for a bus at the entrance of the 42nd Street subway station Better times ahead: The sun rises in New York in front of the One World Trade Center on March 21 New York is the globes epicenter of the novel coronavirus with over 195,000 cases of the virus and 10,000 deaths in the state. Much of those are concentrated in the Big Apple with over 103,000 cases and over 6,800 deaths. Marti chose the routes as they went, using his photographers eye to make driving choices, sometimes listening to the unforgettable New York music of Lou Reed. Wong, perched on the back, worked fast with an eye honed in places from Myanmar to North Korea, choosing her moments to illustrate the life of a city on pause. Sometimes they were so in sync, so wrapped in this strange world, that he would pause and point, and she would have already seen the shot and raised her lens. The Manhattan skyline is shrouded in low hanging clouds as the Brooklyn Bridge Park piers on Sunday March 29 New York is the globes epicenter of the virus with over 195,000 cases of the virus and 10,000 deaths in the state. Much of those are concentrated in the Big Apple with over 104,000 cases and over 6,800 deaths. The Elmhurst hospital in Queens, which is dedicating most of its operations to treating COVID-19 patients, pictured above in the fog The few stragglers the pair photographed outside were often alone and wearing protective masks and globes An ultra-Orthodox Jewish boy walks along a sidewalk in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn on March 25 A man wearing a face mask waits at a crosswalk while an electronic sign in front of a Catholic church flashes a message in Spanish which reads, 'Our faith is greater than our fear' in Brooklyn on March 25 Essential: Critical workers are still mandated to work in these hard times. A construction worker in protective equipment watches for traffic as he crosses the street in Brooklyn on Sunday March 29 A woman with a face mask walks past a mural in Brooklyn that says 'Not one more death' in reference to street gun violence In many of these images, the people are whats missing. In others, a few tread where throngs usually walk, an unsettling sight in itself. Wong and Marti captured restaurants, closed. Taxis lined up, parked and unoccupied. Wide highways, unwelcoming in their emptiness. People, alone where the crowds should be. The bike its bumps, its turns, its quickness made the photography more challenging. Somehow, though, as they suspected, it also pulled out the character of the city in a way that matched this odd moment: a bit crooked, a bit skewed, as if, all at once, it was New York and it wasnt. Photo editor Marti chose the routes that the pair took on the motorcycle and Wong, perched on the back captured the stills to illustrate the life of a city on pause. A mechanical coin-operated horse ride for children stands in front of a row of shuttered shops in the Queens borough of New York Lights illuminate a gas station on a dark and empty street in Brooklyn on March 26. The gas station is completely empty of cars as locals are ordered to stay at home and only leave for essential trips Red teddy bears sit at the outdoor tables of a restaurant on Madison Avenue in New York on Sunday, March 22, 2020. Many restaurants in New York City have converted to delivery and take-out orders only as people are encouraged to stay home A man gazes out of a window of a restaurant as he adjusts potted plants in New York on March 25 What social distancing? Several men wearing masks wait under an overpass in the Queens borough of New York on March 29 For those who do not call New York home, the city flashes in and out of consciousness, served up in establishing shots and TV credits o f shows like Taxi, The Sopranos, Law & Order, and Sex and the City. Because of this, most of us the non-New Yorkers among us tend to consume the city in quick and fragmented images. What Wong and Marti discovered and corralled is the documentary version of this the snippets and snatches of a city served up as as it really is right now, constricted and claustrophobic in all its shell-shocked glory. And still, strangely, cinematic. An ambulance from The Brooklyn Hospital Center speeds through the Boerum Hill neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York as the coronavirus cases in the city continue to rise Street lights form streaks as a motorcycle travels down a highway free of traffic in the Queens borough of New York A couple walks in front of shuttered shops in the Chinatown in Brooklyn on March 24 The Brooklyn bridge is lit against the dusk sky in the Brooklyn borough of New York on March 31 A woman wearing a face mask waits on the sidewalk in Brooklyn on Tuesday March 24 The usually busy Grand Central Terminal is eerily quiet, free of traffic and shrouded in darkness They snapped a lone jogger, a tentative street crosser, a man sitting on an overpass alone, items out of place. This album is a collection of images but also senses, capturing what it feels like to do the forbidden - wander New York City as a ghost town. 'The whole idea was to make it a stolen moment,' Wong said. Many of New Yorks moments have, in fact, been stolen in these most recent weeks of its life. Pieces of the city have waited for its people to come back before, though never quite like this. And just as before, the city waits for its people. If the past is any indication, they will return. But not yet. By Rania El Gamal DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has announced its official crude pricing (OSP) for May, selling oil more cheaply to Asia while keeping prices flat for Europe and raising them for the United States, after OPEC and its allies agreed the biggest output cut deal in history. Saudi Arabia's state oil giant Aramco has set the May price for its Arab light crude oil to Asia at a discount of $7.3 to the Oman/Dubai average, down $4.2 a barrel from April, according to a document seen by Reuters on Monday. The cut to Asia was in line with market expectations. According to a Reuters survey, Asian refiners have called on Saudi Arabia to slash its crude OSPs for a third straight month in May after Middle East benchmarks and refining margins dropped amid ample supplies and lower demand due to the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the firm has raised the May OSP of its Arab light crude oil to the United States to a discount of $0.75 per barrel versus the Argus Sour Crude Index (ASCI), up $3 a barrel from April, according to the document. Aramco left its OSP for Arab light crude oil to Northwestern Europe unchanged from April at a discount of $10.25 per barrel to ICE Brent. The cut in prices to Asia reflect weak demand, while OSPs to Europe and the United States reflect oil market fundamentals and the global supply cut pact, an industry source familiar with the pricing process told Reuters. Aramco has delayed its OSPs announcement several times over the past few days until after finalizing the OPEC+ reduction agreement. Last month, the world's top exporter Saudi Arabia surprised everyone by ramping up supplies and slashing prices for April, sparking a battle for market share globally and causing global oil prices to plunge to 18-year lows. Markets globally are now flooded with cheap oil with storage space filling up fast, while refiners cut output or shut plants following coronavirus lockdowns. On Sunday OPEC and allies led by Russia agreed to a record cut in output to prop up oil prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. Story continues The unprecedented deal with fellow oil nations, including the United States, could curb global oil supply by 20%. Saudi crude OSPs set the trend for Iranian, Kuwaiti and Iraqi prices, affecting more than 12 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude bound for Asia. (Additional reporting by Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Mark Potter, Kirsten Donovan and Jan Harvey) michael barbaro From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, her mentor and political inspiration has dropped out of the presidential race, and her congressional district has been described as the epicenter of the epicenter of the coronavirus. A conversation with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, plus a preview of a new audio series from The Times. Its Friday, April 17. Congresswoman? alexandria ocasio-cortez Hello. Michael? michael barbaro Hey, its Michael Barbaro. How are you? alexandria ocasio-cortez Im well. How are you? michael barbaro Thank you so much for making the time for us, and for joining this Google Hangout and the interview. Are you at home? alexandria ocasio-cortez Yes, I am. Im at home right now. michael barbaro Well, for those who, Congresswoman, know you primarily as a national figure and perhaps less so by the district you represent in New York, I wonder if you can start by describing this moment in your district, who your constituents are and how this pandemic is impacting them. alexandria ocasio-cortez I appreciate that question, because who my constituents are largely informs my politics and what we advocate for in terms of a national agenda. My community is overwhelmingly working class. It is about half immigrant. It is about 75 percent people of color. Were one of the most diverse communities in the world, not just in the United States. In Jackson Heights alone, over 200 languages are spoken. michael barbaro And how is the pandemic impacting those constituents in your district? alexandria ocasio-cortez Out of the top 10 zip codes in the United States that are impacted by COVID casualties, the top five are in my district, with the top three michael barbaro Wow. alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah, with the top three being all in our district as well. In New York City, about 65% of all front line workers are people of color, so the folks who are stocking our grocery stores, the folks who are acting as our home health aides, that are visiting our elderly parents and the disabled, the folks who, you know, are working in our hospitals, they are the people who are disproportionately impacted. michael barbaro Are you saying that the reason they are getting so sick your constituents is because theyre disproportionately being asked to go into work in the midst of this? alexandria ocasio-cortez Oh, absolutely. Because this pandemic is not happening in a vacuum. Its happening in a social and economic context. And, you know, there are people that are saying, OK, were going to transition to working from home. But working from home is an enormous privilege. And to be able to do your job remotely, it cleaves along class lines. And the people who need to make the sacrifice, those are front line workers, and those front line workers are often underpaid. They have hourly jobs. They dont have health insurance, or if they do, they are underinsured. Its not just about who gets it, but its about who suffers from it the most. And what theyre telling me is that, you know, theyre very proud of the work that they do. Theyre very proud of the role that they play, because they are essential workers. But what they dont feel is supported. And a lot of them feel like theyre just being sent in for slaughter because theyre being asked to do work without the proper protections. Theyre saying youre sending us into war without weapons. I was in line to go to the drugstore a couple of days ago, and there was this woman behind me, and she had, a, I believe, a kidney condition. And she needed to take her medicine and go to the bathroom. And she was out in public and all the stores were closed, and the line to the drugstore was so long, they would not let her in because there were so many other people that needed medical attention and were trying to say, hey, I have XYZ. I need to get my medicine now. I need to cut in front of the line. And so this is kind of what were experiencing. While all this is going on, we have ICE raids that are happening, where ICE officers are knocking on peoples doors, while other people are knocking on their door to deliver goods from food pantries. michael barbaro So which knock do you answer? alexandria ocasio-cortez Right, right. You know, ICE doesnt always present themselves as clearly marked as they should. And so, sometimes these officers are in plain clothes. And, you know, when you have a stranger knocking on your door, Ive been doing the deliveries myself as well. And I would knock on peoples doors, and people were extremely scared about who I was. And everyones wearing a face mask, so its hard to tell at first. You know, its an extraordinary amount of uncertainty. And by the way, these are the people who are delivering our food. These are the people who are delivering your food to your door who dont have health care, dont have access to testing and are extremely vulnerable. michael barbaro So given everything youve just described, I want to talk about your response to the governments really large stimulus bill, a bill designed to provide relief to struggling workers in particular, in this moment and therefore, a bill, I imagine, would benefit a fair number of your constituents, perhaps more than in most districts. You stood up on the floor of the House and you called that bill shameful. And my understanding is that you withheld your support for it. So help me understand that. alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah, because, you know, it wasnt designed to help working people. This bill was not designed to help everyday families. It was designed to engineer one of the largest corporate bailouts and giveaways in modern American history. And it used the desperation of working families in order to get that done. And so, you know, when it comes to my district, my district is half immigrant. These stimulus checks dont even go to mixed-status families where you have a dreamer child, or a citizen child, and an undocumented, but taxpaying parent. michael barbaro Well, let me let me make sure I understand. Sounds like your biggest issue with the bill is that it doesnt cover undocumented families, of which there are many in your district. Is that right? alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, I think my biggest issue with the bill is the $4 trillion in leverage giveaways to Wall Street. Its hard to almost prioritize the issues with the bill. And, by the way, you know, I do not fault those who voted in support of this bill, because as I said on the floor, what Trump and Mitch McConnell essentially did was put everyone in an impossible decision. Its do you support one of the largest kind of corporate bailouts in American history in order to get crucial, but small amounts of assistance to families in need? michael barbaro But youre not saying that to take one of the measures that $600 a week in enhanced unemployment benefits, youre not saying that that wasnt designed to protect American families, right? But it sounds like you take issue with other elements of the bill that also protect large corporations. And in order for the American economy to recover from this, dont those corporations also need government assistance so that they can survive and employ people? alexandria ocasio-cortez So Yes and no, in that these big multi-billion-dollar companies do not need this kind of assistance to survive. They just dont. And its always rugged as Martin Luther King said rugged capitalism for the poor, and unfettered, you know, endless socialism for the rich in that, you know, if youre an everyday person and you are on the brink of eviction, really, what we kind of tell you is we just shrug our shoulders and say, you know, better luck next time. michael barbaro But the $600 a week for out-of-work Americans, the reports are that for many people especially many working class Americans that was, actually, a form of a raise a modest raise. And so, that would seem to be something that would be very much in your interest. alexandria ocasio-cortez Oh, yes. No, absolutely. And to be clear, Im not criticizing the expansion of unemployment benefits. In fact, I think thats probably the most or one of the most redeeming aspects of the bill. Thats ultimately what Im talking about, is that this administration held that hostage so that it could leverage $4 trillion for Wall Street. And I understand the argument about, like, dont these corporations need something to survive? I think the real companies do, but we shouldnt be subsidizing peoples stock prices. michael barbaro You know, Im mindful, Congresswoman, that you were something of a lone voice opposing the stimulus bill. And I think that speaks to what I want to talk about next, which is the state of the progressive movement in the United States. As recently as just a few weeks ago, it very much looked like a Democratic socialist, and possibly the most progressive candidate to ever run for president, a candidate that you credit with inspiring your own political run in 2018, was going to be the Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders. And last week, he officially dropped out of the race. This week he endorsed Joe Biden. Can you talk to me about how you are feeling about that at this moment, a moment when from everything youre saying, progressive ideas and progressive policies have never felt more urgently needed? alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah. You know, I think obviously, I feel very mixed about this moment. On one hand, I feel that we are winning the larger conversation around the issues. You know, in exit poll after exit poll, we have had almost stunning support for progressive policies for Medicare for all, for a living wage, for tuition-free public colleges and universities. So its not a rejection of the agenda. I think what were seeing right now is just an emerging progressive movement that really just exploded in a real way four years ago. Bernie Sanders really unleashed that. I mean, I remember in 2016, I was a waitress, and it was literally the first time I had ever heard in my life a political candidate running for president that was actually articulating my material reality, actually telling me that, and telling people in this country that being under insured is a norm for working people, and it is an unacceptable norm. And demanding a $15-an-hour wage in 2016 was insane. It was totally insane. And then last year, the House just passed it on the floor. And now we got to push for $20, because by the time we get this thing done, inflation is going to be killing us anyway. So I feel mixed, because I feel like were really winning in terms of movement, but electorally, there are unique challenges. Winning on issues is not the same thing, obviously, as winning an election. michael barbaro But how do you how do you reconcile that? I think thats the kind of question. How do you reconcile what you see as an embrace of these progressive policies with essentially the collapse of the Sanders campaign? alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, I think theres a couple of things. One is that I think sometimes the mistake that some folks in kind of the in the progressive arena make, is that they think that everybody just kind of looks for policies, has a checklist, and votes for the candidate that aligns with their interests and their and what they support. And a lot of voters are not like that. Some certainly are. Its certainly a value to me, but its not everything. michael barbaro So if you had to sum up what you think happened, why the Sanders campaign didnt become the Sanders nomination, what would the headline be? alexandria ocasio-cortez I mean, Im not a good headline writer or headline editor. But I do think clearly, there wasnt enough work done with outreach in black electorates Southern black electorates in particular. Senator Sanders was successful in certain elements of black support. Young, black people certainly supported him. But obviously, South Carolina was a huge tipping point for the senator. michael barbaro Right. alexandria ocasio-cortez There was, of course, this consolidation that was very dramatic behind Joe Biden just the weekend before South Carolina, which certainly did a lot. But Joe Biden was doing very well in South Carolina the entire time. He has important relationships into our communities, and so, that was certainly an important element that should not go unignored. michael barbaro Right. You think the campaign should have done a better job with Southern black voters, making the case to them for Sanders for his policies? alexandria ocasio-cortez Right, and also understanding the relational organizing. You know, Senator Sanders did very well with Latino electorates and Latino voters. You know, I think his campaign made a very strong effort to understand us. You know, and it flips, right? Joe Biden did not do well with Latino voters during the primary. But Latino voters and black voters play very different roles. Theyre two different communities with aligned interests, but, you know, I think that you have to do that outreach to all communities. Its so, you know, I think it comes down to a lot of different things. michael barbaro It sounds like youre saying if Sanders had accomplished with black voters what he clearly accomplished with Latino voters, this might be a different story. alexandria ocasio-cortez Oh, for sure. I think so. michael barbaro Well be right back. [music] So lets talk about the presumptive Democratic nominee, who you have not endorsed Joe Biden. Earlier this week, you spoke to my colleague at the time Astead Herndon about that. And at the time, you said that you had never spoken to Joe Biden, which I have to confess, was a surprise, and that he had not yet reached out to you. Has that changed? alexandria ocasio-cortez Some folks on his team have reached out to us, so our teams are in touch. michael barbaro Mm-hmm. But you have not yet spoken to him? alexandria ocasio-cortez No, I have not. michael barbaro There has been this question about how much Joe Biden will absorb the progressive policies that the Bernie Sanders candidacy represented. The fact that you have never spoken to Biden, and that you as one of the leading members of the progressive movement are not one of the first places he turned when Sanders dropped out, correct me if Im wrong, that does not seem to bode especially well for the progressive movement when it comes to that question of will Joe Biden absorb it. Do you see it that way? alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, I mean, I think whats important is that and what I want to make clear is that I will be voting for Joe Biden in November. I will be supporting him in the general election. I think its really clear that we understand the stakes of November, and that we understand how important this is. I think sometimes some folks, especially Ive seen from different camps, are kind of looking at me, and theyre like, oh, well, who are you? Like, why youre just a freshman Congresswoman. Why be like, why is this even important? Why is this kind of outreach important? And what I want to make clear is that this is not an ego thing. Im not doing this to pull a stunt or anything like that. I think its very important to make sure that our nominee has plans and is speaking to young people and Latino voters, and working-class voters. And I push not to just score a point, but because I think this is what we need to do to get young people and Latino voters out. Its not just about this boding well for progressives, its about us having a goddamn planet to live on in 10 years or in 20 years. Its about making sure that babies dont get put in the cage again. Its to make sure that we end the scourge of mass incarceration. The thing that I think is tough, sometimes, when it comes to this overlap between progressive policies and electoralism is that sometimes, the most important communities for winning an election are not the ones for which progressive policies are most important. And, you know, theres a very strong emphasis on affluent suburban voters when it comes to winning elections. michael barbaro Yes. alexandria ocasio-cortez And thats great. I understand they are important for winning the election. They are also a constituency that is uniquely protected from the life and death consequences of a Trump administration, and the difference between progressive policy and not. You know, these same affluent, suburban, white voters are the ones that dont have to worry about their babies in a cage. And they may find it uncivil, and I think its and thats the fundamental tension, right? Is that they are necessary. They are important. They are valued, and they are needed to win an election. michael barbaro Right. alexandria ocasio-cortez At the same time, you know, the people that tend to be most impacted by mass incarceration, by unequal access to health care, are sometimes the electorates that are taken for granted. And so thats the issue. Its like campaigning is poetry and governance is prose. Sometimes the poetry the people youre singing to and the people that you need to win an election are ones that can be put off by intersectional policy by talking about ICE and things like that. And thats michael barbaro Right. alexandria ocasio-cortez Thats just a contradiction were going to have to live with and try to figure out. michael barbaro So help me understand exactly what youre advocating for, right? Because it sounds like youre acknowledging the challenge for someone like Joe Biden, which is, to win moderates and win the general election, embracing progressive policies may actually put off crucial voters thinking about swing voters in Wisconsin and Michigan and the midwest. So do you or do you not want him to embrace those policies in this moment, knowing that for those suburban voters you just mentioned who are insulated, that might be a major turnoff, might cost him the general election? alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, again, I think one thing that we can point to is the data that were seeing and the polling that were seeing that progressive policies are popular. And I think this is when we start kind of digging into this issue of class and race. And I tend to be of the opinion that quote, unquote, class issues may be issues like Medicare for All, and tuition-free public colleges and universities, and living wages. Those are much more and a Green New Deal, frankly, which polls very well in those types of communities. I think there are other issues that are unpopular with those types of voters, issues like questioning the very structure of ICE and ending mass incarceration. I do think that one of the things that is compelling about Joe Biden for a lot of voters is just a return to quote, unquote, normal. I think its an uncomfortable reality in politics that a lot of people do vote based on kind of a vibe that they get from a candidate, less than just their actual on-the-paper policy commitments. The fact of the matter is is that how a candidate packages themselves can be sometimes to some voters just as important as the actual inside, that the outside does matter. And I think the outside that Joe Biden represents is this, like, a symbolic return to a pre-Trump time, which is very appealing to affluent suburban voters. michael barbaro It sounds like youre saying Biden should choose wisely which progressive policies he embraces in this moment to allow for that return to normal, which sounds like you being more compromising and pragmatic than I recall you sounding in the past. alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, I think that I mean, I dont know about I always get, like, so I always think these conversations about compromise and pragmatism to be very strange, because people of color, I think, sometimes, have often been the most pragmatic people in this country because we have to make decisions based on survival. And, you know, working class people, you know, was this the match-up that I wanted? Was this the November ballot that I wanted? No, but I know that theres a difference between our communities at least having a fighting chance, and having no chance. You know, I think communities often have to make decisions of harm reduction, and not, like, benefit optimization all the time. michael barbaro So Joe Biden and Donald Trump is a harm-reduction contest for you. Its not the ideal contest. alexandria ocasio-cortez Depending on what happens, you know, in terms of the policies that get adopted. And thats why Im pushing right now. Because you dont want to have a harm-reduction election. Its not good for Democrats. But the difference between a harm-reduction election and not, an a hope election is policy, and a plan for peoples futures. And that has yet to be determined. michael barbaro I wonder if you think this pandemic might have an impact on the politics of this country heading into November? I mean, the repercussions of it have been enormous, and I wonder if in the time between now and then which is a meaningful number of months the fragility of our social fabric will become even more clear to people, and Americans might embrace some of the policies that youre fighting for and that a moderate candidate like Joe Biden who is talking about returning to normal might normally be wary of, the things that Sanders was all about. alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, yeah. Well, were already seeing that. National support for Medicare for All has increased since this pandemic has started. You know, government at its best is an instrument to the public, and the publics means of taking care of itself. And this pandemic has just exposed us at the fragility of our system. I think I already know. I already hear people telling me, I cant believe I didnt see this before. I cannot believe I didnt see this before. And Im just thankful that people are seeing it now. michael barbaro Well then, do you think this moment represents an opportunity for the progressive moment? alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah. michael barbaro I know its weird to think of a tragedy as an opportunity, but and can it capture that moment without a figure like Sanders at the top? alexandria ocasio-cortez Well, I think speaking as an organizer, not as a Congresswoman the thing about the progressive movement is that electoral politics is just one part of it. Its not all of it. Certainly, the progressive movement survived after 2016, and Bernie was not running for a few years. And if anything, that movement strengthened. It elected several members to Congress. And so, I think that it improves. You know, it improves, and a lot of electoral politics has to do for better for worse with the candidate. Were not just voting based on these amorphous figures that do not have identities. Were voting on people and personalities as well. michael barbaro Are you saying that Sanders was, in the end, a flawed candidate? alexandria ocasio-cortez I think, you know, I think ultimately its just about acknowledging the reality. And the reality was that we didnt win. So I guess flawed in the sense that he did not get the nomination. But, you know, I think that in the function of every candidate, every human being is flawed. We are all flawed. Theres no such thing as a flawless candidate. Joe Biden is flawed. Im flawed. Bernie Sanders is flawed. Its what makes novels great. There would be no crazy stories without flawed figures. So, you know, I of course, everyone is. michael barbaro So this is my final question for you, Congresswoman. You havent yet spoken to Joe Biden since Bernie Sanders dropped out. I suspect you have spoken to Senator Sanders. Is there anything you can say about that conversation? alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah. I mean, I think Bernie and I just talk about whats next. We just talk about, like, what were going to do next to help guarantee health care to people. And it takes a lot of different forms. Its about legislation. Its about organizing. Its about coalition-building, but its just about whats next. michael barbaro Has he said anything to you in the wake of his decision to drop out that youre holding on to? alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah, but I hold onto it. michael barbaro Its a private moment, youre saying. alexandria ocasio-cortez Yeah, yeah. michael barbaro Well, Congresswoman, we really want to thank you for your time. I wish you and your district the best of luck. Were sending your best wishes for as quick recovery from this pandemic as possible. alexandria ocasio-cortez Of course. Thank you, and our community thanks you. michael barbaro Good luck. alexandria ocasio-cortez Thank you. Bye bye. [music] michael barbaro Well be right back. Today, The Times launches a new series about our lives spent living on the internet. andy mills Hello, California? California. It is New York. Hi, New York. larissa anderson Hi. kevin roose Hi, Larisa. Who else is there in the room? michael barbaro Sindhus setting up in the other room. kevin roose Is Julia there by chance? julia Hello? kevin roose Julia, this QAnon guy is free to talk anytime. julia Oh, great. kevin roose OK. All right, so where do we begin? archived recording Hey, hows it goin My name is kevin roose So many places we could start. archived recording What dream or vision do you want to turn into reality? kevin roose Lets see. Does this stuff track with her spending more time on the internet? speaker Yes, absolutely. andy mills What if we start with when I first called you last year? Do you remember that? kevin roose I remember that you called, and I dont remember all the specifics, but I remember that you were pretty alarmed. andy mills Mm-hmm. archived recording Unprecedented is how police are describing this attack, scores dead as two mosques are targeted during Friday prayers. andy mills It was right after that horrible attack at Christchurch, New Zealand. archived recording The gunmen stormed in, wearing a helmet with a camera on it. Moving from room to room killing men, women, and children. andy mills This guy had, like, strapped a GoPro on himself and, like, angled it in a way to make his gun look like a video game. archived recording In the most extraordinary fashion, he live-streamed his attack. andy mills And in his manifesto, like, essentially said that he was doing it as, like, a big, real-life shit post. kevin roose Right. archived recording Its now clear he was deeply familiar with far-right groups on the internet. Thats where he posted his so-called manifesto. kevin roose This was basically him trolling people. He knew that this would be this horrible tragedy that would become an international news story, and also that, like, certain people in certain parts of the internet would find it really funny. andy mills And whole thing just felt to me like it was like the strangest and darkest version of this thing that Im becoming more and more consumed with worry about all the time, which is like the internet is doing something to us that is profoundly changing who we are. kevin roose Yeah. Yeah. andy mills Like, I keep finding myself in conversations with friends or family, or, like, this one night I was at dinner with this guy who was sharing this very hyperbolic view about something. And I remember, like as he was sharing it, like, I think I read this almost word for word on Twitter today. And I asked him, like, is this what you really think, or is this what you read online? And he kind of paused and was like, I dont know. I dont know if Im paying enough attention to, like, what the difference between those two things is. kevin roose Yeah. archived recording Im wondering, like, if you think youre still being manipulated? andy mills This is a question that I have been just obsessing over for the last several years. archived recording How do I tell when Im being manipulated? Everything goes back to the global cabal. Yeah, so maybe view us like that. Whats real and whats not. That could be true. andy mills And as I was, like, stressing out about all this stuff, I had this realization that like, oh, I work at The New York Times. Im surrounded by very smart, well-resourced reporters who could probably, like, help me find an answer to what the hells going on. And one of the first calls that I made was you. kevin roose Yeah. andy mills Kevin Roose, because you are the most online person that I know. kevin roose And I remember you saying, like, we got to report on this. We got to go investigate. And I was actually like, I was one tiny step ahead of you, because I had just talked to this guy who I thought could really help me understand what the internet is actually capable of doing to a person. Lets do this. andy mills I remember you saying essentially, like, Im about to step into a rabbit hole. Do you want to come with me? Do a little test here. kevin roose Oh, sure. Testing, one, two, three, do re me. archived recording In just a minute, were going on an exploration the likes of which youve only seen on futuristic television shows. Were going to take a ride on the internet, and today our destination is the world wide web. Now that Ive gotten on the internet, Id rather be on my computer than doing just about anything. Internet sites will soon become alive with virtual characters, interactivity, and intelligent agents, enabling you to do things you could never have done before. Youll find yourself wondering how you ever got along without access to the information superhighway. [music] michael barbaro 13.04.2020 LISTEN The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AFAW) was launched in January in response to pervasive cases of witch persecution and related abuses in Africa. AFAWs main goal is to supply the missing link in the activism and campaign for the eradication of witch-hunting in Africa. However, the mission faces so many challenges. First of all, African witchcraft has largely been misrepresented in the West and in the world. And many institutions have bought into this misrepresentation. Many western NGOs have cashed in on the misconceptions and are using exoticizing and patronizing campaign approaches that tend to perpetuate and not resolve the problem of witch persecution. Witchcraft has largely been presented as a mechanism that helps African societies to function, as a socially stabilizing force. This mistaken anthropological position, which is dominant in scientific and popular western literature, has hurt the advocacy for alleged witches in the region. This misrepresentation has led to a lackluster campaign by the UN agencies and Western NGOs who fund campaigns to eradicate child and adult witch accusations in the region. This approach must change because its been largely unproductive and ineffective. The mistaken idea about witchcraft in Africa must be abandoned if we must see an end to witch persecution in Africa as envisioned by AFAW. So witch persecution in Africa has not been given the attention that it deserves. It has not been addressed with the sense of urgency that the issue demands. The lives of alleged witches in Africa have been treated as if they are inconsequential. For some reason, witchcraft imputation in Africa has been treated like a domesticated useful facility, not a wild and destructive phenomenon that wreaks havoc in the lives of people across the region. Thus the campaign against witch persecution in Africa has been dominated and driven by agencies, organizations, and activists that have refused to call witchcraft belief by its name: myth or superstition. In some cases, there are organizations that have re-missionization agenda and are more interested in using witch persecution in Africa as a medium for re-evangelization than ending this vicious phenomenon. In other cases, there are organizations that have, in trying to avoid being labeled racist or neocolonialist, resolved not to designate witch persecution as an irrational superstitious practice that Africans should abandon. However, COVID-19 has provided a great lesson in global campaigns and activism. As in the COVID-19 pandemic, a campaign against witch persecution must be based on fact and science, not on fiction and superstition. Evidence-based propositions are and should be the guiding principles. So in situations where religious beliefs or practices pose a threat or undermine the advocacy against witch persecution, such practices must be called out and be critically examined, whether they be traditional, Christian, Islamic or Bahai. In situations where religious actors are linked to the persecution of witches, such religious actors must be excoriated. Refusing to do so is a betrayal of the cause and campaign against witch persecution. Now some activists and organizations do not want to openly and publicly take on the negative role of religion in witch persecution in Africa because they do not want to be perceived as atheists or disbelievers in God. They do not want to make statements that imply skepticism such as stating that witches do not exist as believed by the people. They are of the view that such statements will alienate Africans and their Christian partners in the campaign. Look, regarding the COVID-19, WHO has issued guidelines, not based on what aligns with the cultures and religions but what would help contain the virus. What actually alienates people is being dishonest or ambiguous about ones position on the existence and non-existence of witches and by implication other magical entities. Stating that witchcraft is superstition is based on fact, not fiction, and is the most effective way to end witch persecution in the region. Again it takes being critical or better entertaining some disbelief to campaign against witch persecution in Africa even if one is a Christian evangelist or theologian who does not believe in the African witch. Thus in this campaign, disbelief or critical thinking is an asset, not a liability. And pretending to believe or lying about ones position on the existence or non-existence of witches as believed by Africans sends a wrong signal about the intention and mission of an activist or an organization, and attracts people of similar interests to the campaign. Furthermore, many western NGOs and activists have refrained from criticizing harmful traditional, cultural and religious practices such as witch persecution, witch hunting or witch trial because they do not want to offend the cultural sensibilities of Africans. They regard this as a gesture of respect for African culture and religion. It is not. In fact, these NGOs withhold funding or threaten to severe funding for African counterparts that do not comply. Religious, cultural practices that harm other human beings do not deserve respect. They should be critically analyzed and abolished. A critical examination of harmful beliefs and practices is an intellectual duty to Africa and the world. All NGOs and activists must rise up to this duty and challenge in order to realize a witch-hunting free Africa in 2030 As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson struggles with his own case of the Wuhan virus, the British equivalent of President Trumps virus task force no longer dismisses out of hand the South China University study saying the virus likely leaked from nearby viral research labs as some tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. Boris Johnson's British government now has official doubts that the accepted conventional wisdom that the virus spontaneously combusted from an obscure bat sold at a nearby wet market but which is in fact indigenous to a region some 900 kilometers distant from Wuhan that the locals do not in fact consume as food. It is seriously considering the at least equally likely possibility that the Wuhan virus escaped from one of the nearby viral research labs. The DailyMailOnlie reports: "Ministers fear that the coronavirus pandemic might have been caused by a leak from a Chinese laboratory, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.... One member of Cobra, the emergency committee led by Boris Johnson, said last night that while the latest intelligence did not dispute the virus was 'zoonotic' -- originating in animals -- it did not rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory. The member of Cobra, which receives detailed classified briefings from the security services, said: 'There is a credible alternative view [to the zoonotic theory] based on the nature of the virus. Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted.' Wuhan is home to the Institute of Virology, the most advanced laboratory of its type on the Chinese mainland. A second institute in the city, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control which is barely three miles from the market is also believed to have carried out experiments on animals such as bats to examine the transmission of corona viruses.... Britains Cobra commission are not the only experts outside of China questioning the bat theory as a too-convenient explanation pushed by a Chinese government that to this date does not allow outside inspection of the labs which might show their culpability and criminal negligence in the global pandemic: American biosecurity expert Professor Richard Ebright, of Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology, New Jersey, said that while the evidence suggests Covid-19 was not created in one of the Wuhan laboratories, it could easily have escaped from there while it was being analysed. Prof Ebright said he has seen evidence that scientists at the Centre for Disease Control and the Institute of Virology studied the viruses with only 'level 2' security -- rather than the recommended level 4 -- which 'provides only minimal protections against infection of lab workers'. He added: 'Virus collection, culture, isolation, or animal infection would pose a substantial risk of infection of a lab worker, and from the lab worker then the public.' He concluded that the evidence left 'a basis to rule out [that coronavirus is] a lab construct, but no basis to rule out a lab accident'." As noted, a study by the South China University of Technology concluded that COVID-19 'probably' originated in the Wuhan Center for Disease Control. Curiously, shortly after its publication, the research paper was removed from a social networking site for scientists and researchers. Critics claim that the Chinese study was suspect because Chinese institutions, which essentially are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are inveterate liars. Yes, they are, as National Reviews Jim Geraghty documents in The Comprehensive Timeline of Chinas Covid-19 Lies. Amongst the chronology of Chinese lies is this gem: Sometime in Late December: Wuhan hospitals notice an exponential increase in the number of cases that cannot be linked back to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. The NEJM article notes: The majority of the earliest cases included reported exposure to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, but there was an exponential increase in the number of nonlinked cases beginning in late December. The operative word here is reported. And it is worth noting, as right-wing conspiracy theorist David Ignatius of the Washington Post points out, the British medical journal Lancet noted in a January study that the first COVID-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market. As Geraghty shows such institutions are programmed to lie on behalf of the Chinese government and not to damn them, to blame a Chinese lab for unleashing a global pandemic. It is doubtful the CCP approved posting of the study or sanctioned it judging by the fact that it was pulled almost immediately. That suggests that in the age of global social media it temporarily slipped through the cracks and was pulled, not because it was a lie, but because it contained an embarrassing truth. Critics point to studies downplaying it in favor of the discredited bat theory. But then didnt we have the WHO declaring in mid-January that the virus could not be transmitted human-to-human. There are many willing to carry China's water or at least look the other way. The studys authors apparently were not and study author Botao Xiao's resume shows no indication of being a CCP stooge. As Geraghty reports in The Trail Leading Back to the Wuhan Labs: From 2011 to 2013, Botao Xiao was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Childrens Hospital, and his biography is still on the web site of the South China University of Technology. At some point in February, Botao Xiao posted a research paper onto ResearchGate.net, The Possible Origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. He is listed as one author, along with Lei Xiao from Tian You Hospital, which is affiliated with the Wuhan University of Science and Technology. The paper was removed a short time after it was posted, but archived images of its pages can be found here and here. The first conclusion of Botao Xiaos paper is that the bats suspected of carrying the virus are extremely unlikely to be found naturally in the city, and despite the stories of bat soup, they conclude that bats were not sold at the market and were unlikely to be deliberately ingested: The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan [area] of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market. Again, the study was probably pulled, not because it was a lie, but because it revealed an embarrassing truth. Third-party corroboration is hard to come by in a Communist police state and no reputable foreign experts have been invited in to survey the city or the nearby viral labs. Whistleblowers in China have a way of being jailed or simply disappearing. Unless O'Keefe at Project Veritas has some Mandarin-speaking operatives who can sneak in and out with a camera and stay alive. Unless someone defects, third-party corroboration may take a while. Have we forgotten Dr. Li Wenliang, the 33-year-old ophthalmologist based in Wuhan, the epicenter of the contagion, who tried to tell the world that China was hiding something malevolent only to be silenced and imprisoned by Chinese authorities for allegedly fabricating lies about the diseases deadly potential? He would later die of the disease he tried to warn us about and the Chinese tried to keep under wraps. Then there is the case of Dr Ai Fen, the Wuhan doctor who was among the first to alert other medics to the spread of coronavirus: Dr. Ai Fen said she faced 'unprecedented, extremely harsh reprimanded' by officials at Wuhan Central Hospital after she shared a picture of a patient report labelled 'SARS coronavirus'. The image was widely circulated and made its way to whistle-blower Li Wenliang who raised the alarm about the bug, which has killed more than 41,000 people worldwide. Dr Li was reprimanded by authorities for 'illegally spreading untruthful information online' Dr Ai gave an interview to a Chinese magazine criticising the hospital's management for dismissing the early warnings of the coronavirus but has not been seen since, 60 Minutes Australia reported. Early on and to this day Chinese authorities have been loath to let outside authorities canvass the scene or visit the viral labs. The question is why if this is a natural virus outbreak. Were the bats touted as a natural source in fact brought to the labs for deadly and dangerous research from whence they escaped? As noted, even David Ignatius at the Washington Post recently put his tinfoil hat on in a piece that makes some noteworthy points titled How did covid-19 begin? Its initial origin story is shaky: Whats increasingly clear is that the initial origin story -- that the virus was spread by people who ate contaminated animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan -- is shaky. Scientists have identified the culprit as a bat coronavirus, through genetic sequencing; bats werent sold at the seafood market, although that market or others could have sold animals that had contact with bats. The Lancet noted in a January study that the first covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market. Theres a competing theory -- of an accidental lab release of bat coronavirus -- that scientists have been puzzling about for weeks. Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?... And then theres the Chinese study that was curiously withdrawn. In February, a site called ResearchGate published a brief article by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao from Guangzhous South China University of Technology. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories, the article concluded." The British are leaning to the opinion that the Chinese Wuhan virus was not just a random event but rather a Chinese Chernobyl the latest in a series of viruses that have become Chinas major and deadliest export to the world yet. The Brits want to follow the actual evidence where it leads. So should we. Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investors Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications. ATLANTAUnited States President Donald Trump has been open about his eagerness to see the economy and some semblance of business as usual spring back to life as soon as possible. His surgeon general, Jerome Adams, in a television interview on Friday, noted the potential for reopening the country place by place, bit by bit, beginning as early as next month. But on Sunday, officials still in the thick of the grim reality caused by the coronavirus pandemic urged caution, fearing that relaxing protective measures too early could cause the virus to surge once again. In interviews on Sunday morning talk shows, governors and mayors acknowledged the delicate balance between aggressively combating the virus and limiting the economic pain, but they said that public health concerns were their priority. We could be pouring gas on the fire, even inadvertently, Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat, said in an interview with CNN on Sunday. He said that returning to a semblance of life before the outbreak was crucial but, Its not Job No. 1, because right now, the house is on fire and Job No. 1 is to put the fire out. In communities around the U.S., Easter Sunday played out as yet another reminder of just how much life has been upended. Millions of Christians celebrated the holiday separated from their extended families and friends as they watched religious services broadcast online and on television. In some cases, congregations worshipped together, but it was in defiance of official guidance to stay home. But there were signs, in some places, of the crisis levelling off or that it might not be as devastating as had been feared. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday that 758 more people had died, bringing the states total to 9,385 and other data showed that the virus spread had slowed in the state. In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said his state had 8,000 hospital beds ready, and that there had been about 80 hospitalizations. Even so, the United States recently marked a grim milestone, surpassing Italy in the total number of confirmed coronavirus deaths. Tens of thousands more could die. Millions more could lose their jobs, with the pandemic having already put more than 16 million people out of work in the United States in the space of a few weeks. Trump has acknowledged the gravity of the question of when to reopen the country. But the decision is not entirely, or even primarily, his to make. And many governors have expressed wariness about lifting stay-at-home orders prematurely. Weve got to balance those needs, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican, said on ABCs This Week of weighing public health concerns against economic considerations. But, really, right now, the first thing is saving lives and keeping people safe. We do also have to think about how do we eventually ramp up and get some folks back to work. But you cant just pick a date and flip a switch. I dont think its going to be that simple. Chicagos mayor, Lori Lightfoot, said the virus has had a punishing effect on the citys African-American population. Its devastating our community, Lightfoot said in an interview on the CBS program Face the Nation. Nearly 70 per cent of the people who died from the virus in Chicago were African-Americans, who make up only 30 per cent of the citys total population, according to an examination of death records by the Chicago Tribune. She said that, in order to relax stay-at-home measures, there would have to be not just a flattening of the curve but a bending down. Weve got to see a lot more progress on the health-care front, Lightfoot, a Democrat, said, before we can start talking about reopening the economy. Hutchinson, the Arkansas governor, said that responses have varied state by state because needs differed in different parts of the country. He is one of the few governors who has not imposed a statewide stay-at-home order, a measure that, he said, might have been essential in limiting the virus spread in other places but less so in his state. He noted that much of his state is not nearly as densely populated as New York or New Jersey. It just reflects the flexibility a state needs, Hutchinson, a Republican, said. He noted that the hospitalization rate in Arkansas had been low so far. The state, with a population of three million, has reported 1,280 cases and 27 deaths through Sunday. Arkansas has called for strict social distancing, but has allowed businesses to stay open and people to go to work. Thats the important balance that we have in our state, he added. If we need to do more, we will do more. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Sunday that reopening the country would not be an all or none proposition. Fauci said in an interview with CNN that restrictions must be lifted in a gradual manner to prevent a resurgence of cases. Models show that lifting all social-distancing measures at once nationally may set the stage for a rebound sometime in July. If all of a sudden we decide, OK, its May, whatever, and we just turn the switch on, that could be a real problem, Fauci said. He said that governors would need to manage a rolling re-entry, guided by testing results and local risk levels. I think it could probably start, at least in some ways, maybe next month, he said on the networks State of the Union program. But he added, Dont hold me to it. Read more about: By Trend The situation on the global oil markets and issues of strategic stability were in focus of Russian President Vladimir Putins telephone conversation with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, that was held after Putins telephone talks with Trump and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Kremlin press service said on Sunday, Trend reports citing TASS. "Vladimir Putin has a separate telephone conversation with Donald Trump. The two leaders exchanged views on the situation on the oil markets. They once again stressed the major importance of the OPEC+ deal on oil production cuts. They also discussed current issues of strategic stability," it said. The Russian leader congratulated his US counterpart and US Christians on Easter, the Kremlin added. Putin and Trump have spoken over the phone thrice this week. On Friday, the discussed the situation on the global oil market and anti-coronavirus measures. On Thursday, they also focused on the oil market sitaation during trilateral talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. According to earlier reports, the 23 OPEC+ nations who held an extraordinary online meeting on April 12 agreed on oil production cuts in each of them. However they failed to agree a daily production cuts by at least ten million barrels and arrived at a consensus to reduced production by 9.7 million barrels a day as they failed to talk Mexico into accepting its quota of 400,000 barrels a day. A European Union (EU) programme aimed at reducing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions has made significant progress despite low prices in carbon markets, according to a study at the Universities of Strathclyde and Pittsburgh. Under the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), introduced in 2005 in response to the Kyoto Protocol, governments set a cap on an allowable total amount of emissions over a certain period. They also issue tradable emission permits, which allow for one ton of CO 2 . It is widely considered that carbon markets require high prices to reduce emissions but many observers believe they often set prices which are considered too low. However, the study by Strathclyde and Pittsburgh has found that the EU ETS saved around 1.2 billion tons of CO 2 between 2008 and 2016, nearly half of what governments pledged to reduce in their Kyoto Protocol commitments. The study has been published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Strathclyde's home city, Glasgow, is due to host the next United Nations Climate Change Conference. Dr Patrick Bayer, a Chancellor's Fellow in Strathclyde's School of Government & Public Policy and lead author of the study, said: "The ETS was set up to cover some of the most polluting industries"It has focused on very carbon-intensive energy production and manufacturing but there is evidence in other research suggesting that these industries have started to diversify their business models and to look into adopting carbon-neutral technologies or, at least, are interested in thinking about how to change their operations. "Firms got an initial endowment of permits free but if they had emissions in excess of what they were allowed, they needed to buy more. If firms are to change their behaviour in the long run, prices of permits should be as high as possible to incentivise them to change away from carbon-intensive production. advertisement "It turned out prices in carbon markets were fairly low, which then caused major concerns for environmentalists and policy-makers, because they felt they might not provide sufficient incentives. "It depends on the sector or size of firm but we argue that, if firms think of carbon regulation as a long-term project, then they do need to start to change their behaviour." The study used emissions in sectors not covered by the EU ETS to estimate what emissions would have been in those sectors the system does cover. It found that emissions in covered sectors decreased by between 8.1% and 11.5%, compared to expected emission levels without the EU ETS. This translates to a decrease of around 3.8%, compared with the EU's total emissions during 2008 to 2016. Dr Bayer said: "In the energy and electricity markets, we have seen even big players thinking about how they can run their operations when becoming less dependent on fossil fuels. But there can be a threat that, whenever prices in those markets go up, an industry or business becomes exposed to high costs. "The appeal of carbon markets is that, once they are established with the right rules, you can connect them to other markets. Climate is not concerned about whether emissions are reduced in the UK or Germany or China; so long as they are reduced, that helps to address the problem. If you have carbon markets scattered across the world, you might be able to trade across those markets. "The UK's future place in the ETS is still up for discussion but all options are on the table. Whether any UK carbon market would be connected to the European market isn't clear and would probably depend on negotiations with the EU and how trade will be regulated in future relations. Assuming there were agreement on this and some strong economic integration between the two countries, it would probably make a lot of sense to connect those markets. The UK has been successful in decarbonising its economy in the past decade or so and has a strong role to play in continuing to advocate for future decarbonisation" "The period our study covered, from 2008 to 2016, included the financial crisis and economic downturn, when demand for the permits reduced. We used a statistical model to account for the effect of the crisis. The emission reductions that we measure are in addition to lower demand for permits due to the economic crisis, energy efficiency targets and climate policies that try to address carbon emissions." A forest fire that has raged in Ukraine for more than a week has spread to within a kilometre of the Chernobyl power plant, environmental campaigners have warned. Footage of the region has shown fires raging through the 30km exclusion zone set up around the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, with black smoke billowing into the sky as firefighters attempting to beat back the blaze from helicopters. However, despite state officials assuring the situation is under control, NGO Greenpeace Russia has warned the situation may be much worse than first stated by the authorities. On 4 April, Ukrainian authorities said the blaze covered an area of 20 hectares, but Greenpeace cited satellite images showing it was around 12,000 hectares in size at that time. "According to satellite images taken on Monday, the area of the largest fire has reached 34,400 hectares," it said, adding that a second fire, stretching across 12,600 hectares, was just one kilometre away from the defunct plant. Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims. The Emergency Situations Service meanwhile said radiation levels in the exclusion zone had not changed and those in nearby Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, "did not exceed natural background levels". But Rashid Alimov, head of energy projects at Greenpeace Russia, said the fires, fanned by the wind, could disperse radionuclides, atoms that emit radiation. Recommended The Chernobyl art project illuminating a dark obsession with disaster "A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk," Mr Alimov said. "In this case we're hoping for rain tomorrow." Chernobyl tour operator Yaroslav Yemelianenko, writing on Facebook, described the situation as critical. He said the fire was rapidly expanding and had reached the abandoned city of Pripyat, two kilometers from where "the most highly active radiation waste of the whole Chernobyl zone is located". He called on officials to warn people of the danger. The fires, which follow unusually dry weather, began on 3 April in the western part of the exclusion zone and spread to nearby forests. Police say they have identified a 27-year old local resident who they accuse of deliberately starting the blaze. It remains unclear if the person, who has reportedly confessed to starting a number of fires "for fun", is partly or fully responsible. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 07:35 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd16c77e 2 Business social-aid,cash-aid,staple-foods-cards,COVID-19,coronavirus,Indonesia,state-budget Free For Siti Fatimah, 25, a contract-based elementary school teacher in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, making ends meet has become more challenging lately. With a salary of Rp 1 million (US$63) per month, she resorts to selling phone credit to take care of her family her father suffered a stroke three years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has nearly wiped out her extra earnings from the familys small phone credit business, yet the cost to stock up on food and hygiene products have soared to protect her high-risk father. Her family has taken out loans to survive, even though they may be eligible for government aid. I dont really understand the system. My family and I, even the people living in my area, were never taught how it works, Siti told The Jakarta Post when asked if her family had heard about the Social Affairs Ministrys Integrated Data of Social Welfare (DTKS), which provides government aid. The government has set aside Rp 110 trillion (US$7.68 billion) for social safety net programs to soften the economic blow of COVID-19 on low-income Indonesian households. However, concerns have emerged about red tape hampering distribution efforts. Bank transfers (BLT) of Rp 600,000 per month for three months will be available for 9 million people outside of Greater Jakarta if they are included in the DTKS but have yet to receive any other forms of government aid. Meanwhile, eligible Greater Jakarta residents will get the same amount in the form of staple food packages. Read also: Govt expands social aid for poor to prevent Idul Fitri mudik To be included in a DTKS database, a recipient must submit documents that will have to be verified through various administrative layers, from district heads and regional governments to social affairs agencies and the central government. The verification process may vary in length. High school student Eka Nanda, 17, said she heard the process could take up to two years. So, to qualify for government funding through the Indonesian Smart Card (KIP) for her university, she applied in advance for the DTKS during her freshman year in high school. Its like a lucky draw, said Eka, who has yet to be included in the DTKS. SMERU Research Institute researcher Luhur Bima said the governments data collection and validation steps tend to be lengthy. Therefore, it needs to implement a better system with more flexibility, especially during the ongoing outbreak, for the data to be continuously updated and evaluated, he added. The government shouldnt rely on just one uniform mechanism; it must use multiple approaches because the people who require social aid face different circumstances. The government could try data collection methods from communities or merge DTKS data with data from other institutions, such as education agencies, he said. Read also: Accelerate priority spending President Joko Jokowi Widodo has stated that in disbursing the immediate aid, he wanted related offices to use practical methods that dont hinder the process. He especially targeted Indonesias more than 70 million informal workers, such as traditional market vendors and motorcycle taxi drivers, who account for more than half of the nations workforce. Around 24.8 million Indonesians are considered poor, living on under $1 a day and representing 9.22 percent of the population, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data show. According to a World Bank report titled Aspiring Indonesia, over 60 million Indonesians are vulnerable to falling into poverty. The COVID-19 pandemic could bring more than 11 million people in East Asian-Pacific countries into poverty as the global economy faces recession risks, the World Bank estimates. Indonesias GDP is projected to grow at a 21-year low of 2.3 percent this year, with a worst-case scenario showing a 0.4 percent contraction, according to government estimates. Read also: 70 million informal workers most vulnerable during pandemic Senior development economist Vivi Alatas said the government would not be able to collect data to distribute aid for the millions of people in Jakarta by solely relying on DTKS data. DTKS data is a database of poor and vulnerable families. There may not be a lot of them in Greater Jakarta [compared to other regions], but they are the most affected [by the outbreak], Vivi said. The former World Bank economist suggested an on-demand application system for individual households requiring help. Vivi also suggested merging DTKS data with other available data, such as that of the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan). The most important thing is to keep the people [in affected areas] at home without them having to suffer, Vivi added. Read also: What we can do to help those financially hit by COVID-19: Economist's take The Social Affairs Ministrys director general for social empowerment, Pepen Nazarudin, said that some of the recipients of social aid in Jakarta may not be included in the DTKS as per the Jakarta administrations proposal. Non-DTKS households may receive aid if there is an extra quota, he said, adding that DTKS-listed people would remain a priority. Greater Jakarta, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus in Indonesia accounting for around half of the nations cases and deaths, has around 30 million residents. By distributing social aid, the government expects the millions of Greater Jakarta residents to refrain from traveling to their hometowns for Idul Fitri, which will likely fall on May 23 and 24. Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan took to social media on Saturday to ensure that not only residents with Jakarta IDs can get social aid, but also those who reside in Jakarta but with IDs from other regions. If you dont have a Jakarta ID, please report to your neighborhood and community units, Anies wrote on his Instagram account. It is our duty to ensure [everyone] can survive this difficult time. A Philadelphia man has become the first state prison inmate in Pennsylvania to die from complications of the coronavirus. The 67-year-old, whom prison officials did not identify, had been serving a life sentence for murder at SCI Phoenix, a prison in Eagleville, Montgomery County. The announcement comes days after the governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey authorized the early release of potentially thousands of state prison inmates in an effort to prevent major outbreaks at the facilities. Only nonviolent offenders are eligible for placement on house arrest or early parole. READ MORE: Thousands of state prison inmates in Pa. and N.J. are now eligible for temporary release as governors act to avert coronavirus spread The SCI Phoenix inmate died Wednesday after receiving treatment at Einstein Medical Center, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections said. On Saturday, the Montgomery County coroner identified his cause of death as acute respiratory distress from pneumonia. He also had underlying conditions including heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver. Department of Corrections officials had previously denied the death, when asked about it Thursday. At least 11 inmates and six employees at SCI Phoenix have tested positive for COVID-19. No other Pennsylvania state prisons had reported sick inmates as of Friday, but at least 13 additional officers have been infected. In New Jersey on Friday, officials announced its first death of a corrections officer. Nelson Perdomo, 44, of Middlesex County, had worked at East Jersey State Prison for 19 years. One New Jersey inmate has also died, and at least 129 officers and 20 prisoners have tested positive across the state. New Delhi, April 13 : Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a video conference with Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and the chiefs of army, navy and air force on April 1. "The armed forces and the MoD are fully prepared to face any situation," Singh tweeted. Only issue was that Singh was using an app that has created the worldwide security scare due to its links to China. Citizen Lab, a Canada-based independent research organisation, has found that Chinese servers are being used to distribute encryption and decryption keys for video links on Zoom. In all probability, the Chinese servers were used by Singh for the video conference with the security forces brass, leaving it vulnerable to breach. It's not just Singh, more Indian leaders are using this easy-to-use medium. In one such video conference with high-ranking officials, Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal can be spotted using the same platform - Zoom. It shows Goyal talking to officials, while using his MacBook Air. On April 10, ICCR chief Vinay Sahasrabuddhe organised a virtual press conference with the Agriculture Minister where Narendra Tomar talked about how the government planned to minimise the loss for the sector. This too was organised through Zoom. In fact, a link for the same was also sent to participating journalists. But why is Zoom problematic? "We suspect keys may be distributed through these (Chinese) servers. A company primarily catering to North American clients that sometimes distributes encryption keys through servers in China is potentially concerning, given that Zoom may be legally obligated to disclose these keys to authorities in China," the Citizen Lab researchers warned. The suspicion proved to be true. The chief executive of the video conferencing app apologised for "falling short" on security issues and promised to address concerns. Eric S Yuan, the founder, himself is a Chinese American. "Ex-NSA (National Security Agency) hacker Patrick Wardle identified a series of issues, including a flaw that leaves Mac users vulnerable to having webcams and microphones hijacked," the BBC reported. In other words, Goyal's MacBooks webcam and microphone could also be vulnerable, if this assertion of the former NSA hacker is true. Meanwhile, Google has reportedly banned the Zoom app from all employees' computers over 'security vulnerabilities' and Singapore has banned teachers using Zoom after hackers posted obscene images on screens. Earlier this month, according to a report by Reuters, Elon Musk's SpaceX had also banned employees from using Zoom over security concerns. According to a report by social media platform Blind, 12 per cent users have reportedly stopped using Zoom and 35 per cent professionals are worried that their information may have been compromised. Pawan Duggal, India's foremost cyber security expert, calls Zoom a "glitzy timebomb". "It looks nice, but it's deadly," he reasons. But Indian leaders seem oblivious to these statistics. Not only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but the Congress also holds video conferences through Zoom, where likes of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has taken part. She used it to address the Congress Working Committee (CWC) as well as a meeting of state party chief. In fact, all the virtual pass conferences of the Congress that take place at 1 p.m. are through Zoom. Chief Ministers Captain Amarinder Singh and Bhupesh Baghel, and senior leaders, like Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, continue to use Zoom. Ever since the government announced a 21-day nationwide shutdown, forcing not just companies but also political parties to work from home, the company has seen a huge boom in India. The daily downloads for Zoom have increased from around 1,70,000 in the middle of February to nearly 2.5 million in late March. Duggal told IANS, "If you are a policymaker, public figure or corporate honcho, Zoom is not your go-to place. It's proven Zoom is not end-to-end encrypted. Its China link is concerning. It has a dubious privacy record. Indian leaders should learn from Britain where cabinet meetings on Zoom came online." Though, government sources indicate the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has stepped in to suggest what app scan be used as mode of secure video conference. However, the use of Zoom by the government, the security and the trade honchos as well as top politicians, that is conceded to be routed through China, should ring alarm bells across the corridor of power. (Anindya Banerjee can be contacted at Anindya.b@ians.in) Patrick Jesernik feared he and his girlfriend had caught the novel coronavirus when she began showing symptoms, including shortness of breath, that drove her to be tested last week, family members later told investigators in Will County, Illinois. Before the results of the coronavirus test came back, police found Jesernik, 54, and 59-year-old Cheryl Schriefer lying in separate rooms, dead in what they called an apparent murder-suicide. A revolver with two spent casings and three live bullets lay near Jesernik's body, police said. They lived in Lockport Township, Illinois, a suburb about 35 miles southwest of Chicago. Jesernik's parents had not heard from the couple for a few days when an acquaintance called the police to ask for a welfare check, the Will County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. When deputies knocked on the door of the couple's house no one answered. The doors and windows had been locked from the inside. The house was orderly and neat, with no sign of a struggle, the sheriff's office said. Family members met deputies at the home and told them about Jesernik's coronavirus fears and Schriefer's symptoms. They told police the results of Schriefer's recent coronavirus test had not come back yet, the sheriff's office said. On Friday, the Will County Coroner's Office determined Schriefer died in a homicide from a "shot in the back of the head at close range," the sheriff's office said. Jesernik died in a suicide, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the autopsy. Neither tested positive for the coronavirus. Will County, which includes Lockport Township and the surrounding town of Joliet, Illinois, has experienced a sharp increase in coronavirus cases and deaths in the past week. Over the weekend, the number of deaths nearly doubled from 13 on Saturday to 22 by Monday afternoon. The virus has infected a police officer, a sheriff's deputy and a nurse who works in the county jail, Patch.com reported. The county had 703 total cases on Monday afternoon. The Will County Sheriff's Office said the pandemic had increased calls for domestic violence and mental health crises. "During the current COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of service calls that Deputies have been responding to, involve domestic disputes and crisis intervention calls," the sheriff's office said in a statement Saturday. The sheriff's office said the courthouse remains open for people seeking protective orders and asked victims of abuse to contact the agency's social worker who specialized in domestic violence or call the local domestic violence hotline. Those messages have been echoed around the United States, as calls for domestic violence and mental health issues have increased in some areas with public spaces closed, forcing people into close quarters. Some hotlines for people suffering from anxiety and depression have reportedly received more calls, particularly in areas where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly like Maryland and Portland, Oregon, but the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline did not report an increase last week. (The phone number is 1-800-273-8255.) Meanwhile, mental health experts have offered advice for people feeling unmoored by the loss of routines and contact with friends and family. They suggest developing a new routine, getting enough sleep, eating healthfully, staying hydrated, regularly exercising and soaking in some fresh air and sunlight every day. As the virus has spread worldwide, domestic violence incidents have also increased in many countries, as The Washington Post's Miriam Berger reported. The measures employed to tamp down the pandemic - staying inside and avoiding physical contact with people outside the home - also put abuse victims at a heightened risk, experts say. Spikes in violence at home have led some foreign governments to suspend alcohol sales and set up resource centers in grocery stores, one of the few retail businesses still open in many nations. In the United States, advocates are bracing for an increase in domestic violence incidents as quarantine and stay-at-home measures fall into place nationwide. "We know that when there's added stress in the home it can increase the frequency and severity of abuse," Katie Ray-Jones, chief executive of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said last week. "We're trying to prepare survivors for that." Domestic violence was widespread in the United States, long before the pandemic forced some people indoors with abusive partners. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of "severe physical violence by an intimate partner." States issuing stay-at-home orders have made exceptions for victims of abuse and the police officers who need to respond to domestic violence calls. "When cabin fever sets in, give it a week or two, people get tired of seeing each other and then you might have domestic violence," Alex Villanueva, the sheriff of Los Angeles County, told the Associated Press. A south Galway priest secured the support of the GAA and the blessing of the local Gardai for a circumnavigation of his parish over Easter weekend. Equipped with holy water pot and sprinkler, Fr Barry Horan was driven by a Mercedes van on a 75 km journey to bless parishioners and townlands in and around Clarinbridge and Kilcolgan. We started it off as an initiative for elderly parishioners who were missing Mass, but then everyone wanted to get involved and we also brought Easter eggs for the young kids, Clarinbridge GAA chairman Bernie Conlon explained. Fr Barry blessed homes, land and people, Mr Conlon said. "He didn't leave the van at any stage." It was a great success, with everyone observing the two-kilometre restrictions on movement and social distancing by standing at their doorways or the end of their access roads," he said. Clarinbridge GAA had come up with the idea after a similar initiative in a north Galway parish. Also, a parish priest in Co Louth took to the Popemobile on the Cooley peninsula last Thursday. Fr Malachy Conlon, a parish priest at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Boher, Cooley, Co Louth, was transported in the vehicle actually used by Pope John Paul II on visits to Britain and to the African continent in the early 1980s. It had been bought by a vintage vehicle collector from Greenore, Co Louth. The Clarinbridge route was published on social media, and local businessman Mike Kerrigan served as chauffeur. We left cream eggs sponsored by Mike Kerrigan for kids at several agreed pick up points, Mr Conlon said. Meanwhile in Galway city, flags of over 20 European countries including non-EU member Norway and excluding Britains Union Jack - have been erected over the weekend on light standards on the Salthill promenade. Former city mayor and Labour councillor Niall MacNelis welcomed the initiative as a gesture of solidarity to European neighbours who are badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Galway is a multicultural city, and while we have asked people to fly Tricolours as a gesture of support for our healthcare workers we are also aware that there are people of many nationalities living and working here, he said. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - Indigo Exploration Inc. (TSXV: IXI) (FSE: INE) (the "Company") announces that it has signed an option agreement, as described in more detail below, with Desert Gold Ventures Inc. ("Desert Gold") and its local Mali subsidiary, Desert Gold Mali SARL ("DGM"), to acquire up to a 100% interest in the Djimbala Permit in southern Mali, West Africa. The Djimbala Permit lies immediately east of Hummingbird Resources' 0.7 million oz Au Komana gold mine1, 21 kilometres north, along strike, of the Kodieran gold Mine and 28 kilometres north, along strike, from Endeavour's high grade 3.3 million oz Au Kalana project2. The Djimbala Permit will complement the Company's West African gold-focused portfolio with the two permits in Burkina Faso, the Hantoukoura and Lati 2 permits. The Djimbala Permit is located in southern Mali, West Africa, 220 km south of the capital of Bamako and covers a 100 km2 area. The permit is situated in the Yanfolila Gold Belt and is surrounded by a significant number of gold deposits, mines and prospecting permits. The bulk of the permit has not been explored. Two small soil sampling campaigns and a limited artisanal pit sampling program were completed by Desert Gold over parts of the permit with positive Au anomalies coinciding with interpreted favourable mineralized structures. Four north-south trending gold soil anomalies were defined, reflecting the regional structural trend. These soil anomalies also appear to correspond to the southern extension of the Faliko Fodela mineralized zones drilled by Gold Fields immediately north of the Djimbala Permit. To date, several active artisanal workings were located during the soil campaigns, confirming Au mineralization. Paul Cowley, President and CEO of the Company, states: "The Djimbala acquisition will complement our existing gold portfolio and maintain our West African focus. The Company's share restructuring, debt settlement and financing are well timed for the strengthening gold market. We are very much looking forward to reactivating our exploration efforts in Burkina Faso and Mali once financed. A work plan and budget are being developed for 2020 with exploration aimed to start by summer." Story continues Share Consolidation The Company announces that, subject to TSX-V approval, the Company proposes to consolidate its common shares on a 6 for 1 basis. The board of directors believes that it is in the best interests of the Company to consolidate its common shares in order to provide increased flexibility in seeking additional financing opportunities, to pursue strategic business acquisitions, and to improve the market's perception of the Company. Assuming no other change in the issued capital of the Company, it is expected that upon completion of this consolidation, the Company will have approximately 15,336,552 common shares issued and outstanding, reduced from 92,019,316, which are currently issued and outstanding. The Company's outstanding options and warrants will also be adjusted on the same basis (6 for 1) as the common shares, with proportionate adjustments being made to exercise price. No fractional common shares will be issued, and no cash will be paid in lieu of fractional, post-consolidation common shares, options or warrants. The number of post-consolidation common shares to be received by a shareholder will be rounded to the nearest whole common share (less than one-half of a share will be cancelled and more than one-half of a share will be changed to one whole share). The CUSIP number of the Company will change. The Company's name and trading symbol will remain the same. Financing The Company also announces a non-brokered private placement (the "Financing") of up to 10,000,000 post-consolidated units at a price of $0.05 per unit for gross proceeds of up to $500,000. Each unit will be comprised of one share and one warrant. Each warrant will be exercisable into a share for a period of three years at a price of $0.10 per share. The warrants are subject to an acceleration clause should the common shares trade at a price of $0.15 or greater for 10 consecutive trading days, in which event management may notify warrantholders that the warrants must be exercised within a period of 30 days, or they will be cancelled. The proceeds of the private placement will be used to carry out exploration programs on the Company's Burkina Faso projects, the Djimbala project and for general working capital. The Company may pay a finder's fee of cash, common shares or warrants, or a combination thereof, to eligible persons in compliance with applicable securities laws and TSX-V policies. The financing is subject to TSX-V approval. Djimbala Transaction The Company has signed a four-year option agreement with Desert Gold and its Mali subsidiary, DGM, whereby the Company has the option to acquire a minimum 51% interest and a maximum 100% interest in the Djimbala Permit by the issuance of shares of the Company and the completion of certain work commitments. The proposed transaction is subject to (1) the acceptance of the TSX-V; (2) receipt by the Company of a positive legal and technical due diligence review of the Djimbala Permit; (3) the consolidation of the Company's common shares on a 6 to 1 basis; and (4) the completion of the Financing (the "Conditions"). The date that the Conditions have been fulfilled will become the Commencement Date (the "Commencement Date") To acquire the minimum 51% interest in the Djimbala Permit, the Company is required to complete $400,000 in expenditures on or before the second anniversary of the Commencement Date and in any event prior to April 30, 2022. To acquire the maximum 100% interest in the Djimbala Permit, the Company must have earned the minimum interest and is required to make additional work expenditures of $600,000 prior to April 30, 2024. The Company's 100% interest is subject to a 2% net smelter royalty ("NSR") in favour of Desert Gold. The Company has the right to purchase 1% of the NSR for USD$1,000,000. In addition the Company will make a share issuance to Desert Gold equivalent to $50,000 of the Company's post-consolidated common shares at a deemed price of $0.05 per share on the date that the Conditions have been fulfilled (the "Commencement Date"); make a share issuance to Desert Gold equivalent to $75,000 at a deemed price equal to the volume weighted average price (VWAP) for the prior 10-day trading period, subject to a minimum deemed price of $0.05 per share (the "Applicable Deemed Price") on or before the first anniversary of the Commencement Date; make a share issuance to Desert Gold equivalent to $100,000 at the Applicable Deemed Price on or before the second anniversary of the Commencement Date; and make a share issuance to Desert Gold equivalent to $125,000 at the Applicable Deemed Price on or before the third anniversary of the Commencement Date. Debt Settlement The Company intends, subject to TSX-V approval, to settle debt that was incurred for and is currently payable in cash. In order to preserve its cash, the Company is proposing to issue securities on a post-consolidated basis at a deemed price of $0.05 per post-consolidated security. A loan from shareholders of $100,000 plus 10% interest is proposed to be settled with the issuance of 2,166,667 units at a deemed price of $0.05 per post-consolidated unit. Each unit will be comprised of one share and one warrant. Each warrant will be exercisable into a share for a period of three years at a price of $0.10 per share. A debt to an insider of $150,000 is proposed to be settled with the issuance of 3,000,000 common shares at a deemed price of $0.05 per post-consolidated share. On Behalf of the Board of Directors, "Paul Cowley" President and CEO For further information, please contact Paul Cowley: (604) 340-7711 Website: indigoexploration.com Paul Cowley, P.Geo., President, CEO and Director of Indigo Exploration Inc., is the Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, who has read and approved the technical content of this news release. This news release contains forward-looking statements respecting the Company's ability to successfully complete the consolidation, debt settlement, Djimbala transaction and financing. These forward-looking statements entail various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current expectations, are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual results may differ materially from those contained in such statements, including the inability of the Company to successfully complete the consolidation, debt settlement, Djimbala transaction and financing. These uncertainties and risks include, but are not limited to, the strength of the capital markets, the price of gold; operational, funding, and liquidity risks; the degree to which mineral resource estimates are reflective of actual mineral resources; and the degree to which factors which would make a mineral deposit commercially viable are present; the risks and hazards associated with mining operations. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and available at www.sedar.com and readers are urged to read these materials. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such statements unless required by law. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. 1. Hummingbird Komana gold resource; 0.7 million oz Au probable reserves category (2015) https://hummingbirdresources.co.uk/operations-projects/mali/ 2. Endeavour Kalana gold resource; 3.3 million oz Au measured & indicated (2020) https://www.endeavourmining.com/our-portfolio/Kalana-Project/default.aspx To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54358 A total of 254 Saudi citizens arrived at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Monday on Saudi Arabian Airlines plane coming from London, reported Saudi Press Agency (SPA). They were received by representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Health, and the General Authority of Civil Aviation. This flight is part of the trips for citizens wishing to come back to Saudi Arabia. Upon their arrival, the citizens were subjected to all health and preventive measures against the coronavirus (COVID-19). The health and preventive measures include 12 stages that start from the airport of the country of departure until leaving the airports in the Kingdom. All arrived citizens will be isolated for a period of 14 days in guest houses prepared by the Ministry of Tourism and supervised by the Ministry of Health to apply the health procedures adopted to combat the coronavirus epidemic. Sheldon Messing, president of Temple Beth El in Midland, says that while his congregation and other Jewish congregations around the world have adapted their traditional Passover celebrations to curb the spread of the coronavirus, it's also a reminder of what is at the heart of a spiritual community. "My wife and I were watching a program the other day which had the archbishop of Canterbury, the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, and a Catholic priest," Messing explained this week. "They were talking about Easter and Passover. One of them said something to the effect that religion is not a building -- it's really what's in your heart that is important. "This (crisis) is an opportunity to examine that (idea) more deeply," he added. Along with worship services at Temple Beth El being canceled for the time being, Messing explained that he and his wife and other members of their congregation are observing Passover -- which began at sundown on Wednesday -- only with the members of their own households, at least in person. The first two nights of Passover include a traditional dinner called a Seder. "Others in our congregation did Seders via Zoom with their loved ones, or availed themselves of the virtual Seders that are available online which are conducted by some congregations and/or Jewish organizations," Messing said. "You're never really separated," he added of not being able to be in the physical presence of loved ones. "Physically, maybe. But in other ways, you're not." Under normal circumstances, Messing said, the Temple Beth El congregation would have gathered with the Temple Beth Israel congregation of Bay City for the second Seder meal on April 9. That gathering typically includes people from Saginaw and Genesee counties and the Thumb, entailing up to 80 people or so, he said. "But that, obviously, was canceled," Messing said. Messing said that Passover is "one of the most important" Jewish holidays, marking the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt and "the beginnings of the Jewish people as a nation." Messing sees the current crisis as an opportunity for Jews to reaffirm the meaning of Passover, which ends at sundown April 16. "This year gives us the opportunity to look inward and reflect on the true meaning of this holiday and our relationship with God and the amazing history of our people, who have survived for thousands of years despite incredible obstacles. We shall survive this one as well," he said. Through the beginning of February, the coronavirus outbreak in China severely disrupted logistics in the country, creating a shortage of lorry drivers and rail freight cars. The seaborne market showed initial improvement in port cities - including Qingdao, one of the production hubs for graphite - after February 10, whereas... STAUNTON For family nurse practitioner student Brooke Buffington of Staunton, the best use of her skills was clear: helping others in crisis. The Macoupin County registered nurse left on April 10 for New York, where she will spend four weeks on the front line of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. I chose to pursue a career in nursing so that I could serve people in their most vulnerable state, Buffington said. I will be working in one of the intensive care units treating COVID patients at NYC Health and Hospitals in north-central Bronx. The days will be exhausting. She will work a rotation of seven days on, with two-day breaks in between. Buffington earned a bachelors degree in nursing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2017, and began the schools Doctor of Nursing Practice Family Nurse Practitioner program in 2018. She will graduate in May 2021, but has worked in health care for five years first as a student nurse technician in a cardiothoracic intensive care unit and then as a registered nurse in a cardiovascular ICU. The decision to help in New York, which has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, will leave her juggling healthcare service and her studies. What Brooke is doing is truly amazing, SIU School of Nursing lecturer Greg Jennings said. I know her skills will be put to good use, and she will help save many lives. She has been trained for this, both with her education and on-the-job training. Jennings and program director Valerie Griffin have discussed ways to help Buffington take a pause and then complete her studies so she can continue through the program as scheduled. Brookes new work schedule is going to be extremely demanding and even though she has two days off, those days are going to need to be spent recovering both mentally and physically, Jennings said. She is going to see, experience and feel things she may never have before and will need to process that. As important as school is, she felt an internal calling to help others and we support and respect that. Griffin said Buffingtons service is an example of compassion and love. In this past month, I have seen human kindness reflected in many ways and Brookes decision to request time off from her program to volunteer in this manner is an exceptional act of kindness, Griffin said. Buffington said she has a role to play in fighting the pandemic, and hopes others will do what they can such as staying home and practicing social distancing to help flatten the curve of COVID-19. Its important that we think about the many families who have been affected by this pandemic, as well as the numerous healthcare professionals who are working tirelessly to treat these patients, she said. My hope is that everyone will do the best that they can to stay safe during this very difficult time. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global solar PV market is expected to reach 489.79 GW by 2020, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Rising demand for sustainable energy resources coupled with favorable regulatory policies, is expected to drive the market growth over the forecast period. Supportive regulations involving federal subsidy and incentives expected to be the prime factors impacting the industry growth on a positive note. Europe has been a major market for solar PV owing to early adoption of the technology in the region owing to high consumer awareness and positive government outlook in region. Increasing demand for renewable energy sources owing to rising consumer awareness towards cost benefits associated with the technology is expected to propel growth. Furthermore, depleting fossil fuel resources coupled with growing demand for durable energy sources is expected to have a positive impact on the industry growth. The technology offer low conversion efficiencies as compared to conversional energy sources including oil and biomass. Furthermore, the solar PV performance gets affected by various factors including type of raw material used for solar cell manufacturing, availability of sunlight and solar PV designs which is expected to hamper its growth over the forecast period. Access Research Report of Solar PV Market@ www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/solar-pv-industry Further key findings from the report suggest: Utility is expected to be the fastest growing application segment, progressing at a CAGR of 21.3% over the forecast period, owing to the high demand for solar PV in electricity, and transportation Non-residential application segment accounted for 26.3% of the total market share in 2016, high employment of solar PV in industrial processes for fulfilling heating requirements European market is expected to witness a slow growth rate as compared to other regions, on account of early adoption of the technology in the region which led to saturation of the industry Asia Pacific accounted for 17.9% of the total market share in 2016, on account of the favorable government regulations and initiatives taken by the government to install clean energy resources in order to curb the prevailing issue of pollution The major players in the market are investing in R&D activities in order to come up with efficient and high performance systems in order to tap the rising consumer attention and to compete with the alternative energy resources Grand View Research has segmented the global solar PV market on the basis of application, and region: Solar PV Application Outlook (Installed Capacity, MW; 2012 - 2020) Residential Non-Residential/Commercial Utility Solar PV Regional Outlook (Installed Capacity, MW; 2012 - 2020) North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Rest of the World About Grand View Research Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare. Microsofts Platinum Sponsorship will allow the Paid Search Association to ramp up online education efforts at a time when this kind of help is most needed by Paid Search professionals, said Paid Search Association President David Szetela. Microsoft Advertising has become the first Platinum Sponsor of the Paid Search Association. As part of the sponsorship, Microsoft Advertising employees can participate as members of the Paid Search Association Microsofts Platinum Sponsorship will allow the Paid Search Association to ramp up online education efforts at a time when this kind of help is most needed by Paid Search professionals, said Paid Search Association President David Szetela. With great leadership, resources and support from Microsoft Advertising, well plan to expand online learning with a series of webinars and online conferences thats needed now more than ever. "Founding Board Members from Microsoft advertising, including PSA board members, Christi Olson Head of Evangelism for Search and Advertising at Microsoft; John Lee, Learning Strategist - Learning Engagement, Microsoft Advertising and Purna Virji, Sr. Manager, Global Engagement at Microsoft, have each played an important role in building the Paid Search Association, Szetela said. The Paid Search Association has also gained support from leading agencies and companies involved in paid search who have joined as corporate members, including Gold Corporate Member ClosedLoop.com and Silver Corporate Members Adara.com, BoatHouseInc.com, EPLDigital.com, LightMarketingInc.com, LionHurst.com, MakeItEfficient.com, MancusoMedia.com, MetricTheory.com, PPCAdEditor.com, SearsHC.com, SmartBoxDental.com and Xtropy.com About Microsoft Advertising Microsoft Search Network receives 9.4 billion monthly queries in the US across all devices, helping marketers can connect with over 124 million unique searchers per month. With the Microsoft Audience Network, marketers can reach almost 140 million total unique visitors across MSN and Outlook.com See more at https://about.ads.microsoft.com/en-us/get-started/about-microsoft-advertising About the Paid Search IndustryIn 2020 Paid Search Advertising is projected to become a $139.8 billion industry this year, according to research by Statista, which projects yearly revenue of $162.69 billion by 2023. About the Paid Search Association The Paid Search Association is dedicated to advancing the paid search industry by encouraging communication, learning, collaboration, diversity and high ethical and business standards among professionals and organizations involved in the industry. Learn more at https://paidsearch.org Paid Search Association, 500 North Reo Street, Suite 300, Tampa, FL 33609 Contact: Mike Freedman (813) 368-1501 SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) The San Mateo County coroner's office has confirmed the identity of an Antioch man who was fatally shot in South San Francisco early Sunday after allegedly attempting to steal vehicles from two people and trying to flee in a patrol car. Justin Silvernale, 35, died after South San Francisco police officers responded to reports around 5:35 a.m. Sunday of two men fighting at the Chevron gas station on Hickey Boulevard. Silvernale allegedly attempted to steal vehicles from two different people at the gas station, stabbing one of them with a knife. An off-duty San Francisco police officer attempted to intervene in the attempted carjackings but was also stabbed, according to police. The officer then shot Silvernale before he attempted to flee. South San Francisco police made efforts to subdue Silvernale, including using Taser stun guns, but he attempted to flee in a patrol car. Silvernale drove to the Kaiser Permanente medical facility on Hickey Boulevard and exited the patrol car, threatening officers with a knife. According to South San Francisco police, officers then shot Silvernale and immediately attempted first aid. However, He was pronounced dead at the scene. The off-duty officer and the other stabbing victim were both taken to a hospital and are expected to fully recover from their injuries. No South San Francisco officers were injured, according to the department. The South San Francisco and Daly City police departments and the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office are investigating the case. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the South San Francisco Police Department at (650) 877-8900 or the department's anonymous tip line at (650) 952-2244. Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. By Janis Mara Bay City News Service Good news: If your pet is sick or injured, many Bay Area veterinarians are available to treat him or her, using telephone screening and curbside service to help stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. These precautions are essential to keep Bay Area pet owners and veterinary staff safe from COVID-19, according to Dr. Debra Chen, an associate veterinarian at the San Jose Animal Hospital. "My assumption is that if just one (worker) is diagnosed, we would have to shut down for some time," Chen said. "That would have a big impact on the whole community, on people's ability to get veterinary care." The hospital is offering clients a variety of options. Vets can examine pets in the car in the parking lot, or a technician can bring the pet into the examination room to be seen. Telephone consultations are also available. "It is not as ideal to do phone consultations, because we can't do full-on proper assessments," Chen said. "But we are taking the lesser evil." Appointments are limited to more urgent issues, the vet said. Along those lines, Thornhill Pet in Oakland is only accepting emergencies and sick pet exams. Dental appointments are accepted only if an extraction or other pressing procedure is needed. As with the San Jose hospital, clients call from the car upon arrival, the pet is brought in for examination and the doctor calls the pet owner with recommendations. At San Francisco Pet Hospital, appointments start with a phone consultation with the veterinarian, followed by a visit, if necessary. Clients aren't allowed inside the hospital; a technician brings the pet inside while its owner waits outside. The East Bay's Kensington Pet Hospital has an app, the PetDesk App, that clients can use to request an appointment, said Dora Pannell, the hospital's office manager and a registered veterinary technician. When clients arrive for an appointment, they call or text to notify staffers. As with the procedures at the San Jose hospital, a doctor or technician meets the client at the vehicle to obtain a patient history and brings the pet inside the hospital for a physical exam, if necessary. Immediately after the stay-at-home order was issued, the Kensington hospital was deluged with requests for prescriptions, appointments and pet food, Pannell said. During the first two weeks it was chaotic, but now it is slowing down, the veterinary technician said. Like the other hospitals, Santa Rosa Veterinary Hospital is providing curbside service. Pets can either be examined while the owner waits or dropped off, according to the hospital s website. Veterinarians can call pet owners and guide them through the appointment with a telemedicine approach, according to the website. Doctors also utilize the FaceTime app, which makes it possible for the caller and the vet to see each other and the pet as the appointment takes place. A final note: Chen, the associate veterinarian at San Jose Animal Hospital, advises social isolation for dogs as well as for humans. "While we don't think that dogs can get infected by the COVID-19, it is possible, as far as we know, for them to have it on them," Chen said. "So if someone has COVID-19 and it gets on the dog's fur, they might carry it around." Her advice: "Avoid having your dog go to places where there are lot of people." Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Gov. Pritzker said that the federal government was informed in January and February about the coronavirus and didnt do anything. Well, why not, governor? Nancy Pelosi, CNN and other news agencies were saying its just the flu, and theres video of her telling people to go outside, go to the Chinese restaurants. The New York governor and his head of their health department told people its nothing, go out. Go to restaurants, live your life. All your Democrats were too busy with their failed impeachment trial and ignored the warnings. What did you, the governor of Illinois, do for Illinois back in January or February? What precautions did you make? Nothing. But now you blame the federal government, which includes Democrats, Republicans and independents, for not doing anything sooner. I blame you, governor, for not doing anything sooner for Illinois. I am tired of you blaming the federal government. Wouldnt it be amazing for you to contact the president, put aside your hatred and your differences and offer to help? Stop your whining and be a governor for Illinois. Syracuse, N.Y. Financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could result in hospital bankruptcies and even closures in Central New York, experts warn. The pandemic has left hospitals here awash with empty beds, idle nurses and mounting financial losses. Its also hurting many other health providers. The health industry, one of the regions leading employers, has been crippled and no one knows if and when it will rebound. The state ordered hospitals last month to clear out beds for a surge of coronavirus patients by cancelling non-emergency operations. The surge hasnt happened yet. Hospitals here have admitted a relatively small number of coronavirus patients, unlike New York City hospitals which have been swamped with infected patients. Even though Onondaga County had nearly 50 hospitalized coronavirus patients last week, Syracuses three hospitals still had more than 300 empty beds. St. Josephs Health in Syracuse is furloughing 500 employees. Oswego Health, which operates the 164-bed Oswego Hospital, is furloughing 25% of its staff. Its been losing $180,000 a day. Cayuga Medical Center also plan to furlough workers. Crouse Hospital in Syracuse has temporarily sent home 154 employees without pay and is on track to lose $20 million by the end of June. Hospitals in New York state are nonprofits. Before the pandemic they were operating on razor-thin profit margins or losing money. They rely heavily on profitable elective surgeries like knee and hip replacements to stay afloat. All that money-making business abruptly stopped last month. They are in serious trouble, said Tom Dennison, a health care expert and Syracuse University professor emeritus. He says hospital closures and bankruptcies are a possibility. They have to pay their bills, they have to pay their staff and meet their pension obligations. We may well see Chapter 11s to absolve themselves from debt, he said. Dr. David Evelyn, a vice president of Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, said some hospitals will be forced to close unless the federal government comes up with enough money to bail them out. Its that dire, he said. Federal officials say $30 billion is on its way to hospitals, the first payment from a federal $100 billion health care provider relief fund. But some hospital industry groups say that is not enough, especially for hospitals with lots of Medicaid patients. Its not known yet how much hospitals here will get. The financial crisis at hospitals is bad for the Central New York economy because hospitals are among the regions biggest employers. Upstate Medical University, St. Joes and Crouse are three of the five largest employers in Onondaga County. The three hospitals combined employ about 13,700 people. Hospitals throughout 13 Central New York counties have a combined payroll of $2.86 billion and employ 58,000, according to the Healthcare Association of New York State, a hospital trade group. Before the pandemic, 13 of the 15 fastest growing jobs in Central New York were in health care, according to the state Labor Department. The downturn is affecting more than hospitals. The state ordered dentists to shut down their practices except for emergencies. Business has plummeted at primary care doctors practices that are conducting many visits over the phone or computer. Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists, a big private practice, has postponed all non-urgent operations at its outpatient one-day surgery center. Unless you are treating coronavirus, your business is way off, said Bill Hammond, a health care analyst with the Empire Center, an Albany research group. No one knows how long it will take hospitals and other health providers to return to some degree of normalcy. Dennison does not expect that to happen this year. Kimberly Boynton, Crouses president and CEO, hopes the situation gets better by the summer. She expects hospital business to pick up gradually when it is safe to do so. But its not like youll flip a switch and everything will go right back to the way it was, she said. Because of the decline in elective surgery and other services, Crouse has sent 154 employees home without pay. They continue to receive health insurance and other benefits, and are eligible to file for temporary unemployment. Another 113 employees are working reduced hours and have the option of using paid time off. When our patient census goes back up, we will pull them back in, Boynton said. Crouse employs 3,100 people. To help ease the strain, Crouse received $27 million Thursday in advance payments from Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people over 65 and the disabled. Thats a loan that must be repaid over the next year. Medicare disbursed more than $51 billion in advance payments last week to hospitals, doctors and other providers nationwide. Seema Verna, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said hospitals should not be penalized for canceling elective surgeries. Amid a public health storm of unprecedented fury, these payments are helping providers and suppliers so critical to defeating this terrible virus stay afloat, she said in a prepared statement. Hammond said some small rural Upstate hospitals are in danger. Their economics are precarious, he said. Some of them were already on the edge. If you are a small nonprofit, you may or may not be able to make your payroll under these circumstances. At the same time hospitals are seeing the pandemic undermine their business, the recently approved state budget will cut their Medicaid payments by $400 million. The health care system is a utility, Dennison said. We cant starve it between crises and expect it to be viable when the time comes when we need the services. He said the coronavirus blindsided the healthcare system. We never built in as a matter of routine investment preparation for something like a pandemic, he said. James T. Mulder covers health news. Have a news tip? Contact him at (315) 470-2245 or jmulder@syracuse.com MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Social distancing is working. That means it wont end soon (Where we stand after 27 days) Coronavirus shutdown ending soon in NY? Cuomo pours cold water on speculation After a dream wedding, the coronavirus spreads pain and fear through a CNY family Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Japanese consumer durables maker SHARP on Monday announced contribution of Rs 5 lakh to the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Trust (PM-CARES) Fund to support the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Besides this, the company said it has also supplied 24 units of its state-of-the-art air purifier (FP-F40E-W) to civil surgeon hospitals in Panchkula and Gurgaon in Haryana for providing safe and clean hospital wards for medical staff and patients. Commenting on the initiative, SHARP Business Systems (India) Pvt Ltd Managing Director Shinji Minatogawa said this is a contribution from the SHARP family in response to the call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to support the nation's fight against the coronavirus pandemic. "With COVID-19 spreading throughout the world, we want to assist our fellow citizens in this time of great need, and this contribution to the PM-CARES Fund is a small step towards that," Minatogawa added. The company intends to support the less privileged in the trying times when the entire country is under lockdown, the statement said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) Personnel from the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) are pitching in to the government's fight against COVID-19. On Monday's Laging Handa briefing, BJMP Spokesperson Xavier Solda said each employee would give part of their salary to help in the crisis. "Lahat ng BJMP personnel nationwide merong 1.5 percent mula sa aming base pay, aabot sa total na 7.23 million. Lahat ng personnel tutulong po kami sa efforts ng national government," he said. [Translation: All personnel of the BJMP nationwide, 1.5 percent from our base pay, this will amount to a total of 7.23 million. All personnel will help in the efforts of the national government.] Apart from financial aid, Solda said inmates are also contributing by making face masks and other personal protective equipment to be used by frontliners. The BJMP is the latest government agency who said their employees would donate part of their salary for the crisis. Earlier, military personnel said they would give a portion of their wages as well. President Rodrigo Duterte will also be donating a month's salary to address the crisis, and members of the Cabinet agreed to 75 percent monthly pay cuts. Meanwhile, members of the House of Representatives said they would donate their salaries for the month of May to help the government address the crisis. Australia's unemployment rate will likely nearly double to peak at 10 per cent for the June quarter as a direct result of the coronavirus crisis. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said early investigations suggest that figure would've been about 5 per cent higher had the government not introduced the JobKeeper stimulus package, worth about $130 billion. At least 1.37 million people will be out of work by June according to the projections, but that number could have soared to 2.05 million had workplaces not been offered an incentive to keep staff on the books. Unemployment has not reached double digits in Australia since April 1994, 26 years ago. Australia's peak unemployment rate of 11.2 per cent was in 1992. This graph shows how Australia's unemployment rate will likely nearly double to peak at 10 per cent for the June quarter as a direct result of the coronavirus crisis - but it could have been far worse if the government hadn't introduced JobKeeper More than 300 people lined the streets of Sydney after losing their jobs, desperately waiting to get into Darlinghurst's Centrelink office to claim unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the predicted figures as 'heartbreaking' during an interview with the Today Show on Tuesday morning. 'It's a heartbreaking number. Unemployment at that rate, hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs. It is just absolutely heartbreaking,' he said. Mr Morrison said he wanted Australians to know 'we came into this dual health and economic crisis' in a strong financial position, but that it has nonetheless been a 'big blow'. 'I don't want do lessen that in terms of how we speak of it. It's seriously impacting on our economy. It's impacting people's livelihoods. It's heartbreaking,' he said again. In February, before the pandemic led to major shutdowns and mass stand downs of workers, the jobless rate was 5.1 per cent. Economists feared that number would triple - or worse - in the months to follow after the government restricted all unnecessary travel and told people to stay home to slow the spread of the virus. 'In the absence of the $130bn JobKeeper payments, Treasury estimates the unemployment rate would be five percentage points higher and would peak at around 15 per cent,' Frydenberg said in a statement. 'More than 800,000 businesses have already registered for JobKeeper payment, which will allow the economy to recover more quickly once we are through to the other side of the crisis.' People are seen in a long queue outside a Centrelink office in Brisbane after losing their jobs The forced closure of cafes, bars and restaurants has forced some out of business entirely (like this cafe in Mollymook on the NSW south coast) CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement But members of the opposition argue there is still far more unemployment than there needs to be. The Labor party pushed for more casual employees and freelancers to get access to the package - which at present is only offered to permanent staff or those who have worked with one company for longer than 12 months. 'The unemployment rate will be higher than it would be if Josh Frydenberg exercised his powers to give more casual and other workers access to JobKeeper payments,' a statement from Labor's finance team read. 'When unemployment spikes in the next few months remember hundreds of thousands of job losses could have been prevented if the Treasurer picked up his pen and included more workers currently left out and left behind.' The JobKeeper payment is just one of three separate stimulus packages the government has proposed to inject $320 billion - or 16.4 per cent of GDP - back into the Australian economy. After it was announced, Westpac chief economist Bill Evans updated his forecasts to have unemployment peak at nine per cent in the June quarter instead of the initial 17 per cent. 'We expect the beneficial effects of the Government's JobKeeper policy to restrict the rise in the unemployment rate to a peak of 9 per cent at June 2020 and to then see it fall back to around 7 per cent at year's end,' he said in early April. He credited the government's third stimulus package, which grants six million workers, through their employer, $1,500 a fortnight to be kept on the books for the next six months. Australians will get an early taste of what the pandemic has meant for unemployment when March labour force figures are released on Thursday. Economists' forecasts centre on an unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent for March, compared with 5.1 per cent in February. Shopping malls are virtually deserted - though technically have not been forced to close amid the crisis. People have been told to stay home unless absolutely necessary. Pictured: A deserted shopping centre in Melbourne Predictions range as high as 5.9 per cent, a level not seen since early 2016. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Sunday warned Australians to expect a significant rise in the unemployment rate alongside a big reduction in the rate of economic growth as a result of the coronavirus crisis. 'That's a reflection of the queues we have seen outside Centrelink and that is the reflection of the health restrictions that have had a severe economic impact,' he told the ABC's Insiders television program. He said the current crisis was more significant than what was experienced during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, and promised 'every arm of government and industry is working to keep Australians in jobs and business in business, and to build a bridge to recovery on the other side.' New Delhi, April 13 : The government has redressed 7,000 Covid-19 related public grievances with an average disposal time of 1.57 days amid the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic. All the grievances were solved by April 12 with peak disposals of 1,315 grievances per day achieved on April 8 and April 9. The ministries with maximum disposal rate are Ministry of External Affairs (1,625 grievances), Ministry of Finance (1,043) and Ministry of Labour (751 grievances). Union Minister of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Jitendra Singh, was apprised about the development in a review meeting at his office here, which he joined for the first time since the nationwide lockdown was implemented to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission. Singh had launched the National Monitoring Dashboard on Covid-19 grievances on April 1 through the portal https://darpg.gov.in. Circulars were issued to all Central ministries, departments and state governments regarding handling of public grievances received in CPGRAMS on Covid-19. Daily reports on Covid-19 related public grievances were submitted to the Empowered Group 10, Prime Minister's Office, Empowered Group of Ministers and the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions from April 1, 2020. In a meeting of the DoPT, DARPG and DoPPW through video conferencing regarding works done by the three departments in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, Singh told the officials and staff that "work should not suffer at all during this period" in the fight against the pandemic. The minister expressed satisfaction that so far more than 71,000 persons have enrolled at the DoPT's e-learning platform (https://igot.gov.in) to combat Covid-19, which was launched last week, and about 27,000 candidates completed the course. The target groups are doctors, nurses, paramedics, hygiene workers, technicians, auxiliary nursing midwives (ANMs), Central and state government officials, civil defence officials and various police organisations, among others. The platform delivers curated, role-specific content to each learner at his place of work or home and to any device of his choice. The iGOT platform is designed to provide training to around 1.50 crore workers and volunteers in the coming weeks. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) A remote early warning system for the detection of Covid-19 symptoms among frontline medical staff is showing promising results. The early warning system has been developed through a software industry and healthcare partnership with University College Cork (UCC). The Covid-19 Remote Early Warning System (CREW) remotely identifies healthcare staff who may be developing a temperature, symptomatic of Covid-19. A quarter of all diagnosed cases of the Coronavirus in Ireland are among the healthcare community who daily work on the front lines to assist our community. The single common variable in all cases of the Covid-19 virus is a rise in body temperature. CREW remotely identifies healthcare staff who may be developing a temperature that may be symptomatic of Covid-19 and who therefore should not present to work. CREW is being developed in partnership between the College of Medicine and Health at University College Cork (UCC), the Cork-based software consultancy 8 West, The ASSERT centre and Tyndall National Institute at UCC. The solution innovatively combines existing technologies to allow early detection of symptoms of the Coronavirus. The Covid-19 Remote Early Warning System (CREW) consists of: -A wearable digital thermometer sensor to measure axillary body temperature. -A sensor platform e.g. smartphone, smartwatch or wearable IoT device running the CREW app. -A cloud-based server running the CREW system which monitors the incoming data and generates automatic alarms if temperature thresholds are breached. CREW is designed and developed by 8 West Consulting based on its SafeTrx tracking and alerting software platform. Trials using frontline staff have been underway since Friday, April 3rdat Cork University Hospital. Five volunteers have been wearing underarm thermometers connected to smart phones, with temperature readings being sent to the monitoring platform on an hourly basis. Where a staff members temperature shows signs of being elevated above the norm, they are alerted to take appropriate action and self-isolate. Initial results from the trial with volunteers at CUH have shown accurate temperature data being successfully and continually communicated via the phones to the monitoring platform. More volunteers are now to be added and wearable devices introduced to improve the data set and test the accuracy and efficacy of CREW over a longer period of time. Professor Stephen Cusack, Recently retired Prof of Emergency Medicine (EM), UCC, Specialty Expert in EM at UCC Academy, Consultant EM at CUHcommented: "CUH Emergency Department staff are delighted to have helped pioneer an innovative 24 hour monitoring device like this. We are 24 hours on the front line of care daily, and it's good to know that efforts like this are being made to support our wellbeing 24 hours a day too." Commenting on the breakthrough, Professor Barry OReilly, Director of the ASSERT Centre, UCC and Consultant Obstetrician/Gynaecologist at CUMH, explained This is a novel Internet of Medical Things solution created by the collaboration of the MedTech sector and ASSERT to provide a digital COVID infection screening system for front-line healthcare staff at an extremely challenging time. Dr Patrick Henn, Director Research and Education at the ASSERT Centre in UCCsaid: "10-25% of all diagnosed cases of the Coronavirus are among the healthcare community working to halt the spread of the disease. The single common variable in all cases of the Covid-19 virus is a rise in body temperature. CREW is a quarantine management platform that will hopefully allow us to identify healthcare staff remotely who may be developing a temperature that may be an early sign of Covid-19 and who therefore should not present to work. John Murphy, CEO of 8 West Consulting who developed the solution says CREW has the potential to help not only individual medics but the wider hospital population, and the general public. "Exceptional times call for an exceptional response. This technology has been developed over the last three weeks through a huge and remarkably open effort on the part of our partners in UCC, CUH, and the team at 8 West, with technical and hardware support from Sony Network Communications Europe, Cambridge Wireless Vodafone Ireland, Huawei, Davra, BlueBridge Technologies and others. "When Covid-19 struck we asked ourselves what can we do to help protect the wellbeing of healthcare workers who by the nature of their jobs are being exposed to Covid-19 on an ongoing basis? The technical community has the responsibility, and the skills to rapidly evolve and deploy a solution to support Healthcare workers, and that is what we are doing. CREW will available initially on iOS and Android products including phones and wearables, with other operating systems to follow. 8 Wests John Murphy says the goal of CREW is to make the solution available to as many frontline staff as possible in Ireland and around the world. Dr Paul Galvin, Head of ICT for Health Strategic Programmes at the Tyndall National Institute said: Tyndall is pleased to support and be part of this multidisciplinary Academic, Business and Clinical ecosystem, collaborating effectively in as a virtual team, to bring an innovative solution for real-time continuous monitoring of healthcare workers and the general population. How CREW Works: A digital thermometer sensor is worn under the armpit to measure axillary body temperature. The thermometer is paired with a wearable such as the mSafety from Sony, Apple Smartwatch or Google Wear device. The body temperature readings, and other data such as heart rate, dependent on the paired wearables characteristics are sent from the wearable to a cloud-based monitoring platform. If a temperature of greater than 37.2 degrees centigrade is recorded, then the sensor platform fromwill collect a further measurement 30 minutes later. If 2 subsequent elevated readings are noted, then an alert will be provided to the central monitoring console and Staff coordinator, who will then advise the staff member to self-isolate. Some of the nation's most powerful governors said they would form regional alliances to coordinate reopening schools and businesses after the coronavirus outbreak subsides, setting up a potential clash with the president, who says that he alone has that authority. "We will be driven by facts, we will be driven by evidence, we will be driven by science, we will be driven by our public health advisers, we will be driven by the collaborative spirit that defines the best of us at this important moment," California Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, said as he announced a partnership with Washington state and Oregon. With health data suggesting that the spread of the coronavirus may be nearing a plateau in the U.S., public officials are under growing pressure to chart a path back to normality. The longer the state-by-state lockdowns last, the more economic hardship there will be. But dropping stay-at-home restrictions too soon might risk a second wave of infections. That tension was on display Monday as two sets of governors -- one on each coast -- said they would coordinate how and when they might gradually ease their restrictions on travel and business. Shortly before both initiatives were announced, President Donald Trump tweeted that he alone had the authority to decide when states would return to normal. Roughly 105 million people, or about a third of the U.S. population, live in the 10 states making plans for a post-crisis era. "The optimum is a geographically coordinated plan," said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D. "This virus doesn't understand governmental boundaries." Coordination is critical, Cuomo said, to avoid unintended consequences -- such as having thirsty residents of a state where bars are closed driving to another where they've been reopened. The East Coast initiative is in its early stages. Officials from those states -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island -- provided few details about what criteria they might use to restart a semblance of normal life. A panel will consist of the governors' chiefs of staff and health and economic officials from each state. Most residents in those states are nearing the one-month mark of having been told to stay home and keep their distance from others. After the announcement, Massachusetts said it would join the alliance. Cuomo, in his daily briefing, seemed to agree with Trump that the federal government has the authority to overrule the states. But he questioned why Washington would get to direct the reopening after it delegated closures to the states. "Let's see what the federal government's plan is," Cuomo said. Trump "left it to the states to close down, and that was a state-by-state decision, without any guidance really." Newsom, in his announcement, said he would unveil a framework on Tuesday for lifting California's stay-home order, including the metrics that would guide that process. Last week, the state's secretary of Health and Human Services said easing the state's restrictions would require putting in place a system to test more people for the virus, track new cases as they appear and trace person-to-person contacts that could trigger new outbreaks. Further details about how to restart California's economy will come later in the week, Newsom said, along with preliminary figures about how the virus would affect the state's budget. Oregon and Washington, he said, will craft their own plans, although the basic principles guiding all three states would similar. Asked whether Trump or the nation's governors have final say on reopening the economy, Newsom would say only that California still had a strong collaborative relationship with the federal government on the virus fight. "I have all the confidence in the world, moving forward, that we'll maintain that collaborative spirit," he said. Trump, for his part, said in a Twitter post Monday that he has the power to overrule governors, "open up" states and relax social-distancing practices. The declaration came after economic advisers pressed concerns within the White House about the economic fallout from the shutdown, and as Trump's patience appeared to fray after earlier ceding to health advisers' insistence that his initial target date of Easter was too early. He said he would make a decision "soon" on reopening, "in conjunction with the governors and input from others." But he added that "it is the decision of the president, and for many good reasons." He didn't list any. Cuomo said he hadn't spoken to the president about recovery plans, but left open the possibility of ceding state authority to the U.S. if it came up with a workable solution. "If the federal government comes and says they're going to substitute a federal plan, well that would then trump the state plan, pardon the pun, if it fit within the Constitution and the law," he said. The governors' collaborations reflect the deep desire of Americans to get back to work, but they come as New York -- now the epicenter of the global outbreak -- continues to post dire statistics about the toll. New York on Monday eclipsed the grim threshold of 10,000 total deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, after another 671 people died in 24 hours. Before Monday, New York had reported six consecutive days of 700 deaths or more. Cuomo, in Albany, was joined on a conference call by the other Northeast governors. The recovery must be careful, incremental and guided by experts rather than politics, Cuomo said, and the pandemic won't be truly "over" until a vaccine is available, which could take as long as 18 months. Ideally, a plan would also involve widespread testing, he said, to allow those without the virus -- and those who have recovered and may now be resistant to it -- to return to work first. "You only get an economic recovery if it comes on the back of a health recovery," New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, D, said. "As painful as the economic reality is right now, it's not remotely as painful as it would be if we get the sequencing wrong and we get the timing wrong." The continued spread of the virus, while slowing, raises questions about what kind of infection rate would be considered acceptable under normal conditions -- and whether the goal should be to prevent infections entirely or merely contain it enough so that the hospital system can handle the workload. Cuomo said the restart has to be carried out slowly while keeping an eye on the virus rates. "You'll start to open that valve on the economic activity, and you'll turn that valve very slowly reopening the economy, more essential workers, do it carefully do it slowly and do it intelligently," he said. Some data show that conditions are beginning to improve. Hospitalizations continued to flatten, Cuomo said, with total admissions virtually stable at 18,000 and with ICU patients and intubations declining since Sunday. So far, those numbers have been far below the level officials initially braced for. "We've been talking today about the fact that New York believes we have reached a plateau in the increase in the number of cases," Cuomo said. "They're not going down, but they're not going up at the same rate and we believe it's a 'plateau.' That is relatively good news in a world of bad options. We should start looking to 'reopening.' " Vietnam, which sent 450,000 units of protective gear to the United States recently, has now offered to provide more medical supplies to India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday spoke to his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc over the phone to discuss the coronavirus outbreak and the ways to step up bilateral cooperation, not only in containing the pandemic, but also in other areas, including in the energy sector. Track live updates on coronavirus here The two leaders agreed on the potential for bilateral collaboration in fighting the COVID-19, including facilitating supplies of medical equipment. They also pledged to provide necessary support to citizens from India and Vietnam stranded in their territories, according to a press-release issued by the Prime Ministers Office in New Delhi. Also Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases Phuc told Modi that Vietnam would stand ready to cooperate with and provide assistance to India in the fight against the COVID-19, within its capacity. India has already placed order with a South Korean company with manufacturing ties in Vietnam and Turkey for 20 lakh units of protective gear for healthcare professionals dealing with COVID-19 patients. Phuc promised Modi that Vietnam would be ready to provide more assistance to India, if required. Modi has been regularly speaking to the leaders of other foreign nations over the past few weeks and discussing the pandemic and ways to deal with the social and economic crisis caused by the curbs on travel and transport due to the lockdown enforced to contain the pandemic. His phone call with the Prime Minister of Vietnam on Monday has additional significance though. Vietnam has been embroiled in a territorial conflict with China over South China Sea. Tension escalated between the two nations recently after a Chinese Coast Guard and a fishing vessel of Vietnam collided near the disputed Paracel Islands on April 2. The Government of Vietnam claimed that the fishing vessel had sunk after the Chinese Coast Guard ship had rammed it. A press-release issued in New Delhi after Modi and Phuc spoke over phone stated that the two leaders had reviewed regional and international developments. They stressed the importance of strategic partnership between India and Vietnam and expressed satisfaction at the recent progress on various fronts, the release said. The Afghan government has released 100 more Taliban prisoners, the Afghan National Security Council (NSC) said on April 12. The NSC posted several photos of the prisoners on Twitter and said that they had been released on April 11. The council said in a statement that the health condition, age, and length of the remaining sentences were considered in choosing which prisoners to release. The Afghan government has freed a total of 300 Taliban prisoners since April 8. Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesman said that the militant group will release 20 prisoners and hand them over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kandahar. "Today, 20 prisoners of the Kabul administration will be released," Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter on April 12. He did not provide more details. A pact signed by the United States and the Taliban in the Qatari capital, Doha, on February 29 calls for the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters as a confidence-building measure ahead of formal peace talks aimed at ending the 18-year conflict. The Taliban has vowed to release some 1,000 Afghan government troops and civilian workers it is holding. In return for the start of talks and a series of security commitments from the Taliban, all U.S. troops and other foreign coalition forces are meant to withdraw from Afghanistan within 14 months. With reporting by dpa, Reuters, and TOLOnews The Washington Post is providing this news free to all readers as a public service. Follow this story and more by signing up for national breaking news email alerts. With the social distancing campaign drawing to an end, public opinion is sharply divided on a possible extension by the authorities. On Friday afternoon, five days before the campaign comes to an end, streets in Saigon are packed with commuters and people are exercising outdoors. But others are staying at home unless there is a pressing to leave. "I feel safe staying at home amid the pandemic, and it is totally okay to extend this social distancing campaign," Do Hoang Lam of District 10, Saigon, says. Several new patients who do not have a clear source of infection pose a great risk to the community and social distancing makes him feel safer, he adds. But his wife, Nguyen Thanh An, is not convinced. "We have no more than four new patients a day since April 4, meaning the disease in under control." As a businesswoman, she prefers a return to normalcy. She is counting every day until April 15 to open her spa after two weeks of closure. "Earning is as important as fighting the epidemic, especially when we have reasons to be optimistic." This division is playing out around the country ahead of the end of the 15-day social distancing period on April 15. Hanoians sit outside their houses on Lan Ong Street, April 8, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Hue. Since the number of new cases has been rising slowly over the past few days, many believe the Covid-19 pandemic is under control and another period of social distancing is unnecessary. Of Vietnams 258 Covid-19 patients so far, 144 have been discharged from hospitals. Of the 114 active cases, 12 have tested negative twice and 13 have tested negative once. Truong Anh Tuyet, a housewife in Hanois Long Bien District, says, "Since there are only a few new cases every day, the infection risk is minor, and millions of people are looking forward to resuming their normal lives." Since April 1 she had not ventured out until Saturday morning. "I finally went for a walk early in the morning because I was too bored, but a policeman told me to go home. Why are they so serious when more and more people have been treated and discharged?" On social networks, many people are optimistic. "Suspending international flights, putting suspected cases in quarantine and isolating hotspots ... we have been doing well," says a commenter on a Facebook group for foreigners in Hanoi with more than 100,000 members. "The social distancing period should end because life must go on." For businesspeople, whose livelihood has taken a hit due to the closure of non-essential services and shops, the earlier the social distancing period ends, the better. Many of them think authorities should not continue to sacrifice the economy to contain the pandemic, which seems to have eased off during the last few days of the social distancing campaign. An says: "Many people are losing money because of the social distancing. Can we just let things get back to normal and remind people to be careful for their own sake?" A crowded area in Saigon on April 9, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/HoangHuy. But others are less sanguine about the pandemic situation and do not want the social distancing campaign to end yet. Nguyen Huy Nga, former director of the General Department of Preventive Medicine, warns that the decrease in the number of new infections is good news but means little. Vietnam has reported only nine Covid-19 infection cases over the past five days. On March 22, the country had recorded 19 new cases, marking the highest number in a single day. "After the 15 days of social distancing are over, if there are new infections, we have to isolate the hotspots, contain the epidemic and maintain social distancing," he points out. Nguyen Thanh Vi, a white-collar worker in Ho Chi Minh City, still feels threatened by the deadly virus. While there have been inconveniences during the social distancing period, she does not mind them "as long as everyone is safe from the virus." "If we end this (the social distancing campaign) too soon, I am afraid our efforts would have been in vain." In fact, the government has predicted more community infections over the next few days. During the first seven days of the social distancing period, only 22 out of 31 new infections were diagnosed at quarantines, with the rest found in the community. More worryingly, the sources of infection have not been identified yet for some patients, making it difficult for medical authorities to trace people having close contact with them. Another reason people are hoping for a longer social distancing period is that even during the campaign many were indifferent with Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City seeing crowds of commuters and people exercising outdoors, and things could worsen if the campaign is lifted. Lam, who supports the Ministry of Healths proposal to possibly extend the social distancing campaign, asks: "Many people people have not practiced social distancing in the last 10 days? If we stop (social distancing), more people will drop their guard." Testing the waters Tran Dac Phu, senior advisor at the Public Health Emergency Operations Center under the Health Ministry, too said social distancing remains crucial since Vietnam has many potential cases out in the community. "Once social distancing is practiced well, a hotspot will not have a chance to grow bigger. It is just like a fire: if the fires are small, we totally have the ability to extinguish each of them." The government has not decided to extend the social distancing campaign or not since the country has entered the third stage of the epidemic with several cases in the community, and the sources of some, yet to be detected, Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Truong Son said Tuesday. Meanwhile, medical experts warn that many people could be carrying the virus without showing symptoms and transmitting it to others, creating potential transmission chains and posing great danger. But social distancing could cut those chains even when the sources of infection are in the community, Phu said. Last Monday Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc instructed ministries and local governments to prepare for a second wave of the virus that has hit other countries. "If the pandemic continues, protecting peoples health will be the most important factor, not economic growth." The National Steering Committee on Covid-19 Prevention and Control will discuss the possibility of extending the social distancing campaign on Monday before making a recommendation to the prime minister. Both Lam and his wife have been thinking about what they would do after the social distancing campaign is over. While An wants to go for a haircut, Lam has not decided. "I do not plan because it does not matter what I will do after this; it is safety that matters, the safety of all of us amid the raging pandemic," he says. Iran supports any prime minister winning Iraqi parliament's vote of confidence IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Baghdad, April 12, IRNA -- Iran's ambassador to Baghdad Iraj Masjedi said on Sunday that Iran supports any prime minister chosen in a legal process winning the vote of confidence of the Iraqi Parliament. Masjedi wrote on his Twitter account that Iran respects the Iraqi law and political system and accordingly supports any prime minister chosen within the framework of the Iraqi Constitution. He also spoke exclusively with IRNA on Friday congratulating the Iraqi prime minister-designate Mustafa al-Kadhimi. Iran regards that al-Kadhimi was elected in a legitimate process, Masjedi said. He said that Iran did not support any option to be elected as Iraqi prime minister and was ready to cooperate with anyone who wins the vote of confidence of the Parliament. The ambassador noted that Iran is not to support a special political group in Iraq, rather it respects all ethnic communities, tribes and people from different faiths in the country. He expressed success for the Iraqi prime minister-designate, hoping that his proposed cabinet will be able to win the vote of confidence of the Parliament. 9341**2050 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Queensland Landlords Foot Bill for States Mandated Rent Measures The Queensland governments decision to freeze residential evictions for six months and cancel rent arrears has been criticised by the CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland for placing the burden on property owners. REIQ CEO Antonia Mercorella said the new measures dont offer a balance between tenants and property owners. Its just as financially difficult for property owners as it is for rental tenants. Its not just a matter of pressing pause on mortgage repayments to set and forget while a rent reduction agreement is in place, she said in a media release on April 9. The government has also put a moratorium on renters amassing rental debt during the period of their rent reduction arrangement. However, property owners dont have the same relief on their payments. They will have to defer their home loan repayments, yet still make them up at a later time. This is consistent with the industry-wide approach to mortgage deferrals for customers impacted by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the coronavirus. The Queensland government announced a land tax rebate and relief scheme on April 9, which outlined three months of land tax rebate in the 2019-20 financial year for eligible property owners followed by three months of relief in the 2020-21 financial year which will eventually need to be paid back. The scheme is only for property owners who agree to provide rent relief for tenants affected by the coronavirus downturn. Former Liberal Queensland premier and current chair of property company Arcana Capital, Campbell Newman, lashed out at the Palaszczuk Labour governments measures in a post on Twitter. He said the housing ministers Code of Conduct is bad policy, one sided, poorly thought through & would sit comfortably in Venezuela. Landlords should look after small tenants & share the pain. However, Code of Conduct is bad policy, one sided, poorly thought through & would sit comfortably in Venezuela. Meantime state & local government continue to collect land tax & rates. Coalition should not support this Campbell Newman (@CampbellNewman) April 7, 2020 Impact on Investors Queensland landlord Sally said she would never want to evict someone and made an agreement with a tenant who had asked for a rent reduction from $240 to $150 (US$152 to $95) per week. We feel a bit like we dont really know whats there for us because those announcements are made to protect the tenants, she told The Epoch Times. The indication from Sallys bankWestpacwas that should she put a hold on her repayments, the bank would capitalize on the interest and add it to the principal (total balance). But we cant afford to not pay the mortgages because we cant afford to capitalise on the interest on those properties, she said. REIQ said that while rental tenants should not be left without a place to live during the fight against COVID-19, property owners are being made to pick up the tab under the state governments proposals. A spokesperson for the Queensland housing department told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the pandemic has had a devastating impact on Queensland and they know many are doing it tough. Where hardship is being experienced, property owners are encouraged to speak with their financial institutions to access available supports. Rent Measures The measures set out by the Department of Housing and Public Works required a mandatory conciliation between tenants and landlords who cant come to a rent reduction agreement on their own. Housing Minister Mick de Brenni has been empowered to set out principles for working out a new payable rent that is fair and reasonable and in proportion to what the tenant can afford. That means that if a tenant has lost 75 percent of their income, their rent should be reduced a proportionate 75 percent. But while tenants have their debts canceled by the government, landlords dont receive the same waivers for repayments from their banks. So while the banks are sort of saying, Yes well help, and the government is saying, You cant evict, you cant do this, you cant that Itll be things like the body corporate and the [local council] rates that will probably get set aside and not paid for a while, said Sally. Amendments will be introduced to Queenslands Parliament after Easter. To help keep tenants and property owners fully informed, the Queensland government has set up an online rental hub with helpful information and resources is available at www.covid19.qld.gov.au/the-hub. This article was updated on April 15 to include comments made the Queensland governments department of housing. Helping two million people excluded from the historic JobKeeper program could rack up an extra $25 billion bill as the federal government wrestles to balance supporting workers with the climbing national debt. There are millions of newly employed casuals and visa holders who are not eligible for the $1500 fortnightly payments. But adding an extra 1 million people onto the $130 billion JobKeeper program would cost an additional $18 billion, and the government has warned the public purse has already taken a pummelling. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Managing the global economic fall-out of the coronavirus pandemic, including its impacts on joblessness and debt, will be discussed at an International Monetary Fund teleconference and at a phone hook-up between G20 leaders and finance ministers this week. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has warned there will be a "big hole" in the global economy, raising concerns about the effect of cash outflows as investors rush to havens, and currency devaluations increase the cost of servicing debt. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo signaled support for Iraqs newest prime minister-designate, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, in a statement today. The United States looks forward to the formation of a new Iraqi government capable of confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, ameliorating the countrys current economic distress and bringing arms under state control, Pompeo said in a statement. We welcome that [Shiite], Sunni and Kurdish political leaders seem to have arrived at a consensus on government formation and hope the new government puts Iraqs interests first and meets the needs of the Iraqi people. Why it matters: Kadhimi is the third candidate to lead Iraq since former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi resigned last year amid mass anti-government protests targeting corruption and the lack of basic services. Kadhimi, formerly Iraqs intelligence chief, is not affiliated with any party, and he may even currently have the support of most major Iraqi political factions. Iran had opposed former Prime Minister-designate Adnan al-Zurfi, the former US-appointed governor of Najaf in the wake of the 2003 invasion. However, the leader of the pro-Iran Fatah bloc, Hadi al-Amiri, attended Kadhimis appointment ceremony in Baghdad last week after weeks of opposition to Zurfi. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi welcomed "the consensus reached among Iraqi political groups resulting in the designation of [Kadhimi] as the new prime minister of Iraq." At the same time, some pro-Tehran hard-liners have already come out against Kadhimis appointment. Kataib Hezbollah, which is linked to Iran and has attacked and killed Americans in Iraq, issued a statement rejecting the appointment. Kadhimi received support from the United Arab Emirates, with the Emirati Foreign Ministry issuing a statement noting Abu Dhabis desire that he "succeed in his duties and for political and popular forces to unite in ensuring a better future for Iraq and the Iraqi people. An on Sunday Kadhimi received the UN special representative for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert. Whats next: Kadhimi has less than a month to assemble a Cabinet supported by the majority of Iraqs fractured parliament. For now, he appears to have solid support across the political spectrum. There are also the Iraqi protesters, who since Oct. 1 have been demonstrating against Iraqs political elites as they demand a government overhaul. The Iraqi people demand genuine reform and trustworthy leaders, Pompeo said in his statement. These demands deserve to be addressed without violence or suppression. Know more: Keep up to date with the latest developments on Al-Monitors Iraq Pulse. And click here to learn more about Kadhimis background. Wealth manager Escala Partners' chairman Brett Paton has warned that Australians will have to pay more taxes to finance the federal government's $194 billion stimulus package. "Its a household question now being asked ... who is going to pay the bill? I assume it can only be through new taxes that all these outgoings are going to be funded," Mr Paton told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Escala Partners' chairman Brett Paton has called on businesses to come up with innovative solutions to ride out the coronavirus. Credit:Mirek Rzadkowski The former UBS vice-chairman added that a recession was firmly on the cards, with up to four quarters of negative growth likely, as the Australian economy works to recover from the effects of the strict lockdown measures imposed by federal and state governments. "No one is making any money," Mr Paton said. "If it [the lockdown] continues, most companies will go bankrupt with the exception of a few. The government has no taxing base." As students at the University of Tennessee were participating in a virtual Milkshake Monday, an anonymous person jumped into the Zoom gathering and began berating everyone with racist rants. Zoom-bombing has unfortunately become an issue at institutions across the country, and this is at least the second instance at UT Knoxville since weve moved online, Chancellor Donde Plowman posted on the universitys website. As the video conferencing platform Zoom has grown in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, so have instances of Zoom-bombing. Zoom-bombing is when someone joins your meeting and disrupts it in some way. Insidehighered.com reported several online classes have been taken over by Zoom bombers, who post comments not on topic. They were vulgar, racist, misogynistic toilet humor. I would barely even call it humor, one professor said. These anonymous users also have posted pornography during the classes. If you dont want to risk this happening while chatting with your grandparents or co-workers, there are steps you can take to prevent it. Create a unique ID Instead of using the personal meeting ID Zoom assigns when you create an account, pcmag.com recommends you instead generate a unique code. Heres why, pcmag.com writes. Once you put your PMI into the world, people can use it to try and jump in on your Zoom calls at any time. Create a waiting room By creating a waiting room, the host and/or co-hosts can control who joins a meeting. The waiting room option can be found under account settings. Once enabled, the host can either put everyone in the waiting room or guest participants only, which adds people on different Zoom accounts or who are not logged into the waiting room. Disable screen sharing The Verge also recommends the meeting host disable the screen sharing feature. If you schedule a meeting from the web interface, you wont see the option to disable screen sharing, the Verge writes. Instead: Click on Settings in the left-hand menu Scroll down to Screen sharing and under Who can share? click Host Only Click on Save The Anti-Defamation League has created a handy meeting checklist if youre using Zoom: Before the meeting: Disable autosaving chats Disable file transfer Disable screen sharing for non-hosts Disable remote control Disable annotations Use per-meeting ID, not personal ID Disable Join Before Host Enable Waiting Room During the meeting: Assign at least two co-hosts Mute all participants Lock the meeting, if all attendees are present If you are Zoom-bombed: Remove problematic users and disable their ability to rejoin when asked Lock the meeting to prevent additional Zoom bombing When 97-year-old Gina Dal Colleto of Brazil was taken to hospital on April 1 with coronavirus symptoms, even the most optimistic person would not have expected her to survive. But on April 12, Dal Colleto was discharged from Sao Paulo's Vila Nova Star hospital as doctors and nurses applauded her recovery. She became the oldest to survive COVID-19 in Brazil. Reuters This good news gives Brazil hope in these tough times as the country struggles to cope with the pandemic. She is only survivor of an Italian family which had 11 siblings. Dal Colleto lived alone in Santos, Rede D'Or Sao Luiz. Reuters "Even with almost a century of life, Gina has a very active routine and enjoys walking, shopping and cooking," said the hospital's statement, according to Reuters. "She has six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren," it added. She had been put on oxygen and was in incentive care, the statement went on to say. Reuters But now she is out and that is truly a miracle. Brazil's health ministry said 1,223 people were dead due to the outbreak and there are now 22,169 confirmed cases. Worldwide over 110,000 have died while more than 1800,000 are affected. Mumbai, April 13 : Actor Shashank Vyas is not a social media addict. He says he chose not to make his personal life public by posting pictures or tweeting private details. "All this time I have been accused of not being on social media by my fans. I don't take social media seriously. It is a fun thing and I only use it to reach out to my fans, that too once in a month," said the young actor. "One has a choice of being on it or not being on it. I choose not to make my personal life public by posting pictures or tweeting private details. It is an individual choice at the end of the day. Posting everything online and then complaining of invasion of privacy is a hypocritical thing to do," he added. He feels that just like having a million followers won't affect his craft, similarly having fewer followers won't affect his "dream, my health, and my craft". "Through social media, one only wants to seek social validation or adulation to feel good about themselves. In other words, it is all illusionary space. The key to happiness is in my pocket and not in someone else's hand," he said. Meanwhile, Shashank said that he has always tried to concentrate on his work and agrees that there might not be too many great roles out there. "Any seasoned actor who in the real sense is passionate about acting, will not pick up a role casually. There is a huge scarcity of good writers. Right now, only supernatural shows are getting made, which does not offer much to an actor in terms of creative satisfaction," he said. "Many fantastic actors say no owing to the lack of good scripts. A script has to be so compelling that you hear it once and you know you would like to be a part of it. If the role is well-written on paper then an actor has to be physically and mentally present and everything will turn out good. The part where an actor is not convinced is the logic bit. The audience today is spoilt for choice with the vast amount of shows to choose from and they will not accept just about anything. The content has to be compelling," added the "Balika Vadhu" actor. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro have dominated the rumor mill lately. Frankly, we dont really expect anything different, until the April 14 official unveiling event finally takes place on Tuesday. While all the leaks have brought a lot of information on the devices they have also resulted in sort of an overload, making it hard to get the full picture. Hence this more concise round-up of all the things we currently know, or at least think we know about the upcoming phones., up until this point. And mind you, there is actually very little left to uncover. A massive leak from the other day helped us compile the nifty table below with rather detailed specs. Specs OnePlus 8 OnePlus 8 Pro CPU Snapdragon 865 SoC RAM 8/12GB LPDDR4X 8/12GB LPDDR5 Operating System OxygenOS based on Android 10 Display 6.55" 2400x1080 pixel 90Hz Fluid AMOLED 20:9 screen with 402ppi pixel density, Gorilla Glass, and HDR10+ 6.78" 3168x1440 pixel 120Hz Fluid AMOLED 19.8:9 screen with 513ppi pixel density, Gorilla Glass, HDR10+, Adaptive Display and MEMC Rear Camera 48MP Sony IMX586 (F/1.75, OIS, EIS) + 16MP ultrawide (F/2.2, 116-degree FOV), 2MP macro (F/2.4, 1.75m pixel size) with PDAF and dual-LED flash 48MP Sony IMX689 (F/1.78, 1.12m pixel size, OIS, EIS) + 48MP Sony IMX586 ultrawide (F/2.2, 120-degree FOV) + 8MP telephoto (F/2.4, 3x optical, OIS) + 5MP color filter (F/2.4) with PDAF, Laser AF, and dual-LED flash Front Camera 16MP Sony IMX471 (F/2.0, fixed focus, EIS) 16MP Sony IMX471 (F/2.4, fixed focus, EIS) Video Recording Main Camera: 4K UHD 30/60 FPS, 1080p 30/60 FPS, 720p 480 FPS Slow-Mo, 1080p 240 FPS Slow-Mo; Front Camera: 1080p 30 FPS Camera Features HDR, RAW, Cine Mode, Nightscape, Super Macro, Pro Mode HDR, RAW, Cine Mode, Nightscape, Super Macro, Pro Mode, Audio Zoom, Color Filter Internal Storage 128/256GB UFS 3.0 Colors Onyx Black (Glossy), Glacial Green (Matte), Interstellar Glow (Glossy) Onyx Black (Glossy), Glacial Green (Matte), Ultramarine Blue (Matte) Dimensions 160.2 x 72.9 x 8.0mm 165.3 x 74.4 x 8.5mm Weight 180 grams 199 grams Connectivity 5G, Bluetooth 5.1 (with aptX, aptX HD, LDAC, AAC), NFC, Wi-Fi 6 (2.4GHz and 5GHz), USB-C USB 3.1 Gen 1 SIM Dual Nano Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo Other In-display Fingerprint Scanner, Stereo Speakers, Dolby Atmos In-display Fingerprint Scanner, Stereo Speakers, Dolby Atmos, IP68 Battery 4,300 mAh with 30W Warp Charge 30T support 4,510 mAh with 30W Warpe Charge 30T, 30W Wireless Charging, and 3W Reverse Wireless Charging support As you can see the screen is going to be one of the major differences with the vanilla OnePlus 8 getting a 6.55-inch 90Hz Fluid AMOLED display if FullHD+ resolution, while the Pro will receive a 6.78-inch QHD+ Fluid AMOLED unit capable of 120Hz. The camera department also has some notable variations. The OnePlus 8 will have a single 48MP Sony IMX586 main camera, alongside 16MP ultrawide and 2MP macro units. The OnePlus 8 Pro gets a much larger 48MP sensor - Sony IMX689 for its main camera. Its ultrawide gets the smaller, but still pretty big Sony IMX586 48MP, complete with macro mode for shots from as close as 3cm. Then there is an 8MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom and OIS. The final 5MP unit is actually expected to function as a supplementary color sensor. OnePlus has already taunted the impressive low-light photography skills of the Pro - you can see samples here. Some less obvious aspects of the OnePlus 8 duo, worth pointing out, include a stereo speaker setup on both, plus an improved vibration/haptic motor. Both will boot Android 10,complete with OxegenOS and Dark Mode 2.0 with improved app support. It also seems like the higher memory skew of 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage wont be available in all of the colors that the basic 8GB/128GB one will have. The design in the images you see here were confirmed by an official teaser video, released by OnePlus itself, so we don't expect any surprises when it comes to the look of the phones. Pricing, on the other hand, might come as a bit of a shock to long-time OnePlus fans that still remember the days the brand used to make affordability its top priority. The regular OnePlus 8, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is expected to retail at 729. The 12/256GB, bumping things up to 835. For the OnePlus 8 Pro, we have, 930 and 1,020, respectively, for the two skews. Sales for both are expected to kick-off on April 30. That applies to global markets. In China, the schedule is a bit different, with a separate launch event on April 16 and sales starting on April 17. If that is a bit too rich for your blood, a third, cheaper OnePlus 8 Lite, likely called OnePlus Z is still in the cards. That one, however, likely wont make it in time for the upcoming April 14 announcement event and will be released later on. What seems more likely to debut at the event are the new Bullets Wireless Z earbuds. These promise improved battery life and four color versions. Warp Charge 30 Wireless is an intriguing wireless charger, which already has its existence and basic specs officially confirmed. It promises to match the 30W of wired charging speed of the Warp Charge 30(T) by using a proprietary scheme, where the phone receives 20V@1.5 and then converts that in two stages to 5V@6A and feeds it to the actual battery. The Warp Charge 30 Wireless is expected to retail at 70 or so in the EU. OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger Finally there's the just announced partnership with Artist Andre for some limited edition OnePlus 8 accessories. That's about all the info we currently have on the OnePlus 8 family - make sure you are around when the time comes on Tuesday to get the full official info on the phones, complete with our first-hand impressions. Man bites watchdog. In firing one inspector general, sidelining another and assailing a third, President Donald Trump in recent days has put his aversion to agents of federal accountability on stark display in a country consumed by the coronavirus. Clearly displeased when inspectors general come to independent conclusions that don't fit the stories he tells, Trump employs a tactic to mar their credibility. If public servants worked for the government in the Obama era, they are subject to being painted as Obama loyalists out to get him. And they're not insulated if they worked for Republican presidents, too, as the three targeted IGs found out. With concerns raised about the safety of voting in a pandemic including the November general election, Trump spread falsehoods about the extent of mail-in voting fraud. A look at the president's recent distortions on key elements of the pandemic response and a few other political subjects: Announcing his decision to remove Glenn Fine, acting Defence Department inspector general who was tapped to lead a special oversight board of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, Trump had said, Well, we have IGs in from the Obama era." However, Fine is not a creature of the Obama era. He is a career government official who had served both Republican and Democratic administrations and was selected by his peers for the virus oversight board. Trump distorts that record to make Fine and other public servants look like plants or holdovers from President Barack Obama. Fine has been acting Pentagon inspector general for more than four years, and before that was inspector general at the Justice Department for a decade, including the entire duration of the George W. Bush administration. He now reverts to the position of principal deputy inspector general at the Pentagon. Though inspectors general are presidential appointees, many serve presidents of both parties. All are expected to be nonpartisan. They operate as independent investigators in departments, shedding light on deficiencies in their agencies. On a report from the Health and Human Services Department's watchdog that found hospitals faced severe shortages of coronavirus test supplies, Trump had said, Did I hear the word inspector general? Really? It's wrong... Could politics be entered into that? Referring to the HHS report, he tweeted, Another Fake Dossier! However, Trump's claims are groundless. There is no evidence that the report was wrong or politically motivated. Again, he insinuates that a longtime civil servant is an Obama loyalist out to get him. The inspector general in charge of the report is a government employee whose tenure predates the Obama administration. The report was based on a survey of 323 hospitals around the country in late March and reported conditions they described. It did not make any judgments about the federal health department or the Trump administration. With coronavirus cases rocketing toward their expected peak, the inspector general's office reported that a shortage of tests and long waits for results were at the root of mounting problems faced by hospitals. Overseeing the report was Christi A Grimm, who is acting as HHS inspector general. She is a career government manager who took over the position early this year in an interim capacity. Grimm began her career with the agency in 1999, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. A week ago Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who forwarded to Congress a whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to the president's impeachment in the House. His career at the Justice Department dated back to the early Bush administration, and it was Trump who nominated him as inspector general for intelligence. Trump had tweeted, Mail in ballots substantially increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD! "Mail ballots they cheat. OK? People cheat. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they're cheaters. They go and collect them. They're fraudulent in many cases. But the fact is that voting fraud is rare. Trump's push for in-person voting in a pandemic, such as in Wisconsin last week, also contradicts the guidance of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and his task force's social distancing guidelines, which urge Americans to maintain 6 feet (1.8 meters) of separation and avoid crowds of over 10 people. The CDC specifically recommends states encourage mail-in methods of voting if allowed in the jurisdiction" given the coronavirus threat. Late last week, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said it was monitoring the potential spread of the virus during Tuesday's voting. It's true that some election studies have shown a slightly higher incidence of mail-in voting fraud compared with in-person voting, but the overall risk is extremely low. The Brennan Center for Justice said in 2017 the risk of voting fraud is 0.00004% to 0.0009%. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) I confess to never having heard of Venus Cuesta, and to be honest I'd never heard of Fuensalida either. And I don't imagine I'm alone. A municipality in the Toledo province of some 11,000 people, Wikipedia doesn't necessarily advance an overwhelming case for being familiar with Fuensalida. As for Venus Cuesta, there isn't a Wikipedia page, which probably doesn't come as a huge surprise. Venus is the spokesperson for Vox at Fuensalida town hall. No one had heard of her until last week, when she managed to drag Adolf Hitler into the fight against coronavirus. When there was talk among his generals about invading Spain, Hitler said no. The Spaniards "are the only true brave Mediterranean people and would immediately organise guerillas to our rear. You cannot enter Spain without the permission of the Spanish". It was this quote that Venus used to then add encouragement: "Between us all, we will win and we will expel the enemy from Spain." As might be imagined, invoking Hitler didn't go down terribly well with everyone. It merely confirmed that Vox are indeed way off to the right of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, Venus got her fifteen minutes of fame, as she was all over the media because of Hitler, although had she wished to - which she presumably wouldn't have - she might have reached for certain other views that Hitler had about Spain: "All of Spain is contained in 'Don Quixote' - a decrepit society unaware that the world has passed it by." Alas for Vox, Hitler didn't have much time for certain institutions that Vox have plenty of time for - the monarchy, the church, and the aristocracy (and there are one or two aristocrats knocking around in the Vox ranks) - all of which were representative of this decrepit society. Still, Vox might nevertheless share this decrepitude opinion when it comes to the political class with whom they have their differences - most of the political class, and the government in particular. Vox leader Santiago Abascal, having the previous week called for the resignation of Pedro Sanchez and Pablo Iglesias and for the formation of a government of national emergency, reiterated his resignation demand on Thursday. His party would not be "complicit" in the "poor" management of the crisis - the worst on the entire planet, he claimed. The government has been lying about the number of deaths, while Iglesias has been taking advantage of the crisis to impose his "totalitarian and communist delusions" on all Spaniards. It's one thing being an opposition party and challenging government decisions, but Vox are taking things to extremes. We've had a Vox deputy in Congress, Macarena Olona, who when not sporting a face mask the colour of the Guardia Civil green with a Spanish flag on it, has been referring to Sanchez as a gravedigger. Although it was described as having been non-partisan, Vox most certainly lent their support to a protest against the government and another demand for Sanchez to resign. This, naturally enough, wasn't an outdoor gathering type of protest. It was online via YouTube. Some 400,000 people, it was claimed, took part, although it has to be said that viewing something on YouTube doesn't automatically equate to supporting it. Abascal said that this was a "spectacular patriotic reaction, the first online demonstration in history". "Almost half a million people calling for the resignation of Sanchez and Iglesias." Equally as spectacular, though, was the social media clamour to declare Vox illegal. The hashtag #IlegalizacionDeVox emerged after the party posted a photo of the Gran Via in Madrid full of coffins. It was of course a fake. The original photo was posted along with a message telling Vox that they were "idiots" for using a situation like this for propaganda. Washing hands the Bauza way Personal hygiene being uppermost in everyone's mind, we have to thank (who else?) the former president of the Balearics, Jose Ramon Bauza, for his hygiene advice. Having temporarily returned to duties at his pharmacy in Marratxi, J.R. - never knowingly not self-promoting - offered the citizenship his recommendations on how to wash their hands. The video, almost six minutes of it, featured the pharmacist-politician showing how to turn the hot tap on using one's wrist (assuming that the citizens have the kind of tap that allows this), putting some water on the hands, turning the tap off, applying soap from a dispenser and rubbing it on the hands, paying particularly assiduous attention to the palms and between the fingers, turning the tap on again, rinsing the hands, turning the tap off, drying the hands with paper towel, and finally, putting gloves on. The actual hand washing, he stressed, should take at least twenty seconds (his went on far longer than this), and if the citizens need a means of measuring the length of time, they should try singing "Cumpleanos feliz" (Happy Birthday) twice. The Ruffian wanting to be useful While certain political parties (Vox) are using the crisis for all its political worth, the Esquerra Republicana Catalunya is not. The Ruffian of Catalan Republicanism, Gabriel Rufian of the ERC, said in an interview that now was not the time to be talking about "self-determination" for Catalonia. "Everything has changed" because of the pandemic. The ERC isn't giving up its objectives, but its leaders wish to be "useful" at a time of crisis. "I imagine that if someone right now sees me on TV calling for self-determination, they'll be tempted to chuck the remote control at me." In 2016, when the media first got wind that Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex were an item, most people were enchanted. The prince had several public relationships over the years. However, Meghan was different. An American woman of mix-raced heritage who had an acting career and had previously been married was something no one expected. The world watched breathlessly as the pair went public with their romance, got engaged, and eventually wed in May 2018. Unfortunately, the Sussexes royal life didnt turn out to be a fairytale. Despite their obvious love and affection for one another, living life within the British royal family got to be too much for the couple. In January 2020, the duo shocked the world by stepping away from royal life. Now, a royal expert says they can pinpoint the exact moment the Sussexes decided Megxit was inevitable. Meghan: Its not enough just to survive something, right? Thats not the point of life. She says shes tried to adopt the British stuff upper lip but what that does internally is probably really damaging #HarryandMeghan pic.twitter.com/GLGB8qzguF Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) October 20, 2019 Meghan Markle and Prince Harry first opened up about their struggles in October 2019 Leading up to the Sussexes wedding and in the months following, we saw the constant tabloid stories that were spread about the duchess. Still, she seemed unbothered by it all. So much so, that many people never understood how much she was being affected by all of the lies and scrutiny. Then, in October 2019 during a royal tour to South Africa, Meghan gave a heartbreaking interview for the ITV News documentary Harry and Meghan: An African Journey revealing just how taxing her life had become. Its not enough just to survive something, right? Thats not the point of life, Meghan explained in the revealing documentary. The duchess revealed that she attempted to adopt the British stiff upper lip but what that does internally is probably really damaging. Following their Megxit announcement, Prince Harry spoke about how much he and the duchess have struggled with their decision. The decision that I have made for my wife and I to step back is not one I made lightly, he said during a speech at a dinner for his charity, Sentebale. It was so many months of talks after so many years of challenges. And I know I havent always got it right, but as far as this goes, there really was no other option. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle needed Megxit With their decision to leave the British royal family, the Sussexes are choosing their happiness and well-being above everything else. This is such a racist country, British journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown told Vanity Fair. In America racism is not qualitatively better, but at least nobody denies that theres racism. In some ways, it is more difficult for those of us people of color who live here, because it is insidious and hidden, and people dont want to talk about it or accept it. Megxit was the only way their marriage would survive. I just thought, Well done. Youre taking the only step you can take in order to save yourself and your baby and find your own happinessI think its a brave and bold and important decision. Megxit became inevitable after the Sussexes Australian royal tour Despite what has been said, the Sussexes didnt simply decide on Megxit in one day. Royal experts believe that following their 2018 Australia and New Zealand tour, the pair were moving way too fast. We have talked a bit about, maybe they should have eased themselves into royal life at the beginning, maybe it wouldnt have become so overwhelming, Pod Save the Queens Ann Gripper reflected. It was a relentless schedule, Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers explained. And I get that it was their first tour and she wanted to hit the ground running, they were the hottest ticket in the world.[But] Im at a loss to explain it, really, and why they found it [royal life] so hard. Maybe they did try to do too much. Maybe that is a lesson that they will take forward in their new life. But I think it is, honestly, to do with the constraints that they felt they were both under. Whether it will be any different in the private, corporate world, I dont know. Only she will know, really, the straw that broke the camels back. She said she wasnt being supported within the family. But maybe they did try to do a bit too much. You know, when Kate and William first started out were only seeing Kate come to the fore in the last year or so, and shes been a royal for nine years. Its a lifetime job, and you have to take the advice that is there for you. And undoubtedly, they as a pair never did that, and its been to their detriment, unfortunately. A civil rights group on Monday condemned the arrest of two Jamia Millia Islamia students in connection with the Delhi riots and accused the police of "abusing the COVID-19 lockdown to silence those who oppose government policies. In a statement released by 'Hum Bharat Ke Log', which has been signed by 26 civil rights activists, the group termed the arrests by Delhi Police "arbitrary". Meeran Haider of Chhatra Rashtriya Janata Dal was arrested on April 2 while Safoora Zargar of the Jamia Coordination Committee was held on April 11. "This is a time when the nation needs to be focused on the health and hunger crisis across our land; when our priorities need to be to stay united to fight this virus," the group said in the statement. At a time when citizens in lockdown are unable to fully exercise their democratic rights, it is the moral duty of governments to guard against any abuse of power by the state, it added. The statement claimed there is "open communalisation" of the pandemic and "targeting of students and activists by agencies of the state". "We condemn the witch-hunt by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police against activists and students who were at the forefront of the democratic upsurge against CAA/NRC/NPR, the statement added. Several other activists like Gul Inquilabi, many Muslim youth from northeast Delhi and students of Jamia are being called for questioning by the Special Cell every day amid this lockdown, the statement said. "There is now an attempt to implicate them in false cases related to the Delhi violence... Now, weaving fictitious narratives about the Delhi violence, Delhi Police is abusing the COVID-19 lockdown to silence and arrest those who oppose government policies, hoping that this abuse of state power will go unreported, with neither coverage nor democratic protest," the statement said. Jailing activists and students in false cases amid the pandemic puts their lives in peril and with courts functioning only partially owing to the lockdown, those arrested are being denied proper legal aid, it said. Calling the arrests "attempts to unleash fear within the large young democratic opposition that had emerged across the country against CAA/NRC/NPR", the statement demanded the "immediate and unconditional release" of the activists. The signatories include Yogendra Yadav, Anjali Bhardawaj, Annie Raja, Teesta Setalvad, Kavita Krishnan, Medha Patkar and Umar Khalid. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The aircraft carrier Liaoning, and a Type 901 support ship that is used to supply warships at sea, at port in Qingdao, China, before being deployed in recent days in the East and South China Seas, April 3, 2020. China has sent an aircraft carrier battle group to the East and South China Seas, according to statements from governments in the region and satellite imagery. The maneuvers come at a time of increasing tension in the South China Sea and a denouncement of Chinas recent sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel by members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chinas naval exercise with the Liaoning aircraft carrier was first reported by Japans military on Friday. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force said the Liaoning, accompanied by battle group of two destroyers, two frigates, and a support vessel passed through the Miyako Strait, between Okinawa and the Miyako Islands, on that day. Satellite imagery shows the Liaoning at its homeport of Qingdao as of April 5, along with a Type 901 supply ship a relatively new class of vessel for replenishing combat ships at sea. Last Wednesday, both sailed out of port and reappeared east of Shanghai, in the East China Sea, on Friday, along with escorts. Taiwans Ministry of National Defense said Sunday the Liaoning battle group was observed moving off the island of Taiwans eastern coast down to its southern coast. A Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy spokesperson later confirmed the Liaoning and its battle group was engaged in a naval exercise at the Miyako Strait, the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan, and in the South China Sea. The ships were identified as two Type 052D guided missile destroyers, two Type 054A guided missile frigates, and a Type 901 support vessel. This coincides with naval maneuvers in the region by the United States. The U.S. Navy sailed a destroyer through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, Reuters reported, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force conducted a bilateral exercise with the U.S. in the East China Sea on Friday and Saturday. All this takes place in the aftermath of the April 2 sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel in a confrontation with a China Coast Guard ship near the disputed Paracel Islands, which China maintained was the fault of the Vietnamese vessel. The incident drew criticism from the U.S. State and Defense Departments, Vietnam itself and the Philippines. On Friday, a bipartisan group of senior U.S. lawmakers joined the chorus of disapproval. Leading figures from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--Republican chairman Jim Risch, top-ranking Democrat Robert Menendez, and Republican Asia subcommittee chairman Cory Gardner and his Democratic counterpart, Ed Markey--ssued a strongly worded statement over the vessel sinking and Chinas reported deployment of military aircraft in the South China Sea. The reports of a Chinese Coast Guard vessel sinking a Vietnamese fishing vessel and Chinas other activities on illegally reclaimed features in the South China Sea are deeply concerning, said Risch. These are just the latest examples of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) blatant intimidation of its neighbors to assert its excessive maritime claims. The CCP is undermining regional stability at a time when the international community should be coming together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Menendez echoed that sentiment and said: Chinas continued divisive and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea is deplorable. He added: I strongly believe that the United States must stand up and support efforts by regional institutions and our allies and partners to ensure freedom of navigation and economic opportunity throughout the entire Indo-Pacific. On the same day the Liaoning was sailing with its escorts north of Taiwan, China conducted an aircraft exercise south of the self-ruled island, over which Beijing claims sovereignty. A Xian H-6 bomber, KJ-500 early warning aircraft, and Shenyang J-11 fighter aircraft flew to the southwest of Taiwan, prompting the U.S. Air Force to send a reconnaissance aircraft in the same direction, according to a Taiwanese Ministry of National Defence press release. Meanwhile, Chinese state media was blaming Vietnam for stoking tensions in the South China Sea after Hanoi formally protested the April 2 sinking of its fishing vessel. Without providing any evidence, a commentary in the Global Times claimed that Hanoi was provoking anti-Chinese sentiment to distract from Vietnams domestic challenges in combating COVID-19. (Bloomberg) -- One weekend in March, Javier Soltero, a Google vice president, got an email from his team in Europe. Italys Minister of Education needed to move the countrys entire school system online, right away, and wanted to know if Googles software could handle it. Soltero, who leads G Suite, Googles set of productivity tools, called his technical staff. Is this even something we can do? he recalled thinking. Several sleepless days and nights later, millions of Italian kids were learning from home through Google services. As the month wore on, Solteros division faced similar surges in country after country. Schools and universities across the globe have rushed online as the coronavirus shut down public life. Many turned to the worlds largest internet company. We have seen incredible growth, Soltero said in a recent interview. It actually mirrors, unfortunately, the ramp up and spread of the disease. Alphabet Inc.s Google has jumped ahead of its big technology peers in the education market in recent years by giving away software and aggressively courting teachers. The pandemic is entrenching the tech giant even further. Google Classroom, a free service teachers use to send out assignments and communicate with students, has doubled active users to more than 100 million since the beginning of March. Thats boosting other products. Meet, a videoconferencing app is being used 25 times as much as it was in January, and the broader G Suite for Education offering has 120 million users, up from 90 million a year ago. Google doesnt charge most schools to use Classroom. The real prize is the millions of young people learning how to use its software. When those students enter the workforce, theyre likely to keep using paid versions, and encourage colleagues to adopt the tools, too. Google Classroom was already popular in the U.S., but demand is now coming from places with few customers before the virus, such as Italy and Indonesia, according to Avni Shah, Googles vice president for education. All these places were really lighting up in the last month, she said. Story continues The companys foothold in schools began around 2014. In the U.S., a new educational standard, called Common Core, was gaining steam and required online assessments. Google flooded schools with Chromebooks, laptops that run on the companys Chrome operating system. They were cheaper than rival products from Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., and came with pre-installed Google apps including Gmail, Docs, Slides and Drive. Last year, Google commanded 60% of the market for education computers in the U.S., according to consultant Futuresource. Chromebooks were among the first in schools to connect to the cloud, making it easier for teachers and students to work and keep in touch from anywhere. That helped spread adoption, according to Mike Fisher, a Futuresource associate director. Google Classroom, similarly, is taking off because its relatively simple to use and flexible. It competes with dozens of other learning-management systems including Canvas and Edmodo, which let schools upload and track coursework. Classroom syncs with those systems and integrates with other school apps, which, like Googles, are now booming. And crucially, Googles product is free, while most competitors charge money for premium features. Makers of e-learning tools rely on portals like Classroom to get inside schools. Quizlet Inc., maker of software for studying, saw new signups jump as much as 400% in China and Italy as the coronavirus spread, said Chief Executive Officer Matthew Glotzbach. About 150 million of Quizlets study sessions last year came from Google Classroom, he noted. Googles offering is also intuitive. Teachers new to remote learning are usually able to upload assignments quickly and launch video calls with little fuss, according to Fisher. That solution, for the situation were in, is perfect, he said.As schools around the world started closing over the first two weeks of March, Luke Craig, a teacher at Britannia Village Primary School in east London, saw what was coming. Craig and his colleagues used Google Sites, a web page-building tool, to set up a hub for their school and started practicing running classes through Google Classroom. A few days later, schools across the U.K. shut down.Now, Craigs first-grade students open their Chromebooks and log into Google accounts for lessons. The Google Sites page lays out the plan for the day, and, depending on the subject, they use a variety of apps made by different companies, including Microsoft. Google Classroom is the central hub, allowing students to submit assignments and teachers to track progress. Another Google product, Jamboard, lets teachers create interactive lessons. Some of the kids, as young as 6 years old, have become so proficient theyre making their own videos detailing their assignments, Craig said. Google has experienced some problems bringing millions of students online so quickly. When schools first jumped on its Meet video-conferencing service, some kids figured out they could boot other participants from a call.Students were kicking the teachers out and carrying on, Craig said. Google heard the complaints, and fixed the issue quickly. The company has been rapidly building new features, thanks to hundreds of employees who volunteered to help the education team when the coronavirus started spreading widely, Shah said. Craig also warned that students who dont have as much support from parents, or access to computers and the internet, could fall behind. Without the face-to-face contact, its likely some kids will slip through the cracks, he said. Google recently pledged to provide internet connections to as many as 100,000 households in California and distribute 4,000 Chromebooks to kids in need. Thats nowhere near enough resources to fill a growing digital divide in education, and doesnt help Craigs students in East London. Read more: U.S. Schools Trying to Teach Online Highlight a Digital Divide In Italy, Google partnered with telecommunications companies so students can use a regular phone line to at least listen in to video conference calls with their teachers. The company designs its apps to work on cheap smartphones and to be used without a wireless connection, Shah said.There are also privacy concerns with so many more children getting online. In February, New Mexicos attorney general sued Google, claiming the company was breaking child privacy laws by collecting data on students. When kids merge their school Google accounts with their personal ones, data could be synced and logged by Google for commercial purposes, the lawsuit argued. Google disputed the claims. A spokesperson for the company said it never uses student data to target ads, even after kids graduate and become adults. But its unlikely privacy concerns will hobble Googles success during this crisis. Most school districts are desperate to get any online system up and running, ignoring some standard protocols for vetting services, said Douglas Levin, president of EdTech Strategies, a consulting company. Those have been thrown out the window for expediencys sake, he said.Google may even benefit from the privacy failures of other companies. Zoom Video Communications Inc., maker of a suddenly popular video chat service, is now seeing some schools drop it after internet trolls started interrupting online meetings and broadcasting offensive content to participants.Craig has been spending the hours in between classes helping other schools get online. Hes one of thousands of teachers certified by Google to train others how to use the companys software. The certification program has been a keystone of Googles expansion, netting the company a group of people who use its products and encourage others to do the same.When schools finally re-open, the education world will be very different. Tech holdouts who resisted internet-based products like Google Classroom will have been forced to use them and adapt. Many schools without a home-learning system will have one. Students lucky enough to have internet at home will have months of experience learning online.All those technology-phobic people will be no more. They will not go back to their pencil and paper, said Melissa Matthews, a technology program specialist for the school district of Palm Beach County in Florida. I dont foresee Google Classroom getting any fewer users come August when everyone goes back to school. (Updates with G Suite for Education number in fifth paragraph.) For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. (Barbados GIS) Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley last night announced that the curfew, in place since April 3, will be extended until midnight May 3. In an address to the nation, she disclosed that, while the 24-hour restrictions on movement were expected to end next Tuesday, the public health advice given to her was that Barbados was not yet at a stage in its COVID-19 response where the country could resume normal hours and normal activity. She stated that the decision to extend the curfew had been taken by Cabinet, after consulting broadly and widely. She noted that from day one she had sought to have an inclusive approach that brought together the entire nation from private sector to public sector, from labour movement to political entities and church, non-governmental organizations, all levels of society, all categories of persons because that is the only way we are going to get through this, both in terms of securing life and livelihood. The Prime Minister praised Barbadians for their response to the restrictions imposed, noting that there had been significant improvements in the practice of physical distancing and in the actions and habits of Barbadians. At this point and time, I want to thank Barbadians, to thank the many tens of thousands who have literally gotten the message and have been working with us. Indeed, I can safely say that as compared to two or three weeks ago, there are far more Barbadians who understand the nature of the problem that we are confronting and who have therefore fallen into line to cooperate and we are happy that the majority has come to this point. Prime Minister Mottley acknowledged that there were still some people who were not yet listening and continued to act in a reckless manner. To them, she cautioned: The person who your behaviour might affect is the person that you might love the most. The person who your behaviour might affect is the person who you might need the most. She stated that the reality of Barbadians passing away, both at home and overseas, has been so sobering that she was satisfied that it has had an impact on persons and there has been a positive change in behaviour in the last few days. BY JOY SPRINGER | APR 12, 2020 (Barbados GIS) A French Catholic priest has been fined for celebrating Mass in behind-closed-door ceremonies that broke the coronavirus lockdown over Easter. Astonishing images from inside Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet, in Paris, show those taking part in the Latin language services, clustering together and ignoring all other safety procedures. Servers and priests paid no attention to social distancing rules, nor did a handful of parishioners, and nobody wore masks. Neighbours finally alerted officers when they heard music coming out of the ancient place of worship during the Easter vigil on Saturday - a service that was being live streamed on YouTube. Astonishing images from inside Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet, in Paris, show those taking part in the Latin language services, clustering together and ignoring all other safety procedures Servers and priests paid no attention to social distancing rules, nor did a handful of parishioners, and nobody wore masks. It comes as French woman only found out her father had died of coronavirus after she received a text from a funeral home asking for her permission to cremate the body. A complaint was filed by relatives of four dead residents in an government-run nursing home in Mougins, near Cannes, where COVID-19 killed 36 people. Catherine Guilleux, whose father Jacques Petitgirard, 87, was staying in the nursing home claims her father died on March 29 but the nursing home did not notify her. She says that she instead later received a text message from a funeral home, adding: 'I was asked for my identity card and authorisation for cremation. My eyes widened, I read it three times, I didn't get a phone call.' Her lawyer said: 'They have learned of the tragic deaths of their parents in aberrant and dramatic conditions, without being able to be at their side at the painful end of their lives, and sometimes without being able to pay them a last tribute.' Meanwhile, an investigating source involved in the Paris Mass services said: 'There were around 40 people inside, all celebrating Easter Sunday Mass in contravention of the lockdown.' 'Police arrived and found the doors of the church shut but managed to get inside to break up the service, which was being conducted in Latin. 'Everybody was told to go home immediately, but the priest was later contacted and fined for breaking the rules.' The first punishment for non-compliance with France's strict restrictions is currently the equivalent of around a 120. This rises to 330 if it is not paid within 45 days and persistent offenders face prison sentences of up to six months. Neighbours finally alerted officers when they heard music coming out of the ancient place of worship during the Easter vigil on Saturday - a service that was being live streamed on YouTube The Mass service was held at the Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet church (pictured) in Paris Despite the police action, the Church continued with live-streamed services on Sunday and Monday, although social distancing rules were observed. All religious services have been banned in France for the past month as the country seeks to slow the spread of Covid-19, which is killing thousands around the world. Following the story of the Frenchwoman who wasn't told of the death of her father, reports state that other elderly people have died without their loved ones being informed. A woman named Marie-Louise Borgnet, who was placed in a government-run nursing home in January, died on March 23 at the age of 87 without her family knowing the circumstances. The lawyer said: 'It would appear that the establishment had in fact taken away Marie-Louise's mobile phone. 'Her nephew still knows nothing about the circumstances of her death.' Reacting to the news, the Mayor of Mougins, Dr Richard Galy, said: 'This is a potential cluster, we have to react very quickly and that's what hasn't been done. Despite the police action, the Church continued with live-streamed services on Sunday and Monday, although social distancing rules were observed 'This drama must never happen again in France.' A five-day evangelical congregation at a French megachurch was originally blamed for sparking the country's biggest cluster of coronavirus infections. Worshippers at the Christian Open Door church in Mulhouse, near the Swiss border, had travelled across the world for the week-long event on February 18. The prayer meeting triggered the biggest cluster of Covid-19 cases in France - one of Europe's hardest-hit countries. Around 2,500 cases have been linked to it after congregants took the disease to Burkina Faso, West Africa, Corsica in the Mediterranean, Guyana in Latin America and Switzerland. Church officials said 17 members of the congregation have since died of complications linked to the disease. One of Julian Assange's lawyers, Stella Moris, has made a shocking revelation that the that the WikiLeaks founder has secretly fathered two children with her while hiding out at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange has been facing extradition to the United States and rape charges. Assange's partner, in court documents and a video posted on Saturday by WikiLeaks and the Daily Mail, said that the couple conceived two-year-old Gabriel and one-year-old Max as Assange was wanted in the United States for leaking classified intelligence materials and in Sweden for rape allegations, an attorney for Assange confirmed the news to Washington Post on Sunday. Moris, according to the attorney, said that she revealed the relationship because she wanted 48-year-old Assange to be released from London prison, where he landed after the Ecuadorian Embassy rescinded his political asylum a year ago, amid the coronavirus outbreak which is spreading among the UK's prison population. In the documents, Moris further said that Assange's health is already precarious because of a lung condition as well as mental health challenges after extended isolation. "I make this statement now only because our lives are on the brink and I fear that Julian could die," Moris said in the statement filed with the court in support of an application Assange's attorneys submitted, to have him released on bail. She added, "He may himself die as a result of increased risk of exposure to the COVID-19 virus." Westminster Magistrates Court judge Vanessa Baraitser refused his bail request on March 25. Since then, one prisoner in the high-security Belmarsh prison, where Assange is lodged, has died after contracting the virus, according to local media reports. It is, however, unclear if Assange's legal team will make a second bail request. Moris said in the video that she fell in love with Assange after meeting him in 2011 and joining his international legal team, which led her to spend "almost every single day" in the embassy. In the video, she flips through photos of the children, a cat beside her, remarking at one point that the older boy resembles Assange: "Very Julian." The children, both British citizens, have visited their father in Belmarsh, according to British media. It also reported that Assange watched his children's births over video and that he was able to secretly meet Gabriel in the embassy. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian foreign ministry and US officials have declined to comment on the matter. Assange is challenging an extradition request by the United States, which wants the 48-year-old Australian to stand trial in federal court in Northern Virginia on charges that he violated the Espionage Act. Prosecutors allege that Assange helped obtain and disseminate hundreds of thousands of pages of secret military documents and diplomatic cables regarding US action in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, Assange has also helped Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, hack into government computers. -ANI Also Read: Coronavirus: Four more COVID-19 cases in Mumbai's Dharavi The latest data from Flightradar24 shows a rapid decline in the number of flights as travel restrictions and lockdowns take their toll on air travel. Flightradar24 is a global flight tracking service that provides users with real-time information about thousands of aircraft around the world. On 11 March 2020 the 7-day average for the total number of flights tracked by Flightradar24 across the world was 177,834. A month later, on 11 April 2020, the 7-day average had plummeted to 67,376. If this trend continues, the number of flights may decline further. The graph below shows the total number of flights tracked by Flightradar24 over the past 90 days. Big impact on airlines Travel bans and lockdowns have a devastating impact on airlines, many of which have grounded all of their passenger planes. SAA suspended all its domestic flights with effect from 27 March until 16 April 2020. This was before the lockdown extension was implemented in South Africa, and the decision came after the government announced the countrys initial 21-day lockdown. It was yet another blow to SAA, which has been running at a massive loss and has been placed under business rescue. The business rescue practitioners of SAA also announced before the lockdown they would begin consultations with employees about possible retrenchments. SAA is not alone. In March, Emirates announced it was stopping nearly all passenger flights and cut staff wages because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on travel demand. Other airlines did the same, and aviation industry experts are warning this environment could crush many airlines. Bloomberg reported that the coronavirus pandemic will bankrupt most airlines worldwide by the end of May, unless governments and the industry take coordinated steps to avoid this situation. Sydney-based consultancy CAPA Centre for Aviation said in March that many airlines have probably been driven into technical bankruptcy or substantially breached debt covenants already. Now read: SAA shuts down international and regional flights SAGINAW, MI When Joy Jiaos relatives living near Shanghai, China, first told her about the COVID-19 outbreak, she never imagined the virus would soon affect her family and friends in Michigan. Now, as Michigan has become one of the top three states in the nation for COVID-19 cases, Jiao has insight into how the virus is playing out overseas as well. In my city, which is close to Shanghai, basically one household could bring one person out to buy groceries, and you could do that once every two days, she said. But no one really did that because they feared for their lives and probably went out once a week, actually." Jiao is a member of the Tri-City Chinese Association. The group has about 400 members and all have similar stories to share, she said. Even now, as China overcomes its peak outbreak levels and lifts restrictions on daily life, Jiao said wearing gloves, masks, hats and other protective equipment are now a habit for her family. Theres a new norm and new perspective after a pandemic, and maybe even a new way of life right now after the whole turmoil, she said. Jiao remembers discussing with TCCA members the fears she had for relatives lives when the coronavirus first took hold in China. Her grandmother and her parents still live in the Shanghai region. We know that when a pandemic first hits, this tends to endanger more older people than younger people, she said. After April 8, most restrictions in China have been lifted, although social distancing is still recommended, she said. Jiao recalls sending masks and other personal protective equipment, or PPE, to China, but now her family is sending them to her. We would have never thought it would hit here, Jiao said. We thought it was a one-time, singular event that would only hit China. Lily Li, TCCA event coordinator, has family in a northeastern town, Jilin, which was not hit hard by the pandemic. Her family has reported that Chinese factories are now producing enough PPE that they and other Chinese families can send them back to the United States. Jiao and other association members listen to family and friends from China through email, phone and social media as they talk about the lack of supplies and the affects of the virus on their daily lives. These conversations inspired Jiao and other association members to start planning what they could do as an organization to help their community once the virus hit Michigan. Early fundraising efforts involved shipping masks and other PPE in from China, as well as making masks whenever possible. However, the organization was concerned that already swamped hospital employees would have to sort through which masks were medical grade or not, so they shifted efforts to raising money, Li said. Soon, the group settled on an online PayPal fundraiser. Jiao helped lead the campaign from March 29 to April 1. Their original goal was to raise $2,000 from the online donation and to donate an additional $1,000 from their operating budget. This would allow them to give Midland MidMichigan Medical Center, McLaren Bay Region Hospital and Saginaw Covenant Healthcare Center each $1,000. However, after the initial donation of $1,000 to each hospital, they raised enough to donate an additional $1,400 each, making the final donation $2,400 per hospital. They also raised enough to donate additional funds to the Midland County COVID-19 Coalition. In addition to donating to the Midland coalition, TCCA will use the funds to deliver pizza to the MidMichigan Health Center in Midland. They are working with the hospitals dining and catering services to ensure the pizza is safely delivered to employees. Since hospitals are also now in dire need of PPE and will accept non-medical-grade supplies, the association will also continue collecting PPE. Jiao believes the association was in a good position to help the community since many of their members saw China experience its shortage of supplies before that became a reality in Michigan. Weve already heard of the struggle and hurt in China, she said. We already saw a full picture of that in China before it hit here. It gave us time to arrange these shipments and fundraiser before demand was really announced. For Jiao, as relatives in China reach out and send supplies to them, just as they had done for their relatives months prior, the PPE became a symbol of support across the boundaries, she said. No matter ones race, gender or nationality, Jiao said everyone has been affected by the pandemic in one way or another, and the community will need everyone to defeat it. As long as these PPE, these packages of love, are circulating the globe, we can do this, she said. WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE: FCN) today announced that Consulting magazine has named Jordan Rae Kelly as one of the recipients of its inaugural Women Leaders in Technology awards. Ms. Kelly, a Senior Managing Director and Head of Cybersecurity for the Americas at FTI Consulting, was recognized in the Leadership category. She advises clients on a broad range of cybersecurity and data privacy matters involving breaches, insider threats, intellectual property, crisis communications, vendor management, compliance, regulation, risk management and forensic investigations. Jordan is, without a doubt, one of the top women in the field of cybersecurity, and this award is a reflection of that preeminence, said Anthony J. Ferrante , Global Head of Cybersecurity at FTI Consulting. Jordan is an established leader with extensive experience working across the U.S. government and with private industry to protect our nation from cyber threats. Her expertise has been integral to helping our clients safeguard their operations and recover after an incident. Prior to joining FTI Consulting in 2019, Ms. Kelly served as the Director for Cyber Incident Response on the National Security Council at the White House. During her tenure there, she was responsible for both national incident response coordination, as well as management of the U.S. governments process for managing zero-day exploits. She also was a chief author of the National Cyber Strategy, the first of its kind in the United States in 15 years. Before joining the National Security Council in 2017, Ms. Kelly served as Chief of Staff in the Federal Bureau of Investigations Cyber Division, where she managed daily operations and strategic and policy planning for the FBIs national cyber program. Promoting the leadership of women in cybersecurity and technology has always been important to me, Ms. Kelly said. I am honored to receive this award and hope that the recognition of all my talented colleagues by Consulting magazine will inspire the next generation of women leaders to consider a career in cybersecurity and advance the profession even further. About FTI Consulting FTI Consulting, Inc. is a global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations manage change, mitigate risk and resolve disputes: financial, legal, operational, political & regulatory, reputational and transactional. With more than 5,500 employees located in 27 countries, FTI Consulting professionals work closely with clients to anticipate, illuminate and overcome complex business challenges and make the most of opportunities. The Company generated $2.35 billion in revenues during fiscal year 2019. For more information, visit www.fticonsulting.com and connect with us on Twitter (@FTIConsulting), Facebook and LinkedIn. FTI Consulting, Inc. 555 12th Street NW Washington, DC 20004 +1.202.312.9100 Investor Contact: Mollie Hawkes +1.617.747.1791 mollie.hawkes@fticonsulting.com Getting people home from interstate or overseas is part of a national and international humanitarian effort with airlines needing to 'step up', says Western Australia Health Minister Roger Cook. Loading Mr Cook said underwriting flights were something each of the state governments were looking at and working together on to find a solution. He said police commissioners and their teams were currently finding out how many people were in each domestic city and how to best get them home. Mr Cook said there were hundreds of West Australians in the eastern states wanting to get back to the state, while there were more than 600 people from the eastern states currently in WA needing to get back home. It's a big operation, he said. The State Health Incident Control Centre and ... police commissioner continue to work with airlines to try and work out the best way to get these people home. These people have done 14 days of isolation, they want to get home, we want to get them home to their families and their friends. We need the airlines to help us with this, we need the airlines to step up and to make their assets available so that we can get these people home. Mr Cook said the process was complicated with the issue spanning across the world, with cruise ships caught up in the problem. Theres obviously Western Australians and Australians overseas on cruise ships trying to get home as well, he said. So, to a certain extent this is part of an international effort and an humanitarian international effort. Mr Cook said in the case of foreign cruise ship passengers and crew members in WA hospitals and hotels, the state was simply supporting the commonwealth government in the view that it was a global effort to support each other. Two 19-year-old men were arrested Saturday in the murder of a Miami-Dade high school senior during an alleged shoe robbery. Andrea Camps Lacayo was shot and killed Tuesday after she went with her boyfriend, Sergio Berben, to sell three pairs of sneakers for $935, according to Miami-Dade police. The couple was there to meet with one of the suspects, George Walton, who said he wanted to try on the shoes before he bought them. Image: Adrian Cosby and George Walton. (Miami-Dade Police Department) Berben resisted and told Walton he wanted to see the money first, police said. It was then that the second suspect, Adrian Cosby, approached the couples Jeep and allegedly shot at the two of them. Berben drove off to get medical help, and Lacayo was pronounced dead at a hospital later on. An autopsy declared Lacayos cause of death a homicide after a gunshot wound to the pelvis and abdomen, police said. Walton and Cosby were arrested Saturday on felony charges of second-degree murder, attempted murder, and robbery with a deadly weapon. According to an arrest affidavit, Walton admitted to a plan to rob Berben of the shoes. Cosby also told police that he shot at the Jeeps driver, Berben, once before fleeing. Cosby was ordered to remain in custody without bond on the murder charge Sunday, according to court records. Walton was scheduled to appear in court Monday. Neither of the mens public defenders immediately responded to a request for more information from NBC News Monday. Digitalisation, automation, and transformation are impacting every industry, disrupting skills and creating new jobs, while manufacturing is the vanguard, with new roles appearing as fast as others become obsolete. Simon Matthews, country manager of ManpowerGroup in Vietnam, Thailand, and the Middle East Manufacturing has undergone many transformations from dirty, dark, and dangerous to advanced, digital, and connected. In its The Future Factory research, ManpowerGroup has mapped four technical generations of manufacturing generations zero to three. Today we are on the cusp of the third generation, characterised by the transformational power of radical improvements in connected systems and machine learning. However, to prepare for this transformation, companies should get their workforce upskilled and reskilled to stay employable and reduce unemployment. It is a must and foremost directive to carry out in the context of digitalisation around the world. Mapping skills With manufacturing jobs listed in the top 10 in-demand roles globally according to the latest Talent Shortage Survey by ManpowerGroup, manufacturers are reporting growing talent shortages as they struggle to find the right blend of technical and soft skills to fill new positions. The catalyst for the early stages of this skills shift was automation machine strength. Now sector-wide transformation has been turbocharged by the Internet of Things, the digitally-connected enterprise, and the relentless expansion of data and AI to handle the scope of the challenge machine thinking. According to The Future Factory research, almost half of all roles in manufacturing (49 per cent) will need to change within the next three or five years as the industry transitions to become fully digital. ManpowerGroups workforce analysis identified 165 new and evolving roles across seven areas of technical expertise what we refer to as domains. These include roles such as service technician, robotics engineer, data architect, product designer, app developer, technical trainer, knowledge curator, ethicist, and many, many more. The digitalisation of manufacturing is creating a need for people with more advanced skills. The top five skill sets expected to increase significantly in the coming few years due to the influx of automation and advanced technologies are identified as SixSigma certification, computerised numerical control machines, geometric dimensioning and tolerance, Center TRACON automation systems, and PLC software skills. The fast-changing industry will require almost a quarter of workers to become Pioneers, who are the first people to introduce the ideas and processes that will jumpstart transformation. Almost one in five people will be keystones, putting processes in place to execute the strategy, while the majority, 60 per cent, will be producers, responsible for the output, making the change happen, and executing on a daily basis. Producer roles exist in every domain, from executives and IT workers, to those on the production floor. New upskill approaches Vietnam is an emerging country with an abundant young workforce, which is a strong competitive advantage. Among the manufacturing sectors, footwear and textiles have created hundreds of thousands of jobs within Vietnam although in recent years electronics has moved to the forefront and is now the leading export product, overtaking garments and footwear. However, regarding industry structure, most emerging industrial countries have low-skilled workforce and labour-intensive industries. Only 11.6 per cent of the Vietnamese workforce is highly skilled and up to 40 per cent is non-skilled, according to the Total Workforce Index. Without proper planning for upskilling their workforce, organisations will face acute talent shortages. As a result, in the context of digitalisation and new technologies, organisations need to shift their talent strategies and find new and alternative ways to resource, develop, motivate, and retain the in-demand skills they need. Individuals need to be aware of the changing landscape too and be ready to nurture their learnability, or the ability to learn and evolve their skills, so they stay employable for the long-term. To upskill tomorrows manufacturing talent at speed and scale, we need a new approach to training. In ManpowerGroups experience, for instance, the most effective skills development is achieved through shorter certification programmes of six months or less. The two examples below can demonstrate the importance of training in the evolution of new technologies: In the US, ManpowerGroup and Rockwell Automation launched a first-of-its kind programme in 2017, the Academy of Advanced Manufacturing, to upskill 1,000 US military veterans annually for in-demand, highly specialised roles in digital manufacturing. At the end of just 12 weeks, the programme leads to certification and well-paid, sustainable employment as automation and instrumentation controls technicians. Building tomorrows talent Technological disruption is contributing to a manufacturing skills revolution. Roles are being automated while new roles that optimise the potential of machine learning are being created. The pace of change is accelerating and companies, governments and universities need to collaborate to upskill people at speed and at scale. Without proper preparation, organisations will face talent shortages while unemployment will keep raising. Now is the time for manufacturing organisations to carry out three things. First, they must develop a connected workforce strategy: appropriately skilled workers are not available in sufficient numbers to simply buy the necessary skilled talent, so organisations must build, bridge, and borrow the skills they need. Second, they should identify those skills that will be critical in the short, medium, and long term mapping the 165 new roles within the seven domains and use this information to identify future talent needs. Finally, enterprises must understand important impacts caused by each advanced manufacturing role on the entire supply network. VIR Simon Matthews Seven more people tested positive for COVID-19 in three districts of Jharkhand within 24 hours, taking the total number of cases in the state to 24, officials said on Monday. According to them, the seven new cases were reported from Ranchi, Bokaro and Giridih districts. Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Director Dr D K Singh said three people from Ranchi city's Hindpiri locality tested positive for the virus on Monday. One person each from Giridih and Bokaro also tested positive on Monday, he said. Earlier, Bokaro Deputy Commissioner Mukesh Kumar said two men, one aged 68 years and the other 45 years, tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday night. They hailed from Bokaro district's Sadam village and are relatives of the 72-year-old man who died of COVID-19 on April 8, he said. With this, the total number of positive cases in Ranchi Bokaro have gone up to 11 while Bokaro's tally climbed to nine. Hazaribag has reported two cases of the infection, while Koderma and Giridih reported one case each. The third person from Bokaro who tested positive for novel coronavirus on Monday also has contact history at Sadam village, officials said. A 60-year-old man had died of COVID-19 in Ranchi on Sunday, the second such case in the state. The first case of COVID-19 in Jharkhand was detected at Hindpiri locality of Ranchi when a 22-year-old Malaysian woman tested positive for the disease on March 31. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As the nation combats the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic, with increasing number of cases a cause for concern, inmates of prisons in Telangana are doing their bit to help, making thousands of masks and sanitisers for doctors, policemen, health workers and others in the frontline. With increasing demand from health professionals and those in the field, as also from government departments and Information Technology firms, the Central Prisons and district jails in the state have ramped up manufacturing and supply of these items, officials said. An added bonus is that the face masks are washable and reusable. Both the masks and sanitisers are priced lower than products available in the market, they said. The Telangana Prisons Department sells these products under the 'My Nation' brand and has also come out with a Health and Hygiene kit, comprising washable masks, hand sanitisers, handwash, bath soaps and phenyl, they said. The inmates were trained by chemists on how to make sanitisers, while professional tailors at the prisons taught them how to stitch the masks. "We did not have any prior exposure in manufacturing face masks and hand sanitisers, but in view of the crisis (coronavirus outbreak) we took the initiative by training the inmates," the official told P T I. Around 9,000 face masks and 3,000 litres of sanitiser are being produced every day at Chanchalguda and Cherlapally central prisons in Hyderabad and other district jails, the official said. The Prisons Department supplies the finished products to medical and health department personnel, police, power utilities and postal staff, among other government agencies. Various Public Sector Undertakings have also placed bulk orders with them. In fact even before the lockdown was announced the initial order for face masks came from some IT companies, the official said. Such has been the demand that the Prisons Department has now deployed inmates exclusively for producing masks and sanitisers. "As many as 50 inmates make 2,000 face masks every day at Chanchalguda central prisons itself. We have on hand orders to supply 60,000 face masks which are to be delivered by the month end," an official at the Chanchalguda prison said. From Chanchalguda central prison itself over 30,000 facemasks and around 6,000 litres of sanitiser has been sold, the official added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy is set for a deep slide in coming months with the coronavirus forcing businesses to shut and putting millions out of work, but Federal Reserve policymakers are also warning of a slugging recovery once the pandemic subsides. Because of the shock of this... will consumer behavior just be more cautious? Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan asked in a phone interview with Reuters on Wednesday. Its not just the safety concerns... its also financial and potentially job insecurity which might cause them to save more and spend less. Such caution will mute the strength of the rebound and leave the worlds largest economy about 4% to 5% smaller at the end of 2020 than it was at the end of last year, he said. For years, household spending has powered U.S. economic growth, boosting business and helping keep unemployment at a decades-low 3.5% as recently as February. But as cases of the new coronavirus began mounting in March, authorities ordered people to stay home and cease all but essential in-person commerce to slow the spread. U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed the hope that once new infections are on the wane, the economy can reopen and rocket back to its pre-crisis strength. Indeed, the Fed and the U.S. government have undertaken unprecedented efforts to make that possible, with the central bank cutting rates to near zero, resuming bond purchases, and rolling out an array of programs to stabilize financial markets. Additionally, Congress passed a $2.3 trillion rescue package late last month to deliver cash to households and grants and loans to businesses. Chicago Federal Reserve Bank Charles Evans said in a webcast event earlier on Wednesday that the aid would allow the economy to begin to recover in the second half of 2020, depending on the health situation. But he also painted a picture of a potentially fragile recovery, at least until a vaccine is available, with the biggest risk of a deep and prolonged downturn from a continuing pandemic that delays recovery. Even if the economy began reopening by summer in a more guarded posture, Evans said, it could be prone to new stoppages should testing and contact tracing of infected individuals fail to stop broader outbreaks. Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said the success of any recovery would hinge on consumers being reassured by businesses, particularly in the service sector, that they will be safe. Businesses will have to find a way to convince consumers to shop, or eat out, to travel, or go to a concert or a game, he said, suggesting restaurants could offer contactless service and more spread-out seating, while airlines could fly with middle seats empty. Many of these changes could increase costs and prices, but they could also reassure the public enough to bring business back to life, Barkin said. A former Virginia college student has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors to resolve a charge he coordinated with neo-Nazi group members to harass and endanger their targets by calling in bogus police emergencies. John William Kirby Kelley, 19, has signed a plea agreement and has a plea hearing set for May 8, prosecutors said in a court filing Saturday. The filing doesnt specify any terms of the deal. Kelley was arrested in January on a charge of conspiring to make threats to injure. He hasnt been indicted in connection with the alleged plot to make and videotape dozens of swatting calls to police to instigate an aggressive response by officers. Prosecutors in a court filing called it "one of the most far-reaching and prolific swatting conspiracies known to law enforcement." The swatting calls included a November 2018 bomb threat against a predominantly African American church in Alexandria, according to an FBI agents affidavit. In response to another swatting call last November against a vape shop, law enforcement in New Hope, Pennsylvania, issued a shelter in place order for the small town. Kelley and others involved in the alleged scheme were affiliated with or expressed sympathy for Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group linked to a string of recent arrests, according to the agents affidavit. Kelley, who was a student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, suggested the school as a potential swatting target, the affidavit said. Campus police confronted Kelley last November after he allegedly called in a threat that he was armed with a rifle and had placed pipe bombs in university buildings. The university expelled Kelley after his arrest on state drug charges. Other Atomwaffen Division members have been arrested on separate but related charges in Virginia and Seattle that they used an internet chat channel to coordinate at least 134 swatting calls across the country. The conspirators targeted people for different reasons, prosecutors wrote. For instance, some conspirators proposed swatting individuals who were live streaming their activities. These targets were chosen because conspirators wanted to watch the law enforcement response to the threatening phone calls. John Cameron Denton, a 26-year-old former group leader from Montgomery, Texas, was arrested in February. Denton is accused of participating in swatting calls against the New York offices of ProPublica, an online investigative news outlet, and a ProPublica journalist. Denton was angry at ProPublica and the journalist for exposing his role as an Atomwaffen leader, authorities said. The groups swatting targets also allegedly included an unidentified Cabinet official living in northern Virginia. Court records do not identify the Cabinet official, but public records show that then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was a victim of a swatting incident at her home in Alexandria in January 2019, when the alleged swatting conspiracy was active. Josh Rosenberg, a proven executive whose experience includes global distribution & executive leadership VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / Chemesis International Inc. (CSE:CSI) (OTCQB:CADMF) (FRA:CWAA) (the "Company" or "Chemesis") is pleased to announce the appointment of Josh Rosenberg as President. Josh has served on Chemesis' Board of Directors since September 2019 and has been instrumental in the restructuring and rebuilding of its operations. Mr. Rosenberg is a seasoned corporate executive with a proven track record in global foodservice and other product distribution as well as in executive leadership. Josh led the successful buyout of Accent Food Services ("Accent") and transitioned the enterprise to private equity ownership and management, ultimately spearheading a major strategic shift in customer strategy and company culture which resulted in Accent progressing from a single state operator to one of the largest multi-state operations in the Unattended Retail Industry. During Josh's six years at the helm, the company increased top line revenue more than six-fold, expanded operations to cover 11 U.S. states, and grew to encompass more than 600 associates, 14,000 customers, and to service more than 750,000 customers a day. Mr. Rosenberg was also an Executive in the Coca-Cola corporate organization (the "Coca-Cola System"), where he led a non-traditional route to market for the foodservice division of the Coca-Cola Company after heading their $700 million, multichannel business. Over a progressive 18-year career, Josh rose through the ranks of the Coca Cola System, starting as a merchandiser and holding roles in sales, operations, commercial strategy, and call center management. Josh holds a Marketing degree from Madison University, completed the KPMG QuantumShift Most Promising Top 40 Entrepreneurs Program', as well as the Power of Listening Leadership Program' at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and Cornell University. Josh's honors include being named the National Automatic Merchandising Associations' ("NAMA") 2016 Person of the Year' and Automatic Merchandisers' Magazine's 2015 Pro to Know'. Story continues Josh serves on several Boards of Directors, including United Strategies Group as Executive Director, and, previously, Accent Food Services as CEO/Chairman. "I look forward to bringing my experience from the food services and mass distribution industry to provide strategic guidance to the team at Chemesis," said Josh Rosenberg. "As the Cannabis industry evolves in the United States and globally, distribution and penetration into micro-markets will be at the fore-front of accessing the consumer base. The Company has been able to assemble an incredible portfolio of assets and I look forward to adding a global strategy to the vision." "Mr. Rosenberg brings incredible skills, including distribution, business management, new market penetration, and product development knowledge and expertise," said CEO, Edgar Montero. "The remarkable experience he brings will continue to allow Chemesis to grow its business as a multi-state operator in the United States, gain distribution and penetration to markets which are currently untapped." Chemesis also announces the departure of Aman Parmar as President, and notes that he will remain as a Director and will also assume Chairmanship of its Board of Directors. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Parmar for his dedicated service as President. The Company would also like to announce that, pursuant to its Share-Based Compensation Plan, the Board has approved the issuance of 2,500,000 Restricted Share Rights ("RSRs") to certain directors, officers, contractors and employees of the Company. The RSRs were granted in recognition of the extraordinary efforts of the awardees on behalf of the Company, and as an inducement to retain such individuals. On Behalf of The Board of Directors Edgar Montero CEO and Director About Chemesis International Inc. Chemesis International Inc. is a vertically integrated U.S. Multi-State operator with International operations in Puerto Rico and Colombia. The Company focuses on prudent capital allocation to ensure it maintains a first mover advantage as it enters new markets and is committed to differentiate itself by deploying resources in markets with major opportunities. The Company operates a portfolio of brands that cater to a wide community of cannabis consumers, with focus on quality and consistency. Chemesis has facilities in both Puerto Rico and California. The Company believes it is positioned to win additional licenses in highly competitive merit-based US states and plans to expand its footprint to ensure it maintains a first mover advantage. Investor Relations: ir@chemesis.com 1 (604) 398-3378 Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company's business, products and future of the Company's business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing, including with respect to the Company's expectations regarding its plans for expansion and growth, ability to realize benefits from its recent corporate appointments, ability to retain its key personnel, , its plans to continue to develop dispensaries in various jurisdictions, and its ability to obtain licenses in additional jurisdictions. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company's expansion and growth plans will not be realized as expected, or at all, that it will not be able to retain its key personnel, that its products and plans will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected, including, but not limited to, in relation to executing on and maintaining its expansion plans, and its ability to obtain licenses in additional jurisdictions. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information in this news release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and makes no reference to profitability based on sales reported. The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this press release SOURCE: Chemesis International Inc. View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/584820/Chemesis-International-Inc-Appoints-Josh-Rosenberg-as-President On March 12th this year, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, MOEFCC, posted a Draft Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2020. As is the norm, it gave the public 60 days to respond with objections and comments. On March 24th, 2020, India announced a country-wide lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID19, and perhaps, the death of lakhs of Indians. Life changed across the country. Very few Indians work from home, as the tragic walk-homes of lakhs of Indians showed. Im narrating this to put the EIA Notification in context. How do you ask a country under lockdown for comments? How can civilians battling war, even spectators of war, possibly respond when the killer might be at their doorstep? The EIA process impacts lakhs of our countrymen. They are in no position to think, discuss and comment. Perhaps most objections usually come from urban elite or well-organized NGOs. Many might respond. But they arent the only Indians. Weve got to ensure that when we ask for public opinion, the public is able to offer it to us. Which farmers organization, to take only one example, can possibly reply under the current circumstances? Its likely that the MOEFCC didnt expect this situation-frankly very few could have imagined this. Now that we are all in the midst of it, there is only one way ahead. Extend the period for comments for 60 days after the lockdown is over across India. That would be the democratic and fair step forward. (The writer is the founder and director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Like too many areas of Birmingham at the time, the Lakeview neighborhood was largely a blighted eyesore in the 1980s. Empty, decaying buildings could be found on practically every block, and weekend foot traffic was nearly non-existent other than for a few restaurants and bars. Cathy Sloss Jones looked out over this barren landscape and saw the potential for something wonderful to grow there. Jones has long had a strong commitment to her hometown. After all, her great-great grandfather, James Withers Sloss, was the founder of Sloss Furnaces. Jones grandfather, Arthur Page Sloss, along with Everett Shepherd, formed a company in 1920 that later evolved into Sloss Real Estate, the company that created the Five Points West shopping center and developed several subdivisions throughout the city. Jones maintained this trailblazing spirit when she joined the family real estate business. That was evident back in 1988, when the company purchased the old Dr. Pepper syrup plant and Martin Biscuit building in Lakeview, with plans to develop it into a retail and office complex dubbed Pepper Place. That purchase led to what has become one of the citys most popular regular events: The Market at Pepper Place, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. What began in 2000 as a modest farmers market has transformed into a sprawling collection of vendors selling fresh produce, baked goods, and arts-and-crafts items. Toss in live music, cooking demonstrations, and crowds in the thousands (including dozens of dogs), and Pepper Place enjoys a vibrant atmosphere on Saturday mornings that simply did not exist in that part of town two decades ago. It was the market that really changed Pepper Place, says Jones, who is now president and CEO of Sloss Real Estate. I give it a lot of credit for the revitalization of that area. And, in a way, for the revitalization of Birmingham as a whole. After all, the farmers market was in full swing a decade before the creation of Railroad Park and Regions Field, which often are cited as being the catalysts for Birminghams boom. But would those entities have been as quickly successfulor even constructed at allif The Market at Pepper Place hadnt helped pave the way for people to come downtown? People came to the market a few times and suddenly went, Wow, this is awesome. What else can we check out around here? says Leigh Sloss-Corra, who is Cathys sister and serves as executive director of The Market at Pepper Place. They started noticing the shops around here. Then they wanted to have lunch somewhere, or come back for dinner. Then they wanted to have an office here. People came to Pepper Place and rediscovered that downtown can be more than a place where you zoom into work, and then zoom back out to the suburbs. It can also be a place where you have fun. Cathy Sloss Jones says one of her earliest memories as a child was visiting a large farmers market in Los Angeles and marveling at the boisterous, energetic scene. More recently, she says she admires how markets can help revitalize areas. Likewise, famed Birmingham restaurateur Frank Stitt says his passion for food and cooking was heavily influenced by markets he visited in New York, San Francisco, and Europe. Farmers markets are a big part of life in those places. Theyre kind of the heartbeat of the community, Stitt says. And as a cook, you always want to get local, fresh, farm ingredients. There werent many good options for that in Birmingham in the late 1990s. Stitt says even the Finley Avenue farmers market, which has been around since 1956, often had a limited range of choices, and the atmosphere certainly was more functional that festive. At the same time, many longtime farmers were beginning to retire, and they werent being replaced by a younger generation. There was legitimate concern that much of the local produce in the state was on the verge of withering away. Somebody brought to Cathys attention that small family farms in Alabama were dramatically disappearing, Sloss-Corra says. This was a real cultural and economic crisis for these Alabamians. We were losing a part of our identity, and our fresh food supply was disappearing. Stitt and fellow chef Franklin Biggs, founder of Homewood Gourmet, were seeking a solution when they discovered that Jones was interested in starting a weekly farmers market in the Pepper Place parking lot. So with the help of Danny Jones, who runs Dublin Farms in Clanton, they began crafting a plan. They had the idea of a market that could help strengthen the connection between rural and urban cultures and economies, and also help the local chefs, Sloss-Corra says. Pepper Place was the perfect location, because there was plenty of room and it wasnt being utilized during the weekend. The first farmers market at Pepper Place was held in the spring of 2000. A grand total of seven farmers showed up. While it wasnt necessarily a rousing start, an important seed had been planted. Arlie Powell admits he was skeptical when he first heard about the new farmers market being created in Birmingham. A horticulturist and fruit scientist who worked at Auburn University for 24 years, Powell had watched in dismay as previous efforts by the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries to create a series of farmers markets statewide failed to take root. Fresh food, it seemed, no longer was a priority for the general public. All the grocery stores would rather buy [in bulk] from big out-of-state producers than buy anything local, Powell says. The apples were all from Washington and the strawberries from California. Local farmers markets just didnt work. The ones that tried fizzled. Still, Powell kept up with the progress of Pepper Places market as he simultaneously established Petals From the Past, a nursery in Jemison, Alabama. He was pleasantly surprised as the market gradually gained popularity and expanded its number of vendors. Within a few years, Petals From the Past became one of those vendors, selling flowers and a wide variety of fruits, including figs, kiwi, and persimmons. I never thought Id see it happen, but a lot of people started preferring the farmers market to a supermarket, Powell says. They began to appreciate the taste of really fresh food that isnt shipped a thousand miles. I can pick my fruit today and sell it at the farmers market tomorrow. Im giving people the freshest fruit they can get unless they are picking it off a tree in their own backyard. This recognition began a cycle of growth for both Pepper Place and local farmers. More people coming to the market resulted in more vendors offering a wider selection of products, which attracted an even larger number of people. Slowly but steadily, this seed of an idea began to branch out in different directions. Seven vendors turned into 10, then 15, then 30, then 50, Sloss-Corra says. At the beginning it was just farmers. Then people wanted to get some coffee while they were there, so a coffee tent was added. Then they wanted something to eat. Then they became interested in jewelry and pottery. Everything evolved organically, and we became a platform for new food producers and new businesses. The expansion was strong enough that shortly after Lisa Beasley was hired as market manager in 2009, the decision was made to basically double the size of the space. Instead of confining everything to a single parking lot, the market spread onto 29th Street and into the adjacent Martin Biscuit parking lot. We knew we were moving in the right direction, and we thought the city was ready for what we were planning, Beasley says. So we made the jump to see what would happen. What happened was The Market at Pepper Place became more popular than ever, with as many as 10,000 people showing up on peak Saturdays. Beasley says a total of 205 vendors have been approved for this year, with more than 100 in attendance on any given weekend (most vendors dont come out every week). This includes a new generation of young farmers who now view the profession as a viable, money-making career. Before Pepper Place, a lot of farmers were about to age out, and there were not that many young people getting into it, Stitt says. But because of the success and impact of Pepper Place, some of the next generation decided to get involved. So now we have this whole new set of younger farmers who continued farming instead of getting out. We feel really happy that this market has contributed to supporting the farming lifestyle. In 2014, April McClung began selling pound cakes for a fundraiser. They were so popular that she was told she should try selling them at The Market at Pepper Place. Even though there was a waiting list for most new vendors, McClung was able to get a spot quickly because at that time there was nobody selling pound cakes at the market. So in July, McClung arrived at Pepper Place at 6:30 a.m. with 24 full cakes and 100 slices. She began selling at 7 a.m., and by 10:30 a.m. she literally was down to crumbs. We had one bite left on the sample tray, and somebody asked how much wed sell that for, McClung says with a laugh. We were not prepared for how big Pepper Place is. We didnt even have a business name. Our cards just said, Fundraiser. We were still making everything out of our home. It didnt take long before McClung had a business nameEmilys Heirloom Pound Cakes, in honor of her husbands late grandmother who created the recipeand was making the cakes out of a commercial kitchen. Within a few years, she was shipping an average of 500 cakes each week through online sales, and the product is now sold in Sams Club stores in five states. None of this would have been possible, McClung says, without the enormous exposure she received at Pepper Place. Ive had so many people tell me that the first time they had our cake was at Pepper Place, she says. It was the foundation for us. It allowed us to have stable, ongoing brand recognition with customers who are extremely loyal. At Pepper Place, they absolutely understand what it means to support local. There rarely is much time for Lisa Beasley to relax in her role as market manager. Even during the winter months, when the market downsizes to an indoor market, she is busy with planning for the upcoming year. Simply creating the vendor schedule for the year takes two to three weeks, a process she says is like trying to put a Rubiks Cube together with one eye closed. Then on market Saturdays there are always numerous issues that arise and problems to solve. But no matter how busy she gets, Beasley says she always tries to take a moment to stop and appreciate the joyous activity taking place around her. And after all these years, she still marvels at the music and laughter that fills the air on a site that, not too long ago, was abandoned ground. Ill see everybody talking and having a good time, and Ill stand there and realize what a wonderful place this is, Beasley says. Its a place that truly belongs to the entire community. That was the goal from the earliest days of The Market at Pepper Place. Yes, it was designed primarily to connect local farmers and artisans with local consumers. But it also was meant to be a location where the community could gather and simply enjoy being in Birmingham. The market was created as a place where people could relax and be together, Sloss-Corra says. Some markets are very utilitarian. You zip in, do your shopping, and get out. Its just a series of business transactions. This market was created to be welcoming, to be more of a meeting-up place like a town square or park. A place where people can get all their stuff, but also just hang out and be together. That is the heart and spirit that Cathy brought to it. She didnt want it to be just a shopping place. She also wanted it to be a happy place. How to Enjoy Pepper Place Market during COVID-19 In an effort to continue to fulfill its mission of supporting Alabama farmers amid current health concerns, the Market has launched an innovative Drive-Thru Farmers Market to bring farm-fresh produce to customers with minimal handling. Heres how it works: Select and prepay for items on the Markets ecommerce website prior to coming on Saturday. Drive to the Markets pick-up lane at Pepper Place set up along 2nd Avenue South during its normal Saturday hours (7 a.m. 12 p.m.). Follow instructions of Market staff, directing the pick-up line. Vendors place the ordered items in the back of your car. Enjoy your fresh produce for the week. Details Learn more about The Market at Pepper Place and see its 2020 schedule at pepperplacemarket.com. This story appears in Birmingham magazines April 2020 issue. Subscribe today! The European Union entry ban on its wide borders comes in a crucial year for Vietnamese exporters to the EU, leading to the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement to become ever more important for both sides in the year to come. Every week, Vina T&T Group, a pioneer in exporting fruit to worldwide markets, has many shipments by air, accompanied by commercial flights for passengers to EU countries. However, the companys management board got nervous when they heard about European countries temporarily shutting their external borders to most non-residents for the first time in order to avoid the spread of the novel coronavirus. Luckily, the ban does not officially affect the shipment of goods as it only applies to individual travellers. However, with flights to Europe greatly reduced, it appears almost certain that the volume of air transport cannot maintain the same frequency as before, said Nguyen Dinh Tung, general director of Vina T&T. In an effort to battle the coronavirus outbreak that has lit across the continent, leaders of the EU have agreed to close the blocs external borders to most non-EU citizens for 30 days. However, the closure is not a lockdown. Accordingly, EU citizens, their relatives, diplomats, medical professionals, and freight carriers are exempted from the above provisions. Internal movements are permitted but subject to certain restrictions. Doomy times for trade The new movements created chaos at airports as well as concern for strict controls on EU exports all around the world, Giorgio Aliberti, Ambassador of the EU Delegation to Vietnam, claimed that the EU has yet to limit goods from Vietnam. The reduction of orders or cancellations have come from specific companies that have been hit hardest by the global epidemic. Ta Hoang Linh, head of the Ministry of Industry and Trades (MoIT) Department of European-American Market said that this EU disease control regulation may not affect the import and export of goods between Vietnam, as it only applies to individual travellers. Basic cargo transportation and trading activities are not restricted. However, under some economic aspects, these epidemic control measures will in fact affect the speed of goods movement in export, transportation, customs clearance, and storage, causing disruptions or delays in trade and service flows. Linh predicted that trade activities between the EU and partners including Vietnam will also be somewhat limited as the main export countries of Vietnam in the European market, such as the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and France, all have implemented strong solutions to control and close their borders. Thus, the demand for non-essential goods such as textiles, footwear, furniture, and phones, which are Vietnams key export products to the EU market, will likely decline. Meanwhile, purchasing power for agricultural products and food can still be maintained according to the MoIT. Nicolas Audier, chair of European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) admitted that enterprises around the world are facing unprecedented challenges, and those in Vietnam are no different. Currently, the EU is the second largest export market for Vietnam. In 2019, the volume of goods exported by sea reached 20.5 billion ($22 billion), by air 14.5 billion ($15.5 billion), by railway 671 million ($720.5 billion), while imports by sea, air, and rail respectively reached 5.9 billion ($6.3 billion), 3.55 billion ($3.8) and 9 million ($9.6), according to the MoIT. In the first three months of this year, trade between Vietnam and European countries witnessed a reduction due to prolonged holidays on both sides, combined with businesses in a number of areas waiting for the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) to come into effect in the summer to release goods and enjoy preferential tariffs. The MoIT forecast that Vietnamese exports to the EU in the next two quarters of this year may face a decrease by 6-8 per cent if the epidemic continues until June. Pham Van Viet, deputy chairman of Ho Chi Minh Textile and Garment Embroidery Association, told VIR that the associations members are stuck as European importers announced a 30-day suspension of all imports. The EU is a major market for Vietnamese textiles and garments. In 2019, the EU imported $4.4 billion worth of this type of goods from Vietnam, an increase of 2.2 per cent on-year. In Viets view, if the EU could control the outbreak within two months like China did, it would take more than a quarter to bring production and export activities back to normal. In addition, goods imported to European countries by air may be significantly affected by delays and cancellations. In addition, intra-regional transportation is also more or less affected by a number of countries tightening border controls. Along with the EU, the US and Australia are also cutting their commercial flights. All of these are the main export markets of ours, Tung of Vina T&T added. With shipments by sea, fortunately, the company still maintains relatively normal operations to the preservation technology we use. However, even here our exports will be reduced by about 20 per cent over the same period last year. EVFTA raises hopes Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh called the EVFTA a significant milestone and said that the two-way trade and investment flow from the EU to Vietnam is forecast to rise robustly, making active contributions to Vietnams economic growth, facilitating exports, pushing its markets diversification, procuring higher added values through newly established supply chains, and creating more jobs. However Audier from EuroCham said that regarding the EVFTA, it is important to remember that while the European Parliament voted last month in favour of the agreement, it has not yet entered into force. The next and final step before it can be implemented will be a vote in Vietnams National Assembly. So, while we are all going through a difficult period right now, the EVFTA is a long-term, once-in-a-generation change in EU-Vietnam relations, he said. I am confident that, whatever the challenges we face now, in the long-term the EVFTA will usher in a new wave of trade and investment between the EU and Vietnam. Economic growth and exports for 2020 will remain tough during the pandemic. In this context, trade insiders said that the EVFTA will be a lever to push economic growth in general and export in particular. But trade insiders also warned that the situation could be different if the epidemic is prolonged as some export sectors, such as textiles and footwear, that are expected to benefit the most from the EVFTA, may face difficulties due to disrupted supply chains. The shoe and textile industry is self-reliant with only about 60 per cent of the raw materials they need. Vietnams Ministry of Planning and Investment predicted previously that the EVFTA would help Vietnams export value to the EU rise by about 42.7 per cent in 2025, and increase to 44.4 per cent by 2030. Simultaneously, the import value from the EU to the Southeast Asian market will also pick up speed, growing by about 33 per cent in 2025 and 37 per cent by 2030. On a macro level, the EVFTA would contribute to an average 2.8 per cent to Vietnams GDP growth during 2019-2023, increasing to 4.9 per cent during 2024-2028, and 7.35 per cent during 2029-2033. Facing the complicated situation of the COVID-19 epidemic, the MoIT required its trade offices to update and develop a specific scenario while many large export markets of Vietnamese goods are applying border closures. Audier also said that EuroCham supports the governments swift and effective measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and continues to advise its members to follow official advice and take appropriate precautions to protect their companies and workers. The international travel bans introduced this week in Vietnam, Europe, and elsewhere, are hopefully a short-term measure. We also hope that the virus can be brought under control as soon as possible. While it could have an impact on foreign companies and investment here, all of us doing business in Vietnam need to put the health and wellbeing of the public first, Audier explained. In Europe, many countries have adopted a stimulus package to help sustain the economy which will benefit businesses of all kinds and in all sectors and industries, including special packages for small- and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs. It is important that a similar package will be offered in Vietnam in the short term. This could take the form of tax relief or social charges. Meanwhile, Tung from Vina T&T added, We are still updating data and capturing trade signals with the EU market in order to know how to deal with them most effectively in time. VIR Thu Van EVFTA poses challenges to Vietnamese agricultural products Since the EVTFA was approved, experts have been analysing the opportunities for Vietnam to penetrate deeper into the high-value foreign markets. William T. Salmeron, the chief of Emergency Medical Services for the city, told his colleagues that workers should take routine exposure control precautions as they would in dealing with any respiratory illness. Those included getting the travel history of anyone with symptoms, giving patients surgical masks, and moving up to gloves, gown, protective eyewear and an N95 mask if travel history risk factors warrant. At this time the potential risk of infection in the US is LOW, he wrote. Collin M. Arnold, director of the citys homeland security office, sent an email to Dr. Avegno and other city officials on Jan. 27, suggesting they should probably get together and discuss public safety concerns during Mardi Gras and on the parade route. The New Orleans Police Department, he said, had been asking about personal protective equipment and general concerns (they shake a lot of hands and come in contact with a lot of people on the route every day). He suggested putting together a guide sheet for all responders that would offer them common sense mitigation tasks. That same day, Tyrell Morris, the executive director of the citys 911 service, told city officials about a questionnaire and worksheet that the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch was suggesting they use for all suspected coronavirus patients. Dr. Emily Nichols, the medical director for the citys emergency medical services, suggested they add a question asking suspected carriers whether they had been within six feet of another person thought to be infected with the virus. CHESTER Businesses across the country are donating masks, gloves and food to support first responders and medical professionals on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, but one Chester business is brightening these workers days with tea instead. Whole Harmony, at 1 Main St., is a health and wellness brand specializing in plant medicine. Co-owner Stacey Wood began delivering wellness bags with tea and elderberry syrup or another plant medicine in late March to medical workers she knew personally. Since then, she has sent out more than 1,000 packages to workers locally as well as in states as far away as California and Colorado. Our friends and customers got back to us saying, Thank you, that was so wonderful that you did that. That was so kind, Wood said. The kindness right now is really the medicine. Thats when Wood realized that she could spread kindness beyond friends, family and customers with products she had available to her. Whole Harmony, originally located on Saybrook Road / Route 154 in Haddam, typically sells its products on the weekends at farmers markets, but right now, herbal teas and syrups are just sitting on shelves. Products we were going to sell, we just put into a wellness bag, Wood said. That is more important than a sale right now. Employee Olivia Whitehead has been hard at work filling wellness packs and making sure each one is perfect. It can be really hard watching whats going on around us and not being able to do anything about it but stay home, Whitehead said. It feels really good being able to help in some sort of way, even if its just putting a smile on someones face. Wood posted about the wellness packages on Instagram and Facebook along with her contact information so that nursing managers could order some for their staff as a token of appreciation for their relentless work. Within 24 hours, Wood said she received 500 requests in 10 different states. Recipients have included Massachusetts General Hospital, UConn Health, Yale New Haven, UCLA Hospital, Middlesex Hospital and a fire department in Manhattan, N.Y. I just kept getting all of these emails and the biggest thing is we are helping the people who are on the front lines by this act of kindness, Wood said. I would say 95 percent of the emails we are getting are from family members and friends of people who are on the front lines, and their stories are frightening and so emotional. They are caregivers through and through. Now, Wood has set up a request form on the Whole Harmony website for medical professionals to submit an order of wellness bags, which are free. The kits include an immune builder tea and either a chai or a chocolate chai tea. Some also include a tranquility tea. I think it is just as important to focus on stress right now as it is immunity, Wood said. Employee Sarah Bugbee noted the products she and Whitehead are including in each carefully packaged bag were chosen with medical professionals wellness in mind. But, she said, the act of giving means just as much as the product inside. In each bag, we have tried to put a tea that will replenish and one that will help them to relax, Bugbee said. On top of the specific health benefits, receiving these bags lets health care workers know people are thinking about them and that the hard work they are putting in isnt going unnoticed. It also gives them something to look forward to at the end of the day. For information, visit wholeharmony.com or Whole Harmony 4 U on Facebook. According to a post on the towns website Friday, there had been been 13 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Chester, and two of those individuals had died in the two days prior. According to the post, there were 45 confirmed cases within the local health district. The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that evacuation of Indian students and expatriates stuck abroad amid the lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease could pose a risk to Indias domestic population. Echoing the Centres concerns, the bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and justices LN Rao and MM Shantanagouder said, Stay where you are. The Centre made the submission in response to a batch of petitions seeking return of Indian students stranded in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the U.K alone, there are close to 4 lakh Indian expatriates including 50,000 students. Several petitions were filed in the apex court seeking the courts intervention for evacuation of Indian migrants stranded in the Middle East, Indian fishermen in Iran and students from the US and the UK. The petitioners criticized the travel ban on return of citizens at a time when other countries were making arrangements to get evacuate their citizens from India. The Centre, in its status report said that the country had evacuated citizens from China, Iran, Japan and Italy when the condition in India was not as grim. However, given the present situation of the corona virus outbreak in India and the available limited resources, it is not feasible to selectively evacuate Indian citizens from abroad when a large number of them from a number of countries want to return back due to various reasons, the report by the Centre said. The Centres status report said that passengers from these countries are at higher risk of infection. Travel back of such passengers to different regions of India poses a grave risk to the country of a population of over 1.3 billion. The bench also noted the logistical constraints in arranging quarantine facilities for all returnees. It was for this reason, the Centre proposed to the Court, The approach of the Government has, therefore, been to advise the Indian nationals to stay put where they are in line with Governments approach to contain the further spread of the virus within India and allowing health machinery to focus on domestic containment effectively. The government informed the court that the Indian High Commission in London is making all arrangements to ensure the well-being and safety of stranded Indian students. The Centres status report did not make specific averment about extension of visas of Indian students stuck in the US. The court will hear a petition for these Indian students stranded in the US, filed by senior advocate Vibha Dutta Makhija next Monday. The court will also hear a petition seeking the return of some 860 Indian fishermen stranded on the shores of Bandar-e-Moqam and Lavan Island in Hormozgan province of Iran. Food, Wine, & Dining By Ls Cohen Published: April 13 2020 RGNY is giving people unique ways to bring the wine-making and tasting experience to their homes. Its no secret that wine has been the salve for many a shut-ins cabin fever these days. Deemed an essential service, liquor stores have been reporting a brisk business - offering free delivery and curbside pickup. Wineries, it seems, are also getting in on the act. One of the newest wineries on the North Fork of Long Island is RGNY, rebranded last year from Martha Clara Vineyard, the Entenmann's family-owned label when it was purchased by the Rivero-Gonzalez family who also run a vineyard in Mexico. The family came to Long Island to make wine specifically for its climate, terrain, and the marketplace (close to New York City). Were the new kid on the north fork at the moment., a representative of the vineyard told LongIsland.com recently. The family has a long history of making wine and has a duo of women at the head of their efforts here on the North Fork. At the helm is CEO Maria Rivero-Gonzalez (her father started their Mexican vineyard as a hobby to get into winemaking more than 20 years ago). Rivero-Gonzalez, who normally splits her time between New York City, Long Island, and Mexico, fell in love with the North Fork and saw potential to expand the brand by staking ground in this region. Winemaker Lilia Perez, who is a Mexican-American was born in California, trained in her vino-crafting skills in Bordeaux. RGNY has11 varieties that they say are minimal intervention, meaning they let the cool climate and terrain dictate the flavor. The North Fork, they say, offers a nice juxtaposition to their Mexican vineyard in both the climate and terrain. They sell wine under two labels. One is the Scielo line which they describe as expressive, straightforward, and easy to drink. The other is their RGNY label, which is a little more refined. They suggest leaving this wine in the glass a little while to fully appreciate it. Less than a year old, the vineyard saw the severity of the Coronavirus crisis as the wave crested in the area and began offering free delivery to North Fork right away. As things worsened they had to close their tasting room and began curbside pick up. Curbside pickup at RGNY. Photo: RGNY. The drive-through wine stand worked great for their location on Sound Avenue in Riverhead which already had a good flow of traffic. Its been an attraction for people, said the RGNY representative. People dont have to get out of their car. While its very nice to have a good bottle of wine handy as you shelter-in-place the company also focused on how they could bring the experience of the vineyard into peoples homes. Thats when they developed their quarantine survival kits. The vineyard offers three kits to order off their website and is offering free shipping in New York. At-home blending kit. Photo: RGNY. An at-home blending session kit is based on a fun event they host quarterly where people can blend their own own red wine. The kit comes with directions, tips on how to taste like a pro, a 100ML beaker for mixing, four 500ML carafes of wine for blending and tasting, two RGNY glasses, place mats, a book, a corkscrew and a bottle of Scielo Tinto. That goes for $80. At-home tasting kit. Photo: RGNY. Their at-home tasting kit consists of two bottles of wine from their Scielo label, two glasses, a book, tasting notes, two pens, and a video featuring winemaker Perez to hello guide you through your tasting session. All for $60. Photo: RGNY. They also have an adult coloring book and pencil set for $10 featuring illustrations by Merijn Hos, an illustrator from the Netherlands. The cook features illustrations of the vineyard, winemaker, and bottles that you can color (preferably while sipping on a nice glass of RGNY wine.) Bringing the vineyard to their homes in a fun way is just one way RGNY thinks it can help people cope with being cooped up.. In uncertain times, the best thing you can do is have a nice glass of wine. Thomas Woewiyu leaves the federal courthouse in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 3, 2018, after his conviction. Read more A Delaware County man who once served as a top lieutenant to Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, and whose 2018 trial for U.S. immigration violations drew headlines across the globe, died Sunday from complications of the coronavirus. Jucontee Thomas Woewiyu, 74, of Collingdale, had spent nearly two weeks in Bryn Mawr Hospital suffering from the disease. He leaves behind a complicated legacy as one of the leading voices of the Liberian diaspora in the United States and a champion for democracy in his home country, but also as one of the very few people held accountable for the perversion of that vision that led to documented atrocities during the West African nations first civil war. Over his career, Woewiyu rubbed elbows with State Department officials and figures like former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and at times held significant positions in the Liberian government. And though a federal jury in Philadelphia convicted him in 2018 of lying to U.S. immigration officials about his role in war crimes committed by Taylors National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) including acts of torture, ethnically targeted killings, and the conscription of child soldiers Woewiyu died awaiting sentencing for his crimes. READ MORE: For 5 U.S. nuns murdered in Liberia, Delco mans conviction brings a measure of justice For victims of the conflict, both in Philadelphias sizable Liberian expat community and in Monrovia, the nations capital, his conviction took on totemic stature, given their countrys failure to hold anyone responsible for the sins of a war that left more than 200,000 civilians dead. But news of his death Sunday left many of them feeling bereft. Political inaction had robbed them of justice for decades, said Hassan Bility, director of the Global Justice and Research Project. Now, the coronavirus has robbed them of closure. We are sorry for his family, Bility said Monday from Monrovia. But I think justice needed to serve its full course. Unfortunately, [his sentencing] was never to be. In an email notifying some of the witnesses who testified against him of his death, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nelson S.T. Thayer said that Woewiyu was just as responsible for wiping out an entire generation of Liberias youth as any pandemic. The deadly virus he personally spread, Thayer wrote, was one of ethnic and tribal hatred that cost the lives of thousands and thousands of Liberians. Family members did not respond to requests for comment. But in a video prepared last year for his sentencing, they described Woewiyu as a pillar of his community, lion of the Liberian cause, and a doting father and grandfather. My father [was] like a guru at putting people together, said his eldest daughter, Hawa Zoe Dahnsaw. No matter all the different activities that he had regarding his participation in his country, he never forgot about us. He always had a vision. READ MORE: Ex-child soldiers say Delco man turned them into killers His son, U.S. Navy Lt. Monconjay Thomas Woewiyu, 34, credited his father as a mentor. It is because of him that I understand what it is to be a man, he said. His dedication to the community inspired me to join the armed forces. Born in 1946 as Thomas Jucontee Smith, the seventh of 13 children, Woewiyu was delivered on a bed of cut banana leaves in Liberias bush. I was born on banana leaves, he said in the video prepared last year. But Ive always sworn to myself that my kids would be born on a silk blanket. Ive always tried to do something to be worth the name of my family, my village, my country. He came to America in 1969 and spent much of the next decade working odd jobs in New York City while earning an associates degree from Brooklyn College of CUNY, and then a bachelors from Rutgers University at night. But the execution of Liberias president, William V.S. Tolbert, during a military coup in 1980 spurred Woewiyu, like many Liberians living in the U.S., into political action. Along with Sirleaf and others, he lobbied the Reagan and Bush administrations to help oust the man who had seized control of the government by force, Samuel Doe. And when Doe began ethnic purges within Liberia, Woewiyu joined the NPFL, a group that advocated violence to overthrow him if necessary. NPFL forces launched an invasion on Christmas Eve 1989 under Taylors command that seized 90% of the country within months. Doe was assassinated soon after. But new factions arose in the aftermath, fueling a brutal ethnic conflict that would consume the nation for seven years. Woewiyu emerged from that fray as Taylors spokesperson and chief negotiator in Africa and the U.S. An erudite family man, he quickly gained the confidence of the State Department and the international press. He was very articulate not as flamboyant as Charles Taylor, but in a bit of the same style, said Elizabeth Blunt, a former BBC West Africa correspondent, who testified at his trial. If you were trying to put someone forward that gives the impression that yours is a serious political movement, he was a good PR man. U.S. prosecutors described Woewiyus acceptable public face as a facade meant to hide Taylors worst excesses from the world. While Woewiyu spoke of a quick, democratic resolution to the conflict on nightly BBC broadcasts, the NPFL was routinely executing civilians, looting villages, and conscripting child soldiers by the dozens. READ MORE: How a Delco man sought to use stolen U.S. military weapons to wage war in Liberia Woewiyu pursued illegal arms deals in the U.S. and the Netherlands to equip Taylors army. And on trips to Liberia, witnesses testified at his trial, his convoys were escorted by drugged-out youths who had been kidnapped, pressed into service, and trained as killers. In later life, Woewiyu denied playing a significant role in Taylors fighting force, describing himself more as a diplomat. He maintained that he deplored the NPFLs dependence on child soldiers and never used them as escorts. Still, in 2010, the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that he face political sanctions for his actions during the war. By the time he was indicted in the U.S. in 2014, his life bore little resemblance to the stature he once maintained. He had become a grandfather many times over and was deeply involved in his church and politics in his home country. When FBI agents arrested him at Newark Liberty International Airport, he had just returned from Liberia to launch a bid for that countrys Senate. Mark Wilson, who represented Woewiyu at his trial, described his death Sunday as a tragedy for his family. He became more than a client in a lot of ways, Wilson said. I considered it a great honor to have met him. Amid coronavirus outbreak, on the occasion of Easter Sunday, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro was illuminated with the images of medical workers to honor the frontlines in the fight against coronavirus. During the light work, Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Dom Orani Tempesta, also performed the Easter mass. Rio de Janeiro's statue of Christ the Redeemer is lit up on Easter Sunday with images of medical workers in honour of all those fighting the COVID-19 pandemic around the world Carl De Souza pic.twitter.com/ENb9IsKVvX AFP news agency (@AFP) April 13, 2020 READ | Brazil Teens Death Raises Virus Alert For Indigenous Groups Earlier on March 18, in a show of solidarity, Christ the Redeemer was illuminated with images of continents and countries flags grappling with the pandemic. According to international media reports, in a bid to contain the spread of the virus, Brazils Chico Mendes Institute also ordered the closure of all the national parks and monuments it oversees, including the 125-foot tall statue. Rio's Christ the Redeemer pic.twitter.com/ZCLy8S5hAV Tad Long (@TadLong) March 19, 2020 READ | Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 1,000 In Brazil Coronavirus outbreak Brazil, the hardest-hit Latin American country in the coronavirus pandemic, passed the mark of 1,200 deaths. The latest figures gave a toll of 22,169 confirmed COVID-19 cases. With a worldwide, the total confirmed cases stand at over 18,44,000 with the death toll of more than 1,13,000, Brazil's figure is still relatively small compared to the number of deaths in countries such as Italy (more than 19,000), the United States (nearly 22,000) and Spain (nearly 17,000). READ | Brazil Stocks Plunge, Trading Halted In Virus Havoc READ | Rio De Janeiros Christ The Redeemer Statue Lights Up With Flags Of COVID-19-hit Countries A 21-year-old man was hospitalized after he was shot during a shooting on the city's East Side, according to the San Antonio Police Department. Officers responded to a shooting just after 9 p.m. Sunday in the 2900 block of Rigsby Avenue, not far from Comanche Park and Loop 410. When they arrived, police said they found 15 casings from two different weapons at the scene but no victim. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13 By Ilkin Seyfaddini Trend: Uzbekistan has sent humanitarian aid to Belarus to help fight the coronavirus (COVID-19), Trend reports with reference to Embassy of Uzbekistan in Belarus. "The Uzbek side donated disposable overalls, respirators, protective goggles, gloves and masks - a total of 513,000 protective items. Also 500,000 meters of gauze, 50 000 packages of antiseptics and 10 000 liters of medical alcohol were delivered by air," reads the report. According to the latest data, the number of people affected by coronavirus in Belarus is 2,226, while most of them suffer from light and medium forms of the disease. A total of 2031 patients with confirmed coronavirus infection are on hospital treatment, 52 people need the support of an artificial lung ventilation device, 23 patients died. Earlier Uzbekistan provided humanitarian aid to China, Iran, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. The total number of coronavirus infected people in Uzbekistan is 865. To date, 66 people in the country have fully recovered from the coronavirus infection. The first case of coronavirus infection in Uzbekistan was detected on March 15 in the laboratory of the Research Institute of Virology; it was an Uzbek woman who returned from France. The Ministry of Health later announced that her son, daughter, husband and grandson also tested coronavirus-positive. The outbreak of the coronavirus began in the Chinese city of Wuhan (an international transport hub), at a fish market in late December 2019. The number of people killed by the disease has surpassed 114,000. Over 1.8 million people have been confirmed as infected. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. --- Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini Read what is in the news today: Politics Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States Ha Kim Ngoc joined a recent online discussion between Vietnamese representative offices in the host country and the association of Vietnamese students there, focusing on measures to support Vietnamese citizens and students amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Society Vietnams Ministry of Health confirmed two new COVID-19 patients (COVID-19) on Monday morning, both linked to Ha Loi Village in Me Linh District, Hanoi, which has emerged as a new epicenter in the capital city with ten cases so far. The village of over 11,000 people has been fenced off since Tuesday last week. The steering committee for COVID-19 prevention and control in the central province of Quang Nam is searching for Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela, a 22-year-old Colombian national, who sneaked out of a COVID-19 quarantine facility in Hoi An City at around 7:00 pm on Saturday. He has overstayed his temporary residency since February 22. National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines flew 12 Vietnamese citizens stranded in Japan back home on Sunday, according to a representative of the airline. Business Vietnamese low-cost carrier VietJet Air on Sunday launched its Power Pass accounts allowing passengers to fly unlimited on its 45 domestic routes during the validity of their passes, which can be purchased for VND8.99 million (US$380) and VND16.99 million ($720) for flights scheduled for now until the end of September 30, 2020 and March 31, 2021, respectively. The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association has announced that its members March sales reached 19,154 units, eight percent higher than the figure recorded in February. The Vietnam Steel Associations member enterprises suffered a strong reduction in production and business in the first quarter of this year, recording a plunge of 15 percent in steel output to 5.4 million metric tons and 20 percent in consumption to 4.4 million metric tons year-on-year. Meanwhile, steel exports reached 300,000 metric tons, down 38 percent from the same period last year. Lifestyle A first-ever online book fair will be held from April 19 to May 20 in celebration of the seventh Vietnam Book Day, which falls on April 21 each year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will be open to readers via Book365.vn, featuring online booths by accredited publishing houses and distribution companies. Education The Hack Covy hackathon, a programming contest launched by the Hanoi Youth Union in coordination with the United Nations Development Program in Vietnam and AngelHack Vietnam, is offering a $2,000 grant for innovative ideas in education, healthcare, information, and economics to tackle the COVID-19 epidemic. World News The novel coronavirus has infected over 1.85 million people and killed more than 114,200 others around the world, according to statistics. More than 423,400 patients have recovered worldwide. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! UK PM Boris Johnson Has Now Tested Negative for COVID-19 Boris Johnsons spokesman says the British prime minister is continuing his recovery from COVID-19 and, on the advice of his doctors, is not immediately returning to work. Johnson was discharged from St. Thomas Hospital in London on Sunday and then went to Chequers, the prime ministers country residence, around 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the capital. James Slack confirmed that Johnson has now tested negative for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus and denied that the government had downplayed the seriousness of Johnsons condition. Johnson was admitted to St. Thomas on April 5 after his condition worsened and he was transferred the following day to its intensive care unit, where he received oxygen but was not put onto a ventilator. He spent three nights there before moving back to a regular hospital ward. After leaving the hospital, Johnson expressed his gratitude to the staff of the National Health Service for saving his life when it could have gone either way. Slack said Johnson spoke over the weekend to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has been deputizing for the prime minister during his illness. Epoch Times staff contributed to this report. ST. LOUIS, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Centene (NYSE: CNC) today announced a series of investments to address the social determinants of health for vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 crisis. These actions build on the company's long-standing commitment to research and investment in areas related to the social determinants of health, which are the non-medical barriers to achieving quality health outcomes. "To ensure our most vulnerable communities are cared for through the COVID-19 crisis, we need to consider not only how we treat patients, but how we improve the conditions that contribute to health outcomes," said Michael F. Neidorff, Chairman, President and CEO of Centene. "Our communities need access to basic resources during this time of need. We will continue to be their advocate during this pandemic and through the recovery." Hunger and Food Security In partnership with Feeding America's network of food banks, Centene announced today that it will be donating 1 million meals* a month for 12 months to feed our neighbors in communities all over the country. The demand on food banks has significantly increased during this crisis, and it is estimated that these organizations will need an additional $1.4 billion of funding over the next six months to provide food assistance to people facing hunger. "Centene was an advocate of the Feeding America network before the COVID-19 crisis began, utilizing their expertise to help our neighbors facing hunger," said Gita Rampersad JD, MHA, Vice President, Healthcare Partnerships & Nutrition at Feeding America. "We look forward to working with them in the weeks and months to come as we all continue to fight hunger during this critical time." As part of this announcement, Centene is also providing additional resources to the Feeding America network including: Providing SNAP application assistance to those in need Identifying employees interested in opportunities to volunteer at local food banks Additional localized donations to food banks and restaurant crisis funds in each Centene market Connectivity In collaboration with FirstNet, built with AT&T the only nationwide, high-speed broadband communications platform dedicated to and purpose-built for America's first responders and the extended public safety community Centene is expediting the rollout of FirstNet that will streamline access to affordable, high-speed wireless broadband services for primary care providers in rural and underserved communities. Using all AT&T LTE bands, FirstNet already covers over 99% of the U.S. population today, but to better serve communities of all sizes, new purpose-built FirstNet cell sites are being built across the country to expand rural and remote coverage. The collaboration will kick off with pilots in four states: Arkansas, Kansas, Georgia and Mississippi. As a result of the financial hardship COVID-19 has had on these providers, Centene will be extending grants to assist with the upfront investment costs of new devices and equipment. Starting this month, the pilots aim to support Federally Qualified Healthcare Centers and independent practices serving over half a million patients and will expand into additional states over the next few months. "FirstNet helps strengthen first responders' incident response, connecting them to the critical information they need every day and in every emergency. During this pandemic, healthcare personnel across the nation are on the frontlines, and with FirstNet, enabling new ways to provide healthcare, including telehealth," said Jason Porter, senior vice president, FirstNet Program at AT&T. "Centene's investment will enable rural practices to introduce cutting-edge telehealth techniques that will create efficiencies and help those who save lives." Centene is also working to improve internet access at the consumer level and has committed to purchasing tablets for thousands of community members who lack access to the internet during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company will announce specific details of this initiative as they become available. Healthcare and Educational Supplies To ensure community members have access to crucial supplies during this time of need, Centene also announced today that it will be purchasing 50,000 gift cards for use on essential items. The cards will be delivered to local providers and other community resources for distribution to individuals in need. The gift cards, which will have $35 of value each, can be used to purchase essential healthcare and educational items including diapers, over-the counter medicines, cleaning supplies, and books. This is the first phase of a broader effort to supply essential items across Centene markets. As part of the crisis recovery process, Centene is committed to providing these items to its community partners for distribution to families in need. *$1 helps to provide at least ten meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local member food banks. About Centene Corporation Centene Corporation, a Fortune 100 company, is a leading multi-national healthcare enterprise that is committed to helping people live healthier lives. The Company takes a local approach with local brands and local teams - to provide fully integrated, high-quality, and cost-effective services to government-sponsored and commercial healthcare programs, focusing on under-insured and uninsured individuals. Centene offers affordable and high-quality products to nearly 1 in 15 individuals across the nation, including Medicaid and Medicare members (including Medicare Prescription Drug Plans) as well as individuals and families served by the Health Insurance Marketplace, the TRICARE program, and individuals in correctional facilities. The Company also serves several international markets, and contracts with other healthcare and commercial organizations to provide a variety of specialty services focused on treating the whole person. Centene focuses on long-term growth and the development of its people, systems and capabilities so that it can better serve its members, providers, local communities, and government partners. Centene uses its investor relations website to publish important information about the company, including information that may be deemed material to investors. Financial and other information about Centene is routinely posted and is accessible on Centene's investor relations website, http://www.centene.com/investors. About Feeding America Feeding America is the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the United States. Through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, we provide meals to more than 40 million people each year. Feeding America also supports programs that prevent food waste and improve food security among the people we serve; educates the public about the problem of hunger; and advocates for legislation that protects people from going hungry. Individuals, charities, businesses and government all have a role in ending hunger. Donate. Volunteer. Advocate. Educate. Together we can solve hunger. Visit www.feedingamerica.org, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Forward-Looking Statements All statements, other than statements of current or historical fact, contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, forward-looking statements often use words such as "believe," "anticipate," "plan," "expect," "estimate," "intend," "seek," "target," "goal," "may," "will," "would," "could," "should," "can," "continue" and other similar words or expressions (and the negative thereof). Centene (the Company, our, or we) intends such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe-harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and we are including this statement for purposes of complying with these safe-harbor provisions. In particular, these statements include, without limitation, statements about our future operating or financial performance, market opportunity, growth strategy, competition, expected activities in completed and future acquisitions, including statements about the impact of our recently completed acquisition (the WellCare Acquisition) of WellCare Health Plans, Inc. (WellCare), other recent and future acquisitions, investments and the adequacy of our available cash resources. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on numerous assumptions and assessments made by us in light of our experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions, business strategies, operating environments, future developments and other factors we believe appropriate. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are subject to change because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future, including economic, regulatory, competitive and other factors that may cause our or our industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based on information available to us on the date hereof. Except as may be otherwise required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date hereof. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, as actual results may differ materially from projections, estimates, or other forward-looking statements due to a variety of important factors, variables and events including but not limited to: uncertainty as to our expected financial performance following completion of the WellCare Acquisition; the possibility that the expected synergies and value creation from the WellCare Acquisition will not be realized, or will not be realized within the expected time period; the risk that unexpected costs will be incurred in connection with the integration of the WellCare Acquisition or that the integration of WellCare will be more difficult or time consuming than expected; unexpected costs, charges or expenses resulting from the WellCare Acquisition; the inability to retain key personnel; disruption from the completion of the WellCare Acquisition, including potential adverse reactions or changes to business relationships with customers, employees, suppliers or regulators, making it more difficult to maintain business and operational relationships; the risk that, following the WellCare Acquisition, we may not be able to effectively manage our expanded operations; our ability to accurately predict and effectively manage health benefits and other operating expenses and reserves; competition; membership and revenue declines or unexpected trends; changes in healthcare practices, new technologies, and advances in medicine; increased healthcare costs; changes in economic, political or market conditions; changes in federal or state laws or regulations, including changes with respect to income tax reform or government healthcare programs as well as changes with respect to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, collectively referred to as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and any regulations enacted thereunder that may result from changing political conditions or judicial actions, including the ultimate outcome in "Texas v. United States of America" regarding the constitutionality of the ACA; rate cuts or other payment reductions or delays by governmental payors and other risks and uncertainties affecting our government businesses; our ability to adequately price products on the Health Insurance Marketplaces and other commercial and Medicare products; tax matters; disasters or major epidemics; the outcome of legal and regulatory proceedings; changes in expected contract start dates; provider, state, federal and other contract changes and timing of regulatory approval of contracts; the expiration, suspension, or termination of our contracts with federal or state governments (including but not limited to Medicaid, Medicare, TRICARE or other customers); the difficulty of predicting the timing or outcome of pending or future litigation or government investigations; challenges to our contract awards; cyber-attacks or other privacy or data security incidents; the possibility that the expected synergies and value creation from acquired businesses, including, without limitation, the WellCare Acquisition, will not be realized, or will not be realized within the expected time period; the exertion of management's time and our resources, and other expenses incurred and business changes required in connection with complying with the undertakings in connection with any regulatory, governmental or third party consents or approvals for acquisitions; disruption caused by significant completed and pending acquisitions, including, among others, the WellCare Acquisition, making it more difficult to maintain business and operational relationships; the risk that unexpected costs will be incurred in connection with the completion and/or integration of acquisition transactions; changes in expected closing dates, estimated purchase price and accretion for acquisitions; the risk that acquired businesses, including WellCare, will not be integrated successfully; the risk that we may not be able to effectively manage our operations as they have expanded as a result of the WellCare Acquisition; restrictions and limitations in connection with our indebtedness; our ability to maintain or achieve improvement in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Star ratings and maintain or achieve improvement in other quality scores in each case that can impact revenue and future growth; availability of debt and equity financing, on terms that are favorable to us; inflation; foreign currency fluctuations; and risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports that Centene has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This list of important factors is not intended to be exhaustive. We discuss certain of these matters more fully, as well as certain other factors that may affect our business operations, financial condition and results of operations, in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K. Due to these important factors and risks, we cannot give assurances with respect to our future performance, including without limitation our ability to maintain adequate premium levels or our ability to control our future medical and selling, general and administrative costs. SOURCE Centene Corporation Related Links http://www.centene.com Amidst the torrent of pandemic statistics, one data point is conspicuous by its absence: the number of home care workers who have tested positive for COVID-19. Public Health Ontario keeps track of infected health care workers in hospitals and long-term care (LTC) homes. The data shows theyre much more likely to become infected. What no one knows is how many home-care workers who visit clients in their houses, apartments or retirement residences have also been infected. Given that home care workers everyone from nurses to personal support workers (PSWs) deal mainly with older people and travel between multiple sites, this information seems like a critical tool for tracking the spread of the disease. In recent days, a growing number of family members have called for more funding and warned of the risks of home care workers who were exposed in one location and then attended to clients in another. Home care remains the poor cousin of the health sector. Ontarios local health integration networks (LHINs) hire private or non-profit agencies to deliver home care, which accounts for five per cent of health spending ($2.5 billion as of 2015). But home care isnt institution-based. There are no glamorous capital campaigns and the vast majority of Ontarios 35,000 home-care workers are women, many low-paid newcomers or racialized minorities. Yet as the population ages and demand grows, the health system has become increasingly dependent on agencies whose contract employees are dispatched to perform tasks ranging from wound-care to giving showers to infirm seniors. About 650,000 Ontarians receive home care each year. Its intimate work performed in all sorts of settings, not all of which are hygienic or supervised. But in a pandemic featuring a virus that has proven especially lethal to older people, this dispersed mode of delivering care should raise tough questions when policy-makers take stock in post-COVID-19 period. The first is whether the health systems reliance on home care creates an elevated risk of transmission, between home-care workers and their clients, as well as between seniors homes served by travelling teams of home-care staff. Unless provincial authorities track the incidence of COVID-19 among home care workers and their clients, policy-makers wont know. What is known is that the incidence of health-care-associated infection (HCAI) e.g., hospital-base superbugs is growing and claims lives. Hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics and home care services are meant to help people get better, noted a 2013 study by Canadas chief public health officer. Yet it is estimated that more than 200,000 Canadians acquire a health-care-associated infection (HCAI) each year and that 8,000 of them die as a result. During this crisis, seniors homes began screening staff and visiting home-care workers before they entered the premises. Yet a significant number of infected individuals will be asymptomatic, meaning such measures arent sufficient. Then theres home-care worker safety. Ontarios ministry of health has set out guidelines for how home-care workers should protect themselves and Home Care Ontario (HCO), the industry association, says has developed a protocol for home care workers and patients, to be used before and after visits. If any current patient receiving routine or complex home care, does report symptoms that are also common to COVID-19, says HCO CEO Sue VanderBent, the staff member will wear full PPE when attending the call and undertake necessary safety protocols following that visit to protect their other patients. Still, these measures only go so far. Citing figures compiled by SEIU Healthcare, The Globe and Mail has reported that over 400 Ontario PSWs were in isolation or had come down the disease. Carol Annett, CEO of VHA Home HealthCare, an agency that has seen two home-care workers test positive, says it is training PSWs and provides them with protective gear. But many patients have cancelled visits. In one case, a client sprayed the visiting home-care worker with Lysol. Theres been so much fear and anxiety. Annett wants better data on COVID-19 incidence among home-care workers. The stats may help officials determine whether Ontarios home care model represents an efficient way of delivering services, or a simmering source of risk. Correction - April 14, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled VHA Home HealthCare CEO Carol Annetts surname. ATHENS, Greece, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Diana Shipping Inc. (DSX), (the Company), a global shipping company specializing in the ownership of dry bulk vessels, today announced that, through a separate wholly-owned subsidiary, it has entered into a time charter contract with C Transport Maritime Ltd., Bermuda, for one of its Capesize dry bulk vessels, the m/v Houston, for a period until minimum July 1, 2021 up to maximum September 30, 2021. The gross charter rate is US$6,250 per day for the first thirty (30) days of the charter period and US$12,400 per day for the balance of the time charter, in each case minus a 5% commission paid to third parties. The charter commenced earlier today. The Houston is a 177,729 dwt Capesize dry bulk vessel built in 2009. This employment is anticipated to generate approximately US$5.25 million of gross revenue for the minimum scheduled period of the time charter. Diana Shipping Inc.s fleet currently consists of 41 dry bulk vessels (4 Newcastlemax, 13 Capesize, 5 Post-Panamax, 5 Kamsarmax and 14 Panamax). As of today, the combined carrying capacity of the Companys fleet is approximately 5.1 million dwt with a weighted average age of 9.57 years. A table describing the current Diana Shipping Inc. fleet can be found on the Companys website, www.dianashippinginc.com. Information contained on the Companys website does not constitute a part of this press release. About the Company Diana Shipping Inc. is a global provider of shipping transportation services through its ownership of dry bulk vessels. The Companys vessels are employed primarily on medium to long-term time charters and transport a range of dry bulk cargoes, including such commodities as iron ore, coal, grain and other materials along worldwide shipping routes. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts. Story continues The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words believe, anticipate, intends, estimate, forecast, project, plan, potential, may, should, expect, pending and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, Company managements examination of historical operating trends, data contained in the Companys records and other data available from third parties. Although the Company believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies that are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond the Companys control, the Company cannot assure you that it will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections. In addition to these important factors, other important factors that, in the Companys view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions, including fluctuations in charter rates and vessel values, changes in demand for dry bulk shipping capacity, changes in the Companys operating expenses, including bunker prices, drydocking and insurance costs, the market for the Companys vessels, availability of financing and refinancing, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, vessel breakdowns and instances of off-hires and other factors. Please see the Companys filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a more complete discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Corporate Contact: Ioannis Zafirakis Director, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Treasurer and Secretary Telephone: + 30-210-9470-100 Email: izafirakis@dianashippinginc.com Website: www.dianashippinginc.com Investor and Media Relations: Edward Nebb Comm-Counsellors, LLC Telephone: + 1-203-972-8350 Email: enebb@optonline.net Johannesburg: African ambassadors in China have written to the country's foreign minister over what they call discrimination against Africans as the country seeks to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus. Several African countries have separately also demanded that China address their concerns that Africans, in particular in the southern city of Guangzhou, are being mistreated and harassed. Men sit in front of a restaurant off Little North Road, part of an ethnically diverse quarter in Guangzhou known as Little Africa. Credit:Getty Images Having brought under control the original outbreak centred on the city of Wuhan, China is now concerned about imported cases and is stepping up scrutiny of foreigners coming into the country and tightening border controls. It has denied any discrimination. In recent days Africans in Guangzhou have reported being ejected from their apartments by their landlords, being tested for coronavirus several times without being given results and being shunned and discriminated against in public. Such complaints have been made in local media, and on social media. By Trend Azerbaijan is making a significant contribution to the international security with its prompt and adequate reaction to any challenge both on global and regional scale, member of Azerbaijani parliament Sevil Mikayilova told Trend. The MP pointed out that Azerbaijan plays an important role in ensuring regional security and has been recognized by the international community as a reliable partner. In this regard, the MP emphasized the recently held summit of the Turkic Council on the initiative of Azerbaijani President, Chairman of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking states Ilham Aliyev through videoconference. She noted that Turkic Council was the first international organization to hold a meeting at the level of heads of state dedicated to COVID-19. Given the great need for experience exchange, mutual support and solidarity among countries under these conditions, this videoconference is of special importance, she said. Mikayilova pointed out that the summit held under the chairmanship of Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev was remarkable for the constructive exchange of views on the measures taken by states to protect their citizens health, as well as to mitigate and eliminate the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic. The MP went on to add that heads of World Health Organizations (WHO) member states and the organizations director general praised the decisive steps taken by Azerbaijans president in such a difficult time. They noted that with its preventive measures against the spread of coronavirus, Azerbaijan sets an example to many countries. As for cooperation in the Turkic Council, Mikayilova noted that during the chairmanship in this organization, Azerbaijan has achieved more intensive cooperation and has strengthened solidarity among member states. The country has taken great steps to further strengthen the organizations international image, she added. Reliable transport infrastructure is very important for the economic development and trade turnover of the member states. Thanks to the timely initiatives of Azerbaijan, Turkic-speaking countries havent faced any problems in transportation even in the pandemic situation. As a transit and logistics hub between Turkey and Central Asia, Azerbaijan has taken necessary measures for transportation of additional volumes of cargo, the MP said. Mikayilova pointed out that despite the negative impact of the pandemic, the volume of cargo transportation transited by Turkic Council states through Azerbaijans territory has increased by 40,000 tons in the first three months of 2020, as compared to the same period in 2019. During this period, the total volume of cargo transportation stood at 180,000 tons. The MP believes that the fight against coronavirus became a test for states in confronting various threats. Demonstrating solidarity with the international community and maintaining its security, Azerbaijan once again proved the status of a reliable partner and authoritative international actor, Mikayilova concluded. Nepals Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has announced that the country cannot lift lockdown unless the pandemic situation normalizes in its neighbouring country India, according to reports. Olis decision was made clear to Chief Ministers of seven provinces as of April 10 in a LIVE video conference. The former has the porous Indo-Nepal borders sealed and non-essential movement banned to stem the COVID-19 disease outbreak. In an announcement to toughen the measures further, Oli told a news agency, We cannot lift the lockdown despite the fact that the number of cases has continued to rise in India. He further added saying, There is no point in becoming emotional about lifting the lockdown. Instead, we have to adopt stricter measures to control the spread of COVID-19." Reportedly, he directed the Chief Ministers to launch a COVID-19 campaign to spread awareness so that people felt the need to enact the stay-at-home protocol. He further stressed to enhance the co-operation between the provincial and the federal government to combat the global health crisis. Read: Coronavirus: Goa To Set Up Modern Sample Collection Kiosks Read: 31 More Coronavirus Cases Surface In UP; Total Count 483 12 cases of COVID-19 Several new containment guidelines were also recommended to the PM by the Chief Ministers. Among those who presided over the virtual conference were Sher Dhan Rai, Lal Babu Raut, Dormani Poudel, Prithivi Subba Gurung, Shanker Porkharel, Mahendra Shahi, and Trilochan Bhatta, as per the media reports. The meeting streamed for over four hours wherein the leaders hinted to extend the lockdown imposed around March 24 nationwide which was set to end in the midst of March. Nepal has reported 12 confirmed cases of the COVID-19, three new cases detected within the past 24 hours. So far, one person has succumbed to the infection. The cabinet meeting had earlier extended the home confinement measure until April 15 in view of the surge in the locally transmitted cases of Coronavirus, confirmed media reports. Read: Good News: Five Stories To Lighten Up The Mood Amid Coronavirus Pandemic Read: Queen Elizabeth Speaks Of 'light Overcoming Darkness' In Her First-ever Easter Broadcast HDFC share price rose in early trade today amid reports that People's Bank of China (PBOC) has raised its stake to 1.01% in the country's largest finance lender in March quarter. HDFC share price rose up to 3.62% to Rs 1,763 against previous close of Rs 1,701.95 on BSE. Share price of HDFC opened 1.64% higher at Rs 1,730. The large cap stock has lost 17.45% in last one year and fallen 31% since the beginning of this year HDFC Bank succession: RBI puts on hold key board appointments, says recruit new CEO first HDFC share has lost 19% in last one month but gained 11.56% in one week. After initial gains, HDFC counter saw some profit booking. The stock fell 3.18% to Rs 1,647.85 on BSE. It has entered red zone after three days of gain. Its market cap stood at Rs 2.91 lakh crore on BSE. Deposits in HDFC Bank rise 24% in March quarter, advances up 21% China's Central Bank held nearly 1.75 crore shares in HDFC in Q4, data from BSE show. PBOC held 0.8 percent in the company as of March 2019, HDFC's Vice Chairman and CEO Keki Mistry said. It is compulsory for firms to disclose data for shareholders with over 1% stake at the end of every quarter. By Aseem Thapliyal After being locked down for 76 days because of the epidemic prevention and control, Wuhan, central Chinas Hubei province, woke up starting from April 8 as restaurants and companies resume operation and supermarkets reopen to public. The No.2 Yangtze River Bridge in Wuhan. (Photo/People's Daily) The catering business in Wuhan is beginning to recover. Although citizens are not allowed to eat at the restaurants yet, they could order take-out food now, said Liu Guoliang, director of the Wuhan Catering Association. About 10,000 restaurants out of the over 50,000 in Wuhan now provide food-delivery services, delivering over 100,000 shares of food every day, Liu added. Two girls chat with each other at a commercial street in Wuhan. (Photo/Xinhua) Many supermarkets have opened to the public in an orderly manner. The Zhongbai Chain Store in the Huangpu Road of Wuhan would take the temperature of the customers and check the health codes of them at the entrance for the sake of security, according to Luo Zhen, manager of the store. The store has restored to 90 percent of its supplies and the customer flow volume is 80 percent that before the epidemic, according to Luo. Meanwhile, public transportation such as buses and subways has also been put into operation in Wuhan. On March 21, 47 employees under the Wuhan subway project at the Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co., Ltd. arrived in Wuhan and began to check and maintain the subways in the city so that the subways could resume operation soon. While inspecting the subway tunnels and stations, the company has prepared medical supplies for the employees and taken various measures such as taking the temperatures of the employees and registering to ensure the security of the employees. With their efforts, the subways in Wuhan have officially resumed operation starting from March 28. IMEE: NEGOTIATE DEBT MORATORIUM FOR MORE COVID-19 CASH AID Senator Imee Marcos said the government should call for a temporary suspension in the payment of the country's debts to increase cash aid for individuals and companies affected by a lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs, said that a debt moratorium is a third measure that the Department of Finance can adopt, besides the budget realignments and international loans it has already announced, to continue funding the government's social amelioration program while the true duration of the lockdown remains uncertain. The budget for interest payments on the country's debts in the General Appropriations Act of 2020 amount to P451 billion, which Marcos said can be used for cash aid by the government under the Bayanihan Heal As One Act. Marcos added that off-budget payments of P582 billion to amortize the principal amount can also be reserved for cash aid. More cash aid will be needed if the advance of the global pandemic results in extended lockdowns throughout the world and continues to limit business operations and people's means of earning a living, Marcos said. Marcos explained that a debt moratorium is in line with the World Economic Forum's call for international cooperation in handling the backlash of the COVID-19 crisis, adding that not even the world's biggest economy, the United States, can deal with the global pandemic on its own. "Dapat bigyan ng palugit ang mga bansang mas maliit ang ekonomiya at mas mahina ang pamamaraan para sa pagpapagamot ng kanilang mamamayan, lalo na ang mga bansa sa Asya at Africa," Marcos said. How quickly the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the political situation in countries around the world. South Korea is going to hold its 21st General Election to fill all 300 seats of its National Assembly on April 15, and already the issues and dynamics impacting the campaign have completely shifted. Park Rae-yong, columnist for the Kyunghyang Shinmun, wrote in his April 6 column that this is the "corona election." Candidates have been having fewer voter contacts, and the media and voters have been laser-focused on virus, distracting from other issues. However, while the opposition United Future Party (UFP) hoped to capitalize on the medical emergency at first, by attacking President Moon Jae-in for not blocking Chinese travelers, it has seen its narrative flipped on its head in recent weeks, as South Korea's coronavirus response has proven extremely effective. In fact, Moon's approval rating has risen in recent weeks, ending a decline stretching back three years. In early March, South Korea's epidemic infection curve began to flatten. Since April 1, it has only recorded approximately 300 new cases, mostly imported from abroad. South Korea's policy of mass testing, contact-tracing, and cell phone updates has been widely praised around the world. As Park put it, "The conservative opposition party and the media pushed [the image of] the government as a malevolent force. They insisted on using the name 'Wuhan pneumonia' and branded infectious disease experts as 'critical' and 'socialist.' However, in just one month, the situation changed rapidly. Citizens saw that, in countries blocking entry from China early on, the coronavirus spread on a large scale; and realized that our country's prevention policy was not wrong. The conservative press's narrative that 'the Moon Jae-in government's quarantine policy failed' proved fallacious." Indeed, public opinion surveys back Park's observations. An April 8 survey published in Hankyung shows Moon's Democratic Party leading the conservative UFP by a 20-point margin. The Democrats have been leading in Realmeter's national tracking polls ever since February, but they increased their lead from nine points to 13 in the final days of March, when it became clear that South Korea's coronavirus policies were yielding positive results. The Democratic Party of Korea is also leading in most battleground districts with available polling results. Besides hanging onto most of the seats they already control, they are also threatening to take high-profile seats from the UFP and the minor parties. For example, the Democrats are favored to win the seat currently occupied by the conservative party's 2019 floor leader Na Kyung-won, according to many polls. The Democratic nominee is in a close race against Justice Party leader and 2017 presidential candidate Sim Sang-jung. In the progressive stronghold of North Jeolla and South Jeolla provinces, the Democrats also look poised to make big gains. Rebellious Jeolla voters elected a regional minor party, the People's Party, to fill 23 of their 28 seats in 2016, but the People's Party has since been dissolved, and most of their incumbents are losing to Democratic nominees in their respective districts. The upshot is that the Democratic Party will almost certainly hold onto control of the National Assembly. Whether they win a majority (as opposed to their current plurality) is a trickier question, because South Korea uses a complicated formula to allocate seats on a proportional basis, and this is the first election that a new method is in place. In regard to policy, it means that we can expect existing programs to continue for the final two years of Moon's term, which ends in 2022. A liberal president, Moon has raised South Korea's minimum wage, limited maximum hours worked per week by 23%, and pursued a policy of detente with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Democratic Party also appears to practice less antagonistic policy towards China as compared with the United Future Party. We have seen the example of President Moon's coronavirus response, where, early on, he was criticized by the UFP for not shutting down travel from China. Moon also agreed early in his term to refrain from putting any new anti-ballistic missile systems on his side of the line dividing the peninsula. These are just projections, of course. Elections don't always turn out as the polls suggest they will. For those watching at home on April 15, I would recommend paying attention to the following key races: Seoul's Dongjak B, where UFP veteran Na Kyung-won's district is being targeted by rookie Democrat Lee Soo-jin; Daegu's Suseong-gu A, where first-term Democrat Kim Bu-gyeom is trying to defend his seat against a powerful UFP challenger, Joo Ho-young; and Gyeongi's Dongan-gu B, where a former student activist and UFP politician, Shim Jae-chul, is defending his seat from feisty Democratic challenger Lee Jae-jeong. Mitchell Blatt is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn. Photo credit: Office of Gov Andrew M. Cuomo From ELLE Every day, just before noon, hundreds of thousands of people tune in to watch New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's daily Powerpoint presentations on the state government's latest response to the coronavirus. At a moment when the world seems to be spinning out of control, he has emerged via livestream as a reliable guide with a slide clickerassuaging fears and delivering indispensable information. Cuomo is flanked by his inner circle of aides at these briefings, including the woman who sits to his left, Melissa DeRosa. As secretary to the governor, DeRosa is behind every relief effort writ large in New York, now the epicenter of the international coronavirus outbreak, with more confirmed cases than any other country. She strategizes with state departments, and analyzes hospitalization and ventilator numbers. She briefs Cuomo, who then presents the facts to the public in easily-digestible bulleted lists and charts that have become appointment viewing for residents across the state and beyond. Their strategy is simple: Be as transparent as possible, even when the news is bad. When reached by phone, DeRosa told me that people want to feel like "soldiers" in times of crisis, equipped with all the necessary facts and figures to fight back. "Even," DeRosa said, "if those facts and figures are scary." "As long as you know what's going on and feel like there's a plan that you're a part of, then you can galvanize, and survive, and endure, and get through it," she added. "If you don't, that's when you hit real crisis." Photo credit: Office of Gov Andrew M. Cuomo When her alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m. every morning, DeRosa pours a large coffee and settles in with the pile of reports that hit her inbox overnight. She reviews the deaths toll and latest PPE (personal protective equipment) figures, then presents them to Cuomo. Together, they craft his talking points for the daily press briefing. The rest of her day is spent coordinating tri-state relief efforts and shaping and executing state policies. She's in bed by midnight, and up before dawn the next day to do it all again. Story continues In an email to ELLE.com, Cuomo described DeRosa as an invaluable" member of his team and one of the "best minds" to take on the pandemic. "This crisis is a challenge on a scale unseen before and it tests us on every level: public health, economic stability and our basic human nature. I need the best minds to meet the challenge and Melissa is invaluable not just to meas a counsel, strategist, sounding board, and policy makerbut equally to the State and the entire team she leads," he said. They have been working together since 2013, when she joined his administration as communications director. DeRosa worked her way up to chief of staff and, in 2017, was named secretary to the governor, the highest appointed position in the state. She's the first woman in history to hold the role. Reflecting on the last 2 weeks the unyielding leadership of Gov Cuomo, the non-stop work ethic of my colleagues, the unprecedented partnership of state/local governments, the resilience of NY We fight. Its in our DNA. We will get through this, stronger than evertogether pic.twitter.com/8tBOHs5icj Melissa DeRosa (@melissadderosa) March 14, 2020 In New York politics, she's known for steering massive statewide policies, including the $15 minimum wage, a paid family leave policy, and expanded insurance coverage for IVF. DeRosa oversees every vertical in Cuomo's office from top to bottom, and the administration's communications director Dani Lever described her as the kind of person who has "a plan for everything." Now, she's in charge of coordinating a response to one of the state's biggest challenges ever: widespread panic, dwindling healthcare supplies, and a growing death toll during a pandemic. At the time of publication, there were a total of 188,694 cases in New York and 9,385 virus-related deaths. Weve dealt with snow storms, flooding, and hurricanes in New York, but those were all static events," DeRosa said. "This is the first situation the world has had to endure that is as ongoing, and as constant for an indefinite period of time as the coronavirus pandemic is. Photo credit: Office of Gov Andrew M. Cuomo DeRosa managed state decisions about restaurant closures and voting by mail, and is now also executing the governor's overall public messaging strategy. Unpredictable, new challenges crop up "unexpectedly, every single day," she said, "and as much as you try to anticipate, there's really no way to predict what will arise." When NewYork-Presbyterian and Mount Sinai hospital in New York City decided to bar the partners of patients giving birth to slow the spread of coronavirus, she personally stepped in and led the policy shift that directed all public and private hospitals to allow healthy partners into delivery rooms to support their laboring partner. "When you make a decision and then think to yourself, I made this decision, whether it's right or wrong, and I'm living by it, well, that's just not how the world works," she said. "A big part of the way we're living right now hinges on being able to evolve and change in real time as the facts and circumstances change, [I have to be] comfortable with that." OK, everybody. Time to pack it in.https://t.co/o05PMYL9OF Melissa DeRosa (@melissadderosa) April 6, 2020 She's also learned to tune out the online chatter about her boss, who has garnered a passionate fan base and attracted widespread attention, including inquiring minds wondering aloud whether the governor secretly has pierced nipples, which prompted an investigation by New York magazines Olivia Nuzzi. "If anything it's validating and encouraging," DeRosa said. "I'm just glad to know that our press conferences and his leadership are reassuring the public at a time when I know a lot of people are scared and feeling vulnerable and looking for leadership." You Might Also Like Former Bachelor star Monique Morley has revealed she had to hire a wheelchair in order to do her grocery run after she injured both her ankles over the weekend. 'I hurt a ligament in my foot running the other day and I fell down and rolled my other ankle,' she told her Instagram followers on Monday. The 26-year-old brunette then recalled her shopping trip and explained how tiring and difficult the experience was. Ouch! The Bachelor's Monique Morley (pictured) revealed she had to hire a wheelchair in order to go out and do her grocery run on Monday after she injured both her ankles 'I feel so sorry for people who have to have that struggle every single day... it's exhausting,' she continued. Monique, who failed to find love on Channel 10's The Bachelor last year, then instructed her followers to be cautious of people with disabilities and in wheelchairs. 'It is exhausting pushing a wheelchair. And I was not cut out for it today'. 'Does anyone have some crutches that I can borrow for a few days?' she asked her followers in a post on her Instagram stories on Monday 'I feel so sorry for people who have to have that struggle that every single day... it's exhausting,' Monique, 26, told her followers It comes after the reality star-turned-influencer stepped out showing off her new brunette tresses after spending 14 days in self-isolation following a recent trip to the US and Mexico. She has clearly been keeping fit in quarantine, proudly showing off her trim and toned figure in a light blue cropped top and booty shorts in the photo. 'Damn, its nice to be outside exercising after quarantine,' the reality TV stunner wrote in the caption. 'Damn its nice to be outside!' It comes after the reality star stepped out showing off her new brunette tresses after spending 14 days in self-isolation following an overseas trip She also shared a video of herself combing her fingers through her luscious brunette tresses, and in a poll asked fans whether they liked the change on her Instagram Story. At the time of her arrival in Sydney, she told Daily Mail Australia the worst thing about self-quarantine was being unable to collect freebies from the post office - a predicament for many influencers. Monique rose to fame on Matt Agnew's season of The Bachelor last year, but was kicked out of the mansion after calling him a 'dog c**t' behind his back. Thiruvananthapuram, April 13 : The Mata Amritanandamayi Math on Monday announced that it will donate Rs 13 crore to help the fight against coronavirus. Popularly known as the 'hugging saint', the Mata's ashram is located about 90-km from the state capital. The Math has also agreed to provide free care to Covid-19 patients at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (Amrita Hospital) in Kochi. A total of Rs 10 crore will go to the Central government's PM-CARES Fund, and Rs 3 crore will go to the Kerala government's Chief Minister's Distress Relief Fund. Today, on Peace FM, we heard that some Ghanaians who have water tanks and/or sell water directly from the pipe are not allowing their fellow distressed Ghanaians to fetch water for free. The government of Ghana in his last but one speech to the nation stated that the government was absorbing the cost of water to Ghanaians for the next three months. He, therefore, directed all water providers to allow Ghanaians to have water for free. Most of us took to social media and other platforms to hail the president. I was particularly critical of people who underestimated the value of expressing gratitude to the president. But somehow, knowing how we are as people, my concern was largely about whether some of our people will really follow the instruction of the president. But, sadly, my uncertainty about some Ghanaians not conforming to the presidents direction was confirmed. I am not so much worried that some people are not allowing their fellow Ghanaians to fetch water, as I am about the fact that most of these people call themselves Christians. Definitely, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken siege of the world, the churches, para-religious organisations, and other individuals have responded to the call to help Ghanaians. Some churches have gone beyond their reach to help people from other religious backgrounds. We have seen the best in our health professionals as they put their lives on the line to save lines. We have also witnessed the robustness with which some of our security persons are defending the territorial and aerial spaces of the country. Some of them are also diligently guarding against deviants who may have the predilections to flout the rules against physical and social distancing. It, therefore, came as a piece of distressing news when I heard that some Ghanaians have also been diligent in not just trashing the "sacred" words of the president, but refusing to let their humanity and the best in them be seen. In England, when the National Health Service (NHS), in the face of COVID-19 pandemic, called for volunteers to support their staff. With this call, over 400,000 people responded. The number of people willing to freely support the state of England was so huge that some were asked to hold on. Incidentally, England has seen rapid secularization since the late nineteenth century that one would be curious to know the motivation people have to show kindness. I can vouch that most of the people who are volunteering are not religious. It is also possible that these are people who may not even take inspiration directly from any religion. A few may be "spiritual" (though difficult to conceptualise) who share no affiliation with any organised religion. Those who also share any particular with religion may be motivated by their faith, but more specifically by the perilous time we find ourselves in. In Ghana, about ninety per cent (90%) of the population subscribe to one or two of the three main religions Islam, Christianity, and Indigenous religions. A few of them may have an alliance with the Eastern Religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism. The Ghanaian private and public spheres are suffused with religion. Consequently, while it is inaccurate to repeat the refrain of John Mbiti that Africans are notoriously religious or incurably religious (to quote Geoffrey Parrinder), it is true that religion has ubiquitous expression in our world. Religion occupies such a centre stage in our repertoire of activities that, in both the lower and higher domains, religion finds expression. The opposite happens in England. As I have stated, many of the English people do not identify with any organised religion. I have met many students at the University of Cambridge who have never read the Bible or owned a copy. My Ghanaian colleague was surprised to hear an English student say that he had never attended any church since he was born. There are some people in England, who have not read even a sentence in the Bible. Religion is a private affair. It is hardly allowed in the public sphere. You hardly find religious inscriptions on vehicles, stores (maybe a few of the Arab mini-supermarkets), and on doorpost. In Cambridge and Birmingham, you may not even hear the muezzin calling people for prayers through the minaret. You hardly find material religious symbols, like the rosary on people. Apart from a few of the African churches, church services hardly go beyond one and a half hours. Given the differences in religious landscapes, it is curious to explain the differences in demonstrating altruism and care in Ghana and England in a perilous time of COVID-19. Many reasons may explain the differences. I will condense these reasons into social cost and social pressure in understanding the different attitudes Ghanaians and the English people demonstrate towards humanitarianism. I will begin with Ghanaians. In Ghana, the two main reasons for being religious are important in gauging the extent to which people live what they believe. Social pressure is the system where people are "forced" to be religious. Many Ghanaians choose to be religious because of social pressure. Social pressure is where one suffers for not being religious. The Ghanaian space is such that if one does not go to church or pray at the mosque, one is likely to suffer hugely. If you were to ask any Ghanaian what qualities he or she would expect from a prospective spouse, it is most likely that the first response will be "someone who is religious". This is not bad, in itself, because we all wanted someone religious more so Christian to marry. But it demonstrates the centrality of religion in virtually everything we know. It also demonstrates how religion is ingrained into the fibre of our activities. Politicians and political prophets have also taken advantage of the "religiosity" of Ghanaians to deploy religion as an important tool in exploiting and manipulating Ghanaians. Suddenly, it is easy to manipulate people in the name of God than anything else. Generally, in the world, there are three things that drive passion for good and/or evil sports, politics, and religion. But religion is the most important index of determining the contours of passion. The entrenched position of religion in our society is such that the less religious or irreligious is likely to lose friends and family. Unlike in England, it is possible to state that virtually every Ghanaian is born into a religion. Even those who refer to themselves as humanists or atheists cannot hem their children against the influence of religion, because schools and public places are inundated with religion. In Ghana, social pressure to be religious is also such that we mostly invoke the name of God when we know we are lying and cheating. We recite the Bible or Quran when we are actually fleecing people. The opposite of social pressure is social cost. Social cost is the cost one pays for being religious. This applies partly to Ghana but more so in England. In Ghana, the social cost of being religious is that you must really strain yourself not to be corrupt in one way or the other. You really have to be strong in your faith to avoid cheating the system. This is precisely because corruption at the lower domain is so pervasive and there is every reason to be corrupt that, it will take a heartless swim against a menacing tide not to be corrupt. Sometimes failure to be corrupt will imply that you may lose friends, family members or even your work. In England, the social cost is real in terms of what a Christian accepts and does not accept. Liberalism in England, which has turned Christian ethic on its head is such that a pastor or Christian may find it hard if not almost impossible to keep his conservative conviction against abortion, homosexuality, and pre-marital sex. These moral issues have been liberalised and become the paradigm through which life is lived. They have also been normalised and canonised into law. Running roughshod against them is, therefore, to run into legal challenges. In some countries in the West, a pastor risks losing his license if he fails to officiate or preside over homosexual marriages. But in all of this, Christians are called to be like Jesus Christ. We are not to "be" Jesus, but we are to be "like" Jesus. This implies that we are not in a forward march to progress into deities or gods in the manner that Jesus is God. We are not expected to progress from being finite beings to becoming infinite beings. Our finite nature is forever, no amount of religious practices we dabble in. But we are called to share the communicable attributes of Jesus Christ primarily the attribute of LOVE. God saved His elect, because of Love. Jesus entered into history and lived among us because of love. It is love alone that brought God into our world to save us. This is why John 3:16, "For God so love the world that He gave His only Begotten Son" is the heartbeat of the Christian message. Christians are expected to love because Jesus shows us love. Christians are expected to serve, because Jesus serves us, by washing our feet. Christians are expected to be charitable because Jesus is charitable toward us. Whatever Christians are, we owe it to God. So, why can't we give to the world what was freely given to us? People who are in pain do not care about how much we know God and how much theology and doctrines we can teach. They care about how much we care. History books are littered with many instances where men and women were moved by their Christian faith in the Lord to advance the common good of society. Consequently, I can surmise that, while one may not necessarily have to be religious to be good to those in need, the western world has had Christian values of love to humanity deeply engrained in their society that, even in post-Christian England, the Christian value of service to humanity is still very evident in the face of crisis. In Acts 3, we read about an unprecedented show of kindness by Peter and John. In the text, we read about how the Apostle Peter defied human constraints and self-imposed taboos to touch and heal a person who had been lame from birth. In the Jewish culture in the first century, it was defying for a person to touch someone who was lame from birth since it was considered a curse (John 9:1). But the Apostle Peter defied self-imposed tradition and touched and healed a lame person. Christians are expected to demonstrate love by touching someone's life with kindness. If you are playing politics with water, then your Christianity is problematic. If you cannot do good to someone who cannot help you, then your Christianity is questionable. If you cannot provide for the needy, beyond preaching, then you are unlike Jesus Christ. We need to be like Jesus Christ by showing love to people in need. Even if the government will not absorb the cost of the water you supply, at least do it for the Lord, since the Bible categorically says that there is more blessing than giving (Acts 20:35). Satyagraha Charles Prempeh ([email protected]), African University College of Communications, Accra Harris Countys largest association of criminal defense attorneys on Monday called on local judges to halt in-person court appearances to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. As the virus has swept across the nation, it has shut down wide swaths of everyday life. But in Harris County where judges last month halted jury trials and many other court functions some criminal judges have continued to require in-person court hearings and in-person reporting to pre-trial services. Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association President Neal A. Davis wrote that such policies present a threat to public safety and the impartial administration of justice. In the four-page letter which was sent to the countys 22 state district judges and 16 misdemeanor judges, Davis noted that video appearances are easy and routine now, and that local prosecutors are expressly forbidden from appearing in courtrooms, except in the rarest of occasions. STAY AT HOME: From swing sets to adult novelty shops, 311 calls report social distancing violators in Houston area For a Harris County Judge to require one party to physically appear and risk exposure to a deadly pathogen, and allow the other party to appear remotely, violates a judges appearance of impartiality, at a minimum, Davis wrote. Davis also criticized judges for ordering some defendants who are out on bond to report in person to pre-trial services. Requiring bonded defendants to report, in person, to a facility hosting hundreds of people daily is contrary to national, state and local mandates, Davis wrote. It creates an unneeded health risk and prolongs this state of emergency. The letter comes a week after Elsa Alcala, a longtime judge on Texas highest criminal court, called on Judge Lina Hidalgo to take measures to reduce foot traffic in the county courthouse. On April 6, Alcala sent a letter to Hidalgo raising alarm about judges requiring in-person court appearances and urged her to shut down judges private parking entrance and their private elevators. Like Davis, she said in-person court appearances were an unnecessary risk. EXCLUSIVE: As Harris County deputy battles coronavirus, his wife tries to save him from afar "If judges are going to require that defendants personally appear, then the judges should be exposed to whatever contaminants that may be carried by the people who appear," she said. Local defense attorney Patrick McCann said that while many misdemeanor judges were taking measures to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, some district judges have not thought through the implications of everything theyve been asking the defense bar to do. Im glad the HCCLA is finally standing up for the average solo (attorney) thats trying to keep safe, keep their family safe and still do a good job for their clients, he said. The letter comes amid an increasingly fraught debate about the balance of public safety and public health in Harris County and other state and local governments across the country. In Harris County, much of controversy has centered over the county jail, where Judge Lina Hidalgo ordered Sheriff Ed Gonzalez to reduce the jail population by releasing non-violent, low-risk offenders. That prompted Harris County Administrative District Judge Herb Ritchie to issue an order voiding Hidalgos directive. Hidalgo and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez worry an outbreak could tear through the 7,500-inmate jail, sickening inmates and jail employees, spreading it back into the community and overwhelming local hospital systems. Nearly 50 jail employees have tested positive for the illness, along with 25 inmates. A number of inmates with symptoms have been tested and are in quarantine. More than 1,200 other inmates possibly exposed to the virus have also been quarantined, as a precaution. Courthouse insiders said Ritchie is one of several judges to whom Mondays letter was directed. He was not immediately available for comment. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday ordered release of an additional Rs 50 crore from the Chief Ministers Relief Fund for providing assistance to natives stranded in other states due to the nationwide lockdown prompted by coronavirus. Reaching out to the people who could make to homes due to curbs imposed across the country on March 24 last to break the chain of virus transmission, the Bihar government has been supporting the needy by teansfering a special assistance of Rs 1000 each in their bank accounts and also running relief centres in different parts of the country where people are given shelter, food and ration. Earlier on March 26, 2020, the chief minister had released a sum of Rs 100 crore from the chief minister's relief fund for catering to the needs of the distressed migrants hold up outside. The amount would be utilized by the disaster management department for the purpose, an official release said. Lakhs of grounded citizens have been provided help in at least 47 state-funded relief centres operating in far-off places, including Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Sikkim. Kumar held a review meeting through video-conferencing with Divisional Commissioners, Inspector Generals of Police and Deputy Inspector Generals of Police to take stock of measures taken to contain the spread of Coronavirus in the state. The officials apprised the CM in detail about strictly enforcing lockdown, intense checking at inter-state borders, sealing of Indo-Nepal borders, maintenance of social distancing in markets besides monitoring those living in quarantine centres, the release said. We all are collectively working to fight against coronavirus. Everyone is playing an important role in it. Divisional Commissioners should ensure coordination with districts under their jurisdiction, Kumar said. People must practice social distancing for which they (officials) need to make the people aware, the CM said and gave a direction to publicise about social distancing with the help of mike. Intense checking of vehicles should be carried out at (inter-state) borders, Kumar asserted. Intense screening and testing of people coming from outside (other states) should be ensured so that not a single suspected COVID-19 patient is left unidentified, he said. He again appealed to the people having even a little apprehension of having been infected by COVID-19 to visit testing centre in order to ensure safety and security of their family members and others living in their surrounding. Employment opportunities should be created in rural areas, Kumar said adding that any individual willing to work be issued passes for the purpose from an official nominated by the District Magistrate. Chief Secretary Deepak Kumar, Director General of Police (DGP) Gupteshwar Pandey, CMs Principal Secretary Chanchal Kumar and other senior officials of CM secretariat were present during the meeting at CMs official bungalow 1, Aney Marg. To access this article please sign-in below or register for a free one-month trial. Good governance can yield significant ESG outcomes and returns, argues Dean Alborough To access the premium content on Environmental Finance, you must first sign in to your account Not registered? Take a free no obligation one-month trial. Register for a trial A tornado touched down on March 28 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, flattening several streets worth of buildings and injuring 22 people. Normally, such a disaster would be all over the news, and volunteers would get the alert to rush into action. These aren't normal times, and the local sheriff begged everyone to stay home. Two weeks earlier, nearly a dozen tornados had ripped through Nashville, Tennessee. The damage was enough that a federal emergency was declared and the Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched aid workers. But by mid-March, FEMA changed its mind and ordered the vast majority of disaster assistant teams and personnel manning recovery centers to work remotely. Survivors were told to apply for aid online. Managers of nonprofit and government agencies that respond to disasters see 2020 shaping up to be a stress test of a system that is bound to fail. Because of covid-19, the number of major disaster declarations that FEMA is managing has jumped from 43 at the beginning of March to 97 as of April 10th. We're all learning what these managers say they've known for a long time: Even though the U.S. has a national emergency agency, it is not really designed to handle an emergency that is national in scope. FEMA is designed to handle, at most, a few state-by-state disasters at a time. In fact, the system explicitly counts on having the ability to move resources from one state to another as needed. "None of us, and by 'us' I mean FEMA, the Red Cross, or anyone" anticipated an event overtaking the whole country at once, says Greg Forrester, president and chief executive officer of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (Nvoad), one of the many non-governmental organizations that FEMA relies on for backup. "And none of us has the resources to sustain a response like this." Nvoad is a coalition of mostly faith-based organizations that sends millions of volunteers to disaster areas. Normally, they have stockpiles of protective gear such as N95 masks and hazmat suits, but at the beginning of the virus crisis they handed those over to hospitals and other essential workers with confidence that the supplies would be replenished. That has not happened. Most of Nvoad volunteers are over 60, which means that without equipment, Forrester says, they'll be told to stay home. "We have built our systems around what we can handle instead of what might occur," says Craig Fugate, who ran FEMA during the Obama administration. This is particularly the case as climate change constantly raises the bar on what is possible. Nearly every year sets records for storms, floods and fires. Since leaving FEMA, Fugate has focused on trying to get state and local governments to prepare for the more intense emergencies of the future by, to take one example, changing building codes to account for increased precipitation and flooding. Although the U.S. spends billions every year on disaster, it has not taken national disaster preparedness seriously enough. That's the lesson learned by the residents of Nashville and Jonesboro in recent weeks. We are still planning for the past. As Fugate puts it: "We need to think bigger." SK Innovation global staff from six countries hold signs Sunday that read "Hi !nnovation," as part of the company's campaign to speed up innovation and to boost morale amid COVID-19. Through the campaign, SK hopes to create more innovative products and services and enhance company value while maintaining synergy and happiness among staff and clients during the pandemic. Courtesy of SK Innovation By Kim Hyun-bin SK Innovation, the country's leading oil refinery and battery maker, has launched an initiative dubbed "Hi !nnovation" to enhance the company's overall morale and service brand amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The slogan "Hi !nnovation" which communicates the company's wish to pursue breakthroughs in innovative technologies comes with sub-slogans such as "Happy !nnovation" and "Human !nnovation." The slogans were made from the perspective of SK Innovation's economic and societal value and show the diverse innovative direction the company plans to take, the company said. "The company strives to accelerate in the 2030 Green Balance Deep Change and through it shows our will to create a new company value derived from New Fundamental" the company said. "Especially this year, we are faced with an unprecedented crisis and the company and staff together shall overcome and try to maximize happiness through the harsh times, so we are at a time where it is imperative to enhance the meaning of our joint service brand." SK Innovation is the country's first energy and chemical company, but through endless innovation, the firm has expanded its field of expertise to batteries, textiles and other cutting-edge industries. "We have established or are in the process of constructing battery factories all around the world including in the U.S., China, Hungary and Poland, while inking M&A deals with global petrochemical companies including the U.S.' Dow Chemical and ARKEMA in France," the company said. The Hi !nnovation campaign is not just to enhance internal and external means of communication, but to raise awareness among management and staff. The company plans to one day soft land the movement into company culture. The Hi !nnovation campaign was launched to help the company recover from the COVID-19 crisis and enter a new growth era. "The Hi !nnovation seeks to uphold societal value and the meaning of Hi which is friendly to the public and embeds the economic value perspective which sounds similar to High," Lim Soo-gil, communication director at SK Innovation, said. "We will try to make the Hi !nnovation campaign a major milestone for the developments to come, so we launched the campaign when the crisis is at its worst." Ajith M S By Express News Service MYSURU: With the countrywide lockdown confining people to their villages and alcohol being out of bounds, villagers have turned to gambling which is slowly becoming an addiction from being just a pastime. With tighter measures being enforced, especially in cities, those employed in nearby towns including daily wagers are stuck in their villages for many days. Many have turned to gambling as a pastime eventually getting addicted to it. Usually we are occupied with activity all day at our workplace. We have now become quite restless without any work hence we turned to gambling to kill time, said a youth from Kittur in Periyapatna. With betting becoming rampant, despite many being out of the job and running out of savings, villagers themselves had announced the penalty for gambling and have prohibited such activities. Even police authorities had intensified their crackdown following reports and had booked many for it during the lockdown. This has been going on even when it was revealed that a COVID-19 positive patient had gambled with a few men in Hebya village of Nanjangud after which all them had to be quarantined. However, none of these hindered people from continuing the addictive game. Fearing the police, people have stopped gambling in town areas and have moved to farmlands and fields, said Raghu from Hullahalli in Nanjangud. A senior cop speaking said ample measures are in place across the district and already many have been booked for gambling. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to take action after a wave of gender-based violence, robbery and vandalism across the country. Since a nationwide lockdown was announced on March 27 in a bid to curtail the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, 148 people have been arrested and charged with crimes relating to gender-based violence. Dozens of schools have been burgled, trashed or burnt to the ground and state-owned utility Eskom has reported an increase in cable theft and vandalism, further disrupting an already overburdened power supply. In an open letter to the nation Monday, Ramaphosa said it was "despicable" that criminals were seeking to capitalize on the shutdown at a time when law enforcement authorities are embroiled in the national battle against the pandemic. "Our hearts go out to the family of Mama Ngenzeni Zuma who was raped and killed in KwaZulu-Natal last month by men who allegedly pretended to be soldiers to gain entry into her home," Ramaphosa wrote. "We feel the pain of the family of 14-year-old Simphiwe Sibeko who went missing from her Soweto home, and whose body was found dumped in bushes last week." He also paid tribute to Constable Percy Ramalepe, who was shot and killed while attending a domestic violence call last week. As of Monday morning, South Africa had reported 2,173 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 25 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of calls to the GBV (gender-based violence) National Command Centre has increased since the lockdown began on March 27, reflecting a wider global trend since the pandemic forced governments to command people to stay in their homes. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video message last week that there had been a "horrifying global surge in domestic violence," and the South African government has implemented a range of measures to address the scourge. Tweet 1 "We are aware that the restrictions that have been placed on people's movement and the confinement to their homes is a frustration for many," Ramaphosa said. "But there is no excuse, nor will there ever be any excuse, for violence against women, children, the elderly, members of the LGBTQI+ community, foreign nationals, not against anyone." The president and chairman of the African Union also warned perpetrators that "the criminal justice system is not on leave," and urged communities to play their part in protecting and supporting the most vulnerable. "We will continue to bring all the state's resources to bear to support vulnerable women and children, and ensure that perpetrators face the full might of the law," he added. Social media users have begun a light-hearted campaign to discourage people from UK tourist destinations as lockdown flouters continue to flock to the countryside. The #Don'tVisit challenge was started on Twitter on Saturday as a funny way of dissuading travel to popular places in Wales and Scotland. Online participants produced posters in the style of the vintage travel adverts, warning tourists to stay home rather than risk the spread of coronavirus. Do NOT try Wales: Social media users use the #Don'tVisit hashtag to share posters aimed at dissuading tourists from visiting their hometowns during the coronavirus lockdown Posters range from specific popular destinations to broad messages ironically telling potential flouters they are not welcome at the moment Baa-d Idea: One poster features the now infamous Llandudno goats who were spotted roaming the streets of the town last week while people stayed at home The trend began with the hashtag 'Don't Visit Wales' and series of cheeky posters featuring popular Welsh destinations. A selection was tweeted by BBC Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine, who shared them with the caption: 'Congrats to everyone involved in the #dontvisitwaleschallenge because these are superb.' He posted a selection of posters, including one for Wales' highest mountain, that reads: 'Snowdonia: Don't even think about it.' Another, advertising the Pass of Aberglasyn, reads: 'North Wales, Better not.' One for the Welsh Coast reads: 'Gower Way, Wales: Come visit later' above a picture of a deck chair. Cwm bach later: The posters appeal to potential tourists to come to attractive destinations - but only once the lockdown is over 'Cardiff nay': The posters use vintage travel advert and postcard styling to bring the message across in a light-hearted tone Popular landmarks are mocked to make them seemingly less attractive so lockdown flouters avoid heading to them The challenge then sparked a #Don'tvisitScotland campaign, after Martin Crewe, director of Barnardo's Scotland, encouraged people to submit their Scottish offerings. He shared a mock poster of the Scottish capital that reads: 'Edinburgh, it's not that friendly at the best of times. Stay home.' He shared another of a town in Mull, captioned: 'What's the story in Tobermory? Wouldn't you like to.. No!' Twitter user Alan Downie made a poster of the Isle of Skye containing the warning: 'It's a lot wetter than you think.' 'Don't even think about it': A poster discouraging people from travelling to Snowdonia was shared by Jeremy Vine on Twitter Jokes range from harmless to the more risque, with Welsh Twitter users enjoying the opportunity to mock some areas of the country 'It's not for you': People on social media have reacted positively to the campaign with some suggesting it could be used to raise money for charity Textile artist Roslyn Mitchell also added to the fun, warning potential tourists off Largs, North Ayrshire. She took a stylised scene of the seaside town and wrote: 'You'll be attacked by seagulls. Don't risk it' in large letters above it. Civil servant Robbie Cross used the style of an old Scottish Motor Transport bus advert to get his message of 'Scotland: Dinnae bother' across to potential visitors. And actress Kirsty Miller, from Glasgow, produced an image of Edinburgh emblazoned with: 'You'll have had your tea. Stay Home.' Textile artist Roslyn Mitchell warns people not to visit Largs in Ayrshire, Scotland, because of the threat of seagull attacks 'Stay home': Kirsty Miller, from Glasgow, produced an image of Edinburgh pleading with Britons to stay away Not the best of times: Martin Crewe, director of Barnardo's Scotland, shared a similar poster earlier in the day 'NO!': He also shared an image of Tobermory that plays on the theme song of popular children's TV show Balamory, which is set in Scotland The campaign has gone down well with social media users, with many suggesting they should be sold to raise money for charity. Lesley Smith said: 'This is perfect.' Karen Davidson added: 'These are just brilliant! I hope they'll be on sale soon!' And Nicola Livingston wrote: 'Loving the creativity from people, some real laugh out loud contributions!' The campaign follows reports of people driving to natural beauty spots in order to exercise. Their behaviour has sparked outrage among some locals and led to Derbyshire Police using a drone to catch and 'shame' people from who had driven in. Napa Sanitation District is planning a $15 million project to rehabilitate a deteriorating pipe that carries 90 percent of local sewage to the wastewater treatment plant and has no backup. Even without a backup, the relentless stream of sewage from the city of Napa must be kept flowing while work is done. NapaSan is making plans on how to handle the project in the summer of 2021, possibly using a system of temporary, above-ground bypass pipes. Its not difficult to keep (sewage) flowing, NapaSan General Manager Tim Healy said. Its expensive to keep it flowing. The half-century-old, 66-inch-diameter concrete pipe transports raw sewage three miles from the city of Napa to the wastewater treatment plant near the airport industrial area. A district report calls it the backbone of the sewer system. NapaSan officials say a mile-long section of this sewage-transporting lifeline is reaching the end of its useful life. They clearly dont relish the prospect of it possibly failing some day. Thats not an option we really have, said Andrew Damron of NapaSan. It really cannot fail. A 2017 closed-circuit television inspection inside the pipe showed significant deterioration since 2012. A more-comprehensive 2018 inspection confirmed that a section is structurally compromised and concluded it should be rehabilitated in the short term, district reports said. NapaSan recently released a draft environmental study for the project required under the California Environmental Quality Act. The study gives details of the planned project. Workers wont have to dig up the old pipe and bury a new one. Rather, they could use a method called cured-in-place pipe. They would pull a synthetic fabric liner through the existing pipe to form a pipe within a pipe. Sewage cant flow in the pipe while this work is being done. The plan calls for setting up a system of temporary, above-ground, parallel pipes and pumps for a bypass system. How complicated the bypass might be remains to be seen. A report said the district could set up a single, long bypass to serve the entire project or a shorter bypass that is moved as different sections of pipe are worked on. Workers would monitor the bypass 24 hours a day for leaks. There is another option insert a spiral-wound lining that snaps into place within the pipe. That can be done while the pipe is operating, as long as flow remains below 20 percent capacity, the draft environmental report said. No bypass system would be needed. NapaSan will choose an option later based on such considerations as cost. A January report listed the cured-in-place pipe with a bypass system as the preferred option. The 66-inch pipe runs near the Napa River and past sections with marshes, Bedford Slough and Soscol Creek. Approvals for the rehabilitation work are needed from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Fish and Wildlife, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board and state Water Resources Control Board. NapaSan plans to borrow money for the project and pay for the loan using sewer service charges. Damron said refurbishing the pipe has been in the budget for the last two years. When the pipe was built some 55 years ago, the wastewater treatment plant was located on Imola Avenue along the Napa River. The pipe carried treated wastewater to district facilities in the airport industrial area. In the late 1990s, NapaSan consolidated its wastewater treatment at the plant near the airport industrial area and subsequently demolished the Imola Avenue plant. At that point, the 66-inch pipe started carrying raw sewage that is more corrosive, district reports said. You can reach Barry Eberling at 256-2253 or beberling@napanews.com. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. BRANFORD - Petty Officer 1st Class Jacob McFarlane, a native of Branford, is serving aboard the hospital ship USNS Mercy as part of the U.S Navys response to COVID-19. The USNS Mercy arrived in Los Angeles with more than 800 Navy medical personnel and support staff with the afloat medical treatment facility and more than 70 civil service mariners. The ship serves as a referral hospital for non-COVID-19 patients currently admitted to shore-based hospitals, and provides a full spectrum of medical care to include general surgeries, critical care and ward care for adults. This allows local health professionals to focus on treating COVID-19 patients and for shore-based hospitals to use their Intensive Care Units and ventilators for those patients. 4-H Youth Program offers virtual activities, programs UConn 4-H is offering virtual activities and programs for youth. 4-H youth educators have shifted their programming online to help youth adapt to the current situation, and continue their involvement with 4-H. The UConn 4-H Challenges are two separate contests, a food art challenge and an upcycle challenge. All entries are due by April 17 and can be submitted on social media using the contest hashtag or submitted on the contest website. Youth must be a 4-H member to participate, and can join online. The 4-H Virtual Trivia Challenge is an eight-week competition for 4-H members using the online Quizziz platform. Each week, 4-H members will join others in their age group - novice, junior, or senior - to answer the questions. Youth can join online as an independent member if they are not already enrolled in 4-H. The scoreboard will be updated weekly on the website, and youth with the highest scores in each division at the end of the competition on May 27 will receive a prize. Youth must be a 4-H member to participate, and can join online. The UConn 4-H Calendar Photography Contest is open to all 4-H members. Youth who are not enrolled in 4-H but want to participate can become an individual 4-H member by joining online. All photos entered in the contest must be related to the youths 4-H project and submitted by June 1. The 4-H Horse Judging and Hippology (horse science) programs are offering youth online resources to learn and practice their skills. Resources are available for all age groups - novice, junior, and senior. A 4-H horse activity book has activities for youth including puzzles, quizzes, and activities. Parents and families with children out of school can use the other resources available from our UConn 4-H program to provide new educational activities for youth. Keep youth engaged and learning with new materials. There are resources for a variety of age groups. UConn 4-H is the youth development program of UConn CAHNR Extension. 4-H is a community of over 6 million young people across America who are learning science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), leadership, citizenship, and life skills through their 4-H project work. 4-H provides youth with the opportunity to develop lifelong skills including civic engagement and healthy living. Programs delivered by Extension reach individuals, communities, and businesses in each of Connecticut's 169 municipalities. To learn more go to www.4-h.uconn.edu/ National Guardsman promoted to captain MIDDLETOWN Major General Ray Shields, the Adjutant General for the State of New York, announced the recent promotion of members of the New York Army National Guard in recognition of their capability for additional responsibility and leadership. Denzel Godley from Middletown, assigned to the 53rd Digital Liaison Detachment, received a promotion to the rank of Captain. Army National Guard promotions are based on overall performance, attitude, leadership ability, and development potential. These promotions additionally recognize the best qualified Soldiers and attract and retain the highest caliber Citizen Soldiers for a career in the New York Army National Guard. For more information about the New York Army National Guard, visit www.dmna.ny.gov or www.1800goguard.com H/K Hall of Fame dinner postponed HADDAM/KILLINGWORTH The annual H/K Hall of Fame dinner, scheduled in May, has been postponed until May 2021. More information will be provided in the fall. The dinner was to honor this years HK Hall of Fame inductees: Elizabeth Betty Cernan, Robert Kadrle, Betty Meyer, Susan Rutty, Carol Sheridan and Edward Yantosh. Flag sponsors sought Downtown Middletown is once again planning its annual display of patriotism and support for military families. American flags are available to downtown businesses for a minimum donation of $25 per flag. These flags are a way to show support and to prepare for Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and Columbus Day. We have ordered brand new American Flags for the 2020 Season. For many years and again this year, Middletown Fire Department will attach new flags and the Alarm Division of the City of Middletown will install the flagpoles on Main Street, creating a show of patriotism with cooperation between the City, Central Business Bureau / Middlesex Chamber and the Downtown business community. For information, contact Daniellelee Smith in the Chamber office at 860-347-6924 or email dsmith@middlesexchamber.com. April 13 : The most awaited Sikh New Year will be celebrated on April 13, 2020 and this festival is popularly known as Baisakhi 2020 or Vaisakhi. Since this marks the harvest festival also in North India, it is celebrated with a lot of community activities like folk dances, as a gesture to show their happiness and gratitude. This can be seen in Punjab and other North Indian states. On this special day, families and relatives meet each other, wear new attires, share delicacies and send their Happy Baisakhi wishes. With the use of social media on the rise, beautiful Baisakhi greeting cards, messages, Vaisakhi related images are also shared across the globe. Image Source: Prokerala.com Celebrate Baisakhi with loved ones May the Almighty bestow grace upon your deeds May you live in happiness and gratitude Let this Baisakhi gift you with an abundance of wealth and good health Heres wishing you a blessed Vaisakhi from our family to yours Have a lovely Baisakhi Image Source: Prokerala.com Happy Vaisakhi posts to share on social media May this New Year of hopes and dreams come true Live in harmony with loved ones Heres wishing you a blessed Baisakhi May Guruji bless you and your family with joy, health and wealth this year Happy Baisakhi Celebrate the harvest festival with prayers and good food Praying that you get the fruits of your hard work Wishing you a lovely Baisakhi this year Image Source: Prokerala.com Good wishes on Baisakhi festival Stay Positive Unfold new talents Be your best this year May your Vaisakhi be filled with prosperity Image Source: Prokerala.com whatsapp stickers for baisakhi This Year, I wish that your dreams are fulfilled This Year, I wish that you are in the best of your health Wishing that you have a prosperous Baisakhi Image Source: Prokerala.com Images for Vaisakhi Hoping that you and your loved ones remain happy, and prosperous this year Happy Baisakhi Image Source: Prokerala.com Vaisakhi greetings and images Hoping that you have a wonderful year ahead Spend your time with loved ones happily Happy Baisakhi UPDATED at 7:30 A.M. EDT on 2020-04-14 African envoys in the Chinese capital Beijing have written a protest letter and governments of several African nations have summoned Chinese ambassadors following reports of forced coronavirus testing and quarantines, evictions from apartments and hotels, and other acts they said constituted racism against black people in the southern city of Guangzhou. "The African Group of Ambassadors observes with consternation the discrimination and stigmatization of Africans whereby they are made to forcefully, and in a very crude manner to undergo epidemic investigation and Nucleic Acid Test, 14 days quarantine even if they had not traveled outside their jurisdictions, not come into contact with infected persons, not had close contact or showing any symptoms of the COVID-19," said the letter, dated April 10. The envoys said that they had not been made aware of cases in which African nations had violated Chinese pandemic control laws, "Therefore, the singling out of Africans for compulsory testing and quarantine, in our view, has no scientific or logical basis and amounts to racism towards Africans in China," they wrote. "We have received disquieting reports of inhuman treatments meted out to Africans particularly in Guangdong Province," said the letter, addressed to Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi. Among examples of abuses the letter cited were Africans ejected from hotels in the middle of the night, African students singled out for coronavirus testing, Africans married to Chinese removed from their families and quarantined in hotels alone, the seizure of passports and threats of revocation of visas, arrest, detention and deportation of legal visitors "for no cogent reason," they said. The group of African envoys "immediately demands the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments meted out to Africans in Guangdong Province in particular and the whole of China," they wrote. In African capitals, the foreign ministers of Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria have all summoned Chinese ambassadors in recent days after multiple reports and video clips emerged of evictions targeting African immigrants in the city as the authorities implement coronavirus quarantine and testing programs. The Twitter account of Black Livity, a news and current affairs website for and about black people living in China, tweeted a video on of a laminated notice in English at a branch of McDonalds in China, which read: "We've been informed that from now on black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant." The notice then tells the recipient to report to the local police for coronavirus testing. The person shooting the video then hands it back to the employee, who is wearing a McDonalds uniform, after reading it. African-Americans also warned Black Livity commented: "For those who still doubt that Black people and particularly #AfricansinChina are being targeted we feel it is our duty to share this. A sign at a @McDonalds restaurant seems to make this perfectly clear." The McDonald's Corp. issued a statement saying the sign at the McDonalds in Guangzhou was "not representative of our inclusive values" "Immediately upon learning of an unauthorized communication to our guests at a restaurant in Guangzhou, we immediately removed the communication and temporarily closed the restaurant," said the company. McDonalds will use the temporary closure of the Guangzhou restaurant "to further educate managers and employees on our values, which includes serving all members of the communities in which we operate," added the statement. The U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, the largest city in southern China and home to a trading district colloquially known as "little Africa," has said police have ordered local businesses not to serve people "who appear to be of African origin." "African-Americans have also reported that some businesses and hotels refuse to do business with them," it said in an alert on its website. "The U.S. Consulate General advises African-Americans ... to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice," it said. Black people could be required to submit to a coronavirus test and then undergo 14 days' quarantine at their own expense, it warned. Two months ago, Black Livity ran an op-ed discussing a recent spate of racist videos on Chinese social media targeting black people, but particularly Africans, including one in which black children say the words "I am a black monster [the Chinese equivalent of the N-word] and I have a low IQ." Uganda's foreign minister Sam Kutesa conveyed his government's "serious concern ... on the harassment and mistreatment of its nationals," the foreign ministry said in a statement, while Nigerian foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama called via his Twitter account for "immediate Chinese government intervention" over the alleged maltreatment of Nigerians in Guangzhou. Kenya's Nation newspaper ran a front page story with the headline: "Kenyans in China: Rescue us From Hell," reporting on "long nights in the cold, racial discrimination in shopping malls and retail outlets and attacks on public transport in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak." "Residents of African descent have been kicked out of apartments on accusations of spreading the virus," the paper said, citing online video footage of young African immigrants sleeping on pavements and backstreets, or photos of signs barring foreigners from retail outlets. 'We do not have discrimination in China' The country's foreign ministry has issued a "complaint note" to Beijing and asked the Chinese Embassy to follow up, the paper said. Ghana's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey condemned what she called the ill-treatment and racial discrimination meted out to Ghanaians and other African nationals in China in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. I have been briefed on the inhumane treatment being meted out to Ghanaians and other African nationals in the Peoples Republic China with regards to the COVID-19 outbreak," Botchwey said in a statement reported by Ghana's Citinewsroom website on . I regret and highly condemn this act of ill-treatment and racial discrimination," Botchwey said, adding that she had summoned the Chinese ambassador over the matter. Moussa Faki Mahamat, who chairs the African Union Commission, said the Commission had followed suit "to express our extreme concern at allegations of maltreatment of Africans in #Guangzhou." We do not have discrimination in China against African brothers, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily news briefing. It is irresponsible and immoral for the U.S. to sow discord, he said. Its attempt to drive a wedge between China and Africa will never succeed.he said. Without addressing the African letter or other diplomatic protests, Zhao said the provincial authorities in the southern province of Guangdong, of which Guangzhou is the capital, "are working promptly to improve their working method." "The Chinese government has been attaching great importance to the life and health of foreign nationals in China," Zhao said in a statement reported by Agence France-Presse on . "The Guangdong (provincial) authorities attach great importance to some African countries' concerns," he said. The Black Livity op-ed, written two months ago, said black people living in China were "all angry about the mistreatment of our continent, communities and people." "While our host country China battles coronavirus and bemoans [anti-Chinese] racism (rightly so) we, Africans and people of African descent have rushed to the countrys defence producing videos in support of the country and volunteering to assist in efforts to bring the nation back to normalcy," it said. The article said the responsibility for educating its citizens lies with China, and quoted the late Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, who wrote: "The function, the very serious function of racism is a distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being." Reported by RFA's Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. The intergovernmental oil organisation OPEC and other oil producers agreed on Sunday to boost oil prices by cutting nearly 10 million barrels a day in production, or a tenth of global supply. Mexico's energy minister said on Twitter that the group of nations agreed to cut 9.7 million barrels a day beginning on 1 May.Energy officials from other countries shared similar information after the officials met by video conference on Sunday. Iran's oil ministry also confirmed the 9.7 million cut for May and June, saying the so-called OPEC countries have agreed to have Mexico reduce its output by 100,000 barrels for those months only. That had been a sticking point for the accord meant to boost global energy prices.The agreement would be an unprecedented global pact to stabilize the market. Meanwhile, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told state television that Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would cut another 2 million barrels of oil a day between them atop the OPEC deal to help re-balance the markets. Nigeria's Petroleum Resources Ministry said in a statement that the other cuts would stand in the deal, meaning an 8 million barrel per day cut from July through the end of the year and a 6 million barrel cut for 16 months beginning in 2021. "This will enable the rebalancing of the oil markets and the expected rebound of prices by $15 per barrel in the short term," the ministry said in a statement. Mexico had initially blocked the deal but its president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, had said Friday that he had agreed with U.S. President Donald Trump that the U.S. will compensate what Mexico cannot add to the proposed cuts. "The United States will help Mexico along and they'll reimburse us sometime at later date when they're prepared to do so," Trump said at a White House press briefing Friday. (Image Credit: AP) Northrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2020 -- We salute industry experts helping companies survive and sustain in this economic pandemic; they are working day and night to help companies take rapid-decisions by finding - Covid Impact on machine control system market, growth/decline in product type/use cases of machine control system market due to cascaded impact of Covid 19 on Extended Ecosystem.. - How top 50 companies in machine control system market are making rapid shifts in their strategies as we speak here... - Outside-in view of top 50 companies client and client's clients shifting short-term priorities Speak to Our Analyst to analyse how COVID-19 to analyse how it is impacting your clients and your client's clients. (CTA) The machine control system market is projected to grow from USD 4.5 billion in 2019 to USD 6.6 billion by 2024; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.16% during the forecast period. Major factors driving the market growth are elimination of need for bulk earthworks set out and survey pegging using machine control systems, need for faster work and more efficiency during tighter timelines, and safety concerns related to workers and heavy construction machinery. Further, underlying opportunities for the machine control system market include growing demand for machine guided technologies in developing countries in APAC. Download Free PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=62579001 The market for machine control systems deployed in paving systems is expected to grow at highest CAGR during forecast period Paving systems are used in highways, airports, tunnels, concrete safety barriers, curbs and gutters, and rail track beds, which can be constructed quickly, with high precision, and at a lower cost. To save time and effort, contractors use paving systems that comprise sonic sensors, slope sensors, contact sensors, 3D slopes, and 3D elevation control. The machine control system market for paving systems in North America is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during forecast period. GNSS based machine control system market is expected to record largest market and grow at highest CAGR during the forecast period The market for GNSS machine control solutions is expected to witness highest CAGR as well as largest market share during the forecast period. GNSS is used in ground mapping, transportation, machine control, precision agriculture, timing, construction, mining, unmanned vehicles, surveying, and defense. GNSS are installed in equipment such as bulldozers, excavators, graders, pavers, and other farm machinery to increase productivity and provide situational awareness to the field operators. They help increase the efficiency and accuracy of machines and are used in task management, data management, and theft detection applications. APAC is expected to account for largest market size during forecast period APAC is expected to be the largest machine control system market during the forecast period. This market is further divided into China, Japan, and the Rest of APAC. Rest of APAC primarily includes India, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. China is the largest market among all APAC countries. Advancements in agricultural practices involving precision farming have accelerated growth of the agriculture industry. The Australian government is enhancing transport systems, and use of machine-guided solutions in the transportation industry is expected to grow. Even the Chinese government support the development of infrastructural projects, such as East China and the QinghaiTibet railway and the Tibetan Expressway, which is a major factor that propels the growth of the machine control system market. Inquiry before Buying: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_BuyingNew.asp?id=62579001 Key Market Players Topcon (Japan), Trimble (US), Hexagon (Sweden), MOBA Mobile Automation (Germany), Hemisphere GNSS (US) and Eos Positioning Systems (US) are a few major players in the machine control system market. About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledgestore" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Sanjay Gupta MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA : 1-888-600-6441 sales@marketsandmarkets.com Authorities are now saying that man who was found dead in a burning car in Sharon Monday had been shot multiple times. Officers responded shortly before 1 a.m. to a report of a car on fire off Edgehill Road near the Canton town line, Norfolk District Attorney Michael W. Morrisseys office said in a statement. The car was found totally engulfed in flames," according to a statement from the Sharon Police Department. The fire was put out, and authorities discovered the mans body. He was the only occupant in the car. While the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is still working to confirm the identity of the victim, initial investigation reveals multiple apparent gunshot wounds, Morrisseys office said. It is not known that the shooting occurred in Sharon. The car had recently been rented by another person who has been contacted by investigators, according to Morrissey. The district attorney said police are investigating the case as a suspicious death," but authorities have yet to call the incident a killing. Law enforcement has urged anyone with information relating to the death to call the Sharon Police Department at 781-784-1587 or Massachusetts State Police at 781-830-4990. It's common knowledge now that, somehow, the global crisis has impacted all of us in some or the other manner. The people who are living on rent are, particularly, finding this current situation challenging, given they have to bear quite a lot of other expenses as well. In the midst of all this, if your landlord turns out to be a true hero and helps you with the rent, there is nothing like it. I have not one but two #CitizenHeroes today; Koduri Balalingam of Gambhiraopet, Siricilla dist & M. Raghavendar Rao of Narsapur, Medak dist Both these landlords have graciously waived off rents 3 lakhs & 10 lakhs respectively for their tenants #TelanganaFightsCorona pic.twitter.com/Fw98Dz1mrS KTR (@KTRTRS) April 10, 2020 The recent example of the Good Samaritan is of Koduri Balalingam, a house owner in Hyderabad, who waived off the rents for 75 of his tenants amidst lockdown. This 41-year-old man owns around three buildings in the city and has asked his tenants to not pay the rent for the month. Twitter/Koduri Balalingam Koduri Balalingam said I know what it is to go hungry. I have had my own struggles in life. I do not want any of these families to suffer during this crunch time. The buildings have one-bedroom apartments, wherein industrial workers reside. As per reports, he has waived off around Rs 3.4 Lakh. He further added "If the lockdown continues and they have no means of earning, I will think of waiving rent for the next month as well. This is not the only good deed that he has done. He has also distributed Rs 2.5 Lakh amongst the poor families of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. For a hero like him, it is obvious that he had his own struggle during his young days. He worked in a bar and used to clean utensils. Later in 1996, he came to Hyderabad and with the help of his friend and started working in a lathe machine workshop which later led to the beginning of his own shop in 2005. Shutterstock Ever since the time he started his own mechanical workshop, he has contributed around Rs 1.20 crore to the poor families. It is a mix of scholarships, installing water plants in the village, paying salaries to the volunteers working in government schools and also taking care of the RTC workers families. I gave my first donation of Rs 1 lakh to feed the poor when I myself was running a debt of Rs 5 lakh. So, it is in my nature to help others, he said. It has already been announced by CM K Chandrashekhar Rao that rent owners should be a bit liberal with rent payment, given the current pandemic situation. For Balalingam, this was already a clear agenda to help others during such times. Hats off, Mr Balalingam. We need more such owners like you! He arrived home as usual with dusty jeans and a handful of junk mail. "Hola bambinos," Marco said as he opened the door to the one-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and two kids in Langley Park, Maryland. "Papi!" shouted his 9-year-old, Nataly, looking up from her Barbie kitchen play set. But instead of embracing the small girl with big eyes and a dark braid, Marco backed away. The 55-year-old Honduran immigrant is one of the few in his apartment building to still have a job. Yet with each day on his construction site came the risk of bringing the novel coronavirus home with him: home to his daughter with disabilities and a feeding tube in her stomach; home to a 7-year-old son with asthma; home to a wife without legal status and a household where the adults lacked health insurance in a neighborhood packed with other vulnerable families. As the coronavirus sweeps across the country, claiming the lives of thousands and crippling the economy, immigrant communities are likely to be among the hardest hit. The pandemic could be particularly devastating for Langley Park, a neighborhood seven miles from the White House where more than 80% of adults are not U.S. citizens - one of the highest rates in the United States - and many are undocumented. Here, countless cooks, construction workers and cleaners are suddenly out of a job without any chance of unemployment benefits or federal stimulus checks. Those who still work often do so in close quarters and at high risk of infection, even as their more affluent neighbors in Takoma Park or Silver Spring telework from the safety of single-family homes. Maryland's governor had issued a stay-home order. The normally bustling neighborhood was quiet save for the occasional chime of an ice cream truck. The sidewalks, usually occupied by people selling food or clothing, were largely empty. Only the parking lots were full: bumper to bumper with cars no longer taking hourly workers to blue-collar jobs. "We know this is an unprecedented time of uncertainty and anxiety for our residents," began a note in Spanish on the entrance to Marco's apartment building that recommended out-of-work renters apply for unemployment and expect federal stimulus checks, even though few were eligible. Another note informed residents that, although the coronavirus had closed the leasing office, it had not canceled rent payments, which should be dropped through a slot in a metal box. It was the first of the month, yet Marco - who has temporary protective status but asked that his last name not be used, to protect his wife, Maria - didn't have the entire $1,270. He didn't even have enough for his insulin, which he'd run out of three weeks ago. So he kept working, even as the situation grew more dire. "Today I heard some shocking news," he told Maria, who is from Guatemala. "On the radio, they said there are groups of people who shut themselves inside and then started feeling sick but never went to a hospital. More than 20 people have died that way from this disease." "Encerrados?" she asked. Shut in? "Encerrados," he said, "because they didn't have money, they didn't have jobs, and they didn't go to a clinic for a checkup." Maria gasped. This was what she feared most: that the same desperation that had driven her family to rent out their bedroom and sleep four to a bed in the living room would get them sick. "And they all died?" she asked. As they talked, Nataly lay on the dingy carpet next to a used thermometer, the valve from her feeding tube poking up under her pink Disney Princess T-shirt. She didn't understand why her father no longer hugged her when he got home from work. "Did their whole families die?" Maria asked again, worrying about a virus that was already closer to home than she knew. - - - They had moved here five years ago, drawn by the low rent and a sense of community that came with 20,000 people - most from Central America - packed into a single square mile. As densely populated as parts of New York City, Langley Park is a maze of aging apartment complexes where neighbors from rural Guatemala now found themselves sharing a laundry room or a ride to a construction site or a bedroom partitioned with sheets. But in a pandemic, that proximity could be deadly. "This distancing that they are talking about doesn't apply here," said Jorge Sactic, a local business leader and bakery owner. Already, the Zip code that includes Langley Park has 97 confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, according to more detailed data released Sunday by state officials about Maryland's 8,225 cases and 235 deaths. The community's true tally is likely far higher. Few of the country's estimated 7 million undocumented workers - janitors, construction workers, landscapers, caregivers - have health insurance, and even those who do often avoid seeking medical attention. "There is definitely that fear of going to the hospital, getting help, going to the police, raising your head at all so that you're noticed," said Mark Edberg, a public health professor at George Washington University who has done research and outreach in Langley Park since 2005. That fear has grown under President Donald Trump, who has combined anti-immigrant rhetoric and increased enforcement with policies designed to prevent even some legal immigrants from receiving benefits such as food stamps and Medicaid. Last month, as states began issuing stay-home orders, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was still conducting raids. Though ICE has since suspended most enforcement nationwide and said it won't arrest immigrants seeking medical attention, "the damage is done already," said Maryland Del. Wanika Fisher, D-Prince George's County, who represents Langley Park. Local churches, clinics and the immigrant advocacy group CASA, based in Langley Park, have struggled to continue providing services. The pandemic's shadow first fell on Langley Park in early March, when cleaners began receiving word that their services were no longer welcome. "They don't want us going to their houses because they say we can bring them the virus," said a 30-year-old woman from El Salvador. She hadn't worked in a month, yet her $1,100 rent was still due. She'd heard landlords weren't supposed to evict anyone during the crisis, but, like so many things, she feared there were other rules for undocumented people. Asked whether she had enough in her savings to get by, she scoffed. "I don't have a bank account," she said. Another house cleaner from Guatemala said her husband had died in November after untreated headaches turned out to be brain cancer. Now on her own, she had lost her income yet was ineligible for unemployment. When she tried to apply for other jobs, she was told she needed papers. "Thanks to this virus, I have nothing," the 53-year-old said. "Who is going to help us?" Hundreds more in Langley Park lost their jobs on March 19, when Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, ordered the closure of malls, including La Union, the mall on the edge of Langley Park where Sactic had run La Chapina Bakery for two decades. Sactic was forced to lay off his five employees and was considering filing for bankruptcy. He predicted that few of the mall's 50 businesses would survive. "This is going to be catastrophic," he said. When Hogan ordered nonessential companies closed on March 23, many construction projects came to a halt. Among those out of a job was Marco's downstairs neighbor, Juan, an undocumented carpenter from Guatemala. Two years ago he'd brought his then-teenage son to the United States, but the boy had been laid off as well. So had Juan's nephew, with whom he and his son lived. Back in Guatemala, where a wife he hadn't seen in 15 years was waiting for him, there were about 150 reported coronavirus cases and only a few fatalities. But here in Prince George's County, there were already 2,000 and more than 50 deaths. "Everyone is afraid of getting sick," Juan said. By Langley Park standards, Marco was lucky. His temporary protected status allowed him to work legally. He was even eligible for federal stimulus checks. But his job was also precarious. Plumbers and carpenters on the project had already been fired. To generate more income, he and Maria rented a food truck a few blocks away to a friend named Jose Santos. As dusk settled on Langley Park on the first day of April, they decided to go see whether Santos would continue renting. The walk was the first time in days that Nataly and her brother, Kenny - both born in the United States - had been outside. Dressed in a flowery print and plastic pearls, Nataly chased her sibling around as their parents talked about the pandemic. "I heard a lady in No. 24 got infected," Santos told them. "They took her to the hospital in an ambulance." It was the first case Maria knew of in the neighborhood. She glanced up at the apartment buildings all around her. "Well," she said, wringing her small hands. "There you have it." - - - The ambulance had arrived March 30, not to the apartment building Santos identified but to the one next door. As anxious neighbors watched from balconies across the grassy courtyard, paramedics had hurried downstairs to a basement unit with a Santa Claus welcome mat. Inside, past a dachshund named Petey and a set of cheery Christmas lights, they found a 24-year-old woman shut inside her room, struggling to breathe. The woman had started feeling nauseated a week earlier, according to her roommate, Yasmin Alfaro. "She works at an ophthalmologist's office," Alfaro said. "She told me people were coming in, coughing, but they weren't given any [protective] equipment." Her roommate didn't have insurance, Alfaro said. When she called urgent care two days after getting sick, she was told her symptoms didn't match the coronavirus. By the time she called 911, the woman could barely walk out of her apartment to the ambulance. She was immediately put on a ventilator, Alfaro said. Two days later, Alfaro received a call from the hospital saying her roommate had tested positive for the coronavirus. When the friends moved in a year ago, the two-bedroom apartment for $1,600 a month was the cheapest they could find. Now Alfaro used five bottles of disinfectant while wiping down the appliances, the furniture, even the walls. She texted her roommate, but there was no answer. She wasn't allowed to visit the hospital, and her roommate's family was across the country. "That's the hardest part," Alfaro said, "knowing that she is there alone." - - - Marco had developed a recipe he believed would keep him healthy, which he prescribed to anyone who would listen with the confidence of a pharmacist. "What I do before work is make myself a cup of coffee, nice and strong and black," he had told Santos two days earlier. "The caffeine is good against any virus. And then a bit of Vicks under your nose. Vicks is good against any allergy, virus, whatever. Any bad air that passes under your nose, the Vicks attacks it and doesn't let it pass." He claimed the coffee idea came from Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who'd first raised alarms about the coronavirus. "Didn't he die?" Santos had replied. Maria had doubts about the health of her husband, whose blood sugar had soared to dangerous levels. At home with the kids all day, she made tortillas from scratch and tried to clean the dilapidated apartment. But mostly what the 51-year-old did was worry. Worry that her husband would bring home the coronavirus. Worry that her asthmatic son's lungs wouldn't be able to cope. And worry that her daughter, who suffers from a condition called Noonan syndrome and who had just started eating food by mouth a few months earlier, would regress without her special-education classes. Both children were supposed to receive laptops so they could continue their classes online. But when they went to pick them up on April 3, Kenny's school had run out. So the siblings would have to share a single computer with a cracked screen. Their parents also would have to pay for Internet connectivity, which even discounted to $10 was an amount they could not spare. "Hola bambinos!" Marco said, returning home from work to find the children fighting over the new computer. "Did you disinfect it?" he asked, squirting the laptop with a sizable portion of the family's dwindling store of sanitizer. The following day, he waited in line outside the bank to cash his paycheck and get a money order. Then he dropped the bulk of what he'd earned into the metal rent box. He would breathe a little bit easier until Monday, when he would wake up early once more, make himself a cup of black coffee, smear his face with Vicks and go back to work. Its no picnic to try to clean up and redevelop dirty property. Its expensive and risky for investors. But clearly, the companys plan on this demolition went awry. The project is now on hold. It will be up to Lightfoot to get to the bottom of it and get redevelopment, safely, back on track. Lieutenant General KPD Samanta (retired), a veteran of the 1971 India-Pakistan War, 1984 Operation Blue Star and Kargil War in 1999, died on Monday (April 13, 2020) in New Delhi aged 70. The Army officer was suffering from cancer and breathed his last at Delhi's Apollo Hospital. His last rites were held at Brar Square in Delhi Cantonment on Monday afternoon. An alumnus of the prestigious National Defence Academy (NDA) and Indian Military Academy, Lt Gen Samanta was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Artillery Regiment of the Indian Army. A former Director General of the Rashtriya Rifle, which is responsible for anti-terror operations in Jammu and Kashmir, Lt Gen Samanta commanded the Bofors Artillery Brigade during the Kargil War in 1999 and under his leadership, the gunners inflicted massive casualties on the Pakistani soldiers and terrorists hiding in the icy heights of the Himalayas. Lt Gen Samanta had also taken part in Operation Rajshak in Punjab to neutralise the Khaistani terror groups and in the 2001 Operation Parakram following the attack on Indian Parliament by Pakistani terrorists. The officer was a recipient of the Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM), Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM) and Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM) during his military career. He also served as a member of the Armed Force Tribunal in Kolkata under the Eastern Army Command. Several military veterans mourned the loss of Lt Gen Samanta. They also recalled the vital role he played during the different military operations during his illustrious career. Regret to info: Lt Gen KPD Samanta (Retd), Gunner from 34 NDA, passed away at 0730 hrs today at Apollo Hospital. Last Rites today at Brar Square at 3 PM. May his Soul RIP. Eternally in Grief... The Cynic (@StratMan001) April 13, 2020 Sad to learn about it. Condolences to the family. Rich tributes to his immense contribution in nation building. Om Shanti https://t.co/wFzVoPhiHZ Lt Gen Gyan Bhushan (@bhushan_gyan) April 13, 2020 sad to receive this news. a very soft spoken and professional soldier. may GOD grant eternal peace to the departed soul and strength to the family to bear this loss Maj. Gen. CM Seth (@cmseth1) April 13, 2020 Lost a very good friend and confidante of the last 45 years Lt Gen KPD Samanta - an indispensable member of the War Veteran Officers Association Odisha. Funeral today organized by the Army HQ in #Delhi. A big personal loss to me. May you Rest In Peace https://t.co/6r4SURpL16 Lt. Gen Narayan Mohanty (@NarayanM321) April 13, 2020 Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, too, paid his condolences to the brave soldier. #Odisha mourns the loss of one of its most illustrious sons, Lt Gen (retd) KP Dhal Samanta. He was a veteran of 1971 War, Op Blue Star, Siachen & Kargil War. A proud alumnus of Sainik School, BBSR retired as DG of Rashtriya Rifles Indias main counter insurgency force in J&K. Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) April 13, 2020 Odisha mourns the loss of one of its most illustrious sons, Lt Gen (retd) KP Dhal Samanta. He was a veteran of 1971 War, Op Blue Star, Siachen & Kargil War. A proud alumnus of Sainik School, BBSR retired as DG of Rashtriya Rifles Indias main counter-insurgency force in J&K, he tweeted. After completing his schooling from Sainik School Bhubaneswar, Samanta joined the 34th NDA Course in July 1965 as a 19-year-old and passed out in May 1968. He then joined IMA Dehradun for his pre-commission training and was commissioned in the Indian Army as a Second Lieutenant in 1969. Sunday, April 12, 2020 at 11:11PM It's easier to slide into Instagram DMs on the desktop now. The Facebook-owned social media app announced on Twitter that you can now send direct messages from the desktop. Instagram is rolling out the feature to all users around the world. Sending DMs works the same way it does on mobile. You'll now see a direct message icon on the top right corner of your screen. You can access existing conversations and send new ones as well. Photograph: Katherine Taylor/Reuters As millions of jobless Americans line up for food or risk their lives delivering essential services, the nations billionaires are making conspicuous donations $100m from Amazons Jeff Bezos for food banks, billions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for a coronavirus vaccine, thousands of ventilators and N95 masks from Elon Musk, $25m from the Walton family and its Walmart foundation. The list goes on. Related: Call for super-rich to donate more to tackle coronavirus pandemic On Wednesday, Forbes released its annual billionaires list, happily noting that the planets wealthiest are helping the global effort to combat the Covid-19 outbreak. I dont mean to be uncharitable, but much of this is self-serving rubbish. First off, the amounts involved are tiny relative to the fortunes behind them. Bezoss $100m, for example, amounts to about 11 days of his income. Well-publicized philanthropy also conveniently distracts attention from how several of these billionaires are endangering their workers and, by extension, the public. With online sales surging, Amazon is on a hiring binge. But Bezos still doesnt provide sick leave for workers unless they test positive for Covid-19, in which case they get just two weeks. On 20 March, four senators sent him a letter expressing concern that the company wasnt doing enough to protect its warehouse workers. Walmarts booming sales have caused it to hire more than 100,000 workers over the past three weeks. But the firm failed to implement social distancing for two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced guidelines on 16 March. Several workers have died. Most still dont have access to gloves, masks or hand sanitizer. They dont get paid sick leave, not even at stores where employees have contracted the virus. Musk initially dismissed sheltering as dumb and defied a sheriffs order to shelter-in-place by keeping open Teslas factory in Fremont, California, telling employees the factory was an essential business. Story continues The third way conspicuous philanthropy is self-serving is by suggesting that government shouldnt demand more from the super-rich, even in a national emergency. As Rupert Murdochs Wall Street Journal editorial page put it, if we had a wealth tax like Elizabeth Warren proposed, its unlikely [Bill Gates] would have the capacity to act this boldly. Thats absurd. Warrens tax would have cost Gates about $6bn a year, roughly his annual income from his $100bn. Why should we believe that Gates or any other billionaires 'boldness' necessarily reflects societys values and needs? Besides, all the billionaire charity combined is a tiny fraction of the trillions the government has already spent on the coronavirus crisis. How does the Journal believe were going to pay down this added national debt if the wealthiest among us dont pay more taxes? Even when this nightmare is over, most Americans will be hard pressed. And why should we believe that Gates or any other billionaires boldness necessarily reflects societys values and needs? Oligarchies arent the same as democracies. The worst fear of the billionaire class is that the governments response to the pandemic will lead to a permanently larger social safety net. Once the virus is conquered and it will be the biggest risk will be the political campaign to expand government control over far more of American economic life, warns Murdochs Journal. After all, the Great Depression of the 1930s spawned social security and the minimum wage, as well as a widespread conviction that government should guarantee a minimum standard of living. The second world war yielded the GI Bill and then the National Defense Education Act, enshrining the governments role as a financier of higher education. Even programs that dont enjoy wide popularity when first introduced, such as the Affordable Care Act, enlarge the nations sense of what is reasonable for the government to do for its citizens. The ACA lives on, more popular than ever, notwithstanding the GOPs determination to repeal it and Donald Trumps efforts to undermine it. As the pandemic challenges the security and safety of all Americans, some conservative politicians are proposing things that would have been unthinkable certainly unspeakable only months ago. The Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley is calling for the federal government to cover 80% of wages for workers at any US business, up to the national median wage until the crisis is over. Workers will benefit from the steady paycheck and the knowledge their jobs are safe, he says. Indeed. Hawleys logic would as easily justify national paid sick leave and universal basic income, permanently. If the pandemic has revealed anything, its that Americas current social safety net and healthcare system does not protect the majority of Americans in a national emergency. We are the outlier among the worlds advanced nations in subjecting our citizens to perpetual insecurity. We are also the outlier in possessing a billionaire class that, in controlling much of our politics, has kept such proposals off the public agenda. At least until now. [April 13, 2020] Life Image and Dicom Systems Partner to Enable the Alaska Native Medical Center in Enhancing Telehealth and Teleradiology for Native Populations Life Image, the world's largest medical evidence network for clinical and imaging data, announced that the Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC), operated jointly by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) and Southcentral Foundation, selected the company as its image exchange and network access provider to enhance the Anchorage-based hospital's capability to provide telehealth and teleradiology services throughout Alaska and beyond. As an acute, specialty, primary and behavioral healthcare provider, ANMC provides comprehensive medical services to Alaska Native and American Indian people living in the state. More than 60% of ANMC's patients live in rural communities and depend on telehealth and teleradiology for their diagnostic services. This new deployment at ANMC is further validation of the strategic partnership between Life Image and Dicom Systems, a leader in enterprise imaging interoperability and workflows. Since 2014, the Dicom Systems Unifier platform has enabled ANMC's radiology group to read remotely and send back diagnostic reports electronically. The two companies' cobined networks and integration capabilities will provide ANMC with accelerated interoperability and drive new levels of workflow efficiency. As the flagship hospital for the Alaska Tribal Health System, ANMC also works with more than a dozen healthcare facilities in remote areas of Alaska and medical centers in Washington state that require image exchange through the cloud using Life Image. In addition, ANMC now has access to Life Image's network of 10,000 U.S. clinical facilities that connects to 150,000 U.S. providers with 58,000 global clinics. "ANTHC's mission is to meet the unique health needs of more than 175,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people living in our state," said John Dolbinski, Director of Medical Imaging Services of ANTHC. "Our medical center is the state's main referral site as an Adult and Pediatric Level II Trauma Center, and provider of primary and specialty care. Increasing our capabilities in telehealth, teleradiology, data exchange and connections beyond Alaska are critical to fulfilling our mission." "Life Image is a natural choice for ANTHC as we are tightly integrated with Dicom Systems as a strategic partner," said Matthew A. Michela, President and CEO of Life Image, "Both our companies bring complementary capabilities to enhance telehealth and improve access to care. The Life Image Interoperability Suite brings imaging and data connectivity to remote outposts and access to a broad network in the United States and across the world." "Dicom Systems is proud to further enhance our enterprise imaging solutions for ANTHC," said Florent Saint-Clair, Executive Vice President of Dicom Systems. "The partnership with Life Image allows us to deploy a powerful combination of intra- and extra-mural interoperability across ANTHC's network. Critical medical data is now seamlessly compatible among disparate health systems, which has proven more important than ever in an urgent, connected healthcare environment." About Life Image Life Image is the world's largest medical evidence network providing access to points of care and curated clinical and imaging data. It is the only company in the market today with Real World Imaging that provides large-scale, heterogeneous, de-identified imaging sets that are linkable to other longitudinal data. Founded in 2008, Life Image has created a digital platform using industry-leading interoperability standards to connect 10,000 facilities with more than 150,000 U.S. providers and 58,000 global clinics. Its network of hospitals, physicians, patients, life sciences, medical devices, and telehealth is interconnected with a technical ecosystem of EHRs, PACS, AI solutions, cloud environments, and analytics platforms. Life Image is the parent company of Mammosphere, a patient engagement platform that empowers women to take control of their breast health by storing all their breast imaging in one secure, online location. For more information about Life Image, please visit www.lifeimage.com, visit its blog and follow the company on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. About Dicom Systems Dicom Systems provides Enterprise Imaging solutions that simplify IT workflows and interoperability. The features-rich Unifier platform delivers functionality such as intelligent routing, SSL-based DICOM, and HL7 integration tools, DICOM Modality Worklist, archiving and de-identification through on-premise, private cloud and leading cloud providers like Google (News - Alert) Cloud and AWS. Proven at worldwide deployments, Dicom Systems is recognized by top healthcare enterprises, government agencies and partners for next-generation Enterprise Imaging. To learn more, visit www.dcmsys.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005061/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks alongside President Donald Trump at a press briefing with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in Washington, on April 5, 2020. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images) Trump Isnt Firing Dr. Fauci, White House Says The White House says that President Donald Trump isnt considering firing Dr. Anthony Fauci. This media chatter is ridiculousPresident Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in an April 13 statement. Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump. Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has drawn increasing ire for his push to lock down the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to millions of people losing their jobs. Criticism ramped up in early April when he called the situation inconvenient during one of his many television appearances. Trump on April 12 stoked speculation that he was planning to dismiss Fauci, when he shared a tweet that included the hashtag #FireFauci. The tweet, sent by a former congressional candidate, noted that Fauci in late February was telling Americans they didnt need to change anything they were doing and that the risk of contracting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, was low. Dr. Anthony Fauci, right, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks while President Donald Trump (C) and Vice President Mike Pence, listen during a briefing on the CCP virus pandemic, in the press briefing room of the White House in Washington on March 24, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Gidley said the tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history. It was Democrats and the media who ignored coronavirus choosing to focus on impeachment instead, and when they finally did comment on the virus it was to attack President Trump for taking the bold decisive action to save American lives by cutting off travel from China and from Europe, he said. While Democrats were trying to remove Trump from office after impeaching him the month prior, the president ordered a halt to most travel from China. The new virus started in China last year before spreading around the world. Trumps order was widely opposed by his detractors, some of whom described the policy as racist or likely to be ineffective. On March 11, Trump added a travel ban for most of Europe as the number of cases skyrocketed there. A patient is evacuated from the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside, Calif., on April 8, 2020. (Chris Carlson/AP) Fauci has said he supported both moves. Pressed by Congress on the Europe ban, he told lawmakers that patients from areas with widespread transmission were seeding other countries. So it was pretty compelling that we needed to turn off the source from that region, he said. Still, comments Fauci made April 12 were interpreted as a knock on Trump, who some say should have acted more broadly to combat what developed into a pandemic. During an appearance on CNN, a network frequently criticized by the president, Fauci said he believed issuing orders to social distance or stay at home earlier could have prevented some deaths. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that, he said. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. The tweet shared by Trump referenced Faucis comments, claiming the doctor is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he couldve saved more lives before noting Faucis February remarks. Trump added his own thoughts, telling supporters: Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you. Staff members (in black) check the body temperature of passengers after a train from Wuhan arrived at Hangzhou Railway Station in Hangzhou, Chinas eastern Zhejiang province, in a file photograph. (AFP via Getty Images) Fauci and Trump have largely remained cordial in public. They appear together nearly every day in Washington, briefing the press on updates after White House coronavirus task force meetings. Fauci said last month he wished reporters would stop trying to pit him against Trump, calling it not helpful. A radio host said that an increasing number of questions from the media appear designed to create a rift between Fauci and Trump, or emphasize differences in opinion. That is really unfortunate. I would wish that that would stop, Fauci responded. Trump has never overridden Fauci, the doctor says. A reporter at the White House last week presented a hypothetical: Fauci and other top health experts tell the president the country isnt ready to reopen on May 1. Would Trump listen to them? I listen to them about everything. I think theyre actually surprised. I have great respect for these people. All of them, Trump responded, motioning to Fauci, task force response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. In fact, Trump said he told Fauci that the doctor should relocate to New York and run for Congress against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, believing he would win, before adding that he was joking. Two W&M MBA students connect small businesses with assistance during COVID-19 Miller Hall: Alan B. Miller Hall is the home of the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Photo - of - Hide Caption Vicki Harrington and Cara Simpson were planning an event with local small business owners when COVID-19 caused its cancellation. But the two first-year M.B.A. students at William & Marys Raymond A. Mason School of Business decided they could made a difference by offering a different kind of assistance. They are organizing efforts to connect small businesses in the Williamsburg area with crisis support and services, free of charge, to aid in their recovery. They will use a network of resources including Mason faculty, students and volunteers in the local community to help businesses with areas such as navigating federal government relief plans, cash flow assessment and forecasting, online sales, supply chain fixes and social media responses. We wanted to get involved after we started planning an event for our MBAA Net Impact Club, Harrington said. We were trying to host a fair where local businesses could come talk about sustainability practices. Because of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the event was canceled. But it got us thinking about all the people we'd met and how this was affecting them. We wanted to be able to use the wide W&M network to offer potential solutions to those affected. Julie Summs, W&M director of economic development and business innovation, helped connect the students with officials in local economic development offices and the Greater Williamsburg Partnership. The City of Williamsburg, James City County and York County each will identify three businesses and the Greater Williamsburg Chamber & Tourism Alliance will identify one to make up the initial 10 pilot businesses to be assisted, with others to be offered services on a first-come, first-served rolling basis thereafter, according to Summs. The business community in greater Williamsburg is strong, and the support provided to them by the three municipalities and the Greater Williamsburg Partnership is a constant in good times and bad, Summs said. To further connect bright and dedicated students and faculty to the business community during this crisis is a welcomed boost to the thriving connections that are ongoing. Details are still in the works, but Harrington and Simpson say no request or question is too small to be addressed. It's an evolving process as we try to figure out the best ways to help out the community of small businesses, Harrington said. While we know we aren't experts, we know we can find the right connections for a lot of these people needing help. Right now, we've been partnering with the Economic Development Council, Greater Williamsburg Partnership, Small Business Development Center and Launchpad to brainstorm ideas and action plans. We're not trying to give advice ourselves but find businesses the right people to get in contact with. We're trying to branch out to figure out the best way to get the most information to the most people. Simpson said that as club leaders, she and Harrington had spent time in planning for their event talking with local business owners about ways to collaborate with the business school. It was awesome getting to hear their stories firsthand and think about ways in which what we were studying in classes applied to their livelihoods, Simpson said. In order to open up more connections with different types of businesses, we also started talking to people from the local government. We quickly learned how eager local officials were to form better connections to the business school. Then in the wake of current COVID-19 crisis, Vicki and I found ourselves in a unique position to offer assistance. Mostly, this came about because Vicki and I saw an opportunity where we could contribute to our community and keep ourselves busy while we are at home, practicing social distancing. Nancy Turner, executive director of the Executive Partners program, and Terry Walker, executive partner, worked with Harrington and Simpson to provide real-time guidance and to connect with university and community resources. Their ideas came early and were focused on real solutions to real problems facing small businesses in the City of Williamsburg, James City County and York County, Turner said. Almost every day, they have expanded their service offering, expanded their client base, and they are making a real difference all for free at the same time that they spend mornings in remote learning. All of us know how smart our students are and how hard they work. But this is something more this is about reaching out and providing real help to small businesses where we live. Its about understanding and caring for a vital part of our community. Both students say they are learning as they make the necessary connections. It feels good to be putting to use the skills we are working on as business students, Simpson said. Every conversation is a learning experience for us. We're not pretending to be experts. The experts are the small business owners and government workers who think about these sorts of problems every day of the year. The more business owners we speak with, the more insight we're gaining into the overall scope of the situation. What we're seeing is that now, more than ever, business owners need to be adaptable, flexible and willing to step out of their comfort zones in order to stay afloat in this crisis. Michele Mixner DeWitt, economic development director for the City of Williamsburg, requested help for local businesses as part of the start of the effort. William & Mary is a tremendous asset to our community and an important partner to the city, DeWitt said. The university is always willing to assist with economic development, and facing this COVID-19 episode is no exception. Cara and Vicki responded to our request for assistance to businesses facing this time of social distancing and other business disruptions. James Noel, economic development director for York County and president of the Virginia Economic Development Association, also is thankful for the resources being made available. We are very appreciative of William & Marys business school continuing to find new ways to assist our business community, Noel said. The latest effort, tied to the COVID-19 crisis, will be of great benefit to our small businesses who dont have either the staff or expertise to address new challenges posed by this crisis. In times like these, we need to draw on all available resources to assist our business community, and this program is a great example of that. The unique situation provides invaluable experience for students. We've only been in business a few days, but we've already learned so much, Harrington said. Because this is a fast-changing time, we learned that the environment right now is fragmented, confusing and hard to manage. Information is being updated and redone hourly, so it's imperative that updates are given frequently. We've also learned how many amazing people there are in the Williamsburg community that are able to just jump in and help. We've had the opportunity to speak to so many that are willing to devote time and effort to get people what they need. A Ruby Princess crew member serving food in the galley is the likely source of the coronavirus outbreak that spread through the embattled cruise ship, infecting as many as 700 people. As NSW recorded two more passenger deaths from the ship, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said patient zero was probably a crew member. The Ruby Princess is docked in Port Kembla, south of Sydney. It is expected to leave on Wednesday. Credit:Nick Moir "At this stage we would think that it was probably a crew member working in probably the galley, someone who is serving food, someone who would get across a number of passengers for it to spread like it has," Mr Fuller said on Monday. "But again, that is not proven as fact yet, but that would seem to be the most obvious point of transmission is someone who is handling food on behalf of multiple hundreds of people." A criminal investigation, led by NSW homicide detectives, is underway into the cruise ship, with hundreds of witnesses expected to be interviewed. Police are investigating a suspected arson attack at the former Kincora Boys' Home in east Belfast. Shortly before 10.30pm on Sunday a fire was reported inside a property on the Upper Newtownards Road. Damage was caused to a front room and front window of the property. Sergeant White said: "Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service attended the scene and extinguished the fire. The incident is being treated as arson. "We are appealing for information and anyone who witnessed any suspicious activity is asked to contact police on 101, quoting reference number 2676 12/04/20. "Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime." Looks like Rhea Chakraborty and Sushant Singh Rajput are still not ready to make their relationship official. The rumoured couple have been spotted on vacations and dinners for more than a year now but are yet to confirm their relationship status. In an interview with The Times of India, Rhea did not give in to the bait once again. She said that the two have never said anything about being in a relationship. Neither Sushant Singh Rajput nor I have ever admitted that, so its not true. Sushant and I are really good friends. Ive known him for eight years now. We were in YRF together and we had the same manager for a long period, she said. Rhea, however, added that she finds him attractive. Our friendship has evolved over the years. I love all my friends and I dont hide that. I am very public about my love for the people in my life, whether they are girls or boys. Whereas Sushant is a concern, hes one of the nicest and the coolest person I know. I dont know about him but to me, hes super cute and attractive. But I dont know what he thinks about me, she said. Earlier when asked about it, Sushant had said that he would talk about his relationship only if paid well for it by a magazine. I have studied in an engineering college and yet I became a hero. It is not sheer luck, I must have planned a lot about it all. So the secret behind all this is that I will take a lot of money for answering truly a personal question like this. It will take a kaand (huge/big) magazine and a lot of money, I need to at least feature on the cover, apart from the money before I tell the truth whether or not I am single, he had said. Also read: Chahatt Khanna breaks silence on quarantine love with Mika Singh Responding to it, Rhea said, If a guy is going to get paid and will be covered on a magazine cover for revealing his relationship status, then girls toh definitely should get featured in two magazine covers and many more things to reveal the relationship status! Sushant was earlier in a relationship with TV actor Ankita Lokhande with whom he worked on popular serial Pavitra Rishta. They called off the relationship in 2016; Ankita is now dating Vicky Jain. Follow @htshowbiz for more The Wolf of Wall Street, Baby Driver, Matilda. Breathtaking Japanese animation, unflinching comedy and lesser known Arnie-drama as TopFilmTip brings you the best films on TV for Monday, 13 April. Redheaded adventurer discovers world of wizardry precipitating magical mayhem in joyously jaw-dropping wonder Mary And The Witchs Flower 10am Film4 Self-educated/reliant infant inflicts poetic punishment upon abusive adults in Roald Dahls magical marvellous merriment Matilda 10:20am Channel 5 Read more: The best 4K TV deals Emotional ties fray under the strain of a troubled father-son relationship in epic John Wayne classic Red River 2:10pm ITV4 In this 1957 file photo, actor Alec Guinness, right, stands in this scene from the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai" during its production in Sri Lanka. (AP Photo, File) David Leans classic PoW epic regarding duty, principles, morale and obsession The Bridge Over The River Kwai 2:20pm Channel 5 A bitter sweet tale of a man, his otter and a Scottish doctor's island exploring love of nature abound in Otter-ly crushing drama Ring Of Bright Water 2:55pm Talking Pictures Clint Eastwood joins an operation to raid a nazi strong hold as plans within plans start to unravel Where Eagles Dare 4:50pm ITV4 Raptor-daddy and high-heels-sprinter save haircut-brothers from psycho-killer-mutantosaurus in monster chomping fun Jurassic World 5:35pm ITV2 Fully aware that he could call the police anytime, Les Incompetent abandoned boy becomes self-sufficient, learns empathy then sadistically burns/brakes/bludgeons burglars in Home Alone 5:50pm Film4 Crime writer Ethan Hawke moves family into murder-home and uncovers soul eating demonic deity in grizzly homicidal horror Sinister 8pm Horror Channel Delinquent becomes bespoke suited gadgeting gentleman spy in sword-legged viscerally violent riotous fun Kingsman: The Secret Service 8pm Channel 4 Flaky drunk and cloistered mum inflict inadvertent reign of murderous chaos upon Colombian kidnappers in undignified comedy Snatched 8pm Film4 Lude loaded, dwarf tossing, debauched stock market fraudster attains unimaginable heights of wild excess in Martin Scorseses The Wolf Of Wall Street 9pm ITV4 Story continues British fluff presenter locks horns with universally despised ex-president in drunk dialing, history making drama Frost / Nixon 10:45pm Sky Atlantic Ever joyous and frivolous single 30-something teacher encounters various juxtaposed London dwellers in Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky 10:45pm Film4 Musically-mused oedipal getaway kid defies his killer colleagues in deviously deft, funk-fuelled frenetic wheel spinner Baby Driver 10pm Sony Movie Channel Distraught air traffic controller and inconsolably bereaved Arnie are fated to cross paths in morally complex powerhouse Aftermath 1:35am Sony Movie Channel Everything new on streaming in April: Netflix UK: Aprils new releases Everything coming to Now TV in April Amazon Prime Video UK: The biggest April releases Everything coming to Disney+ in April Follow TopFilmTip on Twitter for daily film recommendations. Some films may require a Sky subscription. There are many obstacles, roadblocks and disappointments that we encounter on our journey in life while we are pursuing all that God has in store for us. We must learn that failure is not final and that set backs can become set ups for Gods plan to be revealed in our lives. Some circumstances may knock us down, but they cant knock us out of the will of God. There will also be some circumstances that are simply beyond your control. This can be a difficult place to be in, especially if you are the type of person that needs to be in control of your surroundings. So whatever tough time you are facing, its imperative to remember that God is always right there with you. Through His love, His Word and guidance, He empowers all of us to get back up, become resilient and overcome tough times. Here are five steps that you can begin to take right now that will help get you through a tough time. Make prayer your first response. Prayer is a powerful force that we all have at our disposal. However, many times we use it as our last resort when in a crisis moment. We must learn to hit our knees first when life gives us an unexpected gut punch out of nowhere. King David and his mighty men were valiant and victorious on the battlefield on many occasions. However there was one instance when they were returning home from battle, that they found their entire village burned to the ground. It was definitely a gut punch to all of them.The enemy took all of their wives, children and livestock captive. Davids mighty men had break down moments in which they began to blame David for this tragedy and they even went so far as to discuss killing him. David, grieving for his own wife and children, and then hearing his own men talk about killing him, decided to use prayer as his first response. He knew his problem was much bigger than him but not to big for his God. Through prayer he asked God what he should do about this tragedy and God answered with a plan for David to follow. David and his men pursued the enemy and recovered all that was taken from them. In moments of tragedy and crisis, you will hear many voices going through your mind that have the power to influence your next step in seeking a resolution or creating an even bigger problem. This is why its so important to push through the noise and seek God for what you should do next. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.-Philippians 4:6 NIV Learn to forgive. We have all been wronged, betrayed, or taken advantage of at least a time or two. We may have memories of a painful experience or event with another person that still bother us today. Whether youve been hurt by a family member, friend, coworker, boss or a spouse, its time to forgive and let it go. Unforgiveness has the power to keep us from moving forward while the person we are angry with has moved on with his or her life. While they are free, we are held captive by memories and emotions that continue to drain us of energy and ambition. The story of Joseph is compiled with betrayal, forgiveness and resilience. He was a young man that had a great dream from God that had him headed towards a great destiny. When he told his dreams to his brothers, they became very jealous of him and his dreams. They soon devised a plan to get rid of Joseph that began with them throwing him into a pit and then selling him into slavery. This started a snowball effect of things definitely going in a polar opposite direction of what Josephs dreams reflected. But God used this unfortunate journey to promote Joseph to the position of leadership that He intended all along. Joseph went from being in a pit, to slavery, to prison and then ended up in a palace and second in command to Pharaoh. At the end of the story its very evident that Joseph had forgiven his brothers and was now in a position of leadership in which he could provide for them and his household. It was his willingness to reach a place of forgiveness that allowed him to keep dreaming of a better day and reach his destiny. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.-Ephesians 4:32 NKJ Let go of what didnt happen and embrace what can happen. Weve all had those times in our lives when we were expecting something to happen and it didnt, only to leave us disappointed and even hopeless at times. You thought the relationship would work out and it didnt. You thought you were next in line for the promotion, and to your surprise, it went to someone else. You put your trust in someone and they let you down. You thought a door of opportunity was opening for you, and then all of a sudden, for reasons out of your control, it slammed shut. When a door closes, quit standing there looking at it.This is not the end of the world, no matter how you feel about it. How you respond is the key to overcoming this moment. You have to learn to let go of what didnt happen so you can get ready to experience what can happen. Today make a decision to let go of the past so that you can begin to embrace the new thing that God has in store for you. Dont spend anymore time re-living or rehearsing the thing that happened in your past.You cant fix it or change it.The best thing to do is let it go. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare.-Isaiah 42:9 Draw close to God. If youre not careful, life can get so busy to where your relationship with God begins to take a back seat or second place to everything else thats on your daily schedule. Before long you will find yourself running on empty with nothing to give. Imagine yourself driving down the road in your car and you get stuck in a huge traffic jam. To make matters worse, your low fuel light comes on. Now youre in a panic as you google map request the nearest gas station and hope the traffic jam clears so you can make it before you run out of gas. Youre frustrated, angry and may be on the verge of road rage. Spending time with God and reading His Word will give you the strength and endurance needed to run your race. It keeps your spiritual tank from reaching low. His presence will empower you and His Word will provide the nourishment for your soul as well as continued guidance for your Christian walk. Commit to making this a daily habit by taking a few minutes every day to spend time with your Heavenly Father. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.-James 4:8 NKJ Start believing again. Many people think that when they hit tough times or setbacks, it must be a sign from God that they are going in the wrong direction. Often times the resistance we face can mean that we are going in the right direction. Even dreams from God come with adversity and setbacks, but you must keep believing that things will work out. Dont let your past circumstances dictate your level of belief in a better tomorrow. Move beyond the fear of failure and start trusting God for a comeback. God has so much in store for you. He still has a plan for your life. He is still preparing you for greatness. Start believing that your next days will be your best days. Begin to make some declarations on a daily basis. I believe that Gods best is yet to come.I believe that I will overcome. I believe that God is for me. I believe that my worst days are behind me. I believe that something good is headed my way. I believe that I will reach my destiny. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.-Philippians 4:13 NKJ And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.-Romans 8:28 NKJ So whatever tough time that you are experiencing right now, you must remember that this too shall pass. You are not alone.You are not the only one going through a tough time at the moment. No season can last forever. You will get through this and you will come out stronger than ever as a result of it. Keep fighting the good fight. Finish your race. Keep the faith. TORRINGTON Kindergarten registration continues until April 24. Connecticut law requires public schools to be open to all children who reach age 5 on or before Jan. 1, 2021 to be eligible for the 2020-21 school year. Parents need to log onto the Torrington Pubic School webpage and register their child online through the registration portal found in the Enrolling Students tab or simply type: www.bit.ly/tpskreg in their web browser. Information about further registration steps will be on the webpage. Parents will receive notifications when schools are accepting documents which include a proof of residency (ex: current utility bill, a signed lease or a mortgage statement, etc . . .), copy of immunization form and original birth certificate. Parents can call their district school if they have any questions:, Torringford School, 860-489-2300; or Vogel-Wetmore School 860-489-2570. En Espanola: Jenny Garcia texto/ Llamame 860-294-9827. Trans Am Memorial Day Classic rescheduled LAKEVILLE The Trans Am Series, presented by Pirelli and Sportscar Vintage Racing Association (SVRA) have elected to reschedule the Memorial Day Classic at Lime Rock Park, because of the coronavirus pandemic. Originally scheduled for Memorial Day weekend, May 22-25, the Trans Am and SVRA race weekend will now be held Oct. 16-17. The change is part of Trans Am and SVRAs revised 2020 SpeedTour calendar. Ticket purchases will be valid for the October event date and current ticket holders will receive an email with further information in the coming days. Updated ticket information for the revised October event will be available soon at www.limerock.com Sign up to receive the latest news and information from Lime Rock Park by visiting www.limerock.com/jointhefanclub. Updated announcements will also be made on www.limerock.com and www.facebook.com/limerockpark . For additional questions, Lime Rock staff can be reached by emailing info@limerock.com or by calling 860-435-5000, weekdays from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Submissions sought for Memorial Day Poetry Contest During the Memorial Day (May 25) ceremony in the East End Park in Winsted, the Soldiers Monument Commission will include a reading of a new poem. This year, the commission is opening submissions for an original poem to all residents of town regardless of their age. The selected poem will be read during the Memorial Day ceremony by the writer or a designated person. Guidelines: Original poem with a Memorial Day theme.. Reading length should be no more than two minutes. One poem entry per person. Submissions deadline: May 1. All submission to be e-mailed in a Word Document format as attachment, to jjb06098@yahoo.com. Entries must include: name, physical address, email and phone number. The 2riter of the chosen poem will receive a $50 cash prize. www.soldiersmonumentwinsted.org Harwinton Historical Society offers scholarship HARWINTON The Harwinton Historical Society will grant a $1,000 scholarship to a Harwinton resident or an individual active in the HHS. Applicants must show an interest in history and/or the social sciences through coursework and/or experiences. Graduating high school seniors and students currently pursuing post-secondary education are encouraged to apply. Applications are available from appropriate high school guidance departments or requested on line at harwhistsoc@gmail.com. Applications must be postmarked by June 1, an extended deadline. LCCH offers two scholarships BETHLEHEM Litchfield County Creating Hope is a nonprofit focusing on mental health issues and helping those affected by suicide. They are happy offering a scholarship for $500 to two students pursuing their education in the mental health field. The deadline for applications is May 15. The recipients will be announced at the Run for Hope 5k Race on June 6 at the Bethlehem Fairgrounds. Visit www.lcchcorp.org for more information or email: admin@lcchcorp.org Shane Kinsella Fund accepting applications GOSHEN The Shane Morehouse Kinsella Childrens Fund was established in memory of Shane Morehouse Kinsella, who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome on May 13, 2008. The fund offers assistance to children (through age 18) residing in the Town of Goshen looking for financial aid to participate in extracurricular organizations, to organizations serving the needs of Goshen children, or to meet other needs individual children might have. The Fund Committee will meet on the first Thursday of each month to consider requests. If there is an emergency request, it must be delivered 24 hours before a Fund Committee meeting. Applications can be obtained from the Town Hall in Goshen or on the Goshen Town website. Other questions should be sent to Dexter Kinsella, Selectman, Town of Goshen , 42 North Street, Goshen, CT 06756 or emailed to dkinsella@goshenct.gov. Historical society wants to keep in touch Litchfield Historical Society director Katherine Fields reached out this week to supporters about the response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. First, thank you for your generous support and loyalty to the LHS, which means so much in difficult times like these. As we continue to navigate this evolving situation, the health and well-being of our community remains our overriding concern. All of us here hope that you and your loved ones remain safe and secure, Fields wrote. The museums and library will remain closed until further notice. The staff is working from home. Fields encouraged residents/members to visit www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org for information. Please keep an eye on our website and social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for updates, interesting items from our collections, and activities for you and your family, Fields wrote. For those looking to get out of the house, we will be leaving activity booklets and a scavenger hunt in a container at the Tapping Reeve Meadow. Please be mindful of social distancing, but enjoy our outdoor space during this time. Fields also thanked everyone for participating in events and for their support. Those interested in research can contact the society about available online resources, or visit the websites Research Page for access to its online database as well as links to other resources. To reach the historical society, call 860-567-4501. In this Thursday photo, a sign depicting Smithfield Food Inc. as a pig-shaped money bag is visible on the back of a car during a protest on behalf of employees calling for a safe and healthy workplace drives past company headquarters in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. As we celebrate the Christian Easter and the Jewish Passover, our politicians have a lot to learn from the great British and Jewish politician Benjamin Disraeli. Although a Conservative, Disraeli did not lack heart. In 1844, he summed up Ireland's situation with an economy never equalled. He defined the Irish Question as "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy and an alien Church; and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world". Disraeli was also a genius of practical politics who learned quickly from his own mistakes. Expand Close Click to view full size / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Click to view full size In 1845, he critically noted his leader Sir Robert Peel had supported a reform bill of the sort favoured by the Whig opposition. "The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes." But a few years later, Disraeli pulled the same stroke himself - he also stole the Whigs' reform policies and left them with their principles but little else. Disraeli had discovered an iron rule of democratic politics - which Boris Johnson recently applied. The rule goes like this: the majority in a democracy prefers radical policies to be implemented by centrist parties, not by radical parties who might go too far. That is why Johnson has borrowed Disraeli's doctrine of "one nation" Toryism to steal a huge swathe of the Labour Party's socialist policies. Likewise, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail were ready to implement radical reforms in health, housing, child-care and climate change even before Covid-19 raised the even more radical prospect of a single-tier health system. Furthermore, a report in Tuesday's Irish Independent shows both parties have majority support in forming a government. This was revealed by a UCC-TCD study conducted by political scientist Theresa Reidy, for whom Red C conducted a huge post-election poll of 3,000 voters to find out their preferences in the formation of a new government. Asked in March for their first choice of partners, the majority opted for a FF-FG-Green coalition, a choice which commanded 35pc of first preferences. Given that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are broadly agreed on radical policies, and have public support to form a government, why is it taking so long? The Greens' reluctance is only one reason. After all, there are other options - including, at a pinch, a government with a narrow majority of Independents. The real reason for much of the delay is foot-dragging by a section of Fine Gael, summed up by the different approaches of a constructive Simon Coveney and a vacillating Leo Varadkar. From the start, Coveney, and not Varadkar, has been doing most of the heavy lifting in trying get a deal done. Coveney played the same positive role in government formation talks in 2016 when Varadkar was also non-committal. But now, buoyed by his effective monopoly on media exposure arising from the campaign against Covid-19, Varadkar has moved from vacillation to vaunting ambition. Increasingly tempted to go for a second election, he has every political reason to continue his current lethargic course and avoid an early exit strategy. For the past fortnight, his supporters have been briefing media cheerleaders about the alleged difficulty of forming a government. That is why you've been reading so many reports of anonymous FG ministers talking up the problems of forming a government - and talking down anyone who wants to discuss an exit strategy from lockdown. Mentally, Varadkar's Fine Gael is in election mode. They don't really want a small party to come to the rescue. Hence the time-wasting tactics of not firmly ruling out national unity government. That is also why, at the beginning of last week, Varadkar was still speaking out of both sides of his mouth, first saying that he didn't expect a second election but then piously adding that the small parties shouldn't be "bullied" into government. The arrogance of Varadkar's attempt to avoid doing the democratic thing tempts part of me to hope he will give it a go and learn the eternal hard lesson of 'events, dear boy, events'. Politics continually mocks those punters who back favourites. How many respected commentators predicted the shocking success of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, the Sinn Fein surge or the reverses of the two Civil War parties? If Fine Gael's foot-dragging ends in a second election, Varadkar could find himself canvassing amid the ruins of the Irish economy and subject to a savage post-mortem on his conduct of the Covid-19 campaign. For the moment, we are rightly compliant with the current draconian lockdown, willing to believe it will be worth the damage done to the Irish economy, and that it was the only choice we had. Certainly it is the only choice we have now, given our failure to meet testing targets and our shortage of ICU units. But it was not the only choice Fine Gael faced in early March. We seem content to boast we did better than the Brits and accept back-slapping from the WHO - which has nothing to boast about. In fact, our own litany of mistakes is long and lethal. The Government did not shut the airports to skiers and rugby fans, did not quarantine Cheltenham punters, did not early on compel one of our 40 chemical companies to produce the reagent needed for mass testing and, lacking enough ICU units, was forced into extreme lockdown. Some of these hard questions are prompted by Jamie Blake Knox's report from Taiwan last week in the Irish Independent. How come Taiwan, with a population of 24 million, has only six deaths and a working economy, while Ireland, with a population of five million, has 300 deaths and a badly damaged economy? The fact is we are a frightened people and fear of Covid-19 has forced the public into clinging to nurse for fear of something worse. But just as the green jersey was brought out to convince us of EU solidarity that never showed up, so it is being used now to silence anyone who asks awkward questions about an economic exit strategy. To our list of mistakes we should not add one last error and postpone the creation of a government to feed Varadkar's fantasy of a second election leading to a land filled with milk and honey for Fine Gael. Sadly, this fantasy is being fed by the old guard in the Labour Party led by Brendan Howlin, who warned that Labour would be committing a "fatal mistake" by going into government. Easy for Howlin with his 40 years in the Dail, and his fine pensions, to deny young, ambitious Labour Party TDs of the government roles he relished in his day. This dog-in-the-manger negativity contrasts with the wise advice of that most able of all serious socialists, Proinsias De Rossa, who set out an alternative vision. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to be in government leading the implementation of a New Social Green Deal, which would re-orientate the Irish economy to address the multiple existential crises Ireland and the global community are facing?" Yes it would. Majority Ireland wants it, too. An artist, designer and mother has shared a powerful image to show why her mental health is struggling during the coronavirus pandemic - and it has struck a chord with thousands online. Kasey Rainbow, 33, from Brisbane, shared a black-and-white photo of herself with her head in her hands on Instagram and wrote 'I am not okay'. Thousands across the globe are practicing self isolation and social distancing by staying at home right now, after restrictions were put in place by the Federal Government to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Kasey was diagnosed with depression at age 18, and has since then taken medication every day to help to balance it. An artist, designer and mother has shared a powerful image to show why her mental health is struggling during the coronavirus pandemic - and it has struck a chord with thousands online Kasey Rainbow (pictured), 33, from Brisbane, shared a black-and-white photo of herself with her head in her hands on Instagram and wrote 'I am not okay'; she has suffered with depression since age 18 'Isolation and depression are not a good couple,' Kasey wrote alongside her photo. 'Which is funny, because typically whenever I am in this state of mind, all I want is to be alone.' But, she added, in these sort of times, being alone too much is 'not a good thing'. 'I miss my friends,' Kasey wrote. 'I miss my family. I miss hugs. I miss normality. I miss it all.' Kasey (pictured) said since she shared her message online, she has been inundated with messages from thousands offering her support and their numbers to call The 33-year-old artist and designer, said, like many across Australia, she is 'worried' for her business to such an extent that she is 'panicking'. 'I'm saying yes to everything. And trying to do all the things, when my cup is already overflowing,' she said. Kasey also said she is worried for her daughter, who is 'clearly feeling the change in her environment and in her mum'. She pointed out that her daughter can only see her direct family, when she's used to being able to play with other children. 'I feel worried for my husband, who is working so hard while also trying to support two emotional females,' Kasey said. Lastly, she said she is worried for herself and for others like her who suffer from mental health problems - and who 'may not make it out the other side'. 'Usually, I can see light at the end of the tunnel. But this time, it seems so far away,' Kasey said. 'I am not okay. But that is okay. #depression,' she added. 'P.S. Mum - don't worry. I can handle this.' Kasey also said she is worried for her daughter, who is 'clearly feeling the change in her environment and in her mum' (pictured with her family) Since she shared her message online, Kasey told FEMAIL she has been inundated with responses from people who follow her. 'I have had an amazingly overwhelming response,' she said. 'So many people and complete strangers have reached out to tell me that they feel the same way.' The 33-year-old said some of the strangers have given her their phone numbers so that she can call if 'I need someone to talk to'. 'It's been really beautiful seeing people's responses,' Kasey said. What is the difference between depression and anxiety? Depression While we all feel sad, moody or low from time to time, some people experience these feelings intensely, for long periods of time (weeks, months or even years) and sometimes without any apparent reason. Depression is more than just a low mood it's a serious condition that affects your physical and mental health. You may be depressed if, for more than two weeks, you've felt sad, down or miserable most of the time, or have lost interest or pleasure in usual activities, and have also experienced several of these signs and symptoms. Anxiety An anxiety condition isn't developed or caused by a single factor but a combination of things. A number of other factors play a role, including personality factors, difficult life experiences and physical health. Normal anxiety tends to be limited in time and connected with some stressful situation or event, such as a job interview. The type of anxiety experienced by people with an anxiety condition is more frequent or persistent, not always connected to an obvious challenge, and impacts on their quality of life and day-to-day functioning. While each anxiety condition has its own unique features, there are some common symptoms including: Physical: panic attacks, hot and cold flushes, racing heart, tightening of the chest, quick breathing, restlessness, or feeling tense, wound up and edgy Psychological: excessive fear, worry, catastrophizing, or obsessive thinking Behavioural: avoidance of situations that make you feel anxious which can impact on study, work or social life Source: Beyond Blue Advertisement When it comes to what has been helping the artist at this time, Kasey (pictured) explained that her biggest coping mechanisms have come with her art - and drawing for herself When it comes to what has been helping the artist at this time, Kasey explained that her biggest coping mechanisms have come with her art. 'Taking the time to draw for me has been really helpful,' she said. 'I create art for a living, so taking time away to draw or paint something for myself always re-charges me.' She also said that digital detoxes are great for the soul - whether that's an hour or two sitting in the sun with her pets or an entire weekend. 'Sometimes, I go a whole weekend without my phone and it's great with the current news cycle,' Kasey said. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or anxiety call Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 24 at any time of the day, seven days a week for anonymous support and guidance. Near the end of the 2016 campaign, The Post uncovered a 2005 videotape in which Trump bragged that because of his fame he could grab women between the legs, comments he dismissed later as locker-room banter. In the days after that audio was published, about a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct going back decades. Their stories ranged from Trump groping their breasts and buttocks to him kissing them without consent on the lips. Trump called the women liars. More recently, he has denied a New York writers allegation that he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room more than two decades ago. Digital resources to help churches connect Digital resources to help churches connect New and existing digital resources are being made available to churches across Norwich and Norfolk to help them reach people in need and communicate more effectively online. The Norwich City Council-run Lumi (pictured above) project team is working hard during the Covid-19 outbreak to collate the latest information on support and services available to help Norwich residents. It lists a growing range of support available for residents needing help, alongside opportunities for residents wanting to help and will be updated on a regular basis. A whole range of basic advice & guidance is also available in the coronavirus resource area from help for individuals and keeping safe to community groups, employees and businesses. Visit the website Churches Handbook is a crowdsourced index of useful digital communication tools for church leaders, communications teams and church staff to refer to during the coronavirus outbreak. It includes links to advice on doing church on digital platforms during coronavirus including online services and small groups, ten ways churches can help during the pandemic, church communications and digital filming tips, latest sources of Government advice, official church guidelines, crisis management, online giving, mental health, youth work and outreach. Visit the website Because of the coronavirus epidemic, which the global agenda continues to be focused on, life around the world has stopped. The outbreak of the virus made us forget about the crises for several weeks, but over the past week, especially in Iraq, Syria and Libya, the situation began to heat up, and tension began to rise again Last week, there was a new round of aggravation of the conflict between the United States and Iran in Iraq. Compared to Iraq, the Syrian Idlib had a relatively calmer situation. The last picture looked like this. During the military operation launched in Idlib with the support of Russia, the Syrian army advanced to the M4 and M5 highways. The tension, which increased until the Turkish and Syrian armies clashed with each other continued until March 5, 2020. After the meeting of Erdogan and Putin in Moscow on March 5, the Syrian army did not retreat from the positions it was in, and Russian patrols wedged between the two forces. At the leaders' talks, it was agreed that Turkish and Russian forces would patrol in some areas, primarily along the M4 highway. The details of the March 5 talks have not yet been publicly announced. With the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, Idlib dropped to the bottom of the agenda. On the one hand, the coronavirus infection began to spread, and on the other, the radical groups that control Idlib continued to keep the part of the M4 highway, which is one of the two main routes connecting Derja to Damascus, Damascus to Aleppo and the Iraqi border. They recently announced that they would not leave the region. At the same time, there are reports that the number of Turkish observation posts in Idlib exceeded 50. And the question of Turkish observation posts was one of the main causes of the Turkish-Russian crisis that erupted before March 5. Russia claimed that the Turkish observation posts were created as a result of the Sochi agreement, but Turkey does not fulfill the obligations that it took upon in this agreement. As a result, neither Sochi-Astana nor the March 5 talks gave any sustainable solution to the problem in Idlib. Yes, they could not give. For example, at a meeting on March 5, the "introduction of a ceasefire" was announced. Although the news about Idlib reveals that a ceasefire extends to armed groups in the region, nonetheless Idlib is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, trained by al-Qaeda. And the parties agreed that the ceasefire will not be introduced spread to radical terrorist organizations. In addition, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham made a standard statement: "We will not abide by the ceasefire." In other words, the main purpose of the armistice was to prevent clashes between the Turkish and Syrian armies, and for some time this worked out. Turkey is currently focused on the coronavirus epidemic. There is no such an intensive diplomatic process with Russia on the Idlib issue as in early March. In addition, both the March 5 negotiations and the statements after them have repeatedly emphasized that Russia will not make concessions on the Idlib issue. Due to the fact that it is extremely difficult to find a diplomatic solution in Idlib and Russia does not intend to make concessions, some comments and speculations have appeared regarding the negotiations on March 5. For example, the assessments voiced in Russia and Damascus say that the parties agreed that Turkey will fight radical groups in Idlib. In a word, the Idlib field, which had been calm for several weeks, began to heat up again. Judging by the latest reports coming from the region on the one hand, and the Syrian army on the other, the Turkish Army is concentrating forces in the areas of their presence. In Damascus, assumptions are being made that "the Idlib problem will be resolved before the end of 2020." It is noted that the Syrian army is phasing out the last transfer of forces and is preparing to begin the final stage of the Idlib operation, which lasted almost two years. There is also evidence that along with the Syrian army, Russia is also preparing for the operation. In the coming days, Idlib appears to be on the agenda again. However, it is still not known whether Turkeys position on this issue will change. A few weeks ago, radical groups attacked the Turkish Armed Forces. It should be noted once again that the more difficult the position of groups controlling the city will be, the higher the likelihood that they will go to any provocation. Turkeys position on the Idlib issue can cause both a new, even tougher Turkish-Russian crisis and a clash between the Turkish armed forces and the Syrian army. Workers at restaurant chain Carluccio's will be furloughed after a landmark legal ruling. The firm went into administration last month, casting doubt over the eligibility of its 2,000 employees. Doubts about whether companies in administration can access the scheme prompted trade union Unite to seek legal clarification. Restaurant chain Carluccio's went into administration last month, casting doubt over the eligibility of its 2,000 employees for the government's job retention scheme Responding yesterday, High Court judge Mr Justice Snowden said Carluccio's does qualify a ruling that means employees at other companies in administration could also access the job retention scheme. Experts said this provides 'valuable breathing space' to administrators, and may help save jobs that would otherwise be lost. Unite's Howard Beckett said: 'This ensures no one is left behind in a hospitality sector reeling from the shutdown. 'This also offers some hope to other workers [at companies in administration], such as those at Beales and Debenhams.' According to Arsen Avakov, another 12 protocols on the violation of the quarantine are investigated Law enforcers fined three priests for the violation of the quarantine, which provides the ban for crowds in the churches as Interior Minister of Ukraine Arsen Avakov reported on Twitter. According to Avakov, in three cases, the police imposed administrative fines; while in 12 cases the materials are investigated. Irresponsibility and disrespect for human health have nothing to do with God!... We have the freedom of conscience, buthave it, Avakov wrote. As of April 13, 3,102 cases of Covid-19 spotted in Ukraine. 93 people died, while 97 recovered. 325 cases were confirmed during the past 24 hours. A record number of coronavirus cases have been detected over the past 24 hours in Kyiv - 79 cases. 63 new cases had been observed in Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. In total, there are already over 90 confirmed cases of coronavirus disease. Later it was reported that Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra is quarantined due to an outbreak of COVID-19. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr.13 Trend: Certificates of compulsory insurance of vehicles can now be issued online, so no need to go to an insurance company, a source at Azerbaijani Compulsory Insurance Bureau told Trend. According to the source, the decision of the Main State Traffic Police Department to terminate the process of detecting vehicles moving in quarantine regime by special technical means, announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, does not apply to expired compulsory insurance contracts. If the term of the compulsory car insurance contract has expired, and the driver, nevertheless, continues to drive the vehicle, this vehicle will be detected, and the driver will be fined, the source said. Since there are no restrictions on the activities of insurance companies during the quarantine period, the Compulsory Insurance Bureau urges drivers to obtain a certificate of compulsory vehicle insurance online. The movement restriction has been imposed in the country within a special quarantine regime which is introduced to prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). The Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan has made such a decision in connection with the movement restriction in the country from 00:00 (GMT+4) April 5, 2020 to 00:00 April 20, 2020 to protect life and health of the population, ensure uninterrupted operation of state structures and life support facilities, as well as activity of economic entities in the current situation at the appropriate level. Joe Biden, the longtime Delaware senator and former vice president whos now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, faces a sexual assault allegation from former aide Tara Reade. Reade, one of several women who last year accused Biden of uncomfortable kissing, hugging or touching, made the new allegation during a podcast interview last month. This is an excerpt of the audio interview regarding what happend to me inBidens office. There is graphic discussion of sexual assault. Full interview up soon.#BernieIsOurFDR #TimesUp #MeToo # https://t.co/d85Jy7ljQw taratweets ( Alexandra Tara Reade) (@ReadeAlexandra) March 25, 2020 On Sunday, The New York Times reported that it had interviewed Reade on the alleged assault. The newspaper also spoke with a friend of Reades who was told details at the time, and another friend and a brother of Reades who were told over the years about an incident involving Biden. She filed a sexual assault report with Washington, D.C., police on Thursday, claiming that Biden, in 1993, pinned her against a wall, kissed her and placed his hand under her skirt. Reade alleged that he propositioned her but stopped after she pulled away. Bidens team told the Times that the assault never happened. Kate Bedingfield, a deputy campaign manager for Biden, said in a statement that the former vice president had dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women," including his writing and push for passage of the Violence Against Women Act. "He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard and heard respectfully, she said. "Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen. The Times said it interviewed almost two dozen Biden staffers during the 1990s, including many who worked alongside Reade, with several saying they did not recall any discussion of the incident or similar behavior by Biden toward her or other women. A pair of interns who worked directly with Reade told the Times they were unaware of her accusation or any concerns about Bidens behavior. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden; no other allegations of assault surfaced and no former staff members corroborated Reades allegation. Reade said she complained to Marianne Baker, Bidens former longtime executive assistant, following the alleged assault. But Baker said in a statement that she "never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reades accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager. Reade told The Times she came forward on her own and not to help Democratic rival Sen. Bernie Sanders or President Donald Trump. Trump, whos faced sexual assault and other allegations by more than a dozen women, has not yet referenced Reades allegations against his likely foe in the general election. The Intercept reported that Reade reached out to nonprofit Times Up, which helps assault and harassment victims share their stories. Reade said she was provided a list of attorneys with Times Up Legal Defense Fund, but none took her case, the Times reported. Related Content: The digital writing aid Grammarly will now flag the phrases 'Wuhan virus' and 'Chinese virus' as potentially offensive and encourage people to instead use 'COVID-19' or 'the coronavirus.' The phrases were added to the tool's list of sensitive words and phrases that should be avoided, as they can 'encourage bias and misinformation.' Grammarly points to a 2015 recommendation from the World Health Organization to avoid using countries and specific places to label illnesses to explain the suggestion. The writing aid Grammarly has updated its database to flag the terms 'Wuhan virus' and 'Chinese virus' as sensitive and encourages users to instead use 'COVID-19' or 'coronavirus' 'In recent years, medical authorities have moved away from naming illnesses after places or groups of people,' Grammarly's correction note states, according to a Fast Company report. 'Using unofficial names that associate a disease with a particular region or group of people can lead to inaccurate assumptions and bias.' The Trump administration and members of the GOP have insisted on labeling SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, as the 'China virus' or the 'Wuhan virus.' In March, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went so far as to refuse signing on to a joint statement from the G7 after the other six members wouldn't agree to use the term 'Wuhan virus.' A number of watchdog groups have tied these naming conventions to a new rise in racist harassment and violence directed toward Asian Americans. A recent study from L1ght, a startup using AI to prevent online toxicity, found a 900 percent increase in hate speech and racist posts directed toward China and people of Chinese descent on Twitter during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grammarly says it is following the recommendation of the World Health Organization, which issued guidelines in 2015 suggesting that new viruses and illnesses no longer be identified with the countries of their origin Another study from Stop AAPI Hate found more than 650 direct reports of racist acts against Asian Americans related to the COVID-19 in a single week. People reported being physically attacked, spit on, thrown out of stores, refused service in Uber and Lyft, and harassed online. The British scientific journal Nature recently posted an apology for initially describing SARS-CoV2 as the 'China coronavirus.' 'Its clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs for example, on their health and livelihoods,' the journal wrote in an editorial. 'Law-enforcement agencies say they are making investigation of hate crimes a high priority, but such inquiries might come too late for some.' The naming conventions behind new pathogens and their resultant illnesses has been inconsistent in recent years. Some have been named after their regions of origin, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the first known case of which was documented in Jordan. Similarly, the Ebola virus was named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where researchers observed the first documented cases. There has never been a consistent rule for naming new pathogens after geographical regions. Diseases like SARS, swine flu, and the rare human form of mad cow disease are all region free. The Spanish flu famously was named after Spain not because it originated there but because it was the few countries not repressing information about the outbreak Other illnesses, like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Swine flu (H1N1), and the rare human form of mad cow disease (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) are named without reference to their place of origin. Perhaps most famously, the Spanish flu is believed to have originated not in Spain, but in China, though some still debate the exact origin. According to WHO's assistant director-general for health security, Keiji Fukada, the new political climate has made it difficult to use regional identifiers to name new pathogens. 'The use of names such as "swine flu" and "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" has had unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors,' Fukada said. 'This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected.' 'Weve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals.' 'This can have serious consequences for peoples lives and livelihoods.' [April 13, 2020] BIGO Ads partners with Go Mobile and Fistashki to launch its advertising business in Russia MOSCOW, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile marketing platform BIGO Ads announces Go Mobile Inc and Fistashki as the authorized resellers in Russia. BIGO Ads, from BIGO Technology, is an ads platform providing mobile marketing solutions globally. Covering more than 150 countries, BIGO Ads integrates mobile marketing solutions into imo, the video and audio calling app with global monthly active users (MAU) of 210 million, and Likee, the short video creation platform with global MAU of 115 million. With its strong user base and high-quality content, BIGO Ads enriches the user portrait system and provides marketing solutions for advertisers and partners in different scenarios. BIGO Ads utilizes cutting-edge machine learning technology, powerful Artificial Intelligence algorithms, comprehensive big data analysis, and processing capabilities to support branding and performance advertising solutions for advertisers. With various advrtising formats, such as Banner, Native, Video and different cooperation models such as Programmatic buying, Reserved branding Ads and Auction Bidding Ads, BIGO Ads provides a one-stop integrated marketing solutions for advertisers to reach their targeted audience, increase brand awareness and maximize return of investment (ROI). Go Mobile is a full-cycle digital agency specialized in mobile marketing. The agency provides a wide range of services, including media buying, influencer marketing, special projects, design & video production, ASO, and digital-consulting. Go Mobile conducted the first Russian Likee challenge, made for Wild Screechers (Rosman). The campaign got 11 million views, 115 thousand UGC, 36% of that was shoot with the use of the product. Fistashki is a full-digital agency for world-largest brands in many industries. The Fistashki team is creative digerati that believes in solutions that use cutting edge digital technologies as the basis for effective advertising communications. Fistashki brings together some of the best digital experts in strategy, media, social media, influence marketing and online reputation management, to support clients in the digital world from strategy and ideas development to final efficiency analytics. BIGO Ads is glad to partner with Go Mobile and Fistashki. With Go Mobile and Fistashki's in-depth understanding of the market and excellent relationship in Russia, as well as the rich and efficient marketing solutions of BIGO Ads, we will provide advertisers with a better service and achieve marketing objectives. Now BIGO Ads is ready in Russia, we are looking forward to new collaboration opportunities with local business. Go BIG with BIGO Ads! [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Pictured: Kiwi nurse Jenny McGee, who helped UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson The family of a Kiwi nurse who cared for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he battled coronavirus say they are 'so proud' of all she has accomplished. During an Easter video conference on Sunday, the PM singled out Jenny McGee, who hails from Invercargill in New Zealand, for her tireless efforts during his hospital visit. Ms McGee, who is in her 30s, has been in the UK for eight years. She undertook her Overseas Education (OE) before moving to St Thomas' in central London. She previously worked at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for six years where she did her intensive care training. The Prime Minister spent a week in hospital - including three nights in intensive care - battling the deadly respiratory virus, and admitted that 'things could have gone either way' during his stay. While Ms McGee appreciates the praise she has received, she is more pleased to see her industry getting the recognition it deserves during such trying times. Her brother, Rob McGee, told MailOnline she is feeling 'very humble.' 'She said she was just really pleased to see all the hard working people in the NHS be recognised for the amazing work they are doing.' Mr McGee added: 'She is just doing her job and that is how she sees it. This is what she was trained for, helping people who need care. Special people.' Pictured: International arrivals in Australia exiting a bus which dropped them at their hotels as they prepared to undertake 14 days mandatory isolation to slow the spread of COVID-19 Rob, as well as their parents Mike and Caroline, spoke with Jenny after the public praise. 'We spoke to her this morning - evening in the UK - and she was about to head off to do another night shift. 'She just saw it as another day and kept just saying she is just doing her job.' Mr McGee later told the NZ Herald his family felt incredibly proud of Jenny and her work in the UK. 'We are all very proud of Jen, not just in the support she gave Boris - but what she has been doing helping everyday people,' he said. In the UK, the Prime Minister is just one of about 84,279 people who have been infected with the coronavirus. So far, 10,612 of those have died. A woman has her temperature checked before entering the Sydney Fish Market in Sydney Mr Johnson released a video message on Sunday thanking hospital staff who helped him while he battled coronavirus Medical personnel carry equipment to the Bondi Beach drive-through testing centre on Tuesday (pictured), where people are queuing up in their vehicles to test for coronavirus CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement Meanwhile Australia and New Zealand have had far greater success in stemming the spread of the virus - thanks in part to the geographical isolation of the countries and their governments' fast-moving response to the threat. In Australia, there are 6,313 known cases of COVID-19, including 61 fatalities. Across the pond in New Zealand, there are 1,330 cases, and just four deaths. In the video message posted on Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Johnson praised Ms McGee and senior staff nurse Luis Pitarma from Portugal for his life-saving care. He said: 'The reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed.' He said: 'I have today left hospital after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question. 'It's hard to find the words to express my debt - but before I come to that, I want to thank everyone in the entire UK for the effort and the sacrifice you have made and are making.' The Russian authorities want to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to ease the Western sanctions imposed over its aggression against Ukraine. "The Russians are great masters of the many-moved game. Their actions may be unsophisticated and they often act in an old-fashioned manner, both in statements and in diplomatic steps. But they are masters of behind-the-scene, secretive diplomacy. One should not hope that Russia met with a rebuff last Thursday and stopped when Ukraine and its partners had blocked the Russian resolution on sanctions, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. According to Kyslytsya, the issue of sanctions has a very wide electorate at the UN, in particular at the General Assembly. "Therefore, the Russian Federation, unfortunately, can earn some points among the countries which oppose the unilateral sanctions as such," he added. Kyslytsya noted that when Moscow put the issue of sanctions to the vote of the UN General Assembly, it is presented in such a beautiful package that is attractive to a large number of the General Assembly members. The Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN stressed that the Russian Federation would make new attempts to take advantage of the situation during the coronavirus pandemic in order to foster its propaganda. ol April 13 : To wear the perfect bridal wear is a dream that stands on the top of every dreams mind. While most of us are staying at home, Bollywood actress Parineeti Chopra has made her fans go gaga over her recent bridal photoshoot for the Khush magazine. The actress wore an ethnic ensemble that is royal, glitzy and will make your jaws drop to the floor for sure! Both her photoshoot and her caption were noteworthy. The caption went on like this, Ready as a bride. Husband pending. @khushmag any info on when he is coming? She looked adorably attractive in this glitzy bridal wear. She even played naughty and asked her fans that she was ready for the wedding, but her husband was pending. She quizzed on asking if anybody has any info about her dream husband. Image Source: https://www.instagram.com/parineetichopra/ Parineeti Chopra The actress had worn a golden lehenga with a lot of sequins and mirror work. She had donned this royal attire to pose for the cover girl shoot of the Khush magazine. She looked perfect in this ivory-colored piece, and that blouse with a plunging neckline was top-notch sultry. She completed the look with a large nose ring filled with beads, a chunky bracelet, and a couple of sensuous poses that no one could take their eyes away from. Moving to her hairstyles, it was middle-parted, left in soft curls and wore fresh nude makeup. She had dressed for the Abhinav Mishra couture collection- Spring Summer 2020 in the UK. This was a bit different from the first one, as it had an elaborate overcoat paired off with a flared skirt. She wore a huge choker and matching bangles that were heavily beaded. She looked dreamy in those dusky hues of makeup and was surely the look that could put a lovers heart on fire. On dissecting her work timetables, she will be soon seen with Arjun Kapoor in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar after these lockdown coronavirus issues. The film had to release in March but had been postponed for an undefined time period. The story contains dark shades of comedy and the stars include Sanjay Mishra, Pankaj Tripathi, Neen Gupta, and few others. A leading Taiwanese scientist has explained why the island has dealt with coronavirus so well - and said data from China cannot be trusted. Professor Ih-Jen Su, the former director of Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control, explained that Taiwan has prepared for a pandemic since the SARS outbreak of 2002 which mostly affected China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nursing homes were given thousands of ventilators and the number of intensive care beds was increased to 10,000. That figure is four times Australia's 2,500 beds even though the two countries have similar populations of around 25million. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (C), seen wearing a face mask amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic alongside soldiers and officials on April 9 To date, Taiwan has recorded only 385 cases of COVID-19 compared to Australia's 6,300, China's 82,000 and America's 560,000. As soon as officials heard about a mysterious pneumonia in China in December, they started preparing for the worst. Aggressive testing, contact tracing and isolation of the sick were set in motion and on January 2 Taiwan activated its emergency operations centre before banning flights from China. Professor Su told The Age that Taiwan has been rehearsing for a virus outbreak for 17 years. 'We exercise hospital and control measures one to two times a year. The most important thing is the earlier the better for control measures,' he said. Professor Su said last month that the west would struggle to contain the virus because it lacks the experience of SARS. 'The situation in other countries now resembles the situation we were in during the first few weeks of the SARS spread in Taiwan in early 2003,' Professor Su told the Financial Times. 'You are not ready, you have no experience.' Taiwanese priests, all wearing face masks, pose for a photograph after celebrating behind closed doors at the Holy Family Church in Taipei on April 9 The scientist also said officials in Taiwan refused to trust case numbers recorded in China. 'We get not very transparent data based on their presentation so we make the decision that we should take a step ahead. It's almost impossible to have some real data from China,' he told The Age. It took China until January 20 to admit that the virus transmitted from human to human. But Taiwan had been screening passengers from Wuhan since December 31. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement Professor Su also claimed statistics from the World Health Organisation should be taken with a pinch of salt because they are rarely up to date. 'Even WHO is always behind the real data,' he said. 'We use WHO and China data only as a brief reference, but we should prepare one step ahead.' Taiwan is not a WHO member, because of objections from China, which claims the island as its own and deems it to have no right to membership of international bodies. Such an approach, Taiwan says, deprived it of timely information to fight the virus, and it accused the WHO of having ignored its communications early in the pandemic, which has infected 1.6 million people and killed 100,000 worldwide. China's Communist Party regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and has vowed to one day seize the island - by force if necessary. Beijing's efforts to isolate the island have ramped up since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 because she does not view the island as part of a 'one China'. In Beijing on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesman said Taiwans Democratic Progressive Party had 'been going high and low, deliberately engaging in political manipulation, and continuously playing up the issue of Taiwans so-called participation in the World Health Organization'. 'Its true aim is to seek independence through the pandemic. We are firmly opposed to this, and their scheme will never succeed,' he added. Chinese Government Sends Team of Medical Experts to Russia 2020/04/11 Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian announces: To help with Russia's fight against COVID-19, the Chinese government decided to send a team of medical experts to the country. The team, organized by the National Health Commission and consisting of experts selected by the Heilongjiang Provincial Health Commission, left on the morning of April 11. The worst-case scenario is the two marquee names up for privatisation - Air India and Bharat Petroleum - may not happen this year, and what the Centre may get in divestment proceeds could just be a fraction of the target. The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant slowdown in the global economy have cast serious doubts on the highest-ever disinvestment target of Rs 2.1 trillion that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had set for 2020-21. The most optimistic assumption, according to informed sources, is there will be no transaction in the first half of the year (April-September). The worst-case scenario is the two marquee names up for privatisation - Air India and Bharat Petroleum - may not happen this year, and what the Centre may get in divestment proceeds could just be a fraction of the target. In its April Monetary Policy report last week, the Reserve Bank of India said the global economy is expected to go into recession after taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The International Monetary Fund has said the global economy is headed for its worst phase since the Great Depression. Even if the pandemic is contained soon, it will take time for the global economy and the markets to recover. "Any divestment transaction, be it strategic sale, or any offering on the stock markets, will not happen before October, at the earliest, said a senior government official. Some officials admit that the impact of the pandemic could play out for the entire year. Aviation is one of the sectors that have been hit the worst. The energy sector is also hit. "Because of reduced economic activity, demand for petroleum products has gone down, said a second official. We will have to see how soon these sectors fully recover. "These factors will have an impact on what sort of interest we receive from interested buyers for Air India and BPCL, said a second official. Of Rs 2.1 trillion, some Rs 90,000 are planned to be garnered from sale of Centres stake in state-owned financial institutions. The main transactions that the Finance Ministrys Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (Dipam) and the Department of Financial Services (DFS) were counting on for FY21 were the strategic sale of Air India, BPCL, Concor and Shipping Corp, and the blockbuster initial public offering of LIC India. The Centre plans to sell its entire stake of 100 per cent stake in Air India, 53 per cent in BPCL, 63.75 per cent in Shipping Corp, and most of its stake (30.8 per cent) in Container Corp. The date of submission for BPCLs expression of interest (EoI) by prospective buyers has already been postponed to June 13 from May 2. The date is likely to be extended for Air India as well. Already, Dipam has relaxed some conditions for prospective buyers in terms of submission of documents, in light of Covid-19. The date of submission of EoI for one of the smaller strategic sales being planned, Central Electronic (CEL), has been extended by a month to May 16. The EoIs for Concor and Shipping Corp have not yet been issued, nor have the investor roadshows being conducted. For 2019-20, Dipam garnered proceeds of Rs 50,298.6 crore, a shortfall of Rs 14,701 crore, compared with the revised estimates of Rs 65,000 crore, which itself was a climb-down from the earlier target of Rs 1.05 trillion. (TNS) They disinfect hospital corridors with ultraviolet light to eliminate traces of the novel coronavirus. They help nurses manage routine tasks so they can spend more time with sick patients. They deliver meals to people heeding public health orders to stay at home and help police deliver warnings to those who aren't.As medical researchers rush to develop treatments and vaccines to deploy against the coronavirus, scientists and engineers are working on another type of weapon that could play an instrumental role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic: robots."As epidemics escalate, the potential roles of robotics are becoming increasingly clear," an international group of researchers wrote last month in the journal Science Robotics.And there's much more robots could do if engineers concentrated their efforts on the greatest needs, researchers said."At this time, we really need to ensure that we have a global orchestrated sustainable approach to [robotics] research," said Guang-Zhong Yang , dean of the Institute of Medical Robotics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.Here's a closer look at how robots could play a larger role in the pandemic.Robots on the front linesA big concerns in any infectious disease outbreak is minimizing risk to the doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers who are in direct contact with sick patients. If those caregivers also become ill, it means less treatment for patients."When health workers are at risk, we are all at risk," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.Robots could take their place in certain circumstances, such as administering tests to see whether people have been infected with the coronavirus, Yang said. That's crucial because people who seem to be perfectly healthy may in fact be infected and could spread the disease to others. Silent infection is the biggest problem," Yang said.It helps that robots don't get sick, and unless they run out of power they don't need to sleep. Russell Taylor , a roboticist at Johns Hopkins University whose work led to the development of Da Vinci surgical robots , said medical robots could be useful in intensive care units where risk of contamination was a major worry.For example, a health worker needing to tend to an Ebola patient might need to put on heavy personal protective equipment before entering a high-risk area, then remove and discard that equipment during the decontamination process at the end of their shift. That's time-consuming, tiring and potentially dangerous.Sending a remotely operated robot to interact with the patient instead could dramatically reduce that risk, Taylor said. After all, robots are immune to biological pathogens and can be efficiently disinfected with harsh chemicals. Not so for human beings.Robots behind the scenesBut doctors and health workers don't necessarily want to stop having contact with their patients, even with the risks involved, said Bill Smart , a roboticist at Oregon State University."The human contact part [of the job] is really important," he said.Robotics is still a developing field, and patient care is complex. If robots remain in supporting rather than starring roles, Smart explained, "you're not directly interacting with the patients where it could go really wrong if the robot breaks, and you're also not denying the patient human contact."That said, robots could still help minimize the risk for these front-line medical staffers by taking on more menial tasks in order to reduce the time a nurse or doctor has to spend in a dangerous environment.That could mean using drones to transport medicine to and within hospitals, or using robots to deliver meals. Round-the-clock disinfection by wandering robots something akin to a Roomba on steroids could also minimize contamination risk.Robots in the pastDuring the Ebola outbreak that began in 2014, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation organized workshops to identify ways in which robots could make a difference.But once the epidemic came under control, interest in (and funding for) the project dried up."As a species we tend to be a bit ADD," said Robin Murphy, a roboticist at Texas A&M University.This feast-or-famine approach to funding means scientists, engineers and medical emergency personnel aren't likely to have robotic tools ready for when the next pandemic hits, scientists said.It's akin to the problem faced by scientists who work on vaccines and treatments for emerging infectious diseases. If research into the coronaviruses responsible for the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) hadn't dried up, options for fighting COVID-19 would have been more readily available , scientists say.Robots in the futureRobotics has come a long way since that Ebola outbreak. Computer vision has gotten better, sensing capabilities have improved, and artificial intelligence has gotten smarter. All this translates into more potential for putting robots to good use.Today, investing in robotics development is a lot like investing in a large snowplow, Murphy said. It's expensive and not put to use for much of the year. But when a big snowstorm hits, it proves its worth.Perhaps one solution is to put more robots in day-to-day hospital settings and make sure they can be reconfigured for a range of possible disasters scenarios. That way they can earn their keep, and get experience under the belts, until the next emergency hits.In this scenario, engineers wouldn't design a robot specifically for the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor said. The trick is "to find solutions that can be broadly commercialized for the next system in ways that they're economical to have around."Robots on the teamSmart partnered with Doctors Without Borders after the Ebola outbreak began to present opportunities for robots to help medical staff treat patients more effectively and save more lives.Part of the problem with designing effective emergency medical robots, he said, is that the best time to test them is during an actual outbreak. But that's also the worst time particularly for doctors who are relying on familiar procedures to deal with high-risk, high-stress situations."It's really hard to insert new things into those work flows because if you get it wrong, more people are going to die," Smart said.That's why it's important to make sure medical personnel are included in the development process early on. "You can't just design a robot and take it to a hospital and say, 'Here, use my robot,'" he said.Making robots a more ubiquitous part of medical care would not only help them become more economically viable, it would make them more familiar to the health workers who'll need them in a pandemic."You want to integrate it into a person's life before it becomes a stressful situation," Smart said. NAPLES, Fla. The turning of calendar pages to April is usually the sign for snowbirds to leave Florida in droves for the north. Unfortunately, the arrival of COVID-19 was missing from everyone's version, leaving many still in Florida not only wondering what Gov. Ron DeSantis' safer-at-home order means for them but whether they can drive back with other states adopting similar measures. Before we get to that, let's just get one important point out of the way. While DeSantis' order does not prevent snowbirds from leaving, health officials are still advising Americans to avoid all nonessential travel. Translation: Don't do it. To be clear, there are no restrictions on drivers passing through states. Some cities, though, have placed greater restrictions on nonessential travel, so it's important to check before planning a stop. In an attempt to answer the question, we looked at a few different routes from Florida to examine what a snowbird might face. For a trip to be viable, it depends on these essential elements: food, gas, rest stops, lodging and time to drive. Forty-two states have enacted statewide safer-at-home orders as of April 7. Connie McCormack, whose home is in Rhode Island, is one of those snowbirds facing this dilemma. While she's resigned to staying in Florida until at least the end of April, she said she has important upcoming medical appointments and would feel safer there and closer to her doctors. And when she arrives home, she knows she'll have to self-quarantine for 14 days. "Hopefully we are able to find motels along the way," she said. "We are pretty elderly and beyond the age of sleeping in our cars, but you do what you have to do." Interstate I-95 headed north out of Miami shows very light traffic due to Florida residents quarantining amid the coronavirus outbreak. Worth noting is that 42 out of 50 states have enacted some form of a stay-at-home or shelter-in-place order as of Thursday. For example, the shortest route to Wisconsin, using primarily Interstates 75 and 65, cuts through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, all states with some form of safer-at-home or shelter-in-place order. Story continues The quick answer to whether people can return to Wisconsin by sticking to the interstate is, in theory, yes. Georgia, which recently extended its shelter-in-place order until April 30, does ban short-term rentals but that does not apply to hotels, motels and campgrounds. Like Florida and the rest of the states on this route, Georgia has put restrictions on restaurants, allowing them to operate only for takeout or delivery. Gas stations along this route are also labeled essential services in each state, allowing them to remain open. Rest stops in Georgia remain open to the public, according to the Department of Transportation. This is the case in many states, but it's important to contact each state's Department of Transportation to get updated information about specific areas. In Nebraska, for example, some stops on Interstate 80 were shut down briefly after the theft of toilet paper. In the Northeast, states like New Hampshire and Vermont have closed their rest areas. Our next stop takes us to Tennessee, which enacted its safer-at-home order more than a week ago. Like Georgia, its hotels and commercial lodging remain open, though lodging establishments have been asked to close their dining services. The Bluegrass state is not under a shelter-in-place order, per se. It calls it, "healthy at home." Kentucky's first confirmed case of COVID-19 came from a person that had traveled to Florida for spring break. Although hotels are labeled as essential businesses, some in Kentucky have shuttered in response to the pandemic. The Louisville Courier-Journal, for example, reported that the 612-room Omni Louisville Hotel suspended operations as of Friday. The hospitality industry has taken a major hit with the U.S. Travel Association and Tourism Economics projecting there will be a loss of 5.9 million travel-related jobs by the end of April. Indiana issued a new stay-at-home order this week, extending its previous one by an additional two weeks. While hotel rooms are covered in the definition of homes or residences, campgrounds were closed on April 7 with the exceptions being made for recreational vehicles or cabins where the person has no viable place of residence. The new order also barred overnight stays in state parks. Illinois hotels have also been hit hard by the pandemic with thousands upon thousands of workers losing their jobs. With low occupancy rates, several large hotels in Chicago have gone dark during the state's stay-at-home order, including The Ritz-Carlton, Ace, The Blackstone, Loews, Omni Chicago, The Talbott and Four Seasons. Michael Jacobson, CEO and president of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, told the Chicago Tribune that it was a possibility that half of the city's hotels might temporarily halt operations. As a bonus for Michiganders, they can use a similar route, traveling through Ohio after reaching Kentucky. Gas stations and hotels are included in the list of businesses exempted in the state's stay-at-home order. While the CDC does not generally issue travel advisories for domestic travel, it does list several questions to ask yourself to determine if it is safe to travel including: Is COVID-19 spreading in the area where youre going? If COVID-19 is spreading at your destination, but not where you live, you may be more likely to get infected if you travel there than if you stay home. If you have questions about your destination, you should check your destinations local health department website for more information. Will you or your travel companion(s) be in close contact with others during your trip? Are you or your travel companion(s) more likely to get severe illness if you get COVID-19? Do you have a plan for taking time off from work or school, in case you are told to stay home for 14 days for self-monitoring or if you get sick with COVID-19? Do you live with someone who is older or has a serious, chronic medical condition? Is COVID-19 spreading where I live when I return from travel? But when in doubt, stay inside, wash your hands and practice social distancing. Follow reporter Devan Patel on Twitter: @DevanJPatel This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Coronavirus: Stay-at-home orders still allow snowbirds to drive home Jammu, April 13 : One policeman was killed and another was critically injured when militants attacked a police party in J&K's Kishtwar district on Monday. The police said a rape accused identified as Ashiq Hussain was recently released from Kishtwar jail in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. "He is involved in attacking the police party with axes in far off Dachan area after the police party had gone to a higher reach to get better mobile phone signal. One special police officer (SPO) was killed and another policeman was critically injured in the attack. The attackers have decamped with the service rifles of the police personnel," the police said. Reinforcements have been rushed to the spot to trace the assailants. Trump urges Americans to 'focus on prayer, grow in personal relationship with God' in Easter message Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Ahead of the coronavirus task force briefing Friday, President Trump gave an Easter message, urging Americans to focus on prayer, reflection, and growing in our personal relationship with God during this sacred time as most churches hold services online, and asked pastor Bishop Harry Jackson to pray. On this Good Friday, Christians from all around the world remember the suffering and death upon the cross of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Trump said at the briefing at the White House. At Easter Sunday, we will celebrate His glorious resurrection. Trump said as people wont be able to gather together with one another as we normally would on Easter, they can use this sacred time to focus on prayer, reflection, and growing in our personal relationship with God. So important. He continued, I ask all Americans to pray that God will heal our nation; to bring comfort to those who are grieving; to give strength to the doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers; to restore health to the sick; and to renew the hope in every person who is suffering. Our nation will come through like never before. Trump assured that the U.S. death toll from the new coronavirus pandemic will be substantially less than the last weeks projection of 100,000. As of early Saturday, there were more than 1.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world with 103,257 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. In the United States, the case count was 501,615 with 18,777 deaths. The president acknowledged that many families have prayed for me and for my family. He said, your prayers are felt, and I am forever grateful. Trump thanked our great Vice President (Mike Pence) and his wonderful wife, who we all know very well, Karen, for the incredible job they do and for their service not only to the country but for their service to God. Trump quoted Prophet Isaiah, Darkness covers the Earthbut the Lord rises upon you, and His glory appears over youFor the Lord will be your everlasting light. As America battles the invisible enemy, he continued, we reaffirm that Americans believe in the power of prayer. We give thanks for the majesty of creation and for the gift of eternal life. And we place our trust in the hands of Almighty God. Also on Friday, the evangelical group Christians United for Israel thanked Trump for his leadership. We are grateful to President @realDonaldTrump for his leadership during this crisis and join him in rejoicing during this Easter weekend and praying for our country and leaders as well as doctors, nurses, first responses, and the many people affected by this virus, the group wrote on Instagram. We are believing God for healing and restoration for our country. In his prayer that followed Trumps Easter message at the White House, Bishop Jackson, senior pastor at Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, thanked the President for including the churches in the relief efforts. Many churches wouldve had to close down had it not been for your insightful leadership, he said. Lord, let the death angel pass over. Let there be a mitigation of this plague, this disease. Let medical science come forth, Jackson continued. Lord, let us come out with a thriving economy. That silver and gold spoken of in that passage, let it be our portion. He also prayed that the spirit of division in the nation will be broken. Lord, let e pluribus unum be a reality in us. Let there be a uniting of America. Heal the divide between race, class, and gender. At the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, Trump said he plans to attend the online Easter Sunday service hosted by pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, Texas. We have Easter Sunday, and Im going to be watching pastor Robert Jeffress, whos been a great guy," Trump said. "And Im going to be watching on a laptop. Now a laptop is not the same as being in his church or being in another church. Its not." Both Jackson and Jeffress are members of the president's Evangelical Advisory Board. CBS, the network that brought us the crying nurse with mental health issues who didn't understand hospital procedures and the two, count 'em, two, video instances of Italian hospital mayhem to make phony claims about chaos at New York and Pennsylvania hospitals in the coronavirus pandemic, has now put out another whopper. This time, it's a 60 Minutes segment about mask and personal protective equipment shortages at a New York City hospital, which, its report argues, is all Trump's fault. Here is their tweet with the segment: Tonight, we speak to doctors and nurses risking their lives without the same protective gear as many of their counterparts throughout the world, and with Peter Navarro, the White House official in charge of getting them the supplies they need. https://t.co/WuwPAuiCQv pic.twitter.com/HOAhWEJtnJ 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 12, 2020 Wow. With a record like CBS's on this crisis, you'd think it'd be extra careful about facts, particularly since its top brand, 60 Minutes, is involved. But nope, it's still promoting the same dishonest narrative that drove those previous credibility-killers that America's hospitals are all overwhelmed (they're not), and President Trump is to blame (such garbage). One hospital's problems obtaining personal protective equipment has nothing to do with what's going on out there. To be sure, it's likely that some hospitals, such as the one featured, Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, are overwhelmed, thought 60 Minutes never got around to asking the hospital bosses about this. The featured hospital is in New York City, after all, where living space is tight, the Chinese New Year's parade went forward, the schools stayed open, the packed subways remain the only practical way to get around, and the coronavirus has in fact hit hard. Jacobi was featured by 60 Minutes as a proxy for all hospitals, and it probably has some real problems, even though the nurse quoted was an activist protestor, and much of the footage inside the hospital showed no social distancing efforts among supposedly terrified and underequipped medical personnel there. We can accept that there are problems. The "why" of it is where the shoddy journalism came in. As 60 Minutes painted a picture of doom and gloom, and then featured a gotcha interview with White House adviser Peter Navarro, with argumentative questions in strong contrast to the credulous softball questions thrown out to the individual Bronx doctor and nurse (they didn't ask anyone running the actual hospital what might be going on), other stuff around the country suggested other things: Here's what's being put out by medical personnel on TikTok and Twitter, as this 60 Minutes report came out, no social distancing required: We were told we had to willingly plunge ourselves into a Great Depression because hospitals are being overwhelmed. Meanwhile, Tik Tok is full of videos of hospital staff performing choreographed dance routines. What a joke. This whole thing. Infuriating. pic.twitter.com/pkcXwZHipT Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 12, 2020 (Here are Canadian and U.K. examples, too unlike CBS, I checked when and where.) Fact is, not every hospital is overwhelmed. The nurses and medics doing their butt dance might well be fine doing it, given that they may not be as overwhelmed as some parts of New York, and heck, hospital work can be stressful and monotonous, so no harm in letting them have their fun and build their camaraderie. It's obviously not in a hospital in distress owing to an absence of personal protective equipment. The real question is why Jacobi was so seemingly lacking in personal protective equipment. First, did the hospital have its National Institutes for Health's recommended 10-week supply of personal protective equipment, with an even higher stockpile recommended for pandemics? That's what the NIH cited from a Canadian study in the wake of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. The authors reported that the Ministry of Health plans for pandemic influenza called for hospitals to have a 10-week supply of PPE equipment, but they did not account for increases in the supplies that would be needed. You'd think a place in New York, which is more vulnerable than more spread out places, might have that as a consideration. Did the hospital have a 10-week supply? When did it run out? Why did it run out was it an "out the door" problem, as President Trump brought up earlier with regard to a New York hospital, which is far from immune to inside criminality? Sixty Minutes never asked. How were purchasing decisions made at Jacobi? Was it a mismanagement issue, some bad planning? According to HealthLink Dimensions, a medical site, this is a typical scenario: Physicians and administrators seem to agree that ease of use and staff requirements for training are important considerations for large scale purchases. For all hospital departments, the transition to value-based care has meant an increased emphasis on keeping costs under control and maintaining efficient operations, strategic imperatives that have a powerful impact when buying new equipment. Sixty Minutes never asked. And how many COVID-19 cases did they treat? Again, 60 Minutes never asked. Second, the hospital seemed to have had problems well before the coronavirus outbreak. This ranking from U.S. News & World Report is anything but flattering: To help patients decide where to receive care, U.S. News generates hospital rankings by evaluating data on nearly 5,000 hospitals in 16 adult medical specialties, 9 adult medical procedures or conditions and 10 pediatric specialties. To be nationally ranked in a specialty, a hospital must excel in caring for the sickest, most medically complex patients. The ratings in procedures and conditions, by contrast, focus on typical Medicare patients. Hospitals that do well in multiple areas of adult care may be ranked in their state and metropolitan area. This hospital achieved the highest rating possible in 1 procedure or condition. Read more about how we rank best hospitals. A highest rating in only one speciality in a big New York hospital? It appears to be "high performing" on just heart failure issues, and only based on survival rates, which is commendable. But there's also the below-average rating it got for knee surgery, as well as the large number of average ratings it got, and the even larger number of no ratings at all, which has to be a red flag. It also got a "fewer than average" rating for timely immunizations against seasonal flu, which might just be linked to why it sees so many contagious disease cases. Most troubling was the rating it got for "patient experience," displaying a rock-bottom rating of one out of five stars on all fronts, including cleanliness, with only a single exception for physician communication, for which it got two stars. U.S. News says that that atrocious detail doesn't figure in its rankings for determining top hospitals if it did, it's unlikely Jacobi would be ranked among the tops. Sixty Minutes didn't ask about that and whether such patient experiences might be related to management issues with could also include bad supply management. The doctor quoted was a general surgeon, and while he came off as generally credible until he started blaming Trump, but the CBS report didn't clarify whether he was on the front lines of infectious disease treatment or not. The nurse came off as an activist, and a less-than-credible medical person based on her multiple ear piercings, she was the loudest Trump-blamer, but may well have had a longstanding history of union activism against the hospital and was not letting this crisis go to waste. Her claims about how all other countries (is she thinking of Italy? Spain? U.K.?) have all the personal equipment they need is probably ignorance-based, but 60 Minutes knew the truth of that one and ran with her low-information nonsense anyway. In any case, the condition of the hospital is germane to the issue, because both medical people quoted blamed the issue on Trump instead of the mismanagement and failure to plan of their own hospital (which probably pleased their bosses), and 60 Minutes asked no questions. The whole thing - the hospital shortages, the hospital's inability to get what they needed from other hospitals, and the depleted national medical stockpile, was simply blamed on Trump. The left-wing Atlantic Monthly's Olga Khazan, debunked this good a few days ago, putting out an excellent piece filled with hard facts, and credible sources on what the national medical stockpile is, how it's supposed to be used, and why it's depleted of personal protective equipment: Start with this: But the stockpile was never intended to be the nation's great savior. It wasn't supposed to provide all of the nation's medical-supply needs for a multi-month pandemic. Congress never doled out enough money for it to do so. Instead, the officials who monitored the national stockpile were hopeful that hospitals were making their own stockpiles. But to save money, they largely weren't. In that context, the skimpy mask supply in the Strategic National Stockpile is not the thing that derailed the American response to COVID-19. Rather, it's one of a series of planning failures that created the crisis we're in today. Just like everything else in the government, the Strategic National Stockpile is funded through congressional appropriations. That means there's a limited amount of money to be spent, and the people in charge of the stockpile have to decide how to spend it. Officials bought millions of N95 masks and other flu-type preparations with supplemental congressional funding that trickled in from 2005 to 2007, says Greg Burel, who was the director of the stockpile from 2007 until January 2020. But then that supplemental money dried up. Maybe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who ultimately decides appropriations, should be answering a few questions. Not a chance of course, with 60 Minutes. The China factor, and the fact that China had a monopoly on mask manufacture and was using it to not sell masks, was also cited, just as the hapless Peter Navarro did when he tried to explain the matter to 60 Minutes. There's also this: Still, the fundamental mission of the stockpile remained the same: A stopgap, not a safety net. Jared Kushner drew opprobrium last week for appearing to say that the states were on their own when it comes to medical supplies. "The notion of the federal stockpile was, it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use," he said. Although Kushner's wording was undeniably inartful, the former stockpile directors said he sort of has a point. "Kushner doesn't know exactly how to phrase it, but the stockpile was never designed to be for everybody all at once, anything that you might need for as long as you need," Levy said. The stockpile, Burel and Levy told me, was never meant to provide masks for the entire nation for months at a time. The idea was instead that hospitals and states would create their own stockpiles, and under extenuating circumstanceswhen they ran out of supplies, or if they were incapacitated for some reasonthey could fall back on the national stockpile. Sixty Minutes has converted what's essentially a hospital failure into a federal obligation to subsidize the hospital's poor planning. It was a dishonest as heck report that revolved solely around blaming Trump. How happy the hospital mismanagers and out-the-door inside crowd must have been to have read about this do whatever you want and blame Trump. The rest of us can only see a lot of dishonest journalism, creating quite a tapestry pattern of error, and a growing credibility problem for CBS, as this nonsense keeps happening, again, and again, and again. Photo illustration by Monica Showalter with use of Pixabay public domain sources. Countries across the development spectrum are grappling with an unprecedented situation in which a seemingly innocuous viral illness, the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), has spiralled into a global pandemic in less than 90 days. It has infected more than 1.7 million people in more than 200 countries, claimed over 100,000 lives, and brought most of the world to a standstill. In India, the authorities have responded decisively with a strong whole-of-government approach. However, given the enormity of the challenge, we also need a whole-of-society response. According to the World Health Organization, a critical lesson from the 2014-16 West African Ebola crisis is that both the public and private sectors need to work in tandem in responding to large-scale epidemics. In the Covid-19 response, the private sector in the country for-profit and not-for-profit segments has to play an even more important role, as it is the dominant provider of health services. The National Sample Survey Offices 71st round data shows that private hospitals, clinics and nursing homes provide over 70% of health care. Data on the nearly 10 million treatments received under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) corroborate this finding. At present, most of the Covid-19 testing and treatment are being done in public facilities. As the epidemic progresses, both these services will need to be expanded several-fold, and the private sector will need to step in as a major partner and stakeholder. First, the creation of a large and accessible testing infrastructure is a key weapon to battle the virus. Countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Germany and Japan have been successful in controlling its spread and reducing mortality through early detection and quick containment. This has been possible only through widespread testing. India has opened testing up to private labs and payment for testing is covered under the ABPM-JAY as well. We need to substantially expand our testing capacity, something not possible without the active participation of the private sector. Second, as the government deepens its containment efforts, the numbers of quarantine units, isolation wards and intensive care unit (ICU) beds in dedicated Covid-19 hospitals have to be rapidly increased. It will also need to ensure increased and continued supply of essential medical products, from testing kits, masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) items to oxygen and ventilators. According to a recent Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) study, around 5% of those infected will need intensive care and half of those in ICUs will need mechanical ventilation. The study was based on available global epidemiological parameters from the initial phase of the outbreak and comparison with other countries with similar transmission dynamics. These projections translate into large numbers that considerably exceed the capacity of the governments health care system. During the current crisis, the activities of the private health sector should be the core part of national health efforts. Private hospitals with adequate infrastructure will need to be converted into dedicated Covid-19 hospitals. This process will, of course, have to be steered by the government through a clear policy framework of designated hospitals, reporting and referral systems, and an appropriate payment system. The experience of purchasing health care services through the ABPM-JAY can be the template. Some private hospitals can help in managing the treatment of non-Covid-19 patients. With many government facilities being converted into dedicated Covid-19 hospitals, a large number of non-Covid-19 patients will need facilities and providers to take care of their health care needs. The ABPM-JAY has started a process to bring on board more hospitals to respond to such needs. It is assisting state governments in temporarily empanelling additional health facilities to provide emergency care and treatment for other serious illnesses to all citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable. Third, as more private providers join this fight, a major concern that is bound to arise is keeping health care workers from getting infected. Ensuring the protection of doctors, nurses, paramedics, lab technicians and other health care facility staff from infection is of paramount importance. Companies manufacturing essential medical products such as ventilators, masks, face shields, clinical gloves, hand-sanitisers, and sterilisation equipment will need to crank up their production lines. Direct support from banks may be needed for this. Fourth, the private sector will need to vigorously support the large ecosystem that drives the health system, as the lockdown and ongoing epidemic restrict movement and normal economic activities. The production of essential drugs and medical products, logistics to maintain smooth supply, transportation of health workers, and delivery of food and other essential items must continue and also accelerate. Support for community activities such as night shelters and community kitchens must be strengthened. Finally, an adequate stage-wise response to the pandemic and its economic, social and political aftermath will require filling many knowledge gaps. Government, private and not-for-profit research institutions need to collaborate to understand the nature of transmission of the virus, the factors that helps to slow down its spread, the most at-risk communities, or the optimal quarantine period. The fight against Covid-19 involves the continuous management of an evolving public health crisis that threatens to create economic and social disruptions. This is an appeal to all private and charitable health care institutions to join this effort for our people and humanity. It is the time to embrace reality and play our individual and collective roles in the fight. Indu Bhushan is CEO, Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY and National Health Authority. The views expressed are personal ICA members in Longford are embarking on a campaign 'Sew Scrubs for Ireland' and National President, Josephine Helly, is calling for expressions of interest. Josephine explained "I have been in discussions for some days about a project Sew Scrubs for Ireland - which may be of interest to some of our talented ICA women at this time. The idea grew from discussion with Sinead Lawlor, who, with her colleagues in the costume industry have been busy cutting and making scrubs for the past few days for a hospital and a day centre in Dublin. Sinead is a creative young woman who works in costume production and has many contacts in that field. "The scrubs comprise a top and tunic, and trousers. Guild members who would like to make scrubs to meet a need in their community would be supplied with a package including an instruction leaflet and diagram; cut fabric pieces; tape for binding edges and finishing the inside neckline; plus a drawstring for the waist of the trousers. It would be helpful if the maker has thread but it can be supplied if needed. The kits will be supplied in sizes S, M, L, XL as required by demand. "The package will be sent out, probably in a plastic sleeve to each member individually who has expressed an interest, so that it comes to their door. "Perhaps a number of guild members in a particular community would like to make them for one nursing home or hospice as a collective effort they would be sent the required number of scrubs to be made (to each member individually), so again the package comes to their door. "I believe that any organisation or service that has either requested help, or that you know needs the help, will find a way to collect the finished scrubs from your door in any local area. That is how I see the distribution aspect working within the community. The Community Call Network in your area may also be an option. "To answer this call and to express your interest in this project, please write the word Scrubs in the subject bar and email to manager@ica.ie who will liaise with Sinead on my behalf. Please indicate how many scrubs you would be willing to make and include your full name, guild, federation and contact mobile number/postal and email address. "If you know of any other members who might not be on this distribution list and who might like to become involved, please let them know, I look forward to hearing back from you on this helpful community project, " Josephine concluded. On Saturday, Dominic Sandbrook one of our most eminent historians celebrated the joys of non-fiction by paying tribute to the authors of diaries. Today, he celebrates historians. Whether it's Edward Gibbon's magisterial dissection of the fall of the Roman Empire or Ian Kershaw's devastating portrait of Hitler, these works show it is only by learning the lessons of the past that we can face the future with confidence. Here, Dominic presents his selection of the 20 best ever history books. Pictures from the television programme: Charles II: The Power And The Passion A Gambling Man: Charles II And The Restoration By Jenny Uglow Yes, there's a plague in this book the Great Plague of London in 1665 but lots of jollier stuff, too. The reign of Charles II is an irresistible subject, all card games and theatres, high-class hookers and Westminster intrigues, and Jenny Uglow recreates it brilliantly. She could hardly want a more entertaining central character a gambling, hedonistic monarch with an eye for the ladies. But there's also lots of stuff about wars with the Dutch, the Scientific Revolution and the mad excesses of Restoration fashion. A hugely colourful, panoramic picture of a lost world. The Histories By Herodotus The first history book ever written, and still, some say, the most entertaining. Written in 440BC, Herodotus's book is ostensibly a history of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians. But it has everything: from mad digressions about gods and monsters to carefully researched descriptions of the ancient world. His analysis of political hubris still resonates today, but much of the fun lies in working out what's true and what isn't. 'There are enormous snakes there,' Herodotus says of Libya, 'and also lions, elephants, headless creatures with eyes in their chests...' The Age Of Illusion By Ronald Blythe This classic history of Britain between the wars is trenchant, opinionated and often shamelessly unfair. That is to say, it's brilliant. Quite apart from the waspish pen-portraits of politicians and royalty, you should read it for the hilarious chapter on the disgraced Rector of Stiffkey, whose antics horrified Mail readers in the 1930s. The Rector, says Blythe, was a man with one weakness girls: 'Not a girl, not five or six girls even, not a hundred, but the entire tremulous universe of girlhood.' But he died as he would have wanted, mauled by a lion before an audience on Skegness seafront. Nicholas & Alexandra By Robert K. Massie Unless you're a cardcarrying Communist, there's something seductively romantic about the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their five children. Yes, they often seemed spoiled and self-indulgent. But they deserved better than to be murdered in a grimy basement by Bolshevik thugs. Robert K. Massie tells their story with sense and sympathy: alive to their shortcomings, but seeing them as rounded human beings. His book brims with colour, from the mad mysticism of Rasputin to the drama of the Russian Revolution. But at its centre is a loving family doomed to a terrible fate. Tsarina Alexandra, wife of Nicholas II of Russia, the last Russian Tsar The Twelve Caesars By Suetonius Published in AD 121, Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars gives and X-rated account of Rome's first imperial dynasty. Caligula 'lived in the habit of incest with all his sisters', while Nero 'whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing'. Is it true? Well, like all historians, Suetonius had his prejudices, and he was no stranger to exaggeration. To be honest, who cares? Helen Mirren in 'Caligula' 1979. Caligula is one of the Caesars featured in The Twelve Caesars 1493 By Charles C. Mann This is an extraordinary book, which will change the way you think about human history. It's about what happened after Columbus discovered the Americas. For Mann, this was the most important biological event since the end of the dinosaurs. It's the story of smallpox and malaria, potatoes and chocolate. The sweep is awe-inspiring. One moment we're at the great Potosi silver mine in 17th-century Bolivia, where gangs of conscripted Indians toiled miserably in darkness. Then to eastern China, where merchants paid a fortune in porcelain for Potosi's silver, which they promptly swapped for Virginian tobacco. You'll never think about the world in the same way again. The Normans In The South and The Kingdom In The Sun By John Julius Norwich Today, far too many historians forget that their subject is meant to be fun. Nobody could say that about the late John Julius Norwich, whose medieval narratives all kings, battles, plots and murders make Game Of Thrones look drab. For sheer escapism, his history of the Normans in Sicily is hard to beat. Its two volumes cover almost 200 years, in which these FrancoScandinavian adventurers carved out their own kingdom on the Mediterranean island. Their subjects (Italians, Arabs and Byzantines) built soaring cathedrals and sumptuous mosaics which you can still see today. Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658) Leading Parliamentarian in the English Civil Wars Cromwell, Our Chief Of Men By Antonia Fraser Oliver Cromwell remains the most intriguing political character in British history: a born-again farmer who became a rebellious MP, Parliamentarian general, military dictator and our only non-royal head of state. Antonia Fraser tells his story with tremendous brio and sympathy. There are lots of bloody Civil War battles, obviously. But Fraser also writes about Cromwell's religious convictions, his fondness for music and his gnawing feelings of self-doubt. He emerges as a flawed, very human character, but also a genuinely great one. The Conquest Of The Incas By John Hemming First published half a century ago, this classic account of the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire is still an outstanding historical narrative. John Hemming takes you not just into the cities and jungles of 16-century Peru, but into the hopes and fears of the Spanish and the Incas, showing you just what made the two sides tick. The drama of Francisco Pizarro's journey into the unknown, the exotic mystery of the Inca civilisation, the tragedy of the captured emperor Atahualpa it all makes for enormously exciting reading. The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire By Edward Gibbon 'Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble!' exclaimed the Duke of Gloucester on seeing the second volume of Edward Gibbon's masterwork. It's lucky Gibbon ignored him, because the result is the greatest history book ever written. This grand narrative of the fall of the Roman Empire took him 23 years, from 1776 to 1789, but it was worth it. Covering centuries of history, and sweeping from Hadrian's Wall to the deserts of Africa, it's an epic unlike any other, told with gloriously dry wit. Last Letters Home By Tamasin Day-Lewis (ed.) Many of these letters from World War II are so moving you'll never forget them. They include messages between parents and children, brothers and sisters, soldiers and their sweethearts. 'I want no flowers ...no tears. All I want is for you to remember me and feel proud of me; then I shall rest in peace, knowing that I have done a good job,' writes Ivor Rowberry to his mother, just before he goes into action at Arnhem. But by the time it got to her Wolverhampton home, Ivor was dead. Beyond The Northlands: Viking Voyages And The Old Norse Sagas By Eleanor Rosamond Barraclough This is a lovely book, written by a young Oxford historian who clearly adores her subject. Her story sweeps from Iceland and Greenland to Russia and the Black Sea, taking in manuscripts, monsters, dragons and runestones. It's learned, engaging and beautifully illustrated, and she's brilliant at exploring the real history behind all those blood-curdling stories of Odin, Loki and Thor. Nelson: A Dream Of Glory and Nelson: The Sword Of Albion By John Sugden If the thought of Horatio Nelson pacing the deck of HMS Victory doesn't stir your blood, there's something wrong with you. John Sugden's titanic two-volume life, one of the greatest biographies ever written, takes the great man from his boyhood in a Norfolk rectory to the foaming seas of the Mediterranean. True, Nelson often comes across as a bit of a pain, for ever moaning about his dodgy bowels and mooning over Emma Hamilton. But by the time you reach Trafalgar, the tension and excitement are almost unbearable. As the sea air fills with blood, the masts splinter and crack and the French sniper takes aim, you can't help hoping that, somehow, England's greatest hero is going to dodge that bullet. Picture from That Hamilton Woman (1941) starring Vivien Leigh as Emma Lady Hamilton and Laurence Olivier as Lord Horatio Nelson Germania: A Personal History Of Germans Ancient And Modern By Simon Winder It's rare to find a genuinely hilarious history book, which is why Simon Winder's idiosyncratic exploration of Germany's past is such a treat. Propelled by boyish enthusiasm, he roams through churches, castles, beer halls and restaurants, turning up weird stories about apocalyptic sects and demented barons. The ghastly moment when he orders the 'slaughterhouse platter' in a Frankfurt restaurant is so funny I defy you to read it with a straight face. But there's plenty of wisdom and learning here, too, as Winder reminds you that there's more to Germany's colourful history than the crimes of the Nazis. Battle Cry Of Freedom By James McPherson The first genuinely modern conflict, the American Civil War is a cracking story. James McPherson's award-winning history covers it all in glorious detail: the slave plantations of the Deep South, the enigmatic personality of Abraham Lincoln, the gallantry of the rival commanders, the high drama of Gettysburg and Bull Run, and the appalling human costs of industrialised warfare. Unlike some military historians, he never gets bogged down in tedious blow-by-blow battle narratives, but you get a sense of the stakes. Had the war gone differently, as it might well have done, our world would look very different. A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 By Frederic Morton I can never understand why this book isn't better known, because it's absolutely superb. It whisks us back to the crowded coffee houses and theatres of fin-de-siecle Vienna, where we meet the likes of Sigmund Freud and Gustav Klimt. But the most compelling character is Crown Prince Rudolf, the tortured heir to the imperial throne, who makes a suicide pact with his teenage mistress. Exactly what happened at Rudolf's Mayerling hunting lodge has fascinated writers and composers ever since. And Morton does a brilliant job of setting it against the background of a febrile, glittering city on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The White War: Life And Death On The Italian Front, 1915-1919 By Mark Thompson This book explores a side of World War I we don't often hear about: the bloody struggle between Italy and Austria-Hungary among the snow-capped peaks of the Dolomite Alps. In less than four years, a million men died. Yet even by the standards of the time, it was completely unnecessary. The Italians didn't need to declare war on Austria; they did it out of vainglorious nationalism. Mark Thompson tells the story with great pathos, showing how the Italians' hubris turned to nemesis, and paved the way for the rise of Mussolini. It's a model of how to write about war, full of memorable little details but never blind to the bigger picture. The Life of Samuel Johnson By James Boswell First published in 1791, Boswell's life of his great friend Dr Johnson, famous for his groundbreaking dictionary, is often seen as the first modern biography. And it brings its eccentric, shambling subject alive as no book had ever done before. By the end, you feel you know Johnson, with all his tics and quirks. But it's also a marvellous window on to mid-18th century England, from Johnson's boyhood in Lichfield to the swanky salons of literary London a world stuffed with corrupt politicians, narcissistic writers and pompous actors. Nothing changes, eh? Hitler By Ian Kershaw Condensed from the original two volumes into a single epic book, Sir Ian Kershaw's biography of the Nazi dictator is one of the great historical achievements of our time. Not only does he look behind Hitler's bombastic facade to find the lonely, lazy, bitter human being within, but he explores why so many intelligent Germans supported him, and exactly how his blood-drenched dictatorship worked. Even if you think you know the story, it's an utterly engrossing, if terrifying read. The final chapters, in which the pace quickens, the Nazi empire crumbles and the beleaguered tyrant retreats to his bunker, are breathtakingly well done. Historical image: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German statesman, in Berchtesgaden SecondHand Time By Svetlana Alexievich Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Svetlana Alexievich has a unique method, bringing together the voices of countless interviewees to create an extraordinary literary chorus. Her previous books covered subjects such as World War II and Chernobyl, but this is her most moving and ambitious yet, a history of life and death in the Soviet Union. Some of her subjects' memories are almost unbearably heartrending, especially when they describe the rigours of wartime or the horror of Stalin's camps. But it's a sign of her skill and judgment that you keep reading, drawn back to the raw humanity of her stricken characters and their unforgettable stories. The state has deployed 40 companies of the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) in zones which have been earmarked as Covid-19 hotspots. Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh said the government may even deploy Rapid Action Force (RAF) or Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), if need be, to contain the spread. The force has been deployed in red zones, which have a sizable number of Covid-19 patients, namely Dharavi and Worli-Koliwada in Mumbai, Gultekadi in Pune and Malegaon in Nashik. The hotspots have curfew-like restrictions. We have given SRPF companies depending on the demand from district collectors or commissioners. Forty such companies of about 90 to 110 personnel have been deployed in various parts of the state, Deshmukh told HT. Their [RAF and CRPF] deployment is done in extreme conditions, but I dont think that will be required. We will be able to handle the situation with the help of local police and SRPF, he said. Mumbai MLAs and ministers Varsha Gaikwad and Aslam Shaikh had demanded deployment of the SRPF in areas like Worli and Dharavi. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The crisis in the United States cannot end if the covid-19 pandemic rages elsewhere in the world. It's that simple: In our interconnected world, Americans are vulnerable to infection. The World Health Organization urgently needs U.S. funding to scale up the response in low- and middle-income countries where epidemics are growing. The pandemic could kill millions in Africa, where test kits are scarce and only small numbers of ventilators are available to help more than 1 billion people. The WHO has urgent work to do. Instead of leading with global cooperation, however, the discourse in Washington is becoming dangerous and disingenuous. There are valid critiques of the WHO. But many criticisms recently lobbed by the president and political allies are simply wrong. Critics have accused the WHO of being too close to Beijing and too "political." This rings hollow. The WHO is a political institution, overseen by 194 governments. Its director-general is elected by a vote of member states. Every director-general has to balance the WHO's political mission of building global cooperation with its mandate to support science-based health efforts. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been remarkably effective. It is fair to debate whether the WHO struck the right balance in early messaging on covid-19 in China. We would have preferred to hear more about China's muzzling of independent scientists, lack of transparency and human rights violations. But WHO leaders have long walked a fine line to keep communication open while coaxing international cooperation. U.S. personnel got key early epidemiological data from China only because the WHO brokered access. In late January, President Donald Trump was thanking President Xi Jinping on Twitter. "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus," he wrote. "It will all work out well." Critics have decried the WHO's advice in January not to impose restrictions on travel from China, which the organization said is not effective in stopping transmission. The Trump administration focused much of its policy response in February on travel bans of foreign nationals who had visited China. As we all know, border restrictions did not keep the virus out of the United States. Research suggests that the coronavirus circulated in New York since mid-February, brought mainly from Europe. Preliminary data suggests that travel bans have not been helpful; Canada, which did not enact a ban, has fared better so far than the United States and Italy. The WHO urged in January that "all countries should be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread." Yet U.S. politicians focused on keeping the virus out rather than rapidly scaling up core public health defenses when there was time to do so. Some criticize the WHO for not declaring a global health emergency sooner. China reported the novel coronavirus to the WHO on Dec. 31, describing a cluster of pneumonia cases and no deaths. In retrospect, the virus probably circulated in Wuhan weeks before China's report. Still, the WHO has been transparent, issuing regular updates and warning governments of likely perils. It was hobbled by inadequate data from China, whose leadership, like the U.S. administration, urged that a global alarm was not necessary. When Tedros declared a global emergency Jan. 30, there were still relatively few reported cases outside China. World leaders, including Trump, had ample opportunity to act as the virus swept across China and East Asia, then to Europe. Some countries responded. South Korea, for example, blended aggressive testing and contact tracing with social-distancing efforts. It conducted health checks and followed up on arriving travelers. As of Sunday, South Korea had just 214 deaths from its outbreak; the share works out to about 20 cases per 100,000 South Koreans, compared with 162 per 100,000 people in the United States. The White House, meanwhile, was aware of the threat. Reporting has shown that the National Security Council received intelligence reports predicting spread to the United States by at least early January, and presidential adviser Peter Navarro wrote an urgent memo on Jan. 29. Social distancing guidelines were not established until mid-March. The WHO cannot credibly be blamed for the slow U.S. response. Meanwhile, China is exercising more power at the WHO and across the international community, partly because U.S. leadership has been largely absent. The United States led global aid efforts in response to earthquakes, tsunamis, and the AIDS and Ebola crises. No such leadership emerged for covid-19, however, and China has sought to fill the breach. The U.S. failure to lead a coordinated response is sure to lengthen the duration of this pandemic. Weakening and defunding the WHO will undermine the global response - worsening the health and economic devastation to come in poorer countries. None of this will be good for Americans' health, the U.S. economy or the political survival of U.S. leaders. - - - Gostin is a professor and director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law. Kavanagh is assistant professor of global health and director of global health policy and politics at Georgetown's O'Neill Institute. Australian researchers have found a way to split life-saving ventilators between two patients. The coronavirus crisis has already put major strain on the global demand for breathing machines and the discovery is being hailed as a breakthrough. But researchers from Monash University, The Alfred and The Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne warn using one machine for two sets of lungs should only be attempted in the most critical of circumstances when intensive care units are overrun. The team successfully tested ventilator splitting in a simulated setting, with the results of the study published on Tuesday in the international journal Anaesthesia. Australian researchers have found a way to split life-saving ventilators between two patients Doctor in intensive care unit is pictured holding an oxygen ambu bag to help a patient breath 'Patients with COVID-19 may develop progressive viral pneumonitis leading to severe respiratory failure,' study lead Alexander Clarke told AAP. 'While ventilator splitting has, at face value, validity in addressing ventilator shortages, we agree that on sober reflection, it is a solution that needs to be weighed up carefully as it may cause more harm than good.' A vital tool in the fight against coronavirus, ventilators are administered to patients whose lungs are failing. In some cases COVID-19 can lead to severe respiratory failure and viral inflammation of the lungs. When this happens patients are sedated and hooked up to a ventilator. Splitting a machine is usually not possible because the air supply needed by patients differs. Cross-infection from inter-patient gas exchange is also a major risk, along with irregular pressurised air flow which can be fatal. A global shortfall in ventilators has seen governments around the world scramble to increase supply during the COVID-19 crisis Australia is aiming to secure about 10,000 ventilators in the fight against coronavirus Australia had about 2200 ventilators at the beginning of the pandemic but the federal government is now aiming to secure 10,000. 'So, all of the advice is that we have capacity for even the most difficult of situations we're going from 2,200 ventilators up to 4,400 from within the existing system,' Health Minister Greg Hunt told Sky News. 'Then we've contracted ResMed, a great Australian firm that manufactures here in Australia which is really important, to help add another 5,500. 'We're expecting to have about 7,500 ventilator ICU beds that are ready and available for even the most difficult of circumstances, but then with spare capacity around Australia because one may never know exactly where a hot spot or an outbreak might occur.' Im shocked, just shocked that youre suggesting that during a crisis that insurance companies might in fact be considered the villains. Ive never heard that before. Thats Richard Levick speaking. Levick, who has a public affairs, crisis and reputation risk management firm named LEVICK, also has a sense of humor. His corporate slogan is: Fixing the Impossible. As Levick sarcastically suggests, while the property/casualty insurance industry is experienced in helping during disasters such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires, it is also accustomed to taking some heat during these crises. Sometimes its legitimate criticism but other times its insureds, lawyers or elected officials looking to insurance to remedy situations that insurance does not cover. So it is not surprising to find the industry currently dealing with expectations in several quarters that it will fix the impossible situation people are facing with the coronavirus crisis and the economic shutdown. The industry has been here before. Auto Insurers Offering $8-$10B in Discounts in Coronavirus Relief Effort The group of property/casualty insurers offering auto insurance premium discounts to recognize that insureds are driving less during the coronavirus crisis continues to grow, and now includes all major auto insurers. State Farm and Nationwide late last week joined the ranks of the top 10 auto insurers providing relief that already included Geico, Progressive, Allstate, USAA, Liberty Mutual, Farmers, Travelers and American Family. In addition, since late last week the following insurers have also announced offers: Erie, Hanover, CSAA, MetLife Auto & Home, Mercury, Plymouth Rock, NJM and Union Mutual. According to the Insurance Information Institute, these and other auto insurers have announced refunds, discounts, dividends and credits totaling $8.1 billion. III estimates that this total will reach $10.5 billion as more auto insurers announce their offers. Learn more. I think that insurance companies know this. They know that theres always a challenge, a disconnect between an insured when they find out that something is not covered as they thought it might be, said Levick. LEVICK, with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., works with more than 14 different insurance organizations, helping them prepare for and navigate perils from natural disasters to cyber emergencies to reputational harm. Little Coverage In this current disaster, insurers are under fire for insurance policies with too little to offer. There are huge industries including airlines and hotels, and thousands of small businesses including restaurants and retail shops across the country, upset that their policies do not cover their business losses. They have some lawyers and politicians on their side. Insurers have been out in front explaining that even for those that have business interruption, event cancellation or other insurance, their policies most likely do not cover their losses related to the coronavirus shutdowns because there is no damage to property or most have exclusions for viruses. Insurers are having to explain themselves to lawmakers in various states that are weighing proposals to force insurers to pay business interruption losses the insurers never anticipated under policies, as well as to restaurants and other businesses claiming in lawsuits that their policies should cover their losses because they lost business due to action by a civil authority. President Donald Trump himself has weighed in against insurers and said he would like to see insurance companies pay for business losses where policies do not have virus exclusions. Businesses have been paying a lot of money for a lot of years for the privilege of having business interruption insurance, but when they finally need, the insurance company says we are not going to give it, Trump said. We cant let that happen. Trumps views may have been influenced by celebrity chefs who complained to him earlier this month. Louisiana attorney John Houghtaling II is behind lawsuits by several restaurants claiming business interruption losses and he is leading the public attacks on the industry. To avoid payments for a civil authority shut down the insurance industry is pushing out deceptive propaganda that the virus does not cause a dangerous condition to property, Houghtaling said in a press release. This is a lie, its untrue factually and legally. The industry estimates that losses for all small businesses (not just businesses with insurance) alone could be as much as $400 billion a month. Couples with wedding insurance and tourists with travel insurance have also expressed anger over their lack of coverage. KBW Kudos to Allstate At least one insurance financial analyst thinks the auto insurance discounts being offered by insurers are a good idea. KBWs Meyer Shields praised Allstate for being the first to come forward after the insurer announced it will return about $600 million to customers in recognition of much lower-than-expected auto claim frequency. Despite the near-term financial hit, we think Allstates voluntary consumer-friendly initiatives will foster well-deserved goodwill that should generate considerable shareholder value over time, Shields wrote in an analysts note. He said he expected that most other personal auto insurers to would announce similar plans in coming weeks, although he said he is less certain that multi-line insurers will follow because any lower personal auto losses will probably be offset by other lines higher losses. Regardless of what other insurers do, Shields suggested that current and future customers will particularly respect Allstates first-mover status. On the plus side, workers compensation may help in some cases where health care and other essential workers contract the virus. Most of these employees will have to show they caught it while at work and not elsewhere. Insurers have been asked to discount auto insurance premiums given that people are driving less under shelter-in-place orders. This is one area where insurers have been able to respond. Allstate, American Family, Geico, Travelers, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, Farmers, State Farm, Nationwide, Hanover, NFP, USAA, CSAA, Erie and Plymouth Rock are on the growing list of insurers that have collectively forgiven billions of dollars in premiums for drivers. A number of insurers are also giving free insurance to those now using their cars for commercial deliveries and most are relaxing payment and cancellation terms and deadlines. The industry has also worked the political front. P/C insurance trade groups have been proactive in explaining and defending their position on business interruption. They have succeeded thus far in redirecting the search for financial solutions away from their own coffers and towards Congress, which has already passed a $2.2 trillion relief measure and is working on another. Furthermore, the industry has volunteered to be an integral part of the process of getting relief into the hands of families and businesses in need. What More to Do Insurance Journal asked Levick how the industry might continue responding to the disappointment and anger while also protecting its reputation, relationships and solvency in an environment where insurance is not helping as much as many people want right now. What more should carriers and agents be doing? In a phone conversation early last week, Levick shared ideas for how the industry can make the steps it takes most effective. They know theyre going to be the scapegoats. They know theyre going to be villains here, and so the question is not how do we eliminate it, but how do we reduce it, and that I think should be the goal with insurance companies, Levick said. The things the industry is doing including discounting premiums, expanding coverages, relaxing billing, targeting charitable donations and engaging in politics align with Levicks experience and thinking on what can be done beyond saying, Were sorry. They reflect the need to do something. The Marines, what do they say? When faced with the impossible task, you break the task down to its smallest elements. Unzip the sleeping bag, put your left leg out, put your right leg out, put on your left sock, put on your right sock, put on your boots, tie your boots, why? Because a crisis is paralyzing, its overwhelming, Levick said. The fear that people are understandably feeling now serves a purpose. It gets you thinking, he said, It has you seeking out hope, looking for solutions; its motivating. Its when it rises to panic that its destabilizing and flattens us, so you break everything down into its smallest elements. Strategy for Future While Levick applauds the industrys customer accommodations and its political work, he urges that these individual steps be part of a bigger strategy that can help not only in the immediate crisis but also into the future. I think the key phrase here is proactive communications, proactive communications. We absolutely need to be doing that. If insurance companies are sitting there waiting for their clients to communicate to them, thats bad crisis hygiene, he said. Levick offers advice from the late General Electric CEO Jack Welch who advised, In a crisis, over-communicate. According to Levick, You have to communicate genuinely, and the best way to do that is with as many one-to-one conversations as you can have. Carriers, agents and brokers, who are the ambassadors for the industry, need to keep reaching out, according to Levick. This has to be an ongoing proactive campaign. Quite frankly, if I have to go to the insurance company to find out whats going on about my business interruption insurance, all Im going to do is be angry. Why do I have to find it? And all I found was some variation of no. No, I want you reaching out to me, he said. The messages from ambassadors should extend beyond the current situation. I want you talking to me about the long term. Keep this in mind also, when you talk about the long term, youre no longer talking about why you cant do something, but youre talking about the long term, and youre saying, This is a challenge. But then, youre starting to talk about hope because youre talking about the long term. Remember, people arent sure theyre going to get through this. Is my business going to survive? Am I still going to have my home? Once you start talking about the long term, then people are thinking sotto voce, Wow, theres hope.' The communications can be via calls, emails, webinars, Zoom meetings, press conferences, an online press room and other forums. Its about communicating over and over, but keep them short, he said. Each message, while short, should recognize that insureds want to hear more than regrets. The message should give customers something. You can explain, but it shouldnt be the only thing or the first thing that youre leading with. Youve got to do that after youve shown some sacrifice and some empathy, he explained. Everyone knows what the bad news is; the bad news is Im not covered. But the good news is in each of these different communications. Heres one thing that we can give you in your premiums. Two, going forward, heres what we can do. Three, were switching to plain language, so people understand more. Four, were explaining why we cant cover, he continued. Explaining may not be very helpful when you want yes, and all youre getting is no, but if what youre getting is all these other messages, then youre more likely to start thinking about, well, going forward I wont make that mistake. Just as important, each message has to align with the values expressed in other communications, including advertising. You cant claim to be something youre not, he said. Real Solutions It takes more than words and pictures. The industry also needs to find ways to be active in the broader effort to come up real solutions. The industry appears to be following this advice. P/C insurance trade groups have been working with state regulators and members of Congress to be part of the effort to craft government solutions and deliver relief. Levick believes state regulators are an important ally. Work with your state regulators because they understand insurance, theyre much more sympathetic, and theyre the primary regulators anyway. Understand that most of the House members who are involved in this are just looking to get points with their constituents, he advises. There is nothing wrong with being sympathetic to the politicians needs, particularly in New York, but that does not mean agreeing to a law that mandates coverage. The last thing in the world you want is for insurance companies to be forced to cover claims in which they receive no premiums, and then be cash short for all those insureds who have other claims that they paid for coverage on. I think thats also a very powerful and sympathetic argument, Levick said. It can be useful to let elected officials who are trying to address their constituents needs know that they are being heard. You want to help them without being partisan, says Levick. He suggests issuing a joint industry statement, holding a joint press conference, or agreeing to serve on a commission. Thus the industry helps politicians without committing to future coverage. You want to be thoughtful about what opportunities you can create here that are platforms that give them a win without causing you undue future harm. In addition to working with state regulators, he suggests encouraging ratings agencies to speak out on the effects of requiring insurers to pay claims for which no premiums have been collected. The tangible offers many carriers are making at the same time they are advancing their financial, political and legal arguments are key to an effective crisis management strategy. Theres an old saying in communications that when youre explaining, youre losing, but there are some powerful arguments here, and thats also why the gods of crisis demand a sacrifice, Levick says. Thats why doing something like suspending cancellations and renewals is a really good thing to be doing because it shows youre giving something. Its the same thing as lending institutions, creditors saying, Were not going to kick you out of your house for three months. Were going to let you be as much as three months behind and maybe more on your mortgage. Thats the kind of smaller sacrifice you can make, the renewals, that you can make that lets people know you care. Your message of caring has to include more than just words. Its when someone breaks your heart and says, Well, Im marrying somebody else, but I just want you to know Im broken up about this. It falls sort of on deaf ears, but if they make a sacrifice too, then you know they really do care. Whats the sacrifice that insurance companies are going to make? It has to be something. Looking Forward The industry should look forward. Levick urges the industry to take steps now to educate the public and insureds through joint media webinars or other activities with disease specialists about the potential for future epidemics and pandemics. These efforts produce documentation that could be useful in the future. You want to be able to fall back on it, and you want to be able to say, Look, for years weve been talking about this, and encouraging our customers to buy policies, and they havent,' Levick said, noting that after SARS some insurers put out SARS policies but people didnt buy them. We have to market into the crisis, and because of that, we should be thinking, Okay, going forward, not just how do we play catch up or how do we play whack-a-mole, but how do we go forward?' He said many companies are now slowing down their marketing and as part of that, theyre not doing search engine optimization. But doing some of this now can help control the conversation in the future should this virus return in waves as some experts warn. A couple of years from now we may have to deal with some strain or some other coronavirus beside COVID-19, he said. You should be planning that now for the long haul, so that youre prepared and that youre marketing into it. Anticipated Coronavirus Claims Scenarios Across Major Coverage Lines: Viewpoint While much of the industrys early focus has been on business interruption policies, there are other lines of coverage that could see significant claims, whether directly caused by the pandemic itself or by social, institutional and governmental reaction to it. Learn more. Another suggestion is for the industry to focus on using plain language as it speaks out. People dont read their insurance policies because theyre so difficult to understand. I think plain language will help, he added. That plain language could be in the form of real stories about real people that the industry helps. Make videos of them, he advises. This can be done using various web video services including Zoom and WebEx. You can get great stories with businesspeople talking about how their insurance company is there for them in these other ways, which can be used for search optimization. Now is also a time for the industry to remind insureds to check their insurance policies and for brokers to review coverages with them. We all talk about that, but I can tell you as a small business owner, its something that you put on your agenda, and you dont get to, and that if were going to be talking about business interruption going forward, that should be as important as your annual or every other year legal review of potential liabilities, he said. The current crisis further presents an opportunity for agents and their carriers to contrast themselves with direct sellers that are offering quick buys in minutes or simple forms to fill out. They need to talk to their customers conveying the message that having a relationship with your insurer is valuable. Its not about reducing the premium by another 10%, its about the coverage you have when you need it, and the relationships you have, and thats what needs to be conveyed right now, he suggests. Thats the opportunity, and the sotto voce message. So it actually is an opportunity for the industry to increase premiums because theyll be selling value. Right now, theyre just selling commodity. Finally, Levick sees this crisis as an opportunity for carriers and brokers to review their corporate social responsibility (CSR), philanthropic activities and social causes they support. He said some of these priorities may have been set years ago and may not align with current strategic needs. These things get stacked up on top of each other, but no ones asked what is the overall strategic purpose, he said, suggesting carriers conduct a CSR review going forward for strategic purposes, including of their geographic regions based on where politicians are based. So, if youre concerned about New York representatives who are a big part of this effort on Capitol Hill to increase leverage on forced coverage, then maybe your CSR going forward should make sure it includes New York and a couple of other key constituencies going forward. He said this is in keeping with what is known as the Toyota strategy, which dates back 40 years when the Japanese automaker wanted to build cars in the U.S. but faced some xenophobia and major opposition because lawmakers felt Toyota would hurt Detroit automakers. What did Toyota do? Toyota decided to build its factories and its suppliers, not in Detroit, but in key congressional districts. I think thats the same thing here, Levick says. Youre looking at what are the key congressional districts for our CSR, what are some of the key issues? But again, its looking at your communication strategy as a longer-term approach as opposed to just how do we get through the end of May? Topics Carriers COVID-19 Agencies Auto New York Property Casualty Market Home Just In Nepal leaders wish for victory over coronavirus in New Year greetings Kathmandu, April 13 Nepal is celebrating the New Year on Monday as the Bikram Sambat 2077 begins. Customarily, various government officials and political leaders have issued their greetings statements on the occasion. As the entire world is fighting against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and its impact on various dimensions of life, the leaders in their messages have wished that the country would be able to control the outbreak and return to normalcy as soon as possible. President Bidya Devi Bhandari wished that the New Year would give the citizens energy to prevent the infection and subsequent crisis. Likewise, Vice-President Nanda Bahadur Pun hoped that the global crisis would end at the beginning of the year. Stating that the county was welcoming the New Year in a difficult situation, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli also announced to contribute his salary to the countrys Covid-19 response. Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota, the ruling Nepal Communist Partys chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the main opposition leader Sher Bahadur Deuba and former king Gyanendra Shah among others have issued their statements on the occasion. Trump privately weighed letting COVID-19 'wash over country': Report Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 1:16 PM In his desire to reopen the US economy as soon as possible, President Donald Trump privately made an eyebrow-raising suggestion to his top health adviser, wondering whether the government could simply allow the novel coronavirus to "wash over the country," according to a report. Trump posed the bizarre question to Dr. Anthony Fauci during a White House task force meeting on the pandemic last month, leaving the top scientist and other experts present baffled, The Washington Post reported. "Why don't we let this wash over the country?" Trump asked Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president's top advisor on the coronavirus pandemic. Two unnamed sources told the Post that Fauci was stunned by Trump's question, but realized that the president was serious. "Mr. President," Fauci responded, "Many people would die." Trump's public comments during that time also indicate he was weighing such a scenario in order to jumpstart the economy despite warnings from public health officials that the death toll would be enormous without mitigation. The president repeatedly said at the time that the "cure cannot be worse than the problem itself." Trump spent the crucial period in February and early March downplaying the threat of the virus, fearing the impact on the US economy and his reelection. The controversial approach would involve taking no COVID-19 countermeasures so that large numbers of people would quickly contract the virus in the hopes of creating some form of protective herd immunity, sources told the Post. A study by the White House coronavirus task force had predicted that up to 2.2 million Americans could have eventually died if the strategy were adopted in the US. Trump was not alone in supporting the "herd immunity" strategy at the time. He began considering the approach after hearing about the United Kingdom's mitigation strategy and Prime Minister Boris Johnson resisting the idea of widespread lockdowns. Johnson enacted social distancing guidelines later last month after an Imperial College study predicted a 250,000 death toll in Britain if no measures were taken. This month, the prime minister landed in intensive care after testing positive for COVID-19. The United States has so far recorded a total of more than 20,580 deaths from the virus, surpassing Italy's death toll and becoming the country with the highest number of reported COVID-19 deaths worldwide. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, attends the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the James Brady Briefing Room in Washington on April 10, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Fauci Cautiously Optimistic US Can Gradually Reopen Next Month As Virus Outbreak Flattens Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, has suggested that the United States may begin relaxing stay-at-home orders as early as next month amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. Fauci told CNNs State of the Union on April 12 that there are signs the outbreak not only has flattened, its starting to turn the corner and that the country could open in some ways in May, noting that there is a need to try and get back to normal. I think it could probably start at least in some ways maybe next month, Fauci said. We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on. If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down, he said. Faucis comments come just days after CCP virus deaths in the United States surpassed 2,000 on Friday, the highest daily tally to date, with the most significant numbers in and around New York City. Its tally has now overtaken Italys with 532,879 confirmed cases and 20,577 deaths attributed to the disease so far. However, the infectious disease expert said that while New York has the highest number of deaths, he was now cautiously optimistic because admissions into hospitals and intensive care had begun to decline, even in New York. He added that the available data suggested the outbreak not only flattened, its starting to turn the corner. When you look at the admissions, the hospitalizations, the intensive care, and the need to intubate, that not only has flattened, its starting to turn the corner, he said. So thats what were hopeful [for], and its cautious optimism that we are seeing that decrease, and if you look at the patterns of the curves in other countries, once you turn that corner, hopefully, well see a very sharp decline. Despite expressing optimism about the prospect of people across the United States returning to healthy daily life, Fauci stressed the process would be a gradual one that was not going to be a light switch, and would depend on which region youre in. Its going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak that you already experienced, and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced, Fauci said. I think its going to have to be something that is not one size fits all,' he said. Again stressing the need for slow and steady process in getting back into daily life, Fauci warned, If you just say, OK, its whatever, May 1, click, turn the switch on, obviously, if you do it in an all-or-none way, theres an extraordinary risk of there being a rebound. On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters at a White House press conference that he will soon announce a new task force dedicated to opening up the United States for business, as he stressed his desire to get the United States open as soon as possible. The task force would consist of great business leaders, doctors, and a great group of people, Trump said, adding: This country was meant to be open and vibrant and great. Not with people staying in I would love to open it. Im not determined to do anything, but the facts will determine what I do. The EU continues to expect Russia to stop all violations of international law in the Crimean peninsula. The European Union (EU) says drafting residents of the Russia-occupied Crimean peninsula in the Russian army violates international law. "The Russian Federation is carrying out conscription in the illegally-annexed Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol to draft residents of the peninsula in the Russian Federation Armed Forces. This is a violation of international humanitarian law," an EU spokesperson said in an April 13 statement on the attempted conscription in Crimea. Read alsoOver 18,800 residents in occupied Crimea illegally conscripted into Russian army "The Russian Federation is bound by international law, and obliged to ensure the protection of human rights in the peninsula," the statement said. The EU says it does not and will not recognize the illegal annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and city of Sevastopol. It continues to expect Russia to stop all violations of international law in the Crimean peninsula. "The European Union is unwavering in its support for Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders," the statement said. Netanyahu Gains Strength as Coalition Deadline Nears By April 12, 2020 Israel's president on Sunday rejected a request to extend coalition talks between the country's two most powerful political parties appearing to give a boost to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pushing the nation toward an unprecedented fourth consecutive election in just over a year. The decision by President Reuven Rivlin capped a stunning turnaround in fortunes of Netanyahu, who just a month ago was fighting for his political survival as he prepared to go on trial for corruption charges. His challenger, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz, now faces an uphill struggle as he races to salvage a power-sharing deal with Netanyahu. Rivlin last month gave Gantz the task of forming a new government, after a narrow majority of lawmakers endorsed him as prime minister in the wake of March 2 elections. With his parliamentary majority, Gantz began work on legislation that would have prevented Netanyahu from serving as prime minister in the future. But in an abrupt about-face, Gantz accepted an invitation from Netanyahu to form an "national emergency" government to confront what was then a burgeoning coronavirus outbreak. Gantz froze the anti-Netanyahu legislation and accepted the post of parliament speaker as he began talks on a rotation agreement in which both men would serve as prime minister. The turnabout prompted Gantz's main partner the secular and middle-class Yesh Atid party to bolt, causing his Blue and White alliance to disintegrate and leaving it at less than half its original strength. In the meantime, unity talks with Netanyahu stalled, reportedly over issues that have little to do with the pandemic. Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu insisted on pushing ahead with his plans to annex parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and demanded more influence over judicial appointments. Claiming he was close to a deal, Gantz on Saturday asked Rivlin, who is responsible for choosing a prime minister-designate after elections, for a two-week extension. But on Sunday, Rivlin rejected the request, citing the "current circumstances." He said he was giving both Gantz and Netanyahu until the original deadline, at midnight Monday, to reach a deal, and would consider giving them extra time only if both said they were close to agreement. The looming deadline, along with the coronavirus crisis, has placed Netanyahu in a much stronger position. Citing restrictions on large gatherings due to health concerns, Netanyahu's hand-picked justice minister last month all but shuttered the national court system, delaying the prime minister's corruption trial until May and perhaps longer. While Gantz now appears desperate for a deal, Netanyahu is riding a wave of popularity thanks to his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Israel has reported nearly 11,000 cases and over 100 dead, but appears to be weathering the crisis better than most countries. This popularity could give Netanyahu the upper hand in last-minute negotiations with Gantz, or position him well for a future election. Late Sunday, the two rivals issued a joint statement saying they would not be giving any more media interviews "in an effort to advance negotiations toward forming a national unity government." If they fail, a new election isn't guaranteed. Rivlin said he would first give the Knesset, or parliament, three weeks to endorse another candidate as prime minister. Netanyahu is likely to use that time to try to lure members from the other side or to reach a deal with a weakened Blue and White. After recruiting a defector from the opposing camp on Sunday, he has the backing of 59 lawmakers, two short of a majority. Gantz might also try to revive the anti-Netanyahu legislation, although it was unclear if he could do so. Without a coalition deal, the country could be headed to elections albeit with a much stronger Netanyahu and a much weaker opposition in place. Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said elections are still not a sure thing, but the odds are "dramatically increased." He said it was possible Netanyahu had tricked Gantz, a former military chief but a political novice, into dismantling the opposition, or perhaps Netanyahu sensed the new circumstances gave him a chance to seek re-election from a position of strength. "It looks like Netanyahu backed off, or he never intended to go for that deal and it was just a trick in order to erode Gantz's mandate," Plesner said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Like the rest of the nation, she is currently in lockdown amid the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. But Georgia Toffolo, 25, did not let that stop her from getting dressed up on Sunday to celebrate Easter with her puppy, Monty. The Made In Chelsea star shared a collection of photos to her Instagram wearing a sequined gold mini dress that featured long sleeves and a chunky black satin buckle around her neck. Adorable: Georgia Toffolo, 25, did not let isolation stop her from getting dressed up on Sunday to celebrate Easter with her puppy, Monty To accompany the snaps Georgia, otherwise known as Toff, penned: 'All dressed up with no where to go but at least I got a hot date I love u baby happy Easter bunnies x' In the first photo, the former I'm A Celeb winner is holding onto her adorable puppy and gazing into the camera with a beaming smile. She wore her blonde tresses swept away from her face in a simple style and sported a barely-there-makeup-look. Puppy love: The Made In Chelsea star shared a collection of photos to her Instagram wearing a sequined gold mini dress that featured long sleeves and a chunky black satin buckle around her neck In the second snap, Toff put down Monty and instead accessorised her dress with a black bag with a long gold chain. One photo shows the beauty spinning round and exuding her usual fun, positive persona. Earlier this week, Georgia announced that her grandfather had died. Ready to party: To accompany the snaps Georgia, otherwise known as Toff, penned 'All dressed up with no where to go but at least I got a hot date I love u baby happy Easter bunnies x' The reality star shared a tribute to her grandad Bertie on Instagram revealing he had passed away over last weekend. Georgia, also known as Toff, also explained her sadness at not being able to grieve with her family amid the coronavorus lockdown, writing: 'There's too much sadness at the moment.' Toff shared a video of herself and her grandfather singing together at her 25th birthday party in October, and wrote in a lengthy post: 'I've been a little bit quiet as we lost my Grandad over the weekend. I'm trying not to feel so sad because there's too much sadness at the moment.' Swish swish: In the second snap, Toff put down Monty and instead accessorised her dress with a black bag with a long gold chain Referring to the sweet video, she continued: 'I already miss him terribly, and someone sent me this. We had no idea we were being filmed it was my 25th birthday last year. We were the stragglers at the table not wanting to leave when everyone else had!' 'I will forever miss listening to Sinatra with you. I'm going to keep myself busy and keep smiling (no more crying - he would hate that) and hopefully the time will go quickly so I can see the rest of the family.' 'I'd also like to thank every person who has been kind to us as a family, particularly anyone who cared for him it gave us and him such comfort. I love you Grandy x Gorgeous: One photo shows the beauty spinning round and exuding her usual fun, positive persona The star did not post any further information on his death to her 1.9m Instagram followers. Toff's grandfather flew out to Australia in 2017 to surprise the star after she was crowned the winner of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Last month, the star was forced to walk puppy Monty in a dog pushchair as she was unable to take him to the vets for his jabs due to the COVID-19 crisis. A man is fighting for his life in hospital after he was attacked by a number of men with weapons in Co Fermanagh. Detectives are appealing for information following the incident at Coolcullen Meadows in Enniskillen. Police received a report that an altercation happened in the street involving a number of men with weapons at around 8.40pm on Saturday. When police arrived a short time later, two men were found with wounds to their legs, leaving both requiring hospital treatment. One of the men is currently in a critical condition. It is believed that another man involved in the incident had left the scene before officers arrived and inquiries are ongoing to determine his whereabouts. Detectives have appealed to anyone with information or with any video footage of the altercation to contact them at Enniskillen on 101. Alternatively, information can also be given to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) A woman is dead of a suspected homicide in San Francisco's Mission District on Sunday morning and a man is in custody in the case, police said Monday. The homicide was reported at 9:22 a.m. Sunday in the 1300 block of Natoma Street. A 56-year-old woman died and her name was not immediately available from the city's medical examiner's office. A 29-year-old man was arrested, but San Francisco police have not released his name or more details about the homicide. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the Police Department's anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444 or to send a tip by text message to TIP411 with "SFPD" in the message. Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Several Dutch cellular broadcasting towers have been damaged by arson or sabotage in the past week by opponents of a rollout of a new 5G telecommunications network, newspaper De Telegraaf reported on Saturday. The paper said there have been 4 such incidents in the past week, and cited the director of an industry group that oversees placement of cell towers in the country, The Monet Foundation. The Telegraaf reported that arsonists had left an anti-5G slogan spray-painted at the scene of one attack. A range of groups in the Netherlands have been opposed to the advent of 5G for some time, mostly over concerns that radiowaves could damage human health. Others fear the technology could infringe privacy. In a statement on its website, the Dutch government's Security and Counter-Terrorism (NCTV) said it had registered "various incidents" around broadcasting masts in the past week, including arson and sabotage, and that opposition to the 5G rollout is a possible cause. "This is a concerning development," it said. "Disruption of broadcasting masts...can have consequences for the coverage of the telecommunications network and reachability of emergency services." It noted that similar attacks have been occurring recently in Britain. British ministers last week dismissed a theory that linked 5G masts to the spread of the novel coronavirus as dangerous "fake news" and completely false. Major telecommunications providers in the Netherlands are in a testing phase and have not yet begun any nationwide rollout of 5G pending a spectrum auction due to conclude in June. (Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Toby Chopra) Blood tests that measure a persons antibodies to the coronavirus could be a powerful tool to determine when its safe to reopen the country. But concerns about the accuracy and availability of the tests which detect whether a person has ever been exposed to the virus, and are different from the tests used to diagnose the disease could hamper plans to allow Americans back to work and school. More than 90 antibody tests are now on the market, but only one has been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. The others may not be as accurate as wed like, agency chief Stephen Hahn said Sunday. And public health experts are warning that just because a person has antibodies to the coronavirus doesnt mean they are immune to it. Heres what you need to know about antibody testing including why its unlikely well be able to crowd into a bar or a baseball stadium anytime soon. 1. How do the tests work, and what can they tell us? Antibody tests, also known as serological tests, analyze a persons blood for evidence that they have been infected with the coronavirus even after they have recovered. That data can help public health experts better understand how many people have been infected and adjust their models of the U.S. outbreak, said Kelly Wroblewski, the Association of Public Health Laboratories director of infectious diseases. Widespread antibody testing could also help inform decision making about when to start reopening parts of the economy, but scientists arent sure if surviving a coronavirus infection confers immunity, how strong that immunity might be and how long it could last. Just because you have antibodies doesnt mean you have immunity, Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine, told reporters Friday. Wroblewski said that while its reasonable to assume survivors gain some level of immunity, it is important to proceed with caution. "Everybody is being optimistic you have some sort of sustained immunity for at least the ensuing months to a year, she said. But it is still somewhat an assumption. Story continues FILE - This Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, file photo shows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration building behind FDA logos at a bus stop on the agency's campus in Silver Spring, Md. The Food and Drug Administrations first broad testing of food for a worrisome class of nonstick, stain-resistant industrial compounds found high levels in some grocery store meats and seafood and in off-the-shelf chocolate cake, according to unreleased findings FDA researchers presented at a scientific conference in Europe. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) 2. Whats the government doing to ensure the tests are accurate? The FDA said in March that it would allow companies to develop and distribute validated antibody tests without review under certain circumstances including that test-makers notify the agency and include disclaimers in test results. More than 90 tests are now on the market, and most have bypassed FDA review. Diagnostic manufacturers, public health labs and commercial labs have raised concerns about the accuracy of these tests. They want the FDA to take a tougher regulatory approach to ensure the quality of antibody tests. Top government officials, including HHS testing "czar" Brett Giroir and Hahn, have said the public should only rely on antibody tests reviewed by the FDA. But the agency has given emergency authorization to only one such test, manufactured by Cellex. There should be a strong evaluation process that goes on ahead of getting these tests out there, APHL CEO Scott Becker told POLITICO. The National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA are each working to assess the accuracy of antibody tests that havent yet undergone FDA review. "There has been some concern about the accuracy of at least some of these tests, so the FDA in collaboration with other agencies is standing up a voluntary program to help address and verify their accuracy, FDA diagnostics chief Tim Stenzel said on a webinar last week. 3. Will widespread antibody testing be available soon? The Trump administration said over the weekend that it would require most private insurers to cover coronavirus antibody testing at no cost to consumers. But so far, very few Americans have undergone such testing. Giroir and other members of the administration have predicted that tens of millions of antibody tests will soon be under production, but it is unclear how soon they will reach the public. I think were still weeks away from the logistical aspects of this kind of mass testing program, Becker said. We in public health are looking for a high-quality test that can be used for serology studies to understand the dynamics of immunity within each community. Once the logistics of administering tests are resolved, frontline health care workers should have priority, said former acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt. That can help workers who suspect theyve been exposed to the virus return to work if they have antibodies. It will be important in the future and at least important for health care workers in New York and other places, Slavitt told POLITICO. But until more is understood about potential immunity gained after being exposed to the virus, he added, antibody tests are unlikely to be a game changer." Residents line up outside a Safeway supermarket at Dupont Circle district of Washington, practicing social distancing Monday, April 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) 4. Could the tests help the U.S. ease social distancing measures? Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, last week raised the possibility of issuing immunity certificates to people who test positive for coronavirus antibodies. But antibody tests cannot be the sole mechanism for deciding who can return to work, according to Gigi Gronvall, an associate professor of immunology at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Doing so may induce perverse incentives for people to lie about their antibody status or purposefully try to become infected. If youre going to develop a system like that, you need to make sure its legally okay, Gronvall told POLITICO. You can imagine there would be some HIPAA challenges and also employment discrimination challenges. Another worry is that the use of antibody tests to reopen parts of the economy may give the public a false sense of security. Allowing some people to return to work could cause others to become less diligent with social distancing measures before its safe to do so. The federal government should probably right away say how [the tests] ought to be used, or at least how they should not be used, Gronvall said. Businesses will certainly start using them, and I worry about the consequences for public health if people decide that their employment rests upon getting this disease. The Power of Your Truth in the Golden Age: Activation, Confirmation and Validation of New Earth By Angela Mia White I wrote this book to help people break through their programs of Old Earth, so they can thrive in New Earth. In her newly release guidebook, The Power of Your Truth in the Golden Age: Activation, Confirmation and Validation of New Earth, author Angela Mia White introduces a new world and new form of consciousness. The author was called on by her guides to be a vessel to spread the truths of the world that have been buried. Readers will be introduced to New Earth and how they must break free from their old programs in Old Earth in order to enter the Golden Age. As a master teacher of the mind and consciousness of New Earth, White educates readers by teaching them how to step into their I AM presence by practicing self-love, finding peace within, standing in the power of their truth and knowing that they are the abundance of their lives. White presents the passageway to becoming the best person one can be in New Earth that is focused on being real with ones self and uncovering what has been suppressed. I wrote this book to help people break through their programs of Old Earth, so they can thrive in New Earth, said White. My book was written for those that understand that there is a universal shift going on due to the Golden Age of Aquarius. It is an age of consciousness. It's everyone's own consciousness. This book will help those that have gone through the pain of ascension. This is to help them know they are needed on this planet to carry this new energy. Old Earth no longer works. It is a very necessary change that is taking place. My book is an oracle with golden energy. You can open it to any page, just like oracle cards, to let you know what is going on and what you need. My book will activate people, confirm to them that they have been led and validate that they are ready for the next phase in their journey. The Power of Your Truth in the Golden Age will resonate with a wide audience on a spiritual level and will guide them to self-love and healing through positive energy. The Power of Your Truth in the Golden Age: Activation, Confirmation and Validation of New Earth By Angela Mia White ISBN: 9781982234546 (softcover); 9781982234539 (hardcover); 9781982234553 (eBook) Available at the Balboa Press Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble About the author Angela Mia White is a master teacher, an inspirational speaker, a shaman and an author for this new conscious world. White was called on to be a vessel to spread the truths of the world that have been buried. She shares her knowledge in her new guidebook by teaching readers how to embrace the Golden Age of Aquarius. Her introduction into writing was her debut book, From Sick to Bliss to Conversations with God, she wrote both books after she heard from her guides that she needed to share the positive energy and mind of New Earth. Her books are oracles and can be read at any point at any time. White also has daily Facebook Live videos discussing how to become your best self to accompany her new book, The Power of Your Truth in the Golden Age. To learn more, please visit https://www.angelamiawhite.com/. ### General Inquiries, Review Copies & Interview Requests: LAVIDGE Phoenix Grace Bywater 480-998-2600 x 534 gbywater(at)lavidge(dot)com Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd on Monday said it has contributed Rs 4 crore towards thePrime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES Fund) to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. The company said it has also been undertaking relief measures such as distributionof masks to traffic police and police station personnel, hospitals, medical and other emergency staff such as social workers. Besides it has provided financial assistance for buying COVID-19 related hospital equipment, donation to district authorities for coronavirus related relief fund, Kansai Nerolac Paints said in a statement. Commenting on the initiative, Kansai Nerolac Paints Vice Chairman and Managing Director H M Bharuka said,"COVID-19 continues to have adevastating impact on entire nations. In testing times such as these, the collective effort of all citizens is required to fight and mitigate the pandemic's impact on society." Last month thecompany had also announced that it will do an early disbursement of funds to its painter community falling under theNerolac Premium Painter Pragati (NPP Pragati) Programmewherein over30,000 paintersmaybenefit from Nerolac's initiative. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva is emerging as a powerful voice for the poor, as the coronavirus pandemic that has plunged the world into recession threatens to tip developing countries into chaos. The chief of the International Monetary Fund grew up behind the "Iron Curtain" of the Soviet Union, and has frequently recalled how painful it was to see her mother's life savings disappear overnight during the 1990s currency crisis. She has been blunt about the need to save the world's poorest countries, who account for a quarter of the global population, from a similar plight. The impact of the coronavirus is magnified in emerging markets by crowded conditions, plummeting commodity prices and massive capital flight. Together with her former boss, World Bank President David Malpass, and the World Health Organization, Georgieva is pushing China, the United States and other Group of 20 nations to temporarily suspend some $14 billion in debt service payments by the poorest countries owed through year-end. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show "These are the times for which the IMF was created - we are here to deploy the strength of the global community, so we can help shield the most vulnerable people and revitalize the economy," she said in a speech on Thursday, ahead of next week's IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings. "They urgently need help." Georgieva, who took over as director in October 2019, is the first person from an emerging market economy to run the IMF, which was formed to reverse the debilitating effects of economic nationalism after the Great Depression. Described by colleagues as a "force of nature," "relentless" and a "machine," Georgieva's crisis management has featured video selfies to staff and midnight phone calls with government leaders. She has warned of the dangers of the outbreak since it was still largely contained to China, telling hundreds of policymakers at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February: "We have to pray for the best and prepare for the worst." Since then, the virus has spread to scores of countries and killed more than 100,000 people. Last week, Georgieva issued another warning. "There is no question that 2020 will be exceptionally difficult," she said. Things could get even worse in 2021, she said, depending on what actions rich countries take now. $100 BILLION IN OUTFLOWS Europe and the United States have struggled to contain the virus. Poorer countries, with weaker health systems and densely-packed slums are also more vulnerable, economically. Many are saddled with record high debt, rocked by a plunge in commodity prices, and have seen $100 billion in capital flight, Georgieva said. Her negotiating skills will be tested at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings this week. The talks, which will be held online instead of bringing more than 10,000 people to Washington, will be pivotal to debt relief efforts. Georgieva is "doing everything she can," said James Boughton, the Fund's former official historian. "But she can only do so much without guidance from the G20. Ultimately the IMF is an agent of the large rich countries." Even as the United States under President Donald Trump increasingly embraces nationalism, Georgieva has the respect of some senior members of his team. "She is an effective leader and deeply committed to the IMF's mission," U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Reuters in a statement. "And I am fully confident that she will lead the Fund with vision and creativity through this challenging period." Her connections to another powerful global force, the Vatican, helped her defuse a looming crisis with Argentina after the 2019 election of a government that campaigned against the IMF. Georgieva and Argentine Finance Minister Martin Guzman paved the way for better relations during a during a February conference hosted by Pope Francis, according to Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a nonprofit financial reform organization, who also attended. "It's a blessing that we have someone with a development background at the helm of the IMF. I believe that's why we're seeing quick movement on some fairly bold proposals to save us from a financial crisis or another Great Depression," he said. When G20 finance officials refused to classify the coronavirus outbreak as a major risk factor in February, Georgieva published the IMF's own, dire, outlook. Also read: COVID-19 | How to maximise food security in post-COVID India And as pandemic spread beyond Asia, she convened two extraordinary meetings of the IMF's steering committee in less than month, something that had never been done before, and appeared at a rare joint briefing alongside Malpass to discuss emergency measures. Details of the debt relief proposal are still being finalized, but Georgieva's efforts seem to be working and G20 finance officials are likely to endorse a temporary freeze in debt service payments, according to two sources familiar with the process. "She's blunt and doesn't pull any punches," said Sonja Gibbs, managing director of the Institute for International Finance, which includes more than 450 banks, hedge funds and other global financial firms. "As we address the debt risks, it will be a very good thing to have someone at the end of the table that takes an open approach to communication." Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. A documentary claims to have new evidence that the British teenager involved in the Cyprus gang rape case was telling the truth. ITV's Believe Me is said to feature fresh testimony about the alleged attack in Ayia Napa last July including compelling statements from the young woman's friends. It comes after she received a suspended four-month jail sentence for 'public mischief' while the group of Israeli suspects walked free. ITV's Believe Me is said to feature fresh testimony about the alleged attack in Ayia Napa last July including compelling statements from the young woman's friends. The documentary follows the story of the woman, called Emily in the show, who had consensual sex with a man during a holiday fling. But she says that she was later held down and raped by his friends. One of those who had been on the trip with her at the time said he arrived at the apartment and found Emily surrounded by the gang. He recalled: 'I said "what are you doing?" They didn't reply and started walking away. She was crying.' Another friend said: 'She was hysterical. I've never seen anyone in that sort of state. It was scary.' ITV's Believe Me is the 19-year-old's first television interview since the ordeal. She said that police had forced her to retract her statement: 'There was no other way out of that police station other than [to] sign that retraction statement. 'I thought, "As soon as I am outside this volatile environment I can sort this out." 'When you're in that situation, the only sensible thing to do is to conform.' Emily (above), who is now back in the UK and set to appeal against her conviction, vowed: 'I will achieve justice' The documentary features her barrister, Lewis Powers, who slams police failings as a 'disgraceful miscarriage of justice'. Her defence lawyer at trial, Nicoletta Charalambidou, also adds that the island has a culture of not believing women's claims of rape. She says: 'I do not understand why it's easier to believe that a woman was not raped, rather than believing she was raped. 'Because if you wanted to believe her All the evidence was there to conclude that there was rape.' Emily, who is now back in the UK and set to appeal against her conviction, vowed: 'I will achieve justice.' The Cyprus police have said their investigation was handled with professionalism and they deny improper conduct. Believe Me: The Cyprus Rape Case airs on ITV at 10.45pm tomorrow. Greg Hatala/For NJ Advance Media Don't Edit COVID-19 continues its effect on shelters, but theyre still doing all they can Coronavirus regulations regarding social distancing and essential businesses have made it difficult for animal shelters and rescues to maintain any kind of normal operations, but they still strive to place animals in homes and care for those that have been adopted. Here's what just a handful of shelters are reporting: Patricia Sisolak of the Edison Animal Shelter reports that people are still helping by adopting pets, including two 12-year-old bonded male cats adopted together on April 6. The shelter itself is closed until further notice, but manager Becky Snyder will schedule outdoor meetings with people interested in adopting pets seen on its Petfinder and Facebook pages. The shelter is located at 125 Municipal Blvd. in Edison. Go to https://edisonnj.org/departments/animal_shelter/index.php. SAVE A Friend to Homeless Animals in Skillman is closed to walk-ins, but is still adopting animals by prearranged appointment. The rescue also notes that while they cannot accept donations of household items at this time (sheets, blankets, newspapers), they will gratefully accept donations of canned pet food, treats and cat litter which can be left outside the facility at 1010 Route 601 in Skillman. Go to https://savehomelessanimals.org/. The Humane Society of Ocean City Veterinary Clinic will be open, but the adoption facility will be closed. Patients can make appointments as before with the clinic, and are asked to wait in their cars until they are called on their cell phone at the appointment time. A staff member will come out and receive pets in the parking lot; only employees will be allowed in the HSOC buildings. The society also notes that If you require food or medication for your pet, call first and allow 48 hours for fulfillment. The Veterinary Clinic phone number is 609-399-2800, ext. 2. Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City will continue to provide essential animal control services on an emergency/high priority call basis. While all Wellness Clinic activities are suspended, existing spay/neuter appointments will be honored. The society's animal shelter is open by appointment only; after viewing pets on the website, https://www.libertyhumane.org/, email lhs@libertyhumane.org to make an appointment. The Humane Society of Atlantic County shelter is closed until further notice. Veterinary services will remain open by appointment only; pet owners are asked to wait in their cars and a staff member will come outside. For prescription pick up, please park with flashers on and the prescription will be brought out. Only staff members are permitted to enter the building. The Humane Society will not be accepting donations of towels and bedding, but cleaning supplies and newspaper are greatly appreciated and can be left by the shelter entrance at 1401 Absecon Blvd. in Atlantic City. In a press release, the Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center in Blackwood stated: "Due to the growing implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, Homeward Bound has been forced to cancel more than a dozen necessary fundraisers that were meant to raise money needed for the deluge of neonatal kittens, sickly pups and homeless animals we see between June and October. Typically, these fundraising dollars are what enable us to purchase medical supplies, food, medicine and general care items during peak season. Please consider a donation to help us offset the loss of revenue from our cancelled event. Every penny helps now more than ever as we continue to save our furry friends in the face of such challenging times. Thank you!" More information can be found at https://homewardboundnj.org/. The South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter in Vineland notes that because it is a contracted animal control facility it will not be accepting owner surrendered pets until further notice. The shelter's Outreach Department can still be contacted by anyone needing assistance with placement of pets in situations where an owner wishes to rehome them. SJRAS also maintains a Pet Pantry for those who may need assistance providing food for their pets. The pantry is now open to anyone that may have been affected economically by business closures and loss of wages. Pet Pantry hours are Monday and Wednesday 1 to 6 p.m., Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m to 3 p.m. Future changes in state regulations related to COVID-19 that may affect these hours will be announced. Go to https://southjerseyregionalanimalshelter.org/. Home for Good Dog rescue in Berkeley Heights is still making adoptions by appointment; go to https://homeforgooddogs.org/ for more information. Don't Edit Home for Good Dog Rescue Honey is a 1 1/2-year-old female Labrador retriever/hound mix in the care of Home for Good Dog Rescue in Berkeley Heights. For more information, call 908-598-8212 or go to https://homeforgooddogs.org. Don't Edit 911 Dog and Cat Rescue Janis Joplin is a 2-year-old female brown tabby in the care of 911 Dog and Cat Rescue in Morristown. For more information, call 908-763-2040 or email 911dogrescue@gmail.com. Don't Edit Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center Bain is a 6-year-old male pit bull terrier mix at the Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center in Blackwood. For more information, call 856-401-1300, email info@homewardboundnj.org or go to https://homewardboundnj.org/. Don't Edit Don't Edit South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter Big Daddy is an adult male domestic shorthair in the care of the South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter in Vineland. For more information, call 856-691-1500, email adoptions@sjras.org or go to https://southjerseyregionalanimalshelter.org/. Don't Edit Wise Animal Rescue Lily is a young female pit bull terrier in the care of Wise Animal Rescue in Parsippany. For more information, email wiseanimalrescue@gmail.com or go to https://www.petfinder.com/member/us/nj/parsippany/wise-animal-rescue-nj854/. Don't Edit Liberty Humane Society Mama is an adult female calico mix in the care of the Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City. Call 201-547-4147, email lhs@libertyhumane.org or go to https://www.libertyhumane.org/. Don't Edit Edison Animal Shelter Chloe is a 1-year-old female Labrador retriever/cattle dog mix in the care of the Edison Animal Shelter. For more information, call 732-248-7278, email eas@edisonnj.org or go to https://www.animalshelter.net/shelter/3974/edison-animal-shelter/. Don't Edit Chance at Life Cat Rescue Minnie is a 5-year-old female tuxedo cat in the care of Chance at Life Cat Rescue in Bergen County. For more information, call 201-982-2219, email chanceatliferescue@gmail.com or go to https://chanceatlifecatrescue.com/. Don't Edit Don't Edit Associated Humane Society in Tinton Falls Rocky Balboa is a male American bulldog mix between 2 and 3 years old at the Associated Humane Society in Tinton Falls. For more information, call 732-922-0100 or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ02&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit Angel PAWS Princess is an adult female calico in the care of Angel PAWS in Colonia. For more information, call 732-340-1199, email info@angelpaws.org, or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ128&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit Associated Humane Society in Newark Jellybean is an adult female pit bull terrier mix at the Associated Humane Society in Newark. For more information, call 973-824-7080 or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ01&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit Animal Welfare Association Freddie is a 2-year-old male domestic shorthair in the care of the Animal Welfare Association in Voorhees. For more information, call 856-424-2288 or email adoptions@awanj.org. Don't Edit Southern Ocean County Animal Facility Raleigh is a 5-year-old female pit bull terrier mix in the care of the Southern Ocean County Animal Facility in Manahawkin. For more information, call 609-978-0127, email socaf@@ochd.org or go to https://www.fosocas.org/adopt/. Don't Edit Don't Edit Jersey Shore Animal Center Jynx is a 7-year-old female domsetic longhair at the Jersey Shore Animal Center in Brick. For more information, call 732-920-1600 or email info@jerseyshoreanimalcenter.org. Don't Edit Salem County Humane Society Bugle is a 4-year-old male beagle at the Salem County Humane Society in Carneys Point. For more information, call 856-299-2220 or email info@salemcountyhumanesociety.org. Don't Edit Animal Alliance Jillian is a female domestic shorthair between 1 and 2 years old in the care of Animal Alliance in Lambertville. For more information, call 609-818-1952 or go to https://www.animalalliancenj.org/. Don't Edit South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter Chikis is a senior female poodle in the care of the South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter in Vineland. For more information, call 856-691-1500, email adoptions@sjras.org or go to https://southjerseyregionalanimalshelter.org/. Don't Edit Southern Ocean County Animal Facility Oak is a 2-year-old male domestic shorthair in the care of the Southern Ocean County Animal Facility in Manahawkin. For more information, call 609-978-0127, email socaf@@ochd.org or go to https://www.ochd.org. Don't Edit Don't Edit Plainfield Area Humane Society Roman is a 14-year-old male miniature poodle mix at the Plainfield Area Humane Society. For more information, call 908-754-0300, email contact.pahs@verizon.net or go to https://pahs.org/. Don't Edit Associated Humane Society in Tinton Falls Harrison is a young male domestic shorthair at the Associated Humane Society in Tinton Falls. For more information, call 732-922-0100 or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ02&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter Carnegie is an adult female pit bull terrier mix in the care of the South Jersey Regional Animal Shelter in Vineland. For more information, call 856-691-1500, email adoptions@sjras.org or go to https://southjerseyregionalanimalshelter.org/. Don't Edit SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals Harvey is a 5-year-old male domestic shorthair in the care of SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals in Skillman. For more information, call 609-309-5214 or go to https://savehomelessanimals.org/. Don't Edit Animal Welfare Association Rose is a 5-year-old female terrier mix in the care of the Animal Welfare Association in Voorhees. For more information, call 856-424-2288 or email adoptions@awanj.org. Don't Edit Don't Edit 911 Dog and Cat Rescue Cher is a 2-year-old female domestic shorthair in the care of 911 Dog and Cat Rescue in Morristown. For more information, call 908-763-2040 or email 911dogrescue@gmail.com. Don't Edit Liberty Humane Society Doobie is a senior male Yorkshire terrier in the care of the Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City. Call 201-547-4147, email lhs@libertyhumane.org or go to https://www.libertyhumane.org/. Don't Edit Angel PAWS Comet is an adult male domestic shorthair in the care of Angel PAWS in Colonia. For more information, call 732-340-1199, email info@angelpaws.org, or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ128&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals Emma is a 3-year-old female hound mix in the care of SAVE, A Friend to Homeless Animals in Skillman. For more information, call 609-309-5214 or go to https://savehomelessanimals.org/. Don't Edit Associated Humane Society in Newark Lemon is an adult female domestic shorthair at the Associated Humane Society in Newark. For more information, call 973-824-7080 or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ01&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit Don't Edit Jersey Shore Animal Center Spud is a 1-year-old male Brittany mix at the Jersey Shore Animal Center in Brick. For more information, call 732-920-1600 or email info@jerseyshoreanimalcenter.org. Don't Edit Animal Welfare Association Tipsy is a 1-year-old female domestic shorthair in the care of the Animal Welfare Association in Voorhees. For more information, call 856-424-2288 or email adoptions@awanj.org. Don't Edit Animal Alliance Tammy is a 2-year-old female Staffordshire terrier mix in the care of Animal Alliance in Lambertville. For more information, call 609-818-1952 or go to https://www.animalalliancenj.org/. Don't Edit Plainfield Area Humane Society Floopy is an adult male domestic shorthair at the Plainfield Area Humane Society. For more information, call 908-754-0300, email contact.pahs@verizon.net or go to https://pahs.org/. Don't Edit Associated Humane Society in Newark Beaufort is an adult male pit bull terrier mix at the Associated Humane Society in Newark. For more information, call 973-824-7080 or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ01&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit Don't Edit Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Baxter is a 4-year-old male domestic shorthair at the Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center in Blackwood. For more information, call 856-401-1300, email info@homewardboundnj.org or go to https://homewardboundnj.org/. Don't Edit All-Star Pet Rescue Abbey is a 6-year-old female greyhound/terrier mix in the care of All-Star Pet Rescue in Linden. For more information, email allstarpets@comcast.net or go to https://www.petfinder.com/search/pets-for-adoption/?shelter_id%5B0%5D=NJ451&sort%5B0%5D=recently_added. Don't Edit Beacon Animal Rescue Sundae is a 12-year-old female domestic shorthair in the care of Beacon Animal Rescue in Ocean View. For more information, call 609-390-7946 or email beaconanimalrescues@gmail.com. Don't Edit Bonnies Animal Rescue Kingdom Tammy is a 1-year-old female hound mix in the care of Bonnie's Animal Rescue Kingdom in Hillsdale. For more information, go to https://www.petfinder.com/member/us/nj/paramus/bonnies-animal-rescue-kingdom-nj627/. Don't Edit Salem County Humane Society Victoria is a 3-year-old female domestic shorthair at the Salem County Humane Society in Carneys Point. For more information, call 856-299-2220 or email info@salemcountyhumanesociety.org. Don't Edit Don't Edit Greg Hatala/For NJ Advance Media Talking about the future is our collective obsession in these quarantined days. It would be a new sort of society game if our endless speculations werent underlined by feelings of worry and apprehension. Futurologists and astrologers are having the time of their liveswho can blame them? Our mood swings depend on their predictions. To dissipate the anxiety that hovers like a cloud over my head, the best remedy is a good conversation with an intelligent friend or knowledgeable professionalour industry provides plenty of both. So I called up Maria Luisa Frisa, the renowned art critic, fashion curator, author, and professor at IUAV, the University of Architecture in Venice, to pester her with questions. What will be the role of fashion education and will design schools survive the pandemic? Should fashion be rewritten from the ground up? And about those futurologistsdo they always get it right? I dont think so! she says. Frisa never minces words. Photo: Coppi e Barbieri What do you think the role of fashion schools and education will be in the foreseeable future? I firmly believe that today education is paramount: Fashion designers must have an education giving them the perspective to navigate and make sense of the disciplines of modernity and their complexities. And for art students, fashion is the most incredible platform to understand the arts of our century; fashion is the place where everything collapses, so to speak. Because fashion is a sort of prehensile system that feeds on other disciplines. Today more than ever, artists confront fashion practicethink of Vanessa Beecroft and Francesco Vezzoli or Sylvie Fleury and Matthew Barney, just to name a few. This year, just before the pandemics outbreak, we introduced a new program dedicated to fashion communications new media, which seems utterly apropos. In the future, fashion will have to approach communication in a very different way. What will truly matter in the future will be the content of any fashion practice and its values. The most relevant designers today are the ones whose practice is underlined by strong intentions and a substantial point of view on modernitythe best fashion designers are actually authors. And fashion more than ever will need substance. Communication skills will become even more sophisticated and nuanced, as awareness, respect of cultural differences, and languages will be paramount in the future. Story continues Photo: Coppi e Barbieri Fashion and art students are surely looking at the future with feelings of apprehensionthey will probably question their choice of a career in fashion, which will suffer a moment of deep economic turmoil. As a professor, how are you addressing their sense of insecurity and worry? Its a problem that we teachers at IUAV have discussed. On one hand, were giving support, empathy, and encouragementtheyll face tough times; thats certain. But what I tell them is that you dont have to fear the future. This crisis is a rupture, a profound disruption, a moment of turmoil. But what I say to them is that this dramatic break will force us to restart. It puts us with our back to the wall. You have no choice but to react. Young people dont have to look at what already existsthey have to imagine what doesnt. Its their duty. We probably needed this moment of disorder; we had reached a tipping point on many levels. But we dont have to go backwe have to endure and transform. I think fashion has a deeper meaning than just answering the question What will we wear tomorrow, and when will we leave behind the XXL tracksuits were wearing at home now? I truly believe that fashion has a higher, more important value. Once all this is over, fashion will help everyone of us to say: I am here, I feel good, I want to face the world anew. Clothes help us define who we are, even to transcend ourselves. Of course, well have to change fashion ritualsfashion shows, communication, a lot of superfluous attitudes and habits. The economic crisis will force us to change that. Fashion is a global system that employs thousands of people, and we all hope that it will continue to do so. It brings forth culture, ideas, beauty. We cannot give up all this. At the same time, well have to activate more than ever an ethical behavior: limit waste, stop discrimination, embrace true sustainability processes. But ethics and aesthetics are two faces of the same coin. And fashion has a comforting quality, an emotional depth that transcends the mere idea of luxuryfashion helps define ourselves in the world and can lift up our spirits. Well have to change certain of its rules, thats for sure. But I dont think that when the pandemic is hopefully over, nobody will buy a dress anymore. We have to remember that in Italy, for example, after World War II, fashion was one of the engines of the countrys economy. Photo: Coppi e Barbieri In these uncertain times, futurologists are in high demand. Lidewij Edelkoort, the famous Dutch fashion forecaster, in a recent interview said that in the future our creative attention will be directed more toward our local landscape, more on what is near than on what is far. Well reconsider a local perspective instead of a more global one. Well travel less; well have to source more locally. The economic crisis will profoundly impact the fashion system as a global community. She claims that the crisis will bring about a DIY aesthetic, arts and crafts will flourish, anticipating what she calls the Age of the Amateur. What are your thoughts on this vision? As much as I hold Edelkoort in high regard, Im afraid I disagree with her. I think that her vision always refers to a past that cannot exist anymore. Even her controversial Anti_Fashion, A Manifesto for the Next Decades, where she claimed that the system was dead and that we would go back to craftsmanship, to slow living, to more human and sustainable practices, seems to me more a catchphrase than an assumption based on reality. What she proposes is actually just a nostalgic vision. We cannot go back. We have to move forwardfashion isnt dead, because its a very powerful system that brings about wealth on many levelswealth of talents and creativity above all, not just lucrative businesses. Its a system producing quality and culture. If we have a contemporary art museum in Milan, we owe it to Miuccia Prada, who happens to be one of the most relevant designers of our time. Its a system that generates ideas, contents, values, communication. I also disagree with Edelkoorts assumption that the pandemic is a sort of amazing grace for the planet and for our fashion system, forcing it to review its functioning from the ground upin my opinion, this is actually an anti-historical attitude that doesnt convey any true vision of the future. Its just bringing back an idea of a past that can no longer return. Its obvious that craftsmanship holds a fundamental place, especially in our Italian culture. It has been like that for centuries, so theres nothing new. Not only do luxury brands depend on craftsmanship and savoir faire, but also small fashion companies and indie designerswe know that very well, theres no discovery to be made. Giving value to diverse local productions is already a reality that feeds the system on many levels. But the market is global, we cannot ignore that. Traveling less in the future wont mean well have to stop and go back to a bartering system. What well have to do is work on new ways, but the culture of exchange and interaction has to continue. We cannot be nostalgic; we can have nostalgia of embracing our loved ones, but not of old rituals. What the pandemic has taught us is that the world is one and were all together in this fightwere a connected system, we wont go anywhere by ourselves. We have more than ever to share resources and knowledge. For example, how will we be able to have a vaccine to fight the virus ready in the near future, if the international scientific community wont work together on this? Photo: Coppi e Barbieri You have an important background as a fashion curator; the last exhibition you curated, called Memos: Talking of Fashion in This Millennium and installed at Milans Poldi Pezzoli Museum, opened during fashion week in February, just a couple of days before the pandemics outbreak, and therefore had to be shut down and postponed. Teaching fashion curation is also one of the main programs of your course at IUAV. Can you expand on that? How does curating fashion exhibitions differ from curating art exhibitions? In my opinion, curating a fashion exhibition isnt that much different than curating an art, design, or architecture exhibition. A curator is an archeologist of the future, who activates the past by relating it to our presents parameters. I work in close collaboration with the London College of Fashion and with professor Judith Clark, whos course leader for the MA in Fashion Curation. Together weve worked on Memos; we wanted to reflect on a hypothetical project of a fashion museum, that as of today we do not have in Italy, highlighting the role of the most relevant designers as true authorstheir design practice and their thinking are in most cases extremely sophisticated and complex. In any case, an art exhibition is somewhat more simple than a fashion exhibition, as the relation between clothes and space isnt always easy to manage. Unfortunately, our exhibition has been one of the pandemics casualties, but hopefully it will be held over until the end of September. Photo: Settimio Benedusi I really hope well be able to see it sooneven if we look at the future with apprehension, therell be renewal and opportunity for a new appreciation of things. Do you think that the future of fashion will be a white page onto which everything can be rewritten, as Li Edelkoort has recently claimed in an article in Italian Vanity Fair? The theme of a white page was also emphasized by Italian Vogues April cover, with no images or writing on it. For me the future of fashion isnt actually a blank, white page. A white page means tabula rasa. It suggests a sort of limboan absence and not a presence. Its zero-ing. But what was there before is still there now; it has to be rethought, reimagined, transformed. Fashion is a system that works always on itself. Its its greatest power. Its able to constantly renew and restart, using what it needs to reboot, and getting rid of what is obsolete. Thats its strengthand its beauty. Indeed, its future is a big challenge. More than ever, true talent will be necessary and not gimmicks. Talent will have to be cultivated by education, serious studies, respect for the importance of culture. Superficiality will hopefully be swept awayat least its what I hope will happen in fashion. And fashion brands, of whatever size, will have to deal with what they were and what they should become, because people working for fashion wont disappear, despite the economic crisis that awaits us. In my opinion, a white, blank page awaiting to be filled is probably a too easy way of selling an idea of the future. The future is now; were building it up with what we are in this moment. Saying that we have to erase and restart is just a catchphrase. Our responsibility is to restart from who we are. Restart from the people we work with, building a collective project that belongs to us all. Originally Appeared on Vogue Latino-community members have been asking for the full translation of the Orange County press conferences that are related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Spanish so they can reach the entire Latino community in real-time. According to Father Jose Rodriguez, he would like to see the residents of the Hispanic Orange County have similar access to any information as the non-Hispanic residents. Moreover, Father Rodriguez also asked for the Orange County press conferences to be fully translated in both Spanish and English to reach the entire Latino community. Incidentally, one in every four people affected by COVID-19 in Florida is Hispanic. He added, "We are getting hit hard," which also means that they need the information. Press Conferences Currently in English Currently, press conferences in Orange County are in the English language. However, Dr. Raul Pino and others involved in the media activity are available and willing to answer questions in Spanish while the press conferences are going on. Also, the 'key takeaways' from press conferences are translated in Spanish translation, and can be and can be accessed through the website of the Orange County later on. Additionally, the county has a Spanish-speaking liaison from the mayor's office as well, which sends the recaps of the news conference in Spanish translation to major community groups. Relatively, Mayor Jerry Demings said, after any of each of the press conference, "We redact what is being said here," and post it thereafter, in the Spanish language. The mayor also added they have numerous communications going out that way. Reaching Out Through Social Media Orange County utilizes social media too, "to reach out to the Latino community," and is presently looking at possibly doing sub-caption translations in real-time. This, according to Father Rodriguez, "is helpful but again," he continued, he was wondering why can't there just be a Spanish speaker behind the microphone. Meanwhile, in Osceola County, officials hold their press conferences in English and then, again, entirely in Spanish. This, according to the Orange County officials, is something the Latino community would also like to see in their county. Father Rodriguez emphasized, the infections brought by COVID-19 are quite high in the Latino community, and now is not a perfect time to withhold any information related to it. As of this writing, the number of COVID-19 cases in Orange County has soared to over 1,200, with 18 deaths. According to the county's officials, "85 new cases and one new fatality were reported as of last weekend." At present, 118 people are confined to the hospital. Officials have also urged the people to continue to practice social distancing and skip car cruising, an annual tradition held in Santa Ana during Easter. Meanwhile, the Newport Beach announced on Thursday, "in light of crowds at one of its most visited surf spots," surfing at the Wedge would be prohibited from 10 am to 5 pm, and this began last Friday. Check these out: New Delhi, April 13 : The Cellular Opearators Association of India (COAI) on Monday said that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has assured the telecom operators of its full support in maintaining the network uptime and the quality of service. In a statement, COAI Director General Rajan Mathews said that in a meeting on Monday , between the DoT Secretary, senior members of the DoT and Director General, COAI, the continued preparedness of the industry to meet the requirements of citizens and customers during the continued period of the quarantine, were discussed. "In taking stock of the performance of the networks over the past weeks of the quarantine, note was taken of the substantial support provided by the DoT to the industry to meet the challenges of the increased traffic load on the networks and the logistical issues involved in maintaining the uptime of the networks. "The industry appreciates the close working relation and timely actions by the DoT and the Secretary Anshu Prakash, in addressing the critical issues of the industry during this unique period in the history of the nation," he said. In the meeting, the DoT also assured the industry that additional issues like the request for dynamic IP addresses, additional backhaul spectrum, additional relaxation in filing compliance requirements due to the extension of the quarantine period, clearance of pending network Equipment Type Approvals (ETA), SIM activations, among others would be reviewed and decisions taken expeditiously to address the concerns of the industry. "COAI wishes to categorically dismiss any concerns that may have been reported, suggesting risks to the networks as a result of delays in meeting industry requests to the DoT," Mathews added. In the meeting, DoT noted that as a result of the close working between the DoT and industry, the quantity of "faulty" base transceiver stations (BTS) were brought down from approximately 800 from before the quarantine to nearly 290, he said. "This was out a total number of approximately 22 lakh BTSs, nationwide. Similarly, the number of optical fiber cuts, were reduced from approximately 100 per day from before the quarantine to approximately 19 fiber cuts during the past 15 days of the quarantine. Instructions were also provided to all power companies to ensure stable and continuous power to cell towers to minimize logistical movements," the statement added. During the meeting, COAI raised the need for the government to address the distressed financial plight of the industry, on an expedited basis. It has asked for a reduction in the License Fees (LF) and Spectrum Usage Charge (SUC) as well as modifications in the GST where spectrum debt payments, LF and SUC payments would not be classified as "services" and hence not attract GST. The DoT Secretary referred the matter to Member, Finance for follow-up, Mathews said. The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Monday asked the Imran Khan government to remove Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza from his post. Mirza is Pakistans focal person in the countrys national efforts to fight the Convid-19 pandemic. While hearing a suo motu case related to the situation arising out of the coronavirus crisis, the court expressed anger over the performance of Mirza in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and ordered the federal government to remove him. A five-member bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed was hearing the case. During the hearing, the chief justice, while expressing anger, said the top court is not satisfied with the performance of Zafar Mirza as health advisor. In the meantime, the centre and provinces in Pakistan continue to bicker over how best to tackle the pandemic. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Monday said that he will request Prime Minister Imran Khan to extend the lockdown to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The chief minister reiterated while speaking to the media, that the only way to defeat the virus is through the combined efforts of the provincial and federal governments. Murad, however, expressed disappointment in the federal governments earlier remarks of, provinces can do whatever they want. Tackling a social calamity is not like fighting a war which works best when a leader can use top-down power to order everyone to do what the leader wants with no need for consultation. In contrast, what is needed for dealing with a social calamity is participatory governance and alert public discussion. by Amartya Sen We have reason to take pride in the fact that India is the largest democracy in the world, and also the oldest in the developing world. Aside from giving everyone a voice, democracy provides many practical benefits for us. We can, however, ask whether we are making good use of it now when the country, facing a gigantic health crisis, needs it most. First a bit of history. As the British Raj ended, the newly established democracy in India started bearing practical fruits straightway. Famines, which were a persistent occurrence throughout the history of authoritarian British rule, stopped abruptly with the establishment of a democratic India. The last famine, the Bengal famine of 1943, which I witnessed as a child just before Independence, marked the end of colonial rule. India has had no famine since then, and the ones that threatened to emerge in the early decades after Independence were firmly quashed. How did this happen? Democracy gives very strong incentives to the government to work hard to prevent famines. The government has to respond promptly to peoples needs because of a combination of public discussion and elections. However, elections alone could not do it. Indeed, democracy is never understandable only as a system of free elections, which are intermittent, often with a big gap between one and the next, and which can be swayed by the excitement that the immediate political context generates. For example, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was trailing badly in the polls before the Falklands War in 1982, got a huge bump from the war (as ruling governments often do) and comfortably won the general elections that followed, in 1983. Also general elections in the parliamentary system are primarily about getting a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament. There is no formal rule about the interests or rights of minorities in the voting system. Given that, if all people were to vote according to their own personal interests, an election would not have been a strong saviour of famine victims, since only a small minority of people actually starve in any famine. However, a free press and open public discussion makes the distress and dangers faced by the vulnerable poor substantially known and understood by the public at large, destabilising the standing of a government that allows such a calamity to happen. Of course, the government itself, since it may also be run by people and parties capable of human sympathy and understanding, may be directly influenced by what they learn from the information and analyses emerging from public discussion. Even though only a minority may actually face the deprivation of a famine, a listening majority, informed by public discussion and a free press, can make a government responsive. This can happen either through sympathy (when the government cares), or through the antipathy that would be generated by its inaction (when the government remains uncaring). John Stuart Mills analysis of democracy as governance by discussion helps to identify the saviour of the threatened famine victim, in particular a free press and unrestrained discussion. Tackling a social calamity is not like fighting a war which works best when a leader can use top-down power to order everyone to do what the leader wants with no need for consultation. In contrast, what is needed for dealing with a social calamity is participatory governance and alert public discussion. Famine victims may be socially distant from the relatively more affluent public, and so can be other sufferers in different social calamities, but listening to public discussion makes the policy-makers understand what needs to be done. Napoleon may have been much better at commanding rather than listening, but this did not hamper his military success (except perhaps in his Russian campaign). However, for overcoming a social calamity, listening is an ever-present necessity. This applies also to the calamity caused by a pandemic, in which some the more affluent may be concerned only about not getting the disease, while others have to worry also about earning an income (which may be threatened by the disease or by an anti-disease policy, such as a lockdown), and for those away from home as migrant workers about finding the means of getting back home. The different types of hazards from which different groups suffer have to be addressed, and this is much aided by a participatory democracy, in particular when the press is free, public discussion is unrestrained, and when governmental commands are informed by listening and consultation. In the sudden crisis in India arising from the spread of COVID-19, the government has obviously been right to be concerned with rapidly stopping the spread. Social distancing as a remedy is also important and has been rightly favoured in Indian policy-making. Problems, however, arise from the fact that a single-minded pursuit of slowing the spread of the disease does not discriminate between different paths that can be taken in that pursuit, some of which could bring disaster and havoc in the lives of many millions of poor people, while others could helpfully include policies in the package that prevent such suffering. Employment and income are basic concerns of the poor, and taking special care for preserving them whenever they are threatened is an essential requirement of policy-making. It is worth noting in this context that even starvation and famines are causally connected with inadequacy of income and the inability of the impoverished to buy food (as extensive economic studies have brought out). If a sudden lockdown prevents millions of labourers from earning an income, starvation in some scale cannot be far off. Even the US, which is often taken to be a quintessential free enterprise economy (as in many ways it indeed is), has instituted income subsidies through massive federal spending for the unemployed and the poor. In the emergence and acceptance of such socially protective measures in America, a crucial part has been played by public discussion, including advocacy from the political opposition. In India the institutional mechanism for keeping the poor away from deprivation and destitution will have to relate to its own economic conditions, but it is not hard to consider possible protective arrangements, such as devoting more public funds for helping the poor (which gets a comparatively small allocation in the central budget as things stand), including feeding arrangements in large national scale, and drawing on the 60 million tons of rice and wheat that remain unused in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India. The ways and means of getting displaced migrant labourers back to their homes, and making arrangements for their resettlement, paying attention to their disease status and health care, are also challenging issues that call for careful listening rather than inflexible decisions without proper consultation. Listening is central in the governments task of preventing social calamity hearing what the problems are, where exactly they have hit, and how they affect the victims. Rather than muzzling the media and threatening dissenters with punitive measures (and remaining politically unchallenged), governance can be greatly helped by informed public discussion. Overcoming a pandemic may look like fighting a war, but the real need is far from that. This article was first published under the title Listening as governance The writer, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University. A 55-year-old man accused of robbing three Portland banks within 40 minutes on Valentines Day is in custody following his arrest in Maryland. The FBI and Portland police received anonymous tips identifying John W. Lubow as the man responsible for the heists after they released video surveillance images from the banks. In each, the robber threatened that he had a gun. The suspect was seen frantically biking away from the initial bank after a security guard wrestled with him just outside the banks doors. The first robbery occurred at 1:52 p.m. at the Bank of the West at 419 N.W. Broadway. The robber approached a teller window, passed a note that read, Relax. This is a robbery I have a gun and took off with $5,413 until a security guard confronted him outside the doors. The guard recovered the robbers backpack with the cash, but the man sped off on a white bicycle, according to the FBI. The three banks hit and the route the suspect took, according to the FBI. A witness saw the robber abandon his bike outside a restaurant on Northwest Everett Street, remove his camouflage jacket and mittens and ditch them under a folding sign outside a nearby clothing store at Northwest 11th Avenue and Everett Street. The witness took photos of the suspect and sent them to the FBI. That same day at 2:17 p.m., a robber hit the On Point Community Credit Union at 2011 W. Burnside St, passing a note that read, This is a robbery. I have a gun. The suspect told the teller to give him your big bills and made off with $44. Twelve minutes later, at 2:29 p.m., the Home Street Bank at 22 N.W. 23rd Ave. reported a robbery. The robber told a teller, Give me everything you have and made off with $1,836. Police and the FBI circulated photos of the suspect and received anonymous tips days later that the alleged robber was Johnny Lubow. Lubow is homeless but known to live in downtown Portland and has prior convictions for second-degree robbery, FBI agent Joseph O. Youngblood wrote in an affidavit filed in court. Photo lineups with Lubows photo were shown to bank tellers, who identified him as the man who confronted them, the affidavit said. Lubow is in custody in Maryland and awaiting extradition to Oregon. -- Maxine Bernstein Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212 Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Subscribe to Facebook page A massive supernova discovered 'in the middle of nowhere' is twice as bright as anything previously found in the universe, according to astronomers. Dying stars are found every night but most are in vast galaxies - while this one appeared to stand alone, according to a team from the University of Birmingham. Astronomers believe the explosion was caused by two giant stars merging in an event known as 'pulsational pair-instability' and is the first time it's been seen by astronomers. The team found the explosion, named SN2016aps, had five times the blast power of a normal supernova and was nearly ten times as large. It wasn't until the lights had dimmed that researchers were able to pinpoint it to a very faint and previously undetected galaxy 4.6 billion light years away. Scroll down for video This is an artist's impression of a supernova. The event would have expelled gas, dust and other matter out into space in an explosion of light and colour This type of supernova - caused by the merger of massive stars - had previously only existed as a theory, but these observations show it is a real phenomenon. Lead study author Dr Matt Nicholl, from the University of Birmingham, said supernovae are measured using two scales - total energy of the explosion and the amount of energy emitted as observable light or radiation. 'In a typical supernova, the radiation is less than one per cent of the total energy,' the author said. 'But in SN2016aps, we found the radiation was five times the explosion energy of a normal-sized supernova. 'This is the most light we have ever seen emitted by a supernova.' In order to become this bright, experts say the explosion must have been much more energetic than would normally be seen from an exploding star. The team discovered the explosion was powered by a collision between the supernova and a massive shell of gas, shed by a star in the years before it exploded. The explosion was so bright it eclipsed anything else around - making it appear to be standing alone in the universe - rather than from a massive galaxy. Study co-author Dr Peter Blanchard, from Northwestern University, US, said: 'We weren't able to see the galaxy where this star was born until after the light faded.' Astronomers observed the explosion for two years until the dying star faded to one per cent of its peak brightness. Using these measurements, they calculated the mass of the supernova was between 50 to 100 times greater than our sun. While supernovae typically have masses of between 8 and 15 solar masses. 'Stars with extremely large mass undergo violent pulsations before they die, shaking off a giant gas shell,' said Nicholl. 'This can be powered by a process called the pair instability, which has been a topic of speculation for physicists for the last 50 years. 'If the supernova gets the timing right, it can catch up to this shell and release a huge amount of energy in the collision. 'We think this is one of the most compelling candidates for this process yet observed, and probably the most massive.' Researchers said SN2016aps contained another puzzle - the fact the gas detected was mostly hydrogen when a massive star would normally have lost its hydrogen long before it started pulsating ahead of a supernova explosion. It wasn't until the lights had dimmed that researchers were able to pinpoint it to a very faint and previously undetected galaxy 4.6 billion light years away. It was spotted in a distant, very faint and previously undiscovered galaxy 'One explanation is that two slightly less massive stars of around, say 60 solar masses, had merged before the explosion,' Nicholls said. 'The lower mass stars hold onto their hydrogen for longer, while their combined mass is high enough to trigger the pair instability.' Harvard University Professor Edo Berger said the discovery could not have come at a better time with the unveiling of NASA's new orbiting infrared observatory enabling them to look back in time. 'Now that we know such energetic explosions occur in nature, NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope will be able to see similar events so far away that we can look back in time to the deaths of the very first stars in the Universe,' he said. Supernova 2016aps was first detected in data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, a large-scale astronomical survey programme. The team also used data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck and Gemini Observatories, in Hawaii, and the MDM and MMT Observatories in Arizona. Findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy. [April 13, 2020] Temporary Permits Extended to 30 Days Across Utah The Division of Motor Vehicles has announced that temporary permits have been extended from 15 to 30 days until further notice. Vehicle owners that need additional time to complete required inspections or repairs can obtain a temporary permit and have 30 days from the day the permit is issued to complete their inspections. Temporary permits can be obtained online. All State DMV lobbies are currently closed to the public during the Stay Safe, Stay Home directive. However, the DMV continues to provide limited on-site service via the drive-through at specific locations, with drive-through windows at certain offices now open Monday through Saturday with extended hoursonline or at an On the SPOT station. "Vehicle owners can quickly and easily renew online and at On the SPOT Stations," said Monte Roberts, DMV Director. "We want to help residents of Utah to safely and conveniently get their registration done." There are certain vehicles that may not be eligible for online renewal; however, the majority of vehicles can be renewed without a visit to a DMV office. Vehicles can be renewed at an On the SPOT renewal station or online via Renewal Express. To learn more visit https://rex.Utah.gov. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005367/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Connecticuts prison population has declined at the fastest rate in state history since the onset of the coronavirus public health crisis. The Department of Correction said it is releasing inmates in larger numbers these days, and has regularly cited the overall drop in the states incarcerated population. The net population in the prisons declined by 895 in the 40 days from March 1 to Friday, a record pace. staff Thats dramatically higher than the average decline of 103 prisoners every 40 days between March 1, 2019 and Feb. 29 of this year. But the drop in overall prison population has been overwhelmingly the result of fewer prisoners entering the system, not more releases, a Hearst Connecticut Media investigation shows. The department has released 980 people from its sentenced population between March 1 and Friday, according to an analysis of publicly available data. That compares with an average of 865 people who were released in three 40-day periods since March 1, 2019. Between March 1 and Friday, just 322 people entered the states sentenced population far lower than the average of 840 in the prior three periods used for comparison. That reduction in the rate of intake far outweighs the number of releases in terms of its impact on the overall population. Reducing the overall population mainly through fewer new incarcerations may achieve the goal of making the prison system safer, if it allows the department to move people to less dense housing. But it does little to ease the anger and fears of families and advocates who say vulnerable inmates are sitting on a powder keg of infection that could explode. Families and inmate-rights advocates have implored the state to release those inmates, with family members protesting in front of the governors residence and the ACLU filing a lawsuit in an attempt to force the release of more prisoners. The Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Department of Correction have the authority to make discretionary release decisions for people sentenced to the custody of the DOC, said Marc Pelka, the point person on criminal justice issues for Gov. Ned Lamont. The DOC was able to divert valuable human resources to preparing for the release of approved, suitable, discretionary populations prior to the end of their term of incarceration, Pelka said in an emailed statement. This increase had the secondary, positive effect of reducing the number of people released from correctional facilities to the community with no supervision. The DOC is legally required to release an inmate in its custody at the conclusion of their court-stipulated sentence. The department has said it is prioritizing those discretionary releases for prisoners who are serving sentences for nonviolent offenses and are medically vulnerable, especially those over 50. And that is happening for a few inmates. The story for most, though, is that theyre stuck waiting to find out who is going home, when, how and if theyll carry the virus with them when they do. People like Danny Horner, an inmate who has been at Carl Robinson Correctional Institution since September 2018 for a non-violent drug offense. He was sentenced to three years in the medium-security prison in Enfield. Horners mom, Judi Downs, who lives in North Carolina, said he suffers from asthma and other medical issues including high blood pressure, and was told he was eligible for transition to a halfway house in October 2019, but Horner, 44, is still at Carl Robinson, she said. Now, shes afraid he could get sick and might never be released. Im really concerned, he has respiratory issues and with rising COVID cases, Im really concerned I might not see him again, said Downs, who lives in North Carolina and has been unable to visit her son since he was first incarcerated. Hes scared and Im scared for him. I want to see my son again, its so hard. Caused by COVID In February, the states Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division of the Office of Policy and Management predicted the states prison population would hit its lowest level 11,722 by February 2021. By Friday April 10, the population had dropped far beyond that to 11,588. There was no accounting for March 2020. The number of people released in March appears to have increased by between 50 and 175 people as a result of the coronavirus crisis, according to an examination of every inmate using a state-assigned code, compared with intakes and releases from prior periods. The department releases hundreds of people early every month, regardless of a public health crisis. The Department of Correction has declined to say how many prisoners it has released since March 1 from the population of sentenced inmates; it only shows a net change figure. And more exactly, the department wont say how many people it has released specifically due to COVID-19. Pelka said the counts will be released by the Office of Policy and Management as part of a monthly indicators report later this month. It sounds simple every inmate has a unique identifier, after all but tracking intakes and releases during a normal month, without a global health pandemic, is more complicated than it sounds, Pelka explained. We are concerned that the data available on the Open Data Portal cannot provide the level of detail needed to understand the complexity of the criminal justice system. Counting only admissions and releases masks the movements happening below the surface, Pelka said in the emailed statement. The Hearst investigation shows the the total number released is 980. In those same 40 days, 322 additional inmates joined the population of sentenced prisoners. The net reduction was 658 inmates in the sentenced population. Thats compared to the previous 40-day period when 821 people were released and 807 people were sentenced. In the same period a year ago, from March 1 to April 10, 2019, 914 people were released and 911 people entered. In the randomly selected 40 day period between Oct. 1, 2019 and Nov. 10, 2019, 861 people were released and 803 people entered. Of the 980 released since March 1, 173 were over the age of 50 and 707 were sentenced to two years or less, two metrics the department has said it is using to prioritize the release of inmates. The big difference lies in the numbers of people entering the sentenced population. Far fewer people have been sentenced in the 40 days since March 1, the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Thats a drop of 592 from the same period one year ago, and a drop of 485 from the prior 40 days. The pre-trial population, which is under the jurisdiction of the judicial branch and makes up roughly one third of the overall incarcerated population, declined by a net 237 from March 1 to April 10, meaning at least that many have exited the pre-trial population. In the prior 40 day period, that population declined by 97 people. Similar data on intakes and exits is not immediately available in public records, due to the highly fluid nature of that population. Connecticut has no system of county or local jails. That means the population of people arrested and held pre-trial or before posting bail is constantly changing, making it harder to track individual people. Asking for more The call comes every night around the same time, lighting up her phone with the word, Robinson. Its her fiance, calling from Carl Robinson Correctional Institution in Enfield, where hes been incarcerated since July, when the world was still unmarred by the wrath of the COVID-19 coronavirus. He has a little over a year left in his two-year sentence for a non-violent offense. Their 15-minute phone calls are the only insight shes getting into whats happening inside, and whether or not he might be released. He was given paperwork this week, which might determine if hes eligible for an early release. But theres no timeline for that process. Hes not optimistic. This week he said to me, I feel like Im sitting here waiting to die, said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of jeopardizing her fiances potential release. I told him not to say that, but he just feels hopeless. His sentence is short and for a low-level offense, two of the criteria that make him eligible for consideration, but hes 39 years old, with no pre-existing medical conditions other than knee pain and years of smoking. The Department of Correction has made it clear theyre prioritizing inmates over 50 years old, with high medical needs scores. Even with exceptional behavior, its a long-shot hell qualify. I know theyre worried about making sure everyone has a place to go. He has a place to go, said the woman, who lives in Cheshire. I just hope they let him out before he gets sick. It could already be throughout the entire prison and they dont know it. Im extremely afraid for all of these people. It started out because Im really afraid because I want him home, and now its not just about him, its about all of them. Families, inmates and advocates have pressed Gov. Ned Lamont and the Department of Correction to begin releasing inmates at a higher rate to no avail. The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut filed a lawsuit last week seeking an immediate court-mandated mass release of inmates who fall into certain categories, and to require the state to provide a plan for caring for those who remain incarcerated The states response, filed Tuesday in Superior Court, provided some insight into the level of scrutiny the department is giving each offender in terms of the crimes theyve committed and their medical scores. The Department of Correction has also issued a number of policies to prevent the spread of the virus within its facilities, and this week announced it would transition all inmates diagnosed with the virus to Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. The maximum security prison has the infrastructure recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to isolate inmates with the virus. As of Thursday, 41 staff members and 44 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 across all of Connecticuts prison facilities. So far, 35 inmates have been transferred to Northern. For the woman whose fiance is incarcerated at Carl Robinson, none of that is reassuring. Her fiance told her staff at the facility were bringing meals to the inmates on trays, so they could eat at their bunks instead of in a crowded cafeteria. But this week, the cafeteria reopened. He told her the inmates can go to medical or to the commissary, but they cant go outside for recreation. Instead theyre sent to a gym, that at times, has been crowded well beyond the recommended social gathering of five people or less within six feet of each other. Im extremely worried about him, but its more than that, she said. There are so many people in there. Hes in a barracks situation with about 100 other people. Hes not in one of those two person cells ... How is this social distancing when youre in a bunk with 100 other people? kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt China on Monday rejected reports that the earliest case of Covid-19 in its territory occurred last November and that it had concealed the real situation regarding the pandemic, describing them as a distortion of facts. Chinese embassy spokesperson Ji Rong said in a statement: Recently, certain Indian media ignored the facts that China had officially released and continued to blame China for concealing the real situation. These claims are fact-distorting and irresponsible. Ji noted that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Chinas central Hubei province detected cases of unknown pneumonia in late December 2019, and the Wuhan municipal health commission issued an urgent notification to medical institutions to appropriately treat patients. On January 7, Chinese President Xi Jinping issued instructions on an epidemic response while chairing a meeting of the standing committee of the political bureau of the central committee of the Communist Party of China, and on January 23, China took unprecedented, decisive and strong measures to shut down Wuhans outbound channels, she said. During the fight against the epidemic, the Chinese government has always maintained an open and transparent attitude on timely releasing and sharing of epidemic information, Ji said. Since January 3, China has regularly informed the World Health Organization (WHO) and other countries, including the US, about the outbreak. It has also held daily press conferences since January 27, she said. Virus knows no national borders, and the epidemic distinguishes no races. Only with solidarity and by cooperation, can the international community prevail over the pandemicAt present, the Indian people are fighting against the epidemic under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. China will stand together with India to jointly overcome the epidemic at an early date, Ji said. New Hartford, N.Y. A Utica-area man was being arrested for shoplifting at Walmart in New Hartford when police say he got into a struggle with the officer arresting him. A New Hartford police officer suffered a knee injury in the struggle, police said. Jose H. Burgos, 28, of New York Mills, faces felony assault and other charges. Jose H. Burgos, 29, of New York Mills, was charged with assaulting a New Hartford police officer who attempted to arrest him for shoplifting at a local Walmart. Police were called to Walmart, located at 4765 Commercial Drive in New Hartford, around 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Burgos had been stopped by store loss prevention after police say he failed to scan several pieces of merchandise at a self-checkout counter. Burgos faced a misdemeanor petit larceny charge for the alleged shoplifting, but when police went to arrest him, he resisted and got into a struggle with police. The officer, whom police did not identify, was taken to St. Lukes Hospital in Utica, where he was treated and released. Burgos was charged with second-degree assault, resisting arrest and petit larceny. He was arraigned at the Centralized Arraignment Court and sent to the Oneida County Jail on $2,500 cash bail. People stand in line while practicing social distancing as they wait to be processed through the triage tent outside of the emergency room at Elmhurst Medical Center in New York City on April 10, 2020. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images) New York Working On Reopening Plan With 5 Other States New York officials are working on a reopening plan with five other states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Delaware, as the hardest-hit state in the nation starts to see a decline in hospitalizations and in new cases. The six governors announced on April 13 the creation of a regional advisory committee that will explore how to restore the economy and get people back to work. We cannot act on our own, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement on Twitter. We must be smart and tactical in how our region comes out of this, or else well be right back to square one. The plan will start with easing the isolation measures that have restricted people across all six states to remain largely at home unless theyre designated essential workers. The next phase will be increasing economic activity, in part by adding new groups to the list of essential workers. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gives a daily CCP virus press conference at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City on March 27, 2020. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images) Officials want to introduce widespread testing for the virus, as well as antibody testing, which would detect if an individual once had the virus. As many as 25 percent of patients never show symptoms but can still transmit the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, even if theyre asymptomatic or presymptomatic. Taking temperatures and asking people to wear masks and gloves will be key to the reopening plan, which will be designed by public health and economic experts, not politicians, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters in Albany. While the six states wont be able to be fully in sync, to the extent we can coordinate, we should and we will, he said, adding: The wider the geographic area for that plan, the better. Because this virus doesnt recognize governmental boundaries. The virus follows its own boundaries and its own guidelines. New York has by far the highest number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the nation, with the bulk of the patients in New York City and its environs. The once-soaring metrics stoked fear in officials, who at one point relied on projections that the state would need as many as 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 ventilators. Incident Commander Marc Pellegrino talks to media inside a field medical station in Edison, New Jersey, on April 8, 2020. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images) The peak number of cases in the state instead proved to be far lower, indicating that concerns about the accuracy of the projections were warranted. The state saw a slight increase in total hospitalizations overnight. The net change in total hospitalizations, or discharges versus admissions, remained under 120 for the third straight day. A drop from over 1,000 to the hundreds took place on April 4. The three-day average increase in hospitalizations dropped to 85, the lowest in about a month. New York reported 671 new deaths on April 12, bring the total death toll to 10,056, but the daily toll dropped by 100 or more from recent days. More than half of New Yorks CCP virus deaths have taken place in New York City. Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have all started dropping in the city, according to figures from its Department of Health. A person wearing a mask walks a dog during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City on April 12, 2020. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images) Earlier on April 13, city officials said the number of patients in ICUs dropped 22, to 835, and hospital admissions dropped by 80, to 383. The percentage of people tested who were positive for COVID-19 dropped slightly from 59.3 percent to 58.1 percent. Once all three metrics have been declining for a prolonged period of time, officials can think about loosening social distancing measures, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters. Officials at the moment hope to begin moving out of the lockdown phase in June in the city, he said. All the indicators are moving in the right direction. Inside the city, the group with the most positive cases is those between the ages of 18 and 44. The most hospitalizations and deaths have been among those 75 and over. The whole world is learning all about the coronavirus in real time, it seems, but some states are proactively releasing information more promptly than others. On the latest episode of Beat Check with The Oregonian, investigative reporter Rob Davis talks about what we now know about those hospitalized due to COVID-19 and what information hes continuing to push for from state health authorities. He also talked about how Oregon is faring far better in many respects than other states but explained why theres still much room for improvement in the states efforts to be transparent about the pandemic and its widespread effects here. On the second half of the episode, I spoke with reporter Shane Dixon Kavanaugh about his recent obituary for the states first known coronavirus fatality. We talked about how he got that story, when state, county and federal officials werent releasing the mans identity and how his friends and the tight-knit country-Western dancing community are unable to grieve together. Heres the full episode: You can subscribe to Beat Check with The Oregonian on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. -- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Every company begins with little sparks of thoughts often quoted as ideas. Some companies are created with a vision to truly help creative minds convert their targets into accomplishments. Venteskraft, the brainchild of Mahin BS and Rahul Rajeev, is a great example of that, helping over 30,000 full-time stock market traders to earn their living out of the stock market. Through Venteskraft, the co-founders wanted to share their motto to life, that being poor or rich is a matter of choice that is unknowingly made. They want the youth to be able to stand on their own feet by enabling them to have multiple sources of income. Venteskraft was founded with the idea of sharing their knowledge on the stock market, which they mastered over years of trial and error. Six years since their inception, over 30,000 people are a part of this continuous journey. By imparting practical knowledge on stock market trading and mentoring traders at every step, Venteskraft aims to teach individuals how to utilise the stock market effectively. Their team of experienced financial trainers are training students all across the country with great results and accuracy. Venteskraft's sister venture Venteskraft Media, which is dedicated to business development, is helping people start up a business development consultancy. Business development has become the need of the hour in recent times with the exponential growth of digital media and the internet. They founders feel that new startups truly do not understanding the process of running a business. Stock market and business development, according to them, are evergreen sources of income, if utilised effectively. Their programmes have finessed the technique of offering practical knowledge be it stock market or business development, mentoring students till they are able to earn a steady income out of these sources. Their success has been featured in an interview by CNBC TV18 where the cofounders Mahin BS and Rahul Rajeev talked about the company and the future prospects at large. The company has seen rapid growth in the last couple of years, setting up in Malaysia as well, seeing hundreds of new students joining every month and expanding their crew to reach an accuracy never seen before. (This is a partnered post) Just short of a month since United Way of Lake County distributed $20,000 worth of food to 40 regional pantries, the nonprofit continues to significantly impact several local agencies in need of assistance. Due to fears surrounding the effects of the novel coronavirus, UWLC recently created the Lake County Relief Fund, which has secured thousands of donations from individuals and local businesses alike, and has yet to slow its stride during the current health crisis. The organizations first food distribution of the year normally follows the end of its Feed Lake County Food Drive and fundraiser in May. However, with the current environment, UWLC made the decision to implement an emergency distribution in response to the anticipated need within the community, holding a phone conference to convene with all of its partners in efforts to share information and learn the challenges each are facing. A main topic of discussion has been the need for food, said Jennifer McCarty, UWLC president and CEO. An influx in need is expected due to children who remain home from school, the mass layoffs and the need to ensure our high-risk elderly are being cared for and fed. The nonprofits food distributions have consisted of the most requested items by area pantries, including canned chicken, canned fruit, pasta sauce, chicken noodle soup, peanut butter and jelly, Jiffy baking mix, syrup, and apple juice. We benefit from economies of scale when making food purchases to help restock the pantries, McCarty said. Every ten dollars donated is enough to provide 40 meals. Home-delivered grocery program for seniors Recently, UWLC joined forces with Laketran, Lifeline, Inc., Lake County Council on Aging, RSVP and the Lake County commissioners to provide assistance to the countys most vulnerable population. The program is serving 400 to 500 seniors in need, said Tami Lewis, UWLC marketing and communications director. Its for those 60 years of age and older who live in Lake County and lack the ability to grocery shop or do not have help from someone able to shop for them. One bag of pre-selected groceries, valued at approximately $25, is being dropped off by Laketran on the door steps of those who have signed up for a delivery. Deliveries are available twice a per week per individual household. Project Hope for the Homeless United Way has also worked to put Lake County Relief funds toward helping the homeless during the COVID-19 outbreak. By assisting with extended hours in compliance with Ohios Stay-at-Home order refuge from the streets is provided. Prescription Assistance Program The Prescription Assistance Program of Ohio provides free prescriptions to those in need, and the funds weve provided are helping the agency meet the increased demand they are facing from Lake County residents who have lost jobs and health insurance (coverage) during this time, McCarty said. Lake County Free Clinic The Lake County Relief Fund has also aided the Lake County Free Clinic, helping uninsured and underinsured Lake County residents receive needed medical care, Lewis said. The clinic is experiencing a great inflow of need from those who have lost so much in the face of the coronavirus, she added. The increase in funds weve provided is allowing them to help more of our friends and neighbors as we navigate our way through this devastating health issue. Were grateful to the community for coming together during this time of great need to contribute to our Lake County Relief Fund and we will continue to use the funds on a rolling basis to impact lives through our support of programs working to meet the unprecedented needs of residents during this pandemic. Lucknow, April 13 : The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh will launch tele-consultancy medical services for non-Corona patients in the state from Tuesday, even as the number of coronavirus cases in the state reached 550 on Monday. Principal Secretary, Health, Amit Mohan Prasad told reporters that retired doctors can register for voluntary service in this scheme. He said that the Uttar Pradesh government was also starting pool testing of Corona samples. Explaining the technique, Prasad said: "Under pool testing, we will take 10 samples at a time and test them. If all are negative, it will mean that ten suspects are Corona free. If the pooled samples test positive, then all ten patients will be tested separately. This will ensure faster testing of Corona suspects." He also said that in 40 districts, infection prevention training will be provided to the healthcare staff. Meanwhile, Additional Chief Secretary, Home, Avanish Awasthi, said that the number of corona cases in the state was now 550 with 67 new cases having been reported in the past 24 hours. He said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had ordered that stern action should be taken against those who are found hiding their travel history or symptoms of Corona virus. Adityanath also said that action would be taken against the respective district officials too. Awasthi said that the lockdown was being firmly enforced and sealed hotspots were being sanitised. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador scored a political victory on Sunday by convincing oil nations to let him cut production far less than other OPEC+ members, reinforcing his nationalist project to revive state-owned producer Pemex. Mexico will only cut 100,000 barrels -- just a quarter of its pro-rated share of the 9.7 million barrels a day reduction agreed by the oil-producing nations forming OPEC+. After three days of resistance by the Latin American country, the group abandoned the initial proposal of cutting 10 million barrels per day as the most seasoned oil countries including Saudi Arabia couldnt convince Lopez Obrador to implement a deeper cut. The U.S., Brazil and Canada, the other larger oil producers in the Americas, will instead contribute with a combined 3.7 million barrels as their production declines. The outcome is a win for a president who showed once again that his domestic goals rise above all else, particularly when it comes to the energy industry. Reversing 15 years of oil production declines at state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, has been one of the main goals of the Lopez Obrador administration, which explains the presidents reluctance to accept bigger voluntary reductions even if it meant angering other nations and risking the failure of a historic oil deal. THE DEAL: Oil price war ends with OPEC+ deal to cut production The victory comes at a time when Mexico is facing a significant economic contraction and increasing discontent from the countrys business elite over a lack of significant stimulus measures to combat the devastating impact of the fast-spreading coronavirus pandemic. Its a cautionary tale for companies and lobby groups calling for a strategy change by a leader who has stubbornly gone his own way, including an initial refusal to enact stringent actions to combat the disease. This confirms that even in an international negotiation, the president continues to be very focused on his agenda, his priorities, including Pemex, Eurasia Group analyst Carlos Petersen said by phone on Sunday. His beliefs come before any other analysis or forecast of the economy, and room for change or adjustment in the near term seems very slim. Government officials in Mexico City didnt wait to celebrate the outcome. In a tweet, Mexicos Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard congratulated Energy Minister Rocio Nahle for defending the interests of Mexico by refusing to accept a bigger oil production cut as part of the OPEC+ pact. The strategy designed by Lopez Obrador worked. Good news!!! AMLO is expected to comment on the oil agreement during his daily press conference on Monday morning. Legendary Obstinacy AMLO, a grassroots populist who spent decades decrying Mexicos crony capitalism, has relied frequently on his reputation as a president who advocates for his people, especially poorer workers, and who says he came to power to fundamentally change government-business relations. Hes yet to leave the country since his inauguration in December 2018, having missed all multilateral meetings including the United Nations General Assembly. His legendary obstinacy, as demonstrated during the exhausting OPEC+ negotiations, is likely to play well with voters who like his Mexican people first message in a country where displays of patriotism are frequent. SHALE PLAYED OUT: Trumps oil deal wont save the weakest shale producers Yet some analysts argue that AMLOs fierce defense of his nationalistic energy policy -- which is at the heart of his ambitions to upend Mexicos public life in the model of the countrys revolutionary past-- came at a huge cost: by refusing to cut production, Pemex may continue operating unprofitable fields. And by holding out on a key global negotiation, Mexico could face reprimands from other nations in the months to come. There are no reasons to celebrate, Carlos Elizondo, a former Pemex independent board member, wrote in an opinion piece published by Reforma newspaper Sunday. The cost of getting away with it in front of the international community will be high, particularly at this moment of crisis. Mexicos own future inside OPEC+ is uncertain now, as its expected to decide over the next two months whether to leave the alliance, delegates said. A representative of Mexicos energy ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Pemex Risk AMLO already said he is aiming to export less crude, instead sending it to the countrys refineries as part as his big plan to rid Mexico of dependence on foreign energy markets. His longer-term bid to revive production at Pemex, whose debt is the highest of any oil major at more than $100 billion, could result in even bigger losses. The company is building an $8 billion refinery in AMLOs home state of Tabasco to reduce fuel imports that have soared to account for as much as 65% of Mexicos demand. This, even as the countrys six existing refineries are operating at less than 30% of their capacity and lose more money as they increase production because of a lack of investment in maintenance and refurbishments. FUEL FIX: You know you need it - get our energy news in your inbox Pemex will have a negative cash flow this year of $20 billion if Mexican oil trades at $30 a barrel, according to Anne Milne, a strategist at Bank of America. Investors fear that Moodys Investors Service could downgrade Pemexs bonds to junk after Fitch Ratings Inc. cut Pemex bonds even deeper into junk earlier this month. S&P Global cut its rating in March. At the same time, the government has canceled oil and gas auctions and joint-venture contracts with Pemex that enabled the state driller to share in the financial and technical burden of developing Mexicos vast, mostly unexplored deep-water oil territory. While AMLO prioritizes his energy strategy, some analysts say his refusal to follow the OPEC+ general agreement could come at a cost. AMLO has put Mexico in an internationally awkward position with other players, said Eurasias Petersen. We dont know what the unintended consequences of this might be. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday (April 12) remarked that the economic slowdown caused due to the outbreak of coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has weakened several Indian companies and they have become easy targets for takeovers by foreign firms. The Gandhi scion suggested the government to take measures in order to protect the 'weakened corporates' from "foreign interests". "The massive economic slowdown has weakened many Indian corporates making them attractive targets for takeovers. The Govt must not allow foreign interests to take control of any Indian corporate at this time of national crisis," he tweeted. The massive economic slowdown has weakened many Indian corporates making them attractive targets for takeovers. The Govt must not allow foreign interests to take control of any Indian corporate at this time of national crisis. Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 12, 2020 Rahul Gandhi made the statement hours after it was revealed that People's Bank of China (PBOC) has acquired 1.01 per cent stake in HDFC. It is to be noted that PBOC is the central bank of China and according to SEBI records the bank has purchased around 1.75 crore shares in HDFC during the quarter ended March. The PBOC deicded to make the purchase when the share price of the mortgage lender has plunged around sharply due to the coronavirus pandemic. The eocnomic activity acriss India came to a grinding halt on March 24 after the announcement of a 21-day nationwide lockdown by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to curb the spread of coronavirus. Experts have said that the harsh lockdown is affecting the badly, which was already not doing very well due to fall in demand and low GDP growth. According to World Bank projection, India will register a growth of just 1.5-2.8 per cent in its current financial year. Earlier, the World Bank had projected 4.8-5.0 per cent growth for the same period. The International Monetary Fund has already warned of a global recession, noting that the economic crisis caused by coronavirus is unlike any in the past century. For his part, PM Modi on Saturday (April 11) asserted during his meeting with chief ministers that it is important to protect both lives and the economy. The prime minister, however, also dropped hints that the nationwide lockdown could be extended by two more weeks - till April 30. "In my first address I had said, 'Jaan hai to jahaan hai (If there is life, the world will exist)'. We must now look at Jaan bhi, jahaan bhi (life and the world)," he said. New Delhi, April 13 : The Supreme Court Monday refused to pass any interim order on a plea filed by a Muslim body seeking to restrain a section of media from allegedly spreading communal hatred in connection with the Nizamuddin Markaz incident in Delhi. A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices L. Nageswara Rao and M.M. Shantanagoudar said that "we will not gag the press." The observation from the apex court came on a plea filed by Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind seeking direction to the Centre to stop the dissemination of fake news and take strict action against certain sections of the media for "spreading bigotry and communal hatred" in connection with Nizamuddin Markaz where the Tablighi Jamaat held a religious congregation last month, which led to a spike in the number of coronavirus cases in the country. The bench, which heard the matter through video conferencing, asked the petitioners to include the Press Council of India (PCI) as a party in the case and posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks. The plea filed through advocate Ejaz Maqbool said, "By communalising the issue and demonising the entire Muslim community, the actions of the media pose a serious threat to the life and liberty of Muslims across the country. The demonisation is also an infringement of the right to live with dignity which is also covered under Article 21 of the Constitution." The petitioner's counsel on Monday claimed that reports from certain sections of media constantly talked about Tablighi Jamaat spreading coronavirus in the country. To this, the bench replied, "We think you should add the Press Council of India as a party to the case... It is a necessary party to this case, include them thereafter we will hear this." The petitioner's counsel claimed people are being targeted due to adverse media reports. The bench noted that it would put in place solid long term measures, and after the court take cognizance, people will understand. The petitioner urged the apex court to issue directions to prevent the communalisation of the Nizamuddin Markaz issue by certain sections of media and electronic media. "Subsequently on March 31, the incident made national headlines. However, certain sections of the media, instead of exercising restraint, reported the entire incident with a communal flavour, with phrases such as 'Corona Jihad', 'Corona Terrorism', 'Islamic Insurrection', 'Corona Bombs' etc. It was apparent that the unfortunate incident of the Tablighi Jamaat was being used to demonise and blame the entire Muslim community," the petition said. As the coronavirus pandemic intensified, so did Catherine Paynes strategies for avoiding infection while undergoing chemotherapy. The 33-year-old Chicago woman was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in November and began treatment soon after, suppressing her immune system. What started as avoiding the gym, air travel and limiting contact with anyone who felt ill turned into a full-blown quarantine, Payne said. And visitor restrictions at Northwestern Memorial Hospital meant her fiance could drive her to and from treatment but could not sit with her during her infusion to keep her company, bring food and lend support. You feel very isolated, she said. Cancer treatment is stressful under any circumstances, but those living with cancer now must undergo additional precautions and sometimes delays as oncologists figure out the best plan while also keeping patients safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Doctors say every patient is different. They weigh factors like the type of cancer and its aggressiveness, if patients are feeling symptoms and how far along they are in their treatment against the risk they take just entering a hospital. For some patients, oncologists say its best to postpone surgeries or treatments and replace clinical visits with virtual ones. But others must forge ahead because some cancer is a disease that does not wait, said Dr. Damiano Rondelli, chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago and director of its Blood and Marrow Transplant Program. Payne said she was approaching the end of her 18-week chemotherapy treatment plan when the coronavirus spread increased and stay-at-home orders came down. Her doctors decided she could finish treatment but needed to take extra precautions. Just entering the hospital required masks and gloves and created a lot of anxiety, she said. Every time I go to the hospital, its stressful, Payne said. When youre in the waiting room everyone is just kind of looking at each other. One cough, and youre moving chairs. When she arrives home, Payne describes immediately washing her clothes. And while her fiance is able to help her at home, her parents and other family members who live in Canada were forced to cancel visits. Its not how Payne pictured it, but its the safest approach. She said she feels lucky to have finished her treatment, which concluded late last month, and even luckier to schedule the next step a surgery later this month. While some plastic surgery elements will be postponed due to the pandemic, Paynes doctors are moving forward with her single mastectomy. My worry, of course, was theyd decide I would have to wait, she said. Especially being a younger person with a fairly aggressive cancer I want all the cancer-fighting opportunity that I can get. But having surgery this month means an overnight hospital stay alone because of visitor restrictions, she said. You have one image in your mind of what the whole journey is going to be like. This is another thing thats different. Im coming to terms with that, Payne said, adding she even jokes shes lucky her cancer is serious enough. Rondelli said cancer treatment during the pandemic is a delicate balance. His team must decide the most aggressive treatment while also protecting patients often vulnerable immune systems, as well as hospital resources. But there are some things that cannot be delayed, he said, like certain surgeries to remove cancerous masses, diagnostic biopsies and other treatments like chemotherapy. Its all very individualized, requiring a lot of communication between patients and their doctors. Dr. John Abad, a surgical oncologist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Illinois, said that when the virus first began to spread, he and his colleagues tried to move up as many surgeries as they could, so patients would be out of the hospital and at home recovering during projected peak times for the virus. Now, theyre pushing surgeries back when they safely can, so we dont expose patients to the virus, he said. Were also trying to free up resources so if a patient (were to get) sick after an operation, (they wouldnt) use up space in the ICU. As for other treatments, like chemotherapy infusions, sometimes delaying or extending time in between visits makes sense, said Dr. Mary Mulcahy, an Illinois oncologist. When Chicago first had an uptick in COVID-19, no one knew how long the period of social distancing would last or how long hospitals would be affected, Mulcahy said. The problem is, we keep pushing it back, she said. At some point, were going to have to get people back. But patients coming in for maintenance reasons are able to spread out visits or check in with doctors virtually. This allows for fewer people inside the cancer clinics, Mulcahy said. While safer, losing that personal connection can create more anxiety, she said. Timothy Pearman, a clinical psychologist and director of survivorship at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern Memorial, said he switched his visits with patients to phone calls or video chats. He said while hes noticed many patients are anxious, others have built a resilience from their cancer fight. Theyve been able to transfer those skills to this. The newly diagnosed patients tend to be experiencing the most angst, waiting to see how their treatment could be affected, he said. And the stress grows in those who have had to delay certain treatments. For any cancer survivor, the waiting is always the hardest part, said Pearman, who is also a survivor. He said he advises using exercise as a coping tool, as well as reframing the situation to look at positives, like enjoying additional time home with family. Becky Ness, a social worker in Illinois, said she talks with patients about what they can control, as well as good preventive practices. For those with terminal cancer, restrictions and self-isolating during the pandemic can add a new layer of grief because if theyre feeling good, they want to spend time with family and friends, and enjoy what time they have left. Even for patients who arent terminal, the coronavirus pandemic is bringing up end-of-life issues, said Dr. Sonali Smith, interim chief of hematology/oncology at University of Chicago Medicine. If they get (COVID-19), they have a higher chance of having a more severe course, she said. So that leads to this conversation of, if someone who has advanced cancer gets COVID . what if they go to the ICU? What if they need to be intubated? While these are hard discussions, theyre necessary and important, Smith said. I think it is hard to have these end-of-life conversations with people, no matter what. Now, were being forced to do it because of the potential of having limited resources, she said. Maybe its making us do what we shouldve been doing all along. For Eddie Silverman, 40, the pandemic is changing some aspects of his life but not his overall outlook or plan to treat Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He was diagnosed last summer and began treatment in December. Every 28 days, Silverman drives from his home to University of Chicago Medical Center for chemotherapy. Then, the next day he comes back to complete the two-day course. Under Smiths advice, hes continued to do so. This isnt a time to be experimental, Silverman said. Although hes used to his brother or his in-laws being with him during treatment, Silverman said hes adjusted to the new normal. He wears a mask in the hospital and changes clothes in the parking lot once hes done. At home, Silverman and his wife are vigilant about precautions. Their family doesnt have visitors, and they wipe down packages and groceries that come into the home. There has been really no change in my care because of coronavirus, he said. But, theres been a change in all of our lifestyles. Through it all, Silverman said he uses humor to cope and refuses to waiver from his ultimate goal beating cancer. Ive got so many people fighting for me, he said. I cant lose this battle. 2020 Chicago Tribune President Trump showed reporters a White House-produced video during Monday's briefing in an attempt to shame the New York Times for critical coverage of his coronavirus response. The video, which the president said was produced by Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, showed - in the White House's words - that the 'media minimized the risk from the start,' but Trump took early action. The White House team found audio of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman saying that Trump's China travel ban was 'probably effective' because it 'did take a pretty aggressive measure against the spread of the virus.' The video also featured a number of governors, including Democrats Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, praising the Trump administration's leadership on the pandemic. Cuomo had rebuked Trump for suggesting he has 'total authority' to lift the coronavirus shutdowns against the wishes of the governors. Earlier on Monday, six governors from states on east coast and three on the west coast announced their own pacts to come up with a framework on how and when to reopen. President Trump's Monday press briefing turned into an episode of shame the press - as he lashed out against The New York Times, telling journalists he hopes the newspaper that has covered him critically goes out of business President Trump showed reporters a video presentation at Monday's briefing in a furious attack on The New York Times for its critical reporting of the president's coronavirus pandemic response Six governors from states on east coast - Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island - and three on the west coast - California, Oregon and Washington - announced their own pacts to come up with a framework on how and when to ease their coronavirus lockdowns Trump's claims of total power were quickly refuted by Cuomo, who slammed the president for what he perceived to be an 'abrogation of the Constitution'. During the media briefing, Trump quickly turned his attention to media and articles claiming the president was repeatedly warned about the risk posed by the coronavirus. 'So the story in the New York Times is a total fake, it's a fake newspaper and they write fake stories. And someday, hopefully in five years when I'm not here, those papers are all going out of business because nobody's going to read them,' Trump told the reporters in the room. The story, authored by Haberman and five of her colleagues, detailed the 'extent of his halting response' to the threat. ABC News' Jonathan Karl admitted to the president that he'd never seen what looked to be a 'campaign' style video played in the White House briefing room. The Hatch Act prohibits the president from actively campaigning at the White House. President Trump moved to the side of the press briefing room so reporters in the room could take in a video that he said his social media team produced in two hours on Monday to combat what he called 'fake news' Before the video played, Dr. Anthony Fauci (left) took the podium to clarify some remarks he made that seemd to suggest that President Trump (right) acted too late - and could have saved more American lives Andrew Cuomo rejects Trump's claim of 'total authority' to lift shutdowns as he leads 'Coronavirus Council' of nine Democratic governors New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rebuked President Trump's claims that he has blanket authority to order a reopening of the country and cease stay-at-home orders, saying Monday night that the last time he checked the US had 'a constitution...not a king'. In a heated press conference inside the White House on Monday evening, Trump claimed that his office holds 'absolute power' over the shutdowns prompted by the novel coronavirus outbreak - hours after Cuomo and eight other Democratic governors unveiled a pact to work together to co-ordinate the reopenings of their respective states. 'When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,' Trump told reporters in response to the announcement, declining to specify where his authority to overrule states resides when pressed by DailyMail.com. Instead, he reiterated: 'The federal government has absolute power.' But Trump's claims of total authority were quickly refuted by Cuomo, who slammed president for what he perceived to be an 'abrogation of the Constitution'. 'Mr. Trump offered no legal or constitutional basis to back up his claim to exclusive authority to reopen society,' Cuomo told MSNBC. 'Why he [Trump] would even go there, I have no idea. 'The constitution says we don't have a king. To say I have total authority over the country because I'm the president, it's absolute, that is a king. We didn't have a king, we didn't have king George Washington, we had President George Washington.' Cuomo then pointed out that it was in fact state governors who imposed a variety of stay-home orders under their state constitutions in response to the outbreak of Covid-19, not the federal government. Advertisement Trump, during his Monday diatribe, brought up Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, several times, claiming the former vice president had called the president 'xenophobic' for cutting off travel from China. Biden, according to Politifact.com, never made that direct statement. Karl asked Trump who produced the video for the president. 'That was done by a group in the office and it was done by ... we just put some clips together,' Trump explained. 'I could give you, I'll bet you I have 100 more clips. They were just pieced together over the last two hours.' Trump then identified Scavino and his team as who put the clips together. The president said he wanted to share this presentation amid the pandemic 'because we're getting fake news and I'd like to have it corrected.' 'They're saying what a great job we're doing,' he said of the governors' praises. 'And the reason they did was to keep you honest,' Trump added. The video presentation was part two of what was already an odd briefing. It began with Dr. Anthony Fauci coming to the podium to explain that he used a poor choice of words when he said that earlier mitigation would have saved lives. Fauci had appeared on CNN's 'State of the Union' Sunday and said the federal government 'could have saved more lives' if social distancing measures would have been put in place sooner. 'Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could've saved lives, obviously,' Fauci said Sunday. He suggested at the briefing that he didn't want it to look like he was assigning blame to Trump, who was standing several feet away from him when he made his remarks. 'I had an interview yesterday that I was asked a hypothetical question and hypothetical questions can sometimes get you into some difficulty,' Fauci said Monday. He said he gave the 'obvious' answer that mitigation helps. Dr. Anthony Fauci (left) and Dr. Deborah Birx (right) stand in the White House briefing room before President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence arrived for the daily coronavirus taskforce briefing 'That was taken as a way that maybe somehow something was at fault here,' Fauci said. He then detailed the two times he told the president that social distancing measures should be recommended by the federal government - at the advent of the '15 Days to Slow the Spread' policy in March and then when Trump extended it another 30 days to take the country through April. 'At that time, the president went with the health recommendations and we extended it another 30 days,' Fauci said. During the interview, Fauci mentioned being met with 'pushback'. He revised his wording on Monday. 'That was the wrong choice of words,' he told the journalists in the room. Fauci was then asked by a reporter if he was walking back his comments voluntarily. 'Everything I do is voluntary, please, don't even imply that,' Fauci told CBS News. The White House already had to come out and say that Fauci's job was not in jeopardy. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Monday, 'This media chatter is ridiculous- President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci.' Trump had, however, retweeted a tweet that contained the hashtag '#firefauci.' When asked about that Monday, Trump answered, 'That's somebody's opinion.' The president denied that he 'elevated' that message with the retweet. 'I'm not firing him, I think he's a wonderful guy,' Trump said. 'Not everybody's happy with Anthony, not everybody's happy with everybody,' Trump also offered. 'But I will tell you, we have done a job the likes which nobody's ever done.' The briefing came as New York Governor Cuomo said Trump does not have blanket authority to order the reopening of the country and cease stay-at-home orders, He said on Monday night that the last time he checked the US had 'a constitution...not a king'. Cuomo was joined on a televised conference call by the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island to create a 'Covid corridor' THE CORONAVIRUS COUNCILS Cuomo's 'covid corridor' NEW YORK NEW JERSEY CONNECTICUT PENNSYLVANIA RHODE ISLAND DELAWARE Newson's west coast pact CALIFORNIA OREGON WASHINGTON Advertisement In a heated press conference inside the White House on Monday evening, Trump claimed that his office holds 'absolute power' over the shutdowns. But Trump's claims of total authority were quickly refuted by Cuomo, who slammed president for what he perceived to be an 'abrogation of the Constitution'. Cuomo also pointed out that it was state governors who imposed a variety of stay-home orders under their state constitutions in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, not the federal government. Earlier on Monday, six governors from states on the east coast and three on the west coast announced their own pacts to come up with a framework on how and when to reopen. All nine governors are Democrats and include Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York - both of whom have seen their ratings soar during their handling of the crisis. In Albany, New York, Cuomo convened a virtual press conference with five governors of what he called the 'Covid corridor' - the states of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island which are joined by the I-95 freeway and Amtrak's Acela corridor and form New York City's vast economic hinterland. Massachusetts and Maryland, which both also sit along the I-95 but are not yet part of the council, have Republican governors - although both men have contradicted Trump's position and said reopening is a matter for them. The six Democratic governors revealed they were creating the first multi-state database in order to share information about the virus and help come up with reopening plan that would happen 'within weeks'. President Trump addressing the daily coronavirus task force briefing with Vice President Mike Pence at his side at the White House in Washington yesterday Cuomo, when asked about the president's remarks about his authority, challenged Trump to produce a plan and said wryly that it was 'interesting' that the federal government shrugged the responsibility of shutting down the economy at the start of the crisis but wanted to be the authority to reopen it. The New York governor said: 'He [Trump] left it to the states to close down and that was a state by state decision, without any guidance really. He took the position that it was a state's decision and that the states were responsible for purchasing supplies. 'That was the model of management for this disaster emergency. If they want to change the model, they can change the model. He's the President of the United States. He's the federal government. 'Let him change the model. But change the model and explain it,' he said. While deaths continue to rise in New York, the new death toll across the state is 10,056 - it is rising at a slower rate. On Sunday, there were 671 new deaths as opposed to more than 700, which was the figure over the last few days. The number of new cases across the state rose by another 6,129 to 195,031. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States Mon, April 13, 2020 08:25 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd16f8da 2 World COVID-19-lockdown,COVID-19-quarantine,tornado,US,natural-disaster Free At least six people have died after tornadoes ripped through the southern US state of Mississippi on Sunday, officials said. The tornadoes caused "catastrophic" damage, according to US media, and prompted the National Weather Service (NWS) to issue a tornado emergency, its highest level of tornado alert. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MSEMA) reported one death in Walthall County, two in Lawrence County and three in Jefferson Davis County, all of which are in the southern part of the state. "These are initial reports and will continue to update when info becomes available," the agency tweeted. The Storm Prediction Center said it expected "severe thunderstorms" to continue through the night in Mississippi, as well as in neighboring states Alabama and Georgia. "Strong tornadoes, widespread damaging winds, and large hail are all possible," the center added. Mississippi governor Tate Reeves urged state residents to take the "severe storms very seriously." "The NWS just issued a solemn, rare warning: a 'PDS' (Particularly Dangerous Situation) tornado watch," he tweeted Sunday afternoon. "Please take precautions to keep your family safe." He later retweeted a message from MSEMA reminding residents to "wear a mask, bandana, or scarf around your nose and mouth" and to "practice social distancing" to prevent the spread of the coronavirus if they had to go to a public storm shelter. Superstar Salman Khan, who is currently with his family in his Panvel farmhouse during the lockdown, had recently pledged to financially support 25,000 families of workers in the film industry. Now, the actor has also come forward to help daily wage earners in Mumbai. The actor had helped deliver basic necessities to about 50 female ground workers after an emergency call. Politician Baba Siddiqui took to Twitter to break the news. He wrote, Thank you @beingsalmankhan @tweetbeinghuman for your generous contribution towards the daily wage workers. You are always one step ahead of everybody when it comes to helping people and you have proved that yet again. (1/2).. Thank you @BeingSalmanKhan @tweetbeinghuman for joining us in our fight against #CoronaVirus and making sure no one sleeps hungry! (2/2) Thank you @beingsalmankhan @tweetbeinghuman for your generous contribution towards the daily wage workers. You are always one step ahead of everybody when it comes to helping people and you have proved that yet again. (1/2).. pic.twitter.com/3zlW51MKOg Baba Siddique (@BabaSiddique) April 10, 2020 Thank you @BeingSalmanKhan @tweetbeinghuman for joining us in our fight against #CoronaVirus and making sure no one sleeps hungry! (2/2) Baba Siddique (@BabaSiddique) April 10, 2020 According to a report in Times of India, Salman Khan's manager confirmed the reports and said that the star has been quite generous and has helped people in need. Follow @News18Movies for more If youre stricken with the COVID-19 virus, your first thought probably isnt to warn your neighbors. Yet that's exactly what some homeowner associations and apartment managers are asking residents to do _ self-report when they become sick with the coronavirus. It's a request that pits an individual's right to privacy against the immediate community's right to know. The HOA for The Knolls at Breckinridge neighborhood in Richardson, Texas, which consists of homes valued around $400,000, made that request in a letter to its residents. "This is only a request and the information will only be used for the sole purpose of ensuring the safety and sanitation of our community during this pandemic," says the letter, which was sent to The Dallas Morning News. The Village in Dallas, which consists of 16 apartment communities, also wants its residents to alert management if they test positive. The property management company recently notified residents of a coronavirus case without identifying the individual by name or community. It said it was following federal privacy laws. "All members of the household have been advised to self-isolate/quarantine per (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines and avoid all common areas," said an email sent to residents. The Village did not respond to The News' request for additional comment. By asking residents to report their own coronavirus diagnoses, legal experts warn, these organizations are inserting themselves into a situation where they're obligated to protect individual privacy rights while adding little value to an already panicked community. "People are freaked out," said RMWBH PC's Marc Markel, a 40-year Texas attorney certified in property owner association law. "And so they feel as though they have to do something. And maybe this is what they feel they have to do." A letter notifying residents of a coronavirus case in the Dallas Power and Light apartment building resulted in the posting of panicked messages to a public Facebook group for downtown residents. Property managers appear to be following guidelines recently distributed by the National Apartment Association advising them that they may have a duty to notify residents of a health and safety concern. The guidelines encourage them to notify all residents through email, notes on doors or messages on community message boards when a resident self-reports a coronavirus diagnosis. "Make sure to avoid faulting or blaming the affected resident for contracting the virus," an NAA attorney said in an instructional YouTube video posted on the association's page. Markel said asking residents to provide information about COVID-19 only jeopardizes those residents. "Knowing that somebody on the fourth floor of your building has an issue I think would create more problems," he said. Residents don't have to tell their HOA or property manager if they've been exposed to or even contracted COVID-19, said Jeff Drummond, a lawyer at Jackson Walker who specializes in HIPAA and medical record privacy. HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which gives people stringent health record privacy rights. Also, there's no clear legal protection of the privacy of people who voluntarily share their medical information with property managers or HOAs, he said. Notices from apartment complexes could inadvertently disclose an infected person's address _ something HIPAA rules prohibit, according to Drummond. Entities covered by HIPAA, like hospitals and health insurers, can share only a general description of a person's medical condition. "You couldn't say what the patient's name is, birthdate, address or anything like that," Drummond said. "You can say the patient came from a particular ZIP code, but you couldn't get any more specific than that." Asking residents to self-report also raises questions about what property managers can actually do with the information to protect others. Many property managers across Texas have shut down shared amenities to prevent gatherings and have begun routinely disinfecting communal spaces, Markel said. Weve tried to communicate with our clients as frequently as possible to remind them of why they exist, what theyre doing and recommendations regarding closing and facilities, Markel said. But nowhere do we recommend the gathering of that intelligence, because of privacy concerns. -- By Dom DiFurio, The Dallas Morning News MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE Ga. bar owner removes $3,714 of bills stapled to walls, gives to staff Toilet paper hoarding: How the coronavirus pandemic wiped out supplies Democrats renew vote-by-mail push as coronavirus upends elections 3-month-old Cayuga County baby tests positive for coronavirus, county says Syracuse Crunchs sanitation machines look like a winner in coronavirus fight The unpredictability of the global coronavirus outbreak has disrupted the demand for steel and forced steel projects to lay idle or cut production. '' Hoa Phat Group, one of the leading Vietnamese private steelmakers, has failed to run its hot-rolled coil facility as scheduled. The group said that the line at its $2.6 billion Dung Quat complex in the central province of Quang Ngai finished installing equipment and was expected to test run and go into operation next month, but is likely to be delayed as Italian experts and other overseas engineers are stranded outside Vietnam. This is a modern and highly-automated line. Italian and other foreign engineers cannot be replaced for completion of the blast furnace, said the group, which has supported the government with around VND5 billion ($217,400) to battle the pandemic. Hoa Phat added that the hot-rolled coil line at Dung Quat complex will begin operations as soon as it is feasible. This delay could place more burdens on the groups strategy to increase the steel supply, leading to changes in market shares for steelmakers domestically this year. This key project was slated to double the sectors output of steel products to 4.35 million tonnes per year in the first stage. Meanwhile, the virus pandemic is taking a bite out of profits ranging from petrochemicals and semiconductors to steel at Taiwan-based Formosa Plastic Group, which operates a $10.5-billion steel and port complex in the central province of Ha Tinh. In light of the ongoing pandemic, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel has lowered prices for its hot-rolled coil products for May shipment and delivery to $40 per tonne. Formosa also decreased its wire rod offers for cargoes to be shipped and delivered in March. Although the numbers of new infections and deaths in China are decreasing, other countries in Asia such as Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam have reported increasing infection cases. According to commodity data provider Fastmarkets, this affects the downstream demand from end-users, who are confident that prices will fall further and are in no hurry to purchase materials. Thus, it is forecasted that the weak demand may hold Formosas plan to begin a third blast furnace construction after firing its second last year to bring the groups total production capacity to 6.71 million tonnes of liquid cast iron annually, with sales estimated at $3.5 billion Meanwhile, other local steelmakers are in extreme difficulties and blocked from both export and import lines while the domestic consumption is gloomy as nearly all works are at a standstill. Hoa Sen Group JSC, Nam Kim Steel JSC, and Pomina Steel JSC estimated that profits in the first quarter of 2020 plummeted at least 30 per cent on-year. Dai Thien Loc Corporation, specialising in manufacturing cold-rolling and galvanised steel, is projected to lose about VND12 billion ($521,740) in the same period. Nghiem Xuan Da, chairman of the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) said that Vietnams steel market was indeed gloomy, with moderate production and sales. He added that businesses who want to sell their products have to severely lower prices compared to standard market level, though consumption remains very low. Inventories of finished products are increasing, while businesses still have to pay interest on bank loans and storage costs. In the first two months of 2020, the domestic steel production and consumption are estimated to have decreased by 35-40 per cent on-year, in which galvanised steel, sheet metal items, and coating colours for domestic consumption reduced nearly 70 per cent, and cold-rolled steel by 87 per cent on-year, according to Da. He added that the VSA has called on the government to help through two proposals extension for steelmakers loans, and a reduction in lending rates. A representative of a steelmaker who declined to be named said that what businesses want from the government is support with specific and practical policies. He called a drop of 5 per cent in the corporate income tax rate, which has already been applied by some countries. VIR Nguyen Thu VN steel producers hit hard by pandemic The Vietnam Steel Association (VSA)s member enterprises suffered a strong reduction in production and business in the first quarter of this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. President Trump and the Coronavirus Task Force held a press conference at the White House. Trump was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words: Thank you very much everybody, and good afternoon. Today is Good Friday. And this Sunday, millions of Christians celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this holy time, we pray that God will heal the sick and comfort the heartbroken and bless our heroes. As American families look forward to Easter, were reminded that our story ends not in despair, but in triumph and renewal. Very appropriate, isnt it? Id like to provide Americans an update on our ongoing efforts in the war against the invisible enemy. Before I do that, Ill have a couple of notes. The United States, in discussions last night with Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and dealing with OPEC nations we are trying to get Mexico, as the expression goes, over the barrel. And Mexico is committing to do 100,000 fewer barrels. The President and I spoke last night. We have a great relationship, great friendship. Theyre helping us very much at the border. They have 27,000 soldiers Mexican soldiers on our border right now, stopping people from coming into our country as our wall goes up. Were up to about 168 miles of wall. And in speaking with the President, they have a limit. The OPEC nations have agreed to a different limit: a reduction of about 23 percent. So what I thought I would do and I dont know that its going to be accepted; well find out the United States will help Mexico along and theyll reimburse us sometime at a later date when theyre prepared to do so. And we had a great conversation, but well find out how that all works out. As you know, theyre trying to get rid of the glut of oil. Theres a tremendous glut of oil. And we dont want anything to hurt our incredible industry. Were actually the largest producer in the world now, so we dont want anything to hurt those jobs those great jobs in Texas and North Dakota, in Oklahoma, and everywhere. We have a tremendous energy New Mexico tremendous energy business. And we want to keep those jobs. So were were working on it. I think, eventually, its going to work out. It may work out quicker than what most people thought possible. And maybe it wont, but itll work out eventually. Our experts are monitoring the data from every part of our country having to do with the topic that were here to discuss. In the midst of grief and pain, were seeing clear signs that our aggressive strategy is saving countless lives. Tremendous progress is being made. Although when you look at some of the numbers I just spoke with Governor Cuomo; we had a good talk. When you look at those numbers the numbers of death, people that have died its so horrible. Now, on the other side, you have the numbers of beds being used, we were just saying, are substantially reduced. Thats usually the sign that its heading in the downward curve. So, New York, we know where that is. But in the midst of all this grief and this pain, were seeing these signs and were seeing them very strongly. And a lot of that has to do with the aggressive strategy in saving so many lives. Were saving so many lives compared to what it could have been. So, nobody knows what the number is, but we had a number of 100,000 lives. As many as that is, its impossible to even think of it. And that was the low end with a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of you can call it many different things. Our people had to be extremely strong and brave to be able to put up with what theyve put up with. But the minimum, if you did this social distancing at every other aspect and I think I can say 90 percent, maybe even more than that, were able to do it the minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think well be substantially under that number. Hard to believe that if you had 60,000 you could never be happy, but thats a lot fewer than we were originally told and thinking. So they said between 100- and 220,000 lives on the minimum side, and then up to 2.2 million lives if we didnt do anything. But it showed a just tremendous resolve by the people of this country. So well see what it ends up being, but it looks like were headed to a number substantially below the 100,000. That would be the low mark. And I hope that bears out. The situation in Detroit and New Orleans appears to be stabilizing. Detroit has really started to go up, and now it is stabilizing. And New Orleans is a great place; I have so many friends there. They cant believe whats happening, but its really stabilized. I spoke with the governor of Louisiana. And, as you know, were building them additional beds right now the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA and that is going to be done. And I hope theyre not going to be very well used because I think theyve really I dont think theyre going to need them or certainly not very many of them. We built them a big hospital of 1,000 beds and now were were in the midst of doing another 1,000. I dont think theyre going to be using very many of them, and thats a good thing. There was a time, two weeks ago, where we said, Thats not going to be nearly enough. Were going to have to build more. But we wanted to wait to see and Im glad we waited. It just looks like theyre doing really well. Louisiana and the state of Michigan is doing, really, much better than we thought. In Washington State, weve made enough progress that the governor is now able to return an Army field hospital, so were going to take that hospital. We dont think we need any more hospitals. We built thousands of beds all over the country, and we think were probably not going to need that hospital anyway. And if we do, were ready to move it to a different location. In New York, were seeing hospital admissions declining very substantially, as I said. And nationwide, the number of new cases per day is flattening substantially, suggesting that we are near the peak and our comprehensive strategy is working. Over time, our guidelines to slow the spread are decreasing the rate of new cases very substantially and will result in fewer hospital admissions. And were seeing that; its incredible. I think, with no exceptions, its looking like its lower. And again, thats because of the people doing what they had to do. Great people. And working with elected representatives and and the doctors, the nurses, and everybody I mean, just everybody. Everybody is so, so has been so amazing. I was told this morning again, Please mention all of those people working in the grocery stores. And its true. The checkouts and the clerks and the people that are really and a number of those people have become infected. So we want to thank them and a shout-out to them. With the tireless devotion of American doctors and nurses and all of the medical people, weve kept our fatality rate very, very low compared to other countries. My administration is closely monitoring the data on the viruss impact on our cherished African American communities because theyve been hit hard. And the Surgeon General will be sharing more of that information right after were finished here. Hell be coming up and saying exactly whats happening because its really its very troublesome, I will tell you that. Id also like to provide clarity on the important point for many Americans on elective surgeries. While weve asked hospitals to cancel surgeries and procedures that do not take place at this time, just not to do them now the choice to delay any treatment still remains between the patient and their doctor. Were not advising Americans to postpone medical treatment that the doctor believes should occur now. So its different kinds of surgery, obviously, but were really getting to the point where you can start to think about doing that surgery, if necessary, pretty soon, I think. Pretty soon. Yesterday, I directed Secretary of Agriculture Sonny to Sonny Perdue to expedite aid to American farmers. And Secretary Perdue will be using all of the tools at his disposal to develop a program and very quickly of at least $16 billion to provide relief for farmers, ranchers, and producers impacted by the coronavirus. In this time of crisis, we must keep our supply chains moving from the beginning right from beginning to end. And were committed to supporting the amazing men and women who produce supply. I did, last night, a statement on social media, and I said I have directed Secretary Sonny Perdue to expedite help to our farmers, especially to the smaller farmers who are very, very badly hurting right now. I expect Secretary Perdue to use all of the funds and authorities at his disposal to make sure that our food supply is stable and safe, and our great farmers are prosperous and continue to be prosperous. Were working very hard to make sure our food supply chain is sound and plentiful, but we all know that that begins with our farmers, cattlemen, ranchers, and producers. So were going to be working with the small farmers, the big farmers, the cattlemen, the ranchers all of the producers. Were going to take care of them. Were working with them right now. We have a lot of money that was put there through our use of tariffs and other means, and were going to help out our farmers. And I dont think I tell you, Ive been helping our farmers for a couple of years because they were targeted, as you know, by China and others. And I think theyre very grateful to what for what weve done. On the medical front, the FDA FDA has issued 47 emergency use authorizations for advancements and testing new ventilator designs, innovations, and personal protective equipment, and experimental medicines. And Dr. Hahn is going to be talking about that. Weve cut through the red tape to give doctors and patients unprecedented freedom to make their own healthcare decisions, granting access to potential therapies and drugs. Since Monday, weve deployed two major shipments of hydroxychloroquine from our National Stockpile. And its going to various cities. And we are also disposing and getting, as quickly as we can, portions of it to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. And speaking of the Department of Defense, theyre going to be sending us 10 million N95 masks that they had. And were in great shape in every way. Were in great shape with ventilators. Were in great shape with protective clothing. We have additional planeloads coming in. But were not getting any calls from governors at this moment. I can speak, I think for Vice President Pence will be talking in a little while. Were getting were getting very few calls from governors or anybody else needing anything. Theyre in great shape for this surge thats coming in certain areas in particular, and thats a good job. Youve done a great job on that, Mike. Really, a great job. I appreciate it. The whole country appreciates it. More than 2 million coronavirus tests have now been completed, and were conducting approximately 100,000 more every day. Were also working to bring blood-based serology tests to the market as quickly as possible so that Americans can determine whether or not they have already had the virus and potentially have immunity. They have immunity if theyve had the virus. A lot of them dont even know if theyve had it. Sometimes its brutal. You see the Prime Minister seems to be doing well now, I hope. He had a rough go of it, and still is, but hes doing better. And then some people dont even know they had it. It could be sniffles. It could be they dont feel perfect, but theyve had it. And theyre the lucky ones. The NIH, CDC, and FDA are currently validating these antibody tests to ensure that they are accurate, and theyre doing that at breakneck speed. I think we can say that, Doctor. And were going to get them approved very quickly Dr. Hahn. When validated, were confident that the production will scale up to tens of millions of tests very quickly. Were leading the world now in testing, by far, and were going to keep it that way. Other countries are coming to us, and theyre wanting to know about our tests and can they buy the tests, and can they do whatever they have to do to get the tests. And were going to make that very soon, well be in a position to make that possible because its important for them to have it. And were going to have an announcement on the World Health Organization sometime next week. As you know, we give them approximately $500 million a year, and were going to be talking about that subject next week. Well have a lot to say about it. Well hold it. Every American should be proud of what our country has achieved in just a short period of time. The U.S. military has deployed thousands of personnel to build 23 temporary hospitals with more than 16,000 beds. And we have the potential to build many more if we needed them, but were all ready to go. But I dont think were going to need them, which is great great news. And we built those hospitals in 12 states and the District of Columbia using the Defense Production Act. And we used it like a hammer. A lot of the media said: Oh, we werent using it. We used it like a hammer to a point where all we had to do was say the words and everybody gave us max. And theyve done a good job. They really have done a good job, with few exceptions. And weve harnessed the full power of American industry to produce ventilators and other essential supplies. Right now, were making thousands of ventilators, many of which we wont need, but well use them in our stockpile. And well build that up. Well also help build up the stockpiles, which they should have had in the states. And so were working with governors on that, and well also help other countries or countries that are calling us for help, if they need ventilators and theyre in no no position to build ventilators. We are. We have Ford and General Motors, and many, many companies are building ventilators. So were going to be helping at a not-too-distant point, were going to be helping quite a few of the countries. Now, weve launched Project Airbridge to deliver nearly 300 million pieces of personal protective equipment from and around the globe. Were also shipping out 60 sterilization systems to 10 different cities that can each sterilize up to 80,000 masks each day, and Im even hearing it can go up to 120,000 masks a day certain equipment with certain additions. Its a company in Ohio that makes it. Its a great company. Great I hear its a great product. It works very well. I asked that question; I said, How come we have to buy so many masks? Why cant we sterilize the masks that are being used? And the answer was, You can. In this case, they say, up to 20 times. So we can take a mask certain types of masks the N95s in particular and we can sterilize them, make them very clean, up to 20 times. Thats a great thing. In addition, we passed the largest emergency economic relief package in American history to save the U.S. economy and protect the American worker. As you know, this past week, which was four active days on the stock market Good Friday today is not is not included; the markets are closed. In four days, we had the biggest market increase stock market increase that weve had in 50 years. That tells you that theres a pent-up demand. That tells you they want to get back. Theres something good going to happen. I really believe that. Theres something very good going to happen. We have to get back. So think of it: In this horrible period, this horrible, dark period where this this monster came and worked its horrible, horrible spell over the world 184 countries as of this morning. A hundred and eighty-four countries. Weve done well, and I guess the market thinks weve done well, because we hit the biggest stock market increase without one day were talking four days instead of five that weve had in 50 years. Fifty years. Think of that. More than 50 years, actually. In short, the American people have launched the greatest mobilization of our society since World War Two, deploying every scientific, governmental, medical, and military resource to defeat the virus. So I want to just start then with were going to answer questions later. Well have time. I think we have a lot of time today. A lot of people are off, as they should be. Good Friday. But so Ill stick around, and well answer questions later. I want to start with Deborah Birx, please. Dr. Birx. And you can go over some of the numbers we just looked at, and thatd be great. Thank you very much, Deborah. DR. BIRX: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for outlining how well we are doing in a series of metro areas. What also has been encouraging, for those of you who are watching epidemic curves every day and Im sure you are, and lot watching them in log phase, because thats how epidemiologists like to look at their curves you can see for the first time that, in the United States, were starting to level on the logarithmic phase, like Italy did about a week ago. And so this gives us great heart on that not only in specific places, but were starting to see that change. Obviously, a lot of that is driven by the improvement in New York City. Remember, for a long time, they were over 50 percent of our cases and 50 percent of our new cases. That has dramatically changed because of the impact of what the citizens of New York and New Jersey and across Connecticut, and now Rhode Island, are doing to really change the course of this pandemic and really change the trajectory of new cases. Were seeing that what many states and metro areas were experienced as twofold and fourfold fourfold increases that went to twofold that now those are going to eight days between the doubling rate. Watching this every day gives us hope across these metro areas, from New York and New Jersey and all through Denver, and of course, through New Orleans. We still see cases occurring in the Boston area and in Chicago, but their rate of increase seems to be stabilizing. And we really want to call out the work of the mayors of Baltimore and the District and Philadelphia who have really brought all of their health health experts together and, working with their communities, are starting to really change the curves in those areas. What were seeing is were united in social distancing, and thats been very encouraging to all of us, and it should be encouraging to the healthcare providers that are on the frontline, many of which are serving our Americans with such dignity and respect and ensuring that everybody gets optimal care. And as the President noted, our mortality in the United States is significantly less than many of the other countries when you correct them for our population. And that is really solely the work of our health our frontline healthcare providers. And so working with you can really hopefully you get the theme today that we are incredibly proud of our public health leaders at the city level, at the state level, at the federal level who are working together to really change the course of this pandemic, working with their citizens in their communities to make these changes, and the American public who has really taken all of this to heart and stayed home. I know, last week, we really asked a lot of people in the Washington and Baltimore area to consolidate, not go out frequently to grocery stores or pharmacies. You can really see that thats having a huge impact. So its really about the encouraging signs that we see. But as encouraging as they are, we have not reached the peak. And so, every day, we need to continue to do what we did yesterday and the week before and the week before that, because thats what, in the end, is going to take us up across the peak and down the other side. We continue to really applaud the work of California and Washington State and Oregon. Were learning from all three of those states, from their public health officials, about how they were able to keep the virus from ever becoming logarithmic. And I think thats an important lesson for all of us on how they did that, what the timing was, in case we ever have to face this issue in the future. Thank you, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Deborah. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Tony? THE PRESIDENT: Doctor, please. DR. FAUCI: Thank you very much, Mr. President. So again, just keeping on the theme that Dr. Birx had mentioned, this is the end of the week that famous week that we spoke about last weekend in which we what actually was predicted to happen, happened. Were starting to see the leveling off and the coming down that Dr. Birx had mentioned. But its important to remember that this is not the time to feel that since we have made such important advance in the sense of success of the mitigation, that we need to be pulling back at all. I was actually hearkened [sic] by the fact that weve been talking about the New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, and other areas where they have really big spikes, but theres other parts of the country, in the middle parts of the country, where theyre concerned to make sure they dont get those spikes. And I really want to salute the governors of states throughout the entire United States, but particularly in the central part of the country because the governors after they see us in these press conferences. And Ive had calls over the last several days from several of the governors you know, from Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Utah. Just about an hour and a half ago, I spoke with the governors of Arkansas and Wyoming, who are really committed to make sure that they dont get into the situation where theyre going to have spikes in their state. And theyre doing the kinds of things that they dont get recognized, because people dont talk about them much. But we have a big country. We have 50 states. And its not only the big cities. So if were going to pull out of this, were going to pull out of it in the big cities and were going to pull out in those areas that arent as densely populated. And I just want to give a shout out to them. Theyre doing an extraordinary job. I was really pleasant- I wouldnt say surprised, because I expect it of this country but to hear what theyre doing and the commitment that theyre putting into making sure that we dont have the kinds of situations that weve experienced, unfortunately, in other areas this is very important. I just want to close by one other thing, something I mentioned yesterday and the day before that there are a lot of candidate interventions that are going into clinical trials. For those of you who are interested in it, I recommend you go to ClinicalTrials.gov, and youll see the design of a clinical trial, and youll see that many of them are the randomized control trials that are the really gold standard of how you find out whether something really is safe and effective. And as the weeks and months and itll probably be months sometime in the summer, well start to see which are working, which are not. And to focus on those that are were developing and were working. Ill be happy to answer questions later. Thank you. THE PRESIDENT: Please, Doctor. DR. HAHN: Thank you, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. DR. HAHN: The White House Task Force has been very focused on increasing the supply of personal protective equipment for our great providers. I was one of those providers a few months ago and I can tell you nothing is more important than making sure they have what they need. So, in order to increase the supply of N95 masks, FDA has worked with industry and has now authorized two companies who will supply machines to sterilize N95 masks. Admiral Polowczyk and FEMA are purchasing, on behalf of U.S. government, 60 sterilization machines, as mentioned by the President. And they will be positioned around the country to increase the amount of supply of N95 masks. Each machine will be able to sterilize 80,000 95 masks [sic] N95 masks per day. And we hope to actually increase that further. The Vice President and the White House Task Force challenged us yesterday, and we responded as a team. FDA issued revised guidance regarding the laundering of gowns because gowns are another issue, in terms of supply, that were looking forward on. This is not something that normally happens around the country, but issued this guidance. Its on our website now at FDA. So theres information about how hospitals can do that to increase the supply. Weve heard concerns that maybe hospitals might not want to do that because of regulations. And I can happy to tell you that Administrator Verma and I have worked on this certified providers and suppliers who follow FDI [sic] FDA guidance, as posted on the website, will be compliant with Medicare and Medicaid requirements. And then finally, last week FDA provided guidance to manufacturers on manufacturing specifications for cloth gowns. This is another attempt to increase the number of gowns. Typically, its plastic or other types of materials. And this guidance, if followed, can be used by manufacturers to actually make these gowns and no further regulatory red tape will be necessary. They can go into circulation. Thank you. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Please. SURGEON GENERAL ADAMS: Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon, everyone. I started off the week talking about the challenges that lie ahead, and I want to finish the week just by reiterating what youve heard. Mitigation works. It definitively and quantitatively is working. And I want to say thank you to America for your efforts to help flatten the curve and to save lives. But, at the Presidents direction, yesterday, I met with 2,000 Hispanic leaders from their communities. And today, the Vice President led a phone call that I was on with hundreds of African American leaders, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, including Derrick Johnson of the NAACP, including the National Medical Association and the Black Nurses Association, to talk about some of the alarming trends were observing regarding the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. And youve heard the stats in New York City: Hispanics represent the majority of deaths. In Milwaukee County, blacks are 25 percent of the population but almost 50 percent of the cases and 75 percent of the deaths. So whats going on? Well, its alarming but its not surprising that people of color have a greater burden of chronic health conditions. African Americans and Native Americans develop high blood pressure at much younger ages, and its less likely to be under control, and does greater harm to their organs. Puerto Ricans have higher rates of asthma and black boys are three times as likely to die of asthma as their white counterparts. As a matter of fact, Ive been carrying around an inhaler in my pocket for 40 years out of fear of having a fatal asthma attack. And I hope that showing you this inhaler shows little kids with asthma all across the country that they can grow up to be Surgeon General one day. But I more immediately share it so that everyone knows it doesnt matter if you look fit, if you look young. You are still at risk for getting and spreading and dying from coronavirus. The chronic burden of medical ills is likely to make people of color especially less resilient to the ravages of COVID-19. And its possibly in fact, likely that the burden of social ills is also contributing. Social distancing and teleworking, we know, are critical, and youve heard Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci talk about how they prevent the spread of coronavirus. Yet only one in five African Americans and one in six Hispanics has a job that lets them work from home. People of color are more likely to live in densely packed areas and in multi-generational housing, which situations which create higher risk for spread of a highly contagious disease like COVID-19. We tell people to wash their hands, but as studies showed, 30 percent of the homes on Navajo Nation dont have running water. So how are they going to do that? In summary, people of color experience both more likely exposure to COVID-19 and increased complications from it. But let me be crystal clear: We do not think people of color are biologically or genetically predisposed to get COVID-19. There is nothing inherently wrong with you. But they are socially predisposed to coronavirus dispos- exposure and to have a higher incidence of the very diseases that puts you at risk for severe complications of coronavirus. But as the Vice President shared on the call this morning, this history and I want you to hear me say this it does not have to be our nations future. Were taking steps now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, to reach, protect, and strengthen all communities impacted by this disease, and especially our communities of color. More details will be forthcoming. But we are actively working, as the Vice President and the CDC director laid out today, on data collection; targeted outreach to communities of color; and increasing financial employment, education, housing, social and health supports, so that everybody has an equal chance to be healthy. And I want to close by saying that while your state and local health departments and those of us in public service are working day and night to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and to protect you regardless of your color, your creed, or your geography, I need you to know: You are not helpless. And its even more important that, in communities of color, we adhere to the task force guidelines to slow the spread. Stay at home, if possible. If you must go out, maintain six feet of distance between you and everyone else, and wear a mask if youre going to be within six feet of others. Wash your hands more often than you ever dreamed possible. Avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. And call your friends and family. Check in on your mother; she wants to hear from you right now. And speaking of mothers, we need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop. We need you to understand especially in communities of color, we need you to step up and help stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable. This epidemic is a tragedy, but it will be all the more tragic if we fail to recognize and address the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 and an array of other diseases and risk factors on communities of color. The task force and this administration are determined not to let that happen. The President, the Vice President have said we will not let that happen. We cant fix these issues overnight, but I promise you we will work with your communities to quickly and meaningfully move the needle in the right direction. Nothing less than the fate of our families and friends, my family and friends depends on it. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you. Mike, please. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mr. President. Today, the White House Coronavirus Task Force met and and heard from the President the gratitude then he and I and I know all the American people feel for all the dedicated workers at FEMA, HHS, U.S. Public Health Service, FDA, and all those that are literally working on your behalf around the clock to partner with states, to partner with local health officials. And Mr. President, allow me to add my my thanks and admiration to all of the entire team here at the federal level. On this Good Friday, we we remember those whove lost their lives to the coronavirus. We remember their families, our dedicated healthcare workers, and our first responders. And we do well, on this special day for Christians across this country, to remember them in our prayers. But, as you just heard from Dr. Birx and from the experts, its also a good day to remember that Good Friday is always followed by Easter Sunday. And there is hope. There is hope in this moment that, thanks to what the American people are doing every day adhering to the Presidents Coronavirus Guidelines for America; thanks to the fact that Americans are listening to state and local leaders, and putting the health of their family members and neighbors first, were getting there, America. Were making progress. But its imperative that we all continue to implement all of the guidance in the 30 Days to Slow the Spread. As the Surgeon General just attested, at the Presidents direction, we engaged more than 400 leaders in the African American community today. And allow me to express my appreciation for their leadership and their efforts in communicating to African Americans and other minority populations some of the unique challenges that those communities face in the midst of this epidemic. And the CDC, as the Surgeon General said, is working on not only studying the issue, but very rapidly issuing new guidance. And well be communicating that new guidance to all of those great leaders. On the subject of testing and supplies, the President gave a great amount of detail. More than 2.1 million tests have been performed and we continue to work very, very closely with FDA and suppliers around the country to expand the ability of testing. And you just heard Dr. Hahn reflect on the fact that very soon we will have an antibody test that Americans will be able to take to determine whether they ever had the coronavirus. I spoke today to the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis. And weve been in contact with Senator Cory Gardner about an outbreak at a particular meatpacking facility in the Colorado area. And at this time, our team is working with the governor and working with the senator to ensure that we flow testing resources. At this point, there are some 14 people hospitalized, maybe 2- to 300 of the workforce have been impacted. And we spoke about providing those resources this weekend. I want to encourage people in Colorado that we will we will work to support that effort, but I also want to emphasize that all the people that are working in food supply from farmers, to meatpackers, to distributors, to truckers, to grocers continue to have our gratitude, as President Trump said just a few moments ago. On supplies: More than 5 billion have been obligated to the states, 29,600 National Guard have been activated, and, at the Presidents direction, more than 4,700 active duty military personnel have been deployed medical military personnel in nine states, focusing on the areas of the most significant epidemic. Air bridge, its 26 flights have been completed. Four flights are scheduled to arrive today, bringing a quarter million gowns, 25 million pairs of gloves. Fifty-four more flights are scheduled, literally bringing in supplies from around the world. Finally, let me say, as we go into this very special weekend into Easter services. I know I speak on behalf of the President when I say how grateful we are to all of the churches that have been there and their ministries have been working under great difficulty to continue to provide for the needs of your members. There have been there have been food drives, there have been phone calls, and ministry has continued. And we are grateful for the role, on this Holy Week, that our churches, our synagogues, and all of our houses of worship have played. On their behalf, allow me to remind you that even if youre not in the pew this Easter Sunday, if you are able, its still a good idea to give, because those ministries continue to go forward. And we encourage you we encourage you to continue to support them. We also want to say very respectfully to all of the all the church communities around this country and all the places of worship to continue to heed the guidelines issued in the Presidents Coronavirus Guidelines for America. We know its difficult in this time of year, particularly, Mr. President, to avoid gatherings of more than 10. But were grateful that so many churches, synagogues, and places of worship have done just that, and we urge you to continue to do it. And to my Christian brothers and sisters across the country, let me encourage you with the words we should all remember that Jesus said, Wherever two or more are gathered, there He is also. And so you can worship, you can celebrate Easter, and know that youll be blessed in so doing. And youll be serving the nation. Thank you, Mr. President. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Great job. Thank you. The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML. [April 13, 2020] AttackIQ Strengthens Leadership Team with New Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Director of Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy AttackIQ?, the leading independent vendor of breach and attack simulation solutions, today announced the appointments of Julie O'Brien as chief marketing officer (CMO) and Jonathan Reiber as senior director of cybersecurity strategy and policy. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005071/en/ Julie O'Brien, Chief Marketing Officer (left) and Jonathan Reiber, Senior Director of Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy (right) (Photo: Business Wire) O'Brien joins the company from Nutanix, where she served as senior vice president of corporate marketing, and brings more than 20 years of global marketing and leadership experience including roles at Good Technology, Box, Cisco (News - Alert) and SightPath, which was acquired by Cisco. As CMO, O'Brien will be responsible for leading AttackIQ's global brand strategy and helping drive demand for the platform in key markets. "Julie has a strong track record leading high-performing marketing teams in both start-ups and large enterprises, and we are thrilled to have her talents at AttackIQ," said Brett Galloway (News - Alert), CEO of AttackIQ. "She is a well-rounded executive with experience in digital, channel and brand marketing, and has served demand generation and operations roles. But more importantly, she has demonstrated a commitment to developing personal relationships with customers and understanding the unique challenges they face--a critical quality as we continue to forge a unique path in this space." O'Brien currently serves on the board of advisors for Workforce Opportunity Services, a nonprofit committed to developing the skills of underserved and veteran communities through partnerships with organizations dedicated to diversifying their workforce, and formerly served on the board for Demand Spring, a revenue marketing agency. She was previously a mentor at Alchemist Accelerator, where she dvised enterprise-focused start-ups on outbound marketing strategies and initiatives. "The cybersecurity industry is notoriously crowded, but AttackIQ's novel approach offers value to customers, partners and the security ecosystem at large," said O'Brien. "The company has a unique opportunity to be the Switzerland of the security stack--providing an independent assessment of how solutions perform against real-world attack scenarios so enterprises can close security gaps and solution providers can improve their product offerings. AttackIQ is on a mission to enhance cybersecurity for all, and it's a mission I am very proud to support." Reiber is a seasoned security strategist, previously serving as Chief Strategy Officer for Cyber Policy and Speechwriter in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during President Barack Obama's administration. In his new role as senior director of cybersecurity strategy and policy at AttackIQ, he will focus on shaping strategic communications and industry thought leadership, ensuring the company's initiatives, partnerships and offerings are guided by a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of the global threat landscape. "In today's climate, every organization should adopt an adversary mindset to inform their cybersecurity strategy," said Reiber. "Using the MITRE ATT&CK framework, AttackIQ systematically tests organizations' cyber readiness against real adversary tactics, from the Russians to the Iranians to criminal organizations. This unique approach can help cybersecurity professionals in the private and public sectors do their job better. Threat informed defense should be standard practice for security teams, and AttackIQ is making that vision a reality." Most recently, Reiber served as Head of Cybersecurity Strategy at Illumio and as Senior Advisor at Technology for Global Security. The author of the recent Berkeley study, A Public, Private War, his writing and research has been supported by UC Berkeley's Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, the Smith Richardson (News - Alert) Foundation, and the Thomas J. Watson Foundation among others. Prior to U.S. government service, he worked for the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Sudan and as a research manager at a geopolitical intelligence firm. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. "Jonathan will be an incredible asset to AttackIQ as we continue to strengthen our leadership position in the breach and attack simulation market," said Carl Wright, chief commercial officer of AttackIQ. "His previous experience advising governments and organizations on cybersecurity and his deep understanding of political, policy and technical considerations required to mitigate threats make him an ideal addition. He will provide excellent insights for our platform." About AttackIQ AttackIQ, a leader in the emerging market of breach and attack simulation, built the industry's first platform that enables red and blue teams to test and measure the effectiveness of their security controls and staff. With an open platform, AttackIQ supports the MITRE ATT&CK framework, a curated knowledge base and model for cyber adversary behavior used for planning security improvements and verifying defenses work as expected. AttackIQ's platform is trusted by leading companies around the world. For more information visit http://www.attackiq.com/. Follow AttackIQ on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and YouTube. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005071/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] China is offering tax incentives to the multi-billion dollar animal products industry to export overseas, according to documents from the Chinese government outlining the rebates. It comes just weeks after China's National People's Congress issued a ban on the sale and consumption of wild animals in the country amid fears the practice may have sparked the coronavirus pandemic. The ban acknowledged the concern felt by many that the practice was a risk to public health, but this has not stopped the government encouraging the sale of such products overseas. Meanwhile wet markets in Wuhan, where the virus is thought by many to have originated, are starting to reopen as the country slowly lifts its lockdown measures. Wet markets are marketplaces where locals buy and trade perishable goods, including meat, fish and vegetables, but are perhaps most well-known for the sale of wild animals for their meat. The term is often used when describing a live animal market, in which sellers slaughter animals upon purchase. An example of a Chinese wet market in Macau, China, in which wild animals are sold for human consumption. Since the coronavirus outbreak, the practice have been banned in China In a statement issued at the time of the ban, specifically prohibiting the sale of non-aquatic wild animals, a spokesman said: 'The prominent problem of recklessly eating wild animals and its potential risk to public health have aroused wide public concern.' The government also shut down around 20,000 farms that were raising wild animals such as peacocks, porcupines and ostriches. While there has been no consensus reached on the origins of the virus, a number of studies have indicated that the epicenter of the virus may have been Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a wet market in the city where the coronavirus is thought to have originated. Covid-19, the disease millions of people around the globe are currently infected with, and that has killed almost 115,000 people, is one of a family of coronaviruses commonly found in bats. A working theory is that the virus was passed from bats through another mammal, possibly pangolins - the most trafficked animal in the world for their meat and scales believed by some to have medicinal properties - before infecting humans. One theory suggests Pangolins, the most trafficked animal in the world, could have passed the virus onto humans. No consensus has been reached yet on how it was transferred. Pictured: Pangolin are watered by a customs officer who confiscated them The public concern was great enough that the government banned the sale and consumption of wild animals, but less than a month after doing so, on the 17 March, China's Chinas Ministry of Finance and tax authority announced they would raise VAT rebates on nearly 1,500 Chinese products. In a list of products released by the Ministry of Finance detailing which would receive a 9% rebate when exported included edible meat from snakes, turtles, beavers and primates was all included, as were rhino horns and civet musk. China's economy was already under pressure from an on-going trade war with the U.S., but since the coronavirus outbreak it has struggled even more due to the sudden global downturn. China's National People's Congress issued a ban on the sale and consumption of wild animals on the 24 February, but is encouraging the export of such goods less than a month later The new tax incentives introduced by the government cover a broad range of exports in an attempt to try and support Chinese industries that have been impacted by the global downturn. A report undertaken by the Congressional Research Service, which delivers unbiased and non-partisan information to members of China's Congress, specifically highlighted the export of wild animals as a concern, saying it could: 'spread the risk to global markets.' While products go primarily to countries close to China, such as Vietnam, data from Trade Data Monitor and reported on by Fox News showed that the U.S. was the most prolific importer of China's animal products to be used in pharmaceuticals, importing $1 million worth between January and February this year. Wet markets also sell a number of other perishable goods, such as vegetables (pictured), but they have become infamous for the trade of wild animals for consumption The World Health Organisation (WHO) is now urging countries globally to close wet markets as consensus of the risk they post to humans grows. While the sale of wild animals is now banned in China, wet markets in Wuhan are beginning to open again as the country lifts some of its lockdown restrictions. Due the pathogens being able to spread quickly between animals and humans, the WHO and other public health organisations are all urging such markets to be shut down to reduce the risk of another pandemic in the future. WHO special envoy on Covid-19 and special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition, Dr David Nabarro, told BBC Radio 4'd Today programme while organisations like the WHO don't have the capacity to 'police the world,' they can offer advice. 'Theres very clear advice from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the WHO that said there are real dangers in these kinds of environments, pathogens hopping from animals to humans,' he said. '75 per cent of emerging infections come from the animal kingdom. So we really do plead with governments and plead with just about everybody else to be respectful.' During the coronavirus lockdown in the country, wet markets were closed to the public, but as the lockdown has been lifted, they are beginning to open once more Meanwhile, as efforts are made to establish how exactly the virus started and where it originated from, Chinese officials have taken steps to clamp down on research into these facts. Government officials have reportedly demanded the right to inspect scientific papers researching the origins of the coronavirus before they are made public. Two websites for leading Chinese universities have allegedly recently published and then removed pages that discuss a new policy which requires academic papers about Covid-19 to undergo extra checks before they are published, according to The Guardian. Both Fudan University and the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) allegedly posted notices saying that research on the origins of the coronavirus will be subject to government checks. The director of the SOAS China Institute in London, Professor Steve Tsang, said that the Chinese government is more concerned with 'controlling the narrative' surrounding coronavirus than public health or economic fallout. He told The Guardian: 'If these documents are authentic it would suggest the government really wants to control the narrative about the origins of Covid-19 very tightly.' The source who found the cached versions of the websites said they were concerned at what appeared to be a governmental coverup. As the world reels from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, Apple is still moving ahead with an ambitious 2020 roadmap, even if we dont get any in-person events to show them off. Among the new devices on the way, according to a report by Mark Gurman and Debby Wu of Bloomberg, are four new iPhones (not counting the upcoming iPhone SE), a HomePod mini, and Bluetooth Apple Tags trackers, along with MacBook Pro, Apple TV, iPads, and iMacs. The next iPhone, which will presumably be called the iPhone 12, is shaping up to be a massive leap forward from the iPhone 11. According to Bloomberg, the handset will by borrowing cues from the latest iPads as part of a major fall refresh that will see 5G added to as many as four new handset models. That means a new lower-end model will be joining the line-up for the first time. Previous rumors have suggested that the new entry-level device will have a 5.4-inch display. The Pro models will reportedly have flat stainless steel edges instead of the current curved design as well as more sharply rounded corners like the iPad Pro. In a world where most high-end phones are doubling-down on curved glass, Apple will reportedly ditch the 2.5D glass that adds a slight curve to the sides, like the iPhone 5s. Bloomberg also confirms the report that the new high-end iPhone Pro will have a screen slightly larger than the 6.5-inch panel on the iPhone 11 Pro Max, rumored to top 6.7 inches. The flagship models will also receive the same LiDAR system that debuted on the recent iPad Pro refresh, along with a significant upgrade to the processor with an emphasis on speeding up artificial intelligence and AR tasks. Gurman also says the new iPhones will have smaller notches. In addition to the new iPhones, Apple is also reportedly preparing a new HomePod smart speaker about half the size of the original while keeping a similar design. Due in the second half of 2020, it will be positioned as an alternative to Googles and Amazons inexpensive offerings. Its unclear what the new price point of this new model will be, but Apple has reportedly been selling the original $299 HomePod to employees for $149. Also due this year are the long-rumored Bluetooth accessory Apple Tags, as Bloomberg calls them. Similar to the Tile trackers, the this, small, puck-shaped tags will attach to objects via a keychain and will come bundled with an Apple-designed leather sleeve. Previous rumors have said the tags will use Apples ultra-wideband chip for calculating precise locations. Bloomberg notes that Apple Tags will offer functionality much like gadgets already on the market. Finally, Apple has a slew of product updates on the way as well, including a new version of the MacBook Pro, Apple TV, refreshed budget iPads and a new iMac. Previous rumors have pegged the 13-inch MacBook Pro for a refresh with Apples new scissor keyboard and a larger screen, while the Apple TV hasnt been updated in more than two and a half years. A total of 39 staff members, including doctors and nurses, of Max Hospital in Delhi's Saket area have been asked to go on self-quarantine after two patients tested positive for novel coronavirus. These 39 people include ward boys and other employees of the private hospital. According to the official statement issued by the hospital, the two patients, who tested positive for COVID-19, were admitted for the cardiac treatment a few days ago. This statement said the 39 healthcare workers who came in contact with these patients had been quarantined in a separate wing at Max Hospital. The hospital added the 39 individuals are asymptomatic and would be tested on the fifth day of exposure on April 14, 2020. According to an India Today report, there are 154 employees deployed in shifts in the dedicated COVID-19 ward of the private hospital and none of the employees had any form of exposure to the coronavirus. This, however, is not the first time that healthcare workers have been asked to undergo quarantine. Around 30 healthcare workers including doctors, nurses and technicians were asked to undergo quarantine at the Cardio-Neuro centre in AIIMS, Delhi, after a 72 year-old man who came with neurological issues tested positive for COVID-19. Some doctors and other medical staff have also tested positive for the deadly coronavirus earlier, including some mohalla clinics. INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic Meanwhile, the number of active coronavirus case stood at 7,987, including 856 cured or discharged and 308 deaths. The total number of cases also includes 72 foreign nationals. Thirty-five deaths have been reported since Sunday evening, of which 22 were reported from Maharashtra, five from Delhi, three from Gujarat, two from West Bengal and one each from Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: PM Modi likely to announce lockdown extension soon; active cases near 8,000 Also read: Coronavirus in India: State-wise COVID-19 cases, deaths, list of testing facilities : The Kerala government on Monday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to arrange special flights to the Gulf to bring back Non Resident Keralites (NRKs)stranded there due to the lockdown. In a letter to Modi, Chief Minister Pinaryi Vijayan said many Keralites who had gone on visit visas and in search of employment were finding it difficult to continue there without jobs. While admitting that there were constraints in allowing international travel as the threat of Covid-19 had not yet receded, Vijayan requested that "special consideration" be shown to the needs of the gulf keralites at the earliest. The Union government should consider arranging special flights to bring these people back, Vijayan said, adding that all International health protocols can be followed while extending this facility. The Chief Minister said the state government would take care of the testing and quarantine needs of the Keralites after they return. At the video conferencing Prime Minister had with chief ministers of April 11, this matter had been brought to Modi's notice, he said. Expressing concern about the stranded NRKs, he told reporters that the government wants to bring them back as soon as possible Vijayan said he was not aware of the total number of stranded Keralites, but said that some of them had gone there on visit visasa and others in search of jobs. there were also pregnant women, he said. "Many of them do not have jobs and are finding it difficult to survive there," he said. The Chief Minister said the state government would provide all facilities and medical assistance to the NRKs and that the Centre had been requested to provide a rehabilitation package for them. He said the United Arab Emirates and its people have always been very considerate towards Keralites. "Our Kerala society is spread across the Arab region. As far as we know, they are not differentiating between their people and others", he said. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday observed that Indian citizens stranded in various countries amid the COVID- 19 pandemic should "stay where they are" after the Centre said it would not be feasible to selectively evacuate them from abroad when a large section want to return due to various reasons. The direction was issued on a batch of seven petitions. Thrissur MP T N Pratapan said he had moved the National Human Rights Commission to intervene in the matter and send a medical team to the Gulf as early as possible. "There are many COVID-19 patients in labour camps", he told television channels. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:27:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Photo taken on April 11, 2020 shows the Calvary Cemetery, which is closed to visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic, in Queens of New York, the United States. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) "We will not open schools one minute sooner than they should be opened, but we won't open schools one minute later than they should be opened either and it has to work in a coordinated plan with businesses." NEW YORK, April 13 (Xinhua) -- New York City saw confirmed COVID-19 cases surpass the 100,000 mark to reach 103,208 by midnight Sunday with a death toll of 6,898, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the city would open five new testing centers in hardest-hit communities to address previously-found disparities among different racial groups and between the rich and the poor. "We cannot accept this inequality. We have to attack it with every tool we have," said de Blasio. A healthcare worker wheels a patient out of an ambulance in front of BronxCare Hospital Center in the Bronx borough of New York, the United States, April 11, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) The mayor doubled down on his plan to close all public schools for the remainder of the 2019-2020 academic year, one day after he announced the decision. This is "the right thing to do for our parents, our kids, our teachers," de Blasio said. "This is not a legal or jurisdictional question," he said. "This is a moral question." People drive up to a drive-through COVID-19 testing site during the coronavirus pandemic in the Bronx borough of New York, the United States, April 8, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) New York City has the nation's largest school district with some 1.1 million students. All public schools in the city have been closed since March 16 due to the coronavirus. De Blasio has promised that the city would complete deliveries of Internet-enabled digital devices for every student who needs them for remote learning. However, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo is at odds with de Blasio over school closings, saying that it should be coordinated with the districts around the city and the state. "It is my legal authority in this situation," said the governor at his daily briefing on Sunday. "We will not open schools one minute sooner than they should be opened, but we won't open schools one minute later than they should be opened either and it has to work in a coordinated plan with businesses," Cuomo said. "I do not know what we will be doing in June. Nobody knows what we will be doing in June. But I can tell you it will be a metropolitan-wide decision," he added. Soldiers cross a street in front of NYU Langone Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic in New York, the United States, April 8, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) Meanwhile, Cuomo said the state's rates of hospitalization and intubation have shown signs of slowdown in the spread of the virus. "You're not seeing a great decline in the numbers but you are seeing a flattening," he noted. Cuomo also announced that he would issue an executive order directing employers to provide essential workers with cloth or surgical masks to wear when they are directly interacting with the public. By midnight Sunday, the New York State reported 190,288 cases of COVID-19 with 9,385 fatalities. The total infections in the United States have topped 557,300 with over 22,000 deaths, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins. (Article by Xinhua Reporter Chang Yuan) What do you want me to do? I asked. When everything is under control, Ill call you, she said. I havent heard from her since. I considered myself to be part of her family. It hurt. My boss viewed me as an outsider as a risk to her own health. I live with my son, Emanuel, who is 6. Right now, we are just trying to survive. In my job, I made $80 per day. My hours were flexible. Sometimes I worked three days a week, sometimes four or five. When the family called me, I would go. I never made enough to have savings. And I dont know how I will find another job now. Very few businesses in Miami are hiring. Restaurants are open only for takeout and have laid off many of their workers. A friend told me that working for Amazon might be a possibility. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that working in a big warehouse with lots of other people could be a bad idea during a pandemic. I dont have any health insurance and I cant afford to get sick. Who would care for my son, especially now that his school has shut down? It just seemed too risky. Rent for my apartment is $870 a month. It was due on April 1, but I wasnt able to pay. Ive never missed a payment before, and fortunately, my landlord has been understanding. She said that she would give me free time and I can pay her back when I find a job. After a Russian military contingent with medical equipment arrived in Rome last month, the Kremlins English-language media outlets RT and Sputnik found video gold. They highlighted an Italian man replacing an EU flag with a Russian one deriding how Italys European partners failed to provide assistance to the coronavirus-stricken country while Russia filled in. But when questions were raised about Russias aid, the state-funded outlets went on the defensive. Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that roughly 80 per cent of the supplies were useless, citing high-level political sources. RT called the story ingratitude and ripping a page straight out of the US medias Russiagate playbook. Another RT headline read: How disinformation really works: Activists linked to pro-Nato think tank smear Russian Covid-19 aid to Italy. As the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced people across the globe to stay inside and spend more time scanning the news state-sponsored media outlets have tried to spin it to their advantage, according to an Oxford Internet Institute report. The study which analysed coronavirus-related news from state-backed English-language media in Russia, China, Iran and Turkey found some common themes that have the potential to cloud and complicate global efforts to tackle the pandemic. Among them: portraying responses by others to the pandemic as incompetent, pushing conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and positioning their country as a world leader in the fight against the virus. Some of the narratives are far from limited to media in those four countries. Fox News has provided an ample platform for Donald Trumps touting of hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment despite no consensus from health experts on the drugs effectiveness. In Brazil, president Jair Bolsonaro has described the outbreak as a fantasy and a little flu, and Twitter even deleted two of his tweets for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. Philip N Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, said that criticism of the World Health Organisation was also prevalent in the content the report studied something thats been boosted by Trumps own attacks on the UN agency in recent days. If you can generate some headlines that are a little clickbaity and pretend to be giving you the truth or looking under the hood or exposing some conspiracy, then if youre online late at night trying to figure out whats going on, those are the headlines youll click through on, Howard said. High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Show all 18 1 /18 High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Najaf, Iraq A man holds a pocket watch at noon, at an almost empty market near the Imam Ali shrine Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Bangkok, Thailand Wat Phra Si Rattana Satsadaram (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, part of The Grand Palace) Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Prague, Czech Republic An empty street leading to the historic Old Town Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Washington DC, US Lawn stretching towards the Capitol, home of Congress Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Jerusalem's Old City A watch showing the time in front of Damascus Gate Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world London, UK The Houses of Parliament seen from Westminster Bridge Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Wuhan, China Empty lanes in the city that saw the first outbreak of disease Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Havana, Cuba The Malecon road and esplanade winds along the city's seafront Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Cairo, Egypt A little busier than elsewhere: midday traffic in Tahrir Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Berlin, Germany The Brandenburg Gate, the only surviving city gate in the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Caracas, Venezuela Bolivar Avenue, opened in 1949 and the site of many demonstrations and rallies Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Moscow, Russia Spasskaya Tower (left) on the eastern wall of the Kremlin, and St Basil's Cathedral Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Istanbul,Turkey The harbourside Eminonu district is usually buzzing with activity Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New Delhi, India Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard that runs through the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Amman, Jordan The Roman amphitheatre that dates back to the 2nd century AD Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New York City, US The main concourse of Grand Central station in Manhattan Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Kiev, Ukraine Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the site of many political protests since the end of the Soviet era Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Accra, Ghana The odd walker out in the midday sun on Ring Road Central Reuters The intended audience for English-language media in China, Turkey, Iran and Russia is the countrys diaspora as well as people who like conspiracy theories in the West, Howard said. The majority of the content has heavy political spin rather than outright lies. During a Wilson Centre online video panel, Nina Jankowicz, who studies disinformation at the think tank, said that the most successful propaganda is grounded in emotional truth and that the lack of knowledge about the coronavirus is whats made it fertile ground. Were not talking about fakes, she said. Were talking about things that are very, very real to people. And thats what draws them in and manipulates them. Chinas state-backed media largely focused on distancing the country from the coronavirus origins. One story from the China Global Television Network cited a quote from an Italian doctor who told NPR that the virus might have been circulating in some elderly Italians as far back as November, before news of an outbreak in China. The China Global Television Network then used that statement to argue that the virus could have come from China, US, Italy or anywhere else. Asking questions is a way of inserting doubt, Howard said. Irans Mehr News Agency and PressTV pushed conspiracy theories that the virus was created by the United States, which has crippled Irans economy with sanctions. Russian and Turkish media largely stayed away from conspiracy theories but instead sought to strengthen the appearance of their countries responses to the coronavirus by scrutinising how Western governments have handled it. The Kremlin-backed outlets emphasised Russias offer of medical equipment to Italy, the United States and other countries. And any outside scepticism of the aid was then seized on as anti-Russia sentiment. RT, Sputnik and Kremlin media highlight public fear, the shortage of Western medical supplies and spread confusion with disinformation while widely publicizing that Russia and its system of government is capable of providing urgently needed humanitarian aid to the U.S., Italy and Spain despite the Wests hostilities and sanctions, said Heather A Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In other words, she added, Russia should be viewed as a benevolent hegemon. The Washington Post Washington U.S. Rep. Anthony Brindisi asked federal regulators Monday to halt price hikes from internet service providers during the coronavirus pandemic while customers work from home. Brindisi, D-Utica, said he has heard complaints from Central New Yorkers about Spectrum internet and cable price increases as families face new financial challenges resulting from the pandemic. Parents have no choice but to take even more from an already-squeezed family budget to pay their rising internet bills, or else their children could no longer participate in online classes, Brindisi wrote to Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. It is outrageous that, at this time of national sacrifice, some ISPs are raising their rates and charging families even more for service, Brindisi wrote in the letter. He also asked the FCC to extend voluntary consumer protections that more than 700 companies and associations agreed to beginning March 13. The companies pledged not to terminate broadband or telephone service for residential or small business customers who cant pay their bills. The moratorium, due to last 60 days, included a pledge to waive late fees for customers struggling to pay their bills because of the coronavirus pandemic. Brindisi asked the FCC to extend those protections and ban price increases for at least 90 additional days. He said its essential to extend those protections because most New Yorkers have been ordered to work from home, and schools have been closed through at least April 29. A spokeswoman for Spectrum and its parent company, Charter Communications, said the company has no plans to increase internet prices for its customers. Spectrum agreed March 13 to offer free high-speed internet service and Wi-Fi for 60 days to households with students in grades K-12 who do not already have a Spectrum broadband subscription. Families can call (844) 488-8395 to enroll. Installation fees will be waived for new student households, the company said. Spectrum also agreed to open its Wi-Fi hot spots across its service territory for public use during the coronavirus pandemic. Separately, U.S. Rep. John Katko wrote to House leaders Monday and asked them to include relief for customers of water utilities in the next package of legislation to address the economic fallout of the pandemic. Katko, R-Camillus, asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to establish emergency grants for households having difficulty paying their water bills. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Coronavirus in CNY: Colleges, universities refund money, feel financial pain Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Mark Weiner anytime by: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751 STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The MTA is exploring a pilot to equip New York City buses with plexiglass dividers between bus operators and passengers to further reduce exposure and curb the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In an interview with MSNBC on Monday morning, MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick Foye said the plexiglass dividers could be installed in addition to rear boarding on buses and not collecting fares. An MTA spokesperson said Monday that the agency was exploring a pilot to separate bus operators and passengers. We have gone to rear door boarding on buses to eliminate contact between bus operators and passengers, he said in the interview. Weve eliminated the collection of cash on buses, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North. This morning, were putting in place plexiglass dividers between bus customers and operators in addition to the fact that were doing rear door boarding on buses and not collecting cash. Beginning Monday, the MTA is installing plexiglass barriers at all work locations, including all 28 bus depots and three central maintenance facilities to further protect transit workers and promote social distancing guidelines, according to a statement from Craig Cipriano, acting MTA Bus president and acting senior vice president for the NYC Transit Department of Buses. These dividers are currently being installed in areas where employees would normally congregate in performing their essential tasks, such as storerooms, dispatcher windows and maintenance Line Supervisor desks," said Cipriano. Markers will also be placed on floors to help employees maintain distances of six feet apart. The dividers were added to existing efforts the MTA has already put in place, including rear door boarding on buses, eliminating cash transactions, and enhancing chaining measures to further separate bus operators and customers. Express bus front rows have also been made off-limits. We continue to recommend in the strongest terms all essential workers traveling with us during this time wear a face covering, said Cipriano. "...The health and safety of our customers and employees is our top priority. The focus of the MTA has been protecting customers and employees, Foye said in the interview with MSNBC. After the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in New York City, the MTA began disinfecting stations and gave workers personal protective equipment (PPE). Since March 1, we distributed 2.7 million pairs of gloves, nearly 750,000 masks, which includes about 300,000 N95s, and the remainder surgical masks, he said. And we distributed gloves and other equipment [for] MTA workers disinfecting the stations. That works continues. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***ss Foye said MTA transit workers continue to move New York" and said they are heroes moving heroes." Service is dedicated to essential workers, Foye added, including first responders, doctors, nurses, utility workers, firefighters, grocery story and pharmacy workers, as well as fellow transit workers. ...Transit workers across every MTA agency are acting heroically, he said in the interview. We mourn and grieve with the families of those that have been lost and it is beyond words the effect its had on obviously these 50 families and the MTA. During a Friday morning interview with WCBS880, Foye announced that 50 employees have died from the virus thus far, with nearly 1,900 testing positive, including the chairman himself. Foye said the number of employees currently in quarantine is at around 5,200, down from a high of 6,000. So far, 1,800 employees have returned to work. On Thursday, the MTA announced it is taking additional precautions to ensure the health of its workforce by deploying a Temperature Brigade" of medically trained personnel to check employees temperature as they report to work at 22 locations throughout the region. One of the best ways to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is to ensure that people who are sick are staying home, out of the transit system and away from work, said MTA Chief Safety Officer Patrick Warren. Our temperature brigade helps reduce risk for everyone, and they are among the thousands of behind-the-scenes heroes at the MTA working hard to fight this formidable pandemic. Our frontline employees are incredible, and we thank them for their courage and commitment to public service. Upon arrival, employees have their temperature checked using a thermal scan thermometer on their forehead. Those with a temperature exceeding 100.4 degrees are sent home and advised to seek medical attention. The Temperature Brigade began last month at seven locations, but has since been expanded to 22 locations, now testing over 2,000 employees per day. 70 Coronavirus in NYC: Photos show the fight against the pandemic FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. A Woman, Sandy Brown has lost her husband, Freddie Lee Brown Jr. and son Freddie Lee Brown III to COVID19, within a space of three days. Mrs Brown who hails from Midwestern region of U.S, Michigan, couldnt find words to express how pained she was at losing her entire family to the viral disease within such a short period. Her husband of 35 years had previously undergone a kidney transplant which placed him at risk of losing his life to the virus, if infected. Some time in March, the 59-year-old man fell sick and started struggling to breathe, which is one of the symptoms of COVID-19. He was rushed to the Ascension Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. A COVID-19 test was conducted on Mr Brown, and it came back positive. He was placed on a ventilator. Mrs Brown was shocked when received a call few days later, that her husbands lung had collapsed and he had passed on as a result of that. The following day after the demise of her husband, Freddie Lee Brown III, who also had an underlying health condition, asthma took ill. Mrs Brown took her son to the same Ascension Genesys Hospital. Freddies health improved before he suffered a setback. Just like his father, he began having trouble breathing. Three days after her husbands death, the widowed woman was called again to rush down to the hospital where she was told, that she had lost her son to COVID-19. In what she described as unimaginable, she didnt believe she would lose her son to the virus after he recovered initially. US President Donald Trump has hinted that there would be consequences for China's alleged misinformation to the international community and the WHO on coronavirus, that originated from its Wuhan city last year, and has claimed 119,666 lives with nearly two million infections globally. Trump shot back at a reporter on Monday during his White House press conference on coronavirus when repeatedly asked why there are no consequences for China. "How do you know that there are no consequences?" Trump asked. "I wouldn't tell you. China will find out. Why would I tell you?" Trump replied when repeatedly asked if China was going to face the consequences of the alleged misinformation. "You're going to find out," Trump said as members of the US Congress ramped up their rhetoric and move against China. Senator Steve Daines sent a letter to Trump urging him to end the US government's reliance on medical supplies and equipment from China and bring back drug manufacturing jobs to America in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. "The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear how relying upon China for medicine or essential medical equipment and components is detrimental to our national security and endangers public health," Daines wrote. "It is critically important to ensure that legislation is fully implemented as quickly as possible and that the US continues to be the world leader in biomedicine, pharmaceutical development, and medical innovation," he wrote. Four Republican lawmakers on Monday introduced a legislation to reduce the reliance on China. Protecting our Pharmaceutical Supply Chain from China Act gives companies economic incentives to manufacture pharmaceuticals and medical devices in the US, makes it easier to know which country a drug came from by creating a list of the country of origin of all drugs marketed in the United States, and prohibits federally qualified health facilities from purchasing pharmaceutical products from China, it said. "Relying on the Chinese Communist Party whose lies about coronavirus created the pandemic we now face for essential medicines is dangerous and short-sighted. As with 5G networks, when it comes to medical supply chains, national security must take precedence. China is an adversary that will use any US dependence as blackmail to achieve its nefarious goals," said Congressman Liz Cheney. China ran a disinformation campaign to cover up the coronavirus crisis for weeks, putting the rest of the world at a disadvantage in combating the spread, alleged Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. "We have become far too dependent on China, and it is time that we equip our domestic pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to be able to efficiently produce these items here in the United States," she said. Congressman Mike Gallagher alleged that the Chinese Communist Party's outrageous threats to withhold life saving drugs from the US endangers public health and should open eyes to the dangerous over-reliance on China in medical supply chain. "This is a national security imperative that to many Americans, is a matter of life and death. It's past time for us to develop an aggressive plan to move critical pharmaceutical supply chains away from China," he said. Congressman James Comer along with members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote a letter to the Director-General of the World Health Organization requesting documents relating to their assistance in the Chinese government's coronavirus propaganda efforts. The WHO receives significant financial support from American taxpayers, including as much as USD 513 million in 2017. The letter notes that as recently as January, the WHO promoted Chinese propaganda on social media in claiming that the coronavirus does not spread by human transmission. The organisation likewise criticised travel restrictions implemented by President Trump, praised China's efforts to fight coronavirus even as the Communist regime was jailing doctors, and bowed to Chinese influence by delaying labeling COVID-19 a pandemic, the lawmakers said. Another group of Senators - Marco Rubio, Marsha Blackburn, John Cornyn, Kelly Loeffler, and Joni Ernst in a letter urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Permanent Representative to the United Nations Kelly Craft to address the crackdown of free speech in China and in countries across four continents including Turkey, Bangladesh, Niger, and Cambodia, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "The Chinese Communist Party is using this public health emergency as a thin veil to cover a crackdown on peaceful dissent and freedom of speech," the Senators wrote. "Sadly, China is not unique in its utilization of the pandemic as an excuse to institute surveillance measures or draft new laws that are not necessary, proportionate, transparent, or time-bound," they said. "Therefore, we call on the Department of State to document acts of harassment, arrest, increased surveillance, or other forms of suppression or criminalisation by regimes in retribution for those nations' citizens expressing their freedoms through media, social media, peaceful assembly, or other peaceful means," the Senators said. Globally, the coronavirus pandemic has killed 119,666 people and infected almost two million people, with US being the worst affected country leading in the number of infections and deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. While The Wild Animal Park in Chittenango is delayed opening due to the coronavirus pandemic, owner Jeff Taylor has joined about 34 million other viewers to watch the Netflix docu-series series Tiger King. The seven-part series was released on March 20 to a captive audience full of people staying home due to orders of social distancing. The plot centers on the conflict between Joe Maldonado-Passage, otherwise known as Joe Exotic", a larger-than-life private zoo owner and Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist who runs a big cat sanctuary. In the true crime series, we see the tension grow between Baskin and Exotic. She publicly campaigns to close Exotics zoo. He is convinced Baskin killed her husband in the nineties and said she is just another zoo owner who wants to shut down competition. After a series of can-you-believe that moments, Exotic ends up in jail and his former business partner Jeff Lowe takes over Exotics zoo and animals. Tiger Kings" viral viewership has created a stir on social media with memes, celebrity impersonations, TikTok parody songs, and campaigns to set Exotic free from jail. The series just released a follow-up episode to capture cast reactions after seeing it all on screen. Taylor opened The Wild Animal Park in August 2012, just north of the village of Chittenango, New York. A childhood dream, he opened his private zoo with a pair of kangaroos, a dromedary camel named Aladdin, five alligators and a 5-month-old Bengal tiger named Kiara. Presently The Wild boasts that it is home to the largest big cat collection of any zoo in the state. After watching the Netflix series focusing on big cat collectors, Taylor responded with his own takes. The characters in that movie do not represent the entire private sector. Youre putting the craziest people from the private sector on TV and they dont represent our whole industry, he said. Thats what kind of sad about it. Taylor said he forced himself to watch it, bracing for the worst. He thought it would be a documentary, similar to Black Fish," the 2013 documentary about a killer whale in captivity which had killed several people and aimed to uncover problems within the sea-park industry. It wasnt that bad, but it still wasnt good. Im considered a private owner of big cats and a lot of times people think a private owner of a tiger is like a pet owner. I dont think anybody should own a pet tiger, Taylor said. He has met some of the people featured in the docu-series, including Joe Exotic. Taylor said when he met Exotic years ago he was a very eccentric, nice guy who really cared about his animals. However, said he could see the progression over the past 10 years of how Exotic changed and he said, how Baskin changed him. He was always being attacked by her. She is the most guilty person. She attacked him first. He just became so wrapped up in trying to get back at her. She sued him, she sued his mother; she went after his whole life, Taylor said. Exotic is currently sentenced to 22 years in prison for several crimes, including a murder-for-hire plot and wildlife violations. Personally my opinion is that he was set up," Taylor said. Jeff Lowe and that group, they basically set him up. I dont think the government was innocent either. I think they all pushed him. For all the years he hated her, he never tried to do anything and then they set him up. I think he was vulnerable and people took advantage of him. Taylor does not agree with any sort of animal abuse, but didnt know if Exotic ever abused his animals. He did say many of the people making claims of animal abuse are connected to supporting Lowe. There is no character in the series however that draws more of Taylors ire than Carole Baskin. Hes never met Baskin, but said she has gone after everyone in the industry who owns big cats. He said her big cat sanctuary is essentially run the same as a private zoo and describes it in a Facebook post as a rusty small caged dump. Ive known shes awful for years and years. Its nice to finally have the world know it, Taylor said. If the Big Cat Safety Act that Baskin talks about in the series were to pass, he said it would essentially shut down zoos like The Wild. Taylor said the series was a poor representation of the private zoo sector. He said that for many the enclosures are just as nice as any city zoo and that the animals receive amazing care. At The Wild, Taylor said they try to go above and beyond what the minimum requirements are in caring for the animals. They employ several zoo keepers and have on-call veterinarians which frequently come out to check on the animals. Jeff Taylor, owner of The Wild Animal Park in Chittenango with one of his big cats.Provided photo | syracuse.com Its very complicated, the whole radical animal rights movement, Taylor said. In essence, the whole movie comes down to money. Its all based on a monopoly of trying to control the industry, to eliminate competition. Carole Baskin wants to be the only one. Shes a zoo basically and she doesnt like that there are other zoos. The AZA also wants to eliminate zoos like mine because were competition. Anybody thinks its more than that just doesnt know all the details along the way. The Wild is inspected and licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and is required to follow the same regulations for feeding, housing and caring for animals as places like the Syracuse zoo. New York State also requires extra licensing to have big cats on exhibit at the zoo. Taylor said it is frustrating to constantly have to defend themselves against new legislation and he hopes the popularity of the movie doesnt cause quick decisions that would be detrimental to zoos like his. The zoo has retained all of its employees during the coronavirus pandemic shut down and is still preparing to open for a 2020 season, whenever that may be. Read more Coronavirus in CNY: The Wild Animal Park delays season opening Will Donald Trump pardon Tiger Kings Joe Exotic? Whose side are you on, Tiger King edition: Joe Exotic or Carole Baskin? Tiger at Bronx Zoo tests positive for coronavirus Free streaming to watch: HBO shows; CBS All-Access for 60 days; more Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: Turkmenistan and the International Monetary Fund have discussed the current level of cooperation, Trend reports with reference to Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan. The discussions were held via videoconference format on April 10, 2020 at the UN building in Ashgabat. Economic issues related to the regional and global agenda were also discussed. The sides highlighted the development of the world's macroeconomic situation. Views on the development of cooperation in the future were exchanged. Natalia Tamirisa the Head of the International Monetary Fund's mission to Turkmenistan participated at the meeting from International Monetary Funds side. The Deputy Minister of Finance and economy of Turkmenistan headed the Turkmens side. Representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan and the Central Bank also attended the meeting. Turkmenistan became a member of the IMF in September 1992. The International monetary Fund is a partner of Turkmenistan regarding economic reforms and provides technical assistance to support ongoing changes of macroeconomic significance. According to the IMF forecasts, Turkmenistans economy will grow by 6 percent and inflation will reach 13 percent. Increasing transparency and improving economic statistics will help to attract private foreign and domestic investment and improve access to Finance, as well as facilitate decision-making and strengthen confidence in them, said the IMF. The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, according to the results of consultations with primary dealers, refused to hold auctions on placement of government domestic loan bonds on Tuesday, April 14. "Given the volatility in the capital markets and after consultations with primary dealers, we decided that auctions for the placement of government bonds won't be held," the ministry said. The ministry emphasized that it had formed a sufficient supply of financial liquidity in order to comfortably go through a period of unfavorable conditions in the domestic capital market, timely and fully fulfilling its financial obligations. "By limiting supply in the primary government bonds market, we are witnessing invigoration in the secondary market for government bonds. At the same time, the width of the spread in the secondary market does not provide reliable information on price levels," the ministry said. After a brief dalliance with Trumps favorite media network, John Oliver is back to covering the only thing that matters in 2020: The coronavirus, and how the pandemic continues to screw over essential workers. Its a broad term, Oliver reminds us about whos deemed essential, that can include any job from health care professionals to custodians to grocery store clerks to, I would argue, TikTok stars teaching me how to dance. The most egregious of these companies, he notes, is run by the worlds richest nude-sending man, who only recently revised the paid sick leave policies and safety measures for his workers. A video PSA, where Amazon celebrates their hero employees, is particularly irksome to Oliver. Its hard to say what I like least about that, he explained. Maybe its the schmaltzy piano music, maybe its Amazon patronizingly claiming they care about the well-being of their heroes, or maybe its just the fact that, out of context, the Amazon smile logo is a quick sketch of an uncircumcised dick. Its probably a combination of all three. If you still insist on ordering off Amazon for your quarantine goodies, though, Oliver begs you to make sure you actually need whatever you buy. So, not a dildo. Maybe flour. Okay? If you feel youre not working in safe conditions it can be even more infuriating to know the items youre packing can be anything but essential, he added. Risking your life to get someone a sex toy probably doesnt feel fair. China sends medical expert team to Russia People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 10:17, April 12, 2020 A team of 10 Chinese medical experts departed from Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, for Russia Saturday morning to help with its fight against the COVID-19. The experts specializing in laboratory testing, prevention and control of infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, intensive care and traditional Chinese medicine are from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Heilongjiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention and four hospitals in the province. The team carries urgently needed medical supplies donated by China, including surgical masks, medical masks, N95 masks and medical protective clothing. Upon arrival, these experts will exchange experiences with their counterparts of Russia and offer training for medics on the prevention, control, diagnosis and treatment of the COVID-19. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has refused to accept Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu's resignation, according to the country's Presidential administration. Soylu had earlier resigned from his post accepting full responsibility for the hasty implementation of a short-notice curfew imposed in several cities of the country to check the spread of coronavirus. "Soylu's resignation was not accepted by the President, the minister will continue his work," Turkish Presidential administration was quoted as saying by Sputnik. The minister was earlier quoted as saying by Sputnik that "the situation that arose after the announcement of this decision does not correspond to the lengthy and thorough process that has been conducted in the country in its fight with the epidemic". "My experience should have not have allowed for the emergence of such a situation. Forgive me, our people, and Mr President. I am resigning from the post of minister of the interior," he had said. According to a report by Anadolu dated April 10, the country's Interior Ministry had announced on Friday a 48-hour curfew in 31 provinces beginning at midnight. This led to people flooding the streets on Friday night to stock up food and emergency supplies. The number of coronavirus cases in Turkey has surged past 55,000 with the death toll at over 1000. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A coronavirus patient died and at least 61 people tested positive for the virus in Telangana on Monday, taking the number of cases in the state to 592. The virus has so far claimed 17 lives in the state. Of the total 592 cases in the state, 103 have been cured, while 472 are undergoing treatment. According to a bulletin on COVID-19, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has the highest number of active cases in the state at 216. Hyderabad district is on high focus as majority of cases are being reported in GHMC, it said, adding that robust containment is being initiated in the virus-affected area. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who held a meeting with Health Minister E Rajender on Monday, directed officials to pay more attention to GHMC. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The producers of the much-anticipated ITV series Quiz, which dramatises Who Wants To Be A Millionaire's famous coughing scandal, have revealed that the Ingrams are still affected to this day. Speaking on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire podcast Final Answer, executive producer Dan Winch rememembered how Major Charles and Diana Ingram visited the set on the last day of filming in 2019, and 'spoke about it like it was yesterday'. Charles, now 59, and wife Diana notoriously cheated their way to win 1 million on gameshow Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in 2001, and the couple were found guilty of deception in 2003. Charles given a 20-month suspended prison sentence after it emerged that accomplice Tecwen Whittock, who was a future contestant, had coughed to indicate correct answers throughout the show. Speaking on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire podcast Final Answer, executive producer Dan Winch rememembered how Major Charles and Diana Ingram (seen) visited the set on the last day of filming in 2019, and 'spoke about it like it was yesterday' The new three-part series, which starts tonight at 9pm, sees Michael Sheen playing WWTBAM presenter Chris Tarrant, Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Ingram and Sian Clifford as Diana Ingram as the famous scandal is replayed. Revealing what happened behind the scenes as they recreated the real life scandal, producer Dan said: 'I think the most striking thing to me when we met the Ingrams - they did a set visit towards the end of filming. 'They came in and spent some time with us. And it's interesting because for them, while it was obviously, you know, 20 years ago, they talk about it as if it could have happened yesterday. I 'It's affected their lives in such a way that they've never really been able to break away from from much of the impact of it.' The new three-part series, which starts today at 9pm sees Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Ingram and Sian Clifford as Diana Ingram (seen) as the famous scandal is replayed Meanwhile make-up artist Julie Kendrick remembered how she transformed Matthew into Charles, explaining: 'I met him on the same day that I met Michael Sheen. I made him some false teeth. 'Charles Ingram's got a quite a gap between his teeth. So and that was for me, quite a specific thing, a personality trait. 'I also thought it might help Matthew with changing his voice a little bit. So I offered that up to Matthew and said, is it something that you'd be interested in doing? And he said, yes, because all actors love things like that. So we got him some teeth made and he tried them and he loved them.' She continued: 'Matthew, very kindly let us cut into his own hair and make it, made it a lot thinner. So bless him. I know that the next job that he did, he had little stumps of hair popping through, which I knew that because I was working on that job at the same time. The producers of the much-anticipated ITV series Quiz dramatises Who Wants To Be A Millionaire's famous coughing scandal 'The make-up artist that was looking after him and asked me why I'd cut the little sections out of his hair. And my simple answer was because he let us really! He's really game. Lovely, lovely man.' Julie added of Michael's transformation into Chris Tarrant: 'It was quite scary trying to recreate Chris Tarrant and I did have belly wobbles about it. 'But when I was putting a wig on or styling the wig at the back or the side, I would completely believe it was Chris Tarrant. And I would forget completely that it was Michael (Sheen).' Producer James Graham added: 'I popped in to see Michael on that first day of his filming. He'd just come back from America. And I just remember opening the door and he was just finishing his transformation. 'And I'd sort of tried to actually play it cool I thought, I think it's the most uncool thing to, in front of Michael Sheen, who is the king of transformations, Tony Blair and David Frost and now Chris Tarrant, to make a big deal out of it. Michael Sheen is seen playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire presenter Chris Tarrant in the ITV remake Julie Kendrick remembered how nervous she was when she transformed Michael Sheen into Chris Tarrant (seen) 'But I stepped out of it and just remember, I think I probably made a kind of squeaky noise as they walked back over the car park knowing that it was either, well to be honest, it was either completely ridiculous or completely brilliant because you don't ever quite know. But with Michael he's such the real deal with that stuff.' Following the highly anticipated three-part drama Quiz set to air tonight on ITV, Final Answer is the official Who Wants To Be A Millionaire podcast. The Final Answer podcast will release three special episodes immediately after each instalment on 13th, 14th and 15th April this week, allowing fans behind the scenes to find out how hard it is to recreate modern history, the moral grey areas of dramatizing such a well-known story and the journey for key crew on whether they feel the Ingrams ultimately are guilty or innocent. The series which stars Matthew MacFadyen, Michael Sheen, Helen McCrory and Sian Clifford is written by award-winning James Graham and producers Dan Winch and Alice Pearse who appear in the podcast. The podcast also features the experience of the make-up artist who transformed Michael Sheen into Chris Tarrant, the designer who had to rebuild that iconic set and many others who made Quiz come to life. The series which stars Matthew MacFadyen, Michael Sheen, Helen McCrory and Sian Clifford is written by award-winning James Graham and producers Dan Winch and Alice Pearse who appear in the podcast Speaking to Piers Morgan on GMB this morning, Chris Tarrant said of Michael Sheen's impersonation of him: 'I was listening to his voice and was like 'God that's very close'! And he does this weird thing with his body and I was like 'I do that too!'. Chris also remembered the moment they discovered the Ingrams had scammed them, explaining: 'We kept rewatching the video, then one of the young editors went 'there's a cough there', and we were like what? Then we went all the way back and saw it. 'Another thing that came to me later is that usually when I tell people they may lose 450k when they're on the millionaire question they usually they gasp - he didn't and he's the only one.' He continued: ' The drama is very well made and well acted, there's a lot of conversations that didn't happen. They're trying to load it in the way that maybe Charles was innocent. He wasn't! He was guilty. He was a major arrested for insurance scam before that happened.' WASHINGTON A woman who briefly worked as an aide for former Vice President Joe Biden in the 1990s has expanded her claims that he harassed her to now include an instance of sexual assault, which Biden's campaign denies and says is untrue. The woman, Tara Reade, first made the assault allegation public last month, saying in a podcast interview that Biden then a veteran senator from Delaware and a powerful committee chairman penetrated her with his fingers under her skirt when she brought him a gym bag in spring 1993. At the time, she was a staff assistant in his office on Capitol Hill. NBC News has spoken with Reade multiple times since she came forward with the assault allegation on March 25 and has also spoken with five people with whom Reade said she shared varying degrees of detail over time. Three of those people said on the record that they do not recall any such conversation with Reade. A fourth person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Reade told her about the alleged assault at the time. That person, who asked that her name be withheld by NBC News for fear of negatively affecting her business, said she remembers Reade's telling her that she spoke with superiors in Biden's office about harassment but not the assault. She also recalled that Reade told her she filed a formal written complaint with a Senate personnel office at the time. A fifth person, who also spoke with NBC News anonymously, recalled that Reade told her in the mid-2000s that Biden had been inappropriate and touched her when she worked in his office but that she didn't detail the alleged assault. Reade said that she also told her mother, who has since died, and her brother, who has told The Intercept that he remembers having been told about an incident at the time. Former Biden staffers, including his former chief of staff Ted Kaufman and his longtime executive assistant Marianne Baker, were both named by Reade as having been told about harassment at the time, but both said they have no recollection of the claim. Biden's campaign has said the alleged assault "absolutely did not happen." Story continues In a new statement Sunday, the campaign pointed to his record of advocating for survivors and his authoring of the Violence Against Women Act. "He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard and heard respectfully," deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said. "Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: it is untrue." Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics Thursday evening, Reade filed an official complaint with the Washington, D.C., police. The public incident report which is one page long and doesn't name Biden was obtained by NBC News and recounts an assault sometime from March 1 to May 31, 1993. Reade confirmed that she is "Subject-1" in the report and that "Subject-2" is Biden. It is illegal to falsify police reports, and the statute of limitations for prosecuting the allegations has passed. She also said that at the time of the incident, she filed a formal complaint through a Senate personnel office. In it, she said, she complained of harassment but didn't allege an assault. Federal law at the time set forth procedures for allegations of harassment or discrimination in employment on the basis of gender, which would have included a hearing by a board of independent officers. No such process was initiated by Reade's complaint. Reade's new allegation comes at a highly sensitive moment not just for Biden as he moves forward now as the apparent Democratic nominee for president, but also amid a larger societal reckoning with how to seriously address people's accounts of sexual harassment and assault in the #MeToo era. IMAGE: Joe Biden (Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images file) Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 despite facing multiple allegations of improper sexual conduct and sexual assault. A recording of Trump bragging about sexual assault to an "Access Hollywood" host also emerged in the weeks before Election Day. In addition, Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018, in part for his role in making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump. It was just over a year ago that a former Nevada legislator, Lucy Flores, came forward with her story of Biden inappropriately touching and kissing her without consent. Flores was the first of several women who would soon come forward and, in interviews with NBC News and other outlets at the time, recount how the self-described "tactile" politician's close physical contact made them feel uncomfortable. Biden, who was about to launch his campaign, acknowledged then that "social norms are changing" and "the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset," and he said he would be "much more mindful" of his conduct going forward. None of those women accused Biden of crossing the line into sexual assault. That includes Reade, who in an April 3, 2019, article in The Union, her local newspaper in Nevada County, California, said that Biden had inappropriately touched her during her time working in his office, rubbing her neck in a way that made her feel uncomfortable, and that she'd been asked to serve drinks at a fundraiser because she was told that Biden, then a senator, thought she had nice legs. Reade says now that she didn't feel comfortable telling her full story then. Reade was also met with criticism on social media after she made her initial claims of harassment in April 2019, in part because she was vocally supporting other Democratic presidential candidates but also because of her past favorable writings about Russia and President Vladimir Putin. In a posting on Medium from 2018 that has since been deleted, she called Putin "a compassionate, caring, visionary leader" and said she hoped "America will come to see Russia as I do, with eyes of love." Reade explained that at the time she was working on a novel and said the writings don't represent her current feelings toward Russia or Putin. But the reaction online "really shut me down," she said. "I didn't feel safe." "What's hard for me is I don't want Donald Trump to be president," Reade said, noting that she tried to come forward when other Democrats were still left in the field. In an interview, Reade recalled that she was asked to deliver a gym bag to Biden sometime in spring 1993 and that she met up with him in an empty corridor somewhere in the Capitol complex. She couldn't recall exactly where or when the alleged incident occurred, she said. "I greeted him, and there was no small talk. He smiled at me, and then he just had me up against the wall." She said that Biden began kissing her and that he ran his hands up her shirt and under her skirt, using his knee to push her legs open. Reade said she remembers him saying several things to her at that moment, including in a low voice asking, "Do you want to go somewhere else?" When she pulled away, Biden "just looked at me and said: 'You're nothing. You're nothing to me,'" Reade said. She said that after that, Biden tried to reassure her, saying, "You're fine, you're fine, you're OK." After that, she said, he adjusted his clothing and walked away. "I remember wanting to say 'stop.' But I don't think I said it. I don't know if I thought it or said it," Reade said. She said she felt "frozen" in that moment but later walked to the bathroom, cleaned up and went back to Biden's Senate office to get her purse. She then called her mother, who she said encouraged her to file a police report. Reade said she didn't file a police report at the time. Reade said that while she never came forward about what she said was an assault to her superiors in Biden's office, she was vocal about feeling harassed and made uncomfortable during the months she worked there. "I remember saying I was uncomfortable and why. But nothing happened," she told Democracy Now in an on-camera interview at the end of March. She named Baker, the former executive assistant; Kaufman, Biden's former chief of staff; and Dennis Toner, who also worked in the Senate office, as three people she complained to at the time. Through the Biden campaign, Baker, who was executive assistant to Biden for 20 years, said she "never once witnessed, or heard of or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone." Toner said he didn't remember working with her and said the allegations were antithetical to anything he experienced or remembered in 30-plus years working for Biden. "It's just so foolish to think that any of this actually occurred. You would remember, my God," Toner said. Kaufman, then chief of staff in Biden's Senate office, who continues to serve as an informal adviser, said Reade "did not come to me" with the allegation. "I would have remembered her if she had, and I do not remember her," he said. Reade worked in Biden's Senate office briefly, from December 1992 through August 1993, according to a Senate employment history transcript she provided. Reade recalled leaving the office before that, after her duties were diminished and she was told she wasn't a good fit for the office. She appears to have offered different explanations for having left Washington in the past, including to pursue an acting career. Soon after, Reade became a mother and, in the late 1990s, changed her name after she left what she described as an abusive marriage. She eventually moved back to the West Coast and, among other things, obtained a law degree from Seattle University School of Law, although she said she has never practiced. She also worked as a domestic violence advocate, assisting and advising victims. Recently, she said, she began working part time with families with special-needs children in Nevada City. Reade said she feels abandoned by a party that she had long considered herself a part of and stymied by circumstances that she feels leave some people reluctant to take her claims seriously. "Other people got different treatment with less cooperation," Reade said in a phone call over the weekend, describing her experience of coming forward as one that has rattled her faith in the political system. "I can't tell you that feeling of sort of abandonment, just existentially. Because of who my perpetrator is, there's silence." Brendan McGeever, Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution, Cambridge University Press 2019. Unless otherwise indicated, all page numbers refer to this book. This is the second part of a two-part review. Part one was posted on April 11. ** Marxism and the fight against anti-Semitism McGeevers constant evocation of anti-Semitism as pervading the social base of Bolshevism is meant to discredit the central orientation of Marxism toward the class struggle and the working class, in particular, as the basis for fighting racism and anti-Semitism. After he has conditioned his readers through harrowing descriptions of pogroms, he devotes much of his political and theoretical argumentation in the second half of the book to explicit attacks on Marxism and Bolshevism. He denounces, in particular, Lenin, claiming that he sought to downplay the participation of workers and peasants in anti-Semitic violence and that his emphasis on the link between anti-Semitism and the interests of the bourgeoisie was narrow and reductive. He writes: class concepts such as bourgeoisie frequently bore ethnic (and sometimes specifically anti-Semitic) overdeterminations. In the popular imagery, the Jew was often positioned in an antagonistic class relation to the working people (the trudiashchiesia or trudovoi narod)... the categories of class struggle were vulnerable to anti-Semitic appropriations and interpretations, especially in the former Pale [H]ow could the Bolshevik leadership be certain that a category so porous and malleable as speculator would be understood in its Marxist, and not anti-Semitic, sense? Similarly, when Red Army posters were put up around central Kyiv in 1919 with the words beat the bourgeoisie! (burzhuev bit!), could the Bolsheviks be sure that the message would not evoke the most long-standing and notorious of all anti-Semitic slogans in Russia: beat the Yids!?" (pp. 183, 184) Lenin in 1919 According to this logic, the mere fact that people with anti-Semitic prejudices can misunderstand class terminology in anti-Semitic terms means that anyone who argues as a Marxist is reinforcing anti-Semitism. Such an argument is untenable, unserious and can easily serve as the basis for denouncing everyone whose politics are misunderstood by racists and anti-Semites as racist and anti-Semitic. It is, indeed, the argument that is being leveled now to discreditas catering to anti-Semitismany Marxist criticism of capitalism and insistence on the mobilization of the working class to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie. In reality, only the Marxist insistence on class could undercut the pernicious notion of a united national people or race, which was opposed to the Jews and other nationalities and ethnicities. It was all the more important precisely because of the anti-Semitic argumentation that claimed rich Jews were opposed to the poor Ukrainians or Russians. In his famous speech on anti-Semitism in 1919the only open attack on anti-Semitism by any head of state in the world back then, and for many decades to comeLenin forcefully denounced it: Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers. Shame on accursed Tsarism, which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations. Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital. McGeever rejects this class approach to the fight against anti-Semitism and vehemently insists that to the extent there was a Soviet response to anti-Semitism, it was not rooted in the assimilationist and internationalist currents in Marxism (8). Rather, only Jewish socialists who had proximity to a Jewish socialist-national project (182) were consistent fighters against anti-Semitism because they had the ethical imperative to do so (p. 171). Trotsky during the Civil War McGeever claims that this argument is proven by the critical role of the Evsekciia (Jewish section) and the Evkom (Jewish committee) in the fight against anti-Semitism. Both institutions were composed mostly of socialist Zionists from the Left Poalei Zion (LPZ) and members of the Jewish social democratic labor Bund, which adhered to a specific form of Jewish cultural nationalism. Their politics, he writes, acted as a buffer to the pitfalls of a race-blind class reductionism. The major role that these institutions played in the fight against anti-Semitism is, in fact, well-known and McGeevers argument makes, historically speaking, no sense. These institutions were established by the Bolshevik government and explicitly tasked with focusing their attention on the conditions of the Jewish masses and the struggle to win them for the revolution. If they were leading the fight against anti-Semitism, they were doing precisely what they had been tasked to do. But the state and political power necessary for institutionalizing the fight against anti-Semitism and elevating it to the level of state policy were created by the Bolsheviks seizure of power and the establishment of a workers state. Contrary to his endeavor to prove the allegedly non-Bolshevik origins of the Soviet fight against anti-Semitism, his references to the critical role that the Soviets (councils) of workers and soldiers deputies as the hub of the socialist response to anti-Semitism in 1917 only further support this assessment. The Soviets formed throughout the Empire in 1917 created armed detachments to protect their Jewish population, and established commissions dedicated to the fight against anti-Semitism. Just days after its formation, the Petrograd Soviet created a commission headed by the Bundist Moishe Rafes on March 3, 1917, tasked with stopping Black Hundreds from sowing national hatred among the population (p. 22). The Moscow Soviet began monitoring instances of anti-Semitism days after its establishment. In the former Pale of Settlement, McGeever writes, local soviets were instrumental in preventing anti-Semitic pogroms. (p. 26) Even McGeever has to acknowledge that the main documents were authored by leading Bolsheviks. Thus, the First Congress of Soviets in June 1917 tasked Evgeny Preobrazhensky, one of the closest comrades of Trotsky, with authoring a resolution on anti-Semitism that was passed unanimously and that McGeever himself calls without question, the most authoritative statement on anti-Semitism by the socialist movement yet. (p. 25) Another resolution against anti-Semitism was passed by the historic Second Congress of Soviets on November 7-9, 1917, which proclaimed the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the establishment of Soviet power. The role assumed by the Soviets in the fight against anti-Semitism in 1917 only underscores the correctness of the call by the Bolsheviks for all power to the Soviets. This demand was rejected by the Mensheviks and the Bundists alike, who were adapting to bourgeois forces and were convinced that the establishment of workers power without a prolonged period of bourgeois democratic development would be premature. Yevgeny Preobrazhensky Whatever the intention of these political organizations and however sincere their desire to fight against anti-Semitism, if the opportunist line of the Mensheviks and Bundists had carried the day, state power would have fallen to the counterrevolution, and virulently anti-Semitic and fascistic figures like General Kornilov would have dominated the resulting government. History provides sufficient examples of what counterrevolutionary horror would have followed, including the violence that these forces perpetrated against the Jews and the civilian population in the Civil War in Russia and the barbarism of the Nazis, who successfully mobilized many veterans of the Ukrainian nationalist and White armies in their war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and genocide of the Jews. McGeevers argument has not only no historical foundation, it constitutes a racialist slander against all the Marxists who, whatever their personal background, were committed to the revolutionary struggle against anti-Semitism and all forms of nationalism and racism. In rejecting the Marxist class argument, McGeever effectively adapts to the reactionary logic of racialism and nationalismnamely, the notion that only Jews could genuinely care about the interests and survival of Jews. No historical event refutes this argument more powerfully than the actual record of the October Revolution and the struggle of the Bolsheviks against anti-Semitism. McGeevers interpretation also begs the question of how he would account for the politics of a right-wing Zionist like Vladimir Jabotinsky, who in 1925 praised one of the worst pogromists of the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura? Or the role of anti-Bolshevik Russian Jewish politicians like Maxim Venaver, who lobbied for imperialist support for the Kolchak and Denikin governments, portraying them as bearers of democracy and tolerance, even as they were perpetrating horrific pogroms. [11] Ultimately, the fight against anti-Semitism was a class issue, and the emphasis the Soviet government and Bolshevik Party placed on it was inseparable from their orientation toward an international socialist revolution by the working class. In an article written on the very eve of the seizure of power, Trotsky insisted that the fight against anti-Semitism depended upon a revolutionary change in social relations and improvement in the social lot of the working population as a whole: What does the pogromist agitation rest on? The ignorance, and, above all, the misery, the hunger, the despair of the most oppressed layers of the working masses Of course, one must fight against the pogromist agitation with the spoken and written word and conviction. But this alone is extremely little. It is necessary that the revolution directly face the poor, instead of turning its back on them. It is necessary that the most ignorant, the most oppressed and the most confused working man feels in practice that the revolutionary power defends him, and not the rich man The only serious way to fight against the influence of the Black Hundred ideology [chernosotenstvo] among the oppressed is the transfer of power into the hands of the Soviets. The longer this transition lasts, the more dangerous the development of the pogromist movement. [12] As Trotsky had established in his theory of permanent revolution, a socialist transformation of society in Russia was inconceivable without an extension of the revolution internationally, and above all in Europe. Ultimately, the fate of the Jews as one of the most oppressed sections of the population was inseparable from the development of the international socialist revolution. This is something that the Jewish socialists on whom McGeever focuses understood. Their participation in the Soviet government was the outcome of a turn to the left by significant sections of the Jewish workers movement, which split in 1918-1919 over the assessment of the October revolution. Their rapprochement with the Bolsheviks was accelerated by the outbreak of the revolution in Germany in 1918, which was seen as a confirmation of the Bolshevik seizure of power and orientation toward a world revolution. Members of the LPZ and the Bund went on to play important roles in the Civil War and later the early Soviet state. The resurgence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union was not, as McGeever claims at the end, the result of some kind of Soviet anti-Semitism that was never overcome and survived Stalinism (p. 215). It was rooted in and inseparable from the Stalinist reaction against the program of world socialist revolution that had formed the basis for the October seizure of power. In its struggle to defend the counterrevolutionary program of socialism in one country against the Left Opposition of Leon Trotsky, the Soviet bureaucracy resorted to evoking the old counterrevolutionary bogeyman of the Jewish and international revolutionary to mobilize anti-Semitic sentiments in sections of the peasantry and intelligentsia against the genuine Marxists and defenders of the principles of Bolshevism. McGeevers account, resting as it does on the explicit denial of the counterrevolutionary character of anti-Semitism, makes it impossible to understand the actual role of anti-Semitism in the socialist revolution in Russia. In so doing, it also undermines any understanding of how it can be fought today. It is an account driven not by the historical record, but by a political and ideological agendathat of bolstering the perspective of anti-Marxist identity politics. Ultimately, his book serves as a pseudo-historical cover for the fraudulent anti-Semitism campaigns of capitalist governments in Britain (the anti-Corbyn witch-hunt), Germany (the campaign against left-wing extremism) and elsewhere. These governments, while fostering far-right forces, seek to discredit as anti-Semitic any left-wing criticism of the political establishment. Concluded ** Endnotes [11] See Budnitskii, Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, pp. 296-332. [12] Lev Trotskii, Pogromnaia agitatsiia [Pogromist agitation], in Rabochii i soldat, (p. 31), 18 October 1917. Online available under: http://www.1917.com/Marxism/Trotsky/CW/Trotsky-1917-II/6-0-D.html. Translation by this author. A sailor who tested positive for Coivd-19 has died after contracting the virus while aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the US Navy said in a statement. The Navy sailor tested positive for the virus on 30 March and was then taken off the ship on 9 April and placed in the ICU at the US Naval Hospital Guam. Nearly 600 sailors on the ship have tested positive for the virus and 92 per cent of crew members have received tests, the US Navy added. An additional four sailors have been taken to the hospital for the virus, according to CNN. "Over the weekend, four additional Theodore Roosevelt Sailors were admitted to the hospital for monitoring. All are in stable condition, none are in ICU or on ventilators," a Navy official told the news site. Among those who have tested positive for the coronavirus from the USS Theodore Roosevelt reportedly include the ship's ousted captain Brett Crozier, who was dismissed of his duties after a memo leaked from the man imploring US Navy officials to evacuate crew members. In the memo, Mr Crozier said "decisive action is required" to remove a majority of sailors and personnel from the ship because "the spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating." The memo was sent on the day the deceased sailor tested positive for Covid-19 and later leaked in the San Francisco Chronicle. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset - our Sailors," he wrote. Then-acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly said Mr Crozier went outside the chain of command by not bringing his concerns to his direct superiors. Instead, the letter was sent on an unclassified email system to 20 to 30 individuals. Widespread criticism of Mr Modley dismissing the ship's captain over the letter and then subsequently criticising Mr Crozier to his crew encouraged the secretary to resign last week. An investigation into the situation was ongoing, but Secretary of Defence Mark Esper told CBS News on Friday reinstating Mr Crozier, who has quarantined himself since stepping off the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was not off the table. "When I replaced the acting Navy secretary three days ago, I called him and the chief of naval operations into my office. I gave them some guidance. One of the things I told them is this: No further action will be taken against Captain Crozier until the investigation is completed, and once that's completed, we'll see where that takes us," Mr Esper said. "So we've taken nothing off the table," he added. The Navy captain has been reassigned to the Naval Air Forces Pacific command in San Diego once he completes his quarantine period. The name of the deceased sailor from the USS Theodore Roosevelt has been withheld until next-of-kin is informed. Some of Michigans online state services reported technical issues Monday morning as the state began accepting applications for federal unemployment from an expanded eligibility pool. Monday, April 13, marked the first time the states self-employed workers, gig workers, 1099-independent contractors and low-wage workers affected by COVID-19 could begin applying for federal unemployment benefits. Around 11 a.m., the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity announced that the Unemployment Insurance Agency website was experiencing very heavy volume this morning." A spokesperson for the states Department of Technology, Management and Budget said some state networks and applications are experiencing performance issues that are causing some online services, including MiWAM, to be temporarily unavailable. Caleb Buhs, director of communications for DTMB, said teams are working diligently to restore services to 100 percent and there is no timeline for restoration. Asked if the technical issues were related to the heavy volume to the states unemployment system, Buhs said, We do not have a root cause for the problem yet, so it would be premature to make that connection. The UIA site is experiencing very heavy volumes this morning. We know newly eligible workers are eager to get benefits. To help everyone get through, please only file today if your last name begins with A-L and consider waiting until off peak hours 8PM-8AM to file. pic.twitter.com/6pwDyFFANe Michigan Dept. of Labor and Economic Opportunity (@MichiganLEO) April 13, 2020 Waiting for 48, 72 hours, or more will not impact the amount of benefits you receive, reads a tweet from the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. "Almost 600,000 Michiganders are already seeing benefits flow. Were committed to helping every eligible Michigan worker file and receive benefits. The men and women of UIA are working around the clock to deal with the unprecedented economic pain caused by COVID-19. Jason Moon, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, said Mondays performance issues appeared to be government-wide. The states MiWAM online unemployment system crashed on March 31 as it was inundated with residents filing claims amid mass layoffs due to the coronavirus. Days later, the system was purposely taken offline for upgrades to the website. There have been numerous reports over the past few weeks that the system has been slow and at times difficult to access. Last week, Michigan reported more than 828,800 unemployment claims filed in the state from March 8 to April 4. Michigans pre-coronavirus record for new unemployment claims occurred during the Great Recession in January 2009, when there were 77,000 claims in a week. The state reported its first confirmed cases of COVID-19 on March 10, which triggered a state of emergency declaration by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The governor ordered the close of non-essential businesses across the state in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. State officials have asked for claimants to be patient and said all residents who are eligible for unemployment benefits will receive them. The best way to file a claim is online at Michigan.gov/UIA, though residents can also call 866-500-0017. Residents with a last name that starts with A-L are asked to file claims online Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and those with a last name that starts with M-Z should file claims Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Officials recommend trying to access the server outside peak hours, like between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. daily. CORONAVIRUS PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home ( door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. More from MLive: Michigan cites possible testing lag as coronavirus cases drop Kroger, Meijer report deaths of grocery store workers in Michigan from coronavirus Michigan begins sending $600 payments, sets date for expanded unemployment eligibility Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Black holes are endlessly fascinating for astronomers, they represent the ultimate fate for massive stars or relics of the very earliest stages of the universe. A black hole is an astronomical body whose gravity is so strong that nothing not even light can escape from it. Obviously if nothing can escape them, we have to observe them indirectly, by seeing the effect they have on other objects in their vicinity or in the line of sight to us. We can detect the radiation that is emitted when material falls in to the black hole or we can see how the black hole bends the light that is emitted by an object that lies between it and our telescope. Black holes are classified depending on their size. This ranges from black holes that are formed in the death of a star that is a few times the mass of our sun to the super massive black holes (SMBH) that lurk in the centre of almost every galaxy. These SMBHs can be millions or even billions of times as massive as our sun. These giant black holes provide us with a glimpse into the deep history of the galaxy they inhabit. The majority of galaxies are the result of mergers of smaller galaxies in the past and the black holes in the centre of these galaxies are still present. If we are lucky enough to observe them interact with normal stars or the dust and gas that lies between stars we can get valuable information about the formation of that galaxy. This highlights a big problem with black holes of any size, they can only be seen when they interact with the normal matter in the universe. The closest big black hole is the one at the centre of our own galaxy. For the past twenty years the biggest telescopes in the world have regularly been tracking the motion of about 20 stars in orbit around it. By studying how fast these stars are moving and the shape of their orbits we can calculate the size of this black hole to be about 4 million times as massive as the sun. We can also tell from the way that gas clouds in its vicinity have been heated up that the black hole has flared up at least twice in the past 300 years. What causes these flare ups is unknown, it could be passing dust or gas that is pulled into the black hole. It could also be asteroids or comets that are pulled away from one of the twenty stars that are orbiting the black hole, thankfully this is something we get to see from the very safe distance of 25,000 light years, which is how far out we are from the centre of the milky way. Limerick Astronomy Club email limerickastronomyclub @gmail.com While Odisha may not be among the richest states in the nation, the Naveen Patnaik dispensation has a history of showing resourcefulness and pro-activeness in tackling disasters After the coronavirus spread to more than 150 countries and the World Health Organization declared it a global pandemic, India, like many other nations, adopted lockdown and social distancing from 24 March. Restrictions were put in place, factories closed, inter and intra-state transport shut down and citizens advised to stay home to break the chain of the spread and flatten the curve. While Odisha may not be among the richest states in the nation, the Naveen Patnaik dispensation has a history of showing resourcefulness and pro-activeness in tackling disasters. The state government, as per Government of India action plan for cluster containment, formed the State Crisis Management Committee/ State Empowered Committee with the Chief Secretary as the Chairman. In view of the emerging situations, the Information Education Communication (IEC) activities relating to COVID-19 were released to all the District Collectors to ensure wide dissemination of correct information on COVID-19 and its necessary precautions as its major component. The government circular on mandatory registrations on person returning from abroad was released on 16 March. Guidelines for private health care facilities and technical guidelines for quarantine, isolation and treatment were also released on 19 and 20 March respectively. A dedicated telemedicine helpline (14410) is also going to be launched in the state for which 300 doctors have already come forward to provide voluntary services. Patnaik has also assured minorities that strict action will be taken against anyone communalising the situation, an important gesture considering the fake news that has targeted Muslims relating to the Nizamuddin Markaz incident in Delhi. Odisha has also recently ramped up its testing. From 1 February to 31 March, only 584 tests had been conducted. However, 2,639 tests have been conducted from 1 April to 9 April. Odisha, when it comes to the number of the states conducted, is still ahead of bigger states like West Bengal (where 1,657 tests have been conducted as of 8 April). While Odisha's death rate (2.38 percent) is higher than states such as Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Kerala (which has done an exemplary job in fighting the virus), these states have much higher numbers of confirmed cases. While the Odisha government has done well thus far, keeping in mind the spread of the pandemic and number of tribals and poor people in the state as well as migrant population to Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (all these states except Chhattisgarh have high a number of cases), the state government needs to be on its toes and focus on a few key points: 1. Focus on PVTGs: Of the 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, the highest number are in Odisha. Some of the characteristics of the PVTGs are zero or negative population growth, extremely low level of illiteracy. The state is home to the Dongoriyas, Bonda. The groups were listed as PVTGs by the Dhebar Commission during the fourth five-year plan. The Odisha government should ensure that no PVTG families are left out of the social safety net. These groups have their own dialects and a majority of them speak and communicate in that dialect. Government should recruit community cadres who are able to disseminate the correct information and awareness in the local language. The Public Distribution System should be strictly monitored in these areas as the extra benefits that have been announced in may not reach this population and unawareness may lead to inaccessibility. The state should also use the PVTG development authorities/agencies like Dongoriya Kondh Development Agency (DKDA) efficiently to help these vulnerable sections. 2. Focus on migrant population: The Odisha government must ensure safe return of the migrant population. As per a recent report in in Hindustan Times, a migrant worker cycled over 1,000 kilometres from Maharashtra to Odisha in a week. Odisha must work with other states to bring people who migrate for contractual labour home. 3. Empower front line workers: Odisha has a very smooth running Integrated Child Development Services system. Anganwadi and Accredited Social Health Activist workers should be empowered in order to cover the population in remote villages. 4. Focus on malnutrition: Malnutrition has been always a major issue for Odisha. The state government as well as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been constantly working on this issue for years. A robust mechanism should be put in place to ensure that the families of the children with malnutrition (severely underweight or severely wasted) do not fall out of the social safety net. These children will need State intervention to survive. Civil society groups should be included in the government's action plan for manpower, co-ordination and support. 5. Removing stigma: After the lockdown ends, the return of the migrant population may be inevitable. Government of Odisha should work efficiently, and gram panchayats need to be effectively oriented on removing the stigma attached to their return. 6. Focus on the people working in steel and mining companies: On 24 March, Odisha government gave the green signal towards the operations of mines for iron ore, coking coal, thermal coal, limestone, dolomite, manganese, chromite as well as ferroalloys, iron ore pellet plants which are supply critical raw material for steel making. The government should ensure that the labourers or the working class employed in these sectors are not adversely affected. There should be strict monitoring of these factories by the respective district administrations and should provide assurances to the working class that the administration and the state is concerned about their rights. Odisha is doing well in its fight against the coronavirus thus far and a renewed focus on vulnerable sections such as migrants, children with malnutrition and the working class, could see it prove to be a model for the entire country. The writer studied at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He is now working with Public Health Resource Network, Mumbai. Connect Providers with Organizations in Need SCMEP, South Carolina Hospital Association, SC Department of Commerce and SCBIO combine to source critical medical supplies and get them to parties in need quickly A collaboration between SCMEP, the SC Hospital Association, the SC Department of Commerce and SCBIO has resulted in the expedited launch of a new online South Carolina Emergency Supply Collaborative web portal. Located at www.SCCOVID19.org, the portal connects parties in need of essential supplies and equipment with those that can provide it quickly and efficiently. It allows industry and community partners with the ability to quickly produce, source, test, certify or contribute critical medical supplies (such as face shields, gowns, ventilators and masks) to directly connect with the healthcare providers, first responders and members of industry in search of those essential supply needs in one easy step. Manufacturers able to expand or pivot their production lines, suppliers and distributors with access to ready-made supplies, organizations able to donate supplies or personal protective equipment (PPE) can identify the supplies and equipment they can offer in the sites central repository. Once quickly reviewed and vetted by a team from the collaborative, organizations in need of the materials will be digitally connected through the portal to secure their desired goods from providers directly. The need for the portal was identified after members of the collaborative began individually fielding hundreds of calls from organizations in need of such supplies, noted Chuck Spangler, President of the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (SCMEP). Each of our respective organizations has strong and indelible positions as sources of information, connection and aid to our respective constituencies, so it was logical for those parties whether hospitals or manufacturers, existing industry or life sciences organizations to turn to us in time of need, said Mr. Spangler. After sharing among ourselves the flood of requests we were individually receiving and trying to manage, we determined that a combined approach would offer greatest value and efficiency for our state and its citizens, and the creation of the South Carolina COVID-19 Emergency Supply portal was quickly underway. The site identifies critical need items as evidenced by industry, healthcare, first responder and governmental audiences across the state, and allows organizations to quickly enter the type of goods they can provide or manufacture, quantities and production capacity, and supply chain needs or requirements. Once entered and vetted by the SCMEP team, inquiring parties seeking the goods will be connected to the providers through the portal. Organizations then conduct transactions and arrange and plan logistics directly. This is a joint effort to recruit community partners with ability to quickly source or provide needed medical supplies to support South Carolinas COVID-19 response, said Thornton Kirby, President and CEO of the SC Hospital Association. South Carolinas COVID-19 Emergency Supply website will save valuable time and effort in connecting those in need of goods with those who have them at a time where every minute counts in saving lives and defeating this formidable virus. The COVID-19 Emergency Supply website will be updated constantly with new information and opportunities to support South Carolina emergency response efforts. It also links directly to individual websites of the four Collaborative partners, which each provides a host of resources, news, connections and relevant information for businesses and individuals. We are all in this together, and I am proud of the South Carolina business communitys continued response to serve our state during this unprecedented time, said SC Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt. The COVID-19 Emergency Supply Collaboratives ability to connect manufacturers, suppliers and other organizations with the front-line medical personnel who need these critical items will serve as a valuable resource. Organizations and individuals can go online 24/7 to identify critical need items or to note what products they can provide or may need, said Sam Konduros, CEO of SCBIO. We encourage every member of industry, if you have a product that is needed and which you can provide, produce, test, certify or donate, let us know that right now by completing the simple form on the site. And for organizations in need of such items, let us know that right away so that we can connect you with parties who can help right now. By Trend Iran's Embassy in Azerbaijan has commented on the video which shows trucks allegedly belonging to Iran transporting fuel and food to the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, Trend reports citing the embassy on Apr. 13. At the stage of comprehensive development of relations between Tehran and Baku, enemies and forces who do not want bilateral relations be developed and disseminating such kind of false information in order to interfere with this process, are trying to cast a shadow on good neighborly relations between the two countries, the embassy said. We bring to the attention of the distinguished Azerbaijani people that Iran has neither land nor air communication with the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Armenians tried to spoil the relations between the two countries also in the previous years with the help of video or photo materials. As it can be seen, neither the place nor the time is known in the mentioned fake video, the news is completely false. Our expectations from the Azerbaijani media is that prior to the publication of any news, they clarify its reliability and refrain from disseminating information without reference to a reliable source, said the embassy. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz On March 30, it became known that the European Union was allocating EUR 80 million for the war on the novel coronavirus in Ukraine The European Union will allocate EUR 4 million to Ukraine to fight against the coronavirus. "Thousands of volunteers have joined the fight to beat COVID-19, helping the most vulnerable people in Ukraine. EU provides EUR 4 million to support these civic initiatives," EU Ambassador Matti Maasikas said in a video message on Twitter on April 13, 2020. Thousands of volunteers have joined the fight to beat COVID-19, helping the most vulnerable people in Ukraine. EU provides 4M to support these civic initiatives. Watch a video by EU Ambassador @MattiMaasikas. #MovingForwardTogether#BeatCOVID19#GOZNAMYpic.twitter.com/7nuggvQv9K EU in Ukraine (@EUDelegationUA) April 13, 2020 As UNIAN reported earlier, on March 30, it became known that the European Union was allocating EUR 80 million for the war on the novel coronavirus in Ukraine. Thousands of sailors who were scheduled to head back to the East Coast after deploying to the Middle East will remain at sea while another carrier is sidelined in the Pacific -- and there's no clear end date for their mission. Family members of sailors assigned to the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group won't get a homecoming as soon as planned. The aircraft carrier and its escort ships will remain at sea as the Navy fights to stay ready to respond to potential crises worldwide during a global pandemic. Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, the head of 2nd Fleet, said the crew would typically remain on alert pierside, where sailors could be close to home. But the coronavirus pandemic -- and the way the illness has ripped through another ship's crew -- makes keeping them at sea a safer option. Related: Sailor from Carrier Theodore Roosevelt Dies of COVID-19 "It's a very dynamic situation where we are learning very quickly as we go and sharing those best practices across the Navy, across the globe -- and endeavoring to not make any mistakes as we go," Lewis told reporters on Monday. Rear Adm. Andrew Loiselle, commander of Carrier Strike Group 8, said they are confident there are no coronavirus cases on any of the strike group's ships. It has been about seven weeks since their last port call, and no one outside the crew has boarded the ships since they passed through the Suez Canal more than 14 days ago, he said. That's the typical maximum incubation period for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, which has infected more than 10% of the crew on the Theodore Roosevelt. Carrier readiness has been a top concern among military leaders during the coronavirus crisis. The Roosevelt has been sidelined in Guam since late March. A sailor assigned to that carrier died of complications due to COVID-19 on Monday. Lewis said it's vital to have a healthy strike group at sea and at the ready to "do the nation's bidding, if and when called." Competition with China, Russia and others continues, he said, and the Navy has to be ready to respond if needed. The Truman Carrier Strike Group left the Middle East earlier this month, marking the end of a rare two-carrier presence in the region. The ship, along with the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, which remains in the area, was there to temper rising tensions with Iran. Lewis acknowledged that for now, the extension appears open-ended. "We don't know, frankly, how long it's going to be," he said, adding that he and Loiselle would address the family members directly in three weeks when they know more. "That's the best we can do in this uncertain environment," Lewis added. Loiselle said leaders understand extending the deployment burdens families. Navy families, like most Americans, are hunkered down in their houses, juggling kids and work-from-home requirements. He addressed the crews' families in a Facebook post on Monday, urging them to reach out if they need assistance. "Please don't disconnect," Loiselle wrote. "Our Sailors treasure their families and you are all the most important means of support. Your love is the light at the end of the tunnel. We will do everything we can to get them home to you safely, and shortly." Four ships within the strike group -- the guided-missile cruiser Normandy and guided-missile destroyers Lassen, Forrest Sherman and Farragut -- deployed in September as a surface action group. The Truman, which was undergoing repairs, deployed in November. Loiselle and Lewis described the steps they're taking to protect the crew from any exposure to COVID-19. If aircraft land on the ship to deliver supplies, for example, the crews aren't allowed to leave their planes or helicopters to limit exposure to the crew. "We gave them a box lunch and sent them on their way," Loiselle said. Sailors are cleaning the ships three times a day, he said. And since supplies take a few days to reach the strike group at sea, testing shows that the virus won't be able to live that long on cardboard or other materials that are moved onto the ships. Loiselle said the crews are also challenging themselves to make fixes at sea that would have typically required outside help. "We're all learning a lot that we go through this and it's truly making us a better, more resilient organization," he said. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Read more: Roosevelt Revealed: Behind-the-Scenes Stories of Sailors on the Coronavirus-Stricken Carrier Widespread accounts shared by most African on the social media in the wake of the anti-African sentiments in Guangzhou province of China has raised concerns both in the print and electronic media. Africans have been evicted from their homes by landlords and turned away from hotels, despite many claiming to have no recent travel history or known to have contact with COVID-19 patients. There are other reported incidences where Africans sleep on the streets of Guangzhou beside their luggage. Aggravating the situation is a clear violation of human rights by the state police in videos circulating as police continue to harass Africans on the streets and forced them to test for COVID-19 even if they do not have any travel history. Through this medium, we are registering our displeasure as Ghanaians and other African nationals have become targets of suspicion and subjected to forced evictions, arbitrary quarantines and mass coronavirus testing as China steps up its fight against imported infections. Following the series of attacks and inhumane treatment on Africans, most of them have turned to street begging and sleeping in streets and under bridges. We can not sit aloof whiles the dignity of our fellow brethren are not respected and have been thrown into the dustbins. Besides and prior to these happenings, many Africans in China have long complained of targeted racism, in the form of Chinese holding their noses as they walk past Africans, racially offensive adverts on their national television and other social media platforms and Chinese actors performing blackface in a nationwide gala. We fully back the summoning of the Chinese Ambassadors by the Ghanaian foreign minister and urge other African countries to do the same. In the wake this, we call on the African Union, African embassies in China and other countries, the United Union as well as international organizations to condemn these acts of injustices and call the Chinese authorities to order. Issued by Kwaku Adu (Acting Communications Director, NPP Japan Branch) Revenue estimates from taxes on real estate, personal property, meals and businesses, along with other levies, are reduced by 5% to 15% in the revised proposal. The new budget withdraws previous commitments to a 2% raise for all employees and 12 new positions in the citys parks, human services, public safety and legal divisions. The city is also pulling $9.4 million away to freeze vacant positions. Increased funding for the citys Affordable Housing Trust Fund and Eviction Diversion Program also are being pulled. Annual funding for the programs will remain level at $2.9 million and $485,000, respectively. The city also is nixing plans to increase utility rates. Officials say that will reduce new revenue by $2.5 million. Funding for the city school system is also being curtailed, but is still expected to grow by about $6 million for a total of $181 million in city dollars next year. Stoney originally planned to increase school funding by about $16 million. Its uncertain whether the school budget will include planned raises for teachers and school system staff members. The usual gaiety witnessed during Assam's spring festival 'Bohag' or 'Rongali Bihu', marking the Assamese New Year, will have to be missed this year due to the lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus outbreak. The Assam Police has issued an advisory and brought out a music video urging people not to congregate to celebrate the state's most important festival that began on Monday. The advisory on Bihu celebration restricts any gathering or programme due to the ongoing lockdown, Director General of Police (DGP) Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said. "People are requested to celebrate in their homes and Bihu committees are urged to organise only flag hoisting ceremonies," the DGP said. The community Bihu celebration begins with the hoisting of flags at neighbourhood fields by committee members in the presence of local residents. "This year, we have asked the Bihu committees to organise the flag hoisting programme with a maximum of five persons and restrict the event to a maximum of 30 minutes," Mahanta said. He also urged the participants to maintain social distancing during the event. ADGP (law and order) G P Singh urged people to celebrate the festival only with those with whom "they are sharing a house during lockdown" and not to visit the houses of other relatives. In the music video brought out by the police, its uniformed personnel, with Assamese 'gamosa' around their necks, are seen dancing to the tunes of a Bihu song, the lyrics of which is based on awareness on coronavirus. Traditional Assamese musical instruments such as 'Dhol' (drum), 'Pepa' (buffalo horn flute) and 'Gogona' (a jaw harp) are also played. The Bihu song urges people to stay at home and says that people will invite coronavirus to their homes if they indulge in community celebration. The song says life will come to an end if the chain of coronavirus infection is not broken. It says if the community survives, there will be more Bihu celebrations so "let us keep it low this year and sing the glory of humanity". The Bihu song has resonated with the people. "The Bihu song is catchy and its message relevant," Cotton University student Devarshi Hazarika said. Thirty five-year-old homemaker Monica Barua said she will celebrate Bihu at home by seeking blessings from elders and preparing 'pitha' (rice cake) and 'laru' (sweetmeat). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A total of 134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in Punjab amid coronavirus curfew, were allowed to leave through a special flight, a government official said on Monday. "One hundred and thirty four Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-Jalandhar, were allowed to leave for Bhutan through a special flight arranged by Bhutanese government," Special Chief Secretary K.B.S. Sidhu, who is in-charge to monitor state-wide coronavirus cases, informed in a tweet. A woman hosteller, hailing from Maharashtra, of the Lovely Professional University was tested for coronavirus on Saturday. The state has nearly 2,400 resident students stranded in the university hostels. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 12:59 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1858b5 1 National COVID-19-in-Indonesia,dentists,PDGI,dokter-gigi Free Candra Juniar Amiarno, a 38-year-old dentist living in East Jakarta, was forced to stop practicing after the COVID-19 outbreak hit the country in early March. I was not allowed to practice by my mother because the risk for dentists was very high, she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. Im honestly scared [to continue my dental practice during the outbreak]. As dozens of doctors and medical workers have been exposed and killed fighting the outbreak, dentists were also putting their lives on the line as the Indonesian Dentists Association (PDGI) announced that at least six dentists had died due to the pneumonia-like illness. PDGI chair Sri Hananto Seno said dental and oral examination left patients, dentists and assistants vulnerable to contracting the disease as they were exposed to droplets, which were the main method of transmission. [The droplets] can end up on the clothes of dentists and assistants, which can cause transmission between them and other patients coming in for an examination, Hananto told the Post on Thursday. Candra also said that using drills during a dental examination could spread very fine water particles in the air that could carry the coronavirus for up to three hours, requiring the whole dental examination room and equipment to be disinfected every 30 minutes. Minding the danger, the association has advised the public to only see dentists for emergency and serious dental problems during the outbreak. In the meantime, it also has urged dentists to reduce their hours, especially those above 60 years old. Read also: Coronavirus found in air samples up to 4 meters from patients Hananto said most dentists had complied with the warning, adding that only 30 percent of all dentists in Jakarta were still practicing in hospitals to handle emergencies, such as oral bleeding and severe dental pain. While limiting dental practices is seen as necessary to ensure safety and curb transmissions, the policy has also caused dentists to lose their source of income. [My income] has been severely affected, as fewer hours mean a smaller income, Candra said. Pedestrians walk on a bridge in Jakarta on April 9. Jakarta has applied large-scale social restrictions, which will be enforced until midnight on April 24 and could be extended. (JP/ Seto Wardhana ) Diana Kusriyanti, a 42-year-old dentist living in Tangerang, also said her monthly revenue had dropped by almost 90 percent. My income has decreased while basic necessities have become more expensive. My mortgage and credit obligations cannot be fulfilled either, she told the Post on Wednesday. Seeing the dire financial situation of dentists, Hananto advised doctors to be patient and start living frugally, reminding that the outbreak had also economically impacted workers in other industries. Ive closed my dental practice for more than three weeks now, so Ive started living modestly and avoiding excess, he said. We will manage as long as we start managing our spending better and save money,. It is better than me insisting on opening up my dental practice and contracting the disease. If that happened, my family and I would regret that for life,. He added. Hananto also said the inability to make payments had also affected many new dentists that had invested in new dental equipment and office space. He, however, noted that the government had issued a policy to extend loan payment deadlines for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) for up to one year to help them cope with the effects of the outbreak. Read also: Indonesias COVID-19 stimulus playbook explained President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said the new relaxation would apply to business loans worth up to Rp 10 billion (US$619,118), both from banks and non-bank institutions. The association has also requested that postponement of installments as dentists are only treating emergency cases now, Hananto said. He also reminded dentists still practicing to always wear personal protective equipment (PPE), adding that the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) and the COVID-19 task force had been donating PPE to the association. Keep our families safe by not practicing for now. Hopefully, this COVID-19 outbreak will pass and we can practice as usual, he said. As of Monday morning, the country had recorded 4,241 cases of COVID-19 with 373 fatalities and 359 recoveries, as published by the Health Ministry on its official website on emerging diseases, infeksiemerging.kemkes.go.id. Nearly 100 German exhibitors sign up to 3rd CIIE By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-04-13 09:58 (The online roadshow) Nearly 100 exhibitors from Germany have signed up to attend the third China International Import Expo (CIIE), including big names such as Volkswagen, BMW, Zeiss, and Siemens. Germany has been an important destination of CIIEs roadshow in foreign countries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the roadshow of this years import fair was held online on April 9. The online promotion meeting is an innovation, which we hope can boost enterprises confidence, said Liu Fuxue, vice director of the CIIE Bureau. For four consecutive years, China has been Germanys most important trading partner, and Germany has been Chinas largest trading partner in Europe for 45 years. Mutually-beneficial cooperation has been a theme of Sino-German relations. Last year, during the second CIIE, more than 200 German companies participated and their total exhibition area ranked first of all the European exhibitors. The intentional transactions of German exhibitors surpassed USD 14.8 billion, up 13.7% from the figure during the first CIIE in 2018. (Christine Mueller, vice general manager of AHK Shanghai, interviewed by media) The market in China is very big and attractive to German enterprises,said Christine Mueller, vice general manager of AHK Shanghai. As she said, through the online video conference, German industry associations and enterprises could have a direct understanding of the preparations for the CIIE and highlights of different exhibition areas. Besides German participants, CIIE organizers from Japan and Switzerland, like the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and the Swiss China Center (SCC), also attended the online roadshow on April 9. The form of the online roadshow, as they commented, is worth learning from and in the future such events will be held to attract more enterprises to take part in the import expo. New Jerseys only womens prison is rife with sexual abuse of inmates by staff that has persisted for decades, according to a scathing report from the U.S. Justice Department released Monday. Federal investigators described instances of corrections officers coercing prisoners at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Hunterdon County into sexual acts, groping them during strip searches and routinely demeaning them as bitches, hoes" and other slurs. The conditions violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, according to U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito. The federal findings are the latest development in a years-long effort to curb the abuse and exploitation of prisoners by staff, which were documented in a series of NJ Advance Media reports on conditions at the prison. Seven staff members in recent years have been convicted of sexually abusing inmates, and investigations into still more cases are ongoing. Yet women at Edna Mahan continue to be raped and harassed to this day, the inquiry found. Indeed, credible allegations of sexual abuse by both correction officers and civilian staff continued to surface throughout 2018 and into 2019, despite the attention focused on the issue," the report said. (The Department of Corrections) and Edna Mahan have been aware that their women prisoners face a substantial risk of serious harm from sexual abuse, and they have failed to remedy this constitutional violation. Spokespeople for Gov. Phil Murphy and Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Carpenito said in a statement Monday that his office was encouraged by the states cooperation throughout our investigation, and stated commitment to ending sexual abuse at Edna Mahan. But the report found state authorities efforts to fix the problems had failed and now New Jersey faces a potential federal lawsuit if more than a dozen minimal remedial measures are not met. Among dozens of examples of disturbing behavior by sworn law enforcement officers, the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department and New Jerseys U.S. Attorneys Office found male correction officers make efforts to watch prisoners as they shower, undress, or use restrooms." S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Faceboo New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) told a briefing Sunday he's coordinating with the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut on when to ease coronavirus restrictions, adding he wants to reopen nonessential businesses and public places "as soon as possible." The big picture: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told Cuomo via text message of plans to keep 1,800 public schools shut until the end of June, per the New York Times. But Cuomo said it's too early to make such a call. "That's his opinion, but he didn't close them, and he can't open them," he said. "If you say the schools are closed through June, you are effectively saying businesses are closed through June," Cuomo added. He said data and science would drive the decision on when to reopen the state's economy. Where it stands: More than 188,000 New Yorkers have tested positive for the coronavirus and over 9,300 people have died in the state. New York has tested more than 461,600 people for the virus, per Johns Hopkins data. Xi vows to back nations' virus fight People's Daily Online (China Daily) 10:26, April 12, 2020 Interaction shows how 'community of a shared future for mankind' seen in deeds China has vowed to continue providing assistance within its capacity to help the countries in need amid the global battle against COVID-19. President Xi Jinping made the pledge in his latest diplomatic interactions with his Venezuelan, Mexican and Argentine counterparts. Xi held phone conversations with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday night. He has also exchanged messages with Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez recently. Speaking with Maduro, Xi said he was very concerned about the development of the pandemic in Venezuela and he noticed that Caracas has quickly adopted resolute measures to prevent the outbreak. It showed that the government is highly responsible for the people's safety and health, he said. China will strengthen anti-epidemic cooperation with Venezuela and continue to provide help, Xi said. Maduro said that China's support and help are especially precious for Venezuelan people who are experiencing hard times, adding that China has shown the world the spirit of solidarity and cooperation with actual deeds. His country treasures the comprehensive strategic partnership with China and hopes to continue cooperation with China and jointly promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, he said. In the telephone conversation with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Xi said China actively develops international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic, and firmly supports the World Health Organization's anti-epidemic efforts. Beijing stands ready to strengthen coordination with the Group of 20 member countries including Mexico to implement the consensus reached at the G20 Extraordinary Leaders' Summit on COVID-19, he said. Xi extended sincere sympathies to Mexico over the novel coronavirus outbreak and expressed resolute support for the country in the fight against the virus. China is willing to continue to provide support to Mexico to the best of its ability, including assisting its purchase of medical supplies in the Chinese market, he said, adding that experts of both nations may also continue to share experience in epidemic prevention and control as well as diagnosis and treatment of the disease via videoconference. The Mexican president said it's critically important that China offered valuable support and assistance to his country at a difficult time as Mexico fights the epidemic. Mexico will remain committed to actively developing relations with China and intensify exchanges and cooperation in such fields as epidemiology and public health. In his message to Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez, Xi said China firmly supports measures the nation has made against the outbreak, and has sent anti-epidemic supplies to Argentina. He said China will step up bilateral exchanges and cooperation regarding the virus with Argentina and make contributions to preserving global and regional public health security. In his message to Xi, Fernandez said he appreciated China's strong support, adding that China has demonstrated strong leadership and the ability to innovate during its COVID-19 fight, setting an example for his country. Fernandez said China has the world's most professional epidemic prevention and control experience, from which Argentina hopes to learn. He said he believes bilateral cooperation to fight the outbreak will further deepen the friendly and mutually beneficial relationship between the two peoples. Xi has been actively engaged in diplomatic activities through phone conversations or exchanges of messages with other world leaders since the outbreak, calling for international solidarity and cooperation to fight the pandemic. The Foreign Ministry said the Chinese government has provided or has arranged medical assistance including surgical masks, protective gear and testing kits to 127 countries and four international organizations to combat COVID-19. Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a daily news briefing on Friday that China sent 13 teams of medical experts to 11 countries and held over 70 videoconferences with experts from more than 150 nations and international organizations. "Upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, China has provided support and assistance to the international community to the best of its ability while continuing to curb the novel coronavirus at the domestic level," Zhao said. He said local governments, enterprises and civil organizations in China have offered medical supplies to over 100 countries, regions and international organizations. Zhao said 10 Chinese medical experts arrived in Kazakhstan on Thursday, and they planned to work there for 15 days. The Red Cross Society of China, he said, has sent medical supplies to the Vatican Pharmacy to assist in the Vatican's effort to cope with the pandemic and treat patients. At the Nigerian government's request, Chinese companies donated medical materials to the country and set up a medical team to assist it in combating the disease, he said. As of Wednesday, 58 countries and regions and four international organizations had signed commercial contracts with Chinese enterprises to purchase medical supplies, Zhao said. From March 1 to April 4, China exported 10.2 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) in major epidemic prevention materials. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Former Australia and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batsman Matthew Hayden on Monday revealed the most special moment in his Indian Premier League (IPL) career. He said that meeting Dalai Lama will always hold a special place in his heart and revealed as to when the meeting took place. Hayden said that during the 2010 IPL match between Chennai Super Kings and Kings XI Punjab, he got the opportunity to meet Dalai Lama. The left-handed batsman shared a video on Twitter to talk about his favourite IPL memories and captioned the post as: "The @IPL has been a huge part of all our lives. Wanted to share my favourite #MyIPLmoment to fill the gap before live-action starts again. I would like to nominate @ImRaina to share his favourite IPL moment. Bless you, all". "In 2010 I got the opportunity to meet Dalai Lama, it was a great moment in my life, I got the chance to meet someone so special, I still remember the match between CSK and Kings XI Punjab at Dharamsala, we needed more than 190 and we were under the pump," Hayden said in the video. "It was then that MS Dhoni walked out to the middle and started to tee off from the start, he scored 54 off just 27 balls, Suresh Raina scored 46 runs, both of them had a strike rate of over than 150 and as a result, we entered the finals," he added. With this win, CSK entered the finals, and in the summit clash the side faced off against Mumbai Indians. CSK won the match by 22 runs to lift their first IPL title. Hayden also talked about how he took a crucial catch in the summit clash to hand CSK the win in the finals. "My second best memory is when Mumbai Indians and CSK took on each other in the 2010 IPL finals. We all know that it is the real rivalry in IPL. My favourite moment was when Albie Morkel dismissed Kieron Pollard, MS Dhoni had placed me at straight mid-off. I took a catch there to send off Pollard, and as a result, we ended up winning the tournament," Hayden said. Hayden played 32 matches in his IPL career for the Chennai Super Kings. He scored 1107 runs at an average of 36.90 with his highest score being 93. IPL 2020 was slated to begin from March 29, but it was postponed until April 15 due to the coronavirus pandemic. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A man was found dead Monday in Clevelands Edgewater neighborhood, police said. The man, who has not been identified, was found dead about 4 p.m. on West 112th Street near Clifton Boulevard, police said. Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia did not say how he died, but she said his death is being investigated as a homicide. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiners Office will release his name once his family has been notified. Ciaccia did not immediately release any other information about the mans death. Homicide detectives remained at the scene just after 5:30 p.m. They taped off a driveway outside a home as they investigated. The homicide is one of two in Cleveland on Monday afternoon. A 34-year-old man died after being shot in the back just before 4 p.m. on West 96th Street near Macon Avenue, police said. Assam government on Monday initiated a helpline number to assist non-resident Assamese financially for their survival during the COVID-19 lockdown. "Assam has started a helpline through which we want to connect non-resident Assamese. They can call 9615471547, we'll register them. Once registered, we'll transfer an amount which will help them in surviving in another state till lockdown is completely lifted," Assam Minister HB Sarma said. "We have also started an initiative to help the people who are stuck in different countries. To those residents of Assam, we have transferred US $ 1000," he added. According to the latest update by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, with 905 new positive COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours and 51 deaths, the total number of coronavirus cases in India on Monday evening climbed to 9,352 and 324 deaths. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With his exit from the monarchy official, Prince Harry is no longer using his HRH title. The Duke of Sussex agreed to stop using his titles as part of his exit deal and is now starting a new life in California with Meghan Markle. Although Harry has given up a lot to leave the royal family, new documents reveal that he dropped more than just his HRH title at the end of last month. Prince Harry | Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/WireImage The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announce their new charity Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, recently announced the name of their new charity. The couple was forced to drop their previous foundation, Sussex Royal, as part of their exit agreement. They launched Sussex Royal in 2019 after their departure from Prince William and Kate Middletons charity, The Royal Foundation. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced plans to launch a new charitable organisation named Archewell that aims to "to do something that matters" https://t.co/C6pWb0d1Ji SkyNews (@SkyNews) April 7, 2020 With Prince Harry and Meghan ditching their old charity, they recently confirmed that their new foundation is called Archewell. The name is a play on their sons name, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, and the Greek word Arche, which means a source of action. Although Harry and Meghan have announced the name of their new charity, they are not moving forward with any plans due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Sussexes are currently living in Los Angeles and revealed that they will make further announcements when the time is right. Prince Harry drops more than his HRH title As part of their exit deal, Harry agreed to stop using many of his titles and military ranks. He did not lose his royal titles but agreed to drop them because he is no longer an active royal. Turns out, his HRH title is not the only name he ditched. According to Daily Mail, Harry has also stopped using his official last name, Mountbatten-Windsor. While registering his new project, Travalyst, Harry applied under the name Prince Henry Charles Albert David, Duke of Sussex, leaving out Mountbatten-Windsor. Prince Harry 'drops royal surname' in paperwork after settling in LA with Meghan https://t.co/horf5KhwD3 pic.twitter.com/SWs45C0BOX Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) April 12, 2020 Prince Harry launched Travalyst in March during a trip to Edinburgh. In what was one of his final royal engagements, Harry asked the host to introduce him to the audience by only his first name. Hes made it clear that we are all just to call him Harry. So ladies and gentlemen, please give a big, warm, Scottish welcome to Harry, the event host, Ayesha Hazarika, said as she introduced Harry to the stage. Harry has not commented on the reports surrounding his HRH title. The royal family will re-examine his exit in 12 months to determine if any further adjustments are in order. Jane Goodall opens up about Megxit Prince Harry and Meghan announced their exit from the monarchy back in January in a move that shocked many royal watchers. Things had not been easy for Harry and Meghan in the public eye, but few expected them to leave the royal family altogether. There is one person, however, who knew Harry and Meghan were leaving a good six months before their announcement. According to Page Six, Jane Goodall recently revealed that Harry told her that he did not want his son growing up in the royal spotlight last summer. The dynamic duo we need. Prince Harry and Dr. Jane Goodall. pic.twitter.com/K5iIxy8sY7 #ArchieDay (@gordon_izabella) April 11, 2020 At the end [of the conversation] Meghan came in to listen with Archie, Goodall shared. He was very tiny and very sleepy not too pleased to be passed from his mummy. I think I was one of the first to cuddle him outside the family. Goodall added that she made Archie do the Queens wave, telling the couple that he will likely have to learn it someday. In response, Prince Harry replied, No, hes not growing up like that. The conversation happened in July and was featured in the September edition of British Vogue. The interview mainly focused on Goodalls Roots & Shoots charity. How will Prince Harry adjust to life in California? Although Harry and Meghan have started their new lives in LA, there are still many questions surrounding what comes next for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. We still do not know what the couple plans on doing with their charity, and they have not revealed anything about Harrys immigration status. Many royal watchers are also wondering how Harry is going to adjust now that he is living in Southern California. According to Town and Country, TV host Julie Montagu believes Prince Harry might be more open about his emotions now that he is calling LA his home. The rumor is Harry and Meghan have bought Mel Gibsons $14.5m, very luxe home. Plus, Easter messages come from William and Kate and the queen, and Prince Andrew suddenly reappears. All this and more in this week's Royalist newsletter. https://t.co/nlgnlOOIPU The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 12, 2020 Were very emotionally open, which I think for Harry is actually a really good thing, she explained. Hell be able to talk about his feelings, probably more than he was able to talk about over here. I wouldnt be surprised if we start to hear a little bit more about how he feels about losing his mother at age 12, and maybe how he and Megan were treated in the press over here. Montagu grew up in Illinois and married a British aristocrat named Lord Luke Montagu, who will someday be the Earl of Sandwich. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are currently staying out of the spotlight while the entire world deals with the coronavirus pandemic. Living without electricity in a remote area isn't easy, but it's part of the job for some soldiers. Border soldiers with a simple meal in the fight against coronavirus in Thanh Hoa Province. Photo vietnamnet.vn Life may be hard for the troops stationed at Bat Mot border station, Thuong Xuan District, Thanh Hoa Province, but they know they have to do their bit to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. With an area of 17km bordering Lao's Hua Phan Province, the station is considered as an important shield to prevent the spread of the deadly disease. Twelve groups with six soldiers in each group have been set up to strictly control entry and exit across the border to detect possible infections as early as possible. The soldiers and officers work hard with the motto "fighting the epidemic is like fighting against the enemy", Lieutenant Bui Nhu Luc said, adding that they make use of all available resources to combat the pandemic. Tents have set up to facilitate border patrol around the clock and soldiers return to their border station every few days to get food because their tents are more than 20km from the border point. Sometimes, they have to find vegetables such as banana flowers in the forest to eat. "There is not much water from the streams because it's the dry season. We have to use bamboo troughs to get water from streams and contain it in plastic tarpaulin sheets," Luc told vietnamnet.vn. "Sometimes, we have to go tens of kilometres to get water for daily use." "It is very normal in these days if we can not access electricity, phone signal, as well as water and get bitten by mosquitoes." Water taken from streams is contained in plastic sheets for daily use. Photo vietnamnet.vn However, they overcome their hardships to carry out their duties, Lieutenant Colonel Thinh Van Kien said. From April 1 to 15, the border guards will work closely with local police for strict controls around the clock of people and vehicles entering and leaving the province to fight the pandemic. The Government has decided to suspend cross-border activities of individuals at main and secondary border gates, and trails in border areas with Cambodia and Laos from April 1 as part of measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Lao government also ordered the temporary closure of 10 border gates with its neighbouring countries, including Vietnam, from March 19 to April 20, amid the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus. Bat Mot stations border guards have tackled 10 cases of illegal cross-border travelling and handed over the people involved to competent authorities for quarantine. In Muong Lat and Quan Son border districts, human resources from district-level hospitals and healthcare centres have been assigned to work the entire day at border areas to assist border guard forces. Other supplies have been provided to ensure good hygiene to fight the disease and keep officers and soldiers safe. The forces have strictly controlled cross-border activities along the Thanh Hoa-Hua Phan borderline and other cross-border trails. VNS Border guards undergo hardships combating COVID-19 epidemic Border guards in the northern mountainous province of Lai Chau have set up tents along trails and near border crossings to receive people in quarantine in the context of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spreading across the country.. A map of positive novel coronavirus cases in Harris County released over the weekend and sorted by ZIP code is indicative that residents closer to drive-thru testing sites are more likely to have been examined for the virus, according to city officials. The so-called heat map of cases in Houston and the unincorporated county shows anywhere from 61 to 90 cases in the 77088, 77084 and 77449 ZIP codes, along the Energy Corridor and in Acres Homes. Some ZIP codes southeast of Houston amount to less than 10 positive tests on the map, based on 3,561 tests taken as of Saturday. On Monday, Mayor Sylvester Turner warned the map can be deceiving. ZIP codes with fewer cases does not mean COVID-19 is not among the residents in that area, he said. They just havent been tested yet, Turner said. CORONAVIRUS UPDATES: Stay informed with accurate reporting you can trust Turner, speaking from Cullen Middle School where United Memorial Medical Center opened a fourth private testing site, said the map indicates more testing should be done in neighborhoods with fewer positive cases, and more vulnerable residents. He surmised that residents there lack vehicle transportation to access two of the citys drive-thru testing sites at Butler and Delmar stadiums, both of which are located in southwest and northwest Houston. What may appear at first glance to be a novel coronavirus hotspot in Acres Homes, Turner explained, is actually an area that neighbors a ZIP code with a private testing site: the United Memorial Medical Center drive-thru facility that opened last month on Tidwell. You can look at that heat map and see certain areas seem like they have more cases, Turner said at a news conference. The two ZIP codes along the Energy Corridor, which run parallel to Interstate 10, lead to the Harris County testing facility at Legacy Field in Katy. The county operates another site in Baytown and beginning on Tuesday will open one in Tomball. A fourth site is scheduled to open next week in Humble. CORONAVIRUS IN HOUSTON: All of the latest news, numbers and analysis to keep you up-to-date, only on HoustonChronicle.com Now Playing: 'COVID-19 in 60': Houston coronavirus news in a minute Video: Houston Chronicle If Houston had more testing, Dr. David Persse, Houstons health authority, said more areas on the map would be darker indicating more confirmed cases. Those areas are not worse off, Persse said, referring to ZIP codes with a higher number of cases. The proximity to testing sites, he said, are skewing the scope of confirmed cases. Persse would also like to see more testing sites, ideally one in each of Houstons estimated 50 super neighborhoods. It doesnt matter what neighborhood you live in, what your social economic status is, Persse said. Everyone is equally susceptible to being infected. During the same news conference Monday, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said Houstons East End could also benefit from more testing. The citys first testing site at Butler Stadium opened March 20 for first responders and medical professionals before expanding to symptomatic patients. Both sites can now administer a combined 1,000 tests and starting Tuesday, the facilities will allow anyone regardless of whether theyre symptomatic or not to be tested. Potential patients are still required to register with the city before going to a test site. According to officials, that is when a patient is assigned a number and that is how health officials collect demographic data, such as where they live, their age and gender. nicole.hensley@chron.com There is nothing about Christians celebration of Easter that is evocative of solitude. That belongs to season of Lent, the six weeks before Easter that is a period of reflection, sacrifice and discipline. Easter Sunday morning is all about crowded churches, people parading in their best clothes, big family gatherings and happy children running and hunting for Easter eggs. 2020 will be remembered for the absence of those joyous moments. No doubt there have been difficult times in Easters past. An AP archive image photographed April 1, 1945, shows 175 Frenchmen, former prisoners of war, marching down a German road after being freed by a cavalry reconnaissance unit of the U.S. Ninth Army on Easter Sunday. They are shoulder-to-shoulder and jubilant in the image photographed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. During this pandemic, people are spread out and sheltering in place. Churches around the world were closed to most of the over 2 billion Christians, forcing the faithful to watch Easter services online or on TV. At Jerusalems Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Christian faithful believe Jesus was crucified, entombed and rose from the dead, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa urged the faithful not to be discouraged. The message of Easter is that life, despite all will prevail, said Pizzaballa said at a Mass attended by a few clerics, with the streets of the Old City devoid of pilgrims and vendors. Here is how Christians celebrated Easter in Varese, Italy; Hyderabad, India; Caracas; Antigua, Guatemala; and Henderson, Nevada. (Image Credit: AP) Former Minister and Mangaluru MLA U T Khader helped a research scholar in virology who had arrived in India from Italy on March 22 to reach her home at Kulai here on Sunday. Madhu Bhat, a PhD student at University of Turin, had arrived in Delhi on March 22. After the mandatory quarantine period, she was brought to Bengaluru two days ago by a special bus arranged by the central government. But she could not travel to her home due to the continuing lockdown. Learning about her plight through a common friend of the family, Khader arranged his personal car and she reached home safely. Bhat is the daughter of retired army officer Shivaram Bhat and Shailaja Bhat, a professor at Vijaya college in Mulki. The government had brought 26 Indians stranded in Italy, including Bhat, to Delhi where they were placed under quarantine. Later, they arranged the bus for them to go to their respective states and it reached Bengaluru on April 10. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Midland Daily News staff, which won 13 awards in the Michigan Associated Press Media Editors newspaper contest. Barb Fenby, who was named Senior Services' Employee of the Month for April. Nevaeh Tschirhart, who is making hundreds of plastic strap holders for face masks with her 3D printer. Joseph and Nancy Palmer, who celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Expressing dissatisfaction over the performance of Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health in tackling the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the government to remove him from his post. During a hearing on a suo motu case on the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan, a five-member bench of the apex court led by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed observed that Prime Minister Imran Khan's Cabinet had become ineffective in the fight against the pandemic. The bench questioned the integrity of Zafar Mirza, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, in tackling the COVID-19 crisis and the transparency of his work done. The court noted that there were some serious allegations against the team of special assistants to the prime minister. "There is an army of ministers and advisors in place but no work is being done," the Chief Justice said, adding that "corrupt people" have been kept as advisors in the government. "The prime minister's Cabinet has become ineffective...All the provinces are doing whatever they desire," he remarked and directed the government to remove Mirza from his post. Responding to the Chief Justice's remarks, Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan said the apex court's observations and direction for Mirza's removal would "only cause harm" to the government's efforts in combating the coronavirus crisis. He noted that removing the prime minister's aide during this point and time would be disastrous. "Do not change him mid-flight," the Attorney General said, urging the court to leave the matter on the federal government. The chief justice said he was very careful in passing such remarks, and adjourned the hearing till April 20. Later the court issued written orders directing the governments of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces and the Gilgit-Baltistan authorities to submit the details of actions taken by them to curb the deadly viral infection. However, the written order made no mention of Mirza's removal. Mirza enjoys the status of a state minister. He was appointed Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health last year after the then Health Minister Amir Kayani was removed from his post for failing to check spiralling drug prices. Mirza's removal would be a major setback to the Imran Khan government as he is one who is leading the campaign against COVID-19 in Pakistan and addressing media daily about the steps being taken to control its outbreak. Pakistan's coronavirus cases have reached 5,374 with 334 new infections reported on Monday. Seven more people have died due to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll in the country to 93. Prime Minister Khan on Sunday appealed for a "global initiative on debt relief" to help Pakistan to overcome disastrous impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Advertisement Kate Beckinsale is dating a baby-faced musician who is more than 24 years her junior, exclusive new photos obtained by DailyMail.com reveal. The 46-year-old was pictured enjoying a romantic stroll in Los Angeles with a 22-year-old rocker known as Goody Grace on Easter Sunday. The English actress, who enjoyed a brief fling with comedian Pete Davidson, 26, last year, held hands with her new man and snuggled into him on their outing. The pair were first spotted together back in January and she has regularly left comments on his Instagram in recent months, but the PDA display on Sunday made it clear their romance is official. Goody is just one year older than Kate's daughter, 21-year-old Lily Sheen. New man: Kate Beckinsale debuted her new romance with 22-year-old rocker Goody Grace during a stroll in Los Angeles on Sunday Kate definitely has a bit of reputation for dating younger men, having enjoyed romances with several twenty-somethings in recent years. Among them was 26-year-old comedian Pete Davidson, who is exactly 20 years younger than Kate. The duo's romance hit headlines in January 2019 after they were seen flirting at a Golden Globes after party. The couple dated for four months, only to split in April 2019. Pete still had kind words for Kate earlier this year, calling her 'one of the funniest people I've ever met' in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God. The look of love: Goody gazed towards Beckinsale during their leisurely stroll Happy camper: Kate smiled from ear-to-ear while enjoying her loved-up stroll Keeping casual: Kate's grey sweater lazily dangled off her shoulder, putting her white lace tank top on display Comfortable: She wore a sporty pair of black track pants with a neon drawstring and wore her hair piled up into a loose bun Aside from Pete, Kate dated 21-year-old Matt Rife in 2017, and was romantically linked to 30-year-old Jack Whitehall in 2018. Kate and Goody only had eyes for each other while enjoying a loved-up stroll in Los Angeles. Kate smiled from ear to ear as she sweetly held hands with her stylish guy, no doubt happy to be in his company and enjoy a break from the indoors. Goody gazed at Kate as they continued their jaunt, hands interlocked. Hold me close: Goody held Beckinsale close in his arms Hand in hand: The couple never left each other's side Staying close: The duo were clearly enjoying each other's company Strikes again: Kate definitely has a bit of reputation for dating younger men, having enjoyed romances with several twenty-somethings in recent years At one point, the rocker pulled Kate into his arms for a tender embrace. The duo definitely looked comfortable with each other while lazily strolling through the outdoors together, clad in their casual best. Kate's grey sweater lazily dangled off her shoulder, putting her white lace tank top on display. She wore a sporty pair of black track pants with a neon drawstring and wore her hair piled up into a loose bun. Self-isolation break: No doubt the pair were happy to enjoy the fresh air together Looking cool: Goody embraced an emo style with a slouchy white sweater and skinny jeans Best tressed: Beckinsale slicked her brunette hair up into a loose bun In contrast to Kate, Goody embraced a more emo style. The rocker wore a slouchy white sweater, a Cigarettes After Sex band T-shirt, and skinny jeans. Kate was actually seen with Goody as early as January 2020, when the pair were spotted leaving a pre-Grammys party together. Kate has been commenting on Goody's Instagram posts as far back as February, even leaving a heart emoji on one of his snaps. Staying hydrated: The actress carried a glass of water for the journey Insta-connection: While this may be the first time Kate has been seen publicly with Goody, the pair have been communicating on social media these last few months Hitting a high note: Kate was actually seen with Goody as early as January 2020, when the pair were spotted leaving a pre-Grammys party together Locking lips! Kate enjoyed a four-month-long romance with Pete Davidson, then age 25, in 2019 Funny girl: Pete still had kind words for Kate earlier this year, calling her 'one of the funniest people I've ever met' in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God (pictured 2019) On Sunday, Goody posted a snap of himself holding a giant chocolate egg as several peeps sat on his shoulders. 'a very happy quarantined easter,' he captioned the photo, which Kate commented 'Peep x.' Kate was previously married for 12 years to director Len Wiseman. The couple wed in May 2004 after falling in love on the set of 2003's Underworld, which co-starred Beckinsale's then partner Michael Sheen. Cuddled up: Beckinsale held her then-boyfriend Matt Rife back in 2017 Chemistry: Beckinsale was romantically linked to 30-year-old Jack Whitehall in 2018 Happier times: She was married to director Len Wiseman, pictured 2008, for 12 years Friendly exes: Beckinsale shares 21-year-old daughter Lily Sheen with Michael Sheen, who she dated from 1995 to 2003 (pictured 2016) Len filed for divorce in 2016, and the split was finalized in 2019. Kate shares 21-year-old daughter Lily Sheen with her ex Michael, whom she dated from 1995 to 2003. Goody was just 17-years-old when he moved from Canada to Los Angeles to pursue his music career. Since then, he has released a plethora of music, including last year's track Scumbag, and has even performed at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and even Jimmy Kimmel Live! 'Anything is possible,' Grace previously said. 'I came from a super small town and moved to L.A. and was able to live my dream. It's proof that possibilities are infinite. I hope everyone takes that from my music.' Hmm: Beckinsale has been commenting on Goody's Instagram posts these last few months He has her heart: She left a black heart emoji in the comments section of a February post She likes what she hears! Beckinsale commented, 'Limb x' as Goody shared his music She likes it! Beckinsale liked this photo posted on Sunday Easter treat: She commented, 'Peep x' Press Release April 13, 2020 Dispatch from Crame No. 768: Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Earnest Message to the Medical Community Doctors, nurses, medical technologists, health workers, our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons and friends in the medical profession; I implore you: You now hold the power over life and death. In this battle against the virus, you are the frontliners. You are the thin white line that stands between us and catastrophe. Use that power to demand from government what you need to defeat the enemy. Make a list of your demands. What you want from government and what you think government needs to do. Whether it is to deliver more PPEs, roll-out a comprehensive mass-testing program, set-up or accredit new testing laboratories, access or produce more testing kits (whether here or abroad), more field hospitals to quarantine PUIs and PUMs, immediate release of daily allowance and other benefits to health workers, an efficient transport system to ferry medical workers, etc. Whatever you need, whatever you want to fight this virus, put it in writing and send it to the IATF. Tell them how government should spend our taxes and utilize all other available resources. Tell them to spend it now on things that you need to keep saving lives and to keep protecting yourselves. We are behind you. Without you, we will have no chance whatsoever to survive this pandemic, not the generals, not the lawyers, not the bankers, not the politicians, not the bureaucrats. No, only you can save us. You are the most powerful sector in the Philippines right now. Use that power to save lives, and to save your brethren who are falling at the frontlines. Tell government what to do. Tell government you can only continue to fight this battle if they listen and act immediately on your demands. Together, let us make government work for us. Our survival as a people and as a nation depends on it. P ubs could lose an estimated 50 million pints of beer due to the coronavirus lockdown. Pubs, bars and restaurants were ordered to close their doors in March to help slow the spread of the virus and the beer that they had in storage could spoil if left too long. The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) came up with the figure on the basis that each of the UK's 39,000 pubs have about 15 barrels of beer at any one time. Most beer will spoil within a few months of delivery - so a long lockdown would mean that much would go to waste. Punters go for a drink before pubs and bars close to stop Coronavirus 1 /14 Punters go for a drink before pubs and bars close to stop Coronavirus People outside O'Neills pub, in Clapham, London PA A man wearing a protective face mask sits in a pub, on the day Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered all pubs to close in response to the number of the coronavirus disease cases REUTERS Lot of people went to the pub, despite Boris Johnson asking the nation not to be tempted to have one last drink REUTERS People at a Cardiff nightclub after Boris Johnson announced that all pubs, restaurants and gyms were to close Matthew Horwood Boris Johnson, is seen on a television screen in a pub in London as the spread of the coronavirus disease continues REUTERS A man drinks in the BrewDog pub in the Cowgate Getty Images Staff wear face masks at Mussel & Steak restaurant in Edinburgh Getty Images The Bricklayer's Arms pub in West Putney displays a sign warning customers it has closed 2020 Getty Images People are seen drinking inside a pub in London Getty Images The Alexandra pub in Worthing, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered pubs and restaurants across the country to close tonight PA Pub goers enjoy a final evening of drinking in a J.D. Weatherspoon's in London Getty Images The Government has said that any wasted beer can be claimed back by pub operators. Camra chief executive Tom Stainer told the BBC: "It's a very sad waste of all the work and talent that goes into producing great beer. People won't get to drink it and all those resources have been used up for nothing." Its not the biggest issue that the country is dealing with, but aspects of life like going to the cinema or cafe, or going for a pint, are something we treasure." Empty streets in UK after pubs and restaurants close 1 /8 Empty streets in UK after pubs and restaurants close An empty Westfield Stratford City Getty Images The empty car park outside a cinema in Leicester, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered pubs, restaurants, leisure centres and gyms across the country to close PA Westminster Bridge is quiet in London AFP via Getty Images A pedestrian walks past a closed pub in New Cross, south London PA Cyclists keep their distance in Richmond Park PA A sparse Odeon cinema in Leicester after the Government ordered leisure facilities to close PA With pubs facing a huge loss of income over the lockdown, Camra is calling on the six largest big pub companies to waive tenants' rents during the crisis to keep the industry afloat. Admiral Taverns have cancelled rents. Ei Group, Punch, Greene King and Star Pubs and Bars have pushed back the date that rent is due, but not cancelled payments. Marstons are suspending rent on a case-by-case basis. Camra National Director Ben Wilkinson said:When all this is over, lots of us are looking forward to getting to the pub for a pint with friends and family. As Camra members, we stand ready to support our locals once again but we need to make sure that pubs survive this crisis, so they can re-open and thrive in the months and years ahead... Advertisement A 19-member medical team has been constituted for the purpose. The group's advice, along with that of the 12 official groups set up earlier, will be taken into account by the government while deciding whether to extend the lockdown.Officials also said the exit strategy is yet to be charted out as the number of people testing positive for coronavirus is on the rise and the curve has not gone flat yet.They also pointed out that several Chief Ministers have asked the Central government to extend the lockdown period.Source: IANS WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is in a tough spot. He was either misinformed about the virus from within or in the tank for China. So let me add my name to the growing list of people calling for his resignation. In fact, there is a petition out there that goes like this: "We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General," the petition with 853,000 signatures, posted on the Change.org website, states, calling for the official's immediate resignation. "A lot of us are really disappointed," the petition continues. "We believe WHO is supposed to be politically neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus solely believes on [sic] the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government provided with them." U.S. lawmakers have been among Tedros' harshest critics. On Thursday, a group of Republicans from the House Oversight Committee wrote to Tedros, demanding that he disclose the precise nature of his relationship with Chinese officials. "Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is in essence the Communist Party of China," the Republicans wrote. "You, as leader of the WHO, even went so far as to praise the Chinese government's 'transparency' during the crisis, when, in fact, the regime has consistently lied to the world by underreporting their actual infection and death statistics." The GOP letter cited a January message on Twitter in which the WHO said Chinese authorities found "no clear evidence" of human-to-human transmission of the virus, also known as COVID-19. My guess is that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will resign on his own. Why? Because the WHO faces a funding review, and its "China-centric" attitude has not made a lot of friends in the U.S. Congress. President Trump must run for re-election on a theme of re-evaluating all of our arrangements with these so-called international organizations, from the WHO to the WTO and, yes, the U.N. PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. Air traffic controllers direct aircraft from the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport. The FAA has had to be creative to keep the towers operating during the coronavirus crisis. (Federal Aviation Administration) When a traffic control tower worker at Palm Beach International Airport recently tested positive for the coronavirus, the staff evacuated the tower to allow for a thorough cleaning. A makeshift tower to temporarily direct planes was then set up at the top of a nearby parking garage. The incident is one of several in the last few weeks that demonstrate how air traffic control workers have had to turn to creative alternatives to keep airlines operating in the midst of a pandemic that has so far infected more than 75 control tower workers across the country. The workload for air traffic controllers has been lessened lately with airline traffic dropping by as much as 65% across the country and the demand for air travel in a nosedive over the last month. But air traffic control workers say social distancing is nearly impossible in cramped towers, where a team of up to a dozen people work in a room no bigger than a small one-bedroom apartment. The air traffic control room, known as a "cab," at Los Angeles International Airport is about 800 square feet, but smaller airports have tower cabs about half that size. "We have been completely collaborative with the FAA," Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., said in a recent conference call with union leaders in the aviation industry. "But we have to make sure that our workers are protected." Air traffic control workers aren't alone in having to come up with new work policies to cope with the coronavirus outbreak. The Los Angeles Police Department is taking the temperature of officers before each shift, and roll calls are conducted with officers spaced far apart to ensure an appropriate physical distance. The Los Angeles Fire Department has accelerated the graduation of its next class of firefighters and has asked retired firefighters to volunteer to help during the crisis. At the Fairplex in Pomona, a child-care center for the children of first responders and medical staff has divided the children into small groups and assigned them to separate rooms to reduce the chance that the virus can spread to all of them. Story continues Some Metropolitan Transportation Authority construction workers have been holding meetings outdoors whenever possible and others have been asked to take their temperatures twice a day to slow the spread of the virus. In the wake of dozens of air traffic control workers testing positive for the virus, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an internal memo in early April on how to schedule workers during the crisis. The memo, which was reviewed by The Times, called on each airport tower to divide the staff into crews, each with the minimum number of workers to operate a tower for one shift. Employees will work with the same crew on all their scheduled shifts, the memo said. That way if a tower employee becomes infected, that person would expose only the other members of his or her crew and not members of other crews. "This approach strives to ensure that social distancing practices are maximized while also supporting the mission of the agency," according to the memo. In addition, FAA workers are using portable communications equipment that allows them to continue to direct planes even when they have to abandon a control tower for a cleaning. In large airports that have more than one control tower, such as Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O'Hare International Airport, one tower is kept as a "clean spare" in case the primary tower must be temporarily shut down for a cleaning after a worker tests positive for the virus, FAA representatives said. At LAX, a retired control tower that was built in 1961 and is now used primarily for office space is designated as a backup for the current air traffic control tower, which opened in 1996. Some of the nation's largest airlines also have what is called a ramp tower, which operates like a control tower but is used instead by individual airlines to direct planes on the ground, moving along the tarmac and in and out of the gates. On April 3, the Delta Air Lines ramp tower at Orlando International Airport temporarily replaced the main control tower after a tower control worker tested positive for the coronavirus and the FAA evacuated the tower for cleaning. By keeping the Orlando airport open, the tower was able to land a plane that was carrying a passenger who was having a medical emergency, Doug Lowe, a technician at the Orlando tower, said in the union conference call. "It was a good thing we did it," he said. "There was quite a bit of traffic that continued to come in here." When another worker tested positive at Palm Beach International Airport a few days earlier, control tower workers took portable communications equipment to the top of a nearby parking garage, where they directed planes by sight until sunset, according to tower workers. Once it was too dark to direct the planes by sight, the job of directing planes was turned over to the nearest Terminal Radar Approach Control, or Tracon, which directs planes in the airspace between airports. In late March, the tower at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas was closed for about a week after a tower worker tested positive for the virus and the rest of the tower staff was quarantined, FAA officials said. During that time, some flights were canceled and many more were directed into the airport by the Las Vegas Tracon. "Each disruption has a distinct impact on the air traffic system," the FAA said in a statement. "We are experiencing this at the handful of facilities already affected by COVID-19. This is frustrating and inconvenient, but is necessary in the interest of safety." For the record: 11:20 AM, Apr. 17, 2020: A previous version of this story said Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus drivers were meeting outside and were having their temperature taken twice a day. In fact, some MTA construction workers were meeting outside and asked to take their own temperatures twice a day. 2:24 PM, Apr. 13, 2020: The name of the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. was misspelled in an earlier version. It is Paul Rinaldi. Subscriber content preview WOODINVILLE The Villas at Woodinville Village, at 14625 N.E. 145th St., sold for $21.2 million, according to King County records. The seller was RVA Group LLC, associated with the Ellison family's Legacy Cos. of Bellevue, which acquired the property out of foreclosure in 2010. . . . Ride-hailing major Ola on Monday said it has partnered with Haryana government to launch Ola Emergency' on its app in Gurugram to enable essential medical trips. The launch in Gurugram comes closely after Bengaluru, Vizag, Bhubaneshwar, Nashik and Varanasi. The company plans to expand the service to other major cities soon. The service allows riders to book non-COVID-19 medical trips, which do not require ambulance. With the implementation of the lockdown across the country to contain the spread of COVID-19, the government has allowed only people in essential services like healthcare, banking and media to commute. "Ola Emergency is available in Gurugram starting today with a dedicated network of cars that are equipped with masks and sanitizers and will be operated by specially trained drivers. Over 100 hospitals have been mapped on to the app to provide the service to ensure that trips are made from homes to hospitals and vice-versa," Ola said in a statement. To book an Ola Emergency' cab, users can select the 'Ola Emergency' category and enter the drop location from a list of available hospitals in the city. "Trips to hospitals for medical urgencies are unavoidable, even in the current times. With Ola Emergency, we are able to facilitate trips to and from hospitals across the city through the Ola app," an Ola spokesperson said. The service will be available 24x7 and will provide citizens with a reliable, convenient and safe transport solution for medical trips that do not require an ambulance, the spokesperson added. Ola said it is facilitating a clean and safe ride experience by ensuring that all registered driver-partners on the network are trained to follow proper sanitary measures, including wearing masks and frequent usage of hand sanitizers that cars have been equipped with. "We will continue to work closely with various state governments to ensure that people across cities can avail this service to access essential medical care," the spokesperson said. Customers will be charged a nominal fare according to the rate card to compensate driver-partners for their services, Ola said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Michelle Obama will throw her support today behind expanding vote-by-mail options, advisers tell Axios, with her voting rights group embracing legislation before Congress amid coronavirus fears. Why it matters: It's the first time the celebrity-backed organization has endorsed federal legislation and it comes as Democrats await the Obamas' return to the political stage to help Joe Biden. "There is nothing partisan about striving to live up to the promise of our country; making the democracy we all cherish more accessible; and protecting our neighbors, friends and loved ones as they participate in this cornerstone of American life, the former first lady said in a statement provided to Axios. The group will support the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020 by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden. The Obamas were staying mostly on the sidelines of the 2020 election through the Democratic primary season, but they spoke out against the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision preventing the state's voting deadline from being extended. Between the lines: "We all saw those lines" of Wisconsin voters putting their health at risk to vote, said adviser and family friend Valerie Jarrett, who is board chair of When We All Vote. "It was just deeply, profoundly concerning," Jarrett said. "Our goal is to just try to make sure we maximize the number of citizens who can participate in that most fundamental and important responsibility." The group will encourage people to call or email members of Congress in support of expanded access to vote-by-mail. What to watch: Michelle Obama has been testing creative ways to promote voting rights since in-person gatherings are cancelled. She hosted an online voter registration "couch party" in March with DJ D-Nice. Jarrett said another is planned for April 20. The nonpartisan group also will be focused on educating eligible voters about voter registration and vote-by-mail, communications director Crystal Carson told Axios. The backdrop: She launched When We All Vote in 2018, with co-chairs Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Janelle Monae, Chris Paul, Faith Hill, and Tim McGraw. Since leaving the White House, she's also written and promoted her best-selling memoir and launched a production company with her husband which landed them a Netflix agreement. She's also continued promoting higher education. Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify which bill When We All Vote is supporting. In the original story, the group told Axios it will support absentee voting protections under the Resilient Elections During Quarantines and Natural Disasters Act of 2020. The organization now says it will support the Klobuchar-Wyden bill, which incorporates and expands on the original legislation. Go deeper: The Gujarat government has briefed the Centre about the steps it has taken to help students in the state amid the coronavirus lockdown. State's Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama held a telephonic conversation on Saturday with Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal over issues related to students, the Gujarat government said in a press release on Monday. The press release said Chudasama informed the minister that 210 days of teaching work is over in universities and colleges in the state, e-learning has begun in universities with Google class room, Zoom application and YouTube. "Apart from this, a virtual learning platform has been developed with NaMo-e tablet application created by the Department of It offers syllabus for all the courses from different universities," the release noted. Online courses have also been introduced for student trainees pursuing B. Ed. (Bachelor of Education), the release said. Chudasama also informed Pokhriyal about other steps that the state has taken for the students amid the nationwide lockdown since March 25, imposed to curb the spread of novel coronavirus. In the press release, Chudasama said: "Department is actively using social media and technology so that no student has to face adverse impact on their study due to COVID-19. department of state will continue working with commitment until the situation is corrected. More than 9,000 people have been infected and over 300 have died due to the novel coronavirus in India till now. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fashion house titans Louis Vuitton have become the latest brand to rally behind the fight against coronavirus, joining British brand Barbour in offering to use their supply line to turn out 100,000 face masks weekly. Widely regarded as fashion royalty, Louis Vuitton has now reopened a number of its production sites in order to help manufacture protective equipment on a mass scale. The news arrives in the wake of British heritage label Barbour announcing its workforce has been tasked with turning out garments to support local NHS Trusts in the fight against COVID-19. NHS workers have already thanked the luxury clothing brand for turning its factory into a production line for PPE and delivering gowns to North East hospitals. Working with the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, its factory on Bede Industrial Estate in Jarrow, South Tyneside, has made a quantity of disposable gowns which have now been delivered to grateful staff. Louis Vuitton has become the latest brand, alongside Barbour, to join the COVID-19 battle The fashion powerhouse are now using their productions lines to equip medical workers Michael Burke (right), CEO of Louis Vuitton shows a protective gown, as the company makes PPE masks and gowns to fight coronavirus British heritage brand Barbour are now leading the battle on home shores, sending out branded packaging, stamped with the Royal seal of approval, to hospitals in the North East Pictured: A file image of a Barbour waxed jacket as it changes tack to churn out PPE for nurses and other healthcare professionals The navy blue gowns arrived in Barbour branded packaging, stamped with the Royal seal of approval. Dr Alice Wort tweeted: 'Thank you @Barbour. You thoroughly deserve these royal crests. The quality of these new gowns is amazing. They mean so much to our staff. Proud of our British manufacturers.' Deputy Director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead added: 'Much excitement at receipt of our first batch of 'by royal appointment' gowns from @Barbour - thank you so much, we especially love the proper Barbour cuffs! 'Fantastic to see how the whole region is working together to support NHS.' And microbiologist Lucia Pareja Cebrian said: 'Fantastic support from @Barbour delivering superb gowns for our frontline staff @NewcastleHosps. Really grateful for their time and effort, helping us save lives.' Pictured: The Barbour factory in Jarrow, which is now turning out the gowns for NHS workers Barbour has teamed up with the Royal Victoria Infirmary on its first batch of gowns (file image of a Barbour jacket) Barbour will now move to a larger scale production of gowns and scrubs for the RVI and other North East NHS trusts to support frontline medical staff who are in urgent need of these items. Company chairman, Dame Margaret Barbour, said: 'Everyone has a role to play in fighting COVID-19 and I wanted my daughter Helen and I to play our part by turning our South Shields factory over to produce PPE product for the NHS. 'Our staff's welfare is our most important priority and we have undertaken a strict risk assessment to ensure we adhere to social distancing and that they are fully protected whilst undertaking this important role. 'I am very grateful to my staff for their overwhelming support. The factory, where we normally make our classic wax jackets is no stranger to adaptation. 'During both World Wars, we turned the factory over to make military garments to assist the war effort. 'We are pleased to once again be able to make a difference and this time, to support the NHS.' Nurses have been pictured wearing clinical waste bags on their heads at Northwick Park hospital, which declared an emergency in late March when it ran out of critical care beds Commenting on their own move into protective mask production, Louis Vuitton wrote in a statement: 'In order to provide protective gear to healthcare workers, Louis Vuitton has repurposed several of the maisons ateliers across France to produce hundreds of thousands of non-surgical face masks. 'In partnership with the Mode Grande Ouest textile network, this initiative will donate the much-needed protective gear to frontline healthcare workers. Thank you to the hundreds of artisans who have volunteered to create these masks, as well as everyone doing their part to fight this global pandemic.' The government stated that current PPE supplies have been supplemented by 1.2million worth of goggles and masks donated by companies including B&Q. Twenty four healthcare workers have died after contracting covid-19 as the Health Secretary Matt Hancock came under fire for the lack of PPE available to workers. Earlier in the crisis before private firms stepped in nurses were pictured wearing clinical waste bags on their heads and feet at Northwick Park hospital, in Harrow, London, as it was overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. Desperate nurses continue to issue an urgent pleas for proper masks, gowns and gloves amid fears of an inadequate supply. Yesterday The Royal College of Nursing told nurses they can refuse to treat coronavirus patients if there is inadequate personal protective equipment. Canada lynx are losing ground in Washington state, even as federal officials are taking steps to remove the species' threatened status under the Endangered Species Act. A massive monitoring study led by Washington State University researchers has found lynx on only about 20% of its potential habitat in the state. The study, published recently in the Journal of Wildlife Management, covered more than 4,300 square miles (7,300 km) in northeastern Washington with camera traps but detected lynx in only 29 out of 175 monitored areas. The results paint an alarming picture not only for the persistence of lynx but many other cold-adapted species, said Dan Thornton, an assistant professor in WSU's School of the Environment. "Lynx are good sentinel species for climate change," said Thornton, the corresponding author on the study. "They are specialized, have larger ranges and need really cold, snowy environments. So, as they go, they are like an early warning system for what's going to happen to other climate sensitive species." Wildfire, rising temperatures and decreasing snowpack have all hurt the lynx's ability to survive in Washington, the researchers found. In the last 24 years, large wildfires have ripped through northeastern parts of the state, destroying habitat for lynx and their favorite food: snowshoe hare. It can take as long as 20 to 40 years for that landscape to recover. advertisement The lack of snow and cold are also a problem, as lynx with their bigger paws are specially adapted to hunt on snow and for the prey that live there. As temperature rises, warmer adapted species like bobcat and cougar could also bring competition into lynx territory. "We learned that lynx are responding strongly to many of these factors -- snow conditions, temperature and fire -- that are likely to change even more as the climate warms," said Thornton. The connection to Canadian populations is also key for the lynx survival in Washington, and that connection is complicated by differing conservation status. In Washington state, they are protected at the state and federal levels as a threatened species. In Canada, they are harvested for their pelts. The lynx's protected status in the U.S. may also change. Lynx are currently found in Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado, Idaho and Washington, but a 2016 federal draft assessment found the species would disappear from its northern range without protection by 2100. However, a new assessment in 2018 concluded that the lynx could be removed from threatened status under the federal Endangered Species Act. Living in high, remote areas, lynx are challenging to study, and estimates of actual individuals are difficult to make, but according to an analysis by the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife based on data collected in the 1980s, the state used to have about 7,800 square miles of habitat capable of supporting 238 animals. In 2017, that estimate was revised down to about 2,300 square miles capable of supporting 38 to 61 lynx. This latest study adds strong evidence that their territory in Washington is further contracting. To document the elusive animals, WSU graduate student Travis King, the lead author on the study, covered thousands of kilometers and spent two summers in the field. He also relied upon many partners and volunteers, ranging from government natural resource agency employees and conservation groups to hikers and citizen scientists. The researchers and volunteers deployed and collected 650 camera traps which generated more than 2 million images which were, in turn, sorted with the help of dozens of WSU student volunteers. This is the first time such a comprehensive method using camera traps to track lynx has been employed. Thornton and his colleagues are now working to use the method to estimate the lynx range in Glacier National Park in Montana. This research was supported by a Seattle City Light Wildlife Research Grant, Conservation Northwest, the United States Forest Service and a Department of the Interior Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center Research Fellowship. King received funding through the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program as well as Washington State University. People infected with the coronavirus outbreak has far to go before it wears out as surveys shows. Close to the border of the Netherlands, the district of Gangelt has the most number of coronavirus cases after a carnival festivity came and attracted many people to participate in February. Their concise report (PDF), posted online in German, has broad ramifications for how soon that town, and the rest of the world, can come out from lockdown. Nicholas Christakis, a doctor and social science researcher at Yale University, said that they still don't have a significant fraction of the population exposed. They had carnivals and celebrations. However, just 14% are positive. That implies there is significantly more to go even in any part of Germany. Here's the reason the actual disease rate in a district matter: the higher it is, the less agony despite everything lies ahead. In the long run, when enough individuals are secure, the infection won't be able to spread; further, an idea called herd immunity. In any case, the German town isn't near that limit yet. To Christakis, the preliminary figure is unfortunate because it implies the coronavirus still has more harm to do. The German report is among the first to survey a population for the proof of infection, information that scientists need to decide how far the outbreak has spread, what the real death rate is, and how many individuals show no symptoms at all. Christakis said that it's very preliminary, yet it's the sort of study we urgently need, the US should test as many as 200,000 individuals, from large urban communities like New York to small towns in the Midwest. The official case tally of COVID-19 around the world is more than 1.5 million people. The actual number of individuals infected, including those without symptoms and who don't get tested, is far higher. Read Also: 10 Most Common Mistakes When Using Face Masks More information from "serosurveys" ought to be accessible soon; sources incorporate US hospitals. On April 6, Stanford Medicine declared it had propelled its serology test and had started screening doctors, nurses, and others for antibodies. Spokesperson Lisa Kim said that the test would empower them to figure out which health-care workers might be at low risk for working with virus patients. Early results from hospitals are now circling among experts, says Christakis, this results will get us closer to how far the infection has spread in urban areas. On the off chance that 5% positive in health-care workers, that implies infection rates most likely aren't higher than that in the city. The survey in Germany was done out by virologist Hendrik Streeck and a few others at the University Hospital in Bonn, who state they drew nearer around 1,000 inhabitants of Gangelt to give blood, have their throats swabbed for testing and fill out a survey. They found that the coronavirus infected 2 % of inhabitants and an aggregate of 14% had antibodies, demonstrating earlier infection. This group of individuals, they say, can never again be affected with SARS-CoV-2, as the coronavirus is known to scientists. As coronavirus spreads, it sends specific level of individuals to the hospital and a couple of those to ICUs; a part of those will die. One of the most important unanswered questions is actually what percentage of infected individuals the coronavirus is killing. The result of their survey, the German group, evaluated the death rate in the district at 0.37% overall, lower than what's appeared on a dashboard kept up by Johns Hopkins, where the death rate in Germany revealed cases is 2%. The authors clarified the distinction in the estimations of how many individuals are infected but not checked because they have no symptoms. The presence of previously infected individuals in the community, Streeck and associates believe, will diminish the speed at which the virus can move in the area. They additionally outlined a procedure by which social distancing can be gradually loosened up, particularly given a clean measures, such as handwashing, and confining and tracking the sick. If individuals abstain from getting doses of the virus that can occur in hospitals or utilizing contact with somebody infected, fewer individuals will turn out to be sick while creating immunity that can help finally end the outbreak. Related Article: China Fears of 'Silent Carriers' Spreading COVID-19 @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Coronavirus can be spread through surfaces such as the shoe soles of patients and medics, according to new scientific studies. Medical staff and pharmacy workers are being warned to disinfect their footwear after researchers discovered the virus can be transmitted on shoes. Chinese scientists examined surface and air samples from both an intensive care unit and general COVID-19 ward at Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan, where the disease was first discovered last December and spread to become a global pandemic. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention around half of healthcare workers in ICUs carried the coronavirus on the soles of their shoes. Researchers found that there was a 100 per cent positivity rate from the floor of the pharmacy that was tested, where only health-care workers traveled, not infected patients. Medical workers of the ICU at the Huoshenshan (Fire God Mountain) Hospital in Wuhan, where Chinese scientists examined surface and air samples from both an intensive care unit and general COVID-19 ward The spherical particles of the new coronavirus, colorized blue, from the first US case of COVID-19 Medical staff and pharmacy workers have been warned about washing their footwear over fears coronavirus could be spread via footwear How long can corornavirus survive on various surfaces? Aerosols: up to 3 hours Copper: up to 4 hours Cardboard: up to 24 hours Plastic: up to 2-3 days Stainless Steel: up to 2-3 days Source: NIH.gov Advertisement The disease can also travel through the air at least 13 feet, twice the government's social distancing rules, the report said. The Chinese team, from the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing, tested the concentration of the disease on surfaces. Their findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, were that the virus was most heavily concentrated on the floors of the wards, 'perhaps because of gravity and air flow causing most virus droplets to float to the ground'. 'Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive,' the team wrote in the study. 'Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers. 'We highly recommend that persons disinfect shoe soles before walking out of wards containing COVID-19 patients.' Researchers in China found that there was a 100 per cent positivity rate from the floor of the pharmacy that was tested. The public were also warned to only wear one pair of shoes outside A nurse in Italy posted a viral video on Tik Tok last week showing her disinfectant routine, which included putting shoes in bleach overnight. Virologist Dr Lisa Cross also waned the public to be careful about washing their footwear to stop the spread of the virus. She told Channel 4's How Clean Is Your House that only one pair of shoes should be worn outside the house and should be taken off on entering the home due to the risk of spreading the virus indoors. During the show on Friday, Dr Cross said that the virus can survive on shoe soles for anywhere between three and five days. Dr Cross added: 'When you first come in from the outside, take off your shoes immediately. 'Most shoes have a non-porous rubbery sole, which the virus can survive on anywhere between three and five days.' A medical worker looking at CT scans at the Huoshenshan field hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province last month Virologist Dr Lisa Cross waned on Channel 4's How Clean Is Your House that only one pair of shoes should be worn outside and should be taken off on entering the home The scientific team in China also observed so-called aerosol transmission - when the droplets of the virus are so fine they become suspended and remain airborne for several hours. High levels were also found on frequently touched surfaces like computer mice, trashcans, bed rails and door knobs. Encouragingly, no members of the hospital staff were infected, 'indicating that appropriate precautions could effectively prevent infection', the authors wrote. The researchers found that virus-laden aerosols were mainly concentrated downstream from patients at up to 13 feet, though smaller quantities were found also observed upstream up to eight feet away. It suggests that the government's six-feet distancing guidance does not go far enough. However, it remains unclear if these ultrafine particles are infectious and the World Health Organization has so far downplayed the risk. Spain reopened parts of its coronavirus-stricken economy on Monday as slowing death tolls in some of the worst-hit countries boosted hopes the curve may be starting to flatten and lockdown restrictions could soon be eased. Watched by a world that is keen to temper a brutal pandemic-induced recession, some Spanish factory and construction staff were set to return to work within strict safety guidelines. China reported a surge in new coronavirus infections Monday, most of them imported from abroad. By STR (AFP) However China, where the virus emerged late last year, recorded its highest number of infections in weeks -- most of them imported cases -- as warnings echoed that lifting restrictions too early could unleash a second wave of COVID-19. French President Emmanuel Macron was set to warn the nation that its lockdown would stay in place for several more weeks at least, while outlining steps for recovery. More than half of the planet's population is staying home as part of efforts to stem the spread of the virus, which has now killed at least 114,000 people and infected over 1.8 million, overwhelming healthcare systems and crippling the world economy. Yet there is cautious optimism the virus may have reached its peak. Face masks were handed out at a train station in Madrid Monday as lockdown restrictions were slightly eased. By PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU (AFP) Spain's death toll fell again on Monday with 517 fatalities, plus the lowest daily figure of new confirmed infections since March 20. France and the US also saw a drop in daily COVID-19 deaths, along with Italy which reported its lowest fatalities in three weeks. But Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned his country was "far from victory", with the lockdown restrictions for the rest of the nation's 47 million people remaining in place. "We are all keen to go back out on the streets... but our desire is even greater to win the war and prevent a relapse," he said. Police in Madrid handed out face masks to commuters at a train station where life appeared to be creeping back to normal, as workers in protective gear wiped down turnstiles. Macron speech In the US -- now the world's worst-hit nation with a fifth of all deaths and more than half a million confirmed cases -- the government's top infectious disease expert added to hopes the virus may have peaked. Anthony Fauci said parts of the country could begin easing restrictions in May, but warned that the world's biggest economy would not turn back on like a "light switch". Easter celebrations around the world were muted with billions confined to their homes. By Kena Betancur (AFP) President Donald Trump had previously wanted the US to be back to normal by Easter, but most of the country remained at a standstill. Many of the world's more than two billion Christians celebrated Easter Sunday from the confines of their homes, while Pope Francis delivered a livestream message about an "Easter of solitude" from a hauntingly empty Vatican. Governments in many countries continued to warn citizens to stay indoors on public holidays for Easter Monday as they grapple with a virus that has even infected national leaders. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was resting at his official country residence Chequers a day after being discharged following "a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question", referring to the country's state-run National Health Service. Britain's death toll passed 10,000 and it is now seeing daily fatalities to match -- and on one occasion exceed -- those previously seen in Italy and Spain. US President Donald Trump is eager to get the economy back on track. By JIM WATSON (AFP) Johnson, like Trump, had initially resisted stringent measures such as shutting down public places. In France, Macron is set address the nation just after 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), and sources said he would announce the lockdown in place since March 17 must be extended beyond its current April 15 expiration date until well into May. Macron will be looking to strike a careful balance between warning France -- where the death toll stands at 14,393 -- that an early relaxation of the lockdown could be disastrous, while reassuring people that the government has a plan to get the country back to normal. China infections rise In China, where authorities appeared to have the virus under control last week, officials reported 108 new symptomatic cases Monday, the highest number of confirmed infections in a single day in over a month. Imported cases accounted for most of the total, the National Health Commission said, underscoring why the government has been so focused on preventing new outbreaks stemming from international arrivals. China only recently lifted the lockdown on the city of Wuhan where the virus first emerged in December. There are worrying signs the virus could take hold in new, and vulnerable, parts of the globe, including conflict-wracked Syria. By OMAR HAJ KADOUR (AFP) The quarantine measures were later emulated by Italy in early March, followed by Spain, France and other nations around the world. Governments are under pressure to keep populations safe while preventing economic collapse, amid fears of a downturn not seen since the Great Depression. But the World Health Organization has warned countries against lifting lockdown restrictions too early. Meanwhile, there were also worrying signs the virus could be taking hold in new, and vulnerable, parts of the globe. Conflict-wracked Yemen reported its first case last week, raising fears of a devastating outbreak. Syria also faces a heavy hit from the disease after years of war that have left millions in dire conditions, with experts accusing Damascus of minimising its death toll for political motives. "There is a disaster in the making," said Emile Hokayem, Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London (IISS). burs-dk/jv Participant of illegal Moscow 27 July rally released after sentence mitigation RAPSI, Eugeny Varlamov 12:10 13/04/2020 MOSCOW, April 13 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court on Monday reduced a 1-year sentence given to activist Nikita Chirtsov for using force against a police officer during an unauthorized rally held in Moscow on July 27 by one month, RAPSI was told in the courts press service. Chirtsov was released in the court due to the actual serving out the sentence. Unauthorized rallies in support of candidates seeking to become lawmakers of the Moscow State Duma but refused registration by the Election Commission were held on July 27 and August 3 in central Moscow. Over 1,000 people were arrested for various violations as a result. Following the 27 July rally, the Investigative Committee criminal cases were opened. Investigators believe that the protest action was held with the use of force against representatives of authority. After the protest action the defendant was fined 12,000 rubles ($185) for violating the order of a rally. Later, he fled to Minsk, Belarus, but was put on the wanted list. He was arrested in Moscow in early September after he voluntary returned to Russia. In November, Moscows Tverskoy District Court extended detention of Chirtsov until April 30. In December, Chirtsov was convicted and sentenced to 1 year in jail. Investigators claimed that the man gave the policeman pokes in the chest and shoulder. The defendant pleaded not guilty. Members of OPEC have agreed to partner with several non-member nations on a coordinated effort to stabilize the oil market. Overall, 23 countries -- dubbed OPEC+ -- will slash supplies by 9.7 million barrels per day (BPD) starting in May, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. That's roughly equivalent to 10% of the global oil production. Saudi Arabia and Russia will reportedly shoulder the bulk of the supply curtailment, reducing their output by 6 million BPD. Meanwhile, other producers, including the U.S., will contribute a combined 3.7 million BPD of additional cuts. The U.S. agreed to reduce its production by 300,000 BPD to help cover for Mexico, which wasn't willing to meet OPEC's request of a 400,000 BPD reduction. Instead, Mexico will cut production by 100,000 BPD. The U.S. output reduction will mainly come via market-driven losses as producers in the country are shutting-in wells due to poor economics and lack of storage capacity. Continental Resources (NYSE:CLR), for example, slashed its output by 30% because of low demand. The initial 9.7 million BPD reduction will cover May and June. After that, the supply cut will drop to 8 million BPD for the remainder of this year and then to 6 million BPD from next January through April of 2022. This extended reduction will burn off supplies that have piled up in storage over the past month as a result of the demand destruction from the COVID-19 outbreak and a surge in production from Russia's price war with Saudi Arabia. Market watchers, however, were hoping for an even deeper initial reduction of 15 million to 20 million BPD to help offset the steep demand decline from COVID-19. Instead, the group agreed to support the market for a longer duration. Ahmed Khaled al-Kaabi is a 23-year-old Iraqi student and last year he proposed the one he loved and they were looking forward to the big day. The couple dreamed for a big celebration with all the loved ones in the city of Najaf. But with the coronavirus pandemic on the rampage, all those plans went out of the window when a curfew imposed by the government meant that large public gatherings could not be held. Their hopes were shattered. Reuters I didnt expect my wedding to be this way. I was hoping for a party and that we would visit the imam, said Ruqaya Rahim, the new bride as per a PTI report. But we were prevented from doing that, she added. Najaf is one of the cities which has been hit the hardest. At least five are dead along with 257 confirmed cases, according to the Health Ministry. Reuters Iraq has almost 1,300 confirmed cases with 70 dead. But al-Kaabi came did not want to postpone it so he came up with a plan. He requested local security forces for help and they responded in kind. The police provided the the groom with vehicles which complete with blasting music. Reuters The police also transported al-Kaabis bride to the family home for a small celebration of just six people. This was a nice way for the police to help out and it is another story of love in the time of coronavirus. As of now more than 110,000 people are dead all over the world and over 1800,000 are affected. LMTOnline.com is compiling the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Laredo area. Two more deaths attributed to complications from the novel coronavirus were confirmed by City of Laredo health officials on Easter Sunday. A woman in her 90s and a man in his 20s, both with underlying health conditions, passed away at Laredo Medical Center on Saturday, marking the seventh and eighth deaths in Webb County due to the disease. On Thursday, it was revealed that Webb County will not be adopting the stricter face covering measures adopted by the City of Laredo on Wednesday. The stricter measures adopted by City Council require Laredo citizens to cover their nose & mouth whenever they leave the house, including while engaging in physical activity. They also forbid children inside grocery stores, convenience stores and big box stores, excluding parents without access to childcare. As of noon Sunday 1,064 people in Laredo have been tested for the novel coronavirus; 196 have tested positive, 36 have recovered, 20 remain hospitalized and now eight have died. The Numbers: As of Monday morning, there were 547,627 confirmed cases in the U.S, according to Johns Hopkins University. Of those, 21,662 died and 32,988 recovered. Texas had 13,677 confirmed cases, per the Johns Hopkins dataset. To support vital coverage of this and other topics, consider a subscription to the Laredo Morning Times. Here is the key information Laredo residents need to know. What is the status of Laredo amid the COVID-19 pandemic? The City of Laredo has adopted a mandatory stay-at-home order, which bars any gatherings of people outside of family units, The order, which went into effect at 12:01 a.m. on March 28 through April 30 unless otherwise extended mandates all people in Laredo and the surrounding cities stay at home unless absolutely essential. The order also specifies that Laredo citizens must cover their nose and mouth whenever they leave their house. People are excepted from wearing a mask, bandana, scarf or some kind of covering only when they are in their home or backyard, in the car alone, in their office alone, eating or while experiencing an emergency. The order also forces non-essential businesses, such as tattoo shops, hair salons, and maquinita parlors, to close. Read this article see which "essential" businesses are allowed to remain open amid the coronavirus pandemic. What are the symptoms of COVID-19? Fever, cough and shortness of breath. Some patients may have aches and pains, nasal congestion, sore throat or diarrhea. I think I may have COVID-19. What should I do? Todd Trumbull If your condition is not urgent, contact your doctor or an urgent care clinic. Call ahead in case they need to redirect you to another medical center or emergency room. If your health care provider uses telemedicine, such as video chatting, you may want to consider that to avoid potentially exposing others. Also, many counties have set up special phone lines for coronavirus inquiries from the public; your county public health department should have this information online. If you believe your symptoms are urgent and you need to go to the ER, try to call ahead so that health care providers are prepared to isolate you and take other precautions to protect you and other patients when you arrive. Individuals can request a test for coronavirus, but doctors and public health authorities will decide whether thats appropriate. Lets step back. What is the coronavirus? Coronaviruses are part of a large family of viruses. Two other kinds of coronaviruses are known to cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome). Coronaviruses also can cause very mild illness, and are thought to be responsible for 10% to 30% of all common colds. The new virus is already more widespread than either SARS or MERS. So far it appears to cause less severe illness than those viruses. How is COVID-19 different from the flu? COVID-19 and the flu are both infectious respiratory illnesses, but theyre caused by different viruses. They have similar symptoms and are spread by droplets that are expelled with sneezes and coughs. The flu can be prevented with a vaccine and treated with antiviral drugs, but there are not yet similar tools to fight COVID-19. Tens of thousands of people have died from the flu this season, far eclipsing deaths from COVID-19. But millions of people get the flu every year, and the influenza death rate about 0.1% is likely lower than that of COVID-19. Experts still dont know just how deadly COVID-19 is, but early studies suggest the death rate is about 2%. How serious is the COVID-19 virus? Who is most at risk? About 80% of people who have contracted the virus have had mild symptoms and do not need to be hospitalized, according to large studies of cases in China. About 14% become severely ill and 5% critically ill. Those most at risk of becoming seriously ill are over age 50 or have underlying health problems, such as heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, or have weakened immune systems. A Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention study found that most people infected were over the age of 30 and had mild symptoms. The death rate was highest close to 15% in those over the age of 80. The first U.S. deaths were all among residents of a long-term care facility in Washington state. The virus appears to be less deadly than SARS or MERS. SARS had a fatality rate of about 10% before it disappeared in 2004. MERS is fatal nearly a third of the time, but is far less transmissible than SARS or COVID-19. Still, the reported cases and deaths are constantly shifting and its too soon to know exactly the seriousness of the illness. How can I best protect myself? Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. People who are not sick should wash their hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and avoid touching their face with unwashed hands. They should avoid close contact with anyone who is coughing, sneezing or otherwise obviously ill. People who are sick should cough or sneeze into their arm or a tissue, not into their hands. Ideally they should stay home and avoid being around other people. In some cases, doctors may advise people who are sick to wear a simple surgical mask in public to avoid infecting others. Healthy people do not need to wear a mask. Studies have found they are not very effective at preventing illness. Most people become infected by touching their eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands because thats the easiest way for viruses to enter the body. Should I avoid school, work or places where large groups gather? Public health experts have said that if you have recently returned from a country with a high number of cases, or if youve had contact with someone who has COVID-19, youre generally encouraged to stay at home and not go to work or school for 14 days. If you are sick and have not traveled recently and have not been in contact with someone who has COVID-19, you should stay home until your symptoms have passed. In some communities public health experts are advising that people at high risk of serious illness people over age 50 and those with pre-existing health problems avoid places where large crowds gather in close contact. Otherwise, healthy people do not need to take any special precautions. Should I cancel domestic or international travel plans? Keep track of advisories from the U.S. State Department and the CDC that discourage travel to certain countries. If you do travel to those areas, pay attention to what you will need to do upon return. Any U.S. citizen returning from Hubei province in China is subject to mandatory quarantine for 14 days. Anyone coming back from other parts of China or from countries with high numbers of infections will be asked to quarantine at home for 14 days. Anyone who is not a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident, or a close family member of one wont be allowed to enter the U.S. for 14 days after you visit China or Iran. Most airlines have canceled flights to China and are reducing routes to other countries. United has announced some domestic travel reductions, and other carriers may follow suit. Check The Houston Chronicle's live coverage and individual airline websites for the latest information. Be aware that if you choose to travel, the situation is changing rapidly: Flights could be canceled or rules put in place at any time. Before booking, canceling or taking a flight, it helps to know what your rights and options are. Weve compiled tips for traveling during the coronavirus outbreak here. How did the coronavirus get started? Chinese health officials alerted the World Health Organization about a growing number of cases of pneumonia caused by an unidentified virus in the city of Wuhan in late December. The new coronavirus was identified about two weeks after that. Coronaviruses can cross over from animals to humans. The virus that causes SARS is believed to have passed from bats to civets and then to humans, and the MERS virus was linked to camels. But scientists have not yet determined the source of the new coronavirus. How long is the COVID-19 outbreak expected to last? Thats not clear. Other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold, tend to be seasonal. But the coronavirus that causes SARS appears to have disappeared about a year after it was identified in 2004. Its too soon to say what will happen with the new coronavirus. Houston Chronicle producers Jordan Ray and Dana Burke and San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Alejandro Serrano, Mallory Moench, Erin Allday and Catherine Ho and Laredo Morning Times producer Louis San Miguel contributed to this report. MOSCOW A Moscow court began hearing the espionage case against former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan on Monday. The trial opened about two weeks later than originally planned due to strict coronavirus lockdown measures in place in the Russian capital. Whelan's defense team requested a further postponement of the trial Monday, until the lockdown aimed at stopping the spread of the disease is lifted, but the court ruled to reconvene in one week. Olga Karlova, one of Whelan's defense attorneys, told CBS News that during the first hearing the prosecution formally presented its charges, and Whelan pleaded not guilty. "Paul said that he believes he was framed and that [the case] was a provocation against him," Karlova said, adding that her client appeared to be in good spirits. Whelan, 50, was arrested at a central Moscow hotel in December 2018. Russian investigators claim he was caught red-handed after receiving a USB drive containing classified information. Whelan's family says he came to Russia to attend a friend's wedding and believed the USB drive handed to him by an acquaintance contained vacation photos. RUSSIA-US-ESPIONAGE-COURT Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine accused of spying and arrested in Russia stands inside a defendants' cage during a hearing at a court in Moscow on August 23, 2019. KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV The other defense attorney, Vladimir Zherebenkov, raised concerns over Whelan's health. He said the American, who suffers from a preexisting hernia, had asked the court to allow him a visit by the U.S. Embassy doctor, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. The Monday hearing was held behind closed doors; the case has been declared classified by the Russian authorities. Press and U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan were barred from entering the court building due to the lockdown restrictions. U.S. officials have repeatedly called for Whelan's immediate release, and the U.S. Embassy has been critical of Russia's treatment of the prisoner, who's being held in the notorious Lefortovo detention center and hasn't been permitted to call his family since his arrest. Story continues The prosecution is expected to start presenting its evidence in the case and calling witnesses next week, the lawyers said. Whelan, who also holds British, Irish and Canadian citizenship, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of espionage. At the time of his arrest, Whelan was director of global security for Michigan-based automotive components supplier BorgWarner. He spent 14 years in the U.S. Marine Corps before being discharged in 2008 for bad conduct, according to the military. He served in Iraq for several months in 2004 and 2006. Kindness 101 with Steve Hartman: Optimism How countries have informed the public about the coronavirus Andrea Bocelli on his "Amazing Grace" performance, the power of music The service and parts department at Steele Honda continues to operate with reduced staff and hours Steele Honda, a local Honda dealership in St. Johns, has updated its customers with reduced hours during the COVID-19 outbreak. To reduce contact, the dealership has closed its showroom and reduced the hours and staff on hand for its service and parts departments. Customers are told that they can still come in to get service for their Honda vehicles. While the showroom at Steele Honda is currently closed, as noted in the dealerships own COVID-19 news and updates page, the staff at Steele Honda will continue to work with customers at a distance. Customers are encouraged to communicate with the dealership by any preferred method of communications including phone, text message, website messaging or instant messaging. Customers can call the dealership at 709-579-1999. For text messages, customers should use the dealerships other line, 709-700-3438. To send a message online, customers can use the dealerships website, steelehonda.com. The digital sales department operates from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday. The service and parts department at Steele Honda continues to operate from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday. The dealership is closed on Saturday and Sunday during this time. To reduce customer and staff contact, the dealership asks that customers drop off their vehicle and leave their keys in the key drop off. Otherwise, customers can contact the dealership for alternative methods to get their vehicle fixed. Steele Honda also offers an online form for scheduling a vehicle service appointment, which customers can access on the dealerships website. Andrew Rashbass became the CEO of Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC (LON:ERM) in 2015. First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at similar sized companies. Then we'll look at a snap shot of the business growth. Third, we'll reflect on the total return to shareholders over three years, as a second measure of business performance. This process should give us an idea about how appropriately the CEO is paid. View our latest analysis for Euromoney Institutional Investor How Does Andrew Rashbass's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies? According to our data, Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC has a market capitalization of UK995m, and paid its CEO total annual compensation worth UK2.3m over the year to September 2019. While this analysis focuses on total compensation, it's worth noting the salary is lower, valued at UK750k. We further remind readers that the CEO may face performance requirements to receive the non-salary part of the total compensation. We examined companies with market caps from UK801m to UK2.6b, and discovered that the median CEO total compensation of that group was UK1.5m. Next, let's break down remuneration compositions to understand how the industry and company compare with each other. Talking in terms of the sector, salary represented approximately 62% of total compensation out of all the companies we analysed, while other remuneration made up 38% of the pie. It's interesting to note that Euromoney Institutional Investor allocates a smaller portion of compensation to salary in comparison to the broader industry. Thus we can conclude that Andrew Rashbass receives more in total compensation than the median of a group of companies in the same market, and of similar size to Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC. However, this doesn't necessarily mean the pay is too high. We can get a better idea of how generous the pay is by looking at the performance of the underlying business. You can see a visual representation of the CEO compensation at Euromoney Institutional Investor, below. Story continues LSE:ERM CEO Compensation April 13th 2020 Is Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC Growing? Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC has seen earnings per share (EPS) move positively by an average of 23% a year, over the last three years (using a line of best fit). In the last year, its revenue is up 4.6%. This shows that the company has improved itself over the last few years. Good news for shareholders. It's also good to see modest revenue growth, suggesting the underlying business is healthy. You might want to check this free visual report on analyst forecasts for future earnings. Has Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC Been A Good Investment? Since shareholders would have lost about 10% over three years, some Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC shareholders would surely be feeling negative emotions. It therefore might be upsetting for shareholders if the CEO were paid generously. In Summary... We compared total CEO remuneration at Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC with the amount paid at companies with a similar market capitalization. Our data suggests that it pays above the median CEO pay within that group. However we must not forget that the EPS growth has been very strong over three years. However, the returns to investors are far less impressive, over the same period. One might thus conclude that it would be better if the company waited until growth is reflected in the share price, before increasing CEO compensation. Shifting gears from CEO pay for a second, we've picked out 4 warning signs for Euromoney Institutional Investor that investors should be aware of in a dynamic business environment. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. Canadas competition bureau is closely following a French regulators ruling that Google must work out new arrangements to pay publishers and news agencies whose content is featured on its site. But experts in copyright law and digital media dont expect Canada to follow suit at least not any time soon. The Autorite de la concurrence, Frances competition bureau, ruled last week that Google must negotiate a repayment agreement with news companies and publishers for using their content. The ruling stems from a November 2019 complaint from two unions representing press publishers and a French-headquartered news agency, that claimed Google displayed their content unfairly in snippets on its service, costing them important revenue. The Competition Bureau is aware of this decision (but) regarding the conduct in question, it would be inappropriate for the bureau to speculate as to whether it may represent a contravention of (Canadian law), Marcus Callaghan, a spokesperson for the Canadian regulator, said in a statement Monday. The bureau must conduct a thorough and complete examination of the facts before deciding whether to challenge any type of alleged conduct. According to the complainants, search engines largely Google represent between 26 per cent and 90 per cent of their redirected traffic. Googles display policy meant publishers had to allow Google to display article extracts, photos and more without compensation otherwise they wouldnt be displayed at all. This meant publishers and news agencies had no choice but to comply with Googles display policies because they would otherwise lose income in a sector already facing a bleak economic outlook, the French regulator ruled. Googles actions amounted to an abuse of a dominant position, and caused serious and immediate harm to the press sector, according to the regulators statement. Google must now negotiate a new arrangement with French publishers within three months to repay them for reuse of their protected contents, including retroactive payments dating to Oct. 24, 2019. Dwayne Winseck, a professor at Carleton Universitys school of journalism and communication, said Googles past approach giving media companies the choice between displaying their content for free, or losing traffic through Googles powerful service amounted to no choice at all. Thats an imposition (Google has) been able to make on the base of its market power. So I see the (Autorite de la concurrence) decision as a counter to that, Winseck said in an interview Monday. Winseck said he doesnt expect Canadian regulators to come to a similar conclusion in the short term. But he said theyre at least aware of the problem, pointing to the findings of a government-commissioned independent review into Canadas media and communications environment released in January. That review panel chaired by industry veteran Janet Yale recommended a new regulatory system to govern the relationship between big tech companies and content producers. Canadians are increasingly accessing news online through social media platforms, which facilitate the sharing of content without any form of compensation to the journalists and media outlets that created the content, the report reads. The problem is exacerbated by the imbalance in negotiating power between the dominant social media platforms and the great number of creators who actually produce the news. But Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor and leading researcher on internet and e-commerce issues, said the French regulators ruling could establish a system where Google and other internet platforms must pay publishers even if they dont use that publishers content on their sites. I think (the decision) raises some concerns about essentially deep government interference in a marketplace, when I think there are other approaches that could be used (to support publishers), Geist said in an interview. Weve seen the (Canadian) government come up with a number of plans and support mechanisms for the media sector. Whether that is sufficient or not I know is open to debate, but nevertheless theyve acted in this way. According to the 2017 report from the Public Policy Forum, The Shattered Mirror, Canadians are accessing news stories more and more through aggregators such as Google News, Facebook and Twitter and not the media organizations themselves. Google and Facebook, in particular, now enjoy unprecedented power over distribution of the webs content fragments, including news, the report stated. This means they get the bulk of the ad revenue two out of every three digital ad dollars spent in Canada not the news sites. The report said sites like Google exploit the content of news organization in a system they called vampire economics siphoning revenue from the organizations, while using their content on news feeds and search results. In a statement, Google said it would comply with the French regulators orders, and told Reuters the company has been engaging with publishers since new European copyright laws came into force in France last year. Read more about: An Indonesian fashion designer is selling a $5,000 handbag made from alligator tongue and a human child's spine. Arnold Pultra, an Instagram 'rich kid', claims that his eerie product is 'ethically sourced' from medical surplus in Canada. The Los Angeles-manufactured 'one-off bag', which is marketed as an 'ideal statement piece', first went on sale in 2016. The material of the bag compartment is made entirely from alligator tongue with 'protruding scar stitching'. Arnold Pultra claims that his eerie product is 'ethically sourced' from medical surplus in Canada The Los Angeles-manufactured 'one-off bag', which is marketed as an 'ideal statement piece', first went on sale in 2016 This is 'complimented by the human spine handle and raw edge finishes,' according to its previous description on The Unconventional clothing website, before the product was reportedly removed. On Instagram account By Arnold Pultra, which showcases Pultra's designs, it is claimed the handle is made 'of an entire child's spine who had osteoporosis'. Pultra said this account is not run by him personally, but he told the Insider website he had 'contributed' to it. The designer refused to confirm when pressed by the website if the spine had belonged to a child. However experts judged that the handle was indeed a child's human spine. His life seems to range from lounging on superyachts in Greece to posing beside a gun-wielding tribe in Ethiopia (pictured) Although Pultra claims he does not run the By Arnold Pultra Instagram, he regularly uses his personal account to flaunt his jet-setting lifestyle Pultra said that the bones were 'medically sourced from Canada with papers' and suggested it was from a company licensed to trade human specimens, which were donated to medical science but are surplus. Although Pultra claims he does not run the By Arnold Pultra Instagram, he regularly uses his personal account to flaunt his jet-setting lifestyle. This ranges from lounging on superyachts in Greece to posing beside a gun-wielding tribe in Ethiopia. He claims to have once splurged $30,000 on a kangaroo-lined alligator jacket, according to Business Insider. The popular Rich Kids Of Instagram account profiled Pultra, and in 2017 he was named by Tatler Indonesia as one of the 'most prolific car collectors in Indonesia'. New Delhi: Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Monday appealed to Muslims to strictly follow social distancing and lockdown guidelines during the holy month of Ramzan starting later this month in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. He urged them to offer prayers and perform other religious rituals like the 'iftar' (breaking of fast) staying inside their homes during the month of Ramzan, which will begin from April 24 or April 25. A 21-day lockdown was put in place from March 25 and is likely to be extended in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases in the country. Several states like Odisha and Punjab have already announced extension of the lockdown. Naqvi's appeal came after he spoke with various religious leaders, representatives of social and religious organisations, officials and other office-bearers of state waqf boards, asking them to ensure implementation of lockdown and social distancing guidelines during Ramzan. The minister also held meetings in this regard at the ministry on Monday. Naqvi, who is also the Chairman of the Central Waqf Council, said more than seven lakh registered mosques, eidgahs, imambadas, dargahs and other religious institutions come under the state waqf boards across the country. It is to be noted that most of the Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, have called for having no mass gathering during Ramadan at religious places. The state waqf boards, through the Central Waqf Council, have been directed to ensure that the people do not gather at religious and other places under any circumstances during Ramzan, NAQVI said. There is a need to take help of people, various religious and social organisations and local administration in this regard, he said. Naqvi said due to the proactive, effective and positive efforts of the state waqf boards and religious-social organisations, Muslims in the country observed Shab-e-Barat on April 8 and 9 by offering prayers and performing all other religious rituals staying inside their homes. He said that in view of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the cooperation of Muslims in implementation of the guidelines of lockdown and social distancing on Shab-e-Barat has been laudable. All the religious activities at temples, mosques, gurdwaras, churches and other religious places in the country have been cancelled in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Guidelines of lockdown and social distancing are being followed effectively, he said. Traditionally people gather in large numbers at lakhs of mosques, dargahs, imambadas, eidgahs, madrassas and other religious places across the country to offer prayers and performing other religious rituals, including 'iftaar' during Ramzan, he noted. "But due to coronavirus pandemic, lockdown, curfew, social distancing, have been implemented by the Centre and all the state governments," he said, adding that there is a need to make people aware so that they perform all the religious rituals inside their homes during Ramzan. Such efforts are not only needed at mosques and other religious places but also at public as well as private places where Muslims gather during Ramzan to perform religious rituals. Naqvi said the entire country is seriously and honestly following lockdown and social distancing guidelines on the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Any type of carelessness can be harmful for us, our family, the society and the entire country. We should follow the guidelines of the administration to defeat coronavirus with all seriousness and honesty," he asserted. Eli Lilly LLY signed an agreement with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to evaluate its JAK inhibitor, Olumiant (baricitinib), as a potential treatment for hospitalized patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The drug will be evaluated in one of the arms of NIAID's Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment study. The evaluation of efficacy and safety of Olumiant in the above patient population will begin in the United States this month and will be later expanded to additional sites, including Europe and Asia. Data from the U.S. study site are expected in the next two months. Notably, Olumiant is approved for treating moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Several other RA drugs are also being evaluated as a treatment for COVID-19. These include Roches RHHBY and Regeneron REGN/Sanofis SNY IL-6 receptor antagonists, Actemra and Kevzara, respectively. While Actemra is being evaluated for severe COVID-19 pneumonia, Kevzara is being evaluated in patients hospitalized with severe infection due to COVID-19. It is being predicted that anti-inflammatory activities of RA drugs may have a potential beneficial effect on COVID-19 patients. Apart from Olumiant, Lilly is planning to advance its selective monoclonal antibody against Angiopoietin 2 (Ang2) candidate, LY3127804, to a phase II study. The study will evaluate the candidate in pneumonia patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who are at a higher risk of progressing to acute respiratory distress syndrome. Ang2 is found in high levels in ARDS patients and the study will test if LY3127804 can inhibit the effects of Ang2 and reduce the progression to ARDS or the need for mechanical ventilation in COVID-19 patients. The study is expected to start later this month. Lillys shares have increased 10.9% so far this year against the industrys decline of 6.6%. Story continues We note that Lilly collaborated with private biotech, AbCellera, last month to co-develop antibody therapies to treat and prevent COVID-19. The companies will select from more than 500 unique antibodies identified by AbCellera and isolated from the blood sample of a U.S. COVID-19 patient who recovered from the disease. The companies will equally share initial development costs for the antibody products, after which Lilly will take care of further development, manufacturing and distribution. Many other large and small pharma/biotech companies are actively pursuing the development of a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19. Among the large players, J&J and Sanofi are planning to develop a vaccine, while Gileads antiviral candidate, remdesivir, is in late-stage development. Smaller biotechs, including Moderna and Novavax, are primarily focusing on developing vaccines for the deadly disease, which has infected more than 1.8 million people worldwide. Eli Lilly and Company Price Eli Lilly and Company Price Eli Lilly and Company price | Eli Lilly and Company Quote Zacks Rank Lilly currently carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (REGN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Sanofi (SNY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Roche Holding AG (RHHBY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Many entrepreneurs with the chance to pitch on ABC's "Shark Tank" would do anything for a deal, especially one with Mark Cuban. But on Friday's episode, Just the Cheese founder David Scharfman declined Cuban's offer to invest in his baked cheese company and declined offers from Sharks Kevin O'Leary and Lori Greiner too. Scharfman entered the Tank asking for a $500,000 investment in exchange for 5% of his cheese bar business. "When you make a grilled cheese sandwich, the best part is the cheese that melts off into the pan and gets crunchy," Scharfman said during the episode. "Most people look at that and say, 'Man, I wish I could eat just the cheese.' "Since we're a family of cheese-makers, we looked at it and think, 'How can we turn that into a snack bar?'" Just the Cheese bars are made in Scharfman's family-owned cheese factory in Reeseville, Wisconsin, according to the company website. His dad Paul is a Wisconsin cheese-maker and helped him create the snack, which is Wisconsin milk and cheese baked until crunchy. Each bar has 75 calories and is sugar- and gluten-free, according to Scharfman. And after trying the Aged Cheddar and Grilled Cheese flavors, the Sharks were impressed. (Newser) No, President Trump doesn't plan to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, a White House spokesman said Monday. The clarification came after Trump set off speculation by retweeting a conservative criticism of Fauci, one that included a "FireFauci" hashtag. This media chatter is ridiculousPresident Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci, said spokesman Hogan Gidley, per the Wall Street Journal. "Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump." story continues below Fauci himself got things started when he said on CNN Sunday that the government "could have saved lives" had it moved faster on coronavirus guidelines such as social distancing. That led to a tweet from conservative DeAnna Lorraine, who accused Fauci of distorting the facts. Some Trump allies say Fauci and another medical adviser, Dr. Deborah Birx, are regularly undermining the president with such comments, reports NPR. (Fauci recently received enhanced federal security because of threats.) On Apr 9, Ericsson ERIC announced the launch of a commercial 5G network in Hungary with Magyar Telekom a leading telecommunications company. The Swedish telecom gear maker currently has 86 commercial 5G agreements with operators (of which 39 are publicly stated) and includes 29 live 5G networks on four continents. Initial services are live in select locations of Budapest and Magyar Telekoms headquarters in Konyves Kalman korut. The feat marks a new milestone in the long-standing partnership between the companies spanning 2G, 3G and 4G. Magyar Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG DTEGY, utilized 5G-enabled products and solutions from the Ericsson Radio System. Notably, the launch comes two weeks after Magyar Telekom secured the related 3.5GHz spectrum in an auction on Mar 26. Ericsson Radio System comprises hardware, software, and services for radio, RAN Compute, antenna system, transport, power as well as site solutions. It enables smooth and cost-effective migration from 4G to 5G, supporting communications service providers to launch the avant-garde technology and grow 5G coverage fast. The companys 5G radio access technologies provide the infrastructure required to meet the growing demand for high-bandwidth connections and support the real-time, high-reliability communication requirements of mission-critical applications. Ericsson is seeing healthy momentum in its business, based on the strategy to increase its investments for technology leadership, including 5G. In Networks, the companys ongoing activities include investments in R&D to safeguard a leading product portfolio and cost leadership; increase investments in automation and serviceability, while lowering costs; and selectively gain market shares led by technology and cost competitiveness. The companys cost and efficiency program has been devised to generate higher cost savings. Ericsson is focusing on structural changes that will help generate lasting efficiency gains and boost cost competitiveness. It is also focusing on stabilizing its IT, cloud and project portfolio as well as and re-establishing profitability in managed services by managing existing contracts as well as investing in automation. Further, Ericsson is on track with its 2020 and 2022 financial targets while progressing toward building a stronger company in the long term. It has invested in R&D and supply chain capacity to increase market share. The company continues to focus on a restructuring plan to cut costs and streamline focus areas as well as explore options for the media business. Ericsson has a long-term earnings growth expectation of 17.7% compared with 14.9% of the industry. The stock has lost 2.6% compared with the industrys decline of 11.7% in the past six months. Story continues Ericsson currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A couple of better-ranked stocks in the industry are Qualcomm Incorporated QCOM and InterDigital, Inc. IDCC, both carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Qualcomm has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 10%, on average. InterDigital has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 62%, on average. The companys earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the last four quarters. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGY) : Free Stock Analysis Report QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Ericsson (ERIC) : Free Stock Analysis Report InterDigital, Inc. (IDCC) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 By Eldar Janashvili - Trend: The ability and willingness of the government of Azerbaijan to support the banking sector, in particular, the biggest banks, will remain strong, Trend reports referring to Moody's. "Despite the stringent measures being taken by the government of Azerbaijan (Ba2 stable) to curb the spread of coronavirus, will undermine economic activity, the ability and willingness of the government of Azerbaijan to support the banking sector, in particular, the largest banks, will remain strong, given large reserves compared to the size of the banking system," the message said. The spread of coronavirus will disrupt economic activity and together with lower oil prices will erode the debt service capacity of households, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and corporates, leading to an increase in problem loans, the message said. Banks' profitability will weaken due to increases in provisioning charges and funding costs. The share of foreign-currency loans in total loans still remains at 35 percent as of the end of 2019, which raises asset risks for borrowers, the message said. Probability of government support to the largest banks remains high in Azerbaijan, the message said. With total reserves accumulated by State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan Republic (SOFAZ) amounting to about 90 percent of GDP at the end of 2019, the government is well positioned to provide support to the economy and the banking system, which is small, with total gross loans equalling 19 percent of GDP. Therefore, in terms of an increase in problem loans and provisioning charges, the government has good capacity to provide support to the economy and SMEs, the message said. The sectors reliance on wholesale market is limited while refinancing risks are relatively low. In addition, about 50 percent of banking sector assets are in liquid forms, which provide a strong cushion against external shocks. ---- Follow the author on Twitter: @eldarjanashvili Italys biggest insurer Generali on Friday said it would pay its 2019 dividend in two tranches, confirming a total payout of 0.96 euros per share, citing its strong capital position. The announcement flies in the face of calls by industry regulator EIOPA for insurers and reinsurers in the European Union to suspend dividends and share buybacks and consider postponing bonuses to ensure continuity in services during the coronavirus pandemic. Generali said it would pay a first tranche of 0.50 euros per share in May and that it plans to pay the remaining portion by the end of the year, subject to a board assessment of capital and regulatory requirements. The company said it had taken EIOPAs recommendations into account and that its decision was consistent with the fact that all of the conditions to proceed with the dividend distribution for 2019 continue to exist. Even if the final impact of the COVID-19 crisis is still uncertain, there is no reason to doubt the groups stability, it said, adding that its solvency ratio remains comfortably within the target operating range. Germanys Allianz, the regions biggest insurer, told Reuters last week that it was in good shape and wanted to maintain both its dividend and a share buyback. Generalis solvency ratio, a key measure of its financial strength, stood at 200% on March 6, compared with 224% at the end of 2019 partly because of an acquisition in Portugal, but also because of falling prices for Italian government bonds. The insurer held 63 billion euros ($68 billion) in Italian bonds at the end of 2019. Italian bonds have been hit as the coronavirus crisis and a nationwide lockdown aimed at stemming contagion rock the economy, forcing the government to ramp up spending. Generali also announced voluntary pay cuts at management level. Chief Executive Philippe Donnet, the members of the groups management committee and other executives with strategic responsibilities have decided to reduce their fixed salary by 20% for the remainder of the year, the company said. Frances biggest insurer AXA has postponed its annual meeting to allow time for discussions with European regulators, though draft resolutions to pay a dividend remain unchanged. Generalis smaller domestic rival UnipolSai last week said that it would pay its planned dividend on 2019 results while parent company Unipol Gruppo suspended its own dividend payment. ($1 = 0.9205 euros) (Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; editing by Valentina Za and David Goodman) Related: Topics Legislation Europe Generali Life Assurance (Thailand) Plc. - Mystica turned really emotional while airing an apology for President Rodrigo Duterte - She said sorry to the head of state because of the harsh words that she said in a viral video - It can be remembered that the actress cursed at the President for how he handles the COVID-19 crisis - In a new video, she said that she just aired her frustration over what she is witnessing in the country PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Mystica became really emotional while airing a public apology for President Rodrigo Duterte whom she lambasted a few days ago. KAMI learned that the controversial actress said in her previous video that she now supports Vice President Leni Robredo and her advocacies. She even cursed at the Philippines head of state for the lack of food supplies in the country amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. I am challenging the President! Siya ang i-home quarantine. Wag siyang palabasin at wag siyang bigyan ng pagkain at inumin. Tingnan natin kung ano ngayon ang magiging kahihinatnan niya she exclaimed. PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! However, a few days after she slammed President Duterte, Mystica decided to apologize and she emphasized that she supports him from the very beginning. She also quipped that she treats the Davaoeno politician as her real father and she knows that he will soon understand what she did. The former Ang Probinsyano cast member further said that she just cursed at the President because of frustration amid the crisis that the Philippines is experiencing. Ako talaga ay taga-suporta ng President Alam ko na ang President natin may puso yan Kung ako man ay nakapagmura, and I repeated it again, dahil sa parang ako rin ay isang anak ng isang ama. Kasi from the start, tinuring ko na siyang ama, the celebrity stressed. Im sure naman na mapapatawad ako ni Presidente dahil alam niya na ang isang tao kapag frustrated, masasabi niya lahat And bilang anak, alam ko na hindi tama yun she added. Watch the video of her apology below: In a previous article by , Raffy Tulfo slammed Mystica after complaining about the help that she received from his program. Mystica, or Ruby Rose Villanueva in real life, is a Filipina showbiz personality. She is dubbed as the Split Queen because of her dance moves whenever she performs on stage. Please like and share our Facebook posts to support KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinion about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts! A Filipino found his own way to help frontliners amid pandemic. They had to walk an hour, an hour and a half to get to work. I mean, coming from an 8-hour shift sa hospital, tapos palalakarin mo pa yung nurse o kahit security guard. Parang hindi makatarungan, diba? on HumanMeter! Source: KAMI.com.gh British Indian troops on the orders of Brigadier General Reginald Dyer had opened fire on a large group of people who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar to celebrate Baisakhi, the harvest festival. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday paid tributes to the martyrs of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, saying their valour will inspire Indians for years to come. "I bow to those martyrs who were killed mercilessly in Jallianwala Bagh on this day. We will never forget their courage and sacrifice," he wrote on Twitter. Their valour will inspire Indians for the years to come, the prime minister said. British Indian troops on the orders of Brigadier Gen Reginald Dyer had opened fire on a large group of people who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar to celebrate Baisakhi, the harvest festival. At least 400 people were killed and a thousand were injured. Technavio has been monitoring the chip-on-board (cob) led market and it is poised to grow by USD 1.73 bn during 2019-2023, progressing at a CAGR of almost 12% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200412005005/en/ Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire) Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Latest Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., Cree, Inc., Lumileds Holding B.V., NICHIA CORPORATION, and OSRAM GmbH are some of the major market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. Growing adoption of COB LED in smart lighting has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023: Segmentation Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market is segmented as below: Application General Lighting Automotive Lighting Backlighting Geographic Landscape Americas APAC EMEA To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR30882 Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023: Scope Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market report covers the following areas: Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market Size Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market Trends Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market Industry Analysis This study identifies adoption of COB LEDs in horticulture as one of the prime reasons driving the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market growth during the next few years. Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023: Vendor Analysis We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market, including some of the vendors such as CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO., LTD., Cree, Inc., Lumileds Holding B.V., NICHIA CORPORATION, and OSRAM GmbH. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Chip-on-Board (COB) LED Market 2019-2023: Key Highlights CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2019-2023 Detailed information on factors that will assist Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market growth during the next five years Estimation of the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market size and its contribution to the parent market Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior The growth of the Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of Chip-on-Board (COB) LED market vendors Table Of Contents : PART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORT 2.1 Preface 2.2 Preface 2.3 Currency conversion rates for US$ PART 03: MARKET LANDSCAPE Market ecosystem Market characteristics Market segmentation analysis PART 04: MARKET SIZING Market definition Market sizing 2018 Market size and forecast 2018-2023 PART 05: FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition PART 06: MARKET SEGMENTATION BY APPLICATION Market segmentation by application Comparison by application General lighting Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Automotive lighting Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Backlighting Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Market opportunity by application PART 07: CUSTOMER LANDSCAPE PART 08: GEOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison APAC Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Americas Market size and forecast 2018-2023 EMEA Market size and forecast 2018-2023 Key leading countries Market opportunity PART 09: DRIVERS AND CHALLENGES Market drivers Market challenges PART 10: TRENDS Adoption of COB LEDs in horticulture Development of high-color rendering index (CRI) COB LEDs Growing interest in human-centric lighting PART 11: VENDOR LANDSCAPE Overview Landscape disruption PART 12: VENDOR ANALYSIS Vendors covered Vendor classification Market positioning of vendors CITIZEN ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. Cree, Inc. Lumileds Holding B.V. NICHIA CORPORATION OSRAM GmbH PART 13: APPENDIX Research methodology 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200412005005/en/ Contacts: 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/ The Central Reserve Police Force on Monday announced a national poster-making contest on COVID-19 for school students as part of an initiative to enhance public awareness about the pandemic. The contest is open for students in three categories: Class 1-5, 6-10 and 11-12. Students can send their entries through the official Twitter handle of the CRPF @crpfindia with hashtag BalsenaFightsCorona, an official spokesperson said. "The entries can be in the form of a hand-made painting, drawing or sketch with an appropriate tagline or slogan. It should be accompanied with the name of the student, their parents, class of study and school," he said. The last date for sending the entries is April 25. A jury of experts and force officials will decide the winners and top three will stand to win a cash prize of Rs 50,000, Rs 40,000 and Rs 25,000. Ten consolation or motivational cash amounts of Rs 5,000 will also be given in each of the three categories, the official said. With 3.25 lakh personnel in its ranks, the CRPF is the country's largest paramilitary force and designated as the lead internal security force. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cybersecurity vendor Armor identified from Jan. 1, 2019 to April 8, 2020, 94 school districts and colleges that have publicly reported being a victim of ransomware. These attacks have potentially impacted 1,150 schools nationwide. Last August we told you about the Armor report that detailed there were 68 publicly reported ransomware attacks so far that year against municipalities, including 23 in Texas. Of the 17 schools hit in this years attacks, 15 have not disclosed whether or not they agreed to pay the ransom, and two have reported that they refused to paythe Fort Worth Independent School District in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Crystal Lake Community High School District in Crystal Lake, Illinois. Only four of the schools reported the type of ransomware that was used to attack them. The malware used included Sodin, Ryuk and Maze. Schools are not the only organizations being targeted by ransomware threat actors in 2020. There were 54 organizations that publicly reported attacks from the first of the year through April 8, 2020. School districts and colleges currently lead the victim list with 17, followed by municipalities with 15, healthcare organizations at six, and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and/or Cloud-Based Service Providers with three. Multiple Schools Lose Complete Access to Computer Networks, Communication Systems and Student Files Of the 17 school districts and colleges compromised by ransomware in 2020, several districts lost total access to their computer networks, files and communication systems. Gadsden Independent School District (New Mexico)Gadsden was hit by ransomware twice in one year. The attacks caused a complete shutdown of the districts internet and communication systems. One of the saddest ransomware incidents in 2020 was the attack on the Gadsden Independent School District (ISD). According to school officials, on Monday, Feb. 24, for the second time in a year, the school district was compromised by ransomware. Because of the attack, the district had to shut down its entire internet and communication systems. This included phone service across all of its 24 school sites, as well as supporting locations. School officials estimated that it would take four to five days to restore their internet and phone communications, as employees worked to clean computers. The Gadsden ISD was also attacked by the Ryuk ransomware in July 2019. The second ransomware attack occurred even after the district replaced servers and constructed a whole new email system. Havre Public Schools (Montana)All of the school districts computer systems were taken down. The teachers and administration were forced to use personal cell phones and personal email, and they had to connect their laptops to the internet via mobile hotspots. In January, the Havre Public Schools in Missoula, Montana, were hit by the Ryuk ransomware. As a result, the entire schooldistricts computer systems were taken down. According to news reports, the schools computer staff instructed school officials to disconnect everything with a blue cordincluding every computer, telephone and printer in every district building. The schools did remain open. However, during the incident district staff and administration were forced to use their personal cell phones and personal emails and connect their laptops to the internet via their mobile hotspot. Their systems were down for approximately four days, according to news reports. Nacogdoches Independent School District (Texas)The school district opted to shut down its entire computer network to limit the damage. Ransomware locked files on district PCs. School officials predicted some teachers and other department members would have to resort to using pencil and paper to keep records. The Nacogdoches Independent School District in Nacogdoches, Texas, was compromised by a ransomware attack on Feb. 11. School officials shut down the districts entire computer network to limit the damage. According to school officials, the ransomware locked files on PCs so users could not access them. School administrators did allow staff to use Chromebooks and iPads. One school official stated, If its a PC, it is shut down right now. Probably our teachers and some of our other departments are having to use pencil and paper right now to keep a record of whats taken place. Fort Worth Independent School District (Texas)The ransomware attack caused the Fort Worth ISD to lose some materials, in addition to affecting the districts website and causing several computers to stop working. Fort Worth ISD officials sent the teachers curriculum synopses on how to proceed without technology and said staff would have to go back to the good old days and teach without the computer. In early March, the Fort Worth, Texas, Independent School District became a victim of ransomware. According to Fort Worth ISD spokesperson Clint Bond, he first noticed his computer wasnt working on March 3. The attack also affected the districts website, and they lost access to some materials. According to Bond, school officials sent its teachers curriculum synopses and had them plan to teach the old-fashioned way, foregoing technology for white boards. With Distance Learning as the New Norm Due to Coronavirus, What Happens Now if Schools Get Hit by Ransomware? Because of the Coronavirus crisis, distance learning is currently the most viable option for educating the nations students. However, what happens to a schools learning management platforms if the school gets hit by ransomware? There is not one consistent outcome because much of it depends on the breadth of the cyberattack and other variables. According to news reports, on March 28 the Mitchell County Public Schools in North Carolina suffered a ransomware attack preventing the teachers and staff from accessing certain documents and data. However, school administrators reported that their students were still able to access Remote Learning. The outcome was quite different for the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation in Indiana, however, which is made up of 15 schools. It was hit by a ransomware attack in late 2019, and news reports described how the attack knocked out all internal network systems districtwide. This included its online learning system Canvas, the platform students use to access and submit work, and Skyward, the platform used to track attendance and share information with families. Because the Coronavirus crisis has forced schools to physically shut down and teachers must rely on distance learning to continue educating the students, Chris Hinkley, who heads Armors Threat Resistance Unit (TRU) research team, says he believes the chances of threat actors targeting educational institutions with a ransomware attack is higher than ever. The cybercriminals know that with schools having to shut down their physical locations and the majority of them having to depend solely on distance learning, they are in a much more vulnerable position, Hinkley said. Add this to the fact that many schools dont have the security protections in place to protect themselves from the myriad of security threats being launched daily, and you have a perfect storm, he said. With this being the case, Armor advises schools to be prepared more than ever to defend themselves against a ransomware attack. They also need to have a solid plan in place, which will allow them to continue teaching should an attack take down the schools computer network and/or encrypt their key files. The Coronavirus crisis presents a unique and unprecedented risk to our U.S. school systems, Hinkley said. Now more than ever, educational institutions need to implement proven and comprehensive cybersecurity protections, which can defend their data and networks against the debilitating effects of ransomware and other forms of malware. Should an attack get past a schools cyber protections, their security leaders must ensure that they have multiple backups of their critical data, applications and application platforms, and these must be air-gapped from the internet and password-protected. Having these backups is critical to recovering expeditiously from a ransomware attack, as well as from other types of attacks, thus helping to ensure that the students education continues uninterrupted. Armor Security Tips for Combating Ransomware Offline Data Backups Users must have multiple backups of their critical data, applications and application platforms. These backups must be air-gapped from the internet and password-protected. Users must have multiple backups of their critical data, applications and application platforms. These backups must be air-gapped from the internet and password-protected. White Listing Solution Limit the use of applications and processes that are allowed to run in your environment by providing a short list of approved applications and processes. Like a VIP List for your PC, if its not on the list, its not allowed. Limit the use of applications and processes that are allowed to run in your environment by providing a short list of approved applications and processes. Like a VIP List for your PC, if its not on the list, its not allowed. File Integrity Monitoring This monitors your IT environment 24/7/365 for changes to critical OS files and processes, such as directories, registry keys, and values. It also watches for changes to application files, rogue applications running on the host, and unusual process and port activity, as well as system incompatibilities . This monitors your IT environment 24/7/365 for changes to critical OS files and processes, such as directories, registry keys, and values. It also watches for changes to application files, rogue applications running on the host, and unusual process and port activity, as well as system incompatibilities Practice Least Privilege Access Control Ensure the user has the least privilege for their job. This also applies to services. Ensure the user has the least privilege for their job. This also applies to services. Audit/Penetration Testing from Independent, Third-Party Experts Use this to ensure that you are implementing best practices. Use this to ensure that you are implementing best practices. IP Reputation Monitoring/Blocking Block known bad infrastructure and actors. Block known bad infrastructure and actors. Continuous Security Awareness Training Educate employees about current and emerging cybersecurity risks and phishing emails. Effective training should actively engage employees and include policies concerning the correct response to suspected phishing attempts. Educate employees about current and emerging cybersecurity risks and phishing emails. Effective training should actively engage employees and include policies concerning the correct response to suspected phishing attempts. Endpoint Protection Solution This includes protection, detection, and response capabilities for laptops, workstations, and mobile devices. It uses antivirus (AV) and antimalware (AM) to block cyberattacks. It is also used to quickly detect and remediate any malicious activity or infection that has made its way onto the endpoint. We would add using phishing simulation and hiring a top-quality MSP or MSSP to assess your situation and give you advice on how to improve. Appendix A: List of School Districts and/or Individual Educational Institutions Hit by Ransomware from Jan. 1 April 8, 2020 Panama Buena Vista Union School District Buena Vista Union School District Lakeland Community College Mountain View Los Altos High School District Los Altos High School District ITI Technical College Havre Public Schools Allegheny Intermediate Unit Nacogdoches Independent School District Niagara University Crystal Lake Community High School District 155 South Adams School District Gadsden Independent School District Butler County Community College Spartanburg School District One Three Rivers College Fort Worth ISD Burke County Public Schools Mitchell County Public Schools See the ONLY cybersecurity companies that matter at the ITEXPO #TECHSUPERSHOW. Watch the video below for more. This Event has been called the BEST SHOW in 5 YEARS and the Best TECHNOLOGY EVENT of 2020. 2020 participants included: Amazon, Cisco, Google, IBM, ClearlyIP, Avaya, Vonage, 88, Comcast Business, BlueJeans, CoreDial, Dell, Edify, Epygi, FreeSWITCH, Grandstream, Granite, Intrado, Frontier Business, Fujitsu, Jenne, West, Konftel, Intelisys, Martello, NetSapiens, OOMA, Oracle, OpenVox, Peerless Network, Phone Sentry, Phone.com, Poly, QuestBlue, RingByName, Sangoma, SingTel, SkySwitch, Spracht, Spectrum, Sprint, Tallac, Tech Data, Telarus, TCG, Teledynamics, Teli, Telinta, Telispire, Telstra, TransNexus, Unified Office, Vital PBX, VoIP Supply, Voxbone, VoIP.MS, Windstream, XCALY, XORCOM, Yealink, Yubox, and ZYCOO. Full List. Join 8K others with $25B+ in IT buying power who plan 2021 budgets! Including 3,500+ resellers! A unique experience with a collocated Future of Work Expo, SD-WAN Expo, and MSP Expo June 22-25, 2021, Miami Register now and you could win a Tesla on Feb 12th. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:25:04|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will on Tuesday in Beijing attend a special meeting of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan and the Republic of Korea on responding to COVID-19. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made the announcement on Monday, saying the video meeting will be hosted by Vietnam as ASEAN's chair in 2020. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, as friendly neighbors, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and ASEAN countries have been working together and supporting each other. The event is an important meeting on the joint response to the pandemic in East Asia held after the G20 Extraordinary Virtual Leaders' Summit on COVID-19, Zhao told a press briefing. "It demonstrates the determination and willingness of East Asian countries to work together to combat the pandemic and safeguard regional economic development," he added. China looks forward to an in-depth exchange of views among the 10+3 countries on cooperation to prevent the spread of the pandemic and safeguard economic development, and hopes that the meeting will achieve positive results in strengthening cooperation on prevention and control, enhancing health cooperation in East Asia, promoting practical cooperation and economic and trade exchanges, and advancing regional economic integration, Zhao said. The Supreme Court on Monday modified its April 8 order which asked private labs to conduct free COVID-19 tests and said the benefit will be available only to "economically weaker sections" who are covered under a government scheme such as the Ayushman Bharat. IMAGE: Medics collect a swab sample of a young boy for the COVID-19 test at Sadar in Lucknow. Photograph: Nand Kumar/PTI Photo The top court said it never intended to make testing free for those who can afford to pay. It had on April 8 directed that private labs, which were allowed to charge Rs 4,500 for COVID-19 tests, would not charge for the tests observing that they need to be philanthropic in the hour of national crisis. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Ravindra Bhat took note of the pleas of two persons, including orthopedic surgeon Kaushal Kant Mishra, who said that if the testing is made free for all, private labs will be overburdened financially and would slow down the tests for the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. Having heard, counsel for the parties, we are satisfied that sufficient cause has been made out to clarify and modify our order dated April 8, 2020," the top court said. It added: "The order dated April 8, intended to make testing in private Labs of COVID-19 free for economically weaker sections of the society who were unable to afford the payment of testing fee as fixed by ICMR for COVID-19. We further clarify that the order never intended to make testing free for those who can afford the payment of testing fee fixed by the ICMR for COVID-19. The top court took note of the submissions of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi that according to the directive of National Health Authority under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana, the COVID-19 tests were being conducted free of cost in all private laboratories even when the order was passed on April 8. We make it clear that the benefit of free testing by a person can be availed only when he or she is covered under any scheme like Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana. "We are also of the view that looking to the plight of persons belonging to economically weaker sections of the society, the Government may consider as to whether any other categories of persons belonging to economically weaker sections of the society can be extended benefit of free testing of COVID-19, it said. The court said it was conscious of the fact that framing of the scheme and its implementation were in the government's domain who are the best experts in such matters. Modifying the order, the bench said, free testing for COVID-19 shall be available to persons covered under the Ayushman Bharat scheme and any other category of economically weaker sections of the society as notified by the Government for free testing for COVID-19, hereinafter. It said the ministry of health and family welfare may consider as to whether any other categories of the weaker sections of the society may be granted the facility of free testing. The Government of India, ministry of health and family welfare may issue necessary guidelines for reimbursement of cost of free testing of COVID-19 undertaken by private Labs and necessary mechanism to defray expenses and reimbursement to the private Labs, it said. The court said the central government was required to give appropriate publicity the modified directions. Rohatgi , appearing for some private labs, submitted that ICMR has fixed moderate charge of Rs 4,500 for COVID-19 tests to cover the expenses of labs and moreover, persons covered under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana' are tested for free of cost. In case the Labs are not to charge any fee for the tests, it will be impossible for them to carry on the test due to financial constraint, he argued. Law officer Mehta referred to the ICMR affidavit and submitted that the government is taking all necessary steps for conducting the COVID-19 test and as on date, 157 government labs and 67 private labs are conducting COVID-19 test. All government hospitals and government labs are conducting COVID-19 test free of cost, Mehta said. Lawyer Shashank Deo Sudhi, who had filed the PIL in personal capacity, said there are large sections of society who are unable to afford even Rs 4,500 for COVID-19 test and the government has to take responsibility of getting every person tested. Orthopedic surgeon Mishra had moved the top court seeking a modification of the courts April 8 order directing authorities to ensure COVID-19 tests in approved private laboratories be conducted free of cost. He had filed the intervention application in a pending PIL, saying that the private labs be allowed to do COVID-19 testing as per the rates stipulated in the ICMR Advisory dated March 17. The application said forcing private labs would create a sharp dip in an already below par testing rate for COVID. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Saturday that it has lifted a halt of clinical trials of Kolon Life Science's arthritis drug Invossa, which was banned in Korea. Invossa has been touted as the world's first cell and gene treatment for arthritis. The drug was approved by Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in July 2017 but was struck from the ministry' list of marketable drugs last year after the U.S. FDA found out during a clinical trial that an ingredient had been mislabeled. The ministry took legal action against Kolon and around 2,000 investors and patients sued the pharma firm. While the FDA's decision is raising hopes of Invossa's revival, the ministry said Sunday that the Korean government's decision is independent of any U.S. approval. SAGINAW, MI Five residents at a nursing home in Saginaw County recently tested positive for COVID-19, an official there has confirmed. The residents were sent to a local hospital for treatment. The five residents, all over the age of 75, were residing in the short-term unit at Great Lakes Rehab Center, 4100 Tittabawassee Road, in Kochville Township. We dont currently have any COVID patients in our facility, but yes, we have sent patients back out to the hospital who have tested COVID positive, said Ruthe Newman, administrator for Great Lakes Rehab Center. No other cases are known at the rehab center, according to Newman. The senior living facility is adhering to Gov. Gretchen Whitmers order, which prohibits non-essential visitors from entering health care facilities and residential care facilities. The residents who tested positive were sent to a local hospital between April 4 and April 6. Since the confirmed cases of the illness, a state-administered infection control survey was taken at the facility to determine if staff has and is appropriately using personal protection equipment, how an infection is being monitored and to examine resident care among other topics. Family and responsible parties of the residents were notified about the positive cases, Newman said. The nursing home is following guidelines of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention such as frequently disinfecting surfaces, individual eating arrangements, keeping residents in their own rooms and more. We are not only protecting ourselves but are protecting our residents, said Newman. You go about your day and assume that you are positive. Keep your mask on. Keep your face shield on. Keep washing your hands. Just doing what weve been instructed to do. Newman said the residents that tested positive for the virus were originally patients at a hospital. The residents arrived at the care facility within the last two weeks, she said. Durand Senior Care facility in Shiawassee County saw a cluster of confirmed COVID-19 cases in employees. On Thursday, April 9, company officials and the Shiawassee County Health Department announced eight employees are self-isolating after testing positive for the virus. Great Lake Rehab Center, built in 2017, offers long-term and short-term rehabilitation services, a physical therapy center and hospital partnerships. As of Monday, the Saginaw County Health Department reports 13 deaths, 294 positive cases and 20 recovered. Related news: Whitmer extends order banning non-essential visits to hospitals, care facilities Eight employees test positive for COVID-19 at Durand senior care facility Hanoi has asked 7,000 pharmacies to report people buying medicines for cold, cough and fever in recent days as authorities keep up efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Hanoi Chairman Nguyen Duc Chung asked the municipal Health Department Monday morning to inform the pharmacies of their responsibility to report on individuals purchasing medicines for cold and common cold symptoms of cough and fever. The buyers should be asked to submit health declarations immediately, he said. Chung did not mention a specific time frame in which purchases made have to be reported. "If any of these pharmacies miss any of the mentioned cases, they will be dealt with in accordance with the law. This is their duty to participate in the prevention and control of the epidemic. If any pharmacy does not comply, their license can be revoked," he said. Hanoi authorities also order all private clinics and medical centers to take samples for Covid-19 testing from any visitor seeking treatment for ailments like fever, cough and shortness of breath. Chung said small outbreaks in Hanoi have technically been put under control, with the Bach Mai Hospital, Vietnams largest Covid-19 hotspot, having its lockdown lifted last Sunday. However, there are complications at the Ha Loi Village in Me Linh District, which has emerged as Hanois second largest hotspot with at least 12 cases associated with it so far. "The city must focus on putting down the Ha Loi outbreak and identifying all who have come into contact with 'Patient 243', the first recorded case there," Chung said. "Patient 243", 47, had taken his wife to the Bach Mai Hospital's department of immunology and allergy for a check-up on March 12. The couple left the hospital and went for a bite at a shop opposite the hospital on Giai Phong Street the same day. Eighteen days later, he visited a communal medical facility to submit his health declaration and was told to self-quarantine at home. Hed had close contact with family members and business partners. While he remained asymptomatic, his samples were taken on April 4 by the Hanoi Center for Disease Control. Two days later, his test results were confirmed Covid-19 positive. The Health Ministry Tuesday night announced a list of addresses that "Patient 243" had visited between March 8 and April 4, and called for everyone whod gone to those places to report themselves for health monitoring as soon as possible. Chung also said that positive cases in Me Linh District "show signs that they are related to many provinces and cities southward from the central province of Ha Tinh." Medical officers have been asked to immediately impose 14-day home quarantine on anyone related to Me Linh District and Bach Mai Hospital. Another village under the scanner Doan Van Trong, Chairman of the Me Linh People's Committee, said there was a risk that the outbreak has spread from Ha Loi Village to other villages in the district. Ha Loi resident "Patient 259", for instance, had gone to the Lieu Tri Village to deliver flowers and had come into contact with many people. "Patient 259" is the 41-year-old wife of "Patient 254." A horticulturist, she cultivates flowers and delivers it occasionally to the district's Lieu Tri Village and some other places. She also goes shopping often at the house of "Patient 250," the last such instance happening on March 25. The last time she came into contact with her husband was on April 8, before he went for dialysis to the Hanoi Nephrology Hospital. After her husband was confirmed Covid-19 positive on April 9, she went into quarantine the next day and her samples were taken for testing at the Hanoi Center for Preventive Medicine. Lieu Tri, home to 2,000 people, is just across the street from Ha Loi. "The district has proposed that the residents of Lieu Tri are tested and has prepared a plan to isolate the village if positive cases are found," Trong said. Chairman Chung also asked the Hanoi Center for Disease Control to locate the source of infection for "Patient 237," a Swedish citizen. "Soon or later we have to find the source of infection of Patient 237. Even when the epidemic has passed, the Hanoi Center for Disease Control has to find the source of infection for research and prevention purposes," he noted. "Patient 237", whose Covid-19 infection was confirmed on April 3, is a 64-year-old Swedish man with blood cancer whod been in Vietnam since last December. He visited the northern province of Ninh Binh on March 17 and returned to Hanoi on March 22. On March 31 he had a nose bleed and a family member took him to a hospital for a checkup. His samples, taken April 1, tested Covid-19 positive. He is currently being treated at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Hanoi's Dong Anh District. Vietnam had recorded a total of 265 Covid-19 cases as of Monday evening. After 145 discharges, there are 120 active cases undergoing treatment. (Newser) Two groups of Democratic governors are forming regional task forces to work together on safely reopening their states. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he is working with the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Delaware to form a task force on reopening economies in a way that is "driven by data and experts, not opinion and politics," NBC New York reports. Each state will contribute a public health official, an economic development official, and their governor's chief of staff to the task force. "The house is still on fire. We still have to put the fire out, but we do have to begin putting in the pieces of the puzzle that we know were going to need," New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a conference call with the other governors Monday, per the AP. story continues below Cuomo said that while the states may not end up with a "fully common strategy," regional cooperation will be vital. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that he is working with the governors of Oregon and Washington on coordinating plans to reopen West Coast economies, reports the New York Times. In a tweet before the governors' announcements, President Trump accused the media of "creating conflict and confusion" by "saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states," not that of the president and the federal government. "This is incorrect," Trump said, though Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf disagreed. "Well, seeing as we had the responsibility for closing the state down, I think we probably have the primary responsibility for opening it up," he said. (Read more coronavirus stories.) Puerto Ricos governor, Wanda Vazquez, announced Saturday that the US territory will remain on lockdown until May 3 in an attempt to curb the outbreak of COVID-19 cases. The island has been under a mandatory quarantine and all non-essential businesses have been closed since March 16. As of this writing there are 780 confirmed cases out of approximately 7,700 who have been tested. Puerto Rico has a population of 3.2 million. More than 1,300 test results are currently pending. The island has confirmed at least 42 deaths, including a pediatrician and a number of people in their early 40s with no prior health conditions. There is no doubt that the actual number of cases on the island is much higher, as widespread testing is not yet available. A month into the crisis, Puerto Rico had the lowest per capita testing rate than any US state but Oklahoma. A woman wears a face mask and gloves at the gas station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) Starting from the initial case, it took 15 days for the territory to register 100 confirmed cases. However, it only took three days to register 100 morea stark indication that the virus has already spread rapidly through the population. Amid widespread frustration regarding the state of testing, the local government announced in early April that it had placed an order for 1 million tests. The following week, newly appointed Health Secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez revealed that the government was canceling the $38 million order because the tests were not FDA-approved, sparking further outrage. Puerto Ricos largest newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, has also drawn attention to the fact that the company through which the government ordered the million testsa small construction firm that has never before sold medical productshas close ties to the governors New Progressive Party (PNP). Officials are trying to pursue a refund of their 50 percent deposit of $19 million, but the outcome remains unclear. The local governments overall handling of the pandemic has been criminal from the start. Local officials initially downplayed the threat of the pandemic and squandered valuable time to prepare. Incredibly, the islands then-Health Secretary Rafael Rodriguez-Mercado issued statements shortly after the first case was confirmed in the mainland US, casting doubt on the likelihood of COVID-19 reaching Puerto Rico, a major tourist destination. Rodriguez-Mercado resigned from his post on the same day that the first case was announced in Puerto Rico. Only two weeks later, his replacement Concepcion Quinones de Longo also resigned under undisclosed circumstances. The island is facing the impact of a global pandemic with its third health secretary in three weeks. Highlighting the extreme crisis within the government, Governor Vazquez (who herself is the third governor in less than a year) also indicated that Puerto Ricos state epidemiologist Carmen Deseda had resigned, but offered no further details on the circumstances. Once the virus hit the island, the local government changed its attitude toward the pandemic quite dramatically. Governor Vasquez has since instituted some of the strictest measures imposed in the US so far. The National Guard has been screening passengers who arrive at Puerto Ricos airports, detaining those with a high fever and other symptoms. The officers claim that passengers are using fever-reducing medication in order to get past the screening. On Wednesday, Vasquez requested a ban on flights to the island from states which have been hardest hit by the coronavirus, such as New York, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and others. If the request is accepted, flights to Puerto Rico would be resumed once there is a drop in cases in those states, said Joel Piza, the interim executive director of Puerto Ricos Ports Authority. Only two days after the first case was reported on March 15, Governor Vazquez ordered a strict curfew on the entire island until April 12, which was extended this weekend until May 3. She also closed all non-essential businesses and restricted all travel except for groceries, to get medication, or to go to the bank. Violators are punished by either a $5,000 fine or a six-month jail term. Enforcement has reportedly been extremely stern. Hundreds of people have already been cited, according to the Associated Press. Vazquezs measures also stipulate that anyone entering a business is required to wear a face mask or other protective equipment around their mouth. The most controversial aspect of the measures, however, is the shelter-in-place order. Only those family members who are part of a family nucleus are allowed to shelter in the same home, requiring anyone not deemed part of a family to be kicked out of the home. This measure has prompted a backlash, and a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on Saturday, citing the curfew as unconstitutional. According to the lawsuit, The order pretends that constitutional rights be handed over blindly to the government, and that is unacceptable. The ACLU continues, The government cannot interfere with who you interact with within your home or define your family nucleus. The lawsuit states that the ban is too vague and gives the police authority to arrest people with impunity. There are many people on the island who have elders to take care of, and in some cases have to give insulin shots, which requires them to travel daily. The onset of the pandemic in Puerto Rico has exacerbated an already extreme social, economic and political crisis on the island. Omar Marrero, executive director of the islands Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority, estimates that the costs associated with the coronavirus crisis and the economic fallout stand around $4 billion. That amount represents nearly half of the governments overall budget. The islands Treasury Department has estimated that it could lose up to $1.6 billion in revenue. Puerto Ricos Department of Labor has reported that it has processed more than 131,000 unemployment claims, sometimes receiving more than 10,000 claims a day. More than 45,000 business owners have sought a $1,500 one-time payment from the local government. As for the islands preparedness in terms of immediate health care, Puerto Rico is perhaps the most ill-prepared US territory. It has one of the worst health care systems in the US, on par with that of Mississippi. Many hospitals in Puerto Rico, for instance, have not been modernized since they were built in the 1940s, according to a 2017 study by the Urban Institute. Cuts to health care and other vital infrastructure on the island have been carried out for decades under both the Democrats and Republicans, and their counterparts on the island. Just last December, Trump, with bipartisan approval, slashed Medicaid funding for the island from an initial $12 billion in funding over a four year period, to $5.7 billion over two years. The dire situation has been greatly intensified since Hurricane Maria in 2017. Some 10,000 schools, bridges, roads and other infrastructure were destroyed by the hurricane. The lack of any significant response to the devastation by the local and federal government has had, and continues to have, deadly consequences. The federal and local governments lied for months to the population about the real death toll which is estimated to be about 5,000 people. Masses of people left the island in the aftermath of the hurricane, including many skilled workers such as health care workers and doctors which are badly needed to combat the pandemic. While the tipping point for the mass emigration was the hurricane, many Puerto Ricans were compelled to leave due to the deteriorating social conditions which have been imposed by both the federal and local government for decades. Even before the hurricane struck, the number of doctors on the island dropped from 14,000 in 2006 to only 9,000 in 2016. On top of the fallout from the hurricane, the coronavirus pandemic in Puerto Rico comes only two months since the island was rocked by a string of devastating earthquakes which destroyed and collapsed thousands of buildings, including homes, schools, and hospitals. Thousands on the island were forced to live in tent cities or in their cars. Many more were left without running water or electricity. In Puerto Rico, the COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis unfolding amidst the backdrop of a series of other severe crises. In late March, Arnold Mergell delivered an urgent message to Germany's political elite. Standing in front of a row of blue metal barrels, he complained that the funds needed by small and mid-sized companies like his to survive the coronavirus crisis weren't getting through fast enough. "The bazooka's been loaded, but the trigger is stuck," said Mr Mergell, who runs chemicals company Hobum Oleochemicals in Hamburg, with 52 employees. Two weeks later, Mr Mergell returned to YouTube with a decidedly more upbeat message. Now, he said, the funds were flowing freely. That's after Economy Minister Peter Altmaier unveiled a programme on April 6 aimed at fast-tracking loans to Germany's Mittelstand, the backbone of Europe's largest economy, with unlimited guarantees covering 100pc of their credit risk. The swift turnaround, defying the country's reputation for red tape, underscores the hands-on approach officials are taking to protect growth as the virus shutters shops and factories globally. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has pledged aid worth more than 1trn in state guarantees, loans and direct capital to companies, and also eased access to state wage support for workers. Businesses elsewhere, meanwhile, are less impressed. Just 1pc of companies in a UK survey reported successful applications for emergency loans. In the US, the government's Paycheck Protection Programme, which aims to issue loans meant to help small businesses, has been beset by confusion and delays. "It seems surprising how quickly the German government is responding, but at the same time it's completely in line with what it has professed for years about maintaining fiscal prudence in good times in order to spend when it's needed," said Christian Odendahl, chief economist for the London-based Centre for European Reform. The emergency is real. Germany's economy will shrink almost 10pc in the second quarter, more than twice the pace it suffered at the height of the financial crisis. In one sign of the speed of mobilisation, authorities in Berlin, whose unfinished airport long made it a target of jokes, paid out 1.3bn to freelance workers and small companies, processing 140,000 applications in a few days. The money arrived in some businesses's bank accounts within 24 hours. The country has had generous crisis-response measures available for years, and their relatively smooth implementation might stem from previous experience. State wage support for workers, for instance, saved hundreds of thousands of jobs during the global financial crisis. While the UK is experimenting with paid furlough schemes for the first time, the Germans are fine-tuning a programme in existence since the 1950s. Meanwhile, in Ireland the Government introduced the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment of 350 a week for employees or self-employed people who have lost their job due to the pandemic. Revenue here is also operating a temporary wage subsidy scheme. "One advantage Germany has is its model of preserving businesses and jobs during a recession, allowing it to more easily scale up existing instruments," said Mr Odendahl. Liquidity support from Germany's state bank, KfW, also existed before and is being expanded. Loans worth several billions of euro have already been approved, and applications for up to 3m can be processed instantly. Ana Botin, who heads Spain's largest lender as chairman of Banco Santander, said in a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday that Germany's loan programme should become the "benchmark" for the rest of Europe. Not everything is going to plan. Banks struggled initially, and it remains to be seen how quickly government wage support - which firms pay upfront to be reimbursed later - will reach their bank accounts. Germany's aid programmes aren't a panacea either. Some smaller companies may struggle to repay loans lasting years, and a survey in late March by the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce showed one in five small and medium businesses saw a risk of insolvency. More than two-thirds said aid in the form of cash injections is most effective and should be expanded. For some, it's already too late. Appelrath Cuepper, a fashion retailer that employs 1,000 people, filed for insolvency under self administration on April 7 after being denied a KfW loan. It will restructure and try to resume operations when the crisis passes. Still, for Zack Helwa, a gallery and print-business owner in Berlin, the stimulus is working. He received 8,000 in aid from the government to support his business and replace lost income as a freelancer. "The unexpected thing was how unbureaucratic it was. The application form took me 10 minutes to fill out, and two days later I had money," he said. Bloomberg Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday accused Congress leader and former CM Kamal Nath for indulging in bad politics at the time of COVID-19 crisis. "I had never imagined there will be such bad politics at the time of this crisis. Kamal Nath had said Rahul Gandhi warned about COVID-19 on February 12. Who was CM then? What did he do till March 23? Can someone be this selfish to stop working as they won't be the CM anymore? " CM Chouhan told ANI. "They devastated the state and accusing us of horse-trading. We are not at fault. We are providing facilities to combat COVID-19 in the state. I urge them to put aside the political differences and work together to combat COVID-19," he added. The Chief Minister said that Indore has 328 coronavirus positive cases and Indore is divided into 11 zones. "We have to divide Indore into 11 zones. A dedicated team is working in each zone. We sealed Indore and also listed hotspots in Indore. We have also marked COVID-19 dedicated hospitals. We are also providing essential commodities too. We have booked hotels for frontline workers," he said. He said that the state is following the IITT strategy to combat COVID-19. "We are following the IITT strategy to combat COVID-19. In IITT, I stand for Identification of hotspots, I-Isolation of the affected areas, T-Testing of likely to be COVID-19 patients, T-Treatment of COVID-19 positive patients," he said. "We are fighting against COVID-19 under PM Modi's guidance. PM Modi will address the nation tomorrow and he will announce the lockdown measures. Every CM wanted an extension of the lockdown during video conferencing that happened two days back," he added. According to the Union Health Ministry, there are 604 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Madhya Pradesh. The 21-day lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month to contain the spread of novel coronavirus will end on April 14. India's count of positive COVID-19 cases has risen to 9,352, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his gratitude to the staff of the National Health Service (NHS) for saving his life when his experience with the coronavirus could have gone either way as the UK on Sunday became the fourth European country to surpass 10,000 virus-related deaths. The UK became the fourth European country after Italy, Spain and France to reach the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths from Covid-19. The government said another 737 people who tested positive had died, taking the total number of virus deaths recorded in the UK to 10,612. The figure reported on Sunday represented a second straight daily decline in the number of reported deaths. Earlier, Johnson was moved from St Thomas Hospital in London to the country house of Chequers in Buckinghamshire to rest and recuperate from Covid-19 even as a senior government adviser admitted Britain could have the worst death rate in Europe. Jeremy Farrar, a member of the governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, told the BBC, The numbers in the UK have continued to go up. I do hope were coming close to the number of new infections reducing and the number of deaths plateauing and starting to come down. And yes, the UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe. In his first statement after emerging from ICU, Johnson thanked doctors, saying, I cant thank them enough. I owe them my life. A Downing Street spokesman later said, The PM has been discharged from hospital to continue his recovery, at Chequers. On the advice of his medical team, the PM will not be immediately returning to work. The UK parliament is due to reopen virtually on April 21. In an optimistic Easter message to the country, Queen Elizabeth said, Coronavirus will not overcome usWe need Easter as much as everAs dark as death can be - particularly for those suffering with grief - light and life are greater. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON ABOUT THE AUTHOR Prasun Sonwalkar Prasun Sonwalkar was Editor (UK & Europe), Hindustan Times. During more than three decades, he held senior positions on the Desk, besides reporting from Indias north-east and other states, including a decade covering politics from New Delhi. He has been reporting from UK and Europe since 1999. ...view detail Dan and Heather Adamson were at church leading worship when they received a call from a Franklin County 911 dispatcher that no homeowner wants to get. Their Hamilton Township home was on fire. This family of five lost their home and all their belongings on the morning of Sept. 29. But adding to the devastation is their inability to finish construction on a home to replace it. That work was brought to a standstill by Gov. Tom Wolfs order to shut down businesses that are not life-sustaining. The order is part of his mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. The Adamsons builder, J&B Custom Built Homes of Greencastle, applied for a waiver to that closure order specifically for this project that was on schedule to be completed by June 15. In it, he pledged to have only one or two workers inside the home at the same time to adhere to health experts social distancing recommendations. He told PennLive each worker would have used his own tools. On Friday, Justin Grove, J&Bs president, received a response. It was a denial. Waiver request denial by PennLive on Scribd The Adamsons know others are affected worse than they are by this pandemic. They feel blessed to have their children, their lives and the roof of their temporary housing over their heads. But Dan Adamson said he never thought a consequence of the virus would be a delay in their plans to return to a home at their old address. "We were expecting schools, work, and large gatherings and church things [to be affected], he said. "But I wasnt looking at our home and the residential construction industry as being ultimately affected by it. Wolfs decision to order construction activity to break off has been a point of contention for Republican lawmakers. GOP leaders in the House and Senate have urged the governor to relent on at least this part of his mitigation response. Legislation has been offered in both chambers to do so. A bill that would replace the Wolf Administrations list of life-sustaining businesses with less-restrictive guidance from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is teed up for a vote in the House. A proposed bill allowing construction activity to resume is in the works in the Senate. Democratic members say the priority right now needs to be on saving lives and call the Republican-backed measures premature. So does the governor. If we begin to slip in our efforts to distance ourselves socially, we could very easily see explosive growth rates, Wolf said in a recorded message prior to Fridays COVID-19 update. There are cases where just one person has infected dozens of others so dont be patient zero. The House is expected to return on Tuesday for a voting session. Its unclear at this time when the Senate will return. Haunting memories For Dan Adamson, seeing his house fully engulfed in flames brought back haunting memories from his boyhood. Almost 25 years ago to the day, he saw a similar scene when he was 9 at his familys home in Waynesburg, Greene County. I remember when I was a kid, we had a fire and we didnt know it was happening," said the engineer employed by JLG in Chambersburg. When we got home, I remember sitting there vividly. Watching it. Watching the firemen knock windows out, cut holes in the roof. Its not a fun thing to watch happen. When he and his wife got the life-changing call last September near the end of the late worship service at King Street Church, they abruptly abandoned their worship leader duties: She sang. He played the drums. They gathered up their children from their church classrooms and headed for home. Not wanting their children to see what Adamson witnessed as a kid, they dropped them off at a family friends house who lived nearby. That friend, who had just left the church, called 911 to report the fire and provided the dispatcher with Heather Adamsons phone number. Dan and Heather Adamson and their children Brayden, 8; London, 5; and Beau, 3 lost their home to a fire on Sept. 29. Gov. Tom Wolf's COVID-19-related business closure order has brought a halt to construction on the house they were building to replace it. The dispatcher asked Heather if anybody was in the house. She said there wasnt but their dog was in the basement. The fire company arrived within 15 minutes. They were able to rescue the dog. But the fire, determined to be caused by an electrical issue, destroyed their home right down to the foundation. Gone were all their clothing, the kids toys, their furniture, and all of their belongings. Especially difficult for Heather was the loss of the newborn outfits her children wore when she brought them home from the hospital. Unlike other things they lost, those are irreplaceable. So is her engagement and wedding rings, which as was her practice, she removed the night before. We were running late to get to the church and had a couple of things we had to do in the morning before we had to lead worship, she said. "I forgot to put them on that morning and they were lost in the fire. As her husband wrote in a letter to the governor, the pain and tears that I watched my parents have as everything that they had worked so hard for was gone was now the same pain and tears that my wife and I were shedding. The family had lived in that house since 2012. And in the 15 minutes time it took for the fire company to arrive after receiving the call, it was torched. There wasnt much they could do when they got there," Dan Adamson said. Honestly, they defensively took action to try to keep other houses [from going up in flames]. The other houses did incur some damage. Really just cosmetic siding stuff on both sides. But yeah, ours obviously was a total loss. Rebuilding process The Adamsons signed a six-month lease on a townhouse in Chambersburg to live in temporarily. Now they are working on pushing that out until their house gets finished whenever that is. It was supposed to be ready for them to move in by mid-June. The demolition work to knock down the charred remains of their house and clear the site was completed in November. Construction on the house began Jan. 5. The house was framed and roof installed and shingled. Much of the exterior work was finished. They were scheduled to have their electrical inspection done the week of March 23. The insulation and drywall work could start soon after that. But the March 20 shutdown order from the governor quashed that plan. We were making some good progress," said Grove, the builder. Had nice weather there through the winter and we were staying on schedule. So this is pretty devastating for that family, for sure. Adding pain to their already painful situation. Dan Adamson said its definitely disappointing. We were really starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here that we were going to get back into our house. We were really starting to shop for furniture and shop for those last finishing touches, he said. To see progress stop for what its been three weeks now is disappointing and heartbreaking. He rested hope on Grove being able to secure a waiver from the governors business closure order. After all, emergency repairs are one of the permissible activities that were included on the list of life-sustaining businesses. In Adamsons mind, the work being done on his home was an emergency repair. The only reason were building this house is because we lost our home, he said. We had no plans to go build a house. Obviously, we are just rebuilding on the site we were at. We just want back what we had and go back to our home. Thats when he reached out for the first time in his life to his local senator for his assistance. His builder reached out to another senator as well. Adamson sent his letter to the governor asking him to re-evaluate the administrations definition of emergency repair. I would fully believe most people would consider something that is out of your control whether its a natural disaster, a tornado, a flood, a fire in our case, that we should be able to continue building and repair our home, Adamson said. Mounting frustrations The Adamsons arent alone in feeling frustrated. Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County, said the governors list of essential businesses and waiver process has proven to be the most frustrating thing Ive dealt with in my time in the Legislature from a constituent service point of view. He said he and others have tried to work with the governor to understand the inconsistencies in the administrations thinking as to which businesses can operate and which ones cant. They have not been successful. Hes clearly falling on the side where his health care experts are telling him to be, Corman said. Republican senators hope to work with the governor to come up with a better process of deciding which businesses can open. If thats not successful, Corman said theyll perhaps consider going the legislative route. One idea might be turning over the decision about opening up the economy to local leaders once the number of the coronavirus cases start to decelerate, he said. The pandemic is impacting areas of Pennsylvania differently. There are a lot of cases in the southeast and northeast but parts of the central and western regions of the state have been barely touched by the pandemic. So maybe returning these decision to the local level would be better than sort of a one-size-fits-all, Corman said. If the purpose is to make sure we are being socially distant and following CDC guidelines, who would better know if a business is doing that than the local community as opposed to a bureaucrat in Harrisburg who is looking at paperwork. House Democrats, meanwhile, stand with Wolf in his decision-making about construction activity. Caucus spokesman Bill Patton noted the governor has allowed some limited work to continue. That includes site stabilization and securing partially built homes from weather damage as well as some critical highway projects. Wolf has taken his lead from Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The daily COVID-19 updates indicate the steps Pennsylvanians have taken may be starting to bend the curve just a little but its far too soon to change the approach, Patton said. House Democrats agree with the governor and medical experts like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Levine. Saving lives is our priority. But like the Adamsons, House Republicans want to see a little more movement to allow other certain projects to continue, especially in light of the federal government recognizing construction as an essential business. We advanced legislation through the appropriations committee to seek clarification for all business owners who sought waivers and allow businesses who meet CDC and CISA list qualifications to resume working if they choose," said House GOP spokesman Mike Straub. Additionally, he said House Republicans are examining other proposals to loosen up the reins on construction activity while monitoring the impact of the pandemic on public health and the states economy. The governor acknowledges some businesses can operate safely. He created the waiver system, Straub said. We just ask that some uniformity be brought to that process, and following the federal CISA list would allow that. Wolf acknowledged in a Friday afternoon conference call with reporters that his administrations team tried to apply common sense in deciding which businesses could operate during the crisis. If theres something where weve made a mistake or erred, Im all ears, Wolf said. The goal of the hard stop to non-life-sustaining businesses, he said, is to get through the pandemics surge so the state can move into the next phase sooner. I think every time we talk about opening something up, were just going to be prolonging this phase, Wolf said. So if were going to err, we ought to err on the side of keeping our feet on the brakes. Grove, the Adamsons builder, said he understands the health risk that COVID-19 poses. From the guys and my subcontractors I talk to, everyone has a healthy fear of this virus," he said. "No one wants to bring this home to their families but we also have to provide for our families. We are not a nanny state. I think were all adults here and understand the situation. From the guys I talk to and even myself, we respect it enough and dont want to see this brought into our homes but we can work in a way that is safe. Thats just my opinion. Dan Adamson said he hesitated to share his familys plight. He does not want to come across as whining about the situation his family is in, knowing others may be suffering more. But its the frustration over a lack of clarity in the business closure order that makes it difficult for he and his wife to accept and why he spoke up. I want more people to see the decisions the [policymakers] are making are affecting peoples lives deeply," he said. Ones worse than ours. Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy. Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. Lucknow, April 13 : Muslims in Uttar Pradesh are now worried that the intense communal profiling of the Corona patients by the official agencies could lead to lynching incidents once the lockdown is lifted. Muslim scholar and former SP spokesman, Abdul Hafiz Gandhi, on Monday said, "The manner in which the government agencies are identifying persons belonging to Tablighi Jamaat in the list of Covid-19 patients is now translating into intense communal profiling which has been prohibited by the World Health Organization and the central government. A very small percentage of Muslims subscribe to the Tablighi Jamaat ideology but the impression going around is that the Muslim community, in general, is spreading coronavirus." He said that there was a strong possibility of Muslims, in general, being attacked after the lockdown is lifted. "This is exactly what happened on the cow slaughter issue. Even a small rumour led to people being lynched by mobs across the country. Corona is a pandemic and should be treated like one. We should fight against the virus together instead of creating a communal divide. Every day, the government spokesman lays down the number of Corona positive cases and then goes on to say how many of them are from Tablighi Jamaat," he explained. Amir Haider, a social activist and also a veteran Congress leader, echoed similar sentiments when he said, "We strongly condemn the Tablighi Jamaat for ignoring the protocols and holding the congregation but why is the state government repeatedly harping on the religious angle. Shia and Sunni clerics are repeatedly asking the people to adhere to government guidelines and follow safety protocols." He said that efforts to create a communal divide on the corona issue could have dangerous ramification after the lockdown is lifted." A retired IAS officer, who did not wish to be named, said, that people have already started objecting to taking home deliveries from Muslim employees. "My neighbours refused to take delivery of groceries from a Muslim boy. This is just the beginning of the narrative that is being drilled into the minds. We must check this before it explodes into something very dangerous," he said. The overturning of Cardinal Pells conviction may feel like a set-back, but there could be a positive impact. One of the most senior figures of the Catholic Church to be tried and convicted of child sexual abuse is now a free man. On April 7, Australias highest court overturned Cardinal George Pells six-year prison sentence for the alleged sexual abuse of two choir boys in 1996 on the basis that the evidence presented in the case had not proven his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The High Court judges unanimously ruled that there was a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted. Cardinal Pells was one of the most high-profile lawsuits to spotlight child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The question now is whether this latest ruling is a setback in the pursuit of justice for the institutionalised sexual abuse of children. The struggle for justice Sexual offences are difficult to prosecute in most circumstances, and Pells case illustrates the challenges that abuse survivors face in seeking justice, which are compounded if the abuse took place years or decades ago. As the years pass, it is often too late to collect DNA evidence, more difficult to find witnesses, and the recollections of the witnesses who are available may fade. At the High Court, while Pells lawyers did not discredit his accusers testimony, they argued that the jurys guilty verdict in the 2018 trial had relied too heavily on the testimony as evidence, without properly taking into account other evidence. The High Court judges agreed. For some survivors of childhood sexual abuse, there will simply not be sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person they accuse is guilty. This can be traumatic for the survivors who will not see their perpetrators held accountable for their actions, but it is a fact in justice systems that guarantee fair trials, no matter who the accused is or what they are accused of. This is not the only challenge survivors face, however. While not a problem in the lawsuit against Pell, a common barrier in seeking justice is the presence of limitation periods the number of years a person has to take legal action after an offence, harm or injury occurred. The reason this is such an obstacle for survivors of childhood sexual abuse is that the nature of the crime means it usually takes them years, if not decades, to come to terms with what happened to them and to report it, by which time the limitation period may have expired and they will have no means of bringing their perpetrator to justice or securing redress. There have been encouraging moves to recalibrate justice systems to the reality of abuse survivors. In Australia, for example, following recommendations by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the state of Victoria removed limitation periods for civil claims relating to sexual or physical abuse of children in 2015, while New South Wales and Queensland followed suit in 2016. A domino effect Pells legal case may not have concluded as many survivors of clergy abuse and their allies had expected, but it has actually left a lasting positive impact. The widespread media coverage alone that the case generated will have undoubtedly raised awareness of clergy abuse in Australia and beyond, and perhaps even encouraged other survivors to report their abuse. Pell, for instance, is now facing at least two civil lawsuits from alleged abuse survivors which were filed in 2019. But the impact does not end at the Catholic Church. If we can learn one thing from Pells case, it is that even the most powerful figures and institutions whether they are religious, state or privately-run cannot avoid facing up to accusations of abuse and its cover-up. And this has the potential to filter down into all settings where children suffer sexual abuse, including family homes, schools and sport clubs, among others all places where adults hold positions of trust and power. Strength in the collective While Pells acquittal may be seen as a setback, his accuser said he hoped the case would not discourage other survivors from coming forward. He reassured them that most people recognise the truth when they hear it, noting that he had felt supported by police and prosecutors. Undoubtedly, if survivors stopped coming forward, there would be no justice to pursue. This is where survivor-led networks come in. These have led the way in supporting survivors of abuse, mobilising and making collective demands for truth, justice and redress. For instance, long before Australia and New Zealand created their respective public inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse, the Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN), a movement of people who had suffered abuse while in out-of-home care, had been lobbying for justice and driving the issue onto the political agenda since the 1990s. Such networks have emerged even in traditionally conservative countries, such as Chile, Italy and Poland. But achieving justice should not just depend on survivors. For public inquiries to even happen, politicians must heed the demands of survivors and contribute to government lobbying. Justice requires police and prosecutors to act independently of the powerful institutions they may need to investigate. Law reform requires the same of legislators. And media coverage of the issue helps build pressure on all relevant sectors. If perpetrators of abuse and the institutions that shield them are to see their day in court, the key to achieving justice for survivors of sexual abuse is absolutely in the collective response. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. Shares of Luckin Coffee Inc (NASDAQ:LK) were halted last week for pending news. At the time of this writing, the stock had not resumed trading, and it's unclear what the pending news is. However, there are some possibilities. Luckin Coffee stock halted: chairman, CEO default On Monday, a press release issued by Goldman Sachs said Haode Investment defaulted on a $518 million margin loan to a collection of banks. Goldman was one of those banks. Haode is controlled by the family trust of Luckin Coffee Chairman Charles Zhengyao Lu. The shares that were pledged as collateral on the loan were controlled by CEO Jenny Zhiya Qian's family trust. [caption id="attachment_564669" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Dean Drobot/Shutterstock.com[/caption] Q1 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Almost 611 million shares of Luckin Coffee stock were put up as collateral for the loan, according to Goldman Sachs. The investment bank said the lenders have begun the enforcement process against the collateral in connection with the default on the loan. That includes conversion of the Class B ordinary shares into American Depository Shares. Goldman also said that if the syndicate of banks sold all the pledged shares, Qian's voting rights in the coffee chain would "decrease significantly." However, Lu's voting status would not change much. Lone Pine exits the stock, Chanos closes short Steve Mandel's Lone Pine Capital did have a sizable position in Luckin Coffee. S&P Capital IQ's data indicates that the fund was the Chinese coffee chain's seventh-biggest shareholder. A regulatory filing revealed that the fund's stake in Luckin Coffee fell below 5% the same day the company disclosed that a significant portion of its sales had allegedly been fabricated. The following day, the stake fell to zero. Short-seller Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates told CNBC that he did have a short position in Luckin Coffee earlier this year, having taken it after Muddy Waters' Carson Block published his thesis. However, Chanos closed the position on Thursday. The company revealed then that an internal investigation had uncovered about $310 million in fabricated sales. Story continues Luckin Coffee halted, could face delisting China Daily reports that Luckin Coffee faces the possibility of delisting after it reported the fabricated sales. Dong Dengxin of the Wuhan University of Science and Technology's Finance and Securities Institute told the news outlet that in addition to delisting, the company may face a class-action lawsuit filed by shareholders. The result of that lawsuit could even go as far as bankruptcy. In addition to civil compensation, Dong said the company could also be saddled with criminal and administrative fines. Further, the employees found to have fabricated the sales could even go to prison. Luckin Coffee said last week it had suspended the employees that were involved. For now, it definitely looks like trading on Luckin Coffee stock has been halted, but it's unclear why. However, Ucar, of which Luckin Chairman Lu is the biggest shareholder, has also halted trading of its stock. According to Reuters (via Yahoo! Finance), Chinese regulators questioned Ucar about how the fraud allegations against Luckin Coffee would affect it. Ucar officials decided to halt trading in their stock to avoid abnormal price fluctuations. Disclosure: No positions (@FahadShabbir) The Maldivian government has ordered that the COVID-19 curfew in the capital of Male be lifted, while keeping the ban on public gatherings in place, the Russian embassy in Sri Lanka and to the Republic of Maldives said on Monday MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) The Maldivian government has ordered that the COVID-19 curfew in the capital of Male be lifted, while keeping the ban on public gatherings in place, the Russian embassy in Sri Lanka and to the Republic of Maldives said on Monday. The curfew in Male has been in effect from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time (12:00-15:00 GMT) daily since April 2. "To the Russian nationals in the Maldives! The Maldivian authorities have decided to cancel the daily curfew in Male. At the same time, public movements of groups of more than two people are prohibited," the embassy said on Twitter. COVID-19 has been declared public health emergency in the Maldives. The Maldivian Health Ministry has so far reported 20 confirmed cases, including 14 recoveries and no fatalities. UK imports medical supplies from China By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-04-11 15:04 A British Airwayss Boeing 777-300ER aircraft took off on April 9 from Shanghai, carrying medical aid to the United Kingdom. The medical supplies were respirators and thousands of pieces of personal protective equipment. The transportation was realized thanks to the coordination between IAG Cargo and the British government, and the support of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). This flight was chartered specifically to deliver this aid as most passenger flights between the two countries have been suspended. Typically, passenger aircraft will carry some cargo in their holds in addition to the baggage of the paying passengers above. However, this capacity has vanished as a result of the decline of passenger flights during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the following weeks, we will keep importing more medical supplies from China. Lets combat COVID-19 through close international cooperation, said the Consulate General of the UK in Shanghai. Before Mr. Atkinsons nomination in 2017, there was significant turmoil in the work of the intelligence community watchdogs office, especially as it pertained to handling whistleblower complaints. The situation had deteriorated so dramatically that members of Congress made it a central issue during Mr. Atkinsons confirmation hearing. As part of his testimony, he committed unequivocally to work with Congress on fixing the problems and promised that my first objective as inspector general, if confirmed, will be to make sure the [intelligence community inspector generals] house is in order. The public record of his leadership of the office suggests that Mr. Atkinson has done exactly that. The American public should be heartened to know that our government has public servants like Mr. Atkinson. The hot-pink Manhattan Beach home that roiled a neighborhood last year sold in March for $1.55 million. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) The hot-pink house adorned with two giant emojis that roiled a Manhattan Beach neighborhood last year has changed hands. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom beach-adjacent property on 39th Street, which was listed at the height of a neighborhood brouhaha in August, sold on March 31 for $1.55 million, according to property records. The house was put up for sale with an asking price of $1.749 million two weeks after homeowners and renters in the El Porto neighborhood raised objections to the home's colorful paint job at a City Council meeting. The battle between prior homeowner Kathryn Kidd and her neighbors began in May 2019, when residents reported Kidd to the city for illegally using her property for short-term rentals. After Kidd was fined $4,000 for violating the city's rental laws, the once-beige property was painted an eye-catching shade of pink enhanced with two yellow emoji faces. The saga was first reported by Easy Reader News and quickly became a phenomenon that snagged headlines across Southern California. Neighbors perturbed by the spectacle said the emojis were intended to mock them. One emoji on the duplexs top floor showed a smiling face with a stuck-out tongue; the eyes, looking in different directions, were crowned by long, bold eyelashes. Another on the lower level had the same eyes and lashes but a zipper across its mouth, representing the shut up emoji. Susan Wieland, a neighbor who reported Kidd to the city, told Easy Reader News that she was wearing eyelash extensions when she met her neighbor. Kidd told the outlet at the time that the emojis were not intended to mock Wieland and that, although people were entitled to their opinions, she was not in violation of any laws. Im trying not to offend anybody, Kidd said. I did it for the purpose of being happy, being positive, and I think its cute and quirky and kind of funny, and certainly was a time for the emoji. Kidd purchased the duplex, built in 1931, in March 2018 for $1.35 million. The property was listed in December 2018 for $1.99 million before it was pulled from the market a few months later. It was listed again in August 2019 for $1.749 million. The asking price of the property dropped five times over the course of several months before it was sold, according to Zillow. Times staff writers Alexa Diaz, Colleen Shalby and Jack Flemming contributed to this report. The Czech National Ballet will help to entertain people shut in during the nationwide lockdown amid the new coronavirus outbreak this Easter. The company will stage a production made up of traditional and contemporary dance numbers to an empty house Sunday night.But they will still be seen by the nation because the performance will be shot and broadcast live by state TV, Czech Television. To maintain social distancing guidelines only dancers in pairs, who also live together, will perform together.Soloist performers will still maintain at least two metres (six feet) distance from other performers. Also, all performers must dance with face masks on. There has been some easing of the lockdown in the Czech Republic in the last week when authorities opened some more stores and partially lifted mandatory face mask use in public.Yet, theatres are still closed and all public gatherings are still banned. (Image Credit: AP) As coronavirus panic shopping started, one of the retailers drawing the most price-gouging complaints in Texas was a Fort Worth-headquartered, online-only gun store that customers say isnt living up to its name: Cheaper Than Dirt. I said, Wow, this cant be right, said Houstonian Kevin Switzer, who filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney Generals office after coming across the prices while shopping for ammunition. Theres no way. Two or three weeks ago, this price was way less. Switzer is one of 123 to complain to the office so far about Cheaper Than Dirt. Switzer and other shoppers reported markups such as a package of 1,000 rounds of .223 Remington rifle ammunition that once cost around $300 being sold for $900. Others said the company was canceling orders under previous prices claiming they were out of stock only to immediately re-list the product at a higher price. No more different from the folks trying to amp up hand sanitizer on eBay or Amazon, Switzer said. This is no different from that. INVESTIGATION: Texas second-worst in the nation for COVID-19 testing The attorney generals office had received more than 1,000 complaints of price gouging before the month of March was over. Many had to do with sticker shock on typical essentials, such as toilet paper and gasoline, and most were directed at big-name companies such as Walmart and Amazon. But over a weeklong period in mid-March, at the peak of panic buying as Texas mayors and county judges called stay-at-home orders, no company received more than Cheaper Than Dirt. A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment. Its unclear whether guns and ammunition are items subject to Texas price gouging law. Kayleigh Date, a spokeswoman for the attorney generals office, said the consumer protection division is reviewing the complaints. She would neither confirm nor deny whether Cheaper Than Dirt is under investigation. But a high volume of complaints can trigger an investigation, she said. There is no exact number for determining price gouging; however, a high number of complaints can contribute to initiating investigations, Date said. The world has changed A message on the Cheaper Than Dirt website, which has since been taken down, said that during one week in mid-March, it received more than 10 times the normal number of orders. As the company warned customers that order processing would be delayed, it seemed to put the blame on new customers for not stocking up sooner. As everyone is aware, the world has changed. Preparing and ordering key supplies in advance has put you ahead of the others hoarding. We salute you for having a plan, and making the smart decision to order early, the website read. Those who did not plan will be too late and run into limited supplies, higher prices, and stress. FOR THE LATEST: Interactive maps, charts show spread of coronavirus in Texas The complaints against the company came from across the state, from Dallas to Houston, and some were even filed by online shoppers out-of-state. Hundreds of comments filled the companys Facebook comment sections, as shoppers posted screenshots of prices they saw as exorbitant and accused the company of exploiting customers during a crisis. As the coronavirus pandemic first started to unfold, people turned out in droves to gun stores to stock up, wanting to make sure they were equipped for any potential civil unrest. Gun sales across the nation spiked, and the FBI conducted a record 3.7 million background checks in March the most for a single month since the agencys reporting system launched in 1998. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton paved the way for even more sales when on March 27 he issued a nonbinding legal opinion stating that gun stores should be considered essential businesses under any stay-at-home order. FIRST PRICE GOUGING CASE: Texas AG accuses company auctioning N95 masks of price gouging Texans may have been snapping up guns and ammunition like they were essential, but the law is far from straightforward. Texas price gouging law specifically mentions certain items like fuel, food and medicine, but goes on to add: or another necessity. That last clause is left open to the attorney generals office to interpret, said Michael A. Giberson, an associate professor at Texas Tech University who studies price gouging. Date, the spokeswoman for the office, said it has no official opinion at this time. Given the wide variety of opinions on the topic by Texans, Giberson said, it is not an enviable position for the Attorney General to be in. Giberson added that he was not aware of any lawsuits in which a judge has ruled on this topic. A morality issue The lack of clarity hasnt stopped complaints from streaming in. Northwest Houston resident Rachel Williams said she had been a regular customer, but after the experience that led her to file a complaint, she doesnt plan to shop there again. When Williams logged on to the companys website in mid-March, she noticed that the price for the 9mm ammunition she usually buys had doubled from about $12 to $22. In a Facebook message, the company said it was a mistake. But the next day, she checked again and the price had tripled to about $36. For me, that was it. I was done, Williams said. I understand the whole idea behind supply and demand, but to go up two, three times the amount? No. Most of us will understand and were willing to pay a couple of dollars extra, its not a big deal, we get the whole idea, but the trick they were using, I guess in hopes that people werent paying attention to me it was deceptive. Another complainant, Garrett Woodruff, a competitive shooter and hunter from North Houston, said bumping up prices during a global crisis is not just bad business, its immoral. When the pandemic first broke out, Woodruff said he and others worried about potential looting and other unrest wanted to be prepared. To make someone have to pay four times the previous market price for tools to defend themselves, I just think thats a terrible thing to do, Woodruff said. I understand making a profit is how this country works, but theres a morality issue. This report contains material from the Associated Press. taylor.goldenstein@chron.com The coronavirus pandemic is weakening international trade, with the Port of Oakland reporting a 7.4% drop in loaded containers in March, compared to the previous year. Overall loaded container volume was 150,000 20-foot-equivalent units, the lowest number since February 2019, when the port handled 137,800 units, said port spokesman Mike Zampa. Southern California ports also reported drops in March. The Port of Long Beach had a 6.4% decrease in March cargo volume compared to the prior year, and the Port of Los Angeles cargo plunged 30.9% in the same time period. Both ports cited the spread of the coronavirus as the biggest disruption. The Port of Oakland supports more than 84,000 jobs in the Bay Area and is classified as an essential operation under shelter-in-place orders that have closed many other businesses. It said overall import and export volume, including empty containers, was down 11% compared with 2019. Imports were down 10.3% and exports were down 5%. Around three quarters of the ports business is with Asia, and empty containers returning to Asia fell by 23% in March from last year. The port said 15 sailings have been canceled to Oakland in May and June, or roughly 10% of the total voyages scheduled for that period. The number of ships arriving in Oakland last month declined 10.6% from March 2019. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Last month, an unused portion of the port was the docking site for the Grand Princess cruise ship, which had more than 100 coronavirus cases. The ship has since left and passengers have departed. Some Port of Oakland workers have called for more extensive equipment cleaning and threatened to refuse to work. Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf Gemma Collins has sparked concern by continuing to film her new reality show during the current government mandated lockdown. Britain is preparing for a fourth week of social distancing and self-quarantine in a bid to halt the spread of deadly coronavirus COVID-19, with 10,612 having already lost their lives to the virus across the United Kingdom. But despite repeated demands for people to stay at home, a small production team is understood to be making daily trips to the reality star's Essex home in order to film forthcoming ITVBe series Diva On Lockdown, The Sun reports. Worry: Gemma Collins has sparked concern by continuing to film her new reality show during the current government mandated lockdown However the crew remain safely outside the property, shared by Gemma, 39, and her brother Russell, and adhere to strict government mandated guidelines by ensuring they do not interact with each other. Those safety standards also extend to Gemma, with whom the team who have reportedly all been tested for the coronavirus - pass on direction via an ear-piece radio system. An ITV spokesperson told MailOnline: 'Safeguarding the well-being of everyone involved in our shows is our priority. 'Careful new ways have been established to allow new programmes to be created to help keep viewers entertained at this difficult time, whilst following government guidelines around social distancing and the safety of all involved. 'With the appropriate guidance, new measures have been put in place covering production practice for all crew and Gemma and the filming of Diva.' A source had told The Sun: 'People are being told to stay inside except for all essential travel, or if you cant work from home. Arguably, the crew cannot work from home so what else are they to do? Carrying on: Despite repeated demands for people to stay at home, a small production team is understood to be making daily trips to the reality star's Essex home in order to film forthcoming ITVBe series Diva On Lockdown 'But neighbours and locals have raised eyebrows about people traipsing to sit outside Gemmas house to film a reality show when people are dying from this crisis. Theres a feeling among some that its bosses putting profits over health.' It's understood that a team was required to enter Gemma's home to film scenes on Monday, but disinfected their camera equipment shortly after leaving. Gemma was in the middle of filming a new series of Diva Forever when the lockdown was put in place forcing it to go in a different direction. Change of plans: Gemma was in the middle of filming a new series of Diva Forever when the lockdown was put in place forcing it to go in a different direction and rebrand her show Renamed Diva On Lockdown, it will follow the reality star as she navigates through the crisis and makes changes to her daily life and routine. Taking to her Instagram Story on Saturday, Gemma shared: 'We were in the middle of filming my new series of Diva with loads of exciting stuff planned. 'But as you know, we've found ourselves in the middle of a pandemic. So here we are nowI'm standing in my living room, with fixed rig cameras all over my house to bring you Diva on Lockdown. Opening up: Taking to her Instagram Story on Saturday, Gemma admitted she show was taking a different direction as a result of the coronavirus pandemic 'You want the GC, so the GC found a new way of working. You're going to see everything that I do in isolation. We'll all be on our journey together.' Using fixed-rig cameras set up around her house the three hour-long episodes will see the star fight to keep her Brentwood shop trading and secure her dream home amid the coronavirus pandemic. Gemma continued 'I'm being filmed and I've also got the producers speaking in my ear so if it sounds as if I'm talking to myselfwell maybe sometimes I am. Coming soon: 'You want the GC, so the GC found a new way of working. You're going to see everything that I do in isolation. We'll all be on our journey together,' she said 'I can guarantee though, what you see will definitely be 100% authentic GC. I hope it cheers you up in these difficult times.' ITV head of digital channels and acquisitions Paul Mortimer said: 'Gemma has proven in all her previous outings across ITV that she is a star who thrives on audience and public interaction. 'Both generous and warm, the GC is one of the most gregarious personalities in the UK. ITVBe is therefore very grateful to her for finishing production on her new series whilst on lockdown.' Diva on Lockdown will air on ITVBe later this month MailOnline has contacted a representative for further comment. San Antonio police are searching for a man who allegedly attacked a realtor and stole her car during a Northwest Side home inspection. On Wednesday, a realtor was conducting an inspection at a for-sale residence on the 300 block of Freiling, according to Crime Stoppers. FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox A pickup truck, driven by a woman, pulled up and a man got out. He asked if he could see the residence. The realtor allowed the man to look around. After the showing, the realtor asked if he had locked the back door. The man said no, so she walked back into the house. When the realtor turned her back, the man pushed her down, police said. The realtor ran outside and saw the man driving away in her vehicle, according to police. Crime Stoppers may pay up to $5,000 for information which leads to a felony arrest in the case. Anonymous tips can be submitted to 210-224-7867. Mark Dunphy is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | mark.dunphy@express-news.net | @m_b_dunphy Tom Reel/Staff photographer San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg is hosting a town hall for kids on Monday to answer questions the city's younger residents have about the coronavirus pandemic. The virtual event will begin at noon. Nirenberg will chat with kids about how the city is handling the pandemic together by staying apart. He'll also answer questions that were submitted on the Facebook event page or by email. By Ofeliya Afandiyeva Azerbaijan has set up a Council for Public Control under Coronavirus Response Fund on April 11, the official website of the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers reported. The relevant decree to set up the council was signed by Prime Minister Ali Asadov on April 11. The reason for setting up the Council for Public Control is to ensure transparency in the use of funds collected in the Coronavirus Response Fund and to regularly inform the public about the use of the funds. According to the order, the Council is created in the following composition of seven members, including five members public representatives and two representatives of the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers: Ziyad Samadzade - Full member of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Council of Economists; Shafiga Mammadova - Chairman of the Union of Cinematographers of Azerbaijan; Farhad Badalbeyli - Rector of the Baku Music Academy named after Uzeyir Hajibeyli; Garay Garaybeyli - Rector of the Azerbaijan Medical University (AMU); Zemfira Meftahaddinova - Olympic champion, Member of the Executive Committee of the National Olympic Committee; Aydin Isayev - Deputy Head of the Department of Tax Policy and Revenues of the Office of the Ministry of Finance of Azerbaijan - Head of the Sector; Rasim Ismayilov - Deputy Head of the Main Financial Department of the State Tax Service under the Ministry of Economy. Board meetings are valid if two-thirds of its members are present. Decisions of the Council are taken by a simple majority vote of its members. The council within two working days approves orders received from the relevant state bodies and state-owned legal entities. The council publishes information on the use of the funds resources twice a month on the website http://covid19fund.gov.az/en/. The Fund to Support Fight against Coronavirus was established by the decree of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on March 19, 2020. On March 19, President Aliyev announced the creation of the Fund to Support Fight Against Coronavirus. Initially, the government allocated $11.7 million to the fund and the president and the first lady donated their annual salaries to the fund. As of April 8, the fund had collected about $65.1 million. Donations have been made by 2,692 legal entities and 8,223 individuals. The resources of the Fund are used in the following directions to combat coronavirus: 1) The remuneration of medical workers and the provision of material assistance to them; 2) The improvement of the infrastructure and material and technical capacity of medical institutions (including the acquisition of technological installations, devices, equipment, vehicles, goods, and materials, as well as other medical supplies); 3) The formation of medical institutions of special regime; 4) The organization and implementation of control and monitoring; 5) The financing of researches in the medical field; 6) The training of specialists in the medical field; 7) Awareness-raising and enlightenment activities; 8) Other measures taken to fight against the coronavirus. Moreover, President Ilham Aliyev donated his annual salary to the Fund on March 21. Currently, the amount of donations transferred to the Fund in Azerbaijan is about $65 million. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz President Donald Trump, who has been chafing at criticism that he didnt do enough early on to fight the spread of coronavirus, reposted a tweet that said, Time to #FireFauci, after Dr. Anthony Fauci said social restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19 could have saved lives if theyd been started earlier. Fauci made those comments on CNNs State of the Union Sunday. Fauci said that the economy in parts of the country could have a rolling reentry as early as next month, provided health authorities can quickly identify and isolate people who will inevitably be infected. Fauci also said he can't guarantee" that it will be safe for Americans to vote in person on Election Day, Nov. 3. When asked if earlier action on social distancing and stay at home policies could have saved lives, Fauci responded in part: Its very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. Trumps tweet referencing Fauci was one of several that was posted on Sunday that defended the presidents handling of the virus outbreak and blamed others for missteps. The president pointed to his decision in late January to restrict travel from China, writing, Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Rather than flipping a switch to reopen the entire country, Fauci said a gradual process will be required based on the status of the pandemic in various parts of the U.S. and the availability of rapid, widespread testing. Once the number of people who are seriously ill sharply declines, officials can begin to think about a gradual reentry of some sort of normality, some rolling reentry," Fauci said. Social distancing guidelines from Trump are set to expire April 30. Trump denies ongoing problems with the coronavirus testing thats available, including shortages and long wait times for people to learn results. Hes also resistant to the idea of more widespread testing, saying last week that its unnecessary and that vast areas of our country dont need this. The U.S. has the most confirmed cases and deaths of any nation, more than 555,000 and more than 22,000, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University. In hard-hit New York, the number of deaths topped 700 for six straight days, but the increase in people who are hospitalized is slowing, in a hopeful sign. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020 PREVENTION TIPS Michigans State Emergency Operations Center is coordinating state-government resources and the response to the coronavirus spread. It has shared the following tips: What you can do to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases: READ MORE: Dr. Fauci questioning why more states not issuing stay-at-home orders Dr. Anthony Fauci: I dont think we should ever shake hands ever again Dr. Fauci says coronavirus antibody tests expected in U.S. by next week Photo credit: Ben Buchanan/Netflix From Town & Country As the co-director of Tiger King, the viral murder-mayhem-and-mullets Netflix documentary, Eric Goode has highjacked the culture, captivating even the White House briefing room. Its not hard to see why. In the engrossing seven-part series he created with Rebecca Chaiklin, which is back this Sunday for a wrap-up episode hosted by Joel McHale, Goode mines the underbelly of big-cat owners like latter-day Errol Morris crossbred with John Waters. Ive always been fascinated by these hidden subcultures that exist in America, Goode tells T&C, calling from his home in Ojai, California, and with passions that border on pathological. Photo credit: Jonathan Torgovnik A deep-pocketed animal rights activist behind such concerns as the Turtle Conservancy, Goode is referring to his interest in the exotic-animal hobbyist world. But its a penchant for strange creatures and obsession to the point of mania that dates back to his days of navigating the wilds of downtown New York. From 1983 to 1987, Goode was one of the co-owners and the public face of Area, one of the most canonical clubs in the history of New York nightlife. Located on Hudson Street below Houston, on the site of the former Pony Express stables, Area assumed the baton from clubs such as Studio 54 and ran with it like an amphetamine-charged anchor. As notoriously difficult to get into as 54, and every bit as hedonistic, Area had loftier ambitions from the get-go. It was known for its elaborate themesFashion! Confinement! Suburbia!that changed every six weeks and recalled the happenings of Jim Dine and Claes Oldenburg and its equally artful invitations (the one for Gnarly included a mousetrap that smashed open an ammonium capsule redolent of amyl nitrate). Those lucky enough to get in rubbed oversized shoulder pads with artists such as Warhol and Basquiat, and celebs from Madonna and Sting to Malcolm Forbes and Yul Brynner, as well as a menagerie of fabulous nobodies whose theatricality made the dramatizations of self in Tiger King look toothless by comparison. Story continues It was a remarkable cast of actors, who really dressed the part, recalls Goode, whose own look usually comprised boulder-shoulder Jean Paul Gaultier suits. I was definitely an 80s fashion victim who drank the Kool-Aid. According to Goode mythology, its about all that he consumed: every story written about him at the time was at pains to point out that, unlike most of his patrons, he abstained from alcohol and drugs. I never said that, Goode bristles. Look, when we were building Area, we were so driven and focused, partly because none of us came from money. If we had we been doing drugs all the time we would not have been able to accomplish what we did. But, you know, I was young and as time goes on you explore life. Which might explain some questionable lapses in judgment, especially when it comes to his use of animals in the clubs vitrines. We definitely used live animals and other things that I would not do today, Goode admits. I knew a notorious reptile dealer who would send me animals for Area. I regret that. I mean, the landlord had wolves and an arctic fox upstairs and quite possibly a tiger. Just as he has resisted calls for a second series of Tiger King for fear of overstaying its welcome, Goode and his partners always conceived of Arealovingly chronicled in the coffee table book of the same name published, in 2014, by Abramsas having a built-in use-by date. We approached it more like a limited run show on Broadway, he says. It was a place to meet and hang out for all kinds of reasons, obviously sex and drugs and all that, but also a forum to experiment with whatever you were working on. The second it became formulaic and predictable we closed. But up until that point I think it was pretty magical. The Tiger King and I recap premieres on Netflix this Sunday, April 12. You Might Also Like Google Maps A woman was killed in a Bellaire residence early Sunday after returning from a trip to a nearby store, according to Houston police. Officers were sent to the home around 4:30 a.m. after receiving reports of an unconscious woman, said Houston Police Department Homicide Detective Ken Fregia. A man dialed 911 after returning to his apartment on the 7900 block of Bellaire Boulevard and finding his cousin unresponsive on the floor. An investor looks at stock prices on the screens at a brokerage in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Huu Khoa. The VN-Index added 1.04 percent to close Monday with 765.79 points, led by blue chips in general and banking stocks in particular. 230 stocks gained and 119 stocks lost on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the VN-Index is based. Total transaction volume changed little over the previous session, reaching VND4.28 trillion ($183.58 million), order-matched transactions accounting for 72 percent. The VN30-Index for HoSEs 30 biggest market caps gained 1.53 percent, with 21 gainers and 5 losers. VPB of private VPBank and VRE of mall operator Vincom Retail topped gains at 7 percent and 6.9 percent respectively, both hitting their ceiling prices. Other major gainers this session included VJC of budget carrier VietJet Air, up 6 percent, MWG of electronics retailer Mobile World, 4.6 percent, and SBT of agricultural firm TTC Sugar, up 3.7 percent. VJC had been gaining for the previous three straight sessions, rising 7 percent to its ceiling price Friday. The airline announced Friday it was resuming domestic flights on April 16, after Vietnams 15-day nationwide social distancing campaign ends. VIC of private conglomerate Vingroup and VHM of its real estate subsidiary, the biggest and third biggest market caps on the VN30, also added 1.1 percent and 0.3 percent respectively. All private banking stocks gained this session, with strong gainers being TCB of Techcombank, up 2.7 percent and HDB of HDBank, one percent. Vietnams three biggest state-owned banks by assets, CTG of VietinBank, BID of BIDV, and VCB of Vietcombank, added 0.8 percent, 0.7 percent and 0.3 percent respectively. Oil and gas were a mixed bag with POW of electricity generator PetroVietnam Power adding 3.2 percent and GAS of energy giant PetroVietnam Gas climbing 1.3 percent, but PLX of petroleum distributor Petrolimex shedding 1 percent. On Sunday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies in the OPEC+ group, in conjunction with efforts from the G20 and International Energy Agency, finalized a deal which could see up to 20 million barrels of oil per day removed from an oversupplied global oil market. The deal is set to boost oil prices, which had been in free-fall as the Covid-19 slashed global demand. However, as of 4:50 pm, Brent Crude continued to plummet 3.72 percent over the last trading session, to $30.84 a barrel. On the HoSE, MSN of food conglomerate Masan Group topped losses this session with 3.5 percent, followed by SSI of brokerage Saigon Securities Inc., 1.1 percent and VNM of dairy giant Vinamilk, down 0.5 percent. Meanwhile, the HNX-Index for stocks on the Hanoi Stock Exchange, home to mid and small caps, gained 0.92 percent, while the UPCoM-Index for stocks on the Unlisted Public Companies Market added 0.45 percent. Foreign investors continued to be net sellers on all three bourses this session to the tune of VND272 billion ($11.67 million), with selling pressure highest on VIC of Vingroup and BID of BIDV, two of the VN30s biggest caps. Slate is making its coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism. Start your free trial. In 1994, on his 90th birthday, the legendary diplomat George Kennan, architect of Americas Cold War containment policy, said, in a speech looking back on his life and times, It is primarily by example, never by precept, that a country such as ours exerts its most useful influence beyond its borders. With our response to the coronavirus, so different from any crisis the country has faced for over a century, we are providing a very poor example, and as a result, our influence abroad is declining to a historic low pointso low that we may be experiencing a pivot in geopolitical power away from the United States and its allies. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement American influence had already been waning for a host of reasonsthe collapse of power blocs (which gave us leverage in the Cold War competition), the rise of terrorist groups and sectarian militias (which cant be quelled by conventional military means), the surge of Chinese investment and pressure in Asia and beyond. All of these trends have been accelerated, sometimes willfully, by President Donald Trump, who has dissed or deserted traditional allies, embraced authoritarian regimes, and wavered in his response to Chinas rise from obsequious kowtowing to self-destructive trade wars. Even so, until recently, Trumps retreat from the ways of previous presidents only highlighted Americas esteem and power. His behavior alarmed so many allies because they desperately wanted the return of U.S. leadershipand delighted so many adversaries because they could carve new inroads of influence in the absence of this leadership. Advertisement Advertisement Now, however, Trump has taken us to the brink of irrelevancenot quite to the abyss, but teetering on its edge. To lead or to inspire, a country has to offer a modelan example, as Kennan put it, of what its leadership or values or system of politics can produce. And facing the coronavirus, we are showing that, at least for the moment, were offering little or nothing. Advertisement The New York Times and Washington Post have reported long, gripping tales of how slowly Trump responded to the pandemic, ignoring warnings from scientists and top officials. Even now, fully seized of the urgency, he has no plan for minimizing the damage or restarting the economy. He has appointed two advisory teamsand is about to appoint a thirdthus only exacerbating personal and bureaucratic rivalries. He continues to shrug off his responsibilities as chief executive, leaving under-resourced state governors to squabble among themselves in bidding wars for scarce medical supplies. His lousy relations with foreign governments have impeded the international cooperation that usually fosters a solution to these crises (though scientists are building consortiums on their own). He even tried to buy a German research company that was working on a vaccine, with an eye toward restricting its product to American buyersa much-publicized attempt that could backfire if Germany or some other country comes up with a vaccine first. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Trumps toxicity has infected our entire political system. The bureaucracy has been stripped of its experts; the few who remain often go ignored. The Cabinet, which once held a few independent minds, is now filled with mediocrities who see that their main job is to nod vigorously whenever the president speaks. Congress had one bright moment, when, with no help from Trump, it put together a $2 trillion rescue package and passed it almost unanimously; but the rudderless, threadbare bureaucracy has been slow to implement it. Well see if Congress, which since that vote has gone silent, will double down in a few months, as it will need to do, when the money runs out. Advertisement Advertisement Meanwhile, China is acting like a leader. This status may be undeserved; the virus took hold within its borders, and the Communist Party leaders suppressed the earliest reports of its spread and have falsified data ever since. Still, China is the source of much of the worlds medicine and medical gear, and party leaders have made a great show of airlifting supplies to other countries, including the United States. As Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, tweeted, Lets be honest. It hurts to see China sending humanitarian aid to the U.S. and Europe. Advertisement Advertisement All over the world, people are asking: Who is the superpower now? The impression is a bit misleading; much of the Chinese medical gear turns out to be defective. But the image is still powerful: At least, in the eyes of many, China is doing something. What, they ask, is America doing for the rest of the worlds suffering? What, for that matter, is it doing for the suffering of its own people? All of this is occurring in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive network of Chinese-backed infrastructure projects in more than 60 countries, encompassing two-thirds of the worlds population, costing $200 billion (with estimates of $1.2 trillion over the next seven years). President Xi Jinping sees this as laying the foundation for a Beijing-controlled global trade systemwhich could eclipse the Wests dominance since the end of World War II. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Some of the countries receiving funds under the initiative have balked at the political conditions attached to them but, in the end, have nowhere else to go. Others may soon feel the same way in a variety of realms. Many countries would prefer American leadership, flawed as it has been through the years. But if thats no longer an option, they will turn elsewhereto other sources of supplies and security, maybe to other forms of governance. At the end of his 1994 birthday speech, George Kennan warned that unless we preserve the quality, the vigor and the morale of our own society, we will be of little use to anyone at all. Thats the fate that we await if Donald Trump stays in power much longer. For more on the impact of the coronavirus, listen to Mondays episode of What Next. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: Iran's Embassy in Azerbaijan has commented on the video which shows trucks allegedly belonging to Iran transporting fuel and food to the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, Trend reports citing the embassy on Apr. 13. At the stage of comprehensive development of relations between Tehran and Baku, enemies and forces who do not want bilateral relations be developed and disseminating such kind of false information in order to interfere with this process, are trying to cast a shadow on good neighborly relations between the two countries, the embassy said. We bring to the attention of the distinguished Azerbaijani people that Iran has neither land nor air communication with the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Armenians tried to spoil the relations between the two countries also in the previous years with the help of video or photo materials. As it can be seen, neither the place nor the time is known in the mentioned fake video, the news is completely false. Our expectations from the Azerbaijani media is that prior to the publication of any news, they clarify its reliability and refrain from disseminating information without reference to a reliable source, said the embassy. Overnight loss of income from core clientele plunges the marginalised group into depths of anxiety and deprivation. Mumbai, India The Indian governments decision to impose a strict lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of the new coronavirus last month has triggered a mass exodus of migrant workers from cities as economic activity came to a standstill. But for thousands of sex workers living in cities across India, there is nowhere to go. The loss of income overnight has plunged one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups into the depths of anxiety and deprivation. Bani Das from Kranti, an NGO that works with the children of sex workers in Mumbai, arranged a pass from the police and rushed to the narrow lanes of south Mumbais Kamathipura, one of the oldest, biggest and densest red-light areas of India. When she got out of the taxi, women emerged from their homes and crowded around her. My heart sank. I only had 100 ration packets but the number of women coming for them grew in several hundreds, she told Al Jazeera. The police kept making announcements, asking the sex workers to keep a distance, but it was not possible. Minutes later, the ration was over. The country of 1.3 billion people descended into chaos following the March 24 announcement to impose the lockdown at four hours notice. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi justified the decision, saying it was necessary to stop the coronavirus from spreading. As of Saturday, India had 8,446 positive cases and 288 deaths. On April 8, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects and UNAIDS released a statement highlighting the hardship and discrimination faced by sex workers in this time, urging countries to ensure that their human rights be respected and fulfilled. The statement read: Whenever and wherever possible, sex workers are responsibly self-isolating in response to governments calls. However, when they are excluded from COVID-19 social protection responses, sex workers are faced with putting their safety, their health and their lives at increased risk just to survive Informal of the informal economy The government announced a $22.5bn relief package for the poor but it is not clear if it will benefit sex workers. For now, aid in the form of cooked food and rations is largely supplied by local non-profit organisations and individuals, with the help of local governments and police. Sex work is like the informal of the informal economy. There is nothing for them at the moment. In the interest of the larger society, the government needs to proactively do more things for the community, said Trina Talukdar, a co-founder of Kranti. Sex work in India is governed by the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956. It is currently illegal to solicit sex sale in public and to organise commercial sex. While there are no official figures, the number of sex workers could be anywhere between 1.25 million and 3 million. Activists believe this to be a conservative estimate. On average, activists say, sex workers earn anywhere between 100 and 800 rupees ($1.3-10.5) per client. The core clientele has traditionally been migrant workers, truck drivers and other men who are away from their families. Given that this group is also grappling with the horrific economic effect of the lockdown, sex workers themselves daily wage earners are staring at months without business. Nearly 1,400km (870 miles) north of Indias financial hub of Mumbai, lies Garstin Bastion Road, popularly known as GB Road the biggest red-light district in the capital New Delhi. It is home to 78 brothels where 2,225 women stay, according to NGO Kat-Katha that works with sex workers and their children. NGO officials say about 1,200 women are still in brothels, while many of them left for their homes as business declined following the lockdown. Homeless people are being put in shelters, but nobody even acknowledges the existence of sex workers Urmi Basu, executive director of New Light Kolkata On regular evenings, Sunita* (name changed for privacy) is very busy. But now, the unusual lull post 6pm is unbearable. I have never seen something like this. Now in the evenings, we watch TV, play ludo and do things to keep ourselves busy, the 45-year-old told Al Jazeera. Maintaining social or physical distance the key to preventing the spread of coronavirus is a luxury as she shares her brothel accommodation with 15 other women and 10 children. My priority is to stay safe. We will make do with whatever food we get, but I want to get out of this situation as soon as possible. I want to fund my daughters education and get her married. She has dreams of becoming a police officer, she said. The financial situation is made worse because sex workers often have no savings. Now, with no liquid cash coming in, they fear not being able to pay rent and end up without a place to live. Some of them pay daily rent to brothel owners, and others give a cut per customer. In the eastern city of Kolkata, like elsewhere in the country, requests are being made to owners to relax the rent for sex workers for three months at least. There is no way they will be able to pay in these conditions. Homeless people are being put in shelters, but nobody even acknowledges the existence of sex workers, said Urmi Basu, founder trustee and executive director of New Light Kolkata an NGO working with sex workers. Kolkata is home to some of the biggest red-light districts in the country, including Sonagachi and Kalighat. The National Commission for Women, a statutory body concerned with advising the government on policy matters affecting women, has decided to look into the issue of sex workers. We have heard that they are not getting ration due to the lockdown. We will raise the issue with concerned officials and develop a strategy. This will also include sensitisation, NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma told Al Jazeera. Hygiene and mental health In most red-light areas in urban centres, multiple women live together in squalor, in tiny 33.7-metre (1012-foot) rooms. Dilapidated brothels stand cheek by jowl on narrow streets, where social distancing is impossible to follow. Can you imagine 50 people using one public bathroom? Often there is no water, said 23-year-old Sandhya Nair, the daughter of a sex worker who grew up in Kamathipura. How do you keep space and maintain the required hygiene? said Nair, who studies in New Delhi but is currently based in a shelter home in Mumbai. 161122124031163 She also wondered if anybody was bothered about an even more marginalised section of society, the trans sex workers. When will sex workers be seen as human beings whose basic needs deserve to be met? she asked. Access to healthcare has become increasingly difficult due to the coronavirus scare. Many sex workers have diseases. There is an especially high prevalence of HIV-positive and tuberculosis cases. Last week, one of the women in Kamathipura started throwing up blood. No hospital was willing to see her. Eventually, a local doctor gave her medicines, but she needs to undergo more tests, said Nair. NGO New Light Kolkata distributes ration and food to 500 families in Kolkata [Courtesy of New Light Kolkata] Al Jazeera spoke to Dr Daksha Shah, Mumbais tuberculosis officer, and Dr Shrikala Acharya, additional project director of Mumbai Districts AIDS Control Society. Both said discrimination was not tolerated. A patient is a patient. Health posts, dispensaries and community health centres are open to everyone, said Shah. Acharya said MDACS makes sure that antiretroviral treatment reaches everyone in need if they cannot collect it. We have also launched a helpline make it easier for HIV-positive patients to access medication, said Acharya. Gitanjali Babbar, Kat-Katha founder, said there is a lot of tension and in-fighting within the confined spaces of these brothels. On top of that, there is the feeling of scarcity and joblessness. In the coming weeks, we will have to address their psychological problems. Former princess Tessy Antony De Nassau sparked rumours she has a new man in her life after sharing loved-up snaps on Instagram over the Easter weekend. The ex-royal, 34, is currently in isolation with her two sons Prince Gabriel of Nassau, 14, and Prince Noah of Nassau, 12. On Good Friday she shared a series of snaps of the happy trio - including one featuring a man who appeared in a previous post on April 4. Tessy, who lost her royal title when she divorced Prince Louis of Luxembourg, 33, last year, wished her followers a happy Easter 'from our little family to yours'. Former princess Tessy Antony De Nassau sparked rumours she has a new man in her life after sharing loved-up snaps on Instagram over the Easter weekend Several of her fans commented on the unknown gentleman, with one writing: 'Fingers crossed you have a new man in your life, you deserve love.' Another wrote: 'Happy Easter. Your boyfriend is gorgeous. Congratulations, you deserve it,' with Tessy 'liking' both comments. The man was also pictured on a family hike with the proud mother and her two boys, with Tessy captioning the photos 'Family is all that matters' with two love heart emojis. One follower questioned whether the man was her twin brother Ronny, which Tessy also 'liked' but did not comment on. Several of her fans commented on the unknown gentleman, with one writing: 'Fingers crossed you have a new man in your life, you deserve love' The mystery man was also pictured on a family hike with the proud mother and her two boys on April 4, with Tessy captioning the photos 'Family is all that matters' with two love heart emojis Tessy has previously told how her family 'suffered greatly' when she became a princess in 2006 after marrying Prince Louis, whom she met in 2004. Speaking on Sky News special report The Meghan Effect, Tessy explained: 'My little cousin needed to change schools twice. My twin brother was incredibly bullied at work he still is today. 'My sister, my parents suffered, my oldest brother doesn't talk to me anymore because of that, because it was too much for him to handle. 'That was when I married in, and when I got divorced, oh my gosh the same.' Born a commoner, Tessy joined the Luxembourg Army in 2002 at the age of 18, rising to the rank of corporal. Two years later, when she was one of a handful of female UN peacekeepers in Kosovo, she met Prince Louis, who was visiting the army. Tessy has previously told how her family 'suffered greatly' when she became a princess in 2006 after marrying Prince Louis, whom she met in 2004 Born a commoner, Tessy joined the Luxembourg Army in 2002 at the age of 18, rising to the rank of corporal. Two years later, when she was one of a handful of female UN peacekeepers in Kosovo, she met Prince Louis, who was visiting the army His family only became aware of their love affair when Tessy fell pregnant and gave birth aged 19, and unmarried, in September 2005, providing Grand Duke Henri with his first grandson. It infuriated the royal family, and Prince Louis renounced any claim to the title of Grand Duke due to the constitutional crisis they had created by having a child out of wedlock. When Tessy married Prince Louis in September 2006, six months after giving birth in a modest country church wedding, the Grand Duke stripped her of any claim to his title. The couple's fairytale marriage broke down in 2016, and they were granted a decree nisi in February last year. The couple's fairytale marriage broke down in 2016, and they were granted a decree nisi in February last year Tessy, who in 2017 was named Woman of the Decade by the Women Economic Forum for her work in women's empowerment, now lives in London with Gabriel and Noah, while Louis lives in Paris - though she appears to be in isolation somewhere more rural. The philanthropist is the co-founder of social enterprise Professors Without Borders which aims to improve access to higher education across the globe. She also works as a consultant, public speaker and is a UN Association patron. Plastic surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Wise knew exactly what the finished product would look like as he examined his first grammar school-aged patient of the day. He just didnt know how to start. Or, more precisely, where. Needles? Surgical thread? Where the heck does everyone keep this stuff? Almost a full month ago - one week before Gov. Phil Murphy ordered non-essential businesses to close in response to the coronavirus - Wise had made the decision to close the doors of his Wayne practice in order to better protect both his patients and staff. Soon after, he received a worried call from a patient whose daughter had sustained a cut while playing in the backyard. The woman was sure her little girl required stitches, but was concerned about taking her to an emergency room already stretched to the limits dealing with coronavirus patients. Wise came to the rescue ... at least as soon as he could locate all his stuff. I could barely find the sutures or any of my instruments because my staff knows where they all are, and I take that for granted. Or, I did, Wise said. "As you may or may not know, surgeons are very needy and we like our staff around us to help us out. Im used to putting my hand out and saying please and thank you and thats it. But now its an interesting lesson for me in self-sufficiency. I always feel like Ive had a deep appreciation for the assistants and my staff. But now that theyre not around, absence does make the heart grow fonder. I definitely appreciate them even more. Seems as though, Wises staff of 20 at the Wise Center for Plastic Surgery doubles up on that sense of appreciation for their employer, a double board certified surgeon with an extensive Ivy League background. He attended Yale for his undergraduate studies, went to medical school at Cornell and fulfilled his residency at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his private practice, Wise is affiliated with NYU Medical School as a clinical assistant professor. Wise is originally from Hollywood, Florida, but has lived with his wife, Allison, and their two children, daughter Kate and son Jacob, in Montville for the past 13 years. I consider myself now a Jersey guy, he said. Just as those 20 staff members consider Wise pretty much part of their own families. It was one of those staff members, in fact, who reached out to NJ.com to spread the word about Wises transformation from skilled sculptor to ER doctor. Perhaps one of his gratified patients would have eventually shared their story with the same sort of handwritten notes that have been sent to Wise to express their thanks. But Kaidi Ilves wasnt about to wait. Dr. Jeffrey Wise's plastic surgery patients probably don't send toys as a general practice, but this youngster decided it was appropriate after being stitched up in Wise's Wayne office.Courtesy Kaidi Ilves Hes fantastic, Ilves said. "Im not one to praise people for no reason, but hes one of the good guys. I think he really deserves to have some spotlight. Hes chosen to do the right thing and hes been urging his colleagues to do the same thing. There are a lot of people in his network who know how to do sutures and suture removal. But can they handle it all by themselves, as Wise has done for the approximately one dozen young patients he has patched up? He ordered his staff home for their own well being, though kept his door ajar to alleviate some of the growing perils of overcrowded emergency rooms. And what about cutting their rates drastically for these frantic parents? Ive only been charging a bare bones fee, Wise said. Once the dust settles, Im going to help them submit to insurance companies so they get reimbursed. Another thing: while the employees are home with their families, Wise is still paying their salaries. He also donated much of the personal protective equipment (PPE) that his staff would have been utilizing to the Passaic County Office of Emergency Management. Im super proud of the fact that we havent let a single person go and were still paying the entire staff, Wise said. It does create quite a strain on the business for obvious reasons, but I feel a real responsibility to my staff to take care of them to an extent. Im happy to help them for as long as I can. Same as he helped that frightened young girl with the sizable laceration, or the young boy who came in with a fractured nose and had to have it reset right there in the office (impromptu rhinoplasties may not have been part of the curriculum at the Cornell Medical School). There are patients I would have taken to the operating room, but weve been trying to make due in an office setting without some of the anesthesia we might normally perform with just to get it done, he said. There really is no availability right now for non-life-threatening surgery at the local hospitals. Wise realized the importance of keeping otherwise healthy patients away from those situations through his affiliations with both the Chilton Medical Center in Pompton Plains and St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. Just in receiving some of their staff memos and internal memos (as far back as February), it became obvious that the emergency departments were really overcrowded and the entire medical system was being really stressed as far as patient encounters with potential COVID patients, Wise said. It became an obvious thing for us to try to do just to fill in. The kids that Wise has stitched up obviously hold that fill-in work with the highest regards. Another note of appreciation from a parent whose child was under the emergency care of Wayne plastic surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Wise.Courtesy Kaidi Ilves No doubt some of you have the same question that we put forth to Wise. How in the world, with all this social distancing and park closures, are children suffering injuries that require stitches and nose resettings? I actually feel like were seeing more injuries, Wise said. This has been an opportunity for a lot of parents to try to teach their kids how to ride bikes. Ive seen a few bike injuries at this point. And kid are also on the trampoline in the backyard. Normal kid stuff, but the odds are theyre going to get into more accidents with more time. Wise has been able to capture some quality time with his wife and children, though the good doctor is busier than one might expect despite a relatively vacant office. He is still conducting his plastic surgery practice virtually and he also has been creating helpful videos on such topics as how to effectively wear a mask and use gloves. Obviously, people are at home by themselves. Its actually a great opportunity for me to connect with patients, he said. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but theres actually something more personal about zooming with someone than meeting them in person sometimes. Its really interesting; theyre inviting me into their houses and Im inviting them into my own home. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. This article is part of NJ Is Open*, an important initiative designed to help essential businesses that are still open get the word out and connect with customers. Business owners can become part of our comprehensive resource by filling out this simple Google form. Have several locations? Fill out a new form for each one. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Mike Kinney may be reached at mkinney@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter @MikeKinneyHS. A staff member has tested positive for the coronavirus, closing the Pennsylvania State Police Academy for at least two weeks. According to the Pennsylvania State Police, the 100 cadets currently attending the academy in Hershey will continue with their lessons remotely from home, using the Canvas online learning platform. State police officials say the temporary closure became necessary Monday after an enlisted staff member at the academy tested positive for the coronavirus. All other activities at the academy, including continuing education classes for state police personnel and municipal law enforcement officers, had been suspended since March to promote appropriate social distancing among cadets and staff, state police say. The 158th cadet class graduated in March, leaving only the current 159th class at the academy. The state police Bureau of Training and Education is adjusting the curriculum to try to keep the cadets on track for their scheduled July 24 graduation. When they can return to the academy for on-site training will be based on guidance from the state Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. TROY Detective Sgt. Randall French, the city police officer who shot and killed drunken driving suspect Edson Thevenin nearly four years ago, is on a ventilator and fighting for his life after being diagnosed with COVID-19, according to a Facebook post from his wife and others familiar with the situation. French is being treated at Albany Medical Center Hospital. His family and fellow officers asked for people who recovered from the coronavirus to donate plasma to keep him alive. There are no anti-viral treatments for the disease but early examinations show plasma therapy offers promise for some severely ill coronavirus patients. We need help. My husband is currently fighting for his life, on a ventilator, in the ICU. He has Covid-19. We are scared and praying and trying our best to stay positive, the sergeant's wife, Danielle French, wrote on Facebook Sunday. The post was shared thousands of times. Late Monday, Frenchs wife posted on Facebook that they had found a match for a plasma donor. My contact at AMC said they were inundated with calls today for donating, with most calling on behalf of Randy. All of you are amazing!! You all have helped save many lives today. She continued, Remember there is still a need for this, there are still many people fighting this virus. The Troy Police Benevolent Association also urged people to help. People can call Albany Medical Centers donor hotline at 518-262-9340 to offer possible plasma donation to COVID-19 victims, or email covidserum@amc.edu. Albany Medical Center and St. Peter's Health Partners were among the first hospital systems nationwide to receive federal approval to use the experimental COVID-19 treatment that uses the antibody-rich plasma from a recovered patient to treat a sick person. Albany Med said last Thursday that it had given its first plasma donation to a critically ill patient. Please help if you are able. This disease is nasty and terrifying. Do your part to stop the spread, this is real and it could happen to anyone, Danielle French wrote. The North Greenbush Ambulance Association where French is a paramedic also called on people to call Albany Medical Center if they can help. The ambulance association is the volunteer ambulance corps that serves the town. A source familiar with the case said French entered Albany Med about a week ago with what was thought to be broken ribs from an ATV crash. He was tested and found to be infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. It's not known where French may have been exposed to the disease. French had not worked a paramedic shift for at least three weeks before being hospitalized, North Greenbush officials said Monday. As a police officer, French works in a job that is considered essential but that comes with worries that officers can be exposed to the virus while doing police work. French, who graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in applied mathematics, currently commands the Troy Police Departments drug unit. He is ranked first on the city's civil service list for promotion to captain. But Frenchs attempts to be promoted into the command ranks have been thwarted by his connection to the fatal shooting of Thevenin during an April 17, 2016 traffic stop on Hoosick Street. Thevenin was suspected of drunken driving when French stopped his car. Thevenin drove off and was fatally shot by French, who later claimed he thought his life was at risk. Within days, then-Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove presented a case to the grand jury and allowed French to testify without a waiver of immunity, meaning French could never be charged with the shooting. The grand jury declined to file charges but the state Attorney General's office scrutinized Abelove's handling of the case and the grand jury in that investigation later accused Abelove of committing perjury when he testified before them. City leaders insisted French acted appropriately, but a report from a internal affairs investigation unearthed by lawyers for Thevenin's family cast doubt on French's versions of events. The internal affairs report found French had improperly forced Thevenin's car off the road and later lied about that and his claim of opening fire as he was trapped between his cruiser and the suspect's vehicle. It recommended sustaining four disciplinary charges against French, including unjustifiable use of deadly force and providing false testimony related to the death of the 37-year-old man. No action was taken. President Donald Trump tosses a hat into the crowd as he arrives for a campaign rally in Montoursville, Pa., on May 20, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Trump Reelection Campaign Raises $212 Million In First Quarter President Donald Trumps reelection campaign announced April 12 that it and the Republican National Committee (RNC) jointly raised more than $212 million in the first quarter of 2020. Various fundraising initiatives have topped up the coffers of Trumps reelection bid to more than $240 million in cash-on-hand, the campaign said in a statement. The amount raised in the first quarter is $56 million more than the final quarter of 2019, and represents a 36 percent increase. Americans can see President Trump leading this nation through a serious crisis and they are responding with their continued enthusiastic support for his re-election. Joe Biden, Democrats, and the media continue to oppose his every action, but the people know that President Trump is fighting for them so they are fighting for him as well, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. To date, the Trump campaign and RNC committees have raised more than $677 million, which is about $270 million more than was raised toward President Barack Obamas reelection bid in 2012. The campaign added that in March alone, Trumps reelection bid raised $63 million. The enthusiasm for President Trump and our Party remains strong, and we continue to be all systems go toward November, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. Presumptive Democratic Party nominee Joe Bidens campaign and election committees, as of March 23, jointly raised a total of just over $98 million. After expenditures, Bidens campaign has some $13 million cash-on-hand. Trumps campaign, which said it has more than 880,000 volunteers and has made more than 17 million voter contacts since March 13, recently moved to an all-virtual effort because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, has spread aggressively across the United States, with more than 568,000 infections, according to a Johns Hopkins University database. The number of U.S. fatalities attributed to COVID-19 stands at almost 23,000 as of April 13. Trump, at the April 10 briefing of the COVID-19 task force, said his administrations response to the virus was having an effect. Our experts are monitoring the data from every part of our country having to do with the topic that were here to discuss. In the midst of grief and pain, were seeing clear signs that our aggressive strategy is saving countless lives, Trump said. Ecuador has recorded 7,500 cases of the coronavirus since the first diagnosis was confirmed on February 29. Ecuador has said police removed almost 800 bodies in recent weeks from homes in Guayaquil, the epicentre of the countrys coronavirus outbreak, after COVID-19 the disease caused by the new virus overwhelmed emergency services, hospitals and funeral parlours. Mortuary workers in the Pacific port city have been unable to cope with a backlog, with residents posting videos on social media showing abandoned bodies in the streets. The number we have collected with the taskforce from peoples homes exceeded 700 people, said Jorge Wated, who leads a team of police and military personnel created by the government to help with the chaos unleashed by COVID-19. He later said on Sunday on Twitter that the joint taskforce, in operation for the past three weeks, had retrieved 771 bodies from homes and another 631 from hospitals, whose morgues are full. Wated did not specify the cause of death for the victims, 600 of whom have now been buried by the authorities. Ecuador has recorded 7,500 cases of the coronavirus since the first diagnosis was confirmed on February 29. The coastal province of Guayas accounts for more than 70 percent of those infected in the country, with 4,000 cases in the capital Guayaquil, according to the national government. The military and the police began removing bodies from homes three weeks after the mortuary system in Guayaquil collapsed, causing delays in forensic services and funeral homes under a 15-hour-long daily curfew. Guayaquil residents posted videos on social media of bodies abandoned in the streets, along with messages asking for help to bury their family members. The Ecuadorian government has taken on the task of burying bodies, given the inability of relatives to do so for various reasons, including financial ones. In early April, Wated said medical experts, unfortunately estimate that COVID-19-related deaths in these months will reach between 2,500 and 3,500, just in the province of Guayas. A nurse from New Zealand who was praised by the Prime Minister for her care has been blown away by the recognition, her brother said. Boris Johnson used a speech on Sunday to mention by name the medics who had looked after him, particularly two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. Mr Johnson said the NHS has saved my life, no question after spending seven nights in St Thomas in central London after contracting the coronavirus and was discharged at the weekend. Her brother Rob told the New Zealand Herald the family had spoken with Ms McGee just as she was about to head off to do another night shift. He told the paper: We are all very proud of Jen, not just in the support she gave Boris but what she has been doing helping everyday people. Whilst she is blown away by Boriss recognition, she is just really pleased to see the public recognition for the amazing work the NHS is doing that made her really proud. It's not very often a nurse from Invercargill saves the life of the British Prime Minister Ms McGee attended the Verdon College in Invercargill, and they said the community was so proud and that she had wanted to be a nurse since leaving in 2002. The school said: Our sincerest admiration for the work and dedication of past pupil Jenny McGee who was singled out by UK Prime Minster Boris Johnson for helping him get through his serious illness due to Covid-19. Jenny is described by her past teachers as an absolutely delightful person and someone who had a caring and humble nature. Thanks Jenny for your courage, outstanding work and the example you have provided for everyone at this difficult time. Your old school community is so proud of you! President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has already personally thanked the nurse Luis Pitarma, and... also thanks the commitment of all Portuguese health professionals Meanwhile, mayor of the city Tim Shadbolt told Stuff.co.nz Its not very often a nurse from Invercargill saves the life of the British Prime Minister. The other nurse mentioned by Mr Johnson Luis from Portugal, near Porto has been named as Luis Pitarma and has been thanked by Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. A statement on the presidential website said: President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has already personally thanked the nurse Luis Pitarma, and also thanks the commitment of all Portuguese health professionals who in Portugal and around the world are providing decisive help in the fight to the pandemic. The statement added that president offered encouragement that is also addressed to professionals of other nationalities who, reinforcing the National Health Service, provide an invaluable service to Portugal. The Connecticut National Guard is performing potentially life-saving service to residents as the peak of the coronavirus pandemic approaches. Members helped erect field hospital tents at Danbury Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Hartford; this week they are converting space at state universities into medical care for the sick. At least two members have tested positive for the virus, so far. With this remarkable and vital work going on, the Trump administration wants to divert millions from the National Guard budget to build more wall along the Southern border with Mexico. We have always thought that the mission to build a physical wall was a bad idea, for moral, economic and practical reasons. But now with the desperate fight against the novel coronavirus in our state and around the country, the timing is particularly odious. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is right to stand up for state residents and challenge the diversion of National Guard funds. On Tuesday, Tong joined attorney generals from seven other states to file action to permanently block the federal government from siphoning a total of $3.8 billion from defense budgets for the wall. National Guard units would otherwise lose $790 million to purchase equipment needed to respond to emergencies and natural disasters, such as hurricanes. The Connecticut National Guard needs every cent of its budget right now to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, and our states economy cannot afford to lose any more revenue. The President has no legal right to grab lawfully appropriated taxpayer dollars, Tong said. The law was clear before todays crisis, but it is imperative now that we move immediately to protect public health, our state economy, and national security. The motion follows a March 3 lawsuit by a coalition of 19 states challenging the money shuffle. For Connecticut, the effect of redirecting defense funds goes beyond the National Guard. Four fighter plane engines made by Pratt & Whitney, for a total of $80 million, would be unfunded. This would translate to a $195 million reduction in business sales and ripple effects including a $5.5 million loss of state and local tax revenues, Tong said. We can ill afford this. After Gov. Ned Lamont activated the Connecticut National Guard as part of the COVID-19 emergency response, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security promised full reimbursement for the costs. But with one arm of government giving while another is taking away, a court injunction against the taking becomes necessary. Residents of Connecticut are grateful for the rapid response of the states National Guard. This week units are erecting a third field hospital, at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, as well as climate-controlled tents at hospitals for veterans in West Haven and Newington, and will convert spaces to accommodate 300 hospital beds each at Webster Arena in Bridgeport, Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven and Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. Their work is invaluable in this uncertain time and much more important than an ineffective wall. Singapore is shifting its healthy migrant workers to what it calls 'floating hotels' as coronavirus cases continue to rise in congested clusters in the city-country. According to reports, migrant workers living in dormitories across the country, have become the source of increasing coronavirus cases in recent days. Authorities are reportedly moving healthy workers to Army camps, vacant public housing blocks and accommodation vessels, known as floating hotels. Read: Pune Police's Savage Reply To Man Who Wants To Go Out Amid Lockdown Wins Internet Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan in a Facebook post said, "Each facility can hold a few hundred occupants and can be suitably organised to achieve safe distancing. Meals can be prepared off-site and delivered to the cabins to minimise inter-mingling. We have activated this solution. They are now parked in a restricted area in the Tanjong Pagar Terminal, with strict measures in place to limit movement. They are suitable for foreign workers who are well and not working during this circuit breaker period. The public health measures on infection control and personal hygiene are worked out jointly with MOH." Read: UAE Considering Travel Restrictions On Countries Refusing To Receive Their Citizens The floating accommodations are typically used in the marine and offshore industries in Singapore. According to data by worldometer, there are currently 2,532 confirmed coronavirus cases in Singapore. So far, eight people have died due to COVID-19 in the country, while 31 remain under critical condition. Read: Amul Pays Tribute To Women Working From Home Amid COVID-19 Lockdown Coronavirus outbreak The deadly coronavirus infection has claimed more than 1,15,000 lives across the world and has infected over 18,65,000 people globally since it first broke out in December 2019. China was the most affected country until last month before Italy and Spain surpassed it to record the most number of deaths anywhere in the world due to COVID-19. The virus is believed to have originated from a seafood market in China's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the disease, where animals were reportedly being traded illegally. Read: Good News: London Residents Clap For Medical Workers Fighting COVID-19 On Frontline (Image Credit: Khaw Boon Wan/Facebook) French President Emmanuel Macron is to deliver a speech on prime time television on Monday evening, his fourth address since the start of the coronavirus crisis. He is expected to outline how France will move forward in the coming weeks. Issues he is expected to address include the use face masks, the school calendar and the economy. Macron will begin his speech at 8pm local time (1800GMT), and will refer to the recent indications that the epidemic is starting to plateau, albeit at a high level. France on Sunday reported a lower number of COVID-19 fatalities over the last 24 hours, with 315 deaths in hospital over the last day, compared with 345 the previous day. The health ministry said the total toll from the coronavirus epidemic, including those who have died in nursing homes, now stands at 14,393. For the fourth consecutive day in a row, the number of patients in intensive care fell with 35 fewer patients, making a total of 6,845 people needing such treatment. As France enters its fourth week of lock down, one of the first things many people will be waiting for from Macron is details on how much longer the confinement period will continue. Government sources suggest the lock down will be extended beyond its current 15 April expiration date until at least the 10 May, but could be modified if the situation improves. When will schools reopen? Macron will be looking to warn France that an early relaxation of the lockdown could be disastrous, while reassuring people that the government has a plan to get the country back to normal. One of the other issues covered will no doubt be the question of whether schools will reopen. The Journal du Dimanche newspaper reported that the restrictions could continue until the end of May, with schools only reopening with the new academic year in September. According to political journalist, Nathalie Saint-Cricq, this option is "on the table", but it is being weighed up against the economic impact it could have. Story continues Speaking to France Info, she explained that such a move would mean many parents who could've gone back to work will be stuck trying to juggle child care options at a time when the government needs to reboot the economy. Criticism over face masks When it comes to the issue of protective face masks and testing, she says Macron is likely to clarify the government's overall policy when it comes to handling the epidemic in an effort to regain the public's trust, rather than go in to detail. "It will be a delicate balancing act, of being clear and telling the truth, all while accepting that Macron doesn't have the answer to everything," Nathalie Saint-Cricq says. "This is perhaps the price to pay for the government to regain the public's confidence in order to accompany them through this crisis." There has been considerable criticism aimed at the Macron government in terms of its management and communication over issues such as the stocks of face masks, and whether they may have ignored possible treatments for the virus. However, sources say Macron is not expected to issue rulings on specific questions during his speech, such as whether the wearing of masks in public should become generalised, or on tracing and testing. Economic woes Finally, in terms of the economy, the French public will be eager to hear how the President intends tackle "post lockdown" business activity. France is facing its worst recession since 1945, with 30 to 40 percent of businesses closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the GDP expected to drop six per cent in 2020. At the weekend, the head of Frances employers union Geoffroy Roux de Bezieux, suggested that that people will need to work harder to get the economy back up and running, implying that a rethink would be necessary in terms of working hours and paid holidays. The era of globalised supply chains, which was being built up with its epicentre in China, is falling apart. As the pandemic spread, the system that relied on factories across the world feeding each other with components came to a grinding halt with plants shutting down, and flights and shipments getting stuck. This has underlined the need for localisation, at least of products that a nation believes are essential to its economic and medical security. Luckily the Indian government, for a different set of reasons, had long been planning to break free from global supply chains by forcing manufacturers in certain key sectors to make most, if not all, parts of their products on Indian soil. The government last month announced plans to set up hubs that could supply drug manufacturers with raw materials currently shipped in from China. The Centre has also moved to incentivise electronics manufacturing, again something that India imports mostly from China and East Asian nations. Indian engineers and firms have started making personal protective equipment for healthcare workers, while car factories here are trying their hand at making ventilators for sick patients. Need, they say, is the mother of all change. Obviously, the government is not going to stop with forcing changes in the structure of just these two industries. It has more ambitious plans. It wants to encourage Make In India in a number of spheres, ranging from defence and shipping to aviation and renewable energy. While the new boost to the initiativewhich started in the early days of UPA-1is welcome as it will help create jobs at a time when joblessness is increasing, we have to realise that there are limits to it. No nation can produce everything. We cannot shift back to autarky or to small-scale localised manufacturing. As the global economy gets back to normal over the next few months or years, it will again demand that every nation buys at least as much as it sells. The Bhutanese Government evacuated as many as 134 Bhutanese students across universities in Chandigarh and Punjab in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. India is under a 21-day lockdown till April 14 with most states extending their lockdown period amid soaring cases. The Bhutanese students who were stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University near Jalandhar were airlifted by a special flight arranged by the Bhutanese government. This news was confirmed by KBS Sidhu, the Chief Secretary of the Punjab Government. Read: Bhutan Increases Quarantine Period To 21 Days Amid Coronavirus Outbreak 134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University, PhagwaraJalandhar, were allowed them to leave for Bhutan through a special flight arranged by Bhutanese Government. KBS Sidhu, IAS, Spl. Chief Secretary, Punjab. (@kbssidhu1961) April 13, 2020 Read: PM Modi Appreciates Bhutan PM For Contributing $100,000 To The COVID-19 Emergency Fund Last week, Bhutan had thanked India for facilitating the evacuation of Bhutanese nationals stranded in India due to coronavirus lockdown. Bhutan has been evacuating its nationals from India over the past few weeks. As many as 140 Bhutanese nationals comprising mostly students were flown back to their country back in March. The Himalayan country has also sealed its border with India last month to arrest the spread of coronavirus. Coronavirus in Bhutan The country so far has reported only four positive cases of the Coronavirus as per the reports of Johns Hopkins University, however, it had decided to extend its quarantine period for 21 days, with effect from March 31. The first case of the virus came into limelight on March 5 where the patient was a 76-year old tourist from the United States and had visited Assam before arriving in Bhutan. Bhutan last month had decided to contribute $100,000 to the COVID-19 Emergency Fund which PM Modi had proposed to set up in his meeting with the SAARC nations. (With Agency Inputs) Read: Lockdown: 140 Bhutanese Flown Back Home In Special Flight From Chandigarh Read: India's Covid Cases Rise To 9152 & Death Toll To 308 As Testing Increases To 1.95 Lakhs FAIRFIELD Everybody is talking about the coronavirus, but few have had the remarkable direct experiences stemming from it that this Fairfield native has. Jim Ercolani not only went through 12 intense days of being homebound in Fairfield with COVID-19 himself, but also lost his father, James Ercolani, to the virus in the same week. I never had anything like this ever in my life, Jim Ercolani, a fourth generation Fairfield resident., said of the illness. Ive had flus before but this was ongoing, he said. It went on for 12 days. I had no energy. I couldnt get out of bed. For the past year or so Ercolani, a Manhattan-based real estate agent, had been living back at home with his father, following the death of his mother in 2018. My father was 85 with diabetes, he said of the 1956 Fairfield University graduate, who remained a devoted Stags supporter throughout his life, so he had underlying conditions. He described his father as a popular and gregarious man, a retired banker who still maintained a good support network, as well as close ties with his family and St. Thomas Church, where he was a longtime active member. On Monday, March 16, Jim Ercolani was in Manhattan showing apartments when he first realized he felt ill. I felt achy on the Metro-North going home, he said, and then I had a low-grade fever that went high-grade throughout that night. That next morning, he knew he was pretty ill, suffering from a fever that was topping out just under 104. He admitted that he had not been informed about precautions going into the illness, and didnt even immediately realize what was wrong. I didnt really fully understand the Corona, he said. Id been playing stupid and not really paying attention to the news. After he had just started to learn more details about the current situation that week, he finally took a trip to the grocer to get some supplies. It made a stark impression on him. I went to Whole Foods in Fairfield and people were fighting over food, he said. Two women were going at it. One woman took every one of the frozen meals, he said, with the other, also apparently a young mother, raising objections. I never saw people fight over frozen meals, he said, watching one hit the other on the arm, and a very brief but shocking scuffle exploding and then quickly dissipating. That next day after returning on the train, Ercolanis father informed him that it looked like he too was getting sick. He said, I think I have what you have, he remembered. The following day, Wednesday, Ercolani went into New York, where he got a COVID-19 test at Lenox Hill Hospital. They were very efficient, he said, bringing him to an isolated room, where he was kept comfortable for about two hours before testing was completed. They called me Sunday and said You tested positive, he said, though by that point he and his father knew what it was they had. The fever and its accompanying issues was the main problem. Ercolani said the two struggled to simply maintain rest and continue a regiment of Tylenol. He said the fever would get worse at night, topping 103, but would wane with activity during the day, dropping to around 100. In the daytime if I were to do something it would go down, he said, and then it would flare up at night. I would force myself to go to bed, he said. I would take a lukewarm shower and I would take a Tylenol. Still, he and his father had no appetite for food, and he remembered a feeling of wanting to vomit when he tried to eat something. As struggles continued with fever for both of them, Ercolani said he reached out to their local hospital but was discouraged from admission. The hospital was kind of dismissive, he said, being told it was really the last place he wanted to be at that time given its crowding and chaos. Instead they continued, on the advice of Lenox Hill Hospital, where he said the staff was helpful and informative, to home treat. Theres no medication for you, they said. All you can do is drink plenty of fluids and take Tylenol and itll go away. It was creepy, he said. It was scary. And if youve ever had a fever before, a high-grade fever, it just feels so awful. I had no cough, he said. I had no sore throat. I just had a fever that was relentless. Ercolani said he would sometimes fall down but be too weak to even get himself upright again without a long wait. Likewise, his father, whose diabetes constituted a terrible pre-existing condition for COVID-19, struggled with fever and the accompanying weakness and loss of appetite. Thankfully some of my siblings came and they got me Gatorade and stuff like that, he said. Me and my dad were both doing that. Theres really not a lot you can do unless you cant breathe, he said the staff at Lenox Hill told him. Though he had no particular respiratory symptoms from the virus, James Ercolanis years of medication for his diabetes, as well as his advanced age in general, began to take their toll. Due to his own symptoms, his son had gotten to the point where he was struggling to help care for him in the throes of the virus. The hospital was a last resort, Ercolani said, but by the end of the week the senior Ercolani said he couldnt take the trauma anymore. His fever was relentless and he had no energy, he said. And he couldnt stand up. Take me to the hospital, he told his family. I cant do this anymore. He went in on a Sunday evening at 10:30, Ercolani said, March 22. Fairfield paramedics arrived in full haz-mat gear and brought him to St. Vincents Medical Center. Tuesday at 5 p.m. he went into a coma, he said. They were like, There was nothing we could do. He died officially of heart failure on Saturday, March 28. For Jim Ercolani, meanwhile, an ongoing regiment of lukewarm showers and Tylenol ultimately began taming the fever. I couldnt see him because the hospital was shut down and I was sick, he said, noting they gave him the chance to say goodbye by phone. Ercolani finally began seeing recovery himself over the next couple of days. The fever lifted, and though he had lost 22 pounds from the experience, the end was finally in sight. Once you have it, youre immune, because you build up antibodies for this, he said, or so medical science believes at this time. Presumably you cant get it again. Still, Ercolani, who is still slowly getting back his energy, uses precautions in public. So I wear a mask, he said. I avoid contact as best I can. Like others, Ercolani hopes the epidemic passes soon. Hes feeling better and grateful to have survived this trying experience, he said, but now that he has his health back, Theres nowhere to go! Coronavirus The Anambra State alleged COVID-19 Index case victim, Chief Marcel Eze has accused the government of the state of peddling lies against his person. He made the declaration yesterday while denying that he tested positive for coronavirus. According to him, the governments release that he tested positive for coronavirus was aimed at tarnishing his image. Speaking with Vanguard yesterday in a telephone interview, Chief Eze, who said he deals on Pharmaceuticals, challenged the Anambra State government, particularly the state Commissioner for Health to show him and the world the alleged lab test result that confirmed him positive. The angry Chief Eze said that he has been abandoned without any care, food or any medical attention since Friday he was taken to General Hospital Onitsha after a call from the State Commissioner for Health. Chief Eze also called on Governor Willie Obiano to thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding his alleged current travail in General Hospital Onitsha, just as he challenged the governor to visit the hospital to hear his story, claiming that the state is being deceived over the claim that he tested positive to Coronavirus. Chief Ezeh also said that he has not visited Lagos State since January, contrary to the claim in some quarters that he visited Lagos where he allegedly contacted the virus, saying that the last time I visited Lagos State was in December and I have been in Anambra State since January. According to Eze, I was admitted for a heart problem at Prof. Nwilo Heart Foundation, St Joseph Hospital Adazi Nnukwu, and was discharged after being confirmed okay by the doctors. While I was in the hospital, three people came and introduced themselves that they are from government and are conducting test on Coronavirus that they will take my sample like others in the hospital, and I said no problem. They brought something like cotton bud but very long with both ends having cottons, and inserted it into my mouth and nose and later collected it and left. That was before I was discharged from St Joseph Hospital Adazi Nnukwu. For three days before I left the hospital, I did not see them again. I was discharged on Tuesday and I went to one of my doctor friends in Awka who advised me to take bed rest in his hospital to avoid disturbance because of the type of person I am and I agreed. While I was there, on Wednesday by 11pm, a call came into my phone and on picking the call, a man identified himself as the Commissioner for Health in Anambra State, and he told me they have been looking for me and I asked him for what, and he did not say any reasonable thing to me and because it was late, I told him to come to the hospital the next day. On Thursday, the Commissioner came with some of his officials to the hospital and told me that the test conducted on me was positive for Coronavirus and I told him that St Joseph Hospital from where I was discharged on Tuesday did not take any sample from me. They brought a stretcher and asked me to enter. That was the way I found myself in General Hospital Onitsha where they currently dumped me without food, water or any medical care since Friday they brought me from Awka to Onitsha, on this their fraudulent claim of me testing positive to Coronavirus. Reacting yesterday to the allegation of the coronavirus index case, Anambra State government said the man does not possess a good frame of mind to discuss his condition. The commissioner for information and public enlightenment, Mr. Don Adinuba told Vanguard that the mans problem was that his people were tormenting him psychologically and emotionally in the social media, advising him to stop granting media interviews that would not help him in any way. Adinuba said: I wonder why he is saying that he was dumped. I will advise him to stop granting interviews since he doesnt have the state of mind to speak on this matter. I know that he is dispirited. We understand his situation because for someone to be isolated in a very large compound with only two family members, that person will not feel good. What he needs is peace of mind especially when his people are tormenting him psychologically and emotionally. According to the commissioner, the index case is not in a position to know if he is positive for coronavirus or not. He added that it was NCDC that brought the result of his test. We heard the result just like other people and it is wrong for him to be blaming anybody in the state for his situation, the commissioner said. She and a fellow organizer spoke to hospital officials about their plan and called the police departments in the towns they would drive through, La Grange, La Grange Park and Western Springs. She learned officers could not help with traffic control or closing streets because what they were doing did not comply with the governors directive to stay at home. Donald Trump has promoted a tweet calling for the firing of Dr Anthony Fauci, after the White Houses top infectious diseases expert suggested the US president cost lives by delaying social distancing measures. Amid an escalating coronavirus pandemic, which has so far killed more than 22,000 people in the US alone, Dr Fauci appeared to confirm details of a bombshell New York Times report which described the bungling response to the crisis by Mr Trump and senior aides. Asked by CNNs Jake Tapper why the administration failed to act in mid-February when he and other officials advised measures to slow the spread of the virus, Dr Fauci said: You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it's not. But we - it is what it is. We are where we are right now. In a rambling overnight Twitter tirade, Mr Trump reacted furiously to the Times report. After a series of complaints about the Lamestream Media, Mr Trump shared a tweet by DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican former California congressional candidate, which read: Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci. There is no evidence Dr Fauci played down the diseases threat in February. Alongside the message, Mr Trump himself tweeted: Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. The tweet was the presidents most public message yet about his reported growing frustration with Dr Fauci, who has become a hated figure among some on the far-right for his occasional public contradictions of Mr Trumps misinformation about the virus. And despite the suggestion he failed to support the travel restrictions placed on China, Dr Fauci had by the end of January told the White House he supported the move, which came into effect on 2 February. Late on Friday, following his complaint about Dr Fauci, Mr Trump tweeted: I am working hard to expose the corruption and dishonesty in the Lamestream Media. That part is easy, the hard part is WHY? He later added: The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the paper itself. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so. Despite Mr Trumps repeated claim his China travel ban saved thousands of lives and is evidence he has adequately handled the crisis, experts have said the little evidence there is suggests the move at best delayed the spread of Covid-19 time his administration failed to use by delaying social distancing measures and widespread testing. UAE Central Bank Governor Abdulhamid Saeed has emphasised the importance of extending support to private sector companies and individuals affected by Covid-19 as part of the Targeted Economic Support Scheme (TESS). He was speaking during his first meeting with CEOs of banks operating in the country. The meeting was part of the central bank's mandate to safeguard financial stability in the UAE, said a Wam news agency report. At the meeting, the CEOs endorsed the exceptional measures taken by the Central Bank of UAE (CBUAE) in a very short time span and welcomed the efforts of the bank to support the banking sector and the national economy from the impact of the spread of Covid-19 and expressed their willingness to participate in the TESS. In addition, the CEOs confirmed to the CBUAE their decision to avail the benefits of TESS. The Governor hosted an in-depth discussion of the measures implemented under the TESS and stressed the importance of banks commitment to making active use of the TESS and utilising the scheme to the full extent, for the benefit of corporates, individuals and the economy in general. A number of CEOs shared the progress of their utilization of TESS till date and their targeted outreach programme to support their affected customers by Covid-19; including individuals, private corporate customers, and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Since the launch of the TESS on March 14, 2020, a total amount of Dh10 billion has been provided to banks in the form of zero interest funding, and over Dh 61 billion in the form of lowered cash reserve requirements, which are to be deployed to directly benefit companies and consumers who have been adversely impacted by the pandemic. The Central Bank encourages all boards and management of banks to accelerate their confirmation to implement TESS measures as soon as possible, it said. CBUAE will also be reaching out to the banks during the coming days to better understand how they plan to serve the objectives of TESS and help their customers to cope with the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic, said teh CBUAE. The Governor underlined that the breadth and depth of banks participation in the scheme will be a fundamental factor in its success. He added: "It is encouraging to see that banks operating in the UAE are drawing upon the Targeted Economic Support Scheme to support the liquidity needs of their customers, as we aim to cushion the economic impact of the pandemic on companies as well as individuals. I am confident that the scheme will act as a catalyst to strengthen economic activity and effectively mitigate financial risk, while also ensuring that the businesses are prepared for the post-Covid-19 era. In addition, I would like to thank participating banks for their collaboration and positive response to support their affected customers at their unprecedented time". Saeed noted: "We urge banks and financial institutions to act in the best interest of retail clients, private sector corporates and SMEs, which are the growth engine of our economy." Banks which have yet to confirm their participation in the TESS are called upon to do so at the earliest, to protect our economy, he said. The UK has endured a sombre day in its battle against coronavirus as the death toll soared beyond 10,000 amid warnings the UK could be the worst-hit country in Europe. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, confirmed that some 737 people had died in hospital from the virus, taking the tally of UK deaths from Covid-19 to 10,612 on Sunday. The news came as one of the governments most senior scientific advisers warned that the UK was likely to be one of the worst, if not the worst, affected countries in Europe by the outbreak. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson said the NHS saved my life, no question in an emotional tribute to frontline staff as he was discharged from hospital after a seven-day stay. In other developments: Mr Hancock declined to apologise to nurses being forced to choose between working and staying safe amid a furious row over shortages of protective equipment (PPE) The health secretary confirmed a new NHS app will warn if people come into close contact with someone experiencing coronavirus symptoms Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg confirmed parliament was on course to return on 21 April with work underway for a virtual Commons Transport staff may be one of the first sent back to work if ministers decide to lift lockdown restrictions on a sector-by-sector basis Labour demanded the government publish its lockdown strategy as splits emerged in the cabinet over when to lift the most restrictive measures On Sunday, the UK became the fifth country to surpass 10,000 deaths from coronavirus, after France, Spain, the United States and Italy. Mr Hancock told the daily Downing Street briefing: Today marks a sombre day in the impact of this disease as we join the list of countries who have seen more than 10,000 deaths related to coronavirus. The fact that over 10,000 people have now lost their lives to this invisible killer demonstrates just how serious this coronavirus is and why the national effort that everyone is engaged in is so important. Earlier, Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, warned the UK could end up with the worst coronavirus death rate in Europe. Numbers in the UK have continued to go up, he told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show. And yes, the UK is likely to be certainly one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe. Pressed on the prediction, Mr Hancock said the future of this virus is unknowable and that there had been a flattening of the curve as the majority of the public were observing social distancing measures. The health secretary also confirmed work was under way on a contact tracing app by NHSX, the governments innovation unit, which will alert users when they have been in contact with a person with coronavirus symptoms. Mr Hancock also came under pressure to apologise to frontline staff amid a growing row over lack of adequate PPE for health workers. High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Show all 18 1 /18 High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Najaf, Iraq A man holds a pocket watch at noon, at an almost empty market near the Imam Ali shrine Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Bangkok, Thailand Wat Phra Si Rattana Satsadaram (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, part of The Grand Palace) Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Prague, Czech Republic An empty street leading to the historic Old Town Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Washington DC, US Lawn stretching towards the Capitol, home of Congress Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Jerusalem's Old City A watch showing the time in front of Damascus Gate Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world London, UK The Houses of Parliament seen from Westminster Bridge Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Wuhan, China Empty lanes in the city that saw the first outbreak of disease Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Havana, Cuba The Malecon road and esplanade winds along the city's seafront Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Cairo, Egypt A little busier than elsewhere: midday traffic in Tahrir Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Berlin, Germany The Brandenburg Gate, the only surviving city gate in the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Caracas, Venezuela Bolivar Avenue, opened in 1949 and the site of many demonstrations and rallies Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Moscow, Russia Spasskaya Tower (left) on the eastern wall of the Kremlin, and St Basil's Cathedral Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Istanbul,Turkey The harbourside Eminonu district is usually buzzing with activity Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New Delhi, India Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard that runs through the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Amman, Jordan The Roman amphitheatre that dates back to the 2nd century AD Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New York City, US The main concourse of Grand Central station in Manhattan Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Kiev, Ukraine Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the site of many political protests since the end of the Soviet era Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Accra, Ghana The odd walker out in the midday sun on Ring Road Central Reuters The Royal College of Nursing issued new guidance to its members urging them to refuse to treat patients as a last resort if appropriate PPE was not available. Asked whether he would apologise to medics who are being put in that impossible position, Mr Hancock did not answer directly, instead saying: We are working night and day to make sure that we get the right PPE. The thing I want to do is pay tribute to the unbelievable of a huge number of people to get to the position where we are in now, which is improving, but we wont rest until we get there. Mr Hancock said it was impossible to commit to a date for all frontline staff to have the protective equipment they need, despite insisting record amounts of kit were in the system. Elsewhere, the prime minister paid an emotional tribute to the NHS staff who saved his life as he battled coronavirus at St Thomas Hospital, in London. Mr Johnson singled out Jenny, a nurse from New Zealand, and Luis, from Portugal, for particular praise, who were at his bedside during his three days in intensive care. Boris Johnson discharged from hospital The prime minister said it was hard to find the words to express my debt to the medics who saved him, adding: The reason my body started to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed. So that is how I also know that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second of every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who are acting with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis. Mr Johnson will not return to work immediately following advice from his doctors, instead moving to Chequers, where he will convalesce. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is acting as stand-in prime minister while Mr Johnson recovers. Actor-turned-writer Lisa Ray moved to Singapore a few days ago and has shared a post about life in Singapore amid coronavirus spread. She also posted pictures of her wearing a mask as she stepped out to buy coffee. Sharing her experience of going out in public in such times, she wrote, Here in SINGAPORE (I have to emphasise my location as were not under curfew, but in circuit breaker mode) I find myself even more watchful on my morning coffee runs along Roberston Quay. I watch peoples expressions, their eyes lighting up in excitement when they recognise a friend and then offering a muted greeting across the mandated one metre safe distancing length. Others cant help themselves and gather in uneasy clusters outside coffee shops, serving take out and run morning delicacies. Some people walk with clenched jaws, their anxiety working beneath their skin. Talking about the black mask shes wearing in the picture and exerting on the need to change our mindset, she said, Im wearing a government issued reusable 3 ply fabric mask (thank you Singapore!) so no more excuses for reckless exposure. Theres a part of me that wants to volunteer as a social distancing ambassador and help enforce the rules. I understand its difficult for some people to adjust but were in the midst of a global health crisis and its no longer about the individual. We each have to shift our mindset. Its not a sacrifice but a necessity to stay home, stay sane and keep your distance for the welfare of us all. Also read: Varun Dhawan shares video of deserted Juhu beach amid lockdown, says Mother Nature will heal this situation She further stressed on the need to embrace the change and added, And theres no way to sugarcoat this, but living like this a precursor to seismic change. Dont be married to perceptions of normal and they way things were before. Youll only cause yourself dukka or suffering. Experiment with flow and acceptance. its all in the mind. #hijabieyes #safedistancingworks #staysafe. Meanwhile, she also shared a picture of one of her twin daughters sitting quietly on a sofa and captioned it, Lockdown Diaries. Singapore Edition. Married to Jason Dehni, the actor is mother to one-year-old twin daughters Sufi and Soleil. She has also released a book titled Close to the Bone about her battle with cancer. Follow @htshowbiz for more Martin Traiser of Yarmouth, a member of the Marine Corps League, holds his rifle at attention during the playing of Taps at the ceremony at Portland City Hall that was held after the Veterans Day parade on Monday, November 11, 2019. As many as 2 million veterans could miss out on the federal stimulus payments that started arriving in Americans' bank accounts this week, prompting outcries from advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The checks can total up to $1,200 per person and are being dispersed through the IRS, which requires eligible households to file a tax return in order to receive their money. But many veterans and their survivors who rely solely on government benefits, such as disability payments from Veterans Affairs, do not typically have to submit a return. This year, that means they could also fall through the cracks of the stimulus program. "I served my country. I was ready to go to war," said Dennis Arellano, 61, a Marine Corps veteran who now lives in San Jose. "I think they should consider something about that." Veterans groups estimate roughly 1.9 million veterans and their survivors could be in this category, based on the number who were in a similar situation during the Great Recession. Advocates argue that the federal government already has bank account information for those households since they receive veteran's benefits. And they're calling on the VA, IRS and Treasury Department to work together to waive the filing requirement. "We are gravely concerned that absent quick and decisive action from the Administration, millions of seriously disabled veterans, their survivors and caregivers who are among the most vulnerable Americans during the ongoing coronavirus health crisis may never receive this critical financial support," a dozen of the nation's largest veterans service organizations wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and VA Secretary Robert Wilkie this month. On Friday, the IRS launched an online tool that allows households who do not typically file a tax return to submit basic personal information in order to receive their payments quickly. The site specifically encourages disabled veterans and their survivors to fill out the form. "President Trump, Secretary Mnuchin and the administration are fully committed to providing fast and direct economic impact payments to all Americans entitled to them, and we are particularly sensitive to the needs of our nations' heroes and survivors," a Treasury spokeswoman said. But the effort falls short of the fix that lawmakers have demanded. Many affected veterans may not have a computer or internet access to submit their information, forcing them to venture out of their homes to a post office to get the necessary forms instead. Earlier this month, Treasury waived the filing requirement entirely for Social Security recipients. Veterans should also be able to receive their payments automatically, they said. "To put this hurdle in front of them will be wrong," House Veterans Affairs Chairman Mark Takano said of the filing requirement. "They are people who need this stimulus payment the most." Earlier this month, Takano and other leading House Democrats, including Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, urged Treasury to resolve the problem. In the Senate, Democrats called automatic payments "the fastest, most cost-effective way to provide desperately needed help" in a letter to the Trump administration. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona sent a similar letter, stating "our nation's veterans deserve better." Takano said he spoke recently with a top official at the VA who expressed "eagerness" to resolve the problem by cross-referencing agency databases. "I believe they can find a solution," he told CNBC. "They've done it before." In the meantime, Patrick Murray, who handles legislative affairs for the VFW, called the IRS' new online tool a good step in the right direction. The challenge now, he said, is educating veterans about the guidelines for getting payments and the resources available for them as new information is released. Arellano, the Marine Corp veteran, was not planning to file a tax return this year until he heard about the stimulus. He said that he lives off the $435 a month that he receives in VA benefits and that he's confused about what paperwork needs to be filled out. But he knows that it would make a big difference -- both financially and mentally. "I'm alone, you know. So if something happens to me, they're going to open the door and they're going to find me dead," he said. "That's what I'm really, really scared of. If I feel bad, there's nobody I can call." Politicians are "playing with people's lives" by arguing over enlisting the military to help deal with the Covid-19 emergency, a former senior Army officer has said. Tim Collins claimed lives, jobs and health play second fiddle to politics, and said the situation was "typical" of Northern Ireland. The ex-colonel and author, who fought in the Iraq War, was speaking after formal requests to the Army for assistance, made by Health Minister Robin Swann, sparked a political row. Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill criticised Mr Swann for making the decision "unilaterally". Mr Collins advised Mrs O'Neill to "get out of the way" if she was not helping. He described the row as "typical Northern Ireland", adding: "It is Northern Ireland politicians playing politics with people's lives." Read More Last week Mr Swann made formal requests for military aid to the civil authorities (MACA) to help distribute equipment and plan for a Nightingale hospital on the site of the former Maze prison. He earlier stated his intention to go to the Executive prior to making a decision. "I believe the Army's skills and logistical expertise could assist with the redistribution of essential life-saving equipment across Northern Ireland to ensure that all hospitals have the materials and resources required to fully enact their surge plans," Mr Swann said. Read More A spokesperson for the minister said: "The Health Minister publicly stated his intention to make a request for military assistance on Friday, April 3. That request was submitted and both the First and deputy First Ministers were informed of the decision." But Mrs O'Neill said the minister acted "unilaterally and without consultation with Executive colleagues" when he requested assistance from the Army. Mrs O'Neill - who wants to meet the Health Minister, Secretary of State Brandon Lewis, Tanaiste Simon Coveney and the PSNI to discuss the issue - added: "Sinn Fein has made it clear we will not rule out any measure necessary to save lives, protect the public and tackle the spread of coronavirus. "However, no proposal to use British military personnel in the north for roles normally performed by civilians has come before the Executive." Expand Close Michelle ONeill Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Michelle ONeill Mrs O'Neill said the Department of Health had hired a local civilian contractor "to scope out building a HSC-led civilian field hospital". She added: "The Health Minister has a responsibility to exhaust all options, including the use of other blue light public services and civilian contractors, to ensure ventilators and life-saving equipment are moved swiftly to where they are needed most." On April 3, Mr Swann said: "I'll probably put forward a MACA request to the Executive office at the start of next week to make sure that process is in place, because I can't afford to do anything that puts anybody's life at risk." Mr Collins said: "Any army, not just the British Army... is likely to be trained in nuclear, biological and chemical (warfare), and the army of the land is. They have the logistics, the trucks, other equipment, and young fit men and women who can do the job. "Only in Northern Ireland, out of anywhere in the world, would you have anyone thinking twice. It is politics, people's lives, people's jobs, healthcare, everything takes second place to politics. Asked specifically about Sinn Fein's position, Mr Collins said: "We have a saying in the Army - if you are not helping, get out of the way." He added: "In any country in the world getting capable, effective and ready assistance by an organisation equipped and trained to deal with this crisis in order to save lives would be an absolute no brainer... except in Northern Ireland. Saving lives is of course second to sectarian point scoring. "When this is over people need to look back at their politicians and remember what their priorities were when lives were at risk - and it was not the lives and livelihood of the unfortunate folk of Northern Ireland." Finance Minister Conor Murphy on April 3 said Sinn Fein would consider a request for military assistance if it was put before the Executive. "We are about saving lives and that's the number one priority, we're not about politics in this game at this time - all rules are out the window," he said. "We are about saving lives and protecting the community so any assistance we can get from anywhere if that's what it lends itself towards then we will absolutely consider that, that's our priority." SDLP leader Colum Eastwood tweeted that "15 people died of coronavirus overnight in the North. I'll support anything that gets PPE and ventilators to where it needs to go. Let's stop playing politics and do whatever it takes to save lives." Justice Minister Naomi Long said Mr Swann has her full support, and the Alliance Party's, "for taking extraordinary measures to try to save people's lives". Former DUP Health Minister Edwin Poots said it is Mr Swann's job to keep the number of deaths as low as possible, and it is the role of the Executive ministers to assist him. Expand Close Edwin Poots Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Edwin Poots He added: "I don't care if the British Army bring their skills to creating an emergency hospital, every person whose life is saved in it ought to be glad of the help. "For example, whenever the order for PPE was made with the Irish Government, which didn't come to fruition, I had no issue with that because we needed it. "I have no issue with bringing in the British Army and I don't believe that anyone else should either." First Minister Arlene Foster said she fully supports the Army being used. Read More People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll does not support any proposals that give the Army "a coordinating or security role to deal with the Covid-19 crisis". He said: "Both the Tory Government and the Executive's approach to the Covid-19 pandemic has been shambolic from the beginning and this latest proposal to bring in the British Army is further evidence of this. "We are concerned about how this latest announcement may open the door to a security or military-led approach to deal with a health pandemic." We reached out to the New York organizers early on, said Metzger, sharing a Zoom video conference call with LeMaster, Benitez and Plauche. They were very helpful in the initial phase." He noted the Chicago effort represents a different sort of coalition that reflects the diversity of the Chicago film landscape. And we felt it was important to get more feedback from people working at theaters while all this was developing. MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A United States federal judge on Sunday ruled that Alabama cannot ban abortions as part of the states response to the coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued a preliminary injunction sought by clinics to prevent the state from forbidding abortions as part of a ban on elective medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thompson said abortion providers can decide whether a procedure can wait. Based on the current record, the defendants efforts to combat COVID-19 do not outweigh the lasting harm imposed by the denial of an individuals right to terminate her pregnancy, by an undue burden or increase in risk on patients imposed by a delayed procedure, or by the cloud of unwarranted prosecution against providers, Thompson wrote in an opinion. The ruling was a victory for abortion rights advocates who are fighting efforts in Texas, Ohio, Alabama and other states to prohibit abortion services during the COVID-19 pandemic. States have argued they need to conserve medical equipment and potential hospital beds during the pandemic. Abortion clinics in Alabama said they sought the injunction after the state refused to clarify that the clinics could continue to operate. Alabama had ordered a postponement of medical procedures except in cases of a medical emergency or to avoid serious harm from an underlying condition or disease, or necessary as part of a patients ongoing and active treatment. A lawyer representing clinics praised the decision. Preventing someone from getting an abortion doesnt do anything to stop the COVID-19 virus, it just takes the decision whether to have a child out of their hands, said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Unions Reproductive Freedom Project. The Alabama attorney generals office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Similar legal fights over abortions during the pandemic are ongoing in Texas, Ohio and Oklahoma. Agricultural commodity bourse, National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Ltd (NCDEX), has received capital market regulator Sebi's approval to launch the Rs 500-crore initial public offer (IPO). The offering comprises a fresh issue aggregating up to Rs 100 crore and an offer for sale of up to 1.44 crore shares, according to the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP). In an update on April 10, the regulator has given observations to NCDEX's IPO on April 9. Sebi's observations are mandatory for any company to launch public issues like initial share-sale, follow-on public offer (FPO) and rights issue. The company had approached the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) with its IPO papers in February. After BSE and MCX, this would be the third listing by an exchange. The public issue is expected to raise about Rs 500 crore, including from the fresh offering of shares, merchant banking sources said. Build India Capital Advisors LLP, Canara Bank, Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative, Investcorp Private Equity Fund I are among the selling shareholders. Besides, Jaypee Capital Services, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, Oman India Joint Investment Fund andPunjab National Bankwill also sell their stakes. Last month, the regulator had sought clarification from the merchant banker of NCDEX regarding its proposed IPO. The National Stock Exchange (NSE) holds 15 percent stake in the agricultural commodity exchange, while Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and NABARD have 11.10 percent each. IFFCO has 10 per cent,Oman India Joint Investment Fund 10 per cent and Punjab National Bank 7.29 per cent, among others, according the DRHP. NCDEX has proposed to utilise the net proceeds towards contribution to the core settlement guarantee fund, net worth requirements of National Commodity Clearing Limited and general corporate purposes, as per the document. The book running lead managers to the offer are ICICI Securities and SBI Capital Markets. ICICI Securities is the coordinating lead manager for the issue. The shares are proposed to be listed on the BSE and NSE. The exchange offers services across the entire post-harvest agricultural commodities value chain by utilising a varied presence, which has enabled it to create a wide network of stakeholders and market participants. It also engages in research, training and building awareness in agricultural commodities market through NCDEX Institute of Commodity Markets and Research. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) NOVA LIMA, Brazil, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The leading medical education group in Brazil - based on number of medical school seats - Afya Limited (AFYA) is committed to the safety and health of its students. Afya believes that Medicine classes and knowledge gain even more relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly due to the geographical distribution of its medical courses in Brazil; Almost 70% of Afya students are in the North and Northeast regions of the country. The first practical measure taken by Afya was to quickly replace all non-practical on-site classes to Afyas online platform in order to minimize the impact on the academic calendar. Then, Afya decided to open its online platform during the quarantine period to other medical institutions without any cost. Over nine thousand medical students of 30 public and private schools are already accessing Afya's platform to enhance their learning process during these challenging moments. Concerning the mission of transforming medical education in Brazil and its social responsibility with communities, Afya donated masks, gloves and other safety equipment to health departments and hospitals to the 13 cities where its medical courses are installed, with 6,600 students enrolled: Palmas, Porto Nacional and Araguaina in Tocantins; Sao Joao del-Rei, Ipatinga and Itajuba in Minas Gerais; Teresina and Paranaiba in Piaui; Itabuna and Vitoria da Conquista in Bahia; Itaperuna in Rio de Janeiro; Maraba in Para and Pato Branco in Parana. A free course of Conducts for emergencies in COVID-19 Afya, which delivers an end-to-end physician-centric ecosystem that empowers students to be lifelong medical learners from the moment they join us as medical students through their medical residency preparation, graduation program and continuing medical education activities, created a free course of Conducts for emergencies in COVID-19 for institutions as hospitals, medical associations, medical schools and also interested professionals and students. The course focuses on mechanical ventilation, respiratory emergencies and imaging diagnosis. Story continues "The goal is to help physicians and resident students who are on the front line of patient care during the new coronavirus crisis. The on-line training is provided by two pulmonologists and a cardiologist from Afya and also selected guest specialists. Medical students may also access the content on http://www.afya.com.br/emergenciasmedicas," explains Virgilio Gibbon, Afya's CEO. About Afya Afya is a leading medical education group in Brazil based on number of medical school seats, delivering an end-to-end physician-centric ecosystem that serves and empowers students to be lifelong medical learners from the moment they join us as medical students through their medical residency preparation, graduation program, and continuing medical education activities. https://ir.afya.com.br/ Contacts: Investor Relations: ir@afya.com.br " " There are about 300 eastern lowland gorillas in the GRACE habitat that you can watch live via webcam. Grace Gorillas Staying quarantined all the time probably has you stir crazy by now and maybe even wondering what's going on in the outside world you know with the animals. And with zoos and aquariums off-limits, there are only so many ways to catch up with our friends in the wild. But no worries, you and you kids can still check in on some pretty amazing species via webcam and we found five that do the trick. Depending on what hour you tune, you might be treated to the animals during an actual livestream, but if not, no worries. Most of these kid-friendly webcams also include highlight reels that provide hours of footage that's ready for watching. Just press play and become mesmerized as you watch gorillas in the lush forests of Africa snooze unencumbered or watch brown bears in Alaska catching salmon as they swim upstream. Advertisement Gorillas in the Mist The Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE) is an organization dedicated to the conservation of the eastern lowland gorilla (Grauer's gorillas) in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The program focuses on the long-term rehabilitation of these majestic primates (the largest in the world!) by creating surrogate families of orphans. There are about 300 gorillas in the habitat. The webcam, which went live on Sept. 24, 2019, in honor of World Gorilla Day, captures male silverbacks, adult females and little ones romping around and dozing in the forest, and snacking on leaves, blissfully unaware of how much joy they're bringing those who are watching from afar. One Word: Puppies Umm, puppies, hello! No matter what time of day you check in, you'll likely be greeted with an adorable pile of puppies transmitted live from Brookeville, Maryland. These pups, typically a litter of Labradors, are part of Warrior Canine Connection, a program designed to help service members and veterans who are struggling with both psychological and physical injuries. Veterans with PTSD help train and socialize the pups, starting at 4 weeks old, to become service animals for other physically disabled vets. Everyone benefits from the love and connection the dogs provide along the way. It's a win-win situation for all involved. And when you tune in to the webcam, it's a win-win-win! Fat Bear Challenge Established in 2012, the Brown Bear Cam of Brooks Falls in Alaska's Katmai National Park is a classic animal cam that you need to check out immediately if you never have before. If you tune in early in the spring, you might be surprised to see how skinny some of the bears are. But no need to worry, they're just coming out of hibernation. As the months progress into June and July, those bears will thicken right up on a feast of migrating sockeye salmon that leap up the falls. It all leads up to Fat Bear Week, an annual competition in October that awards the biggest chunk through an online bracket. Carole Baskin's Big Cats If you're curious to check in on Carole Baskin's cats, check out The Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida. That's where you can see the "Tiger King's" co-stars via The Big Cat Rescue cam from many different vantage points around the sanctuary. The most popular view is of Tiger Lake where two rescue tigers in separate enclosures lounge on wooden platforms but don't miss Nikita the Lioness or the Kitten Cabana. The latter showcases the smaller cat species at the reserve, such as bobcats, but also regular house cats who live in a fever dream of a scratching post corral. Advertisement Save the Manatee Tune into the underwater and above-water manatee cams at Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park to see the park's permanent residents, Ariel, Betsy and Electra (who was rescued in 1998 after a boat struck her) drift and float across your screen. You might not see them right away but that makes a glimpse of these interesting creatures in their natural habitat all the more rewarding. Now That's Interesting There are hundreds of fascinating live cams streaming all kinds of creatures from around the world on Explore.org. Find everything from eagles to elephants to Great Danes and alligators. OTTAWA, April 13, 2020 /CNW/ - Today, the Government of Canada is announcing $50 million to help farmers, fish harvesters, and all food production and processing employers, put in place the measures necessary to follow the mandatory 14-day isolation period required of all workers arriving from abroad. Protecting the health and safety of Canadians is the clear top priority in managing COVID-19, so the Government of Canada is working very closely with provinces, territories and stakeholders to maintain the strength of Canada's food supply chain. Before the pandemic, the food sector was already challenged by significant labour shortages and it is anticipated there will be even more jobs to fill, requiring a variety of skills. In many regions across Canada, producing a variety of quality foods to be sold at affordable prices relies upon the contributions of experienced temporary foreign workers right from planting season to harvestparticularly for fresh fruits and vegetables. Fish, seafood and meat processing plants are also reliant on the addition of these workers. This is an important reason why the Government of Canada granted an exemption for temporary foreign workers from travel restrictions to Canada, along with other foreigners with student and work visas, provided they adhere to a strict 14-day isolation protocol upon arrival. The rules of the mandatory isolation period have been clearly defined and distributed to the employers, who themselves are committed to protecting the health of their communities and their workers. Government authorities will continue to proactively communicate and engage with employers, source countries and other stakeholders on public health requirements. Those who do not comply with the Quarantine Act or the isolation protocol will face severe fines and sanctions. Under proposed changes, employers could also face significant penalties, and a possible ban from the program, if they prevent adherence to the self-isolation order. In addition to the responsibility of paying the workers for the two weeks during which time they cannot work, many employers are also responsible for providing workers with transportation and accommodations, as well as access to food and basic supplies needed to meet all of the conditions imposed by public health authorities. Recognizing the importance of this responsibility, the federal government will provide support of $1,500 for each temporary foreign worker, to employers or those working with them to ensure requirements are fully met. The funding is conditional on employers not being found in violation of the mandatory 14-day isolation protocols or any other public health order. This program will be available as long as the Quarantine Act is in force and the isolation protocol is followed. As labour circumstances are different across regions in Canada, the Government will work with interested provinces and territories in the coming days to ensure this funding is delivered in a manner that meets their needs and best ensures quarantine requirements are met. Quotes "I would like to thank farmers, food processing plant workers, truckers, inspectors, grocers, food bank volunteers and all those who are helping to provide us with quality and affordable food." - The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food "Temporary foreign workers have long been key to our food supply. We will work with farmers and food processing employers to ensure they get the workers they need and that plans are in place to meet mandatory isolation requirements." - The Honourable Marco Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship "Temporary foreign workers have been an integral part of the Canadian workforce and food supply chain for decades. Today's announcement will help to protect the health of Canadians, while ensuring a steady labour supply to support our economy and ensure our food security during these extraordinary times. There will always be jobs for Canadians who want to work and support these sectors." - The Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion "Fish and seafood provide a healthy sustainable protein choice that Canadians have always relied on. With this new funding, we're ensuring the sector has the capacity to access the labour force needed while keeping Canadians and workers safe." - The Honourable Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard Quick Facts Temporary foreign workers play an important role in the Canadian economy with approximately 50,000 to 60,000 foreign agricultural, food and fish processing workers coming to work in Canada each year, which accounts for more than 60% of all foreign workers entering Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. each year, which accounts for more than 60% of all foreign workers entering under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Each year, despite the fact that the agricultural sector receives approximately 60,000 foreign workers, around 15,000 jobs remain vacant. No travellers including temporary foreign workers who present with COVID-19 symptoms are allowed to board international flights to Canada . . This support is available for all food production firms that rely on temporary foreign workers, including primary agriculture and food processing, as well as fisheries and aquaculture. Additional Link Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Outbreak update Follow us on Twitter: @AAFC_Canada Like us on Facebook: CanadianAgriculture SOURCE Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada For further information: Jean-Sebastien Comeau, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, [email protected], 343-549-2326; Media Relations, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 613-773-7972, 1-866-345-7972, [email protected] Related Links www.agr.gc.ca PALO ALTO, Calif., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the premier provider of legal services to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises worldwide, announced today that Tracy Shapiro has rejoined the firm's privacy and cybersecurity practice as a partner in the San Francisco office. She was previously an attorney in the firm's privacy practice for six years. Shapiro has extensive experience counseling clients on privacy, data security, and advertising issues and defending clients in investigations and enforcement actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys general, Senate and House congressional committees, and self-regulatory bodies. She has helped numerous technology companies comply with federal and state privacy laws including the FTC Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, biometric privacy laws, and student privacy laws. Most recently, Shapiro was a partner in the data protection, privacy, and security group at DLA Piper in San Francisco. Previously, was a member of Wilson Sonsini's privacy practice for six years, first as associate and then as Of Counsel. Prior to initially joining the firm in 2012, Shapiro spent six years as a staff attorney at the FTC in the Bureau of Consumer Protection's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection and Division of Advertising Practices, where she investigated and brought enforcement actions related to consumer privacy, data security, and advertising. She also helped create principles for industry self-regulation in the area of online behavioral advertising, and she led the FTC's first enforcement action involving online behavioral advertising. "Clients need effective and timely guidance, perhaps more than ever before, to address the uniquely challenging and complicated privacy and cybersecurity issues resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic," said Doug Clark, managing partner at Wilson Sonsini. "Tracy is one of the many talented attorneys on our privacy and cybersecurity team, which focuses on helping clients resolve countless complex combinations of legal, technology, and policy issues. Her broad privacy-related experience makes her a tremendous asset to our clients. We are pleased to welcome her back to the firm." Earlier in her career, Shapiro worked as in-house counsel at Yahoo!, where she advised on privacy, advertising, and marketing laws, and as an associate at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr in Washington, D.C., and Fenwick & West in Palo Alto. Shapiro received her J.D. from George Washington University Law School in 2001, graduating magna cum laude. She earned a B.A. degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. About Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Wilson Sonsini represents clients in a broad range of legal disciplines that address the principal challenges faced by the management and boards of directors of business enterprises. Known worldwide for its representation of technology and life sciences clients, Wilson Sonsini is a leading corporate law firm, representing clients in capital markets, M&A, private equity, venture finance, and technology transactions. The firm's recognized litigation and trial practice represents clients in antitrust, class action, commercial, governance, IP, privacy, securities, and other types of contested matters. Wilson Sonsini also has a substantial and growing regulatory and compliance practice, advising clients as to antitrust, consumer products, CFIUS and FCPA, FDA, international trade, privacy, and other matters. With deep roots in Silicon Valley, Wilson Sonsini has offices in Austin; Beijing; Boston; Brussels; Hong Kong; London; Los Angeles; New York; Palo Alto; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; Shanghai; Washington, D.C.; and Wilmington, DE. For more information, visit www.wsgr.com. SOURCE Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Related Links http://www.wsgr.com Relaxing its earlier conditions in view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Supreme Court Monday directed the release of those detainees who were declared foreigners and have been lodged in the detention centres of Assam for two years or more. A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices L N Rao and M Shantanagoudar, referring to the top court's May 10, 2019 order, also lowered the personal bond amount from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5,000 while reducing the minimum period of detention from three years to two years. The top court had imposed certain conditions while directing the release of such detainees including that they should have spent more than three years in detention, and were to be released upon furnishing a bond of Rs 1 lakh along with two sureties. The order on Monday came on intervention application filed by Justice for Liberty Initiative, a Assam based Public Charitable Trust, seeking the release of detainees lodged in six Assam detention centres in view of coronavirus pandemic. During the hearing, Attorney General K K Venugopal objected to their release apprehending that they would infect people in villages or where ever they go after their release. Advocate Shoeb Alam, appearing for the applicant, informed the court that the apprehension of the Attorney General was based on an unfounded premise that every such person was already infected by the virus. The bench observed that the very purpose of framing of guidelines and the release of persons was to prevent these prisons and detention centres from becoming a hotspot of infection. Alam also contended that the two-year period be dispensed with or further reduced on account of unprecedented pandemic situation. The bench observed however that at this stage it would release only those who have spent two years or more in the detention and for further reduction it would consider later. Referring to the orders of the apex court passed on March 16, the plea filed through advocate Talha Abdul Rahman, said that the court has in the present matter already taken a bold and decisive step towards ensuring that prisons do not become breeding grounds of COVID-19 and has ordered a high powered committee to come up with modalities of releasing prisoners on parole. That in the wake of coronavirus outbreak, there are about 802 detenues in detention centres in Assam who are now more vulnerable in the already overcrowded detention centres with deplorable living conditions, and with no parole being made available to them, the plea said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 10:56:05|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close SEOUL, April 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export posted a double-digit fall in the first 10 days of this month on the economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak across the world, customs office data showed Monday. Export, which takes up about half of the export-driven economy, amounted to 12.2 billion U.S. dollars in the April 1-10 period, down 18.6 percent from the same period of last year, according to the Korea Customs Service. Import declined 13.0 percent to 14.6 billion U.S. dollars in the same period, sending the trade deficit to 2.4 billion U.S. dollars. Semiconductor export shed 1.5 percent, and automotive shipment retreated 7.1 percent. Oil product shipment plummeted 47.7 percent, and export for telecommunication devices such as smartphone, and auto parts slumped in double digits in the cited period. Export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, dipped 10.2 percent in the 10-day period, with those to the United States and Japan sliding 3.4 percent and 7.0 percent each. Shipment to the European Union, Vietnam and Latin America tumbled in double figures in the period. With reporting from Press Association. The French President Emmanuel Macron has said France will close its borders to countries outside Europe. He is extending pandemic lockdown measures until the May 11 -- when schools, creches and other public spaces may be allowed to reopen. By then, he said, every citizen should be able to get a face mask. In a national address broadcast tonight, President Macron said he wants to make wearing a mask in public common practice. In the UK, the British Government is not expected to announce any plans to relax or lift the coronavirus lockdown in the UK later this week. Britain's foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said while there are some "positive signs" from the latest figures - they are still not past the peak. A further 717 coronavirus patients have died in UK hospitals, taking the total to more than 11,300. But the true figure is thought to be higher because of the way the stats are collected. Meanwhile, the Spanish death toll has fallen again to 517 people in the last 24 hours. The rate of coronavirus infection has also dropped to 4,167. The country also began to slightly ease restrictions today with manufacturing and construction businesses allowed to reopen. Some health experts and regional politicians argue that it is premature to ease any part of the lockdown order. Police in Madrid handed out face masks to the few commuters taking public transportation to work in the early hours of Monday. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:52:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KABUL, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Afghans have welcomed the exchange of prisoners between the government and the Taliban outfit as a step towards initiating intra-Afghan talks to find negotiated solution to the country's prolonged war. The government of Afghanistan freed 100 Taliban prisoners from Bagram prison on April 8 and since then 361 detainees have been released, according to Javid Faisal, the spokesman for National Security Council. "The government released 361 Taliban prisoners from Bagram prison under the presidential decree of March 11. As per the decree, releases will continue across other prisons to free a total of 1,500 as part of our efforts to advance peace," Faisal writes in his Twitter account on Monday. In the same manner, the Taliban outfit has also set free 20 detainees of the government and handed them over to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in southern Kandahar province Sunday. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in contact with media has confirmed the report and said that "20 soldiers of Kabul administration were freed in Kandahar on Sunday". Welcoming the prisoners' exchange, an Afghan analyst Dad Mohammad Annabi said "The release of more than 300 Taliban detainees in Bagram and freeing 20 prisoners by the Taliban in Kandahar could be a step towards beginning of intra-Afghan talks." "The release of prisoners by the government and the Taliban is virtually a move towards confidence building that could eventually bring the two sides to the negotiating table," Annabi told Xinhua. He also observed that the start of prisoners swap or any other step that narrows the gap and brings the rival sides towards dialogue deserves appreciation and should be welcomed. The exchange of 5,000 Taliban prisoners with 1,000 Afghan security forces prisoners as a precondition for initiating an intra-Afghan dialogue is part of the U.S.-Taliban peace deal inked on Feb. 29 in Doha to end the war in Afghanistan. "We Afghans have fed up of endemic war and civil strife. I personally support the exchange of prisoners between the government and the Taliban and am praying for the success of the process and returning lasting peace to the country," a Kabul resident Mohammad Hamayon said. Both the Afghan government and the Taliban outfit are hopeful that the prisoners' exchange could finally led to the start of intra-Afghan dialogue and eventually to returning durable peace to the war-battered country. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:28:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BISHKEK, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Kyrgyzstan reported 42 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the country's total to 419. Nurbolot Usenbaev, the country's deputy health minister, told a news briefing Monday that 16 of the newly infected are medical workers, meaning the total number of health workers diagnosed with COVID-19 has reached 79. Usenbaev said 13 patients have recovered and were discharged from hospitals over the last 24 hours, adding that the number of people who have had confirmed close contact with confirmed patients is 6,899, among which 947 are under medical observation. So far in Kyrgyzstan, 67 patients have recovered from COVID-19 and five people have died. Tehran (AFP) - Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday the country had won a legal "victory" over $1.6 billion of its assets that had long been frozen on a US request in Luxembourg. Tehran and Washington have long been arch enemies and tensions have risen sharply since President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear accord and reimposed stinging sanctions. In a separate dispute, a New York court in 2012 ordered Iran to pay $7 billion in damages over the September 11 attacks, arguing that it had aided Al-Qaeda by allowing its militants to travel through its territory. Iran has rejected the accusation and refused to pay the money. Rouhani said in a televised cabinet meeting Sunday that "our central bank, our foreign ministry [have] recently won a very good victory in a legal battle". "$1.6 billion of our money was in Luxembourg and the Americans had put their hands on it," he said. After trying for months, "we succeeded some days ago and freed this money from the Americans' grasp," he declared. The Luxembourg Court of Cassation had devoted a hearing in April 2019 to the case of Iranian assets frozen there on a US request, according to the news site Paperjam. The court is yet to make its decision public. But Rouhani hailed a victory in a "difficult situation" for Iran, which has been battling the Middle East's most deadly novel coronavirus outbreak. COVID-19 has so far killed over 4,400 people and infected more than 71,600 in the Islamic republic, according to official health ministry figures. Sanctions-hit Iran has requested a $5 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund to battle the outbreak. But the US, which effectively holds a veto at the IMF, has signalled it has no intention of allowing the loan, alleging that Iran would use the money to fund "terror abroad". Tehran in 2017 unsuccessfully attempted to repatriate the $1.6 billion frozen in the Clearstream clearing house, a financial company based in Luxembourg. Story continues A judge denied the demand at the time and ruled that the assets would remain temporarily frozen in the small EU nation. Billions of dollars in Iranian assets were also frozen in the US and Europe as part of efforts to push Tehran into a nuclear deal with world powers, which was finally signed in July 2015. Trump in 2018 withdrew from the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and reimposed tough sanctions that have severely damaged Iran's oil sector and its wider economy. Mainpuri : , April 13 (IANS) A 46-year-old woman died in Mainpuri district on Sunday after her family failed to get an ambulance for her on time. Her nephew, Jitendra Rathore, rushed her to the district hospital on a handcart, but she was declared 'brought dead on arrival' by the doctors. Mainpuri district magistrate Mahendra Bahadur Singh has ordered an inquiry into the matter while the additional SP hinted the possibility of negligence by ambulance drivers and the '108' service. The woman has been identified as Guddi Devi. Her husband, Laxmi Rathore, and their son, who work as tailors in Jaipur, were on their way to Mainpuri in the evening, after learning about the tragedy. The duo had been stuck in Rajasthan since the nationwide lockdown began. They were issued passes to travel to Mainpuri after Jaipur police verified the incident with their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh. According to police, Guddi Devi fainted while climbing up the stairs, after which her family frantically dialled '108' for ambulance service several times. With no help coming their way, they took her to the hospital and she passed away on the way. The Mainpuri district magistrate told reporters that prima facie, there is a lapse on the part of '108' ambulance service, but other aspects are also being looked into. "We need to know the cause of death and CCTV footage of the district hospital will be scanned to get a clear picture of the incident. I have asked the officials to investigate whether district health officials or ambulance service were responsible," he said. The official assured that strict action will be taken by the administration against those responsible. Mainpuri additional Superintendent of police, O.P. Singh, said that according to family members, the victim was operated for an abdominal tumour seven months ago. She developed breathing problem on Sunday and then fainted. He further said that in preliminary inquiry, it was revealed that her family called for ambulance service on '108' and one driver did not pick up the call while another driver told the call centre that his vehicle had a punctured tyre. A third driver, who was contacted, claimed that he was going to the spot, but never turned up. Officials said that the post-mortem of the deceased will be conducted only after her husband's approval. Mainpuri is the parliamentary constituency of Samajwadi patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. Call me "Captain Obvious," but this must be said out loud: Democrats and their fake news media enforcers cruelly created corona-madness as a weapon to further their failed transformation of America. In their dream, America, government controls every aspect of our lives and the God of Christianity is banned. Louisville mayor Greg Fischer decreed that he will not even allow a church to have drive-in parking lot Easter worship services. Thank God the church is suing his dictatorial derriere. Drive-in worship services are banned in Raleigh, N.C. Wake County even forbade a pastor from visiting his church members in hospitals and rest homes. In Greenville, Mississippi, church members were given $500 tickets for sitting in their cars listening to their pastor's sermon on the radio. Elmira, N.Y. has banned worship services in church parking lots. Most arrogantly unconstitutional of all, NYC mayor de Blasio threatened to close churches forever. We are talkin' tyrannical abuse of power on steroids. Kentucky police recorded the license plates of churchgoers to fine them. Meanwhile, abortion shops where Planned Parenthood sells baby body parts for profit remain open, deemed essential. Clearly, Democrats are furthering their anti-Christianity and socialist/communist agendas under the pretense of protecting Americans from a flu virus. Health experts using models to predict catastrophic coronavirus deaths have been proven wrong, dramatically dropping from two million to around 60,000, which is the typical number of deaths during flu season. Ninety-eight percent of people who catch the coronavirus recover. Yes, you heard me correctly. And yet, fake news media and Democrats are clamoring for Trump to continue the shutdown for the next 18 months. In just a month or so, 16 million Americans applied for unemployment, and 701,000 jobs have been lost. Due to the coronavirus, suicide hotlines are super-busy. Family fortunes are being lost. Keeping America shut down for 18 months would be insane, a self-induced apocalypse. Remarkably, fake news media and Democrats do not care. The coronavirus is their latest weapon to remove Trump, ending his America first agenda. Democrats and fake news media are well funded elitists who live in a protected bubble. They deem wreaking havoc upon the life of average blue-collar American Joe acceptable collateral damage in their quest to "get Trump!" I realize that the last thing on anyone's mind is House and Senate races. Like a magician using misdirection, while everyone is focused on the coronavirus, Democrats are kicking Republican candidates' butts in fundraising for House and Senate races. Democrat fundraising emails, in essence, say if you hate Trump and want to stop his agenda, send money to defeat every Republican in every race. While our side is generously funding Trump's re-election, we are pretty much ignoring other Republican candidates. You can imagine the horrible nightmare if Democrats retain a majority in the House and win control of the Senate. The Democratic party has become a cult of anti-Christian and anti-American domestic terrorists. Everything they desire to do will harm America and Americans; the Green New Deal open borders abortion even after a healthy child is born mandatory LGBT indoctrination beginning in pre-K repealing our Second Amendment right to bear arms banning private health care revoking our constitutional religious liberty getting rid of the Constitution redistributing wealth and removing America from her throne as the world power. Even now, Democrats are planning to impeach Trump again based on the lie that he had advance knowledge of the coronavirus and ignored it. Trump has done a remarkable job for We the People despite 92% negative lie-filled reporting and Deep-Stater, Democrat, and NeverTrump efforts to stop him. Trump can keep America on the winning track for at least a decade if Republicans win a majority in the House and Senate. Please do not let Republican candidate races fall through the cracks. Good news, folks. A tsunami of angry, eye-opening articles and talking heads are condemning the insane, horrible damage we are inflicting upon our country. Hang in there, folks. Trust God and the man He put in the White House. Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American Help Lloyd Spread the Truth https://www.trumptrainusa2020.com/ http://LloydMarcus.com Supreme Court of India The Supreme Court, on April 13, dismissed a petition which challenged the legality of the constitution of the PM CARES fund for COVID-19 relief, LiveLaw has reported. Advocate ML Sharma, who had filed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL), had contended that the power to form a contingency relief fund, such as PM CARES, lies only with the Parliament. "How can PM CARES come into existence. Power is only with Parliament under Article 266 and 267 to create contingency fund", Sharma had submitted. Hearing his petition, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde said, "This is a completely misconceived petition," "We will impose the cost on you," the bench, comprising CJI Bobde, and Justices L Nageswara Rao and MM Shantanagoudar, added. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show On March 28, the Centre set up the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund with the primary objective to deal with any kind of emergency situation like the one currently posed by the coronavirus outbreak and provide relief to those affected. The prime minister is the ex-officio chairman of the fund and the defence, home and finance ministers are its ex-officio trustees. The PIL, which has made all the trustees of the fund as well as the prime minister parties to it, had sought a transfer of the donations received so far in the fund to the Consolidated Fund of India, besides a court-monitored SIT probe into the setting up of the fund. Search engine Google has dedicated its popular Google Doodle homepage to thanking key workers who are making daily life possible during the coronavirus crisis. Over the next two weeks, a series of Doodles will recognise not just doctors, nurses and teachers but food service workers keeping essential services running as lockdowns continue across many countries. The dedicated Doodles come after the multinational tech company released a video last week thanking healthcare workers for sacrificing so much to save so many. Google has also been running a series of public health information campaigns in partnership with the World Health Organisation and national health ministries to ensure authoritative information on Covid-19 reaches communities effectively. Google Doodles are usually reserved for holidays or recognising pubic figures, whereas series of Doodles are dedicated to sporting events that extend over multiple weeks, such as the Olympics. Karen DeSalvo, Chief Health Officer at Google Health, said in a statement: Over the next two weeks, our Doodles will honour other essential front line workers, including healthcare workers, first responders and the many people keeping services like sanitation, food service, public transit, schools and more up and running. Thank you to all the people who are working to save lives and keep communities safe during this pandemic. The first Google Doodle in this series, released on 6 April, thanked public health workers and researchers in the scientific community. In the following days, Google thanked doctors, nurses and medical workers, emergency services workers, custodial and sanitation employees, farmers, and grocery staff. The coronavirus pandemic has so far infected around 1.7 million people globally, and claimed the lives of nearly 106,000 people since the outbreak first emerged in December. The UK faced a sombre day on Easter Sunday as the death toll soared to 10,612 after 737 more people died from Covid-19. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP Donald Trumps abrupt ousting of two veteran watchdogs has prompted fears the scandal-prone US president is purging people from government who have oversight of fraud, waste and abuse. The moves also come at a time when a global pandemic and resulting mass unemployment crisis has prompted a multitrillion-dollar economic rescue effort, much of which is aimed at helping some of Americas largest companies. Ex-watchdogs dubbed inspectors general plus top Democrats have voiced alarm at Trumps removal last week of an acting IG at the Pentagon slated to lead a new oversight panel for the $2.2tn coronavirus relief law. The move came just days after Trump axed the intelligence community IG who had alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint precipitating Trumps impeachment. Related: Ousted US intelligence inspector general urges whistleblowers not to be 'silenced' by Trump Trump also drew fire for tapping a White House lawyer involved in fighting impeachment as a special IG to oversee a $500bn corporate bailout piece of the $2.2tn law. Days before, Trump had used the signing statement for the law to blunt two newly created IG posts, suggesting he would decide what information Congress receives about the aid package. Trumps sudden oustings of the two well-respected watchdogs, Michael Atkinson, the IG for the intelligence community, and Glenn Fine, the acting IG for the Pentagon, sparked special concerns given their timing and apparent political motivations. Trumps ousting of Fine, who was recently picked by his fellow IGs to run a critical oversight panel for the $2.2tn law, is seen as a broad slap at any oversight on the president and his administration since it rendered Fine ineligible to lead the watchdog panel. Trumps motives in firing Atkinson prompted other worries. After initially saying he had simply lost confidence in Atkinson, Trump used a pandemic press briefing the next day to unleash an angry torrent at Atkinsons handling of the whistleblower complaint, slamming him as not a big Trump fan. Story continues Trumps antipathy to IG watchdogs was displayed again at a pandemic briefing last week when he was asked about a report by the health and human services IG revealing that hospitals faced widespread shortages of face masks, and severe test shortages. Providing no evidence, Trump dismissed the report as just wrong, and the next day labeled it another fake dossier. At a recent press briefing Trump unleashed an angry torrent at Atkinsons handling of the whistleblower complaint. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images IGs were created in 1978 to ferret out executive agency waste, fraud and abuse. Presidents nominate them, but they require Senate approval. The mandate for IGs is to serve as the public eyes and ears regarding the functioning of the executive branch, said Michael Bromwich, a prominent ex-IG at the justice department. That means they must be independent, and they are required to be so by law. Trump doesnt understand any legal mandate that conflicts with personal loyalty. He believes everybody in the executive branch should be loyal to him personally. For instance, Atkinsons firing reveals Trumps penchant to retaliate against people he perceives to be his enemies whose duties require them to do things that are contrary to Trumps political interests, Bromwich said. Trump doesnt understand any legal mandate that conflicts with personal loyalty Michael Bromwich, former IG Likewise, Fine is simply too independent and has too much integrity to be trusted to minimize or sweep under the rug problems with the $2tn package recently passed by Congress. Other ex-IGs say Trumps actions pose a danger to all IG watchdogs and the vital role they perform in curbing corruption Trumps actions are clearly a threat to all IGs, said Cynthia Schnader, a former acting IG at the justice department. In just a few days, he has fired one, moved another one aside, and publicly attacked a third one for accurately reporting problems. The former Pentagon IG Eleanor Hill stressed that Trumps moves seem to endanger the mandate of IGs to be honest and independent brokers, and alert Congress to serious problems. Significantly, the current justice IG, Michael Horowitz, who leads a group of executive branch IGs, quickly came to Atkinsons defense, issuing a strong statement of support for his integrity and professionalism including his handling of the whistleblower complaint that helped spark Trumps impeachment which featured one count of obstruction of Congress. Horowitz has also vowed that aggressive, independent oversight would continue after the firing. Former officials say Trump mistreated Atkinson. It is troubling to see that the president apparently based on political grievances has removed Michael Atkinson, a talented and capable inspector general who was doing exactly what his job requires, said Mary McCord, a former chief of the DoJs national security section where Atkinson once worked. Atkinson himself concurred. It is hard not to think that the presidents loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, and from my commitment to continue to do so, Atkinson said in a statement on Sunday. Other criticism of Trump erupted when he selected the White House lawyer Brian Miller as a special IG for a $500bn business chunk of the $2.2tn law. Someone who currently works in the White House counsels office, serving a president who has tried to silence other inspector generals and announced his intention to silence this one, is not independent, Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance panel, said in a statement. In Bromwichs eyes, Trump has rejected all forms of oversight by congressional committees, and has now turned his opposition to oversight to the IG community. [April 13, 2020] Tauriga Sciences Inc. Approved by ALIBABA to List its Cannabigerol Infused Version of Tauri-Gum on Alibaba.com NEW YORK, NY, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: TAUG) (Tauriga or the Company), a revenue generating Company that operates through the development, distribution, and licensing of proprietary products as well as the evaluation of potential acquisition opportunities and equity investments, today announced that it has been approved by Chinese E-Commerce giant, Alibaba Group (Alibaba), to list its proprietary Cannabigerol (CBG) infused version of Tauri-Gum on Alibaba.com. The Companys CBG Tauri-Gum is Peach-Lemon flavor and contains 80mg of CBG isolate per Blister Pack. This product is being sold to the Chinese retail marketplace, at an MSRP of $19.99 USD per Blister Pack. The Company has already established fulfillment capabilities throughout mainland China. Below Alibaba Listing of Peach-Lemon CBG Tauri-Gum: Link: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Tauri-Gum-Cannabigerol-CBG-Infused-Peach_62024173147.html?spm=a2747.manage.0.0.261d2c3cFTEKYS ABOUT TAURIGA SCIENCES INC. Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (TAUG) is a revenue generating, diversified life sciences company, engaged in several major business activities and initiatives. The company manufactures and distributes several proprietary retail products and product lines, mainly focused on the Cannabidiol (CBD) and Cannabigerol (CBG) Edibles market segment. The main product line, branded as Tauri-Gum, consists of a proprietary supplement chewing gum that is both Kosher certified and Vegan formulated (CBD Infused Tauri-Gum Flavors: Mint, Blood Orange, Pomegranate) & (CBG Infused Tauri-Gum Flavor: each-Lemon). The Companys commercialization strategy consists of a broad array of retail customers, distributors, and a fast-growing E-Commerce business segment (E-Commerce website: www.taurigum.com ). Please visit our corporate website, for additional information, as well as inquiries, at www.tauriga.com Complementary to the Companys retail business, are its two ongoing biotechnology initiatives. The first one relates to the development of a Pharmaceutical grade version of Tauri-Gum, for nausea regulation (specifically designed to help patients that are subjected to ongoing chemotherapy treatment). On March 18, 2020, the Company announced that it filed a provisional U.S. patent application covering its pharmaceutical grade version of Tauri-Gum. The Patent, filed with the U.S.P.T.O. is Titled MEDICATED CBD COMPOSITIONS, METHODS OF MANUFACTURING, AND METHODS OF TREATMENT. The second one relates to a collaboration agreement with Aegea Biotechnologies Inc. for the co-development of a rapid, multiplexed, Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) test with superior sensitivity and selectivity. The Company is headquartered in New York City and operates a regional office in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, the Company operates a full time E-Commerce fulfillment center located in LaGrangeville, New York. DISCLAIMER -- Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 which represent managements beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. These forward-looking statements are often indicated by using words such as may, will, expects, anticipates, believes, hopes, believes, or plans, and may include statements regarding corporate objectives as well as the attainment of certain corporate goals and milestones. Forward-looking statements are based on present circumstances and on managements present beliefs with respect to events that have not occurred, that may not occur, or that may occur with different consequences or timing than those now assumed or anticipated. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in forward looking statements due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, such as are not guarantees of general economic and business conditions, the ability to successfully develop and market products, consumer and business consumption habits, the ability to consummate successful acquisition and licensing transactions, fluctuations in exchange rates, and other factors over which Tauriga has little or no control. Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in greater detail in the Risk Factors section of Taurigas Form 10-K and other filings made from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this release, and Tauriga assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Contact: CONTACT INFORMATION Tauriga Sciences, Inc. 555 Madison Avenue, 5th Floor New York, NY 10022 Chief Executive Officer Mr. Seth M. Shaw Email: [email protected] cell # (917) 796 9926 Instagram: @tauri_gum Twitter: @SethMShaw Corp. Website: www.tauriga.com E-Commerce Website: www.taurigum.com Attachment Tauri-Gum [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Four giant presidents' heads have long overlooked Houston's dreaded rush hours on Interstate 10 and 45, but now, they bear witness to the often vacant stretches of highway, emptied by the coronavirus pandemic and resulting stay-at-home orders. Pandemic preppers: Texas-built bunkers becoming luxury shelters amid COVID-19 Mount Rush Hour, a sculpture by Houston artist David Adickes, has seen its own change amid the spreading virus. The huge busts of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston are now adorned by an additional accessory that serves as a grim reminder of the global crisis. On Monday. the four figures could be seen draped in masks, one of the precautions Americans have been recommended to take when in public. The masks consisted of U.S. flag-patterned fabric. On HoustonChronicle.com: 'It's nonstop:' Houston SPCA sees massive spike in rescued animals during pandemic Adickes donated the collection of 18-foot-tall sculptures to Harris County Precinct 2 in November 2012, according to the precinct's website. The sculptures are made of concrete and also go by the name American Statesmanship Park. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission TDT | Manama Royal Fund for Fallen Servicemen director Shaikh Khalid bin Salman bin Khalid Al Khalifa expressed yesterday his keenness to identify and provide the needs of the late servicemens families and relatives, with the advent of the Holy Month of Ramadan. Shaikh Khalid stressed this while contacting the families and relatives remotely, with the participation of representatives from the Bahrain Defence Force and the Interior Ministry. Shaikh Khalid said that this is in line with the directives of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander, First Deputy Prime Minister, who is also the Supreme Commission for the Royal Fund for Fallen Servicemen president. It reflects the interest of HRH the Crown Prince in taking care of the relatives and families of the fallen servicemen, on all occasions and under various circumstances; and it is in appreciation to the late servicemen who had sacrificed their lives for the sake of the homeland. Shaikh Khalid added that the Royal Fund for Fallen Servicemen will continue implementing its initiatives aimed at meeting the needs of the families of the fallen servicemen, while taking into consideration the preventive and precautionary measures in place. TDT | Manama A live discussion with government sector employees will be held today, organised by the Bahrain Institute of Public Administration (BIPA). BIPA Learning and Development acting director Najem Salmeen will lead the discussion, which is entitled eLearning: Government-Approved Training. The 30-minute discussion will be broadcast via the Instalive feature of the Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA) Instagram account, @ iGABahrain, starting 10.30am. BIPAs own blog will be launched following the live broadcast on the same day via the national portal bahrain.bh. Launched in cooperation with the iGA, the BIPA blog will help government employees fully benefit from modern communication technologies, with an emphasis on eLearning and training. The move is in line with the current situation to deploy advanced technologies in support of national efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Salmeens broadcast will cover the different axes of the eLearning, including providing training hours accredited by the Civil Service Bureau (CSB) and providing flexible self-learning anytime and anywhere. Once the broadcast is complete, Salmeen will continue communicating and replying to inquiries on the BIPA blog. The ICT field is witnessing an unprecedented period of innovation, offering a wider range of high-quality products and services than ever before, said Salmeen. This has had a positive impact on education and training, allowing people to learn at their own pace, anytime, anywhere. Online learning also provides flexibility in responding to exceptional circumstances through an interactive online environment rich with a wide range of applications. Through this blog, we hope to shed light on these benefits so that government employees can begin their remote learning journeys fully aware of all the offerings available to them. The blog on bahrain.bh will open a direct communication channel between senior Bahrain government decision-makers and the public. The action plan of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine submitted to the Verkhovna Rada is aimed at overcoming the risks to life and health of Ukrainian citizens in the short term, as well as restoring economic growth in the long term. The text of the document has been published on the Parliament's website. "Responding to urgent challenges in order to preserve the life and health of citizens, the Government focuses its efforts on solving the tasks set before Ukraine by the global pandemic COVID-19," the action plan reads. The Cabinet intends to focus on preparing a network of health care facilities to work in the current particularly challenging environment, restoring the operation of the anti-epidemic protection system, strengthening monitoring of compliance and quarantine measures. The Government of Ukraine also plans to ensure the continuous operation of critical infrastructure and food security facilities, to create conditions for the domestic production of essential medicines, medical equipment and products, as well as other critical goods. The Government will strengthen social protection and economic support, focus on providing loan support to small and medium-sized businesses, which have sustained losses by quarantine measures, and take a number of other priority steps. In the long term, the Government action plan provides for creating favorable conditions for the development and restoration of small and medium-sized enterprises, industries focused on the production of high-tech products. Creating conditions for attracting effective owners through privatization of state-owned facilities, as well as introducing a rational corporate governance system for state-owned enterprises in accordance with international standards are also among the Cabinet's objectives The Government of Ukraine intends to achieve reducing energy dependency, diversifying energy sources, developing renewable and low carbon sources, ensuring the reliability, environmental friendliness and affordability of energy for all consumers. Ensuring the proper conditions for the effective activity of scientists and researchers, promoting the development of applied research, the development of culture are also planned in the long term. On April 13, the Government registered the draft resolution No. 3330 "On the Action Plan of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine" at the Verkhovna Rada. ol Kaula Carrs job in Arizona disappeared in March when the restaurant where she worked laid off staff members in response to the coronavirus crisis. She and her young daughter are eligible for public assistance, ranging from food stamps to Medicaid, to help soften the blow. But after Ms. Carr spent hours filling out forms and uploading dozens of documents, the online system crashed. I want to cry, she texted her aunt. They make it impossible to actually get assistance. Ms. Carr is one of millions of Americans discovering the gap between the promise of public programs and the reality of their design, which makes it hard to get help. The short-term result will be unmet needs, a stymied economic recovery and profound frustration. The long-term result should be a reconfiguration of how we administer the safety net in the United States. We have previously documented administrative burdens in government programs, and it is all too apparent to us that a crisis response built on the existing system will fall short. The $2.2 trillion CARES Act relies on state unemployment systems that were immediately overloaded, leaving many people spending hours on hold or online only to face disconnected calls or crashing websites. Chinese companies are likely to turn to Hong Kong or Shanghai for capital, after two accounting scandals in a week burned investors and triggered a crisis of confidence in their US-listed peers. At least two companies are now debating with their sponsors about switching their initial public offering (IPO) plans to Hong Kong from the US, according to a senior investment banker, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. While investors have become "accustomed" to decades of tainted accounting books including the Sino-Forest saga in early 2011, the latest lapses could not have come at a worse time when US-China relations are frayed by spats over trade and the origin of the new coronavirus. Luckin Coffee slumped by a record number on April 2 after it said former top executives inflated its sales figures, while TAL Education also said it discovered the same misdeed. Meanwhile, video streaming firm iQiyi has rejected reports by short sellers that the company made up its revenue. The switch could further dent the outlook for IPO bankers after US equity offerings fell 13 per cent last quarter to US$29.8 billion, the slowest start to a year since 2009, according to Bloomberg data. They fell for a second year in 2019. This may be boon to Hong Kong after being overshadowed by Shanghai as the top IPO venue this year. "Due to the US-China trade tension and the related rumours about potential geopolitical implications on US-listed Chinese companies, there was already a decline in Chinese issuers seeking US listing last year," said Edward Au, co-leader of the national public offering group at Deloitte. "We expect there will be even fewer this year." People wearing protective masks are seen outside a Luckin Coffee outlet in Shanghai, China. The accounting scandal is hurting investor confidence in the reliability of Chinese companies' financial reports. Photo: Bloomberg alt=People wearing protective masks are seen outside a Luckin Coffee outlet in Shanghai, China. The accounting scandal is hurting investor confidence in the reliability of Chinese companies' financial reports. Photo: Bloomberg Story continues Recent events surrounding cases like Luckin Coffee, TAL Education and iQiyi may also force Chinese IPO candidates to consider raising funds from private investors pending a better window, said Wang Yang, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Dechert. "The unfavourable sentiments surrounding Chinese firms may delay the IPO process, leading companies to potentially look for pre-IPO investors during this period of time," Wang said. Apart from corporate governance concerns, the poor performance of Chinese companies on US exchanges had also given investment banks some cold feet about their IPO prospects, some bankers said. Some banks have had to pull out from syndicates at the pre-marketing stage as weak appetite from investors made fees unattractive. Most of the six Chinese companies that debuted in the US last quarter saw their prices fall below their IPO prices, data from Deloitte shows. They included financial services, medical and biotech firms. Granted, most stocks also fell significantly last quarter amid the coronavirus pandemic. Bankers now predict biotech and deep technology firms that have traditionally preferred to list in the US will now look at Hong Kong and Shanghai more favourably. Beside new IPO hopefuls, the latest scandals could also push existing Chinese entities to delist as a slump in stock prices weakened their ability to raise fresh capital at higher valuation. IPO advisers also said they are expecting more private equity investors to take US-listed Chinese companies private, and subsequently re-list them on the Hong Kong or Shanghai Stock Exchange. They expect the founding shareholders to work with private equity investors to take advantage of the depressed share prices to buy out minority investors. In one example, Chinese internet security firm Qihoo 360 re-listed its shares in Shanghai at US$62 billion capitalisation, or seven times more than its market value when it was delisted in the US in 2016. "Already a number of Chinese 'take-private' deals are pending post coronavirus, and I suspect there will be a further increase in numbers," said Stuart Witchell, a managing director at risk consultancy firm Berkeley Research Group, stressing the need for investors to undertake in-depth due diligence on these companies. Alison Tudor-Ackroyd contributed to this article. Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. Learn about the AI ambitions of Alibaba, Baidu & JD.com through our in-depth case studies, and explore new applications of AI across industries. The report also includes exclusive access to webinars to interact with C-level executives from leading China AI companies (via live Q&A sessions). Offer valid until 31 May 2020. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Lata Mangeshkar admitted to ICU in Mumbai Hospital after testing positive for Covid Delhi reports 356 COVID-19 cases in biggest 1-day jump, total rises to 1,510 India oi-Deepika S New Delhi, Apr 13: A total of 356 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Delhi in the last 24 hours. Out of which, 325 patients are contacts of men who attended the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz congregation in Delhi's Nizamuddin area in March of this year. With developments on Monday, the total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Delhi stands at 1,510. Out of these, 1,071 either attended the Markaz congregation or came in contact with someone who did. As many as 30 patients have been cured and discharged from various hospitals while 28 have succumbed to the infection to date. Coronavirus 10 times deadlier than Swine Flu, only vaccine can fully end transmission: WHO According to health ministry report, nearly 15,000 people are still in home-quarantine. As many as 2,187 of these people have a travel history of countries affected by Covid-19 while 12,545 are people who were traced as contacts of coronavirus patients. In addition, 2,456 people are under institutional quarantine across 16 quarantine centres in Delhi. Meanwhile, the Delhi government on Monday launched a massive sanitisation drive in the city's COVID-19 containment areas, declared as red zones, and high-risk zones, identified as orange zones, to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The administration ran a pilot disinfection drive using hi-tech Japanese spray machines at the Rajinder Nagar Assembly constituency. The state government also announced an ambitious plan to send task forces of 5 members to every single home in the city to identify suspected COVID-19 cases. Nearly 14,000 such teams of "Corona Foot Warriors Containment and Surveillance Force'" will be formed at the election-booth level, a Delhi government official told news agency PTI. Each team will have five members including a booth-level officer, civil defence volunteer, police constable, sanitation and anganwadi worker, the official said. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Monday, April 13, 2020, 23:49 [IST] Sensex and Nifty closed over 1% lower each on Monday amid investors' concern over the mounting Covid-19 cases globally and a spike in crude prices. Tracking losses from Asian equities, the Sensex closed 469 points lower at 30,690 and Nifty lost 118 points to 8,993. "After a decent recovery in the past few sessions, the Indian markets were back in the red, led by weak global cues and extension of lockdown till April 30th announced by several states," said Ajit Mishra, VP - Research, Religare Broking. All indices in Asia turned red, with Nikkei and Kospi dropping 2% after the OPEC+ decided to cut 20% global supply of oil to curb fall in price amid virus outbreak. Tokyo was down 0.5%, while Shanghai fell 0.5% and Singapore closed flat. Hong Kong, Sydney and Wellington remained shut for a public holiday. European markets were also closed. Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said, "Inspite of the hope that infections are peaking out in Europe, Indian markets closed negative with virus infections seen to be increasing in some regions of India. The Indian markets are awaiting the decision of the government regarding the current lockdown. The government is expected to announce a plan for a staggered withdrawal from the lockdown. Any continuation of the lockdown in its current form will put further pressure on economic growth and corporate earnings and will have a negative impact on the markets." Sector-wise, Nifty pharma index remained in positive territory, settling 2.77% higher, while metal index gained 1.9%. In the last one month, pharma sector has risen over 13%, followed by 3.2% rise in FMCG. Nifty pharma has risen 10.87% since the beginning of 2020. All other sectors ended in red. Realty fell the most by 5%, followed by 3.5% decline in media, financial sectors. Banking indices dropped over 2% each followed by 1.5% decline in FMCG. Pharma stocks continued to move higher despite today's broader bearish session, with Cipla (2%), Biocon (4.5%), DRL (6%), FDC (2.37%) hitting their respective 52-week highs. S Ranganathan, Head of Research at LKP Securities said, "Market closed lower as Autos and Financials dragged indices ahead of the PM's address tomorrow morning. The day witnessed value-buying in cement & infrastructure stocks while accumulation was also seen across a range of Midcap stocks in the Pharmaceutical space". Asian stocks reversed the trend to bearish territory in early trade on Monday with investors cautious on news of an international 'historic" output deal to cut oil production by nearly 10 million barrels per day from May to prop up oil prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war . Crude prices rose by 3% to $32 per barrel. On Thursday, US and European key barometers closed in green over prospects of more government stimulus amid tightened lockdowns across the world to combat the virus spread. On the currency front, Indian rupee opened weak at the interbank foreign exchange on Monday and fell 15 paise to 76.43 against the US dollar, tracking weakness from domestic equity indices amid sharp rise in coronavirus cases in the country. It later closed almost flat, gaining 2 paise to 76.27 mark per dollar. According to experts, prevailing uncertain market conditions amid the rising cases of the virus and extension of the lockdown period has caused volatility and led to the downfall of broader markets on a global scale. There are 18.53 lakh confirmed cases worldwide and almost 1.14 lakh deaths from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. India has recorded a total of 9,152 cases, 308 deaths after 35 new fatalities were reported and 764 recoveries. In the last one week, cases confirmed in India have doubled to 9,000 mark, while total cases increased by 909 in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, PM Modi will address the nation at 10 am on April 14 amid the virus outbreak. Most states requested the Prime Minister to extend the lockdown for 2 more weeks. Ajit Mishra, VP - Research, Religare Broking said," The market has seen a decent run-up recently led by rising hopes of the stimulus package from the government amid positive global cues. And, now the Prime Minister's speech, which is scheduled tomorrow at 10 am, would also be actively tracked for the roadmap to fight the coronavirus and measures to kick-start the economic activities. Besides, we shall be seeing the participants reacting to the CPI number in early trade on Wednesday i.e. April 15. Needless to say, volatility will remain high in the coming sessions too and traders have no option but to align their positions accordingly. Last Thursday, the 30-share BSE Sensex closed 1,265 points higher at 31,159 and 50-share barometer NSE Nifty ended 363 points higher at 9,111. Sensex and Nifty have fallen 1.3% in one day, 9.82% in last one month and 26% since the start of the year. Contrary to this, the indices have gained over 11% in last week's trade. BSE and NSE will be closed tomorrow on April 14, 2020, on account of Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Jayanti. Share Market Update: Sensex ends 469 points lower, Nifty at 8,993; Bajaj Finance, Zee Ent, Titan top losers Rupee vs Dollar: Rupee falls 15 paise to 76.43 amid weakness in equity market Why it matters: With millions of people now out of work due to the continued impact of stay-at-home orders related to Covid-19 and unemployment systems struggling to keep up with sudden demand, some are turning to the Internets seedier side as a source of emergency income. CamSoda, a livestreaming video platform for adult content, saw a 37 percent increase in new model sign-ups last month (compared to the same period in 2019) according to company vice president Daryn Parker. A similar site, ManyVids, saw a 69 percent jump in new model sign-ups during the same time span. Viewership has increased, too. CamSoda said the number of new viewers on its site has doubled thus far this year compared to early 2019. But even with more viewers, models arent necessarily making more money. Mileena Kane, a popular cam model with CamSoda, said earnings are static as many new viewers arent tipping as much as they normally would. Im meeting a whole bunch of people more frequently than I normally would, but theres not much more money, Kane said. Some of the issues that Kane and others are now facing may be tied to the sudden saturation of new talent on the platform, making it harder for existing models to stand out among the crowd. According to The New York Times, some 16 million people applied for unemployment benefits over the last three weeks. Masthead credit: Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH, Parilov At several places across the city where the police have received complaints of residents not following social distancing, shopkeepers have been instructed by the police to shut retail shops by 6pm. Retail shop owners in different parts of the city said they were instructed by the police to close shop before the evening rush. Senior Delhi police officers said that police stations across the city are discussing with market welfare associations the different ways to prevent crowding, such as closing early or allowing shops to open at different times of the day. The police are yet to issue a formal order to implement this across the city. Several shopkeepers said they started closing early on the polices orders, while some said they were doing so on their own. Raj Arora, who owns a grocery store in East of Kailash, which has three containment zones (areas sealed to contain the spread of Covid-19) around, said they were closing their shop before 6pm. In the evening, the queues get longer. We were told to maintain social distancing norms by the local police else we could be booked. After some areas were sealed, it was decided that we will open the shops only till 3pm to restrict the movement of those who come out in the evening, Arora said. In nearby Kailash Colony and Greater Kailash-I M-block markets also, retailers said that two days ago, the area station house officer had asked them to shut shop by 6pm, as some crowding was observed around that time. More movement was seen on the streets and the market around 6pm when people would just come out to get supplies. The two provisional stores and even vegetable vendors in the market now shut down by that time, said Rajendra Sharda, president, GK-1 M-block market. Joint commissioner of police(southern range) Devesh Srivastava said the police are in touch with all market welfare associations. We will ensure that people have access to essential items. At many places such as in Govindpuri, the market welfare association told us that they would decide the timings to open shops. They have assured us that they would do it in a staggered manner. Many other market associations have come up with their own ways of ensuring social distancing. The police said they are focusing on social distancing at market places. Two station house officers were on Friday transferred from their post for failing to ensure social distancing. In north Delhis Ashok Vihar also, grocery store owners have decided to shut down early. There was a lot of movement in the evening and hence the police asked us to close early. We have been closing down by 4pm for the past week, Sandeep Bhatia, a shopowner in phase-2 Ashok Vihar, said. Several shopkeepers said that while they have been following orders, they are at the receiving end from both the police and the residents. Amit Dudeja, who owns a department store near Tara Apartments, Alaknanda, said that despite the circles drawn on the ground that designate waiting spots, people do not follow the rules of social distancing. The police lodged a case against me last week for the same even though I had been following all the steps. It was just that people were not standing the way they were supposed to in the queue. Since then I decided to down my shutters by 3pm. Most people come to the market in the evening just to get out of their homes for which we have to pay a price, Dudeja said. In places like Nabi Karim and Chandni Mahal, which have been declared containment zones, the police are allowing shops to open for three hours in the morning and the evening. Deputy commissioner of police (Central) Sanjay Bhatia said, The staggered timings are only for areas in containment zones. We are doing this to ensure social distancing. At the same time, we will ensure that people are not deprived of essential goods. Senior government and police officers said that they have discussed different ways in which other countries have managed crowding at markets. If the number of cases continues to rise, the state government and police could issue gender-based lockdown rules such as allowing only men and women to shop on different days. In Peru and Italy, the government has ordered men to leave the house three days while allowing women to leave the other three. But several senior officers, who spoke to HT on condition on anonymity, said it was too early to even suggest such rules because the volume of cases in Delhi is comparatively lower than the cities of such countries. GOVERNMENT ON SOCIAL DISTANCING AT WHOLESALE MARKETS Development Minister of Delhi Gopal Rai on Monday held a meeting with the members of the market associations of seven wholesale markets of Delhi. The government in a press statement said they have implemented an odd-even policy in the markets to avoid crowding. ...The odd-even scheme will allow sale at odd-numbered platforms in each shed on dates ending with 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 and even-numbered platforms on dates ending with 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8...The government has also directed a change in the timings... Vegetable markets will be open from 6am to 11am and fruit markets will be open from 2pm to 6 pm. The entry to these markets will be allowed only through coupons... Rai said. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The news of China's central bank hiking its stake in Housing Development Finance Corporation ( HDFC ) has ruffled feathers in the Finance Ministry, according to a report in Mint People's Bank of China (PBOC) raised its stake to 1.01 percent from 0.8 percent in India's largest mortgage lender HDFC, possibly during the last quarter of FY20. "Normally, there would be no need for xenophobic hysteria over this but a central bank buying an equity stake in a commercial entity is unusual. No red flag was raised," a source told the publication. Also Read: Peoples Bank of China picks up 1.75 crore shares in HDFC Moneycontrol could not independently verify the story. While is there is no law prohibiting central banks of other nations from buying an equity stake in an Indian company, it is unusual. Central banks typically buy bonds of companies in other countries, not equities. HDFC had informed stock exchanges about PBOC's shareholding on April 11. "HDFC stock is also owned by SAMA, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (the country's central bank), purchased on behalf of their sovereign wealth fund. Many other sovereign wealth funds also own HDFC and other Indian stocks funds such as the government of Singapore," HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh told CNBC-TV18 in an interview. / -- On April 13, Tencent Cloud launched an international anti-COVID-19 service package to help support the global fight against the pandemic. The package will help companies, medical institutions and governments worldwide tackle the unique challenges presented by COVID-19. This is the latest step taken by Tencent to assist in the global campaign against the pandemic, beginning with the establishment of a US$100 million global anti-COVID-19 fund and the rollout of a global COVID-19 information platform. Products launched in the first phase can be used in a wide range of scenarios including enabling remote collaboration, facilitating online medical consultation and helping governments promote access to reliable information. Tencent Cloud will also provide free credits for some cloud service purchases to help companies and organizations in need, which can be accessed through Tencent Cloud's official website. VooV Meeting, the international version of Tencent Meeting, has already been rolled out in more than 100 countries and regions, and is available to users free of charge. The service can support meetings of up to 300 participants, which makes it a crucial tool for helping companies to work remotely, educational agencies to teach online classes and medical institutions to provide online consultations. With the help of Tencent Cloud's live broadcast service application, Tencent Real-Time Communication (TRTC), databases, Global Application Acceleration Platform (GAAP) and subtitling solution (AI Transfy), schools, hospitals and other institutions can also quickly set up their own live broadcast capabilities for remote consultation and teaching. The timely publication and distribution of information surrounding COVID-19 prevention is of critical importance during the epidemic. Tencent Cloud's SMS service is available in more than 200 countries and regions and through more than 1,000 operators, which can help government agencies quickly communicate COVID-19 prevention information to the public. Previously, Tencent launched a global platform for healthcare information amid the epidemic. This service has also been launched in English, including a section for "COVID-19 Epidemic Info", AI-powered COVID-19 self-screening tools, We Doctor and Dingxiangyuan, which gives users worldwide access to epidemic updates, medical knowledge, self-diagnosis tips, online voluntary clinics and more. Tencent has furthermore made a technological contribution to the global fight against COVID-19 by open-sourcing the international module in its COVID-19 Mini Program (TH_COVID19_International) on March 27, making it an important information resource that is available for free to users around the world. Government agencies, healthcare institutions, media organizations and developers worldwide can access the Mini Program to develop their own pandemic-related services. On April 3, Tencent open sourced the COVID-19 Self-triage Assistant, a program that allows anyone to conduct a self-assessment about potential coronavirus symptoms. The service helps educate the public with prevention tips, thus reducing the risk of cross-infection caused by panic and minimizing the load on medical providers. Tencent has been helping businesses and government agencies fight against the epidemic with a series of products and services in China. A variety of pandemic-related Mini Programs provided by third parties have been developed to give the public seamless access to information and updates. Products such as VooV Meeting, WeChat Work and Tencent Document provide tools through which businesses can efficiently work together remotely. Tencent's integrated online education solution enables over 100 million teachers to continue teaching, and students to continue learning during school disruptions. Tencent has also helped scientific institutions accelerate the R&D of new drugs with cutting-edge AI and computing technologies. Tencent is committed to aiding the global fight against the virus with its experience, technologies and products. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A supernova at least twice as bright and energetic, and likely much more massive than any yet recorded has been identified by an international team of astronomers, led by the University of Birmingham. The team, which included experts from Harvard, Northwestern University and Ohio University, believe the supernova, dubbed SN2016aps, could be an example of an extremely rare 'pulsational pair-instability' supernova, possibly formed from two massive stars that merged before the explosion. Their findings are published today in Nature Astronomy. Such an event so far only exists in theory and has never been confirmed through astronomical observations. Dr Matt Nicholl, of the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute of Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of Birmingham, is lead author of the study. He explains: "We can measure supernovae using two scales - the total energy of the explosion, and the amount of that energy that is emitted as observable light, or radiation. "In a typical supernova, the radiation is less than 1 per cent of the total energy. But in SN2016aps, we found the radiation was five times the explosion energy of a normal-sized supernova. This is the most light we have ever seen emitted by a supernova." In order to become this bright, the explosion must have been much more energetic than usual. By examining the light spectrum, the team were able to show that the explosion was powered by a collision between the supernova and a massive shell of gas, shed by the star in the years before it exploded. "While many supernovae are discovered every night, most are in massive galaxies," said Dr Peter Blanchard, from Northwestern University and a coauthor on the study. "This one immediately stood out for further observations because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We weren't able to see the galaxy where this star was born until after the supernova light had faded." The team observed the explosion for two years, until it faded to 1 per cent of its peak brightness. Using these measurements, they calculated the mass of the supernova was between 50 to 100 times greater than our sun (solar masses). Typically supernovae have masses of between 8 and 15 solar masses. "Stars with extremely large mass undergo violent pulsations before they die, shaking off a giant gas shell. This can be powered by a process called the pair instability, which has been a topic of speculation for physicists for the last 50 years," says Dr Nicholl. "If the supernova gets the timing right, it can catch up to this shell and release a huge amount of energy in the collision. We think this is one of the most compelling candidates for this process yet observed, and probably the most massive." "SN2016aps also contained another puzzle," added Dr Nicholl. "The gas we detected was mostly hydrogen - but such a massive star would usually have lost all of its hydrogen via stellar winds long before it started pulsating. One explanation is that two slightly less massive stars of around, say 60 solar masses, had merged before the explosion. The lower mass stars hold onto their hydrogen for longer, while their combined mass is high enough to trigger the pair instability." "Finding this extraordinary supernova couldn't have come at a better time," according to Professor Edo Berger, a coauthor from Harvard University. "Now that we know such energetic explosions occur in nature, NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope will be able to see similar events so far away that we can look back in time to the deaths of the very first stars in the Universe." Supernova 2016aps was first detected in data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), a large-scale astronomical survey programme. The team also used data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck and Gemini Observatories, in Hawaii, and the MDM and MMT Observatories in Arizona. Other collaborating institutions included Stockholm University, Copenhagen University, California Institute of Technology, and Space Telescope Science Institute. ### The research was funded through a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellowship, along with grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Horizon 2020 European Union Framework. Notes to editor: The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world's top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries. Nicholl et al (2020). 'An extremely energetic supernova from a very massive star in a dense medium'. Nature Astronomy. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei permitted on April 6 the administration of President Hassan Rouhani to withdraw 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) from Iran's National Development Fund to address the negative economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. The move comes after weeks of disbelief in the government's circle and passivity in dealing with the economic impact of the pandemic. Not since the time of the Iran-Iraq War have Iranians experienced such a volume of death and sorrow. On the same day, Kianoush Jahanpour, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, told reporters that there were 60,500 cases of the coronavirus in the country. As of April 10, the number of confirmed cases reached 68,192 and 4,232 deaths were recorded. It is not just the lives that are lost, but the livelihoods. More and more Iranians have to choose between trying not to get sick or earning a living. If traffic is any indication, the number of cars on the highways of Tehran after the Iranian new year holidays showed that Iranians have chosen to return to work. Even if every health-care professional in Iran is advising them to stay indoors, the Iranian government has decided not to force Iranians to take shelter in their homes. Instead of barring Iranians from leaving their homes, Rouhani told his Cabinet that economic activities are to resume on April 11 across the country, and on April 18 in the province of Tehran, the most inhabited region in Iran. The pandemic has not spared Iran's economy. Like attacking a victim with pre-existing conditions, the virus that causes COVID-19 has left a lethal impact on Iran's economy, which is already suffering from high inflation, high unemployment, sanctions, mismanagement and widespread corruption. The Iranian economy simply does not have the resources to help Iranians protect themselves during this pandemic. The Iranian government has lost significant oil revenues as a result of the US sanctions. Iranian businesses cannot endure more losses after bearing the cost of sanctions and the government's mismanagement of the economy. Many Iranians are sharing the news of suddenly losing their jobs on social networks. Many businesses have closed their doors, not renewing contracts with their employees. A new wave of unemployment is expected, while many wonder if their communities can go through another series of economic hardships. The government has left much to be desired in its first response to the economic impact of the coronavirus. Like any other economic crisis, the government's first reaction was to blame sanctions imposed by the United States. However, Iran needed and needs hospital beds and ventilators. Blaming sanctions would not provide relief. The government felt the need to take action. It did so, not recognizing the actual size of the unfolding economic crisis. On March 12, Rouhani announced that the government would provide 3 million Iranian households with welfare packages to help them with the negative impact of the economic slowdown following the spread of the virus. He promised to offer government assistance to 4 million low-income families if the budget is allocated. That was the key the government did not have any money to help vulnerable Iranians. On the very same day, Iran requested $5 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through its Rapid Financing Instrument citing the economic conditions caused by the pandemic. However, the process proved lengthy, and the IMF is yet to approve any transfer to Iran. The United States also opposed the request saying Iran has enough funds at its disposal, and arguing it would use the money to "fund its adventurism abroad, not to buy medicine for Iranians," according to a statement to Al-Monitor's Bryant Harris from the State Department. US law also requires that Washington oppose proposed assistance to Tehran as it is designated a state sponsor of terrorism. Thus, it is unlikely Iran will receive anything from the IMF. Rouhani had no other choice but to request permission from Khamenei on March 26 to use 1 billion euros from the Fund for National Development, a trust fund established to save oil revenues for a rainy day. In 2012, it was reported that the fund would have $55 billion by March 2013. Later in 2015, it was claimed that the fund had surpassed $80 billion. However, no one knows precisely how much money is left in the account from a total of $618 billion in oil revenues, which Iran earned from 2005 to 2013, before internationally imposed sanctions. Facing sanctions and other barriers in finding external resources, the Iranian government settled for about one-fifth of what it had initially asked of the IMF. In the 11 days between Rouhani's request and Khamenei's approval, the economic reality of Iran kept changing. It became apparent that Iran's struggling private sector would bear the brunt of the economic cost of the pandemic. The government announced that it would make available $5 billion in low-interest rate loans to the struggling businesses. It has also increased the funding for unemployment insurance by another $300 million. In the meantime, 50 Iranian economists took upon themselves to write an open letter to the president proposing a stimulus package for the economy. They suggested the government allocate $5 billion to provide low-income families with 1 million tomans (or about $70) per member of the household in credit card loans, which they can use in chain department stores to buy necessities. The government will deduct these loans after a six-month breathing period from families' cash subsidies in 12 monthly installments. Signatories of the open letter have also urged the government to provide businesses with immediate access to funds to prevent unemployment from increasing any further. They also asked for $650 million to boast the health-care sector. While the economists meant to address negative demand and supply shocks, the government has seen an opportunity to provide Iranians with some relief and to score some political points. First, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Abdolnasser Hemmati, welcomed the idea, urging the banks to participate in the program. Rouhani has made a point of publicly advocating for "1 million for every Iranian." He is making calls to speed up the cash payouts, according to the website of the president's office. The amount is not much, but it would mean a lot to many Iranian families. Still, the Iranian economy needs much more to get through the coming months. No one doubts that such programs will increase the inflation in the economy, reducing the average Iranian family's shopping power further. The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic in Iran is yet to be determined. Many part-time workers and hourly wage earners have already lost their jobs. The pandemic interrupted holiday season shopping, costing shopkeepers and small distributors immensely. At the same time, sanctions and widespread corruption have made Iranians and the Iranian economy more vulnerable than other economies to the crisis. Iranian authorities claim that because of the sanctions, there had not been enough funding to expand health-care coverage. However, the directors of hospitals complain of a lack of resources and funding to care for COVID-19 patients in the existing facilities. The director of one provincial hospital went as far as claiming that he cannot feed the patients. If sanctions have denied Iran the necessary funds, a dysfunctioning bureaucracy has reduced the effectiveness of available resources significantly. One billion euros would disappear quickly in corridors of the labyrinth, which is the Iranian government decision-making process. The coronavirus is not planning to go anywhere anytime soon. Iranians have no other choice but to go back to work in the midst of a global pandemic to earn a living, while their economy continues to shrink. HUMAN rights doctors have demanded that authorities probe prominent medical practitioners who appear to be running parallel coronavirus treatment programmes, casting official results in doubt. Zimbabwe has so far recorded 11 confirmed positive cases of the deadly COVID-19 and three deaths, but there is suspicion government could be understating the figures because of its inability to conduct massive testing, with only 438 tests conducted as of Thursday. In a letter to Health and Child Care permanent secretary Agnes Mahomva dated April 9, 2020, seen by NewsDay Weekender, Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights board secretary Norman Matara cited Trauma Centre Borrowdale owner Vivek Solanki as one such medical practitioner involved in private testing of the virus. Matara said Solanki was reportedly involved in the setting up of a COVID-19 designated facility at the Rock Foundation Medical Centre in Mt Pleasant, Harare. In that regard, we kindly request your office to conduct an investigation into the operations of Dr Vivek Solanki with regards to the treatment of COVID-19 patients, Matara said. The letter stated that on April 8, Solanki, through his Twitter account @doksolanki, at 1357 hours, insinuated that he is actively involved in the treatment of COVID-19 patients and reported that they were experiencing gastroenteritis. Matara said after being quizzed about his role by his followers, Solanki deleted the tweet, raising suspicions of all well-meaning Zimbabweans. To the best of our knowledge, currently, COVID-19 patients are being managed in State and local authority-run facilities in Zimbabwe, Matara said. The human rights doctors said there was a possibility of masking the true extent of COVID-19 cases in Zimbabwe, with some cases not being reported through the official statistics and called for an investigation to bring clarity on whether the countrys reported 11 cases include statistics from Solanki. Matara further claimed that Solanki claimed he was treating such mentioned patients outside Zimbabwe, of which we are aware that there are travel restrictions in place and we are also unaware of countries that have been utilising telemedicine to respond to COVID-19 patients. Telemedicine refers to the practice of caring for patients remotely when the provider and patient are not physically present in the same place. In any case, if he was doing the right thing, why did he rush to delete the tweet? We, therefore, urge your office to investigate this claim and reassure the nation of the true extent of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe, Matara said. Mahomva said she was yet to receive the letter. I am actually in my office, if I come across it, I will come back to you, she said. Rock Foundation Medical Centre, which has been taken over by fuel mogul, Sakunda Holdings owner Kudakwashe Tagwirei, was expected to open its doors to the public on April 5 after receiving equipment from China and South Africa. In a related development, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) Zimbabwe has also filed an application at the High Court seeking an interdict compelling government to avail information and resource materials on COVID-19 to the public. The media advocacy group cited Health minister Obadiah Moyo and his Information counterpart Monica Mutsvangwa as repondents. Misa Zimbabwe submitted that there was no information regarding the money received from the Global Fund after President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared the pandemic a state of national disaster and what is in the State coffers for the fight against COVID-19. Due to lack of that information, Misa said, the public will be left to guess on the gap between resources available and required. The media lobby group also demanded government releases information on the number of doctors available at national, provincial and district levels after months of labour unrest by the medical practitioners. The information given in the updates on tests carried out is cumulative and it makes it difficult for the public to identify hot zones of the pandemic, which is critical in enforcing the lockdown and to assist people to avoid such hot zones, the lobby group said. Misa said on April 7, Moyo and Mutsvangwa published an update relating to one resident of Bulawayo who was infected with the virus and succumbed to the infection, but did not give details about the name of the hospital. There is also no information on how health services will be delivered to those in rural areas, Misa said. The media lobby group also submitted that the content of information available to the public regarding State measures and state of preparedness was scant and was in violation of the right to access to information. It also raised concern that government updates were exclusively in the English language. It said the communication was marginalising rural people as most of them were not active on social media due to unavailability of data bundles or wifi as well as limited access to mass media forms of communication. UPDATE: A tornado watch is in place until 6 p.m. in the Lehigh Valley and Warren County, the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center reports. A broken line of thunderstorms at midday was moving southwest to northeast across Pennsylvania and toward New Jersey and creating conditions that make a tornado possible, the weather service said. The watch, which began at 11:30 a.m., extends to numerous counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. To prepare for a tornado, people should watch out for dark, rotating clouds, keep your television and radio on, avoid unnecessary car trips and bring outside furniture in, the weather service said. If the tornado arrives, people should take shelter -- which, since both states have stay-at-home orders, likely isnt a huge step. People should keep windows closed and stay away from them and go to the basement or lowest floor. If driving, they should head for the nearest building for cover. If they are outside, they should lie down in a low, flat area and cover their head with their hands. INITIAL POST: Something called a gravity wave arrived between rain storms Monday morning and wind gusts near 50 mph took down trees and wires across the Lehigh Valley and Warren County, according to the National Weather Service and in-person and broadcast reports. The top wind gust between 8:51 and 9:51 a.m. at Lehigh Valley International Airport was 48 mph, according to the weather service. Gusts were expected as high as 70 mph over a one- to two-hour period, the weather service warned. A large tree came down about 9:40 a.m. into a house in the first block of Marshall Street in Phillipsburg. Wires fell as well. The town fire department responded. Surrounding streets are closed as well as Marshall. Power poles in the 2500 block of Brodhead Road in Bethlehem Township toppled in a row. Heavy winds took down a tree April 13, 2020, in the first block of Marshall Street in Phillipsburg.Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com contributor Trees were reported down on West Lafayette Street, Porter Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Easton. Dispatches said Arndt Road and near Mitman Road in Forks Township was shut, as was Whitney Avenue in Freemansburg. PPL at 12:30 p.m. reported 1,672 customers without power in Northampton County, led by Lower Saucon Township (673), Bethlehem Township (414) and Bethlehem (361). PPL had 2,397 out at that hour in Lehigh County. A tree came down in high winds April 13, 2020, near the top of Easton's College Hill and tugged down wires with it.Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com contributor As of 12:30 p.m., Met-Ed had 210 customers out in Northampton County, headed by Lower Mount Bethel Township (105). Warren County had 1,172 JCP&L customers out, topped by 504 in Mansfield Township. Poles were down April 13, 2020, in heavy wind in the 2500 block of Brodhead Road in Bethlehem Township.Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com An atmospheric gravity wave, which could be seen in the clouds on Monday morning above the region on radar, according to the weather service, is often associated with thunderstorms. But in the case of Monday morning it was likely caused by the change in pressure as the low pressure system bringing rain moved away and was quickly followed by a high pressure area, meteorologist Trent Davis explained from the NWS Mount Holly, New Jersey, office. The wave forces higher velocity winds just above the surface down to the surface, he said. Friction would have slowed the winds if they had been at the surface the whole time, he said. The weather service said a broken line of thunderstorms is up next about noon and the Lehigh Valley should be done with the risky weather by 4 or 5 p.m. Isolated tornados are not out of the question. This is a breaking news post and it will be updated as more information becomes available. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. If theres anything about this story that needs attention, please email him. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohioans could need to wear a mask for the next year to keep the coronavirus at bay as businesses reopen, Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton said. In a state briefing on Monday, Acton predicted a culture change, with masks an instrumental part of fighting coronavirus. The remark was part of a greater discussion on how the state will emerge from its strict stay-at-home order, which runs until May 1. There are now 6,975 confirmed coronavirus cases in Ohio and 274 deaths. Professionals initially did not recommend members of the public wear masks, especially because protective personal equipment for healthcare workers is limited. Tone shifted as the virus continued to spread and people started to create their own, homemade cloth masks. Ohio officially recommended residents wear cloth masks in public -- not medical masks or N95 respirators -- on April 4, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the recommendation. Acton said that social distancing measures stack on top of each other, creating less of a chance for the virus to spread with each layer. We are going to be looking at a year of using these in new ways, she said. Keep making them. A simple cloth mask involves attaching layers of fabric to elastic to secure the mask around the wearers ears. Making a homemade mask doesnt require a sewing machine, and if you dont have elastic to secure the ears, there are other options. University Hospitals is still collecting cloth masks, for health care workers and visitors. Don your mask," said Acton. Don your cape." Read more about sewing masks below: Cant find elastic to make a mask? Here are some other options 12 simple steps to make a fabric mask to protect from the coronavirus: See the video Making a coronavirus mask without a sewing machine is fairly easy (video) How to help sew masks for hospital in coronavirus crisis Hudson volunteers make 750 masks in a week for Canton hospital during coronavirus crisis New Delhi, April 13 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted the nation on the occasion of Baisakhi and the Odia New Year or Maha Bishuba Pana Sankranti. Taking to Twitter, the Prime Minister said in Hindi, Odia and English: "Many wishes to the countrymen on the auspicious occasion of Baisakhi. May the festival of new aspirations bring new energy and new enthusiasm in everyone's life." The Prime Minister also said: "Happy #OdiaNewYear and Maha Bishuba Pana Sankranti. May the coming year bring happiness and good health in everyone's lives." Baisakhi is a historical and religious festival in India specially in Punjab. It is a spring harvest festival for Sikhs and also marks the formatio of the Khalsa in 1699 by Guru Gobind Singh. Additionally, it celebrates the Solar new year, based on the Hindu Vikram Samvat calendar. Maha Bishuba Pana Sankranti is the traditional new year day festival of Buddhists and Hindus in the state of Odisha. The festival is celebrated by visiting Shiva, Shakti, or Hanuman temples and taking holy dip in the river. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, most religious places are closed in India. People are celebrating these festivals staying home and maintaining social distancing. Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh also posted a video message on Twitter and urged the people of the state to celebrate the festival inside their homes and pray for the people of the country. "I urge all to celebrate the auspicious festival of #VaisakhiAtHome and do an #ArdasAt11 am for Sarbat Da Bhala," he said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Beyond those, the court has heard arguments, but not ruled, on other major cases: a challenge to a restrictive Louisiana abortion law; whether federal laws protecting workers apply to LGBT employees; and whether the Trump administration moved unlawfully to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects those brought illegally to this country as children. These are extraordinary times and we all are in uncharted territory. There is a lot of fear and negativity in all spheres due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. While the Corona Warriors are doing a tremendous job fighting from the frontlines, we at Adgully are embarking on an endeavour to highlight the positive developments during these challenging times. Over the next few weeks, Adgully will be featuring a series of brief interactions with industry leaders in India and find out how they are keeping their spirits up as well as keeping their employees motivated, also how they are joining in the fight against the adverse impact of the global pandemic. Ashish Bhasin, CEO APAC and Chairman India, Dentsu Aegis Network, presents a realistic viewpoint of the disruption in peoples lives, business operations, and the economy due to the COVID-19 crisis. He says that while there will be pain for some time, but is also optimistic of coming out of this together, stronger. What steps are you and your organisation taking to help out the society at large or those engaged in the war against Covid-19? Wherever possible, we are trying to team up with our clients a good example is Vivo. All clients have CSR budgets, and this is a good time to use those budgets to do good for society. Options are limited because of the lockdown, but there is still a lot of good that can be done. We are partnering with our clients both in terms of messaging and in terms of real benefits like masks being given out to people who need it. This is a time of real anxiety and we are counselling people and providing them support. We have counselling helplines which are not just open to our employees, but also their friends and families. A lot of efforts are happening at a micro level by brands, by teams, in various cities, to meet the different needs, in different parts of the business. For example, iProspect has opened up its e-learning platform called iProspect Masterclass for professionals in marketing and advertising industry who want to upgrade their skills. We have planned a series of initiatives and are encouraging people to think of them at the team level and brand level to address the real ground needs of the hour. How are you keeping your employees motivated and are encouraging them to give their best, even as they are working from home? I think you need to go step by step in this. Safety comes first, even before motivation. We had started work from home before the lockdown officially came into effect. We had initiated temperature checks and sanitisation programmes before the Government announced the lockdown. The unsung heroes in this situation are actually the IT guys, because for a company like ours, where suddenly 3,500 to 4,000 people suddenly moved to work from home, for the system to run smoothly and people to be able to access their files, folders and communicate via the Internet, you need more VPN licences, more bandwidth, and other systems in place. So, hats off to our IT colleagues, who have made sure that has happened. The first thing is physical safety and health. The second thing is to ensure that basic infrastructure is provided. And the third thing that leaders should be doing at this time is to communicate. This is the time to communicate more and not less. While we are practicing social distancing, we should also practice virtual proximity. There are anxieties in everybodys minds, such as will I lose my job?; what is going to happen?; Is this ever going to come back to normal?; which is normal and natural for everybody to feel. Nobody knows the answers to these questions, but if you discuss and talk about it together, then it does help. At times like these, it helps to be honest and transparent. It doesnt make sense to paint a picture that is rosier than reality as this event is going to hurt everybody juniors, seniors, agencies, clients. It is one of those big global events that will hurt everybody. There is going to be pain, but we have to collectively find out the best way to get over it. We should be aware of the fact that this situation has a finite time span, I dont know whether it will be one week, one month or one year, but whatever it may be, there WILL be light at the end of this tunnel. You have to keep people focused on the fact that while we will endure pain, when the bounce-back happens, we should come back stronger as individuals and as a company. What is most needed in challenging times such as these: (a) From the general public: I think the best thing we can do is follow the instructions that the authorities are giving. These are unprecedented, untested times and everybody is being told that if you stay at home and follow certain norms, then we can flatten the curve and help remove the load from the medical system. Our first and foremost basic duty is to follow this, not just for our sake, but for the sake of our friends and family and everybody else. One person violating these norms is not just hurting himself/ herself, but everybody in contact with them. Weve seen that one or two people being careless can multiply this virus in geometric progression. Our duty as the public is to follow the guidance given by the state and municipal authorities. (b) From the authorities: The Government has to understand that there are two aspects to this. First is the damage and health related issues that the virus is causing, but equally because of the lockdown there is tremendous disruption in the industry. We have to figure out a way to ease this so that the system doesnt collapse under the burden. Liquidity has come to near zero, consumption other than that of essential items has come to near zero, and many are under this mistaken impression that one fine day a switch will be turned on and everything will be back to normal. Thats not going to happen. When the economy starts rolling again, it is going to be a very difficult period. There has to be tax relief, liquidity benefits, reduction in corporate tax rates, money put in the pockets of daily labourers, are the need of the hour to help get things back to normal or it is going to hit us really hard. In the best scenario, assuming we have a really good monsoon which boosts rural demand in India, we will see things returning to normal by the coming Diwali or so. This calendar year is going to be tough and we need government support, particularly in the area of liquidity for businesses to survive. (c) From business leaders: We have to ensure the safety and well being of our people, because nothing is more important than human life. The second responsibility is to take care of the health of your business. This is a fine line because, on the one hand you have to take care of your staff, on the other, we all have to get together and feel a little pain so that a few people dont have to feel a lot of pain. This situation is unprecedented and we have to deal with it. There will be cost cuts of every kind, including salary cuts, bonus cuts, increments will go away, and there will be loss of jobs depending on how long this whole thing lasts. As leaders, we have to be true and transparent to our people, give them the whole picture, which involves everybody making some small sacrifice so that we can protect the larger good of the company and larger health of the business. I think people wont mind participating in this as long as you are honest about the situation. As business leaders, it is our job to be optimistic and see the light at the end of the tunnel. There will be a revival after a period of time and we have to give that assurance to our people. Our key job will be communicating that there will be pain for a short period of time, but in the end we will come out of this together, stronger. Also Read: Adversity fuels creativity says Ashish Bhasin in open letter to M&E Telecom, handset makers to be biggest spenders on IPL 2020: Ashish Bhasin Australia could soon replace strict social-distancing rules with advanced surveillance and tracking methods to more precisely combat the spread of the coronavirus while allowing people more activities outside the home. The bans on almost all social gatherings and unnecessary travel were introduced in stages last month to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Australia's infection rate has been slowing, with only 33 new cases over the 24 hours from Sunday into Monday morning, raising the question of when the lockdown measures will be lifted to stem the resultant economic damage. Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said Australia was in stronger position than most countries in flattening the curve of the infection rate, and the national cabinet was now looking at methods to gradually unwind the restrictions. The first restriction that could be loosened would be the size of gatherings; currently set at just two people unless they share a home. But Mr Murphy has warned that it is too soon to tell if Australia had permanently passed the peak of its coronavirus cases and therefore any relaxation of the lockdown must be approached prudently. A pair hug after leaving a hotel where travellers had spent two weeks in isolation after returning from overseas A man reacts as he leaves the Crown Promenade Hotel after spending two weeks in forced quarantine in Melbourne Restrictions will only be eased once medical experts are confident community transmissions are under control. Mr Murphy cited the examples of Japan and Singapore, which eased restrictions when infection rates slowed but then had to reimpose them after another wave of cases. 'These restrictions in some form or another...are going to be in place for months and months, theres no possibility of large scale relaxation in the short term.' He said other measures such as surveillance and tracking of people who had tested positive would be needed once the broad community lockdown had been relaxed. Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy (pictured) has warned that it is too soon to tell if Australia has passed the peak of its coronavirus cases The strict measures, banning almost all social gatherings and unnecessary travel, were introduced in stages last month to prevent the spread of the deadly disease. As a result, Australia's infection rate has been slowing, with only 33 new cases over the last 24 hours However, there was a 'huge risk' in surveillance and tracking methods, he said. 'We want to spend the next few weeks looking at the framework with the national cabinet and helping them to make a decision.' With much of Australia's infection due to the arrival of carriers from overseas, Mr Murphy said allowing the resumption of international travel without subsequent quarantine periods was 'a long way off'. 'You have to keep the most aggressive border measures in place for a very long time,' Mr Murphy said. Prime Minister Scott Morrison had said Australians would be under restrictions of varying severity until at least September, and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the public was largely supportive. International travel remains a huge issue for combating the coronavirus until a vaccine is found. (Pictured: Australians returning home after a mercy flight from Cambodia) Across Australia residents can be fined for breaking social distancing rules, fines vary in each state and territory 'We have to take the medical advice. It is very dangerous - and unrealistic - to move ahead of the medical advice,' Mr Frydenberg said. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement 'As the Prime Minister has said, patience is a virtue. Complacency is a problem. And everyone needs to understand that this is a very fluid and difficult situation. 'When you look around the rest of the world, the United States, Europe, parts of Asia, even closer to home, we don't want to have those experiences and so far our medical experts and those on the front-line are the real heroes of the crisis.' Last month, pubs, cafes and restaurants were forced to close and could only offer takeaway and delivery, while other public gathering spots like gyms, cinemas and places of worship were also shut as the federal and state governments began introducing rules to stop the spread of the illness. From March 31, residents were banned from leaving their homes for anything but a few reasons: essential work, education, shopping for food or medical supplies. Police had been monitoring public spaces like beaches and parks since the rules were introduced. On-the-spot fines of up to $1,652 were being issued for anyone caught breaking social distancing rules. Governments around the world are struggling to decide when people can return to work. The coronavirus pandemic has closed businesses and factories and damaged economies. Workers in some nonessential businesses returned to their jobs Monday in Spain. South Korean officials, however, are warning that new infections could appear if restrictions are lifted. And officials in the United States are debating when businesses can reopen in the worlds biggest economy. The decisions are difficult to make, especially on a national level. Some areas are hit harder and at different times than others. Britain, Japan, parts of the United States and other places are still seeing daily increases of deaths or infections. Both Italy and Spain have seen drops in recent days. In the United States The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths than any other nation. On Monday, Johns Hopkins Universitys Coronavirus Resource Center reported that the country had more than 558,000 infections and more than 22,000 deaths. President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to reopen the economy as soon as possible. On Monday, the president said it was his decision when to reopen the U.S. economy, and not the decision of state leaders. Trump wrote on Twitter, It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly! The governors of Maryland and New Jersey said earlier on Sunday that they are not likely to reopen their states until widespread testing is available. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said, The question is how fast we can get enough tests up to speed in order to help us get to the point where we are able to do all of those things. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy warned if we open up too early, and we have not sufficiently made that health recovery and cracked the back of this virus, we could be pouring gasoline on the fire. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the nations head of infectious diseases. He said Sunday that the economy in parts of the U.S. could reopen as early as next month, if health officials can quickly identify and isolate people infected with the virus. While federal health officials have issued guidelines -- including social distancing and wearing face coverings -- the state governments have issued orders to close schools, services and businesses. Spain Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the coronavirus crisis threatens to destroy lives and at the same time destroy the economic and social fabric of our country. Spains government is permitting workers to return to some manufacturing and building jobs. Stores and services remain closed. Office workers are urged to keep working from home. The nationwide state of emergency, set to continue for at least two more weeks, prevents people from leaving home for anything other than food and medicine. South Korea In South Korea, officials were discussing whether to permit certain levels of economic and social activity. With unemployment numbers rising sharply in the country, President Moon Jae-in promised Monday to focus on saving jobs and protecting the economy. But the countrys health minister, Kim Gang-lip, said a quick return to usual activities was virtually impossible because of the threat of new infections. Japan In neighboring Japan, infections have risen as companies have been slow to urge employees to work from home. Many workers are still going into work, even with the state of emergency in many areas -- including Tokyo. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has tried to urge people to stay home. He released a video showing himself holding a dog, reading a book and using a remote control at home. But the attempt drew criticism on social media. Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged a careful method of loosening restrictions. She will hold a video conference with state leaders Wednesday to discuss a road map to return to normality. Armin Laschet, governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, said his government has a plan for slowly easing the restrictions. The restrictions, which began on March 22, limit public gatherings to only two people. What about poor economies? Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged the worlds wealthy countries and international organizations to provide debt-relief for poor nations. Last week, Oxfam warned that the coronavirus pandemic could push half a billion people into poverty. The charity organization asked richer nations to give at least $2.5 trillion to help. It said, Unless developing countries are also able to fight the crisis will continue and it will inflict even greater harm on all countries, rich and poor. I'm John Russell. And I'm Ashley Thompson. Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on Associated Press and Reuters news reports. Ashley Thompson was the editor. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story governor - n. a person who is the leader of a state, province, etc. gasoline - n. a liquid made from petroleum and used as a fuel isolate - v. to put or keep someone in place that is away from others fabric - n. the basic structure of something focus - v. to direct or keep attention on something inflict - v. to cause harm (Newser) Lawyers dreaming of arguing before the Supreme Court surely never pictured it quite like this: Next month, justices will hear arguments by telephone, reports CNBC. The court announced the first-of-its-kind move Monday as a coronavirus safety measure, saying that 10 cases will be heard by "telephone conference." There will be no video component, a court spokeswoman confirms to CNN. The media will be allowed to listen in via a live audio feed, though there's no word on whether the feed will be available to the public as well, per Axios. Of note: Three of the May cases involve President Trump's efforts to keep prosecutors and congressional panels from getting a look at his financial records. The dates haven't yet been set. (Read more US Supreme Court stories.) The following items were taken from Lincolnshire Police Department reports and releases. An arrest does not constitute a finding of guilt. Drugs Two juveniles were charged March 25 with illegal possession of cannabis under the age of 21 and fraudulent identification at Oxford Drive and Lincolnshire Drive. The juveniles are scheduled to appear in court May 13. Michelle Gutierrez Arreola, 18, of the 4400 block of North Avers Avenue, Chicago, was charged April 2 with unlawful possession of cannabis under the age of 21 at Half Day Road and Oakwood Lane. Gutierrez Arreola is scheduled to appear in court May 13. A juvenile was charged April 2 with unlawful possession of cannabis under the age of 21 at Half Day Road and Oakwood Lane. The juvenile is scheduled to appear in court May 13. DUI Roman Pavlyshak, 40, of the 6000 block of North Melvina Avenue, Chicago, was charged April 5 with driving under the influence at Half Day Road and Oxford Drive. Pavlyshak is scheduled to appear in court May 22. Speeding Nicolette Koutsoukos, 53, of the 2400 block of Southport Avenue, Chicago, was charged March 21 with speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Half Day Road and Old Mill Road. Koutsoukos is scheduled to appear in court April 15. Rashard Chester, 29, of the 4000 block of 115th Street, Chicago, was charged April 1 with speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Half Day Road and Wood Creek Road. Chester is scheduled to appear in court May 13. Sam Barlow, 57, of the 200 block of US Highway 45, Indian Creek, was charged April 1 with speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Half Day Road and Oxford Drive. Barlow is scheduled to appear in court May 13. A juvenile was charged April 2 with speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Half Day Road and Oakwood Lane. The juvenile is scheduled to appear in court May 13. Sean A. Kolber, 25, of the 100 block of Adair Court, Vernon Hills, was charged April 2 with speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Half Day Road and Barclay Boulevard. Kolber is scheduled to appear in court May 13. Richard W. Kenner, 58, of the 800 block of Sherman Avenue, Evanston, was charged April 3 with speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Milwaukee Avenue and Knightsbridge Parkway. Kenner is scheduled to appear in court May 20. Curfew A juvenile was charged March 25 with curfew at Oxford Drive and Lincolnshire Drive. The juvenile is scheduled to appear in court May 13. Drivers license Russet Wilson, 42, of the 7500 block of Yates Boulevard, Chicago, was charged March 24 with driving while license suspended and speeding more than 26 mph over the limit at Half Day Road and Wood Creek Road. Wilson is scheduled to appear in court May 13. Shanon D. Oshon, 32, of the 2300 block of Gideon Avenue, Zion, was charged March 25 with driving while license suspended at Aptakisic Road and Milwaukee Avenue. Oshon is scheduled to appear in court May 13. kedquist@chicagotribune.com Twitter: @kaitlinedquist Representative Image. The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has sought relief for the industry from government think-tank Niti Aayog, saying the lockdown had hit the business hard and led to job losses following the coronavirus outbreak. In an April 9 letter, a copy of which has been seen by Moneycontrol, NRAI has requested Niti Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant that licence renewals, permits and registrations be put on hold for six months. It has also sought a discount in utility rates to manage cash flows as businesses have been closed for more than three weeks now. Once a restaurant is set up, all the operating costs are incurred on a credit basis. With zero revenues, there is absolutely no buffer. At this crucial juncture, we need to focus on both, lives and livelihood. I implore the government to share the contagion burden, said Rahul Singh, founder of The Beer Cafe, and a trustee of NRAI. The letter to Kant comes a few days after the industry body wrote to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, requesting relief measures. Not just restaurants, the food and beverage industry, on the whole, has been upended as restriction of movement and travel a toll on business. Follow LIVE updates on the COVID-19 pandemic here COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show The three-week lockdown announced to check the spread of coronavirus ends on April 14 but several states have already extended the restrictions by two weeks to the end of April. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on the morning of April 14 address the nation once again to spell out the plan for the days ahead, as the number of confirmed cases in India inch close to 9,400, so far, with 324 deaths. The industry was looking at businesses failing and more people getting unemployed as the lockdown was set to be extended across the country, the letter said. Major cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Kolkata have already announced an extension of the lockdown. The association claims to represents more than 5 lakh restaurants and 70 lakh employees with a total business turnover of more than Rs 4 lakh crore. NRAI has also requested the government to declare force majeure, which will help many businesses hit by the pandemic. It would save litigation costs once the business gets normal. Typically, the force majeure clause is invoked for unforeseeable circumstances, including natural disasters, war or war-like situations, epidemics or pandemics, that prevent fulfilling of a contract. To protect the employees, the association has requested the government to offer some support in terms of unemployment protection until March 2021. The protection could be in terms of cash and free food grains. It also said that the governments support for provident fund contributions should be extended to business establishments with 1,000 employees with 50% of them working at minimum wages level. SMEs can at best comply with the request to continue employment during the lockdown, but to expect sustenance is not only unfair but also practically impossible, Singh said. To provide a cushion to small business and their employees, the government has said it will pay the employee provident fund contribution, both of the employer and the employee (12 percent each), for the next three months for establishments employing up to 100 people, 90 percent of which earn 15,000 per month. The head of new buy now, pay later entrant Splitit has hit out at rivals offering vulnerable consumers lines of credit, saying they will be hit hardest by the economic pressures brought on by COVID-19. Splitit chief executive Brad Paterson told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that companies who "gouge and profiteer" will suffer, as they are more likely to weather bad debts and lose customers as scorned users look for alternatives. Buy now, pay later providers are facing a test as coronavirus response measures lead to a huge surge in unemployment. Credit:Wayne Taylor "Companies who aren't gouging or profiteering from this by giving credit to those who shouldn't have it, they will do very well," he said. "But those who try to ... will pay a price dearly in the future." Australia's two largest buy now, pay later companies, Afterpay and Zip, provide lines of credit to consumers and shares in both have plunged as investors raised concerns over what effect the coronavirus would have on their businesses. Taliban had announced that it will release a total of 20 Afghanistan government prisoners on April 12 marking the first release since the peace process began, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter. Shaheen also revealed that all the prisoners would be handed over to representatives of the Red Cross in the southern city of Kandahar. Today, 20 prisoners of the Kabul Administration will be released by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and handed over to ICRC in Kandahar. Suhail Shaheen (@suhailshaheen1) April 12, 2020 Read: Taliban Attacks Kill 20 Afghan Soldiers Hours After Trump Call: Report Read: Taliban End 'fruitless' Meetings With Afghan Govt Over Prisoner Swap 300 Talibani prisoners released The Afghanistan government has since April 8 released 300 prisoners despite the militant group's constant complaint about the piecemeal nature of the releases. However, April 12 marks the first release from the Taliban's side as a part of the Afghan peace deal signed between the US, Taliban and the Afghanistan government. Reports suggest that the exchange was supposed to have happened by March 10, allowing peace talks to begin, but has been beset with problems. Previously, a few days after the deal was signed Taliban launched an overnight attack killing 20 Afghan army and police officials. In retaliation, the US attacked the Taliban with an airstrike. However, on April 10, Taliban officials met the head of US forces in Afghanistan to call for an end to what they say is an increase in American attacks since the peace deal was signed. Read: Taliban Meet With US General Amid Tensions Over Peace Deal Read: Pak Court Orders Investigating Agency To Submit Details Of Slain Taliban Chief's Properties (With inputs from agencies) (Image Credit: AP) BURLINGTON, Mass. and PLANO, Texas, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Keurig Dr Pepper (NYSE: KDP) announced today that it has closed its previously-announced $1.5 billion public offering of senior notes (the "Notes"), in a transaction that was nearly 10x oversubscribed. The offering consists of $750 million aggregate principal amount of 3.20% senior notes due 2030 and $750 million aggregate principal amount of 3.80% senior notes due 2050. Commenting on the announcement, KDP Chief Financial Officer Ozan Dokmecioglu stated, "We are very pleased with the execution of this offering and the continued strong support we receive from the banking community. This proactive refinancing extends our maturities and increases our liquidity to a level that we believe enables us to more than meet our commitments, even in a prolonged downturn, as we continue to exercise financial discipline and ensure the long-term financial health of KDP." The Company estimates that the net proceeds from the offering will be approximately $1,481 million (after underwriting discounts and offering expenses). The Company intends to use the net proceeds of this offering to repay approximately $1,000 million of its outstanding borrowings under its 2018 credit agreement and the remainder to repay its outstanding commercial paper notes. The remaining net proceeds, if any, will be used to fund costs of the offering and for other general corporate purposes. The Notes are the unsecured and unsubordinated obligations of the Company and rank equally in right of payment with all of the Company's current and future unsubordinated indebtedness. The Notes are guaranteed by certain of the Company's domestic subsidiaries (each a "Subsidiary Guarantor") and are fully and unconditionally guaranteed by all of its existing and future subsidiaries that guarantee any of its other indebtedness (each a "Subsidiary Guarantee"). Each such Subsidiary Guarantee is an unsecured and unsubordinated obligation of the Subsidiary Guarantor providing such Subsidiary Guarantee and ranks equally in right of payment with such Subsidiary Guarantor's current and future unsubordinated indebtedness. BofA Securities Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, BNP Paribas Securities Corp., Mizuho Securities USA LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc. and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. acted as joint book-running managers for the notes offering. The offering of the notes is being made only by means of a prospectus and related prospectus supplement. Copies may be obtained from: BofA Securities, Inc., 200 North College Street, 3rd Floor, Charlotte, North Carolina 28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department, telephone: 1-800-294-1322 or by email at [email protected]; Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316 or by email at [email protected]; and from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10179, Attn: Investment Grade Syndicate Desk, telephone: (212) 834-4533. An effective registration statement is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), and a copy of the prospectus and related prospectus supplement is also be available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. About Keurig Dr Pepper Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) is a leading beverage company in North America, with annual revenue in excess of $11 billion and 25,000+ employees. KDP holds leadership positions in soft drinks, specialty coffee and tea, water, juice and juice drinks and mixers, and markets the #1 single serve coffee brewing system in the U.S. and Canada. The Company's portfolio of more than 125 owned, licensed and partner brands is designed to satisfy virtually any consumer need, any time, and includes Keurig, Dr Pepper, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Canada Dry, Snapple, Bai, Mott's, CORE and The Original Donut Shop. Through its powerful sales and distribution network, KDP can deliver its portfolio of hot and cold beverages to nearly every point of purchase for consumers. The Company is committed to sourcing, producing and distributing its beverages responsibly through its Drink Well. Do Good. corporate responsibility platform, including efforts around circular packaging, efficient natural resource use and supply chain sustainability. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained herein are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws and regulations. These statements are often, but not always, made through the use of words or phrases such as "may," "might," "should," "could," "predict," "potential," "believe," "expect," "continue," "will," "anticipate," "seek," "estimate," "intend," "plan," and "would," or the negative version of those words or other comparable words or phrases of a future or forward-looking nature. These forward-looking statements have been based on the Company's current views with respect to future events and the timing of this notes offering. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties including prevailing market conditions, as well as other factors. All of the forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 and the Company's other filings with the SEC. Forward-looking statements represent the Company's estimates and assumptions only as of the date that they were made. The Company does not undertake any duty to update the forward-looking statements, and the estimates and assumptions associated with them, after the date of this release, except to the extent required by applicable law. Contact information Investors: Tyson Seely (781) 418-3352 [email protected] Steve Alexander (972) 673-6769 [email protected] Media: Katie Gilroy (781) 418-3345 [email protected] SOURCE Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. Related Links http://www.keurigdrpepper.com Billions of locusts have laid waste to 500,000 acres of Ethiopian cropland and unleashed a food crisis. A United Nations report found that the devastation caused by the swarms have left millions of citizens in need of emergency food aid. The findings from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which recently concluded a joint assessment with the Ethiopian government, come as the region is bracing for new swarms that could be even more destructive. This second wave of pests to spawn in Africa could to be 20 times larger than the first - which was already the worst in 70 years in some nations. The desert locusts, some in swarms the size of Moscow, have already chomped their way through much of East Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda. Billions of locusts have laid waste to 500,000 acres of Ethiopian cropland and unleashed a food crisis (a pesticide worker holding a desert locust in Somaliland, pictured) The desert locusts, some in swarms the size of Moscow, have already chomped their way through much of East Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya (pictured), Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda Their breeding has been spurred by one of the wettest rainy seasons in the region in four decades. In Ethiopia, the locusts have caused widespread losses of sorghum, wheat and maize, also known as corn, and vastly reduced the amount of available land for cattle grazing, FAO said. Some 75 per cent of Ethiopians requiring emergency food assistance live in the country's Somali and Oromia regions. FAO Ethiopia representative Fatouma Seid said farmer and pastoralists needed help in the form of agricultural inputs and cash transfers to get them through the emergency, which was being worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. 'It is critical to protect the livelihoods of the affected population especially now that the situation is compounded by the COVID-19 crisis,' Seid said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. Ethiopia has recorded just 74 cases of COVID-19, but testing has been limited and experts fear the country's weak health system, like others in the region, could be quickly overwhelmed by an influx of cases. A motorcyclist rides through a swarm of desert locusts in Kipsing, Kenya, during an outbreak which some believe is more dangerous than coronavirus In this photo taken Tuesday, March 31, 2020, a swarm of desert locusts flies in Kipsing, near Oldonyiro, in Isiolo county, Kenya The pandemic is also having a crippling economic effect in many countries, destroying jobs, dislocating trade systems and crimping supply lines through lockdowns and movement restrictions. The locust situation, meanwhile, is likely to get even worse. Last week, FAO warned a 'massive increase' in locusts across the region would pose 'an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods' by imperilling the upcoming planting and harvest seasons. Billions of the young locusts are coming in from breeding grounds in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, threatening 'total destruction' of crops and farmland and putting millions of people at risk. Some communities in Africa regard the desert insects as a greater threat than the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far spread less rapidly than in Asia or the West. The fiscal and monetary measures to cushion the impact of COVID-19 has so far been guided by sector-based considerations. The justification for this approach is not without cause given that consumer demand, particularly in the services sector, have proven more elastic than others. Take for instance, travel and tourism it has been hardest hit due to the low traffic volumes caused by the onslaught of COVID 19. The impact has been revenue decline and unemployment. Notwithstanding, it is important to also draw attention to other exposed sectors which employ majority of persons considered vulnerable or poor, in this case, those who get by on less than GH4.8 worth of meals per day. According to Ghana Living Standards Survey (Round 7), 23.4 percent of Ghana's population fall within this bracket. The urgent policy discussion now is twofold (1) how do we locate these persons, and (2) what kind of intervention would enable them to generate decent levels of income to cover their basic needs food, water and shelter? Micro-credit may be the answer not only as a channel to reach the vulnerable but a mechanism to promote productive inclusion. Figure 1 shows that regional distribution of micro-credit businesses in Ghana. Productive inclusion, unlike social protection, ensures that capital deployed for purposes of assisting the poor is channeled into productive economic activities that have measurable outcomes. By the close of FY 2019, an estimated amount of GH370 million had been disbursed to over 84,800 beneficiaries by some 600+ micro-creditors spread across all districts in Ghana. All districts that's an important point to note. Not only does micro-credit have reach, but it also possess the risk management capabilities to ensure funds are repaid back into government chest. Another point of interest to note, is that, at the bottom of the pyramid, female borrowers outnumber their male counterparts by a factor of two. This is good news for policymakers, considering the emerging trail of evidence in development literature which suggests that female economic empowerment is one of the key covariates of poverty. To put it simply, when mummy earns income, the family is taken care of. This essentially summarizes the business case for a micro-credit fund to support the millions of traders, chop bar operators, mechanics and shoemakers, who may also feel the adverse impact of COVID 19. The situation is even more urgent considering the slowdown in funds flow from the top tiers of the financial sector to those at the base. Market intelligence shows that banks and other NBFIs in tier 1 that hitherto supported micro-credit operators through on-lending facilities, have now adopted more stringent credit policies which limit their exposure to the sector. As a result, the demand for liquidity at the base of the pyramid cannot be overemphasized. Obviously, there may be genuine concerns about weak corporate governance systems, poor lending practices and managerial inefficiencies. But it is exactly why I believe the current business environment presents a door of opportunity for the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Ghana to engage the Micro-credit Association in order to fashion out implementation mechanisms that sorts out the strong institutions from the weak ones, and to further create incentives for the weak ones to shape up or ship out. We can kill several birds with one stone. A fund for micro-credit sector is an urgent policy matter. Dogs Trust, Irelands largest dog welfare charity, is delighted to announce one of their most beloved residents, Porkie the Pit Bull cross, has found the perfect family after waiting almost four years. Porkie was born in the charitys Rehoming Centre in Finglas after his pregnant mum, Penny, arrived into their care in April 2016. Porkie, the largest of his litter and hence his name, had difficulty controlling his excitement from a very young age and sadly this resulted in him being overlooked as many families were choosing less energetic pups. Porkie needed a very specific home, and he had no prior experience of home living! Everyday things that people often take for granted such as a bed being made, or the dishwasher being emptied were all foreign concepts to him. On top of all that, Porkie became quickly frustrated and overwhelmed with anything new or exciting, so the introduction of everyday items and events needed to be done in a controlled manner. Karla Dunne, Head of Operations, Dogs Trust Ireland explains: We were searching for people who were willing to get to know Porkie at his own pace and put in both the time and the effort to understand his many quirks and how to deal with them. Potential adopters would need to visit him multiple times to build a strong bond. They would also need to be understanding of the fact that Porkie had never lived in a home before and that every day would be a new experience for him while he settled in. They also needed to live in a relatively quiet area, with no children that Porkie could bowl over with his over-enthusiastic ways! With such specific requirements, it was no easy task to find Porkies paw-fect family but in October 2019, Brian Murphy and Regina Byrne Murphy arrived into the charitys Rehoming Centre, hoping to foster a dog. Regina Murphy-Byrne, Porkies adopter said: Porkie was suggested to us by the Rehoming team who explained all about his quirks and his struggles to control his excitement. As soon as we met him, we fell head over heels in love and knew then and there that we were prepared to do anything asked of us to be able to adopt him! We visited the Centre 35 times and Porkie visited our house with his Canine Carers. Dogs Trust implemented the Porkie Plan to get him accustomed to life in a home and together, we worked on his excitability. What a change there has been in his behaviour! We were thrilled to be able to take him home last month and now he enjoys nothing more than snuggling with myself and my husband on the sofa. Hes a completely different dog to the one we met back in October and we couldnt be prouder of him and everything he has overcome; we simply adore him! To continue to be able to care for dogs like Porkie, Dogs Trust are urgently appealing to dog lovers for their help. Like many businesses and charities, they have had to make the difficult decision to close the Rehoming Centre to the public temporarily. They need your support, now more than ever, to keep caring for Irish dogs as usual behind the scenes. As a charity that receives no Government funding, they are solely reliant on the generosity of the public to continue their life-saving work across Ireland. In these challenging times, your generosity will save lives, and ensure unwanted dogs and puppies can continue to receive the love and expert care they need to get them back on their paws again. Please donate what you can through their website or by Sponsoring a Dog or a Puppy Playgroup online. For more about Porkies story and to see the huge level of work and commitment our specialised team of behaviourists and canine carers put into finding him a new home, please see Porkies blog here: www.DogsTrust.ie/Porkie Written by ACM *Strasbourg/Angelo Marcopolo/(Partly UpDated)- EU Citizens may soon face a Risky Paradox : After having been practicaly Abandoned, withOut Any Protection, vis a vis Massive Infections imported from NW Italy's initial Deadly Virus' Hotspot, since several EU Governments did Not Monitor at all the endangered Borders, (Contrary to what China succesfully did vis a vis its Wuhan Region, similar to Lombardy, which was Tightly Quarantined: See http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/delaytoprotecteupeoplefromvirus.html, etc), Now they are threatened to be ...themselves Monitored in their EveryDay Private Lives, Spied even on their Individual Movements and Contacts, Health condition, etc., under Pretext to limit a Further Spread of the Virus ! - Already, CoE Assembly's new President, Rik Daems from Belgium (Liberal), Warned, on this occasion, against a Risk to "Open the Door to an <> Future of Constant Personal Surveillance, Following our Every Move, for UnKnown and UnAccountable Purposes", as he said in a Press Release just send to "Eurofora" by PACE's Press Service in Strasbourg, (See also Infra). - Indeed, as independent Web Freedom Watchdog "Electronic Frontier Foundation" NGO cautioned, currently, "Governments around the World are demanding Extraordinary new Surveillnce Powers", allegedly "to fight the Virus", Urging also a Close Scrutiny on New Links between some Governments and certain Private Companies that popped up out of the Pandemic, (f.ex. Telephone Companies, Internet access Providers, SpyWare Manufactors, Social Medias Networks, etc). + In Addition, World Famous WhistleBlower Edward Snowden, who risked his Job and Freedom in order to Denounce a Global Massive Surveillance mecanism by Secret Services, (Comp. Snowden's Replies to "Eurofora" Questions earlier at: http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/snowdenfriendshelpwhistleblowers.html, http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/snowdenlaughonlongmuellerspyingtrump.html, etc) has just Warned that, even "Five years later the coronavirus is gone, this data's still available to them they start looking for new things... They already know what you're Looking at on the Internet, they already know where your Phone is Moving, now they know what your Heart rate is" (f.ex. by Spying a "Fitness Tracker", etc). "What happens when they start to interMix these, and apply artificial intelligence to them ?" - Yesterday, CoE's Rapporteur on WhistleBlowers, and vice-President of the French National Assembly, Sylvain Wasserman, from Strasbourg's area, (Comp. Earlier Replies by Wasserman to "Eurofora"s questions, f.ex., at: http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/whistleblowersineuandcoe.html, +http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/snowdenfriendshelpwhistleblowers.html, http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/coerapporteurforassangeprotection.html, etc), stressed that, as a matter of Principle, Nowadays "It is Vital we improve the Protection of Whistle-blowers both during and after the CoronaVirus Crisis". Because, "Times of Crisis show that we need them to Safeguard our fundamental Rights such as Freedom of Expression and Information, but we also need them to enable us to prepare for and manage such situations more effectively". Thus, inter alia, Whistle-blowers can also Help to Prevent or Correct State Failures during the current Crisis. They are therefore an Essential cog in the wheel of our Democracies, and their Protection is a Measure of how Democratic we are". => In Consequence, Wasserman "fully Support(ed) the Initiative taken by NGOs to ...Improve the Protection of Whistle-Blowers ot only during the Crisis, but Also once it is behind us", including "Transarency International", the "European Federation of Journalists" and the "Media Development Center", "Government Accountability Project", the Universities of Griffith (Australia), Maastricht, Middlesex, Ryerson and Greenwich, "International Bar Association", "European Centre for Press and Media Freedom", "EuroCadres", "European Public Service Union", "European Organisation of Military Associations and Trade Unions", "Council of European Professional and Managerial Staff", "WhistleBlowing International Network", etc., who recently launched a "Coalition to make WhistleBlowing Safe, during COVID-19 and Beyond". - "The signatories ... call(ed) on all public authorities and institutions to Protect those who Report or expose the Harms, Abuses and serious Wrongdoing that arise during this period of Crisis caused by the COVID19 Pandemic", and "encourage(d) all Citizens and Workers to participate in ensuring our Governments, Corporate institutions and markets remain Accountable, and in Defending the Human Rights and freedoms", as "the Need for regular and Reliable Information", as well as "the importance of Accountability" are Now "Brought into Stark Relief", since "Speak about Threats to Public Health and Safety, Corruption and other Abuses", added to "their Disclosures", "are Vital to Preventing Major Disasters and reducing the Impacts of the crisis ..., especially on the most Vulnerable members of society and our Democratic systems", particularly "when Decisions are taken in Emergency conditions, often Away from Democratic Scrutiny", since "the use of Extraordinary Powers by governments, withOut proper public Oversight and Transparency creates a tangible Risk of overreach and potential Misuse". - Indeed, "we have Already seen examples of Wrongdoing and Mismanagement in our public Institutions, commercial Markets and Business as a result of COVID-19. Emerging areas of Concern include Health System Capacity and delivery" (f.ex. Masks, ICT, Ventilators, etc), "public Procurement, violations of health and safety and labor law, inequitable and ill-prepared global Supply chains, ... and significant Violations of personal Privacy rights at scale, through the Digital Tracking of individuals", the NGOs Denounced. Already, f.ex., New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo notoriously called the CoronaVirus' Crisis as "Worse than 9/11" Massive Barbaric Killings of Thousands of innocent Civilian People, and everybody knows that this was soon Followed, in the recent Past, by various US Government's Exceptional Measures, including, particularly, on Mass and Individual Spying, (that many Criticized as Excessive), etc... => F.ex., in South Korea several massive attempts to Track Individuals, in relation to the Virus, through the GeoLocalisation of their Mobile Phones were reportedly made, including SMS Alerts for Contacts with Infected People, while in Taiwan Police is autiomaticaly alerted if Quarantined patients move Outside of their Homes, and from China come also Reports about Individual Mobile Codes being Tracked when Entering several Private Residences, Public Areas, Super Markets, Collective Gardens, etc, added to Singapore's SmartPhone App Tracking People who may have been Exposed. - In Iran, the Government reportedly pushed Citizens to download an App available at Google's Play Store which registered their device, collEcting Contact and Location details, (but, when this was Denounced by a Researcher, Google removed that app, and the Iranian Government blamed the Officials responsible for that, ensuring the People that No Private Lines were crossed)... - At the West, already in Poland citizens under Quarantine have to download a government App that mandates they respond to periodic requests for "Selfies". The UK Government is reportedly talking with Private Companies about Phone and Contacts Tracking, without being clear if this might concern Individuals who are Quarantined or Everybody, using Private Data or only Anonymized and Aggregated Data, Secretly or Openly. USA's Kansas Governor reportedly uses Phone Data of Infected People and GeoLocalisation, although it seems that those Data might, eventually, be Anonymised and Aggregated. Germany and some Other EU Countries are, in parallel, reportedly planning to use also Mobile Phone Data, but Only Anonymized and Aggregated for Maps. However, in Israel, a new Law has just allowed the Government to impose Mobile Phone Tracking of Infected People, and Alert those Contacting them, as well as to Enforce Quarantine Orders. But on Canada much Worse Concerns were expressed when controverial "Socialist" Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reportedly "did Not Exlude" that the Government might use telecom Data to Track all Canadians' compliance with Pandemic Measures in the foreseable future, (Expanding that issue, soon After French-speaking Quebec's Premier, Francois Legault, had recently spoken about Tracking past Movements of Infected People, by using their Phones). In France, President Macron is due to announce new Measures on Monday, and many consider that he may include also Mobile Phone's Data related to Massive Confinement, (as, Already, its Government reportedly Tested a relevant App, and the JHA Ministry has just Started to Invite People to Inform its Website about their planned individual Movements, by filling a special Form with their Mobile Phone Numbers and Personal Data, while promising that these won't be stored !)... + EU Commissioner in charge of the Common Market, Thierry Breton, from France, (UpDated), has just reportedly spoken about such possible Mobile Phone Tracking linked to the Virus throughout the EU, but vowed that it should be Not Linked to any "Sanctions", be "Voluntary", and used "Only by Health Authorities", under "Conditions" due to be determined asap. In Parallel, EU Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee's President, Juan Fernandez Lopez Aguilar, (a "Socialist" MEP from Spain), stressed that, at any case, "even in these Difficult Times, EU's basic Rules on Personal Data Protection and "E-Privacy" should remain in force and be respected". => It's in this Fast-Moving and Slipery-slope Context, that PanEuropean CoE Assembly's new President, Rik Daems, (a "Liberal" from Belgium : Comp. Supra), noted that, since "Until enough people have been Vaccinated against this CoronaVirus", (i.e. more than a Year Later, according to Technocrats, while Simple and Fast-Track eventual Treatments, as HCQ, are still Blocked f.ex. in France and elsehere), "we must Limit its Spread. ONE" (Not the Only) "Way is to Track-and-trace Infected people and those whom they Meet". - "But this has Huge Privacy Implications and will Need very Careful Regulation to ensure respect for Human rights and the rule of Law". Because, "in defeating one evil, we must Not open the door to an Orwellian future", he Warned. => "Fortunately, we have common (Pan-)European standards (for all the 47 CoE's Member States, including Russia) on this, he optimistically observed. In particular : - (1) The European Convention on Human Rights requires Surveillance measures to have a Legal basis and be Necessary and Proportionate to their Goal", placed under ECHR's Judicial Monitoring. + (2) Moreover, "Automated data collection, Processing and Storage should satisfy the standards of the recently modernised Convention 108+" on Personal Data Protection. ++ (3) "States must Ensure that these requirements are Met BEFORE Track-and-trace Measures are Introduced, and" (probably most Important) "must establish Public TRUST in them, FROM THE OUTSET, he urged. +++ (4) Last, but not least, Exceptional Crises justify Exceptional Measures, But they must be LIMITED to the OBJECTIVE, in SCOPE and TIME and comply with Fundamental Rights" of the People, Instead of a "Constant Personal Surveillance, Following our Every Move, for UnKnown and UnAccountable Purposes", President Daems stressed today. => It's in these circumstances that, inter alia, French mainstream Center-Right Opposition "Republican" Party (ChristianDemocrats/EPP) Top Official Bruno Retailleau has just send a Letter to President Macron Warning him that such a Political Decision, as an eventual imposal of Massive "Tracking", (even on any Citizens' access to his/her Workplace, a Doctor, Grocery Store, a short Promenade solo, or to Help an Elderly person, etc), would be "Formidably Risky" and complicated ! - In particular, for Retailleau, it would also become Useless, if France was UnAble to ensure a Massive prior Testing (of that Virus' Infections), as well as a Generalized use of protective Masks", (a Big Controversy here, as French Officials have, until recently, Claimed that normal Masks would Not be Appropriate for Citizens, But Reserved Only to relevant Public Authorities' Agents : Medical staff, Police, etc)... +=> "I am Asking him (President Macron) to provide Guarantees on Security and (Personal) Liberty", and to carefully measure all Immplications, Retailleau stressed, shortly Before the forthcoming Official Announcements. Naturally, it Remains to be seen Whether the relevant National and European Legal and Political bodies, as well as International Human Rights Organisations, and, (mainly) the Majority of the People, could be Convinced, or Not. Particularly when Crucial Local (2020) and Regional (2021) Elections are Soon followed, in a straight line, even by Decisive Presidential and Legislative Elections (2022) in France, (well Before the Culmination of EU-wide Elections on 2024)... (../..) ("Draft-News") The number of coronavirus cases in Delhi rose to 1,510 on Monday and four deaths were reported within 24 hours, as the Delhi government set up a task force to identify suspected coronavirus cases in all districts of the city. With the number of COVID-19 containment zones in the city rising to 47 on Monday, a massive sanitisation drive has begun in those areas to prevent further spread of the disease. According to a Delhi government health department bulletin, 356 fresh cases were reported on Monday -- the highest spike in a day so far. The death toll also rose to 28. On Sunday, the number of COVID-19 cases stood at 1154. More cases of medical and para-medical personnel being tested novel coronavirus positive were reported. A doctor, a nurse and a non-medical staff at Max Hospital in south Delhi's Saket have tested positive for the virus. In Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in central Delhi, COVID-19 tests were conducted on all 115 healthcare workers who were quarantined two weeks ago and only three of them have tested positive. The three who tested positive for the pathogen are an endoscopy technician and two nurses, hospital authorities said. Amid the rising number of cases, a 'Corona Foot Warriors Containment and Surveillance Force' has been constituted at every booth level by Chief Secretary Vijay Dev, a Delhi government official told PTI. Each team of the force will have five members including a booth-level officer, civil defence volunteer, police constable, sanitation and anganwadi worker, the official said. According to him, 13,750 such teams will also advise people to maintain social distancing and wear masks when going outdoors. The teams will recommend suspected cases for testing to the district health authorities, the official said, adding anganwadi workers will be trained by the health department. The government launched a massive sanitisation drive in those areas declared as red zones, and high-risk zones identified by the colour orange to prevent the spread of the disease. "Massive sanitisation drive underway in Delhi. Sixty machines, including 10 hi-tech Japanese machines, have been deployed," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted. The administration ran a pilot disinfection drive using the hi-tech Japanese spray machines at Rajinder Nagar Assembly constituency. "The key target of the Delhi government is to focus on containment zones. Therefore, the disinfection drive will start with the red zones. In Rajinder Nagar Vidhan Sabha, we have started a pilot project with three such machines in presence of experts to analyse the performance and results thereof," local MLA Raghav Chadha said. "We sanitised the whole area and studied all the necessary parameters. After a careful consultation with the experts, it has been decided that this is a fully equipped technology, and the disinfection drive should immediately start at the containment zones," he said. This is the first time in India that such advanced Japanese technology is being used to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, he claimed, adding the length of the machine is adjustable and as such it can enter narrow lanes. The chemical composition used for the disinfection drive adheres to WHO guidelines. These machines spray disinfectants in a way that can kill germs and virus on any solid surface, according to a statement. Meanwhile, in order to ensure strict compliance of social distancing norms, the Delhi government will implement odd-even rules in all wholesale markets of the city. Traders will sell vegetables on alternate days, Delhi Development Minister Gopal Rai told PTI. He said the government has also decided to stagger the timings for sale of vegetables and fruits in these 'mandis' to ensure social distancing. "Vegetables will be sold from 6 am to 11 am and fruits from 2 pm to 6 pm in all wholesale markets in Delhi," Rai said, adding that the decisions were taken at a meeting chaired by him. There are five major wholesale vegetable and fruit markets in the national capital, including the Azadpur mandi, the Ghazipur mandi and the Okhla mandi. Also, there two wholesale 'anaj mandis' (wheat markets) in Najafgarh and Narela. As per the odd-even rule, sheds, under which traders sell vegetables, will be allowed to operate on alternate days according to their numbers, Rai said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rebecca Kapaira, from the village of Shamva in Zimbabwe, is balancing home-schooling her five children with trying to work to put food on the table a daunting task. Being a single mother, I have to work doubly hard, as the mother and the father, she says. I cant buy the basics because the price it was yesterday is not the same as today. Our economy is so unstable it becomes difficult for us to survive. When I visit their home, Rebeccas seven-year-old daughter, Kudzwai, reads to her mother in word-perfect English from a science textbook (her first language is Shona). It becomes clear that home-schooling is the least of Rebeccas worries. What Rebecca fears most of all is not being able to put food on the table. Recommended Zimbabwe doctors walk out over lack of protective equipment The teachers told us we had to go home from school because of coronavirus, says Kudzwai. And they told us not to touch our eyes, nose or mouth. Rebecca is a farmer, and like most Zimbabweans, she depends on just one, increasingly unreliable rainy season each year. However, because of severe drought induced by climate change, of the last five growing seasons, only one has seen normal rainfall. Experts predict that the upcoming 2020 harvest will be even poorer than those preceding it. Women are the ones who fetch water from unprotected wells, and it needs two to three people to pump it. We cannot do social distancing For the past two years we havent harvested anything, says Rebecca, standing in her garden of sun-scorched maize. Our community hasnt been able to predict the rainfall patterns. Our timing seems wrong every time and the crops never mature enough to make it to harvest. There is nowhere to get food. As the only breadwinner, I end up with nothing to give the children. I usually skip meals myself so they can eat. Life is becoming harder each day for Rebecca and her children. Hyperinflation has sent food prices soaring (in December, food inflation was at more than 700 per cent), dramatically eroding purchasing power. The prices are always changing, and I cannot keep up with them, she says. This month, Rebecca is just one of the 4.1 million Zimbabweans experiencing crisis or emergency food insecurity that the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is planning to support. Insufficient funding has, however, prevented WFP from achieving this monthly target since the start of the year in March, it reached only 3.7 million people. Zimbabwe has a population of 16.5 million. Coronavirus: United Nations World Food Programme plans to support 4.1 million Zimbabweans With hunger peaking, the looming Covid-19 pandemic threatens to exacerbate Zimbabwes dire economic and hunger crises. A recent WFP analysis on the impact of Covid-19 on food security estimates that the forthcoming agricultural season so crucial for millions of Zimbabweans may again be compromised, either by reduced agricultural labour because of the countrys lockdown or because of lack of access to agricultural inputs due to supply-chain disruptions. Rebecca fears that the spread of Covid-19 in Zimbabwe will bring an end to the food she is receiving from WFP. If all borders are closed then food transportation to our communities will be affected as well. Lack of access to food means more hunger for our families here, she says. At the end of the day, women and girls are at the receiving end of the coronavirus. It will affect us more than anyone else. Why? Because its us women who do the household chores all the time. We are the ones who fetch firewood for cooking from the bush. We are the ones who fetch water from unprotected wells, and it needs two to three people to pump it. We cannot do social distancing. We are the most at risk. Eddie Rowe, WFPs country director and representative for Zimbabwe, is adamant that its operations must and will continue uninterrupted by the coronavirus. WFP has a critical role to play by sustaining a scaled-up food assistance programme while supporting Zimbabwes response to the pandemic, he says, We must be able to deliver at full capacity. WFP has negotiated with the government of South Africa to ensure its flow of food coming into Zimbabwe remains uninterrupted. WFP is pre-positioning three-months worth of food through key supply corridors and securing financing to support cash transfers for the same period, including in urban areas. At all food-distribution sites, like the one Rebecca is attending in Shamva today, WFP is rolling out new risk-control measures. These include increasing the number of distributions to limit overcrowding, monitoring social distancing, providing protective clothing for all partners and staff, offering handwashing facilities, and using a new device for scanning SCOPE cards which allow people to access the programme at a distance. Last month, before the pandemic hit, we would gather in large groups depending on how big your family is to collect and share out the food, Rebecca explains. We are now being supervised by health workers they come and tell us how to sit practising social distancing and that we should not be close to each other. Back at home, Rebeccas children gather round as she serves a porridge of maize meal by the fire. As a mother I always want my kids to have the best life they can, she says. I want to see all five of them going to school with all the books, uniform and shoes. For now, our only hope is the food we are receiving. WFP is calling for an urgent investment of $130m (103m) to fully implement its emergency operation throughout August, warning that otherwise, millions in Zimbabwe will be plunged deeper into hunger. "For a whole week she couldn't eat. She coughed up blood and her nose would bleed," he said. They drove daily across town for outpatient treatment, waiting 10 hours in line with many others. Mr Cai doesn't know what shots were administered. At the peak, 5000 bodies waited to be scorched into ash at one of Wuhan's eight crematoriums, a worker tells me - a far cry from two dozen per day before the pandemic. His shifts began at 5:30am and ended after dark. Such accounts cast doubt over China's reported death toll of about 3300, especially as fatalities elsewhere exceed that figure. Loading Virus deaths are so sensitive that at a cemetery - which the bereaved haven't been allowed to visit - uniformed officers and plainclothes minders surround me. When I try to leave they drag me backward and snatch my phone. "What if you report about this incident?" one sneers. They accuse us of sneaking in to take photos. Actually, we'd walked in the front gate, registered after a temperature check and roamed for half an hour. After berating us ("stupid imbeciles") for about an hour, they let us go upon taking photos of our ID. Our driver says the police also harassed him and recorded his details. Residents have told me they don't think they'll ever learn the truth of what happened. All this leads me to ponder what the authorities are trying to hide - even as China crows success. Wednesday Freedom! Sort of. Lockdowns lift today in Wuhan. But things are far from normal. Transport links start coming back online and major roads are unsealed. Cars started lining up at city limits before midnight. But quotas have been imposed - only 1000 people a day are allowed to enter Beijing from Wuhan - after showing a clean bill of health. Some housing compounds continue barring residents from going out, or limiting them to two hours a day. Metal barriers have yet to all come down. Same with cement road blocks. Disinfecting tents continue to dot the city. Getting in and out of my hotel still requires being sprayed with medical-grade alcohol. Thursday Requirements to depart Wuhan apply to me, so I head to the city's No. 7 hospital to get my throat swabbed for a test to determine whether I've been infected. At the hospital entrance, a thermal facial recognition camera takes my temperature. Amazingly, this works with a face mask. I don goggles and feel even more claustrophobic. Medical staff have protective suits, shoe covers, face shields; one spritzes sanitiser over his latex gloves. Haunting to be inside. So many people died here, staff say. Doors are sealed in the fever clinic, dozens of oxygen tanks sit outside and an extra CT machine is in a trailer. Next step: Registering via a mobile app to be approved for return and quarantine confirmation. Long queue - at least 11,000 have already applied. Glad to pass an open wine shop. I stock up; might be here a while. Friday A seafood vendor tells me she heard patient zero was a man in his seventies selling wild ducks at Huanan market. Others deny any Huanan link and tell me unspecified foreigners brought it during the World Military Games last October, held in Wuhan. Wu Jianming, 29, a glassworker says: "Bats are impossible - when I was a child, we often played with them." The most prevalent rumour is that the Americans brought the virus. One man says the severity of infections is evidence the virus emerged in the US, an idea seeded by a Chinese official. Beijing has been busy reframing the narrative, portraying China as the world leader in virus response. Some see it differently - that a botched initial response exacerbated global spread. Saturday Loading We bundle into a van for a government-arranged trip to Leishenshan Hospital, a temporary field hospital. Hospital officials say thousands have recovered. We're shown an empty virus ward with sealed rooms waiting to be disinfected. "All data are reliable; please rest assured," they say. Yet doubts persist over the numbers. Hospitals were overwhelmed; there were multiple revisions to confirming cases; and those not tested - despite having what doctors strongly hinted was the virus - weren't included in the death toll. With curbs still in place, authorities remain concerned. Even as Wuhan reports zero deaths, the hospital won't be dismantled until next year. Get virus results back. Relieved to be negative! London, United Kingdom The new leader of the United Kingdoms main opposition Labour Party has launched an urgent investigation into a leaked report documenting deficiencies in how the party dealt with complaints about anti-Semitism. Announcing the investigation on Monday, Keir Starmer said the probe would focus on why the report was commissioned, its findings and also how the document was released into the public domain. In the meantime, we ask everyone concerned to refrain from drawing conclusions before the investigation is complete, Starmer added in a joint statement with his deputy, Angela Rayner. The pair added the leaking of the report and its contents had raised a number of matters of serious concern. We have also asked for immediate sight of any legal advice the Labour party has already received about the report, they said. 191205081541598 Anti-Semitism probe The announcement of the investigation came just 24 hours after the 850-page internal Labour Party document seen in full by Al Jazeera was first reported on by the UKs Sky News. Completed in the final months of Corbyns tumultuous leadership, the report concluded factional hostility towards him among former senior officials had contributed to a litany of mistakes that hindered Labours response to a slew of anti-Semitism allegations that had plagued the party since 2016. It also suggested senior party figures were actively working to hinder the partys chances in the 2017 election. The document dated March 2020 was reportedly intended to be submitted as an annexe to Labours response to an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The watchdog launched a probe into anti-Semitism within the party in May of last year after a complaint from UK-based NGO Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Reports suggest the document will not now be submitted to the commission, however. Labours press team could not be reached for comment by Al Jazeera on Monday. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the leadership of which was criticised in a 2015 all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism for having on occasion conflated legitimate protest against Israel with anti-Semitism, said the report serves as an exhibit of the partys failure to address the crisis, and should be handed over to the EHRC. In the dying days of Jeremy Corbyns leadership, the Labour Party appears to have invested in a desperate last-ditch attempt to deflect and discredit allegations of anti-Semitism, Gideon Falter, the organisations chief executive, said in a statement. Rather than properly dealing with cases of anti-Semitism and the culture of anti-Jewish racism that prevailed during Mr Corbyns tenure, the party has instead busied itself trawling through 10,000 of its own officials emails and WhatsApp messages in an attempt to imagine a vast anti-Corbyn conspiracy and to continue its effort to smear whistleblowers. Hyper-factional atmosphere Corbyn, who was elected party leader in 2015, was repeatedly dogged by criticism from party members, legislators and Jewish leaders, who said he had failed to tackle anti-Jewish racism in the party during his tenure as leader, despite promising to do so. 191219095602403 Staunch defenders of the veteran socialist member of Parliament, who himself had labelled anti-Semitism a poison and an evil, repeatedly dismissed the claims as a smear campaign against him. But Labours report said it had disproved any suggestion the issue was not a problem in the party, or that claims such racism existed were either a smear or a witch-hunt. The reports findings prove the scale of the problem, and could help end the denialism amongst parts of the party membership which has further hurt Jewish members and the Jewish community, it said. However, the report added there was no evidence of anti-Semitism complaints being handled differently than any other kind of complaints, or of current or former staff being motivated by anti-Semitic intent. The leaked document also hailed disciplinary measures taken by Corbyn since 2018, including the introduction of fast-track expulsions, describing the changes as transformational. These safeguards ensure that the past mistakes in the handling of anti-Semitism complaints cannot be repeated now, it said. But it said a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in party HQ had appeared to have affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints before 2018, when Jennie Formby, the current general secretary, took over as the partys most senior official from Iain McNicol. 180814131144185 Many staff, including Governance and Legal Unit (GLU) staff and senior staff with responsibility for managing and overseeing GLU, were bitterly opposed to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, it added. At its extreme, some employees seem to have taken a view that the worse things got for Labour, the happier they would be, since this might expedite Jeremy Corbyns departure from office. The report contains several leaked WhatsApp messages that reveal the extent of senior officials hostility to Corbyn when he took over as leader. Former advisers to the Islington North member of Parliament, including Director of Communications Seumas Milne and Chief of Staff Karie Murphy were referred to as Dracula and Medusa respectively, while supporters were derided as trots short for Trotskyists. Starmers honeymoon over Reaction to the leaking of the report was swift on Monday, with a group of Labour MPs demanding its findings be released officially and in full. The statement by the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs populated by 29 of the partys 243 Members of Parliament also called for an emergency meeting of Labours National Executive Committee to discuss the documents contents. This process must produce a report, that is publically available, which restores faith among Labour members in the practices of our party, it said. Statement from the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs in light of the recent revelations about senior officials undermining the 2017 general election campaign. pic.twitter.com/o2anrRr1ZL Socialist Campaign Group (@socialistcam) April 13, 2020 Momentum the group originally set up to back Corbyn as Labour leader meanwhile accused party headquarters of undermining Labour in the 2017 general election. Winning 40 percent of the popular vote, we were less than 2,500 votes away from forming a government. Had we pulled together, we could have won, John Taylor, a member of the groups National Coordinating Group, said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera. Those responsible must be held to account, and anyone found to have worked against a Labour victory must never again be allowed to hold a senior party position, he added. Unacceptable that Labour staff stalled action on antisemitism and prevented a Labour govt in 2017 Members, from left to centre, will rightly expect a full investigation, immediate expulsions,and maximum legal action against those involved. Nothing less will do. #LabourReport Kate Osamor| Labour Co-operative MP| Edmonton || (@KateOsamor) April 13, 2020 Analysts, meanwhile, said the fight had effectively ended new Labour leader Starmers honeymoon period. Starmer, a knighted barrister and former UK director of public prosecutions, fended off a challenge from two of his rivals in the party Rebecca Long-Bailey, a Corbyn loyalist, and Lisa Nandy to be elected as Corbyns successor on April 4. Clearly, theres still a huge amount of factional infighting going on, and that, I presume, will continue for some time, Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Londons Queen Mary University, told Al Jazeera. 180928072852455 Bale added the dispute may largely go under the radar among the electorate with attention overwhelmingly focused on the UKs battle against the coronavirus pandemic, but warned it would do little to help their bid to break the Conservative Partys more-than-decade-long grip on power. Unfortunately, this will give the impression that Labour is intent on fighting like cats in a sack rather than prioritising the needs of the country, he said. Clearly this is a serious story, and at any other time, Labour would suffer a great deal from the row, but given most people have far bigger priorities at the moment its likely to pass unnoticed among people who quite sensibly dont pay too much attention to politics. The Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani) has signed an agreement worth more than SR7 billion ($1.85 billion) with Saudi Global Ports (SGP) for the construction and operation of container terminals at the King Abdulaziz Port in the city of Dammam. The largest 30-year build, operate and transfer (BOT) agreement for the container terminals was sealed during a virtual signing ceremony on April 13 under the patronage of Prince Saud bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz, Governor of the Eastern Region. The remote agreement signing ceremony was attended by Engineer Saleh Al Jasser, Minister of Transport and Chairman of the Saudi Ports Authority; Khaw Boon Wan, Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister for Transport of Singapore; Engineer Saad bin Alkhalb, President of Saudi Ports Authority; and Engineer Abdullah Al-Zamil, Chairman of Saudi Global Ports. The BOT agreement represents a major step towards achieving the strategic objectives and development plan of the Saudi Ports Authority by conceding some of its services in partnership with the Ministry of Transport and with the support of the National Center for Privatization. The agreement activates the MoUs signed in the presence of HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, during the inauguration of the National Industrial Development and Logistics Program (NIDLP). Upon assuming the responsibility of managing both container terminals, SGP will embark on a development and modernisation programme to transform King Abdulaziz Port into a mega container hub and increase the ports capacity to an estimated annual handling capacity of 7.5 million 20-ft equivalent units (TEUs) when the planned expansion works are fully completed. This comes as part of the continuous developments carried out by Mawani in the Saudi ports. It will provide more than 4,000 job opportunities in the port and logistics sector. Under this agreement with SGP, Mawani will invest and develop key infrastructure such as berths and container handling equipment, and more than double the existing container handling capacity of King Abdulaziz Port in Dammam. The investments will focus on environmentally friendly and technologically sophisticated systems, including the adoption of automation to develop a modern Saudi workforce, it added. The spread of the new coronavirus is rattling even Japan's largest companies. A Nikkei survey of 129 presidents and chairmen of the nation's biggest companies found that 32.7% feel that there will be an impact to their business continuity if the state of emergency lasted three months. Half of them said they wanted the government to take measures to stabilize employment, and some asked for more financial support to help with operating cash. The emergency declaration covers seven prefectures, including Tokyo and Osaka, and runs through May 6. Local authorities have asked people to avoid going out and have placed restrictions on some business activity. The emergency may be extended, depending on the trends in infections, potentially dealing a heavy blow to business. The survey revealed that just 3.2% are worried that a one-month state of emergency will impact the survival of their business. But if it lasts two months, the figure rises to 7.4% and jumps to 22.1% if it stretches to three months. The share of those worried about their company's survival reaches 44.3% if the emergency lasts up to half a year, and 50.6% if it continues for up to a year. 'Life will prevail' says Holy Land archbishop on Easter Sunday Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, holds a masks as he enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before the start of the Easter Sunday service amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Jerusalem's Old City By Stephen Farrell JERUSALEM (Reuters) - With Jerusalem under lockdown over coronavirus, Easter Sunday was marked at the traditional site of Jesus' death and resurrection by just a handful of Christian clerics. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, normally packed with pilgrims, was closed to the public last month due to COVID-19, amid similar restrictions affecting sites sacred to Jews and Muslims. After walking through a deserted Old City bathed in early morning sunlight, a purple-robed Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Vaticans apostolic administrator in the Holy Land, spoke briefly outside the church: "Easter is a time for life. Despite the sign of death we are seeing everywhere, life will prevail, as long as someone is giving life out of love for the others. Happy Easter," he said, before entering the ancient sandstone building. Carrying a face mask and flanked by aides, Pizzaballa then conducted a service with a small number of Roman Catholic clergymen. COVID-19 has killed more than 100,000 worldwide. It has infected nearly 11,000 in Israel, with 103 fatalities, and there have been 268 cases and two deaths in the Palestinian territories. Passover and Ramadan also fall this month, but this year Jerusalem is all but empty. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the site where Christians believe that Jesus spent his last few hours, is the focus of celebrations of Easter, the most important festival in the Christian calendar. Tens of thousands of pilgrims usually walk the Via Dolorosa passing the 14 Stations of the Cross marking events leading up to Jesus' burial. The church has reopened for Holy Week services attended only by senior clerics of the denominations who share custody of the site, the Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Roman Catholics. Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter a week later, including the ceremony of the Holy Fire, which symbolizes the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross. (Reporting by Stephen Farrell; editing by Philippa Fletcher) As the motorbike registration fee has increased, consumers have become hesitant to buy new motorbikes. Reports from the Vietnam Association of Motorbike Manufacturers (VAMM) show that the motorbike market declined in 2019. In Q1, 753,000 products were sold, a decrease of 6.13 percent compared with the same period last year. In Q2, the number of motorbikes sold decreased by 4.39 percent to 749,516. The latest report showed that the number of motorbikes sold surged to 831,440, but this still represented a 3.88 percent decrease compared with the same period last year. The association predicted that if the current situation continues, only 3.1-3.38 million products would be sold this year, which means a zero percent or minus growth rate compared with 2018. Meanwhile, analysts believe the motorbike market is getting saturated. Nguoi Lao Dong reported that the HCM City market is no longer bustling as it was in previous years. In Q1 2019, 753,000 products were sold, a decrease of 6.13 percent compared with the same period last year. In Q2, the number of motorbikes sold decreased by 4.39 percent to 749,516. Bui Van Toan, the manager of a motorbike shop in Binh Thanh district, told reporters that previously he could sell nearly 100 products a month. Now, on some days he sells no motorbikes. Ngo Tien Long, owner of a motorbike shop in district 5, HCM City, said the market is no longer bustling because people now have too many choices. Wealthy people use cars, while many other people travel on taxi motorbikes they hail via apps. Electric motorbikes are also a good choice for users. Gianluca Fiume, CEO of Piaggio Vietnam, said there are two segments of the motorbike market in Vietnam the high-end market segment and the segment for others. High-end scooters are selling better than the others. He said VAMM has also predicted that the Vietnamese market is entering a saturation period and there will be a shift from traditional motorbikes to scooters. Scooters now account for 45 percent of market share and the figure will increase rapidly in the time to come, he said. Meanwhile, Keisuke Tsuruzono, chair of VAMM and CEO of Honda Vietnam, is optimistic about the market, saying that motorbike will remain the major means of transport for Vietnamese for many years. As scooter demand is on the rise, Honda plans to increase scooter output to force production costs down. The manufacturer plans to launch electric motorbike soon, after settling problems in technology, environment and infrastructure. While the new motorbike market has cooled down, the used motorbike market has become busier. A report from Cho Tot showed that previously, used motorbikes were reserved for low income earners and those who sought original models, but now, everyone can find what they want. The scooter models mostly wanted on online markets include Honda Air Blade (VND30-37 million), Yamaha Nouvo (VND12-18 million), Honda SH (VND75-76 million), SYM Attila (VND8-12 million), and Honda Vision (VND25-28 million). Chi Mai Motorbike embraced by roots of an old tree The image of an old motorbike entwined by the roots of an old tree in Tuong Binh Hiep Ward, Thu Dau Mot City, Binh Duong Province, has been widely shared on social media recently. Nearly 200 members of the armed forces are being loaned to NHS ambulance services to support their work during the pandemic, the Ministry of Defence has revealed today. Personnel from all three strands of the armed forces will be sent to work at five ambulance trusts. Although their responsibilities will vary depending on the area, the new duties will include driving ambulances and taking calls from the public. This comes as thousands of fire and rescue workers - who have taken on extra responsibilities during the pandemic - have been put in self-isolation. Military personnel arrive at the NHS Nightingale Hospital at the Excel Centre in London this morning Members of the Queen's Ghurka Engineers Regiment, 36 Engineer Regiment, help to build the new NHS Nightingale Hospital on London Firefighters applaud outside Clapham Fire Brigade Station during the Clap for our Carers campaign Firefighters removing a suspected coronavirus patient from their home in Shepherd's Bush, west London earlier this month Eighty service personnel will be sent to the South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust where they will drive emergency response vehicles, larger ambulances and work at the response centre which covers five counties around London. In London, 21 medical personnel from the armed forces will form 10 critical care transfer teams to transport patients who need to be moved between intensive care units. Engineers from the Army are also supporting the London Ambulance Service to maintain suction units used in ambulances. In Wales, 60 soldiers finished their two-day ambulance training at the Sennybridge Training Camp near Brecon on April 7, ready to be deployed across Wales to assist paramedics with non-clinical tasks. Thirty-seven military personnel have been deployed to the East of England Ambulance Service, which covers six counties including Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, to assist with tasks including driving and logistics. The group all volunteer as emergency responders in their free time and have previously trained with the service. Members of the RAF are already assisting the Scottish Ambulance Service with a trial of a medical isolation and transport system, using RAF Puma helicopters to take critically ill people to hospital. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: 'Our armed forces always step forward at the appearance of threats to the country and its people. 'Across the United Kingdom, soldiers, sailors, airmen and women have got the backs of our NHS colleagues as they confront coronavirus.' Members of the armed forces have helped with the response to the outbreak in a variety of ways. Military personnel were involved in the planning and building of the first NHS Nightingale hospital at the ExCel exhibition centre in east London, as well as its equivalents across the country. Armed forces personnel made up of 39 drivers and 63 driver's mates have also been trained to fill and transport oxygen tankers to NHS facilities. Military personnel were involved in the planning and building of the first NHS Nightingale hospital at the ExCel exhibition centre in east London (pictured on site today) Members of the Armed Forces have been working with NHS medical staff and Air Ambulance Service crews at Thruxton Aerodrome. The training session was arranged to ensure that the frontline medical staff could integrate successfully with military aircraft as and when needed during the ongoing global pandemic The Ministry of Defence said there are hundreds of personnel delivering supplies of PPE for the NHS based at distribution centres across the country, amid reported shortages of the vital equipment. Meanwhile, there are understood to be almost 3,000 fire and rescue workers in self-isolation across Britain. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) is calling for the government to roll out testing to allow those who do not have coronavirus to return to work, the BBC said. Fire crews have taken on extra tasks during the Covid-19 pandemic, including transporting personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing masks for frontline health workers to ensure they fit properly before use. Firefighters have already agreed to drive ambulances, deliver essential items such as food to vulnerable people and retrieve dead bodies in addition to their core roles. The FBU told the broadcaster that an eighth of staff in Bedfordshire are off work, while 10% of staff in London are self-isolating. It added that while there were planned testing programmes in Scotland and Wales, and firefighters in Northern Ireland have already been tested, there was no such system for England. General secretary Matt Wrack said services would be put on a 'dangerous knife edge' if staff are forced to isolate unnecessarily. Teledyne Marine to Supply Eco-Friendly eSource Seismic Source to WesternGeco Teledyne Marine Seismic, a division of Teledyne Technologies and a leading provider of acquisition solutions to the offshore seismic market, has been awarded a contract to provide the eSource seismic source to WesternGeco, a Schlumberger (News - Alert) company. WesternGeco will use the eSource technology as an integral part of its wide-azimuth (WAZ) survey, the first ever conducted in Brazil. The project will be acquired by a third-party acquisition services provider. Teledyne Bolt's eSource is the seismic industry's first bandwidth-controlled seismic source. It was engineered to mitigate the potential impact of seismic acquisition operations on marine life, while maintaining optimal bandwidth for subsurface imaging. Delivery of the eSource energy source is expected in the second quarter 2020. About Teledyne Marine Seismic Teledyne Marine Seismic designs and manufactures instruments to address the needs of the offshore seismic market. The group is comrised of 4 different technology-based companies. At the cornerstone of this group is Teledyne Geophysical, a long-standing supplier of hydrophones and streamer cables. Joining them in 2014 via the Bolt Technology acquisition are Teledyne Bolt, Teledyne Real Time Systems, and Teledyne AG Geophysical, which round out the product offerings with eco-friendly sound sources, air gun controller/synchronization systems and harsh environment interconnect systems. For more information, please visit http://www.teledynemarine.com/seismic/ About Teledyne Technologies Teledyne Technologies is a leading provider of sophisticated instrumentation, digital imaging products and software, aerospace and defense electronics, and engineered systems. Teledyne's operations are primarily located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Western and Northern Europe. For more information, visit Teledyne's website at www.teledyne.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005494/en/ Hyderabad, April 13 : Amid the rising number of Covid-19 cases in Telangana, the BJP is targeting the ruling TRS government over its presentation of Covid-19 tests in the state. Accusing the state government of being evasive on the matter, the BJP's chief spokesperson for Telangana, Krishna Sagar Rao, demanded the details of the number of tests conducted every day. BJP believes the state government is not testing enough and is trying to be evasive on the matter. The BJP demanded the release of test numbers in the daily health bulletin being released by the state government. Krishna Sagar Rao said on Monday that the state government is not heeding the advisory issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and ICMR "to test extensively, contact traces and isolate to ensure arrest of transmission of coronavirus in the community." He also questioned the proclamations made by state minister Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao, popularly known as KTR, on television channels calling for plasma therapy in Telangana without having adequate testing facilities in place. "KTR has to explain how he wishes to undertake plasma therapy without having antibody testing in Telangana. His statements are rhetoric hyperbole and not factual. Testing is very less in Telangana which is leading to the state's inability to assess the cause of deaths in the state. Many Covid-19 cases and deaths are seemingly going unreported," the BJP spokesperson said. He urged the Chief Minister to follow the guidelines issued by the Central government and WHO to counter the spread of Covid-19 in Telangana. Over the past few weeks, Telangana has reported a large number of Covid-19 cases. On Sunday, the state's tally stood at 531 confirmed cases, while 16 people have died so far. A majority of the cases in the state are of people who visited the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi between March 15 and 17. UAE buys Israeli missile system for Libya rebels: Report Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 6:13 AM The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has paid the Israeli regime to deliver an advanced anti-aircraft missile system to the Libyan rebels under the command of renegade general Khalifa Haftar, a report says. The Libya Observer on Saturday cited the New Arab newspaper as reporting that the UAE's purchase of the missile system was an effort to boost Haftar's forces trying to overtake the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and unseat the internationally-recognized government there. "The UAE has signed a contract with Israel to provide Haftar with an air defense system made by [an] Israeli defense firm. The system has been transferred to Egypt in order to send it to pro-Haftar areas after training some of Haftar forces' military officers on how to use it," the report said, citing sources. While the Emirates had traditionally been one of the many Arab countries to side with the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has increasingly warmed up to the Tel Aviv regime in recent years. It was unclear whether the Libyan rebels would receive direct training from Israel. They have been fighting to overrun the Libyan capital since April last year but have been bogged down on the city's outskirts since the start; and in recent days, they have been suffering heavy losses in intensified fighting. The rebels have lost a dozen commanders, armored vehicles, ammunition supplies, and at least three fighter jets and one cargo plane. The new Israeli missile system is meant to shore up the rebels' capabilities against the more powerful Libyan Air Force. Fighting around Tripoli intensified in recent days after the rebels breached a March 21 humanitarian truce that had aimed to allow a focus on efforts to combat the coronavirus outbreak in the North African country. Last Tuesday, Libyan government forces said Emirati drones had carried out two airstrikes in support of Libyan rebels near the city of Sirte. And on Wednesday, the Libyan rebels claimed they had downed two Turkish drones. Tripoli receives backing from Turkey. Libya plunged into chaos in 2011, when a popular uprising and a NATO intervention led to the ouster of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Since 2014, two rival seats of power have emerged in the North African country the United Nations-recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, and another group based in the eastern city of Tobruk, supported militarily by Haftar's rebels. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address London: Stirling Moss, the archetypal British racer widely regarded as the greatest Formula One driver never to win the world championship, has died at the age of 90. A teammate at Mercedes to Argentine five-times world champion Juan Manuel Fangio, the Briton won 16 grands prix in the 1950s and early 1960s when the sport was at its deadliest and most daring. British Formula One driver Stirling Moss on the road in Melbourne in 1996. Credit:AP Four times a championship runner-up, and also third overall on three occasions, no other driver has won as many races without taking the title. Moss was also the first Briton to win his home grand prix, beating Fangio at Aintree in 1955, and became a byword for speed. The governor said the state's tenuous progress will likely continue as long as people continue to follow stay-at-home restrictions. Loading "The worst can be over, and it is over unless we do something reckless," Cuomo said. "And you can turn those numbers on two or three days of reckless behaviour." Across the country, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported 554,849 cases of the coronavirus and said the number of deaths had risen to 21,942. In the US, about half of the more than 22,000 deaths reported are in the New York metropolitan area. Meanwhile, tracking maps maintained by Johns Hopkins University show a dense patchwork of coronavirus cases along the Northeast corridor, as well as significant outbreaks corresponding to other major metropolitan areas - though nothing on the scale of what New York has endured. Dr Sebastian Johnston, a professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, said it appeared that COVID-19 had peaked in much of Europe, including France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK. He was worried the virus might now start to take off in countries across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. There's also concern about Russia. Still, hot spots may yet emerge as states lift stay-at-home orders, said Dr Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington institute that created widely cited projections of virus-related deaths. He pointed to states where the number of COVID-19 cases is still climbing: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida. "Don't consider relaxing social distancing in the near term," Murray said he'd advise leaders in those states. "You need to stay the course." A study released Monday by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, relying on data from mobile devices in New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle, suggested that social-distancing policies prompted more people to stay at home in March and might have curbed spread of the new virus. Researchers say people increasingly left their devices - and themselves - at home as cities, states and the federal government adopted increasingly restrictive closures and social distancing policies. Loading The report "provides some very early indications that these measures might help slow the spread of COVID-19," the authors said. The infection rate remains relatively low in areas of the developing world that have poor or nonexistent health care infrastructure. The rapid spread of the coronavirus beyond cities to more rural areas often depends on travel and social connections, said Dr Mike Ryan, the World Health Organisation's emergencies chief. But he noted that rural areas often have less sophisticated health surveillance systems to pick up potential disease clusters. "Is it that it's not there or is it that we're not detecting the disease when it is there?" In other countries, including those that have been grappling with the virus for longer than the US, officials pointed to positive signs as they began prepping for the reopening of largely shuttered economies and industries. A delivery worker wears personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns while riding a bicycle through the rain outside NYU Langone Medical Centre, Credit:AP In Italy, where the day-to-day increase was one of the lowest in weeks, bolstering a generally downward trend, slightly eased restrictions were about to take effect in some sectors, such as allowing stores selling necessities for newborns to reopen. The hard-hit Veneto region is entering a phase the governor, Luca Zaia, termed "lockdown light." Zaia is expanding the 200-metre from home radius for physical fitness and allowing open-air markets in a new ordinance that takes effect Tuesday. At the same time, the ordinance makes masks or other face coverings mandatory outside the home - not just in supermarkets or on public transportation, as was previously the case. Veneto has been credited with a rapid response to the virus -- including a higher number of tests than the national average -- that has helped limit the number of fatalities. It is the fourth-hardest hit, recording 9 per cent of all infections but just 4 per cent of deaths, at 779 to date. Ohio's Republican Governor says reopening the United States could be tougher than when the coronavirus outbreak initially started spreading across the country. Governor Mike DeWine told MSNBC's Morning Joe on Monday that it wouldn't be as simple as turning a switch when President Donald Trump decides to lift restrictions and reopen the economy. 'I will say this, that going out of this thing is going to be just as tough, if not tougher, than going into it and closing things down,' DeWine said. The Ohio Governor issued a stay-at-home order for residents of his state back on March 22. As of Monday, there had been more than 6,600 infections and 253 deaths in Ohio. Governor Mike DeWine told MSNBC's Morning Joe on Monday that it wouldn't be as simple as turning a switch when President Donald Trump decides to lift restrictions and reopen the economy 'Whenever we open up, however we do it, if people aren't confident, if they don't think they're safe, they're not going to go to restaurants, they're not going to go to bars, they're not going to really get back into society,' DeWine said. Echoing remarks from lawmakers and health officials, DeWine said testing was imperative until a vaccine could be made available to the public. 'There are people who are particularly vulnerable, from a medical point of view are going to have to be very, very, very careful,' he said. 'I think that sometimes we all think we're going to turn a switch and we'll get back to normal, and that's just not going to happen.' Sweeping stay-at-home restrictions to curb the spread of the disease, in place for weeks in many areas of the country, have taken a painful toll on the economy, raising questions over how the country can sustain business closures and travel curbs. On Sunday, a Trump administration official indicated May 1 as a potential date for easing the restrictions while cautioning that it was still too early to say whether that goal would be met. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, refused on Monday to give a time frame for the re-opening of the US economy and praised social-distancing measures that he said helped curb the mortality rate. 'There's no doubt that we have to reopen correctly. It's going to be a step-by-step, gradual process. It's got to be data driven, and as I said I think it will be community by community, county by county,' he told NBC's Today. 'We've all sacrificed a substantial amount and I do want to thank the American people. The potential mortality of this virus on our nation could have easily been 250,000, 500,000, a million - I think the social distancing that the American people all embraced... led to the mortality rate, sadly still too high, was far less than we anticipated.' His interview came after Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr Fauci after the nation's top expert on infectious diseases said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the outbreak. Trump retweeted a message Sunday from a former Republican congressional candidate who cited Dr Fauci's comments during a television interview on Sunday and tweeted 'time to #FireFauci.' Trump in the past has repeated critical tweets of officials or enemies rather than make the criticism himself. The retweet fueled speculation Trump was running out of patience with the popular scientist and could conceivably fire him. Dr Fauci has assumed national prominence as a leader in the fight against the coronavirus. He has contradicted or corrected Trump on scientific matters during the crisis, including whether the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective against it. Fauci was asked on CNN's State of the Union about a New York Times report documenting early warnings issued to the White House about the novel coronavirus. The scientist acknowledged shutting the country down sooner could have saved lives, but cautioned that a number of factors were involved. 'Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor,' Fauci said. 'It's very complicated.' Already a target of the far-right for his contradictions of Trump, Dr Fauci drew more opprobrium after the comments. Trump also denounced the New York Times story in several tweets on Sunday, calling it 'A Fake.' Last week during the daily White House coronavirus briefing, Trump stepped in and prevented Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine. Dr Fauci has led the federal infectious disease agency since 1984 under Republican and Democratic presidents. Republican George W. Bush honored him with the presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. Some polls during the public health crisis have shown Americans trust him more than Trump. Rochester's West Circle Drive has a new building in the pipeline, and it's not a bank branch this time. WMG Developmenthas filed plans with the City of Rochester to build a 4,200-square-foot office center on the northwest corner of West Circle Drive Northwest and 41st Street Northwest/Badger Hills Drive Northwest. The one-story office building is mapped out to have a parking lot with 29 spaces. The building is slated to be constructed on open land next to the West Circle Drive Hy-Vee grocery store . The new complex will be across 41st Street/Badger Hills Drive from the corporate office of Sterling State Bank . The permits state that WMG is building the complex for Heartland Dental, a dental support company. Both WMG and Heartland Dental are based in Effingham, Ill., and both were founded by Rick Workman. ADVERTISEMENT Heartland Dental states on its website that the company provides "support services" to 1,000 dental practices in 37 states. It currently reports working with two dental practices in the Twin Cities. The new office complex will be the latest project in the booming Northwest Rochester corridor, which has seen many bank branches, restaurants and retail stores built in recent years. Due to weather and the pandemic, it's unknown when work will begin on the new building. However, it seems likely it will start as soon as conditions allow. ADVERTISEMENT The Alabama Historical Commission has taken legal ownership of a Mobile Bay shipwreck believed to be that of the slave ship Clotilda, according to a federal court ruling released Monday. The ruling, handed down by the Chief Judge of the Southern District of Alabama, granted the AHC full control over of the ship but added that the ruling could be challenged if a new party provided compelling evidence. any party alleging a claim or lien against the Unidentified Shipwrecked Vessel believed to be Schooner CLOTILDA, subsequent to the date of the signing of this Order is in default, and bears the burden of establishing good cause for having the entry of default set aside, wrote Chief Judge Kristi DuBose in her March 30 order. Alabama had previously issued a 14-day notice offering any other party the opportunity to challenge its right to take ownership of the vessel. No claims were made. The vessel is believed to be the last ship to enter the United States carrying slaves, arriving in 1860. Around 32 of the 110 West African slaves who were onboard later established the Africatown settlement just north of Mobile. Because the Atlantic slave trade had been banned for more than half a century by the time the slaves arrived, the ship was later set alight in Mobile Bay to hide the crime. Slavery was abolished in the United States five years later. In May 2019, documentarian and former journalist Ben Raines helped find the remains of the ship. Recent efforts at trying to preserve the wreck have been difficult given adverse weather conditions at the ships location in Mobile Bay, according to the attorney representing the AHC. Due to river action, heavy rains, scouring of silt away from the site, etc., there is concern that further harm or exposure of the wreckage will occur as tour operators and the public navigate their vessels too close to the Vessel, wrote John Kavanagh in an March 16 update to the court. AHC is currently in contact with the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to come up with a plan to deal with this problem. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - APRIL 12: Ambulances are seen on the tarmac at Melbourne airport on April 12, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. Over 1000 passengers arriving from Peru, Uruguay and India. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images) Australian Travellers Return From Overseas Hundreds more Australians stranded overseas during the CCP (Chinese Communist party virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus) pandemic are returning home on chartered flights. A flight from India has arrived in Melbourne and another from Cambodia landed in Sydney on April 13. Australians flying in from Peru are expected to touch down in Brisbane on Tuesday. Qantas is also due to mount rescue flights from Argentina and South Africa. Details of those flights will be confirmed in the coming days, with information provided directly to registered travellers. People planning to travel overseas when the crisis is over are being encouraged to holiday at home instead. There is speculation international flights will not return until at least the end of this year, if not well into the next. It is impossible to tell at present precisely when travel restrictions will be removed because that will be a matter dependent upon the health advice at the time, Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham told the ABC. Senator Birmingham is wary of people going overseas and bringing the virus home, as well as potentially infected international visitors coming into Australia. The international travel restrictions have played a key role (in stopping COVID-19s spread) and will continue to play a key role, he said. The only people returning to Australia at present or entering the country are effectively those Australians receiving assistance through a range of different ways or undertaking their own flights to get back to Australia. They are going into strict 14 days quarantine. Senator Birmingham said the unfortunate reality was people would not be able to go overseas for some time, with no guarantee international flights will resume by December. There may be a slightly earlier point in time where it becomes feasible to think about domestic travel again, he said. Were not there yet but certainly this time is a good time for a bit of dreaming, planning, thinking about the Aussie break that you might take when we finally get to the other side of this. By Daniel McCulloch Queensland teachers will head back to the classroom for term 2 but schools will remain open only to vulnerable students and those whose parents are essential workers. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced state and private schools would be mostly pupil free for the first half of the term. But children of essential workers, such as health staff, supermarket employees and those still required to attend their workplace, would still be able to attend. Vulnerable students are classified as those receiving child safety services or living in designated Indigenous communities. ARCHIVED - Spanish Prime Minister denies that Spain intends to relax the lockdown Spain is not in the de-escalation phase. Only if we gain ground against the virus and the health system recovers will we advance into that phase. And if not, we will maintain or tighten the restrictions, he said following the fifth videoconference between regional leaders. The PM announced his intention of prolonging the state of emergency until 11th May on Friday. Today Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez held the fifth in a series of video conferences with the regional presidents of the 17 Autonomous Communities of Spain to discuss the current situation regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures undertaken by the Spanish Government to deal with the crisis. There has been a considerable amount of tension amongst the leaders of the Autonomous Communities in the last few weeks about the handling of the crisis, and during this meeting the PM called for a national pact of reconstruction to put the country back on its feet which required the consensus of all without exception. Manana se reanudan las actividades economicas hibernadas durante el #PermisoRetribuidoRecuperable. Solo esas. El resto de actividades interrumpidas al decretarse el estado de alarma siguen interrumpidas. El confinamiento general sigue siendo la regla.#EsteVirusLoParamosUnidos pic.twitter.com/JrNpUPqUNb Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) April 12, 2020 It is important that at this critical moment we are all together, and that we make this pledge from the heart and in good faith. We do not view any of the autonomous governments as adversaries, but as allies with the sole objective of defeating the pandemic, "said Sanchez, saying that he viewed it as " essential " to transmit a message of " coordination, transparency and loyalty even if there are logical discrepancies between us. " Tomorrow around four million non-essential workers will be permitted to return to work, a decision which has highlighted political differences between political leaders, as although there is a general acceptance that financially the country cannot support the cost of so many workers sitting at home in lockdown, there are also fears that insufficient protective materials are available to ensure the full protection of all those who will be working and that the number of cases could increase again with more people on the streets. However, Prime Minister Sanchez is most concerned that the general public does not view the decision to allow some non-essential workers to resume work as being a relaxation of the state of emergency and misinterpret the economic decision as being a sign that Spain can relax its lockdown; Spain is not in the de-escalation phase. Only if we gain ground against the virus and the health system recovers will we advance into that phase. And if not, we will maintain or tighten the restrictions. "I want to be very clear: we are not even entering a second phase. The de-escalation will begin at the earliest in two weeks and will be progressive and cautious. General confinement will continue for at least the next two weeks, "said the president. The situation continues to be critical for Spain, with 16,972 deaths and more than 166,000 cases of Covid-19 and although there has been a deceleration in the number of cases and deaths over the weekend, observers should take into consideration that Thursday and Friday were bank holidays, and Easter weekend is traditionally an important family holiday in Spain, so the chance of the figures not being accurate is very high; for the last two weekends the Monday figures appeared to have shown positive evolutions, but by Tuesday had increased considerably once again, so it is very dangerous to take the figures presented this weekend as being accurate. However, one positive figure which has been published is the number of recoveries, which has now passed the 62,000 mark. On Friday the PM revealed that he would be requesting a debate for a further extension of the state of emergency until the 11th May as by the 26th April we will not have seen the back of this pandemic and if it were so, then things would have to have improved considerably by then. Today he insisted that the health and lives of Spanish citizens remained his principal preoccupation and that the general confinement of the population must continue in order to fight the virus, the state of emergency is maintained and the general confinement will continue, he said. Remember: LOCKDOWN MEANS LOCKDOWN. STAY AT HOME. STAY SAFE AND DO YOUR BIT TO REDUCE THE SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS. Follow Murcia Today on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest updates locally for the Region of Murcia and the main information for the rest of Spain: https://www.facebook.com/MurciaToday/. Our local area groups are as follows. These are designed to filter locally specific information and may be used by clubs, charities, any of the businesses who work with us to ensure information is available to residents in English and for those living in the specific areas. They are not buy and sell groups, do not accept any bickering or argumentative so and so's, are not "open for any old rubbish" pages, and are not trying to compete with your local comunity groups, they are specifically for sharing good, relevant local information and we hope you will use them for that during this difficult time. Around Mazarron news, events and local info: Click to join Mazarron, Fuente Alamo, Aguilas, Lorca, Totana, Puerto Lumbreras, Camposol, Alhama de Murcia. Click to join (all within a half hour drive of each other) Mar Menor news, events and local info. Click to join (this includes all the Mar Menor municipalities and Cartagena) North-west Murcia: Bullas, Mula, Cehegin, Caravaca, Cieza, Calasparra, Jumilla, Moratalla info. Click to join What to do if you are in the Region of Murcia and believe you may have contracted the virus The regional government has set up a special helpline to supply information to members of the public (900 121212) if they suspect that they may have contracted the virus rather than going straight to hospital or to a medical centre. Sensible precautions The advice being issued to members of the public by medical authorities all over the world coincides on the following points: - Wash hands frequently with either soap and water or a sanitiser gel - Catch coughs and sneezes with disposable tissues and throw the tissues away immediately after use before immediately washing your hands! - If you dont have a tissue, use your sleeve and wash the item of clothing used at the next opportunity - AVOID touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands - AVOID close contact with people who are unwell - Dont panic! By PTI LOS ANGELES: 'Narcos: Mexico' star Diego Luna says it was a mistake to watch HBO's 2019 miniseries 'Chernobyl', about the 1986 nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine, as it is too close to what the world is going through because of the coronavirus pandemic. During an Instagram live chat with IndieWire's Eric Kohn, Luna, who is back home in the Mexico city, said the response to COVID-19 by governments is similar to what happened with Chernobyl. As the nuclear plant in Pripyat exploded, authorities kept insisting that everything was fine even as labourers at the plant had started to get sick from acute radiation. "I remember in London one day before we were told it was time to go home, I tried to watch 'Chernobyl' and it was such a big mistake. Terrifying! I was seeing the reaction of so many governments to COVID-19 represented in that show. "That beginning of the show where the authorities say no, no, nothing's happening, everything's under control. It sounded so much like what we were living in," Luna said in the chat. In the chat, the actor revealed that his daughter got the virus during a camp and it was hard to be home but stay isolated from his children. Now that his children are back, the actor said he is spending time with them besides exploring cooking. "I love cooking. I am really curious about Indian food, exploring spices. I am obsessed with cooking," he said. The 40-year-old actor had visited India in November 2018 to promote "Narcos: Mexico". He is looking forward to his Disney Plus series, which is based on his "Rogue One: Star Wars" character Cassian Andor. President Trump says he wants U.S. economy to reopen on May 1st President Trump says he wants to reopen the U.S. economy on May first and get people back to work. But health experts warn without more aggressive testing the country may not be ready. America's top infectious disease expert says life could start looking normal again, in November. Treasury official: Tens of millions to receive coronavirus payments this week A senior treasury department representative says tens of millions of Americans will get coronavirus relief payments by this Wednesday. The first payments started being deposited Friday night. Several days ahead of schedule. The Trump administration has told congress the first payments would be to people who filed tax returns in 2019 or 2018 and received funds via direct deposit. Paper checks should go out starting in early May. CHP: Truck carrying children crashes into canal, kills Oroville man One man is dead and four people are in the hospital, after the CHP says a Sacramento man crashed their truck crashed into an Oroville canal into the Thermolito dam canal. The CHP says the driver and a passenger in the front seat were able to escape the wreck. Emergency crews on the scene rescued two children from backseat both with major injuries. The driver is facing charges of felony driving under the influence. Police: Redding man arrested for killing his mother A Redding man is behind bars this morning after police say he stabbed and killed his own mother. Redding police say it happened Friday in the 1100 block of Edgewood Drive. Officers said they arrested 23-year-old Nicholas Mackenzie of Redding. Medics transported the victim 68-year-old Joan Mackenzie to a local hospital where she later died. Nicholas is now in the Shasta County Jail charged with murder. Nursing facility in Anderson limits access to patients Administrators at Oak River Rehab and Nursing Facility in Anderson say the facility is limiting those with access to only staff and local vendors. Victors are not allowed. Administrators say all employees are screened and must have their temperatures taken. No one there has coronavirus but if that were to change the facility has a wing in the building where the person would be placed and receive special medical care. Community Action Agency of Butte County to distribute emergency food in Oroville Happening today, the Community Action Agency of Butte County is holding its latest drive-through food giveaway in Oroville. Today's giveaway will be at the Oroville new life church - thats at 965 Grand Avenue. It runs from 9 a.m. to noon. Volunteers wear masks and gloves and put the food inside your car without having to make contact with the driver. Butte Regional Transit offers free fare on the B-Line through May A local bus service is now offering free bus fares to its passengers. All of this is paid by the coronavirus aid act. Its an effort to ease financial worries for passengers impacted the coronavirus. Passengers will be required to enter from the back door of the bus. Members from the b-line say they are making an effort to sanitize all their vehicles every evening. As well as cleaning handrails that might be frequently touched. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12) The city of Manila is now ready to conduct localized mass targeted testing for COVID-19, with the Philippine capital capable of conducting more than 1,000 swab tests weekly. Six district hospitals and the Delpan quarantine facility can take 232 tests a day, totaling 1,624 tests per week. Other hospitals that can conduct COVID-19 swab tests are Ospital ng Maynila, Sta. Ana Hospital, Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center, Ospital ng Tondo, Ospital ng Sampaloc, and Justice Jose Abad Santos General Hospital. All swab tests will either be processed by the Department of Healths Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (DOH-RITM) and the University of the Philippines Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH). The citys public information arm said Manila has so far conducted 934 swab tests, with Santa Ana Hospital accounting for the bulk of this, with 451 tests conducted so far. Aside from Manila City, Quezon City, Valenzuela City, Pasig City, and Cavite have initiated their own mass testing efforts. COVID-19 response chief implementer Carlito Galvez described Sunday the planned aggressive testing as a game changer as it would be the key to the governments plan to identify COVID-19 patients, isolate and treat them. Hindi tayo makakaahon sa enhanced community quarantine hannggat hindi tayo magkakaroon ng targeted testing, Galvez said. [Translation: We wont be able to come out of an enhanced community quarantine until weve had targeted testing.] The death toll due to COVID-19 in the Philippines nears 300, as the country reported a spike in fatalities due to the viral disease on Sunday. The Health Department reported 50 new deaths due to COVID-19 in its 4 p.m. bulletin on Sunday, bringing the death toll to 297. The department reported 220 new cases of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, bringing the total number of those who have been infected to 4,648. Meanwhile, the number of people who have recovered from the viral disease has reached 197, with the Health Department reporting 40 more who have survived COVID-19. J.K Rowling has purchased the Grade II listed cottage where she spent almost a decade of her childhood. The property has unique features and is even home to a cheeky note the Harry Potter author scrawled into the wall when she was 17-years-old that read: Joanne Rowling slept here, circa 1982. Rowling, 54, along with her husband Dr Neil Murray, have even commissioned major renovation works for the property in Wye Valley near Chepstow, it was revealed today. Church Cottage at Tutshill was the multi-millionaire writers home from the ages of 9 to 18, the property had previously gone on the market for 400,000. Church Cottage at Tutshill (pictured above) was the multi-millionaire writers home from the ages of 9 to 18 The property has unique features and is even home to cheeky note the author scrawled into the wall when she was 17-years-old that read: Joanne Rowling slept here, circa 1982 Sources said the property was purchased by Rowling some years ago in order to protect and preserve the building. Edinburgh based Caernarfon Lettings Ltd, the property company Rowling runs with her husband, has now purchased the property with Rowling listed at the person in significant control of the firm. Rowling, pictured above moved to the property when she was nine-years-old Forest of Dean District Council has granted the pair planning permission to install two rear dormer windows and knock down and rebuild the garage. The author lived at the house with her late mother Anne Volant, a science technician, and her father Peter Rowling, a Rolls Royce worker in Bristol, and sister Diane from the age of nine to 18. The author was born in Yate, Gloucestershire in 1965. Her sister Dianne was born two years later. Her parents Anne and Peter first met in London when boarding a train at King's Cross Station - a station that features heavily in her novels. When she was four-years-old the family moved to Winterbourne, Gloucs. They lived there until moving to Chepstow, Monmouthshire, and into the cottage when Rowling was nine. During her teenage years she was head girl at the nearby Wyedean School in Sedbury. The Rowling family: Father peter is pictured left and Dianne is thought to be next to him on his right. J.K Rowling is thought to be the child on the end and her mother Anne is to the left of her The author, who is most famous for her Harry Potter series, but who has also penned other books such as The Casual Vacancy, is believed to have based characters such as Professor Severus Snape and Harrys ginger-haired pal Ron Weasley on people she met there. In 1980, when Rowling was 15-years-old her mother was diagnosed with M.S, which subsequently killed her a decade later. When her mother Anne was 30-years-old she started to show signs of losses and feeling of limbs. Anne died without any knowledge of the Harry Potter books and the huge franchise it had created. She was 45-years-old when she died and Rowling previously said she 'didn't know how I didn't realise how ill she was'. Two years after Anne's death, Rowling's father re-married. Rowling's step mother Janet was in attendance at her graduation ceremony at Exeter University. J.K Rowling is pictured above with her father Peter James Rowling in 2000. When Rowling was growing up her worked at Rolls Royce in Bristol Rowling's father (left) re-married after her mother died. Rowling's step mother Janet (right) was in attendance at her graduation ceremony at Exeter University. J.K Rowling is pictured centre On leaving school she left home and went to Exeter University before studying in Paris. After this she answered an advertisement to go and teach in Portugal. She met television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar and the pair found they had many common interests. In 1992 the pair married and had a little girl, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes a year later. Months after the pair split and Rowling moved herself and Jessica to Edinburgh in order to be closer to her sister. She worked for Amnesty International in London before moving to Scotland, where she has resided since. Rowling previously named a Quidditch team after the area Tutshill Tornadoes. The house was sold by her father in 1995 to BBC producer Julian Mercer and he sold it again, for 399,950, in 2011. The architecture of the Gothic style cottage, thought to have been designed by architect Henry Woodyer, has been described as very Hogwarts-like. The interesting property which was on the market for 400k even has its own trapdoor (above) Inside the property: When the house went up for sale in 2011 the estate agents posted these images of one of the bedrooms Inside the property: The image above shows the living room at the property when it went on sale in 2011 It has vaulted ceilings, stone windows and includes an under-stairs cupboard, similar to the one aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon Dursley forced Harry Potter to live in before he left for Hogwarts. It also has a cellar reminiscent of the one where Harry searches for the Philosophers Stone in the first novel. In January last year planning agents obtained permission to change the windows and garage of the house - originally a schoolhouse and then rectory - after a report was submitted listing all the work proposed by the owners. Neighbours: The St Lukes Church in Tutshill, which is next door to the Church Cottage The report said the roof needed stripping back and repaired with the same tiles, the secondary glazing should be repaired, the plastic gutters replaced with metal ones, the chimneys swept and the bathroom replaced. The report said the owners intended to keep original features like cast iron fireplaces, lime plaster, wooden floorboards and cottage style doors and take out modern additions such as plasterboard, vinyl floors and bathroom tiles. The quarry tiled floor around the trap door is to be repaired and retained and the house redecorated says he report. There is speculation about what Rowling and her husband plan to do with the house after the renovations are complete. Rowling, 54, along with her husband Dr Neil Murray (pictured together above), have even commissioned major renovation work for the property Some locals believe she may convert it into a holiday home for deprived families while others conjecture that she simply wants to acquire properties which formed part of her life to preserve and protect them. At the beginning of this morning Rowling stunned Harry Potter fans after she launched 'Harry Potter At Home', in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Rowling would today not comment on further plans for the property. HARBIN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province reported 56 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Sunday, local health authority said Monday. Of all, seven were locally transmitted cases and 49 were imported cases all involving Chinese nationals returning from Russia, the provincial health commission said. Of the confirmed imported cases, 27 were previously asymptomatic cases. By Sunday, the province had reported a total of 247 confirmed imported COVID-19 cases and one has been discharged from hospital after recovery, it said. Meanwhile, the province reported eight new imported asymptomatic cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of such cases to 118 by Sunday, according to the commission. Geometry Global, WPPs end-to-end Creative Commerce agency has announced the appointment of Safwan El Roufai to lead its experiential offering as Executive Vice President for Middle East & North Africa. Joining the Geometry family, Safwan is tasked with bolstering Geometry Menas experiential offering with existing clients, and to reinforce the agencys role as the regional experiential powerhouse of WPP as it accelerates growth across the Middle East & North Africa (Mena). Were incredibly excited to have Safwan join the Geometry team to spearhead our experiential capabilities. He is a true pioneer in the events industry, with a proven track record delivering some of the biggest and best brand and governmental live experiences in the region. Even in the current climate we see a constant demand for experiences, and Safwan will significantly augment our offering, to deliver truly immersive and engaging experiences, both in virtual and physical worlds. Safwans experience, combined with our heritage of deep discipline expertise in retail, design and innovation, allows us to expertly provide a true end-to-end commerce offering for our clients, said Nick Walsh, Geometry Menas CEO. Prior to joining Geometry, Safwan led Prisme International, a global large-scale experiences company. Heading its transformation from an artistic events production company to a global creative agency, Safwan positioned the company at the forefront of the experiential industry. His work across a diverse roster of clients - from government & public communications and smart cities, to premium real estate development and the re-imagining of cultural destinations as well as his 20 years plus experience in larger-than-life events creation, production and management across the globe - has earned him some notable awards, these include: the RED DOT Award 2009 for Brands & Communication Design and IVCA London International Experience Award for the Opus by Zaha Hadid Launch at the British Museum in London. Safwan is now bringing his gravitas and expertise in the power of live and digital experiences to complement Geometrys existing commerce and brand activation excellence. I am very happy and excited to join this bold and forward-thinking agency. Knowing Geometrys pivotal role within WPP and the caliber of talents and tools that the agency invested in, it is only a matter of time for us to take experiential to a whole new level, commented Roufai. The current COVID-19 outbreak has caused an acceleration in the thinking and delivery of live experience. Geometry has identified a growing opportunity for digital and live experiences to work together more impactfully to continue to deliver creativity that converts. So, we are excited to announce a new integrated, scalable experiential product that allows brands to continue to derive all the benefits they get from live experience but enhanced through both digital and physical engagement. -- Tradearabia News Service President Donald Trump retweeted a call to fire his top infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci on Sunday evening, amid mounting criticism of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. The call from a former Republican congressional candidate, using the hashtag FireFauci, followed an interview with National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Fauci on CNNs State of the Union, in which he said a stronger early response by the administration to the outbreak could have saved lives, but also characterized the decision to implement social distancing guidelines as complicated. "Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor," Fauci said on CNN Sunday. "It's very complicated." Fauci also confirmed a New York Times story saying that he and other experts had wanted to begin social and physical distancing measures as early as February. Trump has often in the past shown his anger with critics within his own administration by retweeting the negative or taunting comments of others rather than saying anything himself. It allows him to cry "fake news" when the media interprets the retweeted material as reflecting his views. While he may or may not actually want to fire Fauci, he has used Twitter just to discredit the views of officials with whom he disagrees, retweeting stories and commentary from his favorite news outlets, like Fox News and more recently OANN, the One America News Network. Fauci, known for his candor but also his diplomacy, has implicitly and explicitly taken issue with Trump on several occasions. Trump demonstrated his apparently increasing irritation last week when he stepped in to stop Fauci from answering a question about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, an unproven drug the president has been touting for treatment of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Fauci has also been skeptical of Trump's rush to set a date for lightening up on mitigation efforts to get the economy moving as the 2020 election approaches. Fauci has become a major figure in America because of his prominent role in the White House's coronavirus task force. He has appeared on television almost daily, standing beside Trump during coronavirus briefings and landing interviews on news programs and even late-night comedy shows. He has become so well-known, people have designed doughnuts, T-shirts and "fan clubs" to celebrate him. Recent polls have shown that Americans trust Fauci much more than they trust Trump, which could rankle the president. But any effort to hound out Fauci could also further erode public confidence in the president's handling of the deadly pandemic. Fauci is a career government scientist who has never been a partisan figure. First appointed to his position in 1984, Fauci has led the agency, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, under six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush said he has "absolute confidence" in Fauci and the other experts leading the way on the coronavirus outbreak. Bush awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. And Fauci developed a reputation as a skilled public health expert while combating the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Sunday's measured comments by Fauci, which did not mention Trump or explicitly criticize the administration and were elicited by questioning by CNN's Jake Tapper, led a flurry of right-wing commentators to rebuke him. Some reports have indicated that the president has been calling advisers seeking their opinions on Fauci's performance in recent days. Some right-leaning commentators and Trump's online base have rallied behind the president, taking shots at Fauci as their relationship has grown increasingly strained. And even as the president repeatedly slammed the mainstream media Sunday, he praised OANN. Stuck inside the White House because of social distancing limitations, Trump spent his Easter Sunday railing against the "Fake News," slamming publications ranging from the New York Times and even Fox News, after criticism of the federal government's slow response to the coronavirus pandemic ramped up over the weekend. The president attacked the journalists after a New York Times report that the Trump administration had information that could have led to social distancing precautions much earlier and blamed the president's slow response for the scale of the virus's spread and rising death toll. Similar criticisms were echoed in many news reports Sunday, sparking heated retorts from Trump even for Fox News. In an interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace, Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also said the U.S. would "be in a much better position" if the Trump administration had acted more quickly. That interview inspired Trump to blast the right-leaning news network and Wallace personally, calling him a "Mike Wallace wannabe," a reference to Chris Wallace's father, the legendary investigative broadcaster who died in 2012. "What the hell is happening to @FoxNews," Trump tweeted Sunday. "It's a whole new ballgame over there!" The personal attack on Wallace drew a rebuke from Jedediah Bila, a weekend co-host of one of the president's favorite shows, "Fox & Friends." "Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling," she said. "Chris is doing his job." Here are relevant excerpts from Sunday's Fauci interview with CNN's Jake Tapper: TAPPER: The New York Times reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to President Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn't announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16, almost a month later. Why? FAUCI: You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not. But we it is what it is. We are where we are right now. TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February, instead of mid-March? FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it's the what would have, what could have. It's it's very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is is complicated. But youre right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. Filmmaker-choreographer Farah Khan has yet again taken a sly dig at Bollywood celebrities for posting workout videos during the crucial times of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the world. During an interview with senior film journalist Rajeev Masand, Farah said even though she is aware that Bollywood is not known to be an industry of "deep thinking," those videos seemed "a little shallow" to her. Read: It's Not A Global Party Guys, It's A Global Pandemic: Farah Khan Blasts Bollywood Stars Yet Again The recently released Masakali 2.0 featuring Sidharth Malhotra and Tara Sutaria has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. After severe backlash from fans of the original Masakali, Sidharth, who is self-quarantining in Mumbai, spoke to Rajeev Masand over a video call and addressed the disappointment over the recreated version. Read: Sidharth Malhotra Reacts to Masakali 2.0 Outrage, Says 'It is Completely Valid' As fans eagerly wait for updates on the forthcoming Marvel film, Thor: Love and Thunder, filmmaker Taika Waititi treated them by hosting an Instagram Live watch party with Thor: Ragnarok actors Mark Ruffalo and Tessa Thompson. Read: Taika Waititi Confuses Marvel Fans with Tony Stark's Appearance in Thor Love And Thunder Script Sonakshi Sinha recently got into a Twitter altercation with The Tashkent Files director Vivek Agnihotri after the latter shared a picture of her from a set and implied that she was shooting amid the coronavirus. This did not go well with the actress and she clarified that the picture was from last year while shooting for Farah Khan's show Backbenchers. Read: Sonakshi Sinha Tags Mumbai Police For Help to Stop Misinformation As Vivek Agnihotri Shares Her Picture From Set Ramanand Sagars Ramayan is being re-run on Doordarshan these days in order to keep people entertained during the coronavirus lockdown. In a video that is going viral on social media, one can see veteran Gujarati actor Arvind Trivedi, who played the role of Raavan in the epic show, getting emotional while watching 'Sita Haran' (Kidnapping of Sita) episode. Read: Arvind Trivedi Aka Ravan Gets Emotional While Watching This Scene From Ramayan Follow @News18Movies for more Coronavirus: What you need to read Coronavirus maps: Cases and deaths in the U.S. | Cases and deaths worldwide Vaccines: Tracker by state | Booster shots | For kids 5 to 11 | Guidance for vaccinated people | How long does immunity last? | County-level vaccine data What you need to know: Omicron variant | Breakthrough infections | Symptoms guide | Masks FAQ | Delta variant | Other variants | Follow all of our coverage and sign up for our free newsletter Impact of the pandemic: Supply chain | Education | Housing Got a pandemic question? We answer one every day in our coronavirus newsletter Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 22:56:08|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities on Monday urged efforts to send medical experts and resources from inland areas to border regions to help fight novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The instruction was given at a meeting of the leading group of China's COVID-19 epidemic response, which was chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee. The meeting called for continuously improving the measures to prevent imported COVID-19 cases, stressing identifying and eliminating the potential risks of an epidemic rebound to create the necessary conditions for work resumption. The working teams of medical experts will support and guide local epidemic prevention and control work, the construction of makeshift hospitals, the setting-up of designated quarantine facilities and medical institutions, and the treatment of patients. Testing kits and facilities, and diagnosis and treatment equipment should be sent to border regions and port cities, according to the meeting. The meeting stressed strict supervision of the quality of export medical materials, and punishments for unqualified and substandard production and the practices of driving up the prices of epidemic prevention products and raw materials. Requiring strengthened nucleic acid testing of travelers leaving Wuhan, the hardest-hit city in the COVID-19 outbreak in China, the meeting also called for the expansion of testing and better management of travelers' health conditions. Those who are set to work as teachers, medical workers or service providers at public places after leaving Wuhan should all undergo nucleic acid testing, noted the meeting. The meeting demanded further prevention and control efforts at the community level, stressing that Chinese and foreigners should receive equal treatment. It also stressed the need for epidemiological investigations and management of asymptomatic cases and their close contacts. Testing capabilities should be further improved and the testing time should be shortened, according to the meeting. Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and deputy head of the leading group, attended the meeting. Remember what Jesus said: there are two lords, the Lord God and the god of money. One cannot serve both. May the Lord be both in our personal life and in our social life. May he always help us to choose the announcement: the announcement that is horizon, open, always; may he lead us to choose what is good for people. And never fall into the tomb of the god of money. Vatican City (AsiaNews) Pope Francis introduced the Mass he celebrated this morning at Casa Santa Marta by calling on politicians and scientists to find ways to overcome the pandemic for the sake of people, not money. Let us pray today for leaders, scientists, politicians, who have begun to study the way out, the post-pandemic [period], this 'after' that has already begun, that they may find the right way, always in in favour of people, always in favour of the people, said Francis. Our bet will be either on life, on the resurrection of peoples, on for the god of money. Commenting on the passage in the Gospel (Mt 28, 8-15) in which the Risen Jesus appears to some women to urge them to tell his disciples to go to Galilee, whilst the priests bribe the soldiers guarding the tomb, saying to report that Jesus disciples had stolen the body as they slept, Francis highlighted that the Gospel offers a choice, one that also applies today, between the hope of the resurrection of Jesus and the nostalgia for the tomb. Today's Gospel presents us with an option, an everyday option, a human option that has existed since that day: the option between the joy, the hope of the resurrection of Jesus, and the nostalgia for the tomb. Women went forth to make the announcement (cf. Mt. 28:8). God always begins with women, always. They open paths. They don't doubt: they know; they saw him, they touched him. They also saw the empty tomb. It is true that the disciples could not believe it and said: 'But these women are perhaps a little too imaginative' . . . I don't know, they had their doubts. But they were certain and eventually carried on this path until today: Jesus is risen, he is alive among us (cf. Mt. 28, 9-10). And then there is more. It is better not to live with the empty tomb. The empty tomb will bring us many problems. [There is] the decision to hide the fact. As always, when we do not serve God, the Lord, we serve the other god, money. Remember what Jesus said: there are two lords, the Lord God and god of money. One cannot serve both. To overcome this self-evident fact, this reality, the priests, the doctors of the Law, chose the other path, the one offered to them by money and they paid; they paid for silence (cf. Mt. 28, 12-13), the silence of the witnesses. One of the guards had confessed, as soon as Jesus had died: Truly this man was the Son of God! (Mk 15:39). These poor people did not understand; they were afraid because their life was at stake . . . and they went to the priests, to the doctors of the Law. And they paid; they bought the silence, and this, dear brothers and sisters, is not a bribe; this is pure corruption, pure corruption. If one does not acknowledge Jesus Christ the Lord, ask yourself why, where is the seal of your tomb, where there is corruption. It is true that many people do not acknowledge Jesus because they do not know him, because we have not consistently announced him. This is our fault. But when we take this path knowing the evidence, it is the devil's path, it is the path of corruption. One pays and you shut up. "Even today, in the face of the upcoming, hopefully soon, end of this pandemic, there is the same option: either we bet on life, on the resurrection of peoples or we bet on the god of money: go back to the tomb of hunger, slavery, wars, weapons factories, children without education ... thats where the tomb is. May the Lord be both in our personal life and in our social life, said Francis at the end of the service. May he always help us to choose the announcement, the announcement that is horizon, open, always; may he lead us to choose what is good for people. And never fall into the tomb of the god of money. The Pope ended the celebration with the Eucharistic adoration and the blessing, inviting people to make spiritual communion. Before leaving the chapel dedicated to the Holy Spirit, the Marian antiphon Regina caeli, which is performed at Easter, was sung. New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman arrives to her office at North Block after long time due to nationwide lockdown imposed as a precautionary measure to contain the spread of coronavirus, in New Delhi on April 13, 2020. Prime Minist Image Source: IANS News New Delhi, April 13 : As Union ministers and their staff attended offices on Monday after the a gap of around three weeks, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman too returned to her North Block office, putting on a home-made mask. The ministers were working from home since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a three-week nationwide lockdown from March 24 midnight due to coronavirus scare. Sharing a picture of her working from office, Sitharaman said: "Back to working in North Block office with a home-made mask this morning." The Finance Minister leads a COVID-19 Economic Response Taskforce to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the Indian economy. She faces a very tough task of getting the economy back on track, which was already subdued prior to the coronavirus pandemic. She is currently overseeing the preparation of the much-anticipated stimulus package for the industry as businesses have suffered severely due to the nationwide lockdown. The minister has already announced an economic relief package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore for the poor and migrant workers under the Prime Minister Gareeb Kalyan Yojana. As of April 10, the Centre has provided financial assistance of Rs 28,256 crore to 31.77 crore beneficiaries under the scheme. Bay Area political events that are happening online during the coronavirus pandemic: TUESDAY Democracy and the coronavirus: James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic, and Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, discuss how the pandemic may affect the 2020 elections and broader democratic processes. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 3 p.m. More information is here. THURSDAY Janet Napolitano: University of California president and former homeland security secretary discusses the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on UC and its security implications. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. Noon. More information is here. Rep. Ro Khanna: Fremont Democrat holds a Facebook Live town hall meeting. Noon. More information and join here. Rep. Eric Swalwell: East Bay Democrat holds a Facebook Live town hall meeting with Dr. Abayomi Jones, executive director of student health and counseling services at Cal State East Bay. 1:30 p.m. Submit advance questions and join here. Tom Ammiano: Former San Francisco supervisor and state assemblyman in conversation about his new book, Kiss My Ass: My Trip Down the Yellow Brick Road Through Activism, Stand-up, and Politics. Hosted by the Commonwealth Club. 2:30 p.m. More information and join here. SUNDAY Indivisible S.F.: Online general meeting. 1 p.m. Information on how to join meeting is here. MONDAY Dan Pfeiffer: Pod Save America co-host on how President Trump is handling the coronavirus crisis. Hosted by Mannys. 6 p.m. More information here; join here. APRIL 21 Change during a pandemic: Remote access-study group discusses possibilities for social change during the pandemic. Hosted by Freedom Socialist Party. Sessions on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. (register here) or Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. (register here). Reading list here. $3-$5 suggested donation per session. APRIL 23 Christine Pelosi: Democratic activist and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about growing up in the Pelosi household. Hosted by Mannys. 7 p.m. More information is here; join here. APRIL 24 Mayor Petes California campaign: Pete Buttigiegs California campaign director, Cecilia Cabello, talks about the experience. Hosted by Mannys. More information and join here. APRIL 26 Environmentalism and social media: A livestream on using social media to drive environmentalism, hosted by the Ecology Center. 11 a.m. More information is here. APRIL 29 Obamas legacy: David Simas, CEO of the Obama Foundation, discusses former President Barack Obamas legacy and the foundations work. Hosted by Mannys. 5 p.m. More information is here; join here. To list an event, please email Chronicle politics editor Trapper Byrne at tbyrne@sfchronicle.com For Vishakha Laskar, a sex worker living in Kolkata's Sonagachi, one of South Asia's largest red-light areas, the novel coronavirus outbreak feels worse than the time of the HIV outbreak. Laskar says that no one prepared them for the pandemonium the pandemic was about to unleash. Thousands of sex workers in Kolkata have been left without income days after the coronavirus outbreak which has led to a nationwide lockdown. Sonagachi, which once witnessed at least 15,000 to 20,000 clients every day, now stands abandoned. The red light area mainly comprises three extremely dingy lanes with houses on either side. On average, there are approximately 12,000 women living in the houses although a few of them managed to rush back home before the lockdown was imposed on March 24. Representational photo. (Source: AP) "Right now, there are approximately 7,000 girls who couldn't go back home and we're all stuck here together," says Kajal Bose, also a sex worker and the secretary of Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a collective made for and by sex workers in Kolkata. In India, at least 10 million women work as commercial prostitutes. Although it is illegal, flesh trade continues to thrive in the narrow lanes and corners of cities around the country. Bose says that ever since news of the novel Covid-19 outbreak started doing the rounds, their business had been dwindling. "Customers didn't want to take the risk of getting infected and our girls were also scared. There is no way to know where a customer is coming from or if he's been exposed to coronavirus," she added. However, following the outbreak, the sex workers at Sonagachi were trained by Dr. Smarajit Jana, the founder of Durbar, who has worked closely with the women in red light areas for decades now. For one week, girls were educated about how Covid-19 can spread, the symptoms, the benefits of using sanitisers and washing hands and so on. In fact, till the lockdown was imposed, the women had implemented stringent rules which included making customers washing hands before and after their visit, a shower after each customer and ensuring that basic personal hygiene was maintained. However, all that came to a standstill when the lockdown was declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in order to contain the virus. "We've been completely locked inside since the lockdown. All 101 houses here are locked. Just before the lockdown, we had reached out to the government and other NGOs for help. We are daily wagers, whether we'll be able to eat at night depends on how much we earn throughout the day. What are we supposed to do now?" asked Bose. Arjun Sengupta, a government employee working with the labour department, regularly visits his Union office which is located in Harkata Gali, another well-known red light area in North Kolkata. After the lockdown was announced, Sengupta says he knew that the sex workers would be the worst-hit in the pandemic. "The society won't even care to look at them," he says, emphasizing how sex workers have always been ostracized from the mainstream society. Sengupta, along with his friends and colleagues, started a social media campaign with the help of his son to gather funds to help out sex workers. "Our campaign helped us acquire 1.5 lakh INR in 72 hours. Using that, we bought 400 kilograms of rice, 200 kilograms of potatoes and other essentials which we then distributed among the women," he says. Photo: Facebook/Arjun Sengupta Sengupta says that the women he met were living in miserable conditions. In a shocking revelation, he says that at present, at least ten to fifteen women were living in the same room together. Globally, social distancing is being promoted as the only viable method to keep the virus at bay. Maintaining a minimum distance of six feet between two people is being called mandatory in most parts of the world. However, in the tiny houses of Sonagachi and Harkata Gali, scores of women are huddled together - living in fear of the pandemic that looms outside. Dr. Jana, who has been working tirelessly to make things easier for the women of Durbar during the pandemic, says that the lockdown being extended is bound to make things worse. At this point, he says, gathering essential goods and making sure it reaches the women is his only agenda. He also says that his organisation is trying to build their own quarantine centres as a precautionary measure in case one of the women show symptoms. In the upcoming days, he also hopes to be able to start testing independently. Another initiative has been taken up by the Rotaract Club in Kolkata, in association with Durbar Mahila Samity, to crowdsource funds to help women living in red light areas. Bishal Modak, a member of the club, says that they have been trying their best to raise funds which can help Durbar buy essentials for the women during the crisis period. Representational photo (Source: PTI) Vishakha Laskar, who worked as a sex worker when she was younger, has been associated with Durbar since the 1990s. She says that she's been trying to speak to landlords at Sonagachi so that the rent is waived off for the women staying in leased houses there. Sonagachi, although a red light area, has some of the most expensive houses in the city. The rents for these houses start from Rs. 1000 and may even go up to Rs 1 lakh. She also acknowledges how difficult it has been to get the children to stay indoors. In Sonagachi and other red light areas, women often reside with their children. However, the kids are not used to staying indoors especially in such crowded rooms. Unable to understand the seriousness of the pandemic, all they want to do is step outside and play. Yet, Vishakha believes that all hope is not lost yet. "This problem is not specific to India, the whole world is suffering. We can stay indoors and hope for the best. We have to fight this together, otherwise no one will survive," she says. Egypt's parliament will convene on the 29th of April after a month hiatus over coronavirus concerns The Egyptian parliaments decision to meet on 29 April as scheduled has sparked speculation that the Egyptian government might resort to relaxing anti-coronavirus measures in the near future. MP Mostafa Bakri said there is a growing sentiment in government circles that the state should relax anti-coronavirus measures in the coming period to help prevent economic stagnation while obliging businesses and state institutions to comply with strict precautionary measures against the virus "I think President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and many government officials and businessmen are in favour of this option, which could maintain balance between fighting the virus and keeping the economy in action at the same time," said Bakri. Parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal said on Sunday that it is necessary that parliament meets on schedule later this month without any further suspension. "We have a busy legislative agenda including looking at two laws on proposed real estate tax exemptions and an increase in bonuses granted to state employees," said Abdel-Aal. The two laws are part of measures that were taken by President El-Sisi to help mitigate the negative economic impact of the coronavirus on low and middle-income citizens, and also support businesses particularly the tourism and civil aviation sectors hit by the economic fallout from the measures adopted to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Parliament's budget and planning committee is also expected to begin discussing the new state 2020/21 budget on 29 April. The budget, approved by the cabinet in a meeting on 26 March, was referred to parliament on 30 March in line with the constitution. Head of the budget committee Hussein Eissa told reporters this week that the constitution gives parliament a period of 90 days (beginning on 1 April and ending on 30 June) to discuss and vote on the budget and the annual economic development plan. Abdel-Aal also said that the chamber will discuss government-drafted amendments to the law on epidemic diseases, aiming to stiffen measures aimed at fighting viruses. He added in a statement on Monday that MPs will be required to follow certain measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus among them and staff during the upcoming session. MPs will sit on marked seats that maintain safe distancing of at least one metre. Parliament's secretary-general Mahmoud Fawzi indicated Monday that the Shura Council's meeting hall will also be used to host the discussions of the House's 49-member general committee in a way that ensures a safe distance between each member. "Parliament committees with a big number of MPs can also use the Shura Council to hold their meetings whenever chairpersons find it necessary," said Fawzi. The Shura Council a consultative upper house was created in 1980 by late president Anwar El-Sadat, but it was dissolved following the ouster of the former Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Fawzi also indicated that MPs, staff, parliamentary reporters and guests will be required to wear facemasks before they enter the House building. They will also undergo tests to detect high temperature, exceeding 37.3 degrees. "Violators of these precautionary measures will not be allowed to enter the House building," said Fawzi, also indicating that "parliament's meeting halls are regularly disinfected and sanitised in line with relevant standards in this respect." Egypts parliament was scheduled to convene on 29 March, but due to the coronavirus fears it decided to postpone meetings to 12 April. On 9 April and following the government's decision to extend the curfew for another two weeks (until 23 April), parliament decided to extend the suspension of its meetings until 29 April. The meetings will resume five days after the holy month of Ramadan begins on 24 April. In the Monday statement, parliament speaker Abdel-Aal dismissed rumours that the House recently received a government-drafted law aiming to make it obligatory for citizens to donate to the Tahya Misr (Long Live Egypt) fund to help fight the coronavirus, which exceeded 2,000 cases on Sunday (12 April) and has so far killed 159 citizens. "We have not received any law from the government or MPs suggesting in title or content that all Egyptians should donate a certain amount of money to the Tahya Misr fund to help fight the coronavirus," said Abdel-Aal. The Tahya Misr fund was established by President El-Sisi following his election for the first time in 2014. The fund aims to help poor citizens living in slum areas, build new housing communities, as well as offer help in emergency cases like the coronavirus crisis. Search Keywords: Short link: India is capitalizing on low global oil prices to fill its underground strategic oil reserves, with the first shipload of 1 million barrels of crude oil from the UAE arriving at Mangalore as part of efforts to shore up supplies to meet any supply or price disruption. While the 5.33 million tonne of emergency storage -- enough to meet its oil needs for 9.5 days -- was built in underground rock caverns in Mangalore and Padur in Karnataka and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh by the government, state-owned oil firms have been asked to buy oil at cheaper rates from the market and fill them up. "Under the guidance of MoP&NG, IndianOil is importing crude oil to strengthen India's Strategic Petroleum Reserves while taking advantage of prevailing low crude prices. First such cargo of 1 million barrels of Upper Zakum Crude oil is being unloaded at Mangalore since yesterday," IOC Director (HR) Ranjan Kumar Mohapatra tweeted. Oil prices have declined by more than 60 per cent since January and benchmark crude still trading under USD 32 per barrel despite an unprecedented deal by the world's biggest producers to cut output to steady a market pummeled by the coronavirus. The storages at Mangalore and Padur are half-empty and there was some space available in Vizag storage as well. These will now be filled by buying oil from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who attended the office for the first time since the nationwide lockdown was imposed, reviewed the reserve filling plans. "Min. P&NG Shri @dpradhanbjp along with officials of MoPNG reviewed the ongoing operations of India's Strategic Petroleum Reserves Program in the light of prevailing low crude oil prices," the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) tweeted. Pradhan has in the last few days held talks with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia and the UAE with a view to shoring up supplies. "He instructed officials of @ISPRL1 to augment storage of crude in the strategic reserves to further enhance India's energy security," the ministry tweeted. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve entity of India (ISRPL) built the underground storages as insurance against supply and price disruptions. It allowed foreign oil companies to store oil in the storages on condition that the stockpile can be used by New Delhi in case of an emergency. Pradhan also reviewed marketing and supply of essential petroleum products including petrol, diesel, and LPG, the ministry said. "Together with officials of MoPNG reviewed exploration and production activities of @ONGC_ through video-conferencing. ONGC is maintaining oil and gas production in spiteof the challenges posed by the lockdown and the COVID-19 pandemic." Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) had previously hired half of the 1.5 million tonnes of Mangalore storage. It has stored for its commercial purposes 0.75 million tonnes of oil at Mangalore and the remaining space was empty, sources said adding the UAE's Upper Zakum crude is being bought for storing in the empty space. Padur, the biggest of the three storages, has a total capacity of 2.5 million tonnes (about 17 million barrels). ADNOC had in November 2018 signed up to hire half of this capacity but never actually stored oil in it. Government-sourced crude fills up half of the Padur capacity currently and 1.25 million tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Arabia is planned to be sourced for filling up the empty space, they said. Padur storage has four compartments of 0.625 million tonnes each. The 1.33 million tonnes Vishakhapatnam storage has a small amount of unfilled space which would be filled with Iraq crude oil, they added. While the oil to be stored in the three caverns will belong to the government, the government isn't paying for it. State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) have been asked to source oil from the three Middle-East countries for storing the caverns, sources said, adding the government will reimburse them of this cost at a later date. The Finance Ministry has set aside Rs 700 crore for the purpose, they said adding the amount wouldn't cover for the cost of entire oil to be bought and more allocations will need to be made. At least Rs 2,000 crore more would be needed for buying the 15 million barrels of oil needed to fill Mangalore, Padur and Vizag, they said. ADNOC had in February 2018 signed a pact to fill half of the 1.5 million tonnes of strategic oil storage at Mangalore. In November 2018, it had signed a similar pact with the ISRPL for Padur. In Mangalore, it had agreed to stock 5.86 million barrels or 0.75 million tonnes of oil. The agreement allows ADNOC to sell or trade crude oil storage in the storages to local refiners but give the Indian government the first right to the oil in case of an emergency. Allowing foreign companies to use the storage for storing crude oil helps the government save on the cost of filling the reserves. Sources said foreign oil firms are allowed to hire the storages and use them to stock their oil and sell it to refineries in the region on commercial terms. India, which meets 83 per cent of its oil needs through imports, will have the right of first refusal to buy the crude oil stored in the facilities in case of an emergency, they said. Indian refiners maintain 65 days of crude storage, and when added to the storage planned and achieved by ISPRL, the Indian crude storage tally goes up to about 87 days. This is very close to the storage of 90 days mandated by IEA for member countries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Oslo, Norway Mon, April 13, 2020 22:02 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1a3a8a 2 Science & Tech Norway,isolation,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,technology Free Widower Per Leif Rolid lives alone on his farm, a two-hour drive from Oslo. His sense of isolation has mounted with the COVID-19 pandemic, but a simple screen is helping him stay in touch -- without requiring any computer know-how. Aged 87, Rolid has never owned a computer, smartphone or tablet. But that has not stopped him from getting messages, photos and video calls from his grandchildren scattered around the world. The secret? A screen that looks like a mix between an old-fashioned television and radio, placed next to his TV. There is no keyboard, login or password. And there is just one button to turn the machine on and adjust the volume, like an old-fashioned radio. On the other end, relatives can take a few minutes out of their day to reach out to the family patriarch via an app. "I can see them while talking to them. I keep in touch with family at home and abroad, on travels. I feel like I can be with my family all the time," Rolid says with a smile. The tech revolution that has changed our daily lives in so many ways has left parts of the population behind. According to a study co-conducted by the British Red Cross, more than nine million adults in Britain feel lonely, including four million of those aged 55 and over. In Norway, 35 percent of people over the age of 67 live alone. That feeling of isolation risks being aggravated by confinement measures during the coronavirus outbreak, as older people are told to avoid physical contact with others since they are most at risk. According to psychologist and physiologist Christopher Lien, the added isolation is "particularly regrettable". "Lots of old people have quite a small social network and if you add weeks of social isolation to that, it's clear that for a lot of them this network becomes even smaller," he said. "In the worst cases, they can end up feeling disoriented in space and time. They lose their bearings when they can't get together in their nursing home or have visits from friends and family." Read also: Elderly in UK care home embrace technology to beat coronavirus lockdown 'Window to the family' The virus crisis could give a boost to tech companies developing products to bridge the gap between generations, with analogue people on one end and their digital-savvy counterparts on the other. The global market for such machines -- known as telepresence robots -- could rise by 20 to 35 percent this year because of COVID-19, and could hit $400 million, according to Lian Jye Su, tech analyst at ABI Research. The screen used by Per Leif Rolid on his farm in Redalen was made by Norwegian start-up No Isolation, which specializes in using technology to tackle loneliness among vulnerable groups. "We know that this is not something that exclusively happens during a pandemic, but it became painfully clear that this harms the most vulnerable first and the hardest," says No Isolation chief executive Karen Dolva. "All of a sudden the families realized that we have to take them online," noting that "granddad doesn't have to be digital to be online". The screen, called Komp, "becomes like their window to the family in the day-to-day life". After selling 650 devices last year, the company says it sold 1,500 screens in the last two weeks of March alone. In Oslo, Rolid's granddaughter Martine Rolid Leonardsen says she has made sure to use the technology even more lately to keep in touch with him and help fight his solitude during the pandemic. "I'm more mindful of sending him pictures every day," she says. "It doesn't matter if they're not from now, because we're not doing anything right now. It's important to send (some) from vacations years ago, and to remind him of how life used to be before corona." KIGALI Top Rwandan officials will not get their April salaries in one of the drastic measures the government has enforced to raise funds for social protection programmes aimed for the most vulnerable in the community. Rwanda has implemented a strict lockdown in a bid to curb the spread ofCoronavirus, which has forced many low-income earners and unemployed people to struggle to get food and other basic necessities. The country has confirmed 104 Coronavirus infections to date, the second-highest number in the region after Kenya which has 172 cases. Seven patients were released from hospital. In the context of the fight against COVID-19, and in solidarity with the most affected Rwandans, the Government of Rwanda has decided, over and above ongoing social protection initiatives, that all Cabinet Members, Permanent Secretaries, Heads of Public Institutions and other Senior Officials shall forfeit one months salary (April), Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente said in a statement released on Sunday. Those who will not get their April pay are 34 Cabinet Members, 26 Senators, 106 Members of Parliament, and hundreds of Heads of Public Institutions who earn an average of Rwf2 million (about $2,140) per month. This is likely to generate close to $1 million to be used to combat effects of Coronavirus on the vulnerable. Related DAR ES SALAAM Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority on Easter Sunday, April 12, announced a suspension of all international passenger flights due to the coronavirus pandemic. Cargo flights are exempt from the suspension, but crew members will be quarantined at Tanzania government facilities during their stay, the TCAA said. President John Magufuli in a televised announced that the country will not be closing its borders due to humanitarian concerns, as the closure would impact land-locked countries in the region dependent on its ports. On Saturday, April 4, authorities announced that all inbound travelers are required to undergo a 14-day quarantine in government-designated facilities at their own expense. Commercial cargo vehicles will need to declare their final destination upon entry to the country and self-quarantine onboard their vehicle for the duration of their stay. Meanwhile, all tourist hotels have also been closed as a precautionary measure. As of Friday, April 10, the Ministry of Health had confirmed 32 cases of COVID-19 nationwide, including three fatalities. Further international spread of the virus is expected in the near term, according to authorities. The first case of COVID-19 was reported on December 31 and the source of the outbreak has been linked to a wet market in Wuhan (Hubei province, China). Human-to-human and patient-to-medical staff transmission of the virus have been confirmed. Many of the associated fatalities have been due to pneumonia caused by the virus, according to Health Authorities. Measures adopted by local authorities evolve quickly, and are usually effective immediately. Depending on the evolution of the outbreak in other countries, authorities are likely to modify, at very short notice, the list of countries whose travelers are subject to border control measures or entry restrictions upon their arrival to the territory in question. Related One more coronavirus positive case was detected in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar on Monday, taking the total number of COVID-19 cases in the district to 7, a senior official said. The patient is a member of the Tablighi Jamaat and had attended the Nizamuddin Markaz in New Delhi last month, he said. He along with nine other Jamaat members had come to Muzaffarnagar after attending the Markaz and were staying in a local mosque, Sub Divisional Magistrate Inderkant Dwivedi told PTI. The patient has been shifted to Muzaffarnagar Medical College Begrajpur, the official said, adding that the local mosque has been sealed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A new global foundation will help Australias government scientific research organisation dramatically expand the reach of a mathematically-verified secure operating-system kernel for applications such as autonomous vehicles, secure internet of things (IoT) devices, connected medical devices and military systems. Designed to provide hack-proof embedded systems, the seL4 microkernel began life in 2009 as a research project of Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which baked security into every aspect of the ultra-reliable, real-time environment. [ Keep up on the latest thought leadership, insights, how-to, and analysis on IT through CSO Onlines newsletters. ] Currently managed by the Trustworthy Systems team within CSIROs Data61 data group, seL4s microkernel has been carefully defined and extensively tested using mathematical proofs that confirm it is highly reliable and impervious to compromise and attack. Feted as a world first, these proofs have been maintained and tweaked by a dedicated verification team of around a dozen people which work in lockstep with the development team to ensure that the microkernel cannot be compromised by outside actors. Yet despite its successful use in hack-proof drones, autonomous vehicles, medical devices, IoT equipment and military applications that we dont really know about, Scientia Professor Gerner Heiser told CSO Australia that taking the microkernel to the next level meant extending the projects service development and integration well beyond CSIROs core team. We have the expertise and have to provide a lot of the components required to make the system usable and help people build with it, he explained, but this is just not scalable enough so we have become a big bottleneck. The newly-launched seL4 Foundation has been designed to resolve this bottleneck by engaging with well-resourced industrial partners that want to integrate the real-time operating system into real-world devices where secure, ultra-reliable design is essential. The Linux Foundation is a core partner of the new foundation, throwing its weight and extensive community behind an effort that vice president of strategic programs Michael Dolan said would provide a neutral, mature and trustworthy framework to help advance an operating system that is readily deployable and optimized for security. Engagement with the Linux Foundation was a massive coup for the seL4 effort, Heiser said, because that effort had years of demonstrated success in fostering an ecosystem of innovation built around a common operating-system core. Whereas Linux integrates core services with its kernel into an operating system, however, the seL4 approach will maintain the kernel in-house and allow outside parties to layer their own services and components on top. Its easier to manage this way because you dont break the kernel even if you break something in these user-land components, Heiser explained. You can provide a much higher degree of autonomy to developers, which should make it easier to see how the seL4 ecosystem can scale up. A basic idea of the foundation is to bring these players to the table and let them pool funding to make it possible in ways that none of the individual companies could do. The foundations launch has been two years in the making, during which time the Data61 team was engaged selling the idea internally and externally, improving its documentation and support systems. Separating the kernel from its implementation will allow the two dozen-strong Data61 team to maintain its focus on big-ticket items such as the almost-complete mathematical verification of a new 64-bit, multi-core seL4 kernel. Such kernels are big, multi-million dollar projects that are above the pain limits of the companies that want to make this happen, Heiser said. Nobody else has the insights into the kernel design or verification practicalities; its often difficult to judge the implications of any changes to the kernel on the verifications. By fostering worldwide innovation around a demonstrably secure systems architecture, Heiser believes the seL4 Foundation will provide a highly attractive option for IoT developers that continue to struggle with security vulnerabilities that have proved difficult to iron out of other architectures. The December launch of the Australian governments Draft Code of Practice for Securing the Internet of Things for Consumers offered some guidance for developers of such devices, but taking it to the next level will require the kind of concerted development focus that an ecosystem like the seL4 Foundation enables. Within a year, we hope to have some big companies putting real money into the project, Heiser said. We understand what we can do for this effort, but we would like to have a few dozen active developers of various components for the system. Nigeria has recorded 5 new coronavirus cases, bringing the number of infections persons in the country to 323. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, announced via Twitter on Sunday. In a breakdown, NCDC said 2 cases was recorded in Lagos, 2 in Kwara and 1 in Katsina. However, 85 patients have been discharged with 10 deaths recorded. Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has asked Lagosians to dismiss the speculations that the two-week Coronavirus lockdown has been suspended. He admonished the citizens to think long term and stay safe while the country is still combatting the ravaging pandemic. Five new cases of #COVID19 have been reported as follows: 2 in Lagos 2 in Kwara 1 in Katsina As at 09:10 pm 12th April there are 323 confirmed cases of #COVID19 reported in Nigeria. 85 have been discharged with 10 deaths There are 19 states with confirmed cases in Nigeria pic.twitter.com/hfsRXAaiTQ NCDC (@NCDCgov) April 12, 2020 Post Views: 4 AUBURN, Ga., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Canvas ETC, a textile supplier and e-commerce business, has donated thousands of face masks to area doctors, clinics and hospitals. Nik Narwani, spokesperson for the company, shares, "We source fabrics domestically and from all over the world. Because we have built up goodwill with manufacturers, we were able to put those relationships to good use. Our company wants to give our community's healthcare workers every chance to help us beat this virus safely." Like in so many cities all over the United States, Atlanta and suburban healthcare facilities are struggling to prepare for the possible influx of COVID-19 patients. Responding to the need for personal protective equipment (PPE), Canvas ETC distributed thousands of face masks to Emory Healthcare, Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, and other local clinics. "I think we all recognize the need to support the most vulnerable essential workers in this fight: our healthcare workers," Narwani adds. "Canvas ETC will continue helping our community in any way we can." About Canvas ETC Canvas ETC is a leading wholesale supplier of a varied range of textile products located in Auburn, Georgia. Their specialties include yarn, industrial fabrics, apparel fabric, made-up and finished products. As a family-owned business with over 60 years of combined textile experience, the company has served the greater Atlanta area and customers all over the country through their e-commerce channels. Learn more on their website: canvasetc.com. Contact: Nik Narwani Canvas ETC (678) 985-5434 [email protected] SOURCE Canvas ETC Education Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu. Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu. Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events: International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu. EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu. Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets June Homecoming: Participant $18 per person; Sustainer $25 per person; Benefactor $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events: SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available for information call 610-275-1960 Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above) SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m. Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. 4 p.m. computers are available during those hours. Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m. Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863. Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376. Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com. The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes: Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020. CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313. The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events: Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m. Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m. Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30. Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m. The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301. For Kids & Families The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443. Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950. Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required. The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950. Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus. Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage. Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun. Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train. Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world! Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class. Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org. Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583. Community Events at the Ambler Y: -YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register. Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org. Health Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot. The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information. Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245. Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net. Spring Aquatic Programs UDHS Pool: -Summer is just around the corner Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required. Shallow Water Aerobics Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR. Adult Swim Instructions Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR -Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21. -Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m. -Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons. -Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates. Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994. SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com. Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org. Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs: FITNESS CLASSES Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month. Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30 9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly. SUPPORT GROUPS Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000. Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30 7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047. New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m. 12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30 4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931. Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325. Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes. Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com. Librarytalk Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744 www.upperdublinlibrary.org APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS: Storytimes: Please register in the library. o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m. o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m. o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6. APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS: North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS: NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org. One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register contact info above. Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744. o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register. Meetings: Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m. Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m. Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org. For children and teens at Blue Bell: * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m. * May 14 Despicable Me * June 11 Alpha and Omega * Special Events * April watch for date of spring/Easter events * April 14 at 4:30 p.m. Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children. * April 14 at 7 p.m. Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided. * April 16 at 1 p.m. Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King. * April 16 at 1:30 p.m. Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes? * April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button. * April 30 through May 3 Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults. * May sign up for Science in the Summer * June sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children * June sign up for Summer Reading, all ages For adults at Blue Bell: * Daytime Book Discussion Group fourth Tuesday, Jan April at 1:30 p.m. * April 26 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Night-time Book Discussion Group third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. o April 19 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked? *Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs * Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class. * Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class. * Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m. * Giant Book Sale, April 29 May 3 o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults! o Held during library hours. o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m. o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join. * Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series o May 11 at 1 p.m. Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society * Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room. * Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read. * Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome. * Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome. *Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older. * Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours * Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours * Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday! Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library. * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * For adults: * Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn. * Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net * Special Events: * April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. * April 19 at 7 p.m. Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m. * April 21 at 7 p.m. Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades. *May 2 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. *May 10 Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *May 12 at 1:30p.m. Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. *May 17 Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *June 13 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. Meetings and Lectures The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833. The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313. Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200. The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/. LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings. Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org. Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org) -Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them. The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter. For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps. Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin. Special Events The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County. The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065. Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members. Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex. The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com. The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348. The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org. Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163. The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu. The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com. The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net. Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages. 13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries. Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family. The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler. JPRN Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike. Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies. Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately. Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways. Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table. Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374 Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall: -Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store. Music and Theater The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html. Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free. The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org Religious News The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276. Reunions St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net. Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572. Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779. Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411. Support New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149. PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931. The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296. Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656. Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group every other Wednesday, 7 8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information. CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7 8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich, (Associated Press) The idea of the president as pater familias the moral head of the nation has always been just an idea. The job functionally involves killing people, directly or indirectly; that's not what we'd have our good fathers do. Still, it's a potent fiction, and never before have the two candidates for the job so baldly resembled the creepy uncle you'd avoid getting cornered by at a family function. (Libidinum patruus? Whatever.) Now, before you accuse me of spoiling the election by refusing to go hard in the paint for a birdbrained hair sniffer, let me be clear: I will vote for Joe Biden in November, and it will kill me. There are several reasons I will vote for Joe Biden, few of which have to do with Joe Biden. For one, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 87. She was born in 1933, people; no amount of reverence from the blue states will make the rules of the human game we are born, we die less likely to apply to her. Another is Donald Trump, a man who alludes to having sex with models in the middle of a pandemic briefing. Still, Biden will probably lose, regardless of how I or the Democratic Socialists of America or anyone else votes, because he is a uniquely uninspiring candidate; Joe Biden is three children in a trenchcoat, twice passed-over, alternately psychobabbling and walking out of the frame. There is one hope yet: if Biden nominates Amy Klobuchar to be his vice president. Now that would activate the youth vote! Kidding, I'm kidding. Ninety percent of voters under age 40 couldn't pick Klobuchar out of a lineup of four brunettes; the other 10% know her for eating salad with a hairbrush. (Unofficial poll.) Her brightest campaign moment was scoring third in the New Hampshire primary. That's the dream team, baby. Three years after the #MeToo movement told survivors our experiences were speakable, we now have the right to choose between two men accused of sexual assault and harassment and the rumored carrot for the Democrats guy is that he might choose an alleged workplace abuser who is a woman!!!! Girl power!!! Forgive me if the roars of support I'm now obliged to affect get stuck in my throat. Story continues I supported Bernie Sanders in this primary, but I am not #BernieorBust. I would have been happy with Elizabeth Warren and far happier than I am now with some others too. I did not support Sanders in 2016, and the supporters who refused to vote for the Democratic nominee in that election drove me mad. Ultimately, though, the busters weren't primarily responsible for Hillary Clinton's loss. Clinton ate it in Michigan, where she barely campaigned. (Among a billion other reasons.) We are now in a pandemic, being led by one of the world's great morons, who has only a handful of capable public servants still standing around him. It's quite hard to imagine how Joe Biden would lead differently, given that as coronavirus spread across the United States, Biden went dark. For some reason, no one not even Symone Sanders, the capable strategist who served as Bernie Sanders national press secretary in 2016 and has since switched to the Biden camp can get the guy from walking out of the frame of his own video. Disappearing was functionally what he did throughout the debates; Biden often ceded his time back, making a point to tell the moderator he was sure he'd nearly hit his limit. Nothing to say, framed as gentility. Imagine having nothing to say right now. Speak to it or around it, but Bidens cognition is declining; he's barely in the race. As the field consolidated around him, it became hard to imagine a likelier outcome for January 2021 than the orange king being re-coronated before what is sure to be another record-breaking, incredible, awe-inspiring crowd, the likes of which have never been seen before. But just one OK fine, a dozen! more thing(s) I hate quickly! I hate that when Ginsburg dies Roe vs. Wade will be overturned and millions of young women will not live the lives they wanted or intended to live. I hate that the future of reproductive choice rests on one very old person. I hate that Ginsburg didn't retire under President Obama when she could and should have. I hate how Biden treated Anita Hill and how he had the opportunity to apologize and botched the job. I hate that the mainstream media barely covered the recent sexual assault accusations against Biden by former aide Tara Reade. I hate Biden's unapologetic handsiness and his empty chivalry and the smarmy, entitled projection that he was the only choice from day one. I hate many of Biden's past votes and positions. I hate that I am now in the position of either voting for one of two men I would not comfortably be alone in a room with or forgo what I believe is a core civic duty. Biden's main selling point for president is that he's a seat filler. He will, we are assured, do little. He will do so little it will be like it was before; we will sink drowsily into the past. I hate that. "The argument for resuming a viable social-welfare state is about not only attending to the immediate needs of tens of millions of people but also reestablishing social connectivity, collective responsibility, and a sense of common purpose, if not common wealth," Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor wrote in a recent New Yorker piece titled "Reality Has Endorsed Bernie Sanders." "In an unrelenting and unemotional way, COVID-19 is demonstrating the vastness of our human connection and mutuality." I hate that Sanders was written off as a lark when he was always a canary. I hate that some moderates are seeing that now, when the hour's too late. I hate that he didn't get the votes. I hate that his campaign is over, even though it was time. Here's what I love. I love that Sanders privileged content over form; he was a crumpled, ornery old guy with a New York accent who kept saying that ordinary people deserved more and better. I love that he made some of us believe it. I love that he emphasized the American people's interconnectedness and that our fates are intertwined not only in this country but also with those of other nations. I love that he asked those of us with more to sacrifice some material comfort; he never lied about that. I love that he asked those of us with less to value our work even as power would tell us otherwise. I love that he hopes to be known for his compassion. I love that he met his caring with clarity of purpose and with strong policy. Sanders has said he intends to push Biden to the left and I dearly hope he achieves that. But regardless of whether Biden moves, I will do what Sanders is now imploring his supporters to do: I will get behind the Democratic nominee. Against all internal resistance, I will vote for creepy Joe Biden, a man who both should be and does not deserve to be president. "When I was writing God Never Changes, I felt that the Holy Spirit was upon me, encouraging me to persevere, refueling my energy, and inspiring the stories that I was to write." Author Elaine M. Thorpe has published an inspiring collection of 10 faith-based stories that transcend cultures and illustrate miracles of the spirit. In God Never Changes: In the Land of the Living, Thorpe shares deeply relatable tales of wounded people struggling to live in truth and freedom within an imperfect world. These stories are drawn from Thorpes encounters experienced in service to the needy, disenfranchised, and lonely. Through her eclectic cast of fictional characters, Thorpe deftly mimics reality, inspiring faith in todays fractured society and revealing the presence of God within people who are desperate to find love and truth. Each narrative in God Never Changes imparts a Christian, Bible-based theme using modern-day people, places, and events and teaches readers that God calls everyday people to be unwitting evangelists in His salvation plan for the world. God put it on my heart to write this book in the midst of a stressful move my family undertook from Southern California to a farm in the Central Valley in late 2016, Thorpe said. As our new home was still under construction, we slept upstairs in our barn. It was rough. Although I would be so very tired at the end of a strenuous day driving, loading, and unloading, I was compelled to sit up at the old table with a lantern and write after everyone else had gone to sleep. But the stories came easy. When I was writing God Never Changes, I felt that the Holy Spirit was upon me, encouraging me to persevere, refueling my energy, and inspiring the stories that I was to write, she continued. It was always clear to me that God wanted this book, and I was obedient to that call, even though the timing was inconvenient for me. But as Christians, we know that all things happen for good in Gods time, not ours. He seeks us, and He wants us to seek Him. Ultimately, Thorpes book serves as a comforting reminder to others that despite modern advances, technology, and education, all people are still Gods children, as flawed as their biblical ancestors. No matter how far humanity falls, He will still reach out and pull it up from the pit of despair into the land of the living. God Never Changes: In the Land of the Living By Elaine M. Thorpe ISBN: 978-1-9736-6935-7 (hardcover); 978-1-9736-6933-3 (softcover); 978-1-9736-6934-0 (e-book) Available through WestBow Press, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon About the author Elaine M. Thorpe is a Catholic laywoman and writer who draws inspiration for her work from encounters with those in need and the local color, customs, and people of the many places she has spent time. Thorpe was born and raised in Niagara Falls, N.Y., attended university in Buffalo, and lived in Long Beach, Calif., for 33 years while enjoying a career in the aerospace industry. She earned her bachelors degree in psychology from Buffalo State College and her masters degree in industrial engineering from the University at Buffalo. Thorpe and her husband, David, have resettled to a quiet farm in the Central Valley of California, where they raise free-range chickens with the help of the Dutch shepherds, Freeia and Rollo, and their cat, Jean Grey. General Inquiries, Review Copies & Interview Requests: LAVIDGE Phoenix 480-648-7557 dgrobmeier@lavidge.com Bill McCann has been spreading the gospel of jazz on radio in the Capital District seemingly forever. Actually, this year he's celebrating 35 years as the creator and host of The Saturday Morning Edition of Jazz on WCDB, 90.9 FM, from the campus of the University at Albany. Each Saturday morning, from 8 a.m. to noon, there he is. Like a rock. For some, Saturday morning means rising uneasily, teetering toward the kitchen, and reaching the coffee maker. For countless jazz fans it's also means tuning in to McCann and great jazz. McCann runs his show with the flavor of a jazzman, improvising on selections, keeping it fresh. The show is not pre-planned. I have stuff that I want to play. But there's no set order, per se. I don't want to plan out my show. Put it together and then show up and have it on autopilot. I want it to be spontaneous, said McCann, who is a University at Albany alumni. I might open up with this piece. But after that, we're off to the races. Wherever the music takes me. I can literally stop on a dime and change my mind. Even if I have something cued up and I'm on the mic and something comes in my brain, I'll have a change of direction. I try to do it like I'm in my living room. ... It's very relaxing. I don't want it to be a job. Anyone on radio for 35 years deserves some attention. And on Saturday there was to be a music event featuring 10 jazz bands at Alumni House on the college campus. But it's not possible because of the coronavirus pandemic. McCann hopes it can be held later in the year. We're certainly going to do it. I raised the funds. I'm sure the musicians will be very anxious to get to work. I was very excited about it. It wasn't going to be a concert, it was going to be a hang, with bands playing from 1 p.m. until toward midnight, one after the other." Nonetheless, the radio show goes on. McCann's ritual is to take his time. He gets to the studio by about 6:30 a.m. (I don't want to feel rushed). There are papers and notes. He has an idea of the basic framework for the day. Then off he goes, into an activity he says has made his life more complete over the years. He was influenced heavily his father, a huge jazz fan, who liked to go hear live jazz in Rockland County, where they lived. Young McCann would tag along and developed a fascination. Dad's record collection was a shared aural experience. McCann found UAlbany had a radio station on a visit in 1980, not knowing he would soon enroll there. He trained for an on-air spot and it came to fruition in 1985. Of course, he wanted it to be a jazz show. In the beginning the music was vinyl. DJs worked like watchmakers, cuing up records just in the right groove so the music started correctly without listeners hearing the sound of the needle sliding, or missing the first strains of a song. He remembers that fondly. I tend to keep the music more in the pocket. More mainstream. So was my Dad, he said. I tend to dig mainstream jazz from the '50s and '60s. Count Basie and Joe Williams and stuff. It took him awhile to get used to bebop and beyond: John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Art Blakey. But after a short time that became part of his vernacular as well. The problem is that there are so many awesome musicians. I find myself saying, 'I can't remember the last time I played that guy.' That kind of thing. Even though I have four hours, it doesn't seem like enough time. I would need to have many, many, many more hours. McCann seems to be known everywhere. He says he gets hollers of love your show when he is in a store or walking down the street. I have no idea who these people are. People bring gifts of pastries, cookies and the like to the studio. When a longtime fan passed awaysomeone McCann had never met except via weekly call-inshe noticed the obituary in the newspaper and attended out of respect. The family was excited to see their father's favorite DJ show. (The family was not allowed to telephone the man on Saturday mornings during McCann's broadcast). To his amazement he was gifted the man's extensive collection of jazz recordings. He was humbled by the affection. McCann appreciates his fan base and with technology, it has no bounds. The station only has 100 watts of power via terrestrial radio, which is extremely limited. But in more recent years, I've literally had people message me or email me, or go to our website and get on the request line, from Egypt or the Philippines or Spain. And all over the United States. Which is really cool, he said. It's become truly a worldwide thing. Working at a college station, he also encounters his share of young DJs who are impressed by his knowledge. I've had student DJs come in unannounced, to do something at the station. They'll come in the master control room. I'll be doing my thing and they'll say, 'Man, how do you do that?' Thirty-five years, you know? It's second nature, he said. He also received major recognition, as when the Jazz Journalists Association honored him with a Jazz Heroes award in 2012. McCann makes it a point to highlight the plethora of jazz talent in the Capital District and keeps listeners informed about what's going on in the region during the upcoming week or month. . I think that's critical. I have a segment called the Jazz Corner said McCann. I make it a regular point to promote a calendar. Not only read it by rote, but have people in the studio to visit and do a segment. If they're putting on a jazz series or if there are some events coming up. Or if musicians have a new CD out. I definitely want to have them come to the station and promote what they're doing. It changes the flavor of the program, but I think its important to give back to the jazz community. He said of that community, It may be an inch wide, but it's miles deep. Pound for pound, I would take the Capital District over any place. Between the clubs that we have. And places like The Egg and Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Proctors, Skidmore. The colleges have different jazz programs. There are so many outlets for not only great local musicians, but world-class musicians. So, I like to promote the cause. As far as favorite moments, McCann recounted that the Lee Shaw Trio once did an in-studio live set. Pianist Shaw was based locally but was renowned on the national jazz stage. Another was when the great swing-style, sweet-toned tenor saxophonist Scott HamiltonMcCann's favorite--appeared on the Saturday morning show the day after his gig in Schenectady as part of the long-running A Place For Jazz series. So on rolls The Saturday Jazz Edition. I hope I can do it for many years to come. I'm 55...I wouldn't mind getting 50 years on the radio. That would put me at 70." Bottom line: I don't think my love of the music will ever change. A couple were caught engaging in sexual activity just a stone's throw away from Buckingham Palace amid the coronavirus lockdown. The unknown man and woman were seen having sex in London's sun-soaked St James's Park, just metres away from Birdcage Walk, as shocked onlookers walked past on Saturday afternoon. However despite their actions, the oblivious pair, who were eventually spotted by two police officers on horseback, were able to escape with a verbal warning about the government's social distancing guidelines, The Sun reported. The anonymous cyclist who filmed the incident told the paper: 'The Queen would have been outraged they were at it like rabbits in the shadow of Buckingham Palace.' The anonymous pair were seen engaging in sexual activity in London's St James's Park which sits just yards away from Buckingham Palace The cyclist continued: 'Families and joggers went past as they went at it but they didn't give a damn who saw them.' After several minutes and a complaint from a passer-by, the anonymous onlooker said that the frisky couple were eventually spoken to by two officers on horseback. However much to the cyclist's surprise, the pair were simply reminded about the government's social distancing measures and told to return home by the officers. The cyclist added: 'I was surprised nothing was done during lockdown because they were clearly very close to the pavement.' A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: 'At around 12.50hrs on Saturday 11 April mounted branch officers on routine patrol in central London encountered a man and a woman who appeared to be having a picnic on Birdcage Walk, SW1, in central London. 'Officers engaged with the pair and spoke to them to remind them of the current government guidance, including around social distancing, and advised them to return home. The officers did not observe any sexual activity taking place. 'The individuals involved explained that they were homeless and the officers then gave them advice to signpost them to a third party agency that they could contact about seeking shelter.' The incident comes as Britons across the country continued to flout the government's social distancing rules amid the pandemic. The man and woman were spoken to by two officers on horseback and escaped with a verbal warning The pair were seen by shocked families and joggers near the park (GV of St James's Park) on Saturday afternoon With temperatures soaring to 73F in parts of the UK today, sun-soaked parks and beaches were once again flooded with people breaching lockdown guidelines to enjoy the sunshine. In the capital sunbathers were spotted lounging in London's Victoria Park, which only reopened its gates yesterday after being closed for two weeks to deter those breaching the government's social distancing measures, and sunbathing in Battersea Park. Meanwhile on Hertford Union canal in London, people continued to walk and cycle across the path despite the lockdown measure in place. The continuing defiance among some Britons comes after the Health Secretary Matt Hancock backtracked on a threat to ban outdoor exercise if people do not comply with the coronavirus lockdown. Last week, the Health Secretary blasted sunbathers for flouting the rules and warned the government would ban 'all forms' of public exercise if a 'small minority' refuse to stay at home. In London's Victoria Park, which only reopened its gates yesterday after closing for two weeks, sunbathers continues to flout the government's social distancing rules Meanwhile in Battersea Park, people continued to enter the park despite the government's social distancing guidelines On Hertford Union canal in London both cyclists and walkers were seen enjoying the rising temperatures However he later updated his comments while speaking at the daily Downing Street coronavirus press conference and said he did not want anyone to think that any changes to the social distancing rules are imminent. Mr Hancock said the end of lockdown will be determined by 'how much people follow the rules on social distancing' and 'the more people follow the rules then the faster we will all be through it'. He then issued a direct plea to people who are 'breaking the rules or are pushing the boundaries', telling them: 'You are risking your own life and the lives of others and you are making it harder for us all.' Good morning. Over the weekend, millions of Californians celebrated Easter and Passover in a changed world. For many of faith or not recent holidays have been occasions for reflection and gratitude. If youve felt inspired to help, the state has a clearinghouse site for ways you can safely serve your community. (Heres the sign-up, if you dont already get California Today delivered to your inbox.) Today, we have another dispatch from our partners at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, written by Miki Katoni and Nina Sparling, about the challenges facing community health centers: OAKLEY, Calif. With chronic thyroid problems and stents in her heart, Caren Abell is one of millions of Californians with underlying health problems that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. It is hard to resist the white sand beaches, steamy rainforests, and welcoming smiles of Thailand. So much so that 39,000,000 tourists visit Thailand each year, making it one of the most visited countries on earth. Thailand is flecked with alluring cities, but Bangkok and Chiang Mai are the heavyweights. A fierce competition exists between the two, both battling for the title of best city in Thailand. Read below to find out more about these exceptional cities and decide which is your favorite. Bangkok Thailands buzzing capital city has a population of more than 8,000,000 people, and in 2019, the metropolis welcomed nearly 11,000,000 visitors. Get lost in the chaos of this sprawling city and uncover the charm that earned Bangkok the number one spot in Mastercards 2017 Global Destination Cities Index. But what makes Bangkok such a great city? Old Meets New Siam Paragon is one of the largest malls in Thailand. Image credit: wikimedia.org Ornate temples are tucked among soaring skyscrapers in this city of two halves. You can spend a morning in front of the mystifying reclining Buddha in Wat Pho, built in the 16th century it is one of Bangkoks oldest temples. Learn about the history of the temple and discover the intricacies of the eight-hectare complex, including Thailands largest collection of Buddha images. A short trip via public transport will take you straight back to modern-day Bangkok. The sleek Siam Paragon Mall is one of the largest in Thailand; it is full of international and luxury brands. Shop until you drop or watch the latest movies at the on-site Cineplex. Incredible Food Bangkok has a vibrant food scene. Photo by Lisheng Chang on Unsplash No matter what food you are craving, Bangkok has it all. The city is a melting pot of cultures and it is reflected in the variety of cuisines. Why not sample the flavors of France in Le Normandie restaurant? This elegant eatery has one Michelin star. Or, for an authentic taste of Thailand, look no further than the street stalls that line the roads where tasty Thai dishes are whipped up there and then. Try one of Bangkoks most loved dishes Khao Gaeng. You can choose the curry, or if you are feeling adventurous, let the vendor choose for you. Transportation Options Bangkok spans a gigantic 605 square miles and it would be almost impossible to explore the whole city on foot. Luckily, Bangkok has great transport links that can take you to all four corners. From the reliable and modern Skytrain to traditional tuk-tuks, there are plenty of affordable options at your disposal. The Markets Bangkok is home to some of the best markets. With over 15,000 stalls, the Chatuchak Weekend Market is one of the largest open-air markets in the world. Get lost in the lanes and pick up antiques, fresh local produce, clothes, and accessories. If you want to avoid shopping in the heat, then try one of the many night markets. For a unique shopping experience, visit Amphawa Floating Market. The best time to visit in the morning; take a longtail boat cruise and purchase local sweets from the vendors cruising down the canal. Chiang Mai Chiang Mai is far more relaxed and laid back than Bangkok. Photo by Peter Borter on Unsplash Get away from the throngs of crowds in Thailands capital and head north to Chiang Mai. With a population of fewer than 200,000 people, it is a fraction of the size of Bangkok. Chiang Mais relaxed culture and stunning landscapes make it a favorite getaway destination. Here are some of the best bits about Thailands northern capital: Day Trips Travelers can take a day trip outside of Chiang Mai to visit a national park or elephant sanctuary. Photo by Kameron Kincade on Unsplash Even though Chiang Mai does not have the same intensity as Bangkok, a break from city life is always welcome. As Chiang Mai is situated between mountains, there are plenty of opportunities to get close to nature. Take a day trip to Mae Wang National Park: Trek through the luscious jungles, pass by thundering waterfalls and become acquainted with the Karen Hill tribe. Guided tours are available or you can go it alone; outdoors enthusiasts should embark on a trek of Doi Pha Tang mountain. For those who want to brush up on their culture and history knowledge, embark on excursions to the magnificent White Temple and the White Buddha On Top Of The Hill. Weather Like Bangkok, Chiang Mai has warm weather all year round. However, it does not suffer the same intense heat as the capital. The best time of year to visit Chiang Mai is from October to April when it is pleasantly cool and highs average around 87F. April is the citys hottest month, but if you visit during this time, you will get to cool off during Songkran a huge water fight that celebrates Thai New Year. Affordability Chiang Mai is considerably cheaper than Bangkok, so you will not break the bank if you spend time here. Accommodation is much more reasonable in Chiang Mai, and you can stay in contemporary apartments and up-market hotels for a good price. As the city is quite compact, you will not spend much on transportation. Walking is encouraged in order to discover the citys coveted restaurants and ancient temples. Tasty Cuisine Northern Thai cuisine is some of the best in the whole country. Photo by Zach Inglis on Unsplash The cuisine from the north of Thailand is some of the best in the whole country. Many of the dishes draw influence from neighboring counties, specifically Myanmar and India, providing the meals with a richer taste; a mellow contrast to the fiery flavors that most visitors are familiar with. Try the famous Khao Soi, regarded as Chiang Mais greatest dish it is a creamy and tangy soup that is typically served with braised meat and topped with crispy noodles. You can find this dish in any restaurant and street stall across the city. City residents continue to defy lockdown Experts warn for dire consequences People swarm a road at Khilgaon Nandipara in Dhaka on Monday forgetting social distancing protocol during the nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of coronavirus disease. Staff Reporter : Dhaka city residents continue to defy the government's lockdown order, which is imposed to combat coronavirus. Besides, thousands ignore social distancing advice while queueing for food and vegetables at the city's kitchen markets and TCB's makeshift commodity sale outlet. Even the members of law enforcement agencies are exhausted though they have to enforce the lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus. They are also confused whether to stop people by force or ignore the violation of the lockdown by individuals in absence of necessary order from high-ups. "We are frustrated at the rule breakers, but we cannot go tough against them as our high command asked to handle the situation carefully," an on-duty police officer told The New Nation on Monday. He said, "We are asking people to obey the lockdown rules and sending most people home with a warning." Dhaka Metropolitan Police put 54 areas under lockdown to contain spread of coronavirus. In others areas, community leaders have stepped up to limit movement in their own efforts. The government also deploys army to aid the civil administration in enforcing the lockdown rules and maintain social distancing protocol. But they also find it hard to enforce the lockdown due to people's wholesale violation of stay at home. However, public health experts expressed serious concern over the breach of stay at home order saying such a practice can aggravate the corona situation in Dhaka, which already turns hotspot of the deadly virus with recording the highest number of active cases so far. Coronavirus has spread to 75 areas in Dhaka, with 335 residents of the capital tested positive till Monday. "The number of Covid-19 cases has started increasing rapidly in the last few days. It is a sign that the spread of the virus is continuing at community level despite the lockdown," Dr Muzaherul Islam, a Health Expert told The New Nation. He said if the lockdown is not enforced strictly, the virus may spread throughout the city. "The government should take strict measures to keep the residents at home. If needed curfew may be slapped," Prof Dr ABM Abdullah, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Personal Physician told The New Nation. "The spread of coronavirus is now at stage three in the country. But it may enter stage four soon if people continue to show their relaxed mood in abiding social distancing protocol in absence of stringent measures to enforce the lockdown," he added. (TNS) Research already underway in Colorado when the coronavirus began its brutal march across the globe may provide a head start in finding a vaccine for the virus.Scientists at Colorado State University who were investigating the human rotavirus, feline coronavirus and possible vaccines tapping methods used to prevent the transmission of disease through blood products are now focused on the new coronavirus.It was very easy for us to pivot and look at that virus and understand the similarities with what we were already doing, said Gregg Dean,head of CSUs Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology.Dean and his team had received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a vaccine for human rotavirus, which, like the coronavirus, targets mucous membranes. Dean, also a veterinarian, has a grant from the Morris Animal Foundation to find a vaccine for feline coronavirus.Researchers led by Ray Goodrich, executive director of CSUs Infectious Disease Research Center on the Fort Collins campus, shifted their focus to COVID-19 in February. The team had been looking at developing vaccines with a process that is used to prevent the transmission of disease through plasma and other blood components during transfusions. While working in private industry, Goodrich developed a technique that applies ultraviolet light and riboflavin, or vitamin B2, to kill bacteria or viruses in the blood.We had been looking at a number of different vaccines, producing vaccines using this technique, Goodrich said. When COVID-19 came along, it was just natural to pivot to try to apply what we were learning and what we were doing with these other vaccine candidates.There is an intense sense of urgency for Dean and Goodrich.Every day brings the news of the suffering and disruption that were all experiencing. I think we feel a tremendous responsibility, given our training, to respond in a productive way, said Dean, who earned his doctorate and other degrees from CSU.Goodrich said scientists at the university and across the country and globe are committed to finding a vaccine as quickly as possible.Thats why I think its important that we try to repurpose, try to redirect and utilize the knowledge that weve already built up as efficiently as possible, Goodrich said. We dont necessarily have the time to start from scratch.The pace of devastation from the highly infectious disease is daunting. As of Friday, 100,000 people had died since the outbreak was first publicized in January. There are more than 1.6 million confirmed cases, with the United States accounting for nearly a third. Colorado had 250 confirmed deaths and more than 6,500 confirmed cases.While scientists are keenly aware of the need to find a solution as soon as possible, Goodrich said, they are also dedicated to getting the science right, conducting the necessary testing and following the protocols. When people hear Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, say it could take at least a year to develop a vaccine, they might think thats a long time, Goodrich said.I have to tell you that when he says 12 to 18 months, hes probably already cutting two to three years off of the normal development cycle it would take for a vaccine if we werent in the middle of a pandemic, Goodrich said. Thats actually incredibly fast, and the reason its not faster is because we want to make sure that what we do is safe.Dean said if all goes well, his team could start testing a potential vaccine in the next few months. The researchers approach is similar to the one in their work on feline coronavirus. Theyre using a modified version of lactobacillus acidophilus, a beneficial bacterium in yogurt and health supplements.One reason that were very interested in lactobacillus acidophilus as a vaccine platform is because we understand how it engages the immune system. It does that right at the mucous membrane, and that is where we encounter the virus, Dean said.The goal is to stimulate an immune response that prevents the coronavirus from attaching to the membrane via the spiky proteins on its surface. The protein changes shape as its anchoring into a cell, and that process, which Dean calls its Achilles heel, is what he hopes to disrupt. Research into the feline coronavirus has helped because of similarities to the human form, he said.The research led by Goodrich involves using ultraviolet light and riboflavin to inactivate the coronavirus. The genetic material is damaged and it cant replicate or cause disease. But the chemistry, including the proteins on the surface of the virus, looks the same as the infectious form and can be used to trigger an immune response and generate antibodies.Once your body sees that again in the form of the native, viral type virus that is infectious, your body is already primed to be able to go after and destroy that viral particle and prevent you from becoming infected, Goodrich said. Its a basic way that vaccine technology works in general.In addition to looking at vaccines, CSU researchers are working on diagnostic tests, ways to kill the virus in our surroundings and how to screen health care workers. Other CSU scientists working on the investigation into a vaccine include Richard Bowen, a biomedical sciences professor, Izabela Ragan and Lindsay Hartson, senior lab manager. An experimental vaccine developed by the NIH and Moderna Inc., a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, was given to participants in a study in March.At CSU, scientists are collaborating with researchers at other universities, tapping some of CSUs unique resources to help. The schools infectious disease research center has whats called biosafety level 3 facilities, where scientists can work with certain agents and materials that other labs cant handle. The university is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases network.Another resource on campus is BioMARC, a nonprofit that works with universities and government and private labs to test and produce pharmaceuticals following the requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies.We can actually manufacture a drug or a vaccine that can then go into humans, Dean said. That is a unique and important asset that we have here.At that point, a private company would be sought as a partner to get the drug to market.Whether scientists at CSU or elsewhere develop a vaccine that works, Goodrich said, he hopes there are many options to choose from. Whatever we could do to help each of those individual efforts, were here to help.Dean said the work underway at CSU and other universities shows in real time the importance of teaching the next generation of scientists.This is not hypothetical. This is what were training them to do right now in whats going to be a life-changing event for them, Dean added. Trump, in typical fashion, initially doubled-down on his rhetoric, defensively telling journalists questioning him about the impact of his language that it did come from China. It is a very accurate term. Two days later, Trump wisely backed off, saying in a Tweet that, We have to protect our Asian Americans, adding that the pandemic was NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form. Weeks into the pandemic, Rep. Scott Perry pointlessly deployed similar rhetoric in a tweet in the wake of the House vote approving the coronavirus stimulus package. The coronavirus emanated from China is here, the Pennsylvania Republican said, despite the fact that the virus had long since spread worldwide. We cant stop that. We cant go back. That kind of talk doesnt help. Those at the top, as we all know, set the tone. And Asian Americans across the nation have felt the sting of hate as a result. Here in Pennsylvania, Democrats in the state House and Senate stepped up to denounce that cruel bigotry, even as they urged Asian-American residents who think theyve been targeted because of their ethnicity to report abuse to the Pennsylvania State Police. The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and another ships are visible at a port in Qingdao, China, on April 3, 2020, before being deployed in recent days in the East China Sea and South China Sea. China has sent an aircraft carrier battle group to the East China Sea and South China Sea, according to statements from governments in the region and satellite imagery. The maneuvers come at a time of increasing tension in the South China Sea and a denouncement by members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the Chinese coast guards recent sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat near the contested Paracel Islands. Japans military reported Chinas naval exercise involving the Liaoning aircraft carrier on Friday. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force said the Liaoning, accompanied by a battle group of two destroyers, two frigates and a support ship, passed through the Miyako Strait, between Okinawa and the Miyako Islands, on that day. Satellite imagery shows the Liaoning at its homeport of Qingdao as of April 5, along with a Type 901 supply ship a relatively new class of vessel for replenishing combat ships at sea. Last Wednesday, both sailed out of port and reappeared east of Shanghai, in the East China Sea, on Friday, along with escorts. On Sunday, Taiwans Ministry of National Defense said the Liaoning battle group was observed moving off the island of Taiwans eastern coast down to its southern coast. A Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy spokesman later confirmed the Liaoning and its battle group were engaged in a naval exercise at the Miyako Strait, the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan, and in the South China Sea. The ships were identified as two Type 052D guided missile destroyers, two Type 054A guided missile frigates, and a Type 901 support vessel. This coincides with naval maneuvers in the region by the United States. The U.S. Navy sailed a destroyer through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, Reuters reported, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force conducted a bilateral exercise with the U.S. in the East China Sea on Friday and Saturday. All this takes place in the aftermath of the April 2 sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat in a confrontation with a China Coast Guard ship near the disputed Paracel Islands, which China maintained was the fault of the Vietnamese boat. The incident drew criticism from the U.S. State and Defense Departments, Vietnam itself and the Philippines. Last week, the Philippine foreign office issued what it called a statement of solidarity with Hanoi. The statement rebuked Beijing for the incident in waters near the Paracel Islands which both China and Vietnam claim. It described the sinking as a provocation amid a global crisis around the COVID-19 outbreak. China claims it has historical rights to much of the South China Sea, despite conflicting claims by other governments in the region. Malaysia has had its own issues with Chinese ships in the South China Sea. In February, a combination of Chinese Coast Guard ships and maritime militia were monitoring and harassing energy exploration efforts by Malaysia in the mineral-rich waters. US senators speak out On Friday, a bipartisan group of senior U.S. lawmakers joined the chorus of disapproval. Leading figures from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republican chairman James Risch, top-ranking Democrat Robert Menendez, and Republican Asia subcommittee chairman Cory Gardner and his Democratic counterpart, Ed Markey issued a strongly worded statement over the sinking and Chinas reported deployment of military aircraft in the South China Sea. The reports of a Chinese Coast Guard vessel sinking a Vietnamese fishing vessel and Chinas other activities on illegally reclaimed features in the South China Sea are deeply concerning, Risch said. These are just the latest examples of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) blatant intimidation of its neighbors to assert its excessive maritime claims. The CCP is undermining regional stability at a time when the international community should be coming together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Menendez echoed that sentiment. Chinas continued divisive and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea is deplorable, he said. I strongly believe that the United States must stand up and support efforts by regional institutions and our allies and partners to ensure freedom of navigation and economic opportunity throughout the entire Indo-Pacific. On the same day the Liaoning was sailing with its escorts north of Taiwan, China conducted an aircraft exercise south of the self-ruled island, which China considers a breakaway province. A Xian H-6 bomber, KJ-500 early warning aircraft, and Shenyang J-11 fighter aircraft flew to the southwest of Taiwan, prompting the U.S. Air Force to send a reconnaissance aircraft in the same direction, according to a Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense press release. Meanwhile, Chinese state media was blaming Vietnam for stoking tensions in the South China Sea after Hanoi formally protested the April 2 sinking of its fishing boat. Without providing any evidence, a commentary in the Global Times claimed that Hanoi was provoking anti-Chinese sentiment to distract from Vietnams domestic challenges in combating COVID-19. MADRID For years, we have heard Spains leaders say that we had the best health care in the world. This political fantasy has now met with a rude awakening. We have learned the hard way that being deemed the healthiest nation in the world by the World Economic Forum is not the same as having the best health care system. The health care workers at the forefront of the pandemic garbed in trash bags for protection and forced to choose which patients to connect to ventilators had long tried to debunk the myth surrounding the superiority of health care in Spain, denouncing serious deficiencies in the countrys hospitals. We now know they were right. What we may never know is how many lives could have been saved if the country had heeded their warnings earlier. Spain has both one of the worlds highest coronavirus mortality rates, with over 17,000 people, and the highest rate of infected health care workers. But hospitals had reached their limit before the first Covid-19 patient arrived. It was not uncommon for single a doctor in a hospital to treat up to 60 patients a day. Last year, medical professionals took to the streets, demanding dignity for their profession and better compensation. They are now being battered by the pandemic. The governments delayed response to the pandemic, coupled with an aging population and the physical affection that tends to characterize Mediterranean people, contributed to Spain becoming an epicenter of the epidemic. However, some of the decisions that undermined the response were a result of the austerity measures imposed after the 2008 financial crisis. The General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has given the ruling government a high mark for various measures put in place to curb the novel covid-19 pandemic. The government of Ghana as part of efforts to fight the coronavirus put in place some measures including mandatory quarantine for overseas travellers, ban on public gatherings and a partial lockdown of Greater Accra, Kasoa and Greater Kumasi. Speaking to this in an interaction on Neat FM, John Boadu believes the ruling government needs commendation because had those measures not been put in place, Ghana's story would have been bad. "In terms of rating, I would give government 120 percent," he averred. Ghana Extends Lockdown For One More Week Restriction of movement in Greater Accra, Kumasi and Kasoa has been extended for one more week. This was announced by President Akufo-Addo during his 6th address to the nation on the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, April 9. A 14-day restriction was imposed with the aim of controlling the spread of the novel Coronavirus and according to the President, "it is important that we stay the course" Listen to him in the video below Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video According to reports, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has demanded for the reopening of churches amidst the lockdown across the country to prevent Coronavirus. This was contained in a statement made available to journalists on Monday by the CAN Chairman, South-East, Bishop Dr. Goddy Okafor. Also Read: BREAKING: President Buhari To Address Nigerians At 7PM The CAN in the South-East said the Church should not remain closed forever as it remained a place of hope for the people as every other solution to the pandemic seemed elusive. Going further, Bishop Okafor called for the reopening of churches in the country in order for Nigerians to cry to God for solution to this pandemic. Northern Ireland could be losing almost 50m a day in economic output as the lockdown continues, according to estimates. The stark figure emerged amid new warnings that our economic landscape is being dramatically reshaped by coronavirus, with some parts of the economy likely to take years to recover. According to research by think-tank CEBR, the economy of the UK as a whole is losing 2.4bn a day as a result of the lockdown. On the basis that Northern Ireland accounts for 2% of the UK's private sector output, the cost to our economy could amount to 48m per day. Economists caution that all predictions and calculations are fraught with uncertainty, particularly given the distinct nature of Northern Ireland's economy, with its greater agricultural and public sectors, and smaller professional services sector. The majority of the economy has been mothballed since the shutdown began three weeks ago, with large numbers of manufacturers and most builders downing tools. Shops, hotels and restaurants have been forced to close, while office-based businesses have shunted activity to the homes of management and staff. Last week the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce said that 36% of its members had closed temporarily. The construction industry is operating at between 5% and 10% of its normal capacity. Colin Neill, the head of Hospitality Ulster, which represents pubs, bars and restaurants, said its members were facing increasingly pressing cashflow issues. Andrew Webb, chief economist at business advisory firm Grant Thornton, said some sectors, such as tourism and leisure, may not recover from the crisis for up to three years. "For the whole economy, a good outcome would see the economy come back by this quarter next year. If challenges now become ingrained, there could be a longer recovery period that could take two to three years to climb back from," he said. Around 65,000 people in Northern Ireland work in the hospitality industry and the vast majority have now been furloughed. Mr Neill said he was concerned about the survival rate of hospitality businesses. "As well as initial support, we do need long-term support," he said. "People still have their building costs like insurance and rent. "It won't be about simply reopening but about rebuilding. How will businesses cope with any rules on social distancing which there might be? "They'll need money to reopen with and buy new stock with. "Overall, the hospitality sector has been first hit, hardest hit and will take the longest to recover." With the average restaurant operating with two weeks cash in reserve, they were now running out of money and in many cases, could not afford to furlough staff. Mark Spence, an associate director at the Construction Employers Federation, said members there were also facing cash flow problems. "Furlough is a fantastic scheme but there is a time lapse with the money not available until the end of April," he said. Up until the outbreak, there had been an increase in optimism in the industry. Mr Spence added: "We're not very worried for a number of businesses which may not survive. "Those with cash reserves might survive but others who went in not great shape to begin with may not come through." Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Manufacturing NI, said he felt the sector here would take a greater hit than the UK. He said there had been a campaign to have factories closed which did not happen in the UK. "The impact on the provincial economy, outside the cities, is likely much more devastating given that is where most manufacturing is located and whose wider economy depends on a source of income for families and small consumer facing businesses," he added. UN-brokered government says its troops seized Sabratha, Surman and al-Ajaylat after an intense day of fighting. Libyas internationally recognised government said its troops have seized control of three strategic coastal cities located between the capital, Tripoli, and the Tunisian border after expelling forces loyal to eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar. Our forces took control of Surman and Sabratha and are pursuing [Haftars forces], Mohammed Gnunu, spokesperson of the Government of National Accord (GNA), said in a statement on Monday. GNA-aligned forces later in the day retook the city of al-Ajaylat, located some 90km west of Tripoli. Libya, a large oil producer, has been engulfed in chaos since 2011 when longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed in an uprising. It is now split between two rival administrations: the Tripoli-based GNA, led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, and the House of Representatives allied to Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA). In April 2019, Haftar launched a military campaign to wrest control of Tripoli but the offensive was largely stalled by forces loyal to the GNA. On Facebook on Monday, GNA forces published images of Grad rocket launchers, 10 tanks and armoured vehicles they said they captured in the cities, which had been controlled by Salafist militias allied with Haftar. Mohammad al-Gammoudi, a GNA commander on the ground, said Surman and Sabratha were seized after six hours of fighting with air cover. While Sarraj also said his forces had taken the cities, Haftars forces did not immediately comment. Government forces say that by overtaking Sabratha and Surman, they can easily take control of all of the entire coast and the highway connecting Tripoli to the Tunisian border, said Al Jazeeras Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from Tripoli. GNA forces can also join Amazigh or Berber fighters in the city of Zuwara and can move on al-Watiya airbase, a strategic airbase and stronghold of Haftar southwest of the capital. Earlier on Monday, Colonel Muhammad Qanunu said the GNAs air defences intercepted planes belonging to Haftar in the Abu Grain area and shot down the two Chinese-made Wing Loong aircraft and one Russian Mi-35 helicopter. Sources told Al Jazeera the clashes killed nine soldiers from the GNA forces and more than 30 fighters loyal to Haftar, including a number of Sudanese and Chadian fighters. The sources added GNA forces used drones provided by Turkey to launch raids on Haftars forces and the LNA. Military commanders say the latest advance by GNA forces can mainly be attributed to Turkish air support. Control of the skies has recently shifted in favour of the GNA thanks to the Turkish air force, said Abdulwahed. Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and others have fuelled fighting in the oil-rich but impoverished North African country. The UN says hundreds have been killed and more than 200,000 displaced since Haftar launched his battle for Tripoli. Several UN-backed attempts to reach a ceasefire have failed and the UN has slammed repeated violations of a 2011 weapons embargo. On March 17, the world body and nine countries called on Libyas warring parties to cease hostilities to allow health authorities to fight against the new coronavirus. Repeated UN efforts to mediate a ceasefire have not yielded a permanent result and have been on hold since envoy Ghassan Salame quit in early March, citing health reasons. Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for the UN secretary general, said the world governing body is concerned continued fighting will hamper the countrys efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. We, as you know, have been asking the parties to cease fighting we need to make sure that they can set aside [their differences] and work together to allow us to deal with the pandemic. Your browser does not support the audio element. Many people flocked to a kite field in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday despite the governments social distancing order in place to curb the spread of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Parents, children, and young adults were spotted enjoying their Sunday afternoon in groups at the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2. The kite field had been sealed off and closed to the public, but that did not stop the crowds from gathering in defiance of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phucs social distancing directive, which limits public gatherings to no more than two and asks people to stay home or wear a face mask and keep a two-meter distance from one another during essential trips outside between April 1 and 15. Many people were spotted ignoring barricade tape and loudspeakers blasting out messages about COVID-19 prevention and control to enter the area for kite flying, picnicking, and photo shooting. A couple has a picnic amid the COVID-19 pandemic at the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre A father takes his son to go kite flying amid the COVID-19 pandemic at the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre Some people were even seen wearing no face mask although Vietnam has issued regulations making it mandatory for all citizens to put on ones while outdoors. Ho Chi Minh City began penalizing people for failing to wear face masks in public on March 28, doling out fines ranging from VND200,000 (US$8.50) to VND300,000 ($12.80). I know this is not the right thing to do but its too boring at home, said B.N., who was among those gathering at the kite field on Sunday afternoon. The national steering committee on COVID-19 prevention and control is poised to convene a meeting on Monday to discuss whether to extend the social distancing duration. Vietnam has recorded 262 patients so far, 144 of them having recovered. No fatality associated with the disease has beem reported to date. A man wears no face mask while going kite flying with his friends at the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre People park their motorbikes along the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre A family prepares to fly a kite at the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre A man lifts barricade tape for his friend to enter the kite field near one end of the Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre People gather on the Thu Thiem Bridge to take photos in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Ngoc Phuong / Tuoi Tre Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The price of futures contracts of Brent crude oil for June 2020 delivery climbed by 4.4% on London's ICE on Monday to $32.85 per barrel, according to the trading data as of 3:44 a.m. Moscow time. WTI futures are up by 6.8% to $24.31 per barrel, TASS reported. A reported surge in oil prices follows a videoconference meeting of the OPEC+ member states on Sunday that ended with an agreement on oil production cuts. The new deal envisages an aggregate reduction in oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day in May-June, by eight million barrels a day in July-December, and further reduction by six million barrels a day between January 2021 and April 2022. Russia and Saudi Arabia will cut their daily oil output by 2.5 million barrels each from the level of 11 million barrels. Other nations will decrease production by 23% on the October 2018 level. Mexico, which refused to accept a quota of 400,000 barrels a day, will cut production by 100,000 barrels. The remaining 300,000 barrels will be compensated by the United States, which has committed to cut daily production by 250,000 barrels a day. The deal is subject to revision in December 2021. Oil prices were up but Asian stock markets fell today after oil-producing nations agreed a 'historic' deal to limit production because of the coronavirus pandemic. Saudi Arabia, Russia and others agreed to slash their output by nearly 10million barrels per day to prop up prices after a slump in demand. Fuel consumption is down roughly 30 per cent across the world because of the health crisis and resulting economic standstill. Today, the Brent crude benchmark was up by 4.2 per cent to $32.83 per barrel, but there were doubts over whether the move would be enough to stabilise markets. Tokyo's Nikkei stock index fell by 2.3 per cent today as analysts said the deal could not fill the void in demand for travel and business. Japan's Nikkei stock market dropped by more than two per cent today (as shown on this graph) despite a deal to prop up global oil prices Oil producers reached their deal last night in a bid to end a Russia-Saudi price war which had sent prices tumbling to nearly $20 a barrel. The countries agreed a compromise deal via video conference, settling on a cut of 9.7million barrels per day from May, after Mexico demanded a cut from 10million. The agreement between Vienna-based OPEC and partners foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual reduction in cuts until April 2022. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts 'historic'. 'They are largest in volume and the longest in duration, as they are planned to last for two years,' he said. Another oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, was up about five per cent at $23.94 a barrel in Asian afternoon trade, after earlier rallying almost eight per cent. In the UK, unleaded petrol prices had fallen below 1 for the first time in 15 years earlier this month as a result of the slump. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who chaired the meeting together with his Russian and Algerian counterparts, confirmed that the discussions 'ended with consensus'. US President Donald Trump welcomed a 'great deal for all', saying on Twitter it would 'save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States'. He added he 'would like to thank and congratulate' Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman. An oilfield in Russia is pictured in operation last month, as Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed a deal with other oil-producing nations to slash their output by nearly 10million barrels a day The Kremlin confirmed the joint phone call, adding that Putin and Trump agreed on the 'great importance' of the deal. Mexico's initial reluctance had led to a standoff that cast doubt on efforts to bolster oil prices, pushed to near two-decade lows. Russia and Saudi Arabia had both ramped up output in a price war to maintain market share during the downturn. Rystad Energy analyst Per Magnus Nysveen said Sunday's agreement provided 'at least a temporary relief'. His colleague Bjornar Tonhaugen said that even though the deal made 'the single largest output cut in history', prices were still expected to see 'renewed downwards pressure'. Other analysts were also concerned that the cuts did not go far enough with storage tanks rapidly filling up. 'The hard work lies ahead given that the market is very sceptical that OPEC+ are actually going to be able to come up with their near 10million barrels a day of production cuts,' Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates LLC told Bloomberg News. AxiCorp's Stephen Innes added that 'there remain concerns the agreement could be a day late and a 'barrel short' to prevent a decline in prices in the coming weeks as storage capacity brims'. Harry Tchilinguirian of BNP Paribas said 'a sustained recovery' in the oil price was not expected 'until pent-up demand is released in Q3 on the lifting of confinement and social distancing measures related to COVID-19'. Discovered a small protein that synchronizes the circadian clocks in shoots and roots Five years ago, researchers from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) led by the CSIC Research Professor Paloma Mas made the breakthrough discovery that the circadian clocks in the growing tip of the plant shoot function in a similar way to the clocks in the mammalian brain, which in both cases are able to synchronize the daily rhythms of the cells in distal organs. From that seminal finding, plant researchers have been eager to discover the messenger molecule that could travel from the shoot to the root to orchestrate the rhythms. The answer is just being published this week in the prestigious Nature Plants journal by Paloma Mas' team and collaborators from Japan, UK, and USA. They have identified a small essential clock protein, named ELF4, as the needed messenger. Furthermore, through a series of ingenious experiments, the researchers have discovered that the movement of this molecule is sensitive to the ambient temperature. The circadian clock is guided by the activity of proteins Most living organisms, including humans and plants, have an internal biological clock that allows them to anticipate and adapt to the environmental changes produced by the earth rotation every 24 hours. In plants, this circadian biological clock is crucial to set up the time for germination, growth and flowering, among other processes. The circadian clock is built of a set of cellular proteins whose amount and activity oscillate daily. The researchers who discovered this mechanism were awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017. Every plant cell contains a circadian clock, that is, it contains all the machinery needed to adapt its responses to the 24 hour-cycle. Nevertheless, as CRAG researchers published in a seminal article in Cell (2015), plants, as mammals, have a master circadian clock, which synchronizes peripheral clocks dispersed throughout the plant. The CSIC professor Paloma Mas explains: "we knew that there was a circadian signal that moves from shoots to roots, but we did not know about the nature of this signal. It could have been hormones, photosynthetic products... Now, we have discovered that it is a core protein of the circadian clock that moves though the plant vasculature." The researchers designed ingenious grafting experiments with the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, connecting different shoots into several roots in which the clock was not working properly. These experiments allowed them to identify the clock protein ELF4, an acronym that accounts for "EARLY FLOWERING 4", as the messenger that moves from shoots to roots to convey circadian information. ELF4 delivers temperature information to the roots Anyone who has ever experienced jet lag, knows that, luckily, the circadian biological clock is able to reset itself by environmental light cues, allowing the body to adapt to the new time zone within few days. In the same way that the circadian clock can synchronize to environmental light, it can also integrate information about ambient temperature. To discern if the ELF4 protein was transmitting to the roots information about light or temperature changes, the two main regulators of the circadian clock, the researchers tested ELF4 movement under different environmental conditions. They discovered that at lower temperatures (12?C), ELF4 mobility from shoots to roots was favoured, resulting in a slow-paced root clock. Instead, when the experiments were performed at higher temperatures (28?C), they observed less ELF4 movement, which lead to a faster root clock. This newly described mechanism could provide an advantage for optimal root responsiveness to temperature variations. Knowledge to live in a climate changing world All this knowledge gathered with a small model plant, could have an impact in the near future. "Climate change and the associated higher temperatures are causing drought, which is already affecting crop productivity in agriculture. Knowing the genes and proteins that plants use to adapt their physiology to the environmental conditions will allow us to design better adapted crops, which will be key to ensure food security", explains CRAG researcher Paloma Mas. ### The work at Paloma Mas' laboratory has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Ramon Areces Foundation and by the Generalitat de Catalunya. The firts author Wei Wei Chen is financed by the Chinese Scholarship Council. The other authors are financed by public funds from their respective countries. About the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) The Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) is a centre that forms part of the CERCA system of research centres of the Government of Catalonia (Spain), and which was established as a partnership of four institutions: the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the Institute for Agri-Food Research and Technology (IRTA), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the University of Barcelona (UB). CRAG's research spans from basic research in plant and farm animal molecular biology, to applications of molecular approaches for breeding of species important for agriculture and food production in close collaboration with industry. In 2016, CRAG was recognized as a "Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence" by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Cookie Preferences Cookie List Cookie List A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website when visited by a user asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes: Strictly Necessary Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more. Functional Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more. Performance Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a sale of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more. Sale of Personal Data We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website. Social Media Cookies We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website. Targeting Cookies We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated sale of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website. Republican Frank LaRose was elected Ohio's secretary of state after serving in the state Senate. (Justin Merriman via Getty Images) Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) on Sunday rejected claims President Donald Trump has made that mail-in voting increases the risk for voter fraud. Trump and other GOP leaders have rebuffed efforts by top Democrats to push for more federal investment in mail-in voting to ease the voting process for Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic. LaRose, a veteran state legislator before winning his current office in 2018, was asked by a Dayton Daily News reporter to respond to a Trump tweet on Saturday that asserted, without evidence, that mail-in balloting substantially increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD! LaRose said fraud was not a significant issue for mail-in voting in his state. I can tell you thats not the case in Ohio, LaRose replied. As Ive said, were fortunate that weve been doing vote by mail for a long time. We know how to do it, and we know how to get it done securely. Five states currently conduct all elections entirely by mail Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington and many other states have adopted rules making it easy to do. The issue was spotlighted after actions by Republican legislators and court decisions forced Wisconsin to go forward with in-person voting in its presidential primary and elections for some state and local offices last Tuesday despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urging Americans to continue practicing social distancing. At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Trump called mail-in voting horrible and corrupt. A reporter noted that Trump, officially a resident of Florida, has been voting by mail. Asked to reconcile that, the president said he voted by mail because Im allowed to. Trump last week also claimed, again without evidence, that mail-in voting benefits Democrats and hurts Republicans. Several studies, including recent data compiled by professors from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,... Continue reading on HuffPost Photo credit: Courtesy Rolex From Town & Country When Sir Edmund Hillary became the first man to summit Mount Everest in 1953, he did so with a Rolex Oyster Perpetual on his wrist. In 1960, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard plumbed the depths of the Mariana Trench, with a Rolex Deep Sea Special strapped to the outside of his vessel. It's not just those who have explored the furthest reaches of the planet who have worn Rolexestoday, so do some of the best filmmakers, novelists, dancers, architects, and artists of our time. In February, only a short while before the worldand the ability to travel across itchanged dramatically, I received a fresh reminder in the power of art and beauty to lift the human spirit. The biennial Rolex Mentor and Proteges Arts Initiative was drawing to a close, and artists, creatives, journalists and the public gathered in Cape Town for a series of performances, talks, and celebrations. For nearly two decades, the initiative has paired emerging artists with masters in their fields for a period of two years. It is a gift of time, in keeping with the ethos of Rolex's craftsmanship, allowing for a one-on-one relationship with the funding, space, and brain power to create something extraordinary. Transmission of knowledge through one-on-one relationships is how watchmakers honed their trade for centuries, and remains the house credo 115 years after the Swiss manufacturer's inception. Photo credit: Bettmann - Getty Images Since it began in 2002, the program has paired 54 individuals in various disciplines; the 2018-19 cycle revolved around dance, literature, architecture and film. Once a mentor has accepted the invitation to serve, Rolexs nominating panel of artists and practitioners identifies several qualified candidatesaspiring participants cannot directly apply; they must be invitedwhom the mentor interviews before making a final selection. The program has drawn big-name mentors, like the late Toni Morrison, Martin Scorsese, Philip Glass, David Hockney, and Margaret Atwoodand produced notable alumni, like Tracy K. Smith, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry the year she completed the Rolex program, and later became the U.S. Poet Laureate. For the 2020-21 cycle, Rolex recently announced as mentors the filmmaker Spike Lee and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who, ever the renaissance man, will be mentoring a new "open category." He will be helping Agustina San Martin, a 28-year-old Argentinean filmmaker, nurture and broaden her creative universes." Story continues Rolex asks the mentors and proteges to spend at least six weeks together over the two-year mentoring period (though many spend much more) and provides the proteges with a stipend and the mentor with an honorarium, plus funds for travel and expenses. There are no requirements for what the mentorship should look like or what must be produced. For most pairs, it becomes a balance between observing a master at work and watching a new talent come into their own. Being able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Sir David Adjayethe renowned designer of the National Museum of African American History who served as the architecture mentor for the recent 2018-2019 cycleas he studies a building or sketches a plan is more valuable than any classroom lesson, as his mentee Mariam Kamara would learn. Photo credit: Courtesy Rolex Speaking at the Rolex weekend in Cape Town, Adjaye recalled a formative mentorship moment in his own life, when he was working with Eduardo Souto de Moura in Portugual in 1991. "We were working on a house and just said, 'David, come with me' and we spent a day together, and it was probably the most profound moment in my architectural career because I just saw an architect in the world," he said then. Nearly three decades later, Kamarawho initially deleted the email from Rolex notifying her she had been invited to interview for the program, thinking it was spamhad a similar experience. "Even if I could just have an hour with David Adjaye, that would be enough for me," she told me. They got much more than that, traveling across the world (even crossing the border to Pakistan on foot) to study buildings. But for Kamara, the most important journey with Adjaye was in her home country of Niger, where she is designing a sustainable cultural center in the capital, Niamey. The pair went to her family's village, and also to the historic 14th century city of Agadez, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Photo credit: Bart Michiels for Rolex For Colin Barrett, an Irish novelist who had written a successful short story collection but couldn't get his novel off the ground, the life lessons gleaned from the mentor and protege were far greater than technical expertise. Working with his mentor Colm Toibinan esteemed novelist, professor, and fellow Irishmanwas a chance not just to parse sentences and discuss plot, but to see how one builds an actual life as a writer. "Not every great writer is a great teacher, but Colm is," said Barrett, whose novel is forthcoming this year. "And he was generous in speaking candidly about how this is all part of a process. You cannot achieve something if you're not willing to fail, and he was very open about that." Just two months after that celebratory weekend, the coronavirus pandemic upended the global economy and the luxury market. Watchmakers are adapting accordingly. Rolex took the extraordinary step of delaying all 2020 product releases due to the crisis. But the mentor and protege program will go on, albeit without physical interaction for the time being. But if the recent Hamilton reunion on John Krasinski's YouTube show is any indication, that won't be a problem for Miranda at all. Photo credit: ROLEX/Reto Albertalli You Might Also Like If youre looking for some old-fashioned nonpartisan outrage, where anger or sadness isnt dependent on political leanings or party affiliation, you can find it in The Longest War, the sobering Afghanistan documentary by Greg Barker that premieres Sunday on Showtime. The film is a dissection of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, the longest running war in U.S. history and a morass with enough blame to go around to leaders of all affiliations. That much is made clear in the first few minutes of the film, when a reverse timeline shows the last seven presidents Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Carter all promising things that didnt happen. Comprehensive and clear, the film tells a story of U.S. involvement that is infuriating at times, befuddling at others and mostly just sad. My heart hurts for these people, says CIA targeter Lisa Maddox of the Afghans at one point, because I just dont see how this ends. Also Read: Amblin Television Acquires Rights to Washington Post's Report on the 'Afghanistan Papers' The films executive producers are Homeland creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, who have set their shows final season in Afghanistan, with The Longest War premiering after their series penultimate episode. Itll be the second movie directed by Barker to premiere in three days; Sergio, a narrative film inspired by his 2009 documentary of the same name, landing on Netflix on Friday. Apart from the new Sergio, Barkers entire career has been in nonfiction, with his other films including Koran by Heart, the Emmy-winning Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden and The Final Year, about foreign policy in the last year of the Obama administration. His storytelling style is methodical but well-paced as he trots out an array of journalists, American and international officials in the military and intelligence communities and Afghan citizens. And the patient, chronological telling is necessary to make sense of a conflict that goes back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and has turned into as much of a quagmire for the Americans as it was for the Soviets. Story continues Also Read: Meghan McCain Invokes Late Father in Rebuke of Trump's Tweet Honoring Former Prisoners of War Over the years, the U.S. worked through Pakistan to arm and back the rebels who were fighting the U.S.S.R. and who succeeded in driving out the Soviets after 10 years; then stood back and watched the Taliban rise to power under a promise that they would purify and reunite the country under Islam; then became interested in the country after the terrorist organization Al Qaeda formed there under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden; then went into the country in full force after 9/11, only to turn its sights to Iraq in 2003 and let its operations in Afghanistan slide further into chaos. The Longest War tracks the comings and goings, the changes in attitude and in tactics. One instructive juxtaposition: During the Clinton administration, the CIA had an opportunity to kill Bin Laden, but the president had signed an order stating that they could use lethal activity against the terrorist leader, but only if the purpose of the activity was not to kill him. Only a few years later, after 9/11, the CIA not only had orders to kill Bin Laden, at one point it was asked to kill him, cut off his head and ship it back to the U.S. One operative said he wondered, Where am I gonna find dry ice in Afghanistan? The Obama administration finally mounted an operation that found and killed Bin Laden, but it also stepped up a campaign of drone warfare that killed numerous civilians at a time when the Taliban seized major territory for the first time in more than a decade. Also Read: 'The Main Event' Film Review: At Least They're Still Wrestling in This WWE Kids' Movie The film touches briefly on Donald Trumps proclamation when he took office that he could win the war in a week, but itd involve killing 10 million people and wiping Afghanistan off the map. But by that point, the focus of the film isnt on one mans silly boasting, but on what a 2019 Washington Post investigation documented as 18 years of U.S. officials misleading the public about their operations in Afghanistan. It wasnt even mission creep, says one military officer of the complete lack of a plan in the country. It was mission fantasy. One after another, the films talking heads describe the mess that Afghanistan has always been for outsiders and as if to underline the disorientation, most are filmed in empty rooms and framed to show vast open spaces behind them. The one who receives different treatment is the CIA operative Maddox, who is positioned as the conscience of the film. Before the narrative begins, she gets an intro that shows her in her daily life as a mother of young girls; its the kind of setup not afforded any other of the films subjects. So when she says her heart hurts for the Afghans at the beginning of the film, or when she returns to that theme near the end and says, I dont see how this war could be won, were meant to listen and, crucially, to feel. We do, even as the film tries to end on a note of something other than hopelessness as it points out that the age of its citizens makes Afghanistan the youngest country outside of Africa. But if its future is in the hands of its youth, will they ever have the opportunity to build a new society from the wreckage of decades? The Longest War can plant some seeds of hope, but it cant make them grow. Read original story The Longest War Film Review: Sobering Documentary Recounts Decades of Destruction in Afghanistan At TheWrap Despite his injured hand being kept in a splint, completely immobilised so that repaired structure is not disturbed, assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Harjit Singh is in high spirits, said doctors at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. He will have to remain hospitalised for two weeks, they added. 50-year-old Harjit was injured in Patiala when a group of nihangs chopped off his wrist and left two other Punjab Police personnel injured. This was after the cops stopped them from entering a vegetable market amid curfew to curb coronavirus. Dr RK Sharma, head of plastic surgery department at PGI, said, The good news is that blood circulation in the ASIs hand was fine in the past 24 hours. We hope it remains the same in the next four days, which are crucial. The arteries and veins will take 2-3 weeks to heal following which, he will be discharged. We are expecting 90% recovery, he said. The cops positive attitude is helpful as such patients tend to recover fast, he said. While being brought to PGI from Patiala in an ambulance, he was worried about the treatment expenses. In the ambulance, he said I do not have much cash in my pocket, said Patiala SSP Mandeep Singh Sidhu. Dr Sunil Gaba, who led the team in surgery, said, During the operation, we got connected with Harjit at the personal level. The real challenge was reattaching the arteries and veins attached eight hours so that the hand survives. One team looked after the chopped hand while the other took care of the wrist. The operation involved reattaching around 50 structures which was done under microscopic vision and is a tiring task. Full recovery of the hand may take up to six months. Dr Jerry R John, an associate professor who was part of surgery team, said that such injuries are common but sharp cut, which was the case here, is an advantage. Mostly, in such cases, the body part is crushed which makes it difficult to perform surgery. But here the cut was sharp, which made it easier to make assessment and perform the surgery. Washington D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Natasha Guinan has been named Chief Counsel, Office of the Chief Accountant (OCA). As Chief Counsel, Ms. Guinan will provide legal guidance to the Chief Accountant and the other OCA groups in support of the Commission's mission. Additionally, the Chief Counsel leads OCA's support of the Division of Enforcement on matters related to financial reporting and auditing. Ms. Guinan first joined the SEC in 2008 as senior counsel in the Division of Enforcement. From 2013 to 2014 she was senior counsel in the Division of Enforcement and Investigations at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). Ms. Guinan rejoined the SEC in 2014 to serve as Senior Special Counsel for Legal Policy in the Office of General Counsel. Prior to joining the SEC, she was a litigation associate in the New York office of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. "Natasha has deep knowledge and expertise of the oversight responsibilities of the Commission including with respect to the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the PCAOB given her previous experiences," said SEC Chief Accountant Sagar Teotia. "Natasha also is widely known and trusted throughout the Commission not only for her thoughtful counsel and insights to the most challenging questions, but also for her willingness to share her time and advice with her colleagues." "I am extremely grateful that I am able to continue the Commission's work in support of investors and that I now have the opportunity to work with the very talented and dedicated staff in the Office of the Chief Accountant. I look forward to contributing to the advancement of accounting and auditing standards that support high quality financial reporting and audit quality for the protection of investors," said Ms. Guinan. Ms. Guinan earned her law degree from Fordham Law School where she was an Associate Editor for the Fordham Law Review. She also received a Ph.D. in philosophy from McGill University and a B.A. with honors in philosophy from the University of Alberta. By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Patient readers, there was a lot of political activity over the weekend, #COVID-19 At reader request, Ive added this daily chart: New York looks like it could be approaching the peak, but holy moley. The data is the John Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site. I have changed to a logarithmic scale for US States and territories, adjusted for population. See Vice, How to Read the Coronavirus Graphs: Quantities that grow exponentially, when depicted on a linear scale, look like curves that bend sharply upward, with the curve getting constantly steeper. On a log scale, exponentially growing values can be depicted with straight diagonal lines. Thats the beauty of plotting things on log scales. Plots are meant to make things easy to understand, and we humans are much more adept at understanding linear, straight-line behavior. Log plots enable us to grasp exponential behavior by transferring the complexity of constantly steepening curves into the simplicity of an exponentially increasing scale. On a log scale, we want to constantly be making the line more and more horizontal. The general concept of flattening is still a good one, but its never going to curve down. And so what we should be looking, and hoping for is a trend toward horizontal. I removed population adjustment, based on this exchange from alert reader dk: A quick chart for those who keep asking for per-capita adjustment: Heres population vs total death toll one week after 10th death. No relationship. As Ive been saying, population does not affect pace of spread. All per-capita figures do is make smaller countries look worse. pic.twitter.com/yWsa4YNNxI John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 29, 2020 I hope this change is helpful. One also notices at once that the New York and New Jersey metroplexes stand out. Politics But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? James Madison, Federalist 51 They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery. Frank Herbert, Dune They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord * * * * * * * * * Biden (D)(1): A Never Biden movement vows not to vote for Joe [Politico]. In Michigan a state critical to Democrats efforts to reclaim their general election footing in the Rust Belt just 2 of 5 Sanders backers said they would vote Democratic in November, regardless of who became the nominee, according to exit polls. Four in five said theyd be dissatisfied with Biden as the Democratic standard-bearer. At the end of the day, its Biden or Trump, said Boyd Brown, a former South Carolina lawmaker and former Democratic National Committee member. Theyll turn out.' So I guess well see if the South Carolina political establishment are successful wypipo whisperers or not. They certainly were in 2016. Oh, wait Biden (D)(2): New York Times edits Biden sexual assault coverage, deletes references to past inappropriate hugs, kisses and touching' [FOX]. FOX is correct; I saw the whole discussion flow by. For example: Remember the press spent a month essentially arguing that underage drinking was evidence that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault, but a long pattern of hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable proves Bidens innocence. pic.twitter.com/CPGr48o8nK (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) April 12, 2020 We saw no pattern of sexual misconduct, except for the sexual misconduct. Cuomo (D)(1): There Are Worse Governors Than Andrew Cuomo, But None Who Are Personally Responsible For As Many Coronavirus Deaths [Down with Tyranny]. Accurate, but check out this little nugget: How big a scumbag is Cuomo inside Democratic politics? We know he hates the Congressional Progressive Caucus and everything they stand for. Now, Maggie Moran, Cuomos top political operative the one not currently serving a prison term is surreptitiously fund-raising against AOC and soliciting campaign operatives to work against her reelection. If Cuomo gets Sanders off the New York ballot and neutralizes AOC, the DNC will owe him a solid. Sanders (D)(1): Bernies Winning Strategy: Suspend His Campaign While Continuing to Collect Delegates [Vocal Media]. As I sat there thinking about the timing of Bernies suspension - with nearly half of the states left to vote - I started to think that perhaps this is shaping up to be the most strategic move the Sanders campaign has ever made. It may seem like - from the outside - the end of his bid for the nomination, but I wonder if Bernie Sanders and his closest campaign advisers see it that way. I would need to see numbers on this, and some signs from the Sanders campaign. Then again, I cant take the time to watch the Sanders videos (and AFAIK there are no transcripts) so I could be missing some messaging. Readers? UPDATE Sanders (D)(2): Sanders endorses Biden for president [The Hill]. Ex-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed former rival Joe Biden during a virtual event on Monday. Im asking all Americansto come together in this campaign, to support your candidacy which I endorse, to make sure we defeatthe most dangerous president in the modern history of this country, Sanders told Biden during the former vice presidents virtual event on the coronavirus. Sanderss endorsement comes less than a week after he suspended his own presidential campaign. And we get? UPDATE Sanders (D)(3): Sanders endorses Biden [Politico]. Their staffs have in recent days met to discuss establishing six task forces concerning the economy, education, criminal justice, immigration, climate chage and healthcare to bridge any gaps between the two wings of the Democratic Party. I dont know how you bridge a gap between Bidens horrid health care plan and #MedicareForAll. And it sounds like a way to avoid a platform fight by doing deals behind closed doors. But where is Sanders leverage now? (And if Sanders, as everyone keeps saying, won the battle of ideas, will the task force deliverables reflect that? Im guessing no.) UPDATE Sanders (D)(4): Sanders backs Biden as ex-rivals join forces to beat Trump [Associated Press]. Sanders referred to the former vice president as Joe. Biden answered him repeatedly as pal. The two men asked the other to give regards to their wives, Jill Biden and Jane Sanders. Biden told Sanders: I really need you, not just to win the campaign but to govern.' Pal? UPDATE Sanders (D)(5): From Obamas surrogate, a *** [chefs kiss] ***: This quick, warm and unambiguous endorsement from @BernieSanders is a huge and important boost for @JoeBiden. Without papering over their differences, the two projected a united front. Each handled this well.https://t.co/MEBXPtBJQF David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) April 13, 2020 That photo. UPDATE Sanders (D)(6): Also quick but not so warm: With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don't endorse Joe Biden. I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like #MedicareForAll, cancelling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those. Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 13, 2020 UPDATE Sanders (D)(6): I think the Democrat Establishment thinks Sanders can deliver voters in the same way they did, but Im not so sure: Anyone who thinks that the social movements who backed Sanders campaign are going to just be folded into the Biden campaign b/c Bernie endorsed him doesnt know anything about social movements. People who organize 24/7/365 outside the electoral arena arent for sale. jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) April 13, 2020 UPDATE Sanders (D)(7): Opportunity cost: and what do we know. bernie sanders could've endorsed a may day 2020 general strike and redirected his entire base and network of resources towards shutting down this country in solidarity with gig/undocumented/essential workers and the unemployed, and.. he chose to endorse biden Jamie (@jtbrg) April 13, 2020 Warren (D)(1): Her non-endorsement is indeed odd: #BREAKING: Sanders endorses Biden days after suspending campaign; Warren still deciding, needs several more months to recover from violent emojis pic.twitter.com/2D7TCeqMZ0 MSDNC Commentary & Satire (@MSDNCNews) April 13, 2020 * * * 2020 Stats Watch At reader request, I added some business stats back in. Please give Econintersect click-throughs; theyre a good, old-school blog that covers more than stats. If anybody knows of other aggregators, please contact me at the email address below. The Coronavirus Shock Looks More like a Natural Disaster than a Cyclical Downturn [Liberty Street Economics]. Although many observers are comparing the current economic cycle to the Great Recession, the two situations are very different. First, the Great Recession was driven by economic and financial imbalances, while the current situation results from a non-economic shock. Second, the Great Recession developed graduallyfirst as a sub-prime mortgage crisis, then as a broader housing bust, and eventually as a full-blown global financial crisis and recession. The coronavirus pandemic, in contrast, came on suddenly, hitting the economy at full force in one month. Third, the current pandemic is widely viewed as a temporary situation with an endpoint, though how soon that endpoint is reached is of utmost concern and remains to be seen. Given the nature of the current crisis, a better benchmark for assessing the current economic cycle would be the regional economic impact of a severe natural disaster, as seen in Louisianas economy after Hurricane Katrina or Puerto Ricos economy after Hurricane Maria. * * * * * * Travel: Why Is Getting a Refund From an Online Travel Agency So Hard? [ New York Times ]. The agencies say they were overwhelmed by the immediate spike in travelers looking to cancel. The spike in refund requests occurred while companies were simultaneously trying to equip their own teams to work remotely. An [Online travel agency] doesnt have your money. When you book with a third-party site, they take your payment and parcel it out to the various suppliers of your vacation services. Online travel agencies are dependent on the decisions of their hotel and airline suppliers, so they cant preemptively issue a refund to someone without someone at the hotel or airline signing off on that refund. The Bezzle: Red Light Camera Company Says Its Dying Of Coronavirus [Tech Dirt]. Redflex, an Australian company that operates traffic safety programs in roughly 100 US and Canadian cities, warned that less traffic and suspended construction amid the pandemic will be a stress on its balance sheet. Yeah, thats a real shame. Its too bad a company that engaged in bribery to grab market share wont be able to weather this unexpected downturn in questionably-obtained income. There are several competitors in the crowded worst traffic cam ever field, but Redflex did everything it could to stay ahead of the pack. This behavior resulted in other unexpected downturns, like refunding millions of dollars of tickets in multiple locations due to the techs inability to do the little things like accurately judge vehicle speed. Lets hope there are no more installations ever, even if drivers return to the roads to undo the environmental damage reduction they inadvertently contributed to by staying home. Redflex is a terrible company with terrible ethics and terrible products. Fodder for the Bulls: Goldman Sachs abandons its bearish near-term view on stocks, says the bottom is in [MarketWatch]. Our call of the day, from a team of Goldman Sachs strategists led by David Kostin, says the worst of the market rout is behind us. A previous near-term downside of 2000 [for the S&P 500] is no longer likely. Our year-end S&P 500 target remains 3000 (+8%), says the team in a note to clients on Monday. Why? The combination of unprecedented policy support and a flattening viral curve have dramatically reduced downside risk for the U.S. economy and financial markets and lifted the S&P 500 out of bear market territory, said Kostin, whose gloomy stock prediction from last month came the day before a complete market meltdown. I wonder if the term Democratic strategist orginated on Wall Street. Honey for the Bears: America should be ready for 18 months of shutdowns in long, hard road ahead, warns the Feds Neel Kashkari [MarketWatch]. Kashkari, while acknowledging the downside of what a prolonged shutdown could mean for the economy, said the U.S., barring some health-care miracle, is looking at an 18-month strategy of rolling shutdowns based on what has happened in other countries. We could have these waves of flare-ups, controls, flare-ups and controls, until we actually get a therapy or a vaccine, he said. We need to find ways of getting the people who are healthy, who are at lower risk, back to work and then providing the assistance to those who are most at risk, who are going to need to be quarantined or isolated for the foreseeable future. Looking ahead, Kashkari doesnt envision a quick rebound for the U.S. economy, which has already suffered more than 16 million job losses in the past three weeks. This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine, he said. Its hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario. Todays Fear & Greed Index: 36 Fear (previous close: 42 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 28 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 13 at 12:20pm. Now mere fear. The prospect of re-opening the economy? Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 186. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing. The Biosphere Nobody Knows How to Wean Manatees Off Coal Plants [Bloomberg]. Manatees are the chubby vegan hippies of the sea. Neither predator nor prey, the worlds three remaining species are all considered vulnerable, including the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), of which the Florida manatee is a subspecies. Manatees seem to have evolved almost immune to Darwinian struggle. Theyre small-brained, radically farsighted, almost deaf, and barely able to smelleffectively floating digestion machines propelled by paddle-like tails. They survive mostly on seagrass, 100 to 200 pounds of which is working through a manatees intestinal system at a given moment. Their lungs stretch the entire length of their trunk, helping them maintain optimal buoyancy so they can munch like Jersey cows grazing a field of clover. Yet though manatees are sitting targets, even sharks leave them alone, uninterested in an animal that, despite its corpulence, lacks a tasty, insulating layer of blubber. So unflappable are manatees that a wild one will roll over and let its only true predatorusrub its tender underside. Shut down the coal plants and let the manatees display adaptability? Agriculture really was a mistake: you: Industrial Agriculture is kinda like a machine that turns fossil fuels into foo John Deere (bursts in): THIS IS SPUDNIK!!!https://t.co/zGQCxDe6k0 Albert Pinto (@70sBachchan) January 26, 2020 Health Care Pharmacologic Treatments for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) [JAMA]. The COVID-19 pandemic represents the greatest global public health crisis of this generation and, potentially, since the pandemic influenza outbreak of 1918. The speed and volume of clinical trials launched to investigate potential therapies for COVID-19 highlight both the need and capability to produce high-quality evidence even in the middle of a pandemic. No therapies have been shown effective to date. And here is a lovel visualization of how SARS-COV-2 hijacks a cells machinery, and how (some of) the various drugs undergoing trial may (or may not) interfere with that process: Could a Japanese Encephalitis Drug Prevent COVID-19? [Contagion Live]. Investigators in Germany took a step toward determining a potential novel therapeutic intervention for COVID-19 after identifying a cellular protein that may allow entry of SARS-CoV-2 into lung cells. The research, published in the journal Cell, examined how SARS-CoV-2 enters human cells and found that a drug currently approved in Japan to treat pancreatic inflammation could block the COVID-19 infection. Our results show that SARS-CoV-2 requires the protease TMPRSS2, which is present in the human body, to enter cells, Stefan Pohlmann, head of the Infection Biology Unit at the German Primate Center, said in a statement. This protease is a potential target for therapeutic intervention.' I remember a similar visualization done for Lombardy: A very good video on social distancing: Made by the State of Ohio and so, in its way, a minor triumph for Federalism. Making your own face mask? Some fabrics work better than others, study finds [NBC]. The best masks were constructed of two layers of heavyweight quilters cotton with a thread count of at least 180, and had thicker and tighter weave. Lesser quality fabrics also worked well, as long as they had an internal layer of flannel. You do want to use a woven fabric, like batik, Segal said, but you dont want to use a knit fabric, because the holes between the knit stitches are bigger. In other words, if the fabric allows for a substantial amount of light to shine through, its probably going to allow tiny viral particles through, as well. With other useful tips. Easter Wrapup Hero of a thousand faces: Watching Jesus Of Nazareth. Explaining it is in 4 parts. My son oh, its a saga. Like Lord Of The Rings but with Jesus instead of Frodo! Yes, thats right. Steve Brookstein (@stevebrookstein) April 12, 2020 Failed State Millions of Americans face crisis payment delays [Financial Times]. Steven Mnuchin, US Treasury secretary, said on April 2 that direct payments of up to $1,200 per person would be wired within two weeks to the bank accounts of people with direct deposit details on file at the Internal Revenue Service. Cheques for others, including Social Security recipients, would be sent by mail very quickly after that, he said. The problem for consumers who have received tax preparation assistance is that many might think their deposit details have been sent to the IRS when they have not. That is because they have used refund transfer services in which their refunds have been routed through a temporary account set up at a bank working with their tax preparation company. As a result, these taxpayers could have to wait to receive their economic impact payments via cheques sent to the home addresses on their tax returns, significantly slowing down the distribution of the money. Ron Wyden, a Senate Democrat, has said such cheques could take months to arrive. Of course, its an open question whether parasitical middlemen like tax preparation services should even exist, when the IRS has a free program that does the same thing (While 70% of taxpayers could use the program, the actual use is closer to 3%, good job H&R Block/Turbotax lobbyists, and dark pattern programmers!) That said, this distinction if you get your refund directly, you go to HappyViille, and if you get it through a service, you go to Pain City is exacty the same random creation of first- and second-class citizens that drove me crazy about ObamaCare. Wherever you look in the relief efforts in the bailouts, you see this. It seems our systems are so chocked and sclerotic that they simply cannot deliver material benefits to citizens in a uniform, consistent way. Too bad, so sad: Gen X and Millennials cant wait until 60 for their bailout, They need a debit card with 2k a month for the next 12 months and medicare right now. https://t.co/xVgqtOQSie Winifred (@WaywardWinifred) April 13, 2020 (As Tlaib has proposed, to exactly no reaction from the flaccid and indifferent malevolent Democrat powers-that-be) Interestingly, this is the demographic that the Democrat Establishment has effectively disenfranchised by selecting Biden. Expect volatility. Class Warfare East Side, West Side. This data reporting from @THECITYNY vividly shows which New Yorkers have gotten out of town https://t.co/fIgW948qwA pic.twitter.com/h6j6AWkdRz Ben Smith (@benyt) April 13, 2020 The Elegy Of Serological Racialism: The Search For Biochemical Races [Policy Tensor]. In 1908, Wilhelm Weinberg, a German physician, and Godfrey H. Hardy, the famous mathematician at Cambridge, independently clarified the elementary mathematics of gene frequencies in a stable population. Anthropologists immediately sensed the opening of a new frontier. Raciology may have been more popular then ever before, but there were problems aplenty. One could only go so far with skin pigmentation, hair cross-sections, stature, and other skeletal and cranial measurements. For one, there was little agreement between physical anthropologists on the number and identity of the races of man there seem to be as many races as race scientists, if not more! For another, progress was excruciatingly slow in understanding the origins of the races. All manner of theories abounded. The one issue on which all concerned agreed was the supremacy of the Nordic race. The only question was whether not just contemporary but all civilizations in history were secretly the creation of Grants Great Race had the ancient Egyptians been Nordic too before mixing led to their racial degeneration? How else could one square the abjection of the contemporary Egyptian races and the astounding achievements of the ancient Egyptians? Such old wives tales were a minor irritant to serious scientists. They were more concerned about the results of Dr Boas, who had shown in 1912 that the cephalic index (the ratio of the length and breadth of the skull) was not as stable as hitherto believed. More precisely, Boas demonstrated that the cranial index of second generation immigrants differed from their parents. No doubt the ravings of mainstream macro-economists will read, one day, as the pseudo-science they are. News of the Wired Prime Obsession [OneZero]. A lovely story about Oliver Sachs, two autistic twins, and prime numbers. John would say a numbera six-figure number. Michael would catch the number, nod, smile and seem to savor it. Then he, in turn, would say another six-figure number, and now it was John who received, and appreciated it richly. They looked, at first, like two connoisseurs wine-tasting, sharing rare tastes, rare appreciations. Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity [Nature]. From 2011, still intrigues: Humans are not believed to have a magnetic sense, even though many animals use the Earths magnetic field for orientation and navigation. Here we show using a transgenic approach that human CRY2, which is heavily expressed in the retina, can function as a magnetosensor in the magnetoreception system of Drosophila and that it does so in a light-dependent manner. Fruit flies do it * * * Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . Todays plant (CC): CC writes: Easter in Colorado. It has snowed all day. Daytime temperatures were in the seventies last week, yet here we are experiencing the first white Easter I can recall. * * * : Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldnt see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know Im on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals: Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated. If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you! Pastor Chuck Salvo delivers his sermon to the congregation during a drive-in service at On Fire Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., on April 5, 2020. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images) Federal Judge: Drive-In Church Ban Unconstitutional On the day before Easter Sunday, a federal judge in Kentucky enjoined Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer from enforcing a sweeping social-distancing order that banned drive-in church services. The court ruling came some hours before the Trump administration vowed swift action to protect churches from overreach by local officials perceived as overzealous in their efforts to combat the CCP virus that causes the occasionally deadly disease COVID-19. During this sacred week for many Americans, [Attorney General William] Barr is monitoring [government] regulation of religious services, Kerri Kupec, Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesperson, wrote on Twitter hours after the judge ruled. While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly & not single out religious [organizations]. Expect action from DOJ next week! Stories of government interference with religious worship have been streaming in from across the country. A police officer in Mississippi reportedly told a religious minister preparing a drive-in service that his rights had been suspended by the local government and said attendees would not receive a citation if they left the site on their own. San Bernardino County in California reportedly backed down on its ban of drive-in worship after being confronted by lawyers representing worshipers. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky issued the injunction at 2 p.m. on April 11, in the case cited as On Fire Christian Center Inc. v. Fischer. The court took a dim view of the action of Fischer, a Democrat. The government plans to substantially burden their religious practices on one of the most important holidays of the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday[,] the judge wrote, adding that Louisville has targeted religious worship by prohibiting drive-in church services, while not prohibiting a multitude of other non-religious drive-ins and drive-throughsincluding, for example, drive-through liquor stores. On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion[,] a reference to a popular satirical newspaper. This state of affairs has severe implications for religious Americans, because freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine Creator and divine law[,] the judge wrote citing a Supreme Court precedent. But its importance extends beyond the liberty to worship. It threatens liberty of all kinds. Thats because, as [Alexis] de Tocqueville wrote, religion, which among the Americans never directly takes part in the government of society, must be considered as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not give them the taste for liberty, it singularly facilitates use of it. The temporary restraining order prevents Louisville from enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services at the premises of the plaintiff. The court has scheduled a telephonic hearing on the preliminary injunction motion for April 14. The order was granted by U.S. District Court Judge Justin R. Walker, 38, who was appointed by President Donald Trump last year. On April 3, Trump announced his intention to elevate Walker to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The plaintiff, a church, is represented by Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute, which describes itself as the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans. Fischer seemed to be following the lead of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, who has adopted a particularly hard line on mandatory social-distancing measures aimed at protecting public health. Beshear said he was pleased that he reduced the number of churches conducting in-person services to just seven across the state. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, wrote a comment on Twitter about the governors actions: Someone needs to take a step back here. After Beshear directed churches not to conduct in-person services, some congregations opted to try to adhere to social distancing by conducting services in which worshipers remained in their cars. But Fischer made it clear that he would have police surveil churches to record license plate numbers of worshippers to report them to local departments of health so they could compel them to self-quarantine for 14 days. Some legal commentators have said that strong government restrictions on private activity are likely to continue as long as the public continues to support such measures. Lupin share price closed higher in trade today after the pharma firm's Nagpur facility received Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) from the US health regulator. Issuance of an EIR after completion of inspection is considered good for a pharma or healthcare firm. Share price of Lupin gained 7.72 percent to Rs 848.6 intraday against previous close of Rs 787.5 on BSE. The stock has risen 42.6% in the last 5 days. Stock price of Lupin currently trades higher than its 5, 20, 50, 100 and 200-day moving averages. It closed 4.85% or 38 points higher at Rs 825.95 on BSE. The pharma sector has seen strong buying sentiment since India lifted restriction on exports of anti malarial drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and paracetamol to US and others on April 7. US President Donald Trump is of the view that hydroxychloroquine is useful in treating COVID-19 patients. Sensex falls 469 points, Nifty ends below 9K amid weak global cues; pharma stocks shine Since then, Nifty pharma index has gained 11.25% or 915 points. On April 7, the index stood at 8,129. Today it closed at 9,044. The index has gained 13.50% in one month. "...announced the receipt of the Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) after closure of the US FDA inspection of its Nagpur, India facility," the company told BSE. The US Food and Drug Administration conducted the inspection between January 6 and 10, 2020. "Nagpur facility is our largest and most advanced oral solid dosage facility," Managing Director Nilesh Gupta said. Lupin is a pharma company engaged in producing, developing and marketing a range of branded and generic formulations, biotechnology products and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) across the world. It offers products in the cardiovascular, diabetology, asthma, pediatrics, central nervous system, gastro-intestinal, anti-infectives and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug therapy areas. The company also offers solutions in the anti-tuberculosis (anti-TB) and cephalosporins therapy areas. Avenue Supermarts share hits 5% lower circuit after half of D-Mart stores shut down BY Aseem Thapliyal Doug Preszler wasnt thinking about risk when he took a cashier job at a regional supermarket in eastern Iowa. But five months in, he has found himself at the forefront of a global crisis with little training or protection save for the pocket-size bottle of hand sanitiser and Ziploc full of disposable gloves he brings from home each day. The 51-year-old has told himself not to live in fear, yet concedes he increasingly is. Even the most routine tasks are fraught: Accepting bills and giving change scares him the most, Preszler says. And he has run through so much hand sanitiser that his skin is cracking. Ive been way more anxious this week, he said. Theyve started telling people: Go to the grocery store as little as possible. And yet Im going there every day. Next to healthcare providers, no workforce has proved more essential during the novel coronavirus pandemic than the 3 million US grocery store employees who restock shelves and freezers, fill online orders and keep checkout lines moving. Although the public health guidelines are clear steer clear of others these workers are putting in longer shifts and taking on bigger workloads. Many report being stressed and scared, especially as their colleagues fall ill to Covid-19, the highly contagious disease responsible for more than 20,000 deaths in the US alone. Some liken their job to working in a war zone, knowing that the simple act of showing up to work could ultimately kill them. At least 41 supermarket employees have died including a Trader Joes worker in New York, a Safeway employee in Chicago, two Walmart associates near Chicago, and four Kroger employees in Michigan. Thousands more have tested positive for the virus. Now workers across the country are staying home or quitting altogether, according to interviews with more than a dozen employees, leaving many markets short-staffed and ill-prepared to deal with demand. Thats complicated the scramble led by Walmart, Kroger and Safeway to fill hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Demand for groceries has doubled in recent weeks, employees say, as Americans avoid restaurants and prepare most of their meals at home. Job postings for grocery clerks have jumped 60 per cent the past four weeks, according to Julia Pollock, a labour economist for the site ZipRecruiter. Supermarkets are increasingly hard-pressed to find and keep staffers. Workers are walking out, going on strike and circulating petitions aimed at getting companies such as Amazon, Trader Joes and delivery service Instacart to take additional measures to protect their health. The language in job postings has become more desperate, Pollock said. Grocery companies are saying theres an urgent need, or that they need workers to start immediately. Its becoming more difficult to convince workers to put themselves at risk. Chains such as Kroger and Safeway have begun providing masks and gloves. Walmart is checking employees temperatures before each shift. And countless large and regional chains have installed shields at cash registers and signs encouraging social distancing the best defence against spreading the coronavirus. But employees say more needs to be done. People keep social distance as they queue in front of the supermarket in New York (Getty) Grocery workers are risking their safety, often for poverty-level wages, so the rest of us can shelter in place, said John Logan, director of labour and employment studies at San Francisco State University. The only way the rest of us are able to stay home is because theyre willing to go to work. Public health experts generally say nurses, doctors, paramedics and other medical workers the highest risk of exposure to Covid-19. But grocery workers also come in close contact with large groups of people, often without meaningful protective gear. They are less likely to have paid sick leave or the financial means to take time off if they feel ill. The sectors relatively low pay grocery cashiers averaged $11.43 an hour in 2018, Labour Department data shows has also become a bigger part of the calculation. At least 1,500 supermarket workers throughout the country have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 900,000 grocery employees at chains such as Kroger, Safeway and Giant. Nearly 3,000 members are not working because they are quarantined, hospitalised or awaiting test results, the union said. The big picture is: workers are frightened, said president Marc Perrone. The labour group, he said, is urging states to categorise grocery workers as first responders to give them higher priority for testing and protective equipment like masks. We believe in our health-care professionals being first, but we also believe that if were going to slow the transmission, that we need to start flatting the curve in those areas where grocery employees are literally coming face-to-face with thousands of people, Perrone said, referring to a depiction of virus infections on a chart. Although more than 40 states and the District of Columbia have ordered nonessential businesses to shut their doors in recent weeks, grocery stores are among the few retailers that remain open. Bill Gates warns that a viral outbreak similar to coronavirus could happen every 20 years Wando Evans had worked at a Chicago-area Walmart for 15 years when managers sent the 51-year-old home on March 23 because he was displaying flu-like symptoms. Two days later, he was found dead. Now his brother, Toney Evans, alleges in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed Monday that the worlds largest retailer did not provide protective masks and gloves, adequately disinfect the store or keep workers apprised of their colleagues illnesses. Another store employee, Phillip Thomas died four days after Evans. Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove said the retailer was heartbroken by the deaths. We take this issue seriously and will respond with the court once we have been served with the complaint, he said in a statement. The company declined to provide a full count of employees who have tested positive for the virus or died from related complications. Some employees at a Whole Foods Market in Virginia say they are afraid to go to work. Its like youre constantly in fight-or-flight mode, said a worker in her 50s who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job and health insurance. Its been scary, its been confusing and there is a palpable fear among everyone whos still working. It feels like a war zone. A shopper wearing PPE makes her way through the ShopRite supermarket (Getty) That fear, she says, picked up last week after a store manager called, texted and emailed late one evening to say that someone at their store had tested positive for Covid-19. A number of cashiers called in sick the next day, leaving long lines that snaked through the aisles. Although there are signs and stickers at her store encouraging customers to stand six feet apart, not everyone does. The store recently installed dividers at registers and is offering masks to workers who want them. But she said there are no limits on how many people can be at the store at one time, and the company has made no specific accommodations for its older or more vulnerable workers. A spokeswoman for Whole Foods said the company has had crowd control protocols at its stores since 25 March. The company is also checking workers temperatures and providing gloves and masks before each shift, she said. When the Virginia worker ended her shift that day, she told her manager that she wanted time off. She plans to stay home for a couple of weeks, though her children are urging her to quit. Her daughter is helping her update her resume. Were in new territory, and nobody knows what to do, she said. But I also need to keep myself safe. Montgomery and Prince Georges counties, starting this week, will require shoppers at stores to wear masks. Supermarkets around the world remain busy (Getty) Shoppers Food stores in Maryland recently began limiting the number of customers who can shop at one time. It is providing disposable gloves and paying employees an extra $2 an hour. But many workers are still scared. The store hasnt been able to find masks for its employees, they said, and hasnt provided them with hand sanitiser in days. Shoppers parent company, United Natural Foods, did not respond to a request for comment. There are things they could have done to better protect us, sooner, said Amber Stevens, who has been working at the Forestville, Maryland, store for a dozen years. Its a scary feeling to be around so many people and then come home to my family. Stevens says shes lucky to still have a job when much of the economy is upside down. At least 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March, and US stock markets have tumbled from the all-time highs set in mid-February. But she worries about passing on the virus to her 9-year-old daughter or 59-year-old mother. A woman wearing a mask to try and prevent the spread of Covid-19 leaves a supermarket in Washington (Getty) Workers say grocers have done little to assuage their fears. Jasmine Kapralova says she has repeatedly asked her managers at a Trader Joes in Seattle for guidance on responding to the virus since late February, after dozens of infections had been confirmed locally. She and her colleagues asked to wear masks to work but were told they would be disciplined if they did, she said. Any time we tried to talk to management about this outbreak, they made it clear they did not want us speaking about it, said Kapralova, 39, who has worked at the company for nearly a decade. They warned us not to freak each other out and cause panic. She and three colleagues, she said, came down with respiratory infections in early March. Kapralova took three weeks off with pay but says she was warned by her manager not to talk about her symptoms which included fever, body aches, a cough and difficulty breathing on social media. She took an extra week off unpaid but is still sick. Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokeswoman for Trader Joes, said the company has given Kapralova three weeks of paid leave while she recovers. Managers were concerned, she said, that Kapralovas social media posts speculating that she had Covid-19 were alarming her colleagues. They asked her to refrain from saying more online because she had not been formally diagnosed, Friend-Daniel said. Although the grocer initially discouraged workers from wearing masks, Friend-Daniel said it is now providing masks and gloves to all employees to keep up with changing guidelines from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Kapralova has since asked managers to take her off the stores schedule, Friend-Daniel said. I shouldnt go in, but I feel pressured to go because I need the money, Kapralova said. She and her 12-year-old daughter have been living with relatives since they lost their home in a fire five years ago. Im scared to death of dying, but also of losing my job and not getting paid. Elsewhere in Seattle, a longtime Kroger employee says hes facing a similar decision. At least two colleagues have tested positive for Covid-19 and about 20 more are home sick or awaiting results although the company has instructed workers not to discuss this with shoppers. It scares the hell out of me, said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears retribution. Were terrified, but what choice we do have? Were college students or were parents trying to raise kids. We need the paychecks. Kroger spokeswoman Kristal Howard said the company is communicating openly and transparently with its employees and the public. Our store teams should confirm when theres been a diagnosed case, sharing how weve worked with the health department and the immediate actions taken to sanitise and clean the store, she said. The Seattle employee says it never occurred to him that the supermarket job he applied for 13 years ago to support his new wife and infant could one day put his life at risk. He feels vulnerable and scared. Nobody told us, he said, that when the world falls apart, its going to fall on our shoulders. The Washington Post Accra, Ghana (PANA) - The Ghana Health Service (GHS) on Sunday said the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases has continued to rise, hitting 566 with eight deaths UTICA, N.Y. Berkshire Bank donated $1,500 to the YWCA Mohawk Valley to support residential programs and services. The funds will go toward two emergency domestic violence shelters, and programs that help find housing for victims and provide intensive case management. Our shelters and residential programs save lives every day, says YWCA MV CEO Dianne Stancato. The support of Berkshire will go far in helping us to support survivors of domestic violence and help them create safe and independent lives. For domestic and sexual violence crisis services in Oneida County, call 315-797-7740, and in Herkimer County, call 315-866-4120. For more information on services available from the YWCA, visit: ywcamv.org. A controversial 'scoring system' used by the NHS to decide who receives critical care has been slammed over fears disabled people will be denied life-saving treatment. The 'Clinical Frailty Scale' (CFS) ranks patients' frailty from one to nine and is designed to prioritise those most likely to recover from the killer virus. It has been implemented as NHS hospitals desperately scramble to free up beds and ventilators, which Britain is desperately short of, to fight the COVID-19 crisis. But it discriminates against people with learning disabilities who may need round-the-clock care, according University of London professor Irene Tuffrey-Wijne. Lynn Murray, from the learning disabilities charity Don't Screen Us Out, said the scoring system treated disabled people as a 'sub-class of the population'. NICE recommends NHS clinicians use the controversial Clinical Frailty Scale when considering patients for intensive care. It ranks patients' frailty from one to nine and is designed to prioritise those most likely to recover from the killer virus. But it discriminates against people with learning disabilities who may need round-the-clock care, according University of London professor Irene Tuffrey-Wijne (pictured) Under the guidance, coronavirus patients are ranked out of nine based on their age, frailty and underlying conditions. People are deemed 'severely frail' if they are 'completely dependent for personal care', the guidance says. That would put them at a total of seven points before underlying health conditions are even considered. Those with a combined score of more than five are said to have uncertainty around the benefits of critical care, according to the system. Professor Tuffrey-Wijne, a leading learning disability and palliative care expert, said the system left too much room for interpretation and could see disabled people incorrectly categorised as 'approaching end of life'. She said people who are 'completely dependent for personal care, because of both physical and cognitive disabilities' may be classed as frail despite being otherwise healthy. Professor Tuffrey-Wijne, writing on her blog, said: 'There is no reason to think that [they] won't live into a ripe old age, but the CSF has her firmly in the category of decline, one step away from approaching the end of life, and two steps away from dying. BRITAIN STILL HAS NO-WHERE NEAR ENOUGH VENTILATORS Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis is at its height. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson - despite the engineering giant never making them before. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said 'the race is on' to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic. The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending 'regulatory approval'. But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were 'nowhere near' being reached. One source told The Guardian: 'You just can't do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they're trying to do. But if there's a second wave in the winter, we'll have a lot more by then.' A second source said it was impossible to 'produce into the peak'. The Ventilator Challenge UK group - which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce - have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch. Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks. Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process. The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin. Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: 'To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. Advertisement 'It is completely obvious, therefore, that the Clinical Frailty Scale is not suitable for use with people who have learning disabilities (nor, indeed, for people with any other kind disabilities or conditions that affect their ability to do things independently). 'My concern is that many NHS staff, working under pressure and having to make impossibly difficult decisions for and with patients, will turn to the guidance without full knowledge, consideration or understanding of the need for making reasonable adjustments.' NHS regulator, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), has clarified that its scoring system should not be used to assess disabled patients. But campaigners say this is not clear enough in the single-page guidance on its website. Lynn Murray, from Don't Screen Us Out, added: 'Discrimination towards people with disabilities that starts before birth continues throughout their lives and sadly now it looks like some medical professionals are treating people with learning disabilities as a sub-class of the population to be denied treatment during the current crisis. 'The guidance issues that have occurred around people with learning disabilities being assessed for treatment and possibly denied treatment does not align with the equality guidance that the United Kingdom has signed up to. 'It's at times like these that negative perceptions of life with learning disabilities such as Down's syndrome come keenly to the fore. 'We are calling for the Department of Health and Social Care to issue urgent guidance making it clear that this practice is unethical, discriminatory and must not happen, to ensure that any discrimination ceases. COVID 19 must not lead to people with learning being screened out and denied treatment. Peter Todd partner at Hodge, Jones and Allen solicitors, wrote to NICE last month demanding the guidance was withdrawn. He told The Independent: 'The guidance is still published on the NICE website and says that clinicians should comply with it. It would be better if they took it down and amended it before it was published again. 'You could be totally forgiven as a doctor for thinking this was still a valid policy, but they have already accepted they have made a major blunder.' A spokesman for NICE said: 'In its COVID-19 rapid clinical guideline on critical care for adults, NICE recommends the use of the Clinical Frailty Score in some people in whom it has been validated as part of a holistic assessment as it was before COVID-19. 'The guideline makes it clear that it should not be used in isolation to direct clinical decision making and that clinicians should take any decisions about care in conjunction with patients and their carers where possible. 'The guideline also states that the tool should not be used in certain groups, including those with learning disabilities or with stable long-term disabilities such as cerebral palsy.' Frail coronavirus patients may be denied critical care under NHS 'scale' system designed to free up ICU beds for those most likely to recover Coronavirus patients will be ranked from one to nine based on age and frailty Those with a score of five are said to have uncertainty around benefits of care It comes as hospitals scramble to free up beds before an explosion of cases Coronavirus outbreak is expected to peak in Britain this week or over weekend Frail coronavirus patients may be denied critical care under an NHS scale system designed to free up ICU beds. The controversial 'Clinical Frailty Scale' (CFS) ranks patients' vulnerability from one to nine in order to prioritise those most likely to recover from the killer virus. Those with a combined score of more than five are said to have uncertainty around the benefits of critical care, according to the system, which has been implemented while NHS hospitals desperately scramble to free up beds and ventilators. It comes after NHS sources denied that elderly patients would be rejected from critical care using a scoring system - where over-65s with the deadly virus were to be ranked out of 10 based on their age, frailty and underlying conditions. The most vulnerable coronavirus patients could be denied critical care under a new NHS scoring system designed to free up ICU beds for those most likely to recover. Sources say the draft guidance was scrapped and will not be implemented Under the guidance, over-65s with the deadly virus would have been ranked out of 10. Pictured: An intubated patient at the South Pest Central Hospital in Budapest, Hungary More than 5,000 coronavirus patients are being diagnosed at hospitals every day and some intensive care units are already approaching capacity. Dominic Raab reveals lockdown WILL continue and warns the worst is yet to come Dominic Raab tonight confirmed the UK's coronavirus lockdown will remain in place for the foreseeable future and warned Britain is yet to hit the peak of the outbreak as official statistics showed a further 717 deaths. The First Secretary of State, who continues to deputise for Boris Johnson while the PM recovers from his fight with the disease, said there were now 'positive signs that we are starting to win this struggle, but we've still got a long way to go'. The latest death toll figures took the overall UK number of victims to 11,329 but the daily total of fatalities has now dropped for three days in a row for the first time since the epidemic began. Speaking at the daily coronavirus press conference in Downing Street, Mr Raab described the figures as 'grisly' as he said Britain was 'still not past the peak of this virus' and the government could therefore not ease social distancing measures. Earlier, Mr Raab was gazumped by Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, who revealed at lunchtime that the UK was likely to extend the lockdown in what was the latest example of the SNP leader moving before Number 10 during the outbreak. Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance added that this week would be 'difficult' and that he expects the daily numbers of deaths to increase before they plateau, continue to plateau for some time and then, eventually, start to fall. Today's figures come after Britain yesterday became only the fifth country to pass the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths - the only other countries to declare this have been the US, Italy, Spain and France. Advertisement NHS doctors and other health professionals were said to have been issued with the scoring system to identify 'who may not benefit from critical care interventions', the Financial Times reported. Patients aged 71 to 75 were said to automatically score four points for their age and an extra three for their frailty. That would put them at a total of seven points before underlying health conditions are even considered. Dementia, high blood pressure or recent heart and lung disease would also incur more points. Patients who scored more than eight points were earmarked to be given 'ward-based care' and treated with an oxygen mask instead of a ventilator. Britain is thought to be short of thousands of ventilators, which pump oxygen directly into the lungs of a sedated patient. The machines are the most efficient breathing tools the health service has. The scoring system was considered in a piece of draft guidance which has now been scrapped, NHS sources say. Instead, clinicians are being urged to use the 'Clinical Frailty Scale' when considering which patients to give critical care. It does not discriminate against age, but it does weigh up underlying conditions and overall health. The Clinical Frailty Scale was included in guidelines issued by the NHS regulator, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It was originally developed at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. An NHS website outlining how the scoring system works states that it 'is a reliable predictor of outcomes in the urgent care context'. 'Like any decision support tool, it is not perfect and should not be used in isolation to direct clinical decision-making,' it adds. 'It will sensitise you to the likely outcomes in groups of patients, but clinical decision-making with individual patients should be undertaken through a more holistic assessment, using the principles of shared decision-making.' NICE recommends clinicians use the Clinical Frailty Scale when considering patients for intensive care A spokesman for NICE said: 'In its COVID-19 rapid clinical guideline on critical care for adults, NICE recommends the use of the Clinical Frailty Score in some people in whom it has been validated as part of a holistic assessment as it was before COVID-19. BRITAIN STILL HAS NO-WHERE NEAR ENOUGH VENTILATORS Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis is at its height. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson - despite the engineering giant never making them before. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said 'the race is on' to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic. The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending 'regulatory approval'. But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were 'nowhere near' being reached. One source told The Guardian: 'You just can't do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they're trying to do. But if there's a second wave in the winter, we'll have a lot more by then.' A second source said it was impossible to 'produce into the peak'. The Ventilator Challenge UK group - which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce - have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch. Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks. Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process. The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin. Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: 'To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. Advertisement 'The guideline makes it clear that it should not be used in isolation to direct clinical decision making and that clinicians should take any decisions about care in conjunction with patients and their carers where possible. 'The guideline also states that the tool should not be used in certain groups, including those with learning disabilities or with stable long-term disabilities such as cerebral palsy.' An NHS spokesperson said the health service only followed the clinical frailty scale and would not cherry pick patients who deserve ventilators. They added: 'This [the scoring system] is not an NHS approved document, we do not agree with it, and the NHS will not endorse its use in decisions on care.' It comes little over a week after the British Medical Association released advice on taking older coronavirus patients off ventilators so they can be given to younger and healthier patients. The BMA guidelines said this will 'inevitably be indirectly discriminatory against both the elderly and those with long-term health conditions'. They add it may be necessary to deny some of the most unwell patients potentially life-saving treatment even if their condition is improving. The doctors' union said a simple 'age cut-off' policy would be unlawful but 'relevant factors' for considering if a patient should get intensive care include their age and underlying health conditions. 'Some of the most unwell patients may be denied access to treatment such as intensive care or artificial ventilation,' it says. 'This will inevitably be indirectly discriminatory against both the elderly and those with long-term health conditions relevant to their ability to benefit quickly, with the latter being denied access to life-saving treatment as a result of their pre-existing health problems. 'A simple 'age cut-off' policy would be unlawful as it would constitute direct age discrimination. 'A healthy 75-year-old cannot lawfully be denied access to treatment on the basis of age. However, older patients with severe respiratory failure secondary to COVID-19 may have a very high chance of dying despite intensive care, and consequently have a lower priority for admission to intensive care.' The Alzheimer's Society said the 'discriminatory' system could prevent those with dementia getting treatment even if they could recover from coronavirus. Are doctors HARMING coronavirus patients by putting them on ventilators too early? Doctors warn the gadgets may be overused and could even damage the lungs of the infected The nationwide shortage of ventilators and Britain's rush to build them has been one of the biggest stories of the coronavirus pandemic But now doctors have warned putting patients on the machines too early could cause more harm than good. Figures show two-thirds of COVID-19 sufferers who are hooked up to the potentially life-saving machines in the UK do not survive. Reports in China, Italy and the US have found that less than half of patients who are intubated recover. Experts are unsure why the death rates are so high. In New York City, at least 80 per cent of coronavirus patients in New York City who have been put on a ventilator have died. As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could be harming certain patients. Mechanical ventilators push oxygen into patients whose lungs are failing. Using the machines involves sedating a patient and sticking a tube into the throat. Deaths in such sick patients are common, no matter the reason they need the breathing help. Generally speaking, 40 percent to 50 percent of patients with severe respiratory distress die while on ventilators, experts say. Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat Two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator will die from the illness, official NHS data suggests. Graph also shows the likelihood of critically ill COVID-19 patients surviving based on their age, BMI and whether they have health woes Higher-than-normal death rates - like those in New York City - also have been reported elsewhere in the US, said Dr Albert Rizzo, the American Lung Association's chief medical officer. Similar reports have emerged from China and the United Kingdom. One UK report put the figure at 66 percent. A very small study in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first emerged, said 86 percent died. The reason is not clear. It may have to do with what kind of shape the patients were in before they were infected. Or it could be related to how sick they had become by the time they were put on the machines, some experts said. But some health professionals have wondered whether ventilators might actually make matters worse in certain patients, perhaps by igniting or worsening a harmful immune system reaction. That's speculation. But experts do say ventilators can be damaging to a patient over time, as high-pressure oxygen is forced into the tiny air sacs in a patient's lungs Some say it is simply a result of patients being extremely ill when they are put on the machines, which pump oxygen directly into the lungs via a tube down the throat. But others suggest the ventilators - which can make inflammation in the lungs worse - are being implemented too soon and harming coronavirus patients. In the most life-threatening cases, COVID-19 can permeate deep into the lungs and cause severe inflammation, making it hard to breathe. Pumping pressurised oxygen into the lungs can irritate the organs and damage them further. Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said this was a 'vicious cycle' for coronavirus patients. Scott Weingart, a critical care physician in New York, told Stat News coronavirus patients get worse 'as a direct result of intubation'. He added: 'High levels of force and oxygen levels, both in quest of restoring oxygen saturation levels to normal, can injure the lungs. I would do everything in my power to avoid intubating patients.' Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said putting coronavirus patients on ventilators was a 'vicious cycle' because it actually makes them worse For most people, COVID-19 causes mild or moderate symptoms which clear up in a few weeks. But roughly 20 per cent, mainly the elderly or those with underlying conditions, fall seriously ill and have trouble breathing. The killer infection can burrow its way deep into the lungs, causing them to become severely inflamed. CAN VENTILATORS CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE LUNGS? Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat. Pushing pressurised oxygen into the organs can cause them to become extremely inflamed. They become irritated which triggers an aggressive immune response, resulting in the inflammation. Very high levels of oxygen is also harmful because it increases free radical formation, leading to damaged membranes, proteins, and cell structures in the lungs. Doctors normally circumvent this by making sure to keep pressure levels low and only administer as much oxygen is necessary to keep the organs supplied. But, in patients who already have severely damaged and inflamed lungs, they can worsen the problem. Inflammation can cause fluid from nearby blood vessels to leak into the tiny air sacs in the lungs, making breathing and getting oxygen to organs increasingly difficult. Advertisement The inflammation causes fluid from nearby blood vessels to leak into the tiny air sacs in the lungs, making breathing harder and cutting the supply of oxygen to the organs. Intensive care doctors turn to mechanical ventilators as a last resort when patients' oxygen levels plummet and they can't be boosted with drugs or non-invasive techniques. Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat. Patients are heavily sedated so they can't fight the sensation of being unable to breathe on their own. But doctors are panicking and intubating COVID-19 patients sooner because the new virus is causing their blood-oxygen to fall to critically low levels, Stat News reports. 'Data from China suggested that early intubation would keep 19 patients' heart, liver, and kidneys from failing due to hypoxia (oxygen deprivation),' a veteran emergency medicine physician told the website. 'This has been the whole thing driving decisions about breathing support: Knock them out and put them on a ventilator.' There are widespread reports that coronavirus sufferers are being ventilated for far longer than other types of patients. Patients with non-coronavirus related pneumonia are usually intubated for a day or two, compared to coronavirus patients who have can need a ventilator for up to two weeks. Pushing pressurised oxygen into the organs can cause them to become extremely inflamed and worsen the condition. Very high levels of oxygen can also be harmful. Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said this was a 'vicious cycle'. It is thought at least 30,000 ventilators will be needed to cope during the peak of the pandemic, as manufacturing companies race to build more (pictured, medical equipment labelled and prepared for use by NHS staff at the ExCeL centre in London) What is a ventilator? A machine that helps people breathe. It puts oxygen directly into patients' lungs and removes carbon dioxide from them. A breathing tube connects the ventilator machine to your body. One end of the tube is placed into the lung's airways through down the throat or nose. In some serious cases, the tube is connected directly to the windpipe through a small cut in the throat. Surgery is needed to make the hole in the neck. This is called a tracheostomy. Patients are heavily sedated so they can't fight the sensation of being unable to breathe on their own. Ventilators are used to help a person breathe if they have lung disease or another condition that makes breathing difficult. They can also be used during and post-surgery. Advertisement He told Yahoo News: 'The ventilator is causing lung injury, which causes them to stay on the ventilator longer, and basically is depleting the supply of ventilators for people who need them. It's becoming a vicious cycle.' Dr Eddy Fan, an expert on respiratory treatment at Toronto General Hospital, added: 'We know that mechanical ventilation is not benign. 'One of the most important findings in the last few decades is that medical ventilation can worsen lung injury - so we have to be careful how we use it.' Dr Marik has called on other clinicians to implement a gentler approach than the high-pressure ventilators. He said anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as breathing masks used in sleep apnoea, should be used for as long as possible before switching to a ventilator. Not only would it potentially save more lives, he claims, it would also would help relieve a shortage of the machines. The UK is projected to need 30,000 ventilators at the peak of the outbreak in the next week. It is thought to be thousands short of this number. It comes after MailOnline revealed two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator die from the illness. A report from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Center (ICNARC) found ventilated patients succumb to the virus 66.3 per cent of the time. A ventilator is a machine that helps people breathe. It puts oxygen directly into patients' lungs and removes carbon dioxide from them BRITAIN STILL HAS NO-WHERE NEAR ENOUGH VENTILATORS Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis is at its height. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson - despite the engineering giant never making them before. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said 'the race is on' to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic. The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending 'regulatory approval'. But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were 'nowhere near' being reached. One source told The Guardian: 'You just can't do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they're trying to do. But if there's a second wave in the winter, we'll have a lot more by then.' A second source said it was impossible to 'produce into the peak'. The Ventilator Challenge UK group - which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce - have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch. Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks. Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process. The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin. Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: 'To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. Meanwhile the UK received 300 ventilators from China over the weekend and it will get thousands more by next week, Michael Gove has claimed. The Chinese ventilators arrived at MoD Donnington, a British military base situated in Shropshire, on Saturday. Advertisement That is double the mortality rate of non-virus patients who were put on breathing support between 2017 and 2019, before the outbreak. The NHS is still 22,000 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need during the peak of this crisis, which has infected almost 34,000 Britons. The high death rate has led some doctors to question whether some critically ill COVID-19 patients are being put on ventilation 'for the sake of it', when the machine could be spared for a healthy person with a higher chance of survival. The ICNARC report looked at the first 775 patients who had fallen critically ill with COVID-19 across 285 intensive care units. Of the 98 patients who needed advanced respiratory support when their lungs started to fail, just 33 patients lived (34 per cent). Patients in this age range die 73 per cent of the time if they fall seriously ill after contracting the disease. For critically ill patients aged between 50 and 69, the mortality rate is just over 40 per cent. And a quarter of over-16s succumb to the disease, the figures show. There are several reasons why older people have trouble fighting off the virus. The likelihood of having chronic conditions increases markedly as people age, with four out of five over-65s living with at least one underlying health condition. Elderly people also have weaker immune systems, a natural side-effect of the body ageing. This makes them more vulnerable to serious infections of all types. The ICNARC report showed obese people are at a heightened risk of dying from coronavirus. Among patients who needed intensive care after catching the infection, people with a BMI over 30 died 61 per cent of the time. There was little discrepancy between overweight patients and those with a health body weight. Those with a BMI under 25 - the ideal range is between 18.5 to 24.9 - the mortality rate was 42.1 per cent. For overweight patients , it was 41.7 per cent. People with pre-existing health conditions are thought to be at greater risk of developing severe symptoms because of their weakened immune systems. But the ICNARC report found people with severe underlying health woes were just 10 per cent more likely to die if they fell seriously ill with COVID-19 than otherwise healthy people. The document also found that most coronavirus patients in intensive care were male, 71 per cent of all cases. Only 18 patients (9 per cent) had 'severe co-morbidities', such as underlying heart conditions or lung disease; while two patients had been pregnant within the last six weeks. The mortality rate was 58.8 per cent for people with pre-existing conditions and 47.6 per cent for those without. Are doctors HARMING coronavirus patients by putting them on ventilators too early? Doctors warn the gadgets may be overused and could even damage the lungs of the infected The nationwide shortage of ventilators and Britain's rush to build them has been one of the biggest stories of the coronavirus pandemic But now doctors have warned putting patients on the machines too early could cause more harm than good. Figures show two-thirds of COVID-19 sufferers who are hooked up to the potentially life-saving machines in the UK do not survive. Reports in China, Italy and the US have found that less than half of patients who are intubated recover. Experts are unsure why the death rates are so high. In New York City, at least 80 per cent of coronavirus patients in New York City who have been put on a ventilator have died. As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could be harming certain patients. Mechanical ventilators push oxygen into patients whose lungs are failing. Using the machines involves sedating a patient and sticking a tube into the throat. Deaths in such sick patients are common, no matter the reason they need the breathing help. Generally speaking, 40 percent to 50 percent of patients with severe respiratory distress die while on ventilators, experts say. Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat Two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator will die from the illness, official NHS data suggests. Graph also shows the likelihood of critically ill COVID-19 patients surviving based on their age, BMI and whether they have health woes Higher-than-normal death rates - like those in New York City - also have been reported elsewhere in the US, said Dr Albert Rizzo, the American Lung Association's chief medical officer. Similar reports have emerged from China and the United Kingdom. One UK report put the figure at 66 percent. A very small study in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first emerged, said 86 percent died. The reason is not clear. It may have to do with what kind of shape the patients were in before they were infected. Or it could be related to how sick they had become by the time they were put on the machines, some experts said. But some health professionals have wondered whether ventilators might actually make matters worse in certain patients, perhaps by igniting or worsening a harmful immune system reaction. That's speculation. But experts do say ventilators can be damaging to a patient over time, as high-pressure oxygen is forced into the tiny air sacs in a patient's lungs Some say it is simply a result of patients being extremely ill when they are put on the machines, which pump oxygen directly into the lungs via a tube down the throat. But others suggest the ventilators - which can make inflammation in the lungs worse - are being implemented too soon and harming coronavirus patients. In the most life-threatening cases, COVID-19 can permeate deep into the lungs and cause severe inflammation, making it hard to breathe. Pumping pressurised oxygen into the lungs can irritate the organs and damage them further. Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said this was a 'vicious cycle' for coronavirus patients. Scott Weingart, a critical care physician in New York, told Stat News coronavirus patients get worse 'as a direct result of intubation'. He added: 'High levels of force and oxygen levels, both in quest of restoring oxygen saturation levels to normal, can injure the lungs. I would do everything in my power to avoid intubating patients.' Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said putting coronavirus patients on ventilators was a 'vicious cycle' because it actually makes them worse For most people, COVID-19 causes mild or moderate symptoms which clear up in a few weeks. But roughly 20 per cent, mainly the elderly or those with underlying conditions, fall seriously ill and have trouble breathing. The killer infection can burrow its way deep into the lungs, causing them to become severely inflamed. CAN VENTILATORS CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE LUNGS? Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat. Pushing pressurised oxygen into the organs can cause them to become extremely inflamed. They become irritated which triggers an aggressive immune response, resulting in the inflammation. Very high levels of oxygen is also harmful because it increases free radical formation, leading to damaged membranes, proteins, and cell structures in the lungs. Doctors normally circumvent this by making sure to keep pressure levels low and only administer as much oxygen is necessary to keep the organs supplied. But, in patients who already have severely damaged and inflamed lungs, they can worsen the problem. Inflammation can cause fluid from nearby blood vessels to leak into the tiny air sacs in the lungs, making breathing and getting oxygen to organs increasingly difficult. Advertisement The inflammation causes fluid from nearby blood vessels to leak into the tiny air sacs in the lungs, making breathing harder and cutting the supply of oxygen to the organs. Intensive care doctors turn to mechanical ventilators as a last resort when patients' oxygen levels plummet and they can't be boosted with drugs or non-invasive techniques. Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat. Patients are heavily sedated so they can't fight the sensation of being unable to breathe on their own. But doctors are panicking and intubating COVID-19 patients sooner because the new virus is causing their blood-oxygen to fall to critically low levels, Stat News reports. 'Data from China suggested that early intubation would keep 19 patients' heart, liver, and kidneys from failing due to hypoxia (oxygen deprivation),' a veteran emergency medicine physician told the website. 'This has been the whole thing driving decisions about breathing support: Knock them out and put them on a ventilator.' There are widespread reports that coronavirus sufferers are being ventilated for far longer than other types of patients. Patients with non-coronavirus related pneumonia are usually intubated for a day or two, compared to coronavirus patients who have can need a ventilator for up to two weeks. Pushing pressurised oxygen into the organs can cause them to become extremely inflamed and worsen the condition. Very high levels of oxygen can also be harmful. Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said this was a 'vicious cycle'. It is thought at least 30,000 ventilators will be needed to cope during the peak of the pandemic, as manufacturing companies race to build more (pictured, medical equipment labelled and prepared for use by NHS staff at the ExCeL centre in London) What is a ventilator? A machine that helps people breathe. It puts oxygen directly into patients' lungs and removes carbon dioxide from them. A breathing tube connects the ventilator machine to your body. One end of the tube is placed into the lung's airways through down the throat or nose. In some serious cases, the tube is connected directly to the windpipe through a small cut in the throat. Surgery is needed to make the hole in the neck. This is called a tracheostomy. Patients are heavily sedated so they can't fight the sensation of being unable to breathe on their own. Ventilators are used to help a person breathe if they have lung disease or another condition that makes breathing difficult. They can also be used during and post-surgery. Advertisement He told Yahoo News: 'The ventilator is causing lung injury, which causes them to stay on the ventilator longer, and basically is depleting the supply of ventilators for people who need them. It's becoming a vicious cycle.' Dr Eddy Fan, an expert on respiratory treatment at Toronto General Hospital, added: 'We know that mechanical ventilation is not benign. 'One of the most important findings in the last few decades is that medical ventilation can worsen lung injury - so we have to be careful how we use it.' Dr Marik has called on other clinicians to implement a gentler approach than the high-pressure ventilators. He said anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as breathing masks used in sleep apnoea, should be used for as long as possible before switching to a ventilator. Not only would it potentially save more lives, he claims, it would also would help relieve a shortage of the machines. The UK is projected to need 30,000 ventilators at the peak of the outbreak in the next week. It is thought to be thousands short of this number. It comes after MailOnline revealed two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator die from the illness. A report from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Center (ICNARC) found ventilated patients succumb to the virus 66.3 per cent of the time. A ventilator is a machine that helps people breathe. It puts oxygen directly into patients' lungs and removes carbon dioxide from them BRITAIN STILL HAS NO-WHERE NEAR ENOUGH VENTILATORS Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis is at its height. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson - despite the engineering giant never making them before. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said 'the race is on' to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic. The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending 'regulatory approval'. But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were 'nowhere near' being reached. One source told The Guardian: 'You just can't do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they're trying to do. But if there's a second wave in the winter, we'll have a lot more by then.' A second source said it was impossible to 'produce into the peak'. The Ventilator Challenge UK group - which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce - have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch. Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks. Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process. The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin. Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: 'To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. Meanwhile the UK received 300 ventilators from China over the weekend and it will get thousands more by next week, Michael Gove has claimed. The Chinese ventilators arrived at MoD Donnington, a British military base situated in Shropshire, on Saturday. Advertisement That is double the mortality rate of non-virus patients who were put on breathing support between 2017 and 2019, before the outbreak. The NHS is still 22,000 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need during the peak of this crisis, which has infected almost 34,000 Britons. The high death rate has led some doctors to question whether some critically ill COVID-19 patients are being put on ventilation 'for the sake of it', when the machine could be spared for a healthy person with a higher chance of survival. The ICNARC report looked at the first 775 patients who had fallen critically ill with COVID-19 across 285 intensive care units. Of the 98 patients who needed advanced respiratory support when their lungs started to fail, just 33 patients lived (34 per cent). Patients in this age range die 73 per cent of the time if they fall seriously ill after contracting the disease. For critically ill patients aged between 50 and 69, the mortality rate is just over 40 per cent. And a quarter of over-16s succumb to the disease, the figures show. There are several reasons why older people have trouble fighting off the virus. The likelihood of having chronic conditions increases markedly as people age, with four out of five over-65s living with at least one underlying health condition. Elderly people also have weaker immune systems, a natural side-effect of the body ageing. This makes them more vulnerable to serious infections of all types. The ICNARC report showed obese people are at a heightened risk of dying from coronavirus. Among patients who needed intensive care after catching the infection, people with a BMI over 30 died 61 per cent of the time. There was little discrepancy between overweight patients and those with a health body weight. Those with a BMI under 25 - the ideal range is between 18.5 to 24.9 - the mortality rate was 42.1 per cent. For overweight patients , it was 41.7 per cent. People with pre-existing health conditions are thought to be at greater risk of developing severe symptoms because of their weakened immune systems. But the ICNARC report found people with severe underlying health woes were just 10 per cent more likely to die if they fell seriously ill with COVID-19 than otherwise healthy people. The document also found that most coronavirus patients in intensive care were male, 71 per cent of all cases. Only 18 patients (9 per cent) had 'severe co-morbidities', such as underlying heart conditions or lung disease; while two patients had been pregnant within the last six weeks. The mortality rate was 58.8 per cent for people with pre-existing conditions and 47.6 per cent for those without. NASA missions help reveal power of shock waves in nova explosion Unprecedented observations of a nova outburst in 2018 by a trio of satellites, including two NASA missions, have captured the first direct evidence that most of the explosion's visible light arose from shock waves -- abrupt changes of pressure and temperature formed in the explosion debris. A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. It occurs when a stream of hydrogen from a companion star flows onto the surface of a white dwarf, a compact stellar cinder not much larger than Earth. NASA's Fermi and NuSTAR space telescopes, together with the Canadian BRITE-Toronto satellite and several ground-based facilities, studied the nova. "Thanks to an especially bright nova and a lucky break, we were able to gather the best-ever visible and gamma-ray observations of a nova to date," said Elias Aydi, an astronomer at Michigan State University in East Lansing who led an international team from 40 institutions. "The exceptional quality of our data allowed us to distinguish simultaneous flares in both optical and gamma-ray light, which provides smoking-gun evidence that shock waves play a major role in powering some stellar explosions." The 2018 outburst originated from a star system later dubbed V906 Carinae, which lies about 13,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. Over time -- perhaps tens of thousands of years for a so-called classical nova like V906 Carinae -- the white dwarf's deepening hydrogen layer reaches critical temperatures and pressures. It then erupts in a runaway reaction that blows off all of the accumulated material. Each nova explosion releases a total of 10,000 to 100,000 times the annual energy output of our Sun. Astronomers discover about 10 novae each year in our galaxy. Fermi detected its first nova in 2010 and has observed 14 to date. Although X-ray and radio studies had shown the presence of shock waves in nova debris in the weeks after the explosions reached peak brightness, the Fermi discovery came as a surprise. Gamma rays -- the highest-energy form of light -- require processes that accelerate subatomic particles to extreme energies. When these particles interact with each other and with other matter, they produce gamma rays. But astronomers hadn't expected novae to be powerful enough to produce the required degree of acceleration. Because the gamma rays appear at about the same time as the peak in visible light, astronomers concluded that shock waves play a more fundamental role in the explosion and its aftermath. In 2015, a paper led by Brian Metzger at Columbia University in New York showed how comparing Fermi gamma-ray data with optical observations would allow scientists to learn more about nova shock waves. In 2017, a study led by Kwon-Lok Li at Michigan State found that the overall gamma-ray and visible emissions rose and fell in step in a nova known as V5856 Sagittarii. This implied shock waves produced more of the eruption's light than the white dwarf itself. The new observations from V906 Carinae, presented in a paper led by Aydi and published on Monday, April 13, in Nature Astronomy, spectacularly confirm this conclusion. On March 20, 2018, the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, a set of two dozen robotic telescopes distributed around the globe and operated by Ohio State University, discovered the nova. By month's end, V906 Carinae was dimly visible to the naked eye. Fortuitously, a satellite called BRITE-Toronto was already studying the nova's patch of sky. This miniature spacecraft is one of five 7.9-inch (20 centimeter) cubic nanosatellites comprising the Bright Target Explorer (BRITE) Constellation. Operated by a consortium of universities from Canada, Austria and Poland, the BRITE satellites study the structure and evolution of bright stars and observe how they interact with their environments. BRITE-Toronto was monitoring a red giant star called HD 92063, whose image overlapped the nova's location. The satellite observed the star for 16 minutes out of every 98-minute orbit, returning about 600 measurements each day and capturing the nova's changing brightness in unparalleled detail. "BRITE-Toronto revealed eight brief flares that fired up around the time the nova reached its peak, each one nearly doubling the nova's brightness," said Kirill Sokolovsky at Michigan State. "We've seen hints of this behavior in ground-based measurements, but never so clearly. Usually we monitor novae from the ground with many fewer observations and often with large gaps, which has the effect of hiding short-term changes." Fermi, on the other hand, almost missed the show. Normally its Large Area Telescope maps gamma rays across the entire sky every three hours. But when the nova appeared, the Fermi team was busy troubleshooting the spacecraft's first hardware problem in nearly 10 years of orbital operations -- a drive on one of its solar panels stopped moving in one direction. Fermi returned to work just in time to catch the nova's last three flares. In fact, V906 Carinae was at least twice as bright at billion-electron-volt, or GeV, energies as any other nova Fermi has observed. For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from about 2 to 3 electron volts. "When we compare the Fermi and BRITE data, we see flares in both at about the same time, so they must share the same source -- shock waves in the fast-moving debris," said Koji Mukai, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "When we look more closely, there is an indication that the flares in gamma rays may lead the flares in the visible. The natural interpretation is that the gamma-ray flares drove the optical changes." The team also observed the eruption's final flare using NASA's NuSTAR space telescope, which is only the second time the spacecraft has detected X-rays during a nova's optical and gamma-ray emission. The nova's GeV gamma-ray output far exceeded the NuSTAR X-ray emission, likely because the nova ejecta absorbed most of the X-rays. High-energy light from the shock waves was repeatedly absorbed and reradiated at lower energies within the nova debris, ultimately only escaping at visible wavelengths. Putting all of the observations together, Aydi and his colleagues describe what they think happened when V906 Carinae erupted. During the outburst's first few days, the orbital motion of the stars swept a thick debris cloud made of multiple shells of gas into a doughnut shape that appeared roughly edge-on from our perspective. The cloud expanded outward at less than about 1.3 million mph (2.2 million kph), comparable to the average speed of the solar wind flowing out from the Sun. Next, an outflow moving about twice as fast slammed into denser structures within the doughnut, creating shock waves that emitted gamma rays and visible light, including the first four optical flares. Finally, about 20 days after the explosion, an even faster outflow crashed into all of the slower debris at around 5.6 million mph (9 million kph). This collision created new shock waves and another round of gamma-ray and optical flares. The nova outflows likely arose from residual nuclear fusion reactions on the white dwarf's surface. Astronomers have proposed shock waves as a way to explain the power radiated by various kinds of short-lived events, such as stellar mergers, supernovae -- the much bigger blasts associated with the destruction of stars -- and tidal disruption events, where black holes shred passing stars. The BRITE, Fermi and NuSTAR observations of V906 Carinae provide a dramatic record of such a process. Further studies of nearby novae will serve as laboratories for better understanding the roles shock waves play in other more powerful and more distant events. ### The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR's mission operations center is at the University of California Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission's ground station and a mirror archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. If the regulations on environmental impact assessment (EIA) are not strict enough and the role of citizens in monitoring the environment cannot be appreciated, environmental scandals will reoccur, experts have warned. The draft of the law on several articles of the Environmental Protection Law, compiled by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MONRE), has been opened for public opinion before its submission to the National Assembly. Under the draft law, investors of projects subject to compulsory EIA must organize preliminary assessment of environmental impact and take responsibility before law for these results. As for the formal EIA assessment, the project owners will implement the EIA themselves or hire consultancy organizations to implement EIA, and take legal responsibility for the results of the assessments. Dao Trong Tu, Head of Vietnam River Network (VRN) Management Board, and Deputy Director of the centre for sustainable development of water resources and adaptation to climate change (CEWAREC), reiterated the important role of EIA in ensuring environmental protection when implementing projects. As for the formal EIA assessment, the project owners will implement the EIA themselves or hire consultancy organizations to implement EIA, and take legal responsibility for the results of the assessments. He said because of many existing problems in EIA, environmental scandals have occurred, including the Dong Nai 6 and Dong Nai 6A hydropower projects and Lee Man paper mill. Scientists and experts have suggested amending the regulations on allowing project owners to implement EIA themselves. However, the opinion has not been taken into consideration. The EIA will not be unbiased if project investors implement EIA themselves or hire consultancy organizations to implement EIA. The organizations to be hired will not be independent if they receive money from investors, Tu said. The investors of Dong Nai 6 and Dong Nai 6A projects hired a university to carry out EIA for them. The university gave an assessment that could offer benefits to investors. Therefore, Tu believes that it would be better to establish a fund for EIA which is put under state management. Third parties will be hired to carry out EIA to ensure independence and objectivity. Some experts have praised the provisions of the draft law which emphasize the important role of citizens' supervision. However, they pointed out that the provisions on the issue need to be more precise. GreenID commented that the draft law still cannot solve the problem the lack of a detailed legal framework for people to participate in environmental activity monitoring. The Law on Access to Information and the Law on Environmental Protection (2014) stipulate that people have the right to request information. However, in the draft law, there are no regulations mentioning the responsibility of related subjects to information exposure. It is unclear through which channels people can express their opinions. Thien Nhien Environmental law amendment: EIA not a must for all projects The draft of the amended environmental protection law clearly describes the types of projects subject to EIA (environment impact assessment) based on project scale, characteristics and impact on the environment. The decryption of the black boxes is postponed for an indefinite period of time Due to Covid-19 pandemic, Iran postponed the process of downloading and decryption of the data from black boxes of downed PS752 flight of Ukrainian International Airlines, as Deutsche Welle reported. The black boxes of downed Ukrainian Boeing should be decrypted in the presence of the experts from a few countries. But the restrictive measures imposed due to Covid-19 pandemic do now allow them to arrive in Iran, the message said. A few days ago Iran appealed to the countries, which are involved in the investigation, with the request when the qualified experts may arrive for help with the decryption of the black boxes. Canada and another countries asked Iran to postpone the decryption of the black boxes of the planed downed near Teheran as the experts cannot arrive due to the coronavirus pandemic. January 8, Boeing 737 of Ukraine's International Airlines, flight PS752 with 176 passengers aboard crashed in Tehran, not far from Imam Khomeini airport. 11 citizens of Ukraine died in the crash of Boeing 737 of Ukraine's International Airlines (PS 752 flight). President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky reported that the passenger plane crash in the Iranian capital left no survivors. On January 19, the bodies of the Ukrainians, who died in a plane crash in Iran, were delivered to Ukraine. The farewell ceremony took place at Boryspil Airport. Organisations large and small, in the public and private sectors, have expressed deep concerns about the impact of Covid-19 on people, productivity and cashflow according to ACCAs new global research of 10,000 respondents, including an expert panel of 236 finance professionals in Mauritius. According to respondents, the three most severe impacts for the future viability of Mauritian organisations is employee productivity, with 46% of respondents saying this is the case; cashflow problems at 37% and 26% say they were unable to obtain supplies from preferred suppliers in regions affected by the outbreak. While 52% of business leaders said they have completed a financial reforecast recently, 94% per cent believe the worst-case scenario of Covid-19s impact will be negative revenue growth; with just 2% anticipating positive growth, and the remainder seeing no change. When asked about profit, 98% of respondents said the worst-case scenario would be a negative effect on their profit growth compared with the previous financial year. Madhavi Ramdin-Clark, Head of ACCA Mauritius, says: This worldwide research of 10,000 finance professionals aims to understand the business and financial impact on organisations so far from the viewpoint of ACCAs members finance professionals working in a wide range of businesses and organisations. The findings gauge the short to medium term implications, while also looking at the measures being undertaken and considered by organisations to mitigate the effects. It also looks at what lessons we can all learn from the pandemic. We are recommending that organisations follow the three As of crisis planning Act to respond in a sustainable manner and focus on employees and stakeholders; Analyse the different information sources to secure your organisation and Anticipate the business impact and future trends. Jamie Lyon, the reports author, explains: Everyones hurting, but particularly the smaller organisations. Financing and cash flow are concerns to everyone across all the countries polled. For many of us, the face of work has changed overnight. In the short term, organisations are facing a very difficult operating environment when it comes to employee productivity and engagement, alongside a number of compounding and wide ranging consequences stifled and stalled customer demand, supply chain disruption, people mobility issues, product and service delays or deferments, investment challenges and so on. Madhavi Ramdin-Clark, Head of ACCA Mauritius concludes: All this is of course translating to the financials being affected because fundamentally all of these things are interconnected. But whats heartening is to see is organisations commitment to ensuring the health and wellbeing of employees, customers and other stakeholders first and foremost, and the resilience being shown in the face of this unprecedented position were all in. Overall the data confirms Covid-19 is a huge challenge across all sectors and sizes of business, and regions and countries. The main issue is uncertainty, which affects the ability of organisations to plan properly, to react and to forecast appropriately. While talking of silver linings may be very hard at this time, we need to think about every opportunity, and to consider every option available to keep businesses large and small afloat. ACCA is holding a webinar on the 16 April 2020 to discuss these findings, which will be published in full on the 27 April 2020: http://accamember.newsweaver.co.uk/invitation/1586s9wf53w The survey supporting this research closed on Thursday 26 March 2020. Please refer to ACCAs Covid-19 Hub, which includes useful resources to help organisations deal with the impacts and implications, including advice for ACCA members in practice and in business, students, and a section on wellbeing. https://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/cam/coronavirus.html Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn Articles similaires Scientists in Brazil have stopped part of a study of a malaria drug touted as a possible coronavirus treatment after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested. Chloroquine and a newer, similar drug called hydroxychloroquine, have been pushed by President Donald Trump after some early tests suggested the drugs might curb the virus from entering cells. But the drugs have long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death. The Brazilian study, in the Amazonian city of Manaus, had planned to enroll 440 severely ill COVID-19 patients to test two doses of chloroquine, but researchers reported results after only 81 had been treated. One-fourth of those assigned to get 600 milligrams twice a day for 10 days developed heart rhythm problems, and trends suggested more deaths were occurring in that group, so scientists stopped that part of the study. Scientists in Brazil have stopped part of a study of the malaria drug touted as a possible coronavirus treatment after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested. Pictured: a chemist in New Delhi, India, displays tablets of hydroxychloroquine (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File) The other group was given 450 milligrams twice a day on the first day then once a day for four more days. That is closer to what is being tried in some other studies including some in the US. It's too soon to know whether that will prove safe or effective; the Brazil study had no comparison group that was getting no treatment. Only one participant in the Brazil study had no signs of the virus in throat swabs after treatment, researchers noted. The results from the Brazil study were posted on a research website and have not yet been reviewed by other scientists. Complicating matters is that all patients in the study also received two antibiotics, ceftriaxone and azithromycin. The latter also can have side effects on the heart. Trump has touted the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin combination. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has also repeatedly hailed the benefits of chloroquine and azithromycin without evidence. He said at one point he heard reports of 100 percent effectiveness when administered in the correct dosages, zeroed tariffs for import of the drugs, and late last month announced military labs were ramping up their chloroquine production. In reality, results of trials of hydroxychloroquine have been mixed. The drug is already being widely deployed in countries like South Korea and China, but data on its safety and efficacy are still being collected in those countries as well as in the US. As cases of coronavirus in the US continue to mount past 570,000, the search for an effective treatment is intensifying with tests of hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir across the US However, a recent worldwide survey found that hydroxychloroquine was not only the potential treatment used most often by doctors internationally, but the one they thought most likely to be effective. Brazil's trial failure comes amid growing concerns that coronavirus itself may attack the heart. The first evidence that the virus may be dangerous to the heart came out of China, which, as the origin of coronavirus, has been the bellwether for the disease's patterns. Nearly 20 percent of 416 hospitalized coronavirus patients in one study conducted there showed signs of heart damage. And more than half of the patients that had heart damage died while hospitalized for coronavirus. By comparison, just 4.5 percent of patients without heart damage died. This month, daily coronavirus in the US have surpassed 1,000 every day but one Unsurprisingly, rates of heart damage from coronavirus were much higher among people who already had heart disease before they were infected. But worryingly, the patients with no prior health conditions were hit hardest by the heart damage they suffered while infected with coronavirus. This smaller group of patients was at greater risk of dying from heart-related complications of the disease. Still, as is the case with all facets of COVID-19, older people and those with underlying health conditions are hardest hit by its cardiac effects as well. Doctors believe that inflammation triggered by coronavirus, the virus's potential ability to attack blood vessels and to infect the heart itself may trigger heart attacks or heart failure in COVID-19 patients. So the combination of the impact of coronavirus itself on the heart combined with hydroxychloroquine's potential to trigger heart arrhythmias could prove dangerous to patients. But it may be that at a lower dose - an NIH trial is giving patients two 400mg doses of the drug on the first day of treatment, followed by 200mg twice daily for the following eight days - the drug poses a lesser cardiac risk. Some 33% of Ukrainian citizens who left Poland due to quarantine are interested in the opportunity to go back, and 51% of Ukrainians in Poland want to stay and continue to work there. These are the results of a telephone "hot line" poll conducted under the framework of the social assistance program We Are Together. "Some 51% of Ukrainians want to stay and continue to work in Poland. They are concerned about questions on how to extend work permits or legal stay, which expired during quarantine. About a third of Ukrainians who returned home are interested in the opportunity to return to Poland now or after the quarantine," says a press release from the analytical center of the Polish international employment company Gremi Personal, which launched the We Are Together program for Ukrainians in Poland and Ukraine. According to the company, Ukrainians who worked in the hotel and restaurant services industry, tourism business or companies that manufactured components for export to countries in the midst of a pandemic are interested in returning. Some 22% of Ukrainians, who called the toll-free telephone line of the program, are interested in crossing the Ukrainian-Polish border. Of these, half of respondents worry whether there will be consequences in the form of deportation if exceed the length of their stay on a visa, or as part of a visa-free movement in Poland. At the same time, the company said the Polish government decided to automatically renew visas and temporary residence permits and work for 30 days from the date of quarantine. However, this innovation did not affect those who are in Poland according to biometric passports. Since the launch of the hotline on April 2, some 1,287 requests from Ukrainians have been processed. APRIL 13, 2020 UTSA alumna Ana-Sofia Gonzalez 19 has been named an English teaching assistant in the Fulbright Student Program. The Fulbright program is administered by the U.S. Department of State and is the flagship program for international educational exchange. Born in Mexico City, Gonzalez grew up in Dallas and describes herself as a proud immigrant to the United States. Raised in a bilingual household, where English was spoken in school and Spanish was spoken at home, Gonzalez learned about language and difference from an early age. She witnessed how students like herself were stereotyped based on their ethnicity and socioeconomic status, rather than their character or their work in the classroom. Growing up, I often encountered classrooms decorated with posters that read knowledge is power. At first I didnt think much of them, but eventually I realized this concept would be significant in my life, Gonzalez said. Less education means less general awareness and therefore less capability to create change. Toward the end of high school, I decided that I would no longer stand by idly in a rapidly polarizing society. At UTSA, Gonzalez became a leader through various student initiates. She founded the Women in Leadership group in 2017, which is a feminist organization that seeks to empower women in their everyday lives, as opposed to being strictly politically driven. Before graduation, she also served as chief of staff for Sustainable Youth Action, which was founded by fellow UTSA honors student JayLen Boone. The organization envisions a world in which young people are both civically engaged and empowered to use their creativity for social good. Less education means less general awareness and therefore less capability to create change. Studying global affairs and Spanish, Gonzalez has learned about how leadership and cross-cultural understanding can be applied on an international level. She has put her classroom curriculum into practice accordingly, first studying abroad in Madrid and then serving as a volunteer in Mexico City with the International Association of Students in Economic and Commercial Sciences. There, she served as an English tutor for adults working at a marketing startup business. Her time spent abroad not only prepared her to apply for the Fulbright grant but instilled in her how to listen and understand others. Spending time alone in a foreign country is not always easy, but the benefits are numerous and wonderful, Gonzalez said. I was immersed in a unique culture and learned about the lives of students my age who grew up in completely different circumstances from my own. I learned humility, empathy and a willingness to ask for help and explore at a new level. I witnessed the commonalities that unite all of us. I learned to listen with the goal to understand even when I experienced confusion or disagreement. This enabled me to embrace new places and new faces. The prestigious Fulbright Program will fund Gonzalezs travel to Colombia during the 20202021 academic year, where she will teach English to Colombian university students. Gonzalez was the first of UTSAs five semifinalists to receive a notification about winning the award. Other finalists are vying for awards in Taiwan, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. She was drawn to Colombia as a UTSA student and Archer fellow spending a semester in Washington, D.C. She interned for Refugees International at the time and she noted how Colombia has been generous in its intake of Venezuelan refugees. She hopes to design a civic engagement project to work with the Venezuelan refugee community during her stay in Colombia and that the entire endeavor will serve as a stepping stone to a career in diplomacy or the nonprofit sector. Students are awarded grants to conduct research, study in graduate programs, and teach English abroad. UTSA has had 13 students participate in the program and has seen a rise in awardees in the past decade, earning four awards in 2011. The mission of the program seeks to increase mutual understanding between countries all over the world and seeks to send abroad American students from a diversity of backgrounds. The Fulbright student program encourages applicants to apply through their home institutions endorsement. Undergraduate students in their junior and senior years, graduate and professional students, as well as alumni, should apply through the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards, which is housed in the UTSA Honors College. Students typically start applications in April through early summer in consultation with Fulbright program adviser Andrew Chapman. Applying for a Fulbright The Office of Nationally Competitive Awards is now hosting weekly online info sessions to help students apply for the Fulbright Programs 20212022 class, which will be comprised of approximately 2,000 awardees. Students can reach out directly to ONCA or follow ONCA on Instagram or Facebook, where the office regularly posts information on new scholarship opportunities, info sessions and workshops. Read about the Fulbright Program. Learn more about the UTSA Office of Nationally Competitive Awards. While in our current situation with the coronavirus outbreak, international opportunities might be at the back of students minds, said Chapman, Id like to encourage students to consider programs like Fulbright. It is so important during this time that we consider the ways in which the international community cooperates and helps one another, and Fulbright challenges students to consider how they can take part in this mission. Students receive advice on crafting a competitive application, which helps them in writing personal statements and grant proposals, and participate in a campus interview. This year UTSAs Fulbright committee was composed of faculty and staff throughout the university: Bridget Drinka (English), Alegra Lozano (Honors College) and Melissa Wallace (modern languages and literatures). ROCKY RIVER, Ohio -- Harbor Court, an assisted living facility in Rocky River, went out of its way to put its heroes out front -- literally. A group of staff and residents recently posed in front of the building with a giant banner reading, Heroes Work Here. Executive Director Cydney Bare said they produced the banner because my staff has been extremely accommodating, flexible, cheerful and are able to make a difference in the lives of the people in this tense time. I feel extra proud of our team (being) so willing to work so hard during this challenging time. When asked what the staff is doing that is so special Bare said, Going above and beyond, providing activities while families are not allowed to visit, helping residents make cyber phone calls with loved ones -- we even had some window visits. Their attitudes and the support they are giving to each other, as well, is amazing. Alma Gross, originally of Fairview Park, commented on her experiences at Harbor Court since becoming a resident last summer. She and her husband lived together at the facility until he died in January. We have been very happy here, said Gross. The activities are helpful and there are instructions about staying six feet apart. The staff are all wearing masks for our safety, and we are not confined to our apartments. I also see them doing a lot of extra cleaning due to the virus. They are being extra careful. Bare noted that Harbor Court is abiding by all of the protocols from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Ohio Department of Health regarding COVID-19. When asked what she thinks about the caregivers, Gross said: The caregivers are all wonderful, and I learned that before my husband passed away. They are so caring and good. The staff is wonderful, too. They are really trying to make this the best place there is -- trying to do everything to make us comfortable. Bare said they are pleased to have added a new medical director to the facility. Dr. Richard Li is in the building on Tuesdays and Friday. Its not required by assisted living facilities, she said, but we feel its good for our residents so they dont have to leave for primary care doctors appointments. Harbor Court is located at 22900 Center Ridge Road in Rocky River. For more information, visit https://www.capitalsenior.com/theharborcourt/ or call 866-750-1823. Read more from the West Shore Sun. First, knock down the number of new COVID-19 cases. Then, ramp up testing far beyond current levels. And lastly, prep health care facilities and businesses for the possibility of new flare-ups. Those are the three core steps in Joe Bidens plan to safely reopen America, according to an op-ed by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in The New York Times on Sunday. The op-ed, mixing logistical steps informed by health experts with open shots against President Donald Trumps response to the deadly virus, lays out Bidens vision of whats required for the countrys economy to begin churning again. The questions of how and when the nation returns to normalcy after being shuttered amid a pandemic thats kept consumers at home and produced unprecedented unemployment are consistently posed to Trump administration officials, and Biden argues the administration hasnt supplied an answer. Trump has framed a thriving economy as the bedrock of his re-election campaign, and he has made clear hes eager to see businesses bounce back sooner rather than later. But hes also lately followed the advice of his more cautious public health experts and urged Americans to follow continued social distancing guidelines through the end of the month. Biden not only suggests that social distancing must continue until the number of new cases begins to fall significantly, but he called on Trump to use his full powers under the Defense Production Act to get supplies and medical equipment to health providers more quickly. He needs to get the federal response organized and stop making excuses, Biden wrote. For more Americans to go back to their jobs, the president needs to do better at his job. Biden also said the nation should be running multiple times the number of diagnostic tests were performing right now. He added that the country should be ready to scale up a second form of testing: rapid serology tests to tell who has already been infected with the coronavirus and has antibodies. The Trump administration, which has touted nearly 3 million tests performed throughout the country, this weekend announced that costs for diagnostic testing, including rapid antibody testing, and related services must be covered by private health insurers. Biden cautioned that when economic activity expands again, new cases could crop up and health care systems must be ready. Hospitals need to have the staff and equipment necessary to handle any local outbreaks, and we need an improved federal system to get help to these places as needed, he said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, has noted that some sections of the country can likely open quicker than others. Hotspots like New York, for instance, will take longer than places where the disease has had little impact, he said this past week. Biden agreed, writing that things will not go back to 'normal right away. As public health experts have said, we should expect activity to return gradually, with sites like offices and stores reopening before arenas and theaters. Biden said if he were president, he would convene top experts industry by industry to figure out ways to operate more safely, including perhaps spacing out workers in offices and factories and laying out restaurants with diners farther apart. Biden said he would also direct the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, organized labor and employee groups to figure out what protections workers need on the job during this period. Getting protective gear to our health care workers and emergency medical workers is the top priority and one where we are still lagging, Biden said. But once that need is met, Id ask the experts to figure out what delivery workers, waiters, clerks and so many other professionals need to be safe. And I would focus like a laser on the racial disparities in COVID-19 cases. The state of Massachusetts recently began including a breakdown of COVID-19 cases by race and ethnicity after state officials issued an order requiring labs to submit the information. Across the country, low-income communities and neighborhoods with high populations of African American and Latino residents have been hard hit by the virus. More than half a million Americans have contracted the virus and nearly 22,000 have died. Globally, the disease has infected more than 1.8 million and killed 113,000. More than 421,000 have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE Trump retweets call to fire Fauci over questions about coronavirus response Woman, 93, stuck at home due to coronavirus: I need more beer!! Health or wealth? Nations pressured to loosen coronavirus restrictions Coronavirus advice: Should HOAs, landlords ask if you have COVID-19? Should you tell them? Guide to federal small business loans: 9 expert tips on coronavirus relief funds A damaged house in Monroe, Louisiana, after a tornado ripped through the town (Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star via AP) Severe weather has swept across the Deep South in the United States, killing at least 20 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains. Many people spent part of early Monday sheltering in basements, cupboards and baths as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes. Chattanooga in Tennessee and several counties in north-west Georgia appeared to be particularly hard-hit. Expand Close Rolanda Robinson calls family and friends from her brothers damaged home in Monroe (Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Rolanda Robinson calls family and friends from her brothers damaged home in Monroe (Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star via AP) Murray County Georgia Fire Chief Dewayne Bain told WAGA-TV that two mobile home parks were severely damaged, with five people killed and five others taken to hospital after a line of narrow line of storms left a five-mile-long path of destruction. Another person was killed when a tree fell on a home in Cartersville, Georgia, the station reported. At least 14 people were taken to hospital in Chattanooga, where search and rescue teams from at least 10 fire departments were going door-to-door responding to more than 300 emergency calls for help, the fire department said. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out power for about 750,000 people in a 10-state swath ranging from Texas to Georgia up to West Virginia, according to poweroutages.us. The National Weather Service tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Several apparent tornadoes spun up in South Carolina, where dozens of homes appeared damaged in a line from Seneca to Clemson. Emergency officials were working to open shelters in the North Carolina mountains, where up to five inches of rain fell in a few hours. Expand Close Damaged planes at Monroe Regional Airport (Monroe News Star/Greg Hilburn via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Damaged planes at Monroe Regional Airport (Monroe News Star/Greg Hilburn via AP) In southern Mississippi on Sunday, one person killed was in Walthall County, two were killed in Lawrence County and three were killed in Jefferson Davis County, state Emergency Management Agency director Greg Michel said. The deaths included a married couple Lawrence County sheriffs deputy, Robert Ainsworth, and a Walthall County Justice Court deputy clerk, Paula We, a Facebook post from the county sheriffs office said. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency on Sunday night after he said several tornadoes had struck the state. This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter, Mr Reeves said on Twitter. As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together. The National Weather Service advised the storm front would blow into the mid-Atlantic states on Monday, bringing potential tornadoes, wind and hail. News outlets reported downed trees, flooded streets and other damage in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. Strong winds late on Sunday toppled power lines and blew trees on to several houses in Clarksdale, Mississippi, trapping some people inside, Mayor Chuck Espy said. I know these are some tough times and Im just asking everyone to stay prayed up, he said. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries in Louisiana, even though the storm damaged between 200 and 300 homes in and around the city of Monroe, Mayor Jamie Mayo, told KNOE-TV. Flights were cancelled at Monroe Regional Airport, where airport director Ron Phillips told the News-Star the storm caused up to 30 million dollars (24 million) in damage to planes inside a hangar. In Alabama, lightning struck the Shoals Creek Baptist Church in Priceville, damaging the roof and steeple, Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Eddie Hicks told AL.com. It does not have to be National Hispanic Heritage Month to celebrate our appreciation and love for our abuelas. In 1968, the first Hispanic Heritage Week was celebrated in the United States of America. However, the week-long celebration was transformed into a 31-day celebration by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated in the US from September 15 to October 15. This 31-day celebration of Hispanic Heritage in the country is the recognition of the contributions and culture of US citizens with ancestors coming from South America, Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Spain. September 15 was chosen because five Latin American nations, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, celebrate their day of independence on this date. Hispanic culture covers a large and diverse group of people in various regions around the world. Despite the diversity among these people, they have a lot of things in common. One of the characteristic features of Hispanic culture is its large families and their close ties. In the majority, Hispanic cultures use Spanish as their native language, and it is one of the reasons why the names of their family members are similar. Respect for Grandparents In many Hispanic families, the most respected family members are the grandparents. They are seen as an important figure in their grandchildren's lives. The majority of Hispanic grandparents prefer to live with or near their children. This allows them to pass along Hispanic culture among their grandchildren. Also, they help their grandchildren learn the Spanish language. In other cultures, grandparents also play essential roles. The knowledge, patience, and love of grandparents come with age. Grandparents' wisdom and perspective allow them to affect the lives of their grandchildren significantly. Check these out: The Abuelas It is no doubt that many Hispanic grandchildren develop strong bonds with their abuelas. According to Karolyna, a Mexican-American US citizen, she was taken in by her Abuela when her mom and dad got divorced. She cannot remember how many months they stayed with Abuela. However, she remembered how she took excellent care of them during that time. She remembered that while their mom was looking for work, their Abuela would watch over them. Her Abuela even found them a house to rent and stay in. Her Abuela helped her mom raise them. According to Sara, a Columbian-American US citizen, her Abuela was one of the bravest women she has ever met. Her Abuela got a divorce in the 1960s with her abusive husband. During that time, divorce was not widely accepted by society in Columbia. Her Abuela did not finish college, but she was able to provide a living for her children. She was able to keep her family together despite the challenges she had to face. Sara's Abuela has been gone for years now, but she still misses her. (Newser) Netflix's insanely popular Tiger King has brought quite a bit of attention to Carole Baskinmuch of it unwelcome. Now, the Big Cat Rescue founder and her husband, Howard, say the makers of the docuseries were not upfront with them. The Baskins, who have long worked to outlaw the captive tiger trade, say the filmmakers told them they aimed to reveal cruelty in that trade. (In an extensive blog post, Baskin says they were told Tiger King would be "the big cat version of Blackfish.") The Baskins believed that would be the focus of Tiger Kingbut, as anyone who's watched it knows, that's far from the case. Indeed, Carole Baskin is painted, per the Tampa Bay Times, as "a shady exploiter no better than the abusers shes spent years trying to shut down," while those abusers are portrayed as "endearing eccentrics." story continues below "Theres almost no way to describe the intensity of the feeling of betrayal," Carole Baskin tells the Times in her first interview since the series premiered. The series focuses quite a bit of speculation on what happened to Baskin's ex-husband, and she says so many death threats have been coming in that she's scared to leave her house. In response to Baskin's blog post refuting Tiger King, one producer tells the Los Angeles Times that Baskin "certainly wasn't coerced" into talking to filmmakers and the other says they were "completely forthright" with everyone involved, but that the series evolved over five years of development. Meanwhile, a surprise eighth episode of the series was released Sunday, and NBC News has some revelations from it for those who haven't watched yet, including the fact that most cast members agree "Joe Exotic" deserves the jail time he's currently serving. (Read more Tiger King stories.) Excellencies, Thank you for joining the briefing today. We meet under extraordinary circumstances, in extraordinary times. Covid-19 is a human crisis of unprecedented dimensions. The devastation is deep and widespread, far beyond the immediate health impacts and death toll. We have already passed the tragic bar of 1 million people infected by Covid-19 across the world, with more than 80,000 deaths. These numbers are increasing by the minute as the virus spreads across the globe. And these numbers all have a human face. The virus is affecting billons of lives and livelihoods across the globe. ILO estimates that 2.7 billion workers are affected in different ways - 81 per cent of the world's workforce; and that we are likely to lose the equivalent of 195 million full-time workers in just the next 3 months in such short time. Across every sphere, women and girls are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic; even as they are the backbone of recovery in communities. Painstaking efforts to reduce poverty are at risk. No country is spared. In the face of a threat of such historic magnitude, our collective response must be fast and massive. Under the leadership of the Secretary-General, the entire UN system is rallying to respond around three dimensions: First, to support the health response to suppress the transmission of the virus, under the leadership of WHO. Second, to mitigate the socio-economic impact of the pandemic. Third, to help countries build back better, anchored in the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement on climate change. We have moved in record time within the UN system to provide an integrated response to Member States. Three key, interconnected instruments are guiding our efforts: the WHO-led strategic preparedness and response plan; the global humanitarian appeal and the UN Sustainable Development Group global framework help us work with UN Country Teams. Together, they form our emergency response. All three have been initiated. All three require your support. All three are critical to mitigating and surviving COVID-19. In combatting the virus, WHO has provided remarkable leadership in galvanizing the international response as governments around the world tackle immediate health threats. The solidarity vaccine trial, in which many of your governments (90) are participating, is now fully underway. Through this unprecedented collective research effort, we hope to better understand and disseminate information on the most effective treatment methods. WHO is also providing technical guidance for countries on a wide range of issues, such as: critical preparedness, readiness and response actions; laboratory testing; surveillance for human infection; clinical management of severe acute respiratory infection and many more dimensions of this multi-faceted health crisis. At the same time, WHO is providing operational planning guidance for UN Country Teams, with WHO country representatives working very closely with Resident Coordinators. Their work, under such circumstances, has been extraordinary. The entire UN system stands behind WHO. The humanitarian response is also in full gear. Humanitarian workers are on the ground and doing everything they can to respond and prevent the loss of lives. The UN and its humanitarian partners are working to ensure that aid continues to reach those in need while also ensuring safety measures are in place to prevent the spread of the virus. For example, doubling or tripling rations and implementing physical distancing at distribution sites. They are doing so in the face of multiple challenges such as restrictions of movement, and access to supplies, among others. We count on all governments to help remove such barriers. Every step that makes the delivery easier saves lives, every measure that speeds up the provision of aid matters. Allow me therefore to reiterate in this regard - the Secretary-General's repeated calls for a global ceasefire and a waiving of any unilateral sanctions to enable the Covid response in humanitarian settings. We have seen all of those who have signed up and I would like to commend their efforts. It is now imperative that we forge ahead in deploying an ambitious response package for countries to be able to cope and recover better as they deal with the emergency socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 and the lockdown measures it requires. Addressing these dimensions simultaneously is not only a moral imperative to prevent human suffering. It is also the only possible way to win the battle against the virus. In the end it come down to this: if COVID-19 remains active somewhere, we cannot be safe anywhere. And if we do not confront the pandemic and its consequences simultaneously, the virus will continue to run like wildfire, taking lives, affecting people and threating social cohesion. Developed countries are showing their determination and deploying all tools available to combine lockdown measures with fiscal stimulus, cash transfers, social security and other measures. And developing countries, too, are taking decisive steps. But we must ensure massive financial and technical support to allow developing economies to win the fight against COVID-19. The virus has already shown how swiftly it can move across borders, devastate countries and governments, and bring life to a standstill. Excellencies, You can count on the UN to move at the pace and scale required. Yesterday the UNSDG finalized a global framework for the immediate socio-economic response. It was developed by the members of the UNSDG, under the co-lead of DCO and UNDP and with inputs from our Resident Coordinators in the field. The framework follows the Secretary-General's call for shared responsibility and global solidarity issued in late March. It is our guide for efforts of the UN country teams. It covers a span of immediate actions to support governments in the following eight clusters: Health First: Protecting Health Systems during the Crisis Protecting People: Social Protection and Basic Services Investing in Resilience: Community-led Resilience and Response Systems Labor Markets: Protecting Jobs and Promoting Decent Work Economic Recovery: Protecting SMEs, farmers and the most vulnerable productive actors Macroeconomics: A surge in fiscal and financial stimulus Social Cohesion: Social Dialogue and Political Engagement Multilateral/Regional collaboration: regional trade policies, connectivity, and monetary-fiscal coordination A dedicated Secretary-General's COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund has been set up to help catalyze joint action by our Country Teams to implement the framework. Under the coordination of Resident Coordinators, the full range of UN development assets is being mobilized. Individual entities will also continue to mobilize and deploy resources as they respond to the pandemic but the difference this time will be in a coordinated way, under the common Framework. We are encouraging all entities to repurpose relevant development programmes to support the response, in consultation with governments and partners. Many have started doing so, and the efforts will be accelerated. We count on your support in respective governing bodies to facilitate such efforts. The system is moving with an unprecedented sense of urgency and maximizing the use of fast-track implementation procedures. Yesterday we met with the World bank to seek ways to reinforce our collaboration and response to COVID-19 on all three fronts. Next week we will engage our EU partners and the African Development Bank. Traditional development timelines will not work. We are facing a development emergency. The time has come to fully leverage on the repositioning of the development system approved by the General Assembly. And early benefits are already clear. The UNSDG collective leadership is working to signaling to our regional and country teams the imperative for a one UN response to the pandemic. Our empowered Resident Coordinators are serving as the centre of gravity for the COVID-19 response, relying on and supporting the technical lead of WHO for the health response. And counting on UNDP's role that helps channel the expertise of all members of the UNCT through integrated programmatic responses. This includes Non-Resident Agencies. The reforms we made to our business operations will significantly reduce implementation time, by allowing UN entities to quickly use administrative procedures from other UN entities with new mutual recognition agreements. Working closely with UN Women, Resident Coordinators are now better able to focus on the most vulnerable and to ensure women and girls are at the centre of the response. Our increased ability to draw on global and regional policy capacities is helping ensure that UN Country Teams can offer integrated policy support to governments as they deal with trade-offs and identify ways to keep supply chains open and increase investments in the response. Our stronger focus on partnerships will ensure we leverage and enable further action by partners, including International Financing Institutions and NGOs. We are adjusting our financial and administrative procedures to make it easier and faster for IFI resources to get to countries and people. This is not a banking crisis so resources must flow directly to small companies, households and individuals. Excellencies, To be effective, our response must be well-resourced. We are not asking you to choose between funds. We need to leverage these three key instruments simultaneously - the humanitarian appeal, the WHO strategy for preparedness and response, and the inter-agency COVID-19 fund that the Secretary-General launched last week to help respond to the development emergency. Combined, these instruments will enable a joint, integrated and multi-sectoral approach to address the magnitude of this crisis. You are already familiar with the objectives and contours of the humanitarian appeal and WHO's response plan. We will also circulate to Member States, following this briefing, the UNSDG framework and the Terms of Refence of the new COVID-19 Fund. We count on your guidance as we move forward. Anchored in the 2030 Agenda, the Fund will seek to support those countries least able to cope with -- and recover from -- the socio-economic impacts of this pandemic. Our goal is to mobilize $1 billion dollars to support its first nine months of operation, and $2 billion dollars overall leveraging several billions more for investing in countries. The first call for proposals will be issued on 15 April, with the first funds to be disbursed by May 1st. Resources will be channeled through UN Country Teams under the leadership of the Resident Coordinators. And they will target joint programmes that meet the objectives of the global framework. While the fund will be placed under the direct leadership of the Secretary-General, it is anchored in the UNSDG to ensure fund ownership and accountability. Other global funds are also playing their part to ensure a synergy deployment of resources. For example, the Peacebuilding Fund is adjusting its investments through UNCTs to support data analysis, social cohesion and the fight against discrimination and hate speech. The Joint SDG Fund investments on social protection are ongoing and have never been so relevant. And the UN-EU partnership on the Spotlight Fund is driving efforts to address gender-based violence, which continues to increase alongside COVID-19. Excellencies, We thank Member States that have already announced their initial contributions to power the quick start-up of operations. In the face of such a catastrophic global pandemic, it is not just the virus that is spreading. So is global generosity and the will to act. Your contributions to the other key instruments have been critical. The Humanitarian Response Plan has already received $396.5 million- close to 20% of the $2 billion dollar requirement. WHO's Response Plan has received over $274 million, with total requirements at over $676 million. But let us be clear that the needs of countries will be in the trillions. The UN-supported response will represent a small fraction of this, but we must ensure that critical multilateral expertise is fully resourced. In particular, we must help those least able to respond. Very few countries have the fiscal space to fight off a new crisis that requires massive budgetary outlays. Debt restructuring is at the core of global solidarity. It must happen now, accompanying emerging economies. At the same time, it is imperative that we do not divert funding from critical humanitarian operations and the necessary investments to stay on track in our development and climate commitments (2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement). We must continue to combat malnutrition and provide shelter to people who have been displaced. We have to sustain our fight against endemic diseases like measles and malaria. And we must fight vigorously what is becoming a pandemic of gender-based violence. If funding is diverted from these lifesaving activities, the pandemic can cause even greater human suffering. Excellencies, The two key words of the briefing today are solidarity and determination. Solidarity to ensure we focus on the most vulnerable individuals and countries. Determination to take bold steps and recognize that traditional tools and timelines do not apply. Let us stay truthful to our promise to leave no one and no country behind. Let us keep in mind our common fate with countries that were already facing a steep curve towards 2030. Conflict-affected countries, Least Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and Landlocked Developing Countries, which face specific and profound challenges. As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, its impact will likely be most devastating in countries already affected by humanitarian crisis. Let us also show our solidarity to middle income countries who risk seeing major reversals in the gains made in the past decade in fighting poverty. And let us ensure that within our countries we help these households and individuals that are disproportionally affected. Informal workers, the elderly, women and girls. They are facing a disproportionate and unjust burden. We must avoid letting Covid-19 widen already pervasive inequalities. For our part you can count on the absolute determination of the UN development system to help win the battle against Covid-19 and offer a pathway to restore and accelerate progress towards the SDGs. In each socio-economic area, our UN country teams are already at work to identify what it will take for countries to survive and meaningfully build back better. If there was ever a time to step up, together, and show to the world that we are here to prevent suffering and ensure a better future for all well, this time is now. This is the value and the promise of our United Nations. Several of my UNSDG colleagues are here with me today including my UNSDG Vice-Chair Achim Steiner and will be available to help address your questions in the following days and weeks. Together, we will get through this. Thank you. Anil Kapoor and wife Sunita have been together for over 46 years, which includes 10 years of courtship and 35 years of marriage. The two are very different from each other and that seems to only bring them together. Their unshakable bond is what makes their love story unique. While Sunita was a model and a bankers daughter who earned her own money, Anil was an aspiring actor who worked hard so that he was capable enough of giving her a house and a cook. Here are some precious pages out of their epic love story. Sunita and Anil first spoke to each other on a prank call Anil had fallen in love with Sunitas voice when she got his number from his friend for a prank call. The actor was instantly impressed by her English. I thought oh God, what a beautiful voice yaar, kya English bolti hai, pronunciation is so well, he told Hindustan Times in an interview. Anil found Sunita sexy during their first meeting The two met at a party at Raj Kapoors house and started talking to each other. Opening about his first impression of her, he said, She was so attractive, and if I may say, sexy also she wore these gogo glasses, which are big, round and rimmed. Sunita helped Anil get over a heartbreak Anil found Sunitas shoulder to cry on when he couldnt get the girl he liked. He told in a post on Humans of Bombays Instagram page, We used to discuss this other girl I liked - you know, if I like her or she likes me? Then suddenly that girl vanished, leaving me heartbroken our friendship strengthened because of that! A cook was the first requirement for them to get married Anil says he wanted to get married to Sunita only when he was financially capable of buying a house and getting a cook as Sunita had made it clear, I wont go in the kitchen, I am not going to cook for you. However, their younger daughter Rhea Kapoor cooks well and now even Sonam Kapoor has developed a love for cooking during her time in isolation. She regularly shares glimpses of her dishes and was even praised by her mother-in-law for a chocolate cake baked by her. When Anil chose marriage over career Anil had tied the knot with Sunita soon after he found his footing in the film industry. He was even advised against marrying at such a crucial point of his career. He was told that if got married, he was going to come down. I had to make a choice either come down, or get married. I said I dont mind coming down, but I will not sacrifice shes more important for me, he said. Also read: Janhvi Kapoor performs Aishwarya Rais Salaam in throwback video, says classroom can be anywhere Sunita flew solo for their honeymoon, without him Anil had just bagged the film Meri Jung, which released in 1985, and went on to tie the knot with Sunita soon after. Talking about how she chose to go on their honeymoon without him, he said, I thought, now house will come, kitchen will come, help will come...I can get married! So I called Sunita & said, Lets get married tomorrow its tomorrow or never and the next day, we were married! I went for shoot 3 days later and madam went abroad on our honeymoon...without me! Heres how Sunita motivates Anil to do more work Anil continues to hold his rhythm both on the personal as well as professional front. With a career spanning close to four decades, Anil has quite a few coveted projects in his kitty, including Karan Johars Takht. Opening up about how wife Sunita keeps him motivated, he had said, Shes the perfect mother, perfect wife & the reason I wake up every morning, motivated. You know why? When I ask her, Arrey, yesterday only gave you so much money she says, Woh sab khatam ho gaya.. (Author tweets @ruchik87) Follow @htshowbiz for more As the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to spread around the world, many Chinese cities have recently held online exhibitions to help offset the impact of not being able to hold shows offline. Photo taken in a cross-border e-commerce industrial park in Nankang district, Ganzhou, east Chinas Jiangxi province shows sales clerk promotes furniture via live streaming on mobile phone. (Photo by Hu Chenhuan/Xinhua) The Beijing online exhibition development alliance has received positive feedback from organizations and enterprises since it was established at the end of last month. Through the alliances efforts, three major exhibitions have been held online. The 2020 Three Gorges Citrus International Fair (Online) was held online from Feb. 16 to March 16, and helped sell more than 270,000 tonnes of citrus fruit, bringing tangible benefits to orchardists and related companies. Exhibitions are also an important way for foreign trade enterprises to promote their goods overseas. However, due to the pandemic, many overseas exhibitions have had to be put off or canceled. At a State Council executive meeting held on April 7, it was decided that the 127th China Import and Export Fair (also known as the Canton Fair), will be held online in mid to late June, the first time this has been done in the history of the well-established event. Made-in-China.com, a website that was established to connect global buyers with Chinese suppliers, has provided new platforms for business negotiations between foreign trade enterprises through virtual online exhibitions. These platforms enable buyers to gain information about manufacturers products from pictures, descriptions, videos, and panoramic photos of factories. According to an executive from Made-in-China.com, the website saw a 39 percent growth in page views last February on a year-on-year basis, and provided nearly 200,000 pieces of open procurement information for Chinese suppliers. The website also plans to launch 15 virtual Smart Expos before the end of June, aiming to showcase Chinese products to overseas buyers, the executive revealed. New technologies such as 5G network, live streaming, and virtual reality (VR) have played a big part in bringing online exhibitions to life. At the recently held 2020 global textile exhibition, many enterprises successfully made contacts with potential clients via live streaming. Live streaming has been very effective, according to an executive of a textile company that has used webcasts and live streaming videos to attract clients every day during the exhibition. According to the executive, each of the companys products has witnessed around 300 page visits each day, bringing more potential clients to the company. BOSSGOO.COM, a global online marketing and cross-border e-commerce platform established by a service company based in Ningbo, east Chinas Zhejiang province, rolled out a VR application for enterprises during its online exhibitions. The application allows potential clients to virtually visit factories and try out products and services. A number of enterprises, including major Chinese mobile phone makers Xiaomi, Huawei, and Huaweis sub-brand Honor have turned their offline events for launching new products into online events. Homeland Designated Driver Season 8 Episode 10 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * * Previous Next Photo: Sifeddine Elamine/SHOWTIME Consider all the elements that had to align in very specific ways to get to the ending of this weeks Homeland, in which a suicide bomber from the Taliban crashes into a bus of U.S. operatives being returned by the Pakistani government on the border between that country and Afghanistan. The brilliance of this very strong season has been in how the writers have captured that events like suicide bombings dont exist in a vacuum as a singular event they are the culmination of dozens of decisions on both sides. Set aside the big plot of the assassination of two world leaders and think about how many characters have been involved in bringing this event into existence through minor decisions episode to episode. Its almost the entire cast. Of course, the main link in this chain is Carrie traveling with Yevgeny into Pakistan after the flight recorder, and then tricking Jenna into revealing the location of the team that was following her. If Carrie doesnt make that call or Jenna doesnt fall for the scam, none of this happens. But its also Hayes and Zabel playing tough in the White House, leading David to suggest that Pakistan needs to release the prisoners, who then become targets. Also consider how Hayes essentially turned Jalal Haqqani into a hero by claiming he killed the president, or how Qureshi could have really just left the kid in a ditch a few weeks instead of salvaging a warmonger. They are also links in this chain. And then consider the fact that those U.S. soldiers arent on that bus if Saul and the former leader of the Taliban had never tried to negotiate peace at all. If one starts to think how past seasons of this show or U.S. policy in the region after 9/11, for that matter influenced this specific event, it becomes almost overwhelming. This excellent season of Homeland has captured the complexity of peace in the Middle East in ways we havent really seen on TV before, and it all climaxed this week in a tragedy that will almost certainly lead to war. Before that, Carrie has been released by Yevgeny, who has fled the area with the flight recorder. But she remembers what she heard, quickly scribbling down the important elements of what the pilot said before the copter crashed, confirming not much later at Bagram that it was a mechanical issue metal in the engine that really started these dominoes falling. Sadly, no one is going to believe Carrie Mathison. And so she knows she needs to get back the actual flight recorder, which is now in the possession of the Russians. She tells Saul everything she knows and begs him to pull as many strings as possible. He will learn there are no strings to pull. Meanwhile, President Hayes and the increasingly loathsome John Zabel are pushing Pakistan to turn over Jalal Haqqani, whom they dont have. As Pakistan moves weapons to the border, aiming them at U.S. troops, the ignorant new leader of the United States is pushing the world into a situation it cant survive. However, David Wellington suggests that Pakistan can turn over the operative that Carrie and Jenna got arrested, a good faith gesture that is about to go horribly wrong. Before that happens, Saul meets with his Russian contact, and begs him to get that recorder back, whatever the cost. He will quickly learn there is no cost. The Russians claim not to have it or know anything about it, but the implication here between the lines is that the Russians just dont want to give it back. They want chaos. The real world has grappled with this idea more strongly for the last four years, the suggestion that international turmoil and unrest is good for Russia. Would the real Russia withhold evidence about the death of the U.S. president to push that country and the Middle East to a war that could lead to nuclear fallout? Its a fascinating thing to consider. Who can save the day?!? Who else would you expect in the last season of Homeland? Yevgeny Gromov goes to Carrie and puts it on the table: The only way to get the recorder back is to reveal the identity of a U.S. double agent within the Kremlin. Its one of Sauls agents, who is in so deep that most people deny his existence. Saul will never give him up, so Carrie will have to somehow figure out his identity on her own. Would she betray a fellow agent, and Saul for that matter, to save the world? And could she possibly save her own reputation if she does? Its a thematically resonant lose-lose in that Carrie has to betray her country to save it, becoming a double agent to stop nuclear World War III. A question worth asking at the end of this hour is if shell even have the chance. With Zabel pushing Hayes to nuke the entire Middle East from orbit, people like Saul and David arent going to be able to talk him out of it after a suicide bombing, are they? Can you imagine a goodwill gesture from a potential war enemy going that wrong and it not leading to an intense military response? Hayes has been wanting to flex his muscles, and the deaths of U.S. soldiers on the Pakistani border is going to give him the opportunity to do just that. Will Carrie or anyone else be able to stop him? Final Notes Theyve written themselves into this kind of a situation before, but doesnt it feel like theres now suddenly a ton of narrative to wrap up in just two episodes? They basically ended this hour with an event that could start World War III. And now they have only two hours to wrap up that and the entire arc of an eight-season show. About that arc: How do you think where this show is ending reflects where it began? Theres the issue of the double agent that started the show being mirrored in what Carrie has done and has to do now. Theres also the recurring theme of Carrie feeling like she didnt do enough in the past, and she may now be able to stop carnage she couldnt before. Would she literally sacrifice herself to do so? What if she goes to jail or dies to stop WWIII? Do you need a happy ending for Carrie to be satisfied? Danes has been great this season, but its also been Mandy Patinkins best in years. He has brilliantly captured the bone-deep exhaustion that Saul Berenson has to be feeling right now, watching potential peace turn into possible nuclear war. When his voice cracked while talking to Carrie, Patinkin reminded us of Sauls deep humanity. Id love to see him get another Emmy nod for this years work. Two episodes left! It seems unlikely that Homeland ends in nuclear war in the Middle East, but how do you think Carrie will stop it? And will she betray Saul and her country to do so? Every Major Death on 'Homeland' One might as well state right from the word go that nobody in the watch industry knew either Brice Lechevalier or Pierre Jacques when they set out to launch a watch magazine at the turn of the third millennium. The former was carving out a career in the tourism industry, along with writing articles on marketing, travel and, more recently, watches, while the latter was involved in publishing. They met when Pierre Jacques suggested advertising in the Agenda Etudiant, which he had created, to Brice Lechevalier then marketing director of Club Mediterranee in Switzerland and later of Sunsail, a worldwide leader in the yacht charter business (hence the subsequent parallel launch of the magazine Skippers, voile & ocean). Having become friends and sharing the same passion for watchmaking, they embarked on the somewhat crazy idea of publishing a national watch magazine aimed at wealthy end consumers. At the time, no high-quality publication existed in this particular niche. Targeting watch buyers The pairs credo was to offer an aesthetically pleasing watch magazine aimed at established watch buyers: customers in boutiques, affluent Swiss residents, as well as businesspeople and tourists passing through Swiss palace hotels... without waiting for these different populations to find the magazine on newsstands. GMT thus became Switzerlands first free luxury magazine. At the time, magazines were not distributed in hotels or at retailers, and the latter were immediately drawn to this high-quality gift all the more practical in that GMT is trilingual (German, English, French) which they could offer their customers. Three people were particularly enthusiastic about the concept presented by the two GMT colleagues and contributed to the success of its launch by endorsing the project. Patrick Cremers, then Branch Manager of the Les Ambassadeurs boutique in Geneva, said he was convinced of the relevance of this effective promotional tool for watches among final consumers and conveyed his enthusiasm to the brands he represented by advising them to place advertising in it. Osvaldo Patrizzi, founder of Antiquorum auction house, understood the value of reaching new customers through this medium and agreed to send each issue of the magazine to his entire collector base in exchange for editorial visibility in GMT. Finally, the Swiss director of the Financial Times, Stefan De Muynck, did the same with his subscribers. How could advertisers not be convinced of the relevance of this audience? To this very day, private Swiss subscribers to the Financial Times continue to have GMT delivered to their doorsteps. The GPHG has chosen GMT to produce and insert its official catalogue for the last 10 years. GPHG Baselworld 2000 The first issue of GMT was published in March 2000, on the occasion of Baselworld, followed directly by the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH). It was met with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Many welcomed the initiative, but as the two founders of GMT still remember, certain brands not only did not agree to welcome them onto their booths, but were even not prepared to give them a press kit. It should be pointed out that the photo by Denis Hayoun (a still unknown photographer at the time) that appeared on the magazine cover might be regarded as somewhat perplexing: a flowerpot holding a Roger Dubuis MuchMore watch. The picture was chosen by the brands Communication Director at the time, Esthel Brunschwick; and then CEO Carlos Diaz warned them: With a Roger Dubuis on your first cover, either everyone hates you and youre finished, or it will be a great success! Other more traditional Maisons decided to trust them for the inaugural edition, such as Vacheron Constantin whose brand manager at the time was a certain Julien Tornare, now CEO of Zenith and Ebel during its grand Architects of Time era. Interpreted in various sizes and for different countries In 2002, on the occasion of the Time trade fair that was held that same year, the two partners launched a Belgium-Luxembourg version of GMT. This unfortunately had to be abandoned after two years as they struggled to secure payments from local advertisers. The Time watchmaking exhibition in Brussels also suffered the same fate. But that same year, GMT XXL was launched, targeting summer customers in the Middle East with its unprecedented large format. In 2004 it was GMT Stars&Snows turn to appear in an intermediate size between the standard GMT A4 format and the XXL A3 variation, this time targeting wealthy tourists frequenting Swiss ski resorts in winter. GMT XXS followed in 2007, created for women who could slip it into their handbag and becoming the first magazine entirely devoted to ladies watches and jewellery. Since then, it has been transformed into GMT Lady and returned to the standard GMT format so as to provide a better showcase for products, taking its place as the only womens magazine in any field to appear in both German- and French-speaking areas of Switzerland. That same year (2013), at the request of the watch brands, and to optimise distribution efficiency, GMT Stars&Snow also adopted the standard A4 format and was renamed GMT Winter. Meanwhile, the internationalisation of GMT accelerated from 2004 onwards, helped by its differentiation in terms of format (the GMT XXL version was selected for the foreign market) along with the outstanding quality of its production. GMT XXL USA blazed the trail, followed by GMT XXL Russia-Ukraine and GMT XXL Paris-Monaco, prefaced by designer Philippe Starck. GMT evening during the SIHH in 2018. The two founders of GMT, Brice Lechevalier and Pierre Jacques (now CEO of De Bethune), are no longer partners but remain friends GMT GMT changes hands, although... During the mid-2000s which proved a prosperous economic period, particularly for the press and the watch industry, GMT received several takeover offers, including from as far afield as India. The bid that best matched the founders vision which was to ensure the long-term survival of the title was made by Edipresse, a major Swiss media group. The change of ownership took place in two steps between 2007 and 2009. During this transitional phase, GMT was launched in Asia by the local subsidiary of Edipresse, but this initiative was quickly halted by the financial crisis that erupted around the world. Henceforth freed from their contractual commitments, the two partners were able to choose whether they wished to take their careers in another direction. This was the option taken by Pierre Jacques, who became Branch Manager of Les Ambassadeurs Geneve and, at the same time, Managing Director of the Grand Prix dHorlogerie de Geneve (GPHG). After a year, he left both positions to join the De Bethune company, where he became CEO. For his part, at the request of Edipresse, Brice Lechevalier continued to serve as Chief Editor of GMT, although his actual role extended far beyond that. The separation from his other partner, Christian Bugnon, in the company with which he had created Skippers and other magazines also took place in 2009. Brice Lechevalier kept Skippers and Christian Bugnon the magazine 30. That same year, Skippers became the official publication of the Swiss Sailing Federation. At the same time, Edipresse sold all its activities in Swiss media, retaining only GMT and a certain watchmaking site, WorldTempus, which was initially managed by an agency. In view of the unfailing commitment shown by the founder who remained on-board, and his influence within the watchmaking community, the Lamuniere family, owners of Edipresse, offered him an opportunity in 2012 to acquire half the shares in GMT and to create the GMT Publishing joint venture so as to develop all watchmaking activities together. Brice Lechevalier sets the tempo In 2012, once again officially co-owner of GMT, Brice Lechevalier created the Geneva Watch Tour and supported Carlo Lamprecht (then president of the GPHG) in instating the 12th Art, the Art of Time Measurement, thereby strengthening GMTs ties with the GPHG. In 2013, GMT became the only B2C watch magazine (aimed at end consumers) whose circulation is controlled and certified by the REMP, a guarantee of reliability for the brands and their media-plan return on investment. That same year, the Chief Editor followed the advice of several major brands and unified the GMT XXL versions published outside Switzerland into a single title: GMT XXL World. This annual special edition is published simultaneously in 80 countries with a print run of 100,000 copies, targeting wealthy individuals and collectors worldwide. Its eighth edition was released in September 2020 at Homo Faber and the Cannes Yachting Festival. With six issues per year (in addition to the XXL World), GMT became the Swiss B2C watch magazine with the highest publication frequency. In 2014, the Lamuniere family and Brice Lechevalier decided to broaden the scope of their joint venture, by bringing WorldTempus and Skippers within the ambit of GMT Publishing. The synergies are obvious, and the two complementary specialised watch media have established themselves as watchmaking references in print and on the web. President of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, Jean-Daniel Pasche chose GMT to extend his best wishes to the watchmaking world in 2015 via the magazines preface. Other leading figures in the industry also engaged in this exercise, such as Fabienne Lupo, then Managing Director of the SIHH, and Luc Pettavino, founder of Only Watch, with which GMT has kept step since the very beginning. Among insiders, GMT has always been known for its festive and popular watch-themed evenings that took on a whole new dimension at the SIHH 2016 the year the famous after-parties held on boats vanished. More than 600 people from the industry flocked to the GMT soiree organised during the Geneva show. The event was held each year until 2019. Since 2018, Brice Lechevalier has strengthened the GMT ecosystem by creating the Watch Photo Awards (the first international watch photo competition for the general public) and the Fine Watch Club (the first international watchmaking club). He has also signed two new franchises for the magazine, GMT Middle East and GMT Africa, both published quarterly. Brice Lechevalier, General Director of GMT with the cover of the first GMT published in the year 2000 GMT In 2020, the focus is on Asia and a cult book In addition to a party scheduled for this autumn in Geneva, GMT is also celebrating its 20th anniversary in several ways throughout the year. In Switzerland, distribution is being strengthened through a national partnership with high-end retailer Bongenie, which is placing it in all its mens departments. With his associates, owners of Tatler magazine in Asia, a leading title in the Asian luxury press, Brice Lechevalier is creating Tatler x GMT, a new publication covering the eight markets in which Tatler is present, including China. Tatler x GMT merges GMTs watchmaking expertise with Tatlers knowledge of Asian-style luxury. Its 100,000-copy circulation ranks it at the very top of Asias leading luxury watch magazines. Its first issue will be officially presented this fall. Also in Asia, a new franchise is being created with GMT Korea, initiated by a local publisher specializing in fine magazines (cuisine, fashion, travel). The first issue of this high-quality Korean watch quarterly will be published in the autumn 2020. Finally, since last summer, the GMT (and WorldTempus) team has been working on a book intended to become a reference in watchmaking literature, covering 20 years of watchmaking from 2000 to 2020: The Millennium Watch Book. Experts from all over the world who have been involved in or have witnessed this intense period are participating in the preparation of this work, due to be published in the autumn. Subscriptions are possible from May onwards on the-watch-book.com and further information is available on GMTPublishing, Instagram, Facebook and WorldTempus The new regulations on social distancing will for sure have an added impact on some businesses, however, it is necessary to view the full picture in assessing the impact. Kenneth Atkinson Executive chairman Grant Thornton The current daily increases in cases in Vietnam are just a fraction of most European countries and the United States, and Vietnam has yet to register a single fatality. GDP growth in the first quarter of 2020 has fallen to 3.82 per cent, the lowest for 10 years, and forecasts for 2020 are much reduced with some commentators forecasting a rate in the region of 5.5 to 6.3 per cent or lower if the impacts run longer than another three months. This fall in growth is not just due to the pandemic but also because of the drought in the Mekong Delta region and the fall in beer consumption and restaurant sales due to new drink-driving regulations, which have been quite significant. This dramatic fall in GDP growth was in spite of the goods export performance in the first three months of the year, when export turnover reached $59.08 billion, up 0.5 per cent on-year. Several important sectors have been badly hit by the outbreak prior to the social distancing measures including hotels, restaurants, transport companies, tour operators, airlines, and more besides. As early as mid-February, the tourism and hospitality sector went in freefall with hotel occupancy falling to single digits and a 50 per cent decrease in visitor arrivals. Vietnam Airlines reported it had cancelled 1,000 flights to China in the month of February alone. Visitor arrivals in the same month declined 22 per cent on-year, and dropped 68.1 per cent in March on-year. Total visitor arrivals in the first quarter of 2020 were 3.7 million, down 18 per cent compared to the same period last year. A bright spot has been in banking, insurance, communications, and healthcare in fact the finance, banking, and insurance sector grew 7.19 per cent on-year in the first quarter. The challenge for the manufacturing sector is applying social distancing regulations to workers in factories, although this should not be insurmountable, and now the ability to actually get workers and management to factories which are located in provinces away from where people, particularly management, actually live. In addition, the limitations on interprovincial transportation will have an impact but my understanding is that this is not completely shut down although public transportation such as taxis and ride-hailing services have ceased operation for now. The manufacturing sector was already experiencing significant challenges before the new social distancing regulations as shown by the results of the Purchasing Managers Index in March. There was already a decline in February to 49 per cent (anything below 50 per cent represents a decline/contraction) with a really significant fall to 41.9 per cent last month. A steep drop was noted in both healthcare and manufacturing sectors with reductions in both new orders and production with a consequential reduction in staff, the highest fall in six years. One bright spot was a reduction in input costs. However, it is interesting to note that the majority of respondents expected an overall increase in production in 2020 over last year. In addition to supply chain disruptions with the rapid spread of the virus in Europe and the US, the demand for manufactured goods will surely decline further. Another major factor affecting manufacturing is the lack of foreign experts due to the strict temporary entry regulations and suspension of international flights. On the other hand, directives from the government have been issued to help support business including the governments Directive No.11/CT-TTg, dated March 4 on urgent tasks and measures on enhancement of COVID-19 prevention and control, and the credit support package announced by the State Bank of Vietnam, as well as a new package of tax cuts and other measures in a draft decree by the Ministry of Finance. These will include providing tax breaks, delaying tax payments, and land-use fees for businesses. If approved by the government, the draft decree is expected to give tax relief worth over VND80.2 trillion ($3.49 billion). It has also been suggested to defer payments of value-added tax for March to June by five months. Whilst Directive 11 certainly will help business, the decline in demand arising from the wide and swift spread of the disease to many of our major export markets is irreversible in the short term and it is like trying to stem the flow of water from a broken dam wall. What is really needed is helping businesses to continue to pay their workers livable wages, so that when the markets start to improve we can move quickly to ramp up production coupled with a promotion campaign to existing and new markets. I believe that Vietnam will recover well ahead of many of our competitors and good planning will enable us to benefit from this. Certainly the coming into effect of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement later this year will give an added boost to exports to the EU but again good preparation is needed to be able to avail ourselves of the tariff reductions. China coming out of lockdown in many cities and provinces will offer a boost to cross-border trade with China, which will certainly have a positive early impact on the recovery in foreign trade and the economy. In spite of the challenges and the first quarter GDP growth, Vietnam is expected to maintain its star status and to bounce back quicker than most from the current challenges and to be back on track with 6.5-6.8 per cent GDP growth by the end of 2020. Also, as manufacturers re-evaluate the dynamics of their supply chains, Vietnam could well be a beneficiary at the expense of China. VIR Kenneth Atkinson The 13 nations in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reached agreement with Russia, Mexico, the United States and seven other major oil producers Sunday to cut production by a combined 9.7 million barrels a day in May and June. President Trump resolved an impasse between Saudi Arabia and Mexico that threatened to sink the agreement, intended to raise oil prices as demand plummets amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The cuts, if implemented, would reduce global oil supply by about 13 percent. Trump, who has long criticized OPEC for raising U.S. gas prices, tweeted Sunday that "the big oil deal with OPEC plus" will "save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States," and he thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi King Salman. As part of the deal, the U.S. agreed to cut 300,000 barrels a day, making up for Mexico's shortfall, The Wall Street Journal reports, though "it couldn't be determined whether that was in addition to other U.S. cuts, or how the U.S. cuts would be implemented." Analysts are also skeptical the cuts will be enough to shore up oil prices. Overall, the U.S., Brazil, Canada, and other non-OPEC countries will cut production by four million to five million barrels a day, OPEC said. Canada wasn't asked to cut production but would let market forces curtail its supply, Alberta's energy minister said. Oil prices plummeted 40 percent since early March amid a crash in demand and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that now appears to be resolved. More stories from theweek.com CNN's Jim Acosta expresses concern Trump's 'meltdown' shows he's not 'in control on multiple levels' Florida declares WWE an essential business that can operate during stay-at-home order Trump's frightening claim of 'total' authority Handout image released by 10 Downing Street shows Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson as he delivers a television address after returning to 10 Downing Street after being discharged from St Thomas' Hospital, in central London on April 12, 2020. Johnson was discharged from hospital on Sunday, a week after being admitted for treatment for coronavirus and spending three days in intensive care. (AFP) This should be called the London Lockdown Diary. We are in the Easter holiday weekend. Normally Londoners escape to the seaside or hills or even abroad as the Good Friday weekend stretches out. But now, even our local parks are deserted. Police are keeping a watch on parks and beaches to make sure we all stay at home. The government has got serious. And this includes prime minister Boris Johnson who came up to the top of politics by being a jokey, relaxed chap, charming the girls, not to be trusted if you could help it, but loved by all. And last Sunday we had in sharp contrast to him, the one person whom everyone trusts, the Queen, who broadcast to an audience of 27 million viewers. She reminded people she had seen trouble before when she broadcast to the nation on radio in 1940. Eighty years ago! That put everything in perspective. But then news came that Boris had caught the virus and was taken to St Thomass Hospital which is the local hospital for Parliament and Whitehall. He was placed in the ICU. And there were sad reports about his pregnant fiancee, Carrie Symonds, being distraught about it. This, along with the increasing number of deaths, brought home to the country that a casual attitude would not do. Boris who has been joking about shaking hands with everyone just a fortnight previously and comparing the diagram of the spread of the disease to a sombrero and had boasted about flattening the sombrero was now a victim himself. Luckily, he is now out of the ICU and in a general ward, with other patients. At a time like this, he would not like to occupy a room, or an ICU bed when people more sick than him need it. Thats the spirit, Boris! With the prime minister away there was a real vacuum at the top. Boriss absence at the daily press briefing at 5 pm meant that another minister had to chair it. There is no deputy prime minister designated, nor is there any provision anywhere in the (unwritten) Constitution as to how a prime minister can be replaced if one was to resign or die. Dominic Raab, who is foreign secretary, is technically ranked number two. But when he chaired the press conference, everyone said, Come back, Boris, all is forgiven. So now ministers take turns. Rishi Sunak has proved very successful. He is also listened to because he has money to give away. On Wednesday he had his fourth chance to give away another 750 million to charities. Of course as soon as he announced it, everyone said it was not enough. For all these days, only male ministers had presided over the press conference. People noticed and raised their voices. So come Saturday, we had Priti Patel giving a measured no-nonsense style performance which is her forte. We may end up seeing the entire cabinet for what it is worth. One thing which has emerged is an immense appreciation of workers in the National Health Service. As it is while everyone loves the NHS it never has enough resources. The coronavirus made it obvious that if the epidemic struck hard the NHS would run out of beds, nurses, medicines. Many retired nurses and doctors have come out to join the workforce. And of course people came to their doors and windows (as we were in lockdown) and banged tin cans, clapped and played whatever instrument they could to say Thank you NHS. Now that has become a regular weekly ceremony. For five minutes everyone comes out including soldiers stationed at home and abroad to say thank you. The people are finding ingenious ways of amusing themselves while at home. Parents have had to take up teaching their children who are home and not at school. But for some families and couples the forced closeness has been stressful. The virus has also forced many to take a reality check on how good their relationship is, and can it last? Cases of domestic violence have gone up, as have a few cases of murder. The hardest hit, of course, are those who are unprepared for lockdowns, or are completely engaged in external activities, with groups. The luckiest are writers, including my husband and me. We are used to imposing lockdowns upon ourselves. At one time, a few years back, I made myself housebound for up to six months , while writing a book. I only used to visit Sainsburys down the road when I needed to see a human face (apart from the family). Thus this lockdown has come at an opportune time as I am completing my biography of Devika Rani, the actress of the '30s and '40s, and, for a change, I will even be able to meet my deadline this month. At a time like this, I am grateful to have solid work to do and it is a relief to be able to stay at home without having to make excuses to everyone who thinks you have suddenly become a snob. My husband is working on his new novel, and being an avid reader is surrounded by books ranging from politics to the Mahabharata. But of course, we cannot forget the heartbreak all around us. May the lockdowns help to make the coronavirus vanish! Dormitories at Tuas South area. PHOTO: Google Street View SINGAPORE The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has revoked the work passes of 24 holders and permanently banned them from working in Singapore for flouting circuit breaker measures put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19. In a media release on Monday, MOM said it stepped up inspections at factory-converted dormitories to ensure that living conditions are acceptable, and that the well-being of the dorm residents are taken care of. MOM officers also checked that the dorm operators and employers adhere to the enhanced safe distancing measures. Among these measures are ensuring that employees stay in their rooms as much as possible, minimise interactions with those not living in the same room and leave the premises only if they need to purchase essential goods and services. Despite past enforcements carried out in the vicinity of Tuas View Square, our inspectors found 24 work pass holders eating, drinking, and gathering in groups. To send a clear signal of the seriousness of the offense, MOM has decided to revoke all 24 work passes and permanently barred the individuals from working in Singapore, MOM said. At least 17 COVID-19 clusters linked to foreign worker dormitories have been identified thus far, including the largest cluster at S11 Dormitory@Punggol, which is linked to 365 cases. Eight such dorms have been gazetted as isolation areas, including the newly confirmed cluster at Acacia Lodge and Cochrane Lodge II. Between Saturday and Monday, MOM officers inspected over 600 dorms at Sungei Kadut, Tuas and other locations across Singapore. The vast majority of the dorms had instituted safe distancing measures and health checks for their residents. Minor lapses were found in 57 dorms, with the most prevalent issue being a lack of sickbays and isolation areas. The cleanliness levels of some of these dorms were also found to be unacceptable, MOM said. MOM will complete the inspections of the remaining 600 dorms in the next two days. Story continues Separately, MOM issued an additional advisory to employers of foreign workers living in the dorms, and other living arrangements on Monday to remind their employees to observe the safe distancing measures. Employers are reminded to continue to pay the salaries of their workers promptly and look after their well-being during the circuit breaker period. MOM said it will not hesitate to revoke the work pass privileges of errant employers. Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore Related stories: COVID-19: Work pass holder permanently banned, 30 fines of $300 over violations of circuit breaker measures Cochrane Lodge II becomes 8th foreign worker dorm gazetted as isolation area COVID-19: Two more dormitories isolated Cochrane Lodge I and Acacia Lodge Singapore lifts ban on using Zoom for remote teaching following enhanced security measures COVID-19: S'pore confirms 233 more cases and 7 new clusters; 3rd straight day with no imported cases Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system. Sg.savillswebmail.com scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team This CoolSocial report was updated on 8 Jan 2013, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. The total number of people who shared the sg.savillswebmail homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the sg.savillswebmail homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if sg.savillswebmail has a Facebook fan page). This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the sg.savillswebmail homepage on Twitter + the total number of sg.savillswebmail followers (if sg.savillswebmail has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the sg.savillswebmail homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the sg.savillswebmail homepage on StumbleUpon. Basic Information PAGE TITLE Outlook Web App DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The title found in the head section of the homepage. Domain and Server DOCTYPE HTML 4.01 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE UTF-8 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Microsoft-IIS/7.5 (ASP.NET) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 The language of sg.savillswebmail.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Operative System running on the server. Type of server and offered services. Character set and language of the site. Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world. Referring domains for sg.savillswebmail.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines. Facebook link FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND The type of Facebook page. The URL of the found Facebook page. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. Twitter account link TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND William Hudson believes the arrival of an eagle soaring over the intersection where his daughter died last week was no coincidence. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. William Hudson believes the arrival of an eagle soaring over the intersection where his daughter died last week was no coincidence. "We were just talking about it, that it was Eishia watching over us, making sure everyone was OK," he said Sunday evening. "It definitely touched our hearts seeing the eagle. It was very special, thats for sure." Sixteen-year-old Eishia Hudson was shot to death by city police Wednesday night at the intersection of Lagimodiere Boulevard and Fermor Avenue. She was driving a stolen SUV with several youths in the vehicle, officers pursued and shots were fired. On Sunday night, family and friends held a vigil in her memory, a ceremony that included drumming and singing, the burning of sweet grass and a large circle walk. The intersection was shut down for more than two hours as participants as many as 75 people came to support William Hudson and Christie Zebrasky, Eishias mother. "Fly high my baby May you rest in peace baby," Zebrasky had posted to her Facebook page the morning after losing her daughter. Speaking from the vigil, Hudson said he was overwhelmed by the turnout. "Christie and I are very grateful for everyone showing up and showing their support for Eishia. We couldnt ask for any more. Wow, the turnout is amazing," he said. Police allege the group robbed a liquor store in Sage Creek not long before the deadly confrontation with officers. Speaking Thursday, Winnipeg Police Service Chief Danny Smyth said the SUV rammed into a police car and hit other vehicles during suspects attempts to flee. JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Family and friends comfort Christie Zebrasky (centre). Smyth said an officer fired, striking the teen driver. She was rushed to Health Sciences Centre but didnt survive. The Independent Investigative Unit of Manitoba (IIU) is investigating the officer-involved shooting, Smyth said. The girls parents maintain the use of lethal force wasnt necessary. "Well go day by day and do the best we can to get justice for our daughter. Thats whats going to be on my mind after I lay my daughter to rest," said Hudson. A funeral service is planned for Monday. Zebrasky said her daughter should be remembered for the kind-hearted teen she was, not the tragic way her life ended. "Eishia was very outgoing, loving, caring, put everybody above her. She was as strong, independent girl. She was a great aunt, sister, daughter, granddaughter," she said. "She was loved. She had impact on a lot of these people. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "And I want it to be known that Winnipeg police did wrong to my daughter." Four teens were charged with several offences in connection to the thefts and stolen vehicle. Early Thursday morning, another Winnipegger was shot to death by police after officers responded to a domestic violence call in the 300 block of Anderson Avenue. The IIU is investigating the death of Jason Collins, 36. jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @WFPJasonBell Google and Apple recently announced a joint project for the development of a Coronavirus contact tracing tool for mobile devices. A contact tracing app is a tool that could be used to contain new diseases, like Coronavirus, by tracking down and quarantining everyone that gets infected and localize any person that has been in contact with him/her. Contact tracing technologies played an essential role in the containment of the pandemic in several countries, including South Korea, Singapore, Israel, and other nations. Google and Apple have joined forces to develop a contract-tracing tool to face COVID19 pandemic, the IT giants are expected to release an API that could allow government agencies can integrate into their applications. The companies plan to design a built-in system-level platform that uses Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons to implement an opt in system contact tracing technology. In this spirit of collaboration, Google and Apple are announcing a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design. reads a joint communication sent by the two companies. As part of this partnership Google and Apple are releasing draft technical documentation: All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the worlds most pressing problems. Through close cooperation and collaboration with developers, governments, and public health providers, we hope to harness the power of technology to help countries around the world slow the spread of COVID19 and accelerate the return of everyday life. What makes this project different from other real-time location systems is that it doesnt leverage tracking user locations or other data that could be used to identify a specific mobile user. According to the designers, it uses BLE beacons to determine if an infected individual has been around other people. This is the way the contact tracing technology from Apple/Google might work: When an individual came in close contact with another one for a certain period of time (i.e. 10 minutes), their mobile devices will exchange anonymous identifier beacons. The identifiers rotate every 15 minutes and have no personally identifiable information. When an individual gets infected and he is positively diagnosed for Coronavirus, he can enter the test result into an app from a public health authority that has integrated the Google/Apple API. At this time, the infected person has to give the consent to upload the last 14 days of his broadcast beacons to the system. Any other person who has been in close contact with the infected individual will be alerted. This is possible by analyzing a beacon on the device that matches the broadcast beacons of everyone who has tested positive for Coronavirus. The app then provides instructions to the people that receive the alert. Of course, contact tracing apps could have a severe impact on the privacy and security of the users, US President Donald Trump announce its government would take a very strong look at the announce contact-tracing partnership. Its very interesting, but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a persons freedom, Trump told reporters at a White House briefing Friday afternoon. Were going to take a look at that, a very strong look at it. Apple chief executive Tim Cook remarked that the project aims at protecting the user privacy: Contact tracing can help slow the spread of COVID-19 and can be done without compromising user privacy. Were working with @sundarpichai & @Google to help health officials harness Bluetooth technology in a way that also respects transparency & consent. https://t.co/94XlbmaGZV Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 10, 2020 Privacy advocates and organizations that fight for defending human freedoms are concerned for the implication of contact tracing technologies and remarked that they could be effective only if people trust them. No contact tracing app can be fully effective until there is widespread, free, and quick testing and equitable access to healthcare. These systems also cant be effective if people dont trust them, said Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union in a statement. People will only trust these systems if they protect privacy, remain voluntary, and store data on an individuals device, not a centralized repository, Rhe European Union announced it would adopt a pan-European approach to using mobile apps to track coronavirus outbreak, it aims at implementing a common scheme for using anonymous, aggregated data to trace individuals who come into contact with infected people. This is my interview with TRT broadcast on the use of contact tracing technology: Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs Apple, Goole, contact tracing) [ adrotate banner=13] Share this... Linkedin Share this: Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On Transtector Expands Surge Protection Line with Isolation Transformers for Medical Applications These are mission-critical applications that require uninterrupted flow of data, said Dan Rebeck, Product Line Manager for Transtector. The new data isolators are a simple, effective way to build in a reliable layer of surge protection. Transtector Systems, an Infinite Electronics brand and an industry-leading provider of end-to-end power and signal integrity solutions, today launched a new series of data isolators optimized for medical applications, providing a highly effective layer of protection that is simple to install. Also known as isolation transformers, these cost-effective components are fully self-contained devices that protect valuable network equipment and personnel from damaging surges and power anomalies that commonly occur across network cabling. Installation and operation is quick, easy and efficientsimply plug this device inline between two 10/100/1000 Ethernet cables and equipment on each end is effectively protected. Each unit is fully RoHS compliant and certified to meet the EN60601-1 European Medical Device Directive, making them ideal for hospital and medical laboratory environments. These are mission-critical applications that require uninterrupted flow of data, said Dan Rebeck, Product Line Manager for Transtector. The new data isolators are a simple, effective way to build in a reliable layer of surge protection. Additional key features include: Plug-and-play installation saves time and money Two RJ45 connectors provide simple, standard connections Meets EN60601-1 European Medical Device Directive Isolation up to 4kV Transtectors new data isolators are available today, in stock for same-day shipping. Contact your Transtector representative or visit http://www.transtector.com for more information. About Transtector Systems: Transtector Systems leads the industry with a comprehensive product portfolio and specialized expertise in consulting, design and manufacturing of AC, DC, data and signal surge protection, communications power cabinets, EMP protection and power quality engineering services. Transtector provides valuable end-to-end power and signal integrity solutions for markets that include telecommunications, medical imaging, transportation, energy, security, and the military. About Infinite Electronics: Based in Irvine, Calif., Infinite Electronics offers a broad range of components, assemblies and wired/wireless connectivity solutions, serving the aerospace/defense, industrial, government, consumer electronics, instrumentation, medical and telecommunications markets. Infinites brands include Pasternack, Fairview Microwave, L-com, MilesTek, Aiconics, KP Performance Antennas, PolyPhaser, Transtector, RadioWaves, ShowMe Cables, INC-Installs and Integra Optics. Infinite Electronics serves a global engineering customer base with deep technical expertise and support, with one of the broadest inventories of products available for immediate shipment. The main aim of stock picking is to find the market-beating stocks. But even the best stock picker will only win with some selections. So we wouldn't blame long term China Aluminum Cans Holdings Limited (HKG:6898) shareholders for doubting their decision to hold, with the stock down 80% over a half decade. Furthermore, it's down 11% in about a quarter. That's not much fun for holders. Of course, this share price action may well have been influenced by the 14% decline in the broader market, throughout the period. Check out our latest analysis for China Aluminum Cans Holdings To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement. Looking back five years, both China Aluminum Cans Holdings's share price and EPS declined; the latter at a rate of 34% per year. This fall in the EPS is worse than the 27% compound annual share price fall. So investors might expect EPS to bounce back -- or they may have previously foreseen the EPS decline. The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers). SEHK:6898 Past and Future Earnings April 13th 2020 Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here. What About Dividends? It is important to consider the total shareholder return, as well as the share price return, for any given stock. The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. In the case of China Aluminum Cans Holdings, it has a TSR of -32% for the last 5 years. That exceeds its share price return that we previously mentioned. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence! Story continues A Different Perspective It's nice to see that China Aluminum Cans Holdings shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 40% over the last year. And that does include the dividend. That certainly beats the loss of about 7.4% per year over the last half decade. We generally put more weight on the long term performance over the short term, but the recent improvement could hint at a (positive) inflection point within the business. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. For instance, we've identified 2 warning signs for China Aluminum Cans Holdings (1 makes us a bit uncomfortable) that you should be aware of. If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them). Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. India has issued a strong demarche to Pakistan on the killing of three innocent Indian civilians in the unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistani forces on April 12, sources in the Ministry of External Affairs said. Three persons including a minor were killed and five others injured in intense shelling across the Line of Control in north Kashmirs Kupwara district on Sunday, the army said. Pakistan's provocative posture along the LoC has remained unabated despite the novel Coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in both countries and forced respective governments to impose lockdowns to contain the outbreak. READ | Pakistani Troops Violate Ceasefire At LoC In Kupwara SSP Kupwara, Shari Ram Ambarkar, said three civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed when shells fired from the Pakistani army hit homes at two locations along the Line of Control in the Kupwara area of Kashmir Sunday evening. A defence spokesperson said that in response to Pakistan's unprovoked shelling, Indian Army units "retaliated strongly and effectively". READ | Amit Shah Asks BSF To Enhance Vigil Along Pakistan, Bangladesh Borders: MHA Official Infiltration bid in the garb of ceasefire violation On Friday, Pakistani forces violated ceasefire in the Kupwara sector of Jammu and Kashmir. It was reported that heavy artillery firing took place and the Indian side is retaliated strongly. That was the fifth consecutive day of unprovoked shelling and firing along the LoC. Sources say the Pakistan Army is trying to push terrorists into J&K to foment trouble in a region already facing the COVID-19 challenge. (PTI Photo) READ | Pakistan Violates Ceasefire In J&K's Kupwara; Heavy Artillery Firing Witnessed READ | Kashmir Reports 25 Fresh Cases Of COVID-19; Total Rises To 270 It's been one of TV's biggest ratings winners since it began in 2004. And Strictly Come Dancing reigning champion Oti Mabuse, 29, has admitted that the future of the BBC show is uncertain with show bosses taking things 'day by day' amid the coronavirus pandemic. Appearing on Good Morning Britain with Lorraine Kelly on Monday morning, the professional dancer revealed that those involved with making the show are 'just hoping that everything can be okay' and that it can still go ahead later this year. Oh no! Strictly's reigning champion Oti Mabuse, 29, has admitted that the future of the BBC show is uncertain with show bosses taking things 'day by day' amid the coronavirus pandemic Preparations for Strictly, which is is set to start filming in September, were due to start in June. Lorraine quizzed Oti about the next series of Strictly, asking: 'Right now we hope that everything's gonna be okay, or are we not sure?' Oti admitted: 'We're just hoping that everything can be okay. I think at the moment it's really important to listen to the government guidelines and just take it day by day. 'The most important thing is that everyone is safe and everyone is healthy. So, at the moment, we're all just isolated together. We're all in the same boat really.' Reining champs: The dance competition airs every year in autumn (pictured last year's winners Oti Mabuse and Kelvin Fletcher), and BBC previously suggested the show could go ahead Hopeful: Talking to Lorraine on Monday morning's GMB, the professional dancer revealed that those involved with making the show are 'just hoping that everything can be okay' All in the same boat: 'The most important thing is that everyone is safe and everyone is healthy. So, at the moment, we're all just isolated together. We're all in the same boat really' she added Lorraine replied: 'You have your title to defend!' Later that morning, Oti's sister Motsi Mabuse, 39, appeared on This Morning from her home in Germany. The Strictly Come Dancing judge Strictly judge explained to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford how Germany's version of Strictly is still going ahead, despite the coronavirus pandemic Motsi said: 'What's different? First of all the couples are quarantined together. They train and live together. So, that's quite different. Keep dancing! Last week BBC bosses confirmed Strictly Come Dancing was set to go ahead this year amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (pictured L-R Bruno, Motsi, Shirley and Craig) Popular: Strictly Come Dancing has been one of TV's biggest ratings winners since it began in 2004 with millions tuning in each year to watch celebs taking to the dancefloor 'We do not have an audience. They cut in an applause. They've changed the stage - it's just a lounge - and there are minimum people in the studio, they've stripped it down. 'And it's constantly being cleaned. Everyone, even the make-up artists wear masks. The first few weeks it didn't feel quite right.' Oti's admission comes a week after BBC bosses confirmed Strictly Come Dancing was set to go ahead this year amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The broadcaster's controller of programming suggested the dance competition, which airs every year in autumn, could still go ahead. Speaking to Emma Bullimore on BBC Essex, BBC's Dan McGolpin said: 'It wouldn't be the same if we didn't have Strictly in the autumn, would it? 'So no of course the BBC is doing everything it can, and I know that everyone involved in that production team would absolutely love that to happen this Autumn.' The competition typically launches in August or September with the reveal of the celebrity lineup, and live shows follow in October as the programme concludes in December. Dan said he was hopeful filming would kick off as planned, if the current health crisis improves, adding: 'We've really just got to keep watching the government advice, thinking about what's possible. 'And if there's any way of bringing Strictly back this autumn, then we absolutely will. That's very much our intentions, so yeah fingers crossed.' The show must go on: It comes Anton du Beke has vowed to return to the Strictly dance floor for the next series and cleared up concerns over the show's fate (pictured 2017) Dan echoed comments made by pro dancer Anton Du Beke, who is keen to push on as planned. Anton said on The Steph Show: 'The actual live stuff doesn't start until about September, so we're hoping we'll be out of it by then and back to some sort of normality. 'I think everyone will be ready for a bit of Strictly Come Dancing by then!' Whenever the programme returns, it will be without departing stars Kevin Clifton and AJ Pritchard, after both the pros recently confirmed their respective exits. Head judge Shirley Ballas has paid tribute, saying: 'They've been a great part of the show. We love them, we wish them well, they've chosen to go onto other things, but the show will continue.' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she's never spoken to Joe Biden - nor has his campaign reached out to the progressive congresswoman, who was a key surrogate for Bernie Sanders. Ocasio-Cortez spoke by phone with the New York Times and explained that party 'unity' shouldn't be rushed and should be 'uncomfortable' at times - and should be more thoughtful than what she's so far seen from the Biden campaign. 'They floated this olive branch to the progressive left of lowering the Medicare age to 60. And it's almost insulting,' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50. So we're talking about a "progressive concession" that is 10 years worse than what the nominee had in 2016.' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to The New York Times about bringing the Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party together on the heels of Sanders departing the 2020 race She explained that presumptive nominee Joe Biden needed to do more than throw 'a couple of bones' at progressives in part because he needed to broaden his coalition in order to win against President Trump AOC (left) argued that there were real policy differences betwen Bernie Sanders (right) and Biden and that they shouldn't be brushed under the rug 'as an aesthetic difference in style' as she warned Democrats of rushing unifying the party Last week, on the heels of Sanders stepping out of the Democratic primary, Biden released a set of plans - one that would bring Medicare eligibility down to age 60 and another that would cancel some student debt. 'Sen. Sanders and his supporters can take pride in their work in laying the groundwork for these ideas, and I'm proud to adopt them as part of my campaign at this critical moment in responding to the coronavirus crisis,' Biden said in a Medium post. Biden has said he's against Medicare-for-all and said he wouldn't pick a running mate who supported going that far, characterizing it as expensive and too much of a political heavy lift - with improving Obamacare his main healthcare aim. AOC pointed out that these are real differences and shouldn't just be brushed under the rug 'as an aesthetic difference of style.' 'Unity and unifying isn't a feeling, it's a process,' she said. 'The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved - thats how you know its working,' she continued. 'And if Biden is only doing things hes comfortable with, then its not enough.' She added that she believed scrutinizing Biden through this process would help him in the end because she worried that simply saying she supported him as the nominee wouldn't bring voters along. She pointed to do blocs of the Democratic Party that he's had trouble reaching - young people and Latinos. 'And so, I don't think this conversation about changes that need to be made is one about throwing the progressive wing of the party a couple of bones - I think this is about how we can win,' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'I think its a difference between making an argument for harm reduction, and making the argument for, theres actually going to be progress made for us,' she added. Though she said she also believed that Biden didn't win because voters were smitten with his ideas. 'I want to respect his win, he won because of his coalition building, he won because of his service, he won for a lot of different reasons - but I don't think he won becasue Americans don't want "Medicare-for-all,"' Ocasio-Cortez told the paper. 'And in this moment, I wouldn't be surprised if what we're seeing with coronavirus didn't further change people's views in further support of a progressive agenda.' Ocasio-Cortez said there 'could be' a joint rally between the New York Democrat and Biden, she's just never talked to him. A spokesperson for Biden did not return a request for comment on whether the presumptive Democratic nominee planned to reach out to Ocasio-Cortez. 'But I know the goal ultimately is to win. And I'm not trying to needle as a way of making a point or to score points. I want to win. And I want to make sure we win broadly,' she told The Times. Kapil Wadhawan The Shiv Sena on Monday said the IPS officer, who gave permission to scam accused DHFL promoters Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan and 21 others to travel to a hill station amid lockdown, was appointed in the state Home department by previous chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. It is now clear who is actually behind IPS officer Amitabh Gupta's decision and on whose instructions he would have put the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government into a "crisis", an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said without taking any name. "This clearly indicates a "conspiracy plot, which could not succeed," it said. After Home department's special principal secretary Gupta allegedly gave the Wadhawans a letter which facilitated their travel to Mahabaleshwar hill station in Satara district last week, Fadnavis said "it is not possible a senior IPS officer would do such gross mistake knowing the consequences on his own". Following a row over the issue, the MVA government (comprising the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress) on Friday sent Gupta on compulsory leave and ordered a probe in the matter. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show Defending the government over the issue, the Shiv Sena on Monday said, Amitabh Gupta was appointed in the state Home department by previous chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. He must have trusted the efficiency of Gupta before appointing him into the Home department." "It is now clear and self-explanatory who has been actually behind Gupta's decision and on whose instructions he would have put the MVA government into a crisis," the Marathi publication said. It is the same officer (Gupta), appointed by previous chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who has "created trouble for the state government by favouring the Wadhawan family," the Shiv Sena said. "It seems some conspiracy was being hatched but could not be successful," it said. One of the leaders from opposition party says there should be immediate action against Amitabh Gupta, while Fadnavis claimed the IPS officer would not do something like that on his own, the Sena said. "It clearly underscores a conspiracy plot, which could not succeed," it claimed. If this government had any plans to help the Wadhawan family, why would Satara district collector seize their vehicles and put them under quarantine, the Sena argued. "The opposition in the state should ask its questions to the Centre that who was behind Gupta in issuing the letter (to Wadhawans) and what exactly has the Centre planned in the Wadhawan case, it added. Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan are under the scanner in the Yes Bank and Punjab and Maharashtra Co- operative Bank scams. The CBI registered an offence against Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Yes Bank's then Managing Director and CEO Rana Kapoor and others on March 7, an official earlier said. Since then Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan were absconding, he added. A court issued a non-bailable warrant against both on March 17, but they did not appear, he said. The Enforcement Directorate also issued summons to the Wadhawan brothers in the Yes Bank case and asked them to appear on March 17. The duo reportedly cited the coronavirus pandemic and skipped the appearance, officials said. Islamabad, April 13 : Two pilots were killed on Monday when a Pakistan Army aircraft crashed near the city of Gujrat in Punjab province during a routine training mission, according to the military's media wing. The Inter-Services Public Relations identified the two vicimts as said Major Umer, an instructor pilot, and Lieutenant Faizan, a student pilot, reports Dawn news. Jawad Shaukat Ali, media coordinator of Rescue 1122 Gujrat told Xinhua news agency that no loss of life or property was reported on the ground as the wreckage of the Mushaq plane fell in an open area, far away from the residential settlements. He added that the military cordoned off the area following the crash and all the rescue work including the recovering of the bodies was handled by the security personnel. On March 23, a Pakistan Airforce F-16 aircraft crashed near Shakarparian in Islamabad during rehearsals for the Pakistan Day Parade. Wing Commander Nauman Akram was killed in the crash. Japan has allocated an economic stimulus package of $2.2 billion to help its manufacturing firms shift production out of China, where supply chains have been disrupted due to coronavirus outbreak, a Bloomberg report said. Out of $2.2 billion, the Japanese government proposes to allot 220 billion yen ($2 billion) to firms for shifting production back to Japan and 23.5 billion yen to companies seeking to move manufacturing base to other countries, the report quoted sources as saying. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe-led Japanese government has taken this decision at a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit to Japan early this month. It remains to be seen how this change in policy stance will affect Japan's relationship with China, which is one of its biggest trading partner. Also Read: Coronavirus lockdown: Govt likely to take final call on lockdown extension on April 11 On April 7, PM Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and six other prefectures with big urban populations that have been grappling with a rising cases of coronavirus. He also announced a record 108.2 trillion yen ($992 billion) stimulus package to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and to protect the lives and lifestyles of the public and move toward economic recovery. The relief fund, which amounts to 20 per cent of the Japan's annual economic output, indicates the magnitude of damage that policy makers are bracing for. There have been 13 more COVID-19 cases identified in Victoria overnight, taking the total to 1281. The death toll remains at 14, while 14 people are in intensive care. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the latest numbers were encouraging but not cause for relaxing of any of the state's social distancing rules. "I am deeply grateful for the sacrifices people are making," Mr Andrews said. As general manager of the UN Digital Solutions Centre (DSC) and managing director of Kenya-based Sera Afrika a consultancy devoted to sustainable economic growth in business and society Kate Krukiel has firsthand experience in how emerging technology is transforming the enterprise and its relationship with society at large. At the UN, she works to address operational challenges facing the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP). Prior to her current roles, she was UN global technology strategist and the director of strategic partnerships for Microsoft. She has worked in the Middle East and Africa, focusing on private and public sector partnerships with the goal of breaking down political, social, and language barriers in creating lasting technological change in emerging markets. In this Q&A, Kate shares her insights on applications of key emerging technologies including AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and blockchain technologies expected to drive what has been called the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), a tech-fueled, fundamental transformation in industrial processes and a jump in productivity. What 4IR technologies have been tested or successfully implemented by the UN Digital Solutions Centre and what problems are they solving? Kate Krukiel Kate Krukiel is GM of the UN Digital Solutions Centre and managing director of Sera Afrika. United Nations organisations utilise a Joint Sanctions Checklist to ensure that sanctioned entities are not qualified for UN procurement processes. Updates to the list are cumbersome, prone to error and, while a joint list, updated by each agency. Its a perfect use case for the newly formed UN DSC, with its mandate to offer cost-efficient, innovative technology as shared services across the UN family. Joint Sanctions list checking is a core operational business process that can readily be optimised using robotic process automation (RPA). This was the first pilot to test collaboration and scaling-up of a solution across two organisations that greatly reduces costs, time and manual work. The bot screens parties with whom the organisations have a commercial relationship, funded partnership or other financial relationship including staff, consultants, contractors or any other cash recipients. The UN DSC is a pilot partnership between UNHCR and WFP, and supported by ICC (the UNs International Computing Centre). The DSC aims to use cutting-edge technologies to address common operational challenges faced by both agencies and, hopefully the wider UN. Some of the solutions youre considering at the UN DSC include using RPA to automate the sanctions screening process, automation of invoice processing, intelligent software to aid in preparation and review of agreements, and chat bots for internal and external queries to support functions like human resources or finance. Whats the approach to deciding which projects get funding priority and what are some of the resources youve been able to secure in order to move forward with your mission? We are keen to have a working pipeline of both quick wins and longer-term projects. With the variety of needs mapped to discrete technologies, developing impactful solutions that the UN employees value is critical. We work with the board (currently UNHCR and WFP) to prioritize and also look at what needs span more UN organisations. For instance, invoice automation is something every UN Agency can leverage, so this is something we are working on now. The UN DSCs financial model is also a cost recovery model. The more organisations that we are able to scale solutions for, the lower the upfront costs become. This is a great incentive to innovate and collaborate across the UN. By the way, this is a mandate from the UN Secretary-General on UN reform that we abide by strongly. Can you give us an example of some challenges and how technologies such as AI, robotics or blockchain can provide solutions to these challenges? We now have several other use cases to apply similar technologies from time tracking, talent acquisition, supply chain training, digital identity, cash advances and more. We recently hosted the first bootcamp to solicit internal ideas and host a week of ideation and solution design that spanned technologies from virtual reality to blockchain. Other interesting use cases include talent acquisition and identity. As you know, the United Nations comprises over 60 organisations, and being able to get the right talent, foster that talent and connect to roles across entities and geographies is critical. We are in the process of looking at artificial intelligence to help enable this, make onboarding quicker and ensure that each UN staff member has the best career path for their duration. The UN Joint Staff Pension Fund is piloting a blockchain, biometric mobile app for e-certification and pension payments for UN retirees. This same technology could be used to implement a strong digital identity system from day one of employment through retirement, for cost savings, transparency and ease of use for all employees. Which blockchain solutions are you considering as a solution for securely storing staff records and streamlining secure inter-Agency transfers? Are you leveraging existing protocols or building in-house solutions? For the above-mentioned pension scenario we are using a Hyperledger solution. WFP, also, for instance, is using Ethereum for cash payments to beneficiaries. The opportunity is vast for both internal operations and mission critical delivery of services to the world the UN serves. What are the key lessons you learned from your previous role as UN global technology strategist and the director of strategic partnerships for Microsoft? First and foremost, that the Microsoft brand opens doors but comes with a moral and ethical code. This helped me develop a strong work ethic and work style that will be with me forever. Second, working across the UN system for 12 years, you understand how we literally speak different languages within different sectors, and then across diverse geographies. Being able to break down those communications from the private sector, NGOs, civil society groups and the UN was critical to my success and enabled me to learn both culturally and technically. Many jobs are threatened by redundancy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We expect that existing jobs will also go through step-changes in the skill sets required to perform them. How should businesses or governments facilitate relevant skills and knowledge acquisition to unlock future opportunities for workers? What I see today with some of the artificial intelligence technologies coming out to map skills is incredible. Utilize these! We have gone through previous revolutions and we have survived, adapted and created required skills. We will do it again and are lucky enough to have tools, like artificial intelligence to help map and understand the skill sets our organisations have and then forecast those that we will need. One critical issue we have across Africa is the lack of available data or even capturing that data. How can we know where to go or what to change if we dont know where we are? There are two aspects here, the capturing and the availability. We are more than likely capturing a lot of data on the continent but there are very few data standards and methods of making this data available, secure and consistent. This is the most crucial aspect to then understanding where we want to go, based on where we are today. That was an injustice to my brother. First of all he wasnt convicted, he was a detainee. Awaiting trial, he couldnt even go to trial because they shut the court system down," he said. "Nobody, incarcerated or detainee, they should not be dying in there. Nobody should die in there. T commissioned original works by the artist Jessica Wohl, who made pieces inspired by the artists mentioned in this essay. The snowballs that blanket this family portrait are a reference to the artist DAVID HAMMONSs ephemeral 1983 piece Bliz-aard Ball Sale, in which he sold snowballs on the streets of New York City. The frame is an interpretation of his African American Flag, which Hammons created in 1990, replacing the flags traditional red, white and blue with the black, red and green of Marcus Garveys Pan-African flag. T commissioned original works by the artist Jessica Wohl, who made pieces inspired by the artists mentioned in this essay. The snowballs that blanket this family portrait are a reference to the artist DAVID HAMMONSs ephemeral 1983 piece Bliz-aard Ball Sale, in which he sold snowballs on the streets of New York City. The frame is an interpretation of his African American Flag, which Hammons created in 1990, replacing the flags traditional red, white and blue with the black, red and green of Marcus Garveys Pan-African flag. Artwork by Jessica Wohl. Photographed by Weichia Huang. Source photograph: Stockbyte/Getty These days, artists of all kinds are expected to be available for public consumption. But a small and highly influential group of them has chosen to disappear from society in favor of letting their work speak for itself. What does it mean to be inaccessible in an age of oversharing? FOR THOSE OF us old enough to remember an era when we didnt account for our existence on social media, when we could attend a dinner party without being tagged like a shot deer on someones Instagram story, when privacy was respected and deeper meanings had room to quietly take root and bloom, it is no surprise to see artists flinching from the din of publicity. How can we really look and listen when we are so busy being seen and heard? Art, as Susan Sontag wrote in a 1967 essay, The Aesthetics of Silence, has acquired a spiritual quality in secular culture, becoming a place to reckon with and question the human project and, perhaps, even transcend it. To create, in other words, isnt only about self-expression; it is also a realm of mystification, satisfying our craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech, as she puts it. Silence is an essential part of the creative process, opening a space for contemplation. So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has with an audience, she goes on. To withdraw from the public is the artists ultimate otherworldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter and distorter of his work. The T List | Sign up here Shapes that reference nature and the cosmos (including fish, plants and black holes) are common in the work of the sculptor LEE BONTECOU. Artwork by Jessica Wohl. Photographed by Weichia Huang. Source photograph: Superstock/Everett Collection All art legislates between private and public spheres; it has also often been a way of hiding in plain sight, a place for coded identities, for the obliqueness of lyricism. As Marcel Proust claimed, That which enables us to see through the bodies of poets and lets us look into their souls is not their eyes, nor the events of their lives, but their books, precisely where their souls, with an instinctive desire, would like to be immortalized. And so it fits that Sontag both an outspoken critic and a novelist would appreciate these tensions: the artists need for abstraction and ambiguity, the critics desire to elucidate. That she wrote this before the art market exploded, before artists were deified and cast as saviors of a broken world, before we looked to them not only for beauty, inspiration and affirmation but also for a form of self-critique, surely had a lot to do with her own fraught relationship with celebrity. Sontag, one of the last public intellectuals until her death in 2004, knew firsthand the cost of attention: what a distraction it could be; the risk of self-censorship to buff ones own image. (Even posthumously, her biographer, Benjamin Moser, took her to task in his 2019 book, Sontag: Her Life and Work, for not speaking out about her own sexuality during the AIDS crisis.) Today, we expect artists to perform a public role, to assent to interviews and magazine profiles in which they explain and justify their work, to attend openings in enviable clothes, to hold forth on feminism and racism and social injustice and the latest catastrophes, political and environmental. YET THERE HAS always existed a small but powerful shadow world of creators who have managed to outfox public expectation to varying degrees, evading de rigueur press and book tours while making their impact resonantly felt. Some have pulled this off with pseudonyms, among them Banksy and Elena Ferrante, who has written copiously on the liberation she found in detaching her public face from her work. Others have employed alter egos to convey their message, like David Bowie, who adopted the persona of Ziggy Stardust, an alien rock star who comes to Earth with a message of hope only to be destroyed by his fans and his own excesses. It is one of musics great commentaries on fame, created at a time when Bowie himself was self-destructing in celebritys glare. As a critic whose work hinges on the notion that theres a great deal of value to be learned from the particular contexts, personal and otherwise, in which art is made, I find myself shuttling between two impulses: the desire to get closer to those difficult truths and to understand the very real costs to exposure. I want to protect inspirations riverbank, those Romantic thoughts of more deep seclusion, as Wordsworth put it, while also making space for the kind of powerful storytelling possible in art, stories that, so often these days, seek to fill a historical void. A family portrait is embellished with visual motifs (bullet holes and American flags) from Oozewald (1989), a work by the conceptual artist CADY NOLAND that alludes to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Artwork by Jessica Wohl. Photographed by Weichia Huang. Source photograph: Image Source/Getty Rare, in fact, is the artist who has succeeded in entirely separating personal identity from work, like Martin Margiela, one of the most influential designers of all time despite the fact that few fashion insiders know what he looks like; his name has become a metonym for avant-garde cool. In fine arts, withdrawal from public life is often interpreted as an extension of a larger artistic project, as when the conceptual artist Lee Lozano pulled a Duchamp and retired with Dropout Piece around 1970, refusing contact with longtime friends and collaborators and essentially drawing a frame around her own absence, writing in her notebook that it was the hardest work I have ever done, because it involves destruction of (or at least complete understanding of) powerful emotional habits. Cady Noland, still among the highest-selling living female artists, stopped showing her work around 2000 and even began to disavow some of it: In 2011, she renounced a damaged 1990 silk screen, Cowboys Milking; in 2014, it was her 1990 sculpture Log Cabin Facade, which had been extensively restored without her consent or consultation. Like that of the interventionist artist Laurie Parsons, who left her art career in 1994 to become a social worker, these womens departures feel not so much like the ultimate otherworldly gesture but rather a deliberate form of resistance to a patriarchal and market-oriented art world. But few artists have been as successful at this kind of recusal as a form of protest as David Hammons, among the most respected contemporary artists despite the fact that he rarely submits to interviews (he likens them to police interrogations) or attends his own openings. This, too, has largely been viewed as a commentary on the art worlds smug and still largely white self-regard, but the artist, who is black, has said that he is simply too private to talk about where his work comes from, that doing so would feel like a bodily violation. Across these three family photographs, a tree and a bench are a nod to the work of the artist LAURIE PARSONS; V-2 rockets and bananas are images found in THOMAS PYNCHONs 1973 novel, Gravitys Rainbow; and a pair of Tabi shoes (inspired by traditional Japanese split-toed socks) reference those originally designed by MARTIN MARGIELA in 1989. Artwork by Jessica Wohl. Photographed by Weichia Huang. Source photographs, from left: Classicstock/Akg-images/H. Armstrong Roberts; Superstock/Everett Collection; Mirrorpix/Topfoto Hammons is famous enough to let his work largely speak for itself, not unlike the author Thomas Pynchon, whose reclusiveness hasnt diminished his eminence or influence on American letters (arguably, the opposite is true). And yet withdrawing from public life entirely is never without risk: I suspect for any Pynchon or Greta Garbo or Hammons theres someone like Lee Bontecou, who was one of the most exciting names in 1960s art before she left New York in the early 1970s and faded from view. The first woman represented by the powerful gallerist Leo Castelli, Bontecou was known for her strikingly original, imposing wall reliefs made of steel and canvas; often, they featured the motif of a black hole. At the time, it almost seemed as if she had disappeared into one of her own works when in fact shed only moved out of the city with her husband and daughter (and continued to teach at Brooklyn College for the next two decades). She never stopped making art, as a 2003 show at the University of California, Los Angeless Hammer Museum revealed: Over the course of three decades of relative isolation, her work had evolved into more delicate, elaborate sculptures that evoked celestial bodies, solar systems and star charts. Its hard to imagine that without this period of seclusion it would have looked quite the same. Her story is a reminder of just how arbitrary and how irrelevant public accolades can be to creation itself. As the artist once told Ann Philbin, the director of the Hammer, Ive never left the art world. Im in the real art world. How much do we need to really know about the artists we admire? I thought of this recently when reading a Pitchfork profile of Dan Bejar of the music act Destroyer, who claims that some of his best shows have resulted when he turns his back to the audience and sings toward his bandmates. As a member of the audience for all the shows Ive ever seen, I just wanted to be flummoxed. Thats all I ever ask from art. Just stagger me, stop me in my tracks. We dont need to go through something together, he said. But surely we do go through something together or at least, thats the spell cast by the song or novel or film we love: The very language we use to talk about art is suggestive of romance. Its difficult for me hearing the voice, reading the words not to feel a connection to the person behind any creative work that succeeds in truly flummoxing me. Like love, this experience of art is rare and real and wonderful and ultimately unpin-downable; like love, it is privately felt and personal in origin yet publicly affirmed by our culture. And so we seek to know more, to maybe even find ourselves in the artists story and become part of its mystery. Its worth the risk, we think, of actually solving it. Megan OGrady is a writer at large for T Magazine. India on Monday issued a strong demarche to Pakistan over the killing of three civilians, including a minor, by Pakistani troops in a ceasefire violation along the Line of Control in Keran sector of Jammu and Kashmir, official sources said. IMAGE: Indian army soldiers patrol near the Line of Control in Mendhar sector of Poonch district. Photograph: PTI Photo The three people were killed when Pakistani forces resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation on Monday, they said. A strong demarche -- a formal diplomatic note -- was made to the Pakistan side on the killing of three innocent Indian civilians, said a source. The demarche was issued to a top diplomat in Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. In Islamabad, Pakistan foreign ministry summoned Indian Charge d'Affaires Gaurav Ahluwalia and lodged a protest, claiming it was the Indian side that resorted to ceasefire violation in Dhudnial, Rakhchikri, Chirikot and Baroh Sectors on Sunday. Pakistan alleged that a two-year-old boy was killed in Dhudnial Sector. Last Sunday, Keran sector was the scene of a deadly operation in which five elite army commandos laid down their lives while eliminating a group of infiltrating militants. There have been frequent incidents of ceasefire violation by Pakistani side since India announced its decision to withdraw special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two union territories in August last year. Pakistan often resorts to ceasefire violations to push militants into the Indian side. Indian troops have also been retaliating to Pakistani actions under its policy of hot pursuit. According to official figure, Pakistani troops resorted to 3,200 instances of ceasefire violations in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, which was highest in the last 16 years. Of these, 1,565 ceasefire violations took place since between August and December after the India reorganised Jammu and Kashmir. In 2018, Jammu and Kashmir recorded 2,936 instances of ceasefire violations by Pakistan. Sri Lanka has reportedly made it compulsory to cremate people who are dying due to the novel coronavirus despite facing protests from rights groups and the country's Muslim population. The Muslim population in the country has said the new government order goes against Islamic tradition that requires them to bury the body of the deceased. According to reports, seven people have lost their lives due to COVID-19 in Sri Lanka so far, of which three belonged to the Muslim faith. All the bodies were reportedly cremated by the authorities despite protests from relatives of Muslim patients. Read: UAE Considering Travel Restrictions On Countries Refusing To Receive Their Citizens Sri Lanka's Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi on April 12 reportedly said that the bodies of all the people who have died of coronavirus or suspected to have died of coronavirus, shall be cremated. The decision has received a lot of criticism from rights groups and other religious freedom monitoring bodies. Amnesty's South Asia Director Biraj Patnaik had earlier this month said that the government should be working on bringing communities together rather than creating a divide at this difficult time. Read: Good News: London Residents Clap For Medical Workers Fighting COVID-19 On Frontline Sri Lanka's main political party that represents the country's Muslim population has accused the government of 'callous disregard' for religious freedom and the families' wishes. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, both cremation and burial of coronavirus patients are permitted. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has also expressed concern with reports of forced cremation of Muslims who died from coronavirus in Sri Lanka. USCIRF is concerned with reports of forced cremation of Muslims who died from #coronavirus under new govt guidance in #SriLanka; a violation of Islamic burial practice which forbids cremation. Under @WHO guidelines, both burial and cremation are permitted.https://t.co/JM0Fg4FZMB USCIRF (@USCIRF) April 7, 2020 Read: COVID-19: Canadian Family Recreates 'The Simpsons' Intro, Netizens Ask For All Episodes Coronavirus outbreak The deadly coronavirus infection has claimed more than 1,14,000 lives across the world and has infected over 18,53,000 people globally since it first broke out in December 2019. China was the most affected country until last month before Italy and Spain surpassed it to record the most number of deaths anywhere in the world due to COVID-19. The virus is believed to have originated from a seafood market in China's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the disease, where animals were reportedly being traded illegally. Read: US Records 6.6 Million Unemployment Cases In One Week, Total Number Reaches 16 Million The United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Iran have also overtaken China in terms of the COVID-19 death toll. The latest country to join the bandwagon is Belgium, where 3,600 people have died so far, compared to China's 3,341. Germany is on its way to surpass the East Asian country as it has crossed the 3,000 benchmark last week. (Image Credit: AP) Amid the spurt in COVID-19 cases, police here have deployed drones, as a key surveillance instrument, to keep a tab on people's movement and prevent mass gatherings, if any, a senior officer said. The unmanned aerial vehicles have been pressed into service over densely-populated localities -- Hatibagan and Shyambazar in northern part of the city and Burrabazar and New Market in central Kolkata - to record videos and aid the police in their efforts to enforce the lockdown order. "At the moment, three drones are being used for the purpose. We are keeping a check on crowded areas, mostly markets places, where people gather violating the lockdown rules," the senior Kolkata Police officer said. More such drones will be employed for the purpose over the next few days, he said. "People have to understand why gatherings have been barred for now. Until then, it will be difficult to fight this virus. The metropolis is densely populated and we have to make sure everyone maintains social distancing norms," he noted. No one will be allowed to step out of homes without wearing masks, and strict measures would be taken against those flouting the rules, the officer stated. "Once we receive the footage from the drones, we send local police station officers there to ensure people abide by the orders. Going by the government's directive, we will not allow anyone to come out of homes without masks," he added. The state government on Sunday made masks mandatory for people visiting public places. Meanwhile, police here have also started providing on-call taxi services for emergencies. "This is a taxi service available only for emergencies. Not more than three persons can travel at a time. Also, anybody wanting to avail the taxi service can dial 1073, but he or she will also have to furnish relevant documents," another police officer said. So far, West Bengal has reported 122 COVID-19 cases, according to the state health department. Of them, seven have died and 22 recovered from the disease. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three hours before the 11:59 p.m. April 13 deadline to compose a new government, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make the tough decision to sign onto an agreement for a unity government. Gantz delivered his statement after a long day of talks. Earlier in the day, negotiations on the establishment of a coronavirus-emergency government exploded over perceptions that Netanyahu was backtracking from everything that had been agreed upon. Both sides finally went back to the negotiating table, with Gantz championing a responsible and stately approach, saying he wouldnt close the door to a national unity government. During the day, Gantz considered releasing a combative announcement with an ultimatum: If Netanyahu did not respect earlier understandings and sign the unity agreement, Gantz would advance legislation preventing an indicted politician (Netanyahu) from heading a government. Eventually, Gantz decided against it, with the assumption that he could harshen his tone later on in talks. Responding to Gantzs call, Netanyahu tweeted, Benny, I am waiting for you at the premiers official residence in Jerusalem. Come over and we can sign already tonight the establishment of a national-emergency government that would save lives and would function for the benefit of Israeli citizens. Netanyahus words were received with some skepticism within the political system. His latest moves indicate that he got cold feet over the rotation arrangement that would offer him the premiership for the next 18 months, to then be replaced by Gantz. Over the past few days, Netanyahu heaped obstacles on talks, backed away from understandings and demanded guarantees in form of legislation against the possibility that the Supreme Court would disqualify him from serving as prime minister. Gantz refused to offer legislation that would prevent such action by the Supreme Court. Recent polls that favor Netanyahu might be the reason why he has tightened his negotiation stances. He might have even changed his mind and may now prefer new elections. Channel 12 published a new poll April 13 that predicts that Netanyahu's Likud would win 40 Knesset seats in a new vote for the Knesset, with the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc giving the prime minister a majority of 64 seats. The Blue and White headed by Gantz (now separated from Yair Lapid) would only get 19. The poll also gives Netanyahu high marks for his handling of the coronavirus crisis. After the clock hits 11:59 p.m. April 13, Gantz will have to return his mandate for composing a government to President Reuven Rivlin. The president is not expected to hand over the mission to Netanyahu, but to the Knesset, which will have three weeks to propose a majority-supported candidate. And so, talks between Netanyahu and Gantz would resume. If Netanyahu does not make up his mind by then, Israel wont have a government, and as surreal as it sounds, the country will face a fourth set of elections this summer. Filing your taxes can be an annoyance, but it can become even more of a nuisance if you get audited by the IRS. Although the IRS is generally not beginning new audits until after the new July 15 tax filing and payment deadline, you could still be audited after the deadline has passed. Fortunately, your chances of being audited are small only 0.5% of the tax returns filed in 2017 were audited, according to the latest IRS data. However, that small fraction still amounts to nearly 1 million tax filers getting audited, so it can happen if youre not careful. So that youre prepared, these are the red flags the IRS looks out for when reviewing your tax returns. Last updated: July 2, 2020 Large Charitable Donations The IRS often identifies red flags through automated computer programs, said Nate Smith, director in the CBIZ MHM National Tax Office. Almost all returns submitted to the IRS are analyzed by a computer program to search for an anomaly or a result that deviates from norms. Under this program, each return is assigned a score, which the IRS calls a DIF (Discriminate Function) score. The DIF score is used by the IRS to identify returns for examination. One factor that would negatively impact a DIF score is a charitable contribution deduction that is disproportionate with your overall amount of income, Smith said. Mismatches Between Reported Income and Data on Your Tax Forms Make sure the income you report matches exactly what it states on your Forms W-2 and 1099. Any mismatches are considered a red flag, Smith said. Failure To Report Cryptocurrency Transactions The IRS sent around 10,000 letters last July to taxpayers who participated in virtual currency transactions Bitcoin, etc. and who did not report gains or losses involving virtual currency, Smith said. These letters offer taxpayers participation in a voluntary disclosure program if they find that virtual currency transactions were omitted from prior tax filings. Story continues Business Income and Expenses That Are Out of Whack The IRS is always on the lookout for both unreported income and high expenses, said Dave Du Val, chief customer advocacy officer at TaxAudit. Self-preparers should be cautious of accidental duplication of employee and business expenses, and of taking losses on activities that might be a hobby rather than a business activity. Make the Right Moves: What Can I Write Off on My Taxes? Itemized Deductions That Seem High The IRS loves to pounce on people who report high itemized deductions, Du Val said. Its fine to claim these legally allowable deductions for your actual qualifying expenses, but make sure you have your documentation on-hand to support your position before you file your tax return. Du Val notes that 2017 was the last year that unreimbursed employee business expenses were allowed to be deducted on federal returns. (However), many states such as California will still allow the deduction, so its still important to hold onto receipts, he said. Inflated Rental Property Expenses Tax returns with what appears to be inflated rental expenses are frequently caught in the IRS net, Du Val said. Some of the deductions on the Schedule E for rental income, where the income and expenses for rentals are reported, can be easily misinterpreted. Those who prepare their own tax returns should take the time to understand the deductions they are claiming. Not knowing the difference between a deductible expense and one that must be capitalized over a number of years could result in a disaster in an audit. This is especially true if you rent a room(s) to a roommate, as common-use areas are not allowed as rental areas. Dependency Issues When two people claim the same dependent, the IRS gets involved. Although separated and divorced parents who have custody have the clear advantage, they still have to prove everything by providing birth certificates, school records and more, Du Val said. Filing Status Confusion Du Val said that those who file using the head of household filing status are often questioned because the way you categorize dependents with this status can be confusing. The new tax reform bill has not made the rules any easier to understand; in fact, under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, there is a new $500 credit for what the IRS calls qualifying relatives who are not necessarily people who are even related to you, but who meet certain tests and are not eligible for the child tax credit, he said. A Tax Return That Suggests the Taxpayers Are Not Reporting Enough Income To Support Their Lifestyle If your expenses are high but the income you are reporting is not, this could be a red flag for the IRS. For example, a taxpayer who claims a deduction for mortgage interest on a million-dollar mortgage (or the new $750,000 mortgage limit) and personal property taxes on expensive vehicles has a good chance of showing up on the IRSs radar if their taxable income is not enough to pay these expenses, Du Val said. Reporting the Exact Right Ratio of Income and Expenses To Qualify For a Large Earned Income Credit A Schedule C for self-employment that reports just the right ratio of income and expenses to qualify the taxpayer for a large earned income credit is a red flag, Du Val said. The available credit is as high as $6,557 for 2019 for a taxpayer whose income is below a certain threshold, he said. Taxpayers who claim EIC and whose returns include a Schedule C business form should be prepared to show proof of all expenses, and even income listed on the return. Be Prepared: These Are the Receipts To Keep for Doing Your Taxes 199A Deduction for Real Estate Rentals Some people who claim this deduction dont actually qualify for it. To be eligible the owner needs to have a contemporaneously written log showing that they have put in a minimum of 250 hours of non-investor type activity hours into the rentals, Du Val said. Examples do not include such activities as commuting to the rental, reviewing the records or preparing a tax return. Meeting this requirement does not automatically qualify a taxpayer to be considered a real estate professional for tax purposes, or to exclude this income from the Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) calculation. Overseas Accounts The law requires Americans with foreign financial accounts to report accounts to the U.S. Treasury Department, even if they dont generate any taxable income. The Bank Secrecy Act requires you to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) if you have financial interest in, signature authority or other authority over one or more accounts in a foreign country and the aggregate value of all foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the calendar year, according to the IRS. Failure to report these accounts could land you in hot water with the IRS. If you dont disclose overseas accounts, the IRS might find out about them anyway because foreign institutions are required to disclose account holdings by U.S. citizens, CNBC reported. What To Do If You Get Audited Hopefully being aware of these red flags will prevent you from being audited but if you do end up hearing from the IRS, heres what to do to be prepared. 1. Gather All Necessary Documents To defend yourself during a tax audit, youll need documentation to back up what you claimed on your return. The documentation you will need will depend on what it is youre being audited for but can include receipts, bills, canceled checks, employee documents, legal papers, loan agreements, trip logs, medical or dental records, theft or loss documents, business trip tickets or a Schedule K-1. 2. Ask For Help The Taxpayer Advocate Service is an independent organization within the IRS that protects taxpayer rights and assists with tax-related problems. If youre audited, you can contact the service for help. Most audits are conducted via correspondence, but if you do need to meet with an auditor in-person, consider hiring an attorney or another advocate to represent you. The best thing to do if youre subject to an IRS audit is to hire someone and authorize them to go to the audit, said Paul Joseph, an attorney, CPA and founder of Joseph & Joseph, LLC. Never go yourself. In fact, my clients dont go at all. It is my position that I never let my clients come to an audit because they are expected to know all of the answers immediately. By not having the client attend the audit, theyll have an opportunity to discuss and fully explain the return with the hired professional prior to giving a response to the IRS. More From GOBankingRates This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: These Red Flags on Your 2019 Tax Return Could Spark Interest From the IRS As we continue onward into 2020, we are excited to have these two join our efforts to support our Scholars. Wells Fargo and AT&T are two companies that played an important role in the founding of our organization. We look forward to the leadership and experience Julie and Jeff bring to the table. Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholars (APIA Scholars) has elected new members of its Board of Directors: Julie Caperton, Head of Wealth Client Solutions for Wealth and Investment Management at Wells Fargo, and Jeff Luong, Vice President of Radio Access Network Construction and Operations at AT&T. Julie and Jeff will serve as excellent thought partners to collaborate with in advancing our mission, said APIA Scholars President & Executive Director Noel Harmon, Ph.D. As we continue onward into 2020, we are excited to have these two join our efforts to support our Scholars. Wells Fargo and AT&T are two companies that played an important role in the founding of our organization. We look forward to the leadership and experience Julie and Jeff bring to the table. The new Board members bring insight and experience to further APIA Scholars vision of a world where all Asian and Pacific Islander Americans have access to higher education and resources that cultivate their academic, personal and professional success regardless of their ethnicity, national origin, or financial means. APIA Scholars Board Member Julie Caperton is head of Wealth Client Solutions for Wealth & Investment Management (WIM). In this role, she is responsible for leading a cross-WIM platform for Banking, Trust, and Business Sales and Advisory (mergers and acquisitions) offerings, among others. Wealth Client Solutions is also WIMs central contact point for business development with Wells Fargos Wholesale lines of business. A 17-year veteran of Wells Fargo, Julie served most recently as head of Corporate Development as well as head of Asset-Backed Finance and Corporate Trust Services. Julie joined Wells Fargos predecessor firm, Wachovia, in 2002 as head of structured products in the legal division. Before joining Wells Fargo, Julie was a securities law and structured-finance attorney with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English and history from Syracuse University and a J.D. from Wake Forest University School of Law. Julie is an advocate for the development and engagement of Wells Fargo team members, serving as an executive sponsor and member of the Enterprise Diversity & Inclusion Council and the WIM Diversity & Inclusion Council. Outside of work, she is a fundraising chair for Christ the King Catholic High School and the founder and chief fundraiser for the Christus Rex Boosters organization. She serves on the Board of Visitors of Wake Forest Law School and is involved in fundraising for the North Carolina Dance Theater and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Julie lives in Cornelius, North Carolina, with her husband, two children, and two dogs. APIA Scholars Board Member Jeff Luong is Vice President of AT&Ts West Access Construction and Engineering, responsible for Wireless and Wireline Access across the Nations 13 Western States, inclusive of Hawaii and Alaska. His organization is comprised of 3,500 employees who plan, design, build, and maintain AT&Ts network infrastructure. He has held numerous leadership positions throughout his tenure, including VP of RAN Construction, National Construction & Engineering (C&E) Staff, Field Wireline C&E Operations across Western and Northeast states, and Chief of Staff for the AT&T President of Network Operations. Jeff joined AT&T (Pacific Bell) in 1996 as an Outside Plant Design and Planning engineer. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife Cindy and their two daughters, Abby and Sofia. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Corporate Finance from the University of Southern California (USC). Jeff also serves on the board of Wescom Credit Union, a financial institution with 24 branches and over 200,000 members throughout Southern California. The APIA Scholars Board of Directors provide counsel and establish policies that further the organizations growing programmatic, scholarship, and research portfolio. About APIA Scholars Based in Washington, D.C., Asian & Pacific Islander American (APIA) Scholars is the nations largest non-profit organization devoted to creating opportunities that provide access to higher education and resources that cultivate the academic, personal and professional success of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (APIAs). These efforts include various development programs, college preparation workshops, and scholarship awards. Since 2003, APIA Scholars has distributed over $150 million in scholarships to deserving APIA students. APIA Scholars manages three scholarship programs: the APIA Scholars General Scholarship, the APIA Scholars Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) Scholarship, and the Gates Millennium Scholars/Asian Pacific Islander Americans funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) The Quezon City Council passed an ordinance Monday afternoon imposing penalties on funeral parlors and crematoriums refusing to accept remains of a COVID-19 related death. That's P5,000 per violation and subsequent revocation of business permit. COVID-19 related deaths include confirmed, probable, and suspected coronavirus cases, and those that are respiratory-related. "No funeral parlor and crematorium may refuse to accept the remains of a COVID-19 related death due to fear of infection or other unjustifiable reasons," the proposal stated. Funeral parlors or crematoriums will also be barred from raising service fees more than the rates before the declaration of community quarantine on March 12. Mayor Joy Belmonte said she will sign the proposed local law. "Actually this measure is an executive measure so of course we will sign it," Belmonte told CNN Philippines. Councilor Peachy De Leon, a principal author of the ordinance, said there is a city government-operated facility, the Baesa Crematorium but it can only cremate eight remains per day. The city has at least three private crematoriums. "We will be coming up with a memorandum of agreement with private crematoriums na they will be doing the cremation also for the COVID-related cadavers," said De Leon. Managing the unclaimed remains De Leon said the measure also sets guidelines on managing unclaimed remains. Based on the ordinance, the remains must be cremated within 12 hours after death. "Pag COVID-related, merong protocol on how to handle it. Hindi mo pwede basta i-open yung body bag. It has to be cremated right away. No cleaning, no whatsoever," De Leon said. [Translation: Theres a protocol in handling COVID-related cases. You just cant open the body bag] This move comes after reports of alleged piling up of remains in some government hospitals in the city. As of Monday morning, East Avenue Medical Center (EAMC) spokesperson Dr. Dennis Ordona reported 13 remains are still in the hospital including 12 probable COVID-19 cases. EAMC morgue can only accommodate five remains. But the hospital recently received a donated refrigerated van as a temporary storage facility. "We do not know full capacity (of the refrigerator van) yet. We are coordinating with the COVID implementing team for the guidelines since the equipment is new to us," Ordono SAId. Earlier, the local government reported that the Lung Center of the Philippines has 12 more bodies. But the hospital administration clarified that the problem was resolved. Cremation cost For those from poor families, the Quezon City government will shoulder all cremation expenses for COVID-19 related cases. For non- residents, Quezon City will coordinate with the family and the local government concerned. "Siyempre it will start with the family. We will let the family know of the protocol then sasabihan ang LGU, for example Caloocan. We will be telling them that there's a body here na it died in Quezon City but is residing in Caloocan. And then magkakaroon ng agreement na they should be the one to handle or manage the body," De Leon said. [Translation: Of course it will start with the family. We will let the family know of the protocol then we will inform the local government unit, for example Caloocan. We will be telling them that theres a body here, it died in Quezon City but is residing in Caloocan. And then there will be an agreement that they should be the one to handle or manage the body.] In case the concerned local government is unable to fetch and process the remains of its resident, it may then ask the Quezon City government to take care of it. "Pwede namang mayroong coordination na ike-cremate na lang dito sa Quezon City. That's also allowed," De Leon said. Cremation in private crematoriums may cost from P40,000 up to P90,000. 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 About seventeen countries across the world are yet to record any case of the Coronavirus disease. The virus started spreading from... About seventeen countries across the world are yet to record any case of the Coronavirus disease. The virus started spreading from Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has been reported in over 185 countries. Coronavirus also known as COVID-19, is a respiratory illness that can be transmitted from droplets of body fluids, such as mucus and saliva. Due to its infectious nature, scientists, health officials have encouraged citizens to practice physical distancing, as governments declare lockdown of major cities. Johns Hopkins Universitys current data shows that more than 1.8 million people have been infected. Global death toll of more than 110,000 has been recorded while more than 412,000 patients have recovered. However, a few countries are yet to report any cases of the coronavirus disease so far. The countries include; New Jersey now has at least 64,584 cases and 2,443 deaths of the coronavirus as the outbreak continued to escalate Monday, with 3,219 new cases and 94 numbers reported in the last 24 hours. Gov. Phil Murphy offered condolences to the families of the 2,443 who have died. To put that in perspective, that is more than the number of New Jersey who gave their lives in the Korean and Vietnam wars," Murphy said during his daily coronavirus press briefing in Trenton. "These numbers hit us right square in the gut. Our hearts are with every family. We honor every lost life. The states tracking website shows 118,097 tests have been reported, with a 46.2% positive rate. As of 10 p.m. Sunday, there were 7,781 patients hospitalized in the state with the virus or suspected of having the virus. Of those, 1,886 were in critical or intensive care, and 1,611 are on ventilators. Thats about 55% of the states capacity for ventilators. Another 556 patients have been discharged in the last 24 hours. Murphy added that the curve of cases in New Jersey is undeniably now flattening" after weeks of strict lockdown orders in calling for residents to stay indoors and the shuttering of many businesses. Murphy cautioned the house is still on fire and people need to continue to adhere to the unprecedented rules to avoid losing ground. It is still rising," he said. Weve got to hit that plateau and then aggressively bring it down the other side. We only do that if you all stay home. Literally. Just stay home. Murphy announced Monday afternoon that New Jersey would join with six other states New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts in developing a regional plan to lift restrictions and re-open, but only after the state has pushed safely past the peak of cases. The partial county-by-county breakdown of cases includes: Bergen County: 10,092 with 482 deaths Hudson County: 7,879 with 236 deaths Essex County: 7,634 with 433 deaths Union County: 6,636 with 217 deaths Middlesex County: 5,987 with 204 deaths Passaic County: 5,950 with 136 deaths Monmouth County: 3,875 with 127 deaths Ocean County: 3,593 with 141 deaths Morris County: 3,225 with 162 deaths Somerset County: 1,809 with 85 deaths Mercer County: 1,646 with 53 deaths Camden County: 1,401 with 35 deaths Burlington County: 1,155 with 24 deaths Gloucester County: 566 with 9 deaths Sussex County: 508 with 38 deaths Warren County: 416 with 24 deaths Hunterdon County: 325 with 11 deaths Atlantic County: 267 with 8 deaths Cumberland County: 187 with 3 deaths Cape May County: 164 with 9 deaths Salem County: 66 with 4 deaths Another 1,203 cases and 2 deaths remain under investigation to determine where the person resides. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage Its difficult to get a complete picture of exactly how many people in New Jersey currently have COVID-19 because the state is testing only symptomatic residents and officials say testing has been backed up for up to 14 days. The state also is not reporting significant increases in daily testing, so it is unclear exactly how quickly the virus is spreading. The curve of cases of the coronavirus in New Jersey is undeniably now flattening" after weeks of strict lockdown orders in calling for residents to stay indoors and the shuttering of many businesses, Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday. Murphy cautioned the house is still on fire and people need to continue to adhere to the unprecedented rules to avoid losing ground. It is still rising," the governor said after announcing the state now has 64,584 cases and 2,443 deaths of COVID-19. Weve got to hit that plateau and then aggressively bring it down the other side. We only do that if you all stay home. Literally. Just stay home. Murphy said the latest numbers showed progress, but he stressed that people must stay the course. If we stop doing what were doing, even one bit, COVID-19 can boomerang on us, the governor said. We are right in the thick of it, folks. We cannot take our foot off the gas." On Sunday, Murphy downplayed the chances that hell begin to lift strict lockdown orders he put in place to battle the pandemic as soon as the beginning of May. Any sort of an economic reopening or recovery depends first and foremost on a complete health care recovery, Murphy said on CBS Face The Nation. He also said hes having discussions with our neighboring states on the whole question of testing, contact tracing, what are the rules of the road going to be for things like bars and restaurants. In all, Murphy has issued 24 executive orders to help slow coronavirus outbreak. As of Monday, the virus had infected more than 1.8 million people across the globe, according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University. Of those, more than 115,200 have died and nearly 441,000 have recovered. NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Sign up for text message alerts from NJ.com on coronavirus in New Jersey: Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Challenge 1: Detecting incoming issues in a fast-changing situation Challenge 2: Making sense of a dynamic threat with limited information Challenge 3: Making life-or-death decisions Challenge 4: The art of strategic coordination Challenge 5: Keep worried publics and wary workers on side The COVID-19 pandemic has become the ultimate stress test for communities, countries and the world. It falls into the "once in a lifetime" category, but the dynamics and challenges it will entail have been studied for years by researchers investigating super wicked problems, transboundary crises and mega crises.Time is at a premium. Political and public service leaders must deliver their ultimate performance in the face of exceptional threats, gaps and flaws in the available data, and high levels of uncertainty about how any interventions will play out. They must do so in the full light of media, and under the forensic scrutiny of experts, business owners and worried citizens. The costs of failure are high for all concerned. Offering steadfast strategic leadership under these circumstances appears to be a daunting prospect.But it is not impossible. Based on extensive research over decades, we identify key current and future leadership challenges, while offering recommendations for leaders seeking to navigate a minefield of issues.The speed and scale of the COVID-19 threat have surprised most, if not all, governments. By the time it became an "official" crisis, the virus and its impact were already cascading across national borders and economic sectors from health to tourism and hospitality. It is very difficult to call a crisis when the public, experts and politicians are mentally not ready to accept the emerging threat as one. The COVID-19 crisis will give rise to new crises, some of which will be hard to imagine now but will seem conventional wisdom next week.Accept that you are now in new territory, where the normal rules of problem emergence and problem definition are not valid. Leaders will have to grasp the evolving nature of the crisis in a timely manner to stay ahead of the curve while avoiding suggestions that they seek to exploit or manufacture it. Timing and framing are everything.It has proven frustratingly hard to understand the speed, scope and consequences of COVID-19. There are many variables and not enough information. Experts disagree on escalation rates and the impact of proposed measures. Seemingly dramatic predictions are based on modeling efforts that make use of disputed input variables. As a result, leaders are navigating in semi-darkness.Accept, as the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte put it, that "with 50 percent being uncertain you still have to make 100 percent of the decisions." There are major limits to what you can know in the here and now, which makes it important to ensure you have whatever is available.Gather as much feedback as possible from statistics on testing and hospital bed capacities, to issues of societal resilience and the extent of compliance with new laws, regulations and guidelines. But realize that the data may prompt new questions. Be aware of what happens in other countries but recognize that threat trajectories and success measures do not automatically translate into valid prescriptions for different environments. Deep uncertainty is the essence of the crisis. Accept major limitations to your information flow rather than waiting for better conditions for decision-making to emerge.The COVID-19 crisis brings all the dilemmas that crisis experts fear most: choosing between who will live and die; weighing how much economic damage we will take to save the lives for a select category of fellow citizens; balancing unpopular measures against the necessity of legitimacy. These are defining choices that determine how history is written. They can also be lonely moments for leaders.Avoid the temptation of heroic leadership the historic model of the ultimate decision that demands the ultimate sacrifice. Stick with the limited hard data that you have, but realize that experts will not take all values into consideration. Making value judgments and weighing the balance of interests are what prudent political leadership is about. In charting a course, take a pragmatic approach by trying to avoid irreversible decisions as long as you can, and create mental and political space for adjusting and reversing decisions that turn out to be counterproductive or wrong.In a global crisis like COVID-19, many organizations public, private and societal will need to do their part. They must work together, as the integrity and effectiveness of the overall response is highly dependent on them joining up their individual responses. They are usually willing to do just that, but they may need guidance. The same is true for citizens, many of whom are keen to volunteer. There is much societal resilience on offer, but it needs to be given a license to operate through explicit facilitation, public encouragement and regulatory flexibility.Think about this crisis and the responses to it across sectors, across levels, across boundaries. In a crisis such as COVID-19, formal competencies and institutionalized boundaries can be navigated with surprising ease, as long as the skills of people and organizations are recognized and respected. Leaders need to reach out and bring everybody on board. That is the art of strategic coordination. Office-driven or agency-centric command and control are overrated.Crisis communication best practice is remarkably simple and consistent. It emphasizes the need for clear, timely, consistent and repeated messaging and actionable advice, delivered by credible sources. Yet it remains surprising how often crisis communication turns out to be an Achilles heel of crisis response. Government communications may be "behind the curve" or offer ambiguous messages that seek to balance competing priorities. Leaders often fail to convince and can be disconnected from peoples experiences. They may also be overly cautious in avoiding panic among citizens and therefore refuse to communicate the whole truth. Fifty years of crisis research has shown this almost never happens as most citizens can handle ominous information when given clear guidance on how to act.If you get it wrong, rumors and intensifying criticism will soon let you know. Do not let it get to that point. Fill the hunger for information and the need for guidance, informed not just by expert knowledge and incoming data but also by grasping the publics evolving mood and spirit. All messaging has to have a clear and convincing bottom line. If the elderly are vulnerable, the message and measures should be aimed at protecting the elderly. If ICU beds are in short supply, leaders should explain where they will come from or who will get to use them. Treat citizens (and staff) like adults. A Montgomery woman was killed Easter Sunday morning in a house fire. Montgomery District Fire Chief Quentin Burke told Alabama News Network, a Montgomery television affiliate, that the 57-year-old woman died from injuries sustained from the house fire. The Montgomery fire department responded to the home on Wyndgate Loop at approximately 4 a.m. Firefighters discovered the two-story home engulfed in heavy visible smoke and immediately searched the home looking for occupants. After several attempts were made to resuscitate the sole occupant, the victim was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim has yet to be identified. The cause of the fire is currently being investigated. 13.04.2020 LISTEN The Institute of Energy Security (IES) is predicting unstable power supply across the country in the coming days if government does not resource electricity service providers. President Akufo-Addo disclosed that the government will fully cover the bills of low-income consumers of electricity in the country for April, May and June 2020. The remaining consumers who fall outside of this category will enjoy a 50 percent reduction in the cost of electricity for the same period. This, the Research and Policy Analyst at the Institute, Raymond Nuworkpor in a Citi News interview said the already existing challenges in the sector may be compounded if funds are not provided urgently to support the rollout of government's intervention. For this policy to come to effect, the government must first make available resource funding to the three entities in the supply chain so that they will be to give us consistent power, but unfortunately, we dont know whether funds have been made available to them and thats the problem now because even before the president made the announcement, we understood that, the IPPs and the rest were unable to get gas supply from Nigeria because of liquidity challenges and Jubilee [field] too is unable to produce enough gas to power our thermal plants so if the government doesnt make funds available to these entities, it will be difficult. The entities in the supply chain are the Ghana Grid Company, the Northern Electricity Distribution Company and the Electricity Company of Ghana. Background Government has decided to fully cover the bills of low-income consumers of electricity in the country for April, May and June 2020. The remaining consumers who fall outside of this category will enjoy a 50 percent reduction in the cost of electricity for the same period. We have decided further measure of mitigation for Ghanaians for the next three months The government will fully absorb electricity bills for the poorest of the poor, i.e: lifeline consumers. This will cover persons who consume 0 to 50-kilowatt hours per month for this period. This forms part of relief interventions by the state amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. Other categories of consumers will enjoy a 50 percent discount within the same period. For all other consumers, residential and commercial, the government will absorb 50 percent of your electricity bill for this period using your March 2020 bill as the benchmark, President Akufo-Addo disclosed. ---citinewsroom California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Monday ordered insurance companies to provide premium discounts for March, April and possibly May in at least six lines of personal and business insurance where the risk of loss has fallen substantially because people are driving less, working less and in some cases have closed their businesses as a result of the coronavirus. The order applies, at a minimum, to private passenger automobile, commercial automobile, workers compensation, commercial multi-peril, commercial liability and medical malpractice insurance in California. The credit, reductions or rebates should be made as soon as possible, but no later than August, he said. In California, collisions on state highways dropped precipitously between March 1 and April 12 compared to the same period last year, according to preliminary data from the California Highway Patrols Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System. In the Bay Area, the total number of crashes dropped 48% to 2,312 from 4,475 and fatal collisions dropped to just one this year from 22 last year. Statewide, the total number of crashes dropped 43% to 16,066 this year and fatal collisions dropped by 84% to 31 from 194. These numbers exclude accidents responded to by agencies other than the CHP. In the past week, most of the nations large auto insurance companies announced they would provide across-the-board discounts on personal auto policies because most customers are driving less and less likely to be involved in accidents. The most common deal was a 15% credit for April and May premiums, although some offered more or less. The Consumer Federation of America on Monday assigned letter grades ranging from A to F to offers from the nations 35 largest insurance companies. The grades were based on the amount of premium relief, the number of months covered and the method of delivery. State Farm, the nations largest auto insurer, got an A for promising an immediate dividend to customers amounting to 25% of premiums for March 20 through May 31, said the report, co-authored by the Center for Economic Justice. GEICO, the second largest, got a D-minus. Although it is offering a 15% credit off your next full policy term, customers wont get the credit until they renew their policy between April 8 and October 7. The credit will also apply to any new policies purchased during this period. This is a pure marketing scheme, designed to force their customers to stay with GEICO, said Richard Holober, president of the Consumer Federation of California. He said drivers could get a credit from their current insurer, then switch to GEICO on Oct. 1 and get another one, even though they werent covered by GEICO during the period when shelter-in-place orders were in effect (assuming they have been lifted by October). The consumer groups added that companies likely will have to offer more relief, depending on accident reduction during the crisis. If claims drop by only one-third, premiums should drop by 26%. A more likely 50% drop in claims should lead to a 39.4% reduction in premiums, and in many regions a 67% drop should lower premiums by 52.8%, they said in a news release. Commenting on Laras order, David Sampson, president and CEO of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said, Now is not the time for arbitrary calls for rate decisions. In a statement, he noted that insurers are voluntarily offering additional help for auto and business customers impacted by the coronavirus, such as flexible payment plans, waiving late fees, pausing cancellations and suspending personal auto exclusions for restaurant employees who have started using their own cars to deliver meals. If regulators allow insurers flexibility, private competitive markets will work to the benefit of consumers, he said. The proposed auto discounts are pending approval of state regulators. It was unclear, in California at least, whether insurers would have to file a new rate plan and get it approved before they could offer such discounts. That process could take months. Lara said companies could make such offers without getting prior approval if they follow certain methods outlined in a bulletin, such as using an average percentage based on estimated changes in risk or reduction of exposure. Alternatively, they could refund premiums on a case-by-case basis by, for example, reclassifying a personal automobile exposure from commute use to pleasure use for as long as the pandemic substantially reduces miles driven. Consumers will also have the opportunity to provide their individual actual or estimated experience to their insurance company, the department said in a news release. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes In California, your driving record, miles driven and years of driving experience must be the first-, second- and third-biggest factor in determining auto insurance premiums. After that, insurers can factor in a host of lesser factors. Within those rules, some companies could weigh miles driven more heavily than others in their approved rates. Drivers should contact their insurer to see if they are due a larger discount based on their actual mileage, but the consumer groups warned in a news conference against dropping insurance altogether while they are sheltering in place. In most states (excluding California), insurers can charge extra if drivers have a lapse in coverage. And even if you have ceased driving, it could pay to have uninsured motorist property damage coverage if someone crashes into your parked car and runs away, or comprehensive coverage if your car gets damaged by hail. Laras actions go far beyond last weeks announcements because they apply to many more lines of insurance. A statement from the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies said Laras order fails to factor in operational challenges, and goes far beyond what could be considered a productive response that genuinely benefits policyholders. The California bulletin inappropriately establishes policy assumptions about nearly all lines of insurance, some of which are directly impacted by COVID-19 and may show increased rather than reduced claim experience. For example, theres no expectation that medical malpractice claims activity would be reduced. Until such a time as first responders are granted civil immunity, it would be inappropriate to assume a reduction in claims activity and they could see more, Erin Collins, a spokeswoman for the association, said in an email. She added that businesses identified as essential during quarantine could face liability claims or litigation as a result of increased activity. The association urged Lara to join the overwhelming numbers of state regulators who agree that a federal response to COVID-19 is the appropriate economic relief mechanism. Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender Meghan Markles Everlane jumpsuit has been given a summer update. (Getty Images) Yahoo Lifestyle is committed to finding you the best products at the best prices. We may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page. Pricing and availability are subject to change. One of the many things Meghan Markle did during her time as a senior royal was to shine a spotlight on ethical fashion brands. Whether it was stepping out on the red carpet or visiting one of the charities she was patron of, her lessons in style were frequent and fairly sourced. One such brand that Meghan continues to champion is Everlane, a designer which focuses on comfortable, long-lasting basics created in ethical factories by fairly-paid workers. As well as her trusty Everlane tote bag, her affordable jumpsuit from the same brand accompanied her on the then-Duke and Duchess of Sussexs royal tour around Africa. She wore the simple black all-in-one when she visited The Woodstock Exchange, a hub for art and design in Cape Town, to meet with women entrepreneurs working in technology, pairing it with matching Manolo Blahnik heels. Meghan Markle visits the Woodstock Exchange wearing her Everlane jumpsuit. (Getty Images) And now, the basic jumpsuit has undergone a summer overhaul, meaning that weve found the ideal, airy outfit to see us through the warmer months. The newly-styled jumpsuit, which comes in five different colourways, is made of the same breathable fabric you can lounge in while still feeling effortlessly put together. The Linen Square-Neck Jumpsuit features a cool, square neckline and bra-friendly straps and can be paired with a loose T-shirt or worn on its own. Buy it: The Linen Square-Neck Jumpsuit | 72 from Everlane Dress it up with a pair of high heels, as Meghan expertly demonstrated, or style it for everyday use with a pair of sandals. To check out other colours, and jumpsuit, styles you can view the full Everlane collection here, and if youre still keen on Meghans original black version then you can still get your hands on one for 98 here. In short, rain or shine, smart or casual, its got you covered. Six years ago, I married a woman I truly believed I loved. It has been bliss until this Corona crisis broke out. Having stayed at home for about 4 weeks, I am going crazy. My apartment is small and I cannot stand one more minute of my wife. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. The smallest issue becomes a big issue. I cannot express my disappointment and need immediate help. Staying indoors is leading to insanity. How can you help me get an online consent divorce? What if my wife refuses? GO, Dar Both of you might be needing marriage counselling as this might be a phase that will hopefully end soon. Everyone needs their space and you and your wife might be missing this space leading to the huge incompatibility issue arising now. First piece of advice is not to rush making hasty decisions.We have researched on online consent divorces. In Tanzania these are not available. Same applies to most other jurisdictions. A divorce is not something you can online order on e bay or amazon and pay for with your credit card. Before a divorce petition is granted, there is a physical Court process that you must follow, and likely also be present in Court.The Law of Marriage Act of Tanzania provides for specific grounds that can be adduced in a petition seeking divorce. For example one cannot simply get a divorce in Tanzania by consent of the husband and wife. Some of the main grounds are cruelty, adultery and dissertation, which likely dont yet apply in your case. We suggest you seek sound legal advice. Records maintenance in money laundering I own a small bureau de change that does small transactions. Recently I have been asked to produce some documents that date way back in 2014. I never maintained such documents but the law enforcement officers insist that I have no choice but to produce them. Is the limit to retain documents not 5 years under our laws? LO, Dar As a bureau de change dealer, since you deal with cash, you fall under the definition of reporting person under the Anti Money Laundering Act. The regulations under this Act, particularly regulation 30, states that such a person must retain records for 10 years. Regulation 30 is worded as follows: (1) A reporting person shall retain records required by section 16 of the Act for a minimum period of ten years from the date- (a) when all activities relating to a transaction or a series of linked transactions were completed; (b) when the business relationship was formally ended; or (c) where the business relationship was not formally ended but when the last transaction was carried out. (2) where a reporting person is required by any enactment to release a record referred to in sub regulation (1) before the period of ten years lapses, the reporting person shall retain a copy of the record. (3) Where a report has been made to the FIU pursuant to the provisions of the Act or the reporting person knows or believes that a matter is under investigation, that person shall without prejudice to sub-regulation (1), retain all relevant records for as long as may be required by the FIU. (4) For the purpose of this regulation, the question as to what records may be relevant in the analysis process may be determined in accordance with the Guidelines. Most bureaus perhaps dont know this, but the records are to be maintained for 10 years, and must be easily retrievable.Money Laundering in Tanzania is not bailable and you should do your best to locate these documents. Setting quarantine centre We are an NGO having our offices in Tanzania. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the way the disease has been spreading around the world, we are thinking of supporting the Government by establishing quarantines centers. Do we need approval for this or is it automatic? Should we be writing to the Ministry of Health seeking approval and submitting our plan. Please guide. GH, Dar The Public Health Act, 2009 obliges the Government through Medical Officer of Health (MOH) and District Medical Officer (DMO) to prevent and control the spread of infectious or communicable diseases. Section 15 of the Act empowers MHO and District DMO to specify quarantine measures that will facilitate the scaling down of the outbreak. One of the quarantine measures is the creation of temporary treatment centers.It is important to note that every state protects and provides basic services for its citizens. The said duty is a legal obligation of each state towards its citizens and is usually provided for under the Constitution. On top of that, the Social Contract Theory as advocated by different philosophers puts a similar obligation to the state to protect its subjects. Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the Government in exchange for protection of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order. What the above implies is that since the citizens pay taxes, the Government is expected in return to provide services such as police protection, education, highway building and maintenance, welfare programs, and medical services. Basing on the above analysis it is worth noting that, individuals, community groups, religious communities, and NGOs usually support the Government through financial measures unless communicated otherwise. The rationale behind the above is because the duty to provide health care and medical services lies on the Government itself. However, based on the Act, subject to relevant approval, you may also offer to assist with setting up such quarantine centres, and approval will only be granted based on the situation at the time. For example, if COVID-19 gets out of control (we pray that it doesnt), then based on the situation then, approval can be sought. However, without approval you cannot proceed with your plan. Infact presently only select hospitals are allowed to treat COVID-19. China might delay submitting revised climate plans to the United Nations "at least until after the U.S. presidential election in November as officials focus on reviving the economy from an unprecedented slowdown," Climate Home News reports. Why it matters: China is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the story signals how the coronavirus-related postponement of critical United Nations talks, which had been slated for November, could shake up the landscape. Under the 2015 Paris agreement, countries are supposed to submit revised emissions pledges to the UN this year. The intrigue: The delay will give countries time to adjust their posture in response to the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, which otherwise would have occurred just a few days before the talks. The new 2021 date for talks in Glasgow, Scotland has not yet been set. Go deeper: Making sense of the UN's climate conference coronavirus delay Is Marshalls plc (LON:MSLH) a good dividend stock? How can we tell? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. On the other hand, investors have been known to buy a stock because of its yield, and then lose money if the company's dividend doesn't live up to expectations. While Marshalls's 2.2% dividend yield is not the highest, we think its lengthy payment history is quite interesting. Some simple analysis can offer a lot of insights when buying a company for its dividend, and we'll go through this below. Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis LSE:MSLH Historical Dividend Yield April 13th 2020 Payout ratios Dividends are typically paid from company earnings. If a company pays more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. So we need to form a view on if a company's dividend is sustainable, relative to its net profit after tax. In the last year, Marshalls paid out 49% of its profit as dividends. This is a medium payout level that leaves enough capital in the business to fund opportunities that might arise, while also rewarding shareholders. One of the risks is that management reinvests the retained capital poorly instead of paying a higher dividend. In addition to comparing dividends against profits, we should inspect whether the company generated enough cash to pay its dividend. Marshalls's cash payout ratio in the last year was 39%, which suggests dividends were well covered by cash generated by the business. It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously. Remember, you can always get a snapshot of Marshalls's latest financial position, by checking our visualisation of its financial health. Dividend Volatility One of the major risks of relying on dividend income, is the potential for a company to struggle financially and cut its dividend. Not only is your income cut, but the value of your investment declines as well - nasty. Marshalls has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. The dividend has been stable over the past 10 years, which is great. We think this could suggest some resilience to the business and its dividends. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was UK0.052 in 2010, compared to UK0.14 last year. This works out to be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 11% a year over that time. Story continues It's rare to find a company that has grown its dividends rapidly over ten years and not had any notable cuts, but Marshalls has done it, which we really like. Dividend Growth Potential While dividend payments have been relatively reliable, it would also be nice if earnings per share (EPS) were growing, as this is essential to maintaining the dividend's purchasing power over the long term. It's good to see Marshalls has been growing its earnings per share at 24% a year over the past five years. Earnings per share have rocketed in recent times, and we like that the company is retaining more than half of its earnings to reinvest. However, always remember that very few companies can grow at double digit rates forever. Conclusion Dividend investors should always want to know if a) a company's dividends are affordable, b) if there is a track record of consistent payments, and c) if the dividend is capable of growing. It's great to see that Marshalls is paying out a low percentage of its earnings and cash flow. Next, growing earnings per share and steady dividend payments is a great combination. Overall, we think there are a lot of positives to Marshalls from a dividend perspective. Market movements attest to how highly valued a consistent dividend policy is compared to one which is more unpredictable. However, there are other things to consider for investors when analysing stock performance. Taking the debate a bit further, we've identified 1 warning sign for Marshalls that investors need to be conscious of moving forward. If you are a dividend investor, you might also want to look at our curated list of dividend stocks yielding above 3%. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. Ministers are not expecting to lift the lockdown this week despite positive signs of progress in the UKs battle against coronavirus, Dominic Raab has said. The foreign secretary, who is deputising for Boris Johnson while he convalesces, said restrictions were unlikely to be eased when the governments scientific advisory committee meets later this week, as the evidence showed the UK has still not passed the peak of the outbreak. But Mr Raab insisted the UK was starting to win in its battle against the virus, as the public were overwhelmingly observing the strict social-distancing guidelines put in place by ministers. His comments come ahead of the review of the three-week lockdown, which was first announced by Mr Johnson on 23 March. Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference, Mr Raab said: We dont expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place at that point and we wont until were confident, as confident as we realistically can be, that any such changes can be safely made. Coronavirus: London on lockdown Show all 29 1 /29 Coronavirus: London on lockdown Coronavirus: London on lockdown A man walks down a deserted Camden High Street Photos Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Goodge Street Station is one of the many stations closed to help reduce the spread Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown An empty street in the heart of Chinatown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown People in masks in Chinatown a day after the lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A near-empty Piccadilly Circus during the first week of lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Sonja, my neighbour, who I photographed while taking a short walk. It was nice to briefly chat even from a distance Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A couple sit on the empty steps of the statue Eros in Piccadilly Circus Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Making sure I stay two-meters apart DArblay Street, Soho Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A mannequin behind a shop window. UK stores have closed until further notice Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A notice displayed on a shop window in Camden Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown As part of the lockdown, all non-essential shops have been ordered to close.Image from Camden High Street Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A skateboarder wearing a mask utilises his exercise allowance in the Camden area Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Communities have been coming together in a time of need Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A woman stands alone in a deserted Oxford Street. Up until a few weeks ago, on average, half a million people visited the street per day Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A couple walk hand in hand down a street in Soho, a day before the stricter lockdown was announced Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown During the first week of March, shoppers focused on stockpiling necessities ahead of a countrywide lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Many supermarkers are operating a queuing system to make sure only a limited amount of customers are allowed in at anyone time Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Stay Safe Curzon cinemas are temporarily closed under the new measures Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Pubs, restaurants and bars were ordered to shut as part of the lockdown Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden High Street There are fears that coronavirus could lead to permanent closure of struggling shops Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden Town is eerily silent on a normal working day Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Shops and supermarkets ran out of hand sanitisers in the first week of the lockdown. As we approach the end of the second week most shops now have started to stock up Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Empty streets around Soho Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A noticeboard on Camden High Street urges the public to stay at home Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Camden High Street, one of Londons busiest tourist streets turns quiet Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Thriller Live confirmed its West End run ended in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown Empty and eerie Soho streets after stricter rules on social distancing announced Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A woman pauses for a cigarette on Hanway Street, behind Tottenham Court Road Angela Christofilou Coronavirus: London on lockdown A man steps outside onto Hanway Street, that sits behind what is usually a bustling retail hub Angela Christofilou Some 11,329 people have died from coronavirus in the UK, an increase of more than 700 since Sunday, when the death toll exceeded 10,000 for the first time. Mr Raab said: Amidst this sobering death toll, there are also some positive signs from the data that we are starting to win this struggle, but we have still got a long way to go and as those grisly figures I just read out show, were still not past the peak of this virus. However, he refused to give details of the governments exit strategy, simply saying: Its absolutely crucially important that we do not take our eye off the ball or the publics focus on the thing that has been a success so far in relative terms which is our ability through widespread support for our social-distancing measures to deprive this virus of the means to spread. The foreign secretary praised the overwhelming majority of people for staying home over the Easter bank holiday weekend, which surprised ministers who were afraid the social-distancing advice might be ignored. By staying home this weekend, youve saved lives, Mr Raab said. Thank you, your efforts are making all the difference. And please keep them up weve come too far, weve lost too many loved ones and weve sacrificed too much to ease up now. Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, warned that deaths were expected to continue to rise over the coming week before reaching a plateau as social-distancing measures begin to slow the outbreak. He said the UK is following the same sort of path as Italy with the number of hospital deaths from Covid-19, adding: I think this week we are going to see a further increase, thereafter we should see a plateau as the effects of social-distancing come through. That plateau may last for some time and begin to decrease. Earlier, Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, signalled that the lockdown was unlikely to be lifted this week. There are early optimistic signs that the steps we are taking are working but until we know more, until we have solid evidence, we must stick with it, she said. New Delhi, April 13 : Union Tourism Minister Prahlad Singh Patel on Monday attended his office and held a meeting with senior officials, who all followed social distancing and used face masks. According to a senior Ministry official, the meeting was held to discuss issues related to international tourists left stranded in India during the nationwide lockdown, as well as to ensure that the tourism industry gets back on track once the lockdown is lifted. "He was clear that nothing will come before safety, but maintained that the Ministry has to keep plans ready for bringing the tourism industry back to normal," the official told IANS. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Given covid-19's reach through the economy, cascading bankruptcies loom as a major threat. These happen when one company's failure to pay its bills weakens the financial health of another, which in turn undermines the viability of yet another and so on, causing a chain reaction. Economic stress from the present pandemic is far more diffuse than it was during the 2008-2009 crisis, and this time the firms that pose the greatest danger are not limited to the financial sector. To mitigate this risk, countries need a "too connected to fail" policy - to provide liquidity to companies whose bankruptcies stand to have the largest ripple effects. This is the real economy equivalent of the too-big-to-fail strategy during the last financial crisis. To combat potential bankruptcy chains, policy makers have four options. First, governments can improve companies' cash flow by boosting demand for their products, including by providing additional income to displaced workers. This approach is already being adopted aggressively, but for many reasons - including that many companies simply can't open while urgent social distancing measures are in place - this won't be enough to stem the risk of substantial numbers of bankruptcies. On March 24, President Trump told a Fox News virtual town hall that hed love to have America opened up and just raring to go by Easter. Bill Hemmer, who was hosting, chuckled, and said that would be a great American resurrection. Later the same day, during a second appearance on Fox, Trump elaborated; Easter, he said, is a very special day for him. Wouldnt it be great to have all the churches full? he asked, rhetorically. I think itll be a beautiful time. Easter Sunday was yesterday, and America, in large part, remained closed. (Some churches did open, in defiance of social-distancing recommendations, but many others held virtual services instead.) Trump spent much of his Easter weekend being angry on Twitter. When he wasnt busy with that, the Daily Beasts Asawin Suebsaeng reports, he was working the phones, asking allies for advice on (you guessed it) when he ought to reopen America (for real this time, no takebacks). Of late, the president has floated the idea of jumpstarting the US economy on May 1. (Federal stay-at-home guidelines are currently in place through April 30, after Trump backed off his Easter-opening wish and extended them.) At a White House briefing on Friday, the timing question was clearly on Trumps mind. Im going to have to make a decision, and I only hope to God that its the right decision, he said. But I would say, without question, its the biggest decision Ive ever had to make. (As many journalists pointed out, state officials, not Trump, are the ones who have the authority to ease lockdown measures, though its also true that Trumps nonbinding guidance carries great weightespecially in red states led by his allies.) Related: Some of the worst takes of the coronavirus crisis, animated Discussion of when we might all be allowed back outside isnt new, to Trump or to the press; for weeks, cliched warnings of lives v. livelihoods and the cure being worse than the disease have swirled in the national discourse, and in right-wing media, in particular. In recent days, what Axios referred to, yesterday, as the great reopening debate has only intensified. Trumps plan to appoint an opening-our-country task forcehes expected to announce its members (names that you have a lot of respect for) tomorrowdrove chatter, including on the Sunday shows, whose anchors also asked federal and state officials to weigh in on Trumps May 1 timeline. Also yesterday, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, headlined, My Plan to Safely Reopen America. And the Times Magazine published a roundtable discussion in which five experts from different fields debated the moral dimensions of the question. Restarting America means people will die. So when do we do it? the magazine asked. In the long run, it wrote, there will be difficult compromises between doing everything possible to save lives from COVID-19 and preventing other life-threatening, or -altering, harms linked to economic inactivity. The Times Magazine acknowledged that in the short term, saving lives and saving the economy are complementary goals. And its roundtable offered important insight on the trade-offs we are already making, and dont talk about enough. (Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, pointed out that were putting low-wage workersgrocery-store clerks, for instancein harms way right now, and that talk about reopening the economy is more about whether were comfortable with the professional classes becoming part of the trade-off.) Still, in general terms, the medias widespread framing of the relationship between protecting lives and protecting the economy as a debate or a trade-off is dangerousor at least one-sided. As Gupta notes, trade-offs already exist. The debate about them exists, too, insofar as there are two sides that are arguing about them. This framing, however, risks missing that there is, in reality, no choice to be made between public health and a healthy economybecause public health is an essential prerequisite of a healthy economy. In recent weeks, several observersincluding the New York Times editorial board, various ethicists, and some financial expertshave noted the flaws in this conversation. THIS IS A FALSE CHOICE!!!!!!, Julia Coronado, an economist, told Axios in late March. If we go back to work and the disease continues to spread, not only will people die, and the 20 percent of our economy dedicated to healthcare be overwhelmed, but people wont have the confidence to resume normal activity. Around the same time, Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, pointed out, in a column for The Guardian, that The global economic depression unleashed by the deaths of millions in the United States, millions in Europe, millions in Asia, millions in India, millions in Mexico and millions in Brazil would be beyond our experience or imagination. These are both important points. Economics involves trade-offs, but these arent binarythey exist in a complex, interlocking system. The notion that we could prematurely (from a health standpoint) end the lockdown and accept the resulting loss of life as collateral in reviving the economy isnt just morally tasteless. Its also a fantasy. Sign up for CJR 's daily email And, as I wrote a few weeks back, any understanding of where were going requires a better understanding than we currently have of the state of play right now, and how it came about. In recent weeks, weve seen a string of useful stories on the initial failures that blinded the Trump administration to the coronavirus until it was too late to stop its spread; on Saturday, the Times added another. (On CNN yesterday, Anthony Fauci, Trumps top virus expert, didnt deny the Timess reporting when pressed on it by Jake Tapper; later, Trump retweeted a missive demanding that he #FireFauci, and, per Suebsaeng, asked allies what they thought of Fauci.) Such reporting doesnt just matter for the public record. It matters because the administration is still making some of the same mistakes, with regard to testingwhich must be much more widespread than it currently is before we can know if reopening the country is safein particular. Until it stops making them, there is vanishingly little chance of safely reopening the country, and thus its economy. Yet rather than act on such stories, Trump gripes about them online, and passes the buck. Trump relentlessly antagonizes the press, and so its tempting to make every story involving him conflictual. When it comes to the cyclical great reopening debate, that framingthe saintly doctors who value human life versus the monstrous president who only cares about money and his reelectionisnt serving our coverage well. Again, that debate is happening, in the same way that debates about whether climate change is real can be said to have happened. Our job, when covering it, should be to deconstruct it, loudly and consistently, as a false choice. We should, obviously, all want the economy open again as soon as possible. Rather than be wary of that goal because Trumps the one advocating it, lets hold him accountable for failing to take the public-health steps necessary to deliver on it. Below, more on the coronavirus: Other notable stories: ICYMI: Why did Matt Drudge turn on Donald Trump? Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop. Following the meeting with commissioners of agriculture last year, the Enugu state government has demonstrated its commitment to investing in weed control by organizing the first-ever training for extension workers on weed management in cassava and maize farming systems in the state. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) through the African Cassava Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) was invited to facilitate the training. At least 40 extension workers drawn from different local governments in the state took part in the two-day theory and practical training sessions held at the Enugu State Cooperative College, Enugu. The aim of the training was to empower extension workers with the tools to educate farmers on how to grow and double cassava/maize yield in their communities. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the training on Friday, March 13, the Program Manager of the state Agricultural Development Program, Dr. Matthias Onu, who represented the Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources in the State, expressed gratitude to IITA for facilitating the training. While welcoming the IITA team which was led by Godwin Atser, Digital Extension, and Advisory Services Specialist; Dr. Onu said the training was important because the state had relatively few extension workers, a number not sufficient enough to serve the state's farming population. He then expressed hope that the training and digital extension tools participants would be exposed to would greatly increase the productivity of cassava and maize. His words: I am glad that this training is coming now because it will assist these few extension workers to reach more farmers more effectively using the digital tools you are going to unveil here. To my fellow extension workers, this is one of the best gifts you have received in recent times. The training has been packaged having in mind that you are very few in number. With your number, you can't do much, but after what they'll expose to you today, you stand a chance of helping to double yield and productivity in cassava, maize and even rice which Enugu is also known for. Onu, as well as some of the participants who spoke, expressed hope that some of the digital tools could be adapted for weed control in other crops like rice. Responding, Atser hailed the state government for its commitment to agricultural development and organizing training that will help improve cassava and maize productivity in the state. According to him, Agriculture is one of the ways to engender development because it creates jobs, it creates peace and it reduces crimes. It is a major solution to the challenges we have as a country. He said the aim of the training, which is the product of five-year research by IITA's Cassava Weed Management Project and ACAI, was to eliminate the pain and drudgery associated with farming, encourage young people to embrace agriculture, help farmers make more money and live well and be able to do other things with the time and resources they are able to save The two-day training covered land preparation, best agronomic practices, types of weeds, types of herbicides, herbicides application, calibration and safety; cassava maize intercropping tool and fertilizer intercropping tool. Other areas covered in the training include gender considerations, barriers and communication in farming systems, Akilimo and digital tools for knowledge dissemination to farmers. Atser and Prof. John Oladeji, a gender expert with the Department of Agricultural Extension & Rural Development, University of Ibadan facilitated the training. Apart from Onu, officials of the state Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, including the ministry's Director of Agricultural services, Asogwa Clement, were in attendance. ICMR has given Kerala their approval to conduct a clinical trial for plasma therapy on critically ill patients in its hospitals. The top medical research body of India, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), on Thursday, has approved a clinical trial for plasma treatment for people who are infected with COVID-19 and are seriously ill. Many countries around the world have begun using plasma to treat patients infected with coronavirus and the treatment has shown some favourable results in improving patient health. Currently, there is no cure for the virus but there are many ongoing vaccine trials. Kerala Kerala's Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) has been given the nod of approval by the ICMR to begin convalescent plasma therapy, reports PTI. SCTIMST is expected to start the trial by the end of this month after receiving approval from the Drugs Controller of India and the Ethics committee. Five medical colleges - at Thiruvananthapuram, Alapuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Kannur - have been included in the trials and Dr Anoop Kumar Chief of Critical Care Medicine at Baby Memorial Hospital Kozhikode and an expert on COVID-19 will do the clinical follow up. Additionally, The Print has reported that ICMR has only allowed these hospitals to conduct the therapy on patients who are critically ill. This (plasma therapy) will not be for mild patients, but (for) those who are on ventilators and under the clinical trial mode, before being recommended for all patients, said Manoj Murhekar, Director of the Indian Institute of Epidemiology. Chandigarh Dr Jagat Ram, Director, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, in an interview with India Today TV on Thursday, said that his institute, in collaboration with another coronavirus centre, will launch a clinical trial for plasma therapy as well. However, the representative of ICMR made no mention of this second trial. Delhi The Delhi government, headed by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has sought and receieved the approval of the Centre to conduct plasma therapy clinical trials. It will be tested on critically ill patients as a form of compassionate testing. Trial of Plasma Enrichment technique will begin in the next three or four days. If successful, we can save the lives of serious COVID-19 patients, Delhi CM said in an online media briefing. An autonomous Delhi government hospital the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences has already received approval to conduct the trials. Economic Times reported that a private hospital, Max Healthcare, has already used antibodies to treat two patients who were in the intensive care unit. The patients members of the same family requested the doctors to use this treatment quoting the provision of Off Label Use. The hospital, however, is still waiting on their approvals from ICMR to conduct trials. Pune Sassoon General Hospital in Pune has applied for approvals to begin randomised controlled trial and is in the process of getting a plasma separator. BJ Government Medical College in Pune is also seeking approval for an experimental convalescent plasma therapy trial. However, there are many obstacles that need to be jumped over before ICMR and the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) give them the all-clear. What is convalescent plasma therapy? Plasma therapy uses the antibodies found in the blood of people who have recovered from an infection (or convalesced), to treat patients who are infected. According to The Associated Press, the body makes antibodies especially designed to target an infection. Those antibodies can stay in the blood specifically the plasma i.e. the yellowish liquid part of blood for years. Plasma therapy is not a vaccine, but instead gives the infected person's body a boost to start producing its own antibodies. Theoretically, it can be used in patients whose immune system is too weak to fight the infection. History of plasma therapy The use of plasma to treat patients is not new and has been used successfully to treat patients infected with other Coronaviruses, namely Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that range from the common cold to more critical viruses like MERS and SARS. These viruses come from animals and can sometimes transmit from animals to humans, which is called a spillover event. However, these are rare cases, as a lot of different factors have to align in perfection for that to happen. In the case of COVID-19, they did. The use of plasma therapy dates back to the 1900s, when first Nobel Prize awardee Emil von Behring developed a cure for diphtheria by injecting infected patients with antibodies taken from animals. In 1918, when the Spanish flu became a pandemic similar to COVID-19, plasma therapy was used. It was particularly useful when a person was injected in the early days of their illness. During the Ebola epidemic that started in 2013, plasma therapy was again used to treat patients as the development of vaccines always take time. The first vaccine was approved in the US in 2019, but it is a preventive measure. There is still no cure for the disease. During the SARS pandemic in 2003, it spread to 26 countries and caused 8,000 deaths. In some cases, plasma from recovered patients were used to treat those who were infected. Seventeen years later, there is still no vaccine or cure for SARS. The difference between vaccines and plasma therapy When the human body is infected by an intruder, it makes antibodies to fight it. Antibodies are proteins produced by the body to neutralise or destroy toxins or disease-carrying organisms, and they are made specifically to fight that one type of disease. In order for a person to fight the disease and not get sick in the future, the antibodies help the body achieve immunity to the disease. There are two types of immunities - active and passive immunity Active immunity is long-lasting and sometimes life-long, but it takes weeks to develop. It occurs when the immune system produces antibodies for that disease either by getting infected or through the introduction of a weakened disease via a vaccine. A vaccine is a biologically engineered medicine that trains the body to fight a disease it has not yet come into contact with. The weakened or inactive disease-causing microorganism is injected into the body, which in-turn prompts the body to create its own antibodies, thus giving a person immunity towards that disease. Vaccines are designed to prevent disease, rather than treat the disease once someone is infected. Passive immunity is temporary, but immediate. It occurs when antibodies are given to a person rather than the body's immune system producing them on their own, for instance with plasma treatment. What did China find? The novel Coronavirus first emerged in China with at wet market in Wuhan, and the first case was detected in December 2019. However, it was only in January that the gravity of the spread of the virus began to set in. China saw a steep rise in the number of people who were getting infected and the death toll was increasing as well. While the country first brushed off the seriousness of the disease, it soon started taking extreme precautions to try and control the spread of the virus. A massive lockdown was enforced, with no one being allowed to leave the Hubei province at first, and then the country. Researchers in China set about trying to first isolate the virus and then conduct preliminary studies that set the foundation for other researchers worldwide. In a couple of months, the virus had spread and become a pandemic. Chinese researchers found that the virus can turn critical in older people especially men while children, who have better immune systems, are not as affected. They narrowed down the origin of the virus to the animals sold in the wet market - snakes, bats and pangolins. These researchers also started testing other, previously approved antiviral drugs to treat the infection. The researchers also found that using the plasma from the blood of a person who had recovered from COVID-19 could help in the treatment of other infected patients. Reuters reported that their preliminary results were encouraging and the WHO had also approved of this approach, saying it was 'very valid'. Dr Mike Ryan, head of WHOs health emergencies program, told Reuters, It (plasma therapy) is a very important area to pursue, but "it has to be carefully timed and its not always successful. Other countries trying the same approach China has now relaxed the lockdown after their cases have gone down drastically to single digits. Meanwhile, the USA has taken over. The number of cases in the US are much higher than they ever were in China. The US has also joined the plasma therapy bandwagon and has begun clinical trials for plasma. They have also begun clinical trials for possible vaccines, but we will have to wait and watch for the results. Turkey, South Korea, Italy, the United Kingdom, are some of the few countries that are also looking at plasma therapy to help deal with the coronavirus crisis that has gripped the world. FALLS CHURCH, Va. - A Maryland man who operated an online drug dealing website engaged in extensive plans to bomb and burn down a competing pharmacy in Nebraska, an FBI agent testified Monday. At a court hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, the agent testified that William Burgamy, 32, of Hanover, Maryland, was getting his supply of drugs from a pharmacist in Nebraska. Under the plan discussed in a journal and text messages, Burgamy and his supplier pharmacist reasoned that if the competing pharmacy were destroyed, Burgamys pharmacist would pick up new customers and could then increase his supply to Burgamy without attracting suspicion, authorities said. The defendant is a dangerous and volatile individual who schemed to blow up that pharmacy using Molotov cocktails, prosecutor Raj Parekh said. During a two-hour detention hearing conducted by conference call, FBI agent Samad Shahrani said that a search of Burgamys home found eight loaded weapons in his residence. Text messages showed that he made a list of needed equipment that included body armour, weapons, bottles, lighter fluid and other materials. Last month his pharmacist gave him a map that could be used to plot his getaway after bombing the rival pharmacy, Shahrani testified. U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered Burgamy to remain in jail pending trial after Mondays detention hearing. Public defender Elizabeth Mullin had argued Burgamy should be released pending trial, saying that his talk about firebombing a pharmacy was just hyperbole. She also said pretrial detention should be used sparingly because jails can be a particular risk for spreading the coronavirus. Burgamy does not have an unrequited thirst for violence, Mullin said. Burgamy was arrested last week on charges of illegal drug distribution and money laundering after prosecutors accused him of selling large-scale quantities of narcotics and other drugs over the internet. An FBI affidavit states Burgamy operated a business on the Darknet called NeverPressedRX that sold oxycodone and other narcotics over the internet without a prescription. Court papers do not specify the volume of transactions, but show Burgamy regularly exchanged thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin used in the purchases for U.S. currency. Burgamy boasted on his vendor page late last month that, Even with Corona Virus the shop is running at full speed, according to the affidavit. Neither the testimony nor the court documents specified the Nebraska town or towns where the pharmacies were located. The virus has infected more than 8,900 people across Maryland and killed more than 260 of them, according to state figures. In addition, cases of covid-19 have been reported at more than 90 nursing homes in Maryland. With the virus running rampant in the state, those who treat drug addiction in Baltimore are making hard decisions to scale down services and protect their workers. The high street is usually a hive of activity in the riverside suburb of Bulimba. People would browse through clothing, gift and second-hand stores and have a coffee or a bite to eat at a cafe or restaurant before catching a movie at the Balmoral Cineplex on Oxford Street. The usually humming Oxford Street is empty as residents and visitors stay home. Credit:Jocelyn Garcia Finding a parking spot could be a challenge and lining up to get a movie ticket early was an absolute must to beat the rush. But since the coronavirus pandemic, shops are bare, the cinema is shut and the Bulimba Memorial Park is almost empty. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Made Anthony Iswara (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 07:03 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd16b4da 1 National #research,researchers,research,COVID-19,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,#COVID19,coronavirus,#coronavirus,diaspora,#diaspora,peneliti,#peneliti,Research-and-Technology-Ministry,ristek,#ristek Free Researchers say they see themselves walking a long, winding road in helping the government battle the COVID-19 outbreak, as broader research is needed to improve countermeasures nationwide. According to Indonesian Young Academy of Science (ALMI) secretary-general Berry Juliandi, the government has either been slow to adopt or ignored some of the associations scientific-based recommendations. For instance, the governments decision to release inmates was contrary to the researchers suggestion to close prison doors for outside visitors to slow the virus spread. Their recommendation to ban this years Idul Fitri exodus and to use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests instead of serum-based rapid tests are examples of slow adoptions of their advice. The path is steep for researchers to give science-based advice to the government, Berry said. Sometimes, the government gives us the impression that they dont immediately believe our recommendations. Berrys concern is among a slew of challenges that Indonesian researchers face despite research being highly needed in the current efforts against the virus, which has infected 3,842 people nationwide as Saturday afternoon. Convoluted bureaucracy is another roadblock that has hampered swift research on the pandemic, which has forced researchers to spend more time caring about financial administrations than the actual research. On top of that, Indonesia has to juggle with a limited budget that is much smaller than what neighboring countries spend. The Research and Technology Ministrys 2020 budget also saw the largest cut compared to other ministries in the state budget revision on April 3 in an effort to finance COVID-19 measures, among other financial resources. Read also: Indonesia interested in joining WHOs multinational trial for COVID-19 treatments Berry urged the government to use its eternal fund scheme to fund urgent COVID-19 needs and hold an open call for researchers outside state research institutions like the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), as many scholars lacked access to a recent consortium scheme. On March 26, the Research and Technology Ministry and the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) formed a consortium to develop protection gear, rapid test kits, medicine and vaccines, among other purposes. Research and Technology Minister and BRIN head Bambang Brodjonegoro said in a recent teleconference that the consortium would not only involve state institutions but also the private sector and universities that were adept at health-related studies. The ministry is also rolling out an IDEAthon contest from Monday to April 20 to encourage greater public participation in proposing innovative ideas that could help with the COVID-19 fight. Bambang launched another scheme last Thursday that will allow local research groups from universities, NGOs and state institutions to partner with Indonesian scholars living abroad to propose research ideas on COVID-19, due on May 30. The International Indonesian Scholars Association (I-4) estimates there are around 477 Indonesians living abroad who have PhDs and are currently actively researching in their respective institutions. This scheme is not just for studies related to health, pharmaceuticals, biology or chemistry. Instead, we want to encourage interdisciplinary studies to solve and deliberate on COVID-19, Bambang said. If approved, the recipient will receive a grant of up to Rp 2 billion (US$127,112) per year for up to three years, depending on the studys scope and expected outcome. Because the scheme will use funds from the Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) and not the yearly state budget, Bambang said the financial administration for the multiyear scheme would be easier. The ministry will be using the program every year for other topics in the future. Read also: Government to expand PCR testing for coronavirus The I-4 secretary-general Sastia Prama Putri lauded efforts to involve more Indonesians abroad, saying that her association would be ready to help solve national problems, including the COVID-19 crisis. But with lockdowns and travel restrictions still in place in various countries, she said scholars abroad could only contribute their know-how for now. In the long run, she expressed hope that countries could form more partnerships to ease transfers of technology and research samples as well as solve clashing intellectual property laws in different nations. We hope that this research-innovation diaspora scheme could be a good initial milestone to a sustainable partnership for the sake of building our nation wherever we are, said Sastia. Surabaya-based natural product chemistry researcher Sri Fatmawati said she had received little information on how to join the COVID-19 fight despite being keen on researching supplements that could boost the immune system against the novel coronavirus. Instead, Sri and her peers have received numerous open invitations from foreign institutions and universities to propose research ideas. In the current uncertain situation, with a vaccine for COVID-19 still unavailable, shouldnt [the government] be more open? Sri said on Thursday. Iffath Fathima By Express News Service BENGALURU: A dream holiday was cut short for a couple from Bengaluru, who were on a vacation in South America when the coronavirus pandemic broke out across the world. The couple, who were tested positive, have won the battle against the deadly virus and were discharged from Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru on April 11. Patients 43 and 44, a 63-year-old man and his 59-year-old wife, were tested positive after coming back to Bengaluru. First, they thought it was the end of the world for them. But they said, It is not the end. We can overcome it with positive vibes and courage. Around 70-80% of COVID-19 patients have survival chances and we are glad to be among them. The couple left for the South America trip on February 28 and had travelled to Brazil, Argentina and Amazon jungles before reaching Peru on March 15. But that was the day, the Peruvian government announced an indefinite lockdown. The worried couple contacted the Indian Embassy and their tour operator leased an aircraft and they left the same day. The lockdown was to begin at March 16 midnight and our flight was at 11.40 am. We were about 20 passengers in the flight and when we took off, everyone cheered. But at that time, we did not know what was in store for us, the husband said. They reached the Miami airport, took a flight to Newark and flew from there to Mumbai, and then to Bengaluru. We reached here on March 19 evening. On March 22, we were on our balconies clapping for our health workers. Later that day, my wife and I developed fever with the temperature hovering around 102. The next day, we went to the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases and got ourselves tested. Till we got the reports, we home quarantined ourselves. On March 25 morning, we woke up to the shocking news of we testing positive. We were scared and thought that the world would end for us soon. But we decided to fight it out. They were admitted to KC General Hospital the same day. They later shifted to a private hospital from March 26-30. But the doctors advised them to move to Victoria Hospital, where they were under treatment till April 11. I was in the ICU on oxygen, while my wife, who was better, was at the COVID ward. I was given hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, an HIV drug and antibiotics. I could not breathe properly and each day, I prayed to God to help me and my wife recover. We both are diabetic and I was scared about our comorbid condition. My sugar levels shot up due to stress, and I could not sleep. The doctors and nurses did a wonderful job and took care of us well, he said. My only pastime was listening to religious prayers and reading The New Indian Express online. It is one of my favourite newspapers, he said. A few days ago, our tests came negative and on April 10, we were told that we would be discharged the next day, he said. We are back and we feel blessed. Its not the end if we test positive. We need to listen to what doctors say and follow it, the husband said. New Delhi, April 13 : States have started demanding early release of GST compensation for FY20 in view of the Covid-19 crisis putting the already stretched financial position of the Centre under further stress. Sources said that at least three states - Punjab, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu raised the issue of GST compensation dues with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his April 9 video conferencing with chief ministers on coronavirus outbreak. The three together have GST dues of around Rs 15,000 crore till January 2020. The total dues of all states as Goods and Services Tax (GST) compensation for December 2019 and January 2020 works out to about Rs 30,000 crore. GST compensation is released at the end of every two months' period. So, for FY20, dues are actually paid only upto January with compensation for the February-March period getting settled in next fiscal. Centre has been slow in laying GST compensation for last year that has made this issue a hot topic of discussion at all previous GST council meetings. States like West Bengal, Punjab, Delhi have raised the issue of delays in payment on numerous occasions. The voice has become stronger now as most states are witnessing a slowdown in goods and services consumption during the lockdown and want central support to carry out spending on Covid-19 related relief measures. The last tranche of GST compensation was paid in February, when the Centre released Rs 19,950 crore as GST compensation cess to the States/UTs for FY20. With this GST compensation, the Central govt has released a total of Rs 1,20,498 cr towards GST compensation to the States/UTs during last fiscal. This is higher than revised estimate of cess collection of little over Rs 98,000 crore or even Budget estimate of over Rs 1.09 lakh crore for FY 20. In the supplementary demands for grants, finance minister has got parliament approval for additional spending of Rs 20,000 crore required for releasing GST compensation for states and union territories. After the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime was put in place, the Centre assured the States, through legislation, that the revenue shortfall will be compensated fully for first five years. The 2015-16 was assumed to be the base year for calculating the compensation amount for a financial year. The growth rate of revenue for a State during the five-year period is assumed at 14 per cent per annum. Any shortfall in this growth number is to be compensated by the Centre. Not only dues for FY20, a few states have also asked the centre for an early release of GST compensation for February and March that falls due this month. This they have told the finance ministry is important for the governments in fight against coronavirus. For the Centre, payment of GST compensation dues would further strain its resources that is already impacted with less than encouraging overall tax collections. With economic growth now projected to slump and pressure on it to come out with more economic packages to take the country out from a recession owing to Covid-19, the centre is in a bind how to manage the needs. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text The Tamale Central Hospital in the Northern Region has with immediate effect disengaged the services of its casual workers until further notice due to the impact of the Coronavirus outbreak on their operations. This decision has been necessitated because the hospital can no longer generate enough money to pay the casual workers following the decrease in the number of patients it has been recording in the wake of the pandemic. In a memo sighted by citinewsroom.com, management of the facility said: This is to inform all causal staff of this hospital that they are disengaged from the hospital with immediate effect until further notice. This directive has become necessary due to the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19). Patients attendance has been dwindling and the hospital will not be able to generate any revenue for the period that the pandemic is going to be with us. This implies that the hospital will not be able to pay hired labour wages for the entire duration of the pandemic. It is against this background that, all casual workers are disengaged until further notice. Casual workers kick against move Meanwhile, the causal workers say the decision by the hospital administration is only a means to frustrate them as the facility is never cash-strapped as it claims. The workers said the current turn of events can rather be blamed on what they say is the selfishness and incompetence of the Medical Superintendent who is committed to relieving all casual works from their posts. They contend that the Medical Superintendent has on three occasions dismissed some casuals workers before the outset of the pandemic and now wants to use the current situation to achieve his plan. The workers who claimed they have not been paid since December 2019 in a letter said: the main reason for the disengagement of all causal contract is as a result of a meeting held by casual workers to deliberate on the rapid retrogressing and decline in service by the hospital. We wish to dismiss the claims and make it very clear that, the hospital has never been broke but rather, this selfish and incompetent medical superintendent deliberately brought the hospital to its knees. The threat posed to businesses and institutions by the coronavirus pandemic appears to be reaching alarming levels. Since the outbreak of COVID 19, business activities globally have witnessed a dip, running into huge financial losses. Already in Ghana, some organizations have laid off casual workers due to low patronage. They say patronage has dropped by a huge margin, some also want government to offer them some relief by way of tax cuts to prevent a complete shutdown of their facilities. ---citinewsroom Three civilians, including a child and a woman, were killed in two villages on Sunday when Pakistani forces resorted to ceasefire violation in north Kashmirs Kupwara district. Several houses were also damaged when shells landed in Reddi Chowkibal and Tumna villages, officials said, adding that it is the first time when shells fired from across the Line of Control (LoC) landed deep inside Kupwara villages. The shelling, which continued for two hours, has left villagers scared as they had to run for the cover. Defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia blamed Pakistan for ceasefire violation in Keran sector of Kupwara. Unprovoked ceasefire violation was initiated by Pakistan in Keran sector at 5pm. Pakistan targeted civilian population in Kupwara near LoC, resulting in the killing of three innocent civilians, including one woman and a child, he said. Indian troops retaliated by targeting Pakistani posts. A senior police officer said that rescue operation is underway and the police and army teams have reached the villages where shells landed. Four civilians were also injured in the shelling, the officer said. The armys one of the biggest camps is located in Chowkibal. A few days ago, from this place only Indian troops had targeted Pakistani pickets by using artillery shelling. However, the shells fired from Pakistan used to land near the villages close to LoC. On Thursday, the army had blamed Pakistan for ceasefire violation and said in retaliation, Indian troops targeted the terrorist launch pads and ammunition dumps across the LoC. For the past several months, the army has been using heavy artillery to respond to the ceasefire violation from the Pakistani side. There was an exchange of heavy artillery and mortars from both the sides on Friday morning which continued for three to four hours. The army in Kupwara fired artillery shells towards the PoK from Chowkibal and Panzgam villages. The ceasefire violation took place in the same area where army and militants got engaged in a gunbattle in which five militants, three are believed to be locals from south Kashmir, were killed earlier this week. Five soldiers, all elite paracommandos, were also killed while trying to neutralizing the militants. Since then there has been tension in the area, the officials said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the decision of Madhya Pradesh governor Lalji Tondon asking the then Kamal Nath-led Congress government to undertake floor test holding that if Governor has reasons to believe that the government has lost confidence of the house, constitutional propriety requires that the issue can be resolved by the trust vote. However, the top court expressed concern over the trend that legislators are taken away by rival political parties at safe hideouts like hotels and resorts which does little credit to the democratic The spectacle of rival political parties whisking away their political flock to safe destinations does little credit to the state of our democratic It is an unfortunate reflection on the confidence which political parties hold in their own constituents and a reflection of what happens in the real world of politics, said a bench comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta. The apex court, which had on March 19, asked Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker N P Prajapati to reconvene a special session the next day with a sole agenda of conducting the floor test, gave a detailed order on Monday. Following the apex court order, senior Congress leader Kamal Nath had resigned as Chief Minister on March 20. He was chief minister for 15 months. Nath's resignation paved the way for formation of BJP government led by Shivraj Singh Chauhan. On Monday, the bench in its detailed verdict, said the decision of the governor calling for a floor test cannot be construed to have acted beyond the bounds of constitutional authority. Based on the resignation of six ministers of the incumbent government (accepted by the Speaker), the purported resignation of sixteen more Members belonging to the Congress, and the refusal of the Chief Minister to conduct a floor test despite the House having been convened on March 16, 2020, the exercise of power by the Governor to convene a floor test cannot be regarded as constitutionally improper, the bench said. It relied upon the nine-judge Constitution bench verdict of apex court in S R Bommai case of 1994 and said the observations made in it indicate the question of whether the Council of Ministers in an ongoing legislative assembly commands the confidence of the house is a matter, which has to been determined only on the floor of the house. "In the circumstances as they have emerged in this case, the exercise of authority by the Governor was based on circumstances which were legitimate to the purpose of ensuring that the norm of collective responsibility is duly preserved. There existed no extraordinary circumstances for the Governor to determine that a trust vote was not the appropriate course of action on March 16, 2020," it said. It said, The Governor is not denuded of the power to order a floor test where on the basis of the material available to the Governor it becomes evident that the issue as to whether the government commands the confidence of the house requires to be assessed on the basis of a floor test. Undoubtedly, the purpose of entrusting such a function to the Governor is not to destabilise an existing government. The bench said when the satisfaction on the basis of which the Governor has ordered a floor test is called into question, the decision of the Governor is not immune from judicial review. The top court said that in exercising the constitutional authority to demand a trust vote, the Governor must do so with circumspection in a manner that ensures that the authority of the House to determine the existence or loss of confidence in the government is not undermined. Absent exigent and compelling circumstances, there is no reason for the Governor to prevent the ordinary legislative process of a no confidence motion from running its due course. It said, the Governor is an appointee of the President but does not represent either a political ideology or a political view and the Governor is expected to discharge the role of a constitutional statesman. The authority of the Governor is not one to be exercised in aid of a political dispensation which considers an elected government of the day to be a political opponent. The bench said the governor's decision is not immune from judicial review and can be scrutinized on whether it was based on relevant and germane material. It dealt with the facts of Madhya Pradesh political crisis and said that the then Chief Minister Kamal Nath, adverting to the turmoil in the state, addressed a communication to the Governor on March 13, stating that convening of the floor test would be a sure basis for resolving the conundrum. This is a strong indication that the Chief Minister himself was of the opinion that the situation in the state had cast his government's majority in doubt. However, upon the convening of the Legislative Assembly, no floor test was conducted, and the House was adjourned till March 26 2020. These facts form the basis on which the Governor advised that a floor test be conducted, it added. The bench also dealt with the plea of Congress in which a direction was sought for granting access to the then 22 MLAs who were lodged at a hotel in Bengaluru. "Political bargaining, or horse-trading, as we noticed, is now an oft repeated usage in legal precedents. 'Poaching' is an expression which was bandied about on both sides of the debate in the present case. It is best that courts maintain an arm's length from the sordid tales of political life," it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Voters put at risk Wisconsin held its primary election in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Photos show hundreds of people standing in line, close to each other, for hours. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied the Democrats request to move the election date and for mail-in ballots for everyone. On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough said, Of all the things that Ive seen in my 25 years of politics and being associated with politics and reporting on politics, I dont know that Ive ever seen anything as reckless and irresponsible with the public health. Republicans arranged this election, risking the lives of countless voters in their state. In 2018 in Wisconsin, Democrats won 190,000 more votes for the State Assembly than Republicans, but because of gerrymandering, the GOP held a 64-35 advantage. This recent election included a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, and it will make a huge difference. As in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas, Republicans maintain dominance on the courts. In Wisconsin, like in Texas, voters find restrictions to voting. Sadly, we can expect the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court will not remedy this injustice. Adam Castillo, Leon Valley On ExpressNews.com: Wisconsin voters wait for hours, others stay home amid virus Captain the scapegoat In firing Capt. Brett Crozier for writing a letter of concern about the poor handling of a coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship, former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly accused him of being too naive or too stupid to command the USS Theodore Roosevelt. And then President Donald Trump said, I dont want to destroy somebody for having a bad day. What? Croziers firing is seen among the aircraft carriers crew as an attempt to muzzle any leaks of information about the situation that could become politically inconvenient for top officers and civilian appointees in Washington. Crozier was not the problem he was a scapegoat for the failure of the American powers that be who did not take serious steps in the early days of the virus to contain its spread. Crozier wanted to do things differently and take early action to protect his sailors. When his superiors failed him, he wrote a letter, which was then leaked to the media, making the top military officials and civilian appointees appear impotent. Along with 230 of his sailors, Crozier was COVID-19 positive. As with all great leaders, he placed the greater good of his roughly 4,000 sailors above all else, and thus the letter was written. Modly can call Crozier disparaging names, and Trump can say he was having a bad day. But I think he is a courageous leader who made a tough decision to protect the health and welfare of his crew because the chain of command was unresponsive. I ask you: Who would you want to be the captain of your ship Mobly, Trump or Crozier? JoAnna Strong Stein, Boerne Moment to moment Its interesting to note how life can dramatically change from one instance to the next when a life-threatening virus hits the world. Everything has come to a grinding halt. One minute everything was life as usual, and the next minute everything is life being lived in an unusual way. We all take so very much for granted. And only when we are confronted with our own immortality do we stop and take the time to put life in its proper perspective. What truly matters, and what is merely superfluous, becomes a stark reality. There are no longer any large gatherings; everyone is told to stay home; students no longer go to a school building to learn. The cost of gasoline is at an all-time low, but there is nowhere to go with the ominous virus lurking everywhere. We are advised to stay home, to slow the spread, to stay safe. Hopefully we will learn our lessons, not to be dependent upon foreign countries for our safety and well-being. Not to rely on cheap foreign manufacturing and low-cost foreign trade to keep our country going forward. Look how quickly all the open borders slammed shut across the world because a deadly virus was being brought into their countries. The virus is truly an equal opportunity infector. It does not discriminate. No matter your race, your religion, your politics or your profession, if you are wealthy or you are on welfare. Marian Casillas, Del Rio On ExpressNews.com: 21 things to cure quarantine boredom besides going for a walk Wont happen to you? What is going on, people? Do you think it cant happen to you? Well, to all those who are hitting the beaches and/or gathering to worship, what you are doing sends a negative message to every person in this country who is sacrificing so much to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic. I would love to gather my family and friends around me. But beating this deadly virus is far more important than my desire to be with those I love, especially since my children had to cancel a 50th anniversary party for me and my husband. But, again, in the grand scheme of things, the pandemic takes precedence over all. I also love my parish family and miss gathering in worship and community with them, particularly during Holy Week and Easter, remembering and honoring the greatest event in my faith. I would have loved to celebrate the great Triduum Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil with my parish family, but it is better to stay home and celebrate by livestreaming it. The sacrifice of staying home and not gathering together which we, as a nation, are asked to do is little price to pay when the alternative is the death of someone I love or myself. Opening beaches and encouraging people to gather at church are frivolous actions in light of what is happening around the Earth. Have we grown too unimaginative to think of safer ways to pass our time during quarantine? Hey, take it from someone who has spent the last year and a half spending a majority of my time confined to my home because of health challenges. You do what you have to do. Staying in self-quarantine and maintaining social distancing when grocery shopping and performing other essential needs are the responsible things to do until the pandemic runs its course. Cherryl A. Sagan [April 13, 2020] Labaton Sucharow LLP Files Securities Class Action Lawsuit Against ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. and Certain Executives Labaton Sucharow LLP ("Labaton Sucharow") announces that on April 10, 2020, it filed a securities class action lawsuit, captioned Ruttenberg v. ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc., No. 20-cv-02976 (S.D.N.Y.) (the "Action"), on behalf of its client Michael Ruttenberg ("Ruttenberg") against ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. ("ServiceMaster" or the "Company") and certain officers and directors (collectively, "Defendants"). The Action asserts claims under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act") and SEC (News - Alert) Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, on behalf of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired the publicly traded common stock of ServiceMaster between February 26, 2019 and November 4, 2019, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), who were damaged thereby (the "Class"). ServiceMaster is a leading provider of essential services to residential and commercial customers in the termite, pest control, cleaning and restoration markets. ServiceMaster's largest and most profitable business segment is Terminix, a termite and pest control business that primarily operates in the United States. Among other services, Terminix offers an annual coverage plan for its termite customers, which indemnifies the customer against the cost of treatments and repairs. During the Class Period, Defendants repeatedly assured the market that ServiceMaster was successfully executing upon initiatives to improve the performance in the Terminix segment. In addition, Defendants stated that Terminix would reach a positive "inflection point" and was "definitely the driver" for positive trends expected in the second half of 2019. Unbeknownst to investors, however, in the past several years the Terminix segment had experienced an adverse trend of costly termite litigation, primarily related to Formosan termite activity. This negative trend, which would ultimately impact ServiceMaster's current and future financial results, was known to Defendants throughout the Class Period, as by their own later admission they had been taking mitigating measures since 2018. On October 22, 2019, ServiceMaster announced disappointing preliminary financial results forthe third quarter 2019, having missed revenue and earnings estimates, and issued downward adjusted EBITDA guidance. The press release attributed the disappointing results to "termite damage claims arising primarily from Formosan termite activity," primarily in Mobile, Alabama. The Company further stated that this had been a known issue, having taken mitigating measures "starting in 2018." Finally, the Company announced the sudden departure of Matthew J. Stevenson in his role as President of Terminix Residential. On this news the price of ServiceMaster common stock fell $11.44 or 20 percent, closing at $44.70 on October 22, 2019, down from its $56.14 closing price on October 21, 2019. On November 5, 2019, before the start of trading, ServiceMaster released its third quarter 2019 financial results. In this press release discussing the "challenging quarter," the Company revealed that it had been impacted by certain "legacy risks," including "termite damage claims." That same day, Defendants held an earnings call with analysts and investors to discuss ServiceMaster's third quarter 2019 financial results. On the call, Defendants informed the market that the increase in termite litigation-which had occurred "[i]n the past few years"-had impacted termite revenue and these issues would continue throughout 2020. On this news, the price of ServiceMaster common stock fell $1.42, or 3.5 percent, to close at $39.15 on November 5, 2019. As the market continued to digest the disappointing news, ServiceMaster shares further declined by $3.41, or 9 percent, closing at $35.74 on November 6, 2019. All told, following the November 5, 2019 disclosure, ServiceMaster stock suffered a total decline of $4.83 from the November 4, 2019 closing price. If you purchased ServiceMaster common stock during the Class Period and were damaged thereby, you are a member of the "Class" and may be able to seek appointment as Lead Plaintiff. Lead Plaintiff motion papers must be filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York no later than June 9, 2020. The Lead Plaintiff is a court-appointed representative for absent members of the Class. You do not need to seek appointment as Lead Plaintiff to share in any Class recovery in the Action. If you are a Class member and there is a recovery for the Class, you can share in that recovery as an absent Class member. You may retain counsel of your choice to represent you in the Action. If you would like to consider serving as Lead Plaintiff or have any questions about this lawsuit, you may contact David J. Schwartz, Esq. of Labaton Sucharow, at (800) 321-0476, or via email at [email protected]. Ruttenberg is represented by Labaton Sucharow, which represents many of the largest pension funds in the United States and internationally with combined assets under management of more than $2 trillion. Labaton Sucharow has been recognized for its excellence by the courts and peers, and it is consistently ranked in leading industry publications. Offices are located in New York, NY, Wilmington, DE, and Washington, D.C. More information about Labaton Sucharow is available at www.labaton.com. You can view a copy of the complaint here. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005283/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Anna Wintour is set to take a 20 percent pay cut after Conde Nast announced it is reducing salaries for staff earning over $100,000 by 10 to 20 percent in response to expected losses brought on by the coronavirus outbreak. Wintour, 70, an editor-in-chief at VOGUE and artistic director at the global publishing company, takes the 20 percent financial hit as CEO Roger Lynch halved his basic wage in order to cover for a decrease in advertising income amid the pandemic. And a post uploaded to VOGUE's Instagram account on Monday left fans in shock, with Winter sporting a pair of uncharacteristically casual red sweatpants while she worked from home in isolation. The fashion move marks a fashion U-turn for Winter, who has previously claimed she never wears sweatpants. 'This action will start at the top. I will take a 50% reduction of my base salary, as will the external members of our board,' Deadline reports Lynch wrote. 'The rest of the ELT will reduce their base salaries by 20%. For those who make $100K or above, reductions will range from 10-20% of base salary, depending on compensation level.' Wintour has been editor of VOGUE since 1988. In 2011, New York magazine reported Wintour was paid $2million annually for role as editor-in-chief since 2005. Since then she has become an artistic director at Conde Nast and is believed to earn much more. Anna Wintour is set to take a 20 percent pay cut in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The VOGUE editor-in-chief is pictured wearing sweatpants and working in isolation Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch announced the company is reducing salaries for staff earning over $100,000 by 10 to 20 percent. Lynch will be taking a 50 percent pay cut Lynch announced the news in a memo to staff, some of whom will be furloughed and others who were told the temporary income reduction would last for five months starting in May. Half the company - which has offices in the UK, Europe and Asia - earns under $100,000 the New York Times reports. Aside from Lynch's salary reduction, executive leadership teams had the most drastic pay reductions. Lynch explained that the company-wide decision was in anticipation of less money coming in due to the businesses directly affected by strict stay-at-home measures. The pay decreases would limit the impact to lower wage earners and allow them to continue providing benefits, Lynch said. Travel and tourism is one of the worst affected sectors amid the pandemic due to travel bans. High-end brands may also see a decline in sales due to customers being furloughed. With such brands being advertising clients of publications like VOGUE, the loss in revenue is expected to have a knock-on effect. 'It's very likely our advertising clients, consumers, and therefore our company, will be operating under significant financial pressure for some time,' Lynch said. The May issue of VOGUE is pictured with Gal Gadot as the cover star 'It's very likely our advertising clients, consumers, and therefore our company, will be operating under significant financial pressure for some time,' Lynch said in the company statement. 'As a result, we'll need to go beyond the initial cost-savings measures we put in place to protect our business for the long term. 'While we consider it a last option, we do expect there will be some role eliminations as part of these efforts.' Lynch said the company had already closed several hundred open positions and limited hiring only to the most critical roles. Other Conde Nast publications Wired and Vanity Fair earned money by operating with a digital paywall. Meanwhile VOGUE still relies heavily on advertising funds, as does Glamour which recently moved to a digital-only platform. One advertiser, LVMH - which has Louis Vuitton under its umbrella and who boss recently appeared in Forbes' Top 10 Richest Billionaires List - has laid off employees. In response to the outbreak, publishing companies Bustle Digital Group, Vice Media, Group Nine, Gannett and Maven Media have also introduced cost-saving measures that directly affect employees. 'We aren't alone in needing to take actions like this,' Lynch said in the memo. 'Companies around the world are all facing similar challenges and responding accordingly. But that doesn't make this process any easier.' The VOGUE cover price is $6.99 and is cheaper with a subscription. Conde Nast operates globally and announced in the memo that it is taking advantage of schemes set up by governments around the world, to make sure employees are better off. Whereas in the US the relief plan only gives Americans a one-time handout of $1,200, in the UK (Conde Nast has a London HQ) the government will pay 80 percent of salaries for those who have lost out. Anna Wintour has had to swap the runway shows for a more low-key appearance since the coronavirus outbreak. Left she wears Chanel in November 2019. Right, she wears a face mask amid the pandemic 'We will also work to implement reduced working hours and work week schedules (e.g. three to four-day work weeks) for certain roles, in particular where government programs and stimulus packages can help supplement employees' earnings,' Lynch said. 'These decisions will be made locally in markets in accordance with available government programs.' On Monday, fashion icon Wintour was pictured on VOGUE's Instagram account uncharacteristically wearing sweatpants as she worked from home and social media users appears shocked as she made an exception to her very strict style rules as she wore a red sweater. 'I never imagined I would see Anna Wintour wearing sweatpants,' one person commented on the image, while another incredulous commenter added: 'ARE THOSE SWEATPANTS?!!!!' While wearing sweatpants might not ordinarily seem like a subject that would cause so much interest online, Wintour's ensemble appears to represent something of a U-turn as far as her own personal style rules are concerned. Just last year, the magazine editrix was asked whether or not she ever wears sweatpants, to which she responded, 'No'. The style move was also surprising because Wintour is renowned for wearing the same fashion formula day in day out, no matter what the weather or the occasion. Since 1994, Wintour has worn the same style of nude Manolo Blahnik pumps, which were designed especially for her by the footwear legend. Although she will occasionally switch these out for a more sensible boot during the colder months, the rest of her ensemble remains the same: a floral-print dress, a stack of colorful gem collar necklaces, and her signature sunglasses. However, spending days quarantined at her home appears to have pushed Wintour towards a more comfortable collection of clothing - although she has not ever been without her sunglasses, even while self-isolating at home. However, spending days quarantined at her home appears to have pushed Wintour towards a more comfortable collection of clothing - although she has not ever been without her sunglasses, even while self-isolating at home Just last week, Wintour penned an essay about the things she is most grateful for during lockdown - while also pleading with members of the public to wear masks whenever they leave their homes Despite the frenzy of excitement about Wintour's outfit however, the fashion icon was actually trying to make a more important point with the post, which hinted at a need to embrace sustainable fashion going forward in a bid to take better care of the environment. It read: 'We need to talk frankly and openly about what fashion is going through, but just as importantly, we need to start imagining what comes next. 'Please join us. Anna Wintour shares how #VogueGlobalConversations, a four-day event on Zoom that starts tomorrow, came to be, as well as what she's most looking forward to about it.' The new image of Wintour is the latest in a series of candid photos of the Vogue Editor-in-Chief, who has regularly been writing personal pieces for the magazine's website since its staff began working from home last month. Just last week, Wintour penned an essay about the things she is most grateful for during lockdown - while also pleading with members of the public to wear masks whenever they leave their homes. She also revealed that her doctor son, Charlie Shaffer, had contracted coronavirus while working with patients in New York City, explaining in a video for Vogue's Instagram that the 35-year-old father-of-two was 'quite ill' and currently quarantining at home. CONDE NAST CEO ROGER LYNCH ANNOUNCES PAY CUTS To our Conde Nast team, For those of you who celebrated the recent Passover or Easter holidays, and for those who may still be out today, I hope youve had the opportunity to spend time with your families and loved ones whether virtually, or in person. While were working from home, we still need to take time to recharge. As Ive shared in my recent emails, weve been working to assess the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on our business and to reset our financial plan for the year. That work has involved modeling several different scenarios. While we arent as solely dependent on print and digital display advertising as some of our competitors, globally, we will still see a substantial impact from this crisis on our business. The ELT and I recognize its very likely our advertising clients, consumers, and therefore our company, will be operating under significant financial pressure for some time. As a result, well need to go beyond the initial cost savings measures we put in place to protect our business for the long term. Today, Im outlining some additional actions were taking to balance the needs of our people and our company, as our people are the most important part of our company. I recognize these are extremely challenging times both personally and professionally, and that any amount of added uncertainty is stressful. As a leadership team, weve continued to work to do everything possible to protect jobs, limit impact to lower wage earners, and continue to provide benefits to individuals and their families through this time. Heres an overview of what you can expect at the global level: Temporary salary reductions: To start, were implementing temporary salary reductions for all those who earn a base salary of at least $100K USD (or equivalent). This action will start at the top. I will take a 50% reduction of my base salary, as will the external members of our board. The rest of the ELT will reduce their base salaries by 20%. For those who make $100K or above, reductions will range from 10-20% of base salary, depending on compensation level. These changes will go into effect on May 1 and will last for a period of five months, through the end of September. Our People/HR teams globally will work to implement these adjustments according to local employment laws and regulations, updating agreements and working with union representatives as needed. Furloughs and reduced working schedules: We will also work to implement reduced working hours and work week schedules (e.g. three to four-day work weeks) for certain roles, in particular where government programs and stimulus packages can help supplement employees earnings. These decisions will be made locally in markets in accordance with available government programs. Along with the salary reductions noted above, these are actions that will help us preserve jobs and benefits. Potential job and role eliminations: Many of you have been asking whether there will be any job eliminations. While we consider it a last option, we do expect there will be some role eliminations as part of these efforts. Weve already closed several hundred open positions and limited hiring only to the most critical roles. Role eliminations are never something we take lightly, and well continue to work to limit this as much as possible. Project deferrals: Beyond the employment measures outlined above, were also deferring several projects to reduce workloads on teams, and to focus us on immediate priorities. Some examples of global projects that have been deferred or reprioritized for now include: our further Workday implementation for Finance and HR; the on-boarding of additional markets onto Copilot this year; the further outfitting of global internal events spaces; and, the global employee intranet all of which will be deferred to 2021. Local leaders will follow up in the coming days and weeks to communicate specific actions in your markets and teams. We want to act swiftly and thoughtfully, so this process isnt dragged out. While well always have the need to make adjustments to our organizational structure and team to optimize our business, we expect to complete communications related to these actions by the end of May. We arent alone in needing to take actions like this companies around the world are all facing similar challenges and responding accordingly. But that doesnt make this process any easier. I understand the impact this will have on many of our team members, and I appreciate all of you who will join me in taking temporary salary reductions, so we can limit that impact as much as possible. Over the past few months, Ive said repeatedly how proud I am of this team. That is even more true today, as we embark together on these actions in an effort to protect our business for the long term. Our efforts to diversify our business model and grow consumer revenue are helping us weather this challenging time, and we must continue to focus and adapt our business in that direction. I know you will have questions about todays announcements. The ELT and I are standing by ready to answer them. We may not have all the answers today, but well do our best to provide as much information and clarity as possible. Thank you for your support during this critical time for our business. I wish you and your loved ones good health, and look forward to the day when we can meet again in person. Roger Advertisement Israeli president rejects Gantz's request for more time to form unity government Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 6:17 PM A months-long political paralysis further persists in the Israeli regime after its President Reuven Rivlin turned down a request by Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz for a two-week extension to form a coalition government. In a statement on Sunday, the President's Residence said that Rivlin had not granted Gantz, an ex-military chief and the current Knesset speaker, a 14-day extension he requested a day earlier to form a coalition government. Gantz had argued that the COVID-19 pandemic and the Passover holiday had caused delay in his talks with other parties to form a government. Last month, the Israeli president gave Gantz a four-week time to reach an agreement with other parties, most notably the right-wing Likud party headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to form a power sharing government. Three previous elections in April and September 2019 and in March this year tuned out to be inconclusive as no party could secure the necessary 61-seat, in the 120-seat parliament, to form a government. The Netanyahu's bloc only managed to win 59 seats. Gantz's mandate to form a government will end by midnight Monday, prompting the desperate Knesset speaker to assure Rivlin that he was near an agreement with Netanyahu. Although Netanyahu has said that he is open to negotiations with Gantz, it does not seem that an agreement between the two on a unity government be on the horizon, as the Israeli president stressed that the two were not close to any agreement. "The president made his decision after also speaking to ... Netanyahu, who did not confirm in their conversation that the parties are close to signing an agreement that would lead to a unity government," the statement said. It also said that if Gantz and Netanyahu did not reach an agreement to form a unity government by midnight Monday, "and if the number of recommendations for each candidate does not change, the task of forming the government will return to the Knesset and a period of 21 days will begin during which Knesset members can form a majority to recommend an agreed-on candidate to form a government, who would have 14 days to do so." Any lawmaker who can secure 61 recommendations would be tasked by the president to form a government. If Knesset members fail to agree on a peer, the regime has to prepare itself for holding yet another election. As the right-wing religious bloc urged Rivlin on Sunday to tap once again Netanyahu to form a coalition government, a number of public figures petitioned the High Court of Justice in the same day that the Israeli president should not be allowed to task the premier with forming government, citing the three criminal indictments on corruption charges that are pending against Netanyahu. It seems that Netanyahu intentionally does not reach an agreement with Gantz, hoping that during a fourth election he might secure the parliamentary majority necessary to grant him both a powerful government and immunity from prosecution. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address A backlog of 11,000 Covid-19 tests is expected to be cleared throughout this week as more than 7,500 tests were completed by last Saturday, HSE chief Paul Reid has said. At a HSE briefing this morning, Mr Reid said that a total of 7,903 backlogged Covid-19 tests were completed by last Saturday, while a total of 72,000 Coronvirus tests have been completed since the outbreak began. He said there are now 11,000 backlogged tests but the health service is working to clear it by the end of this week. Mr Reid said 80pc of the tests will be carried out in German laboratories and 20pc will be carried out in Irish labs, which have the capacity to carry out an average of 2,800 daily tests. That number is expected to fall as the backlog clears. He added that the turnaround times for completed tests in hospitals are currently between 24 and 36 hours but community tests are experiencing a longer delay. "If people are in the hospital, and they get a test, you can see that the test will be turned around much quicker because they're in the hospital, and the test is primarily carried out in the hospital," he said. "So it will be a quicker turnaround. It's a more complex process where it's done under community and that swab test has to be sent off either to one of our other laboratories here or across to our extensive support that we have in our German laboratories." He said the HSE are still facing a number of significant uncertainties over the coming weeks, such as sustaining the support of the German laboratories, the supply of reagents and building up Enfers testing capacity. There are still significant uncertainties that we are trying to manage through this week, he said. Firstly, sustaining the support that we have from the German laboratories to. We had good discussions with them, very positive discussions with them and we want to continue their supply process to us. The second uncertainty that we'll have to manage over the course of the next few weeks is the continuous supply of reagents, a really global worldwide issue and we have to continue to sustain. And finally, building up our capacity also through Enfer, who we brought on board, working with the NVRL (National Virus Reference Laboratory) as well. Mr Reid said Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) sent by Chinese resources that were not up to standard has been revised and is currently going through tests. The second batch of PPE will be ordered on April 17 at the value of 67m and will cover a range of items including, gowns, gloves, facial respiratory masks, and goggles. He also mentioned that 55,000 tests have been done between the national ambulance service and community testing across the 48 testing centers. The HSE are on average making around 500 calls to cases each day in its contact tracing efforts, adding that a further 500 calls are made to define who confirmed cases' contacts could be, and some 800 calls per day are made based on the contact tracing. Around 800 people are waiting to be tested either have or are awaiting appointments. He added that the HSE is on average receiving around 220 to visits to its website each day. That figure peaked for one day with over 850,000 at the start of the process. The HSE has received around 35,000 calls at peak to its live line across its seven centers. and had 700,000 contacts through social media. It is now at a demand level of around 1,200 calls per day over the past week. "The demand levels are down, and our capacity has really risen, which demonstrates why we'll be in a better position this week to meet the demand," he said. He said "it would be wrong" to say Ireland has hit the peak and cannot predict when it will. Ann O'Connor, HSE chief operations officer, said 128 referrals have been made to the City West isolation unit to date, which currently has 69 residents. A sum of 862 Covid-19 patients are in the care of acute hospitals as of 8 pm last night, an increase of 8.5 pc on the previous week. Over 2,000 beds are available in our acute hospitals. As of now, 275 people are in ICU's across the country - 148 people admitted with Covid-19, and 127 are non-Covid-19 related patients. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:12:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A man returns a gas nozzle back to the pump after pumping gas at a BP gas station in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States on April 9, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) The production adjustments are historic, said OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo. "We are witnessing today the triumph of international cooperation and multilateralism which are the core of OPEC values." BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Oil industry operators who have suffered in the past few weeks from dropping crude prices have welcomed an agreement reached over the weekend between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other major oil producing countries to cut output, saying the deal would bolster stability in the market as the world continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic. ECONOMIC SWAMP The rehabilitation process for the world's largest economy, however, could be a difficult one, instead of a "V-shaped" model, Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said on Sunday. "This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine. It's hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario," he told CBS's "Face the Nation." As more countries implement restrictive measures and shut down large swaths of the economy in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, oil consumption has dramatically decreased, and in turn oil prices, also hit by a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, have fallen by more than 50 percent since early this year. A woman passes by a Petrobras gas station in Sao Paulo, Brazil, March 9, 2020. (Photo by Rahel Patrasso/Xinhua) Energy ministers of the Group of 20 (G20) nations agreed on Friday to ensure the energy market's stability, as well as affordability and security in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, but remained quiet on the issue of oil production reduction. Finally, after four days of talks, the OPEC+ group of nations met on Sunday and struck the deal of an output cut by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for May and June, around 10 percent of global supply, to support oil prices amid the pandemic. Gas prices are displayed on a pump at a Shell gas station in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States on April 9, 2020. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua) OIL DEAL During a phone conversation on Sunday between U.S. president Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, "the leaders supported the agreement reached by the OPEC+ on the phased voluntary reduction of oil production in order to stabilize global markets and ensure the sustainability of the global economy as a whole," the Russian president's press office said in a statement. According to an OPEC statement on the deal, from July through the end of 2020, the cut will decrease to 7.7 million bpd, and will then be followed by an adjustment of 5.8 million bpd for another 16 months till the end of April 2022. A man rides past a gas station in Brussels, Belgium, April 9, 2020. (Xinhua/Zhang Cheng) Trump tweeted his delight and congratulations on Sunday, calling it a "great deal for all," which "will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States." "This is a significant agreement that will foster increased stability in energy markets to the benefit of both American energy consumers and producers," said American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers, adding "significant challenges remain in the weeks and months ahead" for the energy industry. The production adjustments are historic, said OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo. "We are witnessing today the triumph of international cooperation and multilateralism which are the core of OPEC values." By ANI NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a telephonic conversation with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Monday to discuss the COVID-19 situation and steps taken towards dealing with the disease. The two leaders agreed on the potential for bilateral collaboration in fighting the disease including facilitating medical supplies. Both the leaders have also expressed the need to provide the necessary support to each other's citizens present in their respective territories. FOLLOW COVID-19 LIVE UPDATES HERE As per the official release by the government, both the leaders reiterated the strategic partnership between India and Vietnam and expressed satisfaction on various fronts of the bilateral relations. They also reviewed regional and international developments. They also agreed that teams of experts from each other's countries will remain in touch to exchange knowledge on pandemic response measures and other bilateral relations aspects. Vietnam will also preside over the special virtual ASEAN (Association for Southeast Asian Nations) scheduled for April 14 with the agenda of tackling COVID-19. For St. Cuthbert Episcopal Church, Holy Week is important with traditional services such as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The church would usually be participating in those at their location in northwest Houston this month to celebrate the story of Jesus life, death and resurrection. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Coronavirus live updates: Houston using private companies to test for COVID-19 During this time of social distancing, Reverend Bruce Bonner admits the congregational church has been presented with a challenge in transitioning to Facebook Live and YouTube but added that its been a blessing in a lot of ways too. Its a different style of worshiping but its still the same worship, Bonner said. Weve had to learn how to livestream, its just something we havent done because we worship face to face. Bonner says theyve learned a lot about video streaming since the stay at home order. However, to ensure the videos quality, the staff pre-recorded Easter services from home so they can make sure the signal doesnt fade out in the middle of worship. SOME GOOD NEWS: Tomball health care workers receive free Panda Express meals for service during COVID-19 pandemic The Cypress area church normally averages over 200 members in attendance Sunday mornings, according to Bonner, and has tripled in views since going online. Theres people outside the city of Houston that are worshiping with us. Thats been the blessing of it, Bonner said. The change has also conditioned St. Cuthbert to learn how it can keep expanding virtually. They are committed to continue streaming their services to reach as many people as possible and involve as many people of faith, even once the COVID-19 situation subsides. This has really helped us stretch how we can become more of the church on a broader base, Bonner said. This as an opportunity that can draw more people in unified ways when worshiping worldwide on Easter regardless of religion. New normal Northside Christian Church Lead Pastor David Garison is proud of how the church has pivoted to online services during this time. However, the Klein area location actually decided to start going online as of last summer. ONLINE LEARNING: Harris County Public Library offering digital services for patrons We were already streaming our services on Sunday morning back in August, Garison said. Normally, the non-denominational church would be having services over the weekend. A typical Sunday would include three identical services starting at 9 a.m., 10:40 a.m., and 12:10 p.m. During Easter weekend the church usually adds two more Saturday night services in addition to the three. Northside regularly sees attendance go up significantly on Easter weekend like so many other churches. But when the COVID-19 crisis hit, they immediately put all efforts into being an online church using three main platforms: Facebook Live, Northsidelive.com and YouTube. Garison also recorded his sermons for the weekend during the week from home. So many churches are going this route and very quickly, Garison said about online services. Forty-nine percent of the churches in the United States are now growing. Were seeing that ourselves, were seeing that our attendance is actually going up. Finding hope In addition to weekend services, Northside has started doing Facebook Live three times a week. Monday night is for the childrens ministry as the minister tells a Bible story. On Wednesday nights the church has an adult Bible study with various staff members leading. Friday is prayer time where they invite people to come in and pray over their community, some even doing prayer walks through the neighborhood. They also send out a video each Tuesday to staff and all Northsiders, communicating messages of encouragement. Church leaders have urged all 60 discipleship groups to begin using Zoom. Garisons group meets Wednesday nights and utilizes the app to see everyones faces, meet and check-in with everyone. Were seeing an enormous amount of activity of people tuning in for that, Garison said. I believe that all of that direct contact is going to continue to aid us. I believe that a lot of people are going to sign in from home like they have been doing. Technology is making that possible. I think that people have discovered technology can really be used to spread the love of Jesus. Two years ago, St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church was reduced to a tent in the front yard because they had lost the church to Hurricane Harvey. At this time last year, they were celebrating a homecoming in the Spring location. Now, Pastor Norbert Maduzia and the staff are using Facebook Live to provide online services. Instead of partaking in the Veneration of the Cross, a devotion practiced on Good Friday, the church planned to stream a video of the devotion online and asked people to use a cross from home to do the sametouching the cross, passing it from one person to another, or even kissing the cross. Holy Saturday night, April 11, is usually when they baptize, confirm and initiate new Catholics, but the church did not do that this year; instead, doing a shortened version of the vigil, renewed baptismal promises and then mass continued as it normally does, albeit online. There was no blessing of the Easter Fire, or procession with candles into a darkened churchall of that was eliminated, Maduzia said. Viable option St. Ignatius is capable of getting as many as 2,000 people for one of its services. The church has around 4,100 families. What we are finding on livestream, were watching, and the numbers keep increasing the more there are, Maduzia said. Were getting 350 average signing on (Monday through Thursday). Were really hitting the numbers quite well. The numbers of views that Facebook showed us was almost 3,000 views (Thursday). Maduzia said the concept of domestic church, the church at home, has been strengthened. Churches are giving Catholics the tools to worship at home as well as providing them the ability to network together. They also have classes online using Zoom. Church now is viable option online, Maduzia said. Maduzia prefers doing services through Facebook Live and likes the fact that as soon as the event is off, people can immediately start watching. Non-Facebook members can even watch the service on the page. Maduzia added that its the customs that people miss the most, like the Easter egg hunt, but says they plan on hosting Parish picnic at a later date, distributing palm branches as a sign of victory over the pandemic. Now with livestream, we can hold one service that everybody can come to at the same time, Maduzia said. We just feel that the live is important because its in this moment that were gathering together. Were trying to keep traditions but find new ways of doing them. alvaro.montano@chron.com JALANDHAR: As many as 134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University (LPU) near Jalandhar, were evacuated by a special flight arranged by the Bhutanese government. They flew out from the Amritsar airport on Monday morning. This was the second batch of students from Bhutan to have left after the Covid-19 pandemic. The first batch of 100 students left on March 28. 134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-Jalandhar, were allowed to leave for Bhutan through a special flight arranged by the Bhutanese government, Punjab special chief secretary (disaster management Covid-19) KBS Sidhu tweeted on Monday. A 21-year-old woman hosteller of LPU from Maharashtra tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday. Last week, Bhutan had thanked India for facilitating the evacuation of Bhutanese nationals stranded in India due to the coronavirus lockdown. Bhutan has evacuated many people residing in India in the past few days. The Himalayan country has sealed its border with India last month to stem the spread of coronavirus. India is under a 21-day lockdown till April 14 and has suspended all flight operations. So far, Bhutan has reported five coronavirus cases. India has cleared the first list of 13 countries to export hydroxychloroquine, including Bhutan. Government sources said on Saturday that Bhutan will get two lakh tablets of hydroxychloroquine, which is an anti-malarial drug. CURRENT SHAREHOLDERS: Zamansky LLC Investigates ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SERV) for Potential Breaches of Fiduciary Duties Zamansky LLC announces that it is investigating ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SERV) ("ServiceMaster" or the "Company") for potential breaches of fiduciary duties by ServiceMaster's senior officers and board of directors. If you are a shareholder of SMGH who still holds your shares, please contact our firm for information. It has recently emerged, that ServiceMaster-a leading provider of essential services to residential and commercial customers in the termite, pest control, cleaning and restoration markets-had allegedly experienced a known adverse trend of costly litigation, related to Formosan termite activity, that it failed to disclose to investors. According to Jake Zamansky, investment fraud attorney, ServiceMaster's officers and directors owe the Company and its shareholders fiduciary duties. "The recent allegations against ServiceMaster raise potentialconcern for investors," Zamansky says. "Our law firm is investigating whether the officers and directors have breached their duties to ServiceMaster and its shareholders." What ServiceMaster Shareholders Can Do If you are a current shareholder of ServiceMaster who still holds your stock, please contact us to review or discuss your legal rights. You may, without obligation or cost to you, email [email protected] or call the law firm at (212) 742-1414. About Zamansky LLC Zamansky LLC is a leading investment fraud law firm with experience handling securities, hedge fund, ERISA and other shareholder class action and derivative litigation. We are investment fraud attorneys who represent both individual and institutional investors. Our practice is nationally recognized for our ability to aggressively prosecute cases and recover investment losses. To learn more about Zamansky LLC, please visit our website, http://www.zamansky.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005487/en/ Bexar County Sheriff's Office An off-duty Bexar County Sheriff's detention corporal was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated Sunday night, according to a statement from the sheriff's office. The San Antonio Police Department arrested Susan Palomo, 50, at 11 p.m, the sheriff's office said. - James Oyugi Onyango travelled from Mombasa to his home village in Siaya and succumbed to COVID-19 on Friday, April 10 - The police were then ordered to immediately disinfect the body and have it buried as soon as possible - The body was brought for burial at his home as early as 2am and hurriedly buried without regard to the Luo traditions and rituals Social media has become ungovernable after a patient who succumbed to COVID-19 was hurriedly buried in a body bag, in a shallow grave and in the middle of the night. James Oyugi Onyango, 59, who worked at the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) had travelled with his wife and two daughters from Mombasa to Siaya. READ ALSO: Ruth Matete's husband dies after tragic gas accident James Oyugi Onyango worked at the Kenya Port Authority (KPA) before he died on Friday, April 10. Photo: K24 Source: UGC READ ALSO: Somalia minister succumbs to coronavirus Oyugi succumbed to the disease on Friday, April 10, after he was involved in a road accident at Awasi, Kisumu county. On April 5, he slept in Nairobi. On April 6 he was involved in a non-injury accident at Awasi market and slept in Kisumu, read a police report. The next day he proceeded to his home in Ukwala, Siaya county, where he remained indoors until April 10 when he developed a cough and was rushed to Matibabu Foundation Private Hospital. He died on the same day and samples were collected from him and taken to Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) in Kisumu on April 11. The samples tested positive for COVID-19. James Oyugi had travelled from Mombasa to his home village in Siaya county. Photo: James Oyugi Onyango Source: Facebook READ ALSO: TBT photo of MPs Isaac Mwaura, Gladys Wanga as student leaders at KU excites supporters Police were then ordered to immediately disinfect the body and have it buried. To the shock of the family, the body was brought for burial as early as 2am and it was buried hurriedly without dignity and respect to the dead. In a viral video circulating on social media, the body can be seen carried in a body bag on a pickup. There was no coffin. To add insult to an injury, the grieving family was woken up at 2am and a very shallow grave was dug at the man's home which was approximately three to four feet. READ ALSO: COVID19: Wakristu wajificha milimani na mapangoni kufanya ibada The people who were handling the body were wearing white aprons and protective gears. They then pulled the body out of the vehicle and threw it into the shallow grave like it was a dog as the family members wailed in the background. It was this careless handling of the body that has left many people on social media questioning the authorities on how they treated the family and the deceased's body. Although the government had directed that bodies of COVID-19 victims be buried within the shortest time possible, this did not necessarily take away the family's right to bury their loved ones in a decent manner. Some netizens were quick to compare the burial of the deceased KPA employee and that of the late Kenya Airways pilot whose body was escorted from the morgue and other employees allowed to give their last respect to their colleague. Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Contact Tuko.co.ke instantly. Source: TUKO.co.ke Eamonn Holmes has fanned the flames of baseless coronavirus conspiracy theories by suggesting it suits the state narrative to dispel claims that the pandemic is linked to 5G technology. Wading into debunked rumours which have ensnared a string of celebrities and prompted acts of vandalism, the presenter of ITVs This Morning claimed on Mondays programme that the media had been too quick to dismiss the theory as false when they dont know its not true. His remarks came during a discussion of fake news with co-host and wife Ruth Langsford and journalist Alice Beer. Referring to ridiculous coronavirus conspiracy theories, Beer cited those who believe that 5G is a main link to Covid-19, that the virus has been manmade to cull the population, and that the lockdown is a device to allow the roll-out of the wireless communications technology. This rumour has been spread so far and wide and has been so convincing to some people that there have been some 30 acts of vandalism and arson around the UK damaging essential telephone equipment, she added, before saying the theory was not true, and is incredibly stupid. Holmes, previously an anchor for Sky News, then interjected: I totally agree with what youre saying, but what I dont accept is mainstream media immediately slapping that down as not true when they dont know its not true. No one should attack or damage or do anything like that, but its very easy to say its not true because it suits the state narrative. Thats all I would say, as someone with an enquiring mind. Versions of the 5G conspiracy theory have been spreading online for years, with some proponents claiming the coronavirus outbreak is just the latest in a string of pandemics induced by electromagnetic waves. High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Show all 18 1 /18 High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Najaf, Iraq A man holds a pocket watch at noon, at an almost empty market near the Imam Ali shrine Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Bangkok, Thailand Wat Phra Si Rattana Satsadaram (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, part of The Grand Palace) Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Prague, Czech Republic An empty street leading to the historic Old Town Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Washington DC, US Lawn stretching towards the Capitol, home of Congress Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Jerusalem's Old City A watch showing the time in front of Damascus Gate Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world London, UK The Houses of Parliament seen from Westminster Bridge Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Wuhan, China Empty lanes in the city that saw the first outbreak of disease Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Havana, Cuba The Malecon road and esplanade winds along the city's seafront Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Cairo, Egypt A little busier than elsewhere: midday traffic in Tahrir Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Berlin, Germany The Brandenburg Gate, the only surviving city gate in the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Caracas, Venezuela Bolivar Avenue, opened in 1949 and the site of many demonstrations and rallies Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Moscow, Russia Spasskaya Tower (left) on the eastern wall of the Kremlin, and St Basil's Cathedral Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Istanbul,Turkey The harbourside Eminonu district is usually buzzing with activity Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New Delhi, India Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard that runs through the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Amman, Jordan The Roman amphitheatre that dates back to the 2nd century AD Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New York City, US The main concourse of Grand Central station in Manhattan Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Kiev, Ukraine Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the site of many political protests since the end of the Soviet era Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Accra, Ghana The odd walker out in the midday sun on Ring Road Central Reuters The theory has been disproved countless times by scientists, with one microbiology professor recently describing it as both a physical and biological impossibility. That has not stopped the baseless claims being shared by high-profile figures such as actor Woody Harrelson and TV presenter Amanda Holden. The rumours have fuelled attacks on wireless towers and other telecoms gear across the UK, as well as the harassment of technicians. Downing Street said vandals were putting lives at risk and condemned the crazed conspiracy theory. The telecoms industry has also been forced to respond to the growing threat to both workers and infrastructure. UK networks EE, O2, Three and Vodafone issued a joint statement condemning the baseless claims as harmful for the people and businesses that rely on the continuity of our services, while cabinet minister referred to theory as dangerous nonsense. Ofcom has warned broadcasters that they face sanctions if they spread misinformation about coronavirus, and censured a Sussex radio station for airing conspiracy theories about 5G. The media regulator launched a formal investigation into an interview with David Icke on regional TV station London Live last week in which the infamous conspiracist suggested the coronavirus pandemic was part of a government plot to conduct mass surveillance. Chinas northeast Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia, has become the new battleground against the coronavirus as authorities reported the highest number of new daily cases in nearly six weeks, driven by infected travellers from overseas. China fears a rise in imported cases could spark a second wave of Covid-19 and push the country back into a state of near paralysis. A total of 108 new cases were reported in mainland China on Sunday, up from 99 a day earlier. The National Health Commission said 98 of the new cases were imported, a new record. A total of 49 Chinese nationals who entered Heilongjiang province from Russia tested positive. On Monday, two people were reported dead in Hubei, pushing the toll to 3,341 while total cases stood at 82,160. As of Sunday, the mainland had reported a total of 1,378 imported cases. Chinese cities near the border with Russia are tightening controls and imposing quarantines in response to influx of infected patients from the country. No case occurred in November: China China on Monday rejected reports that the earliest case of Covid-19 in its territory occurred last November and that it had concealed the real situation regarding the pandemic, describing them as a distortion of facts. Chinese embassy spokesperson Ji Rong said in a statement: Recently, certain Indian media ignored the facts that China had officially released and continued to blame China for concealing the real situation. These claims are fact-distorting and irresponsible. The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking immediate financial support from the government for the ailing sector amid the nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic. In its letter to the prime minister, FADA sought complete waiver of interest on all category of loans from banks and NBFCs for the lockdown period. The industry body, which represents around 15,000 auto dealers, also sought extension of 4 per cent interest subvention/subsidy for working capital/loan requirements to companies for a period of nine months post the lockdown. FADA sought that the salary of people employed at the dealerships during the lockdown period should be paid through ESIC. It has also asked for grant of MSME extension to auto retail. The subsidies and incentives received under the MSME division will provide much needed relief to dealerships, which provide direct and indirect employment to lakhs of people, FADA said in the letter which was also marked to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, among others. The industry body has sought measures like GST cut on automobiles, incentive based scrappage policy and priority sector tag for the sector to boost demand post-lockdown period. FADA said the auto industry has already been reeling under a severe slowdown for the last 15 months, with more than 275 dealerships already shut, resulting in huge job losses. "The current situation can lead to an existential situation for many of our members and their employees. Majority of them are small scale family run businesses with no financial sustenance for such a crisis after already having gone through a tough period in past 15 months," FADA President Ashish Harsharaj Kale said in the letter. Over the years, the auto dealership business model has come under severe strain with increasing costs and low operating margins, thereby reducing the sector's strength to face challenges like the current situation and its after effects, he added. "While we are taking it up with SIAM at a complete change of the business model to build up sustenance for the after effects of COVID-19 and for any future disruptions, the immediate situation is extremely bleak if not supported," Kale said. Many auto dealers will go out of business and livelihood of hundreds of thousands will be lost if the sector doesn't get government support, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As per the directive issued by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers and senior officers on Monday (April 13) started to return to their offices. On Saturday (April 11), PM Modi had said that it is important to adopt the policy of "Jaan bhi jahaan bhi (both life and economy are important)" as the 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus COVID-19 has put severe stress on economy. It may be recalled that two days ago a directive was issued asking all government officials who are entitled to official vehicles to resume work despite the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak. Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar, Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister DV Sadananda Gowda, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda, Minister of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries Giriraj Singh and Minister of State for Youth Affairs Kiren Rijiju came to office on Monday to resume their duties. Along with the ministers, senior officials and some of their support staff too have also joined work from Monday. It is learnt that the ministers have been asked to carry on their duties with 50 per cent of their staff. "Only senior officials and the minimum required staff will be coming to the office today onwards. We'll follow all guidelines regarding COVID-19," Mr Rijiji told news agency ANI. All ministers and officials were screened with temperature guns before they were allowed to enter their respective offices. The vehicles of the ministers and their officials were also sanitised at the gate. On Saturday, PM Modi held a meeting with 13 Chief Ministers and had dropped hint that the nationwide lockdown will be extended after April 24 but the Centre is ready to give relaxations in certain areas and cases to ensure the survival of the economy . Notably, coronavirus has infected over 9,000 and killed more than 300 in India so far. A Yemeni shares his life experiences with Italians via his YouTube channel to help them get through the pandemic. Taha al-Jalals daily lockdown routine at his home in Milan, Italy, involves a morning soundcheck and about an hour of video editing. Every two days, he places his wifes professional camera on a tripod in front of his couch, presses the red button and records his days of isolation in Milan in the form of a public video diary. In his video appearances, he shares the lessons he has learned about coping with a lockdown from witnessing the continuing conflict in Yemen. As of March 9, the national government has placed the whole of Italy under lockdown, the most radical step taken by a Western country to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Restrictive measures mean residents may only leave their homes for urgent, verifiable work and health situations or emergencies. Among the roughly 60 million people forced into home confinement for safety, many are finding refuge in virtual connections. Al-Jalal decided to share his personal lockdown tales and thoughts by starting a YouTube channel, which he says helps him connect with the outside world in a situation of forced physical distancing. I think this period of quarantine will completely change our concept of human relationships, and give us a chance to discover more about each other and our loved ones. Im trying to see this as an opportunity for personal growth, he says. Welcomed with a warm heart Al-Jalal, a Yemeni home cook and Arabic translator, moved to Milan in early 2015, to reunite with Laura Silvia Battaglia, an Italian woman he had met in Sanaa about a year before. Today, she is his wife and quarantine companion. Like many other couples these days, they are trying to figure out how to make the lockdown work for two people not used to being stuck together 24 hours a day in a 60 square-metre (646 square foot) apartment. This could make or break our relationship, Battaglia says chuckling. But four weeks have already passed, and I still see this as a chance to re-discover our love and recover many moments lost beneath a modern, frantic lifestyle. Battaglia, a documentary filmmaker originally from Sicily, met al-Jalal in Sanaa in 2013, where she spent a few months to improve her Arabic language skills in preparation for completing a video project about Yemens child brides. A year after their first meeting, al-Jalal applied for a scholarship at the Catholic University of Milan, where he graduated with a masters degree in International Relations. He and Battaglia got married in Italy a few months before the conflict erupted in Yemen. Italy welcomed me with a warm heart and merciful hands. I found it easy to call this place home, because generosity is the main similarity between my two homelands, al-Jalal says. Human bonds in the worst situations The couple, amid many difficulties, has been able to return to war-torn Yemen twice since their wedding, to visit al-Jalals family who is still there. Yemen has turned into a country that people have limited access to, and find it even harder to get out from, he says. In 2016, on their way back from Yemen to Italy, al-Jalal and his wife were held at the land border between Yemen and Oman for three days, in an overcrowded room with other people trying to leave the country, with no Wi-Fi and limited access to food and water. We were totally disconnected from the outside world, only knowing that a conflict was happening just outside. Still, we took that chance to get to know each other and socialise. In retrospect, I ended up seeing it as one of the best lessons of my life, that you can still develop human bonds and support within the worst situations. That memory has acted as a point of reference in facing Italys pandemic lockdown with a more positive attitude. It inspired me to share my perspective that of a foreigner with family trapped in a war-torn country with worried Italians, and encourage them not to see this as a tragedy, but as an opportunity to appreciate the privilege of staying close to their loved ones. Messages from Yemen His videos now tackle a variety of subjects, from comparing Milan before and after the lockdown to his appreciation of Italys strong healthcare system, which he is sure will overcome the crisis. Al-Jalal personally saw the efficiency of Italys ICU system, as he recovered from brain cancer surgery two weeks before the first coronavirus cases made it to the news. All the treatment was for free, and in my videos, I encourage people to trust Italian doctors skills. As an immunocompromised brain cancer survivor, he says he was worried about living through this pandemic, but not frightened. However, when the situation escalated and the number of COVID-19 deaths in Italy surpassed those in China, he found it odd to be receiving messages from relatives and friends in war-torn Yemen worried about him. They told me they had read news about the Italian president crying on TV, bodies slumped in the streets of Milan and rumours about Muslims being cremated without the families consent. They thought I was the one living in a conflict zone. So I began adding videos in my diary specifically for a Yemeni audience, debunking fake news and sharing useful tips on how to maintain the environment clean, despite the limits caused by six years of conflict. The couples closest friend and groomsman, Hamdan al-Zeqri, also from Yemen and living in Italy, thinks al-Jamals lockdown diary idea can teach both Italian and Yemeni audiences a lot. It encourages locked-down Italians to put things into perspective, since the message comes from a migrant who saw conflict ravaging his home, like the many that sought refuge in Italy in the past years, al-Zeqri says. But it can also educate fellow Yemenis about a topic that is causing the spread of misinformation back home, and that could create panic or negligence in a place where, either way, the current context could make things worse. Virtual relationships The YouTube series also offers a daily moment of distraction from the couples new reality of uncertainty. As a freelance home cook, al-Jalal has temporarily lost a large part of his monthly income, like many other contract workers in Italy. But he has not lost his passion for cooking, and uploads some Yemeni recipe videos. Luckily, for now, the couple can rely on Battaglias job as a professor of video journalism at the Catholic University of Milan. As for many teachers across Italy, her lessons have turned into digital Skype conferences that have dragged her into a completely virtual lifestyle. I can at least still see my students through a webcam, and support them as much as I can, although its not the same level of excitement as teaching in real life, she says. But virtual relationships are even more emotionally draining when its your family members that youre not allowed to see because of the lockdown. With her elderly parents stuck alone in Sicily, on the other side of the country, Battaglia constantly thinks of the moment she will be able to reunite with them. From their small Milan apartment, the couple awaits the moment it will be safe for them to walk out of the house again, without fears for al-Jalals fragile health. Be it a war or a pandemic changing your life as you knew it, you dont know how much you have until you lose it, including the simple freedom of roaming crowded streets, he says. Many hawker food stalls are now delivering food due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in Singapore. (Photo: Catherine Lai / AFP) SINGAPORE During the Circuit Breaker Period, which will last from 7 April to 1 June, you would need to either cook at home, takeaway from food stalls and restaurants, or order food deliveries. If you are tired of cooking, or would rather not leave home and potentially get infected with the coronavirus, your best option would be to get food delivered to your home. Since the economy isnt doing well now due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of you would prefer cheap food even while ordering in. Common options for food delivery are the Big Three apps (GrabFood, Deliveroo and Foodpanda) as well as restaurants and fast food chains. But as demand surges for food deliveries, more services are being offered to help both businesses and consumers tide over this period. Weve compiled a list of places where you can get affordable food or even free meals from Good Samaritans, if youre really in financial need. (If you need a slightly fancier meal delivery for a special occasion at home such as birthdays or date nights, check out this list of restaurants.) E-commerce platform Carousell today announced the launch of its #SupportLocal campaign, to aid business owners whose operations have been disrupted by COVID-19. In partnership with food service supplier Unilever Food Solutions, Carousell will onboard over 2,500 F&B businesses onto the newly created Local F&B category on its platform. The onboarding process will ensure that business owners who have not had prior experience with online operations are still able to list on Carousell for increased visibility. With Carousell listings, F&B owners will be able to provide on-demand takeaway services without having to pay a premium or commission to external vendors. Hawkers United - Dabao 2020 started as a Facebook group that compiles hawker stalls or businesses that deliver food during Circuit Breaker. The group now has a website. The food vendors featured are those that lack marketing channels or are not on the usual food delivery apps. Hawkers United lists businesses with their contact details so that you can order from them directly. The food establishments are organised by district, so zoom in on the area that you live in to see what food is available in your area. Story continues A hawker at Lau Pa Sat prepares a take-away meal for a customer on 7 April 2020, the first day of Singapore's circuit breaker period. (PHOTO: Dhany Osman / Yahoo News Singapore) Similar to Hawkers United above, Stay Home Makan SG is another Facebook group that posts hawker stalls and their contact details so you can contact them for food deliveries. SG Dabao is yet another community-initiated web portal for food vendor listings to tide people over during the COVID-19 crisis. The group also has a Facebook page. SG Dabao hopes to save local hawker businesses in this difficult period. According to SG Dabao, they do not take a cent from the hawkers and delivery riders that they feature. Food vendors can get their business featured by WhatsApping SG Dabao at +65 8108 4318. WhyQ offers deliveries from a wide range of stalls at hawker centres and food courts. Its selling point as compared to the bigger food apps is that there is no minimum order amount, so you can go ahead and order a single meal just for yourself. You can also schedule your food delivery for a certain date and time in advance. Do note that there is a $1.50 charge for every separate portion within a single order. SG Local Shops is a Telegram chat-bot with AI that allows you to view food vendors and restaurants in your area and order food from them. The bot tells you the contact details of nearby food places for you to call or message them directly. Just converse with the bot in the Telegram channel like its a real person answering your queries! Add the Telegram bot at @SGLocalShops_bot. You can contribute details of the hawkers in your neighbourhood if you know them here: https://tinyurl.com/SGLocalShopsForm Allied Foodservice Equipment has rolled out an initiative where they have collated a list of F&B establishments that are offering in-house delivery, mostly island-wide. Businesses featured include heartland stalls serving zi char, nasi lemak and fishball noodles. The Excel sheet containing the list of businesses can be found here: bit.ly/supportlocaldelivery. Many of these F&B establishments rely heavily on in-house marketing as they are not on third party platforms, so hopefully this initiative will help these businesses out while getting more meals where theyre needed. Hawker Food Delivery is a new online food platform that aims to feature eateries from iconic hawker centres such as those at Old Airport Road and Tiong Bahru Market. This service delivers only to condominiums, though. The website is currently rolling out delivery service by district, with the service currently available in Districts 11, 21, 10 and 19 in Phase 1, followed by Districts 9, 16, 18 and 23 in Phase 2. Hawker Jason Chua and his co-founders at Beng Who Cooks are offering free meals and deliveries for those who need it. (Read our interview with Jason here.) Theyre offering this Circuit Breaker service under the Instagram account, Beng Who Cares Foundation (@bengwhocaresfoundation) just DM (Direct Message) them on Instagram with your order before 7pm to get your meal delivered the next day. This charitable service from the hawkers is based on the honour system they wont ask you why you need the free meal. The stall at Hong Lim Market & Food Centre started out selling poke bowls, but chef Jason changes the menu frequently to keep it fresh. Belanja Eat is a ground-up charitable initiative set up by a group of friends who wanted to spread some cheer to the needy during this difficult period. You can claim a free meal from participating hawker stalls, or you can belanja someone (to treat in Malay) by donating to participating hawkers so that they can provide free meals to someone who needs it. Belanja Eat works on an honour system too no questions asked, just visit a participating hawker stall and ask for the free meal. Tiding over Circuit Breaker and WFH: Coronavirus: Bollywood stands united in the coronavirus crisis, actor Anushka Sharma recently wrote a note expressing her disagreement towards the attack on medical officials who are being treated badly during working to save lives instead of putting their lives at risk. Coronavirus: The situation is getting tense day by day, as positive infected cases are unfathomable and rising, by looking at the current data, no signs of ebbing away. Bollywood has played a key role in spreading awareness related to the contagious virus, meanwhile, actor Anushka Sharma severely criticizes the act of attacking front line workers. Through her Instagram handle, Anushka showed disagreement towards all who are badly treating essential workers. The actor wrote: Deeply disturbed by knowing how medical officials and patients are treated discriminately. The current situation demands unity, care for each other and not to disrespect anyone. She shared another note which reads, when distresses, then bring a change until then a person always complains. Anushka has had been seen bringing out the social issues, earlier she expressed her concern over migrants heading towards there home, amid lockdown. She said, its painful to see how people are struggling to get food, water, and shelter which is basic for most, but for some its a necessity. Being in quarantine made her understood how blessed she is, the actress added. Check the post here: According to IANS Anushka with husband Virat Kohli donated Rs 3 crore to the PM CARE fund. Talking about their quarantine period, the duo is enjoying to the fullest, as they are enjoying homemade golgappas, besan burfi, photos posted on their Instagram. Earlier this week, she sahred a family photo playing monopoly with her family where all were seen smilling ear to ear Check the post here: For all the latest Entertainment News, download NewsX App Prime Minister Narendra Modi wearing a protective mask chairs a meeting with chief ministers on COVID-19 lockdown via videoconference, in New Delhi, Saturday, April 11, 2020. (Photo | PTI) Chennai: The Government of India has issued an advisory to all Central government officers cautioning them against using third-party software and apps, especially to hold meetings over videoconference. The advisory seems to have come after several instances of security breaches on popular videoconferencing apps such as Zoom. The government advisory said that third-party apps, especially those using Java, are prone to hacking. Government staff have been asked to stick to videoconferencing solutions provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), CNNNews 18 reported. Over the past few weeks, most of the ministers and senior bureaucrats have been working through meetings scheduled on Zoom, the news report said. However, the NIC, which on its website says has been providing videoconferencing solutions since 1995, is fully equipped to handle the video calls. All districts of the country and its top officers, namely the district magistrates or collectors, already have videoconferencing facilitated by the NIC. Now, the government has asked all its staff to strictly adhere to the advisory and only use NIC applications. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Chennai, April 13 : The mere thought of adjusting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds for payment of salaries/wages during the lockdown period is nothing but "Corporate Anti-Social Irresponsiblity", said a labour leader. "Salary or wage is a legal obligation. There is nothing like moral obligation for payment of salaries/wages. Further, for corporates, the wage cost will come to about 8 per cent only," A. Soundararajan, President, Tamil Nadu unit of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) told IANS. Soundararajan said the companies are also saving their power and other costs. He was reacting to the clarifications issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) where it said: "Payment of salary/ wages in normal circumstances is a contractual and statutory obligation of the company. Similarly, payment of salaries/wages to employees and workers even during the lockdown period is a moral obligation of the employers, as they have no alternative source of employment or livelihood during this period." The MCA has clarified that payment of salaries/wages during lockdown period shall not qualify as admissible expenditure under CSR. According to Soundararajan, the thought of adjusting CSR funds for wages should not have come at all. "If CSR funds are used for wages, then the company has not spent anything as CSR," he said. Soundararajan said that only about 20 days has passed since the lockdown was imposed and it is strange that the industry lobby bodies are claiming that their members are incurring huge losses. To the question whether the lockdown period could be adjusted against earned leave of the employees, Soundararajan said, "Such things should not be done as the lockdown was not the making of the workers or that of the company. Nevertheless, these aspects should be discussed between the management and the unions." According to him, big companies can easily absorb the production loss that happened during the lockdown. Soundararajan said the government should pass an order saying wages should be paid to workers -- permanent/temporary/casual -- for the lockdown period. "The CSR funds cannot be used for payment of salaries. We have paid our staff full salaries for March and will be paying for April as well. We hope operations would start from May onwards and there will be cash flows," Alok Aggarwal, Managing Director, National Trust Housing Finance Ltd, told IANS. "We are also asking our landlords to take a cut in their rent," he added. Speaking to IANS, N. Krishnamurthy, a city-based interior decorator who does works for major banks, said: "I have paid full salaries to my 40 workers for the month of March and in April salaries will also be paid in full. Yes, business has been affected, but that is different." Americans can see President Trump leading this nation through a serious crisis and they are responding with their continued enthusiastic support for his re-election, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. Joe Biden, Democrats, and the media continue to oppose his every action, but the people know that President Trump is fighting for them so they are fighting for him as well. By Abdul Qadir Sediqi KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan met Taliban leadership in Doha to discuss the need to reduce violence in the war-torn country, spokesmen for both sides said on Saturday, as continued clashes threaten to derail a fragile peace process. The meeting between Taliban leaders and General Scott Miller, commander of U.S. forces and the NATO-led non-combat Resolution Support mission in Afghanistan, took place on Friday night. It came as the insurgent group accuses U.S. forces of breaching an agreement signed between the two sides in February. "General Miller met with Taliban leadership last night as part of the military channel established in the agreement," a spokesman for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan told Reuters. "The meeting was about the need to reduce the violence," he said. The February pact between the United States and the Taliban, under which international forces will withdraw in phases in exchange for Taliban security guarantees, is the best chance yet of ending the 18-year U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. The spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Doha also said on Twitter that the meeting discussed implementation of the agreement. The Taliban last week accused U.S. forces of supporting Afghan security operations in some parts of the country, and warned that such support could jeopardize the agreement. The spokesman for the U.S. forces described the latter's actions as defense of Afghan forces. The Taliban are to sit for negotiations with an inclusive Afghan delegation as part of the agreement, but a prisoner exchange preceding the talks has hit snags. The Afghan government released a total of 200 Taliban prisoners on Wednesday and Thursday, but the insurgent group had walked away from the exchange process saying its demand on who was to be released first was not met. (Writing by Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell) Despite the new challenges posed by the novel coronavirus outbreak, Turkey is pressing ahead with military deployments in Syrias Idlib and maintaining its tight grip east of the Euphrates River. Ankara has transferred a number of military vehicles and munitions to Idlib, bringing its number of military posts in the last rebel bastion to 53 as of April 8. Turkeys increasing military activity in Idlib is no surprise, given possible looming operations in and around the enclave to reopen the M4 highway and to create a security corridor on both sides of the strategic road, as called for in a deal between Turkey and Russia. The deal, sealed in Moscow March 5, called for the cessation of hostilities, provided that the fight to eradicate terrorist groups continued. But there has been escalation on another front. Turkey-backed forces deployed east of the Euphrates to an area that came under the Turkish control in Operation Peace Spring are mounting attacks on the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian government troops. The coronavirus outbreak has topped the agenda not only in the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, but also in Turkish-controlled Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain to the east of the Euphrates. The outbreak was expected to slow the fighting in the region. However, the attacks have not been disrupted by the pandemic, nor by internal disputes among Turkish-backed Syrian National Army factions. Syrian fighters discontent with Turkey's failure to pay them is also growing. In March, as the pandemic sent the world into turmoil, clashes raged in the region, particularly around Tell Abyad, Ain Issa and Tell Tamer. April saw an uptick in violence. Turkish-backed forces based in Ras al-Ain are shelling villages in the predominantly Christian town of Tell Tamer, which lies on the M4 highway some 23 miles (37 kilometers) from Ras al-Ain. Ain Issa and Tell Abyad are also under fire. The frequency of the clashes points to a low-intensity conflict strategy. According to local reports, Turkish-backed rebels targeted several villages and towns near Tell Abyad and Ain Issa with mortar and artillery fire March 1-16. A civilian and a Syrian soldier were wounded by shelling near Tell Abyad and Ain Issa on March 15 and 16. The tension further escalated through the second half of March with the mainly Assyrian town of Tell Tamer coming under fire. On April 1, the villages of Kafr Hamra and Umm al Kayf near Tell Tamer and Rabia near Ras al-Ain were bombed, wounding three civilian women. On April 2, the villages of Umm al Kayf, Abosh, Qabr, Rubaiyat and Tal al-Ward near Tell Tamer came under fire. According to local sources, two Syrian soldiers were killed and two others wounded during the clashes in Abosh and Qabr. Turkeys state-run Anadolu Agency gave a different tally, reporting that four SDF fighters and two Syrian army soldiers had been killed. The Turkish Defense Ministry stated that 10 People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters had been neutralized in an operation conducted by Turkish commandos in the Peace Spring region. The YPG is seen as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the armed group that has been fighting Ankara since 1984. The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community. The terrorists were about to launch an attack aiming to disrupt the peace and stability in the region, the statement read, giving no further details. In another statement on the same day, the ministry announced four more YPG fighters had been neutralized. Attacks on the SDF positions in Tell Abyad and Tell Tamer kept up through the first week of April. In response, the influential Assyrian Military Council in Tell Tamer and the Habur Protection Units joined in the SDFs counterattacks. The Defense Ministry announced April 4 that 24 fighters had been neutralized, without providing any details about the time and locations of the operations. Naturally, the Kurdish sources have not confirmed these figures. When Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring in October 2019 against the Syrian Kurdish-led groups, civilians escaping villages between Ain Issa and Tell Abyad took refuge in Raqqa while civilians escaping Tell Tamer scattered across Hasakah. Now that the operation is over, they are trying to return to their homes, but they are discouraged by the artillery fire and the recent clashes have allegedly led to new displacements from some villages. The region is being kept under fire to prevent civilians from returning to their villages. We were expecting the coronavirus outbreak to stop the clashes and bring some normality to the region, but the attacks are mounting, an official from the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria told Al-Monitor. These attacks are affecting some 15 villages and undermining the autonomous administrations coronavirus [containment] efforts. The attacks have also led to speculation on whether President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still betting on his so far botched attempts to seize control of a corridor stretching for the entire 566-mile (911-kilometer) Turkish-Syrian border and oil fields in SDF-controlled Deir ez-Zor. Turkeys Operation Peace Spring in October had aimed to set up a safe zone along the war-torn countrys northern frontier to resettle some of the 3.6 million refugees Turkey hosts. However, the deals Turkey reached with the United States on Oct. 17 and Russia on Oct. 22 to cease the operation limited the Turkish-control territory to an area 20 miles (32 kilometers) deep between Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain. The escalation is considered an effort to keep Turkeys initial plans alive. The Turkish Defense Ministrys decision to scale down the troop movements also appears irrelevant in the Syrian arena. Meanwhile, discontent and disarray seem to be growing among Turkish-backed Syrian National Army factions. Some 60 fighters held a protest in Tell Abyad April 5 demanding Turkey pay their overdue salaries and allow fighters to cross into the area west of the Euphrates. Similar demands were raised back on March 17, when armed militia staged a sit-in, blocking the road linking Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain. They had also asked for a rotation of troops between forces deployed in the Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch regions as well as the Peace Spring area. Turkey has taken some measures at the Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain crossings to stop the virus from entering the region and people still fear becoming trapped in the Peace Spring area, which lacks proper health facilities. Rifts between the various Syrian National Army factions are standing out as another example of the disarray. A quarrel over the houses and businesses that the militia sees as spoils of war escalated into an armed conflict in the town of Kharabat in Ras al-Ain on the night of April 5. Hours of clashes left eight militia members dead. Episodes of looting similar to what happened in the formerly Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin are now unfolding in the Peace Spring region. Ankaras efforts to keep the front lines active despite the deals it reached with Russia and the United States might be futile. The attacks on the SDF and Syrian government troops positions have not yielded any territorial gains. In addition to the armed factions discontent with Turkey, ongoing problems with the locals may be another harbinger of new trouble for Turkey. New territorial gains, new financial resources, reconstruction opportunities and oil have been the main driving forces behind the armed militias eagerness to participate in Operation Peace Spring. Under the new circumstances, however, Erdogan may not be able to use similar leverage to entice these forces, given its budget crisis, international isolation and dependence on the Russian game plan. Thus, the unfinished drama in northeastern Syria appears to be a looming headache for Turkey. Hong Kong human rights activists have donated 4,000 surgical masks to a Freehold hospital fighting the coronavirus crisis to thank the New Jersey congressman who has been a staunch advocate on Capitol Hill. The donation to CentraState Medical Center in Freehold was organized by the Hong Kong Democracy Council and New Yorkers Supporting Hong Kong, two U.S.-based groups supporting the pro-democracy protesters fighting the Chinese governments efforts to limit freedom in the former British territory, according to Rep. Chris Smith. The hospital is located in the 4th Congressional District, represented by Smith. He was the lead House sponsor of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act signed into law last November by President Donald Trump. The international Hong Kong community who like Americans struggle to contain this outbreak are our good friends, Smith said. "For them to show this gesture to CentraState workers is very much appreciated. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage Smith has introduced legislation in every Congress since 2014 to resist efforts to erode the unique freedoms China had guaranteed to Hong Kong. Last years pro-democracy protests gave new impetus to Smiths efforts and he stood with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Hong Kong protesters at the Capitol last September to tout the legislation that eventually cleared Congress and went to the president. New Jersey, with more cases of COVID-19 than any other state but New York, has struggled to get enough equipment to contain the outbreak. Gov. Phil Murphy said Sunday that the state obtained another 200 ventilators from the federal government. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Australians have been told the 'three elements' needed before the country's strict coronavirus lockdown can be lifted. Health minister Greg Hunt warned on Monday despite a dramatic reduction in the growth of coronavirus cases in Australia it is too early to relax social distancing rules. There are 6,360 cases of the coronavirus in Australia and 61 people have died, but the growth rate in recent weeks has slowed from 30 per cent to less than 5 per cent. Mr Hunt told reporters the government was already drawing up a 'road out' of the pandemic through an assessment protocol consisting of three main factors. Two women walk along Bronte Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on Easter Monday. Australia's health minister has said 'three elements' must be met before the nationwide coronavirus lockdown can be eased 'One is clear indication we are suppressing the case numbers in Australia it could be case numbers, the re-transmission rate, thats all being developed into an assessment protocol,' he said. 'Two is ensuring we have rapid response capability testing, tracing. Thirdly, once those things are achieved, is planning the steps out, which will always be gradual.' Mr Hunt warned Australia should be wary of falling into the same trap as 'sophisticated' Asian countries like South Korea and Japan. Both relaxed their restrictions only to be forced to heighten them again. 'We want to ensure the more we do now, the greater our ability to manage in the future,' he said. It comes as Australians are congratulated for staying at home over Easter as more than half of those who caught coronavirus have now recovered. Political leaders and health officials have said though the nation must maintain the pressure in the fight against the virus. The actions of Australians in staying at home and keeping their distance from others is now consolidating efforts to flatten the curve of new infection numbers, Mr Hunt said. A road warning sign urging Australians to stay at home on Monday - with the Sydney Opera House looming in the background. Health minister Greg Hunt said one criteria was the suppression of COVID-19 case numbers and the re-transmission rate of the illness Mr Hunt speaks to the media during a press conference outside the Lifeblood Donor Centre in Melbourne on Monday 'Millions and millions of Australians have done the right thing and helped protect lives and save lives, not just over the Easter weekend, but over recent weeks and that is why we are flattening the curve,' he said on Monday. 'Australians have done what we had hoped - and more. CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement 'I couldn't be more impressed, more honoured, and more heartened by the work of Australians over the Easter weekend and in the weeks before.' Traffic movements over the Easter weekend were just 13 per cent of the usual amount for the holiday. However, fines were issued in several states after people ignored or flouted the rules and travelled anyway. More than 6300 Australians have been infected with the coronavirus and 61 people have died. Two more deaths were recorded overnight but there were only 33 new cases nationwide in the past 24 hours. The low number of new infections could be due in part to less testing over Easter. But encouragingly, almost 3340 people - more than half the total cases - have now recovered. Although the coronavirus infection curve is flattening, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy says it is still too early to relax strict social distancing rules. 'The scale of measures at the moment are something that we clearly do have to review ... but it's not now, it's within the next few weeks,' he told ABC radio. What would normally be a bustling Bronte Beach on Easter Monday is pictured closed off to the public under coronavirus restrictions 'I think we need to look at all of the data, look at our preparedness, and the national cabinet will be making a lot of decisions about what, if anything, can be relaxed in the coming weeks.' Looking forward, Professor Murphy said he would be very concerned if social restrictions were relaxed before public hospitals were fully prepared and the country had enough personal protective equipment. 'The thing that worries us most at the moment is complacency,' he said. 'Every single community transmission that's undetected can infect a lot of people, and that's why it is so important that we do maintain measures for the time being.' Mr Hunt said the aim was to work towards 'effective eradication' of the disease. NSW Police ask people to move on while patrolling during the Easter long weekend at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday It comes as a new cluster of 60 cases in Tasmania's northwest has led the state government to close two hospitals. About two-thirds of those affected are healthcare workers. All hospital staff and their households - about 5000 people - will be placed into quarantine for two weeks as a 'super clean' of the facilities is undertaken. Meanwhile, NSW has offered waivers of up to a quarter of land tax bills to landlords who cut rent for tenants affected by the coronavirus crisis. The six-month package also includes a moratorium on forced residential evictions over rent arrears. Queensland has announced that, as in other states, schools will only be open to vulnerable children and those of essential workers after the Easter term break but that this will be reviewed by May 22. A person dressed in an Easter bunny outfit stands in front of a deserted Maroubra Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on Easter Sunday The federal government has announced an extra $3 million to boost the nationally co-ordinated emergency response to COVID-19. It is also considering subsidising domestic flights for airlines hammered by the pandemic. Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham says there are no guarantees international flights will resume by December. He is encouraging people to take domestic holidays instead once the pandemic subsides. And sport minister Richard Colbeck has questioned the NRL planning to restart its competition on May 28, saying the date is probably a bit ambitious. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:25:03|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CAIRO, April 13 (Xinhua) -- As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the globe, the international community has renewed its call for the warring sides in the Middle East to focus on curbing the disease instead of fighting each other. In a joint appeal issued on Saturday, five UN envoys to the Middle East urged for a cessation of hostilities across the region, following UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' recent call for a ceasefire amid the COVID-19 crisis. POSITIVE RESPONSE On March 23, Guterres called for a worldwide ceasefire. Some conflicting sides in the Middle East have responded positively to the UN appeal. In Yemen, a country suffering from the world's worst humanitarian crisis, a two-week ceasefire proposed by the Saudi-led coalition backing the UN-recognized government went into effect on Thursday. In the Gaza Strip, rare calm has been observed for over a month now. Though there has been no official ceasefire, Israel and Palestine have put aside their disputes and made joint efforts to fight COVID-19. In Libya, both the UN-recognized government in Tripoli and the rival eastern-based forces publicly welcomed the UN's ceasefire call. "The positive responses to the UN's call are also practical arrangements compelled by the pressure of the epidemic," said Ding Long, a researcher at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. "After years of war, these countries are suffering from poor health, lack of medical staff and a large number of crowded refugee camps with no basic living facilities," he said. "Once the epidemic spreads, the consequences will be unimaginable." So far, both Syria and Libya have reported 25 COVID-19 cases, respectively. Yemen reported its first case on Friday. NO PEACE IN SIGHT However, a gap between the declarations and actions remains. During the past several days, military operations and sporadic attacks have continued between Yemen's government forces and the Houthi rebels in different turbulent areas of the impoverished Arab country. Ali Bin Hadi, a retired military official and expert, said that there are no positive signs that fighting in Yemen would cease temporarily. "The warring factions in Yemen only react and respond positively with the ceasefire calls through their media outlets, but on-ground is something else," the Aden-based expert said. In Libya, conflicts have even escalated amid the coronavirus crisis. Khaled Al-Montaser, Libyan professor of international relations, said the conflicting parties "declared their readiness for peace to end the war, but actions on the ground confirm that the battles did not stop." "I think the war will not stop until one of the parties declares its control over Tripoli and the entire west of Libya," he said. According to Ding, the ceasefire amid the epidemic is "expedient," and will not bring about real peace as long as the decades-long causes of the conflicts remain unresolved. In a joint appeal, the UN envoys urged all warring parties to translate Guterres' appeal for immediate ceasefires into concrete actions. They called on all parties to conflicts to engage without preconditions in negotiations to immediately halt hostilities, to sustain existing cease-fires, and to achieve "longer-term resolutions to the persistent conflicts across the region." MORE TO BE DONE The joint call for ceasefire is of great significance, and highlights the urgent need to fight COVID-19 with concerted efforts, Lebanese expert Mahamoud Raya said. However, the international community needs to launch mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the ceasefire, he added. "I hope the regional countries are invited to hold a permanent forum to heal the wounds left by the conflicts, through facilitating access and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced people, refugees, besieged communities, and all those destroyed by war and deprivation," said Ibrahim al-Ameri, a political expert at the University of Baghdad. Libyan Parliament member Mohamed Abullah said a ceasefire in the Middle East could be achieved, especially during the novel coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, "significant international pressure" must be forced on "regional parties supporting the conflicts, especially in countries like Syria, Libya and Yemen." The new Ukraine Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Assessment report for 2019, published by the World Bank and the EU on April 13, testified to the progress made by Ukraine in the field of public finance management. "The 2019 PEFA Assessment indicates that the government of Ukraine has made progress in the application of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). According to the report, the government improved its macroeconomic and budget forecasting tools, as well as increase transparency in public financial management through introduction of an open budget portal and e-procurement system ProZorro," according to a press release on the website of the EU Delegation to Ukraine. The comparison of the 2019 and 2015 PEFA Assessments reveals that many indicators and dimensions have improved, specifically those related to fiscal discipline, the strategic allocation of resources, and the efficient use of resources for service delivery. However, some indicators have deteriorated since the last PEFA. For instance, the time for budget preparation was shortened, and there was a reduction in competitive procurement bidding and fewer payroll audits compared to the previous PEFA," the report says. "The report demonstrates Ukraine's willingness to further improve the management of its public finances. The EU will continue to support Ukraine's public financial management reform agenda," Ambassador Matti Maasikas, the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, said. "The assessment was carried out by the World Bank as part of the Parallel European Commission-World Bank Partnership Program for the Reform of Public Administration and Finances (EURoPAF) and closely coordinated with the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. Development partners from the U.S. Treasury Department and Sweden were part of the Assessment team," according to the document. "The report presents an up-to-date diagnostic of the national-level public financial management (PFM) performance and describes the changes that have taken place since the previous PEFA Assessment in 2015," it says. A shoplifter who stole 27 handbags from one shop has been jailed for 15 months. Calvin Cunningham (25) had been struggling with heroin and crack cocaine addictions when he carried out the thefts in Dublin city centre. Judge Colin Daly handed down the sentence at Dublin District Court. Cunningham, of George's Hill Apartments, Halston Street, Dublin 7, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of theft. The court heard he went to River Island on January 23 last year and took 27 handbags with a combined value of 859. He also stole goods including a dress worth 800 from Zara last October 30 and was found in possession of other stolen property, including accessories from Aldi and a dress from Fat Face. Convictions The accused had 34 previous convictions for offences including theft. He was already serving a sentence when he appeared in court in custody. Cunningham had suffered serious addiction issues and had been abusing heroin, crack cocaine and tablets, his solic- itor said. His parents had both been addicted to heroin and he had seen them using the drug when he was growing up. Cunningham turned to theft to fund a habit he could not break. He has since detoxed. He was hoping to change his life around when he got out of prison, and could live with his father, who had given up drugs. Cunningham's partner was also in custody, and he was hoping to get back with her when she got out of prison, the court heard. Sentencing him, Judge Daly backdated the sentences to last October. He made some concurrent and others consecutive. A 32-year-old man who was under quarantine at the Galgotias University hostel in Greater Noida, fell to his death on Sunday evening. The person has been identified as a resident of a village in Phase 2 of Noida. According to officials, the incident took place at around 8pm when the man fell from the seventh floor of the hostel. Officials said that he allegedly jumped from the balcony of his room when there was nobody inside. The person was previously under quarantine at the Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar Hostel in Gautam Budh University and was shifted to Galgotias University hostel on Sunday. Officials had taken his sample for Coronavirus testing and his reports were awaited. According to officials, the person was declared dead when the doctors on duty checked him after his fall. They added that the man was allegedly mentally unstable. The person who died was mentally unstable but we are verifying all facts. The person jumped from the seventh floor. Our investigations are on in the matter, said Suhas LY, district magistrate, Gautam Budh Nagar. The DM has also ordered a magisterial inquiry in the matter. A magisterial inquiry headed by the additional district magistrate has been ordered to find out the circumstances of the incident and also to figure out the person responsible, added the DM. Officials said the body will not be handed over to his family members as the Sars-Cov-2 test reports are awaited. The funeral has to take place as per the protocol set up for the last rites of Covid-19 positive patients. We will get the sample reports of the deceased on a priority basis. The body cant be handed over to the family before his results are clear to us as there is a set protocol for the disposal of a Covid-19 patients body, said Dr Vikasendu Agarwal, state surveillance officer, Lucknow. According to authorities, the victim was one of the 72 persons in the district who had directly or indirectly come in contact with the Tablighi Jamaat event last month in Nizamuddin Markaz. As per the preliminary investigation, the person has not left any note behind. Knowledge Park police is going to register a case of suicide in the matter. The investigations are on to find out the exact reason behind his extreme step, said the DM. I ts been over three weeks since the UK closed all its schools in an attempt to prevent the spread of coronavirus, forcing parents to homeschool their children for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, by now you will have established a routine and ensuring they keep active, with the help of Joe Wicks, of course. Online platforms and apps are a crucial tool at this time to keep children engaged and learning during the lockdown. When it comes to the harder subjects such as science and maths, it can be hard to keep up the momentum for learning, particularly if they are subjects the parents struggle with. Here are some handy STEM apps and platforms to keep in your pocket for some added fun and support during the lockdown. BBC Bitesize The BBC is doing a big push for its Bitesize website, launching 14 weeks of daily online lessons for children of all age groups. Designed to reflect the UK school curriculum, there will be new maths lessons every day, with more subjects to follow. Its not launching until April 20, but it could come in very handy for those daily sums lessons. CodeSpark The lockdown is a great excuse to get your children coding, after all its one of the most in-demand digital skills around. CodeSpark is the top coding app for children aged five to nine. Its available on tablets, smartphones and computers so your kids will be making their own games in no time. BT's Code a Cake challenge introduces kids to the basics of code / BT Another way to get started with coding is with BTs Code a Cake challenge, as part of its Skills for Tomorrow Initiative. The challenge allows children to program a robotic arm to help them create a virtual cake. It teaches the basic steps of coding including sequencing, variables and looping. MathTango One of the Apple App Stores favourite maths games for aged 11 and under, MathTango makes learning addition, subtraction, multiplication that little more interesting thanks to its unique maths puzzles and classic world-building activities. For those aged 12 and over, Dragon Box Algebra 12+ is also a good one to try: its an algebra tutor in your pocket, full of educational games to help kids gain confidence in maths. Dyson engineering challenge If you want to challenge your children to use their STEM skills, then the James Dyson Foundation has put together 44 science and engineering tasks for kids to try during the lockdown. From building a cardboard boat from scratch, racing a balloon-powered car, or keeping a marble rolling for a minute, children wont even realise theyre learning. The Foundation is also encouraging people to share photos and videos of their challenges on social media using #JDFChallenge and #DysonLearning. Khan Academy Khan Academy hosts lessons for science, maths and computer programming (Khan Academy ) / Khan Academy Khan Academy is based in the US so it will have more American references, e.g it uses the word math instead of maths, but it gets the results. Around 90 per cent of teachers and students who have used the online learning platform have said it's an effective learning resource, with many pre-college students saying it has helped them prepare for college. It covers subjects including maths, science and computer programming, and has partnered with institutions including Nasa and MIT to offer specialised content too. Tassomai If youre used to the fun, goal-orientated design of Duolingo, then youll definitely appreciate Tassomai. The learning app creates daily goals for students, whereby they have to answer a certain number of questions in order to hit their target. One Ukrainian serviceman killed in Donbas for past 24 hours, another on receives combat wound JFO HQ One Ukrainian serviceman killed, one received a combat wound when Russia-led armed groups three times opened fire using hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers and machine guns of large caliber near villages of Taramchuk, Vodiane and Krymske, a press center of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) headquarters reported. "Ukraine lost one brave defender following shell attacks on April 12, another one received a combat wound," the HQ reported in the morning report on its official page in Facebook on Monday. The press center emphasized that the servicemen of the JFO took "comprehensive measures to cease enemy fire and gave a decisive answer to all the criminal actions of the enemy." It is noted that after the use optional armaments by the Ukrainian troops, the militants refused further provocations. "Losses of the enemy are being specified," the HQ added. It is also reported that since the beginning of the current day, fighters have not shown fire activity and there have been no losses among the Ukrainian defenders. "There have been no cases of coronavirus infection among the personnel of the Joint Forces. The situation in the area of the operation of the JFO remains under control," the HQ said. Slate is making its coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism. Start your free trial. During the weekend of March 7 and 8, when documented U.S. COVID-19 cases numbered not even in the hundreds, much less the hundreds of thousands, SiriusXM Satellite Radio promoted Doctor Radio, an entire channel dedicated to discussing the coronavirus. On that weekend, Dr. Marc Siegel of the NYU Langone Medical Center was the dominant voice on the channel, of which he is the medical director, and the talk was about how viruses work, how viruses spread, and what the public could do. No facts were misstated, and the question in the air was, how much should people worry? The answer was, in summary, a bit. Siegel enthusiastically agreed with Paul A. Offit, a professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, who said of the novel coronavirus: People are treating this like its a viral apocalypse, and I dont see it. I dont understand. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I was never blase about the virus, but after listening to Doctor Radio for a few hours that weekend, I felt reassured. I figured that these were highly credentialed medical experts, and I was impressed by their titles and affiliations. But out of curiosity, and wondering if I could book Siegel for The Gist, I researched him a little and learned more about his background. Siegel, who has contributed to Slate, is a Fox News contributor. He frequently appears on Fox & Friends and Tucker Carlson Tonight. He has written three books about pandemics, all of which reach the same broad conclusion: Americans are overly concerned with the ill effects of pandemics, and the fear of viruses is often worse than the viruses themselves. Advertisement As the virus spread, Siegel doubled down on his positive review of the White Houses handling of the virus and its messaging on the risk of the pandemic. In 2005, Siegel wrote False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fearyou can see that book propped up over his shoulder when he does remote appearances on Fox News. In it he writes: One reason for the potential panic out of proportion to the risk is that it is almost impossible to predict when this pandemic might occur. The event occurs only about once in fifty years, but the more we see it discussed in the media, the more we personalize the uncertainty, convincing ourselves irrationally that every year will be the year. He wrote 2006s Bird Flu out of my concern with which the ease such potent doses of bird flu jargon can cause public alarms to be sounded. In his 2009 book, Swine Flu, Siegel emphasized the importance of learning to understand why the likelihood of the worst case coming to pass is awfully low. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement On March 4, Siegel appeared on former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorkas radio program, in which he praised the presidents handling of the burgeoning crisis but singled out Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDCs National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, for criticism. Siegel said: The messaging with the exception of one slip by Nancy Messonnier who said this is going to disrupt your community and minethe if but when sentencehas been very strong. Its the politicization that is building the fear. The hysteria is coming from trying to knock the president and his team. Advertisement Advertisement Reading Siegels extensive writing on past pandemics, a picture emerges of an analyst who has poured so many professional and reputational resources into proving how often we overreact to potential pandemics that he quite dangerously underreacted to an actual pandemic. (Slate reached out to Siegel for comment multiple times but has not heard back.) Advertisement Advertisement On Feb. 20, Siegel went on Fox Business and Lou Dobbs asked, So are you impressed by the number of Americans whove got that much confidence in the Trump administration? Siegel replied, Absolutely, Lou. I think that the task force that the president put together and his leadership on this has been tremendous. Advertisement Advertisement As the virus spread, Siegel doubled down on his positive review of the White Houses handling of the virus and its messaging on the risk of the pandemic. Messonnier was proved right, in contrast to Siegel, who ended the interview with the words Stop rushing to the worst-case scenario. Were not going to get there. In my own life, it was becoming clear during the second week of March that I was going to have to make a decision about whether my son should continue to go to public school, since New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was lagging behind the decisions made by other, less affected cities. In the keep them going camp was a March 10 op-ed in the New York Times and that initial Doctor Radio coverage led by Siegel. The programming I heard on SiriusXM radio back in early March had established itself in my mind as the sensible, nonhysterical, board-certified argument. And yet so much of the medical establishment was challenging this view of the virus being more hype than harm. Advertisement A March 14 Siegel segment with Fox News Jeanine Pirro convinced me that I had to take the virus much more seriously than even an associate professor of medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center was taking it. Advertisement Advertisement Pirro read a viewer question asking: We have been told that the upcoming warm weather in the the U.S. will kill the virus as [it] cant take warm weather, warm temperatures. So why is it spreading now in tropical areas where its hot every day and every night? Siegels response? First of all, it is not spreading in places like Africa right now. South America, theres not a lot of cases. There isnt a lot of cases in Australia right now. Theres about 200. Were seeing it mostly in areas where its not their summer right now, but to answer his question, high humidity and heat and a lot of ultraviolet light are conditions that most viruses, respiratory viruses, most, including coronaviruses, do not do well in. So were hoping for a seasonal change here when we get to the warmer weather. Advertisement Four weeks later, even amid inadequate testing, Brazil has registered more than 22,000 cases and more than 1,200 deaths, Australia has more than 6,000 cases, and tropical countries like Malaysia and the Philippines are each nearing 5,000 cases. There are more than 14,000 cases on the African continent. Advertisement Advertisement Pirro asked a second question: Is it OK to have family visit my 73-year-old healthy mom at her home? Siegel replied: I would say so. Provided that theyre careful, and that theyre not sick, and that they do the kind of social distancing were talking about here. Pirro followed up: Can they hug Grandma? To which Siegel responded: Well, lets do an elbow bump with grandma. But sure. I mean, the point is, lets not go completely overboard. You get to see Grandma, if shes healthy, she doesnt have emphysema. shes healthy, youre healthy, you dont go there sick, you dont cough on her. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement This is not in alignment with the best practices expressed by most experts, and it contradicts the advice issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Finally, when Pirro asked if it was safe to go to the gym, Siegel said it was fine, adding, Im still going to the gym. By this point, I had stopped going to the gym. Reading the guidance from medical experts, I had concluded that the gym was an unnecessary risk. In fact, the next day the mayors of New York and Los Angeles issued an order to shut down gyms (although de Blasio did infamously sneak in one last workout). Advertisement On March 25, in a segment of Bill Hemmer Reports described in its web write-up as Dr. Siegel calls out mathematical modeling of coronavirus spread, Siegel said, Maybe, just maybe, were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel Advertisement On that day there were a little more than 80,000 confirmed cases in the United States. Now there are almost 560,000. Siegel has consistently been the media-facing medical expert least worried about stopping community spread and most concerned with economic considerations. His recommendations about masks, gloves, and distancing have lagged behind those of other experts and the CDC. He treated panic as if it were the pandemic and the pandemic as if it were a false sense of panic. As recently as April 6, he advised Fox & Friends, The general public can get adequate protection by washing their hands, by changing their clothes, by taking hot showers, by using masks if they are in close confines with other people. Advertisement It is one thing for Fox News to employ, and occasionally part ways with, talk show hosts whose job it is to filter reality through a pro-Trump lens for their audience. That may be journalistic malpractice, but there is no licensing board for journalists. Physicians, on the other hand, must maintain membership in professional organizations, adhere to ethical standards, and take oaths. To offer a view of reality that so often departs from the best advice offered by the most informed experts in the field of medicine is worse than careless punditry, Trumpist doctrine, or the kind of gonzo performance art misinformation that Fox is often known for. To aggressively defend President Donald Trumps agenda and worldview in the field of right-wing punditry earns the speaker points and cachet. In the field of medicine, its a dangerous dereliction of professional duty, a harmful contradiction to the very notion of public health. For more from Mike Pesca, listen to The Gist. Threatened sun bears could suffer from increased poaching due to the Chinese governments touting of bear bile treatment for coronavirus, conservation charities have warned. In a list of recommended treatments for Covid-19 published last month, Chinas National Health Commission promoted injections of a traditional medicine containing bear bile. An estimated 12,000 bears are held in captivity on farms in China and Vietnam, where they are milked for the digestive fluid. But experts said Chinas official approval of the so-called medicine could influence desperate consumers in Malaysia, potentially leading to an increase in sun bear poaching there. Monitor, a conservation society dedicated to lesser-known species, said the bear, which is found in tropical forests across Southeast Asia, was already threatened with extinction. Desperate consumers may easily be swayed, Monitor spokesperson Loretta Shepherd told Free Malaysia Today (FMT). There is a very real chance that our sun bears will be at increased risk. We could see an increase in the use of bear bile medicine and a rise in the poaching of sun bears. According to a study last year by Traffic, an organisation tackling the international wildlife trade, illegal trade in bear parts in Malaysia had increased since 2015. It reported bear-based medicines were on offer in more than two-thirds of traditional Chinese medicine shops in the country. Andrew Sebastian, head of the Malaysian Ecotourism and Conservation Society, told FMT Chinas message would increase the demand for bear bile in China itself as well as Malaysia. Bear bile is an ingredient of tan re qing, injections of which are among recommended treatments for severe and critical coronavirus patients in a plan published three weeks ago, circulated by Chinese state media. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners typically use tan re qing to treat bronchitis but Clifford Steer, a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who has studied the subject, said he had seen no evidence bear bile is an effective treatment for coronavirus, National Geographic reported. But, he said, it may alleviate Covid-19 symptoms because of its anti-inflammatory properties and ability to calm immune responses. In February, the Chinese government banned the eating and transport for eating of wild animals as coronavirus was spreading, but it did not cover use of wildlife products in Chinese medicine or as ornamental items. Cleaners moved into the parliament of the Democratic Republic of Congo to disinfect it on Monday, under a scheme to stamp out coronavirus in central Kinshasa, the epicentre of the country's outbreak of the disease. Cleaners clad in white suits deployed sprays and fumigators to deep-clean the Palace of the People, which is the seat of the National Assembly and Senate, AFP reporters saw. Legislators are to gather in congress in the coming days. The operation is part of a campaign to disinfect the institutional and commercial centre of Kinshasa, where almost all of the DRC's known cases of coronavirus have occurred. Gombe, a district of embassies, corporate offices and upmarket homes next to Lingwala where the parliament is located, has been in lockdown since April 6. Cleaners have "disinfected the building (in Gombe) where several ministerial cabinets are housed," said Blaise Zahinda, a communications adviser for the environment ministry. On Sunday, firemen hosed down the main streets of Gombe using water containing a five-percent solution of bleach. The DRC, a country the size of continental western Europe, is considered by experts to be highly vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus. It has a large population of 80 million, conflict in its east, crowded shantytowns in the capital and poor healthcare infrastructure. The country has reported 235 cases of coronavirus, 20 of them fatal. Infections have occurred in five out of the DRC's 26 provinces, led by the city-province of Kinshasa, which accounts for 223 cases. Most of those infections have been in Gombe. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) How is it going today? It was a relatively calm morning. I had Yan do some homework. I had the other two just watch TV. I tried to get some work done midmorning, which I did. I finished one project. My oldest one had one major tantrum where he was just screaming because he couldnt find his sweatshirt. Oh no. Its like, his favorite sweatshirt. It turned out it was on one of the strollers outside. Like, why would you leave it in the stroller? How are the 3- and 5-year-olds today? I have been just generally letting them float along and whatever they want to do. Occasionally theyll get sick of the TV and theyll want to just come upstairs and do something non-TV-related, and its good and bad. Its like, oh, thats nice. Youre using your imagination. But on the other hand, its like, please just go watch TV and dont destroy the house. The little one just likes to kind of run laps around the house, which is great because that kind of wears him out a little bit. I think generally were settling into a routine. I mean, that first two weeks was rough. Why? Just having a hard time accepting that, Oh, my God, all three of my kids are going to be home all the time and Im going to be pretty much by myself with them the entire time. And oh, my God, how am I going to handle this? Because Ive never had to do this. Right now theyre used to being at home, theyre used to this, whatever this is. Well, theres not really a choice at this point. Yep. Were all condemned to be with each other, basically. Thats it for this briefing. See you next time. Melina Thank you To Melissa Clark for the recipe, and to Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. P.S. Were listening to The Daily. Our latest episode is about life in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic. Heres our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Prayer ender (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here. The Times translated its examination of how common pandemic terms are used to mean different things in different countries into Spanish, Italian, French, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 By Elnur Baghishov - Trend As many as 111 people have died from the coronavirus (COVID-19) over the past day in Iran, said Kiyanush Jahanpur, spokesman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Trend reports citing Ministry. According to Jahanpur, 1,617 people have infected with the coronavirus in the past 24 hours. Jahanpur added that the condition of 3,877 people is serious and critical. So far, more than 275,000 tests have been conducted in Iran for the diagnosis of coronavirus. Iran is one of the countries heavily affected by the rapidly-spreading coronavirus. According to recent reports from the Iranian officials, over 73,300 people have been infected, 4,585 people have already died. Meanwhile, over 45,900 have reportedly recovered from the disease. The country continues to apply strict measures to contain the further spread. Reportedly, the disease was brought to Iran by a businessman from Iran's Qom city, who went on a business trip to China, despite official warnings. The man died later from the disease. The Islamic Republic only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on Feb. 19. The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) spent almost 90,000 on taxi fares for its members of staff in three years, new figures have revealed The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) spent almost 90,000 on taxi fares for its members of staff in three years, new figures have revealed. Following Freedom of Information requests by the TaxPayers' Alliance last year, it was revealed that a total of 87,267 was spent by the NIO on the fares, while another 5,877 was spent on heating during the summer in a four-year period. The research found that since 2014 Government departments at Whitehall spent 15,383,904 on taxis and summer heating. Darwin Friend, a researcher at the right-wing pressure group, said that those facing the highest tax burden following the coronavirus pandemic will think it is "deeply unfair" that their money will be spent on taxi fares and summer heating. In 2016/17 the NIO spent 18,981 on taxi fares, before rising to 30,365 in 2017/18. The following year the expenditure increased once again to 37,921. Meanwhile in 2014 the NIO spent a total of 3,038 in June, July and August on heating. During the same summer months heating cost 761 in 2015; 129 in 2016; 546 in 2017, and 1,404 in 2018. The UK Government said NIO staff are required to travel regularly between its offices in Belfast and London. "They use public transport where possible, with taxis used only where they represent the most cost effective method of transport available," the Government added. Mr Friend said that when the country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, it will be vital that the Government gets its "finances in order", focusing funds on front line services and cutting down on "wasteful" Whitehall spending. "Whitehall ought to get its own house in order and put a stop to these wasteful anti-eco practices as soon as possible," he continued. Between 2016-17 and 2018-19, 14,590,284 was spent by 11 Government departments on taxis for members of staff. Among the departments based at Whitehall, the Ministry of Defence spent the most amount of money on taxi fares between 2016/17 and 2018/19 with a total expenditure of 3,498,317. That figure includes chauffeur-driven car journeys. Taxi costs at the department more than tripled between 2016-17 and 2018-19. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy also spent a total of 375,668 on summer heating between 2014 and 2018. Of this, the department spent 195,197 in 2018 alone, which was the joint warmest UK summer on record. BOSTONOn the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The companys new Alzheimers drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher. Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston, Vounatsos touted the drugs remarkable journey. Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the companys big plans, Vounatsos said no. So far, so good, he said. But even as he spoke, the virus was already silently spreading among Biogens senior executives, who did not know they had been infected days earlier at the companys annual leadership meeting. Biogen employees, most feeling healthy, boarded planes full of passengers. They drove home to their families. And they carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread. The Biogen meeting was one of the earliest examples in the U.S. of what epidemiologists call superspreading events of COVID-19, where a small gathering of people leads to a huge number of infections. Unlike the most infamous clusters of cases stemming from a nursing home outside Seattle or a 40th birthday party in Connecticut, the Biogen cluster happened at a meeting of top health care professionals whose job it was to fight disease, not spread it. The smartest people in health care and drug development and they were completely oblivious to the biggest thing that was about to shatter their world, said John Carroll, editor of Endpoints News, which covers the biotech industry. The official count of those sickened 99, including employees and their contacts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health includes only those who live in that state. The true number across the United States is certainly higher. The first two cases in Indiana were Biogen executives. So was the first known case in Tennessee, and six of the earliest cases in North Carolina. All the people outside Massachusetts that The New York Times has connected to the cluster have recovered. But its impossible to say for certain whether anyone became gravely ill or died from the spread out of the conference. In hindsight, many people have criticized Biogens decision to continue with its leadership meeting in late February, which was attended by vice presidents from European countries already hit by the virus. Others in the industry fault Biogen for being too tight-lipped about the outbreak. At least two of the companys senior executives have tested positive. Citing privacy concerns, the company has declined to name them, even as other chief executives in biotech have disclosed their positive tests. Responding to questions from The New York Times, Vounatsos refused to say even whether he had been tested for COVID-19. He is completely focused on employee safety, supplying medicines to patients, and leading the company, said a Biogen spokesman, David Caouette. This takes precedence over his personal health status. The company has defended its handling of the leadership meeting and its aftermath, saying it made the best decisions it could with the information available at the time. For a company whose mission is to save lives, it was very difficult to see our colleagues and community directly affected by this disease, Vounatsos said in his first public comments about what happened at Biogen. We would never have knowingly put anyone at risk. Founded in 1978 and based near Boston, Biogen helped pioneer the biotechnology industry, specializing in multiple sclerosis drugs. The company is best known now for its work on a promising treatment for Alzheimers. Its experimental drug was seen as a potential Holy Grail until the company announced about a year ago that the drug appeared to be a failure in large-scale trials. Patients were devastated. The companys stock nosedived. But last fall, in a stunning reversal, Biogen announced that further analysis of the data suggested the drug actually worked at higher doses. Vounatsos said the company planned to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible. The stock soared; the company pulled in record annual revenues of about $14.4 billion (U.S.). By the time of Biogens annual leadership meeting on Feb. 26 and 27, spirits were high. So was the pressure to deliver. Although some other companies cancelled international meetings around that time, Biogen never discussed doing so. The outbreak was raging in China but had not yet been declared a worldwide pandemic. As of Feb. 21, the Friday before the meeting, the United States had only 30 confirmed cases, according to data compiled by The Times. Biogen executives in Germany, Switzerland and Italy where there were just 20 known cases packed their bags. On the first night, about 175 executives gathered for a buffet dinner and cocktails at the Marriott Long Wharf overlooking Boston Harbor. Colleagues who hadnt seen one another in a year shook hands and vied for face time with bosses. Europeans gave customary kisses on both cheeks. Its unfortunately the perfect breeding ground for a virus, said one former vice president, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his ties to Biogen. Two days later, the senior executives returned to their offices. One drove to a manufacturing centre in North Carolina. Others flew back to Europe. Peter Bergethon, the head of digital and quantitative medicine at Biogen, went home to his wife, an infectious-disease doctor. A Biogen vice president in the Alzheimers franchise and her husband attended a party the following Saturday night at a friends home in Princeton, New Jersey, with about 45 other people. They celebrated a holiday in the Greek Orthodox calendar, the end of the Carnival season, with special sweets and traditional dances that involved holding hands in a circle. Although celebrations in Greece had been cancelled, the party in New Jersey went forward, since White House officials had just pronounced the virus in the United States to be under control. That night, Allana Taranto, a photographer who covered the leadership meeting for Biogen, celebrated her 42nd birthday with her boyfriend and another couple. Over that weekend, though, some people in the company had already started feeling sick. Jie Li, a 37-year-old biostatistician who worked on the Alzheimers drug team, had chills, a cough and aches. She was too junior to attend the companys leadership conference, but her boss went, and showed up at the office afterward. On March 2, the following Monday, the companys chief medical officer sent an email informing everyone who attended the leadership meeting that some people had fallen ill and telling them to contact a health care provider if they felt sick. We moved quickly, Caouette said. Still, that same day, the companys four top executives attended a huge health care conference hosted by the investment firm Cowen. At another Marriott in Boston, they held meetings in hotel rooms with potential investors. Another attendee who met some of the same investors said he heard that members of the Biogen team looked sick. At the conference, concern about the coronavirus mounted as word spread that some companies, including Vertex and Seattle Genetics, had cancelled their appearances. By Tuesday, the second day of the conference, many attendees had stopped shaking hands. Later, investors were informed that two of the four Biogen executives at the conference tested positive for the virus. In defence of his companys decision to attend the event, Vounatsos said, When we learned a number of our colleagues were ill, we did not know the cause was COVID-19. That Tuesday, Biogen contacted the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and reported that about 50 employees in the Boston area and overseas had flu-like symptoms. Biogen employees began showing up at the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital, demanding tests. They were told their cases didnt satisfy the testing criteria at the time, since none had travelled to a hot spot or had known exposure to someone who had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day, confirmation of the worst arrived. Two Biogen executives who had returned home to Germany and Switzerland, where tests were more widely available, had tested positive. On Thursday, the company held a call with its staff and shared the news. All office-based employees were directed to work from home. Yet on that same day, a Biogen executive visited the Washington office of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, the industrys top lobbying group. Soon after, that executive tested positive, prompting the group to close its headquarters for deep cleaning. The next few weeks turned into a blur of Biogen employees leaving casseroles on one anothers doorsteps and trading news about who had fallen ill. Bergethon infected his wife, the infectious-disease specialist. While their symptoms were manageable, the scariest part was the uncertainty, Bergethon recalled recently at a virtual event hosted by the University of Rochester. We didnt know we were going to recover, he said. We didnt know what was coming next. Taranto, the photographer who had been at Biogens leadership conference, unknowingly gave the illness to a friend at her birthday dinner. She had felt healthy at the time. Of the four dozen people who attended the party in New Jersey, at least 15 later tested positive, according to public health authorities. A Biogen executive, Chris Baumgartner, became the first COVID case in Tennessee. I was patient zero, he wrote on Facebook. He added: Imagine having to confront a virus so feared, it now has the entire world on the brink of mass hysteria. The earliest cases in Indiana and North Carolina were tied to the company. One Biogen employee even carried the virus back to China. After falling ill with flu-like symptoms, Li called an ambulance and was given a coronavirus test, according to a public health official in Belmont, the upscale Boston suburb where she lived. But before she received the results, she booked a flight to Beijing, boarding a plane with her husband and son, leaving behind their house, a white BMW and other trappings of the life they had built in the United States over 15 years. They must have been desperate, said Dr. William Q. Meeker, a statistics professor at Iowa State University who had worked closely with Lis husband, Yili Hong, also a statistician. The couple worried most about their two-year-old, who would be far from relatives if they both fell ill, according to a former graduate school classmate. Li took medicine to conceal her symptoms, and did not reveal her health condition to flight attendants on board the flight, Air China and Beijing disease control officials said last month. After she landed in China, authorities placed her under investigation for obstructing the prevention of infectious diseases, a crime that reportedly carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison. In Beijing, the couple suffered from high fevers and lung infections and were hospitalized, Meeker said. He recently received an email from Hong that said they were recuperating, but that their lives will be different in the future. It appears that all of Biogens employees who fell ill have recovered. Aside from Li, who was fired, all have returned to work, Caouette said. Biogen has since joined the fight against the virus. The company donated $10 million to expand access to testing and to provide emergency food and protective gear for hospital workers. Company officials said its struggle against the pandemic is just beginning: Biogen, for instance, has also entered into talks with Vir Technology about manufacturing a potential treatment for COVID-19, another pharmaceutical Holy Grail that could make untold amounts of money. Textile and garment companies are facing double problem: they find it difficult to import input materials and cannot export their goods. Analysts had predicted that the textile and garment industry would have a bright future thanks to EVFTA after one year of instability because of the US-China trade war. However, the outbreak of Covid-19 has upset everything. One of the reasons behind the sharp fall in garment share prices is the investors pessimism about the epidemic in Vietnam and the world. Covid-19 has spread in 197 countries and territories after it originated in Wuhan in December. Negative was the assessment by SSI about the impact of Covid-19 on the textile and garment sector. The firm has excluded MSH shares out of the list of favorite shares. Textile and garment companies have suffered from the interruption of input material supply from China, and most recently, they have been informed that partners from the EU and US have stopped importing products. Input materials Textile and garment companies have suffered from the interruption of input material supply from China, and most recently, they have been informed that partners from the EU and US have stopped importing products. Soon after the Covid-19 broke out in China, the Chinese government closed many factories and restricted transport. It re-opened factories in recent days, when the number of new infection cases began decreasing. However, it will take time to restart production and export products. Meanwhile, Vietnamese textile and garment enterprises need input materials from China to maintain production. Vietnam imported $11.5 billion worth of textile and garment materials from China in 2019, according to the General Department of Customs (GDC). Exports The Covid-19 epidemic in China has temporarily subsided, but in Europe and the US, it has become worse. The Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of HCM City (Hawa) on March 20 said that US importers would stop importing garments from Vietnam for the next three weeks. Prior to that, the importers from EU also announced the suspension of imports for one month. The US and EU are the two most important export markets for Vietnam which bought $14.85 billion and $4.3 billion worth of Vietnams products in 2019. A lot of textile and garment companies have shifted to make face masks, which has allowed them to survive the current difficulties. Vinatex said its face mask output is 28-30 million a month and will be 50 million face masks a month, if necessary. TNG Investment and Trade reported revenue of VND288.6 billion in February, an increase of 65 percent over the same period last year. The figure was VND559.5 billion in the first two months of the year. The sharp increase is attributed to the big orders for face masks. Mai Lan Two textile and garment companies to benefit the most from EVFTA TNG Investment and Trading JSC (TNG) and Thanh Cong Textile Garment Investment JSC (TCM) are expected to benefit the most from the EU-Vietnam FTA (EVFTA), according to Bao Viet Securities. Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit and Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Monday extended Tamil New year greetings on the eve of the festival. This is the first major festival to be celebrated in the state during the ongoing lockdown imposed by the government to prevent the spread of coronavirus. In his greetings, Purohit said the new year is celebrated on the first day of Tamil month 'Chithirai' every year to "mark the onset of peace, prosperity and joy in our families" and stressed on social distancing. "It (the new year) marks the greatness of our tradition, heritage and culture. May the state and its people be filled with hope and happiness for a glorious future during this year," he said in his message. Purohit urged people to resolve to work together in the spirit of harmony and friendship to usher in progress and development so as to create a brighter and better tomorrow. "I also request all the people of Tamil Nadu to follow the government guidelines regarding COVID-19 scrupulously and to stay at home and be safe," he said. Palaniswami said the Tamil people, known for their pluralism and culture, had been celebrating the new year in Chithirai for long. His government was striving to realise the late chief minister J Jayalalithaa's aim of making the state numero uno in many areas, including economy and social justice. "Let prosperity flourish in the homes on the occasion of the new year and let there be light of joy in all our lives," he said in his greetings. TNCC president K S Alagiri said the new year was being celebrated during the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. "People are confined indoors due to social distancing and isolation. They are living in unprecedented fear. I request people to celebrate the new year from their homes," he said in a statement. AMMK leader and independent legislator TTV Dhinakaran also extended his greetings. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The countrys top scientists team has come up with a do it yourself hand wash station that could be used in densely-populated neighborhoods such as Dharavi to raise the sanitation bar. This one is operated by foot and can be assembled by community volunteers and authorities using affordable and locally available material even during the lockdowns supply-chain challenges. These foot-operated hand wash stations not only reduce the chance of transmission of disease by eliminating direct contact with potentially high-infection areas but also reduce the amount of water used to wash hands, the office of Principal Scientific Adviser K VijayRaghavan said in a statement on Monday. Our densely populated places, Dharavi is but one example that needs special attention. The manual, put together by the team at the PSAs office, brings out how frugal but effective tools can have disproportionate positive impact, K VijayRaghavan said. He urged community leaders, NGOs and corporate houses to take up to implement such solutions. Mumbais Dharavi, Asias biggest slum cluster, has already reported 49 Covid-19 cases. Five of them have died. Given how the residents of Dharavi are short on space and basic amenities, there has been a lurking concern that the highly contagious disease could spread rapidly prompting the state to bring in hundreds of reserve police personnel to enforce the lockdown and social distancing norms. The sprawl of shanties spread across 240-hectare is home to 8,50,000 people. At a population density of 66,000 people per square kilometre, it is one of Mumbais most congested spaces. A set of guidelines issued by VijayRaghavans office on Monday said some basic steps would, with precautions and measures, help control the spread of Covid-19 in such densely populated areas where toilets, washing or bathing facilities are shared. The statement by VijayRaghavans office said installing permanent foot-operated stations in public and community toilets encourage people to wash their hands and, yet reduce water use. Chlorinating the water dispensed at such stations would add additional effectiveness and should be considered, it said. The guidelines also outline good toilet practices to maintain sanitation and hygiene in communities. It also underscores simple measures such as the need to always wear face-covers and footwear in the toilet, washing hands immediately after use and maintaining social-distancing. Disinfectants to keep public areas and homes clean and sanitised have also been detailed. An underground nightclub in San Franciscos Bayview district was shut down Saturday for allegedly operating in spite of shelter-in-place-orders during the coronavirus outbreak, The Chronicle has learned. San Francisco police raided the unlicensed club, city officials said, after an investigation by the city attorneys office found that the venue was holding events in a warehouse that sometimes drew more than 100 people. Health orders from both the city and state have required bars and nightclubs to close, banned gatherings of any size and mandated that people stay at home when not pursuing essential activities. Located at 2266 Shafter Ave., on a dead-end street near a freeway overpass, the nightclub was also operating without proper permits and did not have the fire sprinklers, alarms and exits required in public buildings, according to a warrant obtained by City Attorney Dennis Herrera. The club was holding its events mostly between 2 and 6 a.m. Herrera sought the warrant, issued by a judge Friday, after investigators received a tip, reviewed video from April 4 through 6 and staked out the small warehouse in an industrial area of the Bayview on April 8, according to the warrant. They noticed as many as 20 to 30 cars an hour parked near the site, saw strobe lights and heard loud music. Surveillance video showed more than 100 people entering the club and security guards frisking each one. None of them practiced 6 feet of social distancing, Herrera said. Herreras office said the landlord, whose name was redacted from the copy of the warrant obtained by The Chronicle, cooperated fully with his office and the police. The name of the tenant, who was said to be operating a janitorial business at the site, was also redacted from the warrant along with the license plate numbers of several patrons of the club. An attorney who represented one of the property owners could not immediately be reached for comment. Now Playing: Surveillance video captures the activity outside a warehouse at 2266 Shafter Avenue, in San Francisco, Calif. on April 4, 2020. San Francisco Police report they conducted a raid at the warehouse during the evening of April 11, 2020, breaking up what they say was an underground nightclub operating in violation of the city, county and state shelter-in-place mandates designed to prevent the spread of coronavius. Video: San Francisco City Attorney's Office / San Francisco City Attorney Office After obtaining the search warrant on Friday, police parked patrol cars near the front of the underground club that night in an attempt to dissuade people from entering. On Saturday, before the club could open for the night, officers from the Police Departments tactical unit and Bayview Station entered the building and seized DJ equipment, two fog machines, nine gambling machines, $670 in cash, two pool tables, bins of liquor, cases of beer, bar furniture and other nightclub-related items, the city attorneys office said. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Nobody was arrested in connection with the raid. Police could decide to file criminal charges in connection with the allegedly illegal operation of the club. We are going to use every tool at our disposal, including these types of warrants, to protect public health during this pandemic, Herrera said. Cramming dozens of people into an illegal club during this outbreak is like dropping a lit match in the woods during fire season. Police Chief Bill Scott agreed. The operators of this illegal club senselessly put lives at risk in a time when our city is doing everything within our means to slow the spread of this pandemic and safeguard the health and well-being of the public, he said. Let this case be a reminder that we will take action against those who knowingly violate the public health order and endanger the health and safety of our residents. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan The chief of Victorias peak farming group says major rainfall has ended the drought in many parts of the state, after Melbourne had the wettest start to the year in a century. Rain has drenched paddocks across Victoria, with some regions already surpassing their average monthly rainfall for April. Some areas hit hard by drought are tracking at 50 per cent to 100 per cent above average for the start of the year. Greg Forster and wife Felicity Cassano, owners of Gippsland Pastured, at their farm in Winnindoo. The rain in April has done wonders for their chicken, cattle and pigs. Credit:Eddie Jim While recent rain has boosted confidence and encouraged some to invest in their own operations, celebrations were muted as many farmers still face a long recovery to recoup losses from years of dry weather Victorian Farmers Federation president David Jochinke said the downpours had brought welcome relief for many farmers but it was yet to be seen whether it would translate into profits. An NHS worker takes a swab in a car at a coronavirus testing facility in Wolverhampton. (Reuters) The UK will have the most coronavirus deaths in Europe but almost half the number that were originally predicted, say researchers. The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington initially forecast 66,000 COVID-19 deaths in the UK, in research published last week. But in revised figures published at the weekend, the US scientists drastically reduced their estimated death toll for the UK, bringing it down to 37,400, resulting in fierce criticism of the model by British experts. That number of deaths, forecast to take place by 4 August, would still make the UK the worst country in Europe for COVID-19 fatalities. The IHME predicts Italy will have the second highest death toll with 20,000, followed by Spain and the Netherlands with 18,000 each and France with 16,000. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have so far been 10,612 COVID-19 deaths in the UK, compared to 19,899 in Italy, 17,489 in Spain, 2,833 in the Netherlands and 14,393 in France. Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area 6 charts and maps that explain how COVID-19 is spreading The IHME was criticised last week when it forecast 66,000 deaths in the UK, a figure disputed by one of the governments scientific advisers, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. The US research team explained the large drop in predicted UK deaths by saying it had updated its modelling. It said: Our initial release of EEA country predictions included reported daily deaths through 5 April. For the United Kingdom, daily death data during the week prior to 5 April showed sharp and steadily increasing cumulative daily deaths. Since our last release, we have been able to include four more days of reported daily deaths for the UK. Two women wear protective face masks as they walk past the flowers outside Buckingham Palace in London on Sunday. (AFP via Getty Images) It said a slower rate of increase in deaths and more accurate data from other nations has resulted in notably lower average projections for the UK. Story continues In the UK, scientists questioned the IHME model after it revised its predicted deaths. Professor Babak Javid, from the Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing and consultant in infectious diseases at Cambridge University Hospitals, said: The IHME model is extremely sensitive to the base underlying assumptions. Model assumptions should be investigated A few days ago, when the predicted UK deaths were about 67,000, one base assumption was that the model assumed only about 800 ICU beds available in the UK, which was a massive shortfall. Checking today with the revised downward projection of 37,000 deaths the base assumption is that the UK has 6,800 ICU beds available. The predictive power of the model is likely to be highly dependent on how accurate those assumptions about ICU beds are. The fact that underlying assumptions in the model vary by such magnitudes over short spaces of time should be investigated. Statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter, professor at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said: Although reporting delays make it difficult to track the epidemic with confidence, we appear to be following a slightly worse trajectory than Italy and it is plausible that we might end up with the most in-hospital COVID deaths in Europe. However, the IHME projections still seem unduly pessimistic, even after their recent dramatic change. For example, their model is saying that today we should be needing 64,000 hospital beds while there are only 18,000 available although our hospitals are undoubtedly under a lot of pressure, this does not seem to fit reality. Major flaws in their models Their curve-fitting procedure currently seems too sensitive to small changes in data and assumptions to make it reliable for the UK. And Keith Neal, emeritus professor in the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said: Redoing their prediction in under a week strongly suggests major flaws in their models. The number of deaths each day in their original calculations have been just above their lower limit so they have been seriously over-predicting UK deaths since I first saw their model. Watch the video below This is not the first model to be shown to have got their projections seriously wrong. The daily trend in the UK appears to be slowing but we need another week to be sure, especially with possible reporting delays over the holiday period. It is likely that the UK will have one of the largest number of total deaths solely because we have the second largest population in Western Europe and EU countries only Germany has a larger population. The important figure is the death rate per million and the total number of deaths. On this count, Belgium seems to be heading for a serious problem like Italy and Spain. Belgium has had 3,903 deaths from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University. Coronavirus: what happened today Ryan Seacrest is donating $1 million to help relief efforts in both Los Angeles and New York City amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Of the million, $750,000 is going to house and feed 200 first responders in NYC, including the FDNY and EMTs for six weeks, according to People. Ryan, 45, said that both 'New York and Los Angeles are very special places to me and so I wanted to do something in the immediate to give back in these unprecedented times.' Good guy: Ryan Seacrest is donating $1 million to help relief efforts in both Los Angeles and New York City amid the global COVID-19 pandemic; pictured January 5, 2020 at the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills He told the outlet: 'After seeing a new report about first responders sleeping in their cars in New York to avoid putting their loved ones at risk, I wanted to do something to help make sure these New Yorkers stay safe while they're away from their families busy taking care of ours.' The $750K donation covers six weeks of housing and for 200 first responders in New York City through the First Responders Children's Foundation. The rest of the donation - $250,000 - will go to relief efforts in Los Angeles. Ryan has been working from home - with co-host Kelly Ripa doing the same - for their morning show Live With Kelly and Ryan. Focused: Ryan has been working from home - with co-host Kelly Ripa doing the same - for their morning show Live With Kelly and Ryan He shared a snap of himself Monday while performing his hosting duties. The host has a charity, called The Ryan Seacrest Foundation, that builds broadcast media centers within pediatric hospitals so patients can explore and have fun in the media center. He created the charity 10 years ago. Last week, Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes surprised kids with a video call at the Children's National Hospital with help from his Foundation. Ryan shared a clip of the virtual call, captioning it with: 'Just when the kids thought their video call with @Camila_Cabello couldn't get any better, @ShawnMendes enters the chat.' Adding: 'Thank you both for hanging out and pulling off this surprise.' In episode two of the latest season of "The Real Housewives of New York City" on Bravo, Leah McSweeney, a brand new addition to the cast, shares that she was depressed when her family moved her from Manhattan to Connecticut as a teen. And according to an interview with McSweeney in the New York Post, Newtown was the town she was not proud to call home. After being expelled from school at age 14, McSweeney was "whisked away to Newtown, Connecticut, by her mom, who works as a social worker and therapist, and her dad, a retired city health inspector," the paper reports. If all the truck drivers in Germany stopped working, there wouldnt be anything left. Supermarket shelves would be empty, letters would no longer be delivered, says truck driver Uwe Kleinsorge on Spiegel Online. He reports how, Im taking woodchips to a power station right now. Without me, the sawmill would at some point no longer be able to continue working, and the power station would also have to close down. The consequences are clear, Kleinsorge emphasizes. Everyone depends on our work. Erika Radisavljevic, 53, works as a cleaner in a hospital in southern Bavaria. I have been cleaning in a hospital for four years, mainly the patients rooms, mostly in the gynaecology department, she tells Spiegel Online, for which I get eleven euros gross per hour. Most of us cleaning women have an immigration background and many have small children, so we need this part-time job. Sometimes the importance of their work is underestimated. Last week, she had voluntarily worked ten-hour extra shifts: In the process, I disinfected the reception rooms of patients suspected of having coronavirus. When you hear the reports from Italy about how many hospital staff are infected, you can get anxious. The work is very strenuous and the harsh cleaning agents are harmful to health. But someone has to do the work, she says. Clean rooms are a prerequisite for the virus and other germs to spread less. Erika says she is pleased when now many people and politicians applaud, and adds, On the other hand, applause alone cannot pay the rent. The coronavirus crisis is currently making it very clear who is really systemically relevant to social lifenot the billionaires and super-rich, who have retreated to their luxury villas or ocean-going yachts, from there make their outrageous demands for higher returnsbut the working class, which produces all of societys wealth and maintains the vital public services needed on a daily basis. A new self-confidence is currently emerging among workers. This is accompanied by growing criticism of the government, which unreservedly represents the interests of the rich, providing hundreds of billions of euros to the corporations, banks and capital owners, while at the same time doing nothing to change the disastrous conditions in hospitals, nursing homes and other important areas of work. Anger is growing, especially among medical staff. It is well known to what extent the health system has been cut to the very bone, privatised and turned to increasing shareholder value over the last thirty years. Everywhere, there is a shortage of beds, staff, medical equipment and protective equipment. Staying in hospitals and nursing homes is now life-threatening for patients, doctors and nurses. At DocCheck, a network for medical workers with more than 500,000 registered members, under the heading I am worthy of protection, health and nursing care worker Sarah F. from Hamburg demands her fellow health workers not accept instructions that safety standards are no longer being met. She criticises the decision of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) public health body to relax the quarantine obligation for medical staff. In future, quarantine would not necessarily be observed after unprotected contact with an infected patient, according to RKI. The decision by Health Minister Jens Spahn (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) to relax the working hours regulations for hospital staff and to lift the lower staffing limit for certain wards has also met with massive criticism. The same blog quotes Ulrike, an emergency room nurse: Are we still citizens of this country at all? Or are we simply a resource that can be exploited, exhausted and used up?! We only find out days later whether patients tested positive or negative; whether we had contact, is difficult to say. We cannot remember all the names of the patients who come through the emergency room. Even if we dothe RKI and the politicians classify us as systemically relevant, different rules apply. Work until you drop, and dont take off your face mask. She continues, I am tired of denouncing the conditions and being described as negative. I am tired of the fact that the simplest rules of hygiene are not being observed because unqualified personnel have been retrained and anyone can care has been propagated. Not everyone can do it! Professional carers must finally be listened to, we have been warning for years and now everyone is surprised with the force with which corona hits us. Andreas is a nurse. DocCheck quotes from his e-mail, Our hospital has already had several positive cases. Two ventilated intensive care patients have already passed away this week. It is a frightening but real scenario that is catching up with us now. He is very worried. In the comments column, doctor Bodo Brudniok writes, I call this exploitation of all nurses and doctors criminal. The undermining of all occupational health and safety laws is also criminal. Neglecting the employers duty to protect his employees is also criminal. Angrily he adds, I also call the irresponsible politicians who have not prepared for this case criminal, and they are only trying to distract from their failure. For this, they are mercilessly walking over the corpses of the nurses and doctors who try to help and assist patients at the risk of their lives. On the backs of those making the most effort, the same politicians were trying to depict themselves as great crisis managers. This was a disgusting spectacle. Ever since the last pandemics, all those responsible had known about it. It was a crime that despite detailed pandemic plans, not even protective clothing, disinfectants and enough hospital beds had been provided. Contributor Medman writes in another comment, I think that after this crisis, it is time for doctors and nurses to stand up together. To stand up against laws that challenge our physical integrity, laws that force us to work without adequate protection. Moreover, adequate remuneration for medical staff was urgently needed. A paramedic from Chemnitz wrote to the WSWS, Here is a short report from Saxony about my experience since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. Staff are not tested, this is only done in cases of symptoms and unprotected contact with confirmed covid infected persons. The whole thing is a vicious circle that works like this: Someone has all the symptoms, but cant prove theyve been in the risk area or had close contact with someone who tested positive, resulting in no testing, even in a hospital. But if the person was infected, his contacts cannot be tested, because the person of origin was not tested, etc. And yet the risk areas are already history, the virus is everywhere! The next problem, someone is positive, we drive them to the hospital, we protect ourselves, but we still have to deal with smart cards, referral papers, transport documents, etc., which the patients partly hold in their hands, and paper cannot be disinfected! Extensive tests would finally have to be carried out so that what had happened here in the last few weeks would not be repeated. He continues, Almost a complete village was infected by a physiotherapist and a waiter, several people have already died! An employee of the online supermarket Picnic reported to the WSWS about high workloads and lack of security since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. There was a lack of disinfectants and face masks, protective goggles and other equipment for the safety of suppliers at work and in vans, who were in daily contact with customers in risk groups. Even the delivery vans with which several workers travel every day are not professionally cleaned and disinfected. The same applied to the forklift trucks at the respective company locations. Despite inadequate safety precautions and a lack of hygiene measures, the company continued to operate without restrictions. Demands by employees for hazard pay have so far been rejected on the grounds that the company was only two years old and could not afford it, and the risks of the corona crisis were exaggerated. Instead of spreading panic, the workers themselves should pay attention to safety and trust the company, which at some point will have a thank-you note ready. Workers in the car industry are also concerned about the dangerous effects of the pandemic. VW workers discuss conditions for resuming work in an online forum where a joint statement by the works council and management creates unrest. It opens with the usual pompous words about health taking precedence over speed when production is restarted, and that they support the federal and state governments in their efforts against corona to the fullest extent. Then works council leader and IG Metall union bureaucrat Bernd Osterloh and personnel director Gunnar Kilian announce the gradual resumption of work immediately after Easter. As far as the restart is concerned, it has so far been decided that from Tuesday after Easter, some parts of the component production will expand the already running partial operation in order to secure supplies to the Chinese plants. This would affect employees at the components sites in Braunschweig, Kassel and Salzgitter as well as Chemnitz and Hanover. Concerned employees ask, Is there any information on how to proceed with colleagues who have previous illnesses? Another writes, I am, demonstrably, an asthmatic... I am on short-time work until 19.04. as a precaution. I dont need or want corona. A third says, What do I do if I have a high-risk kid at home? A VW worker has linked to an n-tv article in which a colleague from Braunschweig reports that he has to continue working, which was becoming more and more difficult. Meanwhile, you have to watch out for so much, so you dont even know whats right or wrong anymore. Its not always possible to maintain a two-meter distance. Now we are told to come to work in our work clothes, so that there is no crowding in the washing machines. Maybe theyll close them completely. In the coming days, the catastrophic situation in many hospitals and businesses will continue to worsen and the pressure to resume work under totally unsafe and irresponsible conditions will increase. Send information and reports to the WSWS so we can provide detailed reports to workers around the world. Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari says the US economy is facing a 'long, hard road' ahead as it attempts to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic, warning Americans to brace themselves for 18 months of shutdowns. In an interview on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, Kashkari said projections for a quick economic turnaround were overly optimistic unless a vaccine for COVID-19 became available in the next few months. 'It would be wonderful if some new therapy were developed in the next couple months,' Kashkari said. 'Then potentially we would have a V-shaped recovery' a term which describes a steep market decline followed by a quick resurgence. But Kashkari, who oversaw the U.S.'s Troubled Asset Relief Program implemented in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, gloomily added: '[That] barring some health-care miracle, it seems were going to have various phases of rolling flare ups.' In an interview on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, Kashkari said projections for a quick economic turnaround were overly optimistic unless a vaccine for COVID-19 became available in the next few months Kashkari, who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the U.S. implemented in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, told Americans to brace themselves for 18 months of shutdowns (Pictured: A man crosses the street at a nearly empty Time Square on April 9) Such with a process, according to Kashkari, would involve 'different parts of the economy turning back on, [and] maybe turning back off again,' as part of an 18-month strategy. Looking ahead, Kashkari says he isn't expecting the U.S. economy to bounce back quickly. 'This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine,' he added. 'It's hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario.' In the last three weeks, the US has suffered in excess of 16 million job losses - equivalent to nearly 10 percent of the nation's workforce. Kashkari's comments followed signals from President Donald Trump that he wants to re-open the economy sooner than anticipated in order to stem the bleed. Trump said on Friday that he would unveil a new advisory group this week that would focus its efforts on the process of economic opening. As of Sunday night, as many as 22,701 Americans had died from coronavirus. Public health experts have warned the U.S. death toll could surge to more than 200,000 over the summer if the unprecedented stay-at-home orders that have closed businesses and kept most Americans indoors are lifted when they expire at the end of the month. In the last three weeks, the US has suffered in excess of 16 million job losses - equivalent to nearly 10 percent of the nation's workforce (Pictured: Canal Street stands empty during rush hour in New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 8) Kashkari said additional support was also needed for small businesses beyond the $350 billion provided in the coronavirus aid package passed in March, but he was 'optimistic' that Congress would approve more funding to help keep businesses from folding under the strain of strict social distancing measures. 'But then again, we dont know if this support is going to be long enough,' Kashkari added, 'because if we need to have different phases of shutdowns for the next several months or until we have a therapy or vaccine, were going to need more help than that.' Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is being 'aggressive' in its approach to softening the blow of the pandemic's impact Kashkari said, with the central bank announcing a number of new programs last week, lending us much as $2.3 trillion to businesses and governments. Container trucks cross Vietnams Kim Thanh Border Gate No.2 with China in the northern province of Lao Cai, February 16, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy. Vietnam can save at least VND700 billion ($29.6 million) if official agencies reduce official trips and conferences to ease pandemic-hit budget strains. Revealing this estimate, the Finance Ministry proposed Friday that central and local governments cut down at least 30 percent of money spent on conferences and local work trips and 50 percent on overseas work trips this year. A report on the government portal said central government agencies alone could save between VND600-700 billion ($25.3-29.6 million) under the proposal. Finance Minister Dinh Tien Dung said state budget revenues would fall by between VND140-150 trillion ($6-6.3 billion) if the Covid-19 disease was contained in the second quarter. Dung's estimate is dramatically larger than the previous one made by the Ministry of Planning and Investment in late February which said the coronavirus epidemic could hit state budget revenues to the tune of VND42.3 trillion ($1.82 billion) if the disease was contained by the end of the second quarter. The epidemic-induced economic downturn and huge drop in crude oil prices were factors in the revenue loss, the minister noted. The government also has to adjust state budget collection policies, including tax breaks and fee cuts to help companies and businesses cope with the Covid-19 crisis, he said. Vietnam has allocated VND16.2 trillion ($685 million) to combat the Covid-19 epidemic in the country. More than half of this amount ($407 million) has been spent on purchasing medical equipment and materials. Expenses for these items are expected to increase, depending on future developments. Vietnam has also spent VND6.7 trillion ($283 million) on providing allowances for people working on the frontline of the Covid-19 fight, meals for people in quarantine facilities and medical treatment for those with underlying conditions. The government has also allocated VND62 trillion for a financial support package for poor people and businesses affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Finance Ministry said the national budget will endure further losses if Vietnams GDP growth falls to below five percent. Vietnams GDP growth hit was roughly 3.82 percent in the first quarter, the lowest since 2010, due to the coronavirus, according to the General Statistics Office. Last year, GDP growth was 7.02 percent, the second highest in the last decade, after a record 7.08 percent in 2018. When will 8,130 deaths each year become a crisis? By Michael R. Shannon The crackdown on the China Flu is an eyeopener in a number of ways. In Rhode Island the governor has police roadblocks on major highways stopping any cars with New York plates. She has also mobilized the National Guard and troops are conducting housetohouse searches for New Yorkers as other troops man outposts in airports, train stations and bus stops. Rhode Island had 200 cases of China Flu. Texas is confronting air passengers from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Louisiana ordering them into quarantine. Highways are also roadblocked to snare drivers from Louisiana. Florida also has highway checkpoints and airport intercepts. In a new wrinkle the governor has suspended property rentals and some mayors are imposing curfews. So far 54 dead. California is using cell phone data to track the movement of citizens. The mayor of Los Angeles has threatened to cut off water and power to business that dont comply with close orders. Hes also organizing citizen vigilance groups to inform on neighbors. Even Honolulu, Hawaii, which has little to fear from even Louisiana drivers, is ordering roadblocks to catch violators of quarantine orders. The goal of these extreme measures is to respond to an alien virus that threatens to kill thousands of Americans. Its a crisis and the Flustapo measures are only temporary and justified because this extraordinary event threatens lives, imposes punishing wage losses and will change the culture. What Ive learned from this is that government has been lying to lawabiding citizens for decades. Weve had the way to reverse a plague of illegal aliens all along. What weve lacked is the will from weak and collaborationist politicians. How can I compare a virus to a massive violation of the law? Easy. Look at the similarities. The China Flu is supposed to kill up to 200,000 (the estimate depends on where that days dart lands). Okay lets compare deaths. National Review found in just 2009 illegals in TX, NY, FL, CA and AZ were responsible for 5,400 murders in a single year. The GAO calculates between the years 2003 and 2009 illegals committed 25,064 murders nationwide. Since the illegal population increases each year the yearly total will no doubt increase, too. Those are just intentional deaths. Theres collateral damage from Latin Americas national pastime, driving while drunk. Yearly estimates there range from a low of 3,000 by Americans for Legal Immigration, to a midpoint of 4,745 by Cong. Steve King widely known as a racist because he calculated the numbers. And a high of 8,527 by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study that no doubt includes sober illegals who just didnt have a license or were hit by drunk citizens. Lets take Kings estimate. Roughly 232,505 people were killed in car crashes with drunk illegals between 2003 and 2009. Add in the homicides its a rough estimate of 257,569 deaths over seven years which puts us in Kung Flu territory, only slower. (Getting a precise count of nationwide deaths caused by illegals is almost impossible because the government intentionally hides or doesnt gather the data in the first place.) Next is economic damage. Breitbart ran the numbers from an analysis by the National Academies of Science and found the avalanche of foreigners into the job market cost Americans $650 billion a year in lower wages due to a flooded labor market. Multiply by seven and youre in federal bailout territory. And as for the culture change, well press 1 for English. Now your objection is the public wont stand for a crackdown of Wufluenza intensity on those nice people who confuse our order in the drivethru. They might if they knew. A recent Harvard/Harris poll found that only 2 out of every 15 Americans are even aware of the tidal wave of illegals, to say nothing of the death toll. If the media gave the same level and intensity of coverage to the illegal death toll that it does to the projected China Flu death toll borders would become important again. Instead of treating illegals like the plague they are our political class treats them as a small price to pay to keep donors and tribal voting blocs happy. You may be surprised to learn that instead of using this crisis to focus attention on citizens and encouraging illegals to leave as Ive been advocating illegals will be getting Kung Flu checks from the Feds. The decision to use the IRS to dispense checks means every illegal whos stolen a social security number will be getting a check and every illegal whos committed Earned Income Tax Credit fraud will also be thanking Uncle Stupid for his 1,200 dinero. The difference in the response to the alien virus and the illegal alien is the politicians protective detail cant stop a virus. Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr (at) gmail.com. He is also the author of Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!). Home Arusha, Tanzania If Mwanyika Thomas had a choice, she would lock herself inside her small home and not venture outside at all. I have to leave my house to get money for food. But if I didnt have to, I would never leave, the 48-year-old said. Im very scared of this virus, she added, referring to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic that has swept across the globe. I have been thinking about it a lot. I know that if I get it, I will die. Thomas, who makes a living by finding sporadic farming and cultivation jobs around the northern city of Arusha, is among the 1.6 million Tanzanians who are living with HIV. Michel Yao, programme manager for the COVID-19 emergency response at the World Health Organization (WHO)s Africa regional office, told Al Jazeera that even though not enough studies have been conducted to determine how exactly coronavirus affects those living with immune deficiency disorders such as HIV-AIDS, people suffering from them would likely be more vulnerable to developing serious illness from COVID-19. HIV also makes individuals more prone to developing tuberculosis (TB), a respiratory illness that Yao said could make the COVID-19 cases in affected populations more severe. According to WHO data, in 2016 the African region accounted for a quarter of new TB cases worldwide. Next wave could be Africa As of Monday, there were more than 1.8 million known coronavirus cases and almost 115,000 deaths wordwide. The virus was slow to arrive on the African continent, but within a few weeks the confirmed number of COVID-19 infections has climbed to more than 14,500, with at least 788 coronavirus-related fatalities. In Tanzania, there are 46 confirmed cases, including three deaths, although some fear the actual number of infections is higher than reported. While COVID-19 can affect people of all ages, older adults, whose immune systems have declined with age, appear to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill after contracting the pathogen. Africa has the youngest population in the world, with 211 million people aged between 15 and 24. This has led some to predict that the continents seemingly favourable demographics may protect it from experiencing the catastrophic death tolls seen in Europe and the United States. Yao said, however, that this is a shaky theory and does not account for the millions living with HIV-AIDS and other pre-existing conditions. Eastern and southern Africa are home to 54 percent of the worlds people living with HIV, according to the UN. The disease started in Asia and then Europe; the next wave could be Africa, Yao said. So were advising countries that we should learn from what has happened [in the rest of the world] and adjust it into our context. We need help In Tanzania, antiretroviral medications are free for those suffering from HIV-AIDS. Davota Faustini, 41, was diagnosed with HIV more than two decades ago. But Faustini, who makes a meagre living going door-to-door in search of work cleaning homes and doing laundry, at times cannot afford the food she must take with her medication. Its a big challenge for me, she told Al Jazeera. When I take the medication I get sick and feel very dizzy because I dont have enough money to eat a lot of the time. For Devota Faustini, who suffers from HIV, the lack of clear information from the government is worrying [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera] I heard about coronavirus on the TV and radio, she added. I know that I should wash my hands and keep my distance from people. Other than this, we havent gotten any more information from the government. Faustini said that even the extra $0.09 it takes to buy soap is unaffordable for her, never mind the $2 it costs to purchase a 100ml bottle of hand sanitiser. No one sits us down and tells us what HIV people are supposed to do in this situation. We are getting no direction from the government. But we are scared and we need someone to help us, she said. This isnt a joke Many countries in Africa have taken drastic measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, including nationwide lockdowns, curfews and fiscal measures to assist the poor. Tanzania, however, split with its neighbours during what has been described as a mild response to the pandemic, avoiding some of the most sweeping measures imposed elsewhere. The government has cancelled schools, including university, and suspended all international passenger flights to the country but does not plan to introduce a lockdown. When you look at the dynamics, most Tanzanians live from hand to mouth they have to leave their households in order to survive. So when you go for a total lockdown it means some will instead die of hunger, Faustine Ndugulile, Tanzanias deputy health minister, told The Citizen earlier this month. Meanwhile, a ban on public gatherings announced soon after the first COVID-19 case was reported does not seem to be rigorously enforced; people continue to crowd into bars and clubs undisturbed. In fact, besides the presence of more hand-washing stations outside businesses and hotels, not much appears to have changed in Tanzanias daily life. No one here is taking this virus seriously, Thomas said. People need to open their eyes in Tanzania and see how other countries are suffering, she added. People here are still making jokes about coronavirus. If we [HIV positive people] get this disease, we are going to die. This isnt a joke. Mixed messaging But Tanzanian authorities have delivered mixed messages to the public. While the health ministry has promoted social distancing, Tanzanian President John Magufuli has encouraged the public to continue gathering in places of worship to pray the virus away, referring to the highly contagious disease as the devil. Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country, recently mocked Tanzanians who have decided to self-quarantine, claiming they were waiting around for the virus. He encouraged Tanzanians to instead get out and work. Jeremia Msweta, 50, has no choice but to spend most of his days at a crowded market in Arusha selling fish. I cant avoid crowds or avoid the market. If I stay inside and dont work, hunger will kill me before coronavirus does, he told Al Jazeera. Msweta said he tries to take precautions owing to his HIV status, like washing his hands whenever he has the opportunity. But it is difficult to find places to wash properly at the market, he noted, and there is no running water at his home. [The virus] makes me feel sad that there is yet another disease we have to worry about, Msweta said. Of course, Im afraid. But theres nothing I can do. Whatever happens, will happen. I dont have control over anything. I believe in God and I pray that God will save us, he added. Jeremia Msweta, 50, cannot afford to stay home to avoid getting infected from coronavirus and goes each day to the market in Arusha selling fish [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera] Other countries in Africa, including Rwanda and Uganda, have introduced measures to assist those who are adversely affected by lockdowns, including free food distribution. Tanzania, however, has not announced any such plans to date. Thomas said the government should be putting more effort into providing special attention to at-risk segments of the population, like those suffering from HIV-AIDS, to stay home and self-quarantine while other citizens can continue living as usual. They could provide food for us, and other necessary items like soap, so that we can stay at home without starving, she added. Faustini, meanwhile says she fears Tanzanians living with HIV-AIDS may also face more difficulty seeking treatment for their pre-existing condition while the governments resources are allocated to fighting the spread of coronavirus. According to Yao, this is a major concern for African countries. Having thousands of people accessing treatment for COVID-19 could reduce access for those suffering from other conditions, he said. He noted that governments must develop additional dedicated services to people living with HIV-AIDS, or other vulnerable groups, by providing protective equipment and soap or hydroalcoholic solutions to assist them in maintaining precautionary hygiene, and making sure they become more alert on the seriousness of a potential infection. This all needs to be done while also ensuring that the official COVID-19 response does not reduce the ability of those living with HIV-AIDS to access necessary treatment. Al Jazeera reached out for comment to various individuals in the health ministry, including Ndugulile, the prime ministers office, and the Tanzanian governments chief spokesperson Hassan Abbas, who is in charge of communicating details of the states COVID-19 response. However, despite numerous attempts over several days, no one replied to Al Jazeeras requests for information on the governments plans to protect its at-risk citizens. Critics, including activists and opposition politicians, have urged the government to develop a comprehensive national plan to curb the viruss spread and share this strategy with the public. Some people living with HIV-AIDS fear that they may face more difficulty seeking treatment for their preexisting condition while the governments resources are allocated to fighting the spread of coronavirus [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera] Mariam, the director of a small NGO in Arusha that assists Tanzanians living with HIV-AIDS and who requested to use a pseudonym in fear of government reprisal, believes the government needs to do more to communicate its COVID-19 response to the general public. Many HIV positive people are feeling so hopeless in this situation. They are concerned about their lives. If the government is more open with us, I think people will start to feel safer, Mariam told Al Jazeera, noting that she has not been made aware of any plans that will assist Tanzanias most vulnerable. Last year, the WHO issued a rare public rebuke against the Tanzanian government for refusing to cooperate and withholding information about suspected Ebola cases in the country. People have completely lost trust in the government, said Thabit Jacob, a Tanzanian academic. Decision-making has gone from being influenced by technical experts to being solely about politics. Over the last few years, Magufulis administration has been the target of widespread criticism over his authoritarian style of governance. Press watchdogs and rights groups say increasingly restrictive laws have undermined freedom of expression and sowed fear into civil society. The government has also faced accusations of maintaining control on who can gather and disseminate statistical information, denying citizens alternative sources of independently verified data, while routinely harassing, intimidating and arresting journalists and others. If you question their statistics or their official narrative, you will have to pay the price, Jacob said, underscoring the case of Mwele Malecela, the former director-general of Tanzanias National Institute for Medical Research. In 2016, Malecela, who now heads the department of control of neglected tropical diseases at the WHO, was fired by Magufuli after she went public with research findings that indicated the presence of the Zika virus in Tanzania. Magufuli later admitted to firing Malecela because she was working for imperialists and had tried to tarnish the countrys image. Tanzanians living with HIV-AIDS, meanwhile, feel left in the dark by their government. We feel abandoned, Thomas said. Were not seen and our struggle is not being acknowledged. They tell us to keep washing our hands. But thats not enough. We are going to die. They need to do more to protect us. Pope Francis gave his annual Easter address Sunday to an empty St. Peter's Basilica as hundreds of millions of Christians celebrating the holiday have been ordered to stay home and traditions have been upended. In his speech, the pope directly addressed the coronavirus pandemic and laid out his vision for a "contagion of hope." "Today my thoughts turn in the first place to the many who have been directly affected by the coronavirus: the sick, those who have died and family members who mourn the loss of their loved ones, to whom, in some cases, they were unable even to bid a final farewell," he said to an empty church. Image: Pope Francis' Easter Mass (Jason Cairnduff / Reuters) Saying this is "an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing," the pope broadcasting the address on the internet to the world's 1.3 billion Roman Catholics called for solidarity and prayer during these difficult times. He also called on politicians "to work actively for the common good" and "to provide the means and resources needed to enable everyone to lead a dignified life." Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak The world was already facing "epochal challenges" before the pandemic. Now, the pandemic is "severely testing our whole human family," he said in his speech, which was livestreamed around the world. His address produced stark visuals. Vatican City, usually festooned with flowers to celebrate Easter, was bare and empty as police stood next to barricades blocking visitors from St. Peters Basilica. "Let us not lose the opportunity to give further proof of solidarity, also by turning to innovative solutions," the pope said. "The only alternative is the selfishness of particular interests and the temptation of a return to the past, at the risk of severely damaging the peaceful coexistence and development of future generations." "This is not a time for division," he continued. "May Christ our peace enlighten all who have responsibility in conflicts, that they may have the courage to support the appeal for an immediate global cease-fire in all corners of the world." In the U.S., some churches still planned in-person Easter services, despite warnings from officials about the coronavirus. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said anyone who violated the state's stay-at-home order to attend services would be subject to a 14-day mandatory self-quarantine. ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday, April 10, ACB and more than 75 national, state and local disability and civil rights organizations sent a letter urging Congress to protect the voting rights of people who are blind and disabled during the current pandemic. The letter, which is available here, urged Congress to mandate an accessible online absentee voting system to be used by any state adopting vote by mail as an alternative to in-person elections at polling locations. "Americans with disabilities have fought for decades to secure the same voting rights as all other Americans. Congress must make it clear to states that implementing vote by mail without offering an accessible absentee voting alternative for people with disabilities is not acceptable," said ACB president Dan Spoone. "The current national emergency must not be leveraged as an excuse to erode the voting rights of people with disabilities. As states take pragmatic measures to rethink how elections will be administered, the rights of voters with disabilities must be maintained. This includes equal access to all parts of the voting process, from absentee voting to securely and independently marking, casting and verifying our ballot." There is no nationwide approach to creating accessible absentee ballots and as such, many voters with disabilities are excluded from absentee ballots. Some states have implemented accessible solutions to this problem, such as remote voting through the use of online and remote ballot marking devices. Earlier this year and in collaboration with ACB, Gov. Justice in West Virginia signed into law S.B. 94, a bill to bring the absentee vote by mail system in West Virginia into compliance with Title II of the ADA by offering an accessible electronic absentee voting option for people with disabilities. "According to the CDC, 26% of Americans have a disability; ACB will continue to work tirelessly to ensure these Americans are able to fully participate in the most fundamental part of our democracy in the 2020 elections and beyond," said Eric Bridges, ACB's executive director. The American Council of the Blind is a national grassroots consumer organization representing Americans who are blind and visually impaired. With 70 affiliates, ACB strives to increase the independence, security, equality of opportunity, and to improve quality of life for all blind and visually impaired people. Learn more by visiting www.acb.org. SOURCE American Council of the Blind Related Links http://www.acb.org Michael Melchor, who works in the oil and gas industry, planned to buy a home this year. He had reached out to a real estate agent in 2019, but when oil prices began collapsing in March at the same time the novel coronavirus began shutting down demand for petroleum-based products, he called her back. He was shelving his dream of buying a home, instead opting to find a less expensive rental. Ive seen friends get laid off and Im just hoping Im not next, he said. Melchor is among a number of renters who are on the move. Some are interested in shrinking their monthly payments, others want to relocate somewhere with less social interaction, several real estate agents said. Theyre moving due to uncertainty, Melchors agent, Jennifer Phillips, said. RENTAL ASSISTANCE: Houston-based landlord Camden Property Trust gives away $5 million in 16 minutes due to coronavirus The number of people looking to save on their rent could have consequences for affordability, said Christopher Ptomey, executive director of the Urban Land Institutes Terwilliger Center for Housing, which promotes residential development. There is already a shortage of affordable housing stock, and if more people are vying for the same housing, prices could rise. Youll see a lot fewer people who are willing to take the risk of moving up, he said. We have had a real shortage of housing for lower-income and middle-income folks, and I think that will be exacerbated theres going to be more demand at that lower price range. On Sunday, Phillips took Melchor on a virtual tour of a two-bedroom house that was asking $550 less a month than the home hes currently renting. Wearing purple disposable gloves and careful not to brush her purse against any of the surfaces, she videochatted with him over her phone. Its not as nice, but it will do, Melchor concluded. While many are seeking to shave a few hundred dollars off of their monthly rent in case theyre furloughed or take a pay cut, others are selling their homes and opting to rent just in case the housing market turns south. Because they might have retirement around the corner, Phillips said. Or theyre going to relocate a year from now. And data from the Houston Association of Realtors suggest those who are able are choosing to rent single-family homes over higher-density developments. While the number of townhomes and condominiums leased in Houston in March the second half of which was impacted by job losses and stay-at-home orders dropped 9.7 percent from the same month last year, single-family homes leases actually saw an uptick of 1.2 percent. Not all rentals, including the rentals of large multifamily buildings with their own leasing offices, are captured in HAR data. Definitely since the coronavirus outbreak, weve seen a lot more people who are looking for single-family homes, said Jessica St. John, the broker of ULR Properties, which helps clients find rental houses and apartments. She estimated that 60 percent of clients who were looking to rent were now asking to see single-family homes instead of townhomes, condos and apartments up from 50 percent before the crisis. With the quarantine, a lot of the reasons people wanted to lease apartments with all of the amenities the pools and gyms dont really make sense, she said. (And) people dont want to be as close to their neighbors as they used to. The social aspect is gone now. Prime Property: Get Houston real estate news sent directly to your inbox The amenity that is in demand? Cleaning protocols. Jacob Sudhoff, chief executive of high-end brokerage Douglas Elliman, Texas, said hes heard so many questions about sanitization that the company will make it a key amenity in a multifamily project theyre managing that is set to open next month. The plan is to have staff wear masks and gloves, wipe down packages as they arrive with Clorox wipes, clean the gym three times a day and have UV lights in the air intakes to kill bacteria in the air. I think all the multifamily buildings are going to have to spend more money on cleaning and be more transparent on exactly how often and exactly what, Sudhoff said. Its now something that every tenant is paying attention to. rebecca.schuetz@chron.com twitter.com/raschuetz Thousands of Ontarians with disabilities may end up in hospital or not be able to return to the community safely because the Ford government has temporarily shuttered a provincial program that helps pay the cost of specialized mobility and medical devices, disability activists say. The Assistive Devices Program (ADP), which provides 75 per cent of the cost of critical equipment such as power wheelchairs, portable oxygen, prostheses and insulin pumps, was declared a non-essential workplace March 24 due to the COVID-19 crisis. And yet equipment vendors, who continue to receive government funding, have been deemed essential and are still open, causing confusion among people with disabilities who struggle to pay for equipment without ADP approvals. The situation highlights the urgency to to modernize the ADP system and to move to more digital solutions to support eligibility reviews and funding approvals, said Christine Brenchley, executive director of the Ontario Society of Occupational Therapists. It is unclear why some elements of application review processes cannot proceed with safe practices of social distancing as in other areas of essential service, she wrote in a letter to ministry officials March 27, in which she raised concerns about the governments decision to close ADP. Barrie-area mother Heather Morgan, a disability activist who has a rare neuromuscular condition, said she has also been raising the alarm with ministry officials and her local MPP. Many people with disabilities in the community rely on specialized equipment to remain in their homes safely while they self-isolate, said Morgan, whose 16-year-old daughter, Ten, has an acute form of the condition that makes it difficult for her to even sit up and has been bedridden for the last year. After months of waiting, an error in Tens application for a motorized wheelchair was sorted out last month, just as the ADP program was closed, Morgan said. My daughter has already missed a year of school because of this, and now we dont know when the funding will come through, she said. But this isnt just about my family, Morgan said. I have heard from someone who is taping their prosthetic leg together because they cannot get it fixed and cant function without it. I have heard from someone whose elderly relative needs a rollator (a type of walker that helps prevent falls) and cant access one but lives alone. On and on the stories go. A spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government is aware of the uncertainty around the ADP program. Were currently evaluating options to provide greater continuity of services under the Assisted Devices Program during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hayley Chazan said in an email. In 2017-18, the health ministry spent about $514 million to provide mobility and medical devices for more than 400,000 Ontario residents, an increase of about 48 per cent in the last 10 years, according to a 2018 provincial auditors report. More than 8,000 devices are covered under the program. Since the program closed, the ministry has continued to fund equipment vendors based on an average of their monthly billings for the past six months. But some vendors are reluctant to offer equipment without ADP funding approval, Morgan said. Others have said they will provide equipment if clients pay the 25 per cent co-payment. But for her daughters motorized wheelchair, that amounts to $10,000, she said. Many people rely on insurance to cover co-payments. But insurers wont cover the cost without an ADP approval, she said. So it is a Catch-22 situation. In her letter to the ministry, Brenchley expressed grave concerns about the provinces decision to close ADP services during the pandemic. She said many hospital patients are unable to return home or move to long-term care without access to appropriate seating and mobility systems. Closing ADP will delay timely discharges that are critical as hospitals prepare for a surge in COVID-19 patients, warned Brenchley, whose society represents the provinces 4,300 registered occupational therapists. Those living in the community who need mobility equipment repairs, upgrades or new equipment will be put at increased risk of falls, pressure injuries and other loss of independence if they cant access ADP financial support, she said in the letter. Some people will end up in emergency departments and put increased demands on home care during a time when the health-care system is already struggling to fight the pandemic, she noted. ADP is already experiencing a three-to-seven-month backlog, Brenchley said, adding the situation will only worsen if the program remains shuttered during the health crisis. In an email Thursday, Brenchley said the ministry has been working to ensure expedited funding approval for patients being discharged from hospital who need seating and mobility equipment. While not perfect, the ministry has addressed a workaround for essential services, she said. At this time were monitoring impacts. Double amputee Aristotle Domingo, founder of the Amputee Coalition of Toronto, is not aware of any local members who were awaiting ADP funding approval when the office closed last month. What I can share, however, is the level of anxiety that we feel while we wait for an approval from ADP even on a regular day, he said this week. In the amputee community, getting approval for a prosthesis or wheelchair is a game changer. Without funding support, mobility is severely limited, resulting in less than ideal healthy outcomes both physically and mentally, he added. The Bhopal Police have so far registered over 1,000 cases related to violation of lockdown which is in force since late last month in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak, an official said on Monday. A Bhopal police spokesman said a total of 1,017 cases were registered till Sunday evening for violation of the lockdown in the district. These cases related to defying government orders issued for compliance of the lockdown, implemented to halt the spread of the deadly viral infection, he said. Most of these cases were registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant). "Besides, some people were booked under the provisions of the Disaster Management Act (invoked to deal with the pandemic), the spokesman said. In some of the cases, people were booked under the Excise Act, in addition to relevant IPC sections, for possession of liquor, he said. The Bhopal Police spokesman said most of the people were booked for roaming on roads without any valid reason or opening shops not covered by lockdown exemption. The police have been monitoring the situation through CCTV surveillance system under which 1,365 cameras have been installed in different areas of the state capital, said officials. So far, 139 COVID-19 patients have been found in Bhopal and three of them have succumbed to the disease, they said. The district administration imposed a curfew since the announcement of the nationwide lockdown on March 25. In addition, over 1,000 containment zones have been identified in the city based on detection of coronavirus patients in these areas, the officials said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Asserting that ministry guidelines on countrywide lockdown should be followed in "letter and spirit", the Union home ministry has written to all state governments to ensure smooth movement of trucks and goods carriers irrespective of essential or non-essential cargo carried by them. Addressing a press conference on measures taken during 21-days lockdown imposed from March 25 to contain the spread of Covid-19, MHA joint secretary Punya Salila Srivastva said the situation of essential goods and services is under control. To strengthen this situation, the home ministry has written to state governments that both inter-state and intra-state movement of trucks and goods carriers should be allowed during the 21-day countrywide lockdown announced by the central government irrespective of the cargo being essential or non-essential. The empty trucks and goods carriers should also be allowed as they may be going to pick the cargo or coming post delivery of the consignment, she said. "No permit or pass is needed by the trucks and goods carriers for the transportation of cargo," she said. The official said in a truck, a driver and a cleaner are allowed and district authorities should actively help them to commute from their homes to the location of their trucks. The ministry has written that states and UTs must quickly issue passes for workers employed in organisations and companies exempted from the lockdown restrictions, she said. "Attention must be paid that workers in manufacturing units located in bordering areas of states and UTs should not face any problem," she said. Officers of railways, airports, sea ports and customs have been empowered to issue passes to allow movement of their employees and contractual workers, she said. There should be no impediments in the working of micro, small and medium industries involved in essential items like flour, lentils, edible oil. "Warehouses and cold storages should be allowed to function without any impediments whether they are storing essential or non-essential items," she said. Srivastava made it clear that all these directions are applicable except in hotspots and containment zones. She said states should ensure that all the directions reach the district and field level for implementation. The officer said state governments are making continuous efforts to implement the lockdown with retired police officers, NCC cadets, NSS volunteers helping the police in enforcing it. Admitting that the state is in financial trouble, Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa on Monday announced measures to help in resource mobilisation, including by authorising the auctioning of 12,000 corner sites in the state capital. The Bangalore Development Authority intends to raise 14,000 to 15,000 crore from the auctioning. Apart from this, corner and vacant sites in all urban development authorities across the state would be auctioned for additional resource mobilisation. Yediyurappa made it clear that the auction of government-owned sites would be done only if they fetch a good price. The possible situation once the [Covid-19] lockdown is ended was widely discussed in the meeting. Discussion was also held about the financial situation of the state government and how to mobilise resources. Many suggestions were given and it was decided to implement those suggestions, Yediyurappa said after a meeting with officials of various departments. According to officials aware of developments, the state government has lost nearly 2,500 crore in revenue from just the stoppage of liquor sales since March 24 when the 21-day lockdown to halt the spread of Covid-19 was announced. The lockdown is expected to be extended on Tuesday. The officials said the government is likely to take a call on Tuesday whether liquor stores could be opened in the state. They added the state has also decided to use the 1,000 crore available for upgrading medical college hospitals. To help dairy farmers as well as poor people, the state would continue to distribute free milk among the poor living in slums, the officials said. Yediyurappa also announced 45 crore compensation for farmers of Raichur and Koppa, who have lost their paddy crop due to hailstorm. While appealing sugar factory owners to clear pending payments to the tune of 2,834 crore due to farmers across 11 districts, the chief minister warned of strict action in case they failed to do so. The federal government is considering underwriting domestic flights operated by Qantas and Virgin Australia to maintain air links between capital cities, following sharp capacity cuts by the carriers. Virgin on Friday grounded all domestic flying except for a single Sydney to Melbourne return service operating six days a week. Qantas and its budget offshoot Jetstar continue to fly to each capital city but at a significantly reduced frequency due to travel restrictions put in place to slow the spread of coronavirus. Jetstar planes being parked for storage at Avalon Airport, near Geelong. Credit:Jason South Federal transport minister and deputy prime minister Michael McCormack said he was talking to both airlines about funding domestic flights to ensure routes between capital cities could remain open. "We... need of course to transfer people around from capital city to capital city," Mr McCormack said in an interview with ABC television on Monday morning. Kerala Police on Sunday thanked actor Kamal Haasan for posting a congratulatory note for a music video which is conceptualised, sung and directed by the cops about their work on fighting Novel Coronavirus outbreak in the state. Interestingly, the music video features many top-ranking officials including the state DGP himself. After the video was released, it grabbed everyone's attention. Congratulating the police department of Kerala and their unforgettable contribution to the state, Kamal Haasan wrote, "Excellent. The front line warriors are Doctors Police and Sanitary workers. It is essential to cheer these centurions with an anthem for Kerala Police. I am glad even the singing talent was a policeman in uniform. I congratulate the higher echelons of the police department for coming up with a sensitive and thoughtful idea. My salute (sic)." In response to Kamal Haasan's message, Kerala Police thanked the actor with beautiful words. Loknath Behera, IPS, DGP & State Police Chief of Kerala in a statement said, "We are really honoured and delighted to receive this congratulatory message from one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema - Shri. Kamal Hassan. In these difficult times when the members of the police force are engaged in very difficult circumstances in the field, this message is a great motivation to every member of the force in Kerala. On behalf of Kerala Police and the Govt. of Kerala, I thank you for your kinds words and it is sure to help us in continued and better selfless service for the citizens and to this great Nation (sic)."' Also Read : Kamal Haasan Trolled For Criticising PM Narendra Modi's Decision Of 21 Days Lockdown For COVID-19 Kamal Haasan has always been vocal about everything on social media. A few days ago, he had criticised PM Narendra Modi's 21 days lockdown plan. However, the actor had also stated that he's with honourable Prime Minister. On a related note, Kamal Haasan will next be seen in Indian 2, directed by Shankar. The film also stars Kajal Aggarwal, Siddharth and Rakul Preet Singh in pivotal roles. Message from Japan's Four Automobile Manufacturers Associations in Response to the Spread of COVID-19 Remarks given by JAMA (Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association) Chairman Akio Toyoda Toyota City, Japan, Apr 10, 2020- Today, the three associations related to automobile manufacturing who have just been mentioned are joining us in addition to our own JAMA members. Gratitude to healthcare workers and others fighting for us At the recent JAMA press conference, I mentioned that in this world there are things that we can control and things that we cannot control. If we focus too much on the things that cannot be controlled, our feelings will become negative. We must focus our action on the areas that we can take control. We must be mindful and thank people who are able to do something in the areas of our lives that we cannot control. First, I would like to thank all those working in the areas of healthcare and in logistics and transportation who have been working diligently to support our lives, and their families who support them from the bottom of my heart. This expression of gratitude is not limited only to those working in Japan. Our business extends to people in various countries and regions, and we know that there are people in each country and region working just as diligently on the frontlines every single day. While I am not sure how far this message given from Japan will reach, on behalf of the automobile industry in Japan, I send our deepest gratitude to all who are involved in this industry around the world, and wish to ask for your continued support. I think we are all encouraged in the industry to keep doing our very best, and we will! How we can help support the healthcare system Now, please allow me to return and speak more about Japan. Japan is now facing a deepening crisis. If the number of infected people continues to increase, it may cause the healthcare systems here to collapse, and Japan may not be able to recover. First, we hope to provide support in areas that we can control, and begin from there. Typically, events like press conferences were places to announce things that have already been decided. However, today we plan to talk about topics we should be thinking about moving forward, and includes our "thoughts" and "declarations." While nothing has been officially decided, by discussing our thoughts, there may be people who will raise their hands and are willing to do the things we suggest together with us. Then, we can work more speedily and perhaps start a bigger movement. Because we are in a time of crisis, this carries added importance. If you can listen to and understand this point, it would be appreciated. Self-sufficient production of face masks for internal use Returning to the topic of how we can help support the healthcare system to keep it from collapsing in any small way we can, the first action item we have come up with is to produce face masks for our own employees within the automobile industry. However, we have not secured the quality or quantity of face masks for distribution to everyone yet. The first prototype face mask we made using auto parts was too stiff. Of course, we are continuing to make improvements, but for the first products, we plan to use them amongst ourselves. Though small in overall impact, we believe even this action can help ease the pressure on the supply chain for face masks as it reduces the amount some companies need to procure from outside manufacturers. Self-sufficiency in remote facilities Among our companies, we also have vacant dormitories and recreational facilities. For example, just within the Toyota Group companies, we believe we can prepare around 1,500 rooms if needed. We anticipate that as JAMA we may be able to prepare around 3,000 rooms in total. Currently, these facilities are used mainly for employees returning from their posts overseas, but, depending on the situation, we would consider using these facilities for mildly infected patients. Support improvement activities for ventilator equipment production We are also aware that there are some expectations regarding the production of ventilators. However, this is medical equipment that is directly connected with human life. Automobiles are also products that are related to human life, and so, as manufacturers or those engaged in monozukuri relating to life or death, we understand how difficult it is to make such things. This is no simple task. To support these manufacturers, we will first go where the medical equipment is being made, and we will do what we can to support increased production, even if the result is only one more mask being made, as we determine improvements in the production process and start providing support by utilizing our know-how. Other activities to support healthcare worksites While not directly related to human life, there are other things we may do that can help support the frontlines of the healthcare system. We see needs such as "providing vehicles necessary for transporting patients," "vehicle modifications to support patient transport," and the production of "bed parts for use in hospitals among other parts," that we can also make efforts in. By offering our help in areas that relate to our expertise and that can utilize our existing assets, we hope we can play our part and do something useful for everyone. Understand the situation at the frontlines (efforts by the airport rental car services desk) Please let me mention one more thing our "friends," or partners, are working hard on. One example is at the airport rental car services desk. Those people who are returning from overseas, after passing the medical inspection, are finding that they need to return home using personal vehicles as a way to prevent others from becoming infected. There are many people visiting the airport car rental desk every day. However, we have not been able to distribute personal protective gear to those working at the desk, and many of them are only wearing masks as they work. Despite the fear of potential infection, they work hard for their customers every day. We want to provide personal protective gear for each and every one of them, and so we continue to try our best to see how we might be able to do so. Now, worksites everywhere are facing unprecedented situations. It is of utmost importance to grasp what is happening at the front lines as fast as we can, and, for now, under this situation, think of what we can do and act on now. The economy is also in crisis The economy is also in a crisis. Until recently, there was a total global GDP of 9000 trillion yen; however, this has decreased by 15 to 20 percent within the last three months. Economic measures to counter this situation are being implemented in each country and region. This is also true for Japan, where an emergency economic measure of 108 trillion yen was announced. Please let me take this opportunity to thank the government of Japan for deciding so quickly on what may be one of the biggest measures they have taken. However, we are still facing an extremely tough situation. The day will come when humans will conquer the threat of COVID-19. However, if the current situation continues, the economy in Japan may be exhausted. It may not even be possible to find a way to tackle COVID-19 fully before the economy is in ruin. It is our hope as the automotive industry that we can be a part of efforts to prevent this collapse from happening. Ripple effect of the automotive industry In the automotive industry there are approximately 5.5 million workers. This makes up approximately ten percent of the working population in Japan. The automotive industry has a profound amount of influence that could cause a ripple effect to other industries. When we try to put a figure to it, the estimated effect the industry has on production is said to be "2.5 times" the amount. This means that when the automotive industry produces "1", this will lead to a production of "2.5 times the amount" across the world, making the automotive industry one of the top level industries in Japan (and the world). We will make every effort to continue to stimulate the economy, and more than anything, we understand that protecting employment is a powerful force to help stop the collapse of the economy. Therefore, we will do our best to keep our businesses in operation. To do that, first we need to protect workers related to the automobile industry from becoming infected. So it is really critical that we take thorough measures to prevent this. Furthermore, this is also important to help prevent the healthcare systems from collapsing. Things we discovered (and left as assets for people to follow and use) by not giving up on domestic production We have been through a lot, such as the Lehman shock and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred after that. During these difficult times, I was very insistent about retaining our domestic production. With regard to this, a lot of criticism was received, some stating that from the perspective of economic rationality, it is wrong to stay focused on Japan (in terms of production). After the earthquake and tsunami disaster, I believed that offering only temporary support would not be effective for a "true recovery" of the Tohoku region, so we built a new automobile body manufacturing company in the area and also a school that teaches monozukuri (making things). This effort aimed at providing the type of long term recovery support needed to establish the roots of "making cars" there. When we look at the Tohoku region now, nine years on from the disaster, the total value of vehicle shipment volume from the area, which was 50 billion yen at the time, has now reached 800 billion yen, which is 16 times that amount. Furthermore, the number of suppliers mostly consisting of auto parts manufacturers which was approximately 100 companies at the time has now increased to 170 companies. Although there is high inflow and outflow of people in the Tohoku region, we have been able to increase the number of workers in the automotive industry there by 3,000 people. This current status in the Tohoku region was realized because the four associations here today worked together as one to conduct recovery efforts in the Tohoku region. More than anything, new technology and skills are being created in the Tohoku region. These skills will be passed on; the people who learn these skills will teach this to the next person. And they themselves will create a place where they can work, maintain, and develop themselves. At the time following the disaster, I made a strong commitment to myself that I wanted to establish Japanese monozukuri there, and was very focused on domestic production, and I don"t think this was a mistake. Things taken to heart in response to COVID-19 This time, facing the threat of COVID-19, we face a situation where we are unable to simply acquire the things we need as we wish. Examples of this include face masks and medical face shields. In these circumstances, we have once again realized the importance of "being able to produce the things we need for ourselves." Why were we able to produce these things for ourselves? It is because monozukuri is still in Japan. This reaffirms what was felt strongly in our hearts about how we should never lose the worksites of real monozukuri. New attempt to not lose monozukuri (making things) Now, a situation where cars cannot be sold around the world continues, and because of that situation, there are some plants where operations have had to be stopped. If this continues, we may face a situation where some of our "friends" or partners may not be able to continue operation. However, amidst this situation, looking to the future, the underlying technology cannot be lost, and there are people with expertise that no machines can ever copy. If these resources are leaked or cut off, the future we envision will grow more distant many years ahead. Before it is too late, we need work in a timely manner to tie these vision to new capital. To do that, we need the power of "mekiki," an eye for identifying the crucial elements that the automotive industry should keep and maintain during the most challenging, unstable times. This skill, I believe, is only possessed by the associations here today, who understand monozukuri. I hope we can consider a fund that combines both our mekiki and the capital you wish to invest in the future of automobiles together. Matching people with skills I believe if we have mekiki, we can match people with skills. If there is someone with a high level of expertise or skills who is unfortunate and about to lose a place to work, that person will first be introduced to a company within the automotive industry requiring those skills. In addition to protecting monozukuri within the automotive industry, we hope to reduce the amount of unhappiness and instead increase happiness. I hope we can create this kind of system. Rediscovering the value of moving things and people (transportation) The other day, looking at the flowers that bloomed outside the house, I thought again about how "Spring really is a long-awaited season." The cold days pass. In spring it gets warmer, so people start going out. Then, people feel "Finally! I can go outside again!", and they begin once again to taste the "joy of moving". Currently, just like on cold winter days, people still cannot go outside. In that context, it is likely that many people are now rediscovering the "joy of moving." Being able to go outside and go where you want is truly wonderful. This situation has made all of us, including myself, feel and realize that again. The word "move" means "to move physically," but it also can mean "moving your heart to change" and "being moved (emotionally)." In my opinion, I am convinced that these two meanings can be said to be in the same word. At the end of this so-called "winter," there will be a need to make our cars even better and even more wonderful, so that even more people can enjoy moving more than ever. This winter is also continuing on the economic environment as well. It could be described as a pretty harsh winter. If you can survive, you will see spring. If the automobile industry survives, it will have a connected impact for many people. Before I was born, there are stories from the post-war era about how Toyota had lost people and factories. Regardless, the company somehow survived by choosing to produce whatever needed to be produced. Among the products we made were things like frying pans and pots, and we cultivated the wasteland around the factories to be able to produce potatoes and barley. I've heard that Subaru also made all types of lifestyle products, including things like agricultural equipment, carriages for babies, sewing machines and even clippers for barbers. For dealers that didn't have cars to sell, they also did what they could, selling tableware, etc., and other things that are considered necessary for life, selling them from person to person. As an industry, I believe we have the tenacious DNA that will help us to survive, so we should do all we can to survive! When spring finally comes ... that is, when this COVID-19 situation has ended ... When people are saying "Come on! Move forward! Get outside!", that will be the time that we would like the automotive industry to be the best engine to revive the economy as soon as possible. If you're huddled up not doing anything because it's winter, your legs will weaken. At any rate, we should do whatever we need to do, and we'll do it now. What we can do now are the following three things 1. Thank healthcare workers and their families and provide any support we can 2. Keep doing business, whatever we can, to keep the economy running 3. Make preparations to lead by becoming the number one driver of the economy for when spring finally comes. Due to the escalating number of cases around the globe (a whopping 1.8 million infected as of Monday), U.S. laboratories are hastening medical studies to develop a cure for the coronavirus. Physicians are experimenting with drugs to find a possible lead on how to treat the disease. Last March, medical researchers in France attempted to study whether or not hydroxychloroquine could become a treatment for the coronavirus. The first to declare the results of this experiment with a "100% cure rate against coronavirus" was a lawyer who starred on Fox News's program, where it was reported to be the "game-changer" for the pandemic. This happened before the publication of the study. The effect, as expected, was instantaneous. The world was led to believe that hydroxychloroquine was a be-all, end-all treatment for COVID-19, the beacon of hope to end the pandemic. There was immediate exportation of the product that led to scarcity from high demands from various health sectors, such as hospitals in New York and healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente. An obstetrician in southern Indiana reported that hydroxychloroquine prevented the virus from entering cells. Dr. Thomas Brown believed "it was only a couple of days, probably a day or two before I noticed a difference." France's drug safety agency has recently proven that hydroxychloroquine being used on COVID-19 appears to have serious cardiovascular side effects. Their data about the supposed miracle drug shows 43 cases of heart problems. This can serve as a reminder for everyone, media consumers and health workers alike, to act responsibly during the pandemic. Rushing into unverified research may harm progress. Check these out! A Cure of Promise Survivors of COVID-19 contribute to the research surrounding the development of a cure against the coronavirus using the antibodies they developed to combat the disease. "We don't want to provide false hope," Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said, adding that the research is proving to be promising, "but definitely [provide] hope." An experimental drug, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has deemed as "promising," is the subject of over 70 tests across universities in the U.S. Remdesivir, a drug by Gilead Sciences, was successful in fighting viruses like SARS and Ebola. And so, it is predicted that it can work against the coronavirus since they share similar strains. In the study, the researchers found significant differences in the results: Of the 53 patients, 36 got better, eight got worse, and seven died. The death rate of the study, at 13 percent, is still marginally lower compared to other data. While there is still yet to be conclusive evidence to support the clinical implications of remdesivir, the authors of the study were confident that further progress into the research could give hope. "We look forward to the results of controlled clinical trials to potentially validate these findings," a statement from Gilead stated. A Sunday night agreement reached between Massachusetts and the union representing licensed nurses and caregivers currently on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in state hospitals and group homes will see an increase in pay by as much $10 an hour. The hazard pay increase will last during the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak that has caused the death of more than 750 people in Massachusetts. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 93 said those state workers will receive temporary pay increases of $5 to $10 per hour as they continue to work amid the outbreak. Were pleased to deliver this hard-earned pay increase for our members, Council 93 Executive Director Mark Bernard said. The agreement we signed with the state calls these increases pay incentives, but we view them primarily as well-deserved recognition for the courage and dedication AFSCME human service professionals are exhibiting on the job every single day and night. Under the agreement, workers holding licenses related to their occupation will receive the $10 increase. All other workers will receive the $5 pay increases. The increases go into effect immediately and will remain until the Executive Office of Health and Human Services determines the COVID-19 crisis has abated, the union said. Roughly 6,500 AFSCME members will receive the increases which will remain in place until at least May 30 regardless of any determination by EOHHS. The agreement also provides an additional recognition to workers who have not missed a shift or regular workday since the March state of emergency declared by Gov. Charlie Baker began. Those workers will receive a $500 one-time bonus in addition to the hourly-pay increases, according to the union. Bernard said employee absenteeism among the union members has been extremely low during the crisis even with members working in high-risk environments. Our members know that they are needed now, perhaps more than ever, Bernard said. And, they have really stepped up during the crisis. They have been wherever they are needed, whenever they are needed. The union called the agreement a good start and added that ongoing efforts will continue to increase compensation for workers who are needed during the crisis. Bernard said the union has worked to have the increases be paid retroactively to the start of the state emergency in March. Related Content: An Indonesian worker carries pillows for beds at a government building on the outskirts of Jakarta being converted into an emergency hospital for COVID-19 patients, April 13, 2020. Indonesias president on Monday called for greater transparency and increased rates of testing amid the coronavirus pandemic, after his government was criticized for not being forthcoming about the extent of the outbreak in Southeast Asias most populous nation. The government has been the target of complaints that President Joko Jokowi Widodo and other officials downplayed the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic during their initial response to the public health threat. The numbers of patients under monitoring, people under monitoring, positive cases, recoveries, deaths and rates of CPR testing, should be made available openly so that everyone can access the data properly, Jokowi told members of his cabinet. These should be updated every day in a more integrated way. Jokowi said PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests to detect COVID-19 infections should be ramped up by adding more labs 29 now from just three in early March. Only 26,500 tests have been done to date. I want PCR tests to be expanded to reduce queues in areas where there are COVID-19 outbreaks, he said. This is good progress, but what I want is for us to be able to test more than 10,000 a day, Jokowi said without elaborating on a time frame for such testing. On Monday, Indonesian authorities confirmed 316 new cases of the coronavirus disease, bringing the nationwide total to 4,557 cases. The daily death toll rose by 26 to 399, officials said. Outside of China, Indonesia remains the country in East Asia with the highest number of fatalities from the outbreak. More than 116,000 people have died and at least 1.8 million have been infected worldwide, according to the latest data compiled by disease experts at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. Back in February, when no cases had been officially detected, Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said that no one had been infected by the virus in Indonesia thanks to prayers. He urged people to just enjoy things. In mid-March, Jokowi said his government was deliberately holding back some information on COVID-19. We did not disclose some information to the public because we did not want to stir panic. We have worked hard to overcome this, Jokowi said at that time. The government has also been criticized for low rates of testing, with health experts expressing fears that the number of positive cases was much higher that official figures suggested. New restrictions The Ministry of Health, meanwhile, has approved proposals to institute large-scale social restrictions for regions bordering the capital city, Jakarta, over the next two weeks, officials said. The greater Jakarta area, which includes the cities of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi, is home to 30 million people. Jakarta officials imposed the same measures on April 10, banning gatherings of more than five people and ordered residents to stay at home. The measures call for closing schools, places of worship and businesses except for establishments providing essential goods and services including grocery stores, pharmacies and telecommunications. Violators could face fines of up to 100 million rupiah (U.S. $6,378). The health ministry rejected proposals for similar measures for Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan province, and Sorong in West Papua province, citing a lack of epidemiological justification because there were no widespread outbreaks in the regions. Prisoner unrest Elsewhere in Indonesia, authorities in North Sulawesi said that a riot at a prison in Manado on Saturday might have been sparked by fears of the spread of COVID-19 among inmates. Parts of the prison were burned during the riot. A prisoner died of a heart attack after the riot, North Sulawesi correctional official Edy Wardoyo told local media. The source of the problem is still being investigated, but it could be because of recent measures to fight COVID-19, said Nugroho, director general of corrections at the Law and Human Rights Ministry. He referred to the recent release of 30,000 inmates nationwide who had served two-thirds of their sentences to ease pressure on prisons during the virus outbreak. He said the inmates who rioted might have wanted to be released too, even though they were not eligible. Eighteen drug inmates suspected of inciting the riot were to be moved to a high-security prison complex on the island of Nusakambangan off the coast of Java, said the director of correctional security at the ministry, Tejo Harwanto. Bangladeshi leader boosts outreach packages Meanwhile in South Asia on Monday, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced that her government was setting up a special fund to support health workers and other frontline workers combatting COVID-19 as part of economic stimulus and social outreach packages that now total more than U.S. $11 billion. [I have] already instructed officials to make a list of public sector health workers who have directly served coronavirus patients and they will be given special allowance, Hasina said in a national address Monday night. Funds amounting to 1 billion taka (nearly U.S. $11.8 million) will be allocated for them. We are going to introduce insurance for doctors, nurses, health workers, local level administrative officials, members of law enforcement agencies and the armed forces, members of the BGB (Border Guard Bangladesh) and other public servants who have directly been involved in fighting the coronavirus, she said. In addition, the government is going to allocate 7.5 billion taka ($88 million) to cover their health insurance costs. The funds are to be drawn from COVID relief and economic packages that have swollen to $11.26 billion. Hasina on Monday did not give a breakdown, but the increased figure includes $8.5 billion in financial aid, social outreach measures and incentives for industries crippled by the pandemic that the prime minister unveiled in late March and early April. Part of the packages 95 billion taka ($1.1 billion) is to go to aiding agricultural industries such as farming including dairy and poultry, along with fisheries. The formation of a fund meant to provide working capital in the agricultural sector has been undertaken, the prime minister said. We had bumper production of rice last year and we have forecast a good yield in the current season, too. Necessary measures have been adopted to maintain the existing supply chain of agricultural products and distribution network. Bangladeshi newspapers hit hard Apart from dealing a severe blow to key export-oriented sectors, particularly the garment industry, where more than 1 million have lost their jobs or been suspended as a result, the pandemic has hit the countrys newspaper industry hard, Bangladeshi press groups say. At least nine newspapers have stopped printing, and owners of papers in most cases have shuttered newsrooms and offices at short notice and without paying employees their salaries and dues, said Sheikh Mamun-Ur-Rashid, a member of the steering committee of the Press Institute of Bangladesh. According to the Ministry of Information, 551 daily newspapers are registered in Bangladesh, of which about half are concentrated in the Dhaka area. All those nine newspapers are Dhaka-based, and many more outside Dhaka are facing the same situation, Rashid told BenarNews, referring to the papers that stopped printing, as he called on Hasina to include journalists in her governments financial outreach to industries that are struggling economically due to the pandemic. Kamran Reza Chowdhury and Sharif Khiam in Dhaka contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung, West Java Mon, April 13, 2020 15:51 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd191337 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,Greater-Bandung,Bandung-raya,West-Java,PSBB,large-scale-social-restrictions Free The West Java administration is reviewing requests for large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) to be imposed in Greater Bandung that will be submitted to the Health Ministry following the approval of such measures in several areas of the province that border Jakarta. West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil said a partial lockdown would be imposed in various locations of Greater Bandung, namely Bandung city, Bandung regency, West Bandung regency, Cimahi city and Sumedang regency. We can send the letter after reviewing Bogor, Depok and Bekasi. The process is getting better, faster and more disciplined, Ridwan said after holding a video conference in Bandung on Sunday. Although the implementation of such restrictions in Greater Bandung was not urgent, Ridwan said, the request would be sent to Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto, who has the authority to approve PSBB status, by no later than next Thursday. Ridwan previously sent a request for PSBB status to be declared in Bogor, Depok and Bekasi, after restrictions were imposed in Jakarta on Friday. The cities are part of Greater Jakarta, which has become the countrys epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. Health Minister Terawan approved the implementation of PSBB in Bogor, Depok and Bekasi on Saturday, with the restrictions set to begin next Wednesday and last for 14 days. Ridwan said the implementation of PSBB in the satellite cities of Jakarta would be divided into two zones, as part of the population was spread out across villages. For red zones in certain subdistricts, a maximum PSBB will apply. In non-red zones, the PSBB will be adjusted from minimal to medium, Ridwan said, adding that maximum restrictions would include the closure of access to surrounding areas. Read also: COVID-19: More regions request PSBB status as Indonesia sees big jump in infections, deaths Ridwan requested that the regency and municipal administrations conduct large-scale inspections of factories and studies of strategic industries to inform future policy. After large-scale testing, regents and mayors may allow them to operate if no positive cases are found, so long as physical distancing and health protocols are in place, Ridwan said. Ridwan also asked all community and neighborhood heads to verify the identity of all residents in their respective areas to determine who had come other regions and to prevent them from traveling to their hometowns during the crisis. I order all community units in West Java, especially those in areas imposing PSBB, to report those who need assistance. If there are guests that need to be monitored, record them properly, Ridwan said. Ridwan said residents who were financially affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and faced difficulty accessing basic necessities should report to their local administrations or lodge a claim via the Pikobar application managed by the West Java administration. He said data collection was aimed at enabling affected residents to access assistance from the government via programs funded by both the state and regional budgets. The central government has launched a social aid scheme that provides assistance for low-income citizens through the Family Hope Program (PKH), basic food cards, pre-employment cards, village fund assistance and staple food distribution, among other programs. Read also: Uneasy calm descends on empty Jakarta as capital makes it through first day of social restrictions The West Java administration will also provide cash assistance of Rp 500,000 (US$31.8) and food supplies for affected families. If it is still insufficient, they will be assisted by social funds from regencies and cities, Ridwan said. In addition, Ridwan said his administration had launched the Gasibu movement to collect donations of food. As of Monday, West Java was the second most affected province in the country after Jakarta with 450 confirmed cases with 43 fatalities and 19 people having recovered. The administrations Pikobar data showed that the highest number of positive cases in the province was recorded in Bandung city with 67 cases. The West Java administration has distributed some 70,000 rapid test kits to 27 districts and cities. Ridwan said 832 people had tested positive for COVID-19 using the rapid tests and that they would undergo PCR tests. Once PSBB status is implemented, Ridwan plans to increase COVID-19 testing throughout West Java, with a target to test 300,000 residents. (syk) Kim Jong Un replaces more than a third of countrys main decision-making body, calls for tougher coronavirus fight. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has carried out a major reshuffle of his State Affairs Commission, official media reported on Monday, replacing more than a third of its members. Kim has cemented his grip over the country since coming to power in 2011 and is chairman of the SAC the Norths highest decision-making body. At a rare meeting of the countrys Supreme Peoples Assembly on Sunday, five of the SACs 13 other members were replaced, official news agency KCNA reported. The rubber-stamp parliament met a day after Kim presided over a governing party politburo meeting where he called for strict measures to prevent an outbreak of the new coronavirus. A cabinet report submitted to the assembly reiterated the Norths insistence that not a single case of coronavirus has been reported in the country. State emergency anti-epidemic campaign will continue to be intensified to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the cabinet report said. Photos released by state news agency KCNA on Monday showed hundreds of legislators sitting in close proximity to each other with no masks or other visible measures to protect themselves from the disease. There was no mention on KCNA of Kim presiding over the meeting himself, and he did not appear in photos of it. North Korea has said it has tested at least 700 people and has put more than 500 in quarantine, but has no confirmed case of the new coronavirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) told Reuters news agency last week. The state emergency anti-epidemic campaign will continue to be intensified to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with a priority given to the life and safety of the people, said a report submitted to the Supreme Peoples Assembly (SPA), according to the KCNA. North Korea took swift steps to prevent the spread of the virus, including blocking nearly all travel with neighbouring China and Russia, suspending international tourism and imposing long quarantines on thousands of people, including foreign diplomats. The supreme assembly meets once a year to adopt the state budget and to exercise its constitutional mandate to approve key appointments and legal amendments, though Kim holds near-absolute power in the country. Personnel changes also take place during the meeting. Ri Son Gwon, a former defence commander who was promoted to foreign affairs minister earlier this year, was one of the newly appointed as members of the Cabinet and the SAC in the assembly. His predecessor, career diplomat Ri Yong Ho, was removed. Another former foreign minister, Ri Su Yong, was also taken off the committee. The SPA was initially scheduled for Friday, but was postponed without explanation. By Lizzy Straus The coronavirus has infected nearly every corner of America, but perhaps none have been hit harder than long-term care facilities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hundreds of facilities across the U.S. have reported a positive case. Unfortunately, we at CareOne have not been spared from this unprecedented crisis. Some have even referred to the nursing homes as ground zero in the war against the coronavirus. Yet thousands of caregivers and nurses have been showing remarkable courage by coming to work every day to battle the virus and care for the most vulnerable members of our community; our grandparents, our parents, friends, and loved ones. The risks they take cannot be understated. Its impossible to even contemplate social distancing at one of our facilities. Unlike the dangers faced in a hospital setting, which are challenging in their own right, our residents require constant physical contact; from cleaning, to feeding, to dressing. Our caregivers hold our residents hands and soothe them, sometimes in their final hours. There is no other way for our staff to do their jobs. We are proud of the courage and compassion our team brings to work each day. But the dangers from the coronavirus dont end when they leave work. The virus threatens to follow them home and spread to their families. As such, many of our employees have taken the extra precaution to send their children and loved ones to live elsewhere or physically separate themselves at home to prevent any chance that their family members get sick. Many have not seen or hugged their children for weeks because of their dedication to work. This additional sacrifice is nothing short of selfless and heroic. Theres also the emotional toll weighing on them. Caregivers develop relationships with the residents. They form bonds after spending months, sometimes years getting to know them. Its quite difficult for them to witness the health decline of the people theyve come to care for and call friends. Our compassionate caregivers hold the hands of these residents and soothe them, even in end-of-life situations. To the families that have been restricted from visiting their loved ones as we follow the CDC and Department of Health guidelines, please know that we will continue to do our best during these extraordinary times to connect you with your loved ones via FaceTime and other electronic means. We will continue to make those connections, which are so important, and provide as much real-time information as is possible under the circumstances. Please know that our caregivers are doing all they can to care for your loved ones and treat them as you would. I want to give an example of some of the heroic actions our caregivers have taken. Recently, a nursing home in Woodbridge became overrun with COVID-19. The virus depleted the staff and spread among residents. The New Jersey Department of Health urgently requested help from CareOne, which had no prior relationship to the home. Several of our staff volunteered without knowing the conditions or level of risk to their own well-being and arrived at the nursing home within hours. As you can imagine, the situation was dire. In fact, the state declared the facility a public health emergency and closed it down within a day. Yet our caregivers didnt hesitate to rush in to help strangers and those most in need. Federal officials have declared the fight against the coronavirus a war. It is a war and our caregivers and nurses march straight to the frontlines every day. Please keep in mind the sacrifices and risks they take. They do an incredible job and we express our deep admiration and appreciation during these times. Lizzy Straus is executive vice president of CareOne, based in Fort Lee operates 60 facilities in New Jersey and four other states around the region. It has more than 5,000 employees and admits and discharges more than 20,000 residents each year. The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Single Wing Creative Creates Support KC Industry Collection to support workers in the service industry. "We partnered with J. Rieger & Co. Distillery to raise needed funds for service industry workers and those on the front line fighting this virus. Emily Elmore, Creative Director of Single Wing Creative. Single Wing Creative, a graphic design and public engagement firm in Kansas City, Missouri, has launched a campaign to raise funds for hand sanitizer for front-line workers and restaurants that are serving the public during the Coronavirus crisis. Single Wing Creative has designed a line of clothing and merchandise, named the Support KC Industry Collection, to support the fundraiser, and 100% of all proceeds from the sales of that merchandise will go towards providing sanitizer to individuals and restaurants who sign up to receive it. Single Wing Creative is partnering on this campaign with Kansas Citys J. Rieger & Co. Distillery, which has converted its distillery into a hand sanitizer factory, producing Riegers Remedy Sanitizer. J. Rieger & Co. has generously offered to match all funds raised with an equivalent donation of sanitizer. Individuals and restaurants interested in sanitizer will be invited to begin signing up to receive the sanitizer on April 13, via a form on the emoji my city website. The campaign is running from April 9-April 24. Distribution is planned to occur at J. Rieger & Co. Distillery on April 28 and 29, and recipients will be notified via email when they may come pick up sanitizer. About Single Wing Creative and the Support KC Industry Collection In response to the coronavirus crisis, the team at Single Wing Creative has created a line of t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and totes featuring custom graphics that pay tribute to our city and its critically important hospitality industry. 100% of the proceeds from the Support KC Industry Collection will benefit causes tied to the hospitality sector and its workers. The first beneficiary of this project was the Crossroads Community Kitchen at the Rieger. Tiger Shroffs Father Jackie Shroff Is Stuck At His Khandala Farmhouse Amid Coronavirus Lockdown, Reveals Ayesha By PTI NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10am on Tuesday, the last day of 21-day nationwide coronavirus lockdown, amid indications that the shutdown could be extended by another two weeks with certain relaxations to boost economic activities. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10am on 14th April 2020," the Prime Minister's Office tweeted. With most states favouring the lockdown to be extended at least by two weeks beyond April 14, the government is broadly focusing on a two-pronged action plan ----containing the spread of COVID-19 in the country and staggered resumption of economic activities, according to an official. An indication that while the lockdown maybe extended to ensure social distancing, some relaxations would be made to push economic activities also came from the prime minister, who during a meeting with chief ministers on Saturday via video conferencing, said it was important to save lives as well as livelihoods. "While announcing the lockdown, I had said 'jaan hai to jahan hai' (health is wealth). . . Most people in the country understood it and discharged their responsibilities by remaining indoors. And now it is imperative to focus on both aspects, 'Jaan bhi, jahan bhi' ((lives as well as livelihoods), for India's bright future, and prosperous and healthy India," Modi had said. At least seven states -- Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana-- have already announced extension of the lockdown till April 30. According to the Union Health Ministry's latest update, the COVID-19 death toll has risen to 308 and the number of confirmed cases climbed to 9,152 in the country, which is under the nationwide lockdown since March 25. Meanwhile, several Union ministers resumed work from their respective offices from Monday as part of government's plan to revive economic activities. The government in an order last week had also asked all officers of the joint secretary level and above to be present in the ministries along with one-third of the essential staff from Monday. According to sources, the government is also looking into various recommendations and suggestions made by states, experts and other stakeholders. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has recommended that certain identified industries and services should be allowed to resume limited activity with "reasonable safeguards". In a number of recommendations to the Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA), the department said these new activities in wide-ranging spheres are essential in any lockdown exit plan to improve the country's economic activity and provide liquidity in the hands of the people. There is also a suggestion to divide the country into three zones -- red, orange and green - based on the number of COVID-19 cases in those areas, and allow some industrial activity in orange and green areas, where there are no COVID-19 hotspots, while maintaining standard operating procedures of social distancing. All inter-state public transport, including buses, trains, has been stopped. There is also a ban on domestic and international air travel to prevent the spread of the virus. Last month, the prime minister had addressed the nation twice -- on March 19 and March 24. ROCKY RIVER, Ohio -- The Rocky River School District has won a Best Communities for Music Education Award for the fourth year in a row. The high school band director, Mike Komperda, is also the music teacher and the K-12 music coordinator. It is Komperdas fifth year at the high school, after four years as the middle schools band director. The award, said Komperda, is put on by the National Association of Music Merchants that includes local music stores and big manufacturers of musical instruments. They look at what the community is doing to support music and music education. We have to reapply each year. Its not just a one-time strong effort. Its a way they check in on us -- are we still continuing all the things we need to do? Komperda said that on the application, he had to detail what programs are in the schools, how they are integrated into music, how students are reached with just band and choir, as well as courses outside of performing ensembles. The application clearly intends to include an overall look at the music program within the city, too. Its a comprehensive look at what is going in the community in terms of music opportunities, said Komperda. We have a lot of students participating in the Cleveland Institute of Music wind symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra youth orchestra, community theater efforts that are recognized through Playhouse Square for our spring musicals, kids in dance classes, as well as programs through the Beck Center," he said. "We reapply each year not just for the award, but for how it gives our community a rich tradition in music, as well as (demonstrating) support of the arts in the community. But what makes this particular music department so good? Its all the pieces working together, he said. Support from the administration, the staff, teachers that are wonderful, preschool through high school, outstanding students that work very hard and want to be a part of this, and a community that supports us. Its a whole group of interested people that work hard to make the arts a part of the community. Its a good place to work for that reason. Currently, Komperda is working with the high school band online until the schools reopen. Its definitely an adjustment. I am assigning things for students to work on. They submit recordings. I give feedback. We are also doing classes on Zoom (teleconferencing). Everyone is still working together to make it happen," he said. Komperda said he wants to thank his colleagues and the administration, the school board and the students and parents who are there with us every step of the way. Read more from the West Shore Sun. Conde Nast, the most glittering of all magazine publishers, is the latest media casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Roger J. Lynch, the chief executive of the company behind Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, sent a memo on Monday to 6,000 employees around the world to inform them of an austerity plan that includes pay cuts, furloughs and possible layoffs. Its very likely our advertising clients, consumers and therefore our company will be operating under significant financial pressure for some time, Mr. Lynch said in the note. As a result, well need to go beyond the initial cost-savings measures we put in place to protect our business for the long term. The salaries of those earning $100,000 or more just under half the company will be reduced by 10 to 20 percent for five months, starting in May, the memo said. The pay of executives in the senior management team, including Anna Wintour, the artistic director and Conde Nasts best-known figurehead, will be cut 20 percent. Chris Tarrant has baffled Good Morning Britain viewers by saying he finds it hard to believe wet markets in China started the coronavirus. The Who Wants To Be a Millionaire presenter shocked audiences across the country by saying he found experts' explanation on the Covid-19 outbreak difficult to accept. Appearing on the show this morning, he told Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid: 'I don't have any conspiracy theories really I don't normally believe in them but I find it very hard to accept that one man in China eating a bat has caused this world scale of chaos. I find it very hard to believe. I can't understand that at all.' Virus experts say Covid-19 transferred from animals to humans at a wet market in Wuhan. Twitter users were outraged by Tarrant's comments. One said: 'Chris Tarrant, first thing, going all in with a conspiracy theory on #GMB 'I find it hard to believe this was all caused by some bloke in China eating a bat'.' Tarrant angered viewers by suggesting that he does not believe the official narrative on how the coronavirus outbreak started Another tweeted: 'Chris Tarrant finds it very hard to believe that one man in China eating a bat has caused this global crisis. If you don't understand stuff, you're not obliged to comment on it.' A third wrote: 'Very scary moment at the beginning of the interview Chris Tarrant was about to explain his Coronavirus conspiracy theory.' Tarrant was appearing via videolink from his second home in Berkshire and said he was relieved not the be spending lockdown in London. As the TV star said he was finding the shutdown hard, social media users mocked him and even accused him of escaping his London home to spend lockdown at his second home. One said: 'How's isolation going Chris Tarrant in your very big massive home .. oh I'm finding it very hard.' Another said: 'Glad he's ignored any rules and gone to his second home. No one was even bothered.' The 71-year-old was on the show to discuss the ITV drama Quiz, which focuses on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire cheat Charles Ingram. UK pleges 200 million pounds in aid to help stop second coronavirus wave Saudi Press Agency Sunday 1441/8/19 - 2020/04/12 London, April 11, 2020, SPA -- Britain said late today it was pledging 200 million pounds ($248 million) to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and charities to help slow the spread of the coronavirus in vulnerable countries and so help prevent a second wave of infections. More than 1.6 million people are reported to have been infected by the novel coronavirus globally and deaths have topped 100,000. Infections have been reported in 210 countries since the first cases were identified in China in December last year and British aid minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said assisting the poorest nations now would help prevent the virus returning to the United Kingdom. Britain has reported almost 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus so far, the fifth highest national number globally. --SPA 02:07 LOCAL TIME 23:07 GMT 0024 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Seeking to expeditiously expand COVID-19 testing facilities, the government hasidentified 14 Centres of Excellence such asPGIMER in Chandigarh, AIIMS, New DelhiandNIMHANS in Bangalore to mentorall government and private medical colleges in their catchment areas to create state-of-art molecular virology setups. In the wake of spurt in cases of coronavirus in India, the ICMR has taken into account the need to expeditiously expand COVID-19 testing facilities in all parts of the country and has initiated a proactive search of potential laboratories which could be enabled for coronavirus testing, a senior official said. The ICMR has already invited applications from all government and private medical colleges for establishing COVID-19 testing facilities. "As per directives of Union Ministers of Home and Health, under a core team of Director, AIIMS, Delhi and Director and Director General of ICMR, a total of 14 Centres of Excellence have been designated. These Centres have been delegated a responsibility of mentoring all government and private medical colleges in their catchment area and eventually create state-of-art molecular virology setups," the ICMR said. In a letter to directors of the 14 designated institutes, ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava said, "This work will involve significant due diligence, interaction with various medical colleges, training and handholding. Therefore, it has been decided to distribute the responsibility evenly across various institutions of eminence all across the country.These institutions are expected to serve as mentors of the medical college in their allotted area and facilitate the establishment of COVID-19 testing facilities in respective states." These mentor institutes will constitute a core team of Director, microbiologists, other faculty, administrators and other relevant staffto conduct site assessments and mentor the allocated government and private medical colleges for setting up COVID-19 diagnostic facility. They will also conduct a comprehensive review of medical colleges to assess the feasibility of setting up a real-time RT-PCR testing facility for COVID-19 as per requirements laid down by ICMR and prepare a comprehensive list of available and deficit infrastructure, space, staff, expertise, equipments and consumables at each of the designated medical colleges and submit it to the respective state governments for fulfilment of necessary gaps. They will also maintain a daily follow-up of all the allocated Institutions to monitor progress of work in-terms of setting up a COVID-19 diagnostic facility, conduct onsite/offsite trainings of all designated staff of the proposed19 testing facility on aspects like appropriate laboratory biosafety and biosecurity procedures, respiratory sample collection and processing, RNA extraction and setting up of real-time RT-PCR experiment and appropriate disinfection and decontamination of laboratory spaces among others. They will also ensure expansion of COVID-19 testing facilities as per geographic distribution. The 14 Centres of Excellence includePost Graduate Institute ofMedical Education & Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh which will mentor medical colleges in Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Punjab, Haryana Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and Uttarakhand, AIIMS Delhi to handhold medical colleges in Delhi and Bihar, Armed Force Medical College in Pune to mentor medical colleges in Mumbai and Pune, AIIMS Jodhpur will mentor medical colleges in Rajasthan and Gujarat and National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru will hand hold colleges inKarnataka. The death toll due to the novel coronavirus pandemic rose to 308 on Monday after 35 new fatalities were reported, while the number of cases climbed to 9,152, according to the Union Health Ministry. However, a PTI tally of figures reported by various states as on Sunday showed at least 327 deaths. There has been a lag in the Union Health Ministry figures compared to the number of cases announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning cases to individual states. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) DENVER Colorado regulators on Monday fined an Occidental Petroleum Corp. subsidiary more than $18 million for a fatal 2017 house explosion linked to a severed oil and gas well flowline. The fine for the Kerr-McGee Corp. was by far the largest ever levied by the state against an energy company, The Denver Post reported. Federal investigators said in November the explosion in the Weld County town of Firestone happened after lines then owned by Anadarko Petroleum likely were severed during the homes construction. Kerr-McGee was a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum, which was later purchased by Occidental. Kerr-McGee said in a statement Monday that nothing it says can bring back what was lost in the accident and noted that the company has put in place extensive additional safety measures over the past three years. The National Transportation Safety Board found that flowlines near the home werent properly abandoned. Anadarko acquired the well the line was connected to in 2013. Investigators blamed odorless gas seeping from a long-abandoned flowline just feet away from the home. They found that, despite being abandoned, the line was connected to an operating well. Its existence was unknown to regulators or developers of the neighborhood where the home was built. The blast killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin. Erin Martinez, Mark Martinez wife and Irwins sister, was badly burned. Jeff Robbins, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, explained last month when the fine was proposed that the aggravating factor of death boosted the amount. The previous top penalty assessed by the agency against an oil and gas company was $1.6 million in 2018. In November, Colorado regulators approved a set of safety measures designed to increase citizen protections in areas surrounding thousands of miles of underground oil and gas pipelines in the state. Anadarko reached an undisclosed settlement agreement in 2018 with the families of victims and survivors of the deadly explosion. Hyderabad, April 13 : In a case of discrimination on religious grounds, a private hospital in Telangana's Karimnagar town allegedly refused to treat Muslim patients, triggering outrage. An audio of a telephonic conversation purportedly between an employee of a children's hospital and a woman went viral on the social media, evoking protest from the community leaders and neitizens. The hospital employee allegedly refused to give an appointment to a Muslim. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President Asaduddin Owaisi urged Director General of Police and Karimnagar Police Commissioner to verify the audio take strict action. "Request you to verify and take strict against this 'communal virus' that has now spread to essential healthcare providers. If we don't contain it in time, it'll only endanger innocent Muslim lives," tweeted the Hyderabad MP. Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) leader Amjedullah Khan tweeted that he was shocked to hear the audio that Muslims will not be treated in the hospital. "Couldn't believe this happening in Telangana which has a record of #GangaJamuniTehzeeb," he tweeted and sought a thorough probe. Karimnagar police said they were yet to receive any complaint regarding the audio. Robin Roberts held back tears Monday morning as she paid an emotional tribute to Good Morning America producer Thea Trachtenberg who died on Easter Sunday. The 20 year veteran of the show was hailed as 'a force', a 'mentor to so many' with a 'biting wit, skeptical eye, and a very big heart'. Trachtenberg, 51, is understood to have 'battled serious heart and lung disease for some time' and did not have COVID-19. But her death came just days after the death of the show's cameraman Tony Greer from complications due to the coronavirus. Paying tribute George Stephanopoulos called Thea 'part of the bedrock of GMA'. He added: 'She, I am sure, will tell you she's been fortunate to work in a place like Good Morning America but the program has been just as fortunate, if not more so, to have her.' Thea Trachtenberg, pictured, is understood to have 'battled serious heart and lung disease' This morning we are celebrating the life of longtime @GMA producer Thea Trachtenberg - she was a force of nature as a producer, a colleague and a human being. We will miss her dearly. pic.twitter.com/HXlMQLOuVp Good Morning America (@GMA) April 13, 2020 The 20 year veteran of GMA, left, was hailed as 'a force' and a 'mentor to so many' Recalling an interview with Barack Obama, Stephanopoulos said: 'One other moment I remember, I was in the Oval Office actually interviewing president Obama, big exit interview with President Obama, and as you know he always liked to be very conscience of how much time we had. 'So he said "We have 30 minutes, right, George?" Before I could say a word Thea jumped in and said, "Mr. President, you promised 45".' Pictures of Thea alongside the band U2 as well as politicians including Joe Biden were shown on screen as the hosts paid tribute. Trachtenberg, 51, is understood to have 'battled serious heart and lung disease for some time' and did not have COVID-19. She is pictured with her GMA colleagues and Bill Clinton Pictures of Thea alongside the band U2 as well as politicians including Joe Biden, pictured, were shown on screen as the hosts paid tribute Diane Sawyer paid tribute to Thea saying her reporting 'brought light to the world' George added: 'I worked with Thea on all of my big shoots, and you know, she did love that Bono one most of all. She would come up to me and say "When are we going to do Bono again?". 'Not only was she so much fun to work with but she was just an incredibly competent, intelligent, and fearless producer.' In an earlier social media post Roberts had said Thea was a cancer survivor who had battled heart and lung disease. As pictures of Thea with her colleagues were shown Robin, holding back tears, added: 'I'm glad we're showing these faces. Those are the ones - it's nice to see her with the president but her fellow colleagues, they really, really loved her. 'That's what we should remember about Thea. Boy, she had a big heart.' Roberts said the GMA family member played 'a mean guitar' and was a 'cool dude' whose 'bright light' you could feel 'a mile away' 'He loved his longtime girlfriend Robin. We're thinking of her. She lives in his hometown of Chicago. They loved traveling the world together and traveled extensively,' Roberts said Producer Michael Corn said: 'She was tireless in her pursuit of perfection in her pieces which is why she was the first choice of so many of the top talent at ABC over the years. 'Extraordinarily gifted at this thing we do, she could craft with equal skill epically smart and or heart wrenching and or funny television. Thats no doubt because Thea herself was razor smart and bitingly funny and filled with heart.' The GMA team paid tribute to cameraman Greer last Wednesday, with Robin telling viewers: 'It's a sad day for our family. We know coronavirus has affected so many of you and it has claimed one of our family members too. 'Our talented studio camera operator, Tony Greer has passed away from complications due to the coronavirus. 'He was such a bright light working in our studio for more than six years and you could just feel Tony's beautiful spirit. Could feel it from a mile away.' When Aesop wrote the famous fable The Crow and the Pitcher, he wasnt making up a story. The fable was based on actual observation that was confirmed by recent scientific studies that found that crows, indeed, do just the same as the crow in the fable when presented with a similar situation. Crows are remarkably intelligent creatures who demonstrate complex skills like the ability to manufacture and use tools, remember human faces, and use individual experience to predict, plan and adapt to their environment. Crows are found to bend wires into hooks to acquire hard to reach food, crack open walnuts by dropping them into pavements from a height, and even memorize the schedule of the garbage truck so that could pick up some tasty morsels. Photo credit Food isnt the only motivation factor that drive crows to adaptability. Crows also demonstrate intelligence when building nests, using whatever materials that are available to construct them. A typical nest is composed of interlocking twigs, often recycled from the old nest, and pieces of wires of various lengths and thickness, gathered from the surrounding, to strengthen the nest structure. Tokyo residents have observed that crows in the city have learned to use coat hangers instead. In such a large city, there are few trees, so the natural materials that crows need to make their nests are scarce. As a result, the crows will often steal hangers from the people who live in apartments nearby, and carefully assemble them into intricate nests. The completed nests almost look like works of art. Nests built from hangers were also discovered in other Japanese cities. In Fukuoka City, the Jungle Crow would often make nests atop power lines during the breeding season that could cause large blackouts due to short circuiting. The Kyushu Electric power company actually has "crow patrols" that search out and destroy hanger nests on their power grid. Also see: Massive Bird Nests on Telephone Poles Photo credit Photo credit Photo credit Photo credit Photo credit Photo credit Photo credit Sources: Besgroup / Sinister Pictures / Cracked via Oddity Central Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and doctors are worried. As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could be harming certain patients. The evolving treatments highlight the fact that doctors are still learning the best way to manage a virus that emerged only months ago. They are relying on anecdotal, real-time data amid a crush of patients and shortages of basic supplies. Mechanical ventilators push oxygen into patients whose lungs are failing. Using the machines involves sedating a patient and sticking a tube into the throat. Deaths in such sick patients are common, no matter the reason they need breathing help. Generally speaking, 40 percent to 50 percent of patients with severe respiratory distress die while on ventilators, experts say. But 80 percent or more of coronavirus patients placed on the machines in New York City have died, state and city officials say. Higher-than-normal death rates also have been reported elsewhere in the U.S., said Dr Albert Rizzo, the American Lung Associations chief medical officer. Similar reports have emerged from China and the United Kingdom. One U.K. report put the figure at 66 percent. A very small study in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first emerged, said 86 percent died. The reason is not clear. It may have to do with what kind of shape the patients were in before they were infected. Or it could be related to how sick they had become by the time they were put on the machines, some experts said. But some health professionals have wondered whether ventilators might actually make matters worse in certain patients, perhaps by igniting or worsening a harmful immune system reaction. Thats speculation. But experts do say ventilators can be damaging to a patient over time, as high-pressure oxygen is forced into the tiny air sacs in a patients lungs. We know that mechanical ventilation is not benign, said Dr Eddy Fan, an expert on respiratory treatment at Toronto General Hospital. One of the most important findings in the last few decades is that medical ventilation can worsen lung injury so we have to be careful about how we use it. The dangers can be eased by limiting the amount of pressure and the size of breaths delivered by the machine, Fan said. But some doctors say theyre trying to keep patients off ventilators as long as possible, and turning to other techniques instead. Only a few weeks ago in New York City, coronavirus patients who came in quite sick were routinely placed on ventilators to keep them breathing, said Dr Joseph Habboushe, an emergency medicine doctor who works in Manhattan hospitals. But increasingly, physicians are trying other measures first. One is having patients lie in different positions including on their stomachs to allow different parts of the lung to aerate better. Another is giving patients more oxygen through nose tubes or other devices. Some doctors are experimenting with adding nitric oxide to the mix, to help improve blood flow and oxygen to the least damaged parts of the lungs. If were able to make them better without intubating them, they are more likely to have a better outcome we think, Habboushe said. He said those decisions are separate from worries that there are not enough ventilators available. But that is a concern as well, Habboushe added. There are widespread reports that coronavirus patients tend to be on ventilators much longer than other kinds of patients, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University. Experts say that patients with bacterial pneumonia, for example, maybe on a ventilator for no more than a day or two. But its been common for coronavirus patients to have been on a ventilator seven days, 10 days, 15 days, and theyre passing away, said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, when asked about ventilator death rates during a news briefing on Wednesday. Thats one reason for worries that ventilators could grow in short supply. Experts worry that as cases mount, doctors will be forced to make terrible decisions about who lives and who dies because they wont have enough machines for every patient who needs one. New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said Wednesday that officials are looking into other possible therapies that can be given earlier, but added thats all experimental. The new virus is a member of the coronavirus family that can cause colds as well as more serious illnesses. Health officials say it spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes. There is no proven drug treatment or vaccine against it. Experts think most people who are infected suffer nothing worse than unpleasant but mild illnesses that may include fever and coughing. But roughly 20 percent many of them older adults or people weakened by chronic conditions can grow much sicker. They can have trouble breathing and suffer chest pain. Their lungs can become inflamed, causing a dangerous condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome. An estimated three to four percent may need ventilators. The ventilator is not therapeutic. Its a supportive measure while we wait for the patients body to recover, said Dr Roger Alvarez, a lung specialist with the University of Miami Health System in Florida, who is a leader in the effort to use nitric oxide to keep patients off ventilators for as long as possible. Zachary Shemtob said he was absolutely terrified when he was told his 44-year-old husband, David, needed to be put on a ventilator at NYU Langone last month after becoming infected with the virus. Needing to be ventilated might mean never getting off the ventilator, he said. Shemtob said the hospital did not give any percentages on survival, but he got the impression it was essentially a coin flip. He looked up the rates only after his husband was breathing on his own six days later. A coin flip was generous it seems, he said. But Shemtob noted cases vary. His husband is relatively young. David is living proof that they can really save lives, and how incredibly important they are, Shemtob said. New Delhi: A day ahead of 21-day lockdown, the number of coronavirus COVID-19 cases on Monday (April 13) reached 9352 with 905 new cases reported in the last 24 hours, but 25 districts across 15 states have not reported any case in the last 14 days, according to Union Health Ministry report. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, will address the nation at 10 am on Tuesday. The Prime Minister is likely to talk about the further course of action to deal with the crisis posed by COVID-19 pandemic. A post from the official Twitter handle of PMO read, "PM Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10 am on Tuesday." Prime Minister @narendramodi will address the nation at 10 AM on 14th April 2020. PMO India (@PMOIndia) April 13, 2020 Last week, PM Modi held a meeting with state Chief Ministers through video conference and at least 10 CMs had reportedly advocated for an extension of the ongoing shutdown to contain COVID-19 pandemic. While some Chief Ministers advised him to extend it 'at least for the rest of April', some had advocated 'caution' if he decides against extending it. On March 24, the Prime Minister had announced the 21-day lockdown in the country to contain the spread of coronavirus. As expectations mounted that the Prime Minister may dwell on plans to restart economic activities in a graded manner, Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh today formally announced an extension of the lockdown till April 30 taking to eight the number of states adopting this step. The other states are Odisha, Punjab, Maharashtra, Telangana, West Bengal and Karnataka. Notably, 51 people died in the last 24 hours taking total toll 324. As many as 25 staff members of Mumbai`s Bhatia hospital tested positive for the deadly virus and number of cases in the city has reached 1549. The number of those who have died has reached 100 in Mumbai. With 2,064 cases, Maharashtra continues to be the worst affected followed by Delhi with 1,154 cases and Tamil Nadu with 1075 cases. The number of containment zones in Delhi has been increased to 47. In Delhi, traders at Delhi`s Azadpur Mandi have been told to follow the odd-even rule according to their shed numbers to maintain social distancing. There will be staggered time for sale of vegetables and fruits in the mandis. New cases have been reported from several states including Kerala, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Nagaland reported its first COVID-19 case following which several localities and a hospital in Dimapur hve been sealed. Uttarakhand Health Department, however, stated today that no new positive COVID-19 case emerged in the state for the fifth day in a row. Lav Agarwal, a joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry, said 796 new COVID-19 cases and 35 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 9,152 and fatalities to 308. In some good news, Agarwal also said 25 districts across 15 states which had detected COVID-19 infections earlier have contained the spread and reported no new cases in 14 days. In the wake of spurt in COVID-19 cases in India, the ICMR has taken into account the need to expeditiously expand COVID-19 testing facilities in all parts of the country and has initiated a proactive search of potential laboratories which could be enabled for coronavirus testing, a senior official said. According to an ICMR official, 2,06,212 tests for COVID-19 have been conducted so far. "Of these 14,855 tests took place at 156 government labs and 1,913 tests happened at 69 private labs on Sunday. There is no need to worry. We have enough stocks to conduct tests for six weeks," the official said. Seeking to expeditiously expand COVID-19 testing facilities, the government has identified 14 Centres of Excellence such as PGIMER in Chandigarh, AIIMS, New Delhi and NIMHANS in Bangalore to mentor all government and private medical colleges in their catchment areas to create state-of-art molecular virology setups. The Centre has also sought inputs related to production, labour and logistics from clusters in five key sectors to ascertain expected output if they are made operational within a fortnight and procedural support required, official sources said. The five sectors are textiles, chemicals, electronics, steel and pharmaceutical, the sources said. Industry chamber CII has suggested a "slow and staggered" approach to reopening various sectors based on classification of geographies as red, amber and green, depending upon the incidence of COVID-19 cases. Textiles and apparels, pharmaceuticals, food processing, minerals and metal, besides e-commerce, automobiles and chemicals are the key sectors that need to restart operations in a calibrated manner, a CII report said. Earlier today, Union ministers and senior officials resumed working from offices in Delhi as the Centre scaled up its activities to deal with the situation arising out of the coronavirus crisis. The ministries became fully operational while following standard operating procedures (SoPs) for maintaining social distancing in offices. Meanwhile, here`s a quick read on the COVID-19 related updates: 1. The Supreme Court directed that COVID-19 tests will be conducted free of cost for the poor and needy people across the country. 2. The Supreme Court asked the central government to file a reply on a petition seeking evacuation of Indian citizens stranded in several countries, including the United States, amid the coronavirus lockdown. 3. The Supreme Court deferred for two weeks hearing on a petition seeking directions to curb media coverage on the spread of coronavirus due to the congregation at Markaz Tablighi Jammat in Nizamuddin last month. 4. On the 20th day of the lockdown, union ministers and senior officials resumed working from offices on Monday. 5. One hundred and forty-six hotspots have been identified in 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh, having 401 positive COVID-19 cases. 6. Revenue and Disaster Management Department of Odisha government on Monday said that agriculture activities, fisheries, and work under the MNREGA scheme will be exempted from the second phase of coronavirus lockdown. 7. Indian Army recruitment exam has been postponed to May 31 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 8. The Ministry of External Affairs said it will continue to advise the diplomatic community to follow lockdown guidelines. 9. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Monday informed that 746 out of the 1,154 coronavirus cases in the national capital are from Markaz area in Nizamuddin 10. Ahmedabad joined the list of cities which have made it compulsorily for people to wear face mask at public places to contain novel coronavirus spread. (With Agency Inputs) Hubballi: The coronavirus has spread to the historic city of Vijayapura as six positive cases were reported in the district Sunday. Five of them, including a 60-year old woman, belong to the same family. They include three children 10, 12 and 13 years old. Officials have stepped up security arrangements and declared a confinement zone. They sealed off the area from the famous 17th century Gol Gumbaz to Managuli Agasi locality in Vijayapura where the affected family reside. The officials are making all efforts to find out the travel history of these persons. Later in the day, the 69-year old husband of the 60-year old woman whose test reports are positive, passed away. Deputy commissioner Y S Patil said the deceased person was kept under quarantine along with his wife and members of the joint family of 25. The administration is waiting for a report on the blood sample and throat swab of the deceased. He was undergoing treatment in the district hospital in Vijayapur. The officials said that health condition of the woman is also critical. The surge of Covid-19 cases in the district have fueled the opinion of some experts that the virus has spread to the community though many reject the claim that it has reached state three of the epidemic. Health officials have kept all other 24 family members of the virus-infected woman under strict home quarantine as it's a joint family. Until Saturday, the district administration had tested throat samples of more than 400 people since the outbreak of the virus in Karnataka. The reports of all these people including those who attended the Tablighi Jamaat religious congregation in Delhi have come negative. The detection therefore of the first case in this district on Sunday afternoon, almost three weeks after the lockdown, has baffled the district administration. Initially, the woman had complained of cough and other symptoms of the virus a few days ago and approached several private hospitals for treatment. Finally, she was referred to the district government hospital where she was kept under quarantine. Officials said she had also visited a private hospital in the city where her husband underwent treatment for health issues. The officials have launched a search operation to find out all those people who had come into contact with the virus infected woman and her family members. Four more cases are found in border district of Belagavi on Sunday. The province has hired a local company to help businesses, not-for-profits and charities access federal COVID-19 support programs. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The province has hired a local company to help businesses, not-for-profits and charities access federal COVID-19 support programs. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister said Winnipeg-based 24-7 Intouch has won a $4-million provincial contract to help qualifying organizations obtain interest-free loans and wage support from Ottawa. Pallister estimated more than 65,000 Manitoba businesses are eligible for federal supports such as the 75 per cent wage subsidy and the Canada Emergency Business Account, which offers interest-free loans of up to $40,000. "Literally billions of dollars are at stake," he said Monday. The government recently issued a request for proposal from organizations that could operate a secure call centre to inform and guide businesses about government programs during the pandemic. Pallister said the federal programs offer great potential benefit not only to businesses, but charitable organizations, cultural groups and daycares. Manitoba wants to promote awareness of these programs, "co-ordinate the registration, even going so far as to assist in the preparations of the applications themselves," the premier said. "There are tens of thousands of these entities that need to be notified and assisted wherever possible." The province has yet to announce direct aid for Manitoba businesses. When asked whether such assistance was forthcoming, Pallister said the investment the province was announcing in support of federal programs Monday is "pretty significant." "What we don't need is 10 different programs competing with each other, overlapping with each other and confusing Canadians," he said. Jonathan Alward, Prairie director of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, welcomed the provincial initiative, while repeating calls for direct provincial aid for small business. "It's a good idea but it doesn't replace the need for the provincial government... to step up in terms of a grant" for businesses who have been required to shut their doors due to public health orders, he said. Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Alward said provincial funding is needed both to complement Ottawa's initiatives and to fill gaps in federal programs that prevent many enterprises from benefiting. The province said it is working with 24-7 Intouch to establish the bilingual service in the coming days. It said strict privacy protocols regarding the use of personal and business information will be established. 24-7 Intouch is to identify and reach out to businesses and other organizations that have been affected by the pandemic to offer help. It will also answer incoming calls and questions. Details, including the call centre phone number and hours of operation, will be available in the days ahead, the government said. It encouraged businesses to regularly check the Manitoba government website for an updated list of federal and provincial supports. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca NASA is calling out to all people who love to design little things and who have dreamt of sending one to the moon to join their new contest. Shortly after NASA launched their 'Send Your Name to Mars' Program, the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has launched their new competition: "Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload." Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload Inspired from the hit movie in 1989, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, NASA's JPL has named their new contest for the public after the movie. They aim to challenge people to design instruments that could support a long-term human presence on the moon. The "Honey I Shrunk NASA's Payload" contest will be giving an award of $160,000 in prizes. These miniature robots would provide mission flexibility and collect information about the moon's surface which would be helpful for future lunar endeavors including NASA' Artemis program. This NASA program intends to return humans to the moon by landing the first woman and the next man on the moon's surface by 2024. Artemis program is derived from the Greek goddess of the moon whose namesake program first brought crews to the moon 50 years ago. JPL technologist, Sabah Bux said that smaller payloads are game-changing as they will allow NASA to develop technologies to do more exploring and science on smaller and more mobile platforms. To explore the moon, NASA needs to recruit a host of robots. They are planning to travel on the moon's south pole to search for water ice using the VIPER or the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. But scientists think that smaller rovers could potentially collect more data using less fuel and power. Read: Over 10 Million Entries Sent to NASA's 'Send Your Name to Mars' Program How to Qualify? The agency requires the participants to design a payload not bigger than a bar of soap that could hitch a ride to the moon and help collect important scientific data. To qualify for the challenge, the payload designs should not be bigger than 3.9 inches by 3.9 inches by 1.9 inches or 100 millimeters by 100 millimeters by 50 millimeters and weighs no more than 0.8 pounds or 0.4 kilograms. The deadline for submissions will be until June 1. For more information, click here. Some of the biggest lunar explorations China's Chang'e 5 will be China's third successful spacecraft landing on the moon. Although it is unlike the previous Chang'e rovers, this will be the first sample-return mission of China, bringing back at least two kilograms of samples from two meters below the moon's surface. India is planning to re-attempt a soft landing of its Chandrayaan-3 on 2021 after the Chandrayaan-2 crashed landed into the moon's surface. The rover is expected to carry out explorations in the South Pole of the moon to help characterize the water ice found there. Russia is resurrecting the Luna program which sent its last mission in 1976. Eager to prove that they still got a stake in the 21st century, Luna 25 will prove out new landing technologies and drill into the south pole to study the composition of the lunar soil for water ice. Japan and Korea will also be landing their first missions on the moon in 2022 eager to play an important role in the moon rush exploration this decade. Read Also: Can You Guess What Message is NASA's Perseverance Rover Carrying to Mars? It's Written in Morse Code! Hundreds of media workers in Pakistan have been left jobless following the sudden closure of AAP news. The IFJ has backed calls by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) for the decision to be reversed. Business tycoon Malik Riaz, who is estimated to be the 9th richest person in Pakistan with a net worth of over $1bn, took the decision to close Aap News television channel, claiming "unavoidable legal and technical reasons". The PFUJ strongly condemned the closure and threatened nationwide protests unless the ddecision was immeditaely reversed. They also threatened legal action. According to an internal staff email, dated April 11, "the administration has decided that salary of all employees for the month of March will be paid on April 14 and 15 while the payment of salaries for the notice period between April 11 and May 11 will be paid on April 21 and 22," reads the email. Riaz will use his licensing rights to launch a new channel where employees of Aap News would be hired on a "priority basis", according to the email. PFUJ President GM Jamali and Secretary General Rana Muhammad Azeem said: "This is an unbelievable action amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has added to the stresses and worries of the journalists community in Pakistan. We will be considering a legal course to undo the closure to protect the interests of the hundreds of the media workers," The PFUJ leadership said. IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: This closure must be reversed. If there are technical and legal reasons the owners and government must sort those out to protect hundreds of jobs. We stand strongly behind the PFUJ in this crucial fight for jobs. TEHRAN, Iran, April 13 Trend: Iran Health Ministry plans to bring back its students from abroad, said Deputy Foreign Minister Gholamreza Ansari, Trend reports citing IRIB. "The Foreign Ministry and the Road and Urban Development Ministry has prepared list of students and are ready to be transferred, while we wait for the health protocols," said Ansari. "Many university students that reside abroad, especially in European countries including Italy, have expressed desire to return," he said. "Iran is still witnessing arrival of humanitarian aids from foreign countries that have sentimental and economic value," he said. "There were non-cash and cash donations offered by some countries including China and international organizations that delivered directly to the Health Ministry," he added. Iran is one of the countries heavily affected by the rapidly-spreading coronavirus. According to recent reports from the Iranian officials, over 73,300 people have been infected, 4,585 people have already died. Meanwhile, over 45,900 have reportedly recovered from the disease. The country continues to apply strict measures to contain the further spread. Reportedly, the disease was brought to Iran by a businessman from Iran's Qom city, who went on a business trip to China, despite official warnings. The man died later from the disease. The Islamic Republic only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on Feb. 19. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. Sisters Esha, 14, and Nimi Agarwal, 10, have watched their parents work each day to help combat the spread of the coronavirus. Their father, Dr. Amit Agarwal, works at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, treating patients on the frontline of the fight against the fast-spreading respiratory virus. Their mother, Dr. Sonia Agarwal, works in outpatient treatment, helping patients remain out of the hospital. So if there are any kids who understand the challenges facing health care workers amid the coronavirus pandemic, its Esha and Nimi. The two sisters also understand health care workers arent the only essential employees still going out to do their jobs during the outbreak. Delivery drivers, grocery employees and others were still going to work each day. So the two wanted to make a small gesture to thank those other essential workers. The Upper Saddle River residents created care packages for their mail carrier and sanitation worker, paying a small token of their appreciation for the jobs they continue to do. We knew that they were out risking their lives every day, and we felt that this was needed, Esha said. And it was also a nice thing and hopefully that when they got it, they felt appreciated and that they liked our gifts. The girls have left one care package each for two essential workers, and they plan on creating more in the coming weeks. The boxes included snacks, such as chips, plus some candy. They also added a picture frame and candles, plus some laundry detergent. The sisters are currently on spring break from school, but with their virtual learning schedule during typical school weeks, they have a little extra time on their hands As my parents and teachers (have) said many times to me, this is a good experience, you guys are making history," Nimi said. "Youre staying home from school to go to online school during this pandemic. The two sisters are also part of a group of Ridgewood kids and teens making bracelets to raise money to help feed workers at The Valley Hospital. With their time at home, they want to contribute in any way possible. It means a lot, especially since were young kids and many people think that we cant make a difference," Esha said. "But being able to do this, and even if it was very small with things around that we had in the house, we felt like we made a difference. And hopefully they did, too. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Chris Ryan may be reached at cryan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisRyan_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. US President Donald Trump on Sunday thanked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud for their deal along with other oil-producing countries to calm global energy markets, the White House said. Trump spoke with the two leaders over phone. In separate readouts of the call, the White House said Trump welcomed the commitment by Russia and Saudi Arabia to return oil production to levels consistent with global energy and financial market stability. Trump, during his phone call, thanked them for working with each other, and other oil-producing states to calm global energy markets, the White House said. The top oil-producing countries on Sunday agreed to reduce output in order to boost prices that went down due to the new coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war. Trump hailed the agreement as "great deal for all". In a tweet, Trump said, "The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all!" Former lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani has called on the federal government to deploy more resources to feed Nigerians as extension of lockdown to prevent spread of Coronavirus looms. President Buhari is set to address the nation on Monday and all indications points to an extension of the lockdown. Also Read: Covid-19: To Lift Restrictions Without Vaccine Disastrous: Shehu Sani The former lawmaker expressed that ending the lockdown now would be disastrous. He urged the government to deploy note resources into feeding the people in order to control and contain people. He tweeted: In view of what we are seeing in the US,Spain,Italy,Iran and the UK,Ending The Lockdown in Nigeria will mean diving into a volcano or charging towards a hurricane.But more resources must be deployed to feed the people in order to control and contain the situation. The nations food supply chain is showing signs of strain, as increasing numbers of workers are falling ill with the coronavirus in meat processing plants, warehouses and grocery stores. The spread of the virus through the food and grocery industry is expected to cause disruptions in production and distribution of certain products like pork, industry executives, labor unions and analysts have warned in recent days. The issues follow nearly a month of stockpiling of food and other essentials by panicked shoppers that have tested supply networks as never before. Industry leaders and observers acknowledge the shortages could increase, but they insist it is more of an inconvenience than a major problem. People will have enough to eat; they just may not have the usual variety. The food supply remains robust, they say, with hundreds of millions of pounds of meat in cold storage. There is no evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted through food or its packaging, according to the Department of Agriculture. Still, the illnesses have the potential to cause shortages lasting weeks for a few products, creating further anxiety for Americans already shaken by how difficult it can be to find high-demand staples like flour and eggs. [April 13, 2020] Smart speaker broadcasts made easy through Wecast.ai SEOUL, South Korea, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- South Korean startup, NextNest, has launched Wecast.ai, a broadcasting platform for the widely used voice assistant technologies, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Wecast makes voice broadcast creation a simple task for anyone. Following an intuitive interface, users simply type their messages, just as they would on Twitter or Facebook, to be broadcast on smart speakers all over the world. According to Voicebot.ai, smart speaker installations reached 76 million units in 2019. Yet without a "killer app", usage has been mostly confined to playing music, smart home commands, and information queries. NextNest aims to improve and increase users' interactions with smart speakers by making voice cast creation accessible even to the non-programmer through its Wecast platform. "Both Alexa and Google assistant are incredible devices but have not yet reached their potential as devices to connect people," said Sam Seo, CEO of NextNest. "There are many voice app tools that claim "no coding necessary", but in the end require some familiarity with coding and server structure. Just as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook made it easy for people who aren't web developers to get their thoughts and messages out on the internet, Wecast will make using smart speakers more accessible, interactive, and fun." Wecast.ai offers standardized Alexa Skills and Google Actions that broadcast content residing on users' Wecast pages. Users are only required to name their Skill or Action and provide message content, although additional features and settings are available to customize interaction. Wecast takes the voice apps through the Amazon or Google standard application process, and upon approval, they are ready to be played on Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or both. NextNest's ultimate aim is to bring innovation to virtual assistant AI technology, and Wecast provides a springboard to do so through the wealth of content generated on its platform. "To truly improve virtual assistant AI, it needs to be fed massive quantities of short audio or text content, as opposed to the long readable page content that currently drives AI improvement. We have developed a system that can gather this data while providing users a more fun experience" said CTO of NextNest, Seongmin Kim, Adj. professor in SW Engineering at Jungbu University, South Korea. About NextNest Inc. Founded by two smart speaker fanatics in 2017, NextNest inc. launched Wecast.ai in 2020. After beta testing in early 2020, Wecast currently has over 80 voice apps on air, with over 120,000 plays on smart speakers all over the world. The company is now preparing its Series A investment round. WECAST service website: https://www.wecast.ai View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/smart-speaker-broadcasts-made-easy-through-wecastai-301039241.html SOURCE NextNest [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] COLUMBUS, Ohio - Despite the time spent with smartphones and social media, young people today are just as socially skilled as those from the previous generation, a new study suggests. Researchers compared teacher and parent evaluations of children who started kindergarten in 1998 - six years before Facebook launched - with those who began school in 2010, when the first iPad debuted. Results showed both groups of kids were rated similarly on interpersonal skills such as the ability to form and maintain friendships and get along with people who are different. They were also rated similarly on self-control, such as the ability to regulate their temper. In other words, the kids are still all right, said Douglas Downey, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. "In virtually every comparison we made, either social skills stayed the same or actually went up modestly for the children born later," Downey said. "There's very little evidence that screen exposure was problematic for the growth of social skills." Downey conducted the study with Benjamin Gibbs, associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University. The study was just published online in the American Journal of Sociology. The idea for the study came several years ago when Downey had an argument at a pizza restaurant with his son, Nick, about whether social skills had declined among the new generation of youth. "I started explaining to him how terrible his generation was in terms of their social skills, probably because of how much time they spent looking at screens," Downey said. "Nick asked me how I knew that. And when I checked there really wasn't any solid evidence." So Downey, with his colleague, decided to investigate. For their study, they used data from The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which is run by the National Center for Educational Statistics. The ECLS follows children from kindergarten to fifth grade. The researchers compared data on the ECLS-K cohort that included children who began kindergarten in 1998 (19,150 students) with the cohort that began kindergarten in 2010 (13,400 students). Children were assessed by teachers six times between the start of kindergarten and the end of fifth grade. They were assessed by parents at the beginning and end of kindergarten and the end of first grade. Downey and Gibbs focused mostly on the teacher evaluations, because they followed children all the way to fifth grade, although the results from parents were comparable. Results showed that from the teachers' perspective, children's social skills did not decline between the 1998 and 2010 groups. And similar patterns persisted as the children progressed to fifth grade. In fact, teachers' evaluations of children's interpersonal skills and self-control tended to be slightly higher for those in the 2010 cohort than those in the 1998 group, Downey said. Even children within the two groups who had the heaviest exposure to screens showed similar development in social skills compared to those with little screen exposure, results showed. There was one exception: Social skills were slightly lower for children who accessed online gaming and social networking sites many times a day. "But even that was a pretty small effect," Downey said. "Overall, we found very little evidence that the time spent on screens was hurting social skills for most children." Downey said while he was initially surprised to see that time spent on screens didn't affect social skills, he really shouldn't have been. "There is a tendency for every generation at my age to start to have concerns about the younger generation. It is an old story," he said. These worries often involve "moral panic" over new technology, Downey explained. Adults are concerned when technological change starts to undermine traditional relationships, particularly the parent-child relationship. "The introduction of telephones, automobiles, radio all led to moral panic among adults of the time because the technology allowed children to enjoy more autonomy," he said. "Fears over screen-based technology likely represent the most recent panic in response to technological change." If anything, new generations are learning that having good social relationships means being able to communicate successfully both face-to-face and online, Downey said. "You have to know how to communicate by email, on Facebook and Twitter, as well as face-to-face. We just looked at face-to-face social skills in this study, but future studies should look at digital social skills as well." ### Contact: Douglas Downey, Downey.32@osu.edu Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu An African American doctor, who has been battling the coronavirus pandemic in his hospital and on the streets of Miami, was detained and handcuffed in front of his own home by a police sergeant as he loaded up his van with supplies he says he planned to take to the homeless. Dr. Armen Henderson, an internal medicine physician at the University of Miami Health System, said his biggest concern about the up-close encounter was that the Miami-Dade police sergeant was not wearing a protective mask when Henderson says the sergeant got "all up in my face," Henderson told ABC News on Sunday. The incident occurred on Friday, just three days after Miami-Dade Police Chief Jorge Colina announced that at least six of his officers had tested positive for the coronavirus and another 125 had been quarantined pending test results. In a video statement, Colina pleaded with the public to help protect his officers, saying, "Please, stay inside, adhere to social distancing, wear a mask or a cloth face covering and be responsible. Were here for you. Please do your part for us." Henderson, 34, said obviously the sergeant who handcuffed him didn't get the chief's message. MORE: US close to coronavirus peak, but we have to take it 'day by day': FDA commissioner "He put me at risk," Henderson said. "Now I feel like I should get tested, honestly. Most likely I will because he definitely was spitting in my face. I could feel it while he was yelling at me." Henderson alleges the sergeant detained him because he is black. Colina said he has ordered an investigation of the incident. Police did not release the sergeant's name, but video footage of the encounter taken by a security camera outside Henderson's home shows the sergeant did not seem concerned about social distancing and appeared to get face-to-face with Henderson while pointing his finger at the doctor's face. PHOTO: Dr. Armen Henderson, second from left, talks with volunteers before heading out to do outreach with the homeless population during the new coronavirus pandemic, Friday, April 3, 2020, in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami. (Lynne Sladky/AP) "Let me start by saying that the City of Miami Police Department does not condone or accept profiling of any kind," Colina said in a video statement released on Saturday. Story continues Saying he wanted to "provide a little bit of context of what was going on here," Colina said his department has received numerous complaints from residents of Henderson's Flagami neighborhood of people illegally dumping trash on the streets. We have had a litany of complaints pertaining to illegal dumping. The commissioner from that area has received many complaints as well from the constituents," Colina said There is a cargo van thats parked in front of that home where there appears to be trash thats being offloaded. That is the genesis of the stop. Now, whats happened after that, whats being discussed, the actions taken, etcetera ... all that needs to be investigated and it will be investigated." MORE: Philadelphia police drag man without mask off public bus, prompting policy change The soundless security video from Henderson's home, which was shared with ABC News, shows the doctor wearing a protective mask and loading supplies into a white cargo van, and placing bulky trash on the sidewalk when the sergeant pulls up and appears to begin questioning him. He just said, Are you littering over here? Do you live here? Do you work here? And I was like, Yes, I live here. This is where we put our bulky trash and the city comes to pick it up every week at this same place," Henderson said. He said the incident occurred about 11:30 a.m., a half-hour before he was to meet the homeless outreach group he works with to distribute supplies in downtown Miami. "Weve been out there once or twice a week for the last four weeks, handing out tents, toiletries, masks, socks. Weve been testing individuals for COVID-19 because its the most vulnerable population. If you want to control the spread you have to go right to the source and take care of these individuals first," Henderson said of his work on the streets. He said that when he began to walk away from the sergeant, the encounter quickly escalated. "Im like, 'OK, thank you officer.' And then I turned around to get back to what I was doing," Henderson said. ''I guess he must have thought that I had disrespected him or something like that. He jumped out of the car and started yelling, 'You call me sergeant when I'm talking to you, and blah, blah, blah. And, you know what, give me your I.D.''' Henderson said that when he told the sergeant he didn't have his identification on him, the sergeant pulled out his handcuffs, placed them on Henderson and walked the doctor to the front of his squad car. Henderson said he yelled out to his wife, who was inside their home with their two young children, to come out with his I.D. When Henderson's wife showed the I.D. to the sergeant, the sergeant removed the handcuffs and released Henderson. MORE: US surpasses 20,000 coronavirus deaths, the highest national death toll "He didnt apologize. He just got in his car and drove away," Henderson said. He said he didn't get the opportunity to tell the sergeant that he is a doctor. ''My hospital is becoming fuller and fuller, more and more people are coming in for COVID-19. I take care of the bulk of those patients just because I work at night. The majority of the patients that Im seeing right now are COVID-19," Henderson told ABC News. ''Its ironic because the police department released a whole video that morning saying, 'We thank first responders.' But even if I wasnt a doctor, why do you feel the need to stop me during a pandemic? Don't you have other things to do?" What to know about the coronavirus: How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus map Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis. Police chief orders probe in handcuffing of black Miami doctor on front lines of coronavirus fight originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:01:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers reported their first attempt to measure the vertical carbon dioxide distribution by using a non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) gas sensor, according to a recent study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The miniaturized sensor, co-developed by experts from the academy's Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the University of Maryland, was carried in a giant aerostat, a helium-filled tethered balloon rising to 1,000 meters, to measure the vertical carbon dioxide distribution during a week-long experiment in January 2019, at a suburban site in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province, also a city with serious air pollution. Among all greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide accounts for the largest share. Since the 1970s, scientists have conducted long-term global monitoring of greenhouse gases. However, data of carbon dioxide in its vertical distribution are insufficient. Compared with traditional instruments, such as high towers and aircraft, the use of gas sensors based on NDIR technology has a lower cost. "It enables researchers to achieve a more accurate assessment of the distribution and changes of the greenhouse gas concentration, which is crucial for the climate policy formulation and climate change predictions," said the institute researcher Han Pengfei, who led the study. The study showed that the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere within 1,000 meters displayed a decreasing trend with the increase in height. Furthermore, the levels of the vertical greenhouse gas concentration varied from morning to afternoon, which were affected by weather conditions and carbon dioxide emission sources, including human activities and the burning of fossil fuels. The researchers also found that the sensor produced data consistent with the traditional method, indicating the instrument is feasible for high spatial density carbon dioxide monitoring, Han said. The results were published in the April 8 issue of the journal Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters. Why is there no leadership in Waukegan in regards to the COVID-19? With the numbers of cases increasing daily in regards to positive cases, I would think our so-called mayor would take an initiative to encourage everyone to follow the guidelines that have been set. I am thinking some of these positive cases include firemen, policemen and other public personnel that are trying to keep the city safe, let alone all the wonderful people in the medical field. If there are gatherings seen, are they being broken up? Is the city enforcing the no more than 10 people at a gathering directive? Please go to the Lake County Health Department website and sign up for the COVID-19 daily updates, which includes the dashboard which breaks down the numbers for each town or village in Lake County. When we do hear from you, I hope it is not about the casino. Shame on you Mayor Cunningham. Residents wearing face masks practice social distancing as they wait in a queue for free rice, amid Vietnam's nationwide social isolation effort against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Hanoi, April 11, 2020. In March 2020, after President Xi Jinping toured Wuhan City to inspect progress in containing the coronavirus, Beijing unleashed a global propaganda campaign to tout Chinas success, in response to foreign criticism that China had been slow in responding to and was not transparent enough in reporting the lethality of COVID-19. The hallmark of Chinas response was the donation of face masks, personal protective equipment, test kits, ventilators and hand sanitizer to nearly ninety countries. This gave rise to the term face mask diplomacy. Vietnam initially responded to the outbreak of the coronavirus by quickly isolating victims and tracing those who had been in contact, delaying the start of the school year, imposing social controls, cutting air flights to and from China and other virus hot spots, and other measures. As Vietnam began to control the spread of COVID-19 domestically, it looked outward and initiated in own form of face mask diplomacy. In February, Vietnam made symbolic donations of medical supplies to Chinas Border Guards and Chinas Ministry of National Defence. For example, on Feb. 8, Vietnams Ha Giang province Border Guards donated 1,000 face masks and twenty sanitizer containers to their counterparts in Yunan. Two weeks later, in a more formal ceremony, the head of Vietnams Ministry of National Defence, Department of Military Medicine handed over unspecified medical equipment to Chinas Ministry of Defence. Subsequently, on March 8, the Dien Bien province Border Guards gifted 10,000 medical face masks to their Chinese counterparts. In late March, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc extended Vietnams face mask diplomacy to Laos, Cambodia, and Russia. In a telephone conference with his Lao and Cambodian counterparts on March 26 , Prime Minister Phuc offered to provide each country with medical equipment worth US $100,000 and to send medical experts to assist in the fight against COVID-19. On April 3, Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung met in Hanoi with the ambassadors from Cambodia and Laos and announced that Vietnam would hand over medical equipment valued at US $300,000 to their countries to assist in their fight against COVID-19 and donate 390,000 face masks to Cambodia and 340,000 face masks to Laos. On March 27 , the head of Vietnams Department of Military Medicine presented unspecified military medicine to the Minister Counsellor of the Embassy of the Russian Federation. In parallel with medical gifts to China, Vietnams Border Guards presented their Lao counterparts with symbolic donations. On March 30, for example, Quang Tri province Border Guards handed over 1,000 medical face masks and some hand sanitizer, 300 kg of rice, thirty-six boxes of instant noodles and 36 containers of instant milk to their Lao counterparts. On April 2, Vietnams Ha Tinh province Border Guards handed over unspecified medical supplies to the Khammuane province Military Command. In the most recent iteration of face mask diplomacy Vietnam donated 550,000 antimicrobial face masks to the ambassadors of five European countries Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom . Vietnam also expedited the sale of 450,000 made-in-Vietnam DuPont hazmat suits to the United States. On April 9, President Donald Trump thanked our friends in Vietnam for responding so quickly. Why did Vietnam initiate face mask diplomacy? First, Vietnams initiative is consistent with its past actions towards foreign countries when they are stricken by a natural disaster. Vietnams aid is largely symbolic and a show of solidarity. In other words, Vietnam wants to be viewed as a responsible international citizen. Second, Vietnams face mask diplomacy was initially directed to those countries that are given priority in Vietnams foreign relations. Since the Seventh National Congress of the Vietnam Communist Party in mid-1991, Vietnam has given priority in its foreign relations to the Soviet Union [now the Russian Federation], Laos, Cambodia, China Vietnam has a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China and a comprehensive strategic partnership with Russia. Vietnam uses the term relations of special solidarity to describe its relations with Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam maintains close relations with the armed forces of both countries, in particular. Third, Vietnam may be taking a page out of Chinas game book. In February-March, China donated medical supplies and equipment and offered the services of medical specialists to eight of ASEANs ten members. Singapore and Vietnam have not been recipients of Chinese largess presumably because they were able to bring COVID-19 under control quickly. However, it should be noted that on April 2, Chinas Premier Li Keqiang spoke with Phuc and promised that China would provide Vietnam with aid and medical supplies and equipment within its capacity. Vietnam cannot hope to match China in the volume and dollar value of its aid but Vietnam can provide assistance where it counts. For example, Vietnam has negotiated strategic partnerships with Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. They hold a special place in Vietnams policy of diversifying and multilateralising its foreign relations and hence received donations of face masks. Fourth, Vietnam appears to have gained in confidence by managing to deal successfully with the coronavirus. Vietnam has officially reported 250 plus victims but has not experienced a coronavirus related death to date. While Vietnam is bracing itself against a second wave of the virus it is also beginning to look ahead to a revival of domestic economic activity. Obtaining approval from the European Union on a free trade agreement ranks high on Vietnams future agenda. Fifth, Vietnam may see an opportunity to provide high-quality face masks on the world market in light of the mounting returns to China of faulty face masks and other medical equipment. There are an estimated forty companies that currently produce seven million surgical masks a day in Vietnam. Government officials would like to produce an additional 5.7 million a day. Vingroup, Vietnam's biggest listed firm, announced last week it would start producing up to 55,000 ventilators a month, including for foreign markets. Carl Thayer is Emeritus Professor and Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. As the battle to contain the Coronavirus pandemic rages on across the world, President Muhammadu Buhari said the Nigerian government has trained 7,000 healthcare workers in a bid to curb the disease in the country. Mr Buhari said this on Monday, while delivering his second address to Nigerians on the coronavirus crisis. He also said the government has implemented comprehensive health measures within the 14 days lockdown imposed on Lagos, Ogun and Abuja. Mr Buhari first addressed Nigerians on March 29 during which he imposed a two-week lockdown on Lagos, Ogun and Abuja to check the spread of the coronavirus. As a result of the overwhelming support and cooperation received, we were able to achieve a lot during these 14 days of initial lockdown, he said Monday evening. We implemented comprehensive public health measures that intensified our case identification, testing, isolation and contact tracing capabilities. To date, we have identified 92 per cent of all identified contacts while doubling the number of testing laboratories in the country and raising our testing capacity to 1,500 tests per day. We also trained over 7,000 healthcare workers on infection prevention and control while deploying NCDC teams to 19 states of the federation, he said. With data from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control(NCDC) showing that Lagos State leads with number of confirmed cases, followed by Abuja, Mr Buhari also said the FCT and Lagos has the capacity to admit 1,000 patients across its treatment centres. Lagos and Abuja today have the capacity to admit some 1,000 patients each across several treatment centres. Many state governments have also made provisions for isolation wards and treatment centres. We will also build similar centers near our airports and land borders. Using our resources and those provided through donations, we will adequately equip and man these centres in the coming weeks. Already, health care workers across all the treatment centers have been provided with the personal protective equipment that they need to safely carry out the care they provide. Our hope and prayers are that we do not have to use all these centres. But we will be ready for all eventualities, he said. Nigeria has, so far, recorded 323 cases of the disease, including 85 recoveries and 10 deaths. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:46:03|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China maintained its position as Mongolia's biggest trade partner in the first quarter of 2020, Mongolia's National Statistics Office (NSO) reported on Monday. China took up 56.5 percent of Mongolia's total foreign trade, Dorjdamba Baasan, an economic statistician at the NSO, told a news conference. Mongolia traded with a total of 121 economies around the world in the January-March period, during which the country's foreign trade volume reached 2.2 billion U.S. dollars, down 28.1 percent from the same period last year. The drop in foreign trade is partially attributed to a temporary suspension of coal deliveries across its southern border into China as part of precautionary measures against COVID-19, according to the agency. China has been Mongolia's biggest trading partner and top export market for many years, with bilateral trade surpassing 8 billion dollars in 2019. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 By Elnur Baghishov - Trend Iran will send trade attaches to at least 10 countries, including Russia, Turkey, Oman, China and India, to increase exports, said Masoud Kamali Ardakani, director general of Industrial and Mineral Exports Development Office at Irans Trade Development Organization (TPO), Trend reports referring to the TPOs website. According to Kamali Ardakani, the role of Iranian trade attaches is to facilitate trade and economic relations with other countries. As expected, their activities will result in a further increase in export potential in the next years. The official said that Iran intends to increase exports to neighboring countries this year and the role of trade attaches in determining the perspective markets is important. Kamali Ardakani noted that in recent years, the number of Iranian trade attaches in the world was 25 people, but at present, this figure has decreased by 5 persons. The director general added that the number of Iranian trade attaches in the world has decreased due to financial shortages. Iran exported 133.9 million tons of products worth $41.3 billion last Iranian year (from March 21, 2019 to March 20, 2020). China ($9.5 billion), Iraq ($9 billion), Turkey ($5 billion), UAE ($4.5 billion) and Afghanistan ($2.3 billion) were the top five countries in terms of exports. The central government has enough grains to feed over 81 crore beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS) for nine months, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan said New Delhi: The central government has enough grains to feed over 81 crore beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS) for nine months, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan said on Sunday, expressing confidence that its granaries, expecting a boost from a "bumper" wheat crop, will have adequate stock for a much longer period. With the government likely to extend the nation-wide lockdown till the month end, the Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution minister said that the transportation and distribution of food grains at an "unprecedented" scale has emerged as a "lifeline" during the crisis, with the poor being assured of their ration supply in time. As of 10 April, the government-run godowns have 299.45 LMT (lakh metric ton) rice and 235.33 LMT wheat, totalling 534.78 LMT of the two major grains supplied to the poor, Paswan told PTI in an interview. The per month supply through the PDS amounts to 60 LMT, he said. Coarse grains and pulses are also supplied through the PDS in a limited quantity. "There is no shortage of grains. We now have a bumper rabi harvest and our estimate is that we will have adequate stock for up to two years," he said. Though the extended lockdown may have sparked a variety of concerns, including about economy, but any shortage of essential grains like wheat and rice is the least of them. Paswan said in a lighter vein that the condition is akin to "the lawyer (Centre) being more keen about the case than the client (states)", with the Union government constantly asking states to lift their quota of rations in time after it was announced that all PDS beneficiaries will get three months of supply free. What has been seen is "unprecedented and historic", he said about the mechanism put in for the distribution of grains, with trains playing a key role. Recently in one day, over 20.19 LMT of grains were moved through trains, a record, he noted. The government has also made it easier for agencies, public or private, to purchase grains from it at a subsidised rate if they are involved in helping the poor. "If in this lockdown there had been any issue regarding the supply of food grains, then it could have created a havoc. So the biggest satisfaction and relief is that it has all gone well," Paswan, a member of the Group of Ministers overseeing the lockdown exercise, said. Following the start of the three-week lockdown from 24 March midnight, the government had announced three months of free ration for the PDS beneficiaries and also allowed them to purchase their usual monthly quota on credit for three months. The antyodaya (poorest in the lot) beneficiaries, who get 35 kg of food grains per month irrespective of their family size, were allocated an additional 5 kg per head in the family. These measures have been of huge help in ensuring that nobody goes hungry during the lockdown, and the government's steps to combat the pandemic get maximum support, he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Singapore Mon, April 13, 2020 08:43 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd170e84 2 Business oil-price,OPEC,Russia,Saudi-Arabia,West-Texas-Intermediate,Brent Free Oil prices rallied Monday after top producers agreed to slash output and shore up coronavirus-ravaged energy markets, but some analysts were concerned the cuts did not go far enough. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate was up 7.7 percent at US$24.52 a barrel in Asian trade while Brent crude, the international benchmark, put on 5.0 percent to $33.08 a barrel. OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia met via videoconference for an hour Sunday in a last effort to cement a deal struck early Friday. It still required Mexico's agreement and in a compromise reached Sunday they agreed to a cut of 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to its Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels per day envisioned earlier. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic". Oil markets have been in turmoil for weeks as lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed worldwide to combat the virus outbreak strangle demand, with a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia compounding the crisis. While Monday's price rises were healthy, they were not as strong as the double-digit jumps and falls of recent weeks in a highly volatile market, and analysts were sceptical the deal went far enough. The amount being cut was slightly lower than had been expected, and observers said it would not make up for expected demand loss due to the virus outbreak. Some analysts are putting this at about 25 million barrels per day in April. In addition, storage tanks worldwide are rapidly filling up. "The deal is a little less than the market expected given that Mexico has gotten off easy," Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, told Bloomberg News. "The hard work lies ahead given that the market is very sceptical that OPEC+ are actually going to be able to come up with their near 10 million barrels a day of production cuts." AxiCorp's Stephen Innes added that "there remain concerns the agreement could be a day late and a 'barrel short' to prevent a decline in prices in the coming weeks as storage capacity brims". Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 03:15:05|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A Palestinian artist carves words "STAY HOME STAY SAFE" with sand on a beach in Gaza City, on April 12, 2020. Palestine said on Sunday that the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country has reached 290. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua) RAMALLAH/GAZA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Palestine said on Sunday that the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country has reached 290. According to Director of Primary Healthcare at the Ministry of Health Kamal Shakhra, 58 cases have recovered and were discharged to return to their homes, while they are requested to commit to a two-week home quarantine. He added that preparations are underway to allow the return of dozens of Palestinians to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing. Meanwhile, Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said that there are 632 people under quarantine. Health Ministry spokesperson in the Gaza Strip Ashraf al-Qedra told reporters that the healthcare system in the coastal enclave is in a critical condition, urging for needed equipment and test kits to face the pandemic. Al-Qedra noted that the returning citizens expected to arrive on Monday will be put under a 21-day quarantine in centers run by the ministry. Earlier on Sunday, the Palestinian government accused Israel of preventing Palestinian health authorities from monitoring the pandemic situation among Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The United States is the worlds single largest financial supporter of efforts to address landmines and unexploded ordnance, and to reduce the availability of loosely-secured, at risk weapons and munitions. Since 1993, the United States has invested more than $3.7 billion in more than 100 countries to fund conventional weapons destruction. The U.S. State Department recently released its annual To Walk the Earth in Safety report. It highlights U.S. conventional weapons destruction programs and U.S. efforts to make post-conflict communities safer, setting the stage for their recovery and development. The report notes that in Colombia, the United States provided more than $24 million in 2019 to continue the survey and clearance of explosive remnants of war and strengthened the capacity of Colombias National Mine Action Authority. Elsewhere in the hemisphere, the United States supported conventional weapons destruction programs in Central America and Peru. In Iraq, the United States contributed $37.5 million last year to clearing explosive hazards, including improvised explosive devices, and promoting continued mine risk education throughout Iraq. These efforts have helped promote the safe return of displaced persons, including ethnic and religious minority communities that are persecuted by ISIS. Since 1993, the United States has invested more than $148 million for programs in Vietnam that have cleared mines and provided mine risk education and survivor assistance. As a result, land is now being returned for civilian use, said U.S. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Political Military Affairs Clarke Cooper. In 2019 Vietnam was able to release over 106 million square meters to farming and productive economic development. This is bringing resources and land access back into productive use, not just for safe access, but for community stability. Through the conventional weapons destruction program, the U.S. government has collaborated with partner nations and international organizations since 2003 to destroy more than 41,000 poorly-secured man-portable air-defense systems or MANPADS these shoulder-fired missiles, if not safeguarded, pose a serious threat to global aviation. United States assistance, along with that of its global partners, is crucial to building a safer and more prosperous world. The State Department looks forward to continuing this important work with other donor countries, those impacted by conflict, and the brave men and women who secure at-risk weapons and munitions, and clear landmines and other explosive hazards. Riding a wave of collective euphoria enveloped by pulsing music in a darkened venue is a liberating, inhibition-lowering, sense-heightening experience for many. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Riding a wave of collective euphoria enveloped by pulsing music in a darkened venue is a liberating, inhibition-lowering, sense-heightening experience for many. Dance floors and festival grounds across Manitoba attract people by the hundreds and thousands absent of public-health orders for an escape from the daily grind. JESSE BOILY / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Joseph Keilty, left, and Bryce Koch, founders of Project Safe Audience, a harm-reduction group that ensures party goers can party safely. And while alcohol, weed and illicit substance use can permeate such events, a couple of public-health nurses are collaborating with revellers to build a safer party culture. Bryce Koch and Joseph Keilty are the founders of Project Safe Audience, a harm-reduction and education initiative launched in 2016 to promote safer substance use in Winnipegs rave scene. It has grown into a full-fledged community outreach project led by a board of directors and more than 50 volunteers. Koch said he was struck with the idea to introduce harm-reduction measures to the citys rave scene while studying nursing at the University of Manitoba. Having volunteered in the medical tent at major electronic dance music events in British Columbia, where safer substance use trumped stigma, the former paramedic wanted to do more for his peers in Winnipeg and offer similar supports: drug testing, substance-use information, free condoms and safe-sex supplies, ear plugs, sterile snorting straws and mental-health crisis counselling. 'I had been going to raves and music events for a pretty long time and I was noticing a bit of a gap in health information that was targeting this audience' Bryce Koch "I had been going to raves and music events for a pretty long time and I was noticing a bit of a gap in health information that was targeting this audience," said Koch, 28. "A lot of my friends, a lot of my peers in the community were taking substances, but they didnt really understand what they were putting into their body, didnt know how much they were putting into their body, and I would have people coming to talk to me with conflicting information." Koch enlisted the help of Keilty, a friend and fellow nursing student. They set up their first booth at a rave in Winnipeg a little more than three years ago. Using their own cash to buy supplies, the pair handed out pamphlets on how to safely use party drugs, condoms and ear plugs, and created the first connections that would establish Project Safe Audience in Manitoba. "Reducing stigma, its creating a culture of safety, its advocating for more progressive laws," said Keilty, 27. "Its creating the culture where we can talk about it openly and honestly and create a safer environment. "I love the philosophy of meeting of people where theyre at, having open and honest conversations, and creating the environment that could allow people to actually be safe and challenge old policies," he said. In the past year, Project Safe Audience volunteers have worked festivals and dozens of events, offering drug testing, mental-health crisis intervention, information and peer support. Keilty and Koch have also started providing harm-reduction training for venue owners, festival directors and are collaborating with community partners on best practices to engage people using meth, opioids and other potentially deadly substances. For more info: Click to Expand Information on harm reduction and safer substance use during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found on Project Safe Audiences Facebook page, facebook.com/ProjectSafeAudience, at streetconnections.ca and ninecircles.ca/news-events/covid-19-resources. "Having this harm-reduction stance and working with a population that uses substances and incorporating people who use substances into an organization that works in this area weve found that a lot of the information we gather is applicable in many other practices," Koch said. "In the last couple years, thats something weve really been focused on: taking what weve learned and applying it to community health practices, applying it to addictions treatments, applying it to other harm-reduction programs." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Project Safe Audience remains volunteer-led and committed to involving peers in the festival and rave scene, Koch said, allowing the organization to nimbly respond to the needs of their community. With events cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Project Safe Audience has pivoted its community outreach to inform people who use substances on how to do so safely while slowing the spread of the virus. Koch recently hosted an online video chat accompanied by slides reminding people to wipe down drug packaging, keep equipment clean and how to prepare if their supply becomes disrupted to explain what harm reduction can mean during an outbreak. "We have information that we can give people to help make better health decisions during this pandemic," Koch said. "Within nursing its deeply ingrained that you are to work with your client, you dont hold all the answers, you have privileged knowledge but that is something you want to share with your client and work with your client to find the best health outcomes." danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca LONGIDO District Commissioner (DC), Frank Mwaisumbe has warned pastoralist communities living along Namanga Border against travelling to Kenya when the world was grappling with the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Speaking recently, Mr Mwaisumbe said he was aware of the Maasai practice of crossing the border to the neighbouring country to greet relatives and friends and warned them of doing so at this time the region was battling with the deadly virus. I know how the Maasai of both countries have a lot in common. However, this is not the right time to visit your friends. If anything, you should stay home and avoid any unnecessary movements, noted the DC recently at Oriendeke Village in Longido District. He also appealed to Oriendeke villagers to take precautionary measures and adhere to prescribed (Covid-19) technical guidelines to help keep them safe from new infections. Wash your hands frequently with soap and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth and most importantly, dont cough or sneeze into your hands, he counselled. Towards the end of December 2019, Chinese public health authorities reported several cases of acute respiratory syndrome in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. The initial outbreak in Wuhan spread rapidly, affecting other parts of the country. Cases were soon detected in several other countries. Outbreaks and clusters of the disease have since been observed in Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and North, Central and South America. At least 1,792,768 (according to worldometers.info) had contracted the deadly virus by yesterday 11:34am, with 109,785 succumbing to it, while 411,536 others were reported to have recovered from Covid-19. The outbreak was declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020. In a massive relief, Delhi's Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, on Monday, has announced that 112 of 115 health care workers who had been quarantined two weeks ago have tested negative for Coronavirus (COVID-19). The hospital has stated that as only 3 workers have tested positive, all 112 workers will join duty on Wednesday. Delhi's current COVID-19 tally is at 1154 with 24 deaths. Coronavirus LIVE Updates: PM Modi to address at 10 AM on April 14; total cases at 9352 112 workers quarantined On April 4, 112 staff members of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi were kept under quarantine after they came in contact with two persons who tested positive for Coronavirus. These include doctors and nurses too. As per the hospital officials, the two individuals tested positive for COVID-19 in their second test. Out of the 112 members, 85 are following home quarantine while 27 others are being quarantined at the hospital, officials said. Delhi has seen several doctors get infected after treating COVID-19 positive patients. While Kejriwal has not officially extended the lockdown in Delhi, he hailed PM Modi for 'taking the right decision to extend'. Delhi: 108 staff of Ganga Ram Hospital quarantined after contact with Coronavirus patients Kejriwal: 'PM Modi has taken right decision to extend lockdown' On Saturday, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has revealed that PM Modi has taken the decision to extend the Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown. Without mentioning how long the lockdown is extended, he said that 'PM has taken the right decision'. While PM Modi is scheduled to address the nation on Tuesday at 10 AM, eight states have extended the lockdown - Odisha, Punjab, Telangana, Wes Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Pradesh, Puducherry. Kejriwal confirms lockdown extension, says 'PM has taken correct decision to extend' As of date, 8048 active cases have been reported of the pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19) - 979 have been discharged and Maharashtra reported the highest at 1985. 324 deaths have been reported till date. India has suspended all visas and barred travel from Afghanistan, Philippines, EU, UK, China, Malaysia and mandatory 14-day quarantine from several other countries. The Prime Minister has issued a 21-day countrywide lockdown starting from 23 March to April 15 and the Finance Minister has announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package under the 'PM Gareeb Kalyan Scheme'. COVID-19: 25 districts in 15 states report no cases in 14 days post-Cluster containment ATHENS, Greece, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mediterranean-focused exploration & production (E&P) company Energean has signed an agreement with the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH) for the deployment of the ODYSSEA Platform, developed by the EU-funded ODYSSEA Project. Energean will host ODYSSEA instrumentation on the company's gas production platform based in South Kavala, Greece. The ODYSSEA equipment will monitor selected oceanographic parameters such as conductivity, water temperature (pH), water level, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, currents at various depths over the water column, suspended matter and marine noise. Among others, Energean will deploy ODYSSEA's Modular Seafloor Lander, an autonomous system, which includes different sensor types powered by an on-board battery package. The system will be lowered to the sea bottom near Energean facilities in the Thracian Sea where it will collect data with a pre-defined temporal interval. ODYSSEA is in advanced stages of developing, operating and demonstrating an interoperable and cost-effective platform that fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin, addressing both the open sea and the coastal zone. "The agreement illustrates the rapid progress made by the ODYSSEA Project," said ODYSSEA coordinator Prof. Georgios Sylaios from the Democritus University of Thrace. "This is the essence of ODYSSEA, since it aims to familiarise users with oceanographic instrumentation, models, forecasts and services." "As a company that is focused on delivering energy transition and securing the sustainable development of natural resources in the Mediterranean, we are committed to advance research and data collection in the Mediterranean," said Vassilis Tsetoglou, Energean's HSE director. "We are happy to cooperate with ODYSSEA on such an ambitious effort to improve ocean observations for environmental management, monitoring the marine ecosystem health and safety, and boosting surveillance." About ODYSSEA ODYSSEA is an EU-funded project targeting Mediterranean marine data, making it easily accessible and operational to multiple end-users. The project, which received funding through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, aims to develop, operate and demonstrate an interoperable and cost-effective platform which fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin. The platform will collect data from the many databases maintained by agencies, public authorities and institutions of Mediterranean EU and non-EU countries, integrating existing earth observation facilities and networks in the Mediterranean Sea. Contact Menelaos Hatziapostolidis [email protected] +30(6)945154829 SOURCE ODYSSEA The coronavirus death toll in the Republic of Ireland has risen to 334 after a further 14 deaths were reported yesterday, the National Public Health Emergency team has announced. The country's Department of Health said that a further 430 new cases of the virus were reported by Irish laboratories yesterday. There were also an additional 297 confirmed Irish cases of Covid-19 reported by a laboratory in Germany. There are now 9,655 confirmed cases in the Republic. Of the 14 deaths, 10 had an underlying health condition. Twelve were in the east and two in the west. There were six females and eight males with a median age of 80. Yesterday Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Republic will face some of its darkest days in the weeks ahead as it battles to contain the spread of coronavirus. In a video message posted on Twitter, Mr Varadkar said that the country is preparing to reach its Covid-19 peak later this month. "The number of hospitalisations and sadly the number of deaths continues to rise," he said. "So, we cannot lose focus. We cannot lessen our efforts. In fact, we need to redouble them for the next few weeks. It's more important than ever that we persevere. It's possible that we haven't seen the peak yet. When it comes, perhaps later this month, we will experience some of our darkest days. So, we need to maintain our discipline and resolve in the knowledge that better days are to come." Wishing the public a happy Easter, he added: "This is a special time of the year when we recall some of the major turning points etched into our national story - the Easter Rising, becoming a republic, the Good Friday Agreement. "For many of us, Easter is a special moment in the Christian calendar, marking the resurrection, the Good News and what it means for the world. "This Easter we reach another crucial point in our history - our fight against Covid-19. Thank you for heeding the advice of our experts, for interrupting the spread of the virus, sheltering the most vulnerable, protecting our health service and ensuring the staff who work in it have not been overwhelmed so far. "Your actions are making a difference. The spread of the virus is slowing. So, today - whether we have faith or not - let us remember the Easter message, a message of suffering and sacrifice followed by rebirth and renewal, and above all a message of hope as winter turns to spring. "When this emergency ends, we will mourn the dead, comfort the bereaved, and be together again. We will reawaken the sleeping giant that is our economy, our people will go back to work and our businesses will reopen, and taking what we've learned, we will build a better society at the end of this - a great society for a great people." COLLINSVILLE While the coronavirus silenced area churches on Easter, a group of regional religious leaders are urging people to continue following Gov. J.B. Pritzkers stay-at-home order. In an Illinois State Police-sponsored teleconference just days before the holiday, Metro East reverends and pastors noted the need right now for social distancing. There are some signs of hope, said ISP Director Brendan F. Kelly, a former St. Clair County states attorney. But now is not the time to let up on that pressure. Bishop Henry Phillips of the Power of Change Christian Church in Cahokia said he realizes churches are breaking religious traditions, but he believes they have be broken due to COVID-19. This is not an issue of separation of church and state, he said. Its a separation of life and death. Phillips said. Whie Phillips said some pastors believe doing this is not scripture, he said the first quarantine in was the story of Noahs ark when he was told to lock his family into safety. He also stated the first Passover was in quarantine, as told in Exodus. There many passages of scripture that support this principle of quarantine, he said. Pastor Ron A. Young of the Impact Church in East St. Louis said he believes that if people celebrated Easter in the safety in their homes, God will still be celebrated. If we are to model Jesus, his most powerful work was done from an empty tunnel, Young said. Pastor Kendall Granger of the New Light Community Church in East St. Louis echoed those statements, adding that the African-American community is being hit harder by COVID-19 that any other community. It only takes one person to cause a lot of damage, he said. He also noted social media and technology such as YouTube offers churches an opportunity to reach more people. You now have the opportunity to reach thousands people without the constriction of four walls, Granger said. Pastor Hal Santos of Grace Church in Fairview Heights said he has been meeting with his congregations members over the internet for a while. Were really taking Christ beyond the walls, he said. Kelly said that appealing to the good in people and their common sense will accomplish more that heavy enforcement of Pritzkers orders. This is what law enforcement looks like in COVID-19, he said. WEST COVINA, Calif., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- As the world navigates through a turbulent time, popular fast-food chain Jollibee wants to bring some joy to customers who are staying safe at home. With the brand's dining rooms temporarily closed, Jollibee has invited customers to enjoy their Jollibee favorites via drive-through across select locations, call and pick-up, and take-out. Now, the public can have even easier access to its menu through the launch of Jollibee delivery across the United States and Canada, powered by DoorDash. Jollibee's U.S. stores are open for delivery beginning today, April 13 while the brands Canadian stores launch delivery tomorrow, April 14. Jollibee delivery will be available in all currently open stores throughout North America, across the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Virginia of the U.S., and in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Customers have the option to order the brand's signature offerings a la carte, build their own meals or order a family pack, featuring some of Jollibee's favorite items. Every order will be secured with a tamper-evident seal to ensure the food is not touched after being packed in-store. In conjunction with the launch of nationwide delivery, Jollibee is also delivering food, love and encouragement to those on the frontlines. The brand is donating 5,000 meals to healthcare workers at hospitals across the country. Every delivery care package will include a 'Note of Joy' from customers nationwide to show thanks and appreciation for the hospital workers' dedication and service during the COVID-19 pandemic. "At Jollibee, it is part of our mission to spread joy, and during this time we want to bring it to those who need it most, our healthcare workers," said Maribeth Dela Cruz, President JFC North America, Philippine Brands. "We're looking forward to providing more than just a meal, but the appreciation from people all over the country for everything those on the front-lines are doing, day and night, for our communities." Consumers at home can join in with their appreciation and words of encouragement by submitting their 'Notes of Joy' for our healthcare heroes on Jollibee USA's Facebook or Instagram page or on Jollibee Canada's Facebook or Instagram page. The notes will be delivered to hospitals this month along with meals from Jollibee Food Corporation's major brands in the U.S. including Jollibee, Chowking and Red Ribbon. In addition to Jollibee, Chowking and Red Ribbon have also launched delivery in the U.S. To place an order for delivery, customers can visit DoorDash.com or download the DoorDash app and enter their zip code. About Jollibee Jollibee is the largest fast food chain brand in the Philippines, operating a Philippine network of more than 1,400 stores. A dominant market leader in the Philippines, Jollibee has embarked on an aggressive international expansion plan. Jollibee has more than 240 international branches including in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Macau, Brunei, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Italy, and in the United Kingdom. In North America, Jollibee opened its first store in 1998 in Daly City, California. It now operates 50 stores across the region, in the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Virginia of the United States, and in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan Canada. Technomic has consistently cited Jollibee among its Top 500 ranking restaurants in the United States. It was also awarded as Multinational Corporation of the Year by the Asian Business League of Southern California in 2017 and Corporation of the Year by the Asian Business Association in 2019. About Jollibee Foods Corporation Jollibee Foods Corporation is one of the largest and fastest growing Asian restaurant companies in the world. It operates in 35 countries, with over 5,800 stores globally with branches in the Philippines, United States, Canada, People's Republic of China (including Hong Kong and Macau), United Kingdom, Italy, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, Panama, and Malaysia. It has 8 wholly-owned brands (Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich, Red Ribbon, Mang Inasal, Yonghe King, Hong Zhuang Yuan and Smashburger), 2 franchised brands (Burger King in the Philippines and Dunkin' Donuts in certain territories in China), a 60% ownership in the SuperFoods Group that owns Highland Coffee and PHO24 brands. JFC has investments in Titan Dining LP, the ultimate holding entity of Tim Ho Wan Pte. Ltd. (the Master Franchisee of Tim Ho Wan in the Asia Pacific region excluding Hong Kong); and a business venture with award-winning Chef Rick Bayless to build a Mexican fast-casual restaurant business in the United States. JFC has also recently entered into a joint venture agreement to open Panda Express in the Philippines. Jollibee Foods Corporation has been named the Philippines' most admired company by the Asian Wall Street Journal for eight years in a row and was honored as one of 'Asia's Fab 50 Companies' by Forbes Asia Magazine. Jollibee Foods Corporation has grown brands that bring delightful dining experiences to its customers worldwide, in line with its mission of serving great tasting food and spreading the joy of eating to everyone. About DoorDash DoorDash is a technology company that connects customers with their favorite local and national businesses in more than 4,000 cities across the United States, Canada and Australia. Founded in 2013, DoorDash empowers merchants to grow their businesses by offering on-demand delivery, data-driven insights, and better in-store efficiency, providing delightful experiences from door to door. By building the last-mile delivery infrastructure for local cities, DoorDash is bringing communities closer, one doorstep at a time. Read more on the DoorDash blog or at www.doordash.com. SOURCE Jollibee Chandigarh, April 13 : The British government on Monday arranged a special chartered flight from Punjab to evacuate its 271 nationals left stranded due to the national lockdown in the wake of coronavirus scare. The British Airways flight chartered by the British High Commission took off from the Amritsar international airport, Special Chief Secretary K.B.S. Sidhu, who is in charge to monitor statewide coronavirus cases, said. He said similar flights are scheduled for April 17 and 19. S pain has allowed workers in some non-essential industries to return to factories and construction sites, despite a surge in deaths over the weekend. The outbreak of Covid-19 in Spain has now claimed 17,489 lives, and the partial lifting of restrictions after a jump of 517 deaths on Monday. On Sunday, 619 deaths were announced, 109 more than on Saturday, when the country reported its lowest daily death count in nearly three weeks. The total number of confirmed cases has reached 169,496, up from 166,019. A woman wearing a face mask sits on a train at the Atocha Station in Madrid / AFP via Getty Images As Spain enters its second month of lockdown, some businesses which cannot operate remotely, including construction and manufacturing, were allowed to reopen on Monday. The move sparked criticism from some regional leaders who fear a second wave of the outbreak. In a letter to Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Catalonias regional president Quim Torra suggested the decision could cause a rise in infections and a situation of collapse for Catalonias health system. Loading.... However, the majority of the country's population are still confined to their homes, and shops, bars and public spaces will remain closed until at least April 26. Interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told Cadena Ser radio station that Spanish police started handing out millions of masks early in the morning across regions which are not observing a public holiday. "The health of workers must be guaranteed. If this is minimally affected, the activity cannot restart," he said. People arrive at the Atocha Station in Madrid / AFP via Getty Images But Mr Sanchez said on Sunday the decision to restart some sectors of the economy was taken after consulting a committee of scientific experts and any further winding down would depend on gains made against the virus. "We are still far from victory, from the moment when we can pick up our normal lives again, but we have made the first decisive steps in the path towards victory," he said. Madrid: Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures 1 /22 Madrid: Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures A person crosses an almost empty Gran Via street Reuters A man rides a bike on an empty street in front of the Almudena cathedral in Madrid AFP via Getty Images View taken of the almost empty Cibeles square in Madrid AFP via Getty Images A screen displaying a warning message is pictured during rush hour at an almost empty A3 motorway amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Madrid, Spain Reuters View taken of the empty Gran Via street in Madrid AFP via Getty Images A vehicle of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) patrols in an almost empty Puerta del Sol square during partial lockdown Reuters View taken of the almost empty Gran Via street in Madrid AFP via Getty Images A woman wearing a protective face mask walks with her dog an empty Colon square Reuters View taken of the empty Alcala street in Madrid AFP via Getty Images View taken of the empty Puerta del Sol square in Madrid AFP via Getty Images A man walks his dog trough an empty street in downtown Madrid AP A woman walks a dog in an empty Puerta del Sol square during lockdow Reuters A man crosses an empty street in Madrid Getty Images Spanish National Police officers stand guard in an almost empty Puerta del Sol square during partial lockdown Reuters A woman wearing a protective face mask walks with her dog an empty Colon square Reuters A man, wearing a protective mask, walks with his shopping bag through an empty street due to the coronavirus outbreak in central Madrid, Reuters An almost empty square outside an office building is seen at rush hour in one the main business area in Madrid Reuters If the current trends continue, he said there could be a progressive and very cautious relaxation of the lockdown in two weeks time at the earliest. A village youth group in Indonesia are dressing up as ghosts to scare people into staying indoors amid the coronavirus crisis. Villagers in Kepuh on Java island are wearing white and patrolling the streets, jumping out at unsuspecting passersby to encourage social distancing. They hope that age-old superstition will keep people indoors. Indonesia has 4,557 coronavirus cases and 399 have died from the bug in the worst-hit Asian country outside of China. A village youth group in Indonesia are dressing up as ghosts (pictured) to scare people into staying indoors amid the coronavirus crisis President Joko Widodo has resisted a national lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, instead urging people to practise social distancing and good hygiene. But some communities have decided to take measures into their own hands, imposing the ghostly patrols, lockdowns and restricting movement in and out of their village. Anjar Pancaningtyas, head of a village youth group that coordinated with the police on the unconventional initiative, said: 'We wanted to be different and create a deterrent effect because pocong are spooky and scary.' Known as 'pocong', the ghostly figures are typically wrapped in white shrouds with powdered faces and kohl-rimmed eyes. President Joko Widodo has resisted a national lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, instead urging people to practise social distancing and good hygiene. Pictured: A woman wears a face mask on nearly- empty Kota Tua in Jakarta Indonesia has 4,557 coronavirus cases and 399 have died from the bug in the worst-hit Asian country outside of China. Pictured: Kota Tua in Jakarta is deserted In Indonesian folklore they represent the trapped souls of the dead. But when they first started appearing this month they had the opposite effect. Instead of keeping people in they bought them out to catch a glimpse of the apparitions. The organisers have since changed tack, launching surprise pocong patrols, with village volunteers playing the part of the ghosts. 'Residents still lack awareness about how to curb the spread of COVID-19 disease,' said village head Priyadi. A woman walks at an almost deserted tourist site Kota Tua in Jakarta, Indonesia, as the coronavirus crisis in the country worsens He added: 'They want to live like normal so it is very difficult for them to follow the instruction to stay at home.' Researchers at the University of Indonesia estimate there could be 140,000 deaths and 1.5 million cases by May without tougher curbs on movement. 'Since the pocong appeared, parents and children have not left their homes,' said resident Karno Supadmo, 'And people will not gather or stay on the streets after evening prayers.' The pandemic is causing Canadians to prioritize our lives. What we cared most about a few months ago should I build a new personal website? Will I buy a car this year? Where shall I go on my honeymoon? is on hold. Right now what is of utmost importance can be simplified down to three things wellness, money and work in that order. This simplicity has a positive side-effect. It helps us prioritize and that could be a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic: we could come out with a better grasp of what matters most. Simple and effective prioritization is also the root of financial stability. Heres how you can leverage that simplicity to build stronger mental and financial health. Ground yourself, and your finances, with this positive mental health principle Take action on what is within your control. Recent polling indicates health and financial fears are major sources of stress. Will I get sick? What if I lose my job? These questions are largely out of your control. But, what is in your control are smart steps you can take to protect yourself as best as you can; social distancing, handwashing, executing your job duties and being mindful of your spending. If fears around uncontrollable factors are overwhelming you, write them down in a journal, share them with a friend or spouse, or talk them through with a mental health professional. You can use the free stress management resources on the Candian Mental Health Associations website. Also, incorporate physical activity and slow breathing into your day to get your blood pumping and help to clear your mind. Simplify your day-to-day money management Your money mission is simple; keep as much money as possible. There are only two things you need to focus on; securing your source of income (a job or various government supports; EI, CERB, CEWS) and spending money on essentials only. Trim whatever you dont need from your budget and waste nothing. Dont worry about temporarily cancelling services. The goal is to balance the money coming in with your required expenses. If you need help, reach out to a credit counselling agency; the legit ones are non-profits and their services are free. If youre lucky enough to have money left over, congratulations. It means you probably need to save more. Reduce your anxiety around investing I have received hundreds of queries about the markets most of them from understandably anxious people who arent sure what to do with their portfolios. For those who feel theyre missing out on buying discounted investments in this roller-coaster market, dont worry. The investment community agrees that the recovery window on this market is years, not days or months. The best and simplist thing you can do for your investment portfolio right now is position yourself properly for the eventual recovery. Simply put, having the correct asset allocation for your age and risk level is the most important step you can take. Every properly balanced portfolio has a slice for equities (stocks), fixed-income securities (bonds) and cash (cash, GICs or money-market funds). The percentages of each adjust to your age and risk profile. A good investment professional can assist you in getting this set up properly. A robo-adviser will do it automatically for you. Work is changing and it might not go back to pre-pandemic norms No one knows exactly how the new economy post-pandemic will look. Will we have the same industries? Will the same types of jobs be available? How many jobs will be available? The two simple things you can take control of are sharpening your personal tool box of professional skills and paying attention to how the job market is changing. This applies whether youre still working now or have recently lost your job. Then, pair these together. Take your best skills negotiation, sales, serving customers, setting up Google Drive or performing data analysis and market these skills to the employers of the future; those with good jobs to offer in the new economy. Yes, this may mean you will need to change, or upgrade, your skill set, and possibly look for new work in an industry thats set for growth. We are going to get through this, but we need to make smart decisions about our overall wellness, our finances and how we work the stuff you can control. Its that simple. There once was a colorful character with flowing hair and a goatee who lost his business and landed in handcuffs after allegedly hiring a hit man. No, not Joseph Maldonado-Passage, star of Netflix's new docuseries "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness." His name was Michael Yuchnitz. TIGER MEMES: Netflixs Tiger King starring former zoo keeper Joe Exotic sparks hilarious memes After the success of "Tiger King," one Alamo City resident labeled Yuchnitz "San Antonio's very own Joe Exotic." The parallels between the pair are striking, from slightly surreal television ads to secret recordings that built murder-for-hire criminal cases. But Yuchnitz did not deal in big cats. He sold affordable eyeware. A 20-year veteran of the Air Force, Yuchnitz launched the My Econo's $39.95 Optical chain in the early 1990s in a South Side strip mall. The business eventually grew to include four locations with Yuchnitz pitching his "optical specials" on television. For his commercials, in which he also promoted his tattoo parlor, Yuchnitz wore flamboyant outfits and sported shoulder-length hair. In one 1997 advertisement, he puts on a pair of glasses and promises excellent customer service at auctioneer pace but monotone pitch. In another, years later, he emphasizes that he takes care of the people in the neighborhoods around his stores. "Always have, always will," Yuchnitz said. In October 2010, Yuchnitz found himself leading the evening news instead of touting his business between segments. He was arrested and charged with hiring someone to arrange to kill his wife. He denied any involvement as police led him out barefoot and in handcuffs. An informant told police that Yuchnitz agreed to pay $10,000 to have her killed. He even suggested she be shot when she traveled to the East Side for a card game because it could look like a robbery in a high crime area, the arrest affidavit said. Tina Yuchnitz filed for divorce and a protective order the day police told her about the alleged plot. The couple's divorce trial, which occurred in February of 2012 while Yuchnitz was out on bail awaiting trial for solicitation of capital murder, featured lurid testimony about their relationship. Statements from a secret recording of him discussing the alleged murder-for-hire plot with the informant were entered into evidence. Yuchnitz invoked his Fifth Amendment right dozens of times when asked to confirm them. "This is not the first time I've done this," Yuchnitz said, according to a transcript read in court. "No, I don't need him to move the body. I just want him to do it." During cross-examination of the informant an employee at the discount eyeware chain whom Yuchnitz had allegedly approached about hiring an assassin Yuchnitz's attorney suggested that in the secret recordings, the informant wearing a wire seems to be the one pushing for a hit. "Don't you say about seven times, Go for it'?" he asked. After two weeks of testimony, a jury decided that each side of the marriage had inflicted severe emotional distress on the other and recommended a judge split their $6 million estate 50-50. 'FREE THE TIGERS': Houston family's Tiger King photo shoot highlights creative responses to quarantine Tina Yuchnitz, who had been given temporary control of the optical business before the divorce trial, got some of the couple's vehicles and kept My Econo. However, she had to buy the business, valued at the time of trial at about $2.3 million. Yuchnitz received the house, other vehicles and two retirement accounts. They split the combined value of their jewelry including $364,698 of Mike Yuchnitz's baubles except for certain pieces that remained his and hers. He got to keep his $14,000 earring. His criminal trial for the murder-for-hire charge was scheduled for March 2014. He would not appear. On Sept. 14, 2013, a maintenance man discovered Yuchnitz's body in the parking lot of a Northwest Side extended stay hotel. The Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office said he died of heart problems related to his lung cancer and ruled it a natural death. Today, the four My Econo locations remain open. The chain's website makes no mention of its history, beyond saying the stores have been offering affordable eyeware for over 30 years. But "Tiger King" offered an opportunity to remember the city's own salacious tale. As Yuchnitz once told the camera, "Hey San Antonio, you know who I am." Mark Dunphy is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | mark.dunphy@express-news.net | @m_b_dunphy There have been 92 new coronavirus outbreaks in care homes across Britain in the last 24 hours, the government has warned. Speaking at a regular news conference on Monday Chris Whitty, the UKs chief medical officer, said around 13 per cent of such homes had been affected in total so far. The news is particularly worrying because medical advice suggests that people over 70 years of age and with certain pre-existing health conditions are particularly vulnerable to developing serious Covid-19 symptoms. Labour called for daily figures to be published of people dying in care homes so that the true scale of the problem could become clear. The government is also expected to push for increased testing in care homes. On care homes, at the moment, the total number cumulatively across the whole country is around 13.5 per cent overall. In the last 24 hours, there have been 92 care homes where an outbreak has been detected, Mr Whitty told the press conference. In terms of testing, if an outbreak is suspected, then the public health authorities will go in and do testing to assess whether an outbreak has occurred and that is going on all the time and has gone on through this. That allows care home staff who are absolutely fantastic and are doing a very difficult job, you know, for the benefit of the people who live with them. They can then isolate people who are symptomatic and try to make sure this does not spread through the care home. The chief medical officer, said he would like to see coronavirus testing increased in care homes. Asked if deaths were recorded properly in such settings, he said: Everybody who sadly dies, the doctor will make an assessment based on her or his view about what the cause of death is, thats what the death certificate says in all cases. He added: Doctors take it very seriously and try to make sure that they get as much information to give accurate data. One of the things we want to do is to extend the amount of testing of people in care homes as the ability to test ramps up over the next few weeks. Because clearly care homes are one of the areas where there are large numbers of vulnerable people and that is an area of risk and therefore we would very much... like to have much more extensive testing. The latest figures releaaed today suggest another 717 coronvirus patients died in UK hospitals, taking the total to 11,329. Liz Kendall, Labours shadow minister for social care, said: Todays press conference has exposed the growing crisis in our care homes because of coronavirus. High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Show all 18 1 /18 High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Najaf, Iraq A man holds a pocket watch at noon, at an almost empty market near the Imam Ali shrine Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Bangkok, Thailand Wat Phra Si Rattana Satsadaram (The Temple of the Emerald Buddha, part of The Grand Palace) Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Prague, Czech Republic An empty street leading to the historic Old Town Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Washington DC, US Lawn stretching towards the Capitol, home of Congress Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Jerusalem's Old City A watch showing the time in front of Damascus Gate Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world London, UK The Houses of Parliament seen from Westminster Bridge Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Wuhan, China Empty lanes in the city that saw the first outbreak of disease Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Havana, Cuba The Malecon road and esplanade winds along the city's seafront Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Cairo, Egypt A little busier than elsewhere: midday traffic in Tahrir Square Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Berlin, Germany The Brandenburg Gate, the only surviving city gate in the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Caracas, Venezuela Bolivar Avenue, opened in 1949 and the site of many demonstrations and rallies Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Moscow, Russia Spasskaya Tower (left) on the eastern wall of the Kremlin, and St Basil's Cathedral Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Istanbul,Turkey The harbourside Eminonu district is usually buzzing with activity Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New Delhi, India Rajpath, a ceremonial boulevard that runs through the capital Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Amman, Jordan The Roman amphitheatre that dates back to the 2nd century AD Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world New York City, US The main concourse of Grand Central station in Manhattan Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Kiev, Ukraine Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the site of many political protests since the end of the Soviet era Reuters High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world Accra, Ghana The odd walker out in the midday sun on Ring Road Central Reuters Ministers must publish daily figures of deaths in care homes so we know the true scale of the problem and how fast it is spreading. They must also ensure social care has the resources it needs and that vital PPE and testing get to care workers on the frontline. Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson Munira Wilson said workers in care homes and the NHS needed to be provided with adequate personal protective equipment as well as tests to diagnose if they have the virus. Foreign secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for the prime minister, told the press conference: We understand the importance of getting PPE to the frontline whether its in care homes or the NHS. I think the strongest practical reassurance they will want and that we can give them is that over the Bank Holiday weekend over 16 million items were delivered and we are straining every sinew to roll them out even further and even faster. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 12 By Sadraddin Agjayev - Trend: Branch of Romanias IT GRUP company in Azerbaijan has rendered assistance to low-income families as part of social solidarity, CEO of the company Kamran Allahverdiyev told Trend. In general, food assistance has been provided to more than one hundred low-income families in Baku city, including citizens over 65 who cannot leave their homes due to quarantine, said CEO. Allahverdiyev added that there have been close cooperation relations between Romania and Azerbaijan for more than 28 years, and IT GRUP Azerbaijan, represented by a branch of a Romanian IT company in the country, keeps the existing relations of cooperation and friendship and acts to transfer European experience and innovative IT solutions to Azerbaijan. --- Follow the author on Twitter: agdzhaev / -- Pledging its support towards India's fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Canon India, one of the leaders in the imaging space, today announced plethora of initiatives to empower the people of its adopted villages and SOS village homes. To ensure that the community members are fully equipped, safe and motivated to win the COVID-19 battle, the company is providing essential food and sanitation items across the villages. Reaffirming its philosophy of 'Kyosei' which embodies the spirit of 'living and working together for the common good,' all the Canon employees PAN India are enthusiastically coming together and contributing to PM CARES Fund as well. As a part of the support, Canon India is providing 3000 food packets in its adopted villages. The food packets include essential ration items such as rice (5 kg), flour (5 kg), pulses (1 kg), salt (1 kg), sugar (1 kg) and cooking oil (1 kg). More than 12,000 people including the daily wagers and below poverty line (BPL) families in the villages are expected to be benefited from the concerted efforts of the company. Canon India's NGO partner - Humana People to People is supporting in the procurement of food packets, packaging and distribution within the villages. In addition to this, to provide sanitation support to children of SOS Children's Villages of Faridabad and Hyderabad, Canon India is distributing essential items such as sanitizers, liquid soap, cotton masks and other home cleansing products. Through this, the organization aims to support 500 children in these SOS villages for a period of one month, covering the 21 days lockdown period as well. Speaking about this endeavor of Canon India, Mr. Kazutada Kobayashi, President & CEO of Canon India said, "With the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire world is going through challenging times indeed. In such an unprecedented and crucial situation, it is pertinent that we stand strong and show the best of humanity to combat this battle. With 'Kyosei' at the heart of our CSR operations, it has been our consistent endeavor to work together as one family and empower the less privileged ones. At Canon, we consider our adopted villages and SOS Village Family homes as our extended families. Hence, re-enforcing the commitment towards our adopted communities, we want to ensure their well-being and equip them to fight through these difficult times.Furthermore, it was also delighting to see Canon India employees come forward and contribute their bit towards the PM CARES fund, supporting the government's relief efforts. Keeping our spirits high, Canon India family will make all efforts to bring a positive difference and emerge as winners in this fight against the pandemic." As a way forward, the organization aims to continue supporting and safeguarding the communities in these villages in the times to come as well by supplying essential commodities. About Canon's corporate philosophy 'Kyosei' Canon India's CSR endeavors are driven by their corporate philosophy of 'Kyosei,' which mean the 'spirit of living and working together for the common good,' which is considered foremost in the organization's way of working and day-to-day operations. However, their definition of the word is much broader and encompasses 'all people-regardless of their race, religion or culture, harmoniously living and working together for the common good.' Moving forward with this philosophy, they believe in standing in unison when it comes to their commitment to the community and strive to make a positive impact in the society and the environment. The organization is involved in various community welfare programs aligned with their 4Es CSR policy implying Education, Eye Care, Environment and Empowerment, in an effort to build progressive self-reliant communities. Along with 'Adopt a Village' project, the organization is also associated with SOS Children's Village across the country to encourage and support the overall development of children in these villages. About Canon Group Ever since its foundation in 1937, Canon is guided by the 'Kyosei' philosophy of living and working together for the common good. Canon strives to create and deliver world-class products, becoming a top global corporation by diversifying into new business fields throughout the world. Focusing on optical technologies, Canon produces office equipment, consumer and professional imaging devices, network cameras, healthcare and industrial equipment. Through the close connection between its global head office in Tokyo and regional headquarters in America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and regional headquarters in Japan, Canon combines its global and local operations organically. In 1996, Canon launched its Excellent Global Corporation Plan with the goal of serving the society with advanced technologies and becoming a trustworthy and responsible corporate citizen. The year 2016 was the first year of Phase 5 of the Plan. Currently, Canon boasts a strong global presence of 376 subsidiaries all over the world, supported by 197,776 employees. (Data as of December 31, 2017) About Canon India Canon India Pvt. Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of Canon Singapore Pvt. Ltd., is a world leader in imaging technologies. Set up in 1997, Canon markets over 200 comprehensive range of sophisticated contemporary digital imaging product and solutions in India. The company today has offices and warehouses in 14 cities across India and employs over 1000 people. Canon has over 500 primary channel partners, 14 National Retail Chain partners, and over 6000 secondary retail points. Canon India till date has opened over 250 retailer stores accredited as "Image Square" across 100+ cities in the country. Canon India's service reach extends to over 595 towns covering 19,892 PIN codes across India - which comprises of 250 Camera collection points, 16 Camera repair centers, 272 Printer repair centers, 206 Copier, Scanner and Large Format Printer Sales & Service dealers. (Data as of March 13, 2020). In sync with its corporate tagline- 'Delighting You Always,' reinforced by World class technology, Canon offers an extended product portfolio, including copier MFDs, Managed Document Services, Fax-Machines, Printers, Document and Cheque Scanners, All-in-ones, Digital Cameras, DSLR's, Cinematic Imaging Products, Camcorders, Cable ID Printers and Card printers catering to the multiple market segments of consumer, SME, B2B, Commercial, Government & PSUs. In 2017, the imaging leader recorded a double digit growth. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) FIVE days after she was informed that she had been found positive for the novel coronavirus, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said a follow-up test yielded a negative result. "Early this morning nag-text sa akin si (Health) Secretary (Francisco III) Duque na ang resulta ng test ko, sa akin lamang, ay negative," Briones said in television interview early Monday, April 13. She said they were still awaiting the test results of her family and staff who also went on quarantine after her positive test result on April 8. The DepEd Secretary had been on isolation since April 8, when she learned that she had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, or Sars-CoV-2, the pathogen that causes the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). She has not manifested any symptom of Covid-19. Briones was first tested on March 13. This yielded a positive result. She underwent a second text on April 2, after Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Eduardo Ano announced that he had been found positive for the virus. She and Ano had attended an urgent and critical meeting of select Cabinet officials on March 23. Briones did not give details of her third test. As of 4 p.m. April 12, the new coronavirus has infected 4,648 people and killed 297 in the Philippines. A total of 197 patients have recovered. (MVI/SunStar Philippines) The Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) on Monday urged the Delhi High Court to set up an app or any other mechanism for hearing more matters as some of the advocates are not able to avail video conferencing facility during the lockdown period. The lawyers' body claimed that in some cases, where hearing is required for interim relief, matters are not being taken up and if regular hearing is not possible, some broad parameters and protecting measures be introduced to hold a few courts by restricting the entry of advocates. "Since most of the advocates are not in a position to avail video conferencing facility fully, it may also be considered to set up an app or any mechanism to give effect to hearing in more matters," BCD Chairman K C Mittal said in a letter addressed to the Delhi High Court Chief Justice D N Patel. The BCD said to contain the spread of coronavirus, the courts also stopped its regular functioning and initially confined to take up extremely urgent matters through video conferencing, which was later partially relaxed to increase the number of benches and take up cases of urgent nature. "The experience of these days has not been very encouraging, since barring a section of advocates, majority of advocates in the high court and district courts, those who are not computer savvy and could not avail the facility of video conferencing, failed to approach the courts. Many advocates have apprised us that they are not able to approach the courts even in genuine cases, Mittal said. The letter added that in terms of the Supreme Court's direction, the high court had granted relief to undertrials but looking into the overall situation, it may be necessary to evolve a system, where more hearing can take place in matters to obviate public suffering. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 By Nargiz Ismayilova - Trend: During the 10th Extraordinary OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting, a historic agreement was reached for oil producers, consumers of oil, and the global economy as a whole, Trend reports on April 13 referring to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Energy. These steps in the OPEC + format support the oil market in several spheres, the message said. "First of all, before the fulfillment of the decision to reduce oil production, all obstacles will be removed from May 1, the ministry said. Secondly, the significance of this decision is not limited to the reduction of oil production in May-June by 9.7 million barrels per day through OPEC +. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE will not produce oil in the volume of 2.7 million barrels per day, scheduled for April." This decision helps to reduce oil production by non-OPEC countries, the message reads. For the first time, other big oil producers are joining this process. "Big oil producers such as the US, Canada, Indonesia, Norway and Brazil, having shown solidarity with the OPEC and non-OPEC countries, will voluntarily reduce oil production by 4-5 million barrels per day, the message said. Thus, if we take into account that crude oil production will decrease by 2.8 million barrels per day in Iran, Venezuela and Libya, then within the initiative launched by OPEC + and supported by other countries, a total of 20 million barrels of oil per day will be supplied to the global oil market from May 1, the message said. This is a very big contribution to the stability of oil prices during a period when the coronavirus pandemic sharply weakens the global demand for it," the ministry said. "Azerbaijan, which from the very beginning played an important role in creating a balance in the oil market, this time made every effort to ensure mutual understanding among the oil countries. Azerbaijans contribution to this process was highly appreciated at the meeting by Saudi Arabias Minister of Energy, Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Salman. Thanking the countries, Saudi Arabias minister expressed gratitude to Azerbaijan for its position, an active role in the consultation process, which the country demonstrated during the meetings held on March 6 and on April 9," reads the message. "Having fulfilled the obligations undertaken since May, Azerbaijan will continue to contribute to the process of balancing the oil market. In accordance with the latest amendment to the Declaration of Cooperation, quotas for daily oil production in OPEC and non-OPEC countries in May-June will amount to 9.7 million barrels, from July 1 - 7.7 million barrels and from January 2021 through April 2022 5.8 million barrels," the ministry said. ---- Follow the author on Twitter:@IsmailovaNargis Authorities arrested a man on April 11 after video circulated showing a man licking a hand rail on a bridge in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Health care workers wearing protective gear joined police as the man was taken into custody, local reports said. Mayple Rungthiwa posted this video on April 10, having recorded it the previous afternoon. The video shows a man on a bicycle leaning over to lick a railing. Chang Mai One reported that the arrested man had a history of mental health problems and was taken for a psychiatric assessment. The bridge was due to be disinfected by local authorities, the same report said. As of April 13, Thailand had 2,579 confirmed cases and 40 deaths from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University reporting. Credit: Mayple Rungthiwa via Storyful Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: With both its COVID-19 patients having fully recovered after treatment, Pilibhit district has freed itself from the virus. The second COVID-19 patient was discharged from hospital on Monday. There has been no case in Pilibhit since March 25. The first coronavirus case of a 73-year-old woman was reported in the district on March 22. She had returned from Saudi Arabia after a 20-day pilgrimage there. The elderly woman was accompanied by 36 other pilgrims of Pilibhit who all were kept quarantined for 28 days. However, three days after the woman tested positive for the virus, her son, 33, too tested positive. He had contracted the virus from his mother as he had stayed with her in the isolation ward. The man was brought to Lucknow KGMU and on Monday, he was discharged after treatment. CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES Meanwhile, in the second phase, the state government is in the process of identifying 59 localities across 25 districts as sensitive hotspots to be sealed and quarantined. Earlier, in the first phase, the UP government had identified 146 hotspots across 15 districts. Now, the state would have a total of 205 hotspots across 40 coronavirus-hit districts of the state. According to Additional Chief Secretary, home, Awanish Awasthi, the state has 550 positive cases and 85 per cent of them are from the hotspots identified across 40 districts. Awasthi said a population of at least 20 lakh was covered in the hotspots. The second phase is being conducted by district magistrates at their local level. The model envisages identification of Covid-19 positive patients, providing medical aid and sanitising the area, he said, adding that the hotspot model of UP government was being appreciated across the country. Nearly 85% of cases are being reported from hotspots alone. The government has decided to impose more stringent measures in 146 coronavirus hotspots identified in 15 districts which cover a population of over 10 lakh, Awasthi said. The government was also ensuring social distancing by providing ration through doorstep delivery to over 80% ration card holders, he said. This is apart from the distribution of over 12 lakh food packets by nearly 2,000 religious organisations and district authorities jointly, he added. The first wave of coronavirus survivors are doing their part to help the United States get back on track by donating blood and plasma and heading back to work. Americans who fell ill with the virus in February and early March and were in isolation well before states started shutting down, are now emerging to test drive their immunity. Tiffany Pinckney remembers the fear when COVID-19 stole her breath. So when she recovered, the New York City mother became one of the country's first survivors to donate her blood to help treat other seriously ill patients. 'It is definitely overwhelming to know that in my blood, there may be answers,' Pinckney said. Doctors around the world are dusting off a century-old treatment for infections: Infusions of blood plasma teeming with immune molecules that helped survivors beat the new coronavirus. There's no proof it will work. But former patients in Houston and New York were early donors, and now hospitals and blood centers are getting ready for potentially hundreds of survivors to follow. Tiffany Pinckney (pictured on April 1 after recovering from virus) remembers the fear when COVID-19 stole her breath. So when she recovered, the New York City mother became one of the country's first survivors to donate her blood to help treat other seriously ill patients 'It is definitely overwhelming to know that in my blood, there may be answers,' Pinckney said On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration announced a national study, led by the Mayo Clinic, that will help hospitals offer the experimental plasma therapy and track how they fare. The American Red Cross will help collect and distribute the plasma. 'There's a tremendous call to action,' said Dr David Reich, president of New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, which declared Pinckney recovered and raced to collect her blood. 'People feel very helpless in the face of this disease. And this is one thing that people can do to help their fellow human beings.' As treatments get underway, 'we just hope it works,' he said. Donations from people like Pinckney could be used as fast as blood centers can process it. She got sick the first week of March. First came the fever and chills. She couldn't catch her breath, and deep breathing caused chest pains. The single mother worried about her sons, 9 and 16. 'I remember being on my bathroom floor crying and praying,' the 39-year-old said. So when Mount Sinai, which diagnosed her, called Pinckney to check on her recovery and ask if she'd consider donating, she didn't hesitate. Also in New York City, Dr Dara Kass (left), who tested positive for the virus in early March, returned to the ER (right) last weekend for her first shift since getting sick This graphic depicts the number of cases in New York City per day. As of Sunday evening, there are more than 103,000 cases in the Big Apple New York City is the epicenter of the coronavirus in the US with a total of 6,898 deaths as of Sunday evening 'It's humbling. And for me, it's also a beacon of hope for someone else,' she said. Also in New York City, Dr Dara Kass, who tested positive for the virus in early March, returned to the ER last weekend for her first shift since getting sick. 'On the way to my first ER shift in 3 weeks,' Kass tweeted on April 5. 'About half of the people are wearing masks. Most of them are homemade. I love New York and am forever grateful to live in this city,' she added. In New York state, there are more than 103,000 confirmed coronavirus cases with 6,898 deaths. A total of 9,736 people have recovered from the deadly virus. According to The New York Times, Kass not only returned to help others in the ER, she has also donated plasma to an antibody study being conducted at Mount Sinai Hospital. What the history books call 'convalescent serum' was most famously used during the 1918 flu pandemic, and also against measles, bacterial pneumonia and numerous other infections before modern medicine came along. When infection strikes, the body starts making proteins called antibodies specially designed to target that germ. Those antibodies float in survivors' blood - specifically plasma, the yellowish liquid part of blood - for months, even years. Christy Karras, of Seattle, recently recovered from coronavirus and is seen donating her blood on April 3 for research purposes There are more than 561,000 confirmed cases in the US with more than 22,000 deaths When new diseases erupt and scientists are scrambling for vaccines or drugs, it's 'a stopgap measure that we can put into place quickly,' said Dr Jeffrey Henderson of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, who is helping to develop a nationwide study. This 'is not a cure per se, but rather it is a way to reduce the severity of illness,' Henderson said. Doctors don't know how long survivors' antibodies against COVID-19 will persist. But for now, 'they're the safest ones on the street,' said Dr Rebecca Haley of Bloodworks Northwest in Seattle, which is working to identify donors. 'We would not be making a dent in their antibody supply for themselves.' Two weeks ago, the FDA told hospitals how to seek case-by-case emergency permission to use convalescent plasma, and Houston Methodist Hospital and Mount Sinai jumped at the chance. And a desperate public responded, with families taking to social media to plead on behalf of sick loved ones and people recovering asking how they could donate. According to Michigan State University, more than 1,000 people signed up with the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project alone. Dozens of hospitals formed that group to spur plasma donation and research. Christy Karras and her husband, Bill, who were both among the first few cases in Seattle, donated blood for research purposes on April 3. Karras wrote in a Seattle Times column: 'Ive rarely been as excited as I was to give that blood. I wont lie part of it was the thrill of having a legitimate reason to climb into my car, drive downtown and meet new human beings for the first time since I got sick. 'But more than that, Im so happy to be able to do something.' Clement Chow, 38, was the first COVID-19 patient at the University of Utah's intensive care unit early last month. He has since beat the virus Elizabeth Schneider of Seattle has recovered from coronavirus and is now donating blood and antibodies to help other patients 'I hope my plasma with anti-SARs-CoV-2 antibodies saves someone's life,' Schneider said Would-be donors can't just show up at a blood center. Those with a proven infection who've been symptom-free for several weeks must get tested to ensure the virus is gone. They also must be healthy enough to meet the other requirements for blood donation plus get an additional test to see if their antibody level is high enough. 'You don't want to take plasma from someone who had a mediocre immune response. That wouldn't be helpful,' said Dr Julie Ledgerwood of the National Institutes of Health. Chinese doctors have also reported that five patients given convalescent plasma all showed some improvement about a week later. But they also received other therapies, and without a rigorous study, there's no way to know if the plasma made the difference. Studies are being planned to test convalescent plasma against regular care in sick patients, and to prevent infections among people at high risk of exposure such as health care workers. Another approach: Spain-based plasma manufacturer Grifols aims to concentrate donor plasma in a North Carolina factory, creating a high-dose version that also would need testing. Separately, NIH researchers are measuring survivors' antibody levels to learn how strong the vaccines under development must be to protect. Other teams, including at Beijing's Tsinghua University, are hunting which antibodies are most potent, to copy in a lab and turn into drugs. John Shackleford, popular school bus driver, photographer and friend to many local politicians, survived the Tornado of 2020, but just barely. "It was a wild ride for four minutes," he said from his Holly Hills Home in East Brainerd as he surveyed the carnage all around him after the sun came up on Monday morning. Mr. Shackleford said when he and his wife Sherry began hearing rumblings late Sunday night she got up and closed all the doors, then yelled, "It's coming!" They then both headed for the linen closet, which he considered the safest area of the house. He said he wedged themselves in, covered Sherry up and lay on top of her. He said the swirling wind threatened to jerk them out, but they managed to hang on. He said, "It's like they all say - it sounded like a freight train going by." Mr. Shackleford said he and Sherry "got beat up" as their home collapsed around them, but fortunately suffered no broken bones and escaped the flying debris. He said, "If we had gone to the bathtub it would have been a lot worse. Some of the flying 2x4s, 2x8s and 2x12s went in there." Afterward, he said they went outside and could not believe that much of Holly Hills - a subdivision of some 80 homes - was wiped out. He said, "The only houses that were not heavily damaged were those at the base of hills that got some protection." He said the sight "was amazing to us. It was like a scene from an Oklahoma tornado." Mr. Shackleford said his roof was gone as well as the front porch. His almost new Dodge Ram with 20,000 miles was crushed "by something that just kept going." His wife's Nissan Pathfinder was "beat all to pieces" as well. Mr. Shackleford said he has no idea what happened to a shed he had in back or the 2,000 pounds of rebar and five five-gallon cans of gasoline that were inside. There were some special items lost as well - like the electric train set "my dad had when we were kids and my granddaughter's bicycle." Sandia National Laboratories has announced a new, fast-track licensing program to rapidly deploy technology to a marketplace reeling from the effects of COVID-19. The move is designed to support businesses facing widespread, often technical challenges resulting from the pandemic. In light of the national emergency, were making technology transfer as simple as possible, said Mary Monson, Sandias senior manager of technology partnerships and business development. The Rapid Technology Deployment Program is an effort to streamline deployment of potential solutions to our partners in industry. Under the new program, more than 1,000 Sandia-patented technologies are temporarily eligible for any U.S. person to use commercially for free. People can visit Sandias Rapid Technology Deployment Program page to apply for free licenses valid through Dec. 31. The fast-track licenses are non-exclusive, meaning more than one person can hold a license to use the same technology. The website contains information on which patents are available to license, as well as information about patents formerly held by Sandia that now are in the public domain and do not require a license to use. Sandias new Rapid Technology Deployment Program will: Enable licensees to invest their full resources into combating the pandemic and its economic effects. Expedited transfer of intellectual property by eliminating fee negotiations, transferring intellectual property in days instead of months. Enable licensees to invest their full resources into combating the pandemic and its economic effects. This isnt just a public health crisis, its also an economic crisis, said Susan Seestrom, Sandias chief research officer. Companies need new ways of doing business. They need cybersecurity tools so they can operate remotely. They need advanced manufacturing techniques to produce goods that are in high demand. If Sandia intellectual property can help, we want to lower barriers to people getting it. As a multipurpose engineering laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration, Sandia invents technologies for research purposes and maintains patents under nine categories: bioscience; electromagnetics; energy and environment; information and computer systems; manufacturing and assurance; materials, chemistry and nanoscience; microelectronics and microelectromechanical systems; security and defense; sensors and detectors. Sandia routinely grants licenses to businesses, universities and individual entrepreneurs to use these technologies for other commercial purposes. The free, temporary licenses come with minimum restrictions. Technologies cannot be exported, so applicants must be legal U.S. residents, and businesses must legally be able to contract with the U.S. government. By Trend The fact that Azerbaijan initiated holding of extraordinary Summit of the Turkic Council as the chairing country is positive, economic expert of Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies (Parasat) Naila Almukhamedova told Trend. The expert noted that holding of the emergency summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States through videoconferencing on April 10 showed the commitment of these countries to act cohesively and jointly in critical situations, thereby demonstrating in practice the solidarity and friendship of the Turkic nations. "The organization of the emergency summit once again shows that the Turkic Council is gradually becoming a multilateral platform that strengthens its international authority. This thesis is also supported by the fact that the President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, as an invited guest, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, as the head of the observer state, as well as the Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus took part in the summit," she said. According to her, analyzing the speeches of the heads of states at the summit, the countries are willing to provide the necessary assistance to each other and coordinate actions for the exchange of information, the use of new methods of diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. "In particular, the emphasis was made on both current, and long term cooperation in the field of healthcare. Namely thats why Kazakhstans President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed including issues of health and healthcare system as a separate direction into the Turkic Vision - 2040 program. Therefore, in the future, we should expect the strengthening of cooperation of the Turkic Council countries in matters of social development, she said. As the expert noted, the long-term cooperation is also confirmed by the fact that the Turkic Council Summits agenda addressed issues of trade and economic cooperation. We can see that the coronavirus pandemic has put the countries of the world before a great choice in matters of citizens' security, politics and the economy. Many countries take tough protectivet measures, which in the future may adversely affect foreign economic cooperation. However, even in the new difficult economic conditions, our countries are interested in adapting to them, strengthening mutual cooperation after passing the peak of the spread of coronavirus. So, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed the development of a joint Action Plan, she said. In this regard, the need to intensify work of the Turkic Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Turkic Investment Fund will increase. Here, of course, a proactive approach and initiatives by Azerbaijan, as the chairing state of the Turkic Council, will be important, she said. Therefore, significant and complex work is ahead to find investors and coordinate the actions of the business community representatives. For Kazakhstan, as a member country of the Turkic Council, as before, issues of increasing bilateral trade, as well as strengthening transit through our joint transport corridors, will be important," she stressed. Commenting on the actions of the Azerbaijani government to fight against the spread of coronavirus infection, Naila Almukhamedova noted that they are largely similar to the measures taken by the government of Kazakhstan. Azerbaijan focused on the social distancing of citizens, thereby slowing the rate of spread of COVID-19 coronavirus infection and reducing the burden on the healthcare system. That is, Azerbaijani government considers the safety of citizens and the prevention of a high percentage of deaths as the priority, she stated. This, of course, affected the business activity, which in the future will lead to a slowdown in the economy. Therefore, Azerbaijan is taking measures to reduce the negative impact on the economy by paying compensations to citizens, alleviating the tax burden of entrepreneurs, and stimulating lending, the expert stressed. Along with this, its already advisable today to develop instruments of the long-term impact, which should also correlate with the joint Action Plan within the Turkic Councils framework," added Almukhamedova. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Two days after Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) wrote to the West Bengal government raising objection over violation of coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown guidelines by the people in the state, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankar on Monday (April 13) urged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to end 'lockdown' with Raj Bhawan. Governor Dhankar added that the country is currently in combat mode against coronavirus pandemic and its time for everyone to join hands and defeat the deadly virus. Referring to the MHA warnings, Governor Dhankar said that the state government must take the warnings seriously and take correctional steps. "Urge CM Mamata Banerjee to end Lockdown with Raj Bhawan. We are in combat mode coronavirus pandemic and must act in togetherness in State interest. MHA warnings must lead to correctional approach. Officials be held accountable for lapses," he tweeted. Urge @MamataOfficial to end Lockdown with Raj Bhawan. We are in combat mode #CoronaPandemic and must act in togetherness in State interest. MHA warnings must lead to correctional approach. Officials be held accountable for lapses #SocialDistancing and religious congregations. Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) April 13, 2020 On April 11 (Saturday), the MHA wrote a letter to the Central Secretariat clearly mentioning that areas like Rajabazar, Narkel Danga, Topsia, Metiabruz in KOlkata are witnessing widescale violation of lockdown and social distancing. The letter also stated that the police in the state has been allowing to hold religious congregations; whereas free ration are being distributed not through the institutional delivery system but by political leaders, thus resulting in a spread of coronavirus infection. Requesting the state government led by Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee to take strict action in the matter, the letter by MHA also sought an action taken report from the state government. "It is further requested to take measures to prevent reoccurance of such violations in future," stated the letter. Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Monday said that Advocate General have been informed that government is concerned about ex-Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav's health considering the coronavirus pandemic. On state government contemplating to grant parole to ex-Bihar Chief Minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav in view of coronavirus crisis, Soren said, "We've informed the Advocate General that we are concerned for his health. So state government should be informed with a legal opinion." He said that all the ministers has given suggestions for further lockdown in the state but imposing and lifting the lockdown in Jharkhand is a challenge in itself. "All the ministers have given suggestions for further lockdown in the state during the cabinet meeting but imposing or lifting the lockdown in Jharkhand is a challenge in itself. We will decide on the matter according the need of time," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ukraine's Emergency Services Continue to Battle Chernobyl Wildfires 1 Week On Sputnik News 08:00 GMT 12.04.2020 KIEV (Sputnik) - WIldfires in Ukraine's Chernobyl exclusion zone continue to rage one week into emergency service's efforts to contain them and after hundreds of tonnes of water was sprayed onto the blaze, the State Emergency Service (SES) said Sunday. "As of 7:00 [04:00 GMT] on 12 April, in the exclusion and unconditional (mandatory) resettlement zone, units of the State Emergencies Service and forest guards continue to extinguish fires. 353 people and 89 pieces of equipment were involved in extinguishing efforts, of which 294 people and 64 pieces of equipment from the State Emergency Situations Service," the SES said in a statement. The SES said that three AN-32 airplanes and two helicopters poured a total of 250 tonnes of water over the past day. The statement added that radiation levels in surrounding areas and the region surrounding the capital city Kiev are within normal limits and do not exceed natural background levels. About 1,000 square miles have been completely depopulated and left for nature to reclaim following the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl NPP. Sprawling forests and build up of shrubbery have rendered the area prone to more intense wildfires. On 4 April, the forest fire began near the infamous nuclear disaster site and the SES mobilized early the next day. By April 7, the fires covered 86 acres of territory. Police said they have apprehended the suspected arsonist and have launched a criminal case. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Goldman Sachs Group Inc. must face a shareholder class action accusing the bank of hiding conflicts of interest, including behind-the-scenes dealings with a prominent hedge fund manager, when creating risky subprime securities before the 2008 financial crisis. In a 2-1 decision last Tuesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Goldman failed to overcome a legal presumption that shareholders relied on its pledges to guard against conflicts, when deciding to buy the banks stock. These included alleged misstatements that client interests always come first and integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business. The court also rejected Goldmans argument that allowing class actions based on general misstatements would turn securities fraud claims into a form of investor insurance, exposing companies to a flood of baseless litigation. We are not blind to the widespread understanding that class certification can pressure defendants into settling large claims, meritorious or not, because of the financial risk of going to trial, Circuit Judge Richard Wesley wrote. But our law already beats back this parade of horribles. Goldman spokeswoman Maeve DuVally said the bank intends to ask the entire appeals court to review the decision. The lawsuit led by three pension plans said Goldman fraudulently overstated its ability to manage conflicts, causing more than $13 billion of losses for shareholders from February 2007 to June 2010. Thomas Dubbs, a lawyer for the shareholders, said they were pleased with the decision and look forward to proceeding to trial. The case arose from several collateralized debt obligations including Abacus 2007 AC-1, the centerpiece of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe that led to a $550 million Goldman civil settlement in 2010. Goldman admitted it was a mistake not to reveal it had allowed hedge fund manager John Paulson to choose some mortgages to include in Abacus, and that he bet against the CDO through short sales. Paulson made a roughly $1 billion profit at the expense of CDO investors. Wesley rejected Goldmans claim that only in special circumstances could a court find that if revelations of bad news caused a companys stock to fall, it could infer that the price had previously been inflated by the same amount. Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan dissented. He said the class should be decertified because Goldman had offered persuasive and uncontradicted evidence that earlier disclosures of its alleged conflicts did not affect its stock price. The case was returned to U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan, who certified the class action in August 2018. The case is Arkansas Teacher Retirement System et al v. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 18-3667. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York Editing by Marguerita Choy and Matthew Lewis) Topics Lawsuits USA In the age of the visionary cook-as-auteur, those who have trained under the Mexican chef Enrique Olvera have not only reconceived their countrys cuisine but have gone on to change how and what we want to eat. THESE ARE TRIBAL markings, the way one veteran of the kitchen knows another before a word is said. The pennys width of a fingertip forever lost. The scars from the oyster knife through the hand, the skin crisped by the oven rack, the counter where someone let a hot pan sit too long. Those who choose cooking as a profession make up a great, sprawling community that transcends borders. But within it are smaller sects, more tightly bonded, often centered around a visionary chef who draws acolytes from around the world with the promise of transforming the way people eat. This has become an international phenomenon in recent decades, as the restaurants of certain chefs from Ferran Adria and his molecular sorcery at the now shuttered El Bulli on Spains Costa Brava to Rene Redzepi and his excavation of forgotten Nordic foodways at Noma in Copenhagen to Manoella Buffara and her marriage of haute cuisine and social and environmental activism at Manu in Curitiba, Brazil have become not just desirable places to work but rites of passage, imprimaturs for all who pass through them. But of all these groups of alumni, perhaps none has achieved as much influence as the chefs who have risen through the kitchens of the Mexican chef Enrique Olvera. Their allegiance to Olvera and his mission of showing the greatness of Mexican cuisine goes deeper: a tattoo on the heart. All restaurants are built on trust; diners must have faith in the kitchen and in the person who leads it. In an industry that prizes hands-on experience over schooling, to have trained under a great chef can be the highest of credentials a testament to ones endurance, technical skill and ideological commitment. Still, not every chef is willing to be a teacher. Those who command the staunchest loyalty are the ones who never forget the labor that goes into every dish who believe, like Olvera, that their job is to create chefs, not cooks, and to establish a different kind of lineage. The T List | Sign up here Tony Floyd IF EVERY TRIBE has an origin story, this one begins two decades ago, on Calle Francisco Petrarca in Mexico City, when Olvera was 24, barely out of culinary school, a chef by self-declaration only. To open a restaurant with such a featherweight resume was an act of wild ambition, even hubris. Typically, you go to cooking school, then go stage apprentice for a few years, then open your own place, Olvera said. Thats the opposite of what I did. It would be easy to cast Olvera as a kind of prophet, defying convention and insisting from the start on the power of Mexican cooking. But like a hero in myth, he had to stumble. The mood in the kitchen was dour at first, the dining room solemn and underlit. Olvera still relied heavily on the European techniques hed been taught in the late 90s at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., which were considered the standard for haute cuisine. Rather than break new ground, he was more concerned about simply surviving. It took years before his restaurant, Pujol, was enshrined in the pantheon of the citys finest and for Olvera to realize that this wasnt enough. After an epiphany in 2004, he turned away from those European teachings, back to his Mexican heritage, and found a new way to speak through food. Enrique Olvera is not only a mentor to many Mexican chefs he is the mentor of Mexico, said Eduardo Garcia, known as Lalo, who at age 42 runs Maximo Bistrot in Mexico City with his wife, Gabriela Lopez, who also worked under Olvera. (His kitchens have brokered many marriages.) The child of migrant workers who became one himself, picking oranges in Florida, blueberries in Michigan and mushrooms in Pennsylvania, Garcia went to work for Olvera after he was deported from the United States in 2007. It blew my mind, he said, to see Mexican ingredients transformed into dishes like mole madre, two stark concentric circles of mole one newly made and one aged for up to a thousand days at once avant-garde and comforting, forward-thinking yet respectful of the past. Everyone in the kitchen was young. We wanted to do things right because of Enrique but also because of us, said Jorge Vallejo, who came to Pujol in 2006, when he was 25, and is today the chef of Quintonil in Mexico City, which has been ranked alongside Pujol on the Worlds 50 Best Restaurants list since 2015. (His partner at the restaurant is his wife and fellow Pujol alum, Alejandra Flores.) To Daniela Soto-Innes, who started at Pujol in 2013, at age 19, and is now a partner with Olvera in his North American restaurants, including Cosme in New York and Elio in Las Vegas, the sense of commitment goes beyond Olvera to Mexico itself. Especially because of everything thats going on with the government in the U.S., she said, for us to be representing Mexico outside of Mexico were all together, united. As Olvera changed course in the kitchen, he started to take a chance on cooks with less experience, trusting in their work ethic. Sofia Cortina, the pastry chef at the restaurant at Hotel Carlota in Mexico City (where she works alongside her fellow Pujol alum Joaquin Cardoso), said that when she started working with Olvera in 2011, at age 18, I didnt even know how to put my jacket on properly. The typical kitchen, Olvera said, is almost like a monarchy, where theres this king that everybody needs to listen to, but at Pujol, he wanted the learning to be horizontal rather than vertical, with cooks learning from one another as much as from the chefs above them. Olvera doesnt see himself as a mentor, although the chefs whove worked for him continue to seek his advice. I tell them to find their own path, he said, because his career arc was so atypical. In that sense, they are his teachers, too. For them in turn, the bond remains, with Olvera and with one another, as a vanguard changing the way Mexican cuisine is seen not just by the world but by Mexicans themselves, and as a scrappy family, flaunting their burns and scars, sharing memories of forcing mole through a chinois a task that invariably took several people and ruined whatever you were wearing or simply sitting in Olveras office talking for hours about how to make tortillas. We were suffering together, when Enrique was mad sometimes; we were scared together, Cortina said with a laugh. But mostly the chef remains patient: He listens and tries to give people the security of knowing that theres not just one way of doing things, Olvera said, noting that hes most proud of the fact that the chefs who have left his kitchens still have a strong personal voice, separate from his own. They have spoken for him. Now they speak for themselves. Ligaya Mishan is a writer at large for T Magazine. Tony Floyd is a commercial photographer and director. Production: Maritza Carbajal. In Parliament today: Bill to amend CVC and Delhi Police Special Act to be tabled today ASI in Delhi police tests positive for coronavirus India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: A 56-year-old assistant-sub inspector of the Delhi Police has tested positive for coronavirus, police said on Sunday. The ASI is a resident of Shyam Nagar, Okhla Phase-1, they said. He is the third policeman in the national capital who has tested positive for COVID-19, police said. Coronavirus patient booked for 'spitting' on doc at govt hospital in TN Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Devender Arya said, "The assistant sub-Inspector posted at the Safdarjung Enclave police station was tested for coronavirus after he showed symptoms. His reports arrived today wherein he was declared positive." The ASI attended the duty last on April 9 and was on leave since then as he was unwell, a police official said. All the police personnel who came in contact with the ASI have been advised for home quarantine and will be tested for COVID-19, he said. The policeman stays at a four-storey building in Okhla and all his family members and residents of the building will be screened for COVID-19 as a preventive measure, the official said. Fake News Buster A letter has been written to hospital authorities for screening and medical examination of his family members as well as neighbours. All of them have been advised for home quarantine and movement of people in the residential area has also been restricted, he said. Earlier, two other Delhi police personnel had tested positive for coronavirus. A 44-year-old head constable, posted in the Foreign Regional Registration Office at the Indira Gandhi International Airport's Terminal 3, and a 49-year-old police official, posted in the traffic unit in Hauz Khas, had tested positive for COVID-19. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) Call it cliche but in the fight against COVID-19, some heroes do not wear capes. Others wear personal protective equipment and serve in various medical facilities. Some are uniformed security or rescue personnel trying to save lives and protect the peace. A few, however, choose to don aprons and wield cooking utensils to prepare food for others. Young entrepreneurs Dexter Marin, Carlos Enesio, and Wilkin Ong are co-franchisees of Ate Ricas Bacsilog, a food kiosk popular amongst students and young professionals for its signature dish: fried bacon, freshly cooked rice, and a fried egg topped with a special cheese sauce and seasoning. Their nearly one-year-old bacsilog stall was located near the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) campus in Laguna. The trio decided to close their store last March 25, in keeping with the advice of local authorities. The next day, they decided to do something to help the students stranded in the town. Marin is no stranger to donation drives. He was involved in a lot of them during his time as a member of the student council at San Beda College, Alabang. He also organized a drive to help 50 families affected by the Taal Volcano eruption last January. Nabasa lang namin yung post ng UP Los Banos nung March 26 na they are in need of help, kailangan talaga raw nila ng food para sa bawat estudyante, Marin told CNN Philippines. [Translation: We saw the post last March 26 that said UP Los Banos was in need of help. They needed food for the students.] Days later, he and his team put that experience to action by organizing a donation drive to help feed students sheltered in place at the UPLB campus. For every 60 donation, one bacsilog cup would be made. The goal was to deliver a meal to each of the 1,547 students living on campus and in the dormitories near the area. Dexter said he was surprised at how word about the drive went fast. Sa first day pa lang namin, halos naka-30k (30,000) na kami na donations, he added. [Translation: On our first day alone, we were able to get Php30,000 worth of donations.] He also contacted celebrities to shed light on their donation drive by sharing information on their social media accounts. Sila Saab Magalona, eventually, they responded kaagad na, sure, well share it. Tapos eventually, nag-chat and e-mail din ako kina Sam YG, Ebe (Dancel), and Moira dela Torre, Marin recounted. By April 11, their team was able to collect close to 90,000 worth of donations, which is equivalent to 1,486 meals. The next day, Easter Sunday, Marin and his team prepared to deliver the first 500 meals to students stranded inside the UPLB campus. He said this did not come without challenges. "We started cooking around 5:30 a.m. We ended up [finishing] cooking [at] 6:30 p.m. Actually, medyo kulang din ako sa manpower right now kasi unang-una, sobrang higpit ng mga barangay [officials] dito, so hirap akong kumuha ng volunteers. I got my friends na rin and family members [to help.]," Marin said. [Translation: We started cooking around 5:30 a.m. We finished cooking at 6:30 p.m. Im having problems with manpower right now because barangay officials have become more strict. I got my friends and family members to help.] He added that due to the volume of meals they were preparing, they had cook them in his garage. Through it all, Dexter felt satisfied that they were able to pull their plan off. Feeling ko, ito yung best way na para mabigyan sila ng isang meal na kahit papaano, masa-satisfy naman sila," he said. [Translation: I feel that it's the best way to give them a meal that would help satisfy them.] Hindi lang naman kasilaging profit yung kailangan mong isipin sa isang business, he added. [Translation: In doing business, it's not always profit that counts.] He said he hopes that other businesses within the community will send in additional help for those living under quarantine in Los Banos. Dexter and his team said they plan to give out the next batch of 300 to 400 meals within the week to students living in dormitories around the UPLB campus. For those students who wish to be reached by Marins team, feel free to contact them through the business Facebook page. They said that they also aim to give out meals to frontline personnel working in the UPLB campus soon. Nourishing frontliners, one vegan meal at a time For Chef B Camposano, the coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity to both satisfy the hunger and nutritional needs of frontliners working in hospitals or police checkpoints. Camposano owns The Sexy Kitchen by B, a 100 percent plant-based kitchen that sells a variety of vegan meals. But last March 29, Chef B decided to temporarily stop commercial operations, dedicating their facility to provide meals for frontline personnel. Importante sa isang business na hindi ka lang kumukuha ng profit out of your customers. Kailangan, pag nagtayo ka ng negosyo, meron kang kinukuha, meron ka ding ibabalik," Camposano told CNN Philippines. [Translation: Its important for businesses to not simply take profit from customers. When you establish a business, you get some, and you also give back.] Some of the dishes Chef B and her team prepared for them: tofu-mushroom omelette with green rice in oolong and green tea, apple and vegetable curry with cranberry and seeds granola served with naan bread, and vegetable, ginger and herbs pasta pomodoro. Para sa akin, importante na tulungan sila to boost their immune system through providing them quality food thats also prepared in a good way, Camposano said, noting how they ship the meals to frontliners straight after cooking. [Translation: Its important for me to help them boost their immune system through providing them quality food thats also prepared in a good way.] So far, they have been able to donate food to three hospitals in Las Pinas, Makati, and Manila. When asked about how the frontliners responded to their efforts, Chef B said they were surprised and happy. "Coming from the heart, nararamdaman nila na totoo yung pagkain na ibinibigay namin sa kanila and its being really well-prepared," she added. [Translation: Theyre surprised and happy! They feel the food is genuinely coming from the heart, and that its being prepared really well.] The restaurant also started an online donation drive to help fund their efforts. Those interested in making a donation may visit their Facebook page. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) The government has so far released 132.3-billion from savings for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to President Rodrigo Dutertes third weekly report to Congress on his special powers to address the crisis. A bulk of the funding went to the Social Welfare Department, which received 100 billion to fund cash aid to some 18 million indigent families to cushion the impact of quarantine measures being implemented to curb the spread of the virus. Cities and municipalities got the second-largest chunk of the funding, with them getting a total of 30.8 billion from the government as a grant to augment their response COVID-19. The Labor Department, which is assisting workers displaced by quarantine measures, also received 1.5 billion in cash allocations. All these were sourced from discontinued programs, activities and projects, and abandoned special purpose funds amounting to 189.82 billion. The special powers that Congress granted Duterte through the Bayanihan to Heal as One law allow him to realign savings within the executive to the governments COVID-19 response. CONSOL Energy CEIX announced that it has taken certain actions to preserve liquidity, reduced outstanding indebtedness and created supplement access to capital amid the unprecedented economic distress created by the outbreak of novel coronavirus. The company has retired more than $50 million in principal, with no material change in liquidity, from year-end 2019. It has enhanced liquidity by closing a sale-leaseback transaction on a set of longwall shields, which provided the company with net cash proceeds of $16.3 million. CONSOL has also amended the Accounts Receivable securitization program, extending the maturity to March 2023 from August 2021, while keeping the size of the facility at $100 million. COVID-19 has a growing impact on the global economy. While the economic impact of the novel coronavirus is yet to be fully ascertained, one thing is certain that it will take time to bring businesses back to pre-pandemic levels. In view of this, CONSOL decided to withdraw its previously announced operational and financial guidance for 2020. Thousands of coal miners across the United States are risking their safety to produce coal, which is utilized by utilities to produce electricity. Despite utmost care, risks of coronavirus infection remain among workers, which could result in forced shutdown of coal mining operation. Recently, CONSOL idled the thermal coal mine in Pennsylvania after two workers tested positive for coronavirus. Coal Countering COVID-19 Impact One of the ways to fight against the virus is to follow the social distancing guidelines and stay indoors. As a consequence, demand for electricity is declining in both the commercial and industrial sectors. Utility operators are adjusting their production capacity by lowering production from fossil fuel units, especially coal-fired generation units. Given the above scenario, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast that U.S. coal production will total 537 million short tons (MMst) in 2020, indicating a decline of 153 MMst (22%) from 2019. The decline in production is due to lower domestic demand and U.S. exports of coal. EIA also forecast that total coal consumption will decrease 19% in 2020, primarily due to drop in electric power sector demand by 107 MMst or 20% from 2019 levels. The importance of coal as a fuel source is declining, with rising usage of natural gas and renewable sources of energy. Coal producers are fighting a battle with other cleaner sources of energy and trying to find ways to remain viable. COVID-19-induced demand decline is an additional headwind for the already troubled coal companies. Coal companies like Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. ARLP are temporarily ceasing coal production from Illinois Basin mines through Apr 15, 2020 and have decided to withdraw their operational and financial guidance for 2020. Blackhawk Mining LLC and Rhino Resource Partners LP, among others, have already idled few of its mines in response of the declining demand caused by COVID-19. Since it is quite evident that decline in coal demand and prices will adversely impact the top line and result in liquidity crunch, coal companies like Contura Energy Inc. CTRA and Peabody Energy BTU have borrowed funds from their respective credit facilities to ensure ample financial flexibility in this COVID-19-induced crisis period. Price Performance Shares of CONSOL have underperformed the industry in the past 12 months. Story continues Zacks Rank CONSOL currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Biggest Tech Breakthrough in a Generation Be among the early investors in the new type of device that experts say could impact society as much as the discovery of electricity. Current technology will soon be outdated and replaced by these new devices. In the process, its expected to create 22 million jobs and generate $12.3 trillion in activity. A select few stocks could skyrocket the most as rollout accelerates for this new tech. Early investors could see gains similar to buying Microsoft in the 1990s. Zacks just-released special report reveals 8 stocks to watch. The report is only available for a limited time. See 8 breakthrough stocks now>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Peabody Energy Corporation (BTU) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (ARLP) : Free Stock Analysis Report Consol Energy Inc. (CEIX) : Free Stock Analysis Report CONTURA ENERGY (CTRA) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Life around Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard and Soto Street has slowed as California officials extended stay-at-home orders into May. Most Angelenos are are adhering to orders to wear masks while out running errands. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles County officials have said the stay-at-home order aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus will stay in place until at least May 15 perhaps longer. The unprecedented social-distancing requirements, which have closed nonessential businesses, prohibited gatherings and shuttered beaches and trails, have been working. But more is needed, health officials say. Polls suggest the public supports these measures at least for now even as the restrictions have devastated the economy. What does the polling show? Ninety-five percent of respondents say they supported L.A. elected officials decision to implement a stay-at-home order for all but essential personnel, a new Loyola Marymount University poll found. Those who identified as politically conservative tended to be more skeptical both of the stay-at-home orders and of the level of threat posed by the virus. Only 76% of them viewed the virus as a real threat, compared with 91% among liberals. Conservatives also saw themselves as less vulnerable, with 74% saying they worried they would catch the virus, compared with 85% of liberals. They have the level of fear; it is a real threat. They are worried about protecting their families, especially the elderly. There is a good understanding of how it spreads," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, which conducted the poll. The poll surveyed 2,000 households in Los Angeles County. It had a margin of error of 2.2%. Both the LMU poll and an earlier UCLA poll show concern among residents about the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, 78% of L.A. County residents surveyed told UCLA researchers they were very or somewhat concerned that they or a family member might catch the virus. People view this as an existential crisis, said Zev Yaroslavsky, a retired L.A. County supervisor and onetime L.A. City Council member who oversaw the UCLA poll. They wouldnt be adhering to this protocol of staying cooped up in their homes if they didnt think there was a good reason for it. Story continues When will the stay-at-home orders end? No one is sure. But health officials have said more time is needed. Los Angeles County health officials warned Friday that residents of the region must adopt even more stringent social distancing practices to slow the spread of the coronavirus and that stay-at-home restrictions could remain for several more months. Even with the dramatic social distancing that county residents are already practicing, local officials forecast that up to 30% of the population could be infected by midsummer without more behavioral changes, such as reducing shopping trips. While the strict physical distancing measures in L.A. County, which have been in effect for three weeks, have clearly had an effect in saving many lives, models presented by the county Friday show troubling forecasts if officials lift the stay-at-home order now. There are still too many people becoming infected with the coronavirus in Los Angeles County, officials said. And there is more than a 50% chance that the current capacity of intensive care unit beds in Los Angeles County, roughly 750 beds now, could be exhausted by late April. Officials outlined the stark paths ahead for L.A. County. If the stay-at-home order was quickly rescinded and people resumed their normal habits, an astonishing 95.6% of L.A. County residents would be infected with the coronavirus by Aug. 1, according to projections released by the county. Staying at the current levels of physical distancing would still result in 29.8% of residents being infected by Aug. 1. But increasing our efforts to stay apart from one another could reduce that to just 5.5% of Los Angeles County residents being infected in that time. The death toll, meanwhile, continues to rise. Los Angeles County officials reported 31 new coronavirus deaths on Easter Sunday, the largest single-day total since the outbreak began. Twenty-five of those fatalities were people over the age of 65, and the other six were between the ages of 41 and 65, health officials said. What about the economic toll? The impact on the economy is the wild card, of course. It's hard to know how public opinion will change as economic damage mounts. The UCLA poll found that nearly half of the households in Los Angeles County have lost a job or had their work hours cut, and an additional 10% have lost other sources of income because of the coronavirus pandemic. In the LMU poll, 83% say they fear the economic impact from the coronavirus closures. A Bend-based community college is suing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs claiming the federal agency wrongly billed them $3.2 million in overpaid tuition, housing and books for veteran students in the colleges aviation program. Central Oregon Community College alleges the federal agency failed to adequately explain why it was owed the money and has ignored the colleges repeated attempts to challenge the bill. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Eugene on Friday. [Read the lawsuit] College officials are asking a judge to throw out the federal agencys $3.2 million bill because they claim it violates the schools constitutional rights to due process. The college wants the judge to prohibit the agency from collecting any money until the colleges claims are heard in an appeals process. They have been unresponsive to our questions and unwilling to explain their decisions, Alicia Moore, the community colleges vice president of student affairs, said in a statement. Going to court to file this complaint is our only option. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs didnt immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. Central Oregon Community College offers a two-year training program for students learning to pilot airplanes and helicopters. The program, established in 2005, has trained more than 220 student veterans to become pilots, the lawsuit said. The student veterans benefits are provided under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which can include tuition, and book, supply and monthly living stipends for up to three years. The federal government pays the tuition and fees directly to the school. According to the lawsuit, the Veterans Affairs department audited the colleges aviation training program from 2016 to 2019 and issued three different letters since 2018 that determined the college violated GI Bill rules, the lawsuit said. The college hasnt received detailed explanations of the violations or how the penalties were calculated, the lawsuit said. The first letter, for example, said the school had 25 violations of Veterans Affairs department rules and owed $3.9 million. But a letter in February said the college violated 31 rules and owed $3.2 million. The college reported having more than 4,700 students enrolled as of spring. Everton Bailey Jr. CADILLAC, MI Northern Michigan first responders will show their appreciation for hospital staff dealing with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic with a demonstration this week. Police, fire and EMS vehicles from Wexford and Missaukee counties will have lights on as they gather around Munson of Cadillac Hospital from 6:30-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15. The demonstration is to show appreciation for the hospital staff facing physical and mental strain in the fight to help patients recover from coronavirus. It is important that as a community we show our support of one another, Cadillac Police Captain Eric Eller said. We will get through this and rebound working together as a community. The idea came from Officer Brandon Grumm who approached department administrators after hearing about similar demonstrations in other communities. Grumm organized the demonstration and invited other first-responder departments in the area. Emergency vehicles will park on Lester, Hobart and Oak streets. Overflow vehicles may park on Lynn Street and parts of Cobb Street. Roads will be partially blocked for the demonstration. Access to the hospital will not be restricted. As of Sunday, April 12, Michigan was reporting a total of 24,638 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,487 related deaths. On the same day, Wexford County had seven cases and one death, while Missaukee County had one case and one death. PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. READ MORE: Microbiologist offers coronavirus cleaning tips for your home: Spray, dont wipe Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Michigan cites possible testing lag as coronavirus cases drop IRS deposits first round of coronavirus stimulus checks into bank accounts Despite criticism, Gov. Whitmer defends revised stay-at-home order President Trump retweets call to fire Dr. Fauci Police in Peru on Sunday arrested a Chinese citizen for illegally conducting rapid COVID-19 tests on the public with newly-delivered kits stolen from Perus health ministry. Tianxing Zhang, 36, was arrested in the Brena district of Lima as he was about to take samples from two women at the door of their house, police said. He was proceeding to carry out rapid tests for COVID-19 that he had stolen from the Lima Sur health authority where he worked, according to a police statement. Zhang was wearing a mask and a light blue medical apron at the time of his arrest by the state security police. Both women had paid him to carry out a rapid home test, without health ministry approval. When questioned, he acknowledged he was not authorized to carry out this rapid test and that the Rapid Diagnostic Tests had been stolen from the Directorate of Integrated Health Network of Lima Sur where he had worked, the police said. According to the police, the bespectacled Zhang confessed to stealing two batches of the test to use, for monetary gain, on people who suspected they were ill with the coronavirus. Police found a backpack with 25 COVID-19 tests and other medical supplies at his home. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday praised the role of NGOs during the times of crisis and expressed hope that they will contribute in a big way in the fight against coronavirus. He said that government and various other agencies are putting in their best efforts to control the spread of coronavirus but whenever there have been natural calamities like floods, earthquakes or this new type of pandemic, the role of NGOs at such times is appreciable. In a televised address to the people of Haryana, in which he updated them about the COVID-19 situation in the state, Khattar said as per rough figures, the total number of registered and unregistered social organisations or NGOs in Haryana was nearly 30,000. During the times of crisis such as the present one they also put in their efforts, he said, expressing hope that they will contribute in a big way in the fight to eliminate coronavirus. He said NGOs can get in touch with Deputy Commissioners concerned and will be facilitated in whatever way they want to contribute in the present situation. Khattar informed that so far the government had distributed 90 lakh food packets and 4.80 lakh ration kits to the needy people during the lockdown period. He also said that more and more people were coming forward to make their contributions towards the Haryana COVID Relief Fund. So far, donations worth Rs 75 crore have been received, he said. Haryana MLAs cutting across parties have donated their one-month salary already towards the Fund and agreed to take 30 per cent pay cut for one year. Former MLAs and pensioners are also contributing, he said. Khattar said coronavirus pandemic has affected millions of people globally. If I talk of our country, we are still in a safe zone where we can manage things. We have to now ensure that it does not spread in community. With Haryana so far reporting 182 coronavirus cases, Khattar said that 115 among those were the Tablighi Jamaat members. Referring to his recent video conference meeting with Prime Minister Modi, Khattar said the nationwide lockdown was expected to be extended by another two weeks and Haryana is prepared to enforce it. He again indicated that worst-affected COVID districts of Nuh, Gurgaon, Palwal and Faridabad will be placed in the red zone meaning stricter restrictions, while those with fewer cases will be placed in the orange category while the places where there have been no or a few cases will fall in the green category. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Frail coronavirus patients may be denied critical care under an NHS scale system designed to free up ICU beds. The controversial 'Clinical Frailty Scale' (CFS) ranks patients' vulnerability from one to nine in order to prioritise those most likely to recover from the killer virus. Those with a combined score of more than five are said to have uncertainty around the benefits of critical care, according to the system, which has been implemented while NHS hospitals desperately scramble to free up beds and ventilators. It comes after NHS sources denied that elderly patients would be rejected from critical care using a scoring system - where over-65s with the deadly virus were to be ranked out of 10 based on their age, frailty and underlying conditions. The most vulnerable coronavirus patients could be denied critical care under a new NHS scoring system designed to free up ICU beds for those most likely to recover. Sources say the draft guidance was scrapped and will not be implemented Under the guidance, over-65s with the deadly virus would have been ranked out of 10. Pictured: An intubated patient at the South Pest Central Hospital in Budapest, Hungary More than 5,000 coronavirus patients are being diagnosed at hospitals every day and some intensive care units are already approaching capacity. Dominic Raab reveals lockdown WILL continue and warns the worst is yet to come Dominic Raab tonight confirmed the UK's coronavirus lockdown will remain in place for the foreseeable future and warned Britain is yet to hit the peak of the outbreak as official statistics showed a further 717 deaths. The First Secretary of State, who continues to deputise for Boris Johnson while the PM recovers from his fight with the disease, said there were now 'positive signs that we are starting to win this struggle, but we've still got a long way to go'. The latest death toll figures took the overall UK number of victims to 11,329 but the daily total of fatalities has now dropped for three days in a row for the first time since the epidemic began. Speaking at the daily coronavirus press conference in Downing Street, Mr Raab described the figures as 'grisly' as he said Britain was 'still not past the peak of this virus' and the government could therefore not ease social distancing measures. Earlier, Mr Raab was gazumped by Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, who revealed at lunchtime that the UK was likely to extend the lockdown in what was the latest example of the SNP leader moving before Number 10 during the outbreak. Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance added that this week would be 'difficult' and that he expects the daily numbers of deaths to increase before they plateau, continue to plateau for some time and then, eventually, start to fall. Today's figures come after Britain yesterday became only the fifth country to pass the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths - the only other countries to declare this have been the US, Italy, Spain and France. Advertisement NHS doctors and other health professionals were said to have been issued with the scoring system to identify 'who may not benefit from critical care interventions', the Financial Times reported. Patients aged 71 to 75 were said to automatically score four points for their age and an extra three for their frailty. That would put them at a total of seven points before underlying health conditions are even considered. Dementia, high blood pressure or recent heart and lung disease would also incur more points. Patients who scored more than eight points were earmarked to be given 'ward-based care' and treated with an oxygen mask instead of a ventilator. Britain is thought to be short of thousands of ventilators, which pump oxygen directly into the lungs of a sedated patient. The machines are the most efficient breathing tools the health service has. The scoring system was considered in a piece of draft guidance which has now been scrapped, NHS sources say. Instead, clinicians are being urged to use the 'Clinical Frailty Scale' when considering which patients to give critical care. It does not discriminate against age, but it does weigh up underlying conditions and overall health. The Clinical Frailty Scale was included in guidelines issued by the NHS regulator, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It was originally developed at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. An NHS website outlining how the scoring system works states that it 'is a reliable predictor of outcomes in the urgent care context'. 'Like any decision support tool, it is not perfect and should not be used in isolation to direct clinical decision-making,' it adds. 'It will sensitise you to the likely outcomes in groups of patients, but clinical decision-making with individual patients should be undertaken through a more holistic assessment, using the principles of shared decision-making.' NICE recommends clinicians use the Clinical Frailty Scale when considering patients for intensive care A spokesman for NICE said: 'In its COVID-19 rapid clinical guideline on critical care for adults, NICE recommends the use of the Clinical Frailty Score in some people in whom it has been validated as part of a holistic assessment as it was before COVID-19. BRITAIN STILL HAS NO-WHERE NEAR ENOUGH VENTILATORS Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis is at its height. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson - despite the engineering giant never making them before. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said 'the race is on' to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic. The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending 'regulatory approval'. But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were 'nowhere near' being reached. One source told The Guardian: 'You just can't do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they're trying to do. But if there's a second wave in the winter, we'll have a lot more by then.' A second source said it was impossible to 'produce into the peak'. The Ventilator Challenge UK group - which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce - have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch. Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks. Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process. The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin. Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: 'To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. Advertisement 'The guideline makes it clear that it should not be used in isolation to direct clinical decision making and that clinicians should take any decisions about care in conjunction with patients and their carers where possible. 'The guideline also states that the tool should not be used in certain groups, including those with learning disabilities or with stable long-term disabilities such as cerebral palsy.' An NHS spokesperson said the health service only followed the clinical frailty scale and would not cherry pick patients who deserve ventilators. They added: 'This [the scoring system] is not an NHS approved document, we do not agree with it, and the NHS will not endorse its use in decisions on care.' It comes little over a week after the British Medical Association released advice on taking older coronavirus patients off ventilators so they can be given to younger and healthier patients. The BMA guidelines said this will 'inevitably be indirectly discriminatory against both the elderly and those with long-term health conditions'. They add it may be necessary to deny some of the most unwell patients potentially life-saving treatment even if their condition is improving. The doctors' union said a simple 'age cut-off' policy would be unlawful but 'relevant factors' for considering if a patient should get intensive care include their age and underlying health conditions. 'Some of the most unwell patients may be denied access to treatment such as intensive care or artificial ventilation,' it says. 'This will inevitably be indirectly discriminatory against both the elderly and those with long-term health conditions relevant to their ability to benefit quickly, with the latter being denied access to life-saving treatment as a result of their pre-existing health problems. 'A simple 'age cut-off' policy would be unlawful as it would constitute direct age discrimination. 'A healthy 75-year-old cannot lawfully be denied access to treatment on the basis of age. However, older patients with severe respiratory failure secondary to COVID-19 may have a very high chance of dying despite intensive care, and consequently have a lower priority for admission to intensive care.' The Alzheimer's Society said the 'discriminatory' system could prevent those with dementia getting treatment even if they could recover from coronavirus. Are doctors HARMING coronavirus patients by putting them on ventilators too early? Doctors warn the gadgets may be overused and could even damage the lungs of the infected The nationwide shortage of ventilators and Britain's rush to build them has been one of the biggest stories of the coronavirus pandemic But now doctors have warned putting patients on the machines too early could cause more harm than good. Figures show two-thirds of COVID-19 sufferers who are hooked up to the potentially life-saving machines in the UK do not survive. Reports in China, Italy and the US have found that less than half of patients who are intubated recover. Experts are unsure why the death rates are so high. In New York City, at least 80 per cent of coronavirus patients in New York City who have been put on a ventilator have died. As health officials around the world push to get more ventilators to treat patients, some doctors are moving away from using the breathing machines when they can. The reason: Some hospitals have reported unusually high death rates for coronavirus patients on ventilators, and some doctors worry that the machines could be harming certain patients. Mechanical ventilators push oxygen into patients whose lungs are failing. Using the machines involves sedating a patient and sticking a tube into the throat. Deaths in such sick patients are common, no matter the reason they need the breathing help. Generally speaking, 40 percent to 50 percent of patients with severe respiratory distress die while on ventilators, experts say. Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat Two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator will die from the illness, official NHS data suggests. Graph also shows the likelihood of critically ill COVID-19 patients surviving based on their age, BMI and whether they have health woes Higher-than-normal death rates - like those in New York City - also have been reported elsewhere in the US, said Dr Albert Rizzo, the American Lung Association's chief medical officer. Similar reports have emerged from China and the United Kingdom. One UK report put the figure at 66 percent. A very small study in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first emerged, said 86 percent died. The reason is not clear. It may have to do with what kind of shape the patients were in before they were infected. Or it could be related to how sick they had become by the time they were put on the machines, some experts said. But some health professionals have wondered whether ventilators might actually make matters worse in certain patients, perhaps by igniting or worsening a harmful immune system reaction. That's speculation. But experts do say ventilators can be damaging to a patient over time, as high-pressure oxygen is forced into the tiny air sacs in a patient's lungs Some say it is simply a result of patients being extremely ill when they are put on the machines, which pump oxygen directly into the lungs via a tube down the throat. But others suggest the ventilators - which can make inflammation in the lungs worse - are being implemented too soon and harming coronavirus patients. In the most life-threatening cases, COVID-19 can permeate deep into the lungs and cause severe inflammation, making it hard to breathe. Pumping pressurised oxygen into the lungs can irritate the organs and damage them further. Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said this was a 'vicious cycle' for coronavirus patients. Scott Weingart, a critical care physician in New York, told Stat News coronavirus patients get worse 'as a direct result of intubation'. He added: 'High levels of force and oxygen levels, both in quest of restoring oxygen saturation levels to normal, can injure the lungs. I would do everything in my power to avoid intubating patients.' Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said putting coronavirus patients on ventilators was a 'vicious cycle' because it actually makes them worse For most people, COVID-19 causes mild or moderate symptoms which clear up in a few weeks. But roughly 20 per cent, mainly the elderly or those with underlying conditions, fall seriously ill and have trouble breathing. The killer infection can burrow its way deep into the lungs, causing them to become severely inflamed. CAN VENTILATORS CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE LUNGS? Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat. Pushing pressurised oxygen into the organs can cause them to become extremely inflamed. They become irritated which triggers an aggressive immune response, resulting in the inflammation. Very high levels of oxygen is also harmful because it increases free radical formation, leading to damaged membranes, proteins, and cell structures in the lungs. Doctors normally circumvent this by making sure to keep pressure levels low and only administer as much oxygen is necessary to keep the organs supplied. But, in patients who already have severely damaged and inflamed lungs, they can worsen the problem. Inflammation can cause fluid from nearby blood vessels to leak into the tiny air sacs in the lungs, making breathing and getting oxygen to organs increasingly difficult. Advertisement The inflammation causes fluid from nearby blood vessels to leak into the tiny air sacs in the lungs, making breathing harder and cutting the supply of oxygen to the organs. Intensive care doctors turn to mechanical ventilators as a last resort when patients' oxygen levels plummet and they can't be boosted with drugs or non-invasive techniques. Ventilators pump oxygen under pressure directly into the lungs via a tube inserted down the throat. Patients are heavily sedated so they can't fight the sensation of being unable to breathe on their own. But doctors are panicking and intubating COVID-19 patients sooner because the new virus is causing their blood-oxygen to fall to critically low levels, Stat News reports. 'Data from China suggested that early intubation would keep 19 patients' heart, liver, and kidneys from failing due to hypoxia (oxygen deprivation),' a veteran emergency medicine physician told the website. 'This has been the whole thing driving decisions about breathing support: Knock them out and put them on a ventilator.' There are widespread reports that coronavirus sufferers are being ventilated for far longer than other types of patients. Patients with non-coronavirus related pneumonia are usually intubated for a day or two, compared to coronavirus patients who have can need a ventilator for up to two weeks. Pushing pressurised oxygen into the organs can cause them to become extremely inflamed and worsen the condition. Very high levels of oxygen can also be harmful. Dr Paul Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said this was a 'vicious cycle'. It is thought at least 30,000 ventilators will be needed to cope during the peak of the pandemic, as manufacturing companies race to build more (pictured, medical equipment labelled and prepared for use by NHS staff at the ExCeL centre in London) What is a ventilator? A machine that helps people breathe. It puts oxygen directly into patients' lungs and removes carbon dioxide from them. A breathing tube connects the ventilator machine to your body. One end of the tube is placed into the lung's airways through down the throat or nose. In some serious cases, the tube is connected directly to the windpipe through a small cut in the throat. Surgery is needed to make the hole in the neck. This is called a tracheostomy. Patients are heavily sedated so they can't fight the sensation of being unable to breathe on their own. Ventilators are used to help a person breathe if they have lung disease or another condition that makes breathing difficult. They can also be used during and post-surgery. Advertisement He told Yahoo News: 'The ventilator is causing lung injury, which causes them to stay on the ventilator longer, and basically is depleting the supply of ventilators for people who need them. It's becoming a vicious cycle.' Dr Eddy Fan, an expert on respiratory treatment at Toronto General Hospital, added: 'We know that mechanical ventilation is not benign. 'One of the most important findings in the last few decades is that medical ventilation can worsen lung injury - so we have to be careful how we use it.' Dr Marik has called on other clinicians to implement a gentler approach than the high-pressure ventilators. He said anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as breathing masks used in sleep apnoea, should be used for as long as possible before switching to a ventilator. Not only would it potentially save more lives, he claims, it would also would help relieve a shortage of the machines. The UK is projected to need 30,000 ventilators at the peak of the outbreak in the next week. It is thought to be thousands short of this number. It comes after MailOnline revealed two-thirds of coronavirus patients in the UK who need to be hooked up to a ventilator die from the illness. A report from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Center (ICNARC) found ventilated patients succumb to the virus 66.3 per cent of the time. A ventilator is a machine that helps people breathe. It puts oxygen directly into patients' lungs and removes carbon dioxide from them BRITAIN STILL HAS NO-WHERE NEAR ENOUGH VENTILATORS Hospitals across Britain are still 21,825 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need when the crisis is at its height. Efforts to get manufacturers to produce ventilators are underway, with the government previously ordering 10,000 from Dyson - despite the engineering giant never making them before. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson said 'the race is on' to get the medical machines created specifically for the pandemic. The British firm, most famous for its vacuum cleaners, said it has a prototype tested on humans and could start delivering them from mid-April, pending 'regulatory approval'. But sources related to one of the ventilator collaborations within British industry reportedly warned manufacturing targets were 'nowhere near' being reached. One source told The Guardian: 'You just can't do this sort of stuff overnight, which is what they're trying to do. But if there's a second wave in the winter, we'll have a lot more by then.' A second source said it was impossible to 'produce into the peak'. The Ventilator Challenge UK group - which includes Dyson and Rolls-Royce - have said they aim to make 1,500 machines a week by the end of the month, but only 30 are said to arrive in the first batch. Under codenames Project Oyster and Project Penguin, the consortium has used its design and building resources to deliver two models in two weeks. Project Oyster has involved making slight tweaks to an existing design by Oxfordshire-based firm Penlon, aimed at speeding up the assembly process. The consortium is also lending its muscle to increasing production of a device called the ParaPac ventilator, made by Smiths Medical, under Project Penguin. Consortium lead Dick Elsy said: 'To provide some context, Penlon and Smiths ordinarily have combined capacity for between 50 and 60 ventilators per week. Meanwhile the UK received 300 ventilators from China over the weekend and it will get thousands more by next week, Michael Gove has claimed. The Chinese ventilators arrived at MoD Donnington, a British military base situated in Shropshire, on Saturday. Advertisement That is double the mortality rate of non-virus patients who were put on breathing support between 2017 and 2019, before the outbreak. The NHS is still 22,000 ventilators short of the estimated 30,000 it will need during the peak of this crisis, which has infected almost 34,000 Britons. The high death rate has led some doctors to question whether some critically ill COVID-19 patients are being put on ventilation 'for the sake of it', when the machine could be spared for a healthy person with a higher chance of survival. The ICNARC report looked at the first 775 patients who had fallen critically ill with COVID-19 across 285 intensive care units. Of the 98 patients who needed advanced respiratory support when their lungs started to fail, just 33 patients lived (34 per cent). Patients in this age range die 73 per cent of the time if they fall seriously ill after contracting the disease. For critically ill patients aged between 50 and 69, the mortality rate is just over 40 per cent. And a quarter of over-16s succumb to the disease, the figures show. There are several reasons why older people have trouble fighting off the virus. The likelihood of having chronic conditions increases markedly as people age, with four out of five over-65s living with at least one underlying health condition. Elderly people also have weaker immune systems, a natural side-effect of the body ageing. This makes them more vulnerable to serious infections of all types. The ICNARC report showed obese people are at a heightened risk of dying from coronavirus. Among patients who needed intensive care after catching the infection, people with a BMI over 30 died 61 per cent of the time. There was little discrepancy between overweight patients and those with a health body weight. Those with a BMI under 25 - the ideal range is between 18.5 to 24.9 - the mortality rate was 42.1 per cent. For overweight patients , it was 41.7 per cent. People with pre-existing health conditions are thought to be at greater risk of developing severe symptoms because of their weakened immune systems. But the ICNARC report found people with severe underlying health woes were just 10 per cent more likely to die if they fell seriously ill with COVID-19 than otherwise healthy people. The document also found that most coronavirus patients in intensive care were male, 71 per cent of all cases. Only 18 patients (9 per cent) had 'severe co-morbidities', such as underlying heart conditions or lung disease; while two patients had been pregnant within the last six weeks. The mortality rate was 58.8 per cent for people with pre-existing conditions and 47.6 per cent for those without. This is a huge product liability case, which is unique in nature. As of January 30, 2020, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded after a thorough review of the best available science that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used according to the label and that it is not a carcinogen. The agencys findings on human health risk are consistent with science reviews by many other countries, including agencies in Canada, Australia and Europe. Despite the EPAs very unambiguous statement on the safety of glyphosate, Bayer AG is still in remediation to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits for a figure in the range of approximately US$10 billion. To make matters worse, a California shareholder of Bayer AG filed a lawsuit in March against the companys directors and officers, claiming they breached their duty of prudence and loyalty to the company and its investors by buying Monsanto Co. in 2018 the company behind Roundup at the center of the glyphosate lawsuits. The Bayer AG case is proof that companies can face significant liability, even when there is a lack of scientific evidence. But in another (arguably similar) product liability case involving sunscreen, the outlook has been very different. In the sunscreen case, concerns were raised (again in America) over the chemicals Oxybenzone and Octinoxate used in chemical sunscreens to filter out ultraviolet rays and their potentially harmful impact on the bodys endocrine (hormone making) system. James Kaufmann, senior manager, business development, AIR Worldwide, commented: To date, [theres been a lack of] scientific evidence involving human studies which would support this worry, and we have not noted any significant lawsuits on this front. But just because theres a lack of scientific evidence, it doesnt mean that a substance doesnt cause harm. There could still be significant liability. [In both the sunscreen and the Roundup weed killer examples] theres a lack of science backing up any claims of liability for bodily injury. So, what makes these two different? If we think through the nature of the defendants, Monsanto at the time of its acquisition by Bayer was described as - and this is a direct quote from The Washington Post Monsanto was one of the most hated large companies in the world. Its a huge company that produced pesticides, genetically modified crops, who spent time in the crosshairs of environmentalist groups, and whose scientists at one point even claimed unfairly influenced science. Now juxtapose Monsanto with brands with names like Hawaiian Tropic, Banana Boat, and Ocean Potion, all of which create a cream that not only helps prevent skin cancer, but it helps you avoid painful sunburn, moisturises your skin, and so on. Who would you rather sue? If youre on a jury, which is a less sympathetic defendant? In conclusion, the underlying science is important, but there are other factors at play that may have the potential to trump the science [and lead to significant liability claims]. By Trend The Declaration of Cooperation on reducing the daily oil production has been approved at the tenth meeting of ministers of OPEC and non-OPEC countries held in the format of videoconference, Trend reports citing Azerbaijans Energy Ministry. During the meeting, OPEC+ countries agreed with Mexicos proposal on reducing its output by 100,000 barrels per day. At the same time, the paragraph making the entry into force of the agreement from May 1 conditional on Mexicos consent to the quotas proposed by OPEC+ during the 9th meeting has been removed from the Declaration of Cooperation. According to the amendments to the Declaration of Cooperation, Mexicos quotas for May-June are now 100,000 barrels instead of 400,000 barrels. In order to offset the remaining volumes of Mexicos quotas, the US has agreed to reduce its production by additional 300,000 barrels. The meeting participants have thereby agreed to reduce their production by 9.7 million barrels per day from May 1. Azerbaijan has also supported the OPEC+ agreement. Azerbaijans Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov praised the position of oil producing countries aimed at stabilize the oil market. Todays meeting and the resolute position of OPEC+ allowed to eliminate the obstacles and uncertainties related to the implementation of the output cut agreement. The mechanism of balancing the oil market with production interventions is supported globally and this support will contribute to the stabilization of the oil market, he said. At the same time, this decision will encourage the countries, which do not participate in OPEC+ to cut their output, the minister added. During the meeting held April 9, OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed to reduce oil production in three stages from May 1 to April 2022. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 12, 2020 | 10:17 PM | BENTON In his letter to Neal, NAACP Kentucky State Conference President Marcus D. Ray said the NAACP "opposes the placement of the Confederate flag or any symbol of hate on any government property or public place," and "the placement of the Confederate flag on government property goes against everything this country was founded on." Marshall County Commissioner Justin Lamb, who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said that from the end of the Civil War until the beginning of World War II, a Civil War cannon sat on the court square. Once the United States entered World War II, the government decided to donate the cannon as scrap for the war effort. According to Lamb, in the 1950s and '60s people wanted a replica cannon to place back on the court square, and that finally came to pass in 2007. Once the replica cannon was placed on the property, Lamb says the goal had always been to display a Confederate flag as well. Lamb spoke to West Kentucky Star about the NAACP's request. "I respect their opinion, but I strongly disagree with their one-sided misinterpretation of history," said Lamb. "As a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, our goal from the beginning, with the Civil War cannon and flag on the courthouse lawn, was to honor the veterans and casualties on both sides of the war. Both sides deserve to be recognized, and it pains me to see the history of my home county to be rewritten and misrepresented just to fill someone's political agenda." He said officials are currently in the works of acquiring a civil war period Union flag which will fly right above the Confederate flag. The Kentucky State NAACP chapter has written a letter to Marshall County Judge-Executive Kevin Neal asking him to remove the Confederate Flag at the Marshall County Courthouse.The Sons of the Confederate Veterans placed the flag on the lawn of the courthouse last month. By Tracy Davis In the United States, a culture where the elderly are often marginalized, the COVID-19 pandemic has left them feeling further devalued. The pandemic has heightened their risks not only physically but psychologically. According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of March 18, nearly a third of all COVID-19 cases and 80% of deaths have occurred among adults over the age of 65, who tend to have weaker immune systems. With quarantines in place, the elderly worry about how they will obtain medications, food and other daily necessities. Many wont seek medical care for health concerns for fear of contracting COVID-19, including one of my elderly relatives who refused to go to the emergency department despite experiencing signs of a stroke -- dangerously high blood pressure and pain in her head. Yet adding to their fear is a national discourse that has portrayed the elderly as disposable, as people who are likely to die soon anyway. Measures to protect them from the viral outbreak are considered by some as not only draconian for the young and healthy but deeply harmful to our countrys economic well-being. Young adults who resist quarantine because they believe the virus attacks mostly older people are engaging in behaviors that put a generation at risk, along with themselves, while sending a signal that elderly lives are worth less. Recent political rhetoric reinforces that perception. Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, suggested that grandparents may be willing to die to save the economy for their children and grandchildren. The 69-year-old said no one had asked him: Are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if thats the exchange, Im all in. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me." Lets stop the ageist rhetoric - which only increases suffering by devaluing the elderly at a time when they are already vulnerable - and focus on the value they bring to society. Lets remember that our seniors contribute significantly in many respects - they bring wisdom, comfort and practical help that comes from having lived long, productive lives. They are providing childcare for grandchildren, which saves families money and allows working parents the peace of mind that comes from knowing their children are in loving hands. A friend in Florida raised her grandchildren because their parents struggled with addiction, a rising trend driven by the opioid epidemic, according to the U.S. Census. As a volunteer with an organization in Philadelphia that provides a buddy for people living with HIV/AIDS, I can say that some of our most committed and active volunteers are people over the age of 60. Once this pandemic has passed, seniors will be right back helping others. Now is a time for us to support our seniors, to stay connected with, treat them with compassion - and to show them that they matter equally. We can check in with older relatives and friends regularly to make sure they have what they need. Pick up their groceries or assist with online grocery shopping. Call or FaceTime and just chat for a few minutes, so they know someone is thinking about them and that they have support. Our seniors have decades of wisdom and advice to offer. They are the only ones who have experienced rationing and quarantine before. They have been through wars, measles and polio quarantines. Seniors can show how us how to deal with disappointment and grief. They can offer reassurance that life will return to normal. We have as much to gain from them as they do from our support. Tracy Davis, Ph.D., is a full-time faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at Rutgers School of Health Professions where she is the Aging Track Coordinator in the undergraduate and graduate degree programs. In addition to teaching, she is involved in numerous research projects, and has participated in research studies aimed at improving mental health among older adults and currently does research on HIV prevention for older adults. The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. The Uttarakhand Health Department on Monday said that no new coronavirus positive case in the state has emerged for the fifth day in a row. Of the samples that were sent for testing today, as many as 125 returned with negative result. The total number of positive cases in the state remains at 35. Seven persons have been cured/discharged. India's count of coronavirus cases has risen to 9,352, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday. 8,048 are active COVID-19 cases and 979 cases have recovered/discharged and one case has migrated. The death toll due to the virus has risen to 324. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. The pretrial conference for alleged mob-boss killer Anthony Comello has been pushed back six weeks. The conference was originally scheduled for next Monday in state Supreme Court, St. George. However, since mid-March, efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease have severely curtailed court operations in cases considered non-essential. There have been no new jury trials. The conference is now scheduled for June 1, online state court records show. At Comellos last court conference on Feb. 7, Justice William E. Garnett said he anticipated holding a final status conference on April 20 and possibly setting a trial date. Defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb had said then he has four other trials scheduled in the coming months in various jurisdictions that may occupy him through June. In view of coronavirus restrictions at both state and federal courthouses, it is unclear how many, if any, of those cases have gone to trial or been otherwise resolved. Prosecutors allege Comello, 25, fatally shot Gambino crime family boss Francesco (Franky Boy) Cali, 53, outside Calis Dongan Hills home on March 13, 2019. Comello is charged with murder and criminal weapon possession. Authorities have not publicly commented on a possible motive. In court papers, Gottlieb contends Comello was deluded by conspiracy theories and was defending himself when he shot the victim. In a videotaped interview with a detective after his arrest, Comello gave conflicting and sometimes bizarre accounts of the shooting during the course of the three-and-a-half-hour interrogation. In fact, at the end of the February court conference, he launched into a strange, rambling 20-second monologue in which he said his phone had contained information on human sex trafficking and drug smuggling. Then, in quick succession, Comello referenced Australia, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Operation Mockingbird, without further details. The latter is an alleged large-scale CIA program dating to the 1950s which attempted to manipulate the news media for propaganda purposes. Meanwhile, the defendant appears to have undercut the viability of a potential insanity defense. At the February conference, Gottlieb said the Eltingville resident refuses to be examined by prosecutors psychiatric expert. The defendants failure to submit to the exam would preclude his own psychiatric experts from testifying at trial. But, lay witnesses could offer psychiatric testimony. (Photo : RICARDO MORAES on Reuters ) Coronavirus Brazil Update: After Confirmed Case in Amazon Tribe, Rio's Christ the Redeemer Statue Lit Up (Photo : RICARDO MORAES on Reuters ) Coronavirus Brazil Update: After Confirmed Case in Amazon Tribe, Rio's Christ the Redeemer Statue Lit Up Brazil has now reached more than a thousand death since the first case of Coronavirus in the country. Unfortunately, one of the cases was recorded in a remote Amazon tribe-- resulting in the death of a 15-year-old boy. The boy died while inside an intensive care unit. Meanwhile, as a sign of gratitude to all frontliners in the world, the country's famous Christ the Redeemer has lit up, dressed as a doctor to give thanks to all medical personnel worldwide. Brazil gives tribute to doctors after 15-year-old dies in Amazon Tribe On Easter Sunday, Apr. 12, Brazil had showcased an emotional tribute to all essential workers in the world, risking their lives to treat and take care of COVID-19 patients. Since last Sunday was the resurrection of Christ, the country decides to lit up the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro with images of various medical personnel around the world. Along with the images, messages of thanks-- in different languages-- were also illuminated on the arms of the statue. Brazil also took this opportunity to promote the slogan written as "Fique Em Casa" -- meaning "Stay at Home." Right at the foot of the statue, the city's archbishop, Dom Orani Tempesta, also conducted a prayer mass for all the lives at risk due to the virus. This will be the second time that Christ the Redeemer was illuminated in connection with the COVID-19. Last month, Rio De Janeiro also offered prayers to all countries facing the tragic deadly disease, including the United States of America. CNN reported that the country's leader President Jair Bolsonaro is still one of the leaders around the world that do not take the virus seriously, even today. This issue becomes even worse after the first case of Coronavirus death was reported in a remote Amazon tribe located in the country. The First Case of Coronavirus Death in Amazon tribe On the weekend, a 15-year-old boy from an indigenous tribe died while inside an intensive care unit in Brazil. The boy named Alvanei Xirixan died after getting Coronavirus. The family wanted their son's body to be back in their place. However, health experts warn that this could cause further transmission of the disease. This raises issues on whether the country is capable to treat indigenous people despite their lack of resources in proper healthcare and knowledge about the virus. Brazil's Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta already explained that they deeply care for tribes easily acquiring the virus. Due to this, the government said that they're planning to build field hospitals for tribes that are vulnerable to the contagion. "We are extremely concerned about the indigenous communities," he said. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The disruption in K-12 education due to the coronavirus is way more than anyone could have imagined just a couple of months ago. A system that has relied primarily on face-to-face interactions in school buildings for generations is now operating almost entirely virtual. That big, rapid shift has dampened morale among both teachers and students, and it has exposed huge equity problems in K-12 schools. At the same time, it has forced educators to learn how to use new technologies, such as video conferencing, very quickly. That rush to use new technologies, though, opened the doors for a wave of data privacy and security problems, especially with the wildly popular Zoom videoconferencing platform. The EdWeek Research Center, the research arm of Education Week, is also pivoting quickly in this environment, conducting twice-monthly national surveys of teachers and district leaders to help the K-12 system navigate these unprecedented times. The surveys provide an evolving view of how schools are addressing challenges around communication, equity, attendance, and academic performance as well as the eventual reopening of school buildings. Following are 10 key insights from our most recent survey, a nationally representative, online poll of 1,720 educators administered April 7 and 8. Stay tuned for future survey results: Our next poll is scheduled to launch April 22nd. 1. Student and teacher morale are down. Maybe its the loneliness or disconnection from colleagues and friends caused by stay-home orders and school closures. Or the frustration with the limitations and technical glitches of online learning. Or maybe the constant drumbeat of news about the rising coronavirus death toll, skyrocketing unemployment rates, and the uncertainty of whats ahead is just too much to handle. Whatever it is, the reality is that student and teacher morale is suffering (as reported by teachers and district leaders), declining considerably between March 25 and April 8. In March, the teachers and district leaders we surveyed reported that morale was lower than prior to the pandemic for 61 percent of students and 56 percent of teachers. This week, educators told us that 76 percent of students and 66 percent of teachers are in lower spirits than they were before the crisis. Teacher and student morale are especially low in the western United States. Compared to district leaders, teachers report lower morale rates both for themselves and for their students. Coping With Coronavirus: An EdWeek Research Center Survey Series Timing: Every two weeks Method: Nationally-representative online surveys of educators There are multiple possible reasons for the declines. Teachers and students miss seeing each other every day. (Morale among teachers is especially low in elementary schools, which are more likely to cultivate a family-like environment.)The rituals of schoolfrom mundane daily routines to milestone celebrations like prom and graduationhave suddenly been struck from the calendar. Teachers worry about the challenges and inequities that their students will face when the supports that schools provide are that much harder to access. This is a serious loss for both students and teachers, Kathleen Minke, the executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists, told Education Week in a recent story. When you experience those kinds of loss, it is perfectly reasonable, acceptable, and human to feel grief around that. Interestingly, administrator and hourly employee morale remained relatively stable, according to the survey. 2. Teachers say theyre spending more time on instruction and communication. But equity problems persist. More teachers are engaging in instruction now than in March. In fact, nearly all teachers (90 percent) say they are engaging in instruction now, compared with 74 percent in late March. Teachers are also engaging in more communication with students. The percentage of teachers who had had no contact with most students declined while those engaging in weekly contact nearly doubled during that time period. That said, some students are having more contact than others. More than half of teachers (56 percent) in lower poverty districts (with poverty rates under 25 percent) are interacting with their students at least once a day, compared with about 1 in 3 in districts in which three quarters or more students come from low-income families. Science teachers and elementary educators who teach all subjects report the highest levels of daily contact. Special education and arts teachers report the lowest. Pren Woods, a 7th grade teacher at Alston Middle School in Summerville, S.C., sings to his students in class for their birthdays when school is in session. Now that schools are closed, he has called several students to sing Happy Birthday over the phone, continuing the tradition. Woods said he tries to pay particular attention to those kids who might be facing very difficult circumstances. When a kid says, My mom doesnt have a job and there are four of us, and shes alone and Im worried. Thats somebody I want to pick up the phone and call, and somebodys mom I want to email, he said. 3. Email is the most common form of teacher-student interaction. Videoconferencing is also popular. When teachers interact with students, its most likely to occur via email. A majority also communicate by posting written messages online, and through online communications or video conferencing platforms. The use of Zoom has raised some big student data privacy and security issues, prompting a growing number of districts to prohibit the use of Zoom for school-related business. So far, though, most educators have not experienced problems. Just 16 percent of teachers and district leaders say someone in their district has been Zoombombed on Zoom or a similar video conferencing platform. More than 1 in 5 elementary teachers (but just 6 percent of high school teachers) have communicated with their students in-person, with social distancing, through car parades, neighborhood wave-and-walks, and other approaches. Emily Richley, a 5th grade teacher at Dennis Elementary School in Springboro, Ohio, told Education Week that video-chatting with students, being able to see their faces, has been important for building community. She hosts chats on Google Meet throughout the week. It helps her connect with the kids, but also gives them a chance to see each other. They miss each other, she told Education Week. Her 5th graders show each other their dogs or introduce the class to their siblings. In a way, it has made the community a little more personal, because were almost meeting in each others homes, she said. Overall, just 2 percent of teachers have interacted with their students without social distancing since schools closed due to the pandemic. But that rate is 9 percent for special educators. Special educators are also significantly more likely to have had one-on-one phone conversations with their students (77 percent versus 40 percent overall). 4. More than a fifth of students are not participating in school, with larger truancy rates in high-poverty communities Even as teachers amp up communications and instruction, they report that, on average, 21 percent of their students are essentially truant during coronavirus closures (not logging in, not making contact, etc.) The percentages are highest among districts in which more than three-quarters of students are from low-income families. Nearly 1 in 3 students in those communities are not participating in remote learning, compared with 12 percent in districts in which a quarter or fewer students live in poverty. Given that income is strongly associated with opportunities to learn, this means that the students who are most likely to need it most may be receiving the least instruction, opening up the possibility that closures will widen existing equity gaps. In his two years working at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk, Va., Malcolm Jones had turned Room 123 into a sanctuary for vulnerable students. As a site coordinator for the organization Communities in Schools, Jones was at school from morning until evening, supporting nearly 100 teenagers struggling with poverty, family upheaval, and other obstacles to learning. The coronavirus pandemic upended that work. These students were distracted from their world by coming to this building that was outside of the community where they faced all these barriers, Jones said. Now, theyre stuck at home in that chaos. Who can really expect some of these students to do that [academic work packet] when theyre at home starving or theyre at home taking care of their siblings? 5. District leaders are trying to address equity Ninety-nine percent of district leaders say theyre at least doing something to address equity during closures. Offering pick-up/delivery of free or reduced-price meals is the most common measure. A majority of administrators also say they provide devices to all students who need them, make additional online tutoring available, and provide online/phone therapy. Unfortunately, these efforts are not necessarily reaching the students who need them most. For example, 62 percent of leaders in districts with poverty rates under 25 percent say everyone who needs home internet access gets it. Among leaders in districts where poverty rates exceed 75 percent, the rate is roughly half that amount (31 percent). In fact, the coronavirus has exposed the digital divide that exists in K-12 schools. In response, many urban districts are scrambling to purchase digital learning devices such as Chromebooks and iPads so that students without those technologies are not left behind. Other districts are outfitting school buses with WiFi hotspots and locating them near apartment complexes to help students get access to the internet. The New York City schools moved quickly over the past few weeks to purchase 300,000 iPads; Boston public schools put together an initiative to put 20,000 laptops in the hands of students; and Chicago is in the process of purchasing 37,000 new digital learning devices. Everybody is fighting for them, Mark Racine, the chief technology officer for the Boston Public Schools, told Education Week. We had some districts reach out to us and say, Can we buy some off of you? 6. Educators are most concerned students will fall behind in math Educators are most likely to be very concerned that students will fall behind in math during school closures, although English/language arts is a close second. More than half are very concerned about math. Of course, as schools have moved online, teachers are turning more and more to services like the Khan Academy, which provides online video lessons on math concepts. They are also using services such as Illustrative Mathematics, Zearn Math, and Core Math Tools provided by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. However, math teachers are concerned that students having difficulty understanding certain concepts will not be able to get the one-on-one attention they would usually receive in a regular classroom. As a consequence, kids who struggle with math might fall further behind during school closures. Additionally, across the board, in every subject included on the survey, educators in higher poverty districts are significantly more likely to be concerned that students will fall behind. For example, two thirds of educators in districts where three quarters or more students live in poverty are very concerned that students will fall behind in math as compared to 38 percent of those in districts with poverty rates of 25 percent or less. 7. The arts are tough to teach remotely Educators are relatively unlikely to say theyre very concerned about students falling behind in the arts during closures. But teachers perceive that the arts are the toughest topics to teach remotely: 27 percent say its very challenging. Parent Maggie Hunter, an instructional designer and technical writer in Holmdel, N.J., told EdWeek that she was thrown by an art assignment that asked her son to demonstrate six different shading techniques. There was crosshatch, hatching, and scumbling, she said. I have no idea what scumbling is. Fortunately, the art teacher sent a video explanation. But Hunters struggles suggest some of the challenges faced by teaching the arts to children at home. Unless they participate in or frequently listen to or watch a particular art form, parents may be less familiar with the terminologyeven at the elementary levelthan they are with, for instance, fractions or syllables. In addition, many arts require specialized materials or equipment (e.g. musical instruments, paint) that families may or may not have at home. Physical education/health/wellness is the subject teachers are most likely to say is very easy to teach from a distance. Its certainly possible to exercise without specialized equipment by taking a walk, or doing calisthenics at home. That said, just 16 percent of teachers say physical education is very easy to teach from afar. 8. More students may face consequences for schoolwork not done during closures Since late March, more teachers are reporting that they are partially or fully counting work assigned during closures toward final grades (57 percent versus 50 percent). However, practices vary significantly by grade level. Less than half of elementary teachers (43 percent) have decided to fully or partially count work, compared with 59 percent of middle school teachers and 76 percent of high school teachers. A larger share of leaders are also saying that there will be consequences if students dont do their work during closures (22 percent versus 13 percent). But these leaders are still in the minority48 percent say there will be no consequences. And roughly 1 in 3 have yet to decide if there will be consequences. A failing grade is the most common consequence (now as in March). The share of leaders who say students who slack off during closures could fail a class has also increased substantially. We realize that if we tell kids today, Hey, your grade cant be any lower than it is now, or if we tell them were not going to grade them for the rest of the year, were going to have a big chunk of kids check out, Curtis Hicks, the assistant superintendent of the Salem City Schools in Virginia, told Education Week. And thats not healthy for them for the short run, and its not healthy for the long term, if students are underprepared for what comes next. 9. The jury is still out on reopening schools More than a quarter of district leaders say schools are closed for the remainder of the school year, up from 3 percent in late March. That share is significantly higher in districts in which three quarters or more students come from low-income families than in districts with poverty rates under 25 percent (43 percent versus 16 percent). However, most still havent announced when schools will re-open-especially in the Northeastwhere school years start and end later and the indecision rate is 82 percent. (Its under 50 percent in the West and the South). Among those who have made this announcement, 80 percent say schools will re-open in May. The remainder say theyll re-open in April. In Iowa, the governor announced that schools would remain closed through at least April 30. But some local districts in the state have now decided to close schools for the remainder of the year. In Des Moines, the states largest district, Superintendent Thomas Ahart said he wont resume in-school classes this spring and would release a plan next week to instruct students over the internet or on paper worksheets. I believe that re-opening our school doors before the COVID-19 pandemic may have even reached its peak in Polk County is not in the best interest of the health and well-being of this community, he said, noting that about 40,000 people pass through the citys schools daily, according to an Associated Press story. 10. Most districts dont have a finished plan if the crisis continues into the fall It is certainly possible that the coronavirus pandemic will continue or recur in the 2020-2021 school year. But just 7 percent of district leaders said they have a thorough and extensive plan for moving forward if that happens. However, close to half say they have at least started planning for that possibility. Top education officials in two states warned this week that schools may have to continue online education in the fall if the spread of the coronavirus continues or resurges. The cautions in Maryland and Washington came as Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a White House briefing that the country would be in good shape to reopen schools in the fall. Im not sure we are going to be doing school in the same way going forward, Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Karen Salmon told state lawmakers, according to the Baltimore Sun. Were not sure that [school building closures] is not something that were going to revisit in the fall or the winter. South Dakota Launches Statewide Hydroxychloroquine Clinical Trial in COVID-19 Patients South Dakota on Monday announced a statewide clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients, the first in the nation to do a trial across an entire state. Hydroxychloroquine is traditionally used against malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis but is approved for emergency use against COVID-19, the new disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus. Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said the comprehensive trial was launched after contact with White House officials, including direct requests to President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for enough hydroxychloroquine doses for the trial. That request was met. Were now the first state to do a full clinical trial to test whether hydroxychloroquine can treat and perhaps prevent COVID-19, she said in a statement. The drug will be given to healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients as a prophylactic, a move already recommended by India, a primary producer of the tablets, last month. Sanford Health, which describes itself as the largest provider of rural health care in America, will treat up to 100,000 patients with hydroxychloroquine. Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem speaks as President Donald Trump listens during a meeting about the Governors Initiative on Regulatory Innovation in the Cabinet Room of the White House on in Washington on Dec. 16, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) The health care community in South Dakota consistently works together with the state for the benefit of all our patients, South Dakota Secretary of Health Kim Malsam-Rysdon said in a statement. I am excited patients across the state will have access to this drug, and we will learn more about its benefits in treating and even preventing COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine is being prescribed by doctors across the nation and used in a number of other countries. Several clinical trials in France and China showed promising results but some health experts and doctors have described them as too small and dismissed anecdotal reports of the drug and the closely related chloroquine preventing or treating the new disease. Several trials are underway in the United States, including one run by the National Institutes of Health. South Dakota reported 138 new cases of COVID-19 overnight, including dozens among employees of Smithfield Foods, some of whom were hospitalized. The state now has 868 confirmed cases, according to the state Department of Health, while 8,134 people have tested negative. Only 44 of the patients have ever been hospitalized. Six have died. Another 207 patients recovered. NEW YORK, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Thrombectomy Devices Market Research Report by Type (Automated Devices and Manual Devices), by Utility (Disposable Devices and Reusable Devices), by Technology, by Indication, by End User - Global Forecast to 2025 (Cumulative Impact of COVID-19) Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05881811/?utm_source=PRN The Global Thrombectomy Devices Market is expected to grow from USD 1,308.08 Million in 2019 to USD 1,893.11 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.35%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Thrombectomy Devices to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: "The Automated Devices is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Type, the Thrombectomy Devices Market is studied across Automated Devices and Manual Devices. The Automated Devices commanded the largest size in the Thrombectomy Devices Market in 2019, and it is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Disposable Devices is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Utility, the Thrombectomy Devices Market is studied across Disposable Devices and Reusable Devices. The Reusable Devices commanded the largest size in the Thrombectomy Devices Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Disposable Devices is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Rheolytic Thrombectomy Devices is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Technology, the Thrombectomy Devices Market is studied across Aspiration Thrombectomy Devices, Mechanical Thrombectomy Devices, and Rheolytic Thrombectomy Devices. The Mechanical Thrombectomy Devices commanded the largest size in the Thrombectomy Devices Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Rheolytic Thrombectomy Devices is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Neurovascular Diseases is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Indication, the Thrombectomy Devices Market is studied across Coronary Diseases, Neurovascular Diseases, and Peripheral Diseases. The Coronary Diseases commanded the largest size in the Thrombectomy Devices Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Neurovascular Diseases is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Ambulatory Surgical Centers is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of End User, the Thrombectomy Devices Market is studied across Ambulatory Surgical Centers and Hospitals. The Hospitals commanded the largest size in the Thrombectomy Devices Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Ambulatory Surgical Centers is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. "The Asia-Pacific is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period" On the basis of Geography, the Thrombectomy Devices Market is studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region is studied across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region is studied across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region is studied across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. The Americas commanded the largest size in the Thrombectomy Devices Market in 2019. On the other hand, the Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market including Argon Medical Devices, Inc., Boston Scientific Corporation, Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies, Medtronic PLC, Penumbra, Inc., Phenox GmbH, Spectranetics, Straub Medical AG, Stryker Corporation, Teleflex Incorporated, and Terumo Corporation. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Thrombectomy Devices Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on sulfuric acid offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and their impact analysis shaping the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market during the forecast period? 3. What is the competitive position if vendors in the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market? 4. How Porters Five Forces define the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market landscape? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market? 6. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market? 7. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market? 8. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Thrombectomy Devices Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05881811/?utm_source=PRN About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links www.reportlinker.com 13.04.2020 LISTEN A card bearing member of the ruling NPP, Kwame A Plus has said some officials of the Akufo-Addo administration, as well as bigwigs within the governing Party, extorted, in bits and pieces, a total of $22 million from businessman Seidu Agongo with the promise to protect Heritage Bank, of which he owned majority shares, from being collapsed by the Bank of Ghana and the government. In a Facebook live broadcast on Sunday, A Plus also revealed some NPP stalwarts, while in opposition, used the name of the partys presidential candidate at the time, Nana Akufo-Addo, to seek sponsorship to the tune of GHS7 million from Mr Agongo. A Plus told the President directly that the people around you used your name to take and extort money from Seidu Agongo, adding: So, even if Mr Agongo stole any money from the state, half of it went to some of your appointees and some NPP officials. According to him, They took to the tune of GHS7 million in the lead-up to the 2016 elections. Some of your appointees were thieves in opposition and continue to be thieves in government, A Plus asserted, stressing: Once a thief, always a thief. You cant be that wicked to people. You went to people you claimed were corrupt while in opposition and took money from them to go and campaign. Im not even sure the party got the money and now the government is turning around to chase the same people for corruption. Why?, he asked. You kept clamouring that the man was corrupt and that you would jail him should you win power, not knowing you were taking money from him for your election campaign, he noted. A Plus said he would name all those who benefitted from Mr Agongos largesse anytime he gets the opportunity to meet the President. Im waiting to meet the President one-on-one to tell him certain very sensitive things. Ill tell him directly that so-so-and-so used your name to extort money from Seidu Agongo and others. They used your name to take money from the same people theyve been saying are corrupt and chopped the money and then when they came to power, they collapsed the businesses of those people and they turn around and act like they dont know anything about it. The most painful aspect of the issue, he noted, Is that, even after winning the elections, the same people in NPP went back to the same Seidu Agongo and told him that: Youve got trouble coming your way, so, give me $2 million to go and deal with this person on your behalf, give me $5 million to go and talk to that person on your behalf, give me $1 million to go and deal with this person on your behalf; they took up to the tune of $22 million from the man, and later on collapsed the mans bank and his business, the satirist-turned-political activist said. Ive decided not to mention names now because of the love I have for President Nana Akufo-Addo but whoever dares me will have himself to blame, A Plus warned. In his view, some of the Presidents appointees and NPP stalwarts, benefited from the same canker they were accusing Mr Agongo of. They mount platforms to accuse the man and others of corruption but hid under the cover of darkness to go and extort money from the same man. Youve been wicked, extorted money from the man for your campaign, won elections and fooled Ghanaians. There are now too many thieves in the NPP. It didnt use to be like this in the days of the Odoi Sykes, Adu Boahens, JH Mensahs, JA Kufuors and Amerley Tagoes. We are going to deal with all of them, the party doesnt belong to anyone, A Plus threatened. He said: I want the President to know that the man called Seidu Agongo owned Heritage Bank but its been collapsed. Even before they collapsed the bank, a lot of your appointees keep trooping to him for money. Even while the ballots of 2016 were being collated before the declaration of the poll results, somebody went to take 200,000 from him. Mr President, I know all of them. How can you benefit from a crime and prosecute somebody for the same crime? If you claim the person is a criminal, how can you benefit from the crime, destroy the persons business and profit from the same crime? he wondered. Youve extorted $22m from the man with the promise to help him, knowing very well that you couldnt help him; you took as much as $22 million to deal with the powers that be on his behalf but the man is still suffering. Will you be happy if hes jailed? Why did you then go to demand that money from him? Lets assume the man did something wrong and is jailed; would you be happy having extorted all that money from him? A Plus also revealed that some government officials did the same thing to Dr Kwabena Duffuor with regard to uniBank, one of the nine local banks that was also collapsed, and promised to release that information on Easter Monday. Ill spill all the beans. I wont leave anything out, he promised. The Bank of Ghana revoked Heritage Banks licence on Friday, 4 January 2019, on the basis that the majority shareholder, Mr Seidu Agongo, among other things, used proceeds realised from alleged fraudulent contracts he executed for the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), for which he and former COCOBOD CEO, Dr Stephen Opuni are being tried, to set up the bank. Announcing the withdrawal of the licence, the Governor of the central bank, Dr Ernest Addison, told journalists when asked if he did not deem the action as premature, since the COCOBOD case was still in court that: The issue of Heritage Bank, I wanted to get into the law with you, I dont know if I should, but we dont need the courts decision to take the decisions that we have taken. We have to be sure of the sources of capital to license a bank; if we have any doubt, if we feel that its suspicious, just on the basis of that, we find that that is not acceptable as capital. We dont need the court to decide for us whether anybody is fit and proper, just being involved in a case that involves a criminal procedure makes you not fit and proper. However, Mr Agongo responded with a press statement in which he said that the not-fit-and-proper tag stamped on him by the central bank was capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad faith. According to Mr Agongo, In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction, adding that: The fact that I have a case pending before the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be determined by the Honourable Court. The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible evidence? Mr Agongo asked. Also, the erstwhile Prof Botchwey Board of the bank, issued a statement on the matter in which it said: Heritage Bank was by the Bank of Ghanas own admission, a solvent bank. It NEVER received liquidity support from the Bank of Ghana. Its corporate governance record had never been impugned by the Bank of Ghana. We believe we have been done a grave injustice and a terrible precedent set that does not bode well for the future. ---classfmonline Piers Morgan has hit out at a social media user over a 'disgusting' post written about the NHS amid the coronavirus crisis. The 55-year-old took to Twitter earlier today to comment on a post that read: 'NHS worship is going to be even more insufferable once this is done than it was before, isn't it?' He quoted the post before describing it as the 'most disgusting tweet of the #coronavirus crisis so far - & the bar was very very low.' Piers Morgan has hit out at a social media user over a 'disgusting' post written about the NHS amid the coronavirus crisis The 55-year-old took to Twitter earlier today to comment on a post that read: 'NHS worship is going to be even more insufferable once this is done than it was before, isn't it?' But the online spat has been dividing opinion among other users. One, @Ian_Davies_, wrote: 'I am just curious as to why he regards the concept of NHS worship as insufferable.' Another, @InDRSrange, commented: 'Piers, I don't always agree with you and I don't always like the way you go after folk (sometimes it's warranted, but not always) but one thing I think we'd agree on is the NHS staff are all worthy of military-like medals/recognition.' And a third, @quarantinelols, simply added: 'NHS are fab!' The exchange comes as millions of Brits continue to take to their doorsteps on Thursday evenings to clap for NHS staff and key workers amid the outbreak. Pictured: NHS staff at Royal Liverpool Hospital in Liverpool, north-west England joining the applause last week Others were quick to defend the original tweet and say that the criticise was not aimed at the staff themselves but the institution as a whole. One Twitter user, @HassanOJMorad, wrote: 'It's really not disgusting at all, Piers. If I understand correctly, Andrew is referring to worship of the NHS as a system, not NHS staff. 'NHS staff are doing a fantastic job in the circumstances, but that shouldn't hide the fact that the NHS itself needs reform, not worship.' Another, @DaveBamforth, wrote: 'He isn't criticising the staff, he's criticising the system, which most would acknowledge is massively flawed in some areas. 'He makes the point, the blinkered, who wouldn't criticise the NHS before Coronavirus, certainly won't do it now. 'Covid-19 has shown the NHS does need reform.' Following the success of the 'Clap for Our Carers' campaign, members of the public are being encouraged to applaud NHS staff and other key workers from their homes at 8pm every Thursday The exchange comes just hours after the number of NHS staff to die with coronavirus reached 31. Millions of households across the country have been taking to their doorsteps on Thursday evenings to clap for NHS staff and key workers to thank them for their efforts during the outbreak. Piers Morgan recently changed his social media photo to the NHS logo as well as publicly offering to pay for frontline staff's parking tickets. French cookware brand Le Creuset has slashed online prices on many of its top items, claiming the sale is happening for the first time ever." If youre taking up baking or cooking during the coronavirus pandemic, this may be a sale worth taking advantage of, with discounts of at least 20% on a lot of popular items. Le Creuset is known for its high-quality kitchen products, including colorful Dutch ovens and cast iron cookware. The company is offering free shipping on orders of at least $100. The full catalog of items on sale can be seen here, but weve rounded up some suggestions below: Dutch Ovens One of Le Creusets signature items, this round deep Dutch oven is down to $200, a near-40% discount from its original $325 price. It holds over 5 quarts and comes in four different colors. There are many other Dutch ovens on sale, as well. Stainless Steel Set of Pots and Pans This 10-piece stainless steel set of pots and pans is 33% off. Included is a frying pan, multiple sauce pans and a stockpot. Pizza Pan Whether youre learning to make pizza from scratch or need somewhere to place your frozen pizza in the oven, this pizza pan fills those needs. Its currently 20% off. Loaf Pan If youre learning how to bake bread to pass the time during the quarantine, this loaf pan is a great deal. It was affordable even before a 20% discount and can be used for other purposes like cooking meatloaf or baking a cake. 16-Piece Dinnerware Set Once all the food is made, you have to eat it somewhere. This 16-piece dinnerware set includes four dinner plates, four salad plates, four soup bowls and four mugs and its 16% off. RELATED CORONAVIRUS RETAIL COVERAGE: An essential online shopping guide for staying at home during coronavirus Best deals on buying snacks in bulk as coronavirus quarantine continues How to improve your internet speed at home if its slower than usual Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Sign up for text message alerts from NJ.com on coronavirus in New Jersey: Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @briannnnf. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Fauci: 'Extraordinary Risk' of Further COVID Spread If US Reopens Too Soon By Ken Bredemeier April 12, 2020 The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned Sunday there is an "extraordinary risk" of the further spread of the ravaging coronavirus if the United States is reopened to business and returned to a sense of normalcy too quickly on May 1, as President Donald Trump is considering. Fauci told CNN, "It's not going to be a light switch" to regenerate U.S. commerce as government recommendations for safe distancing between people end on April 30. He held out hope that "at least in some ways" the country could return to work and routine day-to-day activities next month, but said it is likely to be different in various parts of the country. That depends, he said, on the number of coronavirus cases in specific communities and whether testing has shown that large majorities of people are not infected. Even with precautions, he said, "We know people will be getting infected. That's just reality." The U.S. coronavirus death toll has topped 20,000, the highest total of any country, with more than 534,000 confirmed cases. Current U.S. models predict that 60,000 or more could die in the country by July. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn told ABC's "This Week" show, "The models do show that we are very close to the peak," but cautioned, "This has been a really fast-moving outbreak, so we really have to take this day by day." As for the May 1 date, Hahn said, "It is a target and obviously we're hopeful about that target, but I think it's just too early to be able to tell that we see light at the end of the tunnel. I think it's just too early for us to say whether May 1 is that date." A third expert also expressed the need for caution in reopening the country. Dr. Christopher Murray, the director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told CBS's "Face the Nation" show that the number of coronavirus cases would increase again if the social distancing measures and closures were relaxed May 1. "We don't think the capability in the states exists yet to deal with that volume of cases and so by July or August we could be back in the same situation we are in now" if there was premature reopening of the country, Murray said. Trump, mindful of the death toll and the fact that 17 million U.S. workers have lost their jobs in the last month, has said almost daily that he wants to reopen the country as soon as possible, with economic advisers pointing to the May 1 date as a target. But he says he will also listen to health experts on whether that is too soon. He has called the choice between two imperatives protecting the health of Americans and restarting the world's largest economy -- the biggest decision of his life. Trump had originally called for reopening the country by Sunday, envisioning churches filled with worshippers on the Christian holy day of Easter. But he backed off as health experts, including Fauci, warned that reopening the country too quickly would lead to more coronavirus deaths. Trump marked the day with a Twitter video message to U.S. Christians, wishing them a Happy Easter. But he noted how different the day would be nationwide, with most state governors ordering their residents to stay at home and Trump recommending that Americans practice physical distancing from others by at least two meters through the end of April. "In many cases," he said, "we'll be separated physically only from our churches. We won't be sitting near, next to each other, which we'd like to be, and soon will be again. But right now, we're keeping separation; we're getting rid of the plague. It's a plague on our country like nobody's ever seen." "But we're winning the battle," Trump said. "We're winning the war. We'll be back together in churches right next to each other. Celebrate, bring the family together like no other. We have a lot to be thankful for. Happy Easter everybody." Most U.S. churches kept their doors closed for Easter, but some defied state bans on large gatherings and held services. Trump in January, February and half of March minimized the severity of the coronavirus threat after the first outbreak in China before declaring a national emergency. On several occasions, he said there were few cases in the U.S. and that the disease would quickly dwindle to nothing. Some Trump advisers warned him of the advancing threat. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that "obviously" the country's response could have been better. "It would have been better if we had a head start," he said. "Often the recommendation (of scientists and medical experts) is taken, sometimes it is not." He said the country's high death toll "may have been a little bit better" if the U.S. had moved quicker toward social distancing and stay-at-home edicts. Fauci said he hopes that the U.S. voters will be able to vote in person at polling stations on Nov. 3 in the U.S. presidential election between Trump and the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden. "I can't guarantee it," he said. "There's always the possibility we could have a rebound" in a resurgence of the coronavirus. But if so, he said, "Hopefully we would respond better." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ive held off from saying much about Bernie Sanders decision to suspend his presidential campaign. In part that is because Naked Capitalism is a finance and economics site, not a political site. Nevertheless, the Sanders campaign was particularly important because he ran on a full-bore attack on neoliberalism. He not only made ideas heretofore regarded as political third rails, like wiping out the private health insurance industry, as proposals to be reckoned with, but also built funding, media, and canvassing operations entirely outside the Democratic party structure, which were impressive operational accomplishments. I wish he had soldiered on a bit longer, but with key senior staffers pushing for him to effectively withdraw, he may have felt he had no choice (he could not continue with these disaffected aides in key roles, and it would have been extremely difficult to replace them). And keep in mind that coronavirus ending the campaigns ability to hold large rallies and canvass in person, and potentially have supporters show up en masse in Milwaukee if he had over 40% of the delegates but not a majority as a testament to their loyalty to him, were additional crippling blows. There will be more analyses and no doubt books written about the Sanders campaign, what it achieved and why it fell short. Lambert is toying with working up matrix of failure based on a structure of analysis devised in the classic book Military Misfortunes, and he has discussed both some questionable decisions other have highlighted, like why didnt Sanders present policies in Iowa that addressed the needs of farming communities, or why didnt he try harder to win over black leaders in the South, particularly South Carolina, so as to keep his loss to a respectable level. Today, well stick to a narrow issue, a meme which has become popular and Lambert and I regard as fundamentally wrong: that Sanders should have become more aggressive with Biden and tried to deliver a knockout punch. Lambert rejects the idea because among other things, it perpetuates the horserace framing of the contest, which he sees as wrong-headed. Ive been put off by it because first, its too often comes from Sanders backers and members of the left calling for what theyd liked to see as opposed to what it would have taken to win over fence-sitting voters. Second, the desire for a knockout punch is too reminiscent of action movies, where the outmanned hero somehow through ninja moves and/or impressive gunplay manages to kill a whole lot of baddies and emerge only a bit scratched up. Its an admission of how much of an underdog position Sanders was still in. The mainstream media, day in, day out was gunning for him when it wasnt ignoring him, and that continued at the debates, which him regularly getting the most When did you stop beating your wife? sort of questions, and often denied rebuttals when attacked by other candidates. The superdelegate system, though less heavy-handed than in 2016, still set an extremely high bar for him to win the nomination. The Democrats got rid of many state caucuses, which as we saw in Iowa, are more transparent than elections (so his backers had the dubious pleasure of seeing Sanders win the popular vote and even the eventual delegate tally had it been honestly counted.but the press would not touch that chicanery with a ten foot pole). There was obvious vote suppression in Texas by removing polling stations in poor neighborhoods, and in Maine by not having enough ballots in many districts. And exit polls consistently found support for Sanders higher than the eventual totals, by higher than the margin of errorwhich in third world countries is seen as a likely indicator of election rigging. One also has to wonder if Pelosis curious decision to sit on the impeachment referral was largely driven by wanting to cashier Warren and Sanders and allow Biden and Buttigieg to make inroads against them in Iowa. Yes, it would have been fun to see Sanders slap around Biden in a debate the way Warren did Bloomberg. But Warren got no bounce for accelerating Bloombergs exit (which was bound to happen given all his baggage and the fact Bloomberg had no loyalties to the party). Harris got only a short-lived pop from attacking Biden on his race record. Gabbard never got above 5% even with the flurry of coverage for her kneecapping of Harris. Sanders did hold his fire against Biden, but attacking a fellow candidate at the podium is tricky business. What if Sanders had gone after Bidens supposed greatest point of vulnerability, his record on Social Security? That had already been undercut by a Sanders ad that misfired and failed a Poynter Institute fact check: Sanders misleading Social Security attack on Biden. Biden would have turned the tables on Sanders and said, There you go again. You ran an ad that misrepresented my record of supporting Social Security, a fact check even said so. And youre doing it again. And the Sanders campaign was already under attack for being too angry. Even though Sanders worked to soften his public persona after his heart attack, his habitual stance is finger-punching about injustice. Generally speaking, Americans are very uncomfortable with disagreement and want emotional displays to be strongly biased towards happy (look at our movies compared to film out of Europe and Asia). Sanders regular shows of righteous anger is on the edge of what many will accept. Disappointed Sanders supporters are also ignoring the elephant in the room: his electability. I dont think most understood what that dog whistle signified, since to any Sanders fan, the charge was ludicrous on its face. Sanders had beaten Trump by 10 to 20 point margins in every one-on-one poll in 2016, every time, larger than Hillarys point spread, and in 2020, almost always did best of all the Democratic party contenders in one-to-one polls. Sanders voters were often too deeply vested in his policies to understand what the beef was. Studies on cognitive bias have shown again and again that people will react to the same economic proposition differently, depending on its framing. So even though polls for the last 30 years have consistently found that a majority, or the very worst, a clear plurality favors progressive positions like higher minimum wages, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, ending the wars, and taxing the rich, most Americans identify as centrists or even conservatives. So electability, particularly for older voters, is code for Sanders is McGovern 2.0. Even if you like him, hes too far to the left. Too many big government schemes, too much in tax increases. Thats also the point of attack with the Trump Crazy Bernie monicker: Pie in the sky, big spending. And thats before you get to the s word. Sanders did not help himself by failing to knock back predictable and repeated attacks on his major policies. Biden in particular would repeatedly claim Sanders was lying about how much his health care plan would cost and would bandy about scary numbers. Sanders never rebutted that effectively when he had an easy first line of response: Yes, Joe, taxes will go up. But guess what? For all but the very richest, youll have more cash in your pocket at year end. Right now, you are paying for expensive middlemen and overpriced drugs. Studies have found Americas health care admin costs are 18% to 30% of total costs, versus 2% for Medicare. Thats money we can save right away. We also pay more for drugs than any country in the world even when our government paid for the R&D! Those are savings we can get quickly too. Theres even more we can do over time. The Green New Deal was also part of Sanders platform, but as least based on tweets of his operatives and supporters, it seemed to be getting 1% of the attention from the campaign as his Medicare for All push. That may have been a blessing in disguise. Green New Deal on the left is a hodge-podge of ideas. The Sanders plan does show a lot of initiatives, but even with various programs listed and price tags attached, it still winds up feeling weirdly abstract. If he had wanted to feature this more prominently (or his opponents wanted to corner him into defending it), it would have helped to make it more concrete: Here are some of the things it would do in Wichita, Kansas. But again, for those who have not accepted a Green New Deal as the way to tackle climate change (and this site has reservations, since these schemes rely over-much on building new infrastructure, which means front-loaded energy costs using our current heavily-fossil-fuel-dependent energy sources), it sounds like costly leftie empire-building. Were not the only ones to be generally of this point of view. In comments yesterday Mark Giselson stated: Im a former party hack. Always a socialist, but up until 2000 I always worked within the framework of D party politics (labor issues excepted as the socialist labor folks were ALWAYS more helpful than the Ds). I do not think Bernie ran a bad campaign. Ive never seen stronger ground support or better discipline (Tweeters are not the campaign). Ive also never seen such a massive disconnect vote-wise. For the life of me I cannot make sense of any of our election results this year. Normally you can ALWAYS deconstruct an election after the fact. In 2016, I could not do that. The numbers did not add up and the general election numbers reinforced that analysis. This cycle, not only do the numbers not add up, the case for count manipulation is incredibly well documented. I honestly doubt that weve seen an honest national election in this century. Bernie ran the kind of campaign you need to run to win. You cannot go scorched earth in the primaries, period. It cost Obama the PUMA vote and it cost HRC more Bernie votes than she could afford to lose. The PUMAs were, btw, the first organized super sore losers Ive seen since the Vietnam War ended. You win in the fall by prevailing in the spring in ways that do not unnecessarily offend your opponents followers. Bernie was running that kind of campaign; he was running to win in November. He could still be fighting, but that would just assure he gets the blame when Biden gets humiliated by Trump. I have no problems with Bernie, or how he ran this campaign. He didnt bring a knife to a gunfight, he brought his guns. The other side had water cannons, the media, the police, the governors and all the machinery of corrupt governance because they knew that in a fair fight, Bernie would kick their ass. He still has my full and complete respect. And I am still well on his left. We could not have done better without a better candidate and we didnt have a better candidate. The amount change Sanders was seeking to achieve normally takes more than a generation. The concerted right wing push, backed by open-ended corporate spending, Madison-Avenue phrasemaking, and an orchestrated effort to reshape jurisprudence, took 20 years to start getting real traction. Sanders looked to have an opening to carry his program forward much faster due to the fact that the elites did almost nothing to reform a broken and deeply unfair economic system after the 2008 crisis. The Democratic party had performed badly with and under Hillary Clinton, giving Sanders an opening no one had imagined was there. The overly-large 2020 primary field, as many party insiders worried, had the potential to drain candidate coffers early, leaving them with less funding than theyd need to trounce Trump. And it didnt help Sanders to have Warren as the more moderate progressive, not just splitting the left-leaning vote but also helping to show those nervous fence-sitters that Sanders really was out there.by some standard. In fact, Warren may have been the perfect spoiler. Trump can be unnervingly accurate: Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2020 But on top of that, Warrens barrages did seem to accelerate Bloombergs demise. If Bloomberg had stayed in the race longer, say at least through Florida, he would have sucked votes mainly from Biden. Its not clear the post-South-Carolina salvo against Sanders would have been as effective with Bloomberg still running. Unlike the many Sanders critics, Thomas Frank is quite clear that Sanders was not a self-saboteur but on the wrong end of a hatchet job. A snippet from his important piece in Harpers, How the Anti-Populists Stopped Bernie Sanders: Despite rising infections and fatalities, Sweden continues to stick to what the nations chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, calls a low scale approach to tackle coronavirus. Tegnell, who is also the top strategist against COVID-19 reportedly said that his nation's approach was "more sustainable over a long period of time." So far, the Swedish government has banned the gathering of more than 50 people, shut down schools and universities and urged people over 70 years of age or those at greater risk to self-quarantine. However, the new softer approach allows primary schools, restaurants, eating joints and most businesses to function normally. Sweden and Denmark In contrast, neighbouring Denmark, which imposed a stick lockdown nearly four weeks ago, is planning to reopen. Initially, the number of positive cases and deaths were proportionally similar in both the European nations. However, Denmark with much stricter policies curbed the spread as well as deaths. As of now, the mortality rate in Sweden has reached 88 as compared to the 47 deaths per million in Denmark, international media reported. This comes as Swedish PM, Stefan Lofven, has proposed an emergency law which would allow a swift closure of public ventures and transportation if needed. He reportedly also warned people about the thousands of deaths which might follow. However, the chief epidemiologist Tegnell defers from him and asserts that while Sweden might have faced infections in the short term, it will not face the risk of a huge infection spike that Denmark might face once its lockdown is lifted. Read: This Unique Trick By Denmark's Supermarket Stops Hand Sanitizer Hoarding By Customers Read: Norway Sees India As An Important Player Against Climate Change The deadly COVID-19 has killed more than 900 people in Sweden which has a population of nearly 10 million while Denmark, which has a population of 5.8 million has reported nearly 273 fatalities. Meanwhile, US John Hopkins University has reported that the COVID-19 pandemic has infected nearly 1.8 million people and killed nearly 1,14,000 worldwide. Read: Sweden Faces Pressure To Impose Lockdown After Death Toll Rises Read:Denmark Could Ease Restrictions If Coronavirus Cases Remain Stable Image Credits: AP Tamil Nadu has become the seventh state in India to extend lockdown till April 30. Odisha, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal and Telangana have also extended the lockdown till April 30. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address the nation at 10 am on April 14 on the future course of action. The 21-day lockdown to contain COVID-19 ends tomorrow. ALSO READ: Total withdrawal, partial lifting or extension of lockdown? Here are a few possibilities Palaniswami said the move was in line with the recommendations of medical and public health experts. In a meeting with PM Modi on April 11, he had expressed that he was in favour of extending the restrictions till the end of April, news agency PTI reported. The heads of several other states had also batted for the same in the meeting with the PM. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show PM Modi had announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown on March 24 in order to contain the spread of COVID-19. ALSO READ: Coronavirus lockdown | India plans to resume some manufacturing after April 15: Sources A would-be burglar's screams for help could be heard from a rooftop as he struggled to escape a pipe he had wedged himself in while trying to break into a business in Houston. The unnamed man was allegedly trying to break into a building on Evergreen Street near Hillcroft in Houston. He apparently got stuck sliding down the pipe and began yelling. The unnamed man was allegedly attempting slide down the pipe to break into a Houston business on Saturday night A witness in the area heard the man screaming and called 911. 'He said somebody was texting him from inside,' Oscar Ramirez told ABC 13. 'He said somebody was chasing him from inside.' When fire crews finally arrived, it took them 45 minutes to pry the man loose. He was later turned over to local police, who say he was attempting to break into the building. The suspect was later laid on a stretcher and taken to a local hospital, where he is in stable condition. Fire crews spent 45 minutes later to remove the man from the pipe he had been wedged in A key tool in the fight against COVID-19 has disappeared from American retail shelves at the worst possible time. After sales exploded in March, personal thermometers frequently have gone missing in the weeks since, leaving consumers without a cheap and easy way to detect whether theyve got a fever and might be part of the pandemic. The shortage is even worse than with toilet paper. And the problem is not likely to get fixed for months unless customers spring for more expensive models or if theres an intervention of some sort. Lack of supply and huge demand, said Stan Cohen, owner of 180 Innovations, a firm outside of Denver that imports thermometers for American retailers. The supply-chain breakdown goes back to China, which makes about 90% or more of the popular thermometers normally found at American retailers such as Walgreens, CVS Health, Rite Aid and others, Cohen said. Empty shelves for thermometers are seen at a store on March 10, 2020 in New York City. There are now 20 confirmed coronavirus cases in the city including a 7-year-old girl in the Bronx. How thermometers get to U.S. shelves Before they land on the shelves at these retailers for as little as $6 to $10 each, such thermometers typically are manufactured in China and then transported in containers on ocean freighters. After that, they are imported into the U.S. and sent to a distribution center for shipment to retailers. That process normally takes about three months or more. But these are not normal times, as evidenced by a storm of events that made thermometers exceptionally scarce for Americans: Before the coronavirus outbreak spread to the U.S., demand for these devices already was high because of flu season. Then, COVID-19 shut down China about the same time as the Chinese New Year. Then, the Chinese government made sure an ample supply stayed there, Cohen said. After that, COVID-19 spread in the U.S, spiking demand for these products to the point that they reached $78.4 million in sales for the four-week period ending March 22, an increase of 232% from the same period a year earlier, according to IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm. Story continues Thats also about when the supply started drying up. A week later, IRI's data shows that personal thermometer sales nosedived to $8.7 million for the week ending March 29, a decrease of 58% from the previous week and just 85% of last years sales for the same period, when there was no pandemic. The former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even chimed in about the need for thermometers March 31 on Twitter. I sure hope SOMEONE is coordinating thermometer production, Tom Frieden wrote. Every household needs one. And buildings will need no-touch thermometers, tho they are far from perfect. I sure hope SOMEONE is coordinating thermometer production. Every household needs one. And buildings will need no-touch thermometers, tho they are far from perfect. https://t.co/tqWXjH2n1r Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) March 31, 2020 His comments drew a string of complaints about the shortage, with many saying they ordered some but were told they wouldnt be receiving them for a month or more. When are thermometers coming back? Cohen said he normally might import about 3 million thermometers per year from China, with CVS Health and Rite Aid being his biggest customers. He said the shortage recently prompted those companies to take the unusual step of ordering a batch of thermometers at a premium to be shipped via air freight instead of merchant ship an intervention of sorts that is more expensive but should get the product on shelves for customers more quickly. This could provide at least a temporary replenishment of supplies on real and virtual shelves in the coming weeks, though its unclear how long that supply might last or if it will lead to an increase in prices. Were working with our supplier partners to get the right products on the shelves as soon as we possibly can, said Rite Aid spokesman Chris Savarese, who declined further comment. CVS also declined further comment except for also saying it is working with suppliers to meet demand. How to get them: Here's where you can still buy thermometers Empty rolls: Getting to the bottom of the toilet paper shortage Where are the wipes? COVID-19 wiped out disinfectants, but heres when you can buy again Cohens company is one of the biggest American private label companies in the thermometer import business along with Veridian Healthcare, another importer and distributor based in Illinois. In response to an inquiry to that companys customer service line, a representative said stick thermometers are filtering in all the way from mid-May all the way through July. Non-contact thermometers will be filtering in June through August, the representative said. Asked the reason for the delay, the representative said, coronavirus and China being down. This jibes with the normal ordering time, Cohen said. Our normal lead time, when we normally place an order, its two months before it ships and a month on the water via merchant ship, Cohen said. And were just now getting shipments from the factories, and thats on limited production. Its going to take a couple of months to get everybody resupplied. Two other popular thermometer brands, Braun and Vicks, are part of the Helen of Troy company based El Paso. A representative for the company declined to comment, saying the company couldnt talk about it during the quiet period before its earnings call April 28. There are different types, from your basic mercury thermometer to digital, and they are mostly made in China, said Patrick Penfield, professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse. The issue with the thermometers is that demand has surged, and the Chinese manufacturers have had issues. Much of the thermometer demand recently is for infrared thermometers that dont require contact with a persons head or body. China used these to take temperatures and screen for sick people during its outbreak. In the U.S., a recent inspector generals report for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that hospitals reported shortages of these thermometers needed for temperature screening. Thats the hottest product right now, Cohen said. They are hard to get. For like CVS, it was everything across the board. All the thermometers. We have temple thermometers, ear thermometers. All of them were just selling like crazy. Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: Why thermometer supplies suddenly went cold in pandemic A California woman who last year said Joe Biden touched her neck and shoulders when she worked in his Senate office in 1993 is now accusing him of sexually assaulting her that year in a semiprivate area of the Capitol complex, an allegation the Biden campaign denies. The Washington Post has been examining Tara Reade's allegation over the past three weeks, since she said on a podcast that Biden had pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt and pushed his fingers inside her. At the time, she was a 29-year-old staff assistant. The Post has interviewed Reade on multiple occasions - both this year and last - as well as people she says she told of the assault claim and more than a half-dozen former staffers of Biden's Senate office. In interviews with The Post last year, Reade said Biden had touched her neck and shoulders, but she did not mention the alleged assault or suggest there was more to the story. She faulted his staff, calling Biden "a male of his time, a very powerful senator, and he had people around saying it was OK." She acknowledged in more recent interviews that she twice voted for the Obama-Biden ticket, saying she strongly supported their political positions. Since January, Reade has been a vocal supporter of Biden's former rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. She said political considerations played no role in her decision to raise the sexual assault allegation. President Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. and the president's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, sought to inject Reade's allegation into the presidential campaign on Saturday by accusing the media on Twitter of not covering it. After The New York Times published a story about Reade's account Sunday morning, social media lit up as partisans either rushed to equate it to widely publicized claims against other powerful men or to point out ways in which hers is different. The former vice president has been accused of unwanted hugging and other physical contact, but The Post found no other allegations against him as serious as Reade's. More than a dozen women, by contrast, have accused Trump of forced kissing, groping or sexual assault, and he has been recorded on audio boasting about grabbing women between their legs. On Thursday, Reade filed a complaint with District of Columbia police. She told The Post that she did so because she is being harassed online and wanted law enforcement to be aware of her claim. A public record of the complaint does not name Biden but says Reade "disclosed that she believes she was the victim of a sexual assault" in 1993. Reade told The Post that she gave police a long interview describing the alleged assault by Biden. The portion of the police report detailing her allegation is not public. Filing a false report is a crime punishable by up to 30 days in jail. Reade, now 56, said in recent interviews that she was afraid to report the assault or talk about it publicly last year, when she accused Biden of unwanted touching in online posts and media interviews. In those accounts, she said she complained to supervisors about the alleged neck and shoulder contact and a request from a supervisor that she serve drinks at a reception. She said the supervisors later ostracized her and told her to look for another job. "I didn't have the courage to come forward" about the assault, Reade said. "I couldn't get the words out. . . . As time has progressed, I felt stronger about speaking my truth. I realized I had to do this." Reade said she described the alleged assault soon after it happened to her mother, who died in 2016, and to a friend, a former intern for another lawmaker. In an interview, the friend corroborated Reade's account of their conversation but declined to be named in this report. In another recent interview, Reade's brother, Collin Moulton, said she told him in 1993 that Biden had behaved inappropriately by touching her neck and shoulders. Their mother urged Reade to contact the police, Moulton said, adding that he felt "ashamed now for not being a better advocate" for his sister. Several days after that interview, he said in a text message that he recalled her telling him that Biden had put his hand "under her clothes." Reade said she told a therapist this year about the alleged assault. The Post asked Reade for the therapist's notes of that conversation, but she has not produced them. Biden's presidential campaign called Reade's accusations false. "Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women," said Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager and communications director. "He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard - and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen." The campaign also released a statement attributed to Marianne Baker, who was an executive assistant in the office and one of the supervisors to whom Reade says she made a harassment complaint. "In all my years working for Sen. Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period - not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone," Baker said. "I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade's accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager. These clearly false allegations are in complete contradiction to both the inner workings of our Senate office and to the man I know and worked so closely with for almost two decades." Baker did not respond to messages seeking comment. Reade worked for Biden's office from December 1992 to early August 1993, according to Senate records. She said she complained about feeling uncomfortable - but not the alleged assault - to two other supervisors in the Senate office: Dennis Toner, deputy chief of staff; and Ted Kaufman, chief of staff. "I would remember something like this if it ever came up," Toner, a Delaware-based consultant, told The Post in an interview. "I think it's an outrageous accusation that's totally untrue." Kaufman said: "It never came up. And I sure would have remembered if it did." Kaufman has no formal role on the campaign but remains a close confidant. Reade initially oversaw a group of interns. Two recalled that Reade abruptly stopped overseeing them in April - just a few weeks after the interns arrived - but neither was aware of the circumstances that led to her departure. Reade stopped working in the office several months later. The 2020 presidential campaign will be the first since the #MeToo movement in late 2017 began inspiring women to share stories of abuse by powerful men. Near the end of the 2016 campaign, The Post uncovered a 2005 videotape in which Trump bragged that because of his fame he could grab women between the legs, comments he dismissed later as "locker-room banter." In the days after that audio was published, about a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct going back decades. Their stories ranged from Trump groping their breasts and buttocks to him kissing them on the lips without consent. Trump called the women liars. More recently, he has denied a New York writer's allegation that he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room more than two decades ago. Last spring, as Biden was preparing to formally enter the presidential race, about a half dozen women came forward with stories of unwanted touching or displays of affection. None alleged sexual assault. Among them was Lucy Flores, who said that in 2014 the then-vice-president touched and kissed the back of her head during her campaign for Nevada's lieutenant governor. Biden pledged to be "more respectful of people's personal space." But he joked about the criticism two days later, and he has remained physically affectionate during campaign events, where some supporters ask for hugs. Flores' story inspired Reade to offer her own account to her local newspaper, The Union, in Nevada County, California, Reade said. The details in that article matched the narrative Reade gave The Post the next day in a telephone interview. She said in that interview, on April 4, 2019, that on at least three occasions Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she walked in on an argument between two staffers, in which one suggested that Reade was being asked to serve drinks at a reception because Biden thought she was pretty and liked her legs. She said the supervisors she later complained to dismissed her concerns, told her to wear less provocative clothing and took away responsibilities before finally asking her to resign. In The Post interview last year, she laid more blame with Biden's staff for "bullying" her than with Biden. "This is what I want to emphasize: It's not him. It's the people around him who keep covering for him," Reade said, adding later, "For instance, he should have known what was happening to me. . . . Looking back now, that's my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff." The Post last year published other accusations of unwanted touching by Biden but not Reade's. A friend who she said she had told of the harassment did not respond last year to requests for comment. That friend - the same one who in recent days confirmed that Reade told her of the alleged assault - said she had no memory of receiving calls from The Post. After Reade went public with her account of harassment, she faced a backlash on social media. Her effusive praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin - she described him in a Medium post in December 2018 as a "compassionate, caring, visionary leader" - led to attacks that she was seeking to advance Russian interests. Reade told The Post that she had gained admiration for Putin while doing research on Russia for a novel. She said she took down the Putin-related posts because of the attacks. Throughout the rest of 2019, she tweeted dozens of times at several Democratic contenders and at least once at Trump, saying Biden sexually harassed her when she worked in his Senate office years earlier. "I don't have an agenda other than I just wanted my story told," said Reade, who has a law degree and was working part time assisting families with special-needs children when the coronavirus pandemic hit. On Saturday, she retweeted Trump's son's admonishment of the news media with a comment: "Please Republicans do not use my assault for political gain. Help me pressure @cnn, @nbc, @wapo, @newyorker to question Joe Biden. Thank you" Reade's allegations gained traction among some supporters of Sanders, who quit the race last week amid mounting pressure as Biden swept most primary voting states. Reade said she only recently backed Sanders and previously leaned toward some of his Democratic rivals. She gave $5 through the ActBlue fundraising website to then-candidate Marianne Williamson in August 2019, public records show. But since January, Reade has repeatedly plugged Sanders' campaign while criticizing Biden on social media. A March 5 tweet called Biden "a misogynist pred" while touting a potential ticket led by Sanders with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as his running mate. "Tell Bernie to stay in! voters deserve to hear my silenced history w Biden," Reade said on Twitter on March 22. Two days later, The Intercept posted an article describing the alleged harassment and Reade's appeals for help in January from the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, a project of the National Women's Law Center that offers sexual harassment victims financial support and referrals to lawyers and public relations professionals. The Intercept story did not mention her assault allegations. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the fund said it does not offer financial assistance in every case. Uma Iyer, vice president for communications with the law center, said the group's nonprofit status prohibits it from underwriting cases involving allegations against political candidates. "In Ms. Reade's situation our determination was based on the fact that her allegations were against a presidential candidate in an election year and primary season," Iyer said. The group's nonprofit designation, Iyer said, "mandates a strict and absolute prohibition on participating in electioneering or political activity, and we could not fund a public relations effort around these allegations without significant risk of running afoul of these strict legal rules." The day after the Intercept article published, another media outlet, a podcast co-hosted by Sanders supporter Katie Halper, released an interview in which Reade described the alleged assault. In the recent interviews with The Post, Reade said she could not remember exactly where in the Capitol complex she was when she met Biden to deliver a gym bag to him. She was wearing a skirt and no stockings because it was a warm day in April or May, she said. "He put me up against the wall and took the bag," she said. "He reached up underneath my skirt. . . . I remember two fingers. . . . It was such a nightmare." She said he asked, "Do you want to go somewhere else?" She said that when she pulled away, he said, "Come on, man, I thought you liked me," then told her that she meant "nothing" before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, "You're OK." The friend who Reade said she told about the incident at the time had interned on Capitol Hill and was in college in Virginia at the time of the alleged assault. "I still remember that she handed off the gym bag and then she was pinned up against the wall," Reade's friend said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she feared online harassment and professional consequences. "His hands went under her skirt. . . . He pushed his fingers into her, not at her invitation. Not at her request. She was confused about why he thought it was OK to do that." Reade's younger brother, Moulton, said she had told him parts of her experience with Biden but not the alleged sexual assault. "I heard that there was a gym bag incident . . . and that he was inappropriate," Moulton said. "I remember her telling me he said she was nothing to him." A few days after that interview, Moulton sent the text saying he wanted to clarify his remarks. He wrote that he recalled Reade telling him in the early 1990s that Biden had cornered her and put his hands under her clothes. Another friend of Reade's said that in 2006 or 2007 Reade told her Biden had touched her arm and behaved inappropriately. She had no other details, she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of concern she might face online attacks. Reade said that in 1993 she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources or personnel office but did not remember the exact name. Her complaint dealt only with the alleged harassment, not the assault, she said. The Post could find no record of the complaint, and Reade said she never received a copy. The Senate Office of Fair Employment Practices, which fielded complaints starting in 1992, was replaced under a 1995 law and is now called the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. Biden staffers who might have been alerted to such a complaint said they do not recall hearing of one, and Biden's official Senate papers were donated to the University of Delaware but remain sealed from the public. In interviews with six former Biden staffers who overlapped with Reade, many were hesitant to cast doubt on an individual woman's account but said Reade's story did not match their experience in a tightknit office with high-ranking female staffers. None of those reached by The Post recalled witnessing Biden putting his hands on Reade or the request that she serve drinks. "There was never anything like that that was ever a part of the culture of working on the Hill at that time for Biden," said Melissa Lefko, who worked as a staff assistant in 1993. "There were plenty of other senators I could point in your direction as known for their sexual predatory behavior of female staffers. Biden was never, ever one of those senators. Never. Never." In Medium posts in January and one in April 2019, Reade said no one on Capitol Hill would hire her after she complained about Biden's behavior and the request that she serve drinks. In late 2018, she wrote that she left Washington to pursue an acting and artistic career, turned off by what she called the U.S. government's "xenophobia" toward Russia. In a 2009 essay that noted Biden's work on the Violence Against Women Act, she discussed moving from Washington to the Midwest to be with a boyfriend. She occasionally has tweeted positively about Biden, saying in 2017, "My old boss speaks truth. Listen" with a link to a BBC story about Biden calling for the tech industry to help fight cancer. Reade told The Post in a recent interview that she tweeted support of him because she admired some things about Biden despite the alleged assault. "Here's the person I admire, who stands for all I believe in," she said. "At the same time, that's what happened to me personally." - - - The Washington Post's Peter Hermann and David Weigel contributed to this report. *Sonnie Badu Lashes Out At Bill's Gates Wife For Saying Africans Will Soon Have Dead Bodies Lying On The Streets US-based Ghanaian Gospel musician Sonnie Badu has lashed out at the wife of the founder of Microsoft Melinda Gates after she passed a comment about Africa. The world is currently finding ways of curing the deadly coronavirus which is gradually wiping people from the face of the earth. But in a recent interview, Melinda Gates revealed that her heart goes out to the people living in developing countries because they would be worst affected. She continued that she foresees that very soon the streets in Africa would soon be filled with dead bodies because of the coronavirus. But Sonnie Badu and other Africans have jumped on the billionaires wife for passing such a statement. According to Sonnie Badu, Melinda is not God to be over stepping her boundaries and saying things of that nature. He added that Africans would surprise the world in the fight against coronavirus aka COVID-19. He shared: You are not God You are only human, Just like us. Do not over step your boundaries, dont worry your time will be up soon Africa will surprise the world, that is why for the first time we are ahead of you all Madam, keep quite my name is BADU VIDEO- Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video PHOENIX, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Colling Media, a top-ranked national digital advertising and marketing agency, continues its recent, impressive growth by adding five new businesses to its prestigious roster of clients. The agency's new clients include: ScriptSave WellRxan innovative prescription medication discount program that closes the gaps in prescription benefit coverage. Diamond Kitchen & Baththe leading retailer of kitchen and bathroom cabinetry and countertops in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Radix Lawa business law firm based in Scottsdale. Soul Surgerya renowned integrative medicine addiction and rehab center in Scottsdale, featuring a holistic approach to drug and alcohol treatment. Premier Criminal Defensebased in San Diego and serving all of Southern California, the firm offers skilled counsel to help clients accused of Misdemeanors, Felony and Federal Offenses. "Despite the economic challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic, we are in the midst of explosive growth," says Brian Colling, CEO of Colling Media. "We've prospered during this difficult time because of our exceptional digital expertise, our ability to generate leads with ever-changing strategic tactics and cost-effective media placement, and because of our focused customer service. Now more than ever, it's important to be nimble and creative. Rather than retreating, we know it's important for brands to stay in front of their customers. We help them do this through a careful auditing of their media spend and by shifting dollars where and when necessary. It's heartening to see that our longtime clients, and many new ones, appreciate our creativity and dedication to getting results." >>See this original news report here: Colling Media Lands Five New Advertising Clients in March and April About Colling Media Colling Media, based in Phoenix, AZ, is a full-service national digital advertising and marketing agency specializing in advertising branding and strategy, digital and traditional advertising, media buying, paid search, lead generation, content marketing and SEO. More information can be obtained at www.collingmedia.com and by following the company on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/colling-media/), Facebook, (https://www.facebook.com/collingmedia/), and Twitter (https://twitter.com/collingmedia). Media Contact: Jordan Walsh 480.889.8944 SOURCE Colling Media Related Links https://collingmedia.com Lets go back to a simpler time, rose lovers. A time when you could go to the grocery store without wearing a mask and gloves. A time when something called two-factor authentication did not exist. A time when Chris Harrison first introduced viewers to Fantasy Suite dates by announcing, Alex has been given three mysterious envelopes. Find out whats inside on The Bachelor! ABC Yep, its time for the exotic overnight dates. I have three incredible women, and I cant really predict which two will continue at this point, says Alex. This is the place where I could make a mistake. You mean another mistake, right Alex? Right? Overnight date no. 1: Amanda Location: New York City Of course, Ms. Sex Swing/Role Play Costumes is excited to spend some alone time with Alex. Its a perfect opportunity to see how physical it could get, she says. But first, its time to play tourist! (Oh, wait Amanda is a tourist. Shes never been to NYC.) As she and Alex take a double-decker bus tour around Manhattan, the Bachelor uses the time to get to know, really get to know, the woman who may become his wife. ABC Dude, seriously??? Theyre called implants. Amanda says she idolized Dolly Parton growing up, and she also felt insecure about her breasts being different sizes, so she chose a surgical remedy. I went from a C to a D, she tells Alex. The Bachelor says he asked because normally hes against plastic surgery, but he is very pleased with Amandas honest answer. (Hes also full of s---. The dude says he doesnt like plastic surgery, but then in the next scene we see him telling Amanda hed like to see her in a Playboy bunny outfit. Eff off, buddy.) ((Of course, right after that, Alex referenced They Might Be Giants, so Ill give him a few points back for that.)) Once their afternoon of tourist activities is over, Alex and Amanda head to Tavern on the Green for a tourist dinner. (Mmmmm overpriced pork chops) Amanda says she is falling in love with Alex but the poor womans dad died unexpectedly when she was 11, so we cant expect her to have good judgment about men. Speaking of which, Amanda wants Alex to know her failed first marriage was actually annulled, so she is not a divorcee. As far as Im concerned, says the Bachelor, shes never been married. Story continues Okay, time for the Mystery Envelope! And guess what, rose love? The Fantasy Suite card language has been almost exactly the same since day one: If you decide to forgo your individual rooms, you can use this key to stay as a couple in our Fantasy Suite. Do I need to tell you that Amanda is all for it? Lets go! she says with a giggle. We practically ran out of that restaurant toward the hotel, admits Alex. They make out all the way to the hotel, and once there, they drink some champagne and make out some more. The Bachelor then ups the romance factor by ordering the Sex in the Sheets dessert a plastic sheet, chocolate syrup, caramel and ice cream from room service. While that sounds like the exact opposite of sexy to me, these two seemed to enjoy it if this grainy, black-and-white after photo of Amanda is to be believed: ABC After their wild and sticky night, Amanda says shes not too nervous about Alexs next two dates. Thank the Lord I was first, she adds. Overnight date No. 2: Shannon Location: Lake Tahoe I have a bunch of things I want to accomplish on my date with Shannon today, says Alex. Those things are: 1) Ski, and 2) Break her out of the mode of thinking that this is just a casual date. Fine, Alex, but friendly reminder: Two is not a bunch its a couple. Shannon, meanwhile, thinks that what she and Alex have is real, but she knows that Amanda and Trista have something real with the Bachelor, too. Will she be able to put her insecurities aside and Open Up in time? Um, no. Some of the questions that you ask, Im not going to answer, says Shannon, when Alex suggests that they need to push the limits of their relationship. And some of the things you may want to do, its just not going to happen. With that, Alex is the first Bachelor to find himself in this franchises signature Catch-22: She cant give herself to me emotionally until she knows that shes the one, and I cant decide that shes the one until she gives herself to me emotionally. Eventually, though, Shannon allows herself to imagine that Alex is her boyfriend until its time for them to get into the hot tub. ABC Shannon kind of had a mental freeze-up about getting into [the hot tub] and revealing herself in a bathing suit, says Alex. Perhaps the Bachelor talked the crew into stepping back a few dozen feet, because we do finally see a shot of Shannon submerging herself in the water from far away. If shes that shy about the hot tub, Im guessing the Fantasy Suite card is really going to rattle her. The Bachelor pulls out the card right after Shannon tells him she doesnt like to kiss in public. Impeccable timing, sir! What are your thoughts? he asks Shannon, after she reads the invite to the shows deluxe chalet. Her thoughts are, Ewwww, do you do this with all of your potential wives? Im not dumb, huffs Shannon in her confessional. Its obvious that all three of us are going to get that same envelope with the same proposition inside. It ruined dinner. It ruined almost the [whole] day! At this point I wanted to scream, WOMAN, YOU ARE ON THE BACHELOR WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? But I had to remind myself that Shannon had no idea, because she, rose lovers, was a season 1 guinea pig. Anyway, Shannon crosses her arms and walks stiffly to the deluxe chalet with Alex. Im not too happy, she tells him. The Bachelor kicks the cameras out so he and his date can talk in semi-private. Later, Alex tells producers that he and Shannon sort of got through it, but now he has some big concerns about her. Um, yeah. Overnight date No. 3: Trista Location: Hawaii At this point, I know Trista less well than the other two women, says Alex, as he greets his final date with a lei. They start their outing with a helicopter tour (of course) of the island. Its so beautiful, Alex starts vomiting. ABC Puking in a bag is the least impressive thing I can think of, frets Alex, but Trista takes the vom situation in stride. Drink some Sprite! she tells him, as they part ways to get changed for the beach. That afternoon, when Trista asks Alex how hes going to make his decision, he says hes looking at it as, who do I want to date right now and I want to date you right now. Wait, what? Did Alex just tell Trista shes the winner? It may be what he wants, but Trista is quote-unquote not there yet. Im in like, she says. Im not in love. Its a reasonable response, but it doesnt sit well with Alex or maybe its last nights dinner thats not sitting well with him. He excuses himself, telling Trista he has to check something on their schedule, but really, hes making a beeline for his hotel room. I throw up five times, I get in bed, I have chills and fever, Im crawling around in pain, says Alex. The Bachelor is worried about getting Trista sick, but she still comes to check on him as he languishes in bed. You feel sickie? she asks in her baby voice. That said, I have to admire how willing Trista is to get into bed with a guy who was recently puking his guts out. ABC It may not be the romantic date they were hoping for, but Alex and Trista use their time to talk about relationship things. For example: Its no big deal, but Ive never had an orgasm during real intercourse, Trista tells Alex, who is more than happy to try to solve that problem. (Probably not tonight, but still, Im sure she appreciated the offer.) The next day, Alex feels well enough to join Trista for an outdoor couples massage on the beach. When its time to leave, the Bachelor is deeply in like too: Trista definitely scored points with me in Hawaii, he says. Invitation Night (Nope): Back in Malibu, Alex says he feels total confusion and panic about narrowing his top three women down to two. I can imagine all of them being my wife, and that is crazy and terrifying, he tells Chris Harrison. [It] probably wouldnt make them too happy to hear, either. So whos it going to be? Rose ceremony roll call: To no ones surprise (even if you havent already watched this season), the final two are Trista and Amanda. Shannon, please take a few moments and say your goodbyes. OMG, rose lovers, its the first appearance of the Bye-Bye Bench! We have to stop at this bench, Alex whispers, as he walks Shannon to the Reject Limo, but she isnt about to sit down. ABC Have fun! she says curtly. Shannon then extends her hand and offers Alex a formal goodbye handshake. She stomps off in a huff toward the limo, only to turn on her heel and march back to the Bachelor. Im just curious why? she asks him. What can Alex say? Shes amazing, but theyre two different people and they would struggle too much in a relationship. Okay, says Shannon. Have fun. Bye! This time, she makes it all the way to the limo. Congrats to the final two! But actual congrats to Trista, who will ride this train of relationship dysfunction straight into her own happily ever after. Sorry, Im getting ahead of myself. Next week, rose lovers, Ill recap the very first Women Tell All special. And tonight, God help me, Ill recap the series premiere of The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart whatever the hell that is. Join me if you dare. Related content: Sonakshi Sinha recently got into a Twitter altercation with The Tashkent Files director Vivek Agnihotri after the latter shared a picture of her from a set and implied that she was shooting amid the coronavirus. This did not go well with the actress and she clarified that the picture was from last year while shooting for Farah Khan's show Backbenchers. Who shoots in such times? Agnihotri had tweeted. To this, Sonakshi replied, Being a Director and member of many unions and film bodies one would expect you to be better informed that Absolutely NO one is shooting since studios are shut and its a national lockdown! I believe Classic freeze frame means throwback in @MumbaiMirror terms, clearly meaning its an old picture, from 5th Nov 2019 to be precise! Aaah... those were the days!" Being a Director and member of many unions and film bodies one would expect you to be better informed that Absolutely NO one is shooting since studios are shut and its a national lockdown! I believe Classic freeze frame means throwback in @MumbaiMirror terms, https://t.co/Nrjlh6PuIH pic.twitter.com/6Z8v0S0Ahr Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) April 13, 2020 clearly meaning its an old picture, from 5th Nov 2019 to be precise! Aaah... those were the days! Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) April 13, 2020 She also tagged Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Mumbai Police's handles and asked their help to stop misinformation. Excuse me @MumbaiPolice, @OfficeofUT what is the procedure to stop people from spreading rumors and fake news at a time like this? Asking for a responsible citizen, sitting at home, practicing social distancing and NOT shooting - ME, she wrote. Excuse me @MumbaiPolice , @OfficeofUT what is the procedure to stop people from spreading rumors and fake news at a time like this? Asking for a responsible citizen, sitting at home, practicing social distancing and NOT shooting - ME pic.twitter.com/piKLznKjoo Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) April 13, 2020 To this, the filmmaker said that his tweet was not a dig at her but at the publication that first shared her picture. The dig is at @MumbaiMirror not you. If I have to say something to you, Id tag you. Its very insensitive to print such pictures in a trying time like this giving wrong impression. As a star you should also very strongly condemn this kind of yellow and insensitive journalism," he wrote. The dig is at @MumbaiMirror not you. If I have to say something to you, Id tag you. Its very insensitive to print such pictures in a trying time like this giving wrong impression. As a star you should also very strongly condemn this kind of yellow and insensitive journalism. Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) April 13, 2020 On the work front, Sonakshi will be seen next in Abhishek Dudhaiyas Bhuj: The Pride Of India, alongside Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt and Nora Fatehi. Follow @News18Movies for more A judge ruled Saturday that the Louisville On Fire Church may conduct a drive-in easter service overruling a Kentucky governmental mandate that all congregants would need to quarantine for 14 days. On Friday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced that those in the state who were to attend mass gatherings, including church services over the Easter break, would have to self-quarantine for 14 days. Beshears threat stated: Any individual thats going to participate in a mass gathering of any type that we know about this weekendwere going to record license plates and provide it to local health departments Local health departments are going to come to your door with an order for you to be quarantined for 14 days. He asked Kentuckians of all faiths to remain at home and consider online services. I guess I hear that there are some individuals that say that this is my choice about whether I go to something and get the coronavirus, but its not the next persons choice that you might spread it to, Beshear said. This is the only way that we can ensure that your decision doesnt kill somebody else, that your decision doesnt spread the coronavirus in your county and in your community. In addition to the governors decree, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer also tried to block the On Fire Christian Center from holding an easter drive-in mass on Sunday, April 12. On Saturday, however, U.S. District Court Judge Justin Walker granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing Louisville Kentucky Mayor, Greg Fischer from blocking On Fire Church from holding drive-in services on Easter, The First Liberty Institute, a religious rights advocacy group who filed the case announced on its website. Judge Walker devoted 20 pages to his opinion memo [pdf], which read in part: On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion,' the judge wrote, calling Louisvilles Mayor Greg Fischers attempt to ban the drive-in services beyond all reason and unconstitutional. Mayor Fischer wrote in response to judge Walkers biting criticism: There was never a Louisville Metro Government ban on drive-in church services, as we would have explained in court if we had been allowed. I urged, and will continue to urge, against these kind of services, because I want to protect my city and its residents from spread of the COVID-19 virus, Fischer wrote, according to WHAS11. Fischer further argued that science indicated that the virus wants to infect as many people as possible. He also stated that the more disciplined citizens are in their behavior, the earlier the problem will be resolved. The Kentucky governor also noted that an outbreak in Hopkins County that sickened dozens and led to multiple deaths was traced to a church revival there in mid-March. The Epoch Times reporter Mimi Nguyen Li contributed to this report Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday directed the removal of Dr Zafar Mirza as the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health for failing to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, in a blow to the Imran Khan-led government's battle against the deadly virus. IMAGE: A police officer detains a doctor who along with others demonstrates against the lack of protective gears for medical staff who are treating coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients in Quetta, Pakistan. Photograph: Naseer Ahmed/Reuters During a hearing on a suo motu case on the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan, a five-member bench of the apex court led by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed observed that Prime Minister Imran Khan's Cabinet has become ineffective in the fight against the pandemic. The bench questioned the integrity of Mirza in tackling the COVID-19 crisis and the transparency of his work done. The judges expressed serious doubt over the eligibility of the senior doctor as prime minister's advisor on health. Expressing dismay over the government's performance to combat coronavirus, the apex court noted that there is a lack of leadership that could maintain unity in the country. The court observed that there were some serious allegations against the team of special assistants to the prime minister. "There is an army of ministers and advisors in place but no work is being done," the Chief Justice said, adding that 'corrupt people' have been kept as advisors in the government. "The prime minister's Cabinet has become ineffective...All the provinces are doing whatever they desire," he remarked and directed the government to remove Mirza from his post. Responding to the Chief Justice's remarks, Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan said the apex court's observations and direction for Mirza's removal would "only cause harm" to the government's efforts in combating the coronavirus crisis. He noted that removing the prime minister's aide during this point and time would be disastrous. "Do not change him mid-flight," the Attorney General said, urging the court to leave the matter on the federal government. The chief justice said he was very careful in passing such remarks, and adjourned the hearing till April 20. Later the court issued written orders directing the governments of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces and the Gilgit-Baltistan authorities to submit the details of actions taken by them to curb the deadly viral infection. However, the written order made no mention of Mirza's removal. Mirza enjoys the status of a state minister. He was appointed Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health last year after the then Health Minister Amir Kayani was removed from his post for failing to check spiralling drug prices. Mirza's removal would be a major setback to the Imran Khan government as he is one who is leading the campaign against COVID-19 in Pakistan and addressing media daily about the steps being taken to control its outbreak. Pakistan has recorded over 5,475 COVID-19 cases on Monday. The death toll has reached 95. The Pakistan Medical Association has said more than 100 doctors, nurses and para medical staff have been infected so far across the country, blaming the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government for not providing them required protective gear. Prime Minister Khan on Sunday appealed for a "global initiative on debt relief" to help Pakistan to overcome disastrous impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. On the First Day of Unblocking in Wuhan, Someone Suddenly Fell on the Street On the first day of having the lockdown lifted in Wuhan, new CCP virus cases appeared in the Hanhua community in Wuhan. The community was placed under lockdown again. Our community Hanhua has been locked down already. You can only enter but not exit. We were notified by higher officials. Guard: Go back home! No one is allowed to leave. Only those who are here to pick up the deliveries can come over and pick up the packages. On the same day, someone suddenly fell on the street. At around 3:30 PM on April 8th, while the train station staff were patrolling near the Cyberport on Dazhi Road, a man was found lying unconscious on the street. The videographer said, Stay away from Dazhi Road. Someone suddenly fell. Just fell here. Oh my God, he fell and didnt move. The authorities later issued a statement claiming that the man was passed out drunk, but the outside world remains skeptical. Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Tuesday threatened 20 years in jail to the author of a statement purporting to bear his signature that said the lockdown to contain the coronavirus outbreak had been extended. Mnangagwa, who was speaking at his farm after touring Gweru city in central Zimbabwe, told state broadcaster ZBC the statement, which circulated on social media last week and was immediately denied by the government, was fake. Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Credit:AP "That is absolutely nonsense, I have never made such a statement," Mnangagwa said. "If we catch this person it must be exemplary and they must go in for at least at level 14, which is 20 years imprisonment. That, I think we need to demonstrate that we don't want false news to be circulated." The southern African nation last month published lockdown regulations, which included jail terms of up to 20 years for people who spread falsehoods regarding the outbreak. National police spokesman Paul Nyathi said more than 5,000 people had been arrested for venturing outside their homes without permission. Mnangagwa said his cabinet would meet this week to decide whether to end, adjust or extend the 21-day lockdown. The authorities have said three people have died and 17 people have been infected in the country of 15 million people. Just over 600 people had been tested by Monday night. In the past week, Zimbabwe has deployed the army to help the police enforce the restrictions. The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) group said this had resulted in an increase in cases of residents being beaten by security forces for defying the lockdown. Police spokesman Nyathi said police had not received any official complains of abuse from residents. ZLHR has approached the High Court on behalf of two Zimbabweans who said they were abused by security forces. "This application seeks an order to protect residents from heavy-handed action by police and soldiers who are invading peoples homes/yards and assaulting people ordering them to stay indoors," ZLHR said in a statement. Zimbabwe's security forces have a history of using heavy handed tactics when enforcing the law and against opponents of the government. In an editorial on Monday, the state-owned Herald newspaper criticised the police for harassing journalists doing their work during the lockdown, including forcing some to delete pictures and video that captured abuses by security forces. Nyathi said he was not aware of the incidents. Reuters Local journalism is important and producing it costs time and money. To continue viewing content on tucson.com, please sign in with your existing account or subscribe. New Delhi: A Special Police Officer (SPO) was killed while another was injured in a terrorists attack at a police party in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district. The incident took place on Monday (April 13) afternoon. According to police sources, terrorists attacked a local police party at Tandar village of Dachan area of the district. Some terrorists opened fire on the two SPOs on duty, killing one of them and leaving the other critically injured. "One policeman was killed and another has been injured in this attack. Reinforcements have been rushed to the area to track down the assailants", police sources said. Reports from the area said the terrorists decamped the scene with two service rifles of the police party. Gariev said the terrorism designation was a big surprise. Probably they decided to put our movement on the list of terrorist organizations because we took an active part in the events in Donbass, he said referring to the war in eastern Ukraine. But the main reason for putting us on the list, in my opinion, is our Christian position. The Retailers Association of India (RAI) and the Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India (TRRAIN) hosted a webinar on April 13 that brought together the three largest consumer facing groups Retailers Association of India, The Clothing Manufacturers Association of India and the National Restaurant Association of India. Together, these three industries provide direct employment to over 76 million Indians. The webinar was moderated by BS Nagesh (Founder of the Trust for Retailers & Retail Associates of India) and featured Anurag Katriar (President of the National Restaurant Association of India), Kumar Rajagopalan (CEO of the Retailers Association of India) and Rahul Mehta (Chief Mentor of the Clothing Manufacturer Association of India) as panelists. During the hour-long session, the speakers proposed some clear approaches and objectives for the industries and voiced their expectations from the government and other stakeholders. Although the lockdown has hit their industries hard, the panelists were unanimous in their praise of the government for taking the bold yet necessary step of imposing a nationwide lockdown at a relatively early stage. As a result, the revenues for the apparel and restaurant businesses have shrunk significantly. Track this blog for latest updates on coronavirus outbreak The operating expenditures in the restaurant business are very high, and with revenues almost down to zero, it is becoming difficult to pay salaries to employees. Meanwhile, apparel businesses could face revenue losses of up to 40 percent, and many small and medium players in the apparel industry are contemplating closure of business. Also Read: Coronavirus impact | Retail industry staring at nearly 20% layoffs Unless the government provides timely assistance, there could be a loss of almost a crore of jobs across the entire textile chain. Rajagopalan of RAI pointed out that the shutting down of marginal businesses would have a multiplier effect on allied sectors. The industries expect government support for only a short duration just long enough for them to survive and ensure, in turn, the survival of millions of livelihoods. The panelists estimated a revival time of between 9-12 months for their industries, and categorically stated that they didnt expect government support for that long. They said that they would, however, appreciate government help for a period of 2-3 months including the lockdown interim support that would help them survive and, in turn, protect the livelihoods of the people dependent on them. Katriar of NRAI stressed the importance of approaching the crisis from a humanitarian, people-focused approach "It is our responsibility as job providers to ensure that our employees keep their homes running. If someone loses their job during this time, it might be difficult to get a new one, at least for a while.The industry will collapse if no help comes our way soon. We need the government to give us the tools to live to fight another day. We need a substantial stimulus package. There have been some policy changes on the anvil for a while; now would be a good time to implement them," he said. Also Read: Coronavirus impact | Retailers, government join hands to ease supply chain woes He also suggested measures such as relaxing the tax burden on businesses, allowing the withdrawal of provident fund up to three lakh rupees, and deferring statutory payments. Mehta of CMAI pointed out that almost 80 percent of the garments industry falls under MSME business category more on the micro business side than any other and would therefore be impacted much harder. He suggested wage subsidy as one of the possible solutions to retain workers and expressed hope that the government would help with providing working capital and an incentive package to restart the industry. Rajagopalan expressed concerns that, without support, many of the small apparel businesses and retailers might have to shut shop. He also encouraged businesses to explore alternate means of financing and pointed to some ways in which the government could help. These included waiving property tax and minimum charges for electricity, and easing of licensing norms. According to him, these were not asks but areas that needed to be addressed, things that brought about ease of doing business in the post-lockdown scenario. He highlighted the fact that various industry associations need to work closely as they are facing the exact same issues working capital and retention of people. Theres a strong case for collaborating and leveraging each others resources, both during these times and after. BS Nagesh of TRRAIN urged businesses to think of the likely situation for the next 9-12 months and beyond and reassess their business strategy accordingly. If your business is down by 40 percent, will you be able to run it at 100 percent? We need the government to support us in ways that will enable us to pay salaries; we want them to help us with working capital. In the meantime, businesses must re-assess their business plans. Change in focus Business focus of companies will change restaurants will try to gain peoples trust; apparel makers will need to improve productivity. The recovery period after the lockdown could see a significant change in business approach. Katriar believes that the restaurant industry will be in for a tough time and that restaurants will have to revamp their communication approach to reassure customers of safety and hygiene. Mehta, meanwhile, opined that the apparel industry would need to rethink its volume-driven strategy, and relook the scale of their operations and their pricing policies. Manufacturing wont commence for another 2-3 months from now, except to complete the work thats already in process. Retailers wont take fresh orders at least until the festive season. The apparel manufacturing industry will need to focus on the one aspect it has largely disregarded so far productivity. He also said that the recovery phase of the industry would provide opportunity for boosting exports and reducing imports. Consumer behaviour will change for good The lockdown has triggered a spike in online purchases among consumers. While this is limited, for now, to essential products and services, it is likely to extend to other categories once the lockdown is lifted. This, however, is unlikely to put permanently consumers off shopping in-store. Mehta reckoned that consumers would get over the fear in a few months, but that online apparel shopping was here to stay. He said that the CMAI was working with the government to introduce standard Indian sizes for apparel so that consumers would know that the garment they choose online will fit them perfectly as long as they specify the size correctly. Nagesh pointed out that consumers and businesses are no longer on opposite sides of the table. Consumers are now a part of the value chain and have an important role to play in reviving the economy. Pakistans military says government troops raided a militant hideout in a former Taliban stronghold near Afghanistan on April 10, triggering a shootout in which seven militants and two soldiers were killed. The military said the raid took place in the North Waziristan region, in the village of Zakir Khel. It said troops carried out the raid after authorities received "confirmed information about the presence of terrorists." The operation follows after a similar raid on March 18 against a suspected militant hideout in Zakir Khel resulted in the deaths of seven militants and four members of Pakistans security forces. North Waziristan served as a stronghold for local and foreign militants until 2014, when the Pakistani Army launched a massive military operation to clear the region of combatants. Despite the armys claims of success, the region on the border of Afghanistan has continued to be the scene of violent attacks, targeted killings, and roadside bombs. Earlier on April 10, a roadside bomb exploded near a Pakistani paramilitary vehicle in the southwestern Balochistan Province. That explosion killed two soldiers who were clearing the area ahead of the construction of fencing along the border with Afghanistan. Two other people were wounded in the blast near the Chaman border crossing, according to local Pakistani officials. With reporting by AP A Pew Research Center survey published on April 8 asked nearly 9,000 Americans: From what youve seen or heard, do you think it is most likely the current strain of the coronavirus came about naturally or was made in a lab (intentionally or accidentally)? 43% said it came about naturally, which scientists say is likely the correct answer. 29% -- more than a quarter -- said it was developed in a laboratory. Much is still unknown about the coronavirus, which first widely spread among humans late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Researchers investigating the outbreak say the virus most likely originated in bats and infected humans through an intermediary animal, possibly the pangolin. There is no evidence at this time that the virus originated in a laboratory. The Pew survey, which has a margin for error of 1.6 percentage points, found that young Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the coronavirus was made in a lab. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed who are between 18 and 29 said the virus was created by scientists. Twenty-one percent of respondents 65 and older had reached the same conclusion. Survey respondents with a college degree were far less likely to believe the virus originated in a laboratory than those without a postsecondary degree. Sixty-one percent of interviewees who have a college degree said the virus originated in nature. Thirty-one percent of those without a college degree said the same thing. Republicans were more likely than Democrats (37% to 21%) to say the virus started in a lab. Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas suggested in February that the virus might have been created in a Wuhan lab. We dont have evidence that this disease originated there, Cotton said on Fox News. But because of Chinas duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all. Chinas government has reportedly suppressed information about the extent of the outbreak in its country and the origin of the outbreak. It also has helped spread conspiracy theories. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman last month falsely claimed the U.S. Army might have brought the epidemic to Wuhan. UPDATE: The Pew survey asked respondents whether the coronavirus came about naturally or was made in a lab." New reporting this week found that U.S. intelligence is looking into the possibility that its both: the virus came about naturally and it initially spread in humans because of mistakes at a research lab. No conclusions have yet been reached. -- Douglas Perry @douglasmperry Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Category Select Category Apparel/Garments Textiles Fashion Technical Textiles Information Technology E-commerce Retail Corporate Association Press Release SubCategory Select Sub-Category ONLINE SERVICES UP AND RUNNING: Last weeks column included that in-person Motor Vehicle Division transactions are on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. And that has many New Mexico drivers asking how to proceed. Len Lorence emails, My non-Real ID drivers license expires in July 2020. Does the extension of the deadline of Real ID until Oct. 1, 2021, also mean that the drivers license renewals have been extended as well so that I can drive with an expired license until Oct. 1, 2021? No MVD says, The expiration date of a drivers license is set in state law so we cannot extend or alter the expiration date printed on your license. But you have a couple of options on renewal. More on that in a sec. Dan Bond emailed, Got my registration and requirement for an emissions check notice in the mail. Due to the governors stay-home directives wondered about the status of auto registration. Went online to find any updates. Nothing. Tried to call one of the offices. No answer. Went to the MVD website and found all offices are closed. Does this include online processing offices in Santa Fe? I register online. Is that still open? Do I still need an emissions check to register? Perhaps the whole process is suspended until some future date? No, yes, yes, no. MVD has updated its website, and there are a lot of transactions that can be completed online. According to www.mvd.newmexico.gov: You can renew your Real ID license. You can renew your non-Real ID license for a standard license and get a Real ID later if you need it to fly after Oct. 1, 2021. (If you have a passport thats all you will need to fly.) You can renew your Real ID commercial drivers license as long as you dont have a hazmat endorsement. (And the feds have issued a waiver so CDL drivers can continue to work on an expired license.) You can renew your vehicle registration. BUT WHAT ABOUT 1ST-TIME REAL ID AND OVER 79S? However, there are some transactions that have to be done in person, and as of now the MVD does not have a re-open date. So, folks who need to present their documents for their first Real ID (and dont want to renew online with a standard license in the interim), folks who are over age 79 and need to take an eye exam when they renew each year, and folks who need to wait for a doctors appointment for their medical/vision report get to hang out until things re-open. The MVD website says, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued an executive order on March 30 that allowed us to waive late fees and penalties on licenses that expire during MVD office closures and for a reasonable period of time after our offices reopen. The order also directs State Police not to issue citations for registrations or licenses that expire while MVD field offices are closed. Local law enforcement agencies have been encouraged to do the same. You will not be suspended for not submitting your medical/vision report during this time. Once the field offices are open back to regular hours, you will have a 30-day grace period to submit your medical/vision report. You will receive a reminder notice in the mail. EMAIL FOR SPECIFIC QUESTIONS: Meanwhile, if you have a specific question, MVD has set up specific email streams to get answers out more efficiently: For questions about a DWI or to reinstate an interlock license, email dwi.reinstate@state.nm.us. For questions about a license for someone 79 and older, email mvd.forseniors@state.nm.us. For questions about a CDL, email NMCDL.HelpDesk@state.nm.us. For all others, email mvd.closure@state.nm.us. EMISSIONS CHECKS CONTINUE: Finally, I let my fingers do the walking and found the emissions-check businesses are open, so Bernalillo County folks who need one can complete their vehicle registration online. Last weeks column included the city Vehicle Pollution Management Division saying the emissions testing requirement is essentially on hold until the registration process is back. The MVD website explains that those who are not able to get emissions timely will not be suspended. The governors executive order directs State Police not to issue citations for registrations that are expired, and local law enforcement agencies have been encouraged to do the same. Emissions will have to be completed at the time of registration. Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the Metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or 7777 Jefferson NE, Albuquerque, N.M., 87109. US President said on Monday it was his decision when to reopen the US economy, not that of state governors, but legal experts disagree and governors are going their own way. Trump last month extended federal stay at home guidelines through April and has made clear he wanted the economy to reopen as soon as possible after the outbreak that has killed nearly 22,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs. However, he also has said he would listen to US health experts and others in making any recommendations. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!" Trump wrote on Twitter. The Republican president accused news media of incorrectly saying it was the governors decision. However, legal analysts say a US President has quite limited power to order citizens back to their places of employment, or cities to reopen government buildings, transportation, or local businesses. If there's one aspect of the public's appearance that's improved from sheltering in place, it may have been the beards of this year's Hunky Jesus contestants. Just over 5,000 viewers tuned into the virtual pageant hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on Twitch, while at least 250 others joined an accompanying Zoom conference call to show off their most blasphemous Easter Sunday looks and cheer on their favorite contestants vying for control of the crown of thorns. This year's event served as a fundraiser for the SF Queer Nightlife Fund, a local collective of nightlife organizers, venue owners and nonprofit community leaders providing financial aid to LGBTQ+ workers impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Coinciding with the Sisters' annual event that happened at Dolores Park until this year, the collective has been hosting weekly "Quaran-Tea" dance parties with local DJs to encourage contributions. "Queer nightlife is a renowned and integral aspect of San Francisco Bay Area culture," wrote Race Bannon, a pioneering spokesperson for the leather community who is on the steering committee for the fund and helped moderate the livestream. "The people who produce and staff local queer nightlife have been financially devastated by the venue closures resulting from the coronavirus crisis. The Bay Area is known worldwide as a center for amazing queer nightlife. Lets keep that nightlife alive by lending a helping hand to those who need our help in these trying times. Earlier in March, the Sisters announced the Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary competition and Easter celebration would be postponed, keeping in line with the citywide ban of gatherings of over 1,000 or more people at the time. As circumstances shifted to shelter-in-place orders, the Sisters decided on moving the competition to Instagram, where they would post photos of the top contestants for the public to vote on by liking or commenting. It was the first time the competition was open to hopeful Jesus and Mary lookalikes nationwide not just the Bay Area. Our Easter in the Park has already become part of the San Francisco culture, and every year we get visitors from all over the country. Having the contest open to everyone gives us the opportunity to connect with folks that cant be here in person this year but would love to join the fun, Sister Tilda told the Chronicle. The winners won't be announced until later this week, but this year's contestants included a Mohawk Jesus, who created his own short film for the project, as well as a "Jesusville" Jesus inspired by Justin Timberlake's iconic recurring "Saturday Night Live" sketch. A Skunky Jesus posed with (what else?) marijuana nugs strategically positioned in his armpit, and a "Jesus of Jerusalem" now living in Emeryville described his childhood growing up surrounded "by mountains, the Holy Spirit and hot boys" until he moved to San Francisco and was "baptized in queerness." A crowd favorite may have been "Quarantined with my In-Laws Jesus." The contestant from New Jersey said that a quick weekend trip to visit his spouse's parents in New Hampshire turned out to be longer than he expected. "Jesus spent three days before he rose. QWMIL Jesus has been stuck here for three weeks," he wrote in his submission, which also included a video of himself dancing in the living room with the aforementioned in-laws and even stealing some wine. Responding to the videos in real time during the livestream, Sister Roma asked, "I wonder if they knew he was entering a Hunky Jesus competition with a bunch of crazy drag nuns? It doesnt matter, that was amazing. Just as entertaining were the Foxy Mary contestants, including "The Other Mary," a contender who said they were inspired to pay homage to Mary Magdalene as a former sex worker and current drag queen. And "Virgen de Potdalupe" said she's been passing the time in quarantine by "smoking grass and listening to her favorite mariachi songs from her childhood" in Mexico. As of Saturday, the SF Queer Nightlife Fund had raised over $122,000, with the majority of contributions coming from 1,168 individual donors, according to the SF Queer Nightlife Fund's website. Their goal is to raise $200,000 roughly a thousand dollars for each grant applicant to use toward food, medical and other lifeline necessities. By the end of Sunday's Hunky Jesus competition, the Sisters raised over $10,000 for the fund, contributing an additional $20,000 to the recipients of their 2020 Easter Grant cycle. "We can't be in the park right now, but we are here," Sister Roma said as the event came to a close. "I would like to send a huge heartfelt thank you to the organizers the work that you're doing is compassionate and truly exemplifies San Francisco values. I can't wait to see you all in person and give you a great big hug." MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Amanda Bartlett is an SFGATE associate digital reporter. Email: amanda.bartlett@sfgate.com | Twitter: @byabartlett The Supreme Court on Monday said that those in Assam's detention centres since two years may be released on a personal bond with two sureties and reduced the surety amount from Rs 1 lakh in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic The Supreme Court on Monday said that those in Assam's detention centres for the past two years may be released on a personal bond with two sureties and reduced the surety amount in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Bar and Bench reported. A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde, conducting a hearing via video-conferencing, was examining a plea pertaining to the issue of overcrowding and infrastructure of prisons across the country as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India crossed 9,150. The apex court modified its 10 May, 2019 order, according to which foreigners who had served more than three years could be released on bail after production of two sureties worth a lakh each and a bond. The plea was filed by Justice and Liberty Initiative, an Assam-based non-profit providing legal support to individuals facing proceedings before the states Foreigners Tribunals. The Bench, also comprising, Justices L Nageshwara Rao and Mohan M Shantanagoudar, reduced the surety amounts from Rs 1 lakh each to Rs 5,000 each. The people being released should have enough roots in society, the CJI said in response to Gonsalves concern over the problems detainees may face in getting sureties. Responding to senior advocate Salman Khurshid about the order regarding the release of prisoners extended to those in Assams detention centres, the AG responded, "The purpose of the lockdown will be defeated if prisoners will be released at this time. If they are affected and released and allowed to travel, they may spread the disease further." In response, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said that the health authorities are keeping an eye on them. Calling the measure to release prisoners a double-edged sword, the CJI said that they should be transported but while maintaining the social distancing norm. Follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak here Responding to the CJI on ensuring that these detainees do not disappear after release, Gonsalves, appearing for National Forum for Prison Reforms, said, They are not foreigners in the real sense. They have been living here for five decades but don't have papers to show. Many prisoners have sons and grandsons and they have, in fact, agricultural land over here." Advocate TK Singh mentioned that the jail manual only allows grant of parole for 30 days and inquired about the further measures to be taken when this period expires. "We will say that it can be extended it further. We will pass the order today," Live Law reported the Bench as saying. On 16 March, the apex court has said in an order that it is the bitter truth is that our prisons are overcrowded and that there was a high risk of transmission of COVID-19 virus to the prison inmates. On the next date of hearing, a week later, the court directed all states and union territories to form a High Powered Committee to determine which class of prisoners can be released on parole or interim bail to avoid spreading the infection. Looking into the possible threat of transmission and fatal consequences, it is necessary that the prisons must ensure maximum possible distancing among the prisoners including undertrials, the court observed. On 31 March, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization issued a joint statement for the release of refugees and migrants held in detention. The situation for refugees and migrants held in formal and informal places of detention, in cramped and unsanitary conditions, is particularly worrying. Considering the lethal consequences a COVID-19 outbreak would have, they should be released without delay, the statement read. Assam reported its first confirmed coronavirus case on 31 March. As on Monday, the state has 29 confirmed cases. TORONTO, April 13, 2020 /CNW/ - Orvana Minerals Corp. (TSX:ORV) (the "Company" or "Orvana") reports that production at its Spanish operations have restarted after a temporary suspension, in compliance with the Spanish Government's Extended Lockown Order (as defined below) to contain the advancement of the COVID-19 virus. The Company is also reporting its production results for the second quarter of fiscal 2020 ("Q2 2020"). Resuming Production Activities As announced in the Company's news release on March 30, 2020, the Company temporarily reduced its normal mining operations at OroValle to the minimum essential activities in accordance with the legislation passed by the Spain's Government on March 29th, 2020 to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. (the "Extended Lockdown Order"). However, during the Extended Lockdown Order period, the Company was able to gradually re-start production activities at OroValle, after the Government passed clarifying rules allowing export industries to resume production where such production was subject to international contractual commitments. The Extended Lockdown Order expired on April 9, 2020. The Company continues to implement comprehensive and proactive measures to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic; and continues to work closely with local governments and authorities to ensure proper protocols are followed during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. CEO Juan Gavidia stated, "Our team continues to prioritize and focus on the health and safety of the workforce through the implementation of preventive protocols and strictly following the health authority's recommendations. The Company continues to assess potential COVID-19 impacts on operations and continues to adhere to directives from the central and local governments". Q2 FY2020 Highlights: G old output, at 12,139 ounces. Gold-equivalent output, at 14,843 ounces. Brownfield and greenfield exploration continues at Orovalle to extend the mine life. El Valle Quarterly 12,139 ounces gold production was 12% lower than previous quarter, due to lower throughput and lower ore grade on weakened oxides/skarns blending. Gold head grade of 2.74 g/t declined, compared to 2.98 g/t reported in Q1 FY2020. Copper production was 1.4 million pounds, compared to 0.9 million pounds in Q1 FY2020. Mine exploration activities continue to focus on high-grade oxides areas to ensure optimum feed blending for years to come. Carles exploration drilling is in progress, with 1,500 meters drilled to date. Results will be provided in due course, once the program is completed. Don Mario The Company's Don Mario gold-silver property in Bolivia continues its care and maintenance phase, as previously announced on November 8, 2019, while development and engineering of the oxides stockpile is being advance. The small team of essential employees at Don Mario are following both Orvana and governmental requirements relating to the containment of COVID-19. Production Results Q2 2020 Q1 2020 Q2 2019 El Valle Don Mario Total El Valle Don Mario Total El Valle Don Mario Total Ore milled (tones) 148,339 - 148,339 155,662 64,875 220,537 170,435 188,606 359,041 Gold Equivalent (oz) 14,843 - 14,843 15,654 2,132 17,786 21,414 9,677 31,091 Gold Grade (g/t) 2.74 - 2.74 2.98 1.07 2.42 3.49 1.68 2.54 Recovery (%) 93.0 - 93.0 92.2 84.4 92.2 92.7 94.0 93.2 Production (oz) 12,139 - 12,139 13,722 2,093 15,815 17,742 9,564 27,306 Copper Grade (%) 0.52 - 0.52 0.36 - 0.36 0.49 - 0.49 Recovery (%) 83.1 - 83.1 71.5 - 71.5 78.1 - 78.1 Production (K lbs) 1,422 - 1,422 892 - 892 1,441 - 1,441 Fiscal 2020 Guidance The Company continues to assess and identify opportunities to mitigate the potential effects of COVID-19 on its day-to-day operations. The Company also continues to closely monitor the very fluid COVID-19 situation, constantly updating scenarios, reviewing the latest guidance from the health authorities and engaging with local authorities. Nonetheless, given the uncertainties with respect to future developments, including without limitation: (i) duration, severity and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic; (ii) the effect of the COVID-19 situation on the future availability of mining supply and services that support operations; (iii) the effect of the COVID-19 situation could have on the Company's future operations and financial condition; and (iv) the necessary government responses to limiting the spread of COVID-19 spread, Orvana has decided to suspend its 2020 guidance until the Company is in a better position to quantify the impact. An update to the market on any further developments as a result of the COVID-19 situation will be provided in mid-May or earlier. ABOUT ORVANA - Orvana is a multi-mine gold-copper-silver company. Orvana's assets consist of the producing El Valle and Carles gold-copper-silver mines in northern Spain, and the Don Mario gold-silver property in Bolivia, currently in care and maintenance. Additional information is available at Orvana's website (www.orvana.com). Cautionary Statements - Forward-Looking Information Certain statements made herein constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, potentials, future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "believes", "expects", "plans", "estimates", "intends" or "anticipates" or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will" or "are projected to" be taken or achieved) are not statements of historical fact, but are forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements herein relate to, among other things: Orvana's ability to achieve improvement in free cash flow; the potential to extend the mine life of El Valle and Don Mario beyond their current life-of-mine estimates including specifically, but not limited to in the case of Don Mario, the processing of the mineral stockpiles and the reprocessing of the tailings material; Orvana's ability to optimize its assets to deliver shareholder value; the Company's ability to optimize productivity at Don Mario and El Valle; any measures taken by the Company to prevent and/or mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases at or near the Company's mines and support the sustainability of its business including through the development of crisis management plans, increasing stock levels for key supplies, monitoring of guidance from the medical community, and engagement with local communities and authorities; estimates of future production, operating costs and capital expenditures; mineral resource and reserve estimates; statements and information regarding future feasibility studies and their results; future transactions; future metal prices; the ability to achieve additional growth and geographic diversification; future financial performance, including the ability to increase cash flow and profits; future financing requirements; and mine development plans. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company as of the date of such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. The estimates and assumptions of the Company contained or incorporated by reference in this news release, which may prove to be incorrect, include, but are not limited to, the various assumptions set forth herein and in Orvana's most recently filed Management's Discussion & Analysis and Annual Information Form in respect of the Company's most recently completed fiscal year (the "Company Disclosures") or as otherwise expressly incorporated herein by reference as well as: there being no significant disruptions affecting operations, whether due to labour disruptions, supply disruptions, power disruptions, damage to equipment or otherwise; permitting, development, operations, expansion and acquisitions at El Valle and Don Mario being consistent with the Company's current expectations; political developments in any jurisdiction in which the Company operates being consistent with its current expectations; certain price assumptions for gold, copper and silver; prices for key supplies being approximately consistent with current levels; production and cost of sales forecasts meeting expectations; the accuracy of the Company's current mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates; and labour and materials costs increasing on a basis consistent with Orvana's current expectations. A variety of inherent risks, uncertainties and factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control, affect the operations, performance and results of the Company and its business, and could cause actual events or results to differ materially from estimated or anticipated events or results expressed or implied by forward looking statements. Some of these risks, uncertainties and factors include the affect of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases on the Company's operations, workforce and supply chain, fluctuations in the price of gold, silver and copper; the need to recalculate estimates of resources based on actual production experience; the failure to achieve production estimates; variations in the grade of ore mined; variations in the cost of operations; the availability of qualified personnel; the Company's ability to obtain and maintain all necessary regulatory approvals and licenses; the Company's ability to use cyanide in its mining operations; risks generally associated with mineral exploration and development, including the Company's ability to continue to operate the El Valle and/or Don Mario and/or ability to resume long-term operations at the Carles Mine; the Company's ability to successfully implement a sulphidization circuit and ancillary facilities to process the current oxides stockpiles at Don Mario; the Company's ability to acquire and develop mineral properties and to successfully integrate such acquisitions; the Company's ability to execute on its strategy; the Company's ability to obtain financing when required on terms that are acceptable to the Company; challenges to the Company's interests in its property and mineral rights; current, pending and proposed legislative or regulatory developments or changes in political, social or economic conditions in the countries in which the Company operates; general economic conditions worldwide; and the risks identified in the Company's disclosures. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements and reference should also be made to the Company's Disclosures for a description of additional risk factors. Any forward-looking statements made herein with respect to the anticipated development and exploration of the Company's mineral projects are intended to provide an overview of management's expectations with respect to certain future activities of the Company and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions and, except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements should assumptions related to these plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions change. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Nuria Menendez, Chief Financial Officer, E: nmenendez@orvana.com; Joanne Jobin, Investor Relations Officer, E: jjobin@orvana.com, T: 647 964 0292 South Korea to ship testing kits to US South Korean companies have previously shipped test kits to US cities including Los Angeles but this would mark the first bulk order from the US federal government. South Korea plans to send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States on Tuesday in the first such shipment following a request from US President Donald Trump, a Seoul official said on Monday. Trump made the request for testing kits in a telephone call on March 25 with President Moon Jae-in, as the United States was grappling with fast-growing outbreaks in many states. US GOVERNMENT MADE THE PAYMENT A US Federal Emergency Management Agency cargo plane carrying the equipment is scheduled to leave at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the official said on condition of anonymity due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue. The kits were made by two of the three companies that secured preliminary arrival late last month from the US Food and Drug Administration, the official said. The shipments will be handed over to and paid for by the US government, while the additional 150,000 kits will be exported in the near future to be sold via an unspecified local retailer, the official said. South Korea credits part of its success to moves by government officials and private companies to develop and secure regulatory approval for tests, allowing the country to quickly test thousands of people. Weve moved as quickly as possible to get necessary clearances given the urgency of the situation there, the South Korean official said. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13 By Ilkin Seyfaddini Trend: The total number of coronavirus infected people in Uzbekistan rose to 865, Trend reports citing the Ministry of Health. To date, 66 people in the country have fully recovered from the coronavirus infection, four have died. Since April 1, Uzbekistan announced a self-isolation regime in Tashkent, Nukus and other regional centers. Citizens over 65 are categorically prohibited from leaving their homes. They can go out only to visit pharmacies and shops near their respective places of residence. The first case of coronavirus infection in Uzbekistan was detected on March 15 in the laboratory of the Research Institute of Virology; it was an Uzbek woman who returned from France. The Ministry of Health later announced that her son, daughter, husband and grandson also tested coronavirus-positive. The outbreak of the coronavirus began in the Chinese city of Wuhan (an international transport hub), at a fish market in late December 2019. The number of people killed by the disease has surpassed 114,000. Over 1.8 million people have been confirmed as infected. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. --- Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini Chinas National Health Commission reported 108 new infections on Sunday, the highest number of new infections in six weeks. The commission states that this is due to people returning from other countries. The COVID-19 cases are along its northern border with Russia with the Health Commission reporting that all but 10 of the cases were imported. Seven of the local infections were in the Heilongjiang province, a northern region where authorities are increasing restrictions and monitoring after a rise in people with COVID-19 crossing the Russian border. Heilongjiang Provinces capital, Harbin, as well as the border city of Suifenhe, has introduced restrictions that require all arrivals to quarantine for 28 days and undergo testing, according to Bloomberg. Under new restrictions, residential units in Harbin, where people have been confirmed to have the virus, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, are to be in lockdown for 14 days. China has been trying to open up its cities after imposing lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The City of Wuhan, Hubei Province, which had become infamous for being the epicenter of the outbreak, started to open back up on April 7. The easing of the restrictions allowed residents to again travel in and out of the city without special authorization through the use of a mandatory smartphone app powered by a mix of data-tracking and government surveillance showing they are healthy and have not been in recent contact with anyone confirmed to have the virus. The number of cases in China surpassed Saturdays 99 and the 46 reported on Friday bringing the total number to 82,160 since the pandemic began. The death toll in China stands at 3,341. Related Content: She might need a lot of lovin, but she dont need you! Photo: ABC Congrats to the duplicitous Jed Wyatt and his dog-food jingle for single-handedly willing this show into existence. On April 13, The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart (not to be confused with the virtuosic Tom Petty standard) will become the newest spinoff for the franchise, which follows a group of cardiologists as they travel around the country alongside Doctors Without Borders. Just kidding. Its about young, sexy musicians looking for their big break. There have been a handful of Bachelor spinoffs in the past, but since theyve mostly taken the form of drinking in and out of beachside palapas, we thought it would be a good idea to outline just what exactly the tune-centric Listen to Your Heart entails. Turn up the volume! All right, how is this gonna work? Twenty single men and women descend upon the Bachelor Mansion with their instruments of choice in the hopes of finding a duet partner for life. The dating format thus more closely resembles Paradise than a standard season: The singles (who are each identified by their preferred music genre) mingle and try to find a romantic connection, and, if they find one, they embark on a series of dates that revolve around music. Those dates will then evolve into making sweet, sweet songs (and covers) together and showcasing their work in front of an audience with judges. However, sonic loyalty is not guaranteed, and contestants are allowed to Yoko break up and experiment with someone else in the mansion whenever they want. Its just like a real-life Star Is Born, someone rationalizes in the trailer. Are there any repeat Bachelor Nation contestants? Nope, everyone is new. (Since youre curious, though, Jed is now in a serious relationship.) Chris Harrison is back as our esteemed host, and alum couples JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers, as well as Kaitlyn Bristowe and Jason Tartick, will be appearing as judges for one of the competitions. But most important, so will the newly coronavirus-free Rita Wilson! How many episodes is it? Only six, clocking in at [vinyl scratch] two hours each?!?! What?!?! Do these people win anything? National-television time. More Instagram followers. Maybe a sponsorship deal with the coveted FabFitFun. (Like Rickenbacker is gonna play around with these fools.) But in actuality, no. Unlike The Voice or American Idol, theres no cash prize or guaranteed recording contract. Is it worth watching? Its not like we have anything else going on right now. Posted by Chris on at 01:55 PM CST Chris Wyman: Chuck, thanks so much for clearing some space on your calendar to chat with me today about the current state of Gentle Giant Ltd.s Star Wars product lines! To start things off, can you tell me how you first got involved with Diamond Select Toys and who your favorite Star Wars character is? Chuck Terceira: I can give you the short answer. I started at Diamond Comics over 20 years ago to be the toy buyer and start the toy division. Shortly after that, Steve Geppi founded DST to make products aimed at an area he felt was under serviced at the time, collectors and the specialty market. After about a year of its creation, I was added to the staff at DST. When I was little and the movie A New Hope came out, I liked Luke and would play as him with friends, and used anything I could for a lightsaber. Now, I am not sure...maybe Han? Might still be Luke too if I am honest. CW: Its been just over a year since Diamond Select Toys purchased Gentle Giant Ltd. and weve seen some great stuff solicited and released thus far. How was that first year for you guys and whats been your favorite product line or individual collectible to work on up to this point? CT: For sure it has been a steep learning curve and weve tried to do more good then not good. Ive been very lucky to have Dev Gilmore on board to help guide our path with the history and knowledge he has for the franchise and collectors. Weve had to spend much more time then we expected working on the website, but were confident the changes we have made will be seen as improvements. I am very happy with how that is evolving. For products I am most pleased with, the Dreamer Statues of Luke and Rey. I am most impressed with the work the team has done on the 1/6 scale Vader. For upcoming, I love what we are doing for The Mandalorian I really like that show, as well as the new 1/7 scale animated line. CW: Ive noticed some newer product line names that have popped up over the last year or so which includes the Milestones Collection (1:6 scale Statue) and the Dreamer Premier Collection (1:7 scale Statue). Are these the new and official names for the 1:6 & 1:7 scale lines moving forward? CT: Yes, that is correct. It's more a branding issue and a continuity of messaging issue then anything else. GG LTD was already doing 1/6 statues for Star Wars and DST had several lines existing at that scale and had for many, many years sold under the Milestones line, so we brought the SW line under that banner. As such, our plan is to make the bases more thematic and when it makes sense, to make for more dynamic poses and displays then the black base GG has been using. For some reason, GG was calling their smaller scale pieces Gallery, which for DST, is a huge issue. We've had a robust line for several years now of our PVC statues produced under the Gallery banner. So our thinking, as well as sales and buyers thinking, was that both lines could not exist with that name. We already had a smaller more basic pose and base line called Premier and again, it had existed for years. So we decided to roll that into what was the GG Gallery line. The two scales are very close to each other and the pieces we have displayed in the office seem to fit very well. I understand on the face, any change will be upsetting to collectors and we hope they will at least stick around to see how it goes. We had to move the product forward to try to improve on the sale GG LTD had been having while respecting the legacy and what the collectors loved about the lines. CW: I saw a new 1:7 scale animated Star Wars Bust line revealed during Toy Fair this year that will debut with key characters from Star Wars: The Clone Wars & Star Wars Rebels. Can you talk about the thought process behind starting a new line in a slightly different scale than the current 1:6 scale Mini Bust line and also tell me what the official name for this line will be? CT: Well, while we were new to the inner workings of GG LTD when we acquired the select assets, many of us were fans of the brand, the product, and the Star Wars franchise, and pretty much all of us had pieces in our collections. One thing we noticed was GG LTD had never done screen accurate busts from the animated shows. We have a huge love for what Dave Filoni and his team had done with The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels and while the realistic take on the characters was very neat and had it's place in fans collections, this seemed like an oversight to the team. DST has, what we think, is a very good team for the animation products we have done. Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League of America & X-Men have all been very well received. Barry Bradfield, Robert Yee and Paul Harding really wanted to get a crack at the SW products! As for the scale, we gave that a great deal of thought and really viewed this as a new line, not a line extension from the GG Mini Bust line. After all, there were already great pieces in that line that DST had shipped like Hera and Ahsoka. The thinking was it would not make sense to have two of the same character in the same line with two styles and looks. Also, it was not fair for collectors of the Mini Bust line to have to re-buy the same characters or collect a look that they did not like. Since our other animated lines were in the smaller scale, it made more sense to match that and also allowed for a full breadth of characters and a lower SRP. It was simply going to be a decision not everyone was going to support no matter which way we went. The new 1:7 scale animated Star Wars line does not have a title yet. CW: I think we were all surprised with this COVID-19 Virus and what its recently done to everyday life. How has this affected product release dates for you guys or is it still too early to tell? CT: Oh for sure, no one on this side ever expected anything like this. It does seem silly to talk about collectibles while all of this is going on, but we also know sometimes someones hobby or focusing on something else can be of real value at a time like this. Once the virus hit China, all our ship dates were changed and now that this is worldwide, it's having an even greater impact. We have issues all along the chain that we try to work through on a daily basis. I have great faith in my teams in the states as well as China to do the best job possible and hopefully the impact to collectors will be as minimal as possible. We will continue to post updates as often as makes sense on the website and socials. CW: With the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi back in 2017, to date, weve gotten a Luke Skywalker Mini Bust, a Praetorian Guard Statue, an Executioner Trooper Statue and some Porg Bookends. Needless to say, the Episode VIII shelf has some room for more characters. Are there plans to continue making product from that film? CT: As you know, whatever was done before last year, DST had no control over. GG LTD made those decisions, but as I said, Dev is still here guiding the brand and we are aware of the past history. I will say from what we have seen, the sales on the products from 7 & 8 were not too strong. I know those movies, as well as 9, have their fans and those fans might say GG just never did the right products or characters or formats, and they might be correct. However, we can only go by what we know. For sure the door is not closed to the ST products and we ARE working on a couple pieces for The Rise of Skywalker right now. We were not allowed all access to all of the movie before it came out so some work could not begin until after the movie came out. Were keeping a very close eye on it and listening to fan feedback, so if there is demand, were happy to satisfy it. CW: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters last December and it looks like there are just three pieces up for Pre-Order at this time those being the Sith Trooper Mini Bust, the Kylo Ren Dreamer Premier Collection Statue and the Kylo Ren Legends in 3-Dimensions Bust. I would imagine there are some very requested characters, especially in the ever popular Mini Bust line, that fans would love to see. Names like Emperor Palpatine, Poe Dameron, Zorii Bliss, Babu Frik, Lando Calrissian, C-3PO and more. Can you speak on when we might see more characters from the final chapter in the 9-film Star Wars Saga? CT: As I mentioned before, we are working on some, but I have to ask..are you SURE there is lots of demand for these very requested characters? The overall demand for busts and SW products is not what it was 10 or even 5 years ago. It's not just a GG issue either. The brand is VERY strong with The Mandalorian & The Clone Wars and more new content to come, but you all know what the production runs on collector products were in the past compared to now. We would very much love to make more products from the new movie. Its not like were sitting behind our desk wringing our hands thinking how can we stick it to fans and not make busts they want that will make us money right?? We just, as of yet, have not seen enough fans that would want to buy a bust have that personal affection for some of those new characters that makes sense to justify going to production, but for sure were watching it and perhaps as more time passes, fans affection for those characters will grow. CW: In speaking with other collecting friends and colleagues, I can definitely say that there's a desire to have a lot of these characters on the shelf, though I certainly understand if you can't sell 500-700 of something, how it likely doesn't fit into upcoming plans. CW: We are now in the second quarter of 2020 and to date, only three Mini Busts have been solicited for Pre-Order. There were only eight available in 2019. This eighteen year old collection is arguably the most popular Star Wars line for Gentle Giant Ltd. and the one that fans seem the most eager to collect. Will there be a greater focus on the 1:6 scale Mini Busts for the remainder of 2020 and beyond? CT: I would not say MORE of a focus, saying that implies there is less of a focus at this time. The Mini Bust line is never far from our thoughts. As you said at the start of this interview, it's been one year since we started this process. In that time, we had to sign the license, transition the company, hire staff, create a line plan and open a California office. In the beginning, our focus was on producing all the product GG LTD had promised to fans, but had not produced, while also looking into the future. Could we have rushed out a few more pieces? SURE...but were not going to do that. It takes about a year to create a collector product and deliver it to market, so I would say to collectors, you are only just beginning to see what we have in the works for the Mini Bust line & other collectibles and GG LTD in general. CW: I want to take you back to San Diego Comic-Con in 2008. There was a rather incredible Deluxe R2-D2 Statue that was revealed at the Gentle Giant Ltd. booth. It was listed for Pre-Order and then delayed for a long, long time. Finally, in August of 2013, the project was canceled and weve never seen anything featuring R2-D2 pop up again. Given the fact that this little droid is featured in every single Star Wars film, including all of the newer ones by Disney, and the fact that he is the only main character from all three Trilogies to have not been made in Mini Bust form, might we finally see something on the horizon for the blue & white astromech? CT: I am aware of that piece and in fact, I asked about it shortly after the acquisition! It seems with everything that was going on with that piece when they costed out the production, it was so high, the thinking was it was priced out of the market for most collectors and in that time, some 1/6 scale R2 stuff had come out that had filled the nitch the piece would have filled and we did not receive anything on this item at the time of the acquisition, so there is nothing for DST to work from if it even did make sense to bring back. CW: Lets talk about the 12 Jumbo Vintage Kenner line. For a while, these were being released on a fairly regular basis. Over the last year or two, it seems to have dropped off. Are there plans to continue this line past 2020? CT: I think the thinking over at GG had become...they had done most of the characters or looks that would justify a new production. I can tell you we have had many discussions about this line and where to take it. I will say for as certain as I can, under the current situation, the line is not dead. We are working on a new piece that will fit into fans collections and exploring new ideas that would allow this line to continue into the future. That is all I can say right now. CW: Does Gentle Giant Ltd. still have the Scaled Replica license to produce the Mini Helmets and will we see any new products in that line upcoming? CT: Best I can answer that is there are no plans at this time for any releases in that line. CW: Is the Classic Bust line that was exclusive to the Premier Guild and GameStop all done or will we see any other characters released? This is the only line that weve seen represent Poe Dameron, so thats a big hole in the regular Mini Bust line for sure. CT: At this time, Game Stop is not interested in busts or looking to go deep into exclusive collector product. CW: When you are considering characters for new product, what goes into the decision making process and how many ideas that are brought to the drawing board actually see the light of day when all is said and done? CT: Oh, for sure there are items we discuss that do not get made for a variety of reasons. We look at sales history, fan request, current media, personal interest, line building, price point & release schedule. Lots of factors as well as a our contact at Lucasfilm Ltd. Hes a big fan in addition to working there, and we bounce ideas off each other every couple weeks or we fly to San Francisco and chat. It can be fun...its fun to uncover a character or a key moment that has not been presented and bring that forward or a new movie or property and see what is planned and what we can now bring to collectors. CW: It seems like every Star Wars licensee is trying to get product out featuring The Child from The Mandalorian as quickly as possible and rightfully so. Is that a character you guys have on your radar for one or more of the product lines? CT: For sure! The show is great and there are lots of things in it that translate to products for collectors. We showed several pieces at Toy Fair in February, but we showed them behind our curtain due to licensing and sales issues. The scale and size of The Child was something we had to work out as well. CW: If San Diego Comic-Con and/or Star Wars Celebration Anaheim has to cancel this year due to the COVID-19 Virus, would you postpone the exclusives for these shows to the next year or roll them out through the website starting with the Premier Guild? CT: We have just started to discuss that and as of now, our working plan would to be to have them offered online and kind of build from there, but lots of factors come into play and we have control over very few of them. CW: A Christmas tradition that started sixteen years ago, first being offered just to extended business partners of Gentle Giant Ltd. and later to the Premier Guild members, ended in 2019 when there was no annual Holiday Gift offered. Will we see that tradition return this year? CT: YEA, Bottom line that sucked! When we made the acquisition, we found there was nothing planned or done for the holiday bust at that time. We also found out no production work had been done on the PG gifts, show exclusives or the items that had been solicited. Also, the webstore was in need of several updates. So, we had to make a list of priorities and how to tackle them. When it came to the holiday bust, it was really an easy call. We had to get what had been announced and promised to fans done first as well as re-confirm and protect every order on the website. There was no way we could get the holiday bust done on time and the last thing we wanted was to bring out another late project. We do have one planned for this year, however with everything going on, were falling a little behind, but I still think we can pull it off and begin the tradition again. CW: Is the new 332nd Clone Trooper Mini Bust going to feature the same Deluxe arm options as the original Clone Trooper (Special Ops) Mini Bust from 2006 or will there be any differences other than the repainted helmet signifying Ahsokas battalion? CT: The 332nd has the same arm configurations as the trooper did before. When we were at Celebration, we saw the footage and asked Lucasfilm Ltd. about the origins behind the scene. It was VERY cool, and we like it very much and saw it as a key moment in the evolution of the character. So, we asked them if it would be OK to make product from that part of the show and they agreed. Then, we went through the GG archives to confirm they had done that look, and we found the right piece. We checked with the factory, but they no longer had those molds, so we looked into new molds and if we should make it deluxe at $120.00 or try and make a less expensive version with just the one pose. When we looked at the costing, we realized even at todays costing, due to the fact that the sculpt work had already been done, we could deliver the more deluxe version at the price of todays standard mini bust. Then, we decided the best way to keep the production number small and deliver this to collectors in a fun way, was to make it a PG and Emerald City Comic Con exclusive. This year was supposed to be our first time ever in that part of the country. Sadly, when the show was canceled, we had to come up with another plan, so we went forward with production and came up with the idea of making it PG / GG LTD webstore exclusive rather than offer it to one retailer or all specialty shops or such. We also decided to offer it while season 7 of the show was going on and ship it to fans at the end of April, right after they see the episode. Hopefully, collectors will enjoy it and take it for what it is, a small run fun item, timed to take advantage of a current story line. Something I think comes along rarely. CW: Gentle Giant Ltd. partnered with Nissan to produce 1:1 scale replica Death Trooper, First Order Executioner Trooper & Range Trooper helmets (essentially Statues), which came with the purchase of a new Limited Edition licensed Star Wars vehicle or, by winning a contest that Nissan was hosting. It looks like there was no helmet offered in conjunction with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. Is that line something you could see continuing into the future to be made available to Pre-Order rather than just being tied to vehicles and contests? CT: I believe that was brokered by GG Studios and we had nothing to do with it. If they were to ever ask us, wed love to do anything along those lines if it could be worked out. CW: The Star Wars Rebels Maquette line was looking great with Ezra & Chopper, Zeb Orrelios, two versions of The Inquisitor and a Stormtrooper, but then no Sabine Wren, Hera Syndulla or Kanan Jarrus to finish out the line properly. Has anyone gone back and really looked at past lines to see if there were any characters that got missed that would have really completed it for fans that wanted a full representation on their shelf and is that something you guys would ever consider doing? CT: I was told those pieces did not do that well and there was not much interest. If I found out differently, Id be happy to try some more, but I am not sure I get the sense that it would be successful enough to carry a super deep line. Three or four MIGHT be possible. CW: You and I have discussed this before, but its been almost a year since that conversation, so I wanted to ask if you think there would be any potential to go back and create Mini Busts based on some of the old Star Wars Legends books, Star Wars comic books and LucasArts video games to partner with previously released characters such as Darth Malak, Darth Nihilus, Darth Revan, Darth Talon, the Death Trooper, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Mara Jade, Republic Commandos, Shae Vizla, Starkiller & the Stormtrooper Commander. It would be such a thrill to see names like Kyle Katarn, Jan Ors, The Dark Trooper (in its different phases), Jerec, Prince Xizor, Dash Rendar, Satele Shan, etc. I did see that a 0-0-0 Mini Bust is on the way from the newer Star Wars: Darth Vader & Star Wars: Doctor Aphra comic book series, so that gives some hope! CT: I LOVE the old Tim Zahn books and when I was younger all I had to get me though the gaps in time with no movies were the old Marvel comics and the book Splinter of the Minds Eye. I would love to do stuff from any of that. However, from what I am told, you and I are most of the market of collectors that would be interested. IF there was interest and Lucasfilm Ltd. allowed, Id love to do busts or statues. The Triple 0 is yes, a little bit of a test, so well see how it goes and take it from there. CW: It's the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and you guys just solicited the new 1:6 scale Milestones Darth Vader Statue to celebrate that. Is it safe to assume that well be seeing more from Episode V before the year is over? CT: YES. Vader is a big part of what we have planned and its a massive piece. Something like it has not been done by GG in the past we really feel its a cornerstone piece and hope fans will be pleased when they see it in person. We have several other TESB products planned and hopefully they will move along and get done in time! CW: Characters from Jabbas Palace and the Cantina seem to be some of the most requested of any. With hundreds of Mini Busts produced already including over a dozen from these two scenes, is it safe to say that well eventually see characters like the Rancor Keeper (Malakili), Ephant Mon, Tessek, Duros, Arleil Schous, Hem Dazon, Kitik Keed'kak and the rest of The Modal Nodes? CT: As you say, many have already been produced from those moments in the movies. They are some of the coolest parts of the movies. This past year we held a Twitter and in-person poll to let fans pick which character we would do for the PG gift. Ponda Baba won the poll, so the bust is going into production. If there is enough demand, we would love to do more characters like that. We do plan to have the poll again this year and were moving in that direction. CW: Once the Premier Guild Member Gift products are caught up from the previous year, going forward, what kind of release schedule would you like to see for future offerings? Perhaps an annual membership that starts on January 1st and ends on December 31st with a specific renewal period and with the Gift products shipping in the second or third quarter of the year they are produced? CT: I think it would be cool to follow a calendar year and I thought that made sense, but once I dug into what the club was and how it functioned, I realized it might not be practical. The idea is the membership starts and includes SDCC and the summer shows. So, we want to make sure members get a full cycle of shows as part of the membership. Right now, it's going to end June 30th and the new year would start July 1st. That would have included SDCC & Celebration. I think were going to stick with that for 2020, but with all shows up in the air, well see. CW: Are there plans to continue producing products for the Enamel Pin line that debuted as four different San Diego Comic Con exclusive sets in 2018? CT: As of now we have no plans to continue that line, it's just not an area we think we can handle properly. CW: Gentle Giant Ltd. has always tried to make joining the Premier Guild enticing by offering exclusive product only available to members and allowing members to Pre-Order convention exclusives that they would otherwise have to travel to a specific convention to obtain. How would you feel about members having the opportunity to vote for the next Mini Bust or having an annual Premier Guild Fan Choice specific Mini Bust? CT: That was exactly the intention with the poll we did last year at Celebration. We for sure will do it for 2020. The intention is its something that would directly appeal to those devoted fans. I am not sure if we would do a poll that is JUST to those folks and not allow anyone else to participate in any way. CW: Chuck, this has been a blast and I cant thank you enough for taking the time to answer all of these questions for our readers on Rebelscum.com. Hopefully this will be a fun and informative read for everyone stuck at home right now and give us some much needed Star Wars fun to look forward to in the not so distant future! CT: This was fun, we should do it again soon...but not too soon...(laughs). I very much appreciate that fans care enough about what we do to take the time to write questions and read things like this. That is a passion we share and have no plans to ever take for granted. With many of us hunkering down at home right now, I thought it might be fun to offer our readers something that we haven't done for seven years. That's right... the last time we did a Gentle Giant Ltd. Q&A was in 2013 when we exclusively revealed the Grand Admiral Thrawn Mini Bust! Over the weekend, I spoke with Chuck Terceira, President of Diamond Select Toys, to pick his brain about the current state of Gentle Giant Ltd. and what we can expect from them for the rest of 2020 and beyond. This was a no holds barred Q&A and we hope you enjoy!Hopefully, everyone enjoyed this Rebelscum.com exclusive Q&A with Gentle Giant Ltd. and are just as excited about future offerings as we are! Chuck did tell me that if possible, he may send us an exclusive reveal for a new product, so stay tuned...If you aren't already signed up, you can check out the three different levels of membership available for their Premier Guild right here The students from Warren Hill High School in New Jersey was inspired to produce more than 26,000 face shields for medical workers and first responders as the coronavirus crisis caused a shortage in surgical masks needed for COVID-19 protection. Student Bobby Delghiaccio came up with the idea and he took home a 3D printer to make shields. As he was making them, several of his teachers figured out a way to make them faster. 3D printed face mask According to a police statement, the Warren Hills and Mount Olive High School communities worked together with staff, school faculty, local businesses, and families in order to raise more than $40,000 and produce more than 26,500 face shields. The face shields were donated to the New Jersey State Police on April 11. In only 48 hours, around 20 families hand-assembled 15,000 face shields. The organizers have used a lot of methods and contacts to get materials and they assembled shields from across the country. The shields were then packed in boxes and state troopers loaded them into their vehicles at the high school under the supervision of Col. Patrick Callahan. Also Read: Sweden Refuses to Go on Lockdown, Draws Criticisms The police stated that Col. Callahan explained that the shields packaged in the parking lot were sent to the hands of first responders and medical professionals, who are in dire need, and that the efforts of the community were nothing short of an act of monumental humanitarianism. The face shields were being distributed throughout Hunterdon and Warren counties. Col. Callahan personally transported shields for delivery to a Trenton-area hospital, according to the police statement. Face mask shortage The mask shortage in America is baffling. Masks are so difficult to find that health-care workers and first responders are reusing their masks multiple days in a row. Even grocery-store workers, who are considered at high risk of contracting the virus, have been denied masks for months. People are now making their own masks out of fabric scraps. One reason that America ran short of masks is that a lot of them are made in China. The country slowed mask manufacturing and stopped shipping them to America when the coronavirus outbreaks started. But America was supposed to have its own supply of masks in the Strategic National Stockpile, which is a secretive stash of emergency supplies held in an undisclosed number of warehouses around the country. However, as of April 1, it was almost out. Since the stockpile is limited, President Donald Trump asked the public to use alternatives instead and leave the N95 and surgical masks for the health workers and first responders. The CDC then suggested that the public can use cloth face coverings for protection. The cloth face coverings should fit snugly but comfortably against the side of the face, it should be secured with ear loops or ties, it should include multiple layers of fabric, it should allow breathing without any restriction and you must be able to wash and machine dry the cloth without it losing its shape. Related Article: Dead Bodies Pile Up in Philippine Hospital Hallway As COVID-19 Death Toll Increases @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Hundreds of Intermountain Healthcare clinicians recently expressed interest in providing assistance to states facing major surges in COVID-19 cases that are also currently experiencing severe staffing shortages. In response, Intermountain Healthcare has created two COVID-19 Response Teams that will deploy to the New York City area to assist hospitals the week of April 13. Intermountain has partnered with New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Northwell Health, both located in the New York City area. These healthcare systems will aim to return the favor by supporting Intermountain as much as they can when Utah faces its own surge with COVID-19 patients. Each Intermountain team will have 50 caregivers who will serve for a maximum of 14 days. These voluntary teams are made up of physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other caregivers. "I'm incredibly proud that so many of our caregivers want to help others in need, and we have the capacity right now to share our staff with others in the middle of their COVID-19 surge," said Paul Krakovitz, MD, Intermountain Healthcare's chief medical officer for specialty based care. "Not only will they provide care for patients in New York, they will bring back knowledge and experience to share with their Utah colleagues that will help us serve Utah patients." The first team is scheduled to fly out of Salt Lake City on Tuesday, April 14, and will assist caregivers at Northwell Health. Experts anticipate that Utah's COVID-19 surge will happen in May or June, so caregivers will be back to the Intermountain service area when help is needed most. "This temporary sharing of staff experienced in treating COVID-19 will greatly benefit patients in Utah and elsewhere," said Dr. Krakovitz. ### The restrictions imposed to slow down the spread of COVID 19 has closed churches and forced religious groups to celebrate Easter in a different way.On Sunday in Rio de Janeiro, priest Omar Raposo took the monstrance, entered a helicopter and blessed the city from the air. According to the priest, it's a way to bless the residents of Rio de Janeiro who are staying in their homes to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. He also prayed for health workers working on frontlines fighting the disease that has killed over a 1,000 and infected about 20,000 people in Brazil. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. (Image Credit: AP) In the late 1960s, well before the era of celebrity chefs and the flood of cooking shows, Irena Chalmers found herself stuck with six fondue pots at La Bonne Femme, the cooking school and specialty food shop she opened in Greensboro, N.C. At the time, few in that small Southern city had heard of fondue. So to promote the dish, Ms. Chalmers wrote a slim volume of recipes called Fondue Cook-In. It worked. The pots sold, and the book would be the first of more than 100 titles she would write or later publish for other cooks, many of whom went on to become well-known cooking authorities. Ms. Chalmers died of esophageal cancer on April 4 at her home in Kingston, N.Y., her daughter, Hilary Chalmers, said. She was 84. Although Ms. Chalmers had long been interested in cooking, her career didnt take off until 1971, when she divorced her first husband and moved back to New York (where they had met). She quickly discovered a market for short, affordable single-subject booklets like her fondue book. Home cooks found them to be welcome alternatives to the big compendiums of time-consuming recipes that were popular at the time. There have been increased call for sanctions imposed on Syria to be lifted, as the country makes efforts to deal with the spread of the coronavirus writes SANA. The US Peace Council called on the US administration and the United Nations to immediately lift unilateral coercive economic measures imposed on more than thirty countries, including Syria, especially after the global outbreak of the coronavirus and its devastating impact. In an open letter on Saturday published on its website the council described these sanctions as economic war and crimes against humanity, as the targeted countries suffer in light of the devastating impact of the global epidemic, especially Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe. In another note, the head of the Czech Peace Movement, Milan Krajca, has renewed his call for lifting the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the West on Syria, reiterating that these measures must be condemned. In a statement to SANAs correspondent in Prague on Saturday, Krajca said that the immediate termination of these measures has become an urgent need, particularly as Syria is now confronting the spread of coronavirus and it has been fighting terrorism and foreign interference for more than nine years. In the same context, Cuba has condemned the US blockade that has been imposed on the Cuban people for decades and that has made it difficult for Cuba to secure the medical equipment and medicines needed to counter coronavirus. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says there is no evidence that Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination results in fewer deaths from coronavirus for countries that use it. The global health agency on its website said two clinical trials addressing this question are underway. There is no evidence that the Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine (BCG) protects people against infection with COVID-19 virus, WHO said. Scientists from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the death rate is 5.8 times lower in countries that use the BGC vaccine. According to the researchers, ongoing studies might suggest that there was a correlation between the death rates and the use of BCG vaccine. Although the research is still ongoing, statistical data from the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has shown that death rates in countries where BCG have been administered as part of the immunisation routine are lower, when compared to countries where the vaccine is not used, the researchers said. However, WHO said it will evaluate the evidence when it is available. In the absence of evidence, WHO does not recommend BCG vaccination for the prevention of COVID-19, it said WHO continues to recommend neonatal BCG vaccination in countries or settings with a high incidence of tuberculosis. There is experimental evidence from both animal and human studies that the BCG vaccine has non-specific effects on the immune system. These effects have not been well characterised and their clinical relevance is unknown, it said. BCG vaccination prevents severe forms of tuberculosis in children. Review Meanwhile, WHO has updated its ongoing evidence review of the major scientific databases and clinical trial repositories, using English, French and Chinese search terms for COVID-19, coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 and BCG. It said ecological studies are prone to significant bias from many confounders, including differences in national demographics and disease burden, testing rates for COVID-19 virus infections, and the stage of the pandemic in each country. It said the review also yielded two registered protocols for clinical trials, both of which aim to study the effects of BCG vaccination given to healthcare workers directly involved in the care of patients with COVID-19. This Week in Review A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more. Prasanta Mazumdar and Sumi Sukanya Dutta By Express News Service GUWAHATI /NEW DELHI: As the government struggles to arrest the spread of COVID-19, one part of the country could offer grist to researchers in India and perhaps abroad. The seven states in the Northeast, with 8% of Indias landsize and 3.6% of the total population, not only has a mere 35 confirmed cases of the coronavirus but the rate of local transmission is extremely low, prompting health authorities in the region to believe that perhaps its people are more immune. About 2,000 people who came in contact with 31 corona patients were tested for COVID- 19, the virus that causes SARS CoV 2, and all of them were found negative. Consider this: Assam has 28 positive cases linked to the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi. According to Lakshmanan S, Mission Director of the states National Health Mission, 1,200-1,300 people who are believed to have come in contact with the 28 Tablighis were tested but all of them were negative. Similarly, about 500 people were tested for the virus after an infected American tourist went on a seven-day cruise on the Brahmaputra river, stayed at a luxury hotel in Guwahati and at a resort in Jorhat next to the Kazaringa sanctuary. But all of them were negative. In Manipur, 48 people who came in contact with a 23-year-old infected student of Bristol University in the UK have been found negative. Another 29 people were tested for the virus after a Tablighi markaz returnee turned positive but they have also not been infected. In Mizoram, 18 people were tested after a 50-year-old man returned from the Netherlands but all of them were found negative. While health authorities are convinced that a thorough research is required to study the low number of local cases, they have been left wondering if it is because of higher immunity. We cannot say we (people in the Northeast) are immune to this disease (COVID-19). But obviously the picture says that the number of cases in the Northeast is less than other states. If there is anything that way, it has to be studied. We need more data for the study, Lakshmanan said. But from Lakshmanan to other health officials, all of them believe that the high incidence of malaria and the excessive consumption of hydroxychloroquine could be the reason why people of the Northeast seem to be displaying higher immunity to COVID-19. K Rajo, the Director of Health Services in Manipur, said under the National Malaria Eradication Programme, most doctors prescribe hydroxychloroquine for any fever. I wonder if hydroxychloroquine has improved our immunity, he said. H Lalchungnunga, the Director of Health and Family Welfare of Mizoram, appeared to concur. The drug could have boosted our immunity. In malaria-prone areas, the picture is completely different as compared to other areas, he said. According to a bulletin in the Indian Council of Medical Research, though the population of the NE region is 3.7% of the Indian population, this region contributed 8 to 12% of malaria positives, 10 to 20% of infections and 13 to 41% of the deaths due to malaria. As of Monday, the Northeast has 37 active cases: Assam 31, Manipur and Tripura two each, and Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura one each. Meghalaya and Nagaland are so far untouched by the virus. An ICMR scientist said while the reproduction number of SARS CoV-2 in every state has not been analysed, it could vary significantly across states. There are a number of variables like geography, weather and biological responses that influence R0 of a virus so its possible that the virus will not behave exactly the same way across regions, he said. Akash Deep Biswas, a Ph.D scholar who is researching COVID- 19 at Scuola Normale Superiore, a university in Pisa, Italy, said he has not found any direct scientific data that says hydroxychloroquine can inhibit the functioning of SARS CoV 2. But he said immunity levels are different across the world. It can be clearly inferred that some parts of India (Northeast India) and some parts of Africa have less cases of COVID-19. The question arises if it is a miracle or is it because of some antibody that has been developed by the bite of anopheles? Did the body develop a special shield for COVID-19 while fighting with plasmodium parasite? Biswas wondered. The Indian Child Protection Fund (ICPF) on Monday said the demand for child pornographic material (also referred to as Child Sexual Abuse Material) has been rising during the lockdown period. The ICPF reported that since the lockdown, online data monitoring websites are showing an increase in demand for searches like child porn, sexy child and teen sex videos . Data from Pornhub, the worlds largest pornography website in the world, also reveals that traffic from India has increased by 95 per cent between March 24 and March 26, as compared to their average traffic, pre-Coronavirus outbreak, ICPF said in a statement. ICPF has warned that this indicates that millions of paedophiles, child rapists and child pornography addicts have migrated online, making the internet extremely unsafe for children, and said without stringent action, this could result in a drastic rise in sexual crimes against children. ICPF has released a report titled Child Sexual Abuse Material in India, a research of child pornography demand in 100 cities in India like New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Indore. The overall demand for child pornography was an average of five million per month in 100 cities on the public web during December 2019, which has now spiked, the statement said. (This story has been published from a wire agency. Only the title has been changed.) Follow more stories on Facebook and Twitter Most of the terminations, which amount to about 44% of the companys employee base and "a significant portion of its sales team, should be complete by June, according to a filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it will continue to evaluate its costs, including additional layoffs. Felicity Huffman was one of the four main characters in all eight seasons of ABC's hit dramedy Desperate Housewives. And though the star was noticeably absent from the show's digital reunion on Stars in the House, her former costars did not let her be forgotten. Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross joined former costars Brenda Strong, Vanessa Williams and Dana Delany for a video chat reunion to raise money on Sunday for The Actors Fund amid the coronavirus pandemic. Reunion: Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross joined former costars Brenda Strong, Vanessa Williams and Dana Delany for a video chat reunion to raise money for The Actors Fund, amid the coronavirus pandemic, on Sunday Cross, 58, who played Brie Van de Kamp, said 'I just feel like Felicity Huffman is a flipping genius. Shes just an unbelievable actress.' Longoria, 45, who played Gabriel Solis, continued the praise for Huffman and shared how impressed she was of her portrayal when Huffman's character Lynette Scavo was diagnosed with cancer. 'When Felicity had this story line,' she said. 'She sunk her teeth into it. She had so many questions.' The Grand Hotel executive producer, went on to add that while filming in a hospital Huffman, 57, gave her 'goosebumps.' Missing but not forgotten: Cross and Longoria wouldn't let their former costar Felicity Huffman be forgotten from the reunion and praised her work while on Stars in the House 'Oh, my God,' Longoria said. 'I was just watching her and then Id forget my lines 'cause she was so amazing.' Speaking of their show, known for scandalous drama, Longoria, added that storylines that had depth were her favorite. 'We were a true dramedy.' Adding: ' We were always a joke and then that gravity would take you by surprise, and thats what I loved about the show we got to do two things.' The former Young and the Restless actress shared the bond she still has with Huffman, saying they 'have such a strong connection. Weve all created these amazing friendships outside the show that are lasting forever.' Goosebumps: 'Oh, my God,' Longoria said. ' I was just watching her and then Id forget my lines cause she was so amazing' Amazing: Cross, 58, who played Brie Van de Kamp, said 'I just feel like Felicity Huffman is a flipping genius. Shes just an unbelievable actress' And this was not the first time Longoria came to bat for Huffman. The When They See Us actress was embroiled in the nationwide college admission scandal and was sentenced to two weeks behind bars in October and given a hefty fine after she pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and honest services mail fraud following the college admissions scandal. However, she was released after 12 days of her two-week sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. In a written letter of support to a federal judge presiding over Huffman's case last year, Longoria, called Huffman 'a good friend' who backed her up against a bully on set. Post scandal: The When They See Us actress was embroiled in the nationwide college admission scandal and was sentenced to two weeks behind bars in October and given a hefty fine after she pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and honest services mail fraud following the college admissions scandal ; seen in January 2019 'I dreaded the days I had to work with that person [I was being bullied by] because it was pure torture.' she wrote. 'Until one day, Felicity told the bully "enough" and it all stopped,' she wrote. 'Felicity could feel that I was riddled with anxiety even though I never complained or mentioned the abuse to anyone. 'I know I would not have survived those 10 years if it wasn't for the friendship of Felicity.' Tension: There have been rumors for years that Teri didn't get along with her castmates and show creator MarcCherry talked about a 'problematic' castmember last year The stars also came together without Teri Hatcher as rumors have raged for years that she did not get along with her cast mates. Desperate Housewives ran for eight seasons from 2004 to 2012. The Actor's Fund is providing emergency financial assistance programs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Last week the stars of Taxi, This is Us and Frasier reunited and the week prior to that saw the cast of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt take part in the livestream. Slovakia, one of the more recent (2004) members of NATO, is still replacing its Cold War era Russian weapons with modern ones. The latest upgrade involves older Russian 9K111 and 9K113 ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missile) being replaced with the Israeli Spike LR2. Slovakia is getting the Spike missiles and control units via the NATO Support and Procurement Agency, which handles all the purchasing contract details for many NATO nations buying weapons from non-NATO members. Spike is actually a family of ATGMs with several different models of varying range and size that all use basic Spike technology. So far Israel has exported Spike to 34 nations and Slovakia is the sixth to receive the new LR2 model, which was introduced in 2017. Spike LR2 uses a lighter 12.7 kg (28 pound) missile with a longer range of 5,500 meters (instead of 4,000 meters) when fired from the existing Spike LR launcher. Range is 10,000 meters when fired from a helicopter or UAV. Like the original Spike LR, the new version uses a missile in a sealed storage/launch canister. The original Spike LR weighed 13 kg (28.6 pounds). The missile canister is mounted on a 13 kg fire control system (10 kg without the tripod) for aiming and firing. The missile in its canister has a shelf life of twenty years. The Spike uses a fiber-optic cable so that the operator can literally drive the missile to the target, although the missile can also be used in "fire and forget" mode. Spike LR2 has new warhead and guidance options. One new warhead has a dual shaped charge (HEAT) system with 30 percent greater penetration than the one it replaces. The other new warhead is multipurpose (anti-armor or personnel) and gives the user the option to choose either mode before firing. The new warhead can also be fired remotely at specific locations. Spike can be also fired from vehicles, aircraft or ships. Over 27,000 Spike missiles (in five versions) have been manufactured and exported to 27 nations since 1981 and it often competes with the American Javelin and Russian Kornet for sales. Slovakia has long used the older Russian ATGMs in portable and vehicle-mounted versions and Spike LR2 is able to handle that. Slovakia already ordered (in 2015) 30 Rosomak Wheeled Armored Vehicles from Poland. These vehicles used the Tura 30 unmanned turret that carries 30mm autocannon as well as ATGMs. One of the ATGMs Turra can handle is Spike LR and Slovakia chose that option with the intent of buying Spike LR. The Spike LR2 is a considerable upgrade from the older Russian 9K111 and 9K113 ATGMs. The 9K111 was designed in the 1960s, entered service in 1970 and has a range of 2,500 meters and is wire-guided (like the U.S. TOW). The 9K113 was a more modern (1974) wire-guided missiles with a range of 4,000 meters. Like TOW, Russian wire-guided missiles have been upgraded over the years and are still in service. They are cheaper than Spike LR2 but are not as effective in combat. ---Przemyslaw Juraszek With a large number of Covid-19 cases emerging in Hyderabad, Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao has asked administrative and health officials to step up surveillance to prevent the spread of the deadly disease. On Monday, Telangana reported one more death and 61 new positive cases for Covid-19, taking the total number of deaths in the state to 17 and positive coronavirus cases to 592. There are at least 267 coronavirus positive cases in Hyderabad city. The chief minister, who reviewed the situation at a high-level meeting in the afternoon, instructed officials concerned to pay more attention to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) areas in the wake of the growing number of cases in the city. More cases are getting registered in the Greater Hyderabad area and there are more chances of people with positive cases quickly spreading it to others. Hence there should be a special strategy for Hyderabad, he said. The chief minister instructed that Hyderabad could be divided into 17 units and appointed a team of officials for each unit, comprising a special medical officer, municipal officer, a police officer and a revenue officer. The entire municipal administrative department should involve themselves in prevention of Covid-19, he said. Based on the number of positive cases, we have created 246 containment centres in the state and of them, 126 containment centres are there in Hyderabad alone. The officials will keep vigil on these centres. They should not allow people from the Containment Centre to go out and outsiders to come in. Appoint a Special Nodal Officer and Police Officer at these centres who will maintain strict vigil. The government machinery should supply essential commodities to the people at these centres, KCR said. The officials told him that in the backdrop of the spike in positive cases, all laboratories and hospitals have been kept ready. They said the infrastructure was ready so that every day 1000 to 1100 tests could be done and treatment could be given to any number of patients. The chief minister once again requested people not to come out of their homes and be more cautious as there was a spike in coronavirus positive cases. Andhra Pradesh has recorded 19 new positive cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 439. Of them, 12 patients have been discharged till now, another seven patients died of the disease. According to the latest bulletin, Guntur accounted for the maximum number of 93 cases, followed by 84 in Kurnool, 56 in Nellore, 41 in Prakasam, 36 in Krishna, 31 in Kadapa, 23 each in West Godavari and Chittoor and 20 in Visakhapatnam. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON To the Editor, The April 6 edition contained an article about local unemployment. It stated the Metro-East rate was 3.2 percent in February. It stated the statewide rate was 3.5 percent and the county rate was 3 percent. It appeared to be quoting figures supplied by Tony Fuhrman. Madison County Employment and Training and the Illinois Department of Employment Security both know those figures to be incorrect. Both look at first time filings only and ignore the other parts of that picture. They those who filed for benefits but were denied, the underemployed, those still seeking employment whose benefits have been exhausted, or those who have given up hope of ever finding full time employment. If those in these situations were included in the figures, as they should be, the true rate would be at least double the official numbers. Even the news media has admitted this to be correct. In this area, the true rate would be closer to triple the official numbers due to a lack of jobs in this area. The article goes on to quote Tony Fuhrman as stating it could reach 15-20 percent before this pandemic is over. If that is his official number, simple math would show the seriousness of the true unemployment rate. He states there are a number of companies hiring but fails to mention the revolving door of some of the companies to whom he refers. New employees are kept on payroll until their probation period ends. They are then laid off or fired. The company claims this is due to a lack of work while interviewing replacements. He also does not mention the unethical and illegal practices of some companies using county facilities to conduct interviews. These questionable actions contribute the unemployment rate but are not included in his figures. Three companies have mandated disclosure of a competitors client list as a condition for employment. Another ask my age in the interview. Still another mandated falsifying my resume as a condition for employment. For the record, those demands were denied. I will not engage in industrial espionage or employment fraud to gain employment. These actions were reported to his agency and IDES. Both refused to take action, stating they only provided a meeting room. Both claimed a lack of authority to act. Even if that is true, which is unlikely, it should have been referred to the Department of Labor. Refusal to act condones such questionable practices. If these figures are going to be thrown around, it is time they state the true unemployment rate. It is also time they take action against companies for their questionable practices, which, by the way, contribute to the true unemployment rate. Bill Rogers Wood River Maharashtra on Monday recorded 2064 cases of Covid-19 with 82 new infections, including 59 in Mumbai, the states health department said, even as the government will hold meetings to discuss ways to implement its plan for the second phase of lockdown. Other than the 59 Covid-19 patients in Mumbai, there were 12 in Malegaon, five in Thane, three in Pimpri Chinchwad, two in Palghar and one in Vasai virar -1 according to officials. No deaths were reported from anywhere, they said, on the 20th day of the nationwide lockdown to break the chain of infections. The state had crossed 1000 cases last Tuesday but reported more than 100 per day the past nine days, including three days that saw more than 200 cases. Amid the rising number of coronavirus infections, the state government will hold high-level meetings on Monday to discuss the plan to divide the districts into green, orange and red zones and allow industrial activities in areas that have no cases. The state may relax the restrictions in the second phase in eight districts with no patients till date once the Centre clarified its stand on their implementation. Also read: Life after lockdown: What government plans to do post-April 14 Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has already announced that the lockdown period will be extended by two week after a video conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday. Thackeray had last week hinted at relaxing the restrictions in some parts. The lockdown, which was scheduled to end on Tuesday, has now been extended till April 30 and the CM has warned to extend it further if the people dont follow the restrictions strictly. Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, which are earmarked as red zones are expected to see restrictions tightened and the area with no or fewer numbers of patients may get have more relaxed rules. The movements in these densely-populated areas are going to the restricted further with the help of more security forces. Also read: Ministers back in offices as Centre debates lockdown decision Gadchiroli, Chandrapur, Wardha, Bhandara, Nanded, Solapur, Parbhani and Nandurbar district have no Covid-19 patients and are likely to be earmarked at green zones and may relaxation in restrictions. The industrial units with a minimum number of employees and the capacity to implement social distancing are likely to be allowed to open their shutters. The industrial activities are expected to be allowed only these districts in green zones, the states health minister Rajesh Tope has hinted. Under the orange zone which will have districts with less than 15 positive patients, there may be a relaxation on activities for essential services. India on Monday recorded 308 deaths related to the coronavirus disease, 35 in the last 24 hours, and 620 new Covid-19 cases taking the tally across the country to 9152, according to the Union health ministry data. Brazil gave thanks to the health care workers by lighting up the famous Christ the Redeemer statue. On Easter Sunday, the said statue was illuminated to look like a doctor, as the country paid tribute to the front-line healthcare works and first responders who are on the field fighting the coronavirus pandemic all over the world. Hundreds of flags from all countries affected by the outbreak were also projected onto the statue. Christ the Redeemer can be seen all over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Dom Orani Tempesta, the city's archbishop, held a mass at the foot of the statue during the illumination and he paid tribute to all medical works worldwide. Christ the Redeemer statue Aside from the flags, messages of thanks written in numerous languages also appeared on the statue, while pictures of medical workers and health care professionals wearing scrubs and putting on face masks were also shown during the light show. The slogan "Fique Em Casa" which translates to "Stay at Home" was also projected onto the arm of the statue. Also Read: Experts Warn COVID-19 Can Travel up to 13 Feet, May Spread Through Shoes This is not the first time that the statue was illuminated due to the pandemic. In March, different flags from around the world were displayed on the statue, giving tribute to all the nations that have been affected by the virus. So far, Brazil has recorded 22,720 COVID-19 cases, with 1,270 deaths and 173 recovered cases. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders who is playing down the dangers of the disease. The leader dismissed the coronavirus pandemic and called it a "little flu" and he pushed back on the social-distancing policies mandated by WHO. President Bolsonaro is concerned about Brazil's economy and how it will collapse if the lockdown continues. Related Article: Dead Bodies Pile Up in Philippine Hospital Hallway As COVID-19 Death Toll Increases @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. State agency Bord Bia said it has a team on the ground watching the re-opening of food stores and suppliers in China to see if it can detect changes to consumer behaviour and for any lessons to be applied around the world, when the Covid-19 restrictions are eventually lifted worldwide. The concerns are over the future of the 13bn of global food exports for Irish firms and the thousands of jobs and prosperity that they generate across the island under the harsh effects of the effective lock down in key overseas markets. As it becomes one of the first major markets to lift restrictions, China is an important test bed to monitor if consumers have changed their food preferences after the deadly pandemic. In a report, Bord Bia said that in the last two weeks, "Chinas economic capacity utilisation rate had recovered to 78% of pre-Covid-19 levels" and with almost all food retailers having reopened it had a team on the ground "tracking market movements closely" there. "While Covid-19 impacts are expected to linger into June, recovery is expected to be well under-way by the second half of 2020," it said. However, it warned that despite China opening up again that other Asian markets are still waiting for the pandemic to peak. In Europe, it noted that Londons wholesale food and vegetable market had opened for public buyers and was selling online too. The Bord Bia report, called Navigating Change, also said the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has issued guidelines for food producers and retailers struggling with regulations over ingredients and packaging amid the crisis. It advised firms against "improvising solutions" at this time. "The introduction of allergens when changing ingredients and-or ingredient suppliers; safe shelf-life if packaging changes and-or the product is formulated differently; and the introduction of new microbiological, physical, chemi- cal hazards with new ingredients," are some of the issues facing food firms, it said. "In these situations, it is important that food businesses remember their legal obligations to only place safe food on the market," Bord Bia said. Washington, April 13 : At least six people were killed after strong tornadoes struck the US state of Mississippi, authorities said. The fatalities occurred on Sunday in the counties of Walthall, Lawrence and Jefferson Davis, Xinhua news agency quoted the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency as saying. All the three counties were south of Jackson, Mississippi's capital, near the neighbouring Louisiana state line. The tornadoes also destroyed homes, toppled trees, and caused power outage, according to local officials. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency on Sunday night in response to the devastation. Also on Sunday, damaging storms and tornados destroyed homes, toppled trees and knocked out electricity across Louisiana. The US National Weather Service declared a tornado emergency for Monroe in Louisiana. Doppler radar confirmed a large and destructive tornado was hitting parts of the city. According to local media, at least 20 homes were damaged in Monroe. Images on social media showed several damaged planes and buildings at the Monroe Regional Airport. Local weather forecast said a cold front will move in Sunday night, keeping the severe weather threat until it moves through. Wind gusts, large hail and isolated tornados were possible for all of southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. He was named one of the 10 greatest surfers of all time, but this is not what defines surfing legend Shaun Tomson. Tomson tragically lost his son Mathew in 2006, who died while playing the choking game. After this profound loss, Tomson chose to use his time and energy promoting a positive message of hope for families. On Monday, Tomson will share his message of resilience amid the COVID-19 pandemic in a free livestream event from 7 pm to 9 pm CST. The Power of the Code is an interactive presentation providing a way for families to truly connect. To sign up and participate in the livestream, click here. RACE FOR A VACCINE: Houston doctors lead the way, developing new COVID-19 RNA vaccine Over the years, tens of thousands of people families, employees, friends, students and inmates have intimately connected with each other through writing and then sharing their Code aloud 12 lines, each line beginning with I will...,'" Tomson said. Tomson penned his first book, The Code, which shares a framework for guiding families through ways of coping and change. Sometimes all you need to turn hope into action is to write your promises down and say them out loud to make a promise to no one but yourself, Tomson said. These personal promises will inspire everyone participating to believe in the power that each and every one of us has to shape our lives through the power of 'I Will.'" CORONAVIRUS EXPERT: 'Now's the time when you're at greatest risk of contracting the virus' Tomson has a special connection to Texas and is hoping to reach out to Texas families who feel overwhelmed during this turbulent time. A World Surfing Champion, he first got his start in Texas waters, surfing Galveston and South Padres best spots. I did the first promotion of my young life as a pro surfer at a surf store in Houston for the Dartez family and in Galveston for a couple, John and Molly Trice, Tomson said. alison.medley@chron.com VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / The Company through its Sun Valley Health division, commences tele-medicine services for patients, both in-clinics and virtually through secure video, on browser and in mobile app. With its base of 165,000 patients, the Company will begin offering digital access to physicians, using the newly launched tele-medicine platform, for a variety of physician based consultations. "The COVID-19 Pandemic has forever changed the interaction between physicians and patients, requiring immediate advancement in technology solutions, that offer safe interactions to a vast array of patient needs." said Steven McAuley, Chairman & CEO of Empower Clinics Inc. " Our team are fast-tracking progressive technology, products and service options, to support the needs of our patients, our staff, and our community." Sun Valley digital health initiatives are moving forward with safe and secure physician-patient interactions, starting with a combination of in-clinic virtual kiosk based physician visits, and full tele-medicine virtual consultations based on patient availability. A nationwide roll-out in the U.S. has the potential to reach in excess of 329 million people, based on the most recent U.S. census data. https://www.census.gov/popclock/ The Company has made changes to clinic operations and patient management based on the most recent recommendations from the (CDC) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and their guidance for healthcare facilities. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/healthcare-facilities/guidance-hcf.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/healthcare-facilities/index.html ABOUT EMPOWER Empower is a vertically-integrated health & wellness brand with it's first hemp-derived CBD extraction facility under development, the Company produces its proprietary line of cannabidiol (CBD) based products and distributes products through company owned and franchised clinics, with wholesale partnerships, online channels and with new retail opportunities nationwide in the U.S. The company is a leading multi-state operator of a network of physician-staffed wellness clinics, focused on helping patients improve and protect their health, through innovative physician recommended treatment options. The company has commenced activity on how to connect its significant data, to the potential of the efficacy of alternative treatment options related to hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) therapies. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Steven McAuley Chief Executive Officer CONTACTS: Investors:Steven McAuley CEO s.mcauley@empowerclinics.com 604-789-2146 Investors: Dustin Klein SVP, Business Development dustin@svmmjcc.com 720-352-1398 For French inquiries: Remy Scalabrini, Maricom Inc., E: rs@maricom.ca, T: (888) 585-MARI DISCLAIMER FOR FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" (collectively "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements can frequently be identified by words such as "plans", "continues", "expects", "projects", "intends", "believes", "anticipates", "estimates", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or information that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding; the Company's intention to open a hemp-based CBD extraction facility, the expected benefits to the Company and its shareholders as a result of the proposed acquisitions and partnerships; the effectiveness of the extraction technology; the expected benefits for Empower's patient base and customers; the benefits of CBD based products; the effect of the approval of the Farm Bill; the growth of the Company's patient list and that the Company will be positioned to be a market-leading service provider for complex patient requirements in 2019 and beyond. Such statements are only projections, are based on assumptions known to management at this time, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, including; that the Company may not open a hemp-based CBD extraction facility; that legislative changes may have an adverse effect on the Company's business and product development; that the Company may not be able to obtain adequate financing to pursue its business plan; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; failure to obtain any necessary approvals in connection with the proposed acquisitions and partnerships; and other factors beyond the Company's control. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements in this release, which are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The Company is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable laws. SOURCE: Empower Clinics Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/584830/Empower-Clinics-Launches-Nationwide-Digital-Health-Platform More than a dozen people die in Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana as over 34 tornadoes rip through the US south. Severe storms swept through the southern United States on Sunday night into Monday morning, leaving a path of destruction in their wake and more than a dozen people dead. Images on local media showed the devastation left behind by the tornadoes destroyed homes, downed power lines, twisted billboards and overturned cars. The National Weather Service (NWS) said 34 tornadoes were believed to have touched down across the region. Two long-track tornadoes followed similar paths across parts of the state of Mississippi and were on the ground for more than 160km (100 miles). PowerOutage.us reported more than 580,000 homes and businesses were without power in eight states as of midnight on Sunday. Texas, Arkansas, Alabama and Kentucky were the worst-hit with winds of up to 90km per hour (56 mph), causing outages in many areas not affected by tornadoes. Earlier on Sunday, damaging storms and possible tornadoes destroyed homes and businesses in Louisiana, uprooting trees and downing power lines across several areas of the state. About 300 homes were damaged or destroyed in Monroe, Louisiana. Damaged buildings and vehicles in the aftermath of a tornado in Monroe, Louisiana [Peter Tuberville/Social Media via Reuters] Coronavirus effect Physical distancing measures posed challenges for emergency officials as they opened shelters during the storm and considered where to house those affected afterwards. Monroe city officials secured about 200 hotel rooms to shelter families who were displaced, trying to avoid housing large numbers of people in one place because of the coronavirus pandemic. The NWS warned severe thunderstorms capable of tornadoes, damaging wind gusts and hail are possible on Monday from southeast Georgia, the eastern Carolinas, and into the Mid-Atlantic. More than 55 million people remain under severe wind warnings as the storms continue to move east. Flash flooding is also expected throughout southern states, with as much as 200 millimetres (8 inches) of rain forecast. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 01:42:01|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BUDAPEST, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A plane from southern China's Shenzhen landed here on Sunday morning, carrying 1,365,000 protective masks, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto announced on his Facebook account. These masks will be used by doctors, nurses, police officers and soldiers who are fighting the war against the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the minister. Another six planes with tonnes of protective gears will land in Budapest on Monday morning, he added. During Easter, the Hungarian government has issued stricter rules by closing down all popular natural parks from public and making the tobacco shops close as early as 3 p.m. The population was asked to stay home. According to official figures, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Hungary stood at 1,410 on Sunday, with 118 recoveries and 99 fatalities. Can Mars be made habitable in our lifetime? 55 years after humanity captured its first close-up images of the red planet, we still dont really know. Teams of scientists and engineers spend countless hours evaluating advanced technology to see if it can really be used to create regions with Earth-like temperatures and liquid water on the surface. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, even believes that humans must prioritize colonization of Mars in order to survive. NASA's Curiosity Rover makes its way around the Martian surface to take a stunning 360-degree photo. In times of pestilence and climate change, thats not too hard to believe. But to most of us, Mars doesnt exactly look welcoming. Its hard to imagine transforming the alien landscape into a place anyone would want to be for more than a few hours, let alone an entire lifetime. Seriously, how closely have you ever looked at the rocky surface of this planet, which has almost no readily available oxygen and an average temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit (or -63 degrees Celsius)? If youre curious, NASA has just made it a lot easier to explore from the comfort of your own living room. The Mars Exploration Program just released an incredible 1.8-billion-pixel panorama captured by the Curiosity Rover, and you can use the controls to pan the image or zoom in and out. You can also download the images in full for an even closer look. The NASA website explains that NASAs Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface between November 24th and December 1st, 2019. A version without the rover contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels; a version with the rover contains nearly 650 million pixels. Both versions are composed of more than 1,000 images that were carefully assembled over the following months. The rovers Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama and relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution panorama that includes the rovers deck and robotic arm. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam. A division of Caltech, NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the agencys Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Curiosity rover. Story continues NASA's Curiosity Rover makes its way around the Martian surface to take a stunning 360-degree photo. Plus, on March 20th, 2020, NASA revealed a selfie taken by the Mars Curiosity rover on February 26th. They add that NASAs Curiosity Mars rover recently set a record for the steepest terrain its ever climbed, cresting the Greenheugh Pediment, a broad sheet of rock that sits atop a hill. And before doing that, the rover took a selfie, capturing the scene just below Greenheugh. In front of the rover is a hole it drilled while sampling a bedrock target called Hutton. The entire selfie is a 360-degree panorama stitched together from 86 images relayed to Earth. The selfie captures the rover about 11 feet (3.4 meters) below the point where it climbed onto the crumbling pediment. High-resolution shots of the Martian surface captured by NASA's Curiosity Rover. High-resolution shots of the Martian surface captured by NASA's Curiosity Rover. NASAs Mars Exploration Program website also offers a dashboard giving us up-to-the-minute updates on the planets weather, distance from the sun, other recent images and findings. You can also use it to read about the formation and early evolution of Mars as a planet, how it was shaped through time, whether it might have hosted life sometime in the distant past, and its potential for future exploration by humans. The Mars 2020 rover is still set to launch this summer, collecting documented rock and soil samples that NASA hopes to return to Earth for study. The mission will also help us understand more about the planets environment, like winds, radiation, and dust. Other countries and private companies are sending spacecraft there, too, including the European Space Agency, a Japanese orbiter, and a SpaceX capsule. The Curiosity Rover snaps a sort of selfie as it completes the loop. Wondering what human habitation on Mars might look like? Check out MARSHA by AI Space Factory, the futuristic complex of egg-shaped buildings that won NASAs most recent 3D printed habitat challenge. By Trend Certificates of compulsory insurance of vehicles can now be issued online, so no need to go to an insurance company, a source at Azerbaijani Compulsory Insurance Bureau told Trend. According to the source, the decision of the Main State Traffic Police Department to terminate the process of detecting vehicles moving in quarantine regime by special technical means, announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, does not apply to expired compulsory insurance contracts. If the term of the compulsory car insurance contract has expired, and the driver, nevertheless, continues to drive the vehicle, this vehicle will be detected, and the driver will be fined, the source said. Since there are no restrictions on the activities of insurance companies during the quarantine period, the Compulsory Insurance Bureau urges drivers to obtain a certificate of compulsory vehicle insurance online. The movement restriction has been imposed in the country within a special quarantine regime which is introduced to prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). The Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan has made such a decision in connection with the movement restriction in the country from 00:00 (GMT+4) April 5, 2020 to 00:00 April 20, 2020 to protect life and health of the population, ensure uninterrupted operation of state structures and life support facilities, as well as activity of economic entities in the current situation at the appropriate level. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) shareholders should be happy to see the share price up 23% in the last week. But in truth the last year hasn't been good for the share price. After all, the share price is down 44% in the last year, significantly under-performing the market. See our latest analysis for Darden Restaurants While the efficient markets hypothesis continues to be taught by some, it has been proven that markets are over-reactive dynamic systems, and investors are not always rational. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement. Unhappily, Darden Restaurants had to report a 5.7% decline in EPS over the last year. The share price decline of 44% is actually more than the EPS drop. So it seems the market was too confident about the business, a year ago. You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image). NYSE:DRI Past and Future Earnings April 13th 2020 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. It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on Darden Restaurants's earnings, revenue and cash flow. What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)? We'd be remiss not to mention the difference between Darden Restaurants's total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price return. Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. Darden Restaurants's TSR of was a loss of 43% for the year. That wasn't as bad as its share price return, because it has paid dividends. A Different Perspective While the broader market lost about 4.0% in the twelve months, Darden Restaurants shareholders did even worse, losing 43% (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. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 4.9% per year over half a decade. If the fundamental data continues to indicate long term sustainable growth, the current sell-off could be an opportunity worth considering. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Darden Restaurants you should know about. Story continues Darden Restaurants is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket. Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. Mumbai: At least two workers were killed and one was injured in a blast at the chemical factory in Maharashtra's Palghar on Monday (April 13). The incident occurred at the Tarapur-located company at around 12:30 pm today. As per the report, the blast took place at one of the units that was involved in making handwash and sanitizers. The production work at the company was carried out after taking approval from Palghar Collector Kailash Shinde. The mishap took place around 12 noon in the premises of Galaxy Surfactants, located in the Boisar industrial area, district disaster control cell chief Vivekananda Kadam told PTI. "Two workers were killed and one was seriously injured," Kadam said. Some locals said they heard a loud sound from the unit around noon. The injured worker was rushed to hospital, Kadam said. On getting information about the mishap, a couple of fire engines rushed to the spot and efforts were underway to douse the flames. "The cause of the explosion was not immediately known," Kadam said. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, there has been a vast demand for handwash and sanitizers following which several companies have started manufacturing these products. In the meantime, 82 more cases of coronavirus were reported in Maharashtra on April 13, taking the total number of the positive cases in the state to 2064. According to Maharashtra Health Department, out of the 82 new cases of COVID-19, three are from Pune, 59 from Mumbai, 12 from Malegaon, five from Thane, one from Vasai Virar, and two from Palghar. Slate is making its coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism. Start your free trial. Last week, my friends neighborlets call him Bradknocked on her door and handed over his apartment key. He wanted her to hold onto it because, he told her, he was fleeing New York City via private jet to Florida, where he was renting a mansion to ride out the coronavirus with a dozen of his friends. WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??? she texted me and some other friends after she accepted the key. Advertisement We quickly located his Instagram profile and scoured it for clues as to what, exactly, was wrong with him. He appeared to be a standard-order New York City bro, per the many photos of him posing on yachts, on fancy Tribeca rooftops, or in garish suit jackets, flanked by clones. Every caption was festooned with hashtags like #livingmybestlife and #friends. This guyhe was clearly the worst. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement More significantly, Brad was convenient. He was a gratifying receptacle for all of my impotent rage and anxiety about the current crisis. After weeks of reading about the climbing death rate, basic equipment shortages, the daily missteps of a petulant president, and a governor who chose this moment to cut Medicaid and jail more people, Brad essentially became a Voodoo doll. We fantasized about the unspeakable things we could do to his apartment now that we had his key, egging our friend on to use it to punish him for his mind-bogglingly stupid life choices. She did not follow through. It still made for a good fantasy. Advertisement Advertisement Instead of coming together, every stranger on the street is a potential vector, or worse, another body that could take up a hospital bed and make it unavailable for you or your own loved ones. This crisis is highlighting all the Brads among us. People, especially Americans, tend to do stupid things in reflexive resistance to rules we are told are good for us. Weve all seen the stories. Pastors are still holding church services in defiance of shelter-in-place orders. Spring breakers ignored social distancing guidance and clustered on beaches. New Yorkers are fleeing the epicenter of the outbreak for vacation homes in under-resourced rural areas. There was that guy who stockpiled all the hand sanitizer. Yes, these are all examples of irresponsible behavior in a pandemic that requires drastic and unusual collective action. Because the federal government did nothing to identify or track the coronavirus back in January, when containment was still possible, the most important thing we can do to save lives now is to stay inside and stay away from one another as much as possible, and encourage others to stay inside and away from one another as much as possible, too. The forced separation is a departure from the typical human impulse to grasp for community in the midst of disaster. Instead of coming together, every stranger on the street is a potential vector, or worse, another body that could take up a hospital bed and make it unavailable for you or your own loved ones. No one can be trusted. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement That fear has taken an inevitable turn. The pastors are being arrested. Neighbors are reporting on one another and sending photos of illicit gatherings to the police. Some states are prosecuting people for coughing on others. In Philadelphia, police officers physically pulled a man off a city bus because he didnt have a mask. Earlier this month, the Intercept reported that NYPD officers arrested a woman for insufficient social distancing while hanging out with her boyfriend in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a predominantly black and therefore heavily policed neighborhood in Brooklyn. Her punishment was to sit in a cell, with more than 20 other people, before being released back into the community: The woman was taken to the local precinct and then to central booking, where she shared a cell with two dozen other women for the next 36 hours. Only women who already had masks when they were arrested were allowed to keep them. There was no soap and the cell was dirty, but at one point an officer went around distributing drops of hand sanitizer to the women held there. Advertisement Advertisement This arrest is a sign of things to come. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has encouraged the NYPD to further crack down on people who are not sufficiently social-distancing and suggested in a press conference earlier this month that he would deputize police officers from rural areas upstate to provide backup in the city (an agenda he pushed years ago, to the anger of city police and the public). Advertisement Advertisement Public fear creates an opportunity for leaders to push their own agendas. Everyone can understand that this womans arrest does not make anyone safer. Indeed, it likely does the reverse. But maybe the only remaining question is whether we should even be surprised that its come to this. Americans, especially white Americans, already call the police too much. In normal times, policing has been Americas primary response to a host of societal ills that cannot be solved by punishment. Homelessness, mental illness, violence, racism, poverty, and toxic masculinity are all fed through the criminal justice system, rather than getting addressed in any meaningful way, never mind resolved. Now we expect police officers to contain this virus for us, even as they too become infected. Even though trying to arrest our way out of this just puts everyone in more danger. (If you think it is hard to social-distance in New York City, it is impossible to socially distance in jails, which typically lack basic sanitation supplies and cycle people in and out, only exacerbating the spread.) Advertisement Advertisement Here is the thing: Even though I know all of this, I admit some part of me wanted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to track down Brad and punish him. Even though I know that, as my colleague Mark Joseph Stern pointed out, New Yorkers visiting Florida are the least of Floridas problems. The state had more than 10,000 confirmed cases long before Brad and his friends arrived. Other people are not the problem; a spectacular failure of leadership is. The problem with the way the government has failed to contain this crisis is that now, stopping the coronavirus has shifted to be a matter of personal responsibility. Telling people to stay inside is the best weve got right now. But individuals cant be trusted to follow the rules, and right now, not following the rules might mean that you end up killing people. And the list of rules gets longer with every new CDC guidance: Everyone should be washing their hands for at least 20 seconds, disinfecting commonly touched surfaces every day, donating their masks to hospitals, but also wearing masks outside the home, and, above all, staying home as much as possible. When others defy these rules, it feels like a personal attack, not only because the rest of us are following the rules, but because the consequencesfor older people, for people with compromised immune systems, for essential workerscould be lethal. Which is perhaps why its so tempting to become preoccupied with other peoples wrongdoings. But that impulse works in the favor of the real villains of the pandemic. Advertisement When the virus first entered the U.S., the people who could have done something to contain it did nothing. They didnt even bother to track it. Meanwhile, South Korea and Taiwan immediately instituted widespread testing, created quarantine hotels, and deployed their robust social safety nets to ensure everyone could have basic needs met while staying indoors. Those countries have seen far lower infection rates than the U.S. In contrast, the Trump administration ignored and denied the problem, disbanded a pandemic response team, lied repeatedly about the response, withheld vital supplies from states, and is now hawking an unproven miracle drug that Donald Trump has a personal financial stake in. Even when it became obvious that the U.S. was being overwhelmed by the outbreak, many governors waited too long to shut down businesses and schools. Which is all to say that other people, even Brad, are not the problem; a spectacular failure of leadership is. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But public fear creates an opportunity for leaders to push their own agendas. Americans have done this beforein past public health crises specifically. In the late 19th century, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were blamed for a cholera outbreak, even though the culprit turned out to be contaminated water. With the cholera killing people by the wholesale in the ports whence these creatures assemble to take passage to the United States, there is good ground for the present demand for absolute prohibition of immigration, the New York Times wrote in 1892. The governor of New York took advantage of the moment to push his nativist agenda and banned ships in order to discourage them from transporting poor European immigrants to American shores. Advertisement A few years later, a bubonic plague outbreak in Hawaii and California inflamed suspicions of Chinese immigrants packed into tiny, squalid living conditions. Officials quarantined and even burned Chinatown ghettos and sent the survivors into camps. Fears of the plague also justified an extension of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned all Chinese immigration for an additional 40 years. Letting fear guide our responses wont lead to measures that make anyone safer. And when a policy response is designed around the worst of the worstthe exceptionswe get nonsensical and brutal systems. We are already living through another long-unfolding disaster driven by the impulse to deploy the police against people we fear: mass incarceration, which research shows does almost nothing to improve public safety and can actually exacerbate crime. Its destabilized and trapped vulnerable communities while providing more privileged sectors of society an illusion of security, a talisman against disaster. Advertisement Advertisement The reality of mass incarceration is that every person it touches, victim and perpetrator, has undergone trauma. And traumatized people do not respond well to punishment. What we are experiencing right now, across the world, is also a kind of trauma. People deal with calamity in unpredictable ways. Sometimes that process looks like denial, or joking in a grave situation, or even just going for a run without a mask on. Its easy to feel alone in our grief and lash out at others who dont seem to feel the same way when were grappling with that. But we cant possibly know whats going through others heads. Assuming the worst wont make this crisis go away. Advertisement Advertisement We have a choice now. We can call the police on the kids playing basketball in the street and tell ourselves that doing so will help, or we can decide to put our efforts behind the real things that we know we need to contain this viruswidespread testing and better protections for essential workers. We can recruit more police officers, or we can recruit more health care workers. We can demand tougher punishments for pastors who hold church services, or we can demand a real social safety net to ensure we are never caught off-guard again. The U.S. government has made clear that it doesnt know how to do both. Most importantly, we can stop blaming others hand-washing techniques and instead refuse to forget this truth: Because our leaders failed to rise to the occasion and enact meaningful preventive measures months ago, all of us are now being asked to make extraordinary personal sacrifices to clean up their mess. And for the most part, people have agreed to do the right thing for as long as it takes. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Yes, many people are behaving like selfish jerks. Many more people, right now, are forming mutual aid networks, donating to food banks, and checking in on neighbors. Most people who can are sheltering in place, judging by the massive drops in traffic pollution and transit ridership. Most people are trying their best while staring down a terrifying illness and economic collapse. Well only get through this intact if we can maintain some semblance of compassion for one another. To be clear, yes, Im still going to mock Brads drone-filmed video tours of his mansion every chance I get. But then I will remind myself to just put the phone down and let him #livehisbestlife. For more on the impact of the coronavirus, listen to Mondays episode of What Next. Washington, April 13 : A partial reopening of the US economy could begin in May, Anthony Fauci, director of the country's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, while cautioning that there was a potential for a second COVID-19 outbreak in the fall. Parts of the US economy could have "a gradual reentry of some sort of normality, some rolling reentry", Xinhua news agency quoted Fauci as saying on CNN on Sunday. "There is always a possibility as we get into next fall and beginning of early winter that we can see a rebound," he added. Meanwhile, the path of US economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic could be a "long, hard road", a senior Federal Reserve official said on Sunday. "This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine. It's hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario," Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told CBS News. The United States has become the country with the most confirmed COVID-19 cases and fatalities worldwide. As of Monday morning, the overall number of coronavirus cases and fatalities in the US has increased to 557,571 and 22,108, respectively. With this, the US now accounts for the highest number of cases and deaths in the world. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: Turkmenistan has sold gasoline to UK and carbamide to UAE, Trend reports with reference to Turkmenistan Today State News Agency. The auction at the State Commodity and Raw Material Exchange of Turkmenistan was held last week. At this auction 46 transactions were concluded, both for foreign currency and for the Turkmen manat. The total amount of transactions for foreign currency was $25.3 million. In addition to the UK, entrepreneurs from Afghanistan also purchased gasoline. The gasoline bought by these two countries was produced at the Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries. The total amount of transactions for the domestic market exceeded 14.1 million mantas ($4.5 million). Turkmenistans businessmen purchased polypropylene and substandard polypropylene produced at the Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries, high-density polyethylene produced at the Turkmengaz State Concern. Handmade carpets, cotton fiber were also bought. The State Commodity and Raw Material Exchange of Turkmenistan was established on July 29, 1994. It is the most important regulatory body for Turkmenistans export and import operations. In accordance with the law of Turkmenistan "about commodity exchanges", enterprises and organizations of all forms of ownership, citizens of Turkmenistan and other states can participate in exchange trading by getting a brokerage place or entering into a service contract with exchange brokers. The coverage on this live blog has ended but for up-to-the-minute coverage on the coronavirus outbreak, visit the live blog from CNBC's Asia-Pacific team. All times below are in Eastern time. Global cases: More than 1,912,900 Global deaths: At least 118,966 US cases: More than 577,300 US deaths: At least 23,232 The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 7:30 pm: Trump claims that he has 'total' power to restart state economies As the nation entered its third straight week of near total economic shutdown on Monday, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that it will be his decision when the nation's businesses will reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, and not a choice left to individual governors. But legal experts say Trump is wrong. For one, they note that U.S. law gives state governors wide latitude to protect the health and safety of their constituents. Secondly, they point out that Trump never declared a nationwide lockdown, so there's no mechanism by which he could order a nationwide reopening now, namely. Still, that did not prevent Trump from claiming that his power is nearly boundless. During a press briefing on the coronavirus Monday, he said, "When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total." Trump's comments on Monday evening came in response to questions from reporters about an announcement the president had made earlier in the day. Citing media reports that it would be up to governors when to "open up the states," Trump wrote, "this is incorrect. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons." Christina Wilkie 7:15 pm: San Francisco mayor says city will not allow a 420 event this year San Francisco Mayor London Breed issues a warning against coming to the city to celebrate the annual 420 marijuana celebration on April 20. "We will not tolerate anyone coming to San Francisco for 420 this year," Breed said. Many people typically crowd up Golden Gate Park for the event but Breed said they'll be cited, even arrested, if necessary. "I want to be clear," she said about people who typically come to Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park. "We will not allow this unsanctioned event to occur this year. There will be police officers patrolling the area." tweet 7:08 pm: Vox plans to announce around 100 employee furloughs later this week, hoping to avoid layoffs, sources say Vox Media, the digital media company that owns SBNation, New York Media, The Verge and other brands, is preparing to announce a furlough of about 100 employees later this week, according to people familiar with the matter. Vox executives are negotiating details with the Writers Guild of America, East, which represents about 350 people at Vox, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The number of people furloughed could rise or fall slightly depending on those negotiations, which are confidential, said the people. A announcement will be made by the end of the week, the people said. Vox is discussing three-month furloughs for employees and is focusing on employees whose coverage areas have diminished during coronavirus quarantines, such as dining website Eater and SBNation, said the people. Temporary three-month employee pay cuts aimed at the company's highest earners are also being discussed, the people said. Vox also wants to ensure health care is covered for furloughed employees, one of the people said. Alex Sherman 6:52 pm: Fauci walks back comment that earlier coronavirus social distancing would have saved lives White House health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci walked back his recent comments about the initial U.S. response to the coronavirus, saying he used "the wrong choice of words" a day earlier when describing "pushback about shutting things down." Fauci's comments from a CNN interview Sunday in which he said that more lives "obviously" could have been saved if the U.S. made earlier efforts to contain the virus were seen by some as a critique of the Trump administration's handling of the crisis. Trump later that evening retweeted a call to "#FireFauci." A White House spokesman said Monday that the president "is not firing Dr. Fauci," who "has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump." Fauci on Monday evening defended his comments, and Trump's record on the coronavirus, while standing next to the president at the White House's daily briefing on the disease. Kevin Breuninger 6:45 pm: Millions of veterans could miss out on coronavirus stimulus checks Entrance to Veterans Administration hospital in New York, United States, on April 1, 2020. John Lamparski | NurPhoto | Getty Images As many as 2 million veterans could miss out on the federal stimulus payments that started arriving in Americans' bank accounts this week, prompting outcries from advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The checks can total up to $1,200 per person and are being dispersed through the IRS, which requires eligible households to file a tax return in order to receive their money. But many veterans and their survivors who rely solely on government benefits, such as disability payments from Veterans Affairs, do not typically have to submit a return. This year, that means they could also fall through the cracks of the stimulus program. "I served my country. I was ready to go to war," said Dennis Arellano, 61, a Marine Corps veteran who now lives in San Jose. "I think they should consider something about that." Veterans groups estimate roughly 1.9 million veterans and their survivors could be in this category, based on the number who were in a similar situation during the Great Recession. Advocates argue that the federal government already has bank account information for those households since they receive veteran's benefits. And they're calling on the VA, IRS and Treasury Department to work together to waive the filing requirement. Ylan Mui, Karen James Sloan 6:30 pm: Trump says there's 'clear evidence' coronavirus mitigation is working in US as growth in new cases stabilizes US President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on April 13, 2020, in Washington, DC. Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images President Donald Trump said growth in new coronavirus infections stabilized and new hospitalizations in hot spots like New York slowed over the weekend, providing "clear evidence that our aggressive strategy to combat the virus is working." "Over the weekend, the number of daily new infections remained flat, nationwide flat," Trump said at a White House press conference with the coronavirus task force on Monday. "Hospitalizations are slowing in hot spots like New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Louisiana. This is clear evidence that our aggressive strategy to combat the virus is working and that Americans are following the guidelines." William Feuer 6:10 pm: Futures flat as investors brace for a tough earnings season amid coronavirus crisis Stock futures were little changed in overnight trading on Monday as investors brace for an ugly earnings season with the coronavirus wrecking havoc on global corporate profits. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose just 20 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were also flat Earnings season is set to kick off on Tuesday with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Johnson & Johnson reporting numbers in the morning. The first batch of results will give investors a sense of how devastating the hit to corporations could be from the pandemic. Yun Li 6:05 pm: All 50 states have seen at least one death from coronavirus Wyoming reported its first Covid-19-related death, which confirmed that all 50 states in the U.S. have seen at least one death from the virus. The state currently has 275 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the Wyoming Department of Health. It is also one of the few states not currently under a stay-at-home order. Hannah Miller 5:45 pm: Pope Francis: 'This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage' Amid the Covid-19 pandemic Pope Francis says it might be time for some sort of universal basic income. "This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage" to "acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks" and to "achieve the ideal ... of no worker without rights," Pope Francis said in a letter to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, an organization representing global grassroots organizations, published on Sunday via the Vatican. The Pope acknowledged that for many workers, the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns are making it difficult, if not impossible, for people to earn money. "Many of you live from day to day, without any type of legal guarantee to protect you," Pope Francis says in the letter. "Street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time ... and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable." Catherine Clifford 5:20 pm: The pace of new coronavirus infections in New Jersey slows as cases top 64,500, Gov. Phil Murphy says The pace of new coronavirus infections in New Jersey is slowing even as the number of cases rises, indicating that the state's efforts to contain the pandemic are "clearly working," Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday. The state confirmed 3,219 new cases on Sunday, a 4% jump from the previous day and the lowest percentage increase in new infections since the Covid-19 outbreak began, Murphy said. Officials believe the curve, or the daily rate of new infections, is "undeniably now flattening." However, he said more than 2,400 people in the state have now died from Covid-19, more than the number of New Jerseyans who died in the Vietnam and Korean wars combined. "It's still rising, these cases are still rising, Murphy said. "We have got to hit that plateau and then aggressively bring it down back on the other side." Noah Higgins-Dunn 5 pm: German health minister says the country is considering steps to return to a 'new normal' Graffiti of a woman wearing a protective face mask next to an image of the coronavirus is seen on March 30 in Berlin, Germany. Adam Berry | Getty Images Germany is considering how to implement a gradual recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, the country's health minister, Jens Spahn, told CNBC on Monday. "We are thinking about step by step, that is important ... going back to a new normal," Spahn said on "Closing Bell." Spahn, who was speaking from Berlin, stressed that it will indeed be a new normal because "all the measures we have taken like keeping distance, wearing masks, no parties ... are definitely measures that need to be there in place for months to come." But Germany is in a place to begin considering what a recovery looks like because its rate of new infections has continued to slow, Spahn said. He cited the effectiveness of social distancing measures and applauded the country's residents for taking them seriously. Kevin Stankiewicz 4:30 pm: Trump administration wants to delay deadlines for the 2020 census The Trump administration wants to delay deadlines for the 2020 census because of the coronavirus outbreak, a move that if approved would push back timetables for releasing data used to draw congressional and legislative districts, the chair of the House oversight committee said Monday. U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney said administration officials were asking that all field operations be postponed until June 1 and that the deadline for wrapping up the nation's head count be pushed back until Oct. 31. Field operations for the 2020 census have been suspended since mid-March and were set to resume this week. The deadline for finishing the head count also had been pushed back from the end of July to mid-August because of the pandemic. Associated Press 4:15 pm: AT&T gives free wireless service to frontline health workers AT&T will provide three months of free wireless service for nurses and doctors working on the frontlines through its FirstNet network. FirstNet was developed through a public-private partnership between AT&T and First Responder Network Authority, an independent authority within the U.S. Department of Commerce. "They are working around the clock, on the frontlines to combat the COVID-19 health crisis," AT&T CEO Jeff McElfresh said of nurses and doctors. "We want to be there to keep them connected. And that's exactly what FirstNet delivers." Actor John Krasinski announced AT&T's offer on his new YouTube series "Some Good News," which only reports on positive, uplifting stories. Hannah Miller 3:55 pm: Coronavirus saliva test gets FDA emergency use approval, Rutgers University says Federal health officials have granted an emergency use authorization for a coronavirus test relying on saliva samples that was developed by a Rutgers University-backed entity. The newly authorized test, which require a person with coronavirus symptoms to spit into a cup, could increase by up to 10,000 tests per day the number of screenings for Covid-19, according to Rutgers. The New Jersey university noted that its coronavirus test, which has already drawn attention from the White House task force on the pandemic, does not rely on nose and throat swabs, as other tests do. An infectious disease expert, Dr. Tom Moore, told CNBC that the potential impact from such a test being widely available is "enormous." "The release of any reliable test, expanded capacity of tests or introduction of new tests ... will go a really long way toward curbing the pandemic," said Moore, a Witchita, Kan., physician who previously served on the board of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Dan Mangan 3:45 pm: LA schools to remain closed through summer Los Angeles schools will remain closed through the summer session, according to an announcement from Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner. Schools will continue to operate remotely with online classes held during the summer. The school district is waiting upon guidance from local and state authorities to determine a safe reopen date. Hannah Miller twitter 3:24 pm: Three West Coast states announce pact on reopening economy General view outside San Diego Zoo as entertainment venues remain closed due to coronavirus on April 11, 2020 in San Diego, California. Daniel Knighton | Getty Images California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a regional partnership that will see the three states work together to contain Covid-19 and reopen the West Coast economy. Each state will still develop its own plan, but all three governors agreed to prioritize certain principles, including placing health first and using science to inform policy. "COVID-19 doesn't follow state or national boundaries. It will take every level of government, working together, and a full picture of what's happening on the ground," the governors said in a statement. "In the coming weeks, the West Coast will flip the script on COVID-19 with our states acting in close coordination and collaboration to ensure the virus can never spread wildly in our communities." William Feur twitter 2:20 pm: NY, NJ and other Northeastern states form coronavirus working group to decide when to ease restrictions New York, New Jersey and four Northeastern states are forming a working group to keep a close watch on the coronavirus outbreak throughout the region and coordinate plans to reopen parts of the economy in those states. Each state will name a public health and economic official that will form a working group to decide when to start easing restrictions designed to curb the Covid-19 outbreak in their states, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a press conference Monday. He said it would weigh public health and economic concerns. "State boundaries mean very little to this virus," Cuomo said. "We started this journey together and we're going to end it together." New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who joined on the conference call, said an economic recovery can begin only after there's a complete health-care recovery. The other governors in the group are Connecticut's Ned Lamont, Rhode Island's Gina Raimondo, Pennsylvania's Gov. Tom Wolf and John Carney of Delaware. Kevin Breuninger, Noah Higgins-Dunn, William Feur 2:12 pm: Google is raising money to give 5,000 needy families cash; CEO Sundar Pichai donating $1 million Google is raising cash for 5,000 San Francisco Bay Area families as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has led to an economic collapse in its backyard. The company's philanthropic arm, Google.org, and CEO Sundar Pichai, are each giving $1 million to GiveDirectly, which delivers cash to families enrolled in a federal nutrition assistance SNAP program, the company said Sunday evening. The goal is to raise $5 million so that each family receives $1,000. GiveDirectly will give money to families in Bay Area ZIP codes most affected by Covid-19, according to its website. As of Monday, it had raised $2.45 million. The company said it's putting a call out to Bay Area Google employees and "others" to donate. Jennifer Elias 2:05 pm: President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci, White House says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Saturday, April 4, 2020. Tasos Katopodis | Bloomberg | Getty Images The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump is not firing infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci despite Trump's retweet of a supporter's #FireFauci message. "This media chatter is ridiculous, President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci," said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley. "Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump." In a CNN interview Sunday, Fauci said more U.S. lives could have been saved had stricter measures been taken earlier. Later Sunday, Trump retweeted a former Republican congressional candidate's tweet that was critical of Fauci's comment and called for his firing. Fauci, 79, has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. Reuters 1:57 pm: Netflix surges to 52-week high as investors flock to stay-at-home stocks Shares of Netflix rose to $395.88 per share, a new 52-week high, in an otherwise red day for stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down around 2.3% at midday, while the S&P 500 was off by 1.8% and the Nasdaq Composite was down by 0.7%. Investors have been flocking to stay-at-home stocks. Investment bank William Blair said in late March that Netflix may see an increase in subscribers because people are stuck at home spending more time watching video services during lockdowns because of the coronavirus. Needham, however, has suggested the coronavirus could be bad for Netflix because it can bee seen as a discretionary product by people who need to cut spending. Similarly, Amazon was less than 5% from its 52-week high in early afternoon trading. Jessica Bursztynsky 1:49 pm: Leon Cooperman says gov't shouldn't let companies go bankrupt because of coronavirus Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman said the U.S. government should offer financial assistance to companies that are struggling during the coronavirus pandemic. "If the government lets all these companies go bankrupt and they do disgorge labor, the government is going to have to basically pay a lot of unemployment benefits," Cooperman said on "Fast Money Halftime Report." "Instead, they make low-interest rate or interest-free loans to these companies that are experiencing [a] liquidity crisis, the companies fix themselves up and they come back," Cooperman argued. Cooperman was responding to viral comments made last week on CNBC by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who said the U.S. government should not bail out billionaires and hedge funds as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic. Kevin Stankiewicz 1:38 pm: How the coronavirus downturn may change your plans to retire at 65 Retiring at 65 was already becoming a fading tradition before Covid-19 sank the world's economy. Now, that traditional retirement age could fall further by the wayside as workers pick up the pieces once the economy gets going again. A survey from Allianz Life Insurance finds that half of Americans retired earlier than they expected. A majority of respondents said they did so for reasons outside their control, with 34% citing job-loss and 25% health-care issues. The online survey was conducted in January, well before the U.S. economy came to a halt due to the coronavirus. But the results still point to a trend that may be amplified in the current economic conditions. "Right now, people are fearful of the future," said Kelly LaVigne, vice president of Consumer Insights at Allianz Life. "Are the jobs going to come back? Nobody can really predict it." Lorie Konish 1:27 pm: Putin says Russia may need the army to help battle coronavirus MOSCOW, April 6, 2020 .Police officers wearing face masks patrol on Red Square in Moscow, Russia, on April 6, 2020. Russia has registered 6,343 cases of COVID-19 across most of its regions as of Monday, rising by a new daily record of 954, official data showed. (Sputnik/Handout to Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/ via Getty Images) Xinhua News Agency President Vladimir Putin said Russia might need to call in the army to help tackle the coronavirus crisis and warned the contagion was getting worse after the number of confirmed cases rose by a record daily amount. Moscow, the worst-hit area, and several other regions have imposed a lockdown, ordering residents to stay at home except to buy food, seek urgent medical treatment, take out the rubbish, or go to work if absolutely necessary. Putin criticized what he said was sloppiness in some regions that had allowed local outbreaks to gain a foothold and urged regional leaders to make use of what he said was a three- to four-week lag with Moscow. Reuters 1:13 pm: Dow drops 500 points, Caterpillar slides 8% 1:04 pm: UK chief adviser expects Covid deaths curve to plateau for 2 or 3 weeks Britain should expect the number of daily deaths from coronavirus to continue to rise this week, followed by a plateau for a period of two to three weeks, the government's chief scientific adviser said. "You'd expect that (the plateau) to go on for two or three weeks, but I can't be absolutely sure on the time of that," Dr. Patrick Vallance said at a daily government news conference. After the plateau, the number of daily deaths should begin to decrease, he added. Reuters 12:51 pm: It's now much harder to get a mortgage, or even refinance Mortgage rates have fallen back to recent lows, and though homebuyers aren't exactly banging on the doors during the spring housing market amid the coronavirus crisis, some hardy ones are out in the hunt. And plenty of current homeowners could still save money through a refinance. Unfortunately, both types of loans are now harder to get as the mortgage market is badly battered on several fronts due to the impacts of the pandemic on the economy and employment. Mortgage credit availability in March fell to the lowest level in five years, according to a survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Lenders cite a large drop in liquidity, as investors in jumbo mortgage-backed bonds pull back. Jumbo loans are those valued above the conforming loan limit of $510,400. Diana Olick 12:36 pm: First coronavirus stimulus checks were deposited this week here's when you can expect yours The first wave of stimulus relief checks were deposited into some Americans' bank accounts over the weekend, according to the IRS. Millions more can expect to receive theirs in coming weeks as part of the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill passed to aid Americans suffering financially from the coronavirus pandemic. To help taxpayers check the status of their payment, the IRS this week is rolling out a tracking tool called "Get My Payment." The tool will also let users update their direct deposit information with the IRS. The agency also unveiled an online tool for low-income Americans who do not typically file taxes to enter their banking information to receive a payment. The checks, worth $1,200 for individuals with adjusted gross income below $75,000 and $2,400 for couples earning below $150,00, are part of the federal government's response to unprecedented unemployment levels and financial strain caused by Covid-19. Alicia Adamczyk 12:22 pm: Coronavirus crippling film industry, US box office headed for worst year since 1998 A usually busy Main Street in Livingston , Montana after Governor Steve Bullock order the closing of restaurants, bars, and theaters on March 20, 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. William Campbell | Corbis via Getty Images With theaters closed for the foreseeable future and studios postponing blockbusters until 2021, this year's box office is expected to fall more than 40%from last year, a new report predicts. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates the 2020 box office will reach around $6.6 billion. The last time the box office was this low was in 1998, when the industry reported $6.7 billion in ticket sales. Through the first three months of the year, sales at the box office have tallied $1.79 billion, a 25.4% fall from a year earllier. "Our estimates reflect our opinion that most theaters will remain closed domestically well into June, with a slow recovery over the balance of the year," Pachter wrote in a note. "We expect some regions to remain closed for several months." Sarah Whitten 12:10 pm: WHO officials say it's unclear whether recovered coronavirus patients are immune to second infection People wearing protective masks walk through Lu Xun Park in Shanghai, China, on Thursday, April 2, 2020. Qilai Shen | Bloomberg via Getty Images World Health Organization officials said not all people who recover from the coronavirus have the antibodies to fight a second infection, raising questions as to whether or not patients develop immunity after surviving Covid-19. "With regards to recovery and then reinfection, I believe we do not have the answers to that. That is an unknown," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's emergencies programs, said at a press conference at the organization's Geneva headquarters on Monday. A preliminary study of patients in Shanghai found that some patients had "no detectable antibody response" while others had a very high response, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's lead scientist on Covid-19. Whether the patients that had a strong antibody response were immune to a second infection is "a separate question," she added. More than 300,000 of the 1.87 million coronavirus cases across the world have recovered, WHO officials noted, adding that they need more information from recovered patients to understand their antibody response and whether that gives them immunity and for how long. Will Feuer, Berkeley Lovelace Jr. 12:01 pm: New York Gov. Cuomo says 'worst is over if we continue to be smart' New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the state is "controlling the spread" of the coronavirus, and it appears that "the worst is over ... if we continue to be smart going forward." But at the same time, Cuomo revealed that the death toll from Covid-19 in New York had topped 10,000 people. However, he pointed to a flattening of some data points tracking the virus, or a drop in some cases, as evidence that radical measures such as the shuttering of nonessential businesses had helped to contain the virus. "We're controlling the spread," Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany. "The worst can be over, and is over, unless we do something reckless." "You can turn those numbers on two or three days of reckless behaviors," he said. "If we do something stupid, you will see those numbers go right back up tomorrow." Dan Mangan 11:48 am: World Health Organization officials warn against easing coronavirus restrictions too early World Health Organization officials warned against lifting government lockdowns to contain the Covid-19 outbreak too soon, saying that the coronavirus spreads fast and is 10 times deadlier than the 2009 flu pandemic. "While Covid-19 accelerates very fast, it decelerates much more slowly. In other words, the way down is much slower than the way up," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference. "That means control measures must be lifted slowly and with control. It cannot happen all at once." U.S. political leaders, from President Donald Trump to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have said they he hope to reopen businesses as soon as its safe to do so. "Control measures can only be lifted if the right public-health measures are in place, including significant capacity for contact tracing," Tedros said. Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Will Feuer 11:39 am: Some small businesses are starting to get rescue funds, but payouts overall are lagging behind Small businesses have applied for more than half of the $350 billion allotted for the Paycheck Protection Program and all the funds may be spoken for this week but the amount actually disbursed to businesses is lagging well behind. The "PPP," the Trump administration's centerpiece program to help small businesses weather the economic effects of the coronavirus, has approved 860,000 applications for $210 billion of loans through 4,500 lenders an accomplishment praised by many bankers. But moving from application to disbursal has proven to be another challenge that bankers said has been hampered by a lack of clarity from the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration and by the need first to use bank personnel to process applications before closing loans. "Banks are absolutely beginning to fund and you're going to see those numbers grow dramatically," said Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association. Nichols added, however, "We are still seeking some areas of guidance around some of the contours of the program." Steve Liesman, Kate Rogers, Dawn Giel 11:27 am: 'We're not governments' Cramer says small business owners can't front their employees forever CNBC's Jim Cramer criticized the launch of the small business loan program passed by Congress last month, arguing delays are heaping more burden on business owners. "How many weeks do I have to front everybody?" Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." Cramer owns two restaurants in Brooklyn, New York. While saying he's fortunate enough to be able to pay his employees in the absence of the small business loans, Cramer said the situation is different for many other entrepreneurs who have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. "Most people can't front people," he said. "We're not governments." Kevin Stankiewicz 11:08 am: US Navy sailor from coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier dies in Guam A Navy sailor assigned to the coronavirus-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier died Monday from the disease after testing positive last month, the service confirmed. "At approximately 8:30 a.m., Apr. 9, the Sailor was found unresponsive during a daily medical check. While Naval Base Guam emergency responders were notified, CPR was administered by fellow Sailors and onsite medical team in the house. The Sailor was transferred to U.S. Naval Hospital Guam where the Sailor was moved to the Intensive Care Unit. The Sailor was declared deceased April 13," the Navy said. The sailor's death is the first deom Covid-19 for the Navy's vessels at sea and comes as nearly 600 sailors on the ship test positive for the coronavirus. Amanda Macias 10:59 am: Supreme Court to hear arguments virtually in May, including over Trump tax records and Electoral College The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear some oral arguments virtually in May after closing its building to the public and postponing cases as a precaution against the spreading coronavirus. The move is a first for the high court as it wrestles with carrying on its business despite the strain imposed by the health crisis. Among the disputes that will be heard via teleconference are three high-profile cases over whether President Donald Trump may keep his financial records, including his tax returns, shielded from state and congressional investigators. The court also said the justices will also hear key Electoral College cases over whether electors's votes may differ from their state's popular vote. In all, the court scheduled 10 arguments to be heard over the first two weeks of May. It has not yet assigned dates for each of the cases to be argued. Tucker Higgins 10:30 am: New York City is having a 'very good day' as rate of new coronavirus cases falls, Mayor de Blasio says Healthcare workers are seen next to the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, United States on April 12, 2020. Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city was having a "very good day" as the rate of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continues to fall. But de Blasio hammered away on the need for residents to maintain mitigation efforts, saying New York needed to see further progress in minimizing the number of infected people. The number of new coronavirus hospitalizations and percentage of people testing positive for Covid-19 in New York City have all dropped, de Blasio said at a press conference. The total number of patients in intensive care has also fallen in recent days, he said. There were 835 ICU admissions in NYC Health + Hospitals on Saturday, compared with 857 ICU admissions the day before. Dan Mangan, Berkeley Lovelace Jr., William Feuer 10:24 am: NY Gov. Cuomo says the 'ultimate resolution' of coronavirus will come with vaccine in 18 months New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the coronavirus crisis will be solved only when an effective vaccine is developed and made widely available, and that could take 18 months. "I don't think ultimate resolution comes until you have a vaccine," Cuomo said during a call-in appearance on shock jock Howard Stern's radio show. "Where someone can say to you, 'Don't worry, Howard, there's a vaccine, you take this, you never get it, it's a nonissue,'" then the virus will finally be resolved, Cuomo said. "That's 18 months." Cuomo's remarks came amid a growing debate over when the U.S. will contain the virus enough to reopen parts of the economy that have been crippled by the pandemic. Kevin Breuninger 10:15 am: 'Don't short America' Ken Langone says coronavirus mitigation efforts are working Republican billionaire Ken Langone praised the health-care industry, public service workers and drug companies in the fight against the coronavirus, but bashed the news media. In an interview Monday on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Langone said the media's coverage of the Trump administration's efforts against the outbreak is too aggressive because the country needs to be united. "Don't short America," said Langone, who is chairman of NYU Langone Medical Center, one of the nation's premier hospitals and has given hundreds of millions of dollars to NYU's hospital and medical school. From doctors and nurses to police officers and firefighters, "people are making sacrifices for the benefit of all of us. The least we can do is our part. Our part as citizens should be stay home, obey separation." Langone said. "It is working." The co-founder of Home Depot and founder of investment firm Invemed Associates also lauded pharmaceutical and biotech companies for devoting all their research capabilities to trying to find a coronavirus vaccine and treatments for Covid-19. Matthew J. Belvedere 10:05 am: Amazon to hire 75,000 more workers as demand rises due to coronavirus Amazon is hiring an additional 75,000 workers at its facilities, on top of the 100,000 new positions it created last month, the company said Monday. In March, the company said it would hire additional warehouse and delivery workers across the country amid a surge in online shopping during the coronavirus outbreak. Since then, Amazon said it has hired more than 100,000 new employees and, as a result, is staffing up even more to help fulfill orders. As it continues to hire more workers, Amazon has also raised employees' hourly pay and doubled overtime pay for warehouse workers. Through the end of April, warehouse and delivery workers can earn an additional $2 per hour in the U.S., 2 per hour in the UK, and approximately 2 per hour in many EU countries. Amazon currently pays $15 per hour or more in some areas of the U.S. for warehouse and delivery jobs. Annie Palmer 9:45 am: ABC's Stephanopoulos positive for coronavirus but feels well ABC News Anchor George Stephanopoulos Paula Lobo | ABC | Getty Images "Good Morning America" host George Stephanopoulos revealed Monday that he's tested positive for the coronavirus, but has been relatively symptom-free. The ABC newsman revealed his diagnosis on the show, telling co-host Robin Roberts that, "I feel fine." Stephanopoulos' wife, Ali Wentworth, had come down with COVID-19 and tweeted that she's "never been sicker." Her husband has been taking care of her, their children and doing his TV job in the interim. He said the only potential symptoms he has felt were a lower back ache that he had attributed to a hard workout, and a briefly diminished sense of smell. Associated Press 9:33 am: Stocks open lower, giving up some of last week's historic gains Stocks dipped on Monday, giving back some of the sharp gains from the previous week, as investors continued to weigh the coronavirus outlook along with a historic oil production cut. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 130 points at the open, or 0.5%. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.4%. The U.S. stock market had one of its biggest weekly gains ever last week. The Dow posted its seventh-best weekly performance, rallying 12.7%. The S&P 500 had its biggest one-week gain since 1974, jumping 12.1%. Fred Imbert 9:28 am: Amazon stops accepting new online grocery customers amid surging demand Amazon will begin to put new grocery delivery customers on a wait-list and curtail shopping hours at some Whole Foods stores to prioritize orders from existing customers buying food online during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said on Sunday. Many shoppers recently seeking to purchase groceries from the Seattle-based e-commerce company found they could not place orders due to a lack of available delivery slots. Amazon said it would have to relegate all new online grocery customers to a wait-list starting Monday while working on adding capacity each week. In recent weeks, it increased the number of Whole Foods stores offering grocery pickup to more than 150 locations, up from 80 previously. Amazon also plans to shorten some Whole Foods stores' hours for the public so its employees can more quickly fulfill online grocery orders, the company said. Reuters 9:23 am: 'Banks are playing' games on loans, leaving small businesses 'out in the cold,' Mark Cuban says Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said the recently launched small business loan program has been beset by challenges that could impact the long-term outlook for companies. "Banks are playing themselves. They're being banks and they're trying to determine if the credits are good and that's leading to a lot of small businesses that are left out in the cold," Cuban said on "Squawk Box." "We are at an inflection point" to get money into the system for businesses of all sizes, he said. Cuban said some banks have questioned a company's gross margin and were therefore uncertain about making loans. Cuban said banks have "implemented all these hurdles" that were not supposed to be a part of the program, which was established by the government's $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that was passed in late March. "Until we get through that friction, there's going to be a lot of issues and there's going to be a lot of people laid off and a lot of companies that go out of business," he added. Kevin Stankiewicz 9:12 am: New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts lead US in number of reported cases 9:04 am: Trump retweets #FireFauci after scientist comments President Donald Trump speaks during a Coronavirus Task Force news conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 10, 2020. Kevin Dietsch | Bloomberg | Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the nation's top expert on infectious diseases said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the novel coronavirus outbreak. Trump retweeted a message Sunday from a former Republican congressional candidate who cited Fauci's comments during a television interview on Sunday and tweeted "time to #FireFauci." The Republican president in the past has repeated critical tweets of officials or enemies rather than make the criticism himself. The retweet fueled speculation Trump was running out of patience with the popular scientist and could conceivably fire him. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Trump is unhappy with Fauci. Fauci was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" about a New York Times report documenting early warnings issued to the White House about the novel coronavirus. The scientist acknowledged shutting the country down sooner could have saved lives, but cautioned that a number of factors were involved. "Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor," Fauci said. "It's very complicated." Reuters 8:42 am: Pace of reported coronavirus cases 7:01 am: China defends the WHO after Trump, and others, say it is deferring to Beijing The World Health Organization has come under intense scrutiny for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic with President Donald Trump's administration, China and Taiwan locked in a tussle of words. Last week, Trump blamed the WHO for getting "every aspect" of the coronavirus pandemic wrong and threatened to withhold funding from the international organization. He also said on Twitter that the WHO is "China centric" even though the organization is largely funded by the U.S. The latter comment echoes many of the top critiques of the WHO, such as too readily trusting information reported by China. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian defended the WHO, saying it has been "actively performing its duties and upholding an objective, science-based and impartial position."Huileng Tan 6:11 am: Spain reports 3,477 new cases, 517 new deaths Mortuary employees wearing face masks transport a coffin of a COVID-19 coronavirus victim at La Almudena cemetery on April 04, 2020 in Madrid, Spain. Carlos Alvarez | Getty Images Spain has reported 3,477 new coronavirus cases and a daily rise of 517 deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 17,489, the country's health ministry said. The number of daily deaths has fallen; the death toll the previous day was 619. The total number of confirmed cases in Spain has now reached 169,496 (including deaths and recoveries). Spain has started to lift certain restrictions, reopening some construction sites and factories. Holly Ellyatt 5:38 am: Spain lifts some lockdown measures; Italy records lowest daily deaths since March Construction and factory workers in Spain are returning to work as the government lifts some of the most stringent lockdown measures, but opposition parties are cautioning against an "imprudent" relaxation of the rules. Spain, one of the worst-hit nations by Covid-19, has allowed some factories to reopen as well as some construction work to restart, after the sectors were ordered to stop production two weeks ago. However, the message from government officials is that the country remains in lockdown mode. Schools, bars, restaurants, and other services continue to be closed to the public and Spaniards are supposed to stay home. Silvia Amaro 5:10 am: Indonesia reports 316 new cases and 26 more deaths An Indonesian woman walks past a mural that invite people to fight against the COVID-19 coronavirus in Surabaya, East Java on March 26, 2020. Juni Kriswanto | AFP | Getty Images Indonesia announced 316 new cases, bringing the tally of infections in the country to 4,557. That's according to data provided by a health ministry official, Achmad Yurianto. Twenty-six new coronavirus-related deaths were reported Monday, taking the total number to 399. Holly Ellyatt 4:35 am: Russia reports record daily rise in new cases Nigeria has extended its lockdown of three major cities that are affected by the coronavirus, in continuation of efforts towards reducing the transmission of the virus in Africas most populous country. The lockdown imposed in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja in the last two weeks will continue for another 14 days starting from Monday night, President Muhammadu Buhari announced on Easter Monday, in his second national address since Nigeria confirmed its first case of COVID-19 late February. He said the extension was to further check the spread of COVID-19 which has infected 323 people in Nigeria and caused 10 deaths. President Buhari also said in the last 14 days, the cessation of movement in the three cities helped in slowing the spread of the disease hence the need for the extension. The cessation of movement, physical distancing measures and the prohibition of mass gatherings remain the most efficient and effective way of reducing the transmission of the virus. By sustaining these measures, combined with extensive testing and contact tracing, we can take control and limit the spread of the disease. With this in mind and having carefully considered the briefings and Report from the Presidential Task Force and the various options offered, it has become necessary to extend the current restriction of movement in Lagos and Ogun States as well as the FCT for another 14 days effective from 11:59 pm on Monday, 13th of April, 2020. I am therefore once again asking you all to work with Government in this fight, Mr Buhari said. The president said the previously issued guidelines on exempted services such as hospitals and stores selling essential food items, groceries and medicine shall remain. Lagos and Abuja, Nigerias commercial and political capitals are mostly affected because they are the major entrances into the country. Most of our efforts will continue to focus on these two locations, the president said. Majority of the confirmed cases in Lagos and the FCT are individuals with recent international travel history or those that came into contact with returnees from international trips. Ogun was selected for the lockdown because of its proximity to Lagos. Lagos remains the epicenter of the disease with 176 cases and 54 per cent of the countrys total. When combined with the FCT that has recorded 56 cases as of Monday afternoon, the two locations represent over 71 per cent of the confirmed cases in Nigeria. By closing our airports and land borders and putting strict conditions for seaport activities, we have reduced the impact of external factors on our country, the president said. Easing of Lock Down Several states including Rivers, Kaduna and Anambra earlier imposed similar lockdowns. Schools, churches, markets and public gatherings were prohibited. But because of the Easter Celebration, a host of states ordered partial or absolute relaxation of restriction of non-essential movements by residents. The president in his national broadcast, however, said Nigerians cannot afford to let the guard down in complying with lockdown and safety measures despite the difficulty involved. President Muhammadu Buhari He said the increase in the number of states with positive cases are alarming. An analysis by PREMIUM TIMES showed that 104 new cases were recorded last week, many from contact tracing, amidst an increase in the number of tests carried out daily. As of Sunday, 19 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have confirmed at least a case of the virus in Nigeria. Mr Buhari said the repercussions of any premature end to the lockdown action is unimaginable. This is not a joke. It is a matter of life and death, he said. Mosques in Makkah and Madina have been closed. The Pope celebrated Mass on an empty St. Peters Square. The famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris held Easter Mass with less than 10 people. India, Italy and France are in complete lockdown. Other countries are in the process of following suit. We cannot be lax. This is a difficult decision to take, but I am convinced that this is the right decision. The evidence is clear. Advertisements Community Transmission Mr Buhari also alluded to fears raised by several health authorities that community transmission had begun in Nigerias overcrowded cities and countryside. The National Centre for Disease Control has informed me that, a large proportion of new infections are now occurring in our communities, through person-to-person contacts. So we must pay attention to the danger of close contact between person to person, he said. Enforcing a total lockdown has been challenging for the authorities, especially in Abuja, Lagos and other cities across the nation where millions live in densely populated slums and rely on daily earnings to survive. PREMIUM TIMES observed that several markets and slums in Abuja and Lagos went about their normal activities during the lockdown in a bid to make ends meet. With an estimated population of over 20 million, Lagos poses enormous challenges to social distancing. Even though Abuja is less crowded and in some areas has better infrastructure, the capital city is dotted with slums and overcrowded informal settlements. I am fully aware of the great difficulties experienced especially by those who earn a daily wage such as traders, day-workers, artisans and manual workers, the president said. For this group, their sustenance depends on their ability to go out. Their livelihoods depend on them mingling with others and about seeking work. But despite these realities we must not change the restrictions. He urged security agencies to continue to maintain utmost vigilance, firmness as well as restraint in enforcing the restriction orders while not neglecting statutory security responsibilities. On June 26, 2000, ABC aired a documentary called The Search for Jesus. The networks leading news anchor, Peter Jennings, interviewed liberal and conservative scholars of early Christianity about what we can know historically concerning Jesus life, death, and resurrection. The series ended with a striking statement by New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen, who is not a Christian herself. Commenting on the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus, Fredriksen said: I know in their own terms what they saw was the raised Jesus. Thats what they say, and then all the historic evidence we have afterwards attest to their conviction that thats what they saw. Im not saying that they really did see the raised Jesus. I wasnt there. I dont know what they saw. But I do know that as a historian that they must have seen something. Shes admitting, in other words, that the best available historical evidence confirms that followers of Jesus like Mary Magdalene, his brother James, Peter and his other disciples, and even an enemy (Paul) were absolutely convinced that the crucified man Jesus appeared to them alive, raised from the dead. Fredriksen is not alone in supposing that these followers must have seen something. Virtually every Bible scholar across the Western world, regardless of religious background, agrees that Jesus earliest followers believed he appeared to them alive. This is what launched the worlds largest religion. As a result of these appearances, Jewish fishermen began proclaiming to crowds in Jerusalem that God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it (Acts 2:32). Two thousand years later, the message of Jesus death and resurrection is proclaimed by billions of Christians in nearly every nation and in almost every language on planet earth. What did all these witnesses see? A Bedrock Confession According to the earliest source we have on record for Jesus death and resurrection, a hidden pearl found within 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus appeared to multiple individuals and groups, and at least one enemy. This creedal tradition, according to virtually all scholars, dates to within five years of Jesus death. Through this source, we can reach back to the earliest years of the Christian movement in Jerusalem, to the bedrock confession of the earliest followers of Jesus. Here is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:38: For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. This catalog of Resurrection appearances is unparalleled in the New Testament, even in all of ancient literature. We learn from this list that Jesus appeared to three individuals: Cephas (Peter), his chief disciple; James, his brother; and Paul, his former enemy. And we also learn that he appeared to three groups: the Twelve (disciples, minus Judas); more than 500 early followers; and all the apostles. That Jesus appeared to more than 500 men and women at the same time is a truly remarkable claim. Paul boldly puts his credibility on the line when he mentions that most of them are still alive. After all, he is essentially inviting members of the Corinthian church to travel to Jerusalem and speak to these witnesses, investigating for themselves what it was like to see the risen Jesus. We can see, then, that solid eyewitness testimony to the risen Jesus was readily available in the decades following his resurrection. As G. K. Chesterton observed in The Everlasting Man, This is the sort of truth that is hard to explain because it is a fact; but it is a fact to which we can call witnesses. Article continues below Mary Magdalene also belongs on the list of key eyewitnesses, as she too was readily available to be questioned about her experience with the risen Jesus. As the agnostic New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman writes in How Jesus Became God, it is significant that Mary Magdalene enjoys such prominence in all the Gospel Resurrection narratives, even though she is virtually absent everywhere else in the Gospels. She is mentioned in only one passage in the entire New Testament in connection with Jesus during his public ministry (Luke 8:13), and yet she is always the first to announce that Jesus has been raised. Why is this? One plausible explanation is that she too had a vision of Jesus after he died. Mary Magdalene was given the high honor of being not only the first to see the risen Jesus but the first person in history to proclaim, I have seen the Lord! (John 20:18). Whatever these eyewitnesses saw, it transformed their lives to the point of being willing to suffer and die for it. In 2 Corinthians 11:2333, Paul recounts his almost daily suffering for his conviction that Jesus appeared to him. He was beaten, imprisoned, stoned, starved, lost at sea, and daily in danger of all kinds of evil on his journeys throughout the Roman Empire. We also possess strong historical evidence that certain key eyewitnesses were martyred for their faith. Peter, for instance, was crucified. James was stoned. Paul was beheaded. Whatever they saw, it was worth giving their lives for. They sealed their testimonies with their blood. The Magic Wand of Mass Hysteria In order to explain away these Resurrection appearances, some scholars have speculated that the eyewitnesses were merely hallucinating. In his excellent book Resurrecting Jesus, New Testament scholar Dale Allison surveys the available scientific studies and literature on hallucinations. In documented cases, he concludes, there are four things that do not happen (or rarely happen). First, hallucinations are rarely seen by multiple individuals and groups over an extended period of time. Second, hallucinations are rarely seen by large groups of people, especially groups of more than eight. Third, hallucinations have never led to the claim that a dead person has been resurrected. And fourth, hallucinations do not involve the persons enemy. (We could also add the fact that hallucinations typically arent known for launching global movements or world religions.) Yet in the case of the resurrection appearances of Jesus, every last one of these rare or seemingly impossible circumstances has come to pass. Allison sums up the implications forcefully: These appear to be the facts, and they raise the question of how we should explain them. The apologists for the faith say that the sightings of Jesus must, given the reports, have been objective. One person can hallucinate, but twelve at the same time? And dozens over an extended period of time? These are legitimate questions, and waving the magical wand of mass hysteria will not make them vanish. Cautious Agnosticism The only other answer given by respectable scholars wrestling with this robust historical record is some variation of I dont know. Much like Fredriksen, renowned New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders also represents this cautious-agnostic approach when he writes, in The Historical Figure of Jesus: That Jesus followers (and later Paul) had Resurrection experiences is, in my judgement, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know. Article continues below Jordan Peterson, the popular professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, also belongs in this category. He neither affirms nor rejects the historicity of Jesus resurrection. When asked directly if Jesus literally rose from the dead, Peterson responded, I need to think about that for about three more years before I would even venture an answer beyond what Ive already given. The cautious-agnostics position is a respectable one. Even the original apostles did not believe the claim of the Resurrection when the women first told them (Luke 24:811). Yet if someone like Peterson, with an open mind and heart, follows the evidence where it leads, I am convinced he will find himself at the feet of the risen Jesus, proclaiming with Thomas, My Lord and my God! (John 20:28). Convincing Horatio The extraordinary nature of Jesus resurrection reminds me of my favorite scene in Shakespeares Hamlet. The play opens with the wondrous strange appearances of Hamlets dead father to Bernardo and Marcellus and then later to Hamlets friend Horatio. Horatio is the skeptic of the group, and Hamlet challenges his disbelief of the supernatural in this exchange: Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Shakespeare speaks through Hamlet, telling us to expect the unexpected. Welcome the strange and extraordinary. It is indeed wondrous strange that the ghost of Hamlets father is appearing to people, but do not reject it for that reason alone. Your philosophy should be wide enough for the supernatural. More things are happening in our wonderful world (and beyond) than you can imagine. If your philosophy is not wide and open enough to include the miraculous and the extraordinary, then you need a new philosophy. We should be open to miraculous claims from the ancient world and in modern times. Our philosophies should make room for the unexpected, strange, and extraordinary. And yet, the most important question to ask of any miraculous claim is What is the evidence? We have seen that, even from the perspective of the most skeptical scholars, the weight of the historical record attests that a host of individuals and groups believed they saw the risen Jesus. All the evidence we have suggests that his eyewitnesses were trustworthy and honest. Why disbelieve them? And if that doesnt convince our modern-day Horatios, then we can go further, summoning the Twelve and the more than 500 who saw the resurrected Messiah. We can even move beyond the first-century time frame, exploring how belief in the Resurrection laid the foundations of all Western civilization, inspiring some of the greatest art, literature, music, film, philosophy, morality, and ethics that the world has ever seen. Is this all based on a lie? And if all that is still not enough, then let our Horatios behold the billions across the world today who readily testify to how the living Christ has transformed their lives. These include intellectual giants who have converted to Christianity from every world religion (or from atheism and agnosticism). In Christ, they have found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. On Easter, these billions were proclaiming the same message the apostles proclaimed on the Day of Pentecost: God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Article continues below Now more than ever, in this dark, plague-ridden world, your family, friends, and neighbors are looking for hope. The living Christ is the only hope for us all. Before Easter fades into the rush of everyday life, ask your neighbor: What (or who) did all those witnesses see? They saw hope incarnate, new creation, life in its fullness, God in the flesh. This indeed is wondrous strange! Encourage your skeptical friends not to stop at I dont know. Give the risen Jesus welcome. Justin Bass is professor of New Testament at Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary in Amman, Jordan. He is the author of The Bedrock of Christianity: The Unalterable Facts of Jesus Death and Resurrection (Lexham Press) and The Battle for the Keys: Revelation 1:18 and Christ's Descent into the Underworld (Wipf and Stock). For translations of other select CT articles, Editors note: Want to read or share in espanol or portugues ? Now you can!For translations of other select CT articles, click here and look for the yellow links. [ This article is also available in espanol and Portugues. ] Chennai, April 13 : The RBI and the Central government should allow small housing/non-banking finance companies to function for a limited period or with limited staff so that the three month loan moratorium could be worked out for the benefit of borrowers, a top official of National Trust Housing Finance Ltd said on Monday. "Customers of companies like ours would not be technology savvy nor would have internet connectivity. The Reserve Bank of India and the Central government should allow companies like us to operate with limited staff or for couple of days so that the loan moratorium announced by the central bank could be worked out," Managing Director Alok Aggarwal told IANS. According to him, there is a lot of confusion in respect of moratorium and company staff have to reach out to the customers over phone for taking necessary action. "Customers of many housing/non-banking finance companies are not able to tell their banks to stop deduction of equated monthly instalments," Aggarwal added. On the impact of lockdown on business, he said fresh business will be impacted and self-employed professionals will take one/two months time to attain their full earning potential after the lockdown is lifted. On non-performing assets (NPAs), he said: "There may be a short term spike in NPA after the lifting of lockdown." According to him, all the 200 employees of the Rs.300 crore loan book size company have been paid the March salaries in full and April salaries will also be paid soon. "We are talking with our landlords to take a rent cut as no business was done during the lockdown," Aggarwal said. State police say one person is dead and another injured after an officer-involved shooting in Los Lunas on Sunday evening. According to a New Mexico State Police news release, officers saw a vehicle driving erratically and at a high rate of speed through a Los Lunas neighborhood. When police tried to stop the vehicle, it fled, and officers initiated a pursuit. The vehicle stopped on Entrada Aragon in Los Lunas, police said. At some point after the pursuit ended, the officer deployed his department issued taser and fired his department issued firearm towards two male subjects, the news release states. Both male subjects were struck by the officers gunfire. One man died at the scene, the other was taken to the hospital. The names of the officer involved and the men who were shot have not been released. State police said they were dispatched to the intersection of Tavalopa Road and Entrada Aragon around 6 p.m. Sunday to help Valencia County Sheriffs Office deputies secure a scene and locate a woman. As they were looking for the woman, they saw the vehicle driving erratically. A new name-checking fraud prevention system could have already helped reduce authorised push payment scams by nearly a third, according to figures from the first bank to fully introduce it. Lloyds Banking Group, Britain's largest current account provider, rolled out Confirmation of Payee to Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers over five weeks in February and March, and said it had now carried out 4million name checks. Confirmation of Payee alerts someone setting up a new payee or amending details of an existing one if the recipient's name doesn't match their bank details, helping people targeted by fraudsters as well as those sending 'fat finger' payments. Lloyds Banking Group - which owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland - began rolling out Confirmation of Payee on 27 February Lloyds said authorised push payment fraud, where customers are tricked into sending money directly to a fraudster's bank account, fell by 31 per cent among customers who had used the service. It compared customers who had sent money while using it to those sending money using Lloyds' mobile app, which was the last part of the bank to have the system switched on. Confirmation of Payee is designed to stop millions being lost to bank transfer scams Lloyds Banking Group's fraud director Paul Davis said the drop of nearly a third exceeded the expectations he had for Confirmation of Payee, and that it had had the biggest single impact of any anti-fraud measure introduced. The bank said there was evidence customers were responding to warnings they were seeing, such as when the system said details did not match, with 1.4 CoP requests for every payment sent. Lloyds is the first bank to roll out the scheme in full, with others including HSBC, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland having fully or partially done so too. Lloyds said it had made 4million checks and received 600,000 requests from other banks whose customers were sending money to its accounts. Of the Lloyds customers who received a response, 72 per cent were a match, 13 per cent were a partial match and 15 per cent were not matched. Where the account details don't match, customers are alerted and asked if they still wanted to send money, even though the name may be incorrect. Lloyds Banking Group fraud direct Paul Davis Davis said: 'While it is still early days, the evidence we're seeing suggests Confirmation of Payee is already making a real difference and has reduced the number of scams affecting our customers by nearly a third. 'Helping keep our customers' money safe is our priority and falling victim to fraud can have devastating effects not just on people's finances but also their lives. We've seen in recent weeks how quickly fraudsters have adapted their methods with new scams related to coronavirus. 'This extra layer of protection gives customers added peace of mind when making payments and gives an extra reminder to stop and think before transferring cash out of their account.' Confirmation of Payee has long been seen as a key tool when it comes to preventing APP fraud, which took 456million from victims in 2019. However, it has been repeatedly delayed, first from July 2019 to March 2020 and now again until the end of June, as banks grapple with disruption caused by coronavirus. The Payment Systems Regulator said a fortnight ago it would sanction banks for not implementing it until 30 June, but some of the UK's biggest high street banks have told This is Money they aim to implement it ahead of time. It said: 'We expect the directed banks to ensure customers who would have benefitted from the protections of Confirmation of Payee are not otherwise disadvantaged from any coronavirus-related delay, including refunding victims of fraud if Confirmation of Payee would have prevented it from happening. 'We have been very clear that where the directed banks provide appropriate protection to people, we will not take any formal action in respect of delays to the introduction of CoP ahead of 30 June 2020. 'We fully expect the banks to do everything they can to protect people in the meantime and implement it as soon as possible.' Congo, Weary From Ebola, Must Also Battle the CCP Virus BENI, CongoCongo has been battling an Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands of people for more than 18 months, and now it must also face a new scourge: the CCP virus pandemic. Ebola has left those living in the countrys east weary and fearful, and, just as they were preparing to declare an end to the outbreak, a new case popped up. Now, they will have to manage both threats at once. The new virus has brought major cities across China to a standstill and overwhelmed some of the worlds best hospital systems. In Congo, it could spread unchecked in a country that has endured decades of conflict, where corruption has left the population largely impoverished despite mineral wealth, and where mistrust of authority is so entrenched that health workers have been killed during the Ebola outbreak. Its also unclear how forthcoming international support will be at a time when the whole world is battling the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. It all feels like one big storm, said Martine Milonde, a Congolese community mobilizer who works with the aid group World Vision in Beni, which has been the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak. Truly, this is a crisis within a crisis within a crisis. The community suffers from insecurity and suffered under Ebola, and now may have to face COVID-19. In early March, an Ebola patient whom many hoped would be the last was discharged, and the outbreak was supposed to be officially declared on April 12. But the World Health Organization on April 10 announced a new case in Beni. The outbreak has claimed more than 2,260 lives since August 2018the second largest the world has ever seen, after the 20142016 outbreak in West Africa. Still, there is some hope: Many of the tools used to fight Ebolahand-washing and social distancing chief among themare also key to combating the virus. In Beni, which has reported two cases of the virus, the communities here hold onto some hope that they are going to overcome this pandemic the way they had been working to overcome Ebola, said Milonde. They are counting on the caution, vigilance and hygiene practices that they have been performing to save their families. Community advocates in Beniwho walk around with megaphones to talk about Ebolahave started to include warnings about the virus. Messages explaining COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and where to go if ill are being spread on radio stations, through text message blasts, and by religious leaders. Schools, churches, and mosques are already armed with hand-washing kits. Benis mayor, Nyonyi Bwanakawa, says many of the measures will be familiarbut the recommendations to stay home are more stringent than what is required for Ebola, and officials are prepared to take dramatic measures if people resist. Unlike Ebola, which kills about half of the people it infects, the new virus causes mostly mild or moderate symptoms in about 80 percent of people. Spreading Ebola typically requires an exchange of bodily fluids, and people have often been infected when caring for loved ones or mourning in traditional funerals that involve close contact with the body. In contrast, the new virus is far more contagious and mostly spread by people coughing or sneezing, including those with only mild flu-like symptoms. That means the task of controlling the viruss spread in Congo will be massive: The government has only limited control in parts of the vast country, there are also some dense population centers with poor sanitation and infrastructure, and the countrys mineral-rich east is beset by violence from various armed groups. Dr. Michel Yao, program manager for emergency response at the WHOs Africa office, said implementing robust testing and contact tracing will be key. But getting the community fully involved in fighting the disease might be even more important. That means not just speaking at communities, but giving them responsibility and roles to play. Initially, efforts to control Ebola were met with resistance, one of the major contributors to its spread. Amid the insecurity in the countrys east, superstitions arose, and some clinics to treat Ebola patients were attacked and health workers killed. The capital, Kinshasa, a tightly packed city of 14 million located on the countrys western border, remains another major worry, said Yao, who is based at WHOs African headquarters in the neighboring Republic of Congo. If it reaches this place, it would be a big disaster, he said. Africa is only partly ready. If we stick to sporadic cases, this can be managed. But many more developed countries have seen cases surge, and a sizable outbreak in Congo could easily overwhelm its hospital system. Advanced equipment to deal with severe respiratory illness, which the CCP virus can cause, is lacking: The Health Ministry says there are about 65 ventilatorsall in Kinshasaand 20 more on order for a country of more than 80 million people. There have been 215 confirmed cases of the virus in Congo, with 20 deaths, the ministry said on April 10. And health workers will also need to find a way to continue to treat people infected with the many other diseases that regularly torment the population. In addition, because donor countries are themselves dealing with outbreaks, help from abroad could be less forthcoming. The key, Yao said, is training more people locally to care for the ill. The challenge will be rallying again after many months of trying to contain Ebola. The job wasnt yet finished, and we have to deal with another emergency, Yao said. Katungo Methya, 53, who volunteers for the Red Cross in Beni, expressed a weariness many feel. Its so upsetting to have this second disease. We lost so many people through Ebola, a lot of deaths, now corona, she said. Everyone is really afraid. By Carley Petesch & Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro. The Epoch Times contributed to this report. WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Lata Mangeshkar admitted to ICU in Mumbai Hospital after testing positive for Covid 14 villages in UP sealed after one man tests positive for COVID-19 India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: The administration in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh has put 14 villages under quarantine after a man tested positive for coronavirus. The man from Andhra Pradesh was staying in a Mosque at the Bhavanipur Khalid area. He tested positive on Saturday. PTI reported that he had attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi last month. Coronavirus outbreak: How state governments in India are fighting to curb the spread of COVID-19 After he tested positive, the district administration sealed 14 villages in the radius of three kilometres from the village where he was staying. 14 villages have been quarantined the report said while quoting District Magistrate Kumar Prashant. The total number of positive cases in Uttar Pradesh stands at 483 as per the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Five have died, while 46 have been cured, discharged or migrated. Kolkata Police arrested 895 people in a span of 24 hours since 5 pm of Sunday for defying the lockdown order imposed by the government in its attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19, a senior police officer said. The arrests were made by the Kolkata Police during naka-checking and patrolling across the metropolis, the officer said on Monday. The 895 people were arrested from various parts of the city. Requesting people to strictly adhere to the lockdown order, Kolkata Police Commissioner Anuj Sharma had earlier directed officers to take strong legal action against those found violating the norms. West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday urged the state government to pay heed to the Centre's warnings against "gradual dilution" of lockdown, and said officials should be held accountable for their lapses, if any. The Ministry of Home Affairs had last week flagged concerns over "gradual dilution" of the shutdown order in West Bengal, and asked the state to take necessary action to ensure strict adherence of social distancing norms, following reports of alleged violation in Murshidabad and Siliguri. The total number of COVID-19 cases reported in the state so far stood at 122 on Sunday, the state government said, even though the Union health ministry on Monday has put the figure at 152. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Angela Primachenko was 33 weeks pregnant when she was tested for COVID-19 on March 24 because she had a fever and other symptoms. Eight days later, the 27-year-old respiratory therapist from Vancouver, Washington, was fighting for her life on a ventilator while in a medically induced coma. At the same time, she gave birth to her daughter after doctors at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center induced labor to give Primachenko more of a fighting chance while also protecting her child. "I feel like I'm a miracle walking," Primachenko told Sheinelle Jones on TODAY Monday. Primachenko was taken off the ventilator on April 6, and one look down at her body told her that her baby must have been born. Angela Primachenko received an ovation from hospital workers when she was removed from the intensive care unit after giving birth while also fighting for her life against coronavirus. (TODAY) "Obviously nobody expected that I was going to get that sick, so no, absolutely not, I did not expect to deliver my child,'' she said. "After all the medication and everything I just woke up and all of a sudden I didn't have my belly any more. It was just extremely mind-blowing." Primachenko, who was released from the hospital on Saturday, has not yet been able to hold her daughter, Ava, who remains in the neonatal intensive care unit. She has been able to see her via FaceTime, and her daughter has tested negative for COVID-19. Primachenko said she has to have two straight tests that show she is negative for COVID-19 before she is allowed in the NICU to be with Ava. Her husband, David, and her 11-month-old daughter, Emily, did not test positive for COVID-19, so David has been able to hold their daughter in the NICU. Primachenko is not sure where she may have contracted the virus. Her twin sister, Oksana Luiten, had been keeping family and friends updated through Primachenko's frightening ordeal, asking for prayers on Instagram for a "miraculous healing." Primachenko also had a moment she'll never forget when she was wheeled out of the intensive care unit in her bed. "Everyone did a standing ovation and just clapped me out of the ICU, which is so amazing and such a huge thing to be able to leave the ICU and go to the floor it's just the grace of God," she said. Story continues Washington has been one of the hardest hit states in the country, with 10,411 cases of COVID-19 and 508 deaths, according to state health officials. Primachenko is hoping her story can send a positive message during a difficult time. "That there's hope,'' she said. "That even in the hardest days and the hardest times that there's hope and you can rely on God and people and community. The amount of community and people that were praying for me is just unbelievable. I was blown away, and I'm so incredibly thankful." Giving her daughter the name Ava also has a special meaning, particularly after everything that mother and daughter have endured. "It means 'breath of life,''' Primachenko said. "So she's our new little breath of life." WASHINGTON, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- As many state and local employees face increased financial challenges and stress amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new report finds that these public employees already were worried about their personal finances. Prior to the current global health crisis, the vast majority, 88 percent, worried about their personal finances and financial decisions, and many worry while on the job (66 percent). A Focus on Public Sector Financial Wellness Programs: Employee Needs and Preferences details the results of a national survey of 507 state and local government employees assessing their needs and preferences regarding employer-based financial literacy and education programs. Authored by Rivka Liss-Levinson, Ph.D., director of research with the Center for State and Local Government Excellence (SLGE), the survey was conducted with Greenwald & Associates. Sponsored by the Wells Fargo Foundation, the research is available here. Register here at no charge for a webinar on Wednesday, April 22, 2020, at 1:00 PM ET that will provide a review of the findings and an opportunity to ask questions. The results of the survey indicate that strengthening financial literacy and education programs by public sector employers is needed and would be highly valued by state and local government workers. Whether living paycheck- to-paycheck or saving for retirement, public sector employees believe that financial literacy is important, that it can help them make sound financial decisions, and that employers play a key role in providing these programs. "As we are seeing real-time during the COVID-19 crisis, state and local government employees deliver critical services to taxpayers from public safety to health care," said Rivka Liss-Levinson, report author and SLGE research director. "It is in the public's best interest for these workers to be focused on their jobs and not worried about their financial security. We know that financial wellness programs aren't just the right thing to do they also make good business sense. These programs result in more productive and engaged workers, improved morale, lower absenteeism, lower stress and lower healthcare costs. And, our research shows that although few public employers currently offer these programs, employees want these programs and believe that they are important," she explained. The report key findings are as follows: Most survey respondents (88 percent) worry about their finances/financial decisions, with 66 percent worrying at work. Only 29 percent of survey respondents are offered a financial literacy or financial education program by their employer. Thirty-eight percent of those who have been offered a financial literacy/education program have participated, and 67 percent of those participating in programs were satisfied. 68 percent of respondents would be likely to participate in a financial wellness program in the near future or if offered one. The three financial wellness topic areas of greatest interest to employees are: retirement planning (66 percent); investments (39 percent); and budget and planning (23 percent). The top three reasons why individuals participate or would be likely to participate in a financial wellness program are: a desire to be more knowledgeable about finances (87 percent); a desire to know more about financial topics beyond those related to one's job (51 percent); and rewards or financial incentives that are offered for participating (45 percent). "Even before the COVID-19 crisis, far too many households were struggling to make ends meet and save for emergencies and the future. Knowing that many workers will be forced to navigate significant financial challenges for the foreseeable future, employer-offered financial wellness programs are needed more than ever before," said Darlene Goins, head of Financial Health Philanthropy at Wells Fargo. "We appreciate SLGEs efforts to bring these financial challenges into focus, and through collaboration across the public and private sector, we can expand access to financial empowerment tools, education and counseling and help workers and families build financial stability." Information for this report was collected from a 12-minute survey of 507 full-time state and local government employees ages 18 and older. The online survey was fielded by Greenwald & Associates from July 17- 29, 2019. The final data were weighted by industry type, age, and income to reflect the distribution of state and government employees. The Center for State and Local Government Excellence (SLGE) helps local and state governments become knowledgeable and competitive employers so they can attract and retain a talented and committed workforce. SLGE identifies leading practices and conducts research on public retirement plans, health and wellness benefits, workforce demographics and skill set needs, and labor force development. SLGE brings state and local leaders together with respected researchers. Access all SLGE publications and sign up for its newsletter at slge.org and follow @4GovtExcellence on Twitter. Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo's vision is to satisfy our customers' financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through 7,950 locations, 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 37 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 262,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 26 on Fortune's 2018 rankings of America's largest corporations. News, insights and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories. For more than a decade, Wells Fargo has offered its Hands on Banking/El futuro en tus manos program, which is a free, engaging, non-commercial financial education program available in both English and Spanish. The program teaches people in all stages of life about the basics of responsible money management, including how to create a budget, save and invest, borrow responsibly, buy a home, and establish a small business. Since 2003, Hands on Banking has reached nearly 7 million people through classes, workshops, webinars and websites. SOURCE Center for State and Local Government Excellence Related Links http://www.slge.org The Taliban said it would on Sunday release the first prisoners in a delayed exchange deal with the Afghan government -- a potential breakthrough after the insurgents walked out of talks with Kabul last week. The announcement comes as fears rose that an avenue for fragile peace talks between the two sides was being undercut by mounting disagreements over the prisoner swap, considered key to paving the way for negotiations. "Today, 20 prisoners of the Kabul administration will be released," Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said on Twitter, adding that the group would be handed over to representatives of the Red Cross in the southern city of Kandahar. The Afghan government has pressed ahead with freeing hundreds of Taliban prisoners over the past week, despite complaints from the insurgent group about the piecemeal nature of the releases. Washington signed a landmark deal with the Taliban in February that promised the withdrawal of US and foreign troops from Afghanistan by next summer, provided the militants start talks with Kabul and adhere to other guarantees. The deal requires the Afghan government -- which was not a signatory to the accord -- to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners, and for the militants to release 1,000 pro-government captives in return. The exchange was supposed to have happened by March 10, allowing peace talks to begin, but has been beset with problems. Kabul has claimed the Taliban want 15 of their "top commanders" to be released, while the insurgents have accused Afghan authorities of needlessly wasting time. A small Taliban team met with the government to discuss a comprehensive prisoner swap last week, but walked out of the talks soon after officials offered a gradual release of the prisoners. Sunday's announcement came after the head of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan met with insurgent leaders to discuss a reduction in violence in the war-weary country. The Taliban cautioned that their decision to release a group of prisoners did not mean that the talks with Kabul were being restarted. "No the process is not back on, but this is a good will step by the [the Taliban] to accelerate the prisoners exchange process," insurgent spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. Javid Faisal, the spokesman for the Afghan National Security Council, chided the insurgents for not starting the process earlier, saying a reduction in violence and subsequent ceasefire between the two sides was needed. "They should also prepare for a face-to-face meeting with the Islamic republic of Afghanistan," said Faisal. The insurgents have also stepped up their attacks on Afghan security forces in government-controlled areas across the country and accused US forces of aiding the Afghan government with air support, causing civilian casualties. Gov. Phil Murphy returns to the Trenton War Memorial on Monday to provide another update on the coronavirus pandemic that has swept over New Jersey in the pas six weeks. The press conference in the George Washington Ballroom is scheduled to start at 3 p.m and will be streamed on the governors YouTube channel. NJ Advance Media will add the live stream to this post when it becomes available. (It was originally scheduled for 2 p.m., but bumped back an hour on Monday morning) Murphy will be joined Monday by state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli, Communicable Disease Service Medical Director Dr. Edward Lifshitz and State Police Superintendent Col. Patrick Callahan. The 90-minute press conferences have been held every day except Sunday for several weeks. Murphy announced updated COVID-19 numbers on Sunday in a series of tweets around 1:40 p.m. Another 168 people died and an additional 3,733 people tested positive, the governor said Sunday. About 7,600 are hospitalized with 1,914 patients in critical or intensive care. About 1,644 are on ventilators. The statewide COVID-19 death total is 2,350, Murphy said. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Business School Netherlands (BSN) yet again adds another feather to its cap as it moves up to occupy the top 11th position in the global ranking published by the CEO magazine. The magazine has consistently ranked BSN among the tier one leading MBA providers in the world. The 2020 ranking places BSN far ahead of several business schools, eclipsing notable institutions running MBA Programme and many others. In a report titled CEO Magazine Global MBA Rankings, the editors of CEO Magazine stated the rationale for the ranking: in an increasingly congested market, selecting the right business school can be difficult which is far from ideal given the time and investment involved. Using a ranking system entirely geared and weighted to fact-based criteria, CEO magazine aims to cut through the noise and provide potential students with a performance benchmark for those schools under review According to the report, specific criteria considered in assessing business schools are based upon key performance indicators considered to be of interest and value to potential students: Quality of Faculty (weighted 34.95%), International Diversity (9.71%), Class Size (9.71%), Accreditation (8.74O/o), Faculty to Student Ratio (7.76O/o), Price (5.83O/o), International Exposure (4.85O/o), Work Experience (4.85%), Professional Development (4.85%), Gender Parity (4.85O/o) and Delivery Methods (3.8O/o). Business School Netherlands now ranks among the best eleven business schools to study MBA programmes globally. It ranked no.11 out of over 150 MBA programmes that were thoroughly examined from all over the world. Thus, BSN outpaced over 138 other excellent programmes from different continents of the world in terms of the quality of Faculty, learning environment, class sizes, tuition fees, faculty, delivery methods, international diversity, gender make-up and more, he concluded. Business School Netherlands is present in the Netherlands, but has study centres in different locations across the globe, including Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt. Commenting on this new ranking, Prof Lere Baale, said, achieving 11th position out of a group of 85 Tier-One global universities and business schools is an immense source of pride for us and reaffirms our commitment to the innovative Action Learning and students-first approach. We are honoured to be recognized by the CEO Magazine for the fifth consecutive year. When asked why Business School Netherlands is rated so highly, Prof Baale explained further: in the last six years, international observers including CEO f4agazine have taken note of our innovative curriculum and world-class faculty who are not mere professors but gladiators in the global business marketplace. Also noteworthy is the impressive career outcomes of our alumni. Many of them are securing investments from global venture capitalists, getting appointments and gaining fast promotions in Fortune 500 organizations and public sector appointments, he said. He congratulated BSN faculty and her staff across the globe on this remarkable achievement and encouraged them to continue their excellent work. The CEO Magazine Global Rankings is a global recognition hotly desired by the worlds top business schools. CEO Magazine has published its MBA rankings annually for the past 6 years. It is peculiar because it is acceptable by world top organizations as a yardstick in differentiating among the ever-widening options of MBA programmes around the globe. The magazine processed data from more than 161 schools, offering no less than 303 different programs in 27 countries (77 online MBAs, 87 EMBAs and 139 Full-time and Part-time MBAs). The Rankings focused primarily on Identification of the business schools which combine the exceptional quality of content, facilitation, and other indices with great return on investment. From Sydney's dial-a-dealer drug operations, to large-scale methamphetamine labs in rural Mexico, crime around the world is feeling the pinch of coronavirus. Sources say the importation of drugs and precursor chemicals in air cargo and international mail from China has virtually ground to a halt, while dealers on the dark web say, in some cases, they are struggling to meet demand. The shutdown of entire countries has put the brakes on organised criminal activity, however the impact is likely to be short-lived, as illicit activities rapidly adapt to meet both old and new market demand. The advice from the Global Initiative for Transnational Organised Crime (GITOC) reveals the immediate impact of worldwide restrictions on public movement is particularly being felt by frontline drug dealers. The coronavirus pandemic is prompting the Mississippi attorney general and the state public defender to seek a temporary change in rules governing the criminal justice system. The goal is to require more frequent judicial review of conditions for pretrial detainees people being held in county jails as they wait to go before a grand jury or to trial. Many are held for months because they cannot afford to post bail. The states top prosecutor and the public defender are adversaries, by design of the justice system. Their current alliance is prompted by concern that the highly contagious virus could spread swiftly inside detention centers, harming those who might be medically vulnerable and rapidly overwhelming jails health care capabilities. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause severe symptoms and be fatal. Coronavirus cases were reported last week at a federal prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi. In some jails, inmates sleep in open bay settings, with multiple beds in a single large room. Stated simply, it is extremely difficult for Mississippi sheriffs to comply with the CDC guidelines in jails where close physical proximity is a reality, access to protective equipment is limited, effective quarantine space is scarce or entirely unavailable, and exposure to those moving in and out from the free world is unavoidable, the attorney generals office and the public defenders office wrote in papers filed Thursday with the Mississippi Supreme Court. They are seeking temporary revision of a rule that requires sheriffs to produce jail census information seven days before the beginning of a circuit court term for hearing criminal cases. Senior circuit judges, or people they designate, must review conditions of release for each bailable defendant who has been detained for more than 90 days, their filing said. Because the next criminal term of court in many jurisdictions could be months away ... no such reviews will take place under this rule for weeks or months, they wrote. Public defender Andre de Gruy is seeking weekly reviews. Attorney General Lynn Fitch is seeking them biweekly. Either way, the stepped-up review schedule could provide greater oversight about conditions in jails. Fitch and de Gruy also want judges to review all pretrial detainees, not just those whove been held at least 90 days the current mandate. Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi law school, said last month that during the coronavirus pandemic, judges should consider releasing people who are jailed awaiting trial on nonviolent crimes but cannot afford to post bail. In 2017, the state Supreme Court ordered sheriffs to start providing information about people in county jails and how long they have been there. Justices did so at the urging of the MacArthur Center. In mid-March, the center released figures showing that in December, about 2,500 people had been jailed longer than 90 days, and more than 575 had been jailed more than a year awaiting trial. Those are similar to the figures from November 2018. Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael K. Randolph is taking comments about the requested rule change for more frequent judicial review of county jails. Hes asking that attorneys, judges and others with an interest in the court system submit those by Tuesday. Because of the pandemic, the state Supreme Court has already encouraged trial courts to use teleconferencing or videoconferencing for initial appearances and bail hearings. It has also said that people qualified to administer oaths may do so remotely by using audio or video technology. (Image Credit: AP) LONDON As Prime Minister Boris Johnson was discharged from hospital this weekend after having spent time in intensive care, Britain looked set to face its most challenging week yet in its battle against the new coronavirus. At around the same time that the prime minister was thanking health workers for taking care of him, the United Kingdoms death toll had breached 10,000 the fifth largest death toll globally after the U.S., Italy, Spain and France. With this, concerns are growing Britain that the crisis was far from abating. Over the weekend, Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that although the rise in numbers of hospital admissions has started to flatten out, the United Kingdom had not reached the peak of the outbreak that would allow for an easing of tight restrictions on movement. And on Sunday, Jeremy Farrar, a member of the British government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, told the BBC that the U.K. was likely to be "one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe. Image: River Thames (Glyn Kirk. / AFP via Getty Images) With indications that in Italy and Spain the situation may be taking a tentative turn for the better, there are concerns in Britain that it may become the European nation with the most coronavirus deaths. Last week, the British government's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, warned that the daily number of deaths was expected to increase for a couple more weeks. There is also concern in Britain, as in other countries, that the official death toll could in reality be much higher than what is being recorded. The United Kingdoms official figures only include those who tested positive and were admitted to hospital. Those who died in nursing homes, for example, are not included in the figures. Meanwhile, Johnson is continuing his recovery at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence north of London. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has been standing in for Johnson while he was being treated. As Britons prepare to return to work following the Easter long weekend, it looks all but certain that lawmakers will extend the lockdown that was due to be reviewed on Monday. Story continues "Our judgment is we're not there yet. We haven't seen a flattening enough to be able to say that we've reached the peak," Health Secretary Hancock told BBC radio on Saturday. Nobody knows when that might be. Meanwhile, British Medical Association (BMA), which represents doctors, sounded the alarm that medics and patients in London and Yorkshire were increasingly in harm's way due to dangerously low levels of personal protective equipment. Doctors are being forced into a corner, facing heart-breaking decisions over whether to carry on caring for patients without proper protection and put themselves and patients at risk, said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the council chair of the BMA in the statement. Hancock said on Friday it was a "Herculean" logistical effort to ensure PPE reaches those on the frontline, with hundreds of millions of items delivered so far. Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report Governors and mayors laid out plans to reduce the risk of coronavirus infections among their most marginalized communities as figures show minorities are at much greater risk of succumbing to the pandemic. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said 25 per cent of COVID-19 cases in her state as of a few days ago were found to be among Native Americans, who only represent six per cent of the states population. Since not everyone in tribal communities has access to water and electricity, that creates additional challenges. Were looking at a regional strategy to support the leadership at the Navajo Nation between Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, she said Sunday on CNNs State of the Union. Efforts so far include setting up field hospitals and triage centres and delivering food through the National Guard. And I will tell you that the Pueblo nations in New Mexico have really looked at containment strategies for their community, said Grisham, a Democrat. And were supporting that, right, where we have roadblocks, nobody in, nobody out. Native American health leaders urged the U.S. government weeks ago to ramp up their coronavirus response for tribal health services. Urban centres The mayors of Chicago and Washington D.C. said the virus was taking a heavy toll on black communities in urban centres. African Americans have a greater incidence of diabetes, heart disease and respiratory problems that can worsen COVID-19 outcomes. The kind of things we have been talking about for a long time that plague black Chicago that lead to life expectancy gaps this virus attacks those underlying conditions with a vengeance, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on CBSs Face the Nation. Chicago was tackling the problem by ensuring that data relating to demographics was collected during testing. The city is also putting together a rapid response team including health care professionals and community activists as part of a hyper local focus to help those neighbourhoods most at risk. Chronic issues Frontline workers employed by the city were also being provided with the right equipment to guard against the virus, including masks, gloves and training, as well as regular cleaning at places where they gather. Mortality rates for black coronavirus patients in Illinois are five times higher than for white residents, Illinois Department of Public Health Director Ngozi Ezike said on Friday. And Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said the virus underscored the disproportionate numbers of African Americans who suffer from chronic disease, as well as gaps in health care that have been around for generations. Theres also the problem of substandard housing conditions for many African Americans, and links to asthma, Bowser said. While this is not new during the COVID-19 response, it certainly calls for national and local actions that are going to change the trajectory for African-Americans health outcomes in our nation, she said on Fox News Sunday. Coronavirus deaths in Washington over the past week have been almost exclusively among black and Latino populations. A rash of cases has been reported at the citys homeless shelters and jails. Elsewhere, New York Major Bill de Blasio said the response to the crisis was being impeded by the high level of fear in immigrant communities, even among those who are documented, and laid the blame squarely on Washington. Because theres a lot of people who have been so fearful, they havent been going to the doctor, they havent even gone out to health-care facilities because theyre so worried about being deported and put in danger, he told a news conference Sunday. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist on Twitter: @LtGovGilchrist More than 40% of coronavirus deaths in Michigan have been Black residents, yet our states Black population is only 14%. Thats why Im leading the Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities to tackle this injustice now and in the future. #StandTALL pic.twitter.com/E7d68Xjkhy Garlin Gilchrist II (@LtGovGilchrist) April 9, 2020 For information about how you can help during this pandemic, go to Michigan.gov/FightCovid19 Essential thread on the disparate impact COVID-19 is having on Black Americans: Black journalists have repeatedly asked for race-inclusive data on coronavirus but people keep wondering why we want to inject race into a global pandemic. Here's a list of reasons: michaelharriot (@michaelharriot) April 5, 2020 Stacey Patton at The Washington Post: The pathology of American racism is making the pathology of the coronavirus worse Leilani Jordan, a grocery worker, died at age 27 from Covid-19. She said her store provided neither gloves, nor hand sanitizer. She continued working because she wanted to help people. Her mother received Leilani's last paycheck: it was just $20.64.https://t.co/41wtF8tzF9 Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) April 12, 2020 Risa Lavizzo-Mourey and David Williams at U.S. News & World Report: Being Black Is Bad for Your Health Robert Samuels at The Washington Post: Covid-19 is ravaging black communities. A Milwaukee neighborhood is figuring out how to fight back. Progressives Everywhere on Twitter: @Progressives50 Help Progressives Everywhere elect Jessica Harrington in Floridas 64th House District (and other progressives) by clicking HERE and to support service workers and artists impacted by the coronavirus epidemic by clicking HERE. Also from Jordan: Ive started a new newsletter called Pandemic Stories in order to create a living history of this unprecedented time, which I believe will be a watershed moment for our nation (for better or worse). The virus has impacted literally everyone and I want to ensure that we capture and remember as many peoples stories as possible. Americans are great at pushing forward and protecting, but its absolutely essential we remember everything we can; everyones story deserves to be told, and we cant learn from history if we dont record it. There are already a number of sweet (and bittersweet) stories published in the newsletter, which will be sent out several times a week. The stories will make you smile, laugh, feel some real outrage, and connect with people across the country at a time when we feel so isolated. Id be honored if youd subscribe, which you can do by clicking HERE. Progressives Everywheres website: ProgressivesEverywhere.org Support Progressives Everywhere by becoming a Patreon donor HERE. Jordans important project: Election-Calendar.com Give us a five-star review at iTunes! The GOTMFV Show Facebook page is HERE! Music clips Intro and transition music: You Dress Like an Asshole by Not The 1s Progressives Everywhere intro/outro: Theyre Everywhere by Jims Big Ego Outro music: Complain (from the movie Bob Roberts) by David Robbins & Tim Robbins Australian study: Many home blood pressure monitors not validated for accuracy DALLAS, April 13, 2020 -- Most blood pressure devices sold for home monitoring in Australia - and possibly worldwide - may not have been validated for accuracy and could lead to misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal. In this study, the researchers studied the online blood pressure device marketplace in Australia, including large, multi-national, e-commerce businesses such as Amazon and eBay, which was the source of over 90% of the devices examined. Validating a blood pressure device means it has gone through rigorous testing to make sure it is measuring accurate blood pressure readings. The researchers found: Only 6% of the 972 models of blood pressure monitoring devices available for purchase had been validated; More than half of the blood pressure monitors on the market were wristband models, and none had been validated; Slightly over 18% of the upper-arm cuff blood pressure devices had been validated; and Non-validated devices were cheaper than those that had been tested for accuracy. "People around the world monitor their blood pressure using home devices to help to effectively manage hypertension and to help determine their risk for heart attacks or strokes," said James E. Sharman, Ph.D., lead researcher for the study and deputy director at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania in Australia. "If the devices haven't been properly validated for accuracy, treatment decisions could be based on incorrect information. We found non-validated devices dominate the Australian marketplace, which is a major barrier to accurate blood pressure monitoring and cardiovascular risk management. "Inaccurate blood pressure measuring devices could have a major implication for public health. If blood pressure is incorrectly overestimated it could lead to unnecessary prescriptions or higher doses than needed of blood pressure lowering medications, which are usually prescribed for life. Medications are costly, have potential side effects and patients incorrectly labeled with high blood pressure could suffer unnecessarily. When blood pressure is incorrectly underestimated, people might remain at increased risk for a heart attack or stroke that could otherwise be avoided with the appropriate medication and dose, and/or lifestyle changes," Sharman said. "International policies need to be strengthened to ensure that home use medical devices are rigorously tested for accuracy before being cleared for sale by regulatory authorities. Currently, manufacturers of blood pressure devices conduct their own accuracy testing, an honor system with potential real-life consequences for patients," said Sharman. Home blood pressure monitoring is recommended by the American Heart Association for people with high blood pressure because it provides more blood pressure readings rather than the occasional measurement in a doctor's office or health care clinic. The Association recommends using a blood pressure monitor with an upper-arm cuff that has been independently validated. In addition, the Association suggests taking the device to their healthcare provider to double-check it for accuracy. The study may be limited because it only reviewed devices purchased via Australia's online marketplace. These suppliers also sell products in the U.S. and worldwide, however, the focus of this study is the Australian market, so it is not known if these same blood pressure devices are sold in the U.S. The FDA requires manufacturers to submit documentation that the devices are tested for precision before they can be available for sale in the U.S. However, the devices are not independently evaluated; rather, the manufacturers conduct their own accuracy tests. ### Co-authors are Dean S. Picone, Ph.D.; Rewati A. Deshpande, B.Med.Res.; Martin G. Schultz, Ph.D.; Ricardo Fonseca, M.D., Ph.D.; Norm R.C. Campbell, M.D., Ph.D.; Christian Delles, M.D., Ph.D.; Michael Hecht-Olsen, M.D., Ph.D.; Aletta E. Schutte, Ph.D.; George Stergiou, M.D., Ph.D.; Raj Padwal, M.D., Ph.D.; and Xin-Hua Zhang, M.D., Ph.D. This study had no reported funding sources. Additional Resources: Available multimedia is on right column of release link - https:/ / newsroom. heart. org/ news/ australian-study-many-home-blood-pressure-monitors-not-validated-for-accuracy?preview= cc36f893d1d06d42d12f3acc749de633 After April 13, 2020, view the manuscript online. American Heart News: Half of U.S. adults should monitor blood pressure at home, study says. American Heart Association News Release: Monitoring at home yields better blood pressure control Follow AHA/ASA news on Twitter @HeartNews Follow news from the AHA's Hypertension journal @HyperAHA Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association's policy or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The Association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific Association programs and events. The Association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations and health insurance providers are available at https:/ / www. heart. org/ en/ about-us/ aha-financial-information . About the American Heart Association The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. We are dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities. Through collaboration with numerous organizations, and powered by millions of volunteers, we fund innovative research, advocate for the public's health and share lifesaving resources. The Dallas-based organization has been a leading source of health information for nearly a century. Connect with us on heart.org, Facebook, Twitter or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1. This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Christans in a town in the Nineveh Plains attended Easter Mass prayers online from inside their homes on Sunday due to lockdown imposed in Iraq to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Only the priest and a handful of people were actually present at the Mar Eddie Church in Keramlis, but the ceremony was broadcast live on social media. The governor of Nineveh declared lockdown on March 17, as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, there were over 1,300 confirmed coronavirus cases in Iraq, with 73 deaths and over 600 recovery cases as of Sunday. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. While many may not consider McDonalds a local business, The Glaser Group is a group of family-owned McDonalds that is supporting its employees and communities in west Houston, Katy and the Fulshear area during the pandemic. Our employees live, play, attend church and go to school in the communities we serve, said Amanda Pearson, marketing manager for The Glaser Group. When you think about taking a break today and wanting to buy local to support your community, think about us and the people we employ as being local. Top hits: Get Houston Chronicle stories sent directly to your inbox David Glaser is the second-generation McDonalds owner-operator of The Glaser Group and said business has definitely taken a hit, so he is grateful for his drive-thru lanes and newer avenues for selling like UberEats and DoorDash. He added while many people are at home, essential workers are going about their days and others are out running necessary errands, some craving just a taste of comfort and regular life. Were very happy that were able to be here for them, and were very happy that were able to be open for our staff to be able to be working, too, said Glaser. The Glaser Group has a dozen restaurants from Fondren Road to FM 1463. Right now, the locations are offering free meals to its roughly 470 staff members during their shifts and 30 percent off meals for their family members. They are also wielding their technology and apps so that employees can have access to what shifts are open at any Glaser restaurant and hopefully get as many hours as they want. We are striving to keep as many people working as many hours as they need to support their families, Pearson said. Flavor: Get the best food newsletter in Houston sent directly to your inbox The apps are also used to communicate with employees about ideas about keeping the restaurants clean, organized and ready to best serve guests. Pearson said as staff members come in for the day, they are quizzed on the information to make sure they are up to date and ready. During the pandemic, on-duty police officers and hospital staff members with identification can pick up a free meal with each visit. Teachers with school IDs can receive free breakfast sandwiches during April, and The Glaser Group is also bringing lunch to local fire stations, along with coupons for ice cream that the firefighters can distribute in the community or use themselves. We are grateful for our guests and our team, and in these difficult times we are especially grateful for those who serve us, Pearson said. According to Glaser, about 99 percent of McDonalds across the United States remain open. Owner-operators are having multiple webcasts and leadership groups each week to communicate and learn from one another about how to best serve their guests during the pandemic. Breaking News: Get email alerts from Chron.com sent directly to your inbox So far, The Glaser Group has not had to lay off any employees due to the downturn in business, Pearson said. It is allowing those employees to take a take some time off if they feel uncomfortable working during the crisis, using vacation pay if they have it. However, Glaser said most want to continue working to support their families and themselves. He said he believes his staff, though strained like everyone else in these difficult times, is doing well and thankful to be working. I think theres something nice about routine, so when were here, were able to just focus on the task at hand, he said. Like me, everyones concerned, everyone is a point of frustration or just not knowing whats gonna happen next. And each day is a little bit different, so its nice to be in the restaurant and go through just the cathartic process of filling a box of fries or making a Quarter Pounder. Glaser likes to eat out and support other local businesses and thinks about the smaller mom-and-pop places that lack the resources of the McDonalds brand. He said no matter what the circumstances, he feels thankful and that The Glaser Group loves its staff and all they do. Its all positives to me, he said. For a list of The Glaser Group McDonalds locations, visit www.theglasergroup.net. tracy.maness@hcnonline.com Burglaries have fallen by more than 30 per cent in areas of Britain as many obey the coronavirus lockdown rules and stay at home. West Midlands police said it had seen a drop in burglaries by 34 per cent at the start of April, compared to the same seven-day period last year, while forces in Kent and Durham have also reported a drop in overall crime. There has also been a surge in domestic violence, as people are told to remain at home, with the National Domestic Abuse helpline saying it has seen a 25 per cent increase in calls and online requests. It follows the national picture, which shows a fall in crime by 21 per cent over the last four weeks compared to the same period last year, said the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC). West Midlands police said burglaries have risen by 34 per cent this month compared to the same seven-day period last year. Other forces have reported a drop in overall crime Assistant Chief Constable for West Midlands police, Jayne Meir, said the drop means more officers are available to tackle other crimes. Chief Constable and lead for the NPCC Andy Cooke said crime across the UK has dropped by 21 per cent Assistant Chief Constable for West Midlands police, Jayne Meir, revealed the force has seen 'a significant reduction in traditional crimes such as burglaries'. 'It means with fewer crimes we're able to use more resources on the streets, engaging with the public and encouraging everyone to maintain the government's measures. 'The latest annual figures show we've had a 15 per cent drop in house burglaries, 13 per cent for vehicle offences and six per cent fewer robberies'. Chief Constable and lead for the NPCC, Andy Cooke, told the Guardian that the fall is due to far more people being at home during most of the day. 'There is less violence from pub fights and less burglaries as everyone is at home,' he said. 'What you will see are increases in domestic violence with people cooped up in the same home, and internet crime such as fraud and scams.' Officers on Brighton beach, Sussex, on Easter Sunday after breaking up a bunch of teenagers A reformed burglar, who did not want to be named, said many of his former associates have stopped targeting homes and businesses as they don't want to catch coronavirus. 'Even before lockdown started I know a few of my former associates had decided to jack it in,' he said. 'They didnt think the job was worth the risk.' 'They were too scared of catching the disease from properties where there might be people infected. He also said there is an 'even greater risk of being caught' now that people are staying at home, which is putting off burglars. 'There are less empty properties to target,' he said, 'and if you're out on the street in a stolen car you're more likely to get pulled over by the police as there's less traffic about.' The MET police said it had seen a 'change in demand' since the lockdown came into force. An officer is pictured above after arresting a woman who refused to move from a park bench Kent police has also said crime across the county has dropped by a third in the week compared to the same period last year. And Durham Police has said that it has seen 20 per cent less crime since the lockdown was introduced. Officers recorded an average of 130 crimes a day and 165 the previous week. A MET police spokesman added the force has seen a 'change in our demand over recent weeks' due to the new measures. Figures showing whether crime in London has dropped are due to be published later this month. The chair of the NPCC, Martin Hewitt, urged people to keep reporting crimes during the Downing Street press briefing on Saturday. 'Keep reporting crime to us,' he said, 'our teams are working round the clock to keep you safe and respond to emergencies'. 'I particularly want to reinforce the Home Secretarys message to victims of domestic abuse or controlling behaviour. We will come when you call for help. To abusers, do not think this is a time you can get away with it. We will still arrest, we will still bring people into custody, and we will still prosecute.' He said police have issued 1,084 fines under coronavirus legislation so far, an average of 84 a day, which he said highlighted how strongly the country was obeying the rules. Soyuz-2 rocket lifts off with its first crew Backdropped by a pandemic, the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft lifted off on April 9, 2020, marking the first mission of the Soyuz-2-1a rocket variant to deliver people into orbit. After years of preparations and flight tests, the successful launch completed the transition of the Russian piloted space program from the Soyuz-FG version, which relied on the flight control system built in Ukraine. Previous mission: Soyuz MS-15 Crew members prepare to board the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft for the final familiarization training on April 3, 2020. Soyuz MS-16 mission at a glance: Spacecraft designation Soyuz MS-16, 11F732 No. 745, ISS mission 62S Launch vehicle Soyuz-2-1a No. Ya15000-042 Payload fairing 11S517A3 No. Ya15000-087 Launch Site Baikonur, Site 31, Pad No. 6 Launch date and time 2020 April 9, 11:05:06.463 Moscow Time (actual) Docking date and time 2020 April 9, 17:13 Moscow Time (actual); 17:16 (planned) Docking destination ISS, Russian Segment, MIM-2 Poisk Flight duration 196 days Landing 2020 Oct. 22 Primary crew Anatoly Ivanishin (Roskosmos), Ivan Vagner (Roskosmos), Christopher Cassidy (NASA) Backup crew Sergei Ryzhikov (Roskosmos), Andrei Babkin (Roskosmos), Steven Bowen (NASA) From the publisher: Pace of our development depends primarily on the level of support from our readers! Crew replacement The Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft was assigned to carry three members of the 62nd and 63rd long-duration expeditions aboard the International Space Station, ISS. Russian cosmonauts Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy were originally selected for the mission, but on February 19, 2020, Roskosmos announced the replacement of the primary Russian members of the crew due to medical reasons. The commander and flight engineer positions were re-assigned respectively to Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, who previously served as backups. NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy continued training for the flight. Preparing Soyuz MS-16 In the early version of the ISS flight manifest, the launch of Soyuz MS-16 was tentatively scheduled for March 30, 2020, but by April 2019, the mission was planned to begin on March 20, 2020. In October 2019, the flight manifest under consideration penciled the launch for April 9, 2020, which was ultimately set as the launch date. On November 27, 2019, RKK Energia, prime developer of the spacecraft, announced that Soyuz MS-16 had been delivered to Baikonur. The vehicle was unloaded from its railway car and placed inside the vehicle processing building for acceptance checks and storage, the company said. The spacecraft remained in storage until January 28, 2020, when it was installed in its processing rig at Site 254 for the initial processing. On February 27, 2020, RKK Energia announced that Soyuz MS-16 had completed autonomous tests, including powering up of onboard systems, diagnostics of computer and radio-navigation gear, pressurization tests and other checks. On March 14, 2020, RKK Energia reported that its joint team with the TsENKI ground infrastructure center had completed vacuum testing of Soyuz MS-16. The solar panel tests on the spacecraft took place on March 19. The primary and backup crews arrived at Baikonur aboard Roskosmos' new Tu-204-300 aircraft on March 24, 2020, and the next day, they visited the spacecraft processing building for familiarization training inside the spacecraft undergoing final preparations. On the same day, the technical management cleared the vehicle for irreversible operations. The fueling of the spacecraft began on March 26, 2020, completing on March 28, when the vehicle was returned at its processing complex at Site 254. The integration of the spacecraft with the launch vehicle adapter took place on March 30, 2020. Then, on April 1, 2020, specialists conducted the final visual inspection of the spacecraft and rolled it inside its protective fairing. At the end of March and early April 2020, the corona virus pandemic prompted various restrictions at Baikonur during the final preparations for launch of Soyuz MS-16. A number of management meetings and traditional ceremonies associated with the mission were either scaled down or replaced with video conferences. The crew members were reported to be under a strict quarantine to exclude a possible exposure to the virus. Final assembly of the Soyuz-2-1a launch vehicle with the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft on April 4, 2020. On the morning of April 3, 2020, members of the primary and backup crews visited the processing building once again and conducted the final inspection of their spacecraft in its launch configuration. The spacecraft was then transported to the rocket assembly building at Site 31, where on April 4, 2020, it was integrated with the Emergency Escape System, SAS, and the third stage of the launch vehicle. The resulting upper composite was then attached to the booster stages of the Soyuz-2-1a rocket, completing the assembly of the launch vehicle. The subsequent meeting of the technical management declared the launch vehicle ready for rollout to the launch pad, which took place on the morning of April 6, 2020. How Soyuz MS-16 was launched The first Soyuz-2-1a rocket assigned to carry the piloted vehicle lifted off as scheduled from Site 31 in Baikonur on April 9, 2020, at 11:05:06 Moscow Time (4:05 a.m. EDT). Propelled by the simultaneous thrust of the four engines of the first stage and the single engine of the second stage, the rocket headed east to align its ascent trajectory with an orbital plane inclined 51.6 degrees toward the Equator. Slightly less than two minutes into the flight, at an altitude of around 45 kilometers and a velocity of 1.75 kilometers per second, the ship's emergency escape system was jettisoned, followed by the separation of the four boosters of the first stage. Around 35 seconds later, as the vehicle exited dense atmosphere at an altitude of 79 kilometers and a velocity of 2.2 kilometers per second, the payload fairing protecting the spacecraft plit into two halves and fell away. The second (core) stage of the booster continued firing until 4.8 minutes into the flight. Moments before the second stage completed its work, the four-chamber engine of the third stage ignited, firing through the lattice structure connecting the two stages. Moments after the separation of the core booster at an altitude of 157 kilometers and a velocity of 3.8 kilometers per second, the tail section of the third stage split into three segments and separated as well. Following a nearly nine-minute climb to orbit, the third stage of the rocket released Soyuz MS-16 into an initial parking orbit at 11:13:56 Moscow Time (4:13 a.m. EDT) at an altitude of around 204 kilometers. According to a pre-launch announcement, Soyuz MS-16 was supposed to enter an orbit with the following parameters: Perigee 200 kilometers, +/2.0 kilometers Apogee 242 kilometers, +/5.0 kilometers Orbital period 88.63 minutes, +/0.05 minutes Orbital inclination 51.67 degrees toward the Equator, +/0.033 degrees Expedition 63 flight program The successfully executed launch allowed Soyuz MS-16 to initiate a four-orbit rendezvous profile with the International Space Station, ISS, which passed over the launch site minutes before the liftoff. If everything went as planned, the spacecraft was scheduled to dock at the MIM2 Poisk module, a part of the outpost's Russian Segment, at 17:16 Moscow Time (10:16 a.m. EDT), around six hours after liftoff and six orbit-changing maneuvers. The Russian mission control in Korolev had the following work timeline for the Soyuz MS-16 rendezvous with ISS on April 9, 2020: 15:05:57 Moscow Time: Beginning of autonomous rendezvous; 15:36:57 Moscow Time: Activation of the Kurs rendezvous system aboard the Zvezda Service Module, SM; 15:37:57 Moscow Time: Activation of the Kurs rendezvous system aboard the Soyuz MS-16; 16:51 - 17:01 Moscow Time: Fly-around of the station; 17:01 - 17:05 Moscow Time: Station-keeping; 17:05 - 17:15 Moscow Time: Final approach; 17:15:54 Moscow Time: Contact. As routinely happens during the smooth rendezvous, mission control advsied the crew to shorten the planned station-keeping phase after the flyaround of the station, resulting in docking at 17:13:21 Moscow Time (10:13 a.m. EDT), as the vehicles were flying over the Northern Atlantic in a 440.9 by 419.3-kilometer orbit. The docking probe of the transport ship was successfully retracted at 17:21:50 Moscow Time and latches on both sides of the docking mechanisms were successfully closed completing the process. Upon opening hatches between Soyuz MS-16 and the station at 12:28 p.m. EDT, the newly arrived Anatoly Ivanishin, Ivan Vagner and Chris Cassidy joined three members of the Soyuz MS-15 crew Oleg Skripochka, Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir. Their mission is scheduled to end a week later, on April 17, 2020, with a landing in Kazakhstan. The undocking of Soyuz MS-15 will mark the start of Expedition 63 aboard the ISS. The traditional change of command ceremony is scheduled for April 15, when Skripochka will formally transfer the control over the station to Cassidy. During its 196-day stay aboard the station, the Soyuz MS-16 crew is expected to meet NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who are expected to visit the station during the second test flight of SpaceX' Dragon spacecraft, which would also be the first carrying a crew. As of April 6, 2020, the launch of the Space-X Demo-2 mission was expected no earlier than mid-to-late May 2020. During a pre-launch press-conference on April 8, 2020, Ivanishin said that his crew had been training for a spacewalk to replace a panel on the fluid controller of the Zarya FGB module, which had been continuously delayed since October 2019. However, that spacewalk was cancelled for the Soyuz MS-16 crew as was all the work on the exterior of the station that Ivanishin's crew had been training for in case of the arrival of the MLM Nauka module. As a result, no planned spacewalks remained on the crew's schedule at the time of the Soyuz MS-16 launch. At the time of the launch, the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft was scheduled to return to Earth with the same crew on October 22, 2020, (Moscow and Kazakhstan time). Soyuz MS-16 makes successful landing The Soyuz MS-16 crew (front row, left to right): Chris Cassidy, Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin, with the Soyuz MS-17 crew (back row): Kate Rubins, Sergei Kud'-Sverchkov and Sergei Ryzhikov, during a traditional change-of-command ceremony aboard the ISS on October 20, 2020. After an eventful stay aboard the International Space Station, ISS, the Soyuz MS-16 crew prepared its vehicle for departure from the outpost and landing at the beginning of short daylight hours in the steppes of Kazakhstan of October 22, 2020, after 196 days in space. Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, planned to close the hatches from the MIM2 Poisk module, a part of the Russian ISS Segment, to their Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft between 23:10 and 23:30 Moscow Time (4:30 p.m. EDT) on October 21, according to Roskosmos, based on ballistic calculations of the Russian mission control last updated on October 15, 2020. NASA reported that the Soyuz hatch had been closed at 3:24 p.m. Houston Time (23:24 Moscow Time) on October 21, followed by the station hatch a few minutes later. In the formal change of command ceremony on October 20, Chris Cassidy transferred the command over the ISS to Sergei Ryzhikov, who arrived at the outpost aboard Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft six days earlier. The State Corporation said that the command for the undocking of Soyuz MS-16 from the station was to be issued at 02:30:30 Moscow Time on October 22 (7:30 p.m. EDT on October 21). The physical separation between the crew vehicle and the zenith (sky-facing) port of the Poisk module was to take place 1.5 minute later, at 02:32:00 Moscow Time. According to the Russian mission control, Soyuz MS-16 undocked from the ISS at 02:32:09 Moscow Time. The spacecraft then performed two short separation maneuvers at 02:35 and 02:36 Moscow Time with its small attitude control thrusters to increase its distance from the ISS. After around two and half hours in autonomous flight, Soyuz MS-16 fired its main engine against the direction of the flight at 05:00:53 Moscow Time on October 22 (10:00 p.m. EDT on October 21). The 4-minute 40-second maneuver slowed the vehicle down below the orbital velocity and initiated its reentry into the Earth atmosphere. Less than half an hour later, as the ship approached the dense atmosphere, the Habitation Module, BO, and the Aggregate Module, PAO, were jettisoned from the Descent Module, SA, carrying the crew. Less than three minutes later, the capsule with its three passengers hit the discernable atmosphere and began aerodynamic maneuvering allowing it to slow down the rate of descent and reduce the g-loads on the crew. After around 8.5 minutes of braking with its heat shield, the command for the release of the capsule's parachute system was issued. The Descent Module was scheduled to touch down 147 kilometers southeast of town of Dzhezkazgan at 05:55:23 Moscow Time, 08:55 in the morning local time on October 22, 2020. It was 10:55 p.m. EDT on October 21. Shortly after the landing, Roskosmos reported the touchdown time as 05:54:12 Moscow Time. According to NASA, the Descent Module was in vertical position after landing. In preparation for the Soyuz MS-16 landing, search and rescue specialists of Russia's Central Military District, TsVO, deployed ground and air assets at the primary staging area in the town of Dzhezkazgan and at a backup site in Arkalyk, both in Kazakhstan, the Russian Ministry of Defense said. They included four Mi-8 helicopters and a pair of PEM-1 and PEM-2 Blue Bird all-terrain vehicles. The group joined the main force of the search and rescue teams, which had been recently moved to Kazakhstan to support the launch of the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft and were then re-deployed for the MS-16 landing. In total, the search and rescue assets involved in the Soyuz MS-16 landing included 12 Mi-8 helicopters, two An-26 and two An-12 fixed-wing aircraft and more than 20 ground vehicles, including six Blue Birds, the Ministry of Defense said. The military also announced that the number of personnel at the landing site would be limited for this particular landing to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission. Ahead of the landing, the search and rescue crews conducted aerial and ground based survey of the touchdown zone. Military meteorologists predicted temperatures from +5C to +8C degrees in Dezhezkazgan, westerly winds with a speed from 5 to 7 meters per second and gusts between 12 and 15 meters per second, the visibility up to 10 kilometers and the possibility of rain, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on October 21. According to NASA, following the landing, helicopters of the Russian search and rescue service were scheduled to deliver all three crew members to the recovery staging area in the city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan. There, the Russian cosmonauts will board an aircraft of the Cosmonaut Training City, TsPK, for a flight to Star City near Moscow, while Cassidy will be picked up by a NASA plane for the trip back to Houston, Texas. According to TsPK officials quoted by the Interfax news agency, the Russian cosmonauts would undergo only a regular post-flight quarantine after the landing with no additional restrictive measures associated with the coronavirus pandemic. A complete isolation of the crew members would prevent the planned post-flight activities of the crew, including their participation in the Sozvezdie (constellation) experiments, which involve the assessment of the cosmonaut's flight control and piloting abilities immediately after the long-duration space flight. However, all TsPK personnel interacting with the crew will be tested for the coronavirus, the center's officials said. The undocking of Soyuz MS-16 from ISS, officially marked the beginning of the 64th long-duration expedition aboard the ISS, at the time, represented by just the three members of the Soyuz MS-17 crew. However, three US and one Japanese astronaut, comprising the first operational commercial crew contracted by NASA, were scheduled to join Expedition 64 in November, following their launch aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral. Planned timeline for the Soyuz MS-16 landing on October 22, 2020, according to Roskosmos: Operation Moscow Time UTC EDT Hatch closure between the Soyuz MS-16 and the ISS 23:10 - 23:30* 20:10 - 20:30 4:10 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.* Undocking command for Soyuz MS-16 02:30:30 23:30* 7:30 p.m.* Physical separation between Soyuz MS-16 and ISS 02:32:00 23:32* 7:32 p.m.* Beginning of the deorbiting maneuver 05:00:51 02:00 10 p.m.* End of the deorbiting maneuver 05:05:31 02:05 10:05 p.m.* Separation of Descent Module, Habitation Module and Instrument Module 05:28:56 02:28 10:28 p.m.* Atmospheric entry interface for the Descent Module 05:31:52 02:31 10:31 p.m.* Start of parachute opening sequence 05:40:21 02:40 10:40 p.m.* Touchdown of Descent Module in Kazakhstan 05:54:36 02:55 10:55 p.m.* Soyuz MS-16 crews: Primary crew Backup crew Soyuz commander Anatoly Ivanishin ( Roskosmos Sergei Ryzhikov (Roskosmos) Flight engineer 1 Ivan Vagner (Roskosmos) Andrei Babkin (Roskosmos) Flight engineer 2, Expedition 63 commander Christopher Cassidy (NASA) Steven Bowen (NASA) Next mission: Soyuz MS-17 Congratulations, madridi.com got a very good Social Media Impact Score! Show it by adding this HTML code on your site: Madridi.com scored 70 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 3.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team This CoolSocial report was updated on 5 Dec 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the madridi homepage on Twitter + the total number of madridi followers (if madridi has a Twitter account). This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the madridi homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if madridi has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the madridi homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the madridi homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the madridi homepage on StumbleUpon. Basic Information PAGE TITLE Real Madrid C.F. Arabian Fanclub - - DESCRIPTION - - Madridi - Real Madrid Arab Fansclub KEYWORDS , , , , , , , , , , , , , , OTHER KEYWORDS The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The title found in the head section of the homepage. Domain and Server DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE Arabic WINDOWS-1256Arabic SERVER Apache/2.2.23 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.23 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.2.17 (PHP/5.2.17) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Linux Linux Operative System running on the server. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Type of server and offered services. The language of madridi.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Character set and language of the site. Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world. Referring domains for madridi.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines. Facebook link FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The type of Facebook page. The URL of the found Facebook page. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. Twitter account link TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND PEORIA, Ill., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OSF Ventures, the corporate investment arm of OSF HealthCare, joined in a $16 million Series B funding round in SilverCloud Health, provider of accessible, scalable, digital behavioral health care solutions. Funding will be used to expand the Ireland-based company's presence in the United States, along with an increased number of clinical trials to support enhancement of existing products and expansion of new offerings. OSF Ventures joins LRVHealth, MemorialCare Innovation Fund, UnityPoint Health Ventures, B Capital Group and ACT Venture Fund in the latest investment round. The investment fits with OSF HealthCare's strategy of financially and operationally supporting opportunities that improve patient outcomes, enhance patient experience and reduce the cost of health care. "We also invest strategically through comprehensive collaboration, which is the approach we've taken with SilverCloud," according to Stan Lynall, vice president for OSF Venture Investments. In 2018, OSF HealthCare became the first US health care system to offer free open enrollment to SilverCloud's online cognitive behavioral health therapy for adults in regions served by OSF but without a requirement that users be current patients of the health system. The SilverCloud platform is HIPAA compliant and is available via handheld device, computer or laptop. It is an anonymous, secure and interactive platform that helps people manage the symptoms of depression, including anxiety and stress. "OSF HealthCare was an early believer in our evidence-based approach and continues to provide collaboration and support. SilverCloud has been able to demonstrate that our solutions provide an equivalence to more traditional methods of mental health care," said SilverCloud Health CEO Ken Cahill. "Having backing from such a well-respected US health care system helps to further validate SilverCloud's leadership in this important sector of digital health, especially during this time of unprecedented global crisis where there is a heightened need for clinically validated virtual support, with multitudes of people being asked to stay home and health systems having to prioritize care." SilverCloud's solution for moderate depression, anxiety and stress was piloted and eventually expanded for open enrollment with product updates and enhancements made to the platform to align with feedback from behavioral health professionals who monitor the platform and interact with users when additional individual support is needed. As many as 65 percent of users accessing SilverCloud's entire platform report significantly decreased depression and anxiety symptoms and the platform provides up to a 91 percent reduction in care delivery costs compared to face-to-face therapy. "The key that separates SilverCloud from other applications is that it offers the user with an integrated supporter," according to OSF HealthCare Behavioral Health Manager Luke Raymond. "The platform has been clinically validated as a viable resource to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy content, and we also have a background person who will provide periodic check-ins and reviews and help you if you need connection with a live resource." He added, "SilverCloud Health responded rapidly to our need to help our front-line health care workers dealing with the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic and added a specific program for them, which was an important resource to support our employees." Lynall is impressed with the SilverCloud leadership team which includes top executives and co-creators who are global leaders in online behavior therapy tools and digital specialists who have grown the platform to include more than 30 effective online mental health interventions. "SilverCloud Health is filling a void left by a lack of mental health professionals in the U.S. and globally. OSF Ventures is excited to back SilverCloud Health as it works to create tools patients are embracing to lead happier, more successful lives," said Lynall. OSF Ventures specializes in venture optimization, partnering financially and operationally in companies that improve patient outcomes and reduce costs to health care systems. OSF Ventures is a division of OSF HealthCare. More at www.osfventures.org. About OSF HealthCare OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. OSF HealthCare employs more than 23,600 Mission Partners in 147 locations, including 14 hospitals nine acute care, four critical access with 2,097 licensed beds, and two colleges of nursing throughout Illinois and Michigan. The OSF HealthCare physician network employs more than 1,500 primary care, specialist and advanced practice providers. OSF HealthCare, through OSF Home Care Services, operates an extensive network of home health and hospice services. It also owns Pointcore, Inc., comprised of health care-related businesses; OSF HealthCare Foundation, the philanthropic arm for the organization; and OSF Ventures, which provides investment capital for promising health care innovation startups. More at https://www.osfhealthcare.org. OSF Innovation, launched in 2016, is a multidisciplinary innovation center focused on internal and external innovation to solve the largest health care challenges. More at www.osfinnovation.org and www.osfhealthcare.org. SilverCloud Health is the world's leading digital mental health company, enabling providers, health plans and employers to deliver clinically validated digital health/therapeutic care that improves outcomes, increases access and scale while reducing costs. The company's multi-award-winning digital mental health platform is a result of over 17 years of clinical research with leading academic institutions. Today, SilverCloud is being used by over 250 organizations globally to meet their populations' mental health needs. Global experts have deeply validated the platform through full randomized control trials and real-world data from over 350,000 SilverCloud users. The platform continues to lead the industry with its effectiveness, engagement, and range of clinical programs that encompass the spectrum of mental health needs. Learn more at www.silvercloudhealth.com CONTACT: Colleen Reynolds | Media Relations Coordinator, OSF HealthCare | (309) 825-7255 SOURCE OSF Ventures Related Links http://www.osfventures.org Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 07:15 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd16b9e9 1 SE Asia COVID-19,ASEAN-Plus-Three,diplomacy,health,#COVID19 Free Limited by the need for self-isolating measures, ASEAN leaders will convene a virtual summit this week to propose various initiatives, officials say, as the bloc seeks collective and coordinated action against the COVID-19 pandemic. The 10-member Southeast Asia grouping has held a number of cross-sectoral meetings over the past few weeks, deliberating on issues as varied as collaborative outbreak investigations and supply chain maintenance, all of which will be brought onto the virtual table when leaders meet for a special summit on Tuesday. The summit is expected to be followed by an ASEAN Plus Three Summit, an important forum for collaboration with major development partners China, Japan and South Korea, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi told reporters in a virtual press briefing earlier this week. China, Japan and South Korea have shown varying degrees of success in curbing the outbreak. Speaking after an online ministerial huddle of the ASEAN Coordinating Council on Thursday, Retno assured that the ASEAN diplomatic machine continues to spin as member states try to collectively overcome a pandemic that has infected at least 15,000 people and claimed the lives of more than 500 in the entire Southeast Asia region. Read also: To tackle COVID-19, a united ASEAN must deliver urgently She said the ACC was determined to ensure the blocs synchronous and intersectoral efforts to combat the viral outbreak find wider implementation among member states. Indonesia stresses the importance of implementing the results of the ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three Health Ministers Meetings, Retno said. ASEAN senior health officials have convened several video conferences, including with their Chinese, Japanese and South Korean counterparts, to exchange information on containment and mitigation measures and identify needs for technical support and medical supplies in some ASEAN countries. The two meetings Retno mentioned were led by Indonesias Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto, who currently leads efforts under the ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting as chair. I believe that through efforts to strengthen collaboration and a coordinated response in the region, we can win the war against COVID-19, Terawan said in a statement from the ministry. ASEAN mechanisms to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak. (JP/File) The bloc has come under criticism over its slow response and its members proclivity for putting national interests first, despite being able to draw from a reservoir of existing mechanisms and accumulated experiences. Read also: ASEAN unity in doubt as Indonesia calls for special COVID-19 summit ASEANs traditional response to emergency and crisis situations has been to convene emergency meetings of leaders or relevant ministers to discuss regional solutions. When the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) hit the region in 2003, ASEAN leaders met in Bangkok and rolled out coordinated measures to fight the disease. However, some experts say that ASEAN as a collective seems to be dragging its feet in the fight against COVID-19. And as the pandemic rages on, risks and fears of infection are magnified by geographical proximity and regional connectivity two aspects of the ASEAN Community. The Sri Pelaling tabligh gathering in Kuala Lumpur, which drew 16,000 participants in late February, not only made Malaysia the epicenter of the disease in Southeast Asia but also caused a spike in COVID-19 cases in neighboring Indonesia, Brunei and even Vietnam, said Hoang Thi Ha, lead ASEAN researcher for political and security affairs at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, in an op-ed published in The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. Read also: ASEAN catches up with COVID-19 pandemic There is, however, a growing urgency among member countries to step up collaboration. At Thursday's ACC meeting, led by Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, Retno also underlined the importance of protecting migrant workers as one of the most vulnerable groups in the region, as well as a common commitment to ensuring the continued flow of goods throughout the region. As the current ASEAN chair, Vietnam has proposed to set up regional medical and essential goods reserves in case of an emergency, building a common health response based on guidance from the World Health Organization and organizing online drills at the ASEAN Center of Military Medicine on responding to epidemics, Viet Nam News reports. The bloc is also working to establish a COVID-19 ASEAN Response Fund that would be drawn in part from the existing ASEAN Development Fund. "Malaysia is of the view that we must prioritize the COVID-19 ASEAN Response Fund to expand the scale of existing emergency stockpiles for pandemic responses with items such as face masks, test kits and protective equipment. I understand there are shortages globally, but we must be prepared for any eventuality, Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said recently as quoted by The Star. The establishment of the ASEAN fund was endorsed by the regions foreign ministers on Thursday, according to the Philippines' Foreign Ministry. ASEAN is also expecting help from various partner countries. We have received very strong commitments from China and the United States in supporting and uniting with ASEAN to fight the pandemic, Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung said as quoted by Viet Nam News. Dutch authorities have taken down 15 DDoS-for-hire services in a week, this is another success of law enforcement in the fight against cybercrime. An operation conducted by Dutch authorities last week has shut down 15 DDoS-for-hire services (aka DDoS booters or DDoS stressor), states a press release published by Dutch police. The operation was conducted with the support of Europol, Interpol, and the FBI along with web hosting providers and domain registrars. The DDoS-for-hire services allowed users to sign up and launch DDoS attacks against any system exposed online. The cybercrime team in the Central Netherlands uses innovative methods to detect such booters. Last week, 15 booters were blacked out at the request of the police. reads the press release published by the Dutch Police. We work together with external parties such as hosters, registrars for international police forces, Europol, Interpol and the FBI. With preventive actions, we want to protect people as much as possible against DDoS attacks. By taking booters and their domain names offline, we make it difficult for cyber criminals. We have now put quite a few on black. If they pop up elsewhere, we will immediately work on it again. Our goal is to seize more and more booters, said Jeroen Niessen of the police. Authorities did not reveal the name of the 15 DDoS services. On April 10, 2020, Dutch police also arrested a 19-year-old man from Breda, he is suspected of having shut down the websites MijnOverheid.nl and Overheid.nl by carrying out DDoS attacks on March 19. On March 19, the above sites were unavailable for several hours. In a DDoS attack, servers of a website are bombarded with data traffic. This could cause the servers to fail. Visitors can then (almost) no longer reach the website. continues the press release. Especially in these times where many emergency regulations and other emergency regulations are made accessible via this site. The arrested man is formally suspected of having compromised vital reporting that would compromise safety. The Overheid.nl is a very important website in this period because it includes information on the Coronavirus outbreak and the initiatives of the Dutch government to protect the population. MijnOverheid is a kind of digital letter-box used by Dutch citizens to receive messages from the government, it also provides personal information to the population, including the registration with the municipality or the date of the MOT. By flattening a website like this, you are denying citizens access to their personal data and important government information. We take this very high, especially now that the corona crisis is causing additional uncertainty and a great need for information for many people. We want to protect people and companies and make it increasingly difficult for cyber criminals to carry out a DDoS attack, said Jeroen Niessen, head of the cyber crime team of the Central Netherlands police. In October, a joint operation conducted by the Netherlands National Criminal Investigation Department and National Cyber Security Center allowed to track down and seize five servers that were composing a cybercrime underground bulletproof hosting service. The servers were hosted at an unnamed data center in Amsterdam, it was used by tens of IoT botnets involved in DDoS attacks worldwide. The bulletproof hosting service was used to host malware and command and control systems of several DDoS botnets. In December 2018, Dutch police also participated in an international operation against DDoS-for-hire services. Pierluigi Paganini ( SecurityAffairs DDoS-for-hire service, hacking) Share this... Linkedin Share this: Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On Amidst the upsurge of the coronavirus pandemic, the Nigerian food system would be strained in the coming weeks and months, some agricultural experts have posited. The experts, who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES, also suggested ways the country can navigate this period of uncertainty and ensure food security, especially in the light of the declining purchasing power of most Nigerians. Lockdown President Muhammadu Buhari on March 29 declared a total lockdown on the Federal Capital Territory-FCT, Lagos and Ogun States. However, the government of Ogun State opted to commence in April 3 to enable both government and residents prepare. The lockdown was announced as a measure to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic which is fast spreading around the world leaving deaths in its wake. However, commercial establishments such as food processing, distribution and retail companies, petroleum distribution and retail entities, power generation, transmission and distribution companies and private security companies are exempted from the lockdown. Although these establishments are exempted, access will be restricted and monitored, the president noted while addressing Nigerians. Also, across states in Nigeria, farmworkers and agro business owners have been struggling to understand what the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown measure will mean for their safety and livelihoods as planting season sets in. Ripples Ayodeji Balogun, Chief Executive Officer, Affex commodity Exchange Limited, explains some of the challenges the lockdown and pandemic pose. This was contained in Mr Baloguns presentation slides during an online meeting, on the theme: Impact of COVID-19 on Nigerias food systems, organised by Affex commodity exchange on Friday. Affex is Nigerias first private sector commodity exchange firm established in 2014 to transform commodity and securities exchanges in sub-Saharan Africa in support of capital market development. According to him, the possible challenges to Nigerias food systems would include: price spikes, labour shortages, logistics challenges, shortage of fertilisers and other inputs and limited access to markets. Transport restrictions and quarantine measures are likely to impede farmers access to markets, curbing their productive capacities and hindering them from selling their produce, he said. Mr Balogun said shortages of labour could disrupt production and processing of food, notably for labour-intensive industries. Due to movement restrictions, farmers will have limited access to inputs and input providers will have a challenge reaching farmers in their locations, he said. Folarin Okelola, the spokesperson of National Agricultural Seeds Council, the government agency that regulates the seed industry in Nigeria, weighed in. He said the councils management is trying to liaise with the government to grant permits to agricultural workers in order to address some of the farmers needs this period in terms of seed supply, as farming season commences. Even to get to my office, the security men are saying I dont have the permit, he said. We are planning to have a skype meeting on Tuesday with the director general to properly address some of these issues. On our social media handles, we have been engaging farmers whose farms are not too far from their respective homes to do their skeletal work, so that they wont be food shortages after the pandemic, he said. Other views Emem Essien, chief operating officer, Crop2cash Limited, who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES said: I have a farm of over 300 acres under personal management, because of this pandemic and the government response to it by locking down, I find it very difficult to navigate to the farm. Mr Essien said getting essential supplies such as seeds and inputs is very difficult. He said prices of such have skyrocketed if someone eventually gains access to it. Advertisements Already, importers of farm inputs have it clear that prices are going up because of the rise in dollar compounded by the Covid-19 crisis. Farm inputs have gone up by 24 per cent. This will have an overall impact on cost of production thereby leading to increase in food prices. For farmers who will not be able to afford necessary inputs for their production, this will translate into lower yield. Lower yield means demand will be more than supply which will force prices up, he said. All these point to a looming food crisis if we dont manage the situation well, Mr Essien said. Remember, if we dont finance farmers now and ensure they grow, we will all be hungry post-COVID, he added. Before the federal government declared the total lockdown in some of these states, Kaduna State where Im operating had already clamped down a week beforeabsolute curfew, said Celestine Ayok, Director, Spring Dairy Limited, said. Most persons who are into egg production are lamenting as there is nobody to off-take their products. In poultry, we have a serious crisis because most of our farmers that are into production have eggs the birds are laying. There is no market to off-take and there is nothing we can do, Mr Ayok said. He noted that the products, if not sold on time or preserved under its required temperature might go bad. COVID-19 impact According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, currently, some 820 million people around the world are experiencing chronic hunger not eating enough caloric energy to live normal lives. The FAO says, of this, 113 million are coping with acute severe insecurity hunger so severe that it poses an immediate threat to their lives or livelihoods and renders them reliant on external assistance to get by. These people can ill-afford any potential further disruptions to their livelihoods or access to food that COVID-19 might bring. As a result of the above, as of April and May we expect to see disruptions in the food supply chains, it added. It said blockages to transport routes are particularly obstructive for fresh food supply chains and may also result in increased levels of food loss and waste. Fresh fish and aquatic products, which are highly perishable and therefore need to be sold, processed or stored in a relatively limited time are at particular risk. Also, shortages of labour could disrupt production and processing of food, notably for labour-intensive industries (e.g. crops or fishing), the FAO said. Agric experts who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES said transport restrictions and quarantine measures now in place in many places impede farmers access to markets, curbing their productive capacities and hindering them from selling their produce. Way forward Meanwhile, the FAO, in a recent statement on its website, said to mitigate the impact of coronavirus pandemic on agriculture, countries must meet the immediate food needs of their vulnerable populations, boost their social protection programmes, keep food supply chains flowing and gain efficiencies aimed to reduce costs related to trade. To effectively do these, the FAO urges countries to ensure that emergency food needs are met, adjust social protection programmes, scale up nutritional support, support management and prevention of under-nourishment and adjust school meal programmes so as to continue delivering school meals even when schools are shut. It remains a sad reality that the widening nature of the coronavirus pandemic holds great challenges for food production across the country, Yusuf Ogunbiyi, Product Development Analyst at AFEX said. He said pre-emptive approaches could help mitigate the risks of food crisis in the near future adding that the government should support food production through the provision of necessary agricultural inputs. A key concern is how the input could be distributed or loaned out to farmers while avoiding the risk of spreading the disease, he said. One solution could be the partnership with companies that have last mile interactions with the farmers. This will help organise the support and coordinate the implementation of the programme. Also, Razaq Fatai, policy lead for agriculture and inclusive growth at ONE Campaign, said for Nigeria to up its game towards ensuring food security, governments need to secure food supply chains, by ensuring that farmers and other agribusiness players are not prevented from going to work due to lockdown. Were stuck with our produce, Mr Ayok said. The government should off-take them and distribute alongside the indomie and other relief materials they are sharing to citizens. The federal government should patronise these farmers. Were not saying they should give us money. No! Buy our product so as to enhance our cash flow for production, Mr Ayok added. The oil market continues to plunge into quarantine. After the first two weeks, gas stations have lost 20-40% of sales, after which they stabilized Open source The oil market continues to plunge into quarantine. After the first two weeks, gas stations have lost 20-40% of sales, after which they stabilized. Sales The greatest losses were suffered by the gasoline stations, mainly used by private car owners. To a lesser extent, the decline affected diesel fuel, consumed mainly by commercial and industrial vehicles. Although small "diesel" losses at the level of 10-20% were just a terrible dream of gas station owners a month ago. By the way, the main wholesalers in April reduced their procurement plans by 20%. Demand is supported by farmers, who use it during spring fieldworks. The largest decline in sales traders is noted in the Chernivtsi and Zakarpattia regions. Catering has failed as well (on average by 40%). But in some places, sales of coffee grew. In many regions, local authorities demand to stop selling coffee at the gas stations. The situation in the station stores is slightly better. Firstly, visitors to the stations immediately buy what they need without visiting a large store. Secondly, some owners have expanded the nomenclature in stores, following the "quarantine" trends - cereals, medical masks, antiseptics. The fall is slow and steady. From the beginning of quarantine (March 12, 2020) diesel fuel lost 0.11 $ / l (11.5%), A-95 gasoline - 0.12 $ / l (11.6%), liquefied gas - 0.05 $ / l (12.9%). The main engine of the process is the economy segment stations. There are two reasons: these networks do not hold large stocks, buy at the wholesale market, where prices are the first to respond to the external situation. For example, diesel already costs less than 0,55 USD / l. Another incentive to move discounters more actively is the activation of the main competitor illegal immigrants. Let me remind you that last January the Cabinet cleared the shadow market well, but as soon as the virus loosened its grip and the purchase prices plummeted, everything turned back. As for the big players, they are forced to keep a 2-3-4-week supply of fuel. The management of the three large retail chains that I have managed to talk with over the past two days says they havent even a ton of cheap April resources in their system. But the process is going on, which means whether they want it or not, they would have to follow the discounters. Forecasts According to Adam Sikorski, head of the UNIMOT energy holding, which coordinates the AVIA network throughout Europe, in Italy, retail sales of petroleum products fell by 90%, in Spain by 70-80%, in the Netherlands and France by 50-60%. About the same way we go with Poland - a fall of 2025%. So the current stabilization is most likely temporary, as quarantine tightens (and the peak is still ahead, as everyone probably understands), sales will fall. The upcoming holidays will aggravate the situation. On the one hand, storages are filled with a cheap product. About 0,11 USD per liter is a quite tangible reduction potential, which is supported by a stronger hryvnia. On the other hand, the expected drop will increase the unit cost of each liter. There is no clarity with the future of the currency: how to assess 16,000 amendments to the law on returning of nationalized banks to their old owners? Is this already the end of Ukraines collaboration with the IMF? And then what about the currency rate? 30 UAH per 1 USD? Or 40? Read the original text on Facebook. The only thing certain right now is uncertainty and if you happen to run an independent bookstore, that rings perhaps even more true. With less time for socializing and cultural events outside the home, it should be a great time for books (unless youre simply too stressed and unable to focus on reading in which case, we understand). But that doesnt necessarily translate to being a great time for bookstores who are closing their doors and being asked to re-think their business in fundamental ways. I don't think anyone becomes a bookseller because they think the profit margin [will] make them rich, quips Amy Kane, owner of Haines, Alaskas succinctly named The Bookstore. We're all thoughtful people and we're doing it because we care about books and what they mean to us and what they mean to our community. The New Reality Nationwide, many shops have closed as a result of shelter-in-place orders or an abundance of caution. Even if stores are still open, theyre faced with cancellations from publishers and authors. Normally a home for book clubs, author signings, and book tours, now they must face business without mass gatherings or author travel. Many have been forced to cancel annual festivals that account for large percentages of their yearly income. Bookstores focus on being a community meeting place, and we differentiate ourselves from online by having author events and book discussions, says Eileen McGervey who owns One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia. The very things that distinguish us right now we cannot do. Courtesy One More Page Books The safety net for stores widely varies depending on the store itself, and how long theyve been around. From the most established and venerated shops (New York Citys Strand Bookstore, Portlands Powells Books) to new stores like Kanes The Bookstore, which was open a week and one day before quarantine measures hit, everyone is facing tough decisions. The Strand and New Yorks McNally Jackson have laid off the majority of their employees as stores shutter. Powells Books did the same; though they have since re-hired 100 workers to meet the demand for online orders. Culver Citys The Ripped Bodice, which has a small staff of five, says they plan to pay their employees as long as they can. Story continues Kanes store had its grand opening March 6, before closing on March 14. Shed barely opened and is now rushing to get her inventory online. I'm hoping that I can still provide books to the folks at least here in the community, and I'm having to brainstorm and completely re-envision, my whole business model, Kane explains. I have a bit of a learning curve to get my online presence more robust. At this point, I've been focusing so much on just getting the doors open that I have a website but it's basically [the store info]. Courtesy The Bookstore Loves Sweet Arrow, a romance-focused bookshop in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, is similarly nervous about what this could mean for their brand. Their one-year anniversary isnt until June 15. Were still building our base, reflects co-founder Roseann Backlin. Adds her daughter and business partner, Marissa: We started with a very small amount of money, and we put our profit back into the store so we don't pay ourselves yet, because we can't afford to. You just hear all the time that places fail without something like this in their first year. The odds are really stacked against us. Searching for Solutions Courtesy Love's Sweet Arrow So how might readers and communities keep their local indies afloat? There are straightforward ways: buy a gift card or order books online through the stores website. Many stores are currently offering extremely reduced or free shipping. (Anyone who wants to pre-order a book online can check their local indie before Amazon, especially since Amazon has now seriously delayed the shipping of non-essential items including books.) Depending on a stores ordering system, they may not see pre-order money until the book actually ships and if your goal is to help them now, it wont do the trick. If your local store doesn't have their own online shop, Bookshop.org is making it easier than ever to support them by linking sales and profit sharing with the indie bookstore of your choice. Theres also options patrons might not have considered before: joining a stores Patreon or using Libro.fm, a site that splits the profits of audiobook sales with the indie bookstore of your choosing. Jane Estes, founder of Lark and Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, Texas, also suggests donating to BINC, an emergency fund the American Booksellers Association maintains. Courtesy Lark & Owl Booksellers Still, many fear losing the option to browse could negatively impact sales. They say that 60 to 70 percent of the people that walk into a bookstore don't have a specific book in mind, McGervey explains. They're looking to see what's there and how do you do that when somebody can't come into the store? How do we keep that discovery and exploration aspect of it open? Beyond a sales aspect, bookstores also keenly feel the role they play in their communities. Theyre a gathering ground, an escape, and a safe space. McGervey stresses the need to fill this gap for families most at risk during the crisis. One More Page Books has been donating books to local schools for pick-up alongside daily meals to help provide for the literary needs of the community. [There cant] be an even bigger divide between people who can afford to buy books and people who cant, she says. Courtesy One More Page Books As for those customers with more spending power, stores are turning to their digital newsletters and social media more than ever. Book clubs are moving online to Facebook, Zoom, and YouTube. Authors are using booksellers Instagram pages to do live talks promoting their new releases. Part of this is arising from a need to maintain the communal spirit of bookstores, but also a desire to help support authors who might also be struggling with the cancelation of book tours and the loss of valuable face-to-face time with readers. Colleen Ellis, a book buyer at Lark and Owl Booksellers, says theyre actively brainstorming ways to promote new books on release days remotely. Shes hopeful this might help more localized events reach a bigger audience. Lark and Owl had planned on partnering with the Texas Institute of Letters as part of the schools annual literary event; the store has already purchased the inventory for it, and is brainstorming ways to make it remotely accessible, perhaps broadening its reach. A Boxed-Up Future Courtesy The Ripped Bodice Booksellers also have to find ways to promote titles that can really provide customers the same sense of face-to-face recommendations they might get in stores. One burgeoning space for that is book boxes. The Ripped Bodice now is offering a care package that gives online customers the chance to buy gift items and other things not traditionally on offer through their website. Similarly, Loves Sweet Arrow is offering Surprise Boxes, One More Page is developing their version of a subscription box, and Lark and Owl is implementing a Brown Bag book service. All of these programs are based around a larger shipment of books and potential gift items/bookstore swag, often hand-selected by booksellers based on the customers preferences. Theres a definite interest in these services as part of a larger push to support the bookstores. Since The Ripped Bodice announced their Care Package initiative on March 13, theyve packed over 475 boxes and have over 800 people on a waiting list to order. Emily Hall Schroen of Main Street Books says in one 24-hour period they received more online orders than the last two months combined. Checking in with stores, most say theyre flooded with a demand for books right now, but are still fearsome it wont ultimately replace in-store sales. Courtesy Storefront Predominantly, they worry this level of support will flag the longer this goes on. People are really making a point to support us, which is so incredible, says The Ripped Bodices co-founder Leah Koch. My concern is, Are they still going to be doing that five weeks from now? The answer might lie in constant re-invention. As things change at lightning speed, McGervey is trying to see it as an opportunity for booksellers. Its a whole new paradigm right now, she explains. A lot of indies didnt make it through [the Amazon boom], but the ones that did really had to change how they did business. This might be like that we all have to step back and break the mold of what weve be doing. Perhaps well all have to steal a page from their book. Related content: [April 13, 2020] Traditional PC Shipments Saw a Sharp Decline in Q1 2020 Despite Increased Demand to Meet Remote Work and School Needs, According to IDC The global traditional PC market, comprised of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 9.8% year over year in the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20), reaching a total of 53.2 million shipments according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The stark decline after a year of growth in 2019 was the result of reduced supply due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the world's largest supplier of PCs. While production capacity in January was pretty much on par with past years, the extended closure of factories in February and the slow resumption of manufacturing along with difficulties in logistics and labor towards the end of the quarter led to a reduction of supply. Meanwhile, demand rose during the quarter as many employees needed to upgrade their PCs to work from home and consumers sought gaming PCs to keep themselves entertained. "Though supply of new PCs was somewhat limited during the quarter, a few vendors and retailers were able to keep up with the additional demand as the threat of increased tariffs last year led to some inventory stockpiling at the end of 2019," said Jitesh Ubrani research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers. "However, this bump in demand may be short lived as many fear the worst is yet to come and this could lead to both consumers and businesses tightening spending in the coming months." "IDC believes there will be longstanding positive consequences once the dust settles," said Linn Huang, research vice president, Devices and Displays at IDC. "Businesses that once primarily kept their users on campus will have to invest in remote infrastructure, at the very least, for continuity purposes. Consumers stuck at home have had to come to terms with how important it is to keep tech up to date. This should provide a steady, long-range tailwind for PC and monitor markets, among other categories." Regional Highlights Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ): Traditional PC shipments posted a double-digit decline in 1Q20. The closure of factories in China due to the COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a supply-side disruption throughout the region, while demand was impacted severely in China due to the suspension of business activities in the most affected provinces. As the pandemic spread throughout the world, most of the Asia/Pacific countries progressed into a partial or full closure by the second half of March, with non-essential activities suspended and business operations halted. Even though there was a short-term spike in demand for PCs due to work from home and e-learning, IDC expects a significant negative impact on demand, extending several months or even quarters. Canada: The Traditional PC market posted growth for the 15th consecutive quarter with several vendors managing to capitalize in these unique times. Strategic purchases for Windows 10 upgrades, government year-end, and to counteract possible component shortages were quickly consumed by the rush to address working and learning from home. Inventory levels in all areas of the channel have been decimated to meet this demand. As many retail locations and businesses close the need to replenish, inventory will fade as will the ability to receive goods through all levels of the supply chain and channel. Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA): Traditional PC shipments saw a single-digit year-over-year decline after three consecutive quarters of growth, driven by both desktops and notebooks. The lower than expected performance is attributed to the global pandemic. Despite strong PC demand from SMBs and an additional surge in demand for notebooks stemming from work or study at home amidst severe lockdown across the region, a constrained supply chain was primarily responsible for the decline. Japan: Commercial and consumer markets were expected to mark strong growth in 1Q20, led by demands for Windows 10 migration. However, the supply chain constraints created by COVID-19 drove the overall Japan PC market into a decline. Latin America: The Traditional PC market showed a slightly more pronounced contraction than expected. The biggest contractions were reflected in notebook devices, in both the consumer and commercial segments, due to important deliveries (principally for education and government deals) that had been postponed. United States: While the Traditional PC market saw growth for much of 2019, the first quarter of 2020 produced a significant drop in shipments in the US. Current volume estimates show a year-over-year decline of 4%, which would mark this as the lowest quarterly shipment volume seen in more than a decade. While the desktop market is expected to maintain low single digit year-over-year growth, the notebook market is expected to contract by upwards of 8%. Company Highlights Lenovo (News - Alert) once again managed to capture the leading position despite declining 4.3% during the quarter. Excluding the Asia/Pacific region and Japan, the company managed to grow across all the other regions thanks to increased demand stemming from new work from home policies. HP Inc. finished the quarter in second place while declining 13.8% year over year during the quarter. Despite the company's scale and brand recognition, it was unable to secure enough supply during the quarter leading to a slight reduction in share. Dell (News - Alert) Technologies once again ranked third overall. This was a rather successful quarter for the company as it was one of the few companies that managed to grow during the quarter-up 1.1% year over year-thanks to strong relationships with the supply chain. Acer (News - Alert) Group rose to fourth place with close to 3.4 million units shipped in the quarter. By pulling in inventory ahead of the shutdown in February, the company was able to negate some of the ill effects of the supply disruption. A strong gaming portfolio as well as success in the Chromebook market helped the company rise up the ranks. Apple (News - Alert) saw its Mac volumes decline by 20.7% year over year, one of the largest drops in recent history as almost all of its manufacturing is based in China and the company was one of the hardest hit by the shutdown of factories. Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Traditional PC Shipments, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q1 2020 (Preliminary results, shipments are in thousands of units) Company 1Q20 Shipments 1Q20 Market Share 1Q19 Shipments 1Q19 Market Share 1Q20/1Q19 Growth 1. Lenovo 12,830 24.1% 13,413 22.7% -4.3% 2. HP Inc. 11,701 22.0% 13,573 23.0% -13.8% 3. Dell Technologies 10,495 19.7% 10,379 17.6% 1.1% 4. Acer Group 3,364 6.3% 3,733 6.3% -9.9% 5. Apple 3,092 5.8% 3,896 6.6% -20.7% Others 11,757 22.1% 14,019 23.8% -16.1% Total 53,238 100.0% 59,013 100.0% -9.8% Source (News - Alert): IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, April 13, 2020 Notes: Some IDC estimates prior to financial earnings reports. Data for all companies are reported for calendar periods. Shipments include shipments to distribution channels or end users. OEM sales are counted under the company/brand under which they are sold. Traditional PCs include Desktops, Notebooks, and Workstations and do not include Tablets or x86 Servers. Detachable Tablets and Slate Tablets are part of the Personal Computing Device Tracker but are not addressed in this press release. In addition to the table above, a graphic illustrating worldwide market share for the top 5 Traditional PC companies over the previous five quarters is available by viewing this press release on IDC.com. IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker gathers detailed market data in over 90 countries. The research includes historical and forecast trend analysis among other data. For more information, or to subscribe to the research, please contact Kathy Nagamine at 650-350-6423 or [email protected]. About IDC Trackers IDC Tracker products provide accurate and timely market size, company share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe. Using proprietary tools and research processes, IDC's Trackers are updated on a semiannual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Tracker results are delivered to clients in user-friendly excel deliverables and on-line query tools. Click here to learn about IDC's full suite of data products and how you can leverage them to grow your business. About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights: http://bit.ly/IDCBlog_Subscribe. All product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005417/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] With school districts settling into their virtual programming because of COVID-19, the Houston Independent School District is rolling out webinars and virtual support systems for students and parents. Starting April 13 through April 17, HISD will launch the @ H.O.M.E. (Home-based Online Mobile Education) Hotline from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. to provide answers to questions from students and parents about distance learning. According to a news release, operators will be on hand to answer questions in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Arabic, and will remain in place for as long as needed to support the transition to at-home learning. We are working diligently to offer equitable at-home learning support during this unprecedented crisis, Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan said in a news release. We hope this hotline will be a key resource for students and parents who might have questions about our districts distance learning, HISD @ H.O.M.E. Included in the districts distance learning plan, HISD @ H.O.M.E. TV will provide instructional videos from 9 to 11 a.m., 1 to 3 p.m., and 5 to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. The videos include lessons in English and Spanish from teachers and teacher development specialists in several subject areas, including math, science, reading and writing, social studies, and fine arts. These videos are broadcast on HISD-TV (Comcast channel 18 and AT&T U-verse channel 99), and online via HoustonISD.org/LiveTV. The HISD Social and Emotional Learning Department will host a webinar on April 15 at 2 p.m. to guide students on ways to incorporate Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) into their daily routines, understand the importance of mindfulness, and learn exercises and techniques that can be done by adults and students of all ages. Each webinar will be recorded and available for later viewing on the HISD @ H.O.M.E. page. The webinars are translated in Spanish live in the closed captions. HISD is also providing social and emotional learning resources at https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/180230. To keep the fun alive, HISD will host a virtual spirit week starting April 13. Each day will be designated with a different theme to encourage students to share their at-home learning activities. Students, teachers, and administrators are invited to take photos or short videos and share them on social media using the hashtag #HISDSpiritWeek. Below is the schedule for HISDs spirit week as posted on HISDs blog. Monday, April 13: Move-it Monday. Its important to keep moving while staying home. It could be dancing, yoga, walking or running or participating in a virtual fitness class. Whats your P.E. routine? Share a photo or short video of your activity. Tuesday, April 14: Career Day Think about your future and picture yourself in your dream job. Do you want to be an astronaut, a doctor, a teacher or a scientist? Dress up and share a photo of yourself dressed for your career of choice. Wednesday, April 15: Whatcha Reading Wednesday Whats on your current reading list? Share a photo of your book or a video of yourself reciting a favorite passage. Thursday, April 16: College Colors Day No matter your age, its important to start thinking about college. It could be a college that your brother, sister, parent or teacher attended - or a college youve already been accepted to attend! Dress in the colors of that school or wear a college T-shirt and share your photo. Friday, April 17: Fine Arts Friday This is your day to be creative! Draw or paint a picture, sing a song, play an instrument, or read a poem. Share with your fellow students how you are expressing your creativity at home with a photo or short video. Participants will be shared on the districts social media accounts. ryan.nickerson@hcnonline.com New Delhi, April 13 : The internet can become a dark place with the continuous promotion of fake news spread through it. Overwhelmed by numerous COVID-19 stories? Want to know fact vs fake? Interested in real-time updates ranging from your local community to global scenario? "COVID and the ensuing lockdowns have sent people in panic mode like never before, with misinformation adding to the chaos. Everyone needs credible sources of information and ways to stay connected with their communities. We are putting in our best efforts to ensure the same through our apps, Inshorts and Public, which are witnessing an unprecedented surge with more than 3 lakh downloads. I expect this trend to continue throughout the lockdown and beyond, as people rely solely on the digital space for news and communication," states Azhar Iqubal, Co-founder and CEO, Public App. The Public App. provides users with verified and real-time local updates, and allows them to record and share videos. Use these apps for the free flow factual information COVID-19: Aarogya Setu Developed by the Government of India, the most important feature of this app is that it can help determine if you could have been exposed to the virus due to physical proximity to an infected person. Also use this app for information on essential health services, risks, best practices, symptoms and other relevant topics. Available on Google Play Store and App Store for Android and Apple devices, will help track the coronavirus infection by using the smartphone's GPS system and Bluetooth and provide information that will help in determining if you have been near a Covid-19 infected person or not. It currently supports 11 languages. Once downloaded, one needs to register with a mobile number. Later, the app will have an option to enter health stats and other credentials. To enable tracking, you need to keep your Location and Bluetooth services on. United Nations News Reader If getting the bigger picture is what you are looking for then this is your go-to app. Their Coronavirus Global Health Emergency section will give you important global updates in one place, not just on the pandemic but also its impact on the planet and the people. A multilingual app, it is available on both Android and iOS platforms. The app supports Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Hindi, Kiswahili, PortuguAs, Russian and Spanish. Public App If social distancing is making you anxious about your immediate surroundings, then download the location-based, video-sharing social network Public, which is available in 5 Indian languages (Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu). The app provides users with verified and real-time local updates, and allows them to record and share videos on happenings in their vicinity. You can even get locations and timings of essential services like grocery stores, chemists and hospitals, learn about quarantine arrangements in your area etc. Quite a few local politicians and District officials have now made their verified official accounts on the app to share COVID-19 related information and debunk rumors and fake news to prevent misinformation and panic in the community. The World Health Organisation WHO is also in the process of developing a dedicated COVID-19 app, so keep a watch out for that. Meanwhile, you can avail their alert service currently. WHO has launched dedicated messaging services in Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese with partners WhatsApp and Facebook to keep people safe from coronavirus. This easy-to-use messaging service has the potential to reach 2 billion people and enables WHO to get information directly into the hands of the people that need it. Add them on Whatsapp at +41 79 893 18 92 and send a hello message to start receiving COVID-19 related information. The service can be accessed by a link that opens a conversation on WhatsApp. Users can simply type "hi", "hola", "??????", "oi", "salut", "ciao" or "?????" to activate. (Aditi Roy can be contacted at aditi.r@ians.in) Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rev. Nicolas Sanchez takes a phone call from a parishioner after live-streaming Good Friday Mass at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Los Angeles on Friday, April 10, 2020. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes Many Easter and Passover celebrations this year have gone online, as the coronavirus pandemic circles the globe. Some churches are offering drive-thru and drive-in services, to keep parishioners apart. Because the novel coronavirus is spread mainly through respiratory droplets exchanged from person to person, keeping people away from one another, and avoiding mass gatherings altogether, is one of the most fail-safe ways to help stop the spread of this virus. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Churches around the globe will be largely empty this Easter Sunday, as religious leaders encourage their worshipers to celebrate the holiday from their homes this year, to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus around. At the Vatican, Pope Francis is planning to do Easter morning mass to an empty St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday. "This year, Easter will be different for many of us," Queen Elizabeth said in a recording shared by the royal family on Saturday. "But by keeping apart, we keep others safe." People of the Jewish faith have likewise been taking their Passover celebrations online this week, hosting virtual Seders, and bringing their laptop screens to the table, instead of inviting relatives over to sit down in person. Here's how people around the globe are celebrating two major religious holidays this spring, while keeping their distance from one another: Normally, the Way of the Cross procession in Rome on Good Friday attracts quite a crowd. People attending the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession led by Pope Francis at Rome's Colosseum, April 19, 2019 (top), and the empty Colosseum in Rome, Italy, April 10, 2020 (bottom). But this year, as Italians hunkered down in their homes to contain the spread of COVID-19, the streets of the Italian capital were remarkably quiet. There was no public participation allowed as Pope Francis led his Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday at the Vatican. easter 2020 pope no public.JPG The quieter-than-usual celebration fell in line with new guidance issued from the World Health Organization earlier this week, encouraging religious leaders to take more faith meetings online. Story continues People in gloves and masks carry a statue depicting Jesus Christ for the Way of the Cross procession in Taranto, Italy, April 10, 2020. "If a gathering is planned, consider holding it outdoors," the WHO said. Catholics are blessed by a priest outside, at religious services in Minsk, Belarus, Saturday, April 11, 2020. "Maintain at least 3 feet of distance between people at all times," the agency said. Polish priests moved their confessions outside too on Good Friday, and wore masks while listening to their parishioners. Priests took confession outside in Warsaw, Poland, on April 10, 2020. Wearing masks may help prevent some spread of a virus to others, but it's not as effective as staying away from other people, who may be infected with COVID-19 and not know it. Easter food is also being blessed from a distance in Poland this year. A Catholic priest prays to bless food prepared for Easter in substitute of traditional group prayers and sprinkling of holy water in Lomianki, Poland, Saturday, April 11, 2020. In the coastal southern town of Taranto, Italy, one priest took his Good Friday procession to the roof, so church neighbors could participate at a safe distance, from their balconies and windows. Priest Don Amedeo Basile leads a Way of the Cross procession during Good Friday celebrations on the rooftop of the Maria S.S. Addolorata church, Taranto, Italy, April 10, 2020. The streets of Sevilla, Spain, normally crowded with some of the most ornate 'Semana Santa' processions and floats, are eerily quiet this year. Flowers at the entrance of "Esperanza de Triana" brotherhood, after an Easter Holy Week procession was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak in Seville, Spain, Thursday, April 9, 2020. In the United States, more than 2,000 people died from the coronavirus on Friday. A woman dressed as the Easter bunny rides through the streets of Valrico, Florida during a parade on Saturday, April 11, 2020. The community's annual Easter egg hunt and candy toss had to be canceled in an attempt to avoid spreading the coronavirus. That's the highest number of COVID-19 fatalities any country has recorded in a single day yet. Because the coronavirus is spread easily between people who sit, talk, eat, and sing together for sustained periods of time, churches across the country are shuttering. The Bible Baptist Church on Good Friday, April 10, 2020, in Farmington, Minnesota. Harvest Baptist Church of Harrison, Pennsylvania took its congregation to a drive-thru, so people wouldn't have to sit next to one another in church, and spread germs. coronavirus easter us Of course, people who live in the same household can still share space, but the idea is to avoid coming in contact with others outside the home, who may easily spread their virus around by talking, breathing, spitting, coughing, or singing. Pastor Marc Lickins of the Harvest Baptist Church in Harrison gathers in with his family in the front of their mini van to watch the first of screenings of an Easter service, produced by the church, at the Riverside Drive-In theater in Park Township, Pennsylvania, Friday, April 10, 2020. The Mexican government is encouraging Mexicans living abroad in the US not to travel home to visit family this Easter. A penitent carries a cross down a deserted street on Good Friday, in the Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City, Mexico, April 10, 2020. The Mexican Foreign Ministry said any Mexicans living in the US who may typically come back to the country for Easter celebrations should put that annual tradition on hold this year. Easter egg hunts and egg rolls around the country in the US are being replaced with more time at home. Children wave to the Easter Bunny, during a parade with the Oakmont Fire Company, Friday, April 10, 2020, in Haverford, Pennsylvania. "The health and safety of all Americans must be the first priority, especially right now," First Lady Melania Trump said, cancelling the 2020 White House Easter Egg Roll. "I deeply regret this cancellation, but we need to make difficult decisions in the short-term to ensure a healthy country for the long-term." A lot of churches are planning to live-stream their Sunday services this week, but there are still at least a few pastors in the US planning to hold in-person services this Easter, despite evidence that more people could die that way. Rev. Jo-Ann Murphy, assistant rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, live streams a Good Friday Mass from her backyard during the new coronavirus pandemic, Friday, April 10, 2020, in Miami. Reverent Tony Spell in Baton Rouge, Louisiana said he expects 2,000 people to attend his Easter service this Sunday, despite a statewide stay-at-home order in his state. Major COVID-19 outbreaks in Kentucky, South Korea, Illinois, and Washington have all been traced back to church gatherings. Churches are closed in South Florida as religious leaders worldwide urge people to celebrate Good Friday and Easter from the safety of their homes. At least six people are now dead after contracting COVID-19 at church in Kentucky, and two more were killed in Washington. Because the novel coronavirus is spread mainly through sustained, close contact between individuals, the most effective way to stop the spread of COVID-19 in a community is to keep people apart, for now anyway. Those who do venture in to churches around the world to pray right now are often asked to keep a safe distance from others. Catholic priest V.M. Thomas prays in a church on Good Friday in Gauhati, India, Friday, April 10, 2020. In Italy, it's one to a pew, Reuters reported. Jews also began a week of Passover celebrations on Wednesday, and many of them were virtual. Rabbi Shlomo Segal, right, holds his laptop so participants see his daughter Rayna, 8, left, dressed in a white robe and wig as the prophet "Elijah" during a virtual Passover seder, Wednesday, April 8, 2020, in New York. Some recited the Haggadah text, which guides the Seder meal, on screens this year, instead of face to face. Rabbi Shlomo Segal holds a copy of his Passover haggadah, a guide to the seder and the holiday service, in front of his laptop computer at his home in Brooklyn during the coronavirus outbreak, Wednesday, April 8, 2020, in New York. "It was clunky and emotional," David Oliver wrote of his own Seder, celebrated via Zoom webconference. seder coronavirus celebration online "When you bring together 11 different households and 25 people onto a Zoom call (several of whom were in their late 80s), it doesn't go swimmingly," Oliver shared in USA Today. Still, he classified the meal as a "success." Tali Arbel and her family and friends are pictured on a New York computer screen during a virtual Seder for Passover, April 8, 2020. "We made it through the retelling all in one piece, we ate foods like Matzah (unleavened bread) and dipped parsley into salt water (to represent the bitterness the Jews faced) and my roommates and I drank too much wine," he said. "We smiled and laughed, cried and loved." Italians hoping to celebrate their 'Pasqua' with lamb and other traditional Easter foods waited in long lines for groceries Saturday, and had their temperatures checked before shopping. A shopper has his temperature scanned as he stands in a long line waiting to enter the supermarket in San Donato, near Milan, Italy, Saturday, April 11, the day before Easter, when most Italians will eat a traditional lunch. "The virus is not on holiday," French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Thursday evening, urging French citizens not to partake in any of their usual Easter vacations. Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral's rector Patrick Chauvet, Auxiliary Bishop of Paris Denis Jachiet, and Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit attend a meditation ceremony in front of the holy crown of thorns to celebrate Good Friday in a secured part of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral in France, April 10, 2020. French officials said people in that country will need to stay at home until at least April 15, and probably longer. The WHO suggests parishioners who must get together avoid any touching, and keep their meetings very brief. Archbishop of Hyderabad Tumma Bala, along with other priests, distributes food to the poor on Good Friday, during a lockdown to control the spread of the new coronavirus in Hyderabad, India, Friday, April 10, 2020. Read the original article on Business Insider By PTI PAKPATTAN: Muhimman proudly writes his name slowly, carefully, one letter at a time, grinning broadly as he finishes. He's just 11 years old and was a good student who had dreams of being a doctor. School frightens him now. Earlier this year, a cleric at the religious school he faithfully attended in the southern Punjab town of Pakpattan took him into a washroom and tried to rape him. Muhimman's aunt, Shazia, who wanted only her first name used, said she believes the abuse of young children is endemic in Pakistan's religious schools. She said she has known the cleric, Moeed Shah, since she was a little girl and describes him as an habitual abuser who used to ask little girls to pull up their shirts. "He has done wrong with boys and also with two or three girls," Shazia said, recalling one girl the cleric brutalised so badly he broke her back. An investigation by The Associated Press found dozens of police reports, alleging sexual harassment, rape and physical abuse by Islamic clerics teaching in madrassas or religious schools throughout Pakistan, where many of the country's poorest study. The AP also documented cases of abuse through interviews with law enforcement officials, abuse victims and their parents. The alleged victims who spoke for this story did so with the understanding only their first names would be used. There are more than 22,000 registered madrassas in Pakistan, teaching more than 2 million children. But there are many more religious schools that are unregistered. They are typically started by a local cleric in a poor neighbourhood, attracting students with a promise of a meal and free lodging. There is no central body of clerics that governs madrassas. The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan has promised to modernize the curriculum and make the madrassas more accountable, but there is little oversight. Police say the problem of sexual abuse of children by clerics is pervasive and the scores of police reports they have received are just the tip of the iceberg. Yet despite the dozens of reports, none have resulted in the conviction of a cleric. Religious clerics are a powerful group in Pakistan and they close ranks when allegations of abuse are brought against one of them. They have been able to hide the widespread abuse by accusing victims of blasphemy or defamation of Islam. Families in Pakistan are often coerced into "forgiving" clerics, said Deputy Police Superintendent Sadiq Baloch, speaking in his office in the country's northwest, toward the border with Afghanistan. "It is the hypocrisy of some of these mullahs, who wear the long beard and take on the cloak of piety only to do these horrible acts behind closed doors, while openly they criticise those who are clean shaven, who are liberal and open minded," Baloch said. "In our society so many of these men, who say they are religious, are involved in these immoral activities". Police officials say they have no idea how many children are abused by religious clerics in Pakistan. The officials said clerics often target young boys who have not yet reached puberty in part because of the restrictive nature of Pakistan's still mostly conservative society, where male interaction with girls and women is unacceptable. The clerics, for the most part, had access to and trust with boys, who are less likely to report a sexual assault. Eight-year-old Yaous from Pakistan's remote northern Kohistan region is one of those boys. Yaous is small for his eight years. His features are slight. In an interview with the AP, with his uncle interpreting, Yaous' tiny body shivered as he told of his ordeal. It was near the end of December last year a holiday at the madrassa. Most of the students had left. Only Yaous and a handful of students had stayed behind. The other students had gone to wash their clothes and Yaous said he was alone inside the mosque with Qari Shamsuddin, the cleric. The sexual assault was unexpected and brutal. The boy said Shamsuddin grabbed his hand, dragged him into a room and locked the door. "It was so cold. I didn't understand why he was taking my warm clothes off," Yaous said, his voice was barely a whisper. "The pain made me scream and cry, but he wouldn't stop," Yaous said. The boy was held prisoner for two days, raped repeatedly until he was so sick the cleric feared he would die and took him to the hospital. At the hospital, Dr Faisal Manan Salarzai said Yaous screamed each time he tried to approach him. Yaous was so small and frail looking, Salarzai called him the "baby". "The baby was having a lot of bruises on his body on his head, on his chest, on his legs, so many bruises on other parts of his body," Salarzai said. Suspicious, Salarzai ordered Yaous moved to the isolation ward where he examined him, suspecting he had been sexually assaulted. The examination revealed brutal and repetitive assaults. The cleric was arrested and is now in jail. Police have matched his DNA samples to those found on Yaous. But despite the arrest, fellow clerics and worshippers at the Madrassah-e-Taleem-ul-Quran mosque located in a remote region of northwest Pakistan dispute the charges. They say Shamsuddin is innocent, the victim of anti-Islamic elements in the country. Yaous' father, Abdul Qayyum, said he was ashamed he had not spoken to his son in more than three months before the attack happened. "I want this mullah hanged. Nothing else will do," Qayyum said. Judge allows church to hold drive-in Easter service after mayor 'criminalized' communal celebration Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A federal judge on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the city of Louisville, Kentucky, from barring drive-in Easter worship services in order to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Trump-appointee U.S District Judge Justin Walker granted the temporary restraining order to On Fire Christian Church in Louisville, allowing it to go ahead with its Easter plans after Mayor Greg Fischer issued a directive last Thursday reportedly prohibiting drive-in services. "On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter," Walker, who was appointed to the bench last October, wrote in his ruling. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisvilles Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Sunday services, even if they remained in their cars to worship and even though its Easter. The Mayors decision is stunning, Walker added. And it is, beyond all reason, unconstitutional. After the mayors directive was issued on Thursday, the church was represented by attorneys affiliated with the First Liberty Institute in filing a petition for a restraining order on grounds that the directive violated the churchgoers' religious freedom rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Defendants targeting of religious adherents to prevent them from gathering in a manner consistent with social distancing guidelines, while permitting similar (and at times even more intimate) social interaction to continue unabated in retail and commercial establishments, violates Plaintiffs rights under the First Amendment, the petition argued. The judges order bars the city from enforcing or attempting to enforce, threaten to enforce or require compliance with any type of prohibition on drive-in church services hosted by On Fire Christian Church. If the Court did not immediately intervene and stop Louisvilles enforcement plan, churchgoers at On Fire would face an impossible choice: skip Easter Sunday service, in violation of their sincere religious beliefs, or risk arrest, mandatory quarantine, or some other enforcement action for practicing those sincere religious beliefs, Walker contended. First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Roger Byron said in a statement that the judge recognized that the mayors prohibition of drive-in church services on Easter violated the churchs religious freedom. Matthew Martens, a partner at WilmerHale, a law firm also representing the church in the lawsuit, said in a statement that he is grateful for the judges ruling. [I]n this challenging time for our country, Judge Walker upheld our ideals of religious liberty and a celebration of hope exercised in a responsible manner, Martens said. The church held its drive-in Easter service on Sunday as planned. Our civil leaders are dealing with a difficult and tremendous situation. We pray for them, Pastor Chuck Salvo said at the beginning of the service. We applaud their work to help protect everyone during this pandemic. The church will continue to comply with the [Centers for Disease Control] guidelines and work with our local government to keep everyone safe and well. Fischer told the Louisville Courier Journal on Saturday that his directive was only strongly suggesting that churches dont hold in-person or drive-in services for Easter and added that he did not direct law enforcement activity against the churches that planned to hold drive-in services. "I regret that the judge did not allow us to present evidence that would have demonstrated there has been no legal enforcement mechanism communicated," Fischer complained, adding that the city twice tried to contact the court but was unsuccessful. According to the newspaper, Fischer announced Friday that he would have Louisville Metro Police officers record the license plate numbers of people who attended church services so that local health officials can contact attendees to see if any of them have fallen ill. Instead of focusing on drive-in services, Fischer clarified that the focus was on in-person services. Im doing it because I dont want people to die, Fischer said. Walkers order also drew praise from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. Grateful for this strong, eloquent ruling defending Kentuckians religious liberty from Judge Justin Walker, @POTUSs outstanding nominee for the D.C. Circuit, McConnell tweeted. Of course church parking lots cannot be singled out with unfair standards that differ from other establishments. Walker, a former University of Louisville law professor, was confirmed to the bench by the Senate last year by a vote of 50-41 at the age of 37. However, the American Bar Association rated Walker not qualified to be a federal judge because he does not presently have the requisite trial or litigation experience. I hate to be a bit of a pessimist, but we dont know how much longer this is going to go on, we dont know how many businesses may not reopen, how much tax revenue weve lost, not to mention our income tax share from the state of Illinois could take a huge hit, he said. We dont know how much revenue were going to lose. More than 100 coronavirus-related fines have been issued in three days in Northern Ireland, police said. Officers broke up barbecues and a small number of large house parties, assistant chief constable Alan Todd said. Some parents were also believed to have left their children to play at friends houses. Mr Todd told the BBCs Good Morning Ulster programme: We engage with people, it is only when people wont take the encouragement we end up having to enforce the matter. A total of 107 fines were imposed in three days over the Easter period. House parties involved some dozen or more people, although some were bigger, Mr Todd said. Police stepped up their patrols at coastal beauty spots over the weekend and said the majority of people complied with restrictions designed to limit the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, GPs have written to the Department of Health warning they may be forced to withdraw services if more personal protective equipment is not provided. Masks and aprons are in particular short supply. Health officials have said they are confident enough supplies exist for now. A large order was delivered from Britain last week for distribution. Every journey changes your life. For my family, it was the trip in the summer of 2005 that made the difference. That's when my wife, Mary Frances, and I flew to China carrying two weeks' worth of luggage and a suitcase full of baby clothes, infant-care supplies and medicines. We had three tickets for the return trip to LAX. We were there to adopt our daughter. We hadn't met her yet, but two months before we had received three photographs from her orphanage in Chengdu and a one-page affirmation of health from a local doctor. We named her Grace. We were far from alone on this trip. About two dozen other couples from the U.S. were part of the same venture, organized through the Chinese government. We started in Guangzhou, then moved on to Chengdu. Why China? Because that country's one-child law had put many of its children in peril and because China's international process seemed more predictable than any other adoption path. In the days before the official hand-off, the organizers kept us busy being tourists. Through temples, parks and shopping streets, we paid scant attention to everything, imagining days ahead. And then, 20 minutes before we parents-to-be were to meet our children, there was a knock on the door of our room at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza. It was the adoption team. Grim faces. "There's been a problem," one of them said. Three children were sick, too infectious to allow in a room with others. Our daughter was one of them. And the adoption team had an urgent question for us. "Have you had chickenpox?" The question wiped our memories blank. While most of the other parents were joyfully meeting their children, we retreated to call our mothers in California and repeat the question. We also wondered: Is this a delay or something worse? Would they try to send us home without Grace? Would they suggest some kind of switch? We weren't having that. What could we do? We worked the phones and the web, satisfying ourselves and the authorities that Mary Frances and I each had chickenpox in childhood. So when would we see Grace? Nobody knew. To keep us occupied the adoption team packed us off to more tourist attractions. A folk village. An embroidery studio. And on a 100-degree day, we found ourselves at China's foremost panda preserve, where Mary Frances was invited to cradle a young red panda that was the size of an infant. She forced a smile, the saddest I've ever seen. We pestered authorities, dragged translators to medical offices, waited for our phones to ring and commiserated with the two other couples in the same situation. One night as we sat in the hotel, a tour bus rolled up and out stepped the rest of our new adoption group, back from a day of play. Through a glass window we watched the moms with babes in arms, the dads brandishing new strollers. This is only temporary, we told ourselves. Everything is only temporary. But it still felt rotten. On the second day, we met our girl. At 13 months, she was 15 inches tall and 15 pounds, her face dotted with a yellow paste to dry the red welts, her brow furrowed in confusion. And then after 15 minutes, we had to say goodbye. She wasn't well enough, the authorities said. A second visit ended the same way. On the third day, the team took us to City Hall, and there was Grace in the arms of Mrs. Chen, an orphanage foster mother, who offered a quick lesson in mixing formula (heavy on the sugar) and gently handed her over. We were a family at last. Once all of the postponed families were united, the distracted tourism continued, but now happily, because we were seeing the world through Grace's watery eyes. Some of it now seems like a hallucination. The temple thick with incense fumes. That traumatic first encounter with ice cream. Did we really, on a 105-degree day, end up in a rural theme park with cockfighting, high-diving pigs and Cher on the public address system? Yes, we did. The 15-inch child is now 5 feet tall. She has a learner's permit and a bedroom full of trophies from Irish dancing. Her school's mascot is a panda. We have the ups and downs all families have. But we've been incredibly blessed (or lucky, if you prefer). On a trip to China in 2013, we got to show her Chengdu and tell her how, in the wake of that miserable three-day chickenpox delay, a family was born and the arc of three lives bent immeasurably for the better. All it took, we remind ourselves, was a step into the unknown, a measure of patience and resolve when things went wrong, and a little faith. On our very worst days, as on our very best, it's good to remember that everything is temporary. Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 The pandemic disaster the world finds itself in the middle of is bringing out both the best and worst in people. And some behaviours are just annoying. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion The pandemic disaster the world finds itself in the middle of is bringing out both the best and worst in people. And some behaviours are just annoying. One of the most annoying trends is the emergence of busybodies who are eager to pass judgment on others before they have all the facts. Theyre the "pandemic police" self-appointed vigilantes who are calling out people for not strictly adhering to social isolation protocols. A mom in Sooke, B.C., was a recent victim of this overzealous reign of terror when she was repeatedly verbally assaulted for taking her two kids, ages two and six, out with her for errands. Janene Walker says she was stopped in a Lowes parking lot changing her daughters diaper in her van when a passing man in a truck yelled out at her, "Keep your kids in the house, for Christs sake!" Then, during a visit to a local grocery store, her daughter was strapped in the shopping cart and her son was close to her side when a man called her a "shitty mom" for taking her kids out with her. That confrontation turned into a shouting match that left her in tears. Now, no question it would have been far better if this mom didnt have her children with her while she bought necessary supplies. But sometimes we find ourselves in difficult circumstances. In her case, shes managing her kids on her own while her husband is deployed with the military and, with no family nearby, she says she has no one to help her with babysitting. Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotias chief medical officer of health, recently spoke up to condemn such public shaming. Community harassment, especially online, is "inappropriate," he said. Whats more appropriate is cracking down on people who are obviously flouting common sense and, increasingly, the law in many provinces and states. These are the people who, apparently in denial of their own mortality, are deliberately gathering in large groups to party as if theyre somehow immune to this terrifying disease. Weve all seen images of people, many of them college students on spring break, sunning themselves on Florida beaches, as if the COVID-19 pandemic is a problem only to be found in China, Italy and New York City. Since those images were published, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has banned gatherings of more than 10 people. Check those beaches today and youll find the crowds have thinned out. And then there are the COVID-19 skeptics yes, believe it or not, theyre still out there. They think all of this is being overblown or even a left-wing conspiracy. They also seem to think they can carry on as before without any consequences. To them, the answer may be not only public shaming but also the full force of the law. But what about people like Janene Walker, who just find themselves in a bind and dont know what to do? Strang says that rather than harass or shame individuals, people need to offer help and support so the person in question feels able to self-isolate and has the support to see them through the period of isolation. Walker agrees, arguing that compassion should extend to any single parent whos struggling to keep their household afloat while maintaining physical distancing and isolation: "All these people just think that they know better. And theyre shaming people publicly when they dont know their situation. We should be helping each other and lifting each other up and showing compassion." I suspect that all of us have at some point in our lives felt the sting of being judged by people who seem to be lurking in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to pounce. I dont want to dive too deeply into the psychology behind that, but I suspect a lot of these people grew up in very judgmental households. Their tendency to gossip and look down their noses at others apparently gives their egos a boost. Its time for those people to show consideration and find out the full story before passing judgment. Stay informed The latest updates on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 delivered to your inbox every weeknight. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Im left to wonder what might have happened if one of those people who were so quick to denounce Walker had stopped and asked her why she was out with her kids. A little understanding and problem-solving might have made the connection she needed to find some babysitting or discover someone who could bring supplies to her. Except for a handful for ignorant scofflaws, the vast majority of us fully understand the urgency of maintaining safe social distance. With each passing day, the grim news reminds us whats at stake. Rather than assuming the worst, when we see someone whos breaking the rules, its worth asking whether we can help them comply. Were in this together lets all try to remember that some people just need a helping hand. Veteran political commentator Doug Firby is president of Troy Media Digital Solutions and publisher of Troy Media. Troy Media Spain slowly re-opened some sectors of its economy while most of its population is still confined indoors. Death toll rose on Sunday and dropped again today but Spain is far from victory, warns President Sanchez. Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, after the United States and Italy, started to ease tough lockdown restrictions on Monday. Some businesses, including construction and manufacturing, were allowed to reopen. But most of the population are still confined to their homes, and shops, bars and public spaces will remain closed until at least 26 April. The daily death rate fell for three consecutive days last week, only to rise again on Sunday. But on Monday it fell again, with 517 deaths in 24 hours, putting the overall death toll over 17,000. But Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned his country was "far from victory", with the lockdown restrictions for the rest of the nation's 47 million people remaining in place. "We are all keen to go back out on the streets... but our desire is even greater to win the war and prevent a relapse," he said. Spain's worst recession The population has been confined to their homes for more than a month and this has put a brake on economic activity, resulting in what European Central Bank Vice-President Luis de Guindos described as the worst economic situation since the (1936-39 Spanish) Civil War. Prime minister Sanchez said the decision to restart some sectors of the economy was taken after consulting a committee of scientific experts. He believes that any further winding down would depend on gains made against the virus. "We are still far from victory, from the moment when we can pick up our normal lives again, but we have made the first decisive steps in the path towards victory," Sanchez said on Sunday. However, some regional leaders criticised the moves, fearing a resurgence of the outbreak. For Luis de Guindos, a former Spanish economy minister, Spain's reliance on tourism would likely leave it exposed to a worse recession than the rest of Europe. The coronavirus is weighing heavily on the Spanish economy, with some 900,000 jobs lost since mid-March. Australians could be blocked from going abroad until at least January, with the ban on international travel likely to stay until next year. Holidaymakers should avoid booking any international travel during the coronavirus crisis, warned Federal Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham. 'I wouldn't put any guarantees that you could undertake that overseas trip in December,' he told ABC's News Breakfast. 'This is a time where, unfortunately, people can't undertake holidays and they won't be able to go overseas for quite some time to come.' With travel restrictions between states likely to ease in the coming months, people are instead being asked to start 'dreaming' about their perfect Australian getaway. Holidays to the likes of Rome (pictured, the city in lockdown on East Monday) will likely be impossible until at least January 2021 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic 'There may be a slightly earlier point in time where it becomes feasible to think about domestic travel again,' he explained. 'We're not there yet but certainly this time is a good time for a bit of dreaming, a bit of planning. 'Think about the Aussie break that you might take when we finally get to the other side of this. Under strict laws designed to stop the spread of COVID-19, the federal government has banned Australians from flying abroad in all but essential circumstances. Anyone returning to the country has to enter a mandatory 14-day isolation in a hotel, supervised by the police and Australian Defence Force. Instead, keen holidaymakers are being told to prepare to visit areas in Australia once the state borders are open - such as the Whitsundays in Queensland (pictured) Australia's tourism minister Simon Birmingham (pictured, left) warned Australians they may not be going abroad for some time WHAT ABOUT BALI? Indonesia has banned all tourist and transit travel until further notice. This means no tourists are allowed to visit - including to the island of Bali. All those arriving in Indonesia from overseas with an existing resident visa are required to undertake 14 days of quarantine. For those already there, there is a very limited availability of testing and infection control facilities. Critical care, including in Bali, is significantly below the standards available in Australia. Medical evacuation for COVID-19 patients will not be permitted. There is a critical lack of intensive care and ventilators. Source: SmartTraveller Advertisement Even if these measures were relaxed, many popular foreign tourist destinations are not letting in foreigners. In Australian holiday destinations such as Bali, all tourist visas have been cancelled. Even those with residency are required to self-isolate for two weeks after arriving in Indonesia. 'Travel is still off the books for the foreseeable future,' he added. 'But there will come a time, and perhaps for those Australians who can, it's a good chance to do a little bit of dreaming. 'Look up your favourite Australian tourism destination, or the one you might love to visit in the future, and think about what you could do in the months and years ahead.' Speaking about whether travellers with holidays booked in December should reconsider their plans, Mr Birmingham said it was 'hard to make predictions'. Australians are being encouraged to think about homegrown holidays in coming months, rather than overseas, which could include popular destinations such as Byron Bay (pictured) Holidays to the likes of Paris (pictured in lockdown on Easter Monday) are likely to be off until at least 2021 'December is a long time away, and it's very hard to make predictions about what will happen then, but we could be in this circumstance for quite some period of time. 'The success we are having in terms of slowing the spread of the virus in Australia does mean that we could be at risk in terms of exposure to people from overseas, in countries who have not controlled it so well, for quite some period of time.' He also thanked Australians for their behaviour over Easter weekend, saying it helped to keep the outbreak under control. In New South Wales, just seven new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed overnight on Tuesday. Simon Birmingham (pictured) said the travel ban is likely to remain in place for many months Any Australians dreaming of a relaxed holiday to tropical destinations, such as Thailand's Phuket (pictured on March 31) may have to change their plans due to COVID-19 On Monday, Queensland also reported just seven new cases, while in Victoria saw an increase of 13. But NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian warned the low infection rates would not hasten the lifting of restrictions. The number of confirmed cases on Tuesday in NSW rose to 2,870, with 32 patients in intensive care. It reported two new deaths on Monday, both aged in their 70s and former passengers of the ill-fated Ruby Princess cruise ship. Beloved Australian holiday destination Bali (pictured, a closed cafe on the island's Jimbaran Beach on March 31) has cancelled all tourist visas until further notice Barriers and digital warning signs are seen in front of Maroubra Beach on April 12 (pictured) during the Easter weekend lockdown CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement Ms Berejiklian said testing will be ramped up in areas including eastern Sydney, western Sydney and Lake Macquarie. 'The rate of testing in NSW is really allowing us to control the spread - that will obviously continue this week,' Ms Berejiklian told reporters on Tuesday. 'It's really up to us to continue to follow the restrictions, continue to do what we're asked to make sure the spread is controlled.' The Queensland border with NSW is currently closed to people not travelling for work, medical appointments or carrying freight. Border travel is being policed in an RBT-style with officers to determine who needs to cross. 'People should stay in their own state,' Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in March. The border between NSW and Queensland are being tightly policed (pictured on April 11), but this could be relaxed in the coming months 'As far as possible, they should be staying in their suburbs and as much as possible staying at home.' Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, and Northern Territory have also closed their borders for non-essential travel. Officials in WA went one step further, splitting the state up into nine regions with no travel allowed between them. Travelling to work, to the supermarket, the pharmacy and the petrol station is classed as essential, but travel for all other purposes is highly discouraged. A large chunk of Australia's relatively small number of COVID-19 cases have come from residents returning from holidays overseas. A large chunk of Australia's COVID-19 cases came from residents returning from holidays overseas, including the 600 cases from the Ruby Princess cruise ship (pictured on April 6) This includes the approximately 600 passengers who became infected on the Ruby Princess cruise ship during a tour of New Zealand. It later docked in Sydney on March 19, with infected passengers then travelling all across Australia. The fiasco has further strengthen the government's plan to stop overseas travel, fearing holidaymakers could return with the disease. Another outbreak in the Barossa Valley in South Australia came from an infected tour group from America who visited a local vineyard. The call to start planning for Australian holidays in a few months could prove happy news from the embattled tourist industry. A lone tourist walks down the steps of Sydney Opera House on Monday, as tourists stay away during the coronavirus outbreak Australia's embattled tourism industry is hemorrhaging $3 billion every month as thousands of visitors cancel their holidays amid the coronavirus outbreak. Having already lost billions due the devastating bushfires earlier this year, tour operators, hotels and attractions are struggling to stay afloat. The devastating knock-on effects could see tourism losing $3 billion per month across Australia, Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF) CEO Margy Osmond told the Sydney Morning Herald in March. A perfect storm of travel restrictions, self-isolating and flight cancellations has left Australia's biggest tourist attractions virtually empty. Popular Australian tourist destinations such as the Blue Mountains in NSW (pictured) have seen a decline in visitors, but may have a resurgence once local travel is permitted In December, at the height of the bushfire crisis, there were 15,000 fewer visitors to New South Wales than during the same month in 2018. There was also a marked drop of 2,300 visitors in January, compared to January 2019. The bushfires raged across 5.4 million hectares in NSW alone, seeing visitor numbers plummet to popular destinations such as the Blue Mountains and the south coast. Businesses had hoped for a resurgence in visitor numbers after the fires, but global fears about the spread of the coronavirus have stopped people arriving. Usually, China - the epicentre of the virus outbreak - represents around $12.3 billion in annual tourism. People are seen leaving Melbourne's Crown Promenade hotel on Sunday after two weeks in quarantine (pictured) having returned to Australia from overseas This is around one-third of the total tourism to Australia, but travel from China has been banned for months. Tour operators are now concerned that this decline in visitors will only get worse thanks to the coronavirus and the restrictive travel bans. 'Tourism has already been wearing the bushfire impacts and when the gates open again we are still going to have to contend with the image issues of bushfires having burnt everything to the ground,' Ms Osmond said. 'Were now saying off the back of the banning of large events and cruise ship restrictions, we are probably looking at $3 billion in losses per month.' Compared to the previous 12 months, the last year saw an overall decline in tourist arrivals of 2 per cent - the biggest annual decline in eight years. The number of Chinese tourists in January was the lowest in three years. Update - Tuesday, April 14, 2020: Laura Fagan has been found safe and well. Earlier: Gardai ask for help finding missing Dublin teenager Gardai are appealing for help in finding a missing teenage girl in Dublin. 17-year-old Laura Fagan has been missing from her home in Swords since Wednesday, April 8. She went into town with her sisters and was last seen on Dorset Street at around 5.30 pm that evening. She is five-foot-two in height, of slight build with long black hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information on Laura's whereabouts is asked to contact Swords Garda Station on 01 6664700, the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station. 24 work pass holders permanently barred from working in Singapore for flouting safe distancing measures Ministry of Manpower conducting enforcement operations on breaching circuit breaker measures. Photo courtesy: Facebook/Singapore Ministry of Manpower The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) announced on Monday that it has revoked the permits of 24 work pass holders for flouting the COVID-19 circuit breaker measures in place. The work pass holders were caught eating, drinking and gathering in groups in the vicinity of Tuas View Square, a factory-converted dormitory (FCD), said an MOM statement. The MOM also said that in view of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Singapore, it has stepped up inspections at FCDs to ensure that living conditions are acceptable, and that the well-being of the dormitory residents are taken care of. MOM officers will also check that FCD operators and employers adhere to the enhanced safe distancing measures, including ensuring that residents or employees stay in their rooms as much as possible and minimise interactions with those not living in the same room. They are also required to ensure that workers leave the premises only if they need to purchase essential goods and services. Between April 11 and 13, MOM officers inspected over 600 FCDs located at Sungei Kadut, Tuas and other locations across Singapore. Inspections revealed that the vast majority of the FCDs had instituted safe distancing measures and health checks for their residents. The dormitory residents also had no well-being or salary issues, said the MOM statement. They also found minor lapses at 57 FCDs, with the most prevalent issue being a lack of sickbays and isolation areas. "The cleanliness levels of some of these FCDs were also found to be unacceptable. The operators have been instructed to rectify the issues immediately," said the statement. "MOM will complete the inspections of the remaining 600 FCDs in the next two days." MOM has issued an additional advisory to employers of foreign workers living in FCDs, and other living arrangements to remind their employees to observe the safe distancing measures including no inter-mixing of workers between blocks and where possible between floors, minimise time spent in public area, and to maintain safe distancing in and out of the dormitory/quarters. The ministry has also told employers to continue to pay the salaries of their workers promptly and look after their well-being during this period. MOM will not hesitate to revoke the work pass privileges of errant employers. Work pass holders who do not cooperate will be fined, or have their work passes revoked and permanently barred from working in Singapore, said the statement. The outbreak of a viral disease has left the country shut its doors to contain the spread of the coronavirus. However, sudden halt in all regular schedules has led to disruption in the lives of people belonging to the lower rungs. Also, animals who depend on the corporate neighbourhood and roadside eateries have been starving. However, many feel-good stories have come up in the past few days. In some places, the police officials decided to feed monkeys, while in other social organizations made Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the frontline workers. Here is a look at some of the COVID-19 warriors, doing their parts to not let the spirits dull. 1. Various social workers have prepared personal protection equipment (PPE) for the police officials and medical workers, serving in the time of coronavirus outbreak. This PPE kit has been made by 28 social service groups from Lakhimpur, Isannagar, Paliya and Gola in Uttar Pradesh. 2. Assam government has issued passes to people willing to feed stray animals during the lockdown. With the human population barred from going out, it has become difficult for the animals roaming outside to get food. 3. Around 2,500 people of a panchayat in Kathua, Jammu have decided to forgo one meal every day in order to feed those who have lost their livelihood due to the lockdown called to contain coronavirus. 4. Some police inspectors from Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh fed monkeys amid the nation-wide lockdown. A number of monkeys swarmed in as bananas were distributed among them. 5. The DM-SP of Jamui, Bihar delivered food items to a poor family in Khairma locality. He got to know that an old woman and her daily wage labourer son were not getting food through social media and reached their house to their aid. 6. Sultan, a tailor distributed more than 10,000 masks in Barabanki, UP. To help contain the spread of COVID-19, a tailor in Masauli of Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh has been sewing face masks for villagers. Sultan has distributed about 10,000 masks till now for free. 7. After the countrywide lockdown has been put in place, many daily wage workers have found sustenance hard. Dumra chief Smita Kumari has ensured that the needy get food in Sitamarhi region of Bihar. Apart from food distribution, over 2,000 face masks and sanitizers were also distributed, said Kumari. 8. An Ambulance driver and a truck driver distributing food to truck drivers at National Highway who are ferrying essentials commodities in Alappuzha, Kerala. The driver Joy and a mini truck driver Mahesh have been delivering food for the drivers travelling to deliver essential commodities in Alappuzha, Kerala. Till the lockdown ends we will provide food, Mahesh said. 9. Transgender distributed food to needy people during lockdown due to COVID-19 in Surat, Gujarat. Around 150 people of the transgender community distributed food packets among the needy on March 31. Around 1,500 kits, which consists of rice, pulses, sugar and tea, were distributed in the slum areas. Meanwhile, Indias total cases due to Covid-19 reached 9,152 today with the death toll hitting 308, indicating a jump of 796 new cases and 35 deaths in 24 hours. Virus Outbreak Holocaust Survivors This 2019 photo provided by Olga Weiss shows her in France. For Weiss, the order to stay at home is about much more than simply locking her door to the coronavirus. It has awakened fears from decades ago when she and her parents hid inside for two years from Nazis hunting down Jews in Belgium. (Olga Weiss via AP) OAK PARK, Ill. (AP) For Olga Weiss, the order to stay at home is about much more than simply locking her door to the coronavirus. It has awakened fears from decades ago when she and her parents hid inside for two years from Nazis hunting down Jews in Belgium. It is almost an echo of when we were young, when we were children, the same feeling of not knowing what will happen next, said Weiss, 83. We arent thinking about the virus; we are thinking of what happened to us back then. Close to 400,000 survivors of the Holocaust are believed to be alive worldwide, and for many elderly Jews the coronavirus pandemic has dredged up feelings of fear, uncertainty and helplesness not felt since they were children during that dark period. While the fast-spreading virus has caused fear and the reliving of trauma for many in the general public, Yael Danieli, a psychologist and director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children, said the emotional toll can be particularly acute for survivors of the Nazi genocide. They are not living though this they are reliving it, Danieli said. Not everyone reacts the same way. Some Holocaust survivors see their role in todays pandemic as setting an example for how to survive, how to fight back, according to Danieli. But parallels that may seem extreme to others can push their way unbidden into traumatized minds: The fear of hospitalization, akin to the idea of going to a camp from which you dont come out, she said, or sheltering in place feeling like a return of the horrific times when you had to hide from the world in order to survive. The issue is compounded by the fact that Holocaust survivors are elderly, since old traumas can resurface naturally with advancing age even in pandemic-free times. Nursing homes, for example, know a trip to the shower can trigger elderly Jewish residents. Thats something Colette Avital, who emigrated after World War II from Romania to Israel, served in parliament and now chairs the Center Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, saw firsthand when her mother approached death years ago at age 97: "She was shrieking at night, the Nazis are coming! Story continues Today such fears are only magnified, she added, because people know there really is a menace lurking outside their doors: This has got them panic-stricken. Andre Stein, who was attacked in a Budapest bread line last century by thugs who left him for dead on a pile of bodies, said a difference with the virus is that the enemy is unseen: Now you can walk down the street and somebody sneezes on you, and you may be killed, said Stein, 83, a Toronto resident and author of Hidden Children: Forgotten Survivors of the Holocaust. For most people the coronavirus causes mild to moderate symptoms such as fever and cough. But for some, especially older adults and the infirm, it can cause pneumonia and lead to death. So at 88 years old, I dont go outside much, said Sidney Zoltak of Montreal, who as a boy sneaked with his parents from one hiding place to the next in Poland, including seven months in an underground bunker with no sunlight. Zoltak considers himself fortunate because his days are filled with writing, talking with a son who drops food off on his doorstep, video chatting with grandchildren and communicating with fellow Holocaust survivors. This week he celebrated what he called a virtual Passover with family via FaceTime. But he knows others arent so lucky, cut off from family and left to dwell on their fears. The understanding that Holocaust survivors are a vulnerable population led to this weeks announcement by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany of $4.3 million in grants to agencies around the world that provide care for 120,000 survivors. Weiss, who lives in suburban Chicago and coordinates a group of about 20 other hidden children from the Holocaust, used the phrase as silly as it sounds to couch her comparison of how things felt during the war, when starvation was a real possibility, to todays crisis, when stores are simply running low of certain items. She knows that today she does not have to keep quiet, that the Gestapo isnt lurking outside her door, that the simple pleasure of listening to music doesnt risk discovery and death. But it feels the same, Weiss said. It is the same fear of what will happen to us ... (that) we had at the beginning of our lives, and now at the end. Canadian permanent residents (PRs) stranded in India due to the countrywide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have alleged discrimination by their government, saying it is only airlifting its citizens by special chartered flights. PRs given permanent resident status by immigrating to Canada are not Canadian citizens. Thousands of such people are stranded in India, especially Punjab, feel the Canadian authorities have left them in the lunch. My wife and two sons are Canadian citizens and in Vancouver right now. We are not being allowed to go there by special charter flights arranged by the Canadian government for people stranded here, says Gurpal Singh from Kabir Park. He and his parents hold Canadian PRs. People are ready to pay. Also, why are PRs from Pakistan and Nepal being allowed to go back but not us? he asked. As many as 200 such Canadian PRs have written to the consul general of Canada in Chandigarh to raise the issue. Having no option to return, Canadian PRs are forced to wait for the Indian airspace to open, which honestly, does not appear to be happening anytime soon, it reads. We understand that there are a large number of Canadian citizens currently stuck in India, and that the government of Canada must prioritise repatriating citizens first. We appreciate all the efforts being put in by your office, which has been working nonstop to organise a way home for Canadian citizens in India. Having said that, we consider ourselves an integral part of the Canadian society. We have our family, jobs, houses, and friends in various parts of Canada. And we are desperate to go home as well, just like the citizens, which is not possible without your urgent intervention, the letter reads. In their plea to the counsul general, the PRs say, All of us were well established in our respective lives when we left from India and we have ever since been contributing towards the growth of Canada in every sector, be it education, medicine, research, engineering, social work, paying our share of taxes, creating employment opportunities for fellow Canadians, and generally keeping the economy running. Our share is no less than that of citizens in building a great country like Canada. Therefore, is it too much to demand our share of fair treatment as well, particularly when we need it the most? The Canadian border is open for Canadian citizens as well as the PRs. In other countries, you have included PRs (without any clause affixed) in your repatriation missions. Thus, why should PRs from India be left behind? Listing the names of 200 PRs wanting to fly back to Canada, the letter reads, Though this list is not exhaustive by any means but it still gives you an idea as to the number of PRs that are desperate, yet not getting the desired support from the government to return to Canada. It is, therefore, our kind and earnest request, to please include the permanent residents of Canada (that are not accompanied by citizens) as well in your forthcoming flights from India. Abhinav Rana, a PR from Chandigarh, said they had also sent emails and tweeted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Philippe Champagne appealing for help and the PMs office had responded in a revert email saying their case would be considered. The PRs have also started a twitter campaign, #CanadianPRinDistressInIndia. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Xiaomi attempted to push out the Android 10 update with April 2020 security patch for the third time. A big reason for anyone to invest in a stock Android smartphone is regular updates, especially Android One certified smartphones, a lineup that Google announced to ensure the latest Android version hits users across price range and OEMs. All this sounds quite promising on paper. But the reality couldnt be more different. The case in point is the Xiaomi Mi A3( 14500 at amazon). The company rolled out the Android 10 update for the Android One device for the third time, and once again it had to recall it because of ridiculous bugs. The journey of Android One, in its present avatar, started off with the Mi A1 in 2016. Back then, Xiaomi managed to capture an untapped market with good hardware and pure, stock Android at a reasonable price. The company did plough on to release on A-series device every year, offering an alternative to the otherwise popular MIUI ecosystem. But the Mi A3s issues show Android One doesnt really ensure regular updates as promised. The latest attempt to push out the Android 10 update for the Mi A3 with the April 2020 security patch (embarrassingly enough, it was the third attempt at a global rollout) was once again met with a flurry of bug reports that range from random reboots to screen flickering. As a result, Xiaomi had to pull down the update for the third time, leaving users who had already updated stranded yet again. What are the bugs that are keeping your device from getting updated? The bugs, as reported on the Mi India community, Reddit and XDA Developers are critical enough to hamper the overall user experience. That included - - Random reboots - Fingerprint sensor visible even after unlocking - Slow unlock - Slow camera shutter - UI Lag - Excessive battery drains - Performance slowdown These are the most common issues reported by users on the Mi Community. Thing e are bugs that would have surfaced while beta testing the update. It seems like Xiaomi is in a rush to push out the update and save face. Xiaomi had originally promised the update in October (the device launched in August) but the first update only started rolling out in late February. Lots of bugs meant the update was discontinued. Xiaomi made another attempt during mid-March but the same bugs were still present. Finally, the company made a third attempt which is not completely bug-free either. The Xiaomi Mi A3 looks to be all set to go down as one of the buggiest devices, but it also raises a lot of questions about Googles Android One program. Questionably, almost the entire lineup of HMD Globals Nokia devices are running on Android 10 and so are a lot of devices that dont even run on stock Android, including a host of Xiaomis own smartphones. But what is the issue with the Mi A3? Apart from the fact that its a bug magnet, nothing much is known right now. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 9 By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend: A report of the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers for 2019 was presented and discussed in the parliament on April 9, Trend reports referring to the Cabinet of Ministers. The Azerbaijani prime minister Ali Asadov delivered a report through the video conferencing. Following the discussions, the report was adopted by vote. The MPs comments and proposals will be sent to the Cabinet of Ministers. The cut of around 9.7 million barrels per day (mmbpd) in production by Opec+ announced on April 12 would imply Saudi governments budgeted oil revenue to SR342 billion at $40 per barrel (/bbl), said a report. For 2020, oil price implied in revenue forecasts was around $55/bbl, added Al Rajhi Capital, a leading financial services provided in Saudi Arabia in its latest analysis. Currently, WTI is trading at around $23/bbl. Our forecast is based on the production of 9.4 mmbpd for the year and 6.6 mmbpd of exports. Any cut in dividends from Aramco post decline in refined fuel prices as well as lower demand would also weigh on revenues, said Al Rajhi Capital in the report. Non-oil revenue could decline slightly with the waiver of Govt. fees, expat levy for iqama for 3 months, postponement of custom duties, VAT etc., the net effect of these stimulus measures to amount to SR70 billion, the report said. We forecast non-oil revenue at SR276 billion. Accordingly, it leads us to total fiscal revenue of SR618 billion for 2020e (vs budgeted SR833 billion). However, some investment income could offset this decline, Al Rajhi Capital said. On the other hand, with regard to expenditure, the Government had announced a series of measures such as the cut in non-essential capex of SR50billion while increasing expenditure of around SR9 billion for paying 60 per cent of the salaries of the private sector affected by the pandemic. Additionally, the Govt. has taken up all the expenditure related to treatments due to coronavirus. We believe there are likely more areas for the Govt. to lower expenditure. The Govt has ability to borrow more given its low debt/GDP relative to other countries and plans to increase its debt ceiling from 30 per cent to 50 per cent. However overall, the net increase in deficit is likely to widen, the report added. After multiple rounds of meetings, Opec+ and other oil producing nations decided to cut oil production by record levels to help balance oil market. As per the decision, around 9.7 mmbpd will be cut, starting from May 1, 2020 for two months. Opec members to cut by 6.1 mmbpd and non-Opec members of Opec+ group to cut by 3.6 mmbpd, as per Al Rajhi Capitals estimates. Thereafter, from July to Dec 2020, the cut will taper to ~7.6 mmbpd. From Jan 2021 to April 2022 the cut would be ~5.6 mmbpd. The initial basis for cut is Oct. 2018 production levels except for Saudi and Russia which have 11 mmbpd as baseline. US, Brazil and Canada will cut another 3.7 mmbpd as per Bloomberg. This implies that Saudi oil production would decline to 8.5 mmbpd initially and thereafter to 9 mmbpd in the second half of 2020, the report said. Notably, the Saudi government had planned to pump 12.3 mmbpd from April and as per various reports has started to pump at similar levels already. While a cut at this level would not completely balance the market, it would help prevent supply shocks which may happen if oil continues to trade below $30/bbl leading to exit of low-cost producers and when the economy recovers, the report said. TradeArabia News Service Grumbling about the boss is hardly unusual in the citys business and legal communities. But exactly what one former high-flying AMP lawyer allegedly said about the finance giants senior management and board will soon be aired in public. To recap, Larissa Baker Cook was AMPs head of litigation until she was sacked in June last year. As The Age reported last year, Baker Cook is suing the company for $2.5 million. Baker Cook claims she warned senior executives, including then chief executive Craig Meller and former chair Catherine Brenner, that AMP had been charging customers fees for no service and had misrepresented to the corporate regulator that it was due to an administrative error. After that, she says, she was excluded from meetings, harassed and bullied. Who said what to whom, AMP edition Credit:Golding On the other hand, AMP claims Baker Cook went around town bad-mouthing her boss, AMP general counsel David Cullen, as well as his predecessor Brian Salter, corporate affairs executive Helen Livesey and government relations boss Alastair Kinloch. Betsy Senescu photo I never intended to pull a bait and switch. When my husband Barry and I invited avid racing friends to join us in the Caribbean, our intent was to compete in the Golden Rock Regattaa weeklong event that combines buoy racing with lively courses from island to island in mid-November. We enlisted Terri and Tom Manok from Oceanside, California, who successfully campaign the J/120 Pole Dancer on the SoCal circuit and distance races. And we had Kaci and Matt Gibbs from Coeur dAlene, Idaho, who are such J/24 fanatics that they own three of them. On the agenda was a week of serious fun racing around St. Maarten, with exhilarating courses to St. Eustatius, St. Barts and Anguilla. But as the race dates approached, with sponsorship money dwindling in post-hurricane St. Maarten, the field fizzled. The Golden Rock Regatta had hit rock bottom, and the races were scrapped. I havent done any racing in the Caribbean, and its been on our bucket list. So we were a little disappointed we wouldnt be able to race, Kaci said. But knowing there wasnt anyone to race against made it easy to change gears. There was no sense in being on our ear all week on a monohull, so the Sunsail charter base was able to switch us to a Sunsail 454 Premier catamaran: a 45-foot, four-cabin boat with plenty of space to shift into cruising mode. Im a big fan of cats, but wasnt sure how my racing friends would feel about the somewhat diminished performance of a beamy multihull. Over time they would come to love the spacious quarters a cat affords, and the stability. It offered a big party platform, with no spilled drinks, and plenty of room for us all. Betsy Senescu photo We loaded up with provisions from the nearby market and had a final dinner at one of the French bistros adjacent the base. After a quick chart briefing and boat check-out with Sebastian from Sunsail, we were underway. The base is located in Marigot in the northwest of the islanda great jumping off point to Anguilla. Once out of the lee of St. Maarten we braced for the gusty breeze in the Anguillan channel. Although the crossing was barely 6 nautical miles, we hoisted the sails, adjusted the jib leads and actively trimmed, fancying ourselves intrepid offshore racers before rounding the west end and beating toward Road Bay. Conditions had been delicious, and we were encouraged by a delightful forecast of 12 to 18 knots the entire week. Approaching Road Bay in the late afternoon we set about choosing a spot to anchor. The funny thing about sailboat racers is that we excel at making the boat go fast, but might not be particularly finessed in the stopping department. Typically we leave the dock, race around the buoys, return, tie up and go home. As a result, we spent a lot of time over-thinking our choice of a spot to drop anchor and diving in to ensure it was set. With the boats sturdy tackle and windlass, anchoring proved a piece of cake, and throughout the week wed polished our rusty anchoring skills to a shine. Anguilla is a favorite spot of Terris for the beautiful crescent of sandy beach and chic shops. Kaci and Matt loved that they could swim through the gentle surf back to the boat. But Barrys favorite part is Elvis Beach Bar. Its the Betsy Senescu photo quintessential beach bar, with a 15-foot traditional Anguillan sailboat converted into a bar and counter set just 20 yards from the surfline. Wiggle your toes in the sand while you drink a cold Carib beer, swing in the hammock or play ring toss. Its a great spot for chilling out, with good Mexican fare too. After happy hour we strolled to the open- My favorite place, bar none, is Anguilla, Barry said. I love getting away from the mainstream and touristy spots, plus soaking up the atmosphere on a barstool at Elvis. When youre anchored in Anguilla its so relaxing to just sit on the swim step and gaze out into the wide open ocean to the west. What a view. Our only disappointment with our visit to Anguilla was the outrageous fee charged by customs and immigration. Anguilla, part of the British West Indies, charged a whopping $140 for our one night stay. By contrast it cost $38 to check in and out of St. Barts for two nights and $47 for St. Maarten that was good for the entire week. With each island being a separate municipality (and French St. Martin/Dutch St. Maarten being two) checking in and out is mandatory. Its a chore cruisers must plan around, orchestrating comings and goings around office hours and allowing time to fill out paperwork and pay fees. (Newser) Dire predictions about the coronavirus are easing a littleor let's face it, a lotand Fareed Zakaria wants to know why. Writing this week in the Washington Post, the CNN host looks at projected US fatalities and current hospitalization rates, both of which are way down. Just last month, he notes, the White House estimated 100,000 to 240,000 US deaths, but Anthony Fauci now says that will drop, and a prominent University of Washington model predicts a death toll of 60,415 by June 1 if social distancing is maintained. "That's on par with the number of people estimated to have died of the flu in the 2019-2020 season," writes Zakaria. "What is going on?" story continues below Meanwhile, hospitalization rates in California, Louisiana, and even New York have plummeted from original projections. Zakaria says Stanford University scholars might have an explanation for all thisthat the lack of early widespread testing hid the number of mild or asymptomatic cases. Some studies say 75% to 80% could be asymptomatic, meaning most people who get infected "never get to a clinic and never get counted," writes Zakaria. "We have shut down the economy based on models, understandably worried about worst-case scenarios. But models are only as good as the data that shapes them. And reopening the economy will depend crucially on mass testing." Click for his full piece. (Fauci just predicted "a real degree of normality" by November.) An earthquake measuring 2.7 on the Richter scale hit Delhi for the second day in a row. No reports of damage have emerged so far. The Delhi residents are observing the three-week nationwide lockdown, which ends tomorrow, to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The Sundays earthquake measured 3.5 on Richter scale with epicentre at Sonia Vihar in the national capital, according to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) under the ministry of earth sciences. According to experts, the reason people felt strong tremors here is also because the depth of the earthquake is moderate (not very deep), the epicentre is in Delhi and there is very little ambient noise or vibrations induced by traffic movement. According to a statement by NCS, Delhi experienced last perceptible earthquake of magnitude 3.5 on April 24 in 2018 and prior to that earthquake of magnitude 3.8 occurred on September 7, 2011 near the Delhi-Haryana border. Delhi had also recorded low magnitude earthquake with epicentre within Delhi in 2007. Another similar earthquake was recorded in Delhi on April 28, 2001 of 3.4 magnitude, according to officials. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister says he believes more than one person killed Don Lewis A Florida sheriff says he believes cat conservationist Carole Baskins second husband Don Lewis was likely killed and more than one person was behind what could be a murder-for-hire plot. Lewis' disappearance was the big mystery raised in Netflixs series Tiger King: Murder Mayhem And Madness that has become an online sensation. Baskin and Lewis were married in 1991 until he vanished without a trace in August 1997. Lewis, a real estate businessman, was declared legally dead in 2002, leaving behind $5million in assets. Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister says he believes Lewis was likely killed and he's suspicious of Baskin and believes other people were in on the murder plot. 'Im extremely suspicious but not just of her, of this whole circle here,' Chronister said to TMZ. 'I dont want to allude to the fact or insinuate that shes our person of interest were focusing on. Im not comfortable saying that yet,' he added. A Florida sheriff he believes that Carole Baskin's second husband Don Lewis (above) was murdered and more than one person was involved in the plot. Lewis, a real estate businessman, who disappeared without a trace in August 1997 and was declared legally dead in 2002, leaving behind $5million in assets The mystery into Don Lewis' death was raised in the new Netflix series Tiger King. Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist, pictured above with her third husband Howard Baskin 'Theres normally not one person that commits a homicide, its always a couple people. This had to be extremely planned out, this had to be well thought out. Theres someone else involved in this. Theres someone who was paid to do it, theres someone who helped do it,' he said. He pleaded with whoever was possibly involved with the case, or knowledgeable about it, to come forward. 'I hoping that person wants to come and get this off their chest and help law enforcement do the right thing,' he said. When it comes to perhaps cutting a deal with authorities, Sheriff Chronister said, 'every deal is on the table right now. Help us solve this case.' Chronister speaks about the case in a special entitled 'TMZ Investigates, Tiger King: What Really Went Down?' to air on Fox Monday night at 9pm ET/8pm CT. In the series Tiger King tiger owner Joe Exotic accused Baskin of killing Lewis after he vanished. On January 22, 2020 Exotic sentenced to 22 years for trying to arrange her death in a murder-for-hire plot Baskin, the owner of non-profit animal sanctuary Big Cat Rescue, went on to meet her current husband Howard Baskin in November 2002 and they tied the knot in November 2004 In the series Tiger King tiger owner Joe Exotic accused Baskin, the owner of non-profit animal sanctuary Big Cat Rescue, of killing Lewis after he vanished. Baskin met Lewis in the 1980s and they married in 1991, however they had a rocky last few years of marriage as she claimed he was obsessed in sex and engaged in multiple affairs. She went on to meet her current husband Howard Baskin in November 2002 and they married in November 2004. Baskin has denied any involvement in Lewis disappearance or death. 'I hoping that person wants to come and get this off their chest and help law enforcement do the right thing,'Sheriff Chronister said. This notice shared by Hillsborough County for leads in Lewis' case pictured above In 2013 a court ordered Exotic to pay her $1million in damages, which led to his bankruptcy. On January 22, 2020 Exotic sentenced to 22 years for trying to arrange her death in a murder-for-hire plot. The series has become a hit, with fans theorizing that Baskin could have fed her ex-husband to one of the many big cats she owned. Chronister said hes received an influx of tips since the show was released two weeks ago but none of them seemed credible and has assigned a detective supervisor to handle the tips. PARENTS are being urged to recognise the warning signs of early onset diabetes in children, and not to delay during the Covid-19 pandemic from seeking diagnosis of and treatment for the condition. Dr Orla Neylon, consultant paediatric endocrinologist at University Hospital Limerick (UHL), said parents should be aware of the symptoms, and, if their child is displaying them, to contact first their family doctor or, if their GP is unavailable, the Paediatric Emergency Department at UHL. Treatment is urgent, Dr Neylon said, and if children are urinating frequently; if they are excessively thirsty, and wetting the bed; if theyre losing weight; and if the child has a lack of energy, then parents should consider the possibility of diabetes, and get it checked immediately. She added: Its understandable during the current Covid-19 pandemic that people might be concerned about attending hospitals, but if diabetes is not treated as a matter of urgency, it can lead to complications that are potentially fatal. The early symptoms outlined above can progress to vomiting, dehydration, rapid deep breathing and coma (ketoacidosis) if the condition is not diagnosed and treated. While children with diabetes seem to have no increased risk of severe Covid-19 infection, some countries in recent months have reported an increase in life-threatening complications from untreated diabetes, possibly due to peoples fear of or lack of access to hospital treatment. Our paediatric diabetes population do not seem to be at an increased risk of severe Covid-19 infection, but it is a concern that Italy and China are reporting an increase in severe DKA, a life-threatening complication of untreated diabetes that has most likely arisen as a result of peoples fear of attending hospitals, or a reduced ability to access healthcare, Dr Neylon said. UHL has a multidisciplinary team available to treat paediatric diabetes. Two large dogs that attacked pedestrians and were menacing first responders were killed by Omaha police officers. Officers were called to the Hanscom Park area about 2 p.m. Thursday to investigate a report of two pedestrians who had been bitten by dogs. Police arrived to see two dogs, an American bulldog and a pit bull, running toward Omaha Fire Department medics tending to the two bite victims and their dog, which also had been bitten. An officer armed with a rifle put himself between the pedestrians and the dogs but did not fire because of concern for other people in the area. The dogs then ran east but returned within a minute, police said. When the dogs again charged toward the medics and pedestrians, the officer fired multiple shots at them. One dog ran east to near Interstate 480 and Martha Street, where another officer shot and killed it. The other dog was shot one more time and killed. The Nebraska Humane Society arrived to investigate the dog attack and collect the animals. A 31-year-old Omaha man arrived at the scene and identified himself as the dogs owner. He was ticketed on suspicion of having animals displaying menacing behavior and other infractions. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Chinese ventilator makers are racing against the clock to guarantee adequate supplies of the life-saving machine, as global demand surges due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19_ pandemic. Y-30T non-invasive ventilators manufactured by BMC Medical Co., Ltd. (Photo/BMC Medical Co., Ltd.) With the worlds ventilator demand now 10 times what is available, an estimate shows 960,000 patients in the United States will need ventilator support due to COVID-19, yet the nation only has about 200,000 machines. Chinas ventilator suppliers can meet a fifth of global needs. After receiving orders for about 20,000 ventilators from other countries, they are running full steam ahead to meet the surging demand in the foreign market. Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co., Ltd., the countrys top medical device maker based in Shenzhen, south Chinas Guangdong province, called for its major technical personnel to resume production on Jan. 26, two days after Chinese New Years Eve. Our daily output capacity of ventilators have increased to 1,200 pieces from about 300 ones in early February, said Jiang Dong, marketing manager with BMC Medical Co., Ltd., a ventilator manufacturer based in Beijing. Jiang added that the company receives hundreds of the machines from other countries, with tens of thousands of ventilators scheduled to be produced. We have extended our working hours to 10 p.m. recently, Jiang said, noting the company continues operating on weekends, and if necessary, will send staff members of other departments to the production lines to maximize production capacity. Employees at Beijing Aeonmed Co., Ltd., another respiratory medical equipment enterprise in Beijing, are also toiling day and night to produce ventilators. The firms delivery of machines in the past three months exceeds that of last year. Jiangsu Yuyue Medical Equipment & Supply Co., Ltd., launched a smart plant with robot arms to produce 700 ventilators per day, an increase of 400. China has 21 invasive ventilator makers, and eight of them have obtained the European Unions compulsory CE marking, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The country has exported 16,000 ventilators since March 1, customs official Jin Hai told a recent press conference. Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST Bazaar Corporate Radar Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar. The documents showed that the company largely avoided marketing OxyContin in states with triplicate prescription programs. Prescribers of Schedule II opioids like OxyContin in those states were required to produce three copies of each prescription: one to be retained by them, one by the pharmacy, and one forwarded to a state agency. In addition to the extra paperwork and record keeping, the mandated reporting in triplicate programs raised concerns among prescribers about law enforcement scrutiny. Consistent with other research, Purdues own focus groups of prescribers revealed that these programs had a chilling effect on opioid prescribing. One study of a Texas hospital found that its state triplicate program reduced prescribing of drugs it targeted by 60 percent in the early 1980s. Another study of New Yorks program found a comparable decline in the late 1980s. The N.B.E.R. study compared changes over time in OxyContin prescribing and related overdose deaths in states with triplicate programs California, Idaho, Illinois, New York and Texas with that of other states, controlling for demographic and other differences across states. It found that in 2000 alone, OxyContin use per person was 250 percent higher in states with less regulation as reflected by the absence of triplicate programs. OxyContin misuse was also much higher in those more lightly regulated states, with deadly consequences. Over 1996-2017, opioid overdose deaths would have been 44 percent lower in states had they used triplicate programs, the study estimated. And 65 percent of the growth in overdose death rates between 1996 and 2017 could be attributed to the introduction and marketing of OxyContin. In 2010, Purdue discontinued the original formulation of OxyContin and released one that reduced abuse of the drug, potentially slowing the growth in opioid addiction. When crushed, the new formulation would not turn into a powder, so it could not as easily be snorted or injected. This did not avoid all harms, however. As studies show, many misusers of OxyContin turned to heroin, which brought a new set of risks. The heroin overdose rate more than tripled in several years after the start of the new version of OxyContin. The extent to which the new formulation of the drug inadvertently caused harms from heroin depended in part on how frequently original OxyContin was being abused, which varied substantially across states. Several studies leveraged this state variation to assess the new formulations impact. An analysis by three economists in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that states with the highest rates of original OxyContin misuse had the largest increases in heroin deaths after reformulation. They found that as much as 80 percent of the threefold increase in heroin mortality between 2010 and 2013 could be attributed to the introduction of abuse-deterrent OxyContin. Over all, the study and others have found that the new version of the drug did not reduce total mortality, but shifted the cause of it from one drug to another. All three of those things, and the entirety of the presidents smart and patriotic efforts to generously distribute blame to everyone not named Donald Trump, are irrelevant because they happened in the past. What matters now is what the president is saying now, and what the president is saying now is hes in control and states will reopen when he says theyll reopen. And if they choose not to reopen because they think its unsafe or a decision that could cost lives, the president will be able to blame them for the economic downturn, same as he blamed them back when he said they were responsible for all coronavirus-related decisions. On Saturdays coronavirus quarantine episode of SNL, Larry David showed up to once again portray Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. And in the clip, David-as-Sanders explained what went wrong with his now-ended presidential campaign. Always a bridesmaid, never the Democratic nominee, Davids Sanders joked at the beginning of the clip, which you can watch above now. David taped the clip from his own house where, like pretty much everyone else, he is quarantining from home. As a result he didnt have access to stage makeup and a wig to complete his Bernie Sanders costume, a fact he nodded to early on. Because of the stress of the campaign and the coronavirus, Ive lost a lot of hair on top, David said. Which I dont think is coming back anytime soon, unfortunately. Also Read: 'SNL': Baldwin's Trump Brainstorms Other Racist Names for COVID-19 During 'Weekend Update' (Video) After a couple of jokes referencing the national run on toilet paper, Davids Sanders got to the point. I know a lot of you have questions, and because I cant download Zoom on my Dell computer, I thought Id answer them all right here, he said. Question No. 1: What the hell happened? First of all, math happened, David-Sanders said. And it didnt help that the media lined up behind Joe Biden like he lines up behind a set of ladys shoulders. Which brings me to my next question: Will I endorse Joe Biden? David as Sanders continued. Its not about if I endorse. Im going to endorse. Its about how I endorse. A full-throated I ENDORSE THIS MAN? Or more the ehhhhhhhh, soft endorsement. Then he changed topics, saying, Lets move on to the real crisis: coronavirus. David as Sanders noted that our health care workers dont even have the proper protective equipment. They dont have Purell, they dont even have the little key chain that has the bottle of Purell that goes on your purse. Their gloves have holes in the fingers like Oliver Twist. And I should know I went to high school with Oliver Twist. Story continues Also Read: Tom Hanks Surprise Hosts 'SNL' Coronavirus Quarantine Episode (Video) To tackle this pandemic, guess what we have to do? No more handshakes, no more high fives, and dont even mention the Euro kiss, he continued. The only greeting we need is the half-wave. Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, go away. As for Bernie Sanders, now that hes abandoned his bid to become the Democratic nominee for president, Davids Sanders told people not to worry. Its spring in Vermont, so soon itll be up to 40 degrees. And I finally have the time to relax, and finish that heart attack from October, he said. But my immediate plan is to do anything I can to beat Donald Trump. Thats why Im voting for Joe Biden as enthusiastically as Joe voted for the Iraq war. Ouch. Before ending the bit, David as Sanders said, I just want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who voted for me. The young people, the queer people, the Brendas, the Kyles and of course, the hot girls who love weed. But, he added: And to the little bird who landed on my podium during the last election: Where the hell were you this time? Read original story SNL': Larry David Returns as Bernie Sanders for a Campaign Postmortem From His Living Room (Video) At TheWrap News of Prince Harry and Meghan Markles departure from royal life immediately sent royal watchers into a tizzy. In March, the couple officially backed away and settled into a home in Vancouver Island, Canada temporarily before packing up and moving to California. On the one hand, the relocation wasnt that surprising given that Meghan is a Los Angeles native. On the other, Harrys made it clear that he craves more privacy and less intrusion from the press. What do local paparazzi think about their presence in this celebrity enclave? It will be a frenzy. Prince Harry and Megan Markle at Nottingham Academy | Andy Stenning WPA Pool/Getty Images Harry and Meghan are on lockdown Like most of the country, the couple and their baby, Archie, are in quarantine due to COVID-19. Isolated in an L.A.-area (supposedly Malibu) mansion in a gated community, its expected theyll put down roots in the region. According to reports, they want to live in a secluded, secured home. With the lockdown restrictions in place, its been hard for paparazzi to trail Meghan and Harry, but that doesnt mean the photogs arent primed to pounce on them once they venture out. Photographer says photos could fetch 6 figures Now that Harry and Meghan are in a Hollywood hub, it will be tricky for them to avoid the spotlight. Per The Times UK, California paparazzo Mark Karloff said groups of photographers are already camping out trying to catch a glimpse of the couple. He also stated that once the quarantine rules are relaxed and the public is more aware of Harry and Meghan, Its going to be a little bit of a frenzy to get to them. Karloff added, They are going to be hounded every single day, at least for the first few months, he said. Theyre not going to be able to go out without being photographed. He provided a ballpark estimate of how much those first exclusive photos could sell for, saying the amount may go as high as $100,000. Since they are considered A-listers, catching images of them in their new digs will likely be a huge payday for paparazzi. Karloff continued, Leo DiCaprio, global interest, Beyonce, global interest. Thats what Meghan wants. I hope shes ready for it. The media attention on Harry and Meghan wont be like Canada While fans and paparazzi sought out the royals when they were still living in Canada, the pair took legal precautions and local papers didnt print salacious stories about them. Additionally, there are Canadian laws in place that favor ones consent when it comes having their pictures printed in a publication. Per the Vancouver Island Free Daily, judges tend to consider whether someone grants permission to have a photo shared publicly. However, when out in a public space, things can get murky. Still, with the Sussexes living in a celebrity hotspot, to some it seems counterintuitive to move to an area saturated with paparazzi. Will Harry end up filing lawsuits here too? Karloff has been in the business for more than 10 years and noted that people who work as photographers can get very hungry for certain celebrity shots. Once social distancing and quarantine measures loosen up, he knows it will be a matter time before Harry and Meghan are a hot commodity. Amnesty urges Myanmars leader to release prisoners of conscience and drop charges against those facing imprisonment. Myanmars leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government have overseen the continuing harassment, arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of activists and critics since taking power four years ago, according to Amnesty International. Those who have been arrested and prosecuted for simply expressing their opinions in the past 18 months include students, a poet, a journalist, a Buddhist monk, as well as environmental and labour activists, the prominent human rights group said on Monday. Amnestys new briefing profiles 16 activists, but more than 300 people were prosecuted in freedom of expression-related cases in 2019 alone, the group said, citing local civil society organisation Athan. In most of the 16 cases Amnesty highlighted, the complainants were soldiers who used repressive military-era laws to bring charges against people who criticised members of the armed forces, the group said, adding that the cases span nine states and regions across Myanmar. Four years after Aung San Suu Kyi came to power, Myanmar remains a country where the slightest criticism of the authorities can land you in jail, said Clare Algar, Senior Director for Research, Advocacy and Policy at Amnesty. After campaigning for human rights for decades and paying a high price for their own activism, it is shocking that Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues have done so little to change military-era laws that are still being used to repress and punish critics, she added. Among those facing prosecution is Saw Wai, a poet who is facing two years for reciting a poem at a rally in April last year, in which he called for changes to Myanmars 2008 constitution. I only have my poetry as my weapon. I will fight with it I will not surrender, he told Amnesty. Activists Seng Nu Pan and Paw Lu were sentenced to 15 days in prison in September last year after they organised an event to commemorate the resumption of armed conflict in Kachin and Shan states. Lu was given a further three months on contempt of court charges when he protested against the verdict by handing the judge a pair of broken scales. For each protest, we submit a permission request, including the estimated number of people and slogans. Sometimes police tell us to remove words referring to the military. But no matter how we try to comply with their requirements, one way or another protesters are charged under the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law, said Seng Nu Pan. Abbott U Arriyawuntha Biwuntha, a Buddhist monk living in Mandalay in central Myanmar, is facing criminal defamation charges for criticising the military and accusing a senior officer of donating money to a hardline religious nationalist group. Religious leaders have a moral obligation to tell the truth and speak out against wrong doings, said the monk who is currently free on bail while his trial continues. By restricting freedom of expression, by silencing those who dare to speak out and criticise, the government and others in positions of power and influence can do bad things without consequences. Kha Kha is among eight factory workers facing prosecution over a protest calling for better working conditions. The government should work with civil society and labour activists, speak to them, listen to them, she told Amnesty. [This] oppression makes me work harder. Amnesty said authorities in Myanmar must immediately release all prisoners of conscience, drop all charges against those facing imprisonment solely for their peaceful activities and urgently amend or repeal the long-standing repressive laws used to jail activists and critics. Featured stories African-Americans might be disproportionately infected by coronavirus in Cuyahoga County, county says (cleveland.com) Flattening the curve is just the beginning of a long, tedious process to reopening the world after the coronavirus pandemic (cleveland.com) State senator writes Gov. Mike DeWine, asking to reopen businesses in rural Ohio (cleveland.com) Coronavirus in Ohio The number of coronavirus cases reported in Ohio has grown from the first three on March 9 to 6,604 on Sunday, April 12.Rich Exner, cleveland.com Ohio reports 6,604 coronavirus cases, 253 deaths (cleveland.com) Mapping Ohios 6,604 coronavirus cases, Sundays update, trends graphics (cleveland.com) How did society emerge after 1918 Spanish flu pandemic? And what can we learn about reopening Ohio after coronavirus? (cleveland.com) Survey says people more likely to attend events with space to move once coronavirus restrictions are lifted (cleveland.com) Eleven Ohio prisons under full quarantine as coronavirus spreads among inmates, guards (cleveland.com) Crime Akron sex offender faces federal child pornography charges (cleveland.com) Two people accused of stealing from Brunswick Giant Eagle, violating stay-at-home coronavirus order, police say (cleveland.com) Woman shot in officer-involved shooting in Wickliffe, police say (cleveland.com) Cleveland / Cuyahoga County Cleveland records 19 new cases of COVID-19 coronavirus, pushing total number infected to 312 (cleveland.com) High wind warning for Northeast Ohio goes into effect early Monday (cleveland.com) Two more corrections officers, seven more inmates test positive for coronavirus at Cuyahoga County Jail, officials say (cleveland.com) Houses of the Holy: An Easter tour of Clevelands historic churches and sacred spaces (cleveland.com) Cleveland cultural organizations light up Internet to reach audiences, raise morale, during coronavirus pandemic (cleveland.com) Local news East Beachwood council working to bring relief to small businesses (cleveland.com) Local news West Wearing her Easter bunny ears, 8-year-old Mitra Sangari listens from her car in Ascent Church's parking lot during a drive-in church service Sunday. Visitors could tune into an FM radio station to listen to the music and message from their cars. Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com Westlakes Ascent Church hosts drive-in church service during coronavirus pandemic (photos) (cleveland.com) Crews respond to fire at apartments in Lakewood (WKYC Channel 3) Westlake makes changes to city departments due to coronavirus crisis (cleveland.com) Bay Village suspends yard waste and bulk pickup during coronavirus crisis (cleveland.com) LCCC staff and faculty step up with 3D printing of plastic face shields (cleveland.com) Third bald eagle egg hatches at Redwood Elementary School in Avon Lake (WEWS Channel 5) State Ohio legislative leaders already looking to a post-coronavirus agenda (cleveland.com) Federal judge extends order allowing some surgical abortions in Ohio during coronavirus pandemic (cleveland.com) Toxic algae also threatens Ohios inland lakes, waterways (cleveland.com) Several inland lakes in Ohio battling same algal blooms as in Lake Erie (cleveland.com) Something old, something new, in solutions against toxic algae in Ohios inland lakes (cleveland.com) As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic moved across the country and forced schools to close, CoreGiving recognized that more than 30 million children who take part in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) for regular, balanced and nutritious meals, would be unsure of where their next meal may be coming from. Traditionally, CoreGiving focuses on a fundraiser that revolves around March Madness. In March, the organization pivoted from brackets to backpacks and began collecting funds for local food banks. In less than 30 days, the organization exceeded its goal of raising $500,000 and has now increased the goal to $750,000. "The incredible ramifications COVID-19 has had on our society has left many children at risk of missing meals provided by schools. We're humbled by the donations CoreGiving has received and pleased to have already distributed more than $355,000 to food banks that operate in our neighborhoods where our teams live and work. Together we have funded the equivalent of 2.5 million meals in our most impacted cities," said Luke Petherbridge, president and CEO of ShopCore Properties and LivCor. One hundred percent of CoreGiving proceeds go to organizations that support children. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, CoreGiving has partnered with 20 community food banks in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Orlando, San Diego, Austin, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, and more. Founded in 2016, ShopCore owns and operates more than 15 million square feet of retail space across the U.S. with significant holdings in California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. Its assets are concentrated in densely populated markets and are anchored by best-in-class retailers. Its sister company, LivCor, was founded in 2013 and has become a premier multifamily real estate company focusing on the ownership and asset management of high-quality apartment communities. Both LivCor and ShopCore are part of Blackstone, one of the world's leading investment firms. ShopCore Properties and LivCor are united under CoreGiving's program "Dollars Hours Pounds", which aims to fight hunger one DOLLAR, one HOUR and one POUND at a time. For more information on CoreGiving, please visit this link. Details on ShopCore are here, while background on LivCor is available here. ABOUT COREGIVING According to Feeding America, 1 in 6 (or 16 million) children in America struggle with hunger. These children may not know where their next meal is coming from and ultimately suffer from disadvantages in school and personal relationships, along with physical and cognitive development. ShopCore Properties, in partnership with LivCor, has developed our "CoreGiving: Dollars Hours Pounds" program which aims to fight hunger one DOLLAR, one HOUR and one POUND at a time. CoreGiving Co. is a 501(c)(3) organization. SOURCE CoreGiving Related Links http://www.coregiving.org AUSTIN, Texas, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ideal Power Inc. (IPWR), pioneering the development and commercialization of highly efficient and broadly patented B-TRAN bi-directional power switches, will host a business update conference call on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. A press release detailing key updates will be issued prior to the call. Ideal Power Chairman, CEO and President Dr. Lon Bell, CFO Tim Burns and B-TRAN Chief Commercial Officer Dan Brdar will host the conference call, followed by a question and answer period. To access the call, please use the following information: Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2020 Time: 4:30 p.m. EST, 1:30 p.m. PST Toll-free dial-in number: 1-800-239-9838 International dial-in number: 1-323-794-2551 Conference ID: 9392321 Please call the conference telephone number 5-10 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 MZ Group at 1-949-491-8235. The conference call will be broadcast live and available for replay at http://public.viavid.com/index.php?id=139175 and via the investor relations section of the Companys website at www.IdealPower.com . A replay of the conference call will be available after 7:30 p.m. Eastern time through May 14, 2020. Toll Free Replay Number: 1-844-512-2921 International Replay Number: 1-412-317-6671 Replay ID: 9392321 About Ideal Power Inc. Ideal Power (IPWR) is pioneering the development of its broadly patented bi-directional power switches, creating highly efficient and ecofriendly energy control solutions for industrial, alternative energy, military and automotive applications. The company is focused on its patented Bi-directional, Bi-polar Junction Transistor (B-TRAN) semiconductor technology. B-TRAN is a unique double-sided bi-directional AC switch able to deliver substantial performance improvements over today's conventional power semiconductors. Ideal Power believes B-TRAN modules will reduce conduction and switching losses, complexity of thermal management and operating cost in medium voltage AC power switching and control circuitry. For more information, visit www.IdealPower.com . Most community health workers start their careers in their mid-20s. Texans Can Academies, a network of 14 high school dropout prevention schools, are helping seniors achieve their health worker certification before they graduate. Through a partnership with Baylor Scott & White, a nonprofit healthcare system, fourteen students enrolled in the program and meet twice a week to complete 160 hours of coursework. The program allows students to explore an area of healthcare they may not have previously been aware of and learn of opportunities available to them with the certification. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Now more than ever, Houstons digital divide puts childrens education in peril But due to COVID-19, those students are left to motivate themselves at home, completing the coursework online with Chromebooks and internet hotspots provided by Texans Can Academies. A lot of them are at-risk students. Licensed Professional Counselor and Community Health Worker Instructor Cindy Davis is tasked with teaching the students online and offers tips on how to keep both at-risk and non-at-risk students engaged with their online assignments. Make Learning Social One of the ways to keep students engaged online is to make learning a social situation. According to Davis, most students today are constantly engaged with social media. If instructors carry that social aspect with them in their instruction, it can be easier for students to engage with the material. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Coronavirus live updates: Harris County lawyers call on judges to halt unnecessary court hearings You have to create assignments that cause the students to be able to talk to each other while theyre at home because theyre going to do that anyway, said Davis. From Facebook to Instagram and all the ways students use to communicate with each other, I would use those things to help them learn. Add self-assessment opportunities Davis believes a positive student-teacher relationship is crucial for success. When students classes are transferred from in-person to online, the relationship with their teacher is subsequently transferred online. If a student feels comfortable enough with the teacher to talk about the problems they are facing at home, according to Davis, the student will feel more comfortable engaging with the course. MORE FROM RYAN NICKERSON: Not Doing Things raises money for charity amid COVID-19 Allow the students to vent, said Davis. These kids are stuck in the house and stuff they probably wouldnt see every day they are now seeing. Communicate in multiple formats According to Davis, teachers are now being called to a higher responsibility due to COVID-19. Because teaching online works through a different medium, the traditional lecture format may prove difficult to keep students engaged. Youre going to have to come up with videos and games that will contribute to the particular subject matter youre trying to get at, said Davis. Youre going to have to get really creative. Connect what youre teaching to real life Normally, the younger generations dont learn through traditional formats, according to Davis. When students are asked to present something in front of the class, they usually look scared or broken. When students can relate to the learning material, their interest skyrockets. For me, I really dont see anybody in the classroom being able to relate to anything that is not broken down from a real-life standpoint, said Davis. If I say, in my health workers class, lets talk about diabetes and the effects of diabetes, I stop and say okay now lets talk about somebody in your house that may have had diabetes. Hook students interest Davis recommends teachers utilize fun icebreakers that will allow students to easily transition from the classroom to online in a relaxed environment that doesnt put too much pressure and stress on the student while they are home. You cant just sit there and lecture the whole time and expect everybody to get off the computer and do their homework, said Davis. We do an icebreaker that causes people to laugh then we come back and put the icing on the cake. For homework, I always do something very simple and not too taxing because kids are not going to do it otherwise. If theyre at home, the area is very relaxed and it doesnt constitute any kind of instruction, especially with at-risk students. ryan.nickerson@hcnonline.com Ukraine cuts spending on coal, anthracite imports by over 36% in Q1 15:40, 13.04.20 2660 Russia, the United States, and Kazakhstan were major coal suppliers over the three months. MonoSol has been making water-soluble films for cleaning materials and dissolvable laundry bags for hospitals at a time of "unprecedented demand." The Merrillville-based company is producing health care laundry bags for customers all over the world, counting the National Health Service in the United Kingdom as its biggest customer, spokesman Matthew Vander Laan said. "In addition to ramping up production to meet the surge in demand for detergents, demand for our health care laundry bags is exceeding our supply," he said. "We found a creative way to add capacity by getting our production experts and film over to a third-party manufacturing facility that used to manufacture a similar product. We are now helping them re-start some old equipment to make more bags." The Merrillville-based company, which has manufacturing plants in Portage, LaPorte and Lebanon, has had no confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 among its employees thus far, Vander Laan said. Daily death tolls are 'airbrushing out' hundreds of elderly people who are dying from coronavirus at care homes, furious bosses have warned today. Almost 100 care home residents are already known to have died from coronavirus, but the true statistic is unknown because daily figures released by Public Health England relate only to NHS hospital fatalities. Care England, the industry body, says around 1,000 residents could have died from Covid-19 - with even more 'unrecorded' deaths 'swept under the carpet'. Matthew Reed, chief executive of charity Marie Curie, warned care homes 'are not well equipped to support a number of people dying in quick succession.' He said the figures released everyday of hospital deaths are 'lagging behind the big number' as care home deaths are not part of the government's daily figures. Fifteen out of 20 residents of Oaklands Nursing Home in East Sussex last week developed coronavirus symptoms, with a member of staff in intensive care. However, just three were tested among them Giuseppe Casciello, 95, who died on March 30. He is pictured here with family 12 people have died at Stanley Park Care Home in Stanley, County Durham Furious care home bosses have now accused the government of playing 'Russian roulette with people's lives.' Labour MP Peter Kyle said the failure to do more to stop this spread within care homes amounted to a 'crime'. Dozens of residents die from coronavirus across the UKK Yorkshire - 13: 13 residents have died at a care home in Yorkshire Luton - 15: Castleroy Residential home is believed to have had 15 deaths from coronavirus Bristol - undisclosed: Edgemont View Nursing Home has closed to visitors after 'a number of deaths' in recent days Dumbarton, 8: Eight patients died at Castle View, in Dumbarton Essex, 13: 13 residents are understood to have died at a home in Waltham Abbey Scotland - 32: So far in Scotland, 13 people have died at a care home in Glasgow, eight residents in a home in Dumbarton, nine residents in Tranent and two in an Edinburgh care home. Five elderly residents have also died at Almond Court in Drumchapel, Glasgow. Liverpool, 3: At the Oak Springs Care Home in Wavertree, three residents died at the weekend, with one of them testing positive for the virus Portsmouth, 4: Four elderly residents at Harry Sotnick House have died after showing Covid-19 symptoms and a fifth died without symptoms. London, 7: Seven people living at Hawthorn Green Residential and Nursing Home in Stepney died after contracting the virus, the east London home said. Durham, 13: 13 people have died at Stanley Park Care Home in County Durham from Covid-19 symptoms Advertisement Care home staff say they are working on the 'forgotten front line' of the coronavirus battle and will soon be forced to wear bin bags as PPE. Today it was confirmed 13 people had died at Stanley Park Care Home in County Durham following a concentrated outbreak among residents. And a relative who lost a loved one at a home in Essex told The Sun the disease was 'spreading like wildfire' and was so contagious that relatives are banned from retrieving jewellery from the dead. Some 13 residents are understood to have passed away at the Essex home. To date, some 13 residents have died at a care home in Yorkshire, 11 in Northamptonshire and another 15 at a home in Luton. Edgemont View Nursing Home, in Bristol, has closed to visitors after 'a number of deaths' in recent days. Public Health England (PHE) and South Gloucestershire Council confirmed the deaths in a joint statement - although it remains unclear exactly how many people have died. Today, a 13th resident from Stanley Park Care Home in Stanley, County Durham, passed away. A Care UK spokeswoman said the latest resident, who died on this morning, was living in the home and had symptoms that could indicate Covid-19, though no test had been done. Matthew Reed, from Marie Curie, said it should be possible for care homes to allow visitors for people who are dying. But he added: 'The lack of PPE and testing means workers at care homes are not well equipped to support a number of people dying in quick succession. 'The life of a care home worker is just as valuable as people working in intensive care.' His sentiments were shared by Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, who said the lack of PPE and testing was leading to Covid-19 'running wild' in care homes. 'The problem is there's not enough of either,' she said. Cyril Lawrence, 99, was a teenager when football last ground to a halt back in 1939. His daughter Elaine told MailOnline her father is fighting for his life in hospital after falling ill when he was admitted to a care home 'And what there is is going to the NHS, which is the right decision but it is leaving care settings in a difficult position. 'I can't sleep at night': Care home manager troubled over lack of protective equipment Care home manager Nicola Rowland has said she couldn't sleep at night because of worries about securing PPE. Park Manor residential home in Ipswich has received a one-off delivery of face masks from the Government but is no longer receiving direct supplies of gloves, aprons and masks. Miss Rowland said she had spent hours scouring the internet for items but complained prices were 'sky high'. Suffolk County Council received a PPE delivery from the Government last Wednesday and stock was sent out to the care sector. But a council spokesman said it was having to prioritise protection for 'frontline staff'. The Department of Health says it has delivered 7.8million PPE products to more than 26,000 care providers. Advertisement 'We were underprepared for this, we are playing catch-up on getting enough PPE and testing, I'm wondering if the needs of care homes were taken seriously early on.' Ms Abrahams added: 'The current figures are airbrushing older people out like they don't matter.' Nicola Roberts oversees three care homes in Sheffield as director of Palms Row Healthcare, where eight residents have died and 39 people - including staff - have been diagnosed. She told Sky News staff were 'on the forgotten front line' of coronavirus. The virus has claimed the lives of 10,612 hospital patients with a further 737 deaths reported in the last 24 hours. But the true number will be higher as this figure does not include victims who died at home or in care homes. The Office for National statistics said 20 people had died in care homes across England and Wales in the week up to March 27 of the illness. Government guidance also says untested new residents can be admitted to nursing homes from their own homes even if they are showing symptoms of the disease. The Alzheimer's Society and other care industry leaders believe that the virus is now present in homes that care for around 400,000 people in the UK. The society fears hundreds of thousand of people with dementia may be being 'abandoned' in care homes. 'My mum and I said goodbye to my dad and told him how much we loved him': Relatives forced to say heartbreaking farewells to loved ones over the phone during crisis Cyril Lawrence, 99, was a teenager when football last ground to a halt back in 1939. He is now in hospital after falling ill at a care home Legacy: Lawrence (front row, third from left) with Stan Mortensen (front row, sixth from left) at Blackpool in 1939 Family members of coronavirus patients have contacted MailOnline with the heartbreaking stories of how they have been forced to say goodbye to their loved ones. Elaine Shirt had to put her 'lovely' father Cyril Lawrence, 99, into respite in a care home after her mother was taken ill recently and went into hospital. Ms Shirt said her parents were due to return home when the care home her father was in went into lockdown, so he remained there. Aged 19, in 1939, Mr Lawrence lied about his age in order to register for national service before conscription was introduced. A budding football player who was on the verge of signing for Blackpool United, he was deployed on the brand new battleship HMS King George V, assigned to the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. He would spend more than five years serving on the ship, which performed an active combat role and witnessed some of the most historic episodes of the war, including the pursuit and sinking of the Bismarck and the surrender of Japan. Mr Lawrence's early career at sea was spent on the Arctic convoys delivering aid and essential supplies to the Soviet Union. He represented the Royal Navy at football, appearing in exhibition matches in Cairo and Alexandria and against New South Wales at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Ms Shirt said: 'All was well until Good Friday. We had video calls with him, he looked really well and on Sunday enjoyed his evening meal and even asked if could have had a little more. An hour later, an ambulance arrived and he was taken into hospital. 'I then tried contacting the hospital and at 4am a lovely Consultant phoned to say my dad was extremely poorly. It was a big shock. He was put on oxygen, fluids and antibiotics and swabs for the virus taken. 'At 8pm last night my mum and I said goodbye to my dad. Mun told him as I did how much he was loved. He couldn't speak but we were told he could hear us. It was heartbreaking and the two lovely nurses wearing masks and gloves broke down crying with us. 'I never in a million years thought this would happen at the end of life. My dad is battling on but its just a question of time now. 'Dad is the longest surviving player of Blackpool Rochdale and Wrexham football clubs. 'Hes a battler and I know hes doing his utmost to beat this but I know he wont. Im waiting totally heartbroken supporting my mum. 'My mum will be 100 on June 3, and dad 100 on the 12th. To be cruelly taken like this is just so very sad.' To keep vulnerable people safe, some care homes have implemented a blanket ban on visitors to prevent the spread of Covid-19. This has been the case for former social worker Julie Ding, 56, who has not been able to see her dying mother for more than a month. Julie, from Allerton Bywater, West Yorkshire, was a full-time carer of her mother, Roberta Ding, 83, after she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in 2018. Julie Ding, 56, has not been able to see her dying mother for more than a month. Julie was a full-time carer of her mother, Roberta Ding, 83, after she was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Pictured, Roberta Ding and her daughters Susan (left) and Julie (right) Her condition rapidly deteriorated and soon she was unable to walk or speak and could only breathe through a tracheostomy with the help of a ventilator. Julie said her mother was in hospital before the coronavirus outbreak reached the UK and was subsequently taken to a nursing home on March 2. It was the last time Julie physically saw her mother as she has only been able to contact her through video calls since. Julie is desperate for her mother to return home as she worries Roberta's condition will worsen and she will die at the nursing home alone. After her only sibling, Susan, died aged 49 in 2010, Julie has no family other than her mother. 'I made a promise to my mum that I will always be by her side,' she said. 'I'm allowed in when she's in the last throes of death, the manager will decide.' Advertisement Jayne Connery, who runs Care Campaign for the Vulnerable, said: 'We are getting calls from families who are beside themselves. They are being told they can't go in and see loved ones with dementia even if wearing full safety equipment and yet at the same time the homes are taking in patients with Covid-19.' Care home staff could be 'forced to wear bin bags as PPE' Ceri Roberts, managing director of Cariad Care Homes, in Gwynedd, told the Daily Post that she attempted to buy Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from two major suppliers online. But she was told they were 'only delivering to care homes in England.' Ms Roberts said that, unless she manages to get hold of more PPE quickly, by the middle of next week the staff at the Bodawen home in Porthmadog and Plasgwyn in Criccieth will have to wear black bin bags instead. She said: 'I tried to buy 550 worth of masks, gloves and aprons only to be offered a couple of boxes of gloves and some hairnets for 83. 'I couldn't believe it that one part of the UK was being prioritised over the rest are masks and aprons only for care staff in England? 'I was just dumbfounded to be told that they wouldn't sell to care providers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. 'These are frightening times and my team are doing everything they can to keep the virus at bay because we know if it does get in it will have disastrous consequences. 'No matter how good your infection control is, if it gets in it will be catastrophic because of the vulnerability of the people we are looking after.' A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said some distributors are prioritising supply to central UK stocks, which 'supports a planned and coordinated response'. The spokesman added: 'The Department of Health and Social Care is working very closely with the devolved administrations in ensuring there is sufficient PPE to meet the clinical need across the health and social care sector. 'Supply routes have been set up within each nation to provide PPE to frontline services.' Advertisement At the Government's daily press conference at the weekend, Mr Hancock pledged that testing in care homes would increase. Meanwhile, up to 300 people with coronavirus symptoms may have died in Scotland's care homes, according to industry leaders. Robert Kilgour, a care home entrepreneur, estimated the death toll as he issued a plea to SNP ministers to stop 'dragging their heels' and provide more financial support for the under-pressure industry. He warned care homes face a 'tsunami' of deaths. The Scottish Government also revealed yesterday that cases of the virus are now suspected in more than a third of Scotland's care homes. Ministers also said figures will be published this week providing the number of suspected Covid-19 cases in homes for the elderly across the country. Over the last week, it has been confirmed that 12 patients with suspected Covid-19 symptoms died at the Burlington Court care home in Cranhill, Glasgow, while another eight died at Castle View, in Dumbarton. Mr Kilgour, who runs Renaissance Care, said ten patients have died following suspected or confirmed symptoms of the virus in his 15 homes. He told the Scottish Daily Mail: 'My estimate is that there are at least 200 and possibly close to 300 suspected care home deaths in Scotland since the beginning of this. 'With an upward trajectory in cases, care homes are the new front line of this vicious virus. 'More attention and support certainly needs to be given to the residents and staff.' Five elderly residents have died at Almond Court in Drumchapel, Glasgow, in recent days, according to The Scottish Sun. One staff member is also reportedly ill at the 42-bed care home. The Care Inspectorate confirmed that residents had died at the home following suspected Covid-19 cases with workers in contact with the care service. Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured) has pledged to review the official rules which oversee how patients are transferred between hospitals and care homes A spokeswoman said: 'We are aware of the tragic death of residents at this care home as a result of suspected cases of Covid-19. Funeral directors warn coronavirus deaths in care homes 'are going unreported' Funeral directors, meanwhile, have also claimed that coronavirus deaths in care homes are going unreported. At least four homes within Brighton and Hove have been struck by Covid-19, which is increasingly fatal to the elderly or people with underlying health conditions. 'We have just collected from a home in the Sussex area,' said one funeral director, who wished to remain anonymous. 'The doctor has put down the cause of death as dementia and yet when we collected over the weekend, the staff told us she had developed a cough three days ago. 'A few days after that, the client received a call from the home confirming they had an outbreak of coronavirus. 'Further to that, we also found out from the surgery that there were seven deaths within the same home within the last number of days. 'The point is, I strongly believe this is happening now - I would suggest there are a lot more than what's being said.' Another funeral director agreed, saying they could 'absolutely say there are' deaths happening within the city's homes. Advertisement 'Our thoughts are with the loved ones of those affected as well as the staff and wider community of the home. 'We have been notified of the circumstances and we are in contact with the care service and the local health and social care partnership during this difficult time. 'All of Scotland's social care sector is working under very difficult circumstances to care for people during the pandemic and the Care Inspectorate is doing all it can to support them.' Yesterday, the Scottish Government confirmed the Care Inspectorate has had reports of confirmed or suspected Covid-19 cases from 406 care homes which is 37 per cent of the total number of care homes. Mr Kilgour said the next phase of the response to the pandemic should be to carry out more testing of care home residents and called for more funding to help the sector ensure it continues to have personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff. While some councils in England have passed on UK Government funding to care operators to fund PPE investment, Mr Kilgour said there has been a lack of similar action in Scotland. He said: 'Local authorities I speak to say they would like to help but they are not getting extra money from the Scottish Government. 'They say they would like to help us but the money needs to come from the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Government is dragging their heels .' Across the sector, staff absence rates range from around 15 per cent to around 30 per cent. The Care Inspectorate has asked all care homes to notify it when they have a suspected case or when a resident dies from the virus, and to keep them updated on staff shortages. However, the taxpayer-funded watchdog initially refused to publish figures on suspected cases and suggested anyone looking for the data would need to submit a freedom of information request, a process which can take up to two months. Elderly told: Say no to hospital Elderly patients are being pressured into refusing hospital treatment under 'shameful and discriminatory' blanket guidelines, leading charities have warned. Dozens of care homes have been told to check that vulnerable patients have signed Do Not Resuscitate orders and warned that going to hospital was 'undesirable' if they got coronavirus. But campaigners say this means elderly patients who are mostly fit and well could be denied potentially lifesaving treatment if they get coronavirus, potentially breaching their human rights. Last week, a group of organisations issued a joint statement saying that thousands of older patients had been left believing 'their lives and wishes do not matter'. Advertisement Yesterday, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman intervened and said the data would now be published later this week. She said: 'It is really important that we are confident about the robustness and the accuracy of that information. 'So we are currently working with the Care Inspectorate to check and double check the information they are working with before we have the confidence to release that.' On funding for care homes, Miss Freeman said: 'There may well be more we need to do. Along with PPE, looking at what support is needed in care homes and in the care at home sector is something that is a constant part of our work.' A spokesman for the Care Inspectorate said: 'The Care Inspectorate is working closely with care providers, health and social care partnerships, care industry leaders and the Scottish Government to ensure services get the support they need during the pandemic.' Meanwhile, Miss Freeman announced yesterday that social care staff will get an immediate 3.3 per cent pay rise backdated to April 1 with workers providing direct adult support to be paid at least 9.30 an hour. Miss Freeman said in a statement: 'The measures we are announcing in partnership with Cosla today will ensure all people providing adult social care receive the real living wage for every hour worked with immediate effect, rather than having to wait until later in the year.' An FIR was lodged against a man in Uttar Pradesh's Kushinagar district on Monday for allegedly refusing to eat food cooked by a Dalit village head at a quarantine centre, police said. The man was identified as Seraj Ahmad, a native of Bhujouli Khurd village of the district. He and four others are lodged at a quarantine centre set up in a primary school in the village, they said. Ahmad returned to the village from Delhi on March 29 and has been in quarantine at the centre, the police said. On April 10, the village head, Lilawati Devi, who is a Dalit, went to the quarantine centre and prepared food for the five people lodged there as the cook was absent. However, Ahmad refused to have the food cooked by her, they said. Later, Devi informed Sub-Divisional Magistrate Deshdeepak Singh and Block Development Officer Ramakant about the incident. She lodged a police complaint on Sunday, they added. Station House Officer (SHO) Khadda police station R K Yadav said a case has been filed against Ahmad under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. BJP MLA Vijay Dubey visited Devi's house on Sunday and asked her to serve him food cooked by her. He said untouchability is a social evil and it can't be tolerated at any cost. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip While the entire world fights the spread of the novel coronavirus, some pioneering, creative ideas are emerging to support these efforts. In the Gaza Strip, engineer Mohammed Abu Matar and his team at Tashkeel 3D are using 3D printing technology to produce medical equipment needed to confront the pandemic. Abu Matar, a specialist in digital manufacturing and 3D printing, told Al-Monitor, As the pandemic spread, we couldn't stand idly by, so we initiated a search for creative ideas that support efforts to fight the coronavirus because that's our social responsibility. He added, We searched within the open source communities on social media where ideas are exchanged on ways to fight the coronavirus, and we focused on those that can be applied in the Gaza Strip based on our available resources. The team has produced several different types of equipment, including the protective respirator face masks that front-line medical workers wear, which it is selling for about $6 apiece. The firm is also producing devices that allow two patients to use one ventilator. Abu Matars company, which he co-founded in 2016, works in cooperation with the Ministry of Health in Gaza to provide it with the equipment. The Gaza Strip, which has more than 2 million inhabitants, recorded 13 cases of the coronavirus as of April 8 the same day the Ministry of Health announced coronavirus test kits have completely run out. The announcement has raised fears that the deteriorating health and economic situation in Gaza will turn into a serious health disaster should the virus spread. The health sector is also suffering from a shortage of protective personal equipment for medical personnel. On March 31, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said the number of respirators needed for patients suffering from the virus that causes COVID-19 is proof of the tragic situation in the Gaza Strip. There were only 96 respirators in Gaza intensive care units, despite the dense population packed into its 140 square miles. Meanwhile, The Guardian cited Abdelnasser Soboh, director of the World Health Organizations Gaza office, as saying March 22 that the Gaza Strip needs 100 additional ventilators in the event of an outbreak. Abu Matar noted that 3D printing can be used to fill gaps in the health sector, but he stressed that it is not an easy task and warned against random printing in the medical field. The effort requires precision and scientific construction, and the supervision of specialist doctors and equipment experts to guarantee accuracy and effectiveness, he said. Abu Matar also emphasized that the printing process must be conducted in cooperation with the Gaza Health Ministry. Meanwhile, 3D printing technology is still relatively new to Gaza and is taking some time to expand. Abu Matar created his first printer in 2015, and also designed a machine to produce the plastic filament the printer needs, since the Israeli blockade makes it difficult to obtain materials and parts. He was able to produce a tourniquet, as many people believe that the majority of deaths during the wars on the Gaza Strip were caused by severe bleeding, and that many people could have been saved had the bleeding been stopped. Abu Matar's company produced a large number of such dressings for ambulance and emergency crews to use in Gaza, and he believes they helped many of the people injured in the marches of return, which began in March 2018 on the Gaza borders. However, Abu Matar and his team members face great hurdles that make their work harder, and sometimes even impossible. He explained that obtaining designs and building the required systems are major challenges, especially with the lack of raw materials due to the Israeli blockade and the coronavirus lockdown, which force them to search for alternatives to these materials locally. This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Sam Clayton Jr. made sure the world heard real reggae, even when the people making it came from countries far away from its birthplace, Jamaica. Mr. Clayton, who was born and raised there, was a musical jack-of-all-trades. He was a producer and sound engineer at Kingstons famous Harry J. Studio, where he contributed to music by Jamaican roots reggae artists like Horace Andy and Ernest Ranglin. He also worked with many foreign artists, including Americans, like Harrison Stafford, and Germans, like Sebastian Sturm. He lived in France for some time, spoke fluent French, and worked with many French artists, including the groups Danakil, Dub Inc., Brain Damage and Broussai. He also served as a sound engineer for the Jamaican band Toots and the Maytals and the British group Steel Pulse. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Kargo, a Jakarta-based logistics startup co-founded by veteran Uber Asia executive Tiger Fang, has raised $31 million to scale its business and help firms in the Southeast Asian nation fight the coronavirus. Silicon Valley-based Tenaya Capital, Sequoia India, Mirae Asset Management and Intudo Ventures among others financed Kargos Series A round. The startup, which has raised $38.6 million to date, counts Uber founder and former chief executive Travis Kalanick as an investor. Kargo takes some of the concepts behind Uber and applies them to trucking and logistics. Business customers order trucks using a mobile app or website, but the scope is wider, said Fang. Unlike Uber, Kargo works with truck operators and 3PLs rather than truck drivers themselves. For its Series A announcement, Kargo has an unusual pitch: It wants to help companies in Indonesia fight the coronavirus. The startup plans to do so with its newly formed $1 million relief fund for truckers. Kargo employees have contributed their salaries -- and Fang is not taking any salary for next year. Anyone can donate to the fund, Fang told TechCrunch. The startup has also partnered with several charitable organizations including Kita Bisa, PT Akar Indah Pratama, with whom it is working to deliver meals and essential medical supplies to healthcare workers and patients at multiple hospitals. Yodi Aditya (left) and Tiger Fang co-founded logistics startup Kargo in Jakarta, Indonesia Kargo said it is taking several precautions to keep drivers safe. This includes ensuring that all pit stops on its routes are well-stocked and properly disinfected. Kargo has also implemented an electronic proof of delivery mechanism on its platform to limit physical contact between users. Kargo pledges to be the most reliable logistics partner to ensure no disruptions to the supply chain of essential items in Indonesia. Our entire company is donating a portion of our salaries to this cause and we invite local businesses and organizations to get in touch so we can work this problem together, said Fang. Story continues "Were grateful for our wonderful investors who continue to support us, even in a time of financial uncertainty," he added. Logistics remains a major opportunity in several South Asian markets as local shippers and transporters begin to slowly adopt technology to address infrastructure inefficiencies. Kargo has already amassed more than 6,000 active shippers and a network of more than 50,000 trucks across the nation. This article is part of David Leonhardts newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. The United States and South Korea each had their first confirmed case of the coronavirus around Jan. 20. They each suffered their first death in late February. If anything, South Korea appeared to be slightly ahead of the United States, with more cases and more deaths, in early March. But then the two countries began following very different paths. From the beginning, South Korea took the virus extremely seriously, with widespread testing, tracking of cases and quarantining. The results have been impressive: Only about 220 deaths so far, and not a single day with more than a dozen deaths. The situation in the United States, of course, has been radically different. About 2,000 Americans have been dying each day since early last week, and the United States now has the highest death toll of any country: more than 22,000 overall. In the chart above, you can see the number of new deaths each day for the two countries, adjusted for the population of each. Chinas Violations of Taiwan Airspace Are Testing US Response Amid Pandemic News Analysis The recent violations of Taiwans airspace by Chinese fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft are testing the U.S. capability to respond with resources strained by the CCP virus pandemic. Taiwan Ministry of National Defense (MND) reported on April 10 that several Chinese J-11 jet fighters, H-6 bombers, KJ-500 command and early warning aircraft violated Taiwans western airspace in the South China Sea, before turning south to violate the Philippines and Taiwan airspace over the Bashi Channel. The integrated air squadron violation follows another provocation that began at 11 a.m. on March 31 when two J-11 jet fighters from Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) crossed the so-called median line of the 110-mile Taiwan Strait. Such provocations by both nations were common in the 1990s before a tacit agreement was put into place to reduce tensions by keeping their vessels from crossing it. But the ten-minute standoff with Taiwanese F-16 fighters was the first median-line breach in over a decade, according to Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. Taiwans Foreign Ministry took to Twitter to emphasize the military seriousness of the Chinese air force crossing the median line: It was an intentional, reckless & provocative action. Weve informed regional partners & condemn #China for such behavior. The Chinese regime considers self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, despite the fact that it has its own constitution, democratically-elected government, currency, and military. An article published by The Epoch Times on March 30 titled, China Ramps Up South China Sea Provocations as U.S. Battles CCP Virus, highlighted that the March 24 withdrawal of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier task force from patrolling around the South China Sea threatened to disrupt the balance of power in the region. The aircraft carrier was immobilized after three sailors tested positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. More than 500 crew members are infected as of April 11. The only other American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific that could have intervened as a restraint against Chinese provocations or hostilities is the USS Ronald Reagan, docked in Yokosuka, Japan. But the Reagan and its base have also been in a two-week lockdown due to an unknown number of sailors suffering from the CCP virus. With virtually no combat effectiveness for its major theater domination assets, the U.S. Navy on March 27 sent the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell on a routine Taiwan Strait transit in international waters, according to Lt. Anthony Junco, spokesperson for the U.S. 7th Fleet. Junco added that the exercise demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The U.S. Defense Department dramatically increased military flights around Taiwan since the U.S. aircraft carriers were taken off-line. Examples of disclosed flights include an EP-3E ARIES II reconnaissance aircraft on March 25; a B-52 Stratofortress bomber and KC-135 tanker on March 26, and another B-52 bomber flight on March 27. Taiwan News reported on April 11 that two American Combat Sent RC-135U reconnaissance aircrafts left their civilian transponders on while flying at least six missions over the South China Sea in the last week. The Combat Sent is deployed to locate and identify foreign military land, naval and airborne radar signals. A Taiwan defense expert suggested that the U.S. warplanes may have intentionally turned on the transponders so they could be picked up by air movement trackers. This move would clearly reaffirm that the United States is closely monitoring the situation in the region and is prepared to respond, despite the CCP virus pandemic. Even though most people will never enter a recording studio, the music created in them provides a product that many consider not just essential, but life changing. Different Fur is one of those studios, a 50-year-old Mission institution that has hosted everyone from Stevie Wonder to Lil Wayne. Over the years, it has evolved, turning one of the two studio rooms into a headquarters for Text Me Records, but its main revenue stream comes from renting out recording time in the same studio that David Byrne and Brian Eno recorded My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1981. The studio closed shop a few days before the official shelter-in-place ordinance, leading to a huge loss of business, like other San Francisco institutions ranging from vintage drive-thrus to cocktail bars. It was rough. We had to cancel basically a couple months of sessions, said owner Patrick Brown. We all basically work paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks come when people book us. So all of our income is based on those bookings. If we have to cancel them, it basically just shuts us down. The shutdown causes unique challenges for a recording studio, because the financial hardship hits not just their staff, but their clientele. I think the big difference between us and a bar is that if a bar can survive the downtime, then as soon as they can open the doors and serve alcohol, people will be there to drink, Brown said. With us, musicians are hit so hard, they wont have much income to turn around and spend on things like this. RELATED: This Bay Area town has started weekly porch concerts to boost morale To counteract the ripple effects of the shutdown within the music industry and put some money in the pockets of their engineers, Different Fur is offering local musicians a hell of a deal: It has discounted its rates by nearly 50%. In addition to an old-fashioned sale, Different Fur is implementing video technology to bring its recording expertise to a wider audience. DF house engineer Lien Do hosts experimental music production workshops on Twitch twice a week. The rest of the engineering team has taken on remote mixing and production jobs. And Text Me Records soldiers on, with Brown helping hip-hop artist Ricky Lake put the finishing touches on his next album (Brown lives upstairs, so still has access to the studio). It has even remotely sourced footage for the next Ricky Lake video. The pandemic has also led Brown to return to his roots, micro-managing the studio. He started at Different Fur in 2004 as an intern, then became the studios fourth owner in 2007. At that point, he worked as a jack of all trades, serving as studio manager, main engineer and a producer. A decade later, he stepped back from day-to-day operations to start Text Me in the upstairs studio, forming a collective of like-minded hip-hop songwriters to collaborate on projects, with an emphasis on navigating the more lucrative publishing side of the business that many artists neglect. I was kind of burnt out on engineering and running the studio all at once. I wanted to try to find a way to create more long-term money for musicians and artists, Brown said. Initially, we were using any open unbooked studio time as basically free time for the [Text Me] songwriters and producers. RELATED: What its like being Earl The Pearl Stevens, aka iconic Bay Area rapper E-40s dad There was a loose plan for him to return to his old role as studio manager this year, but the shelter-in-place ordinance immediately thrust him back into his old role. Its a little reinvigorating in a way, because Im stepping back to something I havent done in a while. Its giving me a different view of everything, and making me reassess what is important. Thankfully, Brown considers himself and the studio lucky compared to many other local institutions, as he owns the building, so he doesnt have to deal with snowballing rent, but still needs to rely on financial assistance from the SBA Disaster Loan program. Overall, he feels most concerned about the ripple effects throughout his staff and the greater local music ecosystem. For me, its about maintaining the legacy of the place and making sure the people who work here can survive. Dan Gentile is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: Dan.Gentile@sfgate.com | Twitter: @Dannosphere Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies (CIABC) has written to Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, Health Minister Dr Harsha Vardhan and chief ministers of all states to allow home delivery of alcoholic beverages. Liquor stores and production facilities are currently shut due to the coronavirus lockdown, causing a huge loss in excise duty, the letter said. CIABC and International Spirits and Wines Association of India (ISWAI) have asked the government to plan a phased opening of liquor shops outside coronavirus hotspots for a longer span to ensure minimum consumer rush. The CIABC letter suggested that shops could be asked to fill online applications and pay a license fee for door-to-door delivery. "Assuming that social distancing will be new normal going forward, government may consider institutionalising home delivery as a separate channel administered online. It is our view that the government may consider setting up its own portal for facilitating home deliveries and/or permit food delivery aggregators to do so," Director-General of CIABC Vinod Giri said in the letter. The letter further suggested that shops should be given licenses for 3-4 home delivery workers and the government can control the frequency and the amount of liquor being delivered. Consumers can place orders online or through a phone call along with identity proof for age verification. "Employment has to come back at a certain stage as the livelihood of the people is at stake," Shobhan Roy DG, All India Brewers Association (AIBA) told Times of India. The industry contributes around $20 billion in excise revenue and employs close to a million workers, he added. "States are strapped for cash. 15 - 30 per cent of a state's revenue comes from alcohol. This is a significant revenue stream that comes directly to state coffers and can help in these cash-strapped times particularly when there is pressure to provide a safety net; Minumum subsistence allowance, free food, free medical care," ISWAI chairman Amrit Kiran Singh said. The CIABC is the governing body for Indian alcohol beverage producers while ISWAI consists of foreign liquor companies like Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Beam Suntory. Also Read:Coronavirus India Live Updates: Arunachal Pradesh extends lockdown till April 30 with exemptions Also Read: 'Help or we will die': Auto dealers send SOS to PM Modi amid coronavirus lockdown Coronavirus kept millions of churches from gathering for first time in 2,000 years, Rick Warren says Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment While some churches defied government orders to gather for Easter on Sunday, Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, says the coronavirus pandemic prevented millions of churches around the world from physically gathering for Easter Sunday for the first time in 2,000 years. Because of the worldwide COVID-19 virus pandemic, millions of local churches are going to be unable to meet together this Easter. Now this has never happened in 2000 years, Warren said in a recorded message that was shared with followers of his megachurch online on Sunday ahead of his Easter sermon. Warren told the Orange County Register that he had planned a sermon for Easter Sunday called Time to Dream, in celebration of the first 40 years of his church as well as its future but had to go produce a different message for his congregants after the pandemic began to unfold. The new message was called Expecting a Resurrection When Life Falls Apart. Ive never seen anything like this, Warren told the OC Register on Good Friday about the virus. 9/11, Katrina, things come and go. This is different. Warren explained that along with the rest of the world, many people of faith were having their lives disrupted by the impact of the coronavirus and they are anxious too. The past weeks Ive received literally thousands of emails, texts, and calls from people distressed by the way this world has been turned upside down, he said before reading a letter from a woman describing her struggles. Using the story of Christs resurrection, however, Warren made the case that living a life of faith through Christ can help people get through the pandemic. Jesus resurrection proved that He really was who He claimed to be, it validated His identity. A lot of people in history have claimed to be God. Lots of people have claimed to be God but only one proved it by bringing Himself back to life its why 2.3 billion Christians are celebrating Easter this week, he said. The resurrection story, he said, is Jesus model for what people should do when life falls apart. He explained that it is natural to experience anxiety or despondency when going through a crisis, but taking advantage of the power of God that comes through Christ gives people the ability to overcome challenges. The people whose lives had fallen apart when Christ was crucified and then when they saw Him being raised from the dead, they went from being cowardly to being courageous. They went from being fearful to fearless. They went from being gloomy to being glad, from being hopeless to being hopeful and happy. They went from being powerless to being powerful, from being upset to being unstoppable and Christianity spread through the whole world, he said. It was seeing the risen Jesus Christ come back from the dead, he said, that caused the transformation. That quickly changed their lives, then millions of lives and then billions of lives. The California pastor noted that people will repeatedly go through periods of fear and pain, confusion and grief, and freedom and joy just as Jesus' disciples did between the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Many people are afraid because of this COVID-19 virus and many are in pain because of this COVID-19 virus. When you are in the day of fear and pain, you need to do two things. You do the two things that Jesus did, he said. He then noted how Jesus reached out to friends ahead of His crucifixion and He also prayed. Draw close to friends. Before Jesus was betrayed, arrested and tortured, the very last thing He did was spend some time intimately with His friends, Warren said. The pastor encouraged people to reach out to God in prayer. He also urged, "Rely on the power of Jesus." "You can't do this on your own power. ... Willpower is not enough," he stressed. "It takes more than self help, than positive thinking. Im in favor of positive thinking; its better than negative thinking but it only works on stuff you can control. What about the stuff you cant control? You cant resurrect yourself. You need a savior. God has to do it for you. And thats called salvation." Speaker of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine censor.net.ua The Ukrainian Parliament is going to pass the draft laws as planned today - without any discussions. The two exceptions will be the bill on submitting changes to this year's state budget and the documents on canceling the decision to approve the land sale market. Dmytro Razumkov, the Parliamentary Speaker, reported that in an evening show at 1+1 TV channel. "Most likely, the issue of the budget will be discussed, as well as the matter of canceling the decrees. As for the others, we had an agreement to vote for them without discussions so that to consider them and pass them, so that they can start working as laws from which the Ukrainian people benefits", Razumkov said. The draft laws on canceling the decision to approve the draft law on the land market block the opportunity for President and Parliament Speaker to sign the law on the land market. It was passed by the Ukrainian Parliament on Monday, April 30. The bill foresees that Ukrainian citizens will be able to buy the land earlier than the legal entities founded by the entrepreneurs, state authorities and territorial communities. The latter will be able to buy the land since 2024. One of Ireland's top legal professionals is to be charged with stealing hundreds of euro from a client's bank card. The Herald can reveal that the solicitor, who is one of the highest legal earners in the country, was questioned by gardai last Tuesday in relation to the alleged theft. He is accused of stealing 400 which was taken from the bank account of a client using his ATM card. The incident is alleged to have occurred close to the Criminal Courts of Justice, near the Phoenix Park, in July 2016. It is understood the solicitor was given the bank card by his client, a Spanish national, to take out cash for a court fee at a nearby ATM. However, as well as withdrawing 200 for the legal matter, the solicitor is also alleged to have taken out an extra 400 which he kept for himself. The matter was only reported to gardai in January of this year and an investigation into the fraud allegation was launched at the Bridewell Garda Station. Inquiries It is believed the victim of the alleged theft didn't realise the additional money was taken for some time. Following inquiries by gardai the solicitor met with detectives last week and was quizzed in relation to the allegations. During the course of the interview the client's allegations were put to him and a decision was then made to charge him. He is now expected to appear before the Dublin District Court on a date next month. The solicitor, who is aged in his 40s, is due to face charges relating to theft as well as perverting the course of justice. After being charged in the garda station he was released on bail. "These matters were taken seriously once they were reported to gardai and the individual met officers by appointment," a senior source said. Over recent years the solicitor has commanded hundreds of thousands of euro annually and his legal firm is also a high earner in the free legal aid arena. Distancing: Undertakers in protective suits at the funeral of Larry McManus The daughter of one of Northern Ireland's oldest coronavirus victims has spoken of the pain at the "terrible virus" that took her father's life. Larry McManus (93) was laid to rest in Enniskillen after 10 members of his family formed a guard of honour at Cross Cemetery. Undertakers John McKeegan and Brendan Hynes, dressed in their protective suits, wheeled his remains along a narrow path to the family plot. Daughter Valerie Trotter told The Impartial Reporter: "I feel empty. I just wish it was something else that took him and not this terrible virus. We understand why we can't have a proper funeral service but it's just so difficult for the family." Valerie explained that she and her sisters Audrey Carson and Dorothy McManus had to wait 48 hours to find out if their father had died from coronavirus. "We got the call from the hospital when the test results came back and it has been terrible ever since," she added. "I thought to myself that he had it, it was in the back of my mind, but it's still a shock." Mr McManus died of Covid-19 last Wednesday having also been diagnosed with double pneumonia. Valerie added: "He was a wonderful father and grandfather. "He was just the best and couldn't do enough for you. "He was always there at times of trouble; he was there for us, each and every one of us." A US commission on international religious freedom on Monday said it is 'troubled' by the reports of food being denied to the Hindu and Christian minority communities in Pakistan amidst the spread of COVID-19 in the country. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Commissioner Anurima Bhargava said "these actions are simply reprehensible". As COVID-19 continues to spread, vulnerable communities within Pakistan are fighting hunger and to keep their families safe and healthy, food aid must not be denied because of one's faith. We urge the Pakistani government to ensure that food aid from distributing organizations is shared equally with Hindus, Christians, and other religions minorities," Bhargava said. In Karachi, there have been reports that the Saylani Welfare International Trust, a non-government organisation established to assist the homeless and seasonal workers, has been refusing food assistance to Hindus and Christians, arguing that the aid is reserved for Muslims alone. USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore said, In a recent address by Prime Minister (Imran) Khan to the international community, he highlighted that the challenge facing governments in the developing world is to save people from dying of hunger while also trying to halt the spread of COVID-19. This is a monumental task laying before many countries. Prime Minister Khan's government has the opportunity to lead the way but they must not leave religious minorities behind. Otherwise, they may add on top of it all one more crisis, created by religious discrimination and inter-communal strife. In its 2019 Annual Report, the USCIRF noted that Hindus and Christians in Pakistan face continued threats to their security and are subject to various forms of harassment and social exclusion. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chinese Ambassador Xu Erwen (2nd L) and Croatian Health Minister Vili Beros (2nd R) pose with medical supplies from China in Zagreb, Croatia, April 12, 2020. A cargo aircraft from Shanghai carrying about 60 tons of medical supplies, including 3.7 tons donated by the Chinese government to Croatia, landed at the Franjo Tudman International Airport here on Sunday morning. (Xinhua/Gao Lei) ZAGREB, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A cargo aircraft from Shanghai carrying about 60 tons of medical supplies, including 3.7 tons donated by the Chinese government to Croatia, landed at the Franjo Tudman International Airport here on Sunday morning. Through cooperation with Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical companies, MEHECO and SINOPHARM, the Croatian government has purchased large quantities of protective equipment for fighting against COVID-19, making it the largest shipment of medical supplies from China since the outbreak of the pandemic in Croatia. The Chinese donations onboard the direct cargo flight includes N95 face masks, surgical masks, disposable protective suits and single-use rubber surgical gloves, all in boxes labeled with national flags of China and Croatia and the words "a friend in need is a friend indeed" in both languages. "Today's shipment is another example of quality and concrete cooperation between Croatia and China," the Croatian government said on Sunday in a press release. Chinese Ambassador Xu Erwen, who went to the airport with Croatian Health Minister Vili Beros and the Head of the Prime Minister's Office Zvonimir Frka-Petesic, said that during the most difficult period when China was fighting against COVID-19 epidemic, the Croatian government and people immediately sent condolences and support to China. "We deeply cherish this friendship and will remember it forever...We are willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with the Croatian side in the fight against the epidemic. More support and assistance are also coming from some Chinese companies and local governments," said Xu. Since the first case of COVID-19 in the southeastern European country was confirmed on Feb. 25, Croatia has recorded 1,600 cases as of Sunday afternoon, while 373 patients have been cured and 23 succumbed to the disease, according to government website dedicated to the outbreak koronavirus. As countries across Europe start to ease themselves out of lockdown, there is a growing recognition in Boris Johnsons Cabinet that it, too, will have to make some hard decisions in the coming days. Of course, in terms of infection rates, Britain remains some weeks behind European countries such as Italy and Spain. But even so, two camps are starting to emerge among the Prime Ministers colleagues and advisers: the hawks and the doves. Now that Boris has left hospital, the disagreement between the two factions is starting to heat up The hawks, spurred on by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, see a return to normality as an urgent necessity to avoid permanent economic damage to Britain. Meanwhile, doves such as Health Secretary Matt Hancock fear a return of the pandemic and insist that social distancing rules must remain in force long after the infection curve flattens. Now that Boris has left hospital, the disagreement between the two factions is starting to heat up. The hawks, spurred on by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, see a return to normality as an urgent necessity to avoid permanent economic damage to Britain For while they are all concerned that he obeys doctors orders and rests up, they are equally interested to know whether Boris, after experiencing the viciousness of coronavirus first-hand, is as committed as he was before to relaxing the unprecedented lockdown. To discern which side Boris is leaning towards, we need only look at two of the first calls he made after leaving intensive care. They were to Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary who has been deputising for him, and Mr Hancock both leading doves in the Cabinet. At yesterdays Downing Street press conference, Mr Raab made it clear which side of the debate he stands on Meanwhile, doves such as Health Secretary Matt Hancock fear a return of the pandemic and insist that social distancing rules must remain in force long after the infection curve flattens Indeed, at yesterdays Downing Street press conference, Mr Raab made it clear which side of the debate he stands on. He said: We have to keep social distancing in place. There will come a time in the future when we can talk about relaxation or transition but we are not there now. One senior Whitehall source sympathetic to the doves explained: Our entire strategy is to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed, to ensure patients arent dying on trolleys in hospital corridors or at home alone because of a shortage of NHS beds. We cant risk all that by ending the lockdown, which has broad public support. Asked about the Prime Ministers view, the source added: I think its fair to speculate when you have your life saved by the NHS that he may now be completely signed up to that view. The hawk has become a dove. If true, it would be a monumental U-turn for the Prime Minister, a lifelong libertarian who was once one of the most hawkish Cabinet members, along with Mr Sunak, Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, and Home Secretary Priti Patel. It would be a monumental U-turn for the Prime Minister, a lifelong libertarian who was once one of the most hawkish Cabinet members, along with Mr Sunak, Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, and Home Secretary Priti Patel Michael Gove, who like Mr Raab fought Boris for the leadership last year, is also remaining loyal. Hes not a hawk or a dove, hes with the PM, a source claimed As one ministerial source put it: Boris wasnt so much a hawk about lifting the lockdown, he was the Cabinets golden eagle. This may explain why its rumoured that Boris has had no personal contact with the hawkish Mr Sunak. Describing the Chancellors outlook, one source said: Not only will it be economic Armageddon, Sunak fears a terrible impact on mental health and families when unemployment soars and businesses start folding. But for all their differences, there is some agreement among the hawks and doves that schools should reopen by the summer half term. One senior minister said: I think we are at one on this. If it is possible we will start getting schools open, but it depends on the medical evidence. Whatever the truth, as Boris convalesces at Chequers, his country residence, he knows that Mr Raab is quietly enforcing his wishes. Michael Gove, who like Mr Raab fought Boris for the leadership last year, is also remaining loyal. Hes not a hawk or a dove, hes with the PM, a source claimed. And so for the next three weeks at least, the doves in the Cabinet will be confident they can hold sway. But one well-placed source says: Boris will make the final decision. Two weeks ago Boris the hawk would have decided. Now Im not so sure. Israel's president on Sunday rejected parliament speaker Benny Gantz's request for more time to form a government, a task that could now fall to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ex-military chief Gantz was given the mandate to form a government four weeks ago by President Reuven Rivlin following Israel's March 2 election, the country's third inconclusive vote within a year. But Gantz's prospects for forming a stable coalition were always remote given deep divisions within the anti-Netanyahu camp. The pro-Netanyahu bloc, including the veteran premier's right-wing Likud and several religious parties, also remained short of a majority after last month's vote. In a surprise move last month, Gantz was elected speaker of Israel's parliament, or Knesset. With the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Israel rising, he pledged to use that powerful position to seek an emergency unity alliance with Netanyahu to tackle the pandemic and unblock a grinding year-long political stalemate. While Gantz's mandate to form a government technically runs until the end of Monday, he was no longer actively seeking to forge a coalition with himself as prime minister. Instead, he was widely believed to be pursuing a deal that would see Netanyahu remain as premier for a defined period, possibly then handing power to Gantz. Despite reports of progress from the two sides -- and from Israeli media -- no deal has been announced. Late Saturday, Gantz asked Rivlin for an extension of his mandate. In response, Rivlin told Gantz "that in the current circumstances no extension would be possible", a statement from the president's office said. "The president made his decision after also speaking to ... Netanyahu, who did not confirm in their conversation that the parties are close to signing an agreement that would lead to a unity government," the statement said. - Unity talks 'ongoing' - If no unity agreement is reached by the end of Monday, Rivlin said he would ask the Knesset to nominate a candidate to become prime minister. The Netanyahu bloc currently holds 59 of the Knesset's 120 seats. It is therefore possible, but not certain, that the legislature would give the premier a 14-day window to form a government. Blue and White, the centrist alliance led by Gantz, said in a statement that "the attempts by the negotiating teams to arrive at a unity government are still ongoing". Likud said it too remained open to forming a unity government. But it also urged Rivlin to give Netanyahu a full four weeks to form a coalition. Likud stressed that the president gave both Netanyahu and Gantz a chance to build a government following the inconclusive votes in September, and should do so again. But with Israel's confirmed COVID-19 caseload nearing 11,000, there remain widespread calls from across the political spectrum for a unity alliance, even for a short term. University of Tel Aviv political science professor Emmanuel Navon told AFP that "a unity government remains the most likely option." But, he added, any number of scenarios could play out, including a fourth election. Netanyahu, in office since 2009, is Israel's longest-serving premier and the first to be indicted while in office. The premier denies charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, filed against him in January. Netanyahu critics have charged the premier will stop at nothing to make the indictments disappear, including pushing for a fourth vote in the hope of finally gaining a parliamentary majority that could push through legislation granting him immunity from prosecution. As Navon noted, the latest polls indicate Likud could "emerge as the big winner" if another election were to be called, partly due to generally favourable views of Netanyahu's handling of the pandemic. People wear protective masks line up to buy masks at a department store in Seoul, South Korea, on March 2, 2020. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) CCP Virus May Have Reactivated in 116 Patients Who Recovered: South Korean Official More than 100 South Koreans who fully recovered from COVID-19 have tested positive again, said officials in a Monday update. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, may have reactivated in 116 patients, health officials said, reported Reuters. Jeong Eun-Kyeong, the head of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the virus may have reactivated after staying dormant in the patients instead of those patients having been reinfected with COVID-19. Last week, South Korea reported there were 51 cases of patients re-testing positive for the CCP virus. A couple wearing masks to protect against contracting the COVID-19 walk along a street in Seoul, South Korea, on April 3, 2020. (Heo Ran/Reuters) Prime Minister Chung Sye-Kyun said the government is aiming to lift some of the countrys stay-at-home regulations, which are in effect until April 19. We need a very cautious approach because any premature easing of social distancing could bring irreversible consequences, and have to ponder deeply about when and how we switch to the new system, he said, reported Reuters World Health Organization (WHO) officials said Monday that not all people who have recovered from the virus have developed antibodies to fight off a second infection, raising fears that they will not gain immunity after surviving COVID-19. With regards to recovery and then re-infection, I believe we do not have the answers to that. That is an unknown, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHOs emergencies program, told reporters on Monday. Ryan noted that its not clear whether the virus can reactivate after a CCP virus patient recovers and tests negative. There are many reasons why we might see reactivation of infection either with the same infection or another infectious agent, he said, adding that there have been many situations in viral infection where someone doesnt clear the virus entirely from their system. Archie Clements, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Curtin University in Perth, Australia, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the growing number of people testing positive for COVID-19 again could suggest there is no perfect test available. I think what is very, very unlikely is that these people are being reinfected by other people, said Clements. Theres plenty of evidence to suggest that there is quite a strong immune response to infection with coronavirus, and that should protect people from infection for a period of time. Whats not currently known is for how long. Twenty-five new cases of the virus were detected in South Korea on Sunday, officials told Yonhap. The total of those who have been infected stands at more than 10,537. New Delhi, April 13 : Bharti Airtel on Monday announced a collaboration with Apollo 24-7 the digital business unit of the Apollo Hospitals Group to support Indias battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. The partnership aims to bring together Airtel's pan-India network reach and Apollo Hospital's digital healthcare platform to raise awareness and break the chain of spread of COVID-19, an Airtel statement said. Under the initiative Apollo 24-7 has launched a free digital self-assessment test on Airtel Thanks app to enable its customers to check their COVID-19 risk profile. The test, which has been developed by Apollo 24-7, uses artificial intelligence-based technologies to allow users to assess their COVID-19 risk profile by answering a few simple questions. "Based on the user responses, the digital tool generates a risk score and suggests next best action including online consults on Apollo 24-7 free, dialling COVID non-prescriptive helpline from the app itself, self-care tips, social distancing guidelines and other important prevention steps as suggested by WHO and MOHFW," it said. Apollo 24-7free COVID helpline has over 100 Apollo expert doctors answering questions and clearing doubts of all those who are taking the scan, it added. Shobana Kamineni, Executive Vice Chairperson of The Apollo Hospitals Group said: "Apollo 24-7 truly empowers individuals to protect their health. With the free COVID-19 scan AI tool, Airtel customers across India will get validated data and Apollo's resources to take care of their health, well-being and safety. Our association with Airtel should help us touch more lives." Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia) Bharti Airtel said: "These are unprecedented times and we are working hard with our partners such as Apollo 24-7 to leverage digital technologies to help the nation." While securing a phased success in curbing the COVID-19 epidemic at home, China has taken several measures that give it a vital role to play in stabilizing global industry chains. Workers manufacture elevator parts for export at a factory of Yida Express Elevator Co., Ltd. in Nanxun Economic Development Zone, Huzhou, east Chinas Zhejiang province. (Photo/Zhang Bin) As the worlds second largest economy, largest industrial producer and largest trader of goods, China has accelerated the orderly resumption of work and production, and rolled out policies to maintain stability in foreign trade. Work and production resumption of foreign trade firms in China has been progressing in an orderly manner, said Gao Feng, spokesperson of the countrys Ministry of Commerce, at a recent online press conference. More than 76 percent of key firms in the sector have so far recovered over 70 percent of their production capacity, Gao said, adding that in March, the sub-indexes of the official manufacturing purchasing managers index that gauges new export orders and imports were 17.7 percentage points and 16.5 percentage points higher than that of the previous month, respectively. Helping enterprises bring in overseas orders is a key part of the current raft of foreign trade policies, according to the ministry. To this end, the ministry will conduct a survey of more than 400,000 foreign enterprises, learning from their actual situations during the resumption of work and production while also coming to understand problems faced by micro, small, and medium-sized businesses. Local governments across the country have also taken steps to boost foreign trade. In southeast Chinas Fujian province, port construction fees levied on importers and exporters will be waived from March 1 to June 30, and cargo port fees and port facility security fees will be cut by 20 percent. East Chinas Jiangxi province has launched targeted measures to tide foreign trade companies over, including support for work resumption, market exploration, as well as credit insurance and loans. Despite the pandemic, instead of closing its doors, China will open wider to the outside world, which will translate into strong support for the foreign trade sector, Chinese Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan noted. As a result, the country is calling on its trade partners to join hands to refine the international chains of industry and of logistics, and lower tariffs and barriers. At the same time as taking resolute measures to contain the virus, China has also rolled out multiple policies to support enterprises in resuming work and production, fulfilling its responsibility as a key global player, said Arturo Oropeza Garcia, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who believes that China will make greater contributions to boosting global trade growth. SPRINGFIELD -- Hospitals across Massachusetts will receive more than $841 million in federal funds under the CARES Act Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal announced Monday. The $841 million, sent Friday to 8,746 health care providers , includes $32.1 million for Springfield based Baystate Health. Neal, D-Springfield, is chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways & Means. Nationally, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services distributed $30 billion to more than 318,000 health care providers nationally in what's expected to be only the first of a series of payments. The money is meant to patch budgets ravaged by the impact of coronavirus, patients afflicted by it and by the loss of revenue from health care procedures that can't happen due to stay-at-home and shutdown orders meant to arrest its spread. Hospitals and other health care providers in Massachusetts are experiencing tremendous strain as they respond to the COVID-19 crisis and care for an influx of extremely sick patients, said Congressman Neal. This infusion of federal funds will help providers stay afloat during the unprecedented coronavirus emergency and get the resources they need to keep frontline health care workers safe. Im proud to have been an author of the CARES Act, and I will continue to support our states health care providers as Congress crafts additional COVID-19 response legislation. The federal government is dividing the money among providers based on the providers share of total Medicare fee-for-service reimbursements in 2019. This explains why Baystate, the regions largest provider of those services, is getting the biggest chunk of money. Baystate Health spokeswoman Shelly Hazlett said on Monday that the money will only be used on activities related to fighting COVID-19. Last week, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced more than $800 million in aid from the state to hospitals. According to a news release, the majority of this funding will support 28 safety net and high-Medicaid hospitals, to address lost revenue and increased costs for hospitals treating patients with COVID-19. Hospitals, including Trinity Health New England, owners of Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, have announced layoffs of workers from departments not dealing with coronavirus response in order to balance their new budgets. Neal said in a news release that among those recipients in the First District are: Berkshire Health Systems - $15,000,000 Baystate Health $32,100,000 Harrington Hospital $2,400,000 Mercy Medical Center $5,700,000 Holyoke Medical Center $2,900,000 A state-by-state breakdown of the delivery of the initial $30 billion of CARES Act Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund is available HERE. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package passed and signed into law in March includes $454 billion in guaranteed subsidized loans to larger industries and $150 billion for the nations health care system. Related Content: A drug dealer in a high-vis outfit pretended to be a 'key worker' when stopped by police amid the coronavirus lockdown - only for officers to discover 57,000 of cocaine in his car. Benjamin Evans, 26, was pulled over by police in the early hours of the morning last Monday on the A40, near Brecon, Powys in Wales and and told officers he had been out all night working. However, suspicious officers searched his blue Ford Focus and found a parcel containing a huge stash of cocaine. The large package was wrapped in brown sellotape with the value of the drugs inside approximately 57,000. Benjamin Evans, 26, was pulled over by police in the early hours of the morning last Monday on the A40, near Brecon, Powys in Wales A spokeswoman for Dyfed Powys Police said police pulled Evans' car over on the A40 near Brecon, Powys for a routine lockdown stop. She said: 'Evans, the driver of the vehicle, was wearing high visibility work clothing and said he was on the way home after working all night as a key worker. 'Acting on previous intelligence Evans was arrested for drug offences. 'Police searched the vehicle and found a large package wrapped in brown tape with which was later confirmed to cocaine, to the estimated value of around 57,000. 'He was charged with the offence and remanded to appear in court.' Evans, of Ystradgynlais, near Swansea, admitted possessing class A drugs with intent to supply at Swansea Crown Court. He was remanded in custody to be sentenced next month. Suspicious officers searched his blue Ford Focus and found a parcel containing a huge stash of cocaine, worth 57,000 (stock image) Speaking after the hearing DI Steve Lloyd said: 'This is an excellent result for the Ystradgynlais community. Trying to pass himself off as a key worker did not succeed. 'Possessing drugs with the intent to supply does not qualify as essential work. I hope this will serve as a warning to others who wish to bring drugs into the Powys area that it will not be tolerated. We want to let potential criminals know that it is business as usual and we will continue to pursue those who target some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. 'I would like to thank all the staff who worked together to quickly bring this case to court resulting in a guilty plea. 'This result will go a long way to keeping our communities safe. If anyone is worried about drugs in their community I would urge them to contact police and we will take the appropriate action. 'To report anything suspicious or concerns about the selling and taking of drugs in the community click here to report online, or call 101. To report information anonymously, call the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.' NEW YORK, NY APRIL 04: A view outside McDonalds in Murray Hill during the coronavirus pandemic on April 4, 2020 in New York City. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has spread to at least 180 countries and territories across the world, claiming over 60,000 lives and infecting hundreds of thousands more. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images) On Monday, two women in Sanford, Florida filed a $500 million sexual harassment lawsuit against McDonalds, in hopes of addressing the companys alleged systemic sexual harassment problem. Jamelia Fairley, 24, who currently works at the Sanford, Florida location and Ashley Reddick, 28, a former employee, filed their class action lawsuit at a federal court in Chicago, Illinois, where McDonalds headquarters is located. According to a press release detailing their suit, the two plaintiffs are seeking damages on behalf of not only themselves, but 5,000 women working at more than 100 corporate-run McDonalds restaurants in Florida as of 2016. Its unacceptable that as the second-largest employer in the country, McDonalds is failing to keep workers like me and Ashley safe from harassment, Fairley said in a statement provided to Refinery29 on Monday. No one should have to go through what weve been through. But were strong, and together we have a voice. Were using that voice to hold McDonalds accountable. Both Fairley and Reddick are receiving legal assistance from the TIMES UP Legal Defense Fund, who are helping to navigate the course of the lawsuit. According to the plantiffs allegations, both were subjected to unwanted sexual harassment by their male coworkers while on the job. The suit details both verbal harassment including sexually explicit comments and physical abuse, citing instances of groping and unwanted contact. Fairley noted that, when she brought the instances up to her manager, her hours were cut. Reddick also claims to have lost out on shifts when she brought her own harassment to light. But, this isnt the first time that the company has seen claims like this. The fast-food chain has been hit with more than 50 sexual harassment complaints in the last three years alone. McDonalds puts profits above people, protecting harassers so long as they keep flipping burgers, rather than protecting women workers subjected to unwelcome and offensive verbal and physical abuse, the complaint reads. Story continues In 2019, Fairley and Reddick filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who dismissed the allegations in January. Both women were given 90 days to sue the company and are now taking more serious action and seeking damages on a larger scale. Were not the only ones who have been sexually harassed while on the job at McDonalds in our store, in Florida, and across the country, Reddick said in a statement. This is a nation-wide problem, the company has known about it for years and we wont stop speaking out until McDonalds listens to us. McDonalds USA said in a statement to Refinery29 that the company has always been committed to ensuring that our employees are able to work in an environment that is free from all forms of discrimination and harassment. McDonalds is demonstrating its continued commitment to this issue through the implementation of Safe and Respectful Workplace Training in 100% of our corporate-owned restaurants and encourages our franchisees to do the same. Acknowledging the lawsuit directly, they noted that The plaintiffs allegations of harassment and retaliation were investigated as soon as they were brought to our attention, and we will likewise investigate the new allegations that they have raised in their complaint. The company also highlighted its recent steps towards acknowledging the issue of harassment, including a beefed-up discrimination, harassment, and retaliation prevention policy enacted in January 2019. In the last year, McDonalds has also been called out by multiple political figureheads, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth, to address their culture of harassment more head on. Now, the two plaintiffs are refusing to go unnoticed and the TIMES UP fund is supporting their measures. It is past time for McDonalds to be held accountable for the rampant sexual harassment faced by their workers, not just in Florida but throughout the country, said Sharyn Tejani, Director of the TIMES UP Legal Defense Fund. The TIMES UP Legal Defense Fund is proud to fund this suit and join in solidarity with the brave women who risked their jobs to bring these allegations forward. Its time, McDonalds, to support your employees, put their safety first, and put an end to this scourge. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here? Why The #MeToo Movement Still Has A Lot Left To Do A Comprehensive History Of #MeToo How #MeToo Changed Creator Tarana Burke's Life The attorneys first sought relief from ICE, which has the discretion to release people from its custody. But ICE denied the requests for at least two of the men, according to court records. The petitions filed in U.S. District Court for the men were sealed, meaning the public couldnt access them, but the center provided redacted versions of the petitions. One year ago, scientists captured the unphotographable when the Event Horizon Telescope unveiled a fiery orange ring on a black background that became instantly recognizable. Behold, the first photo of a black hole. The black hole in that image lurks at the heart of a galaxy known as M87, which is the sort of moniker modern astronomers use to name what they study. The black hole doesn't even get its own name, independent of the galaxy that surrounds it. It's a, let's say, abstruse way to refer to an object containing billions of times the mass of our sun packed together unimaginably densely. A program affiliated with one of the sites involved in the discovery quickly offered an alternative name, Powehi, and a new way of thinking about how astronomers could reflect the communities they work within. The program, A Hua He Inoa , is based on Hawaii Island and is the brainchild of John De Fries, a native Hawaiian who was inspired to create a new way for Hawaiians to relate to the astronomy research conducted by the dozen observatories atop the volcano Maunakea . The site is marked by contention between scientists who value its pristine observing conditions and native Hawaiians who consider the peak sacred. De Fries, who is president of the Native Sun Business Group, realized that a naming program could help foster communication and respect between the groups tied to the mountaintop. Related: Eureka! Scientists photograph a black hole for the 1st time "My Hawaiian ancestors treated astronomy as a sacred science, which is not unusual for native people," De Fries told Space.com in January at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society . "The naming, for me, was about elevating the work on Maunakea, to become closer to becoming a sacred science." In 2017, De Fries sent a memo to the Hawaiian cultural group that advises the Maunakea Observatories outlining his vision for a naming program, and a working group was assembled to meet in early 2018. Then, the universe intervened: an interstellar object hurtled through our solar system and, for the first time ever, scientists spotted it. The telescope that made the discovery, called Pan-STARRS, is located on a different Hawaiian mountaintop on a different island, but the team decided the occasion was worth meeting. As a result, the object was dubbed 'Oumuamua , which is typically translated as "visitor from afar arriving first." The International Astronomical Union (IAU), which oversees all official names for solar system objects, recognized the name about a month after 'Oumuamua's discovery. What to call a black hole By the time scientists released the black hole image, the working group was up and running. Among the eight Event Horizon Telescope observatories involved in the data collection, which took place in 2017, were two facilities on the summit of Maunakea: the East Asian Observatory's James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Submillimeter Array. After discussions, the working group came up with the name Powehi (pronounced poh-VEH-hee). The name reflects the way astronomers needed to capture the halo of light surrounding the black hole in order to "see" the object itself, or rather its shadow, and can be translated as "embellished source of unending creation," according to a statement from the University of Hawaii , which oversees the astronomy district atop Maunakea. The name was suggested by native Hawaiian speaker Larry Kimura based on his studies of the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian creation chant. Related: The biggest black hole findings of 2019 Unlike 'Oumuamua, the name Powehi has not been recognized by the IAU , but that doesn't faze De Fries. "Whether the IAU certifies these names or not, we in Hawaii, these will be our names," he said. "It'd be great to get global acceptance and recognition and have that be the global standard, but if we don't achieve that the names are still ours." De Fries said that he hopes Powehi is just the first of many names for the world-famous black hole. He and others associated with the naming project attended a conference held by the Event Horizon Telescope in late 2019, where he said he suggested that astronomers with the project explore similar partnerships with the local communities surrounding other observatories . "Because of the unique make-up of your group, maybe the things that you do collectively may end up with eight different names, and I would encourage you to turn to the indigenous people of your areas on the planet and invite them into a process," he said. "Because your equipment, your instruments tend to be on the tallest mountain in the area, you are on somebody's sacred site. So just come to grips with that." Hawaii's space legacy In addition to 'Oumuamua and Powehi, the A Hua He Inoa program has facilitated the naming process for four other objects, three asteroids and a quasar. For those names, the program brought together Hawaiian language and culture experts, scientists involved in the research and native Hawaiian children to have a conversation about what aspects of Hawaiian culture the specific object reflects. Those are conversations that deeply affect both the scientists and the children, Ka'iu Kimura, executive director of the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center , a museum and cultural center based in Hilo, Hawaii, that helps run the program, told Space.com at the same meeting in January. She said such conversations are particularly important given the contention surrounding Maunakea. (A group of native Hawaiians spent eight months blocking construction access on the mountain to a massive new observatory, the Thirty Meter Telescope, retreating this spring only because of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health measures designed to slow the virus.) Related: The Thirty Meter Telescope: How a volcano in Hawaii became a battleground for astronomy Students who have taken part in the A Hua He Inoa program "may have conflicted feelings of astronomy in general on Maunakea, but despite all of that, they verbalize their appreciation for the knowledge that astronomy has helped to connect them with, knowledge that is documented in very old records our people have passed on," Kimura said. "For them to make that connection and then be able to contribute in their own way through a name is huge." Neither Kimura nor De Fries suggests that Hawaiian names for discoveries made with such instruments will be enough to address the controversy surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope or other tensions between astronomers and native Hawaiians. "This naming initiative for me is no less an act of self-determination, it's no less a form of activism for me," De Fries said. "Who would have the audacity to come in and tell astronomers, 'You've got to start thinking about doing this'? For me, it is about taking ownership of it as a native Hawaiian in Hawaii on topics that are important. I'm okay with using contemporary tools to achieve traditional practices at a higher level." Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels . Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook . The coronavirus pandemic isnt just an inconvenience for many of the Lehigh Valleys college students. Its left them teetering on the edge financially, putting their academic studies in jeopardy. The regions colleges and universities have responded by creating student support funds that higher ed officials can tap to help students with urgent financial needs, like buying an e-textbook or getting a reliable internet connection. At South Bethlehems Lehigh University, the fund has raised almost $35,000 to-date to assist students. Moravian College shifted its day of giving in response to the crisis into the Time of Caring fundraiser. It raised almost $135,000, including a Helping Hounds fund to immediately assist students and their families. Muhlenberg College in Allentown also has a student emergency aid fund. The Valleys largest school, Northampton Community Colleges raised almost $55,000 for its Spartan Aid fund, said Sharon Beales, vice president of institutional advancement. Almost $30,000 of that came from our faculty and staff, Beales said. We had an amazing response from our community. After deciding to cancel its annual Food and Wine Festival at Wind Creek Bethlehem, scheduled for June, the college gave sponsors a chance to move to next year. Many chose to donate to the Spartan Aid fund, Beales said. About half of NCC students rely on financial aid and a sizable chunk of the student body works -- many full time -- while juggling their course load, so the school knew there would be great need after the campus shut down, said Maryann Haytmanek, project director for the aid program. We serve some of the most vulnerable populations in the Lehigh Valley as a community college, Beales said, noting in one week 221 requests for help came in. Many of these students work in service industry jobs that dried up when Gov. Tom Wolf shut down the states non-essential businesses. Others who still have jobs suddenly have no childcare, leaving them with untenable choices, Haytmanek said. We just had a tremendous amount of students become unemployed overnight, Beales said. Students are worried about making rent, finding food, getting online and continuing their studies. Haytmanek helps them navigate these issues, directing them to food pantries and companies that are hiring, showing them how to sign up for food stamps and other community resources via the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley. The Spartan Aid fund is used to help students bridge those financial gaps. Before the coronavirus outbreak, the fund might help a student pay for an emergency car repair so they can still get to campus. Now, Spartan Aid might help a student bridge the gap before they can collect unemployment for the first time or help them buy an e-textbook online access code. Students are honest. They are not looking for a handout, Haytmanek said. "They are really trying to get their work done. NCC has bought Chromebooks to loan to students without computer access. The college is opening up its parking lots so students can tap into the WiFi hotspots, but that might not be feasible for someone with small children. Haytmanek is also helping students set up mobile hotspots on their phones or get current with their Internet bill as long as the outstanding balance is within reason. Thanks to a very generous donor, NCC also has a large pot of money to support single parents, which can even be used to help someone pay rent. If you could read some of these requests, its just heartbreaking some people are this close to the edge, Haytmanek said. This $200 is all they need to stay in school and get their degree in two years and never have to depend on any public charity ever again. Shes seen it happen time and again with students. So, Haytmanek is grateful the Lehigh Valley community dug so deep when NCC put out the call. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. If theres anything about this story that needs attention, please email her. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Gov. Kay Ivey stated that she supports and accepts the courts findings. As an elected official, our first priority is to be above reproach and avoid even the appearance of misconduct and abuse of office, she said in a statement. I support seeking clarity on our states ethics laws to ensure those who want to abide by them may not be unfairly targeted. However, let me be abundantly clear, I do not support weakening a system that is meant to hold our elected officials accountable. The rule of law must be upheld. The Opelika-Auburn News reached out to Hubbards lawyers but they did not respond to request for comment. Gov. Kay Iveys statement : Todays ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court is the culmination of four years of deliberation, and I support and accept their findings. As an elected official, our first priority is to be above reproach and avoid even the appearance of misconduct and abuse of office. Mumbai police on Monday said a large number of vehicles have been seized while trying to enter the metropolis without authorisation during the lockdown in place for the novel coronavirus. The city has five entry points in Dahisar, Mulund and Mankhurd, officials said. "We seized 40 two-wheelers, 11 autorickshaws, five tempos and three trucks since the lockdown began. We have acted against 46 people in this connection," said Inspector Mohammad Mujawar of Dahisar police station. Mankhurd Senior Inspector Prakash Chaughule said his police station had apprehended 10 vehicles while Senior Inspector Sanjeev Dhumal of Vashi police station, part of the Mavi Mumbai commissionerate, said 70 vehicles had been seized at the toll post under its jurisdiction, and 200 people were being fined on an average every day. Navghar Division Assistant Commissioner P Shinde said 100 vehicles have been seized during the lockdown at entry points in Mulund and Navghar police station limits. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The rapid testing kits, which were supposed to be here on April 5, and then April 10, will now be here by April 15, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Monday, commenting on what could well be the lynchpin of the next phase of Indias strategy to combat the coronavirus disease -- widespread (and rapid) testing, not just in hot spots and containment zones but also areas relatively free of the virus. Called Rapid Test Kits, or RTKs, these are blood tests that search for antibodies in the sample of those tested a positive test means the person is or has been infected by the virus. Apart from being a fast way to identify the extent of infections in clusters, countries around the world are looking to use these tests to determine who has immunity to the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. As such, they are in demand everywhere. Unlike the RT-PCR tests currently in use, which take up to five hours to throw up a result, RTKs give out results in 30 minutes. However, ICMRs protocol requires a confirmatory RT-PCR test to back up a negative RTK result. We cannot comment on whether our Chinese consignment of rapid testing kits got diverted to the US or somewhere else because we neither maintain commercial data nor are we manufacturers who would know where our supplies are going. Kits are coming from China, and we have been told some of the kits should reach us by April 15, said Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar, head, division of epidemiology and communicable disease, ICMR. An ICMR official who asked not to be named said that after many kits failed quality tests, the Chinese regulator, National Medical Products Administration, restricted exports, allowing only five to six companies to sell them. Quality control is important as there is no point in getting a product and then realising it is of no use. The products from China have to be cleared by their local regulator and we will also conduct tests on batches to check their accuracy on a random basis, added this person. In addition to the order for 500,000 kits that has already been placed, ICMR raised a tender on April 11 for 4.5 million more rapid testing kits to be delivered in batches. The plan is to have the first batch in by May 1 and the final batch latest by May 31. India ordered 500,000 kits from Chinese suppliers on March 30, and in anticipation of the arrival of the kits first on April 5, India issued an advisory on starting rapid antibody testing on April 4, and revised the testing guidelines on April 9 to include rapid testing of all symptomatic individuals in hot spot areas with symptoms at least a week old. In addition, several Indian states have also placed orders for RTKs. Tamil Nadu, for instance, awaits 400,000 RTKs from China in order to scale up testing across the state The consignment which was to come to India is not for Tamil Nadu alone. Reports from the vendors side suggest seven lakh kits (700,000) were supposed to be shipped out, of which five lakh was for the government of India, one lakh for Tamil Nadu and another one lakh for other states. Unfortunately, due to some issues, these never made it out of China, a state government official said on condition of anonymity. Tamil Nadu health secretary Beela Rajesh said on Monday that the kits were expected to reach the state within two days, but Tamil Nadu has already expanded its testing pool using existing RT-PCR tests. We have ordered rapid test kits that will serve as a screening and surveillance tool. We have already ordered four lakh kits, and they will reach us in a day or two. But we are not waiting for that [to scale up screening]. The confirmatory test is our PCR test and that is now deployed as part of a large-scale massive testing. On Saturday, Tamil Nadu chief secretary K Shanmugam told reporters that China had diverted kits meant for India to the US. HLL Lifecare Limited, a public sector company whose rapid antibody testing kit is approved by ICMR, will start manufacturing kits this week and may be able to deliver some to the government for large-scale testing in the community by the end of the week. But other domestic manufacturers are dependent on China for some components to manufacture these kits, and constrained by an embargo on exports of these components. On April 10, the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, said eight antibody-based rapid tests have been validated and found satisfactory by the facility. Some of those test kits are made by Indian manufacturers. HLL got a clearance from Indian Council of Medical Research, National Institute of Virology, Pune to manufacture rapid antibody testing kits but we were awaiting a license from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) which we have received today. Manufacturing is likely to start in the next three to four days in our Manesar plant. In the initial phase, we plan to manufacture two million kits till May 30, said an HLL executive who asked not to be named. A member of the Association of Diagnostics Manufacturers of India (ADMI), a body representing testing kit manufacturers, said some of the important components for the kits are imported from China. China has an embargo on exports now. This has slowed down manufacturing of these kits in India. The process takes time, if your order hasnt been delivered by a vendor, you will have to then look for other vendors. Logistics are not at their best now. Dr Tarun Bhatnagar, epidemiologist, ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology, said: Antibody testing will not tell us who is currently infected. It will tell us who has been infected in the past. Generally, antibodies are developed five to seven days after contracting the infection. If people test positive, it tells us that they were exposed to the virus sometime in the past and developed no symptoms or very mild symptoms. Firstly, such testing tells us how widespread the infection is in the community and how large is the proportion of asymptomatic patients because infection spreads more from a person who is symptomatic. It tells us what is more common, mild symptoms or severe. Antibody tests are required to understand the virus. It is a surveillance tool and is cheaper than RT-PCR (which detects active infection). Veena Kohli, CEO of Vanguard Diagnostics Limited, which has also been validated for manufacturing of these kits and president of ADMI, said: The Indian diagnostics manufacturers are working earnestly towards making the detection kits available for the screening of Covid-19 infection. Depending on the assay design of the manufacturers product, each kit has some imported and some indigenous components. A majority of these components including antibodies and antigens are imported from China. As we are given to understand, the Chinese government has slowed down the process of export. The Indian manufacturers are also developing alternative sources of raw materials and components to tide over the current situation. Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) on Monday said it has handed over Rs 2 crore to the Karnataka government to fight coronavirus pandemic. The company said the amount would go into Karnataka Chief Minister's Relief Fund COVID-19 and Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA). "At this hour of crisis,Toyota stands fully committed in support of the communities in overcoming this pandemic which has caused unprecedented distress to humanity," TKM Vice Chairman and Whole-time Director Shekar Viswanathan said in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Moldova's Constitutional Court on Monday rejected the recently enacted coronavirus economic stimulus package, saying the parliament's support was mandatory CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) Moldova's Constitutional Court on Monday rejected the recently enacted coronavirus economic stimulus package, saying the parliament's support was mandatory. The government took over the implementation of the bill after the parliament could not muster enough legislators to meet a quorum. It took effect automatically on April 2. Justice Liuba Sova ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it had been passed "in breach of the legislative procedure." It was immediately voided. Lawmaker Sergiu Litvinenco, who filed the complaint, said the opposition objected to tax changes in the bill that he argued had nothing to do with coronavirus response. Moldova declared a 60-day state of emergency in mid-March to limit the spread of the virus. The eastern European nation had 1,662 confirmed coronavirus cases and 32 deaths as of Sunday. The key Eastern Cluster of the North-South Expressway venture has run aground, prompting the Ministry of Transport to reconsider investment scenarios to improve the bankability of each component project with new alternatives opening and closing the doors for private investment. The North-South Expressway will stretch over an impressive 2,100km The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has raised concerns over the limited state funding for the development of the vital national transport project after the proposal of the Ministry of Transport (MoT) to transform three of the eight public-private partnership (PPP) sections into public investment projects. If approved, the number of totally state-funded sections will jump from three to six, thus increasing total investment and site clearance costs to VND54.36 trillion ($2.36 billion), the MoF said in a recent report to the government. Meanwhile, the countrys mid-term public investment fund approved by the National Assembly (NA) is VND55 trillion ($2.39 billion). This means that there will be no funding left for the five remaining PPP sections in the 2016-2020 period. Moreover, up to now, VND16.59 trillion ($721.3 million) has been allocated for the project, with only VND6.8 trillion ($295.65 million) disbursed, which makes it unlikely that the remaining VND37.77 trillion ($1.64 billion) will be allocated and all the funds can be disbursed during this period. The MoFs concern is reasonable amid the current state budget constraints, although the MoT made the proposal to speed up the three PPP sections. At a recent meeting, the government agreed to the proposal in principle, but it needs to secure the NAs approval before the projects can be kicked off in August. This means that the MoTs proposal the first of three scenarios proves less effective in raising the bankability of the projects. Although the MoT has built second and third scenarios, they are also less feasible. As per the second scenario, the MoT proposes to transform the eight PPP sections into public investment projects, and then transfer the operation rights under operation and maintenance contracts to investors to make returns on the investment. This plan is not bankable because, according to analysis by the MoF, it is already difficult for the state coffers to arrange funding for the proposed three PPPs. If the first scenario is approved, the room for private investors will be narrowed, as fewer projects will be available to the same number of players. If the second scenario is selected, there will be no opportunities left at all, Le Net, lawyer at LNT & Partners, told VIR. Recently, the Ministry of Defence has proposed the prime minister to add its Truong Son Construction Corporation to the priority list of direct contracting to develop the three PPP sections, while the names of many other powerful construction firms under this ministry were also put forward. This makes competition fiercer for construction giants such as Vinaconex, Deo Ca Group, and Tasco JSC. If the third scenario gets the green light, both domestic private and foreign investors will have more opportunities and maybe international giants such as Daewoo, Lotte, and Hyundai can rejoin the race. However, this scenario comes with several risks as project development would depend heavily on the results of bidding to select capable investors. If investors cannot mobilise funding, the whole project could be thrown in jeopardy. The North-South Expressway, which is set to cover 2,100 kilometres, costs VND118.71 trillion ($5.16 billion) and has 11 sub-projects (three of which will be state-funded), is tied down by limited funds allocated from the state budget and difficulties in mobilising private investment due to the lack of supporting legal framework. Both investors and lenders want a guarantee mechanism, minimum revenue commitments, and foreign exchange conversion guarantees all of which are missing from current rules. While the MoT had pinned high hopes on attracting private financiers to join the project by opening international bidding, it had to cancel this because of poor results in the international prequalification round and has been forced to cater to more capable domestic groups. Mobilisation of private investment has proved difficult, as lenders still hesitate to offer loans, making bankability an issue. Build-operate-transfer (BOT) initiatives have been a controversial topic for years in Vietnam because of the high risk of losses and the lack of a completed legal framework and risking-sharing mechanisms. A series of BOT transport schemes with better financial plans than the eight PPP sections were stuck with credit, such as Huu Nghi-Chi Lang, Van Don-Mong Cai, and Trung Luong-My Thuan. Many of them even halted construction for up to two years due to difficulties in accessing loans. To rouse investor and lender interest, all of these problems are required to be solved. Now most stakeholders are pinning high hopes on the draft law on PPP, which will likely be submitted to the NA for approval in May. VIR Bich Thuy Bill clarifies legal authority for in-principle approval of PPP projects Legal authority for approving in principle a Public-private Partnership (PPP) project would be given to the National Assembly or the Prime Minister, according to the bill on PPP investment being crafted by the Ministry of Investment and Planning. Two unions representing workers in Australia's retail industry are at odds over whether non-essential stores should keep their doors open amid the coronavirus pandemic. The stoush highlights debate within unions and businesses over how to balance the economic and health consequences of the virus. Some staff at JB Hi-Fi say they feel unsafe because of COVID-19 while others are happy to be earning an income. Credit:Justin McManus The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) wants retailers to keep their doors open "where and when it is safe" so staff in the battered retail sector, the country's largest private employer, can keep their incomes. But more than 850 JB Hi-Fi employees have signed a petition circulated by the rival Retail and Fast Food Workers' Union (RAFFWU) calling for the consumer electronics retailer to close its stores to protect staff from the virus and continue paying them while they are stood down. A couple of centuries ago, most people thought plague was a punishment from God. We have come a long way from that primitive way of thinking. Modern science has thought us that they were infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Outbreak of pandemics have been with humanity forever. The historical records of pandemics, pre-Justinian, are quite sketchy. However, the Justinian plague has quite good accounts to qualify as the earliest known plague with ample historical records. It claimed the life of, at least, 40% of the areas affected. The bacteria that caused the plague wreaked intermittent havoc right up to the middle of the eighth century. The titanic of all plagues, christened Black Death, reached Europe via the silk route in the middle of the 14th century. The damage it unleashed was horrendous. It wiped out between a third and, in some towns and cities, about 60% of inhabitants. Between the 14th and 17th centuries, there were countless outbreaks, which were equally heart breaking. The most serious in recent memories is the Spanish Flu of 1918. It affected almost a quarter of the world population and claimed between 17 to 50 million lives. Anybody who lived through such devastation will undoubtedly be scarred. And as human beings endowed with functioning brains, all those terrible traumatic experiences from Justinian plague to the Black Death right down to the Spanish Flu, have armed us with enormous wealth of lessons. As a result, the global community has developed prophylactic measures to deal with it and avoid the economic effect of this invisible deadly microbial world. In 1948, from the ashes of the health department of the League of Nations, the World Health Organisation was established. Since then, the biggest pandemic they had to deal with was the 1956 Asian Flu. Though the HIV/AIDS is considered a pandemic, its transmission can easily be tamed if you lead a decent and careful life devoid of promiscuity. So, on the whole, the world has become very effective in controlling pandemics and the record speaks for itself since 2002 SARS, 2009 H1N1, 2012 H3N3v and 2014 Ebola. All of these outbreaks were brought under control due to early detection and aggressive containment measures. The effectiveness of the containment was dependent on the speed at which the outbreak was reported and communicated to the international community. It appears we are doing well and what remains a threat is what evil scientists are doing in laboratories at the behest of their pay masters. Now, regarding the current Wuhan virus outbreak, also known as COVID-19, all the rules were broken by the Chinese Communist Party leadership with WHO supervision. Though the direct source is in dispute, as to whether it came from the wet market or the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab is immaterial. There is no doubt about its Wuhan origin. As early as 31 December 2019, the Taiwanese authorities, as good citizens of the world, shared their findings with the WHO and the Chinese authorities that the Wuhan virus is human to human transferable. It took almost three weeks for the CCP to notify the rest of the world what the Taiwanese government communicated to them 20 days earlier. And this brings me to the crux of my piece. If the virus broke out in late November, by the middle of December the authorities in Wuhan will definitely know about it. But lets give them the benefit of the doubt. If the Taiwanese authority informed them on the 31st of December, which I dont have any reason to doubt, why did it take 20 days before informing the rest of the world? Bar any solid alibi, I submit that the Chinese Communist Party is culpable for this needless mess the world is going through. On 23/01/2020, the CCP ban all flights from Wuhan to any part of China. However, they continued to allow flights from Wuhan to other parts of the world. How smart is that. If this cannot be described as evil and treachery then I dont know what it is. They took aggressive action to curtail the spread of the virus in China, including shutting down school in the whole of China, which means they knew how deadly this virus is. The Chinese Communist Party deliberately exported this dangerous Wuhan virus to every corner of the globe when it should have been a local health problem. This is a biological warfare if you ask me, and I am not mincing my words. If they knew how to shut Wuhan from the rest of mainland China, why did they not shut it from the rest of the world, but kept if opened. And the most irritating aspect, which makes my blood boil, are the lies, the misinformation and the propaganda warfare. Besides, when President Trump imposed the travel ban, they had the incredible shameless guts to complain about it when the horse has already bolted from the stable. What every country pays to WHO is an insurance policy to prevent pandemics like this Wuhan Coronavirus. The rest of the world have been short-changed with an economic bill and psychological damage that runs into tens of trillion dollars. And since the Chinese Communist Party leaderships negligence, in cahoots with WHO, allowed this local health issue to turn into a global pandemic, they will have to pick up the cost. I am just a small fry, but the locusts are coming. I will advise the CCP to talk to their lawyers for mitigation, then their bankers. The world cant take this blatant wilful negligence anymore. If they want to remain poor, like Mao dragged them through for a quarter of a century, the rest of the world is not ready to share their fate. Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr. London [email protected] Bukhatir Education Advancement and Management International (BEAM), which operates the International School of Creative Science (ISCS) and American School of Creative Science (ASCS) schools in Dubai and Sharjah, has reached out to parents with a series of financial relief measures to support them during the current crisis. Tuition fees for Term 3 will be discounted by 20 per cent across all grade and year groups with the rebate automatically processed as a credit towards the 2020/21 Term 1 tuition costs. In addition, there will be a full reimbursement of all fees related to transportation, examination and extra-curricular activities. Further, for Dubai campuses, there will be a sharp reduction in renewal fees to a fixed fee of Dh500 ($136) per student for a limited period. The schools will also allow parents to settle all bills with credit cards to help them benefit from UAE banks that are offering zero-cost, easy monthly payment plans on education transactions. These relief initiatives were established after much consideration, placing parents and children at the heart of BEAMs core values. Following government directives, BEAM schools launched the online remote-learning program to keep students academically active during their stay at home. The schools are using a combination of tools and methods to ensure learning is rigorous as well as effective. Salah Bukhatir, chairman and CEO of BEAM, commented: We have come up with carefully developed financial relief measures that take into consideration parents circumstances during these challenging times. We are also ensuring our pupils and students continue to receive the best education through e-learning methods which everyone has embraced so well. I commend our teachers and educators who continue to reinvent themselves and deliver an effective academic program under a rapidly changing environment. BEAM has always promoted excellence in all its activities, being an education system that covers five schools across Dubai and Sharjah, and celebrates great partnerships over the past two decades with the welfare of children, parents, and our educators our utmost priority. Through its Creative Science Schools, BEAM as an institution pioneered the promotion of academic excellence underpinned by the moral upbringing of children inspired by faith. BEAM is committed to providing a consistent value offering to parents, maximising access to learning opportunities at both its UK and US curriculum schools in Dubai and Sharjah. - TradeArabia News Service The director of the Centers for Disease Control said Monday that he did recommend in February some states expand mitigation efforts to combat the coronavirus spread, but lockdowns didn't begin until March. Robert Redfield suggested on NBC's Today that some recommendations by the CDC and National Institute of Health were ignored earlier on in the coronavirus outbreak and not implemented until March. 'As February 28 as we got into March we recognized the different areas that mitigation was now important,' Redfiled told Today show host Savannah Guthrie. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas.' Although reports indicate that Redfield and NIH's top immunologist Anthony Fauci recommended the White House implement social distancing guidelines in late February, such action was not taken until at least three weeks later in mid-March. Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield said Monday morning that he recommended more states issue lockdown orders as early as February 'As February 28 as we got into March we recognized the different areas that mitigation was now important,' Redfield told Today. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas' The White House issued social distancing guidelines about three weeks after the recommendations from Redfield and immunologist Anthony Fauci (right) As of Monday morning, more than 22,000 people died from coronavirus in the U.S. But Redfield excused the delay, claiming that the severity of the pandemic did not fully go into effect in the U.S. until that time. 'If you look back, in January and February, the cases we had in this country were all related to China travel,' he said Monday morning. 'It wasn't until February 28 when we saw our first community transmission where we said, 'wait a minute, where is this coming from?' 'So I think it's important when we get back, and when we get through this, we can look back at the timeline,' he continued. The 68-year-old CDC director said he recommended in February that the federal government begin to 'institute broader mitigation' efforts. Some reports indicate that the intelligence community informed the White House of the COVID-19 threat as early as November. Redfield's comments come as Fauci, a top infectious disease expert who serves on the coronavirus task force, admitted Sunday that more lives could have been saved if a lockdown were issued sooner. The 79-year-old immunologist told CNN Sunday morning that more could have been done that would have potentially slowed the spread and lessened the ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. 'Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could've saved lives, obviously,' Fauci told CNN's State of the Union. 'No-one is going to deny that,' he continued, but added 'there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then'. This sparked Trump to repost a tweet that utilized the hashtag 'fireFauci.' 'Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci' the tweet from Republican DeAnna Lorraine read. Trump reposted the tweet to his page on Sunday with the comment: 'Sorry Fake News, it's all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN' Fauci (right, on CNN's State of the Union) said Sunday morning that if lockdowns and social distancing guidelines were implemented by the president sooner, more lives could have been saved This prompted Trump to retweet a post calling for Fauci's ouster from the White House coronavirus task force CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN TIMELINE CDC Director Robert Redfield said Monday he recommended certain states issue lockdown orders in February, but was widely ignored until later in the outbreak. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas,' Redfield told NBC's Today. Here is a timeline of those states' lockdown orders: MARCH 11: Washington Governor Jay Inslee bans all social gatherings over 250 people MARCH 13: Donald Trump declares national emergency over COVID-19 MARCH 16: The six San Francisco Bay counties, including San Francisco, announce 'shelter-in-place' orders MARCH 17: New York City mayor Bill de Blasio says city should follow San Francisco with a shelter-in-place order; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says it will be statewide: 'As a matter of fact, I'm going so far that I don't even think you can do a statewide policy.' MARCH 19: California Governor Gavin Newsom issues first statewide lockdown order MARCH 22: Cuomo signs statewide stay-at-home order MARCH 23: Inslee extends his lockdown to include all of Washington state MARCH 24: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issues statewide stay-at-home order APRIL 3: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' statewide lockdown goes into effect Advertisement The president's allies have also taken to slamming Fauci over his Sunday comments. Trump's 2016 campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller said Fauci should 'be more careful' during interviews, quoting the CNN headline: 'Dr. Anthony Fauci admits earlier Covid-19 mitigation efforts would have saved more American lives.' 'Dr. Fauci needs to be more careful choosing his words on #Coronavirus, & if he's going to be critical, make clear what he personally could've done better,' Miller tweeted. He suggested the Fauci take more responsibility for what he could have done better to mitigate the coronavirus threat early on. Although lockdowns and social distancing guidelines were not implemented by the White House until mid-March, several governors and local governments began taking matters into their own hands to mitigate the spread. Washington Governor Jay Inslee was the first to do so on March 11, after becoming the first state with deaths from coronavirus. He started by banning all social gatherings over 250 people. Two days later, Trump declared a national emergency. On March 16, the San Francisco Bay area, which includes six counties, issued the first real lockdown where all residents were ordered to shelter-in-place and only venture outside of their homes for essential reasons. These were limited to reasons like shopping for food or going to the doctor. While criticism emerged over the timing of national and state-wide lockdowns, Trump has often boasted his decision to ban travel from China early on in the outbreak. The White House announced a 15 days to slow the spread plan in mid-March where the Trump administration implemented social distancing guidelines. This included staying home except for necessary reasons like grocery shopping or going to the doctor maintaining a 6-foot distance from people in public and limiting gatherings to 10 people or less. At the end of March, when the 15 days were up, Trump ended up expanding the guidelines for another 30 days. The new end date for the guidelines is April 30, and the president says he plans to have the country back open and operating by May 1 a self-imposed deadline many experts claim is optimistic and 'too soon' to implement. Trump ally, and his former senior communications adviser for the 2016 campaign, Jason Miller voiced his criticism of Fauci, claiming the immunologist should 'be more careful choosing his words on coronavirus' and suggested he take more responsibility On Sunday Trump also slammed The New York Times for a piece published Saturday that claims he repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and had been warned about it multiple times by top White House officials. 'The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the 'paper' itself. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so,' Trump tweeted. The president added: ''@SecAzar told me nothing until later, and Peter Navarro memo was same as Ban (see his statements). Fake News!' the president added. Trump claimed that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar only warned him about the threat of coronavirus after he had imposed the China ban at the end of January. However, it has been reported that Azar briefed him on January 18 while the President was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida - but Trump kept interrupting because he was more interested in vaping measures. Trump imposed the China ban after senior White House economic aide Peter Navarro issued a memo in January accurately outlining how bad the pandemic would be. The president failed to mention a second Navarro memo issued in February that painted an even worse picture. Trump has been accused of not taking that seriously. There are several reports that intelligence officials told the White House that there was a virus threat coming from China as early as November, indicating that the president knew about coronavirus sooner than he let on. 'You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,' Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday morning. 'We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not.' 'But it is what it is,' he continued. 'We are where we are right now.' So far, more than 22,000 people died in the U.S. after contracting coronavirus and there are more than 561,000 cases as of Monday morning. We understand that the upcoming weeks of self-isolation and community lockdowns will keep a lot of Americans safely at home. We are still here to help you add value to your home. The Door Stop is still open for business and available to assist DIY enthusiasts with their cabinet refacing projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. If your order cant be delivered to your home because of restrictions relating to social distancing, the company is now offering a money back guarantee that allows you to reorder your doors at a future date. The Door Stops custom-built cabinet doors can be ordered at their website cabinetdoors.com and are delivered either professionally finished or unfinished and ready to paint making this the perfect project to tackle while social distancing. We understand that the upcoming weeks of self-isolation and community lockdowns will keep a lot of American's safely at home, says Donovan Thornhill, the Owner of The Door Stop. We are still here to help you add value to your home, offering a money back guarantee if circumstances prevent future delivery." Customers should know that lead times and order delivery are not currently affected. Standard production time is still 7-10 business days for unfinished doors and 20-25 business days for painted ones. As always, The Door Stop continues to be diligent in monitoring production schedules, staying up to date with shipping vendors, and updating delivery information as it becomes available. Highly-regarded in the DIY and home renovation communities, The Door Stop has over 40 years of experience manufacturing custom-built kitchen cabinet doors out of a wide variety of high-quality products and materials. Customers can explore all the best styles and popular designs for new or replacement cabinet doors online at cabinetdoors.com. For additional information, please contact (800) 342-1010 or sales@cabinetdoors.com. About The Door Stop: The Door Stop is a division of Western Cabinet Doors, Inc., a company with over 40 years of experience crafting custom doors for cabinets. With the advent of the Internet, these pioneers recognized an ideal opportunity to make finding and buying doors easier for everyone. The combination of their expertise with the convenience of eCommerce has helped thousands of customers spruce up outdated spaces and add lasting value to their homes. To get started, please visit https://www.cabinetdoors.com/ today! Media Contact: Donovan Thornhill, The Door Stop, Phone #: 800-342-1010, Email: sales@cabinetdoors.com Although the coronavirus pandemic has slowed business, the Bay Area Farmers Market, which operates every Sunday in rented outdoor space at Baybrook Mall, has managed to meet customer needs with drive-through service. We started the drive-through market on March 22 with about 25 vendors of the typical 45-50 that we normally have, market manager Pamela Sharp Beito said. As the weeks have passed, business has decreased. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Coronavirus live updates The important thing is that we had the products that are essential the meat, the poultry, the vegetables, the eggs, the honey. The other things are what we call added-value products. The rain-or-shine market is open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the mall parking lot near Fidelity Investments. Customers are required to stay in their vehicles and conduct transactions through the vehicle window. FARM FRESH: Houston's Urban Harvest Farmers Market now offering drive-thru service When you look at the customers, thats what keeps the vendors there, Beito said. If theyre not making money, its not worth it to them to be there that many hours and go through what it takes to set up, break down and pay a booth fee, even though that is reduced. And then sometimes they have to pay an employee. The Bay Area Farmers Market hosts a variety of vendors, including Veggies In The Burbs, Gulf Coast Honey Bee Farms, Bobs Salsa, Brenham Kitchens, Damn Fine Coffee Roasters, Quick-N-Ezee Indian Food, Yomnas Yummies and The Mushroom Factory just to name a few. Beito is doing her best to serve everyone. More Information Bay Area Farmers Market What: An outdoor market of a variety of vendors selling products that include meat, eggs, honey, snacks and pet food. The market is operating as a drive-through because of safety guidelines related to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Where: The parking lot of Baybrook Mall, near Fidelity Investments When: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Sunday Information:bayareafarmersmarkettexas.com; "Bay Area Farmers Market" on Facebook. See More Collapse MORE FROM TED DUNNAM: Texas Roadhouse offers drive-through farmers market The last market I had with a regular walk-through, the coronavirus had just taken place, and thats when the guidelines were set forth of not having more than 250 gathering at one place, she said. I was comfortable incorporating the social distancing policy because typically we dont have 250 customers at one time. Over the period of a four-hour market, I tried to have single-file lines, one person at a vendors table at a time, 6 feet apart. Everybody was using gloves, wearing masks, and the customers were not touching products. One of the things I realized is that I couldnt police and enforce the whole market, she said. I dont have a lot of volunteers, and were actually vendors, too. When stricter rules were enforced by Gov. Greg Abbott, it lessened Beitos burden but also cut into revenues. When the guidelines limited gatherings to 10 persons per event, the only way we could continue is if we did a drive-through, she said. As a result of the drive-through and the severity of the virus, several vendors did not feel comfortable with exposure. Some vendors had compromised immune systems, and others felt they needed to be able to explain and sample their products to make sales. The market opened Oct. 14, 2018 and has been a popular attraction for both vendors and customers. I would say for the majority of vendors, this is their primary source of income, Beito said. Theyre small-business owners. The ones who are agricultural vendors, they are small-scale farmers. Some of these vendors are in several markets in a week. Farmers markets are their source of income. I can speak for me, as an example, as a honey producer. Thats the only way we sell our honey. A lot of (vendors) are doing online sales and delivery now, trying to subsidize that. In the first three markets since March 22, waiting line times were lengthy, but that was a situation which really couldnt be avoided. On Easter Sunday, wind prevented the market from erecting canopies, which made it less visible to motorists. With a monthly lease obligation to Baybrook Mall, Beito finds herself in a bit of a pinch. Vendors pay me a booth fee each week, she said, which goes toward rent and advertising for the market. I appreciate the vendors that are there to support the drive-through market, but theyre making half of what they typically make. I dont feel comfortable charging them the full booth fee, so Ive reduced that. Some vendors travel as far from Lexington, a small town in the Hill Country, while others come from Woodville in east Texas and Brenham. Moving forward, Beito said shell simply comply with government mandates while best serving her vendors and customers. She operates the market with her husband, stepdaughter and another gentleman who will help us when we need him. A return to normalcy cant arrive soon enough. We dont know what to expect as an end to this, she said. Its very open. We dont want to be responsible for spreading the virus. If we get on the other side of the curve, that doesnt mean were not going to still be dealing with the coronavirus. Were under Harris Countys jurisdiction, and were an unincorporated part of Harris County where were located. For now, we still have the drive-through market. As soon as possible, well go back to the regular market. tdunnam@hcnonline.com During World War 2, both the RAF and the Luftwaffe lost a large number of pilots at sea. The British used a couple of high speed boats that patrolled the English Channel and picked up downed pilots before they were overcome by the elements. The Germans used the Heinkel He 59 float planes that could land on water, in addition to boats. The German sea rescue service, or Seenotdienst, was more successful than the Allied effort. They had bases all along the coast of Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and France, covering much of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. They also enlisted the help of local rescue societies to increase their reach. The Seenotdienst was a humanitarian service that did not discriminate between pilots belonging to the Luftwaffe and the enemy air force. In fact, one of the first major air-sea rescue operation, conducted on December 18, 1939, involved a group of 24 British airmen shot down into the icy waters of the North Sea. In order to improve survivability in the ocean, German pilots in trouble over the ocean were recommended to make an emergency water landing in their aircraft instead of bailing out and parachuting down. Each aircraft was equipped with an inflatable rubber raft which kept the airmen out of water and away from hypothermia, thus improving their chances of survival. British airplanes carried no such thing. Their fighters carried only lifejackets which were little help against the cold. In 1940, the Luftwaffe developed a floating rescue buoy called Rettungsboje and anchored several of these on the English Channel. Bobbing up and down the waves, these highly visible buoys held emergency equipment including food, water, blankets and dry clothing, enough to keep distressed airmen alive until they were rescued. The Rettungsboje were square or hexagonal in shape with a floor space of about 43 square feet. The cabins were 8 feet tall with a 6 feet high turret carrying a ladder and a signal mast with a wireless antenna. The whole thing was encircled by railings just above and below the water line for downed flyers to grab on to. The buoy was anchored to the bottom of the sea by a rope. Over fifty of these buoys were placed in the English Channel during 1940. The cabin had room for four persons, but in an emergency several more could cram inside. Batteries powered electrical lights, and if those ran out, kerosene lamps took over. There were two double-deck beds and adequate cupboard space for first-aid equipment, dry clothing and shoes, emergency rations, and a water supply. Food could also be prepared on a alcohol stove. Games, stationery, playing cards, etc. afforded diversion until rescue was effected. A radio transmitter allowed the stranded airmen to send out SOS signals. They could also hoist a yellow and red striped flag on the mast to indicate passing ships that the buoy was occupied and needed rescuing. Both German and British rescue units checked the floats from time to time to pick up any airmen they found and to replenish supplies. Many of these buoys became dislodged from their anchor and got stranded on the beach. Photo: Islander/Flickr Before they had their own air-rescue service, British pilots had to rely almost entirely on their enemy to survive. For an RAF airman to be shot down over the sea was an almost certain death sentence if the German rescue services were not close at hand, said military historian, Dr Richard North. Eventually, the British developed their own rescue buoys and deployed them under the main routes bombers took to and from continental Europe. This, along with other British innovation, such as the air-dropped lifeboat, helped save countless pilots from sure death. By spring of 1943, the British had four squadrons each with twenty aircrafts dedicated to air-rescue. By the end of the war, the British air-rescue service saved over 13,000 lives and became one of the largest such organizations in the world. Many of these buoys became dislodged from their anchor and got stranded on the beach. Photo: Islander/Flickr References: # Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7971360/British-pilots-relied-on-German-sea-rescue-service-during-Battle-of-Britain.html # Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_buoy_(Luftwaffe) # Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-sea_rescue#World_War_II Our Ladys care home in west Belfast where at least four residents have died Health bosses are refusing to reveal the extent of the spread of coronavirus in care homes across Northern Ireland, raising fears it could be running wild among the most vulnerable members of society. Last Tuesday, Health Minister Robin Swann revealed there were cases of Covid-19 in 20 care homes across Northern Ireland. No further official information has been released relating to the impact of coronavirus on care homes here, however, on Monday the UK's chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said that one in seven of the UK's care homes are now affected by coronavirus. With 484 care homes in Northern Ireland, that would mean the deadly virus is now present in almost 70 care homes here. The Public Health Agency (PHA) has said it is informed of all outbreaks in nursing homes, considered to be more than one linked case of a disease, but it cannot provide any statistics relating to the number of cases or deaths in facilities across Northern Ireland. A spokeswoman from the PHA said, "this information is not collated in the current surveillance report", while the RQIA said the information is gathered by the PHA - this is despite the fact that, by law, all communicable diseases and deaths occurring in care homes, must be reported to the RQIA. The refusal to release any statistics comes after it emerged that four people with Covid-19 have died at Our Lady's Care Home in west Belfast. Macklin Group Director Gareth Macklin said the team at the home is devastated by the tragedies. "This is a continuously evolving situation and we want to reassure residents, their families and our team that every measure has been, and is being made, to ensure the care of their loved ones as well as all our staff," he said. The deaths have come amid claims that some care home staff are still sourcing their own personal protective equipment and one trust threatened to stop future admissions to a care home if it refused to accept a person being discharged from hospital without first being tested for Covid-19. Julieann McNally who spearheaded a campaign for an investigation into the dangerous conditions at Dunmurry Manor care home, said: "It is appalling that this is happening after all the work we have done and all the assurances we have been given that care home residents are a priority. "I have people phoning me up in tears because they are reading a post on social media asking for prayers for a care home resident with coronavirus and their loved one lives there too. "I've had another person whose loved one was taken to hospital where they were diagnosed with coronavirus and they were sent straight back again and the home was told there was nothing they could do for them, then another man was asked to sign a form giving permission not to ventilate their loved one, for the ventilator to be used on someone who had a better chance of survival. "It's like we're condemning care home residents to death, like they mean nothing, they are essentially being abandoned to die. "We've no idea how many people in care homes have died, the figures are being swept beneath the carpet, but these are people and they matter." Paula Bradshaw, Alliance Party health spokeswoman, said: "I have been trying to source this information for quite some time. Care homes are providing shelter and well-being support for some of the most vulnerable members of our society and, as such, this lack of transparency is truly alarming." West Belfast MP Paul Maskey said the four deaths involving coronavirus at Our Lady's Care Home raised concerns. He said: "There is an urgent need to ramp up testing in the community, particularly in care homes where clusters have been proven to be fatal for residents." Serious questions have been raised about the surveillance of coronavirus in the community, particularly as Covid-19 deaths are not being investigated by the coroner. There are also concerns that staff at care homes are not being provided with adequate PPE to reduce the spread of coronavirus between residents and workers, while the Alzheimer's Society, has warned that many care home residents are unable verbalise when they are feeling unwell. In a statement the Department of Health said testing is being increased where care home residents and/or staff are symptomatic and said more information on this "important area of work will be provided later this week". Gardai are appealing for information to a teenager missing from Dublin. Robin Harte, 17, was last seen in the Clonsilla area. She is described as five-foot-four, with slim build, dark brown hair and blue eyes. She has been missing since Thursday. Anyone who has seen Robin is being asked to contact Gardai in Blanchardstown. MEMPHIS, Tenn., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Comprehensive Pharmacy Services, LLC (CPS), one of the nations largest hospital pharmacy solutions providers, announced today that Chuck Ball has been named President of CPS Sales Division. The addition of Ball to lead the Sales Division is part of CPS strategy to further bolster the organizations business development capabilities that now include specialty and ambulatory pharmacy, consulting, and telepharmacy services. In addition, Chuck will bring a new focus to enterprise hospital and health system pharmacy management. With an extensive pharmacy background in business development, and in particular health system sales, Ball will lead the CPS Sales Division as market demand intensifies across the hospital industry for solutions that address the unique challenges the industry is facing today. I am delighted that weve been able to attract an executive of Chucks caliber to the CPS leadership team, said Frank Segrave, Chairman and CEO of CPS. He has a proven track record and an incredible depth of expertise in the health systems space. His experience and industry knowledge will provide immediate value to our organization and our clients as we continue to anticipate and provide solutions for the ever-evolving needs of our hospital and health system pharmacy clients. Ball brings nearly three decades of executive experience in health system sales, pharmacy services, pharmaceutical distribution and business development. He was Senior Vice President of Distribution Services and President of Health Systems at AmerisourceBergen, where he served for more than 25 years. His responsibilities included portfolio management, business development, customer relationship management, group purchasing and government relations. He also led the companys hospital unit dose, pharmacy-centric consulting and pharmacy automation businesses. Ball most recently consulted and acted in an advisory role for numerous private equity companies. He serves on the board of directors for the Southeastern Pennsylvania chapter of the American Heart Association. Story continues With the clinical, operational and financial issues our hospitals and health systems are experiencing, Chucks extensive sector knowledge will help them navigate challenges through CPS innovative solutions. Together, we will be able to drive substantial results for our clients, said Jeff Foreman, Group President for CPS. Ball holds his M.B.A. from Pennsylvania State University Smeal College of Business and earned his B.A. from the University of California, Irvine. I am honored to join the CPS team at such a critical time for hospitals and health systems, Ball said. I look forward to working with this exceptional team in support of our current and future clients. About Comprehensive Pharmacy Services, LLC Founded nearly 50 years ago and employing over 2,500 pharmacy professionals, Comprehensive Pharmacy Services is one of the nations largest providers of pharmacy services to more than 800 hospitals and healthcare facilities nationwide. CPS helps their clients tackle complex problems such as hyperinflated drug costs, specialty pharmacy, ambulatory/retail strategy, operational effectiveness, interim leadership needs, and telepharmacy solutions. In addition, they address 340B programs, a variety of compliance concerns and much more. CPS helps pharmacy leaders drive cost, quality and safety improvements across the continuum of care. For more information, visit cpspharm.com . CONTACT: Rod Recor Rod.Recor@cpspharm.com 901-748-0470 SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah-based health care organization will send two coronavirus response teams of medical workers to New York hospitals that are suffering from staffing shortages because of the outbreak. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Intermountain Healthcare announced the 50-member teams will be deployed for two weeks. The Utah personnel will work with New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Northwell Health in the New York City area beginning early next week. Intermountain says the New York health care providers will attempt to support Utah when the state faces its own expected surge of virus patients. Intermountain says hundreds of its medical workers expressed a desire to help. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 11:51:28|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Here are the latest developments on the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in China: -- Chinese health authority said Monday that it received reports of 108 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Sunday, of which 98 were imported. Two deaths, all in Hubei Province, and six new suspected cases, all imported ones, were reported Sunday on the mainland. As of Sunday, a total of 82,160 confirmed COVID-19 cases had been reported on the mainland, and 3,341 people had died of the disease. -- No new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in central China's Hubei Province Sunday. Hubei had 621 asymptomatic cases under medical observation by Sunday. -- Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province reported 56 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday, including seven locally transmitted cases and 49 imported ones all involving Chinese nationals returning from Russia. -- The resumption of work across the country should not be stopped by individual cases of COVID-19, renowned Chinese respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan said Sunday. New Delhi, April 13 : Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar on Monday held a meeting with Ministry officials at his office here on harvest operations across the country and other farmer-related issues. Ministers of State Purshottam Rupala and Kailash Chaudhary, Secretary Sanjay Agarwal and other senior ministry officials also attended the meeting, during which the impending harvest of Rabi crops in many states and the procurement process were discussed. The Minister directed officials to oversee the implementation of the directives issued by the central government in this regard. Though the sowing and harvest of crops during the lockdown has been allowed, the process has been hampered due to unavailability of farm labour. Even the procurement process has been hit, and is likely to resume after April 15 in some states. Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at a gala dinner held by the U.S.-China Business Council in Washington D.C., the United States, on Dec. 4, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) "Let's work together to respond to this global crisis, to save people's lives, to save the future of global economy, and to save the future of the global community. This is our paramount task," said Chinese Ambassador to the United States. WASHINGTON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has urged a new and effective global governance system, closer Sino-U.S. cooperation to better combat the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that all countries should also reject any attempts to politicize the rapidly-spreading disease. A new and effective global governance system is yet to be built to cope with a crisis of the magnitude of the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Cui said in an interview on April 3 with Ian Bremmer at weekly digital and broadcast show Gzero World, which was aired nationally on Saturday by American Public Television. "If we aim at a new system of international governance that is open, inclusive, that is based on mutual respect among all countries, on the full recognition of the diversity of culture, civilization, political system, economic system, if we can do this, then I think all the things are ready for us to build a new and effective international governance system. We have to make the right choice now," he noted. The world have had a number of crises in this 21st century, maybe starting with the 9/11 terror attack , then the financial crisis, and now this COVID-19 virus, i.e. the security challenges, the financial instability and now public health, according to the ambassador. "If we can still call this a wakeup call, I think we should have woken up long time ago, but still, if we have not started yet, we have to start real efforts to build a good international governance system for the 21st century, for the future," he said, adding big countries including the U.S. and China have great responsibilities in spearheading the efforts. The United States and China have to facilitate bilateral cooperation on combating COVID-19 to save the future of the global community, the ambassador noted. "Let's work together to respond to this global crisis, to save people's lives, to save the future of global economy, and to save the future of the global community. This is our paramount task," Cui said. "This is the time for solidarity and cooperation," said Cui. "Let's concentrate on the positive things. Let's focus on our common interests and mutual needs," he noted. The Chinese envoy listed three things to which the embassy gives priority "at this critical moment" as COVID-19 is ravaging the world. The first is to facilitate cooperation between the two countries to combat the virus, in particular medical supplies and technical cooperation between governmental and research institutions. Secondly, good efforts should be made to stabilize global market, boost global economic growth, and protect people's jobs and livelihood. The third is to ensure a supportive public opinion for cooperation between the two countries. On the economic front, there is "an even greater need for closer and more effective global cooperation" as COVID-19 has disrupted the global supply chain, Cui stressed. "This pandemic proves again this is a global challenge. The virus recognizes no national boundaries, no difference in political system, in culture, in religion whatsoever. It attacks all of us the same way. So there is an even greater need for closer and more effective global cooperation," said Cui, responding to a question concerning stability of the global supply chain under the threat of the virus. "The process of globalization was driven by economic efficiency and technology," he said. "If there is anything wrong with the past process of globalization, I think we have to make it more open, inclusive, with more equitable distribution of benefits for everybody." Cui noted that China has been doing its best to restore the supply chain and to resume production, especially medical supplies. "We are also working with other countries to make sure the global supply chain will function again," he said. " Moreover, the ambassador called on all countries to prioritize people's life and health, as well as reject any attempts to politicize the pandemic. "We really have to put people's lives and health first. This is the most important thing for us to do. And we should do it at any cost." "We really have to reject any attempt at taking political advantage of other people's sufferings," he said, adding "unfortunately, there are still elements here, maybe elsewhere in the world, who are making such an attempt." "I think people have to give serious thinking to what is a real threat for all of us. What is our real enemy? And where lies our common interest? How we should respond globally together to such global challenges?" Cui stressed. Noting "this is a huge crisis for all of us," the ambassador dismissed the allegations of some Western politicians that China got a political agenda in helping other countries fight the virus. "What is driving our action right now is our understanding that we're all part of the community," he said. "China cannot be safe from the virus if all the other countries are still struggling ... in a sense, we are also helping ourselves by helping others." Cui also refuted the accusations by some U.S. politicians and media outlets that China concealed the extent of the COVID-19 outbreak. "For the accusations that China is hiding the numbers, just think about it, we have such a huge population, such a big country, you cannot hide the cases of a very vicious virus, because if you have patients, they are just patients. If people are infected, they're just infected. How can you hide them?" Cui said. The fact is that China started daily briefing to the press "in the very early stage of this crisis," he said, adding that China even publicized all the possible treatments. "We keep updating it, from time to time, including how to use traditional Chinese medicine to treat the patients. We made it public, all this information, all our experience," he noted. MPPs are returning to Queens Park to extend Ontarios state of emergency for another 28 day due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Premier Doug Ford said parliamentarians would be back in the legislature Tuesday at 1 p.m. for an expedited 80-minute afternoon session to debate items of business related to the governments coronavirus response. Hopefully well get through this. I just want to thank members of the opposition for their co-operation on getting these passed right away, the premier told reporters Monday at his daily teleconference. MPPs last sat on March 25 to pass Finance Minister Rod Phillips emergency relief package. On Tuesday, they will also discuss allowing school boards and municipalities to continue collecting development charges despite the moratorium on construction, suspending student loan repayments for those on OSAP, and extending the deadline to next Jan. 1 for cities and town to adopt new community safety plans. Only 28 MPPs will be in the 124-member chamber in order to abide by Ontarios physical distancing guidelines of staying two metres apart. With the extension of the state of emergency through to May 12, Ford emphasized it is too soon to say when Ontario schools closed since March 23 and provisionally set to restart classes May 4 would be allowed to reopen. We wouldnt be able to answer that right now. Its a little premature. Were seeing a glimmer a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel here, but still were going to take the advice of the chief medical officer and our health team, he said. Ontario invoked the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act on March 17, restricting which businesses can remain open during the crisis, closing all recreational facilities, and outlawing gatherings of more than five people unless they live in the same household. Scofflaws face fines ranging from $750 to $100,000 plus one year in jail. All bars and restaurants are closed except for takeout service, though liquor licensing laws have been loosened to allow them to sell beer, wine, and spirits to go. Ford said that having most Ontarians staying at home and maintaining physical distancing if they are out getting groceries is making a difference. I know everyones getting antsy, but its better to be safe than sorry. Id rather be cautious. As painful as it is for everyone, we just have to do it, the premier said, adding it remains unknown when the economy can open up again. I want to be cautiously optimistic, but I dont want people to think this is done, were moving forward, he said. Even when the economy turns on a little bit, theres still going to be people with COVID-19 and theres still going to be deaths. Even if we turn it on a trickle, theres going to be risks. I do not want to just jump into this. The premier added that he needs the green light from the chief medical officer to begin opening up the economy. You just cant flick the lights on, open the gates we just cant. We arent ready yet. Until we see some modelling that the curve goes down People are getting restless. Theyre just getting squirrelly staying inside the house. I know its difficult, he said. My biggest fear is all of a sudden we get another wave and it hits us. I want to make sure we do it properly and cautiously and not just jump into this and open up the floodgates. It would be irresponsible. Ford, who last Friday announced a ramp-up of testing for the virus, said its very frustrating that more tests are still not being done. We have to separate the elected officials versus the chief medical officer. Im not a medical doctor but it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out the more people we test the quicker were going to put an end to this, the premier said. They told me 8,000 on April 15 and on April 15 I want to see 8,000. That number should increase to 14,000 tests daily by the end of this month, an increase in the 2,500 to 3,000 that Ontario has been averaging. Get these damned tests done. Theyve given me their word theyre going to test every single long-term care resident and every single health worker at long-term care, said Ford, referring to Matt Anderson, the CEO of Ontario Health, and Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer for health. Also Monday, Ford, who had been worried early last week that Ontario had just seven days of personal protective equipment supplies, said stockpiles are increasing. Over the last five days, more than 13 million surgical and procedural masks, 200,000 N95 respirator masks, and 38 ventilators have been delivered to the province. Last weekend, shipments of 6.5 million surgical masks were sent to 650 health-care providers across Ontario for doctors, nurses, and other front-line workers. On Saturday, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced his province would send Ontario 250,000 N95 masks, 2.5 million surgical masks, 15 million surgical gloves, 87,000 safety goggles, and 50 ventilators. The Ontario Hospital Association said it is grateful for the unprecedented efforts of Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on securing personal protective equipment but asked that it be delivered faster once shipments are received. Time really does continue to be of the essence, said association president Anthony Dale. We still need that supply in the hands of front-line workers as soon as possible. With files from Rob Ferguson Robert Benzie is the Stars Queens Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie Read more about: Redondo Beach, California--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - SECFilings.com, a leading financial news and information portal offering free real time public company filing alerts, announces the publication of an article discussing the robust level of cannabis sales during the ongoing pandemic response and the role of companies like Digipath, Inc. (OTCQB: DIGP) in supporting the industry while consumer brands find their footing. If you've been following the cannabis industry, and particularly the investment climate around that industry, at all over the last couple of years, you know that times have been tough for almost a year now. The reasons are numerous, including this dynamic - overvaluation based on aggressive models of large profits, followed by the grim reality that the industry may take a while to hit full stride while governments and companies figure things out. One might think that pandemic-related stresses might cause the industry to collapse completely, but the opposite may be proving true. It appears that cannabis, as a consumer product, could be somewhat recession-proof. Sales Staying Strong Two recent articles, one from Marijuana Business Daily and the other from Forbes, do a pretty good job of outlining the situation. States across the nation have determined that cannabis businesses are "essential" and can stay open under stay-at-home restrictions. These decisions are generally driven by concerns that medical patients have access to medicine. But on the recreational side of the market, there are parallels to liquor stores that have also been deemed "essential" and allowed to remain open. The Marijuana Business Daily article digs into levels of alcohol sales during the last recession in 2007 - 2009. They remained steady and even exhibited some growth, a raging success when compared to the drop in sales experienced by many other industries at the time. People need their stress relief and will find a way to get it, even in the most trying times. The same seems to be holding true to this point for cannabis sales in the time of Covid-19. Bloomberg summarized some of the figures, showing big jumps in retail cannabis purchases in California, Colorado, and Washington state in mid-March as coronavirus cases (and restrictions) skyrocketed. And cannabis could uniquely benefit from people staying at home. Bill Kirk, an analyst at MKM Partners, said, "The vice of choice when alone is cannabis. The vice of choice in large groups or with new people is alcohol. This doesn't solve capital markets issues facing some companies, but it does bode well for the industry's inventory problem. With facilities closing and demand increasing, inventory that has sat idly is starting to find a home." Investment Outlook Investors looking for companies positioned in the cannabis industry could benefit from these dynamics. First, valuations have already been slashed significantly, so there could be some upside just from that aspect alone. Back that up with the idea that cannabis sales remain strong and could even increase through recessions and stressful times, and suddenly investing in cannabis is more appealing than it was even two months ago. Unfortunately, due to fragmented regulations in the United States and to problems with the retail rollout in Canada, it's not like there are recognized brand leaders on which to hang your hat. There are no Cokes or Bacardis or, dare we say it, Coronas out there ahead of the retail brand pack. Instead, it might be wise to look at the structure of the cannabis industry in its infancy and find firms that are active in key areas. One interesting company with a focus on laboratory testing, genetics, and breeding is Digipath, Inc. (OTCQB: DIGP). Digipath, through its subsidiary Digipath Labs, Inc., offers full service cannabis testing out of its Las Vegas, Nevada location. The ISO certified lab is, of course, licensed by the state of Nevada and conducts all of the wide variety of tests necessary to comply with state law. Testing and certification of products is mandated in any legal cannabis environment, an essential service that supports and informs the end-user market. Digipath recently announced a 50% increase in cannabis sample processing for the month of January, 2020 compared to January, 2019, and is expanding both its space and instrumentation to meet the rising demand. Digipath very recently created another promising division of the company with its acquisition of VSSL Enterprises, a cannabis genetics and cultivation consulting outfit based in Kelowna, BC. The two companies had been working together on the development of a mobile genetic testing system capable of distinguishing between hemp and cannabis, a technology that would seem immensely valuable in light of the regulatory differences between how the two plants are treated. During the course of the collaboration obvious synergies between the companies led to the acquisition. The two founders of VSSL, Kyle Remenda and Philippe Henry, Ph.D., have joined Digipath's executive team, with Kyle Remenda assuming the role of CEO and Philippe Henry becoming Chief Technology Officer. VSSL came with a Research and Development license issued by Health Canada, allowing the company to cultivate cannabis at three field sites along with a lab site that utilizes tissue culture techniques. The goal is to develop novel cannabis genetics as well as to identify and stabilize existing desired genetic traits. VSSL was also recently awarded a laboratory testing license that would allow it to test on a national basis in Canada. The marriage between the two companies and their mutual commitment to the science underlying the industry makes a lot of sense. It could be argued that the advancement of cannabis science is one of the most crucial issues facing the industry as it looks to develop and sell products that safely offer both medical and recreational benefits under increasing regulatory scrutiny. The Upshot The genetics of agricultural products have been studied and refined for centuries. Food safety is an ongoing concern for both producers and consumers. The cannabis industry is in essence playing catch up following decades of prohibition on not only the plant itself but also research into the plant. Companies like Digipath, offering scientific services that assure product safety while also helping companies maximize production and formulate effective products, sit in a compelling position. Please follow the link to read the full article: http://www.secfilings.com/news/cannabis-businesses-essential-in-stressful-times-84 About SECFilings.com Founded in 2004, SECFilings.com provides free real time filing alerts to over 600,000 registered members. Disclaimer SECFilings.com is not an independent financial investment advisor or broker-dealer. You should always consult with your own independent legal, tax, and/or investment professionals before making any investment decisions. The information provided on http://www.secfilings.com (the 'Site') is either original financial news or paid advertisements drafted by our in-house team or provided by an affiliate. SECFilings.com, a financial news media and marketing firm enters into media buys or service agreements with the companies that are the subject of the articles posted on the Site or other editorials for advertising such companies. We are not an independent news media provider. We make no warranty or representation about the information including its completeness, accuracy, truthfulness or reliability and we disclaim, expressly and implicitly, all warranties of any kind, including whether the Information is complete, accurate, truthful, or reliable. As such, your use of the information is at your own risk. Nor do we undertake any obligation to update the items posted. SECFilings.com received compensation for producing and presenting high quality and sophisticated content on SECFilings.com along with financial and corporate news. Paul Archie 406.862.2242 parchie@tdmfinancial.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54376 Americans spent a glum Easter Sunday largely confined to their homes by the still-raging coronavirus pandemic as the U.S. death toll neared 22,000, with more than half a million confirmed cases nationwide. With 42 states imposing strict stay-at-home orders most churches were shuttered, although many erected crosses outside or even offered drive-through services conducted by priests, pastors or ministers wearing latex gloves and surgical masks. Other Americans turned to online church services to mark the holiest day in the Christian calendar. In Louisiana, the evangelical Life Tabernacle megachurch near Baton Rouge defied local government orders to shut down, holding its Easter Sunday service as planned, said Reverend Tony Spell. "Our rights come from our creator, not from a governing body," Spell told Reuters, adding people traveled from across the region to attend. In some states, attempts by authorities to clamp down on Easter services have sparked legal battles over the rights of government to prevent Americans from attending church, even under pandemic conditions. On Saturday, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld an executive order barring more than 10 people from gathering for religious and funeral services. The decision, a victory for Democratic Governor Laura Kelly, followed an attempt by a Republican-led legislative body to overturn the order. The United States, with the world's third-largest population, has recorded more fatalities from COVID-19 than any other country, nearly 22,000 as of Sunday evening according to a Reuters tally. Roughly 2,000 deaths a day were reported for the last four days in a row, the largest number in and around New York City. Even that is viewed as understated, as New York is still figuring out how best to include a surge in deaths at home in its official statistics. As the death toll has mounted, President Donald Trump mulled when the country might begin to see a return to normality. Trump Eyes May 1 The sweeping restrictions on non-essential movement now applied to most Americans have damaged the economy, taken a painful toll on commerce and raised questions over how long business closures and travel curbs can be sustained. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the last three weeks surpassed 16 million. The Trump administration sees May 1 as a potential date for easing the restrictions, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn, said on Sunday. But he cautioned that it was still too early to say whether that goal would be met. "We see light at the end of the tunnel," Hahn told ABC's "This Week," adding, "Public safety and the welfare of the American people has to come first. That has to ultimately drive these decisions." In the latest sign of the disruption wrought by the disease, one of the nation's largest pork processing plants was shuttered after workers fell ill, and its owner warned the country was moving "perilously close to the edge" in supplies for grocers. "It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," Ken Sullivan, chief executive of Smithfield Foods, said in a statement on Sunday. Dozens of workers at a beef production plant in Greeley, Colorado, have tested positive for COVID-19, according to its owner, meatpacking company JBS USA. The union representing workers at the plant said two employees have died. In recent days, public health experts and some governors have pointed to some hopeful signs that the worst of the pandemic might be past. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top U.S. infectious disease expert, said he was cautiously optimistic and pointed to the New York metropolitan area, which had its highest daily death toll last week but also saw a decrease in hospitalizations, intensive care admissions and the need to intubate critically ill patients. "Once you turn that corner, hopefully you'll see a very sharp decline and then you can start thinking about how we can keep it that way," Fauci told CNN's "State of the Union." "If all of a sudden we decide 'OK, it's May whatever,' and we just turn the switch on, that could be a real problem." Fauci and other public health experts say widespread testing will be key to efforts to reopen the economy, including antibody tests to find out who has already had the disease and could be safe to return to work. New government data shows a summer surge in infections if stay-at-home orders are lifted after only 30 days, according to projections first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by a Department of Homeland Security official. INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic Also read: India asks US to extend Indians H-1B visa amid coronavirus pandemic Also read: Coronavirus India live updates: 308 people dead in the country as active COVID-19 cases near 8,000-mark Most Reverend John Bonaventure Kwofie, Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, has reiterated the call to the public to adhere to all directives by health experts especially, the social distancing. He explained that the World Health Organisation advised people to maintain at least one metre (3 feet) distance between other individuals to avoid contracting the virus. Speaking at an Easter Sunday Eucharistic Celebration, online, Archbishop Kwofie, said people should be ambassadors of the directive and practise it. We are told that when someone coughs or sneezes, they spray small liquid droplets from their noses or mouths, which may contain the virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including; the COVID-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease, he said. Archbishop Kwofie said it was one of the best ways to halt the spread of COVID-19 pandemic at markets and other places, where people congregate. He stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had revolutionized many sectors of human life, including; digital education, ensuring proper hygiene and sanitation and the strengthening of the health systems in the country. Areas such as Research and Development, he noted would be given the needed attention after the pandemic. Archbishop Kwofie urged the public to be each others keeper especially in the advent of the pandemic, which had to coincide with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The government will extend all possible support to the industry for the revival of economic activities hit by COVID-19, Union minister V K Singh said on Monday. The Minister of State for Roads, Transport and Highways was addressing about 100 participants in a webinar on logistics issues arising due to Covid -19, organised by PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We need to accept that the present time is not normal and hence we need to act wisely and patiently in overcoming the hurdles caused by spread of Covid-19 and not take hasty decisions as the same will lead to difficult times which will be difficult to manage," Singh said. He urged the Chamber to come up with effective suggestions on a smoother and faster revival of economic activities and assured that the government will surely act on them and support the trade and industry in its welfare and growth. "The government has done extensive meetings with various industry bodies to come out with a revival plan, as not only the industry but also the Prime Minister is concerned over the halt on the economic activities and the government is doing its best to frame a model to restart the economic activities in the country," he said. D K Aggarwal, President PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry suggested that economic activities be started in the 400 districts which have not been impacted by Covid-19 with complete observation of precautions, underlined by the WHO and the government. "We urge the government to provide a relief package of at least 5 per cent of the India's GDP which comes to a total of Rs 11 lakh crore. Out of Rs 11 lakh crore the government has already provided a stimulus package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore and India's trade and industry awaits the relief package of remaining around Rs 9 lakh crore," Aggarwal said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Outsourced business services sector, hit hard by COVID-19 pandemic, is in need of financial assistance in the form of GST cut, PF contribution support, FICCI said in a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. This sector, having one crore-strong workforce, includes private security, hygiene and sanitation management, manpower supply and cash logistics business. Outsourced business services sector, with about Rs 1 lakh crore per annum business, is among the top three Goods and Services Tax contributors that paid approximately Rs 25,000 crore last year. Besides, the sector claims lowest input credit (ITC) amongst all other major verticals. The sector, comprising of 10,000 plus MSMEs, has requested subsidising 35 per cent of the wages for at least 50 per cent workforce for next three months, and six months for 25 per cent workforce. This will be critical to supporting members in maintain current employment levels, FICCI Committee on Private Security Industry chairman Rituraj Sinha said in the letter addressed to the Finance Minister. The industry is estimating a 25 per cent to 50 per cent decline in revenues in coming months and these circumstances will compel job cuts, it said, adding that "a sector with such low margins and high working capital intensity is too frail to support wages of 1 crore workers if our customers reduce service volume, cut service charges and delay payments". Besides, the industry also requested the Finance Minister to consider providing GST relief as the industry expect a 3-4 months collection delay. "We do not have resources to ensure GST compliance as per norms under prevailing circumstances," it said, adding given the wafer thin margins of the sector, working capital credit should be extended at sub Prime Lending Rate. "Banks may be instructed to not adversely impact our revenues and ensure they maintain Q4 FY20 service revenues for period March to September 2020. This is especially critical as our members are helping extend banking services across Branches, ATMs, Cash movement etc," the industry body said. It further said similar to the Rs 50 lakh provided to government employees, suitable health insurance cover should be extended to contracted private security guards, hospital cleaning, support services staff, fumigation workers, cash van/ATM crews that continue to operate as essential service workers during the lockdown. "We have incurred significant costs in providing our workforce with protection equipment such as gloves, masks and also installation of sanitisers across facilities and vehicles. We are also incurring expenses in providing safe transportation and housing facilities. We request such expenses to be allowed as eligible spends under our CSR funds," it said. The body also requested to extend existing PF assistance scheme for employers with less than 100 employees to all companies or employers in the sector, and added that the government should support by contributing employer and employees share of PF contribution for next six months till situation eases. The Russian Finance Ministry said on Monday it had informed Luxembourg and Malta of increasing to 15 percent the tax on dividend and interest income derived from Russia MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) The Russian Finance Ministry said on Monday it had informed Luxembourg and Malta of increasing to 15 percent the tax on dividend and interest income derived from Russia. "The Russian Finance Ministry has sent letters to the finance ministries of Luxembourg and Malta on introducing changes into the two-party agreements on avoiding double taxation in terms of increasing the tax rate on dividend and interest income to 15 percent," the ministry said in a statement. Russia has earlier sent a similar notification to Cyprus. "The changes are introduced into the agreements on double taxation avoiding as part of implementation of the Russian president's order to increase the tax rate on dividend and interest income, transferred to foreign accounts," the Finance Ministry explained. America's automotive supply chain is hitting the brakes as automakers like BMW and Volvo in South Carolina temporarily suspend production during the COVID-19 crisis. Shipments of cars and car parts moved by rail the primary mode of transportation for the manufacturers plummeted 82 percent year-over-year in the week that ended April 4, the latest data available from the American Association of Railroads. Such shipments totaled 3,171 rail cars for the week. That compares to roughly 18,000 weekly carloads recorded earlier this year. "We havent seen sustained declines of that magnitude since the Great Recession," John Gray, the association's senior vice president, said of the overall drop in rail shipments. While nearly all sectors saw declines, the automotive segment notched the biggest drop by far. The industry is particularly crucial to South Carolina, which boasts the nation's top automobile exporter in BMW and where roughly 400 automotive companies employ 72,000 people and contribute $27 billion a year to the state's economy. Volvo and BMW this week extended their factory shutdowns through at least the end of April due to the spread of COVID-19. Volvo, which employs about 1,500 people building S60 sedans at a plant near Ridgeville, will reopen May 4. The 11,000 people who work at BMW's campus in Spartanburg County won't return to building X-model SUVs until May 1. They have joined most automakers nationwide that have halted operations to fight coronavirus. Mercedes-Benz Vans began winding down operations at its North Charleston plant, which builds Sprinter commercial vehicles, in mid-March and currently plans to resume production on April 20. That has had a domino effect on suppliers. About 5,000 layoffs have been announced in recent weeks by Palmetto State suppliers. Nearly half of them worked at the ZF Transmissions plant in Gray Court, which builds transmissions for the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group. The ZF Chassis Systems plant in Duncan laid off an additional 250 workers. The German supplier to more than 20 automotive companies said it is pausing both individual product lines and entire factories due to automakers' lack of demand. Benteler Automotive in Duncan, which builds chassis and exhaust systems and other components, has laid off nearly 300. And MAU Workforce Solutions, which provides workers for the BMW plant, has announced more than 1,400 layoffs. Other companies, like Robert Bosch LLC in Dorchester County, have idled their factories but are offering staff extended benefits to avoid layoffs. The Bosch plant on Dorchester Road employs about 1,600 workers and had announced permament layoffs earlier this year citing "structural adjustments" needed in the automotive industry. "As part of our commitment to our associates, we have provided non-exempt hourly associates with additional paid time off to support them during this time," said Bosch spokesman Tim Wieland, who added production won't restart until business conditions impacted by COVID-19 improve. COVID-19 layoffs South Carolina's automotive industry isn't the only segment to feel the impact of COVID-19. A wide range of businesses have filed layoff notices in the wake of the coronavirus, affecting more than 5,200 workers. Among some of the largest layoff notices filed in the past month with the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce: Kiawah Island Golf Resort, Kiawah Island 1,090 workers Husqvarna Consumer Outdoor, Orangeburg 850 workers Hamrick Mills, Gaffney 405 workers Hooters of America LLC, statewide 283 workers Go Rentals, Charleston 275 workers Planet Fitness, statewide 264 workers Chef's Pantry, Easley 240 workers Rite Aid Distribution Center, Spartanburg 224 workers South Carolina's tire dealerships have also suspended production, with Greenville-based Michelin North America saying it is "too early to assess any possible impact this situation could have on our industry long-term." The French-owned company's sales were already down 9 percent for cars and 16 percent for trucks prior to the coronavirus shutdown. Giti Tire in Richburg laid off its staff of 636 workers, according to a fling wih the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce. Car dealers are also feeling the impact, as customers refuse to visit showrooms. Asbury Automotive Group, for example, said it is laying off about 100 employees at its Upstate dealerships. Joey Von Nessen, research economist at the University of South Carolina, told ETV's "This Week in South Carolina" that despite the COVID-19-related problems he's "still very bullish on manufacturing for South Carolina in the medium- to long-run, so two to four years." "Manufacturing is a 'traded cluster' in South Carolina that has been firmly established and has been around for quite some time," he said. "And one of the benefits of traded clusters to a region is once they anchor to that region they are highly efficient and very resilient. So we anticipate that manufacturing will come back just as strong as ever automotive manufacturing, aerospace manufacturing, tire manufacturing." One place where the automotive slump isn't showing up at least not yet is at the Port of Charleston, which released cargo statistics for March this week. Slightly more than 24,100 vehicles, most of them BMWs, were exported from the Columbus Street Terminal in March more than 40 percent better than the same month a year ago. That's expected to change when April totals reflecting a full month of automotive production shutdowns are released next month. LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) Lafayette police have arrested a man accused of hitting a bicyclist and leaving the scene. Police said the driver was believed to be on drugs at the time. About 6:50 p.m. Saturday, officers were called to the 3200 block of Teal Road. Police said a bicyclist, identified as 29-year-old Jordan Stribling of Lafayette, was hit on the shoulder of the road. Witnesses reported the driver sped off. Officers later found the suspected driver, 20-year-old Austin Foster of Lafayette, at his home. Police arrested him on six preliminary charges including leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily injury and operating while intoxicated resulting in serious bodily injury. Police said Stribling was airlifted to an Indianapolis hospital with severe injuries. As of last check, Lafayette police said he was in stable condition with several broken bones. NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / David A. Nicholas works as the corporate director for a national powerhouse in Australia's sales and marketing space. But before taking on his role as company director in charge of staffing, social media management, consulting, etc. there was a time David didn't even know if he'd make it. A Journey Begins David Nicholas was born on October 2, 1993. His birthplace-Adelaide, Australia. Before working his way through the ranks-to the director's office, Nicholas paid his dues tackling several other longstanding projects. These roles included door-to-door sales, and B2B sales, along with mid and upper management-level responsibilities. In a no-holds-barred interview with Welcome to the Poddy's, Claytron; David states, "I've just always had a natural knack for selling." And as Davo says in the same conversation, "Door to door sales is about having the right energy", which David possesses in abundance. But not one to take the credit for himself, Nicholas is grateful to his employers and clients for having entrusted him with his business responsibilities. Because had they not tasked him with those duties, he never would have attained the skills that are so crucial in his life - today. For example, sales' helped improve his communication skills. It also taught him the value of building lasting interpersonal relationships, while teaching him how to resolve conflicts. As a testament to his entrepreneurial endeavors, he learned to create and build effective business plans while further honing his problem-solving capabilities. AKA Davo Slots, AKA The Captain Davo At the beginning of the article, we mentioned there was a time Davo didn't know if he would succeed. That's because before turning 18 years old, he'd also discovered another passion-gambling. He knew if he didn't get it under control it would eat him alive. But in a masterstroke, David addressed the issue head-on. In the process, he successfully merged two entirely different personas into one. Story continues David's reputation as a results-oriented businessman earned him the nickname, "The Captain Davo". By the way, the word Davo' is just a shortened version of David'. But he also has another persona-Davo Slots. That's because instead of running from his love affair with gambling, he embraced it. So, when his followers began calling him Slots' due to his massively televised slot machine winnings he didn't stop them. And while it's evident to those closest to him that Davo's business acumen far outweighs his blackjack pursuits, his social media following tells a different story. Nonetheless, one need only to see how Nicholas has transformed his high roller persona into a luxury lifestyle brand to see that he's as masterful in the board room as on the casino floors. Better Envied than Pitied Suffice to say David has gained numerous detractors. Some feel he glorifies gambling, and that in doing so he may be leading his social media followers down the dark path of addiction. Likewise, several gambling aficionados have flat out accused Davo Slots of flashing fake money in his live streams. An accusation to which Davo has said is patently false. He's further stated in response that he publishes both his winnings and losses and does so to ensure his viewers understand the risks of gambling and play responsibly. Is there truth to the accusations? Who knows? However, one thing's for sure - anyone who achieves high levels of visibility attracts his fair share of haters. And the funny thing is the naysayers only further add to the mystique that is Captain Davo-driving more searches, clicks, and ultimately affiliate sales to the man they're trashing. All of which only serves to further reinforce the uncanniness of Nicholas' branding prowess. Downtime - What's That? As one might imagine finding leisure time between running several companies and hitting the slots is no small feat. Part of the reason is that David so thoroughly enjoys what he does that he considers working fun too. But although he loves what he does for a living, Davo still manages to carve out a few hours to get away from it all. In those instances, he delights in spending time with friends and family. He often likes to hang out with loved ones while relaxing on the beach or basking in the hot sun. Alternatively, during the cooler months, he's really into chasing the sunshine; even if it means hopping on a flight and heading to the North Hemisphere. And somehow between the hustle and bustle of it-all Davo still manages to eat good healthy meals. So, who is Captain Davo? He's just a man who was awakened to his true calling, which is to show us all what we're capable of achieving if we put our minds to it. Contact: Top Entrepreneurs +1.212.729.7552 info@3server.com SOURCE: Top Entrepreneurs View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/584842/Who-Is-the-Captain-Davo As the coronavirus pandemic keeps people locked inside, many are getting creative in the kitchen and trying out new recipes with their newfound free time. One woman has made the most of her Easter chocolate by cooking up a batch of fudge in her slow cooker - using Cadbury Dairy Milk and Crunchies as her staple ingredients. Chanelle Ngohe, from Wellington, New Zealand posted the simple recipe to the Facebook group Crockpot/Slow Cooker Recipes & Tips - and dozens of people have said they're keen to try it out. The carer said all you need is two blocks of Cadbury Dairy Milk, a can of condensed milk, 15g butter, a teaspoon of vanilla and a bag of Crunchie bars - with a Cadbury flake for the topping. One woman has made the most of her Easter chocolate by cooking up a batch of fudge in her slow cooker - using Cadbury Dairy Milk and Crunchies as her staple ingredients Chanelle Ngohe, from Wellington, New Zealand posted the simple recipe to Facebook group Crockpot/Slow Cooker Recipes & Tips and dozens of people have said they're keen to try it out Accompanying her list of ingredients, Chanelle wrote: 'Dairy Milk crunchy fudge - this did not last long lol sooo yum.' People quickly commented on how delicious it looked and said how keen they were to give it a go. Chanelle explained: 'Just chucked it all in at once on high, stirring it for about five minutes, then transferred to another tray with baking paper inside, then put the crunchy chocolate inside. 'Put the garnish chocolate on top when it cooled down a bit.' Other group members praised her skill - saying they wanted to make the indulgent treat themselves. Six ingredient slow cooker fudge INGREDIENTS Two blocks of Cadbury Dairy Milk Can of condensed milk 15g butter Tspn vanilla Bag of Cadbury Crunchie bars - 3/4 for the inside and 1/4 on top Cadbury Flake for the top METHOD Put all Dairy Milk, condensed milk, butter, and vanilla into a slow cooker on the high setting and stir for five minutes Transfer to another tray lined with baking paper inside Put the Crunchie inside and mix Sprinkle Flake on top Leave to cool. Advertisement Other members of the Facebook group praised her skills - admitting they wanted to make it at home too Amy Biglands wrote: 'Wow this looks amazing,' while Amber Destcroix said: 'I soo want to try this one Cadbury's Crunchie is my favorite chocolate.' Chanelle replied: 'Honestly is reallllly good!! it's like chewy crunchy chocolatey goodness.' Margaret Clark admitted: 'I made a massive amount three days ago look what's left,' sharing a picture of a small amount. Another fan of the fudge, Mathew Schell, said: 'Made this yesterday, was so good.' Larry LeShan '42 approaching milestone 100th birthday Nearing a milestone: When Larry LeShan '42 looks back at his nearly 100 years of research, academia and passion for learning, he still smiles about where it all started: William & Mary. Submitted photo Photo - of - Hide Caption The first few months of the new decade are off to a peculiar start the global outbreak of COVID-19 has seemingly thrown everything into uncertainty. But life must continue to be celebrated in the midst of trying times; in this case, 100 years of life. On Sept. 8, 2020, Lawrence Larry LeShan 42 will ring in a milestone birthday. The William & Mary alumnus will celebrate a century of life. My 100 years have been different than anything I ever expected, says LeShan who, at 99, beams at remembering his time at William & Mary. A native of Long Island, New York, LeShan considers himself lucky to have enrolled at the university, where his interest in psychology was piqued. At the time, the psychology department was just getting started Larry recalls being the only student in the program. Much of his undergraduate research was dedicated to patients with terminal illnesses. Many of LeShans subjects during his academic years were cancer patients. I wanted to study how people reacted to things, and especially the phenomenon that one person can see nothing but good possibilities in their future, while others have constricted or negative worldviews, he said. Shortly after meeting Larry, it becomes clear that hes that first kind of person: the eternal optimist. With a glint in his eyes, he looks out the window of his New York City apartment, and you can see the curiosity that a life dedicated to analyzing human beings has given him. After completing his psychology degree at William & Mary, LeShan went west to the University of Nebraska for graduate school, where he dove into learning the history of the discipline. He remembers his close-knit cohort of only four grad students, and the freezing cold Midwest winters. My possibilities felt wide open, says LeShan. I loved learning about what humans do with their lives, how they shape them, and what kind of worlds they build for themselves. It was around this time that Larry married the woman hed go on to spend nearly 60 years of his life with: Eda. Eda made a career in studying the human condition in her own right. She worked as a family counselor, psychologist and public broadcasting television host, focusing on parenting and early childhood education. She lived for 79 years as Larrys intellectual counterpart and the great love of his life before her death in March 2002. Larry continued to further his education after meeting and marrying Eda. He would go on to earn a Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Chicago before becoming a professor, teaching psychology on campuses such as Pace College and Roosevelt University. He delved deeper into his research, focusing on how meditation might help patients with severe illnesses. I was trying to find out what it meant to truly meditate, says LeShan. Which essentially means defining the world around you through concentration. How would people, especially those that were very sick, react to that type of stillness and intentional focus? Larry was writing extensively on the topic, and in 1974, his book How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery was published. The books introduction breaks down the practice as access to more of our own human potential . . . being closer to ourselves and to reality, or to more of our capacity for love and zest and enthusiasm. That definition is one that Larry still stands by, emphasizing years later that a close relationship with ones thoughts and realities is the key to unlocking potential and shaping a happy life. LeShan also began learning about the field of parapsychology, the study of paranormal phenomena that scientific psychological explanations cannot define, such as telepathy, hypnosis and psychic predictions. In a 2017 interview with Parapsychology Foundation President Lisette Coly, Larry admits that he got into parapsychology through a fundamental mistake. After depleting a grant hed been using to fund some of his research, LeShan was curious to explore a discipline in which hed previously not found any value. I had been working with terminal cancer patients for a long time and was completely exhausted, LeShan said in the interview with Coly. I needed a break from that. I noticed a syndrome in people who had very good minds, but who had a small hole in their egos where they believed in this nonsense about the paranormal. They believed in things like telepathy, but they were not doing very good work on it. I was out of grant money for research, so I went to a new foundation looking for help. Larry got that financial support he needed and got busy. A colleague referred him to a woman named Eileen Garrett, a self-proclaimed psychic. He studied and ran tests on her claims and monitored her when she had psychic visions. When she was easily able to tell Larry facts about himself that she wouldnt have otherwise known, he was floored and wanted to learn more. It was a meeting made in heaven, Larry told the Parapsychology Foundation in 2017. We needed each other. She wanted to be monitored by a real psychologist and I wanted someone like her to study. With the support of Eileen and a newfound interest in a field of which hed previously been skeptical, LeShan worked to become an expert in the topic. Since his earlier published works on meditation, Larry has written over 20 books about parapsychology as well as the benefits of psychotherapy techniques on cancer patients. When he looks back at his nearly 100 years of research, academia, and passion for learning, Larry still smiles about where it all started: William & Mary. My freshman year I lived in Jefferson Hall, room 308, Larry says, not missing a beat. I just hope the young people there today feel how I did on that wonderful campus. I hope they know how many possibilities there are and how they can shape the world. I hope they realize the tremendous potential of reaching out and asking what it means to be human. HARBOR SPRINGS, MI - Restaurant and service industry workers have taken an especially hard hit across Michigan amid the coronavirus spread and the states subsequent stay-home order that has effectively shut down all non-essential travel. Nowhere is this more apparent than Northern Michigan, whose vacation hot spots remained idled headed into spring, leaving thousands out of work. To help ease the plate-filling side of this financial strain, Manna Food Project worked with Harbor Springs residents to create a mobile weekly drive-thru food pantry. Starting this Wednesday - and on every Wednesday through May 6 - the pantry will be set up in the main parking lot of Boyne Highlands resort, 600 Highland Drive. It will run from noon to 3 p.m. Manna staff and a group of volunteers will be on hand to distribute the pre-assembled food boxes. Each will have some pantry staples, as well as frozen and fresh food items. No registration will be needed. All the food will be given free of charge. While this mobile pantry is dedicated to support Harbor Springs area service workers, no one will be turned away, said Kim Baker, Mannas executive director. Anyone who would like to pick up a box of food will be asked only for their basic household information when they pull up in their vehicle. "This is extraordinary generosity that will help a very deserving segment of this community's residents," said Mike Chumbler, president and general manager of Boyne Highlands. "We are excited to be the host site of each week's drive-thru event and anticipate a response that will quickly confirm the depth of need among hospitality and service workers throughout the area." Baker, of Manna, credits the effort to a small group of anonymous donors from the community. Harbor Springs is not only a waterfront vacation destination, hugging the curve of Lake Michigans Little Traverse Bay, but its also home to Boyne Highlands and its neighboring ski resort, Nubs Nob. Its also just a short drive from Petoskey, another town with a big tourist influx from spring through fall. Ive often said that we live in a most caring community, and my hat goes off to this small group of anonymous donors for making this effort possible, Baker said. The restaurants and resorts in our area bring so much joy to so many of us, and our hearts go out to those affected by early seasonal layoffs and restaurant closings, one of the donors said in a news release about the project. We love you. We miss you. And we look forward to seeing all of you again. Manna Food Project works to help feed residents in Emmet, Charlevoix and Antrim counties in Northern Michigan. Its a partner organization of Feeding America Food Bank Network. READ MORE Michigans iconic Stormy Kromer factory shifts to making medical gear Free music workshops, free kids concerts - Michigan musician Seth Bernard is at it again Socotra Governor Ramzi Ahmed Mahrous, Saudi Forces Commander in Socotra Brigadier General Abdul Rahman bin Salman Al-Hajji, Socotra Security Director Colonel Faiz Al-Shathi, and Naval Commander Colonel Ali Salmin participated in the event in the presence of a number of local government leaders and military and security officials. "On behalf of all the people of the province, I extend my thanks and appreciation to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdul Aziz and his Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman," Governor Mahrous said during the inauguration. He also thanked SDRPY Supervisor-General Ambassador Mohammed bin Saeed Al Jaber for his interest and efforts in working with program personnel on development and reconstruction projects in vital sectors in the province. The projects that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offered the people of the province would remain immortal in the minds of generations, the governor stressed, and said Socotrans would remain loyal to their Saudi brothers and sisters. Brigadier General Al-Hajji confirmed that the project was an extension of those the Kingdom had implemented in Socotra under the guidance of King Salman and the Crown Prince in support of all Yemeni provinces, with the direct participation of SDRPY Supervisor Ambassador Al Jaber. Al-Hajji explained that the boats being delivered had been manufactured in local Yemeni factories, according to special specifications to adapt them to conditions in the Socotra Archipelago. This was the second batch of boats, he said, to arrive in support of the Yemeni brothers on the island. The fisheries sector in Yemen provides employment opportunities for more than half a million individuals, who in turn support 1.7 million and make up 18% of the coastal population of 9.4 million. Fishing is thus a major source of income, an important sector for job creation, and a key tributary of the economy. Yemeni fisheries are a vital component of the livelihood of Yemeni citizens and a major source of food security. The high cost of boats, on which about 36,000 fishermen depend, represents a genuine challenge after prices jumped by 100% to 150%, in addition to 200% increase in engine prices. In 2018, the cost of an engine reached 3,900,000 Yemeni riyals (about $15,400). SDRPY operations are not limited to the fishermen of Socotra Archipelago, as the program has supplied 100 boats to fishermen in Al-Mahra Governorate as well. The Republic of Yemen's coastline stretches more than 2,500 km along three seas Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Arabian Sea and encompasses 10 governorates: Aden, Abyan, Hadhramaut, Hodeidah, Hajjah, Lahj, Taiz, Shabwah, Al-Mahra and Socotra. Yemeni territorial waters contain over 350 types of fish and other sea creatures. SDRPY aims to achieve its development goals in alignment with the objectives of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14: "Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development." SOURCE Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen Virus-stricken British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thanked medics for saving his life after leaving hospital on Easter Sunday, as hundreds of millions of Christians observed the holiday under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. More than half of humanity is confined at home as governments scramble to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 112,500 lives around the world. Global spread of coronavirus. By Simon MALFATTO (AFP) More than 1.8 million people have been infected but glimmers of hope were emerging that the worst may be behind -- especially in Europe, where hard-hit Italy recorded its lowest death toll in three weeks and fatalities fell in France. Johnson, the highest-profile leader to contract the virus characterised by high fevers and coughing, voiced confidence that Britain would beat the pandemic in a candid video message after he was discharged from a state-run National Health Service (NHS) hospital. "We will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together," Boris Johnson vowed, thanking medics he said saved his life "no question" . By Pippa FOWLES (10 Downing Street/AFP) "I hope they won't mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way," said 55-year-old Johnson, who was admitted on April 5 to a London hospital where he spent three days in intensive care. In a suit and tie but visibly warn, Johnson said he was discharged after "a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question". Even as Johnson headed to a country estate to rest before returning to work, Britain passed the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths. Johnson, like US President Donald Trump, had initially resisted stringent measures such as shutting down public places. The United States has since recorded the world's highest death toll at more than 20,500. 'Easter of solitude' Mexican Archbishop Francisco Moreno Barron wears a face mask as he celebrates Easter Mass at the empty cathedral in Tijuana. By Guillermo Arias (AFP) From the Vatican to Panama and the Philippines, there were unprecedented scenes of empty churches as the world's two-billion plus Christians celebrated Easter from the confines of their homes. Speaking from a near-empty Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Pope Francis offered prayers for the ill and urged "solidarity" to fight the outbreak. "For many, this is an Easter of solitude lived amid the sorrow and hardship that the pandemic is causing, from physical suffering to economic difficulties," he said in a live-streamed message beamed around the world. On the outskirts of Rome, one devout follower held a video session with friends to mark the holy day in lieu of being able to gather in church. The faithful found creative ways to celebrate Easter Sunday in the age of social distancing. By PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA (AFP) "Before lunch, six of us connected online for the Angelus prayer," said Rosa Mastrocinque, adding that her "spirituality has increased" during her weeks-long confinement. The pope had earlier urged creativity to mark the holy weekend -- a call that was met by many. In Panama an archbishop blessed his nation from a helicopter, while one priest in Portugal addressed the faithful from the open top of a moving convertible car. In one church north of the Philippine capital Manila, hundreds of pictures of parishioners were taped to pews as a priest led a Sunday service in a near-empty sanctuary. "We also feel their presence virtually," said Father Mark Christopher De Leon. "This is our way of being with them, praying for them spiritually, praying for them, praying for their safety." 'Far from victory' Unlike France and Italy, Spain reported a slight spike in deaths with 619 fresh fatalities after declines over three straight days. France's lockdown continued over the Easter weekend, while the government said the virus's plateau may have been reached. By Ludovic MARIN (AFP) Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned there could still be tough times ahead, even as the number of new infections continued to slow. "We are still far from victory, from the moment when we will recover normality in our lives," Sanchez said in locked-down Spain. "We are all keen to go back out on the streets... but out desire is even greater to win the war and prevent a relapse," he added. New York, the epicentre of the virus in the United States, has gradually seen the public health crisis stabilise after a devastating week. "You're not seeing a great decline in the numbers, but you're seeing a flattening," Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters. "And you're also seeing a recurrence of the terrible news, which is the number of lives lost, which is 758," he said of the past 24 hours across the state of New York. Questions on reopening The World Health Organization has warned countries against lifting lockdown restrictions too early. India has imposed a nationwide lockdown but dozens of cases were reported in a Mumbai slum, Asia's biggest. By Arun SANKAR (AFP) Governments are under pressure to keep populations safe while preventing the collapse of their economies, amid warnings from the International Monetary Fund of a downturn not seen since the Great Depression. Trump had earlier voiced hope at returning to normal by Easter but backtracked after dire warnings from public health experts. Anthony Fauci, the White House's top advisor on infectious diseases, said Sunday that parts of the world's largest economy may be ready to reopen by May 1 -- but warned it would not be like a "light switch" with the entire country ending restrictions together. In Turkey, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu offered to resign over a 48-hour nationwide shutdown that was announced Friday night with just two hours' notice. The abrupt declaration sparked panic buying at markets -- defeating the aim of social distancing. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to accept Soylu's resignation. There were also worrying signs the virus could be taking hold in new -- and vulnerable -- parts of the world. Conflict-wracked Yemen reported its first case last week, while in Mumbai's crowded Dharavi slum -- one of Asia's biggest and the inspiration for the 2008 Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" -- more than 43 cases have been confirmed. "We have been running extensive medical camps in Dharavi and other areas of Mumbai to test more people for coronavirus and make sure carriers are not ignored," said Mumbai official Khabale-Patil. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari urged all residents to stay at home and wash their hands -- but has not said whether stay-at-home orders due to end Monday in three major cities will be extended. burs-jv-sct/bgs Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13 2020 Protective gear: Tanoto Foundation project manager Eddy Hendry (left), senior adviser Sihol Aritonang (second right), adviser Henky Setiawan (right) and National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) head Doni Monardo pose for a picture during a handover ceremony for protective equipment donated by the foundation in Jakarta on Tuesday. (Courtesy of Tanoto Foundation) The Tanoto Foundation has donated millions of pieces of personal protective equipment to support health workers handling patients with COVID-19 in response to a shortage of such gear. The charity, founded in 1981 by one of the countrys wealthiest men, Sukanto Tanoto, handed over on Tuesday 1 million gloves, 1 million masks, 100,000 coveralls and 3,000 goggles to national COVID-19 task force head Doni Monardo. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login WASHINGTON - A member of the crew of the coronavirus-infected USS Theodore Roosevelt died Monday of complications related to the disease, 11 days after the aircraft carriers captain was fired for pressing his concern that the Navy had done too little to safeguard his crew. The sailor was the first active-duty military member to die of COVID-19. The Navy also announced that an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Harry S. Truman, which had been heading home to Norfolk, Virginia from a monthslong deployment in the Middle East, will instead be kept in the Atlantic for now as a way to protect the ships crew from coronavirus. The Navy is taking this measure to maintain the strike groups warfighting capability while ensuring the safety of the crew, the Navy said in a statement. There are no known coronavirus cases aboard the Truman or the other ships in its strike group. The Navy said it will evaluate this dynamic situation and will provide an update to the crew of the Truman and their families in approximately three weeks. The Roosevelt sailor who died, whose name and other identifying information were not publicly released pending notification of relatives, had tested positive for coronavirus on March 30 and was taken off the ship and placed in isolation housing along with four other sailors at the U.S. Navy base on Guam. On April 9, he was found unresponsive during a medical check and was moved to a local hospitals intensive care unit. Over the weekend, four additional Roosevelt crew members were admitted to the hospital for monitoring of coronavirus symptoms, the Navy said. All are in stable condition and none are in intensive care or on ventilators. The death Monday was the first among the crew of approximately 4,860, of which 585 had tested positive for coronavirus as of Monday. A little over 4,000 crew members have been moved ashore. A number have been kept aboard to attend to the enormous ships nuclear reactors and other sensitive systems. The Navys top officer issued a statement of condolence. My deepest sympathy goes out to the family, and we pledge our full support to the ship and crew as they continue their fight against the coronavirus, Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations, said. While our ships, submarines and aircraft are made of steel, sailors are the real strength of our Navy. Defence Secretary Mark Esper noted that the Roosevelt sailor was the first active-duty military member to die of coronavirus. One member of the New Jersey National Guard died of the virus in late March. We remain committed to protecting our personnel and their families while continuing to assist in defeating this outbreak, Esper said in a statement. The Roosevelt has been in a coronavirus crisis that prompted the Navys civilian leader, Thomas Modly, to fire the ships captain on April 2. Five days later, after having flown to the ship and delivered a speech in which he insulted the skipper, Capt. Brett E. Crozier, and criticized the crew for supporting Crozier, Modly resigned. Modly said he felt compelled to remove Crozier from command because he had distributed too widely via email a letter in which he called for more urgent Navy action to prevent a deeper coronavirus crisis aboard his ship. Croziers words angered Modly but were seen by others as necessary. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset our sailors, Crozier wrote March 31. The letter appeared a short time later in the San Francisco Chronicle and other news media. Modly said the letter was inappropriate and that Crozier had failed to consult sufficiently with his immediate superior before writing it. President Donald Trump initially criticized Crozier for writing the letter but later said he didnt want Croziers career ruined over a single mistake. Navy officials have not ruled out the possibility of Crozier being reinstated. Adm. Robert Burke, the Navys second-ranking admiral, conducted a preliminary inquiry into the Roosevelts coronavirus outbreak and related events. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said Monday that Gilday has received and is reviewing Burkes inquiry report. Christensen, spokesman for Gilday, said it would take time for the admiral to review and endorse the report. Pentagon leaders anticipate that the coronavirus may strike more Navy ships at sea. Last Thursday, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that ships with large numbers of sailors aboard operating in close quarters are vulnerable to an outbreak, although the Roosevelt is the only one so far to have reported coronavirus cases while deployed at sea. Its not a good idea to think that the Teddy Roosevelt is a one-of-a-kind issue, Hyten told a Pentagon news conference. We have too many ships at sea. ... To think that it will never happen again is not a good way to plan. Gilday, meanwhile, said last week that the biggest problem is the inability to test enough people quickly, including those aboard the USS Nimitz, the next U.S.-based aircraft carrier due to deploy out to sea. The challenge that we have now, is having that type of capability where we can test in volume and at speed, Gilday said Thursday. I really dont have a good estimate right now on when that testing capability might be available in the kinds of quantities we would like to see. He said sailors on the USS Nimitz, which is in port preparing for a deployment, will have all movement restricted for two weeks before the ship leaves. ___ Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report. Many Americans woke up to an extra $1,200 in their bank accounts Monday morning, as the first wave of stimulus checks from the $2.2 trillion rescue package were deposited. As per usual, San Antonio reacted with memes and other lighthearted tweets. READ MORE: The latest news and features about coronavirus in San Antonio The Internal Revenue Service began sending the first payments directly to bank accounts this week, though the timing of when individuals will see the change in their accounts depends on how long individual banks take to handle direct deposits, according to an explainer from House Ways and Means Committee Republicans. Americans earning $75,000 or less, or $150,000 and below as a couple, are eligible to receive the full $1,200 check per adult and $500 for each child under 17. Individuals with higher incomes will receive reduced amounts and those who earn $99,000 or more will likely not qualify, according to the IRS. Below are the reactions from San Antonians, who shared their mixed reactions to being included - or excluded - from the first deposits Monday morning. WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Lata Mangeshkar admitted to ICU in Mumbai Hospital after testing positive for Covid Masks made mandatory in Gujarat, Haryana, Bengal India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Apr 13: Masks are now compulsory in Gujarat, Haryana and West Bengal. These states made masks compulsory after Chandigarh and Punjab also implemented the same. The Haryana Home Department said that non-compliance would attract punishment and also said that cops could fine offenders. The people do not necessarily have to buy masks from the markets, but also can use a piece of cloth. Coronavirus outbreak: How state governments in India are fighting to curb the spread of COVID-19 In Gujarat, wearing of masks has been made compulsory in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot. West Bengal reported two more COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, pushing the death toll due to the disease to seven in the state, even as the TMC government made wearing masks mandatory for people visiting public places. However, no fresh COVID-19 cases were reported in the state on Sunday. The total number of coronavirus cases stood at 122 in the state, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government said, even though the Union health ministry put the figure at 134. According to a health bulletin released by the state government, the total number of active cases in West Bengal is now 95. The TMC government, however, did not divulge the details of the deceased persons. Meanwhile, late in the evening, the state government issued an order, making wearing of masks mandatory for people visiting public places. The order was issued by Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha. "Mouth and nose should be covered by facial masks or any other available piece of cloth which may even include a properly folded or rolled dupatta, gamcha, handkerchief or any such material that acts as a protective cover," the order said. "It is hereby directed that it shall be mandatory to use this cover always, especially when in public places," it added. Meanwhile, at least 22 health workers of the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital were placed under quarantine after two patients admitted to the hospital tested positive for COVID-19, a health department official said. A two-day drive to disinfect Nabanna, the state secretariat in adjoining Howrah district, began on Sunday, government sources said. Manitobans could face tougher restrictions on their behaviour later this week to prevent a surge in COVID-19 cases, chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said Monday. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Manitobans could face tougher restrictions on their behaviour later this week to prevent a surge in COVID-19 cases, chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said Monday. And at a press conference earlier in the day, the premier wouldn't rule out public-sector job reductions linked to the pandemic. Chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin and Shared Health's chief nursing officer Lanette Siragusa speak during their daily media briefing at the Manitoba Legislative Building on Monday. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press) Roussin offered a glimmer of hope to house-bound Manitobans, saying they may be "weeks away" from seeing some physical-distancing measures eased. But first, tougher rules may be necessary, he warned. "We're still early in this outbreak," he said after renewing the 14-day Public Health Act order for non-essential businesses to close. The order, which had been set to expire Tuesday, was extended until April 28. "Likely sometime this week we will be enhancing the public health orders to get that message across," said Roussin, who wouldn't offer any specifics. The short-term pain will be worth the long-term gain, he said. "If we can double our efforts we may be weeks away from being able to scale back some of these restrictions." https://www.youtube.com/watch?rel=0&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> On Monday, Manitoba announced just four new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total to 246. No new cases were reported Sunday; the average for the past week has been six cases. Roussin said he doesn't expect the current degree of physical distancing will carry on into the summer. "We're going to have some restrictions on group sizes and changes in how we live day to day," he said, but he expects there will be a "gradual rollback" of the measures. A couple of hours earlier, Premier Brian Pallister also hinted there could be some short-term pain, at the very least, for the public service, as the government marshals its resources to battle the pandemic. Asked if he foresees a reduced civil service in the near future due to the financial pressures the province is facing, Pallister acknowledged such discussions have taken place within government. "I'll have more to say on this tomorrow," he said. "There has been some preliminary exchange of views on that issue." The private sector has been bearing the brunt of the job losses so far, the premier noted, referring to a recent report that showed the province had lost 25,300 jobs in March. Pallister said the province doesn't have a money tree, and "we'll be looking for partnership and support from all. Some are directly impacted; others may be indirectly impacted." Michelle Gawronsky, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union, said the province has not given the MGEU any indication it is considering layoffs. "During these unprecedented times, the critical importance of our public services is more clear than ever," she said in a statement to the Free Press. "Instead of throwing more Manitobans onto (Employment Insurance), our government should focus on a program to top up EI for all Manitobans who have been laid off or had their hours reduced." https://www.youtube.com/watch?rel=0&wmode=transparent" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said although the city hadn't laid off any civic employees during the pandemic, several dozen have been redeployed. Meanwhile, Manitoba has obtained the Spartan Cube, a new COVID-19 rapid-testing system that was approved by Health Canada but needs to be validated by health officials here first, Roussin said. "Even though it's been approved, we still have to see how it performs," he said. The machine is expected to produce test results within an hour. When ready for use, it is expected to be used to test patients being admitted to hospital, for example, or in remote locations far from lab-testing facilities. On Easter Sunday, just 32 tests were performed at the Cadham Provincial Laboratory. An estimated 17,245 tests have been conducted since early February. Stay informed The latest updates on the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 delivered to your inbox every weeknight. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The province is increasing its lab capacity so it will be able test more categories of people soon, Roussin said, adding he expects the expanded list will include "essential" service workers, such as grocery store clerks. And he made reference to "sentinel surveillance testing," in which everyone with respiratory symptoms at a certain location is tested for the virus. "Those would be the next steps," he said. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Carol Sanders Legislature reporter After 20 years of reporting on the growing diversity of people calling Manitoba home, Carol moved to the legislature bureau in early 2020. Read full biography Onetime Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Monday said he endorses Joe Biden's campaign to unseat President Donald Trump. Sanders said he was "asking all Americans" to "support your candidacy, I endorse" in a joint webcast with Biden. Search Keywords: Short link: Central trade unions on Monday sought Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar intervention to stop any purported move to amend the Factories Act, 1948, for raising daily working hours to 12 hours from the existing 8 hours. In a joint letter to Gangwar, 10 central trade unions have also demanded that funds of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) and Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) should not be used amid lockdown to fight COVID-19. "A section of the press has reported that the Government is seriously considering amendment of the Factories Act, 1948, to allow 72 hours of work per 6-day week (12 hours working day), in place of the existing limit of 48 hours (eight hours working day). The move is being justified as exceptional circumstances call for exceptional provisions," the letter said. The central trade unions demanded that the government must come clear and publicly refute the said media reports. These unions are INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC. A Labour Ministry spokesperson clarified that the central government is not considering any such amendment to increase working hours to 12 hours per day and since labour is a concurrent subject, states have the right amend labour laws according to their requirement. The official told that among the states, Rajasthan has increased working hours in view of emergency situation to avoid production loss. About appropriating funds of the EPFO and the ESIC, the official said that the Centre would provide funds under PMGKY for contributing employers' and employees' contribution for next three months which would benefit 79 lakh subscribers and 3.8 lakh firms with an outgo of Rs 4,800 crore. The unions have alleged that the government has already been trying to bring in the amendment to increase working hours through the Code on Occupational Health, Safety and Working Conditions Bill, which has been opposed by the entire trade union movement. In fact, this move of the government is linked with the original project of codification aiming to end the internationally accepted eight hour working norm and not just exceptional circumstances, it added. They said, "Rather, present Covid-19 situation is being sought to be utilised to put in place such anti-worker measure. The report under reference talks of shortage of workers which is not the reality, particularly when the nation is reeling under the highest rate of unemployment, which was slated to rise further due to economic slowdown." According to the letter, the projections by employer organizations from various sectors if added, the emerging scenario is grim as the unemployment rate may reach 23.7 per cent. A report by the International Labour Organisation has also highlighted impact on poverty status for various countries and as for India goes, the estimation is worrisome as it projects that 40 crore of Indians would become poorer. They are of the view that even so called exceptional circumstances or even temporary shortage of availability, if it does arise at all, can very well be taken care of within the framework of the present Factories Act. It does not require permanently ending eight-hour working day norm through hasty amendment, it added. Further, it appears that the government intends to shift the burden of Covid-19 generated economic crises on to the shoulders of working masses,who are already the worst victims of present calamity. "In another report we get to know that the EPFO funds which are wholly-owned by the subscriber- workers are being diverted to Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna (PMGKY) claiming that 3.8 lakh firms will benefit with 76 lakh subscribers with an out go of Rs 4,800 crore," it said. "There is also report about the move to divert ESI funds for meeting Government expenditures, totally unrelated to ESI Scheme," it said. "We strongly feel that the Government should consider mobilising resources in this exceptional circumstances from the huge wealth accumulated by the High Net-worth Individuals (HINI) in the country who have cornered virtually 50 per cent of the national wealth, instead of grabbing workers' lifelong recurring savings in social security funds. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Microsoft MSFT recently announced that its Teams Communication platform has witnessed a robust surge in usage owing to the coronavirus-induced demand. Notably, the company stated that Teams recently set a new daily record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes, up 200% from 900 million minutes on Mar 16. The platform is also being used by 183K users from 175 countries for educational purposes. Moreover, the number of video calls increased 1000% in March, with most of the growth coming from Norway, Netherlands, Australia and Italy, among others. Video usage was lower in countries like India and South Africa due to a lack of stable internet and less access to devices. Further, the number of conferences and live events being hosted online on Teams is also increasing. Markedly, the number of Stream videos in Teams per week witnessed growth of more than 500% in March. The surge in usage bodes well for the platforms growth over the long haul and is expected to boost investor confidence in the stock. Notably, shares of Microsoft have returned 4.7% year to date compared with the industrys growth of 0.1%. Microsoft Corporation Price and Consensus Microsoft Corporation Price and Consensus Microsoft Corporation price-consensus-chart | Microsoft Corporation Quote New Features to Drive Teams Adoption Microsoft is also enhancing Teams capabilities by adding new functionalities to attract new users amid the growing demand for enterprise communication platforms. Recently, the company updated Teams with features like custom backgrounds, which allow users to change the background in Teams meetings. Moreover, meeting organizers are now able to download participant reports and end meetings with a single click. Further, the company has announced updates like the raise hand feature, and the addition of noise suppression capabilities to reduce background noise, to enhance user experience. Microsoft also partnered with Slack WORK to enhance the capabilities of their respective platforms and aid users in working from home efficiently amid the coronavirus-triggered lockdown. Usage Growth to Boost Teams Competitive Position The addition of capabilities is expected to give Teams an edge against competitors like Zoom ZM, Slack and Ciscos CSCO Webex. Notably, Webex reportedly recorded 324 million users in March, with more than double user growth in the United States. The app also witnessed around 73 million meetings in March, with more than 22 million of them taking place per week in the last two weeks of the month. Moreover, Zooms daily active users (DAUs) increased to 200 million as of March 2020 compared to 10 million DAUs in December 2019. However, the company has come under scrutiny due to its privacy and security policies. Further, Slacks connected user base increased from 10 million on Mar 10 to 12.5 million on Mar 25. Additionally, 9000 paid users were added between Feb 1 and Mar 25, up 80% over the full quarterly total for the preceding two quarters. Nevertheless, Teams growing usage and strong capabilities bode well and are likely to expand its presence in the enterprise communication space. Notably, the market is expected to witness a CAGR of 17.5% between 2020 and 2025, per Mordor Intelligence data. Zacks Rank Microsoft currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (ZM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Slack Technologies, Inc. (WORK) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Jymie Merritt, 93, the Philadelphia jazz bassist and composer who played with Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King, and many others in a career that spanned seven decades, has died. His son Mike, also a bass player, said his father died at his home in Center City on Friday, April 10. The cause was liver cancer. Because Mr. Merritt was best known for accompanying famous jazzmen and anchoring legendary bands, he didnt achieve the wide fame accorded to some of his fellow musicians. But the West Philadelphia native, whose compositions Absolutions and Nommo were recorded by Max Roach and others, was held in the highest esteem by his colleagues. Jymie Merritt, thats a great loss, said Philadelphia sax player Odean Pope, who first played with him in 1959. Im very grateful that I lived during his time. Pope is among a group of Philly musicians who, as the Forerunners, recently completed an album of Merritts compositions, scheduled for release later this year. In addition to him being an extraordinary bass player, he had his own sound," Pope said. "He had his own concept. He was just so fluent in what he was doing. To me, playing his music was like going to the highest university in the whole world. Mike Merritt also described his father as a musicians musician. People like Miles Davis wanted him to be in his band," he said Monday from his home in Los Angeles. Art Blakey or Max Roach or Sonny Rollins or Dizzy Gillespie, whoever he was working with the musicians knew who he was. But to the general public he was a sideman, because he never recorded anything under his own name as a leader. In 2013, Mr. Merritt received Living Legend honors at the Philadelphia Clef Club Jazz Awards. A 2016 tribute at World Cafe Live cited his groundbreaking work. Philadelphia bassist and bandleader Christian McBride has featured music recorded at that event on his NPR show Jazz Night in America. McBride called him a giant. Phrases like musical genius and unsung are so casually and recklessly thrown out there describing just about anyone these days, McBride said at that time. Jymie Merritt is not only one of the great bassists of his era, but also one of the great composers. Mr. Merritt is best known for his years with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, starting with the 1959 album Moanin, an acknowledged classic of hard bop. READ MORE: Wallace Roney, Philadelphia-born jazz trumpeter, dies at 59 of coronavirus complications In that period, the band, led by drummer Blakey and anchored by Mr. Merritt, included three other Philadelphians: trumpeter Morgan, sax player Benny Golson, and pianist Bobby Timmons. Mr. Merritt had established himself as a player of impressive range and expertise before he joined Blakey. Mr. Merritt who pronounced his first name Jimmy was born in Philadelphia in 1926. His father was a businessman and minister. His mother was an elementary school teacher who also taught piano. He served overseas in the Army in World War II, seeing combat first in North Africa and then in the Battle of Anzio in Italy. Originally a saxophonist, he switched to bass after returning from the war, and started playing with Coltrane, Golson, and Philly Joe Jones in 1949. He was an early innovator on electric bass, which he started playing in 1951. In the early 1950s, Mr. Merritt moved between the blues and R&B touring circuit and the jazz world in Philadelphia and New York. He toured with Bull Moose Jackson, known for his risque rhythm and blues hits, and spent three years in blues great Kings band. After his years with Blakey, he worked with Chet Baker, Roach, and again with Morgan, the last most notably on the 1970 double album Live at the Light House, which was recorded in Hermosa Beach, Calif., and includes lengthy versions of Mr. Merritts compositions. READ MORE: Hal Willner, Philly-born producer and Saturday Night Live music director, has died at 64 Blue Note Records is assembling a box set of recordings from the Hermosa Beach shows with Morgan, for which Mike Merritt a longtime bass player in Conan OBriens late-night talk show band interviewed his father. He was very positively affected by hearing that music again after all these years. He really felt good about where that band was going, had Lee not met an early death [he was shot to death in a New York jazz club in 1972], and the ground that band was breaking. Mr. Merritt returned to Philadelphia in the 1970s and led that eras Forerunners, which took its name from an organization of musicians and other performers that he had cofounded in 1962. The band, featuring longtime Philadelphia musicians like Pope and Colmore Duncan, put Mr. Merritts music into practice, even though health struggles often prevented him from touring. He was first diagnosed with cancer in the 1970s. People like Lester Young, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie left an enormous trail of ideas that we were following, Mr. Merritt once told the Daily News, explaining his desire to push the music ahead with the Forerunners. For me, there were a lot of threads to be pulled together from all over the place to increase the vocabulary that we used. In addition to his son, Mr. Merritt is survived by his longtime partner, Ave Merritt; sons Marlon and Marvon; and daughters Mharlyn and Jamie Reese. He was predeceased by son Martyn, who died in 1989. Mike Merritt said that no funeral is planned at this time, but that the family hopes to to have a memorial service in Philadelphia in the late summer or fall. A Special Police Officer (SPO) was killed and another injured on Monday in a terrorist attack in Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir, a police official said. The incident took place at remote Tandar village of Dachan this afternoon, the official said. He said some terrorists opened fire on the two SPOs on duty, killing one of them and leaving the other critically injured. The terrorists fled the scene with two service rifles of the jawans, the official said, adding reinforcements have been rushed to the area to track down the assailants. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US intelligence knew of China's coronavirus outbreak as early as November: Report Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 2:27 AM US intelligence authorities became aware of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China as early as November 2019, informed sources have revealed, citing a classified report released at the time by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), an arm of the American Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The US-based ABC News cited four sources briefed on the secret report as saying that US intelligence officials were aware of the looming pandemic and warned that a contagion was sweeping through China's Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population. "Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI report, which included intercepted wire and computer messages, as well as satellite images, and further warned that a viral outbreak could harm American military personnel in Asia. Officials at the White House, the DIA and Pentagon's Joint Staff were all briefed "multiple times" on the secret report, ABC News underlined on Thursday, without elaborating on the source of the virus. The major news network further emphasized that US spy agency officials followed up the November intelligence report with policy briefings "through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House," noting that NSC and the director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the report. "This was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on," a source was quoted as saying. "It would be a significant alarm that would have been set off by this," said the network's contributor and former deputy assistant defense secretary, Mick Mulroy, about the secret report. "And it would have been something that would be followed up by literally every intelligence-collection agency." "Medical intelligence takes into account all source information imagery intelligence, human intelligence, signals intelligence," added Mulroy, who had also served as a senior CIA official. "Then there's analysis by people who know those specific areas. So for something like this to have come out, it has been reviewed by experts in the field. They're taking together what those pieces of information mean and then looking at the potential for an international health crisis." This is while the Trump administration has been widely censured for being flat-footed and late in its response to a pandemic that has now killed more than 12,000 across the US, weeks after sweeping through Wuhan and then most of Europe. US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has alternated between taking credit for early action and claiming that the Covid-19 outbreak was a surprise to him and everyone else. He has repeatedly touted his January 31 decision to restrict air travel with China, but at the same time, he spent weeks telling the public and top administration officials that there was nothing for Americans to fear. For instance, Trump on January 22 made his first remarks about the virus when asked in a televised interview, "Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?" He then responded, "No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine." The US is currently struggling with a sprawling medical crisis, facing a shortage of hospital beds, ventilators, and healthcare workers, similar to the shortage forewarned by the Pentagon. "Competition for, and scarcity of resources will includenon-pharmaceutical MCM [Medical Countermeasures]" like "ventilators, devices, personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves ... medical equipment, and logistical support," the classified report said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Oregon Employment Department said Monday that it has fixed a breakdown in its claims system that erroneously told some laid-off workers to restart their previously filed benefit claims. Sundays stumble was the latest in a series of setbacks for the department, which has been overwhelmed by an unprecedented number of new jobless claims during the coronavirus outbreak. The department said Sundays lapse affected only a small portion of people seeking to file claims. But with an extraordinary 270,000 Oregonians laid off in the past few weeks, an error affecting even a modest percentage of them could have affected a large number of people in aggregate. Heres what happened: Laid-off workers whose benefits claims have been approved must still re-file each week to continue receiving benefits. On Sunday, though, some workers who went to make their weekly filing online found the states system instructed them instead to restart their claims. Twitter immediately erupted with dozens of workers reporting the error, confused about the next step and whether their prior claims were still valid. For those who have completed their initial claim, and continued to file weekly claims, their re-start error has been identified and fixed, employment department communications director Gail Krumenauer wrote in an email Monday. If they tried yesterday (Sunday) and got the re-start error for the first time, they can re-try now and it should work. Sundays error occurred because the departments online system had confirmed some peoples claims but its mainframe computers hadnt yet processed them, according to Krumenauer. She said Mondays fix should prevent the problem from reoccurring next week. If you restarted your claim yesterday (Sunday) before the auto-fix, and were able to claim the week, then you're initial claim shouldn't be effected and it should just pick up where it left off. You do not need to start a new claim. Please remember to file weekly starting Sunday. Oregon Employment Department (@ORemployment) April 13, 2020 Some people who filed an initial claim and then didnt re-file the following week perhaps because of an online claim error or difficulty connecting through the departments overloaded phone lines may indeed have to restart their claims, Krumenauer said. She advised people to email the department at OED_UI_Info@oregon.gov with questions about their claims, but cautioned that It will take at least a few days for someone to get back to them. The crush of layoffs has exposed a number of lapses in the employment departments systems, which date to the 1990s. The department apologized last week for prior errors, which incorrectly told many workers their claims hadnt been processed, when in fact they had. The department has also said its computer systems will not allow it to waive the waiting week for new claims ordinarily in effect, despite federal money Congress approved last month designed to compensate states that adopt a waiver. That decision will cost Oregon workers tens of millions of dollars altogether and potentially delay their first payments. The department has quadrupled the number of people taking claims, but with 1 in 8 Oregonians laid off in the past several weeks the phone lines remain jammed. While many workers can file online, claimants with questions or claims that must be filed manually report they have spent hours on hold or been unable to get through. Many states have encountered similar problems, delaying payments to laid-off workers or making them work through a cumbersome process to file claims. In Oregon, the employment department said Monday it has now processed more than half of the 270,000 claims that have flooded in during the coronavirus outbreak. And at the end of last week it began paying a $600 bonus payment for laid-off workers authorized by Congress last month. -- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway | Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Ricky Gervais is calling for an end to wildlife wet markets amid the coronavirus pandemic and warned that if the consumption of wild animals continues, this will happen again. The coronavirus outbreak is believed to have originated at a market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were sold, and made the jump to humans from animals kept in close proximity. This weekend, The Independent launched a campaign calling for an international effort in creating tighter restrictions on wildlife markets and the trade of wild animals to reduce our risk of future pandemics. On a livestream from his Twitter account this weekend, the comedian and actor, 58, reassured people that life would get back to normal but warned that this would not be the last pandemic. Mr Gervais said: This will happen again. The wet markets are already opening in China and other parts. They are already getting back to it. This comes from animals, like all the other things, MERS and SARS... it comes from animals and f***ing eating things you shouldnt. I dont know what to do. What can I do? Im annoyed at sunbathers so if I saw a wet market, I dont know what Id f***ing do. The comedian also told The Mirror: We cant carry on exploiting animals, eating wildlife and trashing the planet. The wildlife trade and markets have to close, otherwise it will be a case of when, and not if, we have another global pandemic. The newspaper published pictures this weekend of bats, snakes and dogs being sold on the street in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Mr Gervais posted a video message in support of International Animal Rescue and retweeted a link to Humane Society Internationals call for a permanent ban on wildlife trade. A study last year found that one in every five vertebrate species are traded as pets or to be used as products in countries around the world, putting nearly 9,000 species at risk of extinction. Along with the United Nations biological diversity chief, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, and renowned conservationist and UN messenger of peace, Dr Jane Goodall DBE, The Independents campaign asks that governments work together to impose stricter controls on the trade, sale and consumption of wild animals. Recommended China tries to shut down wildlife trade but markets remain open There are now 1.7m confirmed cases around the world, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and more than 108,000 people have died from the disease. Some 241 conservation and animal welfare groups have asked leaders of WHO to take action on a permanent global ban on wildlife markets and a highly precautionary approach to wildlife trade. Previous zoonotic diseases, those transmitted from animals to humans, have been linked to wildlife including HIV, Ebola, Sars, Mers and Zika. Environmentalists told The Independent last month that coronavirus will not be the last pandemic to wreak havoc on humanity if we continue to ignore links between infectious diseases and destruction of the natural world. Following the global sensation surrounding the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, Netflix released a special episode featuring interviews with seven of the supporting characters that make up the cast. While Tiger Kings major figuresthe former G.W. Zoo operator Joe Exotic and current Big Cat Sanctuary owner Carole Baskindid not participate in the special, titled The Tiger King And I, viewers had a chance to hear from Joe Exotics former coworkers on what they thought of the series and where they stand now. Hosted by the comedian Joel McHale, the special featured interviews with Jeff and Lauren Lowe, Erik Cowie, John Reinke, Kelci Saffery, Joshua Dial and Rick Kirkhamall of whom figured prominently in Joe Exotics life and were featured throughout the series. Here are the three biggest takeaways from The Tiger King And I. Joe Exotic has few friends left Tiger King | Courtesy of Netflix Critics have accused the producers behind Tiger King of playing up Joe Exotics outlandish personality without drawing enough attention to the way he mistreated animals, including killing tigers. Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence, in part for making up a murder-for-hire plot against Carole Baskin and for killing five tigers. As Tiger King reveals over seven episodes, Joe Exotics exploitative actions affected both the people who worked for him at G.W. Zoo and the exotic animals under their care. Looking back at their time with Joe Exotic, many of his old friends and coworkers express regret about not doing more to fight against his overwhelming power and the way he mistreated animals. Erik Cowie, the head zookeeper, told McHale that Joe Exotic should not be released from prison. Twenty-two years doing federal timethat guys gonna die in there, he said. So, good riddance. Jeff Lowe, who was revealed in the series to have a notable criminal history himself, said it was ironic that Joe Exotic was receiving so much attention while in jail. Hes where he belongs, Lowe said. I would probably just tell him, gotcha.' Story continues Joshua Dial, who served as Joe Exotics campaign manager for two unsuccessful political runs (one for president in 2015 and the other for governor of Oklahoma in 2018) revealed that he was also neglected in key ways after a traumatic experience. Dial was working in his office in 2017 when Joes former husband, Travis Maldonado, fatally shot himself in front of him. Dial was made to return to work in the same office and told McHale that he never received any mental health counseling to process what he witnessed. Hes now trying to raise enough money to access mental health care; a GoFundMe has been set up to help him out. Kelci Saff Saffery, who lost an arm following a tiger attacka horrifying event which the docuseries detailsprobably had the kindest words for Joe Exotic while talking with McHale. According to Saff, the documentary excludes certain things Joe Exotic did to show his loyalty to others, and he does not think Joe deserves to remain in prison forever. I think justice was served, but I still dont want to see that man die in prison, he said. Not everyone was happy with their portrayals Unsurprisingly, some of Tiger Kings cast members were unhappy with how they come across in the series. John Finlay, Joe Exotics ex-husband, and Joshua Dial, Joes ex-campaign manager, objected to the implication that they were on drugs during the filming of the series. I was portrayed as a drugged-out hillbilly, Finlay told McHale. At that time, I was four to five years clean. Jeff Lowe also objected to his portrayal in the series, in which Joe Exotic implies that Lowe stole the zoo out from under him. They tried to sensationalize the story, he said. Many harbor regrets over the mistreatment of animals Netflix Many people who were in Joe Exotics orbit when he was still running the zoo said they regretted following all of his directions in their treatment of animals, especially the tigers that were killed for no reason. Erik Cowie told McHale that he was often brought in to relax big cats before they were put downand that often, it was healthy big cats that were killed, not sick ones that needed to be put down. Those cats trusted me up until the end and somehow, sometimes, I swear they were like, Dude, you let me down,' Cowie said. I can see it in their faces and in their eyes. Jeff Lowe echoed Cowies remarks. They were not sick. They were beautiful, healthy tigers that he called over to the fence and he shot them in the head because he needed the cage space, he said. So Joe goes out and makes the cage space by killing five beautiful, healthy tigers. Kelci Saffery said the situation at the zoo was beyond anyones control because Joe Exotic was so skilled at convincing others that his choices were right. Joe always had a way of explaining his actions, he said. They were old, they were injured, they were suffering, is what we got. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marchio Irfan Gorbiano (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 18:24 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd19dc5b 1 National COVID-19,COVID-19-Indonesian-patients,COVID-19-test,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,Jokowi,PCR-test Free President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has repeated his call for the Health Ministry and the COVID-19 task force to conduct more polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, saying that they should aim to conduct at least 10,000 tests a day. "I want PCR tests to be further increased and for the backlog of [unprocessed] samples to be reduced, especially in the epicenter regions," Jokowi said at the opening of a limited meeting on Monday. He said that he had received reports that the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry had imported 18 PCR testing machines that could each process 500 tests a day and that there were now 29 laboratories nationwide that could process PCR tests. "Up until today we have reached a total of 26,500 tests. This is a good jump but I want for us to conduct at least 10,000 tests per day," he said. Indonesia's testing rate is among the lowest in the world, with only 99 tests per million people. In comparison, neighboring Malaysia has conducted over 2,000 tests per million people, while Singapore and South Korea have conducted over 10,000 per million people. Indonesia would have to conduct around 2.7 million tests to reach similar levels. According to the Health Ministry's official count, there were 4,557 confirmed COVID-19 cases nationwide as of Monday, with 399 deaths. (kmt) Patients now able to access specialist consultants and cannabis medicines without ever having to leave their homes LONDON, April 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Grow Pharma partner with Cannabis Access Clinics to launch new end-to-end service launched in response to Covid-19 crisis Includes free initial screening call, specialist consultation via online video and next-day home delivery Overall price has significantly dropped thanks to wider selection of medicines, clinics and consultations CEO of Grow, confirms strength of supply chains and stocks of cannabis medicines in the UK The medical cannabis industry in the UK has quickly adapted to the challenges to patient access posed by the current COVID-19 outbreak by implementing the rapid roll-out of remote access and online services for medical cannabis patients, dramatically improving patient experience - meaning patients won't have to leave their home at any point to get their medicine. Previously patients were required to meet specialists in person for consultations in order to receive prescriptions, repeating the visits every 28 days in order to renew their prescription. This was often physically taxing, especially for chronic pain patients, adding to anxiety and costs associated with obtaining their medicine. In direct response to these challenges, Grow Pharma, a subsidiary of Grow, has partnered with Cannabis Access Clinics to launch a brand new end-to-end service that will allow patients to obtain medical cannabis without ever leaving their home. This service will walk the patient through every step of the way, from an initial free consultation, through to a consultation with a specialist doctor via online video link, to a next-day delivery to the patient's doorstep. One such patient is Sharon Dunne, a mental health professional from Devon and long-term chronic pain patient. She recently came across the new online services offered by The Cannabis Access Clinic through Grow, and decided to try it for the first time. "The ability to do this through video link was very helpful; if you are in constant pain it is more difficult to make a long journey to see a specialist. I had been wanting to attend a clinic but a six or seven-hour return journey just to check eligibility made that too difficult," Sharon said, demonstrating the immediate impact that these online services are having on patient access. This does not mean that safety standards have been lowered. Sharon noted that, "The process was very rigorous and I had to demonstrate the failures of mainstream medicine to treat my pain, which I was able to do since I have all my medical records here at home. I now hope that medical cannabis will help me reduce my reliance on opioids." Dr Samuel Murray, the general manager of Cannabis Access Clinics, said, "Improving patient access to medical cannabis in the safest way possible is our number one priority at Cannabis Access Clinics UK. For many patients, particularly those who suffer from chronic pain and decreased mobility, it just doesn't make sense to journey into central London needlessly. It's often much safer that they stay at home, now more than ever, and see the specialist via video consultation." According to a 2019 YouGov poll, 1.4 million people in the UK self-medicate using cannabis bought on the black market. It is important that patients who have begun treatment via legal routes do not return to the black market due to the perceived lack of supply during the current crisis. On a positive note, Alex Fraser, Patient Access Specialist at Grow noted that, "This move towards remote-access is a trend that has been seen in other sectors and will continue to shape how we provide care for patients in the future. Ease of access to medicines thanks to creative uses of technologies combined with a rapidly falling cost of care will greatly improve patients' experiences." Grow is one of the largest importers and distributors of medical cannabis in the UK and is continually working to reduce costs associated with cannabis medicines. This includes measures such as increasing the range of available medicines, removing barriers to access, aiding in clinical trials and shared care initiatives. Addressing the public's concern about a potential future shortage in stocks of medical cannabis in the UK, Grow's CEO Ben Langley, said, "There is an abundance of cannabis medicines available in the UK and we have been working tirelessly with our partners to ensure that these medicines get to the patients for whom it is a crucial element of their doctor's prescribed treatment. "This kind of end-to-end service can provide a vital lifeline to patients with pain and chronic conditions during the current public health crisis and beyond and we are always looking for the most cost-effective, patient-friendly way to get cannabis-based medicines - and advice - to those who can benefit most." For any questions or support please call Grow on 020 3928 6367. NOTES TO EDITORS For more information on the dangers of black market cannabis during Covid-19 crisis: grow-pharma.com/covid-19-and-cannabis-black-market-supply-is-more-dangerous-to-patients-than-ever/ For more information on phone consultations, see here: grow-pharma.com/telehealth-a-lifeline-in-uncertain-times-for-patients-prescribed-cannabis-medicines-and-those-seeking-to-access-these-life-changing-treatments About Grow Grow exists to unlock the medical potential of cannabis for those who need it. Grow consists of two business units, Grow Pharma and Grow Biotech. Grow Pharma, our market access team, launches producers' of cannabis medicines' businesses into new markets, creating long-term value for them. Our medical affairs team supports individual healthcare professionals and clinics. Grow Biotech, our R&D team, creates new technologies for producers of cannabis medicines to create better, more cost-effective, medicines. Find out more at grow-pharma.com. About Cannabis Access Clinics Cannabis Access Clinics has recently launched in the UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of Souther Cannabis Holdings, which operates CA Clinics, Applied Cannabis Research and Fresh Leaf Analytics in Australia. Cannabis Access Clinics UK is focussed on improving patient access to specialists who prescribe medical cannabis, at an affordable price. For more information please visit cannabisaccessclinics.co.uk. Two workers were killed and one was seriously injured in an explosion and subsequent fire at a chemical unit in Maharashtra's Palghar district on Monday, an official said. The mishap took place around 12 noon in the premises of Galaxy Surfactants, located in the Boisar industrial area, district disaster control cell chief Vivekananda Kadam said. "Two workers were killed and one was seriously injured," Kadam said. Some locals said they heard a loud sound from the unit around noon. The injured worker was rushed to hospital, Kadam said. On getting information about the mishap, a couple of fire engines rushed to the spot and efforts were underway to douse the flames. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, Kadam said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Forecast Airbus Boeing Platinum Charts Despite the setbacks from the virus, demand for airline travel and for more efficient airliners is ever-increasing and the ongoing re-equipment cycle for such aircraft is one of the marvels of the century! With Boeing showing a probable near-term loss, plants closing, and the FAA still sitting tight with its order on grounding the 737 MAX, the common belief of many investors is that Boeing is in real tough financial shape and that Airbus is leaping ahead. However, during the daily changing events of COVID-19, analysts at Forecast International, while working remotely, have been continually tweaking their near- and far-term forecasts to reflect the probable outlook for production of large commercial jets, the largest source of revenue for both Airbus and Boeing. With the benefit of Forecast International's Platinum Forecast System, the analysts have been able to quickly examine many near- and long-term scenarios and have come up with some surprising findings! Airbus to Retain Lead in Unit Production Looking first at a very short-term scenario, 2020-2023, combined output from the two major competitors is expected to slump to 993 total units in 2020, as compared with 1,562 units the year before, a projected drop of 36.4%. It is no surprise that Boeing has been the most severely impacted, as the company has taken multiple hits, not only with the grounding of its narrowbody 737 MAX and the COVID-19 virus, but also from additional FAA challenges to the safety of some of its widebody transports. Accordingly, based on what they consider the most probable scenario, our analysts project that Boeings production of large commercial jets for 2020 will total only 423 units, while Airbus, although also impacted by the virus, will build 570. Thereafter, the analysts see production from both competitors mounting steadily in 2021-2023 to address very substantial backlogs. The unit bar graph (attached, Chart 1) shows the projected buildup of production in units by the combined competitors, while the first pie chart (Chart 2) shows the calculated manufacturer market shares by units for the period. As shown, in three full years of mounting production, Airbus is expected to build 2,682 large jet transports of all types for a 50.1% share, while Boeing will produce an estimated 2,592 for a 48.4% share. Several other manufacturers in China and Russia will account for a small share of the output, but it should be noted that China will become increasingly visible as a new manufacturer of large commercial transports as the decade ahead advances. Boeing to Quickly Regain Lead in Value Share Interestingly, while Boeing will temporarily lose value share in 2020, the analysts see the U.S. manufacturer quickly beginning to recover in 2021 and moving steadily into the value lead during the 2021-2023 period. As demonstrated in the second pie chart (Chart 3), Boeing is expected to accrue 52.75% of the value share, as compared to 46.3% for Airbus. The reason for this disparity is that while Airbus currently has an advantage in the narrowbody sector, where unit numbers are higher, Boeing is better positioned in the widebody market, where per-aircraft prices are higher. Boeing to Increase Value Share Lead over Long Term The data amassed by Forecast Internationals Platinum System carries well into the future (Chart 4). Based upon current projections, during the 15-year 2020- 2034 period, Airbus will continue to hold a lead in units (13,633 to 13,491), but Boeings value lead is actually expected to increase significantly. Airbus will earn $2.096 trillion, while Boeing's earnings will climb to $2.451 trillion, a difference of $355 billion. Again, this is due to Boeing's lead in the higher-value widebody segment, led by the 787 and 777. In the final analysis, this great competitive struggle is good for business worldwide. Despite the setbacks from the virus, demand for airline travel and for more efficient airliners is ever-increasing and the ongoing re-equipment cycle for such aircraft is one of the marvels of the century! For further information, contact Forecast International at info@forecastinternational.com, or at +1 (203) 426-0800, where your inquiry will be further directed. To view this article online, please click HERE About Forecast International Forecast International, Inc. is a leading provider of Market Intelligence and Consulting in the areas of aerospace, defense, power systems and military electronics. Based in Newtown, Conn., USA, the company specializes in long-range industry forecasts and market assessments used by strategic planners, marketing professionals, military organizations, and governments worldwide. Forecast International also maintains a high posture of situational awareness and geopolitical analysis. FI on the Web: https://www.forecastinternational.com/ FI Blog: https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/ FI on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ForecastIntl FI on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forecastintl Ray Peterson Vice President, Research & Editorial Services Forecast International 22 Commerce Rd. Newtown, CT 06470 USA (203) 426-0800 ray.peterson@forecast1.com The red zone has been extended for 28 more days in Srikalahasti town of Chittoor district after two more people were diagnosed to be coronavirus positive on Sunday, informed district collector Bharat Narayan Gupta. Narayan Gupta said that the extension of red zone for 28 more days has already been announced. Even if the lockdown is lifted in rest of the country, it cannot be removed in Srikalahasti. One must be very careful and follow the restrictions. In wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the district collector held a review meeting with town administration at Srikalahasti Municipal Office. "The first coronavirus positive case in Chittoor district was detected at Srikalahasti and the patient has been discharged. Now there are four active positive cases in Srikalahasti town. Two of them were detected last night and both of them have returned from Delhi," said Narayan Gupta. "In fact, the man was tested negative at first, it may be due to late effect of the virus, or the original test result might be wrong. We are checking how it happened," he further said. "After that we will check entire quarantine area. We will collect their swabs and get them tested. Tracing of their primary contacts won't be a problem. Right now, sanitisation work is going on and so, we request full cooperation from the public," he added. Today is the 20th day out of the 21-days nationwide lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from March 25, as a precautionary measure against the spread of the virus. According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of positive COVID-19 cases in Andhra Pradesh is 427. Till now, 11 people have either been cured or discharged, while seven deaths have been reported. The total number of positive coronavirus cases across the country are 9,152, including 7,987 active cases of the virus. So far, 856 patients have either been cured or discharged while 308 deaths have been recorded in the country, as per data provided by the Ministry of Health. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Doctors complain of intimidation for reporting shortage of safety kits, and attacks over suspicion they carry infection. New Delhi, India On March 28, when Kolkata-based oncologist Indranil Khan received images of doctors wearing raincoats in the COVID-19 ward of a government hospital, he shared them on Twitter. The next day, the West Bengal state health department assured him that immediate steps would be taken to reject substandard personal protective equipment (PPE). Within two hours of that assurance, Khan was detained by police for questioning. I was released the next day only after I posted on social media that the state government is working hard for doctors, the 31-year-old doctor, who was charged with causing communal disharmony and criminal intimidation, told Al Jazeera. Khan moved a local court to contest the charges. The court observed that no government can intimidate doctors, even those who brought disrepute to it. West Bengal police official Gyanwant Singh, who is authorised to speak on the matter, did not respond to Al Jazeeras calls and messages seeking clarification. Doctors of AIIMS, RML, Lady Hardinge Medical College & allied hospitals refused to donate in #PMCaresFunds They asked authorities to stop mandatory cuts of our salaries & instead provide us PPEs, security, accommodation, transportation & high risk allowance #DocsNeedCare pic.twitter.com/8kAbMJmuoz Harjit Singh Bhatti (@DrHarjitBhatti) April 12, 2020 Social media posts gagged With 1.2 million doctors, the doctor-population ratio in India is 1:1456, much lower than the World Health Organizations recommendation of 1:1000. Yet, doctors across India have been reprimanded for highlighting the governments inefficiency in providing them adequate protective gear to fight the pandemic. Recently, four doctors of New Delhis Hindu Rao Hospital bore the brunt of the authorities for highlighting the lack of PPE. The doctors were threatened with dismissal. The federal governments Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi asked the administrators of their WhatsApp groups to provide their names, phone numbers and email IDs to share the details with the police. The hospitals medical superintendent Balvinder Singh Arora told Al Jazeera the circular will work as a deterrent for people who spread fake news regarding PPE shortage on WhatsApp. Despite Al Jazeeras repeated requests for data on the current stock of PPE and N-95 masks, no government official concerned with the matter responded. In a press statement on Friday, the federal government stated that the availability of PPE with the states has doubled and another two million N-95 masks were provided. Meanwhile, of the nearly 9,000 COVID-19 patients in India, at least 90 are health professionals. On Thursday, a doctor in the central Madhya Pradesh state died of COVID-19. Doctors fear an inadequate supply of PPE makes them vulnerable to the coronavirus infection. Supreme Court took note of the various incidents in different parts of the country where medical staff and doctors were attacked and misbehaved with.Court said such incidents are bound to instill a sense of insecurity in Doctors and medical staff. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/hShYJ5VlPe NewsMobile (@NewsMobileIndia) April 8, 2020 AIIMS doctors write to Modi Srinivas Rajkumar T of the resident doctors association at New Delhis premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), said doctors and nurses in their COVID-19 wards were asked to wear the PPE usually worn while examining HIV patients. PPE kits meant for examining HIV patients are not equipped to resist droplets, and the coronavirus infection gets transmitted through droplets sneezed out or coughed up by infected patients, Rajkumar T said. But those who raised such issues on social media were being intimidated by the authorities, he said. However, AIIMS director Randeep Guleria told Al Jazeera the health professionals posted in COVID-19 wards were getting PPE and masks that met the international guidelines. He advised the staffers to discuss their problems internally and not post them on social media. But the AIIMS doctors still wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the harsh backlash they faced from authorities for demanding professional safety equipment. There has been no response yet from Modis office over the letter. There is no gag order or censorship on doctors or other health professionals by us, Indias Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Harsh Vardhan, told Al Jazeera. But they must approach the authorities to get their grievances addressed instead of going to social media. They can even write to me, he said. Rajan Sharma of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a voluntary national body of doctors, added: Doctors can come to us and not sensationalise problems. However, geriatrician Harjit Singh Bhatti, who started a social media campaign called DocsNeedGear, argued: The aim is not to sensationalise problems but to make the voices heard. Staff members of a hospital in Kolkata carry candles and oil lamps to show solidarity with people affected by the coronavirus disease. [Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters] Recently, doctors in Indian-administered Kashmir were also threatened with strict action and up to six months jail for speaking against the governments alleged failures in a circular. It [the circular] was for a group of health professionals who were using social media for a blame game, the Himalayan regions director of health services, Samir Mattoo, told Al Jazeera. But Owais H Dar, the general secretary of Kashmir Doctors Association, said the doctors were sharing only the truth because they know the ground realities. Political scientist Ajay Gudavarthy told Al Jazeera that by censoring doctors, the government was attempting to create a sense of false self-image that covers up its limitations. Epidemiologist Jayaprakash Muliyil warned the authorities that censoring information would only add more confusion to the existing chaos. Doctors are busy fighting the pandemic, they dont want to start a fight with the government, he told Al Jazeera. Harrasing doctors is not helping. Let's stand together in this and make it a better place to survive in. #covidindia @narendramodi @PMOIndia @AmitShah @MHOIndia Make attacks on Doctors a non-bailable offence Sign the Petition! https://t.co/U07wTv86ES via @ChangeOrg_India Priyanka (@ABHINAHIYAAR) April 12, 2020 Fight inside and outside hospitals Besides facing censorship from the government on speaking out, Indian doctors have also faced attacks and social boycotts. Last week, two female doctors at Safdarjung Hospital were assaulted by a resident for spreading coronavirus infection. In the western state of Gujarat, a mobile video of a female doctor harassed by her neighbour for working with COVID-19 patients went viral on social media. In Madhya Pradesh, health workers were attacked as they visited a neighbourhood to test some residents. Junior doctors in the southern Telangana state were labelled dirty. On March 27, Al Jazeera reported that many doctors and health workers across India were evicted from their rental houses over fear of contracting the infection. I frantically looked for alternative accommodation but nobody offered one, Shamima Yasmin, 23, a medical nurse in West Bengals Murshidabad district, who was among those evicted from her home, told Al Jazeera. The IMA condemned the social boycott of doctors. But Bhatti said the medical body did nothing beyond the condemnation. The doctors continue to fight their own battle inside and outside hospitals. Its easy to take the Wests pine forests for granted, especially when long drives take us through miles and miles of trees. But in the new book Trees in Trouble: Wildfires, Infestations, and Climate Change (Counterpoint Press, 304 pages, $26), Portland author and natural historian Daniel Mathews lays out challenges facing todays pine forests that inspire new respect for their strength and resilience and for the dilemma theyre in. Drawing on interviews with experts and a lot of field reporting, Mathews explains and examines the interwoven impact of forest management policies, bark beetles, funguses, a warming Earth and more. Lovely black-and-white illustrations of various pines by Matt Strieby, a Battle Ground graphic designer who shares Mathews love of trees, precede each chapter. Mathews, who also wrote Natural History of the Pacific Northwest Mountains and Rocky Mountain Natural History, discussed Trees in Trouble last week. Here are excerpts from the conversation. Daniel Mathews is a Portland author and natural historian.Author photo: Stacey Mattraw; book cover image courtesy of Counterpoint Press Question: Give us the elevator pitch for your book. Mathews: Trees are an important and beloved part of our landscape, and were going to be seeing fewer of them in the future. And we can do something about this to some extent. This book tells you the complex dynamics of Western forests and how climate change is problematic for them, especially concerning fires and bark beetle outbreaks, and what little we can do to ameliorate this problem. Q: Obviously youd like everyone to read your book, but who would you say needs to read it? Mathews: Everyone who loves trees and forests and scenery in North America and who has any interest in science. Q: Why did you focus specifically on Western pine forests? Mathews: This is where the problems are most dramatically visible. Here, west of the Cascades in Oregon, we arent seeing a lot in the way of infestations or forest fires. The pines grow mostly east of the Cascades and throughout the Rockies and the Southwest and California, so thats where I focused, where the problems are most conspicuous and alarming. Q: Did anything surprise you in doing the research and reporting for this book? Mathews: There are now studies showing that were definitely going to see the problems west of the Cascades. Deep forests, especially in this part of the world, greatly buffer climate. That is, underneath a forest canopy its much cooler and more humid than in a nearby field, for example. But, as temperature warms a little bit, water becomes more scarce. This effectively will make things drier, and that will really change the way our forest understory looks, and it will change which trees are able to reproduce in those understories. Q: Weve gone into an unprecedented shutdown thats interrupted a lot of research and affected day-to-day forest management. What long-term impact do you think that might have on our forests and their health? Mathews: Its going to have a big impact this summer. The climate-based predictions for forest fire risk say that the entire dry forest part of Oregon and Washington and pretty much all of Northern California north of Tahoe and the Bay Area will have a higher-than-normal fire risk, and the coronavirus epidemic is going to make it much harder. The whole firefighting scene is just ripe for contagion. Firefighters traditionally have something they call camp crud, which is basically respiratory ailments and colds, which go around and circulate and are compounded by all the smoke theyre breathing. A lot of firefighters are going to be getting too sick to work. The ones that normally come here in a bad fire year from Australia and New Zealand probably wont come. The ones that often show up out of retirement probably wont come. In the long term, I guess I can only think in terms of the effect on politics. Itll be very interesting to see whether having gone through this huge crisis will distract people from climate change as a crisis or reinforce the feelings that crises do hit us and we have to deal with them and we can deal with them. In the even shorter term, theres already been a little bit of a bad effect in that in California and Oregon, most of the national forests have canceled all the prescribed burning because of their fear of smoke hitting communities and making coronavirus worse. And more prescribed burning is just what we needed. Q: What do you hope readers take away from this book? Mathews: I hope theyre reminded of how much our forests matter to us and I hope they will support politics that can help, both forest management politics and urban management politics. Q: Anything else you would like folks to know about your book? Mathews: Being in the woods with these scientists or in the forest fire burns where there isnt a woods anymore has been really interesting and a wonderful experience, and I share that experience in the book. Its not just dry science. I try to bring people into it and visuals and smells to convey what all that is like, and I hope readers will enjoy that with me. awang@oregonian.com; Twitter: @ORAmyW Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. My 91-year-old mother is in Adelaide, all the kids live in the eastern states. Our roster of visits has been banned, have to accept the fact we may never see her again. - Marcus My son is doing the HSC and hes dyslexic so thats made an already hard situation extra hard with the floods of written information from his (well-meaning and lovely) teachers - Anne Ive lost my job and Im so lonely. I dont have family in Melbourne so my friends were my family and now I feel so alone under stage 3. Every day I wake up and dread the endless hours ahead of me. My suburb is empty everyone is respecting the rules. - Anonymous My partner and I are living in a tiny apartment. She works in healthcare often doing nights and very much frontline with COVID-19 cases, and Im working from home suddenly so it feels like we are living on top of each other a bit. Like others, we miss friends, family and the freedom to go out but we are mostly anxious about her getting sick from work. She is now showering at work, and we meticulously wipe down all of her things with Dettol wipes and santiser when she returns home. Its stressful and scary knowing our bubble of the two of us could be easily pierced by the virus getting in through her exposure at work and that we could both become severely ill. - Anonymous We are desperately trying to ensure our business stays afloat, keep our staff employed, and manage homeschooling and now school holidays with no more grandparent support. Zoom workshops with clients, neighbours complaining our kids are too noisy in our backyard. The word hibernate does not resonate, but the stimulus will help, and we are so so grateful for the health care, supermarket, and other front line workers who are risking infection daily. - Anonymous I am the youngest of 9 children and my partner and I live together. I would see a family every other day. But now that cannot happen. My parents are both elderly and I can't see them in case I am sick and pass on the infection. My partner lost his job and he rattles along in the backyard, he wants to be at work, but he can't. I feel overly sad at couples where two people have lost their job. I also feel sad for people that live alone. - Anonymous I'm the mother of a 2-year-old and 5-month-old and overnight I lost access to my entire support system. I suffer from postnatal depression and while there is always the telephone it isn't quite the same as someone making you a cuppa and holding your baby so you can just breathe. - Anonymous Well as a sole trader in a single income family my work has ended due to the commercial businesses I do work for closing, so some adjustments and cuts will be needed - Jovay I work in anaesthesia nursing in the operating suite of a major public hospital in Melbourne. Staff are anxious, but we generally feel that were supported and well trained for the onslaught. Its likely well be redeployed and better utilised to provide assistance to ICU patients. Recovery units may well be transformed into additional ICU units, with surgery reduced to only life or limb. I think what Ill find difficult to cope with is the triaging of patients ie; having to prioritise one patient over another for the greater good. This is war time. This is a call-to-arms. Stay safe everyone, and avoid hospitals if you can! - Anonymous I'm working from home finishing up what work I have, I anticipate not having work for the next five months as the industry I provide contract work to has slowed significantly. The subcontractors which I employ I've had to lay off and they and I don't appear eligible for the Job Keeper package. Looks like for the first time ever in my 40 years of work I'll be seeking a Centrelink Benefit. The NBN installation did not work and I'm waiting for the Telco and NBN to sort themselves out; looks like taking a long time. I've had to buy an expensive alternative. Nonetheless, the weather has been nice, I've had the time to walk while avoiding others, I now have toilet paper and I'm enjoying listening to free audiobooks. I miss my children, however, now is not the time to be travelling and with expensive internet replacement for the NBN I can video call them. - Anonymous Loading I work in a supermarket, I wear a mask and gloves and clean and sanitise. Yet, probably half the people still don't get it. They walk right up to me as I back away, they pay with cash and touch everything, sneeze and wipe their nose on their hands and touch things. I have to keep reminding people to space out at the register, when I'm out on the floor I see people grouped together like nothings changed. I have dropped one unit at Uni so I can handle it all, I am working more hours and it is stressful. I pickup extra work because I figure I might need the money for my family if things get really bad. So I work, for me, my family and for you and remember the sacrifice I have put in when all of this blows over. - Mark My toddler son was diagnosed with a very rare disorder (Ring Chromosome 14 Syndrome) a few weeks before this all started. It causes seizures and intellectual/motor disability. But the current issue with this syndrome is that he is much more likely to have difficult battling a respiratory infection like the Coronavirus due to decreased immunoglobulin levels. In the early days we cut out indoor playgrounds and contact with children we didn't know, this was extended to outdoor playgrounds and finally everything except walks in the pram and playing while supervised in the backyard or our street...As the local transmission rates go up we become increasingly nervous...It's hard for us to see people not taking the Coronavirus seriously as the reality of it possibly taking our son away from us is front of mind a lot of the time. - Anthony My daughter is 7 months pregnant with my first grandchild We all said goodbye to each other today and I wont be seeing her again until all this is over My grandchild will be 4 months old when I get to first meet and touch him I am still to find out if I lose my job next week and possibly my car & home as I have a mortgage. - Lorraine Im 34 weeks pregnant and own a licensed venue. We ceased trading on the 23rd of March and had to stand down our employees. My days are spent navigating new announcements and communicating with business partners and my accountant, to try and keep the business afloat. Its a huge stress. Not quite the maternity leave I imagined! Im excited about the $1500 job keeper payment. I miss my staff, miss the momentum we had going at the venue. They are all so passionate about the business, they would constantly go above and beyond for us. This is an opportunity to keep them engaged and let them try their hand at alternative projects to set us up for when were allowed to trade again. Im looking forward to the day when we can reopen entirely and get our casuals back too, and see our wonderful customers again. When Im not working to save the business, time at home at least is peaceful - lunches in the backyard with hubby and Miss 3, housework, simple living. Its so surreal, to be honest. I could never have imagined life being like this one month ago - Anonymous I'm a manager of a retail store that has been classed as an essential service. It's been the hardest week of my working life. I've had to let go a couple of staff, it's been such an awful week. - Ratta My partner lost her job and now I have to pick up as many hours as possible until she can get Centrelink. - Anonymous As a theatre performer and technician, the coronavirus has affected several plays/musicals that I was apart of. Ive had seven shows that I was due to act or be backstage for get postponed or cancelled while every single one of my upcoming auditions has been cancelled indefinitely. Theatre is what makes me whole, its what makes me the person that I am and I havent gone this long without either being apart of a show or seeing a show in years. I feel so lost, like the best part of myself is missing. - Astrid Loading My wife and I run our own business. I have spent my entire working life after graduation building it up and developing a great team of staff. We are trying to keep everyone on as the team are like family but not sure how long we can keep it up. Sales have come to a halt and it is a very challenging time. Hoping we can all pull through together to the other side. - Douglas In a span of 2 days our whole business crashed. We run a local cleaning company relying on pub tenders an everyday regular cleans. Once it was Monday, we lost all our tenders. On Tuesday, all our regular clients called to cancel their cleans due to fear of this virus. We have had to lay off 2 full time & 3 part time employees and looking to potentially lay off our last two part time employees. Terrible week for employers and employees. - Zac My partner was made redundant a week or so ago. Her company decided to not wait for any announcements and let a bunch of people go straight away and then drop everyone who stayed payments by 40 or 60%. Now we don't really know where she stands with job keeper and if the company has to take people back or if they're using it as an opportunity. - Leigh Just in case you thought that it might be ok to just defy the stay at home restrictions, I will give you my perspective. My daughter has brain cancer. She has just started her chemotherapy yesterday (26 March 2020) as of that date her immune system will gradually be destroyed. In the context of physical (social) separation and hand cleanliness, if I come close to a person with COVID 19 who is asymptomatic ( showing no symptoms.) and it gets passed to me. I can kill her. - Gary Just stood down myself and staff, seemed safer than being close to the public I run some Optometrist practices on the Mornington Peninsula. - Anonymous Have lost my income and wont get anything from government because my husband is still working. I was making more than my husband. So now we have to try pay for rent, bills , childcare (though child not there) etc on one income, which is impossible. So unfair and so stressful. They need to remove income test for partners. - Anonymous I work in the events industry. Almost all of the event industry has lost their jobs, we have zero income. I just had to cancel my wedding. How does the government plan to help us? The only people who have been kind enough to help us in this situation is our landlord who selflessly cut our rent by 50% for the next 3 months. Why is the government not doing more for these types of companies? offering interest-free small business loans? COVID 19 will end, but how are we supposed to live right now and plan for the future? - Anonymous Find out what else our readers have been saying about... : The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday directed the state government to file an affidavit by Thursday on the removal of N Ramesh Kumar as the State Election Commissioner. A division bench of the High Court posted the case for summary hearing on April 20. The bench, headed by Chief Justice J K Maheshwari, took up for hearing a batch of petitions, including the one filed by the deposed SEC Ramesh Kumar, challenging the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy governments action in promulgating an Ordinance curtailing the tenure of the State Election Commissioner to three years. Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan on Friday promulgated the Ordinance, amending Section 200 of the AP Panchayat Raj Act, 1994,curtailing the SEC's tenure from five to three years and also appointing a retired High Court judge to the post. Retired judge of the Madras High Court Justice V Kanagaraj took charge as the SEC on Saturday morning. Challenging this, Ramesh Kumar filed a writ petition in the High Court and the division bench heard it via videoconference on Monday. Appearing for the government, Advocate General Sriram Subramaniam sought a months time to file a reply, saying a fair opportunity was needed. The Court, however, rejected his plea and directed that the reply be filed by Thursday. It said the petitioners could file rejoinders by Friday and added that the case would be summarily heard on April 20. Apart from Ramesh Kumar, former ministers Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao, Kamineni Srinivas, CPI state secretary K Ramakrishna and an advocate Yogesh also filed petitions challenging the Ordinance and the removal of the SEC. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The 116th Congress will forever be best known for the impeachment of Donald Trump. But it will also go down as the most hawkish " and most prolific " Congress to date in its approach toward China. There has been "far and away" more China-related legislation introduced during the current congressional session than, for example, there was counterterrorism legislation introduced in the 107th session following 9/11, noted Anna Ashton, who closely tracks movements on Capitol Hill in her work heading government affairs at the US-China Business Council. But amid the coronavirus pandemic, as legislative priorities have pivoted abruptly to address the outbreak's public health and economic fallout, the fate of about 300 bills and resolutions challenging Beijing is now in limbo. "For the time being, and probably for the foreseeable future, Covid-19 is going to totally dominate what people are doing on the Hill," said Ashton, a former China-focused intelligence officer at the Department of Defence. Just weeks ago, before the coronavirus took hold in the US, lawmakers hoped that at least some legislation would join the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act " a symbolically powerful bill whose passage in November tested the limits of an already bruised US-China relationship. After months of negotiations, legislation calling for stringent sanctioning of Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang had won overwhelming approval in both the House of Representatives and Senate. Other bills, including one focused on Tibet, had passed in one of the two chambers. That progress could be undone come January, when the current 116th Congress ends and any bill not approved by both chambers and signed into law by the president is wiped off the docket. Stacking the odds further: Even if Congress is able to return to regular business in the coming months, attention from legislative matters will quickly be pulled away again " this time by election season. In the run-up to November 3, not only will President Trump be seeking re-election, but most members of the House and around a third of the Senate will also be absorbed in fights to stay in office. Story continues "In an election year, really anything after July is not likely to happen," said Chris Lu, a former House oversight committee lawyer who later served as Barack Obama's White House cabinet secretary. "This will be an incredibly short legislating year with the exception of, obviously, continuing to provide relief and possible stimulus [relating to the coronavirus outbreak]," said Lu, who also served as a commissioner on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an influential advisory panel on human rights issues in the country. Neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi " one of Beijing's most vocal critics " or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to requests for comment on whether they anticipated scheduling floor time for any of the China-related bills that still await votes. One House aide on the Democratic side, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the chance of any non-coronavirus legislation moving ahead was "pretty, pretty limited". Yet despite the narrowing window for China-related legislation to reach Trump by January, many lawmakers are pressing ahead, both with intensifying rhetoric and several pieces of legislation about Beijing's handling of the outbreak. "Not much of what gets proposed or introduced in the upcoming days [regarding China] will become policy, but everyone wants to message that they're on it," said a senior congressional staffer, who requested anonymity to discuss lawmakers' internal deliberations. Reporters practise social distancing while interviewing US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Photo: Reuters alt=Reporters practise social distancing while interviewing US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Photo: Reuters In March alone, lawmakers introduced at least 20 China-related bills, ranging from demands that China pay for the US pandemic costs to calls for an international investigation of Beijing's coronavirus response. With criticism intensifying about the US government's own response, Republicans' complaints have become ever louder. On Friday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proclaimed on Twitter that the Chinese government was "responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed". The first thing I want to do is get the United States Senate on the record where we, we don't blame Trump - we blame China.The Chinese government is responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed. https://t.co/wpa9n9hFtx " Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 10, 2020 Also this week, House Republicans introduced a resolution urging the Trump administration to cut off federal funding of the World Health Organisation (WHO) pending the resignation of its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and an investigation into its alleged pro-China bias. The legislation was in step with Trump, who has threatened repeatedly to put a hold on US funding of the United Nations agency, which he called "very China-centric". For many inside Washington, the pandemic has put the "exclamation mark" on a years-long erosion of trust in Beijing's governance, said Terry Haines, founder of the consulting firm Pangaea Policy. "Washington's a whole lot more focused and a whole lot warier than it was a few months ago," the policy analyst said. Perceptions of China's coronavirus missteps have consolidated concerns on a number of threads, Haines said, including grievances over national security and technology, human rights, and "the whole panoply of trade issues". The pandemic has also amplified Washington concerns about the dependence of US pharmaceutical supply chains on China, which US Commissioner of Food and Drugs Stephen Hahn this week called a "critical risk factor". Hahn said that the US supply of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) had remained unscathed in the current crisis, but the pandemic is all but certain to provide grist to those in Congress and the administration who are pushing to disentangle US supply chains from China " particularly those that can be linked directly to the safety and security of Americans. "Whatever decoupling actually looks like, both sides of the aisle will be looking to do something once Washington comes out of quarantine," the senior congressional staffer said. Legislation on China would "have to be driven by [congressional] leadership", said the senior staffer, who " along with the House aide " said it was more likely that pieces would be pushed through as amendments to must-pass bills, like the budget, or the National Defence Authorisation Act, rather than as stand-alone pieces. But whether the two parties can work together in a presidential election year, when "consensus may fall apart", remains to be seen, said the senior staffer. Even now, some seven months from the election, cracks have begun to form in the bipartisan alliance that has formed over several years around a more hawkish China policy. While Republican lawmakers and some in the Trump administration have sought to blame Beijing for the coronavirus' global spread, Democrats have largely focused on the domestic missteps by the federal government. No Democrat is among the 22 backers of Tuesday's resolution seeking an end to US funding of the WHO, for instance. And at the end of March, Seth Moulton, the only Democrat who initially supported a resolution calling on Chinese leaders to state there was no evidence the coronavirus "originated anywhere other than China" withdrew amid blowback from colleagues, who said the legislation would fuel anti-Asian racism in the US. When I signed onto H.Res.907, I did so because it is important to recognize and condemn the CCP's authoritarian tactics. Instead, it has been used to create division, as the president's xenophobia stokes racism across the country. For that reason, I am withdrawing my support. pic.twitter.com/3vT3qQvgc9 " Seth Moulton (@sethmoulton) March 26, 2020 Trump's presidential campaign has messaged along similar lines to congressional Republicans, portraying him as a wartime president defending the US from attack " "not just by an invisible virus," one campaign release said, "but by the Chinese". Through the elections, China issues were more likely to play out in such rhetoric than by any further legislative action, Lu, the former White House cabinet secretary, said. "It's hard to imagine November not being a referendum on Trump's handling of this as well as more broadly " in terms of at the congressional level " whatever coattails or damage Trump faces on this," Lu, a Democratic National Committee superdelegate, said. "And I think the easiest point, or one possible deflection, that Republicans will use is to pivot and try to blame this all on China." That strategy would be amplified further in Midwestern farming states " a Trump political stronghold " should the pandemic's economic fallout cause China to wander from its purchasing commitments made under January's phase one trade deal, Lu added. Donald Trump's re-election prospects are likely to be determined by how he handles the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: DPA alt=Donald Trump's re-election prospects are likely to be determined by how he handles the Covid-19 pandemic. Photo: DPA Surveys suggest that targeting China will resonate with Republican voters, with one recent Morning Consult poll finding that over half of Republicans blamed Beijing for the contagion's spread to the US. Among Democrats, that figure was just 17 per cent. And in a study this week by Harris Poll, 78 per cent of Republicans " versus 40 per cent of Democrats " said the Chinese government was responsible for the spread of coronavirus in the US. Some 22 per cent of Republicans and 60 per cent of Democrats blamed the US government. While the election season and congressional preoccupation with the domestic coronavirus response may stay the bipartisan pressure campaign on Beijing, both observers and congressional insiders say that any such relief will be temporary. "Long term, we're still looking at the same sort of dynamic," said the House aide. In particular " and regardless of how the House, Senate and White House races pan out " Congress in its 117th session is likely to maintain "a significant focus on concerns surrounding China as a potential national security threat, as a strategic competitor", Ashton said. "The bilateral consensus is there and isn't going away." And just as in this session " bitterly divided on domestic matters like health care, immigration and oversight of the executive branch " a hawkish China policy may remain one of precious few areas of common ground. "There will be, as today, a closely divided Congress [in terms of seats] and a president that will not have been elected in any sort of landslide," Haines said, looking ahead to January. "There will be a very divided government in many senses ... which underscores: Watch out when the views of both parties are united." "Areas where there is great consensus will lead to an awful lot of work being done," he said. "And China issues are 'Exhibit A'." Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. Learn about the AI ambitions of Alibaba, Baidu & JD.com through our in-depth case studies, and explore new applications of AI across industries. The report also includes exclusive access to webinars to interact with C-level executives from leading China AI companies (via live Q&A sessions). Offer valid until 31 May 2020. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. University of Manitoba medical students are doing their part to help the province's senior population combat the blues of social isolation through a volunteer program that pairs seniors and students for weekly phone calls. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. University of Manitoba medical students are doing their part to help the province's senior population combat the blues of social isolation through a volunteer program that pairs seniors and students for weekly phone calls. Kaleigh Ducas-Mowchun, one of four U of M organizers, says the program is designed to combat the risks associated with social isolation for seniors by facilitating both lasting social connections and medical literacy. "Many of us are beginning to get a feel for how difficult social distancing can be and, unfortunately, this is a daily reality for many older adults," Ducas-Mowchun said in an interview Monday. "We were aware that with social-distancing restrictions in place, many seniors in the community would be at increased risk of social isolation during the pandemic. This is particularly true for seniors who may not be as tech savvy, or whose regular social programs have been suspended because of the pandemic, or who are otherwise homebound, especially those who don't speak English." The partnership wasnt borne out of the COVID-19 crisis: the idea started at the University of Toronto in 2019, where medical students began pairing up with elderly patients for weekly, in-person visits to combat social isolation among older populations. According to research from the federal government, an estimated 30 per cent of seniors are at risk of social isolation, which is defined as low quantity and quality of contact with others. Under the added physical-distancing measures of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U of T volunteer program shifted to over-the-phone visits, and began expanding to campuses across the country. Ducas-Mowchun and team members Ann Ding, Nebojsa Oravec and Kara Frejuk, kick-started the Manitoba chapter just two weeks ago; they have already gathered 50 volunteers from the medical school. Those students will be paired with seniors referred to the program by health-care providers, Ducas-Mowchun said. The team is working to connect students with seniors based on language preferences (including sign language), schedules, and specific needs of each client. Ducas-Mowchun expects phone calls will begin by the end of this week. Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The aim is to provide participants with both company and COVID-19 resources and information. "We hope that we can prevent older adults from unnecessarily visiting hospital emergency departments and COVID assessment centres, therefore reducing their risk of exposure," Ducas-Mowchun said. When the pandemic eases and social-distancing measures relax, Ducas-Mowchun said she's hopeful the program will be able to transition from phone calls to in-person meetings, in order to keep building relationships. "The idea is that students-senior pairs are able to build hopefully a sustainable connection, which is so important to creating meaningful bonds between students and older adults," she said. "We realize that social isolation continues to be an issue among older adults and is not limited to the pandemic." julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca The source said the government was considering allowing the resumption of some manufacturing operations under guidelines that were being drawn up. New Delhi: India is planning to restart some manufacturing after 15 April to help offset the economic damage of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, two government sources said, even as it weighs extending the lockdown. The 21-day lockdown of Indias more than 130 crore people is due to end on Tuesday, but the government is widely expected to extend it until the end of the month, with the number of coronavirus cases rising to 9,152 and the domestic death toll reaching 308, on Monday. One of the sources said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had directed some ministries to come up with plans to open up some crucial industries as the livelihoods of the poor were being hit. The source said the government was considering allowing the resumption of some operations under guidelines that were being drawn up. The trade and industries ministry did not reply to an email seeking comment. The governments principal spokesman, KS Dhatwalia, declined to comment The sources, who spoke to Reuters on Sunday, asked not to be identified as the plans are still under discussion. Separately, in a letter seen by Reuters, the industries ministry has recommended restarting some manufacturing in the autos, textiles, defence, electronics and other sectors. The ministry said in the letter, addressed to the home ministry, that this could be achieved via reduced shifts with lower staff numbers to ensure social distancing. We believe some industries could be allowed with reasonable safeguards as long as social distancing norms are maintained, the second official, from the industries department, said. The home ministry and the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) are likely to take a final call on the recommendations this week, the sources said. The sources also said that other ministries would soon submit plans on allowing partial resumptions in other sectors. The economy, which was already growing at its slowest pace in six years before the onset of the coronavirus, is set to take a severe hit amid the lockdown, say economists, who warn that unemployment could rise to record levels. The lockdown resulted in many thousands of daily wage labourers losing their jobs in cities and leaving to return to their homes, raising the risk of spreading the coronavirus into the countryside. Willacy County Judge Aurelio Guerra issued an order on Tuesday that will penalize any resident if they are caught without something covering their face while in a public building. According to the order, all persons over the age of 5 are required to wear some form of covering over their nose and mouth at all times when entering a building such as a grocery store, pharmacy or convenience store. A person can be fined up to $1,000. In a 1918 photo, volunteer nurses from the American Red Cross tend to influenza patients in the Oakland Municipal Auditorium, used as a temporary hospital. (Edward A. "Doc" Rogers / Library of Congress) Hernan Cortes fled the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in 1520 under blistering military assault, losing the bulk of his troops on his escape to the coast. But the Spanish conquistador unknowingly left behind a weapon far more devastating than guns and swords: smallpox. When he returned to retake the city, it was reeling amid an epidemic that would level the Aztec population, destroy its power structures and lead to an empire's brutal defeat initiating a centuries-long annihilation of native societies from Tierra del Fuego to the Bering Strait. From the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death to polio and AIDS, pandemics have violently reshaped civilization since humans first settled into towns thousands of years ago. While the outbreaks wrought their death tolls and grief, they also prompted massive transformation in medicine, technology, government, education, religion, arts, social hierarchy, sanitation. Before the cholera epidemics of the 19th century, cities thought nothing of mingling their sewage and water supply. No one can know exactly how the COVID-19 pandemic will ultimately change the world. Unforeseen consequences will lead to even more unforeseen consequences. But stress cracks are already showing. Nations are turning inward. Rulers are seeking more authoritarian power. The decline of American leadership is accelerating. Economies are facing recessions. People are living in fear and distrust, with many losing jobs and potentially facing poverty they've never experienced before. At the same time, scientists, technocrats and businesses are working feverishly to stem this pandemic and better prepare for the next one. There is little doubt new technology will rise from this epic crisis. So too might things less tangible. Americans, by and large, appear to be looking to science to save the day, not to political spin and partisanship. The virus could revive faith in the inarguable forces of biochemistry, deep in the fact-based universe. Story continues On another level, the abrupt disruption of routines that were so long considered by many unalterable the long daily commute, the business meeting that requires a flight or two, the need to schedule children's every hour, the go-go-go mentality opens the possibility of a behavioral reset, for those who can afford it. Millions have stumbled on the ancient simplicity of an afternoon walk and many wonder if there might be a way to reduce some of the noise in their lives, keep the freeways a bit more open and the air a bit more clear. "People tend to need a big shock to change their behavior," said Marlon G. Boarnet, professor and chair of the department of urban planning and spatial analysis at USC. In particular, he sees opportunities to fight a slower-moving, potentially far more destructive global disaster: climate change. "Now we see our day-to-day habits can change more quickly than we thought," he said. "People have had the opportunity to telecommute. The reality is they didn't have to go to every conference. And we're getting a glimpse of what Los Angeles could look like if we could get ahead of our transportation problem." He said public officials need to craft policies to make some of the positive changes permanent before old habits return and solidify. Although many people, from hotel maids to emergency room physicians, cannot do their job online, those who can should consider it, he says. "If we had everybody telecommute a day a week, you would have an incredible air quality improvement." *** Pandemics are famously idiosyncratic in the havoc they cause and the human adaptations that emerge in their wake. An adage among those who study these global infections: "If you've seen one pandemic, you've seen one pandemic." Together, pandemics and epidemics have led to massive advances in public health that allowed cities and civilizations to grow and prosper: germ theory, urban sanitation, vaccination, penicillin, better hygiene, isolation wards and the scientific method, which brought rationality to modern medicine. Nations and societies rose and fell on the backs of pandemics. The Black Death of bubonic plague that erupted in the 1300s, killing half the population of Europe, dealt the final blows to the feudal order of serfdom, with waves of deadly outbreaks to follow for centuries, shaking faith in the Roman Catholic Church, and some historians suggest, making possible the Renaissance and the Reformation. But the disruption caused by smaller epidemics, even mere footnotes in history, have also had colossal consequences. Consider how United States obtained the vast midsection of the country that allowed it to expand westward to California and become the most prosperous nation on Earth. In 1802, Napoleon sent the world's most greatest army to the Caribbean to put down a slave rebellion and restore French rule in what had been France's most profitable colony, St. Domingue. But an epidemic of yellow fever devastated his troops, killing an estimated 50,000 and forcing his army to leave in defeat. Without the wealthy island colony to fund his grand plans on the American continent, Napoleon retrenched to Europe to face off with England. St. Domingue became Haiti, the first free black republic in the world, and President Thomas Jefferson bought 828,000 square miles of French territory on the cheap, stretching from New Orleans to the Rocky Mountains to Canada. So in the great cascade of human events, Kansas City and Denver, and by extension Los Angeles and Seattle and the Silicon Valley, owe a bit of themselves to that long lost ancestor, a pestilence in the Antilles. Yet a much bigger biological disaster, the influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed anywhere from 20 million to 50 million people globally at the end of World War I, left mere ripples in terms of broader societal change. Some historians dubbed it the "forgotten pandemic" and even the great generation of American writers who lived through it Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald ignored or barely mentioned it in their works. "Nothing else no infection, no war, no famine has ever killed so many in as short a period. And yet it has never inspired awe, not in 1918 and not since," wrote Alfred W. Crosby in "America's Forgotten Pandemic." How this new virus SARS-CoV-2 will bend that human torrent is impossible to know. We're still crashing down the first rapid. With modern medicine, and the current data on the virus, no one is predicting the next the Spanish flu or Black Death. But plenty see trouble beyond the death toll and economic fallout. Many political scientists fear that America's deep polarization and divisive president will prevent the nation from rallying around any big policies to save millions from poverty in the event of a recession or to massively reform our healthcare system. No new New Deal seems likely, despite efforts on the left to pass a Green New Deal. And as the U.S. lets go of the leadership role its had wielded since World War II, and nationalism bubbles up across the planet, it will be harder for countries to cooperate on the big transnational crises: climate change, cybersecurity, terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, refugees, every sort of trafficking and the next pandemic. Countries might turn inward, supply chains might contract, the global economy might sputter. "This is the most global crisis of our lifetimes," says Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and founder of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. "We desperately need a coordinated response." "If you look at the last couple of crises we had, whether it's 9/11 or the great recession, it was a U.S.-led-global order," he says. "There was a rally-around-the-flag effect. There was a strong cohesiveness between the U.S. and our key allies around the world." George W. Bush had a 92% approval rating after the 9/11 attack. "Trump is at 46," he says. Bremmer calls this pandemic the first "G-Zero" crisis, without the Group of 7 (G-7) or Group of 8 industrialized countries to provide global leadership. "No one is going to replace the United States but China is certainly going to take advantage of the geopolitical vacuum that's being left by the U.S. right now, and it's going to cause a lot of American allies to hedge more." But taking a less internationalist role could have some advantages too, Bremmer says. He notes when the Cold War ended, there was much talk of a "peace dividend," in which the U.S. would scale down its defense budget and focus on building infrastructure and education. But President Clinton was stymied by resistance from the defense industry and opponents in Congress, and then 9/11 led to costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror. Bremmer hopes to see an effort like that, but fears the economy might be crippled in the short run. "The U.S. government hasnt been adequately investing in its citizens for decades," said Bremmer. "Its not going to be easy. But its now or never. Health policy experts hope that, at the very least, the pandemic leads to the build-up of state and local public health agencies, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to meet the next new contagion and better deal with other behavioral health challenges that affect large swaths of society, including obesity, smoking, vaping, sexually transmitted diseases and the opioid epidemic. "Our less-than-halting response to this shows we need a real public health system in this country," said Drew Altman, president and Chief Executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, "A system that is able to rapidly test whether we have a pandemic, and trace and isolate cases." Altman does not see this pandemic changing the political equation on a nationalized healthcare system. "Theoretically, this is a short-term crisis," he said. "At some point Republicans and Democrats will return to form." Charlie Cook, who has tracked campaigns and trends for three decades for his nonpartisan political guide, says Americans don't see this so much as a failure of the medical system but "more of a civil defense/homeland security threat to the nation." And he doesn't think the chaotic federal response is persuading many people that it should be in charge of their healthcare. What many hope for is a return to faith in science, expertise and hard truths. "I can imagine that the anti-vaccine movement will finally go into decline," said Daniel Hallin, a UC San Diego communications professor who has studied how information spreads during epidemics. "Possibly a shift toward appreciation of why we need competent government." He expects that people will be more cognizant of washing their hands and touching things for a flu season or two, but that when the virus fades from memory they will return to hugging and shaking hands, going to concerts and movies and restaurants. "When people say this will change the world as we know it, I don't see that." But Larry Diamond, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has a different vantage. "I think this is going to be a very long, protracted crisis.," he said. "I think it's going to be very deep and multidimensional. I think the effects are going unfold over many years." Diamond, who has spent four decades promoting democracy in more than 70 countries, is particularly concerned about authoritarians exploiting the crisis. Surveillance used to track people exposed to the virus can be turned against political enemies and dissidents. Critical information can be suppressed, as was the early outbreak in Wuhan, China, allowing the virus to spread across the world to disastrous effect. "The Hungarian parliament has just passed a law giving the authoritarian prime minister absolute unchecked decree power," he said. "I think were going to see more and more efforts to use the crisis to suppress freedom of information and civil liberties and judicial independence and legislative and other institutional checks and balances." And he doesn't only fear this happening in foreign countries. He is dismayed that Congress is not rallying behind a bill to make sure every voter in America can cast their ballot by mail in November, when epidemiologists say the Northern Hemisphere could be in the midst of another outbreak. "We just cannot allow a situation where an incumbent president comes back in late October and says the election has to be postponed because we have a resurging public health crisis," he said. "We've got plenty of time to make this transition. Our democracy is at very great risk if we don't do so. Five NGOs that work for Indigenous rights in Venezuela issued a statement asking authorities to take immediate action against illegal miners operating in the Venezuelan and Brazilian Amazon, as they are likely to spread covid-19 in the region. Endorsed by the organizations Orpia, Oipus, Kuyunu, Omida and the Socioenvironmental Working Group of the Wataniba Amazon, the release rings the alarm bell following the death of a 15-year-old boy from the Yanomami tribe. The young man succumbed to covid-19 in the Brazilian state of Roraima, which shares a border with the southeastern Venezuelan states of Bolivar and Amazonas. According to the news agency Amazonia Real, Brazils Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health confirmed that the youth showed covid-19 symptoms for 21 days before he was able to be properly diagnosed and receive any treatment. He died from complications associated with the infection and from having previously suffered from malaria, anaemia and malnutrition. The teenager hailed from the region of the Uraricoera river, an area known for hosting garimpeiro or artisanal mining activities. Similar to thousands of Yanomami, whose traditional territory extends -regardless of boundaries- between Venezuela and Brazil, the youth had a debilitated immune system, the NGOs communique reads. Most Indigenous peoples in our country experience the same reality. According to the group, it is widely known that illegal miners have been introducing diseases in Indigenous communities for years. Given their state of destitution and the fact that there is a generalized lack of medical treatments in Venezuela, First Nations are not prepared to deal with the threat of covid-19. Ill-prepared for years Two years ago, almost 90% of hospitals in Venezuela reported shortages in medications, 79% shortages in surgical supplies and 79% water shortages. This situation has not improved and the numbers are much worse in remote communities. The issue with water is particularly worrisome, the NGOs document states. The mercury used by illegal miners to pan gold from Amazonian rivers is leaving entire towns without access to clean water in a moment when washing hands is the most important individual action to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. We issued a report back in 2019 after receiving information from the Yanomami Hutukara Association, which operates in Venezuelas Amazonas state and Brazils Roraima state. They said that their land was being invaded by some 20,000 garimpeiros (illegal miners) who were extracting gold from their traditional territories, the Socioenvironmental Working Group of the Wataniba Amazon said. In the view of the non-governmental organization, efforts put forward by the Indigenous communities themselves, in terms of demanding its members to isolate, may be futile given the transient nature of illegal miners. The fact that they are moving back and forth between towns and mineral deposits hinders the isolation demands put forward by First Nations before the authorities, the communique reads. For decades now, particularly since the boom of artisanal mining that started in the 1980s, Indigenous peoples have been suffering epidemics such as measles, tuberculosis and malaria. The NGOs fear the same pattern is going to emerge with covid-19. To the vulnerability imposed by mining, we have to add the fact that the Yanomami people are very mobile themselves due to their binational nature. Normally, they move along the three corridors of the Alto Ocamo, the Parima mountain range and the Alto Siapa, the release states. This is why we respectfully demand that the Venezuelan authorities take urgent measures to guarantee their health with the implementation of actions that lead to the total and temporary isolation of these communities and the mandatory exit of illegal miners. Only this will prevent a new genocide of the Yanomami people. The likelihood of positive action How likely is the Nicolas Maduro regime to take action on the NGOs call is uncertain. For years now, Maduro and others linked to his administration have been benefiting from artisanal mining operations in an area called the Orinoco Mining Arc. They export gold in an effort to bypass economic sanctions imposed by Washington to Venezuelan oil sales. The lucrative business is supported, according to human rights organization Provea, by criminal groups known as unions, who collude with authorities and use violent tactics to take control of entire communities and of their mineral resources. The business is so profitable that just back in January the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, who is recognized by the US, the EU and more than 50 other countries as Venezuelas legitimate president, urged the European Union to officially label as blood gold the precious metal informally mined in the countrys southern jungles. The request was aimed at increasing pressure on Maduro. By Mining.com More Top Reads From Safehaven.com: Wearing of masks will be compulsory for people in this metropolis whenever they they step out of their homes in view of the coronavirus situation, the city civic body said on Monday. An order to this effect was issued as the Tamil Nadu government extended the lockdown to check the spread of the coronavirus till March 30 as the number of positive cases in the state rose to 1,173 with Chennai accounting for 205, the highest among all districts. The Greater Chennai Corporation said people must wear masks compulsorily once they step out of their homes with immediate effect and warned of action in case of violation. "...all persons are to wear masks compulsorily once they step out of their homes," the civic body, the largest in the state, said. The order has been issued under the Epidemic Diseases and TN Public Health Acts, the GCC said. "As long as the public are moving outside, they have to wear it (masks). If found without masks, then their movement passes will be cancelled and vehicles will be impounded for three months. This comes into effect forthwith," it said. Movement passes are issued by authorities to facilitate travel for essential purposes during the lockdown. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Uttar Pradesh Police on Monday said that the tragic incident of Bhadohi where a woman threw her five children in the river was not related to food shortage but to an argument with her husband. "The tragic and unfortunate incident of Jahangirabad in Bhadohi is not related to food shortage in any way. Cooked food was found in the house, photos of which are available. The woman is a homemaker. Her husband works locally as a driver and the family is of sufficient means..," UP Police tweeted. "While the matter is under investigation, the woman's statement (as available) does not mention any such cause. It is strange that the presence of police officers in a publicly populated place in the course of doing their duty is sought to be held against them..." UP Police said in a series of tweet. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Finance Minister of Ukraine Serhiy Marchenko has said that as for today there are no conditions for restructuring of the national debt of Ukraine. "At present, there are no conditions for restructuring. That is, there are no necessary conditions for restructuring. The debt burden is under complete control. We are well aware of what is happening now. The negotiations with the International Monetary Fund are on a final stage, we expect credit support from the World Bank, the European Commission," he said in the Freedom of Speech of Savik Shuster program on Ukraine TV Channel on Friday. Experts have warned that consumers may soon start defaulting on their credit card payments due to rising unemployment and salary cuts in many industries and sectors in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Experts have warned about a global wave of consumer default that's underway, beginning in China. Photo thebank.vn According to the latest report on labour and employment amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs said the number of people applying for unemployment insurance as of February 2020 stood at 47,164, an increase of 70 per cent over the same period last year. Though the banking system has not recorded any cases of defaults related to credit cards, experts said banks should be cautious due to COVID-19. They took China as an example. In China, where the epidemic has taken many lives and caused heavy losses in production and business activities in the first months of 2020, overdue credit card debt swelled in February by about 50 per cent from a year earlier. Qudian Inc, a Beijing-based online lender, said its delinquency ratio jumped to 20 per cent in February from 13 per cent at the end of last year. China Merchants Bank, one of the countrys biggest providers of consumer credit, said last month it pressed the pause button on its credit card business after a significant increase in overdue loans. An estimated 8 million people in China lost their jobs in February. Experts have also warned about a global wave of consumer defaults, beginning in China. It is easy to get a credit card in Viet Nam, and a number of card holders, especially young people, are finding it difficult to repay their debts as their companies scale down business due to the pandemic. Like other young card holders, an employee in Ha Noi, who declined to be named, borrowed money she thought she would be able to repay. Then the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. She said now all she thinks about is finding the money to repay the banks as she spent a lot on her three cards. All she had to do was swipe her cards to make a transaction so she did not know how much money was left on them, so she didn't feel sorry. It was not until the payment deadline arrived that that she realised how much she had spent. To get a card, customers just need to visit a bank where they are guided through instructions and procedures, and they receive their card in a week. Some banks even send staff out to help customers open credit card accounts. Theoretically, the card limit would depend on the customers work or solvency, but increasing the card limit is very simple. Therefore, the number of young customers getting caught up in a spiral of spending is increasing during the pandemic, make the risk of defaulting higher. According to data from the State Bank of Viet Nam, there were 99 million credit cards in the country by the end of last year. . VNS Cashless payments become popular amid COVID-19 Money can spread germs and bacteria, and amid the complicated developments of the novel corona virus Sars-CoV-2, many people have switched to cashless payments to protect them from unnecessary contact with contaminated money. Like offices everywhere, the Tibetan government-in-exile is following the work from home norm. The Central Tibetan Administration complex here bears a deserted look, the schools run by it are shut and its website recommends topics for essays that children can write at home. The Tibetan community here was jolted last month by the death of one of its members, a 69-year-old who became the first person in Himachal Pradesh to succumb to coronavirus. He had returned from a trip to the US. The CTA quarantined his family members and the death prompted local authorities to seal off McLeodganj, a tourist hub in Dharamshala where the Tibetan body is headquartered. According to the CTA, nobody else in the community is known to have contracted the virus. The CTA had earlier asked the 1.4 lakh-strong Tibetan community across India to follow guidelines from the Centre and state governments to fight coronavirus, stressing the need to stay indoors. The body represents the interest of the Tibetan refugee community in India and is unofficially called a government-in-exile. Tibetans spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is also based in McLeodganj. With the lockdown coming into force, the CTA's own staff members are working from home. Meetings, training programmes and workshops are off. They have also pledged a day's salary to the prime minister's relief fund. In March, The CTA issued guidelines, calling on Tibetan monasteries, schools and elder care homes in India, Nepal and Bhutan to cancel public gatherings for one month. CTA Home Secretary Tsewang Dolma says guidelines to fight coronavirus are being followed across 36 Tibetan settlements and 41 old-age homes in the country. We are prepared for a long battle against the disease, she says. CTA president Lobsang Sangay has sent a message across to students to make constructive use of the lockdown imposed due to the Wuhan-originated virus, referring also to online classes available to them. He also advocates the use of traditional Tibetan medicine as part of the fight against COVID-19, which doctors say has no known cure. Lobsang says Tibetan medicine help build immunity. Dolma says the medicine is being provided by the CTA, particularly to people in the community who are over 65. The Tibetan community is appreciably maintaining proper discipline and abiding by the rules fixed by the administration for the curfew, says Onkaar Nehria, vice-president of the Dharamshala Municipal Corporation and the councillor from McLeodganj. Many Tibetans in McLeodganj run shops, homestays and street stalls and business has taken a big hit. But Tenzin, a tourist guide, says, God has given us a short interval to get in touch with our community. This period will end soon. Shopkeeper Lobsang says, We have spent most of our lifespan in India, so we are basically Indians. We have pledged to go with the decisions of PM Narendra Modi. This virus will not stay long in this country, he predicts. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) You may have seen this lilac polka dot dress (195, Faithfull the Brand revolve.com) pictured here and there in the past weeks. Its V-necked, bias cut, mid-calf. It has almost to-the-elbow puff sleeves (the best sort), a narrow torso, and a dip-down-at-the-sides hem. In other words, its one of those summer dresses that ticks a lot of boxes: feminine, uncomplicated, covered in all the right places. This time last year you might have looked at a dress like this and thought: That could be pretty for a party, but now, in April 2020, youre much more likely to think: I could get a lot of wear out of that in the months to come. This lilac polka dot dress (195, Faithfull the Brand revolve.com) is one of those summer dresses that ticks a lot of boxes: feminine, uncomplicated, covered in all the right places Thats one of the revelations of lockdown dressing. A dress a simple, no frills, not dressy dress is emerging as the item we would most like to reach for at the weekend, or in the evening, or on a hot day. As the weather warms up, we want to be able to get a bit of sun on our legs when were sitting outside the back door. We want a one-stop, fuss-free, gear change for balmy evenings. We want a bit of prettiness and colour to mark the change of season (though for me the lilac polka dot dress is too sugar sweet ideally you want a dress with feminine proportions in a less overtly girly fabric). Either way, the Simple Summer Dress (SSD) hits the spot. Oh, and if you love a pink dress, Kitri does a pretty, square-necked, button-through style (125, kitristudio.com). By simple, were talking about unfussy and easy to wear in the day for working or not: your SSD doesnt have a leg split to the hip, or a ruffle hem, or a cleavage-advertising neckline. Zara has a good button-through midi with below-the-elbow puff sleeves (49.99, zara.com) The details that mark it out from last years are extra voluminous puff sleeves and a boldish print. For this particular dress, mixed prints are not such a good idea, or anything in shiny, sheer or floaty fabric. Thats your other sort of summer dress, which well be getting on to in due course. A dress thats similar to the pink polka dot one is Flynn Skyes Elsie Midi in a warm brown with a double dot print (167, revolve.com). This one has a hook-and-eye midriff panel and slightly ruched three-quarter sleeves, and has the advantage of being in a print that looks good whether or not the sun is out. (Brown is a versatile colour for dresses, great with a tan, or black boots.) It does have a ruffle hem, but so discreet and unruffly you barely notice it, which is why were making an exception. Midi-dresses: The new rules Keep it simple; no wraps or ruffles. Go for a pretty colour or bold print. Full puff sleeves make this dress contemporary. Wear with boots now, and flat sandals or low platforms later. Advertisement A little more dressy but still simple is Faithfull The Brands meadows midi dress (159, revolve.com) which comes in a lilac-based floral print, or the more casual style in a vintage yellow floral (159, revolve.com). Be warned both have lowish V necklines, though you could always wear a camisole or bandeau top underneath. Alternatively, if V necks bring you out in hives, then Kitri does a round-necked, fitted body, viscose dress with three-quarter puff sleeves in a bold Seventies floral print on a deep navy base (145, kitristudio.com). Navy, like brown, is a good all-weather player and you could be wearing this silky looking number in October. Still on the dark background florals (black with lilac), Zara has a good button-through midi with below-the-elbow puff sleeves (49.99, zara.com). Mango does a shirt-necked, batik print, blue and white dress (49.99, mango.com), which you could wear loose or belted; or a midi shirt dress (35.99) in a crisp white and Wedgwood blue stripe with a white sprig print. Shirt dresses are in a slightly different category, admittedly, but this one is somewhere in between a shirt dress (chic and crisp) and a pretty summer frock. Other places to browse for SSDs include rouje.com (its Gabin dress is a perennial favourite), musier-paris.com; sezane.com (all French high street brands) and hush-uk.com. Youre not going to have any trouble finding one you like, thats for sure. Morocco, along with the European Union and a group of core countries, took the initiative to draw a joint declaration to support the appeal launched last week by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for peace at home, in households, around the world against domestic violence during confinement. The initiative is the result of efforts from the UN, Morocco, the EU, and other countries including New Zealand, Argentina, Turkey, Mongolia, and Namibia. Fifteen other countries subsequently joined the list of co-sponsors of the declaration. In the declaration, the signatories vow to position the prevention and remedy of domestic violence as a key national and global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The countries pledged to establish a policy of zero tolerance for domestic violence. The declaration also conveys a warm tribute to women who are at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic as 70% of health workers, social workers, and civil society activists are women. In his call last week, the UN Secretary-General expressed frustration against the horrific outbreak of domestic violence worldwide due to COVID-19 lockdowns. We know that containment measures and quarantine are essential to overcome COVID-19. But they can also trap women with violent partners, the UN chief warned, calling for measures to address the horrifying global surge in domestic violence, directed towards women and girls. In Morocco, NGOs are joining efforts with the government to curb domestic violence, and enable women to take a stand against abusers and perpetrators of gender-based crimes. In this vein, the National Union of Moroccan Women (UNFM), a non-profit association, chaired by Princess Lalla Meryem, has strengthened its platform, called Koulounamaak (All with you) that provides assistance to women victim of domestic violence. also strengthened their capacity to help women, victim of domestic violence during this period of lockdown. This listening and aid center is operational seven days a week and can be reached through phone number 8350. The NGO has also designed a downloadable application on smartphones that allows to locate the address of the abused woman in the event of a distress call. This platform works in partnership with the Department of Justice, as well as with the gendarmerie and the police. Earlier this month, a Rabat-based NGO, Mobilizing for Rights Associations (MRA), announced an initiative to assemble online emergency resources for victims of domestic abuse during the lockdown. During this lockdown period, the rate of domestic violence has increased in Morocco as in the rest of the world. As put by the UN Secretary-General, the combination of economic and social stresses brought on by the pandemic, as well as restrictions on movement, have dramatically increased the numbers of women and girls facing abuse, in almost all countries. The UN chief urged all governments to make the prevention and redress of violence against women a key part of their national response plans for COVID-19. Together, we can and must prevent violence everywhere, from war zones to peoples homes, as we work to beat COVID-19, he pointed out. Relatedly, independent UN human rights experts have called on States to boost child protection measures to help safeguard the welfare of millions of children who may be more exposed to violence, sale, trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In their appeal, the independent UN human rights experts Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, and Najat Maalla Mjid, Special Representative on violence against children, emphasized that parents, caregivers, service providers and law enforcement officials all need extra support to minimize the heightened risks to youngsters. Globally, confinement measures and the disrupted provision of already limited child protection services exacerbate the vulnerability of children living in psychiatric and social care institutions, orphanages, refugee camps, immigration detention centers and other closed facilities, said Ms. de Boer-Buquicchio. At a time of lockdowns and home isolation, children are at greater risk of experiencing violence, exploitation and challenges to their mental health. This is especially true of those who are already in vulnerable situations, Ms. Mjid added. Sumi Sukanya dutta By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministrythe nodal central government department to tackle the COVID 19 pandemiccannot emphasise enough on over-preparedness and preemptive measures to contain the public health crisis but in reality, it seems to be fumbling on many counts. On several occasions during the last few weeks, the ministry has done a complete somersault, much to the dismay of many, and has changed the tunes on issues that have mattered the most. On Saturdaythe ministry claimed that India could have 8.2 lakh COVID-19 positive cases in the country by mid-April in a worst-case scenario in the absence of a nationwide lockdown and other containment measures, and said this number was part of statistical extrapolation done on the basis of different rates of growth of the disease. Just 24 hours back, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary, who addresses a daily briefing on the outbreak on the behalf of the ministry, had said he was not aware of any such research by ICMR. While the source of the analysis still remains unclear, Agarwal on Saturday spent nearly 15 minutes elaborating on it. This is not the only example. After reiterating for weeks, that not everyone should wear a mask and only those sick with an infection or suspected patients of COVID 19, their close contacts and healthcare workers treating the patients needed the protective covering, the ministry changed its stand quietly. But that was after an empowered group on science and technology for COVID 19 under Principal Scientific Advisor to the government K VijayRaghvan and Dr V K Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog- who also heads a 21 member national task force on COVID 19 outbreak issued an advisory on homemade masks for everyone. The same advisory was endorsed by the government a few days laterbut not before Agarwal, in a press briefing when asked about the advisory firstsaid that the governments stand remains the same that not everyone needs a mask. The flip-flop by the ministry does not end there. For weeks, despite demands that India needs to ramp up its testing strategy to quickly assess the extent of epidemic progression, the government kept insisting that only those with history of international travel, their close contacts and healthcare workers treating them need to be tested for novel coronavirus. This too was quietly revised a few days back when the government decided that everyone with influenza-like illnesses will now be tested for COVID 19 in areas defined as hotspots Public health specialists watching the move meanwhile said that from the beginning, the ministry's seems to be trying to allay fear and panic, often at the cost of not offering evidence-based solutions. The health ministry operates under severe constraints stemming from the very little money that we invest as a country in health. However, this is just part of the problem, said public health expert Oommen C Kurian. Be it the painfully slow expansion of testing, or the effort to protect our health workers with the untested hydroxychloroquine, or the inability to procure Personal Protective Equipment in time, there are many examples of the governments over-emphasis on trying to reduce panic without really offering a solution. However, this is a long battle and I hope we learn from our mistakes and get our act together. Anant Bhan, an expert in bioethics and global health policy said that flip-flop decisions and messages will lead to confusion, and can indicate poor communication between arms of the government. "The role of the ministry is crucial during a public health crisis. Besides assuming charge of the govt response, it also needs to show that it's following an evidence-based response trajectory which is transparently communicated to all relevant stakeholders. This inspires confidence in the leadership and decisions being taken," he also said. - A well-known Kapuso program recently reported about Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto - However, there was a mistake made when the report was being aired on television - The said network hilariously addressed the young politician as a tricycle operator - Vico immediately posted a screenshot of the report and aired a funny statement about it PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Vico Sotto instantly became the talk of the town online after a prominent Kapuso show mistakenly addressed him as a tricycle operator. KAMI learned that the hilarious incident happened in one of the news reports that was featured recently in 24 Oras. PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! The Mayor of Pasig City was interviewed by the said program regarding his initiatives to amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, instead of putting the words Pasig City Mayor after his name, the producer of the said story mistakenly named him as a tricycle operator. The well-known politician immediately posted a screenshot of the blooper on social media and he decided to poke fun at what happened. May tricycle pala ako! he jokingly wrote. In a previous article by , Coney Reyes got frank on rumored romance between Vico and volleyball superstar Gretchen Ho. Vico Sotto is one of the youngest and most popular politicians in the Philippines. He is the son of celebrities Vic Sotto and Coney Reyes. Please like and share our Facebook posts to support KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinion about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts! A Filipino found his own way to help frontliners amid pandemic. They had to walk an hour, an hour and a half to get to work. I mean, coming from an 8-hour shift sa hospital, tapos palalakarin mo pa yung nurse o kahit security guard. Parang hindi makatarungan, diba? on HumanMeter! Source: KAMI.com.gh For Immediate Release Chicago, IL April 13,2020 Zacks.com releases the list of companies likely to issue earnings surprises. This weeks list includes JPMorgan JPM, Bank of America BAC, Citigroup C, Johnson & Johnson JNJ and Kansas City Southern KSU. What to Expect from Big Bank Earnings Amid Coronavirus The large money-center banks that will kick-off the 2020 Q1 earnings season for the sector this week have been hit hard in the ongoing downturn. Stocks in the Zacks Major Banks industry, which includes JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and others that are on deck to report results this week, have bounced back from the March 23rd lows, but the retracement has lagged the broader market. As a result, while the S&P 500 index is now down -14% this year through Thursday, April 9th, the Major Banks industry is still down more than -37%. This underperformance is not surprising, given the groups exposure to what is expected to be a sharp downturn in economic activities in the current period. Banking is after all a cyclical business, with the demand for credit and investment banking services strongly correlated with GDP growth. The group also suffers in a downturn from deterioration in credit conditions that has a direct bearing on the quality of its assets (loan portfolios) as borrowers struggle to service their obligations. That said, this is not your typical economic downturn, resulting from imbalances in parts of the economy or Fed action. This is an engineered event, necessitated by the need to stop the spread of the virus. As such, it is reasonable to expect normalcy to resume once we get some visibility on the underlying public health issue. The policy response to the pandemic and associated economic downturn has been swift and powerful, which should help taking edge off the economic pain, both for households as well as businesses. We are starting to see some optimism in recent days about the pandemic, which is driving the stock market rebound. But its fair to say that a lot still remains unclear. Story continues With respect to banks Q1 earnings, and also with companies in other industries/sectors, the important elements wouldnt be so much the numbers for the March quarter, but rather the evolving outlook for the current (2020 Q2) and following quarter. To that end, it is hard to envision any management team having the visibility to offer useful guidance. In fact, we would expect the recent trend of companies withdrawing existing public guidance to be the norm, rather than the exception. The set up for bank earnings is tough, with margins under renewed pressure because of Fed policy. The full extent of the Feds emergency rate cut will show up in Q2, but net interest margin will be flat at best for most of these banks. Loan portfolios likely expanded in Q1, particularly on the C&I side, as companies used up existing revolving credit facilities. At the same time, we should brace ourselves for growing loan-loss provisions this quarter, though the full extent of that will really show up in the current and following quarter. The group stands to benefit from the small-business loan/grant provisions of the fiscal relief measure, but we wouldnt see that in Q1 results. With respect to investment banking, deal activity is down, both for M&A deals as well as IPOs, but debt issuance likely expanded. Trading revenues likely benefited from record volatility as well as volumes, which we will see in the result from all the money center players as well as the brokers. All in all, the group is in excellent financial shape, in terms of capital cushions. But questions about the groups dividends remain. What Are Banks Expected to Earn? Total Q1 earnings for the Zacks Major Banks industry that includes JPMorgan, Bank of America and other major industry players are expected to be down -21.5% from the same period last year on essentially flat revenues (revenues are expected to be up +0.1%). Earnings are expected to be down in double-digits at JPMorgan (-15.2% on -0.5% lower revenues), Citigroup (-15.5% & +1.5%) and Bank of America (-18.5% & - 1%). The groups profitability picture is not expected to improve in the current and coming quarters, either. For the Finance sector as a whole (Major Banks industry brings in roughly 45% of the sectors total earnings), total Q1 earnings are expected to be down - 7.1% on +1.8% higher revenues. Expectations for 2020 Q1 as a Whole This weeks reporting docket isnt confined to the banks as we will get March quarter results from a number of bellwether operators in other industries/sectors as well, including Johnson & Johnson, Kansas City Southern and others. In total, we will get Q1 results from 45 companies this week, including from 23 S&P 500 members. The Q1 earnings season is unlikely to give us clarity on the pandemics full earnings impact. The reason for that is these companies are as much in the dark about the economic horizon as the rest of us. The clouds will start lifting once we gain visibility on the pandemics duration, which hit Q1 only partially and is expected to peak sometimes towards the end of this month or next. The hope is that the worst takes place in Q2, with normalcy returning in Q3 and beyond. We have been seeing the effect of this outlook in how estimates have evolved in recent days and weeks. As bad as the Q1 revisions trend above looks, the situation is worse for the current period. All four quarters this year are now in negative territory. We havent seen a lot of changes to estimates for next year, which is understandable given the all-around lack of visibility. Both for earnings as well as revenues, primarily reflecting the pandemics impact. Growth is expected to resume next year and continue the following year. For an in-depth look at the overall earnings picture and expectations for Q1, please check out our weekly Earnings Trends report >>>>Taking Stock of the Earnings Picture Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic Looking for Stocks with Skyrocketing Upside? Zacks has just released a Special Report on the booming investment opportunities of legal marijuana. Ignited by new referendums and legislation, this industry is expected to blast from an already robust $6.7 billion to $20.2 billion in 2021. Early investors stand to make a killing, but you have to be ready to act and know just where to look. See the pot trades we're targeting>> Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Zacks-Investment-Research/57553657748?ref=ts Zacks Investment Research is under common control with affiliated entities (including a broker-dealer and an investment adviser), which may engage in transactions involving the foregoing securities for the clients of such affiliates. Media Contact Zacks Investment Research 800-767-3771 ext. 9339 support@zacks.com https://www.zacks.com Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss.This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) : Free Stock Analysis Report Kansas City Southern (KSU) : Free Stock Analysis Report Bank of America Corporation (BAC) : Free Stock Analysis Report Citigroup Inc. (C) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The amount of trash picked up in some of Manhattan's most expensive and exclusive neighborhoods is down, but is up elsewhere signaling that residents who could afford to go elsewhere may have left town as the coronavirus outbreak was starting, say sanitation experts. Overall, the amount of garbage, recyclables and compost was 255,555 tons total for the city's five boroughs, up 4.1 per cent from the same time a year ago, according to city Sanitation Department records. At the same time, Manhattan's Upper West Side, Upper East Side, and the East Village saw declines in trash. The amount of trash picked up in some of Manhattan's most expensive and exclusive neighborhoods has dropped, signaling that residents who could afford to go elsewhere may have left the city as the coronavirus outbreak was starting, say sanitation experts Overall, the amount of garbage, recyclables and compost was 255,555 tons total for the city's five boroughs, up 4.1 per cent from the same time a year ago, according to city Sanitation Department records. People walk past garbage left for pick up in Manhattan's Flatiron district At the same time, Manhattan's Upper West Side, Upper East Side, and the East Village saw declines in trash. The Lower Eastside (pictured) saw a 5 per cent drop in trash tonnage Manhattan Community District 3 on the Lower East Side saw a 5 per cent drop in trash tonnage, reports The City, a nonprofit local news service. Elsewhere, there have been increases, including in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens, which all saw increases of about five to 10 per cent, The City reports. The biggest jump came in Astoria, Queens, which had 12 per cent increase in trash tonnage. Elsewhere, there have been increases in trash, including in the Bronx (pictured) Astoria, Queens, saw the tonnage of garbage collected in March rise by 12 per cent The trash collection figures come from a period when New Yorkers had to decide on staying home in the city, or leaving, as Gov. Cuomo issued a statewide order allowing only essential workers to report for work. There have been 188,694 confirmed cases in New York State of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for 9,385 deaths. In the city, the epicenter of the outbreak, there have been 103,208 cases and 6,898 deaths resulting from the deadly flu-like infection also known as COVID-19. Across the country there have been more than 561,700 confirmed cases and 22,129 deaths. There have been more than 561,700 confirmed cases in the US of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for at least 22,129 deaths The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in New York City A day-to-day look at the number of deaths resulting from the coronavirus in New York City The anecdotal evidence of well-heeled New Yorkers having left Manhattan for second homes in the Hudson Valley and the Hamptons on Long Island is there, say residents who stayed behind. Joseph Alvarez, a building porter in Sutton Place, estimates that half of the households have left for country homes. 'I do see a lot less garbage than what I normally would see when they're there,' Alvarez, 50, tells The City. Alvarez notes that many people from the area leave go away on weekends, but that every day now feels like a Saturday. East Hampton, New York, in the Hamptons is among the destinations where well-heeled New Yorkers have second homes Poughkeepsie, New York, in the Hudson Valley also was among the places where New Yorkers with apartments in the city have go to get away 'It just feels dead, it feels like there's nobody there, even though there's a few people that I know are there,' he said. By comparison, his building in Hollis, Queens, is a buzz with the sounds of residents, with televisions blaring and babies crying, a sign that most have not left. 'Actually,' said Alvarez, 'everybody's home in my building.' Garbage in Queens Community District 12, which includes Hollis, was up 3.4 per cent in March over the same time in 2019. In Manhattan's Community District 6, where Alvarez works, the trash tonnage collected dropped 2.6 per cent. Robin Nagle, an anthropologist with the sanitation department, says trash trends identify when a city may be undergoing a seismic transformation. 'Garbage itself always, like a canary in a coal mine, is a key indicator of social change,' Nagle tells The City. 'Manhattan is considerably wealthier than Queens, so I'm assuming more Manhattanites left the city, while more Queens residents have no choice but to shelter at home.' The median income on the Upper East Side was $133,850 in 2017, versus $67,650 in Astoria, according to the US Census. 'Some parts of Manhattan have had a significant decrease, potentially due to residents that have left the city during this crisis,' says sanitation spokeswoman Belinda Mager, echoing Nagle's observations. 'Other neighborhoods have seen increases in refuse tonnage, as residents are staying at home.' The department has had to deploy more workers into those areas of the city where there has been more trash using a 'higher level approach,' shuffling workers, she says. 'Our operations staff look at the workers available, the work that needs to get done, and figures out the puzzle in the best way possible to get the job done,' she said. Syracuse, N.Y. Much of Central New York could see gusts of up to 60 mph Monday, as well as the chance of thunderstorms, hail and even a possible tornado, according to the National Weather Service. Much of the region is under a high wind warning until 11 p.m. Monday. The National Weather Service said that southeastern winds, sustained at 20 to 30 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph, are blowing across the region this morning. In the afternoon, the winds will shift to the southwest and increase to a sustained speed of 25 to 35 mph, with gusts up to 60 mph. Winds of that speed have the potential of downing trees and power lines and causing power outages. Though unlikely, Syracuse and points south to the New York-Pennsylvania border have a marginal chance of seeing thunderstorms, heavy rain, hail and an isolated tornado, particularly from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, the weather service warned. The chance of such severe weather is greater in parts of northern Pennsylvania, though the wind there is expected to be slightly calmer. Lakeshore flood warnings have been issued along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario through Tuesday. Several Great Lakes, including Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, may set high water level records this year. The strong winds are expected to subside by the evening, the weather service said. It will be warm today, as temperatures could reach 70 degrees. But by Tuesday, a cold front will make its way through and temperatures will drop into the mid 30s. READ MORE 70 mph winds possible in Upstate NY: Extensive power outages in WNY Several Great Lakes may reach highest water levels ever in modern records Did Plan 2014 contribute to Lake Ontario flooding? Study will find out Flood warning: Expect flooding along Lake Ontario in Oswego, Jefferson counties A woman from Michigan has lost her husband of 35 years and her son to Coronavirus within three days. Sandy Brown of Grand Blanc said shes suffering from 'indescribable grief ' after losing her husband, Freddie Lee Brown Jr. and son Freddie Lee Brown III within a short period of time. Theres not even a word created to describe my pain. Its unimaginable, she said. According to Detriot News, Sandy's husband fell sick in March, coming down with chills and muscle aches. The 59-year-old who had a kidney transplant began having trouble breathing and was admitted to Ascension Genesys Hospital, the outlet reported. He later tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed on a ventilator. Few days later, Sandy received a call that his lung collapsed and to rush to the hospital, where she learned that doctors were unable to save him, according to the report. When Nurses told her not to go into his hospital room, she insisted, putting on protective gear to say goodbye to her husband, the newspaper reported. Im going in that room, she reportedly told them. I dont care what I have to do. Ill sign whatever I need to sign. The next day, her 20-year-old son, Freddie III, who had asthma became sick with a fever and a cough. Sandy took him to the same hospital, where his health improved before he began struggling to breathe, the outlet reported. Three days after her husbands death, the heartbroken woman received the same call from the hospital asking her to quickly rush down to the hospital, where she was later informed that her son had also succumbed to the virus. In three days, I lost my husband and son to an ugly plague, Sandy told the newspaper. I watched my son go from completely well and whole and happy to being gone in three days. 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 By IANS KOHIMA: With two more coronavirus positive cases reported in Assam on Monday, the total number of such cases in the northeast reached 37, including Assam's 31 cases, Assam Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. Sarma tweeted: "Another person from Dhubri (western Assam), connected with the Tablighi Jamaat meet at Nizamuddin Markaz (in Delhi), has been found coronavirus positive. The total number of such patients in Assam now stands at 30 (after one death)." In another tweet he said: "A private hospital in Dimapur (Nagaland) referred a patient to the GMCH (Guwahati Medical College and Hospital). He has tested positive and is undergoing treatment at the GMCH." Health Department officials in Guwahati said that the man from Nagaland had travelled from Kolkata to Dimapur on March 23 and when he developed symptoms of nCoV, he was shifted to GMCH on April 5. FOLLOW LIVE CORONAVIRUS UPDATES HERE In Manipur, a 23-year-old woman, who had returned from the United Kingdom last month and become the first positive case in the northeastern region, has now been declared negative and discharged from the hospital on Sunday. Of the total 37 positive cases -- Assam (31), Manipur (2), Tripura (2), Mizoram (1) and Arunachal Pradesh (1) -- 30 took part in the Jamaat meet in Delhi last month. According to the Assam Health and Family Welfare Minister, the state reported its first death due to coronavirus on Friday (April 10). Five samples of state's 30 positive cases have since tested negative. The first corona death in Assam, also the first in the northeastern region, was in Hailakandi district. Delhi Police on Monday arrested a man for allegedly attacking a vegetable vendor with a stick and demanding to see his Aadhaar card in order to ascertain his religion and name. A video of the incident later surfaced on microblogging site Twitter, prompting Delhi Police to swing into action. Police identified the attacker as Praveen Babbar, who runs a tour and travels agency. He had allegedly attacked the vegetable vendor on Tajpur Road on April 10 and was arrested from Badarpur Extension, where he lives with his family. A case was registered at Badarpur police station. Babbar has been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, said deputy commissioner of police (southeast) RP Meena said. In the 44-second video, the vendor is seen with a vegetable pushcart. Apart from the attacker and the person making the video, at least three other people are seen at the spot. One of them can be heard threatening the vendor. . The vegetable vendor, Mohammad Salim, said the attack took place barely 20 metres away from his rented accommodation where he lives with his family. Salim said that his brother was originally selling vegetable on the cart, but had gone to eat lunch. So he was filling in. Around 1.30 pm. I was standing near the cart when four men came and one of them asked me my name and demanded my Aadhaar Card. I told him my Aadhaar card was at home. The man started hurling abuses at me as soon as he heard my name. He then grabbed a stick and began assaulting me. He told me not to sell vegetables or come into the neighbourhood, said Salim. The vegetable seller said that he did not inform the police or file a complaint, thinking that those men were police personnel. I was scared and decided not to file a police complaint, added Salim. The incident came to light the next day when a video began circulating on Twitter. The Twitter user tagged Delhi Police, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Dwarka, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and deputy CM Manish Sisodia. Aam Aadmi Partys Malviya Nagar legislator Somnath Bharti sought action from the Delhi Police commissioner tagging him in his tweet. .@CPDelhi if your police can bring back stolen purse of niece of PM within 1-2 days, I am sure that this shameless creature can be traced by you. Plz do justice with him and assure Delhi that any and every attempt to divide Delhi on religious lines will be dealt with iron hands (sic), the AAP legislator tweeted. On Monday, deputy commissioner of police (southeast) RP Meena responded to the AAP leaders tweet and tweeted, Cognizance of the incident has already been taken. FIR has been registered under appropriate sections of law & perpetrator of crime has been arrested. Such incidents shall not be tolerated at any cost & law will take its own course against such persons. DCP Meena said that during the probe, the investigators identified the owner of a motorcycle seen in the video and questioned its owner, Sudhanshu. Sudhansu told us that the incident happened at Tajpur Road and identified the attacker as Praveen Babbar, said Meena. Babbar, the DCP added, stated that there were about 10 vendors selling vegetables that area. He had asked the vegetable vendor to move from there as lockdown had been enforced, but he did not listen. At this Babbar started to beat him up, the DCP added, quoting Babbars statement. Last week, a similar video of racism pertaining to Covid-19 had surfaced on social media. In the video, a man was seen bleeding from his leg and pleading to his attackers that he was not spreading the virus. The police later found that the incident took place in outer Delhis Bawana. Three men were arrested for the incident. On April 8, two women doctors of a government hospital were allegedly molested and assaulted in south Delhis Gulmohar Enclave by a 42-year-old interior designer living in the same neighbourhood. On the occasion of Baisakhi, the Golden Temple in Amritsar was illuminated on Monday. However, very few devotees visited the Golden Temple as the country observed lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Earlier today, the Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh thanked the people of the State for responding to his appeal for 'Ardas' at 11 am from their homes. On April 12, he had called upon the people not to venture out of their homes to celebrate Baisakhi with the traditional fervour and gaiety but to stay at home, for their own safety and that of their children as well as the state and the nation. Baisakhi is a major festival in Punjab as it marks the foundation day of the Khalsa Panth (Sikh order) by the tenth Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh. It also marks the start of the harvest season. On this day, people throng gurdwaras to pay their obeisance and take holy dips, but this year, the effect of lockdown is clearly visible as the number of devotees who are visiting the temple has reduced. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the last month, weve seen people come together in an unprecedented way to stave off the coronavirus, one of the greatest threats of our lifetime. People are isolating themselves from loved ones to prevent the disease from spreading. Doctors are protecting those who are suffering; teachers and parents are finding alternative ways to educate children, while faith leaders provide spiritual guidance from afar. We are doing all of this because we must flatten the curve to save millions. Unfortunately, the spirit of togetherness characterizing our citys response to the coronavirus is absent when we respond to the gun violence epidemic. Like a virus, gun violence continues to spread, but we are unwilling to invest the time and resources into collectively studying the issue to do all we can to stop it. We have some of the greatest minds in the country here. If we invested sufficient time, resources, and support, we could abate the gun crisis just as we will the present pandemic. Gun violence is one of the leading killers in America. On average, there is one mass shooting per day. Yearly, 36,000 Americans are killed by guns and 100,000 shot. The U.S. gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than in any other similarly situated country. It impacts everyone but has its greatest effect on poor communities and black people. Yet time and again, our leaders simply play the blame game for shootings. Lately, they point to our elected district attorney and claim shootings result from commonsense bail and drug reforms. Mayor Jim Kenney call[ed] on the district attorney to vigorously enforce all firearms-related charges during this time of crisis, ignoring that Krasner is doing that. He echoed Fraternal Order of Police lodge president John McNesby, who while speaking to President Donald Trump said that DAs are single-handedly ruining major cities. Kenney also joined U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain, who claims that by implementing smart-on-crime policies, Krasner promotes a culture of lawlessness. Placing blame, demanding the toughest sentences, and decrying bail reform without an empirical link to gun violence may sound good, but they dont deter gun violence. Our leaders surely know it. It seems that too many leaders are more concerned with grandstanding than solving the problem theyve identified. Gun violence is a complicated problem, and leaders should be calling for more research funding to study its cause. We know that gun availability, poverty, and inequality increase its likelihood, but we are just scratching the surface. We must study it like the coronavirus to root it out at its core. At the same time, we know there are solutions that can stem its spread. When Philadelphia fully funded the violence interruption program Cure Violence, it cut homicides by 30%. If Kenney, McSwain, and McNesby wanted to make Philadelphia safer, they would demand more funding for a program like this. Their silence is deafening. What if, after the coronavirus pandemic ends, we brought together all the brilliant minds in this city: the researchers and educators, faith leaders and community activists, trauma doctors and social workers, victim rights advocates and law enforcement, and committed that enormous brainpower to figuring out how to make everyone safe and healthy? I am convinced that we would see a massive reduction in violence in this city and become a world model. We cannot afford to respond to violence with politics. The stakes are too high. When we emerge from our pockets of isolation, I hope that we start taking seriously the problem that never seems to go away. The Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler is senior pastor of Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church and co-chair of Live Free, POWER, a gun violence prevention group. A health boss has warned hospitals are running 'critically low' on gowns and face a 'hand-to-mouth' supply of PPE as orders from China are delayed. The Government is airlifting in crates from China on a daily basis but some are being removed from planes before take-off by officials who want to test them. Other boxes are reaching the UK only for NHS officials to discover that they have been wrongly labelled. Rather than containing much needed protective gowns, they are filled with masks. Even worse, much of the kit from China the worlds main supplier is unusable because it fails UK safety checks. The astonishing revelation came as the chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Dobson, who oversees supplies to 217 trusts, said several have already had to receive emergency equipment supplies while those with a surplus have been asked to share with their neighbours. 'If everything had been flowing exactly as had been ordered and if all of the material had properly passed its safety test, there would not be an issue,' Mr Hopson told the Today programme. 'The bit where theres a particular problem was gowns, where we know that over the last 72 hours some trusts have run critically low on gowns. 'No trust, as far as Im aware, has actually run out but some of the stocks are very, very low.' 'This is all really hand-to-mouth in terms of gown delivery, and we need to get to a more sustainable supply.' Chris Hopson (pictured speaking on the Andrew Marr show), whose organisation represents 217 NHS trusts with more than a million staff, said China was the worlds only supplier of gowns which the UK now relies upon Trusts with surplus supplies of gowns and other protective equipment have been asked to share it with their neighbours Delivering lifesaving protective gear to frontline health staff has become hand to mouth, an NHS leader has revealed, with a high dependency on supplies coming in from China He said China was the only country with access to the right materials and manufacturing capacity to produce protective equipment. Surgical gowns are vital for protecting staff performing procedures that put them at risk of catching the disease from a sufferer, which include putting a patient on a ventilator and resuscitating them. More than 30 NHS staff are believed to have died from coronavirus and campaigners say some of the deaths were a direct result of a lack of personal protective equipment, or PPE. As Health Secretary Matt Hancock promised to look into these deaths to establish how the victims caught the virus: Boris Johnson revealed his battle with the disease could have gone either way; Britains death toll rose by 737 to surge past 10,000 with one expert warning it was set to be the highest in Europe; It emerged the Cabinet is split over when to end the lockdown, with growing concerns about the impact of school closures; Michael Gove revealed he had been granted special dispensation to have his daughter tested for the virus so he could get back to work; The Archbishop of Canterbury urged that the dead be treated with dignity; Ministers admitted that only 4,200 of 300,000 small firms had been given loans; The Royal College of Nursing told its members to refuse to treat patients if they didnt have adequate protective clothing; The Royal College of Surgeons said a third of members did not have enough PPE. Protective clothing should be worn by anyone including doctors, nurses, care home workers and paramedics within two metres of a suspected coronavirus patient. It includes gowns, masks, gloves and visors and is vital for preventing individuals from contracting the disease and passing it to patients or their own families. At least 30 NHS staff have died during the outbreak after testing positive although it is not known how many contracted the virus due to inadequate supplies of PPE. Victims include Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, 53, who died in Romford, east London, last week, five days after urging Mr Johnson to make sure staff had appropriate PPE. The extreme shortage of PPE is adding increasing strain to NHS staff across the nation, as guidelines state protective clothing should be worn by anyone including doctors, nurses, care home workers and paramedics within two metres of a suspected coronavirus patient Ministers claim they have delivered 761million items of protective clothing to the NHS and care homes in recent weeks but in the past few days hospitals have reported severe shortages of gowns. Chris Hopson, whose organisation represents 217 NHS trusts with more than a million staff, said China was the worlds only supplier of these gowns, which must be water-resistant. He said the Government had arranged daily airlifts, mostly from Shanghai, which were being overseen by the Foreign Office helped by the Department for Trade and Industry. But explaining the logistical problems that led to these supplies being held up, he added: We understand the Chinese are pulling off stocks to test them before they leave the country. So even if youve got the plane there, the consignment there, you cant actually guarantee it actually gets on the plane. The second issue is that when the plane arrives in the UK there have been some boxes which say on the outside gowns but actually when you open them up have masks. We also have to test all of the garments when they come over and some consignments have failed tests. Everybody in the NHS is incredibly frustrated about the fact that we cant get the supply. The reality is that its probably only China which has got the volume and the manufacturing capacity and access to fluid repellent material. Mr Hancock said the circumstances of the deaths of NHS staff would be investigated to understand as much as possible how they caught the virus. Mr Hancock said he knew of 19 healthcare employees that had died after contracting the disease although the Mail has identified at least 32, from surgeons to doctors, nurses to porters. He told the Downing Street press conference: We are looking into each circumstance to understand as much as possible how they caught the virus, whether thats at work, outside of work, and making sure we learn as much as we possibly can and, therefore, of course protect our health workers as much as possible. Sara Trollope (pictured with Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year), 51, was just months away from retiring when she became yet another hero to been named a victim of the deadly virus Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, 53, pictured left, passed away in hospital after a 15-day battle against the virus - five days after urging Mr Johnson to make sure staff had appropriate PPE But he insisted it would be impossible to commit to a timescale to getting PPE to everyone who needed it, including many millions of people across the NHS and social care. Meanwhile the Royal College of Nursing issued guidelines to members saying that if they hadnt been given adequate PPE, they could refuse to treat patients. The recommendations state: Ultimately, if you have exhausted all other measures to reduce your risk and you have not been given appropriate PPE ... you are entitled to refuse to work.' A survey by the Royal College of Surgeons found that a third of surgeons do not believe they have an adequate supply of personal protective equipment. More than half 57 per cent of the 1,978 members who took part in the poll said their trust had experienced shortages within the past 30 days. One described the lack of masks as scandalous and said he had caught the disease from a patient who had gone on to infect six other members of staff. A survey by the Royal College of Surgeons found that a third of surgeons do not believe they have an adequate supply of personal protective equipment Sue Hill, vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: We have been working with Government to ensure surgeons and their teams have the right advice about what level of PPE they need for different surgical procedures, but the overall picture from our survey is that there is still a lot more work to do to get adequate equipment to the front line. In the meantime we have urged our members not to risk their health, and that of their patients carrying out risky procedures. An NHS source said the reason Chinese officials were taking some protective clothing off the flights for testing was in case they got blamed if the shipments were found to be unsafe. The Foreign Office is understood to be co-ordinating the flights with some input with the Department for Trade and the Department of Health. The military is not involved. Mortuary suppliers warn they have NO stocks left - but NHS says it has plenty despite claims dead are being wrapped in bedsheets Body bags could be in danger of running out as mortuary suppliers warn they have no stocks left and health workers claim they have are forced to wrap dead coronavirus victims in sheets. The NHS maintains it has adequate supplies of body bags, despite mortuary suppliers across the country being unable to source anymore stock from overseas for weeks. Last monday, Sally Goodright, a nurse at West Middlesex University Hospital in Isleworth, West London, wrote on Facebook, in a post later removed: 'We ran out of body bags but still the dead were arriving from the wards.' NHS supplier Barber Medical said they were having a 'real problem' sourcing the zipped body bags and had resorted to producing more 'body pouch bags' made of thin polythene bags Ms Goodright added that all of the dead were still infectious so they needed to wear full personal protective equipment (PPE) for hours despite it being 'hot and sweaty'. Another worker at Watford General Hospital told BBC News that bed sheets were being used to wrap the dead. GMB Union said porters had been asked to transport the dead wrapped in sheets. Public Health England told the publication that the use of body bags was for 'practical reasons' and that there was no specific reason to use them for coronavirus victims as the covid-19 virus degraded quickly after its victim had died. Sally Goodright said on Facebook last week that staff at West Middlesex University Hospital in Isleworth, West London, are 'so overwhelmed with deaths that they can't cope' The main supplier of body bags to the NHS, Barber Medical, told the BBC that they were having a 'real problem' sourcing the zipped body bags and had resorted to producing more 'body pouch bags' made of thin polythene bags. Another major supplier also told the publication they were unable to get any more stock of body bags for over six weeks due to stockpiling - it was unable to make its own bags after being unable to get hold of materials. They added that they had heard from NHS trusts and funeral directors 'horrified' by the official advice not to use them, from Public Health England. In a Facebook post, Ms Goodright also urged people to stay at home and criticised those she saw on her journey home who were setting up badminton nets and playing football Funeral directors have also struggled to get hold of personal protective equipment. A spokesman for Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust did not deny that they were using sheets to wrap bodies, claiming that they had zipper body bags in stock but they weren't necessary as 'placing a cloth or mask over the mouth of the deceased when moving them can help to prevent the release of aerosols.' BBC News reported that thousands of body bags are currently being held as stock by emergency services, and will be made available to hospitals and funeral directors. Advertisement STEPHEN GLOVER: Why ARE we relying on China for vital gowns? When did the authorities first become aware that this country would face a deadly contagion that would cost the lives of many thousands? It must be at least two months back. Six weeks ago tomorrow, Boris Johnson delivered what then seemed a shocking statement in which he warned of a serious pandemic. At that stage, there had been only 51 recorded UK cases of coronavirus. Now there are nearly 20 times that number of deaths every day. No one knows when or how this will end. But it is clear that a lack of basic equipment, in particular gowns, is putting the lives of NHS staff at risk. The question which doctors, nurses and others on the front line have every right to ask is why with at least two months notice the Government has not made better provision for something so comparatively basic. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has boasted that 761million of pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) have been produced for the NHS. Fine. But why is there nonetheless a shortage of gowns, and why are doctors and nurses dying for lack of them? Three nurses, who had been forced to wear bin bags on their shift because of a shortage of gowns, have contracted coronavirus. Isnt that disgraceful? NHS Providers, which represents all hospital trusts, has warned that supply of gowns is hand to mouth. Leaked memos warn of a national shortage of long-sleeved gowns. And, as the Mail reports today, 57 per cent of doctors in a survey conducted by the Royal College of Surgeons said their trusts have experienced PPE shortages within the past 30 days. Meanwhile, the Royal College of Nursing has issued guidelines to its members saying that if they havent been given adequate PPE they can refuse to treat patients. Who could blame them? At least 19 NHS workers have died so far, and some relatives believe they were infected due to a shortage of equipment. What has gone wrong? There have been bottlenecks in shipments from China our main supplier of gowns so that critical supplies are being held up. Now, Im going to say something which during the present climate when everyone, including the Prime Minister, now mercifully recovered, is praising the NHS to the skies may seem controversial. The organisation is not perfect. Its doctors, nurses and other workers are exemplary, and we owe them an incalculable debt. But they are not the health service. The NHS along with its quango little sister, Public Health England is a vast lumbering and often inefficient bureaucracy. It does not respond quickly to the rapidly developing demands of this cunning virus. Already we have seen how cumbersome the NHS has been in grappling with testing, where the daily rate is still far below what experts agree is necessary. This slowness appears to have been at least in part the result of suspicions harboured by health service jobsworths over private laboratories. Of course, I can appreciate that proper testing is a complicated issue. It is undeniably true that many other countries have also not covered themselves in glory. But is providing enough basic gowns, and other fairly straightforward PPE equipment, really so much of a challenge for a country that is supposed to have the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world? With at least two months notice, it surely would have been possible to ramp up the manufacture of gowns in the UK, instead of relying on fardistant China. There have even been appalling stories of health workers cutting up curtains. Slow-footed though the NHS and Public Health England are, the buck stops with Mr Hancock. No one envies the Health Secretary in his job at the moment. Ive no doubt he is working 18-hour days, and doing many good things. But the shortage of PPE equipment is finally his responsibility. Im afraid he was wrong-headed to imply that medics have been wasting equipment. It looks as though he is trying to shift the blame. It is immoral to ask doctors, nurses and other health workers to take bigger risks with their lives than they have to. No wonder some of them have said they feel like lambs to the slaughter. Action is needed. Bottlenecks must be cleared. More gowns and other vital PPE equipment must be found. It feels, not for the first time, that no one is fully in charge of this terrible crisis. New Delhi, April 13 : The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has informed the Supreme Court that there are 13 million Indians - including NRIs and students - abroad and the government is seeking to minimise the severe risk posed by arrivals from an increasing number of countries affected by Covid-19. The government has urged the Indian nationals to stay put where they are to contain the further spread of the virus within India and allow the health machinery to focus on domestic containment effectively. In the UK, there are about 400,000 Indian nationals, including about 50,000 students. The UK government has now extended visas till May 31 and has issued necessary guidelines. "However, given the present situation of the coronavirus outbreak in India and the available limited resources, it is not feasible to selectively evacuate Indian citizens from abroad when a large number of them from a number of countries want to return back due to various reasons," said the MEA in its reply to the Supreme Court. The response from the government came on a plea filed in the Supreme Court seeking direction to the Centre to evacuate a group of nearly 380 Indian students stranded in the UK without delay, and until their evacuation, provide them with accommodation, health and medical support. The MEA said some countries have reported a very large number of cases including deaths, putting passengers from these countries particularly at higher risk of infection. The return of such passengers to different regions of India poses a grave risk to the country of a population of over 1.3 billion, it contended. Noting the very large Indian community abroad, it said: "Only in some cases Indian students are said to have vacated their hostels or rented accommodations. In such cases, the High Commission of India, London and Indian Consulates have arranged accommodation and food at highly subsidised rates." The government informed the top court that several pleas have been filed across the country to evacuate Indians stranded abroad. "High Courts have noted the steps and efforts being undertaken by the Government of India to assist Indian nationals abroad and have also acknowledged that due to the lockdown situations prevailing both in India as well as other countries, it will not be possible to repatriate Indian nationals at this stage," said the ministry. Indian nationals abroad are being mobilised by the High Commissions/Embassies/Posts to help fellow Indians in distress in that country. The Centre said wherever there is a concern of expiration of visas of such Indian nationals in those countries, the foreign governments concerned, have, on the request of the missions/posts, extended the visas. "Wherever possible, missions are also providing food, accommodation etc. to the stranded Indian students. Mission is also informing/guiding about the restrictions being imposed, advisories being issued by the local Governments of those countries," the MEA said. Russian rights advocates urge measures preventing riots in prisons and detention centers flickr.com/ meesh 15:53 13/04/2020 MOSCOW, April 13 (RAPSI) Russias Presidential Human Rights Council has voiced its opinion that courts need to resume hearings on paroles, mitigating of punishments and transfers to corrective labor in order to bar riots in detention facilities, the bodys press-service informs on Monday. Earlier, the Councils standing commission on assistance to the Public Monitoring Commission, reform of the penitentiary system and crime prevention has held a working meeting to discuss the causes and circumstances of a riot in a penal colony situated in the Irkutsk Region, and the activities of public monitoring commissions at the time of the pandemic. Rights activists believe it necessary to seek permission for the members of the Irkutsk regional public monitoring commission to visit the affected penal colony and to ask Russias Investigative Committee to thoroughly check the allegations of unlawful use of force against convicts in this penitentiary facility, what they think could provoke the riot, the statement reads. Among the measures members of the Council propose to prevent further riots are those ensuring convicts could have access to video and telephone communications, extending a special mail system to some regional penitentiary establishments, and permitting those serving terms in penal settlements to reside in residential areas of the locations such settlements are situated in. The Council also insists the penitentiary establishments are to be obliged to publish data on actual numbers of convicts, available places and the limits on their respective capacities; on salaries, among those paid from the state budget, as well as information on the number and types of incentives and penalties given to convicts. AUSTIN, Texas A federal appeals court on Friday partially rescinded a lower-court order that had largely blocked the enforcement of an abortion ban in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic. By a 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld enforcement of an executive order by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that includes abortion among non-essential medical procedures banned during the state of emergency. However, the appeals court allowed the procedure to go ahead if delays would place the pregnancy beyond the 22-week state cutoff for abortions. The ruling was agreed to by Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Kyle Duncan, an appointee of President Donald Trump. Judge James L. Dennis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, dissented and opposed any stay of the lower-court order. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the new coronavirus. For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. In a statement, Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup said the appeals court is unjustifiably forcing women to wait until the eleventh hour to get the time-sensitive, essential healthcare that they are constitutionally guaranteed. We will pursue all legal options to ensure no women are left behind. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin had blocked the total ban in Abbotts executive order last week, but the appeals court overturned that order when the state appealed. Planned Parenthood and other womens clinics then asked the Austin judge to allow non-surgical abortions by medication or abortions if delay would take a pregnancy beyond the 22-week state legal barrier. Yeakel granted that request Thursday, but the state appealed immediately again. Abbotts original March 22 order was to expire April 21 but can be extended. Similar legal fights are being waged in Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Iowa. ___ This story was first published on April 10, 2020. It was updated on April 13, 2020, to correct the name of the president for the Center for Reproductive Rights to Nancy Northup, not Nancy Northrup. MIDDLETOWN We have reached mid-April in Middlesex County and throughout our great nation. However, as we all know, it is not a typical mid-April. In normal times, I would be using this weeks chamber column to preview our Business and Education Partnership Breakfast, our Career Fair Expo, and many other spring events happening in our community. However, that is unfortunately not the case this year, as the public health and economic fallout resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic continues to be top of mind for all of us. These are difficult times for our community and for communities across the United States. We are concerned about the health of our family, friends and colleagues, and we are concerned about the economy in Middlesex County and beyond. There are still so many unknowns about this situation. We dont know how long it will take for the public health crisis to subside. We dont know how long businesses will be closed or only able to operate on a limited basis. We dont know how long it will be before we can hold events that bring us all together in the spirit of cooperation and fellowship. There are, however, a few things that I have always known, and that have been reinforced over the past few weeks. First of all, we are blessed to be a part of a wonderful community. People in Middlesex County truly care about one another and the community at large. Political party affiliations and other labels are out the window, and everyone is coming together to reach a common goal, get through this crisis healthy and stable, and ready to come back stronger than ever. The business community in our region is really hurting, but it is resilient, and it is not going anywhere. We are all in this together, and the sun continues to shine on Middlesex County. The outstanding staff at the chamber continues to provide top-level service to our membership at a time when it is needed the most. The chamber remains operational, and has transitioned to video conference meetings for the near future. Last week featured well-run and productive meetings of our Executive Committee, LEAD CT Steering Committee, Durham and Middlefield Division, Cromwell Division, Health Care Council Steering Committee, and Real Estate Council. We partnered with Congressman Joe Courtney last week on a webinar focusing on the CARES Act, the federal stimulus legislation which was recently passed and signed into law. We will continue to set up these important conversations with members of Congress and other key leaders at the federal, state and local levels. This week also features excellent web-based content for the benefit of the business community in Middlesex County. On Monday afternoon, the first virtual session of our KeyBank Workshop Series will take place through a webinar titled, PPP & More What is Best for Your Business or Non-Profit. Members and other interested parties are welcome to join us for an in-depth discussion with an experienced panel including: James Barger, Connecticut and Massachusetts Market President for KeyBank, Drew Andrews, CPA, managing partner and CEO of Whittlesey, and Brian Kerrigan, J.D., a partner with Whittlesey. Tuesday afternoon features the third installment of the chambers new Tuesday Tips campaign, which provides critical information from the legal community via informative webinars. We look forward to another informative conversation: Looking Ahead Getting Back to Business. Hosted by Attorneys Rich Carella, Chris Brigham, Kevin McEleney and Donald Doeg of Updike Kelly & Spellacy, P.C. This webinar will focus on looking ahead and anticipating issues related to getting your business back to operations, including: Landlord / Tenant Law and the re-opening of businesses and offices, employment law and the re-hiring of employees, insurance law, and business interruption claims. A busy week wraps up Friday with a special Zoom-based town hall webinar with Matt Pugliese, associate director of the CT Small Business Development Center, who will provide real-time updates on the funding opportunities that are available to businesses in our region and throughout the state. We look forward to excellent presentations from our esteemed guests who will help us cut through some of the confusion surrounding the Covid-19 relief packages. I thank all of them personally, and on behalf of the chamber, for taking the time to lead these important discussions. In addition to all of these important webinars, this week features virtual meetings of the chambers Killingworth Division, Board of Directors, Legislative Committee, and Affordable Housing Committee. Also, our Strategic Planning Committee has been holding virtual meetings on a weekly basis which has been so helpful during this period. Before closing, I want to once again urge the business community to hang in there, and to lean on the chamber and other resources that are available at this time. Another reminder: If you visit the chambers website, you can access the Coronavirus Tool Kit, which includes a survey which will help us help you, along with a number of resources which we will be updating on a regular basis as more information becomes available. We have also created a social media campaign which allows our members to share the creative ideas they are employing to stay operational and helpful to their fellow community members during this period. Please connect with the chambers Shout It Out! campaign, and let us know what you are up to. The chamber website has a section dedicated to promoting Middlesex County restaurants open for pick-up orders. This information is also available through our social media platforms. Please support these local restaurants if you are able to do so safely. It is also a good time, if you are able, to support the local business community through the purchase of gift cards. All businesses, large and small, are part of the fabric of this community. It is time to come together, to support each other, so we can weather this storm and come back strong. Finally, I must close this weeks chamber column on a sad note after the recent passing of Vin Volpe at 91. Vin Volpe led an amazing life, and he helped so many people along the way. He grew up in Waterbury, but fortunately for us, he found his way to Middlesex County through his professional career. As a 6-year-old boy in the 1930s, Vin joined his older siblings Dorothy and Leo on the vaudeville circuit as the Volpe Trio. His family knew at that time that he was destined to make a major impact in his life. After high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served in Trieste, Italy, in the 1940s. In fact, he got a U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute for his service in WWII. Those of us in Middlesex County know Vin as the longtime president of Jarvis Products in Middletown. A temporary summer job at Jarvis in the 1950s eventually led to an incredible 65-year career with the company. Vin built Jarvis into a powerhouse through ingenuity, commitment, and good old-fashioned hard work. Thanks in large part to Vins efforts, Jarvis has a truly global reach, and it is a company that Middletown and Middlesex County are truly lucky to have. In addition to this success in business, Vin supported countless community causes throughout his life. I will forever be grateful for his support of the chamber, and for our personal friendship that lasted many years until his passing. While all of this was so important to Vin, nothing was more important than his wonderful family. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Susanne, his children, grandchildren, colleagues at Jarvis, and his vast network of friends at this difficult time. Vin Volpe was old-school, he led by example, and he will be missed by many. We are all grateful for his service to our country, and to our community. We will remember him fondly. Be well, Middlesex County, brighter days are ahead. Larry McHugh is president of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce in Middletown. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 23:20:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed a coordinated response to COVID-19 and other pressing international issues with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif over the phone on Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. "The ministers paid special attention to multilateral coordination in the fight against coronavirus infection, including the rejection of illegal unilateral sanctions and other restrictions on the supply of medicines and essential goods," it said in a statement. Lavrov and Zarif had a thorough exchange of views on pressing international concerns, with an emphasis on Afghanistan and the role of states of the region, the statement said. The ministers also discussed prospects of intensifying efforts to resolve the Yemeni crisis in light of recent proposals of the United Nations, it said. The White House denied Monday that President Donald Trump is considering firing the nation's top infectious-disease specialist, Anthony Fauci, after Trump retweeted a message Sunday night that included the hashtag "FireFauci" amid a flurry of Twitter activity responding to criticism of the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak. "This media chatter is ridiculous - President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement. "Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump." At Monday's coronavirus task force briefing, Fauci appeared to walk back his comments to CNN that had prompted a sharp response from Trump, explaining that he had been responding to a "hypothetical question" and was not intending to criticize the president. "I can only tell you what I know and what my recommendations were," Fauci told reporters. Asked about his claim that there had been "a lot of pushback" to his call for earlier mitigation efforts, Fauci replied, "That was the wrong choice of words." He also disputed the notion that he had been forced by Trump to clarify his remarks. "Everything I do is voluntarily," Fauci said. "Please. Don't even imply that." Trump's Sunday night retweet - which prompted widespread consternation about his relationship with the highly visible member of the White House coronavirus task force - highlighted the views of a former Republican congressional candidate, DeAnna Lorraine. She amassed 1.8% of the vote in an open primary challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., this year. Lorraine's tweet came after an interview with Fauci, chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on CNN's "State of the Union." Fauci said in the Sunday morning interview that a stronger early response to the outbreak by the administration "could have saved lives," but he also characterized the decision to implement social distancing guidelines as "complicated." "Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor," Fauci said Sunday on CNN. "It's very complicated." Fauci also confirmed a New York Times story saying that he and other experts had wanted to begin social and physical distancing measures as early as February. Trump has often in the past shown his anger with critics within his own administration by retweeting the negative or taunting comments of others - sometimes marginal figures such as Lorraine - rather than saying anything himself. It allows him to cry "fake news" when the media interprets the retweeted material as reflecting his views. While he may or may not actually want to fire Fauci, he has used Twitter to discredit the views of officials with whom he disagrees, retweeting stories and commentary from his favorite news outlets, notably Fox News and more recently OANN, the One America News Network. In his statement blaming the media for the confusion over Fauci's status, Gidley said Trump's intent was to expose the media's "attempt to rewrite history" about his decision to impose a ban on travel from China in response to the origins of the coronavirus outbreak there. In Trump's retweet of Lorraine's message, he added in his own words an assertion that he "banned China long before people spoke up." But the underlying tweet from Lorraine complained that "Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives." "Time to #FireFauci," she added. Fauci, known for his candor but also his diplomacy, has implicitly and explicitly taken issue with Trump on several occasions. Trump demonstrated his apparently increasing irritation last week when he stepped in to stop Fauci from answering a question about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, an unproven drug that the president has been touting for treatment of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Fauci has also been skeptical of Trump's rush to set a date for easing mitigation efforts to get the economy moving as the 2020 election approaches. Fauci has become a major figure in America because of his prominent role in the White House's coronavirus task force. He has appeared on television almost daily, standing beside Trump during coronavirus briefings and landing interviews on news programs and even late-night comedy shows. He has become so well-known, that people have designed doughnuts, T-shirts and "fan clubs" to celebrate him. Recent polls have shown that Americans trust Fauci much more than they trust Trump, which could rankle the president. But any effort to force out Fauci could also further erode public confidence in the president's handling of the deadly pandemic. Fauci is a career government scientist who has never been a partisan figure. First appointed to his position in 1984, Fauci has led the agency, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, under six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush said he has "absolute confidence" in Fauci and the other experts leading the way on the coronavirus outbreak. Bush awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And Fauci developed a reputation as a skilled public health expert while combating the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Lorraine, the Pelosi challenger who got Trump going, opined in another tweet that she has "seriously heard enough of the experts' for now" on how to stem the novel coronavirus. Sunday's measured comments by Fauci, which did not mention Trump or explicitly criticize the administration and were elicited under questioning by CNN's Jake Tapper, prompted a flurry of right-wing commentators to rebuke him. Some reports have indicated that the president has been calling advisers seeking their opinions on Fauci's performance in recent days. Some right-leaning commentators and Trump's online base have rallied behind the president, taking shots at Fauci as their relationship has grown increasingly strained. Even as the president repeatedly slammed the mainstream media Sunday, he praised OANN. On Monday, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said in an interview with conservative radio host James Harris that Fauci had "emasculated the economy." "I think it's time . . . for Dr. Fauci to move along. I mean, he shouldn't have a seat at the table," Biggs said, adding that negative sentiment toward Fauci "is growing on the Hill." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., meanwhile, pushed back against the notion of firing Fauci, asking, "For what?" In a tweet, Rubio pointed the finger at China and also noted that the U.S. government reacted slowly to the coronavirus threat because officials "didn't want to harm [the] economy or be alarmists." "Can't change [the] past but can avoid repeating it," Rubio said. Stuck inside the White House because of social distancing limitations, Trump spent his Easter Sunday railing against the "Fake News," slamming publications including the New York Times and even Fox News, after criticism of the federal government's slow response to the coronavirus pandemic ramped up over the weekend. The president attacked the journalists after a New York Times report that the Trump administration had information that could have led to social distancing precautions much earlier. It blamed the president's slow response for the scale of the virus's spread and rising death toll. Similar criticisms were echoed in many news reports Sunday, sparking heated retorts from Trump, even aimed at Fox News. In an interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace, Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also said the United States would "be in a much better position" if the Trump administration had acted more quickly. That interview inspired Trump to blast the right-leaning news network and Wallace personally, calling him a "Mike Wallace wannabe," a reference to Chris Wallace's father, the legendary investigative broadcaster who died in 2012. "What the hell is happening to @FoxNews," Trump tweeted Sunday. "It's a whole new ballgame over there!" The personal attack on Wallace drew a rebuke from Jedediah Bila, a weekend co-host of one of the president's favorite shows, "Fox & Friends." "Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling," she said. "Chris is doing his job." Here are relevant excerpts from Sunday's Fauci interview with CNN's Tapper: TAPPER: The New York Times reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to President Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn't announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16, almost a month later. Why? FAUCI: You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not. But we - it is what it is. We are where we are right now. TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February, instead of mid-March? FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it's the what would have, what could have. It's - it's very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is - is complicated. But you're right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. This photo shows a hospital bed in one of the temporary rooms at the TCF Center, Monday, April 6, 2020, in Detroit. The city's convention center was converted to accommodate an overflow of patients with the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Read more Human services providers for those with intellectual disabilities, autism, brain injury and behavioral challenges are valiantly grappling with a no-win situation: how to manage safely through the COVID-19 Pandemic. Their focus remains clear; to keep clients and staff safe, and to bring programs and services into homes to minimize client contact with others. The clients they support have a wide range of complex issues, including severe behavioral challenges, psychiatric disorders, and medical conditions that put them at greater risk for the worst outcomes if they contract COVID-19. Now, more than ever, dedicated direct care professionals along with nurses are on the frontlines providing hands-on care, keeping clients safe in their homes while also keeping them engaged and helping them maintain skills for independence and daily living. This adds stress to direct care professionals, nurses and to a sector that has grappled with a workforce crisis for years. Additionally, these human services provider organizations have had to spend unbudgeted and enormous sums for unexpected purchases of life-saving medical and other personal protective equipment supplies with little hope of recouping these expenditures, as they are not licensed as hospitals or nursing homes. For example, Woods and our affiliate organizations in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey began to plan for COVID-19 in early March. Our Emergency Preparedness Plan went into effect on March 13 and we started to take staff temperatures as they arrived at work each day and supplied them with scarce personal protective equipment. Furthermore, our operations, nursing and medical staff created isolation beds to be ready for clients in need. Yet, this sector has yet to be fully recognized or acknowledged for what it is doing to protect very vulnerable individuals. And, while all of us appreciate the federal stimulus package for COVID-19 that just passed and what it is doing for our hospitals and nursing home industry, it is not clear how larger complex health and human services agencies will fare. So, we ask that our federal, state and local governments not forget the 24/7 service providers working on the frontlines as we try to manage through this crisis. If we are ignored, the country could be left with a ruined infrastructure that is unable to provide critical services for people with intellectual and other disabilities and frailties. Tine Hansen-Turton is president and CEO of Woods Services and a member of the Inquirers Health Advisory Board Panel. Gabriel Plotkin, formerly a top trader for Steve Cohens Point72, put out his own shingle in 2014, opening Melvin Capital with $1 billion in seed money. Since then, Melvin has achieved high annual returns, hitting 47% in its first year of operations and 41% in 2017. Plotkins fund is consistently among the highest performers in the industry. According to its last 13F, Melvin Capital has over $7.7 billion in assets under management. The largest holding in Melvins portfolio is Amazon, of which the fund has over 405,000 shares. Its no wonder that a high-performing fund is heavy into the tech giant. Amazons share appreciation in recent years has been extraordinary, and Plotkin has steered his fund toward technology and consumer stocks. But he hasnt built his success just on the obvious plays Plotkin takes risks, too. In recent weeks, in the midst of the largest market slide since the Great Depression, Plotkin has gone on a shopping spree. Taking Warren Buffetts famous advice to heart Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful. Plotkin has made two unusual plays. Opening up the TipRanks database, weve found that these stocks offer a bold investor attractive combinations of low entry points and a high growth potential. Lets find out just what Plotkin did. L Brands, Inc. (LB) Well start with L Brands, a retailer whose stores youve almost certainly heard of. The company owns Bath and Body Works, as well as a 45% stake in Victorias Secret. Both are staples of the shopping mall segment, and the coronavirus hit to the consumer economy has put heavy pressure on L Brands. The presser is evident in the earnings. The company is forecasting a 5-cent per share loss in Q1, as the social distancing restrictions really start to bite. Even with the downbeat guidance, LB has taken care to maintain its dividend. The company pays out 30 cents quarterly, or $1.20 annualized, giving a hefty yield of 10.6%. Thats more than 5x the average dividend yield found among S&P listed stocks. Story continues Thats the state of L Brands, as it stands now, and gives some background to Plotkins moves on the stock. In March his fund bought 14.2 million shares, and added another 5.8 million in April. This is a new position for Melvin Capital, and at 20 million shares, it is substantial, giving the fund 7.2% ownership of the company. Deutsche Banks Tiffany Kanaga covers this stock, and sees the retailer with a path forward somewhat counterintuitive for retail right now, but sensible considering Bath and Body Works product line. Kanaga writes, We note that hand sanitizer, while rotating to new scents as we continue to check the website, remains completely sold out. We estimate soaps & sanitizers typically at ~19% of BBW sales, but also expect incremental basket addons in body care (~43% of sales) and home fragrance (~38%). Importantly, the majority of BBW products are produced in the U.S., minimizing supply chain disruption ahead. Kanaga places a Buy rating on the stock, along with a $29 price target. Her target suggests a highly robust 99% upside potential. (To watch Kanagas track record, click here) The overall outlook on LB, an analyst consensus rating based on 24 reviews, is a Moderate Buy. The reviews break down as 8 Buy, 14 Hold, and 2 Sell. Shares in L Brands are selling for a modest $14.69, and the $25.36 average price target indicates room for 73% growth in the coming year. (See L Brands stock analysis at TipRanks) Hyatt Hotels Corporation (H) The leisure industry is facing a particularly hard time, with travel heavily restricted and social distancing measures strongly encouraged to combat the COVID-19 epidemic. Fortunately for Hyatt, the company reported positive Q4 earnings just before the market collapse, allowing the stock to peak at $92, giving it some resilience as the downturn took hold. Even so, Hyatt has been forced pull back its 2020 guidance, as the company attempts to predict just how deep the pandemics negative impact on travel and leisure will finally get. Among the important factors in the revised guidance: a three-month delay in construction during 2020. Once the collapse came, however, share prices dropped and Plotkin moved in. His firm disclosed, on March 20, a purchase of 750,000 shares in H, bring the full holding to 2.6 million, or 7.3% of the companys outstanding stock. It was an opportunistic move, taking advantage of lower prices to pick up an otherwise sound stock. Hyatts value is supported by a strong brand and a reliable dividend with a 2% yield. The yield is solidly in line with the peer-company average, and promises a steady income stream from the stock as Hyatt finds its footing in the rest of the year. The take on Wall Street seems to be, hang on to this one for the long term. Jefferies analyst David Katz writes, anticipating a rocky road, H withdrew its 2020 guidance and COVID-19 Greater China sensitivities as the situation continues to evolve. The company noted the situation has intensified over the last week, with decreased transient bookings and increased group cancellations in North America and Europe. Even so, Katz says to Hold on to H. He lowered his price target to $76, which still implies an upside potential of 47%. (To watch Katzs track record, click here) From Wells Fargo, Dori Kesten says of Hyatt, The U.S. lodging industry is expected to see increasing pressure on revenue and margin growth as demand slows in the face of steady supply growth. Although we believe Hyatt's EV/EBITDA spread to its brand peers will continue to lessen over time, we see limited nearterm price appreciation potential currently. Kesten also rates this stock with as a Hold, seeing the smart play as patience. A price target of $72, indicating a 39% upside, rounds out the picture. (To watch Kestens track record, click here) With 7 recent Hold reviews, and only 1 Buy, the analyst consensus on Hyatt is a Hold. As shares are priced at $51.84, the average price target of $68.42 suggests a potential upside of 31%. (See Hyatt stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights. A day before the nationwide 21-day lockdown is purported to end, the Health Ministry today said that the number of coronavirus cases in India have surged past 9,000. According to the government, there are 9,352 total cases of which 8,048 are active. The health ministry said that 979 patients have recovered, while 324 have died. Here are all the latest updates: >> India registered 51 deaths in 24 hours, the biggest ever spike in the number of deaths in the country. >> Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10 am tomorrow. An announcement on lockdown extension is likely. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show >> The Supreme Court modified its order on free testing of coronavirus in government and private labs. The apex court said that testing will be free only for those eligible under the Ayushman Bharat scheme. Follow our LIVE Updates here >> 25 staff members of a hospital in Mumbai have tested positive for COVID-19. >> Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Arunachal Pradesh extended the lockdown until April 30. >> Asian Development Bank hikes COVID-19 financial aid to $20 billion for member nations. >> Odd-even rule to be implemented in Delhi's wholesale mandis in order to contain the spread of coronavirus. >> Several Union ministers and senior officers returned to their offices today. >> Nagaland reported its first COVID-19 case. >> China's reported 108 new COVID-19 cases as death toll reached 3,341. Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn says there are early signs of a slowdown in the number of mortgage customers seeking to have their payments delayed, after initially being swamped with requests for assistance. In the three-and-a-half weeks since banks said stricken customers could defer their loan repayments for up to six months to cope with the crisis, CBA on Monday said more than 70,000 of its 1.8 million home loan borrowers had requested such a delay. That compares with CBA's previous tally of about 57,000 requests, but in a trend also being experienced by rivals, CBA said growth in the number of new applications for assistance was slowing. CBA chief Matt Comyn says customer requests for help are starting to level out. Credit:Peter Braig While we continue to receive ongoing and significant demand, we are beginning to see initial signs of a levelling out of requests for help after the huge spike in the past few weeks," Mr Comyn said. "That suggests that the different measures put in place by the federal and state governments, and by the banking industry as a whole, are helping to flatten the curve of demand for such assistance." Actor Sidharth Malhotra has reacted to all the flak received by his latest song, Masakali 2.0. Sidharth said that the song was recorded and shot as promotional feature for his last film, Marjavaan. The song is a remix/rehash/recreation of AR Rahmans Masakali from 2009 film Delhi 6. The news version is composed by Tanishk Bagchi and was ridiculed by all of internet and even the songs original makers, AR Rahman, Prasoon Joshi, Mohit Chauhan and others. Speaking with film critic Rajeev Masand in an interview, Sidharth said he has been keeping up with the controversy while in lockdown at his Mumbai home. Of course we get marked (on tweets), we are part of this song. It happend vis a vis a movie, Marjaavan, as a promotional song at the time. Its very easy for people to say--I mean everyone is to blame for it as a team--but I have done remakes in the past of different artistes. Whether it was a Kaala Chashma or Chull, they have all been recreations and they have all worked really well in the past. There is no conversation of whether I endorse it or not endorse it. Whether it is good or bad, he said. Rajeev then asked him if he understands the idea behind the outrage considering original Masakali is a great song. Sidharth said, I keep thinking from an actors point of view, if someone had to remake a film that I have been a part of and it has not been done with utmost taste or to someones satisfaction, of course it can be annoying. So in that case, yes, it is completely valid. Sidharth, however, believe that the trend of remixes is dying. I dont think the audience has the patience now or they are not excited by that we are not really creating new melodies. So as an audience, as a listener, I completely agree. Actors also get far more excited with a brand new song. Also read: Chahatt Khanna breaks silence on quarantine love with Mika Singh Both Rahman and lyricist Prasoon Joshi have expressed discontent over the recreated number, and they have seen a lot of support on social media by fans as well as music lovers. Without mentioning the name of Masakali 2.0, Rahman had tweeted: No short cuts, properly commissioned, sleepless nights, writes and re-writes. Over 200 musicians, 365 days of creative brainstorming with the main aim to produce music that can last generations. A team of a Director, a Composer, and a Lyric supported by actors, dance directors and a relentless film crew. Follow @htshowbiz for more Houston Police Department A Houston man is behind bars after allegedly killing his mother Friday inside their home on the citys westside. Police are still trying to piece together why Mohammed Rasheed, 24, allegedly shot his mother and then cut her throat as she cooked a meal inside the house in the 3200 block of Shadowfern Court. The noontime violence left the woman, identified as 55-year-old Bushra Rasheed, dead in her kitchen. - The Department of Health has recorded 284 new cases of coronavirus disease in the country - The total number of COVID-19 cases are now at 4,932 and the death toll has risen to 315 - Meanwhile, the health department has reported 45 patients who recovered from COVID-19 - The DOH also announced that the misting tents donated by Angel Locsin were removed from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) - As of posting time, there are now more than 1.8 million cases of coronavirus disease across the globe PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed The Department of Health (DOH) has recorded 284 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Philippines. KAMI learned that 45 patients recovered from COVID-19 as of 4 p.m., April 13. Through a Facebook post, the health department has reported a total of 4,932 COVID-19 cases in the country. Meanwhile, there were 18 new deaths reported, making the death toll rise to 315. The total recoveries are now at 242. The DOH also announced that it does not recommend spraying or misting because it may cause more harm than protection. It advised avoiding spraying or misting disinfectants. However, it is suggested to soak the objects completely or directly disinfect surfaces to kill the coronavirus. Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the misting tents donated by actress Angel Locsin were already ordered to be removed from the Philippine General Hospital. PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! As previously reported by KAMI, as of Sunday, the health department reported 50 new deaths, its highest number of fatalities in a day. The coronavirus disease or COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China. As of posting time, there are now more than 1.8 million cases of COVID-19 across the globe. Please like and share our amazing Facebook posts to support the KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinions about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts and views on different matters! Maricar Reyes participated in a hilarious edition of our Tricky Questions challenge! Check out all of the exciting videos and celebrity interviews on our KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: KAMI.com.gh Small businesses have applied for more than half of the $350 billion allotted for the Paycheck Protection Program and all the funds may be spoken for this week but the amount actually disbursed to businesses is lagging well behind. The "PPP," the Trump administration's centerpiece program to help small businesses weather the economic effects of the coronavirus, has approved 860,000 applications for $210 billion of loans through 4,500 lenders an accomplishment praised by many bankers. Moving from application to disbursal, however, has proven to be another challenge that bankers said has been hampered by a lack of clarity from the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration and by the need first to use bank personnel to process applications before closing loans. "Banks are absolutely beginning to fund, and you're going to see those numbers grow dramatically," said Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association. Nichols added, however, "We are still seeking some areas of guidance around some of the contours of the program." He would not say if that lack of guidance has hampered disbursement. The Treasury Department declined to comment. A senior administration official told CNBC that disbursement figures from banks to businesses were not yet available, despite repeated requests. "We have mostly undisbursed loans at this time" said Tony Wilkinson, president of the National Association of Guaranteed Government Lenders. "We still don't have a program guide." The reason some financial institutions are disbursing and others are not comes down to whether the bank believes it has enough assurances from the government. Wilkinson and others say the banks lack a form that details what borrowers must do to gain loan forgiveness. The legislation requires that 75% of the loan amount must go to payrolls, but some bankers says they need that and other details stipulated in a loan authorization form, including what types of payments a borrower must make if the loan is not forgiven, monthly or quarterly. And bankers also say they need details of the government's guarantee of the banks. That is, under what conditions will or won't the government pay off the bank loans? Bankers point out that the government has changed its mind in the past on previous emergency lending programs. (Newser) Actor Hugh Jackman had a sweet message for his wife on Fridayand a fellow actor used it to keep up their teasing feud. People reports the 51-year-old took to Instagram with words of love for wife Deborra-Lee Furness: "These 24 years have been the best of my life! And, as far as I can see, we keep getting better. I love you Debs with every fiber of my soul. Happy anniversary. #24." Enter Ryan Reynolds, who has for years been bugging Jackman to reprise his Wolverine character so they can star in a Wolverine-Deadpool mashup. "Hang in there, Deb," Reynolds commented. story continues below That's perhaps a softer poke than Reynolds took in December during a TV appearance in Australia, where Jackman hails from, after Jackman photoshopped himself into art for Reynolds' flick Free Guy. "Hes just an evil person," Reynolds teased. "I mean, you guys have all been duped. You think he's this benevolent ambassador to your country. People don't realize he's from Winnipeg, Canada." USA Today shares another event on the Reynolds-Jackman timeline: A couple years back Jackman had his dog "do his business on a Reynolds photo." The website instructs Jackman to mark his calendar: Reynolds will celebrate his anniversary with Blake Lively on Oct. 23. (Read more Ryan Reynolds stories.) Consultant- Governance Specialist - Portfolio Analysis, Reporting, Strategy Support, Home based and New York when situation permits Organization: UNDP - United Nations Development Programme Country: United States City: New York, USA Office: UNDP New York, USA Closing date: Friday, 17 April 2020 Readvertisement: Consultant- Governance specialist - portfolio analysis, reporting, strategy support Location : Home based and New York when situation permits, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Application Deadline : 17-Apr-20 (Midnight New York, USA) Additional Category : Management Type of Contract : Individual Contract Post Level : International Consultant Languages Required : English Starting Date : (date when the selected candidate is expected to start) 04-May-2020 Duration of Initial Contract : 12 months-220 working days Background UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDPs policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan. Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDPs Strategic Plan. BPPSs staff provides technical advice to Country Offices; advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogues, and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas. BPPS works closely with UNDPs Crisis Bureau (CB) to support emergency and crisis response. BPPS ensures that issues of risk are fully integrated into UNDPs development programmes. BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working. BPPS supports UNDP and partners to be more innovative, knowledge and data driven including in its programme support efforts The Governance team in BPPS is responsible for supporting UNDPs work on Governance across the organization including on anti-corruption, legal identity, inclusive political processes, parliamentary development. elections, SDG 16 implementation and monitoring, local development, youth empowerment, and disability inclusion, among other themes. The Governance team is split across nine locations. The Governance team works particularly closely with the Conflict Prevention, Peace-building and Responsive Institutions team and the Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights for Sustainable Development and Peace team in the Crisis Bureau. Along with those teams, it supports the delivery of signature solution 2 on Effective, accountable and inclusive governance, which was the area with the largest delivery in the first half of the current Strategic Plan period. In the context of the establishment of the GPN, as well as the challenging international context, the Head of Governance is leading a process of revisioning and adjusting UNDPs governance portfolio as well as supporting resource mobilization. She requires support in the further development of the governance work, analyzing and reporting on the current portfolio, consulting on future directions as well as ensuring the efficient functioning of the team and its timely contribution to the wider work of UNDP. Duties and Responsibilities The consultant tasks will include the following: Support the development of a reinvigorated narrative on UNDPs governance work Conduct research on topics as assigned, analyze information and synthesize into a clear summary to facilitate the strategic development of the governance portfolio. In collaboration with other teams, and using the Power BI dashboard, analyze UNDPs 2019 governance-related programming results to support the further development of the portfolio Substantively contribute to the development of project documents as requested. Proposal writing. Support resource mobilization, including coordinating and substantively contributing to the development of fact sheets, powerpoint presentations and other materials. Support the coordination of consultation around the further development of the governance portfolio, including through the Community of Practice for Governance (in liaison with the IC responsible), with the Accelerator Labs and other units, as appropriate In consultation with team members and in liaison with the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy (BERA) and others, develop and promote basic communications materials for the team Support the governance contribution to integrated UNDP programming In liaison with different parts of the Governance team, including the Oslo Governance Centre, map key aspects of governance-related work across the other clusters of work in the GPN (for example, health governance) Support the coordination of cross-team initiatives, for example on digitalization or SDG localization. Support the coordination and development of governance inputs to corporate priorities, such as the SDGi early movers initiative, as requested. Review, analyze, quality assure and support coordination for the Head of Governance: Review speeches, briefs, background papers, etc for substantive accuracy, completeness, strategic messaging, as needed; Support corporate work planning and reporting processes as requested In liaison with the GPN Directorate, track the completion of required project management processes, including quality assurance, across the projects of the team. Collate and shape governance inputs to work planning processes. Provide coordination support in relation to team tasking and team activities, including team meetings. Expected outputs and deliverables: Analysis of 2019 ROAR results according to agreed schema and drafting of report(s) 40 days Support to internal consultation on Governance offer 10 days Support to drafting of project documentation (proposal writing) 40 days Development of presentation materials for revised Governance offer 15 days Support to resource mobilization, including cross-team coordination 15 days Coordination support to cross team initiatives 25 days Coordination of inputs to corporate priorities 10 days Support to workplanning and reporting 15 days Support to communications 15 days Support to briefing notes, talking points etc 25 days Support to team coordination 10 days Competencies Functional Competencies Knowledge and understanding of UNDPs and/or other multicultural/bilateral actors in governance Demonstrated ability to do desk-based research, and use evidence and data to draft reports Demonstrated ability to prepare presentations which include a variety of data-based graphics Ability to write and communicate in a clear and concise manner Ability to coordinate complex processes across organisational units, including with senior colleagues. Demonstrated proficiency in the use of relevant software including Power BI, Microsoft Teams, Office Suite Corporate Competencies Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UNs values and ethical standards; Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP, and partner organizations: Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability; Excellent understanding of international development issues and knowledge of the UN system Required Skills and Experience Academic qualifications: university degree in development economics, political science, peace-studies, social sciences or related disciplines, or equivalent professional experience, is required Experience: Minimum of 3 years of professional work experience in governance, in areas covered by the BPPS governance team, for example, elections, youth, SDG16. Strong gender experience is also an asset. Minimum of 2 years of experience of UNDPs work in governance at the field and/or regional and/or HQ level. Minimum of 2 years of proven experience in report and project document/proposal writing is required Demonstrated proficiency in the use of relevant software mainly Power point , Microsoft Teams, Office Suite is an asset Experience in supporting team coordination, including through training in new tools, processes and approaches is an asset. Language: Fluency in written and spoken English is required Tags anti corruption collective action conflict prevention elections human rights local development peace building political science procurement project management resource mobilization rule of law sdg1 sdg16 social sciences sustainable development sustainable development goals Working knowledge of another UN language would be an asset Application Procedure The application package containing the following (to be uploaded as one file): A cover letter with a brief description of why the Offer considers her/himself the most suitable for the assignment; Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects and specifying the relevant assignment period (from/to), as well as the email and telephone contacts of at least three (3) professional references. Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document. Shortlisted candidates (ONLY) will be requested to submit a Financial Proposal. The financial proposal should specify an all-inclusive daily fee (based on a 7 hour working day - lunch time is not included - and estimated 21.75 days per month). The financial proposal must be all-inclusive and take into account various expenses that will be incurred during the contract, including: the daily professional fee; (excluding mission travel); living allowances at the duty station; communications, utilities and consumables; life, health and any other insurance; risks and inconveniences related to work under hardship and hazardous conditions (e.g., personal security needs, etc.), when applicable; and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of services under the contract. In the case of unforeseeable travel requested by UNDP, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources. If the Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP. The Financial Proposal is to be emailed as per the instruction in the separate email that will be sent to shortlisted candidates. Evaluation process Applicants are reviewed based on Required Skills and Experience stated above and based on the technical evaluation criteria outlined below. Applicants will be evaluated based on cumulative scoring. When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as: Being responsive/compliant/acceptable; and Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation where technical criteria weighs 70% and Financial criteria/ Proposal weighs 30%. Screening (shortlisting) university degree in development economics, political science, peace-studies, social sciences or related disciplines, or equivalent professional experience, is required Minimum of 2 years of experience of UNDPs work in governance at the field and/or regional and/or HQ level. Minimum of 2 years of proven experience in report and project document/proposal writing is required Technical evaluation - Total 70% (70 points): Criteria Minimum of 3 years of regional professional work experience in governance, mainly in the field of election, gender, youth. Weight = 15%; Maximum Points: 15; Criteria Minimum of 2 years of proven experience in report and project document/proposal writing is required Weight = 15 %; Maximum Points: 15; Criteria Experience in designing and delivering training Weight = 10%; Maximum Points: 10 ; Criteria Demonstrated proficiency in the use of relevant software mainly Power point , Microsoft Teams, Office Suite is an asset Weight = 10%; Maximum Points: 10; Interview: Weight = 20 %; Maximum Points: 20 Having reviewed applications received, UNDP may invite shortlisted candidates for interview. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points) of the maximum obtainable points for the technical criteria (70 points) shall be considered for the financial evaluation. Financial evaluation - Total 30% (30 points) The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal: p = y (/z), where p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal = price of the lowest priced proposal z = price of the proposal being evaluated Contract Award Candidate obtaining the highest combined scores in the combined score of Technical and Financial evaluation will be considered technically qualified and will be offered to enter into contract with UNDP. Institutional arrangement The consultant will work under the guidance and direct supervision of Head of Governance unit, BPPS and will be responsible for the fulfilment of the deliverables as specified above. The Consultant will be responsible for providing her/his own laptop. Payment modality Payment to the Individual Contractor will be made based on the actual number of days worked, deliverables accepted and upon certification of satisfactory completion by the manager. The work week will be based on 35 hours, i.e. on a 7 hour working day, with core hours being between 9h00 and 18h00 daily. Annexes (click on the hyperlink to access the documents): Annex 1 - UNDP P-11 Form for ICs Annex 2 - IC Contract Template Annex 3 - IC General Terms and Conditions Annex 4 - RLA Template Any request for clarification must be sent by email to cpu.bids@undp.org The UNDP Central Procurement Unit will respond by email and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants. Click here for important information for US Permanent Residents (Green Card holders). UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks. State-run Coal India has engaged its retired doctors to meet the shortage of medical staff at its hospitals to fight COVID-19 pandemic. Coal India arm Central Coalfields Ltd has engaged seven retired doctors while Northern Coalfields Ltd and Western Coalfields Ltd have engaged two physicians each, an official told PTI. Eastern Coalfields Ltd and Bharat Coking Coal Ltd have hired one retired doctor each, the official added. Coal India had recently issued guidelines to engage retired doctors and paramedical staff on temporary contract basis in its fight against the pandemic, which has spread to almost every state in the country. "Keeping in view of the shortage of doctors and paramedical staff in the hospitals/ dispensaries of CIL/subsidiaries and need to prepare well to prevent/address the outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19), the PSU had recently issues guidelines for engagement of retired doctors and paramedical staff of CIL/ Subsidiaries on temporary contract basis," the official said. These guidelines will be effective for three months only, the official said. Presently, 839 doctors are working in Coal India which accounts for over 80 per cent of domestic coal output. Coal India subsidiaries have set up 1,509 isolation beds in eight states. The eight coal bearing states are Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Assam. Besides, Coal India arm MCL will also fund a COVID-19 hospital, having 500 beds and 25 intensive care units, in the capital city of Odisha. The hospital was recently inaugurated by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. CIL subsidiaries have also distributed more than 3.3 lakh face masks to the people in and around coal mines. The PSU has developed a sanitising chamber for disinfecting its mine workers. The maharatna firm had earlier pledged Rs 220 crore to the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situation (PM CARES) Fund. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nicole Hingle hasnt seen her son Jace in over a month. Jace, 17, has spent the past year in the Bridge City Center for Youth, a long-term detention facility near New Orleans; he has nearly three years left on his sentence for battery and resisting arrest, stemming from a fight with neighbors. Like many juvenile detention facilities, the Bridge City Center cut off family visits in March as a measure to stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Since then, 10 youths and nine staff at the Bridge City Center have tested positive for the coronavirus. Hingle and other parents say facility and state officials have not told them what steps are being taken to address the rapid spread. So Hingle, who works in the service industry in New Orleans, relies on what she hears from Jace in their daily phone calls, which cost $3.15 for every 15 minutes. Nicole Hingle with her son Jace. (Courtesy Nicole Hingle) The youths at the Bridge City Center get one hour outside each day; otherwise, theyre confined to their dorm, Jace told Hingle. They arent getting any schooling, nor visits from case managers or religious clergy. Theyre stressed and they dont know what's going on. Those who are sick are moved to another dorm but Jace doesnt know what happens to them next. This is one of the worst things Ive ever had to go through, Hingle said through tears. I just sit by the phone and I wait and I pray, and I wait and I pray, and that's all I can do as a mom. I wait for my son to call, and I just pray that my worst fear doesnt come to reality. Twenty-seven youths have tested positive for COVID-19 in Louisianas four secure juvenile detention facilities the Bridge City Center, the Acadiana Center for Youth in Bunkie, the Swanson Center for Youth in Columbia and the Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe which house children and young adults ages 13 to 20 who are serving long-term sentences. As of Monday, 14 staff in these facilities had also tested positive for the coronavirus. Story continues Some Louisiana lawmakers said they are troubled by those figures, as more than 10 percent of the 220 youths in state-run detention centers have tested positive. That is extremely high, said Daryl Deshotel, a Republican state representative. Ive been really worried about these outbreaks getting larger. Parents and civil rights activists are frustrated with state officials who have given few details on how theyre dealing with coronavirus cases among incarcerated children. Hingle said she doesnt know how staff decide whether to take a sick child to the hospital, or if shed even be told. If he contracts this virus, Hingle said, she fears that I may never see my son again. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has not responded to letters sent in March from civil rights organizations, churches, childrens rights advocates and public health experts asking that he release young people from detention centers. The governors office told NBC News that the states Office of Juvenile Justice has distributed personal protective equipment to facility staff, increased cleaning and sanitizing in the centers and is screening anyone who enters the facilities for COVID-19 symptoms, including by taking their temperature. The state is also sharing updates with parents, the governors office said. Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak Louisianas top judge, Chief Justice Bernette J. Johnson, rejected calls to issue a blanket release of juvenile offenders. However, she requested last week that judges consider releasing youths with less than 90 days left on their sentence, and review others on a case-by-case basis. Deshotel said he has pressed Edward Dustin Bickham, who became the head of the Office of Juvenile Justice on March 25, to prepare a list of youths who could be safely released. The Office of Juvenile Justice referred questions to the governors office. Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for the governor, said that the Office of Juvenile Justice is reviewing all youth in its custody and working with the courts to determine the most proper placement to maintain their physical health, as well as maintain public safety. But Renee Slajda, communications director for Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, an advocacy group, said its unclear when those cases will be reviewed. Weve seen no urgency around that, she said, and time is of the essence. Dozens of coronavirus cases in juvenile detention centers Louisiana is one of just a few states releasing coronavirus test results from juvenile detention centers. To fill the gap, Joshua Rovner, who studies juvenile justice at the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based nonprofit, is counting coronavirus cases through a mix of state figures and media reports. Hes identified 55 children and 84 adult staff members at youth detention facilities nationwide with COVID-19 diagnoses. The growing number of positive tests follows pleas nationwide from epidemiologists, physicians and public defenders who warned that the virus would spread rapidly once it appeared in these facilities. Medical professionals, former leaders of juvenile correctional facilities and civil liberties groups have argued that states must release as many youths as possible to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak, like the one occurring at the Cook County Jail in Chicago. News These are crowded facilities that are not created to have social distancing, said Samantha Buckingham, director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at the Loyola Law School and the author of a recent white paper on COVID-19 in youth detention centers. Juvenile detention centers, Buckingham noted, often restrict kids from using hand sanitizer, have communal showers and bathrooms and offer staff few options to separate sick children besides placing them in solitary confinement. While the coronavirus poses a greater risk to older people, its also a threat for those with weakened immune systems, and youths in the juvenile justice system are more likely to have underlying health issues. Louisiana has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to the deaths of a 17-year-old in New Orleans and a state lawmaker. One study found that confirmed cases of the virus rose faster in Louisiana than anywhere else in the world. Do you have an experience to share about the juvenile detention system and the coronavirus? Contact us No one in Louisianas juvenile detention facilities has died as a result of the coronavirus. Five adult inmates in a Louisiana prison have died after contracting COVID-19, as have adults working in juvenile detention centers in New York, Arizona and Washington, D.C. If the coronavirus is going to hit us, its going to hit us all, said Gina B. Womack, executive director of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children, an advocacy group. Its not like behind bars youre going to be safe from these catastrophes, because youre not. Epidemiologists, advocates and attorneys are concerned about the closed nature of jails and detention centers. Staff cycle in and out of the facilities daily. In Louisianas state-run juvenile detention facilities, probation officers take turns picking up shifts due to a high turnover rate among staff that predates the coronavirus. Julia Fleckman, a professor at Tulane Universitys School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said that bringing in additional employees could exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus. The more people you have exposed, the more likely it is to spread, Fleckman said. Theyre scared theyre going to get the virus Parents of youth in Louisiana state-run detention facilities say theyve been left waiting and worrying about their kids. The mother of a 20-year-old who has been in the Swanson Center for Youth at Monroe for three years said her son told her they have hand sanitizer, but it doesnt contain any alcohol, which experts say is ineffective. I feel angry, I feel helpless, she said. Im scared for my child. Its extremely difficult. Another mother, of a 20-year-old son who has been in the Bridge City Center for three years, said he told her the room that the youth spend all day in isnt big enough for them to stay 6 feet away from each other. Its my job to protect him, and I cant do any of that at this point, she said, adding that she is currently spending as much as $50 a week to call her son at the facility. Both mothers, who asked for anonymity because they feared jeopardizing their sons chances of release, said they have heard nothing from the state about outbreaks in the facilities. Slajda, with the Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, said shes spoken with 10 families of children in state-run juvenile detention facilities who say they, too, have been left in the dark. Every parent I spoke to has said the OJJ has not contacted them at all since this began, she said, referring to the Office of Juvenile Justice. One mothers son tested positive for the coronavirus, but his mother was not notified by the facility she found out days later when he called her and said he was in a room with other sick kids, according to Slajda. OJJ is working to keep parents of youth updated on their health and safety status through contacts with medical, administrative and case management staff, said Stephens, from the governors office. Both its facility and community-based staff remain available to communicate with parents that may have questions concerning COVID-19 and their children. Stephens said that the Office of Juvenile Justice is now letting detained youths have two no-charge 15-minute phone calls a week, and the agency is planning to implement a schedule for videoconference visitation in the next week. Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak At the Bridge City Center, Hingle said Jace told her that the teens are starting to lose patience. Theyre scared theyre going to get the virus, she said. Hingle said her attorney has filed a motion requesting that Jace be sent home, in part to protect him from the coronavirus. But she also would like to see the governor get involved. I hope he would do for my child what he would possibly do for his own, she said, and I think he would fight to get them home. Hospitals have started seeing declines in the number of people seeking care through emergency departments. Thats not necessarily a good thing, though. Health officials worry the constant focus on COVID-19 and news about how some hospitals are strained to cope with the coronavirus might keep people away when they need immediate treatment for other problems. Charles Reeve, medical director for Passavant Area Hospitals Emergency Department, said the hospitals ability to care for non-COVID patients has not changed since the outbreak. He said those who experience a medical emergency shouldnt hesitate to go to the hospital. We can still provide safe and effective care to all emergency patients, he said. Passavant Area Hospital and other medical facilities in Illinois have seen emergency room visits drop by almost half. Thats similar to trends seen at some New York City hospitals as the number of people dying at home jumped from a few dozen to nearly 200 a day. My worry or concern is that patients are very wary of going to the emergency room, Dr. Mark Ricciardi, director of interventional cardiology for NorthShore University HealthSystem, told the Chicago Tribune. Its possible when we look back on this and gather general mortality data, we might find a lot of people passed away at home. People may not even get to the ER because theyre delaying going. They delay to the point that they end up having a fatal heart attack before they get to the hospital. Reeve said measures are being taken to protect the health of patients and workers at the hospital. These include evaluating patients in a tent outside of the emergency room before they enter the hospital and making sure appropriate personal protective equipment is being worn at all times. Illini Community Hospital in Pittsfield has also seen a decrease in emergency room visits, according to hospital spokesman Charlie Hull. He said the decrease has been common across the board in healthcare. Illini Communitys emergency room remains open and is screening patients sending anyone who a temperature over 100.4 degrees to a special area and making sure anyone who enters the building wears a protective cloth or mask, Hull said. As record numbers of New Jerseyans apply for unemployment benefits during the coronavirus crisis, many are having trouble getting through. Theyre frustrated. Exasperated. Pull-out-your-hair and throw-something-at-the-wall exasperated. They dont know what to do. NJ Advance Media has been bringing you the most recent updates on whats happening with unemployment benefits in the wake of coronavirus. We know that unemployment recipients should start to see their extra $600 per week benefit this week. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage We also know that gig workers, freelancers and independent contractors will have to wait for the state to get additional federal guidance. But theyre encouraged to apply and expect a denial because that will be the first step in the process. Readers have had other questions and complaints about filing for benefits. Here are the Department of Labors answers to some of your pressing unemployment concerns. (The agency said its working hard to help everyone and it asks for your patience. Also remember that benefits will be retroactive. While no one wants to wait, you can be sure you will get all the benefits for which youre eligible, DOL said.) Q: I dont know my PIN/I need to reset my PIN. What do I do? A: DOL says when you first certify for benefits, you will choose a four-digit personal identification number (PIN). Write down your PIN and keep it in a safe place. Your PIN is good for one year. If you forget your PIN, you will need to call to ask a representative to reset your PIN. Q: I filed my claim and now unemployment told me to call. When I call, a recording tells me they are not taking any more calls and to call back the next business day. But the same thing happens the next day. What can I do? A: This is a commonly reported problem. New Jerseys Unemployment Insurance system is experiencing record levels of demand due to coronavirus and all in-person services statewide are currently closed due to COVID-19, DOL said. Some people cannot get through online or on the phone. We understand your anxiety and frustration, and we apologize. Were working diligently to serve all our customers and ask for your patience. Please keep trying. Were committed to ensuring that everyone receives their benefits during this crisis. You will not lose a days benefits as all claims will be backdated to your first day of employment loss. Q: I was told to call unemployment but I cant get through. So I tried to email UIHelp@dol.nj.gov, and none of my emails have been answered. What can I do? A: As DOL said above, unemployment representatives are working hard to answer everyones questions. Keep trying and be patient. Q: I filed weeks ago and it still says my claim is pending, and I cant get through on the phone. What can I do? A: Same as above. Keep trying. Q: I know I have to certify my unemployment but I havent gotten any instructions on how to do that. What do I do? A: After submitting an application, you will receive a confirmation number at the end of your application. Record the confirmation number. You are then supposed to receive an email with instructions on how and when to claim benefits. If you dont receive an email, you must phone a call center. With so many people filing for Unemployment for the first time, some folks have questions about the procedure for telling the State that you remain under- or unemployed, also known as `certifying for weekly benefits, DOL said Please visit myunemployment.nj.gov and read our guide and schedule for certifying. DOL said because of high volume, it is taking steps to ensure the stability of its online application. Each week you certify, click this link to review the Social Security Number-based schedule to claim weekly benefits. Regardless of the time you claim your benefit, your request for payment will be processed overnight, it said. Q: What is a monetary call and why do I need one? A: If there is any question about the amount of benefits you are entitled to receive, you will need to have a phone interview with a monetary representative. The representative will call you at the scheduled time. While every attempt will be made to call you on time, delays can occur. You must be available for two hours after the scheduled time, DOL said. For the interview, you should have proof of employment such as pay stubs and W-2 forms for the last 18 months. The DOL may also contact your former employers to request wage and separation information. After the interview, you will receive a determination explaining what benefits you are entitled to receive. Q: I had a monetary call scheduled but no one ever called me and I cant get through. What can I do? A: DOL said it will make every attempt to call you on time, but there could be delays. Q: I was on unemployment before this all started. Do I need to reapply to get the extra 13 weeks of benefits? A: Under the CARES Act, you are likely eligible for an additional 13 weeks of benefits provided by Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation. You should receive more information by email or regular mail. You dont have to take any action at this time, DOL said. Q: I was denied benefits because I dont have enough credits. What next? A: While you may not qualify for regular benefits, you are probably eligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. These benefits can be paid retroactively for periods of unemployment beginning on or after January 27, 2020. Q: Ive already exhausted my unemployment benefits. Am I eligible under the CARES Act? A: You are probably eligible for an additional 13 weeks under Pandemic Unemployment Compensation. DOL is still waiting for additional guidance from the federal government before it can process these benefits. Q: I was furloughed. Can I get unemployment benefits? A: You are probably eligible for Unemployment Insurance. You should apply. Q: I was approved for benefits and they said how much my check would be. When I try to certify, it says the claim is not payable at this time. What can I do? A: Because each persons case is different, continue to call and email the agency. Q: I was denied but my business shut down and I was a regular employee. How do I appeal? A: You can file an appeal using DOLs online application. Get more details about appeals here. Other questions? We had several, but DOL wasnt able to answer in time for publication. Among the outstanding questions we still have are whether unemployment benefits will be garnished if you owe back taxes or child support and what happens for those who have been told their monetary appointments are scheduled weeks or months in the future. We will keep bringing you new answers as they become available. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Have you been Bamboozled? Reach Karin Price Mueller at Bamboozled@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KPMueller. Find Bamboozled on Facebook. Mueller is also the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Stay informed and sign up for NJMoneyHelp.coms weekly e-newsletter. By Ofeliya Afandiyeva Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu has advised Azerbaijani citizens in that country against returning to Azerbaijan until the special quarantine regime in the country is over, local media reported on April 12. Dear compatriots, everyone knows the situation in the world in connection with the coronavirus. The situation remains tense and most countries have closed their borders. Azerbaijan has closed its borders. As it has been announced, the Azerbaijans borders are closed until April 20 and the entry into the country is prohibited. In this regard, I ask you not to go to the Russian-Azerbaijani border, there are no conditions for waiting, the ambassador said in his video message. Waiting at the border will not lead to anything. Borders will not open at anyones request or under pressure, he urged. The diplomat noted that after April 20, depending on the situation, the border will either be opened or may remain closed for some time. Therefore, I ask you not to go to the border, you can get sick there. In this case, we cannot help you. I understand that this is difficult, but you have to wait. There is no other option, he said. At the same time, the ambassador appealed to fellow citizens to keep in touch with the Azerbaijani Embassy in Russia, contact the hotline and send their documents via e-mail. We will prepare a list and our staff will contact you to inform you about when and how we will be able to take you to the homeland, the diplomat stated. Note that Azerbaijan suspended air and rail traffic with Russia on the basis of mutual agreement in connection with coronavirus disease spread, from March 31. The Samur border checkpoint on the border of the two countries operates in a limited mode and according to the special schedule. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Married At First Sight's Stacey Hampton became emotional as she revealed her heartbreaking family history in a YouTube video last week. The 26-year-old law graduate confessed she had grown up blaming herself for her father's suicide when she was just a baby. She later lost her older brother, who was like a father figure to her, in a motorcycle accident on the day she was due to give birth to her first child four years ago. Tragedy: Married At First Sight's Stacey Hampton (pictured) became emotional as she revealed her heartbreaking family history in a YouTube video last week Reflecting on these two tragedies, a tearful Stacey said she would happily give away all of her material possessions to have both of them back. The mother-of-two decided to speak about her past so openly because she had been unfairly portrayed as a 'gold digging' bimbo on Married At First Sight. 'You should get to know the people you're watching and you should have an insight into why they are the way that they are,' Stacey began. 'I used to lay in bed thinking, "Was I the reason? Did he not want or love me?"' The 26-year-old law graduate grew up blaming herself for her father's suicide when she was just a baby 'Obviously I was portrayed in a way that was abrupt, quite rude and entitled, with the presumption that I didn't work for what I've got and I live this perfect life,' she added. 'I can assure you that I probably go to bed most nights and cry more than most normal people. 'The reason I am where I am is because I have lost people in my life. I'm not blessed, I'm not lucky and I'm not entitled. I have nice things, but it doesn't mean I'm happy. I'd give away every single handbag I have, I'd give away my car, anything, just to make sure my kids are happy or to have my brother back or to see my dad.' Tragic: She later lost her older brother, who was like a father figure to her, in a motorcycle accident on the day she was due to give birth to her first child four years ago. Pictured: Stacey and her late brother in an undated photo Stacey grew up with just her mother and three siblings, and spent years with no idea what had happened to her father, or indeed who he was. She explained: 'I didn't ask until I started primary school. I thought maybe he was in jail or something. It didn't feel right. Every time I broached it with my mum, she would break down or go to the other room or something. I was so confused. 'When I was old enough, I asked my sister and she told me: When I was one, my father killed himself on New Year's Day. Hearing that was like automatic guilt. I blamed myself. I used to lay in bed thinking, "Was I the reason? Did he not want or love me?"' Stacey added that growing up without a father 'was so damaging' and has affected her relationships with men to this day. 'You start thinking that you don't need a man and can do everything on your own. You see men as unreliable let-downs and that you can't trust them,' she said. Past: Stacey grew up with just her mother and three siblings, and spent years with no idea what had happened to her father, or who he was. Pictured: Stacey and her brother as children Stacey's father was a senior figure in the mining industry and his estate was put into a trust for her after his death. This is how she manages to afford her designer clothes and luxury vehicles. 'That money is nothing. I didn't know [my father], but I'd throw that money in the bin just to talk to him, to ask him what was going on, why he would leave us so hurt and damaged,' she said. 'As much as I feel sorry for what he was going through at the time to do what he did, I also sit back and think, "I can't believe he's left this huge impact on my family."' Inheritance: Stacey's father was a senior figure in the mining industry and his estate was put into a trust for her after his death. This is how she manages to afford her designer clothes and luxury vehicles The truth: The mother-of-two decided to speak about her past so openly because she had been unfairly portrayed as a 'gold digging' bimbo on MAFS. Pictured with Michael Goonan During her introduction on Married At First Sight, Stacey spoke about the death of her brother four years ago. She said: 'He was very protective and like my dad, but also like my best friend. It was the day my son was due to be born and I got a phone call from my mum. He'd had a motorbike accident that day. He died. 'Having a child is meant to be the best day of your life. I was going through all of these emotions where I had such a beautiful blessing coming, but I just lost my best friend and basically my father figure.' For confidential support in Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 Several cases of COVID-19 were confirmed last week at different Amazon warehouses in Poland, as the total number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 6,674 as of Sunday night. Two hundred and thirty-two people have reportedly died from the virus. These numbers are likely a significant underestimation of the severity of the outbreak. The far-right Polish government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has so far organized far fewer COVID tests per capita than most European countries. Meanwhile, news broke last week that PiS set up its own special division at the state-funded National Institute for Hygiene early on in the crisis to provide for fast VIP tests for members of the government and their families. The news about the first confirmed cases at Amazon, which employs a total of 16,000 workers in Poland, came just days after US workers at Amazon, Instacart and Whole Foods engaged in a wildcat strike. Cases were confirmed in three different warehouses last week: in Pawlikowice, Kobaskowo and Sosnowiec. Three of the cases were at the warehouse in Kobaskowo, which is located close to the city of Szczecin (Stettin) on the Polish-German border. Amazon is one of the most important employers in the area, which has been socially devastated by the restoration of capitalism in 1989. Before Poland and Germany went into lockdown in March, it was possible to reach Szczecin within less than two and a half hours with public transport from the German capital Berlin. Germany now has 126,656 confirmed cases, as of Sunday afternoon. Amazon has only confirmed these cases to the media after pictures emerged of one worker in Kobaskowo being taken away by an ambulance. However, the company has released no information to its workers about exactly how many have been infected or placed in quarantine. As in the US and other countries, Amazon workers are deemed essential workers and have continued to work as the country went into lockdown. They have been working regular shifts with hundreds of workers often in a given area at the same time. They have not been provided with masks or any other kind of protective equipment by either the company or the government. Amazon only asked its employees to wash their hands often and installed some hand sanitizer dispensers. Calls have been growing among Polish Amazon workers for a wildcat strike. The strike action taken by their colleagues in the US in early April was widely followed by workers in Poland. However, the union, the OZZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza Amazon, has clearly sought to block similar strike action from taking place in Poland. Asked by the media whether a strike was now impending, the unions spokesperson Marta Rozmysowicz said, Well see, and insisted that the union was now prioritizing an open letter directed towards Jeff Bezos, in which it pleads for PPE and other basic safety measures. Appealing to Bezos, the worlds richest man whose wealth is based on the brutal exploitation of Amazon workers, to change course and look after their safety, is a complete dead-end that exposes the bankruptcy of the union. The union maintains close ties to the pseudo-left Lewica Razem (United Left), which also intervened in last years national teachers strike to prop up the Polish Teachers Union (ZNP) and the Trade Unions Forum (FZZ). The strike, which enjoyed broad public support and shook the far-right government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, ended in the union selling the teachers out completely. The union and Lewica Razem seek to prevent a strike under conditions where the coronavirus pandemic is starkly exposing the devastating consequences of the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Even with a comparatively modest spread of the virus so far, the Polish health care system, ruined by decades of cuts that were implemented by all bourgeois parties, is on the verge of collapse. Entire hospitals lack ventilators necessary to treat critically ill patients for COVID-19. One paramedic described in a recent interview with the Newsweek Polska said that he and his colleagues often had to drive for hours from one clinic to another because many were refusing to take in suspected COVID cases, fearing that they would have to close down entire units, if not the entire hospital, for hours or days. Every day, units and hospitals are closing throughout the country because they are deemed contaminated. There are already far too few units and hospitals to deal with a growing number of patients. According to the Rzeczpospolita, every day of 2019 a medical department was closed in a Polish hospital due to lack of funding and personnel. In some months, up to three departments were closed per day. The number of medical departments at hospitals specializing in infectious diseases was cut from 119 to 79 in the past few years. Starvation wages for doctors have made tens of thousands of young Polish doctors leave the country, leaving behind a workforce in hospitals that is often close to or above the retirement age. Conditions in the health care system have prompted numerous protests and hunger strikes by various sections of health care workers in recent years, including doctors and paramedics. In February, just before the crisis hit Poland, nurses in Biastok in eastern Poland were about to go on strike. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers in Poland have already become unemployed. This includes hundreds of thousands Ukrainian immigrant workers who cannot return to Ukraine, and tens of thousands of caregivers who used to work in Germany until a few weeks ago. Unemployment is widely expected to reach 10 percent, if not more, within the coming months. These workers, most of whom earned poverty wages before, are now facing almost immediate financial destitution. The PiS-government has been trying to exploit the crisis to accelerate its drive toward dictatorship. Despite a de facto lockdown, which has now been extended until at least May 3, it is insisting on holding presidential elections on May 10. The main candidate of the liberal opposition party Civic Platform (PO), Magorzata Kidawa-Bonska, has already declared that she will drop out of the race. The incumbent PiS President Andrzej Duda is expected to win the first round with a bit over 50 percent, as no other competitor is considered to stand a chance of winning against Duda. Recent polls showed that 73 percent of the population oppose holding the elections under a de facto a state of emergency. The science minister Jarosaw Gowin from the Agreement party (Porozumienie), a coalition partner of PiS, opposed the move by PiS and announced his resignation last week. He declared that his party would remain in the coalition with PiS for the time being for the sake of Poland. Under these conditions, any major strike action by Amazon workers or other sections of the working class has the potential to lead to a massive political crisis and a much broader movement against capitalism. The biggest fear of all sections of the ruling class and their props in the trade unions is that such a movement by workers in Poland will link up to the emerging strike wave by the working class in the US, across Europe and internationally. Motorola has just announced that it is holding an event on April 22nd at 11AM CDT, where it will likely announce the Edge. A smartphone that weve been seeing in the rumor mill for quite a few months now. The teaser that Motorola released with the announcement also pegs the Edge as the device that is coming our way. By the looks of the tweet that Motorola sent out, it looks like this is going to be an online-only event. Which is what wed all expect at this point in time. Advertisement Motorolas first curved-display smartphone The Motorola Edge is supposedly going to sport a Snapdragon 865 chipset, and be a true flagship for Motorola. After all, the company did announce that it would return to the flagship space in 2020. After releasing only mid-range and budget handsets in the past two years. The Edge is also likely to come with a 90Hz display that curves pretty dramatically, with 12GB of RAM and at least a 5,000mAh capacity battery inside. There will be a hole punch for the front-facing camera too. So Motorola isnt going with under-display cameras or pop up cameras just yet. Now, Motorola is expected to launch the Edge in two different models. One using the Snapdragon 865 as already mentioned, and other with the Snapdragon 765. Likely to offer two 5G-ready devices at very different price points. As both chipsets will support 5G. Advertisement Finally a new flagship from Motorola Its been quite some time since Motorola released a true flagship device. The Moto Z4 that came out last year was really a mid-range device, since it was using an older Snapdragon 845 chipset. And it was really only released so that Verizon had another, inexpensive 5G smartphone that it could sell. Other than that, it had been focusing on its Moto G lineup, and releasing quite a few models in that line. Which is what makes Motorola money, as that is its most successful lineup of phones ever. Even more successful than the Razr back in the flip phone days. Then it announced the new foldable Razr last year, before it went on sale earlier this year. But that was definitely a mid-range foldable, with a Snapdragon 700-series chipset inside. Advertisement So now, were about to get our first foldable from Motorola in a few years, and its definitely overdue. The Motorola Edge is shaping up to be a pretty impressive phone too. And we cant wait to see what Motorola has planned. "Patient 155" poses with the medical staff at Bac Lieu Province after recovering from Covid-19, April 13, 2020. Photo courtesy of the Bac Lieu General Hospital. A Covid-19 patient in the Mekong Delta's Bac Lieu Province was discharged Monday, bringing the national tally of active cases down to 117. "Patient 155" is a 21-year-old woman from the northern province of Hung Yen who returned from the U.K. on March 22. With international flights to Hanoi and HCMC suspended, she landed at the Can Tho Airport in the Mekong Delta. Asymptomatic on arrival, she was quarantined at the Bac Lieu Province's Military School. She was confirmed positive on March 27 and treated at the provincial General Hospital. After treatment, she tested negative for the novel coronavirus repeatedly from April 3 to April 9, the Health Ministry said. She would continue to be isolated and have her health monitored for the next 14 days, the ministry added. Vietnam has confirmed 262 Covid-19 cases so far, and 145, including the latest case, have been discharged from hospitals. Bac Lieu itself is treating two other patients. The Covid-19 pandemic has so far claimed the lives of more than 114,600 people as it affected 210 countries and territories. A major US drug company unwittingly became a 'super spreader' after a meeting of executives led to nearly 100 people becoming infected with coronavirus. Biogen held an annual leadership meeting at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel, Massachusetts, in late February. By mid-March, around 32 cases were linked to the conference but now that figure has reportedly tripled to at least 99 after the virus was taken to six states by attendees returning home. After the meeting on February 26 and 27, many at the event felt healthy and boarded busy planes and traveled around the country, according to the New York Times. Around 30 per cent of the confirmed cases in the state are believed to have originated at the two-day summit. A conference held by drug maker Biogen in Massachusetts on Feb. 26-27 led to nearly 100 people being infected with the coronavirus, as attendees spread it to Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, Washington, DC, New Jersey and as far as Switzerland and Germany The Biogen Inc. office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a conference on February 26 as many as 99 people are thought to have been infected with coronavirus The meeting was held at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel, and was attended by 175 of the company's senior mangers from February 26 to February 27 An estimated 7,500 employees from around the world as well as 175 of the company's senior mangers attended. The first known case of COVID-19 in Tennessee, as well as the first two infections in Indiana were reportedly Biogen executives. The earliest group of six cases in North Carolina were also traced back to Biogen employees. Officially the number of those left ill by the cluster of infections, including employees and those they came into contact with is thought to be 99, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. All infected people outside Massachusetts have reportedly recovered, but it is not clear whether anyone became seriously ill or died from the spread from the conference. Although experts said the exact number of those infected across the US due to the Biogen outbreak is likely to be higher, the Times reports. At least two of Biogen's senior executives reportedly tested positive, but their identities have not been made public. Biogen initially reported to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health that around 50 employees in the Boston area and abroad were suffering from 'flu-like symptoms'. The first known case of COVID-19 in Tennessee, as well as the first two infections in Indiana were reportedly Biogen executives When some employees went to Massachusetts General Hospital trying to get tested for the virus they were turned away because they had not traveled from a hot-spot for the disease. Later, two Biogen executives who returned to their home countries of Germany and Switzerland where tests were made available by their governments, then tested positive. One other attendee was a former associate director who allegedly hid her symptoms and traveled from Los Angeles to Beijing in the hope of receiving treatment. The mother-of-one, named as Jie Li, claimed to have been denied a coronavirus test three times by American doctors before resorting to the drastic measure of travelling to China. Her husband, a 37-year-old university lecturer, also tested positive for the virus. Police are investigating her on suspicion of preventing the control of infectious diseases and she could face up to seven years in jail. Jie Li, her husband and their son are residents of Massachusetts, according to Beijing health officials. The picture is believed to show the couple's home in Belmont, a suburb of Boston Some have criticized Biogen for holding the conference at the end of February as some vice-presidents from European countries already badly affected by the virus were in attendance. Others in the industry alleged Biogen withheld too much information about how many employees were infected. John Carroll, editor of Endpoints News, which covers the biotech industry, told the Times: 'The smartest people in healthcare and drug development - and they were completely oblivious to the biggest thing that was about to shatter their world.' The strategy meeting was one of many examples in the US of a super-spreader event that sees a small gathering generate a huge amount of infections. Other 'superspreader events' included a 40th birthday party in Connecticut that saw around half of the 50 guests become infected. The lavish party in the wealthy suburb of Westport saw the disease transmitted around the US and abroad as far afield as South Africa. Another event in Kirkland, Washington, is thought to have led to an outbreak at a nursing home. So far, more than 22,000 people died in the US after contracting coronavirus and there have been more than 561,000 infections. A grieving young woman has relived the 'traumatic and distressing' moment a stranger ordered her to abide by social distancing rules at her father's funeral. Channel Nine reporter Mimi Becker and nine others farewelled her father in Melbourne as hundreds of other loved ones watched via livestream. Prime Minister Scott Morrison last month ordered no more than 10 people attend funerals as part of tough social distancing restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19. When the service ended, Ms Becker was standing with her aunt and older brother waiting to approach her father's coffin and bless him with holy water. Mimi Becker (pictured with her father) and just nine other members of her family farewelled her father in Melbourne 'After I had sprinkled the holy water on the coffin, my heart aching, a member of staff from the funeral home came up to me, and she stood close to demand, "can you please maintain social distancing?",' the reporter wrote for Nine News. Ms Becker said she couldn't fathom why the woman would ruin her 'final farewell' to her father. 'At that moment, a woman I had only met for the first time that day, was intruding on an incredibly intimate and private moment, a defining moment in my life and one I can never, ever get back,' she said. Ms Becker told the worker it was 'not the time' to talk about social distancing, but the woman had no emotion when she replied: 'It's the law'. Ms Becker said that moment at her father's funeral is etched into her brain, rather than farewelling the 'true gentleman' and being comforted by family. 'A not-so-gentle reminder of the world we now live in,' she said. Ms Becker and her family are not the only people who have had to endure heartbreak due to strict social distancing laws. Ms Becker (pictured) said she couldn't the woman would ruin her 'final farewell' to her father After South Australian woman Julie Olds passed away there were at least 200 people wanting to attend her funeral last month. But her five children and husband, Graham Olds, 68, made the last minute decision to alter the funeral arrangements and pushed the date back six months. Mrs Olds' daughter Helen Wildash, 43, said it felt 'really unfair' that they couldn't grieve her mother's loss. 'All the elements that making it worth having - comforting each other, hugging, sitting close and sharing memories - have all been taken away,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Helen Wildash, 43, said her family has made the heartbreaking decision to postpone the funeral for her mother, Julie Olds, 66 (pictured together at Christmas 2006) CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement 'With ten people that barely includes my sisters, their partners, and the celebrant. It was becoming less and less intimate, less and less a celebration of her life.' Health Minister Greg Hunt warned on Monday despite a dramatic reduction in the growth of coronavirus cases in Australia it is too early to relax social distancing rules. There are 6,360 cases of the coronavirus in Australia and 61 people have died, but the growth rate in recent weeks has slowed from 30 per cent to less than 5 per cent. Mr Hunt said the government was already drawing up a 'road out' of the pandemic through an assessment protocol consisting of three main factors. 'One is clear indication we are suppressing the case numbers in Australia it could be case numbers, the re-transmission rate, thats all being developed into an assessment protocol,' he said. 'Two is ensuring we have rapid response capability testing, tracing. Thirdly, once those things are achieved, is planning the steps out, which will always be gradual.' This was a no-brainer for the Health Department, a common-sense, confidential, and entirely lawful way they could have worked collaboratively with police departments to assist in enhancing the safety of officers and the community in these dangerous times, and they strangely refused, Kenneally said. The fact that we had to spend precious time and public resources, clearly best spent elsewhere in this difficult time, to get a court order in our favor is beyond disappointing. APRIL 13, 2020 UTSA is responding to the COVID-19 outbreak with a commitment to supporting the safety of the university community while enabling the academic progress of students. Here is your digest of university news and tips. Yes, its another Monday, Runners, but theres incentive in the day to live your best life. To start off, its National Scrabble Day, so while on your break, grab your mobile device and play a virtual game with a friend across town or across the country, or go at it old school and seek out your board game to play with your nearest and dearest at home. And if thats not enough incentive to make this a great Monday, then (most) Texans will rejoice that its also National Peach Cobbler Day. Whether you make it from scratch or pop a frozen ready-made into the oven in time for dinner (Lunch? Breakfast? Nonowe take that idea back), itll be the perfect way to wrap up a late spring day of work or study. ROADRUNNER STRONG This new video expresses why the UTSA spirit remains strong and resilient. No matter where you are, now and forever, we are still Roadrunners. VIRTUAL EVENTS ALL ABOUT CONNECTIONS: This weeks virtual town hall meeting for employees will help you stay connected with fellow Roadrunners. Dia en la SombrillaCasa Edition: A Little Fun with a Purpose: A quick dance lesson as we come together for what would have been UTSAs newly renamed Fiesta tradition. Friday, April 17, 23 p.m. CREATIVE OUTLET: Looking for a fun and creative virtual project for your students? Students are invited to join Airbnb, Adobe and other collegians across the U.S., U.K. and Canada in the beginner-friendly College+Airbnb Jam designathon to identify solutions that matter. Teams of two to three will collaborate virtually on an interactive app prototype April 2427 for a chance to pitch their solution to industry judges and win money. No experience necessary, and no cost to students. SHOW YOUR SUPPORT: Its National Collegiate Recovery Day on Wednesday, April 15. Take a picture of yourself wearing purple and post it on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook and tag @UTSArecovery to show your fellow Roadrunners who are in recovery your support. COMMUNITY NEWS FOOD PANTRY UPDATE: The Roadrunner Pantry continues its commitment to serve the UTSA community. Effective April 10, the Main Campus pantry is operating on a self-service model. Guests will be asked to log in their personal information on site. Anyone with a UTSA ID can stop by weekdays from noon to 4 p.m. to get up to seven bags of food, limited to one visit per week. If you have questions, email RoadrunnerPantry@utsa.edu. Human Resources and the Employee Assistance Program, Deer Oaks, will cohost upcoming webinars on Supervising On-Site Essential Staff at UTSA during COVID-19. These will assist supervisors with managing essential on-site employees, provide information on how to support essential employees and address common situations supervisors may receive as a result of the pandemic. If you supervise on-site employees, you will receive an email invitation through Webex from Human Resources. For more information, email diane.pina@utsa.edu During the first week of the school shutdown, I tweeted about my teen son not getting out of bed until 3 p.m. and my plan to enrol him in night school. The responses were hilarious. Preach, sister, replied Marit Stiles, the NDPs education critic (who was also having trouble getting her younger daughter into a routine). My sons former elementary school principal weighed in: Oh no! Put him on the phone, Ill talk to him. A Peel Region mom admitted her first day was also a bust and shes a teacher. But, she added, her two boys are fed and happy so I say its a win! Always tomorrow! What I thought was a parenting fail was actually just reality for many families and how reassuring it was to know that even teachers were struggling. Ive covered education for more than 15 years and had hoped some of what Ive learned in that time might help. But teens are tough, and juggling daily deadlines while trying to motivate all three of mine even just waking them up proved to be a challenge, especially right after March Break. Having actual work to do now has given them a bit more structure. My eldest daughter received a daily inspirational message during the shutdown from one teacher who also posted a song of the day for students to listen to. Another Grade 12 teacher reassured students by posting videos addressing students anxieties. My youngest daughter, who is 15, has enjoyed the online learning, particularly in math. Her teacher shoots videos from her living room, explaining concepts and formulas using a white board, explaining non-linear relations using COVID-19 numbers from China. (That teacher even gave her adorable young son a cameo appearance for a lesson on parabolas.) My daughter spent about four hours last week on math and three on a science assignment creating 24 pages of slides about optics. Shes an active kid and at this time of year would be in the midst of rigorous daily training for track and field season, which she misses. Mostly, however, she wants to see her friends. A bunch of them scheduled a group FaceTime session last week that was rowdy and fun they even talked about how they wished certain teachers could join their call. My older daughter, whos in Grade 12, is the best organized of the three. She gets up around 11 every day and keeps to a schedule for herself, focusing on school work for a couple of hours (shes taking English, calculus and chemistry), then working out and then back to her assignments. We try to walk every day, too. She has additional worries, though, and they seem to weigh the heaviest on her mind. What happens next? Will her first semester at university be online, at home? Will she see her friends and her boyfriend before the summer? Even so, that doesnt leave them a lot of time together. Will high school graduations and proms go ahead? At this point, no one knows. But the Toronto District School Board says if those important Grade 12 milestones cant be held before the end of this school year, they could be rescheduled for the summer or even the fall. TDSB director of education John Malloy said gatherings like grad and proms cant be held under the rules now in effect, but if the mass shutdown continues, well do everything we can (to) postpone them so this wonderful and important experience is something they wont miss out on. Typically, convocations arent held until late June, he added, so we dont feel that pressure right now. But he said there has been talk that proms could be held in August or something else could be considered but what I will say is we are very willing to be creative with our students and schools. As for my son, he continues to attend night school, but is on top of his work in the Grade 11 natural-disasters course and working on a resume in careers and civics. That said, he also still sometimes falls asleep around dinnertime when he sits down to read for English class (and yes, that nap happens only a few hours after hes rolled out of bed). But he is doing school work. In his free time, he goes for runs and works out daily. Then, its off to the basement to play video games with friends (virtually) until the wee hours. As long as the work is done, Im OK with that. He has no complaints. And why would he? As one person tweeted at me: Everyone knows night school is a lot easier. Homicide detectives are questioning a man over the suspected double murder of a brother and sister found dead at a Perth unit on Easter Sunday. Detectives were called to the apartment block on Leonard Street in Victoria Park at about 4.20pm and discovered one body inside the unit. The second body was found some time later. Police Commissioner Chris Dawson told ABC Radio Perth on Monday the siblings' deaths were being treated as homicide. 'It's less than 24 hours since we found the two deceased, it's clearly a very suspicious and tragic set of circumstances,' he said. Neighbour Colin Adams heard screaming coming from the apartment, on the top floor of the eight-storey building, about 20 minutes before police arrived. The bodies of a brother and sister have been found by police inside a Perth unit complex on Easter Sunday. Pictured: Police and ambulance at the scene Mr Adams was sitting outside his nearby home when he heard people arguing for about 10 minutes. 'Then we saw the police arrive, about 15 police cars and two ambulances, and then we saw the paramedics go upstairs and then come back downstairs and we figured it was something serious,' he told the ABC. 'I'm very shocked and sad, it's just a numb feeling really, especially when something like this happens in your own street. 'You don't expect to things like this to happen when we're in a situation like we are at the moment, it's supposed to be a quiet time.' A crime scene has been set up on the top floor of the building, which is on the corner of Leonard and Washington Streets. Investigators in plastic suits were seen bagging evidence from an apartment on Monday morning, while a coroner's van removed the bodies. A small red SUV and dark grey Kia sedan were towed away from the property under police supervision. The Homicide Squad is working with local police and forensics officers to investigate the deaths. A male resident at the apartment complex was taken into police custody on Monday, according to WA Today. Police confirmed the man was assisting homicide squad detectives with their investigation. 'There's a very big team working on this now,' Commissioner Dawson said. 'Anyone that's seen anything in and around Leonard Street [in] Victoria Park over the last 24 hours or so, we just want any information. 'It doesn't matter how small you think it might be, whether it's persons, vehicles, whatever it might be, noises, we'd just like you to make contact with us.' A Georgia man was charged with fraud after attempting to sell millions of nonexistent respirator masks to the government as it struggles to shore up supplies of vital medical equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities said. The man, Christopher Parris, 39, of Atlanta, was arrested Friday and charged with wire fraud in federal court in Washington, the Justice Department said in a statement. Parris was accused of making a series of fraudulent misrepresentations to secure orders that would have totaled more than $750 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs for 125 million face masks and other personal protective equipment. Parris promised that he could obtain millions of genuine 3M masks from domestic factories when he knew that fulfilling the orders would not be possible, the authorities said. The manufacturer 3M, which is based in Minnesota, produces surgical masks and respirators that have been in high demand since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. Through a series of misrepresentations, Parris claimed to act as a supplier who could quickly obtain the scarce personal protective equipment and supplies. The offer to Veterans Affairs came from a person at a Louisiana-based company who said it sells industrial safety supplies and identified Parris and his company, Encore Health Group, as one of its suppliers, according to an affidavit. When the offer was made in late March, the person said the N95 masks proposed for sale to the department would be made at plants in California and Illinois. However a lawyer for the company said it does not manufacture masks at those sites, according to the affidavit. Parris was revealed as the source of the companys misrepresentations, according to court documents. The authorities did not identify the company or the people working there. Parris on April 1 attempted to contact Veterans Affairs, claiming he was referred by the Louisiana-based company and representing Encore Health, according to the affidavit. He said that Encore Health has the ability to produce materials in one to two weeks and that it buys directly from 3M and other suppliers. A lawyer for 3M said, according to the affidavit, that Encore Health is not one of its partners and that upon review of 3Ms databases, 3M does not sell N95 Masks to Parris or Encore Health. A representative for 3M could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday night. Parris was also accused of making similar false representations to other entities in an effort to sell personal protective equipment to state governments, prosecutors said. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. This is not the first time that Parris has run afoul of the law. In January, he was charged by federal prosecutors with fraud, conspiracy and related charges in what officials described as a Ponzi scheme that defrauded approximately 1,000 investors of at least $115 million over 10 years ending in 2018. Prosecutors said the scheme involved Parris and a partner doing business as Lucian Development, in Rochester, New York, offering unsecured promissory notes and preferred stock issued by various entities that they controlled. The case is pending. Parris appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in connection with the masks case and was expected to be extradited to Washington. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. We will vigorously pursue fraudsters who exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to make money, Attorney General William Barr said in the statement. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. You and I are friends. Weve been friends, said Mr. Biden. I appreciate your friendship and I will not let you down. Yet, buried amid all the comity and light comedy was a serious pivot for Mr. Biden and his campaign from their primary messaging. As Mr. Sanders campaigned across the country calling for political revolution, Mr. Biden had cast his candidacy as a restoration of the Obama era, promising a return to the ethos of a pre-Trump Washington. Today, Mr. Biden shifted course, saying that the havoc wreaked by the pandemic would force a new reckoning in the country. When we come out of this, we cant just go back to business as usual, he said. When we come out of this, our whole country will have to take a deep look and say, how can we fix what is broken? Thats not a shift some Sanders supporters are quite ready to believe. Mr. Sanderss appearance shocked progressive grass-roots leaders, who had little warning that the liberal champion they supported was going to endorse Mr. Biden so quickly after exiting the race. Some worried the speed of his public support diminished their political leverage to win more concessions from the Biden campaign. Some of Mr. Sanderss supporters were left in the awkward position of endorsing his policy platform but not his political choices. Chron.com is compiling the latest headlines on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the Houston area. 8:23 p.m. Self-swab test kits have been available since last week at two Harris County COVID-19 testing sites, providing a more comfortable experience that requires fewer medical personnel on site, according to Harris County Public Health. The tests, supplied by the federal government, have been distributed since last Thursday at the countys sites in Katy and Baytown. The self-swab method is not nearly as uncomfortable as the previous method because they dont have to go back as far and the foam swab is more comfortable, according to Harris County Public Health spokesman Samuel Bissett. The CDC updated their guidelines March 24 to allow for self swab tests. The tests previously used, called a Nasopharyngeal swab, take a sample from the back of the nasal cavity. The new test kits include a foam swab that only needs to be inserted midway into the nostrils, health officials said. Other benefits of the self-swab method include requiring fewer medical personnel at the testing site, which allows for better social distancing. Harris County on Sunday also added two pop-up testing sites. Its unclear whether self-swab kits will be available there. 3:30 p.m. Anyone who would like to be tested for COVID-19, whether they have symptoms of the disease or not, will now be able to receive a test at the City of Houston's two testing sites, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced at a Monday afternoon press conference. People wishing to have a test should call 832-393-4220 to receive a unique identification code and directions on where to go. The mayor also announced that Houston Rockets star Russell Westbrook is donating 650 computers to Houston students in need of technology in order to learn remotely during the stay-at-home order. The computers will go to Comp-U-Dopt, a nonprofit organization that has been holding drive-thru distribution of computers for families in need. The organization aims to donate 400 computers per week after 25,000 families reached out for help. 1 p.m. Neither Houston police officers nor Harris County sheriff's deputies issued any citations or made any arrests for people visiting parks over the weekend, all of which were closed throughout the city and county over fears of large Easter gatherings spreading COVID-19. Houston-area law enforcement officials have preached a policy of education over enforcement, which deputies in the unincorporated parts of the county practiced with some folks who did not hear of the order closing parks for the weekend, according to Harris County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Jason Spencer. While parks opened back up Monday, authorities -- including Houston's top cop Chief Art Acevedo -- urged that park-goers practice social distancing. 10:40 a.m. Now that residents are driving less often due to stay-at-home orders, police say some are acting recklessly on Houston roads and causing crashes during non-essential trips. "Just because there are fewer cars on the road, it doesnt mean you can treat it like a race track," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzales said in a recent Facebook post. Gonzalez said officers are being called to crashes "on a daily basis," and despite the coronavirus orders, most are "still displaying undesirable behavior," including speeding. "Its really disappointing because we need our medical facilities for sick people," Gonzalez said. 7 a.m. Parks in Houston and Harris County are posed to reopen Monday after a three-day closure for the Easter holiday over. ON THE FRONTLINE: Houston H-E-B employees test positive for coronavirus Authorities closed parks over concerns of the spread of COVID-19. While the parks are set to open again, authorities still urge park-goers adhere to social distancing guidelines. In other news, 16 more inmates inside the Harris County Jail tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of inmates to 25. Dozens more are showing symptoms and awaiting test results, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Check back for updates as they come in. When coronavirus was spreading like a wildfire across the globe, a lot of people compared the situation to what happened in Chernobyl. Some even joked that the second season of the show, which was based on 1986's worst ever man made disaster of all times, is what we all have been living. Narcos: Mexico Star Diego Luna hadn't watched the harrowing 2019 miniseries yet and he ulitised his time in self-quarantine to do the same. Twitter As he watched it, he called it a mistake because the 1986 nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine looked close to what the world is going through because of the coronavirus pandemic. superbhub.com "I remember in London one day before we were told it was time to go home, I tried to watch Chernobyl' and it was such a big mistake. Terrifying! I was seeing the reaction of so many governments to COVID-19 represented in that show," he told IndieWire. Twitter "That beginning of the show where the authorities say no, no, nothing's happening, everything's under control. It sounded so much like what we were living in," Luna said in the chat. Twitter For the unversed, his daughter got the virus during a camp. He said it was hard to be away from his own children. Now that they are back, he is spending as much time as possible with them. "I love cooking. I am really curious about Indian food, exploring spices I am obsessed with cooking," he said. The 40-year-old actor had visited India in Nov 2018 to promote Narcos: Mexico. Historically, intrepid nurses from Kerala travelled to remote corners of the country and the world a trend that continues today, as they are on the frontlines of the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. When several nurses all hailing from Kerala and working at a Mumbai hospital recently tested positive for the coronavirus, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan took cognisance of the situation immediately. He wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as the chef ministers of various states asking them to provide proper protective equipment and care to these frontline health workers from Kerala. Vijayan had reason to be concerned: Kerala has the maximum number of registered nurses in India, and they can be found all over the world. According to the Indian Nursing Council, of the 20 lakh registered nurses in India, 18 lakh are from Kerala. Historically, intrepid nurses from Kerala travelled to remote corners of the country and the world a trend that continues today. A WHO report noted that nurses trained in India form a significant portion of internationally educated nurses working overseas, second to nurses trained in the Philippines. It is estimated that over 30 percent of nurses who studied in Kerala work in the UK or the US, with 15 percent in Australia and 12 percent in the Middle East. A significant number work in other parts of India, with Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai being among their favoured cities. *** In the 1970s, while researching an article on the nurses and nuns of Kerala for a Government of India publication, I met an elderly Swiss nun living in retirement in (then) Trivandrum. She had come to India in 1906, along with a group of nurse-nuns from Switzerland, to work in the Trivandrum General Hospital, which was patronised by the Travancore royal family at the time. The nuns took in young girls from (mostly Christian) families living around the area and trained them as helpers; the idea of service was inculcated in them as part of their religion. It was only in 1934 that nursing was formally recognised as a profession. Perhaps because of these roots, for a long time, the emphasis for nursing as a profession was on service rather than service conditions. In its early years, young women, especially from working class families across religions, eagerly signed up to become nurses because no specific educational qualification was required and jobs were easy to secure. Over the years, the nursing community grew. While it still was not a well-paying profession, it did provide these women opportunities to travel and see the world, and the assurance that they would always find employment. *** The beginning was difficult to be sure: there was the stigma attached to nursing because the idea of young women handling male patients was not socially acceptable. Then there was the uniform, which attracted the wrong kind of attention. And because nursing involved handling the bodily fluids of others, the profession was considered lowly. Over the years, however, these perceptions changed as hardworking nurses proved that they could often bring in more money than their male partners. Veteran nurses encouraged others from their extended families to join the profession and they formed their own network. And to begin with, there was barely any competition from men. The numbers of male nurses has since seen an upswing; they now form about 21 percent of the nursing workforce. A research study on male nurses from Kerala indicated that their motivations were different from the service or religion-centric reasons women nurses cited for taking up the profession. More than their female colleagues, male nurses tended to perceive the profession as favourable due to better employment opportunities and pay, with a chance to migrate to more prosperous/developed countries. Many had defied their families to become nurses as the profession isnt considered a manly one. *** In 2011, a nurse from Kerala called Beena Baby committed suicide in Mumbai, where she worked. Babys parents were casual labourers, and she had worked hard to enter nursing training. She was still repaying her education loan when she died. The agent through whom she had got the job in Mumbai was taking a commission from her salary; Baby had signed a two-year employment bond which stipulated a penalty of Rs 50,000 if she broke it. When she got a better job offer she couldnt take it up because she was still serving out her bond. Frustration drove her to take her own life a development that triggered a series of protests by nurses against the bond system. It also led to the formation of the United Nurses Association, which soon acquired a large membership. The Association was the brainchild of Jasmin Sha, a male nurse who had worked in the Gulf. Last year, the organisation was in the news when four of its top officials (all men), including Jasmin, were booked in a case of forgery and cheating, accused of siphoning off Rs 3 crore of the UNAs funds. *** For nurses from Kerala, the sisterhood provides a sort of canopy that holds them in good stead when living and working in difficult conditions. Mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces form networks. Some young women use their earnings to shore up their dowries, marry educated husbands, and settle down comfortably to raise families. But wars and epidemics test their mettle and resilience. Take the case of Marina Jose, the courageous nurse who led a group of her colleagues out of Iraq in 2014, after being held captive by the Islamic State for 23 days. Despite their harrowing ordeal, many of Joses colleagues have returned to work, in other locations. They needed the money: some were paying off loans, others had childrens expenses to meet. Nurses from Kerala are now fighting the coronavirus pandemic in various countries, not only across India. In the UK, they have been at the forefront of the COVID-19 battle, a Caravan report notes; former British MP Anna Soubry observed in an interview that some of the best nurses that we learn from actually, are from South India, from Kerala in particular. For nurses from Kerala, its all in a days work. On April 13, 1975, Lebanon was plunged into a civil war that destroyed the "Switzerland of the Middle East" forever. I lost my only brother and sibling in that war. And since 25% of Arab Americans are Lebanese, I write this article in memory of the victims of that war. We can also derive important lessons for America today from the civil strife that devastated my native country. Battle damage in Beirut from the long civil war was extensive (YouTube screen grab). First, a bit of history. In 1920, after World War I, Greater Lebanon was declared a state and placed under the French Mandate in 1923. Because the state had a Christian majority, the French mandated a Christian president and commander in chief, unlike any other country in the region. In 1943, after independence from France, the major confessional communities (Christian, Sunni, Shiite) forged an unwritten National Pact. The president would always be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the house speaker a Shiite Muslim. Lebanon enjoyed decades of prosperity under a free-market economy and was known to be the most democratic country in the Middle East, second only to Israel. However, in a few decades, because of a higher birth rate, Lebanese Muslims outnumbered their Christian compatriots. Muslims wanted more political representation and power and called upon the Lebanese government to join the pan-Arab nationalist movement and distance the Lebanese state from Western influence mainly from the Baghdad Pact. The Lebanese divide over Arab Nationalism and the Palestinian Question hardened into longstanding disagreements among the confessional communities. The breaking point came with the Cairo Agreement in 1969. Brokered by the late Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser, it gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by the late Yasser Arafat, control over the sixteen Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon. Control passed from the Lebanese Armed Forces to the Palestinian armed command. The PLO developed a state within a state, obtaining funds and arms from both the Arab states and Eastern Europe, disregarding Lebanese law. Lebanese Christian elites were alarmed by Palestinian military actions and were losing their grip on the country. Right-wing Christian parties armed their rank and file, preparing for a showdown. The PLO launched propaganda campaigns, dubbing the Christian elites as reactionary "Isolationists" and collaborators with Israel. Arafat declared, "The road to Jerusalem goes through Jounieh (a Christian stronghold north of Beirut)." This brings us back to April 13, 1975. Phalangist militia attacked a bus carrying Palestinians and Muslims, killing 27 and injuring others. The attack was in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt the previous day on their leader, Pierre Gemayel. The tit-for-tat launched a civil war that raged for years. More than 150,000 Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, and more than 20,000 people were kidnapped and disappeared. Both Palestinian and right-wing Christian militias perpetrated massacres. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in order to stop Palestinian attacks on north Israel, put Beirut under siege, and was locked in battle with the Palestinian militias and their Lebanese allies who took their last stand there. However, Washington was able to broker a ceasefire that resulted in the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut. The Multi-International Force, led by the U.S., came to Beirut to support peace and the country's reconstruction. But the collaboration of Iranian, Syrian, and Lebanese Shiite extremists foiled Western plans for Lebanon. After the October 1983 barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. and 58 French servicemen, Ronald Reagan, then U.S. president, withdrew all U.S. troops. Lebanon again plunged into violence. Today, Hezb'allah, the Iranian-Lebanese Shiite terrorist militia, controls Lebanon, which also suffers from U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. What was once the Switzerland of the Middle East is now a satellite of Iran and Syria. What can Americans learn from Lebanon's debacle? First, as Raymond Ibrahim, an expert on political Islam, explains in what he calls "The Islamic Rule of Numbers," when Muslims reach a large minority, they ignore civil rights, become more belligerent, and seek to impose aspects of their honor-shame culture on others. This is happening in places like Dearborn, Michigan, where American Lebanese Shiites support Hezb'allah. Second, Palestinian political activists, wherever they live, suffer from what I would call an "Israeli-Jewish" complex. This complex drives them to place the annihilation of Israel, as a goal, above their community's interests and the interests of their host countries. It has happened in Jordan and Lebanon and is now happening in the southern suburbs of Chicago, where Palestinians have become almost 20% of the population. Over the last three decades, Palestinian organizations have mushroomed, turning the southern suburbs of Chicago into a hotbed of radical anti-Semitism and an anti-Western conclave. Many American Palestinians there support Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Third, when Muslims are a minority, they engage in a "cultural war." Ibrahim explains, where "Muslims are less than 1% of the population () Islamic assertiveness is limited to political activism dedicated to portraying Islam as a 'religion of peace,' and sporadic, but clandestine, acts of terror." How can we preserve the freedoms in America when we understand those tactics? Extreme vetting for Middle Eastern immigrants is necessary. U.S. Homeland Security is lenient with Jordanian would-be immigrants, although more than 90% of them are of Palestinian descent, and many support the Islamic State (ISIS) and terrorism against Israel. Likewise, many Lebanese immigrants support Hezb'allah, and should be thoroughly vetted. American authorities should take the issue of integration seriously. Many American Muslims are not assimilating. Authorities should push against child marriages and for education among young Muslims. Law enforcement agencies should keep close watch over Palestinian and Islamist organizations. Do not give them a pass, as the Lebanese authorities did. I appeal to my fellow American Lebanese and American Palestinians to appreciate and guard the freedoms we enjoy in this great country. Our new home offers rights and privileges that we did not have in our countries of origin. I call upon us to defend this great nation against all dangers. Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, wisely compared the community to a boat. All are responsible for the maintenance and security of the boat. If those passengers staying at the lower level drill a hole, all the boat [community] will sink. Hesham Shehab is an Illinois Middle East Forum associate. [April 13, 2020] Ziyen Energy CEO Alastair Caithness to be guest speaker on Sweden's Leading Blockchain Show, ChainTalk SAN DIEGO, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alastair Caithness, Ziyen Energy, CEO is interviewed by Zara Zamani, Block Architect & Head of Disruptive Technologies at Meta Bytes, on Swedens leading Blockchain Show, ChainTalk. In this show Caithness explains how Ziyen Energy in collaboration with leading blockchain, data analysis, systems, tokenization, regulatory and trading specialists have developed the ZYEN Energy Asset Trading Platform. Zara Zamani, ChainTalk host states, Whether it's just a buzzword, a hype or a real game changer, we all keep hearing the word, Blockchain on a daily basis. However, still the most frequent question asked is: What is blockchain? This indicates the need for public education on this technology. 1. The episode will be released on April 15th - Visit ChainTalk for more Details 2. Alastair Caithness will join us on a live session on April 20th at 3pm CET for a friendly chat! Alastair Caithness adds, The ZYEN Energy Asset Trading Platform provides a means for tokenizing ownership interests in energy producing assets using permission-based blockchain technology, and thereby creating a liquid market for previously illiquid assets. Users of the ZYEN platform will include investors in energy producing assets and operators raising capital to develop renewable and carbon-based enegy projects. The equity of Ziyen Energy (presently the largest owner of ZYEN, Inc.) has been tokenized and issued as ZiyenCoin. Upon activation of the ZYEN platform it is expected that ZiyenCoin will be tradeable to the same extent as other tokens issued by the ZYEN platform. For more information about Ziyen Energy please visit www.ziyen.com or read our corporate overview Tokenizing Energy Assets on the Blockchain About Ziyen Energy: Ziyen Energy is a technology-driven energy company incorporated in the State of Wyoming, U.S.A. in April 2016. Originally formed as a software company providing information on the oil, gas, power and energy sectors, Ziyen specializes on business information, contracts, news and information by developing cutting edge procurement and supply chain software to provide clients with intelligence on industry specific government and private contracts. In addition, Ziyen Energy currently owns interests in oil assets based in Texas and the Illinois Basin, which covers Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. The equity of Ziyen Energy has been tokenized and issued as ZiyenCoin which is offered for sale as a Security Token pursuant to SEC Rule 506(c) of Regulation D. Forward Looking Statements: Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements related to anticipated commencement of commercial production, targeted pricing, performance goals, and statements that otherwise relate to future periods are forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are described in more detail in the Companys periodic reports filed with the SEC- specifically the most recent reports which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made and based on information available to the company on the date of this press release. Ziyen Inc. assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release. Contact: Alastair Caithness Media Relations [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] A lyric from the musical Hamilton keeps running through the mind of Amber Woods: Im not going to waste my shot. In the musical, the line refers to Alexander Hamiltons willingness to step up when American colonists challenged King George and launched the Revolutionary War. Now Woods is in the midst of another American crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. And as a veteran nurse with experience in intensive-care units, she says she want to meet the moment. This is my shot to be part of history, said Woods, who lives near Kalamazoo. Which why Woods has quit her jobs at two southwest Michigan hospitals and headed to New York City for an eight-week gig in a hospital at the epicenter of the pandemic. When the coronavirus crisis began, Woods braced herself to face the crisis but southwest Michigan has had among the fewest cases in the state per capita. Meanwhile, she was reading stories about the desperate need for experienced ICU nurses in hard-hit areas. Running out of body bags. People dying in the hallways. Coronavirus has Michigan hospital workers near breaking point Thats what they need most right now, she said. Not just any nurse can take care of COVID patients. Theyre intubated and sedated and on multiple critical drips, and hospitals are looking for nurses experienced in that type of care. During a phone conversation with a friend, he pretty much said, You know, youre not in the right place right now, " Woods said. The friend had connections to an agency hiring temporary nurses for hospitals needing more staff, and he said, when youre ready to travel, let me know. Two hours later, I was, like, Hes right. I need to be in it. So I decided to take a travel job, Woods said. The agency placed her in a job in New York City, which has more than 95,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus -- one of every six cases in the United States. Woods said good-bye to her 13-year-old son, who is living with his father until the coronavirus outbreak eases, and last week made the temporary move to New York. The hospital is providing her with a housing allowance, and she found a place about a mile from the facility, Woods said. She declined to name the hospital, saying she did not want to upset her new employers. Shes working 48 hours a week for eight weeks at the hospital, Woods said. Among the items she brought with her: Enough N95 masks for every day she is scheduled to work. Just making sure that I stay healthy and safe is going to be the biggest challenge, Woods said. I really dont know what Im walking into. When the eight weeks is up, she said, well see where I end up going. If the pandemic is still in a crisis phase, she may look for a job in Detroit or another hot spot. Eventually, she said, she plans to return to southwest Michigan. I dont think Ill have a problem finding a job as a nurse when this is over, she said. Woods said that going to New York is about as much as supporting her fellow nurses as it is helping patients. This is just overwhelming the health-care industry, and multiple health systems are basically crumbling, she said. Its not just the patients that were helping, its our co workers that we care about. Theyve got to be exhausted. We dont want to leave them short, so its about putting on your boots and going to work and doing what needs to be done, she said. Woods finds it infuriating that hospital workers are struggling to obtain enough personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns. Its just not right, she said. All these nurse and doctors and health-care workers that are dying, we cant let their deaths be vain. When this is over, heads need to roll and things to change because this is not this is not the way it should be." Doctors on the front lines of coronavirus: It seems like the sky is falling But for now, Woods is focused on the next eight weeks and doing her part to break the back of the pandemic. I honestly expect this to be a life-changing experience, she said. For more statewide data, visit MLives coronavirus data page, here. PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. Related news: Sunday, April 12: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Kroger, Meijer report deaths of grocery store workers in Michigan from coronavirus Tough cookie 79-year-old coronavirus patient discharged as hospital staff cheers Chinese electronics behemoth BBK Group's smartphone brand is said to be working on its new 5G gaming device, the Neo 3 5G. According to a post on micro-blogging platform Weibo, the device will debut in China on April 23. Some of the tech bloggers were invited to a game which revealed the April 23 launch date for the Neo3, GizmoChina reported. Recently, the company's Product General Manager Shuji Niao Shu had said on Weibo that the company had incorporated a new 3 + 2 strategy in an upcoming iQOO phone. The device is expected to feature a 6.6-inch LCD display of a fullHD+ resolution. It will boast a screen of 144Hz refresh rate and sport a punch-hole for the selfie camera. ALSO READ: OnePlus 8-series smartphones' global launch set for April 14: Details here The device is expected to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, which will have an integrated modem for 5G connectivity. The chipset is said to be accompanied by up to 12GB RAM and 256GB native storage. In retrospective, iQOO forayed in Indias price conscious smartphone market with the launch of iQOO 3 5G, a 5G-ready smartphone priced at Rs 36,990 for the base model. The smartphone has a 6.44-inch Super AMOLED display, which supports HDR10+. According to the company, the screen has a touch response rate of 180Hz, which improves the screen touch scan frequency by up to 50 per cent in comparison to standard 120hz screens. The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor and features a quad-camera setup on the back, featuring a 48-megapixel main camera, a 13MP Telephoto (20X Zoom), a 13MP super wide-angle camera and a 2MP Bokeh camera. There is also a 16MP front camera. The device is powered by a 4,440mAh battery and comes with 55W Super FlashCharge Technology, which can charge around 50 per cent battery in 15 minutes according to the company. ALSO READ: iQoo 3 5G review: A powerhouse to sway performance-hungry smartphones' user (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dr. Nadia Alam, and anesthetist at Georgetown Hospital, is being praised for her heroics and humanity during the COVID-19 crisis. Imagine walking into a room after spending seven hours wearing an N95 mask to learn the elderly patient youve been assigned to wants to forego life support and will likely lose the fight against COVID-19. That was the nightmare faced last week by Dr. Nadia Alam, an anesthetist at Georgetown Hospital in Ontario, when she was told by her 72-year-old patient he just wanted to take a break from the madness. He just said, I dont want to die on a machine, I want to die looking at the blue sky, I want to die talking to my family, I dont want to die on a machine, said Dr. Alam, who also has her own family medicine practice in Georgetown. Dr. Alam sat next to the man in the hospital room as he called his family, who were not permitted to visit him, and told them he was opting for medicine to soothe his pain and that he may not survive. He hasnt had anyone sit down and talk to him for days, hed been alone I sat down and my heart just broke and I held his hand while we looked at the sky, she said. Im starving. Thirsty. Tired. I wore my N95 mask for 7 hours straight. Careful to conserve my #PPE. Then I go see a 72 yr old man with poor lung function & #COVID19, on oxygen. I dont want to die on a machine. I want to see the blue sky. So I sat. And we watched the sky. pic.twitter.com/jDoQpIpRwn Dr. Nadia Alam (@DocSchmadia) April 9, 2020 Dr. Alams humane response to a stark reality led to thousands online applauding her bravery and thanking her for her courage amid the ongoing pandemic. But while onlookers praise her courage, she is fearful of contracting the disease herself. Its this constant fear and worry that eats away at you, but thats the reality. I signed up to be a doctor, to take care of patients through thick and thin, and I love my job, she said. Story continues For Dr. Alam and others on the front line, that means wearing protective gear almost every second of the shift, running from patient to patient with time to rest only when theyve gone home. The image of Dr. Alam suited in her personal protective equipment (PPE) hit home for many Canadians, who finally had a visual insight to the lengths doctors must go to help people who are ill. COVID-19 latest infections in Canada I left my mask on, by the time I went to see this patient I hadnt eaten anything, I hadnt drank anything, I was tired, it was hot under the mask and gear, she said. While saving patients is the most important task, hospital staff are now being forced to be cognizant of the masks theyre using, especially as provinces scramble to get more gear. On top of everything we do, doctors, nurses, housekeeping staff were all very conscious of the fact that every time we put on a mask that is one less we can use later when the surge of COVID-19 patients hit, she said. Staring at the blue sky The moment of vulnerability Dr. Alam shared with her 72-year-old patient is an experience that will live with her forever. The notes she received prior to seeing the patient briefed her on his diminishing health situation since he had been admitted to the hospital. He doesnt have great lung function... over the past few days, he needed more and more oxygen, which is a sign COVID-19 was winning, she said as she wept. My six-year-old son turns to me routinely when I go to work and tells me not to die, he asks me not to die. - Dr. Nadia Alam When a patient with COVID-19 gets to this point of their illness, Dr. Alam said there are just a couple routes they can go, and neither guarantee survival. He could go on life support to see if he could buy himself more time and things might turn around or he could keep continuing with medical management and fight it off, she said. The mans decision was essentially between a rock and a hard place. Originally he had chosen to be kept on life support, with the belief the machine would cure him. I had to tell him, all life support will do is buy you some time, youre very sick, and I cant guarantee going on life support means you live, she said. Dr. Nadia Alam holding a box of donated medical supplies by the community of Halton Hills. Given his age and medical history, Dr. Alam knew if the patient went on life support there was a strong chance he would not survive. The man understood his situation and just wanted some human interaction, more than what nurses or phone calls could warrant. He wanted touch, he wanted someone to talk to, someone he could share his thoughts with, and nobody could visit him, nobody could do that for him, she said. The patient was eventually put on medical management, but Dr. Alam admits the chances of survival are slim to none. Hes in medical management, he knows why he did it, and were just trying to make it less painful until he has to go, she said as her voice broke. The vulnerability of her patient to be open about how he wanted to be treated medically was a reminder for Dr. Alam about the severity and emotional impacts of COVID-19. I always feel contaminated from the virus from the work that I do, and I worry about seeing my kids because I might pass it onto them, she said. Dr. Alam, a mother of four, goes home to her children every night after work, often feeling selfish as she could be risking their safety. The first thing she does when arriving home is to wash her PPE, then shower and scrub down every inch of the house she has touched. But the concern isnt just on her end, as her children are worried about their mothers wellbeing. They worry about me a lot, I know its wearing on my kids. My six-year-old son turns to me routinely when I go to work and tells me not to die, he asks me not to die, she said. While she cannot do much to change her reality to help people in need, Dr. Alam admits that shes learned the real significance of hand-washing during this time. Ive never before appreciated the simple act of hand-washing and hand hygiene, how lifesaving something that mundane can be, said Dr. Alam. CAMARILLO, Calif., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Company announced today the launch of its BioEnergy Server 100. The system is capable of converting biomass into clean renewable electricity and a form of ultra-pure, highly porous carbon. The system is mobile and is designed to deliver 100kW of electricity. It is also modular with 1 MW being provided in a 10 system server farm with a compact footprint. The business model is to sell "electricity as a service" at a discounted rate to what customers are currently paying for their electricity. There is no upfront cost to the customer, and the Company owns, operates and maintains the systems. Any form of biomass can be converted, but the company has focused on agricultural waste, such as almond shells, pistachio shells, tree prunings, grapevine prunings and manure. "The advantage of bioenergy is that there is an abundant cheap source of fuel that can provide electricity on demand," said Dr. Greg Campbell, CEO of VGid. "This is important for utilities who struggle to manage intermittent sources from solar and wind." The Company has worked with veterinarians to certify the carbon as a cattle feed additive with the California Department of Food and Agriculture and several other states. We have demonstrated the ability to bind toxins and cure or prevent SCOURS disease. Early trials indicate an improvement in feed efficiency and a significant reduction in methane emissions from livestock. The carbon can also be used for water and air filtration, odor elimination as well as a soil amendment. In a cannabis indoor grow trial with a leading cannabis producer, we demonstrated a 100% increase in yield. Media Contact: Jim Dodsworth Phone: (408) 203-1963 Email: [email protected] SOURCE VGrid Energy President Donald Trump on Sunday defended his COVID-19 response efforts, arguing he called for a ban on travel from China before experts advised and retweeting a post that urged the ouster of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert and, according to polling, the public official most trusted on coronavirus. The president on Sunday evening retweeted DeAnna Lorraine, who tweeted that Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he couldve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci... Lorraine, who made a run at House Speaker Nancy Pelosis seat in Congress but lost in a Republican primary, was referencing Faucis interview with CNNs Jake Tapper on Sunday. Lorraine has previously cast doubt on the scale of the COVID-19 crisis. Fauci said there was pushback in late February when health officials pressed the administration to advise greater mitigation including social distancing, which the Trump administration did not recommend until mid-March. But he noted that a number of factors played into the crisis, and said were not where we are now because of one fact. More than half a million Americans have contracted COVID-19 and nearly 22,000 have died as of Sunday. You could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and if you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives, Fauci said when pressed by Tapper. But what goes into those decisions is complicated. There was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then. The president has said that he moved forward with recommending strict social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines after recommendations from Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, who showed Trump worst-case-scenario models indicating millions of deaths were possible if the government took no action to prevent the spread of the virus. Trump has since been eager to see the economy bounce back, but extended social distancing guidelines through the end of the month. Trump has also touted his moves to limit travel from China, where the disease originated, and Europe. Sorry Fake News, its all on tape," Trump said Sunday in reference to Lorraines tweet on Faucis comments. I banned China long before people spoke up. Its unclear if Trump was referring to Faucis statements as fake news or if he was using his frequent critique against CNN. But Lorraines tweet, and a host of responses, called for Faucis firing, suggesting many Trump supporters see a widening divide between the president and one of his key public health experts. From time to time, Fauci has openly but diplomatically disagreed with how the president presents information on the virus, particularly Trumps advocacy for potential COVID-19 treatments that are still under clinical trials. According to the latest Quinnipiac University poll, Fauci has the highest approval rating among public officials handling the coronavirus response, with 78% approving and 7% disapproving. By comparison, 46% approved of Trumps management of the crisis, and 51% disapproved. In a recent University of North Florida poll, Fauci received nearly double the support of the president in terms of handling the coronavirus crisis, with an 85% job approval rating. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said they do not place faith in what the president says on the pandemic. Lorraine, NBC News reported in late March, was among the first to use the hashtag #FilmYourHospital. COVID-19 deniers, far-right conservatives and conspiracy theorists who claim the crisis is overblown have used the hashtag and shared videos from outside facilities dealing with coronavirus, painting any perceived lack of activity as signs of a grand hoax. But hospitals have limited visitation to protect patients, workers and the public, and The Washington Post recently reported that safety and privacy concerns have largely blocked the media from offering inside looks at hospitals, potentially opening the door for speculation and conspiracies. The Post reported that the theory COVID-19 was a false flag sprang from anti-vaccination and QAnon communities earlier this year. Related Content: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Sebastian Partogi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13 2020 Cultivating leaders: A communications officer from the Indonesian Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (IBCWE) covers the Blue Bird Groups Women Take Over: Leading in a Day program. The program, which involves selecting a female employee to take on the part of the group CEO for a day in a simulation, aims to groom more female leaders. (Courtesy of IBCWE (@ibcwe_id) on Instagram) Local businesses that implement womens empowerment initiatives benefit from a larger talent pool, which helps them sustain overall business growth. One of them is PT Adis Dimension Footwear, a shoe manufacturing subcontractor, which operates its assembly factory in Tangerang, Banten, employing about 9,000 laborers. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly. US Navy Former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly was angered by the videos of sailors cheering for their recently fired commander, according to The New York Times. Modly then flew to Guam to address the ship's crew a trip that reportedly cost over $243,000. Modly was not the only Navy official vexed by the circumstances: Adm. Robert Burke, the vice chief of naval operations, told the ship's senior medical officer that he had failed as a leader, two crew members told The Times. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly was angered by the videos of sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt cheering for their recently fired commander, according to a New York Times report published Sunday. Modly, who on April 2 fired the aircraft carrier's commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was angry after several videos showed crew members gathering to send off Crozier with applause and cheers, Navy officials told The Times. The videos were shared widely and have garnered support for Crozier, who was removed after his letter pleading with Navy leaders for help with a coronavirus outbreak on the ship was leaked to the press. Modly then took a jet to fly to Guam to address the ship's crew a trip that reportedly cost over $243,000. In a 15-minute profanity-laced speech delivered through the ship's announcement system, Modly defended his decision to fire Crozier and expressed continued support for the crew. Audio of the speech was eventually leaked to news organizations. "That's your duty. Not to complain. Everyone's scared about this thing," Modly said. "But I'll tell you something: If this ship was in combat and there were hypersonic missiles coming at it, you'd be pretty f---ing scared too. But you do your jobs. And that's what I expect you to do." Modly was not the only Navy official vexed by the circumstances. Adm. Robert Burke, the vice chief of naval operations, told the ship's senior medical officer that he had failed as a leader, two crew members told The Times. Story continues Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, addresses the crew during an all-hands call on the ship's flight deck in November. US Navy/MCS 3rd Class Nicholas Huynh Modly fired Crozier after the captain warned about the outbreak aboard his ship in a four-page letter that was sent to over 20 people and eventually leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. Modly said Crozier violated military protocols, circumventing the chain of command by sending the letter to a group of people. Modly said that while he did not know how the letter got to the media, there was a "proper way" for Crozier to handle his concerns. "If he didn't think that information wasn't going to get out to the public, in this information age that we live in, then he was A., too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this," Modly said. "The alternate is that he did it on purpose." Modly's comments sparked intense backlash from lawmakers and the ship's sailors. Modly later walked backed his comments and apologized. He resigned on Tuesday. In his final message to the Navy, obtained by Navy Times, Modly said his comments were "a poor use of words." "You are justified in being angry with me about that," Modly said. "There is no excuse, but perhaps a glimpse of understanding, and hopefully empathy." "But what's done is done," he added. "I can't take it back, and frankly I don't know if I walked back up that quarterdeck today if I wouldn't have the same level of emotions that drove my delivery yesterday." Crozier has been in quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus. Over 580 of the Roosevelt's 4,800 crew members had tested positive as of Sunday, according to the Navy. Nearly 4,000 of the crew members have evacuated the ship into Guam, where many are under quarantine in hotels. Read the original article on Business Insider President Donald Trump's record-setting fundraising pace slowed slightly amid the coronavirus outbreak but remained strong as he maintains a massive cash advantage over Democrats. The Trump reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee raised more than $212 million in the first quarter of 2020, bringing their total to more than $677 million since 2017. Their haul for March, even as the nation's economy began grinding to a halt to slow the pandemic, was more than $63 million. That represented a slowing from the more than $86 million raised in February but nonetheless was Trump's second-best month ever, and it kept his campaign on pace to maintain its massive fundraising advantage over Democrats. The numbers are likely to give the president a substantial continued fundraising edge over presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Joe Biden has yet to release his March numbers. But his campaign and the DNC held just roughly $20 million combined at the end of February, with March totals not yet released. Biden effectively wrapped up his party's nomination as the coronavirus was hitting the nation and he cancelled events, watched some states delay primaries, and was delayed high-profile TV victory celebrations. President Donald Trump and the RNC raised more than $212 million in the first quarter of the year The pro-Trump effort will report having more than $240 million in the bank at the end of March - more than $40 million more than two months prior. The campaign has planned to raise more than $1 billion among itself, the RNC and associated joint fundraising committees. The money race is critical as always this year, with much campaigning certain to be fought on the airwaves as Americans hunker down amid stay-home orders. Both parties also will have to recalibrate their approaches if states change laws to allow more voting by mail, as Biden is demanding and as Trump has repeatedly complained about, claiming it leads to fraud and would hurt Republicans. The fundraising totals come at a pivotal moment for the campaign, both as former Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee and as the coronavirus outbreak began to sweep the nation. 'President Trump's unyielding commitment to the American people has shown time and again that he is the president we need to lead our country through this crisis, and its clear that voters are responding to his bold leadership,' RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said. 'The enthusiasm for President Trump and our party remains strong, and we continue to be all systems go toward November.' Trump's fundraising haul comes as former Vice President Joe Biden has been seeking to counter the president with media appearances from a TV studio set up in his Delaware home Trump has made use of near-daily press briefings on the coronavirus at the White House. He also has met with executives and helped fashion a $2 trillion bailout package Democrats have yet to release their March hauls, but at the end of February, Biden's campaign and the DNC held just roughly $20 million combined, accounting for debt held by the national party. 'Americans can see President Trump leading this nation through a serious crisis, and they are responding with their continued enthusiastic support for his reelection,' Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale added. The pandemic has effectively ceased traditional campaigning and fundraising, moving it to digital and other means. Trump held his last formal fundraiser on March 9 in Florida and his last rally on March 2 in Charlotte, North Carolina, the city scheduled to host the Republican National Convention in late August. To fill the gap, the Trump campaign has started to host near-daily video streams featuring prominent Trump surrogates and campaign officials and has continued to pepper supporters with digital fundraising requests. Gilead Sciences, Inc. GILD announced promising results on experimental antiviral, remdesivir, in patients hospitalized with severe complications of COVID-19. Remdesivir is an investigational nucleotide analog with broad-spectrum antiviral activity in both vitro and vivo in animal models against multiple emerging viral pathogens, including Ebola, Marburg, MERS and SARS. Gilead has been providing emergency access to remdesivir for qualifying patients with severe complications of COVID-19 who are unable to enroll in ongoing clinical trials. This cohort evaluated data from 53 patients in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan, who received at least one dose of remdesivir on or before Mar 7, 2020, through Gileads compassionate use program. All patients were hospitalized with severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, with either an oxygen saturation of 94% or less or a need for oxygen. Results from this cohort showed that the majority of patients in this international cohort demonstrated clinical improvement and no new safety signals were identified with the remdesivir treatment. Approximately 64% of patients in this cohort were on mechanical ventilation at baseline, including four also on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Results showed that treatment with remdesivir resulted in an improvement in oxygen support class for 68% of patients over a median follow-up of 18 days from the first dose of remdesivir. More than half of patients on mechanical ventilation were extubated and nearly half of all patients (47%) were discharged from the hospital following treatment with remdesivir. The cumulative incidence of clinical improvement, defined as discharge from the hospital and/or at least a two-point improvement from baseline on a predefined six-point scale, was 84% after 28 days of follow up, according to the Kaplan-Meier analysis. However, clinical improvement was less frequent among patients on invasive ventilation versus noninvasive ventilation and patients at least 70 years of age. The overall mortality rate in this cohort was 13%. The mortality rate was higher in the subgroup of patients who were on invasive ventilation (18%) as compared to patients on noninvasive oxygen support (5%). Factors associated with an increased risk of mortality included age greater than 70 years and higher baseline serum creatinine levels, indicating reduced kidney function. Mildto-moderate liver enzyme (ALT and/or AST) elevations were observed in this cohort. No new safety signals were detected during short-term remdesivir therapy. Story continues Multiple phase III studies are ongoing to determine the safety and efficacy of the candidate for the treatment of COVID-19 as data from ongoing, randomized clinical studies are needed to provide a scientifically robust understanding of the clinical impact of the treatment. Currently, Gilead is conducting two phase III studies on remdesivir the SIMPLE studies in countries with a higher prevalence of COVID-19. Data from the SIMPLE study in patients with severe disease are expected later this month, while data from the SIMPLE study in patients with moderate disease are expected next month. Additionally, the company is supporting multiple clinical trials led by other organizations, including two studies conducted in Hubei Province, China. However, the study in China in patients with severe disease was terminated early due to low enrollment and the company awaits the publication of these data to enable an in-depth review of the results. The study in China in patients with mild-to-moderate disease is ongoing. A global study of remdesivir led by NIAID continues to enroll patients and data from this study are anticipated next month. Gileads shares have gained 13.1% this year so far against the industrys decline of 6.6%. Currently, there are no FDA-approved treatments for the severe illness caused by SARS-CoV-2. Given the alarming levels of spread and severity, some approved drugs or pipeline candidates are being tested to see if these are effective in treating the infected patients. As remdesivir has shown promising results in infected patients, investors are banking on Gilead for being the first company to come up with a treatment for this deadly disease. While the company is pioneering the race for developing a potential cure for COVID-19, other companies have joined the bandwagon as well. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals REGN too has identified antibodies, which can possibly treat coronavirus. Regeneron and partner Sanofi SNY are also evaluating their rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drug, Kevzara, to treat patients hospitalized with severe infection due to COVID-19. Johnson & Johnson JNJ recently announced the selection of a lead coronavirus vaccine candidate. Gilead currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) : Free Stock Analysis Report Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (REGN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Sanofi (SNY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research 295 Shares Share Anecdotal though it may be, a team of Italian doctors and nurses, led by Dr. Luigi Cavanna, has reported apparent success treating COVID-19 patients in their homes. Realizing too many near-death patients were traveling long distances to the hospital emergency room in Piacenza, Italy from their rural villages, Cavanna reasoned many of these patients might be saved if they were diagnosed and treated earlier. He also reasoned his overcrowded hospital might save more lives if it didnt have to treat as many COVID-19 patients. Carrying bottles of hydroxychloroquine and a number of different antivirals, tanks of oxygen, and bags of intravenous fluids, Cavanna and his team started visiting patients in their homes as soon as the patients started complaining of COVID-19 symptoms. Realizing nearly 100 Italian physicians, mainly general practitioners, had already died from COVID-19, Cavanna and his team donned special suits, disposable gowns, goggles, masks, gloves, hats, and shoe covers to protect themselves while they worked. In its first month of activity, Cavannas team treated more than 300 COVID-19 patients in their homes. Significantly, fewer than 30 patients failed to improve with home treatment and required hospitalization. Cavannas experience may offer valuable clues about the successful treatment of COVID-19 patients. His experience may also show the rest of the world a better way to prepare for and treat pandemics of the future. Although Cavannas use of hydroxychloroquine, with or without various antivirals, may or may not have contributed to the recoveries of his COVID-19 patients, few experienced physicians will argue that the earlier diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 patients and earlier use of supplemental oxygen and intravenous fluids played key roles in the patients survival. Throw in the added importance of patients not having to travel long distances to receive medical care while seriously ill, and the frequently-cited advantage of patients being able to recuperate in the peaceful surroundings of their own homes, and the reasons for Cavannas success become clearer. I have practiced internal medicine and made house calls in rural Northeastern Pennsylvania for the past 45 years. I still remember the early days when Medicare paid physicians less to see patients in their homes than in medical offices, and home health agencies were more a notion than a reality. Anecdotal though they may be, my experiences making house calls have taught me that most illnesses can be treated just as well or better in a patients home as in a hospital or skilled nursing facility. Patients seem to heal and recover from their illnesses faster at home because they are able to better nourish themselves with foods they prefer, be surrounded by their loved ones more often and in more comfortable surroundings, have their lifestyles minimally altered, avoid the many stresses, complications and nosocomial infections associated with hospitalization, and avoid the confusion occasionally associated with institutionalization. Portable oxygen concentrators and I.V. pumps work the same in patients homes as they do in hospitals. Doctors, nurses, and therapists do their best regardless of where theyre asked to work. So, the ability to take care of patients in their homes has come a long way in the past half-century, and technological and home health care advances have ensured house calls will continue to be an important part of health cares arsenal going forward. Now is the time to learn from the current pandemic and start to prepare for the future pandemics many epidemiologists seem to think are inevitable. A good place to start learning may be in Italy, where Dr. Cavanna demonstrated COVID-19 patients could be successfully treated in their homes. Consider how much easier it might have been for hospitals in the United States to treat COVID-19 patients if the number of patients was dramatically reduced because many other patients were being successfully treated at home and didnt require hospitalization. Consider how much more effectively COVID-19 might have been contained if infected patients stayed at home instead of riding ambulances to hospitals. Consider how much less it might cost to finance a pandemic by stockpiling $500 oxygen concentrators rather than $25,000 ventilators, using patients bedrooms as treatment rooms rather than being forced to convert schools, arenas, and conference centers into makeshift hospitals, and only requiring a handful of doctors and nurses to manage hundreds of patients in their homes rather than requiring a veritable army of doctors, nurses and ancillary personnel to manage a similar number of patients in hospitals. The COVID-19 pandemic will not end until a successful treatment is discovered, and a successful vaccine is developed. Even when COVID-19 appears to be finally conquered, other viruses will appear and threaten mankind. To this end, we must start now to plan for the future needs of our civilization before another pandemic occurs. We are currently experiencing the dress rehearsal for the end of the world and, unless we start preparing, the next pandemic may make COVID-19 seem like the common cold. Now is the time to start manufacturing and stockpiling the necessary equipment and supplies we may need to combat future pandemics. Adding the number of oxygen concentrators and I.V. pumps, we may need to treat greater numbers of patients at home would seem prudent. Now is also the time to start formally training more physicians, nurses, and therapists to be able to handle emergency medical conditions in patients homes. Training and graduating greater numbers of health care providers may also be a wise move for an insightful nation that respects the past but plans for the future. In 1905, George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Only by carefully studying the work of Dr. Cavanna and his colleagues will we force ourselves to remember the past. Only by learning how to continue their work will we not be condemned to repeat the past or journey into the future unprepared. Bernard Leo Remakus is an internal medicine physician. Image credit: Shutterstock.com By Trend One of the most increasing trends in Azerbaijan is the digitalization of the country's financial sector, and one of the directions in this area is cashless payments, their advantages and future situation, Erdem Chakar, Mastercard Country Manager for Azerbaijan told Trend in an interview. The manager also talked of one of the directions in this area - cashless payments, their advantages and future situation. What is the mission of Mastercard in Azerbaijan, and what are you currently doing in this direction? If very briefly, the Mastercards mission is increasing the share of non-cash payments among the Azerbaijans population. Moreover, the non-cash money is pure not only in terms of transparency and financial security, but also in the full sense that the coronavirus outbreak in China recently showed, where they really began to avoid banknotes and prefer non-cash payments. In 2003, after the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Hong Kong, there was also an increase in contactless transactions in Asia, because people did not want to touch not only cash, but even pin pads to authorize the transaction. Now the epidemic has gone beyond China, transformed into a pandemic, and all other countries of the world have also begun to avoid paper money. Herein, the demand for non-cash payments has increased many times. Speaking about what we are doing in this direction, I will start with tactics, if I may call it that. It lies in the fact that there is a tendency that young people pay more through cards, and that is why we wanted to invest in student cards like smart student cards, since a student are an excellent carrier of cashless payments. Most of them are far from office work, they often and everywhere use their cards, showing an example and instructing their parents, friends, and even sellers who do not know how to use them, thereby popularizing cashless payments and making them part of the local culture. That is why we also carry out various campaigns targeting youth. We are currently running a campaign in the Azerbaijani Bravo supermarket chain. If you pay with a Mastercard card, you participate in the lottery, and if you pay contactlessly, then each such transaction gives ten chances to participate in the drawing of the latest iPhone model every month and twice a year - in June and at the end of the year, or at the beginning 2021, the latest Lexus car is also available as a prize. We do not make any money on this. This does not affect our income model, but we want people to use their cards more. And as soon as you start using contactless payment, youll see how fast it is compared to cash transactions. Just imagine how one transaction would drag out if, for example, you were in a store and wanted to buy a product that costs 3.52 Swiss francs, but the seller did not have a change from 10 francs, or he does not even give you 6.5 francs, since he considers it his duty to count exactly 6.48 francs. A similar anecdotal incident occurred in the Bravo supermarket chain. The manager, the cashier and I decided to check that which transaction will be completed faster, in cash or by card. Since the managers presence played the effect of observer and the cashier worked to the limit of his capabilities, the transactions were approximately the same. Then, when we were about to leave, one guy came and took the goods at a price of 1.28 manat (75 cent). Since the cashier didnt have change, the transaction dragged on several times. Therefore, it might seem that payment by card is not faster than cash payment, but in fact, without such cases with the search for change, a digital payment will always be equally fast. We also arrange these kinds of promotions in which we send mystery shoppers to the store, and if the cashiers ask them if they have a card, if they want to pay it and if they want to do it in a contactless way, the cashier can get a reward. Thus, we make them messengers who will inform the public and thus serve the project Cashless Azerbaijan 2018-2020. For us, this is only the beginning of the way, because right now, only 20 percent of all card transactions are in POS terminals, the rest is cash withdrawals. In other countries, this is more than 40-50 percent. Nevertheless, three years ago, the number of non-cash payments was only 10 percent, so we almost doubled the use of POS terminals, but we have more opportunities, and the way to this lies with a digital approach to everything, and I will tell you a little more about it. The state program for expanding digital payments in Azerbaijan for 2018-2020 ends in 2020. What role has the payment system played in the state program of Azerbaijan for the development of cashless payments over the past period and what is your assessment? Actually, the initiative to create this state program came from the Central Bank of Azerbaijan. As MasterCard, we conducted a consultation project in 2017. We helped the CBA write a program, brought in experts from Turkey and other markets, invited top management. A team of advisers worked here for about 8-9 months, worked with the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, attracting experts from the region, as a result of which the program was adopted as a state one. Nevertheless, we provided the country with ideas and advice not only on payments and the like, but also in other areas, such as calculating the economy, taxes, digitalization of the economy and social reforms necessary to ensure economic transparency. Thus, we trained in all areas, and here our competitors are not other payment brands, but cash, because it is still the largest part of payments in Azerbaijan, as in other markets, even in Turkey, where the share of non-cash transactions significantly higher, but collectively still inferior to cash payments. Thus, we always consider cash as our competitor, and we believe that the transformation of all payment transactions into non-cash will make the economy more transparent and secure. So, about what we have done: Let me start with 2018, when, along with improving the refinement of the state program, we did some additional things, first of all, several projects to familiarize the public with cashless payments. Together with Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), we conducted a campaign in a supermarket in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, the conditions of which were as follows: If you pay above a certain amount, for example 10 ($5.8) or 20 manat ($11.7), then you will immediately receive a certain gift. By the way, the same action will be held in the Bravo supermarket chain from June 1 to June 30 - the Mastercard owner, who has paid over 40 manat ($23.5) in a cashless way, receives one of the offered gifts on the spot. We also met with representatives of the Ministry of Education, and talked with them about student cards, and as a result, there are already two universities in the country where this system is already being introduced. We also introduced Masterpass innovation in Azerbaijan, which was already in Turkey, and which is actually the best in the world in its class. It allows you to store your card under the protection of the Mastercard security system. That is, when making purchases on the website or in the mobile store, you no longer enter the number, card expiration date and CVC code (Card Verification Code) - you just need to save the card once, so that upon subsequent payment we will identify you quickly and, most importantly, safely give access to payment and money transfer wherever there is a Masterpass logo. The advantage of this system is that you no longer need to constantly enter your card information from store to store, and the seller does not need to store it every time, because if something happens, then these cards will be at risk of falling into third parties. This will not happen with Masterpass, because we have the technical infrastructure to keep this entire information safe through Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). In addition, we encourage the holding of a large discount network: Regardless of whether you are a citizen of Azerbaijan or not, in many hotels, medical institutions, coffee houses and boutiques of the city, when paying with a Masterpass or Maestro card, you will receive a discount of 10 percent or more, depending on the type of institution. The same system exists in Turkey, so when you visit, for example, certain hospitals in Istanbul or Ankara, or Trendyol and Hepsiburada stores, you will receive an instant discount if you pay with Azerbaijani MasterCard cards. I believe that this and some other campaigns in Azerbaijan have helped and continue to help people adapt to cashless payments. Also, we conducted several campaigns with more fashionable new developments on the market in 2019, for example, made a discount campaign with Wolt courier company and joined a partnership with Hesab.az (online payment system) owned by Goldenpay OJSC. We have also introduced innovative products, for example, we have a chat bot, thanks to which you can book a seat in a restaurant or book a hotel room by simply entering information into a chat on Facebook Messenger, Telegram or WhatsApp, and the chat bot will respond and give you options that you will choose. We also train cyber security bankers and product development. In October 2019, we also held a training on card payments with the media, because it has one of the biggest responsibilities in familiarizing people with payments, new trends, the digital economy and so on. Moreover, our training is not only bringing foreign experience here, but also "taking" the players of the financial system "there" - to trainings in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Silicon Valley to show them what, how and where are happening innovative solutions so that later they bring them to Azerbaijan. In connection with the end of the state program, the government is faced with the need to develop a new package of documents for the next period and expand the scope of the target program. What, in your opinion, should be worked on in subsequent years, and what can MasterCard offer in this regard? We are going to pay more attention to digitalization. We are working with the CBA in this direction and we will meet with the CBA management in the coming months to draw up a plan for the next stage, and this is only the beginning. When you start such a journey, you can no longer stop because people expect more and more offers. Now everything is becoming digital, and despite the fact that not all non-cash things are digital, all digital things are non-cash. Therefore, the emphasis on digitalization of the financial market is more than obvious. The economy around the world is transforming in a quick way, and today many markets do not use cash, for example, in Norway, China and the US, so we have something to offer the local market. So in 2020, several things will appear on the market, such as payment by phone, and so on, and it is necessary to maximize contactless payments in the coming years. In Georgia, 90 percent of non-cash transactions are contactless. In Azerbaijan, this is probably only five percent. But when we campaign in Bravo and give tenfold chances to win the iPhone or Car in the lottery, their number jumps to 50 percent. We are also going to bring new payment technologies, and again, these will be mobile payments, or something else from the "smart payments" category. However, it should be understood that we bring innovation not for the sake of innovation, but in order to benefit the bank, the cardholder, other ecosystem players, the state, and so on. After all, the more you become cashless, the more banks' liabilities increase, the greater the benefits for the government, since the economy will become more transparent and there will be more tax revenues, consumers themselves will enjoy the security and convenience of payments, regardless of whether they are in the store, abroad in another country, or online. The same experience should be everywhere, it should be seamless, and this is what we are mainly working on. So, our goal is to make Azerbaijan and Turkey leaders in the region in terms of payment in the digital economy. Mastercard invests a lot in fintech startups, acquiring them all over the world. Which of the newly acquired platforms are planned to be implemented in Azerbaijan in the near future? Are any of them under implementation? Yes, MasterCard actually invests both in established companies and in fintech. So, we have got several companies in recent years, such as the company involved in the field of Brighterion artificial intelligence company; Ethoca, which provides real-time interaction to TSPs and card issuers, and so on. This is a very useful technology, for example, one of the artificial intelligences we acquired, understands who you are by the way you hold your phone and how you type, and if it begins to suspect that it is not you, he begins to respond immediately by sending SMS request, or blocking and asking for a password, and etc. We help grow such fintechs across the globe, and support their growth. We have several fintechs in which we invest, we have several fintechs to whom we give ideas and serve as an intermediary, attracting banks to them, with which they may have some opportunities for cooperation. Does the company monitor and develop fintech startups in Azerbaijan, and if so, with whom does it work? I know some Azerbaijani fintechs in Silicon Valley, and, yes, we send some startup developers to forums to search for sponsors and help them in this regard. In general, investing in FinTech is an area for which we are not responsible at the global level, but what we do on our part is to train them, help them grow, and show them that we are connecting them with the right parties. In general, how can a startup in Azerbaijan draw your attention? How do you assess the situation with the development of fintech in the Azerbaijani market? How advanced is Azerbaijan in terms of payment technologies? Although Mastercard used to be a network exclusively for cards, now we invest everywhere where there is growth. So, in everything, no matter what grows, whatever brings income to the seller, cardholders, government and all partners, we either invest, or cooperate, or acquire. It does not even have to be fintech; for example, we also cooperate with automobile companies. For example, in Turkey, when you come to a gas station, the pump recognizes you by your license plate via bluetooth technology and you can pay without leaving your car, because your license plate and your phone are connected. This is a good program and we are investing in car companies around the world to introduce Mastercard infrastructure in their cars. This is done for a reason, since in the not too distant future there will be cars without a driver in everyday life, and this means that with our infrastructure you can buy without leaving your home, just by sending a car to the store. In autumn, MasterCard announced plans to provide an opportunity to replenish the balance of the BakuBus card and pay for public transport with credit cards. Are there any advances on this? Regarding the merger of MasterCard and BakuBus cards, on our part the technology is already ready, and we use it in other parts of the world. The use of payment cards in transport will bring a lot of volume in transactions and will tremendously change consumer behavior. That is why it is so important to us. So, Ill say it again, everything is ready on our side, but we do not wait for the transport authorities to do this, we ourselves begin a dialogue with them to create a solution, and even go to other cities. And not only that, transport is not necessarily a bus or subway; it is also intercity trains, so we take them into account. Sooner or later this technology will come to Azerbaijan, and although its distribution here will not be instantaneous, but even slow, the fact of a change in behavior is more important. As soon as people start using this card, they will use it everywhere; other people will see them and do the same, so this is a change in the behavior of the population in handling payments, digitalization of consumers. In Turkey, for example, everything is changed very quickly, and I hope that it will be the same here. - How do you assess the functioning of recently implemented projects in the country, such as MasterCard Masterpass, Smart Student Card and others? Masterpass technology has coexisted in Azerbaijan, and now it is used to make millions of transactions that, if there was no technology in the market, would either be cash or cash because the card holder did not want to insert the card, or non-cash, by long input card number or a PIN code. Now, these are millions of transactions taking place with just the click of a button on a mobile phone or browser. We are going to bring QR payments (bypassing application stores) to the country, so that you will be able to pay by scanning the QR code and a notification will come to your phone, notifying you want to pay with masterpass, and you just have to click "yes". This is how fast can payments be thanks to masterpass. As for student cards, we are currently working with the Azerbaijan State University of Economics (UNEC) and Baku Engineering University, but soon three or four more universities will join them. We are very glad that this is happening, but we want more, because the younger people get used to it, the faster they learn, and the faster this behavior will become their normal behavior, spreading widely in the national economy. And of course, this is all in the interest of students. We are currently working closely with banks to include several more universities in the Smart Student Card system by the end of 2020. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Laredo police continue investigating the officer-related shooting reported early Thursday near the Golden Corral. Authorities have not identified the 45-year-old male suspect nor the two officers involved in the incident. More for you Undocumented immigrants discovered in Laredo hotel room But police did say that the assailant could face an array of charges, including aggravated assault on a public servant, evading arrest with a vehicle, and terroristic threat, among others. Criminal and internal investigations are underway. Both officers have been placed on administrative reassignment pending the outcome of those investigations. The case unfolded at about 3 a.m. Thursday, when an LPD cop observed the driver of a Nissan Titan slumped over behind the steering wheel at the intersection of Salinas Avenue and Burnside Street. He began evading when the officer approached him for a traffic stop, according to police. U.S. Border Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety assisted LPD in the vehicle pursuit throughout the city. Authorities said the chase ended in the 6500 block of Santa Maria Avenue by Industrial Boulevard. Police said the driver charged his vehicle toward two cops, who responded by shooting and wounding the suspect. Laredo Fire Department crews responded and took the man to Doctors Hospital. He was then airlifted to San Antonio Military Medical Center, where police said he was listed in serious but stable condition. As the world waits out the coronavirus pandemic, leisure travel is on hiatus and people are glued to their screens, searching for ways to explore the physical world. The concept of virtual tourism is suddenly being promoted and tested on a global scale. You have hundreds of thousands of tour companies and tour guides right now who are really in trouble, and theyre trying to think of creative ways to remain relevant, said Douglas Quinby, senior analyst at the travel research firm Phocuswright. Theyre trying to bring their experiences into peoples homes because thats the only place people are right now. In California alone, a recent analysis from the state tourism bureau projects losses of $54 billion in travel spending and 554,000 jobs by the end of 2020. Travel companies in the U.S. and abroad are pivoting to route would-be tourists to video-supported guided tours they can experience from their living rooms. Google is releasing augmented-reality viewing experiences of world-renowned museums and art exhibits. Lonely Planet is promoting virtual hikes. Local tourism bureaus are launching at home recreation campaigns. Napa wineries are hosting virtual tastings. Theyre trying anything that brings that local experience to you through the screen, Quinby said. I wouldnt call that virtual really, it needs a new name. The widespread use of the term virtual calls to mind the scintillating prospect of virtual realitys infusion into daily life. Travel companies have been dipping a toe into the space for the past few years, crafting armchair experiences they hope will heighten anticipation for real trips. Lonely Planet, for instance, added a panoramic video component to one of its travel apps last year. Theres also been some crossover in video games, where VR has found a niche audience. Developers have conjured high-resolution VR simulations of the Palace of Versailles, Sistine Chapel and other fine art exhibitions. Travel is going to change big-time, said Elizabeth Lee, vice president of programs and development at CyArk, an Oakland nonprofit that digitally maps cultural heritage sites around the world and publishes realistic 3-D representations of them. I dont think international travel is going to bounce back any time this year, so I think people are going to look for different ways to experience culture and explore historic sites. Whether thats virtually or some other way, I dont know. Its definitely something were thinking about right now. Last year, CyArk launched a VR app called MasterWorks that renders historic wonders of the world in sharp texture for users to explore via a headset. Recently, the organization has collaborated with Google Arts & Culture on augmented-reality experiences in the tourism sphere. In the past two weeks, CyArks website traffic has risen by 100%, Lee said. Were looking at ways to do more specifically with Google, Lee said. Google declined to make a member of Arts & Culture available for comment before press time. Several hurdles stand between culture-starved consumers and VR. The supply of Oculus Rift VR headsets has ground to a near halt along with manufacturing in China. Issues with simulations inducing nausea among users continue to plague the technology. Plus, how many people have a room in their house to dedicate as a VR space? said Scott Highton, a photographer in San Carlos who develops VR projects. Its still not terribly practical. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Still, the virtual tours currently available most of which rely on 360-degree panoramic photography and video are showing encouraging returns. Highton created Virtual Yosemite, which synthesized hundreds of high-resolution landscape photographs into a digital simulation of Yosemite Valley, replete with historic information placards and nature sound recordings. Since Yosemite shut down to visitors last month, site visits to Virtual Yosemite are up 15- to 20-fold, topping out at about 10,000 unique visitors per day, Highton said. Just like a real visit to a national park, the experience made us smile and really appreciate the wow factor of the great outdoors, James Harper of Wales wrote in an email to The Chronicle. Several days into sheltering at home with his children, Harper and his 5-year-old son, Roo, scrolled their way through Virtual Yosemite, exploring Half Dome, Vernal Fall and Sentinel Bridge. It was lovely to see Roos face light up with excitement, Harper said. The question facing the broader travel industry during this period of disruption is whether any of these virtual offerings will have staying power or can be monetized after the coronavirus pandemic subsides. Its anyones guess. Overall, I personally havent seen any virtual tour that has blown me away yet, Eric Shepard, vice president of Lonely Planet Ventures, wrote in an email to The Chronicle. I think with continued technology enhancements we will get there. But right now, I dont see virtual tours as a large revenue driver its more of a free offering to keep people engaged during these difficult times. Gregory Thomas is The San Francisco Chronicles editor of lifestyle and outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @GregRThomas Judy Sheindlin, better known to the world as Judge Judy, is truly a force to be reckoned with. Her eponymous show, Judge Judy, has been a staple of daytime TV for an astonishing 25 years, and her swift justice and no-nonsense attitude has been garnering respect, fandom, and viral videos across generational and geographical divides. Through it all, Sheindlin has amassed a fortune, and shes been smartly looking at her future to make sure that her investments pay off for the long-term for her and her family. Judge Judy makes sure she gets fair pay for her work Judge Judy Sheindlin | Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images Its clear to anyone watching Judge Judy that it is Sheindlins quick wit and biting persona that make the show as popular as it is. Sheindlin knows her worth, and she has made sure that she is getting a fair portion of the money her show brings in for the network CBS. Sheindlin earns a staggering $47 million a year, making her the highest-paid TV personality. She negotiated the terms of her current contract in 2015, and that immense paycheck is for just 52 days of work each year. In addition to her payment for ongoing performances, she also recognized the immense value of her show as reruns. Armed with that knowledge, she negotiated a deal with CBS and sold her library of episodes to the network for $95 million. While that deal landed Sheindlin in some legal hot water when former producers wanted their cut of the profits, she ultimately came out ahead. Sheindlin has had to face a tough road as a woman in the legal field, and in many ways her public performance of her legal credentials has been groundbreaking. When she earned her J.D. from New York Law School in 1965, she was the only woman in a class of 126 students. Perhaps it is this path to success that helped her hone her famous tough stance, and it has certainly taught her how to fight for her fair share. Judge Judy is looking to the future as her show winds down Sheindlin announced that the end of an era is drawing to a close. The final episodes of her show will be airing in 2021, and the gavel will drop on the 25-year run of TVs most famous judge. However, this is not going to be the end of Sheindlins public performances. While it may seem that the judge has earned herself a nice, quiet retirement, she insists that shes not tired and has big plans for the future. While she remained tight-lipped about what, exactly, fans could expect from the show, she did tease new programming called Judy Justice. We can expect to see it sometime in 2022 and will have to stay tuned to see what Sheindlin has in store. Judge Judy has also been investing her fortune In memory of #JudgeJudy ending this will forever be a classic pic.twitter.com/i2IOd2aLnI Gump (@somedudenamed_e) March 2, 2020 While she may be continuing her work in new ventures, she has also been making calculated investments that ensure her money is well positioned. She has an estimated net worth of $440 million, and she is careful to spread her investments around. A lot of those investments are tied up in real estate. She and her husband, Jerry Sheindlin, spend most of their time in their $8.6 million Florida mansion. However, the couple also has homes in Connecticut, California, and Rhode Island. She is also not above pampering herself and works out using her membership at the Ritz-Carlton. On top of that, she rarely flies commercial and depends on private jets to get her from mansion to mansion. Sheindlin has worked hard for many years to amass a devoted fan base and dole out justice for the world to see. While it might be tempting for her to step back and rest on the fruits of those labors (she is, after all, 77 years old), she seems full of energy and ready to take on a whole new endeavor. In the meantime, the fortune shes earned seems to be managed well to ensure shell live the rest of her life in comfort and luxury. In firing one inspector general, sidelining another and assailing a third, President Donald Trump in recent days has put his aversion to agents of federal accountability on stark display in a country consumed by the coronavirus . Clearly displeased when inspectors general come to independent conclusions that dont fit the stories he tells, Trump employs a tactic to mar their credibility. If public servants worked for the government in the Obama era, they are subject to being painted as Obama loyalists out to get him. And theyre not insulated if they worked for Republican presidents, too, as the three targeted IGs found out. So it went over the past week as Trump distorted key elements of the pandemic response and the few other political subjects that got any attention in the pandemic. A look: GOVERNMENT WATCHDOGS TRUMP, on his decision to remove Glenn Fine, acting Defense Department inspector general who was tapped to lead a special oversight board of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package: Well, we have IGs in from the Obama era. news briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: Fine is not a creature of the Obama era. He is a career government official who had served both Republican and Democratic administrations and was selected by his peers for the virus oversight board. Trump distorts that record to make Fine and other public servants look like plants or holdovers from President Barack Obama. Fine has been acting Pentagon inspector general for more than four years, and before that was inspector general at the Justice Department for a decade, including the entire duration of the George W. Bush administration. He now reverts to the position of principal deputy inspector general at the Pentagon. Though inspectors general are presidential appointees, many serve presidents of both parties. All are expected to be nonpartisan. They operate as independent investigators in departments, shedding light on deficiencies in their agencies. TRUMP, on a report from the Health and Human Services Departments watchdog that found hospitals faced severe shortages of coronavirus test supplies: Did I hear the word inspector general? Really? Its wrong. ... Could politics be entered into that? news briefing April 6. TRUMP, referring to the HHS report: Another Fake Dossier! tweet Tuesday. TRUMP: You didnt tell me also that this inspector general came out of the Obama administration. news briefing on April 6. THE FACTS: His claims are groundless. There is no evidence that the report was wrong or politically motivated. Again, he insinuates that a longtime civil servant is an Obama loyalist out to get him. The inspector general in charge of the report is a government employee whose tenure predates the Obama administration. The report was based on a survey of 323 hospitals around the country in late March and reported conditions they described. It did not make any judgments about the federal health department or the Trump administration. With coronavirus cases rocketing toward their expected peak, the inspector generals office reported that a shortage of tests and long waits for results were at the root of mounting problems faced by hospitals. Overseeing the report was Christi A. Grimm, who is acting as HHS inspector general. She is a career government manager who took over the position early this year in an interim capacity. Grimm began her career with the agency in 1999, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. A week ago Trump fired Michael Atkinson , the intelligence community inspector general who forwarded to Congress a whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to the presidents impeachment in the House. His career at the Justice Department dated back to the early Bush administration, and it was Trump who nominated him as inspector general for intelligence. VIRUS TESTING TRUMP: Initially speaking, the tests were old, obsolete, and not really prepared. We have a brand-new testing system that we developed very quickly, and thats your result. news briefing on April 6. TRUMP: This administration inherited a broken system, a system that was obsolete, a system that didnt work. news briefing on March 30. THE FACTS: His assertion that he inherited a broken and obsolete COVID-19 test from the Obama administration is false. The novel coronavirus did not exist until late last year, so there was no test to inherit. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instead struggled to develop its own test for the coronavirus in January, later discovering problems in its kits sent to state and county public health labs in early February. It took the CDC more than two weeks to come up with a fix to the test kits, leading to delays in diagnoses through February, a critical month when the virus took root in the U.S. Not until Feb. 29 did the Food and Drug Administration decide to allow labs to develop and use their own coronavirus diagnostic tests before the agency reviews them, speeding up the supply. Previously, the FDA had only authorized use of a government test developed by the CDC. Meantime the U.S. bypassed a test that the World Health Organization quickly made available internationally. Trump has said that test was flawed; it wasnt. TRUMP: We are leading the world now in testing by far. news briefing Friday. TRUMP: America continues to perform more tests than any other nation in the world. ... Now were performing them at a level that nobody has ever seen before. news briefing Tuesday. TRUMP: Nobody has done more testing. ... If (other countries) did the kind of testing proportionally that we are doing, theyd have many more cases than us. briefing on April 6. THE FACTS: Hes wrong to say the U.S. has done more tests proportionally than other countries. More broadly, his frequent boasts about testing mask what his own officials have called a failure of the system. The U.S. has notably lagged on this vital front. As for proportional testing, South Korea is just one of the countries with better testing rates. It also has fewer known cases of COVID-19, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of its population. One test has been done for every 100 South Koreans, compared with one for every 150 Americans, according to figures in recent days. Altogether, South Korea has conducted nearly 500,000 tests; the U.S. has conducted over 2.2 million. But South Koreas population is six times smaller. The U.S. only recently surpassed South Korea in the total number of tests, even though both countries reported their first confirmed cases on the same day in January. U.S. testing continues to be constrained by shortages of key supplies, including sampling swabs, and backlogs of unprocessed tests. ECONOMIC RELIEF TRUMP, with his daughter Ivanka in the Roosevelt Room of the White House: She created over 15 million jobs. speaking Tuesday with bankers via video conference about virus aid for small businesses. THE FACTS: Thats a complete illusion. Before the coronavirus became widespread, less than half that many jobs were added to the entire U.S. workforce during Trumps presidency, and his daughter was not responsible for them. The president is referring to a White House initiative led by Ivanka Trump that garnered nonbinding commitments from companies to provide 14 million or so training opportunities in the years ahead. Training for a job is not working at a job for money. Theres no telling how many workers were already going to be trained, absent the initiative. In many cases, the pledge simply confers a presidential seal of approval on what some companies were doing anyway. By having companies sign the pledge, the administration is relying on the private sector to take on more of the financial burden of training workers. (And now, job gains under Trump have been more than wiped out by the pandemic.) TRUMP, on a federal emergency lending program for small businesses: Im hearing its a very, very successful rollout. news briefing Thursday. TRUMP: As of today, Small Business (Administration) has processed more than $70 billion in guaranteed loans and will provide much-needed relief for nearly a quarter of a million businesses already ... were way ahead of schedule. news briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: Hes glossing over reality. There have been substantial delays , with few loans issued. The $349 billion emergency lending program just began operating April 3, but the rollout has been plagued by a host of problems. Small-business owners have complained that they are unable to get through to the SBA or the banks to apply for loans or that they are being rejected by banks that say they are accepting applications only from businesses that are already customers of the bank. Two of the nations largest banks, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, werent initially set up to take applications. The SBAs loan processing system then stopped working early in the week, making it impossible for loans to be approved and money distributed, while confusion spread about the documents that lenders needed from customers to complete loan transactions. Thats according to a trade group for community bankers and the CEO of an online lending marketplace. Trump was actually citing the value of applications received at the time but yet to be fully administered. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had predicted before the program started that loans could be turned around and money transferred to businesses bank accounts the same day as applications were received. PANDEMIC RESPONSE TRUMP, saying his administration is doing a great job handling the coronavirus: Take a look at the swine flu. Thats H1N1.It was a disaster. The other administration, they didnt even know it was like they didnt even know it was here. news briefing on April 6. THE FACTS: His suggestion that the Obama administration was oblivious and did nothing during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, initially called swine flu, is wrong. Then, the CDCs flu surveillance network actually sounded the alarm, spotting two children in California who were the first diagnosed cases of the new flu strain. About two weeks later, the U.S. declared a public health emergency and CDC began releasing anti-flu drugs from the national stockpile to help hospitals get ready. In contrast, Trump declared a state of emergency in early March, seven weeks after the first U.S. case of COVID-19 was announced. THE VIRUS THREAT TRUMP, referring to his past comparisons of the coronavirus to the flu: You said I said it was just like a flu. So the worst pandemic we ever had in this world was a flu.It was in 1917, 1918. And anywhere from 50 to 100 million people died. That was a flu, OK? So, you could say that I said it was a flu, or you could say, The flu is nothing to sneeze at. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: Hes revising history both his own and that of the century-old pandemic. Trump never suggested the coronavirus was akin to the pandemic Spanish flu, which spread from early 1918 to late 1920 and killed over 50 million worldwide. On the contrary, he repeatedly dismissed COVID-19 from January until mid-March as being less of a danger than the common flu and something that would mysteriously disappear soon enough. In February, he asserted that coronavirus cases were going very substantially down, not up, and told Fox Business it will be fine because in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. Its a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for, he told reporters on Feb. 26. And well essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.Two days before the WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic, Trump still presented a sunny outlook on COVID-19. So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu, he tweeted March 9. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that! And in a Fox News virtual town hall March 24, Trump rejected likening the coronavirus to the 1918 pandemic. You cant compare this to 1918 where close to 100 million people died. That was a flu, which a little different, he said, overstating the likely death toll of that pandemic. TRUMP, asked about the wisdom of freezing funding to the WHO during a pandemic: Im not saying Im going to do it, but were going to look at it. Told he had said minutes earlier he would freeze funding, he said, No, I didnt. I said were going to look at it. briefing Tuesday. THE FACTS: Actually, he said earlier in the briefing that he was going to freeze U.S funding to the organization. Were going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO, he said. Were going to put a very powerful hold on it. Hes unhappy with the organizations coronavirus recommendations. The United States contributed nearly $900 million to its budget for 2018-19, according to information on the agencys website, an amount that represented one-fifth of the WHOs total budget for those years. On Friday, Trump said hell make an announcement about WHO soon. Were going to be talking about that subject next week, he told reporters. Well have a lot to say about it. Well hold it. MALARIA DRUG TRUMP, on the governments decision to stockpile millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine to make it available for patients with COVID-19: Youre not going to die from this pill. ... I really think its a great thing to try, just based on what I know. Again, Im not a doctor. news briefing Tuesday. TRUMP: What do you have to lose? Ill say it again: What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it. But its their choice and its their doctors choice, or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine try it, if youd like. news briefing on April 4. TRUMP: They say taking it before the fact is good. ... It can help them but its not going to hurt them. news briefing on April 5. THE FACTS: Hes making unverified claims about a drug that can have serious side effects and may not work. The drug has not been approved as a treatment for COVID-19, and Trumps own health experts say more studies are needed to know whether its safe and effective to use. The president has been talking up hydroxychloroquine, a drug long used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, after very small preliminary studies suggested it might help prevent coronavirus from entering cells and possibly help patients clear the virus sooner. Doctors can already prescribe the malaria drug to patients with COVID-19, a practice known as off-label prescribing. Research studies are now beginning to test if the drugs truly help COVID-19 patients, and the FDA has allowed the drugs into the national stockpile as an option for doctors to consider for patients who cannot get into one of the studies. But the drug has major potential side effects, especially for the heart, and large studies are underway. The FDA says people should not take it without a prescription and emphasizes that the malaria drugs being explored are not FDA-approved for treatment of COVID-19. The American Medical Association, the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in a joint statement warned against prophylactically prescribing medications currently identified as potential treatments for COVID-19. That means prescribing a medicine for the purpose of warding off a disease or preventing its spread. TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS TRUMP, explaining his hesitancy to suspend U.S. domestic flights to stem spread of the virus: Theyre generally very, very empty planes. Theres also testing done when people get onto those planes and also when people get off the planes. news briefing on April 6. THE FACTS: False. Theres no evidence to support his suggestion that travelers at U.S. airports are being regularly tested, let alone when they both get on and off the planes. There are coronavirus screenings of some passengers arriving at 13 major U.S. airports on international flights, which involve temperature checks and questioning by U.S. agents about possible symptoms. Some states are also screening passengers who are arriving from hard-hit coronavirus areas in the U.S. and asking them to self-isolate. None of that is the same as getting a COVID-19 test, and there are plenty of gaps in containment. The screenings, for instance, can miss people who dont yet show symptoms of COVID-19; while symptoms often appear within five or six days of exposure, the incubation period is 14 days. The checks on international travelers are primarily conducted for American citizens, legal permanent residents, and their immediate families who recently visited certain countries many parts of Europe, as well as China and Iran. (Image Credit: AP) ALBANY A month into COVID-19 school closures, many K-12 students in the Capital Region can't get online to access their school work, despite efforts by companies like Spectrum and T-Mobile to help meet the need. A gap in access to remote learning is emerging between more affluent suburban districts, where most students had district-issued Chromebooks and internet before the pandemic, and higher poverty city districts which are struggling to keep up with the demand. Albany City School District, which enrolls close to 9,000 students, rolled out its remote learning program through Google Classroom on April 6, a week after other districts in the region started introducing more materials, in part, because internet connectivity issues would have left too many behind. A phone survey identified 2,517 families that did not have access to a computer at home and 549 households without reliable internet. For three weeks, the district handed out D.I.Y. paper packets at its seven meal drop-off locations for students to use in lieu accessing material online, school officials said. Latest coronavirus-related cancellations, postponements The latest coronavirus numbers in NY Sign up for the Times Union coronavirus newsletter Full coronavirus coverage The district has since distributed 2,168 Chromebooks to those families -- although just one per household -- and is working with T-Mobile to secure 600 hotspots to distribute to students, according to district spokesman Ron Lesko. In the meantime, the district is encouraging students to take advantage free WiFi like Albany FreeNet, the Albany Public Library access, as well as Spectrum's 60-day free-internet promotion for students and educators during the pandemic. The district is still providing paper packets at two of its schools. Shenendehowa school district, which serves a similarly sized student population in the southern Saratoga County towns of Clifton Park and Halfmoon, was better equipped for the crisis; most students already had district-issued devices and remote learning guidelines were set on March 30, after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that that the initial two-week school closures had been extended. Shenendehowa spokeswoman Kelly DeFeciani said the district researched students' internet accessibility several years ago in preparation for going "one-to-one," which indicates that each student has a personal device. "We found that more than 90 percent had access," she said. "While this can change any day/week, we hear about very few students who are unable to access online work at all... we do know there are many demands on home WiFi now with parents and siblings being home and for elementary students sharing devices can be create additional challenges." A survey at Schenectady County's Mohonasan school district found that 96 students, or 3.4 percent of the 2,850-student body, did not have internet access. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. In Ballston Spa, administrators say they have been unable to get an accurate count of students that do not have internet access. While we are confident in saying that over half of our students have reliable access to the Internet, the change in child care placement, as well as a varied definition of 'reliable access' being utilized within the district, has not allowed us to have a more accurate read of this," said Stuart Williams, a spokesman for the Ballston Spa Central School District. "We continue to work on getting more accurate information on this as we prepare to roll out the next phase of our Continuity of Learning plan. Chalkbeat NY reported last month that until recently, New York City parents were denied service because they were former subscribers of Spectrum with outstanding bills. It's difficult to get an agent on the phone -- wait times can be several hours -- and when the installation is necessary, some parents say they have encountered delays. The network's umbrella company, Charter Communications, changed its policy to allow households with students or educators with outstanding balances in New York to gain internet access following pressure from elected officials following the Chalkbeat report. "This went into effect just over two weeks ago," Charter spokeswoman Lara Pritchard said. The offer of free internet access now only excludes households that have had Spectrum within a 30-day period. Then there are areas where internet providers can't reach, like the Adirondacks. Michele Bushey, a high school biology teacher in the town of Saranac, in the Adirondack region, told the American Federation of Teachers union that lack of internet and Wi-Fi access was a problem before the crisis. This region has a lot beautiful mountains that make for amazing landscapes, but it certainly makes it more difficult to get needed internet service, Bushey said. I have a number of students who dont have Wi-Fi or internet, and that means Im reaching out to them by phone daily to try to provide alternate instruction for them. Huaweis flagship Android tablet, the Huawei MatePad Pro, has yet to hit the international markets and the company already has two more offerings nearing launch. Last week, we spotted a Kirin 810-powered mid-range Android tablet from the Chinese company. Now a render for a new, smaller Huawei tablet has also leaked online. Noted leaker Evan Blass recently shared a render for the Huawei MatePad T on his Patreon page. It is an 8-inch Android tablet and might be the companys budget offering this year. The Huawei MatePad T features pretty thick bezels and a single rear camera that seemingly protrudes out of the body. It should also get a single front-facing camera. Advertisement Huaweis upcoming budget-friendly tablet has the power and volume keys on the right side. A cutout can also be seen on the bottom but its unclear if that is a 3.5mm headphone jack or a USB Type-C port. The render shared by Evan Blass shows the Huawei MatePad T in Blue color. More color variants of the tablet should be available when it launches. Huawei MatePad T gets Wi-Fi certification The Huawei MatePad T render leaked just around the time when it also bagged certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA). Advertisement The WFA has certified the MatePad T with six different model numbers, namely KOB2-W09, KOB2-L03, KOB2-L09, BZD-AL10, BZD-AL00, and BZD-W00. These model numbers might refer to the Wi-Fi-only, LTE, and 5G versions of the tablet. The Wi-Fi certification also reveals that the tablet supports dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi and runs EMUI 10 on top of Android OS. The rest of the specs of Huawei MatePad T are still a mystery, though. Interestingly, Huawei previously used the T branding with its MediaPad line of low-cost Android tablets. The company might now be looking to bring this series of affordable tablets under the MatePad branding as well. Advertisement There are no details on the price and availability of the Huawei MatePad T. It should be pretty affordable though, as its Huaweis budget offering. Huawei also has a mid-range Android tablet in the works currently and its priced quite reasonably as well. The Kirin 810-powered tablet, which will likely be called Huawei MatePad, features a 10.4-inch display. It will reportedly sell at a starting price of 1,799 Yuan (roughly $255). It remains to be seen if either of these tablets make their way out at Huaweis Nova 7 launch event later this month. The Huawei Nova 7 series of smartphones will reportedly launch on April 23 in China. A teenage Indigenous offender will cost the criminal justice system about $380,000, five times more than a non-Indigenous offender, an Australian Institute of Criminology report revealed. In a study on offender trajectories published on Wednesday, Griffith University researchers found that non-Indigenous offenders between the ages of 10 and 31 cost the system just under $75,000 on average. Indigenous woman Keelen Mailman says the government needs to think innovatively to fix the endless cycle of crime that jails fail to solve. This difference is due largely to the greater frequency and length of youth detention experienced by Indigenous offenders in Queensland, the study states. Indigenous woman Keelen Mailman, a Medal of the Order of Australia recipient this year, said this was no surprise to her after she had lobbied for a rehabilitation centre on traditional land for low-risk offenders. Democratic governors in the Northeast and along the West Coast on Monday announced separate state compacts to coordinate one of their biggest challenges in the weeks to come: How to begin reopening society amid the coronavirus pandemic. The governors made separate announcements just hours after President Donald Trump said on Twitter that it was his decision to decide when to open up the states." Pandemic protection: Houston's Mount Rush Hour gets new virus-related twist The governors did not announce specific plans on how to scale back stay-at-home orders or reopen businesses. Instead, both groups said they would coordinate those decisions while first considering the health of residents. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said it could take time. The house is still on fire," he said during a conference call with reporters. We still have to put the fire out, but we do have to begin putting in the pieces of the puzzle that we know were going to need ... to make sure this doesnt reignite. His state is in a coalition with its Northeastern neighbors Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston schools scramble for hotspots to avoid 'lost' students The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced similar plans Monday. While each state is building its own plan, the three West Coast states have agreed to a framework saying they will work together, put their residents health first and let science guide their decisions. COVID-19 has preyed upon our interconnectedness, the three governors said in a statement. In the coming weeks, the West Coast will flip the script on COVID-19 with our states acting in close coordination and collaboration to ensure the virus can never spread wildly in our communities. Some of the Northeastern states coordinated last month as they ordered businesses to shut down. States also have been sharing medical supplies. Trump's statement on Twitter earlier in the day also said that he was working closely with governors. It was not immediately clear whether the compacts announced by the Northeast and West Coast states were in reaction to the president's earlier message or had been in the works beforehand. Puerto Rico officials have been accused of attempting to silence the press and banning journalists from televised coronavirus briefings by multiple Spanish-language news outlets, as criticism grew over the governments response to the pandemic. Telemundo Puerto Rico, one of the leading local networks based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, slammed governor Wanda Vazquez Garced and her administration in a statement after it was reported that outside journalists would no longer be allowed to participate in coronavirus task force briefings, hosted by WIPR-TV. The network alleged WIPR a government-owned television station funded by taxpayers was following the instruction from the governor and silencing the press, in announcing a ban on journalists from three weekly briefings on the coronavirus pandemic. Journalists were initially invited to participate in the briefings, which include government and health officials, and ask questions about the administrations response to the pandemic. Recent reports about the government's $19m deposit for Covid-19 testing kits that didnt show up on time and were not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration have raised questions about Puerto Ricos handling of the outbreak, as the island confirmed nearly 1,000 cases and at least 45 deaths due to the novel virus. With the recent decision, the only reporters allowed to question the officials will be WIPR-affiliated journalists, according to the station's announcement. Telemundo Puerto Rico described the move to ban reporters from the briefings as something that not even President Trump would dare to do and said that it cannot in good conscience lend itself to broadcast propagandist programming. Puerto Ricos response to the pandemic has been criticised by opponents of the local government as disjointed from that of the federal government, and civil rights groups alleged certain restrictions violated the US constitution. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the island earlier this month over its strict curfew announced in response to the pandemic, with the organisation saying in a statement: Theres been no martial law declared, and there are no circumstances for it . As such, emergency states cannot be used to suspend fundamental rights. Officials say they are taking the most stringent steps to ensure public safety and provide enough information to local residents. The worst is yet to come for Puerto Rico, health secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez said in a statement. But they also claimed the decision to ban journalists from the three weekly shows, all of which run at least one-hour long, was made by WIPR alone, without input from the administration. That is a decision of the president of the public corporation, Public Affairs Secretary Osvaldo Soto reportedly said in a radio interview. Eric Delgado, the president of the public television station in Puerto Rico, defended the decision to ban additional journalists from the shows in an interview with CBS anchor David Begnaud. Lets say we gave them from 12 to 15 minutes and all a sudden in a show, he said, they decided without asking or anything to take from that time and use it for some other journalism purposes, or news purposes. He added: Unfortunately, I had to pull out. Guwahati/Kohima, April 13 : With two more coronavirus positive cases reported in Assam on Monday, the total number of such cases in the northeast reached 37, including Assam's 31 cases, Assam Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said. Sarma tweeted: "Another person from Dhubri (western Assam), connected with the Tablighi Jamaat meet at Nizamuddin Markaz (in Delhi), has been found coronavirus positive. The total number of such patients in Assam now stands at 30 (after one death)." In another tweet he said: "A private hospital in Dimapur (Nagaland) referred a patient to the GMCH (Guwahati Medical College and Hospital). He has tested positive and is undergoing treatment at the GMCH." Health Department officials in Guwahati said that the man from Nagaland had travelled from Kolkata to Dimapur on March 23 and when he developed symptoms of nCoV, he was shifted to GMCH on April 5. In Manipur, a 23-year-old woman, who had returned from the United Kingdom last month and become the first positive case in the northeastern region, has now been declared negative and discharged from the hospital on Sunday. Of the total 37 positive cases -- Assam (31), Manipur (2), Tripura (2), Mizoram (1) and Arunachal Pradesh (1) -- 30 took part in the Jamaat meet in Delhi last month. According to the Assam Health and Family Welfare Minister, the state reported its first death due to coronavirus on Friday (April 10). Five samples of state's 30 positive cases have since tested negative. The first corona death in Assam, also the first in the northeastern region, was in Hailakandi district. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Meghalaya government has decided to extend the coronavirus lockdown till April 30. The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting held here on Monday evening. The Cabinet further approved a proposal of the Labour Department according to which over 1,20,000 beneficiaries or workers who work in the unorganised sector will be paid Rs 700 each for three weeks. Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong said that there are over 3000 students and workers from the state stranded in other parts of the country and each of them will be given a one-time financial benefit of Rs 3000. On the local weekly market, Tynsong said that the local village markets will be open, but the Deputy Commissioners have been directed to check the feasibility of reopening local village markets in districts that are interlinked with interstate boundary. He, however, said that the Deputy Commissioners of other districts have directed to come up with modalities whether it can be allowed in rural areas. He also said that as far as government employees are concerned the cabinet has decided the attendance should not be more than 50 per cent. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kim Jong-Un's younger sister has been reinstated to North Korea's leadership council to preside over the police state's expansive propaganda operation. Kim Yo Jong, believed to be in her thirties, was turfed out of the dictator's inner circle when she was blamed for last year's bungled talks with Donald Trump. But following an extensive publicity drive to curry favour, her brother has appointed her an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. Saturday's reshuffle saw the Pyongyang strongman overhaul a third of his decision-making body, according to state media. Kim Jong-Un's younger sister Kim Yo Jong (left) has been reinstated to North Korea's leadership council to preside over the police state's expansive propaganda operation. Pictured: Kim Yo Jong walks ahead of South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in March North Korean leader Kim Jong Un takes part in a meeting of the reshuffled Political Bureau of the Central Committee on Saturday Kim Yo Jong was promoted to vice minister for foreign affairs, with special responsibility for pumping out the nation's propaganda, the Times reports. Talks between Washington and Pyongyang collapsed in February last year when President Trump pulled out of a much anticipated Hanoi summit to discuss denuclearisation. Kim pinned the blame on his younger sister, who was swiftly removed from her post. Since she was cast out into the cold, Kim Yo Jong has steadily built back her public profile by appearing in videos with her brother - one even shows the pair riding horses in the snowy mountains. A North Korean defector who is now a researcher in Seoul, Ahn Chan-il, said: 'The restoration is part of Kim Yo Jong's recent rise within the North's hierarchy.' Kim Yo Jong acted as her brother's envoy to the South at the time of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018, which ushered in a rapid diplomatic rapprochement on the divided peninsula. Kim Yo Jong (left, handing a document to Mike Pompeo), believed to be in her thirties, was turfed out of the dictator's inner circle when she was blamed for last year's bungled talks (first summit in Singapore pictured) with Donald Trump Kim Yo Jong, center, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, talks with South Koran President Moon Jae-in in 2018 She has frequently been pictured alongside him at summits with President Trump or the South's President Moon Jae-in. But she only began issuing statements of direct political significance under her own name last month, which analysts said highlights her central role in the North's political ranking. It followed her appointment as first vice-department director of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party - her main role in the totalitarian state. Ri Son Gwon, who was named the North's top diplomat in January, was also elected as an alternate member of the Political Bureau alongside Kim's sister. Since he came to power Kim has established an iron grip on the levers of authority in his nuclear-armed country. He is chairman of the SAC - the North's highest decision-making body - and five of its 13 other members were replaced at a meeting of the country's rubber-stamp Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) parliament on Sunday, the state KCNA news agency reported. 'This is a rather large scale of SAC membership shuffle,' said former US government North Korea analyst Rachel Lee. Since he came to power Kim has established an iron grip on the levers of authority in his nuclear-armed country (pictured on Saturday) North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects inspects an air defense unit in western area Pictures carried by the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed hundreds of lawmakers sitting in close proximity to each other without wearing protective masks. A cabinet report reiterated the North's insistence that 'not a single case' of the coronavirus pandemic that has swept the world since emerging in neighbouring China has been reported in the country. Pyongyang put thousands of its own people and hundreds of foreigners - including diplomats - into isolation and mounted disinfection drives as it sought to prevent an outbreak, which experts say could be devastating given its weak health sector and widespread malnutrition. 'State emergency anti-epidemic campaign will continue to be intensified to prevent the spread of COVID-19,' the cabinet report said. There was no mention on KCNA of Kim presiding over the meeting himself, and he did not appear in photos of it. 'The fact that North Korea went ahead with the SPA suggests the country's confidence in managing the coronavirus situation,' Lee told AFP. 'The fact that the attendees were not wearing masks only reconfirms that.' Under Kim the North has made rapid progress on its nuclear arsenal, launching missiles capable of reaching the whole of the US mainland, and has been subject to increasingly stringent UN Security Council sanctions as a result. Talks with the US have been largely deadlocked since the collapse of the Hanoi summit last year over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in exchange. A budgetary report submitted to the SPA said 15.9 percent of state spending this year would be devoted to defence, KCNA said, a marginal increase on 2019. The cabinet report acknowledged that 'serious mistakes' were found in its work last year. 'They taught a serious lesson that if the officials in charge of providing economic guidance fail to fulfil their duty,' the authorities' economic goals will not be achieved, it said. The world, as we all know, is a very different place today than it was just a month ago when we saw our first confirmed COVID-19 patient at Danbury Hospital. The news arriving by the hour, if not even more frequently, about the spread of COVID-19 in our nation, state, and communities has understandably resulted in a growing sense of fear and perhaps even helplessness for many about the situation. But whats getting lost in the story are the positive developments that are being made as we all rise to this extraordinary challenge. We have been hard at work at Danbury and New Milford hospitals, and across Nuvance Health, well before we even treated our first confirmed COVID-19 patient, as it became clear that it was only a matter of time before what was (and still is) happening in Asia and Europe would also arrive here. Those preparedness activities and following the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for how to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and effectively care for COVID-19 patients, have helped us immeasurably in dealing with this pandemic. Today, we continue to prepare and execute emergency response activities. For example, Nuvance Health launched Virtual Visits at our primary care practices so doctors can screen patients remotely for possible COVID-19 infections. Virtual Visits are also for primary care patients who want to see their doctor about other health concerns such as colds, viruses, fevers, chronic conditions, new symptoms, and other common illnesses. This effectively has kept more patients home to help reduce the possible community spread of COVID-19, without sacrificing the care our patients need and deserve, especially now. Together with the Connecticut Department of Public Health (CT DPH) and our incredible local and state government and public health leaders, emergency medical services, and first responders, we opened two drive-through collection sites at Danbury Hospital and Norwalk Hospital so people in our communities who meet criteria for COVID-19 testing have a safe and convenient place to go to give a specimen sample for a test; all without even leaving their vehicle. To plan for possible surge scenarios, we prepared two field hospitals together with the City of Danbury, CT DPH, Connecticut Emergency Management and Homeland Security, and Connecticut National Guard: a 25-bed field hospital located outside Danbury Hospital, and 250-bed field hospital located at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. We also launched Nuvance Health Medical Professional Reserves to prepare for possible clinical staffing needs. Were looking for volunteers 18 years of age and older with a clinical or healthcare background to assist us with the projected COVID-19 surge. For people who meet this criteria, please visit nuvancehealth.org/volunteer/now. We are continuing to follow new policies we implemented early on in order to reduce the possible spread of COVID-19, including postponing nonessential procedures and surgeries, limiting visitors at our hospitals and facilities, and screening all employees and approved visitors for risk factors of COVID-19 before they enter our hospitals and facilities. These planning and response efforts are important. But its also imperative that everyone follow the guidelines established by the federal and state governments to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Governor Lamont has signed several executive orders on a daily basis, indicative of how quickly the situation is changing. These include limiting all social and recreational gatherings. We understand these are difficult instructions to accept and follow, but this is a critical time in public health history and its crucial we all work together to ensure these temporary orders are followed. We know this by now but its worth repeating the other important ways to protect yourself, your family, and your community and help reduce the spread of COVID-19. These include: Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth; wash your hands frequently; cover your coughs and sneezes; and stay six feet away from others. Please continue to postpone nonessential appointments, errands, and travel in order to stay home as much as possible. The CDC is also now recommending we wear cloth face coverings in public settings, such as the grocery store, to slow the spread of COVID-19. I want to assure you that, as of right now, Danbury and New Milford hospitals, and all seven of Nuvance Healths hospitals, still have adequate supplies. We continuously and proactively plan for future need, and we welcome federal, state, county, local, and private support to help us maintain supplies during this pandemic. The magnitude of generosity in our communities is quite amazing. During this challenging time, many people have asked us, What can I do to help? We cannot thank you enough. If you are able to provide financial support or an in-kind donation, such as personal protective equipment (PPE), please consider making a difference at this critical time when the demands on our healthcare system are immediate and growing. For more information, please visit: nuvancehealth.org/coronavirus/givenow Together well get through this. Lets make that our promise to one another. #DanburyStrong #NewMilfordStrong Sharon Adams is president of Danbury and New Milford hospitals, which are part of Nuvance Health. As industries prepare to restart operations in a staggered manner in the second phase of the lockdown, the Rajasthan government has extended working hours at factories from a maximum of 8 hours to 12 hours a day to ensure production doesnt take a hit with a limited workforce. The template is set to be followed by other states such as Punjab. Rajasthan has used special powers under the Factories Act of 1948, which could be invoked during a public emergency, to make these changes for the next three months. This will apply to all the manufacturing activities permitted ... Shortly before her promotion last year to head the foreign ministrys information department, Hua Chunying lamented the lack of fighting spirit among Chinas diplomats in promoting the countrys preferred narrative. She admitted China had a lot of problems getting its message across at a time of deepening rivalry with the United States and scrutiny of Chinas global ambitions in an increasingly chaotic world. But for Hua, who just wrapped up a four-month training course focused on President Xi Jinpings domestic and foreign policies at the Central Party School, diplomats inaction and their lack of fight is partly to blame. Published in a front-page article in July in Study Times, the flagship newspaper of the party school, her remarks echoed a key message that the leadership and diplomats have repeated since early last year, that Communist cadres must prepare for along-term struggle and be prepared to fight through adversity. The Covid-19 crisis is obviously one of those testing moments. The pandemic appears to have lent further support to a younger generation of Chinese diplomats, many of whom often have become increasingly strident and combative, to the surprise of their overseas counterparts. According to Zhao Tong, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy in Beijing, the repeated calls for fighting spirit have fed a national narrative that it is time for China to stand up to the perceived hostility from the West. With the blessing from the top leadership, it is fashionable and beneficial for diplomats to turn themselves into wolf warriors, he said referring to a popular nationalistic film. Defending China and pushing back against the US narrative becomes a thing of political correctness. In a bid to repair its tarnished image over its initial handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, Beijing has started an aggressive propaganda offensive to deflect the blame for the pandemic. Story continues Apart from sending test kits, masks, ventilators and other medical supplies to 120 countries, the country has also dispatched over 100 health experts to Italy, Serbia, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela and several other Asian countries, according to state media and Chinas top envoy to Washington Cui Tiankai. John Seaman, a research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations, said the failure of Europe and the US to prepare for and manage the coronavirus crisis so far has provided an opportunity for Beijing to promote its narrative showing how it can forcefully impose emergency measures to contain the crisis while casting doubt on the effectiveness of other governments. Huas colleague Zhao Lijian caused a diplomatic uproar last month when he shared a conspiracy theory that the US army might have spread the coronavirus in Wuhan and was attacked by US President Donald Trump for doing so. Cui distanced himself from Zhao and dismissed such baseless claims as crazy, which would only hurt the already damaged relations between the two sides. China's ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai dismissed the conspiracy theory. Photo: Reuters Underlining the deep-rooted distrust and antagonism between China and the West, American and European officials and scholars have cautioned that Beijings medical diplomacy was an attempt to take advantage of their vulnerabilities and fill the leadership vacuum left by the US. Chinese diplomats around the world have gone into overdrive to vigorously fend off any criticism of Chinas handling of the outbreak. China is turning the pandemic into a geopolitical weapon? Will soldier think of reward amidst fierce battle? Hua said in a Twitter post last week. All were preoccupied with now is save more lives and provide more assistance, she said. China is turning the pandemic into a geopolitical weapon? Will soldier think of reward amidst fierce battle? All we're preoccupied with now is save more lives & provide more assistance. Hua Chunying (@SpokespersonCHN) April 3, 2020 Analysts believe the rise of the wolf warriors in Chinas diplomatic establishment marks a shift in Beijings relations with the world especially its love-hate relationship with Washington, as the balance of power shifts between the two sides and rising support for populist, anti-global politics. Chinese diplomats led by foreign minister Wang Yi and his predecessor Yang Jiechi have become increasingly assertive in the past few years, especially when the country was on the defensive over the South China Sea, Huawei, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. There is no doubt that the assertive diplomacy, including the conspiracy theory to blame the US for spreading the virus in China, has had the approval from the leadership, said Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington. This is reflected in the fact that such conspiracy theories are allowed on the internet despite the strict information control about the Covid-19, as well as the fact that a spokesperson of the foreign ministry will need authorisation to tweet what he did. I think the diplomats and the leaders are mutually reinforcing each others position. Zhao, from the Carnegie Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy, also said the top-down decision-making approach meant diplomats and others at the operational level have great incentives to go extra length to promote this line of thinking and action. Senior diplomats must know they are destroying Chinas international image, more than any foreigners can do, he said. Its more likely that they choose not to care, because their aggressive performance on the international stage would win them greater career success domestically, in a political system that has undergone dramatic change in recent years. Analysts believe there are genuine disagreements within the diplomatic establishment between those who want to adopt a more aggressive stance and those that favour a more conciliatory approach. But they warned that with Xi dominating the centralised decision-making process and moderate voices largely sidelined what Zhao Tong described a self-reinforcing cycle could emerge between a self-confident leadership and assertive policy advisors. Pang Zhongying, a visiting senior fellow at Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, warned that the so-called wolf warriors were doing the opposite of diplomacy. It is not helping China further its interests or making friends around the world. Its disappointing to see those diplomats whose personal and career development have benefited from the liberal world order are now trying to dismantle it. It is a big blow to the existing multilateral order and Chinas global image, he said. Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. Learn about the AI ambitions of Alibaba, Baidu & JD.com through our in-depth case studies, and explore new applications of AI across industries. The report also includes exclusive access to webinars to interact with C-level executives from leading China AI companies (via live Q&A sessions). Offer valid until 31 May 2020. More from South China Morning Post: This article China wants its diplomats to show more fighting spirit. It may not be intended to win over the rest of the world first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2020. Federal inspectors have visited 80 nursing home facilities in Massachusetts since March 23 and found that staff members were not properly washing their hands at one-third of the facilities, and personal protective equipment was not properly used at a quarter of the locations. Some 1.3 million people are residents of nursing homes nationwide. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that even before the coronavirus pandemic there were between one million and three million serious infections each year at long-term-care facilities. There were an estimated 380,000 deaths annually. With the addition of COVID-19 victims, this figure is set to grow substantially. Massachusetts has more than 37,000 people living in nursing homes. Data provided by the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services largely corresponds to the national figures. Over the past three years, 234 of 377 Massachusetts nursing homes were cited at least once for failing to meet infection-control standards. This figure is for nursing homes only and does not include other types of longterm care facilities that are subject to different inspections. A person is taken to a waiting ambulance from a nursing facility where a mass outbreak of the COVID-19 virus took place earlier this year. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) According to the April 8 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, there were 1,236 confirmed cases of the coronavirus among residents and staff at 140 longterm care facilities across the state. These figures likely greatly undercount the actual number of cases because testing remains widely unavailable. Multiple nursing homes and assisted living facilities around western Massachusetts are reporting cases of COVID-19. In Agawam, 57 residents of Heritage Hall Nursing Home have tested positive for COVID-19. The Christopher Heights of Belchertown facility for assisted living is reporting four residents and one employee with COVID-19. JGS Lifecare in Longmeadow reports that it has 29 cases of COVID-19 and has placed those residents in an isolation unit. The situation is so critical in the state that the Department of Public Health has called in the Massachusetts National Guard to help administer tests for the virus at nursing homes. In the eight days prior to April 9, guardsmen and women tested nearly 2,600 nursing home residents at more than 140 facilities across the state. State officials are pressing ahead with a plan to designate nursing homes throughout the state as treatment centers for recovering COVID-19 patients, even as the first three homes agreeing to relocate residents report infection outbreaks. AdviniaCare in Willmington, where 77 out of 98 nursing home residents have tested positive, still plans to convert to a recovery center. David Ball, a spokesman for AdviniaCares Norwood-based parent company, Pointe Group Care, confirmed that seven residents who tested positive at the facility have died, all of whom were receiving end-of-life care before they were tested. Recovering patients still needing oxygen and other support began arriving at the Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Worcester on April 6, even as residents who had tested positive for the virus remained quarantined on a separate floor in the facility. At least another three sites on the South Coast and Cape Cod are being converted into recovery centers. These include two former New Bedford nursing homes that were shuttered following the bankruptcy of Skyline Healthcare. At the Alliance at West Acres nursing home in Brockton, five residents died and 28 tested positive, according to the parent company, Alliance Health and Human Services, based in Southborough. Governor Charlie Baker said he hoped the step-down facilities would handle about 1,000 patients released from critical care before they return home. Administration officials have allocated $30 million to compensate operators that repurpose their nursing homes. The plan to move residents has encountered growing protests from families and resident advocates. On April 8, the state chapter of the senior advocacy group AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) expressed concern about the involuntary moves. Transfer [of residents] without offering appropriate and effective counseling and planning can lead to isolation and despair, and the lack of predictability maximizes fear and anxiety, the group wrote in a letter to Baker. The situation in Massachusetts is replicated across New England. Last Thursday, the Rhode Island Department of Health said 43 people had died from coronavirus complications. Approximately 28 people, about 65 percent of reported deaths, were at nursing homes. Twenty nursing homes across the state have at least one case, up from 12 facilities just five days previous. Some 400 total cases have been reported statewide, 270 residents and 130 staff. Golden Crest in North Providence has 75 cases between residents and staff and 13 patients have died, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH). Oak Hill in Pawtucket has 80 cases among residents and staff, and nine deaths have been reported there. In Connecticut, as of last Tuesday, 82 of the 215 nursing homes had at least one person who had tested positive. As stocks of masks and smocks run low, workers are being asked to fashion their own protective equipment from trash liners and paper bags, according to Rob Baril, president of SEIU 1199 New England, whose membership includes 22,000 health care workers, including those working in nursing homes. Workers are angry both for themselves and for residents. Chelsea Daniels, a licensed practical nurse at Fresh River Healthcare in East Windsor, Connecticut, told ctpost: Our lives are in jeopardy. We dont have the option to work from home. We are reusing PPE. We are at risk and nobody seems to care. If we die, whos left to take care of the residents and patients? A young food staff worker at a Masonicare elderly care facility, which describes itself as having an ageless commitment to caring, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the conditions facing the elderly residents before the pandemic and since the outbreak. Before the pandemic even hit, he said, I want you to picture a grey room with stained carpet. Trash is piled up in the corners. The side table has various brown stains of unknown origin. A man sits in his bed stifling a cough in a paper towel. It too is stained with phlegm. Outside the room a man cries out for help. Paralyzed on his right side, his wheelchair doesnt get far before he calls out, Hello? Please help me! These sights are not unusual at Masonicare, an old folks home. Here the elderly sit in filth slowly dying in piss-soaked sheets and stale air. I myself, a food staff member, only heard these things at first from custodians and nursing aides. When the pandemic hit, the building went into lockdown and further negligence, I believe as a means of cutting their losses. Myself and my coworkers became delivery workers of meals that residents could no longer procure in the dining room, and we saw the conditions first hand. They didnt give us proper masks until multiple residents died from COVID-19 exposure. A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to make an announcement on the lockdown, Union ministers and senior officials resumed working from offices on Monday as the government scaled up its activities to deal with the situation arising out of the coronavirus crisis. The ministries became fully operational while following standard operating procedures (SoPs) for maintaining social distancing in offices, officials said. The ministers and officials had been following the government's work-from-home protocols issued in the wake of the 21-day lockdown imposed from March 25 to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The ministers on Monday took stock of the situation of the sectors under their ministries and were preparing business continuity plan to minimize the economic impact of the lockdown. "I was working most of the time from home during the lockdown. Today I returned to my office at Shastri Bhavan after a week. It feels good to be back. The Modi government is in full action on all fronts now, Coal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said. Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Railways and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, Minister of State for Youth Affairs Kiren Rijiju, Culture and Tourism Minister Prahlad Patel were some of the early office-goers on Monday, along with senior officials. Officers of the level of joint secretary also returned to offices on Monday, as they are entitled to official transport. The staff belonging to class 2, 3 and 4 are working on a rotational basis and one-third of them are expected to be present in the ministries. Modi will address the nation at 10 am on Tuesday, the last day of the 21-day nationwide lockdown, amid indications that the shutdown could be extended by another two weeks with certain relaxations to boost economic activities. "While an official announcement on lockdown extension is awaited, the Union government has become fully operational, an official said. Besides tackling COVID-19 pandemic, steps to prepare for post lockdown period and handling its economic impact top the agenda of the government, officials said. Even during the lockdown, ministries such as Health, its officials and minister Harsh Vardhan were working more than the regular days to tackle COVID-19 situation, they said. Similarly, Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmal Sitharman, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur, Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar were regularly attending their offices and holding meetings during the lockdown. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday criticized the launch of the small business loan program passed by Congress last month, arguing delays are heaping more burden on business owners. "How many weeks do I have to front everybody?" Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." Cramer owns two restaurants in Brooklyn. While saying he's fortunate enough to be able to pay his employees in the absence of the small business loans, Cramer said the situation is different for many other entrepreneurs who have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. "Most people can't front people," he said. "We're not governments." Cramer's comments came shortly after billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban detailed challenges faced by some of the small businesses that he invests in from "Shark Tank." Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said some banks have questioned a company's gross margin and was therefore uncertain about making the loan. The $350 billion small business loan program was created as part of the government's $2 trillion coronavirus relief package, which was approved in March and quickly signed into law by President Donald Trump. Distribution of the small business loans were left in the hands of banks and other financial institutions such as credit unions. On Friday, fintech players such as PayPal and Intuit QuickBooks said they also were granted approval to participate from the Small Business Administration. WASHINGTON A crew member from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt who had the novel coronavirus died on Monday, in a poignant punctuation to the plea from the ships captain two weeks ago for help from the Navy because sailors dont need to die. The death of the sailor came as Navy officials continued to struggle to combat the infection that has crippled the nuclear-powered ship, now docked in Guam. The name of the sailor is being withheld until 24 hours after family members are notified, Navy officials said. The entire department is deeply saddened by the loss of our first active-duty member to Covid-19, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said in a statement. Adm. Michael M. Gilday, the chief of naval operations, called the death a great loss for the ship and for our Navy. The death is already wrapped up in what has become a story of disjointed leadership in the Navy, where top officials pitted themselves against the ships captain and medical crew in the battle to contain the disease. Pleading for more help from the Navy to swiftly evacuate the ship as the virus spread, Capt. Brett E. Crozier implored officials to put concerns for the health of the sailors ahead of concerns for the ships ability to maintain military readiness should a war crop up. Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal The beauty of Carmen Florez-Mansis voice mixed with church bells on Easter morning as Archbishop John C. Wester delivered a symbolic blessing to all people from the front steps of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe. We ask Gods blessing on our City of Holy Faith and on all of us, Wester, the leader of the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe, said moments earlier, his voice echoing as he stood in front of the cathedrals baptismal font. The altar was adorned with Easter lilies and deep blue hydrangeas as ornate angels looked down from the vaulted ceiling. On any other Easter morning, the sanctuary would be packed with parishioners celebrating Christs resurrection, the holiest day on the Christian calendar. But on this Easter, the pews were empty as Wester and Father Timothy Martinez celebrated Mass in a lonely cathedral due to the COVID-19 outbreak in New Mexico. Places of worship throughout New Mexico and the nation were forced to forgo large crowds because of the pandemic, but thousands of faithful still came together to celebrate Easter through online streams, drive-ins and even radio broadcasts. We pray that our scientists will come up with a cure quickly and a vaccine, Wester said during his service, which was broadcast on Facebook. But I do know that the light of Christ is already healing us that the light of Christ is already shining brightly in our midst and bringing us new life even in the midst of the dark clouds of the pandemic. Roughly 900 families watched the Mass live. Ordinarily, Florez-Mansi, the cathedrals music director, would be accompanied by an orchestra and a chorus of at least 70. This year, she sang and played the piano, accompanied by a single vocalist. I miss obviously the cathedrals vibrant worship, hundreds and hundreds of people each week. I miss the parishioners But, she added, Sundays Mass was equally as beautiful even if it was different. Hope amid the pandemic At Calvary Church in Albuquerque, participants were up before 7 a.m. to stake out a spot for the churchs drive-in service. Engines hummed as drivers tuned their radios to Calvarys radio broadcast. Senior Pastor Skip Heitzig preached from the main stage flanked by two looming monitors. As Heitzig delivered his message focused on hope amid the pandemic, a chorus of car horns erupted within the parking lot as hundreds of participants rejoiced at the pastors words. Whether you have a pandemic or not, celebrating Easter will never change, Heitzig said. The way we celebrate it will change were obviously celebrating it in a different way. There was a stay-in-car order from Calvary, but families still put on their Sunday best and packed everyone in their car, like Amy Gibson, who drove herself, her husband and three other family members. This Easter was Gibsons first time at a sunrise service and, like everyone else, her first time attending a drive-in service during a pandemic. I felt like I was a part of the community even though we were all in our car where we could do it safely, Gibson said. If not for the pandemic, Gibson said, she would be spending time with other family members at her father-in-laws house. This year she and her family will keep it small, eating brunch and then hunting for Easter eggs in her backyard. Injunction sought Legacy Church streamed its services online. Pastor Steven Smothermon largely focused his Easter Sunday service on resurrection and hope, but mentions of the pandemic filtered through. With everything going on, we may be physically distanced but in the spirit we are connected, Smothermon said. Smothermon highlighted the ways in which Legacy Church has been making charitable strides through care packages and food donations to help those affected by the virus and the accompanying economic upheaval. But he also spoke out against Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams Saturday order banning large gatherings at places of worship. I dont care whats going on, you dont attack the church, he said near the end of his sermon. Smothermons church filed a request for an injunction in federal court in an effort to block the governors order. Deliver us from danger At the cathedral in Santa Fe, Archbishop Wester acknowledged that its a very difficult Easter for all of us. But he told parishioners that Jesus was with them, and he called on them to rise to the occasion and connect with people by calling elderly relatives, texting, and even posting something on our Facebook page, however you do that. Lets be a little kinder to one another, a little more patient with one another, lets listen more and talk less, he said, adding that we should appreciate the presence of our loved ones with all their foibles and all their little annoying habits. Wester called on the Lord to deliver us from the danger we are in and asked him to be with those who contracted the coronavirus and who have COVID-19, along with medical providers and our grocers and delivery persons and first responders and all those who are so bravely serving us during these days of crisis. We pray that hell be with our leaders, with all those who have responsibility to keep us safe, Wester added, but we pray also that on a deeper level still the risen Christ will heal us and bring us together and give us hope. 'Yamraj', the God of Death, roamed the streets of Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh, reminding people of the perils of stepping out of their homes during the coronavirus outbreak and warning to take anyone not following social distancing or the lockdown to the underworld. "I am 'Yamraj', I am coronavirus. If you do not adhere to the rules, no human will be left on the planet. I will become the cause of death of all. If you are careless, I will take you with me," he spoke into a mic, with a sickle in the other hand and policemen in tow. "No one should violate the lockdown and step out unnecessarily. A handkerchief can be used as a face mask, wash your hands repeatedly with soap, use sanitisers and maintain a distance of one to two metres from each other. This will ensure everyone's safety," he said. Wherever 'Yamraj' went, people, young and old, gathered at their doorsteps and listened to him carefully. However, there was no fear and many used their mobile phones to click his photos. This method was deployed by Bahraich police to spread awareness about the COVID-19 pandemic and tell people how precautions like social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks can protect them against the disease. Dressed as 'Yamraj' in a black attire with a touch of gold and red was policeman Lavkush Mishra from Baundi police station. A faux Hungarian moustache and a gold crown complete his look. Baundi police station in-charge Brahmanand Singh said, "We experimented with this idea in our area to spread awareness about COVID-19 and it was successful." About his colleague Mishra, he said he is fond of acting and before joining the police force, he used to act in Ramlila. Shailene Woodley spoke candidly about her love life as she revealed how working on her mental health has helped build clarity in her relationships. Speaking to The New York Times, the 28-year-old actress admitted that she had been the victim of an abusive relationship in her teenage years, and also discussed her experiences in open relationships. Shailene also confirmed she has split from rugby player Ben Volavolo, who she began dating in October 2017. Candid: Shailene Woodley spoke candidly about her love life as she revealed how working on her mental health has helped build clarity in her relationships The BAFTA nominee discussed being in open relationships as she revealed that she doesn't think people should have to follow society's 'rules' about love. Discussing her new role in Endings, Beginnings, in which she plays a woman stuck in a complicated love triangle, she revealed that she herself is more open-minded. Shailene explained: 'Im someone who has experienced both an open relationship and a deeply monogamous relationship in my life, and I think were in a day and age where there should be no rules except for the ones designed by two people in a partnership or three people, whatever floats your boat! She continued: 'But there has to be a level of responsibility in any relationship dynamic, and that responsibility is simply honesty and communication and trust. 'Apart from that, its really none of our business what people choose to do with their lives.' It's over: Shailene also confirmed she has split from rugby player Ben Volavolo, who she began dating in October 2017 (pictured in January 2018) The Divergent star went on to recall how being in an abusive relationship earlier in life lead to losing some of her emotional 'strength'. She explained: 'In my late teens, I had a strong idea of my identity and the meaning of my life, but then I went through an abusive relationship. That combined with, honestly, the commercial success I had in this industry began to wear on my strength.' Shailene added that she has spent her recent years working on her mental health, which has lead to her feeling 'grounded, rooted and clear' not just in her relationships, but career and self worth. No rules: The BAFTA nominee discussed being in open relationships as she revealed that she doesn't think people should have to follow society's 'rules' about love Now, Shailene is 'very much single', and stated she had been for 'a while', confirming the end of her relationship with Australian-born Fijian Ben. The couple reportedly met when Shailene was filming Adrift in Fiji - where Ben has family as his mother and father are both from the island country. Shailene was previously romantically linked to Theo James and musician Nahko Bear, but always maintained that having a boyfriend is not something she's interested in. Single: Now, Shailene is 'very much single', and stated she had been for 'a while', confirming the end of her relationship with Australian-born Fijian Ben (pictured in May 2018) The actress can next be seen on screens in Endings, Beginnings, in which she plays unlucky-in-love Daphne, who is dealing with a series of life events, over a year's time, that bring in feelings of love and heartbreak. She subsequently meets two suitors, Jack (Jamie Dornan) and Frank (Sebastian Stan), who are distinctly different from one another but both share a chemistry with her. Endings, Beginnings had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 and will be released digitally on April 17, 2020. For help and support with abusive relationships in the US please contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline on 1-800-799-7233 Readers in the UK can freephone the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247. Vedanta Ltd is quoting at Rs 77.5, up 0.91% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The stock is down 58.04% in last one year as compared to a 22.66% fall in NIFTY and a 44.94% fall in the Nifty Metal. Vedanta Ltd rose for a fifth straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 77.5, up 0.91% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is down around 0.77% on the day, quoting at 9041.8. The Sensex is at 30858.65, down 0.97%. Vedanta Ltd has added around 3.54% in last one month. Meanwhile, Nifty Metal index of which Vedanta Ltd is a constituent, has added around 0.06% in last one month and is currently quoting at 1705.45, up 1.41% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 233.41 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 319.88 lakh shares in last one month. The benchmark April futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 77.7, up 0.65% on the day. Vedanta Ltd is down 58.04% in last one year as compared to a 22.66% fall in NIFTY and a 44.94% fall in the Nifty Metal index. The PE of the stock is 8.22 based on TTM earnings ending December 19. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jenny Gao, born Jing Gao, started Fly by Jing a couple of years ago on Kickstarter. Gao, 32, was born in Chengdu, in Chinas Sichuan province, and grew up serially across Europe as her professor father moved from university to university, until the family finally settled in Toronto. She has since lived in Beijing, Singapore, Shanghai and lately Los Angeles, but considers herself Canadian above all. Its so diverse, she told me recently. Toronto was the first place I lived that let me feel as if I had one foot in the West and another in the East. She worked in microfinance, brand management and business development before landing on the idea of bringing the flavors of regional Chinese food to the world in their purest form. The global hierarchy of taste has traditionally placed Chinese food at the bottom of the pyramid and told us that it must be cheap, she said. But our hypothesis was that people would pay a higher price for better value, better ingredients, better taste. Some 2,500 people, she says, signed up to get one of the first jars. Gao has since added a dumpling sauce to her online store, along with a fiery-numbing mala spice blend (excellent on popcorn), fresh dried Sichuan peppers and three-year-aged doubanjiang, a paste of broad beans that can elevate even a beginners mapo tofu to levels that exceed most restaurant fare. Gao is interested, she said, in making the flavors of all Chinas regional cuisines more accessible. But it is the chile crisp that remains at the heart of her business, perhaps because you can use it on anything. (On vanilla ice cream, for instance. Seriously.) One of my favorite ways to use chile crisp is as a marinade and topping for tofu, with black vinegar, a little sesame oil, a wisp of honey, minced garlic and ginger, along with scallions and cilantro. Its a sauce that calls up some of the flavors of Guizhou, where the cuisine relies on sourness as well as heat. The black vinegar adds a delicious pong. I bake the dressed tofu in a hot oven with green beans, to serve over rice. You could just as easily press the tofu awhile beneath paper towels, then coat it with egg and flour, fry it and serve the crunchy-soft cutlets beneath the sauce, with stir-fried green beans or steamed bok choy. The mixture elevates the protein marvelously, but its the chile crisp that matters, wherever you get it: a condiment to improve all it touches, a shortcut to deliciousness. Recipe: Tofu and Green Beans With Chile Crisp A sailor who tested positive for coronavirus on board USS Theodore Roosevelt has died. The unidentified sailor had tested positive for the virus on March 30 and was taken off the ship and moved into isolation accommodation with four others. On Thursday he was found unresponsive during a medical check and sailors who found him attempted CPR before he was moved to a local hospital's intensive care unit. 'Over the weekend, four additional Theodore Roosevelt Sailors were admitted to the hospital for monitoring. All are in stable condition, none are in ICU or on ventilators,' a Navy official said. The death comes after it was revealed Captain Brett Crozier knew he could face firing for breaking protocol and sending a memo urging the Navy to respond more quickly to an outbreak on the ship. A sailor who tested positive for coronavirus on board USS Theodore Roosevelt has died. The unidentified sailor was admitted into intensive care on Thursday Former USS Theodore Roosevelt Captain Brett Crozier reportedly knew he'd be fired when he broke protocol on March 30 and sent a memo urging the Navy to respond more quickly to a coronavirus outbreak onboard, but he'd reached 'breaking point' and feared for the lives of his crew members. A doctor had warned 50 people could die on the ship But he went ahead after a doctor warned 50 crew could lose their lives if something wasn't done. Nearly 600 sailors on the aircraft carrier, docked in Guam, have now tested positive for COVID-19. About 92 percent of people on the USS Theodore Roosevelt have been tested. Nearly 80 percent of the ship's crew of 4,000 have been evacuated from the ship and locals in Guam have become worried that their presence in 10 hotels could cause a massive outbreak in the area. People mostly are sympathetic because many in Guam are in the Navy or have relatives who are. Not including the sailors, Guam has 133 confirmed coronavirus cases and five deaths as of Saturday. 'I know there will be a small chorus of cynics who will oppose this decision, but now is not the time for "us versus them,"' Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero told reporters April 1. 'We can protect Guam while being humane to them.' Guam's hotels frequently host military members, and the Department of Defense controls about a third of the island, which is 3,800 miles (6,115 kilometers) west of Honolulu and a crucial, strategic hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific. Some residents are urging the governor to reconsider allowing the sailors to stay in hotels, including I Hagan Famalaoan Guahan, a group that supports women who are Chamorro, the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, which include Guam. 'Being negative today doesn't mean that they won't be in a week or so,' the group said in a statement. 'The decision to house them in the middle of our community is playing a game of chance with the health of our people.' It's believed sailors aboard the Roosevelt picked up the virus during a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam on March 5. A man, who identified himself as a crew member, exercises out on the balcony of a room at the Hilton Guam Resort & Spa, in Tumon, Guam on Thursday Only Navy personnel are interacting with the crew in quarantine in order to protect hotel staff. In this April 7 photo released by the U.S. Navy, sailors assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt move ready to eat meals for sailors who have tested negative for COVID-19 and are being taken to local hotels The quarantine measures come with a huge shake-up in the Navy. After four consecutive days of rebuttals from his superiors, on March 30, Crozier took matters into his own hands and composed an unclassified email to 20 Navy personnel in the Pacific, disclosing the desperate situation on board and asking for their help. Insisting in the message that 'Sailors don't need to die', friends of Crozier told the New York Times the 30-year veteran would have known sending the email would likely end his career, but he persevered regardless. Crozier was controversially fired by acting Navy secretary Thomas B. Modly after the email leaked. Modly, meanwhile, has resigned as acting secretary. According to officials, he decided to oust the captain because he thought it was what President Trump would want. The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is seen while entering into the port in Da Nang, Vietnam, March 5. It's believed this is where the first infection occurred Officials told the Times Modly was hoping to avoid a confrontation with the Commander in Chief and avoid the same fate of his predecessor, but the self-serving motion was miscalculated and he was forced to step down. The Navy has conducted an investigation into the incident, the results of which are expected to be released sometime this week. Crozier was first made aware of an outbreak aboard the Roosevelt on March 24, when three sailors in the reactor department - operating the ship's nuclear reactors - tested positive for the virus. The three men were extracted from the ship by helicopter and flown to a Navy hospital in Guam. Two days later the ship docked in Guam and tests were conducted on the entire crew. It was during this time that Crozier began feuding with his superior on board the ship, Rear Admiral Stuart P. Baker. Crozier was controversially fired by acting Navy secretary Thomas B. Modly (pictured) after the email leaked. Modly, meanwhile, has resigned after receiving blowback about his actions In this photo taken April 7 2020, provided by the U.S. Navy, sailors and staff assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt listen as Vice Adm. William Merz, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, answers questions during a visit to the ship at Naval Base Guam Crozier believed it was necessary to evacuate the majority of those onboard, except for 400 members of the crew, quarantine them and have them tested while the ship was subject to a deep-clean. But Baker disagreed, and back in Washington Modly and other members of the Navy high command sought alternative options. Baker believed an evacuation was too drastic and Modly expressed concern that Guam could not house the carrier's crew even if they did. Instead, the Navy suggested sending the Roosevelt to Okinawa, Japan, or San Diego instead. They also suggested leaving 4,000 on board the ship and allowing 1000 to disembark. While his superiors meandered, COVID-19 cases aboard the ship continued to increase and Captain Crozier began composing a four-page letter to sent via email. Titled 'REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC', Crozier wrote: 'There are two end states T.R. could achieve...We go to war with the force we have and fight sick,' in which case he said 'there will be losses to the virus.' Alternatively, the Times reported, Crozier suggested the ship could try to 'achieve a COVID-free T.R.,' with all the necessary evacuation. 'As war is not imminent, we recommend pursuing the peace time end state,' Captain Crozier wrote. The captain showed the letter to a number of senior officers on the ship, who asked to sign the letter in solidarity with him. However, the captain declined, fearing the implication it could have on their careers. The following day, on March 31, Crozier's letter was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, having likely been leaked by one of the email's 20 recipients. Crozier's letter contradicted the Trump administration's claims that the situation aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt was under control. 'It's disappointing to have him say that,' Modly said during a press conference on April 1. 'Were doing everything we can.' Nicola Sturgeon today revealed the UK will be extending its coronavirus lockdown for the foreseeable future as she announced the move before stand-in PM Dominic Raab. The Scottish First Minister let slip at lunchtime that a UK-wide review of the social distancing measures due to be carried out by Thursday is 'not likely to result in these restrictions being lifted'. Just a matter of hours later, Mr Raab, the First Secretary of State who is deputising for Boris Johnson, told the daily Downing Street press conference that 'we dont expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place'. It is not the first time Ms Sturgeon has made a move before ministers in Westminster during the current crisis, with the SNP leader having also got in first on announcing a ban on large events and the closure of schools. She had said: 'There is of course due to be a review of these restrictions this week. I want to today be very clear so that nobody is under any illusion. 'That review is not likely to result in these restrictions being lifted in the very near future. There are early optimistic signs that the steps we are taking are working but until we know more and have solid evidence we must stick with it.' The government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is due to assess evidence relating to the outbreak in the coming days with a Cobra meeting then expected to make a formal decision on an extension before Friday. Confirming the restrictions will not be eased, Mr Raab said: I should say we dont expect to make any changes to the measures currently in place at that point and we wont until we are confident, as confident as we realistically can be, that any such changes can be safely made. Mr Raab warned that the UK is yet to hit the peak of the outbreak, almost three weeks after lockdown began, as he urged the nation to continue to follow the guidance to stay at home. If we let up now, the virus will only take full advantage,' he said. 'It will spread faster and it will kill more people. If we refuse to give into it, if we keep up this incredible team effort, we will beat this virus and we will come through this national test. It came as the Cabinet hoped that Mr Johnson will return to make the crunch coronavirus lockdown decision amid warnings UK GDP is set to crash by 30 per cent this quarter because of the ongoing disruption. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said at lunchtime today that the UK's coronavirus lockdown will continue Dominic Raab, the First Secretary of State, then told the daily Downing Street press conference that restrictions will not be eased this week The Cabinet is hoping Boris Johnson (pictured delivering a heartfelt thanks to the NHS yesterday) will return to take crunch coronavirus lockdown decisions The implications of the timing has been cast into sharp relief with Chancellor Rishi Sunak (pictured in Whitehall last week) warning that UK plc could shrink by 25-30 per cent in the coming months Divisions have emerged in the PM's top team over how soon the draconian curbs should be eased as they lay waste to the economy. Government sources had said there is 'zero' chance of the restrictions being lifted following this week's formal review - but some ministers want to start moving into a new phase early next month, while others favour delaying weeks longer. The implications of the timing has been cast into sharp relief with Chancellor Rishi Sunak warning that UK plc could shrink by 25-30 per cent in the coming months, costing millions of jobs. However, much is likely to hang on the situation in Italy and Spain, which appear to be past the peaks of their outbreaks and are tentatively starting to loosen their lockdowns. Deliveries of PPE from China 'faulty and wrongly labelled' Delivering lifesaving protective gear to frontline health staff has become 'hand to mouth', an NHS leader has revealed. The Government is airlifting in crates from China on a daily basis but some are being removed from planes before take-off by officials who want to test them. Other boxes are reaching the UK only for NHS officials to discover that they have been wrongly labelled. Rather than containing much needed protective gowns, they are filled with masks. Even worse, much of the kit from China the world's main supplier is unusable because it fails UK safety checks. The astonishing revelations come from Chris Hopson of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, ambulance services and mental health trusts. He said: 'It's all been a bit hand to mouth. 'The heart of the problem is that getting that stock that was ordered weeks ago from China is proving somewhat erratic.' He said China was the only country with access to the right materials and manufacturing capacity to produce protective equipment. More than 30 NHS staff are believed to have died from coronavirus and campaigners say some of the deaths were a direct result of a lack of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Advertisement Mr Johnson is recovering from coronavirus at Chequers after admitting that his fate could have gone 'either way'. The Prime Minister spent a week in St Thomas' Hospital in central London, including three nights in intensive care, but left yesterday to be reunited with pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds - who has also recovered from the virus. He is now convalescing at the country residence in Buckinghamshire after doctors ordered the Tory leader to rest. Number 10 has confirmed that the PM will 'not be returning to work immediately' following his discharge. He tested negative for coronavirus before he was discharged, and is now likely to have a degree of immunity. But Cabinet sources told the Telegraph Mr Johnson should sign off on the major moves on lockdown. 'The Prime Minister has to take that decision. Any lockdown will have huge implications, and the PM will be responsible for it, so he's got to be the the one taking that decision,' they said. A senior Tory MP added: 'It should absolutely be Boris. He's the captain of the ship. It has to be someone who has the confidence of the nation.' Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke told MailOnline those demanding Mr Johnson sets a timetable for coming back needed to 'grow up', and it was in everyone's interests that he is 'firing on all cylinders' when he does return. 'I am just concerned that the PM takes the time he needs to recover,' he said. 'At the end of the day we now know he has been very, very seriously ill. He said himself it could have gone one way or the other. 'He doesn't need to rush back. He has got the entire support of the country behind him. People recognise how serious it was, how hard he was working.' The Conservative Party vice-chairman added that Mr Johnson should be taking it easy for 'at least a couple of weeks'. 'I think politicians who say 'what's going on' almost pushing the pressure for him to come back need to grow up a bit because the public want him to make a full recovery,' Mr Shelbrooke added. 'I don't want to see him rush back into things. I want to make sure he's OK.' Another MP told MailOnline there would need to be consideration over whether he is in condition to make the biggest decisions for the country. 'There is a concern about that and I think that he has got to listen to medical advice. But subject to him listening to that medical advice I am pretty sure he will want to be the one to make that decision,' they said. 'Every report I have read from survivors indicates that it knocks them about tremendously so he does have to watch his own health.' They added: 'Irrespective of what the medics say he will probably want to be involved in that decision and to give the sign off on it. I think he understands the buck stops with him.' Health Secretary Matt Hancock, speaking at the Downing Street briefing yesterday, said there was no advice on how long Mr Johnson should rest before returning to work. 'That will be a clinical decision for his doctors to take with him,' he said. 'The Government is operating perfectly efficiently within the strategy that he set out.' Mr Raab is 'deputising' for the PM as the government faces another crucial week. In an emotional speech posted on social media following his hospital release, Mr Johnson admitted his condition 'could have gone either way' and thanked NHS staff for saving his life. Former Tory communications chief Ms Symonds joined in praising the 'incredible' staff who treated her husband-to-be, tweeting that she would 'never, ever be able to repay you'. Mr Johnson called the NHS 'unconquerable' after seeing first-hand how it was dealing with the pandemic and heralded the 'personal courage' of everyone from doctors to cooks at St Thomas'. He added: 'We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. 'It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.' His comments came as it was confirmed the number of those who had died in UK hospitals after contracting Covid-19 had breached the 10,000 mark. Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the UK looked set to have 'one of the worst, if not the worst' death rate in Europe. The PM is recuperating from coronavirus at Chequers with pregnant partner Carrie Symonds Health Secretary Matt Hancock, speaking at the Downing Street briefing yesterday, said there was no advice on how long Mr Johnson should rest before returning to work The formal review of the strict social distancing measures is required under emergency powers legislation with a formal decision due before close of play on Thursday. Downing Street has said it will only look to lift restrictions once science and medical advisers recommend doing so. But pressure is mounting to change tack soon, reported that Mr Sunak is estimating a massive impact on the economy. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) think-tank last week suggested 25 per cent of the UK economy could be lost by the summer due to the current controls. According to the Times, Mr Sunak has told colleagues the consequences could be even worse with GDP falling by a third in the second quarter. Mr Sunak is said to be among a group of Cabinet 'hawks' - also including education secretary Gavin Williamson and Home Secretary Priti Patel - who want the lockdown eased more quickly. However, other 'doves' such as Mr Hancock and Michael Gove are apparently cautioning against lifting the restrictions too early. A government source said there was no 'table-thumping' going on, but added of Mr Williamson: 'He's Education Secretary - he'd, of course, prefer schools to be open. But it's not his choice. He is worried about all children and how they are going to do. There is no replacement for children going along to classes under the supervision of teachers who know them. 'However, schools will only be opened when it is safe to do so.' Mr Hancock last night announced a new NHS coronavirus app that the Government hopes will help stem the spread of the virus by helping people to self-isolate before they start showing symptoms, as the Government looks to find a way out of the lockdown. He said: 'If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus you can securely tell this new NHS app and the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you've been in significant contact with over the past few days.' Opposition parties, including Labour and the Liberal Democrats, have called for parliamentary scrutiny of the data use. On Sunday the Department of Health said, as of 5pm on Saturday, a total of 10,612 patients had died in UK hospitals after testing positive for coronavirus, up by 737 from 9,875 the day before. Europe goes back to work: Millions of Spaniards are allowed to resume their jobs after industrial lockdown is lifted Europe is beginning its return to work today as factories and construction sites re-open in Spain while Italy takes its first steps towards easing the lockdown. Police were handing out masks on Spanish metro trains today as some 'non-essential' workers were allowed to resume their activities after a two-week ban. Italy will allow bookshops, stationery shops and stores selling children's clothes to re-open tomorrow in the first loosening of Europe's longest lockdown, although most restrictions have been extended until May. Meanwhile in Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday, allowing some parents to return to work. Passengers keep their distance riding the metro in Madrid as non-essential workers are allowed back to work today Spain is lifting its ban on non-essential business despite concerns from some regional leaders and trade unions. The ban was stricter than in Britain, where people can still go to work if they cannot work from home during the lockdown. The people returning today include sanitary, security and telecommunications workers, customs officials and those involved in gas and electricity supplies. They and their companies will have to adhere to strict regulations to make sure they don't get infected by the virus. Non-essential workers had been sent home on March 30 but the Spanish government has not extended the measure despite a surge in new deaths yesterday. Another 619 deaths were announced on Sunday, 109 more than on Saturday, putting an end to three days of declining deaths. It brought the country's coronavirus death toll to 16,972, the third-highest in the world after the United States and Italy. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Beijing, China Mon, April 13, 2020 16:42 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd19780d 2 World China,Africa,discrimination Free China dismissed on Monday allegations leveled by African and US diplomats that foreigners of African appearance in the city of Guangzhou were being subjected to forceful testing for coronavirus, quarantine and ill treatment. "We do not have discrimination in China against African brothers," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily news briefing, accusing the United States of trying to exploit the issue to harm Beijing's relations with African nations. A group of African ambassadors in Beijing had written to China's State Councilor Wang Yi drawing attention to the discrimination that Africans were encountering in Guangzhou, capital of the southern Guangdong province, after which the US consulate in the city also issued an alert to citizens. The alert advised African-Americans to stay away from the Guangzhou metropolitan area, warning that the city's authorities had told bars and restaurants to refuse to serve people who "appear to be of African origin" and launched mandatory tests and self-quarantine of anyone with "African contacts." Denying any such discrimination, the foreign ministry spokesman reiterated that China treats all foreigners equally. "It is irresponsible and immoral for the US to sow discord," Zhao said. "Its attempt to drive a wedge between China and Africa will never succeed." The ambassadors' note highlighted a number of reported incidents, including that Africans were being ejected from hotels in the middle of the night, having their passports seized, and threatened with revocation of visas, deportation or arrest. Ghana's foreign minister and the leader of Nigeria's lower house of parliament have also separately met with the Chinese ambassador to their respective countries last week about the reports of mistreatment of Africans in Guangzhou. Zhao did not directly comment on the ambassadors' note, but said Guangdong has rolled out "new measures" and that Beijing is working with the relevant African nations to resolve the issue. He did not elaborate on what the new measures were. Having largely stamped out in-country transmission of the coronavirus, authorities in China are worried that one of the biggest risks of a second wave in the epidemic stems for infected people coming from abroad. Imported cases of the virus have largely involved Chinese citizens returning home, rather than foreigners. On Sunday, China reported 108 new cases - the most in almost six weeks. Over 90% were imported cases, of which Chinese returning from Russia accounted for about half. Topics : China Africa discrimination SHELTON Moving With H.O.P.E., a Shelton-based nonprofit that provides essential services to people living with moderate-to-severe physical disabilities, has designated this week as an Appreciation Week for those at Yale fighting against COVID-19. The COVID-19 Emergency Response at Yale team includes clinicians and scientists helping first responders and hospital staff keep up with testing demands; it advises on public health policy in the state and helps resolve nationwide supply chain problems. Life has gone completely on hold for all of this, said Anne Wyllie, an associate research scientist at the Yale School of Public Health and a member of the team. The number of people willing to help out whenever we have desperately reached out in need has been so inspiring. Seeing so many people come together to support each other and work towards this common goal has been incredible. Moving With H.O.P.E. is working with members of the Yale Postdoctoral Association and Lyft to pick up and deliver food and other tokens of appreciation to New Haven safely. The nonprofit is asking for donations to cover the costs of coffee, snacks and other goods and services for the COVID-19 Emergency Response at Yale. These dedicated individuals are working around the clock without the true recognition they deserve in this emergency response, said Tad Duni, co-founder of Moving With H.O.P.E. They are fighting for the good of our communitys health. Connecticut relies on their research and leadership. We want to sustain them, and send them a message of love, thanks and support. Donations will also support local businesses as the non-profit plans to purchase food or small items from community businesses, the organization said. Visit Charity GoFundMe to make a donation. Appreciation Week is also part of a larger effort to connect Yale scientists and community leaders with young adults in Connecticut, said Maikel Boot, a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology and chair of the Yale Postdoctoral Association. We have many international postdocs at Yale that are eager to use their scientific communication skills to help their local communities during these times, said Boot. We are building a large network of scientists to help launch a social media and public education campaign in the coming days. Farian Rabbani, UConn senior and a co-founder of the campaign said, One major goal of the campaign is to inform and engage young people so they fully understand how and when to safely help their families, neighbors, and community members. We are ready and eager. Getting youth involved is a must, experts said. Our nonprofits, who have relied heavily on help from individuals aged 40 years and older will require thousands of younger, trained volunteers to ensure those in need receive vital resources now, and for many months to come, stated an open letter signed by seven public health, education and infectious disease experts in Connecticut, New York City and Washington, D.C., dated April 2. This campaign is an opportunity for scientists to communicate the ways that young adults can act now to change the future of this pandemic, and for young adults to engage with scientists who are also working to flatten the curve, said Dr. Mari Armstrong-Hough, assistant professor of public health, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Department of Epidemiology, NYU School of Global Public Health, who also signed the open letter. We need to reach and inspire more young people in the Valley and across Connecticut, said Rabbani, a Seymour native and a longtime volunteer and youth development professional at the Boys and Girls Club of the Lower Naugatuck Valley. This campaign will ask us to take action, will describe the crucial roles we can volunteer to fill, and will explain how we can do so safely. We also will fill a critical role in our communities by collaborating and communicating with experts regularly. The campaigns name will be announced by the end of the week, after volunteers have had time to vote through a Google Survey. brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com Beijing (AFP) - Beijing denied Monday that it was soliciting praise for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic following a report that Chinese representatives tried to earn kudos from German officials. China has faced criticism abroad -- notably in the United States -- over the outbreak that first emerged in the central city of Wuhan late last year. It has sent aid to European countries in recent weeks, a move seen as a charm offensive to deflect blame for the pandemic. Citing a confidential foreign ministry document, Germany's Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday that senior officials and staff at German government ministries were invited "to speak in positive terms about China's management of the coronavirus". The German foreign ministry recommended that all governmental departments reject such approaches, the newspaper added. A German intelligence source told Die Welt that "Chinese officials are pursuing an intensified information and propaganda policy with regard to the coronavirus". Asked about the report, China's foreign ministry said in a statement to AFP: "Our goal is to better protect the lives and health of our own people and maintain global public health and safety rather than obtaining others' appreciation. "(We have) neither need to seek praise, nor intention to launch a 'propaganda war'." The German foreign ministry declined to confirm or deny the report. The House will not come back to Washington until at least May 4 unless it needs to pass emergency measures to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office told representatives Monday. The chamber previously expected lawmakers to return on April 20 after an extended absence. It is unclear if the Senate, which is expected to return to the Capitol next week, will follow suit. House members, most of whom have been in their districts for all of April as Covid-19 spreads, will not have to travel to Washington before May 4 "absent an emergency," the Maryland Democrat's office said. It added that lawmakers would get "sufficient notice" if they have to travel to Washington to vote on coronavirus legislation. As efforts to stall the coronavirus' spread have wrecked the U.S. economy, Congress has hit a deadlock in looking for ways to build on the unprecedented $2 trillion relief package it passed last month to limit the damage. Senate Republicans last week tried to pass a bill to inject $250 billion more into a small business loan program set up in the rescue legislation. Democrats blocked the measure, then the GOP rejected a Democratic counter offer that included more money for states and hospitals fighting the pandemic, along with funding for food assistance programs. While Democrats have held some discussions with the Trump administration on the issue, neither major party's congressional leaders have showed a willingness to back down from their demands yet. In a joint statement Monday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated their demands from last week's proposal. "We have real problems facing this country, and it's time for the Republicans to quit the political posturing by proposing bills they know will not pass either chamber and get serious and work with us towards a solution," they said. Republicans refused to back down over the weekend. In a joint statement Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said they "reject Democrats' reckless threat to continue blocking job-saving funding unless we renegotiate unrelated programs which are not in similar peril." Congress can pass legislation with few people present, as long as no one lawmaker opposes the bill. But the House's attempt to pass the $2 trillion rescue package last month underscored the risks of the strategy. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., went to Washington insisting on a recorded vote, which would require House members to come to the Capitol to cast votes. Representatives rushed back to Washington, and once a majority of lawmakers were present, they passed the bill by voice vote, which simply measures if the "yeas" or "nays" are louder. While Congress has been out of the Capitol, the coronavirus has taken a steeper human and economic toll. U.S. Covid-19 cases now top 560,000, and the disease has been linked to more than 22,800 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, more than 16 million people have filed new jobless claims over a three-week period. Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. A small study by Chinese scientists suggests that the COVID-19 virus can travel more than 13 feet in the the air. The research, published Friday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, examined samples of aerosol from indoor air and air outlets in an intensive care unit and hospital ward in Wuhan, China. The areas studied held 37 virus patients. The scientists also took swab samples from surfaces such as floors, handrails, computer mice, patient masks and shoes. The aerosol distribution characteristics indicate that the transmission distance of [COVID-19] might be 4 m (meters), the report says. Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive. Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers. Whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be spread by aerosols remains controversial. On April 2, Dr. Harvey Fineberg told the White House studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing. But other scientists say aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 is relatively rare. The researchers surmised the relatively high rate of positivity of the hospital's floors might be caused by gravity and air flow causing most virus droplets to float to the ground, accounting for the contamination of the shoes of the staff. As medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100% rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients, the researchers wrote. The CDC says to ensure effective physical distancing, people should stay at least 6 feet apart. The World Health Organization says 3 feet should be enough. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 20:28:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Russia's gross domestic product may fall by 5 percent this year, while the number of the unemployed may triple due to the COVID-19 pandemic, head of Russia's Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin said Monday. "My previous estimate was a drop between 3 and 5 percent, now I think it will be closer to five," Kudrin said in a live interview with the RBC private Russian TV channel. Kudrin, a former Russian deputy prime minister and finance minister, said he also expects the number of the unemployed in the country to shoot to 8 million from 2.5 million this year. He said it was difficult to make rigorous forecasts given how the quarantine imposed in the country until the end of the month might be extended and therefore some regions and sectors of the economy would remain strained. However, by the end of the year there may be a restart of the economy, bringing growth in demand and consumption, resulting in a drop of unemployment as small and medium-sized businesses resume work, Kudrin said. Home Lifestyle Food & beverage Why do you need to revive traditional Nepali food? How can you do it? Sushma Bhandari of Syuchatar, Kathmandu, is a working mother. She usually sends packaged foods like biscuits, cakes, and instant noodles as tiffin for her seven-year-old son. Due to my busy schedule, I rarely have some time to cook something homely for my son as tiffin. With packaged food, my sons tiffin is ready in no time, she says, claiming her son is fond of such readymade food. Observing such trends, nutritionist and public health expert Dr Aruna Uprety comments, Nowadays, people have been taking our traditional healthy food and food culture for granted and have been consuming a lot of junk food on a daily basis, especially as snacks. They are unaware of their cons in the long run. With the number of people like Bhandari increasing across the country, experts like Dr Uprety have expressed concerns over the long-term impacts of such behaviours. They also highlight that getting away with such subtle evils is possible if people really want. The trap of access and advertisement Apparently, ready-to-eat food is popular because access to them is easy. Step out of your house, look around and notice that your closest grocery shops are full of packaged food items. Reach out to your nearest junction you would see a lot of stalls of fast food items like chatpate, panipuri, momo, and laphing. Why only stalls, there are fancy supermarkets and malls too selling the junks. Now, compare them with the eateries that serve traditional Nepali food: the options are scarce. The farms that produce organic food are also comparatively few in numbers. There is also another reason: the fake world created by advertisements. Dr Uprety says, People including parents and children are conned by false advertisements of noodles, biscuits, chocolates, juices or any junk food which claim of containing nutrients, the goodness of fresh fruits, milk and many more for a healthy body. Other than this, added artificial flavours in junk food enhance their taste to the next level, causing an addiction among many children and even in the adults though they are conscious that these items are not beneficial in the long run. She also mentions that those aware adults are eating and letting the children in their families junk and fast food due to their busy schedule or even their laziness and addictive taste of junk foods. They find junk food handy, less expensive, less time-consuming and less tiresome than cooking healthy and nutritionally balanced food at home neglecting the future expenses, time and efforts that one requires to maintain the health harshly affected by junk food in the future, points out Dr Uprety. What actually is junk food? A clinical and bariatric nutritionist at Norvic International Hospital in Thapathali, Praniti Singh, defines junk food as any food that is highly processed, has high calories, excess sugar/fat/salt content and that lacks other nutrients like protein, fibre, vitamins, and minerals. She says, Any food becomes junk when it is consumed in a large quantity, almost on a regular basis, in a wrong climate or season or environment and when it is consumed without the need of the body. She illustrates this idea with the momo-eating culture that has become the symbol of Nepali food to the world. This food originated in a colder climate where one has to work constantly for living. Maida flour in momo provides instant energy to the body and keema (minced meat and vegetables) and soup add nutrient value to the body to survive in the cold climate. But, nowadays eating momo as lunch and snacks daily has been a part of life in any part of the country, neglecting its real purpose and timing. Dt Singh says, in this context, momo can also be considered junk food. Aruna Uprety asserts, This kind of food is responsible for growing health problems like obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, heart disease and diabetes among the youngsters, children and elderly people in Nepal. Singh also confirms that hypertension, obesity, heart diseases, and diabetes were mostly seen in the late 40s and 50s in the past. But today, these health problems are seen very common within the children and youth also. Need for alternatives Uprety argues that the people now should get out of the traps created by access and advertisement, and consume a lot of healthy traditional food that in a way should force the food traders that even traditional food also sells. This will create an environment where healthy food businesses will flourish and people will have easy access to them. As much as people consume traditional healthy food, its market will grow, she hopes. She views the growing business of Newari traditional dishes like samaybaji and Thakali set has already set an example that healthy food also sells. Sharada Jnawali, who identifies herself as a healthy food practitioner, states that a wide variety of traditional Nepali food, in general, has many health benefits. Being concerned about the growing popularity of junk food among people, Jnawali, who has authored Nepali Home Cooking for Healthy Living, puts forward numerous ways to revive and also popularise traditional healthy food among general people. One of the ways she suggests is to sensitise the public, mostly children as well as their parents and teachers, regularly about the benefits of traditional healthy food and the harms caused by consuming junk food. Adding to this, she says, Nutrition education, incorporating both theoretical and practical dimensions, should be introduced in the school curriculum and imparted accordingly. Her next recommendation is that the government should make a policy that requires, or motivates, all hotels and restaurants across the country to include Nepali traditional food items on their menu. Jnawali also believes that organising food shows and festivals that promote the local and traditional food of all regions and ethnic groups of Nepal regularly will revive and popularise healthy traditional food among many Nepali people. The trend of practising responsible cooking should be followed in every hotel, restaurant, and home, she suggests. The expert opines that approaches to promote traditional healthy food should be both from the top to bottom (such as government policies) and bottom to up (such as awareness among general people). Reacting to a common perception that healthy food is not tasty, she says, Yes, there is this myth prevalent in many people, but that is not the reality. If only food practitioners would present the food in a decorative manner adding tasty healthy ingredients, this myth will vanish. Likewise, she remarks that the role of media in promoting the health benefits of traditional food regularly among their audience is very crucial to revive the food culture. A council has been slammed for banning all mourners at funeral services despite government guidelines stating they should be allowed to attend. City of York council has told grieving families they must wait outside the crematorium, while the 'unattended cremation' takes place with only a faith officiant allowed inside, before collecting their loved one's ashes. Only ten immediate family members are allowed to attend, including children, siblings and parents, and must observe social distancing by keeping at least two metres away from each other. Government guidance states immediate family members should be allowed to attend funerals, but does not give a number. City of York council has told grieving families they must stand outside York Crematorium with at least two metres between each other before collecting their loved one's ashes York Central MP Rachael Maskell has said the council had not followed government advice in its decision to ban families from attending funerals A letter sent to the council by heartbroken resident Kelsey Dobson accuses it of causing 'severe and detrimental' damage to families. 'To refuse wives, husbands, parents and children of the deceased the chance to say goodbye is a severe and detrimental decision that will create further trauma and long-lasting damage to the families that are already grieving a devastating loss,' she wrote. 'Nobody is asking for a full funeral. We're simply asking that immediate family (Spouses, parents and children) can attend their loved one's funeral, while adhering to social distancing rules,' The family of Colin Dean, 61, who served in the army in Northern Ireland and Germany for more than 20 years, said all they want to do is give him 'the final journey'. His heartbroken widow, Marie, and children Louise and Barry, said: 'We all have a huge hole in our hearts now that he is gone, and all we want to do is give him the final journey he truly deserves with his wife and children. 'He was the very best husband and father we could have ever wished for. Whoever he came across he would never fail to leave an impression and lovely memories with his infectious personality; he was life and soul of the party.' Mr Dean had not suffered from coronavirus. Up to 75 families have been affected by the change so far, which was brought in last Thursday, including those who have lost relatives to coronavirus. Family of Colin Dean, 61, who served in the army for more than 20 years with postings to Northern Ireland and Germany, said they only wanted to give him a the final journey he 'truly deserves' York Central MP Rachael Maskell said the council had not followed government advice, which clearly states funerals should go ahead with social distancing and limiting mourners to close family members. What is the government's advice for funerals during coronavirus? Faith leaders and Public Health England have worked together to create guidance for funerals during the ongoing cornavirus crisis. The guidance is to ensure communities, the funeral industry and the NHS are protected during the pandemic. Funerals are a concern because Covid-19 is an infectious disease and can be transmitted when large groups of people congregate. However, with the government say that with certain precautions, funerals should continue to take place. The guidance includes restricting the number of mourners who attend funerals, so a safe distance of at least three steps can be maintained between individuals. Only members of the deceased persons household or close family members should attend funeral, while any individual displaying symptoms of COVID-19 should not attend. Those who do attend will need to adhere to social distancing at all times, including when travelling to and from the funeral. Mourners are also strongly advised not to take part in any rituals or practices that bring them into close contact with the body of a person who has died from or with symptoms of COVID-19. Advertisement 'Over the last few days I have been talking to and corresponding with heartbroken constituents who have not only given incredible testimonies of their loved ones who have passed away, but have described the pain and distress caused in not being able to be with them in these very precious final moments,' she said. 'Services were cancelled from last Thursday, with just a day's notice. People are completely distraught. 'I have been liaising closely with ministers who are in agreement that City of York council have not followed this guidance. 'One of the ministers had attended York Crematorium and could not understand why the council made this out to be an exceptional case.' She claimed that the council had incorrectly stated their decision was supported by health leaders and that they were taking the same action as other local authorities. A petition calling on the council to reverse its decision has so far gathered 3,914 signatures. Kirklees, Bradford and Leeds councils have also told grieving families they must wait outside the crematorium before collecting their relatives ashes. Government guidance states gatherings at funerals can continue providing they follow strict social distancing guidelines, says the National Association of Funeral Directors. 'The government has made it clear that it wants bereaved people to still have the opportunity, and therefore gatherings at funerals can continue - but only if they take place within strict social distancing guidelines and through the limiting of numbers attending,' they said. 'Unlike any other life event, witnessing a funeral can't be deferred and there is no opportunity to repeat it again in the future. 'Therefore, being able to be there in person, even if as a much smaller group than the family would have wanted, remains an important choice that families must be free to make for as long as possible.' A petition set up to reverse the council's decision has attracted almost 4,000 signatures The council suspended funeral services at York Crematorium last week and replaced them with so-called 'unattended cremations'. It had initially said mourners would not be allowed to stand outside the crematorium, before relenting on its decision. They are allowing graveside burials at Fulford Cemetery to continue as planned providing families adhere to social distancing rules. Cremation is the most popular form of burial in the UK, with burial being vastly more expensive and requiring families to purchase burial plots. The leader of City of York council, Keith Aspden, said: 'We know that the necessity of unattended cremation services will cause distress to many grieving people. The Council took the agonising decision extremely reluctantly, but it is a policy that will ultimately save lives.' The council said that as the crematorium can hold up to 14 services a day, with up to ten or five people at each, this could mean more than 150 people enter and leave the building in one day. 'It is vital that the number of people visiting the crematoria is kept to a minimum,' they said, 'in order to minimise the chances of spreading coronavirus'. The council is due to review its decision later today. Ministers are due to issue further advice to all local authorities following the City of York's decision. York has reported 127 cases of coronavirus since the outbreak began, according to the Department of Health. There have been 88,621 cases reported in the country so far after an additional 4,342 cases were announced today. Gering Fire Department, Scottsbluff Rural and Scottsbluff firefighters responded at about 4:45 p.m. to a fire at 230757 County Road P. Firefighter Ministry had been called to the scene to assist the family. Carissa Smith, of Firefighter Ministry, says the organization is assisting the family of four with lodging, and clothing and food vouchers. Decatur Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe says it's likely that another spike of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is coming. Moore Wolfe made the remarks Monday morning on NowDecatur's Byers & Co., where she is scheduled to appear every weekday morning at 6:40 a.m. Currently, Macon County is at 35 cases, with 25 of those associated with Fair Havens Senior Living. The latest numbers were announced Sunday afternoon and included an increase of 10 confirmed cases, the largest single-day spike yet for the county. Officials, including Moore Wolfe, held a news conference Saturday at which they confirmed that a cluster had developed at Fair Havens and more cases were coming. Below are the highlights of the mayor's remarks Monday morning. You can listen to the interview here. Full episodes of Byers & Co. can be found on its Podcasts page. On the cluster of cases at Fair Havens Senior Living: Last week, we knew this was likely coming, because any time you get an outbreak, even if its one or two in a congregate living facility, the chances are thats going to just erupt. One of the reasons we wanted to have a news conference on Saturday ... we expected the number to jump. What we were able to do is say yes, we were right, the number did jump, and we expected it to jump again yesterday, which it did, and we will probably take another big jump today. Its expected. Its test results that are coming back. This is a mixture of residents and employees. Out of the total of 35 cases that we have confirmed at this moment, 25 of those are related in some way to Fair Havens. Those cases include employees: I dont have a breakdown for you of whether its a CNA or RN or what but there will be a mixture. Those are potentially the folks that can take it back into the community, to their homes, to other folks around them. The health department is following up with each and every person who works at Fair Havens, really; the state health department is involved as well. The local folks do contract tracing to see what other potential we might be looking at. On taking this seriously: Its very, very real. I think we were so low in the beginning of the number of people, primarily because we werent testing very many, but the number of positive cases that people were really kind of like eh, Im OK, its not going to hit me. Theres a lot of talk in the Chicago area particularly about the minority population because traditionally they have not had as good of access to health care, that those populations are more likely to get a big jump in (positive cases) as well. Were trying to monitor this as best we can with the public health department. The Macon County Health Department has said it will not name group living facilities where outbreaks occur, and is only doing so at Fair Havens because of an administrators request. On that subject: There is some inconsistency in the state. For example, I saw a news report where a pastor got creative in Champaign and held Easter services in the parking lot. He was on the roof broadcasting through a radio station. He apparently got the OK from the Champaign County Health Department. Well, that is exactly the opposite of what the governors office told me when I had several pastors who wanted to do the same thing here. I told them, Absolutely no. It is a hard no. The governors office says no. Meanwhile, in Champaign, theyre getting, Oh, its OK. So basically I went back to the governors office last night and said, you know, one health department is saying one thing, another health department (is saying another) we need some consistency and guidance for our local health departments. They havent been through this before. This is new territory for everybody, but the message needs to be the same from the state health department to the locals as to what they can and cannot say. On the possibility of allowing exposed people to isolate from their families at local hotels: We have secured one hotel in particular for first responders. We have not extended that widely to our other potentially folks who need to isolate but probably well be making those arrangements this week. Weve got one hotel that has stepped up to do that. Weve got the conference hotel, Steve Horve has stepped up, thats a potential for us as well. Weve been looking at properties for weeks Kevin Greenfield, the county board chairman, and I have as to what would be appropriate, what we can afford, because were basically, in a lot of respects for some of these, were asking them to put any kind of other option on hold. I feel pretty confident that weve got enough. Initially the Emergency Management Agency was asked to secure 25 rooms basically. Weve gone above and beyond that, and we know that weve got facilities available if we need them. Im not talking as makeshift hospitals. Weve got those arrangements made, and we just have to pull the trigger on them. On whether large events will come back anytime soon: I think it was a smart move for the county fair to take the step it did over the weekend. You know, its not going to happen this year. I think a lot of us are holding out hope especially for the seniors who got cheated out of their senior year, their graduation ... but theres a hope that things will be so under control by late in the summer that maybe we can host you know, proms for these kids, and graduation ceremonies and parties. Its not going to happen in the next couple of months. Its just not going to be safe. As much as we all are just waiting for the day that were back to normal, I think theres going to be a lot of hesitation for many of us that we really arent wanting to be around large crowds. I go back to 9/11 and after that, the way we looked at flying in airplanes changed dramatically, and the process we had to go through to even get on a plane. After 9/11, it was probably a couple of years before I really felt at ease in a large stadium or a big crowd because you knew potentially you could be a target of terrorism. This time we cant see the terrorist. Its just in the air. Monday updates: Coronavirus and Central Illinois The Pennsylvania Department of Health said today 1,366 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed, raising the statewide total to 24,199. At least 524 have died due to the coronavirus, including 17 new deaths reported today. All of those who have died are adults, the health department said. At least 38 people have died in the Harrisburg region, including one new death reported today in Lebanon County. The health department released new numbers today. The number of new cases is up from the last daily update on Sunday (which reported 1,178 new cases). But its well below the one-day high of nearly 2,000 new cases last week. The number of new cases today represents a 6-percent increase. There are 105,593 patients who have tested negative, the department said. Cases have been found in all of Pennsylvanias 67 counties. Levine has said the state is particularly concerned about the high number of cases in the Philadelphia area, the Lehigh Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania. Philadelphia leads the state with more than 6,800 patients diagnosed and 127 deaths, according to the state report. Neighboring Montgomery County is second with 2,285 cases and 65 deaths. Lehigh County has reported 1,747 cases and 19 patients. In northeastern Pennsylvania, Luzerne County has diagnosed 1,446 patients and 21 have died. Central Pennsylvania hasnt been spared from COVID-19. Nearly 2,000 patients have been diagnosed with the virus in the midstate. Lancaster County leads the midstate with 828 cases and 24 fatalities. York County is second with 331 cases and 3 deaths. Heres a look at the other counties in the Harrisburg region: Lebanon (284 cases and 2 deaths); Dauphin (240 cases and 4 deaths); Cumberland (122 cases and 3 deaths); Franklin (66 cases); Adams (56 cases and 1 death); and Perry (17 cases and 1 death). In western Pennsylvania, Allegheny County has had 876 cases and 21 deaths, according to state figures. On Friday, Gov. Tom Wolf said the long-awaited surge of newly infected patients could occur this week. Wolf said the health care systems ability to handle that surge is going to help determine when the state can relax the stay-at-home order and other measures to curb the spread of the virus. Earlier Friday, Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said there likely wont be one single peak in Pennsylvania, explaining some areas across the state will peak at different times. Levine has said the curve reflecting the growth of cases is flattening in Pennsylvania. But Levine and Wolf have urged Pennsylvanians to stay home and leave only when necessary to continue to make progress. Pennsylvania remains under a statewide stay-at-home order until April 30. Wolf has ordered schools to be closed for the rest of the academic year so 1.7 million students will spend the spring learning remotely. Most of the patients who have been hospitalized are 65 and older. However, about half of all patients who have contracted the virus are under the age of 50. Health care experts urge people of all ages to take the coronavirus seriously. The state health department does not release figures on how many have recovered from the virus. Most people recover without requiring hospital care and hospitals that are treating patients dont inform the state when patients are discharged, the health department has said. Earlier today, Penn State Health announced it would providing updates on cases at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State Health St. Joseph in Reading, including those who have been discharged. The Hershey Medical Center has discharged 32 patients while the St. Joseph Medical Center has discharged 11 patients. More from PennLive Coronavirus pandemic threatens Pa.'s already vulnerable dairy farms After fire destroys familys home, coronavirus prevents new one from being finished Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. The actions are meant to keep the living from congregating around the dead and dying. And nowhere is that principle more strictly enforced than in hospitals. Intensive care units in the city once saw a steady stream of visitors. Nurses and doctors learned about their patients through them: which patient had the spouse who spent every waking hour at the bedside, which patient had the large family. Now bedside vigils, and visitors generally, are a thing of the past. In recent weeks, an exception has sometimes been made when a patient is on the verge of death. But even then, the visitor is usually not allowed in the actual room. In one Manhattan emergency room, a woman recently stood by the secretarys desk. A doctor handed her a phone. I love you, she said. Things will be OK. The words were played through the call bell in her husbands isolation room, 20 feet away. He was in a medically induced coma, dying. They had been married 40 years, according to a hospital employee who described the scene. Dr. Dylan Wyatt, a resident physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, said one recent image is seared into his memory: a woman who had been summoned to the hospital because her mother, in her 90s, seemed close to death. Female friends enjoying their dessert together at a mall The S&P/TSX Composite Index enjoyed a fantastic week ending April 10. However, Canadian restaurants are still facing a catastrophic situation, as we move into the middle of the month. Do restaurant stocks make sense for TSX investors right now? Lets dive in. Many Canadian restaurants are on the brink It is difficult to find a sector that has been harder hit than restaurants in this crisis. The government-mandated lockdowns were immediately felt in hospitality. This is especially true for small business owners. Restaurants often operate on razor-thin margins to begin with. The impact of weeks of lost revenue for these business owners is incalculable. The federal government is taking steps to provide relief, but it will not be enough for many in this sector. The Canadian food service sector laid off an astonishing 800,000 people in the month of March. Restaurants Canada, the industry association which conducted this revealing survey, has warned that nearly 30% of restaurants will not re-open if the situation remains unchanged throughout the month of April. Many restaurateurs have argued that the 75% wage subsidy and $40,000 loans for small businesses will not account for damage that will take a generation to recover from. These restaurateurs are lobbying for an industry-specific package to prevent a catastrophic scenario. Restaurant stocks to watch today Many restaurants have been forced to resort to take-out due to the lock downs. Fast-food restaurant stocks look like the best bet to stay resilient due to their structure. This is good news for Restaurant Brands, which owns and operates Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Popeyes. Even still, investors should expect a sharp pullback in activity. Shares of RBI have dropped 12% month over month as of close on April 10, but the stock bounced back 24% over the past week. Restaurants that rely on in-room dining have moved to offer take-out as well, but they will feel the brunt of the drop in foot traffic. Recipe Unlimited owns and operates casual dining chains like East Side Marios, Kelseys, Montanas, and The Keg. Its stock has dropped 30% over the past month, even with a 23% bump over the last week. Story continues Companies are making cuts In late March, the company announced that it would suspend compensation for its board of directors as well as for its CEO. It will also suspend all further dividend payments. This came with a series of other dramatic actions that have been in response to the loss in revenue that will stretch to a month this week. MTY Food Group is a mixed bag for TSX investors right now. It operates a mix of casual dining, fast casual, and quick-service restaurants. Shares of MTY Food Group have dropped 50% over the past month. This comes after a 25.9% spike on April 10. On April 6, MTY announced that it would rely on exemptions recently granted by the Canadian securities regulatory authorities to delay its first-quarter earnings release. It suspended its dividend, laid off over half of its global workforce, and capital and operating spending has been reduced to a minimum. There is too much uncertainty when it comes to the length of the lockdowns to trust Recipe Unlimited or MTY Food Group right now. RBI, however, is more well equipped to tackle this crisis. The post TSX Investors: How Risky Are Restaurant Stocks in 2020? appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada. More reading Fool contributor Ambrose O'Callaghan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends MTY Food Group. The Motley Fool recommends RESTAURANT BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC. The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020 [April 13, 2020] VMware Recognizes 2020 Partner of the Year Award Winners VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW), a leading innovator in enterprise software, today announced winners of the VMware 2020 Partner of the Year Awards. VMware honors select partners for extraordinary achievements every year at its annual Partner Leadership Summit. "VMware is committed to empowering our partners to deliver exceptional customer success, and we are pleased to recognize our 2020 VMware Partner of the Year Awards winners," said Jenni Flinders, Vice President and Worldwide Channel Chief, VMware. "These awards are demonstrative of our partners capability and dedication to VMware, and it's great to see partners innovating and growing their business with us. The opportunity for our partners is exceptional with the breadth of our solutions portfolio, and it's truly inspirational to witness customers rely on our partners as trusted advisors." The VMware Partner Awards are recognized as a significant marker of achievement, and the 2020 program is no exception. It includes the following regional and global awards: Partner Value, Partner Social Impact, Services Excellence, Digital Transformation, Cloud Platform Transformation, Partner Trailblazer, as well as the Global Partner for Technology Innovation. The program was conducted in partnership with IDC, who helped review and evaluate award submissions against the criteria for each category. Partners were recognized for delivering growth for their customers' businesses, driving ROI, innovating and demonstrating expertise in a technology area, or making a positive impact on the world through VMware technologies. "The 2020 VMware Partner Innovation Awards honor partners delivering services excellence and expertise," said Susan Nash, senior vice president, Strategic Corporate Alliances, VMware. "We are proud of the impact our partners are delivering for customers as they evolve their businesses to capitalize on digital transformation." Partner of the Year Award honorees from around the world received awards in the following categories for outstanding performance and notable achievements in 2019: Global Award Winners Parter Value - Lenovo Enterprise Technology Group Partner Social Impact - Rackspace (News - Alert) US, Inc Services Excellence - ITQ Consultancy B.V. Digital Transformation - Wetcom S.A. Cloud Platform Transformation - Deloitte (News - Alert) Consulting Product Services, LLC - AMER Partner Trailblazer - TeraSky Group Partner Technology Innovation - Microsoft Regional Award Winners Partner Value Americas : Softchoice (News - Alert) : Softchoice (News - Alert) APJ : Lenovo Enterprise Technology Group : Lenovo Enterprise Technology Group EMEA: Computacenter PLC Partner Social Impact Americas : Rackspace US, Inc : Rackspace US, Inc APJ : CTC (News - Alert)/ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corp : CTC (News - Alert)/ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corp EMEA: Fondo Services Excellence Americas : AHEAD, LLC : AHEAD, LLC APJ : Anunta Technology Management Services, Ltd. : Anunta Technology Management Services, Ltd. EMEA: ITQ Consultancy B.V. Digital Transformation Americas : Wetcom SA : Wetcom SA APJ : NCS PTE LTD : NCS PTE LTD EMEA: SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH Cloud Platform Transformation Americas : Deloitte Consulting Product Services, LLC - AMER : Deloitte Consulting Product Services, LLC - AMER APJ : FUJISOFT Inc. : FUJISOFT Inc. EMEA: Xtravirt Limited Partner Trailblazer: Americas : World Wide Technology, Inc. : World Wide Technology, Inc. APJ : Wntime (Beijing) tech. Co., Ltd. : Wntime (Beijing) tech. Co., Ltd. EMEA: TeraSky Group About VMware Partner Leadership Summit The VMware Partner Leadership Summit 2020, held virtually April 7, 2020, connected VMware partners with VMware executives and industry peers worldwide. The virtual event enabled global partners to explore business opportunities, customer use cases, solution practices, and partnering best practices. As an invitation-only event, it provided partners with resources to develop and execute comprehensive go-to-market plans. Additional Resources Connect with VMware on Twitter and Facebook About VMware VMware software powers the world's complex digital infrastructure. The company's cloud, app modernization, networking, security, and digital workspace offerings help customers deliver any application on any cloud across any device. Headquartered in Palo Alto (News - Alert), California, VMware is committed to being a force for good, from its breakthrough technology innovations to its global impact. For more information, please visit https://www.vmware.com/company.html. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005168/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] A sailor who was aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier died Monday of COVID-19, the first fatality from nearly 600 confirmed cases among its crew, the US Navy said Monday. The sailor, who tested positive on March 30, was discovered unresponsive on April 9 and placed in the intensive care unit of the Navys hospital in Guam, where the Roosevelt is docked. The death came six days after Thomas Modly resigned as acting navy secretary over his mishandling of an outbreak on the Roosevelt, one of two US aircraft carriers in the western Pacific. Modly had earlier fired the Roosevelts captain, Brett Crozier, after the officers warning that the shipboard outbreak could dangerously incapacitate much of the crew became public. Crozier had sought to evacuate most of the ships 4,800 crew after it stopped in Guam on March 27, to test all of them and sterilize the vessel, but the idea was rejected by his superiors. With the number of proven cases approaching 100, on March 30 the veteran captain wrote an unclassified, widely-distributed letter addressed to his superiors that quickly leaked to his hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating, Crozier wrote. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. Both Modly and Defense Secretary Mark Esper expressed anger that Crozier had violated the Pentagons chain of command, and they insinuated that the leak to the media was deliberate. They were also concerned that he had exposed a vulnerability in US military readiness that could encourage adversaries to take advantage. Crozier demonstrated extremely poor judgment in the middle of a crisis in his handling of the letter, Modly said. It misrepresented the facts of what was going on the ship and created a little bit of panic that was unnecessary, he said. But the number of COVID-19 cases aboard the ship has continued to mount. With 92 percent of the crew tested, 585 have been infected with the virus, according to the Navy on Monday. Modly removed Crozier from his command on April 2. Naive or stupid But the acting Navy secretary then faced a challenge from multiple videos appearing on social media that showed large numbers from the Roosevelts crew applauding Crozier and chanting his name as he walked alone down the gangway onto shore in Guam. The controversial firing sparked questions over whether and why the Navy hierarchy had ignored Croziers internal requests to evacuate the warship, as coronavirus cases were cropping up on military bases and vessels elsewhere. After firing Crozier, Modly flew to Guam where he boarded the ship and told the crew in a profanity-laced speech that their love for Crozier was misguided, calling him too naive or too stupid. Those comments exploded in the US media even before Modly returned to the United States, and, having sparked a fresh political firestorm over the handling of the pandemic by the administration of President Donald Trump, he resigned. He was the second permanent or acting navy secretary in six months to depart. His predecessor was fired after clashing with Trump over the presidents protection of a Navy Seal who had been charged with war crimes and convicted of lesser charges. So far some 150 US military bases and several ships, including two other aircraft carriers, have reported coronavirus cases. Total cases among Pentagon service personnel, their families, civilians and contractors was 4,528 on Monday. Across the United States, nearly 560,000 cases have been reported, with 22,146 deaths. At this point, the overweight American is a cliche known around the world. And in spite of quips at their expense, many Americans continue to shove down burgers and fries with a big gulp at their favorite fast-food restaurants. But the long-term health effects are truly alarming. An astonishing 42.4 percent of Americans were obese in 2018, which is a roughly 12 percent increase from 2000, according to the CDC. Naturally, obesity is inextricably linked to higher incidences of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and more, which dont bode well for future life expectancies. Considering that social media is now overrun with fitness gurus and Instagram influencers peddling healthier lifestyles, you would assume that health metrics would be lower than they were in the early 2000s. Not so, unfortunately. Much of the reason that people continue to eat at fast-food restaurants like McDonald's is because the food is cheap and easily accessible for people with few resources financially or time-wise. But convenient, fresh, healthy foods are becoming more and more accessible to regular people. From Blue Apron to Freshly to Chipotle, it's just as easy to have it delivered or pick it up on the way home as it is to stop by McDonald's. The healthy option is becoming less costly. The products these healthy-food chains sell are relatively cheap and healthy, and many of the companies behind them are socially conscious, supporting charities and global movements. Modern ecommerce and branding are providing plenty of opportunities for our food culture to turn a new leaf. Now consumer preferences just need to follow suit. Related: These Chefs Just Raised $100,000 to Make Cheap, Healthy Fast Food An evolving market The quick-serve restaurant (QSR) boom, colloquially called fast food, technically started with the Golden Arches in 1940, but the market today is much more nuanced. Burger joints still dominate, but more healthy options like Subway, which now has more locations than McDonalds, started the trend for a different kind of QSR experience. The popularity of Chipotles assembly-line style serving quickly solidified those changes. Now the competition between QSRs is less on outdoing other burger joints and more on innovating the market entirely. Specifically, many of the companies pushing the boundaries of QSR are promoting a distinct healthy flavor, and theyre using technology to rise above the crowded field of competition. Ecommerce is the new QSR sword, and if companies cant appeal to the consumer preferences of the ballooning Gen Z and millennials, then they will have an uphill battle for market share. Interestingly, some tech unicorns play a pivotal role here. For example, startups like DoorDash and Postmates serve as the pseudo-ecommerce delivery partners of many health-forward brands that begin as brick-and-mortar retail locations. Although companies like Postmates and UberEats are valued in the billions, they operate on razor-thin margins. And in many instances, they operate at a loss, which is why some of the market leaders are weighing a merger. Enter the opportunity for boutique QSR brands at the edge of e-commerce, production, and retail. Franchising is alive and well, but the operational and capital burden for people launching a franchise is heavy. However, the sub-franchiser model is gaining traction as a more cost-effective avenue for franchisees. For example, the sub-franchise method requires less corporate overhead and enables retail locations to spread faster. One of the most salient developments is also the onset of broad-based wholesale divisions for franchises. Franchisees have significantly reduced startup costs and better margins, making the option enticing. The more franchisees, the broader the brands network. Eventually, middlemen delivery services like Postmates that rely on unconventional pickup models from brick-and-mortar stores may be crowded out of the market as larger brands turn to their own production and ecommerce delivery methods. Why not excise middlemen like UberEats and Postmates, and instead, deliver directly like any other ecommerce retailer? Delivery costs are cheaper and faster than ever, and ecommerce tech like PWAs or social commerce only serve to make the experience more seamless for the end user. More retail locations mean a broader delivery audience, and the diminished need to rely on DoorDash or Postmates for sales outside of in-store transactions. Related: Why Chains Need to Pay Attention to Kids' Changing Fast-Food Habits Distinct preferences and creating brand access The ability of QSRs to extend into multiple locations around the country has always hinged on franchising. However, it will also be buttressed by changing consumer preferences, and in many cases, the health-forward predisposition of younger generations. To many consumers around the country, the biggest obstacle to healthy-fast-food chains is access, not lack of interest. Not only are younger generations more health-conscious, but they're also more passionate about supporting small brands. According to a recent report by Visual Capitalist, younger generations absolutely love intimate and boutique brands. Those include the booming wellness and nutrition brands like health-forward startups Blue Apron and Sun Basket, and blossoming Kombucha brands like Health-Ade. Amazon still reigns supreme as the favorite ecommerce brand, but many young consumers revel in the personal touch of community-driven brands over corporate chains. To attract more attention to the accessibility of healthy eating in todays hyper-paced world of apps and smartphones, startup brands need to demonstrate a willingness to challenge the status quo of Amazon and companies like DoorDash. Fusing ecommerce into a rapidly growing national franchise network is the optimal avenue. In many of the country's markets, there's a real demand for healthy-fast-food restaurants, and boutique companies are positioned to open franchises that cater to a region's local cuisine and produce in ways that traditional fast-food burger joints do not. Related: Healthy Growth: Kcal Healthy Fast Food Gets Started On Its Middle ... Related: Why Franchising Is the Future of the Healthy-Fast-Food Movement Coronavirus: What Employees Can Eat To Stay Healthy During Work From Home A Former Editor of 'Cosmopolitan' On Her Secret to (Almost) Infinite Energy Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved What happens when nobody wants to get on an elevator? We've been looking at design after the coronavirus: urban design, interior design, even bathroom design. Oliver Wainwright of the Guardian has been looking at these issues and has talked to a number of architects and planners about where they think architecture is going. Zonnestraal Sanatorium/ Jaan Duiker He notes that this is not a new phenomenon, reminding us of the roots of modernism, with my emphasis on a great turn of phrase: ...the wipe-clean aesthetic of modernism was partly a result of tuberculosis, with light-flooded sanatoriums inspiring an era of white-painted rooms, hygienic tiled bathrooms and the ubiquitous mid-century recliner chair. Form has always followed fear of infection, just as much as function. He asks a pile of important questions: "Will homes need to adapt to better accommodate work? Will pavements widen so we can keep our distance? Will we no longer want to live so densely packed together, working in open-plan offices and cramming into lifts?" He wonders about the future of co-working spaces (as we have) and sees changes in office designs, with a move away from open plans. Its a hunch shared by Arjun Kaicker, who led the workplace team at Foster and Partners for a decade, influencing the gargantuan new HQ for both Apple and Bloomberg. I think well see wider corridors and doorways, more partitions between departments, and a lot more staircases, says Kaicker, who now heads analytics and insights at Zaha Hadid Architects. Everything has been about breaking down barriers between teams, but I dont think spaces will flow into each other so much any more. The end of the elevator as we know it? Kaicker suggests that all of this will make super-tall buildings less attractive or efficient. He also sees a hands-free future where we use our own phones for everything, including calling elevators. Office doors will all be out of Star Trek, opening automatically using facial recognition. I suspect we will see a lot more office buildings like this one for BDO in Copenhagen not as high, and with grand open stairs that provide a great, healthy option to taking the elevator. They will lead to office space built out at far lower density, with more square feet per person, but companies probably won't need more space because more people will be working from home. This may all prove a boon for ThyssenKrupp and its MULTI elevator, which has tiny lightweight cabs (barely big enough for me and engineer Dennis Poon of Thornton Tomasetti) that run continuously like a paternoster elevator; since there are many cabs running in one shaft you don't have to crowd in, you just wait for the next one. In residential buildings I do wish it would all lead to changes in the building code to permit buildings like they build in Europe, where there are grand open stairs in the middle of the relatively low buildings; the elevator is used primarily by those who have trouble with stairs or have lots of groceries. We will probably never be able to do this in North America, thanks to the completely different approach to fire safety, but we could at least make stairs more prominent, generous and beautiful. Will this lead to more walkable cities? Lloyd Alter / CC BY 2.0 Whereas a lot of American planners are worried that the pandemic will send people back to their cars and the suburbs, Wainwright speaks to European planners who see other opportunities. This is the best time ever to think of a walkable city, says Wouter Vanstiphout, professor of design as politics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Could coronavirus be a catalyst for decentralisation? We have these enormous hospitals and people living on top of each other, but still having to travel long distances across the city to get to them. The pandemic suggests we should distribute smaller units such as hospitals and schools across more of the urban tissue and strengthen local centres. Perhaps it will encourage us to distribute people into smaller buildings, like those in Munich; they are tall enough to get reasonable densities, but not so tall that you cannot comfortably take those open stairs in the middle of the buildings. Will things actually change at all? Of course, it might be that nothing changes at all. 9/11 didn't kill skyscrapers and as Wainwright notes, SARS didn't kill high-rise apartments. But a hundred years ago, changing the way we built our cities made a huge difference in the health and well-being of people across Europe and North America, and it was done without drugs. Professor Dame Sally Davies wrote in The Drugs Don't Work: Almost without exception, the decline in deaths from the biggest killers at the beginning of the twentieth century predates the introduction of antimicrobial drugs for civilian use at the end of the Second World War. Just over half the decline in infectious diseases had occurred before 1931. The main influences on the decline of mortality were better nutrition, improved hygiene and sanitation, and less dense housing, all of which helped to prevent and to reduce transmission of infectious diseases. Basically, they did it with design. Perhaps in the face of the medical challenges we face, between pandemics and antibiotic resistance, it's time to think about the kind of design changes we should make now. It is the third and final tower to be built on the Wolf Point site near the Merchandise Mart on the north banks of the river. The second of two apartment towers, the 60-story Wolf Point East, is open to residents while construction work is completed within the top 20 floors. Wolf Point West opened in January 2016. With nearly the entire state of Massachusetts under a high wind warning Monday, power companies are warning that it could take longer than expected to restore power if it is knocked out in communities. Heavy winds, torrential rain and scattered thunderstorms are forecast in Massachusetts. The rain began falling in the morning and is expected to finish during the night. The entire state, excluding Franklin County, is under a high wind warning from noon to 10 p.m. Some areas could see wind gusts up to 70 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Franklin County is under a high wind advisory as of 11:30 a.m. The winds could knock down trees and power lines. Widespread power outages are expected, the National Weather Service said. As @MassEMA monitors the current weather forecast, with potential for high wind, rain and outages Monday, it is important to take extra care to stay safe during the #COVID19 emergency. Power Outage Safety Tips: https://t.co/8tcifgrU1a Outage Map: https://t.co/NdksU83e7k pic.twitter.com/Bxt9JBjbVj MAEnergy Environment (@MassEEA) April 13, 2020 National Grid said in Massachusetts the storm is considered a Type 3 event which means roughly 10 percent of its customers could be impacted for three days. National Grid recognizes the ongoing challenges surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and has been monitoring the potential weather conditions for several days, the company said in a statement. The Company has been securing additional resources to support potential restoration needs and collaborating with local and state agencies to ensure that its prepared for the storm and its aftermath. Michael McCallan, vice president of New England Electric Operations for National Grid, said he understands the country and the companys customers are already experiencing an incredibly challenging situation with the coronavirus pandemic and National Grid will do everything it can to keep the power running. That being said, if the weather throws a punch, we know its more important than ever that we ensure the safety of our customers and employees and be ready to address the potential outages that may occur, he said. More than 200 external line crews have been secured to assist National Grids 200 internal line crews in the region and another 200 forestry crews will also be ready to assist in the restoration efforts once conditions are safe to do so, National Grid said. Eversource said in a statement that the company is monitoring the storm. The company said it is adhering to social distancing guidelines and has enhanced sanitation measures to safeguard the health and well-being of workers and customers. Eversource has energy line and tree crews prepared to respond. With many customers working remotely and students relying on technology for distance learning during this unprecedented time, we recognize how important it is to have reliable power, said Eversource Vice President of Electric Operations Doug Foley. Working under the challenging conditions related to the pandemic, our crews are positioned around the state and ready to respond to any damage or outages caused by Mondays storm. Our team will work around-the-clock to restore power as quickly and safely as possible yet some restorations may take longer as we work to ensure the safety of our employees and customers. F rance has extended its coronavirus lockdown for a month as president Emmanuel Macron admitted the country was not sufficiently ready for the crisis. The French leader said the strict rules must be respected over the next four weeks but told the public that the epidemic was starting to slow down. Mr Macron, addressing the nation on Monday night, thanked those who were observing the lockdown and added: everyday we have made progress. But he said: "Our country was not sufficiently ready for this crisis. We will all draw all the consequences. France: Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures 1 /33 France: Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures The empty Place Charles de Gaulle with the Arc de Triomphe AP Place de la Bastille during confinement due to the coronavirus outbreak in Paris AP French resistance: Emmanuel Macron announcing tough measures against Covid-19 AFP via Getty Images The Eiffel Tower is seen next to a board that reads: "In the context of the COVID-19 the Eiffel Tower closes today from 9pm for an indefinite period of time" REUTERS Drastic action: Paris yesterday before the whole of the French population was told to stay home AFP via Getty Images An employee walks in the Musee du Louvre in Paris, undefinitely closed to the public AFP via Getty Images Deserted Hotel de Ville Getty Images The Louvre Museum Getty Images An empty Disneyland Paris PA A French policeman walks down steps at The Sacre Coeur Basilica AFP via Getty Images French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is seen on a TV screen as he speaks from his office during the evening news broadcast of French public television channel France 2, on March 17, 2020, in Paris, on the day a strict lockdown AFP via Getty Images Police officers question people walking in public after a government enforced quarantine Getty Images Police officers patrol near the Eiffel Tower during a government enforced quarantine Getty Images An empty railway station, in Strasbourg, eastern France AFP via Getty Images A deserted Concorde AFP via Getty Images An empty street leading to the deserted place Vendome in Paris AFP via Getty Images A police officer wearing a facemask for protectove measures, contols a man near to the Barbes Market AFP via Getty Images Two motorcycle police officers patrol near the empty Grand Place in Lille, northern France AFP via Getty Images Police officers partol the area of the Esplanade du Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris AFP via Getty Images Police officers check a pedestrian in Boulogne Billancourt AP A Police Nationale officer gestures and talks to a man on the "Promenade des Anglais" in the French Riviera city of Nice AFP via Getty Images French police officers check cyclists in front of the Arc de Triomphe as lockdown is imposed REUTERS A policeman checks people's documents as they sit in their car near the beach of seaside resort town of Deauville in Normandy AFP via Getty Images police's vehicle is parked in front of the Barbes Market as people arrive to do their grocery shopping AFP via Getty Images A view of the empty La Defense square AP He said that by May 11 when the lockdown is now projected to end, France would be able to test every citizen showing Covid-19 symptoms. France is going through "difficult times", President Macron said on Monday, acknowledging that his country had not been sufficiently prepared early on to face the challenges posed by the outbreak. "The epidemic is starting to slow down. The results are there," Mr Macron said in a televised address to the nation. "Thanks to your efforts, everyday we have made progress." Loading.... The death toll in France from the new coronavirus outbreak has risen to 14,967 from 14,393 a day earlier, the French public health authority said on Monday. The body added 6,821 patients were currently in intensive care units, down from 6,845 on Sunday. The Red version of the Galaxy Buds+ launched in early March, but only a few regions got them South Korea, the USA and Russia. Now they are preparing to enter another country, Taiwan. They will be available in late April through Samsungs official stores as well as various retailers like PChome, MOMO and Yahoo!. The price tag remains the same as the other colors, NTD 5,500. One thing that is changing is the noise suppression during calls the latest update (firmware version R175XXU0ATD3) comes with two important fixes. First, the issue with wind noise (which was quite loud during calls) should be resolved. The second change should improve the quality of ambient sound during calls. Samsung also improved the stability of the earbuds connection. This update is currently rolling out in South Korea and the UK and will head to other regions before long. Open the Wearable app to see if the update has reached your shores. The latest Galaxy Buds+ update improves audio quality and wind noise suppression in calls You can check out our Galaxy Buds+ review for more details on the TWS earbuds. If noise cancellation is a must, then check out the AKG N400 (the Galaxy Buds Bean are supposed to come with ANC too). Source 1 (in Chinese) | Via 1 | Source 2 Since March 19, during nearly every White House press briefing on the coronavirus crisis, President Trump has been recklessly promoting the anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as essential pharmaceutical weapons in the fight against COVID-19, despite members of his own task force emphatically stating that the data is ambiguous at best and there is need for reliable scientific investigation. On March 24, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reported a shortage of chloroquine tablets as hospitals and doctors have been making massive purchases of the medication, leaving patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis in a difficult strait as they are unable to fill their prescriptions. Trump said at a recent briefing, We bought a tremendous amount of hydroxychloroquine, which I think is, you know, its a great malaria drug and there are signs that it works on [coronavirus], some very strong signs we have some very good results and some very good tests. Youve seen the same test that I have. In France, they had a very good test. But we dont have time to go and say, gee, lets take a couple of years and test it out. Numerous health authorities have raised concerns about the nature of drug oversight at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On March 28, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) to allow hospital administrations and physicians to use hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 patients, without any clear evidence that the drugs can impact the course of the disease. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb noted that the EUA has jeopardized necessary research to determine the real value of these drugs in the fight against the coronavirus. Plaquenil is one of many brand names for the drug Hydroxychloroquine. (Photo credit: Twitter/Manon01901750) Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, told Reuters, The president is short-circuiting the process with his gut feelings. We are in an emergency and we need to rely on our government to ensure that all these potential therapies are tested in the most effective and objective way. Paul Garner, coordinating editor of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group, cautioned against administering these medications outside of a controlled trial, stating, They could do harm and result in more people becoming infected, as they see the disease as less of a threat and ignore actions that could prevent its spread. He told the British Medical Journal, There is absolutely no evidence that chloroquine is effective in people infected with coronavirus. How the CQ and HCQ work Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and chloroquine (CQ) are antimalarial drugs and anti-inflammatory agents for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus, in use for more than 70 years. The interest in using them for COVID-19 has risen because they have demonstrated in-vitro (within the glass) antiviral activity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In vitro means that the studies on the interaction of the drugs with the virus were done in the laboratory outside of their biological context in human beings. Though these in-vitro results appear promising, they do not necessarily predict equivalent response in the person receiving these medications. Such laboratory experiments help investigators perform more detailed experiments that provide information on how the virus can enter cells, replicate, and propagate. They also allow trialing certain therapeutic drugs like HCQ to understand the mechanisms that inhibit the activities of the virus. These preliminary studies have shown that CQ increases the pH of the affected cells, preventing the virus from fusing to the respiratory cells outer membrane. It was also demonstrated that it interferes with the viruss ACE2 surface cell receptors, the spike proteins, preventing it from binding to the cell, an initial necessary step for infection. Another mechanism touted by scientists is the drugs ability to regulate the immune system, which potentially could enhance the therapeutic impact against the cytokine storm that is seen in patients severely affected by the COVID infection. Initial clinical studies on COVID-19 patients demonstrated they had high levels of inflammatory molecules and poorer prognosis. CQ was discovered in 1934 by a Hungarian scientist named Hans Andersag. The wholesale cost in the developing world is around $0.04 US, though it costs $5.30 per dose in the US. Because of mass use in areas of the world where malaria is endemic, some forms of malaria have become resistant to it. CQ has several negative drug-drug interactions and must be monitored carefully, as overdoses can be fatal. According to epidemiologist Dr. Nanshan Zhong, credited for discovering the SARS coronavirus in 2003, and responsible for managing the COVID-19 outbreak in China, CQ is not a highly effective cure, but its effects deserve attention. The clinical experience with HCQ HCQ, a less toxic derivative of CQ first synthesized in 1946, has also demonstrated similar in-vitro potency, this according to Dr. Manli Wang, in a letter to the editor of Cell Discovery journal. Yet, Dr. Wangs team concludes that confirmation of their findings requires clinical trials. HCQ, also known as Plaquenil, was approved in the US in 1955, and is on the list of the World Health Organizations essential medicines. It is used to treat various autoimmune disorders and those malarial infections still sensitive to CQ. There are contraindications to the use of HCQ for people with certain heart conditions, diabetes or psoriasis. Overdose can cause seizures, stopping of breathing and ventricular fibrillationnonfunctioning heart rhythm. HCQ should only be prescribed by a physician familiar with the medication. In-vivo (within the living) studies test the effects of these drugs on the whole living organism. Animal studies and human clinical trials are major components of such studies. Verification of the efficacy of these drugs becomes critical as the delivery of the active ingredient of the drug at the site of treatment can be impacted by the patients metabolism. The drug also may prove to be too toxic to the patient, despite any efficacy against COVID-19. Physicians in Wuhan saw no benefits to HCQ. One physician stated that he treated 16 patients with severe syndromes. They did not see any benefit with HCQ and he discontinued use after one patient developed a serious abnormal heart rhythm and died. Similarly, an ICU physician in Wuhan had noted equivocal results in patients who received the medication. They admit that these were based on anecdotal assessments. In the only randomized Chinese study, a pilot study in the use of HCQ in the treatment of patients with COVID-19, published on February 29 in the Journal of Zhejiang University, 30 patients with mild to moderate disease were prospectively enrolled after informed consent was obtained. Randomized trials are necessary, as they aim to reduce certain sources of bias when testing the effectiveness of new treatments. The patients were randomized equally to a control group without the drug and a group that was administered 400 mg of HCQ every day for five days. After seven days, the RNA testing demonstrated that the virus was cleared in only two of 15 patients taking HCQ, while in the control group one patient cleared the virus. The median duration of hospitalization, time for fevers to break and recovery of lung findings were similar. The main weakness of the study was the small number of patients. References in the press and by the Centers for Disease Control to CQs possible efficacy cite a letter by Dr. Xu Yang in BioScience Trends released on February 18, 2020, stating that results in more than 100 patients have demonstrated CQ is superior to the control treatment in inhibiting the exacerbation of pneumonia, improved imaging, and promoting viral clearance and shortening the disease. According to the author, this was an open-label, multi-center, non-randomized trial on the efficacy and safety of chloroquine without a control armessentially an observational trial. On February 15, 2020, government and regulatory authorities agreed to add CQ to their recommendations for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. In an email, the author of the study only referred to the above advisory meeting but did not offer his data for review. Attempts to locate this published study did not provide any results in PubMed. It is worth noting that at a World Health Organization press conference in February, in response to a reporters question on CQ, Janet Diaz, head of clinical care for the WHO Emergencies Program, said, For chloroquine, there is no proof that that is an effective treatment at this time. We recommend that therapeutics be tested under ethically approved clinical trials to show efficacy and safety. The WHO has initiated an international study called SOLIDARITY Trial that intends to look at the efficacy of several therapeutic agents to include CQ/HCQ in a randomized fashion. The work of Dr. Didier Raoult A small French study by famed microbiologist and infectious disease specialist, Dr. Didier Raoult, published on March 20, is the one repeatedly touted by President Trump. Twenty-six patients were treated with 200 mg of HCQ three times a day, combined with the antibiotic Azithromycin, for a total of 10 days. Sixteen patients were in a control group who did not receive the treatment. However, six of the patients who received HCQ were removed from the studyone died, three were admitted to the ICU and two withdrew from the study. These were not included in the final results. According to Raoult, after six days of taking HCQ, 70 percent were negative for COVID-19, while in the control group 12.5 percent were negative. Analysis of the study by a French journal, Prescrire International, found, amongst the 18 patients for whom the date of onset of symptoms is known, the median time before non-detection of the virus was 7.5 days, with a wide confidence interval. In the absence of a control group selected according to a similar protocol and followed in the same conditions, it is not known whether this time is shorter than without HCQ or not. In the journal For Better Medicine, Leonid Schneider wrote, The study was not randomized, ethically approved only after it already began, and it was not really controlled: the 16 control patients were treated in different clinics. Dr. Raoult followed this a week later with an as of yet unpublished observational study of 80 patients treated with HCQ and Azithromycin. Again, there was a rapid fall of viral load with 83 percent negative on day 7. In a commentary in Science Translational Medicine, Derek Lowe, a chemist on the advisory board of Chemical & Engineering News, offers a searing critique. Some of the inconsistencies he noted were that only 15 percent of the patients had fevers; four were considered asymptomatic carriers, raising questions how they were enlisted in the study; 20 percent of the patients did not receive the CT scan as claimed by the author, and of those that did, only 54 percent had radiological findings of pneumonia. The discharge criteria changed during the course of the observational study. There are no individual patient data nor are viral load counts resulted, and, glaringly, there is no control group to compare the outcomes against. Three of the patients were transferred to the ICU and one patient on the main floor passed away. Two patients in the ICU were returned back to the main floor, but the status of the remaining patient was not reported. This would place the fatality rate at 1.3 percent, consistent with rates in Germany and the US. Lowe writes: Without matched controls, and without being able to look at individual patient data, we just dont know how good this treatment was or frankly if it was any good at all. We may be seeing a notable effect size in what is still a small trial, or we may be seeing something thats not that remarkable or the result of a poorly controlled protocol. We dont know. I understand the need for speed, and Im glad that the Marseilles group is conducting studies and releasing them as preprints. But this work does not help us anywhere as much as it should . A speculator, a lawyer, and Fox News In the lead-up to the White Houses declarations on CQ/HCQ, James Todaro, an ophthalmologist from Michigan turned cryptocurrency investor, tweeted on March 13 that there was growing evidence of chloroquine as a highly effective treatment for COVID-19. He, together with a New York City attorney by the name of Gregory Rigano, had authored a paper linked to Google Documents suggesting that early trials in China and France appeared to show significant benefits in treating COVID-19. Google has since removed the paper from its website, citing grave concerns on the ethical implications of the manuscript. The night before President Trump touted the potential benefits of HCQ in his White House press briefing, Rigano, falsely billed as an adviser to Stanford Medicine, a branch of Stanford University, appeared on Tucker Carlsons prime-time Fox News Channel program, announcing that HCQ was a cure for the coronavirus and had the potential to prevent the disease. He said, the president has the authority to authorize the use of HCQ against the coronavirus immediately. He has cut more red tape at the FDA than any other president in history. In a prepared statement, he claimed that Dr. Raoults study showed a 100 percent cure rate against the coronavirus. Joan Donavan, director of the technology and Social Change Projects at Harvards Shorenstein Center, tweeted on the same day, Two bitcoin entrepreneurs are pushing a self-published study claiming a cure for the virus. They havent done any original research, but instead have strung together lengthy quotes from other scientists, who have done very limited research. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when asked at the White House press conference whether CQ had proven its efficacy as a prophylaxis against COVID-19, said, The answer is no, and the evidence youre talking about is anecdotal evidence. Dr. Raoults study had gone to press on March 17 in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. On April 3, the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, the society that publishes the journal, issued a statement, The Board believes the article does not meet the Societys expected standard, especially relating to the lack of better explanations of the inclusion criteria and the triage of patients to ensure patient safety Although ISAC recognizes it is important to help the scientific community by publishing new data fast, this cannot be at the cost of reducing scientific scrutiny and best practices. In interviews, Gregory Rigano stated he had been working with Dr. Raoult on a chloroquine-based treatment. Dr. Raoult has not given any statements to the press since these controversies surfaced. But it is worth noting his comments to the press in the last two months. In an interview on January 21, Dr. Raoult seemed to dismiss the COVID-19 crisis, telling Les Crises, All this is crazy. That is, there is no longer clarity. Whenever there is a disease in the world we wonder if we are going to have it happen here in France. It just becomes totally delusional I dont know, people dont have anything to do, so they go to China to find something to be afraid of well, its just not serious. Then on February 24, an article in TourMAG, quoted him touting the Chinese data: One thing is certain, if a patient goes to Marseille hospitals for a Chinese coronavirus infection, Dr. Raoult recommends treatment with chloroquine. Since China has many patients, they can conduct a treatment assessment. The Chinese are investing massively in the subject, and there, chloroquine is the standard treatment. Then Dr. Raoult is quoted, You know, there are more deaths from scooter accidents in Italy than from the coronavirus. This psychosis and media runaway come from sensitivity of the human race to the risk of extinction. Anthropologically, there is always a reason why we will die, each generation having its fantasies around the disappearance of the human species. On April 6, Newsweek magazines health section noted that several hospitals in Sweden had stopped prescribing CQ to COVID-19 patients due to adverse side effects such as loss of peripheral vision, severe abdominal cramps and unusual headaches. Magnus Gisslen, a physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital infection clinic, told the local media, there were reports of suspected more serious side effects than we first thought. We cannot rule out serious side effects, especially from the heart, and it is a hard-dosed drug. In addition, we have no strong evidence that chloroquine has an effect on COVID-19. The next day, without explanation, on April 7, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention updated their therapeutic options guidance, stating, There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19. Prior to the update, the guidance stated, Although optimal dosing and duration of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 are unknown, some US clinicians have reported anecdotally different hydroxychloroquine dosing. Any mention of HCQ has now been removed, but Trump continues to promote it relentlessly. It is quite frequent in modern pharmacology that new drugs seem promising when tested in cell lines, only to find that when introduced into human phase 1 trials, they have no efficacy, or even make the patient worse, damaging the heart, kidneys, liver, etc. The COVID-19 pandemic puts a premium on finding new drugs with a therapeutic benefit. But this must be demonstrated through rigorous scientific processes so that patients can be assured both that the drugs will work and thatto throw Trumps phrase back against himthe cure isnt worse than the disease. AIA: Residential design hard hit by COVID-19 The momentum building in the housing market since the Great Recession has completely reversed itself over just a few weeks, according to a report issued Friday from the American Institute of Architects. It shows that revenue at residential architecture firms for March is estimated to have been 15% below their expectations at the beginning of the month, the AIA said. April is expected to be almost 20% below previous expectations. Here are some other key findings from the survey of residential architects: 78% of firms have already seen slowing or stoppage of projects. 70% of firms indicate that inquiries for new work declined in March. Around 90% of firms have seen problems with current projects due to COVID-19. About two-thirds of firms indicated that a majority or virtually all of their staff are now working remotely. Firms anticipate accelerated revenue losses in April, with almost 70% expecting losses of 10% or more for the month relative to their expectations in early March. AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker said the residential sector has been hit just as it was getting back on a solid foundation. Until we have a better understanding of when the homebuilding and home improvement industries can resume their normal pace, demand for residential design activity is expected to suffer, he said. The report is at https://tinyurl.com/wj4annf/. The findings build on a separate recent survey of architecture firms serving the nonresidential buildings market. Sumi Sukanya Dutta By Express News Service NEW DELHI: A statistical analysis of active cases of COVID-19 has revealed a significant decline in reproductive numbers of SARS CoV 2 -- the virus behind the COVID 19 epidemic -- in India, possibly due to the nationwide lockdown and social distancing measures. R0 -- pronounced R-naught and known also as the basic reproductive number -- refers to how many other people will catch the disease from a single infected person, in a population that hasnt been exposed to the disease before. If R0 is below one, the epidemic eventually dies out. Above one, it keeps growing, possibly exponentially. An analysis by the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, has shown that R0 for novel corona virus was 1.83 from March 5 to Apr 5 in India but dipped to 1.53 from April 6 to April 13. Globally, R0 for SARS CoV 2 has been estimated between 2 and 4 and scientists believe that the factor varies from place to place. The close analysis of R0 graph pattern suggests that there has been a statistically significant lowering of the rate at which the number of cases has been growing, said Sitabhra Sinha who led the analysis. Assuming that this is a genuine new trend, I guess we can attribute this to the lockdown, as in any case, we were expecting the response to the lockdown to be manifested after about two weeks -- this is because for the first two weeks of the lockdown period, the increase in numbers would be mostly due to people who had gotten infected before the start of the lockdown, he said. Sinha added that a closer look at the individual states shows that the picture is more complex. First of all, since the data does not cover the entire country, the estimation is less robust. Secondly, while a few states like Telangana do seem to be showing a similar kind of reduction in the growth rate starting from April 6 -- consistent with what we see nationally --, we still don't see such a reduction in the data from Maharashtra, currently the number 1 in terms of active cases, he added. The researcher added that both Tamil Nadu and Kerala are showing linear, rather than exponential trends, suggesting that the epidemic is spreading at a far slower rate than expected during an epidemic. The analysis by the IMSc coincides with a report on Indias 21-day lockdown by the Centre for Disease Dynamics and Policy, Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University in which researchers modeled the impact of the 21-day lockdown on the spread of COVID-19 in India in March and April; before, during, and after the lockdown is lifted. "India has implemented a nationwide 21-day lockdown, which is predicted to avert a large number of COVID-19 infections in the short term, although it is unknown how the outbreak will unfold once the lockdown is lifted," noted the report. Vijayawada: A 2007 judgment of the Allahabad High Court in the Aparmita Prasad Singh versus the State of Uttar Pradesh case has gained utmost relevance in the ongoing dispute over the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government appointing a new State Election Commissioner (SEC) after issuing an ordinance to curtail the incumbents tenure. Governor Biswabhushan Harichandan, who promulgated the ordinance, paving way for the new SEC to take charge, the YSRC government, which was keen to get rid of the SEC, N Ramesh Kumar, as well as Yogesh Thandava, an advocate of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and petitioner in the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the governments move are all relying on the same judgment pronounced by a two member division bench. But what the state governments legal team seems to have missed out is that while the two judges differed on all important factors relating to the case, they took a unanimous decision to decide the case in favour of the Uttar Pradesh government. Ironically, the government is building its case on observations made by one judge, while the petitioner is relying on observations of the second judge, which are both in complete contrast with each other. Aparmita Prasad Singh was appointed by the then CM Rajnath Singh-led BJP government on December 5, 2001, for a period of five years. When his term was about to end in December 2006, the then chief minister Mayawati amended the rules to increase the term of the SEC to seven years. However, her successor, Mulayam Singh Yadav amended the rules yet again to bring down the tenure to five years, and consequently, appointed a new SEC. Prasad Singh challenged the Mulayam governments decision in the High Court. According to sources in the Raj Bhavan, Governor Harihandan was fully convinced about the legality of the ordinance and his power to promulgate it. There is a crucial clause, 243K, in the Constitution of India, which says conditions of service cannot be varied to the disadvantage of the SEC after his appointment. The Governor, and state Advocate-General S Sriram are said to be of the view that the Allahabad HC judgment categorically said that prescription of tenure of office is not a condition of service. The government further argues that the same judgment also made it clear that once a disqualification is incurred (due to change in tenure), there is an automatic cessation from holding office. Yogesh, in his affidavit, referred to the same judgment, obviously, reflecting the observations of the second judge, who said, in case the State Legislature is permitted to treat the State Election Commissioner like an ordinary government servant and provisions contained in Article 243K of the Constitution is interpreted in manner of statutes covering the service conditions of government servants, then it shall defeat the very purpose of the Constitutional provisions. Giving a ruling that tenure of service was a part of service conditions, the Judge said the State Election Commission shall not be able to discharge its constitutional obligations in case the tenure of service is not secured or protected. The SEC shall not be able to discharge duty keeping in view the constitutional spirit to hold free and fair election in the state. The judge further said that the amendment of reducing tenure is ultra vires to the Constitution. The judge, however, agreed to dismiss the case on technical grounds that the incumbent SEC was not made a party to the case. A New Zealand nurse who was praised by the Prime Minister for her care has been blown away by the recognition, her brother said. Boris Johnson used a speech on Sunday to mention by name the medics who had looked after him, particularly two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. Mr Johnson said the NHS has saved my life, no question after spending seven nights in St Thomas in central London after contracting the coronavirus and was discharged at the weekend. One of nurses mentioned by Mr Johnson, Jenny from Invercargill on New Zealands South Island, has been identified as Jenny McGee. Our sincerest admiration for the work and dedication of past pupil Jenny McGee who was singled out by UK Prime Minster... Posted by Verdon College on Sunday, April 12, 2020 Her brother Rob told the New Zealand Herald the family had spoken with Ms McGee just as she was about to head off to do another night shift. He told the paper: We are all very proud of Jen, not just in the support she gave Boris but what she has been doing helping everyday people. Whilst she is blown away by Boriss recognition, she is just really pleased to see the public recognition for the amazing work the NHS is doing that made her really proud. It's not very often a nurse from Invercargill saves the life of the British Prime Minister Invercargill mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt Ms McGee attended the Verdon College in Invercargill, and they said the community was so proud and that she had wanted to be a nurse since leaving in 2002. The school said: Our sincerest admiration for the work and dedication of past pupil Jenny McGee who was singled out by UK Prime Minster Boris Johnson for helping him get through his serious illness due to Covid-19. Jenny is described by her past teachers as an absolutely delightful person and someone who had a caring and humble nature. Thanks Jenny for your courage, outstanding work and the example you have provided for everyone at this difficult time. Your old school community is so proud of you! President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has already personally thanked the nurse Luis Pitarma, and... also thanks the commitment of all Portuguese health professionals Statement from Portuguese president's office Meanwhile, mayor of the city Sir Tim Shadbolt told Stuff.co.nz Its not very often a nurse from Invercargill saves the life of the British Prime Minister. The other nurse mentioned by Mr Johnson Luis from Portugal, near Porto has been named as Luis Pitarma and has been thanked by Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. A statement on the presidential website said: President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has already personally thanked the nurse Luis Pitarma, and also thanks the commitment of all Portuguese health professionals who in Portugal and around the world are providing decisive help in the fight to the pandemic. The statement added that president offered encouragement that is also addressed to professionals of other nationalities who, reinforcing the National Health Service, provide an invaluable service to Portugal. Australians expect their hospitals to have all the latest equipment, so it has come as a shock that just when it is most needed health workers are running short of basic supplies such as masks and gloves. In fact, the whole world has suddenly discovered it is short of everything needed to treat people for COVID-19 from basics like masks to protect medical staff to the artificial ventilators that pump oxygen into sick peoples lungs. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has argued we must not give up on globalisation. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Australia has some useful local manufacturers, including a factory in Shepparton that makes masks, and some other facilities that are being converted to boost production of hand sanitiser and ventilators. But we are heavily dependent for many products on China or other countries in Asia whose factories are now swamped with orders from big customers in the US and Europe. Even though Australia has so far largely controlled the epidemic, we have been forced to cancel most non-elective surgery to make the best use of our supplies. Some people are now asking whether Australia should subsidise more local manufacturing to make sure this cannot happen again. For instance, Nev Power, the former mining executive who now chairs the national COVID-19 co-ordination commission, has suggested Australia is too dependent on Chinese supply lines and more local, high-tech manufacturing is needed. Westpac has flagged a $1.43 billion hit to its first-half profits as the banking giant puts aside provisions for the money laundering compliance scandal and customer refunds, and has warned of significant loan losses due to the coronavirus. The big four bank said it expects to update the market on these COVID-19-related costs before its half-year results on May 4, where it said profits would be lower than last year. As investors mull the potential for deep dividend cuts and capital raisings by banks, the provisions will take Westpac's common equity tier 1 capital ratio a key gauge of bank strength to 10.5 per cent of risk-weighted assets. Westpac said it expects other new and increased provisions and asset write-downs totalling around $1.43 billion after tax for the first half. Credit:Darrian Traynor In ordinary times this would be the minimum "unquestionably strong" level required by regulators. But the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has temporarily relaxed its bank capital requirements, to give lenders greater scope to support customers during the sharp economic shock triggered by the virus outbreak. By Akbar Mammadov Azerbaijan hosted the Global Virtual Hackathon competition on technological solutions to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on April 10 and 12, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies reported in its official website. The competition was held in connection with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and searched for ways to combat the virus worldwide and ways of switching to remote working mode. It had been organized by the ministry jointly with the United Nations Development Programme and the SUP.VC Acceleration Center. Around 600 applicants from 45 countries covering five continents registered to participate in the Global Virtual Hackathon by registering at www.hackcov19.com. The team Crisis Heroes from Poland won the competition after developing a virtual platform that brings people and organizations together to help each other during a pandemic. The second place was taken by the Azerbaijani team Javid-19, which presented the idea of supporting small and medium-sized businesses through vouchers. The third place went to the Brazilian team Zebrafish, which offered equipment for rapid testing for coronavirus antigens using zebrafish. The final decision of the jury has been based on the effectiveness of the proposed solution, as well as on how easily and quickly the idea can be implemented at the local, regional and international levels.The winner of the first place will receive $5,000, the second place $3,000, and third place $2,000. Prizes will be transferred to the winners bank accounts. During the competition, the teams also asked their questions through the Discord platform, held discussions and benefited from mentors support. Considering the large number of applications and the interest of ideas presented, it was decided to increase the number of selected ideas from 20 to 25. The jury was composed of local and international experts in such areas as Support those who are most vulnerable and at risk, Technology and healthcare, Support small and medium-sized businesses, Physical distance and social contact, Enhance awareness, shape appropriate behavior and take public opinion into account, Technology and education, Technology and engineering, Technology in everyday life, etc. --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz The leaders of six Mid-Atlantic states announced Monday the formation of a committee to help tackle how they will reopen businesses, schools, and other things that have been shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf joined Gov. Andrew Cuomo (New York), Gov. Phil Murphy (New Jersey), Gov. Ned Lamont (Connecticut), Gov. John Carney (Delaware), and Gov. Gina Raimondo (Rhode Island) on a media conference call briefing to reveal the steps that will be taken. Each state will nominate a representative from the health sector, an economic official, and the governors chief of staff for the working group. Wolf suggested that the Keystone States participants would be Department of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary Dennis Davin, and his chief of staff, Mike Brunelle. We all know that we can do anything better when we work together in this region, and we have done good things by working together, Wolf said. "This partnership, this council that were forming here recognizes that simple fact. We need to do this right, and thats what were trying to do. This partnership recognizes that we need to come up with a specific and smart plan for this uncertain future that lies ahead, and were creating a plan to let our people [know] that we indeed do have a future. Cuomo appears to be the leader of the group of governors, who released no specific timeline for when reopening could occur but expect the working groups guidelines to take shape within weeks. Experts have suggested that the availability of mass testing options could signal that the time is right to relax social distancing guidelines among other mitigation efforts. Learn from the other countries, coordinate a set of guidelines, ASAP, but smart," Cuomo said. The multi-state council will rely on data and science to inform their decisions, not politics, they said, and all recognized that a one size fits all plan wont be possible. No one has done this before, so its one step forward, after research and consultation with experts, Cuomo said. Im not a public health expert. This has to be informed by experts and data. You take one step forward and see how it works. To the extent we can do this together, is the best course. Earlier Monday, President Donald Trump suggested that he, not governors, would decide when reopening could occur. Asked if this council was a response to the Presidents tweet, Wolf said: Seeing how we had the responsibility for closing the state down, I think we have the responsibility to open the state up. This regional compact is premised on the idea that youre not going to have a healthy economy if you dont have healthy people. Wolf added: "I dont think were trying to say anything negative about anybody. Were saying that it was our responsibility to steer our way through these uncharted waters, and its our responsibility to steer our way back. "What were trying to do is, weve tried to have the hard stop that we need to make sure we stay as safe as we possibly can, and now were ready to go back to the next step, and moving back to some sense of normal, the new normal, and do it as we have [by] working together. The council is expected to get to work immediately, and Cuomo invited other states wishing to join to do so. As we figure out how were going to reopen our businesses, our schools, were also going to recognize how were going to restore the sense of hope that this pandemic has taken from so many of us, Wolf said. Were going to show the people of the United States how you come out of something as devastating as this in a responsible fashion. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / Credent Capital Corp. (NEX:CDT.H) ("Credent" or the "Company") announces the resignation of director and chief financial officer Calvin Lucyshyn. Mr. Lucyshyn is stepping down to pursue other interests and responsibilities. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Lucyshyn for his time with the Company. The Company has appointed Gong (Michael) Chen as a director and chief financial officer to replace Mr. Lucyshyn. Mr. Chen is the founder of DoubleOcean Financial Group, a financial advisory company. Mr. Chen has 25 years of experience in corporate finance, finance management, and financing, especially with North American publicly listed companies. He served as the CEO of First Growth Holdings Ltd., an Exchange listed company from 2015-2016 and served as VP Finance of Yukon Zinc, a producing mining company in Yukon, from 2012-2014. He has also acted in the capacity of board director and/or CFO of several TSX or other exchange listed public companies. On Behalf of the Board, "John A. Versfelt" John A. Versfelt President & 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. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs other business transactions timing. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. For further information, please contact: John A. Versfelt 20 Sixth Street New Westminster, BC V3L 2Y8 604-527-8146 Email: jav@armc.ca SOURCE: Credent Capital Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/584900/Credent-Capital-Corp-Announces-Director-Officer-Change A FORMER senior clinician from Woodcote has criticised the Governments handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Peter Sudbury, who was medical director of the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust for eight years, says every suspected covid-19 case should have been tested from the outset in order to contain the spread of the disease. This is in accordance with guidelines set by the World Health Organisation, which encourages medical authorities to try to trace everyone who has been in contact with people with covid-19. Dr Sudbury, whose wife Helen is an emergency doctor at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, also claimed the Government had failed to adequately test NHS staff. His criticism came as Prime Minister and former Henley MP Boris Johnson was in intensive care at a London hospital after his virus symptoms worsened. Suspected cases in Britain were initially quarantined but on March 12, as the disease spread, the Government moved to the so-called delay phase in which anyone showing symptoms was asked to self-isolate for seven days and only those who were hospitalised were tested. The Prime Minister declined to impose mandatory social distancing measures until March 23, saying this wouldnt protect people if it was introduced too early but would have a massive social impact. About 10,000 patients or fewer are now being tested daily when several weeks ago at least 25,000 were promised. There have since been pledges to increase this to 100,000 by the end of the month. Dr Sudbury, 59, a retired psychiatrist who now represents the Green Party on Oxfordshire County Council, claims the Government has done too little too late. He said: The response has been farcical and staggeringly inept. Just look at the shambles around testing this all started in China in January so theyve had plenty of time to prepare for tests. They recently claimed there was a shortage of chemicals but industry bodies have denied this. For a government that normally favours the private sector it has been very rigid and tried to do everything itself. The Crick Foundation in London has converted its labs to accommodate 1,000 tests a day, for example, but it was never asked to. As of last week, a little over 2,000 out of more than a million NHS staff had been tested at dedicated sites set up in car parks. Dr Sudbury said: I dont know which genius decided to set up test centres for NHS staff miles away from hospitals. They need to bring them on site and test as many people as possible rather than having workers make the journey. If staff go to those sites without an appointment they refuse to test them even if theres nobody else there but they often cant get appointments because the phone lines arent properly staffed. The strategy behind this is nonsense as the World Health Organisation, which has experience of fighting multiple epidemics like SARS and Ebola, made its stance clear in January identify cases, trace contacts and quarantine. Their most recent guidance note makes that clear on the first page you dont even have to read very far. Its a fundamental plank at any stage of an outbreak and you dont just stop when it has spread beyond a certain point. If you look at the countries which have managed this successfully, they took a firm line from the outset. If you have an invading army on your shores, you dont wait for it to get bigger but hit it with everything youve got as soon as you can. South Korea is a great example as they tested widely and early and have had barely any new cases in a month. China reacted too slowly and had to clamp down but at least theyre now slowing it right down. Weve finally locked the country down except, of course, we arent even doing that properly as people can still travel to work if they cant do it from home, which allows the virus to propagate and lengthens the outbreak. Dr Sudbury criticised the Governments initial belief that letting the virus spread gradually would create a kind of collective or herd immunity, which informed its early actions. This was claimed by Sir Patrick Vallance, the Governments chief scientific adviser, four weeks ago but last week Health Secretary Matt Hancock denied this was ever the strategys purpose. Dr Sudbury said: Its utter nonsense as the concept of herd immunity relates to vaccinations it isnt sit and do nothing and let people die. I dont know how on earth the Governments advisors were persuaded to talk in favour of that. There was this idea of relaxing the rules and treating cases as they come up but one per cent of those affected will die and many more will suffer lung damage. The idea was to protect the economy but China is rebooting its economy two months on and were just prolonging things. If theres an active virus going around, people wont want to frequent discretionary businesses anyway for fear of picking it up. Dr Sudbury praised former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who returned to the backbenches last year and has repeatedly voiced concerns about how the outbreak has been handled. Mr Hunt has advocated mass testing, saying the authorities cannot fight a disease they are not monitoring. Dr Sudbury said: He stayed within health for about six years, which gave him time to develop an understanding of how healthcare works. Ive been very impressed by him as every time he speaks it makes a lot of sense. He said that despite fears over a national shortage of protective equipment for medical staff, his wife and her colleagues had an adequate supply at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. However, there are concerns that there arent enough ventilators for everybody who needs one. Dr Sudbury said: Theyve split A&E into two teams, one dealing with coronavirus and the other doing everything else, and Helens on the latter so isnt directly affected. Already there are frail and elderly people who will not get a ventilator and this affects anyone with a respiratory condition, so people could die of other things like an exacerbation of a chronic illness. Helen is properly protected, though, to the point where its probably more dangerous to visit the supermarket. Im certainly conscious of that I wash all our shopping and wear a heavily filtered mask when I go outside. Its as much to protect others as myself. When Helen comes home from a shift she washes everything immediately and doesnt touch anyone until shes had a shower, which is what theyve been advised to do. Were probably at slightly higher risk as a household but it isnt severe. Weve got three young children but theyll happily chat about it and understand the need to wash their hands. I think theyre of an age where they just accept things they have nothing to compare it with so these times dont seem unusual. Ive explained that when my father was their age, the Second World War broke out and that was far more dangerous. Henley MP John Howell said: The Government has done nothing without the agreement of its chief scientific officer, chief medical officer and their staff as well as leading virologists and epidemiologists. This is a Government which is driven by science, but science doesnt simply produce one answer for a given question there is a range of possibilities and someone has to make a decision, although this has always been based on the evidence. We have seen a commitment from the Government to testing but I question how this can be used as it doesnt, in itself, stop the spread of the disease. Its about knowing where the disease is and protecting the vulnerable and those who are suffering themselves. We still require the lockdown in order to contain the virus. The Mata Amritanandamayi Math announced today that it is donating 13 crores [$1.7 million U.S.] to help combat and contain COVID-19 as well as to provide relief to those physically, mentally and economically affected by the virus. Moreover, it will provide free care to COVID-19 patients at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (Amrita Hospital) in Kochi. Rs. 10 crores will go to the Central Governments PM CARES Fund, and 3 crores will go to the Kerala Governments Chief Ministers Distress Relief Fund. Seeing the entire world hurting and crying in pain, my heart is aching deeply, Amma said in the statement issued by the Math. Let us all pray for the souls who have succumbed to this pandemic, for the mental peace of their families and friends, for the peace of the world, and for Gods grace. At Ammas request Amrita University and Amrita Hospital have set up a mental-health hotline (0476 280 5050), where people who are feeling stressed, anxious or depressed due to the pandemic and its ramifications can call to get free support. Last week, Amma had publicly requested doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists to set aside time to provide counselling. Counselling is a service needed at this time, Amma said. Please consider this as an appeal from Amma to doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists. Whether you are believers or not, set aside one or two hours every day to provide free counselling for those who need it. For decades Amma has stressed the necessity of mankind changing its lifestyle to be more harmonious with Nature and warning that failure to do so would result in increased natural disasters and disease. The selfish things man has done to Nature are now coming back in the form of such epidemics, Amma said. We need to develop the attitude that we are nothing but Natures servants. We should practise humility, servitude and respect. At least now let us stop throwing our arrogance in Natures face. The time has come to bow down before the forces of Nature. The time has come to beg Nature to forgive all our trespasses. The time has come to abandon the lackadaisical attitude that Nature will just forbear, suffer and forgive all the indignities we keep heaping on her. Nature is commanding us to wake up and look around. To awaken humankind, Nature is sounding a loud alarm in the form of COVID-19. Through its deemed university, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita University), the Math also has a interdisciplinary team researching ways to produce low-cost scalable medical masks, gowns and face-protection visors, as well as ventilators, rapid-setup isolation wards, units for sterilizing medical waste, and IoT means for the remote monitoring of quarantined patients. The team includes more than 60 faculty from the fields of medicine, nanoscience, AI, big data, sensor-manufacturing and material sciences. Through online classes and interactions, Amrita students are also being engaged in Coronavirus-related curriculum and service opportunities. The Math is also in regular communication with the leaders of its 101 adopted Amrita SeRVe villages, promoting Coronavirus awareness, ensuring the villagers are aware of all the latest government-assistance programs available to them, as well as ensuring that fake news and erroneous information regarding the pandemic does not spread within their communities. Some Amrita SeRVe villagers have been trained by the Math to tailor medical masks and are fulfilling government contracts for the same. Under Ammas direction, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math has provided more than 500 crore in disaster relief since 2005. This has included the provision of financial support, household items, free healthcare and even construction of new homes, etc. Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma) Spiritual leader and humanitarian Amma has dedicated her life to uplifting the poor, sick and needy. For more than 40 years she has spent the majority of each day receiving one and all who come to her, listening to their problems and holding them with a heartfelt motherly embrace.Throughout her life, Amma has embraced and comforted more than four crore people. She has delivered addresses at the United Nations several times and has spoken twice at the Parliament of the Worlds Religions. Among other accolades, she has received the Gandhi-King Award for Non-violence in Geneva, the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award in New York, and an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York. In 2014, at the invitation of His Holiness Pope Francis, Amma was one of 12 religious and spiritual leaders to travel to the Vatican to sign a joint declaration against modern slavery. When asked where she gets the energy to help so many people while also building and running a massive humanitarian organization, Amma answers: Where there is true love, everything is effortless. Love transforms. For more information: www.amritapuri.org. Mata Amritanandamayi Math Ammas organization exists to help alleviate the burden of the poor through helping to meet each of their five basic needsfood, shelter, healthcare, education, and livelihoodwherever and whenever possible. MAM is especially focused on helping to meet these needs in the aftermath of major disasters. To date, MAM has provided free medical care to more than four million people. It has built more than 47,000 homes for the homeless throughout India and has provided financial aid for more than one lakh people unable to care for themselves. MAM is also providing educational assistance to 50,000 students. Moreover it is offering vocational-training, literacy-training, running orphanages, hospices, old-age homes, scholarship programs, planting trees and managing environmental-protection programs. MAM and its sister organization Embracing the World have done massive relief-and-rehabilitation work following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as well as in response to flooding in Mumbai, Gujarat, Chennai and Bihar, Uttarakhand, as well as in response to earthquakes in Kashmir, Nepal, Haiti and Japan, cyclones in West Bengal and the Philippines, and hurricanes in the United States. For more information: www.amritapuri.org. For all the latest National News, download NewsX App Democracy at the local level usually involves elected officials weighing policy within arms reach of each other, residents delivering impassioned remarks at a lectern, oblivious to the microphones cleanliness, and voters filing into libraries and schools. But the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus has forced elected officials to try to strike a balance between open government and the need for everyone to keep their distance from each another a key tool in slowing the spread of the virus but not conducive to public participation. The virus doesnt care about democracy, City Councilman Manny Pelaez said. The virus cares about killing people. Gov. Greg Abbott granted local governments wide latitude in conducting business during the pandemic, including loosening requirements for local governments to meet in person, allowing for video and telephone conference meetings, for example, so long as two-way communication is maintained with the public at the meetings. Attorney General Ken Paxton has all but ended the timely release of public records, declaring that if an office is closed to the public on a regular workday, even if the employees are working from home, it is not considered a business day for the purposes of meeting the states open records laws. Elected leaders across the state have taken different approaches with these newfound powers, said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. What were seeing is a lot of confusion among governments about what they can and cannot do in this time, Shannon said. But were also seeing governments trying to be very proactive in keeping the public involved, as it should, and respecting the publics right to know. The virus has spurred officials in the San Antonio area to postpone elections, move public meetings online, suspend some deliberative bodies indefinitely and in some cases even upend their own political futures all the result of trying to prevent too many people from gathering in one place. Some officials, such as Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Manager Erik Walsh, have gained more authority during the crisis. They have been empowered through emergency orders to unilaterally take action to respond to the crisis that would normally require approval from the City Council. And theyre not the only ones. At a meeting last week held via teleconference, San Antonio Water System board members gave CEO Robert Puente the power to move forward with contracts and expenditures for use in an emergency situation without having to first consult them. This is just a tool hopefully never to be used, Puente said. Arrangements have been made so members of the public still have the opportunity to comment at the SAWS teleconference meetings, by calling in to address the board, as they would have in person. Those who did so last week saw the Puente measure as unnecessary. I think youre proving this morning that you can have meetings even during COVID, Terry Burns, chair of the Sierra Clubs Alamo Group, told board members. Board members countered that the authority was designed to be used in cases of emergency, if there were a need to act when there wouldnt be time to call a meeting. In Castle Hills, a candidate for alderman gave up his bid rather than force voters to the polls during an outbreak that has now killed 30 people in San Antonio. And in Leon Valley, where continuing conflicts have roiled city government, the City Council voted at a teleconference meeting last week to extend the contract of City Manager Kelly Kuenstler who had planned to resign in May so she could see the suburb through the crisis. But the council had to cut short the teleconference meeting because internet trolls butted in on the livestream, shouting obscenities and blaring music with sexually explicit lyrics a pronounced downside to democracy via the internet. In San Antonio, the virus decimated a plan to help the renewal of a sales tax for Pre-K 4 SA snag an easy victory at the polls. The City Council had opted to stick the measure for the city-funded early childhood education program on the May ballot, an effort to prevent it from getting buried during a cluttered and contentious November election. Now, voters will see Pre-K 4 SA on the November ballot after all. Whether the measure will be joined by a proposal, backed by Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, to reroute sales tax dollars that pay for protection of the Edwards Aquifer to instead fund expanded public transit and transportation initiatives remains to be seen. That project is on hold while attention is focused on battling the coronavirus. For that matter, most of the deliberative work of elected officials has come to a halt. On March 30, Nirenberg suspended all council committees, the primary avenue for council-led policymaking. The normal process of moving policies through council committees and taking away city staff who are needed for pandemic response efforts isnt suitable for a situation that requires quick and decisive action, Nirenberg said. We simply dont have that opportunity to work through a bureaucratic system when weve got the house on fire, Nirenberg said. Instead, Nirenberg and Wolff named five working groups led by City Council members, county commissioners, local business leaders, philanthropists and labor advocates to tackle problems such as food shortages and economic fallout related to the crisis. Local philanthropist and developer Gordon Hartman is heading up the effort. So far, the working groups dont meet in public. Instead, theyve met via private conference calls raising transparency concerns from council members. We have to be very careful, very open and transparent, District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia said. Theres no reason why the meetings shouldnt be public if the bodies are deliberating future public policy, said Shannon of the FOIFT. What would be the harm? Shannon said. In fact, it would be beneficial to the public to know whats being discussed and whats going on. District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, who co-chairs the business and employment working group, said she would consider opening up her group to the public, possibly via livestream. I think there should be opportunities for transparency around them and some opportunities for the public to participate or share input, Sandoval said. Nirenberg noted that the working groups cant enact policy by themselves. The City Council would still have to do that. Readouts from the working groups meetings will be made available, Nirenberg said. Hartman will also brief council members during a weekly livestreamed videoconference work session each week a meeting Nirenberg added after several council members complained that they werent meeting enough. But council members had to agree to time limits on their remarks. Nirenberg shot down the idea of livestreaming every working group meeting. That would really bring in a new level of bureaucracy thats going to slow down the work toward these urgent needs, the mayor said. For the citys dozens of boards and commissions, a livestream would be an improvement over no meeting at all. Assistant City Manager Roderick Sanchez is tinkering with ways for entities such as the city zoning and planning commissions to resume their work in the virtual world because construction work is allowed to continue under the citys stay-at-home order. Sanchez envision limits on the kinds of work those commissions could take up. For example, zoning cases that generate lots of neighborhood controversy would be off the table until after stay-at-home restrictions are eased, he said. We want to keep our economy going even at this slower pace, Sanchez said. There needs to be some way for these commissions to take care of some of these things so that we can help facilitate some of this construction. The City Council still holds an in-person meeting every Thursday, although some members participate via the internet. Whole rows of seats have been blocked off to make sure staff and members of the public who are there in person stay in line with the citys own social distancing requirements. Members of the public are still allowed to address the mayor and council in person albeit from a microphone positioned in the audience, rather than at a lectern. After each person finishes speaking, a staffer wearing a mask covering their nose and mouth materializes to disinfect the mic. At least four council members appear on television screens each meeting rather than attending in person. For a time, it was because several members were isolating themselves at home after either showing symptoms similar to those of COVID-19 or traveling to places with confirmed cases. But no one on the council has tested positive for the virus. In addition to receiving briefings on the citys COVID-19 response, council members still have work to do. Their action is required on contracts, grants and proposed settlement agreements in lawsuits against the city. Walsh said he has asked city staff to focus on bringing agenda items that deal with basic city operations or recovery and response efforts to COVID-19. For now, Nirenberg said he aims to keep the Thursday meetings from going fully virtual in part because doing so could make participating more difficult for residents without internet access. It only exacerbates the digital divide, Nirenberg said. I dont want to do that if at all possible. Joshua Fechter is a staff writer covering San Antonio government and politics. To read more from Joshua, become a subscriber. jfechter@express-news.net | Twitter: @JFReports Every now and then, a piece of American performance is so memorable that it both redefines its medium and reframes the culture at large. Here, an appraisal of one such enduring and heavily referenced work a 2005 Broadway revival that brought a much-needed austerity and economy to the stage alongside a gathering of the stars who not only made it but were made by it, too. FOR MUCH OF the 20th century, theatrical lore was built upon flashy pyrotechnics that elicited stunned gasps from audience members: In the 80s, a hydraulically powered tire airlifted a feline in Cats, while a 1,500-pound crystal chandelier was crashed onto the stage in The Phantom of the Opera. In the 90s, a whirring rotary helicopter ascended to the rafters in Miss Saigon. Broadway still loves extravaganzas, of course, and often provides a home for even ill-fated ones. But over the past decade or so, it has leaned in the opposite direction toward streamlined productions that forgo razzle-dazzle to instead focus on a small ensemble cast, who not only recite the lines and sing the score but frequently play the instruments, too. The T List | Sign up here This shift can be traced to the revelatory 2005 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheelers 1979 masterwork, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street a Grand Guignol tale about a murderous barber who bakes his customers into meat pies. Directed by John Doyle and starring Michael Cerveris as the title character and Patti LuPone as his blood-hungry accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, that show not only incited a new era of theatrical minimalism but encouraged a new generation of composers, directors and musicians to experiment on Broadway. It opened the door for other shows, says Doyle, who has recently been at work on another Sondheim revival, 1990s Assassins, at New Yorks Classic Stage Company, where he is the artistic director. Sweeney is one of several Sondheim shows he has reinterpreted over the years a production, he says, that allowed for the fact that musicals could be something other than spectacle, where the actors, using the full range of their skills, could capture the essence of storytelling. In this case, every performer also served as an orchestra member, playing Sondheims complex score while simultaneously portraying a character. Donna Lynne Champlin, as the competing barber, Pirelli, learned accordion for the show, and several cast members took turns on the center-stage piano. LuPone, who played the tuba in an all-girls marching band while in high school on Long Island in the 1960s, pumped out each horn blast as if it were steam escaping a pie. Cerveris strummed the guitar, an instrument he was introduced to in grade school in West Virginia, and says the experience was an opportunity to be a whole artist for the first time, adding that it was, in fact, a return to theater as it was practiced in Shakespearean times: Doyle engages the audience in a way that harks back to childhood play. Patti LuPone as Mrs. Lovett and Michael Cerveris as Sweeney Todd in John Doyles 2005 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Economic necessity helped inspire the shows asceticism, which characterizes much of Doyles work. The 67-year-old Scottish director spent much of his career in the United Kingdom at regional theaters, where penny-pinching is as much of an art as speaking in iambic pentameter; he had initially modernized Sweeney Todd in 2004 for the Watermill Theater, a 220-seat house in the English countryside. I was trying to find the least expensive way of doing this enormous piece with only nine or 10 people, he says. The handful of actors played all the characters and instruments on a mostly empty stage with a single coffin to serve as the bow of a ship, a table for rolling out pie crusts or the entrance to a madhouse. (By contrast, the director Harold Princes original Broadway production had a 27-piece orchestra and a 27-person cast.) When Doyle learned the producers wanted to transfer his revival to Broadway after it opened on Londons West End later that year, I really, truly thought they had lost their minds, he recalls. Yet the minimalism of Doyles production accentuated the plays subtleties. Sweeneys brutish world is one in which everyone must make do with whats on hand, whether its a barbers knife to slit a throat or a corpse to fill a meat pie. Well, waste not, want not, as I always say, Mrs. Lovett remarks when she realizes the slumped body in Sweeneys barbers chair could be converted into the next days supper. Such economy likewise governed the production. As Anthony and Johanna, the actors Benjamin Magnuson and Lauren Molina not only sang the romantic ballad Johanna but accompanied themselves on cellos. Two arms and two bows swept across the strings, their movements in tandem. Later, the lovers cello movements transformed into violent slashing that mirrored Sweeneys razor strokes, and later still, into the self-flagellating whip cracks administered by Judge Turpin (Mark Jacoby), the morally depraved engineer of Sweeneys downfall. Nothings wasted, and the effect is spellbinding. Of Doyles production, Sondheim told a journalist at the time, Johns, for me, is the most intense. AN EXUBERANT REVIVAL of The Pajama Game won the Tony that year. But Doyles critical and commercial success had lasting influence: It helped persuade audiences and producers that artistic innovation was just as commanding as lavish scenery and effects, and cleared the way for shows in the same vein, many of them new works developed Off Broadway, where scarcity regularly prompts reinvention. The spartan productions that followed not only redefined what a Broadway show could be but also became symbolic of the challenges and triumphs of making art in a New York chastened by the 2008 financial crisis. Money was tight, funders were hard to secure. And as fortunes and jobs melted away, glitzy opulence, sleight-of-hand stunts and ornate effects began to seem like flimflammery, out of step with the changing times. On Broadway, like everywhere else after the global recession, people had to make do. As Mrs. Lovett sings, Business needs a lift Think of it as thrift. From left: Patti LuPone, Michael Cerveris, Alexander Gemignani, Manoel Felciano, Donna Lynne Champlin, Diana DiMarzio and John Arbo in Sweeney Todd (2005). Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Doyles Sweeney also proved the enduring power of austerity. In 2012, Once, a modest Broadway production about two songwriters in a bar that featured instrument-playing actors, won the Tony for best musical. More soon followed: the Josh Groban-starring experimental ensemble production Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 a musicalized Broadway version of Leo Tolstoys War and Peace in 2016, and, the following year, The Bands Visit, about a group of Egyptian musicians stuck overnight in an Israeli village. Last year, Hadestown, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth that featured a trio of Fates playing the accordion, tambourine and fiddle, won the best musical Tony. Best musical revival went to Oklahoma!, which replaced some of Rodgers and Hammersteins lushest orchestrations with a single guitar-strumming cowboy, played by Damon Daunno. That production eliminated the shows standard overture, chorus, elaborate costumes and arrangements to expose the shows darker undercurrents and sexuality, transforming what could be a stodgy bit of Americana into a vital story for our times. Doyle, for his part, often hears from people who tell him his Sweeney Todd was their first Broadway experience. It introduced a new generation to something theyd never seen, he says. Transformation, after all, is what drives theater, and these pared-down productions encouraged creators with different stories to tell and different ways of telling them to share their vision on a larger platform. That, in turn, has inspired new, more diverse audiences, as well as Broadway veterans. The cycle continues today, challenging the conceptions not only of what theater can be but should be. It doesnt have to be big to affect an audience, it just has to be exciting, LuPone says. And, in our case, very scary. Patricia Cohen is a domestic correspondent for The New York Times, covering the national economy. She was the theater editor from 2004 to 2008. Jennifer Livingston specializes in editorial fashion photography. Photo assistants: Mike OShea and Matt Labarbiera. Digital tech: Matthew Willkens. Health officials have released a new list of priority areas for coronavirus in Sydney and urged residents displaying even 'very mild' symptoms to get tested for the virus. Liverpool, Blacktown, Cumberland, Westmead and Penrith have all been flagged as potential new hubs in the city's western suburbs for the deadly virus. Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick in Sydney's east and Ryde in the city's north-west have also been identified as COVID-19 danger zones, along with Lake Macquarie in the NSW Hunter Region. Residents of the impacted regions qualify for testing even if they have not come in contact with a known case or recently returned from overseas. NSW Health say they've updated the testing criteria in these regions because there is a small number of cases of community transmission where they are unable to identify the original source. Sydney's new coronavirus danger zones: NSW Health has released a list of suburbs where cases are spreading without any explanation Bondi has been identified as a hotspot for coronavirus in New South Wales. Pictured: Beachgoers in Bondi on April 11 'These are areas where there have been few cases with people where we are unable to find out where they got their infection from and some other areas where we are concerned [about] the spread of the virus,' NSW Health acting director Dr Christine Selvey said on Monday. 'We are asking that everyone in these areas, if they have even very mild symptoms, to present to their GP or to one of the COVID-19 clinics or to a hospital and seek testing.' NSW Health is urging anyone who is feeling unwell with a cough or fever to get assessed at any of the free COVID-19 clinics. Similar advice has been given in Victoria. Testing criteria in the state was recently broadened to include people who area at a greater risk of exposure due to their work. To continue testing for coronavirus in Bondi, a drive through testing clinic was set up. Pictured: Patients using the facility People were given hand sanitiser and had their temperatures checked before entering Sydney Fish Market on Friday, April 10 NEW CORONAVIRUS TESTING ZONES Penrith Inner West Liverpool Randwick Waverley Woollahra Blacktown Cumberland Westmead Ryde Manning Lake Macquarie Advertisement There are currently 1,281 known cases of coronavirus in Victoria, including 88 in the affluent Stonnington region alone. The cluster there is likely the result of a handful of affluent travellers who returned from overseas holidays last month, the Herald Sun reported. Following Stonnington, Banyule and the Greater Geelong region had recorded the most confirmed COVID-19 cases. Ages of those infected range from young babies to people in their 90s, and cases by gender are fairly evenly split - 669 are in men and 612 in women. Meanwhile about 5,000 people have been forced into quarantine in northwest Tasmania as health authorities battle a COVID-19 outbreak at two hospitals. The North West Regional Hospital and North West Private Hospital in Burnie shut on Monday morning, with patients being transferred elsewhere. Of 144 coronavirus cases in Tasmania, 60 were linked to the hospital outbreak, with 42 of them being healthcare workers at those facilities. Medics were pictured performing COVID-19 tests at a drive through facility while potential carriers sat in their cars CORONAVIRUS HOTSPOTS BY THE STATE New South Wales Blacktown Cumberland Westmead Liverpool Penrith Ryde Waverley Woollahra Randwick Manning Lake Macquarie Tasmania Northwest region Victoria Stonnington Banyule Greater Geelong Boroondara Melbourne Mornington Peninsula Casey Moreland Glen Eira Queensland Cairns Gold Coast Brisbane Advertisement There are at least 6,351 known cases of coronavirus in Australia, including 61 deaths CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AUSTRALIA: 27,244 Victoria: 20,269 New South Wales: 4,273 Queensland: 1,161 Western Australia: 692 South Australia: 473 Tasmania: 230 Australian Capital Territory: 113 Northern Territory: 33 TOTAL CASES: 27,244 ESTIMATED ACTIVE CASES: 269 DEATHS: 897 Updated: 5.31 PM, 11 October, 2020 Source: Australian Government Department of Health Advertisement State premier Peter Gutwein on Monday said at least 1,200 of the staff at the two hospitals had been ordered to quarantine at home for two weeks. Anybody else living in their households were also required to self-isolate, impacting about 5,000 people in total. Queensland Health has also broadened testing criteria to include people who live in known hotspots throughout the state. At present, people with a fever or symptoms who live in Brisbane, Cairns or on the Gold Coast can qualify for testing. Indigenous Australians and those who have recently travelled internationally or interstate may also qualify for testing. Cairns, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Darling Downs, the Sunshine Coast and West Moreton all have current confirmed coronavirus cases. Pictured: People arriving from international destinations, before being directed to the Sofitel hotel in the CBD to carry out their mandatory 14 day quarantine to slow the spread of the virus Due to the significance of Easter and because people are hungry for the sacrament, Hines-Shah decided to celebrate Holy Communion on Sunday, when ministers do as Jesus Christ did, sharing bread and wine with his disciples to represent his body and blood which he was about to sacrifice for them and others. By Trend Ministers of OPEC+ countries will meet again today, on April 12, Trend reports with reference to Azerbaijans Ministry of Energy. Today at 20:00 Baku time, the ministers of OPEC and non-OPEC countries will meet online. "The meeting will be held as part of consultations on issues arising from the 9th meeting of OPEC+ ministers. The meeting, which will be chaired by the Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman and the Minister of Energy of Russia Alexander Novak, will bring together ministers from OPEC and non-OPEC countries participating in the Declaration of Cooperation. Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan Parviz Shahbazov will also take part in the discussions of the ministers of OPEC+ countries. On April 9, at a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC ministers, there was made a decision to reduce the daily oil production from May 1 to April 2022 in three stages by 10, 8 and 6 million barrels per day, respectively. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz With the coronavirus outbreak wreaking havoc on the entire world, governments have set up relief funds for people to contribute towards, in order to help out during the crisis the world is faced with. In India, the poor and needy are suffering due to the lockdown and people are stepping up to help in every way possible. From industrialists to NGOs, everyone is lending a helping hand to the cause. However, help is coming even from those who might themselves be considered vulnerable. A sanitation worker from Telangana decided to donate two months worth of salary (Rs 17,000) to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund, so that the state can fight the pandemic and help those who are in dire need of help. Twitter/@KTRTRS Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao praised the worker on Twitter and lauded him for his kindness. In his tweet, he wrote, 'My #CitizenHeroes today is a Adivasi teenager called Bontha Sai Kumar, who works as a sanitation worker in Utnoor. A very active & socially conscious young man. He contributed his salary for two months 17,000 towards CMRF as #TelanganaFightsCorona #Respect'. My #CitizenHeroes today is a Adivasi teenager called Bontha Sai Kumar, who works as a sanitation worker in Utnoor. A very active & socially conscious young man He contributed his salary for two months 17,000 towards CMRF as #TelanganaFightsCorona #Respect pic.twitter.com/fhS06GiGgL KTR (@KTRTRS) April 11, 2020 Soon enough, everyone on Twitter started appreciating Sai Kumar's contribution and called him a hero. The tweet has almost 3K likes on the micro-blogging website. Really appreciate ur efforts.kudos leelarajesh (@leelarajesh3) April 11, 2020 Great gesture ! Mohammed Sadiq Ahmed Khan (@Mohammedsadiqak) April 11, 2020 God bless you sai kumar Afreen Hasan (@AfreenHasan11) April 11, 2020 @KTRTRS Thanks for recognizing these people as #citizenHeroes, and this is definitely encouraging others to do similar activities. Please call them to your office, after this pandemic is over. As they are the ones who have donated when our society is in need. Rahul (@Rahul13039627) April 11, 2020 Great great work Sai Kumar, you gave ur total earnings, God bless you with happiness and success. Saber Ali (@SaberAl36125963) April 12, 2020 Legend , Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much. ... My Music My Country (@MyMusicMyCount1) April 12, 2020 No contribution is ever small. Help out in your own capacity and those who need it will forever be grateful to you. China has reported 108 new cases of the novel coronavirus disease. Health officials in the Asian nation say the new cases were all imported. The cases are believed to be Chinas highest in recent times. The cases were reported on Sunday, amid racist crackdown on African nationals. China has as at April 13, accordingly recorded a total of 82,160 cases of coronavirus, 3,341 deaths and 77,663 recoveries. ---Daily Guide Complaints of social-distancing infractions in Toronto fell by more than a third on the first day of a new ticketing blitz that threatened violators with $1,000 fines, Mayor John Tory said Sunday. The numbers dipped to 186 on Saturday from 300 on Friday, Tory told the Star. And to me, thats a combination of two things; one is more and more people getting the message, he said, adding that the warm temperatures Saturday made weather an unlikely cause for the drop. And, secondly, I think when they did hear that there was going to be more enforcement, a lot of people, that got their attention. Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders announced at a High Park news conference Saturday that the social-distancing task force, with 160 dedicated officers, would no longer be issuing cautions for people coming within two metres of each other in parks and public squares and, instead, be issuing tickets. People from the same household and contact deemed accidental are exempt. The force had issued some 2,500 warnings since early April when new COVID-19 bylaws ushering in the two-metre rule were enacted in what Saunders called an educational program. Officers issued 48 tickets Saturday for the use of closed park amenities and not practising physical distancing, according to a City of Toronto news release. Id like to think (the drop) was more about the educational aspect and I think the dividends of the educational efforts undertaken by the bylaw and police (were obvious), Tory said. Tory, who had been calling for stricter measures for several days, said social distancing is key to keeping the spread of COVID-19 down. He said he expected the measures would likely be in place to the end of June. The numbers may look better now and again, he said. But weve still got a lot to do in the context of stopping the spread of this. Following recent activities of hoodlums and street urchins in Lagos and Ogun States, the Inspector General of Police, M.A Adamu, on Mo... Following recent activities of hoodlums and street urchins in Lagos and Ogun States, the Inspector General of Police, M.A Adamu, on Monday, ordered the immediate deployment of additional intelligence and operational assets of the Force. These include Police Mobile Force (PMF) Units, Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS), Intelligence Response Team (IRT) and the Special Tactical Squad (STS). A statement by Force spokesman, Frank Mba, said they will strengthen security and bolster public confidence in the affected areas. The Intervention Team is being coordinated by a Deputy Inspector General of Police, DIG Peter Babatunde Ogunyanwo, who doubles as the DIG, Department of Research and Planning of the Force, and the coordinating DIG for South-West. Meanwhile, the IGP has ordered Commissioners of Police across the country to immediately rejig the security architecture in their various Commands to effectively tackle all emerging crimes associated with the COVID-19 lock-down. They are also to intensify patrols around residential areas, markets, shopping malls and all critical national infrastructures in their jurisdictions. The Assistant Inspectors General of Police in the 12 Zonal Commands have also been directed by the IGP to bring their supervisory role to bear by ensuring that the Commands under their Zones are safe and secure for the citizenry to live and thrive. The statement added that a total of 191 suspects have been arrested in Lagos and Ogun States in connection with the incidents. The following exhibits, fifteen (15) locally-made guns, fifty-two (52) live cartridges, forty-two (42) Cutlasses and axes and large quantity of weeds suspected to be Marijuana have been recovered from the hoodlums by the Police Teams in the Agbado, Ifo, Otta and Agege axis, it added. The IGP assures the citizens that the police will not sit idly-by and allow activities of a few criminals to disrupt the peace and security of the country. He commends Nigerians for their steadfastness, patience, perseverance and vigilance at this critical time. Eminent scientist and NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat said on Monday the number of COVID- 19 cases is not going to go beyond what's being reported daily in India as he maintained that the country is in the process of flattening the curve. The former Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister said the coronavirus positive cases have seen a sharper rise in the last four-five days because of increase in the number of testing. "It's a good sign; all those asymptomatic cases lying hiddenthey are also coming out," Saraswat told P T I. "We certainly had a catalytic factor which was basically this (Nizamuddin) Markaz problem which has actually created clusters at different places and that has also been one of the factors for the kind of rise that has taken place." But he said India is in a much better shape compared to other nations in the battle against COVID-19. "I can only say that the rate is not going to go beyond what has been going on now, may be 700 to 800 cases per day. So, we are in the process of flattening the curve."The government's decision to declare nation-wide lockdown has paid dividends, Saraswat, a former chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, said. Noting that India has seen a series of virus attacks in the last 15-20 years including Chikungunya and Dengue, he said the emphasis now should be on more and more R & D to find vaccines in advance. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Trend Turkey's coronavirus death toll has risen to 1,198 with 97 new deaths and 481 recoveries in the past 24 hours, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced Sunday, Trend reports citing Daily Sabah. "We have a decrease in the number of intubated patients," Koca said in a tweet, adding that more tests lead to more diagnoses and quarantines. Cases of COVID-19 stood at 56,956 on Sunday. "This struggle is to be won by staying at home," he warned. Turkey has imposed restrictions on daily life in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Though an early response to the crisis has stemmed the number of those infected, the country has had mixed success in limiting public mobility, especially on weekends and given rising temperatures. With this in mind, a weekend curfew declared Friday in over 31 mainly urban provinces came as no surprise for many, despite having been announced only two hours before implementation. Streets, avenues and main squares across the country have been void of activity this weekend in the wake of the curfew imposed by the Interior Ministry. Turkey already had a curfew in place for those above the age of 65 and those under 20, yet stopped short of a full lockdown. The government has, until now, relied on the publics compliance with calls for self-isolation. Authorities have called on people repeatedly to impose their own quarantine or lockdown measures. Turkey was one of the first countries to take measures against the coronavirus, closing its border with Iran and halting flights from China and Italy. It has since shut down all international arrivals, restricted domestic flights and set up road checkpoints outside cities to prevent unessential travel. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz A woman wears a face mask to help prevent COVID-19 infection in Leipzig city on April 4 (Photo: Xinhua/VNA) The assistance for St. George Hospital includes 10,000 medical face masks, 1,000 protective suits, along with eyewear and gloves. They were delivered free of charge by Vietnams national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines to Frankfurt am Main city on the flight that repatriated German citizens. Mayor Burkhard Jung highlighted that the long-standing cooperation between Leipzig and partners around the world becomes all the more important amidst crises. He appreciated the Ho Chi Minh City-based Military Hospital 175, Vietnam Airlines and other partners creating conditions for the medical aid to reach his city, noting that without the relevant sides coordination, including the policy-related support from Vietnam and Germany, the aid wouldnt have been able to be transported. Meanwhile, Director of St. George Hospital Iris Minde expressed her delight at the aid from Vietnam. She highlighted the successful cooperation between her hospital and Military Hospital 175 for many years, adding they jointly set up a healthcare centre for sharing experience. Leipzig and its twinned HCM City have been developing strong connections in multiple spheres. Leipzig is also the only German city to have opened a representative office in the southern economic hub of Vietnam. Besides, St. George Hospital and Military Hospital 175 have been partners of each other for years. They have effectively implemented many training and exchange programmes in both countries. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Our vision is to see HOPE spread faster than COVID-19. This is how a pastor in New Jersey explains Boxes of Hope, a national movement to help those suffering from the coronavirus pandemic. It began when a member of Evangel Church in Scotch Plains tested positive for coronavirus. Pastor Chris Morante explains his churchs response: Weve always been committed to reaching our neighbors. We always say our mission field is across the street and around the world, so we began to mobilize our efforts as soon as we saw this crisis beginning. Seeing the hopelessness his church member felt, he adds, We wanted to do something tangible to show Gods love, so we just delivered some groceries in a box to their front door. When the church saw the hope their gift brought one family, they started doing the same en masse, shipping out 600 boxes in the New Jersey area. They are partnering with Convoy of Hope and World Help, two disaster relief organizations. Now their local ministry has become a national movement. Pastor Morante: For you to know that youre not forgotten, theres a God that sees you and loves you and theres someone in a church that cares about you. It really means the world to people. Bible sales increase 62 percent Operators of New York States power grid have been camped out since March 23 in parking lots adjacent to plants and control rooms that must be staffed 24/7 to keep the states lights on. They work in specialized, confined spaces. If one of them became sick with coronavirus, they could quickly infect others, resulting in a personnel shortage that could disrupt operations. As a result, they are living in trailers apart from their families during this crisis. The buildings they are powering include hospitals and homes, structures vital to life in these days of pandemic crisis and stay-at-home orders. By contrast, churches across the country are observing Holy Week online and through other technological means. But this doesnt mean that the church cannot be the church. As Evangel Church shows, the church is not a building. Christians can make a difference in this crisis in ways that transcend their physical locations. LifeWay Christian Resources saw a 62 percent increase in Bible sales last week compared to the previous year. We believe this is no accident, said Ben Mandrell, LifeWay CEO. People draw hope from Scripture because in it they see a God who is with us during our suffering. Our own ministry has seen our website traffic double in recent weeks. There are so many ways we can be the church together even as we are apart physically. One of the most significant, of course, is through prayer. When we pray, we address the same God. The closer we come to him, the closer we come to each other. And the more passionately we pray, the more powerfully his Spirit works in the world in response. Three prayers that will change the world As we noted in this mornings Daily Article, Jesus spent Holy Wednesday in communion with his Father. We can do the same today and every day. In fact, we are taught to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), a present-tense imperative that allows for no extenuating circumstances. The more we are socially distanced from others, the more we have time to draw closer to our Lord. Consider three practical ways to pray today: Pray for ways to help people in need. In Matthew 9:37, Jesus taught his disciples to pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. The next verse tells us one way God answered their prayer: He called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and affliction. (Matthew 10:1). Then, these twelve Jesus sent out (v. 5). When we pray for those who are suffering, God often empowers and calls us to be the answer to our prayers. Pray for God to use this crisis for his glory and our good. Acts 1:8 is Jesus well-known mandate for the first Christians to take the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the end of the earth. However, for the next seven chapters, their movement remained centered in Jerusalem. Then, after the martyrdom of Stephen, there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles (Acts 8:1). In other words, Acts 8:1 fulfilled the mandate of Acts 1:8. As a result, those who were scattered went about preaching the word (Acts 8:4). Pray for ways to know God more intimately than ever before. The psalmist called us to sing to the LORD a new song (Psalm 98:1). Whatever our present circumstances, we are to make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! (v. 4). When all seems well, it is easy to become comfortable and complacent in our faith. When crisis comes, we recognize our need for strength beyond our own. The psalmist testified, When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul (Psalm 94:19). Will your soul be cheered today? This piece was first published at the Denison Forum Three people were hurt in a two-car, rollover crash that occurred early Monday after a driver ran a red light in Clark County, deputies say. The Clark County Sheriffs Office said drivers Christian Anderson and Courtney Ogg collided at Northeast 88th Street and St Johns Road in Hazel Dell. Andersons Ford Ranger flipped and came to rest upside-down, deputies said. Anderson, a 22-year-old Washougal resident, and passenger Andrea Karschney, a 21-year-old Vancouver resident, needed to be extricated from the truck. They were taken to a hospital with significant injuries, deputies said. Ogg, a 28-year-old Vancouver resident who was driving a Honda Pilot, was taken to a hospital by a family member. Deputies said one of the drivers failed to stop at a red light. No citations had been issued as of early Monday. The crash is under investigation. -- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. Egypts Minister of State for Information Osama Heikal stated on Monday that the number of Egyptians stranded abroad due to the coronavirus crisis has reached 3,378. Heikal said Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly held a meeting on Monday to discuss the matter with the ministers of foreign affairs, immigration, health, civil aviation, and information. According to Heikal, foreign minister Sameh Shoukry stated in the meeting that the 3,378 Egyptians are stranded in a number of Arab, African, European and Asian countries as well as in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Shoukry added that the government defined the stranded Egyptians as those who were in foreign countries on temporary visits, including tourists, Egyptians on business trips, and professors students who could not return to Egypt due to the suspension of air flights. Heikal said those Egyptians are also identified by their exit visa and in the coming days a schedule for their return will be announced by Egyptian embassies. A number of Egyptians returned from the Gulf, the UK and United States on board special EgyptAir flights sent by the government. Upon their return, they were isolated in special hotels for 14 days. Search Keywords: Short link: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday urged the global community to launch an initiative to give debt relief to developing countries that are fighting the novel coronavirus, as Pakistan reported nearly 450 fresh cases, bringing the total number of the COVID-19 patients to 5,230. In a video message, Khan said that highly indebted countries are facing a lack of fiscal space that was inhibiting their efforts to prevent the coronavirus from spreading and, at the same time, providing relief to people. Click here for full Covid-19 coverage e said a global pandemic cannot be contained without strong, coordinated and well-crafted global response. The Global Initiative on Debt Relief will bring together stakeholders on a platform to promote coordinated health and economic response, he said. Noting that COVID-19 posed unprecedented health and economic challenges, Khan underlined that a global recession worse than the Great Depression was certain. He noted that during the past week, various announcements have been made by multilateral actors such as the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, including an initial relief packages of USD 1.4 billion by the IMF and USD 1 billion by the World Bank. Khan invited the UN Secretary General to work with him in advancing the objectives of a coordinated response. The proposed Global Initiative aims to lay ground for urgent debt relief to the developing countries, at their request, and without onerous conditionalities, he said. While proposing the Initiative, Khan highlighted that his Government had provided USD 8 billion stimulus package to help the most vulnerable people in Pakistan. Khan entrusted the Foreign Minister and Adviser on Finance to reach out to their respective counterparts for the Global Initiative on Debt Relief with the objectives of relieving developing countries of the financial challenge from the COVID-19 pandemic and realizing sustainable development. His appeal came as the Ministry of National Health Services reported 399 fresh coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of the COVID-19 patients in the country to 5,183. The nation-wide breakdown of the patients showed that Punjab has 2,464 cases, Sindh 1,411, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 744, Balochistan 228, Gilgit-Baltistan 224 Islamabad 119 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 40. The ministry also said that 14 more people have died due to COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of fatalities to 86. It said that 1,026 patients have recovered so far while 37 were reported to be in critical condition. The data showed that so far 61,801 tested were conducted, including 2,805 during the last one day. Prime Ministers Advisor on Health Dr Zafar Mirza said that coronavirus was a preventable problem and could be curbed if proper measures were taken, as he urged people to observe social distancing and ensure hand hygiene. He also said that half of the total coronavirus patients were infected due to local transmission. The other half were those who came from abroad. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar told the media that cash distribution was going on and so far over 1.774 million families benefitted from Ehsaas programme to give cash to the poor. The steady rise in the new cases has been registered despite more than three-week of lockdown in the country which is going to end on Tuesday, but officials said that a decision will be made on Monday whether to increase it or not. There is high possibility that it would be extended as Mirza said that the low number of cases could spike if lockdown was completely lifted. The COVID-19 Private Sector Fund has supported Ghanas National Coronavirus Treatment at the Ga East Municipal Hospital with secondary to tertiary Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) to aid the fight against the spread of the coronavirus. The presentation was made last week at a brief ceremony at the premises of the Ga East Municipal Assembly. Present at the donation were some trustees of the fund. Items donated included coveralls, rubber aprons, nurses caps, N95 face masks, gumboots, disposable gowns, reusable goggles, face shields, etc According to Dr. Justice Yankson, General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association, who is also the Chairman of the Technical Committee for the Covid-19 Private Sector Fund, after assessment of your critical needs we decided to support you with more PPEs to aid in this fight. These are very high levels secondary to tertiary care materials that we need by way of PPEs and these are the ones that are in short supply. This is the beginning of our partnership but we will entreat you to ensure you take absolute control of these items as an institution in the fight against COVID-19. Receiving the items, The National Coordinator of Ghanas COVID-19 Case Management Team, Dr. Ali Samba, this donation is timely since we have 60 patients here with four at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Though we have some of these items, we still need more. For ICU we need more PPEs since they are used often and must be changed. We will put the items to good use and we urge other institutions and individuals to all support this national fight, he added. The Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund was established by 10 private businessmen and women to raise GHC100m to complement the governments efforts to combat the spread of the coronavirus in the country. The 10 trustees have each donated GHC1m into the fund. The general public can donate to the fund through the following channels: dial *777#100 on all networks and follow instructions. You can also send a bank transfer to 1300033187312, Fidelity Bank, Ridge Towers or visit www.ghanacovid19fund.com for more information. In 2000, the measles virus was declared eliminated from the United States. Despite cases coming in from outside the country, there were few outbreaks because most people were vaccinated against measles. And then 2019 happened. The U.S. saw 1,282 confirmed cases in 31 states -- the greatest number reported since 1992, with nearly three-fourths linked to recent outbreaks in New York, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most cases were among people who were not vaccinated against measles. After events like this, many people express confusion about others' hesitancy or unwillingness to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, a concept called vaccine skepticism. As vaccine skepticism has become increasingly widespread, two researchers in the Texas Tech University Department of Psychological Sciences have suggested a possible explanation. In an article published recently in the journal Vaccine, Mark LaCour and Tyler Davis suggest some people find vaccines risky because they overestimate the likelihood of negative events, particularly those that are rare. The fact that these overestimations carry over through all kinds of negative events -- not just those related to vaccines -- suggests that people higher in vaccine skepticism actually may process information differently than people lower in vaccine skepticism, said Davis, an associate professor of experimental psychology and director of the Caprock FMRI Laboratory. "We might have assumed that people who are high in vaccine skepticism would have overestimated the likelihood of negative vaccine-related events, but it is more surprising that this is true for negative, mortality-related events as a broader category," Davis said. "Here we saw an overestimation of rare events for things that don't have anything to do with vaccination. This suggests that there are basic cognitive or affective variables that influence vaccine skepticism." In their first experiment, LaCour and Davis surveyed 158 participants to determine the level of vaccine skepticism underlying their perceived dangers, feelings of powerlessness, disillusionment and trust in authorities regarding vaccines. Participants then estimated the frequency of death associated with 40 different causes, ranging from cancers, animal bites and childbirth to fireworks, flooding and car accidents. LaCour and Davis found that people higher in vaccine skepticism were less accurate in their estimations of how frequently these causes of death occur. Specifically, they found that higher vaccine skepticism was associated with an overestimation of rare events. advertisement The second experiment followed the same procedures as the first, but participants additionally estimated the frequency of neutral or positive events -- such as papal visits to the United States, triplet births or Willie Nelson concerts -- to test whether the negative tone of mortality statistics may play a role. LaCour and Davis found that people higher in vaccine skepticism were less accurate in their estimations of mortality-related events and overestimated the negative events more than the neutral/positive events. "My takeaway is that vaccine skeptics probably don't have the best understanding of how likely or probable different events are," said LaCour, a doctoral student in psychological sciences. "They might be more easily swayed by anecdotal horror stories. For example, your child can have a seizure from getting vaccinated. It's extremely rare, but it is within the realm of possibility. If you were so inclined, you could follow Facebook groups that publicize extremely rare events. These cognitive distortions of anecdotes into trends are probably exacerbated by decisions to subscribe to statistically non-representative information sources." While the researchers didn't find an association between a person's education level and their vaccine skepticism, LaCour and Davis believe there is a difference in the information being consumed and used by people higher in vaccine skepticism. "It may be the case that they are specifically seeking out biased information, for example, to confirm their skeptical beliefs," Davis said. "It could be that they have more of an attentional bias to negative, mortality-related events, which makes them remember this information better. Strategies to get the right information to people through public service announcements or formal education may work, but it doesn't seem to be an issue that people with higher vaccine skepticism are less educated in any fundamental way in terms of basic science or math education. Thus, simple increases in these alone -- without targeted informational interventions -- would seem unlikely to help." As LaCour noted, these results leave open many new avenues for further research. "Do some people encode scary stories -- for instance, hearing about a child that has a seizure after getting vaccinated -- more strongly than others and then consequently remember these anecdotes more easily?" he asked. "Do they instead have certain attitudes and search their memory harder for evidence to support this belief? Is it a bit of both? How can you counteract these processes? "I'm excited that we're finding basic, cognitive factors that are linked with vaccine skepticism: It could end up being a way of reaching this diverse group." By Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi On an unusually cold night in October 1964, Jalambaba sat in a cowshed at the edge of Mukpat village, barely two kilometres from the Ajanta caves of yore. Through a hole in the wall, he could just about see the outline of the dead cow, which was less than ten feet away. A single-bore, country-made shotgun in hand, he was waiting for the perpetrator to return. When clouds parted, moonlight revealed a tiger feeding on the carcass of the dead cow. Jalambaba, your grandfather, squeezed the trigger and there was a loud bang. The whole village heard it and people started gathering near the Hanuman temple. Everybody wanted to know if the tiger was dead, but nobody had the courage to approach the cowshed where Jalambaba sat all night waiting for the tiger. I was eight years old when my grandmother first told me this story. For several years I made her retell this story asking for more details each time. Nobody ever saw a tiger in the forests of Ajanta after that night. Ajanta caves in the western state of Maharashtra are carved in basalt rock on the banks of the Waghur (Tiger) river. They are surrounded by ravines covered in deciduous forest and dotted with small villages. Photo by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi. I never met Jalambaba, my grandfather, for he had passed away long before I was born, but he was my hero. He was the bravest person I knew. This changed a little when I learned in school that we must protect wildlife for the benefit of future generations. I was told that people who kill tigers were poachers bad people. I wondered if my grandfather was the reason that I will never see a tiger in Ajanta. I knew that Jalambaba had killed two tigers in his lifetime both of them right at the edge of our village where they had killed cows. But it bothered me that he had probably killed the last tiger of Ajanta. As a kid, I remained proud of my grandfathers bravery, but I never told the story to my friends. I was ashamed of it. Jalambaba was a hero not only for me but also for all the older people of my village. To them, the tiger was like the Razakars the militia of the Nizam State that violently resisted the integration of Hyderabad in the Dominion of India. They said that the tiger would steal cattle, and kill people, just like the Razakar. The people of my village displayed the dead tiger just like the Indian military had done with the local Razakar commander during the Hyderabad Police Action of 1948. My grandmother told me that the only difference between the tiger and the Razakar was that the villagers ran to the hills when the Razakar came and ran to the village when the tiger came. The tales of tigers and Razakars are fading from the memory of my village. There is now the occasional leopard that prowls the fields at the edges of the village. My father, who still works the same fields as my grandfather, has seen the leopard a few times. My luck has been restricted to seeing the occasional jungle cat. I sometimes wonder if my daughter, who is four years old now, will have the opportunity to see at least a jungle cat, or will they also go the tigers way. Return of the tiger Unexpectedly, on a cold December morning in 2019, more than 50 years after the death of the last tiger of Ajanta, a young tiger walked into Ajanta. The tiger had returned. Newspapers were flooded with reports of a three-year-old tiger that had wandered into the forests of Ajanta and stayed there for eight days. The forest department had kept the news under wraps so that people do not panic and the now-famous UNESCO world heritage site of Ajanta caves does not get bad publicity. This tiger was a known individual, that had been radio-collared in Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Yavatmal district and had been named TPWL-T1C1. Thanks to the radio collar, the forest department could closely monitor the movements of the tiger. A big thanks to the tiger for it did not go near human habitation and fed entirely on wild animals. After eight days and nights, it moved away toward the Dyanganga Wildlife Sanctuary in Buldhana district and everyone breathed a sigh of relief, especially the forest department. Ajanta caves are surrounded by villages with patches of dry deciduous forests. A herd of Nilgai walks past a few houses next to wheat fields. Photo by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi. Several crores of rupees are needed to conduct reintroduction programs to repopulate the tigers former distribution range. Despite spending large amounts of money, success is often elusive. This need to bring back lost megafauna is now becoming a buzzword in conservation re-wildling. The idea here is to restore populations of large charismatic animals like the rhino, elephant, lion and tiger to parts of their former distribution range where they have gone extinct in recent times. Such efforts are usually expensive and, more importantly, often force the local people to re-adapt to living with animals that have been absent from their memory for at least a few generations. This eight-day event suggests that if the connectivity of forests is maintained, then tigers will reoccupy their former distribution range wherever there is enough prey for them to persist. This is unlikely to be the last time that a tiger walks to the Waghur river gorge of Ajanta. The forests of Ajanta are contiguous with the Gautala and Autramghat Wildlife Sanctuary. If prey densities remain high and connectivity remains intact, then this region can potentially harbour a few tigers shortly. The real question is if tigers return to Ajanta after an absence of over 60 years what will be the relationship of the local people with the tiger and the forest department? How do we ensure that local people do not perceive the return of the tiger as the return of the Razakars? After Indian independence, people like my grandfather hunted tigers not only because they preyed on the precious livestock of the villagers but also because tigers symbolised oppression by the British officers and the royals and their courtiers who cared more for their hunting trophies than for the people. The brief period of brutalities by the Razakars was like salt in the wounds of the farmers. Forcing conservation of large and potentially dangerous species on the marginalised farmer of today is similarly oppressive. Reintroduced or relocated tigers have killed people in this country on multiple occasions. Naturally dispersing individuals like TPWL-T1C1 could also pose a threat to people. Prioritising conservation of potentially dangerous animals over human safety needs a great amount of trust between the people who want to see these animals protected, and the people who will live with the animals that have been protected. In the absence of such trust, the protectors of animals can also be the oppressors of people. Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi is a wildlife biologist with the Nature Conservation Foundation. Banner image: Portrait of a Tiger. Photo credit: Prasanna Subramanian/Wikimedia Commons. *** This article was originally published on Mongabay.com. Mongabay-India is an environmental science and conservation news service. This article has been republished under the Creative Commons licence. Irelands coronavirus testing backlog has fallen to 11,000, health service chiefs said (Leon Farrell/PA) Another 31 people with Covid-19 in Ireland have died as the total diagnosed hit five figures, the health authorities said. The number of confirmed cases exceeded 10,000. There have been 365 deaths, according to the National Public Health Emergency Team. A total of 26 were located in the east, three in the north west, one in the south and one in the west of the country. Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said: Today marks a milestone in Irelands experience of Covid-19 as we see the number of confirmed cases exceed 10,000. The number of community cases of Covid-19 shows why we continue to need the public health measures that we currently have in place. I understand that the current restrictions are tough, especially during a bank holiday weekend when in normal circumstances most of us would have met up with family and friends but I ask that the public continue to work with us and follow the guidelines that are in place. The next three weeks will prove crucial to Irelands Covid-19 story and by working together we give ourselves the best chance to slow the spread and save lives. The deaths included 18 females and 13 males. The median age of Mondays reported fatalities was 82. A total of 25 were reported as having underlying health conditions. In all, 992 new cases were detected, bringing the total to 10,647. Irelands coronavirus testing backlog has fallen to 11,000, health service chiefs said. The number waiting was once close to 35,000 but is expected to be eliminated entirely by the end of this week, Health Service Executive (HSE) chief executive Paul Reid said. He attributed progress to increased testing in the Republics laboratories and others being carried out at a German facility. Mr Reid said: That backlog will continue to be reduced and will be reduced completely during the course of this week. Expand Close Ireland wanted to get to 4,500 tests per day but that number has already been massively outstripped (Brian Lawless/PA) PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ireland wanted to get to 4,500 tests per day but that number has already been massively outstripped (Brian Lawless/PA) Ireland wanted to get to 4,500 tests completed per day but that number has already been massively outstripped. Mr Reid added: We did peak to almost 8,000 (7,900) tests completed last Saturday. A total of 25 testing laboratories are being used by the HSE. Ireland has had a significant delivery of reagents used in the process from China. It is undergoing quality assurance testing. Mr Reid also said there was a significant issue with the availability of gowns to protect health workers. Expand Close A second batch of personal protective equipment worth 67 million euros will begin arriving later this month (Danny Lawson/PA) PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A second batch of personal protective equipment worth 67 million euros will begin arriving later this month (Danny Lawson/PA) A second batch of personal protective equipment worth 67 million euros will begin arriving from China later this month. Ireland has driven down the rate of infections through early moves towards social distancing and increased testing and tracking of the disease. The Republic has doubled the number of tests being completed in a short time. Mr Reid said 800 people have appointments to be swabbed or will be given appointments over coming days. He said: It give us a total of 25 laboratories now to support us in scaling up. He said Ireland was also building up its capacity to contact-trace. On Sunday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Ireland will face some of its darkest days in the weeks ahead, as it battles to contain the spread of the virus. His Fine Gael party has made progress on a draft agreement with political rivals Fianna Fail towards forming a new Government to tackle the pandemic. Party leaders are expected to consider the proposed agreement this week but need the support of one of the smaller parties following last winters inconclusive general election. Popular sunspots were closed over the Easter weekend including in south Dublin in a bid to limit the virus spread. Irish police stepped up patrols aimed at deterring people from gathering. More than a third of outbreaks happened in nursing homes, most in the east of the country official data showed. Flash The first train of a new postal rail service to Europe, loaded with much-needed medical supplies, arrived early Sunday in Vilnius, according to the Chinese Embassy in Lithuania. Launched by Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, it is the first of its kind to Lithuania. The rail service aims to meet the rising demand for international parcel delivery amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The rail service "opened up new, reliable and efficient logistics channel for China to transport anti-epidemic materials in large quantities to Europe," said Chinese Ambassador to Lithuania Shen Zhifei on Sunday. The ambassador highlighted that the service came "at the critical moment when the world joins efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic." Departing from Chongqing on April 3, the "China Post" CR Express 1st block train carries 44 TEUs of relief supplies and parcels, which will be transferred later to other European countries. Following the first postal train, seven more bound for Lithuania are scheduled to depart in the near future. As of the end of March, the China-Europe cargo trains operated from Chongqing have provided postal service to 36 European countries since 2014. TDT | Manama A campaign to raise donations was announced yesterday in support of the national efforts to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19), which are being led by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister. His Majestys Humanitarian Works and Youth Affairs representative, National Security Advisor and Royal Humanitarian Foundation (RHF) Board of Trustees chairman His Highness Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa gave directives to launch the campaign themed There is Good in the US. The campaign was in response to growing calls from the private sector and individuals, said RHF secretary-general Dr Mustafa Al Sayed in a statement. The Ministry of Finance and National Economy has allocated a National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) account for establishments, companies and individuals to deposit their donations. The account number is BH66 NBOB 0000 0082 1093 70 NBB. The initiative has been coordinated with the National Taskforce for Combatting COVID-19, headed by Supreme Council for Health (SCH) president Lieutenant-General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa. The drive is also in tandem with all efforts and initiatives led by the Supreme Council for Women (SCW), the Ministry of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments, and in cooperation with the Council of Representatives and the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI). Dr Al Sayed paid tribute to His Majesty King Hamad and lauded the efforts of the government, chaired by His Royal Highness the Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa and supported by HRH the Crown Prince. He underlined Bahrains success in undertaking early preparations, competently and attaining full readiness in a speedy fashion, under these circumstances, thus earning praise from the World Health Organisation. Al Sayed praised the private sector institutions and individuals for their keenness to contribute and support the national efforts to combat the pandemic, which stems from the national sense of the importance of harnessing all efforts and social responsibility. Berlin's art galleries are closed, but the art scene is rising to the occasion as around 50 artists join a community exhibition from their balconies. "At a time when our freedom of movement is suspended, (balconies) have become unique performance sites," organisers said as they launched the project in the trendy Prenzlauer Berg district of east Berlin. Balconies are "for getting a breath of fresh air, spending some time in the sun or smoking", said Ovul Durmusoglu and Joanna Warsza, whose project "Balconies, Life, Art, Pandemic and Proximity" gives artists a 48-hour showcase for their work. The rules of isolation in the face of the coronavirus pandemic are less strict in Berlin than elsewhere in Germany, allowing people a chance to admire the works while out for a stroll. One installation presents ribbons of toilet paper cascading down a building's facade, a reference to Germans' rush to stock up on the must-have commodity as soon as the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Europe. One artist displayed black and white photographs of people on their balconies in Athens and Cordoba, while another hung a ladder made from rope and sticks. The project with "zero budget, no preview, no crowds" aims to provide "an intimate walk in search of signs of life and art", the organisers said. The 48 hours end on Monday evening, when the artists will retract their works and return to their usual solitary endeavours. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime minister Boris Johnson exited the hospital Sunday nearly a week after entering intensive care for coronavirus-related complications. But that spot of good news was darkened by a new grim statistic: his countrys official count of hospital deaths related to the virus surpassed 10,000 over the weekend. Public health experts fear that Britains mortality rate may soon be or already is the highest in all of Europe, as pandemic-ravaged Italy and Spain slowly get to grips with the disease. Britains steady shift towards becoming the new European epicentre of the outbreak stands in stark contrast with nearby Germany, the only country on the continent with a bigger economy and whose government reported its first case around the same time as Mr Johnsons government. In the second week of March, Mr Johnsons government justified its largely lax strategy schools, restaurants and other major venues remained open, while only the elderly who were already infirm were advised to stay home on the grounds that it was pursuing herd immunity, counting on Britains invulnerable groups to contract the disease and become immune. Just days later, the government backtracked, its supposed pragmatism crashing against new worrying projections of hundreds of thousands of deaths should it not impose lockdowns and strict measures of social distancing. Meanwhile, on 11 March, German chancellor Angela Merkel warned that 60 to 70 per cent of her country could contract the virus. But that wasnt a statement of resignation Merkel said the challenge now was all about winning time, and her countrys federal, state and local authorities had already set about attempting to achieve that. Nearly three months since their first positive cases, Germany has conducted more than 1.3 million tests and contact tracing remains central to its strategy, noted BuzzFeed in a piece that presented a thorough timeline comparing both countries handling of the crisis. The UK has carried out fewer than 335,000 tests and all but dropped attempts to aggressively trace contacts. About 3,000 people have died so far in Germany. More than 10,000 have died in the UK. Mr Johnsons proclivity for wartime bravura rings hollow in the midst of a public health emergency, especially when set against the more sombre messaging of German politicians. This pandemic is not a war, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in an Easter Sunday address that urged patience and solidarity with other countries. It does not pit nations against nations or soldiers against soldiers. Rather, it is a test of our humanity. Emily Haber, the German ambassador to the United States, waved away any notion of German exceptionalism amid the pandemic. We cant state there is a specific German template, she said during an online briefing call last week with reporters organised by the Meridian International Centre in Washington. Police control a Kreuzberg park yesterday as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany surpasses 100,000 (Getty) Ms Haber pointed to a number of key factors that gave Germany an advantage in its preparations: the widespread mass testing program; a relatively young population that made up the initial bulk of Covid-19 cases, and mostly survived; and the benefit of time to expand intensive care facilities and build up stockpiles of medical equipment. We were able to prepare because we were not the first country in Europe affected, and we saw and could analyse developments elsewhere, Ms Haber said, adding that the well-oiled machinery of the countrys universal health-care system and effective coordination between the federal government and local and state agencies helped. Germanys hospitals still have a surfeit of available beds for coronavirus-positive patients and may not face the same pressures that buckled health-care systems in other European countries. Compared with Britain, Germany gave itself a real head start in testing. The people [they were in contact with] were also traced and tested repeatedly and they were isolated as well, Evangelos Kotsopoulos, spokesman for the German Association of Accredited Laboratories, told the BBC, adding that it helped flatten the curve a bit and slowed down the rate of infection. Rather than following countries like South Korea in taking immediate draconian action to stop the disease including the use of mass testing Mr Johnsons team thought a more modulated approach would ultimately save more lives and cause less economic harm, the Financial Times detailed in a piece on the governments early missteps. Now, Britain finds itself playing catch-up while lacking key German advantages: a sophisticated and sizeable biotech industry that helped fast-track widespread testing, and a decentralised political structure that unlike, say, its equivalent in the United States effectively enabled private laboratories and local and state-level agencies to take the lead on implementing testing. While Germany broadened its testing strategy to cover all those with mild symptoms the core of a strategy to test, trace and isolate people infected with the virus by March, Britain was struggling to scale up, the FT noted. We have the best scientific labs in the world but we did not have the scale, British health secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC. My German counterpart, for instance, could call upon 100 testing labs ready and waiting when the crisis struck, thanks in large part to Roche, one of the biggest diagnostic companies in the world. As Mr Johnson continues his recovery, he faces an altogether different national challenge in 2020 than the one he had set out to achieve: Brexit. The pandemic may yet prove to be this calamity. Perhaps history or the electorate will judge him for not taking it seriously enough, for acting too slowly or too reluctantly, The Atlantics Tom McTague wrote in an essay that touched on the sense of destiny that seemed to tail the prime ministers political career. McTague added: Mr Johnsons sudden deterioration came just as things in the country at large were getting worse. Mr Johnson had not been laid low saving the day like Horatio Nelson, leading Britain through its modern-day Battle of Trafalgar. Instead, he appeared to be living the crisis itself. The Washington Post As the Covid-19 pandemic initially took hold, a cartoon from the The New Yorker summed up the new way of working. In it, a man sits at his laptop: My God, those meetings really COULD have all been emails, he gasps. Four weeks in, and the latest sketch paints a very different picture. A man stands in front of a closet and sees his wife hiding behind their clothes: Dinner is ready if you want to take a break from your personal space. Read More For everything written in between, nothing captures the joy and pain of remote working quite so succinctly. The benefits of video conferencing in slippers, zero commute time, home-cooked lunches and flexi-hours are being weighed each day against the frustration of sleeping and working cheek-to-jowl with a spouse, an inability to unplug, social isolation and the loss of that elusive creative spark which ignites in face-to-face meetings. And yet some people now take it as a given that the end of the office is nigh. Before you get settled in, it might be worth taking a look back at history to get a more realistic view of whats to come. When computers first went mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s, it was said home would become central to work; in the 1990s, with the birth of the internet, email and 24-hour connectivity, again it seemed office life was over. And still remote working never fully caught on. Why? If anyone was to take it up, surely it would have been the tech giants themselves? Perhaps Steve Jobs, a visionary in the digital era, holds the key to understanding. The Apple co-founder knew workplace culture was crucial to a companys success and so insisted on designing the Apple and Pixar offices himself. His dream office would encourage social interaction at every turn. As the then Pixar president Ed Catmull explained: Steve was a big believer in the power of accidental mingling; he knew that creativity was not a solitary endeavour. Jobs atrium got people out of their office and into the centre spine. To get to where they wanted to go, they would have to cross it many times a day. He even asked that only one set of bathrooms be available to the entire company, to enforce even more interaction, until management stepped in. A walk through the big tech headquarters in Dublin today with their free food, on-site gyms and swings shows how his understanding of the importance of social interaction remains a cornerstone in their philosophy. Corporations know employees who work permanently alone at home are far more likely to jump ship when a better offer comes along. A team that makes friends, socialises and is more emotionally invested is more likely to devote years to their company and give their best while there. So with predictions of empty glass boxes over-estimated, where does that leave us? Undoubtedly there will still be a seismic shift in behaviour. Named one of the worlds top five trend-spotters by Forbes magazine, Marian Salzman predicted the clean-eating craze, the rise of the snowflake generation and metrosexual men. With no crystal ball into future behaviour, Salzman is as close as you might get. And she says we need to get ready to set our watches to Quarantine Standard Time. With more flexi-time and remote work days, Marian predicts we will rethink the clock Its not 9am-6pm any more when you have more leeway to plan your productivity and when you havent a commute it will also be easier to give companies more hours. When people do go to the office, she says: They are not going to return to what we used to do. We will still go to the office, but for socialising and group meetings. Once there, she says conference room tables will have seats six feet apart. The days of being squeezed in are over. Her theory fits with one of Irelands leading property experts, Aidan Gavin: When I started 20 years ago the space required per person was 11-12sqm, this has dropped today to 6-7 sqm. Companies will rethink this in light of the pandemic, as people insist on more space and a better quality environment. He says office specification will also have to adapt to counter future events. Higher quality filtration systems, sensor technology and voice activation will become the norm. Monitoring systems will improve, perhaps even to a level where workers temperatures are monitored. Marian says unnecessary business travel and flight hops are out. We are going to have to learn how to put the energy back into video meetings. Little boxes on a screen are equalising, so good ideas that mightnt have been heard will come out, but bosses will need to learn how to assert authority when necessary in a video-mediated environment. As for our homes, Marian says: People are going to move away from big cities and choose to live where there is green grass and access to the city a few days a week. We are also going to look for our homes to be bigger. In some cities, she says, glass skyscrapers will become condos. So will we no longer be Europes tech-hub? Marian says Ireland is unique: Id be worried about cities like Milan that are densely populated and English is not the primary language, but there are three reasons so many companies are headquartered in Ireland: a talented local workforce, tax advantages and proximity. It is a gateway between two continents. Thats not going to change. The coronavirus pandemic is a testing time for Indians who migrated abroad in search of work, particularly in the Gulf. Narendra returned to Telangana from Saudi Arabia, just a few days before India went into lockdown. I work in the hospitality industry in Saudi, he told us. Basic sanitation and hygiene are a part of our training, and we have to be certified in order to work. But after the virus began spreading, working hours were reduced, wages were cut, and curfews were imposed in the non-working hours. On 23 March, Saudi Arabia announced a dusk to dawn curfew (7 pm-6 am) as well as a fiscal stimulus package for businesses to the tune of $32 billion. By then, the number of cases had already crossed 500 in the country. My company issued a notice saying that workers leaving quarters during curfew did so at their own risk and would be fired immediately. Wages are also reduced by 25-30 percent, Narendra said. On 7 April, Saudi Arabia officially gave companies the go-ahead to cut hours and wages, proportionately. A similar situation prevails in Bahrain, where other members of Narendas family work, all of them in the hospitality industry. Some of them have not returned. In both countries, employers are providing food and accommodation, but cramped living quarters and unhygienic surroundings vastly increase the risk of contagion for migrant workers. Among these, undocumented workers are the most vulnerable, because they have no access to healthcare. Indian workers in the Gulf fear contagion amidst cramped living conditions A report by The Lede on 8 April pointed out that in the UAE, the spread has now begun in migrant communities from South Asia. Due to a shortage of beds and health infrastructure, private hospitals have been roped in and the symptomatic or sick asked to self-isolate in flats. Without the money to avail of expensive private facilities, migrants are desperately trying to rent vacant flats for their infected and symptomatic friends. There were also cases of migrants having their identification documents seized when they were unable to pay hefty private facility bills for testing. On 3 April, 24 Indians in Kuwait tested positive for the virus, prompting governments on both sides to jointly take stock of the situation. Kuwait also declared amnesty for undocumented migrants, offering them lodging and transportation back home in an effort to tackle the crisis. The situation of Indian workers in the Gulf is a developing one. Early news reports had warned of the increasing vulnerability in the face of a rising case count, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. More recent reports from April underscore the escalating nature of the issue in Qatar and UAE, where many worksites are still operational. Data shows that Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar are key migrant-sending states. On 10 April, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court, by Pravasi Legal Cell (a migrant welfare group) seeking the rescue of vulnerable Indian workers in the Gulf. As of 10 April, COVID-19 cases in the Gulf stand at Saudi Arabia (3,287), United Arab Emirates (2,990), Qatar (2,376), Kuwait (910), Bahrain (887), and Oman (457). Click here for Coronavirus Outbreak LIVE Updates Conversations with organisations working on the emigrant welfare and return migrants over the past few weeks reveal that anywhere between 20,000-40,000 have already returned to Telangana and are quarantined. We know that many in the Gulf right now are just waiting to come back once this lockdown ends, many of them from rural Telangana. They may be a future source of infection, said Swadesh Parkipandla, President, Pravasi Mithra Labour Union, Jagtial District, Telangana. Migrant workers living in urban areas, who mostly work in hospitality services, live about 10-12 to a room, renting bed space (6 feet by 1.5 feet) as flat rents are too high for them to afford. Sometimes, bed space is also rented in shifts, an impossible situation to manage when everybody is under lockdown, according to an Indian return migrant from Bahrain. Bathroom and kitchen facilities are usually common. Workers also live in labour camps which are built by companies for those working outside of cities. These camps are constrained spaces, with six people sleeping in three bunker beds per room and shared sanitation facilities. Food is sometimes provided as well. Social distancing is impossible in both cases, according to Bheem Reddy Mandha, president of Emigrants Welfare Forum in Hyderabad, Telangana. Certainly known hotspots such as Naif in Dubai, UAE and Jaleeb-Al-Shuyokh and Mahboula in Kuwait are densely populated areas, home to mostly migrant workers. Most companies are now operating at minimal capacity, providing food and lodging but no pay. However, there have also been complaints of no food being provided, according to Donthula Shivaji, the Saudi Arabia head of the Gulf Workers Association for Telugu people. A few GCC nations give amnesty to undocumented and irregular migrants Particularly vulnerable are the estimated six million undocumented immigrants, many from India, in the Gulf who are not covered by any kind of health insurance. Due to the stringent kafala system wherein an immigrants mobility and activities are necessarily tied to a kafeel or a sponsor in the Gulf, it is very easy for a once-legal immigrant to render himself or herself irregular or undocumented by breaking ties with his/her sponsor. Kuwait has now provided amnesty and the government is planning to house and feed the irregular migrants, make arrangements for documentation, and send them home at the states expense when airspaces open. We are expecting a major turnout, about 20-25000 Indians are absconders from their sponsors, rendered irregular, who were unable to return before this because they did not have documentation, an Indian emigrant activist in the Gulf told us. These people will be repatriated and allowed to return to Kuwait at a later date, unless they have criminal charges, according to him. Similar amnesty policies have been announced in Bahrain, helping irregular migrants regularise their legal status with reduced fees for the self-sponsored Flexi-pass. Oman has announced a royal pardon for 599 prisoners, including 366 migrants. In Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, however home to significant Indian populations the status of irregular migrants and their healthcare is still an open question. Fears of livelihood loss may spur return migration Although countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi have been in contact with the Government of India, about the situation of Indian emigrants, worries about job loss, pay cuts, and survival during lockdown remain. The biggest fear outside of the health situation now is the economic situation. In my many years there, we saw demographical shifts from South Asian workers to African and South-East Asian workers as well. The increased competition in the post lockdown times will have economic consequences, a return migrant from Bahrain, who used to be a social worker, told us. There are chances that smaller companies will not survive a period of economic downturn, so workers are apprehensive about job losses in the aftermath, according to an immigrant activist in the Gulf. He added that while many are trying to return now, they are also aware of the worsening situation in India. Conversations with return migrants reveal that workers were already experiencing pay-cuts, with many not being paid at all during the lockdown period. As fears of an extended global recession in a post-COVID-19 world accelerate, barriers to international labour migration may go up, prompting waves of return migration. Bheem Reddy Mandha of the Emigrants Welfare Forum in Telangana estimates that roughly 20-30 percent of the Gulf labour force may be impacted, choosing to return in the coming year. There has to be a comprehensive return and re-integration policy for these people addressing both physical and psycho-social concerns, he said. According to him, it is also high time that migration is accorded industry status in India so that financial packages can be given for supporting migrants in such crises. Migrants in other regions The government has been keeping an eye on immigrant communities, those on student and work visas, and tracking their movements in and out of Singapore closely, an Indian immigrant in the city-state told us in March. She is on a work visa and has been living in Singapore for six years, first as a student, and then as a worker. Singapore was one of the earliest to act when it became clear that the virus was spreading beyond Chinas border. Singapores multi-racial and multi-ethnic community is 76 percent Chinese and 7.5% Indian and was considered high risk for imported cases in the wake of the Lunar New Year when many travelled home to mainland China. Most people have been put under a stay-home order by the Singapore government. Theyve also reached out to immigrant communities, checking their health status, asking them to stay at home, monitoring compliance. So far, I havent heard of a situation where the hospitals have reached capacity, she told us in March. As of 10 April, however, 250 Indians have reportedly tested positive, about 50 percent of these cases connected to foreign worker dormitories. Prime Minister Lee has extended reassurances that Singapores containment and mitigation plans are inclusive of foreign workers. In other parts of Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia, Indian immigrants are bracing for the impact of job losses as the lockdown slowly spreads and the number of cases continues to rise. Employers have been warned to not layoff people, but we have heard of some who are not paying employees. At the moment treatment is free for all, regardless of immigration status, and visas are extended in case of expiry during the lockdown, said Sumitha Shaanthinni Krishna, a Malaysian lawyer working with Indian immigrants. In Europe, Germany has seen its case count soar to 118,235 as of 10 April, the fourth highest in the world after the USA, Italy, and Spain. Conversations with Indian students in different parts of Germany reveal that although health status is not an issue, given the governments regulations about universal health insurance, the lockdown has impacted employment. My part-time job involves delivery, so it cannot be done from home. But many employers have started firing people, even those with a valid contract. My employer has fired quite a few people as business activities have dropped by 70 percent. At the moment, Im utilising my savings to keep things going, an international student in Hamburg told us. Another international student in Berlin said that although the situation has now stabilised, there were instances of panic-buying and stocks running out in the early days. The German government has also announced cash transfers of up to 5000 euros to German residents who are freelancers or have lost jobs. Italy, which has been at the epicentre of the crisis for weeks now, is an important destination for Indians, many of them from Punjab. Punjabis emigrate to work in the agro-industry, primarily dairy and are concentrated in North Italy, which is also the epicentre of the outbreak. Other immigrants include students and working professionals. Towards the start of the crisis, India airlifted several nationals out from Italy, including 211 students. However, many remain and are battling out this crisis far from home. When the crisis started, a lot of people wanted to return. My own family asked me to come home. But I am a health professional, and this is a war for us. It would be unethical of me to go back. an Indian immigrant working in Milan, told us. A registered nurse, he used to work in the surgical department till all departments were collapsed into emergency COVID-19 ones. Many of his older colleagues with underlying health issues and children took leave and he felt it was his time to step up. Our priorities are only humanitarian now, he told us. When patients come in, we dont look at race, religion, or nationality. We just give the care they need and take decisions based on health status. The picture is a more complicated one in the USA, home to 2.5 million Indian immigrants, which currently has the highest number of cases at 466,033, with 16,690 deaths. Conversations with students and working professionals across the USA reveal uncertainty and differential circumstances. Im in New York City (accounting for 35 percent of all cases as of 10 April), where there is currently testing available at a few testing facilities as well as at city hospitals. One has to make an appointment to get a test, which is only available if one is diagnosed as likely to have contracted it by a medical provider. Testing and treatment are difficult to get since the NYC area is swamped at this point. said an Indian green card holder, with healthcare access closer to what full citizens can expect. However, the condition of emigrants is dependent on the kind of health insurance they have, with some emigrants we spoke to unaware of what treatment costs might look like, should they require it. An Indian student in New York told us that her university, like many others, had an extended duration of study by one year. An Indian emigrant worker based in Colorado specified that she would be eligible for 1200 dollars a month of assistance, should she lose her job. Protection of those who want to return is paramount The interconnected nature of the world today, particularly for India with an estimated 17.5 million international migrants, must be factored into the fight against COVID-19. Across the world, the affected countries, especially countries just entering Stages 2 and 3 of transmission, are also ones with significant Indian immigrant populations, many with strong connections to their homes here. Imported cases through immigrants were the beginning of the swift developing COVID-19 crisis in India and many millions are currently coping with the situation at the destination, some hoping to return in the aftermath of the lockdown as job opportunities dry up. Their protection and the facilitation of their return is of paramount importance. Mapping migrants in high-risk areas, opening emergency helplines and utilising existing community networks to identify the most vulnerable are some steps that the Indian government, through its embassies, can take, according to an immigrant activist in the Gulf. The priority now should be to address the fears and apprehensions of vulnerable migrants, particularly in the Gulf, which is home to 8.8 million Indians, nearly half the total emigrant population. The authors are researchers at Mumbai based migration data, research, and policy organisation, India Migration Now. IMN is a venture of the South East Migration Foundation. Follow their work: Twitter/@nowmigration and Instagram/@indiamigrationnow CONTACT: Pamela D. Wilson 303-810-1816 Email: Inquiry_For_Pamela@pameladwilson.com Golden, Colorado April 13, 2020 The Caring Generation Spousal Caregivers and Resentment Golden CO- Caregiving expert Pamela D. Wilson hosts The Caring Generation radio program for caregivers and aging adults this coming Wednesday, April 15th, on the Bold Brave Media Network. The program airs live at 9 p.m. EST. The Caring Generation aired initially from 2009 to 2011 on 630 KHOW-AM in Denver, Colorado. Spousal Caregivers and Caregiver Resentment On Wednesday evening, April 15th, Pamela D. Wilson talks about the elephant in the room, spousal caregiving, and feelings of caregiver resentment. Being a partner or married to a person with a chronic illness or physical disability and being a caregiver can result in feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression. Elderly parents are supposed to be strong and set an example for adult children. The marital relationship before the illness is tested when the sick spouse becomes reliant on the healthy spouse for daily care. Spouse caregivers feel like a rug is pulled from under their feet because life permanently changes. Remembering what life was like prior to becoming a caregiver can result in resentment. When spousal care situations become burdensome, spouse caregivers consider placing the sick spouse in a care community. Many times this care community is a nursing home because of the extent of hands-on and medical care needed by the sick spouse. How Can We Improve Care for Nursing Home Residents The guest for this program is Dr. Yuting Song, a postdoctoral fellow at the Translating Research In Elder Care research program in the Faculty of Nursing at Alberta, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in nursing from Duke University and a Bachelor's degree in nursing from Shandong University in China. The focus of her research is improving the quality of care for residents in nursing homes and the quality of work-life for nursing home care staff. Spousal caregivers feel guilty about placing a husband or wife in a nursing home. While caregivers may be able to sleep and be more in control of their day when the sick spouse is in a nursing home, many spouses visit daily and experience feelings of guilt. Care oversight remains an integral part of life for spousal caregivers because care staff in nursing homes are stretched to serve a large number of patients. A Large Percentage of Spousal Caregivers Feel Unprepared for the Role of Caregiver The stress of being a spouse caregiver includes feeling unprepared for the role of being a caregiver. Providing direct hands-on care and nursing type care is stressful when uncertainty exists. The change in the marital relationship may progress to a point where the sick caregiver no longer recognizes a husband or wife. The stress of being always available and mourning life before becoming a caregiver is significant. Feeling unprepared for the role of the caregiver results in depression, isolation, and loneliness. Wilson shares the experiences of spousal caregivers during this caregiving radio show. She offers solutions for spousal caregivers to reduce resentment and reestablish normalcy in daily life. Women more than men believe that they have to do it all and are less likely to seek help or support from family or traditional family caregiver support programs. Family Caregiver Support Programs Pamela D. Wilson offers family caregiver support programs online and in person. She creates caregiving keynote addresses and digital caregiving programs for corporations interested in supporting working caregivers of elderly parents. Wilson offers content and education for corporations in the industries of healthcare, financial planning, law, and education. Join Pamela on The Caring Generation radio program for caregivers, and aging adults live at 6 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Mountain, 8 p.m. Central, and 9 p.m. Eastern every Wednesday night. Replays of the weekly programs are available in podcast format with transcripts on Pamela's website and all major podcast sites. More information about Pamela and her family caregiver support programs, and Caring for Aging Parents blog, are available on her website. # As a royal, Kate Middletons life is controlled by rules and protocol. She is constantly being photographed, both by the press and by her own staff. That means all her public actions are set up essentially as photoshoots. Shes constantly aware of what shes wearing and doing, and how it might be perceived. But she still sometimes cuts loose. And when she does, its usually with an alcoholic beverage in hand. Kate Middleton enjoys Guinness Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge | Samir Hussein/WireImage Every Saint Patricks day, Kate can be spotted with a pint of Guinness in her hand. Fans think that she enjoys the beverage, but other sources say she actually doesnt like beer at all. Kate may be more of a wine drinker according to royal insiders. In fact, the royal couple didnt even serve beer at their wedding. However, shes been spotted pulling a pint more than once, which makes fans think she may have developed a pension for Guinness, if not all beer. She drank a pint of Guinness in Ireland, when she and Prince William visited the country on royal tour. Prince William enjoys a pint himself. Hes much more of a beer drinker than his wife. Hes been spotted on multiple occasions with a cold one in a pub, usually watching sports. All in all, it seems like the couple is pretty normal when it comes to alcoholic beverages. It could be that sometimes the royals, including Kate, use alcoholic drinks as a way to seem more normal. Kate Middleton may use alcoholic beverages to make her more relatable All the royals try to seem more normal and relatable to the public. Their lifestyle is so different from everyone elses, its not always an easy thing to do. Kate and William are two of the more relatable royals, and Kates indulgence in a pint is a part of that. The couple is very humble, and dont often show off their wealth. That includes taking commercial flights and being seen doing mundane things like dropping the kids off at school. Since insiders say Kate enjoys wine and cocktails more than beer, its interesting that shes usually holding a pint in photos of her public outings. It could be that Kate purposefully grabs a beer when she knows cameras are going to be snapping pictures of her. Beer is very popular in the UK, and so it looks more relatable than a glass of wine. Interestingly, when she went on royal tour to Germany she didnt opt for any famous German beer. It could be that she wasnt trying as hard to appeal to the German public, she decided not to drink something she doesnt really like. At home, however, she goes for Guinness to appeal to the British people. Is Kate Middleton the only royal who likes a pint? Kate is absolutely not the only royal who has a drink or two to unwind. There have been rumors out there for a while that the queen drinks four cocktails a day. While that is apparently untrue, she does enjoy a glass of wine with dinner often, although not every day. When she wants something with a little more kick, the queen likes gin and Dubonnet. Unlike Kate, shes rarely seen drinking a pint. Prince Harry is another story, however. He likes beer, and hes been seen at pubs with Meghan Markle enjoying a cold one. Meghan herself prefers red wine. In fact, her former lifestyle blog was named after an Italian red wine. The Tig was short for Tignanello, which is an Italian blended wine. Men are rushing to freeze their sperm amid the coronavirus pandemic, clinics claim - despite no concrete evidence that the virus will hurt male fertility. Sales of CryoChoice's at-home sperm collection kits have spiked by as much as 20 percent in the last few weeks, their operations manager Heather Kilpatrick told the Daily Beast. So far, there's no evidence to suggest that coronavirus damages sperm or male fertility. But that's not stopping American men from flocking to sperm banks with mail-in collection services in a bid to save their seeds. There is no evidence that coronavirus can lead to male infertility - but American men are nevertheless rushing to purchase at-home collection kits to have their sperm frozen CryoChoice has 'seen a lot of inquiries come in from people scared about coronavirus,' Kilpatrick told the Daily Beast. Other companies have reported exponential increases of kits that allow men to collect their own sperm at home and ship it back to clinics for cryogenic preservation. And they're stocking up on long-term storage space, too, according to male fertility start-up Dadi's correspondence with the Daily Beast. Much about coronavirus remains shrouded in mystery: how many Americans have actually been infected, whether people can be re-infected, what the virus's long-term health effects are - and how it impacts fertility falls under that umbrella. It's far too soon since the emergence of coronavirus in China in December to know for sure what the virus might do to sperm. In fact, there is a near total lack of research on fertility and COVID-19. Scientists have, however, investigated whether the virus might be passed through sex. A study conducted at Nanjing Medical University in China - which was published as a preprint online but has not yet been peer-reviewed - examined the testicles and semen of 13 coronavirus patients, including 12 in recovery and one who died. Despite confirmation that the men, all of whom were between ages 22 and 38, aside from the patient who died (aged 67), were infected with coronavirus, none of their semen or testicular tissues were positive for the virus. As a result, the authors of the small study concluded that there is no reason to believe that coronavirus can be sexually transmitted. They did not address if or how the men's sperm were affected by their infection. The spike protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, matches up to receptors on lung tissue particularly well, which is why it aggressively attacks the respiratory system. A fever may impair sperm production (green), lead to unhealthy sperm (dashed red) and make sperm less mobile (dashed gray), but the effects are short-lived, a graph from French study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility shows It can also attach to receptors on blood vessel cells, but there isn't evidence, so far, that the virus seeks out and attacks sperm, semen or the testicles. So why would men worry? While the virus itself is unlikely to damage semen, there's some evidence to suggest that one of its primary symptoms - fever - might. Sperm thrive at the normal resting body temperature of 98.6 degrees F and are rather delicate when it comes to thermodynamics. Even relatively minor temperature changes can affect sperm production and how well sperm can move, an important measure of their ability reach and fertilize an egg. Research has shown that fever drives down sperm production and motility (how mobile sperm are), and linked this to infections like the flu. 'High fever is known to inhibit sperm production, but men have germ cells that cake new sperm every day,' so getting ill during a sperm production cycle is not a major issue, says Dr James Grifo, an NYU Langone fertility specialist. 'For men urgently in treatment for fertility, ever might be an issue,' he added in an interview with DailyMail.com. But it's a short term disruption. He says that the longest sperm production might be disrupted would be 90 day, but that's at the far outside bound. 'we get exposed to febrile illnesses all the time,' Dr Grifo says. 'If that were our main motiviation to freeze sperm, we should've all done it when we were 20 and had not had many fevers.' In general, most viral illnesses - including flu and COVID-19 alike - don't lead to infertility. So there isn't a medical reason for men to worry they need to freeze their sperm amid the pandemic - though Dr Grifo expects the personal ones that may arise. 'People are considering doing this now in the middle of a pandemic the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever seen, [because] when we're forced to sit in a room and think about life, our life goals and bucket lists come up and you think about the things you have and haven't done and, for a lot of men, that includes thoughts about fertility,' he said. Still, he says that he wouldn't 'particularly' advise his clients to freeze their sperm now, 'because I don't know that it's really necessary.' CryoChoice and Dadi had not responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment at time of publication. Forces backing Libya's unity government seized two coastal cities west of Tripoli on Monday in a new blow to military commander Khalifa Haftar a year after he launched an offensive on the capital. "Our forces took control of Sorman and Sabratha and are pursuing (Haftar's forces)," said a statement by Mohammed Gnunu, spokesman for the forces of the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord. An AFP video journalist saw pro-GNA forces in pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns celebrating in central Sabratha, around halfway between Tripoli and the border with Tunisia. Control of war-torn Libya is largely divided between pro-GNA forces and those of eastern-based Haftar, who launched an offensive to try to capture the capital in the country's northwest on April 4 last year. On their Facebook page, GNA forces published images of Grad rocket launchers, 10 tanks and armoured vehicles they said they had captured in the cities, which had been controlled by Salafist militias allied with Haftar. Mohammad al-Gammoudi, a GNA commander on the ground, said Sorman and Sabratha had been seized after "six hours of fighting with air cover". Haftar's forces did not immediately comment. Libya has suffered almost a decade of conflict since longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi was toppled and killed in a 2011 uprising backed by several Western powers. Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and others have fuelled fighting in the oil-rich but impoverished North African country. The UN says hundreds have been killed and over 200,000 displaced since Haftar launched his battle for Tripoli, which quickly ground to a bloody stalemate. The seizure of Sorman and Sabratha was the GNA's most significant victory since June last year, when its forces retook the town of Gharyan, the main supply base for Haftar's forces southwest of the capital. Jalal Harchaoui, a Libya analyst at The Hague-based Institute Clingendael, said Monday's setback meant Haftar had lost the entire coast west of Tripoli. Pro-GNA forces said they would continue advancing south into other Haftar-controlled area. Harchaoui said their combination of "high-precision artillery on the ground, Turkish drones and better coordination" were proving a "formidable" combination against Haftar's UAE-backed forces. They had in recent weeks been more "aggressive... on multiple fronts, often successfully", he added. GNA chief Fayez al-Sarraj said Monday that loyalist forces had repelled an attack by Haftar's troops on Abu Grein, 250 kilometres (160 miles) southeast of Tripoli. Several UN-backed attempts to reach a ceasefire have failed and the UN has slammed repeated violations of a 2011 weapons embargo. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) PARAMUS, N.J. The lines start forming the night before, as people with glassy eyes and violent coughs try to get tested for the virus. In the darkness, they park their cars, cut their engines and try to sleep. The backlog for coronavirus testing in New Jersey, the state with the second-highest caseload in the country, has been getting worse, not better, officials say. So far, New Jersey has conducted over 115,000 tests, about one for every 75 residents. Across the river in New York, the epicenter of the crisis, there is about one for every 40. The tests are a critical tool in measuring the diseases spread and a requirement for certain forms of treatment. Yet they remain hard to get, and many are actively discouraged from trying. Its unequivocally worsening, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said recently, adding, Weve got constraints in the entire food chain. There could be as many as one crore job cuts in the textiles sector, which has been severely hit by the ongoing lockdown, if there is no support and revival package from the government, according to apparel industry body Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI) New Delhi: There could be as many as one crore job cuts in the textiles sector, which has been severely hit by the ongoing lockdown, if there is no support and revival package from the government, according to apparel industry body Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI). With around 80 percent of the garment industry mostly micro, small and medium enterprises, CMAI, which has around 3,700 members employing over 7 lakh people, said most of its members do not have the kind of reserves to see them through 3-6 months of this magnitude. "We have estimated that if no assistance comes from the government, either in terms of wage subsidy or revival package, there could be loss of almost a crore of jobs in the entire textile chains," said CMAI Chief Mentor Rahul Mehta. He was speaking at a webinar on way forward for brick-and-mortar retail, hospitality and textile industries during and post COVID-19. Seeking a financial package from the government for the industry, Mehta said interventions like wage subsidies must be taken up, otherwise, there would be huge job losses. Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak If the garment industry closes down, it would impact the entire value chain from the fabric supply industry to brand to the zipper and label industry, he said. "If you look at the entire textile industry, I see a job loss of one crore if nothing is done by the government," he added. He, however, appreciated efforts taken up by the textiles ministry such as asking all leading global companies not to cancel orders from the Indian exporters and such steps send positive vibes to manufacturers, particularly to the smaller ones. Mehta said CMAI has done a survey among its members and analysed around 1,500 responses. "The responses were quite frightening. Almost 20 percent of them said that they were thinking of closing down the business after lockdown. At least 60 percent of them anticipated a drop in revenue to the tune of 40 percent, which is massive, if you look in terms of the number of employment," he said. In China, after the opening of the market after the COVID-19 crisis, the apparel garment retailing has witnessed a 59 percent decline though food and other businesses have revived and it''s a serious challenge to face, Mehta added. Expressing a similar view, the Retailers Association of India also said it has found similar trends in an internal survey, where 25 percent of the participants have said that if they did not receive any support from the government, they may wind up. "Around 50 percent of the small retailers have said that they may not be able to open the stores. If marginal and small businesses are shut down, it would have a much bigger impact as the number of employees getting out would be higher," said RAI Chief Executive Officer Kumar Rajagopalan. It would have a multiplier effect and all the allied industry could also be impacted. The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) also said it has been "hit badly" by the coronavirus pandemic. "In our business, the proportion of fixed operating cost expenses are very high, which means when you have zero revenue, your losses are very high. We are fighting a battle for survival and we do not know how long its going to last and what is the ultimate image, how we would shape up in future," said NRAI President Anurag Katriar. It has asked the government to defer all statutory payments, so that its members could pay salaries and marginal suppliers. NRAI has also asked for support in terms of availability of capital when the industry resumes operation after the lockdown. Currently, India is going through an unprecedented complete lockdown of three weeks, ending Tuesday, to prevent the spread of coronavirus PHOENIX Arizonas coronavirus death toll doubled in a week to top 100, according to data released Saturday, as the states most populous cities imposed restrictions on use of parks over the Easter weekend to try to combat the spread of the disease. The state Department of Health Services reported 3,393 coronavirus cases statewide with 108 deaths as of Saturday. The state reported 52 deaths statewide as of April 4 after reporting its first on March 20 in Maricopa County, which includes most of metro Phoenix. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. State health officials have said the pandemic is expected to peak in Arizona in mid-April, with hospitalizations hitting a high in May. Maricopa County had 47 deaths as of Saturday while Pima County, which includes Tucson, had 29. Coconino County, which includes Flagstaff, had 15. The mostly rural other 12 counties had fewer or no reported deaths, according to the states website. The Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department said parks remain open for walking but that facilities such as restrooms and parking lots will be closed over the weekend and that picnicking and grilling will be prohibited. The department said the Saturday and Sunday of the Easter weekend are traditionally the two busiest days of activity in city parks as families and other groups gather to celebrate. Tucson officials said the public should engage in social distancing and refrain from large gatherings in general in public spaces such as parks. Tucson police and park personnel will patrol parks to ensure compliance with closures of ramadas, playground equipment and other park amenities because of the outbreak. He may be the newest addition to the cast of American Horror Story, but Macaulay Culkin rose to stardom in the 1990s, with the holiday movie, Home Alone. And, to the surprise of some fans, Macaulay Culkin did not appear in the popular sitcom, Full House. Heres what we know about this actor. Michelle Tanner of Full House | Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Michelle Tanner has a few friends on Full House With three father figures, an Aunt Becky, three daughters, and a set of twins, theres no house quite like the Full House. (Well, except maybe the Fuller House.) The original sitcom Full House premiered during 1987 and ran for eight seasons. In it, viewers saw the Tanner sisters grow up, going through heartbreak, family drama, and school together. DJ may have Kimmy Gibbler and Stephanie may have Harry, but over the years, the youngest Tanner sister, Michelle, made a few different friends. Theres Denise, who loves sour cream and onion chips, theres Teddy who moves to Texas, and theres Aaron who, well, is very talkative. One of Michelles cutest and most talented friends is Derick. Throughout the series, fans saw Derick audition to be the Yankee Doodle Boy in their school musical and even join the Mighty Mutant Super Kids. Some fans even made the connection to another popular actor at that time, Home Alones Macaulay Culkin. Ive Got a Secret Episode of Full House | Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images No, Macaulay Culkin was not one of Michelles friends on Full House Although some fans suspected Macaulay Culkin portrayed Derick, the actor behind this singing and dancing character is Blake McIver Ewing. He does look a lot like the Home Alone actor, though. The Tanners do, in fact, reference the actor during the Disney World two-part episode, The House Meets the Mouse. Alright: Jesse, Nicky, Alex, Becky, Kimmy, DJ, Joey, Steph, Michelle, Danny said, once they got to the hotel. But, wait a minute, wheres Macaulay Culkin? Just a little joke there. Macaulay Culkin did have multiple roles while he was younger, including Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Now, over 20 years later, hes set to appear in the upcoming season of the television series, American Horror Story. Macaulay Culkin will star in the next season of FXs American Horror Story Although hes best known for his iconic role from the 1990s, Macaulay Calkin is back, joining the cast FXs horror series, and a list of alumni including Lady Gaga, Adam Levine, and Stevie Nicks. The announcement came during February 2020, along with an ominous picture of a beach. The Home Alone actor appears alongside American Horror Story veterans, including Lily Rabe, Kathy Bates, and Billie Lourd. After a noticeable absence from AHS: 1984, Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson will appear in the upcoming season, as well. More information will presumably be announced in the coming month. Macaulay Culkin stars in the next season of American Horror Story, scheduled for release on FX during Fall 2020. Until then, fans can watch other episodes of this television show on Netflix. Full House is available for streaming on Hulu. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday praised the country's efforts in controlling the spread of coronavirus while admitting that the cases are on the rise. The President also added Kremlin is drafting short-term, medium-term, and long-term forecasts regarding pandemic, Sputnik reported. "We must take into account all scenarios, even the most extreme and complex ones, in order to adequately and timely alter our strategy and tactics, especially when it comes to providing medical help to our citizens", Putin said. There are 18, 000 COVID-19 cases in Russia and 148 persons have died. Putin stressed the need for spreading the medical equipment and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in different parts of the country based on needs. Russian government has taken steps to overcome a shortage of PPEs. The Kremlin is also looking at tapping into the country's other resources such as the military, which is also helping other nations to fight the pandemic. He said that the coming weeks will be crucial to determine the work done to contain the pandemic. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The African Union announced on Monday that it has appointed a number of special envoys, including former banking head Tidjane Thiam in an effort to solicit rapid and concrete international support in an effort to deal with the economic impact of Covid-19 on the African continent. The African Union announced on Monday that it has appointed a number of special envoys, including former banking head Tidjane Thiam in an effort to solicit rapid and concrete international support in an effort to deal with the economic impact of Covid-19 on the African continent. These institutions need to support African economies that are facing serious economic challenges with a comprehensive stimulus package for Africa, including deferred debt and interest payments, said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, referring to the G20, the European Union and other financial institutions. Ivorian banker Thiam left Credit Suisse earlier this year after allegations that a former colleague was under surveillance. Others on the team include former Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, and Donald Kaberuka, ex-president and chairman of the African Development Bank. A number of African dignitaries, including Thiam have called for debt payments to private creditors to be frozen during the Covid-19 pandemic. The continent has suffered a number of economic setbacks, including very low oil prices. Namibians help each other It started with a tweet. In Namibia, journalist Gwen Lister asked late last month on Twitter if people had ideas on managing a food and necessities drive for those in need. The idea is that this is a citizen-driven project to complement government efforts to assist the needy over the period of this pandemic, she says. After receiving a positive response, CoFeed (a play on Covid) Nam was launched on Saturday, its founding members including Lister, George Kambala, a land rights activist, Linda Baumann a womens rights and transgender activist, as well as a number of dedicated Namibians. Story continues Weve already received a number of big donations, says Lister via email, adding that a food collection drive will start in her Windhoek neighbourhood on Wednesday. Neighbourhood watch patrols are also assisting with the collection of non-perishable foodstuffs, cleaning products, and toiletries for those in quarantine. Over 40 per cent of Namibians are unemployed and these are hard times with our economy basically at a standstill during the lockdown and state of emergency which has been declared to combat the pandemic, says Lister. Our infection rates are fairly low - about 16 at present with no deaths - but we dont do much testing so we dont know to what real extent the pandemic is happening in our communities, especially marginalised groups where poverty is a real problem. CoFeedNam has already received a number of small donations, but the big work is starting soon, all run by volunteers. They meet on a video call application every night after working their day jobs in an effort to get this initiative off the ground. The group is not accepting financial donations, only actual goods that are listed. They are asking those who need help to fill out a survey to ensure those in need are best served. If it works in our central Khomas region, we are hoping more of the 14 regions of Namibia will follow suit and set up CoFeed committees in their areas, says Lister. No cases in Lesotho and Comoros Although one of two African countries who have not recorded a single case of Covid-19, Lesotho Prime Minister Tom Thabane announced on Monday that the government is implementing a raft of measures for students, small business owners and street sellers in an effort to help the population. Thabane has asked landlords to put a freeze on rent payment for three months, he will be giving aid to factory workers, assisting street vendors in paying for goods, has set aside funds for intensive food production, and is giving aid to the most vulnerable, including people 65 and older. The east African island country of Comoros is the only other country with no recorded cases of Covid-19. More stringent measures for Sudan Over the weekend, Liberia and Sierra Leone put in partial lockdown measures. A 14-day lockdown restricting movement of non-essential goods and services went into effect in Sierra Leone on Saturday. Liberia has created a different sort of partial lockdownfour states, including the capital, Monrovia, are under a total lockdown, while the other 11 Liberian states are restricting movement, but residents are allowed to move within their own community. While Uganda has imposed stringent vehicle measures during its lockdown, Sudan has followed suit on Sunday, banning all passenger transportation between cities. African ambassador ire against alleged Chinese discrimination African ambassadors to China have written a letter to Chinese authorities after a number of reports have emerged that African nationals in Guangzhou were being ejected from their apartments and repeatedly tested for Covid-19. This stigmatisation and discrimination has given rise to the false idea that the virus was spread by Africans. The Group of African Ambassadors in Beijing immediately demands the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments meted out to Africans, according to the letter. The Chinese foreign ministry released a response on Sunday. The Guangdong authorities attach great importance to some African countries concerns and are working promptly to improve their working method, said spokesman Zhao Lijian. Africa cases behind curve, but spike to come While the Covid-19 pandemic has attacked China, Iran, Europe and the United States with a brutal force, infecting more than 1.6 million globally, health experts warned that the African continent would soon follow with high numbers of infected. Although it has touched 52 out of 54 African countries with a steady rise in cases, the numbers are not what was initially predicted. The spike is coming, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). "During the last four days we can see that the numbers have already doubled," said WHOs Africa Emergency Response Programme Manager Michael Yao. "If the trend continues... some countries may face a huge peak very soon," added. Another worry is that the coronavirus could spread rapidly outside the urban centres. Given the magnitude of the economic stress that many Americans will face as a result of the virus, and the early numbers we are seeing from lenders across the country, it is likely that many families will be unable to make their payments as scheduled, triggering widespread participation in the program, with potentially up to 25% of borrowers seeking assistance, the senators wrote. While this is a reminder of the programs importance, it also presents a challenge. To put this in perspective, according to Moodys Analytics, last year servicers had total net profit of less than $10 billion. The institutions that normally provide servicers with their liquidity will be unwilling to provide this unprecendented level of support, at least at a rate that many servicers could possibly afford. In this situation, the senators said, many servicers would have no way to cover their own obligations. Since this liquidity need was created by the CARES Acts entirely appropriate, but extraordinary requirement to provide widespread forbearance, measures should be taken to ensure that the business required to execute on that commitment can survive to see it through, the senators wrote. Ron Farmer is a Houston-based serial entrepreneur of remarkable energy. Back in 2009, and when the U.S. economy was gasping for air after a 2008 political crack-up that subsequently led to financial and economic terror, I asked Farmer how he felt given the economys disastrous shape. Could we recover? His response was uplifting. Paraphrasing Farmer only slightly, he quickly replied Are you kidding me? Im way too smart for Obama, and I was way too smart for Bush. Farmer didnt have time to be pessimistic. His belief in his ability to meet the needs of customers was powerful. Farmer was certain he would be able to work around existing and future governmental incompetence. Ken Fisher has long said the same, albeit in a different way. Though a billionaire several times over today, Fisher hasnt forgotten when his eponymous firm was managing $250. Yes, thats 250 dollars. Fishers lived through uncertainty about the viability of his creation, he knows from the early days what its like to stare potential failure in the face, and this may explain what hes long said about government: capitalists always outrun politicians. Entrepreneurs routinely overcome enormous obstacles to achievement including, but not limited to, near universal skepticism about what theyre trying to do. More important, they spend many nights worrying the next day will be the last for their business. All of this is very crucial in consideration of whats ahead. To see why, lets first step back and remember why were here. Lets never forget that the new coronavirus was a known quantity going back to at least January, and it was a known quantity that the virus would eventually reach the freest, and easily one of the most open countries on the planet. Despite this, U.S. equity markets continued to rally to all-time highs. Though the markets were actively pricing the coronavirus long before it was news in the U.S., surprise sometimes rears its ugly head. Theres arguably your market correction. Think about it. Big lurches in the equity space are never a consequence of the known, simply because equity markets are relentless price-processors of the known. To understand the surprise, readers need only ask who among us was predicting in January and February that by mid-March, 20 to 25% of the worlds most dynamic economy would be on lockdown? Sorry, but no one predicted this, which has to help explain why stocks corrected so suddenly, and so brutally. To be clear, the stock market and economy-crushing agony weve endured has been a surprise that could only have been created by politicians. Even though wealth creation has always been the greatest foe of viruses and diseases given the simple truth that those seeking health advances require copious resources to vaccinate away that which can kill, politicians quite literally responded to the coronavirus with forced unemployment and bankruptcy. Politicians can asphyxiate production in lightning-quick fashion. Never forget that. That they can perhaps calls into question Fishers optimism about the ability of capitalists to outrun them? Its a fair question, but Fisher will be proven right. Bank on it. For one, capitalists routinely overcome obstacles erected by others, along with ones of their own making. While errors in government are generally never fixed as a consequence of government enjoying privileged access to the production of others, in the profit-motivated world entrepreneurs must realize their mistakes, and correct them quickly. Unlike government, entrepreneurs can only innovate as long as they have investors willing to let them. This relentless pressure forces constant improvement. For two, entrepreneurs are battle-hardened. Most successful entrepreneurs can remember many days, years, and even decades of wondering whether their creation would last. Awful, incompetent and inexcusable as the actions of politicians have been, they wont break the spirit of individuals for whom looming failure is the constant rule to the success exception. Consider Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman. In the early days of what is now a global financial behemoth, Schwarzman was turned down 17 times for every yes he received when the former M&A investment banker had the temerity to try and raise a billion dollar private equity fund, despite no background in private equity. In his spectacular memoir, Schwarzman recalls how he began to feel dizzy one night as he sat alone with his thoughts, worried that he was failing on every count. In his similarly spectacular memoir, CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz recalls the folding chairs and card tables for desks that were the nascent talent agencys office furniture when CAA opened its doors in 1975 in a bargain bin building on the very edge of Beverly Hills. And even when it became more apparent that CAA might survive the relentless attempts by global agency William Morris to vanquish the agenting upstart, the brilliant Ovitz writes that there wasnt a day when I didnt walk in the door and get hit by a rush of anxiety. What idea can I come up with today to pay the overhead? Nike co-founder Phil Knight spent many, many years up late at night, wondering if the next day would be Nikes last. He didnt even pay himself a salary until Nikes eighth year, but long after that he recalls reassuring his wife Penny nearly every night about Nikes ongoing viability with optimistic words that I didnt wholly believe. These stories are a reminder that whatever needless barriers politicians can and will - throw in the way of Americas entrepreneurs, theyve seen and overcome much worse. Reprehensible as the latest economy-suffocating political crack-up has been, entrepreneurs will figure out a way. They always do, and when they do, the worlds most dynamic economy will attain levels of progress that will make the past look primitive by comparison. Don't worry politicians with "plans," the actual creators of economic growth are way too smart for you. They'll bail you out again. SAO PAULO, April 12 (Reuters) - Brazil's largest lender Itau Unibanco Holding SA will donate 1 billion reais ($192.57 million) to fight the coronavirus pandemic, newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Sunday. The proceeds will be managed by the bank's foundation, according to the report, and a group of health experts. Itau declined to comment. But in an email, the bank said Chief Executive Candido Bracher would make an announcement related to the novel coronavirus in a conference call on Monday. ($1 = 5.1930 reais) (Reporting by Carolina Mandl; Editing by Tom Brown) While most countries are currently battling with coronavirus outbreak, South Korea is planning to send COVID-19 kits to the United States, which can conduct up to 600,000 tests for the pathogen. An official from Seoul told an international news agency on the condition of anonymity that, it was decided after the appeal by US President Donald Trump over the phone to South Korean President Moon Jae-in on March 25, while the US was struggling with escalating cases of the coronavirus. South Korea-based companies have previously shipped kits to the US but reportedly this latest one will be the first bulk order from the US federal government. As of April 13, South Korea has recorded at least 10,537 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 217 fatalities, while the US has reported at least 560,433 with 22,115 deaths. According to the international news agency, a cargo plane of Federal Emergency Management Agency carrying the entire equipment is scheduled to leave 1330 GMT on April 14 and the report was confirmed by South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha in an interview with a French channel. South Korea will also import an additional package of kits that can reportedly conduct as many as 150,000 tests through an unspecified local retailer. Read - South Korea To Test All Travellers From US Amid COVID-19 Scare Read - South Korea Continues Down Trend In New Cases All 50 states under disaster declaration in US Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump issued a disaster declaration for Wyoming on April 12 which implies that all 50 states will be under such declaration for the first time in history. The White House Press Secretary, Judd Deere, also said that it was the first time a US President has ever declared a major disaster in all its states at once. Donald Trump not only tweeted about the move himself but also said that the country is "winning" against the "war with the invisible enemy". The declaration came on the same day the US surpassed the COVID-19 death toll of Italy which is also one of the hardest-hit countries of the pandemic outside China, where it originated. It was Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon who was formally seeking the declaration on April 9 by writing to Trump when the state reportedly had more than 200 cases of coronavirus infections at the time. Read - About 91 Recovered COVID-19 Patients Test Positive Again In South Korea Read - South Korea To Use Electronic Bracelets To Ensure Citizens Follow Lockdown Orders (With agency inputs) Serotype X; a rare subtype of Nesseria meningitides is said to be responsible for about 70 percent of the Cerebral Spinal Meningitis (CSM) related deaths in the Upper West Region. Regional health authorities are worried as the disease has already claimed 37 lives in 13 weeks from 62 confirmed cases out of 247 suspected cases. Dr Osei Afreh Kuffuor, the Upper West Regional Director of Health Services in his second risk communication meeting with the media, noted that what was more worrying was that there was no known vaccine for serotype X worldwide. People are asking why they are not being vaccinated; the reason is that there is no vaccine for serotype X, which is causing the problem now in the region, he said. Serotype X is as rare as COVID-19; meaning in our Region we are being attacked by two rare organisms with similar mode of transmission which is making the fight very difficult because of the stigma associated with COVID-19, he pointed out. The Regional Director of Health Services noted that until now, subtype A had always been causing the meningitis problem in the Region alongside subtype W135. Dr Kuffuor noted that in 2012, there was however a mass vaccination for subtype A which brought to a halt the outbreak of the disease in the Region for a few years before the emergence of the new serotype X. He noted, however, that, ceftriaoxone, the medicine for treatment have always been in stock before the outbreak but was quick to add that most of the deaths occurred as a result of delay in reporting to health facilities. Dr Kuffuor indicated that since the outbreak, the Region had maintained constant touch with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) through which they were able to secure 7,500 vials of ceftriaoxone from Greece. He added that in addition to donations from former President John Dramani Mahama and Hajia Humu, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) 2020 Parliamentary Candidate for Wa Central Constituency, the Region now boasts of over 8,000 vials in stock. The stock of medicines, he said was enough to last the Region for two years if people adhere to the safety measures being preached on daily bases through the media and the use of information vans. On COVID-19, he disclosed that apart from the one confirmed case, there were also 55 suspected cases out of which 32 samples were taken and sent for testing, adding that the Region would soon commence mass testing for more than 2,000 people who came into the Region through various routes. The northern part of Ghana falls within the Africa meningitis belt comprising 26 countries spanning from Senegal on the West and Ethiopia on the East. More than 30,000 cases of meningitis are said to be recorded along the belt annually. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video THUMB AREA The number of reported coronavirus cases in the Thumb has again increased over the weekend, while the state again reported its largest number of daily deaths as a result of COVID-19. Huron County gained a number over the weekend, bringing its total to six reported with zero reported deaths. Tuscola County gained five cases, now reporting 45 confirmed coronavirus cases. Tuscola County also saw an additional death Sunday, bringing its total coronavirus-related deaths to seven. Sanilac County still has 23 cases, with two reported deaths. Statewide, the number of cases is at 25,635, an increase of around 900 from Sunday's numbers. There were 210 additional coronavirus-related deaths reported Monday, the highest number of daily deaths reported in the state since the outbreak began. In all, 1,697 people have died from the coronavirus in Michigan. Huron and Tuscola County health departments Health Officer Ann Hepfer has repeatedly stated that people should not give much credence to the low number of reported cases, because she suspects they are much higher in reality. Hepfer said the state does not have enough testing capabilities, and because of that, people need to assume everyone is infected with the virus when they are in public. Local and national health departments recommend wearing some form of protection, such as a bandana or mask when in public, maintaining and following the states social distancing guidelines, following the stay-at-home order and frequent washing and disinfecting of hands and surfaces. Other recommendations include: Wash your hands. Stay home when sick. Avoid close contact with sick people. Avoid touching your face. Disinfect commonly touched surfaces. Avoid shaking hands. Follow suggested guidelines for social distancing. For social distancing: Keep six feet between yourself and others when possible. Avoid public places at their busiest times. Work from home when possible. Limit travel. People who are concerned that they may have COVID-19 should contact their healthcare provider and call ahead before visiting any healthcare facility. Mildly ill people are encouraged to stay home and contact their healthcare provider by phone for guidance. If you feel well, you do not need to be tested. Testing is determined based on a CDC risk assessment. A bride-to-be whose wedding was cancelled due to coronavirus claims she was 'tipped over the edge' when the her guests' accommodation double-booked them after moving their dates to 2021 - and is now refusing a refund. Lindsay Johnston, 40, originally from Aberdeen, was due to get married on April 8 at The Byre at Inchyra in Perth, Scotland. She and partner Gordon Davidson, 46, originally from Harare, Zimbabwe, had 51 guests booked to stay at Silverwood Lodges in Errol, close to the venue. When the couple, who live in Dubai, were forced to postpone their big due to the outbreak of Covid-19, they claim the owner of Silverwood was 'incredibly accommodating' and agreed to move their booking to next year at no additional cost. Lindsay Johnston, 40, originally from Aberdeen, was due to marry Gordon Davidson, 46, originally from Harare, Zimbabwe, on April 8 at The Byre at Inchyra in Perth, Scotland However, two weeks later they allege they were informed via email that there had been a double-booking for their guests' final night at Silverwood, meaning they'd have to check out a day early - but would not be refunded the difference in price. Lindsay said they were later offered an additional night at the beginning of their stay, but when she declined due to that not fitting in with their rescheduled wedding plans and asked for a full refund to book elsewhere, the owner reportedly refused. Speaking to FEMAIL, Lindsay admitted the stress of dealing with this on top of trying to re-organise her entire wedding and ensure her guests are not out of pocket has 'tipped her over the edge'. 'We flew back to the UK amidst huge uncertainty about whether our wedding would happen and we were very lucky that our venue, caterers, photographer, videographer, florist, bar team and band etc were all able to reschedule us when it didn't,' she said. When the couple, who live in Dubai, were forced to postpone their big due to the outbreak of Covid-19, they claim the owner of Silverwood was 'incredibly accommodating' and agreed to move their booking to next year at no additional cost 'Our 154 guests have all had to seek refunds on flights and hotels, car hire etc, and we are now "stuck" in Scotland waiting for the border and flights to open up again.' She added: 'My biggest concern is ensuring everyone receives their money back, but I don't think that will happen. 'I appreciate Silverwood is a family-run business with bills to pay in a very challenging and unprecedented time, but regardless of Covid-19, they have double booked us and told us to deal with it. 'They have thousands of pounds from our guests - I'd guess around the 10,000 mark - and refuse to return it.' In a letter addressed to the Scottish parliament and copied to FEMAIL, the owner of Silverwood said: 'In these unprecedented times when businesses took many bookings in advance for events/accommodation that have been postponed or cancelled, many small firms such as ourselves can only offer to re-book as there is no option to refund on a mass scale. 'Businesses are working under duress and not a normal situation, with limited staff and mistakes happen... Why in these times can the government not support the travel and tourism sector to protect the future of the economy by ensuring bookings can only be carried forward?' Lindsay told how she and Gordon were originally scheduled to fly to Scotland on April 2, but brought their flights forward to March 15 as they thought it would be easier to make vital decisions about their nuptials in light of Covid-19 if they were in the right country. Lindsay admitted the stress of dealing with this on top of trying to re-organise her entire wedding and ensure her guests are not out of pocket has 'tipped her over the edge' 'As we landed, we read about the over-70s being most at risk and the advice to self-isolate, and we just knew our plans needed to be moved,' Lindsay said. The couple, who had been planning their wedding for around 18 months, said they felt 'incredibly lucky' that their venue and suppliers agreed to move their booking to March 31 next year. 'We did decide that we still wanted to do the legal paperwork while we were in Scotland and were lucky enough to be the last couple married at the Perth Registry Office before they officially closed and the lockdown was put in place,' Lindsay added. After confirming their new requested dates with Silverwood on the phone and by email, Lindsay said she received an email two weeks later to say the accommodation could no longer provide the third night of their rescheduled dates - and did not offer to refund the loss of the final night. 'After much heated discussion on the phone, they did offer our guests to check in a night earlier,' Lindsay claimed. Lindsay has now requested the entire booking to be cancelled, which she said Silverwood - which offers spa, family and hideaway lodges ranging from 25 to 33 per person per night - is refusing at present 'However, that is of no use to any of our guests, most of whom are flying to Scotland for the wedding, some from New Zealand, Australia and the USA, and need somewhere to stay on Thursday 1 April - the night after the wedding - as we are having a post-wedding BBQ that afternoon and evening. Wedding planner recommends insurance Wedding planner Charlotte Ricard-Quesada, 31, from London, founder of luxury wedding planning company, La Fete, told FEMAIL wedding insurance should, in her opinion, be included in any budget. 'However, in the wake of COVID-19, dependent on the provider, there is no coverage standard set out,' she said. 'It seems as though if your venue closes and is unable to host your wedding or if a close relative were forced to self-isolate or passed away (of the virus or something else), then you would be entitled to compensation. 'Air travel, accommodation and personal choice to cancel do not seem to be covered. This is also why it is vital for your budget and your suppliers that you postpone and keep any payments made as vouchers or credit to be used in the future. 'Please do check the terms and conditions of your insurance provider though and dont hesitate to discuss with them further as policies can and do vary.' Advertisement 'In our phone call I will admit I got angry. The stress and anxiety of the last few weeks just got the better of me... we had recommended this venue to the really important people in our wedding party and are now dealing with so much angst.' Lindsay has now requested the entire booking to be cancelled, which she said Silverwood - which offers spa, family and hideaway lodges ranging from 25 to 33 per person per night - is refusing at present. 'I cannot imagine anyone being able to relax and enjoy staying there next year in light of this experience,' she added. 'We are so lucky that we haven't lost any money. We will have to pay for new flights in 2021 and there are certain items that we'll need to re-print or re-design, which have our original date. 'These included the engraved bottles of Jo Malone perfume for our mums and all our wedding favours - knitted African animal keyrings by Gogo Olive, a Zimbabwe-based charity set up by a Scottish philanthropist from Orkney which supports disadvantaged women in Zimbabwe. 'But I've read some real horror stories from other brides who are having so many problems. All our suppliers have been wonderful. 'I think thats also why I'm so shocked by Silverwood's attitude it seems to go against the world's "we're in this together" approach.' On March 23, Boris Johnson declared marriage ceremonies were among the gatherings to be banned as the UK went into lockdown for at least three weeks. The Prayagraj police arrested a man for allegedly issuing life threat to cabinet minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi and his mayor wife Abhilasha Gupta over the phone. The accused was traced to Kanpur and arrested by a team of crime branch late on Sunday night, officials said. In her complaint, mayor Abhilasha Gupta said she received a call from an unknown number on Sunday morning. The caller first asked for the mobile number of former MLA Puja Pal and used abusive language when the mayor denied having her number. The caller identified as Niraj Yadav of Hamirpur district then threatened to kill the mayor and her husband Nandi with an AK 47 rifle. The accused also claimed that he was behind the attack on Nandi earlier in 2010 in which the minister was critically injured while a journalist and another man lost their lives. Niraj also claimed himself to be a Samajwadi Party leader and said that he got the election ticket of former MP Atiq Ahmad cancelled from the party. SSP Satyarth Anirudh Pankaj said acting on the complaint an FIR was lodged at Kotwali police station. Nirajs location was traced in Kanpur and a team of crime branch nabbed him. Niraj has past criminal record and three cases of attempt to murder, SC/ ST and arms act were lodged against him. He is being further questioned to ascertain the motive behind issuing threat to the minister and the mayor, said the SSP. The North Carolina-based retailer announced on March 20 that it would donate $10 million in protective gear for hospitals nationwide, along with $25 million to help meet the needs of its employees in the crisis and $3 million for small businesses. Our reporters at syracuse.com | The Post-Standard are working around the clock to make sure Central New Yorkers have the news they need to stay informed on this public health crisis. Because this information is so vital to our readers as they go about their daily lives, we have decided to make all our most essential coronavirus-related stories available to all readers, not just subscribers. However, If you are able, please consider helping support this important work with a subscription. Sign up for our free text alerts about coronavirus in Central New York and get direct access to the latest developments, brought to you by syracuse.coms unparalleled team of reporters, visual journalists, editors and more, delivered right to your phone. ----- Here is a roundup of the weekends top coronavirus-related news: Easter Sunday: Worshipping in a pandemic: From the big cathedrals in downtown Syracuse to a tiny rural church in Earlville -- whose building was burned to the ground recently by an arsonist -- church leaders in Central New York used Zoom, Facebook Live and Youtube to livestream services or post services online. County closes in on 500 cases: Onondaga Countys confirmed coronavirus caseload neared 500 on Easter Sunday, according to data released by the county. The county had 494 confirmed cases as of noon on Sunday, including 13 new ones. Thats the lowest number of new cases reported in one day in about a week. Here's a rundown of the latest county virus statistics. How long will social distancing continue? The spread of the novel coronavirus locally and across the state appears to be leveling, even as the number of deaths creeps upward. Central New York has yet to see a surge in cases similar to the one that overwhelmed New York City, and the rate of new infections has remained mostly stable for the last week. But that success is just the beginning. In order to keep the virus at bay, our lives might not get back to normal for at least several more months. Some help is on the way: Gov. Andrew Cuomo today said he would sign a statewide order requiring employers to provide essential workers with cloth or surgical face masks when working with the public during the coronavirus pandemic. Good neighbors in tough times: From their front porch, Scott Upham and Tammy Schuh usually wave at the smiling parents walking children to nearby Roberts School. But since the state ordered all schools closed last month because of the coronavirus, Schuh noticed the smiles have disappeared and many seem nervous and scared. So, they opened "The Shoppe at Strathmore," a stand where people can take items they need and donate what they can. READ MORE: According to a market report research, the Indian HVAC market is expected to reach USD 5.9 billion by 2024, progressing at a CAGR of 7 per cent during the forecast period (2019-2024) against the backdrop of surging infrastructure spending in India. One of the key trends in the Indian HVAC market is the adoption of energy-efficient HVAC systems. As a result, energy efficiency in HVAC has gained prominence as it enables 40-50 per cent of energy reduction in energy consumption in any building or infrastructure to be it commercial or residential. So, an HVAC system must operate as efficiently as possible to reduce the carbon footprint and depletion of natural resources. This reduces greenhouse gas emission by lowering the overall demand for electricity. While relating efficiency of HVACR systems with its performance, Vimal Chavda, Manager HVACR, Testo India says, An efficient system means improved Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), environmental comfort and optimised power utilisation. A more efficient HVAC system will use less electricity to cool a house or building, and will also use less electricity to generate heat. Less power consumption means less operating costs and better environmental protection, informs Daniel Chen, CAREL APAC Marketing Manager (HVAC). Enhancing Efficiency It is pertinent to reduce energy consumption and increase the energy efficiency of an HVAC system while delivering a comfortable environment. The efficiency of an HVAC system significantly depends on its installation, maintenance and finally use of the system. Chavda says, The installation of HVAC system is very precise so that air and temperature regulation in the building is uniform and of the highest degree. While talking about maintenance, he elaborates, Maintenance includes regular inspections of the appliances along with the auxiliary equipment such as ducts and air filters. Proper cleaning, energy audits and replacement of non-performing components becomes a mandatory process. Thermal inspections can also be carried out to ensure proper insulation and avoid leakages in the buildings. The utilisation of HVAC systems becomes vital in maintaining efficiency. and promotes the building managers need to take proactive measures to decrease the energy consumption. Any office building lacking proper ventilation and temperature regulation systems can lead to decreased fresh air levels. Further, an excess number of people working in the office results in excess CO2 which can be a factor of air contamination, humidity and moisture levels along with the presence of dust particles in the surrounding that can degrade the air quality in the office premises. All these factors can consequently lead to overloading and over usage of the HVAC systems which can upset the overall efficiency. There is a need to have efficient Building Management System (BMS) and responsible usage of the systems, states Chavda. Installation of smart control software can bring efficiency in BMS, thus, leading to optimum operating conditions for the entire HVAC system. Elaborating on this, Chen informs, A smart controller can manage the speed, capacity or running time of HVAC system components such as fans, coolers or compressor motors and can also control the entire system according to the specific situation, to deliver the appropriate amount of heating or cooling. He further adds that accurate and reliable measurements enable efficient HVAC operation. When troubleshooting more complex HVAC applications, it is useful to have sophisticated electronic control and protection systems that can interpret alerts and provide diagnostic information. Optimal selection of the system helps to enhance the energy efficiency of an HVAC system as with the proper selection the user can control heating or cooling requirements as per his or her needs that helps to reduce overall energy consumption. Emphasising on the selection of the system for elevating efficiency, Chen says, Select the HVAC unit that is right for the system based on the temperature needed throughout the year. Make sure that the system/unit works at its optimal operating point. Energy consumption of the HVAC system also depends on the cooling load that can be reduced by insulating the cooled space and minimising the use of appliances and lighting. These can help to reduce the cooling load. Energy Efficiency Ratio According to Chavda from Testo India, a simple method of analysing the energy efficiency is called Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) which is the ratio of the cooling output divided by electricity usage in kilowatt-hours. The higher the number, the more HVAC energy efficiency it has. Chen further lists out the following methods used to measure system efficiency. Coefficient of Performance (COP): It refers to the ratio of useful heating or cooling provided to the work required. A higher COP means lower operating costs. Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER): It is the ratio of output cooling energy in BTU/hr to input power in watts at a given operating point. COP is a more general measure of efficiency, and is unit-less, while EER has a unit of measure (BTU/kWh). Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER): It is also the COP (or EER) expressed in BTU/hr/W, but it is not evaluated in a single operating condition, rather it represents the expected overall performance based on the weather in a typical year at a given location. Green Refrigerants Moreover, the use of eco-friendly refrigerants also plays a key role in the reduction of energy consumption in HVAC system in buildings. The choice of the refrigerant has a direct impact on the depletion of ozone and also on global warming. Hence, it is imperative to use eco-friendly refrigerants such as R-134a which has zero ozone depletion potential and lower global warming potential. Chen from CAREL suggests, Effects of traditional refrigerants on the environment and their banning in some geographical areas have made it fundamental for CAREL to use natural refrigerants with a low environmental impact, such as propane (R290), carbon dioxide (R744) and ammonia (R717), at times in tandem with variable-speed compressor technologies. Advancements in Technology Advancements in HVAC technology like the introduction of DC technology and VSD (Variable Speed Drives) has brought a tectonic shift in the HVAC market. VSD technology can be implemented in fans, electric motors and other components to elevate energy efficiency in the buildings. To use the example of variable-speed compressors as these do not always operate at maximum rated capacity, their energy consumption is considerably lower. Technological progress makes it possible to improve efficiency and reduce waste. Variable-speed units can operate at different capacities according to the required load, while a fixed-speed compressor can only be on or off. That makes variable-speed air conditioners more economical to run, suggests Chen from CAREL. Chiller Plant Energy Performance Johnson Controls drives innovation and employs the latest technology and design to enhance HVAC system efficiency. These innovations include a variable speed drive in all the moving components of a plant room. Coupled with advanced control strategies, this has greatly improved plant room efficiency, observes Seemant Sharma, Director, Product and Distribution, Chillers, Asia at Johnson Controls. Elaborating on chiller efficiency, Sharma explains, Typically, the efficiency level achievable in a chilled water plant room that uses high-efficiency chillers with a conventional system design is close to 0.60 KW/TR for mild weather and 0.65KW/TR for a tropical coastal climate. He further adds that to drive efficiency, designers have traditionally focused on using more and more efficient chillers, pumps, and cooling towers. But with rising energy costs and increasingly demanding Minimum Energy Performance (MEP) and green building standards, we need to look at more unconventional ways of achieving a breakthrough in efficiency levels. A chilled water plants energy consumption depends on the work done by the compressor and pump. Sharma states that reducing work done reduces energy consumption. For a building in a tropical climate, with little or no respite from high wet bulb temperature, a plant room efficiency level of 0.55KW/TR seems out of reach because an efficient chiller alone would consume more power than that. He adds, But we can go back to the basics and look at the building load. Building load has two components: sensible and latent load. We can reduce power consumption substantially with higher chilled water temperature to address the sensible load and lower chilled water temperature to address the latent load. To further optimise efficiency, Sharma suggests the following measures: Ensure a higher delta T in the chilled water system to reduce pump energy consumption Arrange the chillers in the series counter system to reduce compressor head Select a cooling tower with the lowest possible approach Using this strategy, Johnson Controls achieved 0.53KW/TR plant room efficiency at a site in Singapore, exceeding the GreenMark Platinum requirement. The site consistently consumes 15 per cent less energy than other green buildings and 30 per cent less than a good plant room in a tropical climate. Initiatives are taken by the industry Testo is one of the market leaders in testing and measuring instruments providing a wide range of instruments that assist in maintaining an efficient system in the building and also ensure the desired IAQ level. Testo primarily provides measuring instruments for all HVACR applications. Vimal Chavda says, The testo 160 wireless LAN data logger measures, monitors and documents temperature, humidity, light intensity, UV radiation and CO2 concentration in rooms, offices and malls automatically and without interruption hence all indoor climate monitoring parameters are covered in one. Testo in its recent upgrade combines everything that makes the air velocity and IAQ measurement technology successful intuitive operation, precise measurement values and an extensive probe range which can even work wirelessly via Bluetooth. The new testo 440 and testo 400 constitute of a compact handheld measuring instrument with user-friendly measurement menus and wireless probes for the versatile and convenient measurement of all air conditioning and ventilation parameters. The probes are available for air velocity, temperature, humidity, degree of turbulence, CO2, CO and light intensity. Daniel Chen from CAREL informs, CAREL pays close attention to the source of power. The transition from traditional gas or fossil fuel heating systems to electric pump solutions will allow for better use of renewable sources. He adds that the main new designs and innovations in HVACR technologies in recent years have led to: Optimisation of refrigeration systems and circuits, Introduction of variable-speed compressors using BLDC technology, facilitating greater efficiency in applications such as heat pumps, Specific devices for CO2 refrigerant applications, making the systems more efficient and extending the use of these applications to warmer geographical areas. The ongoing development of these activities has also allowed CAREL to maintain its competitiveness in the global market for the introduction of new technologies in the HVAC sector. In the humidification sector, CAREL focuses on adiabatic humidification, which allows the production of humidity using less energy compared to isothermal humidification. One related application is evaporative cooling, with more efficient temperature control, especially in air handling applications. The new IoT division has allowed CAREL to concentrate on solutions that allow more advanced system optimisation solutions, along with the traditional monitoring of systems and alarm management. System operating data provides energy managers with additional information about system output. It also allows the assessment of any drops in performance, essential for implementing scheduled maintenance programs. Washington D.C.[USA], April 12 (ANI): Pre-school children who are overweight are known to be at a higher risk of bone fracture, suggests a new study. The study has been published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The study included 466,997 children with weight and height measurements at the age 4 years who were followed for a median of 4.9 years. Fractures occurred in 9.20% of underweight, 10.06% of normal weight, 11.28% of overweight, and 13.05% of obese children. Compared with normal weight, overweight and obesity were linked with 42% and 74% higher risks of lower limb fractures, respectively, and a 10% and 19% higher risk of upper limb fractures, respectively. "In a cohort of almost half a million children from Catalonia, Spain, we have found a strong association between pre-school overweight/obesity and the risk of fracture during childhood. More research is needed to further understand the mechanisms underlying this correlation" said senior author Daniel Prieto-Alhambra, PhD, of the University of Oxford, in the UK. (ANI) A 40 year-old coronavirus positive patient was on Sunday booked for 'attempt to murder' after he allegedly spat on a doctor treating him at the government hospital Tiruchirappalli: A 40 year-old coronavirus positive patient was on Sunday booked for "attempt to murder" after he allegedly spat on a doctor treating him at the government hospital, police said. It was a serious crime under the present conditions with so many restrictions in force to prevent the spread of coronavirus, they said. The patient, admitted to the hospital's coronavirus ward on Saturday, also removed his mask and threw it at the doctor, enraging the hospital staff and other patients. Ever since his admission in the ward, he has not been cooperating with the medical staff, they added. Meanwhile, reports from Nagapattinam district stated that a 65-year-old doctor, running a private clinic at Kadambadi in the district has tested positive for the virus after his return from the US three weeks back. The district administration has appealed to the people who received treatment from the doctor to voluntarily come forward and subject themselves to medical examination. People could contact the officials on 9751425002 and 9500493022 to pass on information in this connection, it said. Tamil Nadu has reported the third highest number of positive coronavirus cases in the country after Maharashtra and Delhi, with a total of 969 confirmed cases, and 11 deaths so far. Qantas' budget arm Jetstar says it is in discussions with its joint-venture partner Vietnamese Airlines about the future of local offshoot Jetstar Pacific, following reports it was moving to exit its minority stake. Qantas owns 30 per cent of Jetstar Pacific in a joint-venture with Vietnamese Airlines, established in 2007 as part of a strategy by the airline to build up its presence in Asia through partnerships using the low-cost Jetstar brand. Aircraft sit idle at Sydney Airport, grounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Credit:James Alcock Vietnamese news site VietnamNet reported the two owners have been in discussions for several months about Vietnamese Airlines taking full ownership of Jetstar Pacific, with talks ongoing. A Jetstar spokeswoman said the airline was "in regular dialogue with our partner Vietnam Airlines about Jetstar Pacific, particularly given the challenges facing all carriers at present". Washington: A friend and donor to President Donald Trump who the president had said was in a coma and seriously ill after becoming infected with the coronavirus has died. Stanley I. Chera's death Saturday was reported by The Real Deal, which covers the New York real estate industry. The publication cited unidentified sources who have worked with Crown Acquisitions, the firm Chera founded and ran. Chera was in his late 70s. A White House official on Sunday confirmed Chera's identity and ties to the president. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details about Trump's personal friendships. Trump had spoken at recent White House briefings about a friend who had fallen ill with the virus, which has killed more than 20,600 Americans as of midday Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Trump first spoke about his friend as he described the 'viciousness' of the disease on March 29. "I had a friend who went to a hospital the other day. He's a little older, and he's heavy, but he's tough person," Trump said. "And he went to the hospital, and a day later, he's in a coma ... he's not doing well." "The speed and the viciousness, especially if it gets the right person, it's horrible. It's really horrible," he said. The president, who is 73, alluded next to having 'friends' who were ill. "I have some friends that are unbelievably sick," Trump said. "We thought they were going in for a mild stay. And, in one case, he's unconscious & in a coma. And you say, 'How did that happen?'" Trump had left the impression that having personally knowing someone who had become sick with COVID-19, the disease the virus causes, had influenced his decisions about how to handle the outbreak. But asked at a later briefing whether his friend's case had marked a turning point in his thinking, Trump said it had not because he had been seeing the statistics and the rising case numbers. "He's sort of central casting for what we're talking about, and it hit him very hard," Trump said April 1. "I've never seen anything like it." Trump called out his friend and campaign donor at a 2019 rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, describing him as 'one of the biggest builders and real estate people in the world.' "He's a great guy, and he's been with me from the beginning," Trump said. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. But it can cause more severe illness in some people, especially older adults and people with existing health conditions. The vast majority of people recover. Trump has been tested at least twice for the virus, with negative results each time, the White House said. Due to you-know-what (if I have to type "corona" or "COVID" again, I'll scream), enterprises have been forced to send a massive number of employees into makeshift home offices within just a few days. That means that there was no time for the security niceties, such as properly processing RFPs for apps that were thoroughly vetted. Given the emergency, employees and IT teams worked with what they could, figuring that they would improve security on the fly as soon as circumstances permitted. That brings us to MFA. Multifactor authentication is supposed to be just that, but it's typically deployed in the least secure manner sending straight numeric texts to a mobile device, a tactic that is well-known to be susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. So, are there better ways to deploy MFA, something that can be easily executed under today's far-less-than-ideal conditions? Let's dig in. First, though, it's worth noting that numeric texts can be undermined by quite a few things other than man-in-the-middle attacks. "There is documented fact that SMS as a 2FA delivery channel has been consciously targeted and successfully compromised by [cyberthieves] exactly because they know it is used for 2FA delivery and by highest-target-value apps/services such as banking and PayPal," said John Herrema, senior vice president of product management at BlackBerry, which today works on security software and systems. "Successful compromises include a combination of technical compromises based on interception and socially engineered compromises, such as bribing someone to port a specific targets mobile number so a malicious [cyberthief] receives codes. Or using a phishing attack to trick a user into entering credentials and [one-time passwords] into a fake site, which is then used to access the actual site. It is true that any form of 2FA is better than nothing, so the question is not whether some form of 2FA is better than nothing, but rather whether there is a better state-of-the-art option available, particularly for highest-target-value use cases. How you secure access to a bank account doesnt have to be and probably shouldnt be the same as how you secure access to a YouTube account." It's interesting that Herrema mentioned PayPal, because PayPal quietly deploys two very different MFA approaches, although they look almost identical to the end user. I discovered this last month when looking into some European security researchers' published report that PayPal MFA was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. The researchers shared their exact methodology (complete with screen captures), but a pen tester we worked with couldn't successfully replicate the attack. After multiple screen-sharing real-time discussions, it became clear that the attack only worked if the MFA option was turned off. Huh? Yep, it was then that we realized that PayPal had a rather robust MFA text deployment for any user who activated the MFA option which, for what it's worth, really should be everybody. But for users who declined MFA, PayPal gave them one anyway, but it was a lower-security offering. Kudos to PayPal for trying to protect all of its users, including the stupid ones who decline MFA. Still, even PayPal's full-fledged MFA appears to be just a straight text message. There are far better ways. Beyond the insecurity of SMS MFA, Duncan Greatwood, the CEO of security vendor Xage Security, worries about the more straightforward SIM-jacking. He encourages enterprises to have employees receive their MFA alerts through a mobile app with end-to-end encryption like Signal, Apples iMessage or Facebooks WhatsApp. He also suggests that enterprises encourage employees to sign up with services that reduce the risk of SIM-jacking, such as AT&T's Extra-Security or Verizon's Administrative Lock. "If the app service provider can integrate with it, end-to-end encrypted messaging is much better protected than SMS for distributing the verification code," Greatwood said. "But even then, SMS remains vulnerable to corrupt staff at a telco assisting in a SIM jacking. Bribes for such assistance run as low as $200." Greatwood's caveat "if the app service provider can integrate with it" is crucial, though. There are two categories of risk at issue here: Risk 1, malware sneaking into a corporate device (or a consumer device being temporarily used as a corporate device, with virus-related worries about how temporary temporary will be) from any site or app download that the employee/end user interacts with; and Risk 2, unauthorized direct access to enterprise assets. This is pushing the security demands of a mobile strategy, specifically because it is redirecting so much internal network access to remote access. IT and Security have almost no control over Risk 1, which is why the only option there is to beg for employees to use better security on their own, when accessing bank accounts, retail sites or streaming video. Some can try making it an employment requirement for any device that also houses or accesses enterprise data, but there is a serious limit as to how much of that is enforceable. Risk 2, on the other hand, is far more under the control of IT and Security. Greatwood recommends an approach that can, sometimes, sit atop a VPN system. If that can be delivered, it would be a huge help in addressing Risk 2. "The next step up is on-phone apps that provide the second factor automatically, usually based on a TOTP (time-based one-time password) system with a seed derived from the users identity. This approach will be familiar to anyone who uses Googles MFA system with apps such as Gmail or Google Drive. It is available with third-party apps such as Authy or OTP Auth and is sometimes built into VPN clients. Another way of thinking about TOTP MFA is that it uses access to the phone presuming the TOTP app is running on the phone as the second factor to prove identity alongside a password," Greatwood said. "Hardware keys, such as YubiKey, can provide a hardware-backed second factor, similar to but stronger than a TOTP app on a phone." Hardware keys are more secure, but if they are stolen, they can make the security authentication problem far worse. A lot of people and I'm guilty of this leave their hardware keys on a literal keychain, along with their car and house keys. In my case, this makes it a pain to get it when needed, since I won't typically have it on me while working. But of far greater concern is when I am working outside of my office. Back in the pre-you-know-what days, I might be at a coffee shop, typing away on my laptop, with my keychain in my coat pocket. If an observant thief watched closely enough, the thief could wait for me to leave my table briefly to grab another coffee and steal both my keys and the laptop. In that case, I am in a worse position than I would have been otherwise. That said, it's still a good idea. Greatwood also brought up corporate ID badges as another potential MFA factor, if the badge system is integrated with the IT sign-on system. "One issue here though is that the token on a badge may be relatively insecure lacking in entropy and/or complexity depending on when the badging system was designed. Badges are relatively easy to lose or steal, and integration between badges and digital IT sign-on may be lacking. Also, badge readers may not be available where users need to sign in. Badges tend to be used only for specialized site-access-related applications," he said. Although it will take more time and cooperation to deploy, Greatwood foresees leveraging the biometrics authentication that's already integrated with many current mobile devices. Facial recognition is most common today, but I'm seeing a return to fingerprint options to sidestep the many facial-recognition hiccups. Many enterprises already use mobile biometrics for authentication customers, so it's not a big leap to using it for employee, contractor and partner authentication. Haiti - News : Zapping... Covid-19 : the PM negative Following the samples taken from all members of the Government on April 7. https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-30474-icihaiti-covid19ministers-and-secretaries-of-state-undergo-the-covid-19-test.html , the National Laboratory confirms that the result of the Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe's Coronavirus Covid-19 test is negative. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30519-haiti-covid-19-daily-bulletin-april-13-2020.html PNH : Yanick Joseph resigns from union Saturday, Yanick Joseph the General Coordinator of the National Police Union of Haiti, dismissed for having advocated the establishment of a union within the PNH https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30061-haiti-flash-5-police-officers-dismissed-for-indiscipline-attack-on-the-honor-of-the-pnh-and-acts-of-vandalism.html then reinstated https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30259-haiti-news-zapping.html, submitted his resignation to the union committee. In her letter, policewoman Joseph does not explain the reasons for her decision... Arrest of two dangerous criminals Police in Port-au-Prince on Sunday arrested Dassa Evens and Dassa Papouche as they attempted to return to Village de Dieu. They are suspected of involvement in kidnapping, attempted murder and the murder of several people. Shootout at least 10 victims On Sunday, a shooting broke out between several individuals at Portail leogane which left at least 4 dead and 6 wounded, including innocent civilians for confused reasons, according to divergent testimony in the absence of an official reaction. Seizure of narcotic drugs Sunday around 3:00 p.m., 6,860 kg of drugs related to marijuana, were seized, on the national road #2, in Mango Blan (locality located in the commune of Aquin). This seizure was carried out during a patrol conducted by the Commissariat of Aquin on the verbal requisition of the investigating judge, Me Bonel Amede. Message from Michel and Sophia Martelly "The Easter period is a time for reflection, sharing, generosity and forgiveness. This year, we are living the death and resurrection of Christ in confinement, respect for the principles of hygiene and a common struggle to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the country. Happy Easter everyone ! Lets's be united and united !" Former President Michel Martelly and his wife Sophia. HL/ HaitiLibre Industrial internet of things is expected to be the next big thing, with the number of IoT devices across the globe expected to triple in four years. This, along with the huge demand for compact, space-saving chips and semiconductor solutions in the telecommunications field during the expected rollout of 5G, is bound to benefit semiconductors players within this space. A promising small-cap stock within this space that has built an impressive portfolio of faster, low-power memory chips over the years is Adesto Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:IOTS). The company works with over 5,000 customers, including Apple (APPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and earns about half of its revenue from the long product cycle industrial IoT market, which is expected to grow at a rate of more than 20% per annum according to McKinsey & Co. data. Adesto has a history of margin expansion and is a strong candidate after its price rebounded following the coronavirus crash. Company overview Founded in 2006, Adesto Technologies is a provider application-specific semiconductors and embedded systems that comprise the main building blocks of IoT edge devices. Based in Santa Clara, California, the company has a wide portfolio of semiconductors and embedded technologies that are designed for connected IoT devices used in industrial, consumer, communications and medical applications. Adesto also provides software solutions, software development kits, tools and system solutions to help speed time to market for customers. Its solutions enable seamless access to data, allowing for intelligent control of things in today's connected world. Adesto's technology is used by more than 5,000 customers worldwide who are creating differentiated solutions across industrial, consumer, medical and communications markets. Story continues Strong customer base Adesto has a very unique chip solution that not only helps device makers extend battery life, but also save space, reduce costs and speed up their products. As a result, Adesto has very solid demand from some of the largest corporations in the industrial, consumer, medical and communications sectors, which could lead to strong revenue growth over a period of time. Apple is one of the biggest clients where Adesto's chips are used in the current generation of AirPods, with a strong likelihood of the trend continuing for the AirPod Pro and other designs. With Adesto increasing its range of products, there is a strong likelihood that it could become the sole supplier to Apple in this area in a few years' time. Industrials as a sector contributes to more than half of the company's revenue and includes products such as smart meters, electric/gas/water industrial IoT and automation; the end consumers are giants like ABB (NYSE:ABB), SolarEdge (NASDAQ:SEDG), Itron (NASDAQ:ITRI), Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX) and others. With respect to consumer goods, the company's products have an applicability in wearables, hearables, far-field voice recognition, Bluetooth and wireless solutions, where end customers are companies like Amazon, Samsung (XKRX:005930), Universal Electronics (NASDAQ:UEIC), Parrot, Ozobot and Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU). IoT Macro is strong After many years of hype, anticipation and steady uptake, the internet of things has finally moved into mainstream business use. From factory robots to autonomous cars, IoT is expanding its reach. As per the research conducted and published by McKinsey Digital, the number of businesses that use IoT technologies has increased from 13% in 2014 to about 25% in 2019. The worldwide number of IoT-connected devices is projected to increase to 43 billion by 2023, an almost threefold increase from 2018. Advanced principal technologies and a proliferation of devices have helped fuel the growth of IoT technologies. Adesto provides a full stack of IoT solutions that are most pertinent to the industrial sector. It caters directly to equipment manufacturers rather than the open market. There is also a strong relevance of the company's mixed-signal ASICs data converters and its non-volatile memory solutions in the consumer-oriented sectors as well as the medical and communication sectors. Adesto's chips also provide advanced controller and memory functions, making the company essential. As for telecom, there is a visible future tailwind as IoT is still in the early stages and will receive a major boost with the advent of 5G. Management expects 10 billion connected IoT devices by the end of 2020 and 14 billion by the end of 2022 based on IoT Analytics 2018 data. This could be one of the biggest drivers for Adesto's revenue growth as well its stock price in the near future. There is a strong application of Bluetooth and wireless solutions in the medical devices industry as well, with end clients including Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Boston Scientific (BSX) and Dexcom (DXCM), among others. Thus, the strong base of end customers and their demand is expected to drive Adesto's future demand. Key takeaways Adesto's stock has had a topsy-turvy trajectory since the Covid-19 crash, but the stock has certainly recovered and is close to its 52-week high even in these tough times. However, the enterprise value-revenue ratio of 3.19 is actually quite low when compared to other semiconductor companies like Ambarella (AMBA) and Lattice (LSCC). The company is making new inroads through its highly compact, space-saving, cost-saving chip solutions and catering to the needs of tech giants like Apple. It is well positioned to deliver excellent returns even from current levels. Disclosure: No positions. Read more here: Not a Premium Member of GuruFocus? Sign up for a free 7-day trial here. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. 12.04.2020 LISTEN The Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund, a private sector led initiative has set out a major plan to construct a 100-bed COVID-19 Treatment and Isolation facility to complement government efforts to contain the coronavirus. Construction works on the new facility is expected to commence on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 and scheduled to be completed between three to six weeks after take-off. The Managing Trustee of the Fund, Mr Senyo Hosi, who revealed this in an interview with Joy FM on Friday, said preparations towards the commencement of the project were far advanced. We are going to build a 100-bed facility and want to do it in not more than six weeks. We are breaking ground on Tuesday. Yesterday, we had a commencement meeting to get architects and engineers from the Built Environment Professionals (BEP), Ghana Institute of Architects, Ghana Institute of Surveyors, the Ghana Armed Forces Engineers Regiment, Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, and a team of medics. As we speak, they are actually seated. We want to sign off on design today. We met the President yesterday and he gave his blessings. The Minister of Health has also been a key champion of this entire project, he revealed. The Fund The Ghana COVID-19 Private Sector Fund, which seeks to raise a minimum of GH100 million has been established by a number of private businesses drawn from diverse sectors in the country to support governments efforts to conquer the coronavirus pandemic. The Fund also seeks to extend relief services to individuals and families, who have been hardest hit by the pandemic, undertake sensitisation programmes, and also support institutions at the forefront of the fight. Since its establishment, the Fund has been embarking on a number of projects in conformity with its agenda. Through one of its initiatives dubbed Feed A Kayayei Project more than 140,000 free hot meals have been served to persons affected by the lockdown in Accra and Kumasi. Under its project dubbed Protect and Resource the Frontline, the Fund has also supplied tertiary care personal protective equipment (PPEs) to the Ga East Municipal Hospital, which is the primary treatment centre for COVID-19. Focus on other projects Mr Hosi said following an intervention by the government to offer free meals to the vulnerable within the period, the Fund would be wrapping up its Kayayei Project and redirect its resources into other critical projects. We want to redirect our resources into other projects which include feeding the frontliners, supplying them with PPEs, and the 100-bed facility we are going to construct, he said. While expressing profound gratitude to its donors and volunteers, Mr Hosi appealed to the public to contribute to the Fund to enable it achieve its full objectives of supporting the total containment of the disease. To donate, visit www.ghanacovid19fund.com and hit the donate button. You can donate through USSD, online with your card, or mobile money. You can also pay by bank transfer or by cheque. All the instructions are live on our website, he appealed. All our platinum sponsors who will fund our 100-bed facility will have their names published on our honour wall in the building, he said. For her part, the Volunteer Team Lead for the Feed a Kayayei Project, Gifty Oware Aboagye expressed appreciation to all persons who supported the successful implementation of the project. NAIROBI Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kenya rose to 197 on Sunday, April 12, after six more cases were confirmed by the Ministry of Health. In the past 24hours, 766 samples were tested, with six returning a positive result. Five of those who tested positive are male while one is female. Kenyan citizens make up five of the six new cases while one is a foreign national. Of the new cases, two have a history of recent travel from the Middle East while one recently traveled from Mombasa. Five of the new cases were from the mandatory quarantine centres, with one picked up by the health ministrys surveillance teams. The statement by Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe further disclosed that over the same twenty-four hour period, one patient was discharged from hospital. The announcement brings to 25 the total number of people who have been discharged in the country after fully recovering from Covid-19. The death of one more COVID-19 patient was also confirmed in Kagwes statement, bringing the total number of fatalities to eight. So far, 7,449 samples have been tested since the onset of the virus in Kenya with the government looking to ramp up its testing capacity to allow for mass testing. A total of 2,160 contacts have been monitored, out of which 1,660 have been discharged. Five hundred (500) contacts are being followed at the moment. A total of 7,449 samples have been tested since the onset of the disease in the country. We thank all Kenyans for their continued support and adherence to the Covid-19 mitigation measures we have put in place. However, we also want to remind our citizens not to relent until we succeed in completely containing the spread of the virus in our country, Kagwes statement read in part. Related The Meghalaya government on Monday decided to extend the ongoing lockdown till April 30, as part of its measures to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. The decision was taken by the state cabinet at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma. "We have decided that the lockdown will continue till April 30," Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong told reporters. He said inter-state movement would continue to remain suspended and all entry-exit points across the state sealed. Based on the inputs received from the deputy commissioners, it has been decided that inter-district movement will not be allowed till such time that the government feels necessary to revisit (the same), Tynsong said. The deputy chief minister, however, maintained that workers of one district stranded in another would be allowed to travel to their homes. The transportation for such migrant workers will be monitored by the Transport department and the deputy commissioners concerned, he added. Tynsong said patients who need to come to Shillong from the districts for medical needs would be allowed to travel, provided they get passes from the authorities concerned. Deputy commissioners in districts along the border with Assam will examine whether operationalising village markets is feasible, he said. "We leave it to their (DC's) wisdom to execute the decision taken by the cabinet today," the deputy chief minister said. The cabinet has also revoked its earlier decision to allow movement of private vehicles from April 15. "We have decided that private transportation will not be allowed until further orders in view of the prevailing situation," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Radio France Internationale (RFI) has hailed Morocco for having adopted multiple initiatives that are sometimes very innovative to help underprivileged populations during the COVID-19 health crisis. Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, billions of euros have been mobilized by states and international institutions to try to cushion the country from the economic shock. However, access to this aid remains sometimes very difficult for poor populations, stated RFI in a commentary on its website. However, Morocco, faced with the emergency, is multiplying sometimes very innovative initiatives to help the underprivileged populations, said the French radio channel in the commentary titled In Morocco, Amid a pandemic, solidarity with the most deprived gets organized. The first measure targeted unemployed workers with the National Social Security Fund, recalled the media outlet, noting that about 800,000 people have already been registered to get the stipends. For people who do not have social security coverage and who could no longer work because of the lockdown, Morocco targeted the households, which hold a RAMED health card, a medical assistance scheme implemented by Morocco for the benefit of the poor. Morocco also decided to distribute compensations to people who are not affiliated to the CNSS nor to RAMED and who have their identity card as the only administrative document. Their requests for assistance will be based on a declaration on honor. The assistance for affiliates to CNSS amounts to about $100 in March and $200 in April and May, while the others will receive from $80 to $120 according to the size of the households. The financial assistance is distributed by the special fund for the management of the pandemic that has so far collected over $1.8 billion donated by the state, corporates, public and private institutions, senior officials and individuals. Besides RFI, several other international media have praised not only the Moroccan governments swift response and comprehensive socioeconomic relief measures taken to mitigate the fallout of covid-19, but also the solidarity and generosity shown by the Moroccan people. Moroccans have actually stepped in to assist others, bringing groceries to the elderly and disabled who cannot leave their houses, and putting at the disposal of health workers and law enforcement agents hotel rooms and flats. Rather than raising prices, many Moroccan hoteliersand even homeownersopened their doors to stranded foreigners who did not manage to leave the country, for free. In the same vein, many carters and restaurants are distributing free meals to hospitals, while hundreds of volunteers are helping pupils and students who are studying online after schools and universities were closed. Others offer their help to local authorities to inform the population about the need to stay home or to sanitize roads, cars and streets, while many industrial units have shifted their production chains to manufacture medical gear, facemasks, or sanitizers much needed at present and these are but a few cases of the solidarity chain established in these coronavirus times. Doctors in Sri Lanka have alleged that health authorities are ignoring WHO directives on coronavirus, increasing the risk of disease spread. Head of the Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) Dr Anurudda Padeniya said the WHO directive that there should be continuous PCR tests to detect COVID-19 positive cases was being ignored by the authorities. The novel coronavirus has claimed seven lives in Sri Lanka with 217 active cases. They have the capacity to conduct tests but the epidemiology unit is yet to approve the tests, Padeniya told reporters. Sri Lanka will celebrate Sinhala and Tamil New Year on Tuesday but the police have warned against violation of curfew orders. Please stay indoors and celebrate the new year. We will be taking strict action against curfew violators, said Deputy Inspector General Ajith Rohana. The new year celebrations are traditionally marked with visits to families and relatives. The government in mid-March announced a lockdown till April 16 and asked employees to work from home. The work from home period has been extended till April 20. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A complaint has been registered against BJP spokesperson Shivray Kulkarni in Maharashtra's Nagpur district for allegedly posting a derogatory content against state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on social media, a police official said on Monday. The post in Marathi was written by Kulkarni on Facebook on April 10, the official said quoting the complaint filed by Akash Gajbe (25), a resident of Kondhali village. A non-cognisable offence has been registered by Kondhali police against Kulkarni under section 500 (Punishment for defamation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) HANGZHOU, China, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Narada donated over 20,000 medical masks and gloves to more than 20 countries, including Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. As prevention supplies were in short supply in China in January, Narada has started the global purchase of healthcare facilities from Europe, Middle East, United States and South Korea. Narada partners gave great help for collecting those materials since early February. "There is an old Chinese saying, 'As we sow mercy, we can be sure we will receive mercy when we need it.' The development of COVID-19 is no longer a problem for one person or one country. It is a problem for mankind to overcome," Said Wu Xianzhang, Vice President of Narada. With Italy being a major epicenter of the outbreak, Narada's Italian partner Pietro reached out to Narada for help with epidemic prevention supplies on March 24th. In response, Narada managed to raise funds and ship the first batch of medical supplies in 48 hours. Narada also shared its accumulated experience in prevention and control measures in response to the pandemic. Wu Xianzhang, Vice President of Narada, said: "As a global company with operations in more than 150 countries, Narada follows the development of COVID-19 closely and is working hard to provide support and assistance where possible. At present, fighting COVID-19 has entered a critical stage. Narada will continue to take advantage of its global network and fight with global partners to fulfill our corporate citizenship responsibilities. We firmly believe that through mankind's joint effort, we will be victorious." About Narada Narada is a leader of Green Smart Energy and Industry Innovation as well as a provider of Turn-key Solutions. They have specialized in high-end industrial battery for 24 years. Main business is development, manufacture, sales and service of stationary power, motive power and renewable energy storage batteries as well as accessories, and also system integration. For more information please visit: en.naradapower.com Linkedln: Narada Power Source Co., Ltd. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1153846/Narada_supplies.jpg Coronavirus lockdown: After Tanmay Vekaria, Sakshi Tanwar, and Shivin Narang, Ankita Lokhande, now Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah actor Sonalika Joshi's building has had been sealed by BMC. Howbeit, as the residents living in it, have completed their 14 days quarantine, BMC has unsealed the building. Coronavirus lockdown: Maharashtra is the worst-hit state in India with the total coronavirus positive case of 1,619 with the death toll at 149. The numbers are staggering and rapidly increasing. Meanwhile, actor Ankita Lokhande, Tanmay Vekaria, Sakshi Tanwar, and Shivin Narangs building has been sealed by the authorities as few residents were tested positive of COVID- 19. Another case came to light, as Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah fame Sonalika Joshis aka Madhavis building was sealed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), as two resident was found infected by the deadly virus. In conversation to a leading website: Sonalika said, that 2 cases were found in her building but now both are recovered and the building has now unsealed, and also all residents have completed their 14 days quarantine too. Currently, all are safe and now people can go out to purchase essential items. Meanwhile, another star from Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah Tanmay Vekaria went on a 14 days self-isolation, as his vegetable vendor was found infected. The actor said, as a responsible citizen he should follow the government directives, as this can keep his family safe. He had also stated, that last time when he went out to buy essential goods, he followed all the precautionary measures, like wash each pack, his clothes which he wore, and after that, he took a hot shower, but taking no risk, he went on a self-quarantine. The actor also thanked BMC for helping them in their problem, as any senior whose medicine exhaust, the authority prepares a list for all the building people and bring that thing for them. For all the latest Entertainment News, download NewsX App Canberra, April 13 : Australia's fight against COVID-19 has achieved a new progress, with less than 50 cases confirmed between Sunday and Monday, but it was "too early" to decide on lifting the restrictions, health officials said. According to the Department of Health there had been 6,322 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia as of Monday morning, an increase of 33 cases from Sunday morning, reports Xinhua news agency. It represents an increase of only 0.5 per cent, a recent record-low for Australia. However, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy warned that the figure could be misleading because of a downtrend in Australia's testing rate over the four-day Easter weekend. Of the 6,322 confirmed cases in Australia, 61 have died from COVID-19. More than 356,000 tests have been conducted across Australia. Authorities arned that the Easter weekend, which spanned from Friday to Monday, would be one of the most important periods in Australia's fight against the virus and reiterated the importance of social distancing rules. Murphy told Seven Network television on Monday that it could take up to two weeks for the government to know if the pre-Easter message was effective. "We won't know what happens over Easter for a week and more. We will be very clearly watching the numbers over the next week to 10 days," he said. "It is too early to relax restrictions at the moment." Earlier on Monday, Simon Birmingham, the minister for trade, tourism and investment, said it was "impossible" to know how long the government's international travel restrictions would last. South Africa: COVID-19 cases rise to 2 272, 27 deaths The number of COVID-19 cases in South Africa rose to 2 272 on Monday, with two more deaths confirmed by Health Minister Zweli Mkhize. The positive tests are an increase of 99 from the previous day. Total deaths stood at 27 on Monday. During a technical public engagement with experts dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Mkhize said the country has conducted 83 363 tests since the outbreak. Of these, 21 190 had been done in public sector facilities. Regarding deaths, Mkhize said the first case was of a 68-year-old male in the Western Cape while the second was that of a 57-year-old male from Gauteng. The Minister said the Gauteng death had raised alarm as the patient had not displayed underlying diseases and only displayed respiratory destress when he was admitted. His chest x-rays showed some changes which were suggestive of COVID-19 and was found to be positive. While in the ICU his condition took a turn for the worse and unfortunately we lost him. We do not have a record of any underlying diseases, said Mkhize. The Minister said the 68-year-old was admitted with acute respiratory destress and hypoxia with underlying concomitant diseases of diabetes, hypertension and chronic renal disease. He said this has been the pattern with most cases. Last month, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that government would roll out a mass COVID-19 public screening and testing programme. Weve managed to mass screen 438 815 people in the country. Its early days but thats where we are right now, he said. Out of these, 4537 people have been referred for testing in various government testing facilities. Mkhize said the Department of Health had identified 11 406 contacts of those who had tested positive. Of those, 9 075 of those have been identified and interviewed and processed accordingly, he said. Government, he said, had deployed an army of 10 654 tracers who are on the ground in an attempt to make as much contact as possible. He expressed condolences to the families of the deceased. During the briefing, the Minister clarified that statistics are released after a rigorous calculation process. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The victims of a monstrous state frame-up, thirteen militant workers from Maruti Suzukis Manesar, Haryana car assembly plant have now spent more than seven-and-a-half-years in prisonthe last three of them under life-sentence for a murder they did not commit. The 13 workersRam Meher, Sandeep Dhillon, Ram Bilas, Sarabjeet Singh, Pawan Kumar, Sohan Kumar, Ajmer Singh, Suresh Kumar, Amarjeet, Dhanraj Bambi, Pradeep Gujjar, Yogesh and Jiyalalinclude the entire leadership of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU). The MSWU was founded in a year-long rank-and-file rebellion, including strikes, plant-floor sit-downs and clashes with police, against Maruti Suzuki, Indias largest automaker, and the company-sponsored, government-supported Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union. Police escort the framed-up Maruti Suzuki workers. The Japanese-owned Maruti Suzuki colluded with the two main parties of Indian big business, Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress Party, the police and the courts to smash the MSWU and incarcerate its leaders for life. Indias capitalist rulers were determined to persecute these young workers and make an example of them, because they dared to challenge the brutal working conditions that prevail in Indias globally-connected auto industry and which are becoming the norm for autoworkers around the world. At the workers March 17, 2017 sentencing hearing, state special prosecutor Anurag Hooda urged the 13 workers be sentenced to death by hanging, saying investors needed to be ensured worker resistance would be ruthlessly stamped out. Our industrial growth has dipped, FDI (foreign direct investment) has dried up, said Hooda. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is calling for Make in India, but such incidents are a stain on our image. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) responded to the life-sentences pronounced by the court the next day by immediately launching a global campaign to mobilize the international working class to win the release of the Maruti Suzuki workers. Three years on, the ICFI and WSWS urge workers around the world to redouble their efforts to win the freedom of these class war prisoners, whose only crime was to challenge a brutal work-regimen, cheap-labour and precarious contract jobs. Their convictions were the culmination of a five-year legal vendetta that began with a July 18, 2012 company-provoked factory-floor altercation, in which company goons, viciously set upon the workers. In the midst of this melee, a fire, whose origins have never been determined, broke out, leading to the death by smoke inhalation of the one manager who showed any sympathy for the workers, Awanish Kumar Dev. The 13 workers who have been jailed for life for challenging a brutal work regime and precarious low-paid contract jobs. The company, with the full-throated support of the then Congress Party state government, used the July 18, 2012 events to purge the Manesar plant work force, firing and replacing 546 permanent and 1,800 contract workers. Meanwhile, Maruti Suzuki conspired with the police and government to launch a campaign of terror, arresting and abusing more than 200 workers. Ultimately, 148 workers were jailed and charged with murder and other grave criminal offenses. As a crucial element in mobilizing support for the Maruti Suzuki workers worldwide, the WSWS published an exhaustive five-part exposure of the frame-up based on the trial transcript. It demonstrated that the trial was a legal travesty. The police, as the workers lawyers exposed in court, had fabricated evidence and colluded with the company. They failed to carry out elementary forensic tests on key pieces of evidence. The judge justified the exclusion of testimony from any workers who witnessed the events of July 18, 2012 on the grounds they would be biased, while lauding the testimony of company officials. Ultimately, the judge was forced to exonerate 117 of the workers, including 89 who had been arrested on the basis of company-supplied lists. But he did so, only to uphold the frame-up against the 13the key accused. In convicting them, he willfully mangled the law, shifting the burden of proof to the workers, and supplying arguments to cover up holes and discrepancies in the prosecution case. (See: The frame-up of the Maruti Suzuki workers Part 1: a travesty of justice) During the almost five-year period between their arrest and detention, and their March 2017 conviction and sentencing, Indian government and judicial officials, including Haryanas Congress Party Chief Minister, repeatedly urged that the Maruti Suzuki workers be subject to exemplary punishment so as to reassure corporate investors. Haryanas current state government, led by the Hindu-supremacist BJP is appealing the workers life-sentences, because it wants them hanged. From the outset, the Stalinist parliamentary parties and the CITU and AITUC, the trade union arms respectively of the Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPM) and the older but smaller Communist Party of India (CPI), have refused to mount a campaign to mobilize the working class in defence of the Maruti Suzuki workers. Indeed, since April 2017 they have effectively banished any mention of them from their publications. This is because the Stalinists fear the Maruti Suzuki workers militant example and recognize any campaign to expose the conspiracy of the courts, police and political establishment to frame-up and imprison them would blow up their own cozy relations with the employers and the Congress Party, till recently Indian big business preferred party of government. In opposition to this conspiracy of silence, workers in Haryana, across India and internationally must intensify their efforts to secure the immediate release of these class war prisoners. Under current conditions, securing their freedom has become a matter of life and death given the devastating impact the spread of the deadly coronavirus threatens to have on inmates of the hell-hole that is Indias prison system. MS workers mark anniversary of MSWUs founding The struggle and sacrifices required to found the MSWU understandably hold pride of place in the hearts of workers. On Monday, March 2, supporters of the MSWU and workers at the Manesar assembly plant held a brief celebration to mark the ninth anniversary of the founding of the MSWU in 2011. Thousands of night and day shift workers along with contract workers participated in the event held in front of the factory gates prior to the commencement of the day shift. Khushiram, a prominent member of the Provisional Committee of the MSWU, which was formed to carry forward the struggle after the July-August 2012 arrest and the subsequent jailing and torture of the leadership of the MSWU, brought this commemoration to the attention of the WSWS by forwarding a Hindi transcript describing the event. In it Khushiram summarizes the speeches of leaders who emphasize the need to unite the working class across religious divisions, in direct opposition to the murderous communal attacks and killings being instigated by the Modi government to sow divisions among working people. We post below a translation of Khushirams account. On March 2, thousands of workers participated in a rally outside the Manesar assembly plant to mark nine years since the MSWU's founding. Today, the ninth anniversary of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) is being celebrated with great fanfare. March 1st was the founding day of the union, but since it was a Sunday, this meeting has been organized for March 2nd. Even after 9 years, the enthusiasm of the workers is noteworthy. In addition to the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union, other trade unions and organizations also participated in the meeting. While speaking about the history of the organization, MSWU leader Ajmer Singh appealed to workers to always carry forward the heritage of the Red Flag and never forget the members of the working class who sacrificed everything for this struggle. The privileges we enjoy today, he told the gathered audience, are due in large measure to the 13 men who remain behind bars. Mr. Singh spoke of the on-going Hindu-Muslim riots in the country. He warned workers against coming under the influence of anti-social currents. The working class, he pointed out, needs to maintain the distinct identity that has been forged through struggle. Our movement, he stated, has taught us that religion is divisive, while the very process of struggle unites us. We do not know how many innocent people lost their lives in the recent Delhi riots, but we do know that all the victims belonged to the working class. We have not heard of a single capitalist, or politician or family members of such being hurt during these riots. So, we should think carefully about who is behind such attacks and who benefits from them. Selfish politicians have no qualms in sacrificing the innocent for their own petty gains. But the working class must always stand with and for the masses against such violence. Provisional Working Committee Member Ramnivas spoke about the history of the MSWU, and appealed to the workers to continue doing their work with sincerity. In the current political climate, he said, theres an attempt to present the Maruti Suzuki plant as an exemplar of Ram-rajya (the Hindutva ideal). This was, in fact, part of a conspiracy to keep permanent workers away from production, so that if the union were to enter into a period of struggle, management could still keep the plant running by bringing in temporary contract workers. We succeeded in our big strikes in this plant, he said, because we controlled the production. In addition, Maruti Suzuki workers fought for the rights of contract workers as well, and demanded the abolition of the contract system and the right to permanent work as their first major demand. Their willingness to keep fighting has taken them all the way to jail. In his speech, Comrade Khushiram brought up the issue of raising the political consciousness of workers. He pointed out that the average salary for a permanent worker is several times those of contract workers who are barely paid Rs.15,000-20,000 ($200-$270) per month. A worker is allocated medical expense up to Rs. 20,000, which is barely even enough to cover any major health condition. The management is focused on increasing its profits, and it does so by hiring more contract workers and reducing the number of permanent workers. To keep workers distracted, these young workers in their 20s were targeted because of the militancy and tenaciousness they displayed against the company management and the Congress Party state government, both of whom wanted to force the workers to meekly submit to sweatshop conditions and constant management abuse at the plant. Liberal Wisconsin state Supreme Court challenger Jill Karofsky defeated conservative Justice Daniel Kelly in the biggest battle of Wisconsin's April 7 elections. But the war over voting in Wisconsin and other states isn't even close to ending. Karofsky's victory over Kelly, who was backed by state Republicans and President Donald Trump, comes after Democrats threatened lawsuits over the election, which was marred by last minute chaos, including significant numbers of polling places closed due to coronavirus and disagreement between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislature over whether to postpone the vote. Its an early preview of the raw, intense legal fights over voting rights and ballot access set to multiply across other states this year, as the two parties prepare to contest a presidential election amid the pandemic. "Its a victory for justice and democracy in an election that should never have taken place in person," Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said in a statement following Karofsky's victory. Earlier in the day, Wikler and other Democrats sounded more pessimistic about the race. Every legal option is on the table, Wikler said at a virtual press conference Monday morning, when asked about possible litigation. Were in constant touch with attorneys as we gather new information. At the same press conference, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez called Wisconsin's election "voter suppression on steroids." Wikler also said at the time he expected lawsuits from individual candidates from across the state, separate from the party. The Democratic presidential primary and the state Supreme Court race with its potential impact on future redistricting and other state laws were the highest-profile races on the ballot this month, but hundreds of local government elections were held as well, with what looks set to be much lower turnout than the equivalent contests four years ago. Story continues The victory reduces the state Supreme Court's 5-2 conservative margin to 4-3. Democrats tried and failed to flip a state Supreme Court seat in 2019, with both races pointing to the competitiveness of the state heading into this year's general election. The statements from Perez and Wikler following the Karofsky's victory did not mention any litigation. "Democrats are working to ensure no voter should have to choose between risking their health and participating in an election," Perez said in his statement. The coronavirus turned Wisconsins April elections inside-out in the days leading up to last Tuesdays vote. Facing worries about public health, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called for the election to be postponed on April 3, four days before the election and after saying in previous weeks that he did not want to move the vote. The Republican-controlled state legislature rejected Evers late request, leading Evers to issue an executive order delaying the election, citing his emergency powers. But the state Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Evers did not have the authority to postpone the election after the legislature challenged his order. That meant in-person voting happened as planned, even though some counties were not able to staff anything near their normal number of voting locations. Municipalities across the state had to scramble to run an in-person election, with many closing polling places and National Guardsmen being drafted to serve as poll workers in most of the states counties. In Milwaukee, the biggest city in the state, just five of 180 planned precincts were open on Tuesday, as volunteer poll workers dropped out due to concerns about coronavirus. The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that ballots had to be postmarked by Election Day and received by 4 p.m. local time on Monday, adding another complicated wrinkle to the election. In Wisconsin, ballots must typically be returned to clerks by 8 p.m. on Election Day, regardless of when theyre postmarked. Municipalities had to determine how to interpret the postmark ruling for ballots that didnt have a postmark or had an unclear one, which could become another possible subject of post-election litigation. The battles in Wisconsin foreshadow the political and legal fights set to play out across the country before the November general election. Both Democrats and Republicans are standing up significant operations to fight over voting laws in the states. And Trump, in particular, has taken a hard-line stand against mail voting. He has said, baselessly, that mail balloting will lead to widespread voter fraud. In the Democratic presidential primary, Joe Biden claimed victory over Bernie Sanders by a wide margin, the Associated Press declared early Tuesday. Sanders dropped out of the race on Wednesday, the day after in-person voting in the state, and endorsed the former vice president on Monday . Voters who cast their ballots on Tuesday in Milwaukee waited in lines for hours, some in the middle of a hailstorm , with many wearing masks and gloves, for one of the most dangerous elections in modern American history. The election took place while the state was under a stay-at-home order and while the state Supreme Court, which effectively allowed in-person voting to continue, met virtually. Voters masked against coronavirus line up at Riverside High School for Wisconsin's primary election Tuesday April 7, 2020, in Milwaukee. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. (AP Photo/Morry Gash) Democrats have homed in on problems with absentee voting as they consider possible legal action. The 2019 spring election saw a record amount of absentee voting in the state. Nearly 1.3 million ballots were requested and about 1.1 million were reported returned as of Monday morning, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission . But some voters who spoke to POLITICO on Election Day said they or someone they knew had requested an absentee ballot but never received one, forcing them to choose between going to the polls and staying inside to avoid risking exposure to coronavirus. Youre risking yourself both ways, Judy Gardner, a Milwaukee-based activist who said her niece requested but never received her absentee ballot, told POLITICO last week. Either with the health scare or not being able to vote at all. Democrats hinted that the issue could be at the center of future litigation. Dan Feyen, a Republican state senator represented Fond du Lac, also tweeted last week that a postal worker told the state elections commission that three tubs of undelivered absentee ballots were discovered. It is impossible to submit an absentee ballot by Election Day when you havent even received the damn ballot by Election Day, Perez said at the Monday press conference with Wikler. By Ofeliya Afandiyeva In 2019, SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic) exported gas worth $271.7 million, local media reported citing the Cabinet of Ministers. According to the Cabinet of Ministers summary report of 2019,the company sold 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas, of which 11.4 billion cubic meters were sold on the domestic market, and the remaining volume was exported. Some 3.2 billion cubic meters of gas were sold to the population in the domestic market. In addition, SOCAR sold 207.1 thousand tons of liquefied gas last year, of which 193.2 thousand tons were sold on the domestic market and 13.9 thousand tons were exported. In 2019, the companys revenue was estimated at $922.2 million from gas sales, including $271.7 million from exports, the statement said. Moreover, during the reporting year, 2.3 billion cubic meters of gas was pumped into underground gas storage facilities, and the volume of gas reserves in underground gas storage facilities, taking into account the remaining reserves, exceeded 3 billion cubic meters. Furthermore, the countrys gas supply indicators have improved. In 2019, $96.3 million was allocated from the state budget to SOCAR to implement measures to improve gas supply and drilling in Azerbaijan. As a result of these measures, the level of gasification in the country has reached 96 percent. In 2019, the oil and gas sector of the industry produced 37.5 million tons of oil and 35.6 billion cubic meters of gas worth $17.1 billion. Some 83.1 percent of oil and 84.2 percent of gas fell to the share of enterprises with foreign investment operating in the oil and gas sector. In 2019, 64 percent of investments in the industrial sector fell to the oil and gas sector. Furthermore, the production of oil products in the country increased by 1.5 percent compared to last year. Revenues from exports of oil products amounted to 384.5 million US dollars. It is worthy to note that compared to 2003, oil production in 2019 increased more than 2.4 times, and gas production 6.9 times. In 2019, the volume of hydrocarbon products produced by SOCAR increased and amounted to 7.7 million tons of oil and 6.8 billion cubic meters of gas, respectively. Compared to 2018, 140.8 thousand tons more oil and 293.0 million cubic meters more gas were produced. 1.4 million tons oil and 1.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas were directed to export. 600,000 tons of export oil was transported through the Heydar Aliyev Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and 800,000 tons via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipelines. Revenues from oil and gas exports totaled $904.6 million, the report delivered data on SOCARs activity last year. It was also mentioned that Azerbaijan's proven gas reserves are 2.6 trillion cubic meters. Therefore, Azerbaijan will be a reliable supplier of hydrocarbon resources for a very long time. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz New Delhi: The law must be strengthened to curb the increasing trend of the breakdown in the composition and allegiances of the political parties due to private allurements as opposed to public policy considerations, the Supreme Court said on Monday while upholding Madhya Pradesh governor Lalji Tandons direction in March for holding a floor test in the state assembly. Kamal Nath resigned as Madhya Pradesh chief minister on March 20 two hours before a floor test in the state assembly on the directions of the Supreme Court that his government looked set to lose following the rebellion of 22 Congress lawmakers. Tandon had earlier written to Nath on March 14 directing that a floor test be held on March 16. When the House was convened on March 16, the speaker adjourned it till March 26 citing the coronavirus threat without holding the floor test. The Bharatiya Janata Pary then moved the apex court submitting Nath government had lost majority in the assembly. The Congress, in a counter-petition, said the floor test can happen only when all the elected lawmakers are present in the assembly. It argued that a governor can order a floor test only when the House is not in session. If the House is in session, the only remedy is to seek a motion of no confidence, the Congress said. The top court on Monday turned down this argument saying a governor can exercise his power and direct a floor test even if the House is in session. The governor is not denuded of the power to order a floor test where on the basis of the material available to the governor it becomes evident that the issue as to whether the government commands the confidence of the house requires to be assessed on the basis of a floor test, the court said in its order. It added such a decision is subject to judicial review. The top courts observation related to the composition of political parties came in relation to the submissions made by the Congress alleging that the 22 of its lawmakers were taken away to Bengaluru and that it faced resistance when it tried to contact them. The law may have to evolve to address these burgeoning evils, it said. The court referred to the spectacle of rival political parties whisking away their political flock to safe destinations and added it is best that courts maintain an arms length from the sordid tales of political life. It added it must be conscious of the position on the ground and an effort has to be made to the extent possible to ensure that democratic values prevail. It is an unfortunate reflection on the confidence which political parties hold in their own constituents and a reflection of what happens in the real world of politicsPoaching is an expression which was bandied about on both sides of the debate in the present case, The top court had on March 19 ordered that a floor test should be held but had not given any reasons for that order. Its Mondays order explained in detail the rationale behind the top courts order of March 19. The court ruled a governor of a state is empowered to order a floor test if he/she has reasons to believe that the council of ministers headed by the chief minister has lost the confidence of the house. This power can be exercised by a governor at any time during a running assembly, that is when the House is in session, a bench of justices DY Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta held, reaffirming its order passed on March 19 asking Nath to prove his majority. The governor in calling for a floor test cannot be construed to have acted beyond the bounds of constitutional authority. Two angels singing. Photo: Tasty/YouTube Last week, I attended a Zoom Seder hosted by my girlfriends family. As an extremely lapsed Catholic, my Passover knowledge, I assumed, was pretty limited. That is, until we got to the portion of the evening where someone tells the story of Passover and I found myself nodding, slowly remembering details Id forgotten Id stored away. And then he marries Tzipora, I heard a voice that sounded suspiciously like mine contribute at one point. Turns out, dozens and dozens of viewings of The Prince of Egypt were finally good for something beyond enjoying the perfect music of Stephen Schwartz and Hans Zimmer. If you are not familiar with The Prince of Egypt, I cannot recommend it more highly. If only because it features the song When You Believe, which was also recorded as a pop duet by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston in the late 90s to go along with the animated movie. Iconic is a term that gets tossed around too easily these days, but, my God, it is fucking iconic. On Saturday night, powerhouse vocalists Cynthia Erivo and Shoshana Bean performed a rendition of the number accompanied by Schwartz himself on the keys during Saturday Night Seder, a YouTube Seder starring big names from screen and stage. Jason Alexander presided. Idina Menzel sang the four questions. Richard Kind and Debra Messing told the story of Passover. The Glazer siblings got increasingly drunk and high. Fran! Drescher was present! Theres also s Bette Middler cameo I will not spoil but brought me great joy. Josh Groban and Rachel Mrs. Maisel Brosnahan explained, in song, that, no, they are not Jewish. The whole thing is a treat and ends on a surprisingly touching note. But if youre only going to watch one thing, make it Bean and Erivo riffing from their respective living rooms. The event hosted on BuzzFeed Tastys YouTube channel raised over $2,350,000 in coronavirus relief funds for the CDC Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit. Why is this night different from all other nights? Please watch and enjoy for your answer. US special envoy for reconciliation in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated a deal with the Taliban, has said an initial prisoner exchange between the armed group and the Afghan government was an important step towards peace. According to the Red Cross, the Taliban released 20 Afghan security force prisoners on Sunday after the government released 300 low-risk Taliban captives, who have pledged not to return to the fight and are being let go based on various factors including their health, age and length of remaining sentence. The release of prisoners is an important step in the peace process and the reduction of violence, Khalilzad said on Twitter on Monday. (1/2) Welcome the release of prisoners by both the Afghan government and the Taliban. The release of prisoners is an important step in the peace process and the reduction of violence. U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) April 13, 2020 Both sides should accelerate efforts to meet targets specified in the US-Taliban agreement as soon as possible, he added, noting the exchange was more important than ever with prison populations threatened by coronavirus outbreaks. Khalilzad and the Taliban signed a deal on February 29 that paves the way for US and other foreign forces to quit Afghanistan in return for various commitments from the armed group. The deal said the Afghan government would release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, while the armed group would free 1,000 Afghan security force personnel. The exchange was supposed to have happened by March 10, allowing peace talks to begin between the Taliban and the Afghan government but the process has been beset with problems. Kabul has claimed the Taliban want 15 of their top commanders to be released, while the armed group have accused Afghan authorities of wasting time. A small Taliban team met with the government to discuss a comprehensive prisoner swap last week, but walked out of talks after officials began releasing prisoners only gradually. On Sunday, the Taliban told AFP news agency their decision to release a group of prisoners was a goodwill step to accelerate the prisoner exchange process. Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion curated for you. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times. Life after lockdown: What government plans to do post-April 14 India is planning to restart some economic activity after April 14 to help offset the economic damage of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, even as it weighs extending the stringent measure. Read full story here. In Covid-19 testing push, ICMR may collect samples from areas with zero infection As the number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in India nears 10,000, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is considering pooled testing of people with symptoms in areas from where no SARS-Cov-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) infections have been reported, in a move that will widen testing significantly and highlight the actual spread of the disease in India. Read full story here. Covid-19: 14 villages in Uttar Pradesh sealed because of one man The district administration in Uttar Pradeshs Badaun has put 14 villages under quarantine after a man tested positive for coronavirus disease Covid-19. Read full story here. Anil Kapoors wife Sunita went on a solo honeymoon, said yes to the actor only when he could afford a cook Anil Kapoor and wife Sunita have been together for over 46 years, which includes 10 years of courtship and 35 years of marriage. The two are very different from each other and that seems to only bring them together. Their unshakable bond is what makes their love story unique. Read full story here. TikTok crosses 1 billion installs on Google Play Store TikTok crossed 1 billion downloads on both Android and iOS last year in February. The short video app has now crossed 1 billion installs on Google Play Store alone. TikTok has been witnessing a surge due to the lockdown, and its leading to major milestones for the app. Read full story here. Superheroes are real, this video shows their real identities. Watch If anyone tells you superheroes arent real, heres a video you can show them to prove they in fact are. The video shows the real identity of some superheroes and once you watch the video, you too will believe theyre walking among us. Read full story here. Watch: Uttarakhand cops unique punishment for foreigners violating lockdown 10 foreign nationals were found violating lockdown norms in Uttarakhands Rishikesh. Uttarakhand police adopted a unique method to punish the violators. Violators were asked to write an apology note repeatedly for 500 times. Police official said that the foreigners thought they were out in the open during the relaxation period. Watch video. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ilaria Allegrozzi, chercheuse a HRW capture d'ecran Human Rights Watch has urged Cameroonian authorities to allow aid access delivery of assistance vital in conflict areas in the Far North, North West and South West Regions amidst the Coronavirus pandemic. They call on government to ensure that its response to the COVID-19 pandemic respects rights and prioritizes support for those who need it most, including in violence-affected areas. Health officials have confirmed over 820 cases of COVID-19 and at least12 deaths as of April 10, 2020, the majority in the cities of Yaounde and Douala. The actual number of cases is most likely higher since testing is limited, HRW posits given that Cameroon has only four testing laboratories, three of them in Yaounde, the capital. The COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding at a time of crisis across Cameroon, particularly in the Anglophone regions and in the countrys Far North region, said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. More needs to be done to ensure that those at greatest risk and those who are fleeing fighting are protected from infection and able to get care if they become sick. In addition to crucial steps to prevent COVID-19, a broader humanitarian response is critical to saving lives in the Far North region, the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency, and in the two Anglophone regions, where armed separatist groups are fighting for independence. Ongoing attacks by Boko Haram and separatists and military operations in these areas have already severely restricted access for aid agencies and their capacity to assess needs and deliver assistance to the people most in need. On April 5, Boko Haram fighters stormed Amchide, Far North region. Three witnesses told Human Rights Watch that two teenage suicide bombers detonated their explosives in the centre of the town, killing six men on the spot and injuring 13 others, three of whom later died. Another man was shot in a confrontation between Boko Haram fighters and the military, a resident said. Since late 2013, the Boko Haram conflict in the Far North has caused about 300,000 people to flee their homes and has left 1.9 million in need of assistance. In the English-speaking regions, violence is also ongoing despite the call for a COVID-19 ceasefire by a separatist group, Southern Cameroons Defence Forces (SOCADEF), on March 26. The UN secretary-generals spokesperson welcomed the move, urging other groups to do the same thing. So far, the group, which operates in Fako and parts of the Lebialem divisions in the South-West region, is the only separatist group to have stopped fighting because of the pandemic. At least 15 separatist groups operate in the North West and South West regions. In areas of the South-West region and across the North-West region, violence is continuing and military operations are being carried out. On March 31, gendarmes killed four civilian men in the village of Okoyong, Manyu division, South West region. Four witnesses told Human Rights Watch that gendarmes shot them in front a shop. One witness said: The gendarmes were looking for Amba boys [armed separatists] but it has been over one year that Amba boys left our village [and] these men were construction workers. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the government has suspended flights by aid groups, jeopardizing their operations. The head of an international humanitarian organization based in Cameroon told Human Rights Watch: Since over three weeks, humanitarian flights have been grounded. UN agencies and non-governmental organizations continue to ask the government to resume them. These flights are key to reach the most vulnerable people living in remote areas. With the virus rapidly spreading, this is exactly the time when the Cameroons government needs to facilitate our work. In an April 8 news release, the United States Embassy said that Cameroons government should allow the UN Humanitarian Air Service to resume its flights and allow aid workers and medical supplies to assist people in need and fight COVID-19. In the North-West and South-West regions, health facilities have been badly affected by the violence, exacerbating a situation in which the hospitals, like many across the country, lack capacity and equipment. According to the UN childrens agency, UNICEF, only 34 percent of health facilities are functional in the Anglophone regions. Since late 2016, many health facilities have been shut down, attacked, or burned. Medical staff has been assaulted, threatened, or forced to flee, depriving people of access to medical care. The Cameroon government has taken steps to contain the spread of COVID-19, including shutting schools and universities, closing borders, banning mass gatherings, encouraging people to follow hygiene rules, and creating a help line. Medical staff, however, have told Human Rights Watch of their concerns that the pandemic is straining the resources of an already fragile health care system. A doctor working in Bamenda, North-West region, told Human Rights Watch: I worry the spread of the virus in the North-West region might have catastrophic consequences. Hospitals lack basic equipment. There are only three ventilators in the whole region and nearly no isolation-designated spaces in hospitals. Even in major urban centers like Yaounde and Douala, hospitals are ill-prepared to respond to the pandemic. A doctor in Douala told Human Rights Watch: There are less than 10 ventilators in the whole city. We are having challenges in treating patients with acute respiratory distress. Instead of improving its pandemic response, the government seems more concerned with silencing free speech, Human Rights Watch said. On April 3, an opposition party leader, Maurice Kamto, called on Cameroonians to work together in response to government inaction. The police stormed the premises of Equinoxe TV in Douala late that day, threatening to arrest journalists if they aired Kamtos declaration. Efforts should be focused on critical measures, such as health care and protecting health care workers, not threatening those who question the governments response, Human Rights Watch said. Cameroons government should accelerate its response to COVID-19, expand access to testing, and make sure those affected by violence, including the displaced, are protected and have access to care, Allegrozzi said. If the government doesnt take preventive steps, shortages of goods, including food and non-food items, water, shelter, and health care could have a devastating impact on people who are already vulnerable." It breaks all the records for oil deals. The agreement by the oil cartel Opec and Russia, sealed on Sunday night, to slash oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day means almost a tenth of global supply will be taken out of the market. Its twice the size of the cuts made by producers during the global financial crisis 12 years ago. Yet the response of the oil markets has been less than record-breaking. Despite an initial spike on Sunday night the price of a barrel of crude oil on Monday morning was no higher than it was 10 days ago at $31. At the end of February, before the row between Saudi Arabia and Russia, it was $53 a barrel. The markets muted reaction is explicable. Saudi Arabia, the worlds second largest producer after the US, is cutting 8.5 million barrels a day from its production. But after the breakdown in relations with Russia in early March, it jacked up production to 11 million barrels a day. So some of those headline cuts merely offset the supply glut from the recent price war. Theres a formidable amount of black stuff in storage in ships and containers around the planet to get through. And then theres the demand element of the equation to consider. The unprecedented lockdowns ordered by governments in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has seen global demand for energy plummet by around 30 per cent. Opec itself expected global oil demand to fall by 20 million barrels a day in April. That puts the 10 million barrels a day production cuts in the right context. As Bjornar Tonhaugen of Rystad Energy puts it, Opec has only come up with half of the ransom money. You cant buck the market, as someone once said. Energy analysts are also doubtful about whether the production cuts will actually be delivered. Opec is not the cohesive force that it once was. The cartel has suffered from indiscipline internally. Can countries such as Iraq and Nigeria be relied on not to break ranks as their exchequers come under massive pressure in the coming months? And Opec allies are not necessarily reliable either, as the fiasco with Russia clearly demonstrates. Trust, but verify was the cautious view of the US towards Soviet nuclear disarmament pledges during the Cold War. Markets seem to be taking a similar attitude to production cuts now. And yet its possible to see something new emerging from the chaos of this price war, in particular the pressure successfully applied by Donald Trump to his Saudi allies and also Vladimir Putins Russia. The endorsement of the planned Opec cuts by G20 energy ministers last week and also the International Energy Agency, which was founded by industrialised countries in the 1970s to protect their fuel supplies, could also be significant. The word is that large oil consumer nations including the US, India, China and Japan are preparing to boost their oil reserves in order to help support the global oil price and non-Opec western states Norway and Canada have signalled a willingness to cut their own oil production volumes. A further step in a global shift towards managed [energy] markets, is how one analyst describes puts it. Economists had expected the collapse in oil prices to exert deflationary pressure on the world economy. A deal to curb supply reduces some of that danger. These are early days, of course. But international coordination on oil production could be a significant legacy of this crisis. Its far too early to talk about global recovery when we are still on the terrifying downward slope, but more a more stable energy market could help underpin it when it eventually arrives. PR-Inside.com: 2020-04-13 15:00:35 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 968 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 Josh Rosenberg, a proven executive whose experience includes global distribution & executive leadershipVANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / Chemesis International Inc. (CSE:CSI) (OTCQB:CADMF) (FRA:CWAA) (the "Company" or "Chemesis") is pleased to announce the appointment of Josh Rosenberg as President. Josh has served on Chemesis' Board of Directors since September 2019 and has been instrumental in the restructuring and rebuilding of its operations.Mr. Rosenberg is a seasoned corporate executive with a proven track record in global foodservice and other product distribution as well as in executive leadership. Josh led the successful buyout of Accent Food Services ("Accent") and transitioned the enterprise to private equity ownership and management, ultimately spearheading a major strategic shift in customer strategy and company culture which resulted in Accent progressing from a single state operator to one of the largest multi-state operations in the Unattended Retail Industry. During Josh's six years at the helm, the company increased top line revenue more than six-fold, expanded operations to cover 11 U.S. states, and grew to encompass more than 600 associates, 14,000 customers, and to service more than 750,000 customers a day.Mr. Rosenberg was also an Executive in the Coca-Cola corporate organization (the "Coca-Cola System"), where he led a non-traditional route to market for the foodservice division of the Coca-Cola Company after heading their $700 million, multichannel business. Over a progressive 18-year career, Josh rose through the ranks of the Coca Cola System, starting as a merchandiser and holding roles in sales, operations, commercial strategy, and call center management.Josh holds a Marketing degree from Madison University, completed the KPMG QuantumShift Most Promising Top 40 Entrepreneurs Program', as well as the Power of Listening Leadership Program' at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and Cornell University. Josh's honors include being named the National Automatic Merchandising Associations' ("NAMA") 2016 Person of the Year' and Automatic Merchandisers' Magazine's 2015 Pro to Know'.Josh serves on several Boards of Directors, including United Strategies Group as Executive Director, and, previously, Accent Food Services as CEO/Chairman."I look forward to bringing my experience from the food services and mass distribution industry to provide strategic guidance to the team at Chemesis," said Josh Rosenberg. "As the Cannabis industry evolves in the United States and globally, distribution and penetration into micro-markets will be at the fore-front of accessing the consumer base. The Company has been able to assemble an incredible portfolio of assets and I look forward to adding a global strategy to the vision." "Mr. Rosenberg brings incredible skills, including distribution, business management, new market penetration, and product development knowledge and expertise," said CEO, Edgar Montero. "The remarkable experience he brings will continue to allow Chemesis to grow its business as a multi-state operator in the United States, gain distribution and penetration to markets which are currently untapped." Chemesis also announces the departure of Aman Parmar as President, and notes that he will remain as a Director and will also assume Chairmanship of its Board of Directors. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Parmar for his dedicated service as President.The Company would also like to announce that, pursuant to its Share-Based Compensation Plan, the Board has approved the issuance of 2,500,000 Restricted Share Rights ("RSRs") to certain directors, officers, contractors and employees of the Company. The RSRs were granted in recognition of the extraordinary efforts of the awardees on behalf of the Company, and as an inducement to retain such individuals.On Behalf of The Board of DirectorsEdgar MonteroCEO and DirectorAbout Chemesis International Inc.Chemesis International Inc. is a vertically integrated U.S. Multi-State operator with International operations in Puerto Rico and Colombia.The Company focuses on prudent capital allocation to ensure it maintains a first mover advantage as it enters new markets and is committed to differentiate itself by deploying resources in markets with major opportunities. The Company operates a portfolio of brands that cater to a wide community of cannabis consumers, with focus on quality and consistency.Chemesis has facilities in both Puerto Rico and California. The Company believes it is positioned to win additional licenses in highly competitive merit-based US states and plans to expand its footprint to ensure it maintains a first mover advantage.Investor Relations:ir@ chemesis.com 1 (604) 398-3378Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company's business, products and future of the Company's business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing, including with respect to the Company's expectations regarding its plans for expansion and growth, ability to realize benefits from its recent corporate appointments, ability to retain its key personnel, , its plans to continue to develop dispensaries in various jurisdictions, and its ability to obtain licenses in additional jurisdictions. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company's expansion and growth plans will not be realized as expected, or at all, that it will not be able to retain its key personnel, that its products and plans will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected, including, but not limited to, in relation to executing on and maintaining its expansion plans, and its ability to obtain licenses in additional jurisdictions. Except as required by law, the Company expressly d A care home has confirmed the deaths of 13 of its residents who all suffered coronavirus symptoms. Care UK said everyone at Stanley Park Care Home in Stanley, County Durham, was really saddened after the latest fatality on Monday morning. Karen Morrison, regional director of Care UK, reassured relatives of those in the home that staff are doing everything they can to keep residents safe. The home had its first case at the end of March, when a resident died in hospital. Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures 1 /81 Coronavirus hits the UK - In pictures A deserted Westminster Bridge PA A man wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past customers sat outside a restaurant AFP via Getty Images Boris Johnson addresses the nation on the Coronavirus lockdown Andrew Parsons Runners pass cardboard cutouts of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince William during the London Marathon in London AP An empty escalator at Charing Coss London Underground tube station Jeremy Selwyn Electronic bilboards displays a message warning people to stay home in Sheffield PA A sign is displayed in the window of a student accommodation building following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Mancheste Reuters People take part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions, in Londo AP People sing and dance in Leicester Square on the eve on the 10PM curfew Reuters Hearts painted by a team of artists from Upfest are seen in the grass at Queen Square, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Bristol Reuters Graffiti reads 'good luck and stay safe', as the number of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases grow around the world, under a bridge in London Reuters A sign is pictured in Soho, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London Reuters Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures, during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London AP A person runs past posters with a message of hope, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Manchester REUTERS Riot police face protesters who took part in a 'We Do Not Consent' rally at Trafalgar Square, organised by Stop New Normal, to protest against coronavirus restrictions in London AP An image of The Queen eith quotes from her broadcast to the UK and the Commonwealth in relation to the Coronavirus epidemic are displayed on lights in London's Piccadilly Circus PA Military vehicles cross Westminster Bridge after members of the 101 Logistic Brigade delivered a consignment of medical masks to St Thomas' hospital Getty Images Durdle Door in Dorset Reuters Captain Tom Moore via Reuters Mia, aged 8, and Jack, aged 5, take part in "PE with Joe" a daily live workout with Joe Wicks on Youtube to help kids stay fit who have to stay indoors due to the Coronavirus outbreak PA An NHS worker reacts at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital during the Clap for our Carers campaign in support of the NHS Reuters Goats which have taken over the deserted streets of Llandudno @AndrewStuart via PA Tobias Weller PA Novikov restaurant in London with its shutters pulled down while the restaurant is closed London Landscapes: Hyde Park and the Serpentine, central London. Matt Writtle A newspaper vendor in Manchester city centre giving away free toilet rolls with every paper bought as shops run low on supplies due to fears over the spread of the coronavirus PA Theo Clay looks out of his window next to his hand-drawn picture of a rainbow in Liverpool, as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continue Reuters A young man cuts another man's hair on top of a closed hairdresser in Oxford Reuters General view of the new NHS Nightingale Hospital, built to fight against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London via Reuters Jason Baird is seen dressed as Spiderman during his daily exercise to cheer up local children in Stockport, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues Reuters A woman wearing a face mask walks past Buckingham Palace Getty Images A man holds mobile phone displaying a text message alert sent by the government warning that new rules are in force across the UK and people must stay at home PA Medical staff on the Covid-19 ward at the Neath Port Talbot Hospital, in Wales, as the health services continue their response to the coronavirus outbreak. PA Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in a virtual Cabinet meeting with his top team of ministers PA A shopper walks past empty shelves in a Lidl store on in Wallington. After spates of "panic buying" cleared supermarket shelves of items like toilet paper and cleaning products, stores across the UK have introduced limits on purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have also created special time slots for the elderly and other shoppers vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Getty Images People on a busy tube train in London at rush hour PA Mia, aged 8 and her brother Jack, aged 5 from Essex, continue their school work at home, after being sent home due to the coronavirus PA Children are painting 'Chase the rainbows' artwork and springing up in windows across the country Reuters Social distancing in Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn A general view of a locked gate at Anfield, Liverpool as The Premier League has been suspended PA Homeless people in London AFP via Getty Images A piece of art by the artist, known as the Rebel Bear has appeared on a wall on Bank Street in Glasgow. The new addition to Glasgow's street art is capturing the global Coronavirus crisis. The piece features a woman and a man pulling back to give each other a kiss PA The Queen leaves Buckingham Palace, London, for Windsor Castle to socially distance herself amid the coronavirus pandemic PA A general view on Grey street, Newcastle as coronavirus cases grow around the world Reuters Matt Raw, a British national who returned from the coronavirus-hit city of Wuhan in China, leaves quaratine at Arrowe Park Hospital on Merseyside PA Britain's Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty (L) and Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance look on as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he speaks during a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) news conference inside 10 Downing Street Reuters The ticket-validation terminals at the tram stop on Edinburgh's Princes Street are cleaned following the coronavirus outbreak. PA Locked school gates at Rockcliffe First School in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear PA A sign at a Sainsbury's supermarket informs customers that limits have been set on a small number of products as the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases grow around the world Reuters Jawad Javed delivers coronavirus protection kits that he and his wife have put together to the vulnerable people of their community of Stenhousemuir, between Glasgow and Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images A sign advertising a book titled "How Will We Survive On Earth?" Getty Images A man who appears to be homeless sleeping wearing a mask today in Victoria Jeremy Selwyn A pedestrian walks past graffiti that reads "Diseases are in the City" in Edinburgh AFP via Getty Images Staff from The Lyric Theatre, London inform patrons, as it shuts its doors PA A quiet looking George IV Bridge in Edinburgh PA A quieter than usual British Museum Getty Images A racegoer attends Cheltenham in a fashionable face mask SplashNews.com A commuter wears a face mask at London Bridge Station Jeremy Selwyn A empty restaurant in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre Getty Images A deserted Trafalgar Square in London PA Passengers determined to avoid the coronavirus before leaving the UK arrive at Gatwick Airport Getty Images A Care UK spokeswoman said the latest resident, who died on Monday, had symptoms of Covid-19, though no test had been done. She said: It is with great regret that I have to let you know that we have lost another resident at Stanley Park Care Home late this morning, bringing the total to 13. Everyone in the home is really saddened by this news. NHS workers in PPE / Getty Images Ms Morrison said: My heart goes out to the families and friends of residents who have passed away over the past few days. We are all thinking of them at this difficult time and send our condolences and best wishes. The manager and her team at the home continue to be absolutely amazing and I cannot thank them enough. Despite all that has happened, they continue to deliver the very best care in a kind and professional way. Their determination and commitment to support every resident, and each other, through these very challenging times is incredible. Care home recreates giant game of Kerplunk to lift morale in isolation She added: Id like to reassure everyone, including relatives of those in the home, that we are doing everything in our power to keep people safe and comfortable. We have all the necessary PPE and we continue to use it meticulously, as we have since the first case was seen at the end of last month. The Department of Health has previously said it is "working around the clock to give the social care sector the support they need to tackle this outbreak", which includes providing PPE to more than 26,000 care home providers. It comes after fifteen residents died at a Luton care home after five tested positive for the coronavirus. The deaths at the 69-bed Castletroy Residential Home in Luton were described as heartbreaking by the leader of Luton Council. By Express News Service CHENNAI: It's official. The lockdown period in Tamil Nadu has been extended upto April 30. "The lockdown period has been extended following discussions during the video conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 10, advice of the World Health Organisation, recommendation of committees comprising health experts that relaxing the lockdown at this juncture may lead to an increase in infection and also based on the decision taken by the state Cabinet on April 11. Section 144 will continue to be in force till April 30. So, all restrictions now in force will continue for the rest of the lockdown period," the Chief Minister said in a statement here. CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES "The safety of every individual and family is of highest importance to the Tamil Nadu government. I appeal to the people of the state to maintain social distancing and extend full cooperation to the efforts of the government in preventing the spread of the coronavirus," the Chief Minister added. Palaniswami said since the lockdown has been extended, rice card holders would get essential commodities for the month of May free of cost through the ration shops - rice, one kg sugar, one kg toor dal and one kg edible oil. Besides, all unorganised sector workers including construction workers would be given Rs 1,000 per family. Migrant workers from other states would get 15 kg rice, one kg toor dal and one kg edible oil free of cost. The Chief Minister also said bakeries would be permitted to open between 6 am and 1 pm but only parcels would be allowed. People in the Chennai Corporation area could clarify their doubts about the coronavirus from doctors of the Telemedicine Society of India, he added. BRIDGEPORT A New Fairfield man is suing a police officer who, he claims, used excessive force following an argument over a parking spot. Paul Delgardo, 76, filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court against New Fairfield Police Officer David Koonitsky. This is an action for money damages to redress the deprivation by the defendant of rights secured to the plaintiff to be free from excessive force and the denial of substantive due process rights afforded by the constitution and laws of the United States and the State of Connecticut, the suit states. Delgardos lawyer, Robert Berke, of Bridgeport, declined comment on the lawsuit. Koonitsky, of Stratford, joined the New Fairfield Police Department in 2015 after 23 years as a state trooper. He was unavailable for comment. Town officials did not immediately return calls for comment on the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, on Dec. 2, 2019, Koonitsky and another officer were dispatched to Heron View Road, New Fairfield, for a disturbance. Delgardo and his neighbor were engaged in a verbal disagreement over a parking spot, the suit states. When the officers arrived, the neighbors wife was yelling, we will park where we want, the suit states. Delgardo was in the process of responding from his front porch when, the suit states, Koonitsky aggressively charged at Delgardo, jumped over the handrail of the porch, placed Delgardo in an arm bar and slammed him on the ground and into an evergreen bush. When Koonitsky was confronted by neighbors for being so rough with a senior citizen the suit states he responded, you never know what they would do next. The lawsuit continues that Delgardo was transported from the scene by ambulance after having suffered a seizure. Delgardo was charged by Koonitsky with second-degree threatening, second-degree breach of peace and interfering with an officer. Those charges are pending in Superior Court in Danbury. The suit states that Delgardo was not combative or aggressive and did not verbally or physically interfere or resist with the officers. It claims Delgardo suffered extensive bruising and severe pain and injury to his arm and shoulder which required surgery to repair torn ligaments and tendons. Chris Pratt had fun with his brother-in-law Patrick Schwarzenegger on Sunday. The Minnesota native, 40, who is married to Patrick's sister Katherine Schwarzenegger, 30, snapped a pleasant shot of Patrick, 26, posed with this longtime girlfriend, model Abby Champion, 23, but was snubbed when it came to getting a credit for his work. In the image, Patrick, the son of A-lister Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, posed with Champion in a kitchen alongside a bunny cake. The latest: Chris Pratt, 40, called out brother-in-law Patrick Schwarzenegger, 26, for not giving him a photo credit on an Easter image he posted to Instagram 'HAPPY EASTER!! THIS CAKE TOOK US 6 HOURS!!' he captioned the post. 'We burnt 1 cake, 1 was filled too high & dripped everywhere & destroyed the oven... We also got in 2 arguments during It!! And yeah.... Was SO FUN!' But absent from the post was any acknowledgement of the man behind the lens - who was quick to point that detail out in a response in the comment thread. 'That is an extraordinary picture,' the Guardians Of The Galaxy star said. 'Who was your photographer? Clearly somebody with an amazing eye. Remarkable composition.' The leading man, who plays Peter Quill/Star-Lord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spent the majority of the holiday with his wife at their Los Angeles home. On social media, he showed fans their holiday amid lockdown due to coronavirus: making a quiche, taking in a streaming service and hunting for eggs. Pretty picture: In the image, Patrick, the son of A-lister Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, posed with Champion in a kitchen alongside a bunny cake Hey there: Chris called out Patrick, who promptly credited him for his efforts The actor, who has a seven-year-old son named Jack from his past marriage to Anna Faris, is approaching his one-year wedding anniversary to Katherine, who recently released her book The Gift of Forgiveness: Inspiring Stories from Those Who Have Overcome the Unforgivable. Pratt opened up about his marriage in a recent appearance on In the Room on E!. Stunning: Champion wore a sweatshirt as the celeb couple worked on a cake Making the best of things: Chris and Katherine spent an activity-packed Easter Sunday at home amid the coronavirus pandemic 'She has changed my life for the better in so many ways,' Pratt said. 'My heart, my soul, my son I feel are all so safe with her. 'She's a great stepmom. She's, God willing, going to be a great mom one day. She's got great parents, great siblings, she fills in all my many deficits.' The actor said of their chemistry: 'My nickname on these press tours is Yard Sale because I'm such a scatterbrain. And she doesn't mind helping me with that stuff. It's a good match.' Srinagar, April 13 : A day after three persons, including a minor, were killed in the Kupwara sector in Pakistani shelling, villagers who live close to the Line of Control (LoC) appealed for calm on Monday. "He was my uncle. She was mother of four. We appeal the governments of both counties to stop shelling and not to force people to turn homeless," said a relative of the deceased. Heartbreaking images emerged from the area on Sunday, with a mother holding body of child in her lap, killed in Pakistani shelling. The army said in a statement, unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan in the Keran sector was targeting civilians. On Friday, five soldiers of special forces were killed in an encounter in the Keran sector, five infiltrators were also eliminated. But the LoC violation is not limited to Kupwara but has spread to other sectors, including Poonch. As people across the globe navigate these uncharted waters and adjust to the new normal, we here at Cook & James promise to continue to innovate and offer closing solutions like curbside closings that comply with the law but also stop the spread of the coronavirus to keep everyone safe. Cook & James, the Atlanta-based real estate law firm which pioneered at-home closings, has added curbside closings in response to the global coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) and associated social distancing mandates. Facilitating mobile closings since 2006, the firm is adept at creating convenience for all parties and making real time adjustments to complete closing transactions; curbside closings are the newest innovation from Cook & James. During a curbside closing, people drive to the Cook & James office in either Roswell or Woodstock but stay in their vehicle and sign the required paperwork inside, thus the real estate closing transaction is completed without leaving their own automobile. Cook & James personnel with protective gear (masks and gloves) stay the appropriate distance away and facilitate the transaction. An attorney completes the closing as required by state law. This pandemic has hurled everyone into an unprecedented, difficult time but since closings and legal services like ours have been deemed an essential service, we are committed to serving our clients, said Kara Cook, co-founding partner at Cook & James. We believe curbside closings can help everyone be safer and keep our country moving forward in a positive direction. In addition to curbside, the Cook & James team is agile enough to offer several other closing options for various situations including their signature at-home solution which really means mobile. Creative, mobile spots where Cook & James has recently closed include the front porch, the garage, the driveway and even the neighborhood pool amenity complex. It is less preferred to close in the office but when that is the chosen option, all parties are physically in separate, sanitized conference rooms with abundant disinfecting wipes, hand sanitizer, masks and gloves. Due to some guidance from the Georgia governor as well as the Georgia Supreme Court, another option during this state of emergency is the fully remote closing. In a remote closing all parties must have the ability to be seen and heard via zoom or some other video conferencing platform but it should be noted this option is limited by lender and underwriter guidelines, so it may not be available for every closing. As people across the globe navigate these uncharted waters and adjust to the new normal, we here at Cook & James promise to continue to innovate and offer closing solutions that comply with the law but also stop the spread of the coronavirus to keep everyone safe, said Heather James, co-founding partner at Cook & James. To contact Cook & James for a personalized closing action plan, call 404.704.0440 or email close@CookAndJames.com. About Cook & James Founded in 2006 to fill a void in real estate transaction services, the attorney team at Cook & James is a pioneer of at-home closings. Specializing in refinancing, purchases, corporate relocations and more, team members can be 100% mobile to offer buyers, sellers and real estate agent partners the flexibility of closing anywhere that is convenient, including at-home. Cook & James attorneys and paralegal professionals bring everything needed to the closing to facilitate a smooth experience. Using a proprietary at-home closing platform, the firms residential real estate legal solutions and expertise include purchases, mortgage refinances, title clearance, deed preparation, corporate relocation assistance and more. Kara Cook and Heather James are co-founding partners. The firm is based in the north Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta/Roswell, Ga., has a satellite office in Woodstock, Ga. Cook & James is also licensed to do business in Connecticut, New York and South Carolina. Learn more at http://www.CookAndJames.com. # # # You may be a first responder who deals with coronavirus patients but dont want to carry the virus back to your family. Or youre living in a homeless shelter and either you or another resident tested positive. Or you have COVID-19 and need to be isolated from your family but have nowhere else to live. New Jersey and its municipalities just got permission to house these people in hotels and motels at federal expense. The state became eligible to request Federal Emergency Management Agency funding after President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration March 26. The idea behind the program is to provide individual housing for first responders or people who otherwise would be living in group quarters, thus stopping the spread of the coronavirus in a state that has the second largest number of cases in the U.S., behind only New York. By using hotel rooms, the state can free up already-scarce hospital beds for more serious cases, and allow those exposed to the coronavirus to avoid infecting family members or others they live with. This increased access to housing for vulnerable populations, health care workers, and first responders will allow New Jerseyans to isolate themselves without fear of spreading COVID-19 to family members and their surrounding communities, said Gov. Phil Murphy, who sought federal approval for the housing arrangements. Murphy reported Sunday that 61,850 residents had the coronavirus, with 2,350 deaths. CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage Those eligible are first responders and health care workers exposed to the coronavirus, who need to be isolated from their families; homeless individuals who either tested positive for COVID-19 or live in shelters with a family member who did, children and adults in group homes who have tested positive, and patients with the coronavirus who do not need to be hospitalized but do need to be quarantined somewhere else. This approval will help alleviate the burden our hospitals are carrying at a critical moment, said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9th Dist., who joined U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., in leading a letter signed by the entire congressional delegation in support of Murphys request for funding. The emergency declaration also made New Jersey eligible for funding for expanded unemployment insurance, child care and supplemental nutrition and assistance programs, according to the delegation. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. As the world has shifted online, the reliability of websites, cloud applications, and cloud infrastructure has become a critical business imperativefor everything from e-commerce operations to global banks to search engines. The way we manage systems and their workloads has changed. Today, we seldom think in terms of precious, high-touch, high-performance servers, but instead rack upon rack of commodity servers pooled together through virtualization, with distributed software architecture preventing server outages from causing downtime. The focus has shifted from hardware to software-defined infrastructure and from inconsistent and error-prone manual processes to consistent, reliable, and repeatable automated tasks. Site reliability engineering is the practice of maintaining that programmable infrastructure and maximizing the availability of the workloads that run on it. The site reliability engineer (SRE) job title originated in the halls of Google, which, at the turn of the millennium, wanted to redefine the relationship between software developers and operations staff and help them work together to build sturdy, flexible systems, with constant improvement and automation as core principles. What is an SRE? At a base level, SREs bring software engineering principles to infrastructure and operations problems, with the north star goal of creating highly scalable and reliable systems. Fundamentally, its what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function, as Ben Treynor, VP of engineering at Google and the godfather of SRE, is oft-quoted as saying. Chief among SRE responsibilities is establishing service level thresholds, often manifested as service-level objectives (SLOs), which help inform whether or not a release gets greenlighted. The holy grail is always the hallowed five nines or 99.999% uptime. The better the uptime, the more rope developers get to launch cool new stuff and the more sleep SREs get, leading to a mutually beneficial relationship between the functions, a far cry from the old days of developer and operations antagonism. An SRE function will typically be measured on a set of key reliability metrics, namely: system performance, availability, latency, efficiency, monitoring, capacity planning and emergency response. Key job responsibilities of an SRE Any good SRE will be obsessed with one thing in particular: automation. As Jason Qualman, an SRE at monitoring software vendor New Relic, states in a blog post: A lot of this role is thinking about inefficient and time-consuming things people are doing and putting a stop to them as soon as possible. Instead of kicking a can down the road on manual work, youre saying, Im going to take the time to automate this right now and stop anyone else from having to do this painful thing. Another key element of the SRE role is something termed release engineering, which involves defining best practices to ensure software releases are consistent and repeatable. Release engineers have a solid (if not expert) understanding of source code management, compilers, build configuration languages, automated build tools, package managers, and installers. Their skill set includes deep knowledge of multiple domains: development, configuration management, test integration, system administration, and customer support, wrote Dinah McNutt, technical program manager at Google, for the seminal book Site Reliability Engineering (published by OReilly in 2016 and authored by Googlers Jennifer Petoff, Niall Richard Murphy, Chris Jones, and Betsy Beyer). Then theres the response part of the role, which involves alerting, being on-call, and troubleshooting, along with emergency and incident response and postmortems. Essentially, its important that SREs know how best to monitor systems and react when things go wrong, constantly writing and rewriting response playbooks to reduce the time to fix any breakdown which may occur. At Google, this involves documenting an incident, understanding all contributing root causes, and implementing future preventive actions. Writing a postmortem is not punishment it is a learning opportunity for the entire company, write Googlers John Lunney and Sue Lueder in a contributed chapter of the Site Reliability Engineering book. SREs vs. devops engineers I know what youre thinking. That all sounds a lot like devops, but when it comes to terminology, the SRE job title actually pre-dates devops engineer by about five years. Both are grounded in similar principles, but the difference is both subtle and important. Both ways of working involve breaking down the barriers between developers and operations staff, and both aim to increase the velocity of developer teams while maintaining core resiliency of those services. The key difference is that devops engineers tend to focus on supporting continuous delivery and developer velocity, whereas SREs take responsibility for reliability and automation throughout the software lifecycle, with an emphasis on successfully deploying and monitoring releases and keeping software-defined infrastructure humming. The SRE has an integral function within the wider engineering team: ensuring theres a specialists seat at the table focused on building stable systems. As Jayne Groll at The Devops Institute puts it: Devops focuses on engineering continuous delivery to the point of deployment; SRE focuses on engineering continuous operations at the point of customer consumption. The history of SRE at Google Tracing SRE principles back to their origins at Google in the early 2000s provides a pivotal object lesson in the discipline. When I came to Google, I was fortunate enough to be part of a team that was partially composed of folks who were software engineers, and who were inclined to use software as a way of solving problems that had historically been solved by hand. So when it was time to create a formal team to do this operational work, it was natural to take the everything can be treated as a software problem approach and run with it, Ben Treynor stated in an interview on Googles internal blog. So SRE is fundamentally doing work that has historically been done by an operations team, but using engineers with software expertise, and banking on the fact that these engineers are inherently both predisposed to, and have the ability to, substitute automation for human labor, adds Treynor. Google also thinks quite rigidly about how to put together an SRE team. All Google SREs must either be Google Software Engineers or candidates who are very close to Google Software Engineering qualifications. They must also have infrastructure management skills, most commonly Unix system internals and networking (Layer 1 to Layer 3) expertise. SRE qualifications still tend to vary from company to company, but as far as basic principles go, the Google approach is a solid starting point. The details will depend on the business needs, established processes, and tech stack already adopted by the organization. SRE job description and salary SREs typically spend about 50 percent of their time performing traditional operations functions, such as being on call and jumping in to resolve issues. The other 50 percent is focused on developing software to make underlying systems more resilient, automated, and self-healing over time. Thats why the role requires a solid mix of software engineering chops and operations skills. A good SRE will be organized, cool under pressure, and a problem solver. SRE managers are responsible for team performance, strategy, and optimization. But what about organizations where the SRE role doesnt exist? In the OReilly report What is SRE? Kurt Andersen from LinkedIn and Craig Sebenik from Split (a release management software vendor) recommend taking a grassroots approach. They recommend finding a development team that is motivated to change and implement a small SRE team (or individual) there. Over time, you can use that success as a positive example to other teams. The average annual salary for an SRE is roughly $130,000 in the U.S. and 76,000 in the U.K., according to job site Indeed. SRE resources Resources abound to build SRE skills, from certifications from the DevOps Institute to books and online resources from OReilly, Microsoft, and Google. The aforementioned 550-page behemoth Site Reliability Engineering by Jennifer Petoff, Niall Richard Murphy, Chris Jones, and Betsy Beyer is the go-to tome on the topic, published in 2016. The book is also available free online from Google. Other more recent books on the topic include Training Site Reliability Engineers by Jennifer Petoff, JC van Winkel, and Preston Yoshioka; What Is SRE? by Kurt Andersen and Craig Sebenik; Seeking SRE by David N. Blank-Edelman, and The Site Reliability Workbook by Betsy Beyer, Niall Richard Murphy, David K. Rensin, Kent Kawahara, and Stephen Thorne. OReilly also has a comprehensive library of online assets, videos, and ebooks on the topic, handily curated in this SRE Essentials playlist by former Google site reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones. Online learning juggernaut Coursera offers several courses, including the popular Site Reliability Engineering: Measuring and Managing Reliability from Google Cloud Training. This course is also available from Pluralsight, as is the beginner course Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): The Big Picture by Elton Stoneman. The Linux Foundation offers a self-guided course titled DevOps and SRE Fundamentals: Implementing Continuous Delivery. UK-based Jellyfish Training offers various two-day private training course options for SRE Foundation (SREF). Read more about devops Visually-impaired persons are facing difficulties in maintaining social distancing norms in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Students of a premier Kolkata school for visually- impaired persons, who are presently at home due to the lockdown, are worried over ways to maintain social distancing once the institute reopens in June. "A visually-impaired person often touches an object or holds the arm of a person to navigate his or her way. However, with social distancing norms in place, this has become a problem for them," a teacher of the Calcutta Blind School said. As the students are presently at home, they are somehow managing but when the lockdown is lifted, they may face difficulties in maintaining social distancing norms, which are expected to remain in force for some time, he said. Subir Das, a class 11 student of the institute said, "At home, I think it is still safe to navigate our way by touching doorknobs or switchboards. But, I have to learn to move around without touching anything once I go out after the lockdown is lifted." "I will go out either with my mother or sister after the lockdown is lifted. Maintaining social distancing during that time will be a challenge," he added. The suspension of classes has posed another problem for the students of the institute. Over 100 students of the school are not able to learn Mathematics as it is taught only through Braille books and under the supervision of a teacher, an educator of the institute said. Other subjects of Humanities and Science are taught through audio lectures, he said. "Their Braille Mathematics books have been kept in the classrooms," the teacher said. The institute has given mobile handsets to guardians of the students so that they can be in touch with the authorities for any need. The arrangement was made before the suspension of classes, he said. For many students, however, classroom learning cannot be equated with home studies by listening to lectures, the educator said. Exams for classes 11 and 12 were conducted before the nationwide lockdown was imposed, he said. However, one of the 22 boarders got stranded due to the lockdown and authorities of the institute dropped him home in Nabadwip in Nadia district, the teacher said. A total of 180 students of another school for the visually-impaired in Chaitanyapur in East Midnapore district are, however, presently lodged in the hostel, a spokesperson of the institute said. "They are devising ways to maintain social distancing. They are facing difficulties but are still coping with it," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) INSEE Extra Durable cement has been provided for homes in affected areas The leading cement group has gifted a total of VND2 billion ($87,000) to accompany people in the fight against salinity, drought, and COVID-19. While the entire country has been united in overcoming the coronavirus situation, the complicated developments of drought and salinity in Mekong Delta provinces continues to seriously affect production and peoples lives in general. As a long-term foreign investor in Vietnam, INSEE has put sustainable development at the top of its core values, leading all activities and responsibilities. In response to the call from the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Kien Giang, INSEE contributed together with the entire population of Vthe country, and Kien Giang in particular, to participate in the fight against COVID-19 as well as salinity and drought by donating to the value of VND500 million. INSEE has offered VND250 million ($10,870) to Kien Giang Relief Committee, as well as donated face masks and hand sanitisers to the value of VND150 million ($6,500). In addition, the group has provided 1,000 bags of INSEE Extra Durable cement to support anti-saline construction projects and houses in the province. Bruno Fux, Sustainable Development director of INSEE Ecocycle said, Not only healthcare workers but also government officers are working hard to control the situation. Therefore, INSEE is lending a helping hand to those who are on the frontlines. I am convinced that with the united effort of everyone and the determination of the government, together we will weather this storm. Previously, INSEE also made timely contributions to communities affected by drought and salinity by accompanying local authorities to implement a project bringing fresh water to the Mekong Delta with a total value of VND1.5 billion ($65,200). Around a third of that has gone towards buying water tanks to help provincial residents and building a pipeline to supply clean water to poor households in Kien Luong district. Furthermore, 500 tonnes of INSEE Extra Durable cement has gone to support the building of anti-saline intrusion constructions and homes in impacted areas. INSEE hopes that these efforts will contribute to supporting the population of Vietnam and the Mekong Delta in particular to fight against salinity, drought, and the coronavirus pandemic. INSEE Vietnam is a member of Siam City Cement Pcl., one of the market leaders in the construction materials industry in the region. The company has more than 1,000 employees working across five different cement production sites and headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City. Since 1994, INSEE Vietnam has been one of the leading cement and drymix producers, and waste management companies. The groups sustainable products have been used in iconic buildings and infrastructure projects, as well as countless housing and commercial developments across the south of the country. (Natural News) Economists from the Federal Reserve predict a wave in coronavirus-related bankruptcies in the next 12 months as the U.S. government continues to struggle with when to reopen the economy, and record numbers of people continue to file jobless claims. The claim was made by no less than three economists from The Fed Juan Sanchez in St. Louis along with Kartik Athreya in Richmond and Jose Mustre-del-Rio in Kansas City, saying that coronavirus-related bankruptcies could jump by 200,000 to reach 1 million, unless government stimulus programs stem the tide. The last time bankruptcies levels reached this high was back in 2010 near the end of the Great Recession, where personal bankruptcies reached 1.5 million. Figures lower than the Great Recession, but could still get worse According to the economists, bankruptcy filing due to the coronavirus will not reach the same levels as those seen during the 2007 financial crisis. However, Sanchez warns that it could still do so because the economy could deteriorate more than we assume. They also noted that their estimates do not take into account medical bills a big factor for some households during the current public health crisis depending on how government programs help. For Edward Altman, professor emeritus at the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, while the number of bankruptcies may not hit record levels the dollar amounts, or the bankruptcys worth in dollars, could do so because of the much larger amounts of debt people and corporations currently have. Whether its corporate bankruptcies or personal, this is unprecedented, stated Altman. We will break the record in dollar amounts because there are much greater amounts of debt outstanding now than in any prior downturn. According to the study, the surge in bankruptcy filings will hit some regions more than others. For some of these, filings were already rising before the outbreak. Farmers in Iowa were already hit hard by the U.S.-China trade war before the outbreak. So too were oil workers in Texas, where energy companies had to cut jobs due to diminished shale drilling as China weaned itself off U.S oil. Unemployment will continue to mount The increase in bankruptcy filings comes after consecutive weeks of record-breaking unemployment insurance claims. On Thursday, the Department of Labor announced that 6.6 million more jobless claims had been filed, equalling the numbers from the previous week. Despite how large the number of filings already is, many economists agree that the actual number of job losses is even larger and that they will continue to mount. Unemployment offices in many states have been overwhelmed by demand, despite efforts to expand their staffing and upgrade their technological capacity. In some of the hardest-hit places, applicants have been unable to get through to file their jobless claims online or even by telephone Several economists are expecting that, by the end of the month, more than 20 million people will have been thrown out of work. This would push the unemployment rate towards 15 percent. On Thursday, the Fed redoubled its efforts to break the fall with an ambitious plan to help companies and state and local governments gain access to funding. It stated that $2.3 trillion could be pumped into the economy with its new and expanded programs. However, additional relief from Washington hit a Senate roadblock as both parties fought over what to include. Republicans are lobbying to earmark $250 billion to replenish a loan program for small businesses. Democrats, on the other hand, want $250 billion more to help hospitals and state and local governments deal with coronavirus-related expenses. What exactly is needed to stabilize the economy is no more than guesswork according to some analysts. The sudden, purposeful halt to economic activity has no precedent, as such no one knows when the restrictions on movement and commerce meant to slow the outbreak will be lifted. Whats becoming more clear, however, is that it most likely wont be soon. Lifting restrictions too soon could cause a deadly resurgence As economists and politicians weigh the cost of the restrictions, healthcare officials are warning against ending them early. In a recent press conference, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), stated that lifting them too early could spark a deadly resurgence of the outbreak. I know that some countries are already planning the transition out of stay-at-home restrictions. WHO wants to see restrictions lifted as much as anyone, explained Dr. Tedros. At the same time, lifting restrictions too quickly could lead to a deadly resurgence. The way down can be as dangerous as the way up if not managed properly. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert and who is also a part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, also cautioned against moves to relax restrictions. Now is not the time to back off, stated Fauci on the restrictions. We would want to see a clear indication that you were very, very clearly and strongly going in the right direction, said Fauci. Because the one thing you dont want to do is you dont want to get out there prematurely and then wind up back in the same situation. While lifting the restrictions and letting businesses reopen will allow people to get back to work, it also risks exposing them to the virus if done before the outbreak has been properly contained. The gravity of having to weigh whether to risk a possible resurgence or face increased levels of unemployment and bankruptcy is one government leaders arent taking lightly. On Friday, President Donald Trump stated that next week, he would announce a council of business and medical leaders to help him make what he called the biggest decision Ive ever had to make on when to reopen the American economy. The facts are going to determine what I do, stated President Trump. Sources include: BloombergQuint.com NYTimes.com TheGuardian.com When Dharamnath Singh and nine of his family members tested positive for the coronavirus disease, his world came crashing down. The 59-year-old had already lost his sister-in-law, the first victim in north Bengal, to the respiratory illness that makes people like him more susceptible. Ten members of the family tested positive soon after Singhs 44-year-old sister-in-law died on March 30, a day after testing positive for Covid-19. She had gone to Chennai alone on March 7 and returned with her daughter on March 19 in a Chennai-Bagdogra flight. On March 20, she visited a local doctor with a cough and high fever before being admitted in the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH) where she died. Also read: Masks made mandatory at all public places in Bengal The head of a business family in Kalimpong town and nine others were brought to Siliguri and admitted to NBMCH and later shifted to a private nursing home that the government has taken over for treatment of Covid-19 patients. When I and other members of the family tested positive, I initially thought the world had come to an end. I soon realised that the virus has to be defeated and for that we need determination. I am home now and free again, Singh said while speaking to HT. Instead of being afraid of the virus people should stick to discipline and social distancing. The virus can be defeated with sheer determination and will power, he said. However, the head of a business family in Kalimpong town fought the deadly virus alongside Kavya, his three-year-old granddaughter, and walked out the nursing home with the child on Saturday afternoon. Diabetes, kidney transplant After spending 12 days at NBMCH and later at the nursing home, Singh and his granddaughter tested negative to Covid-19 in three back-to-back tests. Positive thinking, determination, will power, discipline and social distancing are the mantras in the war against the coronavirus, Singh said. He had undergone a kidney transplant in 2006 and suffers from high blood sugar, a condition that makes many people, especially senior citizens, succumb to co-morbidity. In fact, the West Bengal government is reluctant to attribute these deaths to Covid-19 alone. Be positive Julie, Kavyas mother and Singhs older daughter-in-law, also returned home on Saturday. She was not infected but had to stay with the child. Initially we were scared. Had we remained scared and did nothing to bring out the positive energy from within we would not have come out of the nursing home so soon, Julie said. One should not be afraid. If you are afraid it becomes difficult to fight a crisis. There are doctors, and even common people, to help you, she said. Kavya was always in a playful mood during the treatment, she added. Also read: What you need to know today Singh has the same attitude and some advice. One must be firm, keep social distance and have lukewarm water regularly to defeat the virus. If you have the symptoms, please dont hide it. Tell others and go for treatment. There are people to help you. One can recover in 15 to 20 days, he said. Though they tested positive, members of my family did not have the typical symptoms, said Singh. We are extremely happy that the eldest amongst us and who underwent kidney transplant has been released. This sends out a positive message when people are looking at coronavirus as a killer, said Bijay, Singhs younger son who also underwent treatment at the nursing home. On Saturday, the entire team of doctors and nurses who attended to the family, was present when Singh and Kavya left for their home in Kalimpong. This was the first time that patients were released in north Bengal after treatment. Bijay, his mother, uncle and the familys maid were discharged Sunday evening after their subsequent tests came negative. In Kalimpong, 46 people, including another member of the family, are in still quarantine. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Soon after the announcement of Prime Minister Narendra Modis address to the nation for Tuesday 10am, former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah seemed to be wondering what the PM would be saying in his speech. With light and sound emoticons in the tweet, Omar wondered what the PM would say on April 14. "14 April??," he wrote in tweet. 14th April Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) April 13, 2020 Modi is likely to announce the extension of the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus. The 21-day lockdown imposed on March 24 ends on Tuesday. "Prime Minister @narendramodi will address the nation at 10 AM on 14th April 2020," the PMO tweeted. Omar's reference in the tweet was towards PM's appeal to the people that he had made in his last two addresses. On March 19, Modi had asked people to applaud for the doctors and health workers at the forefront of battle against coronavirus from their balconies. Later, on April 5, people switched off lights for nine minutes and lit candles and diyas as a mark of respect and solidarity with the health workers. JOHNSTON, Iowa -- The rate of novel coronavirus-related hospitalizations in southeast Iowa, the part of the state so far hit hardest, fell recently, impacting the data the state uses to inform its response to the global pandemic, a state public health official said Monday. And Gov. Kim Reynolds said the number of Iowans recovering from the coronavirus continues to increase daily. But Reynolds also cautioned Iowa is not clear of the viruss impact, and that infections and deaths here will continue to rise in the coming days and weeks. With state data showing the rate of virus-related hospitalizations falling in southeast Iowa, the formula designed by state public health officials to guide their response to the virus produced a lower number, meaning the region is now further from needing a shelter-in-place order. In the states 10-point formula for virus response efforts, the region changed from being rated a 9 to an 8, state public health department deputy director Sarah Reisetter said Monday during the governors daily briefing on the states pandemic response. But, Reynolds said, that does not mean she is at this point ready to recommend relaxing the many business and school closures and social distancing recommendations issued by her office. These signs are encouraging, but they are not reason enough for us to let up on our mitigation efforts at this time, Reynolds said during the briefing from the State Emergency Operations Center at Camp Dodge in Johnston. As weve been saying, we project that Iowas peak will occur later this month, and until then we anticipate our number of positive cases and unfortunately our deaths will continue to rise as well. Two additional coronavirus-related deaths were confirmed Monday by the state, bringing the total number of Iowa deaths to 43 since the virus first appeared here in early March. The state also confirmed 123 new positive cases, bringing that total to 1,710. The new deaths were an elderly adult (81 years or older) from Linn County and an older adult (61 to 80 years old) from Muscatine County, according to the state public health department. State officials said 142 individuals remained hospitalized, and 741 had recovered from the virus. Reynolds has established a state task force that will discuss how to reopen Iowa businesses when her administration deems that is appropriate. The task force will begin meeting this week, Reynolds said, and will initially be composed of state department heads. Private-sector leaders will be added later, the governor said. But Reynolds said its too early to predict when her administration will deem the state ready for reopened schools and businesses. Its too early right now. ... Were still not at the peak, and thats not anticipated until the end of the month, Reynolds said. We will get through this. We will recover. I want to open up this state as soon as we can, but I want to do it in a responsible manner. We dont want to open it up just to have to shut things back down again. So we have to be very consistent, and again be relying on some data before were able to do that. Reynolds reiterated that she plans to decide by the end of the week whether to recommend Iowas schools remain closed beyond April 30. The claim: Regarding the national shortage of coronavirus tests, Its not Obamas fault and its not Trumps fault. We have stringent FDA regulations, long in place, that created barriers to the private industry creating a test quickly." U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston. Crenshaw made the claim on Twitter, in a response to a tweet from Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. PolitiFact ruling: True. Crenshaws statement is accurate. FDA procedures adopted in 2004 meant laboratories had to seek the agencys approval before developing and using tests in communities, a policy many health care officials have said prevented the country from taking early action in response to the novel coronavirus. Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Other factors, however, have contributed to the low levels of testing for the virus. Discussion: Accusations about the responsible party behind the United States struggle to accelerate coronavirus testing have come from every which way and the blame has fallen, often inaccurately, on the shoulders of different public officials. About PolitiFact PolitiFact is a fact-checking project to help you sort out fact from fiction in politics. Truth-O-Meter ratings are determined by a panel of three editors. The burden of proof is on the speaker, and PolitiFact rates statements based on the information known at the time the statement is made. See More Collapse In a March 13 tweet, President Donald Trump said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied its testing system for decades but wasnt prepared for a large scale pandemic, an issue that was complicated by policy changes made by former President Barack Obama. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., retweeted Trumps remark and added his own comment: "Trump is once again trying to blame the previous administration for the number of tests available. This is his #DailyLie." FOR THE LATEST: Interactive maps, charts show spread of coronavirus in Texas PolitiFact looked at a different Trump claim blaming Obama for a lack of testing and rated it False. The fact-checking group also looked at a Mostly False claim from Democrat Joe Biden about the Trump administration rejecting tests from the World Health Organization (they were never offered). Trump also inaccurately stated that any individual who wants to be tested for the coronavirus can get a test PolitiFact rated that statement Pants on Fire. To support Crenshaws claim, his spokesman Justin Discigil, pointed to articles from ProPublica, the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the Washington Post, all of which highlighted the role FDA regulations played here. He added: "Just to be clear - nowhere did we say that these regulations were the sole/only reason for the testing issue, we said that they created barriers." The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States came at the end of January, when a man in Washington state developed symptoms after returning from a trip to Wuhan. In the early days of the virus, tests were not widely distributed to local and state laboratories. Instead, testing for the new coronavirus was conducted almost entirely by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Initial test kits developed by the CDC for use in local and state labs were flawed and produced inaccurate results in some labs, meaning they couldnt be distributed. As the agency worked to correct the tests, health officials turned to the FDA. The U.S. Association of Public Health Laboratories submitted a letter asking the agency to use "enforcement discretion" and authorize local and state labs to develop and use their own tests. Health officials have said the FDA regulations prevented them from moving quickly. On Feb. 29, the FDA announced a change in its process: Labs would still need to seek the agencys approval for their tests, but the labs could begin testing while waiting for the official green light. On March 16, (three days after Crenshaw made his claim) the FDA announced another change to its policies and put state officials in charge of coronavirus tests developed by laboratories in their states, meaning labs would engage with state officials and not the FDA. The changes also expand which labs and manufacturers are included in FDA guidelines and which kinds of tests can be developed. After the FDA announced changes to its policies, Labcorps and Quest Diagnostics both announced plans to start testing for the new coronavirus, crediting changes in federal policy with their ability to do so. But even as state and local authorities moved to ramp up testing, the number of available tests is still lacking. Michael Gove's daughter was tested for coronavirus so that he could 'get back to work' in his 'central role' in the battle against the pandemic, Downing Street said today. The Cabinet Office Minister was due to spend 14 days in self-isolation at home after she displayed symptoms, as per Government regulations. But because of her negative test he is due to leave isolation tomorrow and return to work in Westminster. This afternoon the Prime Minister's official spokesman said that the test has been carried out on the advice of Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty 'in line with medical guidance'. He added: 'The minister in charge of the Cabinet Office is a central role in the coronavirus response. 'Testing a member of the household ensured that Michael Gove could get back to work to drive forward the government's response at a critical time.' Mr Gove claimed he was not flouting lockdown rules, saying that he received permission from Chris Whitty to have his daughter tested. She did not contract the virus Michael Gove (pictured) is to come out of isolation tomorrow - nearly a week early. It came as the minister was seen jogging in a park near his London home Mr Gove was seen jogging in a park near his London home at the weekend, sparking fears he was breaking lockdown rules. What are the lockdown rules? There are four key circumstances in which people can leave the home: 1) Shopping for basic essentials, which should be done as infrequently as possible. 2) To exercise, no more than once a day. 3) Any medical reason, such as attending a hospital appointment or to provide care for a vulnerable person. 4) To travel to and from work, but only if you cannot work from home. The above rules apply unless you live with someone who has displayed Covid-19 symptoms, in which case you cannot leave the house at all for 14 days. And if you display symptoms, you must also self-isolate, not leaving the home for seven days. If at the end of the week you still have a high temperature, continue to self-isolate until it passes. Advertisement Anyone who lives with someone who shows signs of the virus is banned from going out for any reason for 14 days. When it was pointed out that the ban included leaving home for exercise, Mr Gove revealed his daughter had been tested and did not have the virus. He said he received special permission from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty for his daughter to be tested so he could return quickly to full Government duties. Mr Gove revealed last Tuesday he had gone into isolation for a fortnight. His daughter first had symptoms on April 5. It now transpires that within 24 hours Mr Whitty had approved a request by Mr Gove for his daughter to be tested. By Wednesday the NHS test came back negative. A source close to Mr Gove said: 'He sought the CMO's advice about what he should do at the suggestion of officials given he's one of the Cabinet ministers leading the Covid-19 response. On Monday, the CMO advised that Michael's daughter should be tested after displaying mild symptoms. 'She was tested on Tuesday and the result came back negative on Wednesday afternoon, at which point the household isolation rules no longer applied to the family.' By Philippe Legrain After the strikes, which militia leaders said killed at least 25 of their men, militia members tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Several days later, a U.S. drone struck a car in Baghdad carrying Soleimani, who as head of Irans Quds Force oversaw support for militia groups across the region. Iran responded to the generals death by firing missiles at U.S. facilities in Iraq, wounding more than 100 troops in the first ballistic missile attack on American forces since the 1990s. There they located three men and, upon further investigation, found a 16-year-old girl hidden in a closet at the vacant home. Authorities said their investigation found she was walking in Sauk Village when she was taken by three men earlier in the afternoon, according to the statement. Masks donated to sister city Rotterdam By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-04-11 15:01 Shanghai has donated 3,000 N95 masks and 18,000 KN95 masks to her sister city Rotterdam. A brief handover ceremony was held on April 8, and attended by Ms. Onny Jalink, deputy consul general of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Shanghai and Liu Guangyong, deputy director-general of the Shanghai Municipal Foreign Affairs Office. The masks will be transported by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to the Netherlands. Both port cities, Shanghai and Rotterdam have remained a close sistership since 41 years ago. The cooperation and exchanges between the two cities in areas of economy, port affairs and old city transformation have become epitomes of the relations between China and the Netherlands. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 15:03:49|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Chinese medical and technical experts share their experience with their Venezuelan counterparts in Caracas, Venezuela, April 1, 2020. (Miraflores/Handout via Xinhua) During their stay, the team of eight experts of different fields of medical expertise provided training and shared experience on prevention and control with Venezuelan medics and officials. NANJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- A medical team of eight experts who aided Venezuela's fight against COVID-19 returned to eastern China's Jiangsu Province Monday. The medical team, organized by the National Health Commission, came from hospitals and the provincial disease control and prevention center in Jiangsu, covering fields of respiratory and critical care, infectious disease control, laboratory testing, nursing and traditional Chinese medicine. They departed from the city of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, on March 29. The experts shared experience with Venezuelan governmental departments and the Chinese Embassy in Venezuela on epidemic prevention and control, the management of isolated groups, treatment and nursing of critically ill patients. They also visited local medical institutions, hospitals and communities, and provided training for local medical staff. Retail giant Woolworths is tripling home deliveries from April 20 to hundreds of residents stuck inside their homes on two of Moreton Bay's southern islands. Last month, Brisbane Times highlighted problems for older residents of Karragarra, Lamb, Macleay and Russell islands as the threats from the coronavirus and associated restrictions intensified. Moreton Bay island residents return from shopping trips to the mainland. Credit:Tony Moore Some of the residents from the smaller islands travel by ferry to Russell Island to get their groceries from the local IGA store and others make the trip to the mainland. But many hundreds who depend on groceries being delivered by Woolworths from the mainland said there were not enough delivery spots for island residents. Bob Antonicello met Viola Richardson in 2006 when he was executive director for the New Jersey Redevelopment Agency. He said meeting her was an eye opener, and she was the one who kept him on his game. Friday evening, Richardson, a former Jersey City councilwoman and police officer, died from COVID-19 complications, Mayor Steve Fulop said on Twitter. Community members told The Jersey Journal Sunday that the news left them shocked, numb and heartbroken. That one really brought the virus home, Antonicello said. Viola was a vibrant person and had a lot of life in front of her. To see her go that way was really heart-wrenching. Richardson, 74, served as a representative for Ward F and at-large from 2001 to 2013. She led the effort to create Berry Lane Park, the Lafayette Pool and Aquatic Center and advocated for the Glenn D. Cunningham Public Library on Martin Luther King Drive. She began her service to the community when she joined the police department in 1979. Antonicello and Richardson used to walk around Ward F, discussing future projects for redevelopment in the area, and he was astounded with how many issues and concerns Richardsons ward faced. But, still, she remained tough, Antonicello said. I think she realized if she wasnt tough, the issues would be ignored, he added. Former Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy said he felt terrible about the death the former councilwoman, who sat on the city council throughout his two-plus terms. Healy said Richardson was always firm in her beliefs. They didnt always agree, he admitted, but he admired her fighting spirit. I dont think she was really playing politics too much. She was willing to fight for her beliefs, Healy said. I always respected her for that. Ward A Councilwoman Denise Ridley spent time with Richardson at the citys annual anti-violence rallies. Participants marched down Martin Luther King Drive to Audubon Park in efforts bring more awareness to violence in that area of the city. Ridley said a part of Jersey City is now gone. Viola was someone who served Jersey City fiercely and proudly, she said. She was very instrumental in the city. ... This virus seems to be hitting home now for a lot of people. Council President Joyce Watterman reminisced on how Richardson would go out of her way for her community. She also described Richardson as a force to be reckoned with because of how she fought for peoples voices to be heard. Those who are less fortunate, shes also been like a roaring lion for them, Watterman added. Other current elected officials had their own memories of the late councilwoman as many took a moment to express their grief. I served on the City Council with Viola for eight years and she was the true definition of a fighter and public servant as an elected official, Fulop said in a newsletter to residents Saturday. She was a champion for Ward F and a champion for all of Jersey City. Gov. Phil Murphy said a few words about Richardson during his daily coronavrus afternoon Saturday briefing. "Tough and outspoken, a fighter for her community and her city," Murphy said. "Her life defined the meaning of the words, 'public service.'" U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez also extended his condolences to the Jersey City community. She was an impassioned and principled fighter for what she believed in, Menendez said in a statement Saturday. I will always appreciate her long service and vigorous advocacy for the African American community. She will be deeply missed. Aside from Richardsons public service, Antonicello and Healy remember her most for her love of music, travelling and visiting her family in South Carolina. The virus is such a cruel thing. She didnt deserve to go this way no one does, he said. If I could have wished for her it wouldve been for her spend the rest of days travelling on a cruise somewhere or going to visit her family and just really enjoying the hard work that she put into her life. CASEVILLE The Caseville Community Food Pantry is teaming up with the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan to host a pop-up food pantry on Tuesday, April 14. The food distribution will take place at the Caseville Public School parking lot, 6609 Vine St., starting at 11 a.m. The food is available to all Huron County residents. Homebound residents can request deliveries by calling (989) 670-8031. Those picking up food are asked to remain in their vehicles with windows closed as volunteers load the boxes of food. Amy Redwantz of the Caseville Community Food Pantry said the organization received a call from the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan earlier this week asking if Caseville could host a pop-up pantry. The food bank is using grants from the federal government and other agencies to fund the food distributions. Families, who may be suffering from financial hardship due to job loss, are having to provide meals to kids that had been served by their schools. Some people are calling it COVID relief, she said. Everybody is in kind of a spot right now, with unemployment and the schools closed. Its caught a lot of families off guard. Organizers said families have the option of picking up food for more than one household, which will allow more people to observe Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order and promote social distancing practices. We hope to see multiple families utilize this option, Redwantz said. She said the pantry is working with Caseville police and city officials to arrange for traffic control and urges families to arrive at least an hour before the distribution begins. She also emphasized those who are homebound should call to request a delivery. She said the food pantry is committed to meeting their needs for food in these difficult times. Having this has sort of been a windfall, and were looking forward to serving a lot of people, she said. For a calendar of food pantries around the Thumb, go to www.fbem.org. The calendar is updated daily and covers 22 counties. As online classes in colleges across the Delhi University (DU) begin amid the lockdown, many teachers have complained that some mischievous elements, who are not on the rolls, were misusing the medium and harassing teachers with obscene messages and posts. Several teachers in DU colleges said they were abused and harassed by some attendees. The teachers said they have informed the university administration about the misbehaviour. An assistant professor at a South Campus college, requesting anonymity, said he was taking an online class on Zoom last week when a person logged in and started writing obscene messages on the chat. It took us a few minutes to realise what was happening. It was embarrassing for us all. We had to abruptly suspend the class. We later went through the recorded video of the lecture to identify the person and found that there is no student by that name in our class, he said. Another faculty member, who teachers at an all-women college in west Delhi, also reported similar misbehaviour. Some outsiders are logging in to our classes using the links we send to our students on college WhatsApp groups. We are trying to find a way to address this issue, the teacher said. DU executive council (EC) member Rajesh Jha said, Several women teachers have informed us that they were abused and harassed during these live classes. The teachers send the invites for live sessions on Zoom or Google Meet to their students every day. The students can log in simply by entering their names and email IDs. These incidents clearly indicate that students are sharing these invites with outsiders. Many countries are facing similar issues in conducting online classes. As per foreign media reports, Singapore banned some video conferencing applications used for teaching after hackers posted obscene images during classes. DU Teacher Association secretary Rajinder Singh said they have also received complaints from teachers. Teachers have started removing the person who writes or shares any unnecessary messages from the class, he said. A senior university official said they are looking into the matter. We are aware of these incidents and are trying to fix it. We may file a police complaint, a DU official said. Experts said institutions need to wisely choose the software tools they use for online classes. Apar Gupta, executive director at Internet Freedom Foundation, said, There is always a chance of cybercrime while using software tools for any purpose. Educational institutions can minimise that risk by choosing software tools that are more personal rather than using the popular ones. Also, there is a need to train teachers on how to handle such situations during a sessions. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Twenty-five districts across 15 states which had detected COVID-19 infections earlier have contained the spread and reported no new cases in 14 days, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday. The ministry asserted that the government has enough stocks to conduct tests for up to six weeks and over two lakh samples have been tested so far. Addressing a press briefing here, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said 796 new COVID-19 cases and 35 deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 9,152 and deaths 308. "Twenty-five districts across 15 states which had reported cases earlier have contained the virus and have not detected new ones in 14 days. This is a positive development," he said. The districts are Gondia (Maharashtra), Raj Nand Gaon (Chhattisgarh), Davangiri (Karnataka), South Goa, Wayanad and Kottayam (Kerala), West Imphal (Manipur), Rajouri (J&K), Aizwal West (Mizoram), Mahe in Puducherry, SBS Nagar in Punjab, Patna, Nalanda and Munger in Bihar, Pratapgarh in Rajasthan, Panipat, Rohtak and Sirsa in Haryana, Pauri Garhwal in Uttrakhand and Bhadradari Kothagudem in Telangana. Agarwal also said that the Core Strategy Group on COVID-19 was working on rapid and economical diagnostics as well as new drugs. "The group has been formed, based on a detailed review of COVID-19 research, undertaken by Union Health Minister Harshvardhan along with CSIR and its 38 labs. The group is working on digital and molecular surveillance, rapid and economical diagnostics, new drugs, repurposing of drugs and associated production processes," he said. According to ICMR officials, 2,06,212 tests for COVID-19 have been conducted so far. "Of these 14,855 tests took place at 156 government labs and 1,913 tests happened at 69 private labs on Sunday. There is no need to worry. We have enough stocks to conduct tests for six weeks," an ICMR official said at the briefing. The Union Health Ministry informed that 78,000 self-help group members of 27 states have produced 1.96 crore masks under the State Rural Livelihood Missions. "Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna package, over 30,000 poor people have been provided financial support of Rs 28,256 crore during the lockdown up to April 10. This includes support of Rs 19.86 crore to Jan Dhan Yojna women account holders who were transferred Rs 9,930 crores. "Under the PM Kisan Yojna, 6.93 crore farmers have been provided support of Rs 13,855 crore. Under social assistance programmes 2.82 crore widows, senior citizens and disabled have been provided support of Rs 1,405 crore," Agarwal said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:28:53|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HANGZHOU, April 13 (Xinhua) -- A fishing boat with 16 crew members aboard has gone missing off the coast of east China's Zhejiang Province, local authorities said Monday. The boat, Zhepuyu 68628, lost contact in the sea waters about 70 nautical miles east of the Dongfushan Island while returning to port on Sunday, the Zhoushan municipal ocean and fisheries bureau said. Eight rescue ships and more than 10 fishing boats in nearby sea waters have joined in the rescue and search operation that is aided by helicopter. Two crew members have been found dead by Monday noon, it said. The boat, 42.2 meters long and eight meters wide, has a tonnage of 248 tonnes. A doctor who warned Boris Johnson that frontline staff urgently needed more Personal Protective Equipment has died after being diagnosed with coronavirus. Dr Abdul Mabud Chowdhury has sadly died after spending 15 days in hospital. The 53-year-old was a locum urologist who worked at Homerton Hospital in East London and died on Wednesday at Queens Hospital in Romford after testing positive for coronavirus. He is survived by his wife and two children. On March 18, Dr Chowdhury wrote an urgent message to Boris Johnson appealed for PPE for each and every NHS worker in the UK. Taking to Facebook last month, Dr Chowdhury wrote: Dear and Respectable Prime Minister Boris Johnson,. Please ensure urgently Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] for each and every NHS health worker in the UK. Remember we may be doctor/nurse/HCA/allied health workers who are in direct contact with patients but we are also human beings trying to live in this world disease free with our family and friends. People appreciate us and salute us for our rewarding jobs which is very inspirational, but I would like to say we have to protect ourselves and our families in this global disaster. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates Arctic Trucks became a famous name when its customized truck was featured on Top Gear. Jeremy Clarkson and James May took a Toyota Hilux to the shows North Pole expedition. Arctic has worked on quite a few trucks to date, but this time, it has laid its hands on Americas best-seller the Ford F-150 . The polar-build specialist aftermarket company has fitted the truck with huge 44-inch tires to tackle the snow. There isnt much known about this truck yet, but we hope to hear from the company soon. The Truck Rides On 44-Inch Tires! Arctic Trucks has based the AT44 on the 2020 Ford F-150 Lariat. The trucks biggest highlight is the set of 44-inch Nokian snow tires that make everything else on the truck look puny. To accommodate these huge tires, the company has also installed wide fender flares. The bumpers receive LED lighting as well. The underbody protection, too, is enhanced. Arctic trucks hasnt said anything about the suspension, but it must have been heavily re-worked upon to match the rest of the trucks demeanor. The truck also features company branding across the body and some graphics with interesting catchphrases, and the signature mud flaps that the company equips on its products. There Are No Changes Made To The Stock Powertrain Autoblog also reports that Arctic Trucks CEO Emil Grimsson spent two weeks in Marc testing the truck around Icelands back 40. He said that the truck is powered by the 3.5-liter V-6 EcoBoost mill, although there was no mention of any tuning or extra boost given to the truck. In the standard form, this mill churns out 375 horses and 470 pound-feet of torque. Power is sent to all the wheels via a 10-speed automatic transmission. Ford F-150 Arctic Trucks specifications Configuration Twin-turbocharged and intercooled V6, overhead cams Block/Head material Aluminum block, aluminum heads Displacement 3.5 liters (213 cubic inches) Bore x stroke 3.64 inches x 3.41 inches Compression ratio 10.5:1 Horsepower 375 hp @5,000 rpm Torque 470 lb.-ft. @3,500 rpm Grimsson is happy with the trucks development, even though he had apprehensions if the truck would give enough flotation on soft snow using 44-inch tires. "Some river banks needed special approach due to fairly low ground clearance of the F150, and some rivers cant be seen at all, which led to a recovery session featuring some swift, hard yanks on a truck chain. In his YouTube video, he mentioned that with the tire pressure set at 2.5 psi, the AT44 could "push through and leave behind a well-compressed track. With this flotation, this power, low center of gravity and long wheelbase, doing the steeper hills was a pleasure and easily outperforming most other vehicles that came along." The Company Has Been Building Snow-Tacklers For A Long Time Although the firm is known for the Top Gear-spec Toyota Hilux that took part in the Magnetic North Pole Expedition in 2007, Arctic Trucks has also worked on many pick-up trucks in the U.K. It helped Isuzu launch the D-Max Arctic Trucks AT35, and has applied its know-how to the Nissan Navara as well. Last year, it designed a new one-off Volkswagen Amarok, called the AT35, for arctic exploring that came with a lift kit, bigger tires, and even had a cappuccino machine on board. Fun Fact: All the numbers in its monikers reflect the size of the tires the vehicle rides on. By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 12, 2020 | 07:18 PM | FRANKFORT Gov. Andy Beshear thanked Kentuckians of all faiths Sunday for protecting their communities by staying home this holiday weekend, supporting the state's fight against COVID-19. "Thank you to everyone who worshipped at home today. Your decision to stay home, even when it is really hard, is what saves lives. Thank you, Kentuckians. People you have never met are going to be alive three months from now because of your willingness to do it." According to Beshear, more than 99.8% of the commonwealth's houses of worship cancelled in-person services this weekend. Only about seven congregations held in-person services disregarding the Governor's executive order banning mass gatherings and repeated warnings from local, state and federal health officials that these services risked Kentuckians' lives. Individuals who attended these in-person services will be required to self-quarantine for 14 days, in order to limit the impact of their actions on other people. Commissioner for the Department for Public Health Dr. Steven Stack said, "Does our right to gather together entitle us to have other people die as a result? That is essentially, what happened. This is about any gathering, not just churches. We are at a time and place in history when the human species has never faced, for the last hundred years, a threat like we do now. The choices and decisions you make have implications, not only for yourself, but for others." As of 5 p.m. on Sunday, there were at least 1,963 coronavirus cases in Kentucky, 134 of which were newly confirmed. "In Kentucky, we are still not seeing the increase we are seeing in other states and we are grateful for that," Gov. Beshear said. Gov. Beshear also reported three new deaths Sunday, raising the state's toll to 97 deaths related to the virus. The newly reported deaths include a 72-year-old man from Jefferson County, 74-year-old woman from Hopkins County, and a 62-year-old man from Pike County. "We know that we are flattening the curve, let's not let up now," Gov. Beshear said. "This virus comes for the most vulnerable and protecting them are the steps we take every single day to do our very best to reduce our contacts. Let's make sure we keep that up. Let's make sure we do our part to not spread this virus." At least 607 people (30.9% of total cases) have recovered from COVID-19 in Kentucky. The deadly COVID-19 could be escalating throughout the world through farts, according to doctors. Tests were accomplished this year have concluded that the coronavirus was present in the feces of more than half of patients who tested positive. On the possibility of farts spreading disease, Mental Floss posed the question and looked at a small bit of science. Mental Floss concluded, "Earlier this year, a Beijing district office for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that pants should be an effective barrier against farts that might carry the novel coronavirus. So to avoid spreading COVID-19, practice responsible social distancing-and avoid farting naked around other people." A nurse asked Australian science author Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki the same question in 2001 because she was curious that she was infecting the operating room she worked in when quietly farting throughout procedures. Kruszelnicki asked for help from Canberra microbiologist Luke Tennent who asked one of his colleagues to fart straightly into two Petri dishes from a distance of five cm - first with pants on and then a second time without pants. While the first Petri dish stayed clean, the second one grew bacteria overnight, seemingly suggesting that clothing acts as a barrier from the bacteria that might be discharged by a fart. Kruszelnicki and Tennent's experiment did not delved too deeply into all types of bacteria that a pants-less person will be able to spread, but China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did. The Beijing district disease control center also declared that pants are an effective tool to cut off coronavirus transmission through farts. Also Read: COVID-19 Patients Can Suffer From Long-Term Bodily Damage A lengthy and simultaneously humorous and serious article on their WeChat account, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of Tongzhou district in Beijing asserted that farts typically do not account for an alternative transmission route of the coronavirus, unless the other person takes a good sniff in close proximity of the gas from a pantless patient. Doctors have alerted that farts consist of small poo particles that can transmit bacteria. Scientists are undertaking an ongoing learning about how the coronavirus gets transmitted to more and more people. It was previously made known to the public that it becomes prevalent via droplet and contact transmission. The comments from the Tongzhou district CDC were prompted by netizens' concerns that patients who contracted the coronavirus may spread the illness via passing gas. The concerns were due to recent findings from a research team spearheaded by Chinese top medical adviser Zhong Nanshan that proposed that they had isolated novel coronavirus strains from samples of infected patients' feces and urine. An article suggested to stay away from places where people are not fully clothed such as beaches to avoid catching the virus from a person's flatulence. This was also deemed as a good rule of etiquette for life in general. Doctors have remarked that more research are needed to be carried out to rule out passing the disease on to other people through omitting bodily gases. Being aware and learning about the signs and symptoms of the coronavirus was deemed important. According to the CDC, "Americans should prepare for serious disruptions to their lives from the coronavirus here at home." Related Article: Four Teens Attack Elderly Asian Woman on a Bus, Suspecting She Has COVID-19 @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. David Werksman is one of two Riverside County sheriff's deputies who have died of COVID-19. (Riverside County Sheriff's Department) The coronavirus continues to move through the ranks of law enforcement in Southern California as officers and jail inmates struggle to maintain social distancing. Nowhere is that more profoundly apparent than in Riverside County, where at least 80 inmates and 55 employees most of whom are deputies have tested positive for COVID-19. Two veteran deputies in the department have died from the disease caused by the coronavirus. In 10 days, the number of deputies infected has more than doubled, while the number of inmates who have tested positive has multiplied by more than six, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said. Bianco thinks the large numbers are the result of "silent spreaders," those who are infected with the virus who show no symptoms and unwittingly spread the illness. "Any of us can get it," he said. "I wish there was a medical study, if you will, of what happened to our agency and how fast it spread," he said over the weekend in a radio broadcast. "It showed us this is not what we prepared for." When deputies David Werksman, 51, and Terrell Young, 52, died April 2 of complications from COVID-19, it quickly emerged that Young was among two dozen deputies infected while working in the close confines of the jails. Bianco, who opposed a zero bail move statewide, has opposed releasing jail inmates early; but like every jailer in the state, his department is taking care of inmates' medical needs, he said. Bluntly speaking after Young's death and a large number of jail inmates had tested positive for the virus, Bianco warned: "If you don't want to contract [the coronavirus], don't break the law. You can't get any more plain than that." Of the 80 inmates who have contracted COVID-19, 16 have recovered. Three of the 55 Sheriff's Department employees exposed to the virus have returned to work. In Los Angeles, the LAPD has reported 54 workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus, including five members of the command staff. Two employees remain hospitalized, while 13 have returned to work after making a recovery. Story continues Temperatures of staff members are now checked as shifts begin, and thousands of officers are working 12-hour shifts while wearing protective masks. Assistan Chief Horace Frank said that while social distancing is helping helping stop the spread of the illness, the mandate isn't always an option for officers when dealing with those needing help or in the pursuit of a suspect. The number of L.A. County Probation Department employees who have tested positive for the coronavirus has jumped to 16, including six employees who are assigned to juvenile facilities, officials said Monday. Interim Probation Chief Ray Leyva confirmed that while no youths have fallen ill, the number of employees who have contracted the virus has jumped significantly, up from just three on Friday. At least eight juveniles have been tested for the virus after displaying symptoms, according to a spokeswoman for the county department of health services. But none has tested positive for COVID-19. Among the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, 29 employees have tested positive and more than 376 staff members have been quarantined. Many have already returned to work, according to numbers last updated Friday. Six inmates in county jails have contracted coronavirus, and 19 others are in isolation with COVID-19 symptoms. More than 400 inmates are under quarantine because of contact with someone who is infected, the Sheriff's Department said. Orange County, by contrast, has seen far fewer cases. So far, only 13 inmates and three sheriff's employees all of whom work in the jail system have tested positive for the virus. In San Bernardino County, at least nine sheriff's employees seven of them deputies and one inmate have contracted coronavirus. The latest deputy, who tested positive Saturday, worked in the jails, officials said. At the California Institute for Men in Chino, at the southern edge of San Bernardino County, 21 employees and 38 inmates have become infected. It is the worst coronavirus outbreak in the state's correctional system. In a court hearing on the treatment of state corrections inmates, medical staff said the outbreak is connected to the broader community. Inmates isolated at the Rancho Cucamonga West Valley Detention Center are displaying COVID-19 symptoms. The numbers among Southern California law enforcement are a sliver compared with those in New York, where 23 NYPD employees have died of COVID-19. Some 2,713 uniformed employees and 471 civilians have tested positive, and 18% of the workforce called in sick on Saturday. Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report. IF THERE CAN be said to be a single group of people who have most effectively counteracted the monolithic idea of what it means to be Asian-American a label that encompasses people with ancestry from countries in East Asia, the Pacific and South Asia it might be the several dozen Asian-American designers who began to shape the fashion industry in New York beginning in the early 80s. Their collective presence corrects at least some of the tokenism that has often defined the fashion world, where diversity can often be a one-dimensional gesture. The very first Asian-American fashion designers were pioneers such as Anna Sui, Vivienne Tam, Vera Wang and Kimora Lee Simmons women who launched their labels in a market dominated by Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Donna Karan and Marc Jacobs. Each had their own aesthetic: Sui with her peasant blouses and flouncy skirts; Tam with her updated takes on the traditional cheongsam; Simmons with her body-conscious velour tracksuits; and Wang, who built a new bridal vernacular with her clean, minimalist gowns. By the aughts, a new vanguard of Asian-American designers (here, we use the term to include both American citizens of Asian descent and Asians who work in America) were launching their own labels, including Phillip Lim, Richard Chai, Alexander Wang, Peter Som, Bibhu Mohapatra, Derek Lam and others. Their clothes shared no unifying aesthetic aside from being contemporary a rebuke to the Orientalist belief that there is one particular Asian mode of expression. (Lim recalled early on being asked by reporters why he didnt use dragons and red silk brocade in his designs.) Their arrival also added depth to the notion of who, exactly, could be an American fashion designer while also announcing a more organic age of inclusion these designers, for example, made a point to cast Asian and other nonwhite models for their shows and campaigns. As they gained acclaim, their presence was bolstered by the success of more conceptual designers such as Jade Lai, Yeohlee Teng and Mary Ping. After the 2008 recession, many independent designers were unable to sustain themselves alongside luxury conglomerates. Still, those who have continued Jason Wu, Joseph Altuzarra, Prabal Gurung, to name a few have ushered in the next generation. Jin Kay, Dylan Cao and Huy Luong of the label Commission, which was created in 2018 and inspired by the stylish Vietnamese and Korean women of the late 80s and 90s, spent time at Lims and Gurungs labels as well as at bigger European brands like Gucci. At around the same time, Peter Do, who used to work with Phoebe Philo at Celine, launched his own label in New York. Theres also now 90s-grunge inspired designers such as Jenny Cheng, of Gauntlett Cheng, as well as Sandy Liang, whose label features raver-like cargo pants for the club kids of the Lower East Side, among many more. The T List | Sign up here The rise of these designers can be explained, in part, by the professionalization of fashion the School of Fashion at Parsons and the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan are incubators for talent (in 2010, The New York Times reported that roughly 70 percent of Parsonss international students came from Asia; 23 percent of F.I.T.s students were Asian or Asian-American). Their achievements have also helped Asian parents accept that fashion design can be a replicable pathway to success. And if many come from families with backgrounds in the garment industry, much like the Jewish-American designers who preceded them (the grandparents of Lam, who is of Chinese descent, owned a large bridal-gown factory in San Francisco; Lims mother, who emigrated from China, worked as a seamstress in Los Angeles), many also found their way into fashion through other arenas: Lim cites the music videos he used to watch on MTV as a teenager growing up in Southern California as being more of a direct influence on him than anything else. I wanted to be part of that tribe, he said. BUT NONE OF this explicitly answers why so many Asian-Americans have gravitated toward fashion. Asian-American representation in the broader glamour industry not only on the red carpets and in fashion shows but also in film and television has been slow to come. There are still too few actors and models of Asian descent to accurately reflect the diversity of this country, one where Asian-Americans are approximately 6 percent of the population, according to the 2018 census. Whatever lingering resistance exists to seeing Asian-Americans speaks to a persistent invisibility in part because Asian-Americans dont neatly fit into the black-white racial dynamics of America, and also because our own history in this country is easily diminished or, worse, often left unacknowledged. The success of these designers is very hard won, as the funders, buyers and editors in fashion are still essentially the same as they were decades ago, and because building a brand takes years of dedication along with significant investment. Perhaps one reason there are so many Asian-American designers is that fashion values the concept of presentation design is a way to connect to the cultural values of craftsmanship and use of luxury materials so historically prevalent in East and South Asian countries. Perhaps, too, the stereotypes surrounding assimilation (especially the model minority) have made it easier for gatekeepers to accept and take risks on them (today, 48 of the more than 500 members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America identify as Asian; by comparison, only 19 identify as black and 31 as Latinx). More commercially, the popularity of these American designers translates abroad, as brands such as Lims or Alexander Wangs proved to be viable in not just the European markets but in China, South Korea and Japan as well, where consumer spending power has increased in the last two decades. Finally, theres also a less tangible factor, which is that the last half century of these designers work (as well as that of Japanese designers such as Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe and Issey Miyake) has aligned designers of Asian descent with the avant-garde. Asian invisibility may still persist, but these designers have become an indelible part of our collective consciousness when it comes to what we wear and how we choose to wear it. And that can only grow over time. Yet when you ask Gurung why there are so many Asian-American designers, he replies, Are there, really? There is always, he was pointedly saying, room for more. Thessaly La Force is a features director at T Magazine. Renee Cox is a Jamaican-American artist. Her work focuses on feminist theory and black womanhood. Set design: Todd Knopke. Hair and makeup: Laura de Leon at Joe Management using Chanel Les Beiges. Hair and makeup for Prabal Gurung: Van Truong at MAC. Hair and makeup assistants: Robert Reyes and Anna Kurihara. Unprecedented observations of a nova outburst in 2018 by a trio of satellites, including two NASA missions, have captured the first direct evidence that most of the explosion's visible light arose from shock waves -- abrupt changes of pressure and temperature formed in the explosion debris. A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. It occurs when a stream of hydrogen from a companion star flows onto the surface of a white dwarf, a compact stellar cinder not much larger than Earth. NASA's Fermi and NuSTAR space telescopes, together with the Canadian BRITE-Toronto satellite and several ground-based facilities, studied the nova. "Thanks to an especially bright nova and a lucky break, we were able to gather the best-ever visible and gamma-ray observations of a nova to date," said Elias Aydi, an astronomer at Michigan State University in East Lansing who led an international team from 40 institutions. "The exceptional quality of our data allowed us to distinguish simultaneous flares in both optical and gamma-ray light, which provides smoking-gun evidence that shock waves play a major role in powering some stellar explosions." The 2018 outburst originated from a star system later dubbed V906 Carinae, which lies about 13,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. Over time -- perhaps tens of thousands of years for a so-called classical nova like V906 Carinae -- the white dwarf's deepening hydrogen layer reaches critical temperatures and pressures. It then erupts in a runaway reaction that blows off all of the accumulated material. Each nova explosion releases a total of 10,000 to 100,000 times the annual energy output of our Sun. Astronomers discover about 10 novae each year in our galaxy. Fermi detected its first nova in 2010 and has observed 14 to date. Although X-ray and radio studies had shown the presence of shock waves in nova debris in the weeks after the explosions reached peak brightness, the Fermi discovery came as a surprise. Gamma rays -- the highest-energy form of light -- require processes that accelerate subatomic particles to extreme energies. When these particles interact with each other and with other matter, they produce gamma rays. But astronomers hadn't expected novae to be powerful enough to produce the required degree of acceleration. Because the gamma rays appear at about the same time as the peak in visible light, astronomers concluded that shock waves play a more fundamental role in the explosion and its aftermath. In 2015, a paper led by Brian Metzger at Columbia University in New York showed how comparing Fermi gamma-ray data with optical observations would allow scientists to learn more about nova shock waves. In 2017, a study led by Kwon-Lok Li at Michigan State found that the overall gamma-ray and visible emissions rose and fell in step in a nova known as V5856 Sagittarii. This implied shock waves produced more of the eruption's light than the white dwarf itself. The new observations from V906 Carinae, presented in a paper led by Aydi and published on Monday, April 13, in Nature Astronomy, spectacularly confirm this conclusion. On March 20, 2018, the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, a set of two dozen robotic telescopes distributed around the globe and operated by Ohio State University, discovered the nova. By month's end, V906 Carinae was dimly visible to the naked eye. Fortuitously, a satellite called BRITE-Toronto was already studying the nova's patch of sky. This miniature spacecraft is one of five 7.9-inch (20 centimeter) cubic nanosatellites comprising the Bright Target Explorer (BRITE) Constellation. Operated by a consortium of universities from Canada, Austria and Poland, the BRITE satellites study the structure and evolution of bright stars and observe how they interact with their environments. BRITE-Toronto was monitoring a red giant star called HD 92063, whose image overlapped the nova's location. The satellite observed the star for 16 minutes out of every 98-minute orbit, returning about 600 measurements each day and capturing the nova's changing brightness in unparalleled detail. "BRITE-Toronto revealed eight brief flares that fired up around the time the nova reached its peak, each one nearly doubling the nova's brightness," said Kirill Sokolovsky at Michigan State. "We've seen hints of this behavior in ground-based measurements, but never so clearly. Usually we monitor novae from the ground with many fewer observations and often with large gaps, which has the effect of hiding short-term changes." Fermi, on the other hand, almost missed the show. Normally its Large Area Telescope maps gamma rays across the entire sky every three hours. But when the nova appeared, the Fermi team was busy troubleshooting the spacecraft's first hardware problem in nearly 10 years of orbital operations -- a drive on one of its solar panels stopped moving in one direction. Fermi returned to work just in time to catch the nova's last three flares. In fact, V906 Carinae was at least twice as bright at billion-electron-volt, or GeV, energies as any other nova Fermi has observed. For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from about 2 to 3 electron volts. "When we compare the Fermi and BRITE data, we see flares in both at about the same time, so they must share the same source -- shock waves in the fast-moving debris," said Koji Mukai, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "When we look more closely, there is an indication that the flares in gamma rays may lead the flares in the visible. The natural interpretation is that the gamma-ray flares drove the optical changes." The team also observed the eruption's final flare using NASA's NuSTAR space telescope, which is only the second time the spacecraft has detected X-rays during a nova's optical and gamma-ray emission. The nova's GeV gamma-ray output far exceeded the NuSTAR X-ray emission, likely because the nova ejecta absorbed most of the X-rays. High-energy light from the shock waves was repeatedly absorbed and reradiated at lower energies within the nova debris, ultimately only escaping at visible wavelengths. Putting all of the observations together, Aydi and his colleagues describe what they think happened when V906 Carinae erupted. During the outburst's first few days, the orbital motion of the stars swept a thick debris cloud made of multiple shells of gas into a doughnut shape that appeared roughly edge-on from our perspective. The cloud expanded outward at less than about 1.3 million mph (2.2 million kph), comparable to the average speed of the solar wind flowing out from the Sun. Next, an outflow moving about twice as fast slammed into denser structures within the doughnut, creating shock waves that emitted gamma rays and visible light, including the first four optical flares. Finally, about 20 days after the explosion, an even faster outflow crashed into all of the slower debris at around 5.6 million mph (9 million kph). This collision created new shock waves and another round of gamma-ray and optical flares. The nova outflows likely arose from residual nuclear fusion reactions on the white dwarf's surface. Astronomers have proposed shock waves as a way to explain the power radiated by various kinds of short-lived events, such as stellar mergers, supernovae -- the much bigger blasts associated with the destruction of stars -- and tidal disruption events, where black holes shred passing stars. The BRITE, Fermi and NuSTAR observations of V906 Carinae provide a dramatic record of such a process. Further studies of nearby novae will serve as laboratories for better understanding the roles shock waves play in other more powerful and more distant events. ### The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR's mission operations center is at the University of California Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission's ground station and a mirror archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 23:17:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close PARIS, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Despite data showing a slowing down of the coronavirus spread after four weeks of lockdown, officials and health authorities in France nonetheless have said the strict measures should be extended to avoid a second wave of the epidemic, warning people not to expect a sudden or complete relaxation of confinement and quarantine rules. As of Sunday, the number of people who have died from the coronavirus in France totaled 14,393, representing a one-day increase of 561, down from Saturday's 643, while serious cases decreased for the fourth straight day to 6,845, showed data from the health ministry. "We are seeing the start of a very high plateau but we must remain vigilant... We must not relax our efforts and continue to reduce the number of contacts every day to curb altogether the virus contagion," said the ministry, suggesting that the gloom will not be over shortly. LOCKDOWN DEBATES France decided on March 17 to put its 67 million residents into lockdown to curb the spread of the virus. The measures have been extended until April 15 and are likely to be prolonged again. The scientific council, which advises the French government on the epidemic crisis, had in late March recommended prolonging confinement at least for six weeks after it was put in place, which means till the end of April. "At present, confinement is the only really operational strategy," the council said in its recommendations released late March. In recent days, officials and experts were hitting the airwaves to reiterate that strict respect of restrictions on public life was a precondition for a possible easing of the lockdown. Hardly anyone presented a clear idea of how the confinement measures might be lifted and when the return to normalcy would be. In the last question session at the National Assembly, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the government was working on de-confinement. "To prepare does not mean that it is ready. That meant to work on technical, scientific and logistical levels to be ready when the time comes," he said without giving a timetable. In a study released on Sunday, French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, in collaboration with Pierre Louis Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health and Sorbonne University, warned that "lifting the lockdown with no exit strategy would lead to a second wave, which would largely overwhelm the healthcare system (again)." "Extensive case detection, testing and isolation are required to envision (new) social distancing strategies that gradually relax current constraints (larger fraction of individuals going back to work, progressive reopening of activities), while keeping schools closed and seniors isolated," the study said. It suggested that by implementing aggressive case detection and isolation combined with strict respect of social distancing, the lockdown could be lifted in May. On the medium to long term, different intensity of social distancing interventions can be maintained, depending on sufficient testing kits and isolation capacity, it added. ECONOMIC IMPACTS Following the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, the French government pledged to increase testing to 50,000 daily tests by the end of April from 5,000 in mid-March. In addition, it has already ordered 5 million rapid tests in order to reinforce health services' ability to detect the virus once the lockdown would be lifted. "The French are more and more worried. In addition to health aspect, there is now growing concern about the economic situation. We will have to lift the lockdown to revive the country's (economy) but at this stage, we have neither the date nor the method to do so," a government advisor was quoted as saying by France info radio. In a report last week, French central bank BdF noted the coronavirus pandemic has hit hard local businesses in tourism and manufacturing, with the country's economic activity tumbled by 32 percent since the lockdown began. It estimated that every two-week confinement would lead to a 1.5-percent loss in the gross domestic product (GDP). The government expected the French economy to shrink by 6 percent, and the budget deficit would hit 7.6 percent of the GDP this year. Eyes are now on the Elysee Palace. French citizens hope to find answers in President Emmanuel Macron's televised address later on Monday. Initially scheduled for April 9, Macron's speech, the third since the coronavirus epidemic began in early March, was postponed to offer more time to consultations with "a large number of public and private actors, French, European and international, on what is at stake concerning COVID-19" to prepare "the decisions that will be announced on Monday," local media reported citing the presidency. "Macron should describe how the end of the tunnel will be. Will the de-confinement be proceeded according to age, profession, state of health, region, etc? Will we be de-confined on different dates with different constraints? He must concretely answer all these questions," Christophe Barbier, a political commentator told BFMTV news channel. As the global energy markets bear the brunt of coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, major oil producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia on Sunday (April 12) reached an agreement to slash output by 9.7 million barrels a day. This is easily the biggest oil deal in history and Russia and Saudi Arabia sealed the deal after three days of negotiations, two virtual meetings by video conference and a meeting of G20 energy ministers. The compromise by OPEC+ the alliance of OPEC members and non-OPEC producers to accommodate Mexico, which was not ready to reduce output by 400,000 barrels a day. It was left to US President Donald Trump to intervene in this matter and ease through the special Mexico terms, under which the Mexican government will have to reduce output by much less than other OPEC+ members. President Trump thanked both Saudi King Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin for a "great" deal. "The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done," he said, adding, "This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States." The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020 The meeting was chaired by Saudi Arabias energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. Talking about the deal, Prince Salman said that the cuts would amount to 12.5 million barrels per day, because of higher output in April from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, reported Gulf news. "I am honored to be a party of this historic moment and historic agreement," Prince Abdulaziz told Reuters. For his part, UAE's energy minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said his government is ready to reduce its oil production from the current level of 4.1 million barrels a day. The agreement means that that the oil output will decrease by around 10 percent from May 1. Notably, the global demand for crude has come down by around 20 percent since the outbreak of coronavirus. It is learnt that Saudi Aramco will release its official selling prices for crude in May on Tuesday. As part of the deal Aramco - Saudi's biggest oil producer - has agreed to cut output by 23 percent and it is expected that the company could for more reductions in the future. Referring to the deal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: The whole world needs it. Thats because the global economy will be on the brink of uncontrolled chaos in prices, on energy supplies, unless there is such a deal. Bernie Sanders made his endorsement of Joe Biden official on Monday telling the former vice president 'we need you in the White House.' The Biden campaign had scheduled a livestream event for 2 p.m., teasing it with a 'special guest' - which turned out to be Sanders, who dropped out of the presidential race on Wednedsday. 'Today I am asking all Americans, I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent, I'm asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse,' Sanders said to Biden on the split-screen, as both men were broadcasting from their homes. SURPRISE: Joe Biden's (left) campaign teased a 'special guest' on his livestream on Monday. It was Bernie Sanders (right) who endorsed him 'To make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe, and I'm speaking just for myself now, is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country,' Sanders went on. Sanders called President Trump his usual assortment of insults: racist, homophobic, xenophobic. He then scoffed at reports that Trump was thinking about firing Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the president's most visible members of the coroanvirus taskforce. Sanders said the Democrats needed to ensure Trump became a one-term president. 'I will do all that I can to see that that happens Joe,' the Vermont senator said. 'And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now, and it's imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done,' he continued. 'Not only in this moment, but beyond this moment, in the future of this country,' Sanders added. Joe Biden (left) made sure to point out to Democrats that he and Bernie Sanders (right), photographed at the final Democratic primary debate, were friends, even calling him 'pal' during their joint appearance Monday Sanders revealed that members of his campaign had been working with members of Biden's campaign team for weeks and were putting together a number of taskforces on issues like climate change, the economy and immigration. 'I'm very pleased that your staff and my staff have been working together,' Sanders said. He suggested that would be one way to push the party together, since there remained a progressive-versus-moderate Democratic split. 'So it's no great secret out there Joe, that you and I have our differences - we're not going to paper them over, that's real,' Sanders said. Biden looked surprised when Sanders made his endorsement. 'It's a big deal,' Biden said. 'I think that your endorsement means a great deal, it means a great deal to me.' Biden said he thought people would be 'surprised' at how close he and Sanders are on some issues. 'And if I am the nominee, which it looks like now that you made me,' Biden remarked. 'I'm going to need you.' The men then took some time to discuss common ground - such as support for a $15 minimum wage and helping younger Americans get ahead. Biden laughed when Sanders took shots at Trump. 'We have actually read the Constitution of the United States unlike the current president,' Sanders said, a likely reference to the president tweeting that it was his decision when to reopen the American economy, which would likely be in conflict with the 10th Amendment. And the two talked about how they're friends. 'You and I have been friends. We've disagreed, but we've been friends,' Biden told Sanders. 'I'm looking forward to working with you pal,' the former vice president said at another point. Sanders joked that they should 'play chess.' 'We'll bore everybody for a few hours,' he remarked. The livestream appearance more neatly wrapped up the Democratic primary than Sanders' slow exit in 2016. Back then, he actively stayed in the race through all the primaries and endorsed Hillary Clinton on July 12, two weeks before she'd officially earn the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. When Sanders dropped out last week he said he'd still be on the ballot in the remaining states. He'd also keep his delegates in order to pressure Biden to back more progressive positions. Biden began that process by vowing to move the Medicare age to 60 - it's currently 65 - and supporting some student loan forgiveness. But Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a top Sanders surrogates, called the Medicare move 'almost insulting,' as Clinton had even pitched moving the age where people could start buying in to Medicare to 50. In order to excite progressive voters, she told The New York Times, Biden would need to prove that he was more than just a 'harm reduction' candidate and 'there's actually going to be progress made for us.' Four Punjab cabinet ministers on Monday sought the registration of a case against Lok Insaf Party MLA Simarjeet Singh Bains for allegedly terming the attack on cops in Patiala a response to the high-handedness of police. A government release here said the Ludhiana MLA in an interview to a media channel said the Sunday attack was a "public backlash against the police high-handedness" over the past a few days. Assistant Sub-Inspector Harjeet Singh's hand was chopped off with a sword while three other Punjab policemen and a mandi official sustained injuries when a group of Nihangs attacked them after being asked to show curfew passes at a vegetable market in Patiala district. Terming the MLA's remarks "provocative and vile", state ministers Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Aruna Choudhary and Vijay Inder Singla asked the LIP leader to give up the police security if he did not trust the force. Bains should be immediately booked under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, the National Disaster Management Act, 2005 as well as relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, the ministers demanded in a release here. They also demanded an unequivocal apology from Bains for politicising the issue for cheap publicity at a time when the entire police force was putting their own lives at stake and working round the clock for providing relief to the needy. The Punjab Police is doing a commendable job in these critical times and what happened on Sunday is reprehensible. By casting aspersions on our police force, Bains has rubbed salt into the wounds of the bravehearts, Health Minister Sidhu said. Randhawa said this was time to fight the enemy unitedly and support the frontline warriors. This is gross disrespect to the great sacrifices being made by our policemen in the line of duty and should be condemned by all, said Education Minister Vijay Inder Singla. Terming it yet another attempt by Bains to grab the limelight, minister Aruna Choudhary said, "By giving such statements, he is encouraging anti-social elements to attack police. Meanwhile, police on Monday arrested three people for provocative social media messages in the wake of the attack. Bhupinder Singh, a resident of Hoshiarpur; Davinder Singh, a resident of Batala; and Kuljeet Singh Bhullar, a resident of Muktsar, were arrested for allegedly trying to incite communal unrest with their hate messages on social media, DGP Dinkar Gupta in a statement. These men were indulging in hate propaganda through social media by lauding the Nihang action, said Gupta. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Of 79 coronavirus cases recorded in Kyiv over the past day, 63 patients are Lavra-based clerics. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko has said the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra has been shut down for quarantine amid a sharp spark of coronavirus incidence at the site that headquarters the Russian-backed church in Ukraine. Speaking at an online press briefing, he said 79 Kyiv residents had contracted the coronavirus over the past day, of which 63 cases were registered in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, which brings the total number of Lavra cases to 90. Read alsoUkraine coronavirus update: 325 new cases in past 24 hours, bringing total to 3,102 "In total, there are already over 90 confirmed coronavirus cases there. Today the city will deploy in the Lavra mobile X-rays and a team of medics to collect samples for PCR testing. We need to have a real picture of the hotbed of the disease. I also emphasize the fact that the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra has been closed for quarantine by the decision of the capital's emergency commission," the mayor said. Klitschko appealed to law enforcement agencies to monitor compliance with the said decision. Nigerian actress, Susan Peters has blasted Bill Gates wife, Belinda for the controversial statement she made while expressing her concerns over the poor health care facilities in Africa. According to reports, Belinda said; My heart is in Africa. Im worried. The only reason why the reported cases of the coronavirus disease in Africa is low now is most likely because there have not been wide testing of people. The disease is going to bite hard on the continent. I see dead bodies in the streets of Africa, Mrs. Gates said. This statement irked Peters as she shared a screenshot of the post on her page with the caption; No Wonder You are bitter God will continue to disappoint you agents of darkness. All your conspiracies wont work,Africans please stay Woke !!! God will heal the land !!! Amen please one word for this wicked soul. Read Also: Toke Makinwa Replies Trolls Who Asked She Was A Prostitute See the post below: A Moshi-based youth organisation, Kijana Kwanza, has donated 2,000 litres of hand washing soap to Moshi Municipal Council to be used at the Moshi Main Bus Station and Moshi Central Market. The aim is to curb the spread of Covid-19 disease caused by coronavirus. Speaking during the handover of the hand-washing soap, Kijana Kwanza Youth Patroness Apaikunda Naburi said part of the handwashing soap was intended for handwashing by travellers using Moshi Main Bus Station. The other amount will be used for the same purpose by vendors and customers of Moshi Central Market, whose big number of people from within and outside Moshi Municipality, she said, adding that, the donation was also meant to compliment government efforts to fight against the deadly disease. She added that the main bus station and the Moshi central market attracted many people every day due to the socioeconomic importance of the two areas, so there was a need to take care as far as the Covid-19 pandemic was concerned. Speaking during the donation, Moshi Traffic Chief, Elias Mkuburo said the Police Force had improved the safety of travellers by making sure all public transport vehicles entering Moshi Main Bus Station washed their hands with running water and soap. For his part, Moshi Municipal Health Officer, Henry Mayila said the council had and still continued educating members of the public on the importance of taking precautionary measures provided by the government and health stakeholders on the Covid-19 disease, which he said continued affecting many people globally. In a massive development, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), on Monday, has filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court on the court-ordered free COVID-19 tests by private labs. ICMR has asked the Supreme Court to discontinue its April 8 directive, ordering all private and government labs to conduct free testing for Coronavirus (COVID-19) for all patients. Currently, India has 9152 cases with 308 deaths. Jharkhand: Ranchi locals defy lockdown to allegedly protest 'burial of COVID-19 patient' SC order on free testing On Wednesday, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Ravindra Bhat ruled in an interim order that the testing relating to COVID-19 whether in approved government or private labs shall be free of cost, while hearing a plea filed by lawyer Shashank Deo Sudhi. Moreover, the bench also directed that COVID-19 related tests should be carried out only in NABL accredited laboratories or any agencies approved by the WHO or ICMR. Meanwhile, the Centre has been given two week's time to file an affidavit in reply. Supreme Court orders free COVID-19 related testing in government and private labs ICMR testing guidelines and capacity Currently, testing for Coronavirus is done in 219 labs throughout the nation - 151 Govt & 68 Pvt. As of Sunday, 186906 samples tested, of which 7953 tested positive. The Centre revealed that 15757 samples tested on an average per day, with 548 testing positive on an average. On March 21, the Centre notified the guidelines laid down by the ICMR for COVID-19 testing in private laboratories in the country. It has been stressed that private labs can charge only Rs.1,500 for the screening of suspect cases and Rs.3000 for the confirmation test. While ICMR has encouraged private labs to go for free or subsidized testing, government labs are testing for free. Coronavirus LIVE Updates: PM Modi to address at 10 AM on April 14; total cases at 9152 Coronavirus crisis in India As of date, 7987 active cases have been reported of the pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19) - 856 have been discharged and Maharashtra reported the highest at 1985. 308 deaths have been reported till date. India has suspended all visas and barred travel from Afghanistan, Philippines, EU, UK, China, Malaysia and mandatory 14-day quarantine from several other countries. The Prime Minister has issued a 21-day countrywide lockdown starting from 23 March to April 15 and the Finance Minister has announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package under the 'PM Gareeb Kalyan Scheme'. With the rise in the number of cases, five states -Odisha, Punjab, Maharashtra have extended their state's lockdown till April 30. Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address nation at 10 AM on Tuesday, April 14, amid Covid The Interstellar object 'Oumuamua was first spotted in our solar system in October 2017 by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1). Three years later, scientists may finally have some answers to its origin and to why it has an oddly cigar-shape and other idiosyncratic features. How 'Oumuamua Got Its Shape According to Gizmodo, a research that was recently published in Nature Astronomy, 'Oumuamua is a fragmented part of a parent body that might have strayed too close to its host star. The research authors, Yun Zhang of the University of Cote d'Azur as well as Douglas Lin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, then believe that it is due to this process that the interstellar object acquired its odd shape and why it was thrown into interstellar space. "A tidal encounter between a planet or small body and a star is a tug-of-war game between the gravitational pull of the star and the self-gravity of the flyby body," Zhang said, noting that when an object comes too close to a star and enters its tidal disruption region, the body will be stretch and torn apart. 'Oumuamua, which was named after a Hawaiian word meaning messenger or scout, is the first interstellar interloper that astronomers have seen. Additionally, it's the first cosmic object that they know of so far that has the weirdly elongated shape like a "big space cigar," which might or might not be flattened as well. Besides its shape, there are a few other odd things about 'Oumuamua. Read Also: NASA Presents Asteroid Bennu: The First High-Resolution Image of a Planetary Object Is it a Comet? For one, the cosmic object also displayed a "non-gravitational acceleration" while it was zooming through our solar system, meaning it has a movement that is not triggered by tugs of the sun or other planets' gravitational pull. This movement is usually linked to cometary outgassing that pushes an object to a particular direction, much like how the thrusters of a spacecraft work, as per Space.com, which made astronomers believe it is likely a comet. Nevertheless, 'Oumuamua has no visible tail or coma-like the usual comet. But with the arrival of the new study from lead scientist Yun Zhang and his co-author, Douglas Lin, the interstellar visitor is now believed to be an "active asteroid" and that there are likely more objects like 'Oumuamua. More Interstellar Objects like 'Oumuamua "On average, each planetary system should eject in total about 100 trillion objects like 'Oumuamua," Zhang said. Zhang and Lin were able to come up with the theory by creating various computer simulations of objects flying by strictly to their stars and how it affects them. Based on their simulations, they found out that very close encounters rip the cosmic bodies apart into elongated forms and then eject them into interstellar space. The research further indicates that the extreme heat from the flyby and then the cooling that follows after is the reason behind their surface crust, which maintains and supports their odd shape. The research about interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua could provide clues to our scientists about how planetary systems are formed and how they evolve over time. Read Also: [VIDEO] SpaceX Starship SN4 Prototype Leaked; Here's How it Looks 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Enemy of My Enemy? Israel Sells Missile System to UAE for Haftar's Libyan National Army - Report Sputnik News 11:42 GMT 12.04.2020 The war-torn nation of Libya, which descended into a foreign-backed civil war in 2011 after NATO warplanes helped rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi, has faced a major escalation of fighting in the past year as Marshal Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) attempts a final push to drive the Government of National Accord (GNA) out of Tripoli. The murky web of backdoor alliances, arms deals and geopolitical infighting for control of oil-rich Libya seems to have become even murkier amid reports that the United Arab Emirates has quietly purchased an advanced Israeli-made missile system for Marshal Haftar's LNA forces. According to a report by the New Arab newspaper citing informed sources, the UAE is supplying the weapon to Haftar to counter the drones supplied to the GNA by Turkey. The sources did not provide any details on the air defence system's characteristics, except to say that it was "advanced" and "produced by an Israeli manufacturer." The weapons system has reportedly already been transported to Egypt, and expected to head to neighbouring eastern Libya after LNA troops are trained to operate it. Israel's defence industry is known for the manufacture of several surface-to-air missile systems, including the transportable Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, David's Sling, an anti-rocket and cruise missile defence system, and the Iron Dome rocket and mortar defence system. The arms deal is said to have been made despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE. Israeli, UAE and LNA officials have not commented on the veracity of the New Arab's reporting. Libya, home to the largest oil reserves on the African continent, has received military equipment from suppliers around the globe as world powers seek to shore up either the LNA or the GNA as the two compete for control of the country. In January, Turkey took the unprecedented step of sending troops to support the GNA amid the LNA's ongoing Tripoli offensive, deploying boots on the ground to complement the arms deliveries sent earlier. The two sides have since engaged in drone warfare, air battles, and ground-based operations. In mid-March, the LNA claimed that the GNA were building a "base on the border with Tunisia" to which they could escape if they lost their capital. The LNA has claimed to have already taken control of 95 percent of the country, a claim which the GNA has disputed. Last week, the UN condemned the cutting off of water supplies to Tripoli, expressing concerns for the city's two million residents, as the LNA reported sending a large number of reinforcements to the city to make one 'final push' to clear the city of GNA forces and their allies. Once one of the wealthiest, most developed and stable countries in Africa, Libya collapsed into a failed state in 2011, after militants backed by NATO airstrikes toppled and summarily executed longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Mediterranean nation has since turned into a haven for militants, terrorist groups and human smugglers smuggling people from across Africa into Europe. In 2011, Gaddafi warned former British Prime Minister Tony Blair that sleeper cell terrorists would take control of Libya and try to stage attacks against Europe if he were toppled. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The EU will provide support to the volunteers who help to fight against coronavirus Open source The European Union will allocate another four million euro to Ukraine for support of the volunteers who help to fight against the spread of coronavirus infection, as the EU Delegation to Ukraine reported. We support volunteers! Everyones efforts are needed to beat COVID-19. Thousands of volunteers taking action to help the most vulnerable people in Ukraine. They deliver food to the elderly, support teachers to go online and are battling disinformation. EU provides 4 million to support these civic initiatives, EU Ambassador Matti Maasika stated. Earlier, the European Union decided to provide the assistance package to Ukraine in the sum of 80 million to facilitate the influence of crisis with coronavirus on the healthcare system, lives of people and economy. In the east of Ukraine, the aid provides the procurement of protective suits for doctors and disinfectants as well as support to volunteers who deliver food and medicines to the older persons. As of April 13, 3,102 cases of Covid-19 spotted in Ukraine. 93 people died, while 97 recovered. 325 cases were confirmed during the past 24 hours. As we reported, 24 Ukrainian citizens recovered from Covid-19 while staying abroad. 171 Ukrainians are getting treated abroad. Most of them are now in Italy (121) and Poland (22). The others are staying in Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal and the U.S. South Africa: Government's senior managers to contribute to Solidarity Fund President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed the decision of members of the Forum of South Africa's Directors General (FOSAD) to contribute to the Solidarity Fund. FOSAD members met on Sunday where a decision was made to support the call by the National Coronavirus Command Council for political leadership and the executive layer of the public service to make contributions to the Solidarity Fund. FOSAD has thus made a call for all public servants in national and provincial departments, including the public entities, to donate to the fund in an effort to support South Africans whose lives have been disrupted by the pandemic and care for those in hospital or medical care. The Directors General have directed on amounts for donations by the senior management service, including Directors General/HODs, Deputy Directors General, Chief Directors and Directors. This applies to all other officials remunerated at these levels including advisors, political office staff etc. FOSAD appealed to public servants to dig deep in their pockets in support of this noble cause. The Department of Public Service and Administration have been tasked to further work on details taking into account the relevant legal environment, and a circular with details will be sent to all departments in due course. President Ramaphosa welcomed this patriotic contribution by FOSAD members, who voluntarily made this decision. Every effort made to alleviate the devastating consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic is highly appreciated. These public servants continue to demonstrate their commitment to the Batho Pele Value Statement: We Belong (to our people), We Care (about our people), We Serve (our people)," said President Ramaphosa. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Govt asking banks to pay and banks have no money Now the moment of truth has arrived for the government. The government is now facing the truth that problems lie within the government itself. The government itself is the worst victim of shameless lies and false adulation of record breaking success in the field of economy. Everything the government did was a role model for the world. Still, for the good of the country, we want to be proved wrong and make the government competent. But we can't. We feel sorry for the sufferings of the people all over the country when looters have looted money from banks for living abroad in kingly luxury. They know they will have no place in the country. Other than enforcing lockdown and shutdown people find that the government is not active on an emergency basis to meet the needs of the shutdown businesses or the people kept under lockdown at home. At a time when the economy has been facing big challenges from the impact of coronavirus the government's stimulus package for Tk 75,750 crore is surely a right step but sourcing of the fund essentially by the banks raises serious questions. The fact is that the plan comes from the government but the money belongs to the banks. There is no certainty that banks will be able to finance the schemes at minimum interest when they are suffering from huge liquidity crisis. The Prime Minister's plan for a special fund of Tk 5000 crore for financing farmers, fisheries and livestock sector at 5 per cent interest may similarly suffer from many loopholes although such steps are seriously needed at this moment. The miseries of the poor without jobs and a source of livelihood at this critical time have failed to make any impact on those people. The government's attitude has remained unchanged. The easier part is to punish some doctors without caring their problems. But helping the distressed people is the difficult part. The government is still busy with the easy part and the difficult part continues to be difficult. The bureaucratic way has failed. The political way is unknown. The government had no difficulty in indulging in dazzling luxury expenses, easy foreign tours, generous pay increases, extra allowances and of course, unbridled corruption for keeping the government servants happy and loyal. The stimulus package itself is part of a government borrowing with creating force on banks while its own bank borrowing is skyrocketing. The government treated the huge money repatriated in dollars by hard-working workers abroad as money to be enjoyed by the government people. The public services were just ignored. As the people lived in fear of financial insecurity due to rampant looting from banks, the government and its cohorts had maintained lavish lifestyle they could never dream of. It is a big contradiction that the government is announcing the bailout packages while banks have not enough liquidity for funding. Some money has been provided from the reserved money kept with Bangladesh Bank. How to meet other such packages for pairing others in equal need of? Available indications suggest that banks are not showing much interest in bargaining although not publicly opposing it. Borrowers are also reluctant except using the fund on pressure for paying wages to workers at the moment. Banks are under severe pressure to disburse loans at 9 per cent interest at a time when enough deposit collection at 6 per cent interest is not forthcoming. Many banks fear that they may eventually run short of capital and go bankrupt. The government's plan to create a special fund of Tk 200 crore at each bank to bail out the ailing capital market has not yet materialized. Many wonder how this scheme will work. So we can in frustration say that this mess is too messy. Susan Arnold, an associate professor at the University of Minnesotas School of Public Health, said the most effective way the top rung of the hierarchy of controls to keep workers safe from a health risk is to eliminate it from the workplace. This is easy if the risk is a toxic chemical or dangerous machine, but it isnt currently possible for the virus, she said. Moneycontrol, Indias leading and largest subscription-based, financial and business news platform, today announced the appointment of Ranjita Sehgal as the Revenue Head. Ranjitas responsibilities in her new role will be focused on revenue generation and growth marketing strategy of the platform. In her earlier role at Network18, she was the Business Head of CNBCTV18 Digital where she led the business from its inception, delivering strong revenues and overall growth for the brand. With over twenty years of industry experience, Ranjita is known to be an innovative and focused business leader. Her prolific experience in the new-age and digital media industry has seen her work with popular brands that include Times, Sify, Yahoo, Rediff.com amongst others. Commenting on her role, Ranjita Sehgal stated, The world today is immensely dynamic and business leaders are facing unexpected challenges that are beyond their imagination. Good products and good business ethics are ruling the roost. Moneycontrol has been a pioneer in the digital business and finance industry for more than two decades. We seek to continue in our endeavor to constantly keep up with the changing times and offer distinctive and innovative offerings to our audience. I am elated to join moneycontrol at a time when the digital revolution is at its peak and we are still in wonder of its utility and services. Having said that, I look forward to contributing wholesomely and meaningfully towards its success, especially in these ever-evolving situations. Staying ahead of its competition, the platform provides distinctive, incisive and a comprehensive repository of information and offerings on the financial and business industry. Telangana BJP slams CM KCR for not conducting enough COVID-19 tests in the state India oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P Hyderabad, Apr 13: While there were no new coronavirus cases reported from Telangana till 8 am today, it looks like the state is going to witness another issue, this time, with the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. The total number of coronavirus cases in Telangana stands at 504. Among them, 43 have recovered and 9 have passed away. Allow limited activity in select sectors, services with safeguards: DPIIT's lockdown extension plan But, the state BJP claiming that the TRS government is not releasing the details on the number of tests it is conducting across the state on a daily basis. Speaking to OneIndia, BJP chief spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao said that the party believes the state government is not testing enough COVID-19 cases in Telangana and is trying to be evasive on the same. He also demanded the release of test numbers in the daily health bulletin that is being released by the state government. "World Health Organization (WHO) and ICMR has issued strong advisory to test extensively, contact tracing and islolate to ensure arrest of tramission of coronavirus in the community. It is evident that the state government is paying no heed to this very important task and behaving wishful and irresponsible," the BJP chief spokesperson said. The BJP leader further went on to say that IT Minister K T Rama Rao is talking of plasma therapy initiative in the state without having either enough pre-emptive testing or antibody testing facilities in the state. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts "KTR has to explain how he wishes to undertake plasma therapy without having antibody testing in Telangana State? His statements are rhetoric hyperbole and not factual," he added. The state BJP also urged Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao to quit his contemplation and act with conviction, following central government and WHO guidelines to counter the spread of COVID-19 in Telangana. The effects of the abortive resignation of Turkeys powerful interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, late Sunday continued to reverberate today, in what many see as widening cracks in the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a late night tweet, Soylu said he was stepping down over his role in a weekend coronavirus lockdown across 31 cities that was declared just hours before it went into effect at midnight local time Friday. The announcement sent tens of thousands of panicked Turks on a shopping orgy, sharply heightening the risk of contagion. Images of citizens without protective masks jostling to snap up bread and other supplies sparked widespread criticism of the curfew as the number of cases continues its upward spiral in the country of 83 million. Soylu tweeted, Responsibility for implementing the weekend curfew decision, which was aimed at containing the epidemic, belongs entirely to me. The tweet, which has since been removed, triggered a tidal wave of support for him. It generated over 1.2 million tweets by the time the Communications Ministry issued a statement around midnight saying that his resignation had been withdrawn. In the Black Sea province of Rize, a man threatened to commit suicide by jumping off a balcony and changed his mind only after police convinced him that Soylu would continue to serve. The affair highlights the governments erratic handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Early measures, including banning flights from and sealing borders with neighboring Iran, have been lauded. But the governments reluctance to introduce curfew measures against the advice of Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and the national Science Board has led to tensions. Erdogan is said to have resisted lockdown measures that would slow the economy and leave millions of citizens turning to the government for financial aid at a time when its resources are increasingly stretched. Nothing threatens Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) more than a deep recession, which seems increasingly inevitable as elsewhere across the globe. Investors have been further spooked by Erdogans refusal to accept any help from the IMF. At least 1,296 people were reported dead from COVID-19 and 61,049 others infected at the latest count. The government announced the first fatalities in the countrys heaving prison population today with three convicts in an open detention center reported dead from the virus. A controversial amnesty law that excludes thousands of prisoners of conscience, including prominent Kurdish leader, Selahattin Demirtas, and philanthropist Osman Kavala, has yet to be approved by the parliament. In what the opposition called a further blow to free expression, Erdogan and his nationalist allies in the parliament tabled an item to be inserted into the draft amnesty law that would specifically exclude those who commit crimes against Turkeys national intelligence agency MIT. Critics say it will affect journalists who have been jailed for reporting on MITs covert activities in Syria and Libya. They include five reporters who were detained in March for reporting on the funeral of a MIT operative who was allegedly killed in Libya in February on the grounds that the coverage jeopardized Turkeys national security. Beyond the immediate health crisis, last nights events also point to palace intrigues, pitting Soylu against Erdogans ambitious son-in-law, Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, in a quietly raging turf war. One theory is that Soylu preempted Albayraks long running campaign to unseat him by demonstrating his own strength through the reaction his resignation provoked. Another is that the whole affair was staged to deflect attention from Erdogans responsibility for the curfew fiasco, with Soylu offering himself as a fall guy. Soylu, a right-wing nationalist, joined the government as interior minister in August 2016 in the wake of the failed coup, which he blamed on the United States, saying everyone knows that America is behind the coup. He has since become the public face of its deepening authoritarianism and in particular of unrelenting pressure on the Kurdish movement that has seen thousands of Kurdish activists prosecuted and jailed and the Turkish army invading Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria. Unsurprisingly, Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party, welcomed news that Soylu was remaining in a flowery statement hailing the interior minister for his combative personality and success at a very sensitive time. Bahceli has since the botched putsch positioned himself as Erdogans informal ally and is believed to have inserted nationalists into positions of influence in the bureaucracy, many of whose ideology aligns with Soylu's. Soylu thanked Bahceli for his support in a telephone call today. But what of Erdogan? He has yet to comment personally on the affair. Erdogan announced today, however, that the weekend curfew would be reimposed April 17-19. Rumors flew that Erdogan was disgruntled by Soylus assertion in April 12 comments to the pro-government Hurriyet that the curfew was being imposed under the presidents orders. It did not go unnoticed that Soylu assumed blame for the implementation of the decision, not for the decision itself. Albayrak and his clique allegedly seized on Erdogans anger to persuade him to sack Soylu but were subsequently outmaneuvered. It remains unclear where Erdogan stands: Is he sticking with Soylu to keep his brashly arrogant son-in-law in check? Or is he unable to fire him because of pressure from Bahceli and assorted other stakeholders? What is clear is that none of it has to do with advancing the cause of Turkeys tottering democracy. Tellingly, the English-language Daily Sabah, a government mouthpiece run by Albayraks associates, spoke of the botched curfew announcement when reporting why Soylu had resigned. But then, apparently once it realized he wasn't going, the paper assured readers in a pinned tweet, We seek to maintain objectivity in our journalism, and our tweet fully reflects what Minister Soylu shared in his resignation letter on his Twitter account. Around the same time, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin sought to fend off conjecture about any internecine squabbles, declaring on Twitter, Our president has not accepted our interior ministers resignation. He is continuing in the job. Nobody can harm our unity and solidarity. But according to prominent commentator Kemal Can the fissures and cracks within the government are clear and impossible to conceal. Speaking on the independent online media news channel Medyascope TV, Can said the Soylu incident is a portent of the violent turmoil to come. Fellow pundit Murat Yetkin declared Soylu the winner of this round, writing, Soylu has got even stronger both in the cabinet and the AKP. 3 1 of 3 Will Waldron/Times Union Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Will Waldron/Times Union Show More Show Less 3 of 3 ALBANY U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Monday announced legislation that would provide farmers who have taken out loans from the USDA's Farm Services Agency up to $250,000 in relief, as farmers in New York and across the country continue to struggle amid the coronavirus pandemic. About 39,000 farmers nationwide would be eligible for loan-release under the Relief for Americas Small Farmers Act, Gillibrand said during a tele-confrence. She said she hopes to include the legislation in an upcoming coronavirus relief package and anticipates bi-partisan support for her bill. Famers who have taken out direct operating loans and emergency loans from the USDA's farm loans program would be eligible for release under the act. MINNEAPOLIS, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Somnetics International, Inc., a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based CPAP manufacturer, announced today the company is working hard to repurpose its inventory of Transcend CPAP machines for use in the fight against COVID-19. "We know we have a part to play in fighting this pandemic," says Clarence Johnson, CEO of Somnetics. "As a medical device manufacturer, we understand the importance these devices can play in helping COVID-19 patients with breathing insufficiency. We are working as fast as possible to boost production and convert our CPAP machines to help prevent a nationwide shortage of ventilators in healthcare settings." As the healthcare system nationwide braces itself for a potential surge of COVID-19 patients, experts predict there will be a shortage of critically needed mechanical ventilators. New York City alone estimates they will need an additional 30,000 units to treat the expected increase in patients. Although ventilator manufacturers have increased production of these devices, they are not expected to meet the surging demand. Somnetics has responded to these concerns by taking steps to repurpose its Transcend CPAP machines into respiratory support devices to assist patients that have trouble breathing as a result of the COVID-19 virus. Their engineers are working on a solution, including designing a new breathing circuit to help control aerosolization of virus particles to protect healthcare workers. The U.S. federal government has cleared the FDA to issue the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), dated March 24, 2020, which authorizes the emergency use of continuous positive airway pressure machines (CPAPs) like those Somnetics is repurposing in healthcare settings to treat patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Somnetics is working within the FDA EUA guidelines to produce as many as possible before a large increase in COVID-19 outbreaks occur across the U.S. "Our healthcare professionals are on the frontlines of this battle, but resources are already running low. We are working quickly to provide another tool doctors can use in this fight to help patients breathe. If our company can manufacture devices that can help reduce the strain on the critical ventilator supply, we will certainly do all we can to help," said Johnson. The U.S. already has over 530,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, which have resulted in about 20,500 deaths so far. Those numbers are expected to peak in the coming months, which will put a strain on the already stretched healthcare community. Ventilators are essential in the fight against COVID-19, a respiratory illness that affects the lungs and can cause severe breathing issues in patients. About Somnetics International, Inc. Somnetics International, Inc. is a privately held medical device company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is an emerging leader in customer-driven design, development and production of respiratory medical devices to treat sleep apnea and related issues. Somnetics' mission is focused on integrating technology, customer input and employee creativity to provide innovative, high-quality products that improve quality of life for people with respiratory disorders. Its leading CPAP machine Transcend received the 2011 Medtrade Innovation Award, the 2012 Medtrade Spring Provider's Choice Award, and the 2012 Best Practices Award for Product Differentiation in the Sleep Disordered Breathing market from Frost & Sullivan. Somnetics received FDA market clearance for the Transcend 365 CPAP machine in November 2018 and CE Mark in May 2018. Media Contact Allison Bordewick 651-621-1802 [email protected] SOURCE Somnetics International, Inc. The government will extend all possible support to the industry for the revival of economic activities hit by COVID-19, Union minister VK Singh said on Monday New Delhi: The government will extend all possible support to the industry for the revival of economic activities hit by COVID-19, Union minister VK Singh said on Monday. The Minister of State for Roads, Transport and Highways was addressing about 100 participants in a webinar on logistics issues arising due to Covid -19, organised by PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We need to accept that the present time is not normal and hence we need to act wisely and patiently in overcoming the hurdles caused by the spread of Covid-19 and not take hasty decisions as the same will lead to difficult times which will be difficult to manage," Singh said. He urged the Chamber to come up with effective suggestions on a smoother and faster revival of economic activities and assured that the government will surely act on them and support the trade and industry in its welfare and growth. Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak "The government has done extensive meetings with various industry bodies to come out with a revival plan, as not only the industry but also the Prime Minister is concerned over the halt on the economic activities and the government is doing its best to frame a model to restart the economic activities in the country," he said. DK Aggarwal, President PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry suggested that economic activities be started in the 400 districts which have not been impacted by Covid-19 with the complete observation of precautions, underlined by the WHO and the government. "We urge the government to provide a relief package of at least 5 percent of India's GDP which comes to a total of Rs 11 lakh crore. Out of Rs 11 lakh crore the government has already provided a stimulus package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore and India's trade and industry awaits the relief package of remaining around Rs 9 lakh crore," Aggarwal said. Tata Motors on Monday launched its online sales platform 'Click to Drive' offering end-to-end full digital sales experience enabling customers to buy its passenger vehicles with a click of a button New Delhi: Tata Motors on Monday launched its online sales platform 'Click to Drive' offering end-to-end full digital sales experience enabling customers to buy its passenger vehicles with a click of a button. This platform has been integrated with all Tata Motors dealers from more than 750 outlets across the country and will also offer vehicle home delivery for customers at a later date, the company said in a statement. Customers can register through the 'Click to Drive' website and select a product of choice from the Tata Motors' passenger vehicle portfolio with the assistance of a video brochure that helps customers discover each car and its features, it added. Once a vehicle is selected, customer can then select the nearest or preferred dealer from any of the company's over 750 outlets across the country, for either home delivery or click and collect at the dealership, at a later date. The company said customers can pay booking amount online, post which order confirmation will be sent by e-mail and they would be guided on the step-by-step buying journey by the Tata Motors call centre and a sales consultant from their preferred dealership. Customers can also avail of financing and exchange services, details on price quotes and offers on the Tata Motors product range online, it said. The entire sales process is completed virtually using online communication tools such as e-mails, WhatsApp and video calls, it added. Saudi Arabia cut most of its crude pricing as the coronavirus hammers oil demand - a clear sign that the kingdom seeks to keep its barrels competitive after producers agreed to coordinate global cuts in output. State-run Saudi Aramco reduced official selling prices for May exports to Asia and the Mediterranean region, according to a price list seen by Bloomberg. The world's biggest exporter raised pricing to the U.S. and trimmed discounts for some barrels to northwest Europe. Lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are choking demand for fuel amid efforts to stop the pandemic. Led by Saudi Arabia, OPEC+ producers agreed Sunday night to slash oil output by nearly a 10th to help remove excess supply. Yet, even this historic global intervention will only partly offset the estimated loss in crude demand. By decreasing its official selling prices to Asia for a second consecutive month, Aramco is discounting its oil to some of the lowest levels in at least two decades. Asia is Aramco's biggest market, indicating that the producer is seeking to defend its share of sales in the region even as it trims output. "The global market remains very oversupplied," said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. "Aramco is still prepared to fight for its market share. While the U.S. hike is symbolic, the real challenge, in terms of maintaining market share, can be seen through the lower OSP to Asia." With barrels getting more expensive for buyers in the U.S. and northwestern Europe, Russia's backyard when it comes to crude sales, Aramco may look to sell less oil there after Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin helped broker the deal aimed at saving their oil industries. Pricier Saudi crude in the U.S. is "designed to keep Trump happy," Hansen said. Saudi Arabia, which has been pumping at a record pace this month, took steps to end the oil-price war it unleashed in March by bringing producers and consumers together to make unprecedented supply cuts. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners such as Russia agreed in principle last week to slash production, and they finally settled Sunday on a collective reduction of 9.7 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia and Russia both pledged to reduce crude production to about 8.5 million barrels a day each, from nominal starting levels of 11 million barrels a day. The U.S., Canada and other Group of 20 nations will make additional reductions. Crude prices are too low for some producers to keep pumping. The Saudi state producer cut its official selling price for flagship Arab Light crude to buyers in Asia by $4.20 a barrel, to a discount of $7.30 versus the Middle East benchmark. That's deeper than eight traders and refiners in a Bloomberg survey in late March said they expected, predicting a median reduction of about $3.60. The actual reductions in differentials for Asia ranged from $2.95 a barrel to as much as $5.50, depending on the type of crude, following deep cuts for April sales. U.S. buyers, however, will see May crude differentials increase by between $2.50 a barrel for Arab Extra Light crude and $4.20 for the Heavy grade, according to the price list. Aramco is also raising pricing on its Medium and Heavy crudes to Asia by $2 each for buyers in northwestern Europe, where those barrels compete with Russia Urals crude. Aramco delayed the pricing announcement four times as it waited for the producer meetings to convene and as deliberations dragged on over the Easter weekend. Your browser does not support the audio element. The deputy chairman of a district-level Peoples Council in the southern Vietnamese province of Binh Phuoc has been required to temporarily stop work after he was filmed furiously resisting a team of officers in charge of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prevention and control. The provincial Party Committee has agreed to suspend Luu Van Thanh, deputy chairman of the Peoples Council in Hoi Quan District. Thanh was previously caught on camera refusing to cooperate with a team of officers stationed at a local COVID-19 control post on April 3. He was driving his car in Binh Long Town, Binh Phuoc Province when he was pulled over by the officers at the checkpoint. Thanh aggressively argued with the officers, at one time pounding his hand on a table and pointing at them, despite the intervention of a woman who was traveling with him, according to footage of the confrontation. In his account of the incident, Thanh stated he had explained to the officers that he was a local resident and that his house was located near the checkpoint, rendering the inspection unnecessary. However, the officers did not let him leave, which infuriated Thanh. Thanh said he lost his temper and was not in control of his actions. I have watched the video and admit I was in the wrong. I regret my actions and would like to extend an apology to the officers at the checkpoint, he wrote in his report. Nguyen Van Loi, secretary of the Binh Phuoc Party Committee, asserted that Thanhs behavior was unacceptable and he must be disciplined for it. The entire country is strictly following the governments directive on fighting the COVID-19 epidemic. There must be no exception, Loi stated. The novel coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, has infected over 1.85 million people and killed more than 114,200 globally as of Monday morning, according to Ministry of Health statistics. Vietnam has confirmed 262 COVID-19 cases in total, with 144 having recovered. The country has yet to record a death from the disease. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued a directive on March 31 ordering nationwide implementation of social distancing from April 1 to 15 to curb the epidemic. It remains unclear whether the social distancing period will be extended after April 15. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The Delhi government on Sunday decided to deploy postgraduate students of Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) for COVID-19 duty in all districts of the city. According to an official, the move comes after Chief Secretary Vijay Dev sought the strengthening of efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus in all the districts of the national capital. A team of 10 students (2019-22 batch) will be deployed along with each district magistrate. For latest updates on coronavirus outbreak, click here In its order, the health department has asked the dean of MAMC to ask PG students to report to chief district medical officers under the intimation to the respective district magistrate. Earlier in the day, the government also decided to make accommodation arrangements for those undergoing COVID-19 tests until their reports are out. Over 740 rooms have been booked at various hotels, government flats in the national capital to lodge people till their corona reports come, an official said. The number of coronavirus cases in the national capital mounted to 1154 on Sunday, with 85 fresh cases and five deaths being reported in a day. King Mohammed VI has proposed the launch of an initiative by African Heads of State aimed at establishing an operational framework in order to support African countries in the various phases of the coronavirus pandemic management. The Sovereign made the proposal during phone talks he held this Monday with presidents of Cote dIvoire Alassane Dramane Ouattara, and of Senegal Macky Sall. The talks focused on the alarming development of the Covid-19 pandemic on the African continent, the royal Office said in a statement. During these talks, King Mohammed VI proposed the launch of an initiative by African Heads of State aimed at establishing an operational framework in order to support African countries in the different phases of pandemic management, the statement added. It is a pragmatic and action-oriented initiative, allowing the sharing of experiences and good practices, to cope with the health, economic and social impact of the pandemic, the Royal Office said. The sweet scent of laundry soap mixes with harsh disinfectant as Laverne Martinez, wearing two masks and a pair of gloves, sanitizes the washing machines at the Spin Cycle Coin Laundry on Atrisco NW. She sprays and scrubs each handle, knob and button, determined not to take any chances as the novel coronavirus continues to spread through the state. I dont want to work at a scary time like this, but I have to support myself, Martinez said. I work a split shift so I can disinfect everything each morning and evening. Martinez said she feels stressed as an essential worker whose job means returning each day to a highly-trafficked location. She lives with her 73-year-old father and babysits her grandchildren, ages 7, 4 and 3, on the weekends. Each day before I go home I spray myself with Lysol, Martinez said. I take my shoes off at the door and put my clothes straight into the laundry. For weeks, New Mexico has urged its citizens to stay home to curb the spread of COVID-19. On March 18, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered restaurants to switch to takeout or delivery. Less than a week later, the governor ordered a statewide closure of non-essential businesses. Construction and farm work got the green light, but indoor shopping malls and call centers did not. On April 6, the governor extended those closures to at least May 1, and car dealerships and liquor stores joined the club of no in-person business. Hotels were ordered to not exceed 25% of their capacity, down from the original 50% limit. New Mexicans, I implore you to honor your social contract with your state, Gov. Lujan Grisham tweeted on April 6. These orders are not friendly suggestions; heed them and protect yourselves, your families and your communities. Its yourself and your loved ones that you put at risk when you do not practice social distancing. Many New Mexicans have adjusted to working remotely from laptops and phones. But workers at essential businesses venture out each day, donning masks and gloves to ensure that the needs of the public are met during a virus outbreak that continues to claim lives and jobs. Trash collector Adrian Gurule drives a garbage truck for the City of Albuquerque. He collects trash from commercial businesses and apartment complexes, and has noticed a drastic drop in business along his route. Im lucky because Im pretty isolated with my job, Gurule said. But my wife works at a nursing home, and she is worried that she could get sick or get others sick. Gurule and other drivers were given masks and hand sanitizer. He knows of some cities that are providing essential workers with hazard pay during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Gurule said he is just appreciative to have a job at a time when layoffs and furloughs have become the norm. The city is and all of us are doing the best they can, he said. We just have to go with the flow and try to be safe, so that we can eventually get back to normal. Grocers Grocery stores have emerged as a face of the publics pandemic response, as employees try to control the chaos of frantic customers combing shelves for cleaning products, fresh food and toilet paper. Lujan Grisham has ordered essential retailers and grocery stores to limit customers inside their stores to no more than 20% of their maximum occupancy. At the Albertsons Market on Rio Bravo SW, nearly everyone wears a mask. Bright red signs remind shoppers to stay six feet away from other customers. An employee counts customers entering the store to ensure compliance with the state occupancy order. Shopping carts are sanitized after each use, and plastic shields now separate customers from cashiers at the checkout lines. Jake Sandoval, the stores produce manager, alternates between stocking fruits and vegetables and cleaning produce crates. Social distance: 6 feet, reads a yellow sticker on his black apron. We have had to get used to a lot, and looking forward, these are probably things well have to be doing for months, Sandoval said. We are constantly disinfecting products, carts and shelves. Keeping our employees and customers safe, its a lot of work. Everyone is anxious and worried. But once we survive this, we can handle anything. Store director Steven Luna said the community has generously donated masks and gloves for employees. Before the store opens at 7 a.m., the grocery store workers stand outside talking to customers, reminding them of purchase limits and informing them what products are available. Weve really tried to stay ahead of the curve, Luna said. When this first happened, we brought everybody in and said, Okay, we dont really know what to expect. Theres no crystal ball. But we do know this could change day to day, so we need to maintain normalcy for our employees and our customers. Im very proud of our team. They are on the frontline. Some of them were working 60-hour weeks when things first started getting serious here. Many essential workers were already in the business of keeping people healthy before the pandemic upended daily life. Community drugstore Mona Ghattas, owner of Durans Central Pharmacy, said she and her staff are adjusting to a new normal. We locked our doors early on, because I was concerned for our staff, Ghattas said. It is labor intensive to keep up with curbside pickup and regular delivery of prescriptions. As far as gloves and masks, we have just enough for our staff right now. We do have lots of natural and immune supplement items. Durans a neighborhood drugstore that has a restaurant with an old-fashioned soda fountain and a gift shop, as well as a pharmacy counter is one of the multi-faceted businesses that has been affected in different ways by the states public health orders. The restaurant has pivoted to take-out orders. Items in the gift shop may soon be available online. Ghattas, who washes her hands constantly and cleans her fabric mask each day, said she is concerned for older pharmacists who may be at-risk of contracting the virus. Especially in some rural areas of our state, these pharmacists may be the only people with their doors open providing prescriptions, so if something happens to them, that could be devastating, she said. We have a lot of shut-ins and elderly people who really need these critical medications, and we are committed to helping them. Laundry attendant As unemployment numbers skyrocket and New Mexicans adjust to staying home, workers at the states essential businesses will continue to do their jobs, if at a safe distance. For Laverne Martinez at the laundromat, the national shortage of personal protective equipment meant she had to find her own masks and gloves to wear to work. Im stressed and scared, mainly for my family, she said. Nobody really knows about the laundry lady, but I know that what Im doing is helping people. Six people have confessed on television to planting bombs in and around Damascus, on the instructions of terrorists based in Jordan writes SANA. The Syrian security forces have arrested the perpetrators of the recent terrorist attacks that targeted several cars and military targets in and around the capital Damascus. In their confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV on Saturday evening, the six terrorists, including a woman, confessed to carrying out terrorist explosions with explosive devices targeting cars in the streets of Damascus and its countryside in exchange for sums of money from their operators who were encouraging them to be agents and implementers of the plans of the enemies of Syria and its people. The terrorists are: Issa Iyad Abbas, Mahmoud Mohamed al-Khateeb, Hamza Ahmad al-Masri and Hussam al-Halak. All the terrorists, whose ages range from 18 to 20 years, were born in the city of Kanaker, south of Damascus, while Ali Ahmad al-Atrash, 22 years, is from Muadamiyat al-Sham.The terrorist Fatmeh Bakash, from Darayya, south of Damascus, lived in the city of Jasem in the southern province of Daraa. They admitted that their operator is a person named Abu Ashur, a known terrorist in the countryside of Quneitra and Damascus and was the head of the engineering department of the so-called Liwa al-Furqan terrorist organization, whose leader is the terrorist Mohammed Majed al-Khatib. Khatib is currently in Jordan and works in the MOC operations room which includes, British, American, Israeli and Saudi officers, where operations for the southern region of Syria have been planned since the beginning of the war in 2011. Recruited terrorists said that their young age facilitated their passage through military checkpoints without review, but sometimes they had to get off the bus before the checkpoint and walk on foot to prevent explosive detection devices from discovering the bombs that were carried in black bags. At the beginning of their missions, they put four kilograms of C4 explosives in military checkpoints, and then they were asked to repeatedly place small bombs equipped with magnets and activated when the vehicles engine was turned on. They indicated that before placing the bombs they took photos of the vehicles and sent them to Abu Ashur by Telegram or Whatsapp to get the green light, and they also had to film the explosion. They admitted to being the authors of all the attacks that took place in Mezzah, Sabee Bahrat, Baramkeh, al-Zahera, al-Midan in Damascus, and in the city of Qatana south of Damascus. The terrorists clarified that on three occasions the bombs they placed did not detonate and the next day they had to check the bombs and reactivate or replace them. Their last attempt, according to their confessions, was to plant a bomb in the car of an army officer in Qatana town, but the device did not explode. The terrorists received 20,000 to 25,000 Syrian pounds for each bomb placed, in addition to promises to leave the country for Germany. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. With thanks from the Syrian president, the UAE has called on the UN to provide assistance in ensuring a ceasefire in Syria, to aid efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus reports Hashtag Syria. The United Arab Emirates stressed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Syria, calling for the country to be assisted in overcoming the health crisis that the whole world is undergoing. The UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, said in a tweet that he has discussed with the UN Special Envoy, Geir Pedersen, the necessity for implementing a ceasefire in Syria, as well as finding means to help it amid the coronavirus crisis. Gargash also praised the UN for its appreciation of the aid provided by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed to Syria, stressing the UAEs support for the organization in its vital missions. On Mar. 27, 2020, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad received a phone call from the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, during which they discussed the developments and repercussions of the spread of the coronavirus in the region and the world and the precautionary measures taken in both countries to address the crisis. During the call, bin Zayed stressed the UAEs support for Syria and its people in these exceptional circumstances and the possibility of helping them to overcome this situation, noting that, the brotherly Arab Syria will not remain alone in these delicate and critical circumstances. For his part, Assad welcomed the initiative of bin Zayed, appreciating the stance of the United Arab Emirates in light of the current situation and amid this emerging challenge, and further welcomed cooperation during this period. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Two workers were killed and three others injured in an explosion at a chemical plant of a private firm near here in Maharashtra's Palghar district on Monday, the company said. The company, GalaxySurfactants, claimed there was no fire after the blast, as stated by a civic official earlier, and added there were not more than 67 employees at the plant in the Tarapur MIDC area when the incident occurred. In a statement, GalaxySurfactants said the blast took place in a small feed tank and its cause was being ascertained. "An unfortunate incident happened today at our Tarapur M-3 plant wherein there was a blast in the small intermediate feed tank. This led to two fatalities and threeinjuries. "Our safety audits are in process of ascertaining the root cause of the blast even as we are cooperating with relevant authorities," according to the statement. This is the first time an incident of such magnitude has occurred at Galaxy, it said. "We are extending support, sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims. There was no fire and we are doing everything that is required to ensure the well-being of the victims and all the workers present at our M-3 site," the company said. The blast took place around noon and the injured were rushed to hospital, district disaster control cell chief Vivekananda Kadam said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A nursing home in Reno where a coronavirus outbreak claimed the lives of two people reportedly told its health care workers that they are to reuse their surgical masks by flipping them inside out. The Lakeside Health and Wellness assisted living center sent a letter to its nursing staff on March 26 instructing them to store their masks overnight in a paper bag and then re-wear them inside out on the second day. When returning the next day that you are scheduled, you will use the same mask as the prior shift, by turning it inside out and wearing it through your shift, the letter obtained by the Reno Gazette Journal said. That mask will then be discarded at the end of your 2-days. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines state that the outside surface of a surgical mask should be considered contaminated and that health care workers are not to come into contact with it. The Lakeside Health and Wellness assisted living center sent a letter to its nursing staff on March 26 instructing them to store their masks overnight in a paper bag and then re-wear them inside out on the second day The facility asked its employees to sign and date the letter so as to indicate that they would adhere to the mask guideline. One nursing assistant who spoke to the Gazette said she couldnt believe it when she saw the letter. That doesnt make sense to me, she said. You're putting the exposed side back on your face. Of course I didn't turn it inside out. That's just common sense. DailyMail.com has reached out to the nursing home for comment. State health officials are investigating the nursing home as well as at least 19 other assisted living facilities after suspected coronavirus outbreaks affected residents and staff there. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines state that the outside surface of a surgical mask should be considered contaminated and that health care workers are not to come into contact with it The nurse who was interviewed by the Gazette Journal said she is staying in a hotel for a 14-day quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19 patients and co-workers. Im actually by myself in a hotel room so I dont expose my family, she said. I have a 3-year-old. The nurse said that she is concerned because she has been suffering from a headache and a runny nose. She said that those are the same symptoms that her co-workers complained of before testing positive for COVID-19. The nurse said that her boss told her on March 26 that one of her patients was infected with coronavirus. We are hands on care with the patients, she said. We help them walk. We bathe them, brush their teeth, change their briefs. We feed them. After the first patient tested positive, the facility handed out gowns and masks to staff members so that they could wear them when interacting with patients. But as of last week, the nursing home ran out of gowns. We were taking care of our sick patients using the regular hospital gowns, the patient gowns, she said. The nurse said she has no plans to return to work at the facility. The Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health on Monday said that there have been 36 confirmed cases of coronavirus infecting people at the Reno facility. In total, Nevada authorities have reported 2,836 cases of COVID-19. Of those, 114 people have died. Lakeside Health and Wellness is a 189-bed facility that offers 24-hour nursing care as well as long-term and short-term rehabilitation and therapy services, according to its web site. The nursing home issued a statement to Fox 11 TV saying: We understand what difficult and uncertain times these are for everyone. As the news surrounding the development and spread of COVID-19 changes daily, it is our top priority to be prepared and equipped to safely care for your loved one. We continue to closely monitor and follow the guidance issued by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal, state and local health authorities. Over the course of the past several weeks we have implemented enhanced infection control practices and have restricted access to the facility to only essential personnel in an effort to prevent and reduce the risk of the spread of respiratory infections, such as COVID-19. Our housekeeping staff continues to intently focus on sanitizing and deep cleaning our facility. All staff is practicing hand hygiene compliance and we strongly encourage all of our residents to do the same. We continue to educate and remind our staff regarding the appropriate use of personal protective equipment (PPE). We understand the concern that there is a shortage of PPE throughout the country and we are working tirelessly with vendors and suppliers to make sure we have the appropriate equipment to safely care for your loved ones. At this time, social visitors are not permitted in the facility. We will make every effort to update you regularly on the status of your loved ones condition. We also encourage you to continue communicating with your loved one through phone, text, email, or FaceTime. Please call us if you need help facilitating communications. Essential personnel that provide direct care and essential services to our residents are permitted in the facility. Each individual is screened daily for signs or symptoms of illness prior to entering the facility. We thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we navigate through this challenging time. If you have any questions, please dont hesitate to contact us. A local school is playing its part in the fight against the coronavirus Covid-19 by facilitating the production of vital PPE equipment for healthcare staff. Colaiste Phobal Ros Cre says it is "delighted" to facilitate the making of visors / faceshields that can be used by frontline workers. The school, which is attended by students from Laois, came on board with St Ailbes School in Tipperary town to help frontline workers. Dympna Nolan and Sandra Farrell have set up fundraising efforts to help ensure we can provide as much PPE as possible. Mr Haugh, the technology teacher in the school, has worked tirelessly in making the visors / faceshields. To date more than 1500 have been made and have been distributed to numerous hospitals, nursing homes, services and individuals all over the midlands. "People have been very generous donating to the fundraising page which has allowed for the sourcing of the much needed materials to make them," said the school. If you know of any front line workers who could use the visors/faceshields please get in touch via the school Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Colaiste-Phobal-Ros-Cre) the school website (https://www.cpr.ie/) or by emailing: ColaistePhobal@tipperaryetb.ie. "We are delighted to be part of this Tipperary schools initiative and playing our part in these difficult times," said the school. Notice from Principal The Government has announced that the JC will be replaced by classroom-based tests and the LC postponed until July/August - with remaining practicals and project work deadlines extended to late July. Over the coming days and weeks, the logistics of how this will be managed will come to light - Ill keep you all informed as soon as I get any information! This is a very difficult time for staff and especially for our exam students - this is an unprecedented situation - we will get through it in the best and most considerate way possible. Stay safe and Happy Easter. Beir beannacht. Mr. O Connor. NEW YORK, April 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. ("ServiceMaster" or the "Company") (NYSE: SERV). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 7980. The investigation concerns whether ServiceMaster and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices. [Click here for information about joining the class action] On October 22, 2019, ServiceMaster announced disappointing preliminary financial results for the third quarter of 2019, having missed both revenue and earnings estimates. ServiceMaster also gave downward adjusted EBITDA guidance of $415 to $425 million, down from $435 to $445 million. The Company's press release attributed the disappointing results partly to "termite damage claims arising primarily from Formosan termite activity," primarily in Mobile, Alabama. ServiceMaster further stated that this had been a known issue, the Company has taken mitigating measures "starting in 2018." Finally, ServiceMaster announced the sudden departure of Matthew J. Stevenson from his role as President of Terminix Residential. On these announcements, ServiceMaster's stock price fell $11.44 per share, or 20.38%, to close at $44.70 per share on October 22, 2019. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com 888-476-6529 ext. 9980 Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is a member and former chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission. Contact her at 1mbjones@nwcable.net. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 21:32:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close John Jabbour, the representative of World Health Organization (WHO) in Egypt, speaks during a televised press conference in Cairo, Egypt, April 13, 2020. The representative of WHO in Egypt said Monday that Egypt has implemented strong responsive measures to fight the coronavirus epidemic. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa) CAIRO, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The representative of World Health Organization in Egypt said Monday that Egypt has implemented strong responsive measures to fight the coronavirus epidemic. In a televised press conference, John Jabbour warned, "if Egyptians do not follow the government's instructions, the situation will take a turn that doesn't come in the favor of anyone." He affirmed that the number of the infected cases might be underestimated as a result of the slight symptoms that may accompany the infection, urging "very few people should conduct the test to save time and tools for the real cases." He asserted that nearly 85 percent of cases in Egypt don't require medication to deal with the illness. Accordingly, some cases could not be detected or discovered. "There might be more COVID-19 cases than the official numbers suggest," he said emphasizing the need for mass testing. He reiterated that 100 percent of the deaths in Egypt have been suffering chronical diseases. He commended on the government's efforts to distribute resources to those who are at risk due to economic insecurity or to health care workers who are confronting the virus. "Egypt is paying great attention to its citizens' health through launching various key initiatives," Jabbour added. He expected the coronavirus crisis to continue until a vaccine is developed and widely distributed. "There are ongoing experimental trials for developing the vaccine which won't happen soon," he noted. He added the people should deal with pet as humans regarding the issues of cleaning, noting abandoning the pets in the street isn't convenient nor human. Egypt's Health Ministry announced 126 new coronavirus cases and 13 new fatalities on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections to 2,065 so far and the number of deaths to 159. The Delhi government will implement odd-even rules in all wholesale markets in the city, under which traders will sell vegetables on alternate days, development minister Gopal Rai said on Monday. The minister said that the government has also decided to stagger the timings for the sale of vegetables and fruits in these 'mandis' to ensure social distancing. "Vegetables will be sold from 6 am to 11 am and fruits from 2 pm to 6pm in all wholesale markets in Delhi," Rai said, adding that the decisions were taken at a high-level meeting chaired by him. There are five major wholesale vegetable and fruit markets in the national capital, including the Azadpur mandi, the Ghazipur mandi and the Okhla mandi. Also, there two wholesale 'anaj mandis' (wheat markets) -- Najafgarh and Narela. As per the odd-even rule, sheds, under which hundreds of traders sell vegetables, will be allowed to operate on alternate days according to their numbers, Rai said. The minister also informed that the Delhi government has formed four special task forces to ensure effective social distancing in the mandis in view of the COVID-19 outbreak. The task forces will randomly visit the markets and take strict action against officials concerned if social distancing norms are violated, he added. Rai said such steps were necessary to arrest the spread of COVID-19 as these wholesale markets see is a major footfall of traders and visitors. The total number of coronavirus cases in the national capital stood at 1,154 on Sunday. WASHINGTON - The pain was going to be worth it. Easter Brown opened her mouth as wide as she could as a dentist yanked out the seven teeth she had left. At 77 years old, she was finally going to get a full set of dentures. She went home toothless that day in February and waited for the call saying hew new smile had arrived. But when her phone rang in March, Brown was told that her dental clinic was almost completely shutting down. The risk of dentists and patients spreading the novel coronavirus was just too high. They promised Brown would get her dentures when the clinic reopened. They just weren't sure when that would be. Ever since, Brown - already at a higher risk because of age and asthma, already enduring a newly isolated life - has been talking and chewing with only her gums. Her pain is shared by dental patients across the country, who are stuck in yet another consequence of the worsening pandemic. In March, the American Dental Association (ADA) recommended that all dentistry practices close for everything except emergencies. The organization realized that the most basic routines of dentistry, from close contact with mouths to the water-spraying tools that send fluids flying, were suddenly filled with risk. Because so many coronavirus carriers lack symptoms, it is impossible to know who is safe to treat and who can safely offer that treatment. In early April, the ADA extended their recommendation until the end of the month. Now, the dental industry and its patients are beginning to grapple with just how long they can manage without each other. "Patients are not happy, dentists are not happy. Dentists are worker bees, and we're not working," said Steven Guttenberg, president of the District of Columbia Dental Society. "And when we do work, we're at greater risk of getting covid-19." The nation's 200,000 dentists are deferring mortgages, applying for loans and laying off staff, desperate to save their practices. Their patients are calling in similar states of panic, with chipped teeth, decaying molars and receding gums, their aching exacerbated by free time and dread. Together, they are navigating a question becoming only trickier to answer as the virus spreads: When every interaction is a possible exposure, what counts as an emergency? Every morning, Brown opens a fridge full of food soft enough for her gums. She picks two eggs from their carton and boils water for her Quaker Oats. She has lived in her apartment since 1973. In her living room, there are five photos of President Barack Obama. In her bedroom, two more. He has become, in these weeks of quarantine, her closest companion. When her breakfast is ready, she scoops it up in little bites, like she once did feeding her three children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. When she was a child, she picked cotton beside her sharecropper father starting at 9 years old. In North Carolina, she wasn't allowed to go to school with white kids or go to their movie theater or eat their food. But when she first moved to the District, she worked for a white family. She had a husband and a record store, though neither lasted long. Instead she spent her years working in cafeterias of government buildings, including, for seven years, the Old Executive Office Building beside the White House. She was there on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the breakfast preparation was interrupted by screeching alarms and flashing lights. When she retired three years later, she received a signed photo of President George W. Bush. Now she spends her mornings watching another president handling another crisis. When it gets to be too much, she changes the channel to "General Hospital." "I have seen a whole lot in my life, but I ain't ever seen nothing like this," Brown said. Two blocks away, her dental clinic at the nonprofit So Others Might Eat (SOME), sat empty, all appointments canceled. With every patient call or referral comes a calculation: How much pain are they in? Do they have an infection? Swelling? Bleeding? The ADA has issued guidance for patients and dentists, but as a clinic that serves the city's most vulnerable people, the danger is amplified. Patients are more likely to wait to get help until they are experiencing a true emergency. They're also more likely to have other health problems that put them at a higher risk of dying from the coronavirus. "The last thing we want to do is treat one disease and give them another," said Berinna Doggett, SOME's chief clinical officer. And then comes the other calculation, the one to ensure that when the pandemic is over, Brown and other patients will have a clinic to come back to. Without Medicaid reimbursements, without the people who pay the sliding-scale fee, how long can the clinic stay open? SOME has an entire nonprofit behind it. But three-quarters of dentists in the U.S. are small-business owners, whose income depends on the number of patients they see. Raha Yousefi, who owns a general dentistry practice and a boutique periodontal firm in Washington, treated up to 20 patients some days. Now, there are zero. And zero income. To pay the mortgages on her practices and the loans on her equipment, she furloughed dentists, dental assistants, hygienists and receptionists, telling them she'd do all she could to hire them back. Her husband, the practice's business manager, applied for economic disaster loans. She video called patients and showed them how to take their own stitches out. She emailed others, telling them how much she missed them. "That's what I keep thinking about," Yousefi said. "When this is all over, can I still hug my patients?" She and other Washington dentists keep calling Guttenberg with the same question: "What do we do?" He has no obvious answers or timeline, only requests. If they have extra personal protective equipment, donate it to a local hospital. And if they are willing, sign up to volunteer at those hospitals as backup medical professionals for when the worst of the pandemic comes. Another morning, and Brown opens her fridge again, noticing what's left. Her children offer to go out and get what she needs. She's on the board of We Are Family, a volunteer network that, before the pandemic, organized visits to more than 800 senior citizens in the Washington. Now volunteers are doing grocery runs, so the elderly don't have to put themselves at risk. But Brown, who can't go to church on Sundays or bring food to her friends or see her grandchildren, has one place left she can go. "My niece in North Carolina sent me this," she says, strapping a surgical mask with a plastic eye shield across her face. She stuffs her hands into a pair of gloves. Then she rolls her shopping cart out the door, down the street and into the Safeway. By Lidia Kelly MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Officials in New Zealand and Australia, hailed globally for their early signs of success in combating the spread of the coronavirus, said on Monday it is too soon to start easing social distancing rules or reopening their economies. The rate of new coronavirus cases has abated significantly in both countries without straining the capacity of their health systems. New Zealand has enforced a wide-ranging lockdown and Australia is also tightly restricting many activities. New Zealand recorded its fifth death due to coronavirus on Monday, but new confirmed cases in the Pacific nation of about 5 million rose only by 15, a sixth of what was seen in early April, bringing the total of cases to 1,064. According to Australia's health ministry, the number of new confirmed cases rose on Monday by 33, the slowest rate in a month and less than a tenth seen two weeks ago. Australia has now recorded 6,322 cases, with 61 deaths. Health Minister Greg Hunt said it was too soon to relax restrictions despite the flattening in the curve of cases."Now is the time to stay the course, to continue with these, self-isolation and social distancing," Hunt said in televised briefing. "These are producing real reductions in the rate of growth." Australia deployed its toughest crackdown yet over the long Easter holiday weekend, with helicopters, police checkpoints and hefty fines used to deter people from breaking a travel ban or breaching public gathering rules. Australia's Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio the government may start making decisions only "in the coming weeks" about what restrictions, if any, can be relaxed. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said a decision on whether to extend the nationwide shutdown and state of national emergency, declared in late March, will be made on April 20. "Our number of cases may be small, but that doesn't mean we have yet been successful in hunting this virus down," Ardern said. Story continues With the economies of both countries taking a severe hit, governments are spending heavily on cushioning the impact. In Australia, which has already pledged spending of more than 10% of its annual gross domestic product to help the economy, the government was in talks over the weekend with top carriers Qantas Airways Ltd and Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd about subsidising domestic flights. New Zealand's Ardern said her government will be issuing guidance next week on the economy's ability to recover. "We are very aware of the need to get our economy running as soon as possible," she said. (Reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Lincoln Feast.) Donald Trump hit out at Dr Anthony Fauci Sunday night by retweeting a #FireFauci hashtag after the nation's top immunologist said his recommendation for a US shut down in February was ignored. The President also wrote that he had banned flights from China 'long before people spoke up', seemingly in response to the criticism. Trump retweeted a post from former congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine who wrote: 'Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. 'Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci.' Scroll down for video President Donald Trump hit out at at Dr Anthony Fauci by retweeting the #FireFauci hashtag (pictured) Sunday night, just hours after the nation's top immunologist said he received a lot of pushback for recommending a United States shutdown in February Trump's (right) apparent dig at Fauci (left) came just hours after the doctor suggested Sunday morning that more lives could have been saved if Trump had initiated a coronavirus shutdown earlier than mid-March Trump says Health Secretary Alex Azar didn't warn him about coronavirus President Donald Trump has claimed that US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar did not warn him abut coronavirus until after he had banned planes from China. In a tweet Sunday night, Trump said 'I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so. @SecAzar told me nothing until later'. Trump imposed the travel ban on January 31. However, it has been reported that Azar briefed him on January 18 while the President was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida - but Trump kept interrupting because he was more interested in vaping measures. The President has now appeared to deny that conversation ever took place. In a series of tweets Sunday night, the president called out several people, including Dr Anthony Fauci and Azar, two top officials who say they warned Trump about the virus several weeks before his administration put out guidelines for social distancing in mid-March. First, Trump slammed The New York Times for a piece published in the newspaper on Saturday claiming the president repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and had been warned about the magnitude of the virus multiple times by top White House officials. He then claimed that Azar told him nothing until after the ban on flights from China. Word of the virus was included in several of the president's intelligence briefings, but Trump wasn't fully briefed on the threat until Azar called with an update on January 18 while the president was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump reportedly spent much of the conversation wanting to talk about vaping; he was considering a new policy restricting its use. At that time the president was also reportedly more concerned about his then-ongoing impeachment trial. Trump also referred to Navarro in his Sunday night tweet. It was recently revealed that Navarro issued his first grim warning in a memo dated January 29 - just days after the first COVID-19 cases were reported in the US. The president has previously claimed that he didn't receive such a memo from Navarro at the time. In January, Trump was publicly downplaying the risk that the virus posed to Americans - though weeks later he would assert that no one could have predicted the devastation seen today. Navarro penned a second memo about a month later on February 23, in which he warned that as many as two million Americans could die from the virus as it tightened its grip on the nation. Advertisement In a second tweet Trump slammed The New York Times for a piece published in the newspaper on Saturday that claims the president repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and had been warned about it multiple times by top White House officials. 'The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the paper itself. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so,' Trump tweeted. The president then wrote: ''@SecAzar told me nothing until later, and Peter Navarro memo was same as Ban (see his statements). Fake News!' the president added. Trump stated that Health Secretary Alex Azar only warned him after he had imposed the China ban at the end of January. However, it has been reported that Azar briefed him on January 18 while the President was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida - but Trump kept interrupting because he was more interested in vaping measures. Trump also said imposed the China ban after senior White House aide Peter Navarro issued a memo in January accurately outlining how bad the pandemic would be. But he failed to mention a second memo Navarro issued in February that painted an even worse picture. Trump has been accused of not taking that seriously. On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus a global health emergency while Trump held a packed campaign rally in Iowa. The next day, the Trump administration banned admittance to the US by foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the past 14 days, excluding the immediate family members of American citizens or permanent residents. Trump styled it as bold action, but continued to talk down the severity of the threat. Despite the ban, nearly 40,000 people have arrived in the US on direct flights from China since that date, according to an analysis by The New York Times. The president's dig at Fauci came just hours after the doctor suggested Sunday morning that more lives could have been saved if Trump had initiated a coronavirus shutdown earlier than mid-March. Fauci said more could have been done that would have potentially slowed the spread and lessened the ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak in the US. 'Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could've saved lives, obviously,' Fauci told CNN's State of the Union. 'No-one is going to deny that,' he continued, but added 'there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then'. There are several reports that intelligence officials told the White House that there was a virus threat coming from China as early as November, indicating that the president knew about coronavirus sooner than he let on. 'You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,' Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper. 'We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not.' 'But it is what it is,' he continued. 'We are where we are right now.' Trump also claimed that he was 'criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so' The president said that Alex Azar, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services 'told me nothing until later' During a task force meeting in the Situation Room in March, Trump proposed to Fauci that they just let the coronavirus 'wash over' the US, instead of issuing a strong federal response, according to a report from The Washington Post. Two sources familiar with the meeting told the Post that the conversation happened the same day the administration was adding Ireland and the United Kingdom to its travel restrictions. 'Why don't we let this wash over the country?' Trump asked of Fauci, the sources claimed. Trump was asking the immunologist why a 'herd immunity' was a bad idea. If the US took a 'herd immunity' approach, it would allow coronavirus to sweep across nation with the belief that those who survived would then be immune to the disease. 'Mr President, many people would die,' Fauci said, according to the two people in the meeting. Fauci (right, on CNN's State of the Union) said more could have been done that would have potentially slowed the spread and lessened the ramifications of the coronavirus outbreak in the US Trump tells governors it's their responsibility to get coronavirus 'testing programs & apparatus perfected' Trump also told governors on Sunday evening that it's their responsibility to get coronavirus testing 'perfected' after several states complained that kits provided by the White House were unusable. 'Governors, get your states testing programs & apparatus perfected,' Trump ordered in a tweet. 'Be ready, big things are happening. No excuses! 'The Federal Government is there to help. We are testing more than any country in the World. Also, gear up with Face Masks,' he continued. Trump's latest comments come days after the federal government purchased rapid coronavirus testing machines - which are able to deliver results within 15 minutes instead of days - and began distributing them across the country last week. Every state except for Alaska was given 15 machines, regardless of its population or severity of its outbreak. However, excitement among Governors who had lauded the prospect of being able to run up to 3,000 tests per day quickly dissipated shortly after the machines arrived. The frustrated parties said the machines are actually sitting idle because they weren't given enough supplies to use them, with many of the machines arriving with only 120 cartridges, enough for about 100 tests. Advertisement So far, more than 22,000 people died in the US after contracting coronavirus and there are more than 561,000 cases as of Sunday evening. Trump often lauds his response to the pandemic, praising his administration for cutting off travel from China early on in the outbreak. The president also continues to push for the reopening of the country as soon as possible to kickstart a suffering economy. Unemployment levels reached an all-time-high as more than 15 million new applications for benefits were submitted in the past few weeks as non-essential businesses shut down and several companies went through rounds of layoffs. The task force initially rolled out a 15-day plan to stop the spread, which would have been completed at the end of March if it were not extended by the administration for another 30 days until April 30. Trump set a new ideal for the country to reopen from lockdown on May 1, which some experts claim it's 'too soon' to tell and a bit optimistic. Fauci, a National Institute of Health expert on infectious diseases who serves on the White House coronavirus task force, said that he believes there could be a resurgence of the virus in the fall. 'I don't want to be the pessimistic person there is always the possibility, as that as we get into next fall, and the beginning of early winter, that we could see a rebound,' Fauci told CNN of a potential for the virus' severity to return in a few months after seeing a drop off. The administration's lockdown guidelines, and several state ordinances, have closed all non-essential businesses and push individuals only to leave the home for absolutely necessary reasons like grocery shopping or going to the doctor. There are more than 561,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the US with 22,129 deaths The lockdown also prohibits social engagements from exceeding 10 people, and some states will even fine individuals for hosting such an event. Fauci told CNN the country might be able to begin to ease up stay-at-home measures by next month, but said a 'rolling re-entry' would have to happen, claiming it's not a one size fits all approach. 'It's not going to be a light switch,' Fauci told Tapper. 'It will depend on where you are in the country.' He also pointed out that for the first time since the uptick in US cases there have been less ICU admissions in New York than the day before. 'It's started to turn a corner,' Fauci said, adding 'it's cautious optimism that we are seeing that decrease'. Disease and medical experts across the US were sounding alarm about coronavirus and Trump's slow response since January in 'Red Dawn' email chain An elite group of medical and disease experts had been sounding the alarm about coronavirus since January, as they discussed the virus' threat to America in an email chain called Red Dawn, a bombshell report revealed. Dozens of experts from government agencies, health organizations and top universities began the chain - named for the 1984 movie starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen who tried to protect their country from a foreign invasion - to discuss the rapidly spreading coronavirus, which hadn't yet overtaken the US. By late January, Dr Carter E. Mecher, a top medical adviser at the Veterans Affairs Department, wrote: 'I'm certainly no public health expert...but no matter how I look at this, it looks [to] be bad,' reported The New York Times after obtaining 80 pages of the email chain. Infectious disease expert Dr James Lawler, who worked under Obama quipped 'great understatements in history: Wuhan... "Just a bad flu season,' lumping it with Napoleon's retreat from Russia as 'a little stroll gone bad' and Hiroshima being 'a bad summer heat wave' Lawler added: 'We are making every misstep leaders initially made in table -tops at the outset of pandemic planning in 2006. We had systematically addressed all of these and had a plan that would work - and has worked in Hong Kong/Singapore' A few hours later, infectious disease expert Dr James Lawler, who worked under President Obama and George W. Bush, quipped 'great understatements in history: Wuhan... "Just a bad flu season," lumping it in with Napoleon's retreat from Russia as "a little stroll gone bad" and Hiroshima being "a bad summer heat wave."' The Times included the two emails as part of eight key messages in the chain that showed how the experts were aware of COVID-19's ever growing threat and their frustration with slow responses from both the White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The chain was started by Dr. Duane C. Caneva, the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security. He told the NYT the email chain was meant to 'provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to Covid-19.' The chain's members included people from 'the Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Homeland Security Department, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Pentagon and other federal agencies tracking the historic health emergency.' On January 28, Dr. Mecher summed up the situation as 'bad'. He noted the CDC and WHO appeared to 'behind the curve' and questioned why both institutions seemed to be downplaying the threat. He wrote: 'Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad. The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.' Dr. Mecher was already pushing for schools to close, adding: 'Now Im screaming, close the colleges and universities.' Jerome, their CEO, has been calling me a couple times a week and hes very concerned about his workforce, but realistically hes got to look at the bottom line, so hes trying to make this as painless as possible for his employees, Novak said. He told me his goal was to get everybody back to work as soon as possible. Hes in the same position as everybody else that has a business. The governors of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware said Monday that they would work together to plan for reopening the regions economies, schools and other important elements. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said that health and economic officials from the six states were starting work immediately on developing strategies for easing restrictions that have brought much of daily life to a halt. The officials, Cuomo said, would study the data, study the research, study the experience of other countries, and give us guidelines and parameters to go forward. Lets be smart, and lets be cooperative, and lets learn from one another, Cuomo said. The six states together have recorded over 300,000 confirmed virus cases, more than half of the U.S. total, and nearly 14,000 deaths, around 60% of the countrys total. The governors, all Democrats, emphasized the importance of acting in concert so that the actions of one state did not inadvertently hurt another or cause the outbreak to flare again. We can put together a system that allows our people to get back to work, Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said. Asked whether the collaboration among the states was a rebuke to the President Donald Trump, who has said the decision about businesses reopening was his to make, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said only that he was focused on making decisions based on facts and science, and he reiterated that an economic recovery was inextricable from a public health recovery. Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania echoed Murphys comments in responding to a similar question. The sequence, Wolf said, is youve got to get people healthy first, and then you can reopen the economy. The worst is over if New Yorkers remain resolute, Cuomo said. Cuomo said Monday, for the first time, that he believed the most horrific phase of the coronavirus outbreak may have passed. I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart, Cuomo said at his daily briefing. I believe we can start on the path to normalcy. But the governor wavered on the pronouncement several times. Asked a follow-up question at the briefing about whether he was confident the worst was indeed over, Cuomo said he was not. He repeated that the state was experiencing plateaus in key categories but that if New Yorkers did not continue to follow the current restrictions, the situation would worsen. The worst can be over, and it is over, unless we do something reckless, he said. And you can turn those numbers on two or three days of reckless behavior. Even if the outbreak had reached its apex, the governor said, there would be weeks of suffering to come. He noted how many people were still dying of the virus. He said the number of deaths, while basically flat, was basically flat at a horrific level of pain and grief and sorrow. Still, despite there being more than 5,000 virus-related deaths in the state in the past week and nearly 19,000 people still in hospitals, Cuomo noted that most of the main measures of the outbreaks severity were either leveling off or decreasing: The states one-day toll of 671 deaths, while still horrific, Cuomo said, was the lowest it had been in a week. The total has been below last weeks peak, 799, for the past four days. The number of intubated patients most of whom, he said, would never recover had dropped in two of the past three days. The number of newly hospitalized patients, 1,958, was the lowest it had been in two weeks. The three-day average increase in the number of hospitalized patients dropped to 85, the smallest increase to date. The number of people who tested positive for the virus Sunday, 6,337, was the lowest it has been in almost three weeks. The state has 195,031 confirmed virus cases, 106,673 of them in New York City. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have emphasized for the past several days that any return to a semblance of normal life in the city and state will proceed in phases, during which restrictions will be eased based on measurable progress against the virus. The governor said Monday that even if he were correct that the worst had passed, it could easily take 12 to 18 months for the states economy to return to normal. Over 20 NYC public schoolteachers have died of the virus. The virus has caused the deaths of at least 50 Education Department employees, including 21 teachers, in New York City, officials said Monday. The dead include Sandra Santos-Vizcaino, 54, a third-grade teacher at Public School 9 in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn, who died March 31, and Dez-Ann Romain, principal at Brooklyn Democracy Academy in the Brownsville section. She died March 23 at 36. Among the other Education Department employees who have died, 22 were paraprofessionals who provided support for children with disabilities and two were school administrators. The dead also included a guidance counselor, a member of the food staff and two employees at the departments central office. In-person classes were halted starting March 16, but teachers and principals were asked to continue to report to schools throughout that week to prepare for remote learning. Many teachers were frustrated that city and state officials had not closed schools sooner. The governor and mayor are at odds over NYCs school shutdown. De Blasio and Cuomo, who have feuded for years, continued for a third day to tussle over the mayors decision to keep New York Citys schools closed for the rest of the academic year. The mayor announced the closings Saturday, but Cuomo subsequently insisted that the final decision was his and that it was too soon to make one. We wont open schools one minute sooner than they should be opened, Cuomo said Sunday, but we wont open schools one minute later than they should be opened, either. Nobody knows what we will be doing in June, he added, in a seeming rebuke to the mayor. De Blasio reiterated in television interviews early Monday that he and the city schools chancellor, Richard A. Carranza, had the authority to keep schools closed for the citys 1.1 million students. Were not reopening schools, de Blasio said on MSNBC. It wont be safe for all the people were supposed to protect, and our job, our responsibility is to them. When asked on WPIX-TV what parents who might be confused by the mixed signals should do, he said, They should simply plan on the fact that theyll be closed. Im quite convinced that they will be, and thats the right thing to do. Cuomo also stuck to his position. In an interview Monday on The Howard Stern Show, the governor repeated that the decision should be coordinated regionally. I cant have things happen that are mistakes, he said, before suggesting that de Blasio was a local official who had stepped out of line. Virus-related hospital admissions dropped in NYC, the mayor said. The number of virus patients admitted to hospitals in New York City dropped 17% from Saturday to Sunday, de Blasio said early Monday. The mayor said that 383 people had been admitted Sunday, down from 463 the day before. In other encouraging news, de Blasio said that the number of people in intensive-care units in the citys public hospitals had also declined, although only slightly, to 835 from 857. And the percentage of people who tested positive for the virus from Saturday to Sunday had also dropped slightly. The developments came as the mayor unveiled a new public effort to track the three measures he has said must move downward consistently and in unison for New York City to lift the restrictions that have shut down the city. The measure are: the number of people suspected of having the virus who are admitted to hospitals; the number of people suspected of having the virus who are admitted to intensive care units; and the percentage of people who test positive for the virus. Im pleased to report we do see all the important indicators moving in the right direction, the mayor said. But as he has for several days, he emphasized that any change in the citys restrictions was also contingent on more widespread testing than was currently available. Other highlights from the mayors morning briefing included: The suspension of alternate-side parking rules has been extended to April 28. He called on the Rent Guidelines Board to enact a rent freeze. He urged the state to let tenants who have lost income because of the virus defer the payment of rent and repay over a 12-month period. Lets acknowledge the extent of this crisis and give tenants a way forward, he said. People who see violations of social-distancing rules will soon be able to report them by sending a photograph, along with location information, to 311. Bad weather prompts the closing of drive-thru testing sites. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Monday closed drive-thru virus testing sites because of the harsh wind and rains that were lashing the region. The New York State Health Department said Monday that it had closed all of the 10 drive-thru testing sites it operates. The sites are expected to reopen Tuesday. New Jersey closed a number of its drive-thru testing sites, including one in Holmdel. At least seven sites in Connecticut were also closed. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Prince William and Prince Harry lost their mother, Princess Diana, when they were hardly teenagers. Since then, the two men have worked hard to continue their mothers legacy long after her passing. But one royal friend, who happens to be Princess Margarets former lady in waiting, criticized the brothers for missing their mother too much yes, you read that right. Princess Diana with Prince William and Prince Harry in 1993 | Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images Princess Diana died tragically in 1997 There has been a lot of speculation behind what caused Princess Dianas fatal car accident back in 1997, though the general consensus is that her driver and bodyguard, Henri Paul, was under the influence of drugs and alcohol when he lost control of the princess car in France. Diana was in the back seat of a car driven by Paul, which was supposedly speeding in an attempt to outrun the paparazzi. Paul lost control of the vehicle as it entered the Pont de Ialma tunnel in France, where it hit the wall and then proceeded to hit one of the tunnels pillars. Diana, Fayed, and Paul all died in the crash; Fayeds bodyguard survived but required several surgeries to recover. Prince William and Prince Harry didnt handle the news well The world seemed to stop when news broke of Dianas death. Her sons were up at Balmoral, the queens vacation home in Scotland, spending some time with their grandparents when the queen received the call. It was already after midnight, and she decided shed let the boys get one last good nights sleep before she told them what had happened. William and Harry, of course, had a difficult time with the news. They stayed up at Balmoral and grieved together, and two decades later, Harry recalled in an interview how painful it was to walk behind his mothers casket as so many people watched. I dont think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances, Harry said. Prince William, Prince Harry, and Prince Charles stand together at Princess Dianas funeral in 1997. | Anwar Hussein/WireImage William and Harry have honored their mother in every way possible since her death Once their mother passed, William and Harry made it their mission to always keep her memory alive. On Harry and Meghan Markles tour to Africa last fall, Harry walked through the same mine field as his mother, more than 20 years later, to show the impact Dianas message had. Meghan and Kate, who are married to Harry and William, often wear heirlooms of Dianas to special events. Though neither woman ever met Diana, both sons believe their mother would have loved their wives. Princess Margarets former confidante says its a bit much Still, though, not everyone is happy with the way William and Harry have honored their late mother. Lady Anne Glenconnor, formerly Princess Margarets lady in waiting, said that Harry and William spend too much time going on about their mother. [The brothers] go on about their mother the whole time. I think its a bit much, Glenconnor said in an interview. Glenconnor befriended Princess Margaret when the two were young, and she remained Margarets closest confidant until her death in 2002. Most people, though, would not suggest that William and Harry speak about their mother too much. However, its interesting to know what those closest to the royal family really think. Baltimore, Md./Washington, D.C., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (CareFirst) announced it will offer a new accelerated payment program to an array of healthcare providers experiencing financial strain due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This initiative is part of CareFirsts ongoing commitment to support the communities it serves as they navigate the complexities of this public health crisis. CareFirsts combined provider-focused efforts will result in over $170 million in direct support of the healthcare delivery system during the pandemic. Cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, contributing to financial pressures across our community, including to our healthcare provider organizations and individual practices. Declines in patient visits and physicians being required to cease elective procedures during this pandemic have combined to impact many independent practices. In response to this disruption, CareFirst will continue to aid a large number of provider organizations in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia that are part of CareFirsts Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) program, as well as independent practices in certain specialty areas. To allow more providers the immediate financial means to care for patients, CareFirst is accelerating funds that would otherwise not be available during the pandemic or have been paid later in 2020 and 2021. CareFirst will offer a combination of: Advance lump-sum payments, increased fee schedules and monthly cash advances for qualifying PCMH panels; Monthly cash advances for pediatricians and rural primary care physicians who need additional assistance, independent practices in certain specialty areas, and dentists; and, Cash advances to select hospitals demonstrating need in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia. Healthcare providers are on the frontlines of this public health crisis, working to fulfill a critical need, said CareFirst CEO and President, Brian D. Pieninck. Providing quality care to members and communities throughout our region is a shared responsibility, not just related to COVID-19, but well beyond this pandemic. By providing accelerated payments and other immediate support, we hope to meaningfully mitigate the financial impact local practitioners are facing so they can continue to provide high-quality care to patients now and into the future. Providers eligible for accelerated payments should visit CareFirsts website during the week of April 13th for eligibility information and instructions for next steps. This announcement is the most recent in a series of CareFirsts ongoing efforts to rapidly address the urgent needs our local providers face as a result of COVID-19, which include: The launch of an online resource guide detailing direct payments, grants and loan opportunities available for providers and hospitals; A collaborative public-private partnership with Baltimore City and local hospitals to expand citywide capacity response to COVID-19 pandemic; Enhanced coverage and expanded reimbursement policies for virtual visits and telephonic consultations; Elimination of prior authorizations for tests or treatments that are medically necessary and consistent with CDC guidance for members diagnosed with COVID-19; Introduction of a volunteer program available for CareFirsts licensed clinicians to volunteer their services to support direct patient care and alleviate the widespread strain on provider organizations; Adjustment of several utilization management policies and practices to assist health care providers during the crisis; and, Ongoing outreach to at-risk populations so they are better prepared to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and potential healthcare support. CareFirst has also worked to proactively mitigate the financial impact this crisis is having on its members and accounts. Last month, the company implemented a premium deferment program where premiums can be deferred for up to two months with repayment spread over the balance of the members contract. Members experiencing difficulties with payment can visit CareFirsts website to learn more about how to apply for assistance. Employers should contact their broker, CareFirst representative or visit CareFirsts website. CareFirst remains committed to helping alleviate the pressure and economic hardships placed on our communities as a result of COVID-19, and continues to assess how the company can provide support to healthcare providers throughout the region. Visit CareFirsts website to remain up to date on the latest information. About CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield In its 83rd year of service, CareFirst, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, is a not-for-profit healthcare company which, through its affiliates and subsidiaries, offers a comprehensive portfolio of health insurance products and administrative services to 3.3 million individuals and employers in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. In 2019, CareFirst invested $43 million to improve overall health, and increase the accessibility, affordability, safety and quality of healthcare throughout its market areas. To learn more about CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, visit our website at www.carefirst.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Attachments R ussia might need to call in the army to help tackle the coronavirus crisis, President Vladimir Putin said, after the number of confirmed cases rose by a record daily amount on Monday. The country reported 2,558 new cases on Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 18,328. Eighteen people died overnight, pushing the death toll to 148. Though the number is rising, the number of deaths remains much lower than other countries, such as the United States and Italy. Russia's President Vladimir Putin warned the army might need to be called in to help battle the Covid-19 outbreak / Getty Images Moscow, the worst-hit area, and several other regions have imposed a lockdown, ordering residents to stay at home except to buy food, seek urgent medical treatment, take out the rubbish, or go to work if absolutely necessary. Putin told officials at a televised meeting held by video link to consider using the army to help tackle the crisis, noting how it had sent doctors and medical equipment to Italy and Serbia in recent weeks to help. A similar move to send medical aid to the United States angered the Kremlin's critics, who cast it as a publicity stunt that squandered precious resources, something the Kremlin denied, saying Moscow could now expect help from the United States in the future. "You need to use this experience, of course, and bear in mind that all these options, including the options of the defence ministry, if needed, can and should be involved here," Putin said. Moscow is set to introduce a new permit system in which residents will have to seek permission before using public transport / Getty Images Putin told officials that the resources displayed by the army were "only a fraction of what the defence ministry has" and that "the main reserves are still in reserve, so you need to keep this in mind". This story was produced as part of a joint effort among Spotlight PA, LNP Media Group, PennLive, PA Post, and WITF to cover how Pennsylvania state government is responding to the coronavirus. Sign up for Spotlight PAs newsletter. HARRISBURG Pennsylvania has been unable to collect vital information about those who have been tested for the coronavirus due in part to a data collection system that was in the midst of an update when the pandemic started, the states top health official said Monday. The flawed system starts with patients, who may not provide full information, and continues through doctors, who may not pass patient information to laboratories, and finally to the labs themselves, which dont always send what theyve collected to the state. The collection of samples at drive-thru and rapid facilities is unique to the pandemic, complicates it, and makes it a much larger mess, so to speak, said Marianne Downes, the incoming head of the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Sciences Pennsylvania chapter. That information is of vital importance as the state and coronavirus researchers work to respond to the virus and, eventually, figure out the best way to scale back social distancing. Various health experts say the state should be collecting information about age, gender, race, and primary residences of those tested, as well as expanding testing beyond high-risk groups. From the standpoint of better understanding the scope of the disease, the more information we have, the better, University of Pennsylvania epidemiology professor Ebbing Lautenbach said. Pennsylvania is working to expand its access to demographic information about people being tested for the coronavirus, Health Secretary Rachel Levine said Monday. The older data reporting system currently in use requires health-care providers and those conducting tests to input information manually. The people doing the testing ... are trying to go as fast as they can and theyre not inputting all the data, Levine said, adding that the state is mandating that they do that. So far, the Department of Health has gathered age and hospitalization data for confirmed patients from hospitals. But consistent and reliable information about those who test both negative and positive outside of hospitals has been a lot harder to come by. We have some of that information [about suspected COVID-19 cases] but not as much as we would like, Levine said, particularly not about race and ethnicity. Laboratories are on the front lines of this race for knowledge but theyre also in the middle of a system struggling to keep pace with demand. Downes, incoming president of the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Sciences Pennsylvania chapter, said the reporting process leaves many opportunities for useful patient data to be lost or not reported in the first place. Many suspected COVID-19 patients are now being seen by health professionals who are not their primary care physicians, she said, and the tests are being conducted at drive-thru testing sites and rapid testing facilities, such as LabCorp or Quest. In the past, if the disease being tested for wasnt an urgent matter, lab technicians could wait for full patient information to arrive from the health-care provider who ordered the test. That simply isnt feasible with COVID-19. This is something weve never had before, said Downes, a former lab technician who now teaches at West Virginia University. Further complicating efforts to expand testing statewide are longstanding staffing shortages and reimbursement challenges at laboratories. Downes said many smaller hospitals dont have the capacity to perform nucleic acid testing one of the ways COVID-19 is diagnosed which requires a separate room and trained staff. The organizations most recent annual survey found that among the hospitals who have such facilities, their laboratories were short of at least two full-time technicians. That staffing shortage, similar to other professions across the health-care industry, could be exacerbated as lab techs fall ill or have to quarantine after exposures. Given recent advancements in testing science and Pennsylvanias lack of a certification requirement for lab techs, she said, its unlikely that retired or older techs could be pressed into service to fill the gaps. A lot of people educated in the 80s were not trained to do this testing, Downes said. If theyve not done that training, its not something theyd know to do. Theres also uncertainty about how insurance companies and health systems will pay for COVID-19 testing, including tests that havent been fully vetted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Downes said these tests were approved on an emergency basis so there isnt a lot of data on false negatives or false positives. These can run $200 to $500 per test just because of the expensive reagents, she said, referencing a key testing substance. And reimbursement is low and getting lower. We dont know whats going to happen: We know insurance will cover it but to what extent? Will it be every test we run a deficit? Levine said Monday the widespread shortage of chemicals used to run COVID-19 tests is a key limiting factor to testing more Pennsylvanians. And serology testing, which would determine which people have antibodies that would help protect them from future exposure, is still in its infancy. While Pennsylvania had made strides in increasing the number of tests conducted daily, the state saw a precipitous drop over the weekend. Pennsylvania had averaged about 7,000 tests per day, which health experts said was already inadequate. That figure dipped below 5,000 on Saturday and Sunday. Last week, two federally funded testing sites at Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia and a Temple University campus in Montgomery County closed. Levine said the Montgomery County site is expected to reopen later this week. State officials are also planning to open a new testing facility in northeastern Pennsylvania, which emerged as a COVID-19 hotspot in recent weeks. I can see a time, hopefully over the next number of months, when well have ... enough testing capability to do more population-based surveillance testing of the virus, Levine said. That will give us a better sense of the true prevalence of the virus in Pennsylvania. 100% ESSENTIAL: Spotlight PA provides its journalism at no cost to newsrooms across the state as a public good to keep our communities informed and thriving. If you value this service, please give a gift today at spotlightpa.org/donate. Chinese aircraft carrier group no cause for public worry: Presidential Office ROC Central News Agency 04/12/2020 09:57 PM Taipei, April 12 (CNA) Presidential Office spokesman Ting Yun-kung () said Sunday the public has no need to worry about their country's safety and security, as a Chinese aircraft carrier battle group sailed east of Taiwan the same day. The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said Sunday evening the Chinese aircraft carrier the Liaoning, escorted by two destroyers, two frigates and a supply ship, were being monitored as they passed through the Miyako Strait on Saturday and then moved southward, passing east of Taiwan on Sunday, on a long-range training mission. No irregularities were detected, according to the MND. Both the MND and Ting said the necessary measures were in place to ensure Taiwan's security during the passage of the battle group. Ting said peace and stability in the region should be a common responsibility on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, especially at this time when the world is struggling to contain the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The Liaoning and its escort ships made the voyage in the Pacific Ocean at a time when all four U.S. aircraft carriers deployed in the Indo-Pacific region are quarantined at different ports, according to local media reports. Meanwhile, according to military air movement tracker Aircraft Spots, an American EP-3E electronic warfare and reconnaissance aircraft was spotted Saturday and Sunday morning over the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan. Based on MND and Aircraft Spots' records, it was the ninth time a U.S. military aircraft was seen flying near Taiwan in recent weeks. The U.S. and Chinese military have been busy maneuvering in areas near Taiwan over the past three days. On Friday, several Chinese J-11 jet fighters, KJ-500 early warning aircraft and H-6 bombers were seen flying southwest of Taiwan in what was also described as a long-range training mission. Shortly after that, an American RC-135U electronic reconnaissance aircraft appeared in the same area. Hours later, an American destroyer the USS Barry sailed through the Taiwan Strait, reportedly tailed by a Chinese missile frigate. (By Yeh Su-ping, Matt Yu and Emerson Lim) Enditem/pc NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Association of Secondary Teachers has told its members the Leaving Cert proposal cannot be enforced. The State exam Read More: A statement on the union's website says "no teacher will be required to do anything." and says the proposal on the state exams "cannot be enforced". The ASTI says it has a number of concerns and needs clarification from the Department of Education, around several points. ASTI spokesperson, Kieran Christie, says the union does have a number of concerns they are raising with the Department of Education. "There remain aspects and practicalities that we need clarification on," he said, citing the revised deadlines for project work, practical work and the needs of special education students. However, Seamus Lahart, President of the Teachers Union of Ireland, says he will be asking his members to help students prepare for the exams. "We have considered the Minister's request - particularly that we engage with students for two weeks during the month of July - and we are asking members to engage in the process as a whole-school response to meet the needs of our students. "I am proud of teachers so far in the efforts they have made in extraordinary circumstances," he added. Hyderabad, April 13 : Police in Hyderabad have installed 330 cameras with Artificial Intelligence (AI) based crowd control technology to check lockdown violations. Telangana Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy on Monday said whenever more than five persons come under a surveillance eye, immediately concerned operational teams are alerted. The police chief said this was how the most lockdown violation prone areas were brought into control. The cameras have been installed in the limits of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda police commissionerates, which cover Greater Hyderabad. This Artificial Intelligence based crowd control technology has been developed by L&T Smart World & Communication, a business unit of Larsen & Toubro (L&T). The cameras are enabled with deep learning based crowd formation analytics triggering real time alerts at the police command centre. Once the command centre receives alerts about gathering of five or more persons in an area, the field officers swing into action to disperse the crowd. Police in Hyderabad have also deployed another AI-based technology developed by L&T to track vehicle movement. The city administration issued an order asking people not to drive beyond three-km from their residences even for buying essential goods. Using existing Machine Learning based Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system vehicle locations are monitored continuously. The moment a vehicle crosses the thre-km limit; an automated alert is sent out to the police. Additionally through the integration of Regional Transport Authority's database vehicle owners are identified aiding officials to issue warning. L&T Smart World & Communication rolled out smart technology solutions to combat COVID-19 in over 20 cities across India. The company said that these technologies are helping respective city administrations in their current responsibilities of tracking patients, containing spread, monitoring quarantined people, controlling crowding by police personnel, galvanise rescue efforts by administration, spreading COVID-19 related messages to populace and establishing rule of law in the current pandemic scenario. RIGHT from the onset of our countrys political independence in 1961, disease was one of the three critical enemies that the leadership cited as one of the most critical. Led by frontline nationalist Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the leadership cited poverty and ignorance as the other deadly enemies. The point they sought to drive home to their compatriots was that, attainment of political independence was not an end in itself. The colonial regime had been humbled into accepting the reality that the people of the then Tanganyika, plus, subsequently, Tanzania, were not masters of their destiny. That was fine, as was the fact that after the colonial masters departure, the running of the newly independent nation had been thrust into the local leadership. It is wise that religious leaders have also called for behavioral change among believers in prayers and keeping track of teachings of the government on how to fight the enemies of development. They said given the current situation when the world is facing the pandemic coronavirus for instance, clerics all over the world have the duty to take all the necessary precautionary measures to save their congregations from contracting the deadly virus. The leaders from Tanzania, India and South Africa who held a seminar over the internet (Webinar) under the facilitation of Global Interfaith Wash Alliance in partnership with UNICEF, said religious leaders are duty bound to advise their congregations to make more use of visual platforms such as radio, television and social media for fellowship and sermons. It is good that the faithful have been reminded on behavior change instead of flocking to Churches, Temples and Mosques as part of the measures to tame the spread of coronavirus. In reference, Secretary-General of the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), Rev Dr Charles Kitima, said: Failure to make physical appearance in church or other places of worship is not an offence, especially during this time when religious leaders are looking for ways to stay connected to their congregations away from prayer houses, he said as he requested people to voluntarily do so. Yet, so long as the country was held captive to the three major enemies, its independence is still incomplete, hence the Mwalimu-led administrations resolute ambition to wage a relentless struggle against them. For the best results, efforts in tackling those critical enemies had to be more-or-less at the same level, and it is good that all government phases have pitched war against them. This is because, it would be pointless, for instance, for the citizens to be well educated and economically stable, but unhealthy. Remember that the foundation of success in life is good health and it is also the basis of happiness, because a person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick. A group of Angolan government officials and senior bank executives funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars out of the country with little oversight, creating their own private banking network through which they sent the money to Portugal and elsewhere in the European Union, an OCCRP investigation has found. The network sent at least $324 million through its banks, with most of the funds originating in Angola. In addition, $257 million was found to be held by European companies closely affiliated with these officials. The scheme was documented in 2016 by Portuguese regulators in two audit reports, which have not previously been made public. In the reports, the banks the group established and used were described as having violated dozens of Portuguese banking regulations. The audit findings, in which the groups millions were flagged as highly suspicious, were brought to the attention of Portuguese and European Union officials, but the secretive financial network still functions today. Portugals leadership wasnt sensitive to the long term damage that laundering this money would do to the country, said Ana Gomes, a former Portuguese member of the European Parliament. Aside from hurting Portugals reputation, the network continues to corrupt the country, she added. Gomes said in an interview that its operation required a spreading web of corruption and tax evasion engineered by many Portuguese lawyers, bankers, accountants, consultants, business people, civil servants, and politicians. The ongoing scheme has had even more dire implications for Angola. Nearly half the southern African nations population lives in poverty. Some of the money that disappeared into the network could have been spent on infrastructure, education, or health clinics. The Bairro Rangel informal settlement in Angolas capital of Luanda. Despite vast oil wealth, nearly half of the countrys population lives in poverty. Credit: Alamy Two men who worked closely with former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who left office in 2017 under a shroud of corruption allegations, appeared to be the systems architects: former Vice President Manuel Vicente and his business partner Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento, better known as Dino. A retired general and ex-head of presidential communications, Dino is one of Angolas richest people.Dino and the Angolan presidency did not respond to a request for comment. Vicente could not be reached for comment. More than a dozen influential officials and their family members have used the system. For example, companies allegedly associated with Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former president, received millions. Much of the elite groups wealth has been tied to Sonangol, Angolas state oil company and the source of at least 75 percent of the countrys public revenues. Under Vicente, Sonangol went from being a fairly-focused oil company to becoming a constellation of more than 70 joint ventures and subsidiaries operating on four continents, really a maze of interests based on oil but massively extending beyond the oil sector, said Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, a professor of African politics at the University of Oxford and an expert on Angolas banking sector. Money was also skimmed from other public sources, including reportedly more than $150 million in loans from Angolas central bank that were never repaid. Aerial view of the headquarters of Sonangol, Angolas state-owned oil firm, in the countrys capital of Luanda. Credit: Nuno Almeida/Alamy The money pipeline started in Angola, where political connections allowed the elites to escape the scrutiny of regulators. The group exerted control over some of the countrys largest lenders, including Banco Africano de Investimentos (BAI), Banco de Negocios Internacional (BNI), and Banco Privado Atlantico (BPA). The Angolan elites then extended the pipeline by setting up foreign branches of BNI and BPA, and effectively becoming both shareholders and clients of these banks. This allowed them to transfer vast sums of money through a private banking network with little scrutiny. The foreign branches two in Portugal and one in Cape Verde did not implement standard anti-money laundering and terrorist financing controls and failed to carry out any due diligence on clients tagged as suspicious by international regulators. The banks had very few other customers, often making little money or even operating at a loss, suggesting that profitability was not their primary purpose. Many details about the network are found in the two audit reports by the Bank of Portugal, the countrys central bank. To uncover the vast Angolan-European pipeline, reporters also combed through internal correspondence, confidential documents from investigators that were not included in the audit reports, and public sources such as corporate data. Reporters did not have access to the banks client lists, so it was not possible to determine the exact amounts sent or received by specific individuals. But the fact that Angolan elites were able to send hundreds of millions through their network and that it continues to operate despite the damning Portuguese audits raises serious questions about the ability, or willingness, of Portugal and the EU to stop illicit financial flows. The European Central Bank did not respond to requests for comment. Following the publication of the Luanda Leaks investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which exposed massive corruption by Isabel dos Santos and her associates, regulators are paying renewed attention to Angolan elites in Portugal. Dos Santos has denied the allegations. This slideshow requires JavaScript. First Priority: Get a Bank The first major component of the Angolan elites financial network was Banco Africano de Investimentos (BAI). Several members of the group created the bank in the Angolan capital, Luanda, in 1996, making it the countrys first private lender. Advertisements The new bank was buoyed by support from Sonangol, which was its biggest shareholder. Over the years, the relationship between Sonangol and the bank became an important conduit for corruption. In addition to the more than $300 million the Angolan elites moved through their financial network, OCCRPs investigation shows that several members of the group received shares in BAI for free. Sonangol transferred just over 40 percent of the banks shares to them yet another way of funnelling the countrys oil wealth into the elites pockets. The value of Angolan banks is not publicly listed, but an analysis of similar banks in neighboring countries suggests the shares could have been worth over $150 million in 2017. Sonangol did not respond to requests for comment. The group that set up BAI included Vicente, at the time a fast-rising executive at Sonangol. Also involved was Mario Palhares, the former deputy governor of Angolas central bank, which granted authorization for BAI to become operational. Locals walk alongside the central bank building in Angolas capital, Luanda. Credit: Ed Cropley/Reuters Palhares was one of several people to hold roles both within BAI and with the regulatory institutions responsible for overseeing the bank. He became BAI president after Aguinaldo Jaime left the role to head the central bank. U.S. investigators later said that Jaime invoked his authority at the central bank to improperly send money to a private account. Another of BAIs initial senior administrators was Joaquim Costa David, who had previously headed Sonangol and later became Minister of Finance. Within months of its creation, BAI had established correspondent accounts with the U.S. subsidiary of the U.K. banking giant HSBC. Those controlling the bank used this relationship to transfer money to companies and private bank accounts belonging to themselves, their family members, and their associates. They also used BAI to issue credit cards they could use internationally. By 1998, the bank had become essentially a credit card and money laundering vehicle for the elites in Angola, according to a 2010 investigation by the U.S. Senate. Investigators flagged the money sent to the U.S. through BAI as likely of illicit origin, since it belonged to public officials who had no legitimate explanation for such massive incomes, and noted that the bank was run under the close direction of Sonangol. Bailing out the Bankers The Cape Verde Connection A decade after creating BAI, the group began to expand its banking network beyond Angola. They looked first to the West African island nation of Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony known as an international tax haven. In 2006, the group set up a bank there called Banco Privado Internacional (BPI), named similarly to Banco Privado Atlantico, an Angolan bank they established the same year. Cape Verde was absolutely crucial, said Gomes, the former European Parliament member. They used it as one of the steps to diffuse the origin of their money. The Cape Verde bank is not known to have any genuine physical presence in the country beyond a mailbox address in the capital, Praia. It operated in almost complete opacity, failing to share any information about its activities and publishing no annual financial reports. In addition to chairing the similarly-named Angolan bank, Vicente was the largest shareholder in BPI, with a 35 percent stake, according to the Bank of Portugal audit. Palhares held 30 percent. General Joao de Matos, former chief of staff of the Angolan Armed Forces under then-President dos Santos, held 25 percent. Another 10 percent was owned by Jose Garcia Boyol, who was president of the bank while also serving as vice president of another bank controlled by the group. The shareholders of the Cape Verdean bank frequently exchanged shares with each other in an apparent attempt to avoid regulatory scrutiny. In one such example noted in the audit, the bank asked the countrys central bank for permission to transfer all of Vicentes shares to Palhares, demonstrating a trusted business relationship between one of Angolas most senior public officials and one of its leading bankers. In that case, the government declined their request. The Portuguese audit reports show that money from Angola passed through Cape Verdean accounts to other banks that the group controlled in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe. Cape Verdes central bank, responsible for regulating the countrys lenders, did not respond to requests for comment, while BPI could not be reached for comment. However, the Angolan elites were still exposed to regulators, as the money that passed through Cape Verde went to other financial institutions not under their control. To solve that problem, they needed to create their own banks in Europe. Praia An aerial view over Praia, Cape Verdes capital. Credit: Viktor Posnov/Alamy European Expansion In 2014, the group received permission from Portuguese authorities to launch a new bank, BNI Europa, in Lisbon. This was a foreign branch of Banco de Negocios Internacional (BNI), an Angolan lender largely controlled by Palhares, the former central bank official. BNI Europas physical presence amounted to a single desk in one building. By December 2015, the bank still had only 97 authentic clients, mostly Angolan. Share Capital To establish a European customer base, the bank partnered with Saving Global, an online German investment system, adding a further 2,400 clients. However, these clients represented just six percent of the money flowing through the bank, and none held accounts there. They used the institution only as a platform to transfer funds. Saving Global did not respond to requests for comment. In reality, BNI Europa appeared to exist solely as a financial conduit for funds leaving Angola. The bank was entirely dependent on BNI, its Angolan parent branch, the auditors said, with 85 percent of the banks assets in 2016 originating from there. Because the money was sent from BNI to its own branch, these transfers were shielded from legal and financial inquiry. Auditors concluded that BNI Europa had no information about the source of these funds. Moreover, because BNI Europa is almost entirely owned by its Angolan parent bank, the money flowing from one to the other was still providing value to the same shareholders. The funds had not really changed hands, but had now been successfully moved into Europe with little scrutiny. BNIs Shareholders The Portuguese auditors discovered a dearth of basic due diligence practices at BNI Europa. An excerpt from the Bank of Portugals audit of BNI Europa. Click to enlarge. Credit: OCCRP The bank had no procedures to establish standard information about its customers. It also lacked anti-money laundering tools to vet transactions, some of which the audit described as enormous, including those involving politically connected customers. The banks compliance team consisted of one officer who was not allowed to access the accounts of certain clients. For example, the account belonging to the son of the banks largest shareholder, Mario Palhares, was off-limits, according to auditors. Palharess daughter, Lucia, came on board as a client manager and directly opened accounts for customers that banked with its parent company, BNI. Palhares could not be reached for comment. After conducting a sample audit of BNI Europas clients, investigators found that no substantive information had been collected on about 71 percent of individuals and 100 percent of corporate clients. The bank should have investigated a large majority of the clients included in the sample, auditors said. BNI Europa also lacked access to accounts opened by its parent bank, essentially placing the bulk of its own financial activity beyond its purview. In a June 30, 2016 letter to auditors, BNI Europa said it was unable to provide records of transactions flowing through its accounts, because only its parent bank had them. We offer our sincere apologies, BNI Europa wrote to auditors. In response to reporters requests for comment, a spokeswoman for the bank said: The nature of our business and the law impose on us a special duty of confidentiality, which prevents Banco BNI Europa from properly responding to your request Banco BNI Europa has acted with due transparency towards all authorities and notes that, so far as it is aware, no charges, accusations, or fines have been imposed on it in connection with any such allegations. BNI did not respond to requests for comment. The Bank of Portugal in Lisbon. [Credit: Alamy] The Bank of Portugal in Lisbon. Credit: Alamy Branching Out The elite Angolan group also opened a Portuguese branch of Banco Privado Atlantico (BPA), another bank they controlled in Angola. A majority of shares in the new bank, BPA Europa, are owned by Carlos da Silva, a lawyer widely considered an associate of Vicente. The banks opaque European ownership structure also includes about a dozen companies largely held in tax havens such as Luxembourg, where their true beneficial owners can be represented by proxies. Da Silva could not be reached for comment. On the surface, the business the banks divisions reported in 2016 did not seem out of the ordinary: Corporate customers received loans worth 125 million euros and made deposits of 57 million euros. However, when auditors opened up the books in early 2016, they found that more than 60 percent of the banks reserves came from Angolas central bank or from deposits made by high-risk Angolan banks in which top government officials owned shares. An excerpt from the Bank of Portugals audit of BPA Europa. Click to enlarge. Credit: OCCRP In a similar tactic to BNI, the bank partnered with German fintech company Savedo to grow its European customer base. We take accusations against banks that use our platform very seriously, the companys head of communications, Attila Rosenbaum, said. The moment a bank loses its license or permission [from the supervisory authority] the cooperation with [that bank] will be terminated. BPA Europa was also largely dependent on Angolan capital, with a client list of politically influential Angolans that included Dino, Vicente, and his associate, da Silva. The banks staff appear to have avoided looking into the accounts of some of its most sensitive customers, such as Vicentes son. The bank, which is now known as Banco Atlantico Europa (BAE), said that less than 1 percent of its clients are politically exposed, and that it performs enhanced due diligence on them. Some of these major clients were also the banks shareholders and directors. The arrangement allowed the bank to move money on their behalf using a variety of opaque techniques, which obscured the origin of the funds. A spokesman for the bank said it has no politically exposed person or any bank in our shareholder structure. He added: Angola is an important market for BAE, but BAE has many other lines of business. It has more than 20,000 affluent active clients, most of whom are Portuguese, he said. The Bank of Portugal audit found that companies associated with the influential Angolans, and already flagged as problematic by Portuguese authorities, did regular business with BPA Europa. For example, Dino and his wife held multiple accounts at the bank, including one associated with Cochan, a company he controlled that reportedly made multi-billion-dollar deals with Sonangol in partnership with international commodity trader Trafigura. Alongside Vicente and Kopelipa, Dino was identified in U.S. court documents as amassing vast wealth through oil-related deals involving Sonangol. BPA Europas shareholders used the banks financial infrastructure to stash millions of dollars sourced from Angola in holding companies with European bank accounts. One such client was the Angolan-based company GAM Holdings, which is alleged to be connected to Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the countrys former president. The transfers, which totalled at least 63 million euros, were sent to several companies, including subsidiaries of GAM Holdings, whose majority shareholder, Antonio Mosquito, was considered by Angolan media to be a business associate of dos Santos. In a series of emails, dos Santos denied any dealings with Mosquito or Vicente. Dos Santos and GAM Holdings Portuguese auditors found that BPA Europa did not follow the required Know Your Customer rules. They identified a lack of basic due diligence, producing a list of breaches and violations that included the use of outdated electronic systems that could allow unauthorized people to handle accounts on the banks behalf. Auditors said the bank tended to not acquire basic knowledge of its customers, commenting that the characteristics of ultimate beneficial owners of corporate bodies are not taken into account because they are not loaded onto the system. BPA Europa also lacked the tools to identify potentially suspect relationships and transactions by corporate, institutional, and correspondent customers such as other Angolan banks, including BNI and BPA Europas own parent bank. In fact, BPA Europa appeared to have been structured to ensure that such information would not be collected, the auditors found. Its compliance officers part-time junior staff who auditors said did not have any experience in the area worked in the open, near other departments. The head of the compliance unit was also the company secretary and did not even have general knowledge of money laundering, according to the audit. The result was a process that did not allow the identification of a wide range of suspicious movements behind money laundering crimes, and the consequences were clear. Click here to read BAEs full response to reporters inquiries. Credit: OCCRP In over 60 percent of individual client accounts examined by auditors, significant information, such as the purpose of the business relationship or the reason for the transaction, was missing. The same was true for every corporate account. The auditors noted that the failure of the Angolan banks and their Lisbon branches to conduct due diligence obscured the origins of transactions, creating a perfect environment for money laundering. A spokesman for the bank said that it operates under the rigorous rules of the European Central Bank and directly supervised by the Portuguese Central Bank, rules that we fully comply with. BAE fully collaborates with all authorities regarding any matter, including those related with Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism or compliance, implementing all determinations and recommendations issued by Supervisors. The Bank of Portugal did not respond to requests for comment about specific banks. However, it did say that between 2015 and 2016 it conducted audits of several financial institutions including those with Angolan capital. The bank said that its audits resulted in more than 500 supervisory measures and 300 administrative proceedings, including several involving money laundering and terrorist financing. Shipyard workers demonstrate in Lisbon on Dec. 18, 2013 amid Portugals financial crisis. [Credit: Francisco Seco/AP] Shipyard workers demonstrate in Lisbon on Dec. 18, 2013 amid Portugals financial crisis. [Credit: Francisco Seco/AP] Happy to Accommodate By 2018, the Bank of Portugal audit had been brought to the attention of the Portuguese government, the European Central Bank, the European Banking Authority, and the European Unions Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. But Portuguese authorities appeared to show little interest in examining its findings, and allowed the Angolan banks to continue operating. This was the time of Portugals financial crisis and it was also the time that Angolas elite were beginning to amass fortunes after their long civil war, said Gomes of the period, during which the Portuguese government was forced to take a $110 billion bailout from the EU. So of course Portugal was happy to accommodate Angolans need to launder their money and reinvest it because it meant an influx of money into the country, she said. Having grown increasingly concerned about corruption spreading through the banking sector, Gomes pressed for action. In letters obtained by OCCRP, she asked the Portuguese central bank what it was doing, if anything, to stop the suspicious activity taking place at the Angolan banks. The Bank of Portugal did not answer, citing a responsibility to maintain professional secrecy. Gomes and four other European parliamentarians also raised the issue in a letter to the European Banking Authority in 2015, but the agency responded that preventing money laundering wasnt within its mandate. The EBA did not respond to requests for comment. Several of the powerful Angolans who used the opaque financial network had breached or violated Portuguese and EU anti-money laundering legislation, including a rule that governs the transactions and business relationships of politically-exposed persons. Yet, none of them have been prosecuted. The EU needs to take concrete measures to harmonise anti-money laundering standards, said Maira Martini, an expert on corruption and illicit financial flows at Transparency International. It also needs to consider a dedicated anti-money laundering body with powers to supervise and sanction Member States for failing to comply. The banks set up by the Angolans continue to operate in both Cape Verde and Portugal. Hundreds of millions have passed through the parent banks and their branches in recent years, and the exact origin of much of this money remains unknown. If even a fraction of these ill-gotten funds had been deployed for more conventional purposes health, education, good quality infrastructure not all problems would have been solved, said Soares de Oliveira, the Oxford professor. But Angola would be a different country today. This article was originally published on OCCRP website A church in West Virginia's coal country is spending Easter using 3-D printers to make gowns, masks and face shields that will serve as personal protective equipment (PPE) for health-care workers who work for its hospital. Last year, Crossroads Church, a congregation of about 150 people in Bluefield, West Virginia, hosted an egg hunt in the grass for families and packed a local school with 600 people on Sunday, which was Easter. This year, its pastor asked the families in its church whether they would help make PPE as the national stockpile of equipment has been depleted rapidly. Churches across the country have looked for innovative ways to help their communities while remaining isolated during the spread of the coronavirus. Many have extended the use of their buildings as day cares for the children of health-care workers, while some have used parking lots for testing or blood drives. Ahead of Easter, a local pastor contacted Tim Bess, executive vice president of operations of Bluefield Regional Medical Center, to ask whether he needed PPE in case the coronavirus were to spread in Mercer County, an economically depressed area of West Virginia that has struggled with the opioid epidemic. "I said, 'Are you kidding me? This is unbelievable,' " Bess said. "We need these desperately." The 93-bed hospital could serve up to 40,000 people in the surrounding area. On Friday, the county had four positive covid-19 cases with one patient in the hospital, according to Bess, and no one knows when cases will peak in the region or how much equipment the hospital will need. "The compounding factor for those of us in West Virginia is, we have pretty poor habits related to health," Bess said. "We enjoy our tobacco too much, we eat a little more than we should. Those things make it more difficult to manage the virus that's hitting the world right now." Bess had contacted Crossroads Church Pastor Travis Lowe a year ago when he decided to start a ministerial association to get clergy to help patients. Lowe, the pastor of the small Pentecostal church, said someone in the faith-based office from the Department of Health and Human Services told him about an organization in Ohio that was having families volunteer safely during the pandemic. She told him that government officials are starting to see the mental health effects of people staying isolated, and that volunteering can give them a way to get out of the house. On Sunday, each of the 25 volunteer groups were family units already in quarantine together. The facility was sanitized Saturday, and everyone entering the facility put on gloves and a mask. When their shift was over, stations were sanitized before the next group took over. The church made sure the designs for the PPE met the hospital's needs and government guidelines. Families took one-hour shifts to produce hundreds of masks, gowns and face shields and plan to deliver the finished products to the hospital on Monday. The families produced the PPE inside a local makerspace, a community-operated space that houses 3-D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines and vinyl cutters, many of which were donated by church members. Lowe and another local pastor, Robbie Gaines, opened Crea Company in an old freight station in November as part of a larger local government effort to revitalize the area. The company sells memberships to people who want to use the space for prototyping or crafting. It has 20 members so far, including a graphic artist, who printed six-inch prototypes of seats planned for the renovation of a local theater. Lowe, who considers himself "pretty good at the computer but not artistic," said he got into the makerspace business because he thought it would be a good way to help the local economy. The idea, he said, is to ultimately help other businesses get off the ground. But the growing need for gear for health-care workers opened up a new opportunity for the facility. Lowe said he started making masks when he saw people who also have makerspaces were making them all over the country. "I would print out a couple masks and give them to people I knew," he said "We never imagined this, and then we were positioned pretty well." Normally hospitals order PPE from a vendor in a group of about 200 hospitals, but since every hospital is searching for the same equipment, the supply has been drained. A friend of Lowe's also recently used the makerspace to make hospital intubation boxes that protect health-care workers from the spread of the coronavirus. Crossroads member Kerri Parris said volunteering on Sunday was an ideal outing for her husband and three children on Easter morning. Her two boys, who would normally be traveling for sports, are spending their days mostly playing video games. On Sunday, though, they helped make masks and shields. Parris' 77-year-old mother, who lives with her family, has long been a seamstress, and she used a sewing machine to sew masks together. Parris cut the material while her 12-year-old traced the pattern. Volunteering, she said, was a way to give back to the community. "You can tell there's fear in the community; you can feel it in the air," she said. "You go on walks and treat everybody like they have a disease, it feels. This is Easter in a different kind of way." Many pastors want to serve their local communities, but face some limits as people are being told to stay home and many church buildings have pews or stadium-like seats that can't be removed for something else. The fact that many clergy have not been able to offer hands-on services to the community weighs heavily on many pastors, said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College, which is providing free housing to local first responders in the suburbs of Chicago. "I think everybody would love to be playing a part in saving lives," Stetzer said. "It would give relief to an emptiness many feel." According to the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in China, the COVID-19 curve is flattening slightly across the country on average. According to the latest reports by the Health Ministry, 796 cases and 35 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded yesterday. So far, a total of 9,352 cases have been confirmed, including 324 deaths. Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health added that 25 districts across 15 states have recorded no new cases in the last two weeks after initial outbreaks. According to the ICMR, 2.06 lakh tests have been conducted so far. The rapid testing kits that were supposed to arrive from China last week will now arrive on the 15th of April. Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh became the latest states to extend the lockdown until the end of the month whereas Ahemdabad became the lastest city to make wearing a mask in public compulsory. In Kasaragod, one of the worst affected areas in Kerala, a woman successfully gave birth to a baby boy on Saturday, just a few days after recovering from COVID-19. Both the mother and child are safe and healthy and samples from the child have been sent for testing. In Telangana, inmates of prisons are helping the fight against COVID-19 by producing face masks and sanitizers for frontline workers. They've received training from chemists and tailors and together they're making about 9,000 masks and 3,000 litres of sanitizers in a day. PM to address the nation at 10 am tomorrow The PM will address the nation at 10 am tomorrow, following extended discussions with CMs over the weekend. Most leaders across the country agree that the lockdown needs to be extended - at least in high-risk areas, along with some concessions for economic reasons. Given widespread agreement, it is likely that the PM will extend the lockdown. At least six states, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, Punjab, Telangana and Karnataka have already extended the lockdown. The CM of Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar said the state would be divided into high, medium and low-risk areas, each with their own set of restrictions. Lobbyists urge centre to lift certain economic restrictions The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) wrote to the Home Ministry to urge the resumption of certain economic activities in the country with reasonable safeguards. This is to boost liquidity in the country and mount a rescue against dire economic conditions. A look at the spread of the virus across the country According to the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in China, the COVID-19 curve is flattening slightly across the country on average. According to the data, the R0 value (a measure of the number of people an infected person transmits the disease too) of the disease fell from 1.83 to 1.55 between April 6th to 11th. Without the lockdown, 35,000 may have been infected by the 20th of April. However, with restrictions in place, the figure may now be closer to 20,000. There are exceptions to this; Maharashtra, the state with the highest numbers of cases, has shown an exponential increase in COVID-19 confirmations. Data from the study also suggests that the positivity rate (the number of people who test positive against all those tested) is also stable at around 4 per 100 tests being positive. The researchers said that more data is needed to attribute this to the lockdown, but it appears that the measures are at least modestly working. They added that testing needs to be ramped up to give a better idea of the positivity rate. Meanwhile, nearly half of all Indian districts now have COVID-19 cases. For more information, read our article on Face covers to battle COVID-19. Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health. China toughens border restrictions as imported virus cases rise Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 6:04 PM China has decided to tighten border controls and quarantine measures on arrivals from aboard after the number of imported coronavirus cases in the country hit a record high. The number of China's new daily confirmed cases has reached 99 on Saturday, almost doubling from 46 the previous day to a one-month high. Of the new infections, all but two involved travelers arriving from overseas, many of them Chinese nationals returning from Russia. The border city of Suifenhe and Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang Province, have decided to urge all arrivals from abroad to undergo 28 days of quarantine, as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests. Harbin said it would also lock down residential units where confirmed and asymptomatic coronavirus cases are found for 14 days. Suifenhe had already announced restrictions on the movement of citizens. It also extended the April 9 closure of its border with Russia which had been due to end next week. Russia had previously halted all flights to China and closed its land border with China. The country has so far recorded 15,770 cases of the new coronavirus, while the number of deaths has risen to 130. The new coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, is believed to have emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. The virus has so far infected 1,806,436 people worldwide, and over 111,725 have died, according to a running count by worldometers.info. China has managed to curtail its coronavirus contagion. The country's main concern now is managing infected travelers arriving from abroad and asymptomatic cases, who exhibit no clinical symptoms such as a fever or a cough. Newly reported asymptomatic coronavirus cases nearly doubled to 63 on Saturday, from 34 the previous day. The country's tally of recorded infections now stands at 82,052. China's leading respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan said as the coronavirus is still spreading rapidly overseas, the mainland could see the epidemic return. "At the moment, the epidemic is still spreading rapidly overseas, so China's coastal, major cities with close international contact are highly vulnerable, and could see the epidemic come back again," Zhong told the official People's Daily newspaper in an interview published on Sunday. He also cautioned that with the world's virus epicenter shifting from Europe to the United States, it is too early to judge whether the pandemic's peak is imminent. Beijing to reopen some schools closed by corona Beijing schools closed by the coronavirus outbreak will reopen to senior high school students and senior middle school students, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday, citing a spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Education Commission. Senior high school students are set to return to campus on April 27, and senior students at middle schools will return to campus on May 11, said spokesman Li Yi at a press conference, according to the CCTV report. Spain's virus deaths rise as some businesses prepare to reopen Spain's coronavirus death toll rose for the first time in three days on Sunday, as some businesses prepared to reopen under an easing of the country's strict lockdown regime. A total of 619 people died over the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed, bringing the cumulative toll to 16,972. Confirmed cases increased by around 2.6% to 166,019. Tough lockdown measures have helped bring down a spiraling death rate that reached its peak in early April, and the new deaths reported on Saturday were the lowest in 19 days while the increase of confirmed cases has roughly halved from a week ago. All non-essential workers had been told to stay home, but the government plans on Monday to revert back to less strict curbs that were in force up to March 27, allowing some businesses to resume activities. That has triggered concerns of a resurgence in an epidemic that has caused more deaths in Spain than anywhere else apart from the United States and Italy. Coronavirus rent freeze unlikely to be extended: Irish PM Ireland will not need to extend a temporary residential rent freeze beyond the coronavirus crisis, Acting Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was quoted as saying on Sunday, amid calls from some parties for more permanent rent caps. Varadkar's caretaker government has banned increases in residential rents for an initial three months during the coronavirus emergency, and a number of lawmakers have said the measure should be extended. Varadkar said extending the rent freeze would be unnecessary because he anticipates rents are going to fall. "At least initially, we are looking at higher unemployment and reduced incomes this year. Probably reduced inward migration as well," Varadkar told the Sunday Independent newspaper in an interview. "In that environment, it's hard to see any landlord increasing rents. They may be glad to have a reliable paying tenant. Rents will probably fall. I don't think this is a bad thing, especially in Dublin." Varadkar also said the government is likely to gradually unwind an emergency three-month welfare payment for those who have been laid off or had hours cut as a result of the virus, rather than allow the extra payments to expire abruptly. Bangladesh announces coronavirus farm relief package Bangladesh has announced a relief package worth about $1.7 billion to help farmers struggling because of restrictions imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, with neighboring India expected to further extend its nationwide lockdown. The Asian country has extended its lockdown by 11 days to April 25, a move that could exacerbate the difficulties faced by the country's hundreds of thousands of rice, fish, dairy, poultry and vegetable farmers. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the relief package, which includes $590 million for cheap farm loans and $1.1 billion for fertilizer subsidies, is designed to help farmers who are struggling to sell their produce during the lockdown. "Disasters come. We'll have to face it boldly," Hasina said. "We want to make sure that our farming sector continues its smooth production." Meanwhile, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to extend 21-day lockdown due to end Tuesday, according to a state chief minister with knowledge of discussions among top officials, but the federal government has yet to make an announcement. States such as Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, and at least three others have already independently said they will extend lockdowns to the end of April. Dutch coronavirus infections top 25,000 The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Netherlands has topped 25,000, health authorities said on Sunday, with the number of deaths rising by 94 to 2,737. The Netherlands' National Institute for Health (RIVM) reported 1,188 new infections over the past 24 hours, taking the total to 25,587. The rate of increase in infections and deaths has slowed for several days helped by social distancing measures. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address MONTREALQuebec Premier Francois Legault says he wont put children at risk after blowback from parents and teachers over talk of sending kids back to school and daycare in the coming weeks after an extended COVID-19 shutdown. Legault apologized Saturday during his daily news conference for anyone who might have been upset about his comments Friday. Quebec has cancelled classes until May 4 due to the coronavirus outbreak, but Legault suggested Friday that they could reopen ahead of that date something that didnt sit well with some parents and teachers. I think that even in the next few months, when we will reopen the school, its clear that some parents will be scared to send their children to school, Legault said. But what I want to be clear about the reopening of schools, is that it will not be done until we have, first, the agreement of the public health, and second, that I have personally the assurance that theres no risk for the children and for the teachers. Quebec health officials announced 48 more COVID-19 deaths in the province on Saturday, bringing the total to 289. The province also announced 12,292 confirmed cases, with 778 hospitalizations, including 211 in intensive care. As officials hope to reach the peak of COVID-19 cases in the near future, the province has begun laying the groundwork for various scenarios to resume economic activities and Legault said that includes what do with the children of working parents. Maybe the way I said it scared some people and Im sorry about that, but the facts are that we have some scenarios before May 4, Legault said. The notion of opening up schools and daycares in the coming weeks led to an emotional reaction from some. Pierre Avignon, the chairman of a governing board at a Montreal school in the borough with the most COVID-19 confirmed cases, said many people are afraid things will move too quickly and people will be put at risk. Avignon said physical distancing rules would be difficult to enforce at the elementary school with 900 students, noting there are rarely two metres between students. One petition demanding the closure of daycares and schools until September had garnered more than 153,000 digital signatures as of Saturday afternoon, with supporters arguing that children and adolescents would be at risk. Legault has said children have been shown to be less at risk of having coronavirus complications, and Dr. Horacio Arruda, the provinces director of public health, said reopening of schools would mean that children would participate in the natural immunization of the population. Young people who could get the disease with almost no symptoms are like being vaccinated, Arruda said. It is natural vaccination that will take hold, and it is important in society that a certain part of the population be vaccinated. The Federation of Quebec Parents Committees positioned itself as a voice of reason, with federation president Kevin Roy saying he did not fear reopening schools as long as public health experts recommended it. But the provinces largest teachers unions said Legaults comments smacked of improvisation, with the Centrale des syndicats du Quebec, which represents 125,000 education sector employees, calling on the government to consult with members. Sylvain Mallette, the president of the FAE teachers union, which represents 45,000 French-language teachers, warned that while children seem to be less impacted, they are often in contact with teachers some of whom are over 60 and have autoimmune diseases or live with the elderly. Read more about: GPs in Belfast may be forced to withdraw services during the coronavirus pandemic due to a lack of personal protective equipment. Chairs of the north and west GP federations have written to the Department of Health saying there is a shortage of PPE, particularly masks and aprons. The federations, who represent 40 practices and more than 220,000 patients, said the lack of PPE was putting both healthcare staff and patients at risk. Last week it was reported the NI Executive had ordered 170m of PPE from a Chinese firm. Dr George O'Neill, who chairs the west Belfast federation, told BBC NI that GPs were "scared and anxious". "I have many GPs ringing me fearful not only for themselves but also their families whom they are returning home to. But also practice nurses who are particularly being placed at risk," he said. "What is also worrying is that they all said they couldn't speak out as they were worried about their jobs. Now is not the time for that. That shouldn't be an issue. Expand Close Dr George O'Neill / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dr George O'Neill "Nurses are having to dress patients who have leg ulcers, who require bloods being taken; they are constantly at risk as are patients as there aren't enough masks to go around." The federations wrote to the Department of Health on April 8 expressing their concerns, but deliveries had still not arrived by April 11. The BBC reports GPs in west of Northern Ireland, including those in Fermanagh, Enniskillen and Londonderry, have also warned about the lack of PPE. A GP in Fermanagh said she was unable to run baby clinics as they did not have equipment for either staff or patients. Dr O'Neill said he recognised there was a global shortage of PPE but questioned why the Executive has briefed that PPE had been ordered was being delivered when it had not. "Clearly there was a lead-in time that was wasted, when more ordering and preparations could have been done," he said. "I am not blaming anyone, this is not one person's fault but clearly this is serious. Questions will be asked when there is an inquiry into all of this later on. "Now the priority must be accessing the right equipment at the right time in the right place." Dr O'Neill said the Executive should appoint someone who would be responsible to oversee the delivery of equipment. "At this stage what is in place is not working," he said. "The equipment must be shared not only across hospitals, but especially to those working in community care, particularly care homes. "I am deeply concerned about what I know is happening in care homes. Elderly residents are dying and the staff are there with them, beside them, caring for them with many not having the correct gear. "We signed up to care for people but not to put our lives at risk." In a statement released to the BBC Mr Swann said his department was working hard to ensure supplies of PPE are maintained. "I know our GPs are working hard for all of us and that they are still delivering critical services to the community, despite the unprecedented challenges they face," he said. "GPs continue to order and obtain PPE under the agreed processes. "It is also why the primary care Covid-19 centres have been established in every trust, to preserve essential primary care services by reducing the pressure on general practice." Mr Swann said his department was also "working hard to build up our PPE stockpiles for the expected second surge later in the year". Its a rare time, when everyone is bound together by a single event. Yet here we are in this unprecedented time. New phrases such as social distancing and flatten the curve dot our daily conversations. Families are trying to stay calm as they deal with remote work and school challenges. We are seeing business and government responding as never before. Think about it: Your trash is being picked up, gas stations and grocery stores remain open, and our pizza is still being delivered. We are seeing neighbors helping neighbors. And theres such a renewed respect and gratitude for our many first responders and health care workers daily doing their best to safeguard us and our families. Theres another sector that deserves our gratitude as well. Our local nonprofits are responding to a groundswell of requests, inquiries and traffic amid the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. During these trying times, these organizations are doing all they can to address these increasing needs of our community. They are working tirelessly to balance rising needs among a pool of declining resources, including not being able to call on their trusted volunteer pools. As our unemployment figures continue to rise, it is impacting our most vulnerable neighbors at an alarming rate. People who have never had to seek assistance for food, rent, utilities or other needs are reaching out daily. Our lowest wage workers, entrepreneurs and other gig economy workers are disproportionately vulnerable as well. More and more individuals are turning to the nonprofit sector for help, and it is responding. While employees are now working remotely, they are still serving. While offices are open, you must now make an appointment where you once were able to just walk in. Even others have had to make adjustments to the services they provide to primarily focus on emergency needs. For instance, the SCAT Van is still running, but its only for medical appointments or to pick up groceries. Calvary Food Pantry is now asking clients to call in their orders prior to coming in. Area soup kitchens are seeing a dramatic increase in those showing up for a meal. And, as they can only offer takeout options, there are increased costs for things, as takeout containers. Lets not forget the important roles that organizations like the YMCA and the arts play in our lives as well all are nonprofits. While their doors are closed, they are finding unique ways to keep us fit or enlighten our lives. On Facebook, the Y is offering a daily dose of positivity and virtual workouts. Auburn Public Theaters "A Feminist Extravaganza," also on Facebook, was a celebration within itself. Nonetheless, let us not lose sight that many organizations have had to cancel fundraising events, classes, programming and more all activities that support their efforts and keep the doors open. Let us celebrate the wins and the good news that abounds. As each day passes, however, our area nonprofits continue to balance the efforts of their employees, the requests to serve more, and a true impact on their bottom lines. For many nonprofits, financial reserves and resources were low or nonexistent before this crisis. Our local nonprofits remain a critically important segment of our business community. Many are already making cuts and sacrifices to ensure that they can continue to serve Cayuga County residents. They are changing how they do business as they plan to serve even more individuals and families in the coming days, weeks and maybe even months. Let us continue to unite and help one another; acts of kindness and encouraging words go a long way during these difficult times. If you can, continue to patronize your area businesses and restaurants. If possible, please consider a donation to an area nonprofit. This support may come in the form of a donation, supplies, or other needed items. If you dont know where to start, there are also a number of newly created COVID-19 response funds through the United Way or the Central New York Community Foundation. These funds are supporting organizations fighting on the front lines of this epidemic. Cayuga County has always had a unique way of caring for its people. It is this shared sense of community that leads us to rise up time after time to find meaningful ways to take care of one another. A little effort by each of us helps us weather the difficult times and remain strong. So heres to the crucial roles served by our nonprofit community; they deserve our gratitude and support as well. Karen A. Macier, of Auburn, is executive director of the United Way of Cayuga County and has spent 20 years working and volunteering in the not-for-profit sector. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 : The Tamil Nadu government has advised district collectors to take part in government functions in view of implementation of CrPC Section 144 but asked the public to skip such programmes to avoid mass gathering in view of the COVID-19 lockdown. The announcement follows Union Home Minister Amit Shah urging governments to strictly enforce the lockdown so as to contain the spread of coronavirus. Shah had said this during the video-conference led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chief Ministers on Saturday. The Tamil Nadu government, in an official release, said district collectors would take part in the functions to mark Dr B R Ambedkar's and freedom fighter Dheeran Chinnamalai birth anniversaries which falls on April 14 and 17 respectively. The statewhich had initially announced the shutdown till March 31 extended it till April 14 in line with the national lockdown as announced by Modi. Tamil Nadu reported 1,075 positive cases of COVID19 while 11 people have lost their lives due to the coronavirus so far. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Beijing: While the coronavirus epidemic has caused panic all over the world, China is not deterring its poor acts. China once again demonstrated its strength in front of the entire world on 11 April, in which the Chinese Navy took part in realistic maritime operations. After this action of China, the whole world is in panic. About 10 days before this, China had also conducted military maneuvers at an undisclosed location. Due to which the neighboring countries were in panic. Japan and Taiwan are the most troubled by China's military drills. This time, China has launched missiles equipped with guided missiles in Yulin and Sochung warships in the sea area of South China. Hundreds of bombs, missiles and guided missiles were tested by China from these two warships. In this exercise, the Chinese Navy conducted exercises such as formation maneuvers, live-fire operations, anti-submarine warfare, joint salvage. The official site of the Chinese military has given its pictures to the Chinese official newspaper Global Times. Let us tell you that Japan and Taiwan are present in the sea located near the southern part of China. Now these two countries fear that China may attack on them with the help of Coronavirus. Also Read: Kim Jong makes big change in his team, is it a conspiracy to hide facts about Corona? NewYork City overtakes China and Britain in terms of corona cases America's condition gets worsens, more than 5 lakh cases of coronavirus so far No confirmed case of Corona in North Korea, Kim Jong seen without mask The Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), has strongly warned Nigerians against defying the governments stay-at-home order. Director... The Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), has strongly warned Nigerians against defying the governments stay-at-home order. Director-General of the forum, Salihu Mohammed Lukman, on Sunday, in a statement warned that Nigeria would record worse casualties than America and Europe if the citizens continue to defy the lockdown orders. PGF is an umbrella body of governors of states controlled by the All Progressives Congress (APC) party. The statement is entitled, Fight against spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria: Issues and factors hindering success. The forum also suggested to the President to expand the membership of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) to include members of the National Assembly. It lamented what it described as the conspiracy theories and reluctance of the people to key into the battle to curb the spread of the dreaded virus. The fact is that given the poor state of our hospitals, if we are unable to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria, the experiences of Italy, Spain, United States, France, etc. will be childs play. Should that happen, records of cases and deaths could be phenomenal, the PGF said. Combinations of high incidences and poor records of citizens in the country having medical conditions bordering on tuberculosis, high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, etc. it is hard to imagine how, as a nation we want to risk such a possibility. Democratic nations are embracing strict and invasive government powers to combat the coronavirus, sparking concerns that all that amassed power may not be given back after the pandemic is over.Lawmakers and civil rights watchdogs are worried that expanded government powers, while maybe necessary to slow the coronavirus, will become permanent fixtures after the pandemic is dealt with, according to The Washington Post . Restrictions around the world have ranged from closing businesses and public places to postponing elections and tapping into cell phone tracking data.In the United States, the watchdog group Human Rights Watch compared the potential for civil rights abuses over the coronavirus to steps taken after 9-11 to combat terrorism.said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.The Trump administration is considering building a federal database to track COVID-19 cases by compiling personal healthcare data that is in the hands of private companies. The administration has already reached out to several firms about the possibility, Juvare CEO Robert Watson said.Jessica Rich, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection bureau, told Politico last week.The Slovakian parliament passed a law last month allowing the government to access location data in cell phones to track the movements of people who have tested positive for COVID-19. The legislation was inspired by similar laws passed in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.said Tomas Valasek, who chairs the European affairs committee in the Slovakian parliament.Slovakia's justice minister, Maria Kolikova, argued that while the legislation was far too invasive for normal times, the threat of the coronavirus justified a temporary invasion of Slovakian citizen's rights and privacy.Kolikova said.Israel and Italy have adopted similar measures. Israel has adapted cell phone tracking data meant to combat terrorism into tracking the whereabouts of COVID-19 patients after they test positive for the disease. In Lombardy, Italy, one of the worst hit regions in world, government officials are using cell phone tracking data to ensure that residents are following government stay at home orders.In Hungary, the parliament has suspended new elections and given Prime Minister Viktor Orban expansive authority to take action against the coronavirus for an indefinite time period. The parliament has also outlawed knowingly spreading false information about the virus, a law critics say the government could use to justify suppression of Orban's opponents in the media. HDFC Bank on Monday deployed mobile Automated Teller Machine (ATM) to assist customers during the lockdown. The mobile ATM of the bank is the first in the South and the fourth in the country. Mobile ATMs would eliminate the need to move out of their locality to withdraw cash and the city is the fourth place where HDFC Bank deployed its mobile ATM after successfully deploying it across Mumbai, New Delhi and Allahabad. The locations for deployment are being identified in consultation with all local municipal authorities across Coimbatore city and the first was deployed to cater to the need across Vadavalli, Navavoor Pirivu and IOB Colony Junction, a press release said. The mobile ATM would be open in each location for a specific period and cover cover 3-5 stops in a day between 10 am and 5 pm. All necessary precautions in terms of maintaining social distancing while queueing for the ATM and sanitisation are being taken to ensure safety of staff and customers at these mobile ATMs. "During this difficult time, we want to do our part to help everyone #Stay Home and #Stay Safe. Our mobile ATM facilities will help customers and the general public get access to easy cash withdrawal and other facilities as we stand together to curb the spread of COVID19," S Sampathkumar, group head, Liability Products, Third Party Products and Non-Resident Business at HDFC Bank, said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Captain Lee Rosbach from Below Deck celebrated 45 years of marriage to the woman who he often refers to as his bride Mary Anne on April 12. Lee has spoken fondly about his wife on a number of occasions on the show. She has also appeared on the series, having dinner with the crew and sharing the story of how the two met. We all went out one night and I met Lee but he doesnt remember me, Mary Anne joked with the crew during an episode. Captain Lee, Mary Anne Rosbach | Heidi Gutman/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images The couple finally went on a date and that was it. Lee turned to deckhand Nico Scholly and told him his secret to a happy marriage. For a relationship to last a long time you have to work at it, he said. I care more about making her happy than what I want for myself. If shes got a smile on her face my day is complete. His favorite chief stew Lee shared a throwback wedding photo of the couple on their anniversary. 45 years ago today I had the honor and pleasure of marrying my very best friend in the world. To my bride: I love you more today than ever before. Youre the best there is. I love you special, he captioned the photo. A number of crew members commented and congratulated the couple, including Bravo superfan Jerry OConnell. Congrats! Knew you kids would make it! Lee appeared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and a caller wondered if he had ever hooked up with a crew member. Yes, he says. My wife. She was my chief stew. Host Andy Cohen exclaims, She was your chief stew! Thats so romantic. Lee adds, And the only one [hes hooked up with]. Mary Anne offers her secret to a long, happy marriage The couple gathered at a table in their backyard to talk about marriage. Lee greets fans from South Florida and shares that the couple is celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary. They say cheers with cocktails as they sit next to each other in their lush backyard, with an inviting pool in the background. Mary Anne remarks about how marrying her best friend is the key to a long happy, marriage, especially when times were hard. Beyond the pandemic, the Rosbachs son Joshua died this summer. Lee has been extremely frank about the immense pain and suffering of losing a child. Mary Anne added that being best friends helps couples weather the storm. She adds a moment of levity too. Who would have thought 45 years ago Id be with the Stud of the Sea? Thats a challenge within itself, she jokes looking over at her husband. Lee captioned the video, 45 and counting, no one Id rather be with than my best friend. I love you special. Friends shared congratulatory messages including Patricia Altschul from Southern Charm. Happy Easter and especially a happy anniversary as well. Much love to you two , she wrote. Kasey Cohen from Below Deck Mediterranean added, Yall are just too darn cute! Congratulations on 45 years with your best friend! Cheers to forever more. After coronavirus outbreak at church that left one dead, health officials praise pastor for response Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Health officials in Shasta County, California, have praised pastor Paul Tilley and his Faith Assembly Church in Redding for how they responded to a coronavirus outbreak at the church that left one person dead. We are impressed with how proactive the church has been since learning about the first case in their congregation, Brandy Isola, the county's public health branch director, told the Record Searchlight. We have community transmission in Shasta County. We recognize that there is less than ideal testing capacity in our county, state and country. This means that there are cases of COVID-19 in our community that Public Health has not been notified about. It is critically important that everyone stay at home except for essential services, follow social distancing practices when it is necessary to go out and practice excellent hygiene, she said. Tilley told the Record Searchlight that once he heard a member of his congregation tested positive for the coronavirus, he contacted Shasta County health officials on March 23 the same day he heard of the exposure "to give them a detailed account of how I handled the crisis." The member, who has been identified as a 75-year-old woman, has since died. Shasta County Health and Human Services officials revealed there has since been a "higher than expected number of positive cases" associated with the church. Warnings were also issued to other members who "may be at higher risk of carrying COVID-19, particularly if they attended a weekend event there (at the church) on March 14 and 15, and they should inform their close contacts and social circles that they may have been exposed, health officials said. Tilley and his church drew praise from health officials because in addition to alerting them about the exposure, he developed a timeline of the woman's activities at the church and then told his entire 300-member congregation what had happened. "They (county officials) informed me at that time, I had responded in a responsible manner," Tilley said. "The church has been closed, in compliance with President Trumps Coronavirus Guidelines for America since the announcement on March 16." Despite his efforts, six of his members, including the deceased woman, tested positive for coronavirus. The deceased woman's son also tested positive for coronavirus and was under quarantine for 14 days but had no symptoms. Other members have been hospitalized but are recovering. Tilley said he is sheltering in place and urging others in his congregation to do the same to keep them and the larger community safe. "I want to do what I can to keep my members safe," Tilley said. "We as a church are trying to lead by example as far as what you should be doing." Fifteen new positive cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Karnataka, taking the total number of affected in the state to 247 on Monday as the government ruled out any community transmission. The government also said there was an increase in the number of people being cured of the coronavirus infection in recent days with the total so far reaching 60. Voicing concern that the COVID-19 situation has thrown the state into a deep financial trouble, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said there was a need to to find ways to overcome the crisis and announced certain measures aimed at resource mobilisation. As of 5 PM on April 13, cumulatively 247 COVID-19 positive cases had been confirmed in the state and it included six deaths and 60 discharges, a deparment bulletin said. The active COVID-19 cases stood at 181 with 177 patients, including one pregnant woman, in isolation wards at designated hospitals and stable while four others in the intensive care units. "In the last five days our growth rate of cases is 6.42 per cent, we stand at 11th place (in the country in number of cases)," Primary and Secondary Education Minister Suresh Kumar said during a media briefing. Pointing out that the number of discharges after treatment has seen a steady increase in the last few days, he said, "In the last four days itself 30 people have been discharged after recovery. I'm happy to see this." On the source of infection in a few cases not being known yet, he said, efforts were on to find it out and ruled out any possibility of community infection in the state."We have not reached that stage." He said, according to statistics that the government has, Karnataka's rate of positive cases is 2.5 per cent, while Kerala is 2.63 per cent, Rajasthan is 2.82 per cent, Maharashtra is 5.53 per cent, Delhi is 9.13 per cent and Tamil Nadu is 11.52 per cent. Among the 15 new cases in the state, thirteen are contacts of patients already tested positive, while one from Dodabballapura in Bengaluru Rural is with a travel history to Delhi, the other from Bengaluru city has Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI). Among the 13 contact cases tested positive four are from Hubballi in Dharwad district, three each from Malavalli in Mandya district and Raibag in Belagavi district, two each from Bidar, and one from Mudhol in Bagalkote district. Contact tracing had been initiated and was in progress for all the cases, the department said. Nine out of total 247 cases detected and confirmed in Karnataka so far are transit passengers of Kerala being treated in the state. Most number of infections have been reported in Bengaluru with 77, followed by Mysuru (48) and Belagavi (17). Among the dead, two are from Kalaburagi and one each from Bengaluru, Bagalkote, Gadag and Tumakuru. A total of 10,017 samples were collected for testing so far, out of which 766 were collected on Monday alone. So far 9,572 samples have reported as negative and out of them 741 reported negative on Monday. Suresh Kumar said the rapid testing kits supposeed to arrive in Karnataka from China have been delayed. "It was expected today, but due to change of some regulations by the Chinese government regarding exports, it is delayed. We may get in a week's time." Responding to a question on Tablighi Jamaat cases, Kumar said, so far 1,330 samples have been tested, out of this 40 were positive, 1,252 negative. Asked whether the government was planning to mark the state into red, orange and green zones to enforce lockdown based on the gravity of the situation during the next two weeks, he said, "we are working at it, we will let you know." Yediyurappa, who held a meeting here on resource mobilisation, said the government was awaiting guidelines from the Centre regarding the implementation of lockdown during the next two weeks, and noted that discussions were on regarding relaxations on the sale of liquor and the decision will be taken after April 14. The decisions taken at the meeting included speeding up the disposal of cases related to regularisation of unauthorised constructions which are pending before courts, auctioning more than 12,000 corner sites lying idle in Bengaluru and also elsewhere in the state. The Chief Minister also launched CORONA Helpdesk in partnership with WhatsApp, for latest updates and facts on COVID-19. Public are requested to get benefited by texting Hi to 8750971717 & for facebook users : KarnatakaVarthe.Official. Commissioner of BBMP (Bengaluru civic body) has ordered all private health care facilities not to deny essential and critical emergency Services to any patients citing ongoing situation of COVID-19. All such patients must be promptly attended and provided with necessary consultation and treatment, it said. The state government also announced formation of a six- member committee of experts to analyse the coronavirus related data in the state and advise government on the interventions to be initiated. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dr Charlie Teo's 'miracle girl' Amelia 'Milli' Lucas who was told she may not walk, talk or see again has defied the odds after undergoing a gruelling eight-hour brain tumour surgery. The 13-year-old was hit with the devastating news last month that her cancerous tumour had returned after the renowned neurosurgeon wiped out 98 per cent of the growth on her brain stem following a life-saving procedure in Sydney in June 2019. Milli and her father Grant Lucas travelled from Perth to Sydney on April 7 so Dr Teo could perform his second operation on her after doctors in Western Australia again refused to carry out the procedure amid fears of paralysis or even death. On the morning of Wednesday, April 8, little Milli went into surgery - as Dr Teo told the family he feared she may not walk, talk or see again after the surgery. But against all odds, the brave young schoolgirl proved to be a fighter following the 'hugely successful' operation. Scroll down for video Amelia 'Milli' Lucas (pictured before her surgery on April 8) has miraculously defied the odds to walk and talk after undergoing a gruelling eight-hour brain tumour surgery Dr Charlie Teo (pictured with Milli last year) performed a second operation on Milli after he wiped out 98 per cent of the growth on her brain stem following a life-saving procedure 'Charlie was very very worried that when she came out of surgery she may not walk, she may not talk and she may not see,' her mother Monica Smirk told 6PR radio. 'So we were nervous but she comes out of ICU on Thursday morning - talking, walking and basically told her dad that the food in the hospital wasn't the best and asked him to "go and get me a steak please". 'Charlie had tears in his eyes, he's like "Milli, you're amazing, you are incredible". He couldn't believe that she woke up so well.' Ms Smirk said when scans revealed their worst nightmare last month, her daughter was 'extremely upset' to hear her cancer had returned. 'As a mum, I held it together for as long as I could but said to her "we will fix it" so we've done it again, we've fixed her for now,' she said. 'Honestly, I think this time we may have our miracle.' Milli has since returned to her home in Perth where she remains in isolation. 'She's still recouping but every day, she's getting better and better. Charlie said she should be back to normal in four weeks,' Ms Smirk said. Milli and her father Grant Lucas travelled from Perth to Sydney on April 7 for her latest surgery performed by Dr Teo (pictured together last year) Her mother Monica Smirk revealed her daughter defied the odds after her gruelling surgery Following surgery, the mother shared the exciting news about her daughter. 'Charlie may have thought she would not be able to walk again but on the way from theatre she moved her leg and arm and they are all incredibly shocked that our Millstar has defied all the odds again,' Ms Smirk said on Facebook. 'Milli is in ICU and doing extremely well she has moved both arms and legs. Charlie again seems to think he got it all... We are ecstatic and crying happy tears. Our angels have conquered again.' The family made headlines last year after generous family, friends and strangers raised more than $170,000 to help pay for the life-saving operation. Milli's older sister Tess (pictured together) was also diagnosed with brain tumour but she has since been given the all-clear Many doctors declined to perform the operation on Milli - who was told she had just 12 weeks to live - as the tumour was in a high risk 'no go zone' of the brain. However, Dr Teo offered to do the procedure, in which he was able to successfully remove 98 per cent of her tumour before she travelled to Germany to get rid of the remaining two per cent. Milli incredibly returned to school just weeks after her surgery. Milli's rare condition puts her at risk of developing various types of cancer, which has also affected her older sister Tess, her mother and cousin Beau. Her older sister Tess was also diagnosed with brain tumour but she has since been given the all-clear, while their mum - who has a family history of cancer - underwent a double mastectomy after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. Chennai, April 13 : Alarmed by stringent criticism, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K.Palaniswami on Monday clarified that there is no ban on non-government organisations (NGO) and others against distribution of relief materials. Recently the government warned people, the had warned people, organisations, political parties and others of legal action for violating the lockdown if they donated essentials, cooked food and other items to the needy directly. In a statement issued here Palaniswami said the government had just advised NGOs and others to coordinate with the government officials so that the relief materials could be distributed to the needy in a safe manner by maintaining social distance. Palaniswami said unlike tsunami, cyclone or other natural disasters where one need not maintain social distance while distributing relief materials whereas during Coronavirus pandemic social distance has to be maintained to prevent the virus spread. He said the statement issued by the government on Sunday was misunderstood and charged the opposition parties of spreading a false impression that the government has banned on distribution of relief materials by NGOs and others. TORONTO - Ridership on two of Ontario's largest transit agencies is down between 80 and 90 per cent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a situation a national industry group said mirrors the experience of many local services. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Transit riders board a streetcar in downtown Toronto on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. Ridership on two of Ontario's largest transit agencies is down between 80 and 90 per cent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a situation a national industry group said mirrors the experience of many local services. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy TORONTO - Ridership on two of Ontario's largest transit agencies is down between 80 and 90 per cent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a situation a national industry group said mirrors the experience of many local services. Both GO Transit and the Toronto Transit Commission said that their ridership is down dramatically as people work from home or self-isolate during the pandemic. Ridership on GO Transit, in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, has dropped to approximately 33,000 people per day, a 90 per cent decrease. The TTC said it has seen an 80 per cent decline, with 10 million daily riders dropping to 2 million. Marco D'Angelo, CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said transit providers across the country are seeing similar drops in ridership even as their roles become increasingly vital. "Looking across Canada, transit operators are facing an impossible choice," he said. "Do they dramatically cut service as ridership plunges? The numbers would justify that. Nonetheless, across Canada we're carrying ... people who are the lifeline during this crisis." The association is asking for $400 million a month in federal aid during the pandemic to keep services running as farebox and other revenues drop. D'Angelo said the association is currently in discussions with the federal government but has not yet received a firm commitment on a financial package to bolster service. "They've been dealing with every sector of the economy," he said. "The lines of communication have been constantly open, which has been good a reason for optimism." The federal government did not immediately provide comment. Metrolinx spokeswoman Anne Marie Aikins said GO Transit has scaled back service several times as ridership has fallen, but trains and buses continued to run reduced hours. "Most of the people taking GO are people working on the front lines," she said. "People working in hospitals, they're in the food service industry, first responders like police and fire. Those are the people taking transit." Aikins said system ridership had been dropping steadily since the World Health Organization declared the global pandemic on March 11. Revenue has also plunged for the agency, down to $1.1 million a week from $11 million weekly prior to the pandemic. Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. A spokesman for the Toronto Transit Commission said Monday that revenues are also down for that system, from $24 million a week before the outbreak to approximately $4.5 million to $5 million a week currently. "Our focus is on continuing to keep the city moving," Stuart Green said in a statement. "Not only because there are still hundreds of thousands of people using our system every day to get to their important jobs, medical appointments and to pick up essential goods and supplies." Meanwhile, a union that represents thousands of transit workers across Canada called on the federal government and transit agencies to ensure employees have access to personal protective equipment while on the job. Amalgamated Transit Union Canada President John Di Nino said workers need masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer to keep them safe. In many cases, it's not being provided, he said. "That has been very, very slow in being delivered," he said. "We've seen agencies where some personal protective equipment is being offered, but not the full complement." This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 13, 2020. On Sunday, Easter celebration was low key for many Christians across the country as several Churches were shut in compliance with lockdown orders. The Easter celebration, which represents the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross, his death and resurrection, in Christianity, was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic across the world which has caused about 100,000 deaths. The quiet celebration in Nigeria is also not unrelated to the increasing cases of the disease as well as the lockdown order imposed in many states and the Federal Capital Territory. The lockdown imposed by federal and state governments is aimed at curbing the spread of the virus which has caused ten deaths in the country and infected 318 people. However, while churches in many states complied with the directives, others did not. Borno Christians in parts of parts of Maiduguri, Borno State, attended Church services to celebrate this years Easter. This is in defiance of lockdown order given by Governor Babangana Zulum to prevent further spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the state. Most churches in Maiduguri metropolis, including New GRA, Post Office, Wulari, Bulumkutu and Polo areas, remained open for services, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports. The churches include Christian Church Maiduguri, First Baptist Church, EYN Church Maiduguri, Living Faith Church, Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri and Saint Patrick Catholic Church. Borno state on map used to illustrate the story Some of the churches directed their members to attend service in spite of the lockdown order. Simon Jude, a worshipper at Saint Patrick Catholic Catholic Church, said thousands of people have been turning up in many churches so that people can seek refuge and true healing. He said that the prevailing circumstances of the COVID-19 outbreak in other parts of the country necessitated the need for everyone to pray to seek divine intervention. Another worshipper, Julius Emmanuel, however said that the congregation was divided into four while the social distancing restriction was strictly adhered to and worshippers were encouraged to use hand sanitisers and wash their hands properly before coming into the church. The church service was divided into different sessions to include between 5 a.m and 6.30 a.m.; 7.30 a.m and 9.30 a.m while during the evening, the congregation open at about 4.30 p.m. and run till 6.30 p.m., he said. Some churches like Christian Church Maiduguri, First Baptist Church, EYN Church Maiduguri, Living Faith Church, recorded low turnout of worshippers. This is because many of them prayed from home, Godwin Abdul, a worshipper at First Baptist Church, said. Mr Abdul said: In compliance with government directive of social distancing, many residents marked services in their respective homes. NAN also noted that mosques, churches, markets and clubs have remained open in Maiduguri despite the lockdown order. Kogi Similar cases were observed in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital. Christians in Kogi on Sunday gathered in their various churches to worship and celebrate Easter. This is justified by the fact that the state government had, on April 9, lifted the ban on all religious gathering. Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello The governor, Yahaya Bello, however, urged religious leaders to put in place preventive measures such as maintaining social distancing, provision of hand washing materials and sanitisers in their various worship centres in order to contain the spread of Coronavirus in the state. Advertisements According to NAN, all the churches visited adhered to the directives of the state government on preventive measures and the worshipers maintained social distancing, while hand washing materials and sanitisers were provided for their members at the church entrance. The turnout of worshipers was averagely low in some churches, but was impressive in most of the Pentecostal churches visited. The churches visited were Living Faith Church (aka Winners Chapel) Lokongoma, Lokoja, The Apostolic Church, Chapel of Freedom Intl Churches, Deeper Life Church, First Baptist Church, Catholic, Anglican Church and Christ Embassy, among others. Some of the worshippers who spoke to NAN, said that they were excited about the lift of ban on congregation and commended the state government for the gesture. I am not used to staying at home on service days, so this two Sundays that we remained at home was like six months to me. We thank the governor for lifting the ban to enable us to celebrate Easter, Esther Alobo, a worshiper at Winners Chapel, said . Pastor Dapo Olumuyiwa of Living Faith Church, Lokoja, commended the state government for taking spiritual bold step by allowing the people of God to worship. Adamawa In Yola, Adamawa State, some Christians celebrated their Easter at home in compliance with the state governments lockdown order due to the coronavirus pandemic. Some churches conducted Easter services with no fewer than 50 followers as advised by the state government as part of measures to contain the spread of the disease in the state. In his Easter message, Dami Mamza, the state Chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), called on Christians to intensify prayers, vigilance and comply with the lockdown directive. Adamawa on map The pace at which the coronavirus is spreading in our country today calls for prayer, vigilance and compliance with relevant bodies in the struggles to curtailing the further spread and the far-reaching damages of the disease. As a church in Adamawa State, we shall continue to comply fully with the directives of the state authorities in curbing the spread of the virus. We therefore call on you dear brethren to cooperate maximally with the relevant government agencies in their efforts and measures towards the welfare of our people in the face of this killer disease, he said. The spokesman of the state police command, Sulaiman Nguroje, told NAN that so far there has not been any report of breach of peace in the state. There is also no case of coronavirus in the state. Nasarawa Many churches in Lafia, Nasarawa State, were under lock and key in compliance with the governments restriction order on gathering to curtail the spread of the virus as Christians celebrated Easter. Joseph Masin, Chairman, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) who is also the Bishop of Word of God Ministry in Nasarawa State, said Christians celebrated the Easter in their houses. This is even as he commended churches for adhering to government order to shutdown worships centres for now in view of the efforts to contain the virus. Mr Masin, however, called on the Nasarawa State Government to provide food items and other palliatives to the poor to cushion the effects of the lockdown. Similarly, Bishop Godwin Robinson, Bishop of Lafia Anglican Communion said he and his members in the state worshipped in their houses to maintain the social distancing order by the government. It has come to a stage where we celebrated in our hearts, rejoicing Gods faithfulness and mercy, he said. The cleric also sympathised with artisans, petty traders and others who earn their living daily describing them as the categories of people worst hit by the partial lockdown as their means of livelihood has been blocked. He, therefore, urged the government to provide palliative to cushion the effects of the partial lockdown in order to avoid another disaster emanating from lack of access to means of livelihood. Speaking on the level of compliance with the state governments restriction order, Bola Longe, Nasarawa State Commissioner of Police, said he was impressed with compliance by Christian leaders. The commissioner said he went round on inspection and he can confirm that no church was opened as everybody celebrated in their houses. Kwara Churches in Ilorin, the Kwara State, remained shut as Christians remained indoors in compliance with the total lockdown of the state to curtail the spread of coronavirus pandemic. NAN reports that churches around Sabo-Oke and Taiwo Isale in Ilorin, were deserted while their gates were locked. Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq had on April 9 ordered a complete lockdown of all the 16 local government areas in the state as a result of two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state. Gov. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State [Photo: Daily Post Nigeria] At the Catholic Cathedral Church in Taiwo Isale, a young priest, who did not disclose his name, said there was no Easter service in the church. He said all parishioners have been directed to comply with the stay at home order of the state government especially on the Easter Sunday. And that the Diocesan Bishop has also asked all the Parish Priests in the Diocese to observe the Easter Sunday service in their various homes with members of their families. Some worshippers expressed shock over the closure of churches. Taiwo Ezekiel, a member of ECWA church, said since he was born over 60 years ago, he had never witnessed an occasion when the church was shut preventing Christians to worship on a special day like Eater Sunday. He however prayed that God would remove the dreaded COVID-19 from the surface of the earth. Another worshiper, Lanre Adams of C&S, described coronavirus pandemic as a period for all mankind to be closer to God. Enugu In Enugu State, many Christian families worshipped online to mark the Easter celebration in compliance with the lockdown directives by the state government. Most of the churches visited were under lock and key. The churches visited include St Pauls Catholic Church Awkunanaw, Emmanuel Anglican Church, Achara Layout, and some Pentecostal churches on Agbani Road. Others are the Cathedral Church of Good Shepherd, Independence Layout, Wesley Cathedral, Uwani, Holy Ghost Cathedral, the Living Faith Church, Presidential Road and the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Abakaliki Road. A resident, Ikem Odenigbo, told NAN that he joined the church service conducted by Pope Francis in the morning on the television and was satisfied with the service as he received the spiritual sacrament he craved for. It is not about being inside the church but being close to God. The people are the church and not the building, he noted and urged the people to stay at home and comply with other hygiene protocols directed by governments and other agencies. Meanwhile, some markets in parts of the coal city were open for business as people were still busy shopping for Easter at the Artisan Market on Ogui Road, Kenyatta Market, Uwani and the Ochanja Market at Abakpa Nike, Enugu. The state has recorded two cases of the virus. Ondo Some churches in Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State, on Sunday, were shut, in compliance with state governments lockdown order. No Easter service was held in any of the churches in the council area, NAN reports. Tthe Ondo State Government had on April 17 granted the churches a concession to hold Easter services after a meeting with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). But the state government later rescinded its directives after a positive case of COVID-19 was reported in Akure on Friday. Map of Nigeria showing Ondo State Churches like Christ Apostolic Church, Foursquare Gospel Church, Anglican Church, Mountain of Fire Ministries, Methodist Church, Stella Maris Catholic Church, Winners Chapel and the Redeemed Christian Church of God did not open for Easter celebrations. And Christians in the council area observed the Easter celebrations at home. Pastor Mathew OgoOluwa, the Chairman, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Okitipupa chapter, said Christians had been implored to ensure total compliance with governments order in their own interest. We have earlier been instructed to open churches today for the Easter celebration after deliberations between Christian bodies and the government. But we were later instructed not to open our worship centres again because of the latest development on COVID-19. So we have no choice than to comply. Since it is all for our wellbeing, I urge all Christians to comply with all the precautionary measures prescribed by government and health professionals in order to contain the pandemic, he said. The case was the same in Akure, the state capital, as churches around Owode and Oba-Ile remain locked. Many of the big denominations, however, held live Easter services on different social media platforms. Message of hope As Nigerian Christians join their counterparts globally to celebrate Easter, President Muhammadu Buhari urged Nigerians to emulate Jesus Christ by imbibing the spirit of sacrifice and perseverance to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. President Muhammadu Buhari I urge you to imbibe and live the values of humility, discipline, perseverance, sacrifice and obedience which Jesus Christ demonstrated during His stay on earth, he said. He said there is no better opportunity than now for all Christians in particular, and Nigerians in general, to remain faithful and hopeful that, with intensified prayers backed by personal and collective responsibility, the nation would pull through the trying time. A new scenario based on computer simulations accounts for all of the observed characteristics of the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system Since its discovery in 2017, an air of mystery has surrounded the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, an elongated, cigar-shaped body named 'Oumuamua (Hawaiian for "a messenger from afar arriving first"). How was it formed, and where did it come from? A new study published April 13 in Nature Astronomy offers a first comprehensive answer to these questions. First author Yun Zhang at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and coauthor Douglas N. C. Lin at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used computer simulations to show how objects like 'Oumuamua can form under the influence of tidal forces like those felt by Earth's oceans. Their formation theory explains all of 'Oumuamua's unusual characteristics. "We showed that 'Oumuamua-like interstellar objects can be produced through extensive tidal fragmentation during close encounters of their parent bodies with their host stars, and then ejected into interstellar space," said Lin, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. Discovered on October 19, 2017, by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1) in Hawaii, 'Oumuamua is absolutely nothing like anything else in our solar system, according to Zhang. Its dry surface, unusually elongated shape, and puzzling motion even drove some scientists to wonder if it was an alien probe. "It is really a mysterious object, but some signs, like its colors and the absence of radio emission, point to 'Oumuamua being a natural object," Zhang said. "Our objective is to come up with a comprehensive scenario, based on well understood physical principles, to piece together all the tantalizing clues," Lin said. Astronomers had expected that the first interstellar object they detected would be an icy body like a comet. Icy objects like those populating the Oort cloud, a reservoir of comets in the outermost reaches of our solar system, evolve at very large distances from their host stars, are rich in volatiles, and are often tossed out of their host systems by gravitational interactions. They are also highly visible due to the sublimation of volatile compounds, which creates a comet's coma (or "tail") when it is warmed by the sun. 'Oumuamua's dry appearance, however, is similar to rocky bodies like the solar system's asteroids, indicating a different ejection scenario. Other researchers have calculated that there must be an extremely large population of interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua. "The discovery of 'Oumuamua implies that the population of rocky interstellar objects is much larger than we previously thought," Zhang said. "On average, each planetary system should eject in total about a hundred trillion objects like 'Oumuamua. We need to construct a very common scenario to produce this kind of object." When a smaller body passes very close to a much bigger one, tidal forces of the larger body can tear the smaller one apart, as happened to comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 when it came close to Jupiter. The tidal disruption processes can eject some debris into interstellar space, which has been suggested as a possible origin for 'Oumuamua. But whether such a process could explain 'Oumuamua's puzzling characteristics remained highly uncertain. Zhang and Lin ran high-resolution computer simulations to model the structural dynamics of an object flying close by a star. They found that if the object comes close enough to the star, the star can tear it into extremely elongated fragments that are then ejected into the interstellar space. "The elongated shape is more compelling when we considered the variation of material strength during the stellar encounter. The ratio of long axis to short axis can be even larger than ten to one," Zhang said. The researchers' thermal modeling showed that the surface of fragments resulting from the disruption of the initial body would melt at a very short distance from the star and recondense at greater distances, thereby forming a cohesive crust that would ensure the structural stability of the elongated shape. "Heat diffusion during the stellar tidal disruption process also consumes large amounts of volatiles, which not only explains 'Oumuamua's surface colors and the absence of visible coma, but also elucidates the inferred dryness of the interstellar population," Zhang said. "Nevertheless, some high-sublimation-temperature volatiles buried under the surface, like water ice, can remain in a condensed form." Observations of 'Oumuamua showed no cometary activity, and only water ice is a possible outgassing source to account for its non-gravitational motion. If 'Oumuamua was produced and ejected by the scenario of Zhang and Lin, plenty of residual water ice could be activated during its passage through the solar system. The resulting outgassing would cause accelerations that match 'Oumuamua's comet-like trajectory. "The tidal fragmentation scenario not only provides a way to form one single 'Oumuamua, but also accounts for the vast population of asteroid-like interstellar objects," Zhang said. The researchers' calculations demonstrate the efficiency of tidal forces in producing this kind of object. Possible progenitors, including long-period comets, debris disks, and even super-Earths, could be transformed into 'Oumuamua-size pieces during stellar encounters. This work supports estimates of a large population of 'Oumuamua-like interstellar objects. Since these objects may pass through the domains of habitable zones, the possibility that they could transport matter capable of generating life (called panspermia) cannot be ruled out. "This is a very new field. These interstellar objects could provide critical clues about how planetary systems form and evolve," Zhang said. According to Lin, "'Oumuamua is just the tip of the iceberg. We anticipate many more interstellar visitors with similar traits will be discovered by future observation with the forthcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory." U.S. Naval Academy astronomer Matthew Knight, who is co-leader of the 'Oumuamua International Space Science Institute team and was not involved in the new study, said this work "does a remarkable job of explaining a variety of unusual properties of 'Oumuamua with a single, coherent model." "As future interstellar objects are discovered in coming years, it will be very interesting to see if any exhibit 'Oumuamua-like properties. If so, it may indicate that the processes described in this study are widespread," Knight said. ### COVID-19 outbreak: The team of over a 100 callers made up of health advisory officers, counselors and medical officers, have reached out to 20,656 people quarantined in Assam and attended to over 132,690 calls as of 10 March, with over 80 percent of these calls related to COVID-19 cases. Guwahati, Assam: By 23 March, when the countrywide lockdown began, not a single person in Assam had tested positive for the Sars-Cov-2 virus even as the Coronavirus cases in India climbed to 469, with 9 turning fatal. But with several businesses and services pulling its shutters down for 21 days, a new set of frontline workers have entered the battlefield in Assam tele callers and counsellors. The 104 Sarathi helpline launched by the Piramal Swasthya Management and Research Institute in collaboration with National Health Mission and the Assam government has been running as a COVID-19 helpline since the lockdown. Apart from disseminating information under the guidelines of the World Health Organisation and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the tele callers have doubled up as tele-counsellors now. The team of over a 100 callers made up of health advisory officers, counselors and medical officers, have reached out to 20,656 people quarantined in Assam and attended to over 132,690 calls as of 10 March, with over 80 percent of these calls related to COVID-19 cases. Apart from Assam, Piramal Swasthya has been supporting beneficiaries through 104 Health Helpline in 6 other states Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Karnataka and Bihar in partnership with the state governments. Although Piramal Swasthya says that they have been providing counselling in addition to medical or health related advise, experts caution that many of their tele counsellors are not formally trained as psychologists. Dr Sangeeta Goswami, a clinical psychologist and founder of Guwahati based Mind India Foundation, recently took a 15-minute stress management for the tele-callers. "With the COVID-19, everyone has been pushed to the frontline. They have suddenly started getting more calls on anxiety issues, which they are not equipped to handle," said Dr Goswami. "But somehow they have been managing but by talking about the facts rather than feelings" Addressing mental health issues, she added, also comes with the emotional investment from the tele-callers, which wasn't the case earlier. "One of the tele-callers told me that while listening to the fears of the people, she herself started feeling very vulnerable," she told Firstpost. "This has been quite overwhelming for them" Since the lockdown, the 104 helpline registered a 250 percent increase in the number of both outbound and incoming calls. So far, 30 cases have been found positive in Assam with 28 connected to the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz cluster in Nizamuddin in New Delhi. As per a statement released by Piramal Swasthya, the helpline has become 'a nodal point for contact tracing to help curb the spread of infection', which has been credited with tracing many of the Jamaat returnees in Assam. The demise of a 65 year old returnee from Hailakandi district on 10 April was the first recorded death in the state from complications caused by the COVID-19 infection. Dr Goswami said that with the pressure of handling the increasing number of calls, very limited time was allocated for the stress management session, in which she shared some self management tips and group relaxation exercises. "I also gave them tips on employing empathy while speaking to the public, since they are otherwise used to sharing information in a more mechanical manner to dozens of callers" However, Pomi Baruah, the Deputy Secretary in the Health Department and the Nodal Officer for the 104 Helpline, said that there hadn't been any major surge of calls related to mental health issues. "We have strengthened the counselling services by appointing 3 psychiatrists at the helpline and more are being recruited," she said. Moreover, Baruah said, mental health professionals from GMCH have started training tele-callers, especially those who are speaking to quarantined patients, over Zoom. "They are being trained on soft skills so that they can speak to them from a very humanitarian point of view," she added. The tele-callers have also been counselling the quarantined on the stigma that has come to be attached to those tested positive for the virus, she added. New helplines to address COVID-19 stress On 7 April, the Psychiatry Department of Guwahati Medical College and Hospital in collaboration with the Assam State Police launched six helpline numbers for tele-counselling, operational from 9 am to 9 pm. Dr Mythili Hazarika, an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at GMCH, trained five other clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers attending to the calls. "While these mental health professionals had been trained in short modules of support during pandemics but it was face to face. So I had to make guidelines of tele psychological counseling from scratch," she told Firstpost. Meant to address issues of anxiety, fear, uncertainty as well as domestic abuse, anger and children, especially those with special needs, Dr Hazarika said that the counselors had already logged about 40-50 calls in a matter of 2 days. On average, she said, the tele-counsellors are spending about 15-20 minutes per call. Clinical psychologist, Dr Sandamita Chowdhury said that they had been receiving around 8-10 calls per consultant, which were related to practical challenges during the lockdown and psychological issues. Clocking a 12 hour shift everyday, Dr Chowdhury continues to attend to cases at the Army Hospital in the morning and volunteers from 3pm to 9pm on one of the six helpline numbers. "On the very first day, I got calls from migrant workers stuck outside Assam who were very anxious about coming home. Then, the father of a patient with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder had called to report that due to the shortage of psychiatric medicines, his daughter's symptoms were resurfacing," she further added. However, Dr Chowhury said, since this is tele counseling, the psychologists are required to keep it solution focused since they are working in the absence of knowledge of a person's case history and other details. "We also have a line of psychiatrists who we are referring to in case they need urgent help" Spike in number of domestic violence and cyber crime cases Meanwhile, the women's helpline number 181 registered a clear spike in the number of domestic violence cases since the lockdown, as has been reported countywide and in other countries, like the United States and France. Curiously, 181 in Assam had also seen a sudden increase in cyber crimes, with 11 cases related to internet blackmailing out of the 65 complaints they had logged so far, as per Nilakshi Sharma, who manages the helpline in Guwahati. "It's basically to defame a woman. Many of these men in the age group of 22-26 years don't have anything to occupy them, so they start pressuring their girlfriends to oblige them. If she protests, he'll blackmail her by threatening to post obscene pictures of her," she said. Per the screenshots they have received from the complainants, Sharma said the accused have sent messages, where the accused threaten to go to the survivor's home and rape/kidnap them and show those videos to their parents. Whatever the nature of the complaint, helpline managers said they're only effective if the administration is prompt in their response. "The brother of a domestic violence survivor had called us from South Salmara district at 11.30 pm saying that his sister had been thrown out of the house and could not go anywhere because of the lockdown," said Sharma. When they tried to contact the local police station, the Officer in Charge was very callous in his response and was only sorted out after the Superintendent of Police stepped in. "The OC actually told the survivor that if she had a bike she could come down, or else, it's better she stays at home," she said. In another case, a woman in Karimganj district was hiding from her husband in the neighbour's house and it took three hours to rescue her. "We had to hire a vehicle and pay for it, which is fine, because we know the police and the administration are already very stressed with the viral outbreak," Sharma added. "They see this as an additional burden" Dr Hazarika said the data from the calls would be compiled in a research paper as a learning document from the pandemic period. However, Dr Goswami also noted that mental health should not be considered only retrospectively in any crisis situation, as is the norm. "We don't have any psychological preparation in disaster management irrespective of what the disaster is, which is something I've been trying to impress upon the government that this needs to be made a priority," she said. "We really need to have psychological aid for those working in the frontline as well as community workers, particularly the youth, to curb panic among the public" Regarding the cyber crime cases, Sharma said that the women's helpline tele-callers have had to personally counsel the perpetrators by threatening to book them under relevant sections of the law. "In such cases, women desist from filing a first information report because the accused is known to them," she said. Since the lockdown, the Assam Police has taken on a massive campaign online in all the districts to curb fake news on social media. As per information shared by the Director of the Information and Public Relations, 8 cases of 'Fake news/misinformation' and 59 cases of 'Rumours and Objectionable comment' had been registered as of 9 April. Sharma, however, added that she is yet to see more serious action in crimes against women. "We see the police advertising a lot about cyber crime activities. But in reality they are doing nothing" The author is a journalist based in Guwahati, Assam. Some businesses in Vietnam are adapting to the coronavirus lockdown by switching to new products and services. Doan Anh Thu, owner Vua Cua, a chain of five seafood restaurants, turned to selling steamed buns stuffed with seafood (banh bao) after local authorities ordered restaurants to stop serving guests to prevent the spread of Covid-19. She is hiring more employees since the product is becoming popular. Thu said the restaurants sold 300 of them in the first three days, and the number is on the rise. "I chose to make this dish because I believe it can be eaten at any time of the day, fills your belly and has a reasonable price." She has been wanting to put steamed buns on her restaurants menu, but her kitchen staff were too busy during normal times to make them, she said. Thu is also preparing to offer two kinds of hotpot broth and 10 new seafood sauces, and hopes to launch them next week for takeout orders. Two of her restaurants are closed and the rest are open, doing deliveries and takeout. Thu said she plans to cut her workers salaries by 30 percent. "We get a steady flow of online orders. It is difficult to make any profit but is enough to cover expenses. At this rate we can probably survive until June." iVIVU, a Vietnamese online travel booking service, no longer sends emails offering combination tickets for flights and tours: it has switched to food delivery. Meanwhile, its competitors and other business in the industry are struggling amid the current crisis. It is offering the service in Hanoi and Saigon. Nguyen Trung Cong, director of iVIVU.com, saying the response during the trial period was good, expects to deliver 100,000 meals a day to customers in big cities before expanding countrywide. Asked why it decided to enter this business, iVIVU said it had always been on the cards, but the pandemic forced an earlier than expected start. Cong said the long-term vision is to be able to earn revenues of VND1 trillion ($42.4 million) a year. "The company's traditional businesses such as travel combos, tours and air tickets have earned virtually no revenues since the outbreak. This is really a dark period for the travel industry." Hoang Tien, founder of Coffee Bike, which operates mobile coffee stalls, said business is not as good as it used to be, especially for F&B since the industry sees a 60-70 percent drop in the amount of products sold. "Therefore, companies tend to sell more products to sustain the cash flow and survive this situation." The company switched from selling beverages to coffee powder used in filters to maintain its customer base. "With 80 percent of beverage retail stores closed, Coffee Bikes main revenue now is from sales of coffee powder." An employee of Quala flower shop hands "Hoa Coffee" to a delivery driver. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Thanh. The flower industry is another victim of Covid-19 since consumers have shifted their concerns to more basic necessities. Quala, a flower shop in Saigon, had to think of a way to incentivize customers to buy since spending money on flowers amid a pandemic would be seen as a luxury. It has launched a product, "Hoa Coffee", that comes with flowers atop a takeout coffee cup. Hoa in Vietnamese means flowers. Dao Duc Thanh, the owner, said he had planned to launch the product in September but changed his strategy and decided to advance the launch due to the pandemic. It is not only for friends to gift each other, but also for bosses to send to their subordinates and couples. It has already received a lot of positive feedback, he said. "After the outbreak ends, "Hoa Coffee" will become a featured product of Quala." Vietnam is still in a 15-day social distancing campaign launched on April 1. People have been told not to venture outside home except for essential reasons like buying food or medicines, emergencies or working at factories, production facilities and businesses that involve trade in essential goods and services. The country's Covid-19 count rose to 262 Monday morning with two new cases in Hanois Ha Loi Village, locked down since April 7. Of the patients so far 144 have recovered and been discharged from hospitals. There have been no deaths. Globally, the Covid-19s death toll has jumped to more than 114,000 as it attacked 210 countries and territories. In a move to trace all Nizamuddin Markaz, Assam police on Monday, have nabbed 12 members of the Tablighi Jamaat and sent them to quarantine, as per sources. Sources add that four officials of different mosques - Saheb Ali, Moinul Haque, Mukdan Ali, and Safiur Rahman too were arrested for helping the Markaz attendees, to hide in four mosques in Kamrup. The four members are from Meerut and were reportedly found by the police after a tip-off. Assam has 31 Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases - 28 of which are Markaz attendees, 1 person has died. Assam seals 'hotspot' at Guwahati mosque where 8 Markaz attendees held congregation of 100 Assam seals first hotspot Earlier on Friday, Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the Athgaon Kabristhan Masjid in Guwahati has been sealed for 14 days. He added that the structure was declared as a self-containment zone after 8 Nizamuddin Markaz attendees had stayed there and held a congregation in the Masjid. Assam's first fatality was a 65-year-old retired BSF personnel hailing from Hailakandi district, who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat meet at Nizamuddin in New Delhi, apart from returning from Saudi Arabia. ICMR reveals 39.2% of COVID-19 positive cases among SARI patients with no travel history Assam govt to file cases against Markaz attendees Assam government has announced it will start filing cases against all those who attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi, who test positive for Coronavirus (COVID-19). Sarma informed that the government has zeroed in on 831 attendees from Assam - others are being identified through Mosque Committees. Moreover, Assam had also given a deadline to all Markaz attendees to surrender to the police. Coronavirus LIVE Updates: PM Modi to address at 10 AM on April 14; total cases at 9352 What is the Nizamuddin COVID-19 scare? On March 30, sources reported that a religious programme was organised at Tablighi Jamaat's headquarters Markaz Nizamuddin mosque between 13-15 March which had over 3400 attendees from Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan and from several states in India. After attending the meeting, prior to the nationwide lockdown, 1500 of these attendees returned to several parts of the country, possibly spreading the COVID-19 virus. The mosque has claimed that while they were letting small groups of attendees leave from the venue prior to the Janta Curfew, several were stuck in the area owing to the nationwide lockdown. All 2631 occupants have been evacuated and the building has been sanitised. The Delhi Crime Branch which has booked the Markaz chief Maulana Saad for violating lockdown is currently searching for him by raiding possible hideouts. COVID-19: 25 districts in 15 states report no cases in 14 days post-Cluster containment A special police officer was killed and another injured on Monday in an attack by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmirs Kishtwar district, officials said. The terrorists attacked the patrol party of Jammu and Kashmir police in Dachan area of Kishtwar with an axe and killed Khurshid Iqbal and injured Vishal Singh, they said. Singh has been critically injured and taken to a hospital. According to officials, the terrorists also snatched the weapons of the policemen before fleeing. The area has been cordoned off and a search operation has been launched to trace the terrorists. Zoom isnt suited for law school. As much as I hate getting cold called in class, the Socratic Method is a core part of a legal education and simply isnt replicable online. As much as I dont miss commuting to my classes at the UC Berkeley School of Law from San Francisco, I long for library study group sessions with my classmates. As much as I appreciate my professors trying their best to adjust to Zoom, theres a lot lost in translation when a lecture takes place in a professors noisy kitchen rather than the classroom. But theres no refund coming my way. Though my legal education has been reduced to lectures I could have YouTubed for free, Berkeley has not signaled any intent to provide even a partial refund for the diminished quality of the educational experience. Its true that I have only had half a semesters worth of Contracts but Ive studied enough to know that where theres a large difference between the goods promised and the goods delivered, a customer deserves some remedy. Other industries are working hard to provide such remedies. Heck, even some airlines have gone out of their way to give customers refunds for canceled and changed flights. Alaska Airlines, for instance, is providing full credit for cancellations of their budget saver fare tickets. Hotels have instituted similar exceptional policies to restore customers to their pre-deal positions. The fact that these notoriously stingy businesses are going out of their way during these chaotic times should send a signal to Berkeley and others that now is not the time to cheat students out of the experiences for which they paid (a lot). Some schools have picked up this signal. NYU is providing students with a partial refund. Though the refund is limited to fees related to the use of course equipment and production classes, it is a step in the right direction. Many others, such as Harvard which went as far as to kick students out of their housing have refused to even slightly budge. My Contracts class has also made clear that parties are often not responsible for liabilities imposed by truly unforeseeable events. However, after Berkeley canceled classes for several days due to power outages in the fall, its hard to believe the school wasnt on notice that so-called Black Swan events appear to be happening with even greater frequency these days. Its also no secret that the entire UC system is under immense financial pressure that will only worsen in the coming years assuming COVID-19 decreases enrollment, especially from international students who tend to pay more money. But why should students be responsible for holding up the financial integrity of the UC system? Most Berkeley professors and staff unquestionably have gone out of their way to make up for the limits imposed by a Zoom-based education. But the fact of the matter is that my classmates didnt pay thousands of dollars to watch lectures that our professors recorded last year. We should not foot the bill for an educational experience that we will never receive. Berkeley may not legally be breaching its contract. Like most people, I havent read the fine print of my purchase agreement. But the court of public opinion should render a strong verdict students deserve their money back. Kevin Frazier is a student at the UC Berkeley School of Law. North Carolina health officials ordered new resident and employee protections in the states nursing homes and similar settings last week after the new coronavirus further penetrated those facilities, leading to more deaths. The new directives, which will require all workers to wear masks when interacting with patients and daily health screenings of residents and staff, come as more than 60 residents at an Orange County long-term care facility have tested positive. Two of them have died and seven are hospitalized, Gov. Roy Cooper said. These are shockingly large numbers, Cooper said of the facility, which local legislators identified as PruittHealth-Carolina Point. Moore County health officials also announced Wednesday that more than two dozen residents and several staffers at Pinehurst Health Care and Rehabilitation Center also have COVID-19. One resident at a Northampton County adult care home died at a Virginia hospital last month. The state had more than 3,400 positive cases of the virus as of the day of the directives, April 8 200 cases more than the previous day according to data from the state Department of Health and Human Services. More than 81 state residents had died as of April 13. The additional restrictions come as civil rights groups and several prisoners asked the North Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday to order the state prison system to release offenders who are at higher risk for infection and those already scheduled to be released soon. They contend social distancing requirements ordered statewide by Cooper are impossible within the 35,000-person prison system. When there is an outbreak, these individuals will be at the mercy of a prison system that is ill-equipped to handle a novel, deadly virus that has overwhelmed healthcare systems across the country, lawyers for the groups and prisoners wrote in the emergency petition. Similar releases are occurring in California, New York, Colorado and Iowa, the petition reads. Cooper and Public Safety Secretary Erik Hooks, who are defendants in the case, said the prison system is doing all that it can to halt the viruss spread. Leaders are prohibiting prison visitors, promoting hygiene, giving correctional officers protective gear and isolating offenders whove tested positive. Attorney General Josh Steins office, which is expected to represent Hooks and Cooper, is reviewing the lawsuit, a spokeswoman said. We are taking this very seriously. Our staff is at the forefront of our minds, as well as our individuals that are incarcerated, said Hooks. A little over a dozen prisoners have tested positive so far, he added. One of the plaintiffs, John Sturdivant, 73, who is incarcerated at a Pasquotank County prison, said he has high blood pressure, suffered a stroke and has had prostate cancer. Because of my age and health problems, I am afraid that if I catch COVID-19, I will die, Sturdivant said in an affidavit. Hed live with his son if released and can follow social distancing guidelines. The Department of Public Safety said late Wednesday its been looking for avenues for reducing the prison population while maintaining public safety. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, and the vast majority survive. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause pneumonia or death. Outbreaks, defined as two or more laboratory confirmed cases, have been reported at more than 20 nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, adult care homes or correctional facilities. Cooper and state health Secretary Mandy Cohen said the new rules also will close all common areas and require residents testing positive to be segregated in the facility for treatment. Visitation to long-term care facilities already had been severely restricted. If an outbreak happens, then quick and aggressive action must also follow, Cohen said. This is really hard work. Cooper has signaled additional orders this week to prevent crowds in essential retail stores like groceries to redouble social distancing directives. Cooper has said he doesnt know yet whether a statewide stay-at-home order will continue beyond its current April 29 expiration. But hes highlighted a report showing state hospitals have a better chance to avoid bed shortages with social distancing restrictions extended beyond April. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics COVID-19 North Carolina A restaurant chain with three eateries in central Pennsylvania shorted employees on minimum wage and didnt pay them overtime, federal investigators claim. The target of the complaint by the U.S. Department of Labor is Montezuma of Pennsylvania Inc., which specializes in Mexican fare and has restaurants in Chambersburg, Waynesboro and Gettysburg. According to the complaint filed in U.S. Middle District Court, the feds accuse the chain of not paying bussers and servers, who are tipped employees, the required minimum wage from September 2016 to September 2019. Also, the firm charged those tipped workers for the company shirts they had to wear during their shifts, investigators contend, again knocking their pay below the minimum wage. The Labor Department claims Montezuma improperly classified six kitchen managers and head chefs as salaried workers exempt from payments for working overtime. As a result, those wrongly rated employees had to work 50- to 60-hour weeks without receiving the overtime compensation they were owed, the complaint states. Nor did Montezuma keep accurate records of the hours their employees worked as required by federal law, the Labor Department contends. It is asking Judge Jennifer P. Wilson to order Montezuma to pay the employees an as yet to be determined amount for the alleged shortages in overtime and minimum wage pay. An attempt to obtain comment from Montezuma regarding the federal accusations was not immediately successful Monday morning. Alexa can help you stay informed with up to date information about the Coronavirus pandemic. Alexa can be accessed through Amazons Echo family of speakers, Fire TV stick and even third party devices that support it. The Coronavirus pandemic has led to a lot of fear and misinformation spreading. Apps and services are doing everything they can to ensure people receive the right kind of information. Google has given users the ability to search for food and night shelters across a number of cities on Google Maps. You can read more about the locations of the shelters here. WhatsApp has reduced the number of people you can share a forwarded message to curb misinformation spreading about Coronavirus. You can read more about it here. Amazon has announced that users can talk to Alexa and get information about the Coronavirus. Amazon says, Using Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) guidance, our Alexa team built an India-specific experience that lets you use Alexa to check your symptoms for COVID-19 at home. Ask, "Alexa, what do I do if I think I have coronavirus?", "Alexa, how do I know if I have coronavirus?", or Alexa, Kya mujhe coronavirus hai?. Alexa will ask a series of questions and provide ICMR and Ministry of Health guidance given your risk level and symptoms. Users can also ask Alexa to sing a song for 20 seconds, so they can keep time while washing their hands. A nice way to keep yourself entertained while washing your hands and not worrying whether you were short by 5 or 10 seconds. Amazon goes on to say, Alexa can now answer questions related to COVID-19, and we are working to provide accurate and timely information from news and official government sources such as Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) in India. So if you are looking for the latest update on the number of active cases or even for local information, if it is available on an official credible source, you will also have access to that information. Going beyond Alexa, Amazon has made a number of books available for free through its Kindle app. So if you have Amazons e-reader or are simply logging onto the app on your smartphone or tablet, you have a wide variety of books to choose from to read for free. Security intelligence expert Wesley Wark poses at the University of Ottawa's Social Sciences Building in Ottawa, Canada, on May 14, 2013. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press) Intelligence Expert Says COVID-19 a Failure for Canadas Early Warning Efforts It was last on a list of eight threat scenarios, but the danger of a global pandemic made the cut when the Liberal government issued a national security policy in 2004. With the then-recent SARS outbreak in mind, the government said it would integrate its approach to public health emergencies with its national security agenda, including when drafting threat assessments. The promise wasnt fulfilled, leaving Canada woefully exposed during the COVID-19 crisis, says security-and-intelligence expert Wesley Wark. Despite the idea that we were going to do this with the national security policy, it just never happened, said Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawas Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Rather, Canada was left to rely on open-source information, including assumptions about timely and accurate reporting from countries like China that stood to suffer from the outbreak, he said in an interview. With regard to COVID-19, there has been a failure of early warning, and we are reaping the consequences of that. The Jacques-Cartier bridge in Montreal is seen from the tourist district of the Old Port, illuminated in the colours of the rainbow as a sign of hope and in support of victims of the coronavirus, Montreal, Canada, on April 11, 2020. (Eric Thomas / AFP via Getty Images) Did it really matter? All one had to do was turn on the news to see the empty streets of Wuhan and the escalating casualty figures. Wark argues careful analysis of intelligence, including satellite imagery from allies, could have revealed signs such as Chinas military movements, the sudden setup of medical facilities and activities around funeral homesa picture of the crisis that clearly the Chinese authorities, in the early days, were not anxious to publicize. A determination in mid-January that COVID-19 could hit Canada hard would have given the country a head start, allowing it to enact a strict travel ban, issue an advisory to stay home during March Break, replenish the nationalemergency stockpile and begin buying personalprotective equipment for health workers, he said. Asked about media reporting that Beijing fudged data on COVID-19, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland recently said Canada turns to the World Health Organization for virus information, given that a global response to the pandemic is essential. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Chrystia Freeland responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons, in Ottawa, Canada, on March 9, 2020. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press) Having said that, Canada is a very energetic member of the Five Eyes and we have a close and very important security-and-intelligence partnership with the United States in the Five Eyes, in NATO, and in NORAD, Freeland told a news briefing. A reason that we are able to have those conversations, which are very important in the crisis that the world is experiencing today, is because those conversations have been in private. And so I am not able to share details of what is discussed in those conversations. Its quite possible that Canada saw some of the early intelligence from the United States, said Greg Fyffe, former executive director of the international assessment staff at the Privy Council Office. Chances are also good that Canadian intelligence assessments of COVID-19 have been produced from an array of sources, but such reports are not made public and rarely leaked, he said. Fyffe recalls tracking the H1N1 avian flu during his time at the PCO. We were making sure that the intelligence that was available was circulated, he said. Wark acknowledges that Canadian intelligence officials gather some health-related information. But there is absolutely no evidence the major players of the security community have collectively focused efforts on a pandemic threat-assessment mission, he said. There is also no indication the Public Health Agency of Canada has conducted its own open-source assessment of the threat in recent years, Wark added. Passengers disembark an airplane carrying Canadian citizens flown out from the coronavirus zone in Wuhan, China, after arriving at CFB Trenton in Trenton, Ontario, Canada on Feb. 7, 2020. (Chris Wattie/AFP via Getty Images) After SARS, there was a sense the federal Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, housed at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, would regularly report on the pandemic danger, among other looming problems. However, tellingly, the unit soon morphed into the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre. It went down that road, which is the road that all of our security-and-intelligence resources have gone down for so long, Wark said. COVID-19 is going to do far greater damage to national security than terrorism ever did. The intelligence community once saw terrorism as rather unsexy, said Mark Stout, a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. But that changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and analysts who study transnational issues like pandemics could soon be getting more respect, too, he told an online presentation sponsored by the Washington-based International Spy Museum. I suspect we may see a similar reorientation after this, said Stout, now a program director in global security studies at Johns Hopkins University. Fyffe said the pandemics broad impact likely has senior Canadian intelligence officials asking basic questions. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during his daily press conference on the COVID-19 pandemic outside his residence in Ottawa on April 5, 2020. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press) What does this mean for the resources we have? What are the questions we want to ask? he said. It does happen from time to time that something changes significantly enough that you have to really reorder all your sense of what the priorities are. At daily briefings, Canadian officials have suggested there will be an opportunity to take stock and do lessons-learned exercises when the COVID-19 crisis abates. Canada was better positioned than a number of countries to respond to this pandemic because it had learned from the SARS experience, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on April 9. Similarly, as we go through this time we will learn more things about how to be even better prepared next time if this ever happens again, as it is likely it will in the coming decades. Wark says the lessons must be learned and applied immediately. The national-security intelligence advisers should be turning the whole security intelligence community around on as much of a dime as possible to say, We are in the global pandemic reporting business as of now. And were going to stay in that business when were through this crisis. By Jim Bronskill Ogbonna is in a quarantine for a second time in his apartment, with a camera installed over the door so police can monitor him. He completed a 14-day quarantine in March after returning from Nigeria but was told by local officials on April 8 that he had to do another 14 days in isolation, although he had tested negative for the virus and had not traveled elsewhere. Two NHS nurses are being hailed as heroes after the British Prime Minister publicly thanked them for looking after him when he was in hospital fighting coronavirus. Boris Johnson praised several Medical Staff but paid specific tribute to Nurse Luis Pitarma, from central Aveiro in Portugal and Nurse Jenny McGee, from Invercargill in New Zealand. The NHS has saved my life, no question, said Boris Johnson, particularly two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way." It is hard to find the words to express my debt to the NHS for saving my life. The efforts of millions of people across this country to stay home are worth it. Together we will overcome this challenge, as we have overcome so many challenges in the past. #StayHomeSaveLives pic.twitter.com/HK7Ch8BMB5 Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives (@BorisJohnson) April 12, 2020 The British Prime Minister was admitted to Thomas Hospital in London on April 5 and moved to the ICU almost immediately when his symptoms worsened. He was given oxygen but did not contract pneumonia or need a respirator and was discharged at the weekend after 7 nights in hospital. Luis Pitarma has been working at St Thomas for 4 years and specialises in oxygenation, which is why he was taking care of Boris Johnson whilst he was in the ICU. Nurse Pitarma has already received a call from Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to "thank him personally for his work and vigilance. Jenny McGee has been working as a nurse in the UK for 8 years. The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern says she's sent a personal Facebook message to Nurse McGee to thank her for her work. BAKU, Azerbaijan, Apr.13 By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend: The work of industrial and construction enterprises, as well as certain sectors of the service will be resumed from April 20, 2020, in Kazakhstans Nur-Sultan and Almaty cities, Trend reports with reference to the press office of Kazakhstans prime minister. The decision has been made during the regular meeting of the State Commission on Ensuring the State of Emergency under Kazakhstans president chaired by Kazakhstans Prime Minister Askar Mamin. The State Commission decided to gradually resume the work of business entities in Nur-Sultan and Almaty cities, while maintaining strict sanitary and epidemiological measures. A specific list of ventures that will resume work in Nur-Sultan and Almaty will be approved by the State Commission and published on Apr. 15, 2020. In turn, Mamin ordered to establish tight control over the provision of sanitary and epidemiological safety at facilities that will resume work, as well as over compliance with the social distance of employees at workplaces. On March 15, 2020, Kazakhstans President Kassym Jomart Tokayev signed a decree introducing an emergency state in Kazakhstan due to the coronavirus outbreak, which came in force from 08:00 (GMT +6) on March 16 and will last till 08:00 April 15, 2020. On Apr. 10, 2020 Tokayev said that the emergency state period in Kazakhstan will be extended till the end of Apr. 2020. Total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Kazakhstan has reached 979. The first two cases of coronavirus infection were detected in Kazakhstan among those who arrived in Almaty city from Germany on March 13, 2020. The outbreak of the coronavirus began in the Chinese city of Wuhan (an international transport hub), at a fish market in late December 2019. The number of people killed by the disease has surpassed 115,200. Over 1.8 million people have been confirmed as infected. Meanwhile, over 440,600 people have reportedly recovered. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. --- Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh Two property/casualty insurance subsidiaries of Cincinnati Financial Corp., The Cincinnati Insurance Co. and The Cincinnati Casualty Co., are offering a 15% personal lines auto credit for current policyholders. Personal lines auto policyholders of Cincinnati Insurance and Cincinnati Casualty will receive a 15% credit per policy on their April and May premiums pending regulatory approval. No action is required by policyholders to receive this discount. The discounts are in recognition of the reduced driving times brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The companies join many other insurers across the country in offering discounts and other accommodations in in response to the current health crisis. The companies other COVID-19 action plans include: For Policyholders: Pausing cancellations for personal lines and commercial lines policyholders due to nonpayment of premium and waiving late fees until at least April 30 Waiving restrictions on policyholders now performing delivery services in efforts to protect the wellbeing of their communities Providing additional risk management advice to businesses considering manufacturing of personal protective equipment Waiving vacancy clauses for buildings temporarily closed due to the pandemic Providing credits on commercial policies for vehicles not being used when requested Conducting virtual claims and risk management inspections where possible, and closely following CDC health guidelines when an in-person meeting is necessary For Agents: Delivering meals, purchased from local businesses, to agencies to help support their employees as they work to serve clients in their communities Transforming training sessions to virtual sessions Connecting agents for roundtable discussion on how to best serve clients during the COVID-19 outbreak Using the Cincinnati Customer Care Center to temporarily assist agents as they transitioned their offices to work from home For Associates: Moving more than 95% of company associates to work from home Supplying location-critical associates with sanitization products and offering take-home meals from our food service vendor, limiting the additional number of trips needed Maintaining full pay for associates who couldnt do their jobs from home or who were needed to care for family members Purchasing face coverings for location-critical associates and those who need to meet with policyholders Source: Cincinnati Financial Corp. Related: Topics Carriers Auto Personal Auto FP Trending Microsoft has announced that it will continue to support the Edge web browser on Windows 7 till 15 July 2021. In a new post in Microsoft Docs, the company has suggested that Windows 7 users should migrate to Windows 10, which is used by more than a billion devices globally. These operating systems [Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2] are out of support and Microsoft recommends you move to a supported operating system such as Windows 10, says the post. Microsoft had earlier this year hinted that it will no longer provide official security and software updates for Windows 7 by ending support for the operating system. However, according to a TheWindowsClub report, many antivirus companies expressed their willingness to provide support to Windows 7 for at least the next two years. Google had also said that Chrome for Windows 7 will continue being supported till July 2021. If Googles decision is taken into perspective, then the announcement by Microsoft does not come as a surprise. The Edge web browser is based on Googles Chromium engine. Microsoft decided to stop supporting Windows 7 in view of security concerns. The company, in its post, said, While Microsoft Edge helps keep you more secure on the web, your PC may still be vulnerable to security risks. The tech giant recommended Edge users on the outdated Windows 10 SAC to shift to the supported version of Windows 10 SAC. By Ezgi Erkoyun ISTANBUL (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan rejected the resignation on Sunday of Turkey's interior minister, who said he was stepping down in the wake of a short-notice coronavirus lockdown which sent people rushing to shops to stock up on supplies. Authorities declared the 48-hour curfew in dozens of cities shortly before 10 pm on Friday, giving millions of people just two hours' notice and prompting a wave of desperate last-minute buying. "The incidents that occurred ahead of the implementation of the curfew were not befitting the perfect management of the outbreak," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in statement on Twitter in which he said he was resigning. Erdogan, however, judged it was not "appropriate" for Soylu to resign and the minister would continue in his position, the presidency said shortly afterwards. Soylu's statement came just before the end of the weekend lockdown in 31 provinces across Turkey, including its largest city and commercial hub Istanbul, home to 16 million residents. The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) said the way the lockdown was announced had undermined efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak in Turkey, which has registered 50,000 cases. "A decision that needs to be taken for public health became a threat to public health due to lack of planning," CHP spokesman Faik Oztrak said. "The sacrifice of people self isolating for days has been wasted." More than 1,100 people have died of COVID-19 in Turkey, many of them in Istanbul where CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said municipal authorities had no advance warning of the move. "Decisions taken without common sense and cooperation will only cause confusion and panic," he said. Turkey's lira fell more than 1% to 6.800 against the U.S. dollar after Soylu's statement. It traded at 6.741 at 2107 GMT. The weekend lockdown came on top of existing curbs under which people under the age of 20 and over 65 have been told to stay at home. Story continues Ankara has also halted all flights, restricted domestic travel, closed schools, bars and cafes, and suspended mass prayers. But people have still been going to work to sustain economic activity. Transport minister Mehmet Cahit Turhan was removed two weeks ago after the ministry drew criticism for holding a tender amid the outbreak to prepare to build a huge canal on the edge of Istanbul. (Editing by Alison Williams, Dominic Evans and Daniel Wallis) Brie Larson and her boyfriend Elijah Allan-Blitz were taking no chances when they headed to the farmers market in Malibu on Easter Sunday. The couple both wore face masks and gloves as they got in a spot of food shopping amid the coronavirus pandemic. Brie, 30, wore a blue jumper with baggy jeans and chunky boots for her outing. What a Marvel: Brie Larson and her boyfriend Elijah Allan-Blitz wear face masks and gloves to go shopping at the farmers market in Malibu Elijah, 32, wore double denim with dark jeans and a lighter coloured jacket which had sweater-style contrasting grey sleeves. After the farmers market, the couple stopped by Whole Foods for a few more groceries before heading back home to celebrate Easter Sunday. Brie first went public with fellow actor Elijah in August 2019, six months after breaking off her engagement with musician Alex Greenwald. Making memories: After the farmers market, the couple stopped by Whole Foods for a few more groceries before heading back home to celebrate Easter Sunday The actress and Alex first began dating in 2013 and got engaged three years later in 2016. Following their split, a source told People: They have taken a step back from their engagement for the time being, but they remain close. Brie has a lot coming up work-wise. It has been announced that she is starring in Captain Marvel II, due for release in 2022. Back in the action: Brie has a lot coming up work-wise. It has been announced that she is starring in Captain Marvel II, due for release in 2022 Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Captain Marvel also stars, Samuel L Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou and Lee Pace. Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, McKenna Grace, Clark Gregg, and Jude Law will also star. The plot currently remains under wraps but Brie will play Carol Danvers. Former flame: Brie first went public with fellow actor Elijah in August 2019, six months after breaking off her engagement with musician Alex Greenwald (pictured with Alex in 2018) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 12:52:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WUHAN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The head of a COVID-19 hospital in central China's Wuhan has suggested New York promote mask-wearing among the public and stop quarantining patients at home. Answering a question about New York's much higher infection figure than Wuhan, Wang Xinghuan, head of the Wuhan Leishenshan (Thunder God Mountain) Hospital, advocated the use of facial masks. Citing the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, where he is also the president, as an example, Wang said that some medics in non-COVID-19-treating departments contracted the novel coronavirus at the early stage of the outbreak, and none of them had worn masks. "None of those who wore masks while contacting the patients were infected, so we're certain about the efficacy of masks," Wang told a group of journalists on the weekend. The president also advised against asking patients with mild symptoms to isolate themselves at home, where they could pass the infection to more family members. "In those early days, there were many cases in which one patient infected a whole family of three, five or six people in Wuhan. This is a heartrending lesson," he said. After realizing this problem, Wuhan later converted public facilities, including gyms and exhibition centers, into 16 temporary hospitals that helped quarantine patients with mild symptoms, which Wang described as a success story. "If the transmission is not cut, then it's natural that infections will rise," Wang said. "To contain an epidemic, at least one of the three factors should be completely controlled: the source of infection, the route of transmission and the susceptible population." Wuhan built two hospitals from scratch -- Huoshenshan and Leishenshan -- within two weeks between late January and early February to treat COVID-19 patients after local hospitals were overwhelmed. Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath has expressed concern over shifting of some NSA detainees from one district to another despite the lockdown, as some of them later tested positive for coronavirus. This could spread the viral disease in other districts, he said. "It is surprising that while there is lockdown in the state, many districts are under curfew and their boundaries sealed in view of the coronavirus scare and people not being allowed to move from one district to other, in such a scenario those detained under NSA in Indore were sent to Satna and they were found coronavirus positive," Nath tweeted on Sunday. "This way corona infection will spread in other districts also," he further said in a tweet in Hindi. Some persons who indulged in stone-pelting and misbehaviour with health workers and police in Indore were recently booked under the National Security Act (NSA). After some of accused under the NSA were shifted out of Indore, two of them tested positive for coronavirus in Satna and one was found infected with the disease in Jabalpur, causing panic in the two districts. Satna Collector Ajay Katesaria on Sunday said two prisoners, arrested under NSA in Indore and shifted here, tested positive for coronavirus. Otherwise, there was no COVID-19 case in Satna district so far, the collector said. The prisoners who tested positive for coronavirus have been shifted to the Rewa-based Medical College and those who came in contact with them have been quarantined, he said. As a precautionary measure they were kept in the isolation cells, he added. The Satna administration has requested the authorities concerned not to send prisoners there from Indore and Bhopal, which have been severely affected by coronavirus. Jabalpur Collector Bharat Yadav said an NSA detainee out of four prisoners shifted from Indore to Jabalpur Central Jail tested positive for coronavirus before his admission to a local jail. The prisoner has been shifted to a government-run hospital, he said. The other three NSA detainees have been lodged at an isolation ward in the Jabalpur Central Jail, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) World in grip of viral pandemic for a month, fatalities rise above 108,000 Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 7:47 AM One month since the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), 108,867 people have died of complications caused by the pathogen and more than 1,777,666 people have been infected worldwide, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. The global epicenter of the disease has shifted to the United States, and its death toll of 20,071 has surpassed Italy's 19,468. Here is the latest on the coronavirus pandemic: In Europe, the pace of the deaths from COVID-19 seems to be slowing as Spain, France, and Germany reported the lowest rises in daily numbers of deaths on Saturday. Spain Spain on Saturday reported the lowest daily toll since March 23, as the number of deaths fell for a third consecutive day, with 510 fatalities. The country, which is the third-worst-hit nation after Italy and the US, reported a total death toll of 16,353, the Health Ministry said Saturday. The number of infected cases also climbed to 161,852 from 157,022 a day earlier. Meanwhile, Madrid has begun to contemplate a gradual unwinding of lockdown measures, which have kept most people confined to their homes since mid-March. It has set out guidelines for people who will be allowed to return to work from Monday in some industries such as construction and manufacturing. Companies restarting work must provide appropriate protective equipment and ensure employees have space to be at least two meters apart. The government, however, extended restrictions on movement across Spain's land borders with France and Portugal for another two weeks. Italy Italy reported 4,694 new cases on Saturday, an increase from the 3,951 a day earlier, according to civil protection officials. Confirmed cases in the country now total 152,271. Italy also registered 619 deaths in the past 24 hours, compared with 570 the day before. The figure brings the total number of deaths to 19,468. Germany Germany has reported more than 117,000 cases of COVID-19 and a total death toll of 2,544. In a rare television address, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the pandemic was a "test of our humanity." "No, this pandemic is not a war! Nations do not oppose other nations, nor soldiers against other soldiers. It is a test of our humanity," Steinmeier said Saturday. France France's fatalities slowed again for a second day on Saturday, and the number of patients in intensive care fell to the lowest in a week, officials said. Deaths caused by the coronavirus increased by 353 during the day the lowest number in the past four days, Director General of Health Jerome Salomon said on Saturday. "The overall number of fatalities since March 1 has reached 13,832, of which 4,889 deaths have been reported from retirement homes," Salomon said. The number of confirmed cases in France stands at 93,790, up by 3,114. Officials said as many as 31,320 patients were undergoing treatment at hospitals and over 26,000 patients had recovered. Russia In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that a "huge influx" of people infected with the virus was beginning to put a strain on hospitals in the capital, Moscow. "The situation in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, but mostly in Moscow, is quite tense because the number of sick people is growing," Peskov said. "There is a huge influx of patients. We are seeing hospitals in Moscow working extremely intensely, in heroic, emergency mode." The country has reported 13,584 cases of the virus, according to authorities, who said on Saturday that 12 new deaths in the past day had pushed the death toll to 106. Peskov further said that it would become clearer only in the next few weeks whether the country was nearing the worst point in its outbreak. In Asia, China and South Korea the two initial epicenters of the virus reported slight rises in new cases on Saturday. China China, the first epicenter of the virus, reported 99 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, according to official data released on Sunday. The figure had doubled from the previous day, and was the highest in one month, as the number of single-day imported cases in the mainland hit a record. Only two of the 99 cases were locally transmitted. China's National Health Commission (NHC) also said that newly reported asymptomatic coronavirus cases nearly doubled to 63 on Saturday, from 34 the previous day. The country's tally of infections now stands at 82,052, while the death toll stands at 3,339. South Korea South Korea reported 32 more cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the nation's total infections to 10,512. South Korea's death toll also rose by three to 214, according to the KCDC. Meanwhile, officials said that some 91 people who were thought to have recovered from the disease had tested positive again. Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the patients did not seem to have been re-infected; rather, the coronaviruses in their bodies might have been "reactivated." This prompted the WHO to open an investigation. "We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly," WHO said Saturday. North Korea's leader calls for strict virus curbs North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un called for tougher and more thorough countermeasures to fight the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Pyongyang has enforced consistent and compulsory "strict top-class emergency anti-epidemic measures" to maintain a stable situation, according to the official news agency KCNA. The county has not reported any infections yet. Indonesia Indonesia on Sunday reported 399 new cases of COVID-19, the biggest daily jump so far, which brought the total number of infections in the country to 4,241, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official, Achmad Yurianto. Yurianto said there had also been 46 new coronavirus-related deaths, taking the total to 373. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The pressure is building for Congress to pass a fourth coronavirus relief bill, beyond the roughly $2.2 trillion already approved to keep people and businesses viable during an unprecedented viral attack. And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is making his case for what a supplemental rescue package should include - guaranteed paid sick leave. "It has been estimated that only 12% of workers in businesses that are likely to stay open during this crisis are receiving paid sick leave benefits as a result of the second coronavirus relief package," Sanders argued in an op-ed published April 8 in The Guardian, just hours before he suspended his presidential campaign. Paid sick leave emerged as a sticky issue on Capitol Hill as lawmakers worked to develop a federal relief package. The Families First Coronavirus Emergency Response Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on March 18, included a guarantee of paid sick leave for some workers, which supporters say is crucial to make sure those who contract the virus are, in fact, able to stay home. The law requires companies that employ fewer than 500 people to provide two weeks of emergency sick leave if an employee develops COVID-19 symptoms, is isolating per the advice of a medical professional or is caring for a family member with a potential case of COVID-19. These employers also must provide paid family leave for people who may need to care for children during coronavirus school closures. But the law exempts bigger companies, a category that includes often-"essential" retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target and supermarket chains. That concession was made to satisfy the White House and congressional Republicans, many of whom have argued that most big companies already offer sick leave packages, and a federal requirement would create unnecessary red tape. Sanders' argument is that their employees are still vulnerable. Many of the firms exempted by the law remain open during the crisis. Employees who may become ill will not be protected by the federal guarantee of sick leave and, he argues, many will fall through the cracks because, while their employers can choose to provide paid time off, those benefits would not fall under the federal directive and could prove less generous than what smaller firms, which must comply with the law, will provide. We contacted Sanders' congressional office for more information but never heard back. Our research suggests that he has the big picture right, though the precise calculations are tricky. The 12% Nuances in the law - and variation in how localities define an "essential" worker make it difficult to quantify the number of people who would benefit from the relief package's paid sick leave requirement. Sanders' figure appears to come from an analysis conducted by The Washington Post, which suggests that "only 12 percent of workers in businesses that are likely to stay open will be affected." The analysis used Philadelphia's shelter-in-place order to determine which private-sector businesses would likely stay open because it offered a clear and publicly available list of workplaces excluded from the order. Other experts validated this approach, noting that this list was a good proxy - though not a perfect one - for locations across the country. Then, the Post used data from the Census Bureau's Statistics of U.S. Businesses (the most recent figures come from 2017) to determine how often those excluded businesses - such as grocery stores, pharmacies, big-box stores, hardware stores, banks and dry cleaners employed enough people to qualify for an exemption from the paid sick leave mandate. It arrived at the rate of 12%. So, first and foremost: Sanders is correct that someone had estimated this percentage. But there's more to consider. The law and its exceptions Because of the law's exemptions for large companies, many of the workers Americans are counting on now may not have protection. "The workers who are on the front lines, on the grocery chains, pharmacies and warehouses, aren't covered," said Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow for paid leave policy and strategy at New America, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "The businesses that continue to operate are very likely to be those that are bigger, that have the cash flows to keep their sales going and that provide essential services." Per the Post's analysis, those large companies employ about 7.4 million people who would likely be deemed essential workers. The law provides other exemptions, too. In interpreting the law, the Labor Department has issued regulations saying that a company with fewer than 50 employees can exempt itself from the paid family leave element of the mandate if it burdens business operations. But the new law still requires those small businesses to provide paid medical leave to their employees, a total workforce of about 2.2 million - a factor, some policy researchers pointed out, the Post did not include in its analysis. If you redo the math counting those workers, the measure's sick leave promise holds up a bit better encompassing about a third of all essential workers. But there's another catch. The law also does not guarantee paid sick leave to health care providers and emergency responders - another category of workers typically deemed essential during a pandemic. The Labor Department defines these categories broadly. For instance, health care providers include "workers who are needed to keep hospitals and similar health care facilities well supplied and operational," not only clinicians. Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that by factoring these various exemptions into the number of likely essential employees guaranteed paid sick leave under the relief package dividing the number of essential workers who qualify for guaranteed leave by the full count of essential workers the true percentage of people covered hovers closer to the teens. Bottom line: "We need people to understand just how broad the exemptions ended up being," said Kathleen Romig, a senior analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The bigger picture The numerous carve-outs in the federal mandate and the benefits it requires from eligible companies - together illuminate a larger point. Historically, American sick leave policies haven't been uniform across industries or organizations. The new law does build on policies some businesses already had in place, Shabo said. For instance, private-sector workers who had sick leave, on average, received seven paid days a year guaranteed. The law bumps that up to 10 days (so, two workweeks for most people) and allows those days to be used to care for someone else. That's a big change. Even so, the majority of front-line workers are not covered by the federal promise of paid leave if they fall ill during the pandemic. Many get some kind of paid sick leave. Dillon Clair, a public policy associate at the ERISA Industry Committee which represents large employers - said, typically the companies his organization represents offer at least 40 hours of paid sick leave, and that medical leave is accompanied by other benefits (like vacation time) that employees can use if they fall ill after exhausting their sick leave. Meanwhile, companies like Walmart and McDonald's have rolled out emergency coronavirus programs, offering two weeks of paid time off for people the company deems sufficiently at risk. But the issue of who is deemed at risk gets dicey. Other employers, like Burger King, Dunkin' and Marriott International, have not instituted any emergency coronavirus policies for their workers, according to New America. And the lack of standardization means that many of the voluntary leave policies have substantial holes, Shabo said. For instance, McDonald's and Walmart both require employees to get an official quarantine recommendation or a confirmed medical diagnosis of COVID-19 to access the sick leave benefit. Those operational barriers mean people who have developed the virus are less likely to stay home especially because coronavirus tests are sometimes difficult to come by. That influences both individual and public health. "They're more likely to get sick than someone like me, who is self-isolating and working from home. They are literally putting themselves at risk every time they go to work," Romig said. Without a guarantee of paid leave, she added, individual workers may have to choose between taking a day off to recover from illness and earning money for groceries. And there are the public implications, too. "We really don't want people who have contracted this virus to be in public. We don't want them at the grocery store where everyone has to go to get food," she said. "We want them out of circulation. We want them to have the income they need to sustain that." Our ruling In his op-ed, Sanders argued that "it has been estimated that only 12% of workers in businesses that are likely to stay open during this crisis are receiving paid sick leave benefits as a result of the second coronavirus relief package." This is true. There are different takes on the math, but when you factor in the impact of the law's exemptions to this requirement, it still appears that the number of essential workers guaranteed paid sick leave because of this law is in the range of 12% to the low teens. More important, Sanders is correct about the big picture: Congress' paid sick leave guarantee exempts the vast majority of front-line workers during the pandemic, which could make containing the virus harder. Sanders' claim could use some more context, but it is generally a fair assessment. We rate it Mostly True. Corey Purcell (left )and Charlie Richard play outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill on Sunday before parading through the neighborhood performing traditional Easter hymns. Read more When the Church of St. Martin-in-the Fields Easter processional marched by, neighbors came out onto their porches. Folks walking their dogs made their pets hold up. People nearby called out thank you! With the passersby not wearing masks, you could see whole faces light up. Some spectators even held each other close as they listened. Church officials called it a socially distanced parade. The revelers a rector, two bagpipers and a drummer on snare were making their way around a portion of Chestnut Hill. The bagpipes could be heard from blocks away. Hymns that could reach people from afar were, of course, the goal, for on this holiday of considerable religious tradition, a deadly virus had made most places off-limits, including churches. Honestly, it started off as a little bit of a joke in a letter I wrote to the parish. I was just trying to find a way to say, What can we possibly do?' We want to follow the rules, and keep people safe, explained the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, the rector at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. And so I just thought, well, bagpipes! Theyre loud. You can hear them inside your house, even if you dont come out. Before the spread-apart march officially kicked off, the trio of musicians warmed up with Beethovens Symphony No. 9, less formally known as Ode to Joy. You cant have an organ? Get a bagpipe, the rector reacted in approval. He didnt play an instrument, but recorded the performance on his phone as the group moved through the sunlit neighborhood. As the Fifield family saw the parade coming down the street, they played along with a flute and tambourine. Jenny Gellhorn, 38, was hiding Easter eggs with her daughters Cecily, 7, and Louisa, 5, when they heard the stirring, low-rising melodies and went to find the source. Gellhorns husband, Alfred, is a doctor who was called for a month-long assignment treating COVID-19 patients in New York. With him away, life at home has been hard. The Easter procession for them was unexpected and heartily welcomed. It's such a treat to see so many people and to see neighbors. This is actually the first time I met the woman who lives across the street from us, Gellhorn said. And it's just a reminder that we're not alone, to see people smiling. It made me quite teary. When the Episcopal church reached out to Roderick Nevin, the Reading-based bagpiper who led the musicians Sunday, he didnt need convincing. It was a chance, Nevin explained, to spread happiness. And it was a chance to play, which Nevin hasnt done in some weeks because of the pandemic. When they reached the corner of Willow Grove and Germantown Avenues, they performed a rendition of Amazing Grace. It was a blast, Nevin said after the march. It was more fun than weve had in a month. St. Martin-in-the-Fields prerecorded its three Easter services, with Kerbel posting videos of musical selections on Facebook. Along the walk, he mentioned wanting to do this again next year. Theres no greater surprise in human history than Easter, the rector said. So if I can surprise some of our neighbors with some joyful, loud music that they dont see coming, I feel like Ive done some Easter work. African ambassadors in China have written to the Chinese foreign minister to express their concerns over the discrimination against Africans, especially in Guangzhou. Several African countries have separately also demanded that China address their concerns that Africans are being mistreated and harassed. China, having succeeded in curbing the spread of Coronavirus, has tightened border controls, all in a bid to prevent imported cases of Coronavirus. However, they have gone about this in a way that has elicited outrage from Africans. Africans in Guangzhou have reportedly been ejected from their apartments by their landlords. They have also been subjected to Coronavirus test several times without being given results and being shunned and discriminated against in public. Videos shared online show Africans stranded, with some forced to sleep on the streets, after being ejected from their hotels and apartments. The ambassadors note highlighted a number of reported incidents, including that Africans were being ejected from hotels in the middle of the night, the seizure of passports, and threats of visa revocation, arrest or deportation. The ambassadors note said such stigmatisation and discrimination created the false impression that the virus was being spread by Africans. The Group of African Ambassadors in Beijing immediately demands the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments meted out to Africans, it said. The note was sent to State Councilor Wang Yi, the Chinese governments top diplomat, copying the chair of the African Union, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and all African foreign ministers. China has denied any discrimination. The Guangdong authorities attach great importance to some African countries concerns and are working promptly to improve their working method, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in a statement published Sunday, referring to the province in which Guangzhou is located. African friends can count on getting fair, just, cordial and friendly reception in China, he said, adding the foreign ministry will stay in close communication with Guangdong authorities and address the African sides reasonable concerns and legitimate appeals. Zhaos statement did not reference the ambassadors note to Wang and did not mention the allegations of discrimination against Africans in the city. Foreign affairs official Liu Baochun told a news conference separately on Sunday, April 12, that Guangzhou is enforcing anti-virus measures on anyone who enters the city from across the national border, regardless of nationality, race or gender. On Saturday, Ghanas foreign minister of affairs Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said she had summoned the Chinese ambassador to express her disappointment and demand action. Kenyas foreign ministry has also officially expressed concern, adding the government is working with Chinese authorities to address the matter. On Friday, Nigerian legislator Akinola Alabi tweeted a video of a meeting between the leader of Nigerias lower house of parliament, Femi Gbajabiamila, and Chinese Ambassador Zhou Pingjian. During the meeting, Gbajabiamila demanded an explanation from the diplomat after showing Zhou a video of a Nigerians complaining about mistreatment in China. The Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe on Saturday dismissed the accusation that Africans were being deliberately targeted. It is harmful to sensationalize isolated incidents, it said in a tweeted statement. China treats all individuals in the country, Chinese and foreign alike, as equals. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Press Release 13 April 2020 IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), one of the world's leading hotel companies, today announces the signing of a management agreement with Shanghai 21st Century Hotel Co., Ltd. for its iconic property located in Lujiazui, Shanghai, China. From 16 May 2020, the hotel will be officially branded as Regent Shanghai Pudong and ready to welcome guests with a truly unique and luxury experience, which the legendary brand is famous for. All existing reservations will be automatically forwarded and honoured by Regent Shanghai Pudong. Guests will be able to experience the understated luxury and intuitive service brought by Regent seamlessly. Under the deal, IHG will also take over the management of its luxury apartments, which sit above the hotel in the same tower. Expanding its luxury footprint, IHG announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Regent Hotels & Resorts in March 2018 and brought the much-loved brand into the top end of its portfolio. Since then IHG has worked quickly to combine its expertise in luxury with Regent's deep heritage and revered legacy, relaunching the brand by evolving it to appeal to the modern luxury traveller. Set amidst the magnificent skyline of the Lujiazui financial district, Regent Shanghai Pudong will be the first Regent hotel opened globally after the acquisition. Meanwhile, renovation is already underway to rebrand the iconic InterContinental Hong Kong into a Regent hotel in 2021, bringing the hotel back to its roots as it first opened its doors as a Regent in 1980. In addition, the brand is also expecting new openings in Phu Quoc, Vietnam later this year, Bali, Indonesia in 2021, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as well as Chengdu, China in 2023. Justin Channe, Managing Director, Regent Hotels & Resorts, IHG remarked: "Welcoming Regent Shanghai Pudong to the Regent family represents a significant milestone for the brand not only in Greater China but also in the world. Since acquisition we have been committed to making the brand a real leader within luxury hospitality and taking it to the world's best destinations. We are excited to team up with Shanghai 21st Century Hotel Co., Ltd., our long-term strategic partner, to bring Regent to Shanghai in such a prime location. We look forward to working closely with the owner to proudly bring Regent hallmarks to life in the hotel." When the State Department designated a Russian white-supremacist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, as a terrorist entity, some supporters saw it as an honor, almost like a coming-of-age moment. For RIM leader Stanislav Vorobyov it was affirming. "A reward," he said in a social media post. The terrorist designation marks a U.S. shot across the bow on Russian authorities' relative tolerance of RIM and an associated paramilitary training operation outside St. Petersburg. Despite Vorobyov's bravado, the designation is likely to hinder RIM's moves to forge ties with far-right groups in the United States and Europe and also frustrate its efforts to attract foreign ultranationalists to travel to Russia for combat training. The designation also comes amid concern over increasing violence by far-right groups, as militant Russian ultranationalists dream of creating a worldwide movement. One of the first to congratulate the organization after the U.S. terrorist designation on April 6 was Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer charged with murder by Dutch authorities over the downing of a Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in 2014. Girkin is also under sanction by the United States and the European Union. Girkin, who calls himself Igor Strelkov, played a key role in Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and was commander and defense minister in the separatist Ukrainian region of Donetsk. "I take the opportunity to congratulate my esteemed comrade-in-arms of RID on receiving a high award - official recognition of their 'terrorist organization' by the enemies of Russia and the Russian people," Girkin wrote on social media, using the Russian acronym for RIM. RIM, which describes itself as a Russian Orthodox monarchical movement, often posts anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT tropes. Themes include the collapse of Russia under incompetent and corrupt elites, and a coming clash of civilizations. The designation of RIM as a terrorist organization was the State Department's first declaration of an extremist far-right group as terrorist, reflecting growing concern about violence by such groups. The State Department also designated as terrorists three associated individuals: Vorobyovand colleagues Denis Gariev and Nikolay Trushchalov. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know enough about the group to comment. "Since 2015 I would say that this Russian Imperial Movement has been posing an increasing threat to European societies," said Anton Shekhovtsov an expert at the University of Vienna on Europe's far right. "Many things can be dangerous for Western societies but at the same time useful for the Kremlin, like RIM." But he said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Peskov probably were not paying any attention to a fringe group such as RIM. "I don't think that either Putin or Peskov are dealing with these questions. It's just below their radar," he said. "They deal with much more significant things." But RIM's interests have at times closely matched the Kremlin's. Its members fought alongside pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine. It offers paramilitary training in urban warfare, including training two members of a Swedish neo-fascist group who were sent to prison in 2017 over bomb attacks. "RIM is a dangerous extremist organization that is involved in training white supremacists to participate in violence both inside and outside of Russia," says a statement by the California-based Center for Terrorism, Extremism and Counter-Terrorism. The statement adds that the group has propagated disinformation about covid-19. "The fact that we were put on the list was a good advertisement for us. Trump has increased our popularity," said RIM's leader, Vorobyov. "We have received letters from many countries, letters of support saying that this decision was not fair and that 'We support you.' " The group tried to leverage its notoriety for recruiting, but its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages were shut down after the U.S. terrorism designation. Russia's Internet control and censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, then blocked access to RIM's website. The group's VKontakte and Telegram accounts are still active. Gariev, a history graduate, openly runs an associated paramilitary course, Partisan, in deserted buildings outside St. Petersburg where participants learn to use combat tactics, and sniper and Kalashnikov rifles. There is a strict ban on alcohol and cursing. "I was put on the sanctions list, but I don't know yet what the risks for me are. I have no idea. We'll live and see," Gariev said in an interview. Vorobyov saw the terrorism designation as related to President Trump's bid for reelection and his efforts to garner support. "He wants to present himself as a fighter against racists, and he also needs to look good to the Ukrainian diaspora," Vorobyov said. But he said the blocking of the website was "a major blow. . . . Many materials, books, publications, archives and articles were all on one site, and now they are destroyed." The group's Russian bank accounts also have been blocked. Gariev said the terrorism designation was "a big surprise. Probably they decided to put our movement on the list of terrorist organizations because we took an active part in the events in Donbass," he said referring to the war in eastern Ukraine. "But the main reason for putting us on the list, in my opinion, is our Christian position." Trushchalov said he left the organization last year and declined to comment further. - - - Until now, Vorobyov has been able to travel freely around Europe as part of his group's efforts to forge links with foreign far-right groups. In 2015, he was part of a conference of international far-right groups in St. Petersburg. That September, he visited the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden, donating an unknown amount money. Two months later, he was at a gathering of right-wing extremists in Madrid. In November last year, he traveled to Vienna for a congress hosted by the monarchist Black-Yellow Alliance at Parkhotel Schonbrunn, a restored former guesthouse for the palace of Emperor Franz Joseph I, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian empire. RIM has made overtures to American groups, too. Matthew Heimbach, a Unite the Right organizer, met RIM representative Stanislav Shevchuk in Washington and in Gettysburg, Pa., in 2017. Jared Taylor, who runs the website American Renaissance, traveled to the St. Petersburg conference in 2015. In 2014, RIM's paramilitary wing, the Imperial Legion, fought in eastern Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists. The movement trained several hundred volunteers to fight in eastern Ukraine. One member, Alexander Zhuchkovsky, led an operation to send supplies, including radios, uniforms, cellphones, drones, binoculars and even items as banal as soap, batteries and toothpaste to support the fighters. In 2014 he told Der Spiegel he had raised about $485,000 for the effort. The war, in which 13,000 people have been killed, drags on, with recent renewed peace efforts faltering. RIM also drew notoriety for training two members of the Swedish neo-fascist organization Nordic Resistance who were later convicted of bomb attacks on a left-wing bookstore and two centers for asylum seekers in Gothenburg. Russia has long bolstered far-right fringe groups in Europe, including ultranationalists in Slovakia, Hungary, Montenegro and Bosnia, as part of the Kremlin's strategy of sowing discord and instability in Europe. In its search for voices supporting Kremlin policies, Russia also has courted more-mainstream far-right politicians in Europe such as France's Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party. Europe's ultranationalists often express admiration for Putin, who styles himself as a virtuous model of traditional Russian manhood, rejecting same-sex rights and liberalism. In contrast, the Russian Imperial Movement abhors Putin and the oligarchic elite that sustains him. Vorobyov acknowledges that the "reward" of the terrorism designation could cause problems with Russian authorities. "I don't know what the reaction of Russian authorities will be. If they take this issue seriously, we might have problem with our activity here in Russia," he said. - - - The Washington Post's Natasha Abbakumova contributed to this report. A man and a woman have been arrested and charged in connection with fires at a church in Wheaton, according to the Montgomery county fire department. The man has also been arrested in connection with the defacing of a synagogue in Rockville, according to county police. A woman traded goods stolen from shops to buy heroin, Naas District Court was told on April 1. Ivona Kliuceviciute, 25, whose address was given as Dowlings House, Kerdiffstown, Naas, was before the court on three counts of theft, one of possessing a foil lined bag and one of receiving stolen property on dates between March 1 2019 and February 25 last. The thefts occurred at Marrons Pharmacy, Clane; SuperValu in Naas and Toughers at Ladytown, Naas. Sgt Jim Kelly said the case revolved around thefts from various shops and hardware stores in Naas and Clane. He said a search of her home took place in February and among the items found were a foil lined bag and a number of items which the defendant could not account for. The gardai were satisfied that some of these items were stolen. These included cosmetics, clothing and alcohol products and some were unopened. He said the items were sold to buy heroin and the defendant had 14 previous convictions, the last of which was in April 2017 at Naas District Court. Solicitor David Powderly said the defendant is originally from Lithuania and her mother and father are also here in Ireland. He said the defendant didnt get cash for the items. He also said there was no violence or threat of violence and the goods were taken behind the backs of people. Mr. Powderly said there had been no application for bail by the defendant was remanded to the Dochas Centre where she was put into isolation and placed in a room with no contact with the outside world. He said she had been terrified. Mr Powderly also said the defendant is a heroin addict and had been on methadone, but is now clean. Sentenced He said a suspended sentence would allow her to keep away from heroin and she wants to be away from the drug. Judge Bernadette Owens said she considered imposing a suspended sentence but this did not act as a deterrent before. Judge Owens imposed a four months term on each of the charges with the terms to run concurrently and backdated these to February 26. Only nine players make up the O'Neill St. Mary's girls basketball roster in 2021-22 and three of those nine are sophomores. All three started last year as freshmen, all three are averaging in double figures this year and all three have led the Cardinals to an 8-2 start. Battered oil prices barely moved on Monday, oscillating in and out of positive, negative territory despite OPEC+ deal. The minimal impact on oil prices of a global deal on record output cuts showed that oil producers have a mountain to climb if they are to restore market balance as the coronavirus shreds demand and sends stockpiles soaring, industry watchers said. A day after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia agreed to reduce output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and June equal to nearly 10 percent of global supply prices barely moved, oscillating in and out of positive and negative territory. On Monday, Saudi Arabias state oil giant Aramco announced its official crude pricing for May, revealing plans to sell oil more cheaply to Asia while keeping prices flat for Europe and raising them for the United States. Its May price for its Arab light crude oil to Asia will sell at a discount of $7.3 to the Oman/Dubai average, down $4.2 a barrel from April, according to a document seen by Reuters news agency. Global benchmark Brent crude and US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude have both lost more than half of their value this year. The cut by OPEC and its allies may be more than four times deeper than the previous record set in 2008, and overall oil supply may shrink by twice that with other measures, but the reduction remains dwarfed by a demand drop predicted by some forecasters to be as much as 30 million bpd in April. Even if these cuts provide a floor to prices, they will not be able to boost prices given the scale of inventory builds we are still staring at, Energy Aspects analyst Virendra Chauhan said, referring to fast-filling storage amid the slide in demand from end users. The absence of hard commitments from the United States or other G20 members is [a] shortcoming of the deal, he said. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said that G20 nations had pledged to cut about 3.7 million bpd and that strategic reserves purchases would reach roughly 200 million barrels over the next couple of months, bringing the total reduction of oil in the market to about 19.5 million bpd. But big producers such as Canada, Norway and the US have yet to commit publicly to fixed quotas. The deal failed to reach the reduction levels anticipated by the market, Takashi Tsukioka, president of the Petroleum Association of Japan, said in a statement. We hope OPEC will continue their talks to stabilise oil markets, he said. Meanwhile, analysts said that while the core number in the deal suggests a near 10 million bpd cut, Middle East producers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait may have to reduce by more than the 23 percent cut for which they signed up. Focus on reserves However, energy analysts at FGE expect oil stockpiles in developed nations to grow in the second quarter to levels last seen in 1982. As a result of the production cuts, the global oil market will have the largest spare capacity in at least a decade, leading to a flatter Brent crude oil curve, Bank of America analysts said. The next major focus for markets will be numbers from the US Department of Energy on its strategic petroleum reserves (SPR). A veteran Singapore oil trader, who declined to be named due to company policy, said that inventory build will continue, albeit at a slower pace because of the OPEC pact. Saudi Arabia cut its crude selling prices to Asia on Monday, while lifting prices for the US and leaving prices to Europe unchanged. Most of the SPR [held by countries around the world] are pretty full already. Probably China still has some room, but the rest, I doubt there is anything significant, he added. Highlighting the scarcity of available storage capacity, Australias Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor on Monday said that the country is working on an agreement to buy oil and store it with the US strategic reserves. China, the worlds largest oil importer, remains the outlier. Its refiners are set to raise crude oil throughput this month by 10 percent from March as the country where the coronavirus originated recovers from the outbreak faster than other nations. China is unlikely to make any firm commitment, especially as Far East consumers are still paying a premium for Mideast supplies versus western consumers, one Beijing-based state oil company official said on condition of anonymity, citing company policy. Outside the government reserve stockpiling, which is highly guarded information, commercial reserve managers at national oil firms will only look at the economics and tankage space available to decide purchases, said the official, referring to commercial reserve departments under state refiner Sinopec and PetroChina. These centres operate independently from the SPR, the official said, and often act as a swing supplier to state oil refineries by loaning crude to plants at a higher price and making a profit when retrieving them at a lower cost. China will ultimately be constrained given this is a demand, not supply-led issue, said Energy Aspects analyst Chauhan. Elsewhere, India is diverting 19 million barrels of Middle East oil from state-run companies to SPRs to help refiners to offload surplus oil, three sources said. North Korean legislature held its third session on April 12 in the absence of its Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un who was earlier present at a Politburo meeting. According to state news agency KCNA, the lawmakers approved the state budget which increased the health expenditure by 7.4 per cent and education expense by 5.1 per cent as compared to the last year. While the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, the agency reported that 15.9 per cent of the total state budgetary expenditure is expected to be spent on national security. It added that last years expenditure for increasing the capability of national defence which contributed to the development of an ultra-modern weaponry system. During the Politburo meeting, members reportedly discussed on thorough state measures for saving the citizens from the pandemic that has claimed around 115,000 lives worldwide. According to KCNA, the Politburo discussed the coronavirus pandemic while cautioning that such an environment can become a condition creating some obstacles to our struggle and progress. Read: WHO Representative: North Korea Is Testing For COVID-19, Has No Cases No COVID-19 case North Korea has not reported a single case of coronavirus case so far which the Politburo reportedly called a result of countrys top-class emergency anti-epidemic measures from the outset. Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that it has been receiving weekly updates from the health ministry and the country even has the capacity to test coronavirus in its national reference laboratory in Pyongyang. Read: North Korea's Senior Health Official Insists Country Is 'free From Coronavirus' Earlier, North Koreas senior health minister had also insisted that the country is free from coronavirus saying it does not have a single case of the disease. Pak Myong Su, director of the anti-epidemic department of the Norths Central Emergency Anti-Epidemic Headquarters, said that North Korea sealed its borders late January, shortly after the coronavirus outbreak news emerged from neighbouring China. According to the WHO website, North Korea, Lesotho, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan have not reported a single coronavirus case. However, several foreign experts have raised doubts over the veracity of report from North Korea, which shares a border with China and South Korea. Read: North Korea Threatens To Cut Off Dialogue With US Over Sanctions, Slams Mike Pompeo Read: North Korea Tests Two Missiles, South Korea Condemns 'inappropriate' Timing Amid COVID-19 (With agency inputs | Image source: AP) Hermione Corfield in Sea Fever. Photo: Gunpowder and Sky Fishermen dont swim, a young scientist named Siobhan (Hermione Corfield) is told in Sea Fever on her first day aboard the weathered but sturdy Irish fishing trawler Niamh Cinn Oir. Cause its better to go fast. Nobody wants to drown slow. I have no idea if this is actually true I suspect its not but its a testament to writer-director Neasa Hardimans ear for authenticity and eye for detail that, in the moment, I totally bought the idea. In its rough outlines, Sea Fever isnt all that different from any number of unspeakable-menace-at-sea horror flicks, but unlike so many other genre movies, it has a fully realized, lived-in quality: You can smell the oil, sweat, and salt, and hear the grind of motors and murmur of sailors. When we first see Siobhan, shes in a lab analyzing an organism while her colleagues have birthday cake in an adjoining room. Shes a standard-issue introvert, shy and focused on her work, and her sojourn on the Niamh Cinn Oir on which she hopes to study anomalies in the daily seafood catch offers yet more opportunities for alienation and awkwardness: The gruff, chummy crew, led by skipper Gerard (Dougray Scott) and his wife, Freya (Connie Nielsen), doesnt know what to make of this nerdy young stranger. Siobhan has scientific and behavioral explanations for things they appreciate as mysteries and myths. Plus, shes a redhead, and apparently redheads are bad luck on ships. But Hardiman doesnt overdo the conflict. She uses it to shape and deepen her characters, as when Siobhan and Freya observe the sea one night glowing blue: Siobhan, in thrall to the beauty of science, identifies it as bioluminescent phytoplankton, while Freya, embracing the mystery of myth, prefers to think of it as the glowing hair of the Irish legend Niamh Cinn Oir, after which her boat is named. Its not an impasse, or even a debate, but rather an acknowledgement that the world is bigger and stranger than either of them. They have no idea. Soon enough, the boat sails into forbidden waters and strikes something. Weird little circles develop along the walls, secreting a bluish ooze. Diving into the water because shes the only one who can scuba, Siobhan witnesses a disturbing sight: The hull is covered in long, thin, glowing tendrils or are they tentacles? that reach all the way down beyond where the eye can see, seemingly belonging to an ominous deep-sea creature. But the problem, the crew soon realizes, isnt the tendrils; its the parasitic larvae contained in the blue ooze that infect you and make you act weirdly before, well, killing you. This is the point at which Sea Fever may become eerily familiar to an audience newly obsessed with the anxious mechanics of real-life infection and exposure in confined spaces. I wont lie: Small chills went up my spine whenever the characters started talking about quarantine and how long to wait before knowing someone exposed might be safe. Its easy to overstate such echoes, however. The movie works not because it was unwittingly released during a pandemic though it may gain extra viewers because of that circumstance, seeing as its a small indie title that has gone straight to on demand while bigger movies scurry off the release schedule but because Hardiman steers clear from spectacle, cheap thrills, and jump scares. Instead, she wisely builds suspense from uncertainty as our heroes are terrorized not by loud noises and gore but by the agonizing solitude of the open sea and a nemesis that is practically invisible. They also grieve in ways that characters in horror are rarely allowed to, which adds to the films excruciating authenticity. Sea Fever teases out elemental anxieties that have been given fresh life by unfortunate reality, but the movie is worth seeing because, when alls said and done, it gives us characters and circumstances we can care about. WASHINGTON A member of the crew of the coronavirus-infected USS Theodore Roosevelt warship died Monday of complications related to the disease, the Navy said. The sailor, whose name and other identifying information were not publicly released pending notification of relatives, had tested positive for coronavirus on March 30 and was taken off the ship and placed in isolation housing along with four other sailors at the U.S. Navy base on Guam. On April 9, he was found unresponsive during a medical check and was moved to a local hospitals intensive care unit. The death Monday was the first among the crew of approximately 4,860, of which 585 had tested positive for coronavirus as of Sunday. About 4,000 crew members have been moved ashore. A number have been kept aboard to attend to the enormous ships nuclear reactors and other sensitive systems. The Roosevelt has been in a coronavirus crisis that prompted the Navys civilian leader, Thomas Modly, to fire the ships captain on April 2. Five days later, after having flown to the ship and delivered a speech in which he insulted the skipper, Capt. Brett E. Crozier, and criticized the crew for supporting Crozier, Modly resigned. Modly said he felt compelled to remove Crozier from command because he had distributed too widely via email a letter in which he called for more urgent Navy action to prevent a deeper coronavirus crisis aboard his ship. Croziers words angered Modly but were seen by others as necessary. CORONAVIRUS IN OREGON: THE LATEST NEWS We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset our sailors, Crozier wrote March 31. The letter appeared a short time later in the San Francisco Chronicle and other news media. Modly said the letter was inappropriate and that Crozier had failed to consult sufficiently with his immediate superior before writing it. President Donald Trump initially criticized Crozier for writing the letter but later said he didn't want Crozier's career ruined over a single mistake. Navy officials have not ruled out the possibility of Crozier being reinstated. Adm. Robert Burke, the Navy's second-ranking admiral, has been conducting an investigation of the Roosevelt's coronavirus outbreak and related events, and the results could be presented as early as this week. Pentagon leaders anticipate that the coronavirus may strike more Navy ships at sea. Last Thursday, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that ships with large numbers of sailors aboard operating in close quarters are vulnerable to an outbreak, although the Roosevelt is the only one so far to have reported coronavirus cases while deployed at sea. Its not a good idea to think that the Teddy Roosevelt is a one-of-a-kind issue, Hyten told a Pentagon news conference. We have too many ships at sea. ... To think that it will never happen again is not a good way to plan. The Navys top officer, meanwhile, said last week that the biggest problem is the inability to test enough people quickly, including those aboard the USS Nimitz, the next U.S.-based aircraft carrier due to deploy out to sea. The challenge that we have now, is having that type of capability where we can test in volume and at speed, Adm. Mike Gilday said Thursday. I really dont have a good estimate right now on when that testing capability might be available in the kinds of quantities we would like to see. He said sailors on the USS Nimitz, which is in port preparing for a deployment, will have all movement restricted for two weeks before the ship leaves. The Associated Press Yves here. Please welcome Mark Blyth and Jeffrey Sommers to Naked Capitalism. They bring some pithy if grim description of how, in classic never let a crisis go to waste fashion, Covid-19 is serving in Wisconsin as a pretext to double down on austerity policies. By Mark Blyth, The William R. Rhodes 57 Professor of International Economics, The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University and Jeffrey Sommers, Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The past decade delivered powerful lessons in what not to do in an economic crisis. Many countries pursued, or had imposed on them, austerity policies. That is, cutting government spending when the economy tanks in order to balance the books. The idea is that with less spending now, taxes will be lower later on, which will make people feel more confident now, thereby shortening the recession. Its a nice idea. But it actually makes things worse. The state of Wisconsin is set to embrace austerity in the wake of Covid-19. March 26th saw metro Milwaukee, the states biggest city, declared the 6th highest site for Covid-19 infections in the United States. In response, the states Democratic Governor engaged the Legislature to meet the challenge. But Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald, respectively heads of the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate, rejected cooperation. Up for grabs was an important State Supreme Court justice seat. The Governor in response gave an emergency order postponing elections until June. The GOP controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court, ironically under orders not to convene at the Court under the health emergency, overturned the Governors order. Wisconsinites who had not filed for absentee ballots would have to vote in person, or not at all. On April 7th once-proud and progressive Wisconsin delivered scenes that seemed inspired by the Book of Revelations. Milwaukee manned only 5 of the normal 182 election sites. Voters, young and old, hale and frail, lined up for blocks and for hours in a day punctuated by hailstorms. Meanwhile, Vos served as election commissioner in a small town not yet hard hit by the virus, fully attired in safety glasses, protective gown, and surgical gloves. Looking more like Hannibal Lecter than an election commissioner, he declared to the press that it was incredibly safe to go out and vote. And then, emboldened by an election turned into a deadly farce, on April 8th Vos and Fitzgerald pressed for greater legislative powers to cut education spending during recessions. Yes, you read that correctly. Massive cuts in education in Wisconsin have already occurred. Many K-12 teachers have left the profession, and the schools are now short of staff. Many university professors departed for better conditions elsewhere. And this was just one part of the austerity already seen; the next round will be worse, and Wisconsin, once the proud home of Robert LaFollette, of William Proxmire and Henry Reuss, of the Progressive Party, Wisconsin the incubator of Social Security and other New Deal programs, is by way of becoming a backwater, stagnant and impoverished. Unemployment remained low until these past few weeks, only because working age people left the state for better jobs elsewhere. Austerity now or later, in the pandemic or afterward, is the path to economic suicide. Of course it also belies the promises that President Trump made when he carried the state, and won the presidency, in 2016. There is an irony here, which is that the Presidents Republican allies are working hard to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for him to win the state in 2020 at least in a free and fair election. But as this weeks experience makes clear, free and fair elections are not on the agenda in Wisconsin either. Austerity isnt just bad economics; it can be imposed, and maintained, only by force, fraud, a campaign based on fear, and the active subversion of democracy in Wisconsin and in America as a whole. Using a mixture of arm-twisting, threats and a sleight of hand, US President Donald Trump has secured an agreement from Saudi Arabia and Russia to at least temporarily end their oil price war that erupted last month and cut production. The deal, which Trump pushed for in the wake of the plunge in oil prices, was on the point of collapse over the weekend because of Mexicos refusal to make cuts to the extent demanded by Saudi Arabia. It was finally stitched together on Sunday. The fear was that if an agreement had not been reached the oil price would have crashed when trading opened today, after dropping from levels of around $50 per barrel to as low as $20. Under the deal, Russia and Saudi Arabia will together reduce production by about 9.7 million barrels a day, more than double the cuts agreed to during the global financial crisis of 2008. Cuts by other oil-producing countries will bring the overall reduction in supply close to 20 million barrels a day, around 20 percent of the total supply. Oil wells (Stock Image licensed via Envato) However, there are doubts that even these major reductions will halt the price slide. Global demand for oil has fallen by 30 percent because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, slashing its price by 40 percent since the beginning of March. According to the Wall Street Journal: Investors remain concerned that the cuts may not be enough to support higher prices in the coming weeks as world-wide lockdowns pummel demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. It said some analysts had warned they were too little, too late with oil consumption expected to fall by as much as 30 million barrels a day throughout this month. Last week, the talks assumed an on-again off-again character. Agreement appeared to have been reached on Thursday when members of the G20 group, currently under the chairmanship of Saudi Arabia, issued a statement saying they would commit to doing whatever it takes, both individually and collectively to ensure that the oil market made a recovery. Speaking after the G20 meeting, Fatih Birol, an official of the International Energy Agency, said the shock waves of the pandemic created the oil price slump and threatened global economic stability. He said the emergency measures would not provide a quick fix but, like the effect of confinement in containing the COIVD-19 spread, they could help to lower the peak and flatten the curve. However, in a further sign of the incapacity of global organisations to deal with the deepening economic crisis, the G20 call had little effect. Mexico continued to insist it would not cut its production to the extent demanded by the Saudis. It only committed to reduce its output by 100,000 barrels a day, well below the Saudi demand for a 350,000 barrel production cut. Fearing a crash in the markets if the deal failed to go through, Trump stepped into the breach and said the US would compensate for the Mexican shortfall by a reduction of 300,000 barrels per day in American output. It is unclear how that will take place. The US is not committed to direct cuts claiming that the fall in its output will take place as a result of the drop in market prices. When the proposal was first raised in the back-and-forth negotiations last week, Trump said he expected the Mexican government would reimburse the US in return for American production cuts. He did not specify what he meant and the White House declined to comment when asked for an explanation. The main factor in pushing the Saudis to the deal was a threat by Trump, issued earlier this month, to impose tariffs on crude imports. Republican senators from US shale oil-producing states also weighed in, holding a meeting for nearly two hours with the Saudi energy minister on Saturday during which they threatened the long-standing ties between the US and the Saudi regime. One of the reasons for the decision by the Saudis to launch the price war, after an earlier agreement with Russia had broken down, was to force higher-cost US shale oil producers out of the market. The Saudis spent over a month waging war on American oil producers, all while our troops protected theirs. Thats not how friends treat friends, said North Dakota Republican senator Kevin Cramer after the meeting with the Saudi minister. In the event, political considerations played a major role in securing the agreement, fragile as it is. The Putin regime is dependent on oil revenues for about one-third of its budget. With analysts warning that the price collapse threatened to create a serious risk to the Russias economy, Putin is anxious to avoid such turmoil as he seeks to change the constitution and extend his term of office. A month ago, no one could have predicted such a crisis and falling demand, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. While the Saudis started the war, the resultant precipitous decline in oil prices has put in jeopardy plans by the countrys de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to transform the countrys economy. His plans for launching infrastructure projects are dependent on oil sales. For his part, Trump is concerned that further price falls will hit oil-producing states that are crucial for his re-election campaign. He is also fearful that a wave of bankruptcies and defaults could have flow-on effects for financial markets because of the dependence of many shale-oil producers on risky junk bonds for their financing. As is par for the course, Trump greeted the news of the deal with wildly exaggerated claims. The big oil deal is done, he tweeted on Sunday. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the US. However, it is doubtful whether the deal will even hold together and, even it if it does, whether it will prevent a further fall in prices as a result of the greatest contraction in the global economy since the Great Depression. VIRGINIA The Cass County board is scheduled to meet in regular session at 7 p.m. today at 100 E. Springfield St. Among the items on the agenda are: US President Donald Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the nation's top expert on infectious diseases said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the novel coronavirus outbreak. Trump retweeted a message Sunday from a former Republican congressional candidate who cited Fauci's comments during a television interview on Sunday and tweeted "time to #FireFauci." The Republican president in the past has repeated critical tweets of officials or enemies rather than make the criticism himself. The retweet fueled speculation Trump was running out of patience with the popular scientist and could fire him. The White House on Monday did not comment on Trump's retweet. Fauci has assumed national prominence - and a degree of affection - as a leader in the fight against the coronavirus. He has contradicted or corrected Trump on scientific matters during the public health crisis, including whether the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective against the virus. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show Fauci was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" about a New York Times report documenting early warnings issued to the White House about the novel coronavirus. The scientist acknowledged shutting the country down sooner could have saved lives, but cautioned that a number of factors were involved. "Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don't think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor," Fauci said. "It's very complicated." Already a target of the far-right for his contradictions of Trump, Fauci drew more opprobrium after the interview. Trump also denounced the Times story in tweets on Sunday, calling it "Fake." Last week during the daily White House coronavirus briefing, Trump stepped in and prevented Fauci from answering a question about hydroxychloroquine. Also read: COVID-19 | How to maximise food security in post-COVID India "He won't fire Fauci today," tweeted Joe Lockhart, press secretary to former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. "He needs to humiliate him a while first. And one thing you can really count on ... He won't have the guts to do it himself." Fauci, 79, has led the federal infectious disease agency since 1984 under Republican and Democratic presidents. Republican George W. Bush honored him with the presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. Some polls during the public health crisis have shown Americans trust him more than Trump. Peer-Reviewed Paper by Prominent Scientists Reinforces Need for Hand Washing, Warns that Wearing Glasses / Spectacles Does Not Reduce Risk of Infection WATERLOO, Ontario, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Moving swiftly to address and correct harmful myths and misinformation, a new peer-reviewed paper from five of the world's most prominent ocular scientists reassures contact lens wearers during the global COVID-19 / coronavirus pandemic. Published in Contact Lens & Anterior Eye, "The COVID-19 Pandemic: Important Considerations for Contact Lens Practitioners" offers five important facts for anyone who relies on contact lenses or eyeglasses / spectacles: You Can Keep Wearing Contact Lenses . There is currently no scientific evidence that contact lens wearers have an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 compared with glasses / spectacles wearers. Consult your eye care practitioner with questions. Good Hygiene Habits are Critical . Thorough handwashing and drying are essential, as well as properly wearing and caring for contact lenses, ensuring good contact lens case hygiene, and regularly cleaning glasses / spectacles with soap and water. These habits can help you stay healthy and out of your doctor's office or hospital. Regular Eyeglasses / Spectacles Do Not Provide Protection . No scientific evidence supports rumors that everyday eyeglasses / spectacles offer protection against COVID-19. Keep Unwashed Hands Away from Your Face . Whether you wear contact lenses, glasses / spectacles or require no vision correction at all, avoid touching your nose, mouth and eyes with unwashed hands, consistent with World Health Organization (WHO) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations. If You Are Sick, Temporarily Stop Wearing Contact Lenses . Contact lens wearers who are ill should temporarily revert to wearing eyeglasses / spectacles. You can resume use with fresh, new contact lenses and lens cases once you return to full health and have spoken with your eye care practitioner. On April 8, the CDC issued updated guidance on contact lens wear during the COVID-19 pandemic, further supporting key findings from the Contact Lens & Anterior Eye paper. The CDC also points out that personal eyeglasses and contact lenses do not qualify as personal protective equipment (PPE). "Millions of people are asking how COVID-19 affects eye care, especially since approximately two out of every three adults worldwide wear contact lenses, spectacles or eyeglasses. Unfortunately, misinformation has become widespread in recent days. Our goal is to make sure that science-backed truths are understood and shared, replacing fear with fact," said Dr. Lyndon Jones, director of the Centre for Ocular Research & Education (CORE) at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) and the paper's lead author. "Our findings indicate that contact lenses remain a perfectly acceptable form of vision correction during the coronavirus pandemic, as long as people practice good hand hygiene and follow appropriate wear-and-care directions." The complete paper incorporates findings from more than 100 referenced sources. It delves into multiple aspects of ocular health amidst the pandemic, including practical advice for eye care professionals. The paper and other resources for good wear and care can be downloaded from COVIDEyeFacts.org. This new research-based review complements and significantly expands on CORE advisories regarding handwashing and safe contact lens wear issued in mid-March 2020. Dr. Jones is a preeminent authority on eye care, having authored more than 400 refereed and professional papers and delivered more than 1,000 lectures worldwide in over 40 countries. In 2019, he was named by Expertscape as the most published expert in the field of contact lens research. Joining him to author the COVID-19 paper were four globally respected researchers, educators and clinicians: Dr. Karen Walsh, professional education team leader and clinical scientist at CORE, Dr. Mark Willcox, director of research at the School of Optometry and Vision Science at UNSW (Sydney), Dr. Philip Morgan, director of Eurolens Research at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom), and Dr. Jason Nichols, associate vice president for research and Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry (United States) and editor-in-chief of Contact Lens Spectrum. About CORE The Centre for Ocular Research & Education (CORE) was established in 1988 at the University of Waterloo'sSchool of Optometry & Vision Science. Over the next three decades, the organization evolved from a three-person operation into a thriving hub of basic and applied research, collaborating with sponsors, agencies and academia on advanced biosciences, clinical research and education. Its uncompromising independence and results of the highest quality have been at the heart of many of the most prominent advances in eye health. Today, its 50-person team serves a range of ophthalmic sectors, including medical devices, ocular pharmaceuticals, digital technology and others, with a focus on the anterior segment. For more information, please visit core.uwaterloo.ca. MEDIA CONTACTS Aimee J. Lewis McDougall Communications for CORE aimee@mcdougallpr.com +1-585-414-9838 (mobile) Mike McDougall, APR, Fellow PRSA McDougall Communications for CORE mike@mcdougallpr.com or +1-585-545-1815 (mobile) Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1153965/CORE_Contact_Lens_Infographic.jpg American Airlines AP Airlines are offering new flexibility for travel later this year, and extensions for elite frequent-flyer status, as the coronavirus outbreak throws the air travel world into chaos. American, Delta, and United have all offered extensions on status and benefits, and all three airlines have new flexible ticket policies. Read on for details on the status extensions, and what you need to know about travel booked for later this year. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The coronavirus pandemic has been a crisis for industries around the world, but as travel has come to a standstill around the world, the airline industry has been thrown into complete disarray. Revenues have slowed significantly and many customers have been left in the lurch. And because it's not yet clear when world governments will lift broad restrictions on travel, vacationers who may have booked trips for the coming weeks and months may wonder what will happen if those restrictions affect their plans. Beyond the one-off trips, frequent flyers who tend to travel all the time are left wondering what happens to their elite status, the benefits that airlines grant to their most loyal and frequent customers. Status typically must be earned each year for the following year. With travelers likely to be grounded for at least three months and quite possibly longer will they be able to fly enough to qualify for status next year, when the world hopefully begins to return to normal? Fortunately, many major airlines are offering new, unprecedented levels of flexibility for passengers, whether they are occasional travelers or elite frequent flyers. Here's what you need to know: Delta Air Lines FILE PHOTO: Delta Air Lines passenger planes are seen parked due to flight reductions made to slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. March 25, 2020. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage Delta has canceled more than 80% of its April schedule, and expects cancellations to continue past May. With passengers unable or unwilling to fly right now and for the foreseeable future, the airline is making a few changes to support its frequent flyers, and to offer flexibility for those with trips planned this summer and fall who may now be having second thoughts. Story continues Travel credits extended for up to two years, and fees are waived for cancellations and changes Because there's still uncertainty surrounding when travel can resume, Delta said it would extend the validity of travel credits, such as the vouchers customers receive if they choose to cancel a flight (although if the airline cancels the flight, rather than the passenger, the airline has to offer a regular refund). All eCredits are automatically extended until May 2022 note that if you have a credit in your Delta account, it may not reflect the new expiration date right away, but the airline says it's working on it. Tickets purchased between March 1 and May 31, 2020, can be changed without fees for up to a year from the date of purchase. Additionally, anyone with travel scheduled to depart in April or May can change their dates or destinations without a fee, or can cancel their trip to receive an eCredit. Extending SkyMiles Medallion status through 2021 All SkyMiles Medallion members will see their status tier extended for one year, through 2021. That means that if you hold Platinum Medallion status now, you won't have to worry about requalifying by the end of December 2020 like you normally would. In addition, all Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) earned this year will be rolled over into 2021, so they'll count towards your 2022 status. MQMs are miles earned for flights, which are one of the ways to earn status. Delta Sky Club memberships are extended For some Sky Club lounge membership holders who, thanks to the lack of flying and lounge closures, have not been able to use their memberships, Delta is offering an extension. Sky Club Individual and Executive memberships that are set to expire March 1, 2020, or later, will get an extra six months added. That means that if you were set to expire on April 1, you'll keep access to Sky Clubs until October. Some credit card benefits are also extended Some of Delta's co-branded credit cards, which are issued by American Express, come with a variety of one-time or recurring benefits, such as flight credits, companion certificates, or guest passes. The following cardholders will receive extensions to these benefits, as long as the benefit is currently valid or has expired since March 1: Delta SkyMiles Gold Card Members with a $100 Delta flight credit will get a six-month extension beyond their current expiration date. Delta SkyMiles Platinum Card Members with Companion Certificates with an original expiration date between March 1 and June 30, 2020, can use them when they book and fly by Dec. 31, 2020, and those that expire between July 1, 2020, and April 1, 2021, will receive an additional six months beyond the current expiration date. Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card Members with Companion Certificates with an original expiration date between March 1 and June 30, 2020, can use them when they book and fly by Dec. 31, 2020, and those that expire between July 1, 2020, and April 1, 2021, will receive an additional six months beyond the current expiration date. Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card Members will also get a six-month extension to use their Delta Sky Club One-Time Guest Passes beyond their current expiration date. Other SkyMiles benefits Finally, Delta is extending the following benefits, as long as they're currently valid or have expired since March 1: Upgrade Certificates or $200 Travel Vouchers with an original expiration date between March 1 and June 30, 2020, are extended now, they can be booked and flown by Dec. 31, 2020. And, SkyMiles Members with Upgrade Certificates or $200 Travel Vouchers that expire after June 30, 2020, will receive an additional six months beyond the current expiration date. SkyMiles Select members will receive a six-month extension to the Priority Boarding benefit and any unused drink vouchers. Unused drink vouchers will be extended for six months from their expiration date. United Airlines United Airlines United is also offering extra flexibility and extending MileagePlus status for members. Waived change fees for travel through all of 2020 United announced last week that it would waive change and cancellation fees on all flights through 2020. However, you'll need to make your change by the end of April in order to get those fees waived. The exception is for those traveling in May they can continue to change or cancel flights without fees until the date of travel. Keep in mind that if you choose to cancel a flight, you'll get a voucher for the value of your ticket to use for a future trip, not a refund. If the airline cancels your flight, though, you're entitled to a normal refund. Vouchers and credits are extended for up to two years Travel certificates, which are normally valid for a year from the date of issue, are now valid for 24 months. If you choose to cancel a trip or a flight that the airline hasn't canceled, you'll get a certificate to use for a future flight. Although you'll have to use the certificate to book within 24 months, the travel that you book can be later than that. Extending MileagePlus elite status for 2021 United said it will extend every elite frequent flyer's status level through the 2021 status year. That means no urgency to requalify in 2020, as flights remain scarce and many companies keep business travel suspended. The airline said it will also reduce the Premier qualifying points (PQP) requirement for those looking to reach a new tier in 2021, and increasing the amount of PQPs that co-brand credit card holders can earn through spending. United said it would also extend the expiration dates for PlusPoints which can be used by United 1K and Platinum members to upgrade flights by six months. Extending other benefits for MileagePlus members United will extend annual membership and subscription benefits by six months, including United Club memberships, subscriptions for Economy Plus and Wi-Fi, and checked bag fees. American Airlines American Airlines American Airlines followed Delta and United by announcing status extensions this week, but has already had new flexible policies in place due to the outbreak. Waived change fees and extensions on travel credits and vouchers American is letting anyone with summer travel plans change their dates or cancel their tickets without fees. If you purchased a ticket anytime before April 7, 2020 for travel through September 30, 2020, you can rebook or cancel without fees (keep in mind that if you cancel, you'll get credits for a future trip. If the ticket, credit, or voucher is set to expire before September 30, it can be used for travel through the end of 2021. Finally, if you buy a new trip between March 1 and May 31, 2020, for future travel, you can change it any any time without change fees. Extending AAdvantage elite status through 2021 American joined Delta and United by announcing that it would extend every elite frequent flyer's status through the 2021 status year. That means that if you hold AAdvantage Gold status now, you'll keep it until January 31, 2022. For those without status who are still flying now, or who return to the skies later this year, the threshold to earn new status or a higher tier for 2021 has been lowered. That means that fewer elite qualification dollars (EQDs), miles (EQMs), and segments (EQSs) will be required. Admirals Club memberships extended All Admirals Club airport lounge memberships and one-time passes will be automatically extended for six months beyond their current expiration date. According to the airline, the extension applies to active members as of March 1, 2020. New memberships purchased between March 1 and May 31, 2020 will also get the extension. For one-time passes, the extension applies to passes that were set to expire between March 1 and May 31, 2020. Vacation credits for elite status holders AAdvantage members with elite status can receive a credit towards an American Airlines Vacations package, good for "something to look forward to when travel resumes," the airline said in its announcement. Elite members will receive up to $400 towards a vacation, depending on the package. Packages typically include airfare and hotel stays. Details were not immediately available. Read the original article on Business Insider NEW YORK, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alleghany Corporation (NYSE:Y) today announced that it has donated one million dollars to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund in the New York Community Trust. The donation reflects the desire of Alleghany's management and Board of Directors to assist in the fight against the pandemic and to support New York City's most vulnerable residents. About NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund The NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund was created on March 20, 2020 to aid small to mid-sized New York City-based nonprofit social service providers and arts organizations struggling with the health and economic effects of the coronavirus. It will give grants and no-interest loans to nonprofits that are trying to meet the new and urgent needs that are hitting the city and the communities they serve. The New York Community Trust will administer the Fund and oversee grants, while Nonprofit Finance Fund will manage the loans. Priority will be given to nonprofits addressing essential healthcare and food insecurity, and in the arts and culture sector, organizations with a demonstrated record of working from and serving their communities. The Fund will help nonprofits with a variety of needs, including protective equipment, cleaning supplies, technological assistance, and support for financial losses. The Fund launched with $75 million contributed by 18 founding members, including foundations, companies and individuals. It has since grown to over $80 million and has attracted many new large and smaller donors who care about nonprofits being able to continue their vital public service missions. About Alleghany Corporation Alleghany Corporation (NYSE:Y) creates value through owning and supporting its operating subsidiaries and managing investments, anchored by a core position in property and casualty reinsurance and insurance. Alleghany's property and casualty subsidiaries include: Transatlantic Holdings, Inc., a leading global reinsurer; RSUI Group, Inc., which underwrites wholesale specialty insurance coverages including property, casualty, professional liability and directors' and officers' liability; and CapSpecialty, Inc., an underwriter of commercial property, casualty and surety insurance coverages. Alleghany's subsidiary Alleghany Capital Corporation owns and manages a diverse portfolio of middle market businesses. SOURCE Alleghany Corporation Related Links http://www.alleghany.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-12 23:29:34|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the African continent has reached 744 as confirmed positive cases reached 13,686, the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) revealed on Sunday. The Africa CDC, a specialized agency of the 55-member African Union (AU), in its latest situation update issued on Sunday also disclosed that the confirmed COVID-19 cases were spread across 52 African countries. The Africa CDC also disclosed that some 2,283 people who have been infected with the COVID-19 have recovered across the continent as of the stated period. The continental disease control and prevention agency also disclosed that the highly COVID-19 affected countries include South Africa with 2,028 confirmed cases, Algeria with 1,825 confirmed cases as well as Egypt with 1,939 confirmed cases. Amid the continuing spread of the virus across the African continent, figures from the Africa CDC also show that more than 541 new confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported across the continent since the center's recent report on Saturday. The death toll has increased from 700 on Saturday to 744 as of the stated period, according to the Africa CDC. The African Union, through Africa CDC, has already activated its Emergency Operations Center and its Incident Management System (IMS) for the COVID-19 outbreak on January 27. The Africa CDC had also developed its third Incident Action Plan that covers the period from March 16 to April 15. The same week President Donald Trump told the public that voting by mail is "corrupt" and "ripe for fraud," his own party was sending a very different message to Republican voters in Pennsylvania. "Voting by mail is an easy, convenient and secure way to cast your ballot," read a mail piece the Republican National Committee distributed across the Keystone State. "Return the attached official Republican Party mail-in ballot application to avoid lines and protect yourself from large crowds on Election Day." Despite the president's rhetoric, state party leaders across the country are aggressively urging their voters to cast ballots by mail, GOP officials confirm. In addition, Republican officeholders in at least 16 states that do not have all-mail elections are encouraging people to vote absentee during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to a tally by The Washington Post. Among them are the Republican governors or secretaries of state in Georgia, Ohio, New Hampshire and Iowa, who announced in recent days that they would allow widespread voting by mail in upcoming elections. Their moves come after decades in which Republicans have encouraged their voters to take advantage of absentee ballot rules, running sophisticated mail programs that targeted GOP supporters most likely to vote from home. The apparent conflict between Trump's attacks on mail-in voting and his party's long embrace of the tactic comes as the health crisis has spurred Democrats and civil rights groups to push to loosen restrictions on mail voting in many jurisdictions. "Republicans like mail voting when it's used by people with second homes," said Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor and former Democratic National Committee chairman, "but not by people with second jobs." Republican officials say there is no dissonance between the president's rhetoric and what's happening on the ground. They say Trump opposes all-mail elections in which every registered voter is sent a ballot by mail, as well as the practice of ballot "harvesting," where third parties are allowed to collect completed ballots from voters and turn them in. Both are too susceptible to fraud, they say. "There is a very obvious difference between requesting an absentee ballot when you will be unable to vote in person versus automatically mailing every registered voter a ballot," said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh. "Sending everyone a ballot opens up wide possibilities for ballots to be intercepted, for ballots to be stolen from mailboxes, or for vote harvesting to occur." Trump, who voted absentee in Florida's primary last month, said he did so "because I'm allowed to," adding that he was at the White House and therefore out of state. He compared that with what he claimed were "thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room signing ballots all over the place." Experts said that mail balloting creates a risk of fraud by loosening the chain of custody of ballots, but they noted that such episodes are rare. The most prominent recent example came in a 2018 congressional race in North Carolina, when a GOP operative was charged with felonies as part of a ballot-tampering operation that is still under investigation. States with extensive mail-balloting systems have enacted safeguards such as signature requirements that make such fraud virtually nonexistent, according to Republican and Democratic election officials. Democrats and civil rights advocates say Trump and his party are trying to undermine confidence in voting by mail and suppress turnout even as they encourage their own voters with well-oiled mail operations. They say some of the restrictions Republicans want in place will have a disproportionate effect on minority communities and young people - an intentional effort, they say, to suppress turnout among voters who tend to vote for Democrats. "The Republican Party has now said, from the president down to the speaker of the Georgia Assembly, that they cannot win elections if everybody votes," said Marc Elias, a District of Columbia-based election lawyer for the Democratic National Committee. "So they are desperate to ensure that voter turnout is low among young voters and minority voters." The clash shows how both sides are hoping to gain advantage as the coronavirus upends the political calendar - a dynamic that voting advocates worry could interfere with the ability to find consensus on safe voting practices amid the pandemic. Republicans have a long history of persuading their voters to cast ballots by mail. Haley Barbour, the former RNC chairman and Mississippi governor, said the party's vote by mail operation "long predated" his tenure at the party's helm, from 1993 to 1997. The effort was intended to boost turnout among GOP voters who might prefer to vote from home, such as seniors. Republicans have been especially successful in states, including Florida, where their voters have embraced the option. About a third of the states allow mail balloting only with an excuse, with some granting excuses to groups that lean heavily Republican, such as the elderly. In the face of the coronavirus, Republican officials in many states are now loosening some of those restrictions. In West Virginia, Idaho, South Dakota and Nebraska, for example, GOP election officials are proactively mailing registered voters absentee ballot request forms. "Basically, if you feel more comfortable voting absentee because of the outbreak or your inability or nervousness about just appearing in person to vote, you can vote absentee and obtain an absentee ballot," said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, as he announced Thursday that the state will allow voters to cite the virus as an excuse to cast a mail-in ballot in November. Democrats and some voting experts say some Republican officials are finding ways to curtail mail-in voting to their benefit. One central point of dispute is whether to mail ballots to all voters - or only those who request them. Republicans argue that voting rolls are wildly inaccurate in some states, including dead people, duplicates or voters who have moved. Mailing a ballot to every registered voter, they say, would open up the risk of ballots falling into the wrong hands and being fraudulently filled out. "States should resist proposals that open the door to voting fraud, such as mailing ballots to voters who haven't asked for one," said Justin Clark, senior political adviser to the Trump campaign. Michael McDonald, an elections expert at the University of Florida, said a ballot request system means "essentially you have to register if you wish to vote, before every election." He also said it is unfair to punish voters for poorly maintained voting rolls. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, announced last month that he would send a mail ballot application to every voter - but only to active voters, not all registered voters. The plan was developed in coordination with Trump's reelection committee, according to a campaign official. That approach means applications will not go to those who have not voted or responded to official election contacts in five years. That will exclude about 300,000 of Georgia's 7.2 million voters, according to state data. Of those, 24% are 30 and under and 40% are nonwhite. "It's a way to try to shape the electorate," McDonald said. Raffensperger has emphasized blocking fraud rather than increasing access. At a news conference last week, he announced the formation of an "Absentee Ballot Fraud Task Force" with prosecutors and other law enforcement to ensure that the expansion of mail balloting does not lead to more fraud. The task force, Raffensperger said, will "investigate every signature mismatch that remains uncured, interview voters with unaccounted for multiple votes from the same address, and construct the rules around investigating nonresidential addresses being used as registration addresses." Lauren Groh-Wargo, the former campaign manager for 2018 Democratic gubernatorial contender Stacey Abrams, said such efforts are likely to intimidate voters and suppress participation in mail balloting. "They're talking about criminalizing a mismatched signature," said Groh-Wargo, who now leads the Abrams-founded voting-rights group, Fair Fight Action. "This is why voter suppression is so insidious. You knock on 10 people's doors in a neighborhood because their signature didn't match. Nothing will likely come of it, but in the meantime, people get charged with misdemeanors or felonies, and it spreads virally that voting by mail is risky." Raffensperger's office did not respond to a request for comment. In his announcement, the secretary of state said: "Those who wish to take advantage of us in these troubling times, and undermine the strength of democracy in Georgia, should be forewarned. Actions that delegitimize the integrity of the vote in Georgia will not be tolerated." The parties are also sharply divided about whether to federally mandate uniform vote-by-mail standards for all the states - a proposal championed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. In an interview, Klobuchar said that at the very least Congress must come up with more money to help states avoid chaos as millions more Americans prepare to vote by mail. "You have a number of Democratic and Republican elected officials across the country, and there are exceptions of course, that want to do vote by mail," Klobuchar said. "And they want funding for vote by mail." But GOP officials have resisted any funding that comes with requirements about how to run a vote-by-mail program, citing the potential for fraud. The partisan tensions were evident Thursday during a conference call organized by Klobuchar for the media to hear from eight secretaries of state. Two Republicans - Kyle Ardoin of Louisiana and Mac Warner of West Virginia - voiced concerns that a ramp-up of universal voting by mail would make their states vulnerable to election fraud. "You have to trust those local officials who say, 'I don't want to expand opportunities for misuse of the election process,' " Warner said. "And we've got that situation here in West Virginia. I don't want any of the buying of votes. I don't want assistance made easier for people to allow others to help them vote, and so forth." That drew a blistering rebuke from Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, who called her state's all-mail election system "the securest in the nation." New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver urged election administrators to avoid such arguments, saying they only serve to further divide Americans and undermine faith in elections. "This is not the time or place for us to be breaking down among each other along partisan lines," she said. Much of the debate focuses on the risk of ballot harvesting, which is illegal in many states. After the operation uncovered in the 2018 congressional race in North Carolina, lawmakers passed major election-law reforms in the state, including a stringent requirement that voters obtain two witness signatures before mailing their ballots. Democrats and state election officials, who supported the new rule at the time, now want to roll it back, saying the pandemic threatens voter access. Republicans, who control the legislature, have so far refused - and accused Democrats of trying to enable the type of fraud that infected the 2018 contest. "The concern I have is that if what you're doing is something that lessens the confidence in the result of the election, then I think we need to be very careful about going in that direction," said North Carolina Senate President Phil Berger, a Republican. Elias, who is leading Democratic Party efforts in court to roll back restrictions on voting by mail, acknowledged that third-party ballot collection is among the DNC's goals. The party is also seeking free postage, the opportunity for voters to fix a rejected ballot, and rule changes in states that require ballots to be received by Election Day to instead allow them to be postmarked by that day. Elias said the election is likely to be won or lost on the margins, meaning those kinds of rules will matter. Postage, for instance, becomes an issue for lower-income voters or young people unaccustomed to using the mail. The right to fix a ballot for a missing or mismatched signature is important to guard against unfair practices or untrained poll workers, he said. Democrats have sued over these rules, winning in Florida and securing a settlement in Georgia to assure the right for a ballot "cure." Elias said he is preparing litigation in a number of additional states now that mail balloting is likely to become more popular. State Democrats have already filed suit in Texas, where voters must have a reason such as disability, age or travel to vote by mail, and where Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has resisted calls to expand mail balloting. - - - The Washington Post's Scott Clement, Emily Guskin and Michael Scherer contributed to this report. NHS staff have been forced to fly in their own supplies of visors, masks and gowns after raising millions through crowdfunding. They have welcomed the donations but say it should never have been necessary. One appeal called Masks for NHS Heroes has already raised 1.8million. The group, started by a team of NHS doctors, received a delivery of 100,000 visors this weekend, which were yesterday delivered to hospitals. It has also ordered more than 70,000 units of gowns and masks to be delivered around the country this week. Meanwhile Cambridge University has launched an appeal to raise 5million to buy personal protective equipment from China for local hospitals and social care staff. NHS staff have been forced to fly in their own supplies of visors, masks and gowns after raising millions through crowdfunding. Pictured is nurse Leilani Dayrit, who died from coronavirus One appeal called Masks for NHS Heroes has already raised 1.8 million. Pictured is Leilani Medel, a nurse at Bridgend, who died from the virus Britain missed THREE chances to join an EU scheme to bulk-buy personal protective equipment for NHS staff The UK has missed three chances to participate in an EU scheme to buy huge quantities of personal protective equipment (PPE). The EU has ordered 1.5billion (1.3billion) worth of protective masks, gowns and gloves for doctors and nurses but Britain did not take part in talks about the purchases. Some 25 European countries and eight companies are involved in the joint PPE procurement scheme and the first deliveries could be received within days, The Guardian reported. A spokesman for the commission said the joint scheme has led to offers of protective gear in excess of the amount requested. However, the UK will miss out on the PPE because it did not take part in any of the three rounds of bulk-buying which were first launched by the EU in February. The Government has previously said it was unable to join the EUs procurement schemes as it had not received an email of invitation. But Whitehall officials reportedly only realised after all three rounds had been put out to tender that they had not received invitations to join the Joint Procurement Agreement steering committee where the orders are organised. After telling the EU commission that the invitation emails were being sent to an outdated address the UK finally participated in its first meeting on joint PPE procurement on March 19. However, British officials did not follow up that meeting and did not attend on March 25 when participating countries were invited to outline their requirements for future purchases by the next day. The revelations comes as anger grows over PPE shortages in Britain. Yesterday foreign secretary Dominic Raab acknowledged that PPE shortages rather than distribution issues only was an issue and admitted supplies were running low because of a competitive market out there. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: We are working round the clock with industry, the NHS, social care providers and the army to ensure the supply of PPE over the coming weeks and months and will give our NHS and the social care sector everything they need to tackle this pandemic including working with countries around the globe. They added that the department will consider participating in future EU joint procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time. Advertisement The team is being headed by two doctors and Cambridge professors, Toni Vidal Puig and Sadaf Farooqi. They are working with colleagues in China to secure equipment, and said Chinese entrepreneurs have already committed to air-freight supplies at cost price. Professor Farooqi said: We have secured thousands of items of PPE including masks, gowns and gloves. We are in the process of arranging a flight, and it should arrive in the next week. Our first aim is to get PPE to Cambridge and the East of England and then we hope to help our colleagues around the country. The global situation is very challenging, demand is far outstripping supply. China is currently the only country with the capability for manufacturing at scale. Hopefully soon UK companies will have that capacity, but at the moment urgency is key. At least 35 NHS staff have died during the outbreak after testing positive although it is not known how many contracted the virus due to inadequate supplies of PPE. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers in England which represents hospital trusts, said the number of gowns in some parts of the country was very, very low. Full-length surgical gowns are worn in the most high-risk areas, including intensive care. Mr Hopson said: The problem is that the flow of gowns into the country is somewhat erratic. 'And there are two or three reasons for that the first is, that for reasons one would understand, the Chinese are, basically, wanting to test equipment before it arrives. The second is there have been some instances of when boxes of what were meant to be gowns, and were labelled as gowns have arrived, when you open the boxes up they have got masks. Although the vast majority of gowns have to be imported from China, some British manufacturers are also stepping up to plug gaps in the supply chain. Barbour, known for its wax jackets, has transformed part of its factory in South Shields into a production line for PPE. It has begun delivering navy blue gowns to frontline staff at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead. Company chairman, Dame Margaret Barbour, said: The factory, where we normally make our classic wax jackets is no stranger to adaptation. During both world wars, we turned the factory over to make military garments to assist the war effort. We are pleased to once again be able to make a difference and this time, to support the NHS. Meanwhile, car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover is making visors for hospital staff, which are being distributed to the frontline. On Sunday, the Royal College of Nursing told its members to refuse to treat people if they do not have adequate PPE. One nurse yesterday broke down in tears as she described making the gut-wrenching decision to abandon her shift due to the lack of equipment. The nurse, who has to care for her vulnerable father at home, explained that she was told they had to use one mask for the entire shift when they only last for four hours. NHS ambulance staff arrive at a call out in London today amid the coronavirus crisis Speaking anonymously to ITV, she said: I just didnt feel comfortable continuing the shift knowing the PPE I was being offered. I cried for about two hours in my car, I felt it went against everything I believe in. When I came into this industry it was to help people and give my best. The fact that I had to leave, it goes against everything that I go by, but I knew I had to do it because I dont to be responsible for infecting my father. They can stop you passing on the virus, but wont stop you getting it Wearing face masks has divided governments and the medical community around the world. The Department of Health does not currently advise the public to wear face masks as it argues there is no evidence they prevent the wearer getting the disease. They also warn front line healthcare workers are in dire need of masks so if the public start panic-buying the medical grade N95 masks, this could put lives at risk. It also says wearing face masks may encourage people to touch their faces, which could increase the spread of the disease and lead to the disregarding of social distancing. Many Asian countries take a different view and see mask-wearing as a way to protect others by helping to reduce the spread of the disease when they cough or even just talk, as the virus can be spread that way too. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have changed position and now say a cloth mask that fits snugly and comfortably in public settings may help. They call cloth face coverings an additional, voluntary public health measure. Looked at it this way, a face mask may not stop you catching the disease but might mean you are less likely to spread it to others. But it is no substitute for staying home, handwashing and keeping at least 6ft from outsiders. Advertisement Nurses Leilani Dayrit, 47, Melujean Ballesteros, 60, Leilani Medel, 41, and hospital plaster cast technician Kevin Smith have all died from the virus. Mrs Dayrit was a nurse at the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby, who was described by her family as selfless, hardworking and compassionate. She was known as Mummy Lei because she was a mother-like figure to her friends children. Her daughter Mary said: She was a perfect example of an optimist who kept looking on the bright side of things and encouraged everyone to do the same. Mrs Ballesteros, who was originally from the Philippines, died at St Marys Hospital in Paddington, west London, where she had worked. The hospital is one of a number nationwide that has had PPE donated to it in recent days, following the national shortage. The Careys construction group delivered more than 1,000 masks, goggles, gloves and face shields to the hospital. Mrs Ballesteross son Rainier, 37, said the mother-of-two was dedicated and very caring, adding: She loved her work as a nurse. Kevin Smith worked putting plaster casts on fracture patients at the Doncaster Royal Infirmary in South Yorkshire, and had worked in the NHS for 35 years. His daughter Ellie Whitley said he was an incredible person who loved his job. Leilani Medel, from Bridgend in South Wales, worked as an agency nurse in hospitals and care homes. Meanwhile a nurse has been left fighting for her life because she did not have adequate PPE, despite suffering from an underlying health condition. Becky Usher, 38, from Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, last night remained in an intensive care unit where she has been put on a ventilator to breathe. Last night, Trade Minister Greg Hands said the UK had reached a deal with Egypt to buy PPE. He tweeted: A large number of medical gowns are on their way to the UK thank you Egypt! Los Angeles, April 13 : Reality TV personality Kylie Jenner and her mother Kris Jenner have begun sending out hand sanitisers to healthcare workers here. The sanitisers are made under make-up mogul Kylie's brand. The duo have joined hands with the officials at beauty giant Coty, the major stakeholder in Kylie's cosmetics companies, to start manufacturing the antimicrobial gels which are in desperately short supply in California, the family's home state, reports aceshowbiz.com. On April 10, Kylie's staffers delivered one of the first batches of the product to workers at a hospital in the San Fernando Valley, California, with staff posing for a photograph with the new range from the reality star. Each bottle is labeled with the message: "Dedicated to first responders working to support our communities." The delivery follows donations of $1 million made by both Kylie and her reality TV star sister Kim Kardashian to medical organisations last month, to aid in the purchase of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers battling Covid-19. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text WILTON Wilton police gave two warnings last week to people trespassing on school property one on Friday at Middlebrook School on School Road and one on Saturday at the Montessori School on Whipple Road. Police did not issue any tickets. As of Friday, we have been proactively enforcing the First Selectwomans order, Lt. Robert Kluk said in an email to Hearst Connecticut Media. We have officers assigned to checking the closed areas all the time and enforcement action will be taken on those that choose to violate the order. Al Roker's 32-year-old daughter Courtney is engaged to her DJ partner, after he popped the question in a sweet Paris-themed proposal in quarantine. The 65-year-old Today show star shared the joyful news on Instagram on Sunday - revealing that he 'waited to get the ok' from Courtney before posting about the milestone moment. 'I was waiting to get the ok, but now that its on her insta, we are so thrilled the @djweslaga asked @ouichefcourtney to marry him #shesaidyes,' he captioned a collage of photos on Instagram of the beaming couple. 'Could not be more thrilled for these two.' Al Roker took to Instagram on Easter Sunday and announced his oldest daughter, Courtney Roker, got engaged to Wesley Laga during their home quarantine Beaming: Courtney Roker, 32, shared the happy news about their engagement by sharing a series of photos on Instagram on Saturday The longtime television weatherman and host waited until Easter Sunday to make the announcement on social media, however his daughter couldn't wait before posting about the news herself. Courtney, who is a professional chef, posted a series of images on her own account on Saturday, revealing sweet details about how Wesley - a DJ and theater teacher - found a way to make his proposal unforgettable, despite having his original plans canceled because of the pandemic. Bling thing: Courtney proudly showed off her ring in the images The daughter of the Today host explained that the couple had planned a romantic trip to Paris together, but their vacation was canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. So, Wesley 'brought Paris' to Courtney, creating his own version of their vacation in their home. 'Life sometimes takes you in a different direction for a reason,' Courtney wrote in her Instagram caption caption. 'We should have been in Paris, but with how the world is at the moment, it was placed on hold. Instead, Wes brought Paris to me with the music, lights and live cam shot of the Eiffel Tower on our TV.' She added, 'I said yes to my best friend last night and I am over the moon! Thank you Wes for making me your partner in crime for life. I love you.' Laga had planned on proposing during a trip to Paris, France, but he had to reverse course and prose during their home quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic Romantic: Courtney revealed that her fiance brought Paris to her with 'music, lights and live cam shot of the Eiffel Tower on our TV' Her post was flooded with likes and comments from well wishers, with more than 300 people sharing kind words for the newly-engaged couple. 'Congratulations! Wishing you both a long and happy life together!' oner person wrote, while another added: 'This is SO wonderful. Congratulations to you both!' Despite not being able to enjoy their planned trip to Paris, the couple look over the moon in the images that Courtney shared, with one capturing the couple proudly showing off her engagement bling, which she is holding up towards the camera, while Wesley points at it. There's also two other photos of the pair snuggling up to one another during their home sequester moments after she said yes to his proposal. Luckily, the couple will have plenty of opportunity to visit Paris again in the future, because Courtney's younger sister, Leila, is currently living there while studying at the American University of Paris. Al and his first wife, NBC producer Alice Bell, adopted Courtney when she was just a few months old, before they divorced in 1994. Family matters: Al and his first wife, NBC producer Alice Bell, adopted Courtney before they divorced in 1994; he also has two children, Leila and Nicholas, with wife Deborah Roberts Going strong: Al and Deborah have been married since 1995; the family is pictured in late February, just before most people started to quarantine in their homes He went on to marry fellow TV journalist Deborah Roberts the following year, and the couple had two more children together - Leila, 21, and a son, Nicholas, who is now 17. In a 2003 interview with Guideposts, Al spoke about his close relationship with his daughter Courtney, revealing that he thought long and hard about having children with Deborah, because he wasn't sure how his eldest daughter would respond, having 'ruled the roost' for so long. However Courtney appears to be incredibly close with both of her siblings, and regularly shares Instagram images of the family of five spending time together. She also looks to be very close with her fiance's family, revealing on Instagram that she and Wesley are currently quarantined with his brother, Cory, who works for New York City Football Club. Wesley, who is originally from New Jersey, describes himself on Instagram as a 'Performer. Director. Theatre teacher. DJ.' Courtney and Wesley have been together for over a year - with the chef sharing her first public photo of the two of them on Instagram in March 2019, after they attended an NYCFC game together. New York City trying to find places to bury the unclaimed bodies of those who have passed away from coronavirus. The city's morgues, funeral homes and crematoriums are filling up fast and the city is looking for additional locations in which to store the dead. Last week, as the city dealt with the mounting coronavirus death toll and dwindling morgue space, the city announced that Hart Island would be used for the burials of virus dead unclaimed after 14 days in storage, but now a park in Queens may also be used. New York City is dealing with the mounting coronavirus death toll and dwindling morgue space. An email has emerged which suggest the city was looking at Fort Totten Park in Queens (pictures), New York as a potential burial site A view of Fort Totten Park in Queens, New York is pictured. The bodies of those killed by coronavirus may be buried at this location if current capacity at other sites is exceeded Fort Totten, a former cemetery, may well be where hundreds of bodies could be buried during the pandemic. The site was a Queens military base in the 1800s but it's believed a cemetery lies on the land somewhere. Any headstones that may have been present have long since vanished according to a 2012 report by the New York Times. Fort Totten ended up being decommissioned and parts of it were turned into a city park. Officials were skeptical that a graveyard even existed at all. At least 6,898 New York City residents have died in the pandemic so far. 'If the current outbreak escalates, burials will occur at Fort Totten and Hart Island,' according to an email written in March, as seen by the New York Daily News. The Mayor's office has denied Fort Totten will be used as a site for public burials and on Sunday, mayoral spokeswoman Avery Cohen stated that use of the park was not on the table at present. 'We are not considering temporary burials at this time,' she wrote. Mayor de Blasio's press secretary Freddi Goldstein added: 'We've increased capacity enough that we do not believe we'll have to move to temporary burials.' The strong stone walls of Fort Totten Battery, now part of the public city parks of New York Fort Totten was once a former cemetery. It could well be the location where hundreds of bodies are buried during the pandemic, even if only temporarily In the March 29 email as seen by the News, details were set out as to what work would be required to turn Fort Totten into a burial site. The city has used Hart Island to bury New Yorkers with no known next of kin or whose family are unable to arrange a funeral since the 19th century. Typically, about 25 bodies are buried there once a week by low-paid Rikers Island jail inmates but that number began increasing last month as the coronavirus spread rapidly and New York became the epicenter of the pandemic. About two dozen bodies a day, five days a week, are now being buried at the site. Bodies are seen inside a makeshift morgue outside Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn Bodies are moved by medical staff to refrigerator truck morgues under the cover of darkness at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, last week as the death toll rises Until now, officials have remained tight-lipped on whether coronavirus victims were being buried on Hart Island. On Thursday, officials said they had no choice but to bury COVID-19 patients at the city's cemetery as it deals with the mounting coronavirus death toll and dwindling morgue space. It comes after aerial images captured contracted laborers burying about 40 cases in a huge trench on Hart Island on Thursday. City officials haven't explained whether the increase in burials at Hart Island is due to pressure on mortuaries to dispose of bodies more quickly. Last week, workers wearing personal protective equipment were seen burying bodies in a trench on Hart Island Officials have explored the possibility of temporary burials on Hart Island, a strip of land in Long Island Sound that has long served as the city's potter's field Burials at Fort Totten could help provide some relief when it comes to storing bodies while the city attempts to deal with the pandemic and flatten the curve. Coffins are stacked three-high in trenches at Hart Island and it could take months to return to families should they be claimed. At Fort Totten, 10 coffins could be arranged in a single row making it far easier to retrieve. According to a report published by The Office of Chief Medical Examiner in 2016, city officials stated that burials on Hart Island may not be able to close should a pandemic arise that kills thousands of residents each week. 'During a biological incident, OCME anticipates significant storage concerns due to the increased processing time and system wide delays with final disposition,' the report reads. 'Should the rate of death outpace available space on Hart Island, the city may need to establish contracts with public and/or private cemeteries to accommodate additional temporary interment for decedents.' The Gaza Strip has resumed testing for the coronavirus, a Health Ministry spokesperson said Monday after Israel allowed the delivery of five World Health Organization-purchased testing kits into the impoverished enclave. We need to carry out these tests all the time and therefore, we are in need of thousands of testing kits, said spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra. Last week, health authorities in the Hamas-run coastal strip said because they had run out of testing kits, hundreds of people waiting on results would have to remain in quarantine. Abdullatif Alhaj, an official in Gazas Health Ministry, told Al-Monitor the five new kits were enough to conduct 480 tests, the results of which will take about a week. Thirteen cases of the novel coronavirus have been diagnosed in Gaza so far. The Health Ministry has converted more than a dozen schools into quarantine centers for those returning to the Gaza Strip. The Rafah border crossing into Egypt, the main entry and exit point for Gaza, opened Monday to allow the entry of Palestinians stranded abroad for the next four days. Hamas had closed the crossing in mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Experts have warned that an outbreak of COVID-19 in the tiny territory of some 2 million people, many of whom live in crowded refugee camps, would present a massive challenge for Gazas health care system. Military conflict with Israel, internal political instability and a 13-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade have left hospitals overburdened and understaffed. According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Gazas hospitals are equipped with just 70 intensive care unit beds and face a shortage of ventilators and protective equipment In Israel, where more than 11,000 have tested positive for the virus, material shortages have led to a reduction in testing, Haaretz reports. Amid the testing rate decline, the Health Ministry said on Sunday it would begin locally producing the chemicals needed to conduct the tests. On Sunday COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates Palestinian civil affairs, announced plans to deliver an advanced medical device used for coronavirus detection, known as a PCR machine, to Gazas Shifa Hospital. Palestinian health officials announced the second coronavirus death in the West Bank on Friday as the number of confirmed cases rose to 266. Solar panels and windmills Turmoil is engulfing stock markets around the globe, as the uncertainty surrounding the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic grows. Many industries have been hit hard by the fallout from the pandemic. Among the most harshly affected are airlines, retailers, hotels, and restaurant stocks. There is considerable speculation that the economic slump will turn into a recession deeper and longer than the Great Recession of just over a decade ago. If that occurs, companies with strong defensive characteristics will protect against uncertainty. Among the top-rated defensive stocks are utilities, notably those that generate electricity. One renewable energy utility that has been punished by the market, losing 18% over the last month, is Polaris Infrastructure (TSX:PIF). Despite emerging headwinds, Polaris is very attractively valued, making now the time to buy. Rising geopolitical risk Polaris owns a portfolio of renewable energy assets in Nicaragua and Peru. Aside from the risks posed by the coronavirus and related economic fallout, it is Polariss exposure to Nicaragua which is responsible for the sharp sell-off. Nicaragua has been torn by strife since early 2018, when protests against proposed pension and social security reforms swept the nation. Those along with U.S. sanctions plunged Nicaragua into an economic crisis. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that Nicaraguas 2019 gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 5%. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the IMF predicted that the Latin American nations GDP would decline by just under 1% during 2020. There is every likelihood that Nicaraguas economy will contract by more than 5% because of the coronavirus. The sharp decline in tourism will have a sharp impact on Nicaraguas economy. Government limitations on movement, travel bans, closed borders, and the enforced closure of non-essential services will have a considerable impact on tourism. In 2018, tourism was responsible for 11% of the Latin American nations GDP. Story continues Furthermore, the economies of Nicaraguas two top trading partners, the U.S. and China have been ravaged by the pandemic, causing growth to significantly decline. That will lead to sharply lower consumption and demand for Nicaraguas exports. Since mid-March 2020, Nicaraguas controversial leader President Ortega has not made any public appearances, broadcasts, or statements. That has triggered considerable speculation that he may be gravely ill with the virus or perhaps deceased. There is considerable uncertainty about how the nation will manage the pandemic and eventually return to growth. Those factors will have impact electricity demand and hence earnings for Polariss 77-megawatt San Jacinto geothermal plant in Nicaragua. There are also fears about continued to unrest in the Central American country, which could see stricter controls and lower fixed electricity prices or even nationalization of the asset. Perceived risk is overbaked Much of the perceived degree of risk appears overblown, and the impact on Polaris wont be as severe as believed. The renewable electricity utility also owns three operating run of river hydro electric plants in Peru. They have 20-year power-purchase agreements (PPAs) and will add up to US$9.9 million to Polariss annual EBITDA. Polaris has also forecast that its cash flow per share will grow by 8-15%, and debt will fall to 2.9 times EBITDA. The substantial increase in earnings and cash flow will allow Polaris to reduce debt. It anticipates that debt will be around 2.9 times EBITDA for 2020, which is quite a conservative multiple for an electric utility. That significantly reduces the risk posed by San Jacinto and Polariss dependence on San Jacinto. Peru is a more stable jurisdiction than Nicaragua. Before the coronavirus pandemic the IMF forecast 2020 GDP growth of 3.6%. While Perus economy will be impacted by the considerable fallout from the pandemic, it will emerge in better shape than Nicaragua. Looking ahead Short-term headwinds abound, but after the latest market decline, Polaris is attractively valued. The renewable electricity utilitys move into Peru will reduce risk and boost earnings. While investors wait for the economy to recover and Polaris to rally, they will be rewarded by its dividend yielding a juicy 7%. That payment appears sustainable with it representing 40% of cash flow and 67% of net income. The post 1 Top Canadian Renewable Energy Stock Yielding 7% to Buy in April appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada. More reading Fool contributor Matt Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Polaris Infrastructure Inc. The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020 WOOD RIVER A total of 1,173 new coronavirus cases including an additional 74 deaths were reported by the Illinois Department of Public Health on Monday. That brings the number of cases to 22,025 statewide, with 794 deaths. During his daily briefing Gov. J.B. Pritzker talked about the states efforts in dealing with widespread unemployment because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Madison County Health Department on Monday reported a total of 120 cases, up eight from Sunday. That figure includes two deaths. Of those cases, 69 are women and 51 are men. A total of 30 are hospitalized and 43 recovered, meaning they have completed isolation. Information by ZIP code Monday showed additional cases in the Granite City/Pontoon Beach area, according to figures on the IDPH website. A total of 24 cases were reported for the ZIP code. Other cases totals by ZIP code include 62002 (Alton) with 18, 62025 (Edwardsville) with 16, 62234 (Collinsville) with 12, 62034 (Glen Carbon) with eight, 62035 (Godfrey) with six and 62060 (Madison) with six. Pritzker on Monday emphasized the states efforts in addressing widespread unemployment caused by the pandemic. He said the virus has killed hundreds of Illinoisans, sickened thousands and caused economic hardship for millions. Local employment officials have said said total unemployment projections have ranged 15-20 percent because of COVID-19. Much of the states effort to this point has been streamlining the unemployment application process. More Information COVID-19 cases in area counties Madison - 120, 2 deaths Jersey - 6 Macoupin - 16 Greene - 1 Calhoun - 1 Clinton - 38 Bond - 4 Washington - 2 St. Clair - 202, 8 deaths Monroe - 46, 4 deaths Montgomery - 8, 1 death Sources: Illinois Department of Public Health and Madison County Health Department See More Collapse The unemployment claims process has been a source of hardships for so many Illinoisans, said Pritzker, adding the systems simply havent kept pace. From the start of March to April 4, 513,000 unemployment claims were filed the highest numbers ever filed during such a short time. Pritzker said that was more than all of last year and 400 percent higher than the total number filed in the first five weeks of the 2008 recession. He noted the Illinois Department of Employment Securitys computer system was built in 2010 in the wake of that recession, with the idea that unemployment would never exceed the 2008 figures. He also said workers have fielded 6.5 million online sessions and the 173 people at its call center are processing thousands of calls each day. To improve the system and expedite service, Pritzker said the state has brought back retirees, in some cases setting them up to work remotely. It also has expanded the IDES telephone system and call center hours, established an outside call center for applications and certifications and entirely overhauled the agencys web platform. He said the state also has brought in numerous outside partners to help, doing in weeks what would normally take a year. Pritzker also said Illinois has expanded unemployment benefits, begun processing additional unemployment compensation under the CARES Act, is working to set up unemployment for independent contractors and made workers compensation changes to ensure health care and other essential workers who might contract COVID-19 are covered. Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said it is important to recognize the toll unemployment takes on individuals. She said it is linked to a number of mental issues including anxiety, depression, substance abuse and low self-esteem. People need to support each other, she said. Ezike also talked about the states new Call4Calm hotline by the Illinois Department of Human Services. To access the hotline, people can text talk to 552020 or hablar to the same number for assistance in Spanish. Participants will get a call from someone with a local community mental health center. Other services can be accessed by texting unemployment, food, shelter and other keywords to the same number. For the latest information on COVID-19 or coronavirus resources, visit the Madison County Health Department online at www.madisonchd.org or on Facebook @MadisonCHD. Also visit www.co.madison.il.us for more news and a daily update or on Facebook @MadisonCountyIL. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has said that it was a 'real shock' for him when he got to know that club's legend Sir Kenny Dalglish tested positive for the coronavirus. Dalglish was admitted last Wednesday for the treatment of an infection and was subsequently tested for coronavirus. Although asymptomatic, Dalglish tested positive and remained in hospital until the weekend, when he returned home. "It was a real shock three days ago when I heard about it first. The boys were sent a message in our WhatsApp group and everybody was like, 'Wow'. What you feel in that moment is a massive difference if you know somebody who got the virus, or if you don't know. In this moment, it was like, 'Wow, one of us has it' and it was really crazy," the club's official website quoted Klopp as saying. Klopp termed coronavirus as a 'terrible disease' and sent good wishes to Dalglish. "We all know this terrible disease is causing heartache all over the world, but this was the first time for many of us someone we have such a personal connection to was affected to this extent. I had the opportunity to text immediately with one of his daughters and we spoke about it," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Monday appealed to Muslims to strictly follow social distancing and lockdown guidelines during the holy month of Ramzan starting later this month in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. He urged them to offer prayers and perform other religious rituals like the "iftar (breaking of fast) staying inside their homes during the month of Ramzan, which will begin from April 24 or April 25. A 21-day lockdown was put in place from March 25 and is likely to be extended in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases in the country. Several states like Odisha and Punjab have already announced extension of the lockdown. Naqvi's appeal came after he spoke with various religious leaders, representatives of social and religious organisations, officials and other office-bearers of state waqf boards, asking them to ensure implementation of lockdown and social distancing guidelines during Ramzan. The minister also held meetings in this regard at the ministry on Monday. Naqvi, who is also the Chairman of the Central Waqf Council, said more than seven lakh registered mosques, eidgahs, imambadas, dargahs and other religious institutions come under the state waqf boards across the country. It is to be noted that most of the Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia, have called for having no mass gathering during Ramadan at religious places. The state waqf boards, through the Central Waqf Council, have been directed to ensure that the people do not gather at religious and other places under any circumstances during Ramzan, NAQVI said. There is a need to take help of people, various religious and social organisations and local administration in this regard, he said. Naqvi said due to the proactive, effective and positive efforts of the state waqf boards and religious-social organisations, Muslims in the country observed Shab-e-Barat on April 8 and 9 by offering prayers and performing all other religious rituals staying inside their homes. He said that in view of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the cooperation of Muslims in implementation of the guidelines of lockdown and social distancing on Shab-e-Barat has been laudable. All the religious activities at temples, mosques, gurdwaras, churches and other religious places in the country have been cancelled in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Guidelines of lockdown and social distancing are being followed effectively, he said. Traditionally people gather in large numbers at lakhs of mosques, dargahs, imambadas, eidgahs, madrassas and other religious places across the country to offer prayers and performing other religious rituals, including 'iftaar' during Ramzan, he noted. "But due to coronavirus pandemic, lockdown, curfew, social distancing, have been implemented by the Centre and all the state governments," he said, adding that there is a need to make people aware so that they perform all the religious rituals inside their homes during Ramzan. Such efforts are not only needed at mosques and other religious places but also at public as well as private places where Muslims gather during Ramzan to perform religious rituals. Naqvi said the entire country is seriously and honestly following lockdown and social distancing guidelines on the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Any type of carelessness can be harmful for us, our family, the society and the entire country. We should follow the guidelines of the administration to defeat coronavirus with all seriousness and honesty," he asserted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) San Antonio's Barbacoa & Big Red Festival will not happen this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than postponing, organizers are gearing up for 2021. READ MORE: The latest news and features about coronavirus in San Antonio "With things rapidly changing, we're making the right decision to cancel the festival based on the facts coming from our leaders and health officials," the festival's team said in a news release Monday. "We want to keep our community safe as well as our sponsors, vendors and staff." The festival was planned for The Greenline, a park inside Brooks (formerly Brooks City Base) on May 16 and 17. This year was going to be the first two-day event in the festival's history. Tickets for the event had not been sold. Last year, the event reported more than 30,000 attendees. Other large events, like St. Mary University's Oyster Bake also decided to cancel the 2020 date altogether instead of postponing. Madalyn Mendoza covers news and puro pop culture for MySA.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @maddyskye The novel pandemic coronavirus has affected lives globally and the elderly are at a very high risk of getting infected. In an effort to avoid that, older people are self-isolating themselves and being placed under quarantine in order to keep them away from their family members who could possibly infect them or vice-versa. It means a lot of senior citizens have to remain away from their families during these tough times and we all know how important it is to have the support of your loved ones right now. In a heartwarming video, an Arab nurse at an Israeli hospital can be seen reading The Four Questions (a ritual during the Passover seder) for the elderly, since none of them could be with their grandchildren during the holiday. This is so beautiful: an Arab nurse at an Israeli hospital reads the Four Questions, generally recited by children during the Passover Seder, to elderly patients who are unable to be with their grandchildren on the holiday due to the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/phvYjt3kul Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) April 11, 2020 For the Jewish, Passover is the most-celebrated Jewish holiday of the year and it happens to come in the month of April. The festival which is celebrated for seven days has a ritual of having seder (traditional dinner) on the first night. One of the seder's special rituals is that the youngest member of the family recites The Four Questions via a song. Twitter/@AviMayer The Four Questions translated to English mean, 1. Why is it that on all other nights we need not dip even once, and on this night we dip twice? 2. Why is it that on all other nights we eat leavened bread or matzah, and on this night only matzah? 3. Why is it that on all nights we eat various vegetables, and on this night, bitter herbs? 4. Why is it that on all nights we eat sitting upright or reclining, and on this night we all recline? The video received a warm response on the Internet and people lauded the nurse for her efforts and kindness. This is what is beautiful in life , human first Wendy Joy (@Wendys_fight) April 11, 2020 Looks like she was reading even more of the hagaddah... beautiful. Melanie Notkin (@SavvyAuntie) April 11, 2020 God bless her. Sheryl Coyne (@coyne_sheryl) April 12, 2020 Its amazing how during dark times the light breaks through vincent heaney (@vinceheaney) April 12, 2020 Compassion for others regardless of faith and politics is what we need more of Susan Bach (@rachelsstones) April 13, 2020 During a time like this, compassion and empathy can take us a long way. Watch out for those who need it the most. United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday vowed that Britain "will defeat" the deadly coronavirus, soon after he was discharged from hospital following week-long intensive care treatment for the disease that has killed over 10,000 people in the country. Responding to Johnson's video message, BJP National Spokesperson Sambit Patra said that it is "great to have a world leader back at the helm." 'Great to have a world leader back at helm' Great to have a world leader back at helm https://t.co/mBsmW1bDI5 Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj) April 12, 2020 Earlier in the day, appearing on Republic, Sambit Patra had shamed foreign media for being negative about India's Covid battle, while India was attempting to help all and sundry: #NoCoronaPolitics | Thankfully the PM of UK is out of ICU, because we all want that nobody suffers. Modiji is helping everyone around the world who asks. And yet, you have these foreign media who spread canards and politicisation: @sambitswaraj, BJP pic.twitter.com/on0ptC1HDn Republic (@republic) April 12, 2020 In a video message recorded to mark his discharge as well as Easter Sunday, the 55-year-old leader said that the UK "will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together". 'Stay at home, protect our NHS- and save lives' He said, "I have today left hospital after a week in which the NHS (National Health Service) has saved my life, no question. It's hard to find the words to express my debt. And the reason, in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they (NHS doctors and nurses) were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed". Johnson name-checked a number of the utterly brilliant doctors and nurses for their care during his week-long hospitalisation and stressed that the UK will win the national battle against Coronavirus because the NHS is the beating heart of this country. READ | Sambit Patra responds as Shaheen Bagh writes to SC Judges over eviction due to Coronavirus "It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love. So thank you from me, and from all of us, to the NHS, and let's remember to follow the rules on social distancing. Stay at home, protect our NHS - and save lives," he said. READ | BJP's Sambit Patra ready with lit diyas almost 24 hrs before PM's '9 mins light' vs Covid The news of Johnson's discharge came as the COVID-19 death toll in the UK crossed the 10,000 mark on Sunday, to hit a total of 10,612 after a daily hike of 737 deaths. READ | BJP & Congress in war of words over PM Modi's '9pm-9mins' Covid appeal; Patra blasts Sibal Meanwhile, with 918 new positive COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the total number of Coronavirus cases in India on Sunday climbed to 8,447, including 764 cured. The death toll meanwhile climbed to 273 as 31 more persons succumbed to the infection, government data on Sunday showed. READ | BJP's Sambit Patra issues first response to PM Modi's '9 minutes at 9pm' Covid-19 appeal (With PTI inputs) Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 13, 2020) - EGF Theramed Health Corp. (CSE: TMED) (OTCQB: EVAHF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") financing of up to 3,400,000 million units (the "Units") of the Company at a price of $0.50 per Unit for gross proceeds of $1,700,000. Each Unit consists of one common share and one common share purchase warrant, with each warrant entitling the holder to acquire an additional common share of the Company at a price of $0.75 for a period of eighteen (18) months from the closing of the Offering. The Company may pay a finder's fee to one or more arm's length parties who introduce the Company to subscribers, in accordance with the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange. The funds will be used for working capital in the Company. The Company continues to develop products, technologies and diagnostic tools focused on hemp-derived cannabidiol. The products will serve with the overall goals of improving health and elevating the human condition. The Company also announces that it has commenced its due diligence and research procedures in search of new investment opportunities in the psilocybin sector to diversify and strengthen its existing asset base. Furthermore, the Company has begun to research psilocybin and psychedelics extraction and processing for its Las Vegas extraction lab. Psilocybin microdosing is known to reduce stress, anxiety and pain without many of the side effects associated with traditional pharmacology products that have been prescribed for the same issues. Psilocybin has been decriminalized in Denver, Oakland, and Santa Cruz and the Food and Drug Administration in the United States granted a breakthrough therapy designation for the compound. Preliminary clinical evidence indicates psilocybin may demonstrate substantial improvement over other available therapies for treatment-resistant depression. The initiative by the Company to enter the Psilocybin sector is a proactive move to jump into new verticals of sales and complementary assets. "We are very excited to enter the Psilocybin space as we feel it is very complimentary to the CBD space as both carry unique and undeniable health benefits." States David Bentil. For more information please contact: Jatinder Dhaliwal 604-780-3311 theramedhealthcorp@gmail.com EGF Theramed Health Corp. DISCLAIMERS This news release may include forward-looking statements that are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. All statements within this news release, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. 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 described in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements include fluctuations in market prices, including metal prices, continued availability of capital and financing, 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. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable laws. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/54389 The Congress on Monday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare a financial package of at least five to six per cent of the GDP to ensure recovery of the economy badly hit by the coronavirus lockdown. It demanded that the Centre must clear all pending dues to the states to enable them to fight with the pandemic, besides also giving each of them special economic packages. Congress spokesperson, Anand Sharma said that the government must also allow industry contributions under the corporate social responsibility to the chief minister relief funds in various states along the same ... This is a community calendar. To accommodate demand for the print edition, we ask that items be brief and include time, date, place, address, admission cost and a contact number for publication. Inclusion of items is at the discretion of the newspaper. Further information is available at 541-758-9524 or jane.stoltz@lee.net. Assistance TUESDAY Emergency food boxes, by appointment, North Corvallis Ministry Center, 5050 NE Elliott Circle. Appointments: 541-220-1040. Emergency food box distribution, 9 to 11:30 a.m., Sweet Home Emergency Ministries, 1115 Long St. Greater Albany Public Schools offers free grab-and-go sack lunches for all children ages 1 to 18: 11 to 11:30 a.m., Columbus Greens, Memorial Middle School, Oak Elementary School, Tangent Elementary School; 11:15 to 11:45 a.m., Lafayette Elementary School, Lake Creek Ranch; 11:20 to 11:50 a.m., Waverly Elementary School; 11:30 a.m. to noon, Albany Meadows, Sunrise Elementary School; 11:40 a.m. to 12:10 p.m., Periwinkle Elementary School, South Shore Elementary School; 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Albany Boys & Girls Club; Takena Elementary School; noon to 12:30 p.m., Lexington Park, South Albany High School, Three Lake Estates. Emergency food boxes, 1:30 to 4 p.m., St. Vincent de Paul Society Corvallis Conference Food Pantry, campus of St. Marys Catholic Church, 501 NW 25th St. No appointment needed. A thrift store is in the same building; proceeds help support the pantry. Information: 541-757-1988, Ext. 317. Emergency food boxes, 1:30 to 4 p.m., St. Vincent de Paul Society Corvallis Conference Food Pantry, campus of St. Marys Catholic Church, 501 NW 25th St. No appointment needed. A thrift store is in the same building as the pantry; proceeds help support the pantry. Information: 541-757-1988, Ext. 317. Emergency food boxes, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. by appointment, FISH of Lebanon, 145 Ash St. FISH also offers help with basic expenses such as rent, utilities, water, propane, prescriptions, clothing, identification cards, driver's licenses and other emergency needs. Appointments: 541-259-3200, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Stone Soup dinner, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., McLean Hall, First Christian Church, 602 SW Madison Ave., Corvallis. Free meal for those in need. Corvallis Men's Shelter, 6 p.m. to 9 a.m., 211 SE Chapman Place. Breakfast: 7 to 9 a.m. Information: 541-791-6691. Classes TUESDAY Free gentle yoga online, 10 a.m. Suitable for all bodies. Go to www.livewellstudio.com. Canceled: Refit group fitness experience, 5:30 p.m. Events TUESDAY Canceled: David Biespiel with Jennifer Richter, Grass Roots Books & Music. Canceled: Genealogical library open, 1 p.m., Benton County Historical Museum. Government TUESDAY Benton County Board of Commissioners goal-setting work session, 9 a.m., 1-646-749-3122, access code 582403925; or https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/582403925. Linn County Board of Commissioners, 9:30 a.m., Room 200, courthouse, 300 SW Fourth Ave., Albany. Canceled: Corvallis Arts and Culture Advisory Board, 5:30 p.m. Corvallis Historic Resources Commission, 6:30 p.m., GoToMeeting, https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/220936125. Health TUESDAY Monroe Family Medicine, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., 610 Dragon Drive, Monroe. Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid accepted. Information: 541-847-5143. Opportunities Power of 100 People Who Care will not hold its usual face-to-face quarterly meeting this month. Members are asked to write their April donation check to a Corvallis or Benton County nonprofit agency of their choice and mail it to Melissa Carter-Goodrum by Wednesday, or donate directly to a nonprofit online and send a copy of your receipt to powerof100pwc@gmail.com. Organizations TUESDAY Canceled: Takena Kiwanis of Albany, 7 a.m. Schools TUESDAY Linn Benton Lincoln Education Service District Board, 6 p.m., https://www.youtube.com/user/linnbentonlincolnesd. Support groups TUESDAY Support group for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Information: Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence hotline, 541-754-0110. Alcoholics Anonymous: 7 a.m., noon, Room 11, First Christian Church, 602 SW Madison Ave., Corvallis. 6:30 p.m. (open meeting), basement, New Life Fellowship, 1412 Applegate St., Philomath. 7 p.m., Crossroads Christian Fellowship, 2555 NW Highland Drive, Corvallis. 7 p.m., The Mustard Seed open group, 313 Washburn St., Brownsville. Information (24 hours): 541-967-4252 or www.aa-oregon.org. Al-Anon Care and Share meeting, noon to 1 p.m., community room (enter from parking lot), First Christian Church, 432 Ferry St. SW, Albany. Information: 541-224-6651. Narcotics Anonymous, noon, 7:30 p.m., Room 11, First Christian Church, 602 SW Madison Ave., Corvallis. Information (24 hours) 877-233-4287 or www.lblna.org. Canceled: Grief Support Group, 2 p.m. Twelve-step program: Overeaters Anonymous, 6:30 p.m., fellowship hall, back parking lot, Corvallis Seventh-day Adventist Church, 3160 SW Western Blvd. Information: www.oa.org. Addiction Recovery, 7:30 p.m., use privacy door, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1955 S. Fifth St., Lebanon. Twelve-step program adapted to the Gospel and doctrines of the LDS church. Open to those with any addiction, and their family and/or friends. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Kheri Chief Development Officer (CDO) Arvind Singh on Monday said PPE kits prepared by self-help groups here will be supplied to an Army hospital in Lucknow. According to a letter written by the Army hospital to the CDO, the sample kit manufactured under Operation Kavach' by self-help groups met the specific requirement and commandant Brig. N. Ramakrishnan has also approved the sample. 'Operation Kavach' is the name given by CDO Singh to the PPE kit manufacturing programme carried out through self-help groups under the national rural livelihood mission. Kheri-made PPE kit includes body cover, shoe cover, medical goggles, a mask and gloves, Singh said. The hospital in Lucknow had approached the CDO for 2,000 PPE kits. The 41 Infantry Brigade Headquarters at Lucknow has also requested for 40 Kheri-made PPE kits. Moreover, Assistant Commandant of 39th battalion Arvind Kumar has put forth a demand for 30 PPE kits for its team on the India-Nepal border. The CDO said his team will make all efforts to supply PPE kits to the military and the para military officials, besides serving the needs of Kheri Police, medical and administrative staff. Soon after the outbreak of COVID-19 and growing demand for personal protection equipment, I felt worried about a wide gap between demand and supply, Singh told PTI. "The open market could not supply adequate numbers of PPE kits as per demand," he said, adding that the price was also a matter of concern. Then an idea to manufacture PPE kits at district level through the self-help groups struck me, the CDO said. Singh said with the help of 28 SHGs at six blocks, some PPE kits were prepared and the sample was sent to the UP Health Department for certification. "I named this PPE kit project as Operation Kavach'. Our team was left overjoyed when on April 8, the director general of communicable diseases certified the design and quality of the kit, he said. Later, Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development Ram Bhushan lauded his efforts. He has extended the capacity of PPE kits from the existing 250 to 500 to fulfill the needs of the medical, civil administration and military staff, the CDO said. "Operation Kavach which is running on a no-profit-no-loss basis is not only serving the needs of our coronavirus fighters but also adding to the earnings of the self-help group women during the lockdown," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fires raging for more than a week in Ukraine are less than a kilometer from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but emergency services say the situation is under control. Environmental experts have warned the wildfires could throw up radioactive ash from the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, threatening residents in nearby areas and the capital, Kyiv. Ukraine's Emergency Situations Service said in a statement April 13 that the radiation level in the Kyiv region does not exceed the natural background values and those in the exclusion zone around the nuclear plant are unchanged. However, Greenpeace Russia warned the fires blazing through the exclusion zone are much larger than authorities in Kyiv admit and the fires pose a radiation risk. "A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk," said Rashid Alimov, head of energy projects at Greenpeace Russia. "In this case we're hoping for rain tomorrow." 'The Zone Is Ablaze' Satellite images from U.S. space agency NASAs Fire Information for Resource Management System show the fires have reached the outskirts of the abandoned city of Pripyat and were just outside the decommissioned nuclear power plant. Chernobyl tour operator Yaroslav Yemelianenko, writing on Facebook, described the situation as critical. The zone is ablaze. Local authorities are reporting that everything is under control, but in fact the fire is rapidly spreading to new territories, he wrote. State Emergency Service spokeswomen Olga Kozak told dpa news agency that the situation is "definitely serious but under control. Strong winds fanning the flames have hindered firefighters, who have formed firebreaks to contain the spread and allow equipment to enter the area. The fires began on April 3 in the western part of the uninhabited exclusion zone and spread to nearby forests. Police say they have identified a 27-year-old local resident suspected of starting the fire. The resident was quoted as telling investigators that he had set some garbage and grass on fire "for fun." A number of regions of Ukraine have recently reported brushfires amid unseasonably dry conditions. With reporting by dpa, Interfax, and Reuters Conor McNamara, managing director for Southeast Asia at Amazon Web Services Cloud adoption is growing steadily across the world. How do you see its trend in the near future of Vietnam, especially as the country is set to commercially launch 5G this year? We strongly believe that over time cloud will be ubiquitous, as the value proposition is so compelling. We can see amazing growth across the world. Since taking up the role of managing director in this region in particular, I have been meeting with customers and partners in Vietnam, and I feel the energy in the market. There is a strong community of developers who really want to embrace the latest technologies. I am also excited about what we work with universities on the AWS Educate programme to make sure that we are not only upskilling engineers to work with customers today but also to build ecosystems for the future. AWS sees an increasing number of customers in Vietnam, across various industries. Some examples are Circle K, a large convenience store chain in Vietnam, and FastGo, the ride-hailing company. Dien Quang is also using AWS services for Internet of Things in lighting and electric equipment. Meanwhile, independent software vendors like Movi are working on catering to the financial needs of workers across various manufacturing houses in Vietnam. And there are some of our higher-level services in the machine learning space they are exploring the use of machine learning applications and embracing really high-end AWS technologies. Together with traditional customers, we also have new examples of successful stories in Vietnam like Online Management Training, Openway Group, and Sapo. For instance, Openway is a payment gateway company. As a result of the work they have done with us, they have reduced payment service time from six months to eight weeks. While recognising the importance of the cloud to digital transformation, technical infrastructure and price remain the concerns among businesses in the country. How can AWS help them to deal with this? Although cost is very compelling and almost always the conversation starter, the number one reason that enterprises are moving to the cloud is agility and speed. Most enterprises understand that cloud is the future and cloud technology has pretty amazing benefits. Most conversations that we have now with customers are about how they can move from the current environment to AWS cloud in the most efficient and cost-effective way. To assist with that, we have a professional services team that works with customers to migrate them to the cloud, and we have dedicated security architects that help customers understand how they can recreate and improve their security posture in the cloud as well as what they do on their premises. Regarding AWS pricing philosophy, weve reduced our prices 80 times since we launched. We have a mindset like our retail colleagues that we want to pass our savings from running more efficiently on to our customers. We strongly believe in investing in business for the long-term. In addition, with AWS Trusted Advisor, we provide real-time visibility for customers to optimise their purchasing patterns and tools for customers to reduce their cost. We also utilise cloud financial management experts, who work with customers to reduce their bills and offer measures to help customers to cost optimisation in real time. Its quite a different approach to other enterprise IT vendors. If we believe that there is something we can do more in terms of pricing or to improve how we can better serve our customers we will do it. The landmark EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement is expected to take effect this year. What are your recommendations to help businesses successfully transform to gain more advantages? If we look at successful organisations who successfully transform with the use of cloud, a couple of ingredients are embedded in their success. First is a leader who believes in the cloud and what can be derived from it. They also must clearly understand the business case of what they are trying to do. Next, we strongly believe in the whole idea of experimentation. Organisations that are successful in the cloud are the ones who experiment early and learn quickly. They must also invest in skills. IT is a clear competitive differentiator you can digitise and create competitive offerings to your customer to respond quickly to their demands. And if you want to be able to do that, you need a certain amount of cloud, technical, and business skills. Finally, you need to create deep partnerships, rather than treat partners as a transactional agreement. Build deep partnerships with a small number of selected partners that you really want to invest in together. The organisations that carry out those things are the ones set for success. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Sunny and windy. Temps nearly steady in the mid 30s. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Windy and partly cloudy this evening. Mostly cloudy with diminishing winds after midnight. Low 29F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible. New Delhi, April 13 : At a time when the entire nation is under lockdown to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily taking away the livelihoods from crores of traders across the country, a bill raised by New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has left over 5,000 traders tensed. The civic body on April 7 raised the monthly rent of the shops it has rented out in various famous markets in its limits, including Palika Bazar. According to the traders, it's not only the rent that is bothering them, but also the timing of the move. NDMC has introduced a 10 per cent hike in rent, which is normally imposed once in every two years as per the contract. The rent bills raised by the civic body range between Rs 15,000 to nearly Rs 75,000 per month, fixed as per the rent agreement keeping in view the location and size of shops, the traders claimed. "We have been earning nothing for over two months, but NDMC is not ready to cooperate with traders. Our multiple demands to withdraw the rent till the pandemic situation have gone unheard," the Chairman of Palika Bazar market association,ABaljit Singh Kohli told IANS.A Showing the rent bill sent by NDMC, Kohli said the bill for April has included the 10 per cent hike in rent that is supposed to take place every two years. He added that various mails regarding the same have been sent to the NDMC Chairman, Secretary, the Lieutenant Governor, the Chief Minister and the Union Home Minister, but only Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's office replied and said that it was forwarding the mail to NDMC for 'proper action'. "I humbly prayed your goodself to direct the NDMC officials to withdraw all the monthly licence fee bills with immediate effect because it will be proved a double attack for the shopkeepers of Palika Bazar as their business have completely stopped and there is no other way of their earning besides they have the liability to pay salary to their entire staff. I further request your goodself to also direct the NDMC officials not to issue the licence fee bills in future till the complete vanishing of this killer disease," one such mail sent to Union Home Minister Amit Shah by the traders read. NDMC officials though claimed that they were aware of the traders' issues and a solution has been found to deal with the matter. "NDMC has just two sources of revenue -- licence fee and taxes. If we give up the rent, how are we supposed to provide services to the residents in our area," asked a senior official of the NDMC, requesting anonymity. He added that a meeting of senior officials of NDMC is scheduled for Wednesday where the matter is expected to be heard. "We are aware their (traders') concerns, and hopefully on Wednesday we all will sit and find a solution to this," he added. In a complaint filed in Clark County Superior Court, a black former PeaceHealth employee alleges the hospital system subjected him to months of racial discrimination. Vancouver attorney Colin F. McHugh of Navigate Law Group filed the lawsuit Friday on behalf of Washougal resident Jeff Darden, who worked as a project manager for PeaceHealth. A press release from the law office asserts that Darden, who has more than 25 years of experience working in health care project management, was the victim of harassment, discrimination and retaliation. As a result, he was passed over for several promotions. Mr. Dardens sole goal was to be treated like everyone else in the workplace, McHugh said in a statement. Not only did PeaceHealth officials fail to act regarding Mr. Dardens complaints about race discrimination, but he was continually reprimanded after bringing his credible concerns and reports of race discrimination to PeaceHealth officials. PeaceHealth did not respond to a request for comment. Darden is seeking damages for emotional distress, humiliation, lost wages and attorneys fees. No dollar amount is listed. According to the complaint, Darden was hired in December 2017 and worked at PeaceHealth until last month, when he resigned. From December 2017 to early July 2018, there were no performance issues reported by Dardens supervisors, the complaint states. However, the complaint alleges he was mistreated after being assigned to a new supervisor. After failing to receive promotions in August and December 2018, Darden filed a harassment complaint against his new supervisor with human resources. He received his first corrective action notice later that month, and he was taken off a project, according to the lawsuit. When Darden followed up with human resources about his complaint, he was told there was no evidence of harassment. According to the suit, PeaceHealth never found any evidence of discrimination against Darden, despite two other employees sharing with human resources that they had also experienced discrimination and believed that Darden had been discriminated against. In May 2019, after Darden filed a complaint of race discrimination, his supervisor allegedly removed him from a project manager position. A couple weeks later, another supervisor allegedly yelled in Dardens face. Fearing for his safety, Darden again went to human resources but was allegedly told they could not substantiate his complaints. Within days, he was given a second corrective action notice. In late June, Darden filed a complaint of racial discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He subsequently requested medical leave until October because of anxiety, panic attacks and other symptoms connected to his work environment, McHugh said in an email. Days after going on medical leave, Darden received an email from human resources declining to investigate his claims, as well as his request to work under a different supervisor, according to the complaint. In late December 2019, he told human resources that one supervisor was attempting to dig up dirt on him to damage his reputation. Afterward, Darden was given a third corrective action notice, according to the complaint. In January, PeaceHealth denied a request from Dardens medical provider asking that he be assigned to a different supervisor. He took another medical leave from mid-January to early March. Darden resigned from his position in early March, citing discrimination, harassment, unfair treatment and a hostile work environment, the complaint states. Wyatt Stayner, The Columbian South Korea reported today that at least 116 people initially cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again. It came as officials suggested they would soon look at easing strict recommendations aimed at preventing new outbreaks - and the number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide surpassed two million on Monday. South Korea reported only 25 new cases overall on Monday, but the rise in 'reactivated' patients has raised concerns as the country seeks to stamp out infections. Officials are still investigating the cause of the apparent relapses. But Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), has said the virus may have been reactivated rather than the patients being re-infected. Medical workers transfer a patient to a hospital in Seoul, South Korea on March 11 2020 South Korea reported today that at least 116 people initially cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again Other experts said faulty tests may be playing a role, or remnants of the virus may still be in patients' systems but not be infectious or of danger to the host or others. The 116 cases is more than double the 51 such cases South Korea reported a week earlier. South Korea plans to send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States on Tuesday in the first such shipment following a request from U.S. President Donald Trump, a Seoul official told Reuters on Monday. Government leaders, meanwhile, called on South Koreans to continue to follow guidelines and restrictions on social gatherings, but hinted that such measures could soon be eased. Medical workers wearing protective clothing against the COVID-19 novel coronavirus attend to a woman with unknown symptoms who was feeling unwell upon her arrival at the Keimyung University hospital in Daegu The country has over 10,000 confirmed cases of the virus and has recorded 217 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University data. Pictured: election officials secure masks in Yongin South Korea has called on residents to follow strict social distancing until at least April 19, but as cases have dropped and the weather has improved, a growing number of people have been flouting the guidelines. At a meeting on disaster management on Monday, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said the government would soon be looking to loosen the guidelines, which call for people to stay at home, avoid social gatherings of any type, and only go out for essential reasons. 'Later this week, we plan to review our intensive social distancing campaign that we have carried out so far and discuss whether we will switch to routine safety measures' he said. Health workers disinfect a street to curb the spread of coronavirus in Daegu, South Korea Some local governments have imposed stricter measures, including closing bars and nightclubs, banning large demonstrations, and limiting church services. Chung cautioned that even when the restrictions are eased, the country will not return to life as before the outbreak. 'We need a very cautious approach because any premature easing of social distancing could bring irreversible consequences, and have to ponder deeply about when and how we switch to the new system,' he said. The country has over 10,000 confirmed cases of the virus and has recorded 217 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University data. While recent recovery rates of the virus are promising, it does not mean that those who have been infected with coronavirus are not still at risk, as experts believe having the virus once does not mean you cannot get sick from it again. According to Li QinGyuan, director of pneumonia prevention and treatment at China Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, those who have been infected with Covid-19 develop a protective antibody - but it isn't clear how long the protection lasts. 'However, in certain individuals, the antibody cannot last that long,' Li told USA Today. 'For many patients who have been cured, there is a likelihood of relapse.' Dr Peter Jung, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston told The Huffington Post: 'Just as the flu can mutate, so could Covid-19, which would make an individual susceptible to reacquiring the infection.' However, according to Dr Stephen Gluckman, an infectious diseases physician it seems likely that having the disease once results in immunity in most individuals - as is seen with other coronaviruses. He said: 'For the most part, the feeling is once you've had a specific coronavirus, you are immune. We don't have enough data to say that with this coronavirus, but it is likely.' This means that people who initially recovered are more likely to relapse rather than get reinfected with the virus. According to one study, people with mild infections can test positive for the virus by throat swabs 'for days and even weeks after their illness'. OPEC+ oil producers reached a new agreement to collectively reduce oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day for two months, starting from 1 May. After that, production will be cut by 7.7 million barrels a day for 6 months, until 31 December. Starting from January of next year until April 2022 oil production will be reduced by 5.8 million barrels per day. According to a final communique released after the Sunday agreement, a possible extension of the new OPEC+ deal will be discussed in December 2021. A meeting will also be held this June via videoconference to see if any further actions are needed to balance the market amid the coronavirus pandemic. Russia and Saudi Arabia will cut their daily oil output by 2.5 million barrels each from the level of 11 million barrels. Other nations will decrease production by 23% on the October 2018 level. Mexico, which refused to accept a quota of 400,000 barrels a day, will cut production by 100,000 barrels. The remaining 300,000 barrels will be compensated by the United States, which has committed to cut daily production by 250,000 barrels a day. About 5,000 people have been forced into quarantine in northwest Tasmania as health authorities battle a COVID-19 outbreak at two hospitals. The North West Regional Hospital and North West Private Hospital in Burnie shut on Monday morning, with patients being transferred elsewhere. Of 144 coronavirus cases in Tasmania, 60 were linked to the hospital outbreak, with 42 of them being healthcare workers at those facilities. State premier Peter Gutwein on Monday said at least 1,200 of the staff at the two hospitals had been ordered to quarantine at home for two weeks. Anybody else living in their households were also required to self-isolate, impacting about 5,000 people in total. The state's premier, Peter Gutwein, on Monday said at least 1,200 of the staff at the two hospitals had been ordered to quarantine at home for two weeks Hospital staff wear protective gear while testing patients with symptoms of coronavirus in northeast Adelaide 'Never before has a premier had to ask a community to do this,' he said. 'I've got to admit, the responsibility rests heavy on me in having to make these decisions. But I would ask that you work with us. 'This is the best way that we can get on top of this, that we can stop the spread of this insidious disease.' Mr Gutwein announced on Sunday the move to shut the hospitals after a spike in northwest virus cases. The two hospitals will undergo a deep clean by specialist teams. Health workers will arrive in the state this week from the Australian Medical Assistance Team, plus members of the Australian Defence Force, to boost resources, Mr Gutwein said. Nationally, there are 6,351 known cases of COVID-19, including 61 people who have died Medical personnel carry equipment to the Bondi Beach drive-through testing centre on Tuesday (pictured), where people are queuing up in their vehicles to test for coronavirus The state government was aiming to reopen the emergency department in 72 hours, with the goal of getting the hospitals back online after two weeks. Testing will be dramatically ramped up in the region from the current figure of 80 per day to over 200. In response to the hospital closures, 23 patients were being transferred to the Mersey Community Hospital at nearby Latrobe. Eight health care workers, one patient and two close contacts of people who previously tested positive were among the latest northwest confirmed cases on Sunday night. The state recorded its fifth virus death on Sunday, while 57 people are recovering. Nationally, there are 6,351 known cases of COVID-19, including 61 people who have died. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 7 Trend: The Azerbaijani Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population will provide benefits to those citizens who are left without work, Azerbaijani Minister of Labor and Social Protection of Population Sahil Babayev told reporters. Babayev made the remark in Baku at the press-conference on the execution of the presidents order dated March 19, 2020 "On measures taken to support employment and social welfare of the population", Trend reports. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, the Azerbaijani government has taken various preventive measures, the minister said. The special quarantine regime has been introduced. If people do not follow the rules, the consequences may be deplorable. One billion manat ($588.2 million) was allocated from the budget upon the presidents order and a plan of necessary measures was created, Babayev said. The plan covers four directions and 10 spheres, the minister said. Over one million citizens will receive the funds. Some 660,000 people have been registered as hired employees, the minister said. These people were not dismissed and were not sent on vacation deliberately. The entrepreneurs performed their duties in good faith. Unfortunately, the number of informally working citizens is unknown, Babayev said. Over the past two years, many appeals have been made for the entrepreneurs to pay taxes and benefits and for their employees to work officially. Many entrepreneurs who have not fulfilled these requirements cannot get the funds today. 13.04.2020 LISTEN The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? The Lord is with me; he is my helper. I will look in triumph on my enemies. . I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. (Psalm 118:6-8, 17). The subject of death makes almost all of us nervous, and some of us really afraid. Although we know that we will die one day, we are not comfortable talking about death. We pretend as if death is not there. We use many euphemisms to describe death, such as, deceased, departed, called home, asleep in Christ, in a better place, passed away, passed on, gone to sleep, late, laid to rest, and joined ancestors. While all of us should take the necessary precautions to protect our health and lives, we know that death will eventually come one day. This article is as much about life as it is about death. For that reason, we join the Psalmist in proclaiming that we will not die, but live and will proclaim what the Lord has done for us. The Lord is with us and we put our trust in Him, and so we do not fear people or enemies (Psalm 118:6-8, 17). Of all the people in this world, Christians have the best reasons not to fear death. We serve the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. We serve the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. We serve God, the GREAT I AM, whose Beloved Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, sacrificed his life on the cross to save all mankind from sin and eternal damnation. We follow Jesus Christ who defeated death by resurrecting from death and sitting at the right hand of God from where he will come to judge the world. We also follow Jesus Christ who promised that he was going to prepare a place in heaven for us and would come back and take us with him. We know that salvation is by Gods grace through faith in Jesus Christ. With all these, why should any Christian fear death? Therefore, if Christians must die, let us not face death like people without hope. Instead, let us face death with hope, courage and faith in the Lord. Let us face death like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who, in the face of what looked like certain death, defied King Nebuchadnezzar, and refused to bow down and worship the Babylonian gods and an image of gold. The three young men made this remarkable statement: If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. (Daniel 3:17-18 NIV). The blazing furnace was heated seven times hotter than usual and the three Jewish men were thrown into it, but they did not burn. The God of Elijah who answers by consuming fire, did the reverse; He protected them from fire. If Christians must die, let us face death with anticipation and hope like Simeon, a righteous and devout man who lived in Jerusalem at the time Christ was born. The Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen Jesus Christ. When Simeon saw baby Jesus at the temple, he took him in his arms and praised God, saying, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation ... (Luke 2:28-30). Simeon was not afraid of death; rather, he was asking God to take him home. If Christians must die, let us face death by following the example of Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. After he was arrested allegedly for blasphemy against God and Moses and brought before the Sanhedrin, Stephen gave one the longest, defiant speeches recorded in the Bible which infuriated the Jewish leaders. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. (Acts 7:55-56 NIV). While he was being stoned to death, Stephen prayed for the Lord to receive his spirit, and to forgive his killers of their sins; then he fell asleep. (Acts 7:59 NIV). If Christians must die, let us face death like the Apostle Paul did. Paul was bold, courageous and daring. Consistent with his zeal for Jesus, the man who said, for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21 NIV), ignored a prophecy by Prophet Agabus that he would be arrested by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem if he went there, and would be handed over to the Gentiles. When the Church leaders tried to persuade Paul, his response was: I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 21:13 NIV). Paul went to Jerusalem, was arrested by the Jewish leaders and handed over to the Roman authorities in Rome who eventually killed him. Over the years, men and women of Christian faith have been killed in the service of the Lord. They did not have the luxury of dying at home or hospital environment surrounded by loved ones. Some were persecuted, tortured, stoned, put to death by sword, crucified, beheaded, starved to death, or boiled to death. Yet, they kept the faith and trusted in the Lord to the very end. It might be helpful for all of us to examine our lives to know those things which keep us so grounded to this earth that we do not want to be separated from them. We should not become earth-bound Christians with no eager anticipation to meet the Lord in heaven. We should take some comfort in what the Bible says that eyes have not seen, nor ears heard, nor the mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9). Death is the beginning of the journey to eternal life that Jesus promised believers in John 3:16. That may explain why the Bible says that: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15 NIV). When people die, some see their dead bodies as mere corpses to be buried and forgotten, but God sees His children among them as precious because they begin the journey to eternal life. I pray and hope for long, healthy life for everyone. Longevity is its own blessing. By the grace of God, we will not die, but live. We will hear and enjoy lots of happy birthdays and many happy returns. However, if Christians must die, let us face death without bitterness, hatred, grief or sin in our hearts. If Christians must die, let us face death graciously and triumphantly by standing firm in the faith, upholding the banner of Christ, and loving God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all people all the way to the end. And if Christians must die, let us look up to heaven and see the Glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That is the victory we have over death through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Alleluia! Prayer is the key. May God grant us the grace to seek Him daily through our prayers. Dr. Daniel Gyebi, Attorney-at-Law, Texas, U.S.A., and Founder, PrayerHouse Ministry, Kumasi, Ghana. PrayerHouse Ministry is dedicated to providing a quiet facility for Christians to pray individually by themselves without any intermediary priest, pastor or any other person. This is a free service. No money is demanded or accepted. One facility is located at Kyerekrom / Fumesua, near Building and Road Research Institute Offices, one mile off the Kumasi-Accra Road and next to a house called Grace Castle. If you are interested, please contact Agnes at 054-7498653. Another is located at Kantinkyiren, at the junction of Kantinkyiren and Konkori, off the Kumasi-Obuasi Road, branching left at Trede junction. Contact Kwadwo at 020-8768461 / 0246-989413. Badaun: A man who had attended a religious congregation in Delhi last month tested COVID-19 positive in Bhavanipur Khali area in this district, following which 14 adjoining villages were sealed, officials said on Sunday. The man is from Andhra Pradesh and he was staying in a mosque here, District Magistrate Kumar Prashant said on Sunday. "After the man tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, the district administration sealed 14 villages in the radius of three kilometres from this village. He had attended the Tabligi Jamaat event in Delhi's Nizamuddin," he said. Prashant said the limits of the village have also been sealed, and zonal and sector magistrates deployed in the area. Essential items are being provided in the village and tests of suspected cases are being carried out, he added. You are the owner of this article. But investors remain wary as the demand for oil continues to be dented by the coronavirus pandemic. Oil prices jumped more than $1 a barrel on Monday after major producers finally agreed their biggest-ever output cut, but gains were capped amid concern that it will not be enough to head off oversupply with the coronavirus pandemic hammering demand. After four days of wrangling, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and other producers, a group known as OPEC+, agreed on Sunday to cut output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) to support oil prices, sources said, representing about 10 percent of global supply. Total global oil supply cuts could come to 20 million barrels per day, approximately 20 percent of global supply, Kuwaits oil minister said. Brent crude futures rose $1.23, or 3.9 percent, to $32.71 a barrel by 00:58 GMT after opening at a session high of $33.99. United States West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up $1.39, or 6.1 percent, to $24.15 a barrel, after hitting a high of $24.74. Still, demand concerns capped oil price gains. Worldwide fuel consumption is down roughly 30 percent, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people globally and kept businesses and governments on lockdown. These levels of production cuts are not material to oil prices in the near term, given the deep hole in demand we are likely to see in 2Q20 (the second quarter of 2020), Suvro Sarkar, regional energy analyst at DBS Bank told Al Jazeera. However, the cuts do signal to the market that producers are willing to control supply going forward, unlike the situation of price wars that Saudi and Russia were hitherto engaged in, he said. Leaders of the worlds top three oil producers Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabias King Salman all supported the OPEC+ deal to cut global crude output, the Kremlin said on Sunday. Trump praised the deal, saying it would save jobs in the US energy industry. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates volunteered to make cuts even deeper than those agreed, which would effectively bring the OPEC+ supply down by 12.5 million bpd from current supply levels, the Saudi energy minister said. The deal had been delayed since Thursday after Mexico baulked at the production cuts it was asked to make. The OPEC+ group met on Sunday to hammer out the agreement, resulting in an output cut four times deeper than the previous record reduction in 2008. OPEC+ has also said it wanted producers outside the group, such as the US, Canada, Brazil and Norway, to cut a further 5 percent or 5 million bpd. Canada and Norway signalled a willingness to cut. The US, where antitrust legislation makes it hard to act in tandem with cartels such as OPEC, has said its output would already fall by as much as 2 million bpd this year without planned cuts because of low prices. While the OPEC+ cuts does not seem to be conditional on US cuts, there is a risk that the members could have a rethink if they dont see US production falling over a period of time, Sarkar said. Goldman Sachs said on Sunday that oil prices would continue to fall in the coming weeks, reasoning that a historic yet insufficient deal by major oil producers to cut output is unlikely to offset a coronavirus-led demand rout. Even with core-OPEC members fully complying with the cuts, and 50 percent compliance by all other countries that have agreed to curb production in May, the voluntary cuts would translate into a reduction of only 4.3 million bpd from first-quarter levels, the bank said. The bank saw downside risks to its short-term oil price forecast of about $20 per barrel for Brent, but projected the global crude benchmark would outperform US oil because OPEC+ producers exports would likely fall, freeing up floating storage space. A bigger output cut by G20 nations would also not help much, it said. Ultimately, this simply reflects that no voluntary cuts could be large enough to offset the 19 million bpd average April-May demand loss due to the coronavirus. Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (135) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (348) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (442) Jan 2014 (547) Feb 2014 (476) Mar 2014 (526) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (469) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (443) Oct 2014 (472) Nov 2014 (497) Dec 2014 (536) Jan 2015 (539) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (582) Apr 2015 (658) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (924) Nov 2015 (802) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (866) May 2016 (947) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (967) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (879) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (896) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (850) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (809) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (851) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (935) Jul 2019 (950) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (941) Feb 2020 (849) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (789) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (812) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (815) Jun 2021 (824) Jul 2021 (830) Aug 2021 (832) Sep 2021 (791) Oct 2021 (754) Nov 2021 (683) Dec 2021 (693) Jan 2022 (257) People who are self-employed, have second jobs or run a business often have to pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis, as well as filing returns for the full year. If they pay too little, they may have to pay penalties. Individuals must make estimated payments if their Illinois individual income tax liability is more than $1,000 for the year, according to the Department of Revenues web site. India on Monday tightened the curbs on import of refined palm oil by putting more conditions for the inbound shipments of the commodity. On January 8, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGTF), under the commerce ministry, has imposed restrictions on imports of refined palm oil, as per which an importer have to seek a license or permission or no-objection certificate for the imports. In a trade notice, the DGFT said "import of refined palm oil will be permitted subject" to certain conditions. As per new conditions, the applications for import authorisation should be accompanied with pre-purchase agreement and details of the import for past three years. "Validity period of import licenses/authorizations for refined palm oil will be six months in place of usual l8 months. Total non-utilisation of import authorization by the applicant will lead to disqualification of the importer from getting any further license for these items in future," it said. Customs will be required to diligently enforce the rules of origin criteria for import of these items originating from Nepal and Bangladesh, it added. Rules of origin certificate is a key document required for exports to those countries with which India has trade agreements. An exporter has to submit a 'certificate of origin' at the landing port of the importing country (in case of refined palm oil it will be Indian ports). This certificate is essential to prove where the goods come from. India, the world's largest importer of vegetable oils, buys nearly 15 million tonne annually. Of this, palm oil comprises 9 million tonne and the rest 6 million tonne is soybean and sunflower oil. Indonesia and Malaysia are the two countries which supply palm oil. Malaysia produces 19 million tonne of palm oil in a year, while Indonesia produces 43 million tonne. India put the commodity from free to restricted category in the backdrop of remarks by Malaysia on the new citizenship law and Kashmir issue. On December 20 last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad had reportedly said, "I am sorry to see that India, which claims to be a secular state, is now taking action to deprive some Muslims of their citizenship". Earlier, Mahathir had said in the UN General Assembly that India had "invaded and occupied" Kashmir. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On Friday, the editorial board of the Southern CA News Group (which publishes the Long Beach PressTelegram), Daily Breeze (southbay), Daily News (LA-SFV) and Pasadena Star News (SGV) ran simultaneous editorials titled: Close vote count reveals flaw in LA Countys pricey new system," writing in part: [So. Cal News Group editorial text]...Under the law, citizens have the right to request a recount, and it is unacceptable for the county to now create financial barriers to the exercise of that right. The [LA County] supervisors should direct the registrar to sort and retrieve the ballots at the countys expense and charge the recount requestor an amount that is consistent with prior recounts. Voters were promised paper ballots that could be examined, and that promise should be kept." Sponsor Sponsor The co-owned Gazettes echoed the parent company's stance ("There should be a recount of the ballots cast last month..") and in LB-localized text said in the past LB had conslidated its elections with the County. However LBREPORT.com has pointed out that it was a LB City Council voted action that chose to let L. A. County run LB's March 2020 election instead of utilizing the LB City Clerk's office to do so. LBREPORT.com's understanding is that LB wasn't and isn't legally required for LB to give up control of running LB elections as under the state law that changed the timing of LB elections (further below.) Sponsor Sponsor L.A. County and LB City Council Record On March 5, as a result of long lines and other issues (below) related to the County's conduct of the March 3 election, LBREPORT.com editorially called on a LB Councilmember(s) to agendize a Council item requesting a report from the LB City Clerk's office on the cost and feasibility of Long Beach retaking control of Long Beach elections. We reiterated our view that the option of having the City Clerk run LB's elections remains legally available notwithstanding SB 415 that required changing the timing of LB elections (from April/June to March/November. Sponsor Our action followed previous County actions that included the following: On Feb. 15, 2020, LBREPORYT.com reported that L.A. County had sent some sample ballots (containing the pro-con arguments on Measure A and Council candidate statements) weeks after vote-by-mail ballots had arrived and based its mailing schedule in part on voters' political party registration On February 22, 2020, LBREPORT.com reported that County election equipment failed to arrive as scheduled at a LB "early voting center" resulting in turning away some voters, LBREPORT.com wrote at that time that it was our understanding that "LB's City Clerk's office could still run LB elections (assuming there's no contractual obligation now with the County to the contrary) notwithstanding Sacramento's SB 415 but it would likely require Council approval of some possibly costly changes." The Council would have to either purchase or rent or somehow acquire for use new election equipment because the City's former election equipment is no longer certified as legally appropriate. That would entail a currently unknown cost. The City would also have to coordinate with the County on polling place locations (because City and County/state/federal elections DO have to occur at the same scheduled times under SB 415.) And the election would also likely require using a second set of ballots, an experience LB voters in the past ("two vote Tuesday") when the City and the County both conducted coinciding elections. On March 3, LB residents encountered long lines (sometimes requiring waits of an hour or more) to cast their ballots) at some Long Beach "voting centers," On March 4, LBREPORT.com reported that someone in L.A. County's election offices had fired the LB whistleblower who alerted us to the County's failure to provide voting election equipment as scheduled at a LB "early voting center" on Feb. 22. On March 5, LBREPORT.com editorially called on LB Councilmembers to agendize an item requesting a report from the LB City Clerk's office on the cost and feasibility of Long Beach retaking control of Long Beach elections." We noted that in our view the option of having the City Clerk run LB's elections is still legally available notwithstanding SB 415 that required changing the timing of LB elections (from April/June to March/November.)" Our editorial simultaneously called on L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn to "Reverse the firing of a de facto whistleblower (a roughly 25 year LB polling place worker) who described serious problems on Feb. 22 at a Long Beach early voting center" and "pursue changes to L.A. County's current unequal (and we believe politically discriminatory) practice in its timing of mailing of sample ballot materials -- that contain the official pro/con arguments on ballot arguments and candidate statements -- based on the voter's registered political preference (LBREPORT.com coverage here.) We are informed that Orange County utilizes a more equal and fair process." To date, no LB Councilmember(s) have requested a report on regaining LB control of LB's elections...with L.A.. County currently scheduled to run LB's November 2020 election. L.A. County Supervisor Hahn likewise hasn't responded to our call to address the election-related issues LBREPORT.com cited above. Sponsor Sponsor Support really independent news in Long Beach. No one in LBREPORT.com's ownership, reporting or editorial decision-making has ties to development interests, advocacy groups or other special interests; or is seeking or receiving benefits of City development-related decisions; or holds a City Hall appointive position; or has contributed sums to political campaigns for Long Beach incumbents or challengers. LBREPORT.com isn't part of an out of town corporate cluster and no one its ownership, editorial or publishing decisionmaking has been part of the governing board of any City government body or other entity on whose policies we report. LBREPORT.com is reader and advertiser supported. You can help keep really independent news in LB similar to the way people support NPR and PBS stations. We're not non-profit so it's not tax deductible but $49.95 (less than an annual dollar a week) helps keep us online. View the discussion thread. blog comments powered by Disqus Recommend LBREPORT.com to your Facebook friends: Follow LBReport.com with: Twitter Facebook RSS Return To Front Page Contact us: mail@LBReport.com Brigitte Nielsen modeled a Supreme mask as she headed to a socially distant park outing with her family on Easter. The 56-year-old bombshell was accompanied by her fifth husband Mattia Dessi, 41, and their one-year-old daughter Frida. Her choice of face covering resells online for hundreds of dollars as seen on the site StockX where a few of the latest sales topped $500. Only the best: Brigitte Nielsen modeled a Supreme mask as she headed to a socially distant park outing with her husband Mattia Dessi and their daughter Frida on Easter Mattia and Frida were seen sitting down on the grass in the park and getting some sun as Brigitte played with their dog Joker nearby. Brigitte, who was once married to Sylvester Stallone and reunited with him onscreen for the 2018 film Creed II, was 54 when she gave birth to Frida. She conceived her youngest child through in vitro fertilization, having had the foresight when she was 40 to have her eggs frozen. 'If you dont want to use [donor] eggs, you have to preserve your own eggs at a reasonable age for there to be a possibility,' Brigitte explained to People. Breath of fresh air: Mattia and Frida were seen sitting down on the grass in the park and getting some sun as Brigitte played with their dog Joker nearby Her romantic history includes Public Enemy rapper Flavor Flav and ex-New York Jet Mark Gastineau, and she claims to have bedded Sean Penn and Tony Scott. Brigitte and her first ex-husband, Danish composer Kasper Winding, share a 36-year-old son called Julian, who has himself become an electronic musician. The mother-of-five - who told Melbourne's Herald Sun that Arnold Schwarzenegger philandered on Maria Shriver with her - has a son called Killian, 30, by Mark. Baby mine: Brigitte, who was once married to Sylvester Stallone and reunited with him onscreen for the 2018 film Creed II, was 54 when she gave birth to Frida Brigitte also has two sons - Aaron, 26, and Raoul Jr, 24 - by her fourth husband Raoul Meyer, who was married to her from 1993 until 2005. The Celebrity Rehab alumna met her latest husband at a Swiss hotel where he was working as a waiter, marrying him in 2006 in Malta. A month ago while guest-hostessing The Talk, Brigitte said more than one of her children live in Milan and spoke about having to miss Easter with them. 'Buon Compleanno mio angelo': Brigitte posted this heartwarming family snap last year while celebrating the first birthday of her miracle baby 'What my kids are saying, they are fine, but it is a very, very difficult situation for them, because they are scared,' she explained. My younger son had to go out to the supermarket and get food. There is no more food. Here in America, they are looking for toilet paper. In Italy, they are looking for food. So there is a panic, not only about getting the virus but the fact that there is nothing to be eaten and there is no clean water.' Brigitte, whose current husband is from Italy, shared that 'it's hard for me as a mom to be on the other side of the planet and I said: "You cannot come over for Easter." Now they definitely cannot come over because the entire place on lockdown.' Error 404 Sorry, we cant find what you were looking for. Teachers have been reaching out to parents since the school shutdown was ordered in March, but the school was still missing information needed to determine what children need. Anderson too started calling parents and asking them to sign up for Class Dojo, a common platform in CPS, if they could. For those she couldnt reach, she dug up emergency forms, and tried emergency contacts to see if they had new numbers for the parents. Bengaluru, April 13 : With the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent 21-day lockdown triggering a financial crisis, cash-starved Karnataka has decided to auction 12,000 housing sites to raise funds, according to Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Monday. "The government will auction 12,000 corner sites, lying idle in Bengaluru, to raise funds for development works," Yediyurappa said after a meeting with Ministers and officials here. Yediyurappa also holds the portfolio of Bengaluru development. The meeting explored ways and means to mobilise resources for funding various schemes, announced in the budget for 2020-21 on March 5 and passed in the Assembly on March 24. "The state government will also be able to mobilise funds from stamp duty and penalty by regularising unauthorised houses and buildings after a speedy disposal of cases pending in the high court and the Supreme Court," said the Chief Minister. Though the state government is set to extend the 3-week lockdown by 15 days in the coronavirus hotspots, like Bengaluru and Mysuru, if not in the entire state, from April 15, it's waiting for the Centre's guidelines for partial relaxation. "The meeting also decided to amend the law to allow sale of vacant sites/plots in private and cooperative housing societies for constructing homes or flats and raise funds from their registration fee, including stamp duty," said Yediyurappa. "Corner and vacant sites in towns across the state under the State Urban Development Authority will also be auctioned to raise funds for post-Covid expenses to restore normalcy," the Chief Minister said. The meeting also decided to use Rs 1,000 crore with the state-run Rajiv Gandhi Health University to modernise all state-run hospitals to improve services. The state government has decided to distribute free milk for one week to the needy, including daily wagers, street vendors and construction workers. As lakhs of farmers and growers of fruits and vegetable are reeling under the lockdown, Yeddiyrappa urged sugar mills for early release of Rs 2,834 crore dues to cane growers. "The state government has released Rs 45 crore compensation for paddy crop loss in Raichur and Koppal districts in the state's northern region due to hailstorm, winds and unseasonal rains," Yediyurappa said. The Chief Minister will hold a cabinet meeting on Tuesday after Prime Minster Narendra Modi addresses the nation at 10 a.m. on Covid measures and the lockdown. Mumbai Police is back with another witty post which urges people to stay inside their homes during the lockdown. This time they took the help of a mastermind and the post has prompted netizens to praise the people managing the Twitter handle of the department. Taking an inspiration from the popular Netflix series Money Heist, Mumbai police tweeted a dialogue by the mastermind of the show, named the professor. The post shows a sassy quote used to take a dig at people not abiding by the rules of lockdown. Every time you plan to go out unnecessarily with your gang during #lockdown, reads Mumbai Polices tweet. They also shared an image which shows a picture of the professor along with the caption that reads, So how about we forget common sense? Check out the witty tweet: Every time you plan to go out unnecessarily with your gang during #lockdown : pic.twitter.com/X0EPJEufGT Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) April 13, 2020 This tweet by the department has taken netizens by surprise and it was liked over 5,300 times. While some were amused with the use of a popular character of a show for spreading such an important message, others praised the department for their great sense of humour. "If I stay with you, if I'm choosing wrong I don't care at all. If I'm losing now, but I'm winning late That's all I want."#MoneyHeist Anup N (@anupnagle) April 13, 2020 Whoever is handling this handle, is doing a splendid job! Maximum respect to the entire team. MASSIVE respect! Rum Ver 2.0 (@NagaValley) April 13, 2020 Bhaisab Mumbai police ka to alag hi swag chalta hai Shailendra Singh Rathore (@Shailen61010199) April 13, 2020 What do you think of Mumbai polices tweet? Delhi Police Commissioner S N Shrivastava on Monday said the decision to take Tablighi Jamaat members from its headquarters (Markaz) in the capitals Nizamuddin area directly to quarantine facilities helped in containing the spread Covid-19. We have quarantined the corona carriers of Tablighi Jamaat. Majority of people were directly taken to quarantine center from Markaz. This helped in containing Covid-19. We have also registered a case in this matter, ANI quoted Shrivastava as saying. Follow coronavirus latest updates here. Earlier this month, Covid-19 cases in Delhi spiked after hundreds of many Tablighi Jamaat members who attended a large congregation in Nizamuddin tested positive. On Monday, Delhis count of Covid-19 positive cases stood at 1,176. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said 746 coronavirus cases in the national capital are from Markaz area in Nizamuddin which had emerged as a hotspot at the beginning of the month. There are 1,102 Covid-19 positive patients in the hospitals including 50 who are in ICU and six on ventilator support, Jain told ANI. The Delhi government has now designated 43 localities in the city as containment zones to check the spread of coronavirus. The containment zones have been sealed under the governments Operation SHIELD that seeks to stop Covid-19 transmission. The Delhi government launched a massive sanitisation drive in several of these containment zones on Monday. George Poikayil By Express News Service KASARAGOD: Ameer was his usual boisterous self on Easter Sunday, his comeback day. After 24 days in an isolation ward at Kasaragods General Hospital, Ameer one of the most ridiculed and vilified patients of the COVID-19 epidemic in Kerala has tested negative and is leaving the centre. What all the people called me! The Father of Corona, the Man who brought Corona to Kerala. But I knew this day would come, he told TNIE. Ameer because of his active social life after returning from Dubai was considered as a potential source of community spread. But none of the persons he came in direct contact with there were more than a thousand and samples were tested for around 300 contracted the virus, said health officials. Not even my mother and son, whom I have hugged and kissed, said Ameer. Didnt I tell you I will infect nobody? Ameer returned from Naif a Covid-19 hotspot in Dubai on March 11, and tested positive on March 19. But in the nine days, he travelled on a train, buses, attended two weddings, a cradle ceremony, a housewarming, played carrom at his local club in Eriyal, took a haircut, attended prayers at his local mosque, hugged MLA N A Nellikkunnu and shook hands with Manjeshwar MLA M C Kamaruddin. Mogral Puthur panchayat shuddered when he tested positive and CM Pinarayi Vijayan mentioned him in his daily evening bulletin. Notoriety was thrust on him when the Department of Customs said Ameer could be a gold mule because he has made 14 round trips to West Asian countries in just three months. They said I came home to kill people By then, he had become a toast of trolls. When a nationwide lockdown was declared to contain Covid-19, one of the popular faces that urged Keralites to Stay Home Stay Safe belonged to Ameer. A sticker of Ameers in a green shirt and sporting dark sunglasses, arms crossed on the chest and hands tucked under the armpits was widely shared in WhatsApp groups. Whoever designed the sticker knew that the irony and dark humour will not be lost on Keralites, and the message will be driven home harder. But Ameer said his ignorance should not be held against him. People said I came home to kill people. Another person put out a voice message saying had he been the collector, he would have shot me dead, he said. There was also a voice clip purportedly of a nurse in the General Hospital that he was spitting from the window during his days in isolation. Hospital superintendent, Dr Rajaram, has disowned the clip saying the voice did not belong to any of his staff. Ameer said he would take on those who spread fake messages against him, once his home quarantine was over. For now, I want to thank all the nurses and doctors who treated me sincerely, he said. He will have to be in home quarantine for another 14 days. This time, no one will see me outside my ancestral house, he said. As it transpires, Mogral Puthur has only 11 positive cases, none from his contact. A sigh of relief WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's reelection committees said they have raised more than $212 million in the first three months of the year, a massive sum that boosts the president's cash lead as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden begins shifting his focus to the general election. Trump, the Republican National Committee and their joint fundraising committees entered April with more than $240 million in their accounts, officials said Monday, announcing their figures ahead of upcoming federal filing deadlines. In comparison, former President Barack Obama, the Democratic Party and their joint fundraising operation raised about $127 million in the first quarter of 2012, according to data from the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. The Trump campaign and joint committees raised more than $63 million in March alone, for a total haul of more than $677 million, they said. Trump has enjoyed a fundraising advantage as the incumbent, and began raising reelection money far earlier than any of his predecessors. Party officials said Trump's fundraising operation has gone completely virtual in the midst of the pandemic, with more than 880,000 volunteers making more than 17 million voter contacts since March 13. "Americans can see President Trump leading this nation through a serious crisis and they are responding with their continued enthusiastic support for his reelection," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. "Joe Biden, Democrats, and the media continue to oppose his every action, but the people know that President Trump is fighting for them so they are fighting for him as well." As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Biden and the Democratic National Committee can strike an agreement to jointly raise money for the general election and close the money gap with Trump and the RNC. By this point in the 2012 campaign, then-presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney had launched his own joint fundraising operation. DNC officials said Monday that they do not yet have official plans for one, saying in a statement: "We will have conversations with the campaign and figure out the best path forward that puts our nominee in the best position possible in order to beat Donald Trump." Biden posted his strongest monthly fundraising record in February of $18 million, and aides said the campaign raised $33 million in the first two weeks of March, when donors consolidated around his candidacy after most of the other Democrats dropped out of the presidential race. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., suspended his presidential campaign last week, leaving Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge Trump. Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here. The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu has condemned President Muhammadu Buharis latest directive ordering ... The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu has condemned President Muhammadu Buharis latest directive ordering Nigerians to stay at home. In a bid to further tackle the spread of Coronavirus across the country, President Buhari had yesterday urged Nigerians to remain at home. Buhari had assured Nigerians that relief materials will soon be distributed to their homes. However, Kanu described the Presidents remark as fraudulent. In a post on his official Facebook handle, the IPOB leader wondered why Buhari failed to give the address in a nationwide broadcast but opted for a statement signed by his spokesperson. The post reads: COVID-19: Stay At Home, I Will Take Care Of You President Buhari Tells Nigerians To prove to you how fraudulent the few redundant scammers in Aso Rock really are, a statement of such magnitude and cataclysmic importance was not delivered by a president but was contained in an obscure statement signed by an inconsequential political appointee in the person of Garba Shehu. The reason we painstakingly point these absurdities out is to drive home the TRUTH that there isnt any Buhari in Aso Rock or any elected official in charge of the business of state in this tumultuous period of life and death. Women were the first to meet the Risen Jesus and bring to the apostles the announcement that carries hope even today. During this epidemic, many women care for others: women doctors, nurses, law enforcement and prison officers, employees of stores selling basic necessities. Some of them are at risk of violence, in a relationship in which they carry too great a burden. Vatican City (AsiaNews) Pope Francis focused his Regina Caeli address on women. Women were the first to meet the Risen Jesus and bring to the Apostles the announcement that even today carries hope. In the current situation of anguish many make an essential contribution, including in families where they are sometimes the victims of violence. Before the Marian prayer, which replaces the Angelus from Easter to Pentecost, Francis stressed that "today, Easter Monday, the joyful announcement of the resurrection of Christ resounds", bringing with it the certainty that death shall not prevail as well as encouragement for this period marked by the pandemic. The pontiff, who spoke from the Library of the Apostolic Palace, focused his address on the Gospel of the day (cf Mt 28:8-15), about the women who, frightened, quickly left Jesus tomb, which they had found empty; [only for] Jesus to appear to them on the way saying: Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me (Mt 28:10). With these words, the Risen Lord entrusted women with a missionary mandate towards the Apostles. In fact, they showed an admirable example of loyalty, dedication and love for Christ during his public life as well as his passion; now he rewarded them with this show of attention and predilection. Women [were] always [there] at the beginning. Mary [was there] at the beginning. Women first, then the disciples, in particular Peter, noted the reality of the resurrection. Jesus had repeatedly announced to them that after the Passion and the Cross, he would rise again, but the disciples did not understand, because they were not ready. Their faith was to make a qualitative leap, which only the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Risen One, could spark. At the beginning of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says: God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses (Acts 2:32). [. . .] From that moment, the announcement that Christ is risen spread everywhere reaching every corner of the earth, becoming the message of hope for everyone. The resurrection of Jesus tells us that the last word does not belong to death, but to life. By raising his one-begotten Son, God the Father fully showed his love and mercy for humanity, in all times. If Christ is risen, it is possible to look with confidence at every event of our existence, even those that are most difficult, full of anguish and uncertainty. This is the Easter message that we are called to proclaim, with words and above all with the testimony of life. May this happy news resound in our homes and hearts: Christ, my hope, is risen!. May this certainty strengthen the faith of every baptised person and, above all, encourage those who are facing greater suffering and difficulty. Francis also spoke about women and their role, even in todays difficult times, after the Marian prayer. We heard that women brought to the disciples the announcement of the Resurrection of Jesus, the pontiff said. Today I would like to remind you of what many women do, even at this time of medical emergency, in caring for others: women doctor, nurses, law enforcement and prison officers, employees in stores selling basic necessities ... as well as the many mothers, sisters, grandmothers who find themselves locked down at home with the whole family, with children, seniors and the disabled. Sometimes they are at risk of violence, in a relationship in which they carry too great a burden. Let us pray for them, that the Lord may give them strength and that our communities may support them together with their families. [. . .] May the Lord give us the courage of women to go forward always. The pontiff went on to mention with great affection all the countries affected by the coronavirus, sometimes with great numbers [of fatalities]: Italy, the United States, France, Spain and many more. He also said: I renew wholeheartedly my Easter greeting. Let us remain united in prayer and in the commitment to help each other as brothers and sisters. A Maharashtra BJP MLA has demanded deployment of the military in a locality in Nagpur claiming it had several COVID-19 patients and many residents had links to the Tablighi Jamaat event last month in Nizamuddin in Delhi. Nagpur East MLA Krishna Khopde on Monday said he had spoken to the municipal commissioner and demanded deployment of the military in Satranjipura as its residents had not cooperated when the civic body conducted surveys in the initial days of the coronavirus outbreak. "Many coronavirus positive patients have been found in Satranjipura. However, some weeks earlier, when the Nagpur Municipal Corporation was carrying out surveys, the residents had not cooperated. If they had offered support to the survey at that time, we would not been facing this situation," Khopde said. "The densely populated area of Satranjipura should be handed over to the military. It will also force those with Markaz (Tablighi Jamaat event in Nizamuddin) links to come forward. I have spoken to the municipal commissioner about it and demanded deployment of the military," he claimed. The Tablighi Jamaat event is being seen as one of the biggest reasons for the coronavirus outbreak as several of the attendees, who tested positive later, fanned out across the country on preaching assignments. Meanwhile, the NMC on Monday declared localities like Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, Nagpur Ward no 3, Ashi Nagar Zone 3 and Ward no 5, which is Satranjipura zone' as "prohibited area" and sealed them off to stall the spread of the virus. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) ALTON State Rep. Monica Bristow, D-Alton, is applauding OSF Healthcare and the Illinois Department of Public Healthcare for bringing a new, virtual healthcare solution to help Alton and the Riverbend region deal with the COVID-19 outbreak. This program will allow Pandemic Health Workers (PHW) to digitally connect with referred clients experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and digitally monitor them from home, limiting the spread of the virus and improving healthcare access throughout the region. I applaud the medical staff around the region that are addressing the pandemic proactively by collaborating together to help during this crisis, said Bristow. As we see cases rise across the state and country, we need to continue preparing locally to tackle this virus at home, helping prevent community spread and protecting our frontline workers as they battle this pandemic. The PHW method will help prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients and limit the possibility of infection, while maintaining access to quality healthcare. This will give COVID-19 patients with more mild symptoms the ability to receive additional support while quarantining in their home. Teams of pandemic health workers will be stationed all throughout Illinois, with one of the first groups being established in Alton. PHWs will be supported by licensed clinicians and providers that will oversee care for these patients. Alton serves as a major medical hub for the region, so this approach will certainly help protect both vulnerable patients and essential medical workers from contracting the virus, said Bristow. We need to continue working towards local, state, and federal solutions to slow the rate of infection and save lives. To find the most recent information about resources and information regarding COVID-19 in Illinois, visit https://coronavirus.illinois.gov or call the Illinois Department of Public Health at 1-800-889-3931. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-12 16:15:33|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close A Chinese medical team arrived in Moscow on Saturday to assist Russia's ongoing efforts in the fight against COVID-19. The 10-member team, which departed from northeast China's Heilongjiang province, also brought medical supplies including surgical masks, N95 masks and medical protective clothing. The team includes experts specializing in laboratory testing, prevention and control of infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, intensive care and traditional Chinese medicine from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Heilongjiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and four hospitals in the province. The experts will share experience with the Russian side and offer training for medics on the prevention, control, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. Russia tallied 1,667 new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of infections to 13,584 across the country as of Saturday. As the Supreme Court has held, sexual abuse is not part of any persons punishment, the department said in its report. Our society requires prisoners to give up their liberty, but that surrender does not encompass the basic right to be free from severe unwanted sexual contact. At least 16 women said they were beaten or sexually abused between 2008 and 2010 by a single officer, according to the report. He never faced criminal charges, but he did settle a lawsuit with six former prisoners for $75,000. In 2010 and 2011, three corrections officers were fired after several women accused them of abuse. The Justice Departments investigation began in April 2018, after New Jersey Advance Media published a detailed article about the culture of rampant sexual violence against inmates at the prison. Even after officers were informed that the Justice Department was investigating the prison, sexual assault and coercion continued largely unabated, federal investigators found. Between October 2016 and April 2019 a full year after the prison had been under investigation seven correction officers and one civilian employee were arrested, indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges, including senior officers. The Hunterdon County Prosecutors Office is still pursuing sexual assault cases related to Edna Mahan. Investigators reviewing the files of state corrections officials found scores of substantiated instances dating back years when guards preyed on inmates for sexual gratification. Inmates were forced to perform sex acts on guards or with other prisoners. In one case, the guards held viewing parties of a mentally ill inmate who was on suicide watch. They coerced her to dance naked for them. Staff members and guards regularly referred to inmates in vulgar, homophobic and demeaning terms, the department found. They also regularly commented on the physical appearance and perceived sexual inclinations of the inmates. Congress and the Trump Administration have enacted three phases of legislation providing resources to support the fight against the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19. Most recently, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed and President Trump signed into law Phase 3 of emergency coronavirus response legislation, the bipartisan Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Details are rolling out about how to access the support provided through the CARES Act. The intent of this column is to help get information about some of the CARES Act assistance to Idahoans. Additional information can also be accessed on my website, at www.crapo.senate.gov/services/covid19. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2020 / ZoomAway Travel Inc. (ZMA.V);(ZMWYF) (the "Company" or "ZMA") www.zoomaway.com, a leader in the hospitality technology sector, is pleased to announce that it has agreed to non-binding LOI to purchase a successful Southern U.S. based Tour Operator. This well-established, profitable business has been in operations for almost 20 years and has a worldwide customer base. Both parties are anxious to begin the process of gaining exchange approval and closing this transaction as quickly as possible. Due diligence, including the negotiation of a definitive agreement, are now proceeding. A very complimentary business to the legacy operation of ZoomAway, the subject company has reported Multi-Million-dollar top line sales for 2019 and a very impressive EBITDA. "Our goal," said CEO Sean Schaeffer, "is to be prepared when this COVID 19 crisis is behind us. My belief is that people are going to need to get out of the house and we want to position ourselves to satisfy their need." Schaeffer continued, "I am especially excited about this potential acquisition. I believe it will greatly enhance our bottom line and continue to provide shareholder value." This is the Company's first potential use of the previously announced $5 million line of acquisition credit. "We are of the opinion that now is the time to aggressively look to acquire other businesses that match our vision," Sean said. "We are in preliminary discussions with several companies that match our growing portfolio. I want to see ZoomAway emerge from this crisis stronger and prepared for growth." For additional information contact: Sean Schaeffer, President, ZoomAway Inc., at 775-691-8860 | sean@zoomaway.com or stay up-to-date and sign up for our newsletter. About Us ZoomAway, Inc. (Nevada Co.) ZoomAway Travel Inc. is a technology company that is revolutionizing the Hospitality and Travel Industries. We have developed a variety of software solutions that enhance the planning and engagement of everyday tourists. Our flagship project, ZoomedOUT, is a complete modernization and re-imagination of mobile travel apps. In a full 3D environment, we are able to integrate planning, booking, social media, and camaraderie into a tangibly rewarding experience. We are combining Travel, Hospitality, Mobile Gaming and Augmented Reality to change the way users travel into 2020 and beyond. Additional information about ZoomAway Inc. can be found at www.zoomaway.com. Story continues ZMA Travel Game Inc. (Canadian Co.) (formerly TravelGameBlockChain Technology Inc.) is a ZoomAway Travel Inc. subsidiary company dedicated to housing new projects in the digital games. The company's first project is ZoomedOUT, being developed with the assistance of Zero8 Studios, Inc., which can be seen at zoomedout.io. To receive more detailed, or investor level information, please contact us at sean@zoomaway.com and we will respond with the appropriate documentation depending on your request. About Zero8 Studios, Inc. Zero8 Studios, based in Reno, Nevada, specializes in new and innovative games and technology platforms. With a focus on social gaming and almost two decades of experience building countless game titles, gaming platforms, and various technologies. The Zero8 Studios' team has assisted dozens of AAA publishers, large clientele, manufacturers, and casinos in the design, production, and delivery of their products to players around the world. Additional information can be found at www.zero8studios.com. Forward-Looking Statements This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that the Company 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", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such 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 the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include regulatory actions, market prices, and continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. 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 statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates, and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, 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. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor it's Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed Offering and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. SOURCE: ZoomAway Travel Inc. View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/584128/ZoomAway-Signs-Letter-of-Intent-to-Acquire-US-Based-Tour-Company Advertisement At least 31 people have been killed as dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes rumbled through the Deep South on Easter Sunday into early Monday, forcing states to lift lockdown orders to allow locals to take shelter while practicing social distancing. There were over 40 reports of tornadoes as the storm spiraled in a destructive path from Texas and Arkansas across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and into the Carolinas, damaging hundreds of homes and leaving 1.3million without power. In Mississippi officials said the tornadoes' threat to the community trumped that of COVID-19, forcing locals to flee their homes for sturdy shelters. 'That's always an issue - we emphasized to everyone that if they went into a shelter they had to maintain hygiene, wash their hands and use sanitizer and use masks but at the end of the day, life safety had to persist over everything else and the greater risk of the tornado overcame COVID,' Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Greg Michel said to Good Morning America on Monday. Speaking on the risk of coronavirus in shelters he said, 'it's still a concern but weve got folks who live in rural areas - shelters were the only option they had.' At least 31 people have been killed as dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes rumbled through the Deep South on Easter Sunday, forcing states to lift lockdown orders to allow locals to take shelter while practicing social distancing. A home that was lifted off the ground in a strong tornado Sunday night and dropped onto a highway in Upson County, Georgia, pictured above Shocking aerial footage shows how the fast tornado winds ripped the roofs off homes and forced walls to collapse in Monroe, Louisiana on Sunday Homes were flattened and debris scattered across neighborhoods in the devastating wake of the Monroe, Louisiana tornado Heartbreaking drone footage shows how family homes in Soso, Mississippi were left in pieces after a tornado rolled through and ripped the roof off and blew the walls down Drone aerial footage displays the extent of the damage of a tornado that spiraled through Soso, Mississippi Sunday night Shocking footage shows whole communities decimated from the twister that flattened buildings and downed trees in rural Soso, Mississippi Sunday evening Many states were forced to lift coronavirus lockdown orders to open up storm shelters for residents, some saying the risk of the storm was greater than the virus itself. Residents of Starkville, Mississippi pictured in a storm shelter practicing social distancing and wearing masks People were urged to head to tornado shelters but practice social distancing as they waited out the storms 'Life safety had to persist over everything else and the greater risk of the tornado overcame COVID,' Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Greg Michel said to GMA Monday morning on the difficult choice to open shelters during the pandemic Executive Director of Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Greg Michel tells @GStephanopoulos how coronavirus has complicated their relief and rescue efforts following the deadly tornado outbreak in their state. https://t.co/QTtkeUmHZL pic.twitter.com/e7ovAneObx Good Morning America (@GMA) April 13, 2020 At least 11 people were killed in Mississippi, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency confirmed four in Jefferson Davis County, two in Jones, two in Lawrence, and one each in Carroll, Panola and Walthall counties. At least eight people have been killed in South Carolina. In Seneca Jack F. Harvill, 77, of Walhalla, was killed around 3.30am when a tornado struck the BorgWarner autoparts manufacturing plant where he worked as a security guard. In Hampton County at least five people were killed. In Orangeburg County Sheriff Leroy Ravenell reported two people died when their home in Neeses was lifted by heavy winds and dropped on a highway. Death toll of storms of that rumbled through Deep South Mississippi: 11 South Carolina: 8 Georgia: 8 Arkansas: 1 North Carolina: 1 Tennessee: 2 Advertisement At the Lowcountry Regional Airport in Walterboro, South Carolina at least a dozen airplanes were destroyed and hangars had their roofs ripped off in the tornado. In Georgia at least seven people were killed when storms ripped through two mobile parks near the Tennessee border in Murray County. About two dozen were hurt in the twisters and two people are missing, according to Weather.com. The twisters that ripped through Murray County had five-mile long paths of destruction. Also in Georgia a 34-year-old man was killed about 1am on Monday when a large tornado ripped through Cartersville, Georgia, about 35 miles northwest from Atlanta, and a tree fell on his home, where he was asleep. Two other people in the home were injured. The winds were so powerful in Georgia a twister lifted a home off the ground Sunday night and dropped it onto a highway in Upson County, as per CBS. Jo and James Neely are stunned after living through the extremely destructive tornado that hit the Soso, Mississippi and nearby areas on Easter Sunday afternoon. Initial reporting from the National Storm Prediction Centers says the tornado may have been an EF-4 or 5 in strength Amber Phillips stands outside the family's safe room, located on their property in Moss, Mississippi after a tornado razed the town late Sunday. While the rest of their home was obliterated in a matter of seconds Sunday afternoon, Phillips, her husband Andrew and their kids, ages 2 and 6 months, survived the storm without a scratch inside the small safe room, which doubles as a closet The closet that saved their lives: The Phillips family's entire home was destroyed by a tornado that spiraled through Moss, Mississippi Sunday night. Following the disaster the only thing left standing was family's saferoom that doubled as a closet A destroyed home in the Cherry Blossom Dr. neighborhood in Monroe, Louisiana pictured above Sunday after a twister razed through the area, downing residences and scattering debris in its wake One Twitter user said that they believed the tornado they had pictured was 'up to two miles wide' with the user urging people to take cover One person also died in Jefferson County, Arkansas on Sunday when a tree fell on a home, according to County Emergency Management. In North Carolina 61-year-old woman Beverly Long was killed when a suspected tornado ripped through Davidson County early Monday morning and a tree fell on her trailer. The tree split the trailer in half and fatally hit Long. Her husband Maurice, 62, is in the hospital with cracked ribs and fractured wrists, according to Fox8. The storms hit Chattanooga, Tennessee and several counties in northwest Georgia the hardest. In Tennessee two people died in Hamilton County, including a 29-year-old Raffell Jenkins man who was killed by a tree that crushed him when it fell on his bedroom. His fiancee was lying right next to him in the incident but was able to crawl from under the ceiling debris with just minor injuries. His three children were unhamed in the next bedroom. In Chattanooga at least 20 people were hospitalized and search and rescue teams from at least 10 fire departments went door to door rushing to respond to over 300 emergency calls for help. Over 200 structures were destroyed by the twisters in this county. According to the National Weather Service an EF-3 tornado with winds estimated around 145mph was recorded in East Chattanooga. Two of the fatalities in Lawrence County, Mississippi were identified as Robert Ainsworth and his wife Paula. He was a deputy with the Lawrence County Sheriffs Office and Marine Corps veteran. His wife Paula was a Walthall County Justice Court Deputy Clerk In North Carolina 61-year-old woman Beverly Long was killed when a suspected tornado ripped through Davidson County early Monday morning and a tree fell on her trailer. The tree split the trailer in half and fatally hit Long. Her husband Maurice, 62, is in the hospital with cracked ribs and fractured wrists Tornado damage pictured in Davidson County, North Carolina above, showing trees falling on top of trailers Ethel Glover retrieves personal belongings from the remains her sisters storm damaged home April 13, 2020 in Livingston, South Carolina, where four were reported dead Neighbors and relatives look through the yard of a storm-damaged home Monday morning after a tornado roamed through the area over night and destroyed homes and businesses in Livingston, South Carolina Neighbors inspect a house for occupants in Monroe after an Easter tornado ripped through the town just before noon Sunday In Alabama twisters destroyed buildings and battered cars, leaving behind only mangled pieces of metal Officials in Mississippi and Alabama lifted lockdown orders to get their residents into shelters, despite the coronavirus pandemic. At a shelter in Starkeville, Mississippi locals were seen practicing social distancing as they anxiously awaited for the storms to pass. Many were seen wearing face masks and standing at least six feet apart from each other, bearing the coronavirus in mind as they waited out the storm together. Throughout the state residents seeking shelters were asked to 'please wear a mask, bandana or scarf'. Some storm shelters handed out masks and gloves to locals, but others decided not to open at all. A destroyed trailer pictured above in Chatsworth, Georgia on Monday after a tornado hit the area late Sunday A razed home in Monroe, Louisiana pictured above following the strong tornado that killed at least 11 people on Sunday Locals pictured sorting through what is left of their home after two powerful tornadoes swept through Soso, Mississippi Sunday Mike Buchanan walks by downed trees from damage caused by two powerful tornadoes that swept through the area last night in Soso, Mississippi The remnant of a destroyed home in Soso, Mississippi pictured above on Monday as devastated residents return to pick up what's left of their belongings Firefighters pictured responding to this destroyed apartment where the walls and roof were ripped off in fierce tornado winds Fire Chief Phil Hyman & Operations Chief Rick Boatwright pictured discussing response plans to the storm-torn areas of Chattanooga, Tennessee with mayor Andrew Berke early Monday First responders: Fire Chief Phil Hyman and Police Chief David Roddy speak with cops and firefighters responding to hardest hit areas in Chattanooga, Tennessee on Monday Firefighters pictured helping a resident get her cats out of the house so they can shelter elsewhere after her house was gravely battered in a tornado that whipped through Chattanooga Destroyed Tennessee: A Bones Smokehouse delivery van was tossed in front of a damaged Goodwill Store on Monday in Chattanooga, Tennessee following Sunday's storms Left in pieces: An Advance Auto Parts store lies in ruin Monday in Chattanooga with little remaining except a few tiles Employees of an auto parts store look over damage to their building on Monday in Chattanooga Nathan Fincher, left, and DeWarren Washington work to clear a street after trees fell on a Chattanooga, Tennessee road in Sunday's storms In Alabama, the National Weather Services Birmingham division shared a post acknowledging the difficult decision locals had to make between protecting themselves from tornadoes or COVID-19. 'The decision to seek shelter in a community storm shelter is certainly made more difficult by the consideration for COVID-19, and each individual will need to make an educated decision on where and when to shelter from a tornado,' the agency wrote in a joint statement with the Alabama Department of Public Health on March 22. 'If a [tornado] warning is issued for your area, you are more likely to be affected by the tornado than the virus,' Alabama officials warned. Alabama's Governor Kay Ivey suspended some stay-at-home orders in the state, saying that shelters and community safe rooms needed to stay open while 'implementing reasonable practices and procedures' to prevent spreading coronavirus. Damaged planes and buildings seen at the Monroe Airport in the aftermath of a tornado in Monroe, Louisiana on April 12 Damaged buildings and vehicles are seen in the aftermath of a tornado in Monroe, Louisiana late Sunday Neighbors and family help to clean a damaged home in Monroe, Louisiana after a tornado ripped through the town just before noon on Sunday, April 12 Rolanda Robinson calls family and friends from her brother's damaged home in Monroe, Louisiana after the twister struck Downed power lines in the Cherry Blossom Dr. neighborhood in Monroe, Louisiana pictured Sunday after a twister whipped through the area A home had its roof torn off after a tornado ripped through Monroe, Louisiana just before noon on Sunday Strong storms pounded parts of the Deep South, including this house and shed in Yazoo County, Mississippi A truck flipped on its side is seen in the aftermath of the devastating tornado that ripped through Monroe on Sunday Damaged Coca Cola vehicles are seen in the aftermath of a tornado in Monroe, Louisiana late Sunday There were over 40 reports of tornadoes as the storm spiraled in a destructive path from Texas and Arkansas across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and into the Carolinas, damaging hundreds of homes and leaving 1.3million without power. Damaged building and a truck flipped on its side seen in tornado aftermath in Monroe, Louisiana on Sunday However, Mayor Thomas Spraggins of Alexander City, Alabama told his constituents no shelters in his city would open due to the pandemic. 'Ill be praying for everyone to have a safe and happy Easter,' he said in a video message Saturday on Facebook. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency Sunday night. 'This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter Sunday,' Reeves said. Two of the fatalities in Lawrence County, Mississippi were identified as Robert Ainsworth and his wife Paula. He was a deputy with the Lawrence County Sheriffs Office and Marine Corps veteran. His wife Paula was a Walthall County Justice Court Deputy Clerk. 'Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs. Paula during the tornado. He was a very valuable employee and will be greatly missed,' the Sheriff's Office said in a statement. Storms will continue through Monday, this time pummeling the East Coast This map shows that severe thunderstorm warnings are in place Monday morning for the East Coast from Florida to Virginia Devastated locks pictured filming their wrecked neighborhood that was destroyed in a tornado that razed the area Sunday afternoon in Monroe, Louisiana Sylvia Salley looks at the remains of her sisters storm damaged home April 13, 2020 in Livingston, South Carolina Ethel Glover gets a hug in front of her sisters storm damaged home on Monday in Livingston, South Carolina Pieces of a storm damaged home home partially cover a car in the tornado-ravaged town of Livingston, South Carolina on Monday In Louisiana about 300 homes were damaged or destroyed in a powerful twister that raged through Monroe Sunday afternoon. The city secured about 200 hotel rooms to shelter displaced families, trying to avoid housing large numbers of people in one place due to the pandemic. The harsh weather will continue Monday with pounding rain and powerful winds in the East Coast, threatening millions. Now about 25 million people along the East Coast are under a tornado watch through 6pm as the storm heads towards the Atlantic. The National Weather Service said powerful winds are expected between noon and 7pm and gusts could reach up to 70 miles per hour in Massachusetts. 'Damaging winds will blow down trees and power lines. Widespread power outages are expected. Travel will be difficult, especially for high profile vehicles,' the agency said in the high wind warning. Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said state National Guard teams were dispatched Monday to all mobile field hospitals across state to monitor the situation and protect their infrastructure. Ajay Devgn took to Twitter to criticise those attacking healthcare workers who are managing the coronavirus outbreak in different parts of the country. Ajay Devgn on Sunday said he is "disgusted" over reports of healthcare workers being attacked by people at a time when the country is fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior star's reaction comes weeks after several Bollywood stars condemned gruesome incidents of physical assault and stone pelting at doctors and other frontliners who are managing the COVID-19 outbreak in different parts of the country. (Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus lockdown) "Disgusted and angry to read reports of 'educated' persons attacking doctors in their neighbourhood on baseless assumptions," wrote Devgn on Twitter. Here is his tweet DISGUSTED & ANGRY to read reports of educated persons attacking doctors in their neighbourhood on baseless assumptions. Such insensitive people are the worst criminals#StaySafeStayHome #IndiaFightsCorona Ajay Devgn (@ajaydevgn) April 12, 2020 Bollywood personalities including Rishi Kapoor, Javed Akhtar, Hema Malini, Paresh Rawal among others have expressed their discomfort over the attacks on healthcare workers in the past. Earlier last month, Devgn along with several other Bollywood celebrities had featured in a video appealing everyone to be safe during the outbreak. The video was made on behalf of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray by Rohit Shetty Picturez. India is currently under the lockdown with around 1.3 billion people asked to stay home in view of the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected over 8,312 people and claimed 273 lives in the country. (With inputs from Press Trust of India) Indian and Pakistani Troops Exchange Fire in Kashmir, Three Dead - Police Sputnik News 15:25 GMT 12.04.2020(updated 16:11 GMT 12.04.2020) Hostilities re-emerged between Indian and Pakistani troops at the Line of Control (LoC) earlier this week with both sets of troops involved in cross-border shooting and artillery fire. Three civilians were killed when Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged heavy artillery fire on Sunday evening, Indian police said, as quoted by the Associated Press. The agency quoted Shri Ram Ambarkar, an Indian police officer, who said that three civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed when shells fired from the Pakistani army hit homes in the Kupwara area of Indian-controlled Kashmir. He added that more people were feared to be injured as a rescue operation was still underway after the shelling. The two countries have been engaged in firefights and shelling for the past few days following the killing of five Indian troops near the Line of Control. According to the Pakistani military, they were responding to "unprovoked ceasefire violations" by the Indian side. India, for its part, issued a statement to say that its army was responding to Pakistan's ceasefire violation. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated in August 2019 after New Delhi revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, a move considered by Islamabad as a violation of the previously existing bilateral agreement. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 20:18:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese central government spokesperson on Monday urged the Legislative Council (LegCo) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to resume normal operation as soon as possible. As Hong Kong is dealing with a serious COVID-19 outbreak and economic hardships, some opposition lawmakers used "despicable tactics" to paralyze the LegCo for personal political gains, said the spokesperson for the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council. "We strongly condemn this," the spokesperson said, adding that people in Hong Kong need to understand the possible dire consequences and stop the opposition lawmakers from continuing their misdeeds. [The stream is slated to start at 5 p.m. ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.] Members of the coronavirus task force are expected to hold a press briefing Monday, in what has become a daily affair, amid signs that the curve is flattening in some hard-hit areas. Members of President Donald Trump's own party have been critical of Trump's rambling performance during the press briefings, suggesting he needs to rein them in. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, for example, said Trump "sometimes drowns out his own message." For weeks, government officials across the federal, state and local levels have been responding to the outbreak, issuing financial aid and guidance on dealing with the spread. The first wave of stimulus relief checks were deposited into some Americans' bank accounts over the weekend, according to the IRS. Millions more can expect to receive theirs in the coming weeks as part of the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill passed to aid Americans suffering financially as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. But still, there are signs of more damage to come. A study from last week found that the coronavirus could put between 420 million and 580 million more people, or 8% of the global population, in poverty. Meanwhile, the White House on Monday confirmed that Trump would not fire the popular Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Rumors that he could be ousted circulated after the president retweeted a post in support of firing Fauci, who has been a key task force member. Task force members include Fauci; Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar; Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, among others. The coronavirus has spread to dozens of countries globally, with more than 1.8 million confirmed cases worldwide and over 117,569 deaths so far, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. There are at least 560,800 cases in the United States and at least 22,861 deaths, according to the latest tallies. Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. Good morning and welcome to On Politics, a daily political analysis of the 2020 elections based on reporting by New York Times journalists. Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox every weekday. The United States has now recorded more deaths from the coronavirus than any other country: over 22,000 as of Sunday night. But according to a wide-ranging investigation into President Trumps response that led our front page on Sunday, the White House spent weeks ignoring recommendations from its own health officials to more aggressively confront the virus, leaving the administration to play catch-up once it finally acknowledged the need for widespread action. You may want to get used to hearing the name Red Dawn, because itll probably start coming up a lot. That is the self-conferred nickname of a group of public health experts who, starting in January, emailed back and forth as they tracked the viruss global spread and sought to make the Trump administration aware of its threat. On Jan. 28, Dr. Carter Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Veterans Affairs Department, emailed the group a dire warning: The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe. A day later, the countrys trade adviser, Peter Navarro, penned a memo warning that the coronavirus could kill up to half a million Americans and cause trillions of dollars in economic losses. The president knew of the memo, despite his later denials; he chose not to immediately act on it. And in mid-February, the health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, unveiled a system to track the viruss spread, but its rollout was delayed for weeks. When health officials finally decided to shift toward warning citizens about the viruss dangers and encouraging people to radically adjust their behavior, the White House dragged its feet for weeks. During all of this, the virus continued to spread. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan, North Sumatra Mon, April 13, 2020 10:51 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd17af36 1 National domestic-worker,TKI,Malaysia,North-Sumatra,Medan,COVID-19,coronavirus,outbreak-in-Indonesia,virus-korona-indonesia,repatriation,repatriasi Free As many as 513 Indonesian domestic workers have been repatriated from neighboring Malaysia after they were given the all-clear for COVID-19 infection. Priagung Adhi Bawono, the head of the Medan Port Health Authority (KKP), said that each Indonesian migrant worker (TKI) had been accounted for and confirmed free of infection after testing negative for the virus upon their arrival at Kualanamu International Airport in Deli Serdang regency, North Sumatra. The preliminary results show that none of the [repatriated] domestic workers have any symptoms [of COVID-19]. They all tested negative, Priagung told The Jakarta Post on Saturday. He added that the workers had been examined in Malaysia prior to their repatriation, but noted that some of the workers had flu-like symptoms, including dry cough and dizziness. As of Saturday, North Sumatra had recorded at least 59 confirmed cases and eight deaths. To ensure public health and safety, said Priagung, all recently repatriated migrant workers were isolated for 14 days at a special facility at Cadika Lubuk Pakam park in Deli Serdang, or at Suwondo Air Base in Medan. Whiko Irwan, the head of the North Sumatra COVID-19 task force, said that all repatriates would undergo rapid testing on the first and 10th days of their isolation periods, as well as physical exercise and psychological evaluation. Read also: COVID-19 news is not all bad. Read this to stay positive There are 318 [TKI] quarantined at Soewondo Air Base, whereas 134 others have been isolated at Cadika Lubuk Pakam Park, Whiko said. Soewondo Air Base Commander Col. Meka Yudanto said that the majority of repatriated workers quarantined at the air base were North Sumatra natives, while the others came from regional provinces including Java. North Sumatra Governor Edy Rahmayadi had submitted a formal request to the Home Ministry for the repatriation of North Sumatran workers from Malaysia amid the health emergency in the neighboring country, said Meka. The Malaysian government extended until April 28 its movement control order, which is technically a lockdown, in an effort to curb the rapid spread of the virus there, Antara News reported. By Saturday, Malaysia had recorded 4,530 confirmed cases and 70 deaths from the disease. Many of the repatriated TKI had police records in Malaysia for overstaying their visas, said Kualanamu Immigration head Tedi Hartadi Wibowo. Zakiah, a TKI from Jambi, said she entered Malaysia illegally in 2018 on a tourist visa. She found work as a waitress at a local restaurant, but was soon arrested by Malaysian immigration officers and sentenced to seven months in prison. Ive learned my lesson. I wont enter Malaysia through unofficial channels ever again, Zakiah told the Post on Thursday, when shse arrived at Kualanamu airport. She said she didnt mind being quarantined before returning to her hometown so that her family would be safe. (rfa) Nagaland recorded its first case of Covid-19 with a patient admitted in Assams Guwahati testing positive for the coronavirus on Sunday. Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tweeted late on Sunday night that the patient, who was referred to Guwahati from a private hospital in Dimapur in Nagaland, was found positive. A private hospital in Dimapur, Nagaland referred a patient to Guwahati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) after he was found with symptoms of Covid-19. He has tested positive and is undergoing treatment, Sarma tweeted. According to health officials in Assam, the patient is a resident of Dimapur and was referred directly from Nagaland. He was first admitted in a private hospital in Dimapur and when he showed symptoms for Covid-19 he was sent to GMCH. Nagalands health minister S Pangnyu Phom also took to Twitter to confirm the first Covid-19 positive case in the state. Unfortunately one person from Dimapur has tested positive for Covid-19 and is under treatment at GMCH at Guwahati. Anyone who came in contact with the person will be immediately quarantined, also certain locations will be sealed for general safety, he tweeted. Nagaland doesnt have a testing laboratory for Covid-19 yet, but samples collected in the state are sent to Assam for tests. It is not known why the patient was allowed to travel to Assam. Till Sunday, 74 samples collected from suspected Covid-19 patients in Nagaland had been tested. Meghalaya now remains the only state in the northeast which is yet to record any Covid-19 positive case. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden in a split-screen livestream video on Monday afternoon, just five days after suspending his own presidential campaign. This time last week, Sanders was still under familiar pressure to quit being such a selfish egotist, drop out, and fall in line behind the presumptive nominee, along with a new wrinkle of 2020-specific pressure to not be personally responsible for killing everyone who would wait in line to vote in a primary. A few days later, hes endorsed Biden before either Elizabeth Warren or Barack Obama did. With Sanders himself out of the way, the professional chider class will now be able to target individual Sanders supporters who arent yet sold on Biden, one by one. Advertisement The endorsement was set up as a casual, spontaneous conversation in the way that a table read of a screenplay is. After Sanders gave his endorsement, Biden expressed his appreciation and then asked Sanders, Do you have any questions for me, Bernie, at all? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I did, Joe, Sanders said. Does Biden support a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour? Bernie, I am extremely supportive of that, Biden said. How about that! It gave way to a Bidenesque three-minute crossbreeding of talking points about Trumps management of the multitrillion-dollar coronavirus relief package. Sanders, who is not unfamiliar with the art of using any question as a prompt to deliver unrelated talking points, nodded dutifully. I want to thank you for your question, Biden said, eventually. Advertisement Sanders would perk up during certain moments, such as when Biden observed that young peoples lives and careers would suffer from the rolling economic crisis. I do think, Biden said, theyve been put behind the eight ball more than our generation was, or any generation in recent history. This was a concession from Biden, who had previously argued that todays young people were spoiled brats. Thats absolutely true, Sanders said, and Im glad you are prepared to focus on that issue. If there was any news beyond the endorsement itself, it was that the Sanders and Biden campaigns had agreed to join their brightest minds together to form six task forces to reach agreement on policy areas. Those areas, in Joe Bidens words: One on the economy, one on education, one on criminal justice one on immigration, [one on] climate change, and [one on] the economy. He probably meant health care instead of economy the second time. Sanders had the blank look, as Biden said this, of someone who was only then appreciating that he will be spending the next seven months saying He probably meant X in his capacity as a surrogate for Joe Biden. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The task forces are this cycles version of Sanders negotiating elements of the Democratic platform with Hillary Clintons campaign in 2016. And now, as then, it is largely an exercise in face-savingthe giveaway is right there in the use of the term task force, government-ese for a superficial treatment of something. In order to bring more of his supporters on board with Bidens candidacy, Sanders needs to show that he secured certain progressive wins in the official policy of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party platform is not binding, however. Its not even remembered. President Joe Biden would govern however he wants. Advertisement Advertisement What does appear genuine, though, is that Sanders and Biden like each other. This was evident throughout the campaign, when they joked with each other during debates and when Sanders refused to make certain personal, negative attacks against Biden despite pleadings from hard-liners within his camp. Its evident at the end of the campaign, as Sanders has already dropped out and endorsed Biden by mid-April, a process that didnt happen until July when Sanders was running against Hillary Clinton. The former vice president, BuzzFeed reported in a March pre-mortem of the Sanders campaign, falls into an exclusive category for the Vermont senator: the people who were nice to Sanders before he mattered. Whatever Senate lunch it was in, say, 2007 that Biden sat next to Sanders and chatted him up, it has more than paid off. Carlo Lamagna hasnt done much cooking at his eight-month-old Filipino restaurant Magna Kusina since cleaning out his coolers in a community giveaway on March 20. Instead, the Detroit-born chef used part of his restaurants coronavirus-enforced closure to renovate the kitchen. But Lamagna made an exception earlier this month for Frontline Foods PDX, a new organization that seeks to turn community donations into tasty meals from local restaurants for medical workers fighting COVID-19. I got an email, and there was a sign-up sheet, and of course, I wanted to help in any way shape or form, said Lamagna, whose parents were both nurses. They set up a time and a hospital OHSU and we did 50 individual meals, and it was amazing. Online donations made via Frontline Food PDXs website are routed through celebrity chef Jose Andres nonprofit World Central Kitchen, then used to pay restaurants to prepare, package and deliver ready-to-reheat meals to front-line health care workers. So far, restaurants have received a fixed rate of $20 per meal. To date, the Portland chapter has raised $60,000 in community donations and tapped 32 Portland restaurants to provide more than 750 meals to clinicians and staff at Oregon Health & Science University, Legacy Good Samaritan, Providence Portland Hospital, Central City Concerns Old Town Clinic and local COVID-19 field-testing sites. Going forward, Frontline Foods PDX hopes to raise $250,000, enough to feed 300 local healthcare workers every day through the end of May. Two anonymous donors have offered a matching fund of up to $20,000 for the fundraising push. In addition to Magna, participating restaurants include Bar Carlo, Bhuna, Boke Bowl, Coquine, La Arepa, Kachka, Nongs Khao Man Gai, Normandie, Olympia Provisions, Pine State Biscuits, Renata, Taqueria Nueve, Top Burmese and Toro Bravo. More than 100 restaurants have expressed interest in taking part. Portland was one of the first cities to join the national grass-roots organization, which has since raised $1 million and 20,000 meals delivered across 34 cities. The local chapter was organized by Nick Cain, a Google.org employee with a background in corporate philanthropy whose wife works as a nurse at the Cancer Institute at Providence Portland Medical Center. Unlike similar efforts to pay restaurants to help feed the homeless or others in need, doctors and nurses arent necessarily incapable of buying their own meals. But in ICUs and ERs across the country, lives have been turned upside down by the novel coronavirus, Cain said. The stress of keeping up with new safety protocols and the demands of the jobs can make it difficult to run down to the cafeteria or sit-down to a meal brought from home. This is not a group of people that is necessarily going hungry, Cain said. But actually handing folks pre-prepared, delicious food is solving a meaningful problem in their day. This is about appreciation for what theyre doing. The actual economic need is on the restaurant side. To donate to Frontline Foods PDX, visit the groups website at frontlinefoods.org/portland -- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. The Malaysian prime minister on Monday banned Ramadan bazaars nationwide amid an extended movement control order (MCO) that runs through April 28 in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government also reversed an earlier decision to allow barbershops, beauty salons and optometrists to open. In a live telecast on Monday, Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the decisions were made by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. The government has listened to the views of the people. The government also sought the advice of the experts and non-governmental organizations on the matter, he said. As such, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has decided that hair salons, beauty salons and optical shops in the whole country are not allowed to operate during the MCO period. The same goes for Ramadan bazaars. The PMs decision is that all forms of bazaars are not allowed in the whole country during the MCO, said Ismail, referring to Malaysias partial lockdown. The government instituted strict measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, starting with the MCO announced on March 18. Extended for a second time last week, the MCO ordered government offices, private companies, factories, schools and non-essential services to close, allowing only essential services to continue. In addition, it ordered places of worship closed and did not allow for mass gatherings. The blanket ban came after weeks of confusion over whether the bazaars would be allowed to open from the beginning of the Muslim holy month of fasting, which is expected to go from April 24 to May 23 in Malaysia. On Friday, Muhyiddin hinted at the move by announcing that Muslims would have to make changes in welcoming the fasting month by not having Ramadan bazaars, special tarawih prayers at mosques and mass break fasts after the prayers. Ramadan is coming. We cannot go to the Ramadan bazaar to buy the food to break our fast, cannot go to the mosque to perform tarawih. So do it at home with the family, he said at the time. He also hinted that those who live and work away from their families would not be able to travel to their hometowns to celebrate Eid al-Fitr at the end of the fasting. Even though it is hard for us to imagine, this is the reality that we will be facing, Muhyiddin said last week. Malaysia recorded 134 new COVID-19 cases since Sunday, increasing the total to 4,817 and one new death, bringing the total to 77 since the coronavirus outbreak began. Globally, more than 118,000 people have died and at least 1.9 million have been infected by COVID-19, according to the latest data compiled by disease experts at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. States already banned bazaars Seven Malaysian states Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Terengganu, Sarawak, Penang, Malacca and Kedah already announced their own bans ahead of the federal government decision. Negeri Sembilan Chief Minister Aminuddin Harun the first state to call off the bazaars said public safety was more important than commerce. Traders should be more creative. We cant allow them to do business in the open air because we refuse to take risks. I hope everyone can be patient for now, he told reporters in Seremban. In a Facebook posting on Monday, Federal Territory Minister Annuar Musa also announced the bazaar ban. After discussing with stakeholders, we unanimously agreed that this year there will be no Ramadan bazaars at all and yesterday (Sunday) a group of 100 traders and I agreed that whatever payments made will be carried forward to next year, he said. So next year you can trade without having to pay anything. Hopefully there wont be problems next year. While announcing the ban, Annuar said he would host a meeting to discuss new concepts for the bazaars that most years attract thousands of people to hundreds of stands. So this Thursday, City Hall will table a ministerial-level committee meeting. I have presented this previously in a cabinet meeting the concept but not in detail, he said. Among the concepts to be discussed include whether a bazaar could be set up as a drive-through, and if so, what would be the layout and how many people would be allowed inside. A different concept calls for a pack-and-pick operation allowing customers to order goods and pick them up at specified locations. Another discussion is to focus on food deliveries to customers. Sixty-nine-year-old Sneh Grover, a resident of west Delhis Maya Enclave, was worried when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown from March 25, to control the spread of Covid-19. Grover lives with her husband, and reports of senior citizens being more vulnerable to the virus had only added to her panic. Last week, however, her problem was solved when Varun Suri stepped forward. Suri is a volunteer with Emoha Elder Care, a tech start-up offering solutions that enable elders to comfortably live at home. Emoha has been providing services for senior citizens across Delhi and the neighbouring satellite towns for over two years, and recently launched a special programme Elders First, Ghar pe Rahiye to help senior citizens in Delhi-NCR survive the lockdown. Emoha volunteers, while delivering essentials at doorsteps, also ensure their own safety by strictly following social distancing norms. In a span of two weeks, more than 2,500 volunteers signed up to help out the elderly purchase their everyday essentials, so that they do not risk their health by stepping out. With Covid-19 cases on the rise in the region, Emoha has launched a free 24x7 helpline 1800-123-44-5555 for senior citizen needs. Hindustan Times has partnered with Emoha to cater to the needs of the elderly. From delivering essential commodities at their doorsteps to providing emergency ambulance coordination, virtual doctor consults and even virtual recreational activities, Emoha is going all out to help out the elderly as the pandemic rages on in the city. Saumyajit Roy, CEO and co-founder of Emoha, said they have stepped up their operations considering the elderly needed the most care, during such a crisis. He said that along with expanding their volunteer base, the caregiver service is now also roping in more health care experts to have sessions with their clients to ease the panic around the infection. He added: Emohas strength lies in the fact that our elders feel comfortable calling us for any help they need and we encourage young people to come forward and join us to make this happen. To register as a volunteer with Emoha Elder Care, people need to sign up on their website www.emoha.com or download the Emoha Responder App on Google Play/iOS store. Likewise, an elder seeking help can also sign up on Emohas website, which has over registered 2,600 senior citizens. Explaining how Emoha functions, Roy said most volunteers cater to senior citizens living in their vicinity. For instance, he says, when a senior citizen calls the Emoha helpline to place a request like help with grocery delivery from a neighbourhood, the request will be flashed to all volunteers in the area; these volunteers can then coordinate and buy the required items. Since the requests are forwarded from with a vicinity, volunteers do not have to depend on any mode of transportation to complete the task., and Emoha recommends the elders reimburse the volunteers through digital payments. In Gurugram, the startup has also collaborated with the police to cater to the needs of seniors. Sharing his experience with the service, 63-year-old Murli Das, a resident of east Delhi, said he requested Emoha to help him get two of his wifes medicines, which he was unable to find in his neighbourhood medical stores because of lockdown restrictions. The volunteer was a young man named Kamal. He called to assure me that he will find the medicines as soon as he can. Within a few hours, he was at my doorstep. It had been many days since we had spoken to a friendly voice from outside, it felt nice, Das said in a video message. In such times when stepping out means risking your lives, it is important to care for our elders. In a day I get three to four calls from my area for the delivery of basic requirements like vegetables and groceries. I just have to buy some extra while I buy some for my own house, said Shafiq, another volunteer from Emoha. Health experts said such initiatives were welcome because it was important for senior citizens to stay at home. Anyone above the age of 50 years need to be extra careful. The elderly have compromised immunity and their lungs take more time clearing up. All these factors make them extremely vulnerable to coronavirus, said Ravi Shekhar Jha, senior consultant and head of department, pulmonology, Fortis Escorts Hospital, Faridabad. After being a target of internet trolls last week, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's potential domain name for their new foundation has been held to ransom. Cyber squatters have been targeting several website domain names that could hypothetically be used by Duke and Duchess of Sussex for their new charity, "Archewell." According to their hackers, they are willing to surrender the domain name if Meghan Markle will ask Prince Harry to go back home to the UK. As the Daily Star reports, the hackers have unveiled a web address with the domain archewellcharity.com which bore that unique demand. On the homepage, they said, "We will surrender this domain upon the immediate and safe return of Prince Henry Charles Albert David, Duke of Sussex to Her Majesty's the United Kingdom." Underneath the demand features the address of Buckingham Palace, "Westminster - London - SW1A 1AA - United Kingdom." At the bottom, it writes, "Yours faithfully," and a fake email address that says, arcehwellcharity@protonmail.com. The trolls' move follows another domain tipped for use by Archewell, Archewellfoundation.com, being snapped up by cyber hackers, where they redirected users to Kanye West's music video for "Gold Digger." Aside from the hacked website, trolls have also been fast to set up numerous accounts on Instagram as well. The handle @archewell has already been taken by a person who has published just one image of turquoise, while "@archewellglobal" and "@archewell.global" are already existing. Copying the design of the couple's previous Instagram account @SussexRoyal and pretending to operate as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, the "@archewellglobal" account wished its more than 4000 followers a "very happy, healthy and peaceful Easter." This wasn't the first time the couple was caught in a hoax. Poor Prince Harry! Early this year, two Russian pranksters succeeded in getting Prince Harry's mobile phone and email address. The Guardian reported that the motion was set when Royal Foundation's former Chief Executive Lorraine Heggessey was contacted by the pranksters and then forwarded the pair's email directly to the Prince. The subject was titled, "Call or meeting with Greta Thunberg," YouTuber trolls Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov claimed to be from Greta's director and set up the message in the name of a former Swiss President. But it wouldn't be the last time that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be annoyed by trolls. $100,000 For The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Photo?! Since Meghan Markle and Prince Harry moved to a Hollywood hub, it will be tricky for them to stay out of the public eye. According to The Sunday Times, California paparazzi said groups of photographers are already camping out near the couple's home to catch a glimpse of the former British royals. Mark Karloff told the publication that once the quarantine rules are relaxed and the public is aware of the Duke and Duchess being there, "It's going to be a little bit of a frenzy to get to them." Karloff added that the Meghan Markle and Prince Harry would be "hounded every single day" for the first few months staying in the US. The paparazzo also provided an estimate of how much the first exclusive photos of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex could sell for, saying that it can go as high as $100,000 since they are considered "A-list" stars. "Leo DiCaprio, global interest. Beyonce, global interest. That's what Meghan wants. I hope she's ready for it," Karloff concluded. READ MORE: Meghan Markle, Prince Harry Divorce? Duchess' True 'Scary' Plot Reportedly Leaked LAPORTE As Hoosiers enter the fourth week of the governor's stay-at-home order to combat the spread of COVID-19, LaPorte County Sheriff John Boyd said he understands the boredom this has created. While police are not allowed to stop motorists simply to determine their destinations, if officers find "that an individual is not out for essential travel, there is a strong likelihood that they could be charged," he said as part of a video statement posted on the department's Facebook page. The charge of violating the governor's order amounts to a B misdemeanor, he said. The sheriff's department charged a Goshen man March 31 with violating the governor's order after police were alerted by the sound of gunshots in rural Kankakee Township. Wesley Rivera-Colon, 22, was also charged with criminal recklessness and possession of a handgun without a license, according to the department. At this point, the drug is not recommended to be used by patients except by medical professionals prescribing it as part of ongoing investigational studies. There are potentially significant side effects, including sudden cardiac death, associated with hydroxychloroquine and its individual use in patients need to be carefully selected and monitored by a health care professional, the answer said, before adding in bold type: Please do not obtain this medication on your own. By Chang Se-moon Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 20:17:56|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HONG KONG, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Asia-Pacific countries are witnessing increasing number of COVID-19 cases on Monday with Bangladesh recording its biggest daily jump of 182 new cases. Bangladesh health officials on Monday confirmed an increase of 182 new COVID-19 cases during the past 24 hours, the biggest daily jump in new cases since March 8 when infected cases first appeared in the country. Health Minister Zahid Maleque told an online press briefing that the number of cases increased to 803 as of 8:00 a.m. local time Monday. "Our COVID-19 death toll rose sharply to 39 Monday as we confirmed five more fatalities," Maleque said. The Philippines reported 284 new infections from the COVID-19, bringing the total number of the cases in the country to 4,932. The Department of Health also reported in its daily bulletin that 18 more COVID-19 patients have died, bringing the death toll from the virus to 315. The Indonesian government on Monday said it received reports on 316 new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 and 26 deaths within the past 24 hours from all the provinces in the country. Meanwhile, as many as 21 people have recently been discharged from hospitals after recoveries. At present, the number of confirmed cases in the country jumped to 4,557 and the death toll climbed to 399. The number of COVID-19 cases in Malaysia totalled at 4,817 after 134 new cases were recorded, the Health Ministry said on Monday. Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said the number of fatalities had risen to 77 after another death was recorded, with the victim having suffered from other health problems prior to being infected. Additionally, two new sub-clusters of infections had been identified in Pahang state, stemming from an infected individual who had become infected during a trip to Indonesia. India's health ministry Monday said the death toll due to COVID-19 in India rose to 308 and the total number of confirmed cases in the country reached 9,152. "As on 8:00 a.m. (local time) today 308 deaths related to COVID-19 have been recorded in the country," said the information released by the ministry. This is a jump of 35 deaths and an increase of 796 cases since Sunday morning. Tokyo confirmed 91 new cases of COVID-19 as of Monday afternoon, local media reported, pushing the total number of COVID-19 cases to 2,159 in the Japanese capital. It is the first time the daily increase of Tokyo has fallen below 100 since last Tuesday. So far the highest daily record was 197 on Saturday. According to officials, the numbers of young patients and those with no clear infection routes are on the rise. Across the country, the number of infections has climbed to 7,545 as of Monday afternoon. Australia's fight against COVID-19 has achieved a new progress, with fewer than 50 cases confirmed between Sunday and Monday but it is too early to decide on lifting the restrictive rules, health officials said. According to the Department of Health,there had been 6,322 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia as of Monday morning, an increase of 33 cases from Sunday morning. It represents an increase of only 0.5 percent, a recent record-low for Australia. However, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy warned that the figure could be misleading because of a downtrend in Australia's testing rate over the four-day Easter weekend. "It is too early to relax restrictions at the moment," Murphy said. A total of 58 new positive cases of the COVID-19 had been confirmed in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 665, Wahidullah Mayar, a spokesman for the Public Health Ministry, said on Monday. South Korea reported 25 more cases of the COVID-19 compared to 24 hours ago as of midnight Monday local time, raising the total number of infections to 10,537. The daily caseload hovered around 30 in recent days, with 39 on Thursday, 27 on Friday, 30 on Saturday and 32 on Sunday each. Of the new cases, 16 were imported from overseas. Three more deaths were confirmed, lifting the death toll to 217. The total fatality rate came in at 2.06 percent. A fifth person has died of COVID-19 in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health said on Monday. New Zealand reported 15 new confirmed and four new probable cases of COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed and probable infections to 1,349 in the country. Five people have died from COVID-19 so far, most of whom were elderly, and 546 people had recovered, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said. Popular social media commentator, Fani Kayode says the federal government of Nigeria must provide food for the country if the lockdown must continue. Read Also: Gbajabiamila Fast Becoming Most Effective Leader In Nigeria: Fani Kayode Speaking via a statement on his official Twitter handle on Monday, he added that if people are locked down without food, then a revolution may not be farfetched. He wrote: If you insist on locking people down you must provide food for them. You cannot just lock them down and expect them to starve to death. If you do not give them food and still insist on the lockdown then you are provoking a revolution which may consume us all. PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY! Prince Harry's life will be very different after leaving Britain for California, according to Lady Julie Montagu. The 47-year-old, who was born in Illinois but moved to the UK 15 years ago, married Luke Timothy Charles Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, the son of the 11th Earl of Sandwich. Speaking to Town and Country, she has opened up about the major culture differences between them both - and what these may now mean for the Duke, 35, and Duchess of Sussex, 38. 'I feel like he has found somebody that he can be emotionally open with and I think that's a really good thing,' she said. 'Family becomes the most important thing.' Lady Julie Montagu, 47, who was born in Illinois but lives in Southwest London, is married to British aristocrat Lord Luke Montagu, heir to the Earl of Sandwich. Pictured, on Good Morning Britain on 28 November 2017 Pictured, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and Archie Mountbatten-Windsor meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation during their royal tour of South Africa on September 25, 2019 in Cape Town Lady Julie Montagu, who manages the Mapperton Estate in Dorset with her husband, went on to express her belief that Americans are generally thought to be more open then Brits. 'I always say whenever you meet an American, you know their life story within 24 hours,' she explained. 'We're very emotionally open, which I think for Harry is actually a really good thing.' Julie, who has four children Emma, 21, and Jack, 18, from her first marriage, and William, 15, and Nestor, 13, with Luke - added: 'He'll be able to talk about his feelings, probably more than he was able to talk about over here.' 'I wouldn't be surprised if we start to hear a little bit more about how he feels about losing his mother at age 12, and maybe how he and Megan were treated in the press over here.' Lady Julie Montagu first met her husband Luke at a drinks party in 2002, and within a few years, the American yoga teacher, nutrition expert and author, and the heir to the Earl of Sandwich, were married. Pictured, on Good Morning Britain on 1 July 2019 Lady Julie Montagu first met her husband Luke at a drinks party in 2002, and within a few years, the American yoga teacher, nutrition expert and author, and the heir to the Earl of Sandwich, were married. The American star of Bravo's 2014 reality series Ladies of London, who has herself experienced being a fish out of water in the UK after she left her native Illinois, previously revealed she sympathises with Meghan and Harry and understood why they decided to forge their own path. She told People that the major transition gave her some perspective on Megxit, explaining: 'You dont know what youre getting into until youre in it, especially with the monarchy.' Julie added it's likely that Meghan wasn't fully prepared for how different her life would be when she married Prince Harry. 'People can tell you and they can try to prepare you, but you dont know. There is a real difference between Britain and America. 'We may speak the same language, but its completely two different cultures, and more so with the royal family. There are traditions. There are protocols,' she said. Julie Montagu hosts An American Aristocrats Guide to Great Estates, airing in the US starting May 17 on Smithsonian Channel Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday thanked the people of the State for responding to his appeal for 'Ardas' at 11 am from their homes. Lauding the cooperation of the people in this difficult time, the Chief Minister said that it was the need of the hour for all to behave responsibly and ensure that the pandemic does not escalate out of control. The Chief Minister, who led the Baisakhi prayers with his own 'ardas' at his home, hoped that the collective prayers of the people would keep Punjab safe and ensure its victory over deadly coronavirus. Chief Minister Singh had on April 12 called upon the people not to venture out of their homes to celebrate Baisakhi with the traditional fervour and gaiety, but to stay at home, for their own safety and that of their children as well as the state and the nation. He thanked the people for extending their full support to his government for the past three weeks in maintaining social distance and adhering to the restrictions imposed as a result of the lockdown. "The inherent Punjabi resilience had once again come to the fore in this critical hour," he said. "Unfortunately, we have had to extend the curfew for another two weeks, till May 1, but given the critical situation, there was no option," said the Chief Minister. He reiterated his assurance to the people that the government would further streamline the supply chain and ensure that not a single person in the state, including the migrant labourers, go hungry. "Further measures would be taken to ensure the smooth and gradual exit of the state from the lockdown/curfew so that some kind of normalcy could be enabled, in the interest of the economy and industry," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) If you knew Ollie Edwards, you knew she was a loving mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, and a genuinely kind, caring person, family members say. Being on this Earth for 108 years, Edwards experienced many events, both good and bad, but she was known for her giving personality and strong spirit. Unfortunately, according to a family member, Ollie is believed to be one of the oldest people in the state to die from the coronavirus. She passed away Saturday at a nursing home in Linden. It was a true blessing to have her as my grandmother, April Edwards-Thompson said. Over 108 years, she was a phenomenal force in our family. Her house was where we all gathered together, enjoying each others company and her cooking, especially her cakes and pies. Oh how we wished she could live forever. Grandma Ollie will be truly missed by everyone. Born in 1911 in Crawfordville, Georgia, the second oldest of ten children, Ollie was raised on a farm helping her parents, George and Laura Swain, feed the livestock, milk the cows and make household products such as hair grease, butter, jelly, and soap. She also picked cotton in the deep south to help her family during the Jim Crow Era. Edwards arrived in New Jersey in 1938, living in Roselle, but moved back to Georgia after some time. In 1947, Edwards moved back to the state, this time to Newark, the city she would call home for over 70 years. She married Jessie Edwards and had eight children, four boys, and four girls. The two also raised their oldest granddaughter, effectively giving them nine children. Known as an excellent soul food cook and baker, Edwards was asked by her family to make many dishes, even having people pay her to make hog head cheese and cakes and pies. 108-year-old Ollie Edwards, bottom left, with family members. Edwards family said that even in her advanced age and having suffered hip surgeries and ailments such as dementia and deteriorating hearing and vision, she would always remind them of her position as the matriarch of the family. Longevity ran in Edwards genes. Her paternal grandmother, a member of the Cherokee tribe, lived to be 121 years old, and Ollie is the only surviving member of that family, the Swains. Im the captain of this ship, you are just a passenger, sit back and take a ride, Edwards used to tell her children according to the family. I may be old, but I aint cold. In her final years, beginning in 2014, she was visited daily by her family at the Delaire Nursing Home in Linden. She quietly left this life on Saturday April 11, 2020, at 10 a.m., surrounded by her family. The loss was felt throughout her family members. Great grandmother, when I took my oath of honor, you were so proud of me, great granddaughter and police officer Tan Edwards, of Clifton. In the oath, I honor to protect and serve, and I am so broken-hearted that I was not able to protect you from COVID-19. I love you and will forever carry the Edwards last name. Edwards leaves behind three living children, 15 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren and numerous great-great-grandchildren and other family members who are spread out across the country. Ollie Edwards, left, in a family photo. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Sign up for text message alerts from NJ.com on coronavirus in New Jersey: Chris Franklin can be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cfranklinnews or on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. New Delhi: The government has disbursed Rs 29,352 crore in the bank accounts of 32.32 crore beneficiaries since the launch of a welfare scheme by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 26 to protect the poor from the impact of Covid-19 lockdown. The Rs 1.7-lakh crore welfare package under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) has already provided financial support to 19.86 crore women under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), a finance ministry statement said. About Rs 9,930 crore has reached 97% PMJDY accounts of women, it said. PMJDY is a national mission for financial inclusion that was launched on August 28, 2014 to provide universal access to banking facilities, such as a zero balance account, to the poor. According to PMJDYs website, there are 38.08 crore accounts under the scheme with total deposits of Rs 119,707 crore as of April 1. Sitharaman had announced financial aid of Rs 500 a month for 20 crore women with Jan Dhan accounts for three months so that they can run their households during the lockdown. The robust digital payment infrastructure has enabled the prompt transfer of cash payment under the PMGKY. About 93% of the 8 crore farmers have already received Rs 14,846 crore cash assistance under the PM-KISAN, a finance ministry spokesperson said. While launching the Rs 1.7-lakh crore package on March 26, Sitharaman had announced the Rs 2,000 instalment of PM-KISAN would be front-loaded and given immediately. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) programme, launched on December 1, 2018, provides Rs 6,000 a year as cash support to all farmer families across the country in three equal instalments. The spokesperson said the government has transferred Rs 1,405 crore into the bank accounts of 2.82 crore widows, senior citizens and physically challenged as of April 13. The welfare package had promised Rs 1,000 as ex-gratia payment to economically poor widows, citizens above the age of 60, and the physically challenged under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP). The amount will be given in two instalments. NSAP is a centrally sponsored scheme that provides financial aid to the elderly, widows and persons with disabilities in the form of social pensions. As announced by Sitharaman, the government has so far disbursed financial support to 2.17 crore building and other construction workers involving Rs 3,071 crore, the spokesperson said. Announcing the scheme on March 26, Sitharaman had said there is already a fund for the welfare of construction and other workers. This had, at the moment, Rs 31,000 crore and 35 million workers were registered under it. We have given directions to state governments to utilise the funds to provide assistance to construction workers to protect them, she said. Jacob Jake Tyler Hill is rarely ever seen without his sunglasses, or the bandana that he wraps around his head. His backpack and skateboard are usually somewhere close by. But on March 20, 2020, 28-year-old Jacob disappeared without any of these items. Jacob Hill The sunglasses and bandana were left in the trailer where he lives in Hopedale, Ohio, his mother Tina Hill told Dateline. Three miles away, at his parents house, are his backpack and skateboard. Tina told Dateline Jacob was going to stay at their home for a while, as he was going through a rough time in his life. March 19 was the last time she heard from her son. He texted me to ask if I was home, Tina said. I was out shopping for things for the quarantine. So his father went to pick him up and bring him back to our house. She added that Jacob did not have a car at the time. Tina said that it was only a matter of minutes after her husband and Jacob got home that suddenly, Jacob was gone. It wasnt alarming at first, Tina said. But it was later that day, when we tried to call him. But... nothing. His phone was dead. Turned off. And thats not like him. He would never want us to worry. Tina told Dateline their calls to Jacob went to voicemail and their texts were not delivered, a sign that his phone was turned off. I know some people might say he walked off, but theres no way, Tina said. All his stuff was here. Or at his trailer. He had nothing except this phone. Tina said her sons backpack and skateboard were still at their house. The bandana he always wore wrapped around his head, along with his sunglasses, were found at his trailer. After exhausting their own search efforts that weekend, Jacobs parents called authorities on Monday, March 23. Sergeant John Thompson with the Harrison County Sheriffs Office, one of the detectives on the case, told Dateline they are working hard to find the missing Hopedale man. Were following every tip we get and are working hard to find answers for the family, Sgt. Thompson said. Story continues Sergeant Thompson said authorities pinged Jacobs phone, which revealed his last outgoing call was made on March 19 in Hopedale, near his home. His phone has been turned off since then. Authorities initially believed Jacob was last seen on March 19 by his father, but Sgt. Thompson told Dateline new information revealed a neighbor saw Jacob and spoke to him around 2 p.m. on March 20. In the weeks since, there have been people in the community who have reported seeing Jacob, but none of these sightings has been substantiated, Sgt. Thompson confirmed. He could be anywhere right now, Sgt. Thompson said. We just really have a lot of unanswered questions. Sergeant Thompson said they are urging the public to call authorities with any tip that may lead them to Jacobs whereabouts. You never know which piece of information will be what we need to find him, he said. We just need to find answers or some kind of closure for the family. Jacobs mother Tina told Dateline she fears something terrible happened to her son. There hasnt been any activity on his bank account and his phone remains off. Its what worries me the most, Tina said. That someone did something to him. You dont just disappear. Someone knows where he is. Someone knows something. Family members have searched surrounding areas and posted fliers all over Hopedale hoping someone will call with information they need to find him. The family is offering a $6,000 reward for information that leads to his location. Jacob is especially missed by the kids in his family -- his nieces and nephews. All the kiddos love him, Tina said. Hes the fun one. The one who is always up for playing with them. Tina says Jacob is a kind-hearted man who would give the shirt off his back for anyone. If his friend was the one missing, hed be out there searching all day and all night, Tina said. He wouldnt give up on anyone. And were not going to give up on him. Jacob is described as being 59 tall, weighing approximately 170 pounds, with green eyes and brown hair. Anyone with information about Jacobs whereabouts should call the Harrison County Sheriffs Office at (740) 942-2197. OREM, Utah, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on businesses around the world. Whether a business has shut down operations for the time being or is attempting to continue work remotely, suffering a cyber attack right now will only kick business owners while they're down. The bedlam of a successful cyber attack may well serve as a tipping point, sending an already struggling business over the edge to bankruptcy. In response to these make-or-break times, SecurityMetrics, a data security and compliance firm in Orem, Utah, has stepped in to offer businesses assistance. The company has opened a free 24-hour cybersecurity advice hotline, available to any company that needs guidance on COVID-19 related cyber threats and attacks. Cybersecurity Hotline: Worldwide: 801.995.6500 Toll-Free in US and Canada : 877.705.6074 : 877.705.6074 UK: +44.20.3014.7831 "The SecurityMetrics Security Operations Center (SOC) has seen a significant increase in the amount of cyber attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cyber criminals understand that businesses have changed their networks quickly to allow employees to work remotely, and these fast changes often cause security vulnerabilities," says SecurityMetrics CEO Brad Caldwell, "Whether a business is worried about protecting against phishing emails, maintaining data security compliance, or believes they are currently infected with malware, SecurityMetrics is available and ready to help. We want to do our part to protect business around the world from cyber attacks." For media inquiries, contact [email protected]. About SecurityMetrics SecurityMetrics helps customers close data security and compliance gaps to avoid data breaches. They provide managed data security services and are certified to help customers achieve the highest data security and compliance standards. As an Approved Scanning Vendor, Qualified Security Assessor, Certified Forensic Investigator, and Managed Security Service Provider SecurityMetrics guides organizations through data security testing and compliance mandates (PCI, HIPAA, GDPR). With over 15 years of forensic investigations, penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, and compliance audits, SecurityMetrics has tested over 2 million systems for vulnerabilities. The privately held company is headquartered in Orem, Utah where it maintains a Security Operations Center (SOC) and 24/7 multilingual technical support. SOURCE SecurityMetrics Related Links http://www.securitymetrics.com Former FDA Commissioner: China Was Not Truthful With the World The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration said on Sunday that China misled the world about the CCP virus and that the World Health Organization should commit to creating a report on the repercussions of its obfuscation. China was not truthful with the world at the outset of this. Had they been more truthful with the world, which would have enabled them to be truthful with themselves, they might have actually been able to contain this entirely and there is some growing evidence to suggest that, Scott Gottlieb told CBS News in an April 12 interview on Face the Nation. Gottlieb made the comments in response to a question about whether it is the right time to defund the World Health Organization, as President Donald Trump and a number of Republicans have recently suggested. I dont think this is a time to defund the WHO given the fact that I think this is going to become an epidemic in the Southern hemisphere and other parts of the world that dont have resources to deal with this kind of a global issue, but the president raised a lot of valid concerns, Gottlieb said. As late as Jan. 20, they were still saying that there was no human-to-human transmission and the WHO was validating those claims on Jan. 14, sort of enabling the obfuscation from China, he continued. I think going forward the WHO needs to commit to an after-action report that specifically examines what China did and didnt tell the world and how that stymied the global response to this. World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom (L) shakes hands with Chinese regime leader Xi jinping before a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Jan. 28, 2020. (Naohiko Hatta/AFP via Getty Images) Trump ordered funding for the WHO to be reviewed because he believes the organization has become too China-centric despite receiving the largest portion of its funding from U.S. taxpayers. The United States contributions make up 22 percent of the WHOs assessed funds from member nations. The president has noted that in addition to repeating Beijings statements about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, also known as the coronavirus, the WHO criticized his early decision to ban travel from China. Trump also said he believes the WHO likely knew about the danger of the outbreak earlier than the organization let on. They called it wrong. They missed the call. They could have called it months earlier. They would have known. They should have known. And they probably did know. So well be looking into that very carefully, the president said on April 7. Gottlieb noted that China also failed to promptly share the information about the viruss molecular structure with the world. China didnt share the viral strains and the WHO should have made them do that, he said. Had they shared those early on we could have developed a diagnostic test earlier, validate earlier. U.S. lawmakers have since backed Trumps call to end funding to the WHO. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) introduced a new bill to withhold federal funding to the WHO. Republican members of the House Oversight Committee asked the WHO to hand over information about its relationship with the CCP. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) votes no on the first article of impeachment as the House Judiciary Committee holds a public hearing to vote on the two articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington on Dec. 13, 2019. (Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images) Several senators have also joined the call, including Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.), Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.), Rick Scott, (R-Fla.), and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.). The WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party hide the threat of COVID-19 from the world and now more than 10,000 Americans are dead, a number that is expected to rise dramatically in the coming weeks, Reschenthaler said in a statement. Internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times have highlighted how the Chinese regime purposefully under-reported cases of the CCP virus, silenced whistleblowers, and censored discussions of the outbreak. Gottlieb also suggested that the WHO should work closer with Taiwan, which is still not a member of the WHO. A senior adviser for the WHO, when asked a question on the subject of Taiwans membership, appeared to hang up on the reporter after first claiming not to hear the question before requesting to skip to another question. The WHO has not admitted Taiwan due to pressure from the CCP. Taiwan has also accused the WHO of ignoring its questions at the start of the outbreak and not sharing the local data it sends. Taiwan has remarkably few infections and deaths from the CCP virus despite its close proximity to China. I also think they need to embrace Taiwans role in the global health community and allow them to attend the World Health Assembly. Right now theyve frozen [Taiwan] out, the WHO has, at sort of the behest of China, Gottlieb said. The WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bowen Xiao, Frank Fang, Nicole Hao and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report. Advertisement Dramatic aerial pictures have captured the ferocity of the fires ripping through Chernobyl's exclusion zone, which are now perilously close to the site of the nuclear explosion. Firefighters on their tenth day battling the blaze are desperately trying to extinguish it before it wreaks a path to the reactor's protective sarcophagus. Radiation levels in the area have already spiked since the outbreak on April 4, and there are fears that the flames could reach contaminated vehicles still abandoned from the 1986 disaster. The devastation of the inferno has been laid bare in helicopter photographs which show acres of scorched earth from where the fire has ravaged woodland which would usually be green in spring bloom. In areas where the fire is still smoldering, thick black smoke billows up from a wall of fire which is wiping out trees row by row. Ukraine's emergency service today claimed the fires were 'under control', however the State Agency on Managing of the exclusion zone acknowledged that flames were raging at Yaniv railway station, less than two miles from the protective sarcophagus covering the blitzed reactor number four. The photographs hammer home the seemingly insurmountable task of the 400 emergency service personnel deployed daily to wrestle it under control. The 1,000-square mile exclusion zone, which was established to prevent exposure to lethal gamma, is largely deserted except for about 200 people who have defied orders to leave. Dramatic aerial pictures have captured the ferocity of the fires laying waste to Ukraine's woodland and engulfing Chernobyl's exclusion zone The devastation of the inferno has been laid bare in helicopter photographs which shows acres of scorched earth from where the fire has ravaged what should be green woodland in the spring In areas where the fire is still smoldering, thick black smoke billows up from a wall of fire which is wiping out trees row by row Firefighters on their tenth day battling the blaze are desperately trying to extinguish it before it wreaks a path to the site of the exploded nuclear reactor But Ukranian authorities are anxious of radiation in the ground unleashed by the infernos will be fanned to the nearest city of Kyiv, the capital, and other populated areas. This threat increases as the fire creeps closer to the reactor, where radiation levels are 40,000 times higher than normal readings in the control room. The infernos are now engulfing the ghost town Pripyat, perilously close to the blitzed reactor which are still loaded with gamma. Yaroslav Yemelyanenko, head of the Association of Chernobyl tour operators, warned: 'The situation is critical.The zone is ablaze. 'The local authority claim that everything is under control, but the fire keeps invading new areas.' He warned: 'Now the fire reached Pripyat and is in two kilometres (one and a quarter miles) opposite the Pidlisny storage of highly radioactive waste. 'Chernobyl fires have been burning for the tenth day, and despite the work of rescuers, the flames move freely blown by the wind. 'Now the town of Pripyat and the most dangerous sites of the Exclusion Zone are reached. ' Yemelyanenko said: 'No one is allowed into the area, including the media. The situation with the fire is difficult. 'Now, they extinguish it through localisation. This means that while one area of the forest is burning, they flood the rest of the forest with water so that no fire breaks through. 'But the fire is spreading again and again throughout the centre of the Chernobyl zone to the west of the power plant. Radiation levels in the area have already spiked since the outbreak on April 4, and there are fears that the flames could reach contaminated vehicles still abandoned from the 1986 disaster The aftermath of a forest fire at the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, not far from the nuclear power plant Ukranian authorities are anxious of radiation in the ground unleashed by the infernos will be fanned to the nearest city of Kyiv, the capital, and other populated areas Kateryna Pavlova, a senior official involved in the firefighting, yesterday said: 'We have been working all night digging firebreaks around the plant to protect it from fire.' She told The New York Times: 'At the moment, we cannot say the fire is contained.' The State Agency for Management of the Exclusion Zone - which Pavlova heads - has ordered in three Antonov planes (AN-32P) and two MI-8 helicopters which have air dropped more than 250 tonnes of water in the wildfires. Officers said the blaze initially broke out after a man set fire to dry grass near the exclusion zone. The man was detained by Ukrainian police. Like most countries, Ukraine's frontline workers are already trying to wrestle its own coronavirus epidemic, which has infected 3,102 and killed 93. The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26, 1986, at unit number four in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Initially covered up by the USSR, the explosion sent radioactive fallout across Europe exposing millions to dangerous levels of gamma. The three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to generate electricity until the power station finally closed in 2000. A giant protective dome was put in place over the fourth reactor in 2016. Fires occur regularly in the forests near the Chernobyl power plant. Since the hit HBO series Chernobyl, tourists have flocked to the site of the reactor to glimpse the fallout from the explosion. Even the control room, which has 40,000 times the average amount of radiation, is open to visitors, who don protective suits as they tour the compound. A finance ministry statement on Monday said the swift implementation of the package is being continuously monitored by central and state governments. New Delhi: The government on Monday said more than 32 crore people have received Rs 29,352 crore financial assistance under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month to protect them from the impact of 21-day nationwide lockdown. As part of the Rs 1.70 lakh crore relief package, the government announced free foodgrains and cash doles to women and poor senior citizens and farmers to mitigate the hardships faced due to the lockdown. A finance ministry statement on Monday said the swift implementation of the package is being continuously monitored by central and state governments. The finance ministry, other ministries concerned, Cabinet Secretariat and PMO are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the relief measures reach the needy swiftly and in line with the intent of the lockdown, it said. "Fintech and digital technology have been employed for swift and efficient transfer to the beneficiary. Direct benefit transfer, i.e. transfer that ensures that the amount is directly credited into the account of the beneficiary, eliminates leakage and improves efficiency has been employed. This has also ensured credit to the beneficiarys account without the need for the beneficiary to physically go to the branch," it said. As of 13 April 2020, it said, 32.32 crore beneficiaries have been directly given cash support through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) amounting to Rs 29,352 crore under the package. "So far 20.11 lakh MT of food grains have been lifted by 31 States/UTs out of 40 lakh MT for April. About 2.65 lakh MT has been distributed by 16 states/UTs to 5.29 crore beneficiaries covered by 1.19 crore ration cards as April 2020 entitlement. 3985 MT of pulses have also been dispatched to various states/UTs," it said. With regard to free cooking gas cylinder, it said, total 1.39 crore cylinders have been booked under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) so far and 97.8 lakh free refills have already been delivered to beneficiaries. Of the total disbursement, it said, Rs 14,946 crore has gone towards payment of the first instalment of PM-KISAN. Under the scheme, nearly 7.47 crore out of the 8 crore identified beneficiaries got Rs 2,000 directly in their accounts. As many as 19.86 crore women Jan Dhan account holders received Rs 500 each in their account. The total disbursement under the head was Rs 9,930 crore as on April 13, it said. The National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) disbursed about Rs 1,400 crore to about 2.82 crore old age persons, widow and differently-abled persons, the ministry added. Each beneficiary received an ex-gratia cash of Rs 500 under the scheme as the first instalment. Another instalment of Rs 500 each will be paid next month. As many as 2.17 crore building & construction workers received financial support from the Building and Construction Workers Fund managed by state governments. Under this, Rs 3,071 crore were given to beneficiaries. It further said free insurance cover of Rs 50 lakh for health workers in government hospitals and healthcare centres has been operationalised by New India Assurance covering 22.12 lakh health workers. Increased rate for workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has been notified effective April 1, it said. "In the current financial year, 19.56 lakh persons man-days of work generated. Further, Rs 7,100 crore released to states to liquidate pending dues of both wage and material," it said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 12:24 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1814bc 1 Business Indonesia,Bulog,rice,sugar,imports,Vietnam,India,lockdown,COVID-19 Free The State Logistics Agency (Bulog), the government institution tasked with securing national staple food stocks, is facing trouble importing rice, sugar and buffalo meat, as producing countries have restricted exports in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bulog, therefore, was planning to procure as much rice as possible from local farmers to ensure supplies during the outbreak as Vietnam, from which the agency occasionally imports hundreds of thousand tons of rice, had limited exports, said the agencys head, Budi Buwas Waseso. Vietnam, the worlds third-largest rice exporter, has capped rice export volumes at 800,000 tons for the April-May period to ensure enough supplies for domestic use. India, another top rice exporter, has restricted its rice exports for the same reason. With the COVID-19 outbreak, we expect that we must have maximum stocks, Buwas said during an online hearing with House of Representatives Commission IV in Jakarta on Thursday. We used to import from Thailand and Vietnam; now they have put restrictions on their exports. Thus, we have to maximize our domestic procurement. The countrys current rice stocks are estimated to exceed consumption until the end of May by 8.3 million tons, according to data from the Agriculture Ministry. Bulog, in addition, plans to procure 950,000 tons of rice from local farmers for this years stocks. With Ramadan approaching and no end in sight to the COVID-19 outbreak, Bulog is anticipating a surge in demand for other staple ingredients, such as sugar. But disrupted logistics are hampering the agencys efforts to ensure enough supplies. Sugar has been in short supply since the January, as reflected in rising prices. The average price of sugar in Jakarta rose by 20.62 percent to Rp 15,583 (96 US cents) per kilogram from February to March, according to data released on April 1 by Statistics Indonesia (BPS). To ensure enough supplies, the Trade Ministry gave Bulog a permit on Wednesday to import 50,000 tons of sugar. However, the producing countries, such as Australia, India and Thailand, were in lockdown. The current situation is difficult because sugar producing countries are under lockdown and container ships are not operating as usual, said Buwas, who has served as the agencys head since 2018. In January, Bulog also requested a permit from the ministry to import buffalo meat from India, but by the time the ministry granted the permit, India, a top exporter of buffalo meat, had put the country in a state of lockdown. As of Thursday, Bulog has 113 tons of buffalo meat, according to data from the agency. It was difficult because the permit came late, said Buwas. We initially planned to import the meat from Malaysia, which also bought from India earlier, but failed because they were also under a lockdown already. I am reminding the government to facilitate Bulog in obtaining the import permits, both for sugar and other commodities in short supply that the public needs, Suhardi Duka, a Democratic Party politician from West Sumatera, said during the same online hearing on Thursday. Love, The Other Dirty Four-Letter Word: a riveting story that shares Darryl McClouds hopeless desire for love that leads him to be caught in an intricate web of unforeseen gimmicks. Love, The Other Dirty Four-Letter Word is the creation of published author Kelly Alex, a loving family man and a dedicated writer from Los Angeles. Alex shares, Darryl McCloud had been unlucky in love meeting the worst kind of females. When he did meet one that had her head on straight, things didnt work out. That left him fed up with the chase. Enter Jennifer Parker, the sister of his best friend Jasons girlfriend Rebecca. Jennifer was just returning home from college and still reeling from having her heart broken by her first real love. After a rocky beginning and an unexpected encounter, they became friends. Darryl found himself in love, but Jennifer was adamant about not wanting to get into a relationship, though at times her actions said otherwise. With his feelings growing every day, Darryl picks Jennifers birthday party in July to make a move fearing he was entering the just friends zone. It backfires and he was asked to leave. Darryl goes into a mood swinging depression that threatens his job status and sanity. Jennifer regrets overreacting and wishes she had the chance to do it all over again. While out of town for the Fourth of July, she decides to come clean about her feelings for him when she gets back. Upon returning home, she pays an unannounced visit to his house only to find Darryl with another female. Later, Darryl hears something from Jason that has him pay an unannounced visit only to see her with another man. Both instances were not what they appeared to be. Will these two ever get together and have the conversation that reveals all? Love was in the air. Darryls friends, widowed father, and born-again Christian younger brother all found unexpected love. Darryls take on love is, Its a dirty four-letter word, the other dirty four-letter word. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Kelly Alexs new book follows the unrequited feelings of a man that yields a twisted worldview of love and makes his life blossom with intrigue. Readers will surely be entertained and relate to the protagonists gauche yet striking personality that gains the right person that fits his character and matches his passion. View the synopsis of Love, The Other Dirty Four-Letter Word on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Love, The Other Dirty Four-Letter Word at traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Love, The Other Dirty Four-Letter Word, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. French midfielder Paul Pogba revealed that, after leaving Manchester United in 2012, his mother was confident of him returning to the club. Pogba came through the youth ranks at Old Trafford while Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge but after only making a handful of appearances for the first team in 2011/12 he left for Juventus in the summer. The 27-year-old said that his brother advised him to leave United and go somewhere else to showcase his skills. "My brother, the United fan, told me he was really angry - even more than me - when I didn't play. He told me: 'No, go. You can't play in this team. If they don't want you here, go somewhere else. They will see.'" Pogba told the Official Manchester United Podcast. "My mother always told me: 'You will go somewhere but come back.' She always said this. I was like: 'We will see' but you know mothers and the things she said: 'You will come back here, don't worry' and that was just after. She said, 'You will come back to Manchester, don't worry', and I did," he added. He re-joined United in 2016 from Juventus when Jose Mourinho was the manager as he saw it as an opportunity to finish what he had started. "Yeah, when I came back, I was really happy. I left it and didn't finish. I started something but I didn't finish, I just went somewhere else," the midfielder said. "To finish it. Obviously, coming back where I started was for me, why I was really happy. Now I'm ready to come as a confirmed player not a youth player," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi, April 13 : The Delhi Congress has demanded special emergency allowance for frontline corona warriors including doctors, nurses, para medical staff, sanitation workers, police personnel, Corona positive patients and other patients who are fighting against Coronavirus. In a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi Congress President Anil Chaudhary wrote that the party is with the government in the fight against the deadly virus but highlighted the shortcomings. "In Lok Nayak Hospital, nurses who were asked to quarantine themselves after treating COVID-19 patients have been provided accommodation in the same building that houses both infected patients as well as those displaying symptoms. But instead of offering single rooms with attached bathrooms to the nurses, who have all been in close contact with Covid-19 patients, the hospital has asked two nurses to share a room," the Congress alleged. "Doctors and nurses are assaulted and misbehaved in Vishnu Staff Nurse of Action Balaji Hospital by Delhi Police," Chaudhary added. The state unit of the Congress alleged that Coronavirus patients are not being treated effectively due to the lack of facilities and testing kits. Other patients are facing difficulty to have treatment of their diseases. PPE kits are not available to all the doctors and nurses who are in immediate contact with the Coronavirus patients. "The nurses should be given proper accommodation; for instance, stay in hotels or one separate room with attached bathroom and that too near the hospital. In this regard, Delhi Government Hospitals and their Federations have been continuously demanding for the accommodation in Hotels nearby to their hospitals but nothing has been done. Thus the nurses should be provided good quality accommodation like in Hotels with food along with adequate security on the line of Doctors so that they may live there and can quarantine themselves away from their family members", he said. The party demanded security for doctors and Nurses and explained the problems of Corona positive patients and said, "The Coronavirus positive people are kept in bad conditions and are not treated properly, even left without attendants, they are also not getting proper care and treatment, like Doctors and attendants are not visiting them". "The Corona positive patients and those who have been quarantined should be provided counselling services to prepare them psychologically to undergo treatment or quarantine." The party alleged that there are less than 100 ventilators in the hospitals which are designated for COVID-19 treatment by Delhi Government. This number is very less in the ratio of surging of Coronavirus cases in Delhi and for god's sake if, the virus spreads at the Community Level, the situation may go out of control, rendering thousands of people to suffer. The ventilators in large numbers should be purchased immediately and made available for effective treatment, the party said. The party demanded proper treatment to patients other than corona positive patients and alleged that there are reports that the patients with serious conditions have been waiting outside Delhi Government's GTB at East Delhi, Ambedkar Hospital at Rohini and GB Pant Hospital. The party slammed the Chief Minister for not giving time to the Congress to highlight the issues and said even the LG did not meet them. Joseph Mbah Ndam archives The opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF, party has said Hon. Joseph Njang Mbah Ndam died of natural causes, far from rumours that he might have been poisoned or that he was killed by armed separatists. Denis Nkemlemo, SDF National Communication Secretary said Mbah Ndam did not show signs of illness before his demise in the early hours of Monday, April 13, 2020 in Yaounde. Hear Nkemlemo: "In the midst of pain, permit me to clarify that the Right Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam was looking very strong yesterday and drove his own car around yesterday without the service of his driver. "It was late in the night that he complained of not feeling fine and walked himself unassisted to his car that took him to the hospital. And as he was being examined by his doctor, he died. "This is to clear the air on the argument that Amba killed him. In fact, he did not even prepare anybody psychologically, including his immediate family, for his sudden death. May his soul rest in peace." Bio-data: Hon. Joseph Njang Mbah Ndam According to Nkemlemo, the Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam was born on February 28, 1955 in Batibo where he attended his primary school, then went to Government Grammar School Mamfe. He then went to the then University of Yaounde where he ended with a Doctorat de troisieme cycle in Private law. He joined the Cameroon Bar Association in 1990 as a full Advocate. In 1990 he joined the Social Democratic Front at its creation and was one of the most formidable pillars of the Party as an ideologue, a strategist and inspirational figure. He led the college of lawyers who are the Party's Legal Advisers until his demise. He has been a member of the Party's National Executive Committee (NEC), National Advisory Council (NAC) and has led two NEC teams for the reorganization of Party structures in the North West and in the South West where he died still maintaining the latter position. The Hon. Mbah Ndam joined the Cameroon Parliament in 1997 and seeing his prowess was immediately chosen as the SDF Parliamentary Group Leader. Under this position as SDF Chief Whip, he led the Party in pushing for numerous reforms on the electoral code and the fight against corruption. In this regard, it was with his impetus as SDF Group Leader that they pushed for the arrest and imprisonment of Ministers for corruption, starting with the famous Mounchipou Gate. He held this post until 2007 when he left it to become Deputy Speaker in the same institution, a post he held till 2020, this year. For his 23 years in Parliament, he was a member of the Constitutional Laws Committee. He was also member of the CEMAC Parliament, Member of the Commonwealth Parliament, Member of the Pan African Parliament, that he was very instrumental in its creation. Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam was also a Human Rights Advocate. He was equally a Board member of the CCC and NFC banks. Cameroon loses a real Statesman. Johann Ruperts R1-billion SME fund will start to give money to businesses from Tuesday, Business Partners MD Ben Bierman said. Business Partners is administering the R1-billion fund, called the Sukuma Relief Programme, on behalf of the Rupert family and Remgro. The fund was created to offer grants and loans to small and medium enterprises which are negatively impacted by COVID-19. For formal sole proprietors, the fund offers a grant of R25,000 per qualifying business to be used to pay for overheads. Closed corporations, companies, and trusts can apply for financial aid in the form of an unsecured interest-bearing loan of between R250,000 and R1 million. These loans are also coupled with a non-repayable grant of R25,000 per qualifying business. R2.4 billion in applications On 3 April, Business Partners launched an application website for SMEs which are impacted by the coronavirus and subsequent lockdown. The response was overwhelming. The fund received applications totalling R2.4 billion, far exceeding the funds R1 billion in capital. The application process was closed on 6 April and Business Partners are currently processing all valid applications. Applicants should hear back from Business Partners about their application over the next 5 to 7 working days. Bierman told CNBC Africa that the first businesses will start to receive money from the Sukuma fund from Tuesday. More money may be raised The fact that applications exceeded the available capital by R1.4 billion means that a lot of businesses will not receive funding. Bierman said the large number of applications show there is an urgent need from SMEs for assistance. He hopes that other initiatives in South Africa will be able to cater to the needs of SMEs, in addition to the Sukuma programme. Bierman said Business Partners will also see if they can raise additional capital for the Sukuma initiative. We will be making calls and requests to other benefactors to donate additional capital to the fund, he said. We should have all of our documentation and processes ready over the Easter weekend, and maybe in the early part of next week we will be successful in raising additional capital. He said certain companies and individuals have expressed an interest, but he said additional funding is not confirmed as yet. It would therefore be irresponsible to accept new applications before they receive clarity on additional capital from donors. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 18:06:31|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close HANOI, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam earned 836 million U.S. dollars from exporting fruits and vegetables in the first quarter of this year, posting a year-on-year decline of 10.9 percent, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The main products witnessing the decline included dragon fruit, banana, longan, watermelon, durian and shiitake, Vietnam News Agency quoted the ministry as reporting on Monday. During the period, China remained Vietnam's top fruit and vegetable export market with turnovers of over 300 million U.S. dollars. Vietnam made total fruit and vegetable export turnovers of 3.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, down 1.1 percent from the previous year, according to the countrys General Statistics Office. After His Rs. 25 Crores Donation, Akshay Kumar Contributes Additional Rs. 3 Crores To BMC For Making PPEs The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has urged the general public to disregard messages and videos being circulated in the social media of alleged recruitment by its acting Director-General, Mary Uduk. The commissions Head, Corporate Communications, Efe Ebelo, said this in a statement on Monday, obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos. Ms Ebelo said the messages and video being circulated were false and called on the general public to disregard them. The commissions attention has been drawn to some messages and a video being circulated in the social media; wherein the commission is alleged to have carried out a recruitment exercise where 811 persons were employed, all from Anambra with one from Kano State. The messages parade the person shown in the video as Ms Mary Uduk, the acting-director general of the commission. READ ALSO: The commission wishes to inform the general public that the person shown in the video is not the acting director-general of SEC, and no such recruitment exercise was conducted. For the avoidance of any doubt, since the acting director general assumed office, the commission has not carried out any recruitment exercise. The general public is therefore advised to disregard the messages and video being circulated as they are false, Ms Ebelo stated. (NAN) President Donald Trump said he has the power to order schools to remain shut down to help contain the coronavirusbut emphasized hed rather not override a governors decision. Trump made the comments about his authority during his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Friday, against the backdrop of a nationwide shutdown of school buildings and at least 19 states and three U.S. territories having either ordered or recommended that school buildings stay closed for the rest of the academic year . But as school closures approach their scheduled end dates in some states, there could be pressure on governors, state education officials, and local education leaders to reopen in places without large numbers of coronavirus cases. If such a scenario arises, would Trump have the power he says he does? Lets review the facts and some legal analysis of the situation. At Trumps briefing Friday, a reporter asked the president about a report that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is considering reopening schools in May. Schools in the state have closed their doors after DeSantis administration recommended that they shut down through May 1. But as the the Tampa Bay Times reported on Thursday , DeSantis seems open to the possibility that students may yet return to schools. If its safe, we want kids to be in school, DeSantis told the paper. "... Even if its for a couple of weeks, we think there would be value in that. In response, Trump first said he had a lot of faith in DeSantis to make the right decision. He made it clear that he would prefer not to override a governors decision to reopen schools due to constitutional considerations, saying, I like to allow governors to make decisions without overruling them. However, he added, If I disagreed, I would overrule a governor. And I have that right to do it. (Trump has been a vocal supporter of DeSantis, dating back to his 2018 gubernatorial campaign.) Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded to a follow-up question about the wisdom of reopening schools by saying that if there are populations where the virus is present, And you allow children to gather together, they will likely get infected. Then he says theyll likely bring the infection home. Fauci said this applies to congregations of people such as in classrooms. However, researchers at University College London recently stated that school closures have little impact on the spread of the coronavirus . Cannot Coerce the States Education Week contributing writer Mark Walsh explored the question of federal and state authority over school closures late last month. James G. Hodge Jr., a professor of public health law and ethics at Arizona State University, said the following about the federal governments power in this situation: From a federalism perspective, the feds could not tell the states they must shut down their schools, said Hodge ... But he notes that the Trump administration is proceeding in some different ways in various areas involving expanded federal power. We cant quite tell how this may go, Hodge said. In an April 1 Q&A with legal analysts, the Associated Press considered this question, Does the president have the authority to override state and local orders? and provided this answer: No. Under our constitutional system, states have the power and responsibility for maintaining public order and safety. As weve seen since the outbreak began, decisions about limiting social interactions by ordering people to shelter in place, closing businesses and shutting schools are being made by governors and local officials. Those same officials will make the call about when to ease up. Trumps comments are just advisory, said John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation. See: Education Weeks Map of Coronavirus and School Closures In a March 24 Lawfare analysis of a presidents power to countermand state coronavirus policies , University of Texas School of Law Professor Bobby Chesney wrote that, The federal government cannot commandeer the machinery of the state governments (or, by extension, of local governments). That is, the federal government cannot coerce the states into taking actions to suit federal policy preference. The federal government does have the power to withhold money from states under certain circumstances. Would a Trump administration withhold emergency coronavirus funding for a states schools if it disagreed with the governor about reopening schools, in order to pressure the state into the desired outcome? That seems like an extreme scenario. Later in the press conference, in response to a question about reopening the economy and whether states ultimately had the power to decide for themselves when to end stay-at-home orders and let businesses resume normal operations, Trump gave a similar reply. The states can do things if they want. I can override them if I want, Trump said. " ... I would rather have the states do it. Photo: President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing with the coronavirus task force, in the Brady press briefing room at the White House, last month. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Follow us on Twitter @PoliticsK12 . And follow the Politics K-12 reporters @EvieBlad @Daarel and @AndrewUjifusa . U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer poses during an interview with Agence France-Presse at the Supreme Court in Washington, on May 17, 2012. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images) Justice Breyer Encourages New Yorkers to Complete Census in Rare PSA Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has appeared in a rare public service announcement to encourage New Yorkers to fill out the 2020 Census. In a brief video released by NYC Census 2020 on April 13, Breyer urged people to take the questionnaires seriously, saying the information is vital to the country. Today, I want to encourage you to fill out your census forms, the 81-year-old justice said in the video. How many representatives your state has in Congress depends on the answers to those questions. THIS JUST IN: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer releases rare PSA to encourage New Yorkers to complete the #2020Census. His message underscores why the census is key to New York Citys rebuilding after #COVID19! #GetCountedNYC pic.twitter.com/hieSi3OfH8 Julie Menin (@JulieMenin) April 13, 2020 The U.S. Constitution mandates a census every 10 years. The data collected helps determine congressional representation, the drawing of electoral districts, and the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funds. During the video, Breyer emphasized how important the census was to New Yorkers who are at the U.S. epicenter of the CCP virus pandemic, which has resulted in lockdowns that have devastated New York Citys economy. More than 10,000 deaths in the state have been attributed to the virus. New York has been going through a very difficult time with coronavirus, just terrible, he said. The amount of health care aid, of hospital aid, of emergency aid, of school aid, for New York and every other state depends upon the answers to your questionnaires. Last year, the Trump administration pushed to add a question to the census form about citizenship, arguing that it was needed to gather data to help enforce the Voting Rights Act. That sparked a court battle that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which blocked the question from being added to the census in a 54 ruling in June last year. In response to the current public health emergency, Supreme Court justices have retreated from public view and are mainly working from home, after the court was closed to the public last month. In recent days, Breyer has appeared publicly while working from home in a video conference chat with students last week. His interview with The Wall Street Journal about life amid the pandemic was published earlier this month. U.S. residents have until Aug. 14 to complete the questionnaire online, by phone, or by mail. A Federal Court in Western Kentucky has put down a temporary restraining order against the mayor of Louisville, Ky., from banning drive-in church services at a Louisville church. The order against Mayor Greg Fischer and the city of Louisville enjoined Louisville "from enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services" at On Fire Christian Center in Louisville. Earlier Department Of Justice Director of Communications Kerri Kupec tweeted, While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly (and) not single out religious (organizations). She also said, "During this sacred week for many Americans, AG Barr is monitoring govt regulation of religious services. While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly & not single out religious orgs. Expect action from DOJ next week!" In Chattanooga, Mayor Andy Berke had a broad order that extended to a ban on church drive-in services. Celebration Church was among those that had invited parisioners to come to the church in their cars and listen to the service there. That had to be canceled. Actor Varun Dhawan on Monday expressed gratitude towards police personnel who are working tirelessly during the COVID-19 lockdown. The actor took to his social media to post an old picture in which he is seen shaking hands and exchanging smiles with a police officer. He posted the picture on his Instagram stories with an emoji of folded hands. Dhawan received backlash from netizens for holding the police officer's hand and violating social distancing to which he replied by saying that the picture was clicked two months back. Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus cases in the country has reached 9,152 including 7,987 active cases, 856 cured/discharged/migrated and 308 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. A state trooper injured during a shoot-out north of Klamath Falls on Friday is "recovering and doing well," according to Oregon State Police. According to the Klamath County Disrict Attorney's office, the incident began with reports of a domestic disturbance on Friday evening. An armed man took a 6-year-old child and fled from deputies before running over a spike strip on Wocus Road, the DA's office said. The man reportedly emerged from his vehicle with an AK-47 style rifle and opened fire at officers. OSP Trooper Kameron Gordon was hit in the ensuing gunfire before officers shot and killed the suspect. The child was reportedly unhurt in the exchange. "The Oregon State Police would like to thank the public for the outpouring of concern for our Trooper, injured by gunfire Friday afternoon," the agency said. Gordon is now recovering and seems to be doing well, OSP said. "His family including his #OSPFamily is looking forward to his speedy recovery and keeping him close to our hearts," the agency continued. "We would like to express our sincere appreciate to his colleagues, partner agencies and health care workers in Klamath Falls that contributed to his treatment." The other officers involved in Friday's shooting have been placed on leave, the DA's office said standard operating procedure for an officer-involved shooting. Once a full investigation is complete, the case will likely go to a grand jury to determine whether the officers were justified in shooting and killing the suspect. Rio De Janeiro, April 13 : The iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil's Rio De Janeiro lit up to honour the healthcare staff working in hospitals across the country amid the coronavirus pandemic. With churches closed due to the restrictions on the movement of people imposed by the local authorities to contain the spread of the virus, Archbishop Orani Tempesta on Sunday carried out an Easter ceremony alone at the foot of the statue, some 709 metres above sea level, reports Efe news. Flags from countries affected by the coronavirus pandemic, including China, the US, Spain, Italy and Brazil, were projected onto the 38-meter-high Christ the Redeemer. Messages written by children that read "Everything will be alright" were also displayed. At the end, an image was projected on the statue that "dressed" the Christ in a doctor's coat, a tribute to the healthcare staff working in hospitals and risking their own lives at the forefront of the fight against the COVID-19. Words such "Thanks" and "Hope" written in several languages were displayed on the statue along with "Stay home for us, for everyone. We are in this together". A few hours before the ceremony in Corcovado, Father Omar Raposo, rector at the Christ the Redeemer Sanctuary, blessed the people of Rio de Janeiro from a helicopter that flew over the city for an hour. According to the latest official figures released on Sunday, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country stood at 22,169 with 1,223 fatalities. Rio de Janeiro is one of the most affected with 2,855 infections with 170 deaths so far. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Two deadly crashes that left its 737 Max airliner fleet grounded. An aborted mission of its new spacecraft. Problems with a tanker it makes for the Air Force, a depressed stock price and the abrupt dismissal of its chief executive. Boeing faced serious problems largely of its own making long before the coronavirus crisis wounded the U.S. economy and led Congress to put hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate aid on the table. But that has not kept the nations largest aerospace company from putting its hand out. If the Trump administration obliges, the company whose prospects have been further clouded by the virus-induced travails of the airline industry could become one of the top recipients of federal aid in the most sweeping economic program in American history. That could give a new chance to overcome its recent struggles, even as businesses without such flaws are fighting for assistance to survive. Boeing is now engaged in a delicate dance with an administration that wants to keep the American industrial base strong but aims to avoid charges of handing out corporate welfare. Only weeks ago, the company signalled a reluctance to accept the conditions that might come with aid, including the possibility of handing over an ownership stake to the government or limiting layoffs. But it is still trying to work out a deal. Boeing, the nations largest aerospace company and its second-largest military contractor, is considering seeking assistance from as many as three of the federal programs established by the $2 trillion (U.S.) coronavirus relief package signed into law last month by Trump. After initially saying it had plenty of options and would not accept taxpayer help if it came with certain strings attached, the company is now working closely with the administration to see if it can work out a deal. Inquiries into the crashes of the 737 Max led to revelations of corner-cutting and distrust, leaving Boeing mired in the worst crisis of its history. In December, the company dismissed Dennis A. Muilenburg as chief executive and later replaced him with David Calhoun, who continues to grapple with a wide array of operational and financial problems not least the drying up of demand from the airline industry for new jets in a period when air travel has been severely depressed. Yet even its critics acknowledge that Boeing is important to the nations security and economy, and that if its problems deepen, they could have wide-reaching ripple effects. Boeing employs more than 150,000 people in the United States, while supporting more than 1 million additional workers through a supply chain that includes thousands of businesses. Those operations span the country, giving Boeing clout in the communities and the Capitol Hill offices of many influential lawmakers, as well as in the White House. Making sure that Boeing is strong again is very, very powerful and very important, and well do whatever is necessary to do, Trump said on Friday at a briefing on the governments coronavirus response. He noted that the company has not asked for aid yet, but I think they probably will. Yet as negotiations over the stimulus heated up late last month with Boeing officials working closely with the White House and key members of Congress to communicate the companys needs and preferences Calhoun gave an interview that provided fodder to critics, left supporters puzzled and created confusion among government officials involved in the negotiations. Calhoun suggested in an interview with the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo last month that Boeing would not accept taxpayer money if it meant giving the government a stake in the company, a condition that was being debated at the time as part of the federal bailout legislation working its way through Congress. The final legislation included conditions for some of the aid, including the possibility of the government taking an equity stake and limits on layoffs and stock buybacks. I dont have a need for an equity stake, Calhoun said in the interview. If they force it, we just look at all the other options, and weve got plenty of them. He added, If they attach too many things to it, of course you take a different course. The comments prompted a flurry of phone calls from members of Congress to Boeing executives and lobbyists, according to people familiar with the exchanges. Was Calhoun saying that the company didnt want to be included in the bailout, or that its internal prognosis was better than the companys debt-laden balance sheet suggested? The responses from the companys lobbyists to lawmakers were emphatic, if at odds with Calhouns pronouncement: Yes, Boeing needed the federal money, and no, it was not in better shape than it looked. Internally, Calhouns colleagues informed him that he had sent the wrong message, according to two people familiar with the matter. Three days after Calhouns interview, Trump signed the bailout bill. It included several programs to be administered by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, for which Boeing could be eligible. The bill authorized the Federal Reserve to make credit available to companies, and it allowed the government to make direct loans to big companies through a program to be administered by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The legislation specifically allotted $17 billion for loans and loan guarantees to businesses critical to maintaining national security a pot of money believed to be intended to benefit primarily Boeing. Yet on the day Trump signed the bill, Mnuchin suggested in an appearance of his own on Fox Business that he was still operating under the premise that Boeing was not looking for federal help. Boeing has said that they have no intention of using the program, he told Bartiromo, adding: I appreciate the fact that Boeing is saying they can operate on their own. Thats what we want them to do. Mnuchin and the Treasury Department will have wide latitude over the assistance funds, and the agency is currently drafting guidelines for doling out the money a process that Boeing is closely monitoring. Hours after Mnuchins interview, Greg Smith, Boeings chief financial officer, called him to try to clarify Calhouns comments. Smith explained that the company was just keeping its options open and studying the strings attached to each pool of money. While some Boeing allies cringed at Calhouns Fox Business interview, others viewed the defiant stance as shrewd. The companys stock, which has plunged this year, briefly ticked upward as investors seemed buoyed by the idea that its value would not be diluted by possible government ownership. Within the company, there was a sense that it might prove useful to take an initial hard line, if only as a negotiating tactic to signal that the company had leverage and was not going to roll over. In a statement, Gordon Johndroe, a Boeing spokesman, said that assistance from the government would not benefit the company alone, but would also help prop up companies in its supplier network. We are continuing to pay our suppliers, he said, adding that 70 cents of every dollar we take in goes directly to maintain the supply chain. Boeing is devoting considerable resources to analyzing and shaping the government assistance programs, as well as avenues for raising money from Wall Street. It retained a pair of New York investment banks Lazard and Evercore to advise on its options, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Smith has been consulting Mnuchin on how the conditions attached to the bailout money will affect the company. Boeings lobbyists have been regularly consulting with Treasury staff members. In addition to the potential equity to be provided to the government in exchange for assistance, people familiar with the companys lobbying effort say it is monitoring the maximum amounts of financing available under the various programs and whether anything in the guidelines would prevent it from seeking assistance from multiple programs at once. For its defence contracting business, Boeing could seek loans from the $17 billion pool for national security companies. And for its commercial airplane manufacturing business, it could seek credit from the Federal Reserve, or direct loans or loan guarantees from the more general program administered by the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department has yet to issue guidelines for the large company loans. It did issue late last month preliminary guidance for the national security company loans, indicating that in order to borrow from that $17 billion pool, companies would be required to identify equity interest that the government could take in the company. The companies borrowing from that pool would also be required to maintain their employment levels to the extent practicable through September, according to the legislation and subsequent guidance from Treasury. And they would face limits on compensation increases for executives, along with prohibitions on using the loans to buy back stock. But details on how those restrictions will be applied are still being hammered out. The Treasury Department indicated last week that it was developing more specific guidance and application materials regarding the eligibility, mechanics and timing of the national security loans. Once the conditions of the various loan programs become clear, Boeing will balance them against its need for financial help to decide which of the options makes the most sense, according to the people familiar with the companys lobbying effort. Boeing is loath to agree to any restrictions on cutting employment, since the aerospace industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis and the company has no idea what levels of aircraft production will make sense in one month, let alone in one year. Trump on Friday seemed sympathetic to Boeings plight. He said a determination hasnt been made about whether Boeing or other companies could be penalized for laying off workers after accepting federal assistance. But he suggested that he was considering the prospect of compelling the company to keep people that they absolutely dont need. They do have to run a company, the president said. You know this isnt a great time to sell airplanes; lets not kid ourselves. Boeing is in fact considering involuntary layoffs, people familiar with its deliberations said. It has suspended production at some factories amid concerns about the spread of the virus and has already begun offering buyout packages to employees. The moves come despite the release this month of $882 million in payments that the U.S. Air Force had been withholding from Boeing because of technical problems with a tanker jet the company had sold to the government. On the day Trump signed the stimulus bill, he spoke by phone with Calhoun, who offered to use the Boeing Dreamlifter, an enlarged 747, to ferry medical supplies to states in need, according to four people briefed on the call. Calhoun also mentioned that Smith and Mnuchin were in close touch over the stimulus terms, one of the people said. Later that evening, Trump held up a photo of the Dreamlifter at his coronavirus news briefing. Theyre letting us use that for the distribution of product all over the country, Trump said. Each plane can carry 63,000 pounds of cargo per flight. Thats a lot of cargo. The aircraft has not yet made any humanitarian flights. Boeing says it expects to deploy the plane in the next couple of weeks. Read more about: The death marks the first coronavirus fatality from the aircraft carrier which reportedly has 900 positive cases. A United States Navy sailor died on Monday after contracting the coronavirus, marking the first death of a sailor assigned to the coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Late last month, the captain of the aircraft carrier, in a blunt letter, called on Navy leadership for stronger measures to save the lives of his sailors and stop the spread of the coronavirus aboard the huge ship. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset our sailors, Captain Brett Crozier said in the letter. Croziers career began in 1992 and has seen him serve around the globe [Mass Communication Specialist 2rd Class Jordan Kirk Johnson/US Navy handout via Reuters] US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who removed Crozier from his post earlier this month, resigned on April 7 after coming under fire for his handling of the crisis aboard the aircraft carrier. So far, about 585 sailors aboard the nuclear-powered carrier have tested positive for the coronavirus. About 4,000 sailors have been moved from the carrier to facilities in Guam, where the ship has been docked after the number of cases started increasing. The Navy, this week, is expected to release the results of an investigation into the events surrounding the letter and officials have not ruled out reinstating Crozier, who is seen as a hero by the ships crew, as captain of the carrier. The sailor, who had been admitted to an intensive care unit in Guam last week, died from coronavirus-related complications, the Navy said in a statement. This marks the first death of a sailor in the Navy, which so far has had almost 900 sailors test positive for the virus. The sailor is also the first active-duty US service member to die from the virus. A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters News Agency that four additional sailors from the carrier had been taken to hospital to be monitored. The officials said the sailors were in stable condition. Al Jazeera was unable to verify the claims. Modlys resignation highlighted the US militarys struggle to meet increasingly competing priorities: maintaining readiness for conflict and safeguarding service members as the virus spreads globally. The episode deepened upheaval in Navy leadership. The Navys last secretary was fired in November over his handling of the case of a Navy SEAL convicted of battlefield misconduct. The Navy SEAL had won the support of President Donald Trump. New Delhi, April 13 : Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the release of detainees declared foreigners and lodged in detention centres in Assam for two years. A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices L. Nageswara Rao and M.M. Shantanagoudar, citing the apex court's May 10, 2019 order, reduced the personal bond from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5,000 and reduced the minimum period under detention from three years to two years. "The prisoners or detenues who have been under detention for two years shall be entitled to be released on the same terms and condition as those laid down... except that they shall not be required to furnish a bond in the sum of Rs 1 lakh. Instead they shall be required to furnish a bond in the sum of Rs 5, 000 with two sureties of the like sum of Indian citizens." The apex court order came on the intervention application filed by Justice for Liberty Initiative, a public charitable trust based in Assam, which sought release of detainees lodged in six Assam detention centres citing the outbreak of coronavirus. In May 2019, the apex court had said detainees who have spent more than three years in detention centres may be released upon furnishing a bond of Rs 1 lakh along with two sureties. Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, representing the Centre, vehemently argued that the release and transportation of the prisoners would itself result in transmission of coronavirus from prisons or detention centres to locations where the released prisoners have to reach. Advocate Shoeb Alam, representing an applicant, claimed these are only apprehensions, and contended the two-year period be dispensed with or further reduced due to this viral infection outbreak. Another advocate appearing in the matter cited the March 16 order of the apex court where it directed the authorities concerned to take steps to prevent jails from becoming breeding grounds for coronavirus infection. The court had asked the high powered committee to come with a framework to release prisoners on parole. At this, the court observed that it had not directed the states/Union Territories to compulsorily release the prisoners from their respective prisons. The purpose of the order was to ensure the states/Union Territories to assess the situation in their prisons having regard to the outbreak of the present pandemic in the country and release certain prisoners and for that purpose to determine the category of prisoners to be released. "No prisoner shall be released if he/she has suffered from coronavirus disease in communicable form hereafter. For this purpose, appropriate tests will be carried out... Transportation shall be done in full compliance of the Rules and Norms of social distancing. For instance, no transportation shall be allowed in excess of half or one fourth capacity of the bus...," said the top court. At a time a pandemic blankets the world, lockdowns and quarantining of people give the impression that societies are, for the most part, at a standstill. Normalcy especially when it was a stand-in for a smooth life feels like its been put on hold. Yet, that fundamental normalcy was whisked away from some groups of people by a new law in pre-pandemic times. Where people are now being asked not to go in to work for fear of spreading COVID-19, in Quebec, teachers, police officers, judges, prosecutors and others were told they couldnt hold public sector jobs if they wore so-called religious clothing or symbols. Last week, a battle to restore this normalcy faced a legal setback after the Supreme Court opted to maintain the ban on religious symbols while the constitutionality of the law enacting the ban is challenged separately. On April 9, the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and an individual plaintiff named Ichrak Nourel Hak a Universite de Montreal student training to become a teacher faced a brick wall in one of a two-pronged challenge they mounted of Quebecs Bill 21 that was passed into law in June 2019. We challenged the law the day after it was enacted. We said it was unconstitutional and we asked the court to declare it unconstitutional. We also asked the court to suspend the operation of the religious symbols ban. Those two things are handled separately by the courts, said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, equality program director at CCLA. This latest development is about that interim suspension of the ban, not the overall challenge to its constitutionality. A hearing on whether the law is unconstitutional, whether it violates fundamental rights to freedom of religion and rights of equality is scheduled later this year. Legal wheels turn slowly, but meanwhile affected people live in limbo. People have lost jobs, people have lost opportunities, Aviv said. After the Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal heard the groups plea to suspend the ban but denied the application, the group went to the Supreme Court. Last week, the highest court refused to hear the case. It gave no reason for this decision, which is apparently standard practice. We were looking for relief to try and help people in their everyday lives for things that are absolutely essential like being able to put food on the table and paybacks to loans and knowing whether you can in the interim at least continue in your profession, Aviv said. The law is being challenged in four separate lawsuits. Named An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, it forbids Quebecs public servants from wearing religious headwear and other symbols of faith including jewelry or accessories. Apart from its legal credibility, religious headwear is a problematic umbrella term that does not distinguish what is religious and what is cultural. Some men and women cover their heads with a turban because its a religious requirement. Others may do it because its a cultural practice. Some who have faith choose not to wear a turban at all. Same goes for headscarf-wearing women. Donning it may be a political choice, it may be an enforcement of the patriarchy, it may be a cultural norm, it may be a symbol of religious belief or it may be some combination of these factors. The scarf may be wrapped tightly around the face like a nuns veil, it could be lacy and hang loose or it could be just thrown casually on the head and draped across the shoulders. The law skirts these distinctions by defining religious symbols as those worn in connection with a religious conviction or belief or that are reasonably considered as referring to a religious affiliation. Reasonable to whom? And what is the criteria for deciding whether the persons act came from a religious affiliation or a cultural one? If I were a Hindu woman for whom modesty made it imperative that I cover my head, would my fact of being Hindu now turn my dupatta a long scarf into a religious symbol? When a law supposedly in honour of religious neutrality fudges the many aspects of why people choose to wear certain clothes, it explicitly classifies what it does not break down into the other and mows down everyone in its path with an oppressive round of rules. Those impacted are mostly women, mostly Muslim, many racialized, many immigrant. Otherwise, what is the difference in the visibility of ones face when its hidden behind a toque and a face mask (or a balaclava) versus a scarf and a veil? Only one. Suspicion. During the pandemic when so many neighbours are looking out for each other and were hearing so much about people coming together and all being in it together, its particularly troubling to think about a law whose purpose is to divide us, to separate people out on the basis of their belief system and whether their practice includes a particular symbol or not, Aviv said. Were very disappointed in the decision. But we are pressing forward. The main fight is yet to come. Read more about: U.S., China stepping up military messaging amid pandemic: analysts ROC Central News Agency 04/12/2020 07:30 PM Taipei, April 12 (CNA) Media visibility and direct messaging could be the motives behind the frequent appearances of Chinese and American military assets near Taiwan, especially as they are both struggling with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, according to analysts in Taiwan. Between January 23 and April 10, Chinese military aircraft were spotted at least six times flying near Taiwan's airspace, according to the records of Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) and military air movement tracker Aircraft Spots. On Sunday morning, Chinese aircraft carrier the Liaoning passed the Miyako Strait south of Japan and was about to sail into waters east of Taiwan on its way to the South China Sea. Meanwhile, since March 25, U.S. military aircraft and vessels have been seen at least nine times near Taiwan. Lin Ying-yu (), an assistant professor at National Chung Cheng University's Institute of Strategic and International Affairs, told CNA on Saturday that the presence of American and Chinese military assets in the area was an indication of increased propaganda efforts by both countries and more frequent flexing of their muscles to boost morale at home, as they have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. He noted that a Chinese military helicopter crashed in Hong Kong on March 30, less than a month after a military plane crashed in China, which he said raised the question of whether the capabilities of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) had been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. In contrast, Taiwan has been gaining international visibility as a result of its relatively successful COVID-19 control measures and donations of personal protective equipment to other countries, Lin said. This may have forced Beijing to think about some action to warn Taiwan against "taking advantage of the pandemic" to move toward independence, he said. Su Tzu-yun (), senior analyst at the Institute of National Defense and Security Research, said China has expanded its maritime and air presence in the Indo-Pacific region through actions such as aiming missiles at U.S. military facilities in the region and militarizing civilian fishing boats to challenge government vessels from Taiwan and Japan. The U.S. has responded by increasing the presence of its military aircraft and warships in the region, Su said. He said it is worth noting that the U.S. has been responding more frequently and readily to the PLA's movements in the area and has been engaging in "military public diplomacy" via social media to convey its message directly to the public. However, Chieh Chung (), research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight, thinks that that an accidental military encounter between the two giants is unlikely. They both seem to be deliberately staggering their military maneuvers in the region, Chieh said. They follow rules agreed upon, and communications between their high-level military officials and decision-makers seemed unimpeded somehow, he said. "In light of those factors, while there is a possibility of such a scenario, it is within a controllable level," Chieh said. (By Chen Yun-yu and Emerson Lim) Enditem/pc NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Israel's unacknowledged military campaign against Iranian targets in Syria could provide a model for the United States as it struggles to contain Tehran's network of armed proxies across the Middle East, according to a new report. The undeclared "gray zone" campaign Israel has conducted in Syria in recent years, consisting of more than 200 airstrikes on Iranian-affiliated targets, has limited Iran's military power without triggering a significant escalation, Middle East experts at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank, say in an advance version of a report to be released this week. A similar approach, the report asserts, would be more effective than the current U.S. strategy, which has alternated between avoiding kinetic action after Iranian attacks on U.S. and allied targets and launching highly publicized attacks on Iranian-linked targets, including a Jan. 3 drone strike that killed a senior military commander, Qasem Soleimani. "This is a strategy that can push Iran back, achieve some American objectives and dramatically reduce the chance of an all-out war," said Ilan Goldenberg, one of the report's authors who served as a Pentagon and State Department official during the Obama administration. The recommendations come as the Pentagon braces for additional attacks from Iranian-supported militias in Iraq, where the Trump administration's standoff with Iran has been the most starkly visible. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has overseen a "maximum pressure" campaign of punishing sanctions against Iran, which has battered the country's economy. When Iran began what U.S. officials have described as a series of attacks last spring, including the downing of an American drone, Trump initially took no known military steps other than a cyberattack targeting Iran's ability to target shipping vessels. Likewise, the administration decided against a military response when two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, were attacked in September 2019. Iran denied responsibility for that attack. That stance changed after a U.S. contractor was killed in a rocket attack in Iraq in late December. In response, Trump authorized strikes on targets in Iraq linked to Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia that U.S. officials blamed for the assault. After the strikes, which militia leaders said killed at least 25 of their men, militia members tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Several days later, a U.S. drone struck a car in Baghdad carrying Soleimani, who as head of Iran's Quds Force oversaw support for militia groups across the region. Iran responded to the general's death by firing missiles at U.S. facilities in Iraq, wounding more than 100 troops in the first ballistic missile attack on American forces since the 1990s. The changing response may reflect internal administration divisions over Iran, in which Pentagon leaders have argued against steps that could intensify the countries' military competition, while some officials at the State Department and White House have advocated more hawkish actions. A better strategy, the report authors argue, would be something akin to Israel's "between the wars" approach. Israeli jets began targeting Iranian targets in neighboring Syria after Iran started taking steps to solidify its military presence there in late 2016, setting up command centers and seeking to install advanced weapons such as precision guided munitions. The campaign slowly intensified as Israeli leaders gauged Iran's reaction, with more than 2,000 Israeli munitions dropped on Iranian targets in Syria in 2018, the report states. Key to the approach has been Israel's efforts to minimize Iranian casualties while refraining from taking official responsibility for the strikes, both part of an attempt to reduce pressure on Iranian leaders to respond with force. While the authors argue that the Israeli campaign has been successful, it has not led Iran to abandon its ally in Damascus. It has also had unintended results. In 2018, Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli jet; its crew ejected safely within Israeli territory. The same year, Syria shot down a Russian aircraft after an Israeli strike, leading to heightened Israeli-Russian tensions. In contrast, the Trump administration's initial decision not to launch a kinetic response to Iranian attacks in 2019 may have emboldened Iran's leaders. The administration's subsequent embrace of highly publicized strikes after the American contractor's death and its decision to target Soleimani resulted in a major escalation in U.S.-Iranian tensions, without halting militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Trump, meanwhile, has made repeated public threats against Iran. After the Soleimani strike, but before it was officially acknowledged by the U.S. government, Trump tweeted a picture of the American flag. Those facts, the report argues, have made it harder for Iranian or Shiite militia groups "to de-escalate while also putting the Iraqi government in the incredibly difficult position of being publicly stuck between the United States and Iran." "What the Israelis have demonstrated is that the military tool does not need to be taken entirely off the table," the report states. "The risk of every operation needs to be evaluated, but there is certainly some space for maneuvering between doing nearly nothing and killing one of Iran's most important military leaders." The authors acknowledge that some aspects of Israel's shadow campaign may not be possible for the United States. For example, the Israeli operation has been enabled by extensive intelligence on Iranian operations in Syria; the U.S. military has been more focused on the Islamic State. It might also be difficult under the U.S. system to withhold acknowledgment of military strikes. The Israeli government can employ a military censor to keep such news under wraps. The report authors also include Nicholas Heras, a scholar at the Institute for the Study of War who previously served as a Center for a New American Security fellow and has closely tracked events in Syria. Around the world, China has delivered medical equipment and supplies like masks, thermometers, ventilators, and test kits that total up to nearly $1.4 billion. The South China Morning Post continued to report that the arrival of these medical supplies in Mexico was last Wednesday. According to Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the air bridge from China to Mexico will become a gateway for continuous supplies. "This is not the only flight," he added. "Ventilators, monitors, and other, more specialized equipment will be coming soon." Lopez-Gatell said in a briefing that Mexico City especially must prepare for the pandemic. Because of its dense population, it is expected to become a hotspot. Phase 3 of the Pandemic In an article by Milenio, experts from the Mexican Society of Emergency Medicine (SMME) confirmed that since March, Mexico has been in phase 2 of the outbreak of the coronavirus and that it will only be a matter of time before they approach phase 3. Further on, they say that authorities estimate the end of April will infect between 600,000 to 1.2 million. Of that number, the experts added that "10,500 would be serious cases that could merit admission to emergency departments and intensive care units." The Health Ministry confirmed that as of Thursday, patients in Mexico tested positive for the coronavirus increased to 3,441 while deaths rose to 194. Check these out! Medical Heroes In Distress As the infected numbers overwhelm health facilities and resources, medical workers are becoming more at risk of contracting COVID-19. Perhaps one health center with the most significant outbreak yet, with 42 personnel tested positive for the coronavirus, is the General Hospital in Cabo San Lucas. Meanwhile, the Coahuila Health Ministry shows that 32 doctors and nurses at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) were also confirmed for COVID-19. One doctor has already died. Susana Najera Sanchez, a colleague of the deceased doctor, said that there is a lack of necessary medical supplies. As such, medical workers all over Mexico are demanding the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) since the number of patients positive with COVID-19 cases in the hospitals have begun to surge. They also issued a flood of complaints about IMSS General Director Zoe Robledo in particular, whose failure to acknowledge the health crisis and generally provide hospitals with equipment and supplies has led to the worsening of the situation. National health workers union leader Arturo Olivares Cerda said that the hospital staff is becoming increasingly at risk of infection due to the lack of equipment. "There will always be a risk, but if we have all the instruments to confront coronavirus, the risks decrease considerably," Olivares said. Most of the health workers claimed to procure equipment and precautionary items such as soap, alcohol, and wet tissues by their initiative because of the insufficient provisions in the hospital. "The authorities told us that it was part of our commitment as doctors to obtain the resources by our own means," they wrote in a letter for protest. "We want to work, and we want to serve, and we want to live to teach the next generations." HomeFront founder and CEO Connie Mercer stood at her Lawrenceville food pantry watching it fill with hungry families in need. The number of people desperate for food has tripled at Mercers pantry from last year due to the coronavirus pandemic in New Jersey. As the line grew with new faces piling in, one family approached Mercer. They said a few months ago that they were the ones donating to our Christmas drive for children, Mercer remembered. Now they arent sure how they are going to feed their own family. December feels like a lifetime ago. The holidays were spent with family in person. Now, they are done virtually on Zoom with social distancing forcing everyone to stay home. Over 16-million Americans have lost their jobs since March and the influx of families in-need makes HomeFront and other non-profit organizations crucial to survival. When we help people that used to give back and are now in need, it makes us profoundly sad and profoundly grateful all at the same time, Mercer said. What could be more important than making sure that people get to eat - particularly people that always played by the rules and worked hard, but now cant work and cant put food on their familys table. We need to be there for them. LATEST CORONAVIRUS UPDATES FROM NJ.COM The Catholic Charities, Diocese of Trenton has seen a similar trend with former donors becoming recipients of its various programs - including children services, mental health services, housing needs, and its food pantry. Despite the number of people that need help growing, Catholic Charities executive director Marlene Lao-Collins knows how important it is for her non-profit to provide a stable image of faith in the community. The one thing I learned when Hurricane Sandy happened is that during these traumatic times - whether its natural disasters or pandemics - people count on organizations like us, she said. They look to the church. They look to catholic charities. We are a source of hope and help. It is our mission. We are here and well continue to be here to support the community. Non-profits will continue to serve a growing community in need, but doing so comes with making constant adjustments. Meals on Wheels Mercer CEO Sasa Olessi Montano says her operation must adjust daily as new regulations are released in an attempt to delay the spreading of COVID-19. This week, it switched from delivering meals daily to a three-day delivery schedule in an attempt to limit the amount of exposure for its workers as well as its recipients. We have tried to find creative ways to continue to serve the community and we have contingency plans on top of contingency plans, she said. We have put contingencies in as things have developed, but those change every single day. One of the most difficult things that non-profits have run into with their contingency plans is the uncertainty of how long the pandemic will last. Their plans also need to include helping to rebuild the community in a post-coronavirus culture. The thing that Im most scared of is not getting through this immediate crisis, its the tsunami of desperate people after the virus has moved on, said Mercer, whose HomeFront non-profit provides housing, and programs for parents and children, in addition to its food bank. There will be a tsunami of people that dont have jobs. How are they going to survive? Despite receiving some support, Rescue Mission of Trenton CEO Mary Gay Abbott-Young still feels that non-profits are fighting an uphill battle. Her non-profit provides shelter, housing, addiction services, and job placement services. We have a loss of revenue and we have an increase in expenses that have been frankly frightening, she said. We have a tremendous amount of demand for our services. Thats a scary thought because all of us are already maxing out to provide services. We are very concerned. Part of that concern can be helped by the community with all four non-profits in need. HomeFront put a list of its most-needed items on its website and is accepting monetary donations. The Catholic Charities, Diocese of Trenton set up a coronavirus crisis fund. Meals on Wheels Mercer is looking for volunteers to help deliver to in-need seniors, who can apply online. Rescue Mission of Trenton is accepting cash donations as well as gently used furniture, clothing, or household items. "The community comes together to support non-profits giving back because they know that its the right thing to do, Abbott-Young said. People will literally die without these services. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Richard Greco covers Mercer County news for NJ.com and may be reached at rgreco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Richard_V_Greco. Find NJ.com on Facebook. A nurse from New Zealand who was hailed by the Prime Minister for her care during his time in intensive care has been "blown away" by the recognition. After leaving hospital on Sunday, Boris Johnson used a speech to mention by name the NHS staff who looked after him after he was admitted for Covid-19. He particularly praised two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way". One of the nurses mentioned by Mr Johnson, Jenny from Invercargill on New Zealands South Island, has been identified as Jenny McGee. Jenny and Luis, the NHS nurses who helped save Boris Johnson / Facebook Her brother Rob told the New Zealand Herald the family had spoken with Ms McGee just as she was about to head off to do another night shift. He told the paper: We are all very proud of Jen, not just in the support she gave Boris but what she has been doing helping everyday people. Whilst she is blown away by Boriss recognition, she is just really pleased to see the public recognition for the amazing work the NHS is doing that made her really proud. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has now left hospital / Getty Images Ms McGee attended the Verdon College in Invercargill, and they said the community was so proud and that she had wanted to be a nurse since leaving in 2002. The school said: Our sincerest admiration for the work and dedication of past pupil Jenny McGee who was singled out by UK Prime Minster Boris Johnson for helping him get through his serious illness due to Covid-19. Jenny is described by her past teachers as an absolutely delightful person and someone who had a caring and humble nature. Thanks Jenny for your courage, outstanding work and the example you have provided for everyone at this difficult time. Your old school community is so proud of you! Paramedics and a ambulance is seen outside NHS Nightingale Hospital / REUTERS Meanwhile, mayor of the city Sir Tim Shadbolt told Stuff.co.nz Its not very often a nurse from Invercargill saves the life of the British Prime Minister. The other nurse mentioned by Mr Johnson Luis from Portugal, near Porto has been named as Luis Pitarma and has been thanked by Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. A statement on the presidential website said: President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has already personally thanked the nurse Luis Pitarma, and also thanks the commitment of all Portuguese health professionals who in Portugal and around the world are providing decisive help in the fight to the pandemic. The statement added that president offered encouragement that is also addressed to professionals of other nationalities who, reinforcing the National Health Service, provide an invaluable service to Portugal. His cousin Ivo Pitarma, who lives in Aveiro and works as a firefighter, was quoted by MailOnline as saying: "I'm obviously very proud. A pregnant thief with 133 previous convictions has been jailed for eight months despite voicing concerns about "health issues" in prison during the coronavirus crisis. Helen Green (31) was sentenced for her latest offences, including at attempted theft from a backpacker in Dublin city centre. Judge Bryan Smyth gave her three consecutive sentences. Green, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to charges including attempted theft and threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour. Dublin District Court heard Green approached a man on O'Connell Street at 2pm on March 3 and opened the zip on his backpack, trying to remove the contents. When he noticed this happ- ening, he pulled away and Green became abusive. When she was questioned for obstructively begging on O'Connell Street on the same day, she gave gardai "numerous names and dates of birth". Green was also abusive and aggressive towards staff and members of the public at Londis on Westmoreland Street on January 26. Screaming She was screaming at people and hitting a window and gardai arrested her. On January 24, gardai found her and a man smoking heroin in the city centre. When told to stop, Green became extremely abusive and aggressive and was arrested. Green had previous convictions for theft, public order breaches and other offences. Her solicitor, Stephen O'Mahony, said she had become involved with drugs in her early teens before progressing on to harder types. Her main issue now was heroin. She had had a lot of trouble trying to get off it, but was doing well in custody. She was highly regarded in the prison service and did not cause problems, but when she gets back out she "falls into bad habits", Mr O'Mahony said. Green was three months pregnant with her first child when she appeared in court and was "concerned about the general health issues" in Mountjoy's Dochas Centre, where inmates have been in isolation. Mr O'Mahony asked the judge to give her "some light at the end of the tunnel". The judge said he took everything into account and set recognisances. KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Law enforcement said preparation remains a constant as the Jackson County, Missouri, Detention Center now deals with its first COVID-19 case. "We had to steer into this problem instead of waiting for it to hit us," Jackson County, Missouri, Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker told 41 Action News on Sunday. Total global oil supply cuts could come to 20 million barrels per day, around 20 percent of global supply, Kuwaits oil minister said. Singapore/New York: Oil prices jumped more than $1 a barrel on Monday after major producers finally agreed their biggest-ever output cut, but gains were capped amid concern that it wont be enough to head off oversupply with the coronavirus pandemic hammering demand. After four days of wrangling, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and other producers, a group known as OPEC+, agreed on Sunday to cut output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) to support oil prices, sources said, representing around 10 percent of global supply. Total global oil supply cuts could come to 20 million barrels per day, around 20 percent of global supply, Kuwaits oil minister said. Brent crude futures rose $1.23, or 3.9 percent, to $32.71 a barrel by 0058 GMT after opening at a session high of $33.99. USWest Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up $1.39, or 6.1 percent, to $24.15 a barrel, after hitting a high of $24.74. What this deal does is enable the global oil industry and the national economies and other industries that depend upon it to avoid a very deep crisis, said IHS Markit Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin. This restrains the build-up of inventories, which will reduce the pressure on prices when normality returns whenever that is. Leaders of the worlds top three oil producers, Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabias King Salman, all supported the OPEC+ deal to cut global crude output, the Kremlin said on Sunday. Trump praised the deal, saying it would save jobs in the US energy industry. US President @realDonaldTrump tweets after the OPEC+ finalises deal to cut production by 9.7 million barrels/day, says the deal will save 'hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States' #Oil #Crude pic.twitter.com/PHB09LNZLj CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) April 13, 2020 Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates volunteered to make cuts even deeper than those agreed, which would effectively bring the OPEC+ supply down by 12.5 million bpd from current supply levels, the Saudi energy minister said. Still, demand concerns capped oil price gains. Worldwide fuel consumption is down roughly 30 percent, due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus that has killed more than 100,000 people worldwide and kept businesses and governments on lockdown. After an initial positive reaction in oil prices, we expect the OPEC+ decision at best to establish a floor under the market, BNP Paribas Harry Tchilinguirian said in a note, adding that oil price gains could also be capped by hedges from producers. We do not expect a sustained recovery in the oil price until pent-up demand is released in Q3, he said. The deal had been delayed since Thursday after Mexico balked at the production cuts it was asked to make. The OPEC+ group met on Sunday to hammer out the agreement, resulting in an output cut four times deeper than the previous record reduction in 2008. OPEC+ has also said it wanted producers outside the group, such as the United States, Canada, Brazil and Norway, to cut a further 5 oercebt or 5 million bpd. Canada and Norway signalled a willingness to cut. The United States, where antitrust legislation makes it hard to act in tandem with cartels such as OPEC, has said its output would already fall by as much as 2 million bpd this year without planned cuts because of low prices. Were going to see a significant drop in production anyway from producers who cant make money producing, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures group. MINNEAPOLIS, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- As COVID-19 continues to spread, there is a growing need to feed those who are food insecure in the Twin Cities community. To help meet the growing demand, Cargill Foundation supports the MN Central Kitchen in its mission to tackle hunger and layoffs brought on by COVID-19. Today, Cargill's headquarters cafeteria opens its door to the MN Central Kitchen. This additional kitchen space will provide employment opportunities and 4,000 meals each day for Minnesotans. The Cargill Foundation is also contributing $1 million to add a distribution site in North Minneapolis with Appetite for Change and to support the production of 120,000 meals across all of MN Central Kitchen's sites. "At Cargill, we believe our state's nonprofits and hospitality professionals can continue to respond to the growing need for food assistance in our community and are proud to join them in this relief for food insecure children and families in Minnesota," said Katie Clark Sieben, Cargill Foundation Director. "It is humbling to see our NGO, restaurant and business communities rally together and mobilize quickly to provide nutritious food and employment opportunities." The restaurants provide the kitchen space, staff, supplies and food; Second Harvest Heartland coordinates logistics; Loaves & Fishes and Appetite for Change distribute the to-go meals to Minnesotans free of charge at its more than 30 locations across the state; and companies like Cargill fund the operation and provide additional kitchen space. "We can't fight this virus hungry and yet hunger is growing in our community every day. Effectively battling COVID-19 is going to take all of us coming together, putting our best innovations forward, to make sure everyone is safe and fed," said Allison O'Toole, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland. "The Cargill Foundation's support of Minnesota Central Kitchen is a perfect example of the kind of powerful partnerships we need right now. We're grateful for Cargill's long-standing backing and we're not surprised that they've stepped forward, once again, when we need the community to come together like never before." "For those of us who choose to cook for and serve people as a profession, the thought of not being able to do so is heartbreaking," said Jonathan Gans, The Bachelor Farmer's executive chef. "We hope that, through the MN Central Kitchen, even though many of our businesses will be affected by this pandemic, we will still be able to feed and take care of those who need it most during these difficult times. A cook needs to cook, and that's what I intend to do." This is just one example of how Cargill is working with nonprofit and NGO partners around the globe to help address food security, health and safety needs and agriculture and food industry challenges due to the spread of COVID-19. In addition to monetary donation, we are collaborating with nonprofits around the globe to donate food, ingredients and other high-need products for those who are vulnerable during this pandemic. For example, Cargill has donated nearly 1 million pounds of food to food shelves and hunger relief efforts in local communities where our employees live and work. Cargill's global and regional COVID-19 response is guided by our purpose to nourish the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. About Cargill Cargill's 160,000 employees across 70 countries work relentlessly to achieve our purpose of nourishing the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. Every day, we connect farmers with markets, customers with ingredients, and people and animals with the food they need to thrive. We combine 154 years of experience with new technologies and insights to serve as a trusted partner for food, agriculture, financial and industrial customers in more than 125 countries. Side-by-side, we are building a stronger, sustainable future for agriculture. For more information, visit Cargill.com and our News Center. SOURCE Cargill, Inc. Related Links www.cargill.com A team of 15 Indian doctors and health care professionals reached here on Monday to support the Kuwait government's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tweeted about the arrival of the Indian team in Kuwait: "India's RAPID RESPONSE TEAM arrives in Kuwait. Follow up to the discussion between our two Prime Ministers on #COVID19. Underlines the special friendship between India and Kuwait." As per the release of India's Ministry of External Affairs, the rapid response team is expected to stay in Kuwait for the next two weeks to help the Kuwait government with medical assistance in testing and treatment of the people infected by the novel coronavirus as a collective fight against COVID-19. Indian Embassy in Kuwait also tweeted: "Covid_19 # fighting together- Indian Rapid Response Team in Kuwait at Jabel Al Ahmed Hospital- Initial interaction and capacity building in Kuwait." The deployment of this team comes after a phone call between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Saba. Both the leaders had agreed for a coordinated approach towards the deadly. Foreign Affairs Ministers S Jaishankar and his Kuwaiti counterpart Dr Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah discussed the situation in Kuwait and other ways to further strengthen bilateral cooperation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rihanna is one of the biggest stars in the world. Although she originally became famous for her music, these days, she is known primarily for her business savvy. With incredibly successful makeup and clothing lines, and a rumored ninth album well on the way, Rihanna is on the top of the world. Critics and fans have applauded her ability to create new and innovative businesses. But as Rihanna herself revealed in a recent interview, when it comes to her beauty line, she doesnt feel like theres any particular genius behind it. When did Rihanna get her start in music? Rihanna was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty in 1988. In her home country of Barbados, she had a particularly difficult childhood. Her father struggled with addiction and when Rihanna was fourteen, her parents divorced. Rihanna also suffered from painful headaches to the point when doctors even started to believe that she had tumors. In order to deal with the stress she was experiencing at home, as well as the traumatic headaches, she began singing to relieve stress. In 2003, Rihanna, along with several of her friends, scored an audition with a well-known record producer. The producer was floored by her talent and immediately scheduled her to record a demo, signing her to a record label not long after. Rihanna spent several years working on her craft, collaborating with superstars like Jay-Z, before her big breakthrough in 2008. Her single Umbrella topped charts all across the United States, and fans quickly became captivated by Rihannas exotic image and undeniable talent. Once she started receiving acclaim, it never truly stopped. Rihanna soon shot to the top of the music industry. A few of her most popular songs include Dont Stop the Music, Disturbia, California King Bed, and Rude Boy. Rihanna has a wildly successful beauty line Rihanna | ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images Rihanna could have spent her entire life in the music business and continued to enjoy the same level of fame. However, she has a wide variety of interests and in 2017, she launched her very own cosmetics company, Fenty Beauty. The artist has a long-standing interest in cosmetics, beauty, and fragrance, and has also released several fragrances but with the release of Fenty Beauty, she became a high-powered businesswoman. Not only has Fenty Beauty been praised for the high level of quality, but Rihanna has received kudos for ensuring that the line has something that caters to everyone, regardless of skin tone or type. Even those who traditionally have a hard time finding a foundation to match their skin have been able to find a solution with Fenty Beauty. It is for that reason that her line has grown more popular year after year, with new products frequently being added to the line. Even more impressive, other makeup lines started following Fenty Beautys example, expanding their shade ranges to try and attract and appeal to more clients. Rihanna thinks that her beauty line is normal Even though fans and critics might think that Fenty Beauty is truly groundbreaking, Rihanna doesnt necessarily view it that way. In a recent interview with British Vogue, Rihanna revealed that she is sometimes shocked by some of the reactions that she gets for her beauty line, and her decision to make it shade-inclusive. She said: Im like, What? You thought this was like, a marketing strategy? Like Im a genius? Its shocking most of the time, Rihanna admitted. In my mind, this was just normal. Rihanna has proven that she has what it takes to succeed at whatever she puts her mind to, whether it is music or makeup and if her fans have anything to say about it, she will be creating and developing for years to come. Bill Gates appeared Monday on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" to discuss the coronavirus. (Seth Wenig / Associated Press) No, "The Simpsons" did not predict the coronavirus outbreak. Neither did science-fiction author Dean Koontz, nor "Jeopardy!" But Bill Gates came pretty close. The billionaire Microsoft mastermind had an I-told-you-so moment Monday on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," reflecting on a harrowing prediction he made during a 2015 TED Talk titled "The next outbreak? We're not ready." "If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war not missiles but microbes," he said at the time. "We have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents, but we've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We're not ready for the next epidemic." While video-chatting with Gates from home, DeGeneres reminded the tech mogul of his prescient lecture now that the world is struggling to contain a public health crisis similar to what he outlined. "You predicted this would happen, and so I'm sure you're very prepared because you knew this was going to happen," the host said. "Do you feel like you prepared for this?" "Well, the goal of the 2015 talk ... was so that the government would do the work to be ready for the next epidemic," Gates replied. "That would have meant that we would have had diagnostics very quickly, drugs very quickly, even a vaccine all of those things dramatically faster than what we're going through here." The philanthropist also noted that he and his wife, Melinda Gates, have made efforts in the last five years to prepare for an epidemic through their foundation, which recently donated $100 million to fight the spread of COVID-19. "We had epidemics like the Ebola epidemic in Africa that should have gotten us ready," he said. "Then we had Zika. But a respiratory pandemic that's very widespread, really, we haven't seen anything like this for 100 years." Story continues Citing the responses of other countries such as China and South Korea, Gates seemed optimistic about the possibility of flattening the curve with strict quarantine practices and an efficient testing system. But he doesn't foresee life going "back to normal until we have that phenomenal vaccine or therapeutics that are over 95% effective." Echoing the projections of healthcare professionals and world leaders, Gates estimated such a solution won't arrive for another 18 months. "I feel very confident that this time, we won't ignore the potential for the next epidemic that this is such a dramatic thing that has reshaped our lives and the economy and created so many tragedies, we will get ready," he said. "I also think we have great examples of heroics where people are stepping up or communities are coming together to solve these problems. "And so although it's very bad news and almost a worst-case scenario, the ingenuity of people, the compassion of people ... hopefully this will renew our sense that we're in this together in our communities, in our country and in the world." New Delhi, April 13 : An alarming rise in the demand for child pornography material (also referred to as 'Child Sexual Abuse Material') has been seen ever since the Covid-19 induced lockdown was enforced, the India Child Protection Fund (ICPF) claimed on Monday. According to the ICPF, the online data monitoring websites are showing an increase in demand for searches like 'child porn', 'sexy child' and 'teen sex videos'. Data from Pornhub, the world's largest pornography website in the world, also reveals that traffic from India has increased by 95 per cent between 24th and 26th March 2020, as compared to their average traffic, pre-coronavirus, the ICPF claimed. In its report the ICPF said that New Delhi was amongst the cities where there is a "high demand" for child pornographic material, thereby posing grave risks to its children during the Covid induced lockdown. The ICPF has released a report titled 'Child Sexual Abuse Material in India', a research of child pornography demand in 100 cities in India like New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Indore. The overall demand for child pornography was an average of 5 million per month in 100 cities on the public web during December 2019, which has now spiked. The report reveals up to a 200 per cent increase in demand for violent content which shows children "choking", "bleeding" and 'tortured". "Metro cities like New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, besides many Tier II and capital cities, which are seeing a sharp increase in coronavirus cases, have been red-flagged by the December study as hotspots for child pornography," the ICPF said. "ICPF has warned that this indicates millions of paedophiles, child rapists and child pornography addicts have migrated online, making the Internet extremely unsafe for children. Without stringent action, this could result in a drastic rise in sexual crimes against children," it added. The report cites Europol, United Nations, ECPAT reports which say that children are now more prone to online grooming and sexual coercion, and also refers to recent news of the Childline India Helpline reporting more than 92,000 SOS calls asking for protection from abuse and violence in 11 days of the lockdown. "This presents a chilling reality of the extreme threat faced by India's children during this period of lockdown. Demand for child sexual abuse material indicates children are more vulnerable to sexual predators," ICPF said. The organisation has requested the authorities to further step up online vigil in these cities for potential exploiters. Also the Rajya Sabha Committee on the issue, instituted by Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, has recommended stringent laws for Internet service providers like Jio and Airtel, and platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to hold them accountable for child abuse enabled by these companies. The ICPF reiterated the urgent need to implement these recommendations. "This is a blatant violation of the directions of the Honourable Supreme Court, and a violation of national policy. Pornographic websites are playing hide-and-seek with Indian law and judiciary by simply changing their website URLs," Nivedita Ahuja, spokesperson for the ICPF said. "The Government of India must urgently crackdown on child pornography and also initiate a global dialogue for an international convention against child sexual abuse material," she added. The India Child Protection Fund (ICPF) is one of the largest child protection organisations in South Asia, working to end child trafficking and child rape. It seeks to achieve its mission by supporting organisations with strategic funding and resources across South Asia. The leaders of a prominent pro-Israel super PAC with close ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rivals against moving forward with plans to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported today. Mark Mellman and Ann Lewis, the president and co-chair of the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, reportedly sent a letter to Netanyahu warning that such a move would make a two-state solution harder if not impossible to achieve and would likely have far-reaching negative consequences for the US-Israel alliance. They also sent the letter to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and Yesh Atid party Chairman Yair Lapid. Why it matters: Mellman and Lewis founded Democratic Majority for Israel to push back against growing criticism of the close US ally from the left. But their letter to Netanyahu indicates that the super PAC is also taking a stand against President Donald Trumps proposed peace plan, which gives the green light for Israel to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank as well as the entire Jordan Valley. Conversely, AIPAC President Betsy Berns Korn praised the Trump plan at the organizations annual policy conference last month. Democratic Majority for Israel spent more than $1 million on attack ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the early presidential primary states of Iowa and Nevada before endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden last month. Sanders, who dropped out of the race last week, was a vocal proponent of conditioning US military aid to Israel over the occupation of the West Bank and the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Biden, the Democratic partys presumptive nominee, has categorically ruled out aid restrictions. Whats next: The initial deadline for Gantz to form a government expired at midnight local time Monday, as talks with Netanyahu appear to have faltered. Yet Israeli President Reuven Rivlin agreed to extend his deadline by two days. Prospects looked rosier last week, when Gantz and Netanyahu struck a deal over annexing the West Bank in consultation with the Trump administration, only for unity talks to fall apart over other issues. Israels ambassador to the United States, Danny Danon, intimated at the time that annexation could happen as early as this summer. Know more: Congressional Correspondent Bryant Harris followed the money and took a look at Democratic Majority for Israels ties to AIPAC earlier this year. The ever-astute Mazal Mualem examines whether Gantzs efforts to strike a grand bargain with Netanyahu signal his political demise or a potential new beginning. And former Meretz leader Yossi Beilin argues that the unity talks endangered Israels parliamentary system. The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) has told its members they won't be compelled to work to help prepare students in the weeks ahead of the rescheduled Leaving Cert. The union issued a clarification to members over the weekend to correct "a considerable amount of misinformation". Teachers are being asked to return to the classroom for at least two weeks to help the 61,000 Leaving Cert candidates entered for the exam, now pencilled in for an end of July/ early August start. The Department of Education is also hoping teachers would maintain contact with these students in the period before the two weeks back in the classroom. The ASTI has told its members the department is worried about maintenance of motivation and engagement of students. This would mean teachers staying in touch with students in June/early July, when they are normally not teaching. However, while schools close for tuition at the end of May, the 13 days given over to exams are part of the official school year. The two second-level teacher unions, the ASTI and the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI), support the rescheduling of the Leaving Cert and said they were committed to serving the best interests of students. According to ASTI president Deirdre McDonald, at a meeting of its leadership held remotely on Friday evening after the postponement announcement by Education Minister Joe McHugh, concerns were raised about a number of issues including provision for students with special needs, social spacing at practical exams and the requirement for people to finish projects that are locked in schools. And an ASTI spokesperson said there was a considerable amount of confusion on social media about the issue of working. "For the record, contrary to misinformation that is circulating, no teacher will be required to do anything. The proposal from the Department of Education and Skills cannot be enforced," the ASTI states in its clarification. Issues raised by members include the position of those with an underlying medical condition being asked to return to the classroom and of non-permanent teachers whose contracts finish at the end of May. The State Examinations Commission will announce a timetable for exams in June, based on the medical advice at the time. Apart from the start date, the big question is whether it will be possible to run more than one exam per day. With more than 30 subjects, on the basis of only one exam per day, it could take four weeks to complete the schedule. The Junior Cycle June exams have been cancelled and will take place in schools early in the next academic year. For years, the Junior Cycle exams have been the source of tension between the Department of Education and the ASTI, which has resisted moves to switch to a school-based system. Among the issues to be decided in relation to these exams is who would supervise and correct them. By Shailaja Chandra While COVID-19 ravages the world, little is known about the diseases spread in Indias rural hinterland and congested urban areas. More importantly, how is it being managed? Will India follow a similar, or even worse trajectory as China, Italy and Iran? What would that mean in a country of 1.3 billion people, which is often depicted as bumbling and chaotic, with poor health facilities and desperately short of medical manpower? Two-thirds of Indias 1.3 billion population is rural, spread over 728 districts n about 650,000 villages. By Tuesday (31 March) evening, 1397 cases had been reported, with 146 new infections in the past 24 hours across the country and a death toll which rose to 35. This, despite taking stout measures long before most people were even aware of how lethal this disease could be and the way it affects human beings, who can easily succumb once it spreads in the community. India ordered an early embargo on international arrivals, including Indian citizens, and cancelled all domestic flights. The Indian Railways, which annually carries the equivalent of the entire worlds population, imposed draconian checks on movement. A nation-wide lockout was imposed on 25 March, banning people from leaving their homes except in pairs, only for essential provisions and medicine. Under the Indian Constitution, health is governed at the State level. But when it comes to epidemic control, the Health Ministrys directives must be and indeed are observed by all states. With the enforcement of the National Disaster Management Act 2005, the administrative system has been reinforced. Indeed, political wrangling has abated considerably, as all states have understood what is at stake. The district administration was inherited from the colonial government run by British officers who once toured the districts on horseback. The horses have disappeared, but the framework remains in place throughout the country. Except that now, it is digitally proficient, precise and swift (albeit mostly in times of crisis). Every district is headed by a district magistrate (DM) or collector who represents the civil administration, and who has the authority during disasters to commandeer virtually anyone and anything within the district. At times like this, the DMs authority is unquestioned and total: they (the DMs) can requisition empty buildings, privately owned transport, hotel space, and even manpower, and can order a halt or diversion of all movement, order house visits and establish systems for documentation and reporting. These are executed by line departments and enforced by the police, who themselves report to the DM. No other country has a network where administrative tentacles can activate so rapidly, and that can penetrate every house, rural or urban, rich or poor. Because of a single line of district authority which, crucially, does not depend on political actors during disasters, what is otherwise viewed as a slow and unresponsive administration, responds to crisis situations with incredible efficiency. That is how India managed to rehabilitate the districts affected by some of the worst floods, cyclones and earthquakes in the world, as well as eradicate polio, contain HIV/ AIDS, and even the plague. Not to speak of small-pox which remains its most shining moment. To understand how COVID-19 gets managed on the ground, consider the district of Bhilwara in Rajasthan (total population 2.7 million) which has been in the news because of a COVID-19 infected private hospital doctor along with 12 of his hospital staff. A relatively sleepy, largely rural district in one of Indias poorer states, Bhilwara was only known for textiles and scroll paintings. The doctor and staff who had all tested positive have been in isolation. How has Bhilwara headlined by the BBC as Indias possible Italy? responded? By 26 March, over two million people in the district 88 percent of the population had been surveyed through house-to-house visits. The DM was certain of 100 percent coverage by 28 March. This was indeed achieved, and the entire 26 lakh-plus population of the district has been combed through, followed by quarantining hundreds of families and putting them under daily surveillance both on phone and in person. The first surveys showed influenza-like symptoms in 2,572 persons in urban areas, but now it has been reported that the number has plummeted to 842 in the second urban survey. Positive cases are beginning to test negative. What about other states? The Indian states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha are ranked in the lowest cohort of states by the UNDPs Human Development Index 2018. In all three states, front-line health workers visit quarantined cases day and night. Each suspected case, which meets the risk threshold, is transported by ambulance to the nearest health centre, where samples are drawn, and the suspect and his family are quarantined until the test report is generated. Health Secretaries of all three states corroborate that this continues daily. The district administration itself runs electronically over mobile phones. In the health sector alone, four groups operate: at the interstate level, within districts, between contiguous districts, and between health Secretaries of the states and the Union Health Secretary all on phone. Things can go out of hand as happened suddenly in Delhi with the exodus of thousands of migrants back to their villages. They travelled on foot or anything moving. The reasons why this happened would need more than what this article can include, but the good news is that they are being identified, quarantined and checked even fed and given shelter not in thousands but tens of thousands. India is actively combating COVID-19 in a way unknown to other countries using enormous human resources and technical prowess. A generous economic package covering cash transfers, food, pensions and cooking gas has been announced for all poor people who will pay nothing out of pocket. A government sponsored insurance package has been announced for all health workers. Langars (akin to soup kitchens in the west) for anyone hungry have commenced. In Delhi, measures to serve food to everyone who wants it are to begin across the wards by Wednesday, 1 April. The latest to throw a huge spanner in what appeared to be a manageable story is the news of a congregation of a very large number of people in Nizamuddin, Delhi which has resulted in several confirmed COVID-19 cases. The visitors had travelled to India from other countries and infected people who have since travelled to different states. This was a totally unwarranted assembly, given that an embargo on any gathering of more than 50 people was announced from 13 March in Delhi long before the countrywide lockdown came into force. Once again, the public health machinery has started combing operations which will now need to penetrate not just to find those who participated in the congregation but who have infected contacts and contacts of contacts. The COVID-19 crisis will certainly worsen. But it should be everyones hope that even as our most trustworthy research organisations, the most experienced clinicians and scientific institutions work in unison, the deep roots of the Indian administrative and public health system will leave no stone unturned in detecting infections and tackling them as set out in the Health Ministrys directions. We must salute all the people who are making this happen, and join hands in gratitude that India possesses the leadership, expertise and commitment that this situation demands. This is not the time to berate anyone least of all the states and districts. Lucknow, April 13 (IANS) Muslims in Uttar Pradesh are now worried that the intense communal profiling of the Corona patients by the official agencies could lead to lynching incidents once the lockdown is lifted. Muslim scholar and former SP spokesman, Abdul Hafiz Gandhi, on Monday said, "The manner in which the government agencies are identifying persons belonging to Tablighi Jamaat in the list of Covid-19 patients is now translating into intense communal profiling which has been prohibited by the World Health Organization and the central government. A very small percentage of Muslims subscribe to the Tablighi Jamaat ideology but the impression going around is that the Muslim community, in general, is spreading coronavirus." He said that there was a strong possibility of Muslims, in general, being attacked after the lockdown is lifted. "This is exactly what happened on the cow slaughter issue. Even a small rumour led to people being lynched by mobs across the country. Corona is a pandemic and should be treated like one. We should fight against the virus together instead of creating a communal divide. Every day, the government spokesman lays down the number of Corona positive cases and then goes on to say how many of them are from Tablighi Jamaat," he explained. Amir Haider, a social activist and also a veteran Congress leader, echoed similar sentiments when he said, "We strongly condemn the Tablighi Jamaat for ignoring the protocols and holding the congregation but why is the state government repeatedly harping on the religious angle. Shia and Sunni clerics are repeatedly asking the people to adhere to government guidelines and follow safety protocols." He said that efforts to create a communal divide on the corona issue could have dangerous ramification after the lockdown is lifted." A retired IAS officer, who did not wish to be named, said, that people have already started objecting to taking home deliveries from Muslim employees. "My neighbours refused to take delivery of groceries from a Muslim boy. This is just the beginning of the narrative that is being drilled into the minds. We must check this before it explodes into something very dangerous," he said. --IANS amita/in As state and local governments continue to lead the coronavirus response efforts, they are being tasked with making critical policy decisions and coordinating across overburdened agencies. One of the key tools these governments can leverage to strengthen their efforts is administrative data data already collected for operational purposes.Here are three ways this data can help governments respond effectively to the pandemic's economic impact on Americans and their families:Administrative data provides critical insights into how the crisis is affecting demand for services. As hospitals face a surge of patients, social service agencies and contract providers are experiencing a similar surge of requests for economic assistance. When indicators such as monthly unemployment reports come too slowly, governments can rely on finer-grained information, such as the volume of requests for assistance programs and corresponding wait times, to understand where to deploy services.Understanding what is going on in one department is relatively easy, but understanding the situation across departments and agencies is more difficult. For jurisdictions that already have integrated data systems, the ability to link data across departments and agencies will allow for a more complete picture and response. Integrating data from different agencies, 911 calls, hospitals and even non-governmental resources like Google searches for unemployment benefits can help leaders understand the full scope of the pandemic's impact.Benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and unemployment insurance are often left unclaimed by people who qualify. As our colleagues Amy Finkelstein and Matthew Notowidigdo wrote recently in Governing , research shows that simply alerting people to their eligibility increases take-up. And to address confusion about and recent changes to eligibility, governments can do some of the work of identifying potentially eligible people and connecting them to programs.Many governments already do this. For example, in a randomized evaluation, Virginia's Department of Social Services and researchers are studying outreach methods to encourage individuals to claim the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Virginia identifies potentially eligible individuals from those enrolled in other social services who do not claim the EITC. Similar data is used by the Benefits Data Trust , in partnership with states, to identify potentially eligible SNAP beneficiaries.The pandemic is not only causing a loss in wages, but is generating additional gaps in social service provision. School closures, for example, are disrupting vital services like the free or reduced-price school lunches that some 30 million students depend on. Many schools have moved quickly to set up pickups or deliveries along bus routes, but meals may be left unclaimed. Real-time geographic and program data can shed light on where these substitutes are working and where resources could be better redeployed.Auto-filling applications with data used to determine eligibility can lower the burden not only on applicants but also on already overstretched government agencies. Individuals can even be auto-enrolled in programs on the basis of existing data, particularly if it shows that they are experiencing gaps in service provision due to disruptions like school closures.States already have experience doing this through direct certification for food assistance. Under this system, states use existing data from other programs, such as SNAP or TANF, to provide free meals to eligible children without the families having to fill out another application. And new programs explicitly allow for this: The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, for example, allows for automatically enrolling children receiving school lunches into supplemental SNAP benefits.State and local governments can also use data across programs to get stimulus payments to those in need. Traditional methods of sending these payments, such as mailed checks, will miss some of the most vulnerable, who may not have filed tax returns that determine eligibility or are unbanked and unable to cash a check. Existing data can identify individuals whose payments could be added to their electronic benefits cards.Government service provision is often fragmented, with programs like unemployment insurance, SNAP, TANF and school meals run by different agencies. But as the combined health and economic nature of this crisis makes clear, our response and the data we use to inform it cannot be siloed. To begin data integration, governments can connect with programs like the IDEA Initiative , run by our Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Other organizations, like Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy and US Digital Response , also have launched calls to connect governments and data analysts.Investment in data infrastructure is not a quick process, but it will pay dividends in allowing agencies to make decisions informed by evidence, in this crisis and the next, and to learn from these actions to continuously improve their responses.GoverningGoverning eye-on-india Hello, This is...| GoAir Advisor Sanjiv Kapoor on turbulence in the high skies amid COVID-19 In this video, GoAir's Sanjiv Kapoor shares his take with Network 18's on how long the stressed aviation sector can stay on the tarmac An updated image of the stunning 'Pillars of Creation' was captured by NASA in this brand-new infrared photograph. The original picture was taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 and showed an array of dazzling colors mixed and intertwined in a great pattern. The latest reveals have taught what the star-forming matter in a whole new look due to advancements in technology. The 'Pillars of Creation' are a collection of gas and dust found in the Eagle Nebula, somewhere around 6,000 light-years away. An assortment of infant stars could be seen within its surroundings. Their beauty garnered them a place as landmarks for the Milky Way galaxy. The image was made possible with the use of invisible infrared light. The cosmic masterpiece spans a massive five light-years (3.5 times the size of our solar system!) shows just how it prepared the stage for the development of stars. Who made it possible? A Twitter post from NASA revealing the newly captured image is shown below, along with the caption that it has never been seen this way before. The organization stated that the seed of a star called 'protostar' often starts from a multitude of dense pockets of hydrogen gas and dust that form in the singular, gravitationally-dense locations that were heated up under the weight of the accumulation, As a protostar continues to accumulate mass and if the core reaches ample temperature to jumpstart a nuclear reaction leads to the formation of a brand-new star that joins the family in the far reaches of the galaxies. The image shows how the Pillars seem to fade away to reveal a vast curtain of newly-formed stars in the clouds. The tip of the most towering pillar is home to the highest activity, where a shine of blue radiation develop as budding stars cool down below to retain their elongated shape. Paul Scowen, as astronomer over at NASA, said as the stars in the tips of the pillars continue to grow, they gain more radiation, which gradually destroys the gas clouds that envelop them. In 2015, the astronomer shared these pillars are ionized, which is a process where electrons are rid of their atoms and heated by the radiation coming from massive stars. He al noted the powerful winds of charged particles produced by the stars is smoothening out their top-most surfaces. Part of the original 1995 Hubble team that explored the Eagle Nebula, Scowen, also took part in the capture of the iconic new photograph. The difference of the pictures shows the grand scheme of things and how space changes ever so constantly for things never to look the same again. Read Also: NASA And Russia Launches Astronauts To The International Space Station With Stricter Safety Precautions Amid Coronavirus Outbreak Hubble turns 30! This new update comes as a celebration to the Hubble Telescope's 30 years in service, continually monitoring and capturing amazing sceneries and findings. With this event, NASA has shared with people around the world what their one-of-a-kind telescope has seen on their birthdays. Go to this website and input your birth month and day, and the tool will show you a photo that Hubble has captured on that day on a random year. Being as large as a school bus, Hubble was initially released in 1990 and has made a whopping 1.4 million observations of the galaxies and cosmic entities around the universe. Read Also: A Cosmic Phenomenon: Discovery Of Connection of Energy Within A Galaxy Sparks Excitement To What Other Space Secrets It Could Lead To Police officers stop cars near Milan, Italy, on Saturday. Italian authorities are stepping up their crackdown against violators of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown decree. (Luca Bruno / Associated Press) The COVID-19 death toll in the United States became the highest in the world Saturday as America surpassed Italy in reported fatalities from the pandemic. In just six weeks, more than 20,400 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University. Italy, with a population less than one-fifth that of the U.S., has reported about 19,500 fatalities. America's coronavirus infection caseload is also the world's highest. About 526,000 have been confirmed across all 50 states. The death and infection totals in the U.S. and other countries are widely believed to be underreported. In China, where the outbreak originated, the population is more than four times that of the U.S., and the government has reported 3,343 deaths. In New York, the hardest-hit state by far, at least 8,627 people have died, including 783 in the last day, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday. A sharp drop in new hospitalizations suggests that stay-at-home orders are slowing the spread of infections. Nonetheless, more than 700 New Yorkers have died each day since Monday. "It is stabilizing at an horrific rate," Cuomo said. "These are just incredible numbers depicting incredible loss and pain." As the nation's health crisis deepens, Americans are struggling with the social and economic devastation from the ongoing shutdown of schools and nonessential businesses with no end in sight to curb transmission of the sometimes lethal coronavirus. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Saturday that the nation's largest public school district would remain closed for the rest of the school year. "There is nothing easy about this decision," he said. Cuomo undercut the mayor less than an hour later, saying he would take De Blasio's "opinion" into account when he decides when to start reopening schools and businesses in the entire region in coordination with governors of neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut. Story continues "It makes no sense for one locality to take an action that's not coordinated with the others," said Cuomo, whose legal powers as governor have given him the upper hand in his long-standing feud with De Blasio. In New Jersey, where at least 2,183 people have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, Gov. Phil Murphy said he was signing an executive order Saturday to require face coverings for everyone using public transit or picking up takeout food at bars or restaurants. Murphy also ordered public transit agencies to keep all trains and buses below 50% rider capacity to prevent transmission of the coronavirus. Across the nation, fears mounted over the spread of the virus. Chicago's Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can hold more than 2,000 bodies. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been roaming the city telling groups of people to break it up. In Illinois, at least 677 people have died from COVID-19. In Indiana, 24 residents of a nursing home have died. In Florida, where the large older population has made long-term care facilities a huge challenge, Gov. Ron DeSantis reminded nursing home staffs Saturday to be vigilant about health protocols. A patient is evacuated Wednesday from the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Riverside County. (Associated Press) "Infection control is always important," he said. "With this coronavirus, it's even more so." At a nursing home in Live Oak, Fla., at least 51 people, including 30 staff members, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Tampa Bay Times reported. In Arizona, the coronavirus-related death toll has doubled in a week. The state reported 108 deaths and 3,393 coronavirus cases as of Saturday afternoon. In the Deep South, the threat of strong tornadoes and severe thunderstorms on Easter was adding to anxieties over the virus. More than 4.5 million people live in the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana communities where dangerous weather was forecast. With many churches closed because of the viral outbreak, some congregations planned to hold drive-in worship with people sitting in vehicles, a dangerous place to be during a tornado. Community storm shelters also presented social distancing challenges. In Kansas, where 55 people had died from COVID-19 as of Saturday, the state Supreme Court held an emergency session by videoconference Saturday as they tried to resolve a clash between Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and the Republican Legislature, which overturned her executive order banning religious gatherings of more than 10 people. As COVID-19 has spread across rural America, cases have been confirmed in more than half of the 105 counties in Kansas. Four of the states 12 clusters of coronavirus outbreaks have been traced to religious gatherings, according to Kelly. In Kentucky on Saturday, a judge overturned a ban on a drive-in church that Mayor Greg Fischer imposed in Louisville. On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter, U.S. District Judge Justin Walker wrote in his ruling. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. Walker called the mayor's order "stunning," noting that it did not cover drive-through restaurants or liquor stores. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A Miami man spent Saturday night in Monroe County jail after deputies say he ran a checkpoint aimed at keeping tourists out of the Florida Keys during the coronavirus crisis. According to a sheriffs office report, Joao Ramon Perez, 56, who lives in the Belle Meade neighborhood in Miami, drove his Dodge pickup truck, which was towing a personal watercraft on a trailer, up to the checkpoint on the 18 Mile Stretch of U.S. 1 around 5:20 p.m. Saturday. Joao Ramon Perez He gave one of the deputies staffing the checkpoint his Miami-Dade County drivers license and a tax bill for a property in the Keys that is owned by a limited liability company, according to Deputy Shaun Lones report. Lones told Perez the documentation was insufficient to allow him into Monroe County. During the state of emergency, only Keys residents and people who can show they legitimately work in the county are allowed through the checkpoint. Lones ordered Perez to turn his truck around and head back north, but he refused, according to the report. He stated that he wasnt going to turn around and said Ill need to arrest him, Lones stated. Perez started driving toward another deputy, who ordered him to stop. But, Perez rapidly accelerated his truck and drove through the blockade, Lones said. Lones then went after Perez in his patrol car with his overhead lights and sirens on, according to the report. Perez stopped shortly down the highway, and Lones arrested him, according to the report. He faces a felony charge of fleeing and eluding from the police and two counts of misdemeanor obstruction and one count of violation of a disaster preparedness order. Perez, who could not be reached for comment, was released from jail Sunday morning with an order to appear in court. Joel Osteen teaming up with Mariah Carey, Tyler Perry for weekend Easter celebration Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment UPDATE: 3 PM ET APRIL 11: Kanye West and the Sunday Service choir will no longer be making an appearance at Lakewood Church's Easter weekend service online. Original: Hollywood stars Mariah Carey, Kanye West and Tyler Perry will be joining Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen for an Easter Sunday digital celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Over 5 million people worldwide watched Osteens Lakewood Church services on Palm Sunday as numerous churches stopped holding in-person services to help stave off the spread of the new coronavirus. For Easter Sunday, Osteen hopes to draw even more people to hear the life saving message of our Savior. The Easter service will stream Saturday at 7 p.m. Central time and Sunday at 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. Central time. It will be available on multiple platforms as well as Facebook, YouTube, Roku, AppleTV and SiriusXM Channel 128. In these times of crises, this is the time for us to shine, to be a bright light, to be a voice of peace and hope for our neighbors and friends. And its a time for all of us to draw closer to God, Osteen told The Christian Post. For the order of service, Mariah Carey is expected to be the first celebrity appearance and will share a message from her home and sing a gospel song. Carey, who's best known for her countless No. 1 hits and elaborate ensembles, has long shared her faith with fans and features a gospel song on each of her records. So its no surprise that shell be lending her iconic voice to this celebration. Joining Carey will be Kanye West and his Sunday Service choir who pre-taped four songs for the service. Osteen and West were gearing up to host a Night of Hope in New York City on May 2, but due to health concerns caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as limits set by the state of New York regarding public gatherings, the event has been postponed. Film and television mogul Tyler Perry, who recently created the #HesGotTheWholeWorldChallenge to help raise hope and morale while the nation is on a temporary lockdown, will also be part of the Lakewood Church service by delivering a message from his home. In addition to the music and messages from the A-list celebrities and Joel and Victoria Osteen, the service will also include Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo and Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena who will share a special prayer for Houston and the nation. Osteen told CP he hopes people will gather with their families and tune in to the stream on Easter Sunday. Lets stay connected, lets encourage each other and help lift each others spirits in this time of need, Osteen said. The service will be streamed HERE. A California police detective who died of coronavirus requested to be tested twice for the disease and was denied, according to a report. Marylou Armer, a 43-year-old detective with the Santa Rosa Police Department was allegedly told by doctors that her age and lack of an underlying medical condition meant she was not a risk, according to her sister, The Press Democrat reported. Her older sister, Mari Lau, explained to the outlet that Ms Armers requests were denied by Kaiser Permanentes Vallejo Medical Centre. In a statement to The Press Democrat, the hospital confirmed that Ms Armer was not immediately tested. According to the report, Ms Armer began complaining of a fever, aching body, and shortness of breath beginning in mid-March. Ms Lau said that by the time her sister was cleared to be tested it was too late already. She said shed never felt this kind of sickness in her body before, Ms Lau told the newspaper. Ms Armer was eventually admitted to the medical centre where she was put on a ventilator and tested for the virus. Doctors hoped that life support would allow her lungs to start to recover, Ms Lau said. The results came back positive for Covid-19 hours after Ms Armer was intubated. However, she never woke up from the medically induced coma and died on 31 March, the newspaper said. Dr David Witt, the HMOs national infectious disease expert told the outlet that doctors adhered to public health authority testing guidelines, which have been based on very limited availability of tests. We offer heartfelt sympathies to Detective Armers family and loved ones at this profoundly difficult time, Dr Witt said in the statement. Ms Armers family agreed to let Ms Lau share details about the devoted police detectives life and experience with the novel coronavirus. She really loved helping her community, Ms Lau said of her sister. She just loved her job. She wanted to help anyone and everyone she could. The toughest thing about this situation is not being able to be there for her when she was at the hospital and being able to see her and talk to her, Ms Lau said. Dr Witt said that guidelines for testing at the medical centre have changed as the pandemic has progressed. Those guidelines for testing have evolved over the past several weeks, whereas a month ago, testing was limited to those with symptoms and who had primary contact with a Covid-positive person, Dr Witt said. Our policy at this time is to prioritise testing of first responders and healthcare workers. These are the heroes who serve, protect and care for our communities. Finding ways to combat the mental health crisis in America is a constant struggle. The work of the Miami-Dade Criminal Mental Health Project is making headway in the fight. It is heralded as a model for helping solve the crisis and it is the focus of the documentary The Definition of Insanity, which premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, on New Mexico PBS. The CMHP works through the court system to steer people with mental illness as their legal cases hang in the balance on a path from incarceration to recovery. Shocked by how people with mental illness were treated in Miami-Dades jails, Judge Steven Leifman works with a team of dedicated public servants, as well as former adversaries in the criminal justice system, to help people with mental illness navigate from lives of tragedy to ones of possibility. The humane criminal justice approach to mental illness has become the benchmark for treatment and New Mexico is taking notice. Grace Phillips, General Counsel, New Mexico Association of Counties, says while the approach differs in New Mexico, there is much to learn from the work that is being done in Miami. But searching for an effective way to treat mental illness is not new to New Mexico administrators. Almost 10 years ago, our sheriffs and detention administrators pulled the alarm on how to deal with people with a mental health diagnosis, Phillips says. Our first task force was in 2011. A few years ago, we worked with the commission to understand who was in our jails. There was a look at how a mental health diagnosis affected length of stay. And the people who stayed in jail the longest, were people who had mental illness, dramatically so, Phillips says. Phillips says different counties around New Mexico have tried different things. Within the past year, New Mexico Supreme Court Chief Justice Judith K. Nakamura has taken the lead within the courts to find a program that works for people with a mental health diagnosis. In early March, we brought in a clinician for all the judiciary in New Mexico, Phillips says. Resources can play a part in the success of a program. I think the biggest part is education and information. The training that happened in March for two days brought every district and magistrate judge to the table. The documentary is helmed by Gabriel London, who embedded a crew with a jail diversion program for 18 months. We tagged along to courtrooms with the people under court orders, London says. Trying to capture the different roles in the process was daunting because there are so many pieces to it. We had to structure what we were doing. The drama unfolds through the eyes of participants ranging from Justin, a formerly-incarcerated peer counselor who guides CMHP clients from jail through community placements; to Trevor, a young man trying to hold down a job while completing his court-supervised treatment plan. From court dates to group therapy, the film documents Miamis community experiment for solving the mental health crisis, where incarceration becomes the last resort, and everyone from the police to prosecutors works together to support the notion that recovery is possible. According to government data, in 2018, 47 million Americans experienced some form of mental illness. A person in the midst of a mental health crisis is far more likely to encounter police than get medical help. As a result, two million people with mental illness are booked into jails each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. London says Miami-Dades program illustrates that a better way is possible, one in which all of society benefits. A dedicated team works together in this struggle for recovery, including judges, peer counselors and treatment providers, as well as the clients themselves. We want people to be part of their own change, says Leifman. We want to be able to give them the tools that they need so that they get the insight but they also learn that theres a better way to live, theres a better way to deal with their illness and you need to stay away from committing offenses. As clients attend group therapy, seek jobs and check in with the court regularly throughout their supervision period, the documentary demonstrates the uniquely collaborative approach that fosters hope. Using the Miami-Dade program as an example, Phillips hopes to gain some ground on getting some control over the crisis. She says the New Mexico Legislature has helped by carving out funding to add clinical help to people while in jail. There are four pilot plans where someone can start treatment and continue once released, she says. Those are important developments and they reflect a growing recognition. In New Mexico, weve put a lot of time and effort to making our detention facilities better for those with a mental health diagnosis. Even the best jail will have some trauma. Statistically, were looking at the ones who get stuck. Managing people by putting them in jail is a very costly way of doing business. On TV The documentary, The Definition of Insanity, premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, on New Mexico PBS. Karim Morani, who also tested positive for coronavirus, is currently under medical care. Bollywood producer Karim Morani's daughters Shaza and Zoa have been discharged from the hospital after testing negative for coronavirus. While Shaza had returned from Sri Lanka in the first week of March, Zoa had come back from Rajasthan around mid-March. Both were quarantined and kept under medication in separate hospitals from 7 April. (Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus lockdown) Zoa said she tested negative twice and is happy to be back home. "I am extremely grateful to the doctors, nurses and hospital staff who took care of my health and my spirits everyday. You will be in my prayers forever. No words can describe how does it feel to be home. I'm so grateful, God is great," Zoa told PTI The actor thanked the government for doing a "commendable job" and keeping a track of everyone's health and safety. "Thank you to the media for being so sensitive and warm and also for all the wishes and prayers we received through social media. Truly felt like we were in this together. Please stay safe and follow all the rules as a lot of people out there are putting their life at risk to protect us! Lets help them," she added. Both the sisters will be under home quarantine as a precautionary measure. Their father Karim, who had also tested positive for COVID-19, is currently under medical care. [April 13, 2020] Viventium and DailyPay Announce Strategic Partnership to Support Delivering On-Demand Pay Amid Healthcare Crisis BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Viventium, a SaaS-based human capital management solution, and DailyPay, a pay experience fintech solution with a comprehensive platform of offerings, including instant access to earned income, today announced a critical strategic partnership. Viventium clients can now offer the full suite of DailyPay products to their employees at no additional cost to their organization and with no changes to their existing payroll setup. This collaboration between the Viventium and DailyPay teams resulted in an integration that enables the two platforms to share data seamlessly, calculate a real-time available balance for employees that enroll in the program, and facilitate the instant transfer of funds when requested by an employee. Viventium clients will save time and effort when offering their employees this best-in-class benefit through an industry leader in compliance. Most importantly, in emergency situations such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, employees will have access to their pay even before payday. In an effort to support our clients employees, and in particular those in the healthcare industry, we are proud to offer a greater degree of financial flexibility during this tumultuous time, said Dan Neuburger, Viventium CEO. Viventiums partnership with DailyPay underscores our commitment to provide innovative HR technology solutions that enhance the employee experience for our clients. In light of the current pandemic, it is critical that we do everything we can to enable employees to access their pay as soon as they earn it. This program is especially beneficial for businesses in the healthcare space as they work to recruit and retain top staff, offer financial stability to their employees, and maintain compliance. With DailyPay, employees can transfer or save their earned and unpaid income to any bank account or pay card, prior to their next payday. Employees can also track their accumulated earnings during each pay period using the available balance feature. In this way, DailyPay provides employees with a safeguard against unexpected expenses and an incentive to work scheduled or even additional shifts to increase their available earned balance. And, during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, DailyPay has waived fees for next-day access. Rockaway Home Care was one of the first businesses to utilize the Viventum-DailyPay integration. The company, based in the New York City metropolitan area, was looking to improve employee retention and recruiting. As a result of offering this benefit to our dedicated staff of home care professionals, we hope to alleviate any financial stress that they may experience so that they can continue to provide top-quality care to our patients, whom we consider family, Pinny Faska, COO of Rockaway Home Care, said. Allowing our staff to have this novel pay experience helps them to pay bills on time, and it also helps them to anticipate any emergencies that could arise. DailyPay works with a rapidly increasing number of businesses in the healthcare industry, and weve seen firsthand how challenging employee retention can be especially during this crisis, said Jason Lee, CEO of DailyPay. With healthcare workers being at the forefront of the pandemic, it is more important than ever that they have financial flexibility. Through this partnership with Viventium, we bring our solution to even more businesses like Rockaway Home Care and continue to improve stability in the American workforce. To learn more about Viventium, visit https://www.viventium.com . To learn more about DailyPay, visit https://www.dailypay.com. To learn more about Rockaway Home Care, visit https://www.rockawayhc.com. Join Viventium and DailyPay on April 16, 2020 at 1:00 PM EDT for their webinar series, "Supporting Our Front Line Heroes in Healthcare." About Viventium Viventium Software Inc. is a SaaS-based human capital management solution that provides a remarkable user experience and award-winning software. Viventium provides flexible software and expert guidance so clients can be sure their payroll is done right. Viventium offers specialized solutions in the health services markets which include home care agencies and skilled nursing facilities. Viventium Software supports all 50 of the United States with payroll and HR solutions. For more information about Viventium, visit https://www.viventium.com or follow @viventium on Twitter. About DailyPay DailyPay is the leading fintech provider of earned income software. We easily integrate with large companies payroll and time management systems to give employees control over their pay. OnCon named DailyPay a Top 25 HR Technology Vendor of 2020. The DailyPay PayEx platform demonstrates why by creating simple, powerful ways for employers to effortlessly provide a flexible, frictionless and compliant pay experience. PayEx strengthens the employee-employer bond as the most significant component of the employee experience, leading to increased employee engagement and retention, at no cost to the employer. DailyPay proudly supports over two million employees at world-class companies across many industries, including Adecco, Berkshire Hathaway and Six Flags. DailyPay is headquartered in New York City with operations located in Minneapolis. For more information, visit dailypay.com/press. Jeff Petescia [email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9246ecc5-bcbb-458a-bdfa-cedbd657c652 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] A state-owned Chinese bank's acquisition of 1 per cent stake in HDFC has raised worries that India's financial institutions are ceding ground to a country whose state-owned institutions may be out to buy up strategic assets in the coronavirus-led crash in the stock markets. The global anti-China sentiment is particularly strong since the outbreak. Beyond coronavirus endangering lives, in India, the health crisis has resulted in a lockdown that has put an already-slowing economy in peril. KEY HIGHLIGHTS HDFC Bank bears the brunt of Bank of China's stake in parent HDFC Indians vent on social media, say will withdraw money, close HDFC Bank accounts Several power, infra players have loans from Chinese banks Chinese giants Alibaba, Tencent have invested in Unicorns such as Paytm, Swiggy, Ola China not among top 10 FDI investors into India It's not surprising then that there has been a hue and cry ever since HDFC announced that People's Bank of China raised its 0.8 pc stake to over 1 pc, requiring a declaration to the stock exchanges. HDFC is also the promoter of India's largest private bank HDFC Bank. The bank has been targeted on social media, with many Indians saying they will withdraw their money and close their accounts. But, can this reaction be justified - should a business deal be looked through the prism of coronavirus? Let's look at India's existing trade relations with China to get a better sense and see if we can play the devil's advocate. Chinese banks already exist in India Chinese banks like Industrial and Commerce Bank of China (ICBC) and Bank of Ceylon have already set up base in India to operate as a foreign bank. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allows them to either operate as a branch (which most foreign banks do like Citibank, Standard Chartered, HSBC, Deutsche) or operate as wholly-owned subsidiaries. Surprisingly, a third Chinese bank - Bank of China - sneaked in last year without any controversy to set up a branch in India. In the past, Indian corporates have taken huge loans from Chinese banks especially players from power and infrastructure sector. Even in the aviation industry, IndiGo signed a $2.6 billion loan deal some years ago with ICBC for buying over two dozen aircraft. In a free market, there shouldn't be any entry barriers for banks or companies to do commercial business or deals. There is currently a policy-level playing field that allows Chinese banks to operate in India under foreign banking regulations. It will not be wise to close this window. Alibaba, Tencent own Indian unicorns Two Chinese internet giant Alibaba and Tencent have invested billions of dollars in Indian startups. These startups are in a range of businesses, including financial services, e-commerce, food delivery, cab aggregator, online education. They have backed Indian entrepreneurs with much-needed capital. That's why we have unicorns in India like Paytm, Swiggy, Zomato, Bigbasket, Ola, Byjus. The Chinese players are investing despite most of these startups are running in losses. It's, perhaps, unlikely any Indian private equity player or institutional investor or bank have the financial strength, and the will, to back young entrepreneurs so strongly. $53 billion trade deficit India runs a trade deficit of $53 billion with China. This effectively means China is exporting more to India than what India is exporting to China. There has to be some trade rationale (cheap products, dependence on raw material or innovative products) that India allows such large imports from China, which results in running such a massive trade deficit. After all, the trade deficit has implications for the current account deficit (CAD) as India gets lesser inflows by FPI and FDI. A higher CAD, in turn, puts pressure on the value of currency against the US dollar. China not investing in India via FDI India actually needs more FDI inflows as they are stable (not volatile like equity inflows) in nature. But China doesn't even figure in the top 10 FDI equity inflows into India. If one analyses the cumulative FDI data of the last two decades, China stands at the 18th position with inflows of Rs 14,846 crore ($ 2.34 billion). Partly, India is not an attractive destination for Chinese because of the bureaucratic delays and lack of infrastructure. But the fact is that Chinese have an infrastructure to be a low-cost producer for the world. India's efforts should be to learn from China's journey and replace it as an alternative manufacturing or supply chain destination for the world. India should collaborate with Chinese in the engineering and infrastructure space. Indian stock market not attractive for Chinese investors While HDFC stake news is hogging limelight, the Chinese investors are not very active in the listed space as portfolio investors. They don't even figure in the top 10 countries in the equity and debt market. There are no country-specific guidelines for registering as foreign portfolio investor in India. Also Read: Coronavirus lockdown: Auto sales crash 45% in March; commercial vehicles worst hit Also Read: Coronavirus outbreak: Which states have announced lockdown extension? Also Read: 'Help or we will die': Auto dealers send SOS to PM Modi amid coronavirus lockdown While many countries are pointing toward positive signs that social distancing might be finally flattening the curve, the novel coronavirus death toll continues to be staggering, with more than 118,000 dead worldwide. The U.S. is the global leader in the number of cases and deaths. At least 23,078 people in the U.S. have died as a result of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. More than 577,000 people in the U.S. have tested positive. Worldwide, nearly 2 million people have been diagnosed since the virus emerged in China in December. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, unreported cases, and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks. Here are Monday's biggest developments: Worldwide cases near 2 million 21 NYC public school teachers dead New York working with 5 neighboring states on reopening plan Trump retweets call to fire Dr. Fauci from post Here's how the situation developed Monday. All times Eastern. Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect Johns Hopkins revised its data on worldwide confirmed cases. The estimated worldwide cases did not top 2 million on Monday, the updated data says. 8:39 p.m.: Worldwide cases near 2 million The coronavirus pandemic is nearing a grim new milestone. According to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, the number of worldwide cases is nearing the 2 million mark. The number of COVID-19 cases reached 1 million only 11 days ago, on April 2. It took a week, between March 26 and April 2, for the number of worldwide cases to nearly double from 500,000 to 1 million. More than 118,000 have died from the virus worldwide. 7:09 p.m.: Mnuchin says small business loans are up to $230 billion Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the Small Business Adminstration's Paycheck Protection Program has so far distributed and confirmed $230 billion in loans for businesses in need. Story continues Mnuchin provided the update at the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing. PHOTO: President Donald Trump listens as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, April 13, 2020, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP) The treasury secretary said if loans haven't been processed yet, they will get processed this week, and confirmed that he's gone back to Congress to ask for more funding. He said that 80 million Americans will receive up to $1,200 in stimulus money via direct deposit by Wednesday. "We started processing those last Friday," he said. 5:47 p.m.: 3 more NYPD fatalities bring death toll to 9/11 level The NYPD announced three more of its members died due to coronavirus complications. Det. Jeffrey Scalf, a 14-year veteran who was assigned to the Gang Squad in the Bronx, and Detective Raymond Abear, an 18-year veteran who was assigned to the Special Victims Squad in Queens, both died on Monday. Auxiliary Police Captain Mohamed Rahaman, who was with the force for 31 years and served out of Queens, died on Sunday. The total number of NYPD members who have died from COVID-19 so far is now 23, the same number of members who were killed in the 9/11 terror attacks. PHOTO: An NYPD Officers helps remove a patient from a house on April 7, 2020, in Queens, New York. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images) The department said 2,334 uniformed members and 503 civilian members have tested positive for the coronavirus -- but since March 24, more than 800 uniformed members and 90 civilian members have returned to full duty after testing positive. Around 17% of the force was out sick Monday, which is a decrease from the nearly 19% that were out sick last week, according to the NYPD. 5:45 p.m.: Massachusetts deaths grow to 844 Massachusetts health officials said 88 new coronavirus-related fatalities occurred in the last 24 hours, bringing the statewide total number of COVID-19 deaths to 844. During that period, there were 1,392 new confirmed cases of the virus, bringing the statewide total to 26,867, according to health officials. 4:35 p.m.: 29% of Los Angeles County deaths are from nursing facilities In Los Angeles County, 29% of deaths -- 92 out of 320 -- are from nursing homes or nursing facilities, public health officials said Monday. In New York state, just over 10% of deaths -- 1,064 out of a total 10,056 -- are classified as nursing home fatalities, according to new data released by the state's Department of Health. PHOTO: A medic from Empress EMS loads a suspected COVID-19 patient from the Regency Extended Care Center into an ambulance, April 7, 2020, in Yonkers, New York. (John Moore/Getty Images) The New York county with the highest nursing home death toll is Queens, which has recorded 193. The elderly are among the most vulnerable to the dangerous virus. Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis. 3:48 p.m.: West Coast states working together on reopening economies The governors of Washington, Oregon and California are working together "on a shared approach for reopening our economies," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced Monday. PHOTO: A sign showing a parking lot at Green Lake Park is closed due to the coronavirus outbreak is shown, April 10, 2020, in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren/AP) Each state will have its own specific plan, but the governors have agreed to work toward these four goals: protecting the vulnerable, like those in nursing homes; requiring adequate hospital surge capacity and personal protective equipment (PPE) supply; sharing best practices for testing, tracking and isolating systems; and "mitigating the non-direct COVID-19 health impacts, particularly on disadvantaged communities." 3:10 p.m.: 21 NYC school teachers dead A food service staffer, a guidance counselor and 21 public school teachers are among the 50 Department of Education employees in New York City who have died due to the coronavirus, the department said on Monday. PHOTO: An empty playground is seen at the Anderson School PS 334 during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York, April 12, 2020. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters) "The pain their loved ones are experiencing is unimaginable," New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said. "We will be there to support our students and staff in any way they need, including remote crisis and grief counseling each day." The Department of Education added that "school buildings are not a place of greater exposure than any other part of our city. At this time, everyone should assume they have been exposed, because exposure can happen anywhere." 2:50 p.m.: COVID-19 deaths now in all 50 states Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon announced the state's first death on Monday. Faces of the coronavirus pandemic: Remembering those who died There has now been a coronavirus death in all 50 states. 2:20 p.m.: New York working with 6 neighboring states on reopening plan Seven Northeast states -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts -- are joining forces to create a reopening plan, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday. PHOTO: Two people walk on Fifth Avenue wearing protective masks during the coronavirus pandemic, April 12, 2020, in New York. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images) "Each state is going to name a public health official for that state, an economic development official for that state," Cuomo said. "Those officials will then form a working group that will start work immediately on designing a reopening plan, taking into consideration the public health concerns and issues and the economic reactivation issues." "State boundaries mean very little to this virus," Cuomo said Questions remain over whether COVID-19 recovery will guarantee immunity: Is reinfection still possible? "We anticipate different facts, different circumstances for different states, different parts of states," Cuomo said. "Let's be smart and let's be cooperative and learn from one another." Delaware Gov. John Carney added, "Our states are connected in a real way in terms of transportation and visitation and the rest. So our working together, sharing our information and intelligence I think will help each of us make better decisions." 'Torn up': African American family mourns 4 loved ones as COVID-19 racial disparities exposed Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont noted the "hundreds of thousands of people going back and forth between New York and Connecticut. It's the commuter corridor for us and it's also the COVID corridor, which is why it's so important we work together thoughtfully on this." PHOTO: Paramedic Randy Lilly, wearing personal protection equipment (PPE), hands a 10-month-old boy with fever to his mother after upon arriving together by ambulance to Stamford Hospital, April 4, 2020, in Stamford, Conn. (John Moore/Getty Images) The plan must "show us that we do have a future," added Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. "As we figure out how we're gonna reopen our schools, how we reopen our businesses and our homes, we are also going to recognize that we're trying to figure out how we're going to restore the sense of hope that this pandemic has taken away." Initally, six states were announced and later in the evening, Cuomo announced that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker joined the coalition. "The Baker-Polito Administration looks forward to participating in discussions with neighboring states and experts regarding the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic," Baker said in a statement. 1 p.m.: Police shut down underground nightclub in San Francisco San Francisco police shut down an underground nightclub this weekend where people were gathering in violation of the stay-at-home order. US close to coronavirus peak, but we have to take it 'day by day': FDA commissioner When officers went inside the industrial building on Saturday, they found DJ equipment, two fog machines, nine gambling machines, bins of liquor, cases of beer and bar furniture, police said. Video from the weekend of April 5 showed more than 150 people going into the building in the middle of the night, and none of them were following the "6 feet apart" rules. "The operators of this illegal club senselessly put lives at risk in a time when our city is doing everything within our means to slow the spread of this pandemic and safeguard the health and wellbeing of the public," said San Francisco Police Chief William Scott. "Let this case be a reminder that we will take action against those who knowingly violate the public health order and endanger the health and safety of our residents." PHOTO: Virtually deserted streets during a lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is seen in San Francisco, Calif., April 7, 2020. (Karlyle Smith via Reuters) 12:15 p.m.: Behaviors will be changed for 'foreseeable future,' WHO says Because COVID-19 spreads fast and is 10 times deadlier than the 2009 flu pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the easing of restrictions must happen slowly. PHOTO: A woman wearing a face mask walks along a street near to Wuhan Bridge in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, April 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images) "You can't replace lockdown with nothing. You must replace lockdown with a very deeply educated, committed, empowered and engaged community," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said Monday. "We are going to have to change our behaviors for the foreseeable future," Ryan warned. PHOTO: The deserted Rue de Rivoli street in Paris during the lockdown in France aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 disease, caused by the novel coronavirus, April 13, 2020 . (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images) On Tuesday, the WHO will publish its updated strategic advice, which will include six criteria authorities will need to consider in order to lift restrictive measures: transmission is controlled; health system capacities are in place to detect, test, isolate, treat every case and trace every contact; outbreak risks are minimized in places like health facilities and nursing homes; preventive measures are in place in offices and schools; importation risks can be managed; and communities are fully educated and empowered to adjust to the new normal. 11:45 a.m.: New York state death toll climbs over 10,000 In New York state, which has suffered the most fatalities from the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., the curve is continuing to flatten and appears to be plateauing, Gov. Cuomo said Monday. PHOTO: Medical workers take in patients at a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center, April 12, 2020, in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) The state saw 671 deaths on Easter Sunday, bringing New York state's death toll to 10,056, Cuomo said. Despite the rising death toll, in hard-hit New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio appeared optimistic on Monday, praising New Yorkers for practicing social distancing as he announced new coronavirus numbers. PHOTO: People are seen wearing protective masks and gloves during the coronavirus pandemic on April 12, 2020, in New York. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images) The number of new hospital admissions fell to 383 on Saturday, down from 463 on Friday. There were 835 people in intensive care units Saturday, down from 857 patients one day earlier. Citywide, the percentage of people tested who were found to be positive fell from 59.3% to 58.1%. "This is a very good day," de Blasio said. Cuomo, de Blasio disagreement over school restart amid coronavirus puts parents in limbo De Blasio noted there is about a 48-hour lag in getting full, accurate information. Cuomo on Monday addressed the reopening of the state, warning that it won't be by the "flick of a switch." PHOTO: A man walks in heavy rain and high winds across a nearly empty West 42nd street in Manhattan during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York, April 13, 2020. (Mike Segar/Reuters) "I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart," the governor said. When the state reaches that point, Cuomo said they will start by easing isolation, then increasing the economic activity, and then recalibrating the essential worker economy. That will be followed by applying more testing and precautions, said Cuomo. 10:35 a.m.: Supreme Court to teleconference oral arguments in May The U.S. Supreme Court will for the first time hear oral arguments by teleconference in May, seeking to resolve a number of urgent cases that include President Donald Trump's appeal of subpoenas seeking his financial records. SLIDESHOW: Coronavirus outbreak sparks global health emergency The announcement means the justices will hand down several major decisions on politically-charged issues in time for the November presidential election. The justices are expected to make a ruling as to whether or not Trump must surrender his records to congressional and state investigators; whether states can require delegates to the Electoral College to cast ballots based on the popular vote; and whether the Obamacare contraceptive mandate is constitutional. 10 a.m.: Death toll over 11,000 in UK In the United Kingdom, the coronavirus death toll has climbed to at least 11,329. The U.K. has the fifth highest death toll, behind the U.S., Italy, Spain and France. PHOTO: Military personnel arrive at the NHS Nightingale Hospital at the Excel Centre in London, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in London, April 13, 2020. (John Sibley/Reuters) Over 88,000 people in the U.K. have tested positive, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was released from the hospital on Sunday. "It is hard to find the words to express my debt to the NHS [National Health Service] for saving my life," Johnson, 55, tweeted Sunday. "The efforts of millions of people across this country to stay home are worth it. Together we will overcome this challenge, as we have overcome so many challenges in the past." 9:15 a.m.: Sailor on USS Theodore Roosevelt dies A sailor from the USS Theodore Roosevelt died from coronavirus complications on Monday, four days after he was admitted to an intensive care unit in Guam, the Navy said. PHOTO: The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) enters the port in Da Nang, Vietnam, March 5, 2020. (Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters, FILE) The sailor, whose name has not been released, tested positive for COVID-19 on March 30. The sailor was taken off the ship and put at an isolation house at the naval base in Guam where he received medical checks twice a day, the Navy said. What to know about coronavirus: How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus map 8:58 a.m.: Airline travel reaches another new low U.S. airline travel has reached another new low. PHOTO: United Airlines boarding gates sit empty at San Francisco International Airport, April 12, 2020, in San Francisco, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) On Sunday, 90,510 travelers came through TSA checkpoints nationwide. Exactly one year earlier, 2,446,801 passengers were screened. 7:02 a.m.: Spain reports a 2.09% rate of increase in newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases Spanish authorities reported on Monday that there were only 3,477 newly diagnosed cases of the coronavirus, a 2.09% rate of increase. The total number of confirmed cases is now at 3,477, the Spanish Health Ministry said. Business around the country that cannot operate remotely are allowed to reopen their doors to the public on Monday. All nonessential businesses will remain closed through April 26. 4:55 a.m.: Moscow introduces digital passes to move around the city The Moscow government introduced a special page on their website to apply for a QR code to move around the city. The website became unavailable for some users on Monday morning, Meduza reported. Officials said the website was down due to a botnet attack, that was coming 'also from abroad'. The pass will be obligatory starting from Wednesday. 3:48 a.m.: President Trump retweets call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci President Trump retweeted a Twitter posting that demanded Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, be fired from his post. PHOTO: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci turns the podium over to U.S. President Donald Trump during the coronavirus response daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 10, 2020. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) The tweet was in response to DeAnna Lorraine, a former candidate for Congress in California. Said Lorraine: "Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could've saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.Time to #FireFauci." Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020 Only hours earlier, Fauci had appeared on CNN saying that he thinks more lives could have been saved if mitigation efforts to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus had started earlier. "I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated ... But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then." 11:52 p.m.: Trump associate, referenced at briefings, dies of virus A longtime friend of Trump, whom the president said entered the hospital "for a mild stay" but then slipped into a coma due to the coronavirus, has died, ABC News confirmed. New York real estate mogul Stanley Chera died at a New York hospital where he was battling the virus, a source said. Although the president never mentioned Chera by name during his briefings on the virus, he described Chera's battle with COVID-19 as a sobering moment for him personally. "I have some friends that are unbelievably sick," Trump said at the White House coronavirus task force briefing on March 30. "We thought they were going in for a mild stay and, in one case, he's unconscious, in a coma. And you say, 'How did that happen?'" At the next day's briefing, a somber Trump called on Americans to be "prepared for the hard days that lie ahead" as health advisers announced new projections indicating between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans could die from the virus. You "think of it as the flu, but it's not the flu. It's vicious," Trump said. "When you send a friend to the hospital and you call up to find out how is he doing -- it's happened to me. Where he goes to the hospital, he says goodbye, he's sort of a tough guy -- a little older, a little heavier than he'd like to be, frankly -- and you call up the next day, 'How's he doing?' and, 'Sir, he's in a coma.' This is not the flu." Asked at the next briefing whether his friend's struggle represented a turning point in this thinking about the virus, Trump said, "Yeah, well, not a turning point, no. Before that, I knew how -- because Im seeing numbers and Im seeing statistics that are, you know, not exactly very good." "But -- but it hit him very hard," Trump continued. "Hes strong -- a very strong kind of a guy. But hes older. Hes heavier. And hes sort of central casting for what were talking about, and it hit him very hard. Ive never seen anything like it." ABC News' Devin Dwyer, Matt Fuhrman, Aicha El Hammar, Josh Hoyos, Ibtissem Guenford, Aaron Katersky, Alina Lobzina, Luis Martinez, Christine Theodorou and J Gabriel Ware contributed to this report. Worldwide coronavirus cases near grim milestone of 2 million originally appeared on abcnews.go.com A new species of bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis) has been described from Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary by Wild Earth Allies Biologist Thy Neang in collaboration with North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' Herpetologist Bryan Stuart. This new species is described in ZooKeys. The species was discovered by Thy Neang during Wild Earth Allies field surveys in June-July 2019 on an isolated mountain named Phnom Chi in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary when he encountered an unusual species of bent-toed gecko. "It was an extremely unexpected discovery. No one thought there were undescribed species in Prey Lang," said Neang. The geckos were found to belong to the C. irregularis species complex that includes at least 19 species distributed in southern and central Vietnam, eastern Cambodia, and southern Laos. This is the first member of the complex to be found west of the Mekong River, demonstrating how biogeographic barriers can lead to speciation. Additionally, the geckos were unique in morphological characters and mitochondrial DNA, and distinct from C. ziegleri to which they are most closely related. Researchers have named the species Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis after Phnom Chi mountain where it was found. Bent-toed geckos of the genus Cyrtodactylus are one of the most species-diverse genera of gekkonid lizards, with 292 recognized species. Much of the diversity within Cyrtodactylus has been described only during the past decade and from mainland Southeast Asia, and many of these newly recognized species are thought to have extremely narrow geographic ranges. As such, Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis is likely endemic to Phnom Chi, which consists of an isolated small mountain of rocky outcrops (peak of 652 m elevation) and a few associated smaller hills, altogether encompassing an area of approximately 4,464 hectares in Kampong Thom and Kratie Provinces within the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, Cambodia. The forest habitat in Phnom Chi remains in relatively good condition, but small-scale illegal gold extraction around its base threatens the newly discovered species. A second species of lizard, the scincid Sphenomorphus preylangensis, was also recently described from Phnom Chi by a team of researchers including Neang. These new discoveries underscore the importance of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary for biodiversity conservation and the critical need to strengthen its management. Further, an assessment of C. phnomchiensis is urgently warranted by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN 2020) because of its small area of occupancy, status as relatively uncommon, and ongoing threats to its habitat. "This exciting discovery adds another reptile species to science for Cambodia and the world. It also highlights the global importance of Cambodia's biodiversity and illustrates the need for future exploration and biological research in Prey Lang," said Neang. "When [Neang] first returned from fieldwork and told me that he had found a species in the C. irregularis group so far west of the Mekong River in Cambodia, I did not believe it. His discovery underscores how much unknown biodiversity remains out there in unexpected places. Clearly, Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary is important for biodiversity and deserves attention," said Neang's co-author Stuart of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. ### For more information on Wild Earth Allies, please visit http://www.wildearthallies.org. For more information on the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, please visit http://www.naturalsciences.org. Note to Editors: The study abstract follows. "A new species of Cyrtodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae) from Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary" Published: April 13, 2020, ZooKeys DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.926.48671 [doi.org] Abstract: Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis sp. nov. is described from Phnom Chi, an isolated mountain in Kampong Thom Province within the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, Cambodia. The new species is recognized by having a unique combination of morphological characters, including snout-vent length 76.1-80.7 mm; paravertebral tubercles 31-36; ventral scales 45-54; enlarged femoral scales 0-8, without pores; enlarged precloacal scales 7-10, bearing pores 4-5 in males, pits 1-7 in females; the posterior border of nuchal loop unbroken and pointed, bordered anteriorly and posteriorly by a broad yellow or yellowish white band; and yellow spots on top of head. The new species also represents a divergent mitochondrial DNA lineage within the C. irregularis complex that is closely related to C. ziegleri, but the phylogenetic relationships among the new species and two divergent mitochondrial subclades within C. ziegleri are not resolved based on available sequence data. Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis sp. nov. is the only member of the C. irregularis complex known to occur west of the Mekong River. The new species may be endemic to Phnom Chi, and likely faces imminent conservation threats. Authors/Affiliations: Thy Neang1, Adam Henson2, Bryan L. Stuart3 1 Wild Earth Allies, 77a Street Beton, Bayap Village, Sangkat Phnom Penh Thmei, Khan Sen Sok, Phnom Penh, Cambodia; 2 Wild Earth Allies, 2 Wisconsin Circle, Suite 900, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815, USA; 3 North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, 11 West Jones Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27601, USA. Funding/Acknowledgements: Wild Earth Allies is grateful to the General Department of Administration for Nature Conservation and Protection, Ministry of Environment of Cambodia, for providing permission to conduct research in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. Rangers of the Environmental Department of Kampong Thom Province, En E (Field Assistant, Wild Earth Allies), and community members living at the foot of Phnom Chi assisted with field work. Field work was implemented with funding support from Wild Earth Allies. Sereivathana Tuy (Cambodia Director, Wild Earth Allies) provided technical support to the project. Hannah E. Som assisted with sequencing DNA and preparing figures. Thomas Ziegler and two anonymous reviewers improved the manuscript. Trade union Solidarity claims that the current implementation of South Africas lockdown will cause an economic implosion. Because of this, it has made comprehensive proposals to President Ramaphosa and relevant ministers regarding changes it believes need to be made to the lockdown measures. Solidarity CEO Dirk Hermann said the coronavirus pandemic will remain for a long time, and South Africa will need to find a sustainable answer to it. A lockdown in its current format will cause an economic implosion, Hermann said. For a sustained fight against the virus, people must be able to work in healthy environments. He said that South Africa should be fearless against the coronavirus and towards the economy to limit the long-term impact of the pandemic on the health of South Africans and the economy. Smart restrictions so that people can live and work well can bring all South Africans together in the fight against the virus, said Hermann. Solidaritys proposals Solidaritys proposals include amending the regulations in a manner which would make it possible for those who are healthy to continue working. Measures proposed by Solidarity to regulate workplaces include strict hygiene regulations, protective equipment, rules around social distancing, changed working hours, regulation of numbers in the workplace, and workplace testing. According to Solidarity, every effort should be made to enable South Africas workers and entrepreneurs to earn an income. It is necessary to make a shift from only essential workers to everyone who can work well, said Flip Buys, head of the Solidarity Movement. The choice is not between health and work, but for a healthy work environment for as many as possible people. Solidarity believes this will protect vulnerable and lonely citizens, while simultaneously maintaining peace and stability. In letter to Trump, World Council of Churches urges U.S. to end Iran sanctions amid COVID-19 03/29/20 Source: Tehran Times With the growing coronavirus pandemic, the World Council of Churches has called on the U.S. to end illegal and inhuman sanctions against Iran. World Council of Churches In a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump published on April 9, the council wrote that "The novel coronavirus is a common enemy of humanity everywhere. An effective response to the pandemic demands an unprecedented degree of global solidarity and cooperation, special care for the most vulnerable, and swift action to mitigate the conditions which create additional vulnerability." In a joint letter to US president Donald Trump, the #WorldCouncilofChurches, ACT Alliance, and National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA have urged the US to lift crippling sanctions against Iran that are greatly impeding response in that... https://t.co/1bBCIijipS #WCC World Council of Churches (WCC) (@Oikoumene) April 9, 2020 The religious leaders share a deep concern for the impact on the people of Iran of the sanctions imposed by the United States. "Iran, currently with over 67,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 documented deaths due to COVID-19, is by far the most affected country in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and one of the most affected countries in the world," according to the letter. "But its public health response is severely impeded by the strict sanctions regime imposed on the country unilaterally by the United States since May 2019, resulting in an almost total economic blockade." "Now is not the moment for pursuing grievances belonging to the politics of the world before COVID-19," the letter reads. "Now is the moment for international solidarity and cooperation in controlling the spread of the virus, protecting the most vulnerable, and defeating this common enemy." Download : WCC-ACT-NCCCUSA Sanctions and COVID-19_FINAL_.pdf B Satyanarayana Reddy By Express News Service KHAMMAM: Mango farmers in erstwhile Khammam district are appealing to the State government to purchase their produce as traders, due to the lockdown, have not turned up. Meanwhile, the lack of proper procurement centres is also taking toll on the farmers. The farmers cultivated mangoes across 47,000 acres of land in both Khammam and Bhadradri Kothagudem districts and they are expecting a yield of 92,000 tonnes this year. It has to be mentioned here that as many as 15,000 families in the erstwhile district rely on growing mangoes for their livelihood and erstwhile Khammam district tops the list in terms of mango cultivation in the State. Meanwhile, the farmers who were hoping that the State government would take steps to purchase their crop were shattered after Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Raos interaction with the media last day, during which he stated that the government will not be purchasing mango from the growers and urged the farmers to make arrangements themselves for the sale. Every year, by this time, traders come from various places across the nation, including New Delhi, Pune and Maharashtra, and start purchasing the mangoes from the farmers. However, even as the mango produce is ready to be cut from the trees, traders have not turned up, leaving the farmers in the lurch. Mangoes cultivated in the erstwhile district used to exported to other countries like China, Malaysia and Singapore. However, the Covid outbreak has brought all this to a standstill and the growers are now in dire straits. Speaking to Express, district horticulture officer J Mariyanna said that not only mango growers but those who cultivate other crops are also facing problems due to the Covid outbreak. He requested the State government to take a decision on exporting the mangoes. We will apprise the government of the farmers problems, said Mariyanna. One such farmer from Kandukur village, K Venkateswara Reddy, has appealed to the State to buy his produce. N Srinivas, another mango farmer from Dammapet village, said they have suffered a lot as the yield this year is less while the investments were high. B Satyanarayana, a farmer from Aswaraopet village, said his crop has reached its end-stage. If he does not cut his fruit, then it will be damaged. Farmers feel that if the government does not rescue them, they will be forced to live on the streets. Provenance beyond Provence One of the most remarkable recent success stories in wine, the rise of rose has been one of the biggest shake-ups of the still wine category for generations. From 2010 to 2015, Nielsen reported exceptional year-on-year growth, driven largely by brands such as Blossom Hill and Echo Falls. Later in the decade, blush rose began to lose ground to Provence and from 2017 to 2019, sales of rose from the French region more than doubled, from 22 million to 49 million in UK supermarkets. Retailers expect the rose trend to continue. Selfridges buyer Terry Threlfall says: Weve seen rapid growth over the past few years. I think it will slow down but continue to grow. Paola Tich, of London wine bar Vindinista, adds: Many of my customers still think theyre unusual in asking for a pale, dry rose, so I think the style has yet to reach its peak. As the paradigm for pale, dry rose, Provence has become an emblematic success story for the French appellation system. Producers have succeeded in maintaining relative quality and consistency of style. The Provencal style has become synonymous with dryness, which has been critical to its market success. Previously, the rose category suffered from customers not knowing whether it was drier or sweeter than equivalent white wines. Packaging has also been a key differentiator in a stagnant wine market. With eye-catching bottle shapes, Provence has stood out on shelves largely confined to Burgundy, Bordeaux or unfashionable flute-bottle formats. Bottled in clear glass, its photogenic colour appeals to modern customers used to high- quality merchandising. With Cotes de Provence already spanning 20,100ha, the downside of this appellations success story is that there isnt much room to expand. High market demand is likely to increase prices for producers who rely on non-estate fruit, of which there are many. Yet price points for many retailers remain somewhat limited compared to traditional red and white categories. It is mainly a sub-20 category, says Phil Innes, managing director of Loki Wine in Birmingham. Customers seem to be very happy with around 15 a bottle, which is lower than our average bottle sale value. The tension between rising prices and a lifestyle-led customer base may prove dangerous. There is a risk that what Provence represents becomes increasingly superficial, rather than driven by grapes or vineyards what London wine merchant Uncorkeds Colin Wills calls the almost-white and in a clear bottle trend, driven more by presentation than terroir. What of rose beyond Provence? Inevitably, the success of Provence has spawned much imitation, with even Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon-based roses now sporting a fashionably coral hue. There are even fears that the hegemony of Provence rose is stifling diversity. Tich at Vindinista says anything that doesnt conform to the Provence colour palette is hard to sell. I once tried stocking Tavel. I even showed it at a tasting evening all about rose. Most of it ended up as sale stock. People really do drink rose with their eyes. Other retailers report similar problems, with Erik Laan of The Vineking in Surrey reporting sales of rose are 97% Provence, and Threlfall stating that Selfridges grew the rose offer over the last few years by over 300%, but when really diving into the numbers, Provencal rose completely stood out from the rest. We will be cutting back rose this year with a focus on Provence and relationships that we have developed with producers there, he says. COMPETITIVE PRICING With Provence proving the only show in town for many retailers, there is little incentive to list quality, terroir-led rose from traditional areas such as Marsannay, Tavel and Anjou. Instead, theres a temptation to shun quality rose that doesnt meet the stereotype and source Provence lookalikes that compete on price rather than distinctiveness. Matt Walls, Decanters Rhone correspondent, notes that Rhone winemakers are producing increasing volumes of pale pink 16% of Rhone Valley wines are now rose but that this is largely a response to consumer demand and a useful cash generator rather than an attempt to best express their terroir. Threlfall says: There are a lot of people trying to replicate the phenomena of brands like Whispering Angel and Miraval simply through bling packaging and very little thought to whats in the bottle. Bad experiences with brands of questionable quality could hurt the category. Innes agrees. As a category, it may run the risk of being more and more driven by fancy bottles at the expense of quality. If this continues, customers will eventually work out there is better value in other wines. Yet, despite challenges around price points, a lack of diversity in styles and poor-quality late arrivals to the party, there are still many opportunities for Provence and other rose producers. Theres already evidence that what began as a summer dalliance has become a year-round love affair, with multiple retailers noting that sales of rose have been consistently rising, including at Christmas. As Threlfall puts it: Rose is no longer a seasonal beverage, as many wine drinkers switch from being white wine drinkers to full-time rose drinkers. Ending seasonal purchasing presents a significant opportunity for producers and retailers to move their rose stockholding and generate sales all year round. Looking to the longer term, opportunities exist in gastronomy and, although restaurants and the on-trade may be better situated to exploit this, the versatility and flexibility of rose with food, including less traditional, non-European cuisines such as mezze and Asian dishes, presents significant opportunities for retailers to grow the category, and seriousness, of the wine. A complex rose, whether it is big and bold or spicy and lean, has phenomenal capability to pair with modern cuisines, says John Chapman, operations director at Oxford Wine Co. Being able to pair well with a specific dish far outweighs tradition. Given its success so far, it is hard to imagine the popularity of Provence rose is going to wane any time soon. But the road to enduring popularity is not straightforward. When a new fashion comes along, will the current buyers of Provence rose stick by the category or move on to more fashionable pastures? While growing market share has been an area of rapid success for Provence, defending it will be slower and more difficult but with substantial rewards for those who succeed. THE DARKER SIDE OF ROSE By Martin Green Just four years ago, rose was in danger of becoming the Austin Allegro of the wine world cheap, unfashionable and something you would never want to bring to a dinner party. Sales decreased 5.2% in the year to March 2016 (Nielsen) and its decline looked terminal. Then along came Provence rose, which dazzled millions of Brits with its pale hues, its elegant packaging and its masterful evocation of chic people sipping classy drinks on balmy Mediterranean evenings. Rose is now a crucial category for all UK drinks retailers, with sales spiking during the summer, and pale, Provencal- style offerings rule the roost. However, leading suppliers are confident that rose is for life, not just for summer, and that a broader array of styles can drive further growth. Sales of rose are no longer restricted to summertime and there is a clear market for quality rose, as shown by the 4% value growth weve seen in rose sales to independent retailers, says David Gleave MW, managing director of Liberty Wines. A pale colour is an easy cue for consumers looking for a drier style and these wines are doing well, whether from Provence or, increasingly, from elsewhere. However, our sales are spread across a variety of regions, grapes and hues. A darker hue doesnt have to mean sweet or cloying, and consumers are willing to try them if the style is well communicated, either on the shelf or by knowledgeable staff. Producers across Iberia, for example, make wonderful fruit-forward rosados whose colour reflects the darker-skinned varieties they are made from, rather than indicating high levels of sugar. Liberty has distributed Portuguese rose brand Mateus in the UK since tying up an agreement with producer Sogrape in 2017. Mateus was recently given a contemporary makeover. Mateus has a great story to tell, says Gleave. Its 78-year history and loyal following combine with its accessible price and distinctive bottle to give it the highest spontaneous awareness of any rose brand [FlyResearch 2018], making it an easy sell for retailers. It is also well placed to meet the consumer preference for a drier flavour profile, thanks to the balanced residual sugar level of 15g/l. It appeals both to those who remember it as an old favourite and the next generation of rose drinkers trying it for the first time. BEYOND THE PALE Paul Braydon, buying controller at Kingsland Drinks, says that pale rose is still the dominant force in the UK market, but he urges retailers not to underestimate the popularity of Zinfandel rose and darker, sweeter styles. It still represents a significant proportion of the volume of wines we supply to the UK market, he says. Were also expecting to see an increase in popularity for drier, premium New World rose wines such as The Ned rose from Marlborough, New Zealand. This Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris blend is an elegant, well-structured rose with notes of summer berries and watermelon, with a delicate floral lift. Consumers are looking for refreshment all year round, something wine as a category often struggles to fulfil rose can do this excellently. Its all about communicating the style, the serve a spritzer, over ice etc and the ability for rose to be refreshing is important. Adam Marshall, buying controller for Europe at Kingsland, adds: Its definitely the lighter/paler styles that are still driving things forward and they seem to have become a real favourite with consumers. Provence is the area everyone goes to first and its still incredibly popular, but retailers and consumers are starting to look further afield as other regions have been creating and honing their paler styles over the past couple of years. We can offer a range of wines from across Europe including Provence but also from Italy, other Mediterranean French regions, Spain and even eastern Europe. Related articles: SALEM, Ore. Oregon will put $8 million toward the Oregon Food Bank in an affort to address rapidly rising food insecurity, according to an announcement from Governor Kate Brown on Monday. In times of crisis, no Oregonian should need to wonder where they can find food for their family, said Governor Brown. I know many Oregonians, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs and incomes due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Oregon Food Bank Network is a vital resource for families in need." The state will be pay out weekly toward the Oregon Food Bank as needed over the next eight weeks, according to Brown's office. Oregon expects to receive a 75 percent reimbursement from FEMA due to the federal emergency declaration. The organization is facing an increase in demand while they also address a significant decrease in food donations from commercial sources," Governor Brown continued. "This funding supports Oregon Food Bank's efforts to ensure resources remain available to Oregonians facing food insecurity bridging the gap until additional food and funds from the federal CARES Act reach Oregon. FEEDING AMERICA: If you'd like to contribute to local food banks currently feeling the strain of COVID-19, visit our page here. The Oregon Food Bank includes a network of 21 regional food banks and more than 1,400 food assistance sites around the state. Since March, the system has seen a "dramatic increase" in demand, Brown's office said. Meanwhile, the usual donations from food producers and grocers have fallen due to the increased strain on supply chains. Those donations generally account for the majority of Oregon Food Bank's in-kind intake. "Hunger was a crisis before the pandemic especially for communities of color, migrant and immigrant communities, trans communities, and single moms," said Susannah Morgan, Oregon Food Bank CEO. "We're grateful for the continued leadership of Governor Brown and our partnership with the state's emergency coordination center as we work together to address this crisis head-on." Governor Brown's office said that the SNAP program is still the state's "first line of defense" against hunger, touting recent efforts to expand SNAP eligibility and benefits. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fathered two children with one of his lawyers while holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for much of the past decade, according to a report Sunday confirmed by the mother. The 48-year-old Australian is the dad of two boys, aged two and one, with lawyer Stella Morris, to whom he is engaged, she confirmed following a Mail on Sunday report. Assange is currently being held in London's high security Belmarsh prison as he fights an extradition request by the United States to stand trial there on espionage charges. Morris detailed the revelations shortly after the report emerged, in a video posted on social media by Wikileaks chronicling her five-year relationship with Assange and the arrival of their two children. "We fell in love," she said in the nearly 12-minute film, outlining how the romance began in 2015 -- three years into his seven-year stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in central London. "This is the person... I know the most in this world -- he's extraordinary," the South African-born lawyer said. Morris said she wanted to speak out now fearing Assange's life "might be coming to an end" due to his continued detention and the spread of coronavirus. Jennifer Robinson, one of Assange's lawyers in Britain who introduced the pair to each other in 2011, according to Morris, also confirmed to AFP they were a family. She said a statement by Morris outlining the situation had been cited as evidence in a failed court bid last month to get Assange bailed to avoid catching COVID-19. "Despite her statement about their family and the medical evidence about the severe risk to Assange's health, the judge refused bail and refused to grant her and the children anonymity," Robinson said. The British government plans to allow some prisoners temporary release, amid fears COVID-19 could sweep through jails, but a judge rejected the request on March 25, saying there were "no grounds" for his release. - 'Deliberate decision' - Assange faces charges under the US Espionage Act for the 2010 release of a trove of secret files detailing aspects of US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. A ruling against Assange could see him jailed for 175 years. He ensconced himself in the Ecuadoran embassy in 2012 after skipping bail to avoid separate legal proceedings in Sweden, but was finally dragged out last year. He reportedly conceived the first child with Morris in 2016, according to the Mail on Sunday. Morris said the couple began a relationship the previous year while she was visiting him to work on his legal cases. Assange watched the birth of both children in London hospitals via live video-link and met the elder boy, named Gabriel, after he was smuggled into the embassy, the newspaper said. It published the report alongside photographs of Assange with the toddlers. Both boys are said to be British citizens and have reportedly visited their father in prison as well as the embassy previously. "Forming a family was a deliberate decision to kind of break down those walls around him and imagine a life beyond," Morris said. "While for many people it would seem insane to start a family in that context, for us it was the sane thing to do. "It grounds me and when Julian sees the children it gives him a lot of peace, and nurturing and support." Assange's full extradition hearing is due to resume for three weeks in mid-May, when witnesses will be called and cross-examined, with an eventual ruling expected by August at the latest. But proceedings could be delayed as court hearings have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Assange and his lawyers argue that he should be bailed from prison because of the risk of catching the coronavirus there Wikileaks Assange ensconced himself in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012 Aside from her pop star darling persona, Taylor Swift has a reputation of turning her exes into lyrical inspirations and pouring all her heartbreaks into a work of art. Swift has been in the music scene for more than a decade -- which means she has a collection of award-winning songs inspired by her exes or short-lived flings. With that said, here are Taylor Swift's five most highly publicized relationships ranked from worst to best. THE WORST 5. Joe Jonas (July 2008-October 2008) At the bottom spot, we ranked the former Jonas Brother member as the "worst" ex. This is after the Grammy Award winner revealed in her 2008 interview with Ellen DeGeneres that Joe broke up with her over a 27-second phone call. "When I find that person that is right for me, he'll be wonderful, and when I look at that person, I'm not even going to be able to remember the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18," Swift told DeGeneres Unfortunately, Joe did not just break Taylor's heart, but he also broke the etiquette of breaking up in person. 4. Calvin Harris (March 2015 to June 2016) The pair met in February 2015 during the Brit Awards through their mutual friend Ellie Goulding. After a year of their relationship, Swift and the Scottish DJ called it quits and ended things in a messy breakup. This also led to a Twitter rant by Harris, saying: "I figure if you're happy with your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex-BF down for something to do." John Newman, Harris' best pal, even called their breakup as "brutal," while one of Swift's famous friends, Lena Dunham, labeled the DJ as her "worst ex-boyfriend." THE BEST 3. Tom Hiddleston (June 2016-September 2016) Just weeks or even days after her very public breakup with the EDM artist, the pop star was seen dancing with Tom Hiddleston at a 2016 Met Gala after-party. The "Hiddleswift" was born after the pair were spotted kissing and cuddling near her Rhode Island home. Hiddleston even agreed to wear the iconic "I Heart T.S." shirt while celebrating Independence Day together. Now that's a boyfriend! 2. Jake Gyllenhaal (October 2010-January 2011) Like her past lovers, Swift's relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal had a huge age gap. The actor was 29 while the pop star was only 20 years old back then. According to Us Weekly, the "Brokeback Mountain" star told Swift that their relationship "wasn't working out" and although she was mature for her age, "she was so inexperienced she didn't know how to deal with it." However, Jake explained that he truly "cares for her," but dating the "Bad Blood" artist was a lot for him as he wants to keep his life private. 1. Harry Styles (December 2012-January 2013) The pair met through their mutual friend and fellow musician Ed Sheeran. Although their relationship was shortlived, it is still one of the most talked-about celebrity relationships. In his previous interview with Rolling Stone, the former One Direction member described his connection with her as "hard" yet a "learning experience." The "Shake it Off" songstress, on the other hand, seemed to agree and expressed the same thought in her Billboard interview in 2017. Per Us Weekly in 2014, a source confirmed that the duo "had become pals" after a year of their split. A pair of North Carolina newlyweds had to give up their big wedding this month due to the pandemic, but decided to go ahead with a small, private ceremony instead. Yet they didn't have to give up celebrating with friends and family entirely: After Matt Williams and Susan McElroy tied the knot on April 2, their loved ones line the street with cars, putting together an impromptu wedding parade for the bride and groom. Video footage of the heartwarming moment shows Matt and Susan's dearly beloved gathered on an otherwise empty street, where they honked their horns, held up signs, and threw rice at the happily married couple. They do! Matt Williams and Susan McElroy tied the knot on April 2 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina All they need is love! They'd planned a bigger wedding but had to cancel due to the pandemic. Instead, they held a small outdoor ceremony with just 10 people Susan and Matt had planned their Chapel Hill wedding, but had to postpone once the pandemic shut down venues and prevented large gatherings across the US. 'Out of an abundance of caution and concern for the health of our closest friends and family, we have decided to postpone our wedding celebration,' the couple told guests. However, rather than wait to reschedule their 'I do's' until the end of the pandemic leaving dates and details up in the air the couple decided to get flexible with their plans. On Thursday, April 2, they got married at Horace Williams House, a museum in Chapel Hill, with just 10 people in attendance. Surprise! When they left the venue, they were surprised by dozens of friends and family who'd lined their cars up down the block To the newlyweds! Several had made signs toasting the newlyweds, with the crowd honking their horns and cheering 'Friends/family from near and far surprised us with a car parade and handfuls of confetti. It was special beyond words,' Susan said 'It was sweet and surreal!' Susan said of the 'petite wedding.' She added: '6 feet apart and happy tears have never looked better!' Though they intend to have a bigger reception at a later date, they didn't end up having to wait to celebrate with a larger crowd. When they left the grounds of the museum, dozens of loved ones had gathered in their cars, safely distanced, to fete the bride and groom. 'Friends/family from near and far surprised us with a car parade and handfuls of confetti. It was special beyond words,' Susan said. Kiss! 'Give her a smooch!' one woman called out and the couple obliged, to more cheers from the crowd That's love: The newlyweds were clearly surprised by the turnout, with one woman shouting that she drove all the way from Alabama for the occasion 'It was sweet and surreal!' Susan said of the 'petite wedding.' She added: '6 feet apart and happy tears have never looked better!' Cars spilled out of the parking lot, parked down the block in two lines to form a parade route. Several had made signs toasting the newlyweds, with the crowd honking their horns and cheering. 'Give her a smooch!' one woman called out and the couple obliged, to more cheers from the crowd. The newlyweds were clearly surprised by the turnout, with one woman shouting that she drove all the way from Alabama for the occasion. Contributed Photo / Connecticut State Police / Contributed Photo SEYMOUR-It took nearly four hours Saturday but police talked a male on Bunting Road out of killing himself. The man had stabbed himself and was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to Deputy Chief Roberto Rinaldi. Ferry passenger numbers are down over 17% at Dublin Port in the first three months of the year, compared to 2019's figures. Figures show the number of tourists passing through has also fallen by 18%. ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has tested positive for the coronavirus. (Gilbert Carrasquillo / GC Images) ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos told viewers Monday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus. Stephanopoulos disclosed his diagnosis on "Good Morning America," where he has been broadcasting from his home for the past few weeks and said he has no symptoms and is feeling fine. Stephanopoulos had been caring for his wife, comic actress Ali Wentworth, who confirmed two weeks ago that she tested positive. "Ive never had a fever, never had chills, never had a headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath," Stephanopoulos said. "Im feeling great." The vast majority of TV personalities who have live programs are now working out of their homes to protect employees and slow the spread of the virus. New York has become the epicenter of the pandemic. The state's death toll since the outbreak began reached 9,385 on Saturday. The diagnosis comes nearly a week after ABC News suffered a coronavirus-related fatality as longtime "Good Morning America" camera operator Tony Greer died from complications related to COVID-19 on April 7. Larry Edgeworth, an NBC News audio technician, died on March 19. Maria Mercader , a veteran producer and executive for CBS News, died on March 29. Global coronavirus pandemic or not, it is spring in Tucson, Arizona the birds are still singing, and the wildflowers are still blooming. Here' are some common local spring wildflowers and birds to identify. Flash British Prime Minister Boris Johnson "has been discharged from hospital to continue his recovery at Chequers", a Downing Street spokesman said Sunday. "On the advice of his medical team, the PM will not be immediately returning to work. He wishes to thank everybody at St Thomas' for the brilliant care he has received," the spokesman said. "All of his thoughts are with those affected by this illness," the spokesman added. The prime minister was moved to a general ward on Thursday evening after spending three days in intensive care. He was taken to the hospital on April 5, 10 days after testing positive for the novel coronavirus. Hours after leaving the hospital, Johnson posted a video on Twitter, praising NHS (National Health Service) staff for saving his life. "It is hard to find the words to express my debt to the NHS for saving my life. The efforts of millions of people across this country to stay home are worth it," said the prime minister. "Together we will overcome this challenge, as we have overcome so many challenges in the past. #StayHomeSaveLives," said Johnson. According to the Guardian newspaper, the combined figures from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland make it clear that the official death toll, when it comes later Friday, will exceed 10,000. The Department of Health and Social Care said Saturday that the death toll of those hospitalized in Britain who tested positive for the virus reached 9,875 as of Friday afternoon. Egypt has postponed sine die the Initial Public Offering (IPO) to sell minority shares state-run Banque du Caire (BQDC.CA) due to spread of covid-19 contamination, reports say. The operation slated for mid-April on the Egyptian Stock Exchange aimed at selling the shares for about $500 million. The Bank Chairman Tarek Fayed, Reuters notes, told a local media in an interview that the roadshow is deferred owing to the covid-19 outbreak. Plans to offer a share of the bank on the Egyptian Stock Exchange are currently deferred due to the spread of the new coronavirus globally and locally, and the impact on both local and global stock markets, Fayed told the private Almasry Alyoum newspaper in an interview published Sunday. The transaction in the in pipeline since last year was first postponed to April this year because of market volatility. The state hopes to relinquish between 20 and 30 per cent of the state-run financial institution. BQDC.CA is by state-owned Banque Misr after taking the control in mid-2000 over non-performing loans in exchange for assets. Egypt, the first African country to report the first covid-19 case in February, Sunday said the number of confirmed cases has topped 2,065 while the death toll hit 159. Posted by North Africa Post North Africa Post's news desk is composed of journalists and editors, who are constantly working to provide new and accurate stories to NAP readers. Harbin requires mandatory 28-day quarantine, multiple tests amid rising risk of imported infections Global Times Source:Global Times Published: 2020/4/12 16:51:54 Harbin, capital city Northeast China's Heilongjiang, is stepping up efforts to curb COVID-19 amid rising imported cases, requiring at least two nucleic acid tests, one serum antibody test and mandatory 28-day quarantine for all international arrivals. All arrivals from overseas and from major virus hard-hit areas will be taken into 14-day quarantine at designated locations and another 14-day medical observation at home. They will also take two nucleic acid tests and one serum antibody test in order to make sure no one is missed from screening, according to the local government. Harbin government also called for strict inspections of border areas while enhancing information-sharing mechanisms between border, customs, aviation, and railway transport authorities to accurately identify arrivals from overseas, according to a statement issued on Sunday. Meanwhile, for all residential areas where confirmed and asymptomatic patients live, buildings will be put under sealed-off management for 14 days, and local community workers will help allocate daily necessities for local residents. All residents will also have to strictly follow exit and entry rules, taking nucleic acid tests twice and a serum antibody test once, the official statement said. All pharmacies in the city will continue to implement the information registration system for anyone who comes to buy antipyretics, cough suppressants, and antiviral drugs. Anyone who reports information about individuals coming to the city who fail to register their information will be rewarded 2,000 yuan ($284.30). Heilongjiang reported 21 new imported cases on Saturday, all of whom were Chinese nationals returning from Russia. The province also reported five new asymptomatic patients on Saturday, also from Russia. Local health authorities also reported two new domestic transmissions on Saturday, according to media reports. A local confirmed patient surnamed Guo and an asymptomatic patient surnamed Wang did not cooperate with epidemiological investigations, which greatly increased difficulties in tracking down the origin of the contagion. Local police in Harbin are further investigating the matter. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Cardinal George Pell is reportedly under police investigation after a new accuser came forward with fresh allegations of child abuse. A week on from his successful High Court appeal against child sex convictions, reports said Victoria Police had been investigating a separate accusation against Pell, 78. Police are yet to approach Pell or his legal team over the fresh allegation - which is understood to date back to the 1970s, according to the Herald Sun. Scroll down for video Cardinal George Pell is reportedly under police investigation after a new accuser brought forward fresh child abuse allegations. Pictured: Pell arrives at the Seminary Of The Good Shepherd in Sydney on April 8 George Pell leaves Barwon Prison on April 7 after his child sex convictions were quashed A man who now works in a professional role reportedly made the accusation. A spokeswoman for the cardinal said on Monday night: 'In any police matter there should be due process through the proper channels.' Daily Mail Australia does not suggest the new allegations are true - only that police are reportedly investigating. Cardinal Pell was not told of the fresh investigation until Monday, the paper reported. A recorded interview between Cardinal Pell and Sky News Australia presenter Andrew Bolt will air on Tuesday night, in which Cardinal Pell said he 'wouldn't be entirely surprised' if police attempted to prosecute him again. Bolt asked the cardinal whether he was ashamed of the Catholic church's handling of child sex abuse scandals. 'Yes. There are two levels. One is the crimes itself and then the treating it so inadequately for so long,' Cardinal Pell said. 'It's like cutting out a cancer. Please God, we've got rid of it.' Cardinal Pell said he condemns 'these sort of activities', adding he has seen the damage sexual abuse has done to victims. 'One of the things that grieves me is the suggestion that I'm anti-victim, or not sufficiently sympathetic,' he said. Pell also criticised the ABC's role in presenting a one-sided view of his legal ordeal. Pope Benedict XVI with Cardinal George Pell in July 2008 at an inter-faith meeting in Sydney 'I believe in free speech,' Cardinal Pell said. 'I acknowledge the right of those who differ from me to just state their views. 'But in a national broadcaster, to have an overwhelming presentation of one view and only one view, that's a betrayal of the national interest.' The interview also sheds light on Cardinal Pell's experiences in jail - where he befriended a number of inmates, including a convicted murderer. Cardinal Pell (pictured in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City in 2013) has always maintained his innocence. He was not told of the reported fresh investigation until Monday The cardinal won his appeal bid to the High Court on April 7 and walked free from Barwon Prison, near Geelong, after more than 400 days behind bars. He travelled from Melbourne to Sydney on Wednesday - stopping briefly at a petrol station to buy a phone charger and newspapers. The 78-year-old travelled from Melbourne to Sydney on April 8 - stopping briefly at a petrol station (pictured) Cardinal Pell arrived at the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush in Sydney's west, at about 9pm on April 8. He released a statement saying the serious injustice he suffered had been remedied. 'I hold no ill will to my accused, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough,' he said on Tuesday. The 78-year-old said his trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church or how Australian church authorities dealt with paedophilia. The 78-year-old spoke candidly about the church's failings following his release from prison in a sit down interview with Sky News Australia presenter Andrew Bolt. Pell is pictured in 2008 'The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not,' he said. In December 2018, a jury found Cardinal Pell guilty of five charges, accepting evidence of one complainant that the then-Archbishop of Melbourne had sexually abused him and another 13-year-old choirboy at St Patrick's Cathedral in 1996. One of the choirboys died in 2014, prompting the other to bring the allegations to police. In an initial trial, a jury was unable to reach a verdict. The second jury was unanimous in its decision. An appeal to Victoria's Court of Appeal last year was unsuccessful. Cardinal Pell has always maintained his innocence, a fact noted in the High Court's 26-page decision. The Supreme Court on Monday said that the Madhya Pradesh Governor was right to order a floor test in the Assembly as the state government had lost the majority. A bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud and also comprising Justice Ajay Rastogi passed a verdict in the matter. The apex court, in a 68-page judgment on the powers of Governor, said the floor test was necessary as the government had lost the majority. "Have given a detailed judgment on Constitutional law and powers of Governor," Justice DY Chandrachud said. The Supreme Court had, on March 19, ordered a floor test in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly to be held on Friday, following which Chief Minister Kamal Nath tendered his resignation. Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan had later taken oath as the new state Chief Minister. The development had come after 22 Congress MLAs tendered their resignation after Jyotiraditya Scindia, a prominent face of the Congress, resigned and joined the BJP. The top court was hearing the petition, filed by former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and other BJP leaders, seeking a floor test in Madhya Pradesh Assembly claiming that the Congress-led government in the state has lost the majority. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: Projection of the UK's flag on the Heydar Aliyev Centers building is a very sincere gesture, British Ambassador James Sharp tweeted, Trend reports. "This is a very sincere gesture. I thank Azerbaijan and the Heydar Aliyev Center and wish the Azerbaijani people good health. In this difficult time, it is very important to show solidarity and work together," he said. Projection of the UK's flag was placed on the Heydar Aliyev Centers building in Baku, Azerbaijan. In a sign of Azerbaijan's solidarity with the international community in the fight against the spread of COVID-19, the flag of one of the states affected by the virus will be displayed daily at the Heydar Aliyev Center, which is a world-wide architectural monument. Flags are changed daily in accordance with the order of the first letter of the country name in the English alphabet. In this way, the Heydar Aliyev Center expresses support and respect to the states and their peoples who have been severely affected by the spread of COVID-19. A Holocaust survivor says the coronavirus pandemic might help remind the world people are people and slow the rise of populism. Speaking on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch said Covid- 19 might wake people up to have better attitudes towards each other. The first camp to be liberated by British troops, the horror of Belsen was on such a scale the BBC initially refused to broadcast the full report by journalist Richard Dimbleby for fear of distressing listeners. The broadcaster, father of Jonathan and David, said he had passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of nightmare. Describing one prisoner, he said: She was a living skeleton, impossible to gauge her age for she had practically no hair left, and her face was only a yellow parchment sheet with two holes in it for eyes. Footage of the piles of emaciated bodies left outside the camps wooden huts soon followed Dimblebys report, revealing to the British public for the first time the reality of the Nazis final solution. A mass grave within the camp broadcaster Richard Dimbleby described Belsen as the world of nightmare (PA) It is estimated more than 60,000 people died at the camp under Nazi rule, and a further 14,000 of the 60,000 living prisoners found by the British were so frail they perished in the weeks after liberation. Diarist Anne Frank and her sister Margot are among the camps most famous victims believed to have died between February and March 1945 from typhus. Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch, now 94, was an inmate at Auschwitz before being crammed on a train to Belsen with 3,000 others as the Red Army marched on the notorious extermination camp. She told the PA news agency: People always ask me: Was Belsen better or was it worse than Auschwitz? It was just different. Belsen was not an extermination camp. In Auschwitz people were murdered in the most sophisticated manner, in Belsen they didnt need that. In Belsen you just simply perished. That was the difference between the two camps. Story continues She continued: Belsen became so overcrowded that they just gave up. The Germans just gave up. They just left us there to die. It was total chaos. The end of the world. When asked, with populism on the rise, the world might be in danger of forgetting the lessons of the holocaust, she said: Of course, we are all worried, but we are worried about something else now. We are worried about coronavirus and maybe the end result of this disaster, which is a world disaster, might wake people up to have better attitudes towards each other. She added: Maybe with what is happening now in the world where everyone is affected, maybe people will wake up and realise that people are people human beings. Anne Frank and her sister Margot were among the thousands who died at Bergen-Belsen (Arthur Edwards/The Sun) Fellow survivor Susan Pollack has never forgotten the moment of liberation. Mrs Pollack, 89, had been sent to work in a munitions factory after undergoing the Selektion process at Auschwitz which determined who would be forced into labour and who would be killed immediately. She arrived at Belsen after being forced on a death march with thousands of other prisoners as the Nazis retreated westward over the course of 1945. Mrs Pollack said: How could we imagine a death camp of that magnitude? Most of us died from hunger, from disease and from total neglect. When the British came and liberated us I was already a corpse, full of lice, but I remember the first time in almost a year the gentleness, kindness. Somebody lifted me up and placed me in this little ambulance how was that possible? By then I was so dehumanised. Belsen survivor Susan Pollack says she was already a corpse when the British arrived on April 15 1945 (Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA) Describing the soldier who helped her, she said: I remember his touch. I remember his gentleness. I dont remember what he said because my cognitive perception was gone but that was the first time I think that somehow I felt a spark of hope. Mrs Pollack said of the liberators: Fantastic people. I am grateful forever for what they have done for us survivors those battle-worn soldiers. Events to mark this years anniversary were cancelled due to the pandemic, but the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) and many other charities are working hard to keep the memory of what happened alive. Karen Pollock, HET chief executive, said populist movements seen in places like Hungary and Poland and their attempts to re-write the Holocaust just makes our work more important. She added: Im proud of the fact we have got generations of young people who feel quite strongly that it is their job not just to carry the legacy of the survivors, not just to remember that it happened, but also to protect the truth of the Holocaust. Skywatchers and also stargazers are delighted after observing the divine event of Supermoon on April 7, 2020. It was this years biggest Extremely moon where natural satellite of Planet came to be closest to our world as well as showed up in its biggest and also brightest from for the year 2020. The Super Pink moon is what astronomers call as a perigean full moon. At this time, the moon goes to its closest range to earth at 356,907 km away. The full moon of April is typically called the pink moon according to old Native American society in addition to is absolutely no indicator of the colour the moon will take. The neighboring perigee (the point in the orbit of the moon or a satellite at which it is closest to the planet) Moon seem around 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than Moons that take place near the apogee (the factor farthest from Planet) in the Moons orbit. Noah Petro, a research study scientist from NASAs Goddard Area Trip Centre, stated that the supermoons are a wonderful possibility to begin taking a look at the moon, not simply that as soon as yet every possibility you have! As per the United States space agency NASA, the Moon will certainly appear complete for 3 successive days, so if anyone missed out on the opportunity to witness the moon in its largest kind, can enjoy the appeal of our all-natural satellite for coming 2 days, i.e., till April 9, 2020. After enjoying the charm of Super Pink Moon, people started recording spectacular images and began sharing it on social networks. We have actually built up a few of the best images drawn from around the world. Why is it called Pink Moon? When it involves calling a full moon, the treatment normally depends upon the indigenous American regions and likewise durations. The name Pink Moon, therefore, describes the pink bloom (Phlox subulata) that grows in spring in the eastern of North America and additionally not the colour of the Moon, according to a Farmers Almanac report. The full moon around this of the year is furthermore referred to as Growing Yard Moon, the Egg Moon, as well as the Fish Moon. Super Moons arent one-of-a-kind as they occur around when every 2.7 years due to the fact that the number of days in a new moon to new moon is a little bit less than the typical calendar month. A sequence of 12 lunations amounts to 354 days, against the 365 days in a year. The distinction builds up over time up until year will certainly have 13 lunations rather than 12. 2018 will certainly feature 2 Blue Moons one in January and one in March. The distance in between the Earth as well as the moon modifications continously. Every time the moon orbits the Earth, in 29.5 days, it will certainly reach near the Planet, and sometimes the surrounding area will be close to the date of the full moon i.e., a supermoon. Michelle Nichols, manager of public observing at Chicagos Adler Planetarium states that when you consider it near the perspective, theres an optical illusion. When the supermoon is witnessed to the low extent, it appears substantial. This is called the moon illusion, as well as the moon has not climbed, it is a trick your eyes are playing on you. Regardless of the noteworthy difference between a normal moon and a supermoon, it is not as considerable as it appears. Nicholas says that it is a remarkable chance to get people excited regarding scientific research and also astronomy. The supermoons moon is a little larger and also brighter, however individuals cant eternally discriminate, and also it is an excellent reason simply to head out and also gaze at the skies. I went outside and actually managed to get some images of the rare Pink Supermoon-enjoy -IG: @ rawfocvs pic.twitter.com/goFsqv8RJJ thatphotographerRudy (@rudym_7) April 8, 2020 A beautiful pic of pink supermoon with Brighton Pier in foreground pic.twitter.com/nLeuFcgOAk mike roberts-millar (@wisheart12) April 8, 2020 Good morning; views of last night's supermoon were rather spoiled by cloud, but it was still interesting to see; hope you all have pleasant days! pic.twitter.com/6YV2Ayzz6R Chris Hall (@christop_hall) April 8, 2020 For those that have missed out on a sight of the last supermoon of 2020, can watch it till April 9, taking photos to maintain the moment can be comfy. Costs Ingalls, a NASA digital photographer, informs that those catching the event by their phones need to focus on the proper light equilibrium. Touch the display and retain your finger on the moon to lock the focus. After that glide your finger up or down to dim or lighten the exposure. For those making use of DSLR electronic cameras, Ingalls suggests making use of one more subject in the photo, like an individual, animal or landmark to associate with the size of the moon. Normally I find when the moon is near the sky line I have a much better opportunity of combining it with a spots or individual, however there are no restrictions, and in some cases a high item can be utilized when the moon goes to an extremely high side. While the supermoon can come out looking bigger in photos than it does when gazing at it face to face, Nichols insists it is an unlikely opportunity to obtain people thrilled about scientific research and astronomy. The supermoon obtains headings since the moons a little bit larger as well as a little better, yet people get frustrated that they can not permanently tell the difference. Still, its an excellent factor simply to go out and also take a look at the skies. The historic agreement that we sawis only 10 mb/d. But that is only half of the story, U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said on Fox Business. When you add up all of the production cuts around the world, we are going to be much closer to 20 mb/d coming off the market. After several days of negotiations, OPEC+ pulled off a historic production cut of around 10 million barrels per day. Additional cuts from a series of non-OPEC countries, including the U.S., magnified the headline number, although those cuts are not mandatory. Instead, the market is going to force shut ins, a trend for which the Trump administration is taking credit as a cut. Through some optimistic accounting, the Trump administration billed the deal as a cut of nearly 20 mb/d. In reality, the figure will be much smaller. In any event, the drop in global demand exceeds the cuts by so much that oil prices were flat on Monday. Thats not to say the deal will have no effect at all. Instead, it could prevent a more catastrophic meltdown, even if it doesnt rally prices anytime soon. Having looked into the abyss three weeks ago, the deal should provide some stability to global oil prices and reduce volatility, Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a note on Monday. The deal mitigates some of the destruction in the U.S. shale patch. Bank of America predicted that U.S. oil production would have fallen by as much as 3.5 mb/d by the end of next year absent a deal. The cuts announced by OPEC+ could translate into a drop in U.S. production by a more modest 1.8 mb/d instead. Nevertheless, the current meltdown is already having an effect. The North American oil industry has announced roughly $50 billion in spending cuts over the past month, according to the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. and Canada have shelved more than 300 rigs since mid-March. Premium: Where Does Oil Go After The Largest Production Cut In History? The Canadian rig count is down to 35, a record low. There were 240 rigs operating in Canada as recently as late February. Output in Canada is already down by 325,000 bpd. Shut ins have already begun. Continental Resources said it would cut output by 30 percent for April and May. Concho Resources began shutting in wells in the Permian last week. Parsley Energy has shuttered production at 150 wells. As the WSJ notes, many other smaller companies are shutting in. The drop in demand is simply too large. In the short run, demand is down by 25 to 30 mb/d, according to an array of analysts. Bank of America sees demand falling by 9.2 mb/d for the full year in 2020, a larger decline than the 4.4 mb/d the bank previously predicted. The demand implosion is immediate and deep, while the supply decline will likely happen in stages, Bank of America said. So plenty of downside risks remain. The OPEC+ cuts, as extraordinary as they are, cannot offset the hit to demand. Goldman Sachs called the deal too little and too late. JBC Energy called the deal just a plaster on an open wound. [A]ny expectations that this will stem the tide of weak physical outright prices in the weeks ahead are likely misplaced, JBC said. [T]he prospect of reaching tank tops remains a real one in our model numbers despite the OPEC+ deal. There are also questions about whether all parties will fulfill their commitments. Mexico objected to 400,000 bpd of cuts, instead agreeing to cut by only 100,000 bpd. But they were at least upfront about it. Other countries may simply continue to overproduce. [T]here are a number of commitments which appear highly unlikely to come to full fruition, to say the least, with -23% cut pledges from the likes of Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and Iraq looking like a stretch by any historic compliance measure, JBC warned. On Monday, the first trading day after the OPEC+ agreement was announced, WTI was trading at about $22 per barrel. A week earlier, prior to the agreement, WTI was at $26 per barrel. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: HURON COUNTY The COVID-19 pandemic has a lot of people staying at home and at least six feet apart from one another, but doctors still need to see their patients during this trying time. As such, the three major hospitals in Huron County, Scheurer Hospital in Pigeon, McLaren Thumb Region in Bad Axe, and Harbor Beach Community Hospital, have been moving forward on a method they had planned on implementing for a while now: telehealth. Telehealth is where regular doctors appointments can take place over a computer, smartphone, or tablet with a camera, so that the patient does not have to leave their home at all. Josh Salander, the Director of IT, Quality, and Innovation for Scheurer Hospital, said that in order to schedule an appointment, a patient can call any of Scheurers offices to request a virtual appointment or a visit. Within 24 hours, the patient can complete an electronic check-in where they can verify information such as if they are experiencing any problems or what medication they are on. The appointments are just like any other doctors appointment, lasting about 10 to 15 minutes, with most of them done as scheduled follow-ups to previous appointments. Still, some medical conditions need an in-person visit, like diabetes, colds, sinus infections, or those that require a doctor to listen to a patients heartbeat. Salander said that Scheurer was already looking at expanding the telehealth services it offers, given that it is in a rural location. But given the COVID-19 outbreak in Michigan, Scheurer managed to put together a telehealth system with 24 of its providers in four days. In a perfect world, we wouldve had more time to evaluate the vendors and procedures, Salander said. Among the Scheurer providers to offer telehealth appointments include care coordinators, behavioral health specialists, a podiatrist, and a general surgeon. Salander said that when Scheurer first implemented telehealth, it was seeing about 10 patients with that method. But last week, it started seeing upwards of 20 a day. What were seeing is that were a week and a half into it, so were able to get more patients scheduled, Salander said. When we reschedule appointments, we offer this option. Now were proactively reaching out to let patients know this exists. Like other regular appointments, doctors may prescribe medication if appropriate where they can sign an electronic prescription to a patients pharmacy. Health insurance can cover the co-pays that come with making an appointment. Salander said that Scheurers providers have been enjoying and appreciating the telehealth offering so far. The main problems with conducting telehealth appointments is making sure any connectivity issues are resolved. For McLaren Thumb Region in Bad Axe, it was anticipating more use of telemedicine as well, but the COVID-19 outbreak also forced the branch to start implementing more widespread usage. Patients can schedule their appointments just like any other doctors appointment, but during the registration, they have the option of a telehealth visit. If they choose that option, a link for the appointment will appear in their email and the McLaren staff will help the patient with their setup. The patients will connect to a virtual waiting room on their computer, tablet, or smartphone for 10 minutes prior to their appointment, after which the provider will connect at the designated time. For Apple and Android users, there is a McLaren application they can download where these meetings can take place as well. There is also McLaren Now for any of McLarens patients anywhere, which provides 24-hour service. The appointments will still take place during McLarens traditional hours of operation, but for their convenient care, their hours are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. Were here to meet the needs of our patients like weve always had, said Rachel Voss, the director of marketing, foundation, and business development for McLaren Thumb Region. This tech allows us to do that, to be creative in meeting the needs during COVID-19. During the first day of telehealth usage last Monday, McLaren Thumb Region CEO and President Michael Johnston said they had about five patients use it. The following day, they had about 50 patients use it. We anticipate that it will grow as more people familiarize themselves with it, Johnston said, calling this a positive trend McLaren was already heading toward, adding that its providers are 100% on board with it. The situation we find ourselves in has kicked this into overdrive. Harbor Beach Community Hospital is also offering telehealth appointments for similar reasons that Scheurer and McLaren have, the growing demand for virtual health care during this COVID-19 pandemic. For Harbor Beach Community Hospitals telehealth appointment, patients need to download the Zoom Client for Meetings application for either their home computers, smartphone, or tablet, have a private setting in their homes and a strong internet connection of at least 3 Mbps. The patient will receive an invite for the meeting via email, which they must click in in order to join. They must be prepared to show their photo identification to the camera of their computer, smartphone, or tablet, provide a date of birth, and verify their current physical address. If the application does not work or if there is a slow connection, the clinic urges the patient to contact them at 989-479-3291 so they know to call over the phone instead. That number is also for those who need to reschedule their appointments for any reason. So far, patients have been really receptive to the new service, said Laura Janks, the marketing and foundation coordinator for Harbor Beach Community Hospital. Our community is focused on the coronavirus, as it should be, but people still have other medical concerns that need attention from a primary care provider. We are glad that we are able to offer this service to patients. Altogether 93 Goan crew members on board a cruise ship anchored off Mumbai coast have sought help from Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to return to the coastal state. They are among the 450 crew members on board cruise ship 'Karnika', which returned to Mumbai last month after dropping 124 passengers in Dubai, officials said. Goa Port Minister Michael Lobo had taken up the issue of repatriation of the crew to the state, an official said. It has been decided that upon their arrival from Mumbai, they will be kept in further quarantine for 14 days in Goa before being allowed to go home, he said. Last week, Goa government decided not to allow the crew members to enter the state in view of the coronavirus threat, after they requested for disembarkment from the ship. It said they will have to follow coronavirus-related quarantine protocol before they are allowed entry into the state. In a letter written to Sawant on Monday, the 93 Goan seafarers sought his intervention in helping them return home. "Our ship has not had a single case of coronavirus or a suspect till date since the disease outbreak last year. Moreover, no crew member on board 'Karnika' has shown any symptoms of coronavirus," they said in the letter. They also attached a certificate signed by an on-board doctor, to support their claim of not having any symptoms. They said the cruise ship sailed from Mumbai to Dubai on March 1 with 124 passengers on board and reached Dubai on March 5. "All the passengers disembarked at Dubai. In view of the COVID-19 situation, the ship owner/operator decided to bring the ship back to Mumbai sans any guests (passengers)," the crew members said the letter. The ship reached Mumbai on March 12, after which all the crew members were medically cleared by the seaport public health office, it said. It added that due to various travel advisories and also in order to support the efforts to curtail spread of COVID-19, the owner/operator of ship, as a precautionary measure, decided to take it to an outer anchorage of Mumbai as a self-imposed quarantine. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the extension of lockdown in the pipeline, a question arises over the operations of domestic airlines as the industry is currently facing huge losses. SpiceJet is not only mobilising flights for medical cargo transportation currently but is prepared now for the staggered opening of domestic operations. SpiceJet, in the spirit of social distancing, has now come up with a solid plan to be executed when operations resume. The footfall of passengers will be monitored so that the flight isnt jam-packed and all the norms are duly followed. READ | Coronavirus: Karnataka banana farmers face losses as buyers bid the lowest prices In the videos accessed by Republic TV, the Buses to be used by SpiceJet on the taxiway will have seats marked by X, where no passenger will be allowed to sit so that there is space between two passengers while sitting and no contact takes place. Also, the standing spaces have been earmarked with numbers inside a square created on the floor, no crowding will be allowed to happen. The stairway used by passengers for boarding a flight has also been marked with an 'X' by leaving space between two stairs. Passengers, while boarding, will not stand next to each other rather will maintain the required distance. The SpiceJet staff has also been apprised about maintaining strict decorum. READ | Goa to conduct door-to-door survey to identify possible Covid patients from April 13 to 15 SpiceJet is among the first airlines to come up with a sound plan to handle passengers during COVID 19 outbreak. SpiceJet has announced the sale of tickets at prices starting as low as Rs 939 onwards. The airline is also providing the flyers with an option to reschedule their flights up to September 30, 2020. SpiceJet is also offering 25 percent off on online bookings and 30 percent app for app bookings. READ | Kamal Haasan questions Tamil Nadu CM EPS for not autonomously extending Covid lockdown The Indian airline industry is now looking forward to the resumption of operations in a staggered manner, which in turn will reduce some losses. However, private airlines opening their bookings has been criticized as misleading as any extension of lockdown can lead to cancellation of tickets and once again, customers may have to bear the consequences. Air India, on the other hand, will open bookings post 30th April READ | 106 fresh COVID-19 cases in Tamil Nadu, total mounts to 1,075 Two people have been charged in connection with fires at a church in Wheaton, according to the Montgomery County fire department. One of the two has also been arrested in connection with the defacing of a synagogue in Rockville, county police said. Spains trade unions are endorsing the politically criminal policy of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos government to force workers back to work today, even as the pandemic is nowhere near ending, with over 20,000 deaths. The measure threatens to lead to hundreds of thousands of more infections and tens of thousands of deaths, while big business reaps massive profits. From today, around 4 million workers return to work in construction and industry, including auto, in crowded public transport and without any proper protection gear. Workers will not only risk their lives, but those of their dependents and partners at home. Spain, ruled by a coalition of the social-democratic PSOE and the populist Podemos party, is one of Europes first countries to force workers back on the job amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is nowhere near controlled. Yesterday, authorities announced that 619 people had died in Spain from COVID-19, an increase of almost 100 people over the previous day. The was a blow after Spain reported its lowest daily death count in three weeks on Saturday: 510 people. Coffins with the bodies of victims of coronavirus are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona, Spain (Image Credit: AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Such facts run counter the governments claims that the pandemic is under control and that confinement is not being relaxed. Minister of Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska said last Friday that there will be no relaxation of measures after the return to non-essential work. We are still in the confinement phase and we all have to have this clear. We have not started the de-escalation. Standing next to him, Health Minister Salvador Illa stressed that the decision was based on the recommendations of the experts. In fact, the measure has been taken against the scientific advice by the governments own expert committee on COVID-19, the World Health Organisation and leading epidemiologists. It was soon revealed last Friday that the government did not even bother to consult the committee of experts, aware of its members opposition to this policy. The government has not even enforced a health and safety protocol for employees to work in a safe environment. Instead, on Friday, the government made a number of cynical recommendations aimed at saving their face while allowing millions to risk their lives for profits. Workers who have symptoms, however slight, should not return to their jobs, and all workers will have to maintain a minimum distance of one meter two, if possible, wash their hands regularly and, in some cases in which crowding is inevitable, cover their mouth with masks. The unions not only do not oppose the criminal policy but have become its chief enforcers. As Renault autoworkers complain they are being sent back to a slaughterhouse, it is the unions who are bussing them to the catastrophe. Their main concern has been to work with management to extract as much profit as possible. They have only supported lockdown measures when it became impossible to control wildcat strikes and eruptions of anger in factories and workplaces. In Spain, the PSOE-Podemos government has tasked the unions with developing health and safety protocols with businesses at sectorial and regional level, aware that in most cases business cannot comply. The right-wing daily La Razon said that when asked to keep a minimum separation of two meters between workers, many companies are neither prepared to make this distance effective nor do they have protective equipment (masks, especially) to minimize the risk of contagion if they cannot guarantee those two meters. Podemos and the unions have even admitted this publicly. Last Friday, in a press conference after a meeting with Podemos Minister of Labour Yolanda Diaz Perez, Unai Sordo for the Stalinist CCOO (Workers Commissions), Spains largest trade union, had to admit: There are currently thousands of companies that are not in a position to guarantee these health and safety conditions. The role of the anarcho-syndicalist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union, promoted as radical by forces around Podemos, is no different. While issuing a few toothless complaints about the back-to-work policy, it is giving the government recommendations for its implementation. In a statement last Friday, CGT said that all infections related to COVID-19 suffered by workers, whatever industry they are in, must be considered for all purposes as a labour accident, during the service and while commuting. Workers will be happy to hear that the CGT is also demanding that, if workers die of COVID-19 making profits for their bosses, this should also be consider a labour-related death. The pandemic has not only exposed the sharp class divide between the ultra-wealthy oligarchy, and the working-class majority, but also the interests served by petty-bourgeois populist parties like Podemos and unions like CCOO, UGT and CGT. The unions support big business and the government sending workers to work despite the COVID-19 risk. They also say workers must pay back working hours lost by business during confinement by working longer hours and giving up vacation days in coming months. On the other side, the working class opposes any lifting of any measure which will allow the virus to continue spreading and killing, defending that only essential services remain open. Internationally, it has been the workers who have forced total confinement measures by shutting down entire industries through wildcat strikes, like those in auto plants in the US, in defiance of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, and similar walkouts in Italy, Spain and Canada against union-management efforts to continue production despite unsafe conditions. For decades, the unions have negotiated austerity, wage cuts, redundancies and speed-up in the workplaces. In this period, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), publisher of the WSWS , stood alone in fighting populist parties like Podemos and exposing the unions as anti-working-class organisations, calling for workers instead to form action committees independent of the unions. Now the unions serve as open policemen for the bosses, extracting profits at the risk of the lives of workers they falsely claim to represent. Faced with the malign neglect of the ruling elite, and as unions trying to march workers to their deaths, the working class is itself moving into action. After mass wildcat strikes erupted across Italy, workers in several factories in Spain also struck to demand to be allowed to shelter at home. The PSOE and Podemos responded by unleashing regional riot police to violently assault striking steelworkers. Such struggles, however, requires workers to form independent Action Committees to coordinate strike struggles, opposition to predictable repression by governments across Europe, and a struggle for state power to go to the working class. These committees can demand the immediate shutdown of non-essential work, with full income for workers affected. No worker should be told to needlessly risk his or her life. Workers laid off must receive full pay, financed by companies and the state. Rent, mortgage and utility payments must be suspended. Where work must continue, as in health care, transportation, food production and other critical sectors, measures must be implemented to guarantee workers safety and their rights. Every work location must be staffed with trained health professionals and given the necessary equipment like protective clothing, masks and gloves. The essential principle guiding the response to this crisis must be that the needs of workers take absolute and unconditional priority over all considerations of corporate profit and private wealth. When detainees at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Mesa Verde facility in Bakersfield announced a hunger strike last Friday to demand protection against the coronavirus, ICE denied any such protest was taking place and called the announcement disgusting false propaganda. That was news to Donovan Grant, who said Monday that he was among 98 out of 100 male inmates in his unit who hadnt eaten since breakfast on Friday, after the hunger strike was started by women in a separate unit. Its the whole situation here a lack of hygiene products, people coming in and out, Grant said by telephone. A lot of people here are sick. They dont do proper testings. Grant, 24, served three years in prison for a criminal conspiracy conviction in Los Angeles and was promptly transferred to Mesa Verde, where he has spent 10 months awaiting proceedings on his possible deportation to Jamaica. He said he is asthmatic and has had tuberculosis, two illnesses that could make the coronavirus particularly deadly. I dont feel like after you finished your prison sentence, you should be held on a death sentence, he said, also via phone. Another detainee, Guillermo Urenda Buscos, 35, said he was working in the kitchen at Mesa Verde and walked off the job when the hunger strike began. He came to the U.S. from Mexico at age 15, spent five years in state prison for a drug conspiracy and said he would face violence if deported, an issue now before a federal appeals court. I dont know what is more dangerous, staying here and getting the virus or getting deported, he said. Also on Monday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra called on the Trump administration to take immediate steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in immigration detention facilities. Noting that many detainees have no criminal history, Becerra released a letter to acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf calling for release of anyone who poses no public danger, along with improved sanitation and mandatory testing of all residents and staff. Failure to act will not only harm immigrants in civil detention, it could also impact community hospitals that will need to mobilize a medical response if nothing is done, Becerra said. In the past 10 days, federal judges in California have ordered ICE to release 10 male detainees, including two in Mesa Verde, whose medical conditions made them vulnerable to the virus. The men were kept close to one another in their living quarters and at meals, and neither they nor most staff members wore protective gear, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney of San Francisco said in one of the orders Wednesday. State court officials, meanwhile, have ordered county courts to release thousands of people arrested on nonviolent charges without requiring them to post bail before trial. State prisons are freeing 3,500 inmates with 60 days or less to serve on their sentences, but advocates for the prisoners want federal courts to order release, or transfer to safer conditions, for as many as 45,000 elderly and medically frail prisoners. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Mesa Verde, with a capacity of 400, is owned and managed by the private company GEO Group under contract with ICE. The federal agency responded heatedly last week to news media reports of a hunger strike and said no detainees had missed their meals or told staff they were striking. These lies appear to be a shameful, coordinated campaign against truth, ICE said in a statement released Saturday by spokesman Jonathan Moor. This disgusting false propaganda being perpetrated by so-called advocacy groups under the premise of helping detainees does nothing more than spread misinformation that incites unnecessary fear throughout the community and among detainees. In response, immigrant-rights groups said ICE has a track record of spreading lies, citing the 2018 resignation of an ICE spokesman in protest of the Trump administrations version of raids for undocumented immigrants in Northern California. Instead of dealing with the facts, ICE has chosen to lash out against detainees and the community, the groups said. ICE did not respond immediately to a request for comment Monday. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com We all know that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex takes much more than her fair share of criticism in the news media. Since her relationship with Prince Harry was made public, it seems that the tabloids look for any reason that they can find to bash her, and Megxit is no exception. Now that Meghan and Prince Harry have officially moved to Los Angeles, they are being watched by just about everyone in the entire world to see how things will pan out for them. Now, Meghan is accused of chasing clout and Hollywood life. But shes already had it all before meeting Prince Harry. A royal source says that Meghan is getting what she has always wanted Meghan was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and apparently, it didnt take much convincing for Prince Harry to agree to move there with her. While some fans may assume that Meghan simply wanted to return to the surroundings that she knows and loves, as well as be in close proximity to her mother, Doria Ragland, there is also speculation that there were other reasons for the move. According to Express, a royal source has said that Meghan chose to move to California simply for her own benefit. She knows that she and Prince Harry stand to make millions, if not billions, of dollars now that they have resigned as royal family members. Not only that, but now that she is the wife of Prince Harry, the royal source feels that Meghan knows that the ball is in her court she can demand who to work with and do so on her own terms, not the other way around. By leaving England and returning to Hollywood, it looks as if Meghan is getting everything that she has ever wanted. This is the ideal result for her she comes back to Hollywood with a prince to flaunt and getting to pick and choose who she wants to work and socialize with rather than the other way around, said a source to Express. I think she always wanted to be back here, she always dreamed of the full-blown Hollywood lifestyle and this kind of clout. Meghan was a household name and famous in her own right before she ever met Prince Harry There may be some people who feel that Meghan is after the glitz, glamour, and fame that the move to California might bring her. But, the truth is she paved the way for herself long before she and Prince Harry ever met. The duchess had a successful acting career for years, and thanks to her hard work and her role as Rachel Zane on the legal drama, Suits, she was already a household name. According to Good Housekeeping, Meghan was introduced to the world of acting when she was a young girl, and always knew exactly what she wanted to do. Those who feel that Meghan is just chasing clout seem to have forgotten that she already had that on her own! Vanity Fair reports that she actually had all the clout that she could have possibly wanted, thanks to her lifestyle blog, The Tig, and her fashion collaborations. Lets not forget that Meghan was also a feminist in her pre-royal days, meaning that she had focus long before ever marrying the grandson of the Queen of England. Meghan had plenty of celebrity friends Meghan Markle | Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images Meghan and Prince Harrys move to Los Angeles could be misconstrued as a way of saying that she is looking to get in with the celebrity crowd, but that couldnt be further from the truth. While her circle of friends has certainly expanded since marrying Prince Harry, true fans definitely know that she had close relationships with famous people such as Misha Nonoo, Serena Williams, and Priyanka Chopra. Looks like Meghan was already with the in crowd years before she was ever introduced to her prince. Although some people are jumping to the conclusion that Meghan is chasing clout and Hollywood life, it turns out shes already had it all before Prince Harry. An elderly woman in need of more beer during the coronavirus outbreak has managed to capture the hearts of people across the country. An image of Olive Veronesi, 93, of Seminole, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, sitting in her window holding a sign reading 'I NEED MORE BEER!!' has been shared widely online. The bespectacled Veronesi, dressed in a pink sweater, even gave a not-so subtle hint to the brew she likes most by holding up a can of Coors Light. An image of Olive Veronesi, 93, of Seminole, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, sitting in her window holding a sign reading 'I NEED MORE BEER!!' has been shared widely online The bespectacled Veronesi, dressed in a pink sweater, even gave a not-so subtle hint to the brew she likes most by holding up a can of Coors Light in the images. She is pictured being interviewed by KDKA outside her front door 'I have a beer every night. I got some in there now. You want one?' Veronesi asked KDKA as the news outlet interviewed her about the image 'I have a beer every night. I got some in there now. You want one?' the woman asked KDKA, which interviewed her outside her front door Friday. A relative took the picture of Veronesi making her request to her daughter and neighbors outside. There have been more than 22,896 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Pennsylvania and 522 deaths. Across the country, there have been more than 550,600 confirmed cases of the deadly flu-like virus, also known as COVID-19, which has been blamed for 21,715 deaths. There have been more than 550,600 confirmed cases in the US of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for at least 21,715 deaths Veronesi's picture was shared on Facebook about 46,000 times and liked 25,000 times. Some 2,800 comments also were posted. An excited Veronesi poses with her favorite brand: Coors Light 'Someone from Coors responded and is working on getting her all the beer she wants! Awesome!!!' wrote Facebook user Lisa Rose, in an update to the post with Veronesi's image Veronesi's picture was shared on Facebook about 46,000 times and liked 25,000 times. Some 2,800 comments also were posted. 'Someone from Coors responded and is working on getting her all the beer she wants! Awesome!!!' wrote Facebook user Lisa Rose, in an update to the post. Another Facebook user had a tongue-and-cheek response to Rose's update. 'Oh okay, a 93-year-old does it and it's funny and heartwarming, but when I do it I'm an alcoholic,' the Facebook user wrote. It is completely understandable that most hospitality industry companies are focused on short-term survival right now. World, business and industry conditions require such attention. However, as time passes and we settle into our routines and manage to put out our most pressing fires, it will soon become time for the industry's leaders to look past the clouds of uncertainty hanging over us and take the necessary time to consider how firms need to position themselves once the pandemic crisis has abated and the world returns to normal. Strategy is about the future, and it is a mediator between the firm and the environment. It is what helps us to evolve proactively to changing conditions. Thus, while the crisis will in fact end one day (though we don't as of yet know when), it would be naive to think that the After Corona (AC) normal will be the same as the Before Corona (BC) normal. New laws, new social norms and behaviors, changes to democracy and governmental intervention policies, employment shifts, and so on will have helped create a new world for people and firms. The question, therefore, is what will the new normal look like in the AC world? More specifically, how will the decisions, actions and events of today shape the hospitality industry of tomorrow, and what can firms do to prepare for the changes to come? We will be simultaneously implementing three testing platforms that will allow our subjects, employees, and sponsors the peace of mind to know we are conducting our trials in the safest manner possible by methodically monitoring for the Virus throughout the entire trial. WCCT Global, a full service early phase CRO which operates a clinical pharmacology unit (CPU) in Orange County, CA, announced today it now has the ability to screen for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID-19 disease) in clinical trial subjects and staff to enable operations to incrementally re-start following a carefully monitored virus testing strategy. Kevin Noble, WCCTs Director of Laboratory Operations, stated We will be simultaneously implementing three testing platforms that will allow our subjects, employees, and sponsors the peace of mind to know we are conducting our trials in the safest manner possible by methodically monitoring for the Virus throughout the entire trial. 20/20 BioResponses CoronaCheck COVID-19 Rapid Antibody Test Kit will be the platform most widely used; it will be used for rapid screening to detect for potential carriers of the virus that are either symptomatic or asymptomatic. The CoronaCheck will enable WCCT medical staff to quickly screen potential study subjects for the virus before allowing them to participate in a trial. The turnaround time for the test is 15 minutes. Any positive result will be confirmed by molecular testing and will result in the volunteer being sent home for at least two weeks before being retested and cleared for participation. Fellow subjects and staff potentially exposed will be tested as well, ensuring the facility remains safe for all participants. The Epitope Diagnostics Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 IgM ELISA Kit will be the second diagnostic test to be deployed. It enables the semi-quantitative measurement of the COVID-19 IgM antibody in serum, utilizing an enzyme immunoassay technique. The test has a turnaround time of 2 hours. WCCT began using this kit to test all clinical staff at its Phase 1 unit on March 23, 2020 and will use this platform to provide a baseline and ongoing monitoring for the health of its employees and subjects. This test also provides the clinical staff the ability to monitor for the Coronavirus in study participants throughout the duration of the trial, as it can give quantitative measurements of any early immune response to the virus. The third testing platform is the same methodology that has received full FDA approval and is being utilized by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). In order to bring this testing in-house at its Safety Reference Laboratory, WCCT signed an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific to bring in two new instruments: Applied Biosystem 7500 Fast DX and King Fisher. In late March, WCCT performed a live validation of the test using positive samples, in accordance with the FDAs Standard Operating Procedure for molecular analysis of COVID-19, which is also used to determine approvals for future testing and methodologies. The turnaround time for this test is 4 hours. When asked how the implementation of the tests would affect safety at WCCTs facility, the companys Chief Medical Officer, David Nguyen, MD, stated Safety is paramount to our operations here at WCCTsafety for our subjects, for our employees, and for their families. We understand the need to conduct critical clinical trials during this pandemic and we are hopeful that these added safety measures will allow us to advance healthcare during this difficult time. WCCTs President and Chief Scientific Officer, Mel Affrime, PharmD went on to say I applaud the tireless efforts of our reference laboratory leadership and staff. They have managed to launch three different and highly sophisticated testing platforms for COVID-19 within a 3-week timeframe. This accomplishment will enable WCCT to continue to carry on with our Corporate Mission: To Achieve our Sponsors Early Phase clinical objectives of advancing global health. On April 13, 2020, WCCT resumed its clinical trial operations at its clinical pharmacology unit, using these three new testing procedures for COVID-19 to enable its sponsors to continue advancing their pipelines, especially those companies which are currently developing vaccines and anti-viral therapies targeting COVID-19. About WCCT Global Inc. WCCT is a full-service early phase contract research organization (CRO) for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. We are specialized regulatory and clinical development professionals who offer an innovative, agile and collaborative approach to every program we deliver. Our mission is to achieve our Sponsors Early Phase clinical objectives of advancing global health. This is accomplished through the development of a scientifically informed time and budget-sensitive design; and with clinical trial research service execution that delivers high quality data, a superior client experience, and a volunteer-centric approach to care. Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The global home healthcare market is estimated to reach USD 447.6 billion by 2025 growing at a CAGR of 8.3% during the forecast period, according to a new study published by Polaris Market Research. The report Home Healthcare Market Size, By Component Type (Equipment (Mobility Assist, Therapeutic, Diagnostics), Service (Infusion Therapy Services, Telemetry, Respiratory Therapy Service, Rehabilitation, Unskilled Home Care)), By Region: Segment Forecast, 2018 2026 provides an extensive analysis of present market dynamics and predicted future trends. The rising geriatric population globally and increasing workforce of home healthcare service providers. Moreover, increasing demand for home healthcare, and large number of population suffering from chronic disease that require long term care would retain the home healthcare market. While, increasing mergers and acquisitions between the manufacturers to tap the potential market will also influence the entire industry. However, high cost of service providers can hinder market in the near future. The major players in the market include GE Healthcare, McKesson Corporation, Roche Holding AG, Linde Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, Omron Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, A&D Company, Kindred Healthcare, LHC Group, Fresenius, Kinnser Software. Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/home-healthcare-market/request-for-sample Regionally, North America holds the major share of the global home healthcare market. This report cover the following regions: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and MEA. In terms of geography, North America accounted majority share in the global market due to huge number of older population that require home care. While, Asia Pacific has a profitable market during the forecast period. This growth is primarily driven by the increasing investment and awareness for home care services in the developing countries on improving the healthcare infrastructure. Key Take-away Based on product type, service dominate the market in 2017. On the basis of geography, the North Americas region dominates the home healthcare market. whereas, Asia Pacific is would notice high growth rate during the forecast period. Polaris Market Research has segmented the global Home Healthcare market on the basis of Product Type and region type: Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/home-healthcare-market Home Healthcare By Geography (Revenue, USD Billion, 2015 2026) North America o U.S. o Canada Europe o UK o Germany o France o Italy o Spain Asia-Pacific o China o Japan o India o Australia Latin America o Brazil o Mexico o Rest of Latin America Middle East & Africa o South Africa o Rest of Middle East & Africa Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/home-healthcare-market/request-for-discount-pricing About Polaris Market Research Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. Contact us- Polaris Market Research Phone: 1-646-568-9980 Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.com Web: www.polarismarketresearch.com It was not a scenario for which they had trained. As the astronauts set to be the fifth and sixth people to walk on the moon, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise had undergone months of extensive preparation to carry out every aspect of NASA's Apollo 13 mission including what to do if something went wrong. But two days after their successful launch on April 11, 1970, mission commander Lovell, lunar module pilot Haise and command module pilot Jack Swigert were thrown into an emergency for which there was no plan. Fifty years ago today (April 13), the Apollo 13 crew "had a problem." Apollo 13 at 50: NASA's 'successful failure' at the moon explained More: See Apollo 13 as it happened with Apollo 13 in Real Time Apollo 13 astronauts James Lovell (at left) and Fred Haise, as seen in a composite of 16mm images from the 1970 mission. (Image credit: NASA, as processed by Andy Saunders via collectSPACE.com) "Problem solving with the system we had was suited to what we had to get done, as every mission had problems to deal with," Haise said in an interview with collectSPACE.com . "But we never considered an explosion, in the sense of being able to work around that." "Normally, that would manifest in a loss of the vehicle and crew," he said. Apollo 13's damaged service module as photographed by the crew after its separation from the command module near the end of the April 1970 moon mission. (Image credit: NASA, as processed by Andy Saunders) And yet, that was exactly what Haise, Lovell and Swigert, as well as the teams of engineers in Mission Control, had to deal with. An oxygen tank, which had been unknowingly damaged during a pre-flight test, exploded, tearing apart the service module that provided the critical power and life support systems for the Apollo 13 command module. Not only did the explosion rule out any chance of achieving a moon landing, it threatened to strand the astronauts in deep space. That they made it home safely, was as much due to the ingenuity of the teams that worked the problem on the ground as it was a matter of fortunate timing. Apollo 13 timeline: The hectic days of NASA's 'successful failure' to the moon "The explosion occurred on April 13, at just the right time to allow a return," said Lovell. "If the explosion occurred when we had lit our engine to go to the moon, in the beginning, we would have never had enough consumables in the lunar module to go all the way around the moon and come back home again. If the explosion occurred after we got into lunar orbit, or, heaven forbid, when we were on the lunar surface, Mission Control would have had to figure out why they left three guys at the moon." Lovell and Haise spoke to collectSPACE about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission (Swigert died of cancer in 1982). The two participated in separate interviews; their replies are presented together to comprise a single conversation. Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell (at left) and Fred Haise pose at the base of a lunar module simulator in January 1970. (Image credit: NASA) collectSPACE (cS): After the explosion itself, was there a point where you felt that your chances of returning to Earth were not looking good? James Lovell: When I noticed the red warning light saying that two out of our three fuel cells had just died, that was kind of a shock to me because that is where we got our electrical power for the whole flight. We would have to rely on battery power, which in the command module we didn't think would be sufficient. It was a feeling of, "Holy cow! We have something really wrong here." And I don't know why I did this, but I looked out the right window and that's when I saw that at a high rate of speed gas was escaping from the spacecraft. You could see a little plume of it. I then glanced at the oxygen gauges and one read zero and another was in the process of going down. That is when I really felt we were in a very dangerous situation. Fred Haise: Before you go on one of these missions, you assume necessarily you're not going to get back. I had no idea about the percentage [or] what odds there were. It was a matter of working through it with a number of the challenges and [hoping] that someone on the ground working at Mission Control would find the answers. Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell (at left) and Jack Swigert work with water hoses aboard the lunar module. A jerry-rigged carbon dioxide scrubber (or LiOH canister) is attached to the wall besides Swigert. (Image credit: NASA/ASU, composite by Andy Saunders) cS: Was there a point where you felt more confident about your survival? Haise: I think the first time I thought we really had a chance to surely make it back was right after the first use of the lunar module's descent engine. We were then on a free return to get around the moon. Jim Lovell asked me to compute the consumables, which I did, and I figured we would make it with power. I assumed the power we'd go down to was 18 amps after that, we'd have to apply a lot more brain power if we got down even lower. But even at that level and even if we had a much longer return, we still made it on six batteries in the lunar module. [I calculated] we'd run short of water about five hours before entry interface, but I knew from Apollo 11 data, where we deliberately had Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin] turn off the water before they left their lunar module in orbit and watched the systems die, that the first system to die was at about eight hours. So we were probably okay with water. The one I did not figure, which actually turned out to be the most critical, was the lithium hydroxide [LiOH] cartridges. It didn't even occur to me. [cS: The LiOH canisters scrubbed carbon dioxide from the cabin air. The solution, which called for using the command module's incompatible canisters in the lunar module, famously involved jerry-rigging a way to fit a literal square peg in a round hole using nothing but the spare parts they had aboard the spacecraft.] cS: What if Apollo 13 never had a problem. Had you given any thought as to what were going to be your first words stepping onto the moon? Haise: No, I wasn't planning any first words on the moon. I don't know if Jim was, he would have been the first out. Lovell: No, this was 13, not Apollo 11. Haise: Really I felt by that time, we were kind of past the historic things you might do. I was just really eager to get down the ladder and start to work. The interview continues at collectSPACE , where Lovell and Haise discuss what personal items they would have left on the moon, what it was like to see the moon from orbit and if the cause of the Apollo 13 explosion was avoidable. PLUS, triskaidekaphobia! Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2020 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. She was propelled to fame when appearing on last year's Love Island and has since continued as a social media 'influencer' boasting nearly 4 million Instagram followers. And Molly-Mae Hague, 20, won not one but two awards on Sunday nights virtual PrettyLittleThing Influencer Award ceremony amid the coronavirus lockdown. The beauty, who picked up the award for both Fashion Influencer Of The Year as well as Influencer Of The Year, made her acceptance speech on their Instagram live stream. Winner: Molly-Mae Hague, 20, won not one but two awards on Sunday nights virtual PrettyLittleThing Influencer Award ceremony amid the coronavirus lockdown American actor Terrence J, 37, hosted the awards live on PrettyLittleThing's Instagram from his own living room, dishing out gongs to celebrate those in the celebrity and influencer industry. Due to the pandemic, Molly and the other winners were forced to record their acceptance speeches via video link after the glitzy ceremony was cancelled amid government guidelines. Either way, she still looked gorgeous in her acceptance video wearing her platinum locks swept to one side with a nude zip up body suit on. Gorgeous: The beauty, who picked up the award for both Fashion Influencer Of The Year as well as Influencer Of The Year, made her acceptance speech on their Instagram live stream The blonde bombshell, who is currently in isolation with her boxer boyfriend Tommy Fury, 20, began her speech: 'I literally cannot believe that you guys have voted for me to be PLT's fashion influencer of the year. I am in shock still about this. I cannot believe it.' She continued: 'Thank you so so so much to everyone who voted for me. This means the world to me. 'Like I studied fashion for three years at collage so it is my passion and obsession in my life. I also want to say a huge thank you to Sophia my stylist at PLT. Happy: Due to the pandemic, Molly and the other winners were forced to record their acceptance speeches via video link after the glitzy ceremony was cancelled amid government guidelines 'You are the best and this is dedicated to you because I think you are the reason I won this. And to every person who voted for me, I love you and thank you so much.' Molly then gave her acceptance speech for the coveted 'Influencer Of The year Award' which she described as being 'over the moon' about winning. She shared: 'I am honestly in shock that I was nominated as one of PLT's influencer of the year, the girls in this category for this award, I never thought in a million years this would come through my door. In love: She was propelled to fame when appearing on last year's Love Island and finished in second place with boyfriend Tommy Fury 'Thank you so much again to every one person who voted, I am over the moon to have received this 'To Emma especially as well, thank you of believing in for having me as your ambassador the relationship I have with PLT is just incredible and I love every person who works for PLT like so so much you've all become my friends, close friends, without you this wouldn't be possible. 'So again thank you so much to everyone who voted and thank you to PLT for believing in me from the start back when i had 10K and you gifted me a trip to Ibiza I'll never forget it. Since then this relationship has grown and grown and working with you is a dream so thank you so much.' Beauty: Molly looked gorgeous in her acceptance video wearing her platinum locks swept to one side with a nude zip up body suit on Following her reality TV stint on Love Island, Molly secured a 500,00 deal with the clothing brand. Despite not winning the show, Molly appears to have matched the record-breaking fee earned by former Love Island winner Dani Dyer, who reportedly signed a half-a-million pound deal with In The Style following her triumphant stint in 2018. Molly-Mae has joined the growing host of PrettyLittleThing ambassadors, which also includes the likes of Ashley Graham and Malika Haqq and Kourtney Kardashian. Last December she appeared on the PLT Podcast where she discussed life before the villa and admitted: 'As an influencer you have to give off this persona of having a great life... before I went on the show, I didnt have money at all. 'I think it's really important people know that what you see on Instagram isnt a true reflection of whats going on in that person's life.' She added: 'This time last year, I was living by myself in a flat in Manchester, I had literally no one around me, I was really just trying to create this social media career for myself.' Virtual: She began her speech 'I literally cannot believe that you guys have voted for me to be PLT's fashion influencer of the year. I am in shock still about this. I cannot believe it' Talking about her relationship with Tommy (Fury), who she met on Love Island over the summer, she gushed that she wants to marry the boxer. She said: 'We're just so happy right now doing our thing. I've found the person Im going to marry!' Other winners on Sunday night's awards included Jesy Nelson, Caitlyn Jenner, Paris Hilton and Amber Gill. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik paid tribute to Lt-General KP Dhal Samanta, who passed away on Monday. "Odisha mourns the loss of one of its most illustrious sons, Lt Gen (retd) KP Dhal Samanta. He was a veteran of the 1971 War, Op Blue Star, Siachen & Kargil War. A proud alumnus of Sainik School, BBSR retired as DG of Rashtriya Rifles India's main counter-insurgency force in J & K," Patnaik tweeted on Monday. Samanta was a veteran of the 1971 Indo-Pak war, former Director-General of the Rashtriya Rifles and member of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) at Kolkata. He passed away on Monday, at a private hospital in the capital. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) [April 13, 2020] Medici Land Governance to Develop Blockchain-Based Land Records and Information Platform in Carbon County, Wyoming Medici Land Governance (MLG), has announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Carbon County, Wyoming to develop a blockchain-based land records and information platform in 2020. A blockchain-based registry assures immutability of records and indicates a clear chain of title. Last year, MLG completed a project with Wyoming's Teton County, making it the first county in the U.S. to record land information (including warranty deeds, mortgages, release of liens, and other similar documents), on a blockchain platform. Modeled after Teton County's success, MLG will work with Carbon County to develop and implement software that will transfer and display existing digital Carbon County public land records to a new blockchain-based registry system. The registry will serve as an archive to Carbon County's current systems. The system will use MLG's technologies, policies, and programs to track, record, and make available to the public certain information related to real property for management purposes. Once implemented, it will also automatically capture and record subsequent land administration transactions ad updates to the blockchain. Title information that is obscured for viewing on the current Carbon County system will also be obscured from the blockchain-based system, but all public records will be available at the Carbon County clerk's office. "Medici Land Governance is delighted to play a major role in Carbon County's commitment to institutionalizing a true 21st century method of recording real property information. In partnering with MLG to securely track, record, and make land records available to the public, Carbon County, like its sister in Wyoming (Teton County), will be providing a critical layer of protection and facilitating transparency for title holders in any property transaction. These critical benefits have made MLG's technology and products feasible and effective for e-governance purposes. We look forward to the same success in Carbon County and boosting Wyoming's portfolio as a leader in the blockchain revolution," says Ali El Husseini, PhD, CEO of Medici Land Governance. "Carbon County is committed to staying ahead of the technological curve, and using blockchain technology to make our public records more secure is a demonstration of that commitment. By implementing innovative approaches to improve efficiency and security for our residents, we are ensuring Wyoming takes advantage of the crucial benefits blockchain has to offer," says Gwynn Bartlett, Carbon County Clerk. About Medici Land Governance Medici Land Governance leverages blockchain and other technologies (such as cryptography, AI and others) to support land governance, titling, and administration with a secure public record of land ownership. With land records stored on the blockchain, land ownership is standardized and can be recognized by local and global economies. Blockchain applied to land improves lives, stimulates economies, and strengthens communities. Medici Land Governance supports agencies in the digitization of their current records, engendering trust and security in data by diminishing human error and accidental damage to records. It is a subsidiary of Medici Ventures, Overstock.com's blockchain accelerator. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005490/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] To the Editor: Re Despite Timely Alerts, Trump Was Slow to Act (front page, April 12): The case can be made that, among industrialized countries, the United States has had the worst overall response. We were late in taking the threat seriously, our testing capacity is chaotic, hospitals are undersupplied, health care across the board is overwhelmed and behavioral efforts to flatten the curve have been piecemeal. Oxford University has been ranking the stringency of government actions in response to Covid-19, comparing the efforts of six countries hard hit by the virus (China, South Korea, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and the United States). Its timeline shows that the United States was one of the slowest countries to respond and was late in ramping up its efforts. Its most recent data (as of April 5) puts the U.S. response in last place among the six nations. As a result, we are now first place in the number of Covid-19 deaths. The United States may well have the best and most experienced cadre of pandemic expertise in the world, and we certainly have the resources to launch a robust effort in preventing the spread of novel diseases. Our poor response to Covid-19 reflects weaknesses in long-term preparation and planning as well as a failure of current leadership. As additional waves of the virus work their way through the population, and as future diseases present themselves, we must either do a much better job of containment or be prepared to face even greater social disruption and an unprecedented loss of life. (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Two powerful groups of governors are beginning to work on plans to reopen regional economies. A group of a half-dozen governors of northeastern states, led by New Yorks Andrew Cuomo, is crafting a plan for ending shutdowns. And on the West Coast, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, along with his counterparts in California and Oregon, have formed a similar pact. Whatever plans they come up with may well serve as models for other states to follow -- or avoid. This is only the latest way that the coronavirus crisis is showcasing the virtues of federalism. When a countrys policy is entirely determined by the central government, its possible for bad leadership to lead to disastrous policy. President Donald Trump's administration has bungled many aspects of this pandemic -- recognizing the danger much too late, failing to implement widespread testing, suggesting unrealistic timelines for reopening the economy, hawking unproven treatments and making various other mistakes. Trump also has declared that the governors have no power to reopen their economies, but as is often the case, he seems to be confused and incorrect. And it's thanks to the U.S.s federal structure that Trumps initial delay and flailing didn't doom the nations pandemic response. Some strong state and local leaders have managed to do what the central government has not. One example is the San Francisco Bay Area, where a group of far-sighted mayors led by the city's London Breed, shut down the economy early on, keeping the outbreak small and contained. Various states have also formed regional consortiums to buy medical equipment, after the federal government failed to furnish the necessary supplies. Crucially, some states and cities are even starting their own programs to suppress the virus using contact tracing -- something the Trump administration seems to have ignored. Reopening is crucial to avoiding an even worse economic setback than the one we already have. But it has to be managed very carefully. To reopen too soon, or without the proper safeguards in place, is to risk the virus roaring back, causing another lockdown and more months of economic devastation. Story continues The first crucial step is to get new infections down to a manageable level. There are early signs that the coronavirus outbreak may have peaked in the northeastern U.S., just as it seems to have peaked in Italy and Spain. But this wont be known for sure for a week or more. And even if the peak has come, the region will need to wait until new case growth reaches a low level before reopening; because not all infected patients can be relied on to isolate themselves completely, letting them have contact with the uninfected populace would be highly dangerous. This will take at least several more weeks. Once it has been verified that new infections are at a low level, the economy can start reopening. But this can only happen if the government has a program to suppress new outbreaks before they can explode. The approach that has been successful in South Korea and Taiwan is one that Massachusetts and San Francisco are now trying to emulate: It involves widespread testing combined with vigorous contact tracing and isolation of potentially infected people. All credible plans for reopening the economy before the arrival of treatments or vaccines rely on test-and-trace approaches. That means the northeastern states will have to make sure they have access to plentiful testing capacity. They will also need some method of contact tracing. Traditionally this is done manually, through interviews and phone calls, but this coronavirus is so contagious that it may require large-scale technical solutions. Companies such as Google and Apple now are working on contact- tracing apps that preserve privacy. The states should all choose the same app, so that infections can be traced across state lines. Finally, the states will need some way to follow up and ensure that people who test positive for the virus are properly isolated. In addition to the essential test-and-trace approach, the states should consider additional tools to revive their economies. Masks might be required for office work or indoor shopping. Antibody tests may be able to identify people with probable immunity, who can then potentially be allowed to return to work. Large-scale screening for coronavirus symptoms, or at-home testing, might be used to find infectious individuals before test-and-trace systems would otherwise have picked them up. Obviously, approaches like these should only be adopted if experts give the green light. If and when the Northeast and the West Coast succeed in reopening, it will provide an example for other regions, states, and cities to follow. Alternatively, if the northeast fails, it will yield important lessons that will make the next attempt more likely to succeed. Federalism will thus act as the laboratory of democracy, as it was intended. In the absence of a strong, wise and effective presidential administration, proactive regions are the next best thing. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners. Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. Phoenix Advisory has provided a detailed understanding of the plethora of advantages for India's community in Australia. According to their recent study on migration, 12,000 millionaires have migrated to Australia since 2018 compared to the USA which registered 10,000 and Canada at 4,000. Another important point to be considered is the fact that an average Australian has become significantly wealthier compared to an average US citizen. The total wealth in Australia has grown by 83 per cent compared to 20 per cent growth in the US in the last decade. As many as 10,000 high-net-worth individuals, with a personal wealth of USD 1 million or more migrated to Australia in 2017 - mostly from India, China, and the UK. One of the most striking aspects is the fact that Australia was ranked as the safest country in the world for women, according to a global review in 2018. This has a 92 per cent correlation to growth in wealth. The world economy in the last 1.5 years has gone downhill. Fueled by the USA-China trade war, Hong Kong-China disputes in addition to the rapidly spreading Coronavirus, which has been termed as a Global Pandemic by World Health Organisation, has engulfed developed nations like the USA, U.K and all of Europe causing loss of jobs and increase in unemployment rate across the world. Major businesses have suffered a terrible blow amidst the growing crisis in every part of the world. This has affected a large percentage of the Indian population who wished to settle abroad or invest in new business ventures. One country that still stands tall amidst the crisis in Australia with its stable economy and a diverse consumer market. It can be rightly said that Australia and a stable economy have become synonyms for each other in the last three decades. Australia has had the 28th consecutive year wherein it has registered growth in positive figures. The regulatory institutions along with their ability to respond to global challenges provide it with a steady growth. Another important thing to note is the fact that it is the 14th largest economy characterised by low government debt. It is estimated that the growth rate of the average annual real GDP will be 2.7 per cent over the next five years. This is the highest amongst the major economies of the world. As of 2018, there are 7.3 million migrants living in Australia. India is in third place with more than 6,00,000 people in Australia. Australian Financial Review listed Vivek Chaand Sehgal as the twelfth richest Australian on its 2019 Rich List with an estimated USD 5.5 billion. Getting an Australian PR is hassle-free and time-saving. One can get PR without an upfront investment. The cash rate of the Reserve Bank of Australia is at 25 per cent which provides a great opportunity for businesses to expand and new businesses to start. Further, the Australian government has introduced a number of measures through its stimulus packages amidst the COVID-19 crisis. For example, affected employers will be able to claim a fortnightly payment of INR 75,000 per eligible employee from 30 March 2020, for a maximum period of six months. Not-for-profits and small businesses with a turnover under INR 250 Cr will receive a tax-free cash payment from INR 10 lakhs up to INR 50 lakhs to help them retain staff and continue operating. Also, Australian banks are offering INR 1.25 Cr interest-free loans for six months. These are just a few out of the bunch of incentives to people across all professional sectors. No wonder, Australia has emerged as the most favoured destination for HNI of India. The free trade agreements facilitate the smooth flow of goods, services, and investments with major economies across the globe. 10 of the country's top 12 export markets are within Asia and Oceania. The two-way trade in goods and services totalled USD 763 billion in 2017 and the foreign investment stock totalled around USD 3.6 trillion. Australia's inward foreign direct investment stock reached a USD 849 billion in 2017. "In addition to a safe business environment, four cities are ranked in the top 40 cities for quality of living on the global index. This makes it an ideal place for any Indian to settle down and carry on a safe business enterprise," said MP Singh, CEO of Phoenix Business Advisory. "Further, the country is ranked at the 20th position under Ease of Doing business on the international market. Its trade market is integrated on the global level. The country has operations from 9 of the top 10 fortune global 500 companies and 8 of top 10 Forbes global 2000 companies," said Singh. "Australia is an ideal place for blockchain and quantum computing, and its robust startup ecosystem has strong competencies in agtech, edtech, fintech, foodtech, and medtech. Ranked 5th in the world for global entrepreneurship, it contributed to over 4 per cent of world research publications in 2017 despite having only 0.3 per cent of the global population," MP Singh added. "Over 40 per cent of the workforce has a tertiary qualification with 28 per cent of the population born overseas. Cultural diversity makes is a thriving hub for businesses from all over the world. 3.2 million Australians speak an Asian language and 1.4 million speak a European language," Singh further added. Over the years, there has been a shift in the migration pattern of Indians. From the USA and the UK to Australia. A large number of Indians migrate to the land of kangaroos every year and they are highly regarded in Australia. The accepting nature of the Australian government coupled with safety and hassle-free visa procedures make it convenient for Indians. As the demand for Australian PR is increasing every year the quota for 2020 is full, and one must act quickly for 2021 quota. Settle one's Family and Business in Australia with ZERO Upfront Investment. Visit www.pcba.com.au to apply for the 2021 quota. This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Lambert Strether of Corrente This was going to be a very short post, because I thought that if I tried to write a longer post, Id stroke out, Schumer ticks me off so much. But now its going to be slightly longer, because Schumers concept blew up after I started to write the post: None other than Elizabeth Warren has chimed in to support Schumer with, naturally, a plan, and Sanders has endorsed the concept of essential workers. So it looks like the Democrat Party is bestirring itself to propose an exciting program of complex eligibility requirements to aid a subset of workers on a temporary basis. As one does. But first lets survey the zeitgeist: Lets start with a banner from Sunnyside in Queens, New York: A nice sign from a very sunny Sunnyside pic.twitter.com/Zl86n5ZdjZ katie honan (@katie_honan) April 11, 2020 The rainbow is cute, and the sentiment is surely not ill-intended, but essential workers? Heres another example (there are a ton): LOVE these gratitude rocks for essential workers displayed outside the ER entrance at University Hospital! #KindnessMatters #LDNONT pic.twitter.com/FmYzmHlPdF Kindness Matters (@KindnessLDNONT) April 12, 2020 I didnt know there was such a thing as a gratitude rock. But again, essential workers? And then there are the heartwarming jokes: For the kids out there who may have been concerned, I have some reassuring news: Today I officially proclaimed the Easter Bunny an essential worker in Maryland. He therefore will be able to proceed with his hopping across the state, delivering Easter baskets to Maryland children. pic.twitter.com/Ul7jJoz99K Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) April 10, 2020 And of course the heartwarming commercialization: #Contest George is grateful that the #Easter Bunny is an essential worker that he wanted to hold a #cookie contest! RT & comment 3 things that you are grateful for! Winner will receive a Small George Box. *Open to Canadian residents, must follow to qualify* #CookiesByGeorge pic.twitter.com/0jMDHh6rAI Cookies By George (@CookiesByGeorge) April 10, 2020 Sometimes essential workers are reconceptualized as front line workers, so we can adopt a militaristic frame: The Air Force Thunderbirds honored health care workers and first responders on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic with a flyover above the Las Vegas Strip. https://t.co/jSNBbbjf0w pic.twitter.com/qMc3RjSg1b ABC News (@ABC) April 12, 2020 And while the Air Force is doing its flyover only in support of health care workers and first responders, the front line worker concept is more capacious: Leilani Jordan said she wasn't given gloves or hand sanitizer. Now this grocery worker is dead at 27 over a $20.64 paycheck. Is this what America is about? Or will we fight for protective gear, hazard pay, and paid sick leave for all frontline workers?https://t.co/rpkOV0z69B Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 13, 2020 (Note the source.) But consider this billboard in Memphis, and the commentary thereupon: I was driving down the highway today in Memphis and I saw a digital billboard that said honoring McDonalds drive-thru heroes, Chic Fila drive-thru heroes, etc. I just I bet those folks would prefer we come out of this with $15/hour, a union and paid leave over a billboard. Tami Sawyer Says Stay Home! (@tamisawyer) April 10, 2020 Exactly. Now lets turn to Schumer. Politico summarizes Schumers proposal in Democrats seek hazard pay for health workers amid pandemic: Congressional Democrats are trying to add $13 per hour hazard payments for frontline health care workers up to a total of $25,000 in the next coronavirus relief package, along with $15,000 incentives for people who join the medical workforce surge during the pandemic. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said a so-called Heroes Fund could compensate nurses, EMTs and other workers for unanticipated risks as they confront a flood of new cases. Some workers have unsuccessfully sought payments from cash-strapped hospitals and other employers experiencing a downturn in business from lockdowns and cancelations of nonessential procedures. No proposal will be complete without addressing the needs of our essential workers by giving them hazard pay, Schumer said on a call this week with reporters. And in Tweet form: Doctors, nurses, and essential workers are putting their lives on the line every single day of this fight@SenateDems are proposing a bold, new program to boost premium pay for Americas frontline workers Were calling it a Heroes Fund because thats who its for: Our Heroes Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 7, 2020 Note that Schumer makes the equation between essential workers and front-line workers, but does not define his terms except to imply that they not doctors and nurses. (Sanders includes grocery workers.) So right off the bat Schumer has complex eligibility requirements, much beloved of liberals, first because Schumer has to classify workers into worthy essential and unworthy not essential, and second because you just know its all going to be means-tested. (I mean, if some trucker makes too much money, we dont want him in the program, right?) Before going on to the foundational problems with Schumers Heroes Fund, lets take a brief detour into the plan that Warren has nimbly whipped up, where naturally the problems are in fine print: Leaving aside that theres to be no Bill of Rights for workers who are not essential, look at #3: Collective bargaining agreeements are protected, but union formation is not encouraged (See again, the commentary on the Memphis billboard above). And #7: No cost health care for the duration of the pandemic, correct? Or are we now to have #MedicareForAll on a permanent basis, but only for essential workers? And so forth. Back to the problems in Schumers proposal. I can see at least three. 1. The distinction between essential and non-essential is impossible to make, and wrong Heres the reaction from a random Twitter account, a trucker, to Schumers Heroes Fund: Chuck Schumer said Essential workers like Truck Drivers should get $25000 in hero fund??? Is this true? If so all I can say is finally the Truckers of America is being recognized. Because without us none of you would get anything. No food, medical supplies,ppe,fuel ECT!! Eric Williams (@EricWil36639297) April 8, 2020 (Interesting to see how Schumers proposal got translated; clearly, $25,000 made it right through.) But the answer to Is this true? is Nobody knows. Schumer doesnt talk about truckers. Sanders talks about grocery workers. Heres another example: Wanted to start the week by saying THANK YOU to all our essential workers on the front lines grocery store workers, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, warehouse workers, truck drivers, journalists, EMTs, childcare workers, janitors, @NJTRANSIT workers, bus drivers, and so many more. Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) April 13, 2020 Governor Murphy would include truckers, but also journalists, and so many more (which presumably would include grocery workers). So you can imagine the sausage-making here, as Congress determines which workers go to Happyville (are essential) and which go to Pain City (not essential). Fortunately, the trucker provides a way out: Because without us none of you would get anything. But that applies to all workers. All workers are essential. (In other words, Tlaib has the right approach, not Schumer, unsurprisingly.) 2. The front lines are everywhere. Imagine a nurse, who everybody agrees is essential. She works late, and needs a ride home. Is the cab driver essential? The cab driver needs to stop for gas. Is the attendant essential? The nurse orders a pizza when she gets home. Is the delivery person essential? I would argue that yes, they all are (since they are all essential to, as the Bearded One would put it, reproducing the nurses labor power, so they can go to work again the next day.) So where is the front line? Is at the nurses hospital? Surely so. But suppose she caught the virus. Then the front line is in the cab, at the gas station, and at the nurses front door, on the door-knob. And the cabbie, the attendant, and the delivery person are all on the front line too! So only the nurses gets a cut of the Heroes Fund? Wasnt the cabbie a hero too, for picking up a nurse that could infect him? Or the delivery person, if they knew where the nurse worked? 3. All workers are heroes. Theres no question the pandemic is bad, and that all workers are heroes for working through it. But there is a larger framework to consider. I dont know if any of you remember as far back as ten years ago, but we had another Crash back then. Calculated Risk used to run a regular chart called the Scariest Jobs Chart Ever. Heres an example: The red line is unemployment, and as you can see and perhaps you remember unemployment was very deep, very long to recover, and when it did, wages and working conditions werent as good as they were before (due to Obamas miserably inadequate stimulus package, failure to address foreclosures, and failure to reform the FIRE sector instead of simply rebooting it, among many other policy failures). If you did live through that scary time, do you remember the millions who lost their jobs? The millions who lost their homes? The broken marriages? The suicides? I say all the workers who lived through those horrible years are heroes, and yet, cest normal, no medals for them, no Heroes Fund, even though it was as destructive as any war. And everyone suffered, essential or not. Schumers Heros Fund, if passed, would be insanely destructive of working class solidarity. It would create a two-tier system not just for a rancid contract from a corrupt business union, but for the entire country, in which essential workers were a legally classified labor aristoracy. Sanders, of all people, should see this divide-and-conquer proposal for what it is: An effort to set the working class at each others throats over wages and working conditions at a time when class solidarity, as shown by the rising wave of strikes, is most essential, and I am extremely disappointed that he supports the concept. I hadnt thought his campaign was about deeming only a subset of the working class essential. Despite the Noida authoritys appeal last week to segregate medical waste from regular garbage, the process has proved itself difficult for the inhabitants of high-rises in the city. The notice issued by the authority had said that all medical waste has to be treated through a scientific process. Almost everyone is using masks and gloves, and according to government guidelines, medical waste has to be disposed of scientifically. So, it is a request to all residents to ensure that all such used products (gloves and masks) should be handed over to the door-to-door collection agency separately. The medical waste collected will be handed over to another agency for proper disposal, the appeal from the authority said. Office bearers of residential bodies believe that the segregation has to start at the individual house level. If each house hands it over separately, it becomes easier for segregation. Vendors can then separate it before handing it over to the authority. And that way it can be treated properly. However, this isnt happening, Rajiva Singh, president, Noida Federation of Apartment Owners Association, said. Despite the appeal, residents are not separating medical waste. Most people are not segregating it at an individual house-level. It becomes difficult for staff to do it thoroughly afterwards which defeats the purpose. Despite handing over the segregation to the door-to-door collection agents, it is still not being implemented, Amit Gupta, president, Prateek Wisteria, Sector 77, said. The appeal has been circulated among residents in at least 70 societies in Noida. We are urging people to do this and hope to see better results in the coming days. Even the maintenance staff and guards are being educated on this and we are pursuing this thoroughly in all societies now. The collection vendor was not doing it, which seems to be a communication gap on the authoritys end and lets hope that the situation gets resolved soon, Singh said. The Uttar Pradesh government, like several other state governments, had mandated the use of masks in all public places last week, which implies that going forward there will be more generation of medical waste in the city. To avoid this whole situation we have been requesting our residents to use cloth masks, which can be washed and re-used. That way there will be less generation of waste. We even distributed 150 cotton masks to our society staff, Gupta said. The problem is more pronounced in high-rises as compared to individual houses. The segregation is taking place and apart from the earlier two categories of recyclable and non-recyclable waste, we now have a third category of medical waste, which is being segregated at the first level itself and is being collected separately, KK Jain, secretary-general, Federation of Noida Residents Welfare Association, said. Noida authority officials clarified that though it is not very extensive for now, segregation is taking place in some areas. All door-to-door collection agents have been given a third separate dustbin to collect medical waste, which is being treated separately. In the next few days, the efficiency of the process will improve further, Vijay Rawal, project manager, health department, said. The halving of the estimated COVID-19 fatality rate was welcome news to a point. To state the obvious, fewer lives lost to the virus is a happy development. Saving lives is a paramount good it's not the only good, but it overrides almost everything else on the hierarchy of collective values. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of President Trump's coronavirus response team, told NBC News of the revision: "I believe we are going to see a downturn in that, and it looks more like the 60,000, than the 100,000 to 200,000." Another obvious point: the preferred number of coronavirus-caused deaths is zero. But cleaving the fatality total in twain is, it can be coldly reasoned, a win for life. That speck of hope is giving the Trump administration its cue to sound out a proper day to reopen the economy, with initial estimations of sometime in May. For the first time in weeks, an expiry to the self-imposed shutdown seems not only plausible, but within view. Speculation is now bubbling over what a post-corona world looks like. Some thinkers posit that COVID-19 is a paradoxical antidote for the disease of hyperglobalization, a "turning point in history," as John Gray puts it. Others view it as a hard lesson in the frangible nature of our constitutional rights. A growing faction sees our loose commercial relationship with China as increasingly untenable. Columnist Damon Linker has a different kind of concern a concern that's been sintering for some time and has been made more visible thanks to the pathogen. Of all the forces that enabled the political rise of a real estate tycooncumcable celebrity, institutional distrust was the through line that connected the disparate concerns Trump raised on the campaign trail. From rampant illegal immigration to the dispossession of the manufacturing sector to the resentment-inducing effect of P.C. culture, these were all elite prerogatives pushed from the lee of institutional protection. Whereas public opinion on institutional probity has fallen in nearly every area, doctors and other public health officials remain in relative good standing. But the coronavirus and resultant economic closure may be a chink in the armamentarium. "Yes, some epidemiologists and other medical experts have overstated likely death tolls and other predictions," Linker admits, acknowledging the frustrating incongruity of fatality estimates and the actual number of deceased. The divide can be explained by what economists call a counterfactual, or, as is the case with virology, a lack thereof. "[T]here are no control groups in life, no alternative timelines we might use to evaluate definitively the relative effectiveness of our actions," Linker rightly reasons. We don't know what the alternative would have been had states withheld shelter-in-place decrees and life went on about its merry way. Epistemological humility is always good habit. In this instance, it runs both ways: we not only don't know what an absence of social distancing would occasion, but can't even be sure our current measures are really making a difference, especially as statutory isolation is starting to yield insalubrious results. Questions are starting to be asked of our medical pantheon overseeing the rearguard action against COVID-19 a kind of odium scholasticus for the high priests of public health. Many are driven by the glaring improvidence of Dr. Fauci, who has seemed one or two steps behind the disease since its advent. As Tucker Carlson has ably documented, Fauci's shilly-shally pronouncements on the danger of this coronavirus strain haven't inspired confidence. "[T]his is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about," the doctor said about the virus back in January. Two months later, he prescribed a nationwide industrial shutdown, unaware of the constitutional infeasibility of such a fulsome measure. The infectious malady expert continues to bang on about necessitous closure of the economy, ignoring the damage being wrought upon our long-term productive capacity. Fauci is, needless to say, a doctor whose expertise is in bodily health, not GDP optimization. But even on the most basic of plague precautions, he failed. The noble lie about M.D.-less citizens not needing to wear masks in public was assisted by Fauci, who told 60 Minutes back in March, "People should not be walking around with masks." The good doctor has reversed field and now encourages donning cloth facial covers in public. The none-shall-wear-masks pronouncements were repeated everywhere from the U.S. surgeong general to Big Apple city officials to foreign public-health commissars to the ghastly World Health Organization, which has functioned as a bought-and-paid-for megaphone for the CPC since the pandemic began. The advice never made sense in the first place: why were masks useful for doctors and nurses, and thus in need of conservation, but not useful for the average uncredentialled air-breather? "How stupid did they think we were?" critic Kyle Smith asks, before excoriating the manipulative lies elites told us. "How many people will fail to take sound future advice from such organizations, having learned to mistrust institutions with a demonstrated record of lying?" he inquires, with an understandable feeling of bitterness. Linker, who is more sympathetic to the knowledge class, reminds us that experts "aren't gods or saints," as if we're too benighted to recognize basic human shortcomings. Yes, the big brains ensconced in our moldering institutions are as fallible as the rest of us. That isn't the problem. Health experts like Dr. Fauci didn't just botch the initial response to a global pandemic; they lied to us along the way, like parents promising to take their kids to Disney World but rolling up at the dentist's office instead. Such a child is liable to develop trust issues. It goes the same for adults who listen to the medical cognoscenti while society all around them commits a slow seppuku. The director general of the Irish Prison Service has ordered that all investigations into protected disclosures in the service be suspended during the health crisis. The directive from Caron McCaffrey is on the basis that the investigations are not an essential part of the service at the current time. However, the investigations are being conducted by independent legal firms and would not impact directly on the work of the prison service. The move is being seen by some prison officers, for whom allegations are being investigated, as an attempt to frustrate the investigations. Currently, legal firms are examining allegations of fraud, malpractice, and falsifying records in a number of different protected disclosures emanating from the service. Disclosures have been made by different grades of prison officers, from governor level down to recruit officer level. The legal firms appointed to investigate the protected disclosures wrote to disclosers over the last week to inform them of the suspension of investigation on direction from Ms McCaffrey. John Devitt, chief executive of the anti-corruption body Transparency International Ireland, which works with the prison service on protected disclosures, says that his body has recommended that investigations continue to be carried out during the current crisis unless it is absolutely necessary to suspend them. If an investigation is already under way it should be allowed to continue and the decision on whether it should be suspended should rest with the investigator, he said. We can understand that some organisations will be redeploying staff and will have resources stretched during the crisis, but now more than ever its essential that workers be encouraged to speak up about potential wrongdoing or health and safety concerns and that management respond or act on those concerns quickly. Queries sent to the prison service last Friday about the suspension had not received any reply at the time of going to print. Meanwhile, sources in the prisons have confirmed that despite media reports a week ago that prison gyms were shut down, they continued to operate right up until Good Friday, at least. Media reports last week stated the gyms were all closed in deference to the social distancing rules brought in by the Government. One source suggested to the Irish Examiner the gyms were being kept open on an ad hoc basis to minimise the prospect of unrest in the prisons. Queries to the Irish Prison Service about the status of the gyms had not received an answer by last night. UPPER THUMB As we arrive on another week during the coronavirus outbreak, here are some things you need to know as you start your Monday. Michigan reports dip in virus cases but might be fewer tests Michigan public health officials reported a big drop in the daily number of COVID-19 cases on Sunday but cautioned against drawing wider conclusions as fewer tests are conducted on weekends. Easter Bunny hops into Elkton The Easter Bunny made a special appearance in Elkton on Friday evening to drop off some special surprises for kids. Mr. Bunny was assisted by the Elkton Lions Club and the Oliver Township Fire Department. Funny quarantined couples memes show life amid stay-at-home order With stay-at-home orders extended, couples took to Twitter to share how they really feel about being quarantined with their spouse or significant other. Life after quarantine: 50 things Americans say they'll do when the pandemic ends The quarantine has undoubtedly changed our way of life for the time being, but a recent survey details the top 50 things Americans say they will do after the pandemic is over. ICYMI Local nurse battling coronavirus Registered Nurse Melissa Leggieri, a public health nurse with the Tuscola County Health Department, has been battling with coronavirus. Leggieri said her symptoms started April 1, and she was still in the hospital Friday. Tuscola hits 41 confirmed coronavirus cases State numbers showed Tuscola County saw an additional five cases of coronavirus Friday, bringing its total to 41 with five deaths. Statewide, confirmed cases rose to 22,783 and the state set a new record in single-day coronavirus-related deaths with 206. Nominate your heroes The Tribune is taking nominations for a new feature called Heroes Unmasked, where we will report on different "heroes" in our community that are helping in the fight against the coronavirus. Easter will have a different look in light of coronavirus Good Friday and Easter Sunday will look a little different from years prior, as they will be celebrated by many church congregations online. Coronavirus cases across the U.S. Here is a look of where coronavirus cases are being reported across the country. Have questions about coronavirus? Need a question answered about coronavirus? Fill out the form below and we will try to get the answer in a future article. Advertisement Long lines are continuing to form outside food banks and unemployment offices across the United States as the coronavirus pandemic takes a heavy toll on families, leaving many unsure of when their next paycheck will come. Health experts have warned that more needs to be done to protect people seeking aid as the large crowds dramatically raise the risk of contracting the same virus that caused the widespread economic pain. 'It's worrisome,' Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington who studies pandemics, told the New York Times. 'It's setting up unnecessary opportunities for transmission.' Bergstrom and others are calling for businesses to be more vigilant in their efforts to spread people out when they're forced to wait in such extensive queues. They're also urging the government provide more substantial support to Americans so they're less likely to end up at food banks and unemployment offices in the first place. Nearly 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past week, pushing the jobless rate to its highest point since 1940 at 14.7 percent. The IRS began depositing the first wave of $1,200 stimulus checks this weekend, but for many struggling families that money will not be nearly enough to keep food on the table as the pandemic persists. Relief organizations scrambling to keep up with unprecedented demand for food and other basic essentials as thousands of people pass through emergency distribution sites in dozens of cities. Health experts have warned that more needs to be done to protect people seeking aid at food banks and unemployment offices across the country as the large crowds dramatically raise the risk of contracting COVID-19. Pictured: People line up outside an unemployment office in Hialeah, Florida Long lines continued to form outside food banks and unemployment offices in dozens of cities over the weekend as the coronavirus pandemic takes a heavy toll on families, leaving many unsure of when their next paycheck will come. Pictured: Hundreds of people wait to receive meals at the Bowery Mission in New York City on Monday Boxes of food are distributed by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank at a drive-thru distribution event on Friday Volunteers from local churches handed out meals to more than 400 homeless people in downtown Atlanta over the weekend On Monday, hundreds of people braved rainy weather to get a free meal at the Bowery Mission in Manhattan. The line leading to the homeless charity snaked down the street and around the corner while volunteers kept watch, calling out anyone who was standing too close to the person in front of or behind them. Meal distribution traffic at the Mission has reportedly doubled in the past week - a startling indication of growing food insecurity in New York City, the epicenter of the US coronavirus crisis. The Mission served an estimated 60,000 meals on Easter Sunday alone, and organizers have said they expect the demand will continue to surge. 'We've seen more and more new faces, with new worries due to recent events. Your support has reminded them that they are not alone!' the Mission said in a statement urging people who are able to donate. On Monday, hundreds of people braved rainy weather to get a free meal at the Bowery Mission in Manhattan (pictured) The line leading to the Bowery Mission snaked down the street and around the corner in Manhattan's Lower East Side, Volunteers monitored the line, calling out anyone who was standing too close to the person in front of or behind them Meal distribution traffic at the Mission has reportedly doubled in the past week - a startling indication of growing food insecurity in New York City Eric Cooper, president and CEO of the San Antonio Food Bank (SAFB), described how the coronavirus crisis has affected his city in an interview with the TODAY Show on Monday morning. Last Thursday, some 10,000 families lined up in their cars for hours at a massive SAFB distribution event called Mega Giveaway. Cooper said it was the worst level of demand he's seen in 25 years with the food bank. 'We were blown away and overwhelmed at the need in the community because of COVID-19,' Cooper said. Eric Cooper, president and CEO of the San Antonio Food Bank, described how the coronavirus crisis has affected his city in an interview with the TODAY Show on Monday 'We typically feed about 60,000 a week. The need has risen to 120,000 people a week, and we are just working as hard as we can to meet that need.' Cooper was on the ground helping run the the event, which will be held on a weekly basis as long as the demand continues. He said the people queuing in their cars included hospitality workers, Uber drivers and others whose place of employment has shut down because of the pandemic - many of whom have never needed to turn to food banks before. 'Their last paycheck ran out, and there's just nowhere else to go,' he said. 'They know the food bank maybe from volunteering but they have never had to ask for help. 'This is the case with food banks across the country. We're one of 200 food banks part of the Feeding America food bank network. 'All of my peers in other cities are struggling to have enough food to meet the needs of that line. It's been overwhelming.' Some 10,000 families lined up in their cars for hours at Traders Village in San Antonio for a food distribution event Thursday People are seen standing by their cars as they waited in line for hours to get their hands on food and other essentials. SAFB President Eric Cooper said attendees showed 'such immense gratitude' as they were given enough groceries to fill two carts A masked and gloved volunteer is seen carrying a box of food to a waiting car at the Mega Giveaway on Thursday Cooper said the people in the cars showed 'such immense gratitude' as they received enough groceries to fill about two carts, intended to last through the end of the month. 'It's so humble. I was loading boxes of food into the back of a minivan. As I did that, three little heads popped up along the back seat, children that were excited to get food with their mom. Look, we've got milk,' he said. 'All of the families so grateful. Children put little heart signs on the glass saying thank you. We were so worried because they had been out there so long, but moms were saying: "No, we brought snacks. We knew it would be a long wait." People lined up hours and hours before the distribution to get ready.' Asked if SAFB has enough food, volunteers and money to keep the Mega Giveaway efforts going, Cooper said: 'We really need all three. We're struggling to keep up. Our inventories are going fast. 'The best help is to make a financial contribution, but volunteers have really been amazing. We are in need of more volunteers. Knowing they are working on the front lines, putting themselves at risk has been humbling to see. 'I would challenge anyone watching to reach out to their local food bank, to volunteer, make a monetary contribution. We hope that we're going to have enough food and to meet this need. It's really going to be a need of a public-private partnership. We hope that the federal government and state governments lean in on this crisis.' The Justice for All Coalition and several churches joined forces to distribute meals and blankets to the homeless in downtown Atlanta's Hunt Park - serving hundreds of people over Friday, Saturday and Sunday Pastor John Robinson (pictured) of Upcoming Ministries in Winston, Georgia, was among the volunteers at Hunt Park. He told DailyMail.com that personal donations from members of his congregation helped feed more than 400 people before they ran out of food on Sunday. They're hoping to get back up and running by Tuesday after storms roll through the city. Robinson said: 'God laid it on my heart to come downtown and feed people. So, I am going to try and do the best that I can with what I have and with the friends that I have to get these people fed. We are going to be doing this for as long as we can' Lines similar to those seen in San Antonio have cropped up in cities around the country as millions stocked up on essentials for the weeks ahead. In Georgia, local charities in and around Atlanta spent the weekend handing out meals to people in need. The Justice for All Coalition and several churches joined forces to distribute meals and blankets to the homeless in downtown Atlanta's Hunt Park - serving hundreds of people over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Pastor John Robinson of Upcoming Ministries in Winston, Georgia, was among the volunteers at the park. He told DailyMail.com that personal donations from members of his congregation helped feed more than 400 people before they ran out of food on Sunday. They're hoping to get back up and running by Tuesday after storms roll through the city. 'We are just trying to feed as many people as we can,' Robinson said. 'It may not be a whole lot but at least some will have something in their belly. That's all we are trying to do in downtown Atlanta. 'God laid it on my heart to come downtown and feed people. So, I am going to try and do the best that I can with what I have and with the friends that I have to get these people fed. We are going to be doing this for as long as we can.' Asked if he has ever seen such intense need in Atlanta, Robinson said: 'I have seen homeless people in Atlanta before but because of this coronavirus, lots of people have lost their jobs, they don't have places to go and are out of work and you have a lot of homeless people in Atlanta. They don't have anywhere to go. Some have no means to get food.' Volunteers dressed in festive Easter attire at a food bank event in Santa Ana, California, on Saturday Hundreds of cars wait in line to collect food donations from the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank in San Rafael, California In Miramar, Florida, the line of cars outside a giveaway by Feeding South Florida extended for five miles on Saturday Volunteers are seen loading groceries into a car during the distribution event at the Miramar Amphitheater on Saturday A volunteer shows off her masks and gloves as she risks her own health to feed struggling families in South Florida Volunteers deliver packages of fresh vegetables, sandwiches and Easter Baskets to vehicles during a drive through pantry put on by Culture Aid NOLA in New Orleans, Louisiana on Sunday In Pennsylvania, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank held a drive-thru distribution event with enough supplies for up to 1,300 families on Friday. A mile-long line of cars turned out at the event to receive two boxes of food each, enough to make about 40 meals. At the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank's giveaway on Friday, hundreds of cars had lined up by 8am outside The Forum in Inglewood, California. The organization said it expected to serve as many as 5,000 families in a single day. Also in Los Angeles on Friday, workers at LAX airport were invited to a specially-organized food bank, DailyMail.com reported exclusively. At least 5,000 cars were expected at the event, according to LA Food Bank President and CEO Michael Flood, all of them people who depended on the airport to make a living, ranging from taxi drivers to air crews, as passenger numbers have dropped dramatically due to stay at home precautions. In Anaheim, California, Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County hosted a drive-thru food distribution event on Saturday which saw volunteers dole out enough food for up to 7,000 families in the span of three hours. Each car in the line was given a bag of potatoes, onions, shelf-stable grocery items and King's Hawaiian Bread, KTLA reported. In Honolulu, Hawaii, a two-mile-long line of 700 cars waited for hours outside the Salvation Army's drive-thru emergency food distribution center on Saturday, Hawaii News Now reported. In Miramar, Florida, the line of cars outside a giveaway by Feeding South Florida and Farm Share Food Distribution extended for five miles. Volunteers unloaded two tractor-trailers with a total of 48 pallets of produce that included eggs, fruits, vegetables, rice and other basics, placing them into bags with enough food to feed a family for a week. Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam was among dozens of masked and gloved volunteers running the event. 'You can see how widespread this situation is,' Messam told the Sun Sentinel. 'You see people who are clearly working class individuals ... and people you would never think to see coming through these lines, which just shows the gravity of what COVID-19 has had on our economy.' Long lines formed outside the Bowery Mission in Manhattan on Sunday as people waited to receive Easter lunch Staff members Chad Eastridge (center left) Jake Mincy (center right) and Cherie Jones (right) load boxes of food donations into carts of those in need at the Covenant Mercy Mission food pantry on Saturday in New York City Either you are a Have ... or you are a Have Not. If you Have, you feel secure, knowing that what you need is close. If you are in the latter category, you may want for much and own very little. Its not fair, its not equitable, and in the new book "Beheld," by TaraShea Nesbit, it gets worse. She should have known it was coming. The signs were all there, but while Alice Bradford noted them, she paid little heed. With three small children to tend and a household to run, she had no time for worry although worry crept into her mind often. It was "the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty," a decade since a small handful of English landed at Plymouth and the colony had first settled. Alice wasnt among them then; she came later, after her best consort, Dorothy, died; and after Dorothys husband, William, called for a new wife. ADVERTISEMENT Life in Plymouth had gone well for Alice, although she missed the children she had by her first husband, boys whod been left behind in Holland. William promised that both their sons would be brought soon; in the meantime, there was much to do including things that, as the wife of the leader of the colony, were necessary but regretful. Alice did not want to confront her nearest neighbors wife, or to tell her things she must know. Like her husband, John, Eleanor Billington came to Plymouth as an indentured slave. For seven years, she dressed, fed, cleaned, and cared for the colonys wealthier citizens, figuring that at the end of servitude, shed become a full and equal member of the village, with cows, goats, acreage, and a home like everyone elses. Alas, William Bradford and his soldier, Myles Standish, ensured that that didnt happen, and though Eleanor chafed, she worried more about John. Shed seen the dangers beyond the colonys fence. She knew what was inside the compound could be worse ... For weeks now, youve been stuck inside and youve read everything from serial to cereal box. Youre antsy. Youre restless. So heres your next book. Dont judge it by its cover, though. It may appear that "Beheld" contains healthy sips from a handmaidens novel and peeks of stuffy Puritanical life, but its really more of a mystery on top of a mystery on top of a feminist tale on top of a story of rich-versus-poor. Here, youll meet people that history treats with heroics, but that author TaraShea Nesbit makes relatable as humans who lie, cheat, abuse, lie some more, and act with lasciviousness. And that mystery ? From the first paragraph, you know something dreadful has happened, but Nesbit makes readers wait to find out, while a cold fog rolls over and skin-crawling doom creeps in. That shivery-ness makes this a perfect staying-in novel. ADVERTISEMENT This is one of those gaspy tales that can hold you enthralled until its time to shock you good, and if you need something different, find it. Indeed, "Beheld" is a book you must have. Iran must fight both COVID-19 and economic sanctions, a government spokesman said Monday, as the country moved to reopen businesses struggling in the coronavirus-battered economy. The government is concerned over both "the health and lives of the population from the coronavirus and its economic and social consequences, government spokesman Ali Rabiei said during a televised news conference. With 4,585 fatalities and more than 73,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, Iran is the epicenter of the outbreak in the region. A number of senior Iranian officials, including a member of Irans council of experts, are among the dead. Despite the rising death toll, Iran lifted its ban on travel between provinces and allowed certain shops to reopen over the weekend. Restaurants, theaters, swimming pools, shopping malls and other high-risk facilities remain closed. Massive crowds and heavy traffic prompted local officials to warn that the easing of virus-related restrictions could lead to a second wave of the virus. "Easing restrictions does not mean ignoring health protocols, said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. We want to continue economic activities as much as possible while fighting the coronavirus at the same time. The Islamic Republic has blamed the United States, which in 2018 reinstated punishing sanctions, for thwarting Iran's efforts to contain the coronavirus. The countrys leaders have at the same time, however, rejected offers of humanitarian assistance from Washington. Medical supplies are exempt from US sanctions. Irans economy has been hard hit by the economic sanctions, which the Donald Trump administration imposed after withdrawing from the landmark nuclear deal reached in 2015 between Iran and six world powers. To shore up its sanctions-weakened economy, Tehran has requested a $5 billion emergency loan through the International Monetary Funds Rapid Financing Instrument. By Trend Extraordinary Summit of the Turkic Council, held through videoconferencing on April 10 at the initiative of the Azerbaijani President, Chairman of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States Ilham Aliyev, is of particular importance, MP Tamam Jafarova told Trend. Jafarova said that the summit demonstrated the steadfastness, solidarity and strength of the Turkic states and peoples in this difficult time. The Turkic Council is the first international organization that held a summit on the COVID-19 pandemic at the level of heads of state, she said. Jafarova noted that this summit has great economic and political significance. At present, the preservation of economic ties amid border closures, especially the implementation of cargo transportation through transit lines, plays an important role in providing food and other products. Under these conditions, the initiative of the head of state on convening an emergency summit has become one of the important measures aimed at combating the problem that the whole world has encountered, the MP stressed. Speaking about changes in international relations in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Jafarova noted that international relations are experiencing a new stage. The viral pandemic, originating from China, has become a test not only for this country, but also for other countries. In these realities, the president of Azerbaijan convened an extraordinary summit of the Turkic Council. This shows that the head of state not only cares about the citizens of his country, but also solves the crucial issues of the world, calling for unity and solidarity in the fight against threats, said the MP. The coronavirus pandemic requires a global solution, and countries more than ever need solidarity and cooperation. I believe that the final declaration of the summit is an important contribution to this cooperation," Jafarova noted. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A team of 15 medical experts on Sunday departed from Beijing for the city of Suifenhe, at the China-Russia border in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, to aid the city's fight against imported COVID-19 cases, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The experts, specializing in laboratory testing from the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention under the CDC, will bring the total number of CDC experts sent to the city to 22. The team will set up a mobile negative pressure lab upon their arrival, which will facilitate them in conducting nucleic acid tests and scientific research. The lab meets the third level of biosafety and will help to increase the daily detection capacity of the local center for disease control and prevention in Suifenhe by over 1,000, according to the CDC. The CDC sent nearly 100 boxes of anti-epidemic supplies to Suifenhe on Saturday to ensure the team can carry out lab testings as soon as they arrive. The supplies cover more than 50 kinds of epidemic prevention and control materials, including negative pressure tents, nucleic acid extractors, fluorescence PCR instruments, virus detection kits and throat swab sampling tubes. Suifenhe has seen a rising number of COVID-19 cases. As of midnight Saturday, the city had reported 194 confirmed cases and more than 100 asymptomatic coronavirus carriers. New Delhi: The outbreak of Corona that is getting increased suddenly takes the form of epidemic for the whole world. This virus has caught more than 114000 deaths so far. But still this death game has not stopped. This virus has rocked the whole world today. To prevent the coronavirus, the government put a lockdown. Strictness at every level, but from the responsibilities to the common people, negligence is being overshadowed. 1917 people got infected due to the negligence of 8 people of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. The result of negligence is that the infection has taken a terrible form and on an average every state is vulnerable. CORONAVIRUS: This institute examined 21 samples on day one Delhi: Tablighi Jamaat and 1650 Corona patients: Thousands of people associated with Tablighi Jamaat gathered in Nizamuddin area from 13 to 15 March, including many foreigners. After the meeting was over, people reached different parts of the country and took the deadly virus with them. These people infected about 1650 people. When they were revealed to be infected, instead of going to the hospital, they kept on hiding here and there. Mumbai: woman was infected, kept giving tiffin: A 65-year-old woman used to supply tiffin in corporate offices. Corona was later confirmed in her. People taking tiffin were quarantined. Uttar Pradesh: Noida Company's Negligence, 41 Infected: Even after the first patient of Corona was found in the company, the work was not stopped. As a result, the effects of the infection continued to increase in Noida and the virus was confirmed in 13 of its family members along with 13 employees of the company. The district administration sealed the company after an infection of 24 people. It is now being said that the root of whatever cases are coming up in Noida is the ceasefire company. First consignment of hydroxychloroquine reached America Rajasthan: 126 returned from person returned from Oman, 16 infected with doctor: Ramganj person from Jaipur returned from Oman on March 17. He was the most similar. Now the virus has been confirmed in 126 people of the colony along with the family of the young man. Rohit Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary, Health, said that his suspected friend also spread the infection to 12 people. Similarly, the virus was confirmed in a doctor in Bhilwara, which infected 16 people. Two people returned from abroad spread the virus in 36: Bihar: Plumbers in Muscat continued to resemble people of Siwan. It has infected 23 people. Similarly, instead of isolating himself, a driver who returned from Qatar in Munger went to the hospital with a walk around the whole area. The result was that one of his mistakes infected 13 people. Here's how India's economic growth rate will be in the financial year 2020-21 California renters who have lost income because of the coronavirus shutdown are protected from eviction for 90 days after the health emergency is over, Californias courts have ruled giving tenants tacit permission to defer paying rent for three months. But what about tenants who have lost income but can pay rent from their savings or investments? Are landlords permitted to ask that tenants dip into their savings or 401(k) accounts in order to meet their rent obligations? The answer is no, according to real estate attorneys. But property owners may still pressure tenants to dip into assets that might help pay the bills until the health emergency order is over, according to tenants rights groups. Residents at the Normandy apartment complex at 1155 Ellis St. in San Franciscos Cathedral Hill neighborhood say the company that manages their building has been distributing letters asking for extensive financial information that goes well beyond evidence of wages lost due to coronavirus. The letters require that tenants sign a statement under penalty of perjury that you do not have sufficient savings and/or other resources that would allow you to pay rent despite the change in employment status. In addition, the property owners letter requested an employers phone number in order to verify the loss of income. The letters, which The Chronicle reviewed, were unsigned. The buildings bookkeeping is handled by Chandler Properties, which did not return calls seeking comment. Kristina Soriano and Jonas Di Gregorio were among those who received the letter. The couple both lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Di Gregorio was furloughed from two jobs because of the coronavirus, one at a restaurant and the other at a sporting goods retailer. Soriano taught piano at an after-school program in Berkeley; that job has ended until at least this fall. Di Gregorio and Soriano said they have diligently documented their lost income and furnished their landlords with evidence of lost wages, as required by law. But they have not responded to the request for broader financial information. What they are asking for felt intrusive, said Soriano. What is this additional information going to do for you? We feel like we are providing everything that is required under the health order. On April 6, state judicial leaders barred courts from enforcing eviction orders against renters. The ruling held that eviction orders threaten to remove people from the very homes they have been instructed to remain in. The action halts legal procedures used by property owners to initiate and enforce evictions until 90 days after the governor declares an end to the current state of emergency. Thats likely at least through July. Human Rights Committee organizer Leslie Dreyer said the pandemic is prompting property owners to seek new ways to pressure tenants. I dont think its illegal to ask for it, she said. But they cant demand it. What we are telling tenants is they dont have to sign anything. All they have to do is prove that they have lost income because of coronavirus. Tenants should be focused on their safety their food and health and survival. Greg August, who also lives at the Ellis Street building, normally works as a banquet waiter at the Marriott Marquis and the Palace Hotel. He has been furloughed from both jobs, and like thousands of other Bay Area residents, is waiting for his first unemployment insurance check. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes He said his landlord gave him an April 8 deadline to come up with a partial payment plan, which attorneys also said would not be allowed under law. They have to take our word for it that we are out of work, he said. It feels like they are bullying us. Why would they lie to us? All I am trying to do is stay legal. Tenants attorney Jacqueline Ravenscroft said the law is intentionally vague on what documents are required to prove the financial impact of the pandemic. But she said a property owners request that a tenant provide a landlord with financial information beyond income losses related to coronavirus would not be legal. That would all be protected by financial privacy laws, she aid. Janan New of the San Francisco Apartment Association agreed that the legal requirement is pretty narrow. She said that her trade group is telling property owners to simply ask for documentation of lost income and leave it at that. Obviously some tenants are going to do their best to pay what they can, while some high-income workers are going to take advantage of the situation to not pay, she said. The bottom line is eventually the money is going to become due. I dont know about you, but if I eventually got a bill for $15,000 in back rent, it would bankrupt me. Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the role of Chandler Properties in the management of the Normandy Apartments. It acts as the bookkeeper for the building. J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen April 14 : Every year, the people of Kerala await one of the most celebrated festivals of Malayalees. This is observed as the glorious festival of Vishu 2020 and falls on April 14, 2020. As per the Malayalam calendar, this is the first day of the Medam month and is officially called the Kerala New Year. People offer prayers to Lord Krishna, and also enjoy that all the family members see a blessed VishuKanni on this day. Along with the rituals, people send Happy Vishu wishes, good luck messages, and prayers to all their friends and loved ones. On the auspicious occasion, we have shared a couple of lovely Vishu greetings, Vishukanni pictures that you can post or send across through to your loved ones. Image Source: Prokerala.com Positive stickers for Vishu festival May Success shine upon you always May you follow your dreams to the fullest Have a wonderful Vishu this year Image Source: Prokerala.com Happy kanni specially for Vishu greetings Celebrate, greet and pray to have a prosperous year May your deeds be inspiration for the world Happy Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Foster happiness on Vishu Wishing that you have the most auspicious Vishu Kanni this year Wishing that you have a blessed Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Wish Vishu messages on Facebook Old days are gone, and new days will come Let golden ideas fill your minds with happiness May your Vishu be filled with luck Image Source: Prokerala.com May your Vishu be blessed Spend time to thank for all the blessings Spend time to love one another May your Vishu be positive, healthy and prosperous Image Source: Prokerala.com Good Luck stickers for Happy Vishu Let this Vishu bless your home with abundance Happy Vishu It was another beautiful Saturday on Joy Newsfile. Before 9am, I was ready with my TV set knowing very well issues of Covid -19 pandemic would take cetre stage of the discussion. My hopes were high; I expected nothing from the program aside education, sensitization and ecstasy. Yes, it all started in line with my expectation as Samson Lardy Anyenini, the host of the program introduced his guest, went ahead to table the topic for discussion , then as usual, read his take on the topic. Of course, the program as usual, beamed on its esteemed standard; as the professionals dealt with the topic with their professional experiences. They actually showed they were masters in their field of disciplines. They elaborated and explained much on how Ghana as a country is doing in the fight against the pandemic. However, they emphasized the fact that we need to do more as a country. My enjoyment of the program was tainted when it came to the part of the governments food distribution intervention. The producer showed a video footage of how food was been distributed in one of the lockdown areas. This made me to break down in tears. I cried like a baby. Oh no! The scenes were horrible. The very reason for the lockdown was completely defied. Immediately the food arrived in a kia track, people forgot of the social distancing protocol. The moment I broke down in tears was when I saw our brothers and sisters from the north we call kayayes and other inhabitants in that slum rushed out and rounded the food track like lions have gathered to devour their catch. That was not even the emotional and horrible aspect of the scene. Machomen was seen in the vehicle throwing the food at our poor siblings. They will throw a bunch of food tied in polythene bag to the masses. The children mixed with adults will rush to collect food stuffs thrown at them. No wonder the technical producer of the program was signaled to stop showing those footages as they were too horrible for human consumption. Could there be a more polite way of distributing this food? Could these machomen be more humane in presenting these foodstuffs? Couldnt the Ministry of Gender and its partners find a more humanitarian measure of distributing the food items instead of throwing them to humans like dogs? As Dr. Nsiah Asare rightly suggested that the Ministry of Gender can distribute the food in collaboration with local authorities like the Assembly Members and Traditional Authorities so as to arrange a more humanitarian and organized way of distributing these food items. He furthered argued how an NGO he worked for organized a similar food distribution program that was not as chaotic as the governments own. From video footages shown, viewers saw how responsible the private distribution was from the governments own. At this critical moment, every single intervention earmarked by the government is to make life a bit confortable for citizens at these uncomfortable times but, the actions of certain individuals may ruin the social intervention policies of the government. Let us check that and correct our mistakes as we move forward to conquering our mortal enemy, covid-19. People in the lockdown areas are humans and should be treated as such. God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation greatest and strongest. Stay at home, stay safe. A Victorian couple were handed fines totalling more than $3,000 after posting year-old holiday pictures on Facebook during coronavirus lockdown. Earlier this month Jazz Mott and her husband Garry shared photos of their getaway to Lakes Entrance - about a two-hour drive from their home at Traralgon in the state's east. The couple were shocked when police arrived at their home days after the post. Jazz Mott (left) and her husband Garry (right) were issued with two fines totaling $3,300 for 'non-essential' travel after they shared this year-old holiday picture on Facebook When police showed up to give Ms Mott (pictured) the breach notices, they had no idea the holiday snaps at Lakes Entrance (shown above) were actually from 2019 'I was actually stunned when she handed me the fine,' Ms Mott told Daily Mail Australia on Monday. 'The photos were from our trip to the Lakes Entrance in June last year.' Ms Mott said the officer just 'handed her the fine and walked off'. It was only after speaking with her husband she realised the breach must have come as a result of the Facebook post. Ms Mott said she shared the year-old pictures after finding them on a hard drive she'd lost track of when the couple moved house. The fines will not stand. 'I got a phone call from a Senior Sergeant at Traralgon police and he told me the fines had been revoked,' Ms Mott said. 'Then he basically told me not to post any more photos while the lockdown is in place.' Ms Mott, pictured on her June 2019 holiday, said she was stunned when police handed her the fines In a statement to 7News, a Victoria Police spokesman said officers are not monitoring social media accounts to identify breaches of coronavirus restrictions. Instead, they are investigating 'the circumstances surrounding individual potential breaches reported by the public.' On March 31, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews introduced stage three restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 which has now killed 13 and infected a total of 1281 in Victoria. Under the measures travel is only permitted for shopping, work, education, medical treatment and compassionate reasons. Over the Easter weekend Victoria Police have handed out over 400 fines to people in breach of the tough new rules. Across Australia, about $1 million worth of fines have been issued since the coronavirus lockdown began. SOCIAL DISTANCING LAWS EXPLAINED STATE-BY-STATE: HOW TO AVOID GETTING CAUGHT OUT Queensland Gatherings are restricted to two people, with residents only allowed out of their homes for a few essential reasons. This includes buying food or essential goods, getting a medical treatment or engaging in physical exercise. You can also visit a terminally ill relative or attend a funeral. Students are also allowed to attend childcare, school, college or university. From April 3, the state's borders will be closed to everyone except residents and essential workers. New South Wales NSW officials are also enforcing the two-person limit, with residents legally obliged to stay at home unless they have a 'reasonable excuse'. This includes travelling to work or school, buying food or other essentials, exercise and medical reasons. It is left up to police officers to decide who will get the fines, with the maximum being an $11,000 fine or six months in prison. Victoria The state has also brought in the two-person limit inside and outside the home - not counting pre-exisitng members of the household. Its chief medical officer Dr Brett Sutton confirmed an exception would made for people visiting their boyfriend or girlfriend if they lived separately. Otherwise, people are allowed to leave the house for one of five reasons - shopping for food, work and education, care reasons, exercise or other extenuating circumstances. Australian Capital Territory The ACT is also enforcing the two-person limit, but people are allowed up to two guests inside their homes - only if there is at least four square metres per person. It also only allows people to leave home for essential reasons, including shopping for essentials, medical reasons, exercise, work or study. Offenders are being issue with warnings, but may get a fine if they are found to be breaking the rules again. Western Australia As well as closing its borders to non-residents, WA has also introduced fines for people who cross out of their region. Nine regions have been carved up, and people cannot move between them for anything but an essential reason. This includes going to work, medical appointments, school or other types of education. Drivers are also allowed to transport freight, and people can go to a shop outside of their area if the essentials are not available closer to home. Northern Territory In NT, police are still enforcing a 10-person limit rather than just two people. But chief minister Michael Gunner warned it may take further action if people don't stick to the rules. All non-essential arrivals in the state must self-quarantine for 14 days, and people are not allowed to visit remote communities. Tasmania Tasmania also has brought into law the two-person limit, with residents only allowed to leave home for essential reasons. This includes shopping, exercising, and going to healthcare apppointments. Going to a vet is also allowed, as is going to school or caring for another person. Arrivals must self-isolate for 14 days. South Australia SA has also stuck to the 10-person limit, with $1,000 on-the-spot fines for people who have a larger group. Again, all arrivals into the state must self-isolate for 14 days. Advertisement A murder investigation has been launched after a 18-year-old man died in hospital after being stabbed during an altercation in Fermanagh at the weekend. The teenage victim, who had been living in Enniskillen area, was taken to hospital after he was seriously injured during an altercation in Coolcullen Meadow in the town on Saturday, April 11. Police had received reports of a fight between a number of men who were brandishing weapons at around 8.40pm. When officers attended they found two men, including the man who passed away, and another 24-year-old man, who had sustained wounds to their legs. Both men were taken to hospital. Police believe another man involved in the incident had left the scene before officers arrived. A 19-year-old male was arrested in relation to the incident and he has since been released on bail, pending further enquiries. SDLP councillor Paul Blake expressed expressed his shock over what he described as a "stabbing attack". He said: This is tragic news for the community of Enniskillen to wake up to on this Easter Monday. At this difficult time, it is unconscionable that anyone would seek to add extra pressure on our already stretched health service. The community of Enniskillen are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event and I know they will rally around the family and loved ones of the victim to offer support. Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell said: "Tragically, this morning, the 18-year-old male victim passed away in hospital and I want to express my condolences to the victim's family, friends and loved ones at this very sad time. "Our investigation continues this morning, and I am appealing to the public to help us establish exactly what happened and who was involved. "If you witnessed the altercation, please get in touch with us by calling 101 and ask for detectives investigating this murder. "If you captured footage of it on your mobile phone, or if you were driving in the area and captured it on your dash cam, I would urge you to bring that forward to us. "I would also appeal to the male who is also believed to have been involved in the incident, and who had left the scene before our officers arrived, to make contact with us today and tell us what happened. "Anyone who has any information which could help our investigation, is asked to call detectives on 101, and quote reference number 2257 of 11/04/20. Alternatively, if you have information which can help our investigation, you can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111." Thousands of sailors are being evacuated from the French Navy's flagship aircraft carrier after 50 tested positive for coronavirus. Some 2,100 sailors on France's Charles de Gaulle carrier were set to be taken off and isolated after the cases were revealed on board. The aircraft carrier docked in the southern French port of Toulon after it undertook NATO exercises with British forces off the coast of Denmark before the coronavirus was detected on board and it had to make an urgent dash for the Mediterranean. The vessel cut short its current mission in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic by 10 days because of the outbreak. Emergency vehicles and people wearing personal protective equipment in front of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle as it arrives in the southern French port of Toulon According to French news channel BFMTV, 'at least 40 cases', possibly 50, of COVID-19 have been reported on the vessel - which arrived at the port at 3pm on Sunday afternoon. The evacuation began yesterday evening. Local authorities said it was a painstaking operation to remove the soldiers to ensure there was no risk of any further infection. Three sailors had already been evacuated to hospital Toulon as a 'precaution' before the ship docked. According to French news channel BFMTV, 'at least 40 cases', possibly 50, of COVID-19 have been reported on the vessel (pictured) All the personnel will be tested and they will then be put into isolation for two weeks, with no physical contact allowed with their families, said the spokeswoman for the regional authorities, Christine Ribbe. 'Our aim is to protect all our sailors and also their families with an unprecedented deployment,' she added. Only once the isolation period is over will the sailors be allowed home. All the personnel will be tested and they will then be put into isolation for two weeks. Pictured: the evacuation of infected crew members From Tuesday, the ship itself will also be the subject of a major disinfection operation. The vessel was equipped with a medical platform on board complete with a resuscitation unit, and everything was being done to keep those who were thought to be infected away from their comrades. Sailors displaying symptoms of coronavirus were all placed in solitary confinement. At the end of March the Charles de Gaulle was the flagship for NATO Maritime Group One and took part in a training exercise off the east coast of Denmark. Local authorities said it was a painstaking operation to remove the soldiers to ensure there was no risk of any further infection. Pictured: sailors are evacuated on buses The force included the Royal Navy Type 23 frigate HMS Sutherland, which has a complement of 185. Beyond sailors and commandoes, the Charles de Gaulle has an air wing of 600 pilots and support crew. It carries aircraft including Rafale M fighters and AS532 Cougar helicopters and was launched in 1994. French navy soldiers stand onboard the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle yesterday It was the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier built outside of the United States Navy. France on Sunday reported a lower number of COVID-19 fatalities over the last 24 hours, with 315 deaths in hospital over the last day, compared with 345 the previous day. Its total toll from the coronavirus epidemic, including those who have died in nursing homes, now stands at 14,393, the health ministry said. And for the fourth consecutive day in a row, the number of patients in intensive care fell with 35 fewer patients, making a total of 6,845 people needing such treatment. NEW YORK Governor and mayor locked horns again Saturday, this time over whether school buildings in the nations largest district would close for the rest of the year, with classes continuing online. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a news briefing that public school sites in the citys 1.1 million-student school district would shutter for the rest of the academic year to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Soon afterward, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at his own briefing that the decision was his to make. It is my legal authority in this situation, yes, Cuomo said. De Blasio, like Cuomo a Democrat, had said that it was not an easy decision to close school buildings in favor of online learning, but that it is the right decision and its also a decision made a little clearer by the fact that the distance learning is working more and more every day. The goal, he said, is to reopen school sites by September, adding that high school graduates may have to go without a commencement ceremony. But Cuomo said school closings would have to be coordinated with districts surrounding the city. So I understand the mayors position, which is he wants to close them until June, and we may do that, but were going to do it in a coordinated sense with the other localities, Cuomo said. It makes no sense for one locality to take an action thats not coordinated with the others. When a reporter suggested that the mixed messages would confuse parents, Cuomo said, We just clarified it. Its not going to be decided in the next few days because we dont know. Adding to the confusion, an email from the city to parents was issued while Cuomo spoke, advising of the extended school closing. NYC school students will continue with Remote Learning for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year, it said. The dispute was the latest bout in a long-running grudge match between the two elected officials, who have failed to maintain a united front in the face of a pandemic. When de Blasio said last month that city residents should prepare for a shelter-in-place order, Cuomo countered that the city didnt have the power to make such a declaration. Days later, Cuomo announced a New York state on pause order directing nonessential businesses to close and telling people to stay 6 feet away from others when in public. The order sounded much like shelter-in-place, a term de Blasio has continued to use. De Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein alluded to the earlier dispute on Twitter, saying Cuomos reaction to de Blasios school announcement was reminiscent of how he reacted when the Mayor called for a shelter in place. We were right then and were right now. Cuomo addressed the school issue as he released numbers showing that 783 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded statewide on Friday, the fifth day in a row that the toll topped 700. The new figures raised the number of coronavirus-related deaths in the state to 8,627. These are just incredible numbers depicting incredible loss and pain, Cuomo said. The governor, whose national profile has risen as his virus briefings have become must-see TV, said again Saturday that he is not interested in running for president. When a reporter said some Democrats would prefer Cuomo to former Vice President Joe Biden as their partys presidential nominee, Cuomo said, That is on one hand flattering. On the other hand, it is irrelevant. I have no political agenda. Period, he said. Im not running for president. Im not running for vice president. Im not running anywhere. Im not going to Washington. Im staying right here. De Blasio ran for the 2020 Democratic nomination but dropped out early in the race. Cuomos remarks Saturday were embraced by authorities on Long Island, which has seen its own surge in coronavirus cases. Everybody wants to get back to normal as soon as possible, but we have to take a data-driven, regional approach, Laura Curran, the Nassau County executive, said in a statement. If this pandemic has taught us one thing, added Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, it is that we are one New York and all in this together. School buildings in New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, have been closed since March 16. All school buildings in the state have been closed since March 18 following a Cuomo executive order. The school closings were initially announced for a few weeks back before the viruss full impact was known. New Yorks school year lasts through late June. A massive effort to move instruction online has met mixed success in the city, where many low-income students lack Wi-Fi and devices for connecting to their virtual classrooms. De Blasio said tens of thousands of tablets and laptops have been loaned to students who needed them and the remaining students who lack devices for online learning will get them by the end of April. De Blasio had resisted closing schools as the city recorded its first deaths from the coronavirus, saying he feared that health care workers would have to stay home to care for children and that hundreds of thousands of poor students would go hungry without free school meals. Since then, the city has set up food distribution sites and centers where essential front-line workers can drop their children off. Authorities in some other locales, including the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania, previously announced that schools would close for the rest of the year. B oris Johnson needed a "significant level of specialist treatment" at the worst points of his battle against coronavirus, according to his spokesman. The PM left hospital over the weekend, having previously been in intensive care at one point of his stay. Mr Johnson has now tested negative for Covid-19, the spokesman confirmed, and is recovering at Chequers. Now, clearly, if a person is moved to intensive care, that means that they are requiring a significant level of specialist treatment," the spokesman said. Chequers - The countryside retreat where Boris Johnson will recuperate So, I think it was clear from the moment the Prime Minister was moved to intensive care that his condition had worsened. He would not go into further details of just how ill the Prime Minister had been. Loading.... Asked about the Prime Minister being tested before he left hospital, Mr Johnsons spokesman said: Im told it is standard practice in hospital to do that. And the results came back negative. Loading.... It is unclear when the PM will return to work though at present he is said to be following medical advice by not doing so, while he will be taking further guidance before going back. Mr Johnson said yesterday that there was "no question" that the NHS saved his life as he fought the virus. Its hard to find the words to express my debt but before I come to that, I want to thank everyone in the entire UK for the effort and the sacrifice you have made and are making," he said in a video statement. Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, has been filling in for Mr Johnson when necessary. Listen to The Leader: Coronavirus Daily podcast The spokesman said that Mr Johnson had spoken to Mr Raab, stating: He spoke to the First Secretary of State over the course of the weekend. [April 13, 2020] Bright by Text Offers Free Support for Families with Young Children During COVID-19 Crisis DENVER, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With current social distancing guidelines in place due to COVID-19, many parents and other caregivers of children from prenatal to age eight are cut off from vital support networks. Bright by Text puts free early childhood education and development tools and community resources into their hands through their smartphones. Parents and caregivers nationwide can rest assured that they are receiving important expert-approved child development resources when they sign up by texting BRIGHT to 274448 or by filling out the form at [ bit.ly/2VwnyQ3 ]. The service alway has been and will always be free, and includes two to four text messages per week with links to tips, videos and related developmental resources based on a child's age. Subscribers can stop the text messages at any time. With the help of Bright by Text, young children will continue learning and growing and caregivers will have the resources they need to confidently navigate this unprecedented time and beyond. The nonprofit Bright by Text partners with trusted national expert resources like PBS, Vroom, Sesame Street, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to deliver expert-approved child development content that families can put to use at home. "Bright by Text provides early childhood education and caregiver support even while schools, libraries and childcare centers are closed," said Jean McSpadden, president and CEO of Bright by Text. "Because we use text messages with links to online content, it is easily accessible on any smartphone. We know this method works -- 95% of Bright by Text subscribers say it makes them a more confident caregiver." Bright by Text subscribers can choose to receive texts in English or Spanish. The tips and other information are customized based on their child's age and, where available, by their region. "Parents and other caregivers of young children are facing unprecedented challenges as a result of COVID-19. Bright by Text provides support with educational and developmental activities or tips. Our sole mission is getting this information into the hands of adults who care for children prenatal to age eight," said McSpadden. Bright by Text has partnered with dozens of PBS affiliates and United Way chapters across the nation, as well as other organizations, to offer this support including information about community resources for families. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bright-by-text-offers-free-support-for-families-with-young-children-during-covid-19-crisis-301039532.html SOURCE Bright by Text [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] As the coronavirus tears through the country, scientists are asking: Are some people more infectious than others? Are there superspreaders, people who seem to just spew out virus, making them especially likely to infect others? It seems that the answer is yes. There do seem to be superspreaders, a loosely defined term for people who infect a disproportionate number of others, whether as a consequence of genetics, social habits or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But those virus carriers at the heart of what are being called superspreading events can drive and have driven epidemics, researchers say, making it crucial to figure out ways to identify spreading events or to prevent situations, like crowded rooms, where superspreading can occur. Just as important are those at the other end of the spectrum: people who are infected but unlikely to spread the infection. Distinguishing between those who are more infectious and those less infectious could make an enormous difference in the ease and speed with which an outbreak is contained, said Jon Zelner, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. If the infected person is a superspreader, contact tracing is especially important. But if the infected person is the opposite of a superspreader, someone who for whatever reason does not transmit the virus, contact tracing can be a wasted effort. The tricky part is that we dont necessarily know who those people are, Zelner said. Two factors are at play, said Martina Morris, emeritus professor of statistics and sociology at the University of Washington. There has to be a link between people in order to transmit an infection, she said. But, she added, a link is necessary but not sufficient. The second factor is how infectious a person is. We almost never have independent data on those two things, Morris said. She pointed out that it can be easy to misattribute multiple infections to an individual possibly exposing the person to public attack when the spread has nothing to do with the persons infectiousness. If you are the first person in a crowded room to get infected and if this is an easily spread disease, you will look like a superspreader, she said. Anyone in that room could have had the same impact. You were just the first in line. Yet there do seem to be situations in which a few individuals spark large outbreaks. With COVID-19, it is not yet known whether those highly infectious people include individuals with silent infections who do not realize they are sick, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and chief executive at Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies. More likely, he added, superspreading events may involve people with symptoms that linger but who are not sick enough to stay home. Or they could involve infected people who shed an unusual amount of virus a poorly studied factor that might be due to variations in the amount of virus in the aerosol droplets from a patients cough or the amount of infectious virus in feces, for example. No matter what the cause, public health measures, like avoiding crowds and what Frieden calls cough hygiene, can prevent a superspreading event, he said. Medical history is replete with stories of superspreading in outbreaks of parasitic disease, tuberculosis, measles and other illness. There is Mary Mallon, a cook better known as Typhoid Mary, who spread typhoid fever to more than 50 people in the early years of the 20th century. She herself was not ill but was asymptomatic silently infected with typhoid. Superspreading also played important roles in outbreaks of two other coronaviruses, which caused severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome. The MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea was driven primarily by three infected individuals, and approximately 75% of cases can be traced back to three superspreaders who have each infected a disproportionately high number of contacts, wrote George Gao, an immunologist and virologist at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, in a recent paper. The outbreak in South Korea began in 2015 when a 68-year-old man became infected with MERS during travel to the Middle East. He returned to South Korea, where he directly infected 29 people, two of whom infected 106 people. The total number of cases in South Korea at that time was 166; that superspreading event accounted for most of the outbreak. In 2003 during the SARS outbreak, the first patient in Hong Kong appears to have infected at least 125 others. Other superspreading events involved 180 people in a housing complex in Hong Kong and another 22 people on a jet from Hong Kong to Beijing. In the Ebola outbreak in Africa between 2014 and 2016, 61% of infections were traced to just 3% of infected people. Superspreading also appears to have driven outbreaks of the new coronavirus. One event occurred at the end of February when 175 Biogen executives gathered for a conference at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Hotel. At least one was infected with the coronavirus. Two weeks later, 75% of the 108 Massachusetts residents infected with the virus were associated with Biogen. The infections rippled out from there to other states and other Massachusetts residents. Why at that conference? asked Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. At the time there were so many conferences it was before social distancing. Something was going on there. Then there was the March 12 birthday party in Westport, Connecticut. About 50 people attended. Half ended up infected. The cluster of cases expanded so fast, health officials gave up contact tracing. At a funeral Feb. 29 in Albany, Georgia, someone unwittingly spread the virus among the 200 mourners. At Illinois current hot spot, the Cook County jail, at least 400 are known to be infected. At the other end of the bell curve of infectiousness are infected people who do not seem to infect others. During the MERS outbreak in South Korea, 89% of patients did not appear to transmit the disease. In the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a striking example from the far end of uninfectious: a couple in Illinois. On Jan. 23 the wife who had returned from a visit to Wuhan, China became the first laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 in the state. On Jan. 30, her husband was infected. It was the first known person-to person transmission in the United States. Both husband and wife became gravely ill and were hospitalized. Both recovered. State public health officials traced their contacts 372 people, including 195 health care workers. Not a single one became infected. Dr. Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer for the Chicago Department of Public Health, said the remarkable lack of spread probably arose from several factors. Where were the couple in the course of their infection when they came into contact with those other people? Were they sneezing or coughing? How close were the contacts? Were the people they interacted with simply less susceptible to infections? As grimly alluring as it is to look for viral superspreaders, there are pitfalls. There is a good chance that a cluster of infections would be attributed to a superspreader when, instead, public health officials missed some transmissions by other people, Zelner said. And there are social consequences to superspreader stories. The nature of our society right now is that we are very much interested in the catastrophic, said Samuel Roberts, a medical historian at Columbia. The best way to do that is to have something that looks like a zombie story. Its a powerful narrative. The general public doesnt need to know if an outbreak was traced to one person, he said. Whats more important is, how do we protect ourselves? he said. Finding patient zero is not going to help. It only stokes fear of the other. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Francis Suarez was one of the first residents of Dade County, Fla., to test positive for the coronavirus. Like many of us, he was suddenly thrust into the uncertainties that this pandemic has brought: Will I get sick? Will I transfer the sickness to my family members? How will I continue working during this time? And how long will this last? Unlike the rest of us, though, Suarez is also the mayor of Miami. more than 25,000 life Many people may be wondering what its like to test positive for COVID-19. Here is my first digital journal entry to shed some light on my experience. pic.twitter.com/RDpIH2sNI8 Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) March 13, 2020 and describe his mild symptoms Using his platform as an elected official, Suarez helped to spread awareness, information and optimism through daily video digital journaling that, despite his quarantine, connected him directly to hisTwitter followers. After 17 days and recovering from mild symptoms, Suarez emerged from quarantine as a symbol of hope, providing reassurance that a full, healthyis possible after a positive test result.Miami was one of the first cities to declare a state of emergency for the pandemic, doing so on March 11. A day later, Suarez was tested and decided to take the precaution of self-quarantining immediately. On March 13, he posted his first video journal entry, addressing his constituents to confirm his positive test result For Suarez, Twitter provided a platform to ensure that while isolated physically from his city and its government, he was still able to help with Miamis response to the health crisis, continue to connect with constituents, and shed some light on the confusing and rapidly changing situation as residents were panic buying toilet paper and other essentials while wondering what it meant to be under a stay-at-home order. We thought it would be a good idea to be transparent about this journey, he told. Hopefully it would reduce anxieties and fears, and I think it has. In addition to his health, the digital journals discussed the latest city updates about the crisis, and many of the videos have received hundreds of likes and retweets. While Suarez test enabled him to avoid spreading COVID-19 to his family and other Miamians, he emphasizes the larger benefit of widespread testing. explained Testing is important to know the real number and to see if the curves are slowing, he, adding that tests also are important at the city, state and national level so health officials can have a better understanding of where resources should be allocated. But for most individuals, testing isnt likely to disrupt lives much more than the pandemic already has. If you get tested there are only two things that can happen. Youll either be positive or negative, he said. Thats it. Most of those who test positive either are asymptomatic or, like Suarez, experience less-severe symptoms. If youre sick and youre positive, the mayor said, theyre actually going to tell you to go home. Its not like anything different happens. Suarez said he also quarantined himself to model proper social distancing and because an individual who gets negative test results could become infected from someone in the testing facility. Thats why we are stressing that people stay home, he said. The only way to really get ahead of this is not to interact socially in the way that we are accustomed to. necessarily having to be in the same place While social distancing isnt easy, the increasingly common video- and remote-meeting technologies are making coping easier. Now that people have understood that capability is pretty ubiquitous and with 5G coming into major cities, he said, youre going to see more and more people working from home or realizing that they can interact without. And that will change a lot of things. can Suarez believes the pandemic also could bring permanent changes to how governments respond to emergencies. Every time we have a traumatic event, as traumatic as it is and as difficult as it seems in the moment, its an incredibly invaluable learning tool that I think cities and governmentsuse to be better prepared for the next one. He also believes that Miami made the right decisions early on. One of the things Ive learned is taking bold, proactive steps can sometimes get criticism but, in the long run, usually youre validated. Miami began buying decontamination equipment and protective gear in the run-up to the Super Bowl, and on March 6, a week before the mayor began his quarantine, the city cancelled a popular upcoming music festival . You have to keep focused on the objectives that youre trying to accomplish, Suarez said, and sometimes that means erring on the side of caution. Having tested positive for COVID-19, there were only two ways Suarez could safely come out of quarantine. One option was to stay quarantined for seven days after being symptom-free and medicine-free for 72 hours, which would have stretched out his self-isolation. The other was to wait until he was symptom- and medicine-free for 24 hours and then take two COVID-19 tests, 24 hours apart, and have both come back negative. On March 30, in a final Twitter journal entry, he delivered the news that he had received his second set of negative results. I have tested negative for a second consecutive time, meeting the strictest CDC guidelines that release me from quarantine! Im deeply grateful to everyone for your support through this journey. This is a small victory in our ongoing battle to beat COVID-19. #InThisTogether pic.twitter.com/CjhIEvDFni Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) March 30, 2020 In the end, Suarez wasnt able to return to his family until more than two weeks after he was diagnosed with COVID-19. The mayor said his experience as mostly asymptomatic convinced him that thousands in the community may have it too and not know. Days after his quarantine ended, he became the first person in Florida to become a COVID-19 convalescent plasma donor. His donation was to be used to help a critically ill coronavirus patient in Florida. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 22:49:26|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Chen Jian, Zhang Jianhua, Nguon Sovan HONG KONG, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's medical student Sok Sambo volunteered to work as an interpreter for the Chinese COVID-19 medical team in Cambodia without hesitation, though he knew the job had high risks. "This is my meager contribution to help my motherland fight the virus," said Sambo, a medical student at Guangxi Medical University in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The seven-member team of Chinese doctors, along with tons of medical supplies, arrived in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, in late March to help combat the bruising pandemic when the Southeast Asian kingdom reported 86 infections by then. ROLE MODEL During their stay in Cambodia, the Chinese medical team visited designated hospitals, communities and testing agencies to carry out epidemiological investigations and review the diagnosis and treatment process of the hospitals. "We have gone through the entire treatment process twice, including admission to hospital, triage and sample testing," said Ai Xiang, leader of the Chinese medical team in Cambodia. The medical experts also visited the Cambodian Ministry of Health to discuss the COVID-19 prevention and treatment system with local officials and medical workers. As hundreds of thousands of Cambodian migrant workers have been leaving Phnom Penh for their home provinces to celebrate the Khmer New Year, which falls on April 14-16 this year, how to prevent the spread of the virus during the holiday exodus became an urgent task, he said. Sambo was busy working together with the Chinese experts to take stock of the epidemic situation in Cambodia. The 32-year-old medical student deemed the volunteer work as a very good opportunity to learn experience from the Chinese doctors. "They worked very hard, visiting various places and meeting people at daytime and writing reports at nighttime," he said. "They are a role model for other doctors, and when I graduate I'll try my best to serve my people." RECIPROCAL HELP Vietnam, the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2020, will host a special virtual summit among 10 ASEAN members and three dialogue partners -- China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) -- Tuesday on the COVID-19 pandemic. "It demonstrates the determination and willingness of East Asian countries to work together to combat the pandemic and safeguard regional economic development," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Monday. When China was fighting an all-out war against the COVID-19 outbreak in February, ASEAN nations donated money and medical materials to China, and leaders of ASEAN countries expressed their sympathies to China and resolve to jointly overcome the virus. Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen paid a special visit to Beijing on Feb. 5, which, as Chinese President Xi Jinping put it, demonstrated the unbreakable friendship and mutual trust between the two countries. As a Chinese saying goes, "The grace of dripping water should be reciprocated by a gushing spring." When the pandemic spread in ASEAN countries, China came to their help after it contained its own outbreak. Less than five days after Laos reported its first two imported COVID-19 cases on March 24, a team of Chinese medical experts from China's southwestern Yunnan Province flew to the Lao capital of Vientiane with medical supplies. "We will join the Lao side to perfect its epidemic prevention and control system, and draw up a diagnosis and treatment guideline that suits the Lao situation. In short, we are together to formulate a roadmap for the fight against COVID-19 in Laos," Huang Xingli, head of the Chinese medical expert team, told Xinhua. In the Philippines, a 12-member Chinese medical team was also racing against time to help contain the killer virus as the total number of infections in the country surpassed 4,600, with 297 deaths. "We'd like to see the frontline experience be brought here in the Philippines, so we should be able to learn and eventually curtail and fight COVID-19 here in the Philippines," Assistant Health Secretary Kenneth Ronquillo said after a briefing session with the Chinese medical experts. In the meantime, a medical team from southwest China's Yunnan Province arrived in Yangon on April 8 to assist Myanmar's efforts against COVID-19 as the country has reported 39 cases so far. Along with the team also arrived 5.3 tons of materials, lab testing equipment and protective gears. COMMUNITY WITH SHARED FUTURE By sharing anti-epidemic experience, dispatching expert teams and offering medical supplies, China is repaying the kindness and support of its ASEAN neighbors. "We are very confident in Chinese experts' skills and experience. The World Health Organization also highly values and cherishes China's resources and experience. As a public health professional, I think what China has done is of great significance to Cambodia," said Li Ailan, the WHO representative in Cambodia. The COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading rapidly around the world. More than 1.69 million confirmed cases were reported globally as of Sunday, including more than 100,000 deaths, according to the daily situation report of WHO. The pandemic has once again proved the importance and urgency of building a community with a shared future for mankind, Xi pointed out during a phone conversation early April with Bounnhang Vorachith, general secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Committee and president of Laos. In a phone conversation with his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo on April 2, Xi said China will share its experience and provide as much support as it can for the global battle against COVID-19, and work with other countries to promote the development of global public health and build a community of common health for mankind. Sounthone Xayachack, head of the LPRP Central Committee's commission for external relations, said the battle against COVID-19 showed that a single person, or a single society, cannot overcome this pandemic, and "the best way to overcome the disease is governments around the world working together to effectively control the disease and achieve victory." Besides Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines and Myanmar, China has also dispatched medical expert teams to Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Italy, Serbia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela and Russia, and offered medical supplies and donations to a number of virus-stricken countries. (Xinhua reporters Mao Pengfei in Phnom Penh, Che Hongliang in Yangon and Yang Ke in Manila also contributed to the story.) By Joseph Wilkinson, New York Daily News While most people are rallying behind medical workers, one man committed a senseless crime against people on the coronavirus front lines, cops say. Several nurses at a hospital in Westchester County finished their shifts in intensive care units Friday morning, received a round of applause from police and firefighters outside and then found the tires on their cars had been slashed, The Journal News reported. Daniel Hall, 29, was arrested Friday and charged with multiple felonies for slashing the tires on 22 vehicles and having a small amount of PCP on him when apprehended, New York State Police said in a press release. Officials at New York-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital in Cortlandt Manor told the Journal News that the hospital would pay for the damages. Hall, a Peekskill resident, is facing charges of second-degree criminal mischief, second-degree auto stripping and fifth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance. Hes due in court on May 18. WASHINGTON With his hoped-for Easter timeline having come and gone, President Donald Trump now appears more determined than he has ever been to open up the economy with a "big bang" early next month, according to multiple people familiar with the decision-making process. As the U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths, aides are cautioning the president about too quickly lifting national social distancing guidelines, now set to expire April 30. An internal debate continues about how best to reopen certain sections of the country at the end of the month, these people said. "I think we are all expecting or planning for May 1," said a senior administration official, cautioning that major new outbreaks in cities could change the thinking and that no final determination has been made. Image: Deborah Birx, Donald Trump and Mike Pence (Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images) Despite the president's determination, it isn't solely in his control. The decision will likely fall to state and local officials, and members of the public will decide when they feel confident to return to work. "Reopening is both an economic and a public health question," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday, "and I'm unwilling to divorce the two. You can't ask the people of this state or this country to choose between lives lost and dollars gained." Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak Over the weekend, the president said he would weigh multiple factors to arrive at the "toughest" decision of his administration to date. Trump signaled that he has consulted his top health professionals, business leaders and others whom he described as "smart people" in recent days. The ultimate call "will be based on a lot of facts and instincts," he said. In a Fox News phone interview Saturday, Trump said he would come to a conclusion "fairly soon." Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the administration is envisioning what he described as a "rolling re-entry." Story continues "It is not going to be a light switch" for the nation as a whole once restrictions are eased. "Not one size fits all," he emphasized Sunday on CNN. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, wouldn't endorse a specific date for the end of the countrywide guidelines, saying on NBC News' "Meet the Press": "I think we're looking at all these targets. If it can be May 1, that would be great for the American people." Some industries may be advised to reopen, while others will remain closed, according to senior administration officials, with one comparing the economic approach more to a "dimmer" than an on-off switch. Officials are exploring different ways to figure out what parts of the country might be equipped to open first and how to pinpoint where the risk of an emerging cluster might be, particularly in the absence of widespread testing for the virus itself or antibodies to it. But Trump seemed to telegraph his eagerness to restart much of the U.S. in a tweet Sunday evening, urging governors to perfect their testing abilities and to "be ready, big things are happening. No excuses!" Trump has said he would like to reopen the country with a "big bang." The motivation to restart the economy even piecemeal sooner rather than later may be based on a political calculation by the president that he needs to demonstrate that things are "on the upswing." A former official close to the president suggested that swing voters make decisions based largely on a single question: "'How do you feel things are going?' If voters feel things are going in the right direction, they'll stick with the president. If you and your family aren't feeling it, you won't." Explaining Trump's near-daily briefings now, surrounded by high-level officials, the former official said: "It's all about perception that government is in control and has a plan and that things are on the upswing." Although the general election is still eight months away, the former official said Trump wants to initiate a recovery as soon as possible, in part because he is banking on swing voters' settling early on whom they will support. "You need that gut feeling [for those voters] to occur in mid- to late August," the official said. "People make up their mind in late August, early September." Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak One of the challenges of reopening certain regions is giving Americans confidence that it is safe to return to work and begin going to restaurants again. Region-based restrictions, however, might be the approach going forward should a significant second wave of the coronavirus occur in the fall and winter months, an official close to the task force said. There is also consistent debate over how the president's guidance might square with state executives' stay-at-home orders. Some states, like California and Virginia, have already extended their social distancing rules beyond May 1. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Saturday that the largest public school system in the country would remain closed for the rest of the academic year. Late last month, Trump wanted to pack the pews on Easter Sunday and have the economy "opened up and just raring to go" before conceding that that was a purely "aspirational" goal. After that, his top aides warned him not to set such specific dates in the short term while the illness is still ravaging hot spots nationwide, especially in New York. Two days later, the president extended the guidelines by an entire month. This week, Trump is set to unveil his "opening our country council," which will be a separate entity from the coronavirus task force and will feature what he described as economic experts, medical professionals, elected leaders and members of the business community. The smaller group will meet less often than the larger one headed by Vice President Mike Pence, according to a senior administration official. White House lawyers worked throughout the weekend to identify any potential issues that could arise by working with the private sector on the coronavirus response. "We have to look very carefully to make sure that these companies don't have any conflicts of interest. It is very complex," an official said. Juggling between economic and health concerns continues to be a challenging balancing act for the president and the administration. "People losing jobs is not good for their health, either," another official cautioned. Trump made a similar point during his briefing Friday. "Staying at home leads to death, also," he said. Australia Post considered slashing letter deliveries to just once a week and replacing full-service post offices with "automated kiosks", with the company's own financial projections showing it could lose more than $400 million next year. The forecasts, contained in a confidential strategic review dated May 2018 and obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, note an analysis by consulting firm PwC found "without significant transformation, Australia Post faces a transition into loss as early as [2019], escalating to a loss of $426 million by 2021". Just over 2 billion letters were sent last year, down 45 per cent since 2008. Credit:Louise Kennerley The review, led by Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate and submitted to the company's board, was scathing about how the business was managed, concluding it was "unnecessarily complex" and that "business customers are not being adequately served and find Australia Post hard to do business with". Politics. Marijuana. Science. COVID-19. Lets start with the first. Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the presidential race. Though he plans to remain on the ballots of the remaining primary states, hes effectively suspended his campaign. Joe Biden, in response, promptly extended an impassioned 800-word olive branch to Senator Sanders and his supporters, recognizing both for shaping important political dialogue. Issues which had been given little attention or little hope of ever passing are now at the center of the political debate, Biden wrote. Income inequality, universal health care, climate change, free college, relieving students from the crushing debt of student loans. These are just a few of the issues Bernie and his supporters have given life to. Biden took it one step further and committing to include Bernie and his ideals as part of his administration stating, Ill be reaching out to you. You will be heard by me. As you say: Not me, Us. Joe Biden's letter to Bernie Sanders. Ill be reaching out to you. You will be heard by me. As you say: Not me, Us.https://t.co/dtc7IOHCCV | #Bernie2020 #Biden2020 pic.twitter.com/B0WGTyYbtL Andre F Bourque (@SocialMktgFella) April 10, 2020 At the same time, legions of devout Bernie supporters dubbed Bernie Bros remain doubtful any radical platform adoption will take form. All this has set the stage for what could be a powerfully unifying shift were Biden to reconsider his current stance on federal marijuana legalization, which remains an illicit drug at the federal level despite being medically legalized by 33 states, of which 11 also allowing for adult-use consumption. Story continues Bernie on Marijuana Senator Bernie Sanders has pledged to use his power as president to legalize cannabis via executive order within his first 100 days on the job, should he be elected. His plan was unveiled at 4:20 PM EST last October, and includes plans to vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions in his platform proposal by creating an independent clemency board removed from the Department of Justice and placed in the White House. Encuentra tus noticias en Espanol en El Planteo. A big part of his marijuana plan includes reinvestment it into the marginalized, largely minority, communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs, provisioning that "federal funding will be provided to states and cities to partner with organizations that can help develop and operate the expungement determination process." Sanders plan would allot $50 billion in tax revenue generated from the sale of legal marijuana and for these equalizing and reparation measures, $20 billion of which would be used to "provide grants to entrepreneurs of color who continue to face discrimination in access to capital." Three additional $10 billion sums would be apportioned to funds or grants that aid businesses or communities disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs. Keeping Big Pharma and Big Tobacco from dominating a newly opened marijuana market is another essential part of Bernies federal legal marijuana approach. Companies who have formerly created cancer-causing products or have been found guilty of deceptive marketing would be banned from the industry, as would tobacco and cigarette. To prevent marijuana market oligopolies taking form as they have in some already legal states (most notably Florida and California), market share and franchise caps will be put in place to prevent profiteering and consolidation under the Senators plan. [A]s we move toward the legalization of marijuana, I dont want large corporations profiting, he said in an interview on Showtimes Desus & Mero. A close up of a sign/p / /ppDescription automatically generated Biden on Marijuana Last November, the former vice president replied to a town hall question that although he supports allowing states to determine their own marijuana policies, he is unconvinced on the science recognizing the plants relationship to other drugs. "The truth of the matter is, there has not been nearly enough evidence acquired as to whether or not it's a gateway drug," he declared. Though Biden opposes legalization on the federal level, he has declared that anyone incarcerated for marijuana should be released and have their criminal records expunged of any marijuana charges. Biden also supports removing marijuana from the list of Schedule I drugs where it sits out-of-place alongside a motley of drugs deemed to have zero medicinal value. He proposes moving it to the Schedule II category, making the plant more easily accessible to research. See Also: Will COVID-19 Cause The US Government To Finally Treat Cannabis As A Medicine? While thats not nearly full federal legalization, it would be significantly more progressive than the decades-old laws marijuana finds itself trapped by today. It also illustrates some semblance of reason; no one truly believes marijuana belongs in the same drug classification as heroin, and Biden would be the first president to acknowledge and enable the medicinal value of marijuana. But he can go a step further, and more modern, well-studied marijuana advocates can lead him there. Research already exists that correlations between marijuana and other drug use have been weakened by studies that show quite the opposite. Cannabis access has been found to be associated with reduced rates of opioid use and abuse, opioid-related hospitalizations, opioid-related traffic fatalities, opioid-related drug treatment admissions, and opioid-related overdose deaths. A 2020 study by the Journal of Palliative Medicine found that the addition of medical marijuana to cancer patients' palliative (pain reductive) care regimen withstood the development of tolerance and reduced the rate of opioid use, over a significantly longer follow-up period than patients solely utilizing opioids. Another 2020 study found a significant reduction in opioid consumption for pain following traumatic injury when supplemented with oral synthetic THC, while opioid consumption was unchanged for controls. Gateway Drug, it can be reliably argued, is more dated political rallying cry than modern thoughtful analysis. The marijuana research is there, Joe Biden just needs credible exposure to it. The Death of Charlotte We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta said of marijuana in a globally-broadcast confession nearly seven years ago. It was a 180-degree about-face from the op-ed he wrote for Time Magazine in 2009 entitled Why I Would Vote No On Pot. For the first time, Dr. Gupta had been exposed to the medicinal properties of cannabis, and in what would become a timeless story with rippling effects, it was a little girl who got him there. Charlotte Figi became the nations arguably greatest exposure to the benefits of CBD oil after using it to control the constant seizures experienced from her severe Dravet syndrome at age 5. The Colorado girl experienced up to 300 grand mal seizures per week and used a wheelchair, before using CBD drastically reduced her rate of seizures. Dr. Guptas interviews with Charlottes family, cannabis researchers, and caretakers led him on an unchartered journey to more closely examine the possibilities of cannabis as a medicine. His findings were brought to a national and global audience in a way no other medical marijuana cases had been before, igniting a momentous push toward medical marijuana reform. On March 26, 2020, her mother, Paige Figi, wrote on Facebook that all five family members were sick with "fevers, pains, coughs" and were "struggling to breathe." An initial test for COVID-19 came back negative, but as Charlotte's condition worsened, hospital staff treated her as a likely COVID-19 case. On April 7, 2020, Charlotte passed from complications with the virus at age 13. Her death was first announced by the group co-founded by her mother through the Realm of Caring Foundation, an organization she chartered to empowering individuals, medical professionals, and the community through research-based education on hemp, CBD, medical marijuana, and THC. "Charlotte is no longer suffering. She is seizure-free forever, Paige Figi wrote on her Facebook page. Thank you so much for all of your love." A screenshot of a cell phone/p / /ppDescription automatically generated Charlottes story brings it all together: the imperative for scientific thought and consideration in political policy for both marijuana and COVID-19. The countrys partisan split regarding the relevance and dependence on science to make informed, data-driven health and wellness political decisions will play a key factor in Novembers presidential election. Charlotte Figi exemplifies the importance of foundationally sound policymaking. By immersing himself more deeply into marijuana research, Biden can firmly demonstrate his commitment to leading a science-first presidency one very different than what exists today. This is Dr. Sanjay Guptas tribute to the life of Charlotte Figi: Political Pivoting Weve already seen Joe Biden shift to the left before. Earlier this year he pivoted to include the Sanders-championed proposal of free college and university education in his platform, announcing a policy to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for all students whose family incomes are below $125,000. See Also: Nothing Silly About Psilly From Mushrooms And Its Medicinal Properties On April 9, 2020, the former vice president proposed lowering the age eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 60 and eliminating student debt for some lower-income families. Both are issues that make up the foundation of the Sanders platform. A shift in his marijuana thinking would be much sharper, but perhaps even politically safer. According to a poll from the Pew Research Center 78% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say marijuana should be legal. At the same time, 66% of Americans favor legalization, and more than 90% support enabling physicians to prescribe medical cannabis to patients, according to an April 2018 poll from Quinnipiac University. At the same time, a new survey conducted by IBD/TIPP, found just 34% of independent voters believe Trump is handling the COVID-19 pandemic well, surging support for Biden among those voters, 47 percent to 41 percent, respectively. This kind of pivot could set the tone for enabling so many other things, as well, including: High-dollar crop growing opportunities for farmers The introduction of new revenue taxes for towns and municipalities An opening for interstate and global cannabis trade A boon for commercial real estate The introduction of broader lending, insurance, and traditional business service markets Favorable cannabis business tax deduction laws Massive tax revenue opportunities for federal and state governments Global cannabis research capabilities Each of these will be desperately needed in the eventual wake of this COVID-19 crisis. If there were ever an ideal time for marijuana to help invigorate the U.S. economy its soon to come. Most of all, federal marijuana legalization would be a unifying, bold move. The desire for bold moves is what Bernie supporters are driven by, and this is one that cannabis scientists, cancer researchers, struggling farmers, poor municipalities, and tax-burdened cannabis businesses are all eager for as well. Illustration: Andre Bourque / Image: Dreamstime.com Andre Bourque is a cannabis industry connector, executive advisor to several cannabis companies, brand strategy advisor, and a cannabis industry analyst. In addition to Benzinga, Andres articles have been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Yahoo Finance, CIO Magazine & ComputerWorld. You can connect with him at @socialmktgfella on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The preceding article is from one of our external contributors. It does not represent the opinion of Benzinga and has not been edited. / See more from Benzinga 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Living around Augusta, Montana, means taking in breathtaking scenery and encounters with wildlife daily. For local wildlife photographer Kelly Peacock, it was a search for grizzly bears that landed her and her husband, Mark, in town. An acquaintance at Glacier National Park mentioned they were having problems with grizzly bears in yards around Choteau. That was just enough to give chase and the couple stumbled onto Augusta. Peacock has always had a thing for photography. At ten, she had to convince her father to let her buy a purple, childrens camera. After she missed capturing clear pictures of a grizzly on a trip to Alaska, she made the switch to an upgraded version. The rest is history, as Peacock scouts wildlife from Dupuyer to Wolf Creek. If she cant find any animals, then she settles for landscape photography. Both are a testament to how a talented photographer sees the beauty that is all around us. Peacock also shares the perils of seeking out wild animals. One of her closest encounters was on a local shoot. I was standing with my tripod and camera, and I heard something behind me. I thought is was a hiker, but it was big, old grizzly standing about 14 feet from me! Peacock was so close, she couldnt even get a photo because her camera was set on zoom. The grizzly was less fazed and wandered off without eating her which is good news for those who enjoy her and her work! Peacock gives credit to God for what He has blessed her with and the beauty around her. Life unBRANDED is Peacocks brand (or is that an unbrand)? To see her photographic works in person, visit Latigo and Lace or forge, or purchase cards at the Augusta Service Station all on Main Street in Augusta. Peacock relies on word-of-mouth sightings of animals and frequent back road drives, so you never know what magnificent creature may make it to her lens and be available for purchase and enjoyment to the public. While the shut-down continues, now is a good time to also browse her works at KellyPeacock.com. MEXICO CITY - The U.N. human rights office in Mexico issued a statement Monday condemning the killing of an environmental activist in the violent Gulf coast state of Veracruz. The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Adan Vez Lira was shot to death on April 8 while he rode his motorcycle in the township of Actopan. Vez Lira was a longtime supporter and organizer at the La Mancha bird-watching reserve on the sparsely populated stretch of coast north of the Veracruz state capital. Adan Vez Lira was a recognized environmental activists whose voice and leadership had played a notable role in several environmental defence causes in Actopan, the office said. Mourners who posted messages on the reserves Facebook page said he also was active in opposing mines and preserving wetlands. The area is noted for its tropical forest and coastal lagoons. He was at least the third environmentalist killed in Mexico this year. Mexicos National Human Rights Commission said at least two other activists have been killed in 2020. In late March, unidentified gunmen shot to death Isaac Medardo Herrera, a lawyer and activist who defended a rural tract against development near the Mexican city of Cuernavaca. His neighbourhood activist group in Jiutepec, Morelos posted a statement saying the killers knocked on the door of Herreras home and shot him, before fleeing. Herrera had led a fight over at least four years to stop plans to build a housing development on the Los Venados tract, an environmentally sensitive woodland area in Jiutepec, just south of Cuernavaca. The development was halted and the area was supposed to be used as a nature reserve. The Mexican Center for Environmental Rights reported that 15 land defenders were killed in Mexico in 2019. Morelos, the state where Jiutepec is located, was the third most dangerous for environmental activists in 2019. Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 13, 2020 | WESTERN KENTUCKY By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 13, 2020 | 12:42 PM | WESTERN KENTUCKY Congressman James Comer has announced plans to host a second COVID-19 Telephone Town Hall on Thursday, April 16 to update constituents on federal efforts to respond to the coronavirus. He will be joined at the beginning of the call by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who will speak on efforts to combat scams posing as COVID-19 charity and relief efforts. The town hall will begin at 1:30 pm. Residents of the 1st Congressional District can call 855-962-1276 to participate in the conversation and can also sign up for the call by visiting comer.house.gov/live. After opening comments from Congressman Comer and Attorney General Cameron, Congressman Comer will spend the remainder of the call taking questions from callers about federal action to help Americans affected by COVID-19. Throughout this crisis, Congressman Comer and his office have continued to keep an open line with constituents to answer questions and listen to concerns. Constituents can continue to find information and seek guidance on cdc.gov/coronavirus. For more tips, information and resources, visit comer.house.gov/coronavirus. A woman had to have her finger amputated after a manicure left her with a life-threatening infection that was eating away at her 'finger and bone'. Jose Jackson, 57, from Carmarthen, Wales, had to get the top of her index finger surgically removed and nearly lost her 'whole arm' after contracting a staph infection. The infection is caused by the bacteria staphylococcus and symptoms include hot, swollen skin. It can be treated with antibiotics when caught early. The grandmother-of-two was accidentally 'jabbed' in the cuticle while she got a set of acrylic nails at a salon in December 2017. Her finger continued to swell until it was 'purple' and 'weeping' puss. Jose eventually went to the hospital to get it checked over. When doctors removed the bandage she'd wrapped the digit in, she claims her finger was so misshapen that it looked like a 'jagged mountain range'. Jose Jackson, 57, had to get the top of her index finger surgically removed and nearly lost her 'whole arm' after contracting a staph infection Doctors had no choice but to amputate the affected area until the infection was completely removed, leaving Jose (pictured) with a half a finger Doctors had no choice but to amputate the affected area until the infection was completely removed, leaving her with a half a finger. She underwent two one-hour ops in January 2018. It was discovered during a health inspection that the tools had not been cleaned properly between customers and Jose went on to win a settlement for her injury. Although she struggled, Jose's learning to adjust to life with one less digit, and she is hoping to raise awareness for the importance of cleanliness in nail bars. Jose, a pub manager, said: 'I wanted to treat myself to a manicure so I felt nice, but it ended up ruining my life and costing me a finger. 'The top of my finger looked like a jagged mountain range at first. The infection had literally eaten away at my finger and my bone. When doctors removed the bandage she'd wrapped the digit in, she claims her finger was so misshapen that it looked like a 'jagged mountain range' Doctors were unable to save the tip of her finger and Jose was sent for surgery to amputate the tip. When the surgeon returned to check-up on Jose, he removed more of her finger 'The doctors removed over half my finger, it was either that, or I lose my whole arm. 'Without that finger I can't grip or do up buttons - it's changed the way I do everything. Losing my finger has completely changed my life.' Jose booked an appointment with a nail salon to get a set of acrylic nails in December 2017. During the treatment, the nail technician accidentally slipped while using a cuticle pusher tool and 'jabbed' Jose's nail bed. Despite the discomfort, Jose didn't want to make a fuss, and got the set finished. Over the next week, she noticed her finger starting to 'swell' and turn 'purple'. She booked herself an appointment with the GP to get things checked out. Despite the doctor sending Jose away with antibiotics, things continued to get worse. Jose's fingers continued to get worse until she was in agony. She went back to the GP who removed her dressing and urged to go to hospital immediately. When she arrived, an X-Ray revealed the extent of the damage. Although she struggled, Jose's learning to adjust to life with one less digit, and she is hoping to raise awareness for the importance of cleanliness in nail bars 'The infection and literally eaten away at my finger and my bone,' she said. Jose was diagnosed a 'staph infection', an infection which develops from the bacteria staphylococcus entering the skin through a cut. Doctors were unable to save the tip of her finger and Jose was sent for surgery to amputate the tip in January 2018. Unfortunately, when the surgeon returned to check-up on Jose, he decided to remove more of her finger. After getting over the shock, Jose suspected the cause of the infection may have stemmed from her visit to the nail salon. Six weeks after surgery, she contacted a health inspector in her area who conducted a check of the bar. They concluded the tools used on nails were not disinfected between uses and Jose contacted a solicitor who helped her seek compensation against her bar. She won an out of court settlement and received a five figure payout. Jose said: 'I was terrified that it might happen to someone else so I got a health inspector to check it out. I ended up winning compensation money but it doesn't feel like a win, it doesn't bring my finger back.' The GM logo is seen at the General Motors plant in Sao Jose dos Campos By Marcelo Rochabrun SAO PAULO (Reuters) - General Motors Co plans to keep its Brazilian factories shut down for at least 60 more days due to the coronavirus crisis, the company said Thursday, as the final batch of unionized workers voted on the automaker's proposal. GM's plants in Brazil have been shuttered since March 23. On March 30 the company put its workers on furlough, but kept their pay intact as it made employees use up vacation days. But as the pandemic has worsened globally and holiday allotments have dried up, GM has had to look for more drastic measures in South America's top auto producer. Now its factories in Brazil, where for several years Chevrolet has been the country's best selling brand, will be shut down at least until mid June. The timeline puts Brazil behind the schedules set by automakers in Europe, where companies have said they might begin building vehicles by the end of this month. In The United States, automakers including Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> are hoping to restart production in early May. To be sure, GM has not set reopening start dates elsewhere in the world. Brazil has more coronavirus cases than any country in Latin America and its right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for minimizing the severity of the disease. GM said all its Brazilian workers except for one have agreed to the shutdown and for a plan to cut salaries by up to 25%. The remaining union, based in Sao Jose dos Campos in Sao Paulo state, will finish voting on the proposal on Thursday night. If the crisis does not allow workers to resume auto production within 60 days, GM may extend the shutdown to 90 days, according to a document shared with workers and seen by Reuters. (Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Christian Plumb) River Twice at Tasker Street and East Passyunk Avenue on Jan 16, 2020. Read more The operator of River Twice, a South Philadelphia restaurant, has asked U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to force its insurance carrier to cover financial losses incurred while it is closed due to the coronavirus crisis. River Twices lawsuit against Admiral Indemnity Co., which does not mention that a claim has been filed, is largely a preemptive move. Insurance companies have told Congress that business-interruption policies, which typically pay out from such losses as fires, were not designed to provide coverage against diseases such as COVID-19. Many business-interruption policies written since 2006, following the SARS outbreak, have a provision known as exclusion of loss due to virus or bacteria." The issue affects hundreds of thousands of businesses across the country, and legislation has been introduced in states such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey to compel insurers to pay claims. A nonprofit group called Business Interruption Group, backed by celebrity chefs including Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, had a call with President Donald Trump and is lobbying legislators. River Twice attorney Richard Golomb of the Philadelphia firm Golomb Honik has gone through the court system rather than wait for legislative action that could be watered down by insurance company lobbying. His request for a declaratory judgment, filed April 10, cites two arguments: that the virus damages property by living on surfaces for hours or days, causing potential danger, and that the shutdown which began March 16 was ordered by the city and state authorities. The suit wants payment of claims greater than $150,000. Golomb declined to comment beyond the arguments in the suit. River Twice which chef Randy Rucker, his wife, Amanda Rucker, and her father, Lawrence Highbloom, opened last September at East Passyunk Avenue and Tasker Street furloughed eight employees. Karen Horvath, a spokeswoman for Admiral parent company W.R. Berkley Co., said the company had no comment. As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said in a recent interview. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression. Apple Inc. and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19, reads a new report from Bloomberg. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the worlds population. World Health Organization executive director Dr. Michael Ryan said surveillance is part of whats required for life to return to normal in a world without a vaccine. However, civil liberties experts warn that the public has little recourse to challenge these digital exercises of power once the immediate threat has passed, reads a recent VentureBeat article titled After coronavirus, AI could be central to our new normal. White House senior adviser Jared Kushners task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions, reads a recent article by Politico, adding, But the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about its impact on civil liberties well after the coronavirus threat recedes, with some critics comparing it to the Patriot Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks. Mass surveillance methods could save lives around the world, permitting authorities to track and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus with speed and accuracy not possible during prior pandemics, The Intercepts Sam Biddle wrote last week, adding, Theres a glaring problem: Weve heard all this before. After the September 11 attacks, Americans were told that greater monitoring and data sharing would allow the state to stop terrorism before it started, leading Congress to grant unprecedented surveillance powers that often failed to preempt much of anything. The persistence and expansion of this spying in the nearly two decades since, and the abuses exposed by Snowden and others, remind us that emergency powers can outlive their emergencies. As we discussed recently, its an established fact that power structures will seize upon opportunities to roll out oppressive authoritarian agendas under the pretense of protecting ordinary people, when in reality theyd been working on advancing those agendas since long before the crisis being offered as the reason for them. It happened with 9/11, and we may be certain that it is happening now. The reason for this is simple: the powerful are afraid of the public. They always have been. For as long as there has been government power, there has been the fear that the people will realize the power of their numbers and overthrow the government that is in power. And understandably so; it has happened many times throughout history. This is more the case now than ever. The oppressive, exploitative nature of neoliberalism has created a dissatisfaction thats converged with humanitys historically unprecedented ability to network and share information, which has seen anti-government protests and movements arising all around the world. Despite the longstanding media blackout on the Yellow Vests protests in France, you may be absolutely certain that eyes widened and leaders snapped to attention all around the planet when the words Weve chopped off heads for less than this were scrawled in graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe during the early days of the demonstrations. Leaders are made vastly more fearful and skittish by the fact that this dissatisfaction with the current world order just happens to be occurring at a time when that world order is already at its most tenuous point in decades, with a surging China poised to surpass the US as a superpower on the world stage and collaborating with Russia and other unabsorbed nations to create a truly multipolar world. It becomes much more difficult to control dominant narratives in a way that can effectively manufacture consent for the aggression that will be necessary to freeze and reverse this shift away from unipolar domination when the denizens of that unipolar empire are out in the streets demanding its downfall. And so of course internet censorship is being ramped up as well, with the mass media demanding that plutocrat-owned tech companies do more to combat coronavirus disinformation and these government-allied tech giants all too happy to oblige. In a recent escalation in this ongoing trend, Youtube changed its rules and began deleting videos accordingly after David Icke said there is a connection between coronavirus and 5G in a controversial video on that platform. Youtube is owned by Google, which has been a military-intelligence contractor with ties to the CIA and NSA since its very inception; you dont have to like Icke or his views to be repulsed by the idea of this institution manipulating human communication with an increasingly iron fist. The escalations in internet censorship and the escalations in surveillance are both directed at a last-ditch effort to control the masses before control is lost forever, and neither are intended to be rolled back when the threat of the virus is over. People are now off the streets, with their communications being restricted and the devices they carry in their pockets being monitored with more and more intrusiveness. There are of course some good faith actors who legitimately want to protect people from the virus, just as there were some good faith actors who wanted to protect people from terrorism after 9/11, but where there is power and fear of the public there will be an agenda to reel in the freedom of the masses. Journalist Jonathan Cook said best when he wrote, Our leaders are terrified. Not of the virus of us. __________________________________ Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what Im trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else Ive written) in any way they like free of charge. Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 U.S. becomes country with most COVID-19 cases, highest death toll People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 15:50, April 12, 2020 NEW YORK, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States has surpassed Italy in the total number of deaths from COVID-19 on Saturday, becoming the country with the most confirmed cases and fatalities worldwide. According to a running tally kept by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, the United States has reported 529,951 cases with 20,608 deaths as of 2 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Sunday. Italy has reported 152,271 cases with 19,468 deaths in total and Spain recorded 163,027 cases with 16,606 deaths, according to the tally. U.S. President Donald Trump approved a Major Disaster Declaration for Wyoming state on Saturday. So far, all 50 states, Washington D.C., the U.S. Virgin islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico have received the declaration for the same reason, the first time in U.S. history, as local media reported. The designation allows state and local governments to gain federal funds and resources such as the Army Corps of Engineers to help combat the pandemic. California and New York, the two hardest-hit states, have seen the curve of COVID-19 infections flattening in their states during the past few days due to staying-at-home orders and social distancing protocols, and both governors urged residents to keep doing so. "Staying at home is literally saving lives. This isn't over yet. We have to keep it up," California Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted on Saturday. Meanwhile, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his daily briefing that he wants to "make sure any decision we make to open the economy is based on what we've learned from our own experience and from other places around the globe." "I understand the need to bring back the economy as quickly as possible and that people need to work, but more importantly we need to save lives," he added. The Empire State has seen 181,825 cases with 8,650 deaths by Saturday night, according to the Johns Hopkins tally. Over 98,000 cases and more than 6,300 fatalities were reported from New York City. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Saturday that all public schools in the city will remain closed for the rest of the 2019-2020 school year, adding that the decision was not an easy one, "But it's the right one." "The social distancing strategies have been working, and we cannot risk a resurgence of the virus," the mayor tweeted. He promised the city will complete deliveries of Internet-enabled digital devices for every student who needs them for remote learning. The city is also rapidly moving homeless people from crowded shelters to hotels for better isolation. Seniors and anyone who has symptoms or has tested positive for COVID-19 is being prioritized, said the mayor. "Our homeless neighbors living on the street are going through a lot right now, and we're working to bring more and more of them inside," he said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam have been countries with the best coronavirus procedures and they are safely keeping their economies open. South Korea had a significant outbreak that they were able to contain. The US now has more than the level of testing that South Korea had when it contained its outbreak. The US has more cases than South Koreas outbreak but coordination of testing, contact tracing and pro-active quarantine maintenance and monitoring should be possible. Taiwan has used electronic and other monitoring of potential patients and actual patients. They used mobile phones to make sure infected people didnt leave quarantine. Israel said last month that it would emulate Taiwans monitoring of potential patients. Israel will use mobile-phone tracking technology to give a far more precise history of an infected persons movements before they were diagnosed and identify people who might have been exposed. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her country was going to follow, pretty closely, the Taiwanese model. Google and Apple will enable global contact tracing via smartphone starting in May. This will enable all phones to determine who was in contact within 6 feet for over 15-30 minutes. Smartphone movement tracking and tracing will be enabled. Permanent Global Privacy Loss The Dark Knight movie had Batman using a smartphone sonar network to spy on citizens and to determine the location of the Joker. The fictional Prism system was destroyed at the end of the movie. The new global smartphone movement tracking system will clearly never be de-activated or destroyed. I believe that with credit card usage and smartphone records any smaller group of people could be thoroughly tracked anyway. The people of the world just have to stay vigilant that this new capability exists and needs to be managed as openly as possible. SOURCES AP, JAMA journal, Dark Knight movie Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com, Describing Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar as a "Yug Purush", the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Monday announced that it will celebrate his birth anniversary by honouring the sanitation warriors fighting against COVID-19 and would be distributing safety masks, hand gloves and sanitizers among them. "This time on the birth anniversary of Babasaheb, big and elaborate programs like garlanding his statues, Kumbh Mela at Parliament street, are not possible due to the crisis of COVID-19 pandemic but still the corona terror cannot stop the countrymen from paying homage to their great man," said VHP's Working President Alok Kumar. He added that Babasaheb was a "Yug Purush" who fought against untouchability, casteism and social discrimination. "The VHP will celebrate his birth anniversary by honouring the COVID-19 sanitation warriors. safety masks, hand gloves and sanitizers would be distributed among them," he said in a statement. Making an appeal to the countrymen, Kumar said that while staying at home, observing the lockdown and anti-corona guidelines and protocols, everyone should sit before a picture of Babasaheb, listen to inspiring themes from his life and times, and reiterate the vow to re-build a harmonious society. "Today our sanitation workers are acting like warriors in the war against the Coronavirus pandemic. By honouring them, we shall pay our true tributes to Babasaheb," he added. Remembering Babasaheb, Kumar said that he had suffered from the brunt of "casteism" and "deprivation" since his childhood. "Despite these humiliations, without any bitterness in his mind and heart, he fought throughout his life to build a harmonious society," he said. Ambedkar was an outstanding warrior of 'social justice', said Kumar adding that he had said that if self-refinement, grace and dignity are attained by being free from untouchability, then not only will the Dalit society itself progress, but its chivalry and wisdom prove to be a factor for the country's progress. Recalling Babasaheb's words in the concluding meeting of the Constituent Assembly, Kumar said that the VHP will continue to work to build a society that is free from untouchability and upholds and celebrates justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : The Mata Amritanandamayi Math on Monday announced a donation of Rs l3 crore to help combat and contain COVID-19 as well as to provide relief to those physically, mentally and economically affected by the virus. It would also provide free care to COVID-19 patients at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (Amrita Hospital) in Kochi. According to a press release, Rs 10 crore would go to the Central government's PM CARES Fund, and Rs three crore to the Kerala government's Chief Minister's Distress Relief Fund. "Seeing the entire world hurt (by coronavirus) and crying in pain, my heart is aching," Mata Amirthnanda Mayi, popularly called as Amma, was quoted as saying in the release. "Let us all pray for the souls who have succumbed to this pandemic for the mental peace of their families and friends, for the peace of the world, and for God's grace," she said. At her request Amrita University and Amrita Hospital have set up a mental health hotline (0476 280 5050), where people who are feeling stressed, anxious or depressed due to the pandemic and its ramifications can call to get free support. Through Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita University), the Math also has an interdisciplinary team researching ways to produce low-cost scalable medical masks, gowns and face- protection visors, as well as ventilators, rapid-setup isolation wards, units for sterilising medical waste, and means for remote monitoring of quarantined patients. The team includes more than 60 faculty from the fields of medicine, nanoscience, AI, big data, sensor-manufacturing and material sciences, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) While stories of wildlife reclaiming their land lost to humans during the lockdown are making viral news on social media, opportunistic poachers are taking advantage of the troubled times to invade wild habitats to kill animals for profit. Yes, the picture is not as rosy as it seems, and wildlife in many parts of the world have been left highly vulnerable to poaching. The past few weeks have witnessed a surge in poaching incidents in several countries. Botswana has reported an increase in rhino poaching, poachers in Nepal have claimed the lives of elephants and gharials, and Malaysia is striving hard to protect its severely threatened sun bears from falling prey to the China-influenced bear bile industry. Tourist Hotspots In Africa Are Now A Favorite Haunt Of Poachers A wildlife safari truck carries tourists to watch wildlife in a wildlife park in Western Cape, South Africa. Image credit: vwPix/Shutterstock.com In Botswana, at least six rhinos have been poached since the country went into lockdown and violent encounters between poachers and wildlife protectors have been documented. With 9,000 rhinos poached in Africa in the last decade, one would say that the news of poaching in the continent is nothing new. However, this time conservationists have a greater reason to worry. With millions of Africans dependent on the $39 billion tourism industry in the continent for their daily bread, the absence of tourists during the COVID-19 lockdown has severely damaged this industry. Mass layoffs await. In a continent that is already stricken with poverty, loss of one of the primary income-generating industries spells great trouble. The wildlife conservation sector in the continent that is funded generously by the tourism business is expected to suffer. Fighting crimes against wildlife will become difficult without the inflow of sufficient funds to pay for staff and resources. Also, the absence of tourist vehicles loaded with ever-inquisitive tourists and their sharp-eyed guides would mean that there are fewer pairs of eyes to monitor the vast stretches of African wilderness giving poachers an upper hand over the numbered rangers to carry on with their illegal activities. In Nepal, Poachers Take Advantage Of Lockdown Wild Asian elephants in the Chitwan National Park, Nepal, a protected area where recent incidents of poaching were reported. Image credit: Natalia Maroz/Shutterstock.com Nepal, a country in the Indian subcontinent, has witnessed a recent swell in poaching activities. According to official accounts, three gharials (a critically endangered species) and an elephant have been killed by poachers since March 24 when the country entered a period of lockdown to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, conflicts between wildlife rangers and poachers were also reported. Bishnu Prasad Shrestha, the spokesperson for Nepal's Department of National Park and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) informed DPA that such a situation was expected and that patrolling has been increased to battle the heightened movement of poachers. To know more about the poaching threats to Nepal's wildlife, World Atlas spoke to Kumar Paudel, lead researcher of a recently published study that investigates the reasons why poachers kill wildlife. He is also co-founder of Greenhood Nepal, a non-profit organization driven by science that concentrates on human dimensions of nature conservation. He is currently the director of the organization and also a graduate student in conservation leadership at the University of Cambridge. "Poaching is one of the biggest threats to wildlife in Nepal," mentions Paudel. "It does not get detected and reported in many cases when it involves other than flagship species and if it's outside the protected area. The current situation is serious since there are already many reports of poaching including elephant, deer, wild boar, and crocodile killings," he says. He also expresses his frustration at how people are taking the opportunity of the difficult times to indulge in poaching. "I think this is happening mainly due to two reasons," he says. "First, poaching is an opportunistic behavior rather a livelihood supplement in Nepal. People try to hold ownership whenever they get an opportunity. It rises when enforcement has other priorities to deal with. This has been proven many times in the past. For example, Nepal lost more than 200 rhinos and other wildlife to poachers during the Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006. Second, many people have returned to their villages from urban areas because of COVID-19 and might take up poaching as an easy source of income." Malaysia Fears Rise In Sun Bear Poaching To Meet Bear Bile Demands The bear bile industry exploits sun bears to extract bile used in preparing Chinese traditional medicines that have no scientific basis. It is an extremely cruel practice that has met with severe protests from across the globe. Image credit: Lapis2380/Shutterstock.com The use of bear bile in Chinese traditional medicine and the atrocious cruelties meted out to sun bears used in bear bile production has met with the harshest disapprovals from the rest of the world for decades. Now, there is a reason for greater alarm as China promotes bear bile for COVID-19 treatment. Two environmental groups from Malaysia have expressed great concern regarding the protection of sun bears in their country. Spokespersons from Ecomy and Monitor Conservation Research Society have informed FMT News that they fear that the demand for bear bile as a traditional medical treatment for COVID-19 will fuel poaching of this threatened species in Malaysia. Already, poachers are in action in the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah where they are hunting sun bears for the bile bear market. Although greater awareness had led to a decrease in bile bear demand in Malaysia in the recent past, the conservationists fear that China's influence might work on Malaysian traditional healers to promote bear bile as a treatment for the novel coronavirus infection. Such a situation would lead to an increased poaching of Malaysia's sun bears. India On Alert To Combat Wildlife Poaching India, home to the world's biggest tiger populations has taken measures to protect its tigers from the novel coronavirus while the country's anti-poaching units are also on high alert during the COVID-19 lockdown. A country known for its successful conservation stories, Indian authorities are also preparing to tackle wildlife-related issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The news of Bronx Zoo tigers getting infected with the novel coronavirus triggered the adoption of a series of measures to protect India's tiger population against the disease. However, India's leading tiger conservation expert and wildlife scientist, Dr. Ullas Karanth, has warned that a spurt in wildlife poaching due to the restricted movement of people can pose a greater threat to the country's wild animals. Citing some recent incidents involving the sale of illegally procured deer meat, Dr. Karanth said that the movement constraints faced by forest officials could embolden poachers. Expressing concern, he mentioned that the potential resurgence in poaching will prove difficult to control given that other social pressures will come into play. Thus, he urges mass media and concerned authorities to focus on this important issue. JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE: JKS) ("JinkoSolar"), one of the largest and most innovative solar module manufacturers in the world, today announced two separate, significant developments in its defense against patent litigation initiated by Hanwha Q CELLS ("Hanwha"). In March 2019, Hanwha initiated the U.S. International Trade Commission Investigation No. 337-TA-1151 (the "1151 Investigation") against JinkoSolar, LONGi Solar, and REC Group, asserting that the companies infringe U.S. Patent No. 9,893,215 ("the '215 patent"). On April 10, 2020, the Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") in the 1151 Investigation ruled that JinkoSolar's products do not infringe the '215 patent. ALJ MaryJoan McNamara issued an initial determination granting JinkoSolar's motion for summary determination of non-infringement. The Commission will now review the ALJ's ruling and issue its opinion on that ruling within 30 days. Separately, on December 10, 2019, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted inter partes review (IPR) proceedings of the patentability of claims 12-14 of the '215 patent claims in view of prior art. IPR is a trial proceeding conducted at the PTAB to review the patentability of one or more claims in a patent. The PTAB's institution decision states that JinkoSolar and REC Group have "established a reasonable likelihood of prevailing in showing that claims 12-14 of the '215 patent are unpatentable." Based on the schedule provided by the PTAB, JinkoSolar anticipates a final written decision on the issue of patentability by December 2020. "These independent determinations by two separate bodies confirm what we have said from the start of this litigation: Hanwha's lawsuit, based on a single patent, was without legal or technical merit, and was brought only to slow down our momentum," said Kangping Chen, CEO of JinkoSolar. "JinkoSolar strongly supports fair competition in the marketplace, and respects the valid intellectual property of all participants in our field. We look forward to continuing to serve our global customers with innovative, industry-leading solar modules, and extending our marketplace momentum." About JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) is one of the largest and most innovative solar module manufacturers in the world. JinkoSolar distributes its solar products and sells its solutions and services to a diversified international utility, commercial and residential customer base in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile, South Africa, India, Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and other countries and regions. JinkoSolar has built a vertically integrated solar product value chain, with an integrated annual capacity of 11.5 GW for mono wafers, 10.6 GW for solar cells, and 16 GW for solar modules, as of December 31, 2019. JinkoSolar has over 15,000 employees across its 7 productions facilities globally, 14 overseas subsidiaries in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Australia, and global sales teams in China, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Ukraine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland and Argentina. To find out more, please see: www.jinkosolar.com. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements constitute "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, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the quotations from management in this press release and the Company's operations and business outlook, contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in JinkoSolar's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 20-F. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: In China Ms. Ripple Zhang JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. Tel: +86 21-5183-3105 Email: [email protected] Mr. Christian Arnell Christensen Tel: +86 10 5900 2940 Email: [email protected] In the US Ms. Linda Bergkamp Christensen, Scottsdale, Arizona Tel: +1-480-614-3004 Email: [email protected] SOURCE JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. Related Links www.jinkosolar.com The Ghana Police Service has issued a warning to the general public stating that all access to beaches during this period of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is prohibited. It can be recalled that the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) on March 23, 2020, ordered the closure of all beaches nationwide as a precautionary measure against the spread of the deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19) in line with the directive from government suspending all public gatherings. In an interesting but irresponsible turn of events on Sunday, April 12, 2020, some residents of Chorkor, a suburb of Accra defied the directive and the lockdown protocol imposed by the government in the Metropolis to go swimming at the beach to celebrate the Easter. A subsequent release from the Ghana Police has indicated that flouting the lockdown rules to go to the beach will amount to an offense. In accordance with the imposition of Restrictions Act 2020 (Act 1012) and consequential orders, the public is to note that gathering at any beach in Ghana amounts to an offense, the statement signed by the Director of Public Affairs for the Police Service, Superintendent Sheilla Kessie Abayie-Buckman said. It added, With the exemption of security service personnel or essential service providers whose presence at the beaches may be necessary to provide security or for public safety, all other persons found at any beach from now onward and within the period of imposition on public gatherings or movement will be arrested. The Police administration thereby encourages the general public to cooperate with the Police and other Security Services to help curb the spread of the Coronavirus disease in the country. Doug Preszler wasn't thinking about risk when he took a cashier job at a regional supermarket in eastern Iowa. But five months in, he has found himself at the forefront of a global crisis with little training or protection - save for the pocket-size bottle of hand sanitizer and Ziploc full of disposable gloves he brings from home each day. The 51-year-old has told himself not to live in fear, yet concedes he increasingly is. Even the most routine tasks are fraught: Accepting bills and giving change scare him the most, Preszler says. And he has run through so much hand sanitizer that his skin is cracking. "I've been way more anxious this week," he said. "They've started telling people: 'Go to the grocery store as little as possible.' And yet I'm going there every day." Next to health-care providers, no workforce has proved more essential during the novel coronavirus pandemic than the 3 million U.S. grocery store employees who restock shelves and freezers, fill online orders and keep checkout lines moving. Although the public health guidelines are clear - steer clear of others - these workers are putting in longer shifts and taking on bigger workloads. Many report being stressed and scared, especially as their colleagues fall ill to covid-19, the highly contagious disease responsible for more than 20,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. Some liken their job to working in a war zone, knowing that the simple act of showing up to work could ultimately kill them. At least 41 supermarket employees have died - including a Trader Joe's worker in New York, a Safeway employee in Chicago, two Walmart associates near Chicago, and four Kroger employees in Michigan. Thousands more have tested positive for the virus. Now workers across the country are staying home or quitting altogether, according to interviews with more than a dozen employees, leaving many markets short-staffed and ill-prepared to deal with demand. That's complicated the scramble led by Walmart, Kroger and Safeway to fill hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Demand for groceries has doubled in recent weeks, employees say, as Americans avoid restaurants and prepare most of their meals at home. Job postings for grocery clerks have jumped 60% the past four weeks, according to Julia Pollock, a labor economist for the site ZipRecruiter. Supermarkets are increasingly hard-pressed to find and keep staffers. Workers are walking out, going on strike and circulating petitions aimed at getting companies such as Amazon, Trader Joe's and delivery service Instacart to take additional measures to protect their health. "The language in job postings has become more desperate," Pollock said. "Grocery companies are saying there's an 'urgent need,' or that they need workers to 'start immediately.' It's becoming more difficult to convince workers to put themselves at risk." Chains such as Kroger and Safeway have begun providing masks and gloves. Walmart is checking employees' temperatures before each shift. And countless large and regional chains have installed shields at cash registers and signs encouraging social distancing - the best defense against spreading the coronavirus. But employees say more needs to be done. "Grocery workers are risking their safety, often for poverty-level wages, so the rest of us can shelter in place," said John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University. "The only way the rest of us are able to stay home is because they're willing to go to work." Public health experts generally say nurses, doctors, paramedics and other medical workers the highest risk of exposure to covid-19. But grocery workers also come in close contact with large groups of people, often without meaningful protective gear. They are less likely to have paid sick leave or the financial means to take time off if they feel ill. The sector's relatively low pay - grocery cashiers averaged $11.43 an hour in 2018, Labor Department data shows - has also become a bigger part of the calculation. At least 1,500 supermarket workers throughout the country have tested positive for covid-19, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 900,000 grocery employees at chains such as Kroger, Safeway and Giant. Nearly 3,000 members are not working because they are quarantined, hospitalized or awaiting test results, the union said. "The big picture is: Workers are frightened," said President Marc Perrone. The labor group, he said, is urging states to categorize grocery workers as first responders to give them higher priority for testing and protective equipment like masks. "We believe in our health-care professionals being first, but we also believe that if we're going to slow the transmission, that we need to start flatting the curve in those areas where grocery employees are literally coming face-to-face with thousands of people," Perrone said, referring to a depiction of virus infections on a chart. Although more than 40 states and the District of Columbia have ordered nonessential businesses to shut their doors in recent weeks, grocery stores are among the few retailers that remain open. Wando Evans had worked at a Chicago-area Walmart for 15 years when managers sent the 51-year-old home on March 23 because he was displaying flu-like symptoms. Two days later, he was found dead. Now his brother, Toney Evans, alleges in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed Monday that the world's largest retailer did not provide protective masks and gloves, adequately disinfect the store or keep workers apprised of their colleagues' illnesses. Another store employee, Phillip Thomas, 48, died four days after Evans. Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove said the retailer was "heartbroken" by the deaths. "We take this issue seriously and will respond with the court once we have been served with the complaint," he said in a statement. The company declined to provide a full count of employees who have tested positive for the virus or died from related complications. Some employees at a Whole Foods Market in Virginia say they are afraid to go to work. "It's like you're constantly in fight-or-flight mode," said a worker in her 50s who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her job and health insurance. "It's been scary, it's been confusing and there is a palpable fear among everyone who's still working. It feels like a war zone." That fear, she says, picked up last week after a store manager called, texted and emailed late one evening to say that someone at their store had tested positive for covid-19. A number of cashiers called in sick the next day, leaving long lines that snaked through the aisles. Although there are signs and stickers at her store encouraging customers to stand six feet apart, not everyone does. (Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) The store recently installed dividers at registers and is offering masks to workers who want them. But she said there are no limits on how many people can be at the store at one time, and the company has made no specific accommodations for its older or more vulnerable workers. A spokeswoman for Whole Foods said the company has had "crowd control protocols" at its stores since March 25. The company is also checking workers' temperatures and providing gloves and masks before each shift, she said. When the Virginia worker ended her shift that day, she told her manager that she wanted time off. She plans to stay home for a couple of weeks, though her children are urging her to quit. Her daughter is helping her update her resume. "We're in new territory, and nobody knows what to do," she said. "But I also need to keep myself safe." Montgomery and Prince George's counties, starting this week, will require shoppers at stores to wear masks. Shoppers Food stores in Maryland recently began limiting the number of customers who can shop at one time. It is providing disposable gloves and paying employees an extra $2 an hour. But many workers are still scared. The store hasn't been able to find masks for its employees, they said, and hasn't provided them with hand sanitizer in days. Shoppers' parent company, United Natural Foods, did not respond to a request for comment. "There are things they could have done to better protect us, sooner," said Amber Stevens, 30, who has been working at the Forestville, Maryland, store for a dozen years. "It's a scary feeling to be around so many people and then come home to my family." Stevens says she's lucky to still have a job when much of the economy is upside down. At least 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March, and U.S. stock markets have tumbled from the all-time highs set in mid-February. But she worries about passing on the virus to her 9-year-old daughter or 59-year-old mother. Workers say grocers have done little to assuage their fears. Jasmine Kapralova says she has repeatedly asked her managers at a Trader Joe's in Seattle for guidance on responding to the virus since late February, after dozens of infections had been confirmed locally. She and her colleagues asked to wear masks to work but were told they would be disciplined if they did, she said. "Any time we tried to talk to management about this outbreak, they made it clear they did not want us speaking about it," said Kapralova, 39, who has worked at the company for nearly a decade. "They warned us not to freak each other out and cause panic." She and three colleagues, she said, came down with respiratory infections in early March. Kapralova took three weeks off with pay but says she was warned by her manager not to talk about her symptoms - which included a fever, body aches, a cough and difficulty breathing - on social media. She took an extra week off unpaid, but is still sick. Kenya Friend-Daniel, a spokeswoman for Trader Joe's, said the company has given Kapralova three weeks of paid leave while she recovers. Managers were concerned, she said, that Kapralova's social media posts speculating that she had covid-19 were alarming her colleagues. They asked her to refrain from saying more online because she had not been formally diagnosed, Friend-Daniel said. Although the grocer initially discouraged workers from wearing masks, Friend-Daniel said it is now providing masks and gloves to all employees to keep up with changing guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kapralova has since asked managers to take her off the store's schedule, Friend-Daniel said. "I shouldn't go in, but I feel pressured to go because I need the money," Kapralova said. She and her 12-year-old daughter have been living with relatives since they lost their home in a fire five years ago. "I'm scared to death of dying, but also of losing my job and not getting paid." Elsewhere in Seattle, a longtime Kroger employee says he's facing a similar decision. At least two colleagues have tested positive for covid-19 and about 20 more are home sick or awaiting results - although the company has instructed workers not to discuss this with shoppers. "It scares the hell out of me," said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears retribution. "We're terrified, but what choice we do have? We're college students or we're parents trying to raise kids. We need the paychecks." Kroger spokeswoman Kristal Howard said the company is communicating "openly and transparently" with its employees and the public. "Our store teams should confirm when there's been a diagnosed case, sharing how we've worked with the health department and the immediate actions taken to sanitize and clean the store," she said. The Seattle employee says it never occurred to him that the supermarket job he applied for 13 years ago to support his new wife and infant could one day put his life at risk. He feels vulnerable and scared. "Nobody told us," he said, "that when the world falls apart, it's going to fall on our shoulders." It started as a way to bless the coming harvest, and some people continue to observe the tradition. Counting the Omer honors history and can help practitioners cultivate awareness, discernment and gratitude, notes the writer Rabbi Yael Levy. An omer is an ancient unit used for measuring grain, according to Koehlers Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Omer is a basis for the word sheaf, noted in the books of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Ruth and beyond. Scriptural measurements are confounding, and we often lack a frame of reference. Koehler explains that an omer is equal to the weight of 43.2 eggs, according to Koehler. Exodus notes an omer is a 10th of an ephah. Modern scholars usually agree that is the rough equivalent of a bushel. That said, Counting the Omer isnt about precision measurement. Ancient observers prayed for an abundant spring harvest by waving their sheaf toward the night sky, explains Levy. This became a liturgy, meant to invoke gratitude, introspection and faithfulness. Counting the Omer comes from Leviticus 23: 9-11, which forbids use of the new barley crop until a farmer makes an offering of an omer of barley to the Temple of Jerusalem. Later, in Leviticus 23: 15-16, theres the directive to begin counting on the second night of Passover: From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off 50 days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of the new grain to the Lord. Starting the count on the second evening of Passover serves as a reminder of how the Jewish people left captivity in Egypt, notes Levy. Meanwhile, the 50th day culminates in Shavuot, or Feast of Weeks. Shavuot commemorates the delivery of the Torah to Jewish people on Mount Sinai. As a conclusion for Counting the Omer, it is a symbol of a formerly enslaved people living together in freedom, Levy explains. One way to observe the practice is with post-sundown services. These might conclude with a special blessing that references Counting the Omer, then announcement of the days number. For example, a person will share a blessing, referencing the scriptural commandment to count the omer. He or she will then announce which day of the omer has passed. Others might choose to count the omer through a solitary ritual, while still others do not necessarily confine their practice to the traditional period. Levy found that after many years of Counting the Omer, his years-long practice deepened during a 30-day solo retreat in the mountains of Utah. Each night, as three stars appeared in the deep blue sky, I said the prayer and counted the day. In the years since, this omer practice has become my very deep guide, recalls Levy in his book, Journey Through the Wilderness: A Mindfulness Approach to the Ancient Jewish Practice of Counting the Omer. After several decades Counting the Omer, he came to view it as a mindfulness practice. Counting helps us pay attention, focus on the moment and watch how everything passes, he writes. In their directions for counting, the mystics teach us not to say out loud the number of the day that is to come. We are to stay present in the day that is still until the very last moment. Then, when each day turns into night, we are to let go fully of what was and step forward into what will be. Golden writes the Couriers weekly faith and values column. Email her at onfaith@karrisgolden.com. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party fell flat in this years presidential primary and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., knows it. Even before Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race last week, making former Vice President Joe Biden the partys presumptive nominee, Ocasio-Cortez was ruminating on the lessons the left must learn to be more successful moving forward. But in the short term, Democrats are desperate to defeat President Donald Trump in November and Biden is making some policy overtures to unite the party. The hope is to win over supporters of Sanders as well as top surrogates like Ocasio-Cortez, who is popular among young progressives a group Biden is struggling to win. In a recent phone interview, Ocasio-Cortez made clear that she intended to support the Democratic nominee, but said his current overtures to progressives must go further. She made a distinction between supporting Biden in November and offering a full-throated endorsement of his campaign. Where she lands, she said, is up to him. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Q: I guess my first question is simple: Has the Biden campaign reached out to you? A: No. Q: OK. Well, what type of outreach are you looking for? Not just to you but to progressives broadly. A: Theres this talk about unity as this kind of vague, kumbaya, kind of term. Unity and unifying isnt a feeling, its a process. And what I hope does not happen in this process is that everyone just tries to shoo it along and brush real policies that mean the difference of life and death or affording your insulin and not affording your insulin just brush that under the rug as an aesthetic difference of style. Theres also this idea that if we all just support the nominee that voters will come along as well. Ive flagged, very early, two patterns that I saw (among Bidens campaign), which is underperformance among Latinos and young people, both of which are very important demographics in November. And so, I dont think this conversation about changes that need to be made is one about throwing the progressive wing of the party a couple of bones I think this is about how we can win. The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved thats how you know its working. And if Biden is only doing things hes comfortable with, then its not enough. Q: Can you give me examples of areas that you want to see him get uncomfortable? A: They floated this olive branch to the progressive left of lowering the Medicare age to 60. And its almost insulting. I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50. So were talking about a progressive concession that is 10 years worse than what the nominee had in 2016. Progressives arent a monolith like every voting block isnt a monolith. But I also know, from a Latino perspective, I think we need a real plan to be better than what happened during his service with the Obama administration. Q: In terms of deportations? A: In terms of deportations, in terms of apprehensions, I mean, even in terms of rhetoric. It was just a couple months ago that he told immigrant activists to vote for someone else. I want to see him get uncomfortable there. Putting Dreamers on a path to citizenship is great, but thats a policy concession from 10 years ago. People need to feel hope in a Democratic administration. And thats what this is about. If were not talking about paths to citizenship for undocumented people, and if were just talking about policy changes of 5 or 10% especially when you look at something like climate change its not about moving to the left. Its about who is able to find hope in your administration. And creating plans that give people hope and possibility. Q: But Biden has gotten to this point by rejecting some of these things. Whats your realistic level of confidence he will get uncomfortable on these issues? Hes been in this game a long time. A: I think the ideological argument is a false one and I think thats backed up by exit polling. While Biden is the nominee, we also know that he didnt win because of policy I dont think he won because of his agenda, he won because of different factors. In state after state after state, Democratic voters support a progressive agenda. I want to respect his win, he won because of his coalition building, he won because of his service, he won for a lot of different reasons but I dont think he won because Americans dont want Medicare for All. And in this moment, I wouldnt be surprised if what were seeing with coronavirus didnt further change peoples views in further support of a progressive agenda. Q: How should the relationship that progressives had in 2016 with Hillary Clinton inform the way you all go about it in 2020 with Biden? What are the lessons from how that turned out that are worth changing, or replicating, this time around? A: As much as a dumpster fire as Twitter can be sometimes, I actually think the process was much less painful and nasty and fraught as it was in 2016. In 2016, things like superdelegates delegitimized the process so much that it felt a lot more scorched-earth, and Im not even talking about between the two candidates, but just how voters felt about the party. I think people understand that there are limits to what Biden will do and thats understandable he didnt run as a progressive candidate. But, at the bare minimum, we should aspire to be better than what we have been before. And I just dont know if this message of Were going to go back to the way things were is going to work for the people for who the way things were was really bad. Q: Is an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsement of Joe Biden a sure thing? A: Ive always said that I will support the Democratic nominee. But unity is a process, and figuring out what that looks like is part of this whole conversation that I think Bernie and Warren and other folks are a part of as well. Q: Yes. But I guess Im asking about you. Is there something youre looking for? Is there a difference between voting for him or campaigning for him? What are the range of possibilities of your relationship with the Democratic nominee in the next months? A: Beating Donald Trump is a matter of life or death for our communities. I think its a difference between making an argument for harm reduction, and making the argument for, theres actually going to be progress made for us. What I want to do is to be able to go out and say, This is the plan for us. But its hard to do that if theres no plan for us. Q: And whos us? A: Any number of communities, whether its the Bronx, whether its Latinos, or whether its people of color, whether its women, whether its young people, whether its people with student debt, whether its working-class people, or people with no health care. And you know, Im not trying to be divisive. But when you talk about lessons from 2016, one of the most divisive things that we can do is just smother and silence legitimate points of critique especially from people whose lives are most at risk in this administration. Because, for some people, this argument of returning to normalcy sounds like an argument of respectability politics and civility. And for other people, it sounds like, will my child be put in a cage? Aesthetics plays a big role in politics, a huge one. But I just want to improve peoples lives. And while well improve peoples lives with Donald Trump not in the White House, we need to do better than what weve done before. Im a progressive (laughter). Thats literally what it means. Q: What if Biden doesnt do it? What if he doesnt get uncomfortable? And you know, only gives kind of aesthetic, in-name-only concessions to the left? What do you do? A: I will be supporting the Democratic nominee in November. I would just hope that the nominee supports our communities too. Q: Is a Biden-AOC unity rally ever in the cards? A: It could be. I have not talked to the vice president. Q: Ever? A: Never. Not that I know of, no. But I know the goal ultimately is to win. And Im not trying to needle as a way of making a point or to score points. I want to win. And I want to make sure that we win broadly. Q: Do you worry about causing damage to the vice president in a way that helps Donald Trump? How do you square unity with applying pressure from the left? A: Its a tightrope. I do not feel a choice in adhering to my principles and my integrity, and being accountable to the movement that brought me here. But also, I dont want another term of Trump. Im not going to lie to people and say Puerto Ricos debt is going to be forgiven or theres going to be some audit of the debt if thats not the plan. But at the same time, I dont want this president throwing paper towels at my family again. I just want to tell the truth and I want to feel good about the truth. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Representative image live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Faced with increasing prospects of an extended lockdown that will restrict flying, airlines in India have reached out to aircraft lessors for a rental holiday. But the lessors are playing a hard bargain, and haven't yet agreed on the demands. Instead, they have offered airlines a rental deferment. "The lessors have offered to extend the lease agreement by three to four months so that the airlines can pay back this amount," a senior industry source told Moneycontrol. Airlines are also in talks with insurers for a refund of a part of the premium to be paid on aircraft insurance. But this depends on several conditions. The negotiations, both with lessors and insurers, will be important for the carriers to limit costs, and manage cash flow at a time when flights have come to a standstill. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show Though airlines now accept bookings for flights from April 15, there is little clarity whether they will be allowed to operate. Many states, including Maharashtra and Odisha, have already extended the lockdown till April 30, and it is expected that if the Centre considers easing restrictions, it will be done only in phases. Over 650 aircraft have been grounded, across airports in the country, since the lockdown was announced in March. Lease rentals Globally, with nearly 70 percent of the total fleet grounded, all airlines have reached out to their lessors. "Airlines and their strategic partners, including lessors, will have to work together through this unprecedented global pandemic in order to enable a future for the industry," said Manish Raniga, aviation industry expert. That is important because lease rentals can make up for up to 60 percent of an airline's fixed costs. In India, IndiGo, the country's largest airline that also has the biggest fleet, paid Rs 5,373 crore in aircraft and engine rentals in the 2019 financial year. SpiceJet paid Rs 1,296 crore. Much of the negotiation between the two sides though, will depend on the terms of the lease agreement. While none of the agreements said industry executives, has included pandemic as a risk factor, given that airlines have seen disruptions earlier in the form of SARS and 9/11, many now include 'other risks' in a lease document. These clauses help airlines negotiate for a cut or waiver, in rentals. In fact, says Nitin Sarin, Managing Partner of Sarin & Co, which specialises in aviation law, few airlines in India have included the force majeure clause in their lease agreements. This means that both, airlines and the lessors, will have to sit across the table and renegotiate the terms. Or, in the worst cases, take the matter to the courts. "Even if the force majeure clause is included in the agreement, the airline will have to convince the lessor that it has done everything in its means to overcome the situation," said Zulfiquar Memon, Managing Partner, MZM Legal. Irrespective of what the airlines manage to get from their lessors, COVID-19 will change the way leasing agreements are drawn in the future. "The legal fraternity will have to re-define the risks involved," points out Mark Martin, Founder and CEO of Martin Consulting LLC, an aviation advisory and consulting firm. Insurance relief The carriers will also be banking on some relief from their insurers. Aviation insurance provides coverage for hull (aircraft) losses as well as liability for passenger injuries, environmental and third-party damage caused by aircraft accidents. When an aircraft is grounded, airlines can get an insurance cover for physical damage from attacks or acts of theft/vandalism are also offered. Depending on the size of the cover, the premium range from 0.002 percent to 0.004 percent of the sum assured. However, insurance executives that Moneycontrol spoke to, said when the plane is grounded the risks are much lower. Hence what the airline companies get is lay-up refund. This depends on the amount of time that they are grounded. Typically, if an aircraft is laid-up for a period of 30 days or more, a proportion of premium is offered as a refund. Airlines will look to recover as much cash as possible, especially as they will be unable to utilise much of their fleet because of the travel restrictions. Advisory firm CAPA India has estimated that up to 250 planes could be returned. "Since aircraft lessors will have limited customers to whom they can remarket returned aircraft, they may be willing to negotiate temporary rental holidays. Although, this may not be applicable for carriers with a high credit risk rating with the prospect for further deterioration," said the firm. The Kaduna State First Lady, Hadiza El-Rufai, on Monday caved in to public pressure and apologised for her failure to immediately denounce her sons Sunday morning threats against a Twitter users mother. I can see how my tweet may have come across, and I apologise to those who were offended by it. I say, once again, that Id never condone sexual abuse in any shape or form, Mrs El-Rufai wrote on Twitter Monday afternoon. The atonement from Mrs El-Rufai came a day after she expressed blanket support for her sons conduct on social media, saying all is fair in love and war. Bello El-Rufai, 32, had triggered social media outrage after a private message he sent threatening gang rape of the mother of a man with whom he had public disagreements over politics was made public. Tell your mother Im passing her to my friends tonight, Mr El-Rufai said to his detractor who was tweeting as @thanos_zer, before adding an ethnic diatribe: No Igbo sounds please! The ensued uproar saw many Twitter users informing his mother, who also has a prominent presence on the microblogging platform, of the development, asking her to immediately denounce it and caution her son. Mrs El-Rufai, 59, initially stood by her son, saying he was within his rights to deploy all forms of abuses against any deserving person on social media. Dont @ me. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. All is fair in love and war, the Kaduna first lady said while dismissing one of the hundreds of tweets directed at her by outraged netizens. The tweet was posted at 2:15 p.m., about three hours after her sons controversial message was made public. When PREMIUM TIMES reminded Mrs El-Rufai that her son had threatened a gang rape of someone elses mother and asked her to clarify whether such threats were amongst what she considered fair in social media bickering, she sidestepped the question, saying instead that her son was an adult who should be responsible for his conduct. Throughout Sunday, Mrs El-Rufai maintained her position that her sons conduct was fair, even as they both became the focus of social media criticism. It was not until Monday afternoon, hours after PREMIUM TIMES published a chronicle of the controversy, that the first lady took steps to walk back her comments. When I posted the tweet below, I assumed it was just the usual Twitter gbas-gbos. Having read the tweets chronologically, I have had conversations with Bello, she said. Never ever should sexual abuse be employed as ammunition in public/ private exchanges, no matter the provocation. When I posted the tweet below, I assumed it was just the usual Twitter gbas-gbos. Having read the tweets chronologically, I have had conversations with Bello. Never ever should sexual abuse be employed as ammunition in public/ private exchanges, no matter the provocation. https://t.co/db4W44bWzJ Hadiza Isma El-Rufai (@hadizel) April 13, 2020 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Although Mrs El-Rufai said she had spoken with her son, he continued with his disparaging tweets on Monday afternoon, threatening a lawsuit against a PREMIUM TIMES reporter responsible for the story. Oh @SamuelOgundipe, our hired PDP columnist, you in particular were the last piece of the puzzle. I assure you that my lawyers will get to you to prove the usage/threat of rape. The onus is on you. I eagerly anticipate the #FreeSamuel hashtag. Thanks for completing the jigsaw. Bello El-Rufai (@B_ELRUFAI) April 13, 2020 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js While some social media commentators accepted Mrs El-Rufais apology as a progress towards redeeming her familys image, others said the threat to gang rape someones mother was a criminal offence that must be prosecuted. The demand for Mr El-Rufais prosecution was predicated on Section 23 of the controversial Cybercrime Act 2015, which prohibited online threats with a maximum 10 years imprisonment and N15 million fine. His comments are a bold, intimate chorus of the mainstream attitude of violent men towards women and must be condemned in its entirety, NorthNormal, an advocacy group against sexual and gender-based violence, said in a statement Monday. We call for a retraction and apology and also join Ugo Ikeakor in calling for Bello El-Rufais prosecution in line with his threats being a violence of Section 23 of the Cybercrime Act 2015. Mr Ikeakor, a Lagos-based anti-rape activist, first called for Mr El-Rufais prosecution under the Cybercrime Act in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES. Other anti-rape activists, including Ayodeji Osowobi of Stand to End Rape, also condemned Mr El-Rufai and demanded his investigation and prosecution. His mothers reluctance to denounce her sons conduct, despite her role as the head of Kaduna Sexual Trauma Centre, was also condemned. Despite public demand and efforts by PREMIUM TIMES, the police in Abuja and Kaduna are yet to move against Mr El-Rufai or comment on the matter. The issue briefly received new attention when Trump tweeted last month that he would like to see a $2 trillion spending package to help with the recovery from the coronavirus. House Democrats quickly branded an existing $760 billion program they have been working on as fitting the bill, only for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to back away for the time being in the face of Republican resistance. Karnataka Water Resources Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi on Monday informed that selling liquor should not be allowed in Belgaum district amid coronavirus lockdown. His comment came after reports that Karnataka government may allow Mysore Sales International Limited (MSIL) to sell liquor in the district. Jarkiholi said he will discuss this issue with the Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa. Speaking at a high-level meeting on COVID-19 in Belgaum, he stressed,"It is important for those to find who attended the Tablighi religious meeting in Delhi who then visited their relatives which usually muslim brothers do, Therefore, the work of locating such persons must be carried out urgently." He told the authorities that no such situation should arise. According to country's health ministry data, Karnataka has so far detected 232 COVID-19 cases in the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) SPRINGFIELD The total number of cases of coronavirus confirmed by Baystate Health on Monday has risen to 648 an increase of 33 from Saturday. No report was issued on Easter Sunday. Baystate Health also reported 183 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19 or are suspected of having the disease at its facilities. Currently within BH, we are caring for 169 hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection, 28 of whom are in our critical care units; we are also caring for 14 hospitalized patients who are under investigation for COVID-19 infection, Baystate Health said in a statement on Monday. To date, Baystate Health facilities in Western Massachusetts have tested a total of 2,826 people for COVID-19 and determined 648 individuals have the virus. Another 2,167 people tested negative. The Springfield-based health provider in still awaiting test results for 11 others. Baystate Health is not providing additional details on patients, such age, gender or residence. Keir Starmer has launched an urgent investigation into a leaked internal report documenting behaviour by Labour officials and its effect on how the party dealt with complaints about antisemitism. The document, commissioned up in the last days of Jeremy Corbyns leadership, says that factionalism by officials associated with Labours right wing made it harder to deal with the issue of anti-Jewish racism. A massive cache of leaked WhatsApp messages and emails detailed in the 860 page report also suggest that anti-Corbyn officials worked to lose the 2017 general election in the hope that that a defeat would force a change of leader a revelation which has sparked anger among MPs and members. In a joint statement with his deputy Angela Rayner, Sir Keir said the investigation would look at the circumstances the report was commissioned in, the wider culture and practices referred to in the report and also look at how the document was leaked into the public domain. We have seen a copy of an apparently internal report about the work of the Labour Partys Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism. The content and the release of the report into the public domain raise a number of matters of serious concern, the statement said. We will therefore commission an urgent independent investigation into this matter. This investigation will be instructed to look at three areas. First, the background and circumstances in which the report was commissioned and the process involved. Second, the contents and wider culture and practices referred to in the report. Third, the circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain. We have also asked for immediate sight of any legal advice the Labour Party has already received about the report. In the meantime, we ask everyone concerned to refrain from drawing conclusions before the investigation is complete and we will be asking the General Secretary to put measures in place to protect the welfare of party members and party staff who are concerned or affected by this report. An independent investigator is expected to be announced to lead the inquiry in due course. Tactics by anti-Corbyn staff evidenced in the report include channelling resources to candidates associated with the right wing of the party, refusing to share information with the leaders office, as well as coming into the office and doing nothing for a few months during the election campaign. It also documents abusive discussions about colleagues and members on the left of the party. The Socialist Campaign Group, which represents dozens of MPs on the left of the party, said in a statement on Monday afternoon that the report should be published in full and that an emergency NEC meeting should be held to discuss its contents and the terms of the investigation. The content and the release of the report into the public domain raise a number of matters of serious concern Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner We understand the disappointment and frustration that many Labour members will feel with the details revealed in this report, the group said. It contains revelation of senior officials undermining the 2017 general election campaign and suggests there are cases to answer on bullying, harassment, sexism and racism. We express our solidarity with Labour volunteers who give up their spare time to fight for a better society and get a Labour government. It also called on socialists to stay and fight for a Labour government rather than leave the party. The signatories of the statement include four members of Sir Keirs front bench: Dan Carden, Imran Hussain, and Rachael Maskell, Lloyd Russell-Moyle. Momentum, a group which organises members on the left wing of the Labour party, said the inquiry should, include an investigation into the possible misuse of funds by officials. Sky News, which first reported the existence of the dossier, reports that Labour party lawyers have decided against sending it to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is currently holding an investigation into antisemitism in the party. It is understood that the report may have been drawn up to help the party understand how its own disciplinary processes operated in recent years and not intended for submission to the EHRC. Protests against Labour antisemitism Show all 14 1 /14 Protests against Labour antisemitism Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters clashed during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of the Jewish community hold a protest against Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism in the Labour Party AFP/Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Protesters hold placards and flags during a demonstration, organised by the British Board of Jewish Deputies for those who oppose antisemitism, in Parliament Square Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Hundreds of people gathered in Parliament Square to protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP Luciana Berger speaks during the protest PA Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester blows through a shofar during the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism Members of London's Jewish community protest in support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outside parliament EPA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour MP John Mann speaks during a protest against antisemitism PA Protests against Labour antisemitism People protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party as Jewish community leaders have launched a scathing attack on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming he has sided with antisemites again and again PA Protests against Labour antisemitism Labour politicians Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna leave after attending the demonstration Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A pro-Jeremy Corbyn protester holds a placard during a counter-protest Getty Protests against Labour antisemitism A support of the Labour Party hold up a placard during the demonstration Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism Jeremy Corbyn supporters during the demo Reuters Protests against Labour antisemitism A protester holds up a sign reading For the many, not the Jew AFP Labour was put under investigation by the EHRC after the body received a number of complaints about the partys response to complaints about antisemitism. The party has moved to expel members accused of anti-Jewish racism, but has been accused by critics of not doing so fast enough or making the wrong decisions in some cases. Critics of Mr Corbyn say his politics, and particularly his support for Palestinian liberation, has attracted antisemities to the party though the Home Affairs Select Committee found no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party. The parliamentary committee however warned at the time that the leaderships lack of action risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally antisemitic. The EHRC, which launched its investigation in May 2019, is investigating whether the party has broken equality law, whether it has taken steps to improve its processes after internal reviews, and whether it has responded to complaints of unlawful acts in a lawful, efficient and effective manner. While scholars debate whether the coronavirus crisis will mark a turning point in modern world history, smaller-scale dramas some affecting the Trump administrations highest foreign policy priorities are still playing out across the globe. Julian Assange secretly fathered two children during his almost seven years of political asylum inside Ecuadors embassy in London, The Mail on Sunday and WikiLeaks revealed Sunday. Stella Morris, a 37-year old South African-born lawyer, has been in a relationship with the WikiLeaks founder since 2015, but the couple knew each other prior to his fleeing US and Swedish authorities to the confines of the embassy (she joined his legal team in 2011). Morris had been working as part of the Assange's defense team and visited him daily inside the closely surveilled embassy, and after two years the couple got engage. "Gabriel, aged three, and his one-year-old brother Max were conceived while their father was hiding out to avoid extradition to America, where he faces espionage charges over the leaking of thousands of classified US intelligence documents," The Daily Mail reports. Morris has since been raising the two children on her own and says she decided to go public about his family life to gain public support amid fears over the spread of Covid-19 in Belmarsh Prison, where he's been held awaiting a US extradition case after being dragged by UK police from the Ecuadorian embassy a year ago. The harsh Belmarsh coniditions, where some of Britain's most notorious criminals and terrorists are held, have taken a severe toll on Assange's health. In a video posted to WikiLeaks' official social media accounts, Morris expressed that already her fiance's "life is on the brink" and that she fears he would not "survive infection with coronavirus". Assange watched the children's birth via video-link while in the embassy, and over the years communicated through video calls and the children were able to make visits to their father in person at the embassy. "Forming a family was a deliberate decision to break down those walls around him and imagine a life beyond that prison," Morris said in Wikileaks YouTube video. "It grounds me, and when Julian sees the children, it gives him a lot of peace and nurture and support. They are very happy children." "We fell in love and this is a person I knew well by then; the person I know the most in this world," Morris said of their early relationship. "Hes extraordinary. Hes generous and hes very tender and loving." Morris also revealed the following, according to a summary of highlights by The Daily Mail: Assange watched both children being born in London hospitals via live video link and met Gabriel when he was smuggled into the embassy; They believe American intelligence agencies tried to steal Gabriel's DNA from a nappy after becoming suspicious that Assange was his father; The couple will marry behind bars unless Assange is released; Both boys, who are British citizens, have visited their father in prison; The Duchess of Beaufort, the former actress Tracy Ward, and British rapper M.I.A are the children's godmothers. "The news will come as a bombshell to Assange's friends and enemies since he was widely understood to have led a near-monastic life since entering the embassy in 2012," the Mail added. Julian Assange's newly revealed partner, mother of their 2 young children, urges UK government to bail him and other vulnerable prisoners as #coronavirus sweeps prisons#FreePress#DontExtraditeAssange #coronavirus #COVID19 https://t.co/UAe8eMESef WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2020 "Instead, as The Mail on Sunday's exclusive pictures show, he was a hands-on father, playing with his baby son under the noses of his increasingly hostile Ecuadorian hosts and the 24-hour a day scrutiny of US intelligence agencies," the report added. Another shocking part of the report relating to alleged US intelligence attempts to gain information on the family is as follows: "Assange did not meet his newest son until May when Miss Morris was allowed into Belmarsh with both boys. By then intimate footage of Max's birth, shot on a GoPro camera by a friend, had been seized by the US along with Assange's legal documents from his quarters inside the embassy." Assange also has an adult son, Daniel Assange, who is believed to be a software designer in Australia. Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi is an Advocate-on-Record practicing at the Supreme Court. He has been practicing law for 15 years and is now representing the Tablighi Jamaat, which is at the centre of a massive controversy for defying prohibitory orders and becoming human carriers as a result of the congregation at the Markaz in Nizamuddin. Ayyubi has previously been the counsel in various high profile cases including that of Assam NRC. Recently, on his petition, the apex court issued notices to all State/UT governments to respond to the plea seeking establishment of community kitchens across the country. In an extensive conversation with IANS he details what exactly happened at the Markaz. Excerpts: The allegation against Tablighi Jamaat is a serious one that they held this congregation despite prohibitory orders and now the Chief Maulana Saad is not coming out to join investigations? The congregation of TJ existed much prior to the issuance of any prohibitory orders. Pursuant to the orders, steps were taken by Markaz to disband and disperse the congregation. The people got stranded in Markaz as they belonged to places outside Delhi. They cant go back to their homes due to the sudden lockdown announced by the Delhi government and subsequently by the central government. Rail services were shut down and eventually domestic flights were also stopped, thus eliminating any possibility for the participants to return. It is wrong to say that Maulana Saad has not joined investigation. Police authorities have sought information from him in terms of Section 91 of the CrPC. He has duly submitted the requisite information to them, very much complying with such notice and with the investigation. The investigation is underway, therefore nothing much can be said at this stage. Is he running away from the law? Markaz Nizamuddin has an impeccable record of abiding by the law, and assisting the authorities whenever needed.Maulana Saad is a responsible citizen and head of this global movement, therefore, such a question does not arise. He is in self quarantine as advised by his Doctor. The Police authorities know this and are following the medical protocol.As I have said, the notice seeking information has been duly replied to as well. Many foreign TJ members have been booked in Uttar Pradesh for flouting visa norms, what legal recourse will you take? Earlier it was said that visas of around 900 foreigners TJ members is revoked and accordingly they will be deported back to their countries. But now it has come to light that FIRs are being registered against foreign TJ members and they are being sent to jail like in Bahraich, UP. We are trying to get in touch with the authorities so that legal aid can be provided to such foreigners. There are many suggestions that markaz chief should come out and speak on the issue to offer clarity? People can give suggestions as they like, but a movement like TJ operates in a certain way. People outside the Muslim community arent familiar with Markaz Nizamuddin and they want to know about it but it should also be respected that TJ has never been associated with the media, it has never sought any publicity, and has not used media or TVchannels ever in its history and has remained apolitical.Thats how they have conducted themselves over the last century and perhaps may want to continue that way only. There are reports in public domain that many members of TJ have been involved in terror activities in various parts of the globe? What do you have to say on this? This allegation is completely misplaced and mischievous. Markaz Nizamuddin has been around since 1926 and serves as the global headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat, which is a purely apolitical socio-religious movement. Volunteers and participants from across the world come to the Markaz to learn about Islamic teachings with emphasis on building a good moral character so that as Muslims they refrain from all thats evil and espouse all thats good. The effort started as a response to the moral degeneration of Muslims, and over the last century has benefited millions of Muslims, enabling them to lead a life of responsibility and respect across the globe.Therefore any connection with such inhuman activities like terror is contrary to the very purpose for which TJ exits. This is a global movement, and security agencies in India and across the world are fully aware of its existence and how it works. TJ is perhaps the largest social reform movement in the world, and is respected for the extraordinary effort they have undertaken. Do you think media has been biased towards you while reporting on the Markaz issue. At the time when humanity is facing its biggest challenge, it is sad and unfortunate that an immature section of the media portrayed the Markaz issue in a very biased and dishonest manner. Nevertheless police authorities have now started taking action against fake news. Since this is a global movement which is respected worldwide we should not do anything which may bring bad name to our great country. For instance, there are repeated reports of Maulana Saad allegedly being away from law, when in fact, he has replied to the notice given by the police, despite being under quarantine. However, the latter aspect has not been reported equally when compared to the former. Media reportage on any issue must take into account all facts and must in any case not give the slightest reason for sensationalize any issue. Unfortunately, certain sections of media have failed on that front. Here's the most recent top news you may have missed in Philadelphia. Man not wearing face mask seen being dragged off bus Read the full story on Fox News. Philadelphia ministry holds Easter service for people in need Read the full story on FOX 29. How planting trees helps solve inequality in Philadelphia Read the full story on ABC Philadelphia, WPVI. Philly installing public restrooms, sinks at City Hall and Love Park Read the full story on Billy Penn. Top Hill Realtor helps displaced restauranteur feed unemployed for free Read the full story on Billy Penn. This story was created automatically using data about news stories on social media from CrowdTangle, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback. A viral video shows police dragging a Philadelphia man off a bus on Friday. The man seemingly was in violation of coronavirus policy at the time. With bottled water baptisms and contact-free Communion, Chosen 300 parish held a Resurrection Day Celebration in Love Park on Sunday. "I always say that trees have superpowers," says one woman involved in planting them across the most barren parts of Philadelphia. Marked by colorful decals, the sites are intended to help prevent COVID-19 from spreading among people on the street. ACSI Increasing Advocacy Presence in D.C. Philip Scott to assume new role as Senior Counsel for Policy and Advocacy NEWS PROVIDED BY Association of Christian Schools International April 13, 2020 COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., April 13, 2020 /Standard Newswire/ -- The Association of Christian Schools is pleased to announce the appointment of Philip Scott as the ministry's new Senior Counsel for Policy & Advocacy in Washington, D.C. Scott will provide legal, policy support and leadership to ACSI's work protecting and expanding Christian education, school choice and religious liberties across the United States by using legal and community organizing expertise in furtherance of the movement and travelling around the country. "As part of our current strategic planning process we are placing a high priority on expanding our Legal Legislative Department," said ACSI President Dr. Larry Taylor. "Due to increased demands stemming from the current COVID-19 situation and a sharp rise in requests for critical Legal Legislative assistance from our members, we have accelerated this planned move. Serving our schools is a top priority, and D.C. is the primary epicenter to provide that support," Taylor added. Scott has been with the ACSI Legal Legislative Department since 2011. He most recently served as In-House Counsel, where he oversaw the legal concerns of the Association, as well as working externally with member schools on legal, HR and risk management needs. He is also responsible for the Association's tax credit parental choice programs for K-12 students currently operating in six states. In this new role, he will return to familiar surroundings to serve as a legal and policy consultant on issues related to state advocacy networks. Serving as the primary liaison between the Association and ACSI-created state advocacy networks, he will work to identify and build an effort of school-led advocacy groups to champion on the state level for issues impacting faith-based education. He will continue to serve as Executive Director of the Children's Education Fund and will work closely with the ACSI Legal Legislative team to help meet demands in Washington, D.C., in coordination with the ACSI Director of Government Affairs. "Philip has the right skillset to represent ACSI in strategic national and state level conversations," said ACSI Chief of Staff Tom Cathey. "In this new role he will effectively cultivate strategic relationships with groups and individuals on national and state levels to positively impact Christian education," he added. Scott's background is a blend of education, religion, and law. As a teacher, he taught middle and high school students U.S. Government and Civics in Christian schools. He is also a lecturer in undergraduate and graduate programs teaching on ethics, nonprofit law and education law. He holds two degrees from Liberty University, an undergraduate degree in Education and a Juris Doctorate degree from Liberty University School of Law. He has also studied theology and law at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a member of the Colorado Bar Association. He is a Senior Certified Professional in Human Resources with the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). He is the author or more than 30 articles on legal and HR matters specifically as they relate to religious private schools and is the associate editor of the ACSI Legal Legislative Update. ABOUT ACSI: Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., ACSI exists to strengthen Christian schools and equip Christian educators worldwide as they prepare students academically and inspire them to become devoted followers of Jesus Christ. ACSI advances excellence in Christian schools by enhancing the professional and personal development of Christian educators and providing vital support functions for Christian schools by offering multiple services including teacher and administrator certification, school accreditation, legal/legislative assistance, and curriculum publishing. Serving more than 25,000 schools in 108 countries, ACSI helps more than 5.5 million students worldwide connect to Christian education. For more information on the ministry, visit www.ACSI.org or follow on Twitter at @ACSIUSA. SOURCE Association of Christian Schools International CONTACT: Larry Lincoln, 719-424-6461, Larry_Lincoln@acsi.org Related Links http://www.acsi.org/ The White House wants the country to "reopen" soon and New York's governor says a regional reopening is in the offing, but experts warn that in the United States' coronavirus fight, different states will see different peaks. More than 22,800 people have died from Covid-19 since the virus arrived on American shores, according to Johns Hopkins University's numbers, but the daily tally of deaths dropped Saturday and Sunday, which could be a sign for optimism. The number of infections -- which stood at more than 560,000 on Monday afternoon -- were also down Saturday and Sunday. This comes as US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams says cases in some of the country's hotspots -- New York, New Jersey, Detroit and New Orleans -- appear to be "leveling off" or even declining. The situations in California and Washington, meanwhile, remain stable. "In the midst of tragedy, there IS hope," Adams tweeted Monday. "Social distancing and mitigation IS working. There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, so keep at it." Still, many states are in the throes of an intense effort to stem the illness' spread. New York crossed the 10,000-death threshold Monday, as its cases topped 190,000, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. New Jersey and Michigan also have frightening death tolls, with more than 2,300 and 1,400 respectively. The upside to New York's numbers is that the three-day average for hospitalization, new hospitalizations, intensive care admissions and intubations are all down, Cuomo said Monday morning. The Northeast joins forces Cuomo announced Monday the beginning of a "geographically coordinated" reopening plan in conjunction with leaders in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island. Each state will name health and economic officials to join the governors' chiefs of staffs to a working group, which will begin discussions Tuesday. The group will come up with "parameters to go forward," Cuomo said, and while they may not agree on every aspect of the strategy, finding areas where they can coordinate will be important, especially given the states' close economic, health and transportation ties. Calling the commuter thoroughfare from his state of Connecticut to New York the "Covid corridor," Gov. Ned Lamont said it was vital that "you don't pull the trigger too early," but applauded the partnership. "The reality is this virus doesn't care about state borders, and our response shouldn't either," Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo said. "By working, sharing our information and intelligence, I think will help each of us make better decisions," Delaware Gov. John Carney added, while Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said, "We can do anything better when we work together in this region." Trump is scheduled Tuesday to announce the formation of the "Opening our Country Council," which is expected to focus on ways to stimulate the economy. Another panel, the White House's coronavirus task force, has been focusing on providing advice to the states on what to do once reopening is advised. The task force is weighing potential benchmarks that would precede reopening the states, but have yet to settle on specific targets, people familiar with the discussions said. Doctors in wait-and-see mode All 50 states are under a federal disaster declaration for the first time in US history. There are more than 29,000 members of the National Guard deployed across the country to deal with the pandemic, according to the National Guard Bureau. Guardsmen have been called to serve a variety of roles, from staffing emergency operations centers to restocking grocery shelves. Key to how optimistic Americans should be will depend on what comes next. The country's testing trajectory will be hugely important, experts say. While President Donald Trump says he wants to reopen the country next month -- even telling state governments to "be ready" as he plans to announce a special council to reopen the country -- health officials say they're still in wait-and-see mode even if the numbers look promising. "It's important to look at the country as many different separate situations," said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on NBC's "Today" show. "This pandemic has affected different parts of the country differently," Redfield said. "We're looking at the data very carefully, county by county by county, and we will be assessing that." Public health capabilities need to be improved to perform early case detection, isolation and contact tracing, he said, and officials need to "start working to rebuild confidence in the community, so the community has confidence to reopen." Testing and social distancing The US is "nearing the peak right now," Redfield told the morning show. "You'll know when you're at the peak when the next day is less than the day before," he said. "We are stabilizing across the country in terms of the state of this outbreak." As for getting the country back to normal, Redfield said it has to be done correctly and "it's going to be a step-by-step, gradual process." The call for caution is being echoed on the world stage as World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked people to remember the virus accelerates faster than it decelerates, so "control measures can only be lifted if the right public health measures are in place." Redfield concurred with Adams that social distancing is working -- and said the potential death toll "while sadly too high, was far less than we anticipated" -- but said relaxing those guidelines would need to be done carefully. Testing is still not widely available, and many states have still tested only small percentages of their populations. The White House has worked to develop a more robust testing strategy, including shipping new rapid tests developed to states, and has worked to scale up serology testing, used to detect antibodies that would identify people who are likely immune to coronavirus and who could return to work or other aspects of normal life. Antibody tests, which reveal past coronavirus infection -- an especially important test for health care workers -- will "give us a good idea from a surveillance point of view of how significant the outbreak was." Weather adds to social distancing stress As millions of Americans worried about stay-at-home orders and social distancing Sunday, about 95 million people in nearly 20 states experienced severe weather and tens of millions more will see storms Monday. A majority of the storms were across the South and East Coast, according to the National Weather Service, with at least 34 tornadoes reported in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia as of early Monday. At least 18 people died. Emergency officials said Sunday people sheltering from tornadoes and protecting themselves from severe weather take priority over the social distancing guidelines Americans are adhering to during the coronavirus pandemic. Forecast models show the worst of the weather sweeping up the eastern portions of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, but even as far north as New York, officials were urging caution. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents the best protection from the weather is to continue to practice social distancing. "We have strong winds and heavy rain coming our way on Monday, New York City, so it's really simple: if you do not need to be outside tomorrow then STAY HOME," de Blasio tweeted. Missouris health department on Sunday reported 136 more confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the states total to 4,160. The Department of Health and Senior Services reported 110 people have died from the virus in Missouri so far, up one from Saturday.The uptick comes as places of worship grapple with how to handle services on Easter Sunday while following social distancing guidelines. At one St. Louis-area church, the pastor printed out photos of his congregation and placed them throughout the pews, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported . Its taken on the feel of a shrine for me, the Rev. Bob Evans of Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Maryland Heights told the newspaper. Not only do I feel the presence of God, but I feel the presence of all these friends and parishioners there. Its beautiful. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (Image Credit: AP) Another two positive cases for coronavirus were recorded in Midland County on Monday, bringing the total cases to 33 and one death, according to the daily michigan.gov afternoon state report. Bay County added another five cases bringing its total to 59 and two deaths, while Isabella County added two cases and one death, now standing at 41 cases and four deaths. Saginaw County added 19 cases and four deaths, bringing its total to 293 and 13 deaths. Gladwin County remains at four cases and no deaths. Michigan on Monday added 997 new cases and 115 deaths, bringing its total to 25,635 and 1,602 deaths. Midland County Department of Public Health continues to encourage residents to take precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19: Continue to practice social distancing as recommended by federal, state and local officials. Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash. Disinfect commonly touched surfaces. Stay home when you are sick. Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. We cannot stress enough how important it is for our community to be diligent in their community mitigation efforts," said Fred Yanoski, Midland County Public Health director/health officer. "We know that COVID-19 is in our community, and our residents can make a huge impact on slowing the spread of disease by following the recommended precautions." If you think you've been exposed to COVID-19 and develop a fever and symptoms such as cough or difficulty breathing, call your health care provider for medical advice. If he/she isn't available, call MidMichigan Urgent Care in Midland at 989-633-1350 or MidMichigan Medical Center's Emergency Department in Midland at 989-839-3100. MidMichigan Health has a COVID-19 informational hotline with a reminder of CDC guidelines and recommendations. The hotline can be reached toll-free at 800-445-7356 or 989-794-7600. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also has a hotline number for Michigan residents for questions about COVID-19. The number is 1-888-535-6136 and is available seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Residents also can email COVID19@michigan.gov. E-mails will be answered seven days a week between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. If you are feeling anxious, stressed, depressed and feel you need to talk to someone, reach out to Community Mental Health for Central Michigan by calling 800-317-0708. Nominate someone doing something to help others during this time: Nominate your Modern Heroes in Midland County. The Syrian armed forces' engineers have removed land mines from 2.7 hectares (4.9 acres) of territory in the provinces of Damascus and Deraa and dismantled 61 explosive devices over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides said on Monday MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) The Syrian armed forces' engineers have removed land mines from 2.7 hectares (4.9 acres) of territory in the provinces of Damascus and Deraa and dismantled 61 explosive devices over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides said on Monday. "Engineering units of the armed forces of the Syrian Arab Republic performed mine clearance tasks in Arbil, Duma, Mazraat Mahmoud and Haush el-Fara (Damascus province), Jasim, Anhuk, Kafar Shams, El-Harra (Deraa province) over the past 24 hours. [A total of] 2.7 hectares were cleared, 61 explosive objects were found and destroyed," the center said in a daily bulletin. The bulletin added that no refugees had returned to Syria from neighboring Lebanon and Jordan over the past day, which has been a case due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has affected all three countries and caused authorities to shut borders. The Ashanti Regional Deputy Police Commander ACP David Ajem Agyemang has warned Ghanaians especially those within his jurisdiction to brace themselves for tougher sanctions against those found flouting the partial lockdown directive. According to the Police Capo, the extension of the lockdown as announced by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo last Friday has rather empowered the Police administration to improve their operations since the available data on Ghanas COVID-19 was getting scary. He implored the public to endeavour to obey the stay at home order adding that because the security gave human face to the exercise in the first two weeks some miscreants took the law into their hands by walking aimlessly in the streets doing practically nothing. ACP David Ajem Agyemang gave the warning over the weekend when the Ashanti Regional Chapter of the Women Empowerment Foundation presented prepared delicious jollof rice and bottled water amounting to thousand of Ghana cedis to the Ashanti Regional Police command to encourage them to discharge their operations more creditable. He told the women group. Tell your family and friends to stay home because next week we are going to be extra tough to ensure everyone stays at home. The law of the Imposition of Restriction law is very harsh on miscreants so if you are found guilty you may be jailed not less than four years or be fined. The Police do not want to be seen jailing those who would be flouting the law hence the warning. The Ashanti Regional President of the Women Empowerment Foundation Mrs. Doris Amakwaa during the presentation charged the media to show development in the US and Europe on the COVID-19 deaths on television to help deter the public from violating the laws. Madam Doris Amankwaa further maintained that the challenge ahead of the country and the world as a whole demands everybodys support and donations to the needy and the frontline workers in particular to enable them realize the public is grateful for their commitment. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 11:17:43|Editor: Liu Video Player Close SEOUL, April 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export of information and communications technology (ICT) products rose last month, keeping an upward trend for two straight months, a government report showed Monday. The ICT export added 1.1 percent over the year to 16.0 billion U.S. dollars in March, after expanding 8.5 percent in the previous month, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Import in the ICT sector amounted to 9.44 billion U.S. dollars, sending the trade surplus to 6.56 billion U.S. dollars. Mobile phone shipment advanced 11.3 percent over the year to 1.02 billion U.S. dollars in March on demand for newly launched smartphones. Export of computer and peripherals surged 77.6 percent to 1.23 billion U.S. dollars, continuing to grow for the seventh consecutive month on strong demand for solid state drive (SSD). Semiconductor export slipped 2.7 percent on weak demand for memory chips, of which shipment dived 13.5 percent. System ship export advanced 32.9 percent in March from a year earlier. Display panel export reduced 4.4 percent to 1.64 billion U.S. dollars last month on soft demand for liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. The ICT export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, amounted to 7.63 billion U.S. dollars in March, followed by shipments to Vietnam with 2.45 billion U.S. dollars, the United States with 1.98 billion U.S. dollars and the European Union with 940 million U.S. dollars each. Mole (pronounced MOH-lay), which originated in Mexico, is generally used in the U.S. to describe a particular type of sauce with earthy, vibrant flavors. It is believed that chocolate is the ingredient that has come to define mole, but did you know there are over 40 different forms of mole? Yes, and some of them don't even include chocolate! Mole "Sauce" Is Redundant The word "mole" is derived from the Aztecs' molli (or mulli), which just means So if you hear your friends referring mole as "mole sauce," feel free to tell them they're redundant. According to an article, a mole is a fusion of New-World, and Old-World flavors since the sauce typically involve chocolate, fruit, and several spices. Chocolate may be the star of the sauce, but its flavor should never dominate. READ: These Latino Cookbooks Will Help Satisfy Your Cravings During Quarantine So, What's Exactly in Mole? This intricate and flavorful sauce may vary according to the ingredients used, but in general, it is made from a mix from five different categories: chiles which are at least two different types; sour from tomatoes or tomatillos; sweet from dried fruits or sugar; spices; and finally, thickeners such as bread, nuts or seeds. These ingredients are combined and made into a paste to create the final output, which is mole, a thick, dense sauce that should never be runny. Below are the types of moles and their ingredients: Mole Negro (dark brown, almost black) - dried chilies, whole smoky spices, a Mexican herb hoja santa, and lots of dark unsweetened chocolate. Mole Poblano (reddish-brown) - pasilla chiles, chocolate, pumpkin seeds, and coriander Mole de Cacahuate - features peanuts instead of chocolate Mole Dulce - with bananas and plantains Pipian - features ground squash seeds Mole Verde - highlights fresh herbs and tomatillos Mole Manchamanteles (or "tablecloth-staining mole") - uses apples and pineapples. You can use mole as a simple finishing sauce for baked chicken, steak, pork, tofu, etc. You can also drizzle your roasted or sauteed veggies, rice, and beans with mole for extra flavor. ALSO READ: 5 Dishes Everyone Thinks Are Mexican, but Are Not How to Make It If you have the time, it's worth the effort to make your own Mole Poblano, which could take hours (sometimes even days) to prepare, with as many as 30 individual ingredients prepped in different ways. The ingredients are ground together into a powder or a paste that creates a seamless layering of complex flavors. But thanks to online shopping, you can make this easier, and you can also order a few different varieties of authentic mole paste from Mexico, to begin with. Mix one part of the pre-made paste with three parts water or broth, bring it to a boil while stirring (or whisking), then let it simmer it for 20 minutes, stirring frequently. You can add more liquid if necessary, but remember, your finished sauce should be dense and not runny. Sure, making mole is a tedious process, so once this quarantine period is over, you can look forward to visiting these top 15 places for mole in Los Angeles: 1. Guelaguetza Restaurant 2. Los Anaya Authentic Mexican Food 3. Monte Alban 4. Guisados (2100 E Cesar E Chavez Ave) 5. Guisados (1261 W Sunset Blvd) 6. Cacao Mexicatessen 7. Pinches Tacos 8. Bar Ama 9. Gish Bac 10. Tortilla Republic 11. Sage Organic Vegan Bistro 12. El Jacalito 13. Sabores Oaxaquenos 14. Pinches Tacos 15. Town Pizza READ MORE: Where to Get Homemade Tortillas in Houston Riyadh, April 13 : Opec producers and allies have agreed a record oil deal that will slash global output by about 10 per cent after a slump in demand caused by coronavirus lockdowns. The deal, agreed on Sunday via video conference, is the largest cut in oil production ever to have been agreed, BBC reported. Opec+, made up of oil producers and allies including Russia, announced plans for the deal on April 9, but Mexico resisted the cuts. Opec has yet to announce the deal, but individual nations have confirmed it. The only detail to have been confirmed so far is that 9.7 million barrels per day will be cut by Opec oil producers and allies. US President Donald Trump and Kuwait's energy minister Dr Khaled Ali Mohammed al-Fadhel tweeted the news, while Saudi Arabia's energy ministry and Russia's state news agency Tass both separately confirmed the deal on Sunday. "By the grace of Allah, then with wise guidance, continuous efforts and continuous talks since the dawn of Friday, we now announce the completion of the historic agreement to reduce production by approximately 10 million barrels of oil per day from members of 'OPEC +' starting from 1 May 2020," wrote Dr al-Fadhel in a tweet. Global oil demand is estimated to have fallen by a third as more than three billion people are locked down in their homes due to the coronavirus outbreak. Prior to that, oil prices slumped in March to an 18-year-low after Opec+ failed to agree cuts. Talks were complicated by disagreements between Russia and Saudi Arabia, but on 2 April oil prices surged after President Trump signalled that he expected the two countries to end their feud. The initial details of the deal, outlined by Opec+ on Thursday, would have seen the group and its allies cutting 10 million barrels a day or 10 per cent of global supply from 1 May. Another five million barrels were expected to be cut by other nations outside the group such as the US, Canada, Brazil and Norway. It said the cuts would be eased to eight million barrels a day between July and December. Then they would be eased again to six million barrels between January 2021 and April 2022. Independent oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma told the BBC that the deal agreed on Sunday was "marginally lower", compared to the 10 million barrels per day that was originally announced on Thursday. Mexico had balked at making these production cuts, which delayed the deal being signed off. Then on Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that Mr Trump had offered to make extra US cuts on his behalf, an unusual offer by the US president, who has long railed against Opec. Trump said Washington would help Mexico by picking up "some of the slack" and being reimbursed later, but he did not detail how the arrangement would work. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text , We're sorry, this article is not currently available : Telangana police, as part of surveillance of the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, have been using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the purpose, state Director General of Police (DGP) M Mahendar Reddy said on Monday. He said 330 cameras across three Police Commissionerates of Hyderabad have been set with AI-based technology. Whenever more than five people come under surveillance, operational teams are alerted and they bring things into control. The Telangana police chief again requested citizens to restrain themselves from coming out unnecessarily from their homes in view of the ongoing lockdown. I request every individual to #RestrainYourselves from #ComingOutUnnecessarily & take the responsibility to prevent your all known fellow beings too, during #LockDown. Becoz #AtTheEndOfTheDay we are all #HumanBeings & Cant see someone being victimised is what called #Humanity," the DGP tweeted. Meanwhile, a press release said L&T Smart World & Communication, a business unit of Larsen & Toubro, rolled out smart technology solutions to combat COVID-19 in different cities in the country. It said the AI-based Crowd Analytics set in the cameras in key areas across the city enables with deep learning-based crowd formation analytics triggering real-time alerts at the police command centre. City police have so far received more than 4,000 alerts and officials were successful in dispersing the crowd through field officers, the release said. In the wake of the administration issuing an order in Hyderabad asking people not to drive beyond 3 km from their residences even for buying essential goods, L&T said it has devised an innovative way to help the police enforce the restriction. Using existing Machine Learning-based Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system vehicle locations are monitored continuously. The moment a vehicle crosses the 3-km limit, an automated alert is being sent out to the police. Additionally through integration of Regional Transport Authoritys (RTA) database vehicle owners are identified aiding officials to issue warning, the release added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The FDA has granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to Rutgers' RUCDR Infinite Biologics and its collaborators for a new collection approach that utilizes saliva as the primary test biomaterial for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the first such approval granted by the federal agency. The new saliva collection method, which RUCDR developed in partnership with Spectrum Solutions and Accurate Diagnostic Labs (ADL), will allow for broader population screening than the current method of nose and throat swabs. The impact of this approval is significant. It means we no longer have to put health care professionals at risk for infection by performing nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal collections. We can preserve precious personal protective equipment for use in patient care instead of testing. We can significantly increase the number of people tested each and every day as self-collection of saliva is more quick and scalable than swab collections. All of this combined will have a tremendous impact on testing in New Jersey and across the United States." Andrew Brooks, chief operating officer and director of technology development at RUCDR, professor in the School of Arts and Sciences Department of Genetics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick Soon after the Rutgers-ADL team received notification from the FDA on Saturday, the White House's COVID-19 testing task force called Brooks to offer congratulations and support and to ask about any specific hurdles to expanding testing and enabling other laboratories to benefit from the accomplishment. Shortly after the White House call, the research team was contacted by chief executive officers of some of the world's largest life sciences companies that are involved in COVID-19 testing. "I have spoken with these companies' leadership to not only share knowledge but to create opportunities for continuing to help innovate during this crisis," Brooks said. "We will work closely with these new partners, the FDA and the White House task force to leverage everything Rutgers has to offer to not only help our community but also make a global impact." Rutgers University President Robert Barchi called the new saliva test a "herculean effort that is great for the country and the world and by reflection great for our university." "Saliva testing will help with the global shortage of swabs for sampling and increase testing of patients, and it will not require health care professionals to be put at risk to collect samples," Brooks said. "Saliva testing will also be important for people who are in quarantine because they don't know how long it will be until they are no longer infectious. This will allow health care workers to release themselves from quarantine and safely come back to work." "The test can help hospital-based and private physicians to accurately assess the infection status of more patients, with RUCDR Infinite Biologics doing the analysis," said Jay A. Tischfield, the founder, chief executive officer and scientific director of RUCDR and a Distinguished Professor also in the Department of Genetics at Rutgers-New Brunswick and at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "Rutgers is proud to be on the cutting edge of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic," said Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Chancellor Brian Strom. "We have long said our researchers and health care employees are working to help make the world well, but never has it been more true than now." Rutgers University-New Brunswick Chancellor Chris Molloy agrees. "Rutgers has always been on the leading edge of research and discovery. We are proud of the work we do and the positive impact it has on the world." The FDA's approval of the new saliva testing approach is the second major announcement in recent days from RUCDR, which launched a genetic testing service for the coronavirus that can test thousands of samples daily. With the new saliva test, that number may increase to tens of thousands of samples daily. The tests are available to the RWJBarnabas Health network, which has partnered with Rutgers University and is New Jersey's most comprehensive health care system, including Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, University Hospital in Newark and many other facilities, including several county health departments. Starting Wednesday, Rutgers, in partnership with the Middlesex County government and RWJBarnabas Health, will make the test available to county residents at a drive thru testing facility at 33 Kilmer Road, Edison, New Jersey. In The Challenge 35: Total Madness, each contestant must win an elimination to receive a red skull and make the finals. Tori Deal wanted to compete in the first elimination to face the perceived weakest girl in the house. The five-season competitor asked Dee Nguyen, who she felt owed her from last season, to throw her in or threatened to cut off their working relationship. Her fiance and three-time champ, Jordan Wiseley, confronted Dee himself in a deleted scene. [SPOILER ALERT: This article contains information revealed in The Challenge 35: Total Madness Episode 2.] Jordan Wiseley and Hunter Barfield | Lars Niki Tori Deal wanted a layup to the final Former champions Jordan Wiseley and Dee Nguyen returned for The Challenge 35: Total Madness alongside Tori Deal, who barely missed out on the money. In the second episode, Dee and her team won the daily challenge, placing her in the Tribunal. She wanted to nominate a strong girl for elimination to send home rookie Jenn Lee because her ex-fling, Rogan OConnor, began flirting with the prospect. Additionally, the Australian-native wanted a tough competitor on her side. Therefore, Dee thought it was a smart thing to give the perceived layup to the arguably strongest girl in the house, Jenny West. However, Tori expressed she wanted to go into the first girls elimination so she could easily get her red skull and skate to the finals. She also thought Dee owed her because they developed a friendship while running the final together last season. After the house nominated Jenn, the ladies talked about the situation, and Dee admitted she would honor Jennys wishes first. Upset, Tori informed Jordan that the former champ might not throw her in due to her previous deal with Jenny. He claimed Dee made a promise to them in Thailand after they won her the $250,000. Therefore, the two would end their working relationship with the Australian native if she doesnt throw Tori into elimination. In a confessional, Jordan accused Dee of playing a Wes [Bergmann] game and noted she needs to get her priorities straight. Dee Nguyen says they never shook hands on any promises Tori then went to talk to Dee and admitted her boyfriend was pissed at her. She explained that Jordan feels they won her money last season. Therefore, Dee owes her. However, the Australian-native doubled down on her initial promise to Jenny. The Tribunal selected Tori to interrogate, and she claimed the slate is clean for her this season. Nonetheless, she still believes Dee shouldnt forget what people have done for you because Jordan ran the final with her. Dee made a deal with Jenny and shook on it. So do you think Tori and Jordan were in the wrong yesterday for how they went about trying to convince Dee to throw Tori in. Or do you think Dee should have listened to them and put Tori in instead of Jenny? #TheChallenge35 pic.twitter.com/ki2H1qh2H0 The Challenge: Total Madness (@TheChallenge35_) April 9, 2020 The Australian native explained shes only made promises with Jenny so far, but Tori interrupted and insisted they had deals as well. However, Dee claimed they never shook hands, invalidating them. Additionally, she reiterated that the couple is high on her list, but stated Jenny comes first. Jordan Wiseley confronted Dee Nguyen over reneged deal In a deleted scene, Jordan headed over to Dees bed to speak with her after she, alongside two others in the Tribunal, interrogated Tori before Purgatory. He explained that basically everything the two ever said to each other meant nothing because they didnt shake hands on it, referring to the reasoning Dee gave Tori. While the Australian-native tried to argue the point, Jordan claimed they no longer got each other as the two didnt shake on it. Therefore, according to Dees logic, it doesnt count. The former champ told Jordan he was making this into a big thing, and she planned on speaking with him after the interrogation. The three-time winner explained he already heard what Dee told Tori and that their deal didnt count because they didnt shake hands. Therefore, Jenny supersedes the couple. Tori and Jordan were ready to take on every in elimination last season. Tori even took out Jenny in Hall Brawl! Yet, this season Tori NEEDS Jenn in elimination or else they'll be gunning for Dee. I understand wanting Jenn in elimination, but it's a lil much. #TheChallenge35 pic.twitter.com/RD1URsONef Allan (@TheAllanAguirre) April 9, 2020 He then asked if she has Toris back tonight, and Dee pointed out she has to get Jenny as well. The three-time winner asked Jenny her opinion of the situation, and the UK native revealed they spoke around a month before filming. According to the two-time contestant, she sent Dee a direct message and congratulated her for smashing the final. Jenny also told Dee that shes a passionate person and the main player she wants on her side for the upcoming season. The ladies claimed they then shook hands at last seasons reunion. The Challenge 35: Total Madness airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EST on MTV. KUNMING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese medical experts aiding Laos in the fight against COVID-19 returned to Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, Sunday after finishing their mission. The team consisting of 12 professionals selected from Yunnan was established by the National Health Commission. They arrived in Laos' capital city Vientiane on March 29, with 4.17 million yuan (about 593,000 U.S. dollars) worth of anti-epidemic medical supplies donated to Laos. According to the team leader Huang Xingli, in Laos, the experts offered more than 20 trainings in more than 30 hospitals, laboratories, ports and airports across the country and exchanged views with their Laotian counterparts on the COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment procedures and related prevention and control experience. Also, the team provided technical guidance and advisory services on epidemic prevention to Chinese-funded enterprises, overseas Chinese and Chinese students in Laos. At present, Laos has actively adopted the suggestions of the Chinese medical team and continuously improved its epidemic prevention and control measures. An unusual statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office on April 7 said that Coordinator for Captives and Missing Persons Yaron Blum and his team are committed to acting constructively with the aim of bringing back the soldiers bodies and missing civilians and putting an end to the issue," adding that the premier was calling for immediate dialogue between mediators to facilitate a deal with Hamas. What made this statement so extraordinary is that it was issued so publicly. In most cases, calls for talks of this sort are made clandestinely, through middlemen. This was not just intended to save time, even if Egypt, which normally acts as mediator, is busy dealing with its own coronavirus crisis. It was also intended to send a direct message to a different target audience. The unusual Israeli statement was apparently instigated by an April 2 announcement made by Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar who spoke on the digital platform of Hamas TV. Addressing Defense Minister Naftali Bennett directly, Sinwar threatened military escalation, if there are not enough ventilators for coronavirus patients in the Gaza Strip. But Sinwar also added, "We are ready to make partial concessions on our prisoners' issue in exchange for the Israeli release of elderly prisoners, patients and prisoners as a humanitarian gesture in light of the coronavirus crisis." Israel knows that Sinwar wants to send a message to the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails that his movement has not forgotten them and that it will not forsake them, especially now, during the pandemic. That is why Hamas has signaled it is eager to conduct these negotiations openly and publicly. Israel responded publicly with a message for the families of its missing soldiers and captive civilians in Gaza that it is not ignoring any signals from Hamas. But Israel also has another reason for responding so publicly. This unusual statement from the prime ministers office was also intended to caution Hamas and Palestinian prisoners alike that there are still red lines for any deal that might be made. It will be a humanitarian deal, and not some new Shalit deal, with the release of hundreds of prisoners with blood on their hands. Sinwars April 2 announcement was carefully studied in Israel. Assessments made at the prime ministers office, the National Security Council, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet attempted to discern what lay behind Sinwars remarks. They wanted to know how serious he is and what he meant by calling this a humanitarian gesture in light of the coronavirus crisis. Was he talking about the deal as a whole, or only about some first stage necessary to enter into negotiations? Only after it was concluded that this began as a personal initiative by Sinwar, and that only later did the entire Hamas leadership come on board with it, was it decided to answer openly. The public discussion was also intended to apply pressure to Hamas by saying that if it is really concerned that its prisoners held by Israel would be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 and if it is making efforts to obtain humanitarian aid to fight the spread of the pandemic in the Gaza Strip, it should get off its high horse and show some flexibility. The full picture became clearer after Israels April 7 statement. What Hamas was suggesting was a deal in three stages. In the first stage, Israel would release women, the elderly and infirm prisoners, as well as what Hamas defines as children (young people up to 21 years of age), in exchange for which Hamas would provide information about Israelis held in Gaza and the missing soldiers. The question for Israel is whether this kind of information would justify the release of prisoners. The second stage would consist of the release of the two civilians held by Hamas Avera Avraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayyad. The third and most complex stage would be the return of the bodies of fallen Israeli soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul. This three-phased plan poses a dilemma for Israel. Ever since the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, Israel has claimed that the two soldiers are no longer alive, and that Hamas is using their bodies as bargaining chips. As for the two civilians, Mengistu and Sayyad, Israel has no doubt that they are still alive. Over the years, Hamas has understood from Israel that it would not release prisoners who committed serious crimes in exchange for these two prisoners. While this was never said publicly, the two civilians crossed into Gaza of their own volition, perhaps on the background of mental illness. Therefore, Israel could not justify exchanging them for terrorists. If Hamas really does want a deal for them, it would receive Palestinians held for crossing the border into Israel illegally, or infirm and ailing prisoners, or prisoners whose sentences are almost over. On the other hand, releasing prisoners as a humanitarian gesture lays the groundwork for the next stage: the return of fallen soldiers Shaul and Goldin for a proper burial in Israel. Israel would then be keeping its promise to do everything in its power to bring its fallen soldiers to rest. Apparently, this supreme value can only be achieved through dialogue and humanitarian gestures. The crux of the problem are the deals three phases. Israel sent a message for Egypt to relay to Hamas that it would not be willing to reach a deal with its eyes closed. In other words, it will not give Sinwar everything he wants, when he is still able to raise the price at any next stage. If Hamas really wants a deal in stages, all these stages should be apparent before a single prisoner is released. More so, Israel made it clear that the release of information is needed not as a stage of a deal, but as a way of confirming that there is really something to talk about. This is where Israel passes the ball back to Hamas. Israel can only do any of this once it clarifies why the Hamas leadership is trying to promote a deal now. Is it because it is concerned that members of the movement in Israeli prisons will be infected with the coronavirus? Does Hamas want the deal to include Israeli aid to stop the spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip? Or does Hamas see this pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step back from the unreasonable conditions it set in the past? Could it then tell its supporters in Gaza that this is an emergency situation that requires flexibility? It seems as if all of these reasons are valid. However, a high-level security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that another reason is that the Hamas leadership has reached the conclusion that the COVID-19 crisis has changed and will continue to change the world order. The global economic crisis will inevitably impact Gaza. It could, in fact, lead to its collapse. It is unknown how long Qatar is willing to fund the organization and transfer millions of dollars to it every month. Even more importantly, it is unclear what kind of impact the pandemic will have on Iran another patron of Hamas which has been hit hard by the pandemic. Given all of that, advancing a deal with Israel could be the first stage in a new Hamas strategy. Threats of jihad, an escalation of violence and rocket fire into Israel will only make the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip worse. It would be better to adopt real change while preparing for the grim reality threatening Gaza. After all, Gaza stands to be hit worse than just about any other place in the world. Not only does Gaza lack manufacturing abilities, it is also under closure and facing economic collapse. In the new world, threatening Israel with rockets will not solve Gazas problems. Hamas would be better off searching for reasonable solutions in response to an emergency situation. And it is up to Hamas itself to adapt itself to that new reality. The really big question is whether the Hamas leadership fully understands the severity of the situation, and whether it will accept Israels red lines. Nepal Prime Minister KP Oli and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Friday agreed to enhance cooperation to further intensify the fight against the coronavirus and underlined the need of taking care of the citizens left stranded in each other's country due to the lockdown to contain the spread of the pandemic. Oli and Modi held a telephone conversation to discuss the situation due to coronavirus pandemic. "We have agreed to enhance cooperation to further intensify the fight against corona virus," Prime Minister Oli tweeted after the conversation. "We stressed the need on taking care of each other's citizens that are left stranded along the bordering areas due to the lockdown imposed in both the countries," Oli said. Hundreds of Nepalese, mostly migrant workers, are stranded along Nepal's border with India due to the lockdown over coronavirus. The workers, mostly from western Nepal, were employed in various sectors across India and were trying to return home. As the government imposed nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19, they have been left stranded along the border. The two leaders also discussed continuing the supplies of goods and making it further smooth. "I expressed gratitude to the Indian government for providing various helps including medicines," Oli added. Prime Minister Modi in a tweet said that he discussed the prevailing situation arising due to COVID-19 with Nepali Prime Minister. "I appreciate the determination of people of Nepal to fight this challenge. We stand in solidarity with Nepal in our common fight against COVID-19," he said. In a press statement, Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the two prime ministers discussed the present situation in the fight against COVID-19 and agreed to further intensify the ongoing efforts. In the context of present state of lockdown in both the countries, "the two prime ministers agreed to look after the welfare and medical care of the people of two countries currently living in each other's territory," according to the foreign ministry. "The two Prime Ministers expressed satisfaction on the smooth supply of essential goods across the border and underlined the need for ensuring its continuity in the present situation," it said. Prime Minister Oli extended sincere condolences to the government and people of India as well as to the bereaved family members of those who lost lives due to the coronavirus in India, reads the press statement. "During the conversation, the two prime ministers also touched upon the multi-dimensional friendly relations existing between the two countries and stressed on further consolidating and strengthening the relations for mutual benefit," the statement said. The death toll in India due to the novel coronavirus rose to 199 and the number of cases climbed to 6,412 in the country on Friday, according to the Union Health Ministry in New Delhi. Nepal has till now has reported only nine positive cases. There is a cardinal rule in nature: After every storm, wildfire, and other disasters, the time comes for the sprouting of green shoots. COVID-19 has left the world badly battered and bruised across multiple sectors and silos, it has left nations helpless and ripped their resolve. India is no exception, though the novel coronavirus has had a milder run so far compared to other nations. Another cardinal rule of nature is that disasters do not last forever; the COVID-19 virus is no exception. It will taper off in months to come. And then there would be a spring of hope, a time for green shoots. This is what India's healthcare sector should be looking for, life after COVID-19. There is no gainsaying that India's healthcare sector has been badly shattered and stretched to its seams by the virus. But every dark cloud has a silver lining. Healthcare sector leaders should look at converting this gloom into an opportunity to service mankind by bouncing back. What the sector should be looking out for are the silver linings in the dark and ominous COVID-19 cloud. Post COVID-19, there would be plenty of green offshoots. The question now is should we be down in despair or look at the road ahead. Surely, India's healthcare sector is made of sterner stuff and has the DNA to bounce back with extra vigour. Some of the sectors that would see large opportunities emerging on the horizon are, testing kits, medical consumables, medical devices, pharmaceutical sector and mid-size hospitals, especially in tier-two and three cities and rural areas. Also Read: Coronavirus: What's holding up rapid tests in India? RAPID testing kits throw open big opportunity for medical devices industry The biggest opportunity would be in developing rapid testing kits. Currently, India is importing these kits from Singapore and other countries but the country can easily ramp up its resources to produce these kits indigenously. There is research that shows that COVID-19 may make a comeback later this year. The coronavirus killers so far have been Sars-CoV, Mers-CoV, and Sars-CoV-2. Researchers now say that if not for COVID-19 making a comeback, there are other viruses waiting in the pipeline to jump from animal hosts to human beings. This makes the case for developing rapid tests even more stronger. There is also an opportunity for India's vast reservoir of IT (Information Technology) talent working with biotechnology scientists and researchers to develop smarter rapid testing kits. Some countries are toying with the idea of developing drive-in testing kits with no human interface, except the suspected carrier. With India being at the cusp of IT and BT (Biotech), such opportunities are there for the asking. Hard-focussed start-ups would have a major role in developing such smart rapid testing kits. Estimates show that India alone would need 1.6 million testing kits in the next two months and there is a huge opportunity for exports. Medical Consumables: Any war against viruses such as COVID-19 needs doctors, nurses, and paramedical staff. They are the frontline foot soldiers in the battle against viruses. There is a paramount need to protect the medical community. The COVID-19 virus has exposed nations to the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as whole-body protection wear with airline facility, half and full-face masks, gloves, etc. According to an estimate by the government of India, the next two months would witness a huge spike in the need for about 27 million N95 masks, 15 million PPEs, 1.6 million diagnostic kits. This was conveyed to industry representatives during a meeting on April 3 of the empowered group of officials on "coordinating with private sector, NGOs and international organisations", which is headed by the NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, according to The Indian Express. In this field too, technology has a role to play. Apple is designing and producing face shields to protect health workers and medical staff from the novel coronavirus. The first set of Apple-designed face shields were delivered to Kaiser Permanente hospital facilities located in California's Santa Clara Valley last week. Each shield assembles in less than two minutes and is fully adjustable. Apple plans to ship 1 million face shields by the end of this week, and 1 million per week after that. Start-ups in India can catch the 'Apple wind' and design and produce such face shields in a very cost-effective manner. Apple has been working closely with the health and government officials across the US and this is what should happen in India too. Also Read: Coronavirus crisis: ICMR allows TB-testing machine to boost screening process Medical Devices: The war against COVID-19 will see an exponential growth in medical devices. Topping the list are ventilators. According to government, the demand for ventilators has been estimated to be 50,000 by June 2020. Out of these, 16,000 are already available and orders have been placed for 34,000 ventilators. Organisations like the DRDO, the Indian Railways, and a few start-ups have designed ventilator prototypes. All that is needed is slight tweaking and a major ramp up to meet the demand in the future. Pharmaceuticals: Developing frontline drugs against coronaviruses and a vaccine against COVID-19 are the fields that would witness a huge growth. Pharmaceutical companies have already started work in developing a vaccine against COVID-19. And at a time when the battle against COVID is getting tougher, the government should fast-track such initiatives. There has also been a huge worldwide demand for anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and paracetamol from India. COVID-19 will give an opportunity for the growth of the pharma sector, especially generic drugs. Hospitals: The huge spike in deaths due to COVID-19 world over has been due to lack of isolation units and hospital beds. This is what happened in Italy, Spain, UK, New York, and other places. It should be noted that the virus will not knock out people. Look at what happened in Italy where it was not the virus that killed thousands of patients but the deluge of patients which overwhelmed the hospitals and forced doctors to decide who should be saved and who should be left to die. Lombardy claims to have one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world, but they couldn't ventilate a huge patient load, especially elderly patients with respiratory distress. According to Dr. Devi Shetty, if we extrapolate the Lombardy data to a city like Bengaluru, we will have about 16,000 positive patients, out of which 2,400 will need hospitalisation, 2,000 will need ICU care and 1,000 will require ventilators. Are we prepared is the question. A back-of-the-envelope calculation would say that we are ill-prepared if we reach the tipping point in the virus spread. Fundamentally, it's a question of capacity in the healthcare system. And it is here that mid-size hospitals will play a fundamental role in the future, especially in taking the load off the over-stretched hospital in metros and other urban cities. Along with this comes the opportunity to have more doctors, nurses and paramedical staff. But the biggest losers in the COVID rampage would be medical tourism and medical value travel. Here the green shoots will take time to sprout and this time should be utilised to refurbish and enhance the capacity of the sector. Instead of burying our heads in despair, the healthcare sector should look ahead and smell the coffee. (The author is a Public Health Expert with about 25 years' experience working in 'Healthcare Communications' and 'Health Awareness & Patient Education Space' as Founder & Mentor @HEAL and also runs a 'Patients Management Program' as Founder & Chief Belief Officer @India Virtual Hospital.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 18:09:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HEFEI, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Wan Lei realized, now more than ever, the vital role of his job to people's health. As a respiratory therapist, he has provided care and treatment for over 200 patients suffering from breathing difficulties in Wuhan, battered by the COVID-19 pandemic. "Doctor, please save me," a patient typed a sentence on her phone before she was intubated, the placement of a breathing tube into her airway. COVID-19 infects the lungs of patients and causes respiratory problems. This is where ventilators come into help. "She grabbed my hand and desperately looked at me," said Wan, the 32-year-old respiratory therapist from the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University in east China. Wan has been on the frontline fighting against the epidemic over the past two months since he was dispatched on Jan. 27 to Wuhan to aid health workers there. Caring for patients relying on ventilators is a complicated job. It takes a trained respiratory therapist to determine the appropriate ventilator settings based on the patient's breathing needs. "We need to keep a close eye on the patient and the ventilator screen around the clock and adjust the settings according to the patient's condition," Wan said. Patients are typically sent to intensive care units (ICU) alone. Respiratory therapists like Wan have to provide them with both medical and daily care, including cleaning the body, trimming nails, and more. During a night shift, Wan received an elder patient who was having difficulties breathing. "The patient kept coughing, but nothing came out. I advised him to take a deep breath, hold it for two seconds, and then cough. He coughed up a lot of phlegm that night," Wan wrote in his diary. Respiratory therapist is a relatively new profession in China, whose work was usually undertaken by physicians or nurses in most hospitals before. However, the group was brought into spotlight during the epidemic outbreak when specialists were needed to operate these sophisticated machines that pump oxygen into patients' lungs. "There are no more than 100 professional respiratory therapists in Anhui Province. The total number in China is also small as it's a new profession," said Wan. "But in recent years, more and more people are taking professional training in this field." He did not become a professional respiratory therapist until he finished a six-month training program at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital in 2018. During the training, he had courses that teach how air flows through tubes and what happens when that flow of air meets a blockage such as mucus in a breathing passage. He also learned how to sterilize various parts of ventilators and fine-tune settings according to a patient's needs. All of these techniques came in handy after he arrived in Wuhan. Besides caring for patients at the ICU of Jinyintan Hospital, he also helped other medical workers adjust ventilator settings and solve technical problems. Whenever he had time, he would explain the theories and operations of different respiratory devices to his colleagues. "There are different ventilators. Some nurses are familiar with one particular type, but not so much with others," said Wan. According to the Ministry of Industry and Technology Information, nearly 17,000 ventilators had been sent to Hubei Province, mostly its capital Wuhan, as of March 3. In March, China added 16 occupations, including respiratory therapists, to its national occupation list, bringing to light the valuable contributions they make in the fight against COVID-19. This could also lead to more career opportunities for the group. During his 64 days in Wuhan, Wan cared for three to five critically ill patients per day. No one died under his treatment. "Wuhan is a city of heroes, and I am proud to have fought for the city," Wan said. At least 20 more doctors were tested COVID-19 positive on Monday in Punjab, bringing the number of the medical staff infected by the deadly virus in Pakistan's most populous province to 50. The Pakistan Medical Association has said that more than 100 doctors, nurses and para medical staff have been infected so far across the country, blaming the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government for not providing them required protective gear. According to a Punjab government official, so far over 50 doctors have been tested positive for novel coronavirus in the province. "Twenty-two doctors and six nurses of Nishtar Hospital, Multan (some 350 kms from Lahore) tested positive for the virus on Sunday and Monday. Some 160 doctors and nurses suspected of COVID-19 of the hospital are quarantined, the official said. The infected doctors had come in direct contact with COVID-19 patients, the official added. "The medical staff that is serving on the front line is not being provided with the N-95 masks because of which the lives of doctors, nurses and paramedics are at stake," Pakistan Medical Association President Dr Masoodur Rauf Haraj said. He threatened to go on strike if the government fails to provide the medics personal protective equipment (PPEs). Pakistan Young Nurses Association President Saima Ansari slammed the government for not providing them protective gear besides lack of space at hospitals for health workers exposed to the virus. She said at least two nurses have died from coronavirus in Punjab. Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has taken notice of the situation in Nishtar Hospital Multan and directed the health authorities to ensure provision of protective kits to the health professionals. He said no negligence will be tolerated in the provision of safety to medics as they are fighting as front-line workers. Pakistan's coronavirus cases have reached 5,374 with 334 new infections reported on Monday. Seven more people have died due to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll in the country to 93, health officials said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) (Newser) The coronavirus pandemic has claimed a friend of the president. Stanley Chera, a New York City real estate developer and Republican donor, has died of COVID-19 complications, a source told CNN on Sunday. Chera co-founded Crown Acquisitions, which in 2008 made a deal with Jared Kushner's company. Last year, introducing President Trump at New York City's Veteran's Day Parade, he said the president was a "dear friend." And Trump returned the compliment last year at a rally, calling Chera "a great guy and he's been with me from the beginning." Chera donated more than $400,000 to funds supporting Trump between 2016 and 2019. story continues below Sources say that when Trump last month described a friend who had fallen into a coma while struggling with the coronavirus, he was speaking of Chera, who was in his late 70s. "We thought they were going in for a mild stay, and in one case, he's unconscious, in a coma," Trump said at the time. "And you say, how did that happen?" Trump has not spoken out on Chera's death, but a White House official anonymously confirmed the death and Chera's links to Trump to Politico. Chera, who owned such well-known NYC properties as the Cartier Mansion, was also a well-known philanthropist, co-founding Brooklyn's nonprofit Sephardic Community Center. (Read more coronavirus stories.) 2. But restarting the economy wont be fast or easy, business owners and economists warned. The president has predicted that lifting business restrictions will rocket the economy out of a deep recession. And his trade adviser said that a prolonged shutdown could pose a more dire long-term health threat than the virus itself. Data suggest that economic activity is likely to remain subdued for some time, partially because both workers and consumers, still scared of contracting the coronavirus, will be unlikely to return to airports, restaurants and sporting venues en masse any time soon. Uncertainty about the virus has slowed economic activity even in places without state or local coronavirus lockdowns. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called its executive board meeting on April 16 to consider disbursement of an extra loan worth $1.4 billion to Pakistan after prime minister Imran Khan, once again, opened up his arms before the global financial institutions to boost the country's foreign exchange reserves and extend budgetary support in the wake of the economic slowdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Addressing the global community and financial institutions on Sunday in context of dealing with this unprecedented challenge posed by the coronavirus, Khan said that in developing countries, apart from containing the virus and dealing with the economic crisis, the biggest worry is people dying of hunger as a result of the lockdown. "While the United States and Germany can come up with a relief package of 2.2 trillion dollars and 1 trillion euros respectively, to give an example of Pakistan, with a population of 220 million people, so far the maximum stimulus we could afford is 8 billion dollars. This is the story of all those countries which are suffering from really high debt to GDP ratios," he said further. The Pakistan government had also requested the IMF last month for a low-cost, fast-disbursing loan under the fund's Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to deal with the adverse economic impact of COVID-19, Express Tribune reported. "We have been working with the Pakistani authorities since the request was placed. This $1.4 billion disbursement is scheduled to happen next week," IMF Resident Representative in Pakistan, Teresa Daban Sanchez, said. The RFI is used to provide financial assistance to IMF member countries facing an urgent balance of payments need without requiring them to put a full-fledged programme in place. Sanchez said the IMF was working with the Ministry of Finance to make sure that Pakistan had "enough resources to navigate through this difficult time". The $1.4 billion loan to Pakistan is additional to the country's $6 billion bailout package that it signed with the IMF in July last year to stave off a balance of payments crisis. Pakistan had already announced Rs 1.2 trillion fiscal stimulus package to offset the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country's fragile economy. According to local media reports, the government is also planning to seek more support from the Bank and Asian Development Bank in the future to save its economy from the dire economic fallout. The country has so far reported 5,374 confirmed cases of the pandemic disease while at least 93 others have succumbed to the deadly contagion. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In "He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump's Failure on the Virus" (April 11, 2020), New York Times writers Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear, Mark Mazzetti, and Julian E. Barnes demonstrate once again why they and their newspaper cannot be trusted. The article uses significant omissions and falsehoods to argue that President Donald Trump was acting contrary to the advice he was getting from his medical and scientific expert advisers. The NYT article does not mention that on December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified by Taiwan that the coronavirus that began in Wuhan, China was spreading by human-to-human transmission. Nor does the NYT article mention that despite the warning from Taiwan, on January 14, 2020, the WHO tweeted: Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #ChinaFlag of China. The NYT article does not mention that on January 21, 2020 during a television interview with Newsmax host Greg Kelly, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the coronavirus that began in Wuhan, China was "not a major threat" to the U.S. Kelly asked: "Bottom line. We don't have to worry about this one, right?" Fauci responded: Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But this is not a major threat for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about. The NYT article does not mention that on January 26, 2020, during a radio interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis, Fauci said the coronavirus posed "a very, very low risk to the United States" (at 25 seconds into this audio file). According to The Hill, Fauci "said Sunday the American public shouldn't worry about the coronavirus outbreak in China." "It's a very, very low risk to the United States," Fauci said during an interview with radio show host John Catsimatidis. "But it's something that we as public health officials need to take very seriously[.] ... It isn't something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about. Because we have ways of preparing and screening of people coming in [from China]. And we have ways of responding - like we did with this one case in Seattle, Washington, who had traveled to China and brought back the infection." The NYT article does not mention that on March 27, 2020, CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade that he agreed with Dr. Fauci's January 26 assessment at the time. The NYT article does not mention that on January 31, 2020, Fauci stated at a White House press conference that there was a "low risk to the American public[.]" The NYT article refers to the date of January 28, 2020 and states: A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing ... Although later in the NYT article the limited China travel ban is discussed, apparently, the NYT and its writers do not consider President Trump's limited ban on the entry of people from China, which was announced on January 31, 2020, and effective on February 2, 2020, to be "aggressive action." The limited ban was announced by secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, who stated: Additionally, the President has signed a presidential proclamation, using his authority pursuant to Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, temporarily suspending the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the 2019 novel coronavirus. As a result, foreign nationals, other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled in China within the last 14 days will be denied entry into the United States for this time. The NYT article does not mention that President Trump's limited China travel ban was condemned by WHO. On February 3, 2020, Reuters reported: World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday there was no need for measures that "unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade" in trying to halt the spread of a coronavirus that has killed 361 people in China. "We call on all countries to implement decisions that are evidence-based and consistent," Tedros told the WHO executive board, reiterating his message from last week when he declared an international emergency[.] ... "Because of this strategy and if it weren't for China, the number of cases outside China would have been very much higher," he said. Referring to the virus' spread abroad, he said it was "minimal and slow", while warning that it could worsen. The NYT article does not mention that on March 11, 2020, Fauci told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity that if not for the limited China travel ban "there would have been many more travel-related cases from China" and the limited ban "saved us a lot of suffering," and "was unquestionably the right move." The NYT and its writers falsely accuse President Trump of making a false statement. They state: Despite Mr. Trump's denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic[.] To support their allegation that President Trump denied weeks later that he was told at the time about Navarro's memo, they cite to President Trump's press conference with the Coronavirus Task Force on April 7, 2020. However, contrary to the NYT article, during the press conference, President Trump never made any such denial. Instead, at the press conference, President Trump stated that he "heard" about the memo at the time but did not "see" the memo at the time. President Trump said: "I didn't see them, but I heard he wrote some memos talking about pandemic. I didn't see them. I didn't look for them either." Therefore, the NYT and its writers are directly contradicted by the official transcript that they cite. Assuming that Fauci's and Redfield's public statements were consistent with what they were advising President Trump at the time, and given the public statements of the WHO, it looks like President Trump was not receiving good advice. However, the NYT does not want you to know that. There is much more to be said about the NYT article, but you get the point. The NYT and Lipton, Sanger, Haberman, Shear, Mazzetti and Barnes may present some facts, but we cannot trust them to refrain from presenting false information, and we cannot trust them to refrain from omitting significant facts that we need to properly evaluate the situation. A good starting place for getting facts about the Wuhan virus issue is the well-sourced timeline of events compiled by the Center for Security Policy. Allan J. Favish is an attorney in Los Angeles. His website is allanfavish.com. James Fernald and Mr. Favish have co-authored a book about what might happen if the government ran Disneyland, entitled "Fireworks! If the Government Ran the Fairest Kingdom of Them All (A Very Unauthorized Fantasy). SEOUL Bono, the lead vocalist of Irish rock band U2, has sent a letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in asking for support in his country's fight against the novel coronavirus, the presidential office here said Sunday. In the letter, Bono asked for South Korean protective equipment and diagnostic kits and said he would personally pay for it, according to Cheong Wa Dae. In a reply sent Friday, President Moon said he would have the health authorities discuss the issue and he hoped Ireland will overcome the crisis, the presidential office added. President Moon and Bono met in December last year, when U2 had its first solo concert in South Korea as part of its Joshua Tree Tour. The 59-year old Irish musician is one of the world's best-known philanthropic performers, spearheading human rights movements across the globe. Ireland had reported nearly 9,000 virus infections as of Sunday afternoon (Korean time), with 320 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Yonhap) US Ambassador to Cameroon, H.E Peter Henry Barlerin Twitter OP-ED by Peter H. Barlerin, U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon The story of U.S. leadership in the global battle against COVID-19 is a story of decades, months, and days. Every day, new U.S. technical and material assistance arrives in hospitals and labs around the world. These efforts build on decades of American investment in global health. Our record of sharing American scientific expertise, financial generosity, and public health planning resources is unmatched in history. The United States provides aid for both altruistic and pragmatic reasons. We believe its the right thing to do. We also understand that pandemics dont respect borders. If we help countries improve health systems they can better respond to whatever outbreaks may occur. And that will save lives -- abroad and at home in the United States. That generosity and pragmatism explains why the United States was one of the first countries to help China when the outbreak of COVID-19 began there, sending 18 tons of medical supplies. Since then, the U.S. government has committed nearly $500 million in assistance. More than 60 of the worlds most at risk countries are receiving this U.S. assistance, including Cameroon. The funds for Cameroon will increase infection control in key health facilities, strengthen laboratories and surveillance, prepare communities, and bolster local messaging. Our help is much more than money and supplies. Its the doctors and public-health professionals trained, thanks to U.S. money and educational institutions. Its the experts we have deployed worldwide or who are assisting global counterparts via teleconference. Our embassy in Cameroon includes a large office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC) which is coordinating closely with the Ministry of Public Health to help the country respond to COVID-19 and prevent further spread of infection. In Cameroon, U.S. CDC, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has invested over $45 million (26.5 billion CFA) since 2014 to expand the capacity of the health sector to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. U.S. funds built Cameroons Public Health Emergency Operation Center, which is coordinating the COVID-19 response. Field epidemiologists who are tracking the contacts of COVID-19 patients were trained by a U.S.-funded program on surveillance and case investigations. U.S. support has significantly expanded laboratory capacity, enabling Cameroon to be one of the first countries in the central African region able to test for COVID-19. USAID and U.S. CDC continue to announce new donations of funds and supplies in response to laboratory and hospital needs. U.S. CDC has provided over $1 million (590 million CFA) to fund COVID-19 response efforts and procure supplies in recent weeks and USAID announced $1.4 million of assistance. Our country continues to be the single largest health and humanitarian donor for both long-term development and capacity building efforts with partners, and emergency response efforts in the face of recurrent crises. This money has saved lives, protected people who are most vulnerable to disease, built health institutions, and promoted the stability of communities and nations. Our aid helps people in the direst circumstances. For instance, the U.S. government works with NGOs to deliver medicines, medical supplies, and food to people in conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, including in several regions of Cameroon affected by violence. Americas unsurpassed contributions are also felt through the many international organizations fighting COVID-19 on the front lines. The United States has been the largest backer of the World Health Organization since its founding in 1948. We provided more than $400 million to the institution in 2019 nearly double the second-largest contribution and more than the next three contributors combined. Its a similar story with the U.N. Refugee Agency, which the United States backed with nearly $1.7 billion in 2019. Thats more than all other member states combined, and more than four times its second-largest contributor. Then there is the World Food Program, to which the United States contributed $3.4 billion last year, or 42 percent of its total budget. Thats nearly four times the second-largest contributor. We also gave more than $700 million to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), more than any other donor. We are proud that when these international organizations deliver food, medicines, and other aid all around the world, that too is largely thanks to the generosity of the American people, in partnership with donor nations. In addition to our health security assistance in Cameroon since 2014 described above, the United States is the top health donor in Cameroon, investing $390 million over the past 20 years to assist with Cameroons fight against HIV/AIDS, animal-borne infectious disease threats, and various tropical diseases. Encompassing all development sectors, the United States has invested more than $960 million in Cameroon in the past 20 years. America funds nearly 40 percent of the worlds global health assistance programs, adding up to $140 billion in investments in the past 20 years five times more than the next largest donor. Since 2009, American taxpayers have generously funded more than $100 billion in health assistance and nearly $70 billion in humanitarian assistance globally. Of course, it isnt just our government helping the world. To face the current crisis, American businesses, NGOs, and faith-based organizations have given at least $1.5 billion to fight the pandemic overseas. American companies are innovating new technologies for vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and ventilators. This is American exceptionalism at its finest. As we have time and time again, the United States will aid others during their time of greatest need. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different. We will continue to help countries build resilient health care systems that can prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. Just as the United States has made the world more healthy, peaceful, and prosperous for generations, so will we lead in defeating our shared pandemic enemy, rising stronger in its wake. OP-ED by Peter H. Barlerin, U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon On April 7, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka held a powerful online meeting entitled The COVID-19 pandemic and capitalist barbarism on the partys Facebook page. The event was addressed by leading members of the SEP and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality. So far, it has been viewed by over 1,100 people and shared by more than 50 Facebook users. We are publishing below an edited version of SEP General Secretary Wije Diass speech, which was delivered in Sinhalese and translated live into Tamil. Wije Dias addressing the meeting Dias began his remarks by quoting from an April 1 WSWS Perspective headlined The working class, socialism and the fight against pandemic written by David North, World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board chairman. North wrote: The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organisation, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. Dias told the meeting it was important to grasp the significance and implications of the exposure of these four factors. First, economic organisation: We live in a global capitalist system of production and distribution. We are all witnessing today that this system is undergoing a breakdown on a global scale. Factories, plantations, banks and businesses are closed and the means of living for the vast majority of the population has been sharply restricted, if they have not yet come to a complete halt. Many are deprived of essential consumer goods. Entire towns, districts and provinces have been locked down. President Gotabhaya Rajapakses government is bogusly claiming that village agriculture in Sri Lanka is immune from this situation, but the equipment, fertilisers and chemicals needed for the sector are scarce. Peasants find it difficult to sell even their meagre produce. The World Food Organisation predicts that the whole world will face drastic food shortages in the coming months. International economic relations and trade agreements have become unviable. Instead of global collaboration to eradicate COVID-9, the ruling elites have turned more and more to nationalist economic programs. Under the Trump administration, the US economic war against China is being intensified and American sanctions are being tightened against several countries, including Iran. With many countries unable to maintain their exports, the Sri Lankan garment industry has totally collapsed, resulting in job losses for tens of thousands of workers. The Rajapakse government is curtailing imports due to its increasing trade deficit, and vehicle imports have been completely stopped. Under these conditions, a totally unrealistic myth of self-sufficiency is being peddled by the Rajapakse government by reintroducing the long-abandoned Grow Your Own Food program. The social structures to which David North refers are no different. Under capitalism, the capitalist class owns all production and distribution, with the workers expending their labour in the production process. But even before the coronavirus pandemic, the capitalist economic system was in a protracted breakdown. This was signalled by the global financial crisis in 2008. Responding to the global financial disaster, massive funds were provided to the same parasitic financial oligarchs centrally responsible for the crisis. This paved the way for an unprecedented growth in the wealth and number of billionaires. The wealth of the top 500 billionaires today is equivalent to the value of the GDP [gross domestic product] of all countries, apart from just 15, in the world. Despite this unprecedented social polarisation, the reformists and pseudo-lefts maintained their embrace of the capitalist order and all its social counter-revolutionary measures. The treachery of these so-called lefts, including the Stalinists, is also cruelly exposed under the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not since the first and second world wars has world humanity been confronted by the sort of devastation created by the capitalist rulers who have allowed the spread of the coronavirus. The working class, which the post-modernists and the identity politics movements tried to erase from history, has started to reemerge as a decisive social force. The third issue is political leadership and what the coronavirus crisis exposes about the bourgeoisie. The Rajapakse government has amply revealed its draconian character by elevating the military, which butchered tens of thousands of innocent Tamil men, women and children during the 30-year communal war, into the top echelons of civil administration. This too is a worldwide phenomenon. Faced with an economic and social crisis and rising class struggles, the ruling classes have realised that they cannot maintain their rule in the old way The absence of an adequate public health service is the result of austerity programs dictated by the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. A pittance is allocated for the vital social rights of the masses, such as education and health, while unlimited sums are spent on the military by the capitalist ruling classes in every country. Dias explained the reactionary role played by the trade unions and their complete failure to advance any progressive solution to the COVID-19 pandemic or to provide the basic social needs for the working class and the broad masses. The speaker noted the relevance of the founding program of the Fourth International and its statement: Without a socialist revolution, in the next period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat. Dias outlined the SEPs immediate transitional demands: * The implementation of universal testing for coronavirus in Sri Lanka, South Asia and internationally. * The immediate provision of well-equipped hospital facilities, with the necessary protective gear for healthcare staff. * Take profiteering out of health services. Provide free health services to all. * Guarantee jobs for all workers. Fully-paid leave must be provided to those workers in industries and other enterprises forced to close. * Nationalisation of all large corporations and big businesses without compensation under the democratic control of workers. * Global committees of experts for a collective effort to utilise scientific and technological knowhow to eradicate the coronavirus and other such pandemics. * The immediate ending of expenditures on war preparations and military material. * Stop servicing the foreign debt. Dias said the capitalist class and its political henchmen would undoubtedly claim that this program is unrealistic and there is no money. He referred to what Leon Trotsky told the French workers in 1935: This is why the most immediate of all demands must be for the expropriation of the capitalists and the nationalisation of the means of production. But is not this demand unrealisable under the rule of the bourgeoisie? Quite so! That is why we must seize power. The speaker explained that the program advanced by the SEP is an indivisible component of the fight for a workers and peasants governmenta Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic as part of a Union of Socialist Republics of South Asia and internationally. Arming the working class and the oppressed masses with a transitional program is to bridge the gap between the present consciousness of the working people and youth and the political consciousness needed for the historical revolutionary tasks, Dias said. The organisational form to facilitate the carrying out of the struggle for these tasks is the formation of Action Committees in workplaces and neighborhoods. More than ever, the building of the SEP, the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, as a mass party is a burning necessity. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Dayanna Monroy reports for the Teleamazonas television station in the port city of Guayaquil, the epicenter of Ecuadors COVID-19 outbreak. She and her colleagues have recently reported on bodies piling up in morgues and being left for days in the streets and in peoples homes, the results of overwhelmed hospitals, funeral homes, and cemeteries. Monroy proudly calls herself a street reporter. Unlike journalists covering the virus from the safety of their homes, she and her camera crew visit the areas hotspots nearly every day. A 10-year veteran of TV news, Monroy covered her first natural disaster in 2016 when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked Ecuadors Pacific coast and killed about 700 people. But she said nothing prepared her for the devastation wrought by COVID-19, which has infected and killed more people per capita in Ecuador than in any other South American nation. Among the victims is one of Monroys relatives. CPJ spoke with Monroy in a phone interview last week. Her replies have been edited for length and clarity. Were you prepared to cover the pandemic? I had never reported on health issues except for stories about corruption in public contracting for hospitals. Before the coronavirus, the biggest story I had covered was the earthquake. The first thing I saw was a mountain of dirt where an 18-story hotel had just disappeared. A man was screaming: Juan! Luis! Maria! He was looking for his three kids, who had been staying at the hotel. That gave me goosebumps. You learn how to cover these crises on the job. You have to use your intuition. When the coronavirus began spreading, Teleamazonas sent a lot of people home for their safety, like older employees and people with pre-existing conditions. The station is now mostly shut down except for a few editors. We used to have 11 or 12 reporting crews going out but now we have just four. What is it like reporting from Guayaquil? There is a lot of back and forth of exchange students and workers traveling between Guayaquil and Europe. So thats why the first cases were here. Also, it was hard to enforce the lockdown. Poor people live hand-to-mouth working at informal jobs, so to tell them to stay home is very difficult. Its also a very hot city and many people dont have air conditioning. When people started to die, there was a big problem with the funeral homes. They did nothing to prepare for this crisis. Many closed or refused to accept bodies infected with the coronavirus because they were afraid. There were bottlenecks at cemeteries. So the hospital morgues filled up and when people died at home, their family members had nowhere to bring them. Some left them outside on the sidewalk but that can cause conflicts because the neighbors get mad when they see bodies they think are infected. My uncle died from COVID-19, and my cousin had to keep his body in the living room of their house for three days before they could bury him. He bought formaldehyde because the smell was so bad. How do you protect yourself? I use a facemask and gloves. I cover the microphone with plastic. Its a directional mic, so I can keep my distance from the people I interview while the camera operators use the zoom lens. I report from just outside hospitals and cemeteries but dont go inside. When Im not on the streets, I am working from home. My parents live by themselves so Im not worried about infecting them. A lot of my colleagues stay in hotel rooms to isolate themselves from their families and stay overnight at their offices. These days we are not trying to cover everything just the essentials. What access do you have to official information about the pandemic? The government is releasing numbers, but everyone knows they are way too low. We have confidential sources. We talk to police officers and doctors who give us a truer picture. Even the president came out to say that the official data dont tell the real story about the number of people dying. The problem is obvious. They cant hide the information when you can see the bodies lying in the streets. What is your advice for journalists covering the pandemic? The job of journalists is to be out on the streets. Obviously, we are not superheroes, and we need to protect ourselves and take all the precautions. But we need to tell these stories. If journalists were not on the streets of Guayaquil, no one would know all of these things that are happening. I interviewed nurses who lacked protective gear and a day after the story aired, they received what they needed. Maybe if I had not been reporting on their situation, those nurses would have gotten infected. A Mexican journalist named Victor Fernando Alvarez was found dead in the southern state of Guerrero on Saturday--more than a week after he was reported missing. According to a media outlet, the journalist was found beheaded close to where his family last saw him. Authorities previously found a limb in the Acapulco municipality. After conducting forensic tests, the limb and the remains were confirmed to be Alvarez. Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization promoting freedom of the press, revealed the journalist had been receiving threats before his disappearance. They believe he was killed by one of the many organized crime syndicates in Mexico. Tragic Deaths #PBIaccompanies pic.twitter.com/OEd72DRdJl Mexican journalist Victor Fernando Alvarez was found dead on Saturday, the second journalist to be murdered this year in Mexico. PBI-Mexico has called for an improved protection mechanism for journalists. For more context, please see https://t.co/AsoGOJSNml Peace Brigades International - Canada (@PBIcanada) April 12, 2020 Mexico is largely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists. On January 8, 2020, authorities found a bullet-riddled corpse of radio presenter Fidel Avila Gomez, the first reporter murdered in 2020. His body was found thrown in a ditch in Tierra Caliente---a region known for producing heroin. Avila was reported missing in November 2019. He is the seventh journalist to be murdered in the Michoacan state since 2006. Meanwhile, the sex reporters before him were never found, joining the ranks of an estimated 62,000 others. Authorities did not immediately comment on possible motives behind his death. A relative, however, believes it is connected to La Familia Michiacana, an organized crime group. It is also possible that Avila as murdered after being unable or unwilling to pay the gang's 'protection money.' On March 30, 2020, a female reporter was gunned and killed in broad daylight in Veracruz. Maria Elena Ferral was shot by two unidentified men on a motorcycle while leaving the local notary. Authorities rushed her to the hospital, where she died while receiving medical treatment. Ferral's daughter said the reporter had been receiving death threats after she covered the murders of several mayoral candidates in Gutierrez Zamora. Basilio Camerino Picazo Perez, a former candidate for state congress, reportedly threatened to kidnap and kill Ferral in 2016. The state Public Security initially assigned her a bodyguard, but later removed the protection after determining "she had not made good use of it." Government Action Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised to 'pacify' the growing violence against reporters when he took office in December 2018. He has yet to address the security crisis. His inaction has led to a surge in the number of murders, with this year already looking to be another bloody year. Paul Velazquez, a Mexican blogger, known for criticizing corruption on his Youtube and Facebook pages, demanded justice for all journalists after surviving a murder attempt. Velazquez was shot in the face in the city of Los Mochis on December 19, 2019. The attack reportedly happened after the blogger received a threat from the mayor's close collaborator. A passerby filmed him staggering in a grocery store, covered in blood. He has since accused Los Mochis Mayor Manuel Guillermo Chapman Moreno of ordering the hit. He was given government protection after the attack. Velazquez narrated his attack in an interview with Elisa Anais on February 8, 2020. Watch the video here: Other related reads: As the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) continues to spread, Indias most populated states have adopted both common, and distinct, strategies to deal with the pandemic. Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal account for one-third of total 10,444 Covid-19 cases in India and about 40% of the countrys 1.21 billion population in 2011. Being densely populated, the probability of rapid spread of Covid-19 in these states was and remains higher than in less populated southern and Himalayan states. They are also more vulnerable because they house about 60% of 1.3 million migrant labourers in shelters across India. While providing food to all, including about 20 million poor citizens in these states, was a challenge, the state governments adhered to health ministrys guideline of testing and strong Covid-19 cluster management. They also launched apps to track hundreds of patients and put thousands of people in quarantine. But they also opted for state specific models that helped in containing the spread. Maharashtra opted for aggressive testing (42,000 so far) and created the most number of containment zones in cities; Uttar Pradesh ensured that the virus is restricted to 41 of the 75 districts; Bihar focused more on isolating migrant workers and screening of all foreigners; Madhya Pradesh came across as lax initially before ramping up screening and testing efforts; and West Bengal termed its plan as containment with humane face. Here is what each state did over the past month: Maharashtra: The states approach to Covid-19 infection and management has been distinct. It got most of the initial Covid-19 patients from foreign travelers, unlike other populated states, where the infection came primarily from secondary sources or attendees of Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Nizamuddin Delhi in mid-March. After a rapid rise in the cases with an average of more than 150 positive cases and 12 deaths a day over last ten days , the state government shifted focus on the containment zones in Mumbai, adjacent areas, and other cities such as Pune that accounted for 90 % of the total positive patients and 91 % of total deaths. The state has more than 400 containment zones, including 381 in Mumbai alone, highest for any city in India. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has divided these containment zones in three categories red with more than 5-6 patients, yellow up to six patients and green with no cases. We have decided to concentrate on the most affected areas of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune by strictly implementing the lockdown. There are hotspots identified, in the containment zones, with the highest positive cases and they will be strictly monitored, said state home minister Rajesh Tope. As on Monday, 2334 people had tested positive and 149 had died due to Covid-19 in Maharashtra. Around 70% of these cases were reported in last ten days. MMR, which comprises of 9 municipal corporation and 20% of the state population has 1520 patients. Uttar Pradesh: The state focused on 41 districts, from where Covid-19 cases were reported and adopted a multi-pronged strategy of aggressive identification of hotspots, intensification of restrictions and creation of new health facilities combined with relief to people. UP chief secretary RK Tiwari said that the UP model of aggressive action to identify and act has been appreciated by the Centre and others states have been asked to follow. When the Covid-19 pandemic first broke out, there was not even a single testing lab in the state. Now, the state has 10 labs and more are come up, he said. The spurt in Covid-19 cases in Uttar Pradesh has been substantially attributed to the Tablighi Markaz in Delhi in last week of March. Additional chief secretary, Home, Avnish Awasthi said 50% of the cases in the state are linked to Tablighi Jamaat and the administration got them quarantined as soon as they were identified. According to officials, 11 committees were set up to oversee the situation following lockdown announcement and suggest measures to provide relief to people. UP was the first state to announce financial relief of 1000 to half a million workers, daily wagers and vendors and is set to implement free distribution of food grains to nearly 30.54 million labourers. UP so far has 550 Covid-19 cases with nearly 190 hotspots in 41 out of 75 districts. Five persons have died, 47 have recovered while about 11,855 tests have been carried out so far. Madhya Pradesh: With a full Cabinet not yet in place after the formation of the new government, and 72 health department officials tested as Covid-19 positive, containing the disease has proved to be a challenge for chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The data provided by the state government shows that Covid-19 has primarily been restricted to Indore and Bhopal, even though cases have been reported from 21 of the 52 districts in the state. Of the 562 Covid-19 positive cases, Indore with 311 patients accounted for 55.33% and Bhopal, with 134, 26.22% of total cases. Overall, Madhya Pradesh has 7.29% death rate while in Indore the death rate of 9.64%, higher than the national average of 3.4. Of the 41 deaths, 30 were from Indore. Additional chief secretary, health, Mohd Suleman, appointed head of department a week back after the incumbent officer reported Covid-19 positive, said, Our strategy has four components Identification, Isolation, Test and Treatment (IITT). He said any area visited by a foreigner or known for ILI (Influenza like illness) or respiratory problems, is declared a containment zone. Door to door survey is done to list people with different categories of diseases and they are marked as high or low risk. The test is then either done of high risk persons eat home or at a testing centre, he said, adding that fourth component is treating people tested positive. The state has 282 containment areas with about half of them in Indore. The affected 21 districts have curfew restrictions while borders of Bhopal, Indore and Ujjain have been sealed to prohibit entry or exit of any person. Indore, the worst affected city, has been divided into five sectors, with a senior officer in-charge of each sector. Bihar: With 65 cases in the state of 100 million people, the Bihar government has now opened its outpatient facilities for all, the first big state to do so, in an indication of the states confidence that the situation was under control. Experts however believe the state may not have tested aggressively enough. Less than 8000 tests have been carried out so far. State chief secretary Deepak Kumar, however, said the state tested all international passengers who came between March 18 and 23 and all symptomatic cases, who came between March 15 and 17, were also tested. It identified around 3,556 international travelers between March 15 and 23 and samples of 2,254 people, who were within the 14-day incubation period, were taken for tests. Bihar also followed the model of containment zones, where people have not been allowed to move out of their homes and essential supplies delivered to them at their doorstep, said Sanjay Kumar, Bihars principal secretary, health. For instance, Panjwar village of Siwan district, where 23 of the 29 cases in the district were reported, was declared red zone and complete barricading of the village was done at 200 metres, 500 metres, 1km, 2km and 3km. Places visited by Tablighi Jamaat attendees were sanitised and mosques, where they were staying were sealed. West Bengal: The state, with 95 Covid positive cases and seven deaths, has been warned by the home ministry for not enforcing lockdown norms strictly. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, however, had said they had opted for lockdown with humane face and imposed complete clampdown in Covid-19 hotspots. Some areas where people have tested positive for Covid-19, and there is a threat of the disease spreading, have been totally sealed, said a health department official, on the condition of anonymity. The state has formed an advisory body roping in international experts (such as Nobel laureate economist Abhijit Banerjee) and has also formed three task forces and a few other committees to guide the state in tackle coronavirus. We are prepared. The state now has seven testing laboratories, 64 hospitals are earmarked for Covid-19 patients and there are more than 580 quarantine centres, said a second official of the health department. The state government has been criticized for opaque information system on Covid with the health bulletins providing information only on active cases. Officials, however, explained that the information was being provided only after vetting by experts, who had termed most deaths because of co-morbidity. (With inputs from state bureaus) Whether its the surge of unemployment claims, or simply setting up a virtual private network (VPN) from home offices, government agencies and the IT departments supporting them have been faced with a tsunami of needs since the outbreak of COVID-19.The pandemic which has sickened nearly 580,000 Americans, killing more than 23,000, and hobbled the global economy has also inspired legions of government technology experts from various backgrounds to volunteer their time and expertise to help government at all levels overcome these hurdles.The loosely assembled nonprofit ad hoc group called the U.S. Digital Response is now more than 3,500 strong.The help can be things like people, said Raylene Yung, a co-founder of USDR with a background in the private sector, working with companies like Facebook and Stripe. And so thats a relatively easy placement."She added that sometimes the needs of an organization are more ambiguous, recalling one situation where systems were largely paper-based and in need of an office-based printer. Yung said situations like this require a more "consultative" approach to share advice and move processes forward.USDR was assembled largely by Code for America alumni and veterans of the Chief Technology Office under the Obama administration.A significant part of todays U.S. Digital Response requests are data related, such as systems showing an availability of personal protective equipment (PPE), hospital beds, ventilators and other virus-related data points.The work of USDR has inspired longtime gov tech educator OReilly Media, a facilitator of online learning for public-sector organizations. OReilly is making its platform available free of charge to local, state and federal agencies through July 6, 2020.OReilly quickly understood that in a number of cases an army of tech volunteers is whats needed by government. However, in other situations, what they need is just better access to knowledge, said company founder Tim OReilly. And thats where OReilly comes in, because we have this knowledge platform.OReilly is married to Jennifer Pahlka , founder of Code for America and the United States Digital Service when she was CTO in the Obama White House. OReilly has no formal relationship with the U.S. Digital Response.The OReilly offer went out early last week, and already, several thousand people at all levels of government have expressed interest.The U.S. Digital Response is structured in three parts, Yung explained, with one of those arms as an online platform where government officials can write in and ask for help on any number of issues. Another group is set up to deal with larger concerns that require pairing the government agency with a tech volunteer or team of volunteers.Much of the focus of the work leans toward data and digital needs, with USDR focusing in areas like data science, engineering and project managers from an equal mix of experience in the private sector and others with government technology experience.I would say that reflects the great extent of our networks, said Yung.Thats how it started. But its evolved a lot. And now what is especially cool is we have different needs, and well broadcast them, she explained. So over the last week or two, trends were coming up. One was we realized we were needing more content help. Because a lot of what we were doing is helping cities communicate what was happening. And so we had very few people who were content specialists or content candidates in our database. So we put out a call for more.One need to grab headlines in the mainstream press was a desire for computer programmers with knowledge of COBOL, the Space Age-era programing language often associated with large government mainframe systems.We had very few people who had that skill set and then, within kind of a day or two of it being out there, people posting about it, we had like dozens of people sign up, said Yung.For all the hardship brought by the coronavirus, the crisis is also fostering the development of new ways for government to work, and the formation of new relationships among public-sector agencies and others who may want to join the ranks of government.We might put a SWAT team of volunteers on for now, and maybe theyll go back to their normal jobs after, but theyre going to help create these sort of new ideas around how to build easier to use, scalable, forms that I think will stay on with the states and cities we work with, said Yung.I think theres maybe a side-effect where some of our volunteers may get really excited about working for government and wouldnt be surprised if theres a new generation of gov tech people that come out of this, she added. The hike in solar power generation was due to the multitude of power projects coming online before the feed-in tariff deadline According to statistics published by Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), in the first quarter of this year, the group mobilised a total of 57.29 billion kWh of power, up 6.3 per cent on year, including local supply sources and imported power. The supply of thermal and hydropower both reported declines. Notably hydropower plants generated 8.93 billion kWh while gas provided 9.46 billion kWh, down 30.4 and 15.9 per cent, respectively. However, the amount of coal power reached 33.91 billion kWh, up 21.3 per cent, and oil-fired thermoelectric power was 1.02 billion kWh, increasing by nearly 1 billion kWh on-year. The total mobilised renewable energy was 2.76 billion kWh, including 2.31 billion kWh of solar power. The surge in solar power is thanks to dozens of large-scale solar farms coming online before June 30, 2019. In the first quarter of this year, EVN and power plants generated 31.25 billion kWh, making up 54.54 per cent of the total power. 49.28 billion kWh of this was generated by EVN, up 6.47 per cent on-year. According to EVN, the plunge in hydropower is due to a decrease in the volume of water available for hydropower generation across the countries, especially in large lakes namely Hoa Binh, Son La and Lai Chau. Notably, the total amount of water in hydropower lakes in March was enough to generate 1.51 billion kWh, 561 million kWh lower than the expectation for the whole year. Meanwhile, the accumulated figure for the three months was 5.11 billion kWh, 2.7 billion kWh lower than the plan. On Pahela Baishakh we must vow to fight Covid-19 unitedly Pahela Baishakh is celebrated every year on April 14 amid festivities and much enthusiasm. But this year, the programme was cancelled to avoid mass gatherings in a bid to curb the transmission of coronavirus. However, the television channels will air a programme to digitally celebrate Pahela Baishakh, the first day of Bangla calendar. The programme of the Cultural Affairs Ministry will be broadcast by all channels from 8:30am on Tuesday, the Ministry said in a statement on Monday. Since Ramadan will start in ten days or more we can celebrate Pahela Baishakh in a unique way this year. Instead of indulging in our personal vanities by wearing colourful clothing and eating traditional dishes and listening to musical soirees we can indulge another aspect of our soul. Every single nation is being ravaged by the pandemic--Bangladesh is no exception to that. We can celebrate Pahela Baishakh this year by indulging in charity. We can donate medical supplies to our healthcare workers if they need them, we can feed stray dogs and cats and other animals--as some of our noble citizens are already doing even though they incur the wrath of mindless local leaders. We can protest at the abuse of welfare goods misappropriated by errant and criminal local political leaders who are stealing goods earmarked for the poor. We can forgive (or at least reduce) debts or rents owed us by our tenants or debtors. As factory owners or other business owners we can try to ensure that our workers are paid on time as it is the lowest socio-economic classes which are undergoing the most hardship. These citizens can't beg, borrow, or steal, but have to live on meager funds. As a nation this is a time for us to come forward and rely on ourselves. We must realize that -- instead of splashing ourselves in colours this is the perfect time for us to show our true colours. We must stand united, for this time too shall pass. Trumps Main Street Marshall Plan By Robert Owens How it was: Basking in the glow of renewed freedom birthed through the Trump era tax cuts and the Presidents massive reversal of the regulation noose thats strangled America for the past three years, small-business success has achieved record highs. The best economy in half a century unleashed by the lower taxes and fewer regulations inspired small businesses to hire more employees, to pay higher wages, and then to reinvest its capital. How it is: This pandemic is what historians call a black swan event. It came out of nowhere and changed our perceptions forever. But having said that the same conditions of lower taxes and less regulation still exist. Though currently stifled by the stay-at-home orders and self-guarantees this period of confinement and artificial limits is building a tsunami of pent-up demand. As one of Americas main employers, the Small Business Administration tells us Main Street is the engine of our economy. Here are some facts about small businesses in America today: There are almost 21.5 million (90%) small businesses in the United States Small businesses are responsible for 39 percent of GNP. Small businesses are responsible for 52 percent of the all U.S. sales and contribute about 21 percent of all manufactured U.S. exports. Small businesses contribute 44 percent of all sales in the country. Small businesses employ 54.4 million people, about 57.3 percent of the private workforce. Some call these small businesses the backbone of the American economy. In this time of national sacrifice and emergency they deserve a government that addresses their needs. Whats been done: In response to this crisis Congress passed, and the President signed the largest direct assistance program in American history. This, the third major bill in a month includes a novel plan for small businesses. Instead of just tax incentives or emergency loans hidden behind a hedge of bureaucracy it seeks to deliver right-now-relief through the Paycheck Protection Program. One way to express this effort calls to mind one of the most successful government programs of all time. This is Trumps Main Street Marshall Plan. Through the Paycheck Protection Program businesses with fewer than 500 employees (including startups, sole proprietors, and the self-employed) can receive 100% federally guaranteed loans for eight weeks. Then if the loan is used to pay employees, rent, or utilities, or rehire employees who were laid off due to the virus, the loan is forgiven. The loan term is from February 15 to June 30. This revolutionary piece of legislation saves small businesses the endless hassle of navigating the bewildering maze of the government bureaucracy which normally stands between citizens and government emergency relief. With this innovative plan small business owners can work with their local bank or any lender backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This includes farmers. Those who feed the world can work with the same farm credit institutions theyre familiar with, the ones they already know and trust. All this without any bureaucrats in between the lenders and the borrowers. American small businesses can take advantage of these loans right now, the sooner the better. The applications for these loans are located on the Treasury Department website. The goal of the Paycheck Protection Program is to ensure small businesses are ready to relaunch as soon as America reopens for business. This act seeks to keep Main Street afloat by providing direct relief for small businesses and keeping tens of millions of workers on the payroll. The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest crisis as a nation we have faced in the lifetime of most Americans. We have a great cheerleader in President Trump. He strives day in and day out to raise our spirits and to lead us out of this dire straight and back to prosperity and peace. What to do: Having said all this I have to share my belief that government, even one that is being led by the greatest crisis manager of modern times, is not the answer to Americas problems. Only God can bring salvation whether were talking about an individual or a nation. He once told us, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. And since God is the same yesterday, today, and forever we can still claim that promise. Besides He also told us, And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Trust God and Hell bring us through. Some may say, What if we follow that advice and we catch the virus and die anyway? All I can say is if we die trusting God, no matter what the reason, we sure will be healed then. Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com 2020 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens Home Australians can get thousands of dollars in government support to help them though the coronavirus crisis - and millions are already cashing in. Someone who receives the JobKeeper payment, uses free childcare, draws from their super and negotiates a rent reduction could access up to $45,000 in financial support. The JobKeeper wage will provide a furloughed employee with $18,000 over six months - and casuals who earn less than $1,500 a fortnight but have been working for an employer for at least a year will even see their wages increase. The free childcare scheme, which applies to all parents regardless of their jobs, could save a working family around $2,000 per child over the next three months. A small group of children play at the Robertson Street Kindy Childcare Centre in Helensburgh south of Sydney on April 3 How to access $45,000 in support Someone who receives the JobKeeper payment, uses free childcare for one child, draws from their super and negotiates a rent reduction could access up to $45,000 in financial support. Jobkeeper: The scheme pays $1,500 a fortnight for six months which amounts to $18,000 before tax Free childcare: A person who pays $34 a day per child - after subsidies - will save $2,040 per child over three months Access superannuation: Under new rules, Australians can take $20,000 out of their super Rent reduction: A rent reduction of 50 per cent for someone paying median rent of $436 per week would save an additional $5,668 over six months Total support: $45,708 Advertisement Meanwhile, a new tax system for people working from home could reduce a worker's taxable income by around $550 over three months - and an instant assent write off expansion could reduce a businessman's taxable income by $150,000. Millions of Australians are getting cash handouts of $750 and small business owners can get grants of up to $100,000. Various states governments have also introduced plans to freeze or reduce residents' power bills by up to $200, and Australians can take $20,000 from their super. Furthermore, hundreds of Australians have privately negotiated rent reductions with their landlords. A rent reduction of 50 per cent for someone paying median rent of $418 per week would save an additional $5,668 over six months. The level of financial help people are entitled to depends on their individual circumstances. Here Daily Mail Australia outlines what's on offer. Free childcare Scott Morrison has announced that childcare will temporarily become free to help families through the coronavirus crisis. The government will pay 13,000 childcare centres 50 per cent of their fee revenue and in return the centres must stay open and not charge parents. The scheme, which will last for at least three months, will cost $1.6 billion and will benefit about one million families. Free childcare will be available to all parents regardless of their job but if places fill up centres will prioritise essential workers such as doctors and nurses. The scheme will be reviewed after three months and may be extended for a further three months. After the pandemic, the system will revert back to normal. A parent who pays $34 a day on full-time childcare after subsidies would save $2,040 over three months. Bloodwood co-owner and head chef Claire Van Vuuren and sous chef India Hocking prepare take away meals inside their Newtown restaurant on March 30 JobKeeper scheme The Prime Minster announced an extraordinary plan to pay the wages of six million Australians for six months. Workers at companies hit by the coronavirus shut down will be paid a flat rate of $1,500 per fortnight. The money will be given from the tax office to the companies, who have a legal obligation to pass it on to their employees. The $130 billion scheme is designed to keep workers connected to their employers so the economy will rebound faster when the coronavirus crisis is over. Payments via the ATO will be made to businesses, sole traders and not-for-profit organisations whose revenues decrease by 30 per cent or more due to the coronavirus fallout. The payment will go to full-time workers, part-time workers and casual workers who have been employed by a company for 12 months, regardless of how many shifts they worked. This means that workers who previously earned less than $1,500 per week will get a payrise if their company uses the scheme. Cash handouts The federal government has announced huge support for households, including handing out $750 to individuals through the ATO. Recipients on Newstart, the disability support pension, carers' allowance, youth allowance, veterans support payments, family tax benefits and Commonwealth senior health card-holders are eligible. Australia's 2.4million aged pensioners are also getting the payment. The payments began automatically on 31 March and will be delivered by mid-April. People queue to enter Centrelink on March 24, 2020 in Melbourne as thousands of jobs were axed Additionally, South Australia has announced it will pay every resident receiving the JobSeeker payment an extra $500 as a one-off payment - and Tasmania is giving people $250 if they have to self-isolate. Business owners can also benefit from federal cash grants. The federal government is handing out tax-free cash grants of up to $100,000 for small businesses and charities who turn over less than $50million and employ people, costing $32billion. On top of that, the New South Wales government will hand out $10,000 cash grants to small businesses affected by coronavirus restrictions. Businesses that employ between one and 19 workers and turn over $75,000 a year can apply through Service NSW. Household bills In Queensland, homeowners and renters will receive $200 off their utility bills while sole traders and small businesses will receive a $500 rebate on their power bill for the year. The Western Australia government has vowed that power and water disconnections will not occur, and interest will not be charged on deferred payments until 30 September 2020. There is a one-off $2,500 credit on electricity bills for 95,000 small businesses, available for those that consume less than 50MWh per year. Household fees and charges, including electricity, water, motor vehicle charges, emergency services levy and public transport fares have been frozen. Various states have introduced plans to freeze or reduce residents' power bills Tasmania has a freeze on all power, water and electricity prices for homes and small businesses and the waiving of first quarter utility bills for all small businesses. The ACT has frozen vehicle registration, public transport fares and parking fees. Residential ratepayers will be given $150 and people on utilities concession will get a $200 rebate. Small businesses will get a $750 rebate through their next electricity bill. In the Northern Territory all regular increases to government fees and charges, including electricity costs have been put on hold. Rent relief Tasmania and New South Wales have temporarily banned evictions for residential renters. All state governments have urged landlords and tenants to reach agreements on rent reductions. Sarah Draeger, a 26-year-old unemployed childcare worker from Melbourne, told Daily Mail Australia she was able to negotiate a 50 per cent rent reduction for three months, prompting hundreds of others to do the same. Sarah Draeger (pictured), 26, an unemployed childcare worker from Melbourne , said she was able to negotiate a 50 per cent rent reduction for three months A commercial tenancies code of practice which will be enforced by all state and territory governments. It stipulates that landlords must provide rent relief, in the form of waivers and deferrals, to tenants who are using the JobKeeper scheme. The amount of the rent reduction must be proportional to the revenue lost by the tenant due to COVID-19. At least half of the reduction must be a waiver not a deferral. JobSeeker The government has doubled the JobSeeker payment by an extra $550 per fortnight for the duration of the coronavirus crisis - and made this available to students. Superannuation There are also changes to superannuation which allow anyone to make a tax-free early withdrawal of up to $20,000. Also, the minimum amount that pensioners have to take out of their super each year has been cut from 5 per cent to 2.5 per cent for the next two years. Asset write-offs Instant asset write offs have been expanded meaning a worker can buy equipment worth $150,000 and deduct it from their taxable income until 30 June. The previous limit was $30,000. Working from home The Australian Taxation Office has announced those working at home will be able to claim 80 cents an hour between March 1 and June 30. They will only have to record the hours they have worked at home instead of adding up specific expenses like electricity and internet connection. It means a person working eight hours a day from home over this whole period can reduce their taxable income by around $550. Churches in Ukraine are preparing for online Easter services, and Ukrainians have already ordered more than 14,000 parcels with consecrated Easter bread. The Easter holidays were discussed on Monday at a traditional meeting on combating coronavirus disease, chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the press service of the Head of State reports. "These figures show that many representatives of the clergy and parishioners are aware of the dire danger posed by the coronavirus epidemic. We no longer have hundreds, but we have dozens of people infected every day. Meetings, crowds during the Easter holidays are a direct way to get sick and infect your loved ones. That is why Easter in a new format this year is a true manifestation of love for close people," Zelensky said. According to participants in the meeting, about 126,000 Ukrainians visited Ukrainian temples during Catholic Easter on April 12, compared to nearly three million last year. At the same time, National Police representatives drafted administrative reports in seven regions for violations of quarantine measures during church services. In addition, participants in the meeting discussed the possibility of supplying domestic mechanical ventilators to hospitals. The technical parameters of the devices of two Ukrainian companies are currently being tested, and if their quality matches foreign equipment, Ukrainian hospitals will receive hundreds of such devices in coming weeks. "The cost of such mechanical ventilators is several times lower than that of foreign equipment. We can better equip our doctors and save more lives," Zelensky said. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that 156,000 Ukrainians abroad were currently using the Foreign Ministry's program to address logistical issues. A total of 3,102 coronavirus cases were confirmed in Ukraine as of April 13. Nine-three people died of the disease, and 97 patients recovered. A total of 325 new cases have been recorded in Ukraine over the past 24 hours. In our recent article on Wellema, much of the conversation in the comments centred around the relevance and wearability of hats today. So I thought it would be interesting to look into the habits and collection of a reader, in this case author and semi-retired political adviser Ned Brown. Ned spent much of his career in Washington, but now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and is long-time hat wearer. He tends to wear high crowns, and also has a penchant for big brims - both perhaps balanced by his physical stature. He sees hats as very much an expression of his character, although very practical too - particularly in the sun of the southern US. And maintains them like old friends. Below is, first, Ned in his own words, followed by a few questions from me. My first hat was a Texas Rancher's Borsalino that I bought in San Antonio, Texas over 30 years ago. I was living in New Jersey at the time, and wore that hat nearly every weekend from October to April. It was an essential part of my casual wardrobe. The late, great author Pat Conroy [above, left, with Ned] tried unsuccessfully to convince me that the hat would look better on him. In the 1980's, I was working for Young & Rubicam Advertising on Madison Avenue in New York. By chance, Worth & Worth hat shop was located just down the street. They had a fabulous selection of quality hats. I would regularly venture in during my lunch break, and whenever there was a sale, I would invariably buy a new hat. Sadly, they moved in the '90's, as did I. I did not start wearing and collecting straw hats until I came to Charleston, South Carolina over 20 years ago. In the South, hats serve a practical purpose to keep you cooler in the intense summer heat. I also drive a Mini convertible, and have a specific hat to wear that will not blow off when the car is going 90 kph. Borsalino almost went out of business 40 years ago when hats fell out of favour. Fortunately, they became a prestige item for Orthodox Jewish men to own and wear in the the New York area. A young man receiving his first Borsalino after his bar mitzvah was a rite of passage. They kept Borsalino in business. Hats used to play an essential role in dictating the design of certain things. For instance, the roof height of the 1950's and early 1960's Rolls-Royce or Bentley had to accommodate a gentleman wearing a hat. When President Kennedy went hatless at his January 1961 inauguration, that event almost single-handedly killed the hat business, and the roof height of Rolls/Bentleys subsequently dropped by the late '60s. Hats should be an essential part of a well-dressed man's wardrobe. And by the way, like properly shined shoes, women notice. But just remember, no man will ever look as good as Cary Grant wearing a hat, but that shouldn't keep you from trying." Permanent Style: What advice would you have for someone that doesn't normally wear hats? How should they start? Ned: Always start with functionality: how will the hat be used, and how does it fit into your life? Next, quality: like good shoes, get the best materials and craftsmanship. And finally is style: how does it fit your personal look? How would you say your hats fit your personal look? How did you discover that? I read a remarkable book some years ago called Crowns. It was a photo book about African-American woman and their Sunday hats for church. One protocol I learned was that a woman never shares her hats with anyone; they are distinctly hers, and an expression of who she is. I sort of used that guidance in my own hat selection, and my own style. Several years ago, I was at a polo match wearing my wide brim Sam Houston Panama hat. After the match, Nacho Figueres (champion polo player and Ralph Lauren model) rode by, pointed to me, and said, "Cool hat." Did you find it difficult, or feel self-conscious, when you first started wearing hats regularly? Not really. I started wearing hats when I was about 30. I suspect some thought it was a tad dandy-ish, but people became accustomed to seeing me with a hat on - sort of a personal signature thing. Have you ever had hats made bespoke? No, but I plan to have the casual wide brim Churchill wore made bespoke, though I will skip the PM's jumpsuits. How do you look after your hats? I had a wonderful gentleman to care for my hats when I lived in New York. Now that I live in Charleston, I gently hand wash them myself. Humidity is the enemy of beaver and hare, so I store my hats in a climate controlled closet on a wire shelf for proper air circulation. How do you wash them yourself? This is an early fall rite of passage for me. You need a steam iron, clean cloth, mild, organic cleaning solution, a bristle shoe brush dedicated to hat cleaning, a pint, and then plop yourself in front of the telly to watch a Premier League match. Gently use the brush over all parts of the beaver or hare to get out any dust, which also reinvigorates the materials. Then, lightly spray the hat with the solution. Also spray a folded cloth with the solution, and press down on it with a steam iron so that it absorbs the heat and steam. Softly wipe down the hat, and keep repeating. Each hat takes about 20 minutes to do. I use a bit of Lexol on a rag for the inner leather band. [Above: Ned's current rotation of hats sitting on his bed - all Borsalino save the green, which is Christy's. Below that, the inside of the Rancher's hat - Ned's first acquisition, and by his own admission, really in need of a new sweatband] Do you wear different sizes or styles of hats with different clothes? For example, an overcoat on the one hand, and just a summer shirt on the other? I wear black, brown, blue or green to match what I am wearing. But otherwise no, I dont vary them with other clothes. However, some proportion to the brim size and the lapel with the coat, for example, seems right. I think you've got it right from the photos I've seen of you wearing a coat and a hat. I have several wonderful bespoke overcoats hanging in my closet, but living in Charleston, I can wear them perhaps 2-3 times in a season. And as for traveling with an overcoat, I try to make it practice during winter to not go to a place colder than the place I left. ["Hats should have a story," says Ned. "In this photo, notice that the edge of hat is frayed on both sides. Two of my 4-month-old pups in Jamaica found it, and thought it would be a fun tug-of-war toy."] Ned's forthcoming book, The Caribbean Golden Era: Jamaica 1946-1962, will be released in Fall 2020. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:35:08|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China's National Health Commission (NHC) has dispatched an expert team to the city of Suifenhe, at the China-Russia border in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, to support its prevention and control of imported COVID-19 cases, a health official said Monday. The dispatched personnel include medical experts on infection control, intensive care and respiratory diseases, as well as public health professionals on emergency health response, infectious disease control and laboratory testing, said Mi Feng, spokesperson for the NHC at a press conference in Beijing. Experts are cooperating with local organs to treat patients and prevent the epidemic from spreading, Mi said. Previously, Google had announced an over $800 million commitment towards efforts to tackle Covid-19 pandemic. Google chief Sundar Pichai has donated Rs 5 crore to Give India, matching Google's earlier donation to the non-profit organisation for the coronavirus pandemic. "Thank you @sundarpichai for matching @Googleorg's Rs 5 crore grant to provide desperately needed cash assistance for vulnerable daily wage worker families...," Give India said in a tweet. Thank you @sundarpichai for matching @Googleorg 's 5 crore grant to provide desperately needed cash assistance for vulnerable daily wage worker families. Please join our #COVID19 campaign: https://t.co/T9bDf1MXiv @atulsatija GiveIndia (@GiveIndia) April 13, 2020 Previously, Google had announced an over $800 million commitment towards efforts to tackle Covid-19 pandemic that claimed thousands of lives globally. This includes $200 million investment fund for NGOs and banks to help small businesses access capital. Besides, Google has also teamed up with Apple to work on a contact tracing approach designed with strong controls and protections for user privacy. Corporate India has been rushing in to help the government and citizens fight the pandemic in India. Tata Trusts and Tata group together have pledged Rs 1,500 crore - by far the highest by any corporate. Wipro Ltd, Wipro Enterprises Ltd and Azim Premji Foundation have together committed Rs 1,125 crore, while a number of other companies are also extending support efforts like providing sanitizers, masks and meals to people. Paytm, in a separate statement on Monday, said it has contributed 4 lakh masks and 10 lakh hygiene products to army, CRPF and health workers fighting Covid-19. These authorities would distribute them to the personnel working in the frontline to help control the outspread, it added. "The company hopes that its contribution of masks and hygiene products including soaps, hand-washes, sanitizers, and rubs would help all volunteers and workers stay safe during these tough times," the statement noted. The death toll in India due to the pandemic rose to 308 on Monday after 35 new fatalities were reported, while the number of cases climbed to 9,152, according to the Union Health Ministry. In a social media post directed to First Lady Michelle Obama, Ivy Vainio wrote on March 30, 2020: "My husband @ArneVainioMD who has practiced on the Fond du Lac Ojibwe Reservation in MN for the past 23.5 years. He is the most selfless, caring, empathetic, intelligent and giving man, physician, dad, and husband. His patients & his colleagues respect him so much. #mashkikiinini" Something incredible happened. Former First Lady Michelle Obama posted on Twitter and Instagram on National Doctors Day and requested people comment on loved ones who are physicians. My wife Ivy sent in my photo with a short caption. That photo ended up getting almost a thousand comments and on World Health Day Michelle Obama shared a post with 6 photos of health care providers and my photo was in the middle on the bottom row. The response on Facebook and texts and emails, Messenger and Twitter was immediate and strong and positive. The responses came from local friends and co-workers, but they also came from across the country and from as far away as Bangladesh and Finland. As of today the responses to that post with those six photos, just on Instagram, is over 675,000 and climbing. I am one of the faces of all those physicians out there and for hundreds of American Indian health providers. Its humbling to have that kind of response and it would be easy to get a big head about it. The truth is, Ivy originated that response and she doesnt always get the credit she deserves. Also not getting the credit they deserve are all the other providers who take care of us. This includes physicians, but it also includes pharmacists filling medications and continuing to educate patients, pharmacy techs running prescriptions out for curbside pickup, x-ray techs, respiratory therapists, lab, receptionists, certified nursing assistants and the maintenance staff who keep our health care facilities running and to the janitorial staff who sanitize and clean to keep everyone safe. All of these are essential employees and are required to stay on the job. The World Health Organization proclaimed 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. This was before the pandemic was a pandemic and those nurses and midwives are proving themselves worthy of that recognition. Every single day. As a physician I work with people who went into health care to make the world a better place. They go to work to make sure your children are healthy and safe and they work to make sure a diabetic foot wound doesnt turn into an amputation. They are integral to delivering babies to end of life care and everything in between. This is a huge responsibility and no one had a pandemic in their future plans when they were graduating. Not one of them thought they would be wearing a surgical mask all day and avoiding eating or drinking so they wouldnt have to touch their masks and undressing in the garage when they got home to avoid bringing COVID-19 home to their families. There are far too many stories of decisions forced when there are too many critically ill patients and not enough equipment. No one should have to choose who gets a ventilator and who doesnt, especially in a country as rich as ours. But those decisions happen. Stay safe everyone. Wash your hands. Keep our elders and our most vulnerable safe. Dont gather. Call an elder. #Coronavirus #COVID19 https://t.co/yoNpXvWbla indianz.com (@indianz) April 7, 2020 I am indebted to Former First Lady Michelle Obama for posting my photograph and spotlighting all our selfless essential workers. Thank you to everyone who commented or sent well wishes, it is truly humbling. We are all indebted to the nurses and other healthcare providers and everyone providing front line care. Zoongideiwin is the Ojibwe word for courage and this is one of our grandfather teachings. Zoongideiwin means to do what is right when the consequences are unpleasant, to do what is right even when youre afraid. This is the time for courage. This is the time to stay strong. The virus is depending on you to bring it to others and we cannot let that happen if we can help it. Protect our elders and those most vulnerable. Protect our essential workers. Help slow the spread of this virus and give us time to care for as many as we can. We go to work for you. Please, stay home for us. Arne Vainio, MD is an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and is a family practice physician on the Fond du Lac reservation in Cloquet, Minnesota. He can be reached at a-vainio@hotmail.com. Join the Conversation A total of 18 persons who had come in contact with the lone COVID-19 patient in Arunachal Pradesh have tested negative for coronavirus, a health official said on Monday. Their samples were sent for tests to the Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC) in Assam's Dibrugarh, Lohit District Medical Officer (DMO) Dr S Chai Pul said. "The COVID-19 patient had defied quarantine and visited a place of worship where he came in contact with fellow worshippers" she said. The coronavirus patient had attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi's Nizamuddin area, the DMO said. "The patient is now asymptomatic and is reported to be without any physical discomfort," Pul said. The third sample of the COVID-19 patient, who is admitted to Tezu Zonal Hospital, along with second samples of his family members will be sent for tests on Tuesday and results are expected on Wednesday, she said. The second sample of the COVID-19 patient had tested positive for coronavirus on April 7 but with lesser viral loads, the DMO said. A total of 253 samples from across the state have been tested for coronavirus so far, of which results for 223 have returned negative and those of 29 are awaited, State Surveillance Officer (IDSP) Dr L Jampa said. Meanwhile, the Health Department sought to assuage concerns of a shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PEE) kits for frontline personnel and said the state is fully prepared to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. Joint Director of Health Services, Dr Emi Rumi said Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL), a public sector undertaking, has dispatched 2,102 PPE kits till Sunday, of which 2,082 have been sent to the hospitals in the districts. Another consignment of 1,700 to 2,000 PPE kits is expected to reach the state by Tuesday, he said. Director of Health Services (DHS) M Lego said people of the state have misconceptions regarding PPE kits. "We don't have any authority to certify which are good or bad quality PPE kits. But there are different kinds of PPE kits categorised according to the risk and need base," he said. Appealing to healthcare professionals not to worry about any misinformation regarding the poor quality of PPE kits, Dr Jampa said, "The PPE kits provided by HLL can provide enough protection from coronavirus infection. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Kogi State Government has announced the arrest of no fewer than 28 suspected criminals at different locations across the state in the last seven days. The suspected criminals were arrested by the Joint Task Force of State Vigilante Service and the Neighbourhood Watch. According to a statement by the chief press secretary to Governor Yahaya Bello, Onogwu Mohammed, the arrested persons include four dreadful kidnappers who confessed to be terrorising the people of Dekina and Bassa local government areas on April 6. Also, over 16 members of a cult group who confessed to be from Ankpa Local Government Area Of Kogi State were arrested in Olamaboro Local Government Area where they were carrying out initiation of new members. The cult group also confessed to have carried out several armed robbery operations on Ankpa-Okpo-Otukpa road. Similarly, 8-man gang of miscreants who were involved in destabilizing the peace around Anyigba and Egume areas of Dekina Local Government Area Of the state were also apprehended by the security agencies when they led masquerades into the mosque during Islamic congregational prayers in order to spark up religious crisis. While handing over the suspected criminals to the Police at Okpo Division, the leaders of the security groups, Usman Okoliko, the Chairman of Vigilante in Imane; and Iliyasu Abubakar, Chairman of the Neighbourhood watch, in their separate remarks, said that the activities of the group had gone beyond cultism as they were engaged in armed robbery, kidnapping and other criminal activities in the areas. Speaking, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor, Dekina Local Government Area, Ishaq Shaibu, described the suspected criminals as miscreants who were bent on creating trouble in the local government area. He restated the commitment of Governor Yahaya Bello to eradicating all forms of criminals from the state, warning that whoever is found in any criminal activity would face the full wrath of the law. Mr Shaibu urged parents and guardians to report their wards who they knew was into any form of criminal activities, saying the governor has said any parent who come forward in defence of any criminal should be treated as one. He further reiterated the resolve and the unwavering determination of the governor to make Kogi a safer and secure state. He said that the arrested criminals will be charged to court for prosecution according to the criminal laws. Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has appealed to all Indian Muslims to stay indoors and strictly adhere to the guidelines of lockdown and social distancing during the holy month of Ramadan. The festival month is set to start from 24 April. Naqvi, who is also the Chairman of Central Waqf Council (the regulatory body of state Waqf boards in India), informed that more than 7 lakh registered mosques, dargah and other religious institutions come under the state waqf boards across the country. Notably, most of the Muslim nations including Saudi Arabia, have denounced mass gathering during Ramadan at religious places. READ | Prime Minister Narendra Modi To Address Nation At 10 AM On Tuesday, April 14, Amid Covid 'Directed to take an effective approach' Union Minister Naqvi said, "The state waqf boards, through the Central Waqf Council, have been directed to take an effective approach to ensure that people do not gather at religious and other places under any circumstances during the holy month of Ramadan. There is a need to take help of various religious and social organisations, the people and the local administration in this regard. These religious and social organisations and personalities need to co-operate with the local administration in strict and effective implementation of lockdown and social distancing during the holy month of Ramadan." READ | BJP Hits Back At Congress' 'sound & Light Show' Attack Amid Covid; Alleges 'Modi Phobia' Naqvi also said, "Pro-active, effective and positive efforts of state waqf boards and religious-social organisations ensured the Muslims of the country observed Shab-e-Barat on 8th and 9th April by offering prayers and performing all other religious rituals on the occasion staying inside their homes." In view of the challenges of Coronavirus pandemic, the co-operation of Indian Muslims in implementation of the guidelines of lockdown and social distancing, strictly and honestly, on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat has been laudable. READ | Imran Khan's S.O.S Answered; IMF To Consider $1.4 Bn Loan To Pakistan To Deal With Covid The Union Minister further added, "There is a need to make the people aware so that they perform all the religious rituals staying inside their homes during the holy month of Ramadan and follow the lockdown and social distancing norms. Such efforts are not only needed at mosques and other religious places, but also at other public as well as the individual places where the Muslims gather during the holy month of Ramadan to perform religious rituals." He went on to say that the entire country is seriously and honestly following the guidelines of lockdown and social distancing on the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. READ | Coronavirus LIVE Updates: PM Modi To Address At 10 AM On April 14; Total Cases At 9152 Image Credits: PIB Residents of Shah-e-Alam area in Ahmedabad on Sunday applauded police personnel by clapping and showering flower petals on them. The police had come under attack by stones pelters in the area during NRC-CAA protests a few months back. However, the police officer who was injured during the stone pelting was today welcomed by flowers. People at several places in the country were seen appreciating police personnel, sanitation workers and healthcare professionals who are working round the clock to help people amid lockdown due to coronavirus. Earlier during 'Janta curfew' on March 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had requested countrymen to express their gratitude towards all those who are safeguarding the health of the nation in wake of the coronavirus outbreak. People came out in their balconies and clapped their hands, banged 'thali' to salute those participating in the war against COVID-19. The total number of coronavirus cases in India has crossed 9,000 and over 300 died due to COVID-19, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Roselouise Smith is an Army National Guard veteran, devoted wife, mother of four, fierce defender of the Constitution, and a consummate student of history currently residing in rural southern Illinois with her family and two dogs on a small family farm. She has published her latest book American Apocalypse: an insightful discussion of a myriad of characteristics of the current presidential administration that run counter to the ideals and norms of American political life. The author writes, The deep political divide that is growing ever more apparent is a far cry from our Founders envisioned Utopia. Whether through hate mongering, religious-political extortion, bold-faced lies, or outright treason, our political leaders are bringing forth the apocalypse of the American ethos. It is important to note that George Washington had a fixed opinion on the punishment of traitors hanging. This absolutism is exactly what he expected his successors and Congress to adhere to as they, like himself, nobly put country before self. We are infinitely removed from the glory days of integrity and honor. Reason, logic, and facts have become sacrilegious with the ever-increasing religious stranglehold on our political system. Published by Page Publishing, Roselouise Smiths engrossing book is a clear-eyed reminder of Americas founding principles and the dangerous precedents being set in every news cycle since the 2016 presidential election. Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase American Apocalypse at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708. About Page Publishing: Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues to focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com. Imposing scene has some people now fearing the authorities. This weekend was the first since Prime Minister Abe declared a month-long state of emergency across seven of the countryas prefectures, including Tokyo, on 7 April. It was also the first weekend since Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike asked a number of businesses to close, including: night clubs, bars, cabaret clubs, karaoke joints, Internet cafes, live music venues, game arcades and mah-jongg and pachinko parlours. With the government targeting drinking establishments and nightlife districts as high-risk places for coronavirus infections, Koike initially wanted izakaya (Japanese-style pubs) to close as well, but she eventually agreed to a compromise after pushback from Prime Minister Abeas administration. Restaurants in the city are now being asked to limit their hours to 5 a.m.-8 p.m., with places that serve alcoholic drinks asked to close by 7 p.m. Ahead of the weekend, Koike strongly urged people of the metropolis to protect lives by staying home during the next month, and before the business closures came into effect at midnight on Friday, the police were already out on the streets to ensure that the public were acting in line with the governoras wishes. Mariusz Macura faces charges of rape, causing grievous bodily harm with intent, and possessing an offensive weapon. A woman was allegedly raped and stabbed during a sustained attack lasting more than three hours, a court was told on Monday. Police claimed she was subjected to an assault in Ballymena, Co Antrim which left her with knife wounds and a broken nose. Details emerged as a 38-year-old man accused of inflicting the injuries at a house on March 21 was remanded in custody. Mariusz Macura, a Polish national with an address at Patrick Place in the town, faces charges of rape, causing grievous bodily harm with intent, and possessing an offensive weapon. The father-of-three denies any involvement in the alleged offences. He appeared at Ballymena Magistrates' Court, sitting in Belfast, via a prison video-link. Opposing bail, a detective said: "The injured party was in a sustained attack for over three hours." He disclosed: "She sustained two black eyes, a broken nose, and swelling to her abdomen and chest. She had cuts to both arms from knife wounds, (including) an approximately four inch stab wound on her left arm." Macura allegedly told the woman he was sleeping on the street because his wife had kicked him out, according to police. District Judge Mark Hamill heard Macura was only located after officers forced their way into his home. "He was found attempting to evade police," the detective added. Defence barrister Conn O'Neill argued that a proper statement of complaint has not yet been provided. "The defendant and his wife would say this lady has a history of giving false accounts," he submitted. But ruling that Macura must remain in custody, Mr Hamill said: "Bail is refused on every conceivable ground." The accused will appear in court again on May 11. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on April 2, 2020, in Washington, DC. U.S. passenger airline executives cheered when Congress passed a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that included $25 billion in airline payroll grants on the condition that they they don't furlough or cut the pay rates of their employees through Sept. 30, as carriers face the deepest crisis in their history. Negotiations between airlines and the department over payroll grants have dragged on longer than expected after the Treasury Department requested more information and proposed additional conditions for the aid, a hint of what companies could face as they seek government assistance to blunt the impact of the virus and harsh measures like shelter-in-place orders aimed at slowing its spread. But Steven Mnuchin's Treasury Department has asked the country's largest airlines to pay back 30% of the grants for which they applied, essentially turning them into low-interest loans, according to people familiar with the matter. The grants would also come with equity warrants for 10% of the value of the loan. Talks continued over the weekend and airlines are closing in on deals, which could be announced early this week, according people familiar with the discussions. Labor unions, some lawmakers and industry members have balked at additional conditions on the payroll grants, arguing they go against what was outlined in the aid package, that they could be too onerous for airlines to either accept or that they could leave carriers on shakier footing later on. "Direct Payroll Assistance funding in the form of grants only is considerably more effective for our employees rather than a hybrid combination of instruments," said Airlines for America, a trade group that represents the country's biggest airlines, including Delta, United, American, Southwest and others. "This federal relief is critical to getting our employees paid and preventing furloughs right now, especially as our country is experiencing historically high unemployment claims." But Treasury Department isn't expected to cede much ground, according to people familiar with the talks. Treasury officials, which are working with financial advisers and lawyers on the aid, believe the $2 trillion relief package, known as the CARES Act, gives the department wide discretion to implement the airline grants, including converting some of them to loans, a person familiar with the situation said. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Monday wrote to Mnuchin and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao that "even if airlines accept relief funding with these conditions, each company's ability to preserve its workforce will be imperiled when the Treasury Department later demands repayment, leaving employees to ultimately pay the price." Mnuchin's requests in these rounds of negotiations may have broader implications as executives and taxpayers look for signs on how the Treasury approaches the $500 billion in loans, guarantees or other aid that Mnuchin is overseeing for businesses and states. Mnuchin has repeatedly said the taxpayers need to be compensated for the aid, payments that may also come in the form of stock warrants or other securities, according to guidelines released by the government. "It is our objective to make sure, as I have said, that this is not a bailout, but to make sure that airlines have the liquidity to keep their workers in place," he said last week. "This isn't what we agreed to," one airline industry source said of the deal. Mnuchin's conditions on the grants may set the tone for how other talks may play out as companies weigh the pros and cons of government aid, and how those conditions may affect them in an uncertain recovery. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has no approved treatment or vaccine as the world grapple with its wrath. The viral infection has so far infected 1.8 million and killed more than 114,000 people. Now, a team of scientists has shown that an experimental antiviral drug, remdesivir, has shown promise in treating patients with severe COVID-19. In a small group of patients hospitalized with severe complications of COVID-19, a team of health experts has found that that remdesivir, a nucleotide analog that inhibits viral RNA polymerases, has shown in vitro activity against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19. Study: Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe COVID-19 / Shutterstock Image Credit: Anyaivanova / Shutterstock Gilead Sciences developed Remdesivir as a treatment for Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus infections. Remdesivir is a prodrug in that it is inactive in intended pharmacological actions and must be converted into the pharmacologically active agent by metabolic or physico-chemical transformation. The experimental therapy The experimental therapy was administered to the patients through compassionate use, which allows the providers access to treatments that are not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when a patient faces a life-threatening situation, and there are no current available options. Remdesivir was administered to patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and had an oxygen saturation of less than 94 percent while they are breathing ambient air or who were under oxygen support. The patients received a 10-day course of remdesivir, consisting of 200 milligrams administered through the intravenous route on the first day and then 100 milligrams daily for the remaining nine days of treatment. Promising results The team of health experts from Cedars-Sinai Hospital found that 61 patients received at least one dose of the drug, but only 53 were analyzed. Twenty-two of the patients were from the United States. Of these, 36 patients or 68 percent had shown improvement with the use of the drug, including 17 of the 30 patients who are hooked to mechanical ventilation who were extubated. About 47 percent of the patients were discharged, while 13 percent or seven patients had died. The team also revealed that from the most severe cases, those who had invasive ventilation has a fatality rate of 18 percent. At the same time, there was one death of a patient who was not receiving invasive ventilation. Among the common side effects noted included rash, diarrhea, and in some cases, renal impairment. Other side effects include hypotension and increased hepatic enzymes. In this cohort of patients hospitalized for severe COVID-19 who were treated with compassionate-use remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 36 of 53 patients (68%). Measurement of efficacy will require ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled trials of remdesivir therapy, the researchers wrote in the paper, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Further research needed To date, no therapy has demonstrated efficacy for patients with COVID-19, and most therapies being used focus on boosting the patients immune system. The preliminary reports describe the clinical outcomes in a small cohort of patients who were severely ill due to COVID-19. The researchers pointed out that the study still needs validation through randomized and controlled trials to provide more informative evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of remdesivir for coronavirus disease. In comparison, a recent trial of the lopinavir-ritonavir in patients with COVID-19, the 28-day mortality was 22 percent. Its critical that the medical community finds a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19 thats supported by solid data. Im very proud that Cedars-Sinai is contributing to the global effort to find that solution, Dr. Jonathan D. Grein, director of Hospital Epidemiology, said. The researchers also emphasize that the interpretation of the study results is limited by the small size of the participants and the short duration of follow-up. Still, the study sheds light on the potential of the drug as a therapy to combat COVID-19, which as now spread to 185 countries. Currently there is no proven treatment for COVID-19. We cannot draw definitive conclusions from these data, but the observations from this group of hospitalized patients who received remdesivir are hopeful. We look forward to the results of controlled clinical trials to potentially validate these findings, Grein, who also leads the Special Pathogens Response Team at Cedars-Sinai, added. The coronavirus disease global pandemic has placed many countries into lockdown, while the United States has reported the most number of cases. The country has a case toll of more than 557,000, while the death toll has topped 22,000. Every year, on April 14, India celebrates the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar. Champion of Dalit rights and principal architect of the Constitution of India, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born on April 14, 1891, in present-day Madhya Pradeshs Mhow. This year, on Babasahebs 129th birth anniversary, political leaders have asked the countrymen to help the poor and those hit by the coronavirus pandemic and pay their tributes to the legend while following Covid-19 lockdown measures. Feed the needy Bharatiya Janata Party president JP Nadda urged all BJP karyakartas to pay tribute to BR Ambedkar on his birth anniversary by helping the needy amid the coronavirus crisis. He asked all party workers and state unit heads to distribute ration kits and face covers as the nation struggles to fight the battle against coronavirus. Distribute ration kits to every home in at least two poor settlements under the Feed the Needy programme and face covers under the Wear Face Cover Stay Safe programme in each mandal of a state. Do ensure to follow public hygiene and social distancing norms, the BJP president said in his message. Nadda also asked party leaders and workers to run awareness campaigns in every poor settlement on good health practices to stay free of coronavirus and build a healthy society. Pay floral tributes in office In the view of the Covid-19 pandemic, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered all ministers and officials to individually pay floral tributes in their office. I have directed all ministers to offer floral tributes to Ambedkar in their offices and people should do the same, he said. Help the poor amid Covid-19 crisis BSP chief Mayawati has appealed to party workers to follow lockdown restrictions and pay their ributes in their homes because of the spread of coronavirus. The BSP supremo described Ambedkar as a symbol of humanistic thought and sacrifice, in a tweet. A symbol of humanistic thought and sacrifice, Babasaheb Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar is a source of motivation for his followers especially BSP workers. But in the current Corona pandemic scenario, it is an appeal to all to follow restrictions imposed by the government, and celebrate the anniversary in their homes and pay tributes. In another tweet, she asked party workers to deliberate upon the condition of the poor and harassment of Ambedkars followers during the pandemic. Sabhi ki bhojan The Uttar Pradesh unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI) said it will commemorate Ambedkar Jayanti as sabhi ko bhojan, sabhi tak ilaaj diwas, demanding food and medical treatment for all. The birth anniversary of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar on April 14 will be observed as sabhi ko bhojan, sabhi tak ilaaj diwas (food and medical treatment to all) by party workers and supporters along with their family members, neighbours and close friends, while adhering to social distancing, CPIs state secretary Girish said in a statement. Ambedkar Jayanti is also known as Bhim Jayanti and is celebrated as a public holiday across India since 2015. BR Ambedkar was conferred the Bharat Ratna posthumously on March 31, 1990. (With inputs from agencies) Jenna Bush Hager and her family weren't able to spend Easter with her parents, George W. and Laura Bush, but it was still a special day thanks to her eight-month-old son Hal. The 38-year-old Today host took to Instagram on Sunday to share photos of her family dressed up in pastels while quarantined at their home on Long Island, New York. In her caption, she shared a conversation she had with her daughter Mila, who turned seven the day after Easter. After initially struggling with not being able to see her maternal grandparents or go to church because of the coronavirus pandemic, she declared it was their best Easter ever because they got to spend it with their family's newest addition, Hal. All together: Jenna Bush Hager celebrated Easter quarantined at her home on Long Island, New York, with her husband Henry Hager and their three children, Mila, Poppy, and Hal Too cute: Mila, seven, and Poppy, four, were dressed up in floral dresses while eight-month-old Hal looked dapper in a plaid pastel suit 'Mila this morning: Mom, it doesnt seem like Easter this year. Me: Why baby? M: well, we arent leaving the house. We dont get to see Mimi and Bumpy. We are watching church instead of going,' Jenna wrote in her caption. 'And so we got dressed up and we cooked and prayed around the table, grateful. Thankful for a beautiful world and a God that loves us so much. Then after lunch Mila said, "Mom, this is the best Easter ever...because Hal is here." 'And I thought thats it baby girlit isnt about where [you] travel, or parties full of people, it is about the greatest and most simple gifts like their baby brother on his first Easter,' she added. 'We are praying [for] those who feel alone, lonely. Those who have lost hope. May you find joy and comfort knowing you are loved.' Jenna shared several photos of her children, including a picture of herself and her husband Henry Hager cuddling their three little ones. In the sweet snapshot, the mother of three is wearing a yellow floral dress and hugging her four-year-old daughter Poppy, who is sitting on her lap. Quarantined: Mila initially struggled with not being able to go to church or see her maternal grandparents, George W. and Laura Bush, because of the coronavirus pandemic Sibling love: The little girl later declared it was their best Easter ever because it was the first one she got to spend with her baby brother Hal Henry is holding baby Hal, and the eight-month-old looks dapper in a pastel plaid blazer and matching shorts. The proud dad has his free arm around Mila, who is cozied up next to her baby brother. Jenna also shared photos of her daughters posing with their baby brother and Poppy giving her big sister Mila a hug. The final image in the post is a close-up of Hal lying on the bed in his little suit and matching pink and white striped bow tie. So sweet: Jenna posted a photo of herself kissing Hal on his first Easter She even posted an Instagram Stories photo of herself kissing Hal, writing: 'First time out of sweatpants in a while so we documented.' On Easter Monday, Jenna returned to Instagram to pay tribute to her eldest child on her seventh birthday. 'Happiest 7th Birthday to our Mila! Named after both your grandmothers, you have their love of life, love of books and love of laughter,' she wrote of her daughter, whose full name is Margaret Laura. 'Your empathy and kindness amaze. I hope you never have to guess how loved you are because our love for you is infinite!' Along with the heartwarming birthday message, Jenna posted sweet pictures of Mila reading the children's book 'Guess How Much I Love You' by Sam McBratney. Jenna, who has been appearing on the Today show via video chat, opened up about her daughter's birthday weekend on Monday morning. Look of love: Jenna's three children are all close with her parents, George W. and Laura. The former president and first lady are pictured with their grandchildren last year Looking back: Jenna and her family celebrated Christmas with her parents, her twin sister Barbara, and her brother-in-law Craig Coyne 'It was so sweet. Some friends of ours drove by on Saturday,' she told her co-host Hoda Kotb. 'They did a little car parade and they had signs that said 'Happy Birthday Mila.' The mom went on to admit that her daughter wasn't as pleased as she thought she would be and quickly realized the birthday surprise was a mistake. 'I wept. I thought it was the sweetest thing, but Mila was like, "Mom, why did you do this to me?" She was like, "I am humiliated and next time don't surprise me,"' she explained. 'I just thought it was so interesting because we learn stuff from our kids every day. I love surprises. I don't mind being the center of attention. I like a birthday, but Mila really didn't. It embarrassed her,' she recalled. 'I did it for her, but I realized maybe I did it for myself.' To pull off the surprise, Jenna told Mila that they were having a family meeting, which they have been doing amid the coronavirus pandemic. She said that as soon as she saw Mila's face she thought, 'Uh oh. This wasn't a great idea.' Birthday girl: On Easter Monday, Jenna returned to Instagram to share photos of Mila reading a book to pay tribute to her eldest daughter on her seventh birthday Whoops! Jenna revealed on the Today show on Monday that their friends had a surprise drive-by parade for Mila on Saturday, but the little girl thought it was humiliating Moving on: The mom said they are going to continue to celebrate Mila's big day by baking a cake and opening her gifts her grandmothers sent her The family has moved on from the snafu, and Jenna shared that they are going to continue to celebrate Mila's birthday when she is done with work. 'My mom and her grandmother, Henry's mom, sent a couple of gifts, and we're gonna bake a cake,' she said. 'It's simple, but I think as long as our kids feel loved that's the best that we can really do.' It was also a special week for Jenna's co-star Hoda Kotb, who celebrated her adopted daughter Hope's first Easter and birthday on Sunday. The proud mom shared several images and videos from her family's Easter weekendwhich was turned into a double celebration thanks to Hope's birthday milestone. Hoda, 55, and her fiance Joel Schiffman, 62, threw their youngest daughter a Sesame Street-themed celebration, with Hope following in the footsteps of her three-year-old sister Haley Joy, who is known to be a huge fan of the popular children's show. They made the party as festive as possible by organizing a Zoom call with their nearest and dearest, including Hoda's beloved mother Sameha, who is quarantined by herself at home. Riyadh, April 13 : The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors will hold a meeting on April 15, the Saudi Press Agency reported. The meeting will continue to discuss and take urgent actions needed to address the global challenge presented by the novel coronavirus, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday. Traditionally, the April's meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors is held in Washington D.C. on the side-lines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group Spring Meetings. Given the circumstances, G20 meetings are currently held virtually and more frequently. In their last meeting held on March 31, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors agreed on a roadmap to respond to coronavirus. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used fireside chats to inform and comfort a nation facing the Great Depression and war. (Associated Press) Harry S. Truman woke up on his first morning as president 75 years ago today to a country in mourning. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only man many Americans had ever known as president, was dead. World War II was won in Europe, but was not quite over. Vienna had just fallen to the Red Army, Prague was next, and Gen. George S. Patton was moving relentlessly to the east. Fighting continued in the Pacific. A fleet of American B29 Superfortresses pounded Tokyo, setting fires visible 100 miles away. With preparations underway for Roosevelts body to return to the White House from Warm Springs, Ga., grieving Americans considered a question that has special relevance today: What is the role of a president in times of testing and travails? Roosevelt had been both president and pastor. His fireside chats were conversational and comforting. His talks were composed in what he called, in October 1933, the simplest, clearest language of which I am capable. He identified himself with the average citizen, opening a talk in 1940, when the world was aflame in war, saying: As I sit here tonight with my own family... FDR never overpromised. Today we have reason to believe that things are a little better than they were two months ago," he said in May 1933. Industry has picked up, railroads are carrying more freight, farm prices are better, but I am not going to indulge in issuing proclamations of overenthusiastic assurance. We cannot bally-ho ourselves back to prosperity. I am going to be honest at all times with the people of the country." The U.S. Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief, but the founders never imagined that the president should be comforter-in-chief as well. On that sad morning in 1945, Truman found himself in the position of Abraham Lincolns successor, Andrew Johnson, in 1865, thrust by presidential death into the White House at the end of a debilitating military conflict without the gifts of his predecessor. Lincoln had held the hands of the wounded and the dying. FDR metaphorically had held the hand of a nation wounded by the Great Depression and then experiencing the death of 400,000 Americans in World War II. Story continues Truman knew that he did not possess the gifts needed to be the nations comforter and consoler. He compensated with plain speaking and hard work. Indeed, on that first full day of his presidency, April 13, 1945, he worked feverishly, consulting with military leaders and meeting with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill. He met twice with Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. But America missed its pastor. And it wasnt for another three decades that the pastoral arts truly became part of the presidential portfolio. For all his national-purpose eloquence, John F. Kennedy lacked those gifts. So did Lyndon B. Johnson and, especially, Richard M. Nixon. But the pastoral presidency came roaring back after Watergate. Taking office after Nixons resignation, Gerald R. Ford told the nation, I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers. And I hope that such prayers will also be the first of many. Ford was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, then as now a Sunday School teacher, though his pastoral effort in his "malaise" speech of 1979 was a debacle. Ronald Reagan may have been a virtual stranger to church services in his White House years, but he understood the power of a presidents "bully pulpit, as Theodore Roosevelt put it. Reagan was never so effective as when, in 1986, he invoked the poet John Gillespie Magee Jr.s lines in High Flight and spoke of the doomed Challenger astronauts as having slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." Bill Clinton, who as governor of Arkansas sang in the choir at Little Rocks Immanuel Baptist Church, was once recruited for the priesthood. He demurred, but as a presidential candidate described his platform as a "covenant. After the 1995 domestic-terrorist bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, he told an audience there: Today our nation joins with you in grief. We mourn with you. In the days that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, George W. Bush summoned FDR's call during his 1933 inauguration for the warm courage of national unity. At the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance service, Bush asked God to grant Americans patience and resolve. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come. Fourteen years later, Barack Obama sang Amazing Grace at the end of his eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. Obama opened his remarks by saying: The Bible calls us to hope. To persevere and have faith in things not seen. Now America faces a challenge often compared to the twin challenges of the Depression and war that FDR confronted. President Trump has said that being presidential is boring. Easter is over, Passover ends Thursday night. In this moment of deep crisis, the nation could use some presidential pastoral comfort. David M. Shribman is executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. President Trump has frequently asked Andrew Cuomo about the health of his COVID-19-stricken brother, Chris Cuomo, the New York governor revealed on Monday. Cuomo told Howard Stern that he did not believe Trump was happy that his brother, a CNN anchor and frequent critic of the president, contracted the coronavirus. Trump has routinely bashed CNN and its reporters and commentators whom he accuses of spreading fake news. Do you think [Trump's] happy your brother got coronavirus because he works for CNN? Stern asked the governor on his SiriusXM talk show on Monday. No, Cuomo replied. Hes been critical of Trump, Stern said. Do you think [Trump] sits there and says, Oh good, like theres an enemies list or something like that? I feel its that vicious. President Trump (left) frequently inquires about the health of CNN anchor and Trump critic Chris Cuomo (right), according to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo The governor (seen above in Albany last Tuesday) also praised Trump for 'delivering for New York' The governor replied: The president always makes a point of saying to me, How is Chris? Is he doing OK? And that's not in his usual character. We're not chit-chatty when we're on the phone. But he always makes a point to say that about Chris and always remembers my mother. On March 31, Chris Cuomo, 49, announced that he tested positive for coronavirus. Cuomo made the comments during an interview on Monday with radio host Howard Stern Since his diagnosis, he has done several shows while in quarantine from inside his Long Island home. During the national lockdown, Andrew Cuomo has been a frequent guest on his brothers nightly CNN show, during which the two men engage in friendly, sibling banter. Chris Cuomo has even returned the favor and remotely joined his brothers daily briefings, which are conducted in the state capital of Albany. Andrew Cuomo told Stern that he didnt think the president wishes ill toward his brother. Cuomo continued: So I don't think thatI think part of it is genuine, personal feeling of anger and part of it is a little theater that goes with politics, especially the way it's happening now in Washington. The governor told Stern that Trump has attacked his brother partially because of me and partially because of my brothers reporting. Andrew Cuomo, whose daily briefings about the coronavirus has earned him nationwide praise, has had a complicated relationship with the president, who has been accused by his critics of failing to adequately address the pandemic. One of those critics is Chris Cuomo, who ripped into Trump last week after the president called himself a cheerleader for this country during the coronavirus pandemic. CNN then cut back to Cuomo's basement as the host said exasperatedly: 'That's what leadership is! Anybody can tell people what they want to hear, and make it easy. And then you know what you get? Exactly where we are right now. 'That was the most asinine statement of leadership I have ever heard.' During his interview with Stern on Monday, Governor Cuomo praised Trump. He has delivered for New York. He has, Cuomo said of Trump. By and large it has worked. Cuomo complimented the president for deploying the USNS Comfort, the floating 1,000-bed hospital, to New York City to alleviate the local hospital system which is being stretched to the limit due to an onslaught of COVID-19 patients. The federal government had the Army Corps of Engineers set up a 2,500-bed makeshift hospital inside the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattans West Side. Cuomo told Stern that he and Trump have a frank exchange. I don't talk to Trump every single day, but I do talk to him when I need to talk to him, which is at least several times a week, the governor said. There has been no governor in the nation who has fought Trump as much as I have. And Trump has been nastier to me than he has been to any other governor. And that is okay, we are both New Yorkers, we speak our mind and if we have to disagree we disagree. And disagreement is good in politics. But during this, I said to him from the get-go, this is not about politics. This is not about personalities. We have to be better than that for the jobs we do. And I put my hand out in partnership to work with you and we'll call it straight. If you do the right thing by New York, I will say it. If you don't, I will say it. That is the plain truth in this situation. Since then, Howard, he has been good in delivering for New York. Cuomo and other governors like Ohios Mike DeWine, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Michigans Gretchen Whitmer, Californias Gavin Newsom, and Phil Murphy of New Jersey have been perceived by many as the real leaders in the crisis while Trump has taken a back seat. The New York governor also told Stern on Monday that he has cried during the current crisis. I can't get over the death numbers every day. I can't. I can't rationalize it, the governor said. I can say that New Yorkers were heroic, and the healthcare workers have been heroic and have done great work. We saved every life that we could because the healthcare workers were great. I can't get passed the death numbers. There's nothing that abates that pain. After his interview with Stern, the governor held his daily briefing in Albany where he announced that an additional 671 people across the state had died. As of Monday mid-day, the statewide death toll from COVID-19 stood at 10,056. The governor said that despite surpassing the grim 10,000-deaths milestone, there was reason for optimism. I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart, Cuomo said. I believe we can start on the path to normalcy. I will decide when to re-open the country - and Javanka will help me: Donald Trump says HE is in charge of ending the shutdown as he unveils 'taskforce' with Ivanka, Jared and other White House aides and says governors will have to follow his lead President Trump insisted that the call on when to reopen the country and the economy will be a 'decision by me' as it was revealed his task force on the vital matter will include cabinet members, his daughter, and his son-in-law. Trump hyped the decision on Twitter, after saying for days it would soon become time to 'reopen' the U.S. economy. Trump is setting up a new task force on reopening, with an announcement planned for Tuesday. 'A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!' The task force is expected to include Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared, who has taken a key coronavirus response role, fielding calls from hot-spots seeking protective gear and trying to line up deliveries. Both Ivanka Trump and Kushner have appeared with the president at separate White House coronavirus event Kushner at a White House briefing and Ivanka Trump at a small business meeting in the Roosevelt Room. 'A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!' President Trump tweeted about the decision to reopen the country The team will be headed by Trump's new chief of staff Mark Meadows, who previously headed the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Fox News reported. Also serving with be Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Other cabinet members to serve include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, White House advisers Larry Kudlow, Peter Navarro who penned memos warning of the impact of the coronavirus, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, along with other officials. Trump attacked the media and added confusion to how the decision to reopen would ultimately be made with a pair of tweets Monday. 'For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government,' Trump wrote. 'Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect...It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!' he wrote. It is state governors who issued the stay-at-home orders that took effect across the country. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence issued 'guidelines' but the administration and health officials have provided considerable discussion and feedback to state officials. Trump has previously noted on shut-down orders that it is governors who have imposed them, and he deferred to a group of GOP governors, many in rural states, who held back from issuing stay-home orders during as the coronavirus spread.Cuomo, who has been in frequent communication with the White House, said he is contacting a regional group of governors to set criteria and plans for reopening. Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner have advised him during the coronavirus pandemic 'Im not interested in political opinions. Im interested in what the experts say about this,' Cuomo said at his daily press briefing from Albany. 'This is a time for smart, competent effective government. Nothing else matters,' he said. 'The optimum is to have as coordinated a regional plan as you can,' said Cuomo. Trump had previously said he would like to get the country reopened by Easter, but then extended 15-day guidelines for an additional 30 days. Government infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday the nation could have a 'rolling reentry.' A couple are restoring a historic Dunkirk Little Ship that was one of the last to leave France during the evacuation after discovering it languishing in a field. Malcolm Jones and Janine Marshall found White Wing, a 28ft motor cruiser, on a farm near Porthmadog in North Wales five months ago. She carried six rescued soldiers. The couple spent 12 hours a day at a boatyard in Chertsey, Surrey, working on the dilapidated vessel. A Surrey couple are restoring a historic Dundirk Little Ship after locating it in North Wales They hope to complete the restoration when the current lockdown is lifted and are aiming to take White Wing back to Dunkirk for a Little Ships voyage next year. White Wing's whereabouts had remained a mystery for several years before Janine tracked it down after doing some research. She found out her last known location was at a boatyard in Snowdonia. Janine turned up there and White Wing was nowhere to be seen, prompting her to ask a passerby if he knew what became of her. Not expecting anything, she was thrilled to discover he knew its whereabouts. Malcolm, 62, a boat builder, said: 'We knew of White Wing and thought she had the most fantastic backstory and it would be wonderful if we could find her and restore her. 'White Wing was one of the last in the fleet to leave Dunkirk, carrying six men. Janine was able to track her down and we were very lucky to buy her from the owner, so now we are working to get her back to Dunkirk, where she deserves to be.' Janine added: 'White Wing has always been a passion of mine so I went on a mission to find her. I was able to find the last boatyard she was seen at so I got in my car and drove up to North Wales. Malcolm Jones (left) and Janine Marshall (right) sourced White Wing after tracking it down in a Porthmadog farm in North Wales just before last Christmas 'When I got to the boatyard there was no sign of her but when I asked a man if he knew of her whereabouts, amazingly he did. He directed me to a farm he said she was being kept at and there she was in a field.' Divine, recounting how he sailed for Dunkirk on White Wing on June 2, 1940, wrote: 'I went over with Rear Admiral Taylor at 8.45pm in the twin-screw river cruiser White Wing. 'The Admiral proposed to supervise the lifting of the pocket of men from Malo-les-Bains in person and also to take charge of other small boat movements through the night. 'White Wing was capable of approximately 12 knots but, owing to trouble with her starboard engine, did not make this speed all the way across.' The boat was one of the last to leave France after the historic battle of Dunkirk in World War 2 It was a hairy experience as a battery started dropping shells on them from land, with one being deposited just 20 yards from White Wing. Divine added: 'Having the admiral on board, we were not actually working the beaches but were in control of operations. 'We moved about as necessary, and after we had spent some time putting small boats in touch with their towing boats, the battery off Nieuport way began to drop shells on us. 'It seemed pure spite. The nearest salvo was about 20 yards astern, which was close enough. A number of small boats descended upon Dunkirk during the crucial battle in 1940 'We stayed there until everybody else had been sent back, and then went pottering around looking for stragglers.' Operation Dynamo began on May 27, 1940 and the beaches were ideal places to gather the men together. However, the 20 miles of gently sloping sand and shallow waters were the worst possible place to try to get the men aboard ships. To counteract this, 800 private boats sailed from Ramsgate in Kent to Dunkirk to rescue the soldiers. The Little Ships appeared off the beaches and long lines of men snaked into the sea as they waded out to meet the small craft, while in the distance destroyers and larger ships could be seen scurrying to and fro. Since Ghana recorded its first case of COVID-19 in March this year, there have been several donations to Government of Ghana from individuals, groups and companies to help contain the spread of the disease. To lead by example, President Akufo-Addo and some of his appointees have pledged to donate their three months' salaries to have enough funds to fight the disease which is killing many across the globe. Ghanas case currently stands at 566 and can be identified in ten regions, with the latest being the Western Region. Remaining only six regions in which government is making sure they do not record a case. It is as a result of this, that the gold mining firm, Gold Fields Ghana, has contributed over $830,000 to fight the disease in its operating areas in the Western Region and other parts of Ghana. The amount which has been channeled to two areas, $433.891 to Government of Ghana and the other $400,000 to the companys employees and host communities are expected to yield the results it has been earmarked for. Gold Fields Ghana extending the monetary support to Government of Ghana through the Ghana Chamber of Mines Thursday, April 9, 2020, the Executive Vice President and Head of West Africa Regions for Gold Fields Mr Alfred Baku, expressed that, the contribution was a timely response to governments call. This contribution represents our timely response to the call by the Government of Ghana to support in the fight against COVID 19, which has been spreading since Ghana reported its first case on 12 March 2020. Mr Baku further stated that the $400,000 Gold Fields Ghana is committing into the host communities points to how the company prioritises the healthy needs of those who are closely impacted by their operations. As a company which prioritises the health and safety of its employees, we have a duty to support the needy and vulnerable in our society in these challenging times. We believe our contribution will go a long way to flattening the curve and help us return to normal lives soon, Mr Baku said. The money quoted for the communities is for the purchasing of handheld thermometers, sanitizers, goggles, face masks, protective gowns and other COVID- 19 prevention equipment. Prior to the recording of a case in Ghana, Gold Fields had already established restrictive measures where employees went through screening to check body temperatures among others. The measures the company has taken, they believe, will help prevent the disease from getting close to the employees and host communities. It was the first week of March, and Bonnie Adell was scheduled for her gestational diabetes screening. Already there were two confirmed local cases of the coronavirus in San Francisco, and Zendesk, where she works, had sent its employees home. But the six-county shelter-in-place order was still more than a week away, and the test was important to ensure a healthy pregnancy, so she pulled on a mask and went to the lab. The waiting room was packed. As Adell spent three hours completing the test, she grew increasingly nervous, wondering how many people in the room might be infected with the coronavirus. I started to cry at one point, she says. After that, I was like, I am not going to the doctor. Since then, Adell, who is due to give birth on June 6, has been checking in with her physician over the phone and monitoring her weight and blood pressure at home. Her next in-person appointment is scheduled for Tuesday but she wishes she could skip that one, too. I want to make sure the baby is OK, she says, but I dont want to go. Many pregnant women in the Bay Area are grappling with the same competing impulses during the coronavirus pandemic. Theyre desperate for information about how the virus impacts pregnancy and trying to balance the need for care with the perceived risk of exposure in medical settings. Some are reconsidering where they want to deliver, turning to local birth centers and home birth in unprecedented numbers. There is precious little data on how COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, affects pregnant women and their babies. Initial reports out of China are encouraging, but that data are limited and based on small samples, says Vanessa Jacoby, vice chair of research with UCSF Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. She is working on a yearlong study of pregnant women with confirmed or suspected infection. For those who are currently pregnant, the lack of research is alarming. Emily Oster, Brown University economics professor and author of the parenting book Cribsheet, has received a cascade of emails from worried women. They ask whether the virus causes birth defects in the first trimester, how stress impacts fetal development, and whether they should go to the hospital for delivery or consider alternatives such as birth centers and home birth. The vast majority of births take place in hospitals. According to data from the Medical Board of California, midwives served as the primary caregivers for just 1% of births in San Francisco and Alameda counties in 2018. But that number is set to increase during the pandemic. The San Francisco Birth Center, a freestanding clinic with four midwives, can serve 12 clients per month but averages eight to 10. We arent generally at capacity, says director Nancy Myrick. But that has certainly all changed in the last few weeks. The birth center has signed 20 new clients in the past two weeks. April and May are full, June is close, and July is on its way. Many are late transfers, switching from hospitals after 34 weeks gestational age. Everybody I know has a wait list for May, Myrick says. The home birth midwives that I know are full. I dont think that there is capacity for many more births. Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Home birth midwife Kelly Murphy has fielded an influx in inquiries in recent weeks, and midwife Renee Lepreau is nearly booked until fall. At Natural Resources store and community center in San Francisco, birthing tub rentals are up 25%, and attendees of virtual classes are asking about hospital alternatives, says doula and instructor Lauren Miller. Some women dont want to choose between their partner and a hired birth assistant, or doula, at hospitals where delivery support is now limited to a single person. Others are worried about exposure in facilities where coronavirus patients might also be receiving care. That was an issue for Soomi Kim, due on June 7. Kim delivered her first child in a hospital, but after doing prenatal care at Kaiser Permanente Oakland, three weeks ago she contracted with Lepreau of June Moon Birth & Midwifery in Berkeley. I never in a million years thought I would do home birth, Kim says. Since transferring, however, shes feeling more confident in her birth plan. I can sleep now. Before there was so much uncertainty. Some of that uncertainty stems from evolving safety procedures at hospitals and lack of communication about current policies and restrictions. Sutter Healths California Pacific Medical Center has consolidated labor and delivery at its Van Ness campus and created a dedicated entrance for the maternity ward. Everyone is temperature-checked and screened for symptoms at the door, and a partner who shows signs of infection isnt allowed in. Mothers believed to have the coronavirus are treated as if positive until tested, and everyone wears surgical masks during labor, then dons N95 masks for pushing or cesarean section, says Dr. Yuan-Da Fan, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology. Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Kaiser Permanente has implemented similar protocols. Some prenatal visits have gone virtual so patients can stay home, and everyone who enters the facility is screened and masked upon arrival. If a woman is confirmed or believed to be infected, practitioners will wear coronavirus-specific protective equipment during delivery. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend rooming newborns separately from mothers who test positive for the coronavirus. But Dr. Nancy Goler, OB/GYN and associate executive director for the Permanente Medical Group, says that decision would be made with the family. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Fan says newborns of infected mothers would be observed for 24 hours, and the mother would be advised to isolate at home when she wasnt breastfeeding. Patients do have some concerns, but my job is to reassure everybody that they should stay calm, and well provide the best care to every mother, he says. Solene Delecourt had planned to give birth at Stanford Medical Center but found the hospitals coronavirus rules too strict. At 37 weeks, she made the switch and gave birth to her son Louis at home on April 1. There are risks and benefits of being at home, and there are risks and benefits of being at the hospital. I just felt like suddenly the hospital had a bump in risk, Delecourt says. Her delivery at home went like in a dream. It was so peaceful and just very calm. Not every pregnancy is a good candidate for an out-of-hospital birth. Midwives check patients to ensure theyre low-risk and have the potential for spontaneous, unmedicated delivery, and Lepreau asks clients to read a statement from the New York City Homebirth Collective that cautions against choosing home birth out of panic or fear. I wouldnt do this work if I didnt believe that home birth was safe for low-risk pregnancy, Lepreau says. But if people were worried about hemorrhaging at home and resuscitation at home, those risks havent changed. Your risk of having a hemorrhage at home isnt any different during COVID. Myrick agrees. Choosing the birth center, she says, isnt just a choice to avoid the hospital, but a choice to give birth in a really special, supported, safe, lovely place. Bonnie Adell is committed to delivering at CPMC, but navigating pregnancy during the pandemic has sapped the fun from what should be a happy, optimistic time. Out-of-town family wont be able to visit after the birth, and she worries about who will take care of her 2-year-old when she goes into labor. Expecting a baby right now has been extremely hard, extremely depressing, extremely stressful, she says. I dont have much of a sense of joy with the pregnancy. I think its a scary time to imagine bringing a baby into this world, Myrick says. We are spending a lot of time talking to folks about how to find peace and calm and joy in what should be an incredibly joyous time in their life and to help keep a focus on that. Sarah Feldberg is The San Francisco Chronicles assistant features editor. Email: sarah.feldberg@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sarahfeldberg Leanna Harmon, a high school junior enrolled in Hamilton County Collegiate High at Chattanooga State, was elected president of the Tennessee Region of Phi Theta Kappa during the Regional Convention. At 16, she may be the youngest regional president to serve, and she is the first regional officer from Chattanooga States Alpha Beta Mu chapter to serve in several years, says Chattanooga State PTK Adviser Miranda Cagle Taj. Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society is the international honor society for two-year colleges. As regional president, Ms. Harmon will with work with the regional officer team and the Regional Advisory Board to plan events across the state and promote chapter engagement in the coming year. Ms. Harmon says that she enjoys being surrounded by like-minded students, and as regional president looks forward to the prospect of providing opportunities for members to grow as leaders and scholars. I believe that one of the biggest challenges of being president will be continuing to create an environment that feels like a family among organization officers and members, she states. During the convention awards ceremony, Alpha Beta Mu won First Place Distinguished Honors in Action Theme for the chapter's research on "Visions of Justice" under the Honors Study Topic "Transformations: Acknowledging, Assessing, and Achieving Change." The chapter was recognized as a Five Star Chapter, the highest star designation a chapter can receive under the international society's Chapter Development Plan, shares Ms. Taj. Additionally, the TN Region recognized Alpha Beta Mu with a Chapter of Light Award for their involvement and initiatives during the 2019-2020 year, a year in which Leanna served as chapter president. As a Collegiate High student, Ms. Harmon's major is undeclared; however she is most passionate about business and plans to transfer to a four-year university majoring in business management following graduation in 2021. In addition to PTK, she is also a member of Chattanooga States Umbrella Club and was recently elected as vice president of the newly formed Asian Culture Club. PTK has opened up many doors for me during my time at ChattState, shares Ms. Harmon. It is a welcoming community that makes you so passionate about everything that people are achieving, she adds. For more information about PTK visit chattanoogastate.edu/phi-theta-kappa. Patients who recover from COVID-19 can still experience lasting bodily damage, according to researchers. For a world grappling with the respiratory disease, reality has set in that even when the pandemic is over, it is not really over with its repercussions. The sickest patients experience an infection that proves to be a full-body assault, resulting in damage beyond the lungs. After they have recovered and are cleared of the virus, physicians have observed evidence of the illness' lingering effects. Studies were conducted to cured novel coronavirus patients from China, where the illness was first detected in November, and showed impairment of the liver and heart. "COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disorder," according to Dr. Harlan Krumholtz, a cardiologist at Yale University. Scientists in China assessed the blood test results of 34 coronavirus patients over the duration of their being admitted to the hospital. In those who were cured of mild and severe diseases alike, the researchers found that several of the biological measures did not return to normal. Krumholtz said the coronavirus "can affect the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the endocrine system, and the blood system." Inflammation from the immune response of the body has been connected to strokes and heart attacks. An impaired liver function was still the condition even after the patients tested negative for the live virus two times and they were geared to be discharged. Cardiologists are contemplating the immediate effects of the coronavirus on the heart and they are asking how much of the bodily damage could be long-lasting. Also Read: Four Teens Attack Elderly Asian Woman on a Bus, Suspecting She Has COVID-19 Some coronavirus survivors are experiencing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a severe complication that, for the worst-affected patients, can last a lifetime. The Lancet, lauded as the doyen of medical journals, was one of the first to issue a warning in a report in February. The report showed that 29 percent of a cluster of patients in Wuhan whom the researchers observed from mid-December to early January had got ARDS. Telltale hints of coronavirus, including fever, dry cough and difficulty breathing, have been well-publicized, but there has been less coverage about the long-term health of those who contract the virus and survive. Patients who are designated to the intensive care unit and are in need of ventilators are more likely to suffer from lung damage and ARDS. However, hospital measures that keep patients lucid and mobile could boost long-term odds. But many ICU doctors say the coronavirus pandemic's strain on hospitals and its infectious nature is making it difficult to stick to those measures. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), SARS, under the family of the coronavirus that behaves much like COVID-19, also impaired the lungs of those infected and led to permanent damage to their capacity to breathe normally. Researchers also ponder if the virus that causes COVID-19 might stay dormant in the body for years or decades and eventually spring back to life, much like how the herpes virus that causes chickenpox can recuperate as shingles. The number of infected cases worldwide has soared beyond the one million mark. Recovered cases are nearly 400,000. Related Article: Fact Check: Harvard Scientist Arrested for Creating Coronavirus, Selling it to China? @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, speaks at a Geneva news conference in early March 2020. (Salvatore Di Nolfi / Keystone) Spain began easing parts of its coronavirus lockdown Monday, and other Western European countries such as Italy and Austria appeared poised to follow suit with fewer restrictions on public activities. But will the easing of constraints, however limited, prove to be a beacon of hope or a cautionary tale? To onlookers in the United States, where many people are staying at home to help curb the spread of the virus, events in hard-hit European nations have been like dispatches from the future. Before COVID-19 fully established itself in hot spots such as New York, it devastated vulnerable Spanish nursing homes, filled the obituary pages of Italian provincial newspapers, and unnerved French villagers with a wave of urban refugees. Now, the death rate across much of Western Europe apparently is beginning to level off. With President Trump musing about at least a partial reopening of the U.S. economy in May, these European countries often grouped with the United States as advanced democracies with modern medical systems might by then be experiencing a glimmer of normality, or showing signs of a new cycle of infection, illness and death. Within Europe, as in the U.S., governments are wrestling with the same decisions, with varying local circumstances. How best to protect essential workers. How to balance considerations of public health and economic harm. How to shield the elderly and other vulnerable individuals, while allowing those who are healthy to venture out. As health officials constantly admonish, actions taken a few weeks ago have a crucial bearing on what will happen today or tomorrow. And that will in turn affect the epidemiological picture weeks from now. We think it is going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come, until we can all have a vaccine that will protect us, World Health Organization special envoy David Nabarro said in a weekend interview on NBC. And the United Nations agency believes there will be small outbreaks that will emerge sporadically, and they will break through our defenses. Story continues The WHO on Monday warned countries against easing lockdowns too fast. "Control measures can only be lifted if the right public-health measures are in place," the organization's chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned in a briefing by video link from Geneva. With fresh decision-making expected in coming days, here is a look at the state of restrictions in some Western European countries: Spain Starting Monday, workers were allowed to return to some manufacturing and construction jobs work that cannot be done remotely operating under strict safety guidelines. In a country of about 47 million, coronavirus-related deaths have exceeded 17,000, but new infections are dropping off somewhat, the government said. Weathering some criticism over moves to ease restrictions, officials are pledging to proceed cautiously. The health minister, Salvador Illa, told reporters in Madrid on Monday that there were no projected dates for ending the strict isolation orders that most Spaniards have faced since March 27. And he promised any further steps will be science-based. Stores remain shuttered and most services halted, and Spanish officials are distributing millions of masks, handing them out on the limited numbers of trains and buses that are running. Italy The country has been under lockdown for five weeks, and most restrictions will continue until at least May 3. The death toll now exceeds 20,000, but with the rate of new coronavirus cases slowing, a narrow range of businesses bookstores, stationers and childrens clothing shops will be allowed to open on Tuesday. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said last week that manufacturing might be the next sector to resume, depending on trends. Regional leaders have some discretion; in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, for example, open-air markets will be allowed to operate beginning Tuesday, with social distancing urged. And residents will be allowed to take exercise outside what had been a strict 200-yard radius of their homes, but those out in public must wear masks. Austria A lockdown that began on March 16 shut down everything except supermarkets and medical facilities. But nonessential businesses including clothiers, hardware stores and plant nurseries will be able to open starting Tuesday, based on size. Others will follow on a staggered basis: shopping malls, beauty salons and barbershops are to open May 1; hotels and restaurants, tentatively in mid-May. No large public gatherings are envisioned until at least June. Masks became mandatory this month in Austrian food stores and pharmacies; starting Tuesday, they will be required in other shops and on public transportation. Britain A shutdown is now in its fourth week, and Britains death toll stands at more than 11,000. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, after what he has described as a life-threatening brush with COVID-19 that landed him in the intensive-care unit last week, is out of the hospital and recuperating at the prime ministers official country retreat, Chequers. Johnson was criticized for a slow start on the shutdown, which is expected to be extended for at least three more weeks pending a formal review Thursday. There are rising concerns about a coronavirus recession, but British officials on Monday acknowledged that the outbreaks peak had probably not yet arrived, and credited social distancing and other measures with slowing the virus' spread. Germany While Spain, Italy, Britain and France have all topped 10,000 deaths, Germanys fatality toll is relatively low, less than a third of that. The reasons why including a younger population, widespread testing, and an ample supply of hospital beds and medical equipment are still being studied. Restaurants and most shops have been closed in Germany since March 22. But Reuters news agency last week said Germany tentatively planned to begin a phased resumption of public life later this month, coupled with measures including making masks mandatory in public, limits on gatherings, and rapid tracing of contacts of infected individuals. German Chancellor Angela Merkel startled compatriots when she warned more than a month ago that up to 70% of the population was likely to contract the virus eventually, but she said restrictions aimed at controlling the spread should prevent the healthcare system from being overtaxed. France President Emmanuel Macron on Monday extended a strict lockdown until May 11. In a speech to the nation from Elysee Palace, he sought to walk a fine line warning that relaxing the nearly month-old lockdown too soon could be catastrophic but proffering hopes of a not-too-distant return to normality. "We have made difficult decisions," Macron said. Under the now-extended orders, people are only supposed to leave their homes for shopping and other essential tasks. Schools could reopen after mid-May, he said. Sweden An outlier among its European neighbors, Sweden has allowed restaurants and most businesses to remain open amid the pandemic, and critics inside and outside the country have been irked by the sight of Swedes chatting in cafes and strolling city streets. Elementary schools are open and domestic flights continue. The government has taken some steps, banning gatherings of more than 50 people, closing high schools and universities, and urging the elderly and otherwise vulnerable to sequester themselves. But while Swedens death toll is relatively low fewer than 1,000 as of Monday its fatality rate among confirmed COVID-19 cases is worryingly high, and some public health experts are sounding the alarm over a potentially large reservoir of undiagnosed cases. Lawmakers are to meet this week to discuss stricter measures, including bringing the country into line with World Health Organization recommendations on self-isolation and contact-tracing plans. (Newser) As if restaurants needed any more hurt these days: New Jersey police say a Florida man enacted a cruel scam on more than a dozen restaurants in the state. Sudeep Khetani, 34, is accused of calling pizzerias and restaurants and placing hefty orders that totaled several thousand dollars. "Each time he indicated he would pick up the order or it was intended for local police," reads a press release from the South Brunswick Township Police Department. Instead, the orders would go uncollectedand not paid for. NJ.com reports that a number of the bogus orders were placed at businesses that had previously donated food to police and area hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic. story continues below Authorities say they were able to find the phone number Khetani was calling from despite his use of a program designed to mask your number, but he has yet to be located. NBC News reports he's thought to be near Orlando. "In several of the follow-up calls the pizzerias made to the phone number that placed the order, Khetani would make statements about Italians and wished they would be affected with the coronavirus," police said. He's been charged with theft thus far. The Bridgewater Courier News reports Khetani, who is formerly of South Brunswick, is on probation in Florida for selling bogus Disney World tickets. (Read more weird crimes stories.) At least 116 people cleared of the virus have tested positive again, raising questions for authorities. At least 116 people cleared of the coronavirus have tested positive again in South Korea, raising questions for health authorities trying to prevent a second wave of infections. The number of such relapse cases more than doubled from 51 reported last week, even as officials suggested they would soon look at easing strict recommendations aimed at preventing new outbreaks. South Korea reported only 25 new cases of the coronavirus overall on Monday, continuing a weeks-long decline. To date, the country has reported a total of 10,537 cases and 217 deaths. Officials are still investigating the cause of the relapses, but Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), said the virus may have been reactivated, rather than the patients being reinfected. Other experts said faulty tests may be playing a role, or remnants of the virus may still be in patients systems. Reporting from the capital Seoul, Al Jazeeras Rob McBride said the developments were worrying for officials worldwide trying to understand the virus. Does that mean that there had been a problem in testing? Does it mean that there are many more questions about this virus that the experts simply dont know? Could it be mutating in some form? said McBride. So there are questions and of course theyre questions that are important not only here in South Korea but with epidemiologists the world over, who are in the thick of it as the pandemic advances, he said. Possible false positives Archie Clements, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Curtin University in Perth, Australia, told Al Jazeera the growing number of those testing positive again in South Korea may simply be because no diagnostic test is perfect for any disease and false positives are a fact of testing a large population, especially during the outbreak of a new virus. Clements also said it is possible the virus is reactivating in the apparently recovered, but noted it was unlikely that those who had previously tested positive and were later cleared had independently picked up the virus a second time. I think what is very, very unlikely is that these people are being reinfected by other people, said Clements. Theres plenty of evidence to suggest that there is quite a strong immune response to infection with coronavirus, and that should protect people from infection for a period of time. Whats not currently known is for how long. Easing restrictions South Korea, which has been hailed for its speedy and widespread testing, plans to send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States on Tuesday in the first such shipment following a request from US President Donald Trump, a Seoul official told Reuters news agency on Monday. At the same time, government leaders have called on South Koreans to continue to follow guidelines and restrictions on social gatherings, but hinted that such measures could soon be eased. At a meeting on disaster management on Monday, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said the government would soon be looking to loosen the guidelines, which call for people to stay at home, avoid social gatherings of any type, and only go out for essential reasons. Later this week, we plan to review our intensive social distancing campaign that we have carried out so far and discuss whether we will switch to routine safety measures, he said. Chung cautioned that even when the restrictions are eased, the country will not return to life as before the outbreak. We need a very cautious approach because any premature easing of social distancing could bring irreversible consequences, and have to ponder deeply about when and how we switch to the new system, he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Addis Ababa Mon, April 13, 2020 23:42 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd1a69c3 2 World COVID-19,Saudi-Arabia,Ethiopia Free Saudi Arabia has deported nearly 3,000 Ethiopian migrants in recent days, despite concerns that such operations could hasten the spread of the coronavirus, the United Nations says. Since mid-March, the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) has registered 2,870 Ethiopian returnees, all but 100 of whom were sent back from Saudi Arabia, IOM spokesman Alemayehu Seifeselassie said on Monday. A humanitarian worker familiar with the deportations, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, put the total at "about 3,000" and said most had arrived from Saudi Arabia in the past 10 days. "The expulsion and deportation of Ethiopian irregular migrants while their country's COVID-19 response is under-prepared puts them in harm's way," Catherine Sozi, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia, wrote in a position paper seen Monday by AFP. The migrants are kept in detention facilities in Saudi Arabia before being flown back to Ethiopia, and it is unclear how thoroughly Saudi authorities are screening them for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Ethiopian government had requested that such deportations be halted until it could set up 30 quarantine centers in Addis Ababa, Sozi said in her paper. But they have continued even though "only seven quarantine centres can host returnees" and "much work remains" to make Ethiopian quarantine centers compliant with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, Sozi wrote. The Ethiopian Public Health Institute on Monday referred questions about the deportations to the country's foreign ministry, which did not respond to a request for comment. Ethiopia has reported just 74 cases of COVID-19 and three deaths, but testing remains limited and experts fear the country's weak health system could quickly be overwhelmed. Ethiopians have long looked to Saudi Arabia as an escape from poor economic prospects and state repression, hoping to find work despite not having legal status. To get there, many board overcrowded boats that are at constant risk of sinking during sea crossings that can last up to 24 hours. Up to half a million Ethiopians were in Saudi Arabia when officials there launched a crackdown on illegal migration in 2017, according to the IOM. Since then, around 10,000 Ethiopians on average have been deported monthly, including in January and February. The humanitarian worker said there was a two-week break in deportations beginning around the time Ethiopia announced its first COVID-19 case on March 13. But flights have resumed despite the fact that Ethiopia is straining to accommodate the migrants. "The quarantine measures currently in place need to be improved, and the current medical staff needs to be increased and better prepared and equipped to assist... all newly arrived migrants," the aid worker said. "These migrants are very vulnerable. They have undertaken an extremely dangerous journey and many arrive in Ethiopia with high medical and mental health needs." The coronavirus pandemic on Monday (April 13, 2020) moved close to infect over 19,00,000 people around the world. According to the COVID-19 data by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), as of 10:20 PM IST on Monday, there were around 18,83,119 people around the globe who have been tested positive for the coronavirus. The global death count surged to 1,17,569. The United States (US) has been the worst-hit nation that has reported close to 30% of the total confirmed cases in the world. The US now has over 5,60,891 COVID-19 positive cases in the country. This includes all the 50 states of the mainland, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as reported by CNN. Spain which has been under a complete lockdown since March 15, is at the second spot with around 1,69,496 coronavirus confirmed cases. Italy, that announced the restrictions in the movement of people on March 10, has seen a decline in the number of confirmed cases. It reported over 3,153 cases on Monday compared to 4,092 infections on Sunday. The number of new cases was the lowest since April 7. France with 1,33,6685 infections, Germany with 1,28,002 cases, the United Kingdom with 89,564 are few of the other severely-hit countries. China's total count of the confirmed cases touched 83,213, while Iran and Turkey witnessed over 73,303 and 61,049 cases respectively. The US remained top on the list of the most deaths due to the coronavirus where the death toll surged to 22,861. New York reported over 6,898 deaths. Italy on Monday became the second country in the world to see over 20,000 deaths. The death count rose by 566 on Monday, up from 431 the day before and jumped to 20,465. Spain reported over 17,489 deaths while in France, around 14,393 French people succumbed to the fatal virus. The UK (11,329), Iran (4,585), Belgium (3,903) and Hubei China (3,221) are the other countries on the list of the most deaths due to the coronavirus. More than 50 new defendants, mainly from Eastern Europe, have been added to a legal action Miriam O'Callaghan is taking against Facebook over alleged defamatory adverts. The defendants, many of whom are Estonian, were included in the High Court case after the television presenter secured an order requiring the social media giant to provide information which would assist in their identification. Ms O'Callaghan (60) has alleged false and malicious adverts containing her image and name appeared on Facebook and Instagram in May 2018, wrongly suggesting she had left her job with RTE's Prime Time to promote skincare products. Identities Users who clicked on links to avail of "free trials" for the products are said to have reported having unauthorised debits taken from their bank accounts. Those behind the alleged scam were unknown when the case was initially filed in March last year. However, a total of 51 new defendants were added after information was provided by Facebook, which owns Instagram. This happened after the television presenter, who is being represented by solicitor Paul Tweed, secured what is known as a Norwich Pharmacal order. This requires a third party, in this case Facebook, to disclose the identity of an unknown wrongdoer, having somehow been mixed up in the wrongdoing. Under the order, Facebook had to give Ms O'Callaghan's lawyers basic subscriber information, payment method details and business manager account information about those behind the adverts. The case is due back before the High Court later this month. Ms O'Callaghan has a motion seeking for Facebook to produce its defence, which has yet to be filed. She has claimed the adverts exploited the trust placed in her by the Irish public and damaged her good name and reputation. In the proceedings she is seeking a permanent injunction restraining publication of the adverts and damages for malicious falsehood, unlawful appropriation of personality, breaches of her constitutional rights and defamation. The case is one of several where Facebook has figured as a defendant in the Irish courts in recent times. The social media company has its international headquarters in Dublin. The most recent lawsuit was initiated on Tuesday by French luxury goods conglomerate Cartier. No papers have been filed as of yet in that case, but it is understood to relate to posts that allegedly advertised counterfeited goods. NORTH GREENBUSH The bodies of five elderly people who died alone at home recently went undiscovered for five days or more as social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic may have led to them going unnoticed, authorities said Monday. This was the first time over the last 14 years that Rensselaer County death investigators have seen so many unattended deaths with such a gap between when the deceased were last seen and their bodies discovered, said Mary Fran Wachunas, the county director of public health. Theres so much isolation now. Sometimes theres too much isolation, Wachunas said. Albany, Saratoga and Schenectady county officials said they have not had a similar experience at this time. State Police reviewed its records and said it found one such death in the town of Berlin in Rensselaer County during the past month. There isnt any data that I can point to that shows we have responded to an increase in the number of unattended deaths, where the deceased hasnt been located for an extended period of time, said Trooper Kerra Burns, a spokeswoman for State Police Troop G, which covers 10 counties. Latest coronavirus-related cancellations, postponements The latest coronavirus numbers in NY Sign up for the Times Union coronavirus newsletter More Information Suggestions for checking regularly on neighbors and family so they're not forgotten: Call on the telephone Contact by text message Send messages via social media. Visit residence at a safe distance such as pulling your car into their driveway and waving Source: Rensselaer County See More Collapse Full coronavirus coverage The recent Rensselaer County deaths included two in North Greenbush with the others in Troy and the Schaghticoke area. The county is not releasing details of the deaths. We are becoming increasingly concerned that in some segments of our population, there is too much isolation and disconnection. Hopefully, residents can be encouraged to check in on their neighbors, either by phone, text, a message on social media or even pulling your car into their driveway and waving. We do not want people feeling lost or forgotten during this time," County Executive Steve McLaughlin said. North Greenbush Police Chief David Keevern said his department was called to the homes of two town residents who lived alone. One of them was reported by a Times Union newspaper carrier when their newspapers began piling up outside. A neighbor, a newspaper carrier or a delivery person may be the person who calls police to investigate if the deceased doesnt have family regularly checking a relative who lives alone, said Keevern. A quick check by anyone who has direct contact with an elderly person can change everything, the chief said. Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years. If we have people checking in regularly that can make all the difference. They may be reminded just to call the doctor, Keevern said. There is no way of predicting an unattended death will occur, officials said. Usually, an autopsy is not performed if there are available medical records or a local police investigation determines there was no foul play involved. Saratoga County Coroner Susan Hayes-Masa said she was aware of the unusual spate of bodies being discovered days after the person died in Rensselaer County. Hayes-Masa said Saratoga County has not had any such deaths recently. The typical unattended death is discovered within 24 hours, according to Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo. Albany County has not seen many unattended deaths at this time, said Coroner Timothy Cavanaugh of Watervliet. The death of a person is more likely to go unnoticed outside of these unusual times during the summer, when relatives and friends may go away on vacation, said Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy. Wachunas said its important to engage people who live alone. Rensselaer County sees its Meals-on-Wheels program as a form of staying in touch with older residents. The countys program has expanded from serving 450 residents to more than 1,100 residents since the stay-at-home was issued. The county employees and volunteers delivering the meals go to residents front doors to drop off the meals at least three days a week. Staff writer Paul Nelson contributed to this report. The United States continues to render security assistance to Ukraine despite the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine wrote about this on Twitter. Even during COVID-19, our security assistance to Ukraine steadily continues! Last week, we delivered more vehicles for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to use in the JFO zone, reads the statement. According to the embassy, the United States stands strongly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's aggression. As reported, as of Monday morning, Ukraine had 3,102 laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases, including 93 deaths and 97 cases of recovery. The number of people infected with the coronavirus worldwide rose to 1,853,517. Deaths from the disease reached 111,257. iy Wuhan, once the epicenter of COVID-19, is now receiving close attention from the international community as it lifted outbound travel restrictions and orderly restored outbound traffic on Wednesday, April 8. Wuhan awakens from two months of coronavirus isolation, and the end of lockdown has a huge significance for the entire China. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia had thrown the city into a 76-day stagnation, but the unusual experiences of the anti-pandemic battle will always be remembered by history, astonishing the world with indomitable Chinese spirit and unyielding Chinese power. Chinas decisive and strict lockdown of a city with a population of over 10 million demonstrated the countrys responsibility for its peoples lives and health, its institutional advantage to concentrate resources to accomplish large undertakings, as well as its outstanding leadership, coping capacity, mobilization and implementation. China, racing against time to achieve a final victory, displayed its image of a responsible major country and received high reputation from the international society. Whats unforgettable for the world in this fight against the pandemic is also the heroic people in the heroic city. Wuhan was a window for the world to know more about China during this special period. WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward said that China has demonstrated phenomenal collective action and cooperation spirit. He noted that every Chinese has a high sense of responsibility and is willing to sacrifice and make contribution to defeating the virus. Foreign experts agreed that Chinas forceful measures have significantly changed the stats curve that demonstrates the development of the pandemic. A joint research done by American, UK and Chinese scientists published on Science indicated that Wuhan travel restriction delayed spread of the virus to other cities in China by 2.91 days, and reduced total COVID-19 cases by 96 percent. I would like to appreciate them and thank them for their cooperation for believing that the actions they are taking protect the people and protect the rest of the world, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference in February. To the people of Wuhan, it is recognized that the world is in your debt. Aylward also expressed his appreciation to Wuhan and its people. He believes it is Chinese peoples resilience and dedication that have largely contained the spread of the virus. The success in Wuhan inspired people across the world that are still in fight against the pandemic, and the citys approaches and Chinese experiences, such as traffic control and building makeshift hospitals, offered valuable reference for other affected countries. Wuhan provides a window into the uncertain, post-virus future, said Bloomberg in a recent report. The Lancet also noted that evidence suggests that the colossal public health efforts of the Chinese government have saved thousands of lives, saying there are important lessons that presidents and prime ministers can learn from Chinas experience. Dominique Bertrand, president of French National Commission of Public Health said that Chinas quarantine measures achieved very good results, and set an important reference for France. In an open letter to Wuhan, Olivier Guyonvarch, Consul General of France in the city said China-France friendship has set a great example for the mutual assistance they offered in the pandemic. He believes only by solidarity can the world achieve the final victory over COVID-19. His words revealed that Wuhans success has enlightened and injected confidence into the world. From the bitter cold winter to the warm spring with the blooming cherry blossoms, Wuhan has achieved significant results in containing the virus, inspiring the people all over the world. Wuhan, singing an anthem for life, is conveying a message to the world that human beings will finally prevail. By fighting the pandemic with solidarity and cooperation, the dark clouds of the virus will finally be expelled, and human beings will eventually embrace the vigorous spring. Los Angeles, April 13 : Actress Goldie Hawn has said that Hollywood used to be "sleazy" when she found fame but things are changing for the better courtesy the #MeToo movement. "Back then we had to make our way around the patriarchal society, how men, the culture and the world, looked at women. A lot of it could be sleazy. I went through that. A lot of it could be: 'You're powerful now; who do you think you are?' Some of it is stopping women from doing the things they want to do, and in relationships, making women feel bad about themselves," Hawn told The Guardian newspaper, reports femalefirst.co.uk. The "Wildcats" actress took everyone by surprise in her fifties by taking a 15-year hault from filming, making her comeback opposite actress-comedienne Amy Schumer in "Snatched" in 2017 and she said she was simply ready to move on. "I wasn't going to wait for a phone to ring. And I certainly wasn't going to continue to produce, because I produced for like 25 years and I didn't want to do that any more. I'd done it, I did it, it was done. Great, but now it's time to move on." Hawn has decided to focus on learning more about the human condition, which eventually led to her founding Mind Up, an evidence-based social-emotional learning curriculum for children from age four to 13 years. WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a blow to the US oil industry but it will recover after the crisis, US Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said in a statement following the new production cut deal reached on Sunday by OPEC+ oil producers. "Under the Trump Administration, America has ushered in a historic era of growth in energy production. While the demand disruption caused by COVID-19 and the price war have greatly harmed the industry, I am confident it will soon bounce back stronger than ever before," Brouillette said in a Sunday statement. He thanked US President Donald Trump for his contribution to the Sunday OPEC+ agreement to collectively reduce oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day. "Today, thanks to President Trump's leadership, Russia and Saudi Arabia have finalized a historic deal, ending a price war that has caused unprecedented uncertainty in global oil markets," the Secretary of Energy said. Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that the new OPEC+ deal was "great" and thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia for the achievement. According to the US president, the new deal "will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States." On Friday, Trump said that the United States would cut oil production to make up the difference for Mexico and the country would reimburse later. Mexico had refused to support the proposed production cuts, saying it was ready to reduce the national oil production by only 100,000 barrels per day in May-June instead of the previously discussed 400,000 barrels. In May 2019, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) had said that the water from the holy river Ganga was absolutely unfit for "direct drinking". In October 2019 the UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) had stated that the river water unfit even for bathing. BCCL/FILE According to UPPCB the level of Coliform and Fecal Coliform bacteria in the river water was so high that against the maximum permissible limit of 500 MPN (most probable number)/100 ML of water for both bacteria, 40,000 MPN of Coliform and 22,000 MPN of Fecal Coliform bacteria was measured in the Ganga, in Jana village of Kanpur. BCCL But since March this year, since the country went into lockdown, which also forced the closure of the industries along its banks, the water quality has been improving dramatically. According to reports, the quality has improved so much that now it is fit for drinking. BCCL The Times of India quoting BD Joshi, Environmental Scientist and Ex-professor at the Gurukul Kangri University reported that Ganga waters at Rishikesh and Haridwar have become very clean and after a long time that Ganga water has become good for achaman (ritual sipping) in Haridwar. According to Joshi, the cause behind cleaner Ganga water is a 500 per cent decrease in total dissolved solid (TDS), industrial effluent, dharamshalas, sewage from hotels and lodges. AFP In Haridwar, Har Ki Pauri Ghat, which used to be surrounded by lakh of pilgrims per day, is closed for the visitors amid the lockdown to contain coronavirus spread. "The Ganga is clean and pure today. Fish and other marine life are visible in the water. The ghats are fully clean," Har Ki Pauri temple priest told ANI. "We all want to see Ganga in such a beautiful state. It is a temporary phase due to lockdown. We will be happy if it remains in such a state even after devotees' visit here," another priest said. According to experts, the quality has improved by 40-50 percent as compared to earlier. BCCL One of the major factors attributed to this significant improvement is the shutting down of industries and other manufacturing units that use to discharge large volumes of effluents and toxicants into the river ecosystem. "There has been 40-50 percent improvement in the quality of water in Ganga," Dr. PK Mishra, Professor at Chemical Engineering and Technology, IIT-BHU told ANI. "The water quality has improved but the water levels are low. Once the water levels increase, Ganga will appear completely clean" a local resident said. Besides Kanpur, locals in Varanasi also said that water in the Ganga river has seen improvement in quality as is apparently more clearer. "There is a lot of difference. Today, the water looks clean. One of the biggest reasons behind this is that today all factories are closed," said a local. Last week the real-time water monitoring data of the CPCB, showed that out of the 36 monitoring units placed at various points of the Ganga river, the water quality around 27 points was suitable for bathing and propagation of wildlife and fisheries. Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask the Ministry of Railways to run special trains to repatriate the pilgrims stranded at Hazur Sahib in Maharashtra's Nanded and at Patna Sahib in Bihar. In a letter to the Prime Minister on April 12, the Union Minister stated that more than 5,000 Sikh pilgrims from Punjab are stranded at Gurdwara Hazur Sahib in Nanded and at Gurdwara Takht Sri Patna Sahib in Bihar since the beginning of the lockdown last month. "These pilgrims have been away from their families for more than a month and have been surviving on the food and shelter provided by the gurdwaras. Many of them are accompanied by young children and elderly parents... With the wheat harvesting season starting on April 15, it is important for these people to come back to Punjab," she wrote. Badal said that the pilgrims have already been in quarantine for more than three weeks. "However, to be safe, they may be scanned again and those not showing any symptoms may be cleared for going back. The Ministry of Railways may be requested to run special trains from Nanded, Maharashtra (for 3,000 people approximately) and Patna, Bihar (2,000 passengers approximately) to bring these pilgrims to Punjab," she said. "The state government of Punjab may be directed to make arrangements for their dispersal to their hometowns after due scanning and if required, they make be asked to stay in quarantine in their respective villages," the minister added. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on March 24 announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown as a precautionary measure to contain the spread of COVID-19. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The U.S. Army's acquisition czar recently launched a competition for companies to present solutions to rapidly produce ventilators needed for the response to the deadly novel coronavirus. Bruce Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics and technology, has directed the Army Expeditionary Technology Search (xTechSearch) program team to host the COVID-19 Ventilator Challenge to find ideas for a low-cost, emergency ventilator that requires minimal components and is designed for simplified mass production, according to a recent service news release. The competition is open to any business and is offering cash prizes ranging from $5,000 to $100,000, according to the release. Related: DoD to Provide 5 Million Masks, 2,000 Ventilators to States from Strategic Reserves "The technology solution must provide a rapid-response breathing apparatus capable of short-term, rugged field operation in a small footprint that will support field hospitals," Zeke Topolosky, Army xTechSearch program manager, said in the release. Ventilators come in different sizes and help mechanically pump oxygen into the body through an air tube. "COVID-19 can inflame your airways and essentially drown your lungs in fluids," according to Webmd.com. "A ventilator doesn't cure COVID-19 or other illnesses that caused your breathing problem. It helps you survive until you get better and your lungs can work on their own." The number of coronavirus cases in the United States recently surpassed 489,000, and the demand for ventilators continues to rise. In late March, President Donald Trump invoked the rarely used Defense Production Act to force General Motors to manufacture ventilators at one of its auto plants. In mid-March, Defense Secretary Mark Esper pledged to provide 2,000 portable ventilators to states trying to cope with the rising number of cases of the deadly virus as intensive care units run short of the devices. Companies interested in participating in the COVID-19 Ventilator Challenge should be prepared to deliver a virtual pitch of their concepts within one week after submission, according to the release. The prize competition will evaluate technology proposals immediately upon submission and will award novel solutions with a prize of $5,000 to present a virtual pitch of the technology concept to the Army xTechSearch COVID-19 panel of judges, it adds. Cash prizes of $100,000 will be awarded to solutions accepted by the panel to develop a concept prototype, the release states. Select technologies may receive follow-on contracts for additional production and deployment. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Read More: States Demand Ventilators as Feds Ration Limited Supply A nurse who was singled out by Boris Johnson for helping save his life should be given a medal according to another patient she treated. David Cotton was in intensive care in Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals in 2017 after suffering a seizure brought on by a tumour in his chest. He had nothing but praise for New Zealander Jenny McGee, whom the prime minister said stood by his bedside in St Thomas' hospital for 48 hours while he was being treated for COVID-19. Mr Johnson said the NHS had "saved my life, no question" after he was moved to intensive care as his coronavirus symptoms worsened. Mr Cotton, from Shoreham-by-Sea, said: "She saved my life without doubt. "She's a fabulous, vivacious, wonderful personality and tremendous sense of humour, but at the same time, 100% professional... thoroughly dedicated. "There's all these noises and machines and ventilators and all kinds of electronic measuring equipment, alarms, people are running around. It's a very fearful atmosphere. "And somebody like Jenny, she's kind of master of all she surveys, but at the same time, keeping calm and throwing in the odd joke and comment, keeping spirits up. "And in that typically wonderful New Zealand way, was able to call a spade a spade and make everyone feel great. "I would imagine she would have gone perfectly with Boris Johnson because she wouldn't have taken any truck from him. "You feel you're in wonderfully safe hands with somebody like Jenny. I can't praise her enough. And I think the prime minister should give her some form of medal because of the work she does." The prime minister spent seven nights at St Thomas' Hospital in central London, three of them in intensive care. In a video recorded after his release on Sunday, he praised the hospital's workers, giving particular thanks to two nurses - Jenny from the New Zealand city of Invercargill and Luis from Portugal. It later emerged he was talking about Ms McGee and Luis Pitarma, neither of whom have given interviews so far, but have been praised by their families and others who know them, as well as leaders from their home countries. Ms McGee's father said she was blown away by all the attention. The latest developments around the region related to the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as of Monday afternoon include: The Concord City Council on Tuesday will consider slashing its own members' pay by 10 percent, in recognition of an already challenging city financial outlook made worse by the effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on area businesses and households. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) Garbage collectors in Mandaue, Cebu can now protect themselves from the risk of contracting COVID-19 while doing their jobs. The garbage collectors hailed as environmental frontliners in the COVID-19 fight have received 1,600 sets of personal protective equipment or PPE. They are vulnerable to the novel coronavirus and other hazardous infections that may be present in solid wastes they collect from hospitals, healthcare facilities, and homes. "If there are medical frontliners, the garbage collectors are environmental frontliners. These environmental warriors are also putting their lives in line for our people and our country to ensure that we control this global pandemic, Environment Undersecretary for Solid Waste Management and Local Government Units Concerns Benny Antiporda said on Monday. The donation from the Environmental Management Bureau in Central Visayas or DENR-EMB 7 consisted of 60 double and single respirators with cartridges, 104 pairs of high-duty reusable safety gloves, and 1,500 pairs of disposable gloves all worth a total of P60,000. Additional PPE consisting of coveralls worth P100,000 and respirators worth P77,000 will be turned over to the local government of Mandaue in the next two weeks, DENR added. DENR-EMB 7 said it is working on a system to improve the handling, collection, and disposal of solid wastes from barangay health centers and households with suspect or probable cases to prevent contamination. Central Visayas has recorded 36 COVID-19 cases, including eight deaths as of April 10. By Express News Service What happens to hugs and kisses on screen once the COVID-19 storm passes? Will actors be confident about intimate scenes, or cautious? Filmmaker Shoojit Sircar cannot help mulling over the matter, in the course of a weekend spent at home doing precious little, amid the ongoing lockdown that looks all set to be extended by two more weeks. How the cinema world conducts shooting intimate scenarios in the film to be seen and planned, after all this is over. Especially the intimate kissing/hugging scenes. How close or how far.. or cheat story telling in those intimate scenes for sometime, the Piku director wrote on Instagram. Actress Dia Mirza commented: Guru, the entire process of making a film is intimate! So many people all coming together to create moment after moment in unity and synchronised effort. Aap intimate scene ki baath kar rahe ho, how will all that change? Will we be masked and gloved as a crew? Only time will tell. A user had this witty quip: Go back to the 60s/70s, show two flowers swaying. Another pondered over the very future of film shoots, and not just intimate scenes. How will the industry shoot at all, if they ban gatherings of 50 or more people? the user wondered. Nineteen Indians are stuck at the Dubai International Airport for the last 21 days after India announced its COVID-19 lockdown, leaving them tired, homesick and desperate to return home, according to a media report. Most of these stranded persons were in transit when India stopped inbound flights in view of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gulf reported. The following few days these stranded persons made the airport benches their home. After COVID-19 tests on March 21 -- which was negative for all -- they were shifted to the Dubai International Airport Hotel on March 25. Currently, all the stranded Indians are lodged at the airport hotel. One of the stranded persons is 37-year-old Arun Singh, who missed his 4 am Emirates flight to Ahmedabad on March 22. Singh says it is cruel irony that sleep is what he does for most of the day now. "I have been eating and sleeping and eating and sleeping ever since they put us here (airport hotel). I am comfortable but am desperate to go home," said Singh, an IT employee at a UAE bank. Singh, unlike the other stranded Indians, has a UAE residency visa but he cannot leave the airport because of suspension of visas. Singh does not know when he will leave for India. "Every few days I send messages to the Indian consulate officials but am yet to hear back from them," he told the Gulf "Today, I came across a heartwarming report which said that UAE has offered to repatriate Indians who are stuck in the UAE. I hope that happens soon," Singh was quoted by the daily. Deepak Gupta, who has been stranded since March 18, said he is concerned about his pregnant wife in New Delhi. "She needs me by her side. Soon I will complete one month at the airport, I am beginning to lose hope," said Gupta, a senior employee at a multi-national company in Gurugram. Gupta, like many others, landed in Dubai from Europe for a connecting flight to New Delhi. However, his plans were hit after India banned the entry of all incoming passengers from Europe. Europe is the worst-hit continent in the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 109,000 people worldwide. In Europe, over 75,000 virus deaths have been reported with most fatalities in Italy, Spain, Britain and France. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) WATERFORD, MI -- It begins when a medical professional sticks an unfortunately long Q-tip-like swab into your nose or mouth. It ends when a machine using sophisticated software analyzes the extracted fluid to see if theres evidence of the coronavirus. Coronavirus testing isnt an overly complicated process, but the sheer numbers have swamped healthcare workers and labs across Michigan. Backlogs and testing supply shortages have led to sometimes lengthy wait times for results, and in other cases, an inability to get tested at all. Helix Diagnostics, a lab in Metro Detroits Waterford, is just beginning its foray into COVID-19 testing and offered MLive a behind-the-scenes look into the journey of a coronavirus specimen once it leaves the body on a medical swab. The lab hopes to soon be equipped to process up to 700 samples per day, said co-owner and CEO Jim Grossi, 49, of Clarkston. At full capacity, thats about 14% of the average 5,000 tests per day conducted in Michigan between April 1 and April 6. Helix Diagnostics tests samples collected by private physicians or clinics. It also operates a drive-through testing operation at its location in Waterford Township and collects samples from vulnerable, sick or immobile patients in their homes based on requests from doctors. While the physical process to get a test result takes about five and 1/2 hours, Helix Diagnostics realistically processes results in 48 to 72 hours from the time they pick up the test tube. The cost to have a test processed varies, but Grossi said the Medicare allowable rate is $53 each. Youve got companies out there sitting on 400,000 backlog swabs, Grossi said. "Thats not what were trying to do ... Were not going to hold on to results for seven, eight days because we cant get them through the system. Wed rather tell people, this is what we can do a day ... when were at capacity, were tapped out. An unused testing swab for COVID-19 is shown at Helix Diagnostics in Waterford in Oakland County on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. The lab has started running COVID-19 tests.J. Scott Park | MLive.com The specimen The nasal swab is preferred by Centers for Disease Control, since its believed to be more reliable for detecting upper-respiratory infections, such as COVID-19. Helix Diagnostics supplies customers, usually doctors, with a third-party test kit that can be used to test for a variety of viral infections, including the flu. Collection involves the patient tipping their head back and receiving the nearly six-inch collection lance through a nostril. Once up into the nostril, the collector tilts the swab forward and pushes it about three inches toward brain stem, stopping when the tip hits the pharynx, the part of the airway that connects the nose to the throat. Then the healthcare worker twists the swab clockwise and counterclockwise, sometimes for as long as 30 seconds, to pick up secretions. Its said to be uncomfortable, but not painful. Eyes may water. Patients sometimes cough or sneeze when the swab is removed. Its uncomfortable, said Drew Thompson, a collector for Helix Diagnostics whos undergone the process herself. Kind of like a shot. The extracted swab is immediately inserted into a plastic test tube with a small amount of fluid designed to preserve the viruss genetic code. The swab is snapped in half at a red line, capped and sealed in a biohazard bag. A slightly less uncomfortable alternative to the nasal swab is an oral collection from the back of ones throat near the tonsils. Grossi said physicians decide which test a patient receives. Upon collection, the specimen is usually expedited by U.S. Mail, courier or a commercial delivery service to a lab like Helix Diagnostics. Based on CDC guidelines, any COVID-19 test conducted by a hospital, private doctor, clinic or drive-through operation, requires a prescription. That means the doctors must observe symptoms of a possible coronavirus infection, such as a fever, cough or trouble breathing. The exception to the symptom requirement is healthcare workers and first-responders. Extraction When the mail arrives, lab personnel open the tube, input patient information and eventually suck up a portion of the liquid at the bottom. By now its mixed with some fluid -- and possibly the virus -- from the swab. Before its ready for testing, the tube may be stored for up to a week in a -20 degree freezer. A few drops end up in a vial held in a plastic tray with up to 95 other vials, each representing a different patients specimen. That tray then enters the automated extractor machine. What happens is, we have magnets that attract the RNA (the viruss genetic code, similar to DNA), off of the sample, said Andrew Sutter, Helix Diagnostics general supervisor of testing. And then we can take it off the magnets and we have our samples. Out comes a rectangular tray with 96 tiny square compartments that contain any extracted genetic code from the coronavirus. A testing machine at Helix Diagnostics in Waterford in Oakland County on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. The lab has started running COVID-19 tests.J. Scott Park | MLive.com The test For the final stop in the testing process, the small tray of samples is taken to another room, where four machines line a table, each capable of testing up to 30 cases per hour. These machines can be found for sale online with a nearly $30,000 price tag and again look like printers, except instead of paper, you feed them a potentially deadly virus. They will detect whether youre sick. The Centers for Disease Control, with help from a company called Integrated DNA technologies, has already mapped the genetic code of the coronavirus, as well as many other infectious diseases. The analysis instrument actually only looks for a portion of the coronavirus, a segment of the genetic code that is unique to other viruses. A computer then uploads a report with the results. Samples at Helix Diagnostics in Waterford in Oakland County on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. The lab has started running COVID-19 tests.J. Scott Park | MLive.com Reporting Theres a fair amount of printing, faxing and phoning that goes on at Helix Diagnostics. Depending on the physician or healthcare providers preference, they may receive an automated fax or email notifications through the electronic portal, but only for negative results. Julie Pantalone, who manages sales for Helix Diagnostics, also handles reporting. It starts when she receives a piece of paper with a list of patients whove tested positive for the coronavirus. I call the doctor, tell the doctor first, she said. " ... Then the county requires us to fax the report, the patients address and the patients phone number to them." A standard case report form created by the CDC is faxed to the patients county health office. Then I stand by the fax machine and wait for the confirmation to come out, Pantalone said, so that I can attach it and prove that it went to them. She holds up an example of the stapled documents that are then inventoried in her paper files. Theres no way to be sure the county recorded the data or forwarded it to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for inclusion in the publicly available cumulative COVID-19 data although state orders require hospitals and health departments to report cases to the state. Some of (the county health departments) do call me afterwards, Panatalone said. " ... We dont report to the state, the counties report the aggregate data." An unused testing swab for COVID-19 is shown at Helix Diagnostics in Waterford in Oakland County on Wednesday, April 8, 2020. The lab has started running COVID-19 tests.J. Scott Park | MLive.com Shortage of tests The raw materials in a coronavirus testing kit are pretty medically generic. You have a swab, a test tube container, some FDA-approved fluid that preserves viral specimens and a bio-hazard bag for shipping. Its a specimen collection and transport system that comes together in a single package. The test kit isnt COVID-19 specific and works for various viruses or bacteria detection. The problem: not all sterilization techniques, preservation fluid or swabs are the same. In order to ensure the kits meet standards, established by the Food and Drug Administration, testing, validation and certification is required. Using unvalidated materials is just bad science, Grossi said. Helix Diagnostics acquires its tests from Copan, a Brescia, Italy-based company that owns a patent on its tried-and-true kits sold for viral testing. The kits are then distributed to customers and Helix Diagnostics knows that what is sent back will work with their testing process. While it may not be physically impossible to duplicate -- manufacturing a swab isnt the same as an automobile -- the time and cost required to pass lab, quality and other medical certifications make it a difficult feat, Grossi said. Just like anything else, when this shortage came up, all the sudden a lot of companies sort of jumped into the space, Grossi said, masks, ventilators, right? That hasnt happened here and one of the biggest suppliers is in Italy. Helix Diagnostics has numerous orders in place with third-party medical supply companies for Copan test kits, but the company remains uncertain when its next shipment might be fulfilled. Hopefully, Grossi said when asked if they had enough test kits to make it to the end of this pandemic. Depends on how long it lasts. Backlogs Supposing there are enough kits to collect samples for coronavirus testing, backlogs are problematic nationally due to testing bottlenecks. There arent enough qualified labs, personnel or machines to keep up. State labs couldnt handle this by themselves, Grossi said. Theyre not equipped to .... The sheer size of this pandemic ... has got everybody trying to keep up." There are also companies not being honest about their capacity," he said. Companies are accepting lab specimens they know ahead of time they dont have the capacity to process in a timely manner, according to Grossi, but there is no established standard for turnaround time. When we jumped into it, we saw the frustration," Grossi said, we saw that people were having a hard time getting those results." Michigan had 22,783 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including 1,281 deaths, as of Friday, April 10. Helix Diagnostics is conducting daily drive-through COVID-19 testing for patients with a doctors testing order at 6620 Highland Road in Waterford Township. CORONAVIRUS PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. Read more on MLive: Not enough body bags Thursday, April 9, coronavirus updates Mapping spread of coronavirus in Michigan over past four weeks Conoravirus upends Michigans Class of 2020: This isnt the senior year that anyone wanted' " A new species of bent-toed gecko has been discovered by biologists on an isolated mountain in northern Cambodia. Describing the find as extremely unexpected, scientists have warned the species could be lost as suddenly as it was detected because of the gold mining which threatens the small lizards forest habitat. Biologist Thy Neang discovered the reddish-brown gecko with grey stripes and distinctive yellow spots since named Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis during a field survey of the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary on the Phnom Chi mountain. It was an extremely unexpected discovery. No one thought there were undescribed species in Prey Lang, said Mr Neang. The geckos were found to belong to the C irregularis family that includes at least 19 species across southern and central Vietnam, eastern Cambodia, and southern Laos. However, this is the first member to be found west of the Mekong River. Environment news in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Environment news in pictures Environment news in pictures Davos 2019: David Attenborough issues stark warning about future of civilisation as he demands practical solutions to combat climate change Sir David Attenborough has issued a stark warning about climate change to business figures gathered in Davos, telling them that "what we do now...will profoundly affect the next few thousand years". On the eve of this year's World Economic Forum, the renowned naturalist told the audience that the worlds of business and politics should "get on with the practical solutions" needed to prevent environmental damage. "As a species we are expert problem solvers. But we've not yet applied ourselves to this problem with the focus it requires. "We can create a world with clean air and water, unlimited energy, and fish stocks that will sustain us well into the future. But to do that, we need a plan," he said. The broadcaster made his speech after receiving a Crystal Award, which is awarded by the forum to "exceptional cultural leaders". AFP/Getty Environment news in pictures At least 60% of wild coffee species face extinction triggered by climate change and disease Two decades of research have revealed that 60 per cent of the worlds coffee species face extinction due to the combined threats of deforestation, disease and climate change. The wild strain of arabica, the most widely consumed coffee on the planet, is among those now recognised as endangered, raising concerns about its long-term survival. These results are worrying for the millions of farmers around the world who depend on the continued survival of coffee for their livelihoods. As conditions for coffee farming become tougher, scientists predict the industry will need to rely on wild varieties to develop more resilient strains Alan Schaller Environment news in pictures Warming Antarctic waters are speeding the rate at which glaciers are melting The Antarctic ice sheet is losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 1980s and the pace is accelerating, one of the most comprehensive studies of climate change effects on the continent has shown. More than half an inch has been added to global sea levels since 1979, but if current trends continue it will be responsible for metres more in future, the Nasa-funded study found. The international effort used aerial photos, satellite data and climate models dating back to the 1970s across18 Antarctic regions to get the most complete picture to date on the impacts of the changing climate. It found that between 1979 and 1990 Antarctica lost an average of 40 gigatonnes (40 billion tonnes) of its mass each year. Between 2009 and 2017 it lost an average 252 gigatonnes a year. This has added 3.6mm per decade to sea levels, or around 14mm since 1979, the study shows Nasa/Getty Environment news in pictures Greater Manchester to ban fracking, paving way for confrontation with government over controversial industry Greater Manchester is to effectively ban fracking, raising the prospect of fresh confrontation with the government over the controversial industry. All of the regions 10 councils are to implement planning policies which create a presumption against drilling for shale gas in their areas, Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has announced. Campaigners said the move was the latest sign that the tide was turning against fracking, which has been the subject of multiple legal battles across the country. Critics of fracking say it poses environmental and health risks. Drilling at the UKs only operational fracking site, run by Cuadrilla in Lancashire, has repeatedly been halted due to earth tremors. But ministers support the industry and last year unveiled plans to accelerate the development of new drilling sites Ross Wills Environment news in pictures Japan confirms plan to resume commercial whaling in its waters from next year Japan will resume commercial whaling next year for the first time in more than three decades, in a move that has provoked strong criticism from campaigners and the international community. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said his nation would leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to resume hunting the marine mammals in Japanese waters. However, he stated the activity would be limited to Japans territory and the 200 mile exclusive economic zone along its coasts. This means controversial scientific trips to Antarctica in which Japanese vessels killed hundreds of whales, as well as activity in the northwest Pacific, will stop in 2019 AP Environment news in pictures COP24: Environmental groups criticise morally unacceptable climate deal reached after major Poland summit Diplomats from around the world have agreed a major climate deal after two weeks of United Nations talks in Poland. But climate campaigners warned the deal effectively a set of rules for how to govern the 2015 Paris climate accord agreed between almost 200 countries lacked ambition or a clear promise of enhanced climate action. Activists cautiously welcomed elements of the plan, saying important progress had been made on ensuring that efforts to tackle climate change by individual nations can be measured and compared. But environmental groups were also highly critical of the agreement, warning it lacked ambition and clarity on key issues, including financing for climate projects for developing countries. The COP24 deal, which is aimed at providing firm guidelines for countries on how to transparently report their greenhouse gas emissions and their efforts to reduce them, was confirmed on 15 December, after talks overran Reuters Environment news in pictures Unprecedented changes needed to stop global warming as UN report reveals islands starting to vanish and coral reefs dying Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut almost in half by 2030 to avert global environmental catastrophe, including the total loss of every coral reef, the disappearance of Arctic ice and the destruction of island communities, a landmark UN report has concluded. Drawing on more than 6,000 scientific studies and compiled over two years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings, released this morning, warn enormous and rapid changes to the way everyone on Earth eats, travels and produces energy need to be brought in immediately. Though the scientists behind the report said there is cause for optimism, they recognised the grim reality that nations are currently nowhere near on track to avert disaster AFP/Getty Environment news in pictures Africas three biggest elephant poaching cartels exposed using DNA from illegal ivory shipments DNA taken from massive shipments of ivory has been used to identify the three largest wildlife trafficking gangs operating at the height of Africas elephant poaching epidemic. Ivory tends to be shipped around the world from African ports in bulk, and scientists have used genetic evidence gleaned from intercepted batches to reveal their origins. Led by Dr Samuel Wasser from the University of Washington, they traced a number of these shipments to three cartels operating out of Kenya, Uganda and Togo. Evidence collected by Dr Wasser has already helped convict ivory kingpin Feisal Mohamed Ali, and as his team joins the dots between shipments they plan to shore up the cases against more of the continents most prolific smugglers Art Wolfe They were also physically different from C ziegleri, their closest relative. But the difference was properly confirmed with DNA testing, as part of a collaboration with North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in the US. Researchers named the species Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis after Phnom Chi, which consists of an isolated mountain and a few smaller hills. The forest habitat in Phnom Chi remains in relatively good condition, but the scientists behind the discovery said small-scale, illegal gold extraction around its base threatens the newly discovered species. Habitat at Phnom Chi, where Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis was discovered. (Thy Neang/SWNS) (Thy Neang / SWNS.COM) Many of these newly-recognised species of gekkonid lizards are believed to be unique to very small areas. Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis is thought to live in a habitat of just 45 square kilometres within the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. Mr Neang argued that the find underscores the importance of the sanctuary for biodiversity conservation, and said it should be assessed for endangered status because of the ongoing threats to its habitat. He said: This exciting discovery adds another reptile species to science for Cambodia and the world. It also highlights the global importance of Cambodias biodiversity and illustrates the need for future exploration and biological research in Prey Lang. Dr Bryan Stuart, of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said: When Neang first returned from fieldwork and told me that he had found a species in the C irregularis group so far west of the Mekong River in Cambodia, I did not believe it. His discovery underscores how much unknown biodiversity remains out there in unexpected places. Clearly, Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary is important for biodiversity and deserves attention. Police discovered 100 wraps of heroin stored in the attic of a house in south Belfast, a court heard today. Lithuanian national Tomas Suvalskas faces charges linked to the seizure made on April 10. The 34-year-old, of Canterbury Street, denies possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply. A judge was told he claims to have been living a hotel in the city, but declined to name it. Belfast Magistrates' Court heard officers searched the Canterbury Street property following a number of suspected street deals. "A bag containing 100 wraps of heroin was seized from the attic," a detective said. He claimed a door to the roof space was directly adjacent to a room where Suvalskas is believed to have stayed. During interviews the accused was uncooperative and denied being the person spotted in the earlier suspected drugs exchanges, according to police. At one stage he described himself as "a born liar", adding that he didn't care about the investigation. It also emerged that he is currently wanted for other matters in Lithuania. A defence solicitor argued that the heroin had not been found in his client's room. "The evidence against him seems to be quite circumstantial," the lawyer said. Seeking bail, he also disclosed that Suvalskas was stabbed in the neck a week ago, receiving up to 25 staples to the wound and awaiting further hospital treatment. A 44-year-old man appeared in court last Thursday charged in connection with that alleged attack. But District Judge Mark Hamill refused bail due to the risk of further offending and issues with the address. Remanding Suvalskas in custody to appear again next month, Mr Hamill said: "He refused to say what hotel in Belfast he was living at. That is untenable." OnScene TV A man went missing Sunday after falling off a raft in Lake Houston, according to authorities. The man was with four other people, riding on two rafts, when they all ended up in the water around 6 p.m. in the 16800 block of Okachobee , Houston fire officials said. High winds were reported at the time. Civilian boaters recovered four people, all of whom did not need to be taken to a hospital. A Vancouver naturopath who charges thousands of dollars to give fecal transplants to autistic children is no longer accepting Canadian clients after receiving a letter from the federal government. Jason Klop has claimed "dramatic improvements" in the autism symptoms of children as young as two that he's treated with pills and liquids made from human stool at his clinic near Tijuana, Mexico. In the last few weeks, Klop has updated the website for his business, FMT Solution, to say that Canadian children won't be accepted on his $15,000 US "retreats" to the Mexican resort city of Rosarito. "At this time, Health Canada does not approve of Canadians receiving FMT treatments abroad, and until they expand the conditions approved for FMT, we are unable to assist Canadians with this treatment," Klop's website states. Health Canada began looking into Klop's business in response to CBC reporting on the operation. Fecal microbiota transplants aren't approved in either Canada or the U.S. for treatment of autism spectrum disorder, and research on that application is still in the very early stages. Vancouver Island Health Authority A Health Canada spokesperson said the federal agency has sent Klop a letter informing him that his business is not compliant with federal law. Health Canada's file on Klop is still active, and the spokesperson was unable to comment on any further actions that might be taken. "Selling unauthorized health products or making false or misleading claims to prevent, treat or cure illnesses is illegal in Canada. The department takes this matter very seriously and will continue to take action to stop this activity," the spokesperson said in an email. A compliance letter is just one option Health Canada has for enforcing the Food and Drugs Act, and it requires that the person involved come up with a plan for bringing themselves in line with the law. Klop did not respond to a request for comment. Story continues 'We're still really, really concerned' Fecal transplants are classified as a drug in Canada, and they're only approved for treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile or C. difficile infection. Research is currently underway on how these transplants could help with a wide range of other disorders, but the process can also lead to serious infection or even death if not performed under the strictest of conditions. Vivian Ly, a co-founder of the self-advocacy group Autistics United Canada, said she was happy to hear that Health Canada had taken some action. "It's a start, but we're still really, really concerned," she said. Ly said she consulted with other members of her organization before speaking with CBC, and one of them told her, "There's a fear that it won't be the end of the suffering for children who are being subjected to this practice. "Caregivers who are willing to put their children through such a treatment, they're the ones who would likely also put their children through other pseudoscience practices." Ly gave the examples of chelation, a process said to remove heavy metals from the body that led to the death of an autistic boy, and Miracle Mineral Solution, a bleaching agent that can cause serious illness. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press Ly said she'd like to see Canadian authorities shut down Klop's business entirely and bring in stricter regulations against dubious therapies for autism. "I really want to send a message that autistic children don't need unproven, so-called treatments that put their lives at risk," Ly said. "All autistic people, not just children, need radical love and acceptance and environmental supports that make sure we can be our best selves." Watch: CBC debunks some myths about fecal transplants Klop is registered as a naturopathic physician in B.C., but since CBC first reported on his business, he has stopped using that title on his website. The College of Naturopathic Physicians of B.C. says that transporting patients to a foreign country for fecal transplants is outside of the scope of practice for naturopaths. The B.C. Naturopathic Association, a voluntary professional group, has suspended Klop's membership. BOSTONOn the first Monday in March, Michel Vounatsos, chief executive of the drug company Biogen, appeared in good spirits. The companys new Alzheimers drug was showing promise after years of setbacks. Revenues had never been higher. Onstage at an elite health care conference in Boston, Vounatsos touted the drugs remarkable journey. Asked if the coronavirus that was ravaging China would disrupt supply chains and upend the companys big plans, Vounatsos said no. So far, so good, he said. But even as he spoke, the virus was already silently spreading among Biogens senior executives, who did not know they had been infected days earlier at the companys annual leadership meeting. Biogen employees, most feeling healthy, boarded planes full of passengers. They drove home to their families. And they carried the virus to at least six states, the District of Columbia and three countries, outstripping the ability of local public health officials to trace the spread. The Biogen meeting was one of the earliest examples in the U.S. of what epidemiologists call superspreading events of COVID-19, where a small gathering of people leads to a huge number of infections. Unlike the most infamous clusters of cases stemming from a nursing home outside Seattle or a 40th birthday party in Connecticut, the Biogen cluster happened at a meeting of top health care professionals whose job it was to fight disease, not spread it. The smartest people in health care and drug development and they were completely oblivious to the biggest thing that was about to shatter their world, said John Carroll, editor of End points News, which covers the biotech industry. The official count of those sickened 99, including employees and their contacts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health includes only those who live in that state. The true number across the United States is certainly higher. The first two cases in Indiana were Biogen executives. So was the first known case in Tennessee, and six of the earliest cases in North Carolina. All the people outside Massachusetts that The New York Times has connected to the cluster have recovered. But its impossible to say for certain whether anyone became gravely ill or died from the spread out of the conference. In hindsight, many people have criticized Biogens decision to continue with its leadership meeting in late February, which was attended by vice presidents from European countries already hit by the virus. Others in the industry fault Biogen for being too tight-lipped about the outbreak. At least two of the companys senior executives have tested positive. Citing privacy concerns, the company has declined to name them, even as other chief executives in biotech have disclosed their positive tests. Responding to questions from The New York Times, Vounatsos refused to say even whether he had been tested for COVID-19. He is completely focused on employee safety, supplying medicines to patients, and leading the company, said a Biogen spokesman, David Caouette. This takes precedence over his personal health status. The company has defended its handling of the leadership meeting and its aftermath, saying it made the best decisions it could with the information available at the time. For a company whose mission is to save lives, it was very difficult to see our colleagues and community directly affected by this disease, Vounatsos said in his first public comments about what happened at Biogen. We would never have knowingly put anyone at risk. Founded in 1978 and based near Boston, Biogen helped pioneer the biotechnology industry, specializing in multiple sclerosis drugs. The company is best known now for its work on a promising treatment for Alzheimers. Its experimental drug was seen as a potential Holy Grail until the company announced about a year ago that the drug appeared to be a failure in large-scale trials. Patients were devastated. The companys stock nosedived. But last fall, in a stunning reversal, Biogen announced that further analysis of the data suggested the drug actually worked at higher doses. Vounatsos said the company planned to seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible. The stock soared; the company pulled in record annual revenues of about $14.4 billion. By the time of Biogens annual leadership meeting on Feb. 26 and 27, spirits were high. So was the pressure to deliver. Although some other companies cancelled international meetings around that time, Biogen never discussed doing so. The outbreak was raging in China but had not yet been declared a worldwide pandemic. As of Feb. 21, the Friday before the meeting, the United States had only 30 confirmed cases, according to data compiled by The Times. Biogen executives in Germany, Switzerland and Italy where there were just 20 known cases packed their bags. On the first night, about 175 executives gathered for a buffet dinner and cocktails at the Marriott Long Wharf overlooking Boston Harbor. Colleagues who hadnt seen one another in a year shook hands and vied for face time with bosses. Europeans gave customary kisses on both cheeks. Its unfortunately the perfect breeding ground for a virus, said one former vice president, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his ties to Biogen. Two days later, the senior executives returned to their offices. One drove to a manufacturing centre in North Carolina. Others flew back to Europe. Peter Bergethon, the head of digital and quantitative medicine at Biogen, went home to his wife, an infectious-disease doctor. A Biogen vice president in the Alzheimers franchise and her husband attended a party the following Saturday night at a friends home in Princeton, N.J., with about 45 other people. They celebrated a holiday in the Greek Orthodox calendar, the end of the Carnival season, with special sweets and traditional dances that involved holding hands in a circle. Although celebrations in Greece had been cancelled, the party in New Jersey went forward, since White House officials had just pronounced the virus in the United States to be under control. That night, Allana Taranto, a photographer who covered the leadership meeting for Biogen, celebrated her 42nd birthday with her boyfriend and another couple. Over that weekend, though, some people in the company had already started feeling sick. Jie Li, a 37-year-old biostatistician who worked on the Alzheimers drug team, had chills, a cough and aches. She was too junior to attend the companys leadership conference, but her boss went, and showed up at the office afterward. On March 2, the following Monday, the companys chief medical officer sent an email informing everyone who attended the leadership meeting that some people had fallen ill and telling them to contact a health care provider if they felt sick. We moved quickly, Caouette said. Still, that same day, the companys four top executives attended a huge health care conference hosted by the investment firm Cowen. At another Marriott in Boston, they held meetings in hotel rooms with potential investors. Another attendee who met some of the same investors said he heard that members of the Biogen team looked sick. At the conference, concern about the coronavirus mounted as word spread that some companies, including Vertex and Seattle Genetics, had cancelled their appearances. By Tuesday, the second day of the conference, many attendees had stopped shaking hands. Later, investors were informed that two of the four Biogen executives at the conference tested positive for the virus. In defence of his companys decision to attend the event, Vounatsos said, When we learned a number of our colleagues were ill, we did not know the cause was COVID-19. That Tuesday, Biogen contacted the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and reported that about 50 employees in the Boston area and overseas had flulike symptoms. Biogen employees began showing up at the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital, demanding tests. They were told their cases didnt satisfy the testing criteria at the time, since none had travelled to a hot spot or had known exposure to someone who had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day, confirmation of the worst arrived. Two Biogen executives who had returned home to Germany and Switzerland, where tests were more widely available, had tested positive. On Thursday, the company held a call with its staff and shared the news. All office-based employees were directed to work from home. Yet on that same day, a Biogen executive visited the Washington office of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, the industrys top lobbying group. Soon after, that executive tested positive, prompting the group to close its headquarters for deep cleaning. The next few weeks turned into a blur of Biogen employees leaving casseroles on one anothers doorsteps and trading news about who had fallen ill. Bergethon infected his wife, the infectious-disease specialist. While their symptoms were manageable, the scariest part was the uncertainty, Bergethon recalled recently at a virtual event hosted by the University of Rochester. We didnt know we were going to recover, he said. We didnt know what was coming next. Taranto, the photographer who had been at Biogens leadership conference, unknowingly gave the illness to a friend at her birthday dinner. She had felt healthy at the time. Of the four dozen people who attended the party in New Jersey, at least 15 later tested positive, according to public health authorities. A Biogen executive, Chris Baumgartner, became the first COVID case in Tennessee. I was patient zero, he wrote on Facebook. He added: Imagine having to confront a virus so feared, it now has the entire world on the brink of mass hysteria. The earliest cases in Indiana and North Carolina were tied to the company. One Biogen employee even carried the virus back to China. After falling ill with flulike symptoms, Li called an ambulance and was given a coronavirus test, according to a public health official in Belmont, the upscale Boston suburb where she lived. But before she received the results, she booked a flight to Beijing, boarding a plane with her husband and son, leaving behind their house, a white BMW and other trappings of the life they had built in the United States over 15 years. They must have been desperate, said Dr. William Q. Meeker, a statistics professor at Iowa State University who had worked closely with Lis husband, Yili Hong, also a statistician. The couple worried most about their two-year-old, who would be far from relatives if they both fell ill, according to a former graduate school classmate. Li took medicine to conceal her symptoms, and revealed her health condition to flight attendants on board the flight, Air China and Beijing disease control officials said last month. After she landed in China, authorities placed her under investigation for obstructing the prevention of infectious diseases, a crime that reportedly carries a sentence of up to seven years in prison. In Beijing, the couple suffered from high fevers and lung infections and were hospitalized, Meeker said. He recently received an email from Hong that said they were recuperating, but that their lives will be different in the future. It appears that all of Biogens employees who fell ill have recovered. Aside from Li, who was fired, all have returned to work, Caouette said. Biogen has since joined the fight against the virus. The company donated $10 million to expand access to testing and to provide emergency food and protective gear for hospital workers. Company officials said its struggle against the pandemic is just beginning: Biogen, for instance, has also entered into talks with Vir Technology about manufacturing a potential treatment for COVID-19, another pharmaceutical Holy Grail that could make untold amounts of money. Calaveras County Jail View Photo San Andreas, CA A visitor who turned violent landed in jail on assault charges. According to Calaveras County Sheriff Rick DiBasilio, late Sunday night deputies were called to a residence on Old Stage Road where they learned 33-year-old Christopher Bates of San Andreas, who after beginning to act strangely and being told to leave, became more agitated and swung an object at a victim. After making contact with Bates, deputies were able to arrest and handcuff him. However, while trying to make a break for it, the sheriff says the suspect fell to the ground and began trying to slip the cuffs before being apprehended. Bates was transported to Calaveras County Jail and booked on felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon not a firearm and battery as well as misdemeanor charges of obstructing a peace officer and vandalism. His bail was set at $30,000. However, the sheriff adds the jail is in the process of releasing 14 inmates due to a recent Judicial Council of California temporary action to end cash bail for lower-level felonies and most misdemeanors due to the COVID-19 emergency. The move, made to reduce inmate populations and limit the spread of the virus, becomes effective at 5 p.m. Monday. Those suspected of DUI, domestic violence and sex crimes are not included in the emergency order, which remains in effect until 90 days after Governor Gavin Newsom lifts the COVID-19 state of emergency or the council repeals it. CORONAVIRUS RESEARCH: 500 More Clinicals! Hope On the Way! Written by Steve Blechman 13 April 2020 CORONAVIRUS RESEARCH: 500 More Clinicals! Hope On the Way! By Steve Blechman On April 2, my article entitled Fighting the War Against the Coronavirus: Potential Drugs and Treatment, I mentioned the preliminary results of the China study published March 17, 2020 in the International Journal of Anti-Microbial Agents. The results of the study found that 100% of the patients were cured by day six by using anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin (brand name: Z-Pak), which is prescribed for upper respiratory tract infections. 57.1% of patients are just treated hydroxychloroquine alone. A small human study was recently reported by French researchers that looked at 80 hospitalized coronavirus patients receiving the drug combo after eight days of treatment. 93% of patients tested negative for the virus. On March 29, 2020 the FDA fast-tracked with emergency approval and more widespread availability of hydroxychloroquine to clinical research centers and hospitals and most recently allowed physicians to prescribe an off-label to their patients under medical supervision. The drug companies Novartis donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and Bayer contributed 1 million doses to the federal government and those most in need. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan told a Swiss newspaper that its malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is the drug makers biggest hope against COVID-19. According to recent survey of 6,200 doctors, hydroxychloroquine was listed as one of the top treatments. No surprise because no legal options for physicians are available right now through prescriptions to treat their sickened patients. There are no proven miracle cures or treatments but hydroxychloroquine or its combo provide hope that they may lower the infection rate and spread of the virus until we have a vaccine in hopefully 12-15 months. Whats needed are gold standard, double-blind randomized clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine alone or combined with azithromycin (Z-Pak). Unfortunately, these stringent types of clinical trials will take months. We need something now. People are dying! Hope is on the way. A new 62-patient randomized clinical trial was most recently completed in China to treat coronavirus patients with a five-day hydroxychloroquine regimen, which was found to be effective. The new study has not been peer-reviewed or published yet in a reputable medical journal. Another clinical trial is now underway in 1,500 coronavirus patients at Columbia University Medical Center to measure risks and benefits. Also, the University of Pennsylvania has started a double-blind clinically controlled trial with hydroxychloroquine. According to the Friday, April 10, issue of The Wall Street Journal, dozens of companies and universities, researchers have been hustling to develop therapies or vaccines against the virus. More than 140 are in development worldwide, most in the early stages, including about a dozen already in clinical trials according to Pharma Intelligence. Drug makers such a Pfizer (Xeljanz), Roche Holding AG (Actemra), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (Kevzara), Gilead Sciences (Remdesivir) and CytoDyn (Leronlimab) just some of the drug companies working on anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, cytokine blockers and immunomodulators for the potential treatment of the coronavirus. 260 monoclonal antibodies have shown a strong ability to bind with coronavirus proteins and block viral entry into the cell. San Francisco doctor Jacob Glanville, who was highlighted in the Netflix documentary Pandemic, has acknowledged that he and his company Distributed Bio are working on a monoclonalantibody therapy to block the coronavirus from infecting human cells. Cytel Inc. has launched an open-access global COVID-19 clinical trial tracker. It was recently reported by Drug Discovery Technology Networks (April 9, 2020) in the short time, since the outbreak occurred, around 500 trials have already commenced a number that is growing daily. The Cytel Inc. COVID-19 clinical trial tracker was developed to help facilitate greater collaboration between researchers, policy makers, clinicians, journalists, philanthropists, and other critical stakeholders who need to understand the complex dynamics of the global response to find a solution to COVID-19 outbreak. In my last article, I mentioned half a dozen biotech companies are working on antibody treatments against COVID-19. Blood is collected from coronavirus-recovered patients who carry antibodies to COVID-19 and then would donate the plasma to someone who is seriously ill with the virus. Known as convalescent plasma treatment, which I mentioned in my last article, and has very promising results that were recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, March 27, 2020). An exciting new pilot study on convalescent plasma (CP) therapy for treating 10 COVID-19 patients was most recently reported by Biopharma from Technology Networks (April 8, 2020). The study was published most recently in the April 6, 2020 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) and reported: within three days of CP transfusion, clinical symptoms, such as fever, cough, shortness of breath and chest pain, significantly improved, and patients exhibited increased lymphocyte counts, improved liver and lung function, and reduced inflammation. This is a very exciting preliminary study and suggests that convalescent plasma therapy might be a safe and effective treatment for coronavirus treatments. Hopefully, in the near future controlled randomized clinical trials will further support these findings. We are at war with the coronavirus. This article further reviews and provides the most recent update on the latest drugs and treatments being tested now to attack the coronavirus. In an editorial by Binh N and Stephen Ditmore in the Friday, April 10,2020 issue of The Wall Street Journal, past FDA director Scott Gottleib in Bet Big on Treatments for Coronavirus in the Wall Street Journal (op-ed April 6, 2020) said that we cannot rely solely on isolation and social distancing and urged the FDA to accelerate approval of covid-19 drugs. The FDA recently approved biotech company Cellex under emergency use authorization which allow for its new antibody tests to be used prior to gaining full approval! Abbott Labs new rapid 5- and 15-minute tests that had recently been approved by FDA for testing of coronavirus are vital and urgently needs to be more widespread even in asymptomatic people. I cant emphasize this enough if we are going to control the spread of infection! Even though cases of coronavirus are going down, we cannot take our foot off of the pedal! More testing, effective treatments and therapeutics and randomized controlled trials need to continue so we can establish safety and efficacy. We can win the war with the coronavirus with the help with all of our wonderful heroic health care workers and leading pharmaceutical and research centers. We can recover, control and kill the virus! Cant isnt in my vocabulary only can is! Hope is on the way! Sources: 1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2. National Institutes of Health (NIH) 3. Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security References: 1. Gautret et al. (2020) Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID19: results of an openlabel nonrandomized clinical trial. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents In Press 17 March 2020 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949 2. French study finds anti-malarial and antibiotic combo could reduce COVID-19 duration. Darrell Etherington@etherington/March 19, 2020. 3. Shen C, Wang Z, Zhao F, et al. Treatment of 5 Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19 With Convalescent Plasma. JAMA. Published online March 27, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4783 4. Roback JD, Guarner J. Convalescent Plasma to Treat COVID-19: Possibilities and Challenges. JAMA. Published online March 27, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4940 5. Arturo Casadevall, Liise-anne Pirofski. The convalescent sera option for containing COVID-19. Published April 1, 2020; First published March 13, 2020. Citation Information: J Clin Invest. 2020;130(4):1545-1548. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI138003. 6. Global COVID-19 Clinical Trial Tracker Launched NEWS Apr 09, 2020 | Original story from Cytel Technology Networks.com https://www.technologynetworks.com/drug-discovery/news/global-covid-19-clinical-trial-tracker-launched-333234 7. Pilot Study Suggests the Feasibility of Convalescent Plasma Therapy for COVID-19 NEWS Apr 08, 2020 | Original story from PNAS https://www.technologynetworks.com/biopharma/news/pilot-study-suggests-the-feasibility-of-convalescent-plasma-therapy-for-covid-19-333225 8. Effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy in severe COVID-19 patients Kai Duan, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 6 2020, 202004168; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2004168117 9. Pfizer PinPoints An Early Drug Candidate. Wall Street Journal. Jared S. Hopkins. April 10, 2020 10. On Developing New Drugs to Treat Covid-19. Binh N & Stephen Ditmore. Friday, April 10, 2020 Wall Street Journal. 11. Eric J. Rubin, M.D., Ph.D., Lindsey R. Baden, M.D., and Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D. Audio Interview: New Research on Possible Treatments for Covid-19. March 19, 2020. N Engl J Med 2020; 382:e30. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe2005759 12. COVID-19 treatment might already exist. Nevan Krogan - Professor and Director of Quantitative Biosciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco. March 26, 2020. Live Science. 13. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. et al. Covid-19 - Navigating the Uncharted. March 26, 2020 N Engl J Med 2020; 382:1268-1269 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe2002387 DISCUSS ON OUR FORUMS SUBSCRIBE TO MD TODAY! FOLLOW MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT ON: FACEBOOK: MuscularDevelopment Magazine TWITTER: @MuscularDevelop INSTAGRAM: @MuscularDevelopment YOUTUBE: http://bit.ly/2fvHgnZ NORWALK In the time of social distancing, people are supposed to remain 6 feet apart and avoid spending too much time together. But that doesnt mean they should be socially isolated. Loneliness, isolation and an inability to access essentials are especially likely for the elderly right now as they are one of the populations most at risk when it comes to COVID-19. The novel coronavirus is spreading through the area with more than 700 Norwalk cases as of Monday morning. To assist the elderly, the city established warm lines that are run by the Norwalk Senior Services Coordinating Council and the Senior Center. There is also a statewide warmline for young adults run by Join Rise Be. Lamond Daniels, Norwalks chief of Community Services, said the warm lines differ from a hotline because they are not intended for people in crisis, but for those who just need to talk to someone. The people manning the line offer a friendly ear, as well as strategies for coping with the crisis. The whole idea is with these uncertain times, were home a lot, Daniels said. The warm lines are designed just to have someone navigate through this mess. People are reaching out because they want to talk to someone. They recognize these are reputable, experienced organizations. Daniels said the warm lines also help connect seniors with services they may need. For example, after the Senior Center had to stop offering rides when a staff member was affected by COVID-19, the warm lines helped people find rides. The city is also compiling a map based on results from a community organization survey so available Norwalk resources are available in one spot online. Daniels said the city is also launching a volunteer match program to find people to do deliveries, collect and pack food and items and expand outreach calls. I come from the nonprofit world, Daniels said. We want to thank our nonprofits who are still serving the community. Theyre very creative and innovative in how theyre serving. Theyre doing a phenomenal job. We need to be connected and were figuring out how to do that in a different way. erin.kayata@hearstmediact.com\ The lines were long. Voters wore masks and gloves. And nearly a week after Wisconsin had people go to the polls in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic despite closing hundreds of precincts the results are expected to arrive on Monday evening. County and municipal clerks cannot report results until 4 p.m. Central time because of a court order that extended the deadline for returning absentee ballots, but they have been allowed to do some of the work of processing votes already, which could speed up the reporting process tonight. Election officials are able to feed ballots into optical scanners now, and until the deadline for ballots to arrive, said Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. What they cannot do until 4 p.m. is create a report of the results. Heres what to watch for when the results come in: Who won a crucial State Supreme Court seat? At the last minute, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, dropped his previous insistence that he did not have the power to change the election date without the consent of the Republican-controlled State Legislature. Mr. Evers tried to mail absentee ballots to all voters or move the primary given the pandemic, but the State Supreme Court, which is controlled by conservative justices, overturned the governors effort. People who currently smoke, and those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may have higher levels of a molecule in their lungs, which could put them at an increased risk of developing severe COVID-19 infections, according to a study. The study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, shows that levels of angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE-2) --which sits on the surface of lung cells -- in former smokers is lower than in current smokers. "The data emerging from China suggested that patients with COPD were at higher risk of having worse outcomes from COVID-19," said Janice Leung from the University of British Columbia in Canada. "We hypothesised that this could be because the levels of ACE-2 in their airways might be increased compared to people without COPD, which could possibly make it easier for the virus to infect the airway," Leung said. The researchers studied samples taken from the lungs of 21 COPD patients and 21 people who did not have COPD. They tested the samples to gauge the level of ACE-2 and compared this with other factors, such whether they were from people who never smoked, were current smokers or former smokers. Not only did they find higher levels of ACE-2 in COPD patients, they also found higher levels in people who were smokers. The researchers then checked their new findings against two existing study groups, which together contain data on a further 249 people -- some non-smokers, some current smokers and some former smokers. They found levels of ACE-2 were higher in current smokers but lower in non-smokers and in those who were former smokers. "We found that patients with COPD and people who are still smoking have higher levels of ACE-2 in their airways, which might put them at an increased risk of developing severe COVID-19 infections. "Patients with COPD should be counselled to strictly abide by social distancing and proper hand hygiene to prevent infection," said Leung. "We also found that former smokers had similar levels of ACE-2 to people who had never smoked. This suggests that there has never been a better time to quit smoking to protect yourself from COVID-19," she said. Professor Tobias Welte, an infections expert from the European Respiratory Society said the study gives interesting insight into why some people may be at risk of more severe COVID-19 symptoms than others. "What it does not tell us is whether it's possible to manipulate ACE-2 levels to improve survival in patients infected with COVID-19 or whether this would make a difference in COPD patients who contract the infection," said Welte, who was not involved in the study. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Donald Trump declared he has the power to overrule governors and "open up" states and relax social-distancing practices to combat the coronavirus, as some of his advisers increasingly press concerns within the White House about the outbreak's economic fallout. Trump asserted Monday on Twitter that it will be up to him, not governors, whether parts of the country can relent on social distancing, which has collapsed the U.S. economy. He didn't cite any authority and many legal analysts and some lawmakers disputed his claim. Some of the president's top economic advisers are intensifying their efforts to persuade the president and other members of his coronavirus task force to give more weight to the emotional, health and financial toll of the economic shutdown. At a White House meeting on Saturday, top economic advisers to the president --including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow and former Council of Economic Advisers chairman Kevin Hassett -- addressed members of the task force. Some of Trump's aides have been concerned the health team wasn't sufficiently weighing the public-health consequences of a country closed for business. Saturday's meeting included Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, senior adviser Jared Kushner and counselor Kellyanne Conway, as well as top health advisers Deborah Birx, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield. In the meeting, the economic advisers delivered a grave assessment of the economy, according to the people familiar with the matter. They asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. The health advisers aren't against reopening the economy -- Fauci has said that the government should begin planning for it, and that parts of the country relatively untouched by the virus could relax social distancing once the U.S. develops testing capacity to detect new outbreaks. Some of the president's aides believe the public health threats of an extended economic recession rival those of the virus - increased mental illness and psychological duress that could raise suicide rates, worsening physical health for unemployed people, and increased use of drugs and alcohol. It's an argument the president himself has aired. After ceding to his health advisers insistence that the economic shutdown should extend beyond his initial target of Easter, Trump's patience appears to be wearing thin. Trump said Monday he would make a decision "soon" on reopening, "in conjunction with the governors and input from others." But he asserted that "it is the decision of the president, and for many good reasons." He didn't list any. The White House issued guidance March 16 recommending Americans isolate themselves from one another to curb the spread of the virus after many governors, mayors, businesses and families had already adopted the practices. Trump subsequently extended the guidance through April. In the meantime, the shutdown has battered markets, and more than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits over the past three weeks. It isn't clear that Americans would comply should Trump urge them to return to work and schools before the outbreak abates, and legal analysts and lawmakers say it isn't within his power to overrule governors' orders. Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said on Twitter that "the president has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses." "No statute delegates to him such power; no constitutional provision invests him with such authority," Vladeck said. Rep. Justin Amash, a former Republican who is now an independent and voted for Trump's impeachment, said in a tweet that the president is "flat-out wrong." "Put down the authoritarianism and read the Constitution," he said. A spokesman for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, D, Mike Faulk, said that "respectfully, the president's claims are false. The states have the authority when it comes to stay-home orders." New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, said Trump could probably decide when schools and businesses should reopen but noted that the president has effectively delegated those decisions to governors. "You want to shift the responsibilities in the relationship?" Cuomo said in a news conference on Monday. "Fine, I'm open to that. Explain to me what they do, what I do. Open what, open it when, open it how?" The president's relationship with governors during the outbreak has been complicated and oftentimes prickly. Governors have complained that they've been forced to take over responsibilities of the federal government, including testing for the virus and procuring medical supplies. In another sign that states are charting their own path, a coalition of northeast governors are set to announce on Monday how they'll coordinate the reopening of schools and businesses after the outbreak subsides. Any regional plan could set up a fresh fight with Trump. Trump has previously suggested governors have broad autonomy in the outbreak. As coronavirus cases escalated, Trump declined to criticize governors who refused to issue stay-at-home orders, saying the decision was up to them. "We have a thing called the Constitution, which I cherish, number one," Trump said on April 4, when asked about the holdout governors, who are all Republicans. "Number two, those governors -- I know every one of them -- they're doing a great job. They're being very, very successful in what they're doing. And as you know, I want the governors to be running things." Governors have complained they've been forced to bid against one another and the Federal Emergency Management Agency for supplies. Democratic governors who have faulted the federal government's response have suffered Trump's wrath, enduring personal insults and criticism on Twitter and in his daily news conferences. Trump has said he'll announce an "Opening Our Country Council" on Tuesday, a group charged with advising the administration on restoring the economy as the outbreak abates. "We're going to have the great business leaders, great doctors" on the panel, Trump said on Friday. "We're going to have a great group of people." There's still general agreement among all members of the coronavirus task force that it would be dangerous to relax social distancing too soon. Doing so could allow the virus to reemerge, risking more lives and further economic damage, as well as public perceptions of the president's competency. Meadows and other top advisers have acknowledged that it's a balancing act, and that there's risk in either hurrying back or playing the situation too conservatively. Trump called it "the biggest decision I've ever had to make" on Friday. Those pushing for the administration to more aggressively focus on an economic reopening see encouraging developments in the medical fight. Over the weekend, Trump's coronavirus testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, said the U.S. is working toward building the robust testing capacity it will need to relax social distancing, including widespread surveillance to detect new flare-ups, testing people with symptoms, contact-tracing for confirmed cases and antibody testing to know who's recovered from the virus. "By May we'll have a lot more testing than we do now," Giroir said in an interview. "By May, we certainly will be in the ballpark." And Redfield on Monday said in an interview with Fox News that the nation is "very close" to the peak of coronavirus cases and that nationally, caseloads have "stabilized." "We're close, we're stabilized and I anticipate that we'll begin to see a decline in the days ahead," he said. "But we got to just continue to take it day-by-day and look at the data." Scientists' new model may lead to more ways to improve fertility Scientists have created a mathematical model that can help explain why so many pregnancies and in vitro fertilization attempts fail. The Rutgers-led study, which may help to improve fertility, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mistakes in female meiosis, the cell division process that creates egg cells, result in eggs with an abnormal number of chromosomes (too many or too few). This phenomenon is strongly associated with the repeated loss of pregnancies and the failure of in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, as well as developmental disorders such as Down syndrome. "Our study demonstrates that in the future, mathematical models can be powerful tools for predicting the outcomes of in vitro fertilization for infertility patients and/or provide the basis for considering alternative family planning options, such as adoption," said senior author Jinchuan Xing, an associate professor in the Department of Genetics in the School of Arts and Sciences and at the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Modeling efforts such as ours can provide guidelines on, for instance, how many eggs must be collected during a single IVF cycle to ensure there will be at least one chromosomally normal conception," said co-author Karen Schindler, an associate professor in the Department of Genetics and at the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey. Pregnancy loss is extremely common, with nearly 20 percent of clinically recognized pregnancies resulting in miscarriage, and many more unrecognized pregnancies end earlier, the study notes. A leading cause of early miscarriage is called aneuploidy, when eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes, and it's also the main cause of IVF failure. The vast majority of eggs with chromosome problems are linked to errors in female cell division that increase as women age. Understanding how that happens is crucial because the average age at conception is rising in developed countries. "Such basic knowledge is required to pave the way for future diagnostic and therapeutic innovations to improve human fertility," the study says. The scientists developed a mathematical model describing all possible abnormal chromosome count issues in eggs due to cell division errors. Using data on 11,157 early stage human embryos (blastocysts), the model revealed previously unknown patterns of errors. The model can be used to identify IVF patients who produce an extreme number of abnormal embryos. It's also a powerful tool for understanding why abnormal numbers of chromosomes arise when cells divide and for predicting the outcomes of IVF reproduction. The model potentially could provide guidance for clinicians on the expected number of IVF cycles needed to get a normal conception for each patient. The modeling framework can also be expanded and adapted to address other processes, such as predicting errors in sperm. ### The lead author is Katarzyna M. Tyc, a former Rutgers post-doctoral associate now at Virginia Commonwealth University. A scientist at Johns Hopkins University contributed to the study. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Dubai, United Arab Emirates Mon, April 13, 2020 08:15 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd176304 2 World Iran,Iran-US,sanction,Hassan-Rouhani,president,coronavirus,coronavirus-prevention,COVID-19,COVID-19-lockdown Free President Hassan Rouhani urged Iranians to continue to respect measures to guard against the new coronavirus as "low-risk" business activities resumed in most of the country on Saturday, state news agency IRNA reported. So-called low-risk businesses - including many shops, factories and workshops - resumed operations across the country, with the exception of the capital Tehran, where they will re-open from April 18. "Easing restrictions does not mean ignoring health protocols ... Social distancing and other health protocols should be respected seriously by people," Rouhani was quoted saying. Many government offices also re-opened, with two-thirds of their staff to reduce crowding. In Qom, a city of 1.2 million, which was the early epicenter of Iran's coronavirus outbreak, some 24,000 businesses were expected to re-open, state TV said. "We have disinfected the shop and are providing gloves for customers," a bookseller in Qom told state television. The Islamic Republic is the Middle Eastern country worst-affected by the COVID-19 respiratory disease and has been struggling to curb the spread of the infection. But the government is also concerned that measures to limit public activities could wreck an economy which has already been battered by sanctions. High-risk businesses including theatres, swimming pools, saunas, beauty salons, schools, shopping centers and restaurants have yet to re-open. Schools and universities remain closed, and a ban on cultural, religious and sports gatherings has been imposed. Iran is also likely to ban all public events marking the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan which starts in late April. Yet health authorities have repeatedly complained that many Iranians have ignored appeals to stay at home, warning of a second wave of the outbreak. The death toll in Iran has reached 4,357 with 70,029 infected cases. "If people become arrogant over the relatively better situation now and disregard anti-corona health measures ... we will surely face a hard and heavy phase [of the disease]," Health Minister Saeed Namaki said on state TV. News agencies carried pictures showing heavy traffic on inner-city freeways in Tehran and crowded buses and subway cars, despite warnings by officials that public transport was behind more than 20% of the spread of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, Iran executed a death-row prisoner who had allegedly led a mass prison escape, IRNA reported, after fears of a coronavirus outbreak led to riots in several institutions. IRNA said the man, Mostafa Salimi, had been sentenced to death over security offences including involvement in a clash that killed two security officers some 16 years ago. Salimi's name has long featured on lists of Kurdish political prisoners facing execution issued by rights group Amnesty International. Iran has temporarily freed about 85,000 people from jail, including political prisoners, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, officials have said. IRNA reported government spokesman Ali Rabiei as saying on Saturday: "In case of a long-term shutdown, some 4 million people could be out of work ... Four million non-state employees face stoppage or reduction in activities, reduction of salaries and expulsion." The number of active COVID-19 patients in ASEAN passed 10,000 at the beginning of this week. As a collective, ASEAN represents nearly 650 million people, and with more people continuing to be infected with each passing day, the ASEAN, its people, economy and way of life are hit increasingly harder. The ASEAN chairs statement last February rightly called for a cohesive and responsive ASEAN in responding to COVID-19. The statement underlines the need to act together if ASEAN is to successfully tackle this crisis. Lan Mercado The time to act is now. Indonesia is calling for a special summit on a regional COVID-19 strategy. The imperative of the hour is a well-articulated ASEAN response plan enacted immediately, addressing the health, humanitarian, social and economic needs of the ASEAN people in line with anorchestrated response and collective action of ASEAN in curbing the spread of the disease, as outlined in the ASEAN Chairs statement. The existing health care infrastructure in many member states, epitomised by long waiting queues and low-quality care, will need significant ramping up to cope with the pandemic. The ratio of doctors is at 0.8 for 1,000 people, and out-of-pocket expenditure for healthcare is at 44 per cent in the regions 5 most populous nations. Current conditions paint a grim picture for more than 36 million people in Southeast Asia who live in extreme poverty, earning under US$1.90 a day. A 20 per cent loss of income due to the current crisis may push 60 million people in East Asia and the Pacific into extreme poverty and another 160 million into surviving on less than $3.20 a day. The crisis is likely to further imperil those already struggling with poverty, vulnerabilities, and discrimination disproportionately. Not only because they will struggle to get good quality health care, but also because theyre more likely to be first-line casualties of the ensuing economic crisis. Informal and daily wage workers and women and girls are likely to be hit the hardest. However, given the unforgiving and undiscriminating nature of a pandemic, none of us - no individual, no community, no nation or region - is safe unless all of us are. Thus, the actions must be cohesive with ASEAN being the platform. Tackling issues of inequality - economic, gender, or otherwise - is critical to containing COVID-19. Prioritising assistance to those most at risk including frontline responders, wage and care workers who are largely women, refugees, and migrants are critical to recovery for all of us. There are successes and lessons to be adopted. WHOs figures indicate countries with stronger public health care systems like Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are more successful at case management while Indonesia has amped up health spending to the tune of $4.5 billion. As part of economic stimulus packages totaling $ 50 billion to date, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam are among the ASEAN countries that have significant social protection packages. Swift action, that takes into account needs of all people, especially those likely to be hit harder, will demonstrate ASEANs commitment to a peaceful and safe living environment for the people. Not only the recovery from the pandemic but also the future of ASEANs member states hinges on decisive action on ASEANs commitment to collectively respond to the outbreak of the COVID-19. To fulfill the commitments and protect the lives and ensures the wellbeing of its people, we urge the ASEAN: To act in unison and serve as a platform for openly sharing knowledge and coordinating cohesive policy. To set up a well-resourced response where no one is left behind through an ASEAN Emergency COVID Fund, pooling contributions from Member States and Dialogue Partners. Build capacities of weaker public health systems to protect the entire ASEAN. To put in place stronger frameworks and fair and transparent structures to deal with transboundary risks now and to prevent future pandemics in the region. To support small and medium businesses and workers by mobilizing resources from finance institutions for crisis response and its recovery. We urge ASEAN member states: To immediately upscale testing and treatment facilities and make them available to all people in need, especially poor and vulnerable communities. Provide health care workers and others on frontlines with adequate protection, equipment, and support to deliver essential services. Ensure all people affected, especially locked down communities, have enough food and essentials. All workers losing incomes require social protection. Enact solutions for the special protection and wellbeing needs of migrant workers, displaced people, and others left marginalised. Enact measures to promote womens voices and leadership, deliver gender-sensitive assistance which enables them, and to prevent gender-based violence. Engage with civil society in impact assessments and response implementation to make the needs of vulnerable groups heard and met. In delivering a strong response, ASEAN will benefit from strengthening its mechanisms. The ASEAN Chairmans statement tasked a coordinating role for its Health Sector mechanism on border crossing (i.e. consular services and transportation). However, a cohesive and holistic approach that looks at all aspects of the health and safety of the people of ASEAN is the need of the hour. The ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA Center) already has in place the mandate, network, and partnerships to rapidly enable an emergency response. The ASEANs Health Sector and AHA Center can play a pivotal role in regional coordination and cooperation of a united ASEAN COVID-19 response. The ASEAN Business Advisory Council will prove to be a useful partner in engaging the private sectorin delivering essential services and supplies, and to support displaced workers in their value chains. The ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC) has been tasked to monitor the collective response, present subsequent recommendations, and report to the 36th ASEAN Summit in June. To put out the immediate fires of COVID-19 and to move beyond, the ACC must take into account the views of impacted communities, emergency responders, civil society and womens rights organizations, and other partners in the region. Meaningfully working together for a cohesive response backed up by an emergency fund, right policies, and open and honest collaboration will go a long way in suppressing the outbreak, especially for ASEANs least developed Member States as well as its most marginalized communities. The ASEAN, whose 36th summit on April 8-9 was rescheduled as a result of the pandemic, holds the power to save millions of lives. Only with bold and decisive actions can we stop a catastrophe and shift irreversibly toward a sustainable, safer, and more equal Southeast Asia. Lan Mercado* *Lan Mercado, Regional Director, Oxfam in Asia ASEAN strengthens measures to control COVID-19 Amid the complicated developments of COVID-19 with the number of new cases and fatalities surging, ASEAN countries have been taking measures to mitigate the outbreak. David Iben put it well when he said, 'Volatility is not a risk we care about. What we care about is avoiding the permanent loss of capital. It's only natural to consider a company's balance sheet when you examine how risky it is, since debt is often involved when a business collapses. As with many other companies Jiashili Group Limited (HKG:1285) makes use of debt. But is this debt a concern to shareholders? When Is Debt Dangerous? Debt assists a business until the business has trouble paying it off, either with new capital or with free cash flow. Ultimately, if the company can't fulfill its legal obligations to repay debt, shareholders could walk away with nothing. However, a more frequent (but still costly) occurrence is where a company must issue shares at bargain-basement prices, permanently diluting shareholders, just to shore up its balance sheet. Of course, plenty of companies use debt to fund growth, without any negative consequences. The first thing to do when considering how much debt a business uses is to look at its cash and debt together. Check out our latest analysis for Jiashili Group What Is Jiashili Group's Debt? The image below, which you can click on for greater detail, shows that at December 2019 Jiashili Group had debt of CN378.7m, up from CN360.5m in one year. But on the other hand it also has CN432.1m in cash, leading to a CN53.4m net cash position. SEHK:1285 Historical Debt April 13th 2020 How Healthy Is Jiashili Group's Balance Sheet? The latest balance sheet data shows that Jiashili Group had liabilities of CN698.0m due within a year, and liabilities of CN160.9m falling due after that. Offsetting this, it had CN432.1m in cash and CN190.9m in receivables that were due within 12 months. So its liabilities total CN235.9m more than the combination of its cash and short-term receivables. Jiashili Group has a market capitalization of CN572.4m, so it could very likely raise cash to ameliorate its balance sheet, if the need arose. But it's clear that we should definitely closely examine whether it can manage its debt without dilution. While it does have liabilities worth noting, Jiashili Group also has more cash than debt, so we're pretty confident it can manage its debt safely. Story continues In addition to that, we're happy to report that Jiashili Group has boosted its EBIT by 40%, thus reducing the spectre of future debt repayments. When analysing debt levels, the balance sheet is the obvious place to start. But it is Jiashili Group's earnings that will influence how the balance sheet holds up in the future. So when considering debt, it's definitely worth looking at the earnings trend. Click here for an interactive snapshot. Finally, while the tax-man may adore accounting profits, lenders only accept cold hard cash. While Jiashili Group has net cash on its balance sheet, it's still worth taking a look at its ability to convert earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to free cash flow, to help us understand how quickly it is building (or eroding) that cash balance. Over the last three years, Jiashili Group reported free cash flow worth 14% of its EBIT, which is really quite low. That limp level of cash conversion undermines its ability to manage and pay down debt. Summing up Although Jiashili Group's balance sheet isn't particularly strong, due to the total liabilities, it is clearly positive to see that it has net cash of CN53.4m. And we liked the look of last year's 40% year-on-year EBIT growth. So we don't have any problem with Jiashili Group's use of debt. The balance sheet is clearly the area to focus on when you are analysing debt. However, not all investment risk resides within the balance sheet - far from it. For instance, we've identified 4 warning signs for Jiashili Group that you should be aware of. At the end of the day, it's often better to focus on companies that are free from net debt. You can access our special list of such companies (all with a track record of profit growth). It's free. If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading. "The launch of YWIB Online comes at a time when there is a real need to provide young girls who cannot otherwise attend our events and programs with access to online programming in STEM..." Young Women In Bio (YWIB) is pleased to announce the launch of its new YWIB Online platform, which includes a dedicated YouTube channel and associated Facebook page. Together, these online resources provide access to young girls across the United States and in Canada to our educational and leadership programs and other opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) free of charge. YWIB is launching this new initiative for young girls who are curious about STEM and want to learn more but may not live near one of our 13 chapter cities across the United States and in Montreal. The launch of YWIB Online comes at a time when there is a real need to provide young girls who cannot otherwise attend our events and programs with access to online programming in STEM. This will help our goal to ignite curiosity and to inspire young girls to see a future for themselves in STEM, said Lily Wound, National Chair of YWIB. We believe that by making these online resources available to a broader audience of girls, we can encourage more girls to find a lifelong passion and career in STEM. As part of our launch of YWIB Online, YWIB is excited to announce the availability of COVID-19 online resources for all students. These resources are intended to provide an opportunity to discuss the current pandemic and help students understand the biology, epidemiology, and global health risk of COVID-19. A series of informative modules outlining the science and statistics behind COVID-19, and the science behind and reason for the shelter-in-place and personal hygiene recommendations from public health officials will be included in this online area. With how quickly things are developing and changing, we believe that these resources on the COVID-19 pandemic will be of great help to students across the country and in Canada, said Sarah Odeh, co-chair of the YWIB-San Francisco Bay Area chapter. The COVID-19 modules and associated resources will hopefully answer some of the questions young people have about this pandemic and why it is so important to help flatten-the-curve. Along with the launch of our YWIB COVID-19 online resources area, YWIB invites student participation by offering contests and additional activities. Students, parents, and teachers can visit here for updates on the offerings on our YWIB Online platform, including to our COVID-19 online resources. ABOUT YOUNG WOMEN IN BIO (YWIB) Young Women In Bio (YWIB) gives girls today the inspiration and support they need to become tomorrows leaders in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We strive to provide education and hands-on experience in STEM, as well as share our passion for all scientific fields. Through 13 chapters across the United States and Canada, YWIB partners with leading companies, universities, hospitals, and other organizations to host highly engaging, educational, and motivational programs for young girls interested in STEM. To learn more, visit: http://www.womeninbio.org/ywib. ABOUT WOMEN IN BIO (WIB) Founded in 2002 to support women employed in the field of life sciences from the classroom to the boardroom, Women In Bio (WIB) is a multifaceted organization with 13 chapters across North America and Montreal. It offers an array of professional educational programs, peer to peer learning, mentoring and networking opportunities, and is the only organization for women that integrates all career levels and life sciences fields. WIB is funded by sponsors and partners dedicated to supporting women of all ages in their lifelong journey in the life sciences and beyond. Please visit http://www.womeninbio.org. Contact: Marsha Morgenstern Women In Bio (WIB) Communication and Marketing Administrator mmorgenstern@womeninbio.org 412-223-7855 http://www.womeninbio.org The Cabinet is hoping Boris Johnson will return to take crunch coronavirus lockdown decisions amid warnings GDP is set to crash by 30 per cent this quarter. Divisions have emerged in the PM's top team over how soon the draconian curbs should be eased as they lay waste to the economy. Government sources say there is 'zero' chance of the restrictions being lifted in a formal review this week - but some ministers want to start moving into a new phase early next month, while others favour delaying weeks longer. The implications of the timing has been cast into sharp relief with Chancellor Rishi Sunak warning that UK plc could shrink by 25-30 per cent in the coming months, costing millions of jobs. However, much is likely to hang on the situation in Italy and Spain, which appear to be past the peaks of their outbreaks and are tentatively starting to loosen their lockdowns. The Cabinet is hoping Boris Johnson (pictured delivering a heartfelt thanks to the NHS yesterday) will return to take crunch coronavirus lockdown decisions The implications of the timing has been cast into sharp relief with Chancellor Rishi Sunak (pictured in Whitehall last week) warning that UK plc could shrink by 25-30 per cent in the coming months Deliveries of PPE from China 'faulty and wrongly labelled' Delivering lifesaving protective gear to frontline health staff has become 'hand to mouth', an NHS leader has revealed. The Government is airlifting in crates from China on a daily basis but some are being removed from planes before take-off by officials who want to test them. Other boxes are reaching the UK only for NHS officials to discover that they have been wrongly labelled. Rather than containing much needed protective gowns, they are filled with masks. Even worse, much of the kit from China the world's main supplier is unusable because it fails UK safety checks. The astonishing revelations come from Chris Hopson of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, ambulance services and mental health trusts. He said: 'It's all been a bit hand to mouth. 'The heart of the problem is that getting that stock that was ordered weeks ago from China is proving somewhat erratic.' He said China was the only country with access to the right materials and manufacturing capacity to produce protective equipment. More than 30 NHS staff are believed to have died from coronavirus and campaigners say some of the deaths were a direct result of a lack of personal protective equipment, or PPE. Advertisement Mr Johnson is recovering from coronavirus at Chequers after admitting that his fate could have gone 'either way'. The Prime Minister spent a week in St Thomas' Hospital in central London, including three nights in intensive care, but left yesterday to be reunited with pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds - who has also recovered from the virus. He is now convalescing at the country residence in Buckinghamshire after doctors ordered the Tory leader to rest. Number 10 has confirmed that the PM will 'not be returning to work immediately' following his discharge. He tested negative for coronavirus before he was discharged, and is now likely to have a degree of immunity. But Cabinet sources told the Telegraph Mr Johnson should sign off on the major moves on lockdown. 'The Prime Minister has to take that decision. Any lockdown will have huge implications, and the PM will be responsible for it, so he's got to be the the one taking that decision,' they said. A senior Tory MP added: 'It should absolutely be Boris. He's the captain of the ship. It has to be someone who has the confidence of the nation.' Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke told MailOnline those demanding Mr Johnson sets a timetable for coming back needed to 'grow up', and it was in everyone's interests that he is 'firing on all cylinders' when he does return. 'I am just concerned that the PM takes the time he needs to recover,' he said. 'At the end of the day we now know he has been very, very seriously ill. He said himself it could have gone one way or the other. 'He doesn't need to rush back. He has got the entire support of the country behind him. People recognise how serious it was, how hard he was working.' The Conservative Party vice-chairman added that Mr Johnson should be taking it easy for 'at least a couple of weeks'. 'I think politicians who say 'what's going on' almost pushing the pressure for him to come back need to grow up a bit because the public want him to make a full recovery,' Mr Shelbrooke added. 'I don't want to see him rush back into things. I want to make sure he's OK.' Another MP told MailOnline there would need to be consideration over whether he is in condition to make the biggest decisions for the country. 'There is a concern about that and I think that he has got to listen to medical advice. But subject to him listening to that medical advice I am pretty sure he will want to be the one to make that decision,' they said. 'Every report I have read from survivors indicates that it knocks them about tremendously so he does have to watch his own health.' They added: 'Irrespective of what the medics say he will probably want to be involved in that decision and to give the sign off on it. I think he understands the buck stops with him.' Health Secretary Matt Hancock, speaking at the Downing Street briefing yesterday, said there was no advice on how long Mr Johnson should rest before returning to work. 'That will be a clinical decision for his doctors to take with him,' he said. 'The Government is operating perfectly efficiently within the strategy that he set out.' Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is 'deputising' for the PM as the government faces another crucial week. In an emotional speech posted on social media following his hospital release, Mr Johnson admitted his condition 'could have gone either way' and thanked NHS staff for saving his life. Former Tory communications chief Ms Symonds joined in praising the 'incredible' staff who treated her husband-to-be, tweeting that she would 'never, ever be able to repay you'. Mr Johnson called the NHS 'unconquerable' after seeing first-hand how it was dealing with the pandemic and heralded the 'personal courage' of everyone from doctors to cooks at St Thomas'. He added: 'We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. 'It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.' His comments came as it was confirmed the number of those who had died in UK hospitals after contracting Covid-19 had breached the 10,000 mark. Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the UK looked set to have 'one of the worst, if not the worst' death rate in Europe. The formal review of the strict social distancing measures is due, required under emergency powers legislation, is set to be reviewed by ministers on Thursday. Downing Street has said it will only look to lift restrictions once science and medical advisers recommend doing so. But pressure is mounting to change tack soon, reported that Mr Sunak is estimating a massive impact on the economy. The PM is recuperating from coronavirus at Chequers with pregnant partner Carrie Symonds Health Secretary Matt Hancock, speaking at the Downing Street briefing yesterday, said there was no advice on how long Mr Johnson should rest before returning to work The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) think-tank last week suggested 25 per cent of the UK economy could be lost by the summer due to the current controls. According to the Times, Mr Sunak has told colleagues the consequences could be even worse with GDP falling by a third in the second quarter. Mr Sunak is said to be among a group of Cabinet 'hawks' - also including education secretary Gavin Williamson and Home Secretary Priti Patel - who want the lockdown eased more quickly. However, other 'doves' such as Mr Hancock and Michael Gove are apparently cautioning against lifting the restrictions too early. A Government source said there was no 'table-thumping' going on, but added of Mr Williamson: 'He's Education Secretary - he'd, of course, prefer schools to be open. But it's not his choice. He is worried about all children and how they are going to do. There is no replacement for children going along to classes under the supervision of teachers who know them. 'However, schools will only be opened when it is safe to do so.' Mr Hancock last night announced a new NHS coronavirus app that the Government hopes will help stem the spread of the virus by helping people to self-isolate before they start showing symptoms, as the Government looks to find a way out of the lockdown. He said: 'If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus you can securely tell this new NHS app and the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you've been in significant contact with over the past few days.' Opposition parties, including Labour and the Liberal Democrats, have called for parliamentary scrutiny of the data use. On Sunday the Department of Health said, as of 5pm on Saturday, a total of 10,612 patients had died in UK hospitals after testing positive for coronavirus, up by 737 from 9,875 the day before. Europe goes back to work: Millions of Spaniards are allowed to resume their jobs after industrial lockdown is lifted Europe is beginning its return to work today as factories and construction sites re-open in Spain while Italy takes its first steps towards easing the lockdown. Police were handing out masks on Spanish metro trains today as some 'non-essential' workers were allowed to resume their activities after a two-week ban. Italy will allow bookshops, stationery shops and stores selling children's clothes to re-open tomorrow in the first loosening of Europe's longest lockdown, although most restrictions have been extended until May. Meanwhile in Denmark, schools and daycare centres will re-open on Wednesday, allowing some parents to return to work. Passengers keep their distance riding the metro in Madrid as non-essential workers are allowed back to work today Spain is lifting its ban on non-essential business despite concerns from some regional leaders and trade unions. The ban was stricter than in Britain, where people can still go to work if they cannot work from home during the lockdown. The people returning today include sanitary, security and telecommunications workers, customs officials and those involved in gas and electricity supplies. They and their companies will have to adhere to strict regulations to make sure they don't get infected by the virus. Non-essential workers had been sent home on March 30 but the Spanish government has not extended the measure despite a surge in new deaths yesterday. Another 619 deaths were announced on Sunday, 109 more than on Saturday, putting an end to three days of declining deaths. It brought the country's coronavirus death toll to 16,972, the third-highest in the world after the United States and Italy. RICHMOND, Va. - Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, caught between an economy cratering from covid-19 and the ambitions of newly empowered Democrats, froze all new spending in the state budget and delayed an increase to the state's minimum wage, part of a flurry of amendments his senior staff announced Sunday. Northam signed and amended a mountain of legislation over the weekend, up against a midnight Saturday deadline to act on all 1,291 measures passed during this year's General Assembly session. Wearing a medical mask as he worked with staff in his Capitol Square conference room, Northam grimly reined in the Democrats' two-year, $135 billion spending plan while happily signing landmark gay rights, environmental and criminal justice bills backed this year in a Capitol that was fully under Democratic control for the first time in a generation. Northam's chief of staff, Clark Mercer, touted "the most progressive budget in the commonwealth's history" in a conference call with reporters even as he announced the governor was tapping the brakes. Northam will hold off on about $1 billion a year in new spending in the budget, which takes effect July 1. "It keeps our entire budget and our priorities, which remain our priorities, in place, but it's putting a pause button on those priorities for the time being," Mercer said. Northam vetoed one bill - a relatively obscure measure backed by the dairy industry, which would have prevented makers of almond milk, soy milk and similar milk substitutes from continuing to label their products as "milk." "While the Governor is very supportive of the dairy industry, he is concerned this bill is unconstitutional and could violate commercial freedom of speech," spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said in a written statement. House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, criticized Northam for not scrapping the minimum wage increase or other measures that could burden businesses already hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic. "The hundreds of thousands of Virginians who have filed for unemployment and the businesses that employed them are going to be digging out of this financial hole well past May 1, 2021," he said, referring to the date Northam wants the wage increase to take effect. The General Assembly is scheduled to return to Richmond on April 22 to take up Northam's amendments. But lawmakers will have another chance to reconsider what they can afford at a special budget session Northam plans to call in the summer or fall. But for the time being, with the state under a stay-home order meant to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, it is too soon to come up with a new forecast for revenue, Mercer said. Under legislation passed by the General Assembly this year, the state's $7.25-an-hour minimum wage would gradually increase to $12 by 2023. The first hike, to $9.25 an hour, was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2021. With his amendment, Northam would push that off until May 1, 2021. Later increases would continue on schedule to reach $12 by 2023. "These new laws will support workers and help our economy rebound as quickly as possible from COVID-19," Northam said in a statement. Northam took a similar line with other worker-friendly bills - supporting them, but with amendments pushing off their effective dates until May 1, 2021. Those include measures to allow public employees to unionize and require certain government contractors pay "prevailing wages." "We went into covid-19 the best state in the country for business and we will come out of covid-19 the best state for business," Mercer said. "We're also going to come out the other end a great state for workers." Northam also signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which establishes energy efficiency standards, sets a schedule for closing nearly all coal-fired power plants by the end of 2024 and requires the state's largest electric utility, Dominion Energy, to generate all of its electricity from 100% renewable sources such as solar or wind by 2045. He made "technical" amendments to a bill requiring the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which establishes a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions from power plants. In the area of civil rights, Northam signed the Virginia Values Act, making Virginia the first Southern state to extend broad anti-discrimination protections to LGBT residents in housing, employment, public spaces and credit applications. Northam signed bills to double the felony larceny threshold to $1,000, eliminate the suspension of driver's licenses for unpaid court fines and fees, and raise from 14 to 16 the age at which a juvenile can be tried as an adult without court approval. He amended a bill to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana, requiring that a work group studying legalization produce a report by Nov. 30, 2021. He also amended a pair of bills that would make people sentenced by juries between 1995 and 2000 eligible for parole consideration. Virginia abolished parole in 1995. But juries were not instructed on that until 2000, after a court ruling that required they be informed and take that into consideration as they sentenced defendants. Northam's amendment would add an emergency clause to the bills so they would take effect immediately rather than July 1, when most of the state's new laws take effect. Northam signed legislation giving local governments the power to decide whether to remove, relocate or contextualize Confederate monuments. He also signed bills creating a commission to recommend a replacement for the Robert E. Lee statue that represents Virginia in the U.S. Capitol. In the area of voting rights, Northam signed bills repealing the state's voter ID law, making Election Day a state holiday and expanding access to early voting. He also signed legislation to implement automatic voter registration for people doing business with the Department of Motor Vehicles. - - - The Washington Post's Gregory S. Schneider contributed to this report. The press service briefly notes pneumonia as the cause of death. The press service of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the Kyiv-based headquarters of the Russian-backed church in Ukraine commonly known as the "Moscow Patriarchate", where at least 26 coronavirus cases had been reported earlier, has commented on the recent death of its monk, Archimandrite Nectarius. The cause of death was pneumonia, the press service claimed in a statement, which failed to mention that the monk had been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, TSN reports. As reported earlier, the coronavirus had infected 26 people at the headquarters of the Moscow Patriarchate which had urged worshippers to defy lockdown orders, according to figures released by the mayor of Kyiv. Read alsoKyiv mayor reports 20 new COVID-19 cases in past day The Moscow Patriarchate last month said the coronavirus had been caused by human sin and could be fought with hugs, prayers and fasting. It has since fallen in line with the government's lockdown measures, moving church services online, disinfecting buildings and offering to house patients in monasteries. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko told a briefing on Thursday that 26 members of the monastery had been infected and said it was hard to predict how the virus would spread further. He once again called on Kyiv residents to stay at home during the upcoming Easter holidays and religious events to remember the dead. Orthodox Christians will be celebrating Easter on Sunday, April 19. Earlier, Metropolitan Epifaniy, Head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which had received from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople religious independence from Moscow, has called on worshipers to help their loved ones "in these difficult times of the pandemic and stay home during Easter holidays". Iraqi student Ahmed Khaled al-Kaabi, 23, proposed to the love of his life last year. The couples dream was to have a huge celebration with family and friends in the southern holy city of Najaf. But in the wake of the new coronavirus, those hopes were dashed when a government-ordered curfew banned large public gatherings and wedding halls were shuttered. I didnt expect my wedding to be this way. I was hoping for a party and that we would visit the imam, said Ruqaya Rahim, the new bride, referring to the religious official who leads prayers in the mosque. But we were prevented from doing that. Najaf has been among the Iraqi cities hardest hit by the pandemic, accounting for a little more than 20% of Iraqs total cases. At least five people have died amid 257 confirmed cases in the province, according to Health Ministry figures. Thats a small fraction of the 70 people who have died nationwide since the first virus case was recorded in Iraq in February. Iraq now has nearly 1,300 confirmed virus cases. Unwilling to postpone the wedding, al-Kaabi came up with a different plan. He asked the local security forces to help him make the wedding happen. The police responded by providing the groom with vehicles, complete with blasting music. They transported al-Kaabis bride to the family home for a small celebration of just six people. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Saudi Arabia has asked people to perform the special 'taraweeh' prayers at their homes during the month of Ramazan in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a media report. Saudi Arabia last month suspended congregational prayers across all mosques in the country, except for the two grand mosques in Mecca and Medina where only staff members are allowed to enter inside the premises. "The suspension of performing the five daily prayers at mosques is more important than the suspension of taraweeh prayers," Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs Dr Abdul Latif Al Sheikh was quoted as saying by the Al Riyadh newspaper on Sunday. "We ask Allah the Almighty to accept taraweeh prayers whether held at mosques, or homes, which we think is better for people's health. We ask Allah the Almighty to accept prayers from all of us and protect humanity from this epidemic that hit the entire world, Al Sheikh added. Taraweeh prayers are performed by Muslims at night during Ramazan, which will start later this month. Millions across the world, including India, perform the taraweeh prayers at mosques during the month of Ramazan. In several Arab countries, the 'azaan' (call for prayer) has been amended in the wake of pandemic and now it urges people to pray in their homes. Last month, the Grand Imam Shaikh of Egypt's Jamia Al Azhar, an authority on Islamic injunctions, and the Supreme Council in Egypt, said that public gatherings, including congregational prayers at mosques, could result in spread of coronavirus and the governments of Muslim countries had full jurisdiction to cancel such events. It also remains unclear if the annual Haj pilgrimage will be held this year, amid the coronavirus pandemic which has killed more than 110,000 people and infected nearly 19 lakh others worldwide so far. The Saudi minister also said that in line with the instructions and precautions issued by the Ministry of Health and relevant authorities, five to six people from a deceased's family are allowed to perform funeral prayers for the dead. "This is a precaution in line with the prohibition of gatherings, so that funeral prayers take place at cemeteries should not exceed five to six of the deceased's relatives, and the rest pray at their homes," he said. Saudi Arabia, which reported 4,462 COVID-19 cases and 59 deaths till Sunday, has extended a nationwide curfew until further notice due to the spread of the deadly disease. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government on Monday said more than 32 crore people have received Rs 29,352 crore financial assistance under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month to protect them from the impact of 21-day nationwide lockdown. As part of the Rs 1.70 lakh crore relief package, the government announced free foodgrains and cash doles to women and poor senior citizens and farmers to mitigate the hardships faced due to the lockdown. A finance ministry statement on Monday said the swift implementation of the package is being continuously monitored by central and state governments. The finance ministry, other ministries concerned, Cabinet Secretariat and PMO are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the relief measures reach the needy swiftly and in line with the intent of the lockdown, it said. "Fintech and digital technology have been employed for swift and efficient transfer to the beneficiary. Direct benefit transfer, i.e. transfer that ensures that the amount is directly credited into the account of the beneficiary, eliminates leakage and improves efficiency has been employed. This has also ensured credit to the beneficiary's account without the need for the beneficiary to physically go to the branch," it said. As of April 13, 2020, it said, 32.32 crore beneficiaries have been directly given cash support through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) amounting to Rs 29,352 crore under the package. "So far 20.11 lakh MT of food grains have been lifted by 31 States/UTs out of 40 lakh MT for April. 2.65 lakh MT has been distributed by 16 States/UTs to 5.29 crore beneficiaries covered by 1.19 crore ration cards as April 2020 entitlement. 3985 MT of pulses have also been dispatched to various states/UTs," it said. With regard to free cooking gas cylinder, it said, total 1.39 crore cylinders have been booked under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) so far and 97.8 lakh free refills have already been delivered to beneficiaries. Of the total disbursement, it said, Rs 14,946 crore has gone towards payment of the first instalment of PM-KISAN. Under the scheme, nearly 7.47 crore out of the 8 crore identified beneficiaries got Rs 2,000 directly in their accounts. As many as 19.86 crore women Jan Dhan account holders received Rs 500 each in their account. The total disbursement under the head was Rs 9,930 crore as on April 13, it said. The National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) disbursed about Rs 1,400 crore to about 2.82 crore old age persons, widow and differently-abled persons, the ministry added. Each beneficiary received an ex-gratia cash of Rs 500 under the scheme as the first instalment. Another instalment of Rs 500 each will be paid next month. As many as 2.17 crore building & construction workers received financial support from the Building and Construction Workers' Fund managed by state governments. Under this, Rs 3,071 crore were given to beneficiaries. It further said free insurance cover of Rs 50 lakh for health workers in government hospitals and healthcare centres has been operationalised by New India Assurance covering 22.12 lakh health workers. Increased rate for workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) has been notified effective April 1, it said. "In the current financial year, 19.56 lakh person's man-days of work generated. Further, Rs 7,100 crore released to states to liquidate pending dues of both wage and material," it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) My roommate said, Well, the good Lord also wants the rest of us to be healthy, too, he said. While much of New York City is staying inside, a crisis has taken hold among a population for whom social distancing is nearly impossible: the more than 17,000 men and women, many of them already in poor health, who sleep in roughly 100 group or congregate shelters for single adults. Most live in dormitories that are fertile fields for the virus, with beds close enough for people sleeping in them to hold hands. And rather than keeping people away from shelters, the virus has driven them in. Some inmates released from Rikers Island to control the outbreak in the jail have wound up in shelters. And with the outdoor safety net falling apart few pedestrians to beg for change; public bathrooms shut; many soup kitchens closed for lack of food and volunteers the nightly shelter population has consistently reached levels seen only a few times in the last decade, and usually only on the most frigid nights of winter. When all of those systems simultaneously break down, youre going to get this influx into congregate situations, said Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society. Its a time bomb. Officially as of Sunday, 23 shelter residents have died in hospitals, among them 14 men and two women from assessment centers and shelters for single adults where multiple, unrelated people share rooms, according to the Department of Homeless Services. And 371 people from shelters had tested positive for the virus, about 80 percent of them from the single-adult facilities, though those adults represent less than a quarter of the homeless population. The rest are mostly families who often stay in studio-like units by themselves. There once was a colorful character with flowing hair and a goatee who lost his business and landed in handcuffs after allegedly hiring a hit man. No, not Joseph Maldonado-Passage, star of Netflix's new docuseries "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness." His name was Michael Yuchnitz. After the success of "Tiger King," one Alamo City resident labeled Yuchnitz "San Antonio's very own Joe Exotic." The parallels between the pair are striking, from slightly surreal television ads to secret recordings that built murder-for-hire criminal cases. But Yuchnitz did not deal in big cats. He sold affordable eyeware. A 20-year veteran of the Air Force, Yuchnitz launched the My Econo's $39.95 Optical chain in the early 1990s in a South Side strip mall. The business eventually grew to include four locations with Yuchnitz pitching his "optical specials" on television. The Good Newsletter: A weekly dose of inspiring San Antonio stories, delivered to your inbox For his commercials, in which he also promoted his tattoo parlor, Yuchnitz wore flamboyant outfits and sported shoulder-length hair. In one 1997 advertisement, he puts on a pair of glasses and promises excellent customer service at auctioneer pace but monotone pitch. In another, years later, he emphasizes that he takes care of the people in the neighborhoods around his stores. "Always have, always will," Yuchnitz said. In October 2010, Yuchnitz found himself leading the evening news instead of touting his business between segments. He was arrested and charged with hiring someone to arrange to kill his wife. He denied any involvement as police led him out barefoot and in handcuffs. An informant told police that Yuchnitz agreed to pay $10,000 to have her killed. He even suggested she be shot when she traveled to the East Side for a card game because it could look like a robbery in a high crime area, the arrest affidavit said. Tina Yuchnitz filed for divorce and a protective order the day police told her about the alleged plot. The couple's divorce trial, which occurred in February of 2012 while Yuchnitz was out on bail awaiting trial for solicitation of capital murder, featured lurid testimony about their relationship. Statements from a secret recording of him discussing the alleged murder-for-hire plot with the informant were entered into evidence. Yuchnitz invoked his Fifth Amendment right dozens of times when asked to confirm them. "This is not the first time I've done this," Yuchnitz said, according to a transcript read in court. "No, I don't need him to move the body. I just want him to do it." During cross-examination of the informant an employee at the discount eyeware chain whom Yuchnitz had allegedly approached about hiring an assassin Yuchnitz's attorney suggested that in the secret recordings, the informant wearing a wire seems to be the one pushing for a hit. "Don't you say about seven times, Go for it'?" he asked. After two weeks of testimony, a jury decided that each side of the marriage had inflicted severe emotional distress on the other and recommended a judge split their $6 million estate 50-50. Tina Yuchnitz, who had been given temporary control of the optical business before the divorce trial, got some of the couple's vehicles and kept My Econo. However, she had to buy the business, valued at the time of trial at about $2.3 million. Yuchnitz received the house, other vehicles and two retirement accounts. They split the combined value of their jewelry including $364,698 of Mike Yuchnitz's baubles except for certain pieces that remained his and hers. He got to keep his $14,000 earring. His criminal trial for the murder-for-hire charge was scheduled for March 2014. He would not appear. On Sept. 14, 2013, a maintenance man discovered Yuchnitz's body in the parking lot of a Northwest Side extended stay hotel. The Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office said he died of heart problems related to his lung cancer and ruled it a natural death. Today, the four My Econo locations remain open. The chain's website makes no mention of its history, beyond saying the stores have been offering affordable eyeware for over 30 years. But "Tiger King" offered an opportunity to remember the city's own salacious tale. As Yuchnitz once told the camera, "Hey San Antonio, you know who I am." Mark Dunphy is a breaking news and general assignment reporter for MySA.com | mark.dunphy@express-news.net | @m_b_dunphy Farmers here on Monday staged a protest and blocked a road in Bihar Sharif in Nalanda, alleging harassment by police. "We have blocked the road and are protesting against the police here. We will not sell vegetables today. Farmers were beaten up by police," said a farmer. Meanwhile, Nalanda SP Nilesh Kumar said, "It is difficult for the police to identify if any bike rider is a farmer or someone was wandering unnecessarily." "The farmers have been told to sell vegetables by maintaining social distancing," he added. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on March 24 announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown as a precautionary measure to control the spread of COVID-19. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Purple Wiggle Lachlan 'Lachy' Gillespie is engaged to his ballet dancer girlfriend, Dana Stephensen. Lachlan, 34, announced the happy news on Monday with a sweet Instagram post, writing: 'On Thursday night, Dana asked me to marry her at home under a fairy light sky and a very excited little boy in a beautiful bow tie.' In the photo, Lachlan was pictured cuddling up to Dana, 34, and Dana's son Jasper, four, inside a bedroom festooned with fairy lights. Congratulations: Purple Wiggle Lachlan 'Lachy' Gillespie, 34, announced his engagement to ballet dancer Dana Stephensen, 34, after she proposed to him at home last Thursday. Pictured with Jasper - Dana's four-year-old son from a previous relationship The couple, who went public with their relationship in October, beamed with joy as they cuddled up for the milestone photo. Meanwhile, Dana shared a post on her Instagram announcing the news and revealing that Lachlan had actually proposed a month earlier. 'At the end of our summer holidays, I walked into the most beautiful surprise - a room filled with the most incredible flowers and Lachy singing at his piano and then asking me to marry him. It was such a surprise and so special. Our faces say it all,' she wrote next to a selfie of the couple. Surprise! Meanwhile, Dana shared a post on her Instagram announcing the news and revealing that Lachlan had actually proposed a month earlier 'It was something very meaningful for us to both have the opportunity to propose to one another, each in our own way,' she continued. 'Last week, with the most beautiful (and excited!) little boy by my side in a special bow tie, it was our time to ask Lachy our special question - and it was so, so wonderful,' she added. It is believed that Dana and Lachlan are living together as they self-isolate amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Smitten! Dana and Lachlan aren't shy when it comes to flaunting their romance In January, Dana spoke warmly about their relationship when asked about Lachlan in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. 'He's just amazing and I just love him so much,' she said. The mother-of-one, who is a senior dancer for The Australian Ballet, also described the moment she met Lachlan on the set of The Wiggles television show in early December 2018. 'Lachy and I just had a really beautiful connection straight away. It was between us, but after the fact quite a few people noticed,' she said. Happily ever after! Dana spoke warmly about their relationship when asked about Lachlan in an interview with The Daily Telegraph in January Lachlan separated from his Wiggles bandmate Emma Watkins (a.k.a. The Yellow Wiggle) in August 2018, after two years of marriage. He confirmed his romance with Dana in October 2019 when he shared a selfie of the pair to Instagram. On New Year's Day, Lachlan revealed that he'd met Dana's son Jasper, four, who she shares with her photographer ex-husband, Michael Kai. Happy couple: 'Lachy and I just had a really beautiful connection straight away. It was between us, but after the fact quite a few people noticed,' she said Cute couple: Lachlan met Dana on set of The Wiggles' television show in December 2018 Posing alongside Dana and Jasper on a trampoline, Lachlan captioned the adorable photo: '2020.' Dana also posted the family photo, which showed her and Lachlan smiling with Jasper sitting on their shoulders. She then uploaded another picture to Instagram, which was captioned: '[I'm] the luckiest girl because of these two.' Milestone moment: On New Year's Day, Lachlan revealed he had met Dana's son Jasper (pictured) Meanwhile, Lachlan and his ex-wife Emma continue to be on good terms, despite their very public divorce. Speaking to Who in August last year Emma said: 'We are the best of friends and we were always meant to be. We were close before we started dating and now we've come full circle!' Meanwhile, Emma is dating The Wiggles' musician Oliver Brian, 32. Still friends: He had previously separated from Wiggles bandmate Emma Watkins (pictured) in August 2018, after two years of marriage A sailor who was moved to an intensive care unit in Guam last week has died from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, the Navy announced Monday morning. The sailor, whose identity has not been released, died Monday at U.S. Naval Hospital Guam. He was assigned to the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, which has seen cases of COVID-19 sweep through its crew. At least 550 sailors, more than 10% of the roughly 4,800-person crew, had tested positive for the illness as of Monday. Related: Roosevelt Sailor with COVID-19 Found Unresponsive in Guam The sailor had been removed from the ship and placed in isolation with four other Roosevelt sailors after testing positive for the virus March 30. His name is being held for 24 hours following family notification, per Pentagon policy. Once in isolation, the sailor received medical checks twice a day from Navy medical teams, officials said in a news release. At about 8:30 a.m. April 9, the sailor was found unresponsive during one of those checks. Other sailors and an on-site medical team in the house where the isolated carrier personnel were staying attempted life-saving aid. He was then moved to the hospital's intensive care unit, where he later died. The Roosevelt has been in Guam since March 27; thousands of sailors evacuated from the ship as coronavirus cases began spreading among the crew. The Navy's handling of the health crisis onboard the Roosevelt has been surrounded by controversy. Late last month, Capt. Brett Crozier, the ship's former commanding officer, wrote a candid plea for help as coronavirus cases began to spread. Crozier urged Navy leaders to evacuate most of the Roosevelt's crew to prevent further spread. He sent the letter to at least 20 people, including some outside his chain of command. The letter was later published by the San Francisco Chronicle, putting a spotlight on the Navy's response to a serious situation affecting the crew of a deployed aircraft carrier. Then-Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly was reportedly livid about Crozier's letter ending up in the paper, The New York Times reported. Modly removed Crozier from his position, in part to appear tough in order to please President Donald Trump, according to the Times. That was a day after Modly stood in the Pentagon press briefing room, telling reporters Crozier wasn't wrong to raise concerns about the health of his crew. He indicated that the captain would be punished only if the Navy determined the commanding officer himself had leaked his letter to the press. Crozier's relief was unpopular with rank-and-file sailors, who could be seen in cellphone videos shared to social media gathering to see their ousted leader off as he walked off the ship. They applauded the skipper, chanting "Captain Crozier" as he left. As health leaders across the U.S. issued warnings that young, healthy people were getting seriously sick from COVID-19, Navy leaders said the first hundred-plus cases on the Roosevelt were "mild or moderate." "We believe that their relative health and youth is in their favor," said Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, the Navy's surgeon general. "We're not assuming that they won't become more ill but, so far, indications are that they will continue to be mildly symptomatic and recover without sequela." Modly then flew to Guam, where he addressed the Roosevelt's crew. In his speech, which was later ripped by lawmakers, retired flag officers and others, Modly disparaged Crozier. He called the captain "too stupid" or "too naive" to command the ship. Crozier, by then, had also become infected with COVID-19. Modly quickly stepped down from his position of acting Navy secretary following calls for his resignation from members of Congress. The Navy has since continued testing Roosevelt sailors for COVID-19 and moved thousands of them off the carrier as the ship is cleaned and disinfected. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Read More: Russia and China Are Spreading Lies About Coronavirus, Pentagon Says ROME (Reuters) - Italy on Sunday ordered migrants aboard a rescue ship off its coast to be quarantined on another vessel to test them for the coronavirus instead of allowing them to disembark. The Alan Kurdi, run by the German non-governmental group Sea-Eye, is sailing in international waters off the western coast of Sicily. The transport ministry said in a statement those on board will be transferred to another ship, screened by health authorities and quarantined on that ship ROME (Reuters) - Italy on Sunday ordered migrants aboard a rescue ship off its coast to be quarantined on another vessel to test them for the coronavirus instead of allowing them to disembark. The Alan Kurdi, run by the German non-governmental group Sea-Eye, is sailing in international waters off the western coast of Sicily. The transport ministry said in a statement those on board will be transferred to another ship, screened by health authorities and quarantined on that ship. This week the government closed ports to charity boats for the entire duration of the national health emergency over the coronavirus, a ban due to remain in effect until July 31. The transport ministry statement said allowing the migrants to disembark would put too much pressure on already stretched health services in Sicily. It gave no details on the planned transfer, its timing or location. After a relative lull in arrivals of boat migrants from Africa, numbers had started to pick up again in the first two months of the year, only to fall back sharply in March as Italy was hit by the epidemic. However, smaller boats with migrants continue to arrive in Italy. A dinghy carrying about 100 migrants arrived at the Sicilian town of Pozzallo on Sunday morning, local authorities said. (Reporting by Wladimiro Pantaleone and Angelo Amante; Writing by Angelo Amante; Editing by Philip Pullella and Frances Kerry) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. UWs Ernest, Currano Receive Flittie Sabbatical Awards Holly Ernest, a University of Wyoming Excellence Chair in Disease Ecology and professor of veterinary sciences; and Ellen Currano, an associate professor of geology and geophysics, are the recipients of UWs 2020 Flittie Sabbatical Augmentation Award. The award will support travel and other expenses during their sabbaticals in the 2020-21 academic year. The Flittie award goes to qualified faculty members whose two-semester sabbatical leave has the potential to enrich instruction at UW. Named for the late sociology Professor Ed Flittie, who bequeathed funds to augment sabbatical salaries, the award is made by the Faculty Recognition and Development Committee of the UW Faculty Senate. During Ernests sabbatical, she plans to combine advanced study and collaborative research in the interdisciplinary fields of genomics, bioinformatics and disease ecology to further science, education and wildlife health. One of the outcomes of her sabbatical will be a new introductory online UW course to excite students in agriculture, health sciences and environmental sciences to the highly marketable field of bioinformatics. Hosted by the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, her sabbatical work in the expertise-rich Vancouver community will benefit students, UW, Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West. Curranos sabbatical will be spent as a visiting researcher at the Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History, home to the worlds largest collection of Wyoming plant fossils and the top paleontological research institution in the U.S. Her research will investigate how past climate changes affected plant and insect biodiversity, and will anticipate that at least three highly cited papers on Wyomings ancient vegetation will result from this research. She is excited to learn new methods to analyze paleontological data, to bring this expertise back to UW and to contribute to UWs goal of being a biodiversity center of excellence. The Flittie is an outstanding example of what a private gift can do for UW and its mission, says Tom Seitz, chair of the Faculty Recognition and Development Committee. These awards help our best faculty stay at the cutting edge of research in their disciplines, and bring new knowledge and techniques home to benefit our students. For our committee, it proved a serious challenge to select two winners from this years field of very strong applicants. On Sunday afternoon, an SUV tried to enter the sabzi mandi in Patiala. The Punjab police personnel on the premises tried to stop the vehicle. The driver veered into the barricades and tried to push on ahead. But since the barricade got entangled with the car, it got stuck. Upon this, five Nihangs ( a Sikh sect, members of which specialise in traditional martial art) got out of the car and assaulted the more than half-a-dozen policemen who were present. A violent conflict took place in which an assistant sub-inspector was grievously injured. Taking advantage of the ensuing chaos, the offender left the scene and took refuge in a nearby gurudwara. They were later arrested by commandos of the Punjab police. They recovered weapons and lakhs of rupees from the gurudwara. I could not help but think what would have unfolded had the perpetrators of violence been maulanas hiding in a mosque instead of Nihangs in a gurudwara. I suspect it would have led to a public furore. Sikhs and Muslims both are minority communities, but the incident reflects the kind of contradictions we live with as a society. The national lockdown has led to serious unemployment issues. This has led to frustration and misery. This explains why some workers from other states came out on the streets in Surat on Friday, their helplessness and anger turning very quickly into violence. The police responded with force to disperse them. It was migrant workers like them who fled cities and went back home after the lockdown was declared. Given their numbers, no action was taken against them. But the workers in Surat were smaller in number and so the police did not hesitate to take them on. One could argue that the police was left with no choice. But the frustration and helplessness caused by this sudden unemployment can very well lead to violence in other places. If the lockdown period is extended some states have already done so substantial efforts have to be made to give daily-wage workers assistance. This lockdown has become a cause for anxiety, hunger and restlessness among them. The government must be sympathetic to their plight. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for a majority of the people and the rabi crop is ready to be harvested. Workers will be required for the harvesting, which seems difficult given the lockdown and the norms on social distancing. Even if harvested in time, the crop has to reach the mandis and farmers have to be given a fair price for their produce. For this, the supply lines will have to be opened up. Not doing this will create several challenges, the consequences of which could hurt us for a long time. The shutting of industries and small-scale industries for a longer duration will harm not just the people but also the economy. Industrialists and entrepreneurs have voiced their fears, and demanded that they be allowed to run at least one shift daily. Air routes, trains and national highways will also have to be opened alongside. This is not to undermine the scale of the health challenge. Some restrictions can be enforced to prevent the spread of the pandemic. For example, the number of passengers travelling in buses, trains and planes can be limited so that social distancing rules are not compromised. This will not only restart the economic process but create a sense of hope for the future. In districts still free of the virus, the rules can be relaxed toa greater extent. According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), India cannot sustain the burden of a lockdown for much longer. The federation has also appealed to the government to advise district magistrates that they should take the help of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for workers engaged in harvesting the rabi crop. It has also suggested imposing heavy taxes on imports for the next six months to help the domestic small-scale industry get back on its feet. Its obvious that while grappling with this pandemic, the government will have to find ways to deal with the economic crisis. As far as the communal virus is concerned, all of us, as a society, will have to fix it. If we dont, then the future generations could well ask us whether even an enormous blow like the coronavirus was not enough to bring us to our senses and make us banish the communal virus forever. Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan The views expressed are personal Monday, April 13, 2020 Fathers Building Futures (FBF), a difference-making Albuquerque-based nonprofit organization, is making a major transition to become part of the Atrisco Companies. The Atrisco Companies is the modern organization descended from the Atrisco Land Grant, established in 1598 by the settlers who came to New Mexico with Spanish explorer Don Juan de Onate. Fathers Building Futures will join six other organizations under the Atrisco Companies umbrella: Atrisco Heritage Foundation, El Campo Santo, Inc. (operating three nonprofit cemeteries in the Albuquerque area), Rio Grande Educational Cooperative, Ascend Business Services, Atrisco Oil & Gas, LLC, and Mariachi Spectacular de Albuquerque. Fathers Building Futures empowers formerly incarcerated parents by providing on-the-job workforce training and supports to enable sustainable futures for themselves and their families. Wood caskets built by Fathers Building Futures Im a member of the FBF Advisory Board. With my expertise in the funeral business, Im helping them market the kosher caskets and wooden urns they make in their woodworking shop as part of their training program. Im thrilled to share this news about the organization from FBF Executive Director Joseph Shaw. Announcement from Fathers Building Futures Before we talk about anything, I want to express our wishes that you stay safe and healthy. We are one community and we all must come togetherby staying apart. Our prayers go out to everyone who has been touched by COVID-19 in any way. I have been grappling with how to deliver such good news in such a heartbreaking moment throughout the world. We have had to overcome such barriers in our lives, but this is unlike anything that we could have imagined. We will have to find out together. Together is how we have made it this far. Over the time that you have supported our mission, Fathers Building Futures has shown that it is a very adaptable program. With every change that we have gone through, it has always been to find better ways to improve the lives of the dads that we serve and their families. One of these moves was to become completely led by and for the people that we serve. Our peer-led model is why weve been so successful over the years and extending that through to the leadership is one of the things that we are most proud of. Today, we are announcing another decision that we are very proud to be able to make. As of April 6th, Fathers Building Futures is one of the sister companies to Atrisco Companies. Our desire to deliver the best future possible for our dads means that we must continually strive to learn more. The Atrisco Companies understand how to successfully run a social enterprise. They have the leadership that will empower us to better run our social enterprise, giving us sustainability for the dads who are coming out of prison. We will receive some of the best professional development and guidance, as those at the Atrisco Companies have a wealth of knowledge. Our glass ceiling has moved so much higher because of this! As an Atrisco Company, we will be able to share some overhead resources, which will allow us to devote more money and energy to the dads. Our operational leadership will remain the same, being led by the same dads that have built the program. Oversight and governance will be overseen by the board of Atrisco Companies. This will allow us to focus on what we do best: serve vulnerable New Mexican families. We will maintain the same staff and program, as well as our standalone nonprofit status. The same strong team of amazing leaders that have stood on our board will remain as advisers to us. They have guided us through every barrier imaginable, so we owe them a big thank you! We are honored to bring our company into a strong, historic organization that was started from the Atrisco Land Grant. Theirs is a story that is over 400 years in the making. The first immigrants to the land that has become known as the United States, they viewed their lives and their opportunities as coming from the land that they worked; land that represented hope for their children and the community. The people of the Atrisco Land Grant still possess the same dreams for their children, and they pursue this generations hopes through the Atrisco Companies. Read more about their history and mission here. Thank you all for your support! We look forward to giving you more great news in the future! Atrisco Companies Statement Atrisco Companies President/CEO Peter A. Sanchez provided these comments: With great excitement and optimism we would like to announce the addition of Fathers Building Futures as the newest member of the Atrisco Companies. All aspects of the business arrangement including legal requirements and Board Member approvals have now been completed. Congratulations everyone! Our discussions began just a few short months ago, however, there was a strong belief from the outset that both parties to this business combination could mutually benefit from this merger. We feel the mission of FBF fits in seamlessly with the educational mission and interests of the Atrisco Companies. We also believe that FBF has a very high ceiling to its programmatic mission. We are optimistic and hopeful that leveraging Atrisco Companies resources and expertise in building and scaling organizations will once again prove fruitful. We look forward to expanding the social impact of FBF by reaching greater numbers of clients in the years ahead. We are also very excited to further broaden the diverse Non Profit entities that comprise the Atrisco Companies. There is strength in numbers and we certainly believe the combination of these organizations will be able to do great things for our communities here in New Mexico. Learn more at the Fathers Building Futures website and at the Atrisco Companies website. Share this: By Express News Service RAIPUR: Even as the Chhattisgarh administration is focussed on the measures to combat Covid-19 pandemic, the capital Raipur is witnessing an increasing number of people afflicted with jaundice (viral hepatitis). The disease has raised another major concern as over 190 residents in Raipur are now affected with Jaundice since past one week. Shaken with the consistent rise in the jaundice cases in some of the wards owing to the contaminated water supply, the Raipur Municipal Corporation (RMC) took stock of the situation. The officials reviewed the areas that reported clustering of the disease and set up health camps in affected wards. With the RMC to conduct random tests of water samples, the residents in affected areas would be supplied with the chlorine tablets and medicines in every household. The BJP corporators have asked the Congress Mayor on the RMCs dereliction on supplying contaminated water to the residents. Its irony that while people are combating with the apprehension over Covid-19, their fear is escalated owing to the failure to check the spread of jaundice. During the lockdown the citizens are provided with contaminated water is shocking said Sunil Soni, the BJP Lok Sabha member from Raipur, accusing the utter negligence by the authorities. In all affected areas the health treatment of jaundice patients continue and the people there are also advised to consume boiled water, said Dr Meera Baghel, chief medical officer. As I walked by the house at the end of my street, a man in the yard waved and smiled. I had passed that house hundreds of times without encountering a wave or smile. Who was this suddenly friendly neighbor? Its not just him. People in this Pacifica neighborhood are taking a lot of walks these days a byproduct of being shut inside for hours on end and most everyone will greet you with a smile or a hello. Sure, such friendly exchanges did happen in pre-pandemic days, but not nearly as frequently. Occasionally two neighbors approaching each other will detour off the sidewalk onto the street at the same time to let the other pass without violating the 6-foot rule. Its the social-distancing version of the dance that occurs when two people pick the same route in a narrow corridor to avoid colliding with each other. While residents of my block often skip the mask during short strolls, shoppers at the Safeway a half mile away are now regularly covering their faces. Of the 15 people queued up outside Wednesday afternoon, all but two were masked. Has the COVID-19 outbreak ushered in a new era of civility? People do seem to be nicer, and many are embracing the spirit that we're all in this together. But there are exceptions. A self-described healthy senior posted on Nextdoor about her encounter with a woman talking on her phone in a Pacifica Rite Aid store. She asked the woman if she would move so she could get a roll of paper towels while maintaining social distancing. She refused so I went to the manager and told him and he made an announcement over the intercom, she wrote. That same day, the woman went to an ATM where she found a man at the machine with no mask or gloves on. I said nicely, 'youre not using protection! And he gave me the finger, and he gave my granddaughter the finger. Another person called out her west Pacific Heights neighborhood on Nextdoor for doing a poor job of social distancing, especially its walk-and-talk-on-the-phone enthusiasts. Today, the only others I saw social distancing were other seniors, she wrote. Also, I noticed no one talking on their phone made any effort to social distance forcing seniors into the street. The rules of physical distancing can create dilemmas. What happens when a friendly 3- or 4-year-old breaks away from Mom and runs to greet you, shattering the 6-foot zone of safety? Do you back away slowly? Warn the child to stay away as if you were radioactive? Wait for Mom to intervene? My friend Anne described a recent encounter she had with two elderly women in the Sunnyside neighborhood of San Francisco thusly: After she moves off the sidewalk to let them pass, the older of the two probably in her 80s shuffles toward her and asks, Can you help me? Anne responds, Oh, whats the matter? Can you call the police? Behind her, her companion waves as if signaling. She didnt take her medication, she says. Sounds like you need to take your medication, Anne tells the older woman, who looks like her aunt. But the white-haired lady steps closer and says. I cant hear you, dear. She's now less than 6 feet away. Anne explained that the proximity made her uneasy, but it would be mean for me to run away. So she just tells her in a conversational tone, Oh, I think you should go inside. And the woman does. Her house is only steps away. As she they enter the home, the womans companion looks back at Anne and says, You helped. Thank you. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2020 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam.... April 13 : A New Year of prosperity and happiness will commence in Kerala on Vishu 2020 and this festival will be celebrated on April 14, 2020. It is also the first day of the Medam month as per the Malayalam calendar. This day is observed with rituals that usher in blessings, luck and good health. The traditional ritual of seeing a beautiful VishuKanni promises that the year will flourish with good luck and prosperity. Along with this, people share Happy Vishu wishes to their loved ones. Image Source: Prokerala.com Vishu Kanni images This year, spread the message of good luck and happiness through meaningful Vishu greetings. Send lovely Vishu Kanni images to your Keralite friends and relatives and build the spirit of harmony. Below you can find a lot of Vishu greeting cards in English, wishes, and posts that you can send across through various social media handles. Image Source: Prokerala.com Vishu greetings to share May your New Year opens new doors to happiness Wishing you an auspicious Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Wishing you a blessed Vishu Banish your worries and let your minds be filled with wisdom Happy Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Auspicious Vishu Kanni image Spread the message of love and good luck Lets egos melt away Begin your New Year with a prayer Wishing you a Happy Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Celebrate Malayalam new year Sending my heartfelt Vishu wishes to you and your family Happy Vishu May the New Year bring you a lot of cheer and good health Have a prosperous Vishu Kanni this year Wishing you a Happy Vishu Dr Riyaz Patel, pictured, Associate Professor of Cardiology at University London said black and ethnic minority patients were more likely to live in densely populated areas Last week, as it emerged that the first ten doctors to die of Covid-19 were black, Asian, or from other ethnic minorities, health chiefs called for an investigation into why these groups were apparently worse affected by the outbreak. Figures suggest 28 per cent of the most seriously ill patients needing hospital treatment for coronavirus infection are either black or Asian despite making up around ten per cent of the UK population. There have also been concerns over what appears to be a disproportionate number of deaths among black and Asian bus drivers. A similar trend has been noted in the US, where 70 per cent of the deaths in Louisiana have been among black Americans, more than double the background population. But experts remain unclear about what might be driving the anomaly. Dr Riyaz Patel, Associate Professor of Cardiology, at University College London, said: This could be because of socioeconomic factors, with BME [black and minority ethnic] patients more likely to live in densely populated areas, multi-generational families in the same household and having more public facing jobs, all of which makes the likelihood and duration of exposure to the virus more likely. Another explanation is that the virus has so far hit densely populated areas like London first, where BME populations are high. Nonetheless, there could be biological reasons for the difference, which we can speculate on. One thing very visible to us in London ITUs now is how diabetes, high blood pressure and possibly being a little overweight, seem to be such potent risk factors for having severe lung illness. All of these risk factors are more common in Black and Asian patients, so there could be a link here to explorate. The Government has introduced a nationwide lockdown to slow down the spread of the virus There could also be a genetic explanation, although not one which has been investigated specifically for coronavirus. Immunologist Professor Philip Goulder, at the University of Oxford, said some immune cell molecules, called HLA, can vary between populations. HLA allows tiny fragments of proteins from viruses like the coronavirus to be recognised by the immune system. In West Africa, where there are high rates of malaria, much of the local population has an HLA molecule called B53, which protects against death from the disease. But this is rarely found in the UK population. Some forms of HLA are also thought to protect against HIV, while others make the disease more serious. Prof Goulder said: Certain classes of molecule are protective, and some are associated with much more rapid disease. Its almost certainly going to apply to coronavirus. Bengaluru, April 13 : An innocuous tweet with his children in a swimming pool at home landed Karnataka's Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar in trouble, as the state unit of the Congress has now sought his dismissal for revelling amid the lockdown, a party official said on Monday. "Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa should sack Sudhakar for behaving irresponsibly by spending time in a swimming pool amid the lockdown enforced to contain the coronavirus spread," state Congress spokesman Ravi Gowda told IANS. The opposition party's demand came in response to a tweet Sudhakar posted on Sunday with a picture and the caption: "After a long time, joined my children for swimming... maintaining social distance here also, haha." A doctor by profession, the 46-year-old minister is also in charge of the Covid-19 fight of the state government. Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President D.K. Shivakumar also sought Sudhakar's dismissal for 'having fun' at a time when the people were reeling under hardship. "When the state, including farmers and workers, is in distress and the police and the doctors are fighting day and night, our minister is having fun," Shivakumar tweeted in Kannada. Sudhakar, however, deleted the tweet from the micro-blogging site after he received flak from the Tweeple. Some Twitterati criticised him for his fun act amid the health crisis, while others defended him by tweeting that the minister also has a personal life. "It is a matter of moral and ethical standards. He must resign on his own accord or the Chief Minister should sack him from the cabinet," asserted Shivakumar in a series of tweets. The youngest minister in the eight-month-old BJP government in Karnataka got re-elected on the ruling party's symbol in the December 5 by-elections from the Chikkaballapur Assembly segment, about 60km northeast of Bengaluru, after resigning from the Congress as a rebel. Sudhakar, a powerful Vokkaliga leader in the state's southern region, joined the Yediyurappa ministry on February 10 along with nine re-elected BLP legislators, who too resigned from the Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) government in July 2019 along with seven others. The resignations of 14 Congress and 3 JD-S rebels led to the fall of the 14-month-old coalition government on July 23 after its Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy resigned following the defeat of the confidence motion he moved in the Assembly on July 18, 2019. Photo: (Photo : Instagram/thehughjackman) Hugh Jackman, 51, shared a message for his wife on his Instagram, and Ryan Reynolds, 43, teased him by telling the wife to "hang in there". Jackman shared a heartwarming message on Friday for his wife Deborra-Lee Furness, celebrating their 24th wedding anniversary, He said those were the best 24 years of his life, and everything keeps getting better. With a throwback picture of them, the 51-year-old actor said that he loves Debs with every bit of his soul. He ended by greeting his spouse a happy anniversary. Reynolds saw the post, and as usual, he played a joke on Jackman by replying with a comment saying, "Hang in there, Deb." Jackman and Reynolds Love Playing Jokes to One Another Reynolds has been telling Jackman to revive his "Wolverine" character so that they can be together in a movie. The Deadpool star told Today Show Australia in December that Jackman is an evil person because he is making people think that he is the benevolent ambassador of the country, but in reality, he is from Winnipeg, Canada. Reynolds also added that Jackman is a fraud. The comment Reynolds made was a response to Jackman's hijacking his then-upcoming movie "Free Guy" when the "Wolverine" actor photoshopped himself into its movie posters. He captioned the photo saying it would make a much better promotional tool for the movie. Jackman and Reynolds' Relationship Ended Early in 2019, the two announced on their respective social media accounts that it would be the end of their friendly feud. Because of that, they tried to mend their broken relationship by making ads for each other's companies. Jackman owns the "Laughing Man Coffee" while Reynolds is the owner of the "Aviation Gin", and as usual, they both planned to outdo one another. Both shared a black-and-white photo of themselves on their social media account with the caption saying "official truce". Jackman added some more in his caption, saying that he is going to make the most amazing ad for "Aviation Gin", and that he is looking forward to Reynolds' reply. Reynolds replied by saying that the photo was a gesture of goodwill, and he is going to make a beautiful ad for the "Laughing Man Coffee." Blake Lively Promoting Reynolds' Trainer Ryan Reynolds trainer, Don Saladino, is offering free workout classes amid the coronavirus pandemic. Lively shared a photo of Saladino telling her followers about the freebie that the trainer is providing. The "Gossip Girl" alumna wrote in her story that she kept swiping right, but it seemed that it is not working. And then she added saying, "Oh...swipe UP!" which is prompting her fans to learn more about the trainer's program. Reynolds and Lively donated $1 million to two organizations that represent food banks in both US and Canada during the global pandemic. New Delhi/Kabul, April 13 : Former Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, who escaped from the custody of Pakistani security agencies in February this year, has complained to the top three international human rights organiations against the illegal arrest of his family members. In a letter written to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Red Crescent, which was posted by him on Twitter, the former Taliban militant said that the Pakistan army has kidnapped members of his family and detained them in an unknown location for the past three months, without any regard for the laws. Ehsanullah, held responsible for terror attacks on Malala Yousafzai and Peshawar Army Public school, had surrendered before Pakistan Army three years ago. But in February this year, he escaped from a safe house of the Pakistani security establishment. In the letter to the international human rights groups, Ehsanullah introduced himself as Liaqat Ali and revealed that after he quit violence in 2017 and signed a peace treaty with the Pakistan Army, he was "given a guarantee that all resources would be used to support me to live a peaceful life but the promises made were unfortunately not kept." "I was imprisoned in a house with my family for three years until we were left with little option but to escape because of our uncertain future," he said. Following his departure, Ehsanullah said, the Pakistan Army attacked his father's house in Mohmand district and abducted his father Sher Mohammad and brother Asad Shafiq. Two of his brothers, Hashmat Khan and Shaukat Khan, were arrested from their shop in Chitral. In addition, the army kidnapped his uncle, cousin, brother-in-law and a friend from their homes, he said. "They have all been detained in some prison for the past three months, but I do not know where they are being held," the former militant said, adding that no case was filed against his father nor was he produced before any court. None of his relatives and friends, he said, had anything to do with any of his actions. The former militant urged the three international organisations to use their positions as upholders of human rights to condemn these actions of the Pakistani state, make enquiries as to the whereabouts of his missing family members and ensure their swift release from detention. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 17:22:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- China's National Health Commission (NHC) has dispatched an expert team to the city of Suifenhe, at the China-Russia border in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, to support its prevention and control of imported COVID-19 cases, a health official said Monday. The dispatched personnel include medical experts on infection control, intensive care and respiratory diseases, as well as public health professionals on emergency health response, infectious disease control and laboratory testing, said Mi Feng, spokesperson for the NHC at a press conference in Beijing. Experts are cooperating with local organs to treat patients and prevent the epidemic from spreading, Mi said. The capabilities of China's land border cities and counties, including Suifenhe, to prevent and control major epidemics are insufficient, said Wang Bin, an official with the NHC. It is an urgent task to improve these regions' medical care, public health and border quarantine, Wang said. The experts dispatched to the border cities will help improve their plans and measures to prevent imported cases, as well as strengthen their capabilities of detection, treatment and quarantine, said Wang. More medical equipment, test kits, protective materials and laboratory equipment will be allocated to border cities, she added. Is the above map not displaying? Click here. The Lehigh Valley and its surrounding counties have become Pennsylvanias new coronavirus hotspots, leading the Northampton County to ask state officials to open a mass COVID-19 test site in the county. County Executive Lamont McClure says if the Pennsylvania Department of Health agrees to set up a mass testing site locally the countys emergency management team could have it in place in a week. Northampton and Lehigh County are a hot spot in Pennsylvania for COVID-19 infections, McClure said. Secretary (Rachel) Levine and the entire PA DOH have done a tremendous job at leading the response in Northampton County, and we are grateful, however, testing is an important tool we need to combat this virus. The Lehigh Valleys become an area of concern for state officials with nearly 3,000 positive cases across the two counties Monday. Philadelphia has by far the most cases (6,810) and deaths (127) of any county in the state. But when adjusted for population, the Lehigh Valley and Poconos are Pennsylvanias most impacted areas. Is the above map not displaying? Click here. Lehigh, Luzerne and Monroe counties each have more than 400 cases per 100,000 residents, the highest per capita rates in the state. Northampton and Pike counties arent far behind with 375 and 396 cases per 100,000 people. Last week, Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said the health department is closely watching the eastern part of the state, not just the densely populated areas around Philadelphia but also the northeast. Lehigh, Monroe and Luzerne counties were specifically mentioned as areas of concern" where officials are eying a mass testing site. The department shares McClures worries about the increasing cases and deaths in the northeastern part of the state, department spokesman Nate Wardle said Monday. We are working through plans to establish a mass testing site in the northeastern part of the state, and will share more information on where that will be when it has been finalized, he said before Levines Monday media briefing. At the news conference, Levine said a northeast site has been chosen for the mass testing center, but she did not say where it will be located. She promised more information later this week. The mass testing sites in Philadelphia and Montgomery County were operated with federal support, Wardle noted. The federal government is not expanding their assistance of mass testing sites to other areas, so this would be a state-run location, with local assistance, he said. The process involves securing a location and then working with the local community to set everything up. A mass testing site in Warren County, across the Delaware River, opened on Wednesday for county residents. Is the above map not displaying? Click here. The virus has killed at least 42 residents of both counties, including 23 Northampton County residents, according to the most recent state and county data available. In its news release Monday, the county says state officials are now reporting 25 COVID-19-related deaths in the county, which has set off alarm bells in light of our proximity to these three Coronavirus hot spots. This figure includes all people who have died within the countys borders, not just county residents. Over the weekend, Pennsylvania reached two grim milestones: more than 20,000 positive coronavirus cases and more than 500 deaths. There have been 24,199 positive test results to date and 105,593 people have tested negative. Health officials warn that the official total is almost certainly an undercount and that Pennsylvanias peak in cases and deaths is still ahead. The peak is projected April 16-17, but that may vary by region. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. If theres anything about this story that needs attention, please email her. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. I did food management when I was younger and entered some state competitions in the culinary arts and I actually got a scholarship to the Culinary Hospitality Institute in Chicago which I wound up turning down, he said. During high school, I was with this police explorer group where they let you do ride-alongs and you got a uniform and helped out with traffic control and that sort of got my foot in the door (with the police). The US Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear arguments by teleconference in May over whether President Donald Trump can continue to shield his tax returns from Congress and New York prosecutors. The nation's highest court had been scheduled to hear arguments in the cases on March 31 but they were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. The court said it would hear the consolidated cases by telephone conference in May, a move which could allow it to deliver a ruling before the November presidential election. "In keeping with public health guidance in response to COVID-19, the Justices and counsel will all participate remotely," the court said in a statement. Two of the justices -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- are over 80 years old and six of the nine are over 65, putting them at increased risk of becoming severely ill from coronavirus. In a break with tradition, the court said it would provide a live audio feed of the May arguments to news organizations. The court said oral arguments in 10 cases would be held May 4-6 and May 11-13 but it did not assign specific dates yet to each case. Trump broke with presidential norms during the 2016 election by refusing to release his tax returns as most presidents have done since the 1970s even though it is not required by law. The New York real estate tycoon claimed his tax returns were under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and he would release them when the audit was done but he has never done so. Three cases involving attempts to force Trump to release his tax returns and financial records are before the court. They are seen as a key test of the limits of presidential privilege and immunity. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr is investigating payments made by Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who claimed to have had a sexual liaison with Trump before he ran for president in 2016. Cohen is serving three years in prison after admitting paying hush money -- in violation of campaign finance laws -- to Daniels and another woman, tax fraud and lying to Congress. A federal appeals court in New York ordered the accounting firm Mazars USA to release eight years of Trump's tax returns in regards to the investigation, leading his attorneys to approach the Supreme Court. The other cases involve subpoenas for Trump's tax returns issued by committees in the Democratic-majority House of Representatives. Since taking office, Trump has appointed two justices to the Supreme Court and conservative justices now have a five to four majority on the court. Gov. Gavin Newsom has made meet the moment a mantra during the coronavirus crisis. He has been impressive in pushing stay-at-home orders, acquiring protective equipment and ventilators, expanding the health care workforce, and keeping the states interest above egos and partisan rivalries in collaborating with the Trump White House. The next step for California would be to ensure that it is optimizing the services of the 13,000 physician assistants in the state. About 80% of the assistants work in hospitals or clinics, where the range of care they provide is often broad. These are the medical professionals with masters degrees who work under the supervision of doctors, typically performing some of the same functions. State law requires a physician assistant to have a written practice agreement with a supervising doctor that formalizes the arrangement and scope of his or her duties. The level of supervision varies; it can be light or intensive and remote or in person. A doctor is allowed to supervise no more than four physician assistants. In ordinary times, that written requirement is not a big burden. But in moments of emergency such as the one were in it can unduly limit the availability of professional care. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, 13 states passed laws that allow the suspension of the supervision requirement in times of natural disaster or emergency. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, which has almost 17,000 physician assistants, recently issued an executive order to greatly increase the flexibility of physician assistants to operate during the coronavirus crisis. The group representing Californias physician assistants have been asking for a similar nod from the state. In a March 25 letter to Newsom and other top officials, the California Academy of PAs have been asking for the temporary easing of legal requirements that are impeding the ability of PAs to meet the demand for patient care during this unprecedented public health crisis caused by COVID-19. The physician assistants group said its offices have been flooded from calls and emails from PAs who want to help to the maximum extent possible without a second thought but current law leaves them uncertain about what they are allowed to do when crisis presents urgent challenges. The examples it presented were compelling. Two emergency-room physicians contracted COVID-19 in Southern California, effectively sidelining the physician assistants who were under their supervision. As this example demonstrates, with physicians themselves becoming ill, the ratio of the number of PAs to physicians must be eliminated in times of crisis. The rapid setup of temporary care facilities for coronavirus patients, such as the Sheraton Fairplex hotel in Pomona, will result in the staffing of doctors and physician assistants who do not have standing written agreements. Doctors are likely to be working outside their specialties during this crisis, thus forcing revisions with their physician assistants under current law. The last thing Californians would want or need is cumbersome bureaucracy when lives are at stake. As the American Academy of PAs noted in an April 2 letter to Kimberly Kirchmeyer, director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, no one is suggesting the waiver of a law that physician assistants cannot do anything for which they are unqualified or untrained. But their medical education has given them the skills to test, diagnose and treat COVID-19 patients. They are merely asking for the opportunity to meet the moment. They should get it. This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters. The Ghana Police Service, Sunday warned that any person found at any beach in Ghana will be arrested as part of measures to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus. A statement signed by Superintendent of Police Mrs Sheilla Kessie Abayie-Buckman, Director of Public Affairs, explained: "In accordance with the Imposition of Restrictions Act, 2020 (Act 1012) and consequential orders, the public is to note that gathering at any beach in Ghana amounts to an offence". The law, however, exempts security service personnel or essential service providers whose presence at the beaches may be necessary to provide security or for public safety. "All other persons found at any beach from now onward and within the period of imposition of restrictions on public gathering or movement will be arrested," it cautioned. The Police Administration advised the public to cooperate with it in the national interest. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A retired woman teacher in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district handed over her March pension amount of Rs 32,500 to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund to strengthen the hands of the administration in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. Madhavi Bindoo handed over a cheque to Aurangabad Collector Uday Chaudhari. "This is my first revised pension under the Seventh Pay Commission. My husband and I decided to donate this amount as the most important thing right now is to combat the coronavirus outbreak," she told PTI. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chiranjeevi has opened up on how coronavirus pandemic has crippled the Telugu industry and what will be the way forward. As a precautionary measure to curb the spread of coronavirus, many film bodies including the FEFSI (Film Employees Federation of South India) had decided to halt the shoot of Tamil films, television programs and advertisements from 19 March. However, this shutdown may also cause massive loss and extreme distress within the industry. (Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak) Telegu superstar Chiranjeevi, in an interview to Deccan Chronicle, weighed upon the current situation and opened up on the impact of lockdown on the industry. When news about coronavirus pandemic was making headlines a few weeks ago, Chiranjeevi was the first Telugu actor to cancel shootings. He mentions how he read about the coronavirus and how quick it was spreading in other countries. Upon reading the precautionary measures, he realised that gatherings of people should be avoided. Chiranjeevi soon discussed the issue with director Siva, and both agreed, to call off the shooting of their upcoming film Acharya. Later, the same evening, government announced the shutdown of multiplexes and theatres. Chiranjeevi also spoke about the losses being suffered by the Telegu filmdom and said, "We cant estimate the losses right now. But I feel that it will run into hundreds of crores. I dont know when the theatres will reopen, and when we can start shooting again. But I am confident that the cinema industry will bounce back once normality is restored." (Also read on Firstpost - Coronavirus Outbreak: Kollywood faces unprecedented economic, social challenges once lockdown lifts) The actor further adds that once the lockdown is lifted, they will discuss how to take things forward. He says they will have to talk to the financiers too and request them to reduce the interest and help the producers. We have to stand united and overcome this situation once everything gets back to normal, he adds. Even since the lockdown, Chiranjeevi has been leading from the front to help daily wage employees via Corona Crisis Charity, a committee set up to attend to the needs of daily labourers. I discussed with a few people from the industry and they were ready to help. When I announced the Corona Crisis Charity, many actors, producers and others responded immediately and donated." On Friday, Megastar Chiranjeevi applauded the police personnel of both the Telugu States for working tirelessly to curb the spread of coronavirus. Sharing a video on his Twitter handle, Chiranjeevi said, The police staff, who are among the frontline warriors in the war against the virus, are doing a commendable work in the two Telugu States. Because of their relentless efforts, the lockdown has been so far successful in Hyderabad. Common people should also co-operate to completely obliterate the virus. Check out his tweet here Libya's unity government said Monday its forces had seized two western cities on the coast between Tripoli and the Tunisian border from troops backing military commander Khalifa Haftar. "Our forces took control of Sorman and Sabratha and are pursuing (Haftar's forces)," said a statement by Mohammed Gnunu, spokesman for the forces of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord. Search Keywords: Short link: Odessa Police Department A 17-year old man is being held in Ector County jail in connection with a shooting death that occurred Friday night in Odessa, according to a press release from the Odessa Police Department. Chaviya Dewayne Crosby has been charged with murder, a first-degree felony, and tampering with physical evidence, a third-degree felony, in the death of Odessan Jasmine Lozano, 17, according to the release. Bond was set at $165,000. Dozens of counties eligible for loans to repair agricultural damage from tornadoes US steps up intrusion as Iraq's new PM seeks to form govt. Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 7:45 AM Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Mustafa al-Kadhimi has been trying to set up a new cabinet amid public calls for social welfare and the withdrawal of US occupation forces from the Arab country. Kadhimi, director of Iraq's National Intelligence Service, met with top members of the outgoing government on Saturday in a bid to put together his cabinet and bring an end to a long-lasting power vacuum. On Thursday, President Barham Salih named Kadhimi, who enjoys support from the country's political establishment, as prime minister-designate and tasked him with forming a new government in a month. He was the third person tapped for the job in just 10 weeks after former nominee Adnan al-Zurfi withdrew his bid. Iran welcomed Kadhimi's nomination for the Iraqi premiership, calling the move a step in the right direction. The new Iraqi prime minister-designate is facing several challenges, among them calls for economic reforms along with a meaningful fight against corruption in state institutions and the nation's frustration with the US military presence in Iraq. Earlier this week, US officials told the Associated Press that Patriot missile launchers and two other short-range systems were in place at Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq's Anbar Province and at the military facility in Kurdistan's regional capital, Erbil. They further noted that a short-range rocket system had been installed at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad. The US military build-up not only violates Iraq's sovereignty, but also poses a threat to the country's armed forces and defies an Iraqi parliament vote on January 5 that called for an end to the presence of all foreign troops. The vote came two days after the US assassination of General Soleimani in Iraq, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha'abi, and eight other Iranian and Iraqi people. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently proposed that Washington and Baghdad "hold a strategic dialogue in June" to discuss the presence of American forces in Iraq. Speaking on Friday, Kadhimi stressed that Iraq's sovereignty was a "red line" and that he would not be flexible about it. On Saturday, some Iraqi sources said Pentagon chief Mark Esper and Vice President Mike Pence had visited Ain al-Asad air base, where they held talks with the Iraqi president. However, an official close to Salih told Al Mayadeen TV channel that he had held no meeting with foreign or American officials during his trip to Anbar Province. The latest developments came months after Iraq witnessed violent protests against unemployment and a lack of basic services. The anti-regime demonstrations led to the resignation of prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. Kadhimi is "a tough and smart fellow," and as a veteran intelligence agency chief "likely has files on everyone of note and could call on those files to pressure people to toe the line," said Dr. Paul Sullivan, a professor at the US National Defense University. "[But] trying to create a peaceful and stable Iraq may be one of the toughest jobs out there. If the economy and jobs don's turn around, even the toughest people cannot keep [the country] together for long." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India intensified its efforts on Sunday to draft a policy striking a balance between lives and livelihood in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak, while formulating guidelines to demarcate zones with different levels of restrictions and restart certain economic activities after April 14, when the three-week sweeping lockdown is set to end. Meanwhile, the UK became the fourth European country after Italy, Spain and France to reach the grim milestone of 10,000 deaths from Covid-19, and reports said the Donald Trump administration in the US acted casually on early warnings about the pandemic. Coronavirus in India: Ministries pitch plan to balance lives, livelihood A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of striking a balance between lives and the world, the government intensified its effort to find the policy mix to implement this framework. This included the process of finalising guidelines to demarcate zones with different levels of restrictions, and restarting certain economic activities once the three-week lockdown ends on April 14. Read More Coronavirus in India: More red zones as Capital extends Covid clampdown Delhi added 10 new containment areas to arrest coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, which climbed to 1,154 the national capital reported 85 fresh infections and five deaths on Sunday even as chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said his government was focusing on zones designated red and orange to isolate and control the outbreak. Read More Some cheer: Indias coronavirus recovery count hits 1,000 As the coronavirus spreads across the country, a figure that not many have paid attention to is that of the number of people who have recovered from the highly infectious Sars-Cov-2. In India alone, over 1,000 people around the country have been cured, while across the globe at least 410,000 people have recovered. Read More Covid-19: What you need to know today As India nears the 10,000 cases mark Covid-19 infections touched 9,191 on Sunday, and there have been 326 deaths so far it is clear that the virus is still following its own trajectory in India. Many scientists expected that this would change at some point. It hasnt . Read More Red, yellow, green: Zones may be coded to lift coronavirus curbs States across the country plan to divide their respective regions into red, yellow and green zones based on high, limited and no cases of Covid-19 for easing the lockdown imposed to check the pandemic and submit their plans to the Centre for framing a uniform policy for the next phase of curbs expected to start from Wednesday, multiple officials said on Sunday. Read More States bank on testing, tracking and containment As the government weighs steps to eventually ease the nationwide lockdown in a phased manner, certain successful models from across the country could prove to be a useful guide, according to experts watching the Covid-19 situation. A health ministry document on containment areas issued last week gave a glimpse of what post-lockdown restrictions may look like in the worst-hit areas.The states have adopted different strategies but some of them are seen to have potential to be replicated nationally. Read More Nihang men chop off cops hand after defying restrictions A policemans hand was chopped off with a sword and six of his colleagues were injured in an attack by a group of Nihangs at a vegetable market in Punjabs Patiala, the state police said on Sunday. Read More India well-prepared to handle surge in Covid-19 cases, says health ministry India is well-prepared to handle a surge in Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases, with over a hundred thousand isolation beds available across the 601 Covid-19 dedicated hospitals, the Union health ministry said on Sunday, adding that at present only 1,671 patients needed hospitalisation. Read More Indias GDP growth may range between 1.5 and 4%: World Bank Indias economic growth is likely to range between 1.5% and 4% in FY21, depending on the severity of the spread of Covid-19 pandemic and the duration of the ongoing nationwide lockdown, the World Bank said on Sunday. Read More Centre raps states over hurdles in smooth supply of essentials The Centre on Sunday asked the states to ensure smooth interstate and intrastate transportation of goods, amid concerns of shortage of supply. Read More Discharge mechanism in focus after false Covid-19 negatives Scientists have called for urgently revisiting the discharge protocol for Covid-19 patients after recent international studies showed people can test positive for the virus even after two consecutive negative results. Read More Coronavirus airborne up to 4 metres, health staff at high risk The virus that causes Covid-19 can be airborne for up to four metres, according to a study of patients in hospital wards and intensive care units (ICUs) in Chinas Wuhan, where it was first detected by the end of last year. Read More Covid-19 fatalities in Britain cross 10,000 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his gratitude to the staff of the National Health Service (NHS) for saving his life when his experience with the coronavirus could have gone either way as the UK on Sunday became the fourth European country to surpass 10,000 virus-related deaths. Read More Covid-19 US toll grows, as do media accounts of Donald Trumps missteps As the United States went from one coronavirus death on February 29 to more than 20,600 Sunday, media accounts are growing of the Trump administrations response beset by unheeded warnings, delays and the presidents own reluctance to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis. Read More SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON doctor Open source 24 Ukrainian citizens have recovered from Covid-19 while staying abroad. The press office of Ukraine's Foreign Ministry reported that on Facebook. The authority specified that 171 Ukrainians are getting treated abroad. Most of them are now in Italy (121) and Poland (22). The others are staying in Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal and the U.S. Six Ukrainians succumbed to the aftermaths of Covid-19. On April 12, the number of infected citizens in Ukraine increased by 266 cases. As of 9 a.m. April 12, 83 lethal cases were observed in Ukraine; another 89 patients recovered. The economic cost of the coronavirus pandemic has caused Western New England University officials to institute furloughs among its workforce. No faculty members will be among the 60 employees furloughed, according to Barbara Moffat, the WNEU associate vice president for media and community relations. The furloughs will begin April 19 and are expected to last 30 days. Moffat said fewer than 10 percent of the university workforce will be affected. There are no layoffs. Affected employees will be contacted this week. With the move to online classes and the departure of a vast majority of students due to the novel coronavirus, our workforce needs have changed dramatically, Moffat said. This temporary move was carefully designed to meet those changing needs, while minimizing the financial impact on our valued employees. The COVID-19 pandemic has emptied classrooms and campuses across the nation, sending education online and forcing institutions to determine which employees must report to campus, which can work remotely - and which would be furloughed to address financial realities with students no longer on campus, and unexpected COVID-19 costs running into the millions. In WNEUs case, the majority of affected employees cannot work from home, due to the nature of their jobs. During the furlough period, employees will be able to maintain their benefits, with the university continuing to pay its share of health insurance premiums. Employees will also be eligible to apply for unemployment insurance. According to a release from the university, the recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act means that most, if not all, of the furloughed employees will be able to replace their full salary with unemployment compensation. Western New Englands financial situation is emblematic of the challenges facing universities and colleges throughout the nation. WNEU recently announced plans to refund $3.8 million dollars in room and board costs to students. Boston University recently pared 1,636 student employees from its rolls. American International College in Springfield has reduced its workforce but, citing confidentiality, did not provide details as to the size and nature of the cuts. Uncertainty surrounding the impact of the pandemic - and how long it would last - led to the circulation of a petition at Smith College in Northampton, where a hiring freeze has gone into effect. With the job security of contingent faculty (including visiting assistant professors, lecturers, laboratory instructors, teaching assistants and others) unclear, the petition demanded these people receive the same protection promised full-time faculty. By late last week, the petition had drawn 1,800 signatures but no firm commitment from the college. Its web site stated there will be no changes to college benefit plans, but the effect of the hiring freeze on non-tenured faculty still left a sense of unease among those staff members, who make up about 50 percent of the Smith faculty. [April 13, 2020] Comcast Business Launches Webinar Series to Support Businesses of All Sizes Comcast Business today announced the launch of a new webinar series aimed at helping businesses, of all sizes and across all industries, navigate the current environment, including strategies on how to rethink their short- and long-term goals and leverage technology to remain productive and nimble with their operations. "With our network of industry experts and strategic partners, we've compiled a collection of new webinars to support and empower the business community," said Eileen Diskin, CMO, Comcast (News - Alert) Business. "Our hope is that these webinars will inform businesses of all sizes as they adapt their operations and adjust their technology strategies to help them remain connected, agile and secure, now and in the future." The free, five-part series, features Comcast Business leaders and subject matter experts alongside industry partners and topical experts tackling some of the biggest questions facing today's businesses amidst the global pandemic. The first of the webinars begins Tuesday, April 14th at 1PM EDT. Interested businesses can view full details and register here. The scheduled webinars in the series include: Tuesday April 14, 2020 1PM EDT Leaning in to Support Small Business Experts from Davis Polk & Wardell LLP will explore the facts of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), including eligibility requirements, primary considerations, and details of other government programs designed to keep businesses running. Panelists: Jai Massari, Partner, Davis Polk & ardwell LLP; John Banes, Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP Thursday April 16, 2020 1PM EDT A shift to remote working and digital commerce puts new demands on technology infrastructure. Comcast Business experts explore how resilient network connectivity can help keep businesses productive. Panelists: Bob Victor, SVP, Product Management; Noam Raffaelli (News - Alert), SVP, Network & Communications Engineering; Jeff Lewis, VP Data Product Management, Strategic Planning & Development Thursday April 23, 2020 1PM EDT Remote Learning Tech Solutions Many school districts lack the technology to enable remote learning. Comcast Business and industry experts detail how educators can adapt by shifting their networks and technologies. Panelists: Lenny Schad, Chief Information & Innovation Officer - District Administration; Nelson Ortiz, Executive Director National Sales Engineering at Comcast Business Tuesday April 28. 2020 1PM EDT Keeping Cybercriminals at Bay - and Protecting Your Business Companies are vulnerable during a crisis. Comcast security leaders help businesses understand how to identify if they are a potential target and explore the steps that can be taken to mitigate risk. Panelists: Shena Seneca Tharnish, Vice President, Cybersecurity Products, Comcast Business; Noopur Davis, EVP, Chief Product & Information Security Officer, Comcast. Thursday April 30, 2020, 1PM EDT Steering Your Brand Through Crisis Brand actions matter, especially during difficult times. Lou Aversano, CEO of Ogilvy (News - Alert) & Mather USA will discuss how companies can manage their brands during all phases of a crisis and come out on the other side. Presenter: Lou Aversano, Chief Executive Officer, Ogilvy & Mather USA With access to free Xfinity hotspots, tools to manage a business from any device, anywhere, and a team of experts and engineers available 24/7, Comcast Business enables businesses of all sizes to stay online and connected during these unusual times. In addition, Comcast Business has enhanced safety and reliability measures to protect the health of its customers while continuing to provide the best possible service. For more details on how Comcast Business is helping support its business customers at this time, please visit: https://business.comcast.com/response About Comcast Business Comcast Business offers Ethernet, Internet, Wi-Fi, Voice, TV and Managed Enterprise Solutions to help organizations of all sizes transform their business. Powered by an advanced network, and backed by 24/7 customer support, Comcast Business is one of the largest contributors to the growth of Comcast Cable. Comcast Business is the nation's largest cable provider to small and mid-size businesses and has emerged as a force in the Enterprise market; recognized over the last two years by leading industry associations as one of the fastest growing providers of Ethernet services. For more information, call 866-429-3085. Follow on Twitter (News - Alert) @ComcastBusiness and on other social media networks at http://business.comcast.com/social. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200413005244/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] The Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) has decided to donate Rs 1 lakh to PM-CARES Fund to fight the coronavirus outbreak. The students body held an Executive Council meeting and discussed the issues plaguing the students during the ongoing lockdown. The council has decided to form five committees each comprising seven representatives including a DUSU office bearer, three Executive Council Members and four college students union presidents to look into the issues concerning semester examinations, university entrance procedure, evaluation, syllabus reforms and review committee . The council also pledged to donate Rs 1 lakh from the unions annual fund towards the PM-CARES fund to fight the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. DUSU also appealed to all affiliated college unions and student representatives of all the universities to make contributions to the PM-CARES fund. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday said that India has a stock of COVID-19 kits with which tests for next six weeks can be conducted easily. Dr Gangakhedkar, while speaking at the daily media briefing on COVID-19 here, said: "Till yesterday, we conducted 2,06,212 COVID-19 tests. There is no need to worry. The pace at which we are conducting tests today, we have a stock with which we can conduct tests for the next six weeks easily." He said that the consignment of COVID-19 kits will arrive from China on April 15. "The first consignment of COVID-19 kits from China will arrive in India on April 15," he said. ICMR's head scientist Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar said that a total of 2,06,212 COVID-19 tests have been conducted till April 12 across the country. Total positive COVID-19 cases have risen to 9,152 in India including 308 deaths and 857 recovered, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The city of Conroe is moving forward with two major water and sewer projects totaling more than $15 million. In March, Conroe council members approved the construction of a new water plant near McCaleb Road. The council awarded a $6.8 million contract to Sugarland-based Wharton-Smith. Tommy Woolley, director of capital projects and transportation, said the plant will have the capacity of 1,500 gallons per minute and will serve the whole area including several new subdivisions and a new school. This is going to be a very important well up there, said Mayor Toby Powell during the councils March 26 meeting. The construction of the well is expected to take about 525 days to complete. The council approved a $490,059 contract with Willis-based Rebel Construction Inc. during its April 9 meeting for the construction of a 1,000-foot access road to the new water plant. In other action April 9, the council awarded a $8.7 million contract to Houston-based Main Lane Industries LTD for a sewer system upgrade near Carl Barton Park. Woolley said the upgrade will help serve the area and is being partially funded with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds received from Hurricane Harvey. The sewer lines will run along South Loop 336 from Carl Barton Park to Stewarts Creek and will go under Ed Kharbat Drive. The project will take about a year to complete. cdominguez@hcnonline.com South Africa: Evictions suspended during lockdown period, Sisulu reiterates Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, has reiterated her call for municipalities to suspend cutting water to residents and the eviction of residents during the lockdown period. Sisulu has held a third meeting with civil society organisations to discuss interventions in densely populated informal settlements, as part of efforts to mitigate against the spread of COVID-19. During the meeting, the recent evictions in Makhaza Informal Settlements in the Western Cape were discussed. Sisulu emphasised that everyone should adhere to the directive by government that all evictions be suspended during the lockdown period in which the nation is engaged in fighting the spread of COVID-19. She called for municipalities to suspend cutting water supply for the duration of the lockdown, as government has called on citizens to practice hygiene by washing their hands several times a day to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections. Regarding the Makhaza evictions, the department said that the Minister received mixed messages as to what occurred. She was informed that the people who were evicted were being prevented from erecting new shacks, while other reports indicated that the people invaded the land with the assistance of an opposition party, the department said in a statement. The Minister has undertaken to travel to the Western Cape this week to get to the bottom of the situation and to find a long-lasting solution. No residents will be evicted during re-blocking Sisulu assured civil society groups that during the re-blocking process, which is aimed at easing congestion in informal settlements, no residents will be evicted. She emphasised that this will be done on a voluntary basis. The civil society groups continue to work with government to convey a message to communities that it is in their interest to be moved to 27 land parcels identified and currently being prepared by Human Settlements for re-settlement as a result of re-blocking. Apart from the suspensions in evictions, there should be no cutting off of water for any citizen of this country during this period. Instead, all efforts should be focused on fighting the spread of the virus, Sisulu said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2020-04-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Drug maker Lupin on Monday said it has received an Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) from the US health regulator for its manufacturing plant in Nagpur New Delhi: Drug maker Lupin on Monday said it has received an Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) from the US health regulator for its manufacturing plant in Nagpur. The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) issues an EIR to a company when an inspection is satisfactorily closed. The health regulator had inspected the company's Nagpur manufacturing facility between 6 January and 10 January, 2020, Lupin Ltd said in a statement. "We are very happy to have received the EIR for our Nagpur facility, our largest and most advanced oral solid dosage facility. We remain committed to enhancing compliance and quality standards across all our manufacturing sites," Lupin Managing Director Nilesh Gupta said. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: The financial support is being rendered to the entrepreneurs who have suffered as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Finance told Trend. The State Treasury Agency, on the basis of the Economy Ministry orders, transferred the salaries: the hired employees working in the spheres affected as a result of the pandemic 3.6 million manat ($2.1 million) to 1,983 taxpayers, 2.9 million manat ($1.7 million) - to 2,560 individual (micro) entrepreneurs working in the spheres affected by the pandemic to their corresponding bank accounts on April 13. The Ministry of Finance allocated a total of 8.9 million manat ($5.2 million) as financial support for 5,752 taxpayers on April 9, including the first tranche. (1 USD = 1.7 AZN on April 13) D owning Street has defended the decision to test Michael Gove's daughter for coronavirus, arguing it was necessary to ensure the Cabinet minister could "get back to work." Mr Gove's daughter first starting showing Covid-19 symptoms on April 5, Mail Online reported. Under Government guidelines this means members of the same household need to self-isolate for 14 days. But the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has come under fire after it emerged his daughter was tested just days after first showing symptoms, while thousands of NHS workers are still waiting to be tested. Speaking on ITV's Good Morning Britain on Monday, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Rachel Reeves, said NHS workers should remain the priority for coronavirus testing. Before and during Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures 1 /44 Before and during Coronavirus lockdown - In pictures AP Buckingham Palace AP Piccadilly Line tube AP Big Ben AP Millennium bridge AP Wembley Stadium AP St Pancras International train station AP Downing Street AP Victoria Station AP Regent Street AP The Mall leading to Buckingham Palace AP London's National Gallery in Trafalgar Square PA Edinburgh's Royal Mile PA Barry Island, South Wales PA Bath PA Bath PA London's Waterloo station PA London Bridge PA London's Canary Wharf Jubilee Line platform PA London's Canary Wharf Station PA London's Buckingham Palace PA London's Tower Bridge PA London's Leicester Square PA London's Millennium Bridge with St Paul's Cathedral PA London's Criterion Theatre PA London's Palace Theatre PA London's Phoenix Theatre PA London's Canary Wharf Station PA Bournemouth beach PA Bath PA Bath PA Barry Island, South Wales PA Bournemouth beach PA On Mr Goves daughter being tested, she said: "I will have reservations about it being one rule for some and another for everyone else. Those tests are obviously in short supply." The Prime Minister's official spokesman defended the decision and said that the test has been carried out on the advice of Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty "in line with medical guidance." The spokesman said: "The minister in charge of the Cabinet Office is a central role in the coronavirus response. "Testing a member of the household ensured that Michael Gove could get back to work to drive forward the government's response at a critical time." Michael Gove self-isolating after family member displays 'mild symptoms' of Covid-19 Within 24 hours of Mr Gove's daughter showing symptoms, Mr Whitty had approved a request for her to be tested, according to Mail Online. The test reportedly came back negative on Wednesday, April 8. "She was tested on Tuesday and the result came back negative on Wednesday afternoon, at which point the household isolation rules no longer applied to the family," a source close to Mr Gove told the news site. Israel's president has rejected a request from Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz for a two-week extension to form a new coalition government. The announcement by President Reuven Rivlin means that Mr Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still have a midnight deadline of tonight to reach a power-sharing deal. If they fail, the country could be forced into a fourth consecutive election in just over a year. Mr Gantz asked Mr Rivlin for the extension on Saturday night, claiming he was close to a deal with Mr Netanyahu. But in his response, Mr Rivlin said that the extension would not be possible under the "current circumstances". Mr Gantz last month was given the task of forming a government by Mr Rivlin, after a narrow majority of lawmakers said they backed him to become prime minister. But in an abrupt about-face, Mr Gantz later announced he would instead try to form an "emergency" government with Mr Netanyahu's Likud party to deal with the country's coronavirus crisis. Since then, negotiations on a power-sharing agreement between Mr Gantz and Mr Netanyahu appear to have stalled. At the same time, Mr Gantz's Blue and White alliance has fragmented, leaving him with a shrunken version of his original party and few viable options. The crisis has given the embattled Mr Netanyahu, who is set to go on trial for serious corruption charges, a new lease on life. Mr Netanyahu's hand-picked justice minister last month shuttered the court system, delaying the prime minister's trial until at least May. By persuading his rival to seek a unity deal, Mr Gantz put on hold plans to pass legislation that would have prevented Mr Netanyahu from serving as prime minister in the future. With Blue and White in tatters and the clock ticking, it is unclear whether Mr Gantz can revive his legislative agenda. In a statement, Blue and White said negotiations were ongoing. It quoted Mr Gantz as telling Mr Netanyahu that he remained committed to agreements they had already reached, with the hope of "forming the national emergency government that the country wants and needs". Mr Rivlin's office said he made his decision after speaking to Mr Netanyahu as well. It noted that Mr Netanyahu gave no indication that an agreement was near. He said he would reconsider if both sides together requested an extension in order to finalise a deal. Mr Netanyahu's Likud party put out a statement asking Mr Rivlin to give Mr Netanyahu an opportunity to form his own coalition. This would give him an extra month to continue to pursue a deal with Mr Gantz, but from a much stronger negotiating position. If Mr Netanyahu can win the backing of a majority of lawmakers in the 120-seat parliament, he would then get a chance to form a government. After recruiting one defector from the opposing camp, Mr Netanyahu currently has the backing of 59 lawmakers. He needs two more for a majority. But if he is unable to do so, the Knesset, or parliament, would have 21 days to select an alternative prime minister. A failure to agree on a candidate would plunge the country into its fourth consecutive election in just over a year. THE WOODLANDS, Texas, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN) today announced, in light of public health concerns related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, that the date and format of the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the "Annual Meeting") of Huntsman Corporation (the "Company") have been changed. The Annual Meeting will be held in virtual meeting format only at 2:00 p.m. Central Time on May 1, 2020. Stockholders of record at the close of business on March 5, 2020, are entitled to attend the Annual Meeting. Stockholders will not be able to attend the meeting in-person. To be admitted electronically to the Annual Meeting at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/HUN2020, stockholders must enter the 16-digit control number found on the proxy card, voting instruction form, notice of internet availability of proxy materials or email previously received. Stockholders may vote virtually during the Annual Meeting by following the instructions available on the meeting website during the meeting. Whether or not you plan to attend the Annual Meeting virtually, the Company urges all stockholders to vote and submit proxies in advance of the meeting by one of the methods described in the Company's proxy materials previously distributed in connection with the Annual Meeting. Please note that the proxy card and voting instruction form previously distributed with the Company's proxy materials will not be updated and may continue to be used to vote stockholders' shares in connection with the Annual Meeting. About Huntsman: Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated and specialty chemicals with 2019 revenues of approximately $7 billion. Our chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. We operate more than 70 manufacturing, R&D and operations facilities in approximately 30 countries and employ approximately 9,000 associates within our four distinct business divisions. For more information about Huntsman, please visit the company's website at www.huntsman.com Social Media: Twitter: www.twitter.com/Huntsman_Corp Facebook: www.facebook.com/huntsmancorp LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/huntsman Forward-Looking Statements: Certain information in this release constitutes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based on management's current beliefs and expectations. The forward-looking statements in this release are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances and involve risks and uncertainties that may affect the company's operations, markets, products, services, prices and other factors as discussed under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Huntsman companies' filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Significant risks and uncertainties may relate to, but are not limited to, volatile global economic conditions, cyclical and volatile product markets, disruptions in production at manufacturing facilities, reorganization or restructuring of Huntsman's operations, including any delay of, or other negative developments affecting the ability to implement cost reductions, timing of proposed transactions, and manufacturing optimization improvements in Huntsman businesses and realize anticipated cost savings, and other financial, economic, competitive, environmental, political, legal, regulatory and technological factors. The company assumes no obligation to provide revisions to any forward-looking statements should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by applicable laws. SOURCE Huntsman Corporation Related Links http://www.huntsman.com ICA members are embarking on a campaign 'Sew Scrubs for Ireland' and National President, Josephine Helly, is calling for expressions of interest. Josephine explained "I have been in discussions for some days about a project Sew Scrubs for Ireland - which may be of interest to some of our talented ICA women at this time. The idea grew from discussion with Sinead Lawlor, who, with her colleagues in the costume industry have been busy cutting and making scrubs for the past few days for a hospital and a day centre in Dublin. Sinead is a creative young woman who works in costume production and has many contacts in that field. "The scrubs comprise a top and tunic, and trousers. Guild members who would like to make scrubs to meet a need in their community would be supplied with a package including an instruction leaflet and diagram; cut fabric pieces; tape for binding edges and finishing the inside neckline; plus a drawstring for the waist of the trousers. It would be helpful if the maker has thread but it can be supplied if needed. The kits will be supplied in sizes S, M, L, XL as required by demand. "The package will be sent out, probably in a plastic sleeve to each member individually who has expressed an interest, so that it comes to their door. "Perhaps a number of guild members in a particular community would like to make them for one nursing home or hospice as a collective effort they would be sent the required number of scrubs to be made (to each member individually), so again the package comes to their door. "I believe that any organisation or service that has either requested help, or that you know needs the help, will find a way to collect the finished scrubs from your door in any local area. That is how I see the distribution aspect working within the community. The Community Call Network in your area may also be an option. "To answer this call and to express your interest in this project, please write the word Scrubs in the subject bar and email to manager@ica.ie who will liaise with Sinead on my behalf. Please indicate how many scrubs you would be willing to make and include your full name, guild, federation and contact mobile number/postal and email address. "If you know of any other members who might not be on this distribution list and who might like to become involved, please let them know, I look forward to hearing back from you on this helpful community project, " Josephine concluded. India has shipped the first consignment of 5,022 metric tonnes (MT) of wheat - approximately 251 containers - to Afghanistan and plans to ship more in the days to follow. The move comes to strengthen the bilateral relations between the two countries and ensure food security during the Coronavirus pandemic. The shipment sailed from Kandla to Chabahar port as of April 11 carrying a portion of the total 75,000 MT supplement of wheat, the Indian embassy in Afghanistan confirmed. According to reports, the embassy of Afghanistan released a statement saying, This humanitarian gesture of Indian people to our Afghan brethren will ensure food security during difficult times of COVID-19 pandemic. Further acknowledging Delhis decision to supply HCQ it added, India is gifting 500,000 tablets of HydroxyChloroquine to AFG for health professionals and COVID-19 positive cases. Afghanistan's Health Minister, Ferozuddin Feroz, had earlier expressed concerns about the countrys healthcare system in shackles that might fail to administer patients in case 80 percent of the population got infected. It sought help stating that at least 1,10,000 people in Afghanistan might succumb to the deadly COVID-19 disease. With at least 52 new cases of coronavirus reported within a day, Afghanistan stands at 607 confirmed cases, over 18 fatalities have been registered so far. (1/2) 251 containers carrying 1st consignment of 5,022 MT of wheat out of total gift of 75,000 MT from India to Afghanistan set sail from Kandla Port to Chabahar Port today. The remaining consignments will follow in the weeks ahead. @MEAIndia @vkumar1969 pic.twitter.com/kDBGRSJ4jb India in Afghanistan (@IndianEmbKabul) April 12, 2020 (2/2) This humanitarian gesture of Indian people to our Afghan brethren will ensure food security during difficult times of COVID-19 pandemic. India is gifting 500,000 tablets of HydroxyChloroquine to AFG for health professionals and COVID-19 positive cases.@MEAIndia @vkumar1969 pic.twitter.com/Ajjdjxk1Gm India in Afghanistan (@IndianEmbKabul) April 12, 2020 Read: Maha Govt Orders APMC To Re-open Vashi Market In 2 Days, Warns Action Under Epidemics Act Read: Nagaland Registers First COVID-19 Case; Patient Undergoing Treatment At Hospital In Assam India's 'gift' to Afghanistan India Ambassador to Afghanistan, Vinay Kumar, had announced earlier in a press conference that India would support Afghanistan and would 'gift' 75,000 metric tonnes of wheat. At least 13 countries would receive a consignment of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) export, including Afghanistan, he had said. HCQ is a game-changer drug in the treatment of coronavirus. India being a primary supplier, several countries requested the drugs export. The Union government had lifted restrictions on the export of 26 pharmaceutical ingredients. Earlier, Foreign Minister of Maldives praised India for the export of the anti-malaria drug saying that "a friend in need is a friend indeed" on Twitter. Read: First Arkansas Prisoner Tests Positive For Coronavirus Read: Coronavirus Cases In Florida Approach 20,000 Mark (With ANI inputs) CLEVELAND -- American novelist and screenwriter Michael Chabon coined the phrase, Man makes plans....and God laughs" (a variation on an old Yiddish saying). I use to think this a rather jaded life philosophy, but now I wonder. In my lifetime, I have tracked lions in Botswana, attended bullfights in Madrid and have been blessed by a Pope in Rome. So it was with great excitement that I looked forward to my September trip to Germany and Austria with the woman I love, Gloria. Our itinerary was set, flights booked and research completed. I was like Rick Steves -- prepared to experience the culture and history of the great European cities of Munich, Salzburg and Vienna. The highlight of our trip was to be the 2020 performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play. What, say you, is so special about that? Allow me to explain. As summarized by Wikipedia, In 1633, the residents of Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany, vowed that if God spared them from the bubonic plague then ravaging Europe, they would produce a play thereafter for all time every 10 years depicting the life and death of Jesus. The villagers were, in fact, spared from the plague and thus kept their part of the vow when the play was first performed in 1634. The production involves over 2,000 performers, musicians and stage technicians, all residents of the village. This amazing Passion Play has only been canceled twice in the past 386 years and it took two world wars to accomplish that. Today, the entire world is battling this coronavirus and once more the Passion Play has been canceled this year. The irony of these circumstances is lost upon nobody. Gloria and I, like people all over the world, have canceled our travel dreams and are heeding the recommendations of the medical experts to stay at home and stop the spread. We will do our best to get through these trying days ahead. Like many people all over the world, we will practice social distancing, wash our hands often and be considerate of others. We will pray to God and Saint Rocco and Saint Gonzaga to intervene and spare the most vulnerable among us. We will implore them to watch over and protect the doctors, nurses, first responders, truckers and food providers that battle this insidious plague that confronts us today. I am confident that, notwithstanding the pessimistic observation of Michael Chabon mentioned above, God will once again see us through these challenging days ahead and that, once its over, we will all come out the better for it. Neal ODonnell, born and raised in Cleveland, still lives in West Park, retiring 14 years ago as a Cleveland police captain after serving in the Cleveland police department for 30 years. He has a bachelors degree in English from Cleveland State University and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. This essay is part of Coronavirus: My Story: We also want to hear from you. Share your fears, your tips, your insights - or just how its making you feel right now. Did your family also experience the 1918 flu pandemic? If so, how is this different? We are community. Together, we can get through this. Please keep your essays, poems, graphic art, photographs or other submissions to 650 words or fewer, email to forum@cleveland.com, and include CORONAVIRUS MY STORY in the subject line. Questions? Send an email to Elizabeth Sullivan at esullivan@cleveland.com. A man is fighting for his life in hospital after he was attacked by men armed with weapons in Co Fermanagh. (stock photo) A man is fighting for his life in hospital after he was attacked by men armed with weapons in Co Fermanagh. At around 8.40pm on Saturday evening, the PSNI received a report that an altercation was ongoing in the Coolcullen Meadows area of Enniskillen. Upon arrival, officers found two men with wounds to their legs, both requiring hospital treatment. One of the men was in a critical condition, according to police yesterday afternoon. It is believed that another man involved in the altercation had left the scene before officers arrived and enquiries are ongoing to determine his whereabouts. Condemning the incident, local UUP councillor Howard Thornton said that it was "terrible" that such incidents were putting unnecessary stress on the NHS during the coronavirus crisis. "I pass on my thoughts and prayers to the family of the men involved," he stated. "At this time, with everyone being on lockdown, it's important that we get on with each other and we do not get provoked or increase our anxiety because we're more or less housebound at the moment. "All these incidents are putting stress on our NHS. Incidents like this are absolutely against the whole of our society." DUP councillor Keith Elliot added that there is a video of the incident on social media and appealed to anyone with the footage to bring it forward to police. An investigation is under way and officers have appealed for anyone with any information or video footage of the altercation to contact them at Enniskillen on 101 quoting reference number 2257 11/04/20. Information can also be provided anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has killed tens of thousands, infected hundreds of thousands, overwhelmed our health-care system, wreaked havoc on the economy and shut down American society, leadership is crucially important yet has largely been missing. What we need can be found in an unusual place - a speech never given. Seventy-five years ago this week, on April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died at the "Little White House" in Warm Springs, Ga. He had spent the previous day composing a Jefferson Day address he planned to deliver on April 13 via nationwide radio hookup. This final speech, though never given, contains important lessons for us today. As the country grapples with another global crisis that demands bold leadership, Roosevelt's message provides an example of inspirational, positive leadership that contrasts with the dark, often hectoring tone of today's politics. For decades, Democrats celebrated Thomas Jefferson's birthday with fundraising dinners and other party-building events (Republicans held similar Lincoln Day dinners). Early in his presidency, Roosevelt frequently spoke at these events, particularly in election years, when his partisan swipes at Republicans could generate votes for Democrats. But by 1945, it had been years since he'd given an official Jefferson Day talk. His 1945 address was a collaborative effort; the Democratic National Committee suggested a few lines, and his speechwriters Jonathan Daniels and Robert Sherwood contributed some language. But the speech was really Roosevelt's: his ideas and his words. The president knew his health was fading. He arrived in Warm Springs on March 30 underweight and exhausted from 12 years in office, suffering from an enlarged heart, chronic digestive ailments and other medical problems. In contrast to his own decline, he recognized that the world was on the cusp of a new era. Nazi Germany was near collapse, and the crucial Pacific island of Iwo Jima was in American hands. One of Roosevelt's pet projects, the United Nations, was about to convene its first session. Japanese resistance remained fierce, but winning the war was, by that point, a question of "when" rather than "if." Although still a wartime president, Roosevelt focused his speech on the coming peace. He spent the morning of April 11 on the porch of his six-room cottage, pencil in hand, working and reworking his lines. That afternoon, he dictated the finished product for typing. It was only two pages long - 761 words - but it struck him as a fine piece of work. It was brief and uplifting, used Jefferson as a springboard to his own thoughts and set the stage for his scheduled appearance before the United Nations on April 25. By the evening, the president's color had faded. His hands shook so badly that he could not hold a cocktail glass steady. The next day, he was gone, felled by a cerebral hemorrhage. On April 13, Roosevelt's funeral train, bound initially for Washington before transporting the president's remains to his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., pulled into Atlanta's Terminal Station. Press secretary Steven Early hopped off and distributed copies of the president's final speech to reporters. Newspapers reprinted it in full and ministers cited it in Sunday sermons, treating the address as a valedictory comparable to Washington's Farewell Address. In the words of the Louisville Courier-Journal, it was Roosevelt's "last request of the American people" - "a high and solemn request" for decency, courage and strength. In his address, Roosevelt, sensing Americans' weariness with wartime sacrifice, urged them to keep fighting until they achieved total victory. "The once powerful, malignant Nazi state is crumbling," he assured them, and the "Japanese war lords are receiving, in their own homeland, the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor." Americans must also avoid following victory with complacency. "More than an end to war," Roosevelt wrote in one of the speech's pivotal lines, "we want an end to the beginnings of all wars." The president had the top-secret Manhattan Project in mind when he asked Sherwood to research Jefferson's thoughts about humanity's relationship with science. He wanted to prepare Americans for thinking about technology's positive potential in an atomic age, when an international misunderstanding could metastasize into global catastrophe. Roosevelt selected an optimistic Jefferson quote for his address: "The brotherly spirit of science," the Founding Father wrote, unites people "into one family . . . however widely dispersed throughout the different quarters of the globe." From this rhetorical launching point, the president mused that "if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships," overcoming national, ethnic and political differences to forge a better world. Jefferson also inspired Roosevelt's core message: the importance of international engagement. Roosevelt depicted Jefferson as a cosmopolitan figure, a onetime minister to France and former secretary of state who, as president, "sent our Navy into far distant waters to defend our rights" during the Barbary Wars. This action embedded internationalism and the protection of the United States' global interests through justifiable military action within the country's historical DNA. The president wanted Americans to remember these lessons in the coming years. "Great power involves great responsibility," he noted. The wise use of American political, economic and military power could prevent "a third world war." This was a controversial message. Many Americans wanted only to win the war, come home and forget about overseas affairs. But Roosevelt defied this resurgent isolationism when he reimagined the United States as a global peacekeeper. This internationalist spirit had pervaded his presidency. He had spent years lowering trade barriers through tariff reductions and the Bretton Woods system and facilitating diplomacy with institutions such as the embryonic United Nations. Roosevelt paired this grandiose vision of an American-led world with a humble, grass-roots political philosophy. He spoke not as a Democrat, but rather as an adherent of democracy "with a small d." Preserving peace was a nonpartisan cause that depended on "millions and millions" of ordinary Americans uniting "to make this work endure." Presidents must lead, but success required an active, committed, informed citizenry. Roosevelt placed the world's future direction in the hands of decent, everyday Americans guided by enlightened leadership. This, too, reflected long-standing Rooseveltian motifs. New Deal art celebrated common farmers and laborers. Wartime movies featured G.I.s named Joe, regular fellas from Nowheresville who toppled the fascists' mighty war machines. Roosevelt's final speech articulated other themes that defined his presidency. His Four Freedoms that articulated his war aims, and his insistence that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," informed his calls for "confidence" and "resolve" for the sake of "an abiding peace." Tyranny, he said, spawned from "fears . . . ignorance, and . . . greed." Americans must overcome these vices, lest the world's wartime sacrifices be in vain. Roosevelt's inspirational, aspirational final vision remains only partially fulfilled. Today's world is a violent place, yet international bodies and economic interdependence have given us generations of relative military peace among the great powers. Science and reason have produced enormous advancements and greater understanding of humanity while awakening new dangers, uncertainties and skepticism. The Cold War kept the United States internationally active, but not always for just causes. There is still hope, Roosevelt might interject. His address's final words, originally written in pencil and now carved into the FDR Memorial, offered his audience, and us, a challenge. "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today," he wrote. "Let us move forward with strong and active faith." His optimistic message provides no specific blueprint for tackling global crises. Rather, it affirms the positive spirit necessary to bear hard times and reminds us that, for all our differences, our fate rests in each other's hands. - - - Welky is a professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas and author of "A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier." He is currently writing a book about FDR's family during World War II. Yosemite Village is normally a crush of humanity and traffic congestion. On Saturday, it was peaceful like few times before the only sounds coming from the wind and the few local residents. A young bobcat ambled by the nearly abandoned administrative buildings, while ravens prattled and danced in the empty parking lots, and coyotes trotted along the valley's empty roads and walkways. Tourists aren't allowed in California's most popular national park, but if they could visit, they might feel as if they had been transported to another time. Either to a previous era, before millions of people started motoring into the valley every year, or to a possible future one, where the artifacts of civilization remain, with fewer humans in the mix. On March 20, the national park was closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus leaving the 7.5-mile-long valley to only a skeleton crew of 100 to 200 park service employees and an unknown number of concessionaire workers. This month is typically a busy month in Yosemite: Of the almost 4.6 million tourists that visited the valley in 2019, about 308,000 came during April. But on this spring day, the air was crystal clear not a hint of diesel or exhaust tainted the sweet, spring breeze. And the valley was nearly silent, except for the rushing waters of the Merced River and the wind blowing through the ponderosa pines. Yosemite Half Dome dusted with snow and clouds in Yosemite National Park is closed to visitors due to the coronavirus. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times) You couldnt ask for a better place to be isolated, said Warren McClain, a saucier at the Ahwahnee Hotel who has worked in the park since 2017. He and his co-workers, Dane Peterson and Billy Sanchez, were skateboarding and cycling along Northside Drive, just east of Horsetail Fall, soaking in the bright, warm sun. Wildlife is coming out of hiding now, they said, as it did during previous government shutdowns of the park in 1990, 1995, 2013 and 2019. The difference is that this park closure is expected to be the longest on record. The bear population has quadrupled, said Peterson, noting a surge of large megafauna into the fields, thoroughfares and open spaces of the park. Story continues Its not like they arent usually here, he said of the bears, bobcats and coyotes that he and other employees now see congregating outside their cabins and apartments. Its that they usually hang back at the edges, or move in the shadows. Just three days after a snowstorm blanketed the region, spring has come to the valley. The sun was bright, the air clear, and fronds and green sprouts of vegetation burst through the dirt. A healthy-looking coyote, still adorned in her winter coat, stalked and then captured a fat gray squirrel outside the entrance of Camp Curry. She grabbed the rodent by the neck, shook it and then proceeded to eat it whole, saving the tail for last. The few employees sheltering in place are taking advantage of the valley's unimpeded natural amenities. Some are hiking to Mirror Lake and the falls, enjoying trails that are empty aside from the critters. As of Saturday, the valley was completely free of the virus. Nobody was wearing masks. And social distancing didnt seem to be happening except at the Village Market. A coyote wanders around Curry Village in Yosemite Valley. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Only 10 people at a time are allowed in the small grocery store, and three wash stations are outside the entrance. Customers are required to scrub and disinfect their hands before entering. If the virus comes into the valley, its going to come through here, said Ken Concroft, a market employee who was managing the wash stations out front. He said the biggest risk comes from visitors who own property in places such as Foresta and The Redwoods, which are inside the park boundaries. He and other employees fear "people who are from the city" visiting their second homes and inadvertently bringing the virus with them. He said three visitors had come in that morning. A young bobcat hunts for a meal in Yosemite Valley. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) Entry at the park gates is permitted only to employees, essential workers and those who can show the deeds to their houses. The wash stations, social distancing measures and newly installed plexiglass sheets that separate customers from cashiers are all steps the market has taken to prevent the spread of virus in the valley. Concroft was interested to hear that many stores outside the park are now prohibiting the use of cloth bags, eyeing them as sources of viral transfer. Well have to consider that, too, he said. Were doing everything we can to keep it out. For gateway towns such as Oakhurst, Mariposa and Groveland, Yosemite's shutdown has hobbled numerous businesses, as it has in communities near other closed national parks. Outside of California, some of those closures have come recently and followed weeks of controversy, in which town leaders accused the Interior Department of being slow to close parks as a protective measure. Deer feed in Yosemite Valley. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times) Char Miller, a historian at Pomona College, said the park probably was very similar today to how it appeared to visitors in the 19th century. He referred to journal entries, written by early visitors, such as Alice Ives Van Schaack, who visited Yosemite in 1871 and marveled over its natural wonders and majesty. Upon seeing Yosemite Valley for the first time, she later wrote, "I felt Heaven itself could not be much lovelier." Miller said that geological marvels such as El Capitan and Half Dome "remind us of how short our time is here. One thing we can know for sure is that Yosemite is enduring," he added. "It was here before us, and will remain after we leave. Los Angeles Times reporter Susanne Rust and photographer Carolyn Cole are embarking on a road journey throughout California. They aim to give voice to those in remote parts of California as they grapple with the worst health and economic calamity of our lifetimes. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) - The national government assures Filipinos that local government officials will be held accountable for irregularities found in carrying out the cash assistance program amid the COVID-19 crisis. The Department of Social Welfare and Development chief on Monday warned local government officials involved in anomalies in cash aid distribution that they may be suspended if proven guilty. DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista said in a televised briefing that the agency has set up a grievance redress system, where Filipinos may file complaints against erring local government officials. "Itoy isang mekanismo para sa ating mga kababayan na sa tingin nila nakakita sila ng anomalya o iregularidad sa pagbibigay ng SAP (social amelioration program) ay maari nilang idulog ito sa aming grievance redress system," Bautista said in a briefing on Monday. [Translation: This is a mechanism for our people who think they have found anomalies or irregularities in providing SAP (social amelioration program) so they can report it to our grievance redress system.] Bautista said he discussed the issue with Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano, and the latter said local government officials found guilty of violating provisions of the law will be suspended. "Ang sabi niya basta ma-substantiate ang ebidensiya ay isu-suspend niya kaagad kung sino yung opisyal ng LGU na yun," Bautista said. [Translation: He said that as long as the evidence is substantiated, he would immediately suspend the LGU officer involved.] "Dapat nga masampolan natin yung mga LGU para hindi gayahin nung mga iba," Bautista added. [Translation: This would serve as example to LGUs so that others will not follow.] The Department of Social Welfare and Development on Thursday admitted challenges in distributing the cash subsidy to low income families who are financially suffering due to the COVID-19 crisis, saying the problem started at the local government level. READ: DSWD eyes improved cash aid distribution after noting 'shortcomings' While the DSWD is leading the distribution of the cash aid, the local government units play an indispensable role. LGUs were tasked to determine the qualified beneficiaries and submit the database to the national government. Bautista urged the public to raise complaints when they see erring local officials, so that the national government may respond accordingly. The unemployment rate in India has spiked to an unprecedented double-digit numbers as lockdown to battle the coronavirus pandemic has hit the livelihoods of the daily wagers and gig workers. This has led to a growing demand for starting unemployment allowance for such workers in the country on the lines of western countries. Track state-wise confirmed coronavirus cases here According to the data available with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on April 12, the 30-day moving average of unemployment rate in India stood at an alarming 13.5% -- surging for the 17th consecutive day. Since the nationwide lockdown was enforced on March 25, 2020, the unemployment rate has almost doubled from 7.58% on a monthly average basis. For latest updates and live news on coronavirus, click here The last time India saw the unemployment in the double-digit range, it was only for urban unemployment numbers, which had spiked to over 11.5% in August 2016. However, as the rural unemployment rate, the sector which has been gripped with disguised unemployment, were low, the overall numbers never went into the double digits. However, as agricultural activities are also witnessing the lockdown this time, the rural unemployment rate has also surged into double-digit territory. As of date, the 30-month moving average unemployment rate for urban areas stands 14.53%, while that of rural areas stands at 13.08%. What has been adding to the growing unemployment is the fact that most gig workers and daily wagers, many of whom were the migrant labourers, are rendered jobless, as non-essential economic activity has ceased across the country in a bid to stop the spread coronavirus pandemic. The migration of the migrant labourers, who usually work on Dihadi basis (daily wage basis) and have been rendered jobless, has been a cause of concern to both central and state governments. The numbers are likely to deteriorate further, as the hit is even harder in the month of April. According to CMIE, in the first week of April, the unemployment rate was 23.8%. The labour participation rate fell to 39% and the employment rate was a mere 30%, according to the CMIE. According to this data, which CMIE had put out last week, 1.5 crore Indian workers were rendered jobless in a span of just three months from January to March, as Covid-19 started to take a massive hit on the global economy. "What has happened between January and March is that the number of employed fell from 411 million to 396 million and the number of unemployed increased from 32 million to 38 million," it said in a note. Call for unemployment allowance As a result of this, the demand for payment of unemployment allowance is gaining traction. Karnataka Employers Association (KEA) has demanded payment of allowance to unemployed workers out of the corpus available with the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC). "ESIC is in possession of funds to the tune of Rs 84,000 crore and it can be used to pay to the unemployed workers at least for the next three months," B C Prabhakar, Lawyer and President of KEA told DH. In a letter sent to the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment, he said the ESI Corporation, under a scheme named Atal Beemit Vyakti Kalyan Yojana (ABVKY), provides relief to an Insured Person who is rendered unemployed to the extent of 25% of the average per day earning during the previous four contribution periods to be paid up to maximum 90 days of unemployment once in a lifetime of the insured person. This scheme may kindly be modified to provide 50% relief during the COVID-19 period. [April 13, 2020] With Adroit Art, Artists can exhibit their Arts, Crafts & Digital Arts online in 2 simple Steps for Buyers Worldwide MUMBAI, India, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Adroit, an India-based digital marketing agency has launched an Online Art Gallery Adroit Art (www.adroitart.in) with 29,000+ pieces of Arts & Handicrafts. Artists can exhibit their Original Paintings & Drawings, Digital Arts, Handicraft to attract the attention of art curators and buyers worldwide. The platform was founded in early 2019 & now has more than 29,000 Artworks & Handicrafts exhibited by 5,300+ Artists worldwide in 50+ categories like Radha Krishna Paintings, Ganesha Arts, Lord Buddha Paintings, Abstract, Modern, Cityscape & Landscape, Figurative made on canvas, paper, & another type of materials. They encourage & exhibiting Indian art forms such as Madhubani, Warli, Tanjore, Kerala Murals, Gond etc. An artist can start selling Paintings, Drawings, DigitalArt & Handicraft by following the url www.adroitart.in/sell-art-online Unlike other online art galleries, they follow a procedure of quality check by a panel of the artist before the artwork gets delivered to the buyer. Adroit Art charges the lowest commission in the industry which makes artworks accessible to a wider audience. They also provide a certificate signed by the artist to ensure the authenticity of the artwork. The packaging of artwork is also done with special care to avoid any damage and their 7 days return policy gives more comfort to the buyer while buying process. There are no Shipping charges in India if the order is above 2,000 rupees. "Adroit Art was formed with an objective of connecting Artists to the Art Admirers, through an easy process of buying, selling of Art & Craft, on a secured Online Marketplace or Online Art Gallery. We always wanted to provide an online platform for renounced artists & emerging entrants who aspire to make a mark in the art industry," added Jeevan Tipke CEO. Like Instagram & Facebook provide a reflection of our lives, Adroit Art provides a dedicated space for artists to display their artworks to the world. Artists also get an online art gallery for exhibiting their lifetime works, even if it's been sold. Adroit Art sells original & handmade paintings with the proper certification of the artwork. Unlike other platforms, Adroit Art doesn't sell prints of paintings to ensure the authenticity of artworks. The quality of the artworks listed on Adroit Art can be comparable to Museum quality works. By following 2 simple steps, Artists can start Artworks online and also create their very own online Gallery. For more details, you can visit https://www.adroitart.in Media Contact: [email protected] Photos: https://www.prlog.org/12818322 Press release distributed by PRLog View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/with-adroit-art-artists-can-exhibit-their-arts-crafts--digital-arts-online-in-2-simple-steps-for-buyers-worldwide-301039703.html SOURCE The Adroit [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Apple will soon start directing users to the nearest COVID-19 testing center via its Maps application. According to a report from 9to5Mac, Apple has already rolled out a portal through which hospitals and other healthcare providers can register their COVID-19 testing center. After the testing center has been approved, 9to5Mac reports that it will begin showing up on Apple Maps for users searching in the area. The locations will be demarcated using a special icon - a red medical glyph - and a banner. Apple Maps will now be able to located COVID-19 test centers for people that are worried they may be infected with the virus In addition to showing users where the center is on the map, it will also display the location's name, the associated healthcare provider, the phone number, and a link to the official website. More details information includes what type of location the testing is done in, for instance a lab or a hospital, and also whether it's a drive-thru test site, a building, or whether there's parking available. Pictured: Apple Maps displaying a test center, including where the facility is located, and what type of facility it is 9to5Mac reports that Apple is also asking official testing centers to specify whether prospective patients will need a referral to be tested or whether they're required to call first before arriving. The addition to Apple Maps will mirror other tweaks made by fellow tech giants like Google which has updated Google Maps by highlighting restaurants that offer delivery. According to 9to5Google, when users open up their Maps app they will now see shortcuts on the home screen that help them find restaurants that are relevant from a delivery standpoint. Users will be able to order directly through the app if the restaurant supports that functionality, otherwise they will have to use a third-party service or call the restaurant directly. Google also previously the tech giant tweaked Maps so that if a user searches for a hospital near them, a notification would advice them to call the in advance if they suspect that they're infected with coronavirus. Sen. Ron Johnson is planning for a summer release of a status report on his investigation targeting Joe Bidens son Hunter but the Wisconsin Republican acknowledged that Congress response to the coronavirus pandemic has hampered the inquiry. The report, which Johnson was on track to release before the start of the summer months, is certain to thrust the issue into the general election debate and prompt vigorous criticism from Democrats. Were in the process of writing different sections of the report that Id like to make public sometime this summer, Johnson, the Homeland Security Committee chairman, said in an interview. But obviously, [the coronavirus] has not been helpful and hampered our efforts. Johnson has insisted that his investigation examining Hunter Bidens role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company has nothing to do with the election, or the fact that the former vice president is all but certain to become the Democratic presidential nominee. But Democrats have argued that the probe is politically motivated, citing Trumps efforts to parrot the allegations against Biden and his son, in addition to Johnsons own statements about his investigation. Committee staffers have been poring through documents provided by the State Department and the National Archives, according to Johnson. The latter tranche includes information from the Obama White House, a key target of Johnsons investigation. Ive got staff that have been devoted to that and theyre working on that stuff from home, Johnson said, adding: We and I can walk and chew gum at the same time here. This is not taking up massive amounts of staff time. FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2012, file photo, Hunter Biden waits for the start of the his father's, Vice President Joe Biden's, debate at Centre College in Danville, Ky. In 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden was at the forefront of American diplomatic efforts to support Ukraine's fragile democratic government as it sought to fend off Russian aggression and root out corruption. So it raised eyebrows when Biden's son Hunter was hired by a Ukrainian gas company. President Donald Trump prodded Ukraine's president to help him investigate any corruption related to Joe Biden, now one of the top Democrats seeking to defeat Trump in 2020. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) But there are several actions the committee cannot take while staffers are working remotely and while the Senate remains on recess until April 20 at the earliest. One outstanding matter is a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic public-affairs firm that, according to Johnson, might have sought to leverage Hunter Bidens role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, to influence the Obama State Department. Johnson is seeking documents from the firm that it has refused to voluntarily turn over, acting on allegations that Biden sought to protect his son from a corruption investigation into Burisma. Story continues Democrats vehemently oppose the subpoena and the investigation as a whole, positing that the probe is based on unsubstantiated claims that have been advanced by Russian intelligence services. Democrats opposition to the subpoena triggered a formal committee vote to authorize the action but that vote has yet to be scheduled while senators return to Washington for normal business remains in flux. Additionally, senators and aides cannot receive classified briefings or view sensitive documents unless they are present at the Capitol, which is equipped with facilities specifically designed for the review of classified information. Johnson leaned into the investigation while the elder Biden was surging in the early Democratic primary contests and appeared on track to secure his partys presidential nomination. These are questions that Joe Biden has not adequately answered, Johnson said at the time. And if I were a Democrat primary voter, Id want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote. The issue has sparked heated discussions among senators, including during a March 10 classified briefing about election security. During that briefing, several Democratic senators spoke up about Johnsons investigation in particular, his efforts to get information from Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat and consultant for Blue Star Strategies who has leveled unsubstantiated allegations about coordination between the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election. Johnson initially sought to subpoena Telizhenko, but later changed the target of the subpoena to Blue Star Strategies after the FBIs foreign influence task force briefed committee aides about Telizhenko. Democrats have said the committees Biden probe could aid Russian disinformation campaigns and undermine U.S. national security. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) delivered a similar warning to Johnson during a private meeting in December, POLITICO previously reported. For the elderly, the lockdown and the virus have both caused great inconvenience - especially the ones who don't have anyone else to take care of them. Having to do everything on their own with minimal services, is bound to be difficult for them. So, in order to lend a helping hand, the police department of Dwarka district launched a free cab service for senior citizens and women who might need to get from one place to another in case of an emergency. Police in Delhi's Dwarka district launch free cab service for senior citizens, women who need to venture out in emergency cases. #COVID19 #Lockdown Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) April 12, 2020 Alyte (Mahindra Logistics) has provided the police department with a fleet of five cars at different locations, including Sector 23 police station; Dwarka South police station; Fecilitation Centre; Sector 6-10 Market; Dwarka North police station and DCP Dwarka office in Sector 9. Economic Times According to a PTI report, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka), Anto Alphonse, said that any senior citizen or woman living alone, and even any other person who could be in need of medical emergency or distress, can call for the free service. The free cab service will be available only from 8 AM to 8 PM and one cab will be made available at night to cater to any emergency. The number for the service is 9773527222 and the cab will only be allowed to move in the area of the sub city. The police also added that the people wanting to use the cab service need to wear masks and practice social-distancing. Car Dekho For now, a fleet of five cars have been provided by Alyte, which will be stationed at the five places mentioned above. With inputs from PTI. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry had a phone call on Monday with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on means of promoting bilateral ties as well as a host of regional issues that concern Cairo and Moscow. The talks also tackled the measures adopted to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed Hafez said. The two sides underlined the depth of bilateral ties at all levels as well as the importance of continued consultations and coordination with regard to various issues of mutual concern. The two sides also reviewed the latest regional developments, especially with regard to the Palestinian cause and the conditions in Syria and Libya. The talks also tackled the latest developments concerning the Ethiopia dam. Search Keywords: Short link: Qantas staff are considering launching a class action lawsuit against the Australian airline, accusing it of failing to protect them from the coronavirus after dozens of employees became infected. At least 59 Qantas cabin crew - as well as some of their family members - have been diagnosed with COVID-19, including 15 cases linked to a rescue flight from Santiago on March 29. It later emerged at least some crew members who tested positive from the flight did not have to go into quarantine, as they were exempt to rules requiring international arrivals to Australia be confined to hotels for 14 days under police guard. The Flight Attendants' Association of Australia on Monday announced it is looking into whether there may be legal case for its members over Qantas' alleged mishandling of their safety. Police officers patrolling an almost deserted departures hall of Sydney domestic airport on March 20. Qantas staff are considering launching a class action against the airline over alleged mishandling of their safety. At least 59 employees have contracted the coronavirus 'Our members have asked us to explore what options are available to them,' FAAA vice president Bruce Roberts told Guardian Australia. Another four crew members tested positive to the coronavirus from a Dallas to Sydney Qantas flight on March 27. Qantas has said the majority of its staff who had contracted the virus had done so while overseas. The airline has maintained its flight staff are at a 'low' risk. 'There's been no confirmed cases of transmission of the coronavirus to employees or customers on board our aircraft, or any aircraft globally for that matter,' Qantas' medical director Ian Hosegood said. As fears grow about plane crews becoming new vectors for the coronavirus and repatriation flights continue to operate, the Australian Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) has issued new guidelines for flight crews returning from overseas. Pictured: A Qantas Boeing 747-400 aircraft lands at Sydney Airport on March 29. The Flight Attendants' Association of Australia has said it is looking into whether there may be legal action its members can take against the airline giant Staff on Qantas flights had previously been exempt from hotel quarantine, but the AHPPC has now recommended stricter rules to control crew members' movements. 'If possible use an aircraft with personalised ventilation as this has been shown to reduce cross-infection,' the committee advice reads. Among the other recommendations is two weeks of isolation and self-isolation away from their families. Flights should also minimise meal and drink service and staff should sit as far away from passengers as possible, the AHPPC advice said. A passenger wearing a face mask gives a thumbs up on arrival in Sydney from Santiago on March 29 Qantas said it is bringing in the measures recommended by the panel. Included in the new policies will be paid-for hotel stays for staff unwilling to isolate at home. Qantas earlier this month confirmed 50 staff members had tested positive for coronavirus. Six baggage handlers from Adelaide airport tested positive for the virus on March 31 before staff who had come into contact with them were tested. At least 19 flight attendants, 14 baggage handlers and eight pilots had then tested positive. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Qantas for further comment. Unforeseeable conditions caused by the coronavirus have driven universities across the country to launch online courses. As a sophomore at North Carolina State University, I've experienced the online transition since classes resumed on March 23.NC State has relied on Zoom, a video-chat program, for professors to continue lectures. Some tests are being proctored online by using a computer lockdown system that records students as they take tests. The tests will be available on Moodle, a program the university already uses to host class websites. Online proctors also watch students take tests to ensure students don't cheat.Though all classes have moved online, students won't get tuition refunds. Partial refunds will be made for housing and meal plan expenses. The university has been transparent in this hectic time, but students still have some concerns and face real hardships in the coming weeks.NC State prices in-person classes differently from online classes. A 9-11 credit hour in-person semester is $3,412 , while 9 credit hours online is $2,131 -a $1,281 difference. Many students, who haven't taken online classes before, might not even be aware of the price difference. Yet NC State has said nothing about a partial tuition refund, even though an in-person class offers more opportunity for student engagement than an online class.But students aren't the only ones who think online classes aren't as good as in-person classes. As a freshman, my advisor warned me to be cautious when taking an online class. She said they are more challenging because students don't meet face-to-face and the workload is usually larger.So far with online classes, the workload seems more like busywork. My assignments have stressed my learning process and shifted my focus from absorbing information to finishing and submitting the many online assignments. Pre-recorded lectures are posted on teachers' websites and those are, in my opinion, the hardest to learn from. At least with live Zoom lectures, students can interact with professors. A pre-recorded forty-minute lecture, however, has no breaks for questions. It's also harder to focus and process the information.Some subjects have been much harder to transition to online classes, too. I'm a Spanish minor and, luckily, my professor has run online classes before, so she had a ready-made plan. Not all professors and students have had a smooth transition, though.said Audrey Kuga, a sophomore studying Spanish. Online classes work better for subjects that don't require a lot of peer interaction. In heavy-interaction classes, students can suffer from the online shift.Instead of students being able to interact in labs for science classes, they now have to watch teaching assistants perform experiments. Channing Loftin, a junior studying human biology, said that the learning process is completely different from the traditional sessions. Labs are meant to give students hands-on experience, but Channing noted that not being able to interact lowers the class's quality.For students who thrive in a hands-on learning environment, the switch is quite a challenge.Some professors seem like they are making the workload more intimidating and heavy for students with online exam proctoring. It seems like an invasion of privacy to be remotely monitored with no other option as students struggle to learn complicated subjects such as a foreign language, chemistry, or physics online. Before the coronavirus, I was already enrolled in an online class. We had never been required to download the exam proctoring system before. I don't know why doing so is a requirement now.Other students have found it harder to keep up their studies without interacting face-to-face with classmates. Macey Bryant, a sophomore studying communications and public relations, says she misses the social and communicative aspects of in-person classes. Most of her classes are small and discussion-based, requiring students to give presentations and then receive feedback from their classmates. Other students studying engineering or pre-medicine have similar problems because they study in groups, working through complex math equations to teach one another.Students aren't the only ones facing problems, either. Professors are having trouble keeping students engaged and on track. Philosophy professor Ronald Endicott said his class attendance rates have fallen from 44 students engaging in class to only 26 showing up Zoom classes. The dynamics of Zoom can make students more passive and timid; talking and interacting become harder for professors and students. The transition into new social settings intimidates students, but it can do the same to professors, who now teach to a silent class, wondering if the students understand the lecture material. Designing an online class in those circumstances becomes trickier.Beyond the classroom, students have had their summer plans upended by the coronavirus. Study abroad programs have been canceled, internships have disappeared, and graduating seniors' job prospects have worsened.I had planned to study Italian and Italian history in Florence, but NC State had to cancel the program and refund students. Other students, however, cannot simply delay a semester abroad or an internship until next year. Julia Madsen, a senior studying textile engineering, said she was very worried about finding a job after graduation. Two companies where she applied for a job have told her that they have frozen hiring. She is not the only senior worried.Those applying to graduate schools, law schools, or medical schools also worry that schools might overlook them if their grades drop, thanks to the hasty switch to online classes.To NC State's credit, they have been proactive about salvaging what they can from the semester to benefit students. The administration has also made the health of students its top priority. Students have not been left in the dark by university leaders. However, online classes are not a true substitute for in-person classes. If the university would grant partial tuition refunds, students would appreciate the financial relief and the acknowledgment that the online transition is less than ideal. (Photo : REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi/File Photo) FILE PHOTO: Various N95 respiration masks at a laboratory of 3M, that has been contracted by the U.S. government to produce extra marks in response to the country's novel coronavirus outbreak, in Maplewood, Minnesota, U.S. March 4, 2020. Picture taken March 4, 2020. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided an emergency use authorization (EUA) to Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) for sanitizing four million N95 masks per day to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. This decontamination system would allow the reuse of single-use N95 masks. The company makes use of vaporized hydrogen peroxide gasoline to smooth the respirators. ASP's STERRAD series sterilization machines, which can be covered under the EUA, are in use in around 6,300 hospitals already. There are also around 9,930 in operation throughout the United States that are capable of processing around 480 masks per day. The sterilization machine is typically used for sterilizing other portions of scientific equipment, but have not formerly been supposed for use with N95 masks. The FDA says heaps of hospitals have already got the device installed and might now use them on N95 respirators, which can be in short supply. ALSO READ: Coronavirus: NHS Workers' Lives at Risk Over PPE Shortages, Study Claims Device to help fight face mask shortage The sterilization device will help fight the lack of essential face masks utilized by doctors, nurses, and health care employees to defend themselves from the fight to COVID-19. In a news release, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen M. Hahn said the nation's health care workers are among the many heroes of this pandemic. He added the health agency need to do everything we can to increase the availability of the critical medical devices they need, such as N95 respirators. "This authorization will help provide access to millions of respirators so our health care workers on the front lines can be better protected and provide the best care to patients with COVID-19," Hahn said. Hahn assured the public that FDA staff continue to work around the clock, across government, and with the private sector to find solutions. ALSO READ: Coronavirus: Are Wearing Face Masks Pointless? Here's What Scientists Can Say The system, called the STERRAD Sterilization System, uses vaporized hydrogen peroxide gasoline plasma sterilization, according to the agency. At least 6,300 hospitals had installed UV sanitizers More than 6,300 hospitals in the U.S. already have the system installed, FDA said, and each device can reprocess about 480 respirators per day. According to the FDA's letter, the machine is limited to "a maximum of 2 decontamination cycles per respirator." The agency has also cleared another similar machine for N95 decontamination: Battelle's vaporized hydrogen peroxide process. This new clearance dramatically expands the reach and ability extent of possible remediation that's possible. The process should pave the way for others to follow. Duke University was the first to call for this system for use on N95 respirators. The university said sterilization is safe and effective. The equipment, according to Duke, is already available in biocontainment labs and other medical facilities. Some hospitals also are using ultraviolet light to decontaminate masks so they could be reused. The University of Nebraska Medical Center commenced experimenting with UV-light last month to sanitize masks by hanging used masks up in rooms with ultraviolet light towers. Once they're sanitized, masks are returned to their owners, allowing health care workers to use them for up to a week longer. Imports of essential clinical supplies have been swiftly decreasing because of factory closures in China. According to the Associated Press, producers were required to sell their inventory internally instead of exporting them. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. File Photo: Teresita Sy-Coson, Vice Chairperson of SM Investments Corporation. REUTERS/Bobby Yip By Clarissa Batino and Siegfrid Alegado The Philippines should gradually reopen the economy and allow businesses to operate at 50% capacity to save jobs, according to Teresita Sy-Coson who helps run an empire ranging from banking to retail under SM Investments Corp. More than 1 million workers were affected by temporary closures, prompting 98% of almost 42,000 establishments to seek assistance for their employees, the Labor Department said in a statement on Sunday. About a quarter of those displaced are in the capital region, it said. President Rodrigo Duterte has placed the main island of Luzon, home to 60 million people and which accounts for 70% of the economy, on lockdown from mid-March, shuttering thousands of businesses. Provinces outside Luzon have also imposed quarantine measures. Gross domestic product could shrink by as much as 1%, its first contraction in more than two decades, according to a government estimate. If all the industries can start operating 50%, including the transport, with all the medical precautions like making test kits more available and disinfecting measures and sanitation safeguards then we can gradually increase the employment after the lockdown, Sy-Coson said in an e-mailed statement on April 11. Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello asked big businesses on Sunday to continue paying their employees amid the lockdown. The majority of affected workers were in manufacturing, hospitality, restaurants and tourism-related sectors. The breakdown of those affected were: 719,649 workers in 31,612 establishments that halted operations 366,404 workers in 10,224 enterprises that had to go into flexible work arrangements Enabling establishments to reopen is important to help absorb Filipino workers returning from abroad, Sy-Coson said. More than 11,000 Filipinos working overseas have returned home since February, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a Facebook post. Employment is also the key to the health of their families by having enough food for their own immunity, and the key to the health of our economy, she said. 2020 Bloomberg L.P. Rio de Janeiro: When 97-year-old Brazilian Gina Dal Colleto was hospitalised on April 1 with COVID-19 symptoms, few could have thought she would survive the deadly virus. On Sunday, however, Dal Colleto was pushed in a wheelchair out of Sao Paulo's Vila Nova Star hospital to applause from doctors and nurses, becoming the oldest known survivor of COVID-19 in Brazil, the Latin American country worst-hit by the outbreak. Brazilian Gina Dal Colleto, 97, the oldest known survivor of COVID-19 in Brazil, is pushed in a wheelchair out of Sao Paulo's Vila Nova Star hospital to applause from doctors and nurses on April 12. Credit:Instagram/Rede D'Or Sao Luiz Her unexpected recovery was a ray of hope in Brazil, where the coronavirus has laid bare a stretched public health system and exposed fierce political debate over how to best tackle the virus' spread and prop up the country's economy. The US recorded 1,514 Covid-19 related deaths, lower than the previous days toll of 1,920, over the past 24 hours, Johns Hopkins University tally showed as of 8:30pm Sunday (0030 GMT Monday). The outbreak has now claimed the lives of at least 22,020 people in the US, the most of any country. The United States also leads the world by far in the number of confirmed infections, with 555,313 by the Baltimore-based universitys count. The country has been recording nearly 2,000 deaths a day from the coronavirus, disproportionately older people with weakened immune systems and ethnic minorities with less access to health care and teleworking. The US, which has 4.25% of the worlds population, accounts for almost a fifth of the worlds nearly 114,180 deaths from Covid-19 since the disease first emerged in China in December last year. Start reopening in May Anthony Fauci, the US governments top infectious diseases expert, said on Sunday that the country may be ready to start gradually reopening next month, as signs grew that the coronavirus pandemic was peaking. Fauci, the veteran pandemic expert, said in an interview to CNN that parts of the country could begin easing restrictions in May. But Fauci was cautious as well. I think it could probably start at least in some ways maybe next month, Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN. We are hoping by the end of the month we can look around and say, OK, is there any element here that we can safely and cautiously start pulling back on? If so, do it. If not, then just continue to hunker down, Fauci said. Also read: What you need to know today US President Donald Trump had earlier wanted the worlds largest economy to be raring to go by Easter Sunday, but most of the country remained at a standstill and churches took celebrations online to halt the spread of the virus that has killed more than 22,000 people in the US. Trump has cast the decision on when to ease the lockdown as the biggest of his presidency as he faces competing pressures from public health experts and businesses along with some conservative allies who want a swift return to normality. Fauci said that regions would be ready at different times rather than the US turning back on like a light switch. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, told ABC he was hopeful about reopening on May 1. I think its too early to be able to tell that, he added. Need to be smart Lockdown decisions, unlike in many western countries, are primarily up to local governments, not the president, and leaders of a number of hard-hit, densely populated states have vowed to act as long as necessary. We want to reopen as soon as possible. The caveat is we need to be smart in the way we reopen, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters. Also read: 3 Indian Americans showing signs of recovery after transfused with plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients Neighbouring New Jerseys governor, fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, said that an economic recovery depended on a full health-care recovery. If we start to get back on our feet too soon, I fear, based on the data were looking at, we could be throwing gasoline on the fire, Murphy told CBS. Trump, for his part, wrote on Twitter Sunday: We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy! Also read: Virus airborne up to 4 metres, health staff at high risk Worst-hit New York recorded another 758 coronavirus deaths, Cuomo said. Youre not seeing a great decline in the numbers, but youre seeing a flattening, he said. Fauci similarly said he was cautiously optimistic as admissions into hospitals and intensive care had begun to decline. Fake News The New York Times, in an extensive article published Sunday, described Trump as failing to act quickly in part due to confidence in his gut instincts and his distrust of civil servants he brands as a conspiratorial deep state. Trump slammed the papers story Sunday evening with his favourite insult: Fake News! The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the paper itself, he tweeted. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so, he wrote, referring to the ban travel ban on the Asian power. Fauci, who has advised six successive presidents, acknowledged when asked about the article that the US could have saved lives by shutting down public spaces when the diseases seriousness became clear early in the year. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then, Fauci told CNN, without naming Trump. Trump soon afterwards posted an interview in which Fauci said that the US early on did not get correct information. Trump last week zeroed in on the World Health Organization (WHO) to explain early difficulties, saying the UN body was overly reliant on China when cases first emerged in Wuhan. Trump had been hoping to campaign on a strong economy as he seeks re-election in November. Instead, some 17 million people have lost their jobs in a matter of weeks and his presumptive Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has been hammering him over his virus response. There are 1,846,963 confirmed cases across the world and 114,185 people have been killed, according to the Johns Hopkins Universitys coronavirus tracker on Monday morning. (With agency inputs) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Mexican health officials reported a spike in confirmed coronavirus cases on April 12. According to an international media outlet, with 442 new COVID-19 cases, the countrys total surpassed 4,600. The officials also reported 23 new deaths, taking the toll to 296 deaths. As the deadly coronavirus is rapidly spreading, Mexican Deputy Health Minister, Hugo Lopez-Gatell reportedly said last week, the country might have had 26,500 people infected. However, he also said that many people who are infected likely did not have symptoms or were not diagnosed. Although the country has declared a shutdown, the authorities have also recommended people with non-urgent symptoms to simply isolate themselves. READ: Mexico City Seeks To Help Homeless In Pandemic According to reports, the country has tested relatively few people, only about 16,700 tests have been done so far. However, in a bid to combat coronavirus pandemic, the Mexico City government is also sending out teams to help the homeless during the shutdown. While speaking to an international media outlet, Almudena Ocejo, who is Mexico citys secretary of Social inclusion and Welfare, said that the city program aims to keep people off the street, while also allowing them to survive at home. As per reports, the citys main shelter has nearly 700- bed capacity. Ocejo reportedly said that she is also seeing increased willingness among the homeless to go to shelters since the health emergency was declared and social distancing measures were imposed in March. Furthermore, the city also has set up a WhatsApp message group for city residents to report homeless people who might need help. READ: Young Infected Doctors At Mexico Public Hospital Demand Help Coronavirus outbreak Meanwhile, coronavirus, which originated in China in December 2019, has now claimed over 114,000 lives worldwide as of April 13. According to the tally by an international news agency, the pandemic has now spread to 210 countries and territories and has infected more than 1.8 million people. Out of the total infections, more than 423,000 have recovered but the easily spread virus is continuing to disrupt many lives. Major cities have been put under lockdown in almost all countries including Spain, and the economy is struggling. (Image source: AP) READ: Horse Trainer Faces Stiff Fines, Suspension In New Mexico READ: Mexico Closes US Owned Plant For Refusal To Sell Ventilators In order to export $42 billion worth of products as planned, exports to China need to grow by 10 percent and to ASEAN by 9 percent to offset the decline in exports to the US and EU. The EU and US are believed to need three more months to contain Covid-19, which means that import markets would only return to normal in June or July, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. As for Japan and South Korea, the markets will be affected from the second half of March to May, which means that exports will resume in June. The good news is that the Chinese market has recovered since late March as the country. The demand has increased rapidly, especially for farm produce and food. The EU and US are believed to need three more months to contain Covid-19, which means that import markets would only return to normal in June or July, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In order to boost imports, China has paif special attention to restoring logistics activities and express delivery of goods to free up domestic consumption. In addition to drastic administrative reform, China has cut tariffs on 80 import items. Trade across border gates with Vietnam has resumed. Since February, nearly 28,000 farm produce trucks have been exported to the market. China will be the key market for Vietnams farm exports in 2020. It is necessary to mobilize all resources to exploit the market, MARD said. Reporting an output of 43.5 million tons of rice, 5.8 million tons of meat, 8.5 million tons of seafood, 18 million tons of vegetables and 13.5 million tons of fruits, Nguyen Van Viet, director of the Planning Department, said that domestic production can meet the demand for local consumption and exports. He said thrre was no need to worry about food shortage under any circumstances and that the export target of $42 billion is attainable. However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) warned that export turnover of $42 billion is a big challenge. Farm exports to China need to grow by 10 percent, to ASEAN 9 percent and other markets 9 percent to offset reductions of exports to the US and EU. Therefore, the ministry has proposed applying a series of solutions to adjust agricultural production and increase processing and preservation. It has also requested support through tax and credit policies for production, processing, preservation and export. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said at a recent conference that the demand for food and foodstuff will be increasing after the epidemic. Vietnam needs to prepare for the post-epidemic period right now to boost exportd. Kim Chi Room for Vietnamese farm produce exports to Singapore amid COVID-19 Vietnamese enterprises shipped around 500 tonnes of goods, including coffee, instant noodles, sweet potato, cabbage, pineapple, watermelon, and dragon fruit, to Singapore in March, according to the Vietnamese Trade Office in Singapore. Islamabad: The fear of Corona growing day by day is taking human life to death today. Every day thousands of people are dying in every corner of the country due to Coronavirus. Today many human aspects have been completely eliminated due to Coronavirus. On the other hand the death toll is increasing all over the world. Pakistan has started a new game due to this virus. Sometimes disturbing the slave countries, sometimes creating a new trouble for them. In these slave countries, with the fear of Corona, the fear of Pakistan is also increasing. Death figure drop in these countries, circumstances can become normal soon Quarantine's outside lawyers are being shut down: Astor senior lawyer Mohammad Bakar Mehdi said that the lawyers are being imprisoned on the pretext of quarantining the suspects of coronavirus. Their samples are being collected for testing, however, all of them have been tested negative for coronavirus. Despite this, they have been kept closed. Mehdi further said that this is not a solution to the problem. He said that before the outbreak of the epidemic, PoK also lacked proper employment and education opportunities, but after the outbreak of the virus, people of the region had to face poverty-like conditions. Things are slowly getting out of control here. Death toll decrease in Italy, circumstances in Iran not changed Pakistan government did not take measures to stop the virus from spreading: He said that there is no relief fund for us. I would not say that masks and sanitizers were not distributed but in small quantities. Mehdi further explained that the coronavirus had a huge impact on the lives of the people as well as the local economy. Amid such circumstances, neither the Government of Pakistan nor the State Government is taking any measures to stop the spread the virus. The lawyer also said that we request the government to take some action here and establish medical facilities. Corona wreaks havoc in America and Japan Turkish interior minister Suleyman Soylu had said he would quit after a short-notice curfew caught millions by surprise. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected the resignation of his interior minister, who had said he would quit after a much-criticised weekend curfew to tackle the coronavirus outbreak which caught millions of people by surprise. In a process carried out diligently and meticulously, the responsibility for all implementation of the weekend curfew to stem the pandemic falls on me in every respect, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Twitter on Sunday evening. Later on Sunday, the Turkish presidency said that Erdogan had not accepted the resignation. Turkey announced the weekend lockdown late on Friday, but in the brief time before it went into effect, many people rushed out to buy food and drink in the countrys commercial hub Istanbul, a city of 16 million people, and other cities. The lockdown ended at 21:00 GMT on Sunday. Although in a limited period of time, the incidents that occurred ahead of the implementation of the curfew was not befitting with the perfect management of the outbreak process, Soylu said. Soylu, who has held the post since August 2016, said the scenes that took place just following the declaration of the curfew on Friday night did not reflect a smooth implementation of policy. Soylu added that he had been proud to serve as interior minister and would remain loyal to Erdogan. If his resignation had been accepted by President Erdogan, Soylu would have been the second Turkish minister to leave his post since the coronavirus pandemic was declared. Transport Minister Mehmet Cahit Turhan was removed two weeks ago after the ministry drew criticism for holding a tender amid the outbreak to prepare to build a huge canal on the edge of Istanbul. On Sunday, Turkey reported 97 more deaths related to the novel coronavirus, bringing the death toll to 1,198. The country also has nearly 57,000 confirmed cases since the first patient was diagnosed a little more than a month ago. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Monday upheld the decision of Madhya Pradesh Governor Lal Ji Tandon asking the then Kamal Nath-led Congress government to undertake floor test, but expressed concern over the trend of legislators being whisked away by rival political parties to safe hideouts. It said that if the Governor has reasons to believe that the government has lost confidence of the House, constitutional propriety requires the issue be resolved by the trust vote. The top court however expressed concern over the trend that legislators are taken away by rival political parties at safe hideouts like hotels and resorts which does little credit to the democratic politics. The spectacle of rival political parties whisking away their political flock to safe destinations does little credit to the state of our democratic politics. It is an unfortunate reflection on the confidence which political parties hold in their own constituents and a reflection of what happens in the real world of politics, said a bench comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta. The apex court, which had on March 19, asked Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker N P Prajapati to reconvene a special session the next day with a sole agenda of conducting the floor test, gave a detailed order on Monday. Nath, who had been the Chief Minister for 15 months, then resigned on March 20 -- paving the way for the BJP government led by Shivraj Singh Chauhan. The verdict on Monday further said that the decision of the Governor calling for a floor test cannot be construed to have acted beyond the bounds of constitutional authority. Based on the resignation of six ministers of the incumbent government (accepted by the Speaker), the purported resignation of sixteen more Members belonging to the Congress, and the refusal of the Chief Minister to conduct a floor test despite the House having been convened on March 16, 2020, the exercise of power by the Governor to convene a floor test cannot be regarded as constitutionally improper, the bench said. It relied upon the nine-judge Constitution bench verdict of apex court in S R Bommai case of 1994. It said that the observations made in it indicate the question of whether the Council of Ministers in an ongoing legislative assembly commands the confidence of the house is a matter which has to been determined only on the floor of the house. "In the circumstances as they have emerged in this case, the exercise of authority by the Governor was based on circumstances which were legitimate to the purpose of ensuring that the norm of collective responsibility is duly preserved. There existed no extraordinary circumstances for the Governor to determine that a trust vote was not the appropriate course of action on March 16, 2020," it said. "The Governor is not denuded of the power to order a floor test where on the basis of the material available to the Governor it becomes evident that the issue as to whether the government commands the confidence of the house requires to be assessed on the basis of a floor test. Undoubtedly, the purpose of entrusting such a function to the Governor is not to destabilise an existing government, it added. The bench said when the satisfaction on the basis of which the Governor has ordered a floor test is called into question, the decision of the Governor is not immune from judicial review. The top court said that in exercising the constitutional authority to demand a trust vote, the Governor must do so with circumspection in a manner that ensures that the authority of the House to determine the existence or loss of confidence in the government is not undermined. "Absent exigent and compelling circumstances, there is no reason for the Governor to prevent the ordinary legislative process of a no confidence motion from running its due course. It said the Governor is an appointee of the President but does not represent either a political ideology or a political view. The Governor is expected to discharge the role of a constitutional statesman. The authority of the Governor is not one to be exercised in aid of a political dispensation which considers an elected government of the day to be a political opponent. The bench said the Governor's decision is not immune from judicial review and can be scrutinized on whether it was based on relevant and germane material. It said Nath, adverting to the turmoil in the state, addressed a communication to the Governor on March 13 stating that convening of the floor test would be a sure basis for resolving the conundrum. This is a strong indication that the Chief Minister himself was of the opinion that the situation in the state had cast his government's majority in doubt. However, upon the convening of the Legislative Assembly, no floor test was conducted, and the House was adjourned till March 26 2020. These facts form the basis on which the Governor advised that a floor test be conducted, it added. The bench also dealt with the plea of Congress in which a direction was sought for granting access to the then 22 MLAs who were lodged at a hotel in Bengaluru. "Political bargaining, or horse-trading, as we noticed, is now an oft repeated usage in legal precedents. 'Poaching' is an expression which was bandied about on both sides of the debate in the present case. It is best that courts maintain an arm's length from the sordid tales of political life," it added. In the time of crisis when the entire world is battling a deadly virus COVID 19, many powerful personalities are coming forward to help the ones who are in need. In India, we have many Bollywood personalities who have been quite forthcoming in terms of helping the poor who are the most hit due to the outbreak of COVID 19 in the country. Just recently, Salman Khan had pledged to bear the expenses of 25,000 workers from the film industry. He also provided food essentials to daily wage workers in Mumbai. Well, now the Dabangg Khan has come forward to help almost 50 female ground workers when he got an emergency call from Malegaon. He would be providing food essentials to these workers too. The actor's Manager and Spokesperson Jordy Patel confirmed the news and said, Salman has always been generous and responds to anyone in need genuinely... we all know that. #SalmanKhan extends help to 50 female ground workers from Malegaon. His team did their ground research at the earliest & made all arrangements to help those in need. Jordy Patel [Mgr]: "Salman has always been generous & responds to anyone in need genuinely... we all know that" (@lovelySalmaniac) April 13, 2020 Salman has been quite active on social media and is trying his best to make people understand the importance of social distancing. In one of the videos, he had no qualms in telling people that he is scared of the novel Coronavirus and urged everyone to stay indoors. He also found a unique and fun way to educate his fans about the virus by recreating a scene from Maine Pyar Kiya (1989). The actor has been in Panvel ever since the lockdown has been announced. The actor has been sharing his daily updates with his fans through social media. On this note, we can say that Salman ne ek baar jo maine commitment ka di, uske baad tho main khud ki bhi nahin sunta! There is a reason why he is known as the real Bhaijaan of Bollywood. Saudi-backed militants take military camp on Yemen's Socotra island Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 9:48 AM Saudi-sponsored militants have reportedly seized control of a military camp in Yemen's strategic island of Socotra from UAE-backed separatists amid growing divisions. According to local sources, militants loyal to former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi took control of the military camp in the Arabian Sea island on Saturday. They said that the UAE-backed separatists of the so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC) fled the camp before Saudi-backed forces launched their offensive. Southern separatists seized the military camp on February. Both the UAE-sponsored separatists and pro-Hadi militants serve the Riyadh-led coalition and have been engaged, since 2015, in a bloody military campaign in Yemen. The separatists have long sought southern Yemen to secede. Encouraged by the United Arab Emirates, though, they had agreed to fight under the Saudi-led military coalition's command in the war on Yemen. Recently and after a decision by the UAE to effectively withdraw its forces from Yemen, the group has turned its weapons on rival militants loyal to Hadi. The infighting has highlighted deepening divisions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the two countries that are leading the war on Yemen. Ties between the two sides have soured over a number of issues, including what the Yemenis view as Abu Dhabi's intention to occupy Socotra Island and gain dominance over major waterways in the region. The island was part of Yemen's eastern province of Hadhramaut but it was introduced as an independent province in a 2013 presidential decree. Home to some 60,000 people, Socotra sits at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden. The island has a unique ecosystem and been listed by UNESCO as a world natural heritage site. There are reports that Hadi leased the islands of Socotra and Abd al-Kuri to the UAE for 99 years before resigning and fleeing the country to Riyadh in 2014. Ansarullah vows response to Saudi truce violation On Saturday, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior member of the political bureau of the Ansarullah movement, blasted Saudi Arabia for continuing its military aggression against Yemen, warning that the invaders should await a response in the coming days. He made the remarks in an interview with Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television on Saturday. Bukhaiti dismissed Saudi Arabia's announcement of a ceasefire a "tactical move" to deceive the world, saying the kingdom had declared a false truce and was not abiding by it. He said any initiative that failed to put a complete end to the war against Yemen would be a "deficient" plan. Any initiative for the cessation of hostilities without a call for the removal of the blockade against the impoverished country would in fact legitimize the blockade, he added. Bukhaiti also lashed out at the Saudi-led coalition's relentless attacks against the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah, saying "the aggressors will be the biggest loser if they continue to aggravate tensions". The Yemeni official further warned that an attack on Saudi Arabia's oil installations would be a justifiable response to the Saudi attacks against Yemeni oil facilities. On Wednesday evening, the Saudi-led coalition announced a two-week ceasefire in Yemen, saying it was aimed at helping contain the spread of the new coronavirus. Yemen has so far registered one coronavirus case, but the country's healthcare system has been shattered by the ongoing military campaign. The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years. The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address New advice issued to coronavirus visor makers as some designs dont provide enough protection This article is old - Published: Monday, Apr 13th, 2020 Advice has been issued to people making coronavirus visors in North Wales after it was found that some designs do not do not provide the necessary protection for health workers. Schools, colleges, businesses, universities and technology enthusiasts have all joined the voluntary effort to help the NHS by making protective personal equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19. The regions health board has thanked all those involved for assisting as reports suggest official supplies have not been sufficient to support frontline staff. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) has now issued guidance though as some of the designs do not meet the right standards. In a statement, a spokesperson said: There are now many visor makers across North Wales voluntarily producing visors to help protect key workers in North Wales during this challenging COVID-19 response period. It is BCUHBs intention to work with the voluntary maker community to ensure that BCUHB staff and other key workers in our communities have the very best quality visors possible, to ensure that they will protect our staff and not harm them either. Were sure you will understand that to do this we need to have confidence in the design, materials, manufacture and decontamination of the visor before we issue it for use. The board said where possible it would procure CE marked equipment a certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area. Non-CE marked visors will only be used when those with the mark are not available. Betsi Cadwaladr is working with voluntary makers in North Wales to ensure the best quality visors can be produced for key workers. Menai Science Parc on Anglesey has provided advice and worked with the board to identify and produce a number of designs for assessment. It has also offered its premises and resources to help ensure quality control measures are in place. The spokesperson said: A clinical scientist from BCUHBs Posture and Mobility Service and Infection Prevention and Control teams have assessed a number of different visor models that have been provided by local makers in recent days. Some versions are not suitable for key workers because they do not provide the necessary protection. Currently (at 12/04/20), the preferred visor models are the PRUSA RC3 and the Kitronik which is laser cut. Details on providing the correct design is available via an online forum at http://forum.northwales.tech. Details on the kitronic design will be provided over the next couple of days. All makers in North Wales are respectfully asked to register here: https://awyrlas.org.uk/covid19offersofsupport and read the information. The BCUHB Voluntary PPE Coordinator can then make contact with you to provide guidance. The spokesperson added: Weve been overwhelmed with the generosity of the maker community of North Wales over the last three weeks. The way that individuals, organisations, businesses and academia have been able to work together for this cause is remarkable. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Im very hopeful in God during this crisis, but Im also very aware of what lies ahead. As I said in a recent article, We are facing uncertain times. Within days, our entire way of life in America changed drastically. The pandemic has given most of us a new perspective about what is really important to us. God is giving us a chance to stop, take a breath, and focus on prayer. . . . Discouragement is Satans tool to keep people in bondage, but its also Gods magnet to draw them to Himself. For example, in just over two days, a sermon preached just a few days ago on this theme has over 125,000 views on just one of our media outlets. I don't say this to elevate anyone, but to show the power of God even in the midst of trials, and to demonstrate how hungry people are for the truth. First, I was sensing a powerful move of God all week (like carrying a heavy burden). Second, the internet and phones were down all day so we began filming anyway. Then, a few minutes into the service, the Live-stream miraculously came on. Third, after the service, my 10-year-old prayed that God would get the message out to America (that was her only prayer). Fourth, some outlets have been trying to limit exposure by readjusting algorithms and denying promotion. In short . . . God wasnt done. Who can stop God almighty? For those interested, the sermon Im referencing is also available here. The key to being used by God is to follow the advice of James, Jesuss half-brother and one of the leaders of the early church. Here are three takeaways from the opening few verses in James. 1. ALLOW THE TRIAL TO BREAK YOU. James, in his letter to believers, said he was a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1). In other words, he was bound to do Gods will. The first step in benefiting during these difficult times is to crucify the flesh; selfishness must die. If I saw families broken, parents fasting, and kids weeping over their sin, I would be encouraged, but right now I see a lot of selfishness, hoarding, and contention. Allow this trial to break you push out pride and replace it with humility. In the Bible, the refiner's fire and the furnace of affliction were good things because they removed the impurities. As the old-time preachers used to say, God often hurts a man deeply before He uses him greatly. Are you ready to be used? Then humble yourself today. 2. MAKE AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT. James added, Count it all joy when you fall into various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience (1:2-3). This is much easier said than done. As Im writing this, were going into the second week of the Safer-At-Home policy, and I wish I could say that I have handled this perfectly. Though I have stumbled, I continue to make attitude adjustments in my heart to be thankful and full of joy for the blessings I do have. To count it all joy means that we must take our thoughts captive. Trials produce either bitterness or love, anger or joy, fear or contentment the choice really is ours. My prayer has been, Lord, I dont like this or understand it, but Im fully trusting in You. This simple prayer gets me back on track, as joy once again fills my heart. Saturate your mind in Gods Word rather than the media, for what you put in your mind greatly affects your attitude. 3. STAY UNDER THE LOAD. James then adds, Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (1:4). Perfect here means full, satisfied, and complete. Patience is active endurance; it means staying under a heavy load until it accomplishes its purpose. We must let the burden remain until it accomplishes its goal. We are not to run in fear but to carry the load. In short, God often says, You will not need to fight in this battle. Position yourselves, stand still and see the salvation of the LORD (2 Chronicles 20:17). In the same way that squats in the gym strengthen leg muscles, the pressure of trials strengthens our faith. Weak Christians complain, blame-shift, and run from the weight. As a result, they never grow spiritually, whereas mature believers have learned to carry the weight of trials as God builds and strengthens. In closing, we dont know what's going to happen with COVID-19, but let God build you up rather than allowing the negative Nellies to pull you down. Dont let them cloud your judgment with doomsday prophecies and worst-case scenarios. How do we know that God is not breaking us down to build us up? Nowhere in the Bible are we encouraged to let conspiracy theories and doom and gloom flood us with fear. It appears that more people are afraid of the Illuminati and the New World Order than they are of God almighty! The Bible tells us to do business and to fight with prayer, fasting, worship, and the Word until He returns. We are to cast down fear, not embrace it. Trials also bring the prodigal sons and daughters home. If this is you, stop running from God embrace this wake-up call and turn back to Him. Repent of your apathy and come back to the Cross, to repentance. If you dont know God, take time now and repent of your sin and ask Jesus to save you. A terrible trial can be turned into a triumphant victory if you are open and teachable. Saudi Arabia has deported nearly 3,000 Ethiopian migrants in recent days, despite concerns that such operations could hasten the spread of the coronavirus, the United Nations says. Since mid-March, the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) has registered 2,870 Ethiopian returnees, all but 100 of whom were sent back from Saudi Arabia, IOM spokesman Alemayehu Seifeselassie said. A humanitarian worker familiar with the deportations, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said most of the returnees had arrived from Saudi Arabia in the past 10 days. "Large-scale migratory movements which are not planned make the transmission of the virus much more likely to continue. We are therefore calling for the temporary suspension of large-scale deportations," Catherine Sozi, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia, said in a statement. The migrants are kept in detention facilities in Saudi Arabia before being flown back to Ethiopia, and it is unclear how thoroughly Saudi authorities are screening them for the virus. The Ethiopian government had requested that such deportations be halted until it could set up 30 quarantine centres in Addis Ababa, Sozi said in position paper seen Monday by AFP. But they have continued even though "only seven quarantine centres can host returnees" and "much work remains" to make Ethiopian quarantine centres compliant with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, Sozi wrote. The Ethiopian Public Health Institute on Monday referred questions about the deportations to the country's foreign ministry, which did not respond to a request for comment. Later on Monday night, Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew took to Twitter to criticise not Saudi Arabia but rather the Ethiopian migrants and the traffickers who help them go abroad. "Saudi Arabia and other countries are fed up both with our human traffickers and migrants. This shame has to stop through the joint effort of families and law enforcement personnel," Gedu said in his post. Ethiopia has reported just 74 cases of COVID-19 and three deaths, but testing remains limited and experts fear the country's weak health system could quickly become overwhelmed. -Migrants 'very vulnerable'- Ethiopians have long looked to Saudi Arabia as an escape from poor economic prospects and state repression, hoping to find work despite not having legal status. To get there, many board overcrowded boats that are at constant risk of sinking during sea crossings that can last up to 24 hours. Up to half a million Ethiopians were in Saudi Arabia when officials there launched a crackdown on illegal migration in 2017, according to the IOM. Since then, around 10,000 Ethiopians on average have been deported monthly, including in January and February. The humanitarian worker said there was a two-week break in deportations beginning around the time Ethiopia announced its first COVID-19 case on March 13. But flights have since resumed despite the fact that Ethiopia is straining to accommodate the returnees. "The quarantine measures currently in place need to be improved, and the current medical staff needs to be increased and better prepared and equipped to assist... all newly arrived migrants," the aid worker said. "These migrants are very vulnerable. They have undertaken an extremely dangerous journey and many arrive in Ethiopia with high medical and mental health needs." Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia -- since mid-March, 2020, the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) has registered 2,870 Ethiopian returnees, all but 100 of whom were sent back from Saudi Arabia - Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto was mistakenly addressed by GMA-7 as a tricycle operator - The prominent politician posted a screenshot of the said mistake and aired a joke about it - The producer of the said story also aired a message after learning about the reaction of Vico - The handsome Mayor then responded to the explanation of the said GMA-7 employee PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed A story producer in GMA-7 has decided to shed some light about the networks recent report that immediately went viral in the online world. KAMI learned that the said television news report mistakenly addressed Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto as a tricycle operator. The producer of the trending story took to Twitter his apologies to the young politician because of the mistake. Ako po yung producer ng story na to. Pasig City po dapat yan. Sorry po, nagkamali po yung chargen operator, the employee wrote. PAY ATTENTION: Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Vico did not hesitate to respond to the said person and he straightforwardly said that there is nothing to worry about. He quipped that people also need a stress-reliever especially now that the Philippines is experiencing a dreadful pandemic. The son of Vico Sotto also jokingly mentioned in his reply that there is someone who should not see the said mistake because it can be used against him. Don't worry about it! Sa panahon ngayon, kailangan din natin ng konting comic relief, he stated. Wag lang po ito makita ng *** at baka isipin nila totoo!! Haha, he added. In a previous article by , Vico unhesitatingly replied to a netizen who suddenly called him babe mayor. Vico Sotto is a young politician from Pasig City. He got elected as the Mayor of the said city in 2019. Many people admire him for his dedication and willingness to help other people. Please like and share our Facebook posts to support KAMI team! Dont hesitate to comment and share your opinion about our stories either. We love reading about your thoughts! A Filipino found his own way to help frontliners amid pandemic. They had to walk an hour, an hour and a half to get to work. I mean, coming from an 8-hour shift sa hospital, tapos palalakarin mo pa yung nurse o kahit security guard. Parang hindi makatarungan, diba? on HumanMeter! Source: KAMI.com.gh WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Danaher Corp. (DHR) announced Monday that it is withdrawing its financial guidance for the full year 2020, which was provided on January 30, 2020, due to the evolving and uncertain impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The company will report first quarter 2020 financial results on Thursday, May 7, 2020. It expects revenue growth of approximately 3.0 percent and adjusted core revenue growth of approximately 4.5 percent for the first quarter. The company said it anticipates positive results in each of its three reporting segments in the first quarter, with particular strength in its Cepheid, Radiometer, Pall and ChemTreat businesses. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. A small study by Chinese scientists suggests that the COVID-19 virus can travel more than 13 feet in the the air. The research, published Friday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, examined samples of aerosol from indoor air and air outlets in an intensive care unit and hospital ward in Wuhan, China. The areas studied held 37 virus patients. The scientists also took swab samples from surfaces such as floors, handrails, computer mice, patient masks and shoes. Suicides spike: Increase in suicides reported in Montgomery County since late March The aerosol distribution characteristics indicate that the transmission distance of [COVID-19] might be 4 m (meters), the report says. Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive. Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers. Whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be spread by aerosols remains controversial. On April 2, Dr. Harvey Fineberg told the White House studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing. But other scientists say aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 is relatively rare. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston schools scramble for hotspots to avoid 'lost' students The researchers surmised the relatively high rate of positivity of the hospital's floors might be caused by gravity and air flow causing most virus droplets to float to the ground, accounting for the contamination of the shoes of the staff. As medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100% rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients, the researchers wrote. The CDC says to ensure effective physical distancing, people should stay at least 6 feet apart. The World Health Organization says 3 feet should be enough. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate The Blue Birds Song: a stirring read that shares with youth a Native Americans heartrending trip across modern America as he searches for acknowledgment of the neglect toward his people and the environment. The Blue Birds Song is the creation of published author Aylan Edwards, an educator specializing in language arts and curriculum development. Edwards shares, The Native calls but no one hears The Blue Birds Song is the poignant tale of the Native American Indian and his journey through todays America. The story shares his thoughts as he travels across what was once considered sacred land. In his eyes, what has todays America become? Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Aylan Edwardss new book teaches children the importance of heritage in perpetuating compassion for their fellow citizens in America. This book is both for the young and old, for it imparts a reverberating virtue of respect for others and the preservation of culture for the benefit of all people in one country. View the synopsis of The Blue Birds Song on YouTube. Consumers can purchase The Blue Birds Song at traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about The Blue Birds Song, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. Generally, health affects productivity. In light of this, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 3 which talks about Universal Health Coverage (UHC) seeks to address the health care needs of people to influence their productivity. UHC means that all individuals and communities receive the health services they need, at good quality and without suffering financial hardship. Over the past one year the issue of no-bed-syndrome in our Health facilities in Ghana has come-up strongly for discussion. In the face of the No-Bed-Syndrome and its attendant fatalities, a number of state-of-art Hospitals have been completed or near completion but have been abandoned for various reasons. In some instances, the reasons have been purely on Management issues. That is the Management formula. Who takes what quantum of shares? For others, it has been mainly on Value for money Audit reasons. For the rest, the issue has been whose legacy the project is? In the case of the University of Ghana Medical Centre, the issue has been purely on who gets to manage the facility. The facility which is a Quaternary Medical and Research Centre is a 650-bed capacity hospital. Because of this tussle between Management of the University of Ghana and the Ministry of Health, the Hospital has been partially shut-down for over one year. Well-meaning citizens called for the immediate opening and operationalization of the facility but this fell on deaf ears. The saying that when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers may be relevant here. Thankfully, I understand the impasse between the two parties over the ownership has been settled now, where the Government will take 60 per cent of the shares whilst the University to take 40 per cent. Does it matter who manages the University of Ghana Medical Centre? The answer is simply YES. Does it have to take more than one year to decide the management formula for the Hospital? The answer is simply NO. On 21 March 2020, the Government announced that the University of Ghana Medical Centre will serve as a quarantine Centre for COVID-19 cases. Should we as a Nation wait for crisis times like the instant case of COVID-19 to do the right things? I guess NO. Let me move away from the UGMC issue to the Bank of Ghana Hospital matter. The Bank of Ghana Hospital is a 60-bed capacity Hospital that I understand was financed by the Bank of Ghana which is meant to serve the Banks staff and the General public. Since its completion over two years ago, it has been left to rot for no apparent reason. The only reason I can phantom is whose legacy project is it or whether or not the Bank of Ghana is autonomous and funded the project, hence it is strictly under the sole control of the Bank. Several calls have been made for the facility to be opened and operated. One would have thought that in the midst of this entire hullabaloo about the No-Bed-Syndrome some quick decisions would have been taken about how to use the facility to ameliorate the suffering of the ordinary taxpayers. Does it matter whose legacy it is as a project? The answer is simply NO. Lets leave the issue of whose legacy it is to the citizenry or the general public to judge and allow the Hospital to fully function to serve its intended purpose. After all, it was not built for the people to admire it but for the purpose of providing quality health care to the good people of Ghana. Does it matter whether the Bank of Ghana is autonomous and funded the project from its purse and for that matter should have full control over when it should be opened to the public? The answer, in my opinion, is NO. The project in my opinion even though I may be wrong is that it was funded by funds from the taxes of the ordinary taxpayers, who worked hard to discharge their tax liabilities to the State. Thankfully to COVID-19 again, it was announced on 1 April 2020 that the facility will be used to treat some class of COVID-19 cases. Should we have waited for COVID-19 to push us to start using the facility? The answer is an emphatic NO. There are many other Hospital projects and other Health Facilities dotted across the Country which are completed or near completion that has been abandoned. For instance, the 120-Bed Kumawu District Hospital and Adansi-Fomena District Hospital are currently rotting away. Others are the Euroget Six District Hospitals project each with 60-bed capacity for Tepa, Nsawkaw, Konongo, Madina, Salaga and Twifi Praso. What is the Way Forward? The Way Forward will be the following: 1. As a matter of urgency, I will like to advise the Minister of Health to use his power or influence to open and operationalize all completed Hospital projects in the Country. This will increase the number of available hospital beds to take care of the health care needs of citizens and the general population living in the Country. We will be inching towards the achievement of SDG3 if this is done. These Hospital projects when opened and operationalized will create job opportunities for Health Service Administrators, Allied Health Professionals, Doctors, Nurses as well as other Health Professionals, who are sitting at home without jobs. 2. The Minister of Health should make near-completion-Hospitals his priority to complete them. This will make the achievement of UHC within the stipulated time possible. 3. The World is getting complex every day that is why we are seeing complex health issues such as COVID-19. My proposal is that going forward the Government should look at putting-up more Specialized Hospitals and train health professionals adequately to man them. Generally, health workers appeared inadequately prepared to handle the COVID-19 cases. Many of them had to be rushed through training on the management of infectious diseases to prepare them to confront COVID-19. It is reported that in certain facilities health professionals took cover on hearing from clients reporting to their Hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms. This will help us deal with specific health threats as and when they come. 4. We must desist from politicizing very important National issues. COVID-19 knows no political colours. COVID-19 knows not whether a person is rich or poor. COVID-19 has no respect for academic degrees. We should learn to approach issues such as the COVID-19 with the National interest put before any other interest. Conclusions This present time is a wake-up call for us to do things right going forward. Posterity will judge all of us. Farouk Adam IDDRISU [email protected] Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 20:21:34|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close Students line up to register at a middle school in Zhengzhou, central China's Henan Province, April 13, 2020. Students in the final year of middle school returned to school on Monday in 11 cities and 7 counties in Henan Province. (Xinhua/Hao Yuan) CHICAGO, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Red Cross of Chicago & Northern Illinois has honored Dr. Kaleem Malik from Chicago, IL for his outstanding acts of heroism, dedication and service to the community. In a News Release Red Cross stated: "The 2020 Class of Heroes is an amazing group of humanitarians whose selfless and powerful actions have impacted our communities and inspired us," said Celena Roldan, Chief executive officer of the American Red Cross of Chicago & Northern Illinois. "I am proud of each of these 'everyday extraordinary' heroes and of their stories of courage. Each individual demonstrates that everyone has the power to leave a lasting imprint upon our world." Dr. Kaleem Malik is an Emergency Medicine physician for the Dupage Medical Group in the Chicago area where he's served as Department Chairman and is also a dedicated volunteer for Humanity First USA serving as the Disaster Response Medical Director. In a statement, Dr. Naeem Lughmani, Chief Medical Director, Humanity First, USA said, "Dr. Kaleem Malik has been an integral part of our medical disaster response team both as Director of our training courses and also going to disasters as a first responder. His recent onsite work during the Hurricane Dorian disaster as Medical Lead of our EMT in the Bahamas under the harshest of situations while also diligently working with the UN-EMT verification process are just a few examples of his extra ordinary humanitarian work." Dr. Kaleem Malik was nominated by his colleagues and peers in Chicago for his tireless dedication spanning over two decades serving the most vulnerable populations in Chicago and in various countries abroad. Humanity First congratulates Dr. Kaleem Malik for this well deserving recognition and thank him along with hundreds of other very dedicated and hardworking selfless volunteers for their great service to HUMANITY. ABOUT HUMANITY FIRST Humanity First USA is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization that has served in human development areas and disaster crises across America and internationally since 2004. Humanity First has responded to many disasters, including the famine in North East Africa, Japan Tsunami, Haiti Earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Pakistan Floods, Tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma, and Texas. In the post disaster phase, Humanity First engaged in community development projects to build local infrastructure and alleviate poverty in these areas. Humanity First is a non-political, non-sectarian international relief and development agency that works with communities around the globe to improve the quality of life for some of the world's under served and vulnerable individuals. For further information please visit our website: https://usa.humanityfirst.org/ Photo(s): https://www.prlog.org/12818161 Press release distributed by PRLog SOURCE Humanity First Related Links https://usa.humanityfirst.org/ Hyderabad, April 13 : Telangana has extended lockdown till April 30 to contain the spread of coronavirus. Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar issued a Government Order (GO) extending the lockdown, which came into effect from March 22. Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao has urged the people to be more cautious and official machinery to be more vigilant in view of increase in spread of the coronavirus in the state and in the country. On Sunday, Telangana reported two more deaths, taking the death toll to 16. As many as 28 new cases were identified, pushing the state's tally to 531. "If we observe developments world wise, country wise and Telangana state-wise, it is clear the coronavirus is spreading and not stopping. On Sunday, Coronavirus positive cases have increased considerably," the chief minister said in a statement. KCR, as the chief minister is popularly known, noted that the situation in neighbouring Maharashtra is scary. There is an increase in positive cases all over the country and the death toll also increased. The chief minister said it was for this reason that the government decided to extend the lockdown period. He urged people to understand the gravity of the situation and confine themselves to their homes as much as possible. "In case there is a need to go out, maintain social distancing strictly. Personal hygiene is a must. In case if anyone has any doubts go for the tests," he said. Seeking people's cooperation, he said the measures taken by the government alone are not sufficient to check the spread. People should follow the instructions and guidelines given by the government. KCR also asked official machinery to be on high alert. Conduct tests whenever there were symptoms. "Collect data with whom all the Coronavirus positive patients met and interacted and find out where they went. Conduct tests for them. Increase checks at the inter-state borders, step up restrictions." Stating that identification of those who went for Markaz meeting in Delhi and conducting tests on them is going ahead, he said in case if someone failed to undergo the tests, they should come forward voluntarily and get the tests done. This is for their own, their family members' safety and wellbeing. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Nicaraguas right-wing opposition is waging an information warfare campaign to undermine the elected Sandinista government, spreading fake news on coronavirus, while the state takes a balanced approach with close attention to the working class and poor. By Ben Norton MANAGUA, NICARAGUA The coronavirus pandemic has paralyzed the global economy, unleashing what is easily the worst crisis since the Great Recession of 2008, if not since the Great Depression of 1929. In Nicaragua, US-backed right-wing forces have exploited the pandemic to try to destabilize the democratically elected government, run by the leftist Sandinista Front (FSLN) and led by the partys President Daniel Ortega and Vice-President Rosario Murillo. As soon as the Covid-19 crisis hit, the Donald Trump administration took the opportunity to escalate its economic war on Nicaragua, imposing a new round of US sanctions on the Sandinista government on March 5. Although Nicaragua has managed to contain the Covid-19 outbreak much better than its US-allied neighbors in other parts of Central America, where the infection rate is far higher, that has not stopped domestic opposition forces from trying to milk the crisis. The Nicaraguan right-wing is a tiny, overwhelmingly elite, out-of-touch group making up around 10 percent of the population. With little hope of electoral success and its base more divided than ever, it has resorted to spreading mountains of fake news, printing demonstrably false information in hopes of stirring up a frenzy among the population. While the fear-mongering has spread panic among Nicaraguas middle and upper classes, the majority of the countrys population has continued to follow government recommendations. Contrary to claims by the billionaire Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post that Nicaragua declines to confront a pandemic, the government is pursuing a strategy that parallels the approach of Sweden, and with more success so far. I have spent most of 2020 living and reporting in the capital, Managua, so I have seen how international corporate media outlets are spreading misleading claims about Nicaragua and its response to Covid-19, fueling the oppositions efforts to stir chaos. As of the date of publication, there are no known cases of local transmission. All nine patients that have been recorded are Nicaraguans who contracted the virus in the United States, Colombia, or Panama, and brought it back to the country. Five of the nine recuperated, and one, who had AIDS, died. Each of the confirmed Covid-19 patients has been isolated. Nicaraguas health ministry has followed up by ordering those they have been in contact with to self-isolate, and has checked in on them regularly. Nicaragua has not closed its borders, however anyone crossing a land border or disembarking a plane in Managuas international airport is required to see a medical professional who checks the temperatures of all arrivals, tests for potential symptoms, and asks about health issues. Nicaragua boasts a system of socialized medicine that provides high-quality healthcare to all residents, at no cost an achievement made possible by the Sandinistas national electoral victory in 2006. This universal health system helped Nicaragua prepare for the crisis well before it started. In its 13 years in office, the FSLN government has constructed 18 public hospitals (with plans to make 15 more), and has put enormous effort into ensuring that all Nicaraguans receive regular, up-to-date immunizations at no cost. Nicaraguas substantial public health system sprung into action when the global Covid-19 outbreak began. The Sandinista government announced its professionals would be training 250,000 health brigadistas, with plans to visit more than 1 million homes to check in on families and teach them ways to fight and contain the virus. It appears that another key reason coronavirus has not spread much in Nicaragua is due to the countrys hot climate. Chinese scientists found that high temperature and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of Covid-19. Nicaraguas temperature is in the mid-90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) on a daily basis, with a humidity often around 50 percent or higher. This makes it much more difficult for the virus to spread. Nicaragua has also benefited from help from its friends and allies. Medical experts from Cuba, some of the best in the entire world, have come to Nicaragua to help combat the pandemic. Nicaraguan health officials have also consulted with experts from both the Peoples Republic of China and Taiwan. (Nicaraguas relations with the PRC are complex, as it is one of the few nations on Earth that still recognizes Taiwan, due to the decisions of past neoliberal governments, heavy financial assistance in anti-poverty programs, and constant US meddling.) #VamosNicaragua Brigada de medicos especialistas de la hermana Republica de Cuba arribo a Nicaragua la tarde de hoy miercoles 18 de marzo pic.twitter.com/ylc4DQndEp El 19 Digital (@el19digital) March 18, 2020 Nicaraguas economic dilemma, with US coup attempt and informal economy While Nicaraguas response to the pandemic has been more hands-off than the lockdown approach pursued by countries in the Global North, it does not mean the government is not taking Covid-19 seriously. Each morning, for example, the Health Ministry (MINSA) holds a press conference featuring officials and health experts updating the public with the latest news on the coronavirus. But unlike the citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations in the Global North, many Nicaraguans face a serious economic dilemma as the pandemic bears down on them. Nicaragua has only just begun to recover from the enormous economic damage it weathered in a 2018 US-backed coup attempt. For months, violent right-wing extremists actively destabilized the entire country, erecting barricades called tranques that blocked off traffic, grinding the nation and its economy to a halt. Besides the hundreds of citizens who died in the violence, or who suffered torture and brutality at the hands of armed opposition forces, the countrys economic growth slipped from a roaring 5 percent to zero. Since the failure of the putsch, the Sandinista government has placed a herculean effort into a national peace and reconciliation process. It has also tried to recover the billions of dollars worth of economic damage that was done, by ramping up domestic production and inviting tourists to return to its beaches. By the beginning of 2020, Nicaragua seemed like it was on the verge of recovering economically from the chaos. Then came Covid-19. With a critical national election looming in 2021, the Sandinista front clearly recognizes that a total economic shutdown in the face of Covid-19 could be exploited by Nicaraguas right-wing oligarchs, who for 13 years have been desperate to return to power. Compounding this dilemma is the fact that Nicaraguas economy is not nearly as centralized as those of rich industrialized nations in the Global North. More than 70 percent of Nicaraguans work in the informal economic sector, meaning they live hand to mouth, without paychecks or salaries. They grow food, sell products in the street, or provide services, often in their own homes, where they have set up businesses. Nicaraguas Sandinista government prides itself on enacting an economic model that centers small businesses and informal vendors, providing them with loans at zero interest and other forms of free assistance. Large corporations are present in Nicaragua (Walmart runs some supermarket chains), but it is mostly the middle class and the rich who shop at these stores. The vast majority of working-class Nicaraguans shop in community markets, small businesses, and the informal economy; they buy food, clothes, cleaning supplies, and even electronics from vendors in the streets. If the majority of Nicaraguans who work in these small businesses do not work, they do not eat. And they cant just get checks from the government, because most of them do not even have bank accounts. A young Nicaraguan vendor with a stylized mask at a working-class community market in Managua (Photo credit: Ben Norton) " data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nicaragua-market-mask-coronavirus-Managua.jpg?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nicaragua-market-mask-coronavirus-Managua.jpg?fit=845%2C475&ssl=1" data-recalc-dims="1" /> So the Sandinista government has responded with a more measured economic response to the crisis. The Nicaraguan economy has not been entirely shut down. Many unnecessary stores and restaurants are closed, but some remain open. In supermarkets, banks, and most stores in Managua, a guard can usually be found in the entrance with a mask and a bottle of alcohol, ready to spray the hands of clients. All across the country, people are wearing masks. I have even seen cab drivers with face shields. The government has provided hand sanitizer containers in public spaces, and there are signs everywhere warning people not to touch their eyes or mouth and to wash their hands thoroughly for 20 seconds. Nicaragua has managed to find a healthy balance while also containing the virus. Life is not normal, but it is not at a standstill as it is in many other countries. Left-wing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has faced a similar dilemma in Mexico another country where the majority of the population works in the informal sector. And as in Nicaragua, the right-wing opposition has weaponized this more careful economic response to attack Lopez Obrador, known popularly by the acronym AMLO. A photo went viral on social media showing a Mexican worker cooking next to a sign reading Mexico is not Europe; in Mexico if you dont work you dont eat. This is a real dilemma facing many millions of laborers in the informal economy. Mexico is not Europe, in Mexico if you dont work you dont eat, reads sign in entrance to the Coyoacan market. The government has ordered everyone to stay home to prevent #COVID19, but 60 million people work in informal economy and have no income if they dont work. by me. pic.twitter.com/Ux62ifVFBY (@Andalalucha) April 8, 2020 Despite these criticisms, however, Nicaragua has managed to avoid the chaos seen in neighbors like El Salvador, where the right-wing government shut down the entire economy, leading to massive protests by poor residents who are starving. The results speak for themselves. A daily tally provided by the Central American Integration System (SICA) shows Nicaragua has the fewest cases in the region, even fewer than the much smaller nation of Belize. SICA Central America coronavirus covid 19 cases April 12 " data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SICA-Central-America-coronavirus-covid-19-cases-April-12.jpg?fit=252%2C300&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SICA-Central-America-coronavirus-covid-19-cases-April-12.jpg?fit=845%2C1005&ssl=1" data-recalc-dims="1" /> Nicaraguas right-wing opposition exploits coronavirus to destabilize country Nicaraguas relative success in fighting Covid-19 has not stopped the right-wing opposition from using the crisis as an opportunity to turn up the heat on the Sandinistas. Information warfare has been their go-to strategy, spreading fake news to depict the FSLN government as incompetent and unconcerned. Opposition media arms like 100% Noticias, a right-wing tabloid station funded indirectly by the US government through the Violeta Chamorro Foundation; along with Confidencial, which is owned by another elite from the Chamorro clan; as well as La Prensa, which also has historically received financing from Washingtons regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy, have all published rumor after rumor as indisputable fact. On a daily basis, these opposition media outlets spread imaginary statistics, claiming without any evidence that the Sandinistas are covering up the actual number of coronavirus cases and deaths. Right-wing saboteurs even created a fake account posing as Nicaraguas public news station Channel 4 to disseminate fabricated statements they falsely attributed to Vice President Rosario Murillo, claiming school had been cancelled until further notice. The fake video they published went viral, garnering more than 350,000 views on Facebook alone. After two weeks and many reports, Facebook has still not taken it down. An employee at Canal 4 told me that the public media outlets real page filed a complaint to Facebook, but instead of removing the fake news, Facebook simply told the owner of the counterfeit account they had to change the profile image so it would not match the logo of the real Canal 4. However, the social media giant has refused to remove the fake Canal 4 account because the real one is not verified (Facebook has rejected its appeals for verification). In the end, Facebook let the users keep the fake name even while the social media corporation continues its program of censoring Venezuelans and Iranians under US government pressure. The oppositions information warfare spread confusion among working-class Nicaraguan families, whose children missed school because they thought they were supposed to stay home. Canal 4 Nicaragua fake news school cancelled " data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Canal-4-Nicaragua-fake-news-school-cancelled.png?fit=300%2C122&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Canal-4-Nicaragua-fake-news-school-cancelled.png?fit=845%2C344&ssl=1" data-recalc-dims="1" /> Opposition hooligans have spread dozens of fake documents claiming to be government press releases, impersonating the national police and other state institutions. Right-wing activists have also tried to blame unrelated deaths on Covid-19. When an elderly man passed away from a heart attack in a market, Nicaraguan opposition groups falsely claimed that he had been a victim of coronavirus, and that the government was supposedly covering it up. Anti-government media websites have even used photos from other countries and claimed they are from Nicaragua. This opposition campaign has also led to some comically hypocritical results. When I went to a beach in the city of San Juan del Sur in early April, a Nicaraguan friend noticed that two prominent right-wing activists were swimming and tanning on the shore with a large group of associates. Both of the opposition figures on the beach had been using their large social media platforms to implore Nicaraguans to stay at home (quedate en casa in Spanish). We are at home, but our hearts are everywhere, wrote anti-Sandinista activist Cristian Vaughan on his Instagram account, accompanied by the hashtag #quedateencasa, while he has been violating quarantine by frequenting the beach. Vaughans partner Idania Maria Flores, a popular anti-government social media influencer who was on the beach with him and several other friends, has also implored her more than 50,000 followers on Instagram to stay at home. Flores and Vaughan took part in a viral video organized by right-wing Nicaraguan activists, in which some of the top leaders of the opposition told their countrymen, Quedate en casa. Mere days before she was spotted at the beach, Flores posted the video on her Instagram account, writing in all caps, YO ME QUE QUEDO EN CASA (I am staying at home). Through its disinformation campaign, the US-backed Nicaraguan right-wing has endangered public health and spread fear to fuel its ambitions. For the working-class and poor base of the Sandinista Front, the oppositions cynical actions amid a pandemic are further confirmation of how little it cares for their lives. Doomed if you do, doomed if you dont In small countries like Nicaragua, the power of the international corporate media can be overwhelming. And the global press has largely joined in the opposition-led effort, using the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to relentlessly attack Nicaraguas government. Foreign media outlets have falsely claimed, for instance, that the Sandinista Front has continued holding marches amid the coronavirus pandemic. This is not true. Until March, the FSLN had weekly demonstrations called caminatas in which thousands of supporters marched in downtown Managua. The last caminata was held on March 14. At the time, there were no Covid-19 cases in Nicaragua. Medical professionals from the Health Ministry participated in the demonstration, and the government provided many signs and posters to help educate the population on how to contain and figure the virus. After that caminata, all of the subsequent marches were cancelled. Alongside the Bezos-owned Washington Post, even ostensibly progressive outlets like Democracy Now have helped advance the demonization campaign against Nicaraguas government by repeatedly spreading misleading claims about its response to the coronavirus. Nicaragua coronavirus march MINSA recommendations " data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nicaragua-coronavirus-march-MINSA-recommendations.jpg?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nicaragua-coronavirus-march-MINSA-recommendations.jpg?fit=845%2C475&ssl=1" data-recalc-dims="1" /> The wave of negative and falsehood-ridden PR has placed Nicaragua in a difficult quandary. If the Sandinista government decides to respond aggressively to Covid-19, it will be accused of being authoritarian and repressive (as China was depicted early on in the outbreak). Meanwhile, citizens who toil in the informal economy will face starvation and potentially protest being forced to remain in their homes as has repeatedly happened in El Salvador, where demonstrators are shouting, We are dying of hunger! But if the government does not respond aggressively enough to the pandemic, and continues the balanced approach it currently pursues, it will continue to be smeared as irresponsible. For historically colonized, politically independent countries like Nicaragua, which are under siege by US sanctions, its a doomed if you do, doomed if you dont situation. And even the smallest of decisions can generate massive repercussions. While Nicaragua faces scathing attacks from corporate media in the US and Europe, the right-wing regime in Nicaraguas neighbor Honduras has been able to crush a nationwide popular protest movement with little scrutiny. Honduras is a failed state run by a narco-dictatorship installed by Washington after a 2009 military coup against a progressive nationalist government. Unsurprisingly, its health crisis is much worse than Nicaraguas. Meanwhile, Brazils far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the crisis. Trump did the same for months. But in Nicaragua, the opposition forces that support Bolsonaro and Trump ironically claim their government has not acted aggressively enough. From a cynical political perspective this makes sense: The right-wing is in power in the Brazil and the US; their allies abroad dont want to rock the boat. But in Nicaragua, it is the left that it is in power, so the opposition wants chaos and destabilization. Carlos Fonseca Teran, the FSLNs vice president for international affairs and son of the martyred founder of the Sandinista Front, explained the contradictory approach of the Nicaraguan opposition: There is an existential crisis in the vulture-like right-wing in Nicaragua. Their spokespeople accuse us of not doing anything against the pandemic because we didnt paralyze the country or declare quarantine over two imported cases while their boss Donald Trump, with [many thousands of] cases and [thousands more] deaths, has not declared quarantine either. Before they complained about the repression, and now they are demanding that we do the same as their idol, Bukele [the president of El Salvador], who is using tanks to close markets, despite only a few cases there and even so, there are more than in Nicaragua, but if we did something similar, they would say that we are using the pandemic to increase the repression,' Fonseca Teran added. US sanctions make the situation way worse While Nicaragua has been taking careful steps to avoid harming its populations livelihoods, the Trump administration has joined the right-wing opposition it sponsors in using the opportunity to destabilize the Sandinista government. Leading up to the pandemic, the US government had imposed several rounds of aggressive sanctions on Nicaragua. In 2018, the US Congress passed the NICA Act without any opposition. This dealt a major blow to Nicaraguas economy, preventing the country from gaining access to loans and blocking it from working with international financial institutions. Since then, the Trump administration has ratcheted up the economic warfare, with new measures declared on March 5, just as the Covid-19 outbreak was spreading. Unlike right-wing countries in Latin America, such as the US-backed regimes in neighboring Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala all of which have done a worse job at fighting the coronavirus Nicaragua is locked out of the US-dominated global financial system. Concerns over the damage this has done to the Nicaraguan people led the Sandinista government to join Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, Iran, Syria, and the DPRK in signing an open letter calling on the UN to take action to lift the illegal, unilateral coercive measures targeting their economies. Ante la coyuntura del COVID-19, hoy China, Rusia, Iran, Siria, RPD de Corea, Cuba, Nicaragua y Venezuela, nos dirigimos al SG @antonioguterres para que la ONU se sume con fuerza al levantamiento total de las medidas coercitivas ilegales. #LasSancionesSonUnCrimen y deben parar ya! pic.twitter.com/tWmikQL02b Jorge Arreaza M (@jaarreaza) March 26, 2020 Prominent Sandinista activists I spoke with expressed concerns that the US government might use the pandemic as an opportunity to trap poor countries in the Global South in debt bondage. Washington could then leverage the debt to force the countries to fork over their natural resources, privatize state institutions, and open up their economies for plunder by multi-national corporations. Sandinista Front members also stressed in our conversations that, while wealthy countries like the US and Britain are treating Covid-19 as a once-in-a-century threat, Latin America has struggled with lethal viruses for decades. More than 3 million people in the Americas suffered from dengue in 2019 alone, including 186,173 in Nicaragua, which has mounted a series of national drives to suppress the mosquito-borne viral disease. Dengue is entirely treatable, however, in much of Latin America, where right-wing governments have systematically privatized health systems under International Monetary Fund pressure, the poor are often neglected. For those weathering the storm of neocolonialism, Covid-19 is a threat, but just one in a disturbingly long list of them. Nicaraguas socialized health system has taken a preventative approach to balance the weight of the many health crises it faces on a regular basis. While the for-profit, capitalist health system in the United States has collapsed under the weight of the pandemic, leading to what will likely be hundreds of thousands of deaths and mass graves in New York Citys public parks, Nicaragua has so far managed to minimize the impact. The Sandinista government has accomplished this feat under much less favorable conditions than any nation in the Global North faces, with an imperial sword of Damocles hanging over it at all times. Washington has waited with bated breath for the government to slip up. So far, it is the US that has suffered through the worst crisis, while Nicaraguans have gone on with their lives. Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton. bennorton.com From a distance it looks like a big bush, but this is actually a clump of trees - and America's smallest national forest, according to the locals. 'Adak National Forest' comprises just 33 trees and you'll find it - if you are a particularly hardy traveller and don't mind a bracing gust or two on the remote Alaskan island of Adak, part of the volcanic Aleutian archipelago. And when we say remote, we mean it the Google Streetview car has not made it out there. 'Adak National Forest' comprises just 33 trees. Its origins can be traced back to WWII A sign declaring that the clump of trees is a national forest first appeared in the 60s. This snap was taken by Instagrammer @sharktoothwelty The origins of the bizarre 'forest' can be traced back to the Second World War and the National Forest declaration began as joke, but the title has stuck (though it's not officially recognised). The first trees at this location were planted on the orders of Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr, who wanted to cheer up his contingent of around 6,000 troops. They were guarding the Alaskan islands against the Japanese and their morale was taking a battering in the brutal conditions think wind, mud, rain, fog and freezing temperatures. It was decided that some Christmas trees, in particular, would boost spirits, so in 1943 a formal programme of festive pine tree planting began and continued through to 1945, according to Atlas Obscura. Adak National Forest can be found on Adak, part of the volcanic Aleutian archipelago The first trees at this location were planted one Christmas on the orders of Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr, who wanted to cheer up his contingent of around 6,000 troops The locals, in a nod to the forest's origins, still decorate it with Christmas lights However, the harsh environment meant many of the trees were unable to survive. By the time the 60s arrived the forest had a population of one tree, apparently, prompting some soldiers to erect a sarcastic sign saying 'You are entering and leaving Adak National Forest'. Fifty years on and there is still a sign indicating 'National Forest' status and the tree population has clearly grown, though it's not known whether that's through human intervention or not. Adak Island, pictured, is remote - the Google Streetview car has not made it out there The locals, in a nod to the forest's origins, still decorate it with Christmas lights. The largest national forest in the U.S is the Tongass National Forest, which is also in Alaska. It covers 17million acres and harbours the remnants of vast glaciers that once dominated the landscape. The largest U.S national forest outside Alaska is the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest that covers both Nevada and California. One of Michigans largest health care systems is launching a testing study to answer many questions surrounding the spread of coronavirus COVID-19 and potentially help treat patients battling the virus. By testing the blood of an estimated more than 30,000 medical professionals and patients for COVID-19 antibodies, Beaumont Health hopes to determine things like: How widespread infection truly is, including individuals without symptoms; Whether COVID-19 antibodies offer any protection post-infection and if so, how long; The relationship between antibody levels and symptoms or the severity of the disease; How susceptible are health care workers to acquiring COVID-19? In the long term, health officials believe their testing could help determine how quickly a vaccine could be created, and help identify people with high antibody levels as potential donors for plasma transfusions to treat others infected with COVID-19. In addition to answering key questions on infection spread and the percentage of total asymptomatic cases in a community, we intend to relieve anxiety through a better understanding of the spread of the infection across Beaumont Health, said Dr. Richard Kennedy, Beaumont Healths vice president for research and director of the Beaumont Research Institute. The health system says its serological testing study will be the largest in the country when it begins Tuesday, April 13, following three weeks of preparation. Testing will be conducted across all eight Beaumont campuses. Serological blood testing detects antibodies the body creates to fight an infection. In the case of COVID-19, antibodies might develop as soon as three to six days after infection, according to Beaumont officials. In many other infections, antibodies offer immunity against reinfection. Beaumonts study will begin to answer whether COVID-19 antibodies offer any protection post-infection. Dr. Matthew Sims, Beaumonts director of infectious disease research, said he believes antibodies against COVID-19 will protect people from getting infected again. In Germany, he said theres a plan to give people immunity passports if they can show they have antibodies to help them get back to work." This study will help prove that antibodies protect those who have them," Sims said. "It is our hope that this study provides a template for others to conduct similar research that will collectively clarify many unknowns of COVID-19. The Beaumont Research Institute will focus the initial study solely on the Beaumont community of inpatients and the employees and affiliates of the health system. Participation in the study will be voluntary and is expected to include thousands of Beaumont employees and patients. The study aims to identify the number of people across Beaumonts network who have COVID-19 antibodies but never reported any symptoms. As many as 25 to 50 percent of people with COVID-19 might not show symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those individuals could still spread the disease to others. The study is expected to produce its first usable data within 2-3 months, a "very good understanding of the virus in six months, and final results in about a year, according to Sims. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized hospital labs to self-validate their own COVID-19 serological tests, according to Beaumont. This has already been completed under the direction of Beaumont Health immunologist Dr. Gabriel Maine. We have validated this test in our own laboratories and we feel very comfortable with it, said Sims. Participants will have their blood drawn at least twice over two or more weeks to better understand the rate of new infections and to assess the persistence of COVID-19 antibodies. Some participants will have their blood drawn over a greater period of time. In prior viral outbreaks like measles, polio, mumps and influenza, the FDA approved convalescent plasma transfusion as a therapeutic treatment. Individuals with high levels of antibodies could donate plasma for transfusions to treat gravely ill patients. This treatment has been used in China with some success, helping COVID-19 patients on ventilators and near death improve enough to begin breathing again on their own, Sims said. Dr. Barbara Ducatman, chief medical officer for Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, said the study could help prioritize who should be vaccinated first when a vaccine is available in the next year and a half. Individuals who do not have the antibodies or who have a low level of the antibodies should receive the vaccination first, while those with potentially significant levels of protection could wait a bit longer," she said. Beaumont officials said their donors contributed more than $3 million in philanthropic contributions to support initial funding of the research project. After its initial study is complete, Beaumont could expand its testing to other hospitals. Sims envisions a day in the future when doctors could order the test to determine an individuals antibody count. As of Monday, April 13, the state of Michigan reported 25,635 total confirmed cases of coronavirus and 1,602 deaths from the virus. Across the country, there have been more than 547, 627 confirmed cases and at least 21,662 deaths. CORONAVIRUS PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home ( door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. More from MLive: A coronavirus specimens trip from a patients nostril through a Michigan testing lab Michigan cites possible testing lag as coronavirus cases drop Kroger, Meijer report deaths of grocery store workers in Michigan from coronavirus IRS deposits first round of coronavirus stimulus checks into bank accounts Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Fears Mount of Second Wave of Virus Infections as China Begins to Lift Restrictions Fears of a second wave of CCP virus infections in China are mounting as several areas recently reimplemented lockdowns in response to localized clusters. Since April, a county in central Chinas Henan Province, cities in the northernmost province of Heilongjiang, and parts of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have been placed under lockdownweeks after restrictions were lifted across much of the country. Meanwhile, rising numbers of asymptomatic carriersthose infected who do not show symptoms of the COVID-19 diseasehave fueled concerns of a second wave of infections. They will get a second wave, most likely, Dr. Aimee Ferraro, infectious diseases researcher and senior core faculty member for Walden Universitys Master of Public Health program, told The Epoch Times. And it will be from asymptomatic cases or imported cases from outside. Ferraro said that a second wave could see an exponential growth in infections, just like during the initial outbreak. Silent Carriers Chinese authorities only started reporting asymptomatic cases on April 1prior to this, these patients were not recorded. At the time, the National Health Commission said there were 1,541 asymptomatic cases under medical observation. Since then, hundreds of new asymptomatic cases have been reported. While the countrys chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou has said such cases accounted for 4.4 percent of total confirmed patients, classified Chinese government data showed that asymptomatic carriers could form up to one-third of those who test positive, the South China Morning Post reported. The data showed that more than 43,000 patients who tested positive in China by the end of February were asymptomatic. These patients were placed in quarantine and monitored, the outlet reported. Ferraro said that the lack of widespread testing in China, which would have detected more cases of asymptomatic carriers, meant there was likely a ghost system of disease spread in the community. Theyre [Chinese authorities] either aware of it and not telling others because of the political implications, or they just dont have the resources to do it [widespread testing], she said. Chinese commuters ride bikes and scooters in the central business district during rush hour in Beijing on April 7, 2020. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) New Lockdowns, Makeshift Hospitals For weeks, the Chinese regime has reported few new domestic infections, claiming that the bulk of new cases are from returnees who were infected overseas. But interviews with Chinese citizens and internal reports obtained by The Epoch Times have revealed that local authorities frequently underreport cases. For instance, a dataset from Wuhan health authorities showed that the city tested 16,000 patient samples on March 14, with 373 showing up positive. But authorities only publicly recorded four infections for that day. In Chinas northernmost province of Heilongjiang, authorities locked down the city of Suifenhe, which borders Russia, on April 7, which officials said was part of an attempt to stem the spread of imported cases from Russia. From March 27 to April 9, the city recorded more than 100 imported cases, as well as 148 asymptomatic patients that were imported cases. Only three new domestic infections were reported during that period. However, data from the provincial health commission cast doubt on the low numbers of domestic infections. A man arrives at Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, China to board one of the first trains leaving the city after two and a half months lockdown on April 8, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) The commission on April 9 announced that 1,051 people in the province went to hospitals presenting symptoms of fever on the previous day. But on April 8, the province reported only 40 new infections, which were all imported cases. It also said 878 people were admitted to hospitals due to fever on April 7, but on that day only 25 new infections were recorded, all of whom were imported cases. Meanwhile, a makeshift hospital was built in Suifenhe on April 11, with 600-bed capacity. The provincial health commission is also preparing to make available nearly 4,000 beds elsewhere in the province, according to an internal document seen by The Epoch Times. Suifenhe and Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, will now require all arrivals from abroad to undergo 28 days of quarantine, as well as nucleic acid and antibody tests. Harbin added that it would lock down any residential units where confirmed and asymptomatic virus cases are found for 14 days. In Jiamusi, another city in Heilongjiang, residents recently told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that many residential compounds in Xiangyang district of the city were placed under lockdown again on April 2, after measures were lifted on March 12. Although local authorities did not provide a reason for the change in policy, residents believed it was due to new infections. In the nearby region of Inner Mongolia, the city of Manzhouli, located along the border with Russia, said authorities were preparing a new hospital to treat virus patients, with construction to be completed on Tuesday. Lamine Ibrahim (L) from Guinea works as his four-year-old son (back C) looks on at their shop inside a clothing wholesale market in Guangzhou, China on August 26, 2013. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) Meanwhile, the southern city of Guangzhou, home to a large immigrant community from countries in Africa, has seen an uptick of new infections among African nationals in recent weeks. Authorities in Guangzhou city have ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin, the U.S. consulate in Guangzhou said in a statement on April 12. Moreover, anyone with African contacts faces mandatory virus tests followed by quarantine, regardless of recent travel history or previous isolation. The U.S. consulate recommended that African-Americans or those who believe Chinese officials may suspect them of having contact with nationals of African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further notice. Many Africans have been evicted from their homes by landlords and left with nowhere to stay, videos shared on social media revealed. A woman walks near New Don Franc Hotel, part of an ethnically diverse quarter of Guangzhou known as Little Africa in Guangzhou, China, on February 3, 2019. (Betsy Joles/Getty Images) Mr. Zhou, a resident from Yaotai village, Yuexiu district in Guangzhou, told the Chinese-language Epoch Times on April 7: Our village has been locked down again since two days ago. All stores except supermarkets were closed. We need to pass a body temperature screening when we leave or enter our village Police who patrol on the streets arrest African people when they see them. Zhou said the village was placed under lockdown in late January. The quarantine measures were lifted in early March. During Nicaraguas devastating civil war in the 1980s, youthful revolutionary Daniel Ortega toured every town in the Central American nation, clad in his green Sandinista uniform. Now in his second stint as president, the 74-year-old leftist leader has disappeared from public view for nearly a month, raising questions about his health and whereabouts as the world reels from the spread of the coronavirus. As in 2014, another time he dropped off the map, his absence has even prompted speculation he may have died. The government did not respond to a request for comment on the reasons for Ortegas absence, his health or whether he is alive. However, a government official close to Ortega said he was alive, speaking on condition of anonymity. Over the years, the former guerilla has suffered two heart attacks and developed high cholesterol and other ailments, said the official. Since then, the president has been increasingly protective of his health, said the source. Ortegas last public appearance was on March 12, in which he spoke briefly via video from a living room. He has always fled from problems; no wonder he is absent in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, said Dora Maria Tellez, a former minister in Ortegas first government in the 1980s who later broke with the president. Ortega also disappeared for several weeks in 1998, after his adopted stepdaughter accused him of abuse, which he denied. During his current absence, Vice President Rosario Murillo, his wife, has spoken publicly every day, fueling speculation that Ortega will eventually emerge to oversee a campaign to defeat the coronavirus. Shwetha Surendran By Express News Service CHENNAI: On March 22, as the nation locked itself in observing the government-ordered Janta curfew, Coimbatore-based Ebin Ephrem Elavathingal, senior manager at AIC Raise, and his team student start-up JK Data Systems incubated in AIC Raise, supported by Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog and students of Rathinam Group of Institutions, Coimbatore came up with an idea. A version of face shields to protect the essential workers in the frontlines of the pandemic. Now, three weeks later, with over one lakh shields distributed across the country, theyre not done just yet, creating a working prototype of an Intermittent Positive Pressure Breathing ventilator (IPPV). The five-member team headed by Ebin and comprising the student start-ups by Karthik S, Gowtham Santhakumar and their team, with support of the Bio-Medical and Computer Science department of Rathinam College, are the people behind this ambitious project. But despite their remarkable final model, youd be surprised to find out that none of them has any prior experience with medical equipment. Once we started watching the global news and understanding the urgent need for ventilators in this pandemic, we immediately dropped what we were working on, and began to educate ourselves about ventilators through open source libraries and other resources, says Ebin. Within a week, they already had their first prototype with basic features. But keen on enhancing the model even further, the team re-engineered the design of an international open-source ventilator project to produce their second working prototype, with improved control facilities, within four days. We havent gotten an Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) license yet, but this device can monitor control of the tidal volume, breath per minute and inspiration expiration ratio adjustments. It is also enhanced with pressure, flow and oxygen monitoring systems, he explains. With most of the countrys ICU ventilators costing over Rs 5 lakh, their simpler model comes in at just Rs 25,000, with the basic first prototype at RS 10,000. Ready to take the next steps, Ebin assures us that they are currently at a production capacity of 100 ventilators a day. Once they receive government approval, the team is ready to spring into action. Our thoughts upon taking up this massive new project was to help save our nation. Its as simple as that. I even quarantined myself at the office to ensure that we can truly build something of value, says Ebin. Still choosing not to rest on their laurels, the team is already brainstorming on their next project, something that could help in a post-coronavirus world. And while theyre hard at work on it, Ebins only plea if you have the intellectual property to make a difference, nows the time. The team The five-member team headed by Ebin and comprising student start-ups by Karthik S, Gowtham Santhakumar and their team, with support of the Bio-Medical and Computer Science department of Rathinam College, are the people behind this project. KYODO NEWS - Apr 13, 2020 - 14:12 | All, Japan, Coronavirus House of Representatives member Jiro Hatoyama's office said Monday one of the lawmaker's secretaries has contracted the new coronavirus, becoming the first among those working at a Tokyo office building for Japanese parliament members to become infected. The secretary, in his 60s, developed a fever on the night of April 5, and it was confirmed Saturday that he was positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The lower house secretariat has disinfected Hatoyama's office upon being notified of the case on Monday. The aide of Hatoyama, son of the late veteran lawmaker Kunio Hatoyama and a scion of a prominent political family, has only shown mild symptoms but will be hospitalized. The secretary had been working from home since last week had not been in close contact with the 41-year-old lawmaker elected from Fukuoka Prefecture, according to the office. The lower house secretariat said when a lawmaker or a secretary tests positive for the virus or is deemed to have been in close contact with those infected, it will try to track their activities and interactions for the previous two weeks and disinfect the office and parliament buildings if necessary. Hatoyama has been elected twice and belongs to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. His father, who died in 2016, held several ministerial posts. Related coverage: Hokkaido declares emergency state again as virus infections grow Olympics: IOC bracing for extra costs from Tokyo Games delay: Bach British PM Johnson out of hospital after weeklong virus treatment The Delhi government will implement odd-even rules in all wholesale markets in the city, under which traders will sell vegetables on alternate days, Development Minister Gopal Rai said on Monday. Speaking to PTI, the minister said that the government has also decided to stagger the timings for the sale of vegetables and fruits in these 'mandis'. "Vegetables will be sold from 6 am to 11 am and fruits from 2 pm to 6pm in all wholesale markets in Delhi," he said. The decisions were taken at a high-level meeting chaired by the development minister here. There are five major wholesale vegetable and fruit markets in the national capital, including the Azadpur mandi, the Ghazipur mandi and the Okhla mandi. Also, there two wholesale 'anaj mandis' (wheat markets) Najafgarh and Narela. According to the odd-even rule, sheds under which hundreds of traders sell vegetables will be allowed to operate according to their numbers, Rai said. The minister also said that the Delhi government has formed four special task forces to ensure effective social distancing in the mandis in view of the COVID-19 outbreak. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Entrepreneurs have started punching holes on governments COVID-19 pandemic relief package, which is expected to cushion workers, stabilise businesses and promote opportunities for economic diversification. One would have expected that the relief fund would come as a mitigation factor for a reasonable period of time, to give oxygen to 'non operational' firms. It seems there wont be such, at least from the current guidelines, Nnyaladzi Malaki Monyamane, founder of a local travel agency, The Gabs Experience, told Botswana Guardian Online. Monyamane said the fund has missed the most critical component for most start-ups and entrepreneurs, which is their rental. Subsidising employees salaries is a commendable move, however it is not enough in the long run, as the offices they work from provides them the basis and justification of a 22 day monthly pay, said Monyamane. He said most youth-owned companies struggle with rentals and usually employ one person on a permanent basis, being the business owner. We can only hope that going forward, the relief fund will capture this important element of business running costs, to avoid our malls becoming white elephants after Covid-19, Monyamane emphasised. He raised fears of businesses not being allowed to operate from home, saying that poses a looming risk for businesses to collapse.Whereas operating from home has been permitted for some sectors, we still have clients who still find it difficult to go into a residential area to make a payment, and they are right, they have been robbed before, said Monyamane. He said most entrepreneurs are considering closing offices due to the pandemic, owing to rental which is a fixed cost. Los Angeles, April 13 : Socialite Paris Hilton will perform a DJ set at Triller festival to raise money to help those on the front line, working to fight the pandemic. She will be performing with Snoop Dogg, Marshmello and PitBull among many other artistes, reports femalefirst.co.uk. "Can't wait to perform for you all this weekend during #HomeQuarantine! ... I'll be performing from home for @TrillerVids Virtual Music Festival #TrillerFest with this amazing lineup! @SnoopDogg, @MarshmelloMusic, @Migos, @PitBull, @WyclefJean, @DonDiablo, @ChanelWestCoast @RubyRose & over 100 other artists to raise donations for #MusicCares #NoKidHungry & driving donations for those deeply affected by Covid-19. #Triller #StayHome #Complex ... Click link in my bio for your FREE pass to #TrillerFest," she wrote. Hilton previously shared she wants to live forever as she is concerned that "nothing" happens after death, which would be "boring". She said: "Death scares me because I don't know what happens. I just don't want it to be nothing because that would be so boring. I'm trying to figure out a way - freezing myself or inventing the fountain of youth pill - so people could live forever, like that movie 'Death Becomes Her.'" -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili. The Linerless Labels are being used for a long time in the market. They come on the products we buy from the grocery stores having a sticky tape with a logo or name on it. They are used for the purpose of tracing and tracking of the product. They provide high quality printing which is good for brands to print their name and logo. Linerless Labels are considered to be environment friendly and they don't create any waste and are available in various types of adhesive options. Linerless Labels Marketare segmented On the basis of Composition: Facestock, Adhesives, Others; on the basis of Printing ink: Water-based ink, Solvent-based ink, Holt melt-based ink, UV curable ink; on the basis of Printing technology: Digital printing, Flexographic printing, Gravure printing, Lithography printing, Screen printing, Letterpress printing; Request For Report sample @: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/3070 on the basis of Application: Food & beverage, Pharmaceuticals, Personal care, Consumer products, Retail, ; Others (apparels & textiles, industrial lubricant & paints, gifts); on the basis of region; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, RoW.Being easily printable, cost effective and providing high quality printing are the main key drivers for Linerless Labels Market for which it becomes the preferred type of labelling for food and beverage sector. Food and beverages market is never ending thus it will drive theLinerless Labels Market to peak heights and open new prospects for growth.The Linerless Labels are proved to be the suitable labels for the high definition printings for the growing packaging industry. These labels require a special printer to get printed thus adding another machinery and the cost. This is the major downside of Linerless Labels.On the basis of the market segment by application, Food and Beverages industry has the largest market share. Request For Table of Contents : https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/requesttoc/3070 With the growing packaging industry, it has now became necessary for the products to be hygienic but also to look attractive. Thus, Food & Beverages sector are focusing more on the packaging these days.Geographically, Asia Pacific is has the leading market in the world followed by European Market. The rapidly growing industrialization in the developing countries of Asia Pacific region like India, China etc. are encouraging the markets of food & beverages, Dairy, pharmaceuticals to grow. Thus adding growth to the market of Linerless Labels to expand with itself to a higher level. The major key players include: 3M Company, Coveris Holdings S.A., CCL Industries Inc., Constantia Flexible Group GMBH, RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Innovia films, Reflex Labels limited, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company. Make an Inquiry before Buying @ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/checkout/3070/Single National Covid-19 count goes up to 265 with three new cases A medical officer collects health declarations from residents at Hanoi's Ha Loi village, the second largest hotspot in the city, April 8, 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh. The Health Ministry confirmed three new Covid-19 infections Monday evening, two from Hanois Ha Loi Village and the third a returnee from Thailand. The number of active cases is currently 120 after the discharge of 145 Covid-19 patients. The two new patients take Ha Loi Villages infection tally to 12, all of whom are still under treatment. The village has become the second Covid-19 hotspot in the capital city after the Bach Mai Hospital, which came out of a fortnight-long lockdown Sunday. "Patient 263" is a 45-year-old resident of Ha Loi who developed a fever, sore throat, dry cough and fatigue on March 25. Her samples were taken on April 11 and she was admitted to the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi after testing positive. "Patient 264", 24, is also a resident of Ha Loi Village who had her samples taken on April 11 and is being treated at the same hospital as "Patient 263." "Patient 265", 26, who hails from the central province of Ha Tinh had returned March 23 to Vietnam from Thailand via the Cha Lo border gate in the central province of Quang Binh. He was quarantined on arrival at a facility in Thach Ha District, Ha Tinh Province. His samples were tested on April 8 and April 12 before he was confirmed Covid-19 positive. He is being treated at the Cau Treo Hospital in Ha Tinh. Ha Loi Village with its 1,000 or so residents was placed under a lockdown on April 7 after three villagers contracted the virus. Hanoi leads the nation in the number of Covid-19 cases with 127 recorded so far, of whom 58 have been discharged. Ho Chi Minh City takes the second spot with 54 cases and 40 discharges. Globally, the Covid-19 death toll has risen to more than 114,000 in 210 countries and territories. Wangmo county, southwest China's Guizhou province, has taken various measures to fight against poverty as the whole country intends to eliminate poverty by the end of 2020. Farmers pack mangoes in Wangmo county. (Photo via the Publicity Department of CPC Wangmo County Committee) By the end of 2019, Wangmo was still left with 22 poor villages and 10,800 registered population living in poverty, requiring the county to sprint for the goal of poverty alleviation. In Wangmo county, with hills making up 97.2 percent of the land, many local people choose to work elsewhere to earn money. Among the total 320,000 people in the county, over 70,000 would seek a job in other places on a regular basis. As many locals couldn't go out to work amid the epidemic, the human resources and social security bureau in Wangmo, together with other departments, arranged special buses, trains or planes to transport the farmers to their work, according to Wei Jiazhun, director of the human resources and social security bureau. By April 7, over 70,000 locals in Wangmo have either resumed positions or secured new jobs outside the county. In addition to helping people find jobs the county also developed industries, taking targeted measures to alleviate poverty. The Nawang village under Wangmo county has encouraged farmers to grow mango trees based on local conditions. Many poverty-stricken people are old-aged and weak in manual labor, said Tian Longyan, director of the office of poverty alleviation and development in the county, adding that the mango industry, which depends less on labor and technology, is considered relatively appropriate. According to Tian, the planting area of mango trees in Wangmo exceeds 267 hectares. "Technicians will train us on planting and officials will help sell mangoes," said Wei Ximi, a 51-year-old villager at Nawang, who received an income of 12,000 yuan from mangoes last August. Meanwhile, the county has focused on practical issues such as safe drinking water and disease relief, hoping to facilitate high-quality poverty alleviation. FREE DIGITAL ACCESS: The Hamilton Spectator has made the decision to provide free digital access to essential local coronavirus articles. If you appreciate good journalism, please subscribe to thespec.com for unlimited access to all articles. Fifteen residents of Anson Place Care Centre have now died of COVID-19 as management and staff at the Hagersville long-term care home continue to grapple with a coronavirus outbreak. Anson Place executive director Lisa Roth said 36 residents in long-term care and 19 in the retirement residence have tested positive, as well as 30 staff members who are in quarantine and no longer working at the facility. The 55 residents who have contracted COVID-19 represent more than half of the 101 people who called Anson Place home before the pandemic. Roth said the number of positive cases could continue to rise now that the health unit has tested all residents and staff. This will allow us to fully understand the current outbreak to better manage it appropriately, Roth said. That being said, we may also see a jump in the number of positive cases in the next few days due to this increase in testing. Residents are confined to their rooms and all staff who interact with residents do so while wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE). Those employees are in self-isolation when not at work or travelling between their homes and Anson Place. To date, we have not had issues regarding the supply of PPE within our home, Roth said. With the safety of residents and front-line staff a top priority, we have also supplemented our workforce by hiring additional direct care and cleaning staff to provide the additional supports we need during this outbreak. The outbreak at Anson Place accounts for all 15 deaths in Haldimand-Norfolk that the health unit has linked to COVID-19. Sixteen residents in the two counties have recovered from the disease. Positive and negative cases continue to rise as test results come back in from the lab. On Monday, the health unit reported 144 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in the area, while 498 tests came back negative. Thats up from 131 positives and 486 negatives on Sunday. Hagersville hospital staff test positive West Haldimand General Hospital has closed its doors to visitors after six staff members tested positive for COVID-19. In a statement, the Hagersville hospital said that the index case, or the first identified case in the cluster, is likely related to a community member infecting a staff member. The other five cases were transmitted among hospital staff. The hospital said there is no indication that staff members have passed the virus to patients or vice versa. Evidence suggests this is a community-related transmission that was identified by the steps we are taking to screen staff for active symptoms, said interim hospital CEO Tom Thomson. Our hospital remains safe. We are all wishing our colleagues a speedy recovery. We are grateful for the commitment of our front-line health-care workers through this pandemic. All hospital staff are screened daily for COVID-19 symptoms before they can enter the building and sent home if theyre not feeling well. The safety of our patients and staff is paramount, Thomson said. The hospital has rolled out strategies to limit visitors and the potential spread of infection. Two patients at West Haldimand General have tested positive for COVID-19. A former resident of Anson Place died at the hospital on March 26, while the other patient is currently under care in isolation. The hospital has been screening patients for COVID-19 symptoms since March 16. Both patients with the disease were admitted prior to their being any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Haldimand-Norfolk. South Korea will hold its general election for the National Assembly this Wednesday amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. The various parties of the South Korean ruling class will vie for all 300 seats in the unicameral body, with legislators elected to four-year terms. None have a progressive way forward as the economy declines and workers, farmers, and youth face increased attacks on working and living conditions. The contest is largely between the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DP) and the main opposition United Future Party (UFP), which was formed in February following a merger of the right-wing Liberty Korea Party and smaller conservative parties and organizations. The so-called liberal DP is banking on the apparent success of the Moon Jae-in administrations response to COVID-19, while the UFP has called on voters to judge the government, particularly over the economy. The DP is likely to win the election, with an April 8 Gallup Korea poll showing the ruling party with a 21-point lead over the UFP. However, reflecting broad dissatisfaction with the political system, 18 percent of people did not support any party. Regardless of who wins, the government will remain in the hands of President Moon, a Democrat, whose term does not run out until 2022. Park Sung-min, the head of political polling company Min Consulting, told the New York Times, The epidemic sidelined all the policy complaints about President Moon. Instead, people believe that his government has done quite well as they see the epidemic spiralling out of control in other countries. However, the ruling class acts to benefit itself. South Korea was one of the hardest-hit countries outside of the Middle East during the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak. Seouls incompetent response then led to widespread anger, which contributed to the massive anti-government protests a little more than a year later. Today, Moons government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with police state measures that could easily be turned against the working class, especially as the economy worsens amid growth predictions of less than 1 percent or even negative. After two days of early voting on Friday and Saturday, voter turnout stands at 26.69 percent, the highest since advance voting was introduced in 2014. The high turnout was attributed to people hoping to avoid large crowds on election day to minimize potential exposure to COVID-19. South Koreas election is being held when at least 47 countries around the world have cancelled or postponed elections due to COVID-19. However, ballots will not be gathered from eligible Korean voters living in at least 55 countries, including the United States, affecting an estimated 87,252 people, or little more than half of overseas voters. In order to provide safety for voters, South Koreas National Election Commission issued guidelines for voters and polling stations that include maintaining social distancing, regularly sanitizing voting booths, and setting aside separate voting stations for anyone showing symptoms of COVID-19. It is not out of the question that a state with a long history of falsifying or otherwise interfering in elections could exploit the confusion at polling places to alter results. Most recently, South Koreas National Intelligence Service interfered in the 2012 presidential election to secure a victory for Park Geun-hye by waging an online smear campaign against then-candidate Moon Jae-in. The election is also the first under a new law passed last December that changes the manner in which the 47 proportionally allocated seats in the National Assembly are distributed. The new law was supposedly meant to make it easier for minor parties to win seats in the legislature by changing how 30 seats are selected while maintaining the old system for the other 17. The law faced opposition from conservatives who feared the changes would favour the liberal parties. To take advantage of the new system, both major parties have set up satellite parties, the Together Citizens Party affiliated with the DP and the Future Korea Party with the UFP to win additional seats in the National Assembly with the intention of merging them with the main parties after the election. The new laws also lower the minimum voting age from 19 to 18. Clearly concerned about widespread political disaffection among younger people, UFPs Kim Dae-ho declared on April 6, People in their 50s to 70s have logic when they bring up an issue. But people in their 30s to 40s do not have logic but only vague sentiment, huge ignorance, and delusions. In a bid to contain the political damage, the UFP expelled Kim the following day and issued an apology. One blogger in his 30s responded to Kims comments online, saying, All age groups, not only those in their 30s and 40s but also those in their teens and 20s, have their own hardships. If we are that illogical and ignorant, why are they begging us for votes? As a result of policies carried out by both Democratic and conservative administrations, wages over the last two decades have stagnated and workers increasingly have difficulty finding stable, regular employment. A study released at the end of last year by the Korea Economic Research Institute found that from 2008 to 2018, youth unemployment grew by 28.3 percent. While the official unemployment rate for those 15 to 29 hovers around 10 percent, the real rate is more than double this when taking into account those in underpaid part-time positions. The COVID-19 pandemic will only accelerate the attacks on working conditions. On April 8, President Moon unveiled another massive bailout of big business totalling 53.7 trillion won ($US44 billion). At least 36 trillion won will go to prop up export companies. The government will expect the working class to foot the bill. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jennifer Epstein and Tyler Pager (Bloomberg) New York, United States Mon, April 13, 2020 17:00 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd198b69 2 World Joe-Biden,vice-president,Kamala-Harris,trump,Gretchen-Whitmer Free Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is in the earliest stages of choosing a running mate who can help him defeat President Donald Trump in November, a decision complicated by the effects of the coronavirus crisis on the country and the campaign. Biden, who is far behind Trump in fund-raising and hamstrung by social distancing rules, is preparing to begin his vetting process in the coming days, according to a person familiar with the plans. Yet alongside the usual political considerations, he will have to add a new criteria for the candidates: Who can best address the challenges of the coronavirus era. High profile senators -- and former presidential candidates -- Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren are all sure to get consideration. Yet the crisis has also raised the profile of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who Biden has said he was watching closely even before the pandemic struck. Some outsiders have speculated about Biden picking New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has been widely praised for his stewardship during the crisis, but the former vice president is unlikely to stray from his commitment to pick a woman as his running mate. New York governor Andrew Cuomo (Bloomberg/-) Bidens pledge to choose a woman eased the Democrats hand-wringing that came when, despite a large and diverse candidate field, they eventually chose a 77-year-old white man and Washington insider as their nominee. All the other usual factors will be considered, too -- who can help him win a region or a demographic, who doesnt have a scandal lurking in her past, and who is, in his words, simpatico with him and his style of governing. Biden faces this choice in a vastly different political landscape than when he entered the race, or even since his decisive win in South Carolina catapulted him to front-runner status. The markets have taken a beating, tens of millions of people are out of work and voters fear another wave of the virus in the fall, before election day. He knows exactly what it will feel like to have a partner, not just a running mate, not someone who is politically convenient or would make for a good profile but someone who he can trust, said Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, Bidens home state, and a close ally. Hes looking for someone who is soulful, whip-smart, capable, compatible and who will really be able to step in and play that right-hand partner role from day one. The vetting process has traditionally begun with lawyers combing through publicly available information about a large group of candidates. A smaller group are then asked to provide private records and most move on to interview with the candidate. In 2016, about 20 people began the process in April, 10 made it to the next round in June, and nominee Hillary Clinton interviewed several finalists before selecting Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running-mate. Washington lawyer James Hamilton has led the process for every Democratic nominee since Al Gore in 2000. He should consider who helps make the best team that sends the message to the American people that this is the team that can get us back on track, this is the team thats going to give us competence versus the incompetence of Trump and Pence, said Democratic strategist Karen Finney, who was Kaines communications director in 2016. The new calculations have put a lot of attention on Whitmer, 48, who has been one of the most visible governors during the crisis. Michigan is a crucial swing state that Trump won by 0.23 percent in 2016, and when she fought for more federal assistance last month, she was dismissed by the president as that woman from Michigan. That rallied Biden and other national Democrats to her defense. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (left) speaks onstage alongside Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer during a Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit, Michigan on March 9, 2020. (Agence France Presse/Mandel Ngan) A test of her rapport with Biden came in a 20-minute podcast conversation between the two earlier this week. In it, Biden described her as one of the most talented people in the country in my view and asked her about things they have in common, including a willingness to work with Republicans. Without in-person events for the foreseeable future, virtual interactions such as the podcast are the Biden campaigns best shot at testing his chemistry with potential running mates. Worse Than 1933? A Michigan Democrat who is close to Whitmer and requested anonymity to speak candidly about the process said Whitmer would be a strong running mate but questions whether she would be selected if the pandemic is still wreaking havoc on her state and demanding her attention. Even before the crisis, Biden made clear he would pick a running mate who could immediately step into the presidency should his good health suddenly turn or, as hes suggested, if he gets struck by lightning. The threat of an infectious disease around the world only amplifies the importance of his choice. Everybody will mouth that you have to be able to step into the job and I think Biden will take that particularly seriously because of his age, said John Podesta, who, as Clintons 2016 campaign chairman, helped her pick Kaine. Biden has suggested that the problems he would inherit in January 2021 could be worse than those Franklin D. Roosevelt faced in 1933. Therefore, his vice president is likely to be given a large workload that will require significant trust and independence from the president, just as Biden got from President Barack Obama in 2009 to oversee the automobile industry bailout and the distribution of stimulus money after the 2008 financial crisis. His experience in 2009 will be really fresh in his mind as he thinks about finding a partner who could take on that kind of work, said Liz Allen, a former White House communications aide who traveled with Biden to construction sites and firehouses across the country as the recovery act was implemented. Although he and Obama didnt know each other particularly well at the start of the administration, trust and transparency were already there between them, she said. In this moment, executive experience and particularly crisis experience is probably something that the public would gravitate to, Podesta said, which is likely to help the prospects of any governors or other executives he considers. Despite his desire to find a running mate with whom hed have the same close personal and professional relationship he had with Obama over eight years, electoral considerations will still be at play, Podesta added. He will have a unique perspective having been vice president and will be thinking about working in the White House with this person but that does not mean that the number one criteria wont be who would help me get elected and who will hurt me in my quest to get elected, Podesta said. What About Kamala Harris? Biden also faces significant pressure to choose a woman of color from prominent supporters and activists, like Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement just before his states primary breathed new life into the campaign, and civil rights icon and Georgia Representative John Lewis. Harris, just the second black female US senator, is seen as a top contender. When she joined Biden at a video fundraiser on Wednesday, he alluded to bringing her into his administration. Im so lucky to have you as part of this partnership going forward because I think working together we can make a great deal of difference and the biggest thing we can do is making Donald Trump a one term president, he said. Democratic presidential candidates former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) speak after the Democratic Presidential Debate at Texas Southern University's Health and PE Center on September 12, 2019 in Houston, Texas. Ten Democratic presidential hopefuls were chosen from the larger field of candidates to participate in the debate hosted by ABC News in partnership with Univision. (AFP/Win McNamee/Getty Images) But some in Bidens orbit, including his wife, Jill, are wary of Harris after her debate-stage attack last summer on Bidens record on school busing and because Harriss team was aggressive in trying to place negative stories about him in the press. Biden has said hes moved on, but Jill Biden was still talking about it in public as recently as March, when she described Harris words as a punch to the gut, in part because Harris was close with Bidens late son Beau. If Biden doesnt choose a woman of color, he must remind voters of his commitment to diversity other ways, Finney said. Hell need to stress that regardless of who he picks, he will have an administration that reflects the broad diversity of our country, including his pledge to appoint the first black woman to the Supreme Court. A number of women remain in the mix for the number two spot. Klobuchar has made no secret of her interest in the job. Her chances could be helped by a bit of misfortune -- her husband was hospitalized in March with the coronavirus but has since recovered that could help her connect with other affected families. Other senators likely to get a close look include Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, and Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen both of New Hampshire. Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia House of Representatives minority leader will also be on his list. And Biden has said that he would consider Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general fired by Trump. CHICAGO, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Trinity High School, an International Baccalaureate, all-girl Catholic school in River Forest, IL announced today that in an effort to support their school families impacted by the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, they would make a portion of their strategic reserve fund available for tuition grants. Trinity is more than a schoolit's a family. Families come together in times of need. For more than 102-years the Trinity High School family has weathered world wars, the Great Depression and countless other challenges. In the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Trinity will follow the example of the strong women who began the school more than a century ago. The school will continue to educate women, take care of their students, and continue building a community grounded in strength, knowledge and faith. Trinity High School has received the approval of the Board of Directors and the Sponsors Council of the Sinsinawa Dominican Schools to earmark $1 million of the school's Strategic Reserve Fund to support Trinity families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis with a one-time tuition assistance grant for the 2020-21 school year. To ensure that they can assist every student in need, the school has also established the #BlazerReliefFund and hope to raise an additional $1 million to match their institutional support. "We have been fortunate that for more than a century Trinity High School and the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa have been such conscientious fiscal stewards. Once the idea was raised, there really wasn't much debateit was the right thing to do. Trinity is family, and family helps one another when times are tough. " -Laura Curley, Trinity High School President Any and all inquiries from foundations, corporations or individuals who want to contribute to the Blazer Relief Fund are welcome and greatly appreciated. Contact Vice President of Institutional Advancement Shena McNamara Keith at [email protected] or 708.453.9374 for details, or go to www.trinityhs.org/covidrelief SOURCE Trinity High School Related Links http://www.trinityhs.org Appointment 10 April 2020 Prior to joining Capella, Lau served as vice president and partner at Shanghai Yu Ji Hospitality Consulting Company, where she advised luxury hospitality companies on their practices. Hailing from Hong Kong, Lau began her career as a management trainee at the Yinhe Dynasty Intercontinental Hotel in China before joining The Peninsula Hotels for 13 years, holding various positions in sales and marketing at the regional office, The Peninsula Bangkok and in flagship hotel The Peninsula Hong Kong. She has also cut her teeth with other luxury brands such as The Ritz-Carlton and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Her international sales and marketing experience was gained through stints in North America, Europe and Asia, where she actively participated in the resort, luxury and business segments. Got a question or tip? Contact us at bizmojoidaho@gmail.com. Lands End furloughed 70 percent of its corporate employees beginning on March 28. The clothing retailer announced the move last week in light of the of the COVID-19 coronavirus, a pandemic that has shuttered most of the country and has left millions unemployed. A Lands End spokesperson declined to say how many people worked in the corporate headquarters in Dodgeville, but the citys mayor, Todd Novak, said he was told last week by Jerome Griffith, Lands Ends CEO and president, that about 1,000 employees in Dodgeville were being furloughed. The companys Wisconsin-based distribution centers remain operational, with those employees receiving a temporary pay increase. Lands End has also made modifications to days of operation and is maintaining six feet of space between employees, the company said in a release Monday announcing the measure. On March 15, the company announced it was closing its 26 retail locations around the country through March 29 because of the virus. Those closures have now been extended. At Lands End, the safety and health of all our employees is our first priority and we are taking steps to minimize risk through work-at-home policies, as well as practicing social distancing and enhanced sanitation in our facilities, Griffith said in a written statement. Given the uncertainty related to the severity and duration of COVID-19, we have also taken proactive steps to reduce costs, carefully manage inventory, and preserve liquidity. Returning to work Some employees will return to work on Tuesday, but for many the furlough will remain in effect through at least May 1. The company did not provide specifics. Lands End plans to fund health insurance premiums for employees furloughed through May 1, Griffith said. The company, which reported last month $1.45 billion in net revenues in fiscal 2019, is also undertaking a wide range of cost-cutting measures. Griffiths salary has been reduced by 50%, and the base salaries of his executive team have been cut by by 20% with scaled reductions for other employees throughout the company. Lands End is also eliminating fiscal 2020 merit increases, temporarily suspending its 401(k) match, temporarily reducing compensation for its board of directors, significantly reducing discretionary operating expenses and reducing capital expenditures to approximately $20 million in 2020 from $40 million in 2019. Lands End has also increased its liquidity by $25 million with a maximum borrowing cap of $200 million under an asset-based financing program that uses collateral such as inventory, equipment and property. The company has drawn $75 million from the facility to provide it with extra working capital and cash on hand. Our brand has made it through rough environments over its nearly 60-year history, and the actions we are taking combined with our liquidity position give me confidence in our ability to weather this storm, said Griffith, who joined Lands End in 2017. Employment powerhouse Lands End was founded in Chicago in 1962 by Gary Comer, who had started a mail-order sailing equipment business. A year later, Comer and five partners incorporated Lands End Yacht Stores. In 1978, Comer moved the warehouse and phone operations to Dodgeville, and in 1986 the clothing company went public. He stepped down as president in 1990 but remained chairman of the board until Lands End was sold to Sears Holdings Corp. in May 2002. He died in 2006 at the age of 78. The company, which split from Sears in 2015 and is now again publicly traded, has been a regional employment force for southwest Wisconsin, supplying jobs in warehousing, shipping, customer service and other departments essential for a major corporation with a global reach. Novak said Lands End employs roughly 4,000 people in Dodgeville and is Iowa Countys largest employer. But because most businesses and all schools in the community and the state are shut down, Novak said, the impact of having 1,000 people out of work is hard to gauge. Jerome, their CEO, has been calling me a couple times a week and hes very concerned about his workforce, but realistically hes got to look at the bottom line, so hes trying to make this as painless as possible for his employees, Novak said. He told me his goal was to get everybody back to work as soon as possible. Hes in the same position as everybody else that has a business. Pandemic response As part of its local response to the pandemic, Lands End has donated new scrubs to Upland Hills Health in Dodgeville and has provided the staff of Reedsburg Area Medical Center with jackets to wear in its outdoor triage area. The company, in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Administration, is also providing, free distribution center capacity for the staging and distribution of personal protection equipment by the Department of Military Affairs. Dodgeville is a city of about 4,700 people and is the seat of Iowa County, where its historic courthouse has stood since 1859. The downtown also has a movie theater, clothing stores and Bobs Bitchin BBQ, which draws employees from Lands End and diners from throughout the region. The city is surrounded by prime farmland. And although the states farm economy has been rocked by low milk prices, tariffs and the loss of more than 800 farms in 2019, spring brings more activity to the area from those that remain and some semblance of normalcy as fields are tilled and seeds sown. Farmers are getting ready, so those essential businesses are open, said Novak, who is also a Republican state Assembly representative and former editor of the Dodgeville Chronicle. I just think the longer this goes on and the nicer the weather gets, people are going to get more frustrated. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Flash U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday welcomed a deal to cut oil production reached by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some other major oil producing countries, known as OPEC+, as it will save hundreds of thousands of U.S. energy jobs. "The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done. This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States," Trump tweeted. "I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. I just spoke to them from the Oval Office. Great deal for all!" said the president. The OPEC and other crude producers led by Russia agreed on Sunday to reduce output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for May-June after four days of talks. "We welcome today's announcement of an agreement by other producing nations to follow the lead of the global marketplace - and U.S. producers - to reduce supply to align with lower energy demand as result of the pandemic," American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement. "This is a significant agreement that will foster increased stability in energy markets to the benefit of both American energy consumers and producers," he said, adding "significant challenges remain in the weeks and months ahead" for the energy industry. Oil prices have fallen by more than 50 percent since early this year due to the global coronavirus pandemic and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The West Texas Intermediate for May delivery fell 2.33 U.S. dollars to settle at 22.76 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday, while Brent crude for June delivery dropped 1.36 dollars to close at 31.48 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange. Almost 40 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas producers face insolvency within the year if crude prices remain near 30 dollars a barrel, according to a recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. "Expectations for future activity also fell to their lowest level since late 2014, as most firms do not expect energy prices to return to profitable levels this year," said Chad Wilkerson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. New Yorks coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 Monday even as the absence of fresh hot spots in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world yielded a ray of optimism in global efforts against the disease, though a return to normal was unlikely anytime soon. Officials around the world worried that halting the quarantine and social distancing behaviors could easily reverse hard-earned progress. Still, there were signs countries were looking in that direction. Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs and a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown restrictions. France extended its strict lockdown until May 11, but President Emmanuel Macron noted hopeful signs the spread of the virus may be stabilizing. An online dashboard that tracks the global number of coronavirus cases, maintained by Johns Hopkins University, showed Monday night that the number of cases had surpassed 2 million worldwide. The site was later adjusted to reflect a total of 1.9 million cases. It wasnt immediately clear why the number changed. Here are some of APs top stories Monday on the worlds coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities. WHATS HAPPENING TODAY: The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the human cost of financial inequality in the United States, making it more visible and potentially worse. The disaster that will likely result in a deep recession also raises the question of what happens once life begins to edge back to normal. Economic measures now being taken are only temporary. And for millions of newly unemployed, they may not be enough. President Donald Trump asserted Monday that he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to relax the nations social distancing guidelines as he grows anxious to reopen the coronavirus-stricken country as soon as possible. But the Constitution largely gives states the authority to regulate their own affairs and governors in the Northeast and along the West Coast on Monday announced separate state compacts to coordinate. The president repeated his assertion he has total authority to reopen the economy at a White House briefing. A member of the crew of the coronavirus-infected USS Theodore Roosevelt died Monday of complications related to the disease, 11 days after the aircraft carriers captain was fired for pressing his concern that the Navy had done too little to safeguard his crew. The sailor was the first active-duty military member to die of COVID-19. Scientists in Brazil have stopped part of a study of a malaria drug touted as a possible coronavirus treatment after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested. Chloroquine and a newer, similar drug called hydroxychloroquine have been pushed by President Donald Trump. But the drugs have long been known to have potentially serious side effects. Americans are beginning to see the first economic impact payments hit their bank accounts. The IRS tweeted Saturday it has begun depositing the funds into taxpayers accounts and will be working to get them out as fast as possible. As countries across Europe have restricted the movement of their citizens, Sweden stands out for what the countrys chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, calls a low-scale approach that is much more sustainable over a longer period. The softer approach means schools for younger children, restaurants and most businesses remain open, creating the impression that Swedes are living their lives as usual. ___ AP FACT CHECK: Despite what President Donald Trump repeatedly says, voting fraud is rare. Trump claimed in a tweet Saturday that mail-in voting increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD! An AP Fact Check finds some election studies have shown a slightly higher incidence of mail-in voting fraud compared with in-person voting but the overall risk is extremely low. ___ WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover. Here are the symptoms of the virus compared with the common flu. One of the best ways to prevent spread of the virus is washing your hands with soap and water. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends first washing with warm or cold water and then lathering soap for 20 seconds to get it on the backs of hands, between fingers and under fingernails before rinsing off. You should wash your phone, too. Heres how. TRACKING THE VIRUS: Drill down and zoom in at the individual county level, and you can access numbers that will show you the situation where you are, and where loved ones or people youre worried about live. ___ ONE NUMBER: 204: There are 204 days until the U.S. presidential election in November, and with so much uncertainty over the coronavirus outbreak, politics are a long way from getting back to normal. ___ IN OTHER NEWS: GHOSTLY CITY: Virus-era New York City captured in photos from a motorbike. TEMPLE ANIMALS: Normally, animals at Nepals most revered Hindu temple, Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, are fed by thousands of devotees. With a lockdown in place, guards, staff and volunteers are coming out to ensure that the animals survive. ___ Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak Donald Trump ordered a freeze on funding for the World Health Organization for "mismanaging" the coronavirus crisis, as world leaders weighed easing lockdowns that threaten to tip the global economy into a second Great Depression. The death toll from the pandemic has topped 125,000, with nearly two million people infected by the disease that has upended society and changed lives for billions confined to their homes around the globe. World leaders are agonising over when to lift lockdown measures to jump-start devastated economies but still avoid a second wave of infections. And with the world battling to get on top of the pandemic, the US President fired a broadside at the WHO and halted payments that amounted to $400 million last year. Funding would be frozen pending a review into the WHO's role in "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus," said Trump, who accused the Geneva-based body of putting "political correctness above life-saving measures." The outbreak could have been contained "with very little death" if the WHO had accurately assessed the situation in China, where the disease broke out late last year, charged Trump. Beijing hit back, saying the move was bad for the global fight. "The current global epidemic situation is grim. It is at a critical moment. This US decision will weaken WHO's capacities and undermine the international cooperation against the epidemic," said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. Trump also earned a rebuke from the head of the UN and entrepreneur Bill Gates who tweeted that cutting funding was "as dangerous as it sounds." The president's controversial attack came as the US counted a record of 2,228 victims over the past 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University. Nevertheless, Trump vowed to reboot large sections of the world's top economy "very soon," saying the US would reopen "in beautiful little pieces", with the hardest-hit areas such as New York taking slightly longer. The International Monetary Fund laid bare the scale of the economic catastrophe, saying the "Great Lockdown" could wipe $9 trillion from the global economy in its worst downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. Underlining the point, Europe's powerhouse, Germany, has been in recession since March, the government there said Wednesday. The virus-hit Chinese economy, second only to the US in size, likely contracted for the first time in around three decades in the first quarter, according to an AFP poll of economists. - 'Open in a desert?' - With tentative hope the pandemic could be past its peak in some European hotspots, many countries are gradually lifting restrictions -- to mixed reception. Italy, one of the hardest-hit nations, allowed bookshops, launderettes, stationers and children's clothing retailers to re-open, but many business owners chose to stay shut. "Open in a desert? Why? Opening a business where no one walks by is dangerous from every point of view," said Cristina Di Caio, a bookshop owner in Milan. Spain has allowed work to restart in some factories and construction sites, Denmark opened schools on Wednesday after a month-long closure while Germany was expected to ease some lockdown measures. Also Wednesday, the European Union is poised to suggest a coordinated "road map" for member states to exit the lockdown. - 'Unenforceable and unsustainable' - Citizens elsewhere, however, braced for several more weeks of restrictions -- including in India, whose 1.3 billion people will remain in lockdown until May 3 despite uproar from millions of unsupported poor. As the virus appeared to be on the retreat in some parts of richer Europe, it is slowly taking hold in Africa, which has seen 15,000 cases and 800 deaths continent-wide -- with fears over growing hunger and possible social unrest. "A lockdown is unenforceable and unsustainable across much of Africa," said Jakkie Cilliers at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS). "You are trying to do something that is not possible, and you are condemning people to a choice between starving and getting sick," he said. "It's not possible for 10 people living in a tin shack... to not go outside for three weeks." A similar crisis is emerging in Ecuador, where hunger trumps fear of the virus for residents in rundown areas of the badly affected city of Guayaquil. "The police come with a whip to send people running, but how do you say to a poor person 'Stay home' if you don't have enough to eat?" said Carlos Valencia, a 35-year-old teacher. However, in parts of the world that saw early outbreaks, things were gradually returning to some semblance of normal -- South Korea headed to the polls Wednesday with a big turnout expected despite the disease. Examples of human resilience and generosity continued to lift the spirits. While a 99-year-old British World War II veteran raised millions for health workers by walking lengths of his 25-metre garden using a strolling frame, a man of the same age beat the virus in Brazil. "It was a tremendous fight for me, greater than in the war. In war, you kill or live. Here, you have to fight in order to live, and you leave this fight a winner," said Ermando Piveta. burs-ric/hg Medical technicians collect a sample from a women at a coronavirus testing site in Chennai, India A man looks at a mural depicting the badge of a superhero under a nurse and doctor's uniform in homage to the efforts of NHS staff in Pontefract, northern England Healthcare workers attend to a COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit at the Ramon y Cajal Hospital in Madrid, Spain Long lines for food donations formed in Chelsea, Massachusetts South African police clash with residents of Tafelsig, an impoverished suburb near Cape Town, after some people did not receive food handouts An employee at the Emirati ministry of health sets up to receive patients at a huge field hospital in Dubai A man in a facemask stands on his balcony in Havana, Cuba Some shops reopened in Italy like this one in Rome, but not all business owners were on board, worrying about the health consequences A poster in Paris thanks healthcare workers, shopkeepers, police, the post office staff and farmers The pantry will accept nonperishable items. "I think it would benefit everybody a lot. I've seen that there's the little library things ... we all thought that it would be a cool idea to do that, but with food," said 13-year-old Ava Graper, one of the Juliette scouts. Ava Graper, along with Madelyn Eenigenburg and Brianna Hulen, will maintain the pantry by checking on it weekly. "It means a lot to me that we can help the people that don't have the ability to obtain food. Three-hundred thousand children in the state of Indiana alone don't know where their next meal is coming from. So it's important that we try to help them by the best way we can," Eenigenburg said. Hulen, who presented to the Board of Works in 2018, shared the same message with board members, adding the pantry has a dual-purpose: serving those with food insecurities, while providing a purpose for those who want to give. "It's a relief. It's definitely been a weight on our shoulders," Ava Graper said, adding she hopes younger generations get involved with the pantry. UN peacekeepers enter the territories after the conflicting parties reach some kind of peace agreement and there has been a sustainable ceasefire, Kyslytsya recalls. Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Serhiy Kyslytsya believes the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Donbas is unrealistic in the near future. "The issue of peacekeeping operations remains in place. Is it relevant? It is. Can we say that such an operation can be carried out in the near future on the terms that the previous and current presidents and partners of Ukraine insisted on? No, this is unrealistic," the envoy said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. UN peacekeepers enter the territories after the conflicting parties reach some kind of peace agreement and there has been a sustainable ceasefire, Kyslytsya recalls. Read alsoDonbas war update: One KIA, one WIA after three attacks on April 12 "UN operations are about peacekeeping, all these operations were given a mandate when the conflicting parties themselves, or through the mediation of the UN or individual countries, had reached a peace agreement and there had been a sustainable ceasefire. And when it's all there, UN members who support the peace process are deployed there. UN members are not parachuted, starting to coerce someone to peace as Russians see it. But we saw what coercion to peace means on the examples of Georgia, Transnistria, and other countries. Therefore, we don't need a peacekeeping operation under Russian conditions, while it's now impossible on the terms of Ukraine and its partners since the Russian Federation has a veto right in the Security Council," the ambassador said. NEWTOWN BOROUGH >> The Newtown Borough Council welcomes the new year with three new members of council and a new borough mayor. District Court Judge Mick Petrucci was on hand on January 3 to administer the oath of office to the towns new mayor, Republican John Burke, who replaces longtime mayor Charles Corky Swartz who decided not to run for... Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Monday held telephonic talks with migrant labourers staying at shelter homes and factory premises since imposition of lockdown for the coronavirus outbreak and inquired about their well being. Rupani spoke to the labourers, belonging to states like Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring Maharashtra, from a command and control centre set up at his official residence in Gandhinagar. The chief minister spoke to labourers taking shelter in an automobile parts factory in Rajkot, a bakery products firm in Ahmedabad and an oil mill in Vadodara and gathered feedback on food, health and other facilities available there, a release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) - Ghanaian-born England international Danny Welbeck has donated to the people Nkawiepanin, the hometown of his mother - The items which included food and sanitary items worth GHC70,000 come amid the COVID-19 outbreak - Danny Welbeck's donation was presented on his behalf by his aunt Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in Install our latest app for Android and read the best news about Ghana Ex-Manchester United and Arsenal star Danny Welbeck has made a kind donation to the people of Nkawiepanin in the Atwima Nwabiagya Municipality of the Ashanti region. READ ALSO: Video of the plush mansion of NPP's Sammy Awuku pop up on his birthday Welbeck who now plays for Watford donated food and sanitary items worth GHC 70,000 to residents in the area amid the coronavirus outbreak. The items, according to Pulse.com.gh, were presented by Welbeck's aunt, Charlotte Adwoa Tumutuom. Danny has been very concerned about how his people would survive these trying times; though he has never lived here, he has a great affection for the people of Ghana, so he felt it prudent to offer some help in the very small way that he can to support the governments efforts in these times, Madam Tumutuom reportedly said. Welbeck in a video call with a section of the residents advised them to joins hands to fight and defeat COVID-19 together, by behaving in ways that would help stop the spread. READ ALSO: Meet Kennedy Agyapong's beautiful wife Christy (photos, video) Photo source: Pulse.com.gh Source: Original Born to Ghanaians parents, Danny Welbeck opted to play for the English national team instead of the Black Stars. Ironically, he made his debut against Ghana in a 1-1 draw in March 2011. READ ALSO: Joe Mettle reacts to reports that he and Berla Mundi are getting married Danny Welbeck's donation comes at a time Ghana has recorded over 400 cases of the novel Coronavirus disease. The situation has led to the extension of the partial lockdown in the Greater Accra and Kumasi areas. Atwima Nwabiagya happens to be one of the places under lockdown. Only God can save Ghana from the Coronavirus outbreak - Pastor declares | #Yencomgh: Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page Source: YEN.com.gh Recent News Cetin: We have a huge opportunity here in data science April 2, 2020 Mujdat Cetin will become the next Robin and Tim Wentworth Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science (GIDS) at the University of Rochester. The appointment is effective July 1, pending approval of the University Board of Trustees. Cetin, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has served as the interim director of GIDS since July 1, 2019. He replaces Henry Kautz, the founding director of the institute. Kautz stepped down in early 2018 to serve as director of the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation. Prior to Cetin, Ehsan Hoque, assistant professor of computer science and the Asaro Biggar Family Fellow in Data Science, served as interim director. "We have a huge opportunity here. We have many strengths at the University that are very well aligned with data science," Cetin says. "So, this is very exciting for me. As interim director, I have sensed how much emphasis the University places on GIDS, the importance associated with data science, and the enthusiasm for it. "This is an evolving domain, and we face a lot of competition. Other universities are making major moves in data science. So, our challenge is: How do we position ourselves?" Wendi Heinzelman, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who co-led the search for a new director, says: "Mujdat is not only an internationally-recognized researcher, but he has a wealth of leadership experience within his research field. I know he will be an outstanding leader who will continue to advance GIDS as not only a University priority but also as a national and international presence in the field of data science." "We could not be more thrilled that Mujdat has agreed to serve as the Wentworth Director of GIDS," says Gloria Culver, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, who also co-led the search. "Even in the very short time he has been at the University he has made a large impact on research and community -- none more so than the impact he had as interim director of GIDS. We anticipate great things for GIDS and Mujdat in the very near future." GIDS was founded in 2014 as part of the Universitys $100 million commitment to making data science its top research priority. Located in Wegmans Hall, the institute serves as a hub for interdisciplinary data science research, interdepartmental data science academic programs, and collaborations with local companies. For example: The institute offers educational programs ranging from summer programs for high school students to research projects engaging PhD students. It currently enrolls 130 bachelors and 50 masters students whose training culminates in company-sponsored capstone projects that engage students in tackling "real-world" data science problems. In addition, the Institute recently launched a new advanced data science certificate program for professionals. The Rochester Data Science Consortium works with more than two dozen local companies on providing timely solutions to pressing data science problems. The consortium employs 10 data and research scientists who are experts in the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics. The New York Center of Excellence supports longer term research involving faculty and industry, commercialization of foundational data science research, and connecting students to opportunities in data science. Heinzelman praised the "new level of activity and success" that Cetin has brought to the research program in GIDS during his time as interim director. For example, he has established working groups among the more than 70 University faculty members affiliated with the Institute. The groups are working to develop data science research collaborations in: Machine learning and artificial intelligence Imaging, optics, and computer/human vision Life sciences and biomedical data science Healthcare analytics and digital health Human-data-system interfaces, including AR/VR, and robotics Complex systems and network data science Economics and business data analytics In collaboration with Cornell University, Cetin obtained $1.5 million in National Science Foundation funding to establish a Greater Data Science Cooperative Institute. The goal is to develop theoretical foundations of data science that transcend individual fields, with a special focus on applications for health care. He also is principal investigator of a $1.5 million NSF grant that will enable 62 doctoral students to be trained in the skills needed to advance augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies. The program will also help the students gain an appreciation for the broader cultural and societal implications of the technologies. Cetins agenda as the new GIDS director is an ambitious one. In an interview he listed these top priorities: Expanding the opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students to become engaged in the institutes activities, beyond their academic studies, to build and maintain an interactive, broad data science community on campus. Expanding and improving the educational program by exploring online offerings for professionals and traditional students, modifying and adapting courses to meet career needs of students, and improving local and global recruitment efforts. Hiring more data science faculty in collaboration with other departments, to teach courses and engage in research. Continuing the process of identifying and building on the Universitys data science research strengths through core working groups. Also, generating seed money for promising projects, which, in turn can help leverage external federal, corporate, and foundation grants. Strengthening industry engagement in collaboration with the Consortium and Center of Excellence, "such that we relate our academic work on campus with the interests of industry through student projects as well as research proposals and grants." Continually reviewing the institutes administrative structure, budget, and academic resources to ensure it can maintain and expand its competitiveness. Establishing partnerships with other universities, industries, foundations, and funding agencies. "We are a great institute, but we are still a small institution," Cetin says. "So, we need to build strategic partnerships, especially focusing on areas in which we have complementary strengths." The grant with Cornell is an example, he adds. Cetin joined the University in 2017 after serving as a faculty member at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey for 12 years. At Sabanci he directed the Signal Processing and Information Systems Laboratory. From 2001 to 2005, he was with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, MIT. Cetin has held visiting faculty positions at MIT, Northeastern University, and Boston University. His research interests are within the broad area of data, signal, and imaging sciences, with cross-disciplinary links to several other areas in electrical engineering, computer science, and neuroscience. The overarching theme of his research is the development of probabilistic and machine learning-based methods for robust and efficient information extraction at various levels of abstraction from observed uncertain, complex data. Cetin received his BS in electrical engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1993, an MS in electrical engineering from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK in 1995, followed by a PhD in electrical engineering from Boston University, Boston, MA in 2001. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. Data science at the University of Rochester is supported by an aggregate computational capacity that equals 420 teraflops or 420 trillion calculations per secondthe equivalent computing power of more than 20,000 laptops. The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) provides computational technology and support services to more than 900 faculty members across the University. The Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation (HSCCI) houses the health sciences research program. The VISTA Collaboratory is a 1,000-square-foot visualization lab that renders massive data sets, helping researchers visualize and analyze complex data instantly and collaboratively. GREENWICH As the Board of Estimate and Taxations Budget Committee gets back to work, it will focus on is funding for special education in Greenwich and for deep-cleaning the towns school buildings. The committee will meet at 1 p.m. Tuesday via Zooms video conferencing app. It will consider a $1.2 million request to pay the out-of-district costs for special education students during the current school year. This is a separate issue from ongoing consideration by the BET about special education costs for 2020-21, which will likely be discussed during the finance boards budget vote on April 27. The money for this fiscal year was requested by the Board of Education, which is required to provide the out-of-district costs for special education students. Of the $1.2 million request, nearly all of it will go to the tuition costs, with $40,000 for continued rental of temporary bleachers for Greenwich High Schools Cardinal Stadium and $40,000 to pay overtime costs from doing a deep cleaning of the schools, which remain closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The $1.2 million is an interim request is made outside of the towns regular budget process. If the full BET approves the allocation, it would then be considered by the Representative Town Meeting for final approval. Both of those meetings will take place on April 20. Members of the public will be able to view Tuesdays meeting and all other BET via Zoom meetings by following the link and instructions posted at www.greenwichct.gov/1628/BET-Virtual-Meetings. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago and White House chief of staff for President Obama, called on the federal government in a Wall Street Journal op-ed to create a Cabinet-level executive department to coordinate the nations response to future pandemics. Why it matters: Emanuel suggested that the agency, which he called the Department of Public Health and Emergency Care, should be modeled on the Department of Homeland Security created by President George W. Bush after 9/11. What he's saying: Emanuel argued that because multiple "disconnected agencies" are responsible for the national response to a pandemic, none can be fully held accountable for government incompetence in the face of an outbreak. "Even if the buck ultimately stops in the Oval Office, Americans should be able to hold a single official accountable for the nations anticipation, preparation and response to future pandemics," he writes. "History will hold Mr. Trump responsible for the federal governments lack of urgency in the early weeks, and the cavalier response that followed. He cannot claim he was insufficiently warned." The big picture: Emanuel recommended that the agency build and maintain a strategic stockpile of medical equipment, set up a warning system for potential global viruses and develop a corps of health care professionals that would deploy to hotspots. "One crucial lesson of the current catastrophe is that response speed plays an outsize role in determining the extent of devastation," he wrote. "But the diffusion of power slows us down." Go deeper: 10 times Trump and his administration were warned about coronavirus If that fear is realized and prices plummet, it will be detrimental to automakers and their in-house lending units, which likely will have to write down the value of lease contracts that had assumed vehicles would retain greater value. Rental-car firms also will get less money from selling down their fleet of vehicles, which are sitting idle amid a global pandemic thats been catastrophic for travel. The question of whether anyone else has been having strange dreams (lately) is perennially popular online. It is a spooky yet comforting query: Has anyone else stumbled onto possible evidence that the universe possesses a finite metaphysical infrastructure occasionally detected by the subconscious? In recent weeks, however, the question has been posed with increasing frequency. Local news personalities in particular appear uniquely susceptible to wondering if anybody else is having strange dreams, with meteorologists and anchors in, for instance, Texas, Connecticut, North Carolina, Washington, Wisconsin, and New York, having recently posed it on their public Facebook pages. And the Google query why am i having weird dreams lately has quadrupled in the United States in the past week. National media properties anxious to provide lighthearted human interest stories to counterbalance news items like a recent announcement that the convenience store chain Wawa was sending a refrigerated truck to New Jersey to serve as a temporary morgue, yet hamstrung by the dearth of novel experiences it is possible to uncover in ones own home have hastened to supply the answer. The answer is: Yes, someone else is having weird dreams lately. (Always.) But are we humanity dreaming with more frequency, and more vividly, right now? The answer is: Also, likely, yes at least for many people. Blood banks across Telangana are running dry because of the ongoing nationwide lockdown, which started on March 25 for three weeks initially and then extended for another two weeks, to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic. Regular blood donors are missing in action, as their movements have been severely restricted due to the lockdown. The authorities at the Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM), the state governments nodal agency for blood donations, said no voluntary blood donation camps are being conducted by the government-run blood banks since the lockdown was enforced. The state government has also issued an advisory to the private blood banks and hospitals not to collect blood from any donors for now over fears of infection due to the viral outbreak. The IPM has been designated as a centralised stand-alone blood donation centre. Additional staff has been deployed to supervise the collection of blood, Dr Shankar, director, IPM director, said. Chiranjeevi Blood Bank at Jubilee Hills, which was started by popular Telugu film actor and former Union minister K Chiranjeevi, wears an empty look, as donors are staying away because of the lockdown. One or two enthusiastic donors are turning up daily, as a replacement for the blood required for their relatives, said an executive working with Chiranjeevi Blood Bank, requesting anonymity. The IPM collects about 100 to 115 units per day, Dr Shankar said, adding they are being processed into component because of Covid-19 pandemic. The medical and health department authorities have requested the police to allow voluntary donors to visit the IPM for blood donation.A voluntary donor would get a text message on h/his mobile about the date and time slot allotted to h/him for blood donation. The donor can show the message to the police to get a clearance for unrestricted movement on roads, the IPM official said. The IPM authorities are taking all precautions while accepting blood from donors. They are processing the request after verifying the donors recent travel history and whether s/he has had suffered from cold, fever or cough and s/he met any Covid-19 patient or any other person with similar symptoms. Besides the IPM, the Indian Red Cross Society has also been authorised to collect blood from donors. Theres a severe scarcity of blood in the state because of the lockdown. The crisis is acute in districts such as Warangal, Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda and Khammam, S Narasimha Reddy, convenor, Indian Red Cross Society, said. Fortunately, accident cases have drastically come down because of the ongoing lockdown, which, in turn, has led to a sharp drop in the demand for blood, he said. The IPM and were supplying blood to hospitals in Hyderabad. Were collecting blood from military personnel, enthusiastic youth and also the police, Reddy said. Patients suffering from Thalassemia, which requires blood transmission twice a month, have been hit the hardest because of the acute crisis There are around 1,723 registered Thalassemia patients. Were trying to arrange blood for these patients, Indian Red Cross Society authorities said. On Sunday and Monday, scores of software engineers working as volunteers for Security for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) donated blood at IPM and Indian Red Cross Societys blood banks. Around 200 volunteers and several policemen, including Cyberabad police commissioner V C Sajjannar, donated blood on Sunday. Another 300 software employees and their friends donated blood on Monday, Krishna Yedula, general secretary, SCSC, said. If anybody wants to donate blood, the police will provide a pick-and-drop facility from h/his home to Indian Red Cross Society, Sajjannar said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The CPI(M) on Monday alleged that the rapid COVID-19 testing kits bound for Tamil Nadu were diverted to the USA by the Indian government. In a statement, the party came down hard on the Centre over the supply of hydroxychloroquine to the Donald Trump administration and said "domestic apologists" close to the government have been justifying the "meek submission to blackmail" by the US President for easing the export of the anti-malarial drug. "It has now come to light that there is a delay in receiving rapid test kits for coronavirus ordered from China since the consignment meant for India was diverted to the US," it said. "India is not the sole victim of such early colonial age 'piracy on the high seas'! International media has widely reported how country after country have been hauling up the US for its attempt to block PPE and testing kits designated for dealing with their domestic health emergency. Sharpest among countries who have hauled up this rogue behaviour of the US are Germany, France, Canada, Brazil and poor Barbados," the Left party said in the statement. The CPI(M) also accused the USA of blocking many countries from getting medicines, doctors and health assistance unconditionally offered by Cuba apart from preventing any international assistance to reach the island nation. "Cuba, apart from combating, relatively successfully, COVID-19, has an unblemished track record of international medical solidarity. The USA has criminally stopped any help reaching Iran invoking it's unilateral sanctions heaping a grave humanitarian crisis leading to preventable deaths. "The Politburo of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the USA's unilateral strong arm methods to subvert the sovereign rights of independent countries. This US intransigence is clearly against the repeated pleading of the WHO for international cooperation in battling the global pandemic," the statement read. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that they won't agree to the Trump administration's insistence on more money for small business loans unless their demands are met for additional funding for hospitals, state and local governments and food stamp recipients. But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the Democrats' demands should wait for another day, while the small business program needs more money now. "We've committed to small businesses. We should top up that program now," Mnuchin said at a briefing of the White House coronavirus task force. "I know the Democrats want to talk about more money for hospitals and states. Right now, we're just sending the money out to the hospitals and states. They haven't come close to using that money." Pelosi, D-Calif., and Schumer, D-N.Y., also rejected suggestions from President Donald Trump that the country could reopen quickly, saying "there is still not enough testing available to realistically allow that to happen." The back-and-forth between Mnuchin and the Democratic leaders on Monday followed a Saturday statement from congressional GOP leaders in which they rejected the Democrats' demands and showed no interest in negotiating. The developments appeared to harden a stalemate on Capitol Hill over how or when the federal government will take further action to address the worsening economic impacts of the coronavirus, with millions newly unemployed and much commerce in the nation at a virtual standstill as the U.S. confronts recession conditions. Congress acted quickly late last month to pass a massive $2 trillion rescue package for small and large businesses, individual Americans and the unemployed, as well as health-care systems and local governments. There is a recognition that more will need to be done - but not an agreement on how to structure new funding. Complicating matters, both the House and Senate are out of session because of concerns about the pandemic, so the only way to pass legislation is through voice vote or "unanimous consent." This would require agreement from all lawmakers, something that may be impossible to achieve in the House. Both chambers had been officially scheduled to come back into session next week, but that timeline won't be met. On Monday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., officially postponed the date when the House would reconvene until May 4 at earliest. Mnuchin last week requested urgent congressional action to approve an additional $250 billion to supplement a $350 billion forgivable loan program for small businesses that is quickly being obligated. That program, run by the Small Business Administration, is called the "Paycheck Protection Program." But Democrats refused to approve the measure when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sought to advance it on Thursday, insisting on changes to the small business program as well as at least $250 billion more for other priorities. The Small Business Administration says that there have now been more than 800,000 loans approved, totaling more than $200 billion. But it's not clear how many small businesses have actually gotten any money. Banks and other lenders are the ones that to extend the taxpayer-backed loans, and they have complained of a cumbersome process. And even if all the companies received loans, 800,000 firms is just a small fraction of the 30 million small businesses in the United States. An SBA spokesman, Christopher Hatch, said Monday that since lenders control the disbursal of funds, it is not possible to say precisely how much money has been distributed to small businesses. He said those figures might not start to be available until around June. Some Democrats have questioned the figures SBA is putting out. On a conference call of House Democrats on Monday, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Small Business Committee, said she has had trouble getting actual data from Treasury, as opposed to anecdotal reports, according to two people on the call who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe it. Nonetheless, Senate Republicans argue that the program needs to be re-upped immediately because once the initial $350 billion has been committed lenders will be locked out of applying for more loans. McConnell's office provided a list of eight small businesses from around the country that say they have been approved for loans through the Paycheck Protection Program. At least five of them - including an espresso kiosk in Montana, an auto shop in Oklahoma, and an equipment manufacturer in Nebraska - have already received the loan money, according to interviews Monday. The Paycheck Protection Program, principally authored by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is supposed to provide loans up to $10 million that are forgivable if the businesses keep their workers on payroll and meet certain other conditions. Prospects for resolving the congressional standoff are unclear as there appear to be few if any negotiations occurring between the two sides. "Small businesses, hospitals, front-line workers and state and local governments across the country are struggling to keep up with this national crisis. They need more help from the federal government and they need it fast - our nurses, doctors and health-care workers need it as much as anyone else," Schumer and Pelosi said in their statement. "Further changes must also be made to the SBA's assistance initiative, as many eligible small businesses continue to be excluded from the Paycheck Protection Program by big banks with significant lending capacity," they said. "Funding for Covid-19 SBA disaster loans and grants must be significantly increased to satisfy the hundreds of billions in oversubscribed demand." Pelosi and Schumer had demanded an additional $150 billion for cities and states, $100 billion for hospitals and health-care systems and an additional 15 percent increase in benefits for food stamp recipients. On the House Democratic conference call Monday, according to one of the people on the call, Pelosi told fellow lawmakers that, "We've said to them: let's negotiate. We all care about small businesses and want them to succeed. Hopefully, we can come to some terms if they will negotiate." A bipartisan group of governors including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, R, who chairs the National Governors Association, on Saturday asked Congress to approve $500 billion in aid for cash-strapped states that are struggling to deal with mounting costs and a loss in revenue triggered by the pandemic. On Monday, Hogan released a statement saying he'd spoken with Vice President Mike Pence to impress upon him the urgency of the funding, and "asked the administration to weigh in so that we can break this logjam in the Senate and get this done for the American people." Trump said Monday that "We're certainly willing to look at" the requests for additional funding for states and hospitals, but that those and other priorities should wait for the next large coronavirus spending bill, after action on the Paycheck Protection Program specifically. The Senate gaveled in and out of session Monday morning for a brief pro forma session, but there was no attempt on either side to advance legislation. The Senate's next pro forma is on Thursday - one day before White House adviser Larry Kudlow has said the Paycheck Protection Program will run out of money. The announcement by House leadership delaying the date when they will reconvene came after multiple members expressed reluctance about returning to Washington. "I'll tell you, I have no interest in going back now. How do you get there? Train? Plane? Last time I got there, I drove for about five hours. People across the country are not going to take a chance," House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said Monday on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal." "Unless it's safe, I think we are better off doing our work, as we have been doing, passing bills by unanimous consent. And, hopefully, there is a bipartisan will to really focus on what we need and leave partisan politics aside." --- The Washington Post's Aaron Gregg, Jeanne Whalen, Mike DeBonis and Paul Kane contributed to this report. AUSTIN Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday that the growth rate of new coronavirus infections in Texas continues to level off, though businesses should not expect to reopen immediately. This is not going to be a rush-to-the-gates, everybody-will-be open-all-at-once (situation), he said. We have to reopen in a way in which we are able to stimulate the economy while ensuring we can contain the spread of COVID-19. The governor, who is under pressure from some conservatives to lift restrictions despite concerns from public health officials, said he will unveil a team of consultants later this week to evaluate what must be done to restart the states slumping economy. He declined to give details but pointed to the data trends as a positive first step. I will call these glimmers of hope, with a whole bunch of red flags, Abbott said. CLOSED FOR BUSINESS: As Abbott weighs reopening Texas economy, Trump chimes in Since Friday, the growth rate of COVID-19 infections has slowed from 12 percent to 10 percent, he said, citing data from the Department of State Health Services. It now takes more than twice as long for the number of cases to double, from three days to about eight, a trend public health officials agree is a sign that social distancing regulations are slowing the spread. I feel better now than I thought I would, said Dr. David Lakey, the former head of the health services agency and now chief medical officer for the University of Texas System. I think that shows that these tough measures are working. Abbott has pivoted toward economic recovery as President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans, including Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, push for some sectors to reopen May 1. The president suggested Monday in a series of tweets that he will ultimately decide when to reopen, not governors. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Abbott said he has been in regular talks with the White House and federal health officials and that they are receptive to feedback. Democratic governors in some of the hardest-hit East Coast states, including New York, where cases appear to have leveled off, announced Monday that they will begin working on plans to reopen schools and businesses. Local Texas health officials have warned their cases may not peak for several more weeks and that a rush to reopen risks setting off new infection surges. As of Monday, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a University of Washington research group, predicted a statewide peak on April 29. This is not the time to reopen the economy, said Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Hotez and others have questioned the accuracy of the states data, noting that testing has been slow to scale; the state has one of the lowest testing rates per capita in the country. Why do we have to make this decision now? Hotez said, citing the calls to reopen by May 1. We have time now. Lets reassess at the end of April, and by then well know if ICUs are getting inundated. Nearly 14,000 Texans had tested positive for the virus by Monday, with 287 deaths and 1,176 hospitalizations, according to the state health agency. Meanwhile, unemployment claims have reached all-time highs. Gerald Parker, a pandemic expert at Texas A&M, cautioned against lifting limits until the number of new infections and hospitalizations has begun decreasing. But he said its important to start planning how to reopen. Texas is a big state, he said. There will be some communities where things will have leveled off and others where well see increases. Whatever the plan, Parker said ithat t will require better testing and ability to trace outbreaks to their source. Benjamin Wermund contributed reporting from Washington. jeremy.blackman@chron.com Last week, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte volunteered his presidential yacht to be used as a COVID-19 facility and now, the Philippine Navy has opened BRP Ang Pangulo to admit patients. The Navy released a statement on Sunday, April 12, that BRP Ang Pangulo "is now ready to accept COVID-19 patients as necessary works to transform the vessel into a floating quarantine facility were already finished." The vessel has now been revamped into a "floating quarantine facility." The Navy said officers and enlisted personnel took charge in the conversion of the presidential yacht into an isolation facility, merely 48 hours after President Duterte made the pronouncement to use the ship as a quarantine site. The yacht, currently designated in the Naval Forces Eastern Mindanao, can board 28 patients and 5 medical personnel while the crew remains on board. The revamp saw three compartments for patients inside the ship. The patients will maintain a 3-meter distance while different entry points will be assigned for the medical staff and patients. "Prompted by President and Commander-in-Chief Rodrigo Duterte's desire to utilize the ship, BRP Ang Pangulo (ACS-25), as a floating COVID-19 quarantine facility, the PN devised a feasible plan of converting the Presidential Yacht into a floating quarantine facility dedicated for coronavirus patients," Navy public affairs office chief, Lt. Commander Maria Christina Roxas issued a statement. The yacht was gifted to the Philippines as part of Japan's post-war amends towards the country. BRP Ang Pangulo was then turned into a presidential yacht in the late 1950s. Also Read: COVID-19 Patients Can Suffer From Long-Term Bodily Damage Recently, the Philippine government has been transforming several conventions and stadiums in Metro Manila and northern Luzon into isolation facilities to diminish the burden on hospitals swamped with novel coronavirus cases. Three special compartments were prepped by Navy personnel for patients with a set temporary division. While the vessel is being utilized as an isolation facility, the crew will be restricted from places occupied by coronavirus patients. "The crew were already provided with personal protective equipment while rapid antibody tests were conducted," Roxas said. "All entry points from the crew's billeting area and other compartments from the temporary medical facility and patient rooms were already sealed off, the Navy said. Duterte asked the Navy to help in running the yacht since there were not enough doctors and medical workers to be designated to manage the ship once revamped into a quarantine facility. The Philippine president said the presidential yacht's interior bears a resemblance to a hotel, but he never used it. He said he only went up the ship because he had an affair with the country's Bureau of Customs. Spearheaded by former president Carlos P. Garcia, the Filipino naval engineers distinctively designed the vessel for utilization as a presidential yacht. The vessel was commissioned into the Philippine Navy on March 7, 1959, as its flagship, which fulfilled its role until December 1961. As of Sunday, 4,648 confirmed coronavirus cases have been recorded in the country, along with 297 fatalities and 197 recoveries. Related Article: Four Teens Attack Elderly Asian Woman on a Bus, Suspecting She Has COVID-19 @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As the lockdown continues, milk producers in Punjab are struggling with low demand, price reduction and irregular payments by mass procurers. As consumption by small-scale milk processers, dairies and halwais these days is nearly negligible, the milk producers are dependent on state milk cooperative Milkfed and big private players like Amul and Nestle for procurement. Prior to the lockdown, 3.15 crore litres of milk were produced in the state daily, but the current figures are not known to us yet, said Milkfed managing director Kamaldeep Singh Sangha. Around 60 lakh litres are procured by private milk processing brands. Of this, Milkfed is processes 27 lakh litres every day, while the other brands are collectively processing 30-35 lakh litres of milk, said Sangha. Milkfed sells products under the Verka brand. Sukhwinder Singh a milk producer who also manages a collection centre for milk processors in his village Bhattian, Samrala, told HT that Milkfed and other brands have not paid dairy farmers for the last 20 days. After price revision, the procurement price of buffalo milk has been reduced to 47.25/litre and that of cow milk to 30-32/litre. Former Verka milk plant head Parminder Singh Chalaki seconded that due to lockdown the entire procurement burden was on the state cooperative and the big private firms. He asked the state government to support milk producers on the pattern of Haryana government which is giving 5/litre support over and above the prevailing prices. Reportedly, milk supplies from Punjab to Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi are almost nil, which used to be 5 lakh litres daily earlier. Were in the process of increasing the production of ultra-heat treatment (UHT) milk packs with shelf-life of six months. Nowadays, UHT is majorly bought by the army, said Sangha. According to him, Milkfed is currently selling 11 lakh litres of milk daily, while 16 lakh litres go into production of milk powder and white butter. Every day, the state cooperative procures milk worth 10 crore and to keep its operations going in the wake of dwindling sales, it has taken a credit of 100 crore and is seeking additional 150 crore, said Sangha. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Jialun Deng They come to say good morning and good night. They tell him that spring has arrived and that the cherry blossoms are blooming. They share that they are falling in love, falling out of love or getting divorced. They send him photos of fried chicken drumsticks, his favorite snack. They whisper that they miss him. Li Wenliang, a doctor in the Chinese city of Wuhan, died of the coronavirus on Feb. 6 at the age of 34. More than a month before that, he went online to warn friends of the strange and deadly virus rampaging through his hospital, only to be threatened by government authorities. He became a hero in China when his warnings proved true, then a martyr when he died. After his passing, people began to gather, virtually, at his last post on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. In the comments section, they grieve and seek solace. Some call it Chinas Wailing Wall, a reference to the Western Wall in Jerusalem where people leave written prayers in the cracks. @A: @A: Dr. Li, what is heaven like? @-dada: @-dada: Dr. Li, my cat died today. @: @: Dr. Li, the cherry blossoms are blooming. Remember to check it out. @242: @242: Good morning, Dr. Li. Here's a drumstick for you. @Odette: @Odette: Dr. Li, thank you for trying to save the world. As the deadly virus killed tens of thousands around the world, each society will have its unique way of coping with the loss and grief. In a largely atheist yet spiritual nation with little tradition of praying, the digital Wailing Wall allows the Chinese people to share their sadness, frustration and aspirations with someone they trusted and loved. It may be the gentlest place on the often polarizing and combative Chinese internet. People write down their thoughts and leave. They dont argue or make accusations. When they do respond to each other, they leave digital hugs and encouragement. I cried as I read through the comments. I found the experience cathartic. Its a refuge for a traumatized people. Many people, I believe, feel the same way. Dr. Li had been an avid user of Weibo, Chinas rough equivalent of Twitter, since 2011. He posted his last message on Feb. 1. Today the nucleic acid test result is positive, he wrote of the test that confirmed he had been infected by the coronavirus. The dust has settled, and the diagnosis is finally confirmed. He died five days later. Under that post, Weibo users have left more than 870,000 comments. Some people post a few times a day, telling him how their mornings, afternoons and evenings went. Only posts by Chinas biggest actors and pop stars can match those numbers, but even those lack the visceral response that Dr. Lis last post has drawn. Users feel comfortable talking to Dr. Li. They know he will never scold them or judge them for what they say. They know, after reading his more than 2,000 posts, that he was a gentle and kind soul. He was an ordinary person just like them who enjoyed food and fun and sometimes got tired of working such a demanding job. He would understand. @: @: Dr. Li, I have a crush on a girl. @: @: My life is a mess. Ill probably get divorced soon. @: @:I think I may have depression. @--: @--: Too much stress. But what is better than being alive, right? @: @: We can have spicy hot pot in Chengdu now. Missing you. @Juana: @Juana: I havent been paid in more than two months. Really scared that the landlord will call. @: @: I quit before the epidemic broke out. Now Im worried that I wont be able to find a job. @ 1977: 2020 @ 1977: I lost my job because of the outbreak in Europe and the U.S.! 2020 is too difficult. @: @: Its raining now. I like the rainy days the best because I can cry in the rain and no one would notice. This is the first time I've shared this secret with anyone, and probably the last time. @: @: I played with my phone for a long time but couldnt find anybody to talk to. So here I am. I can talk to you. I read thousands of messages people left just on March 26, the 49th day the seventh day of the seventh week since Dr. Lis death. Many Chinese believe that is the day that a persons soul will finally leave the body and be reincarnated as a newborn. March 26 is also when Wuhan began to allow its residents to take back the ashes of their loved ones. People queued in long lines at funeral homes. The photos triggered social media discussions of the real scope of the outbreak and the credibility of governments official toll of Wuhans dead. Many of the photos were subsequently censored. @: @: Dr. Li, some comments said that you have probably been reborn as a baby by now. If youre reincarnated, I hope youll be a good-looking baby. @: 49 @: Has it been 49 days? I feel that you're looking upon this world gently and wishing us the best. Please take good care of yourself. You're not allowed to be so sick again. @: @: Dr, Li, did your family go to pick up your ashes? Miss you, and thanks again. @: @: Dr. Li, why were the Weibo posts about taking back loved ones ashes deleted? Have we learned nothing from this outbreak? What would you say? @: @: It seems that another doctor in your hospital died today. How can the people in power sit so securely? Because many people see him as an ordinary person wronged by the authorities and as a hero who stood up to power, they come to him to express their frustration that justice and righteousness havent prevailed. They are angry that only two police officers have been punished for reprimanding him. Many believe the police were acting on orders from higher up. They also share their relief that Chinas lockdowns appear to be nearing an end, their distrust of the official news and their lingering fear of the pandemic. @: @: I cant keep my tears from falling every time I think of all the suffering and trauma Wuhan people have endured. @: @: The day will come when the people can rewrite the investigation report of your case. @: @: Dr. Li, the lockdown is ending in Wuhan! Its ending! Its ending! @--: @--: I heard this is the only place on the Chinese internet where you can say anything. So here I am. @: @: The media is full of good news. Brother Wenliang, do you believe the media? @: @: Dr. Li, can you tell me the real situation of the outbreak now? @: @: The outbreak is very serious abroad. I hope they can get over it safely. @: @: In some places the subsidies for front-line medical workers were distributed then taken back. Im very disappointed. I am a first-year medical student. I kind of want to give up. @--: @--: Hope the people behind this will receive due punishment! Hope we can speak the truth here! Hope your family will be taken care of! Some people complain that the comments are censored, an allegation that is difficult to prove. They worry that his Weibo account could be deleted, just like many others. Then, they will lose the only place they can take a break from a world that has been turned upside down. They watch warily and helplessly as the pandemic spreads to many parts of the world and the two super powers, China and the United States, engage in reckless and meaningless diplomatic squabbles. Like people everywhere, they dont know how this is going to end. But most people just want to tell him that they miss him and wish him the best in the next world. The Federal Ministry of Education has appealed to Nigerians to ignore reports in circulation that claim the Education Minister, Adamu Adamu, has directed the reopening of schools. The spokesperson of the ministry, Ben Gooong, in a statement on Sunday night, said there was no such directive from the minister because everyone had been instructed to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Gooong said parents and guardians must not be misled by fake news but should continue to abide by the governments regulations to tackle the ravaging pandemic. On the issue of reopening of schools, the ministry has not directed the reopening of any school at any level, he said. He said the purported press release alleged to have been issued by the minister that schools should reopen, is a clear case of forgery as it did not emanate from the minister. Parents, students and the general public are advised to please disregard the fake release. There is also another story making the rounds that the Federal Government has blamed the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities on vice-chancellors. At no time did any Federal Government official make that kind of statement, he said. Closing of schools Due to the outbreak of coronavirus, the federal government ordered the closure of all Nigerian institutions to help contain the spread. Nigeria currently has 323 confirmed cases of coronavirus. Eighty five have been discharged and 10 deaths have been recorded. In a bid to deal with COVID-19 impacts on various aspects of Egyptians' daily life based on innovation potential, Flat6Labs, a regional startup accelerator programme, has launched, through its Start Egypt Initiative, the Corona Hackathon under the theme of Crisis Awareness Challenge, announcing three winners. Corona Hackathon is an online competition that targeted Egyptian innovators with ideas that could help in combating the COVID-19 crisis. It is financed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank member, Commercial International Bank (CIB), and the Egyptian Red Crescent Society. Speaking to Ahram Online, Executive Director of Start Egypt Initiative Hassan Mansi said that innovations are best unleashed at times of crises. Innovations create solutions that can deal with problems, difficulties, and challenges societies face. The idea of the application is based on helping users keep a medical record, and medical prescriptions, and it provides users with online medical consultations if COVID-19 symptoms are detected, especially that Mohamed Abdallah, the app developer has lost his medical records in the wake of the COVID-19 dreadful outbreak in Italy. "COVID-19 imposes significant global challenges that require out-of-the-box solutions that can help keep individuals safe and avoid the likely negative impacts they could face in their daily lives, Mansi added. The three challenges that Corona Hackathon has adopted include a safe public transport, enriching the irregular labourers, and a safe currency challenge, with a total prizes of EGP 20,000. The innovations that won the competition were OCRA-Fare Initiative, based on a smartphone application which facilitates e-payments instead of using cash in public transports, in addition to Cayshly Company that innovated a unified payment system for riders and drivers in the public transport. The third winner was IZZY-Health application, which was developed by an Egyptian businessman residing in Italy. Search Keywords: Short link: (CNN) -- One of the country's largest pork processing facilities is closing until further notice as employees fall ill with Covid-19. The closure puts the country's meat supply at risk, said the CEO of Smithfield, which operates the plant. "The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply," the meat processor's chief executive, Kenneth Sullivan, said in a statement Sunday. "It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running," he said. "These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain." The Sioux Falls, South Dakota, facility accounts for 4% to 5% of the country's pork production and employs about 3,700 people, according to Smithfield. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said during a Saturday news briefing that Smithfield employees accounted for more than half of the active coronavirus cases in the state. About 240 employees are sick, she said, out of roughly 430 active cases in the state. Because of that, she and the mayor of Sioux Falls recommended that Smithfield suspend operations for at least two weeks. The problem extends beyond South Dakota. Meat processors in Iowa and Pennsylvania have also shut their doors because of sick employees. Smithfield will maintain some activity in the plant on Tuesday to process its inventory, the company said, as it prepares to fully shut down, adding that it will compensate employees for the next two weeks. Supply of essential commodities getting normalised in Mizoram as trucks entering from Assam Decision on whether to extend lockdown or not in Mizoram to be taken today India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Aizawl, Apr 13: The Mizoram government is mulling to extend the ongoing 21-day lockdown in the state and the Cabinet is likely to take a decision on this matter on Monday, officials said. The nationwide lockdown was imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25 to break the chain of coronavirus transmission and it was scheduled to be lifted on April 15. Violate lockdown norms and listen to Masakali 2.0 in a loop The PM held a video conference with Chief Ministers of all states on extending the lockdown on Saturday but no formal announcement was made in this regard. "Though the Centre is yet to make a final decision, the state government is planning to extend the ongoing lockdown with new guidelines to exempt some sections," Health Minister Dr R Lalthangliana told PTI. The state cabinet would meet on Monday to discuss the matter, he said. The minister said Mizoram, which reported one COVID-19 case so far, is vulnerable to the deadly virus due to spike in cases in neighbouring countries and states. Mizoram shares inter-state boundaries with Assam, Manipur and Tripura and also 722-km international border with Bangladesh and Myanmar. Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Lalnunmawia Chuaungo said the state government is concerned about the Mizo people, who are stranded in different parts of the country due to the 21- day nationwide lockdown. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts He said discussions are being held among top officials to step up measures to bring them home safely. Official sources said Mizoram's lone Lok Sabha member C Lalrosanga, who is currently in the national capital, was making efforts to ensure the safety of 600 odd Mizo people stranded outside the state. The sources said he has personally spoken to the authorities of at least 20 states, where students, workers, travellers and patients along with their attendants from Mizoram are stuck due to lockdown. Fake News Buster The MP has also written to chief secretaries of these states, imploring them to ensure the safety of the stranded Mizos and to protect them from racial attack, the sources said. The rumour was current on Wednesday evening, and it was then stated that there were nearly 1000 people there. About half that number, however, is nearer to the mark. We have ascertained that some of the claims are doing exceedingly well. In proof of this, we may state that Symes's two boys brought in a parcel of coarse gold yesterday, which they sold to the Bank of New South Wales. The situation of the new rush is sixteen miles from Mudgee. May 21 The population of these gold-fields is steadily increasing, and we learn there are upwards of 250 miners on the ground ; many of these are not at work but shepherding, so that the able and willing miner, when he attempts to put a pick in the ground is met by a shepherd, claiming the spot. It may not be generally known, but shepherding is not allowed except on the proclaimed frontage system, so that unless these shepherds work the ground in accordance with the regulations it is liable to forfeiture; but, unfortunately, the regulations cannot be carried out as there is no officer nearer than Mudgee authorised to decide disputes, and so the shepherds carry on these mal-practices and ruin the gold-fields with impunity. It was a mistaken economy to abolish the local Gold Commissioners and it has done great injury to the miner's interests in New South Wales. Several parties at the Gulgong are doing remarkably well, one person having brought in 43 oz. of coarse gold during the week. Shares of Newmont Corporation NEM have rallied 31.9% year to date. The stock has also outperformed the industrys decline of 19.9% and the S&P 500s fall of 13.3% over the same period. Newmont has a market cap of roughly $46.3 billion. Average volume of shares traded in the past three months was around 9,570.6K. The company has an expected earnings per share growth rate of 83.3% for 2020. Lets discuss the factors that are driving the stock. Driving Factors The companys focus on key growth projects, disciplined capital allocation strategy and higher gold prices are some of the factors contributing to its share price appreciation. Newmont is pursuing a number of projects, including Tanami Expansion in Australia as well as Subika Underground and Ahafo mill expansion in Africa. The companys Africa operations witnessed 1.1 million ounces of attributable gold production in 2019 at an all-in sustaining cost of less than $800 per ounce. This was mainly driven by the successful completion of Ahafos expansion projects. It is also expected to add annual gold production of 75,000-100,000 ounces per year from 2020 to 2024. Last month, the company successfully completed the sale of its Ontario, Canada-based Red Lake complex to Evolution Mining Limited for cash proceeds of $375 million. The transaction provided Newmont with an exposure to future exploration opportunities while focusing on its globally diversified portfolio of 12 managed operations and two joint ventures, including 8 world-class assets. Considering the divestment of its interests in Continental and KCGM, Newmont generated total cash proceeds of more than $1.4 billion. The company attained its divestiture target of $1-$1.5 billion in less than a year. The divestment of assets is likely to support Newmonts capital allocation priorities. This is also expected to strengthen the companys investment-grade balance sheet and enable investment in highest-return projects along with returning excess cash to shareholders. Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic has led to a surge in gold prices, driven by the demand for safe-haven investments. Further, declining oil prices and geopolitical tensions are triggering demand for gold. The companys average realized price of gold rose 20% year over year in fourth-quarter 2019 and boosted margins. Higher gold prices are expected to continue driving earnings in the near term amid market volatility and economic uncertainties. Story continues Newmont Corporation Price and Consensus Newmont Corporation Price and Consensus Newmont Corporation price-consensus-chart | Newmont Corporation Quote Zacks Rank & Other Key Picks Newmont currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). A few other top-ranked stocks in the basic materials space are Novagold Resources Inc. NG, Franco-Nevada Corporation FNV and Barrick Gold Corporation GOLD, all carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here. Novagold has an expected earnings growth rate of 11.1% for fiscal 2020. The companys shares have surged 130.7% in the past year. Franco-Nevada has an expected earnings growth rate of 15.9% for 2020. Its shares have returned 52.8% in the past year. Barrick has an expected earnings growth rate of 41.2% for 2020. The companys shares have rallied 65.2% in the past year. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Newmont Corporation (NEM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Franco-Nevada Corporation (FNV) : Free Stock Analysis Report Barrick Gold Corporation (GOLD) : Free Stock Analysis Report Novagold Resources Inc. (NG) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Jet-setters hoping for a European getaway this summer have been warned by EU chiefs not to start making holiday plans amidst the coronavirus crisis. Countries in the European Union are being warned to keep their borders closed until September by key player, France. It comes as France told EU leaders this weekend that it would maintain strict border controls until October 30. Meanwhile, French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called for external borders with the passport-free Schengen zone, of which Britain is not a part, to remain closed until September. So far there have been more than 130,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in France and more than 14,000 deaths. There has 84,279 cases in the UK and 10,612 deaths. Such a move could could cause major disruption for Britons hoping to travel to Europe for their summer holidays. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, has since warned people not to make summer holiday plans. Ursula von der Leyen (pictured left), the European Commission President, has advised people to wait before making their holiday plans, while French president, Emmanuel Macron (pictured right), has called for external borders with the passport-free Schengen zone to remain closed until September. Speaking to German newspaper, Bild, she said: 'I'd advise everyone to wait before making holiday plans. 'At the moment, no one can make reliable forecasts for July and August. 'We will need to learn to live with this virus for many months, probably until next year.' Travellers hoping for some summer sun in the next few months are already facing uncertainty. Last month, budget airline easyJet grounded all of its flights indefinitely, while British Airways stopped its flights from Gatwick Airport on April 1. BA later furloughed 36,000 of its employees on a modified version of the government's job retention scheme. Luton-based carrier easyJet confirmed it will get a 600million loan from the government's coronavirus fund, and is borrowing an additional 400million from creditors. The decision sparked a row with founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou who had previously urged directors to scrap a 4.5billion order with Airbus for more than 100 new planes. Luton-based carrier easyJet grounded all of its flights indefinitely last month and has since taken a 600million loan from the government's coronavirus fund. Meanwhile, Jet2 has cancelled all flights and holidays until mid-June because restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic show no sign of easing. The travel firm, which is Britain's second-biggest holiday company and owned by Dart Group, said in a statement that its holidays and flights would not now restart until June 17. Since April 4, Britons have been warned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) against all non-essential global travel abroad 'indefinitely'. Bengaluru, April 13 : The Karnataka government has set up an expert committee to analyse Covid data every day to advise on interventions, an official said on Monday. "The following committee is constituted to analyse Covid data every day and advise the government on interventions to be taken," said Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Jawaid Akhtar. Members of the committee include public health expert M.K. Sudarshan, PHFI epidemiologist Giridhar Babu and NIMHANS virologist V Ravi/Anita. Other members are NIMHANS epidemiologist Pradeep/Gururaj, BMCRI pulmonologist K. Ravi, and Joint Director, Health Department, Prakash. Major expectations from the committee include studying the epidemiology of Corona cases to report to government, ascertain how different patients got infected, and suggest administrative measures to break the Covid contagion chain and maintain distancing. They will also analyse the treatment given to different patients and suggest any change, if required, added Akhtar. Military members and veterans can get up to four free months of Apple Music through the Apple Music military discount -- but... Prince William has said Britain is at its best in a crisis, his office said on Sunday, the latest in a series of messages from the royal family seeking to galvanise the nation during the coronavirus pandemic. Queen Elizabeth has twice addressed Britons in the past week, while heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, who tested positive for the new virus, has also issued several video and audio messages since he recovered. William's message came on a day when the COVID-19 death toll in hospitals across the United Kingdom passed 10,000. "I think Britain is at its best when faced with a crisis," the queen's grandson said during a call with a community charity in northern England that runs a food bank and has been delivering hot meals to isolated people. "We all pull together and that community spirit comes rushing back quicker than anything else," William said on the call, according to his office at Kensington Palace. William, who is second-in-line to the throne after his father Charles, has become the patron of the National Emergencies Trust (NET) for 2020, the palace said. Created in 2019, the NET seeks to coordinate with not-for-profit organisations to direct public donations to specific appeals and to distribute funds fairly and efficiently. The NET's Coronavirus Appeal in March, launched by William in March, has raised millions of pounds. Last month, six Chinese medical professionals stepped off an Air Serbia jet in Belgrade to a red-carpet welcome from President Aleksandar Vucic and an array of cabinet ministers. After elbow-bump greetings, Vucic kissed Serbias flag, then Chinas. In Serbia, one of Beijings closest European allies, and a handful of other friendly countries, China is providing on-the-ground guidance to help battle the coronavirus that has swept around the world. The outreach is part of a wider push by Beijing to assert global leadership in battling COVID-19 after facing criticism from Washington and elsewhere that it fumbled its early response to the outbreak, believed to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. These efforts by Beijing come as western governments, already wary of Chinas rising influence around the world, including through its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, are struggling with their own mounting coronavirus death tolls. They are part of a long-running effort by China to strike a benevolent posture abroad to offset worries about its growing economic and military might, while presenting alternatives - such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank it set up in 2016 - to Western dominance of global institutions. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show There is no doubt that China will use the COVID-19 outbreak to further what China views as acting in its own national interest, said Gordon Houlden, a former Canadian diplomat and the director of the University of Albertas China Institute. That will include pushing its own governance model, in this case its methodology of epidemiology, he said. That methodology is based on the aggressive and comprehensive approach China took to combat the virus, including the lockdown of Wuhan, and the know-how it has built as the first country to suffer an outbreak of the disease. Chinas foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, at a press conference on Thursday, said the aim of sending medical teams was to share Chinas experiences combatting the virus, not to export its governance model abroad. In addition to Serbia, Beijing has sent medical teams to Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Pakistan, Venezuela and Italy, the only G7 nation to join the Belt and Road Initiative and which has been devastated by the coronavirus. Last week, a 12-member Chinese medical team arrived in the Philippines to aid in the fight against the virus. The outreach is on top of the donation or sale of supplies to some 90 countries, including rivals such as the United States, as well as numerous videoconferences with countries and international organisations to share its know-how, according to the China International Development Cooperation Agency. We hope that other countries will not repeat Chinas tragedies, Peng Zhiqiang, a specialist from the Guangdong Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and head of the Chinese team in Serbia, said by phone from Belgrade. 'Trust Chinese experts' Chinese medical teams are advising some host countries on building makeshift hospitals - evoking the 1,000 bed hospital China built from scratch in eight days in Wuhan - and rolling out virus management measures similar to those that helped it slash new infections at home, according to Peng and Liang Wenbin, a member of a Chinese team sent to Cambodia last month. Those practices include the quarantine or isolation of people with mild symptoms to curb the early spread of the virus, methods of treating complications and widespread temperature checking for entry into public places. On the Chinese teams advice, Serbia began quarantining people with mild symptoms and deploying troops to build field hospitals for patients with mild symptoms. Serbian officials said they welcomed the input, which they say has helped slow the spread of the virus. We changed our approach, and with the support of Chinese experts, we went for more widespread testing, said a source close to the Serbian presidency, who was not authorised to speak with media and declined to be named. Chinese doctors have welcomed the measures taken by Serbia, and we have embraced the Chinese model, which is to reach and treat as many people as possible - all who are infected, the person said. Quarantines and Visa curbs In Cambodia, which has been a loyal supporter of Beijing in Southeast Asia, the issuance of visas for international visitors was sharply curtailed at the suggestion of the team. The country is bracing for an influx of returnees for the Khmer new year this month. Cambodia is also considering the teams advice to refit hotels and schools for possible quarantine of returnees, said Liang, the member of the Chinese team. The latest restrictions to limit the mobility of personnel and to ban foreigners from coming to the country are the control measures China used, she said. The Cambodian government did not reply to requests for comment. 'Thank you, Big brother XI' Despite its medical outreach efforts, China has faced sharp criticism in Washington and elsewhere for suppressing early information on the virus and downplaying its risks. I am sceptical that many countries will soon forget Chinas early missteps that contributed to the global spread of the virus, said Ryan Hass, a senior Asia director in the Obama administrations National Security Council who is now at the Brookings Institution. The response to the outreach from China in countries like Serbia, however, has so far been positive. In Belgrade, the Chinese team visited a memorial to those killed in 1999 when American bombs hit Chinas embassy there in what Washington apologised for as an accident. After the teams arrival, a placard was mounted on a central Belgrade street with a picture of Chinas leader and big letters in Chinese and Serbian: Thank you, big brother Xi. [April 13, 2020] AITRICS and Cleveland Clinic collaborate to verify AI-based sepsis prediction solution SEOUL, South Korea, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- AITRICS, a Korea-based startup offering AI solutions, has signed a joint research agreement with Cleveland Clinic, a general hospital located in Cleveland, Ohio. Two parties will collaborate on verifying VitalCare, AITRICS's AI platform, that predicts critical events in hospitals. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Sepsis is a disease that causes a systemic inflammatory response after infection from microbes, which has a high mortality rate to be selected as the leading cause of death globally. Early detection is the best because there is no underlying cure for sepsis. If sepsis treated within 1 hour after onset, the survival rate is 80%, but after 6 hours, it falls to 30%. The problem is that the diagnosis is knotty because the symptoms are general. To find sepsis, doctors need to determine whether patients have an infection, but the results of the blood test will come out at least two days later. WHAT DO THEY DO? As per the agreement, both organizations will start off by verifying the AI solution platform, VitalCare. It is an AI-based platform that significantly reduces the mortality rate of patients by timely detecting the occurrence of risk factors in a hospital through real-time monitoring of the patient's EMR. AITRICS verifies the accuracy of VitalCare and advances its AI model by utilizing the vast data of the Cleveland Clinic. The two parties aim to cope with patients in Golden Hour and optimize resourc management in hospitals through the solution. "Through the collaboration for the past year after the agreement, I felt that AITRICS has AI technologies not to lag behind any other company in the world and the expertise to understand the medical field accurately," stated Dr. Taehyun Hwang, AI Academic Group Leader at Cleveland Clinic. "The joint research that will continue with AITRICS will contribute to the development of solutions that can revolutionize the health care industry." AITRICS plans to expand VitalCare's predicted types of diseases and modality sequentially by verifying its AI models based on clinical data from the Cleveland Clinic. Also, it is expected to develop an artificial intelligence model that takes into account various factors to build a solution for predicting severe deaths that applicable to patients in multiple countries through collaborating with overseas hospitals. "In collaboration with Cleveland Clinic, one of the best hospitals in the United States, we have made a successful first in applying AI to clinical practice to create real value," said Jinkyu Yoo, CEO and Co-founder of AITRICS. "It has been possible to improve the accuracy of VitalCare by verifying with top tier Hospitals in the US. Through this, we confirmed the possibility of medical AI solutions. We will expand to other fields based on certified technology to solve the problems prevalent in all parts of society." About AITRICS AITRCS is an AI solution startup that experts are working with, developing innovative technologies. Besides, AITRICS has been recognized worldwide for its AI abilities, with remarkable achievements every year in various international AI academic societies such as NeurIPS and ICML. About Cleveland Clinic As one of the top hospitals in the United States, Cleveland Clinic has been ranked No.1 in the field of heart disease for 20 consecutive years. It has 1,400 beds on the main campus and 5,895 beds system-wide. Homepage: www.aitrics.com Facebook: facebook.com/aitrics.corp/ KR Blog: https://blog.aitrics.com/ View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aitrics-and-cleveland-clinic-collaborate-to-verify-ai-based-sepsis-prediction-solution-301038741.html SOURCE AITRICS [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Independent oil company Cleanfuel began its latest corporate responsibility (CSR) initiative targeted to help address the Coronavirus in the Philippines. Cleanfuel's #BeatCovid19 is a collective effort from the oil firm to help mitigate the spread of the novel virus in the country. Firstly, Cleanfuel has extended help to the Department of Transportation's (DOTr) for the Free Bus Ride for Health Workers Program. Cleanfuel Covid-19 "The outbreak of Covid-19 is not only a global health crisis; it also affects the economy of every nation. At this point, the only thing that matters is to help out our medical frontliners in fulfilling their job. Our main priority is their safety. Our partnership with Department of Transportation with the Free Bus Ride assures the safety of our modern day heroes," Cleanfuel president Bong Suntay said. The Cleanfuel Stations that are participating in the said move: Cleanfuel Kamias Cleanfuel Edsa Cubao Cleanfuel Pioneer Cleanfuel Marcos Highway (Pasig) Cleanfuel Baclaran Cleanfuel Sta Rosa Cleanfuel Binan Cleanfuel Tiaong Cleanfuel Bacoor Cleanfuel Bagumbong, Cleanfuel San Fernando (McArthur) Pampanga Cleanfuel Malabon Aside from fueling the government efforts for medical healthcare workers, the company also started the drive relief donations to Northern province. Among those that they donated include Pangasinan (Villasis, Binalonan, Pozorrubio) and San Fernando (La Union) and other cities in Metro Manila. Cleanfuel Covid-19 "There are a lot of ways to win the battle in fighting this outbreak. One is to provide food for rural families in Barangays amidst the enhanced community quarantine," he claimed. "This is the best time to extend help and compassion to people. In the days and weeks ahead, weve seen thousands of lives fighting in the hospitals. This outbreak affected all sectors and all walks of life. We are in this battle together, to protect the health of all Filipinos, and to create assistance to families who are in need," he added. Also read: Cleanfuel, Total Gives Fuel Subsidy for DOTr's Free Ride for Health Workers Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 21:27:30|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan summoned Gaurav Ahluwalia, Indian charge d'affaires to the country on Monday and lodged a strong protest over the recent ceasefire violations, killing a child and critically injuring four others along the Line of Control (LoC) in the disputed Kashmir region, according to the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan. The Director General of South Asia and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) desk at the Foreign Ministry Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri condemned the "indiscriminate and unprovoked ceasefire violations" in different sectors along the LoC on Sunday, the ministry said in a statement. "The Indian forces along the LoC and the working boundary have continuously been targeting civilian populated areas with artillery fire, heavy caliber mortars and automatic weapons. This year, India has so far committed 749 ceasefire violations," the statement said. Denouncing the targeting of innocent civilians, the director general underscored that such acts further vitiate the tense atmosphere along the LoC and are a threat to regional peace and security. Chaudhri called upon the Indian side to respect the 2003 ceasefire understanding between the two countries, investigate this and other such incidents of deliberate ceasefire violations and maintain peace along the LoC and the working boundary. Researchers have found that persons who test positive for COVID-19 disease have common symptoms, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, and a temporary loss of the sense of smell. A commonly asked question is the difference between loss of sense of smell associated with common cold versus COVID-19. Researchers assure that the latter shows a more significant loss of smell. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) on their websites list fever, cough, and shortness of breath as the main symptoms of COVID-19 and recently have added two new symptoms the loss of sense of smell and taste. Can smell be the determining factor in diagnosis? With the novel coronavirus or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) 1,911,407 individuals worldwide are reported as infected, and the death toll now stands at 118,854. Researchers explain that these numbers are the confirmed cases, and there may be many more persons who have the virus, either untested or are asymptomatic. In some like France, patients who complain of sudden onset of loss of smell are being suspected to be positive for COVID-19 even without testing. In the United Kingdom, the Weizmann Institute of Science investigators, working with Edith Wolfson Medical Center, Israel, have developed an online platform called the SmellTracker. This tracker can effectively monitor a persons sense of smell and detect COVID-19 early even before the other symptoms appear. The tracker Prof. Noam Sobel, from the Weizmann Institutes Department of Neurobiology, works with the olfactory functions and feels that each individual had a unique sense of smell, and this may be an olfactory fingerprint. He and his team developed a mathematical model that can that characterize the sense of smell in an individual. The olfactory fingerprint of the person in the middle remains consistent, even after 30 days (right), but is very different from that of another person (left) The team developed an algorithm that is used in an online test. It can help the user to map their sense of smell. For each of the tests, the sensor can help the user work through five different scents found in the home. These scents include spices, toothpaste, vinegar, extracts of scented substances and peanut butter. The sensor itself is a tiny wearable device weighing only six grams. It transmits data via Bluetooth. Within five minutes, the test can monitor if there is any alteration in the sense of smell in the user. This could be an early indicator of COVID-19, the researchers explain. How good is the app at detecting cases of COVID-19? The researchers explain that this new sensor can successfully identify early and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19. Suspected cases are later confirmed to be positive for the coronavirus using standard tests, they wrote. Using the sensor, they explain, a unique olfactory fingerprint could be identified, and if there is an alteration, it could indicate the early stages of COVID-19. What do we know of smell loss in COVID-19? The first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, Hubei province of China. In the patients infected with the novel coronavirus in the region, there were no reports of loss of smell, write the researchers. With time more and more cases were reported from other nations, including Iran and Israel. In around 60 percent of the patients with COVID-19, there was a significant loss of smell. Researchers in South Korea state that 30 percent of the patients test positive for loss of sense of smell in COVID-19 patients. Germany, too, has reported that two-thirds of their COVID-19 patients develop a loss of sense of smell or anosmia. This was announced by Claire Hopkins of the British Rhinological Society and Nirmal Kumar , president of ENT UK. The researchers at Sobels lab explain that there are eight active strains of the coronavirus infecting people around the world. Sobel and his colleagues explain that the difference between the strains could lie in their ability to alter the sense of smell. Prof. Sobel said that the loss of sense of smell is quite rapid with no restriction on nasal airflow. He said, That is, they can sniff, theyre not blocked. They dont have a stuffy nose. But they just cannot smell a thing. Way forward If the current research holds true, Sobel and colleagues believe that the SmellTracker app could help researchers map the outbreaks of COVID-19 across the world cost-effectively and straightforwardly. The team is also developing simple kits called scratch and smell that can be sent to patients who have been confirmed to have COVID-19. The test would provide a detailed look at the duration of the alteration of olfactory senses in the coronavirus-infected patients. Unique questionnaires would also be given to the patients. Israels Ministry of Defense is supporting this new venture, and soon it may be promoted in other regions, including Sweden and France. At present, the wearable sensor containing the smell test is available in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. It will soon be available in other languages, including French, Swedish, German, Persian, Spanish, and Japanese. (Newser) It's a little easier now for overworked health care workers to find a place to rest without endangering their own families. The Hilton and Marriott hotel chains are both donating rooms for doctors, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, and the like, reports USA Today. The chains are working with groups that represent the medical professions to connect them to the free rooms, particularly in hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans, and Detroit. In Manhattan, the posh Four Seasons also is donating rooms, per Fox Business. Hilton is partnering with American Express to provide up to 1 million rooms, and Marriott has pledged up to $10 million worth of free stays. By one industry estimate, 80% of hotel rooms in the US are vacant. (Read more coronavirus stories.) Washington, April 13 (IANS) At least six people were killed after strong tornadoes struck the US state of Mississippi, authorities said. The fatalities occurred on Sunday in the counties of Walthall, Lawrence and Jefferson Davis, Xinhua news agency quoted the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency as saying. All the three counties were south of Jackson, Mississippi's capital, near the neighbouring Louisiana state line. The tornadoes also destroyed homes, toppled trees, and caused power outage, according to local officials. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency on Sunday night in response to the devastation. Also on Sunday, damaging storms and tornados destroyed homes, toppled trees and knocked out electricity across Louisiana. The US National Weather Service declared a tornado emergency for Monroe in Louisiana. Doppler radar confirmed a large and destructive tornado was hitting parts of the city. According to local media, at least 20 homes were damaged in Monroe. Images on social media showed several damaged planes and buildings at the Monroe Regional Airport. Local weather forecast said a cold front will move in Sunday night, keeping the severe weather threat until it moves through. Wind gusts, large hail and isolated tornados were possible for all of southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. --IANS ksk/ The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking immediate financial support from the government for the ailing sector amid the nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic New Delhi: The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking immediate financial support from the government for the ailing sector amid the nationwide lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic. In its letter to the prime minister, FADA sought a complete waiver of interest on all category of loans from banks and NBFCs for the lockdown period. Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations seeks complete waiver of interest on loans from banks & NBFCs. It also requests for an introduction of incentive-based Scrappage Policy, reports @Alisha2494 pic.twitter.com/Ba9CVY7nhG CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) April 13, 2020 The industry body, which represents around 15,000 auto dealers, also sought extension of 4 percent interest subvention/subsidy for working capital/loan requirements to companies for a period of nine months post the lockdown. FADA sought that the salary of people employed at the dealerships during the lockdown period should be paid through ESIC. It has also asked for a grant of MSME extension to auto retail. The subsidies and incentives received under the MSME division will provide much-needed relief to dealerships, which provide direct and indirect employment to lakhs of people, FADA said in the letter which was also marked to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, among others. Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak The industry body has sought measures like GST cut on automobiles, incentive-based scrappage policy and priority sector tag for the sector to boost demand post-lockdown period. FADA said the auto industry has already been reeling under a severe slowdown for the last 15 months, with more than 275 dealerships already shut, resulting in huge job losses. "The current situation can lead to an existential situation for many of our members and their employees. Majority of them are small scale family-run businesses with no financial sustenance for such a crisis after already having gone through a tough period in past 15 months," FADA President Ashish Harsharaj Kale said in the letter. Over the years, the auto dealership business model has come under severe strain with increasing costs and low operating margins, thereby reducing the sector's strength to face challenges like the current situation and its after effects, he added. "While we are taking it up with SIAM at a complete change of the business model to build up sustenance for the after effects of COVID-19 and for any future disruptions, the immediate situation is extremely bleak if not supported," Kale said. Many auto dealers will go out of business and livelihood of hundreds of thousands will be lost if the sector doesn't get government support, he added. A family has been left devastated after a father, 84, his wife, 82, and their daughter, 62, all died from coronavirus within two weeks of each other. Keith and Jean MacVicar from Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire died of the killer illness a fortnight ago and, shortly after, their daughter Jayne developed symptoms. Her younger brother Richard, 60, charted her battle with the illness on Facebook, calling on friends to pray for her recovery. Sadly, mother-of-two Jayne passed away from the virus on Saturday, with Richard writing: 'It's with heartbreaking regret to say Jayne has lost her battle for life. Jean MacVicar, 82 (right), with her daughter and mother-of-two Jean, 62 (left). Both mother and daughter have died of coronavirus, within a fortnight of each other Keith MacVicar, 84 (left), with his son Richard, 60 (right). Keith, his wife Jean, 82, and his daughter Jayne, 62, have all died from coronavirus 'At least we have the comfort of knowing she is back with mum and dad. 'To lose half your family in the space of two weeks feels like someone has cut me open and stolen my heart. So, so wrong.' Before her death, Jayne, a former Staffordshire Police crime analyst, had posted multiple messages on Facebook urging friends to obey social distancing measures. She even swapped her profile picture for one that read: 'Stay home, it could save lives.' The family are now facing three funerals, with Richard telling friends: 'It's like a horror movie for the rest of us.' It's unclear if the parents and their daughter had any underlying health conditions. Before her death within days of her parents, Jayne, a former Staffordshire Police crime analyst, had posted multiple messages on Facebook urging friends to obey social distancing measures Heartbroken son Richard posted on Facebook: 'To lose half your family (pictured is father Keith) in the space of two weeks feels like someone has cut me open and stolen my heart. So, so wrong' The tragic deaths come as Britain's coronavirus death toll surged past 10,000 yesterday, marking a grim milestone in the country's epidemic. A further 737 people lost their lives yesterday, bringing the total number of fatalities up to 10,612 as of Easter Sunday. Cases also hit 84,279 after an additional 5,288 were diagnosed with the infection following 18,000 new tests, down slightly from Saturday. Only the United States, France, Italy and Spain have officially broken the 10,000-death threshold, making the UK among the worst-hit places on the planet. Amid the bleak figures, there was a glimmer of good news as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was discharged from hospital after fighting for his life with the virus. Petty Offences are defined as minor offences or offences without victims. In most cases, the poor and vulnerable members of the society form the bulk of the perpetrators of such offences. Most law students opined that justice is what the law says it is. While this perspective might seem lame and vague, it is hardly arguable as we see this play out daily, leading to the rather unflattering conclusion that the law is an ass. However, a formal definition of the term Justice as proffered by Merriam-Webster dictionary describes justice as the fair treatment that everyone deserves. This indicates (1) that justice should be inclusive and (2) should not be just a noun, but also a verb, an active word. In reaching a pertinent conclusion regarding the nature of the term Justice, however, the following questions come to mind: Who interprets laws? Is fair play actually exercised in the course of interpreting laws? Are these interpreters independent, with independent minds? Can we believe their interpretations are sound enough? Legal Practitioners know better than to disagree that the court (but in a larger scale, the judiciary) is the last hope of a common man. One can also opine that the common man is the one most in need of justice. If the common man therefore cannot get justice, then it could be argued that justice itself has failed humanity in its entirety. Alfred Thompson Tom Denning, Baron Denning, an English lawyer and judge, popularly known as Lord Denning, was famous for the wisdom he displayed in passing judgments. On many occasions, he said, "I am concerned with justice." Justice for him was the reason he became a lawyer, and thereafter, served as a judge for so many years. Justice was a daily pursuit for him. To this end, whenever he was faced with a situation that seemed to him dishonest, unjust or wrong, all his ingenuity and erudition would be directed to finding a remedy, even if the wrongdoer appeared to have the law on his side. Denning was constructive with his delivery of justice. He always passed fair judgements because humanity for him was all that mattered. In the case of Denning, justice could be seen as what the law says it is, because the interpreter interpreted so well. Historically, petty offences originated during the colonial era, where the aim of the colonial masters was to subjugate and dehumanize citizens of its colony. These are decades old, rusty laws which should be abolished, but which have, unfortunately, thrived well into the era of democracy, rule of law and human rights. Nowadays that there are no colonial masters, one would expect citizens of all classes and social strata to truly enjoy liberty, as well as respect and non-discrimination. The existence of petty offences have halted most efforts to ensure that all citizens of Nigeria, irrespective of their social class, enjoy their human rights to the maximum. These petty offences have given security and law enforcement agencies ultra vires powers to act unduly and indiscriminately. Statistically, the part of the society that suffer from these offences are; Poor Persons, Women and Sexual Minorities. These classes of people are vulnerable to the exercise of petty offence laws. The African Union (AU), with support from other African human rights institutions, has resolved to see to the abolishment of petty offences in Africa. In its opinion, the existence of petty offences is a violation of articles 5, 6, 45, etc of the African Charter for Human and Peoples Rights. Lawyers Alert's key objective is to promote the rights of vulnerable groups and indigent persons. To this end, Lawyers Alert renders free legal assistance to these persons, actively engages stakeholders from varied fields to enact favorable laws and policies, monitors the implementation of same, amongst others. Lawyers Alert works to ensure that justice is served to all members of the society, with special consideration for the poor and vulnerable groups who are hardest hit. The organization has at different occasions rendered free legal support to poor and vulnerable groups in the society. Some of these cases are however still ongoing in various courts in Nigeria. The cases range from hawking, loitering, violation of persons human rights on the basis of their private, sexual lifestyle and affairs. By virtue of Lawyers Alerts years of involvement in petty offences cases via its free legal assistance to the vulnerable members of the society, the following lessons have been learnt: That the societys way of justice delivery is at the peril of only the poor and vulnerable people Discriminatory That justice is about looking at cases through a human rights lens. That the rights to freedom and liberty of all persons are all encompassing, as there is no such rights as partial rights to freedom and liberty (save the exceptions as provided under these rights in Chapter 4 of our Constitution. Where a person is deprived of freedom and liberty of his sexual rights, the rights to freedom and liberty becomes trajectory Partial That the existence of petty offences is a direct attack on the social standards of the poor and less privileged ones in our society Discriminatory That the existence of petty offences in our law books is not a means to curtail crime, but a means to increase crime. That the existence of petty offences is an indirect disagreement with Chapter 4 of our Constitution and all other human rights laws that are applicable in Nigeria. Africa has gotten to that point where issues of petty offences ought to have been abolished, as the world has moved past them. This is hoping that Nigeria takes the lead in this pursuit thereby establishing a firm reputation as a true giant of Africa. Ellen Chigoziem Onugha Esq. is a Legal Officer with Lawyers Alert Nigeria, a human rights organization. She can be reached at [email protected] Celebrity COVID candid (CCC) content is now a real thing. Its week four of this lockdown and theres a question thats been gnawing at my privileged Indian middle-class mind since Day 1. When washing dishes (yes, I know this is not an earth shattering topic but seeing as I am spending a significant part of my days washing dishes, this is important to me), do you rinse off all the food, lather each utensil and then rinse them all in one go or do you wash them individually? The former works for me but my husband insists the latter is more efficient. Then, I came across a video that Katrina Kaif posted on her official Instagram account. Standing in front of a sink full of dirty dishes, Katrina asked the very same question that had kept me up nine nights in a row. I felt like that guy in the girl standing in front of a boy scene from Notting Hill. Yes, Ill dump my husband and marry you was my first reaction when I looked at that beautiful face scrubbed of make-up. A black apron over a striped tee and shorts, sporting a messy ponytail, Katrina looked a far cry from her usual glamorous self but I am not going to lie, its this video thats won her a fan for life. Who would have ever thought Id have something in common with Katrina Kaif? I now think of us as BBFs (bartan buddies forever). In other equally important news, Vicky Kaushal has finally learnt to flip an omelette. I can pat myself on the back for having used the excess years I have on him for perfecting the art wait for it without the use of a spatula. Yes, you heard me right. Just me and a pan and a flick of my wrists. Ive never made besan laddoos, and by now you probably know where Im going with this, but if Malaika Arora wants to make besan laddoos, Id watch. Every. Single. Time. It wasnt always this way though. Id stop to watch celebrity videos on social media if it was work related, but theres never been a personal connect to any of it. Celebrities thrive on attention and social media has given them a direct connection with millions of fans. And, for these fans, stars put out daily content. In the pre-pandemic world, this ranged from film announcements to glamorous headshots and in some cases hawking wares. Thats changed to a large degree since the lockdown started. Celebrity COVID candid (CCC) content is now a real thing. Not everyones a fan though, as is evident by the sheer volume of online trolling thats been happening on some of these posts. While Shah Rukh Khan might have mostly gotten it right with measured humour in an early PSA, not everyone did. Karthik Aryans Pyar ka Punchnama style monologue urging people to stay home might have had appeal for his fans, but evoked an equal number of facepalms from others. Varun Dhawans rap left many speechless but then thats expected when your lyrics go, "Ghar se bahar nikala to corona hoga, gedi kiya to corona hoga, pyaar kia to dil tutega, dil tutega to dard hoga... kyu... its ****** lockdown." To someone watching closely though, there have been two distinct phases of CCC content. The first wave started during more innocent times (three whole weeks back) with a bunch of hand washing videos featuring celebrities showing us that they could have made it as hand models too. While some of them used the prescribed twenty seconds to make washing hands look like a sexual activity, others just spouted gyaan its one thing to play a superhero on screen, its another to make hand washing look like a superpower. A lot of the early celebrity posts were about using their huge follower counts to spread important messages on safety, hygiene and staying indoors. The initial excitement of seeing ones favourite stars wearing no make-up and doing stuff you wouldnt expect them to be doing, might have gotten eyeballs but a lot of it reeked of privilege. But wait all of this was three weeks back. As the days turned into weeks of self-isolation, the gloss of privilege seems to have worn off from most of the celebrity posts were seeing now and a lot of it has begun to look real. Most of us are privileged enough to be locked up at home, forced to do pretty much the same mundane things, from cooking and cleaning to finding new ways to kill time. If there are times when you find yourself going stir-crazy, theres no reason why it should be any different for our stars. Deepika Padukone is labelling everything around her (including her husband) while Katrina has moved on from cleaning videos to teaching herself how to play the guitar. Farhan Akhtar posted a video of girlfriend Shibani Dandekar going nose-to-snout with their new pup, Karan Johars cute twins are trolling everything from his fashion sense to his singing while Anil Kapoor showed the world how to have a long distance relationship with the boy next door (Anupam Kher). Some of it is delightful, some of it is weird and some of it is downright funny. But the cringe factor has long gone, because nothing about any of this seems manufactured any more. Its not scripted, its not about getting likes and its not about increasing follower count these celebrity posts just seem to be an outlet for many of them, like it is for us. Yes, there are those whore still posting thirst traps every once in a while, but this is the most candid weve ever seen most of our celebrities ever be. This pandemic may still not be the great equaliser that some had thought it would be, but youd have to be living in la-la-land to even believe that was a remote possibility. If nothing else, all this CCC content is a great distraction from the stories of doom floating around. Its a welcome respite for a few minutes every day, and for that, Katrina & Co. will have my eternal gratitude. A 60-year-old nurse has become the fourth Filipino NHS worker to die after contracting coronavirus. Melujean Ballesteros died at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London, on Sunday after being admitted on Friday. The mother-of-two fell ill with flu-like symptoms in mid-March, but only went to hospital after her family convinced her to two days before her death. Philippine ambassador Antonio Lagdameo has paid tribute to Mrs Ballesteros, nurse Leilani Dayrit and hospital porters Oscar King Jr and Elbert Rico, who were all from the Philippines and have all died of the virus. Nurse Melujean Ballesteros, 60, has become the fourth Filipino NHS worker to die of coronavirus. She died at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London, on Sunday Leilani Dayrit, 47, worked as a nurse at St Cross Hospital in Rugby, Warwickshire, and died on April 7 A House of Commons report from last year found that at least 18,000 Filipinos work for the NHS. They form the third largest ethnic group in the Health Service, second only to British and Indian. Mrs Ballesteros is survived by her husband Luis, 64, and their two sons Rainier, 37, and Bryan, 38. Her younger son said: 'My mum is a dedicated and very caring nurse. She started her career in the UK in 2003, she loved her work as a nurse.' Rainier, who lives in Calauag in the Philippines, added that Mrs Ballesteros had a fever and cough in mid-March and self-isolated for nine days. But on Friday he said she was picked up by an ambulance and taken to hospital after her family advised her to on account of her worsening condition. A GoFundMe page was created by colleague Faz Ghooloo, lead nurse at St Mary's Hospital, to help raise funds for funeral costs. In a touching tribute, Ms Ghooloo wrote: 'Melujean was a kind-hearted person who dedicated her life to her profession as a nurse. 'She always had a smile and she never complained about anything.' Pictured far right is Elbert Rico, a hospital porter at the John Radcliffe Hospital Another of the NHS frontline workers from the Philippines to fall victim to the virus was Leilani Dayrit. The 47-year-old worked as a nurse at St Cross Hospital in Rugby, Warwickshire, and died on April 7. She leaves behind her husband a daughter, who described her as 'selfless until the very end' and a 'truly special and beautiful person inside and out'. A crowdfunding page set up to fund funeral costs has already raised more than 11,000. It reads: 'She was a ray of sunshine to those people who were fortunate to meet her. 'Her beautiful smile mirrors her beautiful heart full of love. Her strong will power to surpass any trial in life and her optimism resonates to everyone.' Mrs Dayrit had worked for the NHS for 16 years after training in her native Philippines. She was described as a 'very dedicated worker' who was often referred to by children of her friends as 'Mummy Lei' or 'second mother'. She grew up with seven siblings in Vigan City, going on to become a community youth leader, student and even a beauty queen. She got her degree in nursing from the University of North Philippines before moving to the UK. Professor Andy Hardy, Chief Executive Officer at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, said in a statement: 'It is with great sadness that I can confirm that a member of staff at the Hospital of St Cross, Rugby has sadly passed away. Pictured: Mrs Ballesteros died at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London 'All our thoughts are with their family, friends and colleagues and we offer them our sincerest condolences. 'The Trust is doing everything it can to support both the family and our staff during this very difficult and distressing time.' He said he could not confirm that Mrs Dayrit tested positive for the virus. Two Filipino hospital porters have also died after contracting COVID-19. Oscar King Jr and Elbert Rico both worked at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. They were both married to other nurses at the hospital, the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust said in a statement. It read: 'It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the deaths of two members of staff, both of whom were porters at the John Radcliffe Hospital and both married to members of our nursing teams. Nurse Gareth Roberts, who came out of retirement to work for the NHS during the crisis, has also died 'Both men were popular and hard-working members of our fantastic team of porters at the John Radcliffe Hospital. 'They will be sorely missed by their colleagues as well as family and friends in the wider community.' Philippine ambassador Antonio Lagdameo, said in a statement: 'Filipino health workers have served tirelessly and courageously at the frontlines of the war against this pandemic, and their contribution to the ongoing effort to save lives is nothing but immense. 'The escalation of confirmed Covid-19 cases and Covid-19-related deaths point out the undeniable truth that this disease is an existential threat even to the most healthy and fit among us.' Tributes have also poured in for other health care workers who have died with Covid-19. Experienced nurse Julie Omar, 52, died after treating patients, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said. She had been self-isolating at home after developing symptoms. Sara Trollope, 51, was confirmed to have died by Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. She had previously met Boris Johnson Trust chief executive Matthew Hopkins said: 'It is with great sorrow that I have to share with you the sad news that a much-loved member of our nursing team - Julie Omar - has died.' Nurse Sara Trollope has died after testing positive for the virus at Watford General Hospital and nurse Gareth Roberts, who had more than 40 years experience, has died, Cardiff and Vale NHS Healthcare Trust said. Mrs Trollope, 51, who has worked at Hillingdon Hospital, died at Watford General Hospital, the Central and North West London (CNWL) NHS Foundation Trust said on Saturday. The mother-of-four had spent 33 years working for the NHS and has been praised for her empathy and support for older people with dementia. Medical director Dr Paul Hopper said: 'Sara had that unbeatable combination of kindness, selflessness and total determination to get things right for patients. She was an example to every one of us.' Tracy Woods, who set up a fundraiser for Mrs Trollope's family, said: 'Sara cared very much about her patients and staff and completely loved her job. 'Sadly it was the job that cost her life.' Nurse Gareth Roberts, who had more than 40 years experience, was also confirmed to have died after testing positive for the virus, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said. Experienced nurse Julie Omar, 52, has died, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said. She had been self-isolating after developing coronavirus-like symptoms Mandy Siddorn, 61, who worked for a pharmacist in the north-west of England died after contracting coronavirus He had come out of retirement to work for the NHS during the crisis. Paying tribute to Mr Roberts, a nurse since the 1980s, colleagues at the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: 'Gareth was well known by everyone and was extremely popular, fun-filled and well-liked person, always greeting everyone with, 'Hello Cariad' when he saw them. Pharmacy worker Mandy Siddorn, 61, from Birkenhead in Merseyside has also died, her employer Swettenham Chemists Ltd has said. They operate branches across Chester, Wirral and north Wales. 'It is with much sadness that we acknowledge the loss of one of our Swettenham 'family', Mandy, who passed away as a result of contracting coronavirus,' the business said. Kevin Smith, who worked putting plaster casts on patients at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, died after catching coronavirus. Colleagues paid tribute to him as an 'incredible person' who 'loved his job' and as a man who was 'renowned for his warm personality' Donna Campbell, 54, tested positive for coronavirus after being admitted into intensive care at University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff. She has been described as a bubbly personality Kevin Smith, who died after a short battle with coronavirus, had worked putting plaster casts on patients at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, South Yorkshire. He had been employed by the NHS for 35 years. His heartbroken daughter Ellie Whitley wrote on social media: 'It's so overwhelming to see so many amazing comments for such an incredible person who loved his job and everyone he worked with for many years. Donna Campbell, 54, worked as a nurse at the Velindre cancer hospital, Cardiff, where she was known for singing and dancing with patients. She had been at the hospital for 20 years after getting her first position there as a volunteer, and was known among staff and patients for her bright and bubbly personality. Ms Campbell was treated in intensive care at University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, after she tested positive for the virus. The Velindre University NHS Trust paid tribute to the nurse who will 'always have a special place in our hearts'. BY: IFEANYI IZEZE Ordinarily, it would have been better to stay comment on the barrage of attacks against the President of Loveworld Incorporated, Rev Chris Oyakhilome, popularly referred to as Pastor Chris, on his message on the 5G internet technology and the corona virus pandemic as well as things that will shortly be but for the now vexing deliberate obfuscation of the facts of what he said and did not say. Is it not tragic that the barrage of smear against the pastor has been coming largely from the same body of Christ he was trying to warn and even rescue from the covert agenda of the devil? How do you explain that? What is consoling though is that none of those attacking him including some preachers of the gospel have bothered to disagree that his teaching using the same Bible available to every believer in Christ was a fairytale. ALSO READ Over 3 billion join Pastor Chris and Benny Hinn to pray against covid 19 global challenge You dont agree with the posit of your brother in Christ and a fellow preacher of the same gospel you bear and the best place for you to lash out on him was through the media. Haba! You make all sorts of attempts as known preachers of the same gospel not only to discredit your fellow servant of God but to turn even unbelievers against him and his ministry? Check yourself well on what you believe and teach the souls God assigned to you to nurture. Now, despite the deliberate attempts to twist Pastor Chris comments on the relationship between the 5G Internet Technology and the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic, let us even look at the smear thats being dished out to the public. Did Pastor Chris ever say 5G is corona virus? No! So where did these opposing preachers got that from if not to deliberately smear and pitch him against the people? Rather he explained that the rolling out of 5G and the corona pandemic are two different modules of the same scheme. The video is there in the public domain to crosscheck. What he said without mincing words was that 5G has a very dangerous effect on the human body but those who are behind its creation are not doing enough proper research on how to mitigate or even completely stop the dangerous effect of this technology rather they are just about its benefits. He expressed his suspicion that the death recorded in China (Wuhan Province) may not really be corona virus caused rather it might be the fallout of the deployment of the 5G internet technology. Whether the critics want to accept this or not, it is a fact that Christ Embassy has one of the largest internet multimedia platform and App content employing the highest level of technology to reach billions of people around the globe, on every available media format. This is in addition to uncountable ministry websites and mobile applications for different departments and functions. Christ Embassy owns about five functional Satellite Television channels including the Loveworld USA, Loveworld Plus, Loveworld Sat, Loveworld TV UK, and Loveworld MENA (Middle East and North Africa). All of these satellite stations can be viewed on the internet. The Rhapsody of Realities, the most widely distributed daily devotional in the world today, is downloadable in more than 1000 translations, and is available and read in almost every country or territory of the world. Go and dispute that, if you wish. So, if there will be anyone, much willing and much eager to embrace the 5G technology, it will be Pastor Chris because 5G internet connectivity obviously will be more attractive to effectively manage all these ministry platforms. Does any of the critics have any doubt that all these things happening now is showing how close we (The Church) are to the rapture? Are they contending that the push for the idea to insert a chip in everyone through vaccination is one of the actualization of the agenda of the Antichrist which are: One World Government; One World Economy and; One World Religion? If this is clearly stated in the same Bible that both Pastor Chris and these other preachers use, how come none of the critics showing any level of concern on the covert arrangement or they dont believe its true? What does Ezekiel Chapter 33 verse 6 means to them? ALSO READ Pastor Chris Oyakhilome donates tuition free school, health centre to community God told Ezekiel, Son of man, I have made you a watchman. Is it no longer the duty of a watchman to warn the people of impending danger? How does God use the role of a watchman to warn and teach? If none of these critics has any doubt about this, so what wrong did Pastor do by opening the eyes of the believers to these facts? How do you explain that rather than see Pastor Chris revelations and the subsequent organizing of global prayers for Christians (with over 3 billion people participating) to come together and stop the plan of the devil ahead of his time, it has since been a barrage of attacks not from unbelievers, no, but from the very household of faith that is supposed to be concerned about the unfolding agenda? So how do we hope to haul souls into the kingdom if we dont love one another? Can any of the critics come out to disagree that this proposed vaccine implant with digital identification is not supposed to be happening now rather till after the rapture of the church? We know that this plan would be carried out in full effect where laws would be made to force people to get the vaccination which is the introduction of the chip (Mark of the beast) but should not be allowed to happen until the church is gone. Pastor Chris to me only opened our eyes to the truth in the gospel. All I can see is exactly the Prophets experience in Daniel chapter 10 verse 7 when a thing was revealed only to the Man of God Daniel. And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. There is no doubt something was revealed to the Man of God Pastor Chris and on the basis of that he has warned his spiritual children and the Church of Jesus Christ at large. So, let he that has an ear hear and those with a discerning heart understand what the Spirit is saying to The Churches. The earlier the body of Christ understood the character of the adversary the devil, the better for the ministry of reconciliation which God committed to their trust. God bless you all. PV: 0 But after a few weeks, when he said he was coming to Chicago, they arranged to have dinner. I thought, This is someone Im going to enjoy getting to know, Floren said. She was disappointed when the supposed Gibson got in too late to see her, then apologetically said he had just landed a big job in Europe and had to leave at once, postponing their date. As the United Kingdom continues to grapple with the surge of the coronavirus, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II gave her first-ever Easter message to uplift the spirit of her countrymen. Queen Elizabeth II delivered a heartfelt message to her fellow Britons saying that although some activities and traditions have been suspended, Easter celebrations will never be canceled as "we need Easter as much as ever." The Queen Expresses Hope Amid COVID-19 In the official Instagram account of the Royal Family, a two-minute video was posted. It showed a flickering candle with a calm voiceover from the Queen as she expressed her hope amid the pandemic. The 93-year-old monarch remained optimistic that "coronavirus will not overcome us." "As dark as death can be-particularly for those suffering with grief-light and life are greater," she added. "May the living flame of Easter hope be a steady guide as we face the future." Moreover, as the health crisis swept across the world, the longest-reigning monarch emphasized in her speech that her message was not just for Christians, but for all the religions and cultures -- as it may symbolize resilience and hope that "unite us all." Long Live the Queen Royal watchers were impressed by the Queen's touching message, with one netizen even wishing they had Queen Elizabeth II. "This touched me very deeply. The light will lead us. I wish we ( American) had a queen," the commenter said. Others thanked the head of the monarchy for her comforting words during these devastating moments. U.S. President Trump Praises The Queen Last week, the 93-year-old head of the monarchy drew praise after she delivered a rare and historic nation address to shut down anxieties over the spread of the coronavirus in the U.K. Queen Elizabeth II acknowledged the sacrifices of frontliners, key workers and medical staff for their support and hard work to combat the pandemic. Moreover, different personalities such as politicians, celebrities, and other prominent people flocked on Twitter to commend the Queen for her emotional speech. U.S President Donald Trump was in awe of Her Majesty's powerful nation's address. "A great & wonderful woman!" Trump wrote. Good Morning Britain's Piers Morgan, meanwhile, thanked the royal for her "magnificent speech" and even branded her fourth nation address as her "finest moment." Britain Might Surpass Italy's Number Of Fatalities Due to Coronavirus Currently, the U.K has reached more than 84,000 confirmed cases while fatalities surpassed 10,000. Following this, the government and health officials fear that they will end up as the country with the most number of death tolls in Europe. Prime Minister Boris Johnson Released from ICU The U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on the other hand, was released from the hospital one week after he was admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19. According to the 55-year-old PM, it "could have gone either way" as he thanked the healthcare staff for saving his life. He added that he witnessed the "personal courage" of the frontliners as they dealt with the dreaded virus. It was reported that the British leader spent three nights in ICU and was being taken care of two nurses -- Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal. Amid the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, Prince William on April 13 said that Britain is at its best in a crisis. While speaking with a community charity in Northern England, which runs meals on wheels, the Duke of Cambridge said, I think Britain is at its best when faced with a crisis. He further added, "We all pull together and that community spirit comes rushing back quicker than anything else. In conversation with: @MoorlandsGoole in Yorkshire, who are providing freshly cooked hot meals to isolated people, about the challenges they are facing and how they are using National Emergencies Trust @NatEmergTrust funding to support their community #NETCoronavirusAppeal pic.twitter.com/1p9oYLZGjq Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) April 13, 2020 READ: UK Health Secretary: New NHS App For Contact Tracing In Development Prince William becomes patron of NET The video call with the organisation comes after Britain recorded more than 10,000 fatalities due to the deadly coronavirus. The United Kingdom has also reported nearly 84,279 confirmed COVID-19 cases. While the government is doing everything to contain the spread of the virus, Prince William, on the other hand, became the patron of the National Emergencies Trust (NET) for 2020. An official statement read, The Duke of Cambridge has become Patron of the National Emergencies Trust (NET) for 2020. The announcement came as The Duke spoke with grassroots charities who are recipients of the NETs Coronavirus Appeal. The Duke of Cambridge has become Patron of the National Emergencies Trust @NatEmergTrust for 2020: https://t.co/bH7vvmnQbx Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) April 12, 2020 READ: After UK PM's Scare & Queen's Speech, Liverpool's 'King Kenny' Delights With Covid Return The NET seeks to coordinate with not-for-profit organisations to direct public donations to specific appeals and to distribute funds fairly and efficiently. As Prince William launched the NET Coronavirus Appeal in March, the organisation was able to raise millions of pounds. The charitable sector responds to national emergencies and works collaboratively with charities and other bodies to direct public donations to NET appeals. As coronavirus is reading rapidly across the UK, the Royal family is doing their bit to help the government overcome the crisis. While Prince William is working with NET, Prince Charles, on the other hand, recently opened a new 4,000-bed temporary hospital in a conference centre in east London. According to the official NHS website, the hospital is built in Bristol and Harrogate to provide beds if local services need them during the peak of coronavirus. (Image source: AP) READ: After Tintin's Role During UK PM Boris Johnson's Covid Recovery, Official Fan Page Reacts READ: UK Pledges Additional 200 Mn To WHO, Other Charities To Help Stop Second Coronavirus Wave Delhi police on Monday said they have sent a constable to district lines for beating two men on a scooter during lockdown with a baton following an argument in Shahdara. A video of the incident in Jagatpuri area early on April 10 had gone viral on the internet. The two men on a scooter were stopped by a policeman in uniform and they are seen engaging in an argument. When the men abused the policeman, he called the constable Mukesh, who was standing nearby. Mukesh then beat the two men with a baton, police said. "After the video surfaced online, we took action against the constable and he has been sent to district lines," a senior police official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the United States. [Photo/Xinhua] China's top diplomat in the United States refuted the claims that his country has underreported the number of COVID-19 cases and related deaths, suggesting instead that the accusers usually have things under their "dirty carpet". Ambassador Cui Tiankai, in an interview with Ian Bremmer at the weekly digital and broadcast show Gzero World, also said that the majority of the several million people believed to have left Wuhan before the capital of Central China's Hubei was locked down on Jan 23 to combat the novel coronavirus had actually remained within China, instead of traveling elsewhere and spreading the virus. The program began airing nationally over the weekend on US public television. "For the accusations that China is hiding the numbers, just think about it. We have such a huge population, such a big country, you cannot hide the cases with such a very vicious virus," Cui said in the interview on April 3. "Because if you have patients, they are just patients. If people are infected, they're just infected, how can you hide them?" Cui told Bremmer, president and founder of Gzero Media and Eurasia Group. As for those people and some institutions accusing China of concealing, Cui suggested that if looking at their own history, normally they are the people and institutions who are "always hiding and concealing" something from the public. He was not asked to elaborate on who the accusers are. "I don't know what is under their dirty carpet. Maybe you could have a look," he said. Cui offered a brief timeline of reporting of what later was categorized as COVID-19 in Wuhan, saying that before Li Wenliang, an eye doctor who sounded the alarm about the infection, another doctor, also in the city, had reported suspicious cases of people running fevers for unknown reasons. Three days after the woman doctor put forward the reporting, the local CDC sent an alert to all the local hospitals to say that there were suspicious cases of unknown cause, according to the ambassador. "The first reporting was on December 27 last year. Then on January 3, we informed the World Health Organization of this particular situation," Cui said. "Then a day after that, the CDCs of our two countries had their first communication." Then when people came to realize the virus could be transmitted between human beings, even before that, the central government sent experts to Wuhan to look at the suspicious cases, Cui noted. "When they came to realize that this is transmittable between human beings, we locked down the whole city of Wuhan with 10 million people," he said. The lockdown actually expanded to the whole of Hubei with 60 million population. Two days after the lockdown of Wuhan, the United States evacuated its consulate in Wuhan, along with its citizens. Then in early February, the US stopped all travelers, whether Chinese or foreigners, from China who had been in China for the last 14 days. No new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in Hubei on Saturday, the local health authority said on Sunday. No new deaths were reported in the province, where the number of COVID-19 patients in severe and critical condition, most of whom were in Wuhan, dropped to 93 on Saturday from a peak of more than 10,000 in February. The overall cure rate of COVID-19 in Wuhan has been improved to 94 percent, with that of patients aged above 80 nearing 70 percent, according to the latest official figures. Cui said Chinese people are working very hard to restart the economy and restore economic and social activities, with many of companies working, the shops and school in many provinces open again. "So you cannot do all these things if you have no confidence that you are able to contain the virus," Cui said. "And the number of infected people is coming down; this is quite clear." In the interview, Bremmer asked about the whereabouts of some 5 million Chinese from Wuhan, who, after the lockdown, the mayor of Wuhan was widely quoted as saying were traveling "during the period of time that we now know that this virus was starting to explode". Cui did not confirm the number, but said that even if a large number of people left Wuhan before the lockdown, he thought the "overwhelming majority" of them didn't have visas to go to any other country; because they left in a hurry, they just didn't have time to apply for visas. So if they left Wuhan, most of them must have stayed in China. But the confirmed cases in other Chinese provinces, even those close to Wuhan, are not very high, meaning China has effectively contained the spread of the virus within China, according to the ambassador. "So I don't think people could put the blame on us for the increasing number in countries far, far away from China," he said. "Maybe they are from elsewhere." SACRAMENTO, Calif., April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 pandemic has caught the world off-guard, and California is no exception. Over three million Californians are out of work, and the state is completely overwhelmed with a record number of unemployment claims. With these substantial disruptions to the economy, Californians United to Protect Insurance Discounts (CUPID) is calling on the California Department of Insurance (CDI) to cease any action or pass any regulation that would cause consumers to lose auto & home insurance discounts. "Many members of my community are worried about day-to-day expenses as their workplaces cut back or completely eliminate hours," stated Gloria Colazo, CUPID member head of the Ecuadorian-American California Chamber of Commerce and Vice-Chair, Board of Directors St. Jude Health Centers. "Now is not the time to be adding one more burden on consumers by threatening to take away discounts that make insurance more affordable." Californians now face financial uncertainties and concerns, from layoffs to reduced hours to unexpected medical expenses. Our frontline workforce, namely those in healthcare, emergency services and law enforcement, have no choice but to risk exposure to this virus. Under the proposed regulations, many unaffiliated workers, including some in health care, would lose their eligibility for affinity group discounts and be forced to pay more for their insurance. "The over 25,000 students and retirees joining California's new Health Corps won't be eligible for affinity group discounts under the CDI's proposed reforms," says Walter Contreras, Vice President of the Western Chapter of National Latino Evangelical Coalition. "This should not be how we treat those on the frontline of this crisis." With so much at risk during the current public health crisis, the Department of Insurance should listen to all parties in this debate, especially those with most at stake. State and local Counties are helping citizens by delaying or reassessing regulations during this time of needCUPID hopes the California Department of Insurance will make the same commitment. Californians United to Protect Insurance Discounts is a broad-based coalition of local business groups, community-based organizations, unions, faith leaders and property casualty insurers working together to protect affinity group programs permitted under current law to which insurers provide insurance discounts throughout California. Learn more at: http://www.protectourdiscounts.org SOURCE Californians United to Protect Insurance Discounts Related Links https://www.protectourdiscounts.org ALBANY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the governors of six other northeast states on Monday announced they are forming a multi-state task force to develop a plan to reopen their economies in conjunction with efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump, in a response to the effort on Twitter, pushed back on the move by governors to coordinate restarting their economies. "It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons," Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon. "With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!" The political conflict arose as the rate of infection and death are continuing to flatten in New York, but an additional 671 people died on Easter Sunday, pushing the number of New York fatalities associated with COVID-19 to 10,056. Still, there has been a leveling in the rate of new and total hospitalizations, as well as the number of patients being placed on ventilators. Cuomo led the effort to form the consortium with the states of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, saying that health and economic leaders from each state, along with each governor's chief of staff, would coordinate their efforts to restart the economy. Late Monday, Massachusetts' officials announced they would also join the consortium. "Nobody has been here before, nobody has all the answers," Cuomo said, adding that he is open to the president taking the lead if there is a solid plan and clear direction given to the states. "Let's see what the federal government's plan is. ... He left it to the states to close down ... without any guidance really. If they want to change the model, they can change the model. He's the president of the United States." Cuomo acknowledged it is a "federally declared disaster" that puts the federal government largely in charge of the pandemic response, but he noted Trump had left it to governors to determine when and how to close their businesses and schools. States also led the effort to coordinate the containment and health care responses. "Let him change the model consistent with the Constitution ... but then change the model and explain it," Cuomo said. "You want to change the management model, you can do that as president, but, what is the model? ... This was not smooth sailing." The governor noted there are many hurdles ahead before the economy can be fully restarted, including whether there will be enough transportation workers or how schools should be reopened in conjunction with businesses. "You can do it any number of ways, but it has to be clearly defined," Cuomo said. "I have to be able to tell the cities what to do ... the counties what to do ... because each one of them wants to come up with their own plan." The multi-state task force was announced jointly during a conference call aired on national cable television between Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Delaware Gov. John Carney, and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo. "I think were going to show the people of the United States how you come out of something as devastating as this in a responsible fashion," Wolf said. Murphy noted that his state is dealing with an increasing rate of infections and is lagging behind New York, which has flattened in the past week in terms of hospitalizations and deaths. "This is the fight of our lives, let there be no doubt about it, and were not out of the woods yet," Murphy said. In a news conference Monday morning, Cuomo cautioned that "12 to 18 months ... when we have a vaccine, that is when it is over ... so let's calibrate our expectations." "For me, Im Catholic, Easter Sunday is the high holy day in many ways and ... to have this happen over this weekend is really, really especially tragic," Cuomo said. "It's very simple, its about density. . That virus is very good at what it does. It is a killer. The dense environments are its feeding grounds." The restarting of the economy will require a coordinated effort that will involve mass transportation, schools and businesses. "It has never been done before," he said. "We are easing isolation. We want to increase economic activity. That will happen, essentially, through a recalibration of what are our essential workers. We never turned off the economy. The economy is functioning. We never turned it off; we turned it way, way down. The essential services have all been operating." Multiple states will need to monitor the infection rate and the number of daily hospitalizations as any restart is unfolding to be certain that another outbreak is not taking place. "If you see that infection rate start ticking up then you know you have opened the valve to fast. That is the delicate balance that we have to work through," he said. "I'm not interested in political opinion, Im interested in what the experts tell you about this." Cuomo said the wider the geographic area that is part of the plan the better it will work. "This is a time for smart, competent, effective government," he said. The governor again pointed to scientific projection models to explain why, in recent weeks, he had asserted that New York's hospital system would be overrun and that the health care system would fall far short of the potential need for up to 140,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients. The rate of hospitalization has not approached those worse-case scenarios, but Cuomo attributed that to compliance with the social distancing orders and closures of schools and non-essential businesses. "I can say to the people of this state, we did everything we could to the best of our ability," he said. "I want it over. I want to get out of the house, I want to get back to normalcy. . I'm afraid to touch people, this violates the human nature and needs." University College Cork (UCC) has developed a remote early-warning system to detect Covid-19 symptoms in frontline medical staff at Cork University Hospital. The Covid-19 Remote Early Warning System (CREW), which has been developed with a software firm, remotely identifies those who may be developing a temperature and who shouldn't go to work. The healthcare worker wears a digital thermometer sensor to measure body temperature and an alarm is generated if it gets too high. "What we've done is linked up wearable technologies where there's an under-the-arm temperature monitor and wearable device that can monitor your heart rate and excercise and movement," said Director of the Assert Centre at UCC, Professor Barry O'Reilly, explaining how it works. "By amalgamating all that, you can see if someone is developing a temperature which is one of the first signs of Covid infection." Gang Hwa suffered from depression when Yu Ri died five years ago. He lost appetite and declined to do surgery to any patients. He almost gave up his life. When he met Min Jeong, his routine changed. She helped him get on with his life back again. The exorcist told him that Yu Ri, for five years, became a wandering ghost. Gang Hwa discovered that Yu Ri was with him and Seo Woo ever since. Yu Ri explained to Gang Hwa that he needs to let go of her. His life now is with Min Jeong and a new family to start with. Yu Ri explained to Gang Hwa that Seo Woo can see ghosts because of her. This makes Seo Woo special, and the exorcist wanted to bring her soul out of this world. Meanwhile, Min Jeong worried why Gang Hwa and Seo Woo were not yet at home since they went out the whole day. She went to Hyun Jung's restaurant to check. Seo Woo ran to her as her voice echoes the place. Hyun Jung explained that Gang Hwa let Seo Woo with them as he needed to go to the hospital for an urgent call. The next day, Yu Ri sought help from Dong Daek (shaman) about what to do to protect Seo Woo from the exorcist. Dong Daek advised her to continue what she plans for her family. Sooner, Seo Woo will be able to overcome her ability to see ghosts in her own eyes. Gang Hwa started to watch Seo Woo all night and followed her everywhere in the house. His thoughts of what Yu Ri told him about the exorcist give him more strength to protect Seo Woo. Min Jeong asked him why he requested to get another pick-up helper not to hire Yu Ri anymore. Gang Hwa told her to visit the hospital later afternoon so they could talk. Gang Hwa decided to say to her about Yu Ri. Min Jeong bought two pieces of friendship bracelets for Yu Ri and Hyun Jung. She got more close to them and she enjoys their presence. After her class, Yu Ri took Seo Woo to the park and met her grandfather. Moo Poong played with Seo Woo the whole time. Yu Ri went to the convenience store to buy drinks. Moo Poong left Seo Woo at the bench while he helped a beggar. Seo Woo saw young children passing by and she followed them. When Yu Ri returned to the park, Moo Poong was shouting Seo Woo's name. They tried to look around and they never found Seo Woo. Yu Ro called Min Jeong to inform her of Seo Woo's disappearance. Gang Hwa went with her to the park. They all looked for Seo Woo the whole afternoon until evening. Min Jeong cried hard as Gang Hwa hugged and comforted her. Yu Ri arrived and saw the couple. She asked for forgiveness of her carelessness. A young ghost came to Yu Ri's attention and signaled her to a place in the playground. She ran towards the slide and went up the stairs. She found Seo Woo lying inside the small area of the slide. Min Jeong followed her and saw Seo Woo. Seo Woo got lost in the park while she tried to follow a group of young children. The exorcist came to the other side of the road and saw her. He walked towards Seo Woo. Dae Chul, Bong Yun and their daughter Young Shim saw what happened with Seo Woo. They tried to distract the exorcist and hide Seo Woo up in the slide. They are a family of ghosts who followed their son after they died due to a car accident. The exorcist asked them about Seo Woo, but they didn't answer back. The exorcist lost his patience and told the family that they will be sent to heaven and leave the human world. Min Jeong upset with what happened. She told Yu Ri not to come and see Seo Woo anymore. As Gang Hwa puts Seo Woo to bed, Min Jeong asks him why he always says not to worry about anything and that things will be fine. He explained that Yu Ri, the pick-up helper, is Seo Woo's biological mother. He went on and told her that Yu Ri came back to life, leaving Min Jeong speechless. She then thought of her memories with Yu Ri and Hyun Jung. Its estimated that there are over 4 million unauthorized immigrants who file taxes each year contributing millions of dollars to the U.S. Unemployed workers or Social Security beneficiaries who dont earn enough to pay taxes are eligible for part of the $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief package President Donald Trump signed into law on March 27. However, the millions of immigrants who pay taxes but do not have legal status will not. I was appalled to learn hardworking, taxpaying immigrants were left out of the $2 trillion CARES Act. These taxpayers work in critical sectors of our economy, like agriculture, and contribute greatly to our country, said Rep. Lou Correa. The coronavirus doesnt care about a persons wealth, job, or immigration status. By casting out immigrants, we are placing some of our most vulnerable residents in grave danger. According to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, non-U.S. citizens with a Social Security number who live and work here, including green card holders and workers using visas such as H-1B and H-2A, are eligible to receive checks. Immigrants who do not have a Social Security number file taxes using whats known as a taxpayer identification number. They do this because they see it as an opportunity to contribute and to prove their economic contribution to the U.S. and to document their residency, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Carmen Contreras Lopez is a 48-year-old housekeeper who told The Associated Press that she files a tax return each year even though she earns a low wage. Because of social distancing orders, she has lost the majority of her clients and is now in need of financial support, like many in the current pandemic. A single unemployed taxpayer earning up to $75,000 will receive $1,200. Those with children under 17 will receive an additional $500 for each child. Married taxpayers filing jointly and earning up to $150,000 will receive $2,400 and also benefit from the $500 extra for each kid. Contreras Lopez has lived in the U.S. for 30 years with four grown children who are U.S. citizens. Its hard because to the government, we dont exist, said Contreras Lopez. Most taxpayers can expect coronavirus stimulus checks in mid-April and the IRS is set to launch a new tool to help track the direct payments. House painter Jose Martinez sits in his home Friday, April 3, 2020, in Greenfield, Mass. "The check would have given me the opportunity to stay at home, avoid sickness and keep my family safe," Martinez said, referring to the stimulus money. "But I have to keep looking for work and exposing us to risk. I don't know what else to do." The $2.2 trillion package that Congress approved to offer financial help during the coronavirus pandemic has one major exclusion: millions of immigrants who do not have legal status in the U.S. but work here and pay taxes. (AP Photo/David Goldman)AP A day laborer near Los Angeles, Maria Zamorano has also been left without work because of the pandemic and spoke to the New York Times about her situation. Ill go crazy with despair, said Zamorano after receiving a call from an employer that had to cancel. She works seven days a week and takes home roughly $100 a day. She said that after the article was published in the Times that two of her former employers continued to pay her. But she said in an interview with Associated Press, she still doesnt have enough cash for food, rent and bills. Greenfield, Massachusetts, resident Jose Martinez told the Associated Press that the stimulus check could have covered a month of expenses. Martinez, who crossed the border from Mexico 15 years ago, came to Greenfield and has been working as a house painter and a part-time dishwasher at a local restaurant that is now closed. He said he is owed $500 by his boss for previous work. The check would have given me the opportunity to stay at home, avoid sickness and keep my family safe, said Martinez, who has a 4-year-old daughter. But I have to keep looking for work and exposing us to risk. I dont know what else to do. Related Content: India has started shipping the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to the United States after President Donald Trump touted it as a potential weapon to fight against the coronavirus. India being the worlds largest producer of HCQ has banned its export last month to secure its own supplies. Take a look on the pictures below to know what is hydroxychloroquine and why is it in debate now. (Image: News18 Creative) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says he believes the worst is over as hospitalisations appear to plateau. China has reported the highest number of new coronavirus cases (108) in nearly six weeks. The death rate in Italy, Spain and France three of the countries worst-affected by the coronavirus appears to be slowing. New York states death toll tops 10,000 Russia records its highest daily jump in coronavirus cases with 2,558 new infections. Globally, more than 118,000 people have died while more than 446,000 have recovered, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Monday, April 13 22:15 GMT Trump plays campaign-style video defending his coronavirus response Amid criticism over Donald Trumps response to the coronavirus, the US president played a campaign style video put together by White House staffers defending his actions. The criticism comes after recent reports suggested that the White House was warned of the potential deadly cost of the viruss spread before taking action and putting in place mitigation efforts. Trump had previously denied seeing a January 30 memo by a senior US official warning of mass casualties and economic devastation from the new coronavirus, months before the pandemic began inflicting thousands of deaths in the US. Trump had also denied knowing about US intelligence warnings that were reportedly made as early as November about a contagion that had the potential to lead to a cataclysmic event. Asked about the report last week, Trump said he learned about the gravity of the crisis shortly before announcing travel restrictions on China on January 31. 22:00 GMT Fauci says Trump listened to his advice about coronavirus mitigation Top US health expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on Monday that President Donald Trump listened to his advice when he recommended that mitigation efforts be taken to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Fauci made the comments after saying in a separate interview that lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner during the novel coronavirus outbreak. Trump retweeted a call to fire Fauci after that interview, but the White House said on Monday Trump did not intend to part ways with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 21:00 GMT IMF to provide debt relief for 25 countries The International Monetary Fund said it would provide immediate debt service relief to 25 member countries under its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust to allow them to focus their scarce resources on fighting the coronavirus pandemic. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in a statement said the Funds executive board on Monday approved the first batch of countries to receive grants to cover their debt service obligations to the Fund for an initial six months. She said the CCRT currently had about $500m in resources, including new pledges of $185m from Britain, $100m from Japan, and undisclosed amounts from China, the Netherlands and others. The Fund is pushing to raise the amount available to $1.4bn. 20:20 GMT Coronavirus: Why are Africans in China being targeted? African students and expatriates in China have reportedly been evicted from their homes, tested for coronavirus several times and are being shunned in public. The incidents have sparked a diplomatic dispute with the African Union, African governments and the United States. So, is this a new form of racism? Or is it just Beijing trying to curb the pandemic? Watch here. 19:39 GMT G20 health ministers to speak next week about coronavirus Health ministers from the Group of 20 major economies will speak by video conference on April 19 to address the impact of the new coronavirus on the global health sector and society, the Saudi G20 secretariat said. The meeting follows last months virtual meeting of G20 leaders, who tasked the health ministers with sharing national best practices and developing a set of urgent actions for the G20 to jointly combat the pandemic. 18:31 GMT Nigeria to extend lockdowns for 14 more days Nigeria will extends lockdowns in Lagos, Abuja and Ogun states for an additional 14 days to combat the new coronavirus, President Muhammadu Buhari said in an address to the nation. Initial 14-day lockdowns in the three states began on March 30. Buhari said it was crucial to extend the lockdown due to an alarming increase in positive cases in a number of states . It is a matter of life and death, Buhari said of the nations response. 18:28 GMT Frances Macron extends lockdown until May 11 French President Emmanuel Macron announced he was extending a virtual lockdown to curb the coronavirus outbreak until May 11, adding that progress had been made but the battle not yet won. Over the next four weeks, the rules must be respected, the president said in a televised address to the nation. He said that by May 11, France would be able to test every citizen presenting COVID-19 symptoms. 17:56 GMT South Africa cases rise to 2,272, deaths at 27 South Africa has recorded 99 new coronavirus cases, taking the total in the country to 2,272, health minister Zweli Mkhike said. The country has also recorded a further two deaths from the virus, increasing the death toll to 27, Mkhize told participants of a Zoom meeting with media, scientists, academics and others that was also broadcast on television. 17:55 GMT French death toll rises by 574 to 14,967 The death toll in France from the new coronavirus outbreak has risen to 14,967 from 14,393 a day earlier, the French public health authority said. The body added 6,821 patients were currently in intensive care units, down from 6,845 on Sunday. The health authority said it was important to remain vigilant because hospitals were still taking in a very large number of patients. 17:20 GMT UK expects deaths curve to plateau for 2-3 weeks Britain should expect the number of daily deaths from coronavirus to continue to rise this week, followed by a plateau for a period of two to three weeks, the governments chief scientific adviser said. Youd expect that (the plateau) to go on for two or three weeks but I cant be absolutely sure on the time of that, said Patrick Vallance at a daily government news conference. After the plateau, the number of daily deaths should begin to decrease, he added. 16:43 GMT Turkeys death toll rises by 98 to 1,296 Turkeys confirmed cases of the coronavirus increased by 4,093 in the past 24 hours, and another 98 people have died, taking the death toll to 1,296, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said. The total number of cases in the country stood at 61,049, he said. A total of 3,957 people have recovered so far, and the number of tests carried out over the past 24 hours was 34,456, the minister said. 16:16 GMT In Pictures: The effects of lockdown in Bangladesh The nationwide general holiday in Bangladesh has been extended until April 25 as the country tries to contain the spread of the coronavirus. See the pictures here. Half of the infections in Bangladesh were reported in the capital Dhaka [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera] 16:12 GMT Ukraine president offers $1m for virus vaccine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised a $1m reward to the countrys scientists if they manage to develop a coronavirus vaccine, his spokeswoman said. The president believes a million dollars is a good incentive, his spokeswoman Yuliya Mendel said in a statement sent to AFP news agency, with the aim being to develop a vaccine that would save hundreds of thousands of lives. Zelenskyy really wants Ukrainian scientists to work more actively towards developing medicines that will help the whole world, Mendel said. 16:10 GMT Turkey to impose fresh lockdown next weekend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would impose a fresh lockdown next weekend as part of measures to halt the spread of COVID-19, having locked down 31 provinces last weekend. Erdogan was speaking after a cabinet meeting. The 48-hour curfew lifted overnight covered all the countrys major cities including its commercial hub Istanbul, which is home to 16 million residents. A cyclist crosses a street on Park Avenue, remaining nearly empty in New York City [Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu] 15:51 GMT New York state virus death toll passes 10,000 The death toll from the new coronavirus in New York state the US epicentre of the deadly pandemic has passed 10,000, Governor Andrew Cuomo said. Cuomo said 671 people had died in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities in the state to 10,056. He also said that he believed the worst is over as hospitalisations appeared to be reaching a plateau. 15:48 GMT Singapore confirms 386 cases in biggest daily jump Singapores health ministry confirmed another 386 cases of coronavirus infections in the city-states biggest daily jump, taking its total to 2,918. A large number of the new cases are linked to outbreaks in migrant workers dormitories. 15:44 GMT Canada coronavirus deaths rise by almost nine percent to 734 The number of people killed by the coronavirus in Canada rose by almost nine percent in a day to 734, official data posted by the public health agency showed. By 11am eastern time (15:00 GMT), the total number of those diagnosed with the coronavirus had risen to 24,804. The respective figures at the same time on Sunday were 674 deaths and 23,719 positive diagnoses. 15:00 GMT Russia must prepare for worst-case scenario: Putin The coronavirus situation is getting worse in Russia, President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Monday, adding that the Defence Ministrys resources, such as assistance by military medical staff, would be used to tackle the crisis if needed. Putin, who was speaking at a meeting with senior officials broadcast on state television, said the situation was constantly changing and that the next few weeks would prove decisive in its battle to halt the contagion. He said preparations must anticipate any possible scenarios, including the most difficult and extraordinary. Read more here. 14:10 GMT The life of a New York City doctor A lonely waiting-room chair sits in a quiet hallway between the ambulance bay and the trauma room at a hospital in New York Citys Manhattan borough. This is where Dr Cleavon Gilman goes to make the phone calls he dreads most. They know when I call them up, what Im about to say next, he tells Al Jazeera. I say that your [loved one] has died, and its almost like, a shock first: What? And then this shrill cry and sobbing on the phone. Read more here. Dr Cleavon Gilman sits in the chair where he makes his hardest calls [Courtesy of Dr Cleavon Gilman] 14:06 GMT US sailor from coronavirus-hit ship dies A US Navy sailor died after contracting the coronavirus, marking the first death of a sailor assigned to the coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. The sailor, who had been admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in Guam last week, died from coronavirus-related complications, the Navy said in a statement. Read more here. 14:04 GMT UK death toll rises to 11,329, up by 717 A total of 11,329 people have died in hospitals across the United Kingdom after testing positive for coronavirus, up by 717 in a day, the health ministry said. The number of confirmed cases has risen by 4,342 to a national tally of 88,621. The deaths numbers are as of 5pm (16:00 GMT) on Sunday, while the confirmed cases numbers are as of 9am (08:00 GMT) on Monday. 14:01 GMT Hello, I am Tamila Varshalomidze in Doha, taking over the blog from my colleague Saba Aziz. 12:30 GMT US Democrats call on Republicans for coronavirus bill The two top Democrats in the US Congress called on Republicans to work towards new bipartisan coronavirus legislation, citing a lack of funding for the national testing needed to begin to reopen the US economy. Two days ago, Republicans renewed their push for a $250bn measure to help small businesses cope with the pandemic while doubling down on their opposition to Democratic efforts to broaden the legislation to include other provisions. It is long past time for President Trump get coronavirus testing under control. This needs to happen immediately. Democrats fought for free coronavirus testing. And we wont stop fighting to ensure that Americans are getting tested so we can beat this pandemic. Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 13, 2020 We have real problems facing this country, and its time for the Republicans to quit the political posturing by proposing bills they know will not pass either chamber and get serious and work with us towards a solution, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement. 12:25 GMT UK conducts 18,000 tests in 24 hours A total of 18,000 tests for coronavirus were conducted in the UK in 24 hours and the country was making good progress towards its target of 100,000 daily tests, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. The spokesman said the 18,000 figure applied to the 24 hours up to 08:00 GMT on Sunday and excluded Northern Ireland. New capacity is coming on stream all of the time and I think we are making good progress, the spokesman said. 12:10 GMT UKs Johnson focused on recovery British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will follow medical advice on when he should return to work, his spokesman said, declining to speculate on how long his full recovery from the coronavirus might take. He was only released from hospital yesterday and any decisions which he makes in relation to when he returns to government work will be following the advice of his medical team, the spokesman said. Johnson tested negative for coronavirus before he left St Thomas Hospital in central London on Sunday and is continuing his recovery at his country residence of Chequers, the spokesman added 12:00 GMT Indonesian Muslims advised to limit Ramadan activities Indonesias top Islamic scholars urged Muslims in the country to follow government advice and limit religious activities to their homes during Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. The Indonesian Ulema Council clarified the provision was not intended to curb prayers and worship during Ramadan, but was only a measure to help the country in its fight against COVID-19. Keep the house as the centre of activity and avoid concentration of worshippers in one spot, said Asrorun Niam Sholeh, a spokesman for the council. 11:55 GMT Pope: Protect women from domestic violence during lockdowns Pope Francis said society had to stand behind female victims of domestic violence, as abuse increased around the world during coronavirus lockdowns. The pope, speaking on a religious and national holiday in Italy and other countries, praised women in frontline roles in helping society weather the crisis, mentioning doctors, nurses, police officers, prison guards and sales staff in stores selling essential goods. Pope Francis led the Easter Vigil Mass in St Peters Basilica at the Vatican behind closed doors due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease [Remo Casilli/EPA-EFE] But, speaking from his official library rather than from a window overlooking St Peters Square, Francis said: Sometimes they (women) risk being victims of violence in a cohabitation that they bear like a weight that is far too heavy. Let us pray for them, so the Lord grants them strength and that our communities support them along with their families, he said. 11:20 GMT Three Turkish prisoners die of coronavirus Three Turkish prisoners have died from the coronavirus, Turkeys justice minister said, as he announced the first cases of convicts diagnosed with the disease. A total of 17 convicts in five open prisons have contracted the virus, Abdulhamit Gul told reporters in the capital, Ankara. Three of them unfortunately died during their treatment in hospital, he said. Read more here. 10:30 GMT Spain loosens lockdown restrictions Hundreds of thousands of people were allowed to return to work for the first time since a coronavirus outbreak in Spain caused the government to impose a lockdown, according to dpa news agency. People in regions of Spain where Easter Monday is not a national holiday were allowed to leave their homes to go to work in a slight relaxation of a lockdown that has been in place since last month. Some businesses, including construction and manufacturing, were allowed to reopen, but most of the population is still confined to their homes, and shops, bars and public spaces will remain closed until at least April 26. Lockdown restrictions have helped slow a spiralling death rate that reached its peak in early April [Burak Akbulut/Anadolu] 10:20 GMT Yemens Houthis release prisoners to stem COVID-19 spread The Houthi rebels in Yemen have released more than 2,000 prisoners to prevent the spread of coronavirus in areas they control, the group announced. Rebel-linked chief prosecutor Nabil al-Azani said in a statement that the group had released 2,361 prisoners since mid-March as part of precautionary measures against the virus. He added that certain criteria were applied on those who were released, including serving three-quarters of their sentences and good conduct. 10:00 GMT Coronavirus disaster in the making in war-torn Syria Experts have warned that a coronavirus disaster looms in war-torn Syria, where hospitals are unable to meet existing needs and hygiene conditions are dire. They have also accused Damascus of minimising its death toll for political motives. Read the full story. 09:45 GMT Police collect nearly 800 bodies from Ecuadors virus epicentre Ecuador has said police removed almost 800 bodies in recent weeks from homes in Guayaquil, the epicentre of the countrys coronavirus outbreak, after COVID-19 the disease caused by the new virus overwhelmed emergency services, hospitals and funeral parlours. Mortuary workers in the Pacific port city have been unable to cope with a backlog, with residents posting videos on social media showing abandoned bodies in the streets. Read more here. In the Jardines de Esperanza cemetery in Guayaquil, boxes with coffins continue to arrive to be buried in Pascuales, Guayaquil [Eduardo Maquilon/Getty Images] 09:40 GMT Spains daily death toll falls again with 517 dead Spains overnight death toll from the coronavirus fell to 517 from Sundays 619, bringing the total death toll to 17,489, the health ministry said, adding that it was the smallest proportional daily increase since tracking began. The ministry said in a statement that overall cases rose to 169,496 from 166,019. 09:34 GMT Iran reports 111 new deaths from coronavirus Irans death toll from the new coronavirus has risen to 4,585, with 111 deaths overnight, a health ministry official tweeted, adding the total number of infected cases had reached 73,303 in the most-affected Middle Eastern country. Fortunately 45,983 of those infected with the virus have recovered There were 1,617 new infected cases in the past 24 hours, tweeted Alireza Vahabzadeh, an adviser to Irans health minister. Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur told state TV that 3,877 of those infected with the new coronavirus were in a critical condition. 09:20 GMT Thousands of Indian seafarers stranded due to virus curbs The stranded Indian crew members on board MSC Grandiosa, currently docked in Italy [Al Jazeera] Tens of thousands of Indian crew members, stranded on cargo and cruise ships across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, are still waiting to be brought home. The Indian government has abandoned all of us in the sea, Anand Kumar, one of the Indian crew members on MSC Divina cruise ship anchored near the port of Miami in the United States, told Al Jazeera. Read more here. 09:10 GMT Indonesia reports 316 new coronavirus cases, 26 deaths Indonesia announced 316 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 4,557, according to data provided by a health ministry official, Achmad Yurianto. Yurianto said there were also 26 new coronavirus-related deaths, taking the total number of fatalities to 399. Read morefor all the confirmed cases around the world. 08:47 GMT South Africa evacuates nationals from Nigeria South Africa airlifted some 136 of its nationals in the Nigerian capital, Lagos, to become the ninth country to do so from the West African country over the novel coronavirus outbreak, Nigerian local media reported. The South Africa Airways SA2259 flight, which arrived on Sunday afternoon in Nigeria, departed from the Murtala Muhammed International Airport at night en route to Johannesburg, the Vanguard news website reported. 08:45 GMT Italian FA hopes for return to training in May Italys football federation hopes that players can be tested for the new coronavirus at the start of May to prepare for the season to restart, its president Gabriele Gravina has said. Serie A has been suspended since March 9 because of the coronavirus outbreak and it is still not clear when, or if, the season can resume. Players at a number of clubs have been infected. There are still 12 rounds of matches to be played in the Seria A, in addition to several outstanding fixtures [Daniele Mascolo/Reuters] 08:20 GMT Number of people entering China cut by 90 percent China has reduced the number of people crossing its borders by 90 percent as part of its efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, an immigration official said. Speaking at a news briefing, Liu Haitao, an official with the National Immigration Administration, said the number of cases was still rising in the countries along Chinas borders. China was working to limit all non-essential crossings, but it remained a challenge to control the large number of mountain passes, ferries and roads along the countrys long border, he added. Commuters wear protective masks and keep their distance in a subway during Monday rush hour on April 13, 2020 in Beijing, China [Lintao Zhang/Getty Images] 07:55 GMT Russia reports record daily rise of coronavirus cases Russia reported 2,558 new cases of the novel coronavirus, a record daily rise, bringing its overall nationwide tally to 18,328. Russias coronavirus crisis response centre said that 148 people diagnosed with the virus have died so far, an overnight rise of 18. 07:34 GMT China rejects discrimination claims against Africans China said there was no discrimination against African brothers in the country and rejected US accusations of mistreatment of Africans in Guangzhou as an attempt to harm Beijings relations with African nations. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made the comments during a daily briefing in response to accusations from the US government that authorities in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou were taking measures targeting Africans in the city. Read more here. 07:10 GMT 3.7 million Kazakhs seek state aid over coronavirus emergency Some 3.7 million Kazakhs, or 20 percent of the oil-exporting Central Asian nations population, have applied for financial aid offered by the government because of the novel coronavirus outbreak, the cabinet said. Of those applications, about 1.8 million have already been approved, labour minister Birzhan Nurymbetov told a news briefing. The Nur-Sultan government has offered to pay 42,500 tenge (about $100) per month to every citizen who loses their source of income during the emergency period, which began on March 16 and is expected to last at least until the end of April. 06:40 GMT S Korea to ship 600,000 testing kits to US: Reuters South Korea plans to send 600,000 coronavirus testing kits to the United States on Tuesday in the first such shipment following a request from US President Donald Trump, a Seoul official told Reuters news agency. Trump made the request for testing kits in a telephone call on March 25 with President Moon Jae-in, as the United States was grappling with fast-growing outbreaks in many states. A US Federal Emergency Management Agency cargo plane carrying the equipment is scheduled to leave at 10:30 pm (13:30 GMT) on Tuesday, the official said on condition of anonymity, due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue. 06:30 GMT Germanys cases rise by 2,537 with 126 new deaths The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany has risen by 2,537 to 123,016, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases. That was lower than a 2,821 increase reported on Sunday, and marked the third decline after four days of increases. The reported death toll has risen by 126 to 2,799. Hello, this is Saba Aziz in Doha. Im taking over this blog from my colleague Kate Mayberry. 05:30 GMT Im handing over this blog to my colleagues in Doha. A summary of this mornings major developments: President Emmanuel Macron is due to address France later on Monday, but is expected to tell the French that a nationwide lockdown must remain in force. Australia and New Zealand seem to be flattening the curve but both countries say it is too soon to ease their lockdowns. China and South Korea continue to report more cases of coronavirus in people arriving from overseas. AP is reporting there have been at least 3,300 deaths in care homes across the United States. 05:15 GMT Malaysia trade ministry website crashes as businesses apply to operate The website of Malaysias International Trade and Industry Ministry was inaccessible on Monday as businesses rushed to apply for permission to operate during the third phase of the countrys lockdown. Companies were told they had to apply online and that applications would be open from 9am (01:00 GMT). Malaysia has said more industries can operate in the next two weeks of the shutdown providing they adhere to distancing and health control guidelines. Hi, due to heavy traffic, the MITI Portal shows temporarily inaccessible. More than 100k companies have applied so far in the system. Please keep trying and the server will direct when a slot is available. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. Thank you. MITI Malaysia (@MITIMalaysia) April 13, 2020 04:35 GMT Asian leaders to hold virtual summit on COVID-19 outbreak The leaders of the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will meet their counterparts in China, Japan and South Korea on Tuesday for a virtual summit on COVID-19. The summit, led by Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, will discuss ways and means of cooperation in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, a statement from Malaysias Foreign Ministry said. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will also attend. The ASEAN countries will first meet separately. 04:20 GMT Australia, New Zealand say too soon to ease restrictions Officials in New Zealand and Australia say they are not prepared to start easing social distancing rules or reopening their economies yet, even as the rate of new coronavirus cases slows. New Zealand recorded its fifth death from the coronavirus on Monday, while new confirmed cases rose only by 15. In Australia, the number of new confirmed cases rose by 33, the slowest rate in a month. The country has recorded 61 deaths. Health Minister Greg Hunt said it was too soon to relax restrictions. Now is the time to stay the course, to continue with these, self-isolation and social distancing, Hunt said in a televised briefing. These are producing real reductions in the rate of growth. Lifeguards try to remove surfers who took to the water during the Easter Long Weekend in Sydney amid a nationwide lockdown [Joel Carrett/EPA] New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said a decision on whether to extend the nationwide shutdown and state of national emergency declared in late March, will be made on April 20. Our number of cases may be small, but that doesnt mean we have yet been successful in hunting this virus down, Ardern said. 03:30 GMT Macron expected to tell France lockdown must continue French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to warn France later on Monday that ts lockdown to combat the coronavirus must go on for several more weeks at least. Macron is due to give this third prime-time televised address to the nation on the epidemic from the Elysee Palace just after 8pm (18:00 GMT). The country has been under lockdown since March 17, and there are now signs the outbreak is beginning to stabilise. Some 315 deaths were reported on Sunday, compared with 345 the previous day. Altogether, 14,393 people have died, according to the health ministry. 03:20 GMT Japans Hokkaido declares second state of emergency Hokkaido, in northern Japan, has declared a state of emergency for a second time, after seeing double-digit increases in confirmed coronavirus cases for five consecutive days. Hokkaido lifted its previous emergency on March 19. Hokkaido declares new state of emergency amid 'second wave' of coronavirus infections https://t.co/g92lcIkQoH The Japan Times (@japantimes) April 13, 2020 03:10 GMT Shinzo Abe under fire over Stay Home tweet A stay home message tweeted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has drawn angry reactions on social media with some accusing him of being insensitive to people who cannot rest at home because the governments social distancing measures do not come with compensation. The offending tweet showed Abe on his sofa at home, cuddling his dog, reading a book and looking rather bored using the remote control for the television. Abe declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and six other prefectures last Tuesday, asking people to stay home and reduce human interactions by as much as 80 percent, but many people continue to go to work because their employers have yet to adopt home-working. 01:40 GMT South Korea reports 25 new cases The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says South Korea confirmed 25 new cases of coronavirus on Sunday, down from 32 the day before. The country had a peak of 909 cases on February 29, but has brought that down through aggressive testing, isolation and contact tracing. 00:40 GMT China grapples with more imported cases of coronavirus China has just released its latest coronavirus update. The National Health Commission says there were 108 new cases of the virus at the end of April 12, and that all but 10 of those cases were imported from outside the country. There were no new cases reported in Hubei, where the outbreak first began late last year, but there were two more deaths. 00:15 GMT Care home deaths in US probably exceed 3,300: AP The Associated Press news agency estimates more than 3,300 deaths in the US can be linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing and care homes. Based on media reports and state health department updates, AP says there have been at least 3,323 deaths, an increase of 450 in 10 days. The Life Care Center of Kirkland was linked to a number of cases in the northwestern state of Washington early in the US coronavirus outbreak [File: Karen Ducey/Reuters] About one million, mostly elderly, Americans live in care homes. 00:00 GMT Erdogan rejects ministers resignation over weekend curfew Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected the resignation of his interior minister, who had said he would quit after a much-criticised weekend curfew to tackle the coronavirus outbreak which caught millions of people by surprise. - Im Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur with Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Read all the updates from April 12 here. Description GIS 13 April, 2020: No new Covid-19 case has been registered in the last 24 hours in Mauritius. As at date, 324 positive cases have been registered, 42 persons have recovered from the virus, and there are only 270 active cases. Around 381 persons are under quarantine in the seven centres across the island. An update of the current situation was given by the Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Kailesh Kumar Singh Jagutpal , this evening, during the daily press briefing of the National Communication Committee on Covid-19 through videoconference, from his residence. With regard to medical equipment, he underlined that Mauritius is receiving daily medical supplies from China and, that Mauritius has now received an automatic extractor which is expected to fast-track the number of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests conducted. Additional information communicated: One patient is currently on ventilator Three hundred tests were carried out today Two persons are undergoing treatment using the plasmapheresis treatment One hundred and forty-one Mauritian passengers and 240 hospital staff are under observation as suspected Covid-19 cases Mauritius disposes of an adequate stock of medical equipment which was recently airlifted from China . As a result, there will be no lack of personal protective equipment to contain the outbreak of the virus . There is an adequate stock of medicines for Covid-19 treatment, that is, one million doses of the Chloroquine drug and 130 000 doses of Hydroxychloroquine. Moreover, necessary procedures have been initiated to ensure that there is sufficient stock in the future. The Minister also made an appeal to all recovered Covid-19 patients to volunteer and contact the Blood Bank so as to donate their blood. This blood donation, he emphasised, is vital in the treatment of those seriously ill from the Covid-19. #ResOuLakaz #BeSafeMoris CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, which owns Touchn Go Sdn Bhd (TNGSB), has reported a continuation of healthy volumes for essential services and online-based transactions on the Touch n Go eWallet app during the period of movement control order (MCO). In contrast, the bank has observed a falling demand for retail transactions across the industry, which is also reflected in the app where offline retail merchants are concerned. Speaking to The Edge Markets, the group ventures and partnerships chief executive officer of CIMB, Effendy Shahul Hamid said that this trend of cashless payment is likely to persist after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. We believe post-Covid user behaviour will be positive for us in general, whereby a greater push for cashless payments is expected in order to reduce physical contact. And as such, we are actively adapting our strategies to ensure we are ready for that, said Effendy. Effendy further commented that the market will be a challenging one for the rest of year 2020 where volumes are concerned. However, the bank remains optimistic with regard to the digital payments space as it is nimble enough to pivot and capture relevant opportunities. This is attributed to the solid baseline that the bank has built for its business model. We will continue with our plans to enhance features on our platform, with particular focus on in-app journeys, as well as enhancing use cases that include payments, content and digital services. Our plans to introduce financial services also remain on track, said Effendy, referring to the Touch n Go eWallet app. CIMBs latest annual report has claimed that the Touch n Go eWallet is now Malaysias largest e-wallet with over 6.8 million registered users and 120,000 merchants by the end of 2019. It is rivalled by two other major e-wallet operators, GrabPay and Boost. (Source: The Edge Markets) 5 1 vote Article Rating SHARE OPEC+ nations have signed an agreement on daily oil production cuts by 9.7 million barrels for a term of two months, Kazakhstans energy ministry said. "After the online ministerial meeting of the OPEC+ and non-OPEC+ nations, an agreement was signed on oil production cuts by 9.7 million barrels a day for a term of two months starting from May 1. Kazakhstan supported the consensus on the agreement," it said. Azerbaijan has also supported the OPEC+ agreement. "Todays meeting and the resolute position of OPEC+ allowed to eliminate the obstacles and uncertainties related to the implementation of the output cut agreement. The mechanism of balancing the oil market with production interventions is supported globally and this support will contribute to the stabilization of the oil market. At the same time, this decision will encourage the countries, which do not participate in OPEC+ to cut their output," Azerbaijans Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov said. The previous OPEC+ online meeting on April 9 yielded only an agreement in principle to cut daily production by ten million barrels. The deal could not be concluded because of Mexicos position as it said it would agree to reduce daily output only by 100,000 barrels, instead of 400,000 barrels it was supposed to do under the deal. A Group of Twenty energy ministers meeting on the following also failed to talks Mexico into the deal. Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) on Monday said its CSR arm Hyundai Motor India Foundation has donated Rs 5 crore to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Relief Fund towards its contribution in the fight against coronavirus. Commenting on the initiative, HMIL Managing Director & CEO SS Kim said, "We stand united with the Government of Tamil Nadu to provide relentless support in these challenging times. This contribution is an expression of our solidarity with the people of the state which has been home for Hyundai for over two decades." A Rs 5 crore cheque was handed over to N Muruganandam, Principal Secretary to government of Tamil Nadu, Industries Department, by Hyundai officials, the statement said. Hyundai has planned a series of initiatives to contribute to India's fight against COVID-19. These include monetary contributions to relief funds, importing advanced diagnostic kits from South Korea, support fabrication of ventilators and other treatment support aids, distribution of PPEs, masks and other safety kits and distribution of dry ration to the needy people, among others, the statement said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi, April 13 : The Indian Council of Medical Research on Monday said that there was no need to worry about testing capacity of the country and the country can test for next six weeks with the stock available in the country. Addressing a press conference, ICMR's Chief Scientist Dr.Raman Gangakhedkar said: "There is no need to worry about the pace with which we are conducting tests. We have a stock with which we can conduct tests for the next 6 weeks easily." He also said that 206,212 tests have been done so far, while the first consignment of coronavirus testing kits will arrive in India from China on April 15. About Covid-19 infection among the health workers, he said it is not easy to find out the reason for infection among them as there was no solid data to prove the reason for it. Joint Secretary, Health, Lav Agarwal, who was also present at the press briefing, said: "Most health professionals are getting infection due to their travel or contact history. There is only a miniscule population of healthcare service providers who have got infection while providing service to COVID patients.There are at least 39 domestic manufacturers who are providing PPE material... I would urge all healthcare workers to follow the protocol of using the PPEs." In the late 1800s, atati (Little Falcon Robe), a Qlispe (Pend dOreille) Tribal member, established a wild bison herd on the Flathead Reservation as the species was being wiped out across the Great Plains. atatis heroic action helped save the species from extinction and was pivotal in the establishment of herds elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada. His heroism also led to the creation of the National Bison Range. U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester recently introduced the Montana Water Rights Protection Act, which would ratify the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact and restore management of the National Bison Range to the CSKT. We commend Tester and Daines for introducing the bill, and we're pleased that the legislation will enable the tribes to manage the NBR. Because of the CSKTs long and impressive history of conservation on the Flathead Reservation and the tribes profound relationship to bison, we can think of no other agency or government entity more qualified or more committed to managing the National Bison Range than the CSKT. The tribes remarkable record of wildland and wildlife protection is clear in the reservations 400,000-acre conservation network an astonishing size given that the Flathead Reservation is just over 1.2 million acres. The cornerstone of that network is the 92,000-acre Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness Area, the first actively-managed wilderness area in the U.S. designated by a tribal government, in 1972. The wilderness area includes a buffer zone around its west end and a designated primitive area around its south end. Within it is a 10,000-acre grizzly bear conservation area, the first of many examples demonstrating how committed the CSKT are to wildlife management. The tribes have set aside two large areas intended to maintain the long-term health of elk and big horn sheep herds, and have also taken the lead on reintroducing trumpeter swans, peregrine falcons, northern leopard frogs and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse to the Mission Valley. Perhaps nothing so exemplifies the tribes dedication to wildlife protection and habitat preservation than the reconstruction of Highway 93 through the Flathead Reservation some 20 years ago. The highways wildlife overpasses, underpasses and fencing have significantly reduced wildlife fatalities and preserved crucial wetlands. This highway design, the wildlife conservation areas and the reintroductions are a testament to the tribes fish and wildlife managers, as skilled and qualified as any in the world. Some question whether the CSKT could properly manage the National Bison Range. We believe, however, that this is based on cultural biases rather than valid concerns regarding CSKTs ability to manage the range. Despite what some have claimed, restoring management of the National Bison Range to the CSKT, while keeping the range in federal trust ownership and accessible to all, has nothing to do with the issue of lands transfer and we say this as representatives of organizations that have been at the forefront of keeping public lands in public hands. Restoring management to the CSKT is about doing whats just. The 1855 Hellgate Treaty reserved the Bison Range land for the CSKT, but in 1908 the federal government appropriated that land without the consent of the CSKT. This was one in a long line of injustices that the federal government perpetrated against the CSKT and other Indigenous nations in the U.S., a line that included the wanton destruction of bison. With their profound spiritual, cultural and material connection to bison, the CSKT had the foresight to establish a wild bison herd. If it were not for the CSKT, there would be no National Bison Range, and possibly no bison. Lets honor that connection and foresight and enable the CSKT to manage this national treasure. John Todd is deputy director at Montana Wilderness Association. Amy McNamara is Northern Rockies director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Scott Brennan is Montana state director at The Wilderness Society. Tom France is the regional executive director of the Northern Rockies, Prairies and Pacific Regional Center at the National Wildlife Federation. Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 CHICAGO and LAKEWOOD, Ohio, April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Green Thumb Industries (GTI) (CSE:GTII) (GTBIF), a leading national cannabis consumer packaged goods company and owner of Rise and Essence retail stores, today announced it will open its 43rd location, Rise Lakewood, on April 13. This is the fifth Rise store in Ohio and the second Rise location in Lakewood. As a designated essential business during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, we are honored to provide cannabis to more members of the community with a second location in Lakewood, said GTI Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ben Kovler. We are grateful to be able to promote well-being through the power of cannabis, especially during these stressful and uncertain times. Rise Lakewood will offer pre-ordering for registered medical cannabis patients and the first hour of each day will be reserved for people 60 years and older and those with compromised immune systems. Pre-orders can be made by calling the store at 216-273-0062. There are four other Rise stores in Ohio in Cleveland, Lorain, Toledo and another location in Lakewood on Madison Avenue. The company was awarded an Ohio processing license earlier this year and will produce GTIs branded cannabis products in a facility located in Toledo. Lakewood is located seven miles outside of Cleveland, the second largest city in Ohio. The number of registered patients in Ohio has reached 88,306 as of February 2020. In an analysis conducted in July 2018, more than 3.5 million Ohioans have qualifying medical conditions. Estimates expect nearly 200,000 to 300,000 patients will eventually participate in the Ohio medical marijuana program. Those interested in the states medical marijuana program can visit https://www.medicalmarijuana.ohio.gov/ . Rise Lakewood is located at 18607 Detroit Avenue. Hours are Sunday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., Monday and Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Story continues About Green Thumb Industries: Green Thumb Industries (GTI), a national cannabis consumer packaged goods company and retailer, is dedicated to providing dignified access to cannabis while giving back to the communities in which they serve. GTI manufactures and distributes a portfolio of branded cannabis products including Beboe, Dogwalkers, Dr. Solomons, incredibles, Rythm and The Feel Collection. The company also owns and operates rapidly growing national retail cannabis stores called Rise and Essence. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, GTI has 13 manufacturing facilities, licenses for 96 retail locations and operations across 12 U.S. markets. Established in 2014, GTI employs approximately 1,700 people and serves thousands of patients and customers each year. GTI was named a Best Workplace 2018 by Crains Chicago Business and MG Retailer magazine in 2018 and 2019. More information is available at GTIgrows.com. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information This press release contains statements which may constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of GTI with respect to future business activities. Forward-looking information is often identified by the words may, would, could, should, will, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, or similar expressions and include information regarding the future direction and business objectives of GTI. The forwardlooking information in this news release is based upon the expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and views of future events which management believes to be reasonable in the circumstances and expectations relating to general economic and market conditions. Any forwardlooking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and, except as required by law, GTI does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forwardlooking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The forwardlooking information in this news release is subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those express or implied. When considering these forwardlooking statements, readers should keep in mind the risk factors and other cautionary statements in GTIs public filings with the applicable securities regulatory authorities on SEDAR at www.sedar.com , including the risk factors set out in GTIs annual information form dated July 10, 2018. The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Investor Contact: Media Contact Jennifer Dooley Linda Marsicano Chief Strategy Officer VP, Corporate Communications InvestorRelations@gtigrows.com lmarsicano@gtigrows.com 310-622-8257 773-354-2004 Source: Green Thumb Industries A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b9c0c5e3-65f9-4957-aa3a-7bb2e050b584 And we can start thinking about as an example, parts of our country are very lightly affected. Very small numbers. And, you know, you look at a state great governor Pete Ricketts, Nebraska. You look at the kind of numbers they have out there. They have one of the great one of the great hospitals there, too, relative to what were talking about. But you look at Nebraska, you look at Idaho, you look at Iowa, you look at many I could name many countries that are handling it very, very well and that are not affected to the same extent, or, frankly, not even nearly to the extent of New York, which is really Im dealing with Governor Cuomo, and were dealing very well together. Well be sending that (hospital) ship up, by the way. As you know, we have a ship going to Los Angeles. Well also be the ship is coming out of a very large repair. Its all ready to go and very soon will be. And over the next three or four weeks, thatll be coming up to New York. It will go to New York Harbor and itll be fully supplied. So theyre working on that right now." A bracelet that vibrates each time you touch your face could help stem the spread of the coronavirus. Designed by engineers in Seattle in the U.S., the 40 wristband buzzes gently when you go to scratch your nose, rub your eyes or wipe your lips. It is hoped this will not only stop you in your tracks but, over time, will train you to touch your face less. As the coronavirus is able to get into the body through the mucous membranes in the eyes, mouth and nose, public health advice stresses the importance of not touching our faces. Engineers in Seattle, U.S., have designed a 40 wristband called the Immutouch that buzzes gently when you go to scratch your nose, rub your eyes or wipe your lips The World Health Organisation says: 'Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to your eyes, nose or mouth. From there, the virus can enter your body and make you sick.' Following the advice, however, is not always easy, with studies showing that we touch our faces roughly every two minutes or so. The Behavioural Insights Team, a company part-owned by the Cabinet Office, has said that because most face-touching is done automatically, without us realising, simply telling people not to do it will not work. Instead, in advice issued last month, it suggests removing the temptation by keeping your hands in pockets or folding your arms, and swapping contact lenses for glasses to create a barrier between the hands and eyes. It also suggests asking a friend or colleague to shout the word 'face' each time they see you reach towards yours. Some of these suggestions may be easier said than done, however, as many require a high level of constant concentration. But the wristband (available online at immutouch.com) now offers an alternative. Roughly the size of a watch, the new Immutouch band contains a sensor that monitors the position of the hand ten times per second. The creators of the band hope that the device will stop users from touching their face. (Stock image) On first getting it, the wearer uses the accompanying app to calibrate it effectively teaching it how their arm moves when they touch different areas of their face. The band then buzzes each time it detects those movements. The aim is to make the user aware of how often they are touching their face and train them out of the habit, with the app producing charts showing the frequency of the touching, too. Two small studies of similar technology by the University of Michigan in the U.S. have shown the value of such gadgets in preventing another bad habit: trichotillomania, or compulsive hair-pulling. Wearing vibrating bracelets on each hand cut the number of hair pulls and attempted pulls by 90 per cent in one of the studies, and contributed to 'significant improvements in symptoms' in the other. The manufacturer of the Immutouch is now conducting a study at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain. Ten volunteers will be monitored as they wear the bracelet to determine just how much it stops them from touching their faces. Top tip Wear gloves if exercising outside to avoid picking up the virus from hard surfaces, but remember not to touch your face while wearing them and wash them at 60c at home, says microbiologist Ed Wright Advertisement Dr Simon Clarke, a virologist at the University of Reading, said the new device could be useful. 'I am a terrible one for touching my face,' he says. 'Hand-washing is the most important thing, but it is not always feasible when you are out. 'So something that helps you break the habit of touching your face could help to protect you from the coronavirus.' Sir Cary Cooper, a professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester, said the device uses conditioning a well-established technique to break bad habits to teach us not to touch our faces. Just as the message that it is socially unacceptable to stand any closer than two metres to others is conditioning us to change our behaviour when out and about, the vibrating alert is conditioning us to change our behaviour regarding touching our face, he says. 'You may still touch your face a few times. But the likelihood is that you will catch on that you shouldn't do it,' he adds. LANSING, MI -- The chairman of the Michigan Senate Appropriations Committee is encouraging Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to lay off non-essential state employees over concerns related to the states budget and effects of the coronavirus crisis. On Monday, April 13, Chairman Jim Stamas, R-Midland, said in a press release he is extremely worried about the states budget as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency and the excessively restrictive Stay Home, Stay Safe lockdown order extended by Gov. Whitmer." The Michigan Department of Treasury has estimated there will be a $1 billion to $3 billion impact on the current 2020 state budget, and another $1 billion to $4 billion hole in next years budget, according to Stamas. Instead of hiring hundreds more workers to help take calls at the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency, as previously announced by the state, Stamas proposed that non-essential state employees transition to being call-takers for unemployment claims or be laid off if they cant assist in that capacity. The states unemployment system has been strained by the more than 828,000 unemployment claims filed in Michigan since March 8. Last week, the state announced it had hired more than 150 call-takers, with plans to add more through a third-party contractor. We are facing a serious financial challenge, and we need to consider all options to adjust our spending such as cuts to popular programs and laying off nonessential state employees, including those in the Legislature, Stamas said in a press release. The state is doing everything it can to address the global COVID-19 pandemic, but we also must soon make the hard decisions to address its tremendous impact to our economy and state budget. The longer we wait to act, the deeper the cuts will need to be." Kurt Weiss, a spokesperson for the state budget office, responded to Stamas comments Monday morning. He said the state has already taken action to implement a hiring freeze and a freeze on discretionary spending, and will know more after its next revenue estimating conference in mid-May. The state is also awaiting further guidance from the federal government regarding how federal funds can be used to address revenue shortfalls, which will be critical to how we address the state budget moving forward, Weiss said in an email to MLive. We know that we have other tough decisions in front of us when it comes to the impact of COVID-19 on state revenues and ultimately the state budget, he said. This years budget, which runs from Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 30, 2020, clocks in at $59.6 billion. But the spending is based on revenue projections, which didnt take a global pandemic into account. The state last updated those projections in January, before the virus was in Michigan. In March, the Senate Fiscal Agency noted declines in state revenue from gas tax (down 22.6% from March 2019), diesel tax (down 21.6%) and casino revenue (down 59%). Revenue came into the states general fund above expected levels but below expected levels to the states School Aid Fund. Like every state in the nation right now, its difficult to project or predict the ultimate impact of COVID-19 on our state revenues and the subsequent impact to the state budget, Weiss said. We know there will be an impact. What we dont know is how large it will be or whether federal dollars will be allowed for the replacement of any lost revenue. The Legislature is required to send the governor the Fiscal Year 2021 budget by July 1. The FY 2021 budget begins Oct. 1, 2020. Gov. Whitmer issued a stay-at-home order take effect on March 24 in an effort to keep residents home to slow the spread of COVID-19. The order was extended April 9, which will keep it in effect through at least April 30. The order will continue to prohibit public and private gatherings among people outside a single household, and orders individuals to stay home unless their work or activity is deemed essential. As of Sunday, Michigan had nearly 25,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and nearly 1,500 deaths associated with the virus. CORONAVIRUS PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home ( door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. More from MLive: Michigan cites possible testing lag as coronavirus cases drop Kroger, Meijer report deaths of grocery store workers in Michigan from coronavirus Michigan begins sending $600 payments, sets date for expanded unemployment eligibility Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Chennai:Health Secretary Dr Beela Rajesh on Sunday said that the department had given strict instructions to the hospital authorities that the Covid-19 positive and negative cases should not be treated in a single ward. Responding to the question on the Deccan Chronicle report on mix-up at the Omandurar Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital on Sunday, the Health Secretary said that it was doctors at the hospital who classify the high risk and low risk patients. We have been instructed to maintain a strict 10ft distance between patients. But there will be no question of treating positive and negative cases in the same ward. The positive cases will be treated in separate rooms. If there is violation, strict action will be taken, she said. However, no orders have been issued so far to probe into the incident based on the report. Though the health secretary claimed that positive cases are being treated in separate rooms, the reality on the ground appears to be different. DC has accessed a fresh video in which three people, out of two people who confessed themselves as tested positive, shared a ward with a person from Koyambedu who was discharged on Saturday after he had tested negative. The positive person from Mannady, who was brought to the ward on Friday, told DC over phone that his sample tested positive on Saturday and another person, who was admitted in the same ward, tested negative on the same day. He said that the negative person was being treated at the same ward since Friday night. It has been learnt that one more patient, a lady who tested positive, had been admitted to the same ward on Sunday after the person from Koyambedu who tested negative was discharged from the ward at 11.50am on Saturday. Now there are three people in the five-bed ward. 56-year-old Covid-19 positive patient on Saturday told DC that he was admitted at the MCH on April 2 at 6pm after he developed symptoms of flu, had tested positive for Covid 19 on April 6. By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With Kerala running out of stock of PCR kits, RNA extraction kits and personal protective equipment (PPE), it is looking at South Korea, Germany and Dubai to procure the same. The state is also wary of the fact that international procurement of the essentials is not as easy as it seems because there is an overwhelming global demand for the essentials. The procurement from within the country is also hit as other than Kerala, there are nine states/UTs which have been identified as Covid-19 hotspots in the country. The state has now knocked at the doors of the Centre for ensuring the steady supply of the same. The containment activities against Covid-19 can only be won if there is adequate stock of PPE and testing kits. But the state is slowly running out of stock. Efforts are on to procure it from within or outside the country. At the international level, America is a major threat as they stock up the essentials by paying three or four times higher than the market price, said an officer of the Health Department. According to the officer, the major shortage the state is facing is in the RNA extraction kits, which are a major tool in the diagnostic tests of SARS-CoV-2 and are used during the process of reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The state ordered two lakh RNA extraction kits. But it received assurance on the delivery of 1,000 kits. An order has been placed with a German company. But they informed us that they didnt have the stock to meet the demand. Thus, the state approached other companies also, including a Pune-based company. The problem is that as Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra are high, the demand for such kits is also high there, said a source. ALSO READ | Cant rush to say Kerala has flattened the curve: Pinarayi Vijayan The other major shortage, as per the source, is with the procurement of kits for RT-PCR and PPE. The state came to know that there is enough stock of RT-PCR test kits in South Korea and within eight to nine days it could procure around two lakh such kits. But for the same, the help of the Indian Embassy at Seoul is needed and the Ministry of External Affairs has been intimated on the same, added the source. Kerala is at present receiving accolades from various quarters as its interventions and proactive approach helped it to flatten the curve of the virus. Meanwhile, authorities say that it will be premature to enter into such conclusions and is stressing the need for mass testing. Antibody test kits yet to arrive Meanwhile, antibody test kits are yet to reach the state as efforts to procure it from foreign countries have hit a stumbling block due to technical formalities. According to an officer, the government has sought the intervention of the Union Ministry of External Affairs in expediting its availability, to which the ministry has replied in the affirmative. Antibody tests can detect whether a person has contracted Covid-19 before and if he/she has recovered since. It takes only 15 minutes to conduct the test, which collects blood from the finger. It also determines how widely the virus has spread and helps identify the asymptomatic group having Covid-19. Herd immunity - In simpler terms, herd immunity is a by-product of an epidemic. When enough people in a community develop immunity to an infection it could be referred to as herd immunity. 1,949 arrested for lockdown violation TPuram: The police on Sunday arrested 1,949 people and registered 1,991 cases in the state for lockdown violation. As many as 1,477 vehicles were also seized. Kollam returned highest figures in terms of arrests and cases. The district recorded 366 cases, 381 arrests and 293 vehicle seizures. Pathanamthitta followed with 269 cases, 280 arrests and 228 vehicle seizures. Thiruvananthapuram saw 250 cases, 234 arrests and 2,013 vehicle seizures. Kasaragod yielded the least number of cases. The district saw 11 cases, 12 arrests and nine vehicle seizure. The maximum temperatures have started rising with many districts in central and west India recording over 40 degrees Celsius, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Sunday. Delhi on Sunday recorded a high of 37.2 degrees Celsius, one notch above the normal for this time of the year, the IMD said. Weathermen said that the national capital could also record 40 degrees C next week. Heat wave conditions are likely to develop in Saurashtra and Kutch in Gujarat, according to the IMDs Sunday bulletin. Heat wave is also likely to develop over southwest Madhya Pradesh and northwest Vidarbha on April 14 and 15, the IMD said. Many places have started recording above normal temperatures now. This is mainly because there is no intense weather system or a western disturbance which brings rain. Maximum temperatures across the country are likely to rise even further next week, said K Sathi Devi, head, national weather forecasting centre. The IMD said maximum temperatures were above normal by 3.1 to 5 degrees C at a few places in Saurashtra, Kutch, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland; by 1.6 to 3 degrees above normal over parts of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, a few places of east Rajasthan, west Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, coastal Karnataka, Odisha, Goa and West Bengal. The maximum temperature in Srinagar on Saturday was 24.4 degrees C, 4 degrees above normal, while Shimla recorded a maximum temperature of 24 degrees C, 4 degrees above normal. Many towns and cities have started recording maximum temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius. According to the IMD, Ahmedabad recorded the maximum temperature at 42 degrees C, 3 degrees above normal, Bhuj at 42.5 degrees C, Gwalior at 40 degrees, 1.6 degrees above normal and Akola at 42 degrees C, 1.3 degrees above normal. There is an anti-cyclone (which causes calm weather) over Gujarat. The temperature hasnt risen much over northwest India, because of western disturbances that are affecting the region. But central India, parts of Gujarat, Odisha, Telengana, which are in heat wave zone, have started recording higher temperatures. They have clear skies and less wind, said RK Jenamani, senior scientist at national weather forecasting centre. Jenamani said that Delhi could also record 40 degrees C next week. The Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) has called for an emergency support package for higher education similar to those implemented for business. IFUT general secretary Joan Donegan said colleges faced financial ruin due to the likely collapse in foreign student intake next year. These students account for around one-tenth of the student body but, due to their much higher fee structures, deliver up to a third of fee income for many colleges, she said. Ms Donegan added that the sector faced further major income loss from collapse of summer course activity, extreme difficulty in obtaining new research projects and loss of student accommodation income. Without an urgent government rescue package, staff lay-offs and collapse of course delivery may be the inevitable outcome, she warned. The IFUT general secretary expressed particular concern that the many contract and precariously employed lecturing, tutorial and research staff on which most colleges increasingly depend, faced immediate lay-off. Without these staff, colleges will be unable to deliver many courses or maintain educational standards, she said. IFUT is also seeking a fully inclusive discussion around college resumption dates, approval of future new online or other learning models and the length and structure of the next academic year. Without such inclusivity, academic planning by staff will be impossible. Without clarity, many thousands of Leaving Cert students may simply opt to defer enrolment, causing further strain on the very existence of some education institutions, she said. Ms Donegan said the Australian government had announced a higher education relief package in excess of 10bn. It included supports for additional access to nursing, teaching, counselling, allied health or other areas considered national priorities according to their Education Minister, she said. We need similar innovative thinking and policies here as a matter of urgency. Above all, academic staff and planners who will have to plan the roll-out of education courses in the new normal must be at the centre of discussion and consultation. The very future of our economy and society depends on educating our young people effectively at this time. Any new programme for government must also include a clear commitment to prioritise a survival plan for higher education, she said. PR-Inside.com: 2020-04-13 18:48:24 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 372 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / UGE International Ltd. ( TSX.V:UGE , OTCQB:UGEIF) (the "Company" or UGE), a leader in commercial and community solar solutions, today announced that it will be presenting at the Planet MicroCap Showcase 2020 on Wednesday, April 22 at 11:20 AM EDT. UGE's CEO, Nick Blitterswyk, will be hosting the presentation and answering questions from investors.To access the live presentation, please use the following information:Planet MicroCap Showcase Virtual Investor Conference 2020UGE International Ltd. Company PresentationDate: Wednesday, April 22, 2020Time: 11:20 AM Eastern Time (8:20 AM Pacific Time)Webcast: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/2059/34220 In addition to the company's webcast, UGE will be participating in a virtual panel titled, "Best Canadian Non-Resource MicroCap Ideas During Coronavirus Crisis", hosted by Paul Andreola, Founder and Editor of Small Cap Discoveries, on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.To access the virtual panel, please use the following information:Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2020Time: 3:30 PM Eastern Time / (12:30 PM Pacific Time)Webcast: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/2059/34220 If you would like to book 1on1 investor meetings with UGE, please make sure you are registered for the virtual event here: https://www.planetmicrocapshowcase.com/signup 1on1 meetings will be scheduled and conducted via private, secure video conference through the conference event platform.If you can't make the live presentation, all company presentations "webcasts" will be available directly on the conference event platform on this link under the tab "Schedule": https://www.planetmicrocapshowcase.com/presenting-companies News Compliments of AccesswireAbout UGE International Ltd.UGE delivers immediate savings to businesses through the low cost of solar energy. We help commercial and industrial clients become more competitive by providing low cost distributed renewable energy solutions at no upfront cost and maximum long-term benefit. With over 400MW of global experience, we work daily to power a more sustainable world. Visit us at www.ugei.com About Planet MicroCap ShowcasePlanet MicroCap Showcase brings together promising companies with well-known and influential microcap, investors, fund managers and newsletter writers for three days of company presentations, one-on-one meetings, and networking.If you would like to attend the Planet MicroCap Showcase, please register here: https://planetmicrocapshowcase.com/signup For more information, contact:+1 917 720 5685investors@ ugei.com Source: UGE via Planet MicroCap Showcase Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) The world is now caught up in battling a pandemic and fighting for the environment. With this being said, there is now an even greater need for awareness on the importance of nature and a healthy planet, and for long-term solutions to the current environmental crisis. The annual Earth Hour will be celebrated on March 28 in an effort to bring together millions of people around the world in a show of commitment for the planet. And the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-Philippines encourages Filipinos to help #ChangeTheEnding of the current environmental crisis. WWF-Philippines Earth Hour Pilipinas National Director Atty. Angela Ibay describes the evolution of Earth Hour throughout the years. Photograph Alo Lantin / WWFPhilippines We want to be able to use Earth Hour to galvanize people, to bring our messages forward - that our own actions have an effect on our planet, and that our own actions are also the solution that will be able to provide for us and for our shared home, said WWF-Philippines Earth Hour Pilipinas National Director Atty. Angela Ibay. Since the first lights out event was held in Sydney in 2007, the movement has continued to bring together individuals, businesses, and governments alike in joint acts of commitment toward a future of environmental integrity and where man lives in harmony with nature. Climate Change Commission Policy Research and Development Division Chief Jerome Ilagan expresses the governments commitment to combating the countrys environmental issues. Photograph Alo Lantin / WWF-Philippines Climate Change Commission Policy Research and Development Division Chief Jerome Ilagan also said the Philippine government is ready to make things possible to make sure that Filipinos survive and thrive in this era of climate change. Public support and the translation and mainstreaming of conservation science across all levels of Philippine government are crucial in addressing the countrys environmental issues, Ilagan added. From left to right: WWF-Philippines Advocate Enzo Pineda, WWF-Philippines Executive Director Joel Palma, WWF-Philippines Child Advocate Xia Rigor, WWF-Philippines Earth Hour Pilipinas National Director Atty. Angela Ibay, WWF-Philippines Earth Hour Ambassador Mikee Cojuangco-Jaworski, and WWF-Philippines National Ambassadors Rovilson Fernandez and Marc Nelson pose with WWF-Philippines Mascot Chi Chi the Panda. Photograph Alo Lantin / WWFPhilippines WWF-Philippines is inviting the general public to participate in the local Earth Hour 2020 activities, to be held across the country on the 28th of March. Earth Hour 2020 Philippines will largely be a digital effort, and WWF-Philippines will be supporting the events of government agencies, local government units, and private businesses. More importantly, WWF-Philippines is encouraging individuals to take part in Earth Hour 2020 from their own homes, through actions as simple as closing and leaving off non-essential lights for the night. WWF-Philippines Earth Hour Ambassador Mikee Cojuangco-Jaworski introduces the #ChangeTheEnding campaign. The campaign aims to stress the urgency of our environmental issues while emphasizing the need to act now in order to change the ending on the current crisis. Photograph Alo Lantin / WWF-Philippines This year, we decided to invest in a campaign that will reach beyond Earth Hour," said WWF-Philippines Earth Hour Ambassador Mikee Cojuangco-Jaworski. "This campaign will hopefully send a message that will show how everything that we've allowed to happen is affecting the generations after us. It's us right now, however, who are in a position to make a change. It came as a bit of a surprise when Johnson named Jenny personally, leaving the family "absolutely astounded and exceptionally proud". She said hospital staff were "absolutely exhausted" at the moment. The nurse has received many messages of support, including from NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who revealed on Monday that she used "the informal tactic of finding her on Facebook and sending her a Facebook message" to give her New Zealand's support. "We have thanked our frontline health workers in New Zealand many times and rightly so but I wanted to add an acknowledgement that many, many Kiwis work in health care around the world," Ardern said. "They show the same commitment, same care, same work ethic that they do here. "We are all very proud of them, especially you Nurse Jenny." Loading Invercargill Mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt said it was "absolutely amazing" to have an Invercargill connection to such an event. "It's not very often a nurse from Invercargill saves the life of the British Prime Minister," Shadbolt said. McGee's actions showed the professionalism and resilience of Southlanders and everyone should be feeling proud, he said. "It's very seldom we get a mention on the BBC, I'm sure it will lift people's spirits," Shadbolt said. Eve McSoriley met Jenny through Panache choir at Verdon College, and they have been friends for more than 20 years. She said her friend was humble and had an amazing sense of humour: "she should have a stand-up show". She said nursing was a "natural thing she [Jenny] was going to do" because she connected with people from all walks of life. That Johnson mentioned Jenny personally "says a lot about her personality and her spirit", McSoriley said. Brent Russell was the principal at Verdon College when McGee was a student. Loading When Russell read that 'a Jenny from Invercargill' was Johnson's nurse, he instantly thought it may have been McGee. "I thought of her straight away," Russell said. "Knowing her personality and demeanour I'm not surprised she went into nursing and doing well." He acknowledged the former student was one of those thousands of health service workers making sacrifices around the world right now. Southland District Council Waihopai Toetoe Ward councillor Paul Duffy's farm was about 10km from the McGee's near Edendale. Duffy said there were nurses around the world saving people and McGee's care of Johnson is just another example of the great work the profession did. Rob McGee, Jenny's brother, told the UK's MailOnline: "She is very humble and is back at work now for another night shift. "She said she was just really pleased to see all the hard working people in the NHS be recognised for the amazing work they are doing. "She is just doing her job and that is how she sees it. This is what she was trained for, helping people who need care. Special people." Loading Johnson, who spent a week in hospital and three nights in the ICU at St Thomas' Hospital, was discharged on Sunday, London time. Soon after, he posted a video to Twitter thanking those who took care of him. "It is hard to find the words to express my debt to the NHS for saving my life," he said. "I want to thank the many nurses, men and women, whose care has been so astonishing." After naming several specific staff members, he singled out two nurses "who stood by my bedside for 48 hours". A patient is taken from an ambulance at St Thomas' Hospital on April 10 in London. Credit:Getty Images One was Jenny, from New Zealand. "Invercargill, on the South Island, to be exact," Johnson said. The other was Luis from near Porto in Portugal. He said Jenny and another nurse's interventions ensured he got the attention he needed to survive Covid-19. The 55-year-old Johnson was diagnosed more than two weeks ago, becoming the first world leader confirmed to have the illness. His coronavirus symptoms at first were said to have been mild, including a cough and a fever. He was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital after his condition worsened and was transferred to the intensive care unit the following day, where he received oxygen but was not put onto a ventilator. He will not immediately return to work. Stuff with AP TotalAV Antivirus Pro has a good interface and all its key features are easy to find. It has some system tune-up tools that are rarely part of a security suite, and it has a scan that looks for more than just malware. The essentials, however, are lacking, with poorly rated zero-day protection, and mixed results for performance. The world of antivirus is a well-established industry made up of major players that are already pretty well known. Every now and then, however, a newcomer shows up for a piece of the pie. One relative newbie is TotalAV from Protected, a UK-based company founded in 2016. TotalAV offers three different levels of protection: Antivirus Pro, Internet Security, and Total Security. Each tier adds a few more extra features, though you get a surprisingly good amount of value with the base level Antivirus Pro. Note: This review is part of our best antivirus roundup . Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them. Features and services IDG TotalAV Antivirus Pro dashboard. The Antivirus Pro dashboard is a simple affair. At the top is a status message indicating whether the system is protected based on the usual red, yellow, green color-coding scheme. Below that is the option to run what the company calls a Smart Scan. TotalAVs smart scan is reminiscent of the PC Matic approach. In addition to looking for security issues, the scan also looks for junk and duplicate files, browser history and cookies, as well as performance issues. Once the scan is complete, TotalAV provides an option to take action on everything the scan finds. To access a standard security scan click on the shield icon in the left rail to see options for a full system scan, quick scans, and a customized scan. The smart scan is a nice touch beyond typical malware scans, especially the duplicate finder. In our tests, it did a pretty good job of analyzing duplicate files based on their contents. Features like this are pretty rare on base-level antivirus programs. Typically, these types of premium features are reserved for the more expensive suites. IDG TotalAVs duplicate file finder. Clicking on the speedometer icon in the left rail shows all of the various system tune-up options available including an application uninstaller, startup manager, and browser cleanup. We arent huge fans of these utilities since features like this are either already built in to Windows 10 or available for fee. Still, to see this in the basic suite is a surprise. Antivirus Pros internet security section (the fingerprint icon) offers protection against malicious websites, as well as a data-breach check. Upgrading to the higher tiers adds a VPN with 32 country locations, and a browser add-on for blocking ads and trackers. Dipping into settings, there are a number of items to tweak here. By default it scans removable drives and archives, but that can be deactivated. Scan scheduling also happens in the settings. The WebShield options allow white listing for domains if TotalAV gets too aggressive, and theres an option to exclude files and folders from duplicate scans. TotalAV Antivirus Pro costs $29 to cover three devices for the first year. The price after that rises to $99. Performance IDG An active TotalAV smart scan. Currently, AV-Test is the only testing house we follow thats looked at TotalAV. Its results were mixed. In the zero-day malware attacks test, with 331 samples, TotalAV scored 91.5 percent in November and 97.4 percent in December. The industry average is 99.1 percent, putting TotalAV noticeably below the norm. Results were a little better with the widespread and prevalent malware-detection test. In both November and December, TotalAV scored 99.8 percent. The industry average is 100 percent, but that is pretty close and larger antivirus names can often fall a little short like this from time to time. The bigger issue is the poor showing in the zero-day malware attacks test. For our in-house performance tests, TotalAV didnt impress in the PCMark 10 test. Without TotalAV, the test PC scored 1,665. With TotalAV Antivirus Pro installed, and after running a full system scan, PCMark 10 scored 1,602, a drop of 63 points. TotalAVs drop was not as drastic in the gaming section of the test, nor was the drop too bad during the rendering and visualization portion of the digital content creation test. Performance was a little better with our file-transfer test. Transferring a large set of files of around 50GB was about a minute faster with TotalAV running. TotalAV also shaved off about 8 seconds from the archiving test. The unarchive time was about a minute faster with TotalAV running, and encoding a large video file with Handbrake was nearly five minutes faster with TotalAV installed. Those are some seriously mixed results. TotalAVs got you covered for the most common forms of malware, but its zero-day chops are concerning. Performance is good in a number of areas, but overall it has some improvement to do. We wouldnt expect to see much of a performance hit for beefy desktops and laptops, but underpowered budget machines might not be as happy with this suite. Conclusion There are a lot of promising features here, including a very good interface and a nice suite of tools. Power users with high-powered computers who like the idea of having all the extra system tune-up tools, and dont mind running Malwarebytes Free to detect zero-day threats, might be happy with TotalAV Antivirus Pro. Overall, however, TotalAV has some improvements to make in performance and detection before we can wholeheartedly recommend it. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the state is "controlling the spread" of the coronavirus, and it appears that "the worst is over ... if we continue to be smart going forward." At the same time, Cuomo revealed that the death toll from Covid-19 in New York which is the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States has topped 10,000 people. Cuomo called the death tally a "horrific level of pain and grief and sorrow." But he pointed to a flattening of the daily death toll, the flattening in the net number of hospitalizations and a drop in the number of people on ventilators as evidence that radical measures such as the shuttering of nonessential businesses have helped to contain the virus. He said the death toll for Sunday was 671, versus 758 on Saturday. "We're controlling the spread," Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany. "The worst can be over, and is over, unless we do something reckless." "You can turn those numbers on two or three days of reckless behaviors," he said. Cuomo said he will make an announcement later Monday about plans for reopening the state in conjunction with some other governors. He said he and governors from Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island have been talking "for the past couple of days, about coming up with, how do we come up with a reopening plan? And can we work together on a reopening plan?" The new deaths recorded in New York state on Easter Sunday brought the state's total 10,056, Cuomo said. "For me, I'm Catholic, Easter Sunday is the high holy day in many ways ... and to have this happen over this weekend is really really especially tragic and they're all in our thoughts and prayers." He noted that the state's total number of fatalities from the virus dwarfed the 2,753 deaths in the terrorist attacks in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. But Cuomo noted that the daily number of new deaths has dropped a bit from some recent days, when new fatalities had topped 750 people each day. (Natural News) Professor Francis Boyle, author of the biological weapons treaty that banned such research in the United States in the 1980s, says that scientists who engage in the development of biological weapons that are designed to kill human beings should be arrested, prosecuted and executed (if found guilty in a court of law). Hes not wrong. We now know that the Obama administration funneled money, via the NIH, into the very same Wuhan BSL-4 laboratory that is widely believed to have created and released the Wuhan coronavirus thats now devastating the world. After bioweapons research was banned in the United States, the US government partnered with private organizations and front groups in Africa to continue weapons research on Ebola and other pathogens. Now, it appears, Barack Obama allowed US researchers to partner with the communist Chinese military so that China would possess the same bioweapons as the United States. The result, as weve all now witnessed, is a global economic collapse, over 118,000 dead (so far), widespread human suffering and the early stages of supply chain disruptions that will surely lead to mass starvation in nations like India and Mexico, not to mention much of the African continent. If fewer than one million people die from this around the world in 2020, it will be a miracle. Vaccine research is the cover story for the death science industry This was all set into motion by death scientists who use the vaccine industry as their cover. They say they need government money to research vaccines to protect the public against biological weapons, but its these same people who are building the biological weapons in the first place. Because the weapons cannot be contained and dont merely fade away (like nuclear weapons do), these weapons have no arguable tactical value in a strategic war. They are global killers that are designed to infect and exterminate humankind, achieving global depopulation as demanded by the globalists. They are indiscriminate killers, too, affecting the innocent, impoverished masses with disproportionate suffering and death. And that brings in Bill Gates, who has now been exposed for pushing a vaccine-led global depopulation agenda that has already killed tens of thousands of innocent children worldwide from failed polio vaccines (which cause polio-like paralysis) and HPV vaccines. And Bill Gates is just getting warmed up. His goal is to eliminate billions of humans from this planet, and bioweapons + vaccines is the means to achieve that (as he knows, since he funded the pandemic simulations that showed the tens of millions who would die worldwide). The worlds power centers have been seized by Big Pharma and its demonic agenda against humanity Making the situation even worse than you might have imagined, Big Pharma has carried out a coup at the White House with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx now running Trumps actions, using a Big Pharma playbook that will end with the mandatory mass vaccination of every American. Those who resist will be arrested, or shot, or marked or isolated from the normal functions of society. In fact, that effort already began three years ago with the de-platforming of all voices, channels and publishers that criticized the vaccine establishment. That was a Bill Gates-run directive to the tech giants who complied by silencing all so-called anti-vaxxers in order to clear the way for this very pandemic and the pro-vaccine demands that would follow (problem-reaction-solution). Now, Dr. Fauci insists that hydrochloroquine doesnt work, claiming that most of America must remain in a perpetual lockdown until vaccines are ready sometime in 2021. He says this even without a single shred of evidence that some future vaccine will even be safe or effective. The vaccine quacks have taken over the White House, and no American is safe while they are in control. All voices of reason have been silenced, and criticism of the vaccine agenda is now a violation of community guidelines on all the globalist-controlled platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Big Pharma is like a deadly cancer on society Big Pharma has taken over Big Tech and Big Media, too. They run the medical schools, which means they own Big Medicine, and theyve also seized control over veterinary medicine. They own all the lawmakers in Washington, and Big Pharma dictates to the tech giants which concepts are allowed to be discussed by the public. No talk about natural cures is allowed, even if they work, and no criticism of vaccines is allowed to exist on any major platform, not even Wikipedia (which is run by the CIA, of course, along with Big Pharma-paid sock puppets.) This cabal of vaccine zealots, bioweapons researchers and pharma collaborators has now managed to create and distribute a biological weapon that was engineered to disassemble human respiratory tissue, mimicking HIV in its attack mechanism (but being airborne and almost impossible to detect in asymptomatic carriers). This is not some natural mutation from the world of bats and seafood markets; its an engineered, planned, carefully constructed weapon designed to exterminate human life. Why should anyone involved in such an effort be allowed to continue their work alongside the very human population they are working to exterminate? Is it time to demand prosecutions and death sentences for bioweapons scientists as Prof. Boyle suggests? Humanity has the right to defend itself against those who seek to exterminate human beings It seems that humanity has no choice but to act in its own self-defense: Either halt the enemies of humanity, or they will eliminate billions of us. Stopping the death science villains seems to be a matter of humanitys survival. If we dont do it, then what superweapon will they build and release next year? How about the year after that? Right now, communist China is hurriedly destroying all evidence of its research into the Wuhan coronavirus. Its like wiping clean the scene of a crime against humanity. Similarly, the U.S. media and corrupt tech giants are censoring anyone who investigates the truth about the artificial origins of this deadly virus. No talk of any artificial origin is allowed, and Zero Hedge was permanently banned from Twitter for merely asking the question. (Thats because Jack Dorsey is a malicious enemy of humanity, too, and hes working for the demonic, anti-human forces that now dominate Big Tech, Big Pharma, Hollywood, the U.S. Senate and the sciences.) Its becoming increasingly clear that if humanity is to survive these anti-human demons who run all the most powerful institutions, We the People will not only have to demand the arrest, prosecution and removal of the death scientists who build these weapons, we will have to dismantle the tech giants that covered for them and sold out to communist China, a regime that harvests human organs and suppresses all truth, all freedom and all personal liberty in its quest for world domination. (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia and other tech platforms have all allowed their policies to be set by communist China now. They are all anti-human platforms that seek enslavement, destruction and death for humanity.) Similarly, the WHO needs to be disassembled. The secret vaccine courts must be exposed and shut down, ending Big Pharmas legal immunity against vaccine damage. The Federal Reserve scammers and bailout bankers need to be arrested, exposed and imprisoned while all their dishonest profits are returned to the workers of America who actually produced something real while their pensions and bank accounts were looted by the financial elite. Its time for grassroots revolution in America, and it must be a pro-human revolution that finally abolishes all those who are enemies of humanity and enemies of freedom. Humanity either rises up and fights for LIFE or collapses in mass DEATH Francis Boyle was right. Those who plot against humanity forfeit their right to exist. If you build self-replicating weapons of mass destruction to murder millions, you forfeit your own right to live in this society. And if you build platforms to censor the truth while protecting pedophiles, communists and the child-abusing vaccine industry, you forfeit your right to operate a business in this world. Its time for Trump to use his national emergency to seek out and arrest all the enemies of humanity, including those in Silicon Valley as well as the bioweapons labs that are right now building the next wave of weapons against humanity. While every person deserves due process and a right to a fair trial, those who are found guilty of building weapons against humanity must be stopped by every legal means available to civilized society. If humanity fails to defend itself against these murderers, perhaps billions will die over the next few years as the annual release of new bioweapons commences. We will all be enslaved, silenced and inoculated like cattle (with infertility chemicals) until the globalists achieve their goal of worldwide depopulation and eugenics. The only defense humanity has remaining is to seek out those who operate as enemies of humanity and end their evil once they are found guilty. Over 118,000 innocent humans are now dead because of the actions of a few thousands death industry scientists whose hubris and ignorance led to this global pandemic. Will humanity just surrender and die? Or does humanity have the right to defend itself against enemies who use irresponsible technology to carry out their agendas of mass death and untold human suffering? Join Team Humanity to help defeat the globalists, the depopulation pushers and the communist tech giants. Listen to all the Health Ranger Report podcasts at Brighteon.com. Watch this powerful film, Out of Shadows, to understand the powerful truth about how Hollywood and the media giants are manipulating your reality to control and exterminate humanity: LONDON - His skin pale and his eyes hooded from a week in the hospital with the coronavirus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson looked into the camera and paid tribute to the two nurses who never left his bedside for 48 hours, a time when his fight to survive could have gone either way.? Jenny McGee from New Zealand and Luis Pitarma from Portugal, he said, embodied the caring and sacrifice of National Health Service staff on the front lines of the pandemic, which has already killed 11,329 people in Britain. The reason, in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen was because, for every second of the night, they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed, he said in an address to the nation Sunday. So that is also how I know, that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second, for every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who are acting with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis. Johnsons statement could mean the NHS has a powerful new advocate as it seeks to reverse a decade of austerity that has left Britains doctors and nurses struggling to treat the flood of coronavirus patients with inadequate supplies of protective gear. At least 19 NHS workers have died in the outbreak. It also was notable for Johnsons unabashed praise of two immigrants. He has staked his career on Brexit, a cause closely bound up with the desire of many in Britain to control immigration, and his words could mean a change in his governments tone. I will never, ever be able to repay you and I will never stop thanking you, added Johnson, who spent three nights in intensive care at St. Thomas Hospital. Johnson called the NHS unconquerable and the beating heart of this country after seeing its response to the outbreak first-hand. He lauded the courage of everyone from doctors to cooks. As the 55-year-old Johnson recuperated at his country estate, the video continued to be shared on social media, sweeping across a nation in the fourth week of a lockdown. The direct and highly personal message could make it harder for him to stonewall the doctors and nurses who saved his life when the NHS asks for more resources in the future, said Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government in London. That video yesterday everyone says that is Boris like theyve never seen him before championing the NHS, Rutter said. He would pay a massive political price for hypocrisy if he appeared to be doing anything that suggests skepticism about the NHS or its performance after that speech. But Johnsons praise for the nurses from New Zealand and Portugal also underscored that it is immigrants who have helped hold up Britains NHS. Up to a quarter of the U.K.s hospital staff were born overseas. Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the council of the British Medical Association, urged Johnsons government to grant permanent residence to the families of overseas medical staff who die in the pandemic and highlighted that many international doctors and health professional pay a surcharge for their own care because of their immigration status. It is unfair to expect doctors currently outside of the U.K. who are willing to come to help in the crisis and other international doctors and health care workers already in the U.K., who are prepared to risk their lives while providing care in the NHS, to pay for that care should they themselves need it, Nagpaul said. Though the NHS hasnt yet been overwhelmed by the outbreak, experts said austerity-fueled cuts have hurt its ability to respond. The infectious diseases specialty has been decimated in the last 10 years, said Allyson Pollock, director of the Newcastle University Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science. Our local health authorities have had a 50% cut in their budgets and no longer have responsibility for infectious disease control, so we have no good data on whats happening at the community level. Pollock said the structural changes in the health service have reduced the number of available beds, harmed its ability to chart the epidemic and drained it of expertise. Other experts noted that pandemic preparedness has taken a back seat to other problems in recent years, such as the effects of Brexit. Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine noted that in the lead-up to Brexit, the department of health was deploying about 80% of its staff to working on potential problems linked to an exit from the European Union without a deal. Supply chains were clearly not ready. Chronic problems with getting personal protection gear have alarmed doctors and nurses, threatening to cripple the response. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers in England, which represents hospital trusts, told the BBC that the supply of gowns was precarious because of delays in shipments and because some of the products failed safety tests. This is all really hand-to-mouth in terms of gown delivery, and we need to get to a more sustainable supply,? he said. There were other problems, too. The government has been criticized for its slow start in increasing coronavirus tests, especially compared with Germany, which has tested far more widely and recorded fewer deaths. The U.K. government has promised to increase capacity to 100,000 tests a day by the end of April. That figure is now 18,000, and the government says it is quickly increasing the number of testing sites including 23 drive-thru centres for health care staff and their families. As it considers easing the lockdown this week, government ministers will be mindful of relaxing measures too soon, despite the economic risks. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak warned last month that the U.K. could fall into recession due to the disruption caused by the outbreak. There was a sense though, that the end of Johnsons hospitalization boosted morale. Today Im feeling incredibly lucky, Johnson said. ___ Associated Press Medical Writer Maria Cheng contributed. ___ Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak Left: Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a Bernie 2020 rally at the Stifel Theater in downtown St. Louis, Mo., on March 9, 2020. (Tim Vizer/AFP via Getty Images) Right: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a campaign stop at Berston Field House in Flint, Mich., on March 9, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) Sanders Endorses Biden After Leaving 2020 Presidential Race After dropping out of the presidential race on April 8, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he is endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden in the general election against President Donald Trump in November. We have to make Trump a one-term president and we need you in the White House, Sanders said in a streaming video with Biden on April 13. Sanderss move to support Biden, considered a moderate, is a significant step toward bringing unity in the fractured Democratic Party as it attempts to unseat Trump. The Vermont senator, who is a self-described socialist, hinted about his intentions in a Twitter post before he appeared on Bidens livestream. Sanders drew widespread support and netted a series of early primary wins in the Democratic campaign, prompting concerns about his electability against Trump among members of the moderate wing of the party. There were fears that if he were to face off against Trump, voters would consider him too left-wing. However, Biden was able to pick up momentum in South Carolina and later in the Super Tuesday contests after he posted dismal showings in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other states. The outbreak of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, meanwhile, threw the 2020 race into disarray, and several remaining states announced they would postpone voting in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus. Aside from Sanderss endorsement, there have also been fears that Biden has struggled to stay relevant as everyday life has been upended, with schools and numerous businesses closing. The 77-year-old also hasnt been able to make any public appearances, hold rallies, speak to voters directly, and has been relegated to holding livestreams and speaking to media outlets from his home. Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about responses to the CCP virus pandemic at an event in Wilmington, Del., on March 12, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) The virus originated in Wuhan, China, and has since spread to around 200 countries and territories around the world. The United States is currently in the midst of an outbreak that has left more than 560,000 people infected and more than 23,000 dead. In recent days, Biden has also been forced to respond to claims that he sexually assaulted a former aide in the early 1990s, when he was a senator from Delaware. His campaign has denied the allegations to media outlets. In a statement, Biden deputy campaign manager and communications director Kate Bedingfield told The Associated Press that claims made by former aide Tara Reade are false. The former vice president has also dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women, she told AP while noting that he helped pass the Violence Against Women Act. What is clear about this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not happen, Bedingfield added. Pragmatism and politics have long prevailed over any pretence of reform in the discourse on permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). A set of legal barriers along with the political influence of the permanent members (P-5), particularly China, have obstructed the UNSC reform process. And the obvious victims of this have been the Group of Four (G-4) countries India, Japan, Brazil and Germany who are considered the natural frontrunners for permanent berths in the UNSC. Nonetheless, with the coronavirus pandemic questioning the relevance of the global governance regime itself, is it not appropriate to review the relevance of the current decision-making process in the UN and its affiliated bodies? On March 31, 2020, addressing the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres stated that, "Everything we do during and after this crisis must be with a strong focus on building more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change, and the many other global challenges we face.'' Beijing's arrogance His words assume great significance given the cavalier and authoritarian Chinese approach within both the UNSC and the World Health Organization (WHO). The same arrogance was on display in the early days of the outbreak, when the Chinese authorities tried to cover it up and punished whistle-blowers, allowing the virus to spread around the globe. In view of the UN secretary-generals comment, the UNSC has largely remained silent on the pandemic. An important reason for this was that for the month of March 2020, the UNSC was under the presidency of China. (It passed to the Dominican Republic in April.) The WHO declared the outbreak as a pandemic on March 11, while the UNSC has still not scheduled a meeting to discuss the rapidly spreading disease. Further, on March 26, Chinas ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, chaired UNSC's first-ever video conference which adopted four new resolutions, none of which, however, pertained to the coronavirus. Further, the Estonian government has blamed China for vetoing its proposal with the help of Russia and South Africa to discuss the COVID-19 situation with transparency. As a P-5 country, China has time and again influenced the decision-making process in the UNSC on many pressing matters, especially regarding its own national or foreign policy interests. However, it has often fallen short of genuinely supporting global issues in times of need, especially amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. In other words, Beijing has overlooked the principles of a rules-based order that the UN or the UNSC as its highest decision-making body should ideally implement. And yet, the WHO, a specialised agency of the UN, has been helping China expand its clout as a public health superpower. However, amid the coronavirus crisis, the agencys support of China is drawing questions about the relationship between the two sides. The WHO, which is heavily dependent on Chinese funding, has consistently been lauding Chinese transparency and 'effective management' of the ongoing crisis, news of which in fact was not shared with the organisation until mid-January. Failure of UN system The UN system, including the WHO, has not only failed to anticipate the global spread of the virus but is also currently struggling to control the pandemic through a credible medical response system. Apart from the damage COVID-19 has inflicted on the global economy and its supply-chain networks, it has importantly exposed the systemic flaws in the current global governance architecture to address universal health problems across continents. While drugs and vaccines for tackling COVID-19 are still being developed or tested, the wide spreading pandemic is prompting many questions such as: Is it not time for an overhaul of the UN governance systems? Isnt the world deserving of a better world health system and an effective UNSC? The world needs values and ethical practices, as also leaders with vision who are transparent and trustworthy. The COVID-19 scenario shows that China does not have the required leadership skills that the world currently needs. Its non-transparent governance system, which heavily draws from its opaque authoritarian political system under the Communist Party of China, is certainly a major obstruction. Even in a health crisis such as this, Beijing has been occupied more with building its own global influence, by supplying masks and medical equipment to cover up its damage. However, the pandemic needs a value-based health care approach that is qualitative in nature, and what countries such as Japan and India could possibly bring to the table, rather than China. Certainly, the G-4 countries, particularly, Japan and India, offer such an alternative leadership, which has not been as yet explored.The comity of nations, surprisingly, has not realised the importance of such a grouping and its constituent members. For example, Beijing has officially objected to the G-4s bid for permanent membership in the UNSC. The lack of serious support from the United States has only helped sustain Chinese supremacy in the global governance architecture. Despite Indias and Japans international efforts to defend a rules-based order, their bids for permanent membership have effectively been clogged with relative ease by China. Beijing has rejected Japans strong candidacy one of the largest financial contributors to the UN because it feels that global responsibility should not be judged through financial criteria. In fact, China has time and again revived the issue of Japans war crimes to prevent this debate from going forward. Likewise, China has never valued Indias historical support to Chinas membership in the UNSC and increasingly views India as pro United States, opposing any prospective entry of India into the organization. Besides, China wants to sustain the global credibility that comes with being the only Asian power with a veto and permanent seat in the UNSC. China has had political differences with Brazil and Germany, too, which have only grown over the years. Brazils education minister Abraham Weintraub recently drew the wrath of China after he tweeted that coronavirus is part of Beijings geopolitical plan for world domination. Further, German presence in the P-5 is not something China is ready for, as it would tip the votes in a pro-European Union lobby within the UNSC, even post Brexit. The current pandemic will hopefully encourage nations to believe in the values of fellowship, harmony and universal well-being to not just pursue UNSC reform or revisit the scope and mandate of international agencies such as the WHO, which have begun to look partisan with greater zeal, but also take actions against Chinas irresponsible behaviour. Thus, in the post-COVID-19 period, the global community must hold China accountable through treaties, covenants and charters; especially in view of similar health negligence by China during the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003. Legal options should be explored against China at the WHO for breaching the International Health Regulations, and legal proceedings in the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration could be initiated too. Such legal actions should not only be explored at the UN-affiliated institutions, but also in other international forums too. For instance, actions could be taken against China under the World Trade Organization rules; claims could be brought before the Hong Kong courts as the actions of state bodies breached the rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; claims could be brought in the US Federal Courts against the Chinese state as an exemption within the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act; and options could also be explored in the courts in the United Kingdom against the commercial entities linked to the Chinese state or the Communist Party of China. Time has come to tax and reprimand China for its authoritarian and non-responsible role in the global governance regimes. To help stem the spread of the virus, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's public schools would remain closed through the end of the school year for the 1.1 million children in the city's system. De Blasio said the decision was "painful" but "I can also tell you [it] is the right thing to do. It will clearly help us save lives." New York is the hardest-hit state in the U.S., with Governor Andrew Cuomo reporting Saturday that there were 783 deaths on Friday, raising the state's death toll to more than 8,600. The U.S. also became the world's first country to report more than 2,000 COVID-19 deaths in a single day. The U.S. reported 2,108 fatalities Friday, the world's highest one-day death toll since the outbreak began in China in late December. The figures showed the U.S. leading all other countries in the number of confirmed cases and fatalities, surpassing Italy's death toll for the first time. Italy's total was 19,468 on Saturday, Hopkins' statistics showed. The United States became the world leader in coronavirus deaths Saturday, a grim indicator of the country's status as the global epicenter of the pandemic. As of Saturday afternoon, the U.S. had recorded about 519,400 COVID-19 cases and 20,071 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. The World Health Organization said Saturday that it was examining reports of recovered COVID-19 patients testing positive again in Korea as they were about to be discharged from hospitals. Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters the virus might have been "reactivated" in 91 patients instead of their being reinfected. The WHO said in a statement, "We are aware of these reports of individuals who have tested negative for COVID-19 using PCR [polymerase chain reaction] testing and then after some days testing positive again." The organization said it was "closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases." Korean health officials said epidemiological investigations were underway to determine the causes of the apparent reactivations. As the WHO and countries throughout the world grapple with containing the pandemic, the coronavirus continues its spread as billions of people on lockdown celebrate Easter weekend from their homes. There were more than 1.76 million cases and more than 108,000 deaths worldwide -- in 193 countries -- as of Saturday afternoon, according to Hopkins' statistics. U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that deciding when to reopen the country would be "the biggest decision I've ever had to make" and that he would weigh the pros and cons of the decision with his health and economic advisers. What was not clear, however, was whether all the states would follow what Trump said. Trump did not officially close down the country, leaving each governor, instead, to decide for his or her state. Trump has said he would like the country opened up again on May 1, despite a warning from the WHO on Friday that lifting lockdown measures too quickly could trigger a "deadly resurgence" of the coronavirus. Trump acknowledged Friday the possibility of higher death tolls if businesses reopened too soon, saying, "But you know what? Staying at home leads to death also." Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, told CNN that "the virus kind of decides whether it's appropriate to open or not." He cautioned that moving too early could result in another surge of infections. The nationwide lockdown in Argentina that was set to end on Sunday has been extended to April 26. President Alberto Fernandez made the announcement Saturday, when he also said travel restrictions would be eased in some areas in the coming days. As the virus spreads and death tolls climb, many public health experts throughout the world believe fatalities are actually much higher than have been reported, because postmortem testing has been limited. Some COVID-19 deaths were not attributed to the disease, they think, and other deaths go unreported because of homelessness and other factors. China continued to report low numbers of new cases of the virus Friday, saying Hubei province, where the virus originated, logged zero new cases, while the rest of China recorded 46 new cases. A Chinese study suggested that coronavirus particles can travel up to 4 meters from infected patients. The WHO recommends that people stay at least 1 meter away from someone who is sneezing, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a distance of about 2 meters. The study, published Friday in the CDC publication Emerging Infectious Diseases, was conducted February 10 to March 2 in two hospitals in Wuhan, China. A study conducted in the U.S. by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that sneezes and coughs could spread the virus more than 8.2 m. NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller says the NRL still faces "work health and safety" hurdles before the season can resume as the code says it can be flexible with the May 28 start date. Mr Fuller wrote to Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V'landys last week confirming the game could be played under the states coronavirus public health orders. NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the professional sport was not closed. Credit:Rhett Wyman As at 8 April 2020, the NSW Health Ministers Directions relating to COVID-19 does not preclude the NRL from commencing a competition in the terms outlined above, Mr Fuller wrote. Mr Fuller said on Monday that he stood by the legal advice he had received. Do the wealthy get away with not paying their fair share of taxes? Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both proposed a wealth tax on the ultra-rich. Even multibillionaire Warren Buffett has said that wealthy Americans such as himself should be taxed at a higher rate. Currently, the top federal income tax rate is 37% for 2019 returns. It applies to incomes of $510,301 and higher for single taxpayers and $612,351 and higher for couples filing jointly. But the top marginal tax rate has been much higher throughout U.S. history. It peaked at 94% in 1944 and 1945, according to the Tax Policy Center. The lowest it has been in recent history was 28% in the late 1980s under former President Ronald Reagan. So, the wealthy have been taxed more in the past, but theyve also been taxed less than they are now. Whether the rich pay their fair share of taxes is still up for debate, but they do pay a disproportionate share of taxes in the U.S. The top 1% of taxpayers those who earn $515,371 or more paid 38.47% of the total tax revenue collected in 2017, according to the latest figures from the IRS. Thats actually a greater share than what the bottom 90% of taxpayers paid in total, at 29.92%. And thats just the federal share of taxes. To find the total tax burden on the top 1%, GOBankingRates analyzed 2019 data from the Tax Foundation on federal and state income tax rates for single filers and married couples filing jointly. The average annual income of the top 1% was sourced from the Economic Policy Institute. GOBankingRates then calculated both the effective and marginal tax rates on the top 1% in every state using an in-house calculator. The study also found how much the top 1% spends on sales taxes by looking at information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center. Property tax was excluded due to the lack of consistent data for home values of the top 1% in every state. Story continues Not surprisingly, GOBankingRates found that the tax burden on the top 1% varies greatly from state to state. However, in almost every state, at least 30% of the wealthiest taxpayers incomes go toward taxes. The study is ranked from lowest to highest average income of the top 1%. Take a look at this state-by-state breakdown of how much the rich pay in taxes. Last updated: Sept. 30, 2020 50. West Virginia Average income of the top 1%: $535,648 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $197,901 Tax burden: 36.95% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $167,769 Tax burden: 31.32% Income needed to make the top 1%: $258,078 49. Mississippi Average income of the top 1%: $580,461 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $209,941 Tax burden: 36.17% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $179,095 Tax burden: 30.85% Income needed to make the top 1%: $254,362 48. New Mexico Average income of the top 1%: $615,082 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $224,821 Tax burden: 36.55% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $193,166 Tax burden: 31.40% Income needed to make the top 1%: $255,429 47. Maine Average income of the top 1%: $655,870 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $255,733 Tax burden: 38.99% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $223,085 Tax burden: 34.01% Income needed to make the top 1%: $303,897 46. Kentucky Average income of the top 1%: $719,012 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $267,886 Tax burden: 37.26% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $235,914 Tax burden: 32.81% Income needed to make the top 1%: $274,818 45. Alabama Average income of the top 1%: $743,644 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $281,033 Tax burden: 37.79% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $249,021 Tax burden: 33.49% Income needed to make the top 1%: $297,564 44. South Carolina Average income of the top 1%: $761,185 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $301,827 Tax burden: 39.65% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $269,611 Tax burden: 35.42% Income needed to make the top 1%: $318,463 43. Iowa Average income of the top 1%: $788,419 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $324,726 Tax burden: 41.19% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $292,323 Tax burden: 37.08% Income needed to make the top 1%: $331,572 42. Hawaii Average income of the top 1%: $797,001 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $345,741 Tax burden: 43.38% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $307,415 Tax burden: 38.57% Income needed to make the top 1%: $310,566 Find Out: How Much You Need To Be in the Top 5% in Every State 41. Indiana Average income of the top 1%: $804,275 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $290,508 Tax burden: 36.12% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $258,753 Tax burden: 32.17% Income needed to make the top 1%: $316,756 40. Louisiana Average income of the top 1%: $814,386 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $318,246 Tax burden: 39.08% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $284,903 Tax burden: 34.98% Income needed to make the top 1%: $318,393 39. Vermont Average income of the top 1%: $816,579 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $336,217 Tax burden: 41.17% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $301,784 Tax burden: 36.96% Income needed to make the top 1%: $321,969 38. Idaho Average income of the top 1%: $829,268 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $329,845 Tax burden: 39.78% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $297,372 Tax burden: 35.86% Income needed to make the top 1%: $314,532 37. Montana Average income of the top 1%: $855,976 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $334,819 Tax burden: 39.12% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $302,615 Tax burden: 35.35% Income needed to make the top 1%: $321,849 36. Ohio Average income of the top 1%: $858,965 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $325,232 Tax burden: 37.86% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $293,260 Tax burden: 34.14% Income needed to make the top 1%: $334,979 Learn More: 5 Common Reasons You Might Owe Taxes This Year 35. Arkansas Average income of the top 1%: $864,772 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $347,058 Tax burden: 40.13% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $314,855 Tax burden: 36.41% Income needed to make the top 1%: $255,050 34. Delaware Average income of the top 1%: $869,461 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $337,737 Tax burden: 38.84% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $305,571 Tax burden: 35.14% Income needed to make the top 1%: $340,770 33. Arizona Average income of the top 1%: $882,657 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $334,508 Tax burden: 37.90% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $301,445 Tax burden: 34.15% Income needed to make the top 1%: $331,074 32. North Carolina Average income of the top 1%: $902,972 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $348,488 Tax burden: 38.59% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $316,486 Tax burden: 35.05% Income needed to make the top 1%: $343,066 31. Oregon Average income of the top 1%: $908,898 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $384,165 Tax burden: 42.27% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $350,221 Tax burden: 38.53% Income needed to make the top 1%: $358,937 30. Alaska Average income of the top 1%: $910,059 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $299,623 Tax burden: 32.92% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $268,262 Tax burden: 29.48% Income needed to make the top 1%: $400,017 29. Michigan Average income of the top 1%: $917,701 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $344,330 Tax burden: 37.52% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $312,449 Tax burden: 34.05% Income needed to make the top 1%: $328,649 28. Rhode Island Average income of the top 1%: $928,204 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $365,307 Tax burden: 39.36% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $333,214 Tax burden: 35.90% Income needed to make the top 1%: $346,657 27. Oklahoma Average income of the top 1%: $932,520 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $359,662 Tax burden: 38.57% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $327,523 Tax burden: 35.12% Income needed to make the top 1%: $333,139 26. Missouri Average income of the top 1%: $944,804 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $368,117 Tax burden: 38.96% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $336,096 Tax burden: 35.57% Income needed to make the top 1%: $326,839 25. Nebraska Average income of the top 1%: $945,869 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $380,272 Tax burden: 40.20% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $347,165 Tax burden: 36.70% Income needed to make the top 1%: $363,310 Find Out: What Can I Write Off on My Taxes? 24. Tennessee Average income of the top 1%: $947,021 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $338,610 Tax burden: 35.76% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $307,005 Tax burden: 32.42% Income needed to make the top 1%: $332,913 23. Wisconsin Average income of the top 1%: $964,358 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $391,900 Tax burden: 40.64% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $358,308 Tax burden: 37.16% Income needed to make the top 1%: $349,905 22. Georgia Average income of the top 1%: $995,576 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $392,335 Tax burden: 39.41% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $360,209 Tax burden: 36.18% Income needed to make the top 1%: $371,811 21. Kansas Average income of the top 1%: $1,034,676 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $409,258 Tax burden: 39.55% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $376,666 Tax burden: 36.40% Income needed to make the top 1%: $375,344 20. Utah Average income of the top 1%: $1,057,066 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $410,782 Tax burden: 38.86% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $378,816 Tax burden: 35.84% Income needed to make the top 1%: $374,467 19. North Dakota Average income of the top 1%: $1,080,845 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $396,093 Tax burden: 36.65% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $363,823 Tax burden: 33.66% Income needed to make the top 1%: $445,415 18. Pennsylvania Average income of the top 1%: $1,100,962 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $408,169 Tax burden: 37.07% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $376,433 Tax burden: 34.19% Income needed to make the top 1%: $388,593 17. Virginia Average income of the top 1%: $1,109,984 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $440,250 Tax burden: 39.66% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $408,187 Tax burden: 36.77% Income needed to make the top 1%: $425,144 A Complete Guide: How To Fill Out a W-4 16. South Dakota Average income of the top 1%: $1,130,048 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $385,273 Tax burden: 34.09% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $353,912 Tax burden: 31.32% Income needed to make the top 1%: $407,406 15. New Hampshire Average income of the top 1%: $1,134,101 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $436,186 Tax burden: 38.46% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $404,214 Tax burden: 35.64% Income needed to make the top 1%: $405,286 14. Maryland Average income of the top 1%: $1,135,718 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $452,083 Tax burden: 39.81% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $419,458 Tax burden: 36.93% Income needed to make the top 1%: $445,783 13. Minnesota Average income of the top 1%: $1,185,581 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $518,411 Tax burden: 43.73% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $482,919 Tax burden: 40.73% Income needed to make the top 1%: $443,118 Check Out: 18 Medical Expenses You Can Deduct From Your Taxes 12. Colorado Average income of the top 1%: $1,261,053 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $493,452 Tax burden: 39.13% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $461,526 Tax burden: 36.60% Income needed to make the top 1%: $458,576 11. Texas Average income of the top 1%: $1,343,897 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $465,868 Tax burden: 34.67% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $434,507 Tax burden: 32.33% Income needed to make the top 1%: $440,758 10. Nevada Average income of the top 1%: $1,354,780 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $470,996 Tax burden: 34.77% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $439,635 Tax burden: 32.45% Income needed to make the top 1%: $341,335 9. Washington Average income of the top 1%: $1,383,223 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $483,327 Tax burden: 34.94% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $451,966 Tax burden: 32.67% Income needed to make the top 1%: $451,395 How To Avoid Paying Taxes Legally: The 11 Craziest Ways People Have Done It 8. Illinois Average income of the top 1%: $1,412,024 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $561,576 Tax burden: 39.77% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $529,611 Tax burden: 37.51% Income needed to make the top 1%: $456,377 7. Florida Average income of the top 1%: $1,543,124 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $538,935 Tax burden: 34.92% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $507,574 Tax burden: 32.89% Income needed to make the top 1%: $417,587 6. New Jersey Average income of the top 1%: $1,581,829 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $680,304 Tax burden: 43.01% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $645,934 Tax burden: 40.83% Income needed to make the top 1%: $588,575 5. California Average income of the top 1%: $1,693,094 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $798,797 Tax burden: 47.18% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $751,034 Tax burden: 44.36% Income needed to make the top 1%: $514,694 See: What Is a Tax Deduction and How Do Tax Deductions Work? 4. Wyoming Average income of the top 1%: $1,900,659 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $669,610 Tax burden: 35.23% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $638,249 Tax burden: 33.58% Income needed to make the top 1%: $405,596 3. Massachusetts Average income of the top 1%: $1,904,805 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $769,639 Tax burden: 40.41% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $737,661 Tax burden: 38.73% Income needed to make the top 1%: $582,774 2. New York Average income of the top 1%: $2,202,480 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $958,503 Tax burden: 43.52% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $903,928 Tax burden: 41.04% Income needed to make the top 1%: $550,174 1. Connecticut Average income of the top 1%: $2,522,806 Single filers: Total income and sales taxes paid: $1,074,605 Tax burden: 42.60% Married couples filing jointly: Total income and sales taxes paid: $1,038,991 Tax burden: 41.18% Income needed to make the top 1%: $700,800 More From GOBankingRates Methodology: To find the tax burden on the richest 1% in every state, GOBankingRates used the Income Inequality in the United States study from the Economic Policy Institute to source the average annual income of the top 1% in every state. GOBankingRates then sourced both the federal and state tax brackets for 2019 from the Tax Foundation. GOBankingRates used an in-house income tax calculator to find both the effective and marginal tax rates on the average income of the top 1% in every state. These calculations were done for taxpayers filing as a single person and for a married couple filing jointly. GOBankingRates then used the 2018 Consumer Expenditure Survey by income decile from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the annual expenditure for the top 10% income decile (minus shelter and healthcare) and the Cost of Living Data series from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center to find the annual expenditure of the top 10% in each state. The annual expenditure of each state was then multiplied by each states average combined sales tax (the state rate plus the average local rate) to give the total dollars spent on sales tax for each state. To figure out the total tax burden, GOBankingRates combined the total spent on federal and state income taxes plus the total spent on sales tax annually divided by average income. Property tax was not included due to the lack of consistent data for home values of the top 1% in every state. The standard deduction was used when calculating income tax rates. All data used to conduct this study was compiled and verified on Jan. 24, 2020, and is subject to change. This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: What the Richest 1% Pay in Taxes in Your State As tribes work day and night to protect their already vulnerable communities from the deadly coronavirus , a new crisis has emerged, courtesy of the Trump administration. With $8 billion at stake, tribal leaders in the lower 48 states are rushing to prevent the much-needed money from landing in the hands of corporate entities in Alaska. The fund, which was authorized by the bipartisan Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act , also known as the CARES Act , is supposed to benefit governments in Indian Country, they point out. But on Friday -- barely one day after the Bureau of Indian Affairs held the final consultation on the $8 billion , and just three days before the close of the comment period -- tribes and their advocates learned of a troubling development in the nation's capital. They are extremely concerned that the Trump administration -- at the urging of Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney , a former executive of a Native corporation in Alaska -- might redirect a huge portion of the much-needed funds to a region that has seen fewer than 10 confirmed COVID-19 cases , compared to the hundreds spreading throughout the lower 48 "While the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs is an Alaska Native, who has worked for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, we do not believe it would be proper for the BIA to advocate for ANC funding," leaders of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Association said in a letter to the Trump administration on Sunday, citing a conflict of interest that arose when Sweeney was being considered for the position in Washington, D.C. With social distancing guidelines being observed in some of the poorest communities in Indian Country, the Great Plains leaders were forced to conduct an emergency teleconference meeting to discuss the letter, which was approved by a unanimous vote. But they aren't the only ones rushing to address the emerging threat from Washington -- the National Congress of American Indians , the oldest and largest inter-tribal advocacy organization in the United States -- is also responding strongly. The Trump administration "must only disburse funds to Tribal governments -- political bodies that serve the interests of citizens," NCAI President Fawn Sharp wrote in a letter on Saturday . Quoting Section 601(d) of the CARES Act, she wrote: "This provision defines eligible uses of the funds, and references only governments" -- Alaska Native corporations are not mentioned. "These funds will be critical to assist Tribal governments in withstanding the impacts of COVID-19," said Sharp, who also serves as president of the Quinault Nation , whose citizens in Washington state were among the first impacted by the arrival of the coronavirus in mid-January , when the Trump administration was playing down the health, social and economic ramifications associated with a pandemic. In order to be confirmed as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, the government official with the most responsibilities to tribes and their citizens, Sweeney two years ago promised to recuse herself from playing a role in "any" decisions that impact Arctic Slope Regional Corporation , which is the largest Alaska Native business entity in terms of revenue . When pressed about the matter by members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs , she further promised never to seek a waiver from her pledge At the time, the pledge was seen as largely symbolic, as the BIA does not typically make decisions affecting Alaska Native corporations , which are organized under state law . But the $8 billion coronavirus relief fund has put the agency -- and Sweeney -- at the center of one of most consequential decisions in decades. "Including ANCs as recipients of the Coronavirus Relief Fund would not be equitable. In fact, it would be galling," President Bryan Newland of the Bay Mills Indian Community , wrote in a post on the influential Turtle Talk law and policy site on Sunday. When asked over the weekend about Sweeney's role in the distribution of the fund, and whether she supports the inclusion of Alaska Native corporations in the $8 billion, the Department of the Interior , BIA's parent agency, did not comment. Interior also did not comment when asked whether the department, which is led by Secretary David Bernhardt , has taken a position on the matter. But Sweeney's cohorts at Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, which reports $3.4 billion in revenues , have definitely taken notice of a huge pot of money sitting in Washington. On Saturday, a spokesperson told Indianz.Com that the $8 billion fund, along with other provisions of the CARES Act, are of great interest to the Native residents in one of the most remote areas of the U.S. "Were also engaged in learning all we can about the $8 billion tribal set aside to assist our tribal members in the Arctic Slope region," the spokesperson told Indianz.Com. "Alaska holds 229 federally recognized tribes and the Arctic Slope has nine with more than 13,000 members." And despite the relatively small numbers of COVID-19 cases being reported in Native communities in Alaska, the coronavirus has definitely had an impact on Arctic Slope's bottom line, the spokesperson said. The corporation portfolio focuses heavily on oil revenues, which have taken a significant dive as a result of the pandemic "ASRC has certainly been affected by the COVID-19 situation (as well as low oil prices) and unfortunately, its very difficult if not impossible to ascertain just how long this disruption in operations will continue," the spokesperson told Indianz.Com. "Like other businesses, were looking for ways to cut spending at this time while still providing value to our customers, stakeholders and shareholders," the spokesperson said. Tribes in the lower 48 are in the same dire situation. Over the last month, they have been forced to curtail services to their citizens, shut down revenue-generating business and, in some cases, furlough employees in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus across America. The $8 billion relief fund -- which is far smaller than the $150 billion being set aside for states -- is designed to help Indian nations recover some of the costs of the extremely disruptive efforts. But tribes and their advocates say the CARES Act is clear on who are the beneficiaries. "The purpose of the entire section is government," Dante Desiderio (Saponny), the executive director of the Native American Finance Officers Association , told Indianz.Com. "The whole center of the relief fund should focus on the 574 recognized governments." With the CARES Act, Congress put the Department of the Treasury in charge of distributing the $8 billion fund. But since the agency's relationship with Indian Country has been a rocky one and has only begun to change in recent years, the law directs the Department of the Interior to assist in the consultation effort. We wanted to take some time to show our support for Healthcare Profesionals near and far. We appreciate you and your dedication to patient care. From the Navajo Police Department, #Thankyouhealthcareprofessional #InThisTogether pic.twitter.com/WLYhlEVg8z Navajo Police Department (@Navajopd) April 12, 2020 During two consultation calls over the last two weeks, Assistant Secretary Sweeney has done just that, opening up the sessions by assuring Indian nations that "tribal leaders" are being asked for input about the $8 billion. President Donald Trump himself said the CARES Act would support "tribal leaders" when he signed the bill into law late last month. "This $8 billion is the single largest infusion of funds into Indian Country in the history of our country," Sweeney said on the first call on April 2, according to participants who relayed the contents to Indianz.Com. "This amount is more than the Cobell settlement , the Land Buy-Back Program and the Ramah Navajo settlement combined," she added -- ticking off a list of big ticket legal and policy achievements that were secured by the Barack Obama administration. "This is our opportunity to get it right," Sweeney said of coronavirus relief fund for tribal governments. THANK YOU TO OUR HEROES FOR KEEPING OUR PEOPLE SAFE 04.12.20 A big thank you to the Navajo Police Departments police... Posted by Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer on Sunday, April 12, 2020 Judging by what has been presented by Sweeney and her chief deputy, Mark Cruz, who is the only other Indian policy leader at the BIA at this time, getting it right hasn't included Alaska Native corporations, participants told Indianz.Com. During the two calls, the Trump administration never brought up the business entities as potential avenues for distributing any of the $8 billion, they said. "They better include casinos if theyre going to do that bullshit," one tribal leader told Indianz.Com, highlighting the fact that a different federal agency has taken an extremely narrow reading of the CARES Act in a manner that has already hurt Indian Country's financial interests But during the last call on April 9, participants noticed a shift in messaging from their relatives up north. More and more Native representatives from Alaska were speaking up about the need for the $8 billion to be distributed in a way that addresses a wide range of economic, social and other impacts in their respective regions. Two regional organizations in Alaska were among those who sought Sweeney's ear, according to participants. Still, neither Sweeney, whose frequent trips back to her home state have stopped as a result of the coronavirus, nor Cruz said anything about possibly including inter-tribal organizations in Alaska, or Native corporations for that matter, in the distribution formula, participants recalled. "We need the money right now": With the number of #COVID19 cases in Indian Country continuing to rise, the Trump administration is embarking on the most consequential tribal consultation in recent history. #Coronavirus https://t.co/5vQzvOzW3O indianz.com (@indianz) April 2, 2020 Should Alaska Native corporations or Alaska regional entities be included, tribes and their advocates in the lower 48 fear that a large chunk -- possibly up to half of the $8 billion -- could flow to the 49th state. "Please do not allow Alaska Native Corporations to be counted as Tribal governments under the CARES Act Coronavirus Relief Fund," the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Association said in their letter to the Trump administration. "That would be contrary to the plain language of the CARES Act, and it would allow forof Alaska Natives since members of federally-recognized Alaska Native villages are also shareholders in Alaska Native Regional Corporations and Alaska Native Village Corporations." The Department of the Treasury has been represented by on the consultation calls by Daniel Kowalski , who serves as counselor to Secretary Steve Mnuchin . He's held that role since March 2017, during which time the Trump administration irked Indian Country by moving slowly to get the Tribal Advisory Committee up and running. The group's first public meeting didn't take place until June 2019, more than two years in the Donald Trump era. Treasury has already been the source of significant concern because its guidelines have locked many tribal gaming enterprises out of the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program . The agency is finally getting around to consulting tribes about the issue on Tuesday -- more than a week after loan applications opened. Over $130 billion has already gone out to other businesses while tribes await clarity from Washington. Join the Conversation Related Stories Africa-China relations have run into rough waters after a large number of African nationals, most of them students, were harassed and discriminated as the Asian giant forced coronavirus testing and quarantine over fears of imported infections. Several African expatriates have been left homeless after being evicted by hotels and landlords as China puts strong control on overseas travellers to contain the second-wave of the pathogen that originated in its own courtyard before spreading and spraying out to the whole A diplomatic crisis has emerged as Africa is upset over mistreatment of its national in China, reports CNN. As videos of Africans under forced quarantine and sleeping out in the streets went viral, there was an outrage in Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. "On Saturday, the front page of Kenya's biggest newspaper lead with the headline, "Kenyans in China: Rescue us from hell," as a member of the country's parliament called for Chinese nationals to leave Kenya immediately," writes CNN. The fallout threatens to undermine China's diplomatic efforts in Africa built over the decades with China's trade with the continent USD 208 billion in 2019, according to official figures from China's General Administration of Customs. Beijing has sought to invest in infrastructure projects in Africa but US officials have talked of so-called Chinese debt trap diplomacy in which countries are forced to hand over key assets to service loans they can't repay. African governments have been quick to demand answers from Beijing on the mistreatment of their citizens. The CNN report notes that governments of Uganda and Ghana reportedly summoned their respective Chinese ambassadors over mistreatment of their nationals. The Foreign Ministry of South Africa, which is currently chairing the African Union, said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports. Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, tweeted that he had invited the Chinese ambassador to the AU to discuss the allegations of mistreatment. The report said that Nigerian lawmaker Oloye Akin Alabi posted a video on Twitter of the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjian, being asked by a Nigerian politician about the mistreatment of Africans in Guangzhou. In an apparent effort to stem the damage, Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe made a tweet and said there is zero tolerance for discrimination in China. "Our attitude is clear, firm & consistent: ZERO tolerance for racial discrimination. NOTHING can change such a position. Communication, including constructive criticism is welcome. That will help any party concerned to improve its working methods & reduce misunderstanding," he said. He also posted a statement which said it is harmful to sensationalise "islotated incidents or what is misunderstanding caused by insufficient communication". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 18:16:51|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close HANOI, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam saw total motorcycle sales of 731,077 units in the first quarter of 2020, down 3.03 percent from the same period last year, Vietnam News Agency reported on Monday. Most of the motorcycles were sold by the five Vietnam Association of Motorcycle Manufacturers (VAMM) members of Honda, Piaggio, Suzuki, SYM and Yamaha, the news agency reported. These producers currently provide around 100 models on the market, from domestically assembled to imported vehicles, with prices ranging from 18 million Vietnamese dong (782 U.S. dollars) to 1.2 billion Vietnamese dong per unit. Experts believe that the fall in motorcycle sales were triggered by market saturation and the downward trend began several years ago, while the improved living standards and decreasing car prices have encouraged many people to choose automobiles instead of motorcycles, the news agency reported. The VAMM members sold nearly 3.3 million motorcycles last year, by the end of which Vietnam had over 60 million motorcycles, according to Vietnam's Ministry of Transport. Since the early hours of Monday, Russian mercenaries have not breached the ceasefire Open source On April 12, Russian mercenaries attacked Ukrainian positions in Donbas three times. One Ukrainian serviceman deceased, and another one sustained combat injury. Ukraine's Defense Ministry's press office reported that on Monday morning. The enemy opened fire in Taramchuk, Vodyane (Donetsk region) and Krymske (Luhansk region). Anti-tank grenade launchers and heavy machine guns were used in these attacks. Ukrainian forces returned fire, making the hostile troops stop any armed provocations. Enemy casualties are being specified. Previously, the Armed Forces reported 18 cases of infection with Covid-19. Earlier, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky visited the tent camp of the 66th Military Mobile Hospital for patients with coronavirus infection, located in the area of the Joint Forces Operation, as the press service of the President reports. It is noted that the hospital is designed to host 100 patients at a time. An additional 50-seat infectious department was deployed there in case patients with Covid-19 were identified. The hospital is equipped with isolation and patient care equipment. Chicago artist Elaine Frei, wearing a spreading joy not germs mask, arrived on the scene early Monday to create one of her signature balloon installations on the chain-link fence outside the school. The finished product is more than five dozen biodegradable balloons of various sizes most of them yellow, many of them smiling that dares anyone in its path not to feel an immediate burst of something unexpected: Joy? Hope? Community? An infected Ruby Princess crew member who handled food could be the most likely source of the cruise ship's mass coronavirus outbreak. NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the investigation into the handling of the Ruby Princess had so far linked the spread of COVID-19 on board to a crew member who likely worked with food. "At this stage, we would think that it was probably a crew member working in the galley," he told reporters on Monday. Live blog: Coronavirus news and updates "Someone that would be across a number of passengers for it to spread like it has." Comm Fuller stressed that it hadn't yet been proven, but suggested it was "the most obvious point of transmission". The police boss expects to give NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian an estimated timeline for their criminal investigation into the fiasco on Tuesday morning. A criminal investigation has pointed towards a crew member being the likely spreader of COVID-19 on the Ruby Princess. Source: AAP NSW Police have gathered over 220 new leads since calling for anyone with information to come forward. But Comm Fuller said chasing up and verifying that information could take at least two months. "At its best, we could have 2500 witnesses that police could speak to in relation to this," he said. The Ruby Princess, which departed Sydney on March 8 for New Zealand and returned on March 19, is responsible for hundreds of COVID-19 cases nationwide and at least 18 deaths, including two in NSW on Monday. Passengers were permitted to disembark in Sydney without adequate health checks, an action blamed by the Australian Border Force on NSW health authorities. More than 1000 foreign crew members remain on board the ship which is docked at Port Kembla, near Wollongong. About 66 crew members have been infected with coronavirus, with 11 evacuated to NSW hospitals. Comm Fuller said while some crew members are happy to stay on the vessel, police are offering to assist in repatriation efforts with possible charter flights paid for by cruise line operator Carnival. Story continues "We're making every effort to get people home," he said. "If someone is clear of the virus they can certainly fly with normal restrictions." Investigators in protective gear shown before boarding the Ruby Princess to seize evidence and question crew members. Source: AAP Meanwhile, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard says it's unfortunate 2700 passengers boarded the Ruby Princess cruise ship at a time when the coronavirus pandemic was already front and centre in the community's consciousness. "It is a very unfortunate outcome but at the time that that ship sailed, which was March 8 from memory, there was COVID-19 well and truly," Mr Hazzard said. "Journalists were talking about it and I as health minister was working hard on it, and it is unfortunate that people went out cruising at that particular point." Mr Hazzard repeated the view of NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant who previously said more infections could have occurred if passengers had not departed the ship. He also backed the decision of authorities to release the passengers, saying their expertise should not be called into question. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play. Another international crisis, another poor show by Europe. No government or multilateral institution has covered itself in glory in the current coronavirus pandemic. Even by these low standards, the response of the European Union (EU) and its member-states has been remarkably inept. Existing protocols on sharing medical supplies during a health crisis were ignored. Freedom of movement principles so beloved of Brussels was hastily abandoned. There was a eurozone crisis redux over coronabonds, with frugal northern Europeans fearing they would end up paying for the fiscal irresponsibility of southerners. There was a palpable sense of virus-ravaged Italy and Spain having to fend for themselves, with China providing the only outside assistance. Yet, the idea that a united Europe will be one of the victims of the pandemic is an exaggeration. The EU is not responsible for medical crises because the member-states never came up with a common health policy. Euroscepticism has risen, but mostly in Italy, and has been partly offset by the poor example set by Brexit Britain. The supplies provided by China, much of it paid for and subsequently shown to be defective, have been surpassed by what European governments have given to each other. The European Central Bank has spearheaded a swathe of financial relief efforts, including for developing countries. Much will be forgiven if a post-crisis Brussels uses the opportunity to expand the ambit of the EUs policy action. New Delhi will be among the capitals that will hope Europe can restore some of its credibility. India and the EU have made progress in their relations, moving beyond seemingly endless trade and human rights disputes, and starting to recognise that they have common strategic concerns that must be prioritised. The hope is that these strands can be picked up again after the virus is defeated. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON At least six people were killed Sunday when tornadoes and severe windstorms plowed through Texas, Mississippi and other Southern states. In Mississippi, the state's emergency management agency said three people in different counties near the Louisiana border Walthall, Lawrence and Jefferson Davis had died because of the weather. The agency did not immediately provide more details, but the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office announced late Sunday night that one of its deputies, Robert Ainsworth, and his wife were among the dead. "Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs. Paula during the tornado," the department said in a statement on its Facebook page. "He was a very valuable employee and will be greatly missed." Robert Ainsworth, a United States Marine Corps veteran and longtime employee of the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office, was killed with his wife Paula during strong storms and tornadoes on Sunday, April 12, 2020. (Lawrence County Sheriff's Office) The governors of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama each declared states of emergency to help recover from the damage caused by the storms. Parts of central Texas were under tornado warnings Sunday morning as the twisters touched down accompanied by what witnesses called "gigantic" hail. Photos of the damage in Round Mountain, Texas, about an hour west of Austin, showed overturned trees and a trailer destroyed by the storm. Some customers in Central Texas were without power as officials worked to determine whether there were more than just two tornadoes, NBC affiliate KXAN of Austin reported. Download the NBC News app for breaking news and weather Extensive damage from severe windstorms was also reported in Monroe, Louisiana, a small city in the northern part of the state, while much of the southern region remained under tornado watches Sunday afternoon. Tornadoes have not yet been confirmed in the state by the National Weather Service. City officials said on social media that trees and power lines had fallen throughout Monroe. "We have downed power lines in many areas of Monroe. Do not touch or attempt to move them," Mayor Jamie Mayo said on Twitter. All flights at Monroe Regional Airport were canceled until further notice, Director Ron Phillips said. The city posted pictures of the airport showing extensive damage and fallen debris. Story continues Gov. John Bel Edwards asked Louisiana residents to remain at home as severe weather continues through the state. "Even though the morning storms have left the state, many other dangerous systems remain across Louisiana. Please stay at home, follow the orders of local officials and tune in to your local weather person for updates," he wrote on Twitter. As of Sunday afternoon, no deaths have been reported in either state, and city officials in Monroe said a few people had suffered minor injuries. The storms come as Louisiana remains one of the states hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with over 20,000 cases as of Sunday, including more than 800 deaths. Texas had 12,561 reported cases, including 254 deaths. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged residents in the western region of the state to take precautions Sunday as they brace for a storm system that is expected to bring high winds and rains until Tuesday. Cuomo said the storm could cause flooding and power failures in the state hardest hit by the pandemic, with over 180,000 cases, including 8,627 deaths. CORRECTION (April 12, 2020, 9:45 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misidentified the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas. It is KXAN, not WXAN. The scene is pseudo-apocalyptic. Corpses are left outside cemeteries and hospitals as Ecuador struggles to deal with the massive body count. The mortuaries and cemeteries are overwhelmed by the sudden, continuous deaths, and these unclaimed bodies are wrapped in plastic, as seen in videos circulating on social media. Currently, Ecuador patients positive for coronavirus is at 7,466, while deaths are at 333. So far, 501 have recovered. Ecuadorians believe this is not an accurate number of the actual cost. Check these out! More Morgues Government officials in Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, are in the process of giving away cardboard coffins to compensate for the scarce burial services to help families put their loved ones to rest. Because of its high population density, Guayaquil has become a hotspot for COVID-19. Funeral homes are struggling to receive the bodies since the disease can be contracted even in the death of the patients. A health worker at the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo hospital likened the ordeal to that of a warzone. "The things we have seen are straight out of a horror film," he adds. Other residents are forced to bring their deceased loved ones home with the city's insufficient burial space. As the bodies rot, neighbors complain of the stench. However, a report by BBC reveals that corpses of COVID-19 patients from Guayaquil hospitals are yet to be released over two weeks since their deaths. "We've been waiting here for over ten days," a relative of a deceased patient says in the video report. She adds that the family is yet to retrieve and bury the body of their family member. "The corpses have been [at the back of the building] for 15 days-they're already disfigured and rotting with worms." Authorities Apologize Jorge Wated, president of the public bank BanEcuador, apologized in a message broadcast to the people. He also served as the national coronavirus joint task force coordinator. In the video, he said that mortuaries had too many bodies on their hands to remove the corpses of the deceased, more so because of the curfew during the pandemic. A public cemetery for the dead of the coronavirus is currently underway to shelter 2,000 bodies. Wated tells the people, "We acknowledge any errors and apologize to those who had to wait days for their loved ones to be taken away." Measures such as installing refrigerator trucks at public hospitals are being done. Guayaquil's mayor, Cynthia Viteri, shared that the city is already receiving these container trucks for the storage of the bodies from the hospital to make room for more patients. She is also confirmed to have coronavirus. In the meantime, as authorities started collecting over a hundred bodies of the dead, Ecuador President Lenin Moreno claimed a more accurate figure was much higher than was being reported. He also posted on Twitter that a task force to give the deceased a dignified burial is in progress. On Saturday, he confirmed a digital system that can be accessed online would be able to allow Ecuador families to see where their dead relatives were buried. Pakistan has appealed to international stakeholders for urgent debt relief for developing countries so they can deal more effectively with the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, the government said on Sunday. Pakistan has recorded 5,183 cases of the virus, with 88 deaths. The country's already-struggling economy has been hit hard by nationwide preventive lockdowns that have brought economic activity to a halt and caused widespread unemployment. Prime Minister Imran Khan, in a video message released by the foreign office, said he was worried people in the developing world would die of hunger as a result of lockdowns. "Pakistan with a population of 220 million, so far the best stimulus package we can afford is $8 billion," Khan said in the video, adding that highly indebted countries lack fiscal space to spend on health and social support. Pakistan, which is over $100 billion in debt to foreign lenders and spends the largest chunk of its budget on debt servicing, last week began a $900 million cash disbursement programme to 12 million poor families rendered unemployed due to lockdowns. Khan said he appealed to world leaders, the heads of financial institutions and the secretary-general of the United Nations to get together to announce a debt relief initiative for developing countries. Pakistan will receive $1.4 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of organisation's Rapid Financing Instrument to help finance the country's response to the virus. It is also currently in the first year of a three-year $6 billion IMF programme to help its ailing economy. INDIA CORONAVIRUS TRACKER: BusinessToday.In brings you a daily tracker as coronavirus cases continue to spread. Here is the state-wise data on total cases, fatalities and recoveries in one comprehensive graphic Also read: Coronavirus India Live Updates: Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Delhi worst-affected states with cases past 1,000 Also read: Coronavirus: India says ready to handle COVID-19 spread; Bangladesh announces farmer relief package [April 13, 2020] CPI Aerostructures Secures $4.8 Million Loan Under Paycheck Protection Program Provision of Cares Act EDGEWOOD, N.Y., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CPI Aerostructures, Inc. (CPI Aero) (NYSE American: CVU) (the Company) announced that it closed on a $4.8 million loan under the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) (the Loan) contained within the new Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed into law by President Trump on March 27, 2020. The Loan was obtained from BNB Bank, which is one of the lenders to the Companys existing credit facility. As a U.S. Small Business, CPI Aero qualifies for the PPP which allows businesses and nonprofits with fewer than 500 employees to obtain loans of up to $10 million to incentivize companies to maintain their workers as they manage the business disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Loan has a term of two years, is unsecured, and is guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. The Loan bears interest at a fixed rate of one percent per annum with the first six months of interest deferred and will be forgiven if at least 75% of the Loan proceeds are used by CPI Aero to cover payroll costs, including benefits, and the Company maintains its employment and compensation within certain parameters during the eight-week period following the loan origination date. CPI Aero expects to meet the requirements for full Loan forgiveness. The forgiven amount is not included in taxable income. Douglas McCrosson, President and CEO of CPI Aero said, We are grateful to the Administration and Congress for creating this much-needed safety net in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This loan gives us a cushion to support our workers in view of the uncertain duration of the pandemic and its unprecedened challenges. Small businesses, such as CPI Aero, are vital to the nations economy and we are proud of the fact that we are continuing to operate without layoffs or furloughs as a Department of Defense-designated critical infrastructure company. We continue to see robust demand from our national security customers and with this assistance, we expect to emerge from this crisis with our workforce intact and the capability to execute on our substantial backlog. Id like to thank BNB Bank for its efficiency, responsiveness and stellar customer service that resulted in CPI Aero being among the first small businesses in the nation to receive a PPP loan. About CPI Aero CPI Aero is a U.S. manufacturer of structural assemblies for fixed wing aircraft, helicopters and airborne Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance pod systems in both the commercial aerospace and national security markets. Within the global aerostructure supply chain, CPI Aero is either a Tier 1 supplier to aircraft OEMs or a Tier 2 subcontractor to major Tier 1 manufacturers. CPI also is a prime contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense, primarily the Air Force. In conjunction with its assembly operations, CPI Aero provides engineering, program management, supply chain management, and MRO services. CPI Aero is included in the Russell Microcap Index. The above statements include forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which are described from time to time in CPI Aero's SEC reports, including CPI Aero's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, and Form 10-Q for the three-month periods ended March 31, 2019, June 30, 2019, and September 30, 2019. CPI Aero is a registered trademark of CPI Aerostructures, Inc. For more information, visit www.cpiaero.com, and follow us on Twitter @CPIAERO. About Bridge Bancorp, Inc. Bridge Bancorp, Inc. is a bank holding company engaged in commercial banking and financial services through its wholly-owned subsidiary, BNB Bank. Established in 1910, BNB, with assets of approximately $4.9 billion, operates 39 branch locations serving Long Island and the greater New York metropolitan area. Through its branch network and its electronic delivery channels, BNB provides deposit and loan products and financial services to local businesses, consumers and municipalities. Title insurance services are offered through BNBs wholly-owned subsidiary, Bridge Abstract. Bridge Financial Services, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of BNB, offers financial planning and investment consultation. For more information visit www.bnbbank.com. Investor Relations Contacts: LHA Investor Relations Sanjay M. Hurry/Jody Burfening (212) 838-3777 [email protected] www.lhai.com [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] 13.04.2020 LISTEN The Coalition of Aggrieved Fund Management Customers (CAFMC) is calling on President Akufo-Addo to come to the aid of the thousands of pensioners (aged) and vulnerable customers whose monies have been locked up in the 53 Collapsed Fund Management Companies. According to the Coalition, the recent lockdown in Accra and Kumasi has worsen and aggravated the already deplorable living condition of pensioners (aged) and the vulnerable in our society. In a statement signed by the Secretary of the Coalition, Joseph Aryeetey, he said, "Our health and living condition have been deteriorating daily to the point of death due to our inability to access our funds to meet our basic critical essentials such as medicine and food" He added that majority of the customers with various health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, prostate challenges etc are currently bedridden with no help in sight while we have our fund locked-up with the various fund management companies. Mr. Aryeetey further explained that it is heartbreaking that civil servants, security officers and traders who toiled and laboured for this country and saved their meagre income with these government regulated investment firms are being treated this way. "We saved our monies with these firms with the hope that we can access the money at our old age to support our critical needs, unfortunately, our hopes of securing our old age have been dashed due to the financial sector clean-up initiated by the current government which resulted into the collapse of these 53 fund management companies in which we invested our funds" he explained. Secretary of the Coalition, Mr. Aryeetey also noted that they are appealing to President Akuffo Addo to empathize with fellow senior citizens of his age in helping mitigate their current sufferings. The Coalition tasked Government to extend the recently announced relief package amidst the fight of COVID-19 which sought to provide support to the vulnerable in our society to the customers of the 53 collapsed fund management companies. Mr. Aryeetey also stated Government should with immediate effect release and disburse the 1 billion Ghana cedis relieve package for depositors of the 53 collapsed fund management companies which was allotted and subsequently announced by the finance minister during the presentation of the 2020 financial budget at parliament. He stressed that, "Unlike our counterparts in the Savings and Loans & Microfinance sector who have either received part or all of their funds, we are by this petition pleading with government to release our funds for us in these times" The Coalition says since the COVID-19 is now worsening the already deplorable condition of pensioners and the vulnerable, an emergency fund should be set aside to settle customers of the 53 defunct fund management companies. "The epidemic (our locked-up funds) we are faced with as pensioners is even worse than the COVID-19 pandemic. It was our hope to secure our future, the reason for which we saved our money with these investment firms," he emphasised. The total number of COVID-19 cases in Turkey is now 56,956, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced Sunday. The number of fatalities rose by 97 to 1,198. 481 more patients have recovered in the past 24 hours. We have a decrease in the number of intubated patients, Koca said in a tweet, adding that more tests lead to more diagnoses and quarantines. This struggle is to be won by staying at home, he warned. READ: Turkeys coronavirus cases near 57,000 with 480 recoveries in single day 24,088 face legal proceedings for breaking weekend curfew A 48-hour curfew was imposed this weekend across 31Turkish provinces to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Interior Ministry said on Sunday evening that 24,088 people face legal proceedings for not complying with the curfew. The curfew was lifted at midnight on Sunday. READ: https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/24088-face-legal-proceedings-for-breaking-weekend-curfew-interior-ministry-says/news Weekend markets moved to Monday The curfew over the weekend meant that the markets normally held on Saturday and Sunday had to be postponed. Patlangc, Calca, Camkoy, Foca and Gocek markets took place today (Monday) and shoppers stocking up on fruit and veg noticed that the produce was no longer in plastic bags. As a result of some market traders putting rotten fruit and vegetables in the bags, customers are now provided with gloves by the market tradesmen and can choose their own produce. Source: https://gercekfethiye.com/haftasonu-kurulamayan-pazarlar-kuruldu/26675/ Istanbul and Ankara introduce new transport rules Turkeys two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, started the week with new measures for public transport aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. As part of the new regulations introduced by the citys governors offices, commuters and drivers in Istanbul are all required to wear protective face masks during the trip. Passengers are not allowed to use public transport unless they have face masks on. Some drivers for metrobuses wear protective gowns. According to the new rules, sanitizers are installed on all public transport vehicles and at all stops. READ: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/istanbul-ankara-introduce-new-transport-rules-153814 Turkish volunteers join forces to help overwhelmed health care staff Bahar Ozsoz, a nurse at a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, chats in a video call with her family she has not seen for a month, April 12, 2020. (AA Photo) Imece is a well-known Turkish tradition especially in villages where people come together for collective collaboration to help others in the community. A website going by the name of this concept brings together volunteers from around Turkey to help the new heroes of the country: health care workers. As they work tirelessly against the COVID-19 pandemic and to help the outbreaks victims, imece.biz gives a platform to more than 300 volunteers to help doctors, nurses and others overwhelmed with work. They do everything to help, from finding babysitters for health care staffs children separated from their overworked parents to shopping for doctors and nurses. READ: https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/turkish-volunteers-join-forces-to-help-overwhelmed-health-care-staff/news Global statistics There are now 1,874,771 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, of which 435,332 have recovered. The number of fatalities stands at 116,332. Source: Worldometer. Follow Fethiye Times on social media for regular updates. Like us on Facebook Follow us on Instagram Follow us on Twitter Todays featured image: Inlice Bay by Lyn Ward Gov. Phil Murphy has said on many occasions during the coronavirus pandemic that personal protective equipment - masks, gowns, gloves and face shields- is among the biggest needs of New Jersey hospitals. Two hospitals got a huge boost over the weekend one thanks to an Ocean County high school student, the other thanks to activists in Hong Kong. Chenxi Mark Bao, a junior at Donovan Catholic High School in Toms River, shipped 10,000 face masks to his school last week after returning home to unite with his family in China during the coronavirus pandemic. The masks were then given to Community Medical Center in Toms River. Also, Hong Kong human rights activists have donated 4,000 surgical masks to Central State Medical Center in Freehold Township to thank the New Jersey congressman who has been a staunch advocate on Capitol Hill. The donation to CentraState Medical Center was organized by the Hong Kong Democracy Council and New Yorkers Supporting Hong Kong, two U.S.-based groups supporting the pro-democracy protesters fighting the Chinese governments efforts to limit freedom in the former British territory, according to Rep. Chris Smith. As of Sunday, at least 2,350 have died of COVID-19 related caused in New Jersey. An estimated 80 to 85% of the 61,850 who have tested positive for the virus have mild or moderate symptoms and either have recovered or are expected to recover, health officials said CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage A roundup of coronavirus news: Feds allowing N.J. to use hotels for first responders, others who may have been exposed to coronavirus: You may be a first responder who deals with coronavirus patients but dont want to carry the virus back to your family. Or youre living in a homeless shelter and either you or another resident tested positive. Or you have COVID-19 and need to be isolated from your family but have nowhere else to live. New Jersey and its municipalities just got permission to house these people in hotels and motels at federal expense. The state became eligible to request Federal Emergency Management Agency funding after President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration March 26. Severe thunderstorms, 50-70 mph close some coronavirus testing sites Monday: The forecast for up to 70 mph winds Monday forced multiple coronavirus testing sites operating under temporary shelters and tents to close and reschedule appointments. The closures include the state-operated testing site at the PNC Bank Arts in Monmouth County and several county-run sites. Be sure to check your local testing site before leaving the house for operating status. When will we get back to normal? Heres the way out of coronavirus quarantine in N.J.: The pathway out of the current quarantine could take a series of extreme measures, some of which arent even in place yet. They include aggressive large-scale contact tracing, like tracking the movement of your cellphone, widespread testing and data collection, and developing a better understanding of potential immunity to the virus. Those measures could provide a way for the state to begin gradually lifting restrictions and easing into reopening, experts said. But for that to happen for parks and beaches and restaurants and schools to open again health officials first will have to see a prolonged decline in infections, hospitalizations and fatalities. N.J. universities, technical schools and seminaries to get $325M in federal emergency coronavirus funding: New Jersey universities, technical schools and seminaries and their students hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic are getting a $323 million lifeline in federal funding. In all, $12.6 billion was earmarked for colleges and universities in the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus law. Those institutions were forced to shut down their campuses in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, and are now facing major financial losses. Each institution is required to distribute half of their award the portion being released first by the U.S. Department of Education directly to students by providing emergency financial aid grants to help cover costs associated with the disruption of campus operations due to the coronavirus, including course materials, food, health care, technology, housing, and other eligible costs. 108-year-old, great-great grandmother succumbs to coronavirus: Ollie Edwards, who lived in Newark for 70 years, died at a nursing home in Linden on Saturday. Edwards leaves behind three children, 15 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren and numerous great-great-grandchildren and other family members who are spread out across the country. She and her late husband had eight children. Bedminster cop, 38, is 2nd N.J. officer to die from coronavirus on Easter Sunday: Sgt. AlTerek Patterson, who served with the Bedminster police departments patrol division, died the coronavirus Sunday morning. The 38-year-old officer joined the department in 2006. Sgt. Patterson always had a smile on his face and touched the lives of so many residents at their time of need, the Bedminster Police Department said in a statement posted on Facebook. Please keep his family, friends, and members of the Bedminster Township Police Department in your thoughts and prayers. Paterson police officer, 34-year-old father of 2, dies from coronavirus: Paterson Police Officer Francesco Scorpo, a father of two who joined the department in 2015, died Sunday morning from complications related to the coronavirus, according to city officials. Cant mask my feelings: Supermarket shopping amid coronavirus can be challenging: A New Jersey Advance Media reporter admitted he looked ridiculous" wearing a face covering made out out of an old T-shirt before he set off to the supermarket for what proved to be a harrowing experience. Facuci comments on U.S. virus response seems draw Trumps ire: Social restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus could have saved lives if theyd been started earlier, and when theyre eased new cases are certain to arise, said the nations top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, seeming to draw the ire of President Donald Trump. Trump, who has been chafing at criticism that he didnt do enough early on to fight the virus, reposted a tweet that referenced Faucis comments and that said Time to #FireFauci. Trump again pointed to his decision in late January to restrict travel from China, writing, Sorry Fake News, its all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Worldwide coronavirus cases: About 115,000 of the 1.6 million who have tested positive for the virus have been killed, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. More than 438,000 have recovered. U.S. cases: More than 22,000 of the nearly 558,000 cases have resulted in deaths. About 42,000 have recovered as of 7 a.m. Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. Tell us your coronavirus stories, whether its a news tip, a topic you want us to cover, or a personal story you want to share. If you would like updates on New Jersey-specific coronavirus news, subscribe to our Coronavirus in N.J. newsletter. NJ Advance Media staff writers Caroline Fassett, Chris Franklin, Peter Genovese, Alex Napoliello, Jonathan D. Salant, Ted Sherman, Matt Stanmyere and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has urged healthcare workers in aged care homes to not go to work if they feel unwell amid two more COVID-19 deaths, taking the state's death toll to 26. A 74-year-old woman died in Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital and a 79-year-old man died in Northern Beaches Hospital, the state government disclosed on Monday. The two deaths overnight were passengers on the Ruby Princess cruise ship, where they acquired coronavirus. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard. Credit:Nick Moir There were nine new cases of coronavirus, taking the total in the state to 2863, Mr Hazzard said. "The fact that we had nine new cases clearly indicates we are moving in the right direction but we still have a lot more to do and no one should think we can slacken off," Mr Hazzard said. Me Joseph Mbah Ndam Archives The death has been announced of 65-year-old Hon. Joseph Njang Mbah Ndam, National Legal Adviser of the opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF, party. Mbah Ndam died Monday, April 13, 2020 in Yaounde where he was receiving medical care, SDFs National Communication Secretary said. The Social Democratic Front party, with deep sorrow, announces the passing on to glory of the Right Honorable Joseph Mbah Ndam this morning the 13th of April 2020 in Yaounde. The departure of this Statesman is an irredeemable loss to the SDF in particular and Cameroon in general. May his soul rest in perfect peace, said Nkemlemo in a statement. Mbah Ndam became Member of Parliament for Momo West Constituency (Batibo) following the May 17, 1997 Parliamentary Elections in Cameroon that saw the SDF win 43 of the 180 seats at the National Assembly. On Friday March 20, some 48 hours before the March 22, 2020 Parliamentary Election rerun, one of the vehicles of the convoy of Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam suffered a blast due to an explosive positioned at one of the twenty-one barricades erected by armed groups between Bamenda and Batibo. Four soldiers and two civilians were seriously injured in the attack but Mbah Ndam emerged physically unhurt. According to open sources, armed separatists fighting to secure the independence of a country they call Ambazonia opened fire on the convoy targeting Hon. Mbah Ndam Joseph Njang, who sought to prolong is nearly 23-year stay as Member of Parliament for Momo West (Batibo). Like was the case during the twin Municipal and Legislative elections on February 9, 2020, separatists vowed to frustrate the parliamentary election rerun. The electorate of Momo West along with those of ten other electoral constituencies in Cameroons North West and South West Regions were to choose 13 Members of Parliament in rerun polls. The election rerun followed Constitutional Council decision no. 29/SRCER/G/20 of February 25, 2020 to cancel the election of Members of Parliament in the following constituencies: North West Region Menchum North, Bui West, Mezam South, Bui Centre, Bui South, Mezam Centre, Momo East, Menchum South, Momo West and Mezam North and South West Region Lebialem. Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that the partial annulment of the outcome of the February 9, 2020 legislative elections came after the opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF, seized the Constitutional Council citing irregularities that breached laws relating to elections in the country. The CPDM however swept all 13 seats following the rerun. Hon. Joshua Osih, 1st Vice National Chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF, Friday, April 3, 2020 granted a press conference in Yaounde during which he recounted the events surrounding the March 22, 2020 parliamentary election reruns in eleven constituencies in the North West and South West Regions. Seated next to Osih at the April 3 press conference was Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam who looked dejected following the defeat that put an end to his parliamentary career. That appeared to be his last public outing. Hon. Mbah Ndam was a graduate of the University of Yaounde and Member of Parliament from 1997. He was Vice Speaker of the National Assembly until his parliamentary career ended following the March 22 defeat. Mbah Ndam was born on February 28, 1955 in Batibo, Momo Division of the then North West province. He has been a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the SDF since 1991. Besides being a politician, he was a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Yaounde from 1988-92. Until his death, he was the adviser on legal and judicial matters of National Financial Credit Bank and chair of Union of cultural and development association of Momo division. He was a practicing Protestant Christian; was married and a father of four children. His house in Batibo was burnt down to ashes by armed separatist fighters on Sunday, December 15, 2019. Congress chief whip in the Rajasthan Assembly Mahesh Joshi on Monday urged the state government to provide benefits under the food security act to the people belonging to economically weaker sections who have been financially hit due to the nationwide lockdown imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus. In a letter to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Joshi said, "The coronavirus pandemic crisis has created a livelihood problem for economically weaker sections of the society." "A large number of such families are not covered under the social security pension scheme. Such people should be provided benefits under the National Food Security Act," he wrote in the letter. Rajasthan-based civil society Vipra Foundation's vice president RK Ojha has also made a similar demand to the chief minister. Ojha said EWS families are neither under the BPL category nor do they get social security pension so a special package should be provided to the section. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Chairperson of the African Union, President of the Republic of South Africa His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Donald Kaberuka, Tidjane Thiam and Trevor Manuel as Special Envoys of the African Union to mobilise international support for Africas efforts to address the economic challenges African countries will face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Special Envoys will be tasked with soliciting rapid and concrete support as pledged by the G20, the European Union and other international financial institutions. President Ramaphosa says: In the light of the devastating socio-economic and political impact of the pandemic on African countries these institutions need to support African economies that are facing serious economic challenges with a comprehensive stimulus package for Africa, including deferred debt and interest payments. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been global in both scale and reach, and this necessitates coordinated international action to capacitate all countries to respond effectively, but most particularly developing countries that continue to shoulder a historical burden of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment, President Ramaphosa said. President Ramaphosa added: The sentiment expressed in two recent letters written to the G20 by a group of world leaders and a team of esteemed economists underscore the importance of bolstering health systems in poorer countries; this can only be done with the support of the international community. Dr Okonjo-Iweala is an internationally respected economist and development expert and served two terms as Minister of Finance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. She has also served as Managing Director of the World Bank. Dr Kaberuka is an economist and former President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB). He is the former Finance Minister of Rwanda and in 2016 was appointed as a Special Envoy of the African Union on sustain-able financing for the AU and funding for Peace in Africa. Mr Manuel was the longest-serving Minister of Finance in the Republic of South Africa and formerly headed the countrys National Planning Commission. In 2018 he was appointed as an Investment Envoy by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to engage domestic and international investors as part of the countrys national investment drive. Mr Thiam is a banker and businessman. He is the former Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse and also served as Chief Financial Officer and CEO of Prudential. He also has a background in management consulting and worked for McKinsey and Company. The African Union Chair said the appointment of the special envoys would expedite the process of securing economic support to enable countries on the continent to respond swiftly to this grave public health emergency. President Ramaphosa said the envoys brought with them a wealth of experience and enjoyed longstanding relationships in the international financial community. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses a media conference at the end of the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg on July 27, 2018, as the heads of the BRICS group Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met in Johannesburg for an annual summit dominated by the risk of a US-led trade war. Five of the biggest emerging economies on July 26, stood by the multilateral system and vowed to strengthen economic cooperation in the face of US tariff threats and unilateralism. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / Themba Hadebe The African Union is immensely encouraged by the support that has been extended by the international community thus far. It is an affirmation that as nations of the world, we are all in this together. We must now focus on efforts to marshal every resource at our disposal to ensure that this pandemic is contained, and does not result in the collapse of already ailing economies and financial systems on the continent, President Ramaphosa said. Dr Okonjo-Iweala is bagging the new African Union appointment a few days after the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva named her a member of the organizations External Advisory Group. The group has been charged to provide perspectives from around the globe on key developments and policy issues, including policy responses to the exceptional challenges the world now faces due to the novel coronavirus and its economic impact. The eminent group from around the world, the IMF said, is to draw on high-level policy, market, and private sector experience to provide insights to enhance the Funds ability to serve its membership. SOURCE: African Union Website Help India! TCN News Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) along with Hindus For Human Rights (HfHR), both Indian American advocacy groups have released a statement condemning the escalation of Islamophobia in India following the spread of COVID-19 across different parts of the country. Support TwoCircles Both the social groups dedicated to safeguarding Indias pluralist and tolerant ethos, have blamed mainstream media outlets in India for the horrifying levels of vitriols poured on Muslims that have resulted in an alarming increase in assaults on Muslims. The groups claim that an urgent healthcare and humanitarian crisis requires a unified response from the entire population and the pervading social and economic boycott of Muslims being openly pursed now is a threat to the nations security at large. IAMC and HfHR resonate that Islamophobia has risen in the country exponentially since news broke out that some members of the Muslim reformist Tablighi Jamaat had held their annual conference in Delhi in Mid March. What was absent in these one sided reports was the acknowledgement that Tablighi Jamaat conference took place before lockdown when it was business as usual for the entire country. The groups point that it was held much before the Janata curfew imposed by PM Narendra Modi on March 22. It is shameful that the crisis of COVID-19 is being exploited by people in positions of power and influence in order to intensify religious divisions in India, said Mr. Ahsan Khan, President of the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC). In order to support their statement, the groups have questioned as to why only Muslims are being called carriers of the deadly disease when on March 14, the day the annual conference was in place, Indias Home Minister Amit Shah was the chief guest at the convocation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at Rishikesh, with hundreds in the audience without social distancing. Following this, Saibaba temple at Shirdi city in Maharashtra and Venkateswara Temple at Tirupati city in Andhra Pradesh, each averaging over 50,000 pilgrims a day, closed only on March 17 and 19, respectively. Calling upon the Indian Government to crack down on fake content that is making outrageous and patently false claims about Tablighi Jamaat members misbehaving with medical staff while in quarantine, IAMC and HfHR have accused such hate speech of creating a dangerous and volatile situation for millions of people. We must call out violations of social distancing protocols regardless of who the violators are, added Ms Viswanath from HfHR. In their end note, both IAMC and HfHR have jointly appealed to the people of India to reject hateful politics that only serves the nefarious ends of a privileged few, urging civil society to unite in a spirit of brotherhood in combating not only COVID-19 but also the bigotry and violence that represents as much of an existential threat to India as the coronavirus. Comedian Joel McHale is currently trending on Twitter for the sarcastic remarks and 'bad jokes' he made while hosting the Netflix documentary Aftershow 'Tiger King and I'. McHale, who is the host of the spinoff show, was called out by netizens for being "condescending" and "mocking" towards the people that he interviewed. Some indicated that his interview "weren't entertaining but annoying". And that, they were disappointed with the episode. Jennifer Vineyard from The New York Times "Anyone in search of a serious critical evaluation of the criminal case against the flamboyant Joe Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic - including his part in the attempted murder-for-hire of Carole Baskin - might want to look elsewhere." Not everyone is against McHale, however. There are Tweets in support of 'The Soup' actor. Some defended him saying that he was simply doing his job. There were also others who said that they respected McHale for not misgendering Saff. Kelci "Saff" Saffery, his full name, is a transgender who used to work as an animal keeper and was praised by Refinery29 as the "real hero of the series". And, some argued that anyone who "defends and celebrates an animal abuser, murder-for-hire" were in the wrong. There were others who said that the social media hate was dumbfounded since the comedian's whole shtick was to make fun of other people and that this was his typical type of humor. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness: A Huge Netflix Hit Before McHale's episode, this true crime documentary was a smashing hit. It was released on March 20, 2020 on the streaming site Netflix. It was received positively by critics including Brian Lowry, media critic for CNN who referred to it as the "weird docu-series distraction we could use right now." And as CNN points out, 10 days after it was aired, its views have tremendously skyrocketed. According to the agency, Nielsen ratings has estimated that about 34 million unique viewers watched the mini docuseries. This estimate does not cover views outside of the US. Moreover, those who watched on their laptops, tablets and mobiles weren't counted as well. And according to Hollywood Reporter, it comes close to Stranger Things, which has a total of 36.3 million views. Tiger King and I: Spinoff Frustrations In his article for IndieWire, Steve Greene remarks that, whether he was told to or did it on his own, McHale's episode came off as a reality show that's incredibly sarcastic. Greene emphasized that this was in stark contrast to the theme of the show, which he described as money's effect on people and how we act in evil ways whenever we feel threatened. He also adds that there was little effort made and that it was only created as a way to feed off the popularity in which the show was currently enjoying. Additionally, he mentioned that important show figures like Carole Baskin and "Doc" Antle weren't even present. This, he stressed, seemed to push McHale to make unbalanced claims about Baskin's backstory, which wasn't the case in the previous episodes. Officials said a forest fire that burned about 1,500 acres in Cumberland County was caused by a lightning strike. The blaze, which sparked Thursday in the Millville Wildlife Management Area, was declared under control at 8 a.m. Saturday, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. While the fire is fully contained, smoke may remain visible for several days as some trees within the fire perimeter continue to smolder, the fire service said in a statement. Motorists were asked to use caution in the area as firefighters remained at the scene. Fire crews faced windy conditions as they worked to quell the conflagration. State and local firefighters battled the blaze, using a helicopter and bulldozers in the operation. There were no reported injuries or damage to any structures. Wildfire Update: Split Ditch Fire The New Jersey Forest Fire Service declared a wildfire in the Millville Wildlife... Posted by New Jersey Forest Fire Service on Saturday, April 11, 2020 Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook. At a petrol pump on the deserted Bavla-Changodar highway near Ahmedabad in Gujarat, several trucks and buses are neatly parked in a row. Some of the drivers are taking a nap, while some others play Ludo on their mobile phones, even as they maintain physical distance from each other. The highway cuts across one of the busiest pharmaceutical hubs in the country. But that was before the nationwide lockdown to battle the coronavirus pandemic came into force. Today, the hub, which consists of big, mid-sized and small pharma companies, wears a desolate look. With the ... Nine out of 10 inmates are male. There were nearly three-quarters of a million Americans held in local jails in 2018, and about a third of them were black, according to the Bureau of Prison Statistics. In fact, the rate at which black people were jailed was nearly three times the rate at which white people and Hispanics were jailed. The Cook County Jail in Chicago has emerged as a hot spot for the coronavirus and Covid-19, with more than 300 inmates and more than 200 employees testing positive for the virus. Seventy-three percent of the people in that jail are black and 93 percent are men. And, to add insult to injury, national data show that 70 percent of the people in local jails are not yet convicted of any crime. Many simply cant afford to post bail, so they wait in jail on a trial for the charge or until they enter a plea to it. People living with compromised immune systems are also at risk. H.I.V./AIDS can lead to such a compromised system, particularly among those not in treatments and whose virus hasnt been suppressed. Black men have the highest rate of new diagnoses of H.I.V. The H.I.V. prevalence rate for black people is eight times the rate for white people and nearly three times the rate for Hispanics. There are over a million Americans living with H.I.V. Nearly half a million of those are black. Only 61 percent of those black people received treatment for the virus in 2016 and only about half were able to suppress the virus. And H.I.V. is now heavily linked to poverty. In 2013, there were 282,100 Medicaid beneficiaries with H.I.V., according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and they were more likely to be male (56 percent vs. 42 percent), or black (50 percent vs. 22 percent) than the Medicaid population overall. Last week, on April 7, distinguished nanomedicine researcher Mauro Ferrari was forced to resign as European Research Council (ERC) president. The ERCs Scientific Council opposed his efforts to mobilize scientists across the European Union (EU) in a coordinated fight against COVID-19. The ouster of Ferrari provides a devastating indictment of the political and, one might add, moral bankruptcy of European capitalism. In his resignation letter, Ferrari denounced the EUs calculated inaction in the pandemic, which is still surging with nearly one million cases and over 80,000 deaths in Europe, long after coordinated public health measures contained outbreaks in China and South Korea. Worldwide, there are already over 1.8 million COVID-19 cases and 113,000 deaths. Ferrari begins his letter, Please forgive me, but I believe that the priority now is to stop the pandemic. The priority is to save millions of lives. ... I believe in science at the service of society, especially when it counts the most. And now it does count the most, since it is only through science that COVID-19, and its successor pandemics, will ever be defeated. Mauro Ferrari (center), appearing at a press conference at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Image Credit Flickr/WorldEconomicForum) He became ERC president in January 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began. Hailing from a working class area of Udine in Italy, Ferrari earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering and did research in America, moving into biomedical science after his first wife Mariluisa suddenly died of cancer in 1995. Last year, the ERC said it wholeheartedly supported his nomination as president, praising Ferraris career as an accomplished scientist and leader in the USA, with a rich and diverse background in the field of research and its applications. Ferrari returned to Europe to lead the ERC, he writes in his resignation, based on a commitment to the idealistic dream of a United Europe and my belief in serving the needs of the world. However, he adds, Those idealistic motivations were crushed by a very different reality, in the brief three months since I took office. Disquieting early warning signs gave way to the painfully icy, cold recognitions of a world entirely different from what I had envisioned. The COVID-19 pandemic shone a merciless light on how mistaken I had been. In time of emergencies people, and institutions, revert to their deepest nature and reveal their true character. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the EU as a corrupt tool of the capitalist aristocracy, indifferent to the fate of millions. While the European Central Bank gave a 750 billion bailout to the banks, followed by multihundred-billion-euro bailouts by each major euro zone country, EU officials insisted they would not stop the spread of this deadly disease. Instead, they would allow it to infect the population, hoping surviving masses of workers would acquire what UK officials called herd immunity. With stunning indifference to human life, German Chancellor Angela Merkel calmly predicted that 70-90 percent of Germans (56-72 million people) would fall ill. The EU adopted beggar-thy-neighbor policies, with Berlin and Paris refusing to export key medical supplies to countries like Italy worst hit by COVID-19. This placed the EU on a collision course with scientists who argued for a coordinated international struggle against COVID-19 and for treating the sick. Ferrari explains: As it became evident that the pandemic would be a tragedy of possibly unprecedented proportions, I moved that the European Research Council should establish a special program directed at combating Covid-19. I believed this was justified by the expected burden of death, suffering, societal transformation, and economic devastation, especially striking the less fortunate, the weakest in the societies of the world. I thought that at a time like this, the very best scientists in the world should be provided with resources and opportunities to fight the pandemic, with new drugs, new vaccines, new diagnostic tools, new behavioral dynamic approaches based on science, to replace the oft-improvised intuitions of political leaders. His proposals, Ferrari writes, were passed on to different layers of the European Commission administration, where I believe they disintegrated upon impact. I have been extremely disappointed by the European response to COVID-19 ... the complete absence of coordination of health care policies among member states, the recurrent opposition to cohesive financial support initiatives, the pervasive one-sided border closures, and the marginal scale of synergistic scientific initiatives. The fact that Ferrari had illusions in the EU as he became ERC president gives his judgment of the EU today, based on the bitter experience of the last three months, all the more force. While pledging to continue to provide my most conscientious advice, in a public and transparent manner, Ferrari writes, I am afraid that I have seen enough of both the governance of science, and the political operations at the European Union. In these three long months, I have indeed met many excellent and committed individuals at different levels of the organization of the ERC and the EC. However, I have lost faith in the system itself. An examination of the ERCs statement on its ouster of Ferrari vindicates his criticisms. Turning 180 degrees from its earlier praise of Ferraris scientific record, it claims he displayed a complete lack of appreciation for the raison-detre of the ERC to fund research proposed by researchers themselves. At the same time, it issues insinuating criticisms of him for spending extensive time in the USA, making personal initiatives to the EU Commission, and meeting with external enterprises, some academic and some commercial to discuss the pandemic. The ERC statement also defends its own record, claiming that it is already very active in developing new programs, including one on COVID-19. This is a pathetic dodge. The ERC statement estimates that its support for coronavirus research over the years has reached a total value of about 100 million. This means that though COVID-19 threatens to kill millions and make hundreds of millions jobless worldwide, the ERC is dedicating about 0.1 percent of its 100 billion Horizon Europe fund to fighting it. In the meantime, the EU is plunging countless hundreds of billions of euros into the pockets of the superrich. Sorbonne University President Jean Chambaz, a leading supporter of French President Emmanuel Macrons unpopular university reforms, penned a letter as head of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) attacking Ferrari. In it Chambaz, the son of a central committee member of the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF), lectured Ferrari on the significance of independent bottom-up research and the ERCs role to support this open and free research. Chambaz also took the opportunity to defend the ERCs record on COVID-19 and appeal for more EU funding for the ERC. It is admired worldwide for its success. It should be supported even more in the investment plan that the European Union is framing to exit the present crisis. Ferraris ouster testifies to the impossibility of fighting for a rational, scientific and international policy against COVID-19 through the existing European institutions. It is the working class that imposed public health measures to stop the pandemic in Europe. Mass wildcat strikes and walkouts in factories led to the initial shelter-at-home policies in Italy and France. Mobilizing all societys scientific and industrial resources to fight COVID-19 will require the mobilization of the working class across Europe against the EU in a struggle for state power. Good Morning, welcome to Information Nigerias Newspaper headlines for today, 13th April 2020. Here are the major headlines. FG Explains Its Fight Against The Coronavirus The presidency has released a statement on its official Twitter handle highlighting two main approaches it is taking in the fight against the novel coronavirus. I Forgive Those Who Lied Against Me Charles Soludo Former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Professor Charles Soludo says he has forgiven those who lied against him in the last few days. Buhari Rejoices With Christians On Easter Celebration President Muhammadu Buhari has taken to his official Twitter handle to rejoice with Christians on the occasion of Easter celebration. Coronavirus: Osun State Discharges Ten More Patients Ten patients who tested positive for coronavirus in Osun state have been discharged after recovering from the disease. COVID-19: NCDC Records 13 New Cases, Total Now 318 Cases The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)has confirmed thirteen new cases of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan has asked the Moscow court trying him on espionage charges to allow a doctor from the American Embassy to examine him at his detention facility, saying his groin hernia had worsened, according to his lawyer. Interfax quoted defense lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov as saying Whelan made the request as his trial resumed at the Moscow City Court on April 13 following a delay of two weeks. The court will announce a decision on the request at the next hearing scheduled for April 20, according to Zherebenkov, who said Whelan "finds it difficult to get up." U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan said April 13 that he tried to enter the courthouse before Whelan's hearing but was denied entry. "Paul continues to endure complicated medical issues that are potentially life threatening and require treatment. We have repeatedly asked for our doctors to visit Paul but have been met with only denials," Sullivan said in a statement. "I remain concerned about Pauls health and welfare; he needs medical care and he needs to go home." Whelan, who holds U.S., British, Canadian, and Irish passports, was arrested in a hotel room in Moscow in December 2018 and is accused of receiving classified information. He was charged with espionage, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Whelan denies the charges and says he was framed. His family said he was in Moscow for a wedding at the time of his arrest. U.S. officials have urged Moscow to release Whelan and criticized the Russian authorities for their "shameful treatment" of him. "The entire case against Paul -- the circumstances of his arrest, total lack of evidence, and ongoing imprisonment -- is not only morally wrong and legally suspect but represents a significant obstacle in the U.S.-Russia bilateral relationship," Ambassador Sullivan said in the April 13 statement. Whelan's brother, David Whelan, has said that U.S. Embassy officials have been barred from visiting him at Moscow's Lefortovo detention center due to what Russian authorities claimed were concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Russian authorities have rejected allegations of ill-treatment. During the April 13 hearing, the court read the indictment against Whelan, who called the case against him a "provocation" by the Federal Security Service, according to Zherebenkov. His trial was delayed because of what authorities said were "restrictions imposed over the coronavirus." Russian courts have suspended many court proceedings over the coronavirus outbreak and banned the public from the hearings. At a March 23 hearing, the Moscow City Court extended Whelan's detention until September 13. With reporting by TASS and Interfax As if these consequences werent bad enough, the states public pension program will suffer as well. At the end of fiscal year 2018, the report notes, the state had only about 40% of the funds needed to cover its long-term obligations. Now, it says, recession-induced declines in asset values could result in a sharp and sudden increase in unfunded liabilities.That means more and more revenue will have to be diverted to supporting government retirees instead of providing services to the general population. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a vivid image of a star-forming spiral galaxy called NGC 2906. NGC 2906 lies in the constellation of Leo, approximately 145 million light-years away from Earth. Also known as LEDA 27074, UGC 5081 and SDSS J093206.21+082630.3, this galaxy has a diameter of 35,000 light-years. It was discovered by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel on December 28, 1785. Hubble astronomers observed NGC 2906 on the hunt for fading light from recent, nearby occurrences of objects known as supernovae. The blue speckles seen scattered across this galaxy are massive young stars, they said. These stars emit hot, blue-tinged radiation as they burn through their fuel at an immense rate. The swathes of orange are a mix of older stars that have swollen and cooled, and low-mass stars that were never especially hot to begin with. Owing to their lower temperatures, these stars emit a cooler, reddish, radiation. Harris County prosecutors will move to commute a death row inmates sentence after determining his intellectual disability makes him ineligible for execution, District Attorney Kim Ogg said. The agreement, reached Monday between the prosecutors office and 50-year-old Gilmar Guevaras attorneys, is the first such deal struck in Harris County since a 2019 Texas case that upended the way courts determine intellectual disability. I do hope it is a pattern we will now see in Texas, Guevaras defense attorney, Gretchen Sween, said of efforts to take intellectually disabled people off death row. Texas has spent a lot of energy litigating and fighting about this and there are still a lot of people on the row who have valid claims. Guevara has spent 19 years awaiting execution for fatally shooting two store clerks during a botched robbery in 2000. The state will now recommend that he be taken off death row and instead be sentenced to life in prison, a district attorneys spokesman said. State District Judge DaSean Jones will make the ultimate recommendation, and the case will be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. These crimes were unimaginable tragedies for the families of the victims who were slain, Ogg said. In the past two decades, the science has changed and the law surrounding that science has changed. Justice mandates that we follow the law as it is now. Executing intellectually disabled defendants has been illegal since a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision, but attorneys on both sides of the bar squabbled over how to interpret the law. In 2019, inmate Bobby Moore won his case after 39 years on Texas death row, helping establish standards that define what constitutes an intellectual disability, and possibly setting the stage for commutations in local district attorneys offices. Moore has since been sentenced to life in prison. After the Bobby Moore decision came out, what we told everybody was, when these claims came in were going to look at it with a fresh set of eyes, said Joshua Reiss, chief of the district attorneys office Post-Conviction Writs Division. Thats what this reflects. Guevaras case goes back to the capital murder of Tae Youk, 48, of South Korea, and Gerardo Yaxon, 21, of Guatemala, at the Town Market in southwest Houston. He confessed to the slayings, but his attorneys have argued for years that he is intellectually disabled and had ineffective assistance of counsel at his 2001 trial. His defense at the time didnt present evidence about his intellectual abilities, court records show. Two neuropsychologists since then affirmed his cognitive impairment. Guevaras problems have been traced to before his birth in El Salvador, his current attorney said. His mother became sick with measles while pregnant, and she drank water and ate fish from a river contaminated with toxins. The defendant continued to be exposed to environmental, emotional and physical trauma throughout his developmental years, drinking from the river until his teens. He hit his head around age 8, and was repeatedly exposed to horrific deaths during the civil war in El Salvador. He didnt begin talking or walking until age 4 and didnt complete the fourth grade, according to the records. And as an adult, Guevara had trouble with basic problem solving and often struggled to speak. samantha.ketterer@chron.com Dr. Sarah A. Merritt, CEO & Clinical Director - Lifestream Health Center "We treat our patients for health, and also with dignity and respect for each and every patient. Receiving this award validates our vision and mission." - Dr. Sarah A. Merritt, MD Lifestream Health Center has been selected for the 2020 Best of Bowie Award in the Local Business category by the Bowie Award Program. Each year, the Bowie Award Program identifies companies that have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Bowie area a great place to live, work and play. Dr. Sarah A. Merritt, CEO and Clinical Director of Lifestream Health Center, states, "Our team is excited to be recognized as 'best of' in this award category. We take a patient centered, caring, and compassionate approach to the practice of Pain Management. While many facilities maintain a formulaic approach to Pain Management; we're proud to spend time with every patient. We treat our patients for health, and also with dignity and respect for each and every patient. Receiving this award validates our vision and mission." Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2020 Bowie Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Bowie Award Program and data provided by third parties. About Lifestream Health Centers Lifestream Health Center has been serving the Bowie/Baltimore-Washington D.C. Metropolitan area since 2000, when the practice was established by Dr. Robert Lyles. We have assembled an amazing team of highly trained pain management specialists to help our patients to solve their acute and chronic pain problems. Our center offers comprehensive pain management for acute and chronic pain problems. We recognize the value of personalized treatment plans, as all patients are not the same. For more information, visit our website at https://lifestreamhealth.com/ About Bowie Award Program The Bowie Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Bowie area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value. The Bowie Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community's contributions to the U.S. economy. For more information, visit our website at http://www.townbestof-information.org About Growth Solutions Team The Growth Solutions Team is a leading provider of Business Consulting Services including, Strategic HR, CFO Advisory, Sales & Customer Service Training, and Small Business Advisory services. Our team assists companies with growth in sales, profitability, and improved cash flows. For more information, visit the website at https://growthsolutionsteam.com. A frustrated local has clashed with a surfer who was caught flouting social-distancing rules. The confrontation happened at Auckland's Takapuna Beach, on New Zealand's North Island, on Monday morning. New Zealand is currently under a strict lockdown to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. All water-related activities - including swimming, surfing, fishing and boating - are completely banned under level four restrictions. The local resident confronted the surfer about how he was breaking the rules as he made his way out of the water. He was met with a very rude gesture. A frustrated resident clashed with a surfer after he was caught flouting social distancing rules The local resident confronted the surfer as he made his way out of the water and was met with a very rude gesture 'The guy was clearly asking ''what on earth are you doing during the lockdown'' but (the surfer) was clearly not bothered about that and then gave him the bird,' a witness told the New Zealand Herald. Surf conditions have been a magnet for surfers across the country over the past week, with police now having to monitor beaches to ensure people are complying with the rules. Most people have been issued a warning. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said lockdown measures could be softened in just over a week, opening the door for some people to return to work if their employers can ensure social distancing. The PM said the country was already 'turning a corner' just six weeks after the epidemic reached New Zealand. New Zealand only confirmed its first case on February 26, but had shut its borders by March 19 and started imposing a full-scale lockdown on March 26. Jacinda Ardern has revealed that she watches 'terrible British comedies' in her downtime during the coronavirus lock down On Thursday, Ms Ardern praised New Zealanders for 'saving lives' by obeying government rules in the first half of a four-week lockdown. 'At the halfway mark I have no hesitation in saying, that what New Zealanders have done over the last two weeks is huge,' she said. 'In the face of the greatest threat to human health we have seen in over a century, Kiwis have quietly and collectively implemented a nationwide wall of defence. 'You are breaking the chain of transmission. And you did it for each other.' This graph shows the daily number of coronavirus cases recorded each day in New Zealand (in yellow), according to figures from the government health ministry. The red line shows the falling rate of growth in virus cases Ms Ardern said the government will decide on April 20 whether to extend or relax the lockdown, which is currently due to expire at midnight on April 22. New Zealand is currently at its highest Alert Level 4, but Ms Ardern said ministers could decide to move it down to Level 3. Under Level 3, people are not generally ordered to stay at home, although public buildings would still be shut and mass gatherings cancelled. Travel would be limited 'in areas with clusters or community transmission' rather than generally, and 'some non-essential businesses should close' rather than all of them. In the days immediately following Oregon Gov. Kate Browns order halting on-premises dining at restaurants and bars across the state, one potential silver lining as much as there could be one was the possibility of scoring takeout or delivery from some of Portlands best restaurants, many for the first time. Was there a chance we would soon be eating brisket jungle curry from Portlands reigning Restaurant of the Year, Eem, at home? But after the new COVID-19 reality began to seep in, many restaurants that had quickly embraced a new to-go model decided to take a step back, close for a week or four and reevaluate. Eem, Beast, Expatriate, Hat Yai and Screen Door were among the restaurants to make that quick reversal, first announcing new takeout menus then shutting completely over concerns for the safety of their staff and customers. Matts BBQ, Berlu and Pok Pok followed suit. One month later, some of Portlands best restaurants, are dipping their feet back in the takeout game, one toe at a time. Last week, modern Chinese-Indonesian restaurant Gado Gado launched a new Southeast Asian stoner food pop-up with contact-less pickup from its Hollywood District parking lot. This week marks the eagerly awaited return of Eem, a Texas-Thai mashup of silky curries and smoked meats from prominent restaurateur Earl Ninsom, bartender and pop-up ringleader Eric Nelson and barbecue expert Matt Vicedomini. Starting today at noon, the popular North Portland restaurant will begin pre-selling set dinners for curbside pickup at the restaurant in 15 minute windows from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday through Saturday. Each $50 meal includes the restaurants chopped barbecue fried rice, sweet and sour fried chicken, white curry with burnt ends, papaya salad and jasmine rice. Beer, wine and pina colada kits (featuring everything but the rum and ice) are sold separately. Nelson, Ninsom and Vicedomini looked to other restaurants including Farm Spirit to see how they were receiving pickups and sending out orders with minimal contact. The idea is just to be safer than the grocery store, Nelson said. They chose to sell a limited number of pre-packaged dinners rather than an a la carte menu to help staff handle demand and practice social distancing in the kitchen, Nelson said. We can do these meal kits in a way thats not wasteful, Nelson said. Its like a pre-sale pop-up dinner: we know how many dinners we need to make, we know what we have to put out there. Also, we dont want to beat our staff up right at the beginning. What if we opened our doors to a $7,000 to-go day? That would be awesome, except everybody in the kitchen has to be six feet apart. Its too hard to work a line like that. There would be nothing worse than opening and having to close again right away. Most health experts have indicated that eating takeout or delivery is unlikely to make you sick, as long as you wash your hands after handling the packaging. In a widely shared article in The Atlantic, Columbia University epidemiologist said that cooked foods are unlikely to be a concern unless they get contaminated after cooking, even if the person preparing them is sick. Still, the new model is a big change for a restaurant such as Eem, where the hospitality and vibe play as important a role as the food and drink. At this point, were basically a food cart with really high rent, Nelson said. Luckily, Nelson says, Eem has one of Portlands premier food cart operators in its corner: Vicedomini, whose Matts BBQ and Matts BBQ tacos are among the citys top carts, not to mention Executive Chef Colin Yoshimoto, who previously ran the counter-service PokeMon. Next week, Eem will roll out a new dinner menu. Plans call for more specials down the line. Delivery could be on the horizon. And Vicedomini says his own carts Matts BBQ at 4233 N. Mississippi Ave. and Matts BBQ Tacos at 3207 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. could reopen by the end of the month. Also reopening this week are Ninsoms Southern Thai curry and fried chicken restaurant Hat Yai, and his Northeastern Thai and comfort food-focused PaaDee, each with a la carte and packaged meal options available for contact-less pickup or via delivery apps Caviar and Postmates. Hat Yai will launch with one line cook at its Northeast Portland location, 1605 N.E. Killngsworth St. In PaaDees case, reopening was somewhat easier, Ninsom said the Southeast Portland restaurants kitchen, 6 S.E. 28th Ave., already features two couples who have been isolating together symptom-free for a month. -- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories. SAGINAW, MI Spring has sprung and mosquitoes are already flying around. Heres an outline of how and when mid-Michigan communities plan to deal with them. Saginaw County The Saginaw County Mosquito Abatement Commission expects to begin its annual spring aerial treatment program to control mosquitoes breeding in seasonally flooded woodlands the week of Monday, April 13. The program will take three to seven days to complete, but the exact start date and duration are weather dependent, according to a Saginaw County Mosquito Abatement Commission news release. The treatment consists of an aerial application of a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti). The program will cover approximately 50,000 acres of woodland mosquito breeding habitat throughout Saginaw County in and around populated areas. This aerial program controls spring mosquitoes only. Summer mosquito populations are controlled through other programs. Aerial treatment provides relief from biting mosquitoes while also controlling mosquitoes that transmit mosquito-borne diseases, such as West Nile virus and Jamestown Canyon virus, the release states. Ovid-based Als Aerial Spraying will provide the aerial mosquito larva control service with the use of six identical, yellow aircraft working out of Harry Browne Airport located in Buena Vista Township. Residents can protect themselves from biting mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit by using EPA-registered insect repellents, ensuring window screens are functioning properly and dumping and removing water filled containers on their properties. SCMAC is closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and is following recommendations and practices established by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), State of Michigan, Saginaw County, and local public health agencies, the release states. The Mosquito Control office is closed to the public until further notice. To contact mosquito control staff, call 989-755-5751. Saginaw Mosquito Control truly appreciates the communities support and patience during this trying time," SCMAC Director Bill Stanuszek said in a statement. "We are looking to offer the best semblance of our services the community has come to expect, yet we must follow those practices that keep employees, families, and communities safe. Bay County Bay County Mosquito Control also plans to begin aerial larvicide treatment the week of April 13, concentrating efforts on flooded woodlots throughout Bay County. This important aerial treatment is considered a critical operation in accordance with the governors executive order for Covid-19 activities as mosquito control will provide for the protection and well-being of Bay County residents, according to a new release. Over a period of seven to 10 days, Bay County residents may notice low-flying, yellow or white fixed-wing aircraft over wooded areas between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., weather permitting. Controlling mosquito larvae in spring is a critical step in Bay Countys comprehensive mosquito control program. More than 50,000 acres of flooded woodlots are to be treated with Bti, targeting larval stage mosquitoes hatched in the standing water. Bti is a naturally-occurring public health product containing a soil bacterium that specifically affects mosquito larvae, blackflies, and fungus gnats," Mosquito Control Manager Rebecca Brandt said in a statement. It has low impact to non-target organisms. Mosquito control officials have implemented a pandemic protection plan which includes extra sanitation procedures and social distancing expectations in order to protect the health and safety of staff and the public. To further reduce mosquito habitats in Bay County, Mosquito Control was awarded an $8,000 Scrap Tire Clean Up Grant by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). Scrap tire collections for Bay County residents are scheduled to take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 30, at Bay County Mosquito Control, and Saturday, Aug. 8, at Fraser Township Hall. Officials will accept up to 10 passenger car-sized tires without rims per household. From spring through fall, residents should protect themselves from mosquito bites by applying insect repellent before going outside when mosquitoes are active to reduce the threat of West Nile virus and other emerging mosquito borne diseases. Midland County Midland County Mosquito Control plans to conduct aerial larviciding for mosquitoes in mid-April, weather permitting, according to Midland Countys website. Vectobac 12AS and Vectobac G Bti is to be applied to woodland pools by airplane between the hours of 7 a.m. and dusk, as weather permits. The material used in this program is a naturally-occurring soil bacterium which is toxic to mosquitoes and related biting flies but nontoxic for humans, pets and all other life forms, according to Midland County officials. For more information, call Midland County Mosquito Control at (989) 832-8677 or click here. RELATED STORIES: Bay City and City of Saginaw to begin yard waste pickup on April 13 Storm definitely worth watching coming toward Michigan early next week Invasive grass carp found in Lake Huron tributary likely came from Lake Erie, DNR says Michigan Sugar buys $131,000 in restaurant gift cards for employees Blood shortage has ended, but donors still needed in Mid-Michigan Recreational motorboats not allowed under Michigans stay-at-home order Washington, April 13 : Ex-US Vice President and Democratic party presidential candidate Joe Biden's former aide has accused him of sexually assaulting her during the early 1990s when he was a Senator. Tara Reade, who hails from California, had accused Biden of assaulting her in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in the spring of 1993. She had also filed a police report in Washington last Thursday which said that she was a victim of a sexual assault by an unknown person, according to foreign media reports. In a statement, Biden's deputy campaign manager and communications director Kate Bedingfield said the former Vice President has "dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women," pointing to his work in passing the Violence Against Women Act. She said "he firmly believes that women have a right to be heard - and heard respectfully," but added: "Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press." Earlier in the Democratic primary, Biden had also faced accusations of unwanted touching by several women, who said they were uncomfortable with hugs, hand-holding and other actions. It was another heavy day for Tamil Nadu in terms of COVID-19 cases with 98 people, including 91 "same source" contacts, testing positive for the disease, taking the tally rose to 1,173 on Monday as the state government announced extension of the lockdown to check its spread till April 30. In another related development, wearing of masks was made compulsory with immediate effect from Monday for people in Chennai whenever they they step out of their homes, the city civic body said. Announcing the fresh cases in the state, Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said of the 98 positive cases, as many as 91 of them were 'same source' contacts, an apparent reference to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in the national capital. The other seven cases were secondary contacts and included doctors and medical staff, Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said. The death toll due to COVID-19 in the state remained at 11, she told reporters here. The number of discharged has increased to 58, she added. The state had on Sunday registered 106 fresh cases. A report from Coimbatore said two doctors, both men, at the ESI Hospital there tested positive for coronavirus. Earlier in the day, Chief Minister K Palaniswami announced the extension of the lockdown, valid till Tuesday,saying it was in line with the recommendations of medical and public health experts. He said the rate of infection in the state has been reined in since the 21-day lockdown was implemented 'vigorously' and it might lead to a spurt in spread of the contagion if the curbs were eased. In view of the continuation of the lockdown, rice ration card holders will get essential commodities, including rice, toor dhal, sugar and cooking oil free of cost for the month of May too, he said. Also, families of workers in the construction and unorganised sectors will get Rs 1,000 as finanicial asssistance for the second time, he said. During her media briefing on the COVID-19 situation, the Health Secretary said approvals had been received for two more labs -- in Vellore Medical College, and State Public Health Lab here -- taking the total facilities for testing for the virus to 25, including nine in private sector. Maintaining that the government undertook measures well in advance in ordering medical equipmentsoon after World Health Organisation declared COVID19 as a pandemic, Rajesh said the success story of the state was that it was able to identify how many people turned positive from a 'single source' contact. "Another success story is that today we had 62 people under the SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infection category) but none of them turned COVID19 positive. This is the success story of Tamil Nadu", she said. "However, the aim of the government is to ensure that the death (due to coronavirus) remains 'minimal', she said. Sharing details of the medical equipment purchased by the government, Rajesh said, Tamil Nadu made procurement of the three layer mask, N95 mask and PPE well in advance even though the state did not have any single positive case then. The first case in the state was detected on March 7. "As on date we have 65 lakh three layer masks, three lakh N95 masks and 3,371 ventilators. We have also ordered for four lakh rapid testing kits," she said. The official said the government did not wait for the arrival of shipmentcontaining the rapid testing kits from China but proceeded with conducting PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction)tests on a 'large scale'. A medical bulletin later released by the health department said Chennai continued to top the list of those affected with 205 positive cases followed by Coimbatore 126. As on date 93,941 people are under home quarantine for 28 days,it said. Announcing the compulsory mask rule, the corporation said: "As long as the public are moving outside, they have to wear it (masks). If found without masks, then their movement passes will be cancelled and vehicles will be impounded for three months. This comes into effect forthwith," it said. In Coimbatore, the doctors, aged 26 and 27 respectively, were treating patients during the first week of this month and developed symptoms of coronavirus, health department sources said. They underwent the tests on Sunday and found positive for COVID19, they said adding steps have been taken to screen other doctors and para-medics in the hospital who had come into contact with the two. As many as 119 coronavirus cases are being treated in the hospital. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mathias Deldicque, age 15, formerly of Fayetteville, lives in Barcelona, Spain, with his parents and two brothers. He has lived in Spain for eight months, and is a student at Benjamin Franklin International School. By Mathias Deldicque | Special to Syracuse.com In recent weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated exponentially. With most countries on some degree of lockdown, it has become difficult to socialize, or share our experiences with the virus. Last fall, my family and I moved from Syracuse to Barcelona, Spain. Spain has been one of the worst places in the world for COVID-19, and, as of today, it ranks second for cases, and third for deaths (more than 17,000). Three weeks ago, Spain implemented a lockdown. People are only allowed to go grocery shopping, go to the pharmacy or walk their dogs. These activities should be done alone and near your home. The police give out fines for people violating these rules. For example, the police fined a man on a motorcycle who was 21 kilometers from his home who claimed he was out to buy bread. Mathias Deldicque, age 15, formerly of Fayetteville, lives in Barcelona, Spain, with his parents and two brothers. He has lived in Spain for eight months, and is a student at Benjamin Franklin International School. (Provided photo) Currently, I am finishing my third week of virtual school (fourth week of isolation), and have been sequestered in my apartment with my two brothers, mother and father. My father is now working from home. The only time we leave the apartment is when one of us takes out the trash. My parents have left three times to buy us food. The supermarkets are well organized, everyone wears masks and gloves and the stores are well stocked. This lockdown is taking a massive toll on everyone, but for me, it has been pure agony. My favorite sport is running, but with the lockdown underway, practices were canceled, and I cannot go outside to run. It has been a struggle to maintain fitness but Im doing what I can. In Spain, most schools developed online plans in advance so when the order was given to shut down schools, they were ready. In the U.S., many schools had to take time to organize a system for online learning, which caused some schools to cancel spring break. Many Americans also seemed to resist acknowledging the severity of COVID-19 and the vulnerability of the country. Another difference has nothing to do with the administrations, but the citizens themselves. Many Americans have chosen to go outside and to social events rather than respecting the rules. The U.S. now has more cases than any other country in the world. These facts are not specific to New York state, or Syracuse, but to the country as a whole. In Spain, when the lockdown was declared, people acted quickly and were orderly. Most stocked their homes with extra food and supplies, yet there was no panic or fighting over toilet paper. Of course, in an urban area, people dont have as much storage space but this seemed consistent across Spain. I realize the U.S. is bigger and more complicated to lock down, but I also think its a question of culture and history. Countries with more restrictive governments (China, Korea) were able to lock down more efficiently. In the U.S., Ive read about people suing over their loss of freedoms. I was hoping the U.S. would act even faster than Spain because they had some lead time. Although the virus is destroying global economies, and killing thousands of people, some good has come out of it. First, the virus has forced people, communities and entire countries to work together. People have realized this virus is bigger than any feud we have with one another, and forced us to work as one. Every night, at 8, people in Barcelona go on their balconies to applaud the first responders. The clapping usually lasts about 2 minutes. After, people in different apartment buildings play uplifting music on massive speakers. Suddenly you are connecting with strangers who are in the same situation you are. Neighbors are checking on each other, families and friends are connecting more often. Everyone is trying to do their part to make the best out of the situation. Hopefully, at last, we can all work as global citizens to improve life on our planet. Population lockdowns have proven the impact humans have on the environment. Because businesses have been shut down, there are fewer emissions going into our atmosphere, and scientists have stated the ozone has started repairing itself already. Pollution in Barcelona is at an all-time low and animal populations have been positively impacted (such as the dolphins swimming again in Venice). Right now, most of us are having a challenging time in quarantine craving to go outside, but what we must realize is that we are living in a moment of history that future generations will learn about. This is one of the biggest challenges our generation has had to face. Its disappointing to miss spring break and prom and sports, but we have to look at the bigger picture.This story of the COVID-19 virus will be told over and over again, by us, to our future families, and children. We are writing this story today. How will it end? MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Social distancing in CNY: Hundreds of calls, police try to teach people to obey crackdown Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com George Stephanopoulos (R) arrives at the Democratic presidential primary debate in the Sullivan Arena at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on Feb. 7, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) ABCs George Stephanopoulos, Ex-Clinton Aide, Tests Positive for COVID-19 George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor and former aide to President Bill Clinton, tested positive for COVID-19 following his wifes diagnosis. Ali Wentworth, Stephanopouloss wife, was diagnosed with the disease before Stephanopoulos tested positive. Im one of those cases that are basically asymptomatic, Stephanopoulos said on Good Morning America on April 13 as he announced the test results. Ive never had a fever, never had chills, never had headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath. Im feeling great. I feel fine. I actually feel great. A significant percentage of patients with the illness show mild or no symptoms, according to health experts. Ali Wentworth and George Stephanopoulos attend Apple TV+s The Morning Show World Premiere at David Geffen Hall in New York City on Oct. 28, 2019. (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images) Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (red) heavily infected with CCP virus particles (yellow), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, published on April 2, 2020. (NIAID) Wentworth is doing much better in her fifth day with no fever, her husband said. Stephanopoulos said he learned of his results over the weekend. Wentworth told followers on social media on April 1 that she tested positive for the CCP virus. Ive never been sicker. High fever. Horrific body aches. Heavy chest. Im quarantined from my family. This is pure misery, she wrote. Stephanopoulos said he recalled one night several weeks ago when he went to bed early with some lower back pain. He thought it was from a tough workout. It cleared up quickly. He also remembered briefly losing his sense of smell, a symptom of the CCP virus. Dr. Jennifer Ashton, an ABC medical correspondent, said that recent data from Iceland indicates that 1 in 2 people with COVID-19 show no symptoms at all. That is part of why it is so difficult to contain this virus, she said. 1 of 2 Covid-19 death toll rises to 308 in india, cases 9,152, PM Modi to address the nation at 10am tomorrow Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation at 10am tomorrow, the last day of the 21-day lockdown announced by him to arrest the spread of coronavirus. The PM's address comes amid demands by various states to extend the lockdown, which will flatten the curve further. Indias total cases due to Covid-19 reached 9,152 today with the death toll hitting 308, indicating a jump of 796 new cases and 35 deaths in 24 hours. Of these, 7,987 are active cases while 856 are cured. Maharashtra tops the list with maximum cases, with Mumbais Dharavi reporting four new cases today, taking the total to 47. According to the ministry's data updated in the morning, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 2064, followed by Delhi at 1,154 and Tamil Nadu at 1,043. Maharashtra on Monday recorded 2064 cases of Covid-19 with 82 new infections, including 59 in Mumbai, the states health department said. Maharashtra announces lockdown extension till April 30, 2020. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Monday informed that 746 out of the 1,154 coronavirus cases in the national capital are from Markaz area in Nizamuddin. 22 new COVID-19 positive cases & 1 death reported today; total number of positive cases in Indore is 328 & total 33 deaths: Indore Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr. Praveen Jadia. The COVID-19 cases have gone up to 564 in Madhya Pradesh. Rajasthan recorded 11 more cases of coronavirus on Monday, taking the state's tally to 815, an official said. The virus has so far claimed 11 lives in the state. Read More... A graduating student attends a class at Jiangsu Qingjiang Middle School in Huaian, East China's Jiangsu province, on March 30, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua] Students in their final year at junior high and senior high schools in Beijing are scheduled to return to school on May 11 and April 27, respectively, as in-school education for the spring semester has been suspended due to the novel coronavirus epidemic. Li Yi, spokesperson of Beijing's education authority, announced at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, adding that the college entrance examination in Beijing will be held from July 7-10. The entrance examination for high school in Beijing will be held from July 17 to 19, according to him. The students should be back to Beijing two weeks in advance of the school resumption and finish the 14-day home or integrated quarantine with a negative result in nucleic acid testing. School staff members and teachers should be on duty 10 days earlier than the resumption and get prepared for schooling. The time for the resumption of student in other grades, as well as kindergartens and special education schools, will be determined later. Students in their final year at junior high and senior high schools in China's southwestern Guizhou province have already returned to schools in mid-March. On Friday, the provincial education authority announced that the non-graduating classes in junior high and senior high schools will be back to school in April 28. The school dates of students of kindergartens, primary schools and colleges will be determined later after mid-May. 13.04.2020 LISTEN Today, since 2017, I spent the Easter service with my family at home. I spent much of the day responding to some comments that my Facebook posts had generated, and also reading. But, in the course of my reading, I started reflecting over a question someone raised about the fairness of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. For many critiques, God cannot deploy unfairness to redeem the world. This, according to them and rightly so, is that God is a just God who abhors all forms of injustices social, political, economic, and possibly religious (Genesis 18:25). So, how could God use the injustice done Jesus Christ to save the world? As a Christian, I am aware that the legal proceedings that resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ were nothing short of truncation of justice. It was an inversion of justice, indeed. For Jesus to have died, in the first instance, was itself an injustice on the part of God and humanity. In law, we are told that one is innocent until proven guilty. The issue of justice is so central to law that Voltaire said, It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. In the case of the judicial proceedings about Jesus Christ, we note that while he was declared innocent (Luke 23:4), He was still hanged on the cross. Also, He was without sin and so, why was He crucified? But it is precisely because of His sinlessness that made Him the perfect sacrificial lamb for the elect of God. Through the readings of the Old Testament, we learn that the animal to be sacrificed should be without blemish and deformity. The animal should also be whole (Leviticus 22:19). In most cultures of the world that continue to practice all forms of sacrifices, the animal for the sacrifice must be clean and without any deformity. The Bible declares that Jesus was without sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). His opponent even after they had crucified Him realised that, indeed, they had killed an innocent soul (Matthew 27:54). The other issue about injustice is that sacrifices of all shades are based on some form of injustice why should an innocent animal be killed for the sins of others? Why should innocent girls be held in captive for the real or putative sins of their parents or relatives? In the history of the consolidation of the Asante Kingdom, we read that it took the voluntary sacrifice of Tweneboa Kodua and two others to free Asante from the rule of the Denkyira. Under the command of Komfo Anokye, Tweneboa Kodua and the two others, put their lives on the line to redeem Asante. In the case of Agya Ahor of the Fante, his sacrifice led to the redemption of the Fante people from an epidemic that ravaged them. This explains why most Fante communities celebrate Ahorba festival. In the case of Tweneboa Koduah, there is a cult that is built around him in Ashanti Region. It must be mentioned, however, whether voluntarily or not, sacrifices of all forms is an infringement of the right of people and animals to life. In either way, life is destroyed for constructive purposes the redemption of a people. In other words, in the rubrics of sacrifices, common sense and rationality do not apply. Because if one applied common sense, sacrifices would be nonsense. Given that all sacrifices constitute a body of rituals, they do not conform to the normative way of thinking. Certainly, sacrifices are what they are because they do not follow the normative pattern of life hence, they are irrational. But irrationality and irrelevance are not the same. I cannot make sense of how an aeroplane flies in the air without falling defeating the low of gravity and also how communication is transmitted via my cell phone (defeating special and vocal gaps) they dont make sense to me. But they are relevant to my life, in terms of enhanced means of travelling and communication. So, Jesus crucifixion is an inversion of justice and common sense. But it is necessary and sufficient for the redemption of the elect of God (Hebrews 9:22). The question that is usually asked is why couldnt God command our salvation into existence? After all, He created the world simply by commanding it into existence. This answer is important. But it separates the means of salvation in Christianity from other religions. In all other religions, God orders salvation into effect through devotees keeping of laws and observance of rituals. In all other religions, God keeps a distance from his creation. He does not participate in the mundane things of life such as eating, drinking, going through pain, and most importantly, sharing the ultimate pain of death. The gods of all other religions attempt to offer salvation from a distance. Over the centuries, one question that has intrigued the minds of philosophers and ordinary people is the reconciliation of an all-powerful God and the existential reality of evil. This question is so real because we all experience pain or evil in one way or the other. Many religions and philosophers have attempted an answer. Some religions like Hinduism and Buddhism argue for the demolition of ego. They believe that it is the concentration of ego that leads to the perpetuation of pain and evil. They, therefore, advocate all forms of meditation to keep the mind from ego. In other religions, like the Christian Science, considered a cult of Christianity, founded by Mary Barker Eddy, pain is just an illusion. For some philosophers, like Epicurus, the presence of evil implies the absence of God. Given the importance of evil and pain, like the current crisis of COVID-19, we are faced with the question: where is God? Why did He allow this? In response, some Christians appeal to dualism a Zoroastrian philosophy that endorses the existence of two equal powers good and evil. Ahura Mazda, the good god is in charge of all good things that happen, whereas Angra Mainyu is in charge of all evil. In the whirlwind of the contest, each of this god is seeking to topple the other. This is not different from ancient Greek or Egyptian gods who fought over control of the universe. Thus, for these religions that had a predilection towards dualistic theology, it is easy to explain evil and to excuse God. This topic generated a heated debate in my philosophy class (logic) at the University of Cape Coast in 2006. The challenge to the question of evil and pain lies deeply with a monotheistic religion like Christianity. The Christian monotheism is unlike other religions. In the case of Christianity, God exists as one in nature, but multiple in persons. In other words, while God is ontologically one, he is multiple in persons (three persons) [Isaiah 48: 12-16]. He is absolutely a good God. He is the uncreated creator. He rules the universe alone. He does not have any competitor. All forces in the universe abide under His sufferance. If these are true and, indeed, they are according to the Christian Bible, how do Christians explain evil, particularly the case of COVID-19? The Christian response is that while God is the creator of all things, whatever He allows, including evil He redeems it (Acts 4:28). While we may be sure that He redeems whatever He allows, we do not always know how He redeems what He allows. In some cases, His redemption of evil may be for us to die which leads to greater glory (Philippians 1:21). Here, I am comforted by John Wesleys assertion that, God kills His servants and keeps His work going. But in the case of the ultimate question of evil, the incarnation of Jesus answers the riddle of life. I have already established that God could have commanded our salvation into being. But instead, He entered into history to identify with us. The Bible repeatedly affirms this assertion (2 Corinthians 4:1, 16; Ephesians 3:13; Hebrews 12:5; Revelation 2:3). God walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). He weeps as we weep (John 11:35). Jesus experienced every temptation and pain we feel (Hebrews 4:15). He is present with us now in the sufferings of life (Deuteronomy 20:1; Psalm 34:18; Isaiah 43:2; Daniel 3:2425, 12:67; Acts 16:2526). God promises us: The mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you (Isaiah 54:10). He assures us, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go (Genesis 28:15). In 2019, a friend who was going for haemorrhage surgery met me and asked about haemorrhage. Since I had had three surgeries while studying at the Makerere University in Uganda (where I began my PhD in January 2014), he was so sure that I would be better informed than the surgeon who possibly had no experience about the pains associated with haemorrhage. The doctor might have learned all the theories about haemorrhage. He might have passed exams and even performed successful surgeries on the ailment, but if he does not have any personal experience with haemorrhage, he would still not be able to fully identify with his patients. So, when my friend met me and I told him all about what to expect, he was so excited that he gladly went into the theatre with confidence. His confidence was bolstered precisely because I had survived a similar surgery. Later when he was healing, he asked about what to expect. Because I had personal experiences with haemorrhage, I was able to guide him through. While the Lord goes beyond experience with pain to help us, His identification with our pains makes Him the best person to save us. Most importantly, He survived the greatest challenge of the human race death. In addition to the empathy He shares with us when we go through pain, He resurrected to assure us that when we die in Him, we shall also resurrect with Him. This is the difference Christianity makes in terms of dealing with the issue of evil and pain. It also speaks volumes in terms of the difference between Komfo Anokye, Tweneboaa, and Agya Ahor. None of these persons, whether they died or not did experience resurrection to live forever. In the Bible, persons like Elijah and Enoch did not taste death. But these persons are not our true guide, because they did not have the experience of death to share with us. Our Lord died and so is the best person to tell us about death. Not just that, he experienced death and also resurrected and so, He can assure us of redemption from death. He is called the first fruit of the resurrection (I Corinthians 15:20). None of the religious leaders or figures, including Enoch and Elijah, promised us that when we die in them we shall live. It is only Jesus Christ who has assured us that when we die in Him, we shall live with Him (John 11:26). I have already written elsewhere that the worst scenario of COVID-19 is death. But if you are in the Lord, do not worry. Death in the Lord means new life in eternal bliss (Revelation 14:13). As we celebrated and reenacted the resurrection of Jesus Christ today, know that you will be resurrected when you die in the Lord. Jesus makes a difference and by trusting Him, you enter eternal bliss. Satyagraha Charles Prempeh ([email protected]), African University College of Communications, Accra. On Sunday, Netflix laid an Easter egg in the form of a Tiger King bonus episode titled 'The Tiger King and I,' which reunited eight people featured in its No. 1 docuseries. The biggest revelation was when Joe Exotic TV producer Rick Kirkham told host Joel McHale that former GW Exotic Animal Park owner Joe 'Exotic' Maldonado-Passage is actually 'terrified of big cats.' 'He was scared to death of lions and tigers,' Kirkham revealed in the 40-minute special. 'The Tiger King and I': On Sunday, Netflix laid an Easter egg in the form of a Tiger King bonus episode, which reunited eight people featured in its No. 1 docuseries 'And in the shots that you see in there, where he's in with the two tigers, the white one and the other one - the white one is blind and the other one is on tranquilizers. It's idiotic to think how he's become famous as "The Tiger King" when he's so terrified of big cats.' Rick - now living in Norway - said he regrets ever meeting the 57-year-old former roadside zookeeper and recounted a particularly unsavory story about him shooting an old horse he rescued for 'tiger meat.' The highly-anticipated reunion took a dark turn when McHale interviewed Joe's gubernatorial campaign manager Joshua Dial, who discussed the accidental shooting death of Joe's husband Travis Maldonado. 'I was looking at him in the eyes when he did it, and I could see the surprise and fear in his eyes. I mean basically, translated, he's like, "Oh crap, what did I just do?"' Dial recalled. Say what? The biggest revelation was when Joe Exotic TV producer Rick Kirkham (L) told host Joel McHale (R) that former GW Exotic Animal Park owner Joe 'Exotic' Maldonado-Passage is actually 'terrified of big cats' Kirkham revealed in the 40-minute special: 'He (L) was scared to death of lions and tigers. And in the shots that you see in there, where he's in with the two tigers, the white one (R) and the other one (M) - the white one is blind and the other one is on tranquilizers' Witnessed Joe's cruelty first-hand: Rick- now living in Norway - said he regrets ever meeting the 57-year-old former roadside zookeeper and recounted a particularly unsavory story about him shooting an old horse he rescued for 'tiger meat' 'I had to go in that office every day and sit in that same chair and look at that bullet hole in the wall every day for a year and a half after Travis killed himself.' Joshua's trauma continues but he said Maldonado-Passage - whom he calls a 'bats*** crazy person' - never got meds or grief therapy and instead visited a shaman, which only 'worsened his condition.' Both Joe's ex-husband John Finlay and GW Exotic Animal Park keeper Erik Cowie used the special to refute allegations they were meth heads. 'I was portrayed as a drugged-out hillbilly and that was not me then,' Finlay noted. Traumatized: The highly-anticipated reunion took a dark turn when McHale interviewed Joe's gubernatorial campaign manager Joshua Dial (L), who discussed the accidental shooting death of Joe's husband Travis Maldonado Dial recalled: 'I was looking at him in the eyes when he did it, and I could see the surprise and fear in his eyes. I mean basically, translated, he's like, "Oh crap, what did I just do?"' 'Bats*** crazy person': Joshua said Maldonado-Passage (pictured with the late Travis) never got meds or grief therapy and instead visited a shaman, which only 'worsened his condition' 'At that time I was four to five years clean...When my daughter was born, I decided to never touch another drug ever again. I am now six years clean.' GW Exotic Animal Park keeper Saff revealed the video of him having his arm bitten off by a tiger was actually used as an 'employee safety video' for years. Out of the eight people interviewed, Saff was the most sympathetic towards Joe, who's now serving a 22-year prison sentence for a murder-for-hire plot among other crimes. 'I think justice was served. But I still don't want to see that man die in prison,' Saff (born Kelci Saffery) shrugged. 'I am now six years clean': Both Joe's ex-husband John Finlay (L) and GW Exotic Animal Park keeper Erik Cowie (R) used the special to refute allegations they were meth heads Cautionary tale: GW Exotic Animal Park keeper Saff revealed the video of him having his arm bitten off by a tiger was actually used as an 'employee safety video' for years 'I don't want to see that man die in prison': Out of the eight people interviewed, Saff was the most sympathetic towards Joe, who's now serving a 22-year prison sentence for a murder-for-hire plot among other crimes 'I've seen him give the jacket off his back for people. And I think that wasn't highlighted enough. Joe did a lot of messed up stuff. That's a fact, and that's shown, and now the entire world knows it. But he did a lot of good things, too.' GW Exotic Animal Park owners Jeff & Lauren Lowe think Maldonado-Passage is right 'where he belongs' inside the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, and he denies ever setting him up. 'That's just a complete crock of s***,' Jeff blasted. 'That's just a complete crock of s***!' GW Exotic Animal Park owners Jeff & Lauren Lowe think Maldonado-Passage is right 'where he belongs' inside the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, and he denies ever setting him up Jeff said: 'You guys saw all the videos that Joe was posting. Joe was his own worst enemy. I mean, he should have gotten up on the stand and testified against himself - because those videos where he's shooting Carole [Baskin], hanging Carole, blowing Carole up, putting rattlesnakes in her mailbox, "Who's gonna finish this b****? Who's gonna go get this b****?" Joe didn't get set up. Joe killed the tigers; he admitted to killing the tigers from jail' Light at the end of the tunnel? On Wednesday, President Donald Trump (R) told a New York Post reporter he'd 'look into' possibly pardoning the gun-toting openly gay polygamist (L) 'You guys saw all the videos that Joe was posting. Joe was his own worst enemy. I mean, he should have gotten up on the stand and testified against himself - because those videos where he's shooting Carole [Baskin], hanging Carole, blowing Carole up, putting rattlesnakes in her mailbox, "Who's gonna finish this b****? Who's gonna go get this b****?" Joe didn't get set up. Joe killed the tigers; he admitted to killing the tigers from jail.' On Wednesday, President Donald Trump told a New York Post reporter he'd 'look into' possibly pardoning the gun-toting openly gay polygamist, who ran for President in 2016 and Oklahoma Governor in 2018. And while Joe loves Tiger King, his nemesis Big Cat Rescue CEO Carole Baskin has been receiving death threats over the allegations she murdered her millionaire first husband Don Lewis, who went missing in 1997. MIA from special: And while Joe loves Tiger King, his nemesis Big Cat Rescue CEO Carole Baskin (L) has been receiving death threats over the allegations she murdered her millionaire first husband Don Lewis, who went missing in 1997 The 58-year-old animal activist wrote on her website: 'Don was not easy to live with and like most couples we had our moments. But I never threatened him and I certainly had nothing to do with his disappearance' MIA from special: Myrtle Beach Safari owner Bhagavan 'Doc' Antle (L) is also not a fan of the binge-watching favorite and denied allegations he euthanized tiger cubs and kept a harem of wives in a March 31 interview with TMX.news (pictured March 25) 'Don was not easy to live with and like most couples we had our moments. But I never threatened him and I certainly had nothing to do with his disappearance,' the 58-year-old animal activist wrote on her website. 'When he disappeared, I did everything I could to assist the police. I encouraged them to check out the rumors from Costa Rica, and separately I hired a private investigator.' Myrtle Beach Safari owner Bhagavan 'Doc' Antle is also not a fan of the binge-watching favorite and denied allegations he euthanized tiger cubs and kept a harem of wives in a March 31 interview with TMX.news. HELENA A little more than a week ago, after canceling or rescheduling at least four upcoming concerts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Helena Symphony Orchestra's Music Director and Conductor Allan R. Scott decided to find a way for his musicians to continue delivering what he believes to be an essential service. "I do believe the arts are the thing that will bring us back together," Scott said, alluding to the global health pandemic that has fractured the lives of so many. To that end, individual musicians from the orchestra selected pieces of music and performed them from their living rooms via the organization's Facebook page as a way of bringing a small glimmer of joy to Helenans and the rest of the world. Visit www.facebook.com/HelenaSymphony to see the live performances and videos, some of which have been viewed more than 1,000 times. Scott said it was not a unique idea. From an Italian man singing opera on his porch for neighbors to a New Yorker playing "God Bless America" on the bagpipes from his balcony, musicians around the world are recognizing the great need for the arts in these times. They dont call him Omo Baba Olowo for no reason. Davido has thrown in some cash to get his staff better living conditions.The DMW boss just got his staff a new house in the Lekki area of Lagos. The Risky hitmaker is well known for his online and offline acts of benevolence. The latest of which is getting a new house for his staff. He shared the news on social media as fans continued to applaud his kind gesture. View this post on Instagram Bought a house for my staff today ... great feeling! A post shared by Davido Adeleke (@davidoofficial) on Apr 13, 2020 at 9:59am PDT 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 family of an 87-year-old man who died last week after contracting the coronavirus at a Hayward skilled nursing home is calling for an investigation into the facility, alleging that employees treated patients without protective gear and continued to admit new patients after becoming aware of the outbreak. Costell Akrie was one of at least nine people who died after a coronavirus infection at Gateway Care and Rehabilitation Center, where at least 57 others have tested positive. Attorneys representing Akries family filed a complaint on Monday against the facility with the states Department of Public Health, and they also called for a criminal investigation. Adante Pointer, one of the attorneys representing the family, said that shortly after Akrie died on April 4, a family member picking up his belongings recalled seeing the facility admit another patient. That is just unconscionable; it should not happen, Pointer said. We call, we implore, we demand, that the health department for the state of California and other officials ... take action. Gateway is one of more than a dozen senior-care facilities in the Bay Area where residents and staff members have been stricken by the coronavirus. As of Saturday, The Chronicle had identified more than 393 cases and more than 20 deaths linked to nursing homes across the Bay Area. With nine known deaths at Gateway as of Monday afternoon, the facility has become the epicenter of this alarming trend. While many counties and facilities have not publicly reported these cases, the most deaths recorded at any other senior center is two. Gateway officials did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said officials investigate all complaints, and the department is setting up a process for making COVID-19 complaint data available to the public. As with any complaint, complainant information is kept confidential, the spokesperson said in an email. Information on whether or not an allegation is substantiated, or if Public Health cited the provider for a violation of state or federal regulations, will be made public after the investigation is completed. Critics of the senior living centers response to the outbreak, which has sickened more than 5,200 people across the Bay Area and killed 146, say the regions facilities remain dangerously unprepared and poorly equipped. Families of patients have told The Chronicle that they have been left in the dark about the severity of the threat. Many learned about cases and deaths at their loved ones residences from the media. Pointer and co-counsel John Burris said they have already received a brief call from the states Department of Public Health, and they plan to reach out to the Alameda County district attorneys office. Pointer said Akries family might file a lawsuit. Teresa Drenick, a spokesperson for the Alameda County district attorneys office, said she was unable to comment on any specific investigations but officials have long been active in working on the issue of safety in long-term care facilities. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Diane Akrie, Costell Akries widow, said the family was told her husband tested positive on March 30. Because he was in a room by himself, the family concluded he contracted the virus from a staff member. Diane Akrie said her family called Gateway to see if staff had been tested and an employee said they had not. The employee, she said, told the family that staffers fell into three categories: those who were symptomatic and staying home; those who refused to come to work because of the outbreak; and those who continued working. The remaining staff members were left to treat 25 to 35 patients each, Diane Akrie said. At no time did we ever see the staff wear masks, before and after the outbreak, she said. My husbands death was tragic and preventable, she continued. He is not with us today because of mistakes and negligence. Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy First came the stuffy nose, followed by a sore throat, ear pain and headache. By April 4, fever hit and her legs, lungs and chest began to ache. The inundated medical staff aboard the Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt wouldnt take her temperature, so the young sailor self-medicated with the Mucinex and Nyquil that she had left over from a care package from home. Her mother said she told her daughter to insist on a test, and she finally got one. But for almost a week, as she waited for results and fought her symptoms, she continued sleeping in close quarters with an apparently healthy sailor and working 16-hour shifts, from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., without wearing a mask. I just want to get soup to her, the mother said in an interview with The Chronicle, her voice shaking. She told me, Mom, I feel like Im dying. Just knowing my daughter is halfway across the world and sick with a pandemic virus and basically all alone, I feel absolutely helpless, she said. Conversations with more than a dozen Roosevelt sailors and family members, and photographs, text messages, social media posts and videos they provided, offer an intimate glimpse of how a now notorious outbreak of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, aboard the nuclear-powered ship has played out over the past two weeks. Even as Navy officials downplayed the severity of the situation, saying the outbreak was under control, sailors who spoke with The Chronicle described unsettling scenes aboard the ship and in quarantine on shore, where avoiding close encounters or touching shipmates or common equipment is nearly unavoidable. Worried parents said their sons and daughters who have shown symptoms have been working without masks sometimes tearing up T-shirts to cover their faces to clean the ship and cook meals as they await test results. One sailor who tested positive told his parents hed rather be on the ship than crowded into a cramped group quarantine on shore in Guam with limited supplies, unsanitary conditions and mediocre food. Another shared stories of trying to sleep in group berths with coughs piercing the silence throughout the night. The Chronicle agreed to withhold the names of sailors and some parents of crew members, who were not authorized to speak to the media or were concerned about repercussions, in accordance with its anonymous sources policy. J. Myers Vasquez, a Navy spokesman, countered some of the claims, saying if Roosevelt sailors show flu-like symptoms, their tests are expedited and the crew members are isolated in sick bay until test results come back. Once confirmed positive for the coronavirus, the sailors are moved off the ship for a 14-day isolation period where they are monitored, he said. Sailors not showing symptoms are also tested, he said, and test results take about three days to return from labs in South Korea. As of April 5, he said, sailors on board the carrier are following federal health guidelines that require protective coverings over their mouths. As far as infected sailors care, Vasquez said, a Navy medical representative evaluates those in quarantine twice a day, and food and laundry service is delivered. Sailors have access to Wi-Fi to stay connected to the command, family, friends and support networks, and have virtual access to counseling services and chaplain services, Vasquez said. But some crew members and their parents paint a bleaker picture of the situation on the Roosevelt, which has been docked in Guam for more than two weeks. In that time, infection rates among its crew have soared, the ships commanding officer was ousted after The Chronicle reported on his letter pleading for help, and Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned after blasting the captain in an address to the ships crew, saying the captain had betrayed them. On Thursday, the Navy announced the first hospitalization of a Roosevelt sailor. The unidentified crew member, who had tested positive, was found unresponsive. By Saturday, the Navy reported that 550 sailors from the ship have tested positive and 92% of the crew had been tested. Almost 3,700 sailors had been moved off the ship, nearing the limit the Navy has said it would remove. Its a helpless, helpless feeling, said Renea Blakewood, mother of 24-year-old Chris, an Orange Park, Fla., sailor on his first deployment. He tested positive Wednesday for the coronavirus. Were supposed to be taking care of our kids. I know hes an adult, but hell always be my little son. Everything changed aboard the Roosevelt on March 22, when the first sailor tested positive for the coronavirus 13 days after it left Da Nang, Vietnam, after a five-day port visit. Critics have second-guessed the Navys insistence on visiting the country during a time when the novel coronavirus was starting to take hold there. The word spread, and the captain addressed it over the intercom, one sailor told The Chronicle, after more infected sailors were identified. They were flown off ASAP and anyone that had contact with (them) were placed in (restriction of movement) status. John Blanchard Most of the crew remained calm after that, sailors said, but as the ship continued through the Philippine Sea, they became aware that the contagion was spreading. By the time the Roosevelt tied up in Apra Harbor, Guam, on March 27, the number of positive cases had grown to 25, and would soon climb to 36. We knew it would be everywhere as soon as the day broke, one sailor said. As the crew raced to disinfect the ship with bleach and other disinfectants, the young sailors, many of whom had attended their senior proms just the year before, began to show concern. So did their commanding officer. On March 30, Capt. Brett Crozier sent a stark email memo that would reverberate throughout the Navy, the military and the country. This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do, Crozier wrote his superiors, asking for immediate assistance to get 90% of his crew off the ship. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset our Sailors. After she read The Chronicles March 31 report on Croziers letter, Elizabeth Paz of Tulsa, Okla., immediately texted her 19-year-old daughter, who was already anxious on her first deployment on the Roosevelt. Paz told her daughter about the letter, and her daughter echoed Croziers concern that it was impossible to maintain proper distance among thousands of crew members in the confined spaces of the ship. Inside the newsroom Anonymous sources: The Chronicle strives to attribute all information we report to credible, reliable, identifiable sources. Presenting information from an anonymous source occurs extremely rarely, and only when that information is considered crucially important and all other on-the-record options have been exhausted. In such cases, The Chronicle has complete knowledge of the unnamed person's identity and of how that person is in position to know the information. The Chronicle's detailed policy governing the use of such sources, including the use of pseudonyms, is available on SFChronicle.com. See More Collapse Pazs daughter texted her: There is no way at all for social distancing Im so close to people all the time i run in to people all the time i tough (sic) people on accident just from walking around. She felt sick, she told Paz, but had not been tested. Please be very vocal about getting taken care of, Paz told her. If you get sick I have to be able to FaceTime you so I can talk to drs and nurses. I would really want you brought back here if you got sick. It can happen really fast too. One minute you are OK and the next you are very sick. Sailors said apprehension spread among the crew. One officer told The Chronicle the mood became very mixed. I personally have been mad, sad, worried, concerned and even scared. After days of silence, Pazs phone buzzed just before 4:30 a.m. April 2 with a text from her daughter. The sailor who sat a few feet away from her had tested positive and she was ordered to clear her work area. Despite the close contact shed had and feeling sick, she wasnt tested, she told her mother. Shed continued cleaning and working long hours. Her mother tried to comfort her, but also texted a dire prediction. Everyone is going to end up getting it at some point. There is no way around it. Her daughters disturbing message came days after Navy officials held multiple news conferences trying to calm criticism of their handling of the outbreak and giving assurance that the evacuation of much of the ship was under way. Later that same day, Crozier would be relieved of his command, cheered by his crew as he departed the ship. His departure was a big hit to morale, sailors said. They would soon learn through the media that their ousted captain had tested positive for the coronavirus. Within days, the situation aboard the Roosevelt worsened. The number of infected sailors grew as virus test results came back. Parents of those who tested positive had new concerns. My daughter tested positive for COVID-19, one mother shared on a Facebook page for Roosevelt families. Shes doing OK. But shes really uncomfortable. Shes off the ship, sleeping on a cot in a kitchen. Meanwhile, the sailor who had been treating her symptoms with her own medication waited anxiously for her test results. Days after her nose was swabbed, she continued working, with no mask or facial covering. She slept next to her asymptomatic bunkmate. You have to get a mask! Where can you get a mask?!, her mother recalled telling her over the phone. Shes like, Mom, they dont give us one! This is straight bulls, the mother said in an interview. Im livid. A program director for a medical assisting program, the mother has had to work at home during a shelter-in-place order. But she has called in sick of late, she said, because shes been racked with anxiety and not sleeping. I just feel like in a way my daughter is in prison, she said, crying. Friends tell me, Shes young, shes healthy, shell be fine. But thats not their child. On Thursday, Chris Blakewood ate his dinner of cut-up hot dogs and rice. It was a better meal than the pasta MRE he was served at the Guam Navy base gym where infected Roosevelt sailors are sent for a 14-day group quarantine. By contrast, his shipmates who have tested negative are isolating in five-star Guam hotels, sharing Snapchat photos of the prime rib and other luxury cuisine they are enjoying, said Chris father, Mark Blakewood. When his 24-year-old son first arrived at the gym, it was a room full of empty cots and fewer than 50 sailors bedding there. But over the past few days, Blakewood said Friday, his son has seen a spike in the numbers sent there, with more than 350 crammed into the space. They keep needing to get more cots, he said. Chris gets up early to have a better shot at one of only eight outlets to charge his electronic devices. He had hoped to pass the time using the TurboTax program to secure an income tax refund, his father said, but the demands on the spotty Wi-Fi have made it impossible. The quarantined sailors are using linens taken from the ship. Chris hangs his wet towel on the gym bleachers to dry, Blakewood said, and he has had to borrow toothpaste, as toiletries are running low. His 6-foot, 215-pound son, a workout fanatic, doesnt fit on his cot, so sleeping has been a problem. More needs to be done for our kids who put their lives on the line for our country, said Chris mother, Renea Blakewood. Elizabeth Pazs texts from her daughter have been more sporadic. Kept busy working and cleaning, the young sailor has sometimes gone days with no communication at all. Paz, meanwhile, has tried to read every report she can about the situation on the Roosevelt. On Thursday, her daughter finally answered Pazs repeated inquiries. Yes i got the results back its negative, she wrote. On Friday, she left for a hotel room and quarantine. Photo illustration / The Chronicle Well thats amazing, Paz wrote back. For the mother of the Roosevelt sailor who had been on the ship for six days with a fever, aches and lung pain, the news from Guam was not happy. On Friday, she learned what she had suspected her daughter was positive for coronavirus. She was being moved to the gym. I had already prepared myself for it since she had all the symptoms for a week, the mother said. I am worried sick and very scared for her. She also believes her daughter very likely got other sailors sick. So they kept a positive corona on the ship for six days, not in quarantine and with no mask, pending results, the mother said. Thats irresponsible in my book. Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni While much of the nation shelters in place, hoping to stem the spread of the coronavirus, prison inmates find themselves in an especially vulnerable position, often living in overcrowded conditions that could put them at added risk of contracting and spreading the disease. In response, state and local officials are releasing thousands of inmates classified as low risk, to protect their health and reduce the likelihood of a full-blown outbreak in prisons and county jails. Inmate advocates say theyre not doing nearly enough. The life-or-death decisions who gets out, what constitutes overcrowding, and what do the law and the U.S. Constitution require for conditions of confinement are in the hands of federal judges. A key arbiter is a three-judge panel that has overseen medical care in California prisons for many years, and ordered a major reduction in the prison population more than a decade ago to address another health crisis. In California, state prison officials have ordered the release of about 3,500 inmates with less than 60 days remaining on their sentences, and say the population will drop by another 3,000 because of Gov. Gavin Newsoms 30-day freeze on transferring newly sentenced inmates from county jails to state prisons. As of Monday, the state prison system had reported 55 cases of coronavirus among its 110,570 inmates and 77 among prison staff. The state and inmate advocates are facing off in Bay Area federal courts on the adequacy of those measures, and the crucial question of how much deference judges, and the public, should give to state officials. California has taken far more steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic than any other state, said Attorney General Xavier Becerras office, representing the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in its latest court filing. The state should be given the opportunity to address these important issues without judicial interference. Lawyers for the prisoners countered that conditions in Californias 35 prisons were a disaster waiting to happen. More than one-third of the states inmates live in packed dormitories one of them, in a mens prison in Sacramento, with 129 bunks as close as 26 inches from each other, the lawyers said in court filings. They also said more than 45,000 prisoners, 37% of the population, have been classified by a court-appointed overseer of prison health care as being at risk of such illnesses because of their age or medical frailty. And they said fewer than 0.4% of the states inmates, or 4 in every 1,000, have been tested for the virus. The prison systems woeful response to the pandemic ... has made conditions far worse, attorneys from an inmate legal advocacy group, Prison Law Office, said in filings this week with federal judges in Sacramento and Oakland. If the state does not significantly reduce the crowding, COVID-19 will rapidly spread through the California prisons, placing the people who live and work inside them at substantial risk of injury and death, in addition to endangering the community. But state lawyers said it was a judgment call for experienced prison officials and staff, not the courts. When officials respond reasonably to a risk of harm, there is no (constitutional) violation even if the harm is not completely averted, Becerras attorneys said. They cited a 1994 Supreme Court ruling that held the government responsible for harm to inmates only if the evidence showed officials had been deliberately indifferent to the known danger. Six feet of physical distancing is not required under the Constitution, the state lawyers said. They said the prisons were acting rationally by canceling group events and in-person classes; keeping inmates in their own households, or housing areas, rather than letting them contact inmates housed elsewhere; converting gymnasiums and other unused buildings into housing, and carefully reviewing categories of prisoners who can be released safely. Nick Otto / Special to The Chronicle The judges are reviewing the cases after a three-judge panel, which has the sole authority to order prison releases, refused to do so on April 4 and said the inmates must first present their arguments to the individual judges presiding over the long-running suits on prison medical care. Inmates first filed the suits 30 years ago and won rulings from the three-judge panel in 2009, and the Supreme Court in 2011, requiring California to reduce its prison population by 30,000 to enable improvements in a woeful prison health care system. Those releases did not lead to a noticeable rise in crime, Prison Law Office attorneys said in their latest filings, despite dire predictions by prison officials and law enforcement groups the same warnings now issued by opponents of major reductions in prison population. Meanwhile, lawmakers and inmate advocates are urging prison and immigration officials nationwide to avoid outbreaks by releasing prisoners. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., have introduced legislation that would provide $1 billion in each of the next two years for state and local efforts to release low-risk inmates and people held for technical probation or parole violations, and for medical testing and treatment of inmates. Correctional facilities have already started to become COVID-19 hot-spots, Feinstein said in a statement. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has introduced a similar bill. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. On Thursday, more than 100 health and civil rights advocacy groups sent a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urging it to use its official guidance to prisons and jails nationwide to call for substantial reductions in inmate population, including prompt release of elderly or medically vulnerable people or anyone due to be freed within 18 months. Federal judges in California have ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last week to release 10 inmates to in-home custody during their deportation cases because they suffer from medical conditions that could cause severe illness or death from the coronavirus. With neither inmates nor staff wearing masks or other protective equipment, detainees cannot meaningfully follow the advice the countrys health officials ... have repeatedly given to avoid infection while in ICE custody, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney said Wednesday in ordering the release of four men held in Yuba and Kern counties. Locally, advocates are urging Alameda County officials to immediately reduce the population and halt new admissions to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where 12 inmates have tested positive for the virus and other results are pending. The jail has reduced its population from 2,597 at the start of March to 1,979, but dozens of prisoner and civil rights groups said Thursday that Santa Rita remains overcrowded, the staff withholds cleaning supplies, and many more inmates should be tested. And county Public Defender Brendon Woods urged the Sheriffs Office to release 115 Santa Rita inmates who have no more than six months remaining on their sentences. Other Bay Area counties have also freed hundreds of inmates. In San Francisco, for example, the jail population has plunged from 1,109 on March 1 to 735 as of Friday, the Sheriffs Office said. San Mateo County said its inmate population had dropped from 969 to 658, and it plans to release 100 more inmates in the next few days. Sonoma County jails, which usually hold between 1,050 and 1,100 inmates, now have 718, while Napa Countys jail population has fallen from 272 to 171. And in Marin County, the population has dropped by more than 50%, from 307 in early March to 144 on Friday. Some former prisoners are calling for governors to use their powers of clemency to reduce the prison population during a time of crisis. One is Barbara Chavez, convicted in 1999 of taking part, at age 22, in the murder of a liquor store employee in Kern County by a robber whom she drove to the site. Sentenced to life without parole, under the states now-repealed felony-murder law, she was made eligible for parole in 2018 by Gov. Jerry Brown, who cited her rehabilitation and prison staff commendations. The parole board then approved her release. Womens prisons are full of people like me ... warehousing people who have so much to share, Chavez, now an advocate for victims of domestic violence, said Wednesday during a telephonic town hall by prisoner advocates. They are scared for their lives. ... Please grant more clemency now. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko Feeling the lockdown blues? Fret not. Police in Rajasthan's Churu district has asked residents to showcase their skill through online competitions and win exciting rewards. As a part of community policing, Churu Police has launched various competitions for all age groups.The selected entries will be shared on social media handles of the Churu Police on a daily basis. The competition is for children aged 3-10 years, 11-17 years juniors and 18+ years for seniors. The participants have to record a 30 second to 4-minute video of acting, dancing, singing, instrumental music, poetry writing, stand-up comedy or a recipe. In image/PDF category, participants can post In-home photography, painting, poster, slogans, poetry, essay, stories, song writing, rangoli and mehandi art. The last date of submitting entries is April 15, which will be extended if the lockdown period is extended by the government. Churu district SP Tejaswani Gautam told PTI that there has been an overwhelming response from the people to the initiative. Police have partnered with local institutions for sponsorship. The winners will be given gift hampers and participation certificate besides a chance to work as 'police mitra'. The aim is that people remain at their homes and remain engaged to beat the lockdown period with some activity and compete for fetching exciting reward, Gautam said. The participants will have to post the video/image on their social media profile with #ChuruPoliceLockdownContest and #ChuruFightsCorona. They will then have to WhatsApp the link along with their name, age and address to +91-91163-12944 or email on "mailto:filmsthan@gmail.com" \ filmsthan@gmail.com. A total of 815 people in the state have been tested positive for coronavirus, including 14 in Churu district. Entire state is under lockdown from March 22. Massive surveys and screening is underway to trace the contagion. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Victorian Ombudsman is investigating an Andrews government decision to forge ahead with a multimillion-dollar highway upgrade that has sparked a string of court battles and ongoing protests over the bulldozing of sacred Aboriginal trees. The Djab Wurrung argue this tree, believed to be about 500 years old, is not within the Western Highway duplication project boundary and should not be cut down. Investigators visited sites along the Western Highway in December last year after fielding a wave of complaints since August about a 12.5-kilometre duplication project removing thousands of trees, including centuries-old natives. A series of court cases waged by the Djab Wurrung people and private landowners have significantly delayed works between Beaufort and Buangor, while hundreds of activists have flocked to support the Djab Wurrung Heritage Protection Embassy a campsite set up next to the highway by traditional owners nearly two years ago. But the Andrews government has vowed it would go ahead with the $672 million project, arguing it would save lives on the dangerous truck route. Pakistan risks sleep walking into a coronavirus catastrophe where death tolls reach levels seen in the West and perilously under-resourced hospitals are pushed to the brink, an opposition leader told AFP on Monday. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of Pakistans first female leader Benazir Bhutto, said the countrys response to the pandemic so far had been characterised by federal foot-dragging over a comprehensive lockdown and an unwillingness to divert cash to the buckling health care system. Pakistan so far has recorded 93 deaths from a total of 5,230 cases, but experts worry the impoverished country of 215 million people -- many of whom live in cramped, multi-generational households -- is only at the start of the coronavirus curve. There is definitely a false sense of security that weve seen from the start of this crisis, Bhutto said in a video call from his Karachi office. We have seen a desire to ignore science and facts and the examples of what has been happening around us internationally, which has hampered us taking the timely and necessary action. Prime Minister Imran Khan has faced particular criticism after saying Pakistan could not afford a country-wide lockdown, citing the economic damage that would be unleashed. Pakistan now has a de facto lockdown after provinces acted independently to shutter schools and companies, but officials are under pressure to loosen restrictions as the economy suffers. Pakistans first COVID-19 cases were reported in the southern province of Sindh, governed by Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), with officials there ordering a lockdown last month. Bhutto said provincial health advisors, academics and experts had recommended tougher measures across Pakistan. We can bring the economy back to life, but we cannot bring people back to life, he said. If we just hope for the best and dont prepare for the worst... then Pakistan is sleep walking into a disastrous situation and I genuinely fear for the consequences. Bhutto said the situation in Pakistan could be worse than the US or western Europe given the countrys shortage of protective gear for medical staff, a lack of critical care beds and other problems with the underfunded health care system. The PPP was founded by Bhuttos grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His mother Benazir became prime minister twice and was running a third time when she was killed in a gun and bomb attack on December 27, 2007. For years Bhutto, 31, faced harsh criticism for his spotty grasp of the Urdu language and was lambasted for benefiting from dynastic politics. But he has become one of the oppositions most recognisable faces -- known for his cool demeanour and lack of vitriol in what is traditionally a bare-knuckle political scene. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Residents of Molepolole who have been reeling under a prolonged water shortage crisis breathed a sigh of relief this past weekend when a local company, Advanced Global Limited, came to their rescue by commissioning four (4) boreholes in the village. Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) blames the water crisis in the densely populated village to polluted boreholes and leakages caused by the old water pipelines and other infrastructure. Advanced Global Limited Director, Teezzarh Seduke, said this is part of their contribution to heed the call by President Dr. Mokgweetsi Masisi for individuals and companies to assist in the fight against COVID-19. He said given the history of the water situation in Molepolole, his company decided to come to the aid of the critical need of water for the residents. Speaking at the handing over of one of the boreholes in Molepolole, Seduke said, we are in a desperate time that requires the private sector to pull ranks with Government and assist the nation in any way possible. This fight against the virus requires access to water for people to frequently wash hands and hydrate. We hope our pledge can go a long way to save lives. The much-needed water pledge was received by Private Secretary Ame Makoba on behalf of the Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Kabo Morwaeng who is also Member of Parliament for Molepolole South. The Minister wishes to thank Seduke and others that continue to heed our call, at a time that our nation is in great need. Minister Morwaeng assures Bakwena that he shall continue to seek ways in which Molepolole and the nation at large, is assisted in the fight against COVID-19, noted Makoba. WUC Acting Chief Executive Officer Gaselemogwe Senai revealed that the water is safe to drink. He said the corporation has satisfied itself that the water is safe after running several tests. He promised that WUC will continue to explore ways to ensure that Molepolole and other affected areas get water. He said in this fight against the coronavirus, water is among one of the first line of defence as people wash their hands as a preventative and precautionary measure. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused the resignation of the country's interior minister Suleyman Soylu over his handling of an abrupt nationwide lockdown. "The incidents that occurred ahead of the implementation of the curfew were not befitting the perfect management of the outbreak," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in statement on Twitter in which he said he was resigning. Erdogan, however, judged it was not "appropriate" for Soylu to resign and the minister would continue in his position, the presidency said shortly afterwards, the AP reported. Soylu's statement came just before the end of the weekend lockdown in 31 provinces across Turkey, including its largest city and commercial hub Istanbul, home to 16 million residents. SANTA FE The last four New Mexico governors have at least one thing in common they have each either ran for national office or had their names floated as possible vice president picks. The states current governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has joined the club and on Sunday addressed speculation that she could be among a list of names Joe Biden is considering for his running mate in this years presidential election. When asked by CNNs Jake Tapper about whether she would be interested in such a position, Lujan Grisham did not rule out the possibility but did not embrace it either. I want to be the governor of New Mexico, Lujan Grisham said during Sundays airing of the State of the Union. I will do whatever it takes to support a Biden administration and Im looking forward to a federal administration that can do a national strategy in good times and in bad times, Lujan Grisham added. Lujan Grisham also said vice president selection should be cut from the same cloth as Biden, citing the former vice presidents experience as a longtime member of the U.S. Senate and in other levels of government. Biden vowed during a debate last month to select a woman as his running mate and is expected to make his selection in the coming weeks. U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., are among the other names that have been floated by national media outlets as possible picks. Lujan Grisham served three terms representing New Mexicos 1st Congressional District in Washington D.C. before being elected governor in 2018. Biden was vice president during the first two of those three terms. Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday exhorted scientists to develop COVID-19 mitigation solutions keeping a fixed timeframe in mind, saying these are "times of war" and it should not be treated as a routine research project. Vardhan held a review meeting with the Director General Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Shekhar Mande, and all the 38 CSIR lab directors, a statement said. During the meeting, Mande said a Core Strategy Group (CSG) has been set up and five verticals have been identified under which coronavirus-related activities are being carried out. These include digital and molecular surveillance, rapid and economical diagnostics, new drugs/repurposing of drugs and associated production processes, hospital assistive devices and PPEs; and supply chain and logistics support systems. Vardhan, however, cautioned CSIR scientists to develop COVID-19 mitigation solutions keeping a fixed timeframe in mind. "These are times of war, CSIR scientists should work to deliver solutions before war ends, they should not treat it as a routine research project, he said. COVID-19 has also come as a blessing in disguise as it will give a boost to the country's resilience and self-reliance, and enhance indigenous capacity in developing critical health care equipment, the minister said. Vardhan appreciated that CSIR labs were also conducting tests of swab samples of coronavirus patients and some of them have started doing genetic sequencing of the virus with a target of doing 500 sequencing in coming weeks. Genetic sequencing is very crucial in identifying the host response as well as identifying population vulnerability to the disease, he said. The minister said these genetic sequencing efforts remind him of the polio eradication movement 26 years back. Mande said 15 CSIR labs are working in close partnership with major industries, PSUs, MSMEs and other departments and ministries at the time of crisis in the country. He also appreciated the work done by CSIR-national aerospace laboratories with Bengaluru BHEL and BEL on ventilators and oxygen enrichment devices. They are also developing 3-D printed face shields, face masks, gowns and other protective equipment, the statement added. "All these things will help us in the next few weeks," he said. Also read: Coronavirus lockdown no excuse to obstruct trucks, essential workers, MHA tells states, UTs Also read: Coronavirus update: 'Jaan bhi, jahaan bhi,' PM Modi pitches new motto to contain pandemic Top oil-producing countries agreed Sunday to record output cuts in order to boost plummeting oil prices due to the new coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war. OPEC producers, dominated by Saudi Arabia, and allies led by Russia met via videoconference for an hour Sunday in a last-ditch effort to cement an accord struck early Friday that hinged on Mexicos agreement. Click here for Covid-19 full coverage In a compromise, Mexico came onboard Sunday to an agreement to cut 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to its Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels per day envisioned earlier. Kuwait Oil Minister Khaled al-Fadhel tweeted that, following extensive efforts we announce completing the historical agreement. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who chaired the meeting together with his Russian and Algerian counterparts, also confirmed that the discussions ended with consensus. Great deal for all US President Donald Trump welcomed a great deal for all, saying on Twitter it would save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States. He added he would like to thank and congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, both of whom he had spoken to. Initial reticence from Mexico to introduce output cuts had led to a standoff that cast doubt on efforts to bolster oil prices, pushed to near two-decade lows. Oil prices have slumped since the beginning of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has sapped demand as countries around the world have put their populations under lockdown. Compounding the problem, key players Russia and Saudi Arabia had engaged in a price war, ramping up output in a bid to hold on to market share and undercut US shale producers. Temporary relief Rystad Energy analyst Per Magnus Nysveen said Sundays agreement provided at least a temporary relief as fuel consumption was expected to fall globally by 27 million barrels per day in April and 20 million barrels per day in May. His colleague Bjornar Tonhaugen said, however, that even though the deal made the single largest output cut in history, prices were still expected to see renewed downwards pressure. The oil market will see enormous stock builds in April as the deal is only in effect from 1 May, while gradual shut ins and production declines will already happen during the current month, he said. Top oil producers struggled to finalise production cuts during a virtual summit held by G20 energy ministers on Friday, despite Trumps mediation efforts to end the standoff with Mexico. The OPEC-led agreement foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual reduction in cuts until April 2022. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak was quoted by Russian news agency TASS as saying he expected oil markets not to recover before end of the year, in the best case. Cinthya Ramirez's greatest fear is spreading the coronavirus to her parents and younger brother when she comes home from her nursing shift at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the largest hospital in the Nashville, Tennessee, area. "I take every precaution before entering the house. I take off my clothes, clean my phone and go straight to the shower. The rest is in the hands of God," Ramirez, 24, tells Telemundo News. Ramirez, who came to the United States from Mexico when she was 4, graduated with a nursing degree just three years ago. She's one of an estimated 29,000 health care workers nurses and health aides, paramedics, technicians and doctors who are on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic but who face an additional worry. Cinthya Ramirez works as a nurse in the largest hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. (Courtesy of Cinthya Ram?rez) They are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. Started in 2012 by President Barack Obama, it has allowed over 700,000 immigrant young adults who lack legal status but who were raised primarily in the U.S. to work and study without fear of deportation. But the Trump administration has fought to end the program, and by the end of June the Supreme Court will announce its decision to allow the president to shut it down or to side with lower courts that have kept DACA going. If the program is shut down, DACA recipients fear they would lose their existing protections and face the possibility of being deported. In a recent letter to the Supreme Court, a group of legal organizations asked the justices to take into account the context of the current pandemic. These immigrants, they said, "are essential to protect communities across the country endangered by COVID-19. Terminating the program during this national emergency would be catastrophic. " 'I try not to think about it every day' Ana Cueva, 27, who works as an intensive care nurse at a small community hospital near Sacramento, California, says the number of patients with COVID-19 symptoms has skyrocketed in a matter of days. Story continues Some of them are getting worse, they are not responding to treatments. In intensive care, we already have patients who require ventilators. At this point in the pandemic, the one who is not worried is because he does not understand what is happening," she says after having finished a 12-hour shift, at night and in the morning. Cueva has been a nurse for almost five years, two of them in intensive care. There are certain things she's used to because of the nature of her work, she says, including seeing patients die. The difference is that now family members will not be saying goodbye to their relatives in the same way. "That keeps me awake every night." Ana Cueva renewed her DACA in February, and she's worried about what happens if she can't renew in two years. (Courtesy of Ana Cueva) She renewed her DACA application in February, so she has a work permit for two years. But the decision the Supreme Court makes in June could change her life. There is not a time of day when I don't think that maybe this was the last time I could renew my DACA. I am here, I voluntarily put my life at risk and go to work happily," Cueva says. "Losing more employees would cause major failures to the health system. Despite the constant fear of getting sick, she says that she won't stop helping those who need it. I am not someone who would abandon a vocation out of fear," Cueva says. "I have wanted to be a nurse since I was 9 years old and I am not going to abandon the oath I took to take care of my patients." In Fort Myers, Florida, paramedic Aldo Martinez says that 1 out of 3 calls to 911 systems he's responded to recently are from people reporting coronavirus-related symptoms. "This includes chest pain, shortness of breath, a lot of cough and fever," he explains on his day off, after having worked a 36-hour shift; sometimes he's assigned on two shifts back-to-back. Part of his job is to calm callers who are panicked and uncertain and to determine, after examining them, if their situation is severe enough to be taken to a hospital. Martinez was born in Mexico City and came to the U.S. with his parents at age 12. Aldo Martinez works as a paramedic in Fort Myers, Florida, as the number of emergency calls regarding patients with viral symptoms has increased. (Courtesy of Aldo Mart?nez) His formative years, "those where you find yourself and decide what you want to do in life," were spent in the U.S., so he says he can't imagine having to return to Mexico. In the eight years since DACA went into effect, Martinez assumed things with the program would be resolved along the way. After all, he says, DACA beneficiaries "do not cause harm, but well being." "It is painful not to be able to have something more permanent, because at the end of the day what I want to do is help people," he says. "I try not to think about it every day, because it can affect my interpersonal relationships and my ability to help patients, which is my priority." Martinez adds that with the existing health care personnel shortage, he "can't imagine" getting rid of thousands of such workers. "Not to mention those who put food in the markets, those who cook food in restaurants, those who clean in hospitals, those who work in the postal service," he says. At Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Ramirez is seeing the effects of the coronavirus, such as the postponement of scheduled surgeries and treatments and the anxiety among her fellow medical workers. Ramirez says she takes refuge in religion. I am a very spiritual person and I pray a lot. I remind myself that this is the job that I was meant to have. If the time comes for patients to die and they cannot have their families with them, we have to be there for them." "We have so much to contribute" Denisse Rojas, 30, is in her fourth year of medical school. Rojas works several hours a day at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York the U.S. city with the most coronavirus cases and deaths. Her task is to handle hundreds of emails with vendors to help secure masks, respirators, gowns and gloves, to meet the needs of the hospital. "Medical students know how important these tools are to work," she says. "Knowing that I am helping people helps me get up early in the morning to answer emails." Rojas was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. with her parents when she was a few months old. Denisse Rojas, a medical student in New York City, is helping her hospital coordinate the purchase of masks, scrubs, ventilators, and other necessary equipment. (Courtesy Denisse Rojas) When she graduates next year, she estimates she will have spent about a quarter of a million dollars to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. I am helping, regardless of what is decided with DACA," she says. "But it feels surreal to know that I am about to graduate, that my colleagues will be able to start practicing and that there is a possibility that I cannot." "The beneficiaries of the program need stability, certainty," she adds. "And people will realize that we must be here because we have so much to contribute." Jorge Carrasco reported this story for Noticias Telemundo. Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The Ghana China Friendship Association(GHACHIFA), has urged the Chinese government, to heed to the call by Ghana's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, to respect the rights of Ghanaians and all other Africans in China. This follows reports of incidents of maltreatment of Ghanaians and other African nationals in China, with regards to the COVID-19 outbreak. Dr. Benjamin Anyagre, General secretary of GHACHIFA, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said as long as Ghanaians and other African nationals in China respected the laws of that country, they deserved to be treated with respect and due recognition. He said the two countries had long-standing relations, which could be traced to the beginning of Ghana as a republic, and several years of fruitful collaborations. The GHACHIFA General Secretary observed that the good relations chalked so far between the two countries, had to be sustained and improved upon, instead of being marred by such easily preventable incidents. Dr. Anyagre said the most important thing at the moment, was for Ghana and Africa as a whole, to now more than ever, indulge in fruitful collaboration towards eradicating the COVID-19 pandemic, and restoring global peace and sanity. He believed that the request by Ghana's Foreign Minister, would be duly attended to. A news release signed by Madam Shirley Ayorkor Botwe, Ghana's Minister of Foreign Affairs, read, "I have been briefed on the inhuman treatment being meted out to Ghanaians and other African nationals in the Peoples republic of China, with regards to the COVID-19 outbreak." The release said the Ministry accordingly summoned Mr. Shi Ting Wang, Chinese Ambassador to Ghana over the reports, and to also asked him to call for the Chinese Government to address the situation and bring their officials to book. A formal communication from the Government of Ghana would be issued within the next 24 hours to address the situation at hand," the release said. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A cargo flight loaded with medical supplies from China arrived at Edmonton's airport early Monday morning, almost a month after the facility stopped accepting international passenger flights. The Cargojet flight, arranged by Alberta Health Services, carried personal protective equipment for front line health-care workers and first responders in the province, according to a news release from the Edmonton International Airport. The Boeing 737 left Shanghai on Sunday. "Although our passenger movements are substantially down, our cargo movements continue to grow and have never been more important to our community," Tom Ruth, EIA president and CEO, said in the release. Canada has been actively seeking medical supplies including medical masks, gowns and gloves to ensure a stable supply as demand and profiteers overwhelm global markets. "Our government is working very hard on an ongoing basis to secure the personal protective equipment required to keep our health care, continuing care and seniors care workers safe," Municipal Affairs Minister Kaycee Madu said in the release. The PPE supplies arrived as health professionals in Canada warn that shortages could put the lives of front-line workers at risk. On March 16, in response to the global coronavirus pandemic, the federal government announced all international passenger flights arriving in Canada were restricted to one of four airports: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. According to the release, Edmonton is the only airport community in Canada to be certified by the International Air Transport Association to be involved with the transport of sensitive medical cargo, including pharmaceutical shipments that need strict temperature controls. "This international designation ensures EIA will continue prospering as a global-scale gateway that will welcome future medical supply flights as well as other essential, time sensitive products," the release said. The Federal Ministry of Education has urged Nigerians to disregard some false news making the rounds that the Federal Government had directed the reopening of schools. The ministrys Director of Press, Ben Goong, said on Sunday that there was no such directive from the minister, Adamu Adamu, as everyone had been instructed to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. Goong noted that parents, guardians and stakeholders must not be misled by fake news but should continue to abide by the Federal Governments regulations to tackle the ravaging pandemic. He said, On the issue of reopening of schools, the ministry has not directed the reopening of any school at any level. The purported press release by the minister to that effect is a clear forgery as it did not emanate from the minister. Parents, students and the general public are advised to please disregard the fake release. There is also another story making the rounds that the Federal Government has blamed the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities on vice-chancellors. At no time did any Federal Government official make that kind of statement. Any insinuation in that direction is simply emanating from the fertile imagination of the author and that the ministry has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Stakeholders and indeed the general public should disregard such statements. Stay at home, stay safe. Lets work from home like Im doing. Only the living can work or worship. Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates In early February, Mariano Pena Lezama leased a pink warehouse in San Franciscos Bayview industrial district to house his janitorial company. He said he planned to use the space to park his trucks and store cleaning supplies, according to the warehouse owners attorney. But within days, the building at 2266 Shafter Ave. was allegedly converted into an unlicensed after-hours nightclub for mass gatherings of drinking, dancing and gambling, creating one of the regions more brazen examples of people disregarding shelter-in-place orders during the coronavirus outbreak. There was a party every night, Monte Travis, an attorney for the buildings landlords, told The Chronicle on Monday. In the weeks since San Franciscos March 16 shelter-in-place order, the parties became more raucous and frequent, according to workers at neighboring businesses. Investigators said more than 100 people were seen attending parties, often while ignoring physical distancing requirements. Lezama leased the property for his business, Bay Area Pinnacle Cleaning, but he instead turned it over to illicit club operators, according to court documents. The tenant previously ignored a three-day eviction order, prompting San Francisco police and the city attorneys office on Saturday to shut down the underground club for violating public health orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19. Lezama could not be reached for comment. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said the landlords family members Andrew Trinh, May Lee, Nam Trinh and Trang Thai cooperated with the investigation and the police shutdown. The raid was conducted with an abatement warrant Herrera obtained Friday, allowing the police to station cars in front of the warehouse that night in an effort to deter people from entering. Police raided the warehouse hours after it closed Saturday, seizing everything from cases of beer to gambling machines and DJ equipment. In the eviction complaint, Travis said the warehouse was used to operate an illegal unpermitted gathering of 100-plus persons that began after midnight, peaked in the hours between 2 and 6 a.m. and generally continued until dawn or later. No one has been arrested in connection with the nightclub and Herreras office did not issue citations or fines. The most important thing was for us to shut down the establishment and make sure it was no longer in operation, Herrera said in a video call with reporters Monday. Could there be other civil actions? Well see. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. San Francisco police declined to discuss the nightclub and any possible arrests or citations, saying the matter remains under investigation. Authorities also declined to release a report of a similar incident at the warehouse April 6. Herrera declined to discuss whether any other clandestine clubs or speakeasies are operating in the city, but he said his office will consider any complaint about a business or activity violating the shelter-in-place orders and determine whether it requires action. Owners of the property were not only upset with being duped, Travis said, but they also feared their building with a single entrance and no sprinklers could become a fire hazard like the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, which caught fire Dec. 2, 2016, and killed 36 people attending an electronic music concert. Travis said the shelter in place took effect and the parties just continued with flagrant disregard for safety of not just themselves but everyone else in the city and the Bay Area. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan Over 2,400 students of Lovely Professional University (LPU), Phagwara, and CT Group of Institutions, are in a state of panic and want to go home. On Saturday, an LPU student had tested positive for covid-19. Classes have been suspended at both the institutes till May 1 and students are stranded at hostels, paying guest accommodations and private rented flats. Over 300 of these are international students; CT Group of Institutions has 100-odd international students in Ludhiana and Jalandhar combined. A health department official, involved in screening of students since Saturday, said students were panicking and were jittery in coming forward for the screening process. Incidentally, the patient is stable, and is being treated at the isolation ward of the Kapurthala civil hospital. At the LPU, stranded students remain from Mumbai, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and some other cities of South India. Internationally, most students still on campus or the city are Afghanistan, Nepal, Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia. LPU additional director Aman Mittal said, The university has approached these countries, requesting for evacuation of their citizens. A student Sulaiman Ahmad from Afghanistan said, I am worried and have requested my own government and Indian authorities to send me home. Suresh Kumar from Telangana, who stays in a rented accommodation, with others from his state, said, We feel trapped. Our families are also worried. 259 LPU BHUTANESE STUDENTS GO BACK IN TWO CHARTED FLIGHTS Since March 28, LPU had coordinated with the Bhutan government and Bhutanese Embassy in India to fly 259 of its students, in addition to some dependents, in two special chartered flights. A batch of 138 Bhutanese students and 2 dependents were sent from Chandigarh Airport on March 28, after necessary health screening. On Monday, 121 LPU Bhutanese students and three dependents too the plane from Amritsar airport on Monday. During the complete process, social distancing was maintained, said LPUs Mittal. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON With decade-low first-quarter growth, the fast and furious spread of the coronavirus pandemic has prompted high-profile international organisations to revise down their forecasts on Vietnams 2020 economic growth. The World Bank last week announced its East Asia and Pacific in the time of COVID-19 report, which stated that while prospects remain favourable for the Vietnamese economy in the medium term, GDP growth will be affected negatively by the coronavirus outbreak, now a global pandemic. Preliminary estimates suggest that the rate of expansion of the economy could decline to about 4.9 per cent in 2020, which is about 1.6 percentage points lower than our previous forecast, read the report. However, the World Bank also showed its strong belief that over the medium term, growth is projected to rebound back to 7.5 per cent in 2021 and converge at around 6.5 per cent in 2022, reflecting an improved external demand and a firming of the services sector, as well as a gradual recovery in agricultural production. The economy will also rebound from the global coronavirus pandemic, said World Bank country director for Vietnam Ousmane Dione. Global analyst FocusEconomics last week told VIR that it projects the Vietnamese economy to expand by only 5.2 per cent in 2020, down 1.3 percentage points from last months forecast, and 7 per cent in 2021. Notably, the firms February forecast of 6.5 per cent was lower than the previous months projection of 6.6 per cent. It is the first time FocusEconomics has issued consecutive downward revisions of Vietnams economic growth projections in years, due to the fast and dangerous spread of COVID-19, which has been badly affecting almost all sectors in the economy. Growth is seen slowing markedly this year due to the impact of the coronavirus. Nevertheless, fundamentals remain solid and the economy should still perform favourably compared to ASEAN peers. A possible worsening of the viral outbreak and domestic banking vulnerabilities pose downside risks to the outlook, said the statement. Under FocusEconomics, Vietnam is projected to remain one of the ASEANs top performers in 2020 thanks to strong domestic demand. Specifically, the analysts reported, the growth rates this year for Asia will be 2.9 per cent, against the ASEAN (3.4 per cent), Indonesia (4.5 per cent), Laos (6.4 per cent), Malaysia (2.8 per cent), Myanmar (6.8 per cent) the Philippines (5.2 per cent), Singapore (-0.2 per cent), and Thailand (0.8 per cent). Meanwhile, Fitch Solutions under Fitch Ratings, one of the worlds three largest rating firms, has also just cut its projections for Vietnams growth this year. In light of the worsening global outbreak, we are revising our 2020 growth forecast for Vietnam down to 6.3 per cent, from 6.8 per cent previously, the group said in a statement. It explained that a disruption of supply chains in the region will result in slower manufacturing growth, due to an inability to secure inputs from and export to China, a key trade partner. Moreover, a cutback in tourist arrivals from the countrys top three markets China, South Korea, and Japan will weigh on tourism and by extension the services industry. However, according to Fitch Solutions, Vietnams 2020 growth will likely be higher than that of many regional nations, like Indonesia (4.8 per cent), the Philippines (6 per cent), Singapore (1 per cent), and Thailand (2 per cent). All these nations have also been hit hard by COVID-19. According to these data rating agencies, the reasons behind Vietnams expected better performance is that the country is pushing up its economic restructuring, making it a more business-friendly destination for investors and firms. Especially, free trade agreements have also been making Vietnam more attractive. In February, the EU Parliament approved the EU-Vietnam trade deal, paving the way for it to come into force later this year and boding well for the external sector in the medium-term, FocusEconomics added. Meanwhile, as per the International Monetary Fund as of March 3 for Vietnam under COVID-19, the country may grow 5.8 per cent this year if the pandemic reaches its peak in late April. A second scenario posits that the economy may increase by 4.8 per cent if the situation lasts longer, with grave impacts on global demand if the pandemic expands on a larger scale within the country. The Vietnamese Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) stated in a report, In order to control the pandemic well and ensure the safety of people, it is a must to sacrifice some economic benefits. Vietnams economy grew 3.82 per cent on-year in the first quarter of 2020, the lowest first-quarter growth rate since 2009 (see box). Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has repeatedly stressed that all resources must be mobilised to put paid to the virus and that Vietnam stands ready to sacrifice some economic benefits in order to eradicate the pandemic. The government expects that the growth rate will be 6.8-7 per cent this year. Previously, PM Phuc ordered that despite difficulties from COVID-19, Vietnam should not change its growth target, and all efforts must be made to reach it. According to an updated scenario by the MPI, if the outbreak ends in the second quarter of 2020, GDP will grow only 5.96 per cent this year. VIR Thanh Thu Fitch Solutions lowers Vietnams growth forecast Fitch Solutions has recently revised down Vietnams economic growth in 2020 to 6.3 per cent from 6.8 per cent previously due to the Covid-19 outbreak. WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Lata Mangeshkar admitted to ICU in Mumbai Hospital after testing positive for Covid Shifting prisoners could spread COVID- 19: Kamal Nath India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Bhopal, Apr 13: Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath has expressed concern over shifting of some NSA detainees from one district to another despite the lockdown, as some of them later tested positive for coronavirus. Nath expressed apprehension, this could spread the viral disease in other districts. COVID-19: 65 prisoners in J&K released After a couple of such prisoners were shifted to a Rewa-based medical college, people and local politicians protested there and some pharmacies closed their establishments, saying the threat of the viral infection had increased in the district. "It is surprising that while there is lockdown in the state, many districts are under curfew and their boundaries sealed in view of the coronavirus scare and people not being allowed to move from one district to other, in such a scenario those detained under NSA in Indore were sent to Satna and they were found coronavirus positive," Nath tweeted on Sunday. "This way corona infection will spread in other districts also," he further said in a tweet in Hindi. Some persons who indulged in stone-pelting and misbehaviour with health workers and police in Indore were recently booked under the National Security Act (NSA). After some of accused under the NSA were shifted out of Indore, two of them tested positive for coronavirus in Satna and one was found infected with the disease in Jabalpur, causing panic in the two districts. Satna Collector Ajay Katesaria on Sunday said two prisoners, arrested under NSA in Indore and shifted here, tested positive for coronavirus. What does your child think about the coronavirus lockdown: Send us their thoughts Otherwise, there was no COVID-19 case in Satna district so far, the collector said. The prisoners who tested positive for coronavirus have been shifted to the Rewa-based Medical College and those who came in contact with them have been quarantined, he said. As a precautionary measure they were kept in the isolation cells, he added. The Satna administration has requested the authorities concerned not to send prisoners there from Indore and Bhopal, which have been severely affected by coronavirus. Jabalpur Collector Bharat Yadav said an NSA detainee out of four prisoners shifted from Indore to Jabalpur Central Jail tested positive for coronavirus before his admission to a local jail. The prisoner has been shifted to a government-run hospital, he said. The other three NSA detainees have been lodged at an isolation ward in the Jabalpur Central Jail, he said. Meanwhile, some people in Rewa protested against the government's decision to shift NSA detainees who tested coronavirus positive to the Rewa Medical College. As a mark of protest, some medicine shop owners announced indefinite closure of their establishments. "There is an atmosphere of fear prevailing now. We used to open our medicine shops for people, but now the threat of virus has increased, so we will keep our outlets closed indefinitely," medical store owner Rahul Gupta said. Fake News Buster Rewa-based Congress leader and former state minister Pushpraj Singh said people have religiously followed guidelines during the lockdown, but this decision has totally changed the situation. "These coronavirus patients shifted from Indore to Satna should not have been brought to Rewa. People of Vindhya region will never pardon them. They should be shifted to Bhopal or Indore," he said. State Congress' working president Kavita Pandey, who is also based in Rewa, criticised the authorities for shifting such prisoners. "BJP leader and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has not done the right thing for people of Rewa. We will protest it strongly," she said and asked BJP MLAs and local MP to talk to Chouhan over the matter. Till now, there was not a single COVID-19 case in Satna and Rewa districts except for these NSA detainees, an official said. MIAMI A Florida police chief has been replaced after a police union said he berated his officers and told them that a sheriffs deputy had died from the coronavirus because he was a homosexual who attended homosexual events. Dale Engle, the police chief in Davie, Fla., a town of 106,000 residents west of Fort Lauderdale, was placed on administrative leave on April 11 pending further review of allegations brought forward by the Fraternal Order of Police, the town administrator, Richard J. Lemack, said in a statement. Mr. Lemack added that the allegations will be investigated in accordance with the Towns Equal Employment Opportunity compliance policy by outside counsel. On Thursday, Mr. Lemack appointed Patrick Lynn, the former police chief in Davie, as acting chief. Mr. Lynn served as the chief for almost 10 years before he retired in 2017. He has the institutional knowledge of the agency, the community, along with the requisite leadership skills to provide interim guidance and support, Mr. Lemack said. Police in Northern Ireland handed out over 100 fixed penalty notices over the Easter weekend as the good weather saw many flouting the government lockdown regulations. PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd told BBC's Good Morning Ulster that the majority of people were adhering to the regulations. He said: "By and large the vast majority of those people also took the advice and guidance when given that by officers. "However, as always you get people who neither understand or follow the restrictions or indeed listen to the advice and guidance. "We have issued 107 fines since Friday morning through into this morning. So over three days there has been 107 fines to people who shouldn't have been where they were and wouldn't listen to the advice and guidance of officers when it was brought to their attention. ACC Todd said members of the public were increasing the risk of household-to-household transmission of the virus by attending barbeques and house parties. He said: "We have been dealing with calls to house parties and barbecues. We have had reports of parents dropping their kids of at other kids houses so that they can play. Again, running the risk of household to household transmissions. "We don't relish issuing anybody with fines, it is always a last resort." Officers will be increasing their efforts in the coming week in order to prevent more breaches of the lockdown legislation. LISLE, Ill., April 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) puts a daily emphasis on serving real estate professionals. For the 11th straight year, MREDs Help Desk has delivered award-winning service and has the trophy case to prove it. The Support Center for Chicagolands multiple listing service (MLS) was named a top contact center based on objective, metrics-driven performance data including caller satisfaction, average hold time, and average talk time. MREDs Help Desk has earned this distinction annually since 2010, including being named the #1 small-sized center in North America in 2019. A global leader in the contact center industry, BenchmarkPortal has conducted annual statistical analyses of call center operations throughout the world since 1995 and maintains the worlds largest call center metrics database. MREDs Help Desk achievements in the 2020 rankings included: 98% of inbound calls being closed on the first call. This is 15% better than the industry average. Inbound calls being answered in an average of 36 seconds. This is 40 seconds faster than the industry average. 85% of customers are very or extremely satisfied. This is 11% better than the industry average. Average email response time of two hours. This is 12 hours faster than the industry average. Our team does an incredible job of quickly and kindly connecting real estate professionals to the answers and resources they need, said MRED Support Center Manager Katrina Bressler. Were thrilled to be named a top contact center because it means were meeting our goal of helping our subscribers succeed. MRED also recently launched a Knowledge Base with answers to common questions. Subscribers can use this 24/7 online tool to find answers to frequently asked questions, enter support tickets, and request new features. The MRED contact center is among the best of its size in the industry, said BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore. This award was granted on the basis of metrics-driven performance. MRED stood tall against its competitors according to the worlds largest database of contact center metrics. This is not easy to do, and we congratulate them on their accomplishment. Story continues MRED strives to be a helpful industry ally for brokerages and associations in our marketplace and we recognize that customer support is essential, said MRED President/CEO Rebecca Jensen. Our staff works hard to make the support process easy and were honored to once again receive this award for serving our real estate professionals well. About MRED Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) is one of the largest multiple listing services (MLSs) in the nation, servicing Chicagoland and spanning northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and northwest Indiana. MRED is dedicated to serving its more than 45,000 real estate professionals from over 7,300 offices. As a leading MLS, MRED takes pride in offering important game-changing products and services for its subscribers. MREDs Help Desk has been named one of the best support centers in North America in its class during each of the last 10 years, including a #1 ranking in 2019 from BenchmarkPortal. MRED is a member of the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO), MLS Grid, and supports the Broker Public Portal. For more information, please visit MREDLLC.com. About BenchmarkPortal BenchmarkPortals activities began in 1995, and it is now a global leader in the contact center industry, providing benchmarking, certification, training, consulting and research. The BenchmarkPortal team of professionals has gained international recognition for its innovative approach to best practices for contact centers. BenchmarkPortal hosts the worlds largest database of contact center metrics, which is constantly being refreshed with new data. BenchmarkPortals mission is to provide contact center managers with the tools and information that will help them optimize their efficiency and effectiveness in their customer communications. For more information, please call 1-800-214-8929 or visit www.BenchmarkPortal.com. Attachment Jeremy Sharp Midwest Real Estate Data LLC 630-799-1402 jeremy.sharp@mredllc.com In a new WBEZ-91.5 piece, Pritzker reflects on his 12-15-hour workdays, the difficulty of afternoon work meetings when he learns how many in the state have fallen ill or died and how he unwinds. Turns out the governor is like the rest of us: When Im just about to go to bed, I flip on something like Tiger King. Ive managed to actually watch all of the episodes of Tiger King or at least fall asleep during every one of them. So thats how I can take my mind off of it. Click here to read the full story. Egypt's health ministry announced on Monday 125 new coronavirus cases and five new deaths, which is the lowest daily death toll the country has recorded in nine days. This brings the total number of confirmed cases in Egypt to 2,190 and the deaths to 164. The health ministry added that 41 Egyptians have fully recovered and left isolation hospitals and quarantine facilities on Monday, which brings the total number of recoveries from the virus thus far to 488. The number of cases whose test results have turned from positive to negative, including the recoveries, has now reached 622, ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said. All the new cases are Egyptians. They were detected through the ministrys investigation and contact tracing protocols, Megahed added. Cases that have responded to treatment protocols and suffer no clinical symptoms -- but still test positive to the virus -- are being transferred from isolation hospitals to quarantine in hotels, youth hostels and other facilities where they are monitored until they test negative and fully recover, Egypts Health Minister Hala Zayed. The minister explained that 185 such cases have been placed in quarantine facilities, of whom 21 have fully recovered and left quarantine on Monday. Zayed held a meeting on Monday - via video conference - with the administrative and medical staff of four isolation hospitals to ensure that all their needs are met and that treatment and infection control standards are followed. She stated that a number of cases in two of those hospitals -- El-Sadaqa in Aswan and Esna in Luxor -- would be transferred to youth hostels on Monday after they had responded to the treatment. Egypt has allocated 94 hospitals across the country to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. They include 12 isolation hospitals and 82 fever and pulmonology hospitals, which will carry out triage and referral of coronavirus patients. Search Keywords: Short link: The San Antonio Independent School District has increased pay for its hourly on-site workers by about 20 percent while the coronavirus pandemic keeps schools closed. As much as possible, we are implementing remote-work plans, Superintendent Pedro Martinez said in an email to staff. But, for those hourly workers who still are needed for functions that cannot be done remotely, we wanted to offer them some level of premium pay. The district asked supervisors for the minimum number of employees they need on site for construction and meal distributions and came up with a total of about 450, Martinez told the districts board last week. That number includes about 200 cooks and 100 custodians, with police officers and bus drivers making up the rest. They will make an extra $3 for every hour they are required to work at an SAISD building. The school districts minimum wage is $15 per hour, and about three-quarters of the essential on-site personnel are at that level or slightly higher, Martinez said. The pay raise takes effect today. The San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel, the union representing non-administrative employees, had petitioned Martinez and the school board for time-and-a-half pay for hourly on-site employees starting March 16, the day school was scheduled to resume after spring break. The proposal was backed by dozens of SAISD employees and community members. They have been feeding our students, cleaning and maintaining our buildings, providing security and distributing devices to our students, a union statement said. They have put their own safety and that of their families at risk to serve our students. The union president, Shelley Potter, argued many other districts in San Antonio and around the state have been paying time and a half since March 16. We are sure that you believe our food service employees, custodial staff, plant maintenance and operations staff, police officers and others are at least as valuable as those same categories of employees in other districts, Potter said. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio-area school districts tackle employee pay issues amid coronavirus closures But Martinez said SAISDs minimum wage was already significantly higher than that of other districts. The Northside and North East districts, larger and wealthier, pay their lowest-earning workers base rates closer to $10 per hour. Money for SAISDs essential worker raises will come from the school districts operating budget, offset by reductions in utility, bus fuel and substitute teacher costs while schools remain closed, Martinez said. He cautioned against spending too much on pay hikes while plummeting sales tax and oil revenues paint a bleak picture of state funding for next school year. For every million dollars in lost revenue, SAISD would have to lay off at least 15 teachers, Martinez said. I want to make sure that we can look at ourselves and say that we spent every resource we could in the most prudent way to ensure that we protect jobs, he said. The school board voted unanimously last week to allow Martinez to determine a premium pay rate. Martinez suggested trustees adopt a policy that includes premium pay for essential workers in the event of future disasters. That could make SAISD eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding in the future, but not this year, he said. Alia Malik covers several school districts and the University of Texas at San Antonio. To read more from Alia, become a subscriber. amalik@express-news.net | Twitter: @AliaAtSAEN China continues to take multi-pronged measures to protect the health of Chinese studying abroad while curbing the potential import of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), an aviation official said Monday. In April, the country has arranged seven special flights to bring 1,278 Chinese citizens home from countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy and Spain, among whom 1,067 are students, Jin Junhao, an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) told a news conference. In March, nine special flights have flown back 1,466 Chinese nationals from Iran and Italy, including overseas students and health experts who were in the countries to help fight the disease, said Jin. To support Chinese students who remained abroad, the CAAC has sent them over 300,000 health kits, weighing 300 tonnes, as of April 7, and another 200,000 health kits will be delivered before Wednesday, Jin said. The CAAC has cut international passenger flights, but it still retains no more than 134 regular international passenger flights per week with 40 countries and 61 cities overseas, Jin said. President Paula-Mae Weekes may be Commandeer-in-Chief of the Defence Force but she does not have the power to instruct the army to go to Venezuela and rescue stranded Trinidad and Tobago nationals there. With the nation under lockdown to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, all shoots have come to a standstill. Actor Sonakshi Sinha was therefore shocked when filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri slammed her for shooting in these times, sharing a news report carrying a picture of her stepping out of a studio in Mumbai. Who shoots in such times? he tweeted. Sonakshi took to Twitter to clarify that the photograph was taken last year, when she shot for Farah Khans chat show, Backbenchers. She also told Vivek that being from the industry, he should know better than to level such allegations against her. Being a Director and member of many unions and film bodies one would expect you to be better informed that Absolutely NO one is shooting since studios are shut and its a national lockdown! I believe Classic freeze frame means throwback in @MumbaiMirror terms, clearly meaning its an old picture, from 5th Nov 2019 to be precise! Aaah... those were the days! she wrote. clearly meaning its an old picture, from 5th Nov 2019 to be precise! Aaah... those were the days! Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) April 13, 2020 Sonakshi also tagged the Mumbai Police and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackerays Twitter handles and asked how she could stop people from spreading baseless rumours. Excuse me @MumbaiPolice, @OfficeofUT what is the procedure to stop people from spreading rumors and fake news at a time like this? Asking for a responsible citizen, sitting at home, practicing social distancing and NOT shooting - ME, she wrote. Excuse me @MumbaiPolice , @OfficeofUT what is the procedure to stop people from spreading rumors and fake news at a time like this? Asking for a responsible citizen, sitting at home, practicing social distancing and NOT shooting - ME pic.twitter.com/piKLznKjoo Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) April 13, 2020 Vivek replied to Sonakshis tweet and said that he was not levelling allegations against her but condemning the tabloid for insensitive journalism. He wrote, The dig is at @MumbaiMirror not you. If I have to say something to you, Id tag you. Its very insensitive to print such pictures in a trying time like this giving wrong impression. As a star you should also very strongly condemn this kind of yellow and insensitive journalism. To this, Sonakshi replied, U havent tagged who ur taking a dig at,nor did u mention source of the picture.Nor hv u replied or clarified to anyone attacking me after ur statement.Rule no.1 of taking a dig - dont post someone elses picture 2 take a dig at someone else,be specific.Thank u & goodbye. She also signalled that she was done with the topic, as she tweeted, Chalo aaj ke liye kaafi entertainment ho gaya, heres wishing everyone a very happy Baisakhi (from home)! #stayhomestaysafe. U havent tagged who ur taking a dig at,nor did u mention source of the picture.Nor hv u replied or clarified to anyone attacking me after ur statement.Rule no.1 of taking a dig - dont post someone else's picture 2 take a dig at someone else,be specific.Thank u & goodbye https://t.co/x9yN1IrceZ Sonakshi Sinha (@sonakshisinha) April 13, 2020 Vivek, however, tweeted again, Procedure is simple dear @sonakshisinha ask your PR company to instruct @MumbaiMirror not to publish your photo in their main page. Simple. And @MumbaiPolice is busy saving lives, dont over burden them with inane requests. Simple. Procedure is simple dear @sonakshisinha ask your PR company to instruct @MumbaiMirror not to publish your photo in their main page. Simple. And @MumbaiPolice is busy saving lives, dont over burden them with inane requests. Simple. https://t.co/ZknBll8Qco pic.twitter.com/fnJMQecj2M Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) April 13, 2020 Also see: Farah Khans son Czar Kunder records rap song on coronavirus, gets a thumbs up from Abhishek Bachchan, Sania Mirza. Watch The dig is at @MumbaiMirror not you. If I have to say something to you, Id tag you. Its very insensitive to print such pictures in a trying time like this giving wrong impression. As a star you should also very strongly condemn this kind of yellow and insensitive journalism. Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) April 13, 2020 Recently, in an Ask Me Anything session on Instagram, Sonakshi hinted that she wants to take a vacation once the situation returns to normalcy. This video is a throwback and also what I would like to do once all this is over, she wrote, sharing a clip of her jumping into the water. Sonakshi will be seen next in Abhishek Dudhaiyas Bhuj: The Pride Of India, alongside Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt and Nora Fatehi. The film, inspired by real events, is slated for an Independence Day weekend release. Follow @htshowbiz for more (Bloomberg) -- Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed into law changes to the states voting practices, including making Election Day a holiday, ending voter ID law and increasing access to early voting. Virginians can now vote up to 45 days ahead of an election without needing a reason to request an absentee ballot. Those eligible to vote will be automatically registered through the Department of Motor Vehicles when renewing or updating their license, polling hours are extended until 8 p.m. and voters will no longer need to show photo ID. Voting is a fundamental right, and these new laws strengthen our democracy by making it easier to cast a ballot, not harder, Northam said in a statement Sunday. No matter who you are or where you live in Virginia, your voice deserves to be heard. Im proud to sign these bills into law. The bills were introduced and passed in the Virginia Legislature before states began postponing elections and encouraging absentee voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. Elections in Wisconsin last week were mired in controversy after voters braving a stay at home order endured long lines and problems with absentee ballots. Sponsors of the Virginia bills argued that existing provisions such as the requiring photo ID at the polls disenfranchised voters and the proposals now enacted into law would make it easier for Americans to vote. Election Day is a holiday in several states including Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky and New York. Trump Campaign Sues Wisconsin TV Station for Ad (12:20 p.m.) Donald Trumps re-election campaign sued a Wisconsin television station for running an ad that features the president calling coronavirus a hoax that his allies say is misleading. The lawsuit comes after the campaign sent cease and desist letters on March 25 to television stations, including Wisconsins WJFW-NBC, over the ad by a top Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA. The spot shows the curve of U.S. cases growing from Jan. 20 to March 22 while featuring audio of Trump playing down the pandemic. The coronavirus, Trump says at the beginning, before a second clip plays, this is their new hoax. The Trump campaign says the president was describing Democrats efforts to politicize the coronavirus, not calling the virus itself a hoax. Fact-checkers at the Washington Post called a similar ad from Joe Bidens campaign misleading, noting that the full comments from Trump at a campaign rally compared politicizing the coronavirus to the investigation into Russian interference and his impeachment. In spite of the letter and documentation, WJFW-NBC continued to run the defamatory ad, Trumps campaign said in a statement Monday. Coronavirus will be the primary topic of debate in the 2020 presidential election cycle. Democrats and Biden have sought to criticize Trumps handling of the pandemic. Trump has pointed to his signing of a $2.2 trillion stimulus package to shore up the battered economy and looked to paint Biden as weak on China, where scientists trace the origin of the virus. Steve Shanks, general manager of WJFW-NBC, didnt immediately return a voicemail left for comment. -- Mario Parker Democrats Say GOP Tried to Steal Wisconsin Seat (11:38 a.m.) Democrats charged that Wisconsin Republicans tried to steal a state Supreme Court seat by holding an in-person election last week amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a video conference call Monday, the chairs of the Wisconsin and national Democratic parties argued that state GOP leaders, the Republican National Committee and conservative state and U.S. Supreme Court justices disenfranchised voters by undercutting mail-in voting and forcing voters to go to the polls despite Governor Tony Everss stay-at-home order. It was voter suppression on steroids, said DNC Chair Tom Perez. Still, Perez argued that Wisconsin was an outlier, highlighting efforts by Republican governors in states like Georgia and Ohio to support mail-in voting in light of the coronavirus pandemic. So far, Wisconsin is the only state to hold an in-person election in April. Wisconsin has 3,341 coronavirus cases and 144 fatalities. Results of the Wisconsin election are expected later Monday, but Democrats said they are keeping their legal options open, noting that thousands of voters who requested absentee ballots before the states deadline did not receive them in time to vote. Its impossible to submit an absentee ballot by Election Day when you havent even received the damn ballot by Election Day, Perez said. The Wisconsin GOP didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. -- Ryan Teague Beckwith Trump Campaign Raises $212 Million in Quarter (10:45 a.m.) President Donald Trumps campaign raised more money in the first quarter of 2020 than in the previous quarter, but the coronavirus pandemic may be starting to slow fundraising efforts. Trumps campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and its authorized fundraising arms, took in $212 million in the first three months of the year, it said Monday. Thats about $56 million more than it raised during the final quarter of 2019. But fundraising slowed toward the end of the quarter, with a $63 million take for March that was 27% smaller than Februarys haul. The Trump campaign still has deep coffers, however. It has raised about $677 million so far and has $240 million in cash on hand. Americans can see President Trump leading this nation through a serious crisis and they are responding with their continued enthusiastic support for his re-election, Brad Parscale, Trumps campaign manager, said in the statement Monday. The Democratic National Committee hasnt released its quarterly numbers yet, but Republican fundraising has consistently dwarfed it. The DNC ended February with $14.1 million in cash on hand. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said hes raised $33 million in the first half of March, but he has yet to release a number for the full month. Coronavirus has ravaged the global economy and affected the 2020 presidential election. Social distancing guidelines to slow the spread of the virus have prevented traditional fundraising efforts and in-person campaigning. Trumps campaign is holding a series of online events to replace his signature rallies, while Biden is hosting virtual events from his Delaware home. -- Mario Parker 2020 Bloomberg L.P. Six people have been fined for breaking lockdown rules after trying to take part in a protest organised by a far-right group in Rome, according to reports. Forza Nuova, a neo-fascist Italian party, had decided to march in the capital on Easter Sunday against restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus, local media said. Police reportedly stopped half a dozen people heading towards a cathedral in the city as part of the planned protest. They were all fined for violating measures taken to contain Covid-19 in the country, according to Italian news agency ANSA. All public events have been banned in Italy and people have been ordered to stay at home unless it is essential for example, to go to work or buy groceries while the nation battles the pandemic. Forza Nuova had announced the march on Sunday to protest the lockdown measures, according to Italian media. The far-right party said they wanted to demonstrate against the mass arrests, against quarantine, against the bans, according to Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. We are mobilising for freedom, for the return to work, for celebrating Mass again, for living again. There will be Easter in Rome on Sunday, the neo-fascist group tweeted last week. The leader of the groups Rome branch, Giuliano Castellino, was reportedly among one of those fined. Authorities had announced beefed-up patrols over the long Easter weekend, when Italians generally head to summer homes or to lunches with friends and family. More than 26,000 people were sanctioned by police for ignoring the restrictions aimed at tackling Covid-19 on Saturday and Sunday, according to interior ministry figures. The measures allow people to move around for work, health reasons or anything else deemed essential, such as grocery shopping or walking the dog. Anyone outside must carry a certificate explaining their movements, and fines can range up to 3,000 (2,600) More than 156,000 people have been infected with Covid-19 in Italy as of Monday, while around 19,800 patients have died to date, according to official figures. Forza Nuova have been approached for comment. Additional reporting by Associated Press Maj. Dennis Kirkland, Guam National Guard state chaplain, greets Soldiers preparing to process through medical and customs checks at the GUNG readiness center after arriving on island April 5. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by JoAnna Delfin) Sailors From Virus-Hit USS Theodore Roosevelt Quarantining in Guam Hotels HONOLULUGuam has seen hundreds of sailors from a COVID-19-stricken Navy aircraft carrier flood the islands hotels for quarantine. An outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt began in late March and has thrust the Navy into a leadership crisis after the ships commander distributed a letter urging faster action to protect his sailors that caused panic among sailors families. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly relieved Capt. Brett E. Crozier of his duties, and then himself resigned over the issue after public blowback over his message to the ships crew that was also leaked to the media. This morning I accepted Secretary Modlys resignation. With the approval of the President, I am appointing current Army Undersecretary Jim McPherson as acting Secretary of the Navy. pic.twitter.com/FvfgOwuXw4 @EsperDoD (@EsperDoD) April 7, 2020 Read More Navy Secretary Modly Resigns After Carrier Remarks; Esper Names Replacement The carrier has been docked in the U.S. territory for more than a week as the 4,865-person crew is tested for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, and moved ashore. More than 580 sailors have been confirmed infected. One was hospitalized Thursday in intensive care, said Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. More than 1,700 sailors who have tested negative are isolating in hotels, while the sick remain on base, Navy officials said, adding that strict safety measures have been enforced to prevent sailor contact with the local population. Mary Rhodes, president of the Guam Hotel and Restaurant Association, declined to identify the hotels being used by the Navy, but said as many as 10 have been set aside to house up to 4,000 sailors. Seven of them had already stopped taking reservations and seen a dramatic drop in visitors as airlines canceled flights, she said. The sailors quarantine is actually benefiting some smaller hotels, Rhodes added. The Navy has taken over hotels with more than 300 rooms, and other guests have been moved to smaller properties that are struggling amid cancellations. Rhodes said necessary measures are in place to safeguard the public. The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) transits Apra Harbor as the ship prepares to moor in Guam on Feb. 7, 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Terence Deleon Guerrero) Guams hotels frequently host military members, and the Department of Defense controls about a third of the island, which is 3,800 miles west of Honolulu and a crucial, strategic hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific. Each sailor is staying in a room stocked with two weeks worth of linens, towels and water, Rhodes said. There is no contact with hotel workers, and only military police and medical teams can visit. The Navy has sent masks, gloves, and other safety equipment to the hotels, where employees make food that military personnel deliver, Rhodes said. Not including the sailors, Guam has 133 confirmed CCP virus cases and five deaths as of Saturday. Officials are focused on stopping the spread of the virus, Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero said as she announced that sailors could stay in hotels. I know there will be a small chorus of cynics who will oppose this decision, but now is not the time for us versus them, she told reporters April 1. We can protect Guam while being humane to them. The Rev. Fran Hezel, parish priest at Santa Barbara Catholic Church in Dededo, Guams most populated village, said people likely arent that upset about the move. People mostly are sympathetic because many in Guam are in the Navy or have relatives who are. Ive come to the conclusion that Guam has got as deep links with the military as it does with the Catholic faith, he said. For most, the CCP virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with other health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. By Jennifer Sinco Kelleher. Epoch Times staff contributed to this report. TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu on Monday condemned the removal of N. Ramesh Kumar from the State Election Commissioner's (SEC) post despite the fact that he saved the people of Andhra Pradesh from coronavirus epidemic threat by the timely postponement of the local body elections. "Ramesh Kumar was undemocratically and unceremoniously eased out of the SEC position which was reprehensible and against the letter and spirit of the Constitution," Naidu said during a video-conference with his party leaders. Naidu accused the YSR Congress Party-led government of turning the COVID-19 quarantine into a farce as several leaders of the ruling party leaders are continuously breaking lockdown. "While no isolation procedures were followed for SEC Kanagaraj who came from Chennai and for contractors who arrived from Hyderabad, common people and migrant labourers were put to untold hardships on inter-state borders," said Naidu. Naidu also said, "The government removed the SEC over elections postponement, suspended a doctor for requesting masks, suspended a municipal commissioner for exposing lack of funds and did not give the required number of personal protection equipment (PPE) to the frontline warriors in virus fight." "The government's failure was behind the capital city area, Guntur and Krishna districts being classified as virus red zones. Vijayawada is a clear example of how suppression of a COVID-19 death leads to a faster spread of the dreaded virus," he added. Meanwhile, the TDP chief also accused Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy of "deliberately giving misleading information to PM Modi by taking Mandal as criterion instead of districts for assessing COVID-19 impact." He also demanded dismissal of Deputy Chief Minister K Narayana Swamy for his objectionable comments "Coronavirus was spreading as Muslims licked scraps of foods on used plates and spoons." On the eve of Dr BR Ambedkar Jayanti, Naidu appealed to people to celebrate the occasion in their respective homes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2020) Militants of the Nusra Front terrorist group (banned in Russia) has attacked a settlement in the Syrian province of Latakia, Oleg Zhuravlev, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry's center for the Syrian reconciliation, said during a briefing on Sunday, adding that it was the only ceasefire violation in the country over the past 24 hours. "Over the past 24 hours, no instances of fire from the side of the illegal armed groups controlled by Turkey have been registered. ... One shelling of Kuljok Penar settlement in Latakia province was recorded from the position of the Nusra Front terrorist organization," Zhuravlev said. Zhuravlev added that a special communication channel for operational interaction between the Russian center for the reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria and the Turkish side continued to function. A husband worried for his wife slipping into depression with no medicines and endless lockdown days in a foreign country, a sailor stranded on his way to join a ship, a business trip stalled as their families wait back home, more than 80 Indians are stuck in Sri Lanka. Their anxiety escalating as their finances dry up, many of the Indians have been stuck in the island country for a month waiting for the coronavirus pandemic to abate. Most of them are scattered across hotels, guesthouses and homes of friends, their stories very different but their desperation to return home the same. Ripusudan Prasad, who was in the merchant navy, said he is watching his wife slip into depression. Her anti-depressants are over and he just doesn't know what to do. "In December last year, the ship I was sailing in was hijacked and we were in captivity for five weeks. At this time, my wife had a breakdown and slipped into depression. Following the advice of doctors, my wife, my two children and I arrived in Colombo on March 7. We were supposed to travel to Dubai on March 23 and finally back to Kolkata on April 1," the 37-year-old from Kolkata told PTI over the phone from Colombo. There are about 80 people in the same situation as him and his family, he said. He is worried his wife might not be able to survive the lockdown curfew was imposed in Colombo on March 20. And with no information on any relaxation for international flights that can take them back home, this looks endless. The family is stuck in a hotel with little food and money steadily running out. "What do I do? We have reached out to the embassy here but even they have expressed helplessness," said Prasad. Abhinav Chaudhry, also a merchant navy sailor from Kolkata, reached Colombo on March 4 on his way to his new assignment on board a ship berthed in Egypt. The 35-year-old admitted that the isolation is getting to him. "There was hardly anything to eat from March 20 to April 3. It was only after the embassy helped me out with food that I have managed. I was supposed to fly to Egypt on March 20 to join my ship, he said. There is loneliness, financial strain and depression, he said. My body and mind are not able to sustain the isolation any more. With that the lockdown will be extended we are really in dire straits," said Chakravarty who is staying in a hotel but mostly confined to his room like the others. Back home in Kolkata, the sailor said, his wife, a six-year-old child and elderly parents are waiting for his return. Thousands of people across the world have been stranded in foreign countries due to the global lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus that has infected more than 1.8 million people and claimed at least 114,000 lives. The Indian Embassy in Colombo has tried to help, the men said. However, despite their best efforts to provide some relief, they, too, are hamstrung due to the lockdown and travel restrictions in India. The men, along with their families have tweeted to the PMO, the MEA with videos and pictures of themselves holding placards and posters with appeals of help written on them. "I am getting completely financially exhausted. I have a one-year-old and a four-year -old back in Bangalore and elderly parents. I came here on March 11 to join a vessel, said 36-year-old Saurabh Kumar. The delay in its arrival extended my stay and then the lockdown was declared. It has been almost a month and I am exhausted because I don't have enough food and I am going through so much stress ," Kumar told PTI. Sanjay Mishra, 47, who went to Sri Lanka for business related work on March 5 has a similar story. He is worried for his family in Bangalore. His 75-year-old mother-in-law and wife are both severely diabetic, he said. Of his two daughters, the older one, who is 21 years old, is stuck in Malaysia. "I was supposed to go back on March 29 and that time the Indian government had not issued any advisory to not visit any other country. I want to go back as soon as possible and I appeal to the authorities to please help me.," he told PTI. Plans for a fortnight-long holiday soured for 44-year-old Hari Thivaakar, a farmer from Tamil Nadu, who went to Colombo on March 10 and was supposed to be back in India on March 25. "My money is fast depleting and I want to tell the government that we are also Indians and we are also suffering," he said. With the lockdown in India likely to continue and many state governments requesting the Centre for an extension the situation is unlikely to change immediately. The men, perhaps, know that. "Our chances of survival depends on what the government does next. We are not giving up, we hope the government does not give up on us," said Chakravarty. The Ministry of External Affairs has instructed its missions abroad to extend all possible help to stranded Indians. In an advisory earlier, it also urged the stranded Indians to get in touch with the Indian missions in their respective countries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Council Bluffs woman has died after contracting COVID-19. Matt Wyant with Pottawattamie County Public Health said a woman between the ages of 61 and 80 died on Sunday at an area hospital. The woman was the county's sixth reported case of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, in the county. The woman had pre-existing medical conditions and had been hospitalized in an intensive care unit since April 7. Wyant did not release which hospital the woman was at. "We are sad to report the first COVID-19 death in Pottawattamie County. It's sad, an unfortunate to happen over the holiday weekend, Wyant said. The family of this individual is in our thoughts and prayers. The woman did not have contact with a known COVID-19 case nor was her case related to travel, meaning she contracted the disease through community spread. She tested positive on March 30. The county also reported the 13th positive case in the county, a Council Bluffs woman 61 and 80 years old. She was tested on April 9 and is currently self-isolating. The woman has pre-existing medical conditions, has not traveled and did not have contact with an existing case, officials said. Pottawattamie County Public Health said it is conducting a contact tracing investigation and is in contact with the Iowa Department of Public Health and will alert the public of any exposure sites. Of the county's 13 cases, eight residents have recovered and four are self-isolating at home. In southwest Iowa, Cass County has its first confirmed case of COVID-19 and Mills County reported its second. Both the Cass County and Mills County cases are adult between 41 and 60 years old, according to the state. The Mills County patient is a woman who is self-isolating, according to Mills County Public Health. The department is conducting a contact tracing investigation for the case. Cass County Public Health declined to release the gender of the patient or if the person is hospitalized or self-isolating at home. There were at least 114 new cases in the state Monday, including 113 reported by the Iowa Department of Public Health, which announced numbers before Pottawattamie County's announcement. There are at least 1,711 positive cases of COVID-19 in the state, including Monday's state numbers and the new Pottawattamie County case. During a livestreamed press conference before the Pottawattamie County announcement, Gov. Kim Reynolds said there were an additional two deaths connected to COVID-19. The state total is at least 44. The disease has spread to 81 counties in the state, Reynolds said. The state reported 981 additional negative tests, for a total of 16,986 in the state. Labs have notified the state of 18,696 total tests. In Iowa Regional Medical Coordination Center region four, which includes Pottawattamie, Mills, Harrison, Cass, Crawford, Shelby, Fremont, Montgomery, Page, Adams, Audubon and Taylor Counties, the severity of COVID-19 remains at six on the states 12-point measurement tool. Reynolds has said a 10 in any region calling for the possible implementation of a shelter-in-place order. Elsewhere around southwest Iowa, Harrison County has 12 cases, Shelby, Crawford and Monona Counties have six, Pages County has three, Mills County has two and Monona County has one. Crawford County has reported one death connected to COVID-19. President Donald Trump said on Monday it was his decision when to reopen the US economy, not that of state governors, but legal experts disagree and governors are going their own way. Trump last month extended federal "stay at home" guidelines through April and has made clear he wanted the economy to reopen as soon as possible after the coronavirus outbreak that has killed nearly 22,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs. However, he also has said he would listen to US health experts and others in making any recommendations. "It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!" Trump wrote on Twitter. The Republican president accused news media of incorrectly saying it was the governors' decision. COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show However, legal analysts say a US president has quite limited power to order citizens back to their places of employment, or cities to reopen government buildings, transportation, or local businesses. While federal health officials have issued anti-coronavirus guidelines including social distancing and wearing face coverings, Washington has not issued nationwide recommendations on school closings or shuttering public services and businesses, leaving individual states to make those determinations. A number of states have extended their stay-at-home and social distancing orders beyond May 1, with Virginia's governor targeting June 10. "All these executive orders are state executive orders and so, therefore, it would be up to the state and the governor to undo a lot of that, said Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state has been hardest hit by the new coronavirus, said Monday he would coordinate his response with governors of neighboring states. "So, we'll listen to the experts, we'll follow the data but remember this is a delicate balance," he told reporters. Each governor needs to make the best decision for their state and help people tap federal government benefits, including unemployment insurance, Sununu said in an interview with CNN. "It's a pandemic. It has no playbook," Sununu said. But there is the US Constitution. Under the 10th Amendment, state governments have power to police citizens and regulate public welfare. "This is Federalism 101," said Robert Chesney, a professor of national security law at the University of Texas. "The president can advocate to his heart;s content, but he can't actually commandeer the state governments to make them change their policies. He has no such inherent authority, nor is there any federal statute that purports to give him such authority." BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 Trend: The rental prices for apartments and trade facilities decreased in Azerbaijans capital Baku in March 2020, Director General of Azerbaijans MBA Group consulting company, expert in real estate Nusrat Ibrahimov told Trend. The expert stressed that the activity in the real estate market has practically stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic. The prices in the rental housing market decreased by 6.2 percent in March, Ibrahimov added. "Futhermore, the prices decreased by 3.66 percent in the rental market of trade facilities." The expert stressed that in general, the real estate market volume decreased by 2.6 percent over the past month. In February 2020, the cost of housing in Bakus secondary market increased by 2.16 percent compared to January 2020, the Azerbaijani MBA Group consulting company said. As for the value of land, a slight increase was observed. A decrease in prices was observed for country houses. In the rental sector, an increase of 1.2 percent was observed in February 2020 compared to January 2020, and on an annualized basis - up to 2.1 percent. Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) Monday opted for the lifting of oil subsidy to be substituted with financial compensations, an official source said here The convener of RevolutionNow and Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore has described President Muhammadu Buharis administration as the virus destroying Nigeria. Speaking in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic which is spreading across States in the country, the activist pointed out that Nigeria also has to deal with a leadership pandemic that does not easily go away. He said: I do not want to glorify the response of the government in power, and the so called opposition, the PDP because these political parties are themselves viruses that are destroying the health of our country both physically, economically, politically, socially and culturally, he said. It is the pandemic that I am talking about. So, lets discuss the revolutionary process that can take these guys out. At the end of the day, the person holding the broom also has an umbrella that hes keeping in the house, so when the broom is not working, he goes for the umbrella. So, we are dealing with the same set of people, no difference. Read Also: Buhari Has Not Done One-Quarter Of What I Have Done For Nigerians: Samklef I dont glorify their responses with any modicum of interest or attention. I dont pay attention to what PDP is saying or what APC is saying. The guys are just jokers. As soon as their loved ones are killed or they become injured, again it comes back to the security. We have soldiers who are either timid, the ones that are not timid are not motivated enough to fight. And that is why small countries, like Chad; Chad for that matter is able to deal decisively with Boko Haram whereas Nigerian soldiers are clapping for them while they were entering Nigerian territory. I will say most importantly that it borders on leadership. After every pandemic is over, there is a pandemic that doesnt go away and that is of leadership. Having bad leaders is the worst pandemic that could happen to any country. It is the worst epidemic that can happen to human beings. Terrible leadership, incompetent leadership, wicked leadership and that is afflicting Nigeria. So, after COVID-19 is gone, we still have a pandemic that is not going to go away. It doesnt have any season, it doesnt have any time, it doesnt have a deadline, it doesnt have a flattening curve. Its around with us and until we get rid of that pandemic leadership forget about progress. Bamboo Airways will resume domestic flights from April 16 when the Prime Ministers social distance order is scheduled to be lifted. The airline will increase the frequency of daily roundtrip flights between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to seven. The airline will increase the frequency of daily roundtrip flights between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to seven. Afterwards, it plans to resume the operation of routes connecting the two major cities with most airports nationwide from April 20 such as Hanoi-Cam Ranh/Da Nang/Phu Quoc/Quy Nhon and HCM City-Da Nang/Hai Phong/Thanh Hoa/Quy Nhon/Vinh. The airline said it will take numerous measures to ensure health safety for passengers and crew members. Bamboo Airways is stepping up transportation of cargo to multiple domestic and international locations via regular and charter flights. According to the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, Bamboo Airways is still leading in on-time performance with the rate of 95.4 percent, followed by Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO) 93.5 percent, Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air 91.4 percent and 83.3 percent respectively./.VNA Government asked to allow Bamboo Airways fleet expansion The Ministry of Transport (MoT) has proposed the Government allow Bamboo Airways to increase its fleet instead of restricting the firms aircraft number to 30 like at present. Wyoming announced its first death caused by the coronavirus on Monday. A man from Johnson County became the first person in Wyoming to die from the coronavirus. County health officials told The Casper Star Tribune that the man was older and had comorbidities complicating his ability to fight the virus. There were 11 confirmed coronavirus cases in Johnson County, which only has a population of 8,400. Ten of those cases have recovered. The CEO of Johnson County Healthcare Center, Sean McCallister, issued a statement following the death. "First and foremost, JCHC wants to express our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the patient," he said.". While we have yet to experience the magnitude of outbreak in Johnson County as some larger cities across the US, a related death is very sobering." Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, who grew up in Johnson County, said he was "saddened to learn that we have our first" Covid-19 death. "This one was close to home and sadly serves as a grim reminder of the importance of following public health orders and guidance so we can reduce the number of serious illnesses and deaths in our state," he said. Wyoming has the fewest number of coronavirus cases, but also has the smallest population of any US state. Welcome to the Trump Bench, a series where Slate analyzes a Trump judges recent work. At an unusually rapid clip, Donald Trump has so far successfully appointed two Supreme Court justices, 51 appeals court judges, and 138 district court judges during his presidency. Trump judges tend to be different than appointees by past presidents of both parties. Many are quite young, some are openly partisan, others are patently unqualified. The judges will likely be Trumps most enduring impact on our nation, which is why we are choosing to spotlight their work. Advertisement The fifth installment is about Justin Walker, who has been nominated to the D.C. Circuit after just a few months as a federal district judge. The Judge: Justin R. Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. The Senate confirmed Walker to the court on Oct. 25, 2019, despite the American Bar Associations determination that he was Not Qualified. On April 3, Donald Trump nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Like many of Trumps judicial nominees, Walker is a member of the Federalist Society. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Age: 37 The Decision: On Saturday, Walker issued the only notable decision of his brief career, blocking a Louisville, Kentucky, social distancing order that, he claimed, banned drive-in church services on Easter. There were two problems with his ruling. First, it was filled with inappropriate, inflammatory, and highly partisan rhetoric. Second, the entire opinion rested on a factual error, because Louisville had not actually banned drive-in church services. Advertisement Advertisement The trouble started on Thursday, when, at his daily COVID-19 briefing, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said he would not permit churches to gather either in person or in any kind of drive-through capacity. Fischer feared these services would lead to coronavirus outbreaks, since religious congregations have contributed heavily to the spread of the virus. This statement alarmed On Fire Christian Center, a Louisville church that planned to hold a drive-in Easter service. Had Fischer attempted to shut down drive-in services, he probably wouldve violated Kentuckys Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires less restrictive limits on the exercise of religion. But the mayor intended no such thing. Rather, Fischers spokesman clarified that police would merely be discouraging organizers from proceeding, noting: This is not a law enforcement matter, its a community matter. And on Friday, Fischer reiterated this point, stating that the police would merely be handing out information detailing the health risks involved to worshippers who congregate, and taking down license plate numbers to expedite contact tracing if any worshippers get infected. Advertisement Advertisement Nonetheless, on Friday, On Fire filed a lawsuit in Walkers court, demanding an injunction that would protect their ability to hold drive-in services on Easter. Walker granted that request on Saturdaywithout even hearing Fischers responsein a decision that began with this scathing rebuke: On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisvilles Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Sunday services, even if they remained in their cars to worship and even though its Easter. The Mayors decision is stunning. And it is, beyond all reason, unconstitutional. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Walker then embarked upon a brief history of religious liberty, beginning with the Bible. According to St. Paul, the first pilgrim was Abel, he wrote, who sought Gods promised kingdom. He then moved onto the Pilgrims, heirs to a long line of persecuted Christians, including some punished with prison or worse for the crime of celebrating Easter. And he complained that just over three decades ago, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, an ex-Klansman, was the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. Advertisement Advertisement Following these gratuitous passages, Walker found that the mayors ostensible order violated both the free exercise clause of the First Amendment and Kentuckys Religious Freedom Restoration Act. (Under the doctrine of constitutional avoidance, Walker should not have addressed the First Amendment question after finding that Kentucky law resolved the case.) He concluded: Advertisement The Christians of On Fire, however, owe no one an explanation for why they will gather together this Easter Sunday to celebrate what they believe to be a miracle and a mystery. True, they can attempt to explain it. True, they can try to teach. But to the nonbeliever, the Passion of Jesusthe betrayals, the torture, the state-sponsored murder of Gods only Son, and the empty tomb on the third daymakes no sense at all. And even to the believer, or at least to some of them, it can be incomprehensible as well. But for the men and women of On Fire, Christs sacrifice isnt about the logic of this world. Nor is their Easter Sunday celebration. The reason they will be there for each other and their Lord is the reason they believe He was and is there for us. For them, for all believers, it isnt a matter of reason; finally, its a matter of love. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement There are several puzzling aspects of this peroration. First, it is unusual for a judge to fill his opinion with overtly sectarian language; Walkers ruling is more of a sermon than a legal opinion. Second, the decision comes very close to endorsing Christianity, with its paeans to the Passion and approving citations to Christian theology. Third, Walker makes a strange distinction between believers and nonbelievers, implying that the latter group simply cannot understand the importance of religious libertya jab not just at atheists but at every non-Christian. But the bigger problem with Walkers decision is that it never shouldve been issued. He granted the restraining order ex parte, meaning he did not give Fischer an opportunity to respond to On Fires charges. After he issued his order, Fischer stated: I regret that the judge did not allow us to present evidence that would have demonstrated there has been no legal enforcement mechanism communicated. We attempted twice to contact the court. As South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman pointed out, Walker couldve at least held a 15 minute telephonic status conference to learn the real facts. Or he couldve given the mayors office an opportunity to file a brief. But instead of hearing from both sides to gain a full understanding of the situation, Walker wrote a 22-page decision with 86 footnotes to address an alleged constitutional violation that did not actually exist. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The Precedent: It seems unlikely that Walkers decision will serve as much of a precedent for other courts given that even legal scholars sympathetic to his position, like Blackman, condemned it as performative overreach. The real precedent here is stylistic. Trump appointees have been falling over themselves to write jeremiads that will keep them in good favor with Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Leonard Leo, former head of the Federalist Society, who advises the president on judicial nominees. It worked for Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote an anti-abortion polemic while serving on the D.C. Circuit that may have clinched his nomination to the Supreme Court. Other Trump judges have also auditioned for a promotion by writing provocative conservative opinions. The president has already nominated Walker to the D.C. Circuitafter he spent less than six months on the bench. He may be trying to clinch confirmation by securing the votes of Senate Republicans, particularly those already partial to a theocracy. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The Record: Aside from Saturdays decision, Walker has issued no notable rulings in his few months on the bench. His primary qualification for his position appears to be that he made 162 media appearances to praise and defend Kavanaugh between June and October 2018. The Vote: The Senate confirmed Walker to the district court by a vote of 5041, with every Republican present voting in favor and every Democrat present voting in opposition. Expect his confirmation vote to the D.C. Circuit to follow a similar pattern. This time around, though, senators will have an opportunity to question him about his work on the bench, including his decision to issue an ex parte order against a government action that did not exist. For more about the law and the judges who interpret it, listen to Amicus. Over two lakh Hindu priests in West Bengal have become jobless as various social functions, rituals and religious festivities have either been cancelled or postponed to prevent public gatherings in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, a pandits' organisation spokesperson said on Monday. They are in distress with no earnings as rituals usually organised at home have been cancelled while weddings and other social programmes postponed, he said, adding that several devotees are not visiting temples during the ongoing lockdown. "If there are no pujas and other religious functions in the next few months to prevent gatherings, how the priests will survive," the spokesman of the Paschim Bango Sanatan Brahman Trust, an organisation of Hindu priests in the state, said. The coronavirus-triggered lockdown has left over two lakh priests across districts jobless, the spokesman said. The organisation has planned to write a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to seek help from the government, he said. Many priests don't have any other steady income and their families solely depend on their earnings from rituals like pujas, and weddings, he said. Anindyo Mitra, father of a software engineer Prithviraj Mitra, said his son's wedding reception was scheduled to be held in mid May, which has been cancelled for the time being. "Our family priest requested us to go ahead with the scheduled ceremony on a smaller scale. But we have cancelled it for the time being. We are hopeful about organising the reception by November this year. "Our family priest has lost many other contracts in this season," Mitra said. Sharing his experience during the lockdown, Prashanta Chakraborty, a priest in Agarpara area of North 24 Parganas, said three household 'Annapurna' pujas in Sodepur and Belgharia localities, had been cancelled at the last moment in March end, and that was the beginning. Many shopkeepers, traders and businessmen, who usually observe the "haal khata" ceremony -- opening of new books of accounts on the occasion of 'Bangla Nabobarsho', new Bengali year,-- are also cancelling their programmes to avoid gatherings, he said. This year, 'Bangla Nabobarsho', is scheduled on Tuesday. "I used to earn around Rs 4,000 in total on 'Poila Boisakh' (the first day of the first month of a Bengali year). I would have earned around Rs 2,000-2,200 from 'Annapurna' pujas... Hopefully, things will not be that bad during Durga Puja and Kali Puja to be held later this year. "If the situation during that time remains as it is today, we will die," Chakraborty, who has a 10-year-old daughter and wife, said. Upen Mukherjee, an elderly priest in Tollygunje area of the city, said he joined the profession seven years ago after his retirement. The last function that he had managed was a 'griho probesh' (puja to mark entering a new house) on February 24, Mukherjee said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It's been more than a few months since the coronavirus outbreak started in China, and people are still scared to step out of their homes. The situation seems to be getting a little better by each passing day, but there's a lot to recover from. As we collectively do our best to fight the deadly COVID-19 virus, tons of donations have started pouring in from wealthy individuals across the globe. In India, a lot of celebrities have come forward to donate and help our nation fight through this pandemic. Now, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also come forward to extend a helping hand. Reuters The Google chief has donated Rs 5 Crore to 'Give India', thereby matching Google's earlier donation to the non-profit organization to help fight the pandemic. 'Give India', for those of you who don't know, is one of the non-profit organisations that are working hard to gather all the help we need. We believe that Sundar Pichai's generous donation will definitely help them do their best and support those who are in need. Sundar Pichai's contribution will go towards the daily wage workers who are believed to be the ones that are most affected during this pandemic in India. Give India confirmed the same in a tweet. Thank you @sundarpichai for matching @Googleorg 's 5 crore grant to provide desperately needed cash assistance for vulnerable daily wage worker families. Please join our #COVID19 campaign: https://t.co/T9bDf1MXiv @atulsatija GiveIndia (@GiveIndia) April 13, 2020 It's worth pointing out that Sundar Pichai's donation is an addition to the existing amount donated by Google India. On top of that, Google had announced an over $800 million commitment towards efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. So we're essentially seeing a lot of help from Google, which is great. In addition to Google, a lot of other tech companies have also stepped forward to help the world. Apple is also doing its part, and so are other companies like Tata, Paytm and more. Despite the commands for social distancing, people are flowing to the Schuylkill River Trail. Read more As crowds flock to Philadelphias riverfront parks and nature trails, turning them into dangerous breeding grounds for germs, the Kenney administration is coming under growing pressure to close selected streets to motor vehicles and turn them over to pedestrians and cyclists for the remainder of the coronavirus crisis. Over the last few days, seven civic groups have sent letters to Mayor Jim Kenney asking him to establish temporary car-free zones to relieve the congestion at popular parks like the Schuylkill River Trail. Five city councilmembers, including President Darrell L. Clarke, have joined the chorus calling for street closures. Although many parks around the city are seeing a surge in users, the crowding has been the most intense on the narrow trails that wind along the Schuylkill and through Wissahickon Valley Park. Social distancing is problematic, if not impossible, Maggie Mund, president of the Center City Residents Association, wrote in a letter to the mayor. "The Schuylkill Banks has become a petri dish, she added in an interview. The call for street closures is part of a coordinated effort organized by the CCRA, the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, the Fitler Square Improvement Association, and a collection of urbanist groups. In separate letters, the three civic associations suggested that the city could easily close the outer lanes of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, effectively creating an extension of the Schuylkill River Trail and allowing people to spread out. The city closes the outer lanes of the Parkway all the time, so it shouldnt be difficult to do, Mund argued. The city has already repurposed one major road, Martin Luther King Drive in West Fairmount Park, to relieve crowding on the Schuylkill River Trail. Philadelphia was one of the first cities to recognize the need to provide more options for recreation while people are under lockdown for the coronavirus. But now the drive is in danger of becoming overcrowded. Meanwhile, other U.S. cities have gone further, banning traffic from a variety of key streets to create more elbow room for their residents. In their letter to Kenney, the urbanist groups the Bicycle Coalition, Feet First Philly, the Clean Air Council, and 5th Square argued that the city needs to create car-free streets in a wider variety of neighborhoods. That letter was co-signed by five councilmembers: Clarke, Kenyatta Johnson, Jamie Gauthier, Helen Gym, and Derek Green. While the coalitions letter applauded city officials for the decision to close MLK Drive to vehicles, the signers argue that the roadway is too far afield for residents of many Philadelphia neighborhoods. One reason the city has been slow to create more car-free zones is because of the cost and logistics of managing the closures. According to a city spokesperson, the administration is currently analyzing the benefits of possible additional closures with public health being our most important consideration, in addition to operational impacts. In their letters, the seven groups all acknowledge that banning cars from local streets could be complicated and expensive. But they argued that the city has a long track record of organizing closures for special events like concerts and festivals. The coalition of urbanist groups noted that traffic is down at least 37%. Were running out of space on the Schuylkill River Trail, said Dennis Boylan, president of the Logan Square group, who wants to see the Parkways outer lanes closed to cars. We need to give families with small kids a safe spot where they can run around. An intensive care nurse is standing by a bed with a ventilator in a patient room in the intensive care unit of the university hospital. The University Hospital in Mannheim has established a coronavirus diagnosis center. Uwe Anspach | Picture Alliance | Getty Images U.S. tariffs on imported medical equipment, particularly from China, have added to the struggle in America's fight against the coronavirus outbreak. The U.S. and China have been embroiled in an escalating tariff war since 2018. Across multiple rounds, tariffs were levied on essential medical supplies from China including medical protective clothing, personal protective equipment (PPE), CT systems and disposable medical headwear. Meanwhile, the fast-spreading coronavirus disease has led to cases growing at a rapid pace throughout the world including the U.S., which is now the country with the highest number of reported cases and deaths. There are currently more than 555,000 reported cases, and over 22,000 deaths in the U.S., according to the latest data by Johns Hopkins University. Compared to other countries with a "more flexible" approach toward importing PPEs, imposing tariffs has "further undermined U.S. preparedness and response to the outbreak," Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC in an email. Without tariffs, the U.S. would be in "a better position in this bidding game" with so many countries scrambling to import critical medical products from China, he added. Any obstacle in the way of expeditious imports of this equipment could cause more people to die of the disease. Susan Shirk former deputy assistant secretary of state States across the U.S. have reported that the number of intensive care unit beds are running out, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has warned that respirators could run out soon as the city's hospital resources are stretched. With the outbreak intensifying in large cities and states, health-care workers have also been scrambling for protective gear and struggling with a shortage of medical equipment as the number of cases surge. Threat to war against pandemic China started to ramp up production of critical medical equipment as the disease spread in January. It reportedly accumulated a large surplus of personal protective equipment, which American health-care facilities now have a "pressing need" for, Susan Shirk, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under the Clinton administration, said in an email to CNBC. "Any obstacle in the way of expeditious imports of this equipment could cause more people to die of the disease," added Shirk, who is currently a research professor at University of California San Diego and also the chair of the university's 21st Century China Center. The administration's tariffs on Chinese medical products may contribute to shortages and higher costs of vital equipment at a time of nationwide health crisis. Chad Bown Peterson Institute for International Economics In an earlier report, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) warned that President Donald Trump's trade war with China could threaten to "cripple" the U.S. fight against the coronavirus pandemic. As of March 13, when the report was published, the think tank found that $3.3 billion in imports of critical health-care products still face 7.5% tariffs, while $1.1 billion of imports which could potentially treat Covid-19 remained subjected to 25% tariffs even after the Trump administration cut and suspended some tariffs temporarily. "The administration's tariffs on Chinese medical products may contribute to shortages and higher costs of vital equipment at a time of nationwide health crisis," wrote the author of the report, Chad Bown. He said Trump's trade policies have forced Beijing to sell many of its medical products to other countries instead of to the U.S. Some of these products include protective gear for doctors and nurses and high-tech equipment to monitor patients. According to PIIE data, about $100 billion in intermediate inputs from China still face 25% tariffs, raising costs of parts and components for U.S. medical product manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal also reported that General Motors was seeking tariff relief on some categories of ventilator parts originating from China that were facing 25% tariffs, to "ease the burden" of ventilator production that would support Washington's response against Covid-19. Trade barriers As early as 2018 and 2019, medical product providers had already cautioned against tariffs on medical supplies, as they warned it would lead to higher costs and disrupt supply chains. As Trump doubles down on his protectionism stance not just with China, but also with the European Union and Mexico Washington could find itself out of time and options as it races to contain the coronavirus outbreak, experts say. U.S. tariff threats against Mexico the second largest source of PPE and medical protective clothing for the United States have reduced the viability of these items being procured from there, according to Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank and former U.S. deputy secretary of state. "Mr. Trump's erratic threats have helped undermine confidence in building that country's industries for export," Zoellick wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Washington could also face difficulties in obtaining much-needed medical supplies from the EU, the U.S.'s main source of items including X-ray equipment and hand sanitizers, if such antagonism continues. A mere seven countries account for 70% of the exports of artificial respirators, vital tools for the seriously ill; if one of them banned exports, prices could increase by up to 10%. Robert Zoellick former president of the World Bank Copyright 2020 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE Doctors and health care leaders in New Mexico are preparing a grim plan they hope is never carried out standards for deciding which patients get ventilators if there arent enough to go around. They are crafting the recommendations as New Mexico braces for a surge in coronavirus patients that could overwhelm hospitals throughout the state. This is completely new, said Dr. Jonathan Bolton, director of the Institute for Ethics at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. You wont meet anybody who has lived through a pandemic like this. Projections released by the state Department of Health suggest the state will face shortages of hospital beds, intensive care beds and ventilators at the peak of the outbreak, which could come later this month or in May. Bolton is part of a four-person committee working on a protocol to help hospitals navigate the possibility of encountering more patients than they can care for. Their proposed Crisis Standards of Care will go to the states medical advisory team, which will, in turn, make a recommendation to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams administration. The governor could issue an order making the standards mandatory or leave it to hospitals to decide. The goal, in any case, is to relieve the burden on front-line health-care providers to ensure they arent asked to determine whose life is most valuable if, say, only one ventilator is available for multiple patients. Were getting ready for a crisis, Human Services Secretary David Scrase, a medical doctor, said in an interview. We dont want individual doctors and nurses being in a situation where theyre having to make tough ethical decisions without a sturdy and detailed framework. Likelihood of survival The recommended standards, still under development, are expected to focus on one factor above all others likelihood of survival. In some ways, the proposal is notable for what it doesnt include. Doctors and nurses wouldnt consider patients age, whether they have children who depend on them, their occupation or ability to pay. Instead, the group focused on a patients prognosis their likelihood to survive the treatment. If a tie-breaker is necessary, it would be handled through a lottery of sorts. Robert Schwartz, a UNM regent, law professor and co-author of a textbook on health law, said the committee members struggled with what criteria to include. Age discrimination is illegal, so that was out. But Schwartz said the committee considered alternatives that would take into account the patients stage of life. Had they had a chance to raise a family or pursue a career? They also examined whether parents with children should be given priority. But what if a patient couldnt have children or decided against it for ethical or personal reasons? Schwartz and Bolton said the committee is leaning against taking such factors into account. We couldnt convince ourselves that there was a just way of selecting among people, Bolton said. Schwartz put it this way: Its almost impossible to find a principle that cant be abused. Furthermore, they said, health care workers need quick, simple criteria that can be applied to a large number of patients. Prognosis seemed like a neutral standard. But even that, Schwartz said, is fraught with ethical questions. A person with a strong likelihood of survival, for example, might be in that position because they could afford health care throughout their life while another patient couldnt. There is no perfect answer, Schwartz said. But they tried to craft a fair system, Bolton said, to maximize the number of people who can survive, who can recover from their illness. Ventilator shortage seen New Mexico health officials are employing a statistical model to help them prepare for the worst. A projection Scrase released Thursday forecasts that New Mexico will have less than half the ventilators and one-third of the Intensive Care Unit beds that hospitals may need at the peak of the virus outbreak. Thats a shortage of 732 ventilators a machine that helps a sedated patient breathe and a shortage of 1,232 ICU beds. The state is also projected to need another 687 general beds. The forecast, of course, could change. New Mexico hospitals are working to boost their capacity. Lovelace Health System, for example, is converting anesthesia machines into ventilators, and Lujan Grisham requested an Army field hospital. The Lujan Grisham administration also ordered the closure of schools and nonessential businesses and instructed people to stay home an attempt to slow the spread of the disease and ease the burden on hospitals. We wanted everything ready, Scrase said, so that when we get to the point where we no longer have enough ventilators, ICU beds or hospital beds, we have a plan. (But) were doing everything we possibly can to keep from getting to that point. Advance directives help Patients can help, Bolton said, by filling out advance directives. No attorney or witness is necessary. People can just find the form online, print it and fill it out. Presbyterian and other health systems also offer the forms through patients online accounts. The form has questions about end-of-life options. Theres also space to write other instructions. Some people, Bolton said, are deciding they would like to be altruistic and state that if there is a situation where there are too many people, that they themselves would give up their ventilator to help someone else. Ethics team to recommend The ethics committee working on the Crisis Standards of Care includes Bolton, Schwartz, a representative from Presbyterian Healthcare Services and a health consultant. Its a circumstance that none of us ever imagined wed have to deal with, Bolton said. Their recommendation will go next to the states medical advisory team. Dr. Michael Richards, vice chancellor for clinical affairs of the UNM Health System, is the teams operational leader. The team also includes representatives from Presbyterian, the Department of Health and other state agencies. After the medical advisory team considers the crisis standards, they would go to Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel, Human Services Secretary Scrase and top staff under Lujan Grisham. Advance directives New Mexicans can update their advance directives to clarify their wishes if they are unable to make their own medical decisions. Blank forms are available at hscethics.unm.edu. Click on the link for advance directives, and then scroll down to the download section for optional advance healthcare directive.The forms may also be available through patients online accounts with their health insurance provider. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) The Philippine government is ready to fund the COVID-19 assistance program for crisis-affected citizens until the end of May, Finance Secretary Carlos 'Sonny' Dominguez III said Monday. "We have actually planned until the end of May for financing," Dominguez told CNN Philippines' The Source. "I'm not saying that we will extend it (enhanced community quarantine) beyond April 30. But our plan has been really to fund our requirements to beat this COVID from April and May." Dominguez said officials remain hopeful the economy can reopen by next month, with community quarantine directives extended until April 30. However, he noted economic managers will continue to monitor the health sector's situation before making any decision. "Before we open the economy, I think it is very important for us to know the potential risks of doing so... That's why we have to be careful when we evaluate how and when we are going to open up our economy," he added. The lockdown measures implemented in different regions nationwide have left over one million Filipinos jobless, as of the Labor Department's latest record. Currently, the government's social amelioration program covers only the "poorest of the poor," with the low-income households expected to receive 5,000 to 8,000 worth of monthly assistance. DOLE has also rolled out several programs to assist displaced workers, but some beneficiaries reported that they have yet to receive feedback on their applications. President Rodrigo Duterte has also earlier floated the possibility of selling government properties should the country fall short of funds for the COVID-19 response. Dominguez, however, stressed that the government's budget for the program remains sufficient, noting that the chief executive may have only referred to generating additional funds to "restart the economy." Economic team plotting recovery plan Dominguez reiterated that while the economy may face "zero growth" this year, the Philippines continues to be in a "good position" to handle the global crisis. He noted the Philippine economy expanded an average of 6.4 percent in the past three years, and that the country has had a "very good" credit rating. The national debt might also grow from 41 percent to 47 percent of what the economy produces, but the Finance chief said the higher debt-to-GDP ratio is something the government "can very well afford." The World Bank also earlier approved a $500 million (about 25 billion) loan to support the country's efforts in the fight against COVID-19. Dominguez, who said the Philippines may borrow a total of $5.7 billion for the relief efforts, also raised the possibility of borrowing from the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Dominguez also stressed the program for the COVID-19 assistance will amount to over 1-trillion and will be allocated under four socio-economic strategies emergency subsidy for vulnerable sectors, resources for health programs, fiscal emergency actions and initiatives to keep the economy afloat, and an economic recovery plan after the crisis. HDFC stock fell about 40 percent this year from a high of Rs 2,493 to a low of Rs 1,499 last week. China's central bank, Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), reportedly raised its stake in India's mortgage lender HDFC to 1.01 percent from the existing 0.8 percent, said news reports. The report of POBC's stake hike in HDFC reportedly raised concerns of the government though there is no rule to ban investment by any Chinese company in an Indian entity. The Peoples Bank of China had held 1.75 crore shares of HDFC as per the shareholding disclosures for the March quarter and it is not clear if the PBOC purchased the shares between January and March, said a report in The Economic Times. HDFC stock fell about 40 percent this year from a high of Rs 2,493 to a low of Rs 1,499 last week, the report said adding the stock jumped 14 percent last week to close at Rs 1,702 on Thursday. HDFC vice-chairman and CEO Keki Mistry said the PBOC has been an existing shareholder and had owned 0.8 percent in the company as of March 2019, reported ANI. "The disclosure has been made now since the stake has hit the 1 percent regulatory threshold. They have been accumulating the shares over a year and are now holding 1.01 percent," added Mistry. The PBOCs 1.01 percent consists of 17.49 million shares of HDFC. As per the norms, the companies have to disclose shareholding changes to the exchanges at the end of every quarter only if an investor's stake crosses 1 percent. Meanwhile, the finance ministry is reportedly concerned over the move as no objection was raised on the Chinese central bank's stake hike in the HDFC, said a report in Mint. It was not mandatory for HDFC to disclose the Chinese central banks 0.8 percent stake and when the stake holding crossed 1 percent threshold, the home loan lender complied with the regulations. Since, the deal was a secondary market transaction, HDFC had no role in it, the report said. No less an institution than a central bank of the worlds second largest economy has bought a stake in one of Indias largest financial institutions. Normally, there would be no need for xenophobic hysteria over this but a central bank buying an equity stake in a commercial entity is unusual. No red flag was raised," a source was quoted as saying in the report. Foreign portfolio investors hold a 70.88 percent stake in the company. --With inputs from agencies Chandigarh, April 13 : A total of 134 Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in Punjab amid coronavirus curfew, were allowed to leave through a special flight, a government official said on Monday. "One hundred and thirty four Bhutanese students, who had been stranded in the hostels of Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-Jalandhar, were allowed to leave for Bhutan through a special flight arranged by Bhutanese government," Special Chief Secretary K.B.S. Sidhu, who is in-charge to monitor state-wide coronavirus cases, informed in a tweet. A woman hosteller, hailing from Maharashtra, of the Lovely Professional University was tested for coronavirus on Saturday. The state has nearly 2,400 resident students stranded in the university hostels. (CNN) In an emergency virtual meeting Sunday, OPEC+ arrived at a deal to slash oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day starting May 1, a senior OPEC source told CNN. The cuts will remain in place through June, the source said. The group has been seeking to cut production in order to buoy oil prices, which have fallen to 18-year lows in recent weeks. The drop came as Saudi Arabia and Russia launched a brutal price war, flooding the market with oil while the coronavirus dealt a devastating blow to energy demand. OPEC+ tried to reach a tentative deal at a meeting Thursday for a cut of 10 million barrels a day, but member country Mexico would not agree to that deal. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday his country would cut its output by 100,000 barrels per day and the United States would make up the rest of its contribution to the production cut. The United States is not an OPEC+ member. According to Lopez Obrador, Trump offered during the phone call to cut US production by 250,000 barrels per day to compensate for Mexico. At a news conference Friday, US President Donald Trump confirmed he spoke to the Mexican President and agreed to a cut, though he did not confirm the exact size. He said Mexico would reimburse the United States at a later date. "It's a small amount for us, a large amount for Mexico," he said. Trump tweeted Sunday that the "big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done" and said that he just spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Salman of Saudi Arabia from the Oval Office. "This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States," Trump said in the tweet. The deal to cut production by nearly 10 million barrels per day in May and June is among the deepest cuts ever agreed to by the world's oil producers. But even that decline in output amounts to only about 10% of the world's normal supply of oil, far below the estimates for how much demand for oil has collapsed amid the coronavirus pandemic. --CNN's Chris Liakos, John Defterios and Chris Isidore contributed to this report. This story was first published on CNN.com, "OPEC+ reaches deal to cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels per day." Some families are using lockdown to watch countless films. And then there are the Taylors... Each night, Stephanie and Matt Taylor and their three young children dress up to recreate images from Hollywood movies. They then upload the pictures on Instagram and ask the public to guess the name of the film. This movie starred Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil and was the first of its kind Even the Taylor's young child gets a chance to pose but is she talking? The Taylor's followers are split on which film this photo refers to And in two weeks their colourful antics using costumes, face paint and an array of imaginative props have won them more than 2,000 followers. The idea started when Mr Taylor returned to their home in Whitton, southwest London, a few weeks ago wearing a tartan scarf to protect his face. The family went on to find all the tartan in the house and let daughter Edith make up their faces to resemble characters from a historical film starring Mel Gibson as a Scottish warrior (see picture four). The Taylor family are definitely not phoning it in but the characters may want to phone home These costumes may be familiar but which movie exactly does this post recreate? Since lockdown began there have been several screen of this series of movies starring a young Harrison Ford Edith and her brother Arthur are fully involved, and baby Olive also takes part even playing a Bruce Willis character (see picture three). Mrs Taylor said: It has been a bit of fun and a welcome distraction from everything thats going on. There are 20 photos so far and well go on as long as we have ideas. Let's hope the Taylor family are not quite so spooky as the family featured in this post It would be hard to miss this striking 1995 movie starring Mel Gibson This 1999 movie was based on an earlier children's novel and Jonathan Lipnicki An emergency video conference between the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and non-Opec ministerial partners, chaired by Saudi Arabia, ended yesterday (April 12) with a continued commitment of the participating producing countries to the agreement reached last week to cut oil production output, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues. All participating countries agreed to adjust downwards their overall crude oil production by 9.7 mb/d, starting from May 1, for an initial period of two months that concludes on June 30. This is expected to end the oil price war. Mexico, which had resisted joing the deal, finally came around following a weekend of urgent diplomacy. US President Donald Trump intervened, helping broker the final compromise to take part in the production cut plan, reports said. We have demonstrated that Opec+ is up and alive, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told Bloomberg News in an interview minutes after the deal was done. Im more than happy with the deal. During their tenth meeting, producing countries "reaffirmed the continued commitment of the participating producing countries in the Declaration of Cooperation to a stable market, the mutual interest of producing nations, the efficient, economic and secure supply to consumers, and a fair return on invested capital." Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: They say ties are tested when the times are trying. Ashok, 25, of Varanasi had a brush with this bitter reality on Sunday when he reached home after covering 1600 km from Mumbai to Varanasi on foot. His mother and brother refused to let him in. Ashok, hailing from Gola Dinanath locality of Varanasi, had gone to Mumbai in search of work four months ago. He got a job as a waiter at a restaurant in Nagpada in Central Mumbai. But after the coronavirus lockdown was announced, the hotel was shut, and Ashok, having tried his luck at other places, was forced to head home till normalcy returned. "I along with my five friends from Chandauli and other areas, started for home around a fortnight ago. With some cash in hand, we followed the road and rail tracks and walked around 1600 km to reach home, said Ashok. As he arrived near Varanasi Cantt Railway station, he could not hold himself back any longer and called up his mother to tell her he was about to reach home. He anticipated a joy-filled response from her. "In these difficult times, when parents are worried about their children who are far away, I expected my mother will be very happy to know that I am back, but imagine my shock when she greeted me with suspicion instead," Ashok recalled. In fact, the whole locality became worried once the news of his arrival spread. They were all desperate to bar Ashok's return and immediately informed the police authorities of their area. COVID-19 lockdown: Mangaluru teenager takes friend home in suitcase, gets caught by neighbours It was not that Ashok had been irresponsible. Mindful of his stay in Mumbai, Ashok first went to the Divisional Hospital in Kabirchaura. Since there was no screening being done there, Ashok was directed to the Deen Dayal Level 2 hospital. At the hospital, after his screening, the doctors advised him to self-quarantine himself for 14 days, though he had no signs of the virus in him. After deciding to follow the doctors' advice, Ashok headed home, but, as reported earlier, his mother and brother refused to open the door, suspecting him to be a carrier of the virus. Ashok tried his best to convince his family and pleaded that they give shelter to him, but to little avail. Distressed, he then made his way to his maternal grandmothers house in a locality named Katuapura. Here too the story was no different. Besides being worried that Ashok might have contracted the virus, his family also reportedly felt that if they allowed him to stay at home, health authorities and the police will keep making repeated visits to monitor him and to ensure that he follows the health protocol and isolation orders. With Ashok having no place to stay till late Sunday evening, the district police administration got him admitted to the quarantine centre at a private hospital in Maidagin locality of Varanasi. "He is fine but very exhausted and worn out," said Kotwali police station house officer Inspector Mahesh Pandey. The police are now gathering information about his friends and have started tracking them for screening and quarantining. Additional reporting: Cianan Brennan Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said Ireland faces some of its darkest days in the coming weeks as coronavirus deaths continue to mount. In a video posted on Twitter, Mr Varadkar said the country is preparing to reach the peak of the virus later this month. The number of hospitalisations and, sadly, the number of deaths continues to rise. So we cannot lose focus. We cannot lessen our efforts. In fact, we need to redouble them for the next few weeks, he said. Its more important than ever that we persevere. Its possible that we havent seen the peak yet. When it comes, perhaps later this month, we will experience some of our darkest days. So we need to maintain our discipline and resolve in the knowledge that better days are to come. Mr Varadkars comments come as the coronavirus death toll here rose to 334 after a further 14 deaths were reported yesterday. There are 9,655 confirmed cases in Ireland. The latest deaths were made up of six females and eight males, with a median age of 80. The National Public Health Emergency Team reported 727 new cases of the virus yesterday. These comprised of 430 cases reported by Irish laboratories and an additional 297 cases reported by a laboratory in Germany. The weekend as a whole saw 47 deaths and 1,566 new cases of the virus. Yesterday, Prof Philip Nolan, chairman of the Epidemiological Modelling Group advising the emergency team, said there is a real danger of another wave of virus cases if any changing of the restrictions on movement is not done correctly. As we look to modifying the restrictions, to let people get back to some more activities, theres a real danger at that point if we dont do it very, very carefully that we will get a second wave of disease and that, very quickly, if we get this wrong, that we will see a rapid re-emergence of the disease and arrive to a potentially very dangerous peak, he told RTE. However, he said that, at the moment, the country appears to be in a very stable situation. On Friday, the Government extended its restrictions for another three weeks, until May 5. Meanwhile, nursing homes have yet to see the benefits of commitments made regarding Covid-19 testing and the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE), according to the representative body for the sector. Tadhg Daly, chief executive of Nursing Homes Ireland which represents 390 of Irelands 440 such facilities said some workers in nursing homes have been waiting for test results for 20 days, a pattern replicated across the country as the HSE struggles with a testing backlog of 14,500 people. We very much welcome the reprioritisation of healthcare workers, but to be blunt, we havent seen the benefits, and we know of people who could be working if they had their results, he said. On Saturday, Health Minister Simon Harris said he hoped the backlog in testing would be cleared by the end of this week. He said between 25,000 and 30,000 tests had been sent to Germany, with more than half returned, and the remainder due back this week. [snippet1]987600[/snippet1] Deaths due to coronavirus in Michigan are back up after an Easter Sunday decrease, as Michigan health officials announced 997 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 115 deaths on Monday, April 13. Both are increases from numbers shared on Sunday, although state officials said a reduction in testing during the holiday weekend may be the cause for smaller numbers of new cases. Besides the 205 deaths announced Friday, April 10 and the 95 deaths from Sunday, April 12, the state has had between 110 and 118 deaths every day since Monday, April 6. In total, Michigan has had 25,635 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,602 deaths. Sorry, but your browser does not support frames. The rate of increase appears to be slowing down, flattening the curve a bit, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said during a Monday press briefing. But more data is needed to see if this is a trend or not, she said. Testing numbers have declined it recent days, from more than 6,400 tests on April 4 to just more than 3,000 tests done on Saturday, April 11 the most recent day test totals are available for. But more testing is on the horizon, as Whitmer announced plans this weekend to open 13 new testing sites. Sorry, but your browser does not support frames. Michigan is releasing recovery data once per week. So far, 433 people have recovered from the virus in the state as of the Saturday data release meaning they tested positive for COVID-19 at some point, theyre still alive and its been at least 30 days since symptoms began. Of the state's 83 counties, 74 have at least one confirmed case. Montmorency County announced its first case on Monday while Alpena County had its only case removed from the list. There are 50 counties with at least one COVID-19 death, as St. Joseph and Charlevoix counties announced their first one on Monday. Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties remain the three hardest-hit areas in Michigan with 78.5 percent of the total confirmed cases and 84.1 percent of the states deaths from the virus. The trio of Southeast Michigan counties are home to 39 percent of the states residents. In Detroit alone, there are 6,781 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 395 deaths. The disproportionate number of cases in the metro Detroit area is a result of multiple factors, including the large population, more aggressive testing in those counties and community spread of coronavirus, according to experts. The virus is heavily affecting African Americans. About 33 percent of cases and 39 percent of deaths in Michigan are for African Americans, while they make up 14 percent of the states population. Sorry, but your browser does not support frames. Here's a look at the Michigan counties with the most confirmed cases: 1. Wayne County: 11,648 cases (760 deaths) 2. Oakland County: 5,073 cases (347 deaths) 3. Macomb County: 3,418 cases (240 deaths) 4. Genesee County: 988 cases (77 deaths) 5. Washtenaw County: 736 cases (18 deaths) 6. Kent County: 311 cases (13 deaths) 7. Saginaw County: 293 cases (13 deaths) 8. Ingham County: 254 cases (4 deaths) 9. Livingston County: 225 cases (5 deaths) 10. St. Clair County: 206 cases (7 deaths) For more statewide data, visit MLives coronavirus data page, here. PREVENTION TIPS In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores. Read more Michigan coronavirus coverage here Monday, April 13: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan Group trying to put LGBT initiative on Michigan ballots turns to electronic signatures IRS deposits first round of coronavirus stimulus checks into bank accounts Microbiologist offers coronavirus cleaning tips for your home: Spray, dont wipe A coronavirus specimens trip from a patients nostril through a Michigan testing lab Michigan senator calls for state employee layoffs to balance budget With the unprecedented lockdown in place, nearly 40,000 Indian crew members across the world are unable to reach home. Tens of thousands of Indian crew members, stranded on cargo and cruise ships across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, are still waiting to be brought home. The Indian government has abandoned all of us in the sea, Anand Kumar, one of the Indian crew members on MSC Divina cruise ship anchored near the port of Miami in the United States, told Al Jazeera. We are willing to come back and stay in quarantine in India, but at least bring us back to our country. Kumar said the Indian crew members had been trying to reach out to the Indian embassy in Washington, DC, and consulate in Atlanta. But they simply say there is no update from the Indian government, he said. #CoronavirusOutbreak | "Return of Indians stranded abroad is still a work in progress. No update on it right now. We are working on it and our envoys are in touch with them": Dammu Ravi, #COVID19 Coordinator, Ministry of External Affairs. pic.twitter.com/jP8tzM9hNW NDTV (@ndtv) April 10, 2020 Indias Maritime Association of Shipowners, Shipmanagers and Agents (MASSA) estimates the number of stranded Indian crew members to be approximately 40,000. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown on March 24 to check the spread of coronavirus, giving less than four hours notice before the order took effect. Since the lockdown included cancellation of all international flights, the crew members could not fly home. Majority of the cruise lines are ready to charter the Indian crew to India, but the Indian government is not giving them permission to fly due to the lockdown, Dixon Vaz, founder of the Goan Seamen Association of India, who has been working closely with the stranded crew members, told Al Jazeera. Deaths on the ships At least two Indian crew members have died on their ships as they awaited evacuation. On April 8, Glen Pereira, a 30-year-old cabin steward on the Marella Explorer 2 cruise ship currently sailing in the Atlantic Ocean, was found dead in his room. The cruise ship, which had just its crew members on board, was sailing from the Mexican port of Puerto Progreso to an unconfirmed European port, where it was originally scheduled to dock on Sunday. Seafarer Glen Pereira was found dead in his room on board the cruise ship he worked for [Al Jazeera] On April 6, two days before his death, Glen spoke to his cousin Collin* who worked for the same company and currently lives in the coastal Indian state of Goa. He sounded all right. He didnt tell me anything about feeling unwell, Collin told Al Jazeera. Glen also spoke to his family in Goa later that evening and told them he had some pain in his throat and mild fever. But he insisted there was nothing to worry about. That was the last time the Pereira family had heard from Glen. Collins friend Jackson* was part of the same cruise and later informed him that Glen was kept in an isolation ward on the ship because he had developed fever and throat infection. We still dont know the real cause of his death. We dont know if its COVID-19 or something else. Glen never told us anything. He probably didnt want us to get worried. We never got to say a final goodbye, he said. On April 5, 48-year-old Andrew Fernandes, an assistant security officer on cruise liner Costa Favolosa, died of coronavirus in Miami, Florida. Speaking to reporters in Mumbai last week, his sister said he had been put on ventilator support after he contracted pneumonia and a lung infection and needed to be transferred to a hospital in Miami. But no beds were available at the time, she said. Fear of virus outbreak on ships Fear of being infected by the coronavirus haunts most crew members who have been kept in isolation. Rahul Shanbagh, 24, from Goas Margoa city, is a crew member on the MSC Grandiosa cruise ship. He has been stranded on the ship since mid-March. The ship has 350 crew members on board, including nearly 200 Indians, and is currently docked in Civitavecchia in Italy. There were at least 14 cases [of coronavirus] reported on this ship, of which four were Indians. Currently, we [Indians] are the only ones left here. Everyone from all other countries has been evacuated. Angie Fernando* is among the 242 Indian crew members on the Costa Diadema cruise ship docked in Italys Port Piombino since the middle of March. His sister, who did not want to reveal her name, told Al Jazeera she has been calling officials in New Delhi and the Indian embassy in Rome almost every day. The cruise ship has reported 329 coronavirus cases so far. We are extremely worried about Angie. He sounds hopeless and depressed about the situation there. There are times when we just get monosyllabic replies from him, she said. The statement released by MSC Grandiosa cruise ship to the families of its Indian crew [Daylife] A statement released by Costa Diadema to Al Jazeera on April 10 on the status of its Indian crew said: To date, several attempts made with different solutions have not had a positive outcome with the Indian authorities. Another seafarer, who did not want to reveal his name, said he was stranded on a cruise ship named Norwegian Sky, currently docked in the Bahamas. We are mentally stressed, frightened and lonely. My room is very small with no window, he told Al Jazeera. We just want to get home and stay close to our family. Still a work in progress On April 5, Indias Shipping Minister Mansukh Lal Manadaviya assured the safe passage of the crew members back home following a meeting with the representatives of MASSA. Al Jazeera reached out to both Manadaviya and MASSAs Captain Shiv Halbe, but received no response. Meanwhile, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the extension of a no sail order on April 9 for nearly 100 cruise ships in the countrys waters. Following the CDC order, Dixon Vaz wrote a letter to the Indian prime minister, urging the government to keep the Indian seafarers stranded in mind, and to allow a window period after April 14 when the initial lockdown period gets over, and evacuate the seafarers. On April 10, Dammu Ravi, an official with Indias Ministry of External Affairs, said the return of Indians stranded abroad is still a work in progress. No update on it right now. We are working on it, and our envoys are in touch with them, he said, according to a report by the NDTV news channel. * Names changed to protect the individuals privacy. On Monday, the total number of coronavirus tally in the country crossed the 9,000-mark with 9,152 cases. According to the Ministry of Health, India now has 7,987 active Covid-19 cases while as many as 856 patients have recovered or discharged. The coronavirus death toll in the country stands at 308. In Maharashtra, the total number of coronavirus cases breached the 2,000-mark while the national capital inched towards the 1,500-mark. Heres a look at the statewise tally of coronavirus active cases, fatalities and recovered patients. Maharashtra With 1,985 Covid-19 active cases, Maharashtra has registered the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country. The state has recorded 149 deaths so far while 217 patients have recovered. Delhi Delhi closely follows with the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the country. As many as 1,154 people have tested positive of coronavirus in the national capital. 24 people have died from the infection while 27 people have made a recovery, as per the health ministrys data. Tamil Nadu The southern state has the third-highest number of Covid-19 cases in the country which now stand at a whopping 1075. Tamil Nadu has seen 50 recoveries and 11 Covid-19 deaths. Rajasthan Coronavirus cases in Rajasthan touched 804 on Monday. The state has reported 3 fatalities. 21 patients have recovered from the infection. Madhya Pradesh The state has reported 532 positive cases of coronavirus. 36 people have died from Covid-19 here. Telangana 504 positive cases of coronavirus have been reported from the state so far. 43 people have made a recovery from the virus while 9 people have died from Covid-19. Uttar Pradesh 483 people have been infected from Covid-19 in the state. While 46 people have recovered from coronavirus in Uttar Pradesh, 5 have died from the infection here. Gujarat Prime Minister Narendra Modis home state has registered 516 coronavirus cases and 44 recoveries so far. 25 people have died from the infection in the state. Andhra Pradesh The state has witnessed 427 positive Covid-19 patients and 11 cases of recovery. 7 people have died. Kerala As per the health ministry, Kerala reported 376 coronavirus cases on Monday. Kerala has witnessed two deaths due to Covid-19 while 179 people have successfully recovered. Karnataka The state has recorded 232 Covid-19 cases and 6 deaths. 57 people have been cured and discharged. Jammu and Kashmir The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has seen the number of Covid-19 patients rising to 245. 4 people have died from the infection while 6 were cured. Haryana and Punjab The neighbouring states have 185 and 151 Covid-19 cases respectively. While 11 people have died in Punjab, Haryana has seen three deaths. 29 people have recovered from Covid-19 in Haryana, 5 in Punjab. 152 people have been affected by the Sars-CoV-2 virus in West Bengal. There have been 7 deaths and 29 recoveries in the state. Odisha has 54 Covid-19 positive patients, 12 have recovered while one person has died. In Bihar, 64 people have tested positive for coronavirus, one has died while 19 patients have recovered. Assam has reported 29 Covid-19 cases, one person has died. Uttarakhand has 35 coronavirus patients, five patients have recovered from the infection. In Chandigarh, 21 people have contracted the Covid-19 disease and 7 have recovered. Andaman has recorded 11 coronavirus cases, 10 have recovered. Chhattisgarh has recorded 31 cases of coronavirus and 10 people have recovered. Ladakh has 15 patients, 10 people have recovered. Goa has reported seven cases of Covid-19 disease, five patients have recovered. Himachal Pradesh has 32 cases, one patient has died and 13 have recovered. Pondicherry has reported 7 cases, one has recovered. Jharkhand has 19 Covid-19 cases, 2 patients have died. Two coronavirus cases have been reported in Manipur, one has recovered. Tripura also has two Covid-19 patients. States and Union territories with just one positive Covid-19 case include Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. Sikkim, Meghalaya and Nagaland have not reported any Covid-19 case yet. India on Monday entered the 20th day of the 21-day coronavirus lockdown which will come to an end on April 14 if not extended. Note: Figures are from official data released by the Ministry of Health, and may differ from realtime numbers released by various state governments subject to confirmation from the Centre. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Screenshot/YouTube Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont officially endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday. Sanders dropped out of the race on Wednesday after failing to pick up momentum in a series of vital primary elections, making Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee. Since Sanders dropped out, Biden's campaign has made an effort to reach out to Sanders' base. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont officially endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race on Monday. "We've got to make Trump a one-term president, and we need you in the White House," Sanders said in a livestreamed video with Biden. Sanders, a progressive firebrand who hit the ground running with a series of wins in early primary and caucus states, dropped out of the race on Wednesday after failing to pick up momentum, making Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee. Biden also praised Sanders on Monday and said he would need Sanders "not just to win the campaign, but to govern." "You've been the most powerful voice for a fairer and more just America," Biden told his former competitor, adding, "You don't get enough credit, Bernie, for being the voice that forces us to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves, 'Have we done enough?'" The two politicians also discussed how the country should respond to the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis. Sanders and his fellow progressives are attempting to extract policy concessions from Biden on a host of key issues, including healthcare, student debt, and climate change. Since becoming the presumptive nominee, Biden has tried to make policy overtures to Sanders' supporters. Last week, he introduced a proposal to lower the eligibility for Medicare to age 60 from 65 and expand student-loan forgiveness to some low-income and middle-class people. Story continues Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders' highest-profile surrogate, has long pledged to support the 2020 Democratic nominee but has been sharply critical of Biden. Ocasio-Cortez made it clear in a recent interview with The New York Times that her endorsement of Biden would not come without "uncomfortable" policy shifts on Biden's part. "There's this talk about unity as this kind of vague, kumbaya, kind of term," she said. "Unity and unifying isn't a feeling, it's a process." She added: "The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved that's how you know it's working. And if Biden is only doing things he's comfortable with, then it's not enough." Ocasio-Cortez said Biden should promise to provide a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US and provide a more progressive plan to expand access to affordable healthcare. The 2020 race was thrown into turmoil this year with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19. The World Health Organization designated the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11. The virus originated in China's Hubei province late last year and has since spread to at least 185 countries and territories around the world. The US is the global epicenter of the outbreak, with more than 550,000 confirmed cases and more than 22,000 deaths as of Monday. The US outbreak has sparked chaos in the electoral campaign season as states impose stay-at-home orders for residents and grapple with how to proceed with their primary contests. Kayla Epstein contributed to this report. Read the original article on Business Insider The Indian rapid response team interacted with Kuwaiti side at one of their COVID-19 facilities after reaching there on April 11 to supplement the efforts of the government. The medical team, which comprises of 15 Indian doctors and health care professionals, is expected to stay in Kuwait for a period of two weeks. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement that the team will provide medical assistance in testing and treatment of the afflicted persons and training their personnel. The ministry added that the rapid response team has been deputed on the request of the Kuwaiti government following a recent phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Kuwaiti counterpart Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah. During the telephonic conversation, both leaders had agreed for a concerted and coordinated effort against the coronavirus pandemic. Subsequently, EAM S Jaishankar also held a phone call with his Kuwaiti counterpart to discuss the prevailing situation in Kuwait and explore ways to further strengthen cooperation during these challenging times. Indians constitute the largest group of expatriates with an estimated population of about ten lakhs in the State of Kuwait. India is reaching out to Kuwait in the extended neighbourhood to further complement its efforts to fight the menace effectively, the ministry said in a statement. Read: Health Ministry Makes Quarantine Mandatory For Travellers From UAE, Qatar, Oman And Kuwait PM Modi dialling world leaders Kuwait has reported 1,300 cases of coronavirus and two deaths due to the infection as the worldwide COVID-19 cases are nearing 1.9 million. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been dialling world leaders to discuss the prevailing situation and offer help as the condition allows. Read: Wuhan Residents Line Up To Bury COVID-19 Victims After China Lifts Lockdown Recently, PM Modi held a telephonic conversation with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and talked about the challenges COVID-19 posed to the global health systems and economic situation and shared information about steps taken in their countries to tackle the pandemic. During the phone call, both leaders expressed mutual appreciation for the handling of the pandemic. While PM Modi appreciated Seoul for the technology-based response to manage the crisis, Moon Jae-in appreciated the way Indian authorities have motivated the vast populace for fighting the pandemic with unity. Read: Survey Shows 33% US Voters Lost Jobs Or Furloughed Amid COVID-19 Crisis Read: Need To Conduct More Tests, Build Capacity To Treat COVID-19 Cases: Expert University of Chicago Medicine is seeking people who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate blood plasma for a clinical trial studying whether the plasma can be used to treat hospital patients with severe symptoms of the disease. Dr. Maria Lucia Madariaga, a general thoracic and lung transplant surgeon at UChicago Medicine, said the study would involve the type of convalescent plasma therapy that has been used for diseases ranging from measles to influenza, SARS and MERS. She said the University of Chicago is well-positioned to perform the study, with its Biological Sciences Division, Blood Bank, Department of Medicine, Transplant Institute and Department of Surgery participating. We are really fortunate at UChicago Medicine we have all the players to get this project started and keep it running under one roof, Madariaga said during an online news conference Monday. She said the hospital began reviewing potential donors Friday, and has scheduled several donations for this week. The initial study, which will include 10 patients, will investigate the safety and feasibility of procedures for identifying donors, collecting plasma donations and administering transfusions, according to the studys leaders. Additional trials would further determine its effectiveness. The coronavirus death toll in New York State has reached 10,056, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday, following a one-day increase of 671, a decline off previous peaks and a sign that containment efforts were effective. I think you can say the worst is over, Mr Cuomo said, referring to the death toll. We have control of the spread. Mr Cuomo said the curve appears to have flattened, along with the slowing death rate. The infection numbers are now on a plateau in the state hardest hit by the pandemic. Across the U.S., more than 22,000 people have died from complications related to the new coronavirus, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. READ ALSO: The governor stressed the control over the spread was contingent on continued social distancing but the state could now begin to plot a path back to normalcy. He, however, cautioned that this would take time and only come in stages. Mr Cuomo said he was working with the governors of neighbouring states to coordinate a plan for reopening businesses and schools, in order to best ensure containment. An announcement was expected later in the day. He described reopening as a delicate balance, that will require intensive testing and monitoring to ensure there is not a resurgent outbreak. (dpa/NAN) Another six Coronavirus patients have been discharged in Lagos after recovering and tested negative twice for the virus. Governor ... Another six Coronavirus patients have been discharged in Lagos after recovering and tested negative twice for the virus. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu disclosed this on Monday, saying that the six people discharged included five male and one female. According to Sanwo-Olu, Good people of Lagos, I have more great news from our isolation facilities. Today, 6 more persons; 1 female and 5 males have been discharged to join society. The patients; all from the Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, have fully recovered and tested negative twice consecutively to COVID-19. This brings the number of patients successfully managed and discharged from our facilities to 61, he said. The governor said the results were significant and indicative of governments will power to triumph in this war against the lethal COVID19. He added that government would not be deterred and would not relent until victory was achieved. I thank you all for your continued perseverance and patience, especially at this critical time. This sacrifice of ours, I am most certain will not be in vain, he said. On Sunday, Lagos discharged five Coronavirus patients after the tested negative twice. Lagos currently has 179 confirmed Coronavirus cases, out of which 61 people have been discharged, five dead, two others evacuated to their countries and three others transferred to Ogun State where they live. The state currently has 108 active cases of Coronavirus after it discharged six on Monday. "Road heroes" is the phrase John Austin, president of Bengal Transportation in Geismar, uses to describe commercial truck drivers during the raging coronavirus pandemic. Tim Ordoyne, business development manager for Peterbilt of Louisiana and vice president at large for the Louisiana Motor Transport Association, adds that the trucking industry is the "backbone of this country at this point." With countless Americans ordered to stay at home during the coronavirus crisis, truckers continue to climb into the cabs of their rigs to deliver the goods that keep the country moving, such as food, gasoline, sanitation products and medical supplies. "At the end of the day the trucking industry is moving America's goods," said Randy Guillot, president of Triple G Express in New Orleans, which services the Port of New Orleans, and chairman of the American Trucking Association. "It all comes down to us. We're proudly doing it," Guillot said. "We're out there in the face of this pandemic." Along the way, trucking companies are doing all they can to ensure uninterrupted business operations while striving to protect the health and safety of their employees, drivers, customers and communities. That's been no easy task. While many truckers do not load or unload their trucks, they do interact with the public. "We're exposed to everything under the sun," explained Austin, who said Bengal Transportation's 160 drivers work across the country and deliver everything from groceries to oilfield products to cranes. "We're interacting with the public, the (petrochemical) plants, everybody we deliver goods to." "These guys are the road heroes," he said. "I want the community to recognize what these men and women are doing." Austin said the company's coronavirus safety measures include temperature checks and sanitizing products for all employees, adhering to the 6-foot social distancing rule, and the majority of office employees working remotely. The building was fogged and sprayed, and a full-time cleaning person was hired. "We spend extra time wiping all our trucks down, keeping our equipment clean," he said. Louisiana Motor Transport Association executive director Chance McNeely said the organization, which represents 5,800 trucking companies and some 90,000 workers, is stressing sanitary measures to "keep this thing at bay." +3 Food scarce for truckers navigating Louisiana's coronavirus shutdown: 'it is pretty rough' The very workers who get medical supplies to hospitals and food to grocery stores truck drivers are having problems of their own eating on Al LaCombe is vice president of safety and risk management for Dupre Logistics LLC in Lafayette, which has 750 trucks and more than 1,350 employees. The company operates from hubs near major metropolitan areas and services all of the contiguous 48 states and parts of Canada and Mexico, delivering gasoline, non-hazardous chemicals, plastics and coffee, to name a few. LaCombe said the company's trucks are sanitized after every shift. Drivers are provided sanitation materials and urged to follow the 20-second hand washing rule. Drivers also are encouraged to stay focused in these difficult and challenging times, LaCombe said. "Don't sit and visit. Grab a cup of coffee and get going," he said. Vaccine news in your inbox Once a week we'll update you on the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up When drivers are delivering gasoline, LaCombe noted, electronic invoices are being used to cut down on a driver's personal contact with others. "If we can prevent someone from getting sick, we can be successful," he said. Dupre is working with skeleton crews at its Lafayette corporate headquarters and at its truck terminals. LaCombe said he's been with Dupre for nearly 38 years and has seen a lot of things, "but I've never seen anything like this." Tiffany Rivet is vice president of the holding company that owns Port Allen-based L&B Transport, which has 400 trucks and services the United States and Canada, delivering such things as chemicals, raw materials for the paper industry, and agriculture industry products. Drivers are wearing masks and gloves, their temperature is checked, and the company doesn't wait for a coronavirus test if a driver exhibits symptoms, Rivet said. "We remove them from the road immediately and recover the load," she said. Rivet said truck stops are sending out messages to trucking companies if truck stop employees test positive for the coronavirus. The company also updates its drivers regularly on the availability of truck stop bathrooms and showers. "We're basically having to adapt every day," she said. Peterbilt's Ordoyne said he sees customers postponing purchases of new trucks during the current crisis, particularly customers who deal with market segments hardest hit by the economic downturn, such as the oil and gas industry. Peterbilt of Louisiana has dealerships in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans and Lake Charles. Those dealerships also offer parts, service and body shop departments. For truckers who are making cross-country runs through Louisiana and are in need of repair services, Ordoyne said Peterbilt is trying to put them at the head of the line. "We're trying to be mindful of the guys who are passing through," he said. "It's a balance. It's a juggling act." Rivet said everyone's been very supportive of the trucking industry during the crisis. But that hasn't always been the case. LMTA's McNeely said the coronavirus outbreak "may change the perception of the American truck driver" when the crisis is over. He said the drivers are unsung American heroes. Guillot, with the American Trucking Association, said he has heard of drivers who tested positive for the coronavirus, were later given a clean bill of health, and went back to work. "Everybody depends on us," he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan Mon, April 13, 2020 12:30 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd182585 1 National COVID-19,Medan,North-Sumatra,coronavirus,hospital,toddler Free A 2.5-year-old girl listed as a patient under surveillance (PDP) died early on Sunday morning at Adam Malik Central General Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, becoming the youngest patient to die of suspected COVID-19 infection. The toddler was admitted to the hospital at 4 p.m. on Saturday, and died at 3 a.m. on Sunday, said the hospital's spokesperson, Rosario Dorothy Simanjuntak. The girl was showing symptoms of COVID-19 when her family brought her in, which prompted the hospital to immediately note her status as PDP, said Rosario. The medical team took a swab sample, but did not administer a COVID-19 rapid test. We have taken samples from her for swab testing and are still waiting for the result, Rosario said on Sunday. She also noted that the girl had an underlying heart condition. This is the first toddler with PDP status who has died at Adam Malik hospital, she added. Rosario said that the hospital's records showed that five of its patients being treated for COVID-19 had died: two PDPs and three patients who ahd tested positive for the disease. North Sumatra has to date recorded 65 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and eight deaths, and has the eighth highest number of cases among Indonesia's 34 provinces. Will he? Wont he? These are the two questions that 1.3 billion Indians are asking amid expectations that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may announce a restricted withdrawal of the nationwide lockdown. The 21-day lockdown announced on March 24 to contain the spread of COVID-19, which has brought economic activity to a screeching halt, affecting livelihoods of millions, ends on April 14. There's widespread anticipation that the restrictions could first be rolled back in a phased manner in those areas where there are fewer instances of COVID-19 positive cases. Also Read: PM Modi to address nation at 10 am tomorrow, decision on lockdown extension likely COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions View more How does a vaccine work? A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine. How many types of vaccines are there? There are broadly four types of vaccine one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine. What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind? Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time. View more Show In his meeting with Chief Ministers on April 11, Modi had announced a nuanced change in the government's approach, with a renewed focus on 'jaan' (life) and 'jahaan; (livelihood). "Our mantra earlier was 'jaan hai to jahaan hai' (if there's a life, there's a world) but now is 'jaan bhi, jahaan bhi', (we need a life, we need the world too) the PM told state CMs, perhaps obliquely hinting that the government's strategy would now not just be focusing on saving lives but also kickstarting the economy. Many states such as Punjab, Odisha, West Bengal, Karnataka and Maharashtra have already announced an extension of lockdown till April 30. During the weekend, the Union home ministry has been asked to look into the possibility of letting a few sectors restart operations to revive economic activity, as India battles to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Track this blog for latest updates on coronavirus outbreak The recommendations made by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) came on April 12, two days before the 21-day nationwide ends. All eyes are on Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the next course of action. Also Read: Coronavirus lockdown | India plans to resume some manufacturing after April 15: Sources Here's what may happen: (Disclaimer: This is a scenario mapping, not a definitive information matrix) Some work is better than no work The DPIIT suggests that industrial units could begin work with only 20 percent to 25 percent capacity in a single shift. For work to resume, industries must ensure single entry points for workers, sufficient space for ensuring social distancing, use of separate transport for ferrying workers or provide stay arrangements in factory premises, and high quality regular sanitisation of the premises. The list of industries to resume work, according to DPIIT, include: cement, textiles, automobiles, seed, fertilisers and plastic among others. You can read the full list here. Beginning work with limited workforce would allow companies to initiate production. Economic activities would resume, which would gradually improve the macro indicators. India was already in the middle of an economic slowdown. Small is where the action is Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the lifeblood of Indias manufacturing sector, with export commitments could be first off the block with restricted operations. The sector's ability to repay debt with zero production is a concern that has been plaguing the sector. Though the Reserve Bank of India announced a moratorium on loan repayments for three months, there have been complains of lack of clarity on the interest payments of term loans. Resumption of economic activities would provide the sector with a lease of life Roads and houses Housing and construction sectors need to be allowed if the labourers stay at the sites with all facilities and safeguards. These activities are essential to improve the economic situation and provide liquidity in the hands of the people. After the Prime Minister's announcement of a complete lockdown, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers fled cities and crowded state borders to head home. If construction activities are allowed to resume, out-of-work labourers would find employment. This could somewhat mitigate concerns over survival of informal workers and feeding themselves. Bring back the gig workers The lockdown has affected the income of tens of thousands that function on daily errands and work in towns and cities. From cobblers to plumbers, to AC repair mechanics to electricians, from the neighbourhood presswalla (dhobi) to the car and cycle repair mechanics to the neighbourhood vegetable and fruit sellers, have found themselves out of job for weeks at a stretch. The DPIIT is in favour of lifting restrictions on such people, including online aggregators offering such services. A third man who was arrested after a serious assault in Co Cork has been released without charge. A man in his 20s was attacked in Pearse Square in Ballyphehane last Tuesday. BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. The Butte Strong Fund committee has approved several grants over the past two months, totaling over $2 million for Camp Fire recovery. Among those grants, includes a grant for $1 million that would continue to help pay permit fees for primary residences as well as provide new incentives for rebuilding rentals and multi-family housing in the town of Paradise, the Butte Strong Fund committee announced Monday. Last year, the Butte Strong Fund approved $1 million for the town of Paradise and $500,000 for Butte County that helped pay 50% of the permit fees up to $3,500 for homeowners who wanted to rebuild a primary residence. The town exhausted its $1 million and requested another grant, according to the Butte Strong Fund committee said. If the request is accepted by the Paradise Town Council on Tuesday, the grant would be expanded to allow fee reductions for second homes and multi-family housing, with the goal of providing more rentals. Individuals can learn about the Rebuild Incentive Program by contacting the towns Development Services Department at the Building Resiliency Center in Paradise, or call 872-6291 extension 411. The grant for renewal of the Rebuild Incentive Program was the largest among 18 grants totaling $2,051,450 that were approved over the past two months, listed below. To learn more details about them, CLICK HERE Oroville Hope Center - A grant that was also matched by the American Red Cross, will pay for operational support for long-term recovery and rebuilding efforts. - A grant that was also matched by the American Red Cross, will pay for operational support for long-term recovery and rebuilding efforts. Camp Fire Shed Project - A grant will provide funding for another round of volunteer effort. Members with the Paradise Adventist Church will partner with Maranatha Volunteers International to build and deliver 400 high-quality, secure storage sheds to selected recipients who live throughout the Camp Fire burn scar. The project directly benefits people who lost their homes, are living in RVs and who intend to rebuild. - A grant will provide funding for another round of volunteer effort. Members with the Paradise Adventist Church will partner with Maranatha Volunteers International to build and deliver 400 high-quality, secure storage sheds to selected recipients who live throughout the Camp Fire burn scar. The project directly benefits people who lost their homes, are living in RVs and who intend to rebuild. Habitat for Humanity of Butte County - The grant will support increased staffing, technology and systems to help the organization achieve its goal of increasing and sustaining more home production each year. - The grant will support increased staffing, technology and systems to help the organization achieve its goal of increasing and sustaining more home production each year. Yankee Hill Fire Safe Council - Funds in vouchers for residents to use at three markets and stores near Concow. - Funds in vouchers for residents to use at three markets and stores near Concow. Butte 211 - The grant will allow Butte 211 to create a public, user-friendly 211campfire.org website providing real-time updated community resource information for fire survivors, disaster case managers and other workers assisting in the Camp Fire recovery. - The grant will allow Butte 211 to create a public, user-friendly 211campfire.org website providing real-time updated community resource information for fire survivors, disaster case managers and other workers assisting in the Camp Fire recovery. Welcome to Paradise Sign Rebuild Habitat for Humanity of Yuba-Sutter - The grant will allow the organization to hire a fund development officer for Camp Fire-related affordable housing projects. - The grant will allow the organization to hire a fund development officer for Camp Fire-related affordable housing projects. Community Resource Coalition - The awarded grant will help with the ongoing needs of the resource center in Paradise that was established by the organization to provide goods and services to Camp Fire survivors. - The awarded grant will help with the ongoing needs of the resource center in Paradise that was established by the organization to provide goods and services to Camp Fire survivors. Paradise/Butte Gleaners - The grant will provide provisions for homeless Camp Fire survivors in Concow, Magalia, Gridley, Paradise and Oroville that arent normally carried at the food bank. - The grant will provide provisions for homeless Camp Fire survivors in Concow, Magalia, Gridley, Paradise and Oroville that arent normally carried at the food bank. First Baptist Church of Paradise - The grant will allow the organization to continue to distribute food and other items for people affected by the Camp Fire - The grant will allow the organization to continue to distribute food and other items for people affected by the Camp Fire Butte Schools Self-Funded Programs - The grant will provide mental health support services and group counseling to employees or retirees of ButteGlenn Community College District, Butte County Office of Education, school districts and two charter schools in Butte County. - The grant will provide mental health support services and group counseling to employees or retirees of ButteGlenn Community College District, Butte County Office of Education, school districts and two charter schools in Butte County. Abundant Manifestations of H.O.P.E. - A grant will provide propane distribution to eligible households at North State Food Bank distributions in the burn scar. - A grant will provide propane distribution to eligible households at North State Food Bank distributions in the burn scar. Butte County Sheriff's Office - will purchase a trailer to carry a chipper for trees and brush. The Butte Fire Safe Council obtained a grant to buy the chipper but not a trailer. Inmates from Butte County Jail provide the labor, overseen by the Sheriffs Office. With this trailer and chipper, work crews will be better equipped to assist with continuing efforts to clean up the more remote areas affected by the Camp Fire while also helping to maintain defensible space as vegetation returns. - will purchase a trailer to carry a chipper for trees and brush. The Butte Fire Safe Council obtained a grant to buy the chipper but not a trailer. Inmates from Butte County Jail provide the labor, overseen by the Sheriffs Office. With this trailer and chipper, work crews will be better equipped to assist with continuing efforts to clean up the more remote areas affected by the Camp Fire while also helping to maintain defensible space as vegetation returns. Vietnam Veterans of American Chapter 582 - A grant will buy and deliver gravel to the trailers, RVs and other temporary dwellings of 53 families or individuals in and around Concow who lost their homes in the Camp Fire. - A grant will buy and deliver gravel to the trailers, RVs and other temporary dwellings of 53 families or individuals in and around Concow who lost their homes in the Camp Fire. United Way of Northern California - A grant provided support for United Ways Stable Housing Opportunities Program and allowed United Way to deploy $900,000 to vulnerable households. - A grant provided support for United Ways Stable Housing Opportunities Program and allowed United Way to deploy $900,000 to vulnerable households. Hometech Charter School - The grant will assist 35 students unable to access or afford wi-fi. HotSpots were donated by T-Mobile but the broadband lines for all devices will cost $16,800 over 24 months. - The grant will assist 35 students unable to access or afford wi-fi. HotSpots were donated by T-Mobile but the broadband lines for all devices will cost $16,800 over 24 months. Yankee Hill Fire Safe Council - The grant will allow the organization to hire two part-timers and also will support a newsletter, website, payroll services and facility fees associated with meetings at Concow School and the historic schoolhouse. With these latest grants, the Butte Strong Fund said the North Valley Community Foundation has awarded more than $33 million for community recovery through Butte Strong Fund, Camp Fire Relief Fund and donor-designated funds. Fifty million pints of beer and cider could be due to end up down the drain after unused barrels go out of date in pub cellars across the UK. If public venues continue to remain closed into the summer months due to coronavirus, many of the barrels they had bought are likely to pass their three of four month best before period. This will leave publicans with little choice but to either return full barrels back to the brewery, some of which have promised to replace them free of charge, or to document themselves pouring away the spoils as duty-free waste. Tom Stainer, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) told The BBC: 'It's a very sad waste of all the work and talent that goes into producing great beer. Manager Sam Craven (R) adheres to social distancing guidelines as he serves takeaway beer to a customer, at the Bow-Legged Beagle micro-pub in Upton near Liverpool on April 01, 2020 'People won't get to drink it and all those resources have been used up for nothing.' Mr Stainer estimates that of the 39,000 UK pubs each has around 15 barrels in its cellar on average. With the average keg holding 88 pints this means around 51 million pints could be currently spoiling in cellars. Lager and other pasteurised beer can last up to three to four months however unpasteurised craft beers and real ale has a short cellar life of six to nine weeks meaning many ordered before the lockdown may be nearing their sell by date before they can be drunk by the public. Keris De Villiers and her husband, landlady of Ram Inn in Wandsworth, south-west London An initiative called Pub2Me are inviting pubs to register their stocks for delivery or collection for consumers in the area. Each participating pub will display their menu card, with a selection of drinks and food options they are able to offer for collection and possibly delivery. Keris De Villiers, landlady of the Ram Inn in Wandsworth, south-west London, told the BBC that unfortunately having people queuing on the narrow pavements outside wasn't an option for them. She told the publication: 'We could do takeaways but that would mean selling beer on the corner of a very small pavement. That wouldn't be socially responsible, with the need for people to keep their distance from one another. The whole situation is heart-breaking. 'Our brewer literally talks to his tanks when he's at work every day. People really care about the beer they're making. It's a craft and people are passionate about it.' Similar scenes are unfolding in the U.S. where one brewery in North Carolina lined up barrels on 'death row' In order to get rid of now useless beer, known as ullage, some pub landlords have resorted to tipping it down the drain, however they may need to document this in order to be exempt from paying duty on the alcohol - and to prove they have not profited. Treasury rules state that no duty needs to be paid on spoilt beer, however it is usually brewery representatives who officiate this process. As they are not able to visit during social distancing this has now fallen on some pub owners to document their own wastage. Wastage that returns to breweries still in the barrels may be boiled down and turned into fertiliser or animal feed. The alcohol could also be extracted to make hand sanitizer. An initiative called Pub2Me are inviting pubs to register their stocks for delivery or collection for consumers in the area. Pictured: A Royal Mail postman walks past a pub in York While sales have been non-existent in pubs since PM Boris Johnson ordered their closure on March 20, the sale of alcohol in supermarkets has shot up by a fifth in the last month. A spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: 'Pubs are at the heart of our communities and an important part of local economies. 'We've asked them to temporarily close in order to help protect people and reduce the spread of the virus. But we are also delivering support to help businesses, including pubs, through the coronavirus pandemic.' Until the evening of March 22, when Delhi was placed in lockdown by the state government to contain the spread of Covid-19, the commandos of the Delhi Armed Police were busy transporting prisoners such as Abu Salem and Neeraj Bawana to and from various courts in the capital for hearings in their cases. They were also posted in the north-eastern part of the city, which had been hit by riots recently, to maintain law and order. But as the National Capital came to a halt, with less crime as well as all courts being closed, and court hearings taking place via video conferencing, these commandos are now working to feed the hungry and the underprivileged in the city. The two target shooting simulation rooms of the commandos in Malviya Nagar have temporarily been converted to a space where police personnel stock food, pack it for families in need and make it ready for distribution through the vans parked outside. Before the lockdown, these vans were used for transporting close to 2,000 prisoners from prisons to courts on a daily basis. Sitting near the rifles, used by the commandos to practice shooting until last month, the police personnel are busy packing the rations. Each ration packet has four kilograms (kg) of rice, three kilos of flour, two kilos of pulses, a bottle of cooking oil and a bar of soap. The unit has formed different teams one to liaison with the Good Samaritans who want to donate food items, another to check that all distress calls are attended to, and a third team to keep stock of the essential food items and their distribution. The distress calls are attended by two NGOs, which the unit has tied up with. Until last month, we were busy transporting prisoners as part of our job. However, now priorities have changed. At a time like this, we are glad to be doing something for society. This is such a noble cause, said a head constable, requesting anonymity, part of the team tasked to feed the needy. Sitting near the rifles, used by the commandos to practice shooting until last month, the police personnel are busy packing the rations. Each ration packet has four kilograms (kg) of rice, three kilos of flour, two kilos of pulses, a bottle of cooking oil and a bar of soap. (Sourced) On Monday, an orphanage located on Mathura road at the Nizamuddin-Jangpura crossing near Nizamuddins Markaz, called the police control room informing them that they were running short of ration and essential items for the 37 children who live in the home. The caller told the police that for the past few days, delivery persons have also stopped coming to the area after reports of rise in Sars-Cov-2 cases in the adjoining Nizamuddin area. The Nizamuddin Basti has emerged as the biggest hot spot for such cases in the national Capital. Special commissioner of police Robin Hibu, the chief of the Armed Police, said that upon receiving the call, a team of officials from his unit rushed to the orphanage. Our officials did not hesitate to go to an area where so many cases have been reported within mere 50-100 metres. No delivery persons have been coming to the orphanage. I am proud of my boys. They even packed sanitary napkins for the young girls in the orphanage. We have also assured the caretakers that the police will continue to help and reach out to those in need during this time. Since the lockdown began, government agencies have been working to feed the underprivileged on priority and officers at police stations across the city are also engaged in the same. Officials say the unprecedented decrease in incidents of crime in the national Capital has enabled the city police to focus on helping the underprivileged deal with the lockdown. According to them, there has been a marked reduction in all types of crimes including murder, robbery, snatching, theft and kidnapping ever since the lockdown began. But how does the Delhi Armed Police manage to gather resources every day? Hibu says Good Samaritans who want to help the poor are plenty. Till now we have distributed ration to 4,762 families in the city. The two NGOs -- Helping Hands and North East Chamber of Commerce -- informed us of those in need of supplies. We verify the information they give and hand over the items. Each packet of ration is sufficient to last a few days. The government is helping us get in touch with NGOs. There are enough good people in the city who want to help. Some of them are anonymous donors. They want to join this fight against coronavirus. It is with their help that we have been managing to reach out to the underprivileged all these days, he says. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Puthandu is celebrated with pomp and fervour by Tamilians across the world. Puthandu or Tamil New Year will be celebrated on 14 April this year. The festival is celebrated on the first day of the Tamil month Chithirai and marks the start of the Tamil calendar. Puthandu is celebrated with pomp and fervour by Tamilians across the world. On this day, people wish each other 'Puthandu Vazthukal' which means 'Happy New Year.' Puthandu 2020 date and timings According to the Drik Panchang, following is the auspicious time for Puthandu 2020: Day and date: Tuesday, 14 April 2020 Sunrise timing: 6:22 am Sunset timing: 6:56 pm Sankranti moment: 8:39 pm on 13 April Rituals and significance of Puthandu On the Tamil New Year, people wake up early and take a bath. After this, they wear new clothes and arrange three fruits jackfruit, banana and mango - on a tray. They also place silver or gold jewellery, money, arecanut, betel leaves and flowers on the tray. This ritual is known as Kanni and it is believed to bring happiness and prosperity. Houses are decorated and the festival is celebrated with family and friends. There are two dishes closely associated with Puthandu, one sour and the other sweet. Special rice kheer or pal payasam is also an important food item in Puthandu. Legend behind the celebration of Puthandu According to mythology, it is believed that Lord Brahma of the Holy Trinity in the Hindu pantheon of gods created the universe on this day. Puthandu is a part of the 23 public holidays of Tamil Nadu as per the Negotiable Instruments Act of 1881. Apart from India, the festival is also celebrated in other countries, including Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Singapore and Malaysia. TDT | Manama Bahrain Polytechnic begins today accepting applications for admission to the next academic year 2020-2021. The application period will continue until June 1. Registry Director Ahmed Malalla explained that the process of applying will be done online. Interested applicants must complete the form available on polytechnic.bh and pay the application fee (BD20 non-refundable). Applicants must also submit the following required documents: a valid ID card or passport and the secondary school certificates if available to the student at the time of application. The Registry Directorate will verify the documents and approve the application. The applicant will then receive a confirmation e-mail that they have submitted an application for admission, as well as an entry test appointment. The whole process is conducted through the schools website, so applicants are not required to come to the campus to apply. Malalla directed applicants to prepare for the entry tests in mathematics and English, as the selection of students will be very competitive. Samples of entry tests can be found on the website. Applicants who meet the minimum high school CGPA requirements, which is a cumulative average of no less than 70 per cent (to be provided with the graduation certificate), and pass the entry tests will be selected, subject to the number of vacant seats in that year. Bahrain Polytechnic offers the following academic programmes: Bachelor of Business, Bachelor of International Logistics Management, Bachelor of Information and Communications Technology, Bachelor of Engineering Technology, Bachelor of Web Media and Bachelor of Visual Design. Chinese police officers march in formation at Beijing Railway Station on April 4, 2020 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Beijings Attempt to Influence Wisconsin Official Backfires, Results in Resolution Condemning Virus Cover-up The Chinese regimes attempt to get a Wisconsin state senator to voice support for Beijings CCP virus containment efforts has resulted in the lawmaker introducing a resolution slamming Beijings coverup of the outbreak. Wisconsin Senate President Roger Roth on March 26 introduced a resolution to condemn the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for deliberately and intentionally misleading the world about the outbreak in Wuhan, which has resulted in a global pandemic the likes of which has not been seen for generations, according to the resolution text. Roth told The Epoch Times that the resolution would not have been introduced were it not for the Chinese consulates actions. He received two emails from an official in the Chinese consulate in Chicago, asking him to pass a resolution the consulate drafted that would tout Wisconsin states support for Beijings efforts to combat the outbreak. When the senators staff handed him a printout of the first email, dated Feb. 26, he saw that it came from a Hotmail account and thus dismissed it as a fake. I threw it away and thought nothing of it, Roth said. But when he received a followup email on March 10, the senator asked his staff to verify the email address. After inquiries through state government sources, Roths staff confirmed that the message was indeed sent from the consulate. Roth was told that Chinese consulate officials routinely use private email accounts. I got really angry, because by that point, the United States started to be hit by the coronavirus and were trying to prepare, and we realized that weve been lied to, Roth said. I was more than angry. I was downright furious. So he sent a one-word response to the consulate: Nuts. Then I signed my name and that was it, the senator said. The consulate official replied back expressing shock to Roths email, but he didnt respond. A few days later, Roth decided to take further action. He said he told his staff, We are introducing a resolution on China, and were going to pass it; its just not going to be the one China wants. The Chinese consulate in Chicago didnt return a request for comment. Emphasis Added Roth said the resolution lays out point by point how the CCP has been lying to the world in relation to the outbreak. It also calls out the Chinese consulates attempts to influence Roth, complete with bold, italics, and underline for added emphasis: The Chinese Consulate reached out to the Wisconsin Senate President requesting that the Senate pass a resolution written by the Chinese Consulate including propaganda and falsehoods such as: China has been transparent and quick in sharing key information of the virus with the WHO and the international community, thus creating a window of opportunity for other countries to make timely response.' While Chinese authorities first reported on the outbreak in Wuhan on Dec. 31, 2019, a South China Morning Post report, citing government records, said the regime knew about the first patient in November 2019. Authorities also silenced and reprimanded those who tried to sound the alarm about the outbreak in late December. And while the regime confirmed human-to-human transmission on Jan. 20, evidence shows authorities knew the virus was spreading between humans well before that time. The Chinese regime also obstructed efforts to research the virus. On Jan. 1, the Hubei provincial health authority instructed a genomics company to stop testing virus samples and to destroy all existing samples, Chinese financial magazine Caixin reported. The only window of opportunity they gave the world was an opportunity for this virus to spread around the world and turn into a pandemic, Roth said. The resolution also acknowledges that the Wisconsin senate stands in solidarity with the Chinese people, a reflection of the senators efforts to distinguish between the Chinese people and the CCP. I think that the Chinese people are a wonderful and great people, Roth said. Theyve just been held hostage by this brutal, oppressive regime for the last 70 years. Oppressive Regime The resolution also highlights the communist regimes widespread human rights abuses, including its treatment of Tibetans, its internment of Uyghur Muslims, and forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong practitioners. When you look at the forced abortions and sterilizations, and organ harvesting, you realize that this Communist Party of China is just a terribly oppressive and brutal regime, he said. It was for this reason that Roth said Wisconsin should not lend legitimacy to the CCP by passing the resolution proposed by the Chinese consulate, which the regime would in turn use for its domestic propaganda efforts. Its so imperative that we in Wisconsin dont do that and that governments around the world dont do that, the senator said. Because were giving legitimacy to a government that has the worst human rights violations of any modern state that Im aware of. In Wisconsin, like the vast majority of U.S. states, people have been directed to stay at home in a nationwide bid to contain the outbreak. Roth said he wants the people of Wisconsin to know that theyre sheltering at home right now, and their kids cant attend school right now, and their spouse or relative or friend may have lost their job because the Communist Party of China decided to lie to the world. But hes also hopeful that this crisis presents an opportunity for the Chinese people, once they discover the truth that the CCP lied to them. This could be, I hope, the catalyst to bring down the Communist Party of China and allow those people to rise again. Since all nonessential businesses were ordered closed last month to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Shayne Brown figures his seven shuttered San Antonio-area barbershops have lost a combined $1 million in revenue. Were just dead in the water, Brown said, adding hes had to furlough 120 employees. Within days of closing the shops, Brown, 51, filed claims with their insurer asking it to cover the loss of business income. State Farm Lloyds rejected those claims. So Browns shops responded by suing State Farm for breach of contract for wrongfully denying coverage and other claims. The shops seek more than $1 million in damages in the complaint, filed Wednesday in state District Court in San Antonio. The Good Newsletter: A weekly dose of inspiring San Antonio stories, delivered to your inbox Its among the first if not the first lawsuits brought by businesses in San Antonio over the coronavirus pandemic. Brown never actually expected State Farm to pay on the claims filed by his shops, which include the Diesel Barbershop, Henleys Gentlemens Grooming and Outlaws & Gents Grooming. This was an unprecedented event thats impacting the entire country, so, of course, theyre going to deny the claims, he said. They dont want to set a precedent early on and have to pay whats probably going to be billions of dollars worth of claims. He didnt know how much coverage he has for the shops. The filing of a lawsuit does not substantiate the allegations within the complaint, State Farm spokesman Chris Pilcic said in an email. Weve recently learned about the filing, and it is premature to provide further comment at this time." On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio-area lenders have a backlog of small-business-loan requests In a letter to one of Browns shops denying its claim, State Farm stated the shop had no coverage for loss of income and extra expense for your closure due to coronavirus. The policy specifically excludes loss caused by enforcement or ordinance or law, virus, and consequential losses, State Farm added in the March 24 letter shared by Brown. San Antonio attorney Shannon Loyd, who specializes in insurance cases and represents the barbershops, believes the insurance policies cover business interruption caused by the stay-at-home orders issued by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. We believe we have a covered loss that we can prove to the court, Loyd said. Thats our burden. And then its the insurance companies burden to prove that any exclusions apply. We are in new territory, she added. Nothing like this has ever happened to any of us in our lifetime. Its a case of first impression, and so we need the courts to decide because thats who decides the question of whether a contract covers or doesnt cover something. On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases Coverage and terms vary among insurance policies. But its not hard to find lawyers whove argued whether businesses can collect business-interruption insurance proceeds due to COVID-19. Camille Garcia, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Council of Texas, which represents insurance carriers, said after the SARS epidemic occurred in the early 2000s, commercial insurance policies were expressly written to exclude pandemics and viruses. If this hit globally, theres no way that an insurer can insure so many policies, Garcia said. When you have this whole global pandemic where everybody is impacted, insurance is not written for that. It would be economically unfeasible to be pay for these (claims). On its website, the Texas Department of Insurance states business-interruption insurance generally covers financial losses due to property damage that prevents a company from doing business. The agency adds, however, that such coverage is usually based on direct physical loss of or damage to the property, which the epidemic may not trigger. In the letter State Farm sent to one of Brown shops, the insurer said the shop didnt have any physical damage. Physical loss or damage is defined very broadly in Texas, Loyd countered. Browns policies dont define direct physical loss, she said. The Department of Insurance advises businesses owners to file a complaint if they believe their claims were unfairly denied. The barbershops business-interruption insurance covers up to a year of income, Loyd said. She added that the policies also cover civil authority orders that restrict access to a place of business. That provides up to four weeks of income. State Farm also denied that claim. Everywhere we go, theres bacteria and viruses pretty much everywhere we go, she said. They dont cause the damage, the interruption of the business. Its the order to stay home (and) the publics fear of contracting the virus that causes the damage. Both business-interruption and civil authority coverage are typically amendments customers can add to their policies, Garcia said. On March 26, Loyd filed a similar lawsuit against another insurer in Houston on behalf of a business forced to shut down because of a stay-at-home order. It makes wigs for cancer patients. Its the first business-interruption lawsuit filed in the state due to COVID-19, she says on her website. Brown opened his first shop, Diesel Barbershop at the Strand at Huebner Oaks, in 2011. He was spurred to open the shop after a series of bad haircut experiences. He doesnt cut hair himself, though. Browns shops have operated without a stitch of debt, he said. Since the pandemic, though, hes applied for a disaster loan through the Small Business Administration. Hes also applied for a low-interest loan through the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program, part of the $2 trillion stimulus package signed last month by President Donald Trump. Texas Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox So far, though, Brown hasnt gotten a relief from either program. Brown had to resubmit his application for the SBA loan after getting no response. He was told the website he had used to make the loan request had been compromised. As for the PPP loan, Brown said his bank hasnt been moving particularly fast. I spoke with them (Friday) and unless I misunderstood, they have not approved a single application, he said. Theyre still waiting for some additional guidance from the SBA with regards to the language in the promissory note. In the meantime, Brown expressed bewilderment over rules determining what is an essential business. He doesnt understand how a cookie maker or a coffee joint can continue to operate but he cant. With some masks and some hand sanitizer, we can operate pretty effectively without putting folks at risk, he said. Im not saying that we shouldnt abide by the guidelines that are out there. Im saying it just seems like to me its a little all over the place. Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. To read more from Patrick, become a subscriber. pdanner@express-news.net | Twitter: @AlamoPD Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Sausan Atika (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 15:42 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd190f81 1 City #COVID19,COVID-19,orange-troops,#Jakarta Free Concerned about the highly infectious coronavirus, Firmansyah Putra washes his orange uniform and takes a bath as soon as he arrives home from work. The 25-year old, who lives in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, then washes his hands and uses hand sanitizer before holding his 3-months-old son. A new father, Firman tries to apply a high standard of personal hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic. My wife also reminds me to wash my hands and apply hand sanitizer often, as we now have a baby, he told The Jakarta Post. Given the news reports that people infected by the virus could be asymptomatic, it is better to take all necessary precautions, he added. Firman works for the Jakarta Public Facility Maintenance Agency (PPSU), widely known as the orange troops in reference to the color of the uniforms. Unable to work from home during the outbreak, they are at an elevated risk of contracting the virus. On regular days, he works eight hours, mainly to sweep major streets in Sunter Agung, Tanjung Priok. However, for the past 10 days, Firman has been working shorter hours, in line with a policy his office introduced to protect its workers from coronavirus infections. "Now the PPSU works five hours a day and there are no more roll calls nor morning briefings at the Sunter Agung subdistrict office [which is also the headquarters of his PPSU team]," he said. Firman said his superior, through WhatsApps group chats, often reminded the PPSU workers to maintain a physical distance as well as to wear masks and gloves during work hours. And now, we are only allowed to gather in groups of no more than four people during breaks. Everyone must sit down [or stand] at least 1 meter from their peers, he added. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the way people perform their duties, with many companies and institutions eliminating some tasks their workers normally do. Read also: COVID-19: Vacant roads, little activity mark first day of PSBB implementation in Jakarta Many deem the orange troops heroes for ensuring the clean face of the capital. Apart from cleaning, the PPSU workers often perform jobs in residential areas, such as cleaning up mud or removing fallen trees. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Firman said, many subdistrict heads in Jakarta prohibited the orange troops from entering residential areas in an effort to prevent the workers from contracting the virus. If the community unit [RW] head asked us, we would reject the request. They [RW management] need to handle their [cleanliness] issue using their own resources, Firman said. According to Firman, the number of such requests has fallen a lot since the Jakarta administration called on the public to stay at home. North Jakarta Mayor Sigit Wijatmoko recently issued a circular stipulating that PPSU workers who are more than 50 years old, pregnant, breastfeeding mothers, suffer from hypertension, heart disease, lung disease or other underlying health problems should stay at home. In North Jakarta, all the orange troops working in the field and outdoors are given masks and hand sanitizer. Despite the reduced workload and shorter working hours, Firman said, the workers were paid their full salary. In addition to 2,000 orange troops in 267 subdistricts across the capital, Jakarta also employs contract workers for tasks under the Jakarta Water Resources Agency, Park and Forestry Agency and Bina Marga Road Agency. Jakarta Water Resources Agency head Juaini Yusuf, who heads around 7,000 contract workers known as the blue troops, said he had issued a similar circular aimed to protect the agencys workers from the coronavirus. The circulation is based on instructions issued by the World Health Organization [WHO] and the Jakarta Health Agency, as well as a Jakarta gubernatorial instruction on handling COVID-19, he said, adding that handwashing and the use of face masks were mandatory for the blue troops, particularly those cleaning gutters. Read also: COVID-19: More regions request PSBB status as Indonesia sees big jump in infections, deaths As frontline workers dealing with garbage, workers of the Jakarta Environment Agency must strictly follow health protocol during the pandemic, the agency's spokesperson, Yogi Ikhwan, said. All workers must wear complete personal protective equipment based on their work risk, practice physical distancing with a minimum of 1 m between workers and wash their hands before and after performing duties, he said. The instruction applies to more than 13,000 workers under the Environment Agency most of whom are assigned to collecting garbage, drive garbage trucks, clean rivers and reservoirs -- and workers at the Bantar Gebang landfill in Bekasi, West Java. The Jakarta Bina Marga Road Agency has also issued a circular on COVID-19 prevention in ongoing projects, such as road repairs and overpass construction, stipulating that all projects must have a COVID-19 prevention task force and provide health facilities for workers. 'Around April 1-2, both states had similar number of cases, around 300.' 'The number of deaths in Kerala were 2 and in Maharashtra around 10. But the two graphs have diverged after that.' IMAGE: A doctor is about to use a swab on a child in Borivali, north west Mumbai, April 7, 2020. Photograph: PTI Photo Dr Abhay Shukla is a public health physician and has vast experience in working on health issues at the grassroots in western India. He is the co-covenor of the Jan Swastha Abhiyan or People's Health Movement. Dr Shukla, below, has co-edited and authored several books: Review of Health Care in India, Report on Health Inequities in Maharashtra, Health System in India -- Crisis and Alternatives and The Rights Approach to Health and Health Care. "Till a few days back in Maharashtra, we were thinking that only a few people are infected when actually many more were," Dr Shukla tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih, discussing the reasons behind the rising cases in Maharashtra and how Kerala contained the epidemic. The first of a two-part interview: Maharashtra is the worst COVID-19 affected state. As a public health practitioner, what should be done and what are the critical recommendations to deal with the surging cases? There are some things that are easily do-able and there others that are not, yet they can be done if there is a political will and imagination. If you compare the current situation in Maharashtra and Kerala. Around April 1-2, both states had similar number of cases, around 300. The number of deaths in Kerala were 2 and in Maharashtra around 10. But the two graphs have diverged after that. Kerela was the first state in India with COVID-19 cases when they had a student returning from Wuhan with the infection. Kerala is a high-risk state because it has a large number of international travellers. It also has a lot of domestic travellers because its natives work in various other states in the country and return to the state. Despite that, Kerala was able to contain the epidemic while Maharashtra couldn't and cases spiralled. The number of deaths in Maharashtra is now 149 and Kerala has held it at 2 (As on April 9). Kerala's entire public health structure is dedicated to this and they are informing people on a daily basis. Maharashtra has a greater per capita income than Kerala and Mumbai is the financial capital of the country. Despite that, why have we landed in such a situation. Why are the COVID-19 cases mounting in Maharashtra? Its fatality rate is double that of the national average. There are four arms to dealing with COVID--19. Maharashtra is making reasonable efforts no doubt, but they are not enough, which is why, especially in Mumbai, the situation has spiralled. A lockdown is no substitute for careful testing, tracing, tracking, treatment and isolation of each and every person who is a contact, or a contact of a suspect. This is what Kerala did. Kerala's testing rates are much higher than Maharashtra. Just by locking down the whole state of Maharashtra with 12 crore people will not be sufficient. Moreover, it is not working very well in rural areas. South Korea contained this epidemic without a lockdown. It was the second country after China where the outbreak happened. They controlled it very effectively and now we hardly hear about COVID-19 cases in South Korea. One must understand that a lockdown is a very crude and blanket measure. It may be required for a short period of time, but it is not a substitute for individualised very large-scale testing, which is what South Korea or Kerala did or what Maharashtra is trying now. Wide-scale testing gives you the number of people actually infected. Till a few days back in Maharashtra, we were thinking that only a few people are infected when actually many more were. Deaths on a particular day show what the extent of the epidemic was two weeks back. We did not pick up a large number of cases because of inadequate testing at that time and those people were roaming around the community. They were visiting hospitals because they were not infected at that time. When they infected more people and deaths started being recorded, we realised that there were many cases. First of all, testing has to be expanded significantly. It is most necessary. We have passed the stage where we could have put the cat back in the bag. Once travellers are the contacts it is easy to control, but once it becomes a community-based spread it is more difficult to control. Still with some focal containment it can be tackled. Containment areas have been earmarked in Mumbai and Pune. It is very important, but still the bedrock remains large-scale testing, tracing of contacts, and isolation through home quarantine. In Kerala, some 10,000 were in home quarantine which means you stay at home and within the home also you remain in your room and people in the family take care of you without getting exposed to you. You stay there for 14 days until you are fine. If you develop symptoms you are shifted directly to a hospital. Home quarantine has to be done very strictly on all the contacts. In Mumbai, as many as 85 hospital staff have been infected and at least four private hospitals are not admitting new patients. At one hospital, nurses were infected because they were dealing with a patient who tested positive. Those nurses stay in the same room as other nurses and 50 other healthcare workers came down with the infection. There was gross negligence in providing PPE and following the isolation protocol. This is an Italy-kind of situation where a hospital became the epi-centre of the infection. Instead of controlling centres, they become amplifying centres. A range of measures have to be coordinated, it is not only about enforcing a lockdown and expecting that the epidemic will be controlled. It has to be done in a nuanced, strategic and integrated manner. We have not been able to do testing and contact tracing on the required scale, we have not been able to isolate contacts effectively, not provided adequate PPE to nurses and other staff in contrast to Kerala. Kerala has a graded strategy for providing PPE. Not everybody needs the head to toe kind of spacesuit which is required in the COVID-19 ICU where there is very high risk of infection. In OPDs and wards, different grades of PPE is provided, Kerala has put that on its Web site and is following it. Who is responsible for the 50 workers being infected at a private hospital in Mumbai? Has any official said anything about the management of that hospital and these are supposedly big and private hospitals in Mumbai. PPE are scarce and must be in short supply in rural areas. How must that be making rural healthcare workers vulnerable to infection? In the public health system like in rural PHCs (public health centres) there is a shortage of PPE which must be exposing doctors, healthcare workers and ASHAs who have been asked to do various activities. They all need to be given all these as priority. It cannot be treated as business like usual. It is a war-like situation. Do we send our soldiers to fight a war without bullets? If we can give guns and bullets to our soldiers, why not masks and PPE to our doctors and nurses? Private sector and industries should be roped in to make masks and other necessary equipment as urgent priority. Private companies have been asked to make PPE, ventilators, masks, gloves etc. Do you think we started doing this late? Should we have pre-empted the situation? 1. People need to be given accurate, updated, honest and comprehensive information about what is exactly going on. The Kerala CM addresses the state every evening at 6 pm. He debunks misinformation on WhatsApp etc and gives the exact number of cases, what the state government is doing and how people need to co-operate by doing a b c d. It is not only about people sitting at home after a lockdown. That is not enough. They have mobilised tens of thousands of volunteers. Every panchayat has been asked to mobilise 100 volunteers and entrusted the job of providing food to all those in home quarantine. You can only expect people to remain in quarantine if you provide them daily needs, otherwise they will come out looking for it. Public organisation and mobilisation is critical. Sitting at home and wearing masks while coming out is not sufficient. We need much more effective public communication and mobilisation system. The Maharashtra chief minister has been addressing the people of the state regularly online. He should do an online press conference if possible too. Maybe he could ask the media to send him some questions before hand and he can answer some questions from that when he addresses the state. There has to be very pro-active communication. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-14 01:25:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TORONTO, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Canada's Ontario province identified 421 new cases of COVID-19 and 17 new deaths on Monday morning. It brought the total of COVID-19 cases in the province to 7,470, including 291 deaths. Monday's epidemiological summary by the Ontario provincial health department showed that there were 760 COVID-19 patients in Ontario hospitals, including 263 patients who were being treated in intensive care units. The summary also showed that 813 of all Ontario COVID-19 patients were health care workers. In terms of virus exposure, 1,131 patients traveled within the 14 days prior to becoming ill. The number included 380 patients who traveled to the United States and 117 who traveled to the United Kingdom. A total of 1,223 cases had close contact with another confirmed case while 1,656 infections developed through community transmission. Last week, Ontario laid out its new testing strategy, which involved targeting vulnerable groups like long-term care home residents and first responders. The provincial government's goal is to process 8,000 tests a day by Wednesday and 16,000 a day by May 6. Africa has passed the grim milestone of 10,000 reported cases of coronavirus, along with more than 500 deaths, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC). As the daily number of new infections appears to be falling in parts of the world, some fear the epicentre of the virus could move to the continent. Despite efforts to lock down cities and countries, despite donations of protective equipment, testing kits and ventilators from China, one thing is clear: Africa has not yet flattened the curve and the room for manoeuvre is getting smaller. 'Delay in action' "What we are seeing is that this opportunity is no longer there or almost not there for some countries," says Dr Michel Yao, who runs the emergency response programme for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa. "The worry is also now that [countries] cannot adequately manage this phase, they are moving to [in country transmission]. But we are seeing there is some delay in addressing [this] to mobilise more people, train more people, think about capacity." It is difficult to compare regions with different cultures, economies, travel links and infrastructure, but some comparisons paint an urgent picture. In studying the daily increases in the number of those who have tested positive for coronavirus around the world, Africa appears to be controlling the spread better than in the US and Europe so far. But the comparison with Asia, where some countries appeared to reduce the daily increase in the number of new cases relatively quickly, does not fare so well. Spreading in communities Perhaps a better comparison could be with the Middle East. There, cases have steadily risen, along with deaths, and the region has now recorded more than 78,000 cases in total, according to the WHO. Nearly every African country has reported cases, and while most began with patients bringing the virus in through international travel, it is now spreading within communities. Different variables make predictions difficult, but the worst-case scenarios are still jarring. "Cases can easily pick up," Dr Yao says, "even triple, maybe multiply by seven to 10 from what we have right now". In South Africa, the last two weeks of March saw a 20-fold increase in the number of confirmed cases. In response to the growing numbers, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a country-wide three-week lockdown that began on 27 March. He has since extended that to the end of April as the number of daily new cases has dropped - though it is too early to say conclusively if the lockdown the reason. What is significant is the rise in testing capabilities in South Africa. The country has so far conducted around 60,000 tests for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and is now testing at a rate of nearly 5,000 a day, according to Health Minister Zweli Mkhize. But compared to other countries in the grip of the virus, that amount is still woefully inadequate. Italy - one the hardest hit countries in the world - has a similar population to South Africa and has conducted more than 700,000 tests. Testing numbers are even more worrying across the rest of Africa. Nigeria and Kenya have each conducted around 5,000 tests. Compare that with 600,000 in South Korea, who many see as having waged the strongest campaign against the virus. "We are seeing an increase in the number of tests but I think we could do much more," argues Dr Abdhallah Ziraba, a research scientist and epidemiologist at the African Population and Health Research Center. Testing bottlenecks African countries have been fighting hard to raise their testing capacity. Health ministries have worked to convert private laboratories into Covid-19 testing centres and major laboratories like the Pasteur Institute in Dakar have - through the ACDC-organised Covid-19 training seminars for laboratories around the region. Still it has not been enough. Bottlenecks in the supplies of reagents necessary for testing have limited capacity. Chinese billionaire Jack Ma recently announced donations of more than one million sample extraction kits to African countries. It is unclear whether the full testing package will be included, but if so, the donation could prove critical to boosting tests continent-wide. "We know there are challenges around the development of the tests, the cost of the test and the logistics involved but we can't be complacent and just think that people are not going to die," says Dr Ziraba. According to a study written by epidemiologists in London and Johannesburg, a single reported death could mean a country already has hundreds or even thousands of cases. The more tests that can be conducted, the more confident the continent can be in its data and the systems it has in place to fight the rising tide. One of the major problems Africa will face in the coming weeks is exactly how to fight the virus. So far South Africa's lockdown strategy has shown signs of promise. Other countries have followed suit. Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, has locked down Lagos, restricting movement to essential activities. One suburb of the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa, has followed suit. Dakar in Senegal and Nairobi in Kenya have imposed curfews, allowing people to continue working but preventing social activity and travelling at night. The spectre of a total lockdown however risks a complete halt of economic activity across the continent. More than a third of the population of the continent lives below the poverty line. While most of those live in rural areas and potentially have access to subsistence farming, around 20% live in urban areas, relying on casual labour to feed themselves and their family. Risk of malnutrition If it proves necessary to completely cut them off from jobs and markets, the potential death toll is unknown. "Economic recession and deteriorating livelihoods mean impoverishment, malnutrition, worsened access to routine health services, and that in turn all means lives lost as well," says Dr Francesco Checci, a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "Lives lost not just among the old but also among children and younger people. So there is a really difficult equation there." Countries like Rwanda have started to distribute food and resources in anticipation of those consequences. In Cape Town, in South Africa, even notorious street gangs have begun to help distribute food. In other countries, the plan is less clear. In Kenya, civil society groups have started collecting funds and food for lower income families. Ethiopia has declared a state of emergency, despite Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently saying that "we can't impose a lockdown like more developed nations, as there are many citizens who don't have homes". African nations have limited resources to replace the incomes of their citizens. Those difficulties again highlight the importance of testing. "If we can test and have a more localised strategic approach to restricting movement that would really help resources," says Dr Ngozi Erondu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Chatham House think-tank. "I think we can be more creative about which villages can go to markets on which days doing rotations so that there are less densely populated areas." Ultimately, it will be the efforts and resources deployed by African countries themselves that determine the course of the outbreak "Governments need to invest in this, you can't tell people to stay away from work and make sure you stay hygienic when you don't give them a way to do so," says Dr Erondu. "We really will start seeing if these lockdown measures, these quarantine measures - if they're actually working towards the end of April." Source: BBC Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video HARDIN The Calhoun County Board of Commissioners have hired Karen Hanneken to administer the Downstate Small Business Stabilization Program. She was hired following a special meeting of the board last week. To support small businesses in downstate and rural counties across the state, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is repurposing Community Development Block Grant funds to the program. The fund will offer small businesses of up to 50 employees an opportunity to partner with local governments to obtain grants of up to $25,000 in working capital. Calhoun County has approved participation in the grant program; businesses in the unincoporated areas of Calhoun County may contact Hanneken at khanneken1@frontier.com or 618-576-9785 to discuss the program. Businesses within an incorporated location in the county are advised to contact their local mayor or Hanneken. Photo: (Photo : pexels/willsantt) A medical researcher at New York's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Rebecca Powell, Ph.D., thinks that breast milk could protect against the coronavirus. Dr. Powell is Looking for Breast Milk Donors A human milk immunologist, Dr. Powell, posted on her social media a request for lactating mothers to donate breast milk so that she could study its healing powers. In her post, Powell asks healthy, lactating women from New York City if they own a breast pump and if they are comfortable expressing breast milk not only for their babies. She said mothers who answer yes are eligible to participate in her breast milk research study. Powell is looking for hundreds of samples that are coming from mothers living in New York City for her research because the said city is the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. As reported by VICE News, Powell said that many lactating women are contracting the virus and would be ready and willing to donate their breast milk. She said this based on the hundreds of people who already sent her emails saying that they are eager to donate their breast milk. Many of them have said that they are highly suspected of having contracted the virus. She added that donors are just around the corner and she believes that they should not be overlooked. Why Use Breast Milk? One of the main reasons why health experts are insisting mothers to breastfeed their babies, especially for the first few months is because there are multiple antibodies found in breast milk. When these antibodies work together with the immune cells, they can produce powerful pathogen-killing functions that when passed onto the newborn, it could protect them from diseases such as chickenpox or measles during the first few months of their life. Blood antibodies of patients who recovered from the coronavirus are being studied. The aim is to see if they can treat COVID-19 infection. However, breastmilk antibodies could be given the same attention too. Vibe reports that there are no studies at present that focus on whether breast milk could cure MERS, SARS, or influenza. Powell would be willing to give donors $5 for every ounce of breast milk that healthy lactating women in New York City would donate. She is also willing to accept any donation via mail from outside of New York City. The researcher also said that it is unfortunate that there were not many studies done to breast milk antibodies, not even to well-studied viruses such as SARS, MERS, and flu. Yediyurappa went around western and southern parts of Bengaluru city, interacting with a cross section of people. (DC PHOTO) Bengaluru: In a bid to get first hand information about life during the lockdown, Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa went around western and southern parts of Bengaluru city, interacting with a cross section of people on Sunday. While common people poured out their woes, even small-time businessmen had their own problems to tell. At the end of the day, Yediyurappa hinted that the government would introduce some relaxations in the lockdown after April 14. Yediyurappa started his rounds from the Rajajinagar and Vijayanagar areas in west Bengaluru. In Vijayanagar, two places are completely sealed off while a strict lockdown is being implemented. When the chief minister reached there, there were a series of complaints from the residents as well as small traders. While the residents complained that they could not get essential commodities as well as medical facilities, the small traders, especially roadside vendors explained their problems regarding perishable goods like fruits and vegetables. Yediyurappa said that the government had worked out a detailed plan to ease problems of people, amidst close down. He asked the people to wait for two days, so that the government would ensure that their needs would be taken care of. During his visit to Padmanabhanagar in Southern Bengaluru, chief minister had a group of daily wage workers and domestic helps. Since lockdown, they did not had jobs and they were wondering how could they pay house rents. While promising that their household needs would be taken care by government, Yeddyurappa could not reply on rent. He only asked them to wait for two days before government came out with it's plan. The United States has delivered vehicles for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to use in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area in Donbas, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine reported. "Even during COVID-19, our security assistance to Ukraine steadily continues! Last week, we delivered more vehicles for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to use in the JFO zone," the embassy posted on Twitter on Monday. The embassy also stressed that the United States was standing strongly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's aggression. Led by Union Home Minister Amit Shah from the front, the MHA has been tirelessly working and coordinating with states and union territories virtually on real-time basis to ensure eradication of problems arising out of the lockdown announced to combat novel coronavirus. While senior officers in other ministries joined their duties on Monday, it has been business as usual in the Ministry of Home Affairs during the lockdown, with it being the nerve centre for advising states about almost everything, including shipment of necessary equipment for fighting the virus. Officials said the MHA, which has set up a round-the clock control room to regularly monitor implementation of the 21-day lockdown, is one of the few ministries which has continued functioning amid the curbs announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24. Apart from ensuring law and order, the MHA has been tasked with ensuring regular supply of essential commodities across the country, monitoring of the situation arising out of large scale movement of migrant workers, ensuring their shelter, food and healthcare facilities. The MHA has been the nodal authority for facilitation, monitoring, follow up and taking corrective steps with regards to the lockdown, an official said. Shah and his two junior ministers -- G Kishan Reddy and Nityanand Rai - have been coming to office regularly and attending various meetings. Top officials, including Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, has been attending office daily -- even on holidays and weekly offs, sources said. He attended all video conference with chief secretaries convened by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba. Bhalla is also the chairperson of the National Executive Committee governing the Disaster Management Act, 2005, under which the lockdown measures are being implemented. Infact, the working hours of the home secretary has become longer in last three weeks than normal days as he had to stay at his North Block office chairing meetings till late in the evening and for other works, the officials said. Under Bhalla's signature, six orders were issued on March 24, 25, 27, April 2, 3 and 10 giving exemptions for various categories of services and people from the purview of the lockdown. Over a dozen letters were also written by the home secretary to state chief secretaries keeping them abreast with various aspects of the lockdown, exemptions and their implementation at the ground level. To assist the home secretary, almost all six additional secretaries and 14 joint secretaries have been coming to office regularly. Joint Secretary (Internal Security) Punya Salila Srivastava is another key officer of the MHA who has been attending office without any break for the last three weeks. Srivastava also addresses the government's joint press conference along with her colleagues from the Ministry of Health and ICMR on a daily basis. To assist the senior officers, their staff, though not in full strength, is coming to office. Junior officials, who are not staff members of the senior officers or ministers, have started coming to office from Monday on rotational basis. Being a key ministry, works of the senior officers in the MHA have been more than normal during the lockdown period, another official said. The home minister has attended the chief ministers' video conference convened by the prime minister. Shah had also attended the Union Cabinet meetings held during last three weeks and personally spoke over phone to all paramilitary personnel who were tested COVID-19 positive. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least six people were killed Sunday when tornadoes and severe windstorms plowed through Texas, Mississippi and other Southern states. In Mississippi, the state's emergency management agency said three people in different counties near the Louisiana border Walthall, Lawrence and Jefferson Davis had died because of the weather. The agency did not immediately provide more details, but the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office announced late Sunday night that one of its deputies, Robert Ainsworth, and his wife were among the dead. "Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs. Paula during the tornado," the department said in a statement on its Facebook page. "He was a very valuable employee and will be greatly missed." Robert Ainsworth, a United States Marine Corps veteran and longtime employee of the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office, was killed with his wife Paula during strong storms and tornadoes on Sunday, April 12, 2020. (Lawrence County Sheriff's Office) The governors of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama each declared states of emergency to help recover from the damage caused by the storms. Parts of central Texas were under tornado warnings Sunday morning as the twisters touched down accompanied by what witnesses called "gigantic" hail. Photos of the damage in Round Mountain, Texas, about an hour west of Austin, showed overturned trees and a trailer destroyed by the storm. Some customers in Central Texas were without power as officials worked to determine whether there were more than just two tornadoes, NBC affiliate KXAN of Austin reported. Download the NBC News app for breaking news and weather Extensive damage from severe windstorms was also reported in Monroe, Louisiana, a small city in the northern part of the state, while much of the southern region remained under tornado watches Sunday afternoon. Tornadoes have not yet been confirmed in the state by the National Weather Service. City officials said on social media that trees and power lines had fallen throughout Monroe. "We have downed power lines in many areas of Monroe. Do not touch or attempt to move them," Mayor Jamie Mayo said on Twitter. All flights at Monroe Regional Airport were canceled until further notice, Director Ron Phillips said. The city posted pictures of the airport showing extensive damage and fallen debris. Story continues Due to weather conditions and debris removal from the runways, Mayor Jamie Mayo and Monroe Regional Airport Director Ron Phillips announce all flights at the Monroe Regional Airport are cancelled until further notice. pic.twitter.com/Kw4zWNRtZT City of Monroe, LA (@CityofMonroe) April 12, 2020 Gov. John Bel Edwards asked Louisiana residents to remain at home as severe weather continues through the state. "Even though the morning storms have left the state, many other dangerous systems remain across Louisiana. Please stay at home, follow the orders of local officials and tune in to your local weather person for updates," he wrote on Twitter. As of Sunday afternoon, no deaths have been reported in either state, and city officials in Monroe said a few people had suffered minor injuries. The storms come as Louisiana remains one of the states hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with over 20,000 cases as of Sunday, including more than 800 deaths. Texas had 12,561 reported cases, including 254 deaths. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged residents in the western region of the state to take precautions Sunday as they brace for a storm system that is expected to bring high winds and rains until Tuesday. Cuomo said the storm could cause flooding and power failures in the state hardest hit by the pandemic, with over 180,000 cases, including 8,627 deaths. CORRECTION (April 12, 2020, 9:45 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misidentified the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas. It is KXAN, not WXAN. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:37:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages on Monday with his Indonesian counterpart, Joko Widodo, on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of China-Indonesia diplomatic relations. Noting that the friendly exchanges between China and Indonesia boast a long history, Xi said bilateral relations have made great progress since the establishment of diplomatic ties. In recent years, in particular, Xi said, the two countries have continuously lifted their relations, expanded the areas of cooperation, achieved fruitful results from Belt and Road cooperation, and worked closely on international and regional affairs, bringing benefits to the two peoples and contributing to regional and global prosperity and stability. China and Indonesia share broad common interests at bilateral, regional and multilateral levels and enjoy tremendous potential for cooperation, Xi said, adding that China will continue to work with Indonesia to prevail over the COVID-19 epidemic. Xi said he attaches great importance to the development of China-Indonesia relations and stands ready to work with Widodo to enrich the China-Indonesia comprehensive strategic partnership and add new impetus to regional development. For his part, Widodo said that Indonesia and China possess longtime historic and cultural ties, while close contacts between the leaders of the two countries and between the people of various sectors have forged a solid friendship. Over the past 70 years, bilateral ties have matured day by day, which is a remarkable strategic achievement of both sides, he said, adding that the two countries have continuously created cooperation opportunities in various fields, benefiting the two peoples and deserving the pride of both sides. Within the framework of a comprehensive strategic partnership and upholding the spirit of cooperation, the two sides will surely bolster the continuous progress and prosperity of the two countries and contribute to regional and global peace, stability and prosperity, said the Indonesian president. Burt Reynolds regretted turning down the part of James Bond, but now you can see how it would have turned out thanks to deepfakery. During his 60-year career, he claimed to have turned down several huge roles, including James Bond and Han Solo. Reynolds was eyed up as the replacement for Sean Connery's Bond, but told USA Today in 2015 that he turned down the part because he thought the public wouldn't accept an American 007. We're approaching the point where the seamlessness of the face-swap lets the attention wander to other things that haven't changed. In this, for example, the uncanny thing is the difference between Connery and Reynolds' very distinctive physical presences. In trying to summarize these differences, the best I can do is to say Connery is catlike and Reynolds is doglike. American actor Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila, donated approximately 80,000 face masks to COVID-19 first responders in Texas and Louisiana, officials said. The couple gave away the masks at the Austin Fire Department on Friday (local time), Fox News said quoting KEYE. Expressing its gratitude, the Austin Fire Department tweeted on Saturday, "The C-shift at Station 32 got a surprise yesterday, when McConaughey and @iamcamilaalves stopped by to let us know we're getting several 1,000 N-95 masks soon, part of their donation of 80K to healthcare workers, FFs, and police officers in #ATX and #NOLA! DC T. Smith, AFD" Earlier on Sunday, the COVID-19 death toll in Texas reached 270, following a rise of nearly 1,000 more positive tests for the disease in the state. Overall, roughly 13,500 cases have been reported so far, according to Fox News. Camila wrote on Instagram about the donations. She wrote, "Our mission is to protect those who protect us, by providing healthcare workers, firefighters, police officers and others with approximately 80,000 masks needed to battle the #COVID19 virus." She hoped that the move would "inspire you to pick a lane to help others whatever that lane is even if your lane is helping your neighbour, calling people, emotional support, donations, volunteer... pick a lane and do it well! Stay strong this too shall pass..." Last month, McConaughey urged students at the University of Texas in Austin to stay at their homes after dozens tested positive following an ill-fated spring-break trip to Mexico. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fiesta 2020 may be postponed until November due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but KSAT-12 wants to help bring some "Fiesta cheer" during these trying times. The San Antonio TV station announced it will re-broadcast the 2019 Fiesta Parades. READ MORE: The latest news and features about coronavirus in San Antonio KSAT-12 will re-air and stream on its app the Cavaliers River Parade on Monday, April 20, the Battle of Flowers Parade from 2 to 5 p.m. Friday, April 24 and the Fiesta Flambeau Night Parade from 7 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 25. The City may have delayed Fiesta 2020 until November, but we think everyone needs a little Fiesta in their lives right about now! So, as a way to give people a little coronavirus break, were going to rebroadcast last years Fiesta Parades on the days they would have occurred this year. Viva! said the station's Vice President and General Manager Phil Lane. On the KSAT-12 streaming app, viewers can watch the parades anytime they like. During the airing of the parades, KSAT-12 will highlight Fiesta charities and collect money for all of them through the Fiesta Commissions website. MORE SAN ANTONIO TV NEWS: San Antonio TV anchors transform their homes into studios amid coronavirus pandemic KSAT-12 also announced it is turning this into a week-long event for viewers that will include virtual watch parties anchors and reporters will take part in from the comfort of their homes. The station is partnering with several local restaurants that will be offering Fiesta Food Packs so that viewers can have fun food to eat while watching the parades. At 6:30 p.m. Saturday, April 25, KSAT is inviting the public to put on their finest Fiesta outfit and grab glow sticks, a carton of cascarones or a gordita and take a selfie showing your Fiesta spirit. Viewers can upload their photos to appear on the station's website. Our hope is that families will plan their own little Fiesta event in their home as they watch the parades on TV and/or on the web site, Lane said. It really is our hope that this will provide some relief from all the bad news circulating in the world right now. These events allow residents to stay home and still enjoy the Fiesta spirit!" Candice.Garcia@express-news.net | Twitter @_candicegarcia MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Dr Alex George has injected some fun into his rounds on the ICU as he continues to battle coronavirus from the NHS frontline. The former Love Island star, 30, took to Twitter to share a snap of himself in his PPE and scrubs with his shirtless promo shot from the show attached to the front of them. He captioned the photo: 'So many patients are afraid especially with the PPE we wear and so I thought I would try and make them laugh or smile, even for a second.' Keeping spirits high! Dr Alex George has injected some fun into his rounds on the ICU as he continues to battle coronavirus from the NHS frontline He went on to reveal that the first patient he saw responded with: 'I am actually not sure whats scarier!' Alex has made it his mission to keep spirits high among his colleagues at Lewisham Hospital. Taking to Instagram last week, the Love Island hero posted a selfie of him and his colleagues decked out personal protective gear, trying to be as upbeat as possible. 'Positive vibes only!' came the caption as the group raised their fists in surgical scrubs and masks. Throwback: The former Love Island star, 30, took to Twitter to share a snap of himself in his PPE and scrubs with his shirtless promo shot from the show attached to the front of them He captioned the photo: 'So many patients are afraid especially with the PPE we wear and so I thought I would try and make them laugh or smile, even for a second' Fighting talk: Alex was determined to keep spirits high among his colleagues at Lewisham Hospital on Wednesday, as they continue to fight against coronavirus on the NHS frontline Alex admitted he's struggling living apart from his girlfriend Amelia Bath after making the decision to distance himself as he continues to risk his life in a bid to help the nation. In a clip shared to his YouTube channel on Monday, Alex confessed he's 'tired' following his 'busy shift', and just 'wants to go home and chat' to the Ibiza Weekender star, 25, who he credited for helping him 'relax'. Leaving University Hospital Lewisham in the early hours, the media personality shared: 'My shift is now finished and I am just heading home. Its been again a busy shift I know I keep saying this but it is the truth. I am feeling alright, I am tired. 'One of the challenges is that I am away from my girlfriend, I made the decision that I didnt want to risk giving it to her or her family, so I am up in London staying on my own isolating and she is staying elsewhere so I dont give it to her. 'That is difficult when you have a busy shift like today you want to go home and sit and chat with someone and just hang out with someone to relax after what happened, its hard when you cant and you are on your own.' 'It's difficult': Dr Alex George admitted he's struggling living apart from his girlfriend Amelia Bath after as he continues to work on the NHS frontline (pictured on Tuesday) 'It's a challenge': The Love Island star, 30, confessed he's 'tired' following his 'busy shift', and just 'wants to go home and chat' to the Ibiza Weekender star, 25 (pictured in 2019) Candid: in a clip shared to YouTube on Monday, the media personality recalled his shift while leaving University Hospital Lewisham in the early hours 'Technology is good': The healthcare professional revealed the pair have been communicating via video message and call services Revealing the pair have been communicating via video message and call services, the healthcare professional added: 'Technology is good, being able to FaceTime and chat to people. 'I try and share as much of my experience as I can because it does help, even doing these videos as well, telling you guys how I feel and what I am doing does help me get through a challenging time.' The couple, who met in a bar, have been going strong since December 2018, a few months after his stint on ITV2 dating series Love Island. Reality TV star Amelia has since shared her pride over Alex's career, writing last week: 'Im so proud of him and Im endlessly grateful for all the NHS staff and key workers who are working tirelessly during such uncertain times.' Smitten: The couple, who met in a bar, have been going strong since December 2018, a few months after his stint on ITV2 dating series Love Island 'I'm so proud of him': Reality TV star Amelia has shared her pride over Alex's career Earlier in the week, Alex revealed he's been forced to move out of his flat and has asked his social media followers for help finding a new place. In the social media post, the Welshman explained his tenancy period has expired and he now needs a new place to stay near his hospital in south London. Alex wrote on his Instagram Stories: 'I need to move out of where I am staying due to the tenancy period expiring. Does anyone have a place I could rent short term for the next month or so. 'Need to be in central/south/southwest London to be close to A&E. Thank you.' Home issues: Earlier in the week, Alex revealed he's been forced to move out of his flat and has asked his social media followers for help finding a new place President Trump has now told governors it's their responsibility to get coronavirus testing 'perfected' after several states complained that kits provided by the White House were unusable. 'Governors, get your states testing programs & apparatus perfected,' Trump ordered in a tweet on Sunday evening. 'Be ready, big things are happening. No excuses! 'The Federal Government is there to help. We are testing more than any country in the World. Also, gear up with Face Masks,' he continued. Trump's latest comments come days after the federal government purchased a fleet of rapid coronavirus testing machines - which are able to deliver results within 15 minutes instead of days - and began distributing them across the country last week. President Trump has told governors it's their responsibility to start testing residents for coronavirus, warning there's 'no excuses' for inaction despite several states warning the test kits provided are virtually useless Trump unveiled the plan to distribute the Abbott Laboratories testing machines about two weeks ago - calling them a 'whole new ballgame' in the fight against the pandemic. Every state except for Alaska was given 15 machines, regardless of its population or severity of its outbreak. However, excitement among Governors who had lauded the prospect of being able to run up to 3,000 tests per day quickly dissipated shortly after the machines arrived. The frustrated parties said the machines are actually sitting idle because they weren't given enough supplies to use them, with many of the machines arriving with only 120 cartridges, enough for about 100 tests. 'There was a lot of talk about this device, a lot of hype on it nationally, and it's wonderful, and when they showed up, expectations were really high,' New Hampshire Gov Chris Sununu told a news conference on Wednesday. 'But to actually have 13 of these devices and have no way to use them - I'm banging my head against a wall. I really am. It's really frustrating.' The federal government has faced fierce criticism over nationwide testing shortages that have crippled the US response to coronavirus, a pandemic which has sickened more than 534,000 Americans and killed at least 21,692 as of Sunday evening. Trump unveiled the plan to distribute Abbott testing machines about two weeks ago - calling them a 'whole new ballgame' in the fight against the pandemic. Every state except for Alaska was given 15 machines, regardless of its population or severity of its outbreak However, excitement among Governors who lauded the prospect of being able to run up to 3,000 tests per day quickly dissipated shortly after the Abbott Laboratories testing machines arrived - because they weren't given enough supplies to use them Public health officials including top members of the White House coronavirus task force have acknowledged the testing failures, while President Donald Trump has maintained that the system is the strongest in the world. The President has also repeatedly suggested that the U.S. is leading the world in testing rates, as he once again reiterated in his tweet Tuesday evening. To date, 2.8 million coronavirus tests have been carried out nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which amounts to less than one percent of the population - a lower per-capita testing rate than many other countries. So while it's technically true that the U.S. has physically tested more people than any other country, Trump's suggestion that the United States is leading the world in testing rates is wrong. As for Trump's insistence to 'gear up' with face masks, last week the administration told Congress that the federal governments emergency stockpile was depleted and states wouldnt be receiving more shipments of personal protective gear. Trump first advocated for the use of non-medical face masks on Friday, but insisted he wouldn't be following the instruction, saying: 'I dont think Im going to be doing it...Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queensI just dont see it.' Public health officials including top members of the White House coronavirus task force have acknowledged the testing failures, while President Donald Trump has maintained that the system is the strongest in the world The President's latest orders come just a day after a New York Times report detailed numerous instances in which senior White House officials and other experts tried to urge Trump into proactive action against the coronavirus outbreak in January and February, but the cries fell of deaf ears. According to the report, Dr. Carter Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, was once such expert who urged senior White House officials shut down schools nationwide some six weeks before President Trump finally took his first steps to address the danger the nation was facing. 'You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools,' Mecher wrote to the nations public health bureaucracy, as reported by The Times. 'Now Im screaming, close the colleges and universities.' Despite the warning, and several similar alarms from top White House executives, Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus' and opted to focus his attention instead on 'controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials.' To date, 2.8 million coronavirus tests have been carried out nationwide, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which amounts to less than one percent of the population - a lower per-capita rate than many other countries Asked about on-going testing shortages by the Wall Street Journal, US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) spokeswoman Mia Heck said that states are able to order more supplies through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Heck explained that the federal government purchased limited quantities of Abbott machines for state labs because it wanted to allow enough for hospitals to buy them as well. She did not respond to a question about why 49 states received the same number of tests and machines. Illinois Gov J.B. Pritzker said he spoke to Abbott, which is based in his state, over a week ago and made an agreement to conduct 88,000 tests a month, or about 3,000 daily. After the federal government took over purchasing and distribution of the tests, Illinois received far fewer than Pritzker had anticipated. 'That's eight tests per machine for all of Illinois,' the Democratic governor said. In New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak, said their Abbott machines wouldn't be used until they acquire enough cartridges to make them practical. In Louisiana, which has the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the nation, Gov John Bel Edwards said he had hoped to deploy the Abbott machines statewide to help keep health-care workers on the job while preserving personal protective equipment. 'We have the machines, but not necessarily the cartridges to make a big difference,' Edwards said. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has pledged its support to its member states in the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). In a statement released by the Commission and signed by its President, Dr. Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, ECOWAS says it continues to closely monitor the evolution of the pandemic in the world and particularly in West Africa. The Commission noted that as of 5 April 2020, the 15 Member States are affected by the pandemic with 1 739 confirmed cases of contamination, 55 deaths and 328 persons who have fully recovered. It said that approximately 95% of deaths are patients with comorbid conditions. While reaffirming its solidarity with the Member States, the ECOWAS Commission said it welcomes all the measures already taken to contain the spread of the pandemic and care for the sick. It further reiterated its commitment to supporting the Member States in the fight against the pandemic, noting that the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), its specialized health Institution responsible for coordinating the response at the regional level, has drawn up a Regional Strategic Plan with all Member States. To address the emergency at hand, ECOWAS has immediately made available financial support from its own resources, in addition to assistance from international partners, for the purchase of medical supplies and equipment essential for the fight against the pandemic, the Commission noted. WAHO has already purchased and dispatched to the 15 Member States: - 30 500 diagnostic test kits; - 10 000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) (Coveralls, Aprons, gowns, gloves, goggles, boots); - 740 000 prescription tablets (Chloroquine and Azithromycin); Orders have been also been placed to acquire for the Member States, the following items: - 240,000 diagnostic kits; - 240,000 extraction kits; - 250,000 viral sample transport equipment; - 285,100 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); - 268,1000 masks for medical personnel (face masks, surgical masks, full face masks); - 120 ventilators; - Several thousand litres of alcohol gel and disinfectants. Furthermore, WAHO is also working, in close collaboration with the specialised services in the Member States, to deploy personnel and epidemiological surveillance and data collection tools, strengthen the capacity of reference laboratories and train technical personnel. ECOWAS further noted that it is working in conjunction with the apex regional health governing body, WAHO, to continue both internal and external resource mobilisation, with a view to increasing the availability of medical materials and equipment necessary to prevent, monitor and combat this pandemic. This is expected to expand its scope of support to supplement Member States' own efforts. The release further noted that ECOWAS is working to complement its intervention as part of a Short and Medium Term State Assistance Plan (humanitarian assistance and support for economic recovery). It further thanked all its partners for their financial and technical support to the Community in these difficult times while it urged people to continue to implement the measures recommended by the Health Authorities, and to comply with the prescribed hygiene guidelines. Edward Snowden, the famous whistleblower who leaked information from the National Security Agency in 2012, has come out of hiding to share a warning with the world about the coronavirus. Snowden told Vice that governments could exploit the coronavirus pandemic in order to keep their control over the public. The cautionary words comes at a time where officials have set strict emergency laws, increased surveillance and suspended civil rights to limit the spread of the disease. Snowden also believes that experts and intelligence agencies knew the outbreak was coming, as he himself has read reports planning for such an event. Scroll down for video Edward Snowden has come out of hiding to share a warning with the world about the coronavirus. Snowden told Vice that governments could exploit the coronavirus pandemic in order to keep their control over the public The interview was the first episode of VICE TVs Shelter in Place that aired Thursday, which was conducted by Vice co-founder Shane Smith via a virtual meeting. Snowden explained that as authoritarianism spreads and emergency laws are set in place, the public will be forced to sacrifice their rights in order to survive the pandemic. And he believes officials will attempt to hold this power long after the pandemic is over. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression, he said. The cautionary words comes at a time where officials have set strict emergency laws, increased surveillance and suspended civil rights to limit the spread of the disease. Snowden also believes that experts and intelligence agencies knew the outbreak was coming, as he himself has read reports planning for such an event The coronavirus started in Wuhan, China December 2019 and quickly spread through the country and then the world. It made landfall in the US in late February, with California being the first state to impose a lockdown. CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN TIMELINE CDC Director Robert Redfield said Monday he recommended certain states issue lockdown orders in February, but was widely ignored until later in the outbreak. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas,' Redfield told NBC's Today. Here is a timeline of those states' lockdown orders: MARCH 11: Washington Governor Jay Inslee bans all social gatherings over 250 people MARCH 13: Donald Trump declares national emergency over COVID-19 MARCH 16: The six San Francisco Bay counties, including San Francisco, announce 'shelter-in-place' orders MARCH 17: New York City mayor Bill de Blasio says city should follow San Francisco with a shelter-in-place order; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says it will be statewide: 'As a matter of fact, I'm going so far that I don't even think you can do a statewide policy.' MARCH 19: California Governor Gavin Newsom issues first statewide lockdown order MARCH 22: Cuomo signs statewide stay-at-home order MARCH 23: Inslee extends his lockdown to include all of Washington state MARCH 24: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issues statewide stay-at-home order APRIL 3: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' statewide lockdown goes into effect Advertisement The virus has now made its way to at least 42 US states, which have reported more than 573,000 cases and over 22,900 deaths. President Donald Trump has come under fire for his relaxed attitude about putting policies in place that would help limit the spread, as many officials have come forward saying that Trump knew about the coronavirus well in advance. Snowden explained that this crisis was predicted by scientists and intelligent agencies and is not sold on the fact that the US and the world for that matter was ill-prepared. There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic, he said. And every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming. And in fact, even intelligence agencies, I can tell you firsthand, because they used to read the reports had been planning for pandemics. The Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield said Monday that he had recommended more states in the US implement a lockdown as early as February. 'As February 28 as we got into March we recognized the different areas that mitigation was now important,' Redfiled told Today show host Savannah Guthrie. 'CDC sent recommendations to Washington, to California, to New York and to Florida recommending that they expand mitigation in those areas.' The nations top immunologist Anthony Fauci has also shamed Trump for not locking down the country sooner. Obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier you could've saved lives, obviously,' Fauci told CNN's State of the Union Sunday morning. 'No-one is going to deny that,' he continued, but added 'there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.' The virus has now made its way to at least 42 US states, which have reported more than 53,700 cases and over 22,900 deaths. There are several reports that intelligence officials told the White House that there was a virus threat coming from China as early as November, indicating that the president knew about coronavirus sooner than he let on. 'You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint,' Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper. 'We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it's not.' 'But it is what it is,' he continued. 'We are where we are right now.' As the world battles COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been reaching out to several foreign leaders, assuring all possible assistance in these times global crisis. In one such telephonic conversation, PM Modi spoke to his Vietnam counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Monday, to discuss challenges faced due to Coronavirus outbreak. The two leaders also addressed the measures being taken to face this challenge. PM Modi and PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc emphasised the significance of the strategic partnership between India & Vietnam especially in these extraordinary times and expressed satisfaction at the recent progress made in both countries on various fronts. The leaders also reviewed regional and international developments on the matter. They also agreed on the potential for bilateral collaboration in combating COVID-19, including facilitating supplies of essential medical equipment. PM Modi and PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc also assured to provide the necessary relief to each others citizens residing in their countries. READ | PM Modi Discusses COVID-19 With PM Shinzo Abe; Highlights Indo-Japanese Global Partnership READ | PM Modi Discusses COVID-19 Challenges With Uganda President Over Phone, Assures Support PM Modi discusses COVID-19 crisis with Nepal PM Oli In a series of discussion with foreign leaders over phone calls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to his Nepal counterpart KP Sharma Oli on April 10, to discuss the current situation due to the pandemic. Taking to Twitter, PM Modi expressed solidarity with the neighbouring country and appreciated its citizens in the fight against COVID-19. The two leaders exchanged their views on the ongoing crisis and the challenges it poses to the health and safety of the citizens. They agreed to continue close coordination and consultation among the experts and officials of the two countries on all the issues arising out from COVID-19, including the issue of cross-border supplies of essential commodities. PM Modi reiterated Indias commitment to ensure all possible support and assistance for Nepal's efforts in fighting the pandemic. He also appreciated the response and crisis management by the Government on Nepal under PM Olis leadership. READ | PM Modi Dials Swedish Counterpart And Sultan Of Oman To Discuss COVID-19 Crisis READ | PM Modi Discusses COVID-19 With Bahrain's King, Thanks Him For Supporting Indian Diaspora Authorities in Georgia said a 7-year-old boy was shot and killed while a teenager was taken to a hospital with unknown injuries on the afternoon of April 11. Officials with the Clayton County Police Department are investigating a double shooting that happened on Lamont Avenue in Conley about 5:40 p.m. Saturday afternoon, police spokeswoman Lt. Cherie West said. The 18-year-old whose identity was not released by authorities was reported to have been fighting with occupants of a white sedan, who fired shots but managed to flee the scene before police arrived, West told AJC News. The 7-year-old boyidentified as Gabriel on a GoFundMe pagewas struck by a stray bullet while he was upstairs in his bedroom. Upon arrival, officers learned there were two shooting victims, West told AJC News. Each victim was struck at least one time, with the 7-year-old succumbing to his wounds. West told the outlet the boy is not related to the teen and had nothing to do with the conflict between him and the occupants of the white sedan. Gabriels family told Fox5 the boy was a second-grader at Anderson Elementary School. The boy is described on GoFundMe as a very happy boy, with his death leaving a big gap in his familys life. Its always devastating for a young child to lose their life when it had nothing to do with the situation going on just being a bystander in their home feeling free, Clayton County Police Capt. Frank Thomas told Fox5. The suspects have not been apprehended yet and police said they will speak with the hospitalized teen to get more information on their identities. Authorities said this is currently an active investigation and are asking anyone who may have information on the shooting to contact them. Conley is located along the northern border of Clayton County in Georgia, about 29 miles from Lawrenceville. Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe Our news is free on LAist. To make sure you get our coverage: Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter. To support our non-profit public service journalism: Donate Now. It's our new reality: Angelenos are now required to wear a mask when visiting grocery stores and other essential business. Some jurisdictions, like San Bernardino County, are even stricter, asking you to wear a mask when you leave home. These rules are meant to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, but it's challenging our social conventions. Under a mask, nobody can see you smile. You may think we can see you smile with your eyes, or smize, as supermodel Tyra Banks puts it. But when your glasses are fogged up with vapor exhalation, all those droplets that you're politely keeping to yourself, you're not really expressing your friendliest self. What L.A. needs now is a robust new vocabulary of hand gestures that say, "Hello, neighbor. I care." icon DON'T MISS ANY L.A. CORONAVIRUS NEWS Get our daily newsletters for the latest on COVID-19 and other top local headlines. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy We're all relying on new body language -- the finger guns, Namaste prayer hands. Or heart hands, V for Victory, a Japanese-style bow, the closed hand to the chest, Hawaiian shaka greeting, rock-and-roll horns, thumbs up or a solidarity fist. KPCC/LAist visual journalist Chava Sanchez captured some of the new ways we are saying hello. Maricruz Morales uses her hands more when greeting people these days, and smizes at them to try to disarm them. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Olivia Mazurek says she almost forgot how to socialize and felt fear when interacting with people, but she feels it's important to at least acknowledge others as she takes walks so she'll throw up double peace signs as a greeting. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Smizing and waving are the go-to greetings these days for Adrienne Sacks and Mackenzie Katz, but for the most part they try to steer clear of people. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Chris Bedford takes precautions when approaching people, but will generally smile and have a socially distant conversation with folks. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Vergilio Leon says face masks have changed everything for him. He finds it's difficult to convey his expressions, but when he has to greet someone he'll throw up his arm and loudly say hello. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Jeremy O'Keefe goes on long walks everyday and he usually greets everyone he sees with a smile and a wave. Nowadays he tries to greet people with a smize. It's important to him to acknowledge people and let them know non-verbally that they are safe and respected. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Kristina Wong has been meeting new people all over L.A. as she delivers supplies for a volunteer mask-sewing group. And she finds it a challenge to come up with the right hand gestures to replace a smile. "I just find myself going, 'Hello. Thank you for working,' like, through my mask. And having this like love and heroic appreciation for them." Kristina Wong smiles and rapidly waves her hands in the air. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) But wearing masks isn't just new and uncomfortable -- for some people of color it can make them feel like a target. "I'm not going to put on something that causes me to stand out in a negative way," said Sheldon Wright, an African American resident of Monrovia who works for an insurance company. He sewed part of a white-and-brown plaid handkerchief on the outside of his mask. The hankie belonged to his late father, who died of pneumonia four years ago, so it has sentimental value. Sheldon Wright demonstrates an elbow bump greeting while wearing a mask sewed with a part of his late father's handkerchief. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) And it prompts interested conversation from people like checkout clerks, whose parents might also have owned similar handkerchiefs. While wearing a mask, "you can't see my smile, you can't see what I believe about me (and what) makes me approachable. I need to find other ways to convey I am still approachable," Wright said. Luis Guzman, who lost his job as California went into shutdown, relies on the bus to get around. As a worker in the U.S. illegally who will not be receiving money from the federal stimulus package, he tries to limit all interaction and goes so far as to not greet people, because he can't afford to get sick. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Paul and Elsa Santos no longer greet most people because of their fear of catching COVID-19. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Jeremy H. and Tanasia M. rarely go out even for walks, and when they do they keep to themselves, and rarely talk to anyone. (Chava Sanchez/LAist) Me? I give people I know a full hand wave and maybe a chin pop. Or, as in this photo, where I'm attempting a smize. NEW YORK, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market Research Report by Drug (Corticosteroid, Monoclonal Antibody, and Vitamin), by Route of Administration (Oral and Topical), by Diagnosis, by Treatment, by Distribution - Global Forecast to 2025 (Cumulative Impact of COVID-19) Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05881813/?utm_source=PRN The Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is expected to grow from USD 211.49 Million in 2019 to USD 344.19 Million by the end of 2025 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8.45%. Market Segmentation & Coverage: This research report categorizes the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets: On the basis of Drug, the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is studied across Corticosteroid, Monoclonal Antibody, and Vitamin. On the basis of Route of Administration, the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is studied across Oral and Topical. On the basis of Diagnosis, the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is studied across Blood Test, Imaging Test, Physical Exam, Radioactive Iodine Uptake Test, and Orbital Ultrasound. On the basis of Treatment, the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is studied across Medication, Radioactive Iodine Therapy, and Surgery. On the basis of Distribution, the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is studied across Hospital Pharmacy, Online Pharmacy, and Retail Pharmacy. On the basis of Geography, the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market is studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region is studied across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region is studied across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region is studied across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom. Company Usability Profiles: The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market including Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Inc, Allergan plc, Bausch & Lomb Inc, Eyevance Pharmaceuticals LLC, GlaxoSmithKline plc, Hi-Tech Pharmacal Co Inc, Horizon Therapeutics plc, Kala Pharmaceuticals Inc, Merck & Co., Inc, Mylan N.V., Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc, Pharmos Corp, and RLC LABS. FPNV Positioning Matrix: The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape. Competitive Strategic Window: The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth. The report provides insights on the following pointers: 1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on sulfuric acid offered by the key players 2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets 3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments 4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players 5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments The report answers questions such as: 1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market? 2. What are the inhibiting factors and their impact analysis shaping the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market during the forecast period? 3. What is the competitive position if vendors in the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market? 4. How Porters Five Forces define the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market landscape? 5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market? 6. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market? 7. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market? 8. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Thyroid Eye Disease Treatment Market? Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05881813/?utm_source=PRN About Reportlinker ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place. __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links www.reportlinker.com Butler has been with Lexmark for more than 15 years and has extensive experience in financial planning and analysis, sales operations, and business analytics. Most recently he served as vice president of Financial Planning and Analysis. Prior roles include vice president of Sales Operations and Business Analytics, director of Corporate Finance, and senior manager of Financial Planning and Analysis. He joined Lexmark in 2004 as a senior financial analyst. Prior to joining Lexmark, Butler worked in finance roles at Hitachi Automotive Systems Americas, LG&E and KU Energy, and the J. Peterman Company. He holds a bachelor's degree in in accounting from the University of Kentucky. "I want to thank Vivian for her contributions to Lexmark since joining the company in 2017," Waugerman said. "On behalf of the entire executive team, we wish her well in her future endeavors. " "I am pleased to welcome Chuck to the Lexmark executive team. His finance expertise and deep knowledge of our company make him an ideal choice to lead the global finance team," Waugerman said. "I am excited to join the Lexmark executive team as CFO," Butler said. "In my 15 years with the company, I have gained tremendous confidence in our team. I look forward to helping lead Lexmark toward continued growth and success." About Lexmark Lexmark creates innovative imaging solutions and technologies that help customers worldwide print, secure and manage information with ease, efficiency and unmatched value. SOURCE Lexmark Related Links http://www.lexmark.com As coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the United Kingdom, the government has announced that a new NHS app for contact tracing is being developed. While addressing the daily coronavirus briefing, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that new step will help content he further spread of the deadly virus. The UK government is doing everything to overcome COVID-19 pandemic, meanwhile, the country has reported nearly 84,000 confirmed cases and the deadly virus has claimed more than 10,000. Hancock said, Today, I wanted to outline the next step, a new NHS app for contact tracing. If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus you can securely tell this new NHS app. The app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users you've been in significant contact with over the last few days, even before you've had symptoms, so that they know and they can act accordingly. We are already testing this app. READ: After Tintin's Role During UK PM Boris Johnson's Covid Recovery, Official Fan Page Reacts He further also informed that the country also has spare capacity for critical care. He said the UK has more than 2,200 spare critical care beds available, therefore, everyone can get the care they need. However, he was unable to expand on the number of deaths of NHS workers, although, the authorities are looking into each circumstance to find how they picked up the virus. WATCH: There's more spare capacity for critical care than before #coronavirus hit our country. We have 2,295 spare critical care beds available- so everyone can get the care they need in the NHS pic.twitter.com/LMx47q5slf Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) April 12, 2020 READ: After Shaming Foreign Media's Covid Coverage, BJP's Patra Hails UK PM Johnson's Discharge UK pledges 200 million to charities Furthermore, the UK has also pledged an additional sum of 200 million to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other charities to help slow the spread of the novel Coronavirus in vulnerable countries. The amount is aimed at accelerating the response efforts to stem the second-wave of COVID-19 resurgence. The United Nations' (UN) agencies such as WHO, Red Cross, and Charities in the homeland and overseas are among the organisations the government donated an additional package of 200 million funds under the UK aid scheme, International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said in a statement. As per the release, " package of 200 million will back UK charities and international organizations to help reduce mass infections in developing countries which often lack the healthcare systems to track and halt the virus. (Image source: AP) READ: UK Pledges Additional 200 Mn To WHO, Other Charities To Help Stop Second Coronavirus Wave READ: UK Vicar's Hymns And Prayers On The Street John Lennons Imagine is the most famous song from his solo career. Its an anthem for peace and antimaterialism. Interestingly, the piano on which John composed it was owned by a different artist: George Michael. Michael made music that was pretty far removed from Johns. However, that didnt stop him from admiring Johns work. Heres why he saw his purchase of Johns piano as charitable. John Lennon| Icon and Image/Getty Images The early history of the piano John Lennon wrote Imagine on The piano was built in Hamburg in 1970, according to MTV News. So it was very new when John released Imagine in 1971. The piano can be seen in the music video for Imagine, which features John and his wife, Yoko Ono. Whoever built the piano probably had no idea it would become a sought-after collectors item. In 1992, a private collector purchased the piano, the Independent reports. That collector loaned the piano to Liverpools Beatles museum. Then, the collector began to think about selling the piano to wealthy Fab Four fans in Japan or the U.S. The Beatles are a major part of Englands musical heritage. Consequently, some English people didnt like the idea of the piano leaving the country. One of these English people was Michael. George Michael buys the paino The video for John Lennons Imagine featuring the white piano Michael purchased the piano for around $2 million, a price he said was worth every penny. Michael beat out smaller bids from other British celebrities, particularly Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis and pop star Robbie Williams. Michael wanted to buy the piano for people to see it. He wanted it to be in Liverpool. He also dreamed of writing a song on the piano before he returned it to the Liverpool museum. Having paid one and a half million pounds for it Id really like to play something on it and stick it on my next record, Michael said, according to the Independent. So as Im recording right now I think Ill hold on to it for a couple of months and see if I can get it on to my new record and then its going back to the museum in Liverpool where I think it rightly belongs. Its not the type of thing that should be in storage somewhere or being protected, it should be seen by people. What George Michael did with the piano George Michael of Wham! bought the piano on which John Lennon wrote Imagine. | Michael Putland/Getty Images Discussing the song hed write on the piano, Michael said it wouldnt be Imagine part two. He said he could never hope to write anything as good as Johns anthem. In addition, he said the song hed write on the piano would sound like the famously simple composition Chopsticks compared to Imagine. It doesnt appear Michael ever wrote a song on the piano. Michael was interested in keeping the piano in England. However, he still sent it on a symbolic road trip for peace, according to The Guardian. The piano visited historic sites around the world, such as Fords Theatre in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was shot. By taking the piano to all these sites, we are reminded that violence has long been a part of our history, Michael said at the time. Also see: Joe Rogan Rips Into Gal Gadot for Her Cover of Imagine On Friday, the Navajo Nation instituted a three-day total lockdown in an attempt to combat the spread of the coronavirus, as COVID-19 cases neared 600 and deaths climbed to 22. This move will likely do little to reduce the risk the pandemic poses to Native Americans, whose communities have historically been starved of resources by the US government, resulting in crushing poverty and severe health issues. With conditions in the Navajo Nation already dire, the coronavirus crisis has pushed the limited health care system to the breaking point, overwhelming emergency rooms and causing many to die at home without being tested. The Navajo Nation faces a critical lack of ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE), and an overall lack of infrastructure to respond to an acute health crisis. According to Dr. Nina Ritchie, as reported in Lake Powell Life, There are only 28 ventilators on the entire reservation. We need at least double this amount And that doesnt take into account the number of medical professionals needed to take care of these critically ill patients. Health workers, she added, are continually getting exposed to the virus and being quarantined because they do not have enough [PPE]. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez speaks on Facebook Live on Thrusday, April 9, 2020, to announce he is self-isolating after a possible coronavirus exposure. Though the CARES Act passed at the end of March will provide over $3.5 billion to tribes across the United States, doctors and tribal leaders are critical of the slow federal response. Dr. Ritchie cited concerns that the National Guard, which has set up field hospitals on Navajo land, has treated tribes with indifference. A temporary hospital in Chinle was put in place far from any other hospital and provided no staff or medical supplies. Dr. Ritchie said the federal funding will likely get here after the worse has already occurred. She added that the money is not worth a whole lot when vendors are out of [medical supplies] and we cant find nurses and other staff to pay. As the World Socialist Web Site reported in 2017, health care for Native Americans has already been gutted in the interests of private profit. The Indian Health Services (IHS) has received only 30 to 50 percent of the funding required to maintain adequate services, staffing and programs. Under the Obama administrations Affordable Care Act, the chronic health issues plaguing Native Americans were not addressed. Rather than increasing funding for the IHS, the government directed tribal members to private insurance. More than 175,000 people live in the semi-autonomous Navajo Nation, which spans 27,413 square miles spanning parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. According to Al Jazeera, there are in an area the size of West Virginia only 13 full-service supermarkets, one of which closed last week when an employee tested positive for COVID-19. Navajo authorities had already imposed a curfew, intensifying an already acute hunger crisis on tribal lands. By restricting access to an already limited food supply among a population wracked by health issues stemming from social inequality, the coronavirus pandemic has the potential to decimate the Native American population. A 2007 Johns Hopkins University study on Navajo Nation food insecurity found that Navajo households have the highest prevalence of food insecurity (76.7 percent) ever reported for a US population. This staggering rate of hunger and malnutrition is the direct result of poverty and economic distress, stemming from US capitalisms centuries-long drive to eradicate the Native American population. So too are the pervasive health problems and the lack of health care infrastructure. Doctors and workers cite the Navajo Nations high-density housing projects, with multiple generations under one roof, as posing a particular danger of COVID-19 infection. A member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe told ABC News, The apartment complexes are basically wall-to-wall, where you dont have that real social distancing They were not built with the thought of a pandemic happening. The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) has sought to cover up its role in allowing the virus to spread. On March 16, as Arizona shuttered schools across the state, the BIE-run Rocky Ridge Boarding School remained open, busing students from many rural Navajo communities and allowing teachers to meet for days after the shutdown. As reported by AZ Central, four employees and two students were confirmed to have contracted COVID-19. They then spread the virus to family members and other Navajo communities. The BIE is also accused of covering up COVID-19 cases at Tuba City Boarding School, where an employee who tested positive died last week, and Kaibeto Boarding School, where AZ Central reports that the school board accused the BIE of endangering its staff and students. BIE schools are not investigating the negligence that led to the spread of the coronavirus throughout the Navajo Nation, but are instead targeting educators who spoke to the press. It is well documented that pandemics pose a disproportionate threat to Native American populations, and the rapid spread of COVID-19, which was first reported to be in the United States on January 20, could have been predicted. The 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic produced a mortality rate three-to-eight-times higher among Native Americans, and medical studies conducted during the swine flu pandemic reported the same underlying factors that link back to poverty. As Navajo Nation authorities attempt to reduce the spread of coronavirus cases with measures that are too little and come far too late, tribal leaders are appealing for people to practice ancestral ways of life, including growing food and returning back to our ways. Meanwhile, even New Mexico Governor Michelle Grisham has admitted that the pandemic could wipe out tribal nations. Native Americans must not rely on elites and their appeals to tradition, but on the growing opposition of the working class in the US and internationally to the failure of governments to take any effective measures to combat the disease, while using the health crisis as an excuse to implement long-standing plans to funnel trillions of dollars to the banks and corporations. Native American workers should unite with their fellow workers to demand immediate and comprehensive testing and trillions in federal funds to provide needed medical equipment, build new hospitals and guarantee free and equal medical care for all. The murderous policies of the ruling class against Native Americans can be halted and reversed only through the struggle to put an end to capitalism and establish a society based on equality and the satisfaction of human need, not profit, i.e., socialism. Jenelle Evans has a long, tangled history with Teen Mom 2. She started in the franchise on 16 and Pregnant when she was carrying her first son, Jace. After getting married to David Eason, her status as a cast member on Teen Mom 2 was on shaky ground. Eventually, she was let go from the show altogether. Now, she is claiming that the franchise wanted to kick Jade Cline off of the show in order to bring her back. Jenelle Evans | Gregg DeGuire/WireImage Jenelle and David Easons relationship Eason was kicked off of Teen Mom 2 after making a slew of homophobic comments. And just what makes you think you have the right to teach me how to parent, he tweeted in response to people calling him out for supporting kids bringing concealed weapons to school. Because you think you know me? Why dont you go tell the h*mos and transgender parents to start teaching their kids better morals? Oh, I forgot that is supposed to be normal now. After fans were outraged, MTV decided to let Eason go. David Easons personal comments do not reflect the views of MTV, the network said in a statement to People. With six weeks left of production on Teen Mom 2, effective immediately, we are ending our relationship with him. Later, when Eason shot Evans dog in front of her kids, MTV let her go as well. Did Jenelle almost come back to the show? When Evans broke up with Eason, people hoped she would return to Teen Mom 2. Ive mostly kept off social media the past few days because Ive been focused on making some big life decisions, she wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. Ive lived my life on camera since I was 17 years old. And a lot of it hasnt been pretty. But its been my life. I know I need to make changes. Im starting that now, she continued. The kids and I have moved away from David. Nobody gets into a marriage expecting it to end but I know thats what is best for me, and for my kids. Today Ive filed papers to start that process. She, then, moved to Tennessee with her kids and claims that MTV reached out to her during that time. While living in Tennessee, I was in talk with my producers and they were asking me to send them footage of my daily routine with the kids and what I was doing, Evans said on the Dirty Reality podcast. And they were thinking about kicking Jade [Cline] off the show. Evans, then, claimed that the only reason Cline didnt get fired was that Evans moved. Ultimately they didnt because I had to move back to North Carolina, she said. Evans moved back to North Carolina to live with Eason. The two are now back together and are trying to make their marriage work. Yes. Me and him are deciding to work things out right now, she said in a recent YouTube video. Were taking it slowly, A lot of things have changed, she continud. Me and him have decided to just try to remain positive no matter what and if we have an issue, we try to talk it out. While getting back together may have been what Evans wanted, it certainly doesnt bode well for any attempts she had at coming back to Teen Mom 2. The Lebanon City Council has approved an agreement with Lebanon Community Schools to collect its new Construction Excise Tax beginning July 1. The school districts board approved the tax during its March session. The district will impose a tax of $1.25 per square foot on new residential construction. The district will also collect $0.65 per square foot on new non-residential construction with a maximum amount of $33,700 for each project. State law authorizes school districts to impose this tax in order to help pay for school construction and improvements. The rationale is that new construction brings additional students into the district and these new developments should help pay for the necessary improvements. Because the City of Lebanon issues building permits for homes within the school district, its cooperation is needed in order to collect the tax. The city will keep 4% of the funds collected to cover its cost of administering the tax collection. That is the maximum amount allowed under state law. City councilor Karin Stauder emphasized that the city has no input into whether or not the Construction Excise Tax is the right approach and is solely acting as the agent. My own opinion is that if you want a capital improvement, you go out for a levy for that, Stauder said. The council met remotely on Wednesday, April 8 in a video conference call. State rules on public gatherings imposed in response to COVID-19 do not allow the council to hold its regular sessions at the Santiam Travel Station. In other business Wednesday, the council also approved a quote for the purchase of a new vactor truck. This is a specialized vehicle used for cleaning and unplugging sewer lines, as well as other tasks. Interim City Manager Ron Whitlatch said the current vehicle has been in use since 2007. These vehicles have a typical lifespan of eight to 10 years and the current vehicle is frequently unavailable because of necessary repairs. Whitlatch said the city has been setting aside funds to replace this vehicle and estimated the replacement cost to be $600,000. The city is working with the state of Oregons cooperative sourcing program to acquire the vehicle at a discount, with the current quote being just over $452,000. The council unanimously approved the purchase and the vehicle is expected to be delivered in late summer or early fall. Mayor Paul Aziz thanked the citys information technology staff for making the virtual meeting possible and for helping councilors and staff members work from home during this time. Remote planning commission sessions will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 30 and 6 p.m. Thursday, May 7. The next remote city council session is slated for 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 13. For details on those meetings, go to: https://www.ci.lebanon.or.us/meetings. To view the April 8 council session, go online to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUplFbqDo-E. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 4 Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks! Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics. The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc. The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics. The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates. Access to college recruiters and advisors its harder to line up higher education. Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family. Vote View Results In a Time of Social-Distancing, Virtually Serving Others Becomes More Essential Than Ever NEWS PROVIDED BYApril 13, 2020CINCINNATI, April 13, 2020 / Standard Newswire / -- While an abundance of events and activities have been canceled and communities are being asked to stay home amid the rapid-spreading COVID-19, for members of American Heritage Girls (AHG), serving others is still on the calendar. Adapting to their new 'normal' across the country, members of American Heritage Girls, a faith-based scouting-type alternative, are creatively using their gifts and talents to serve those in their communities while social distancing."The many ways AHG Members, near and far, are giving of their time and talent to serve others during a time of isolation and uncertainty, is a testament to the power of what American Heritage Girls is all about faith, service, and fun." Said Patti Garibay, AHG's Founder & Executive Director. "Most importantly, we are serving others by praying for our world each day as we all get through this time together."An AHG Troop in Louisiana is creating care packages for local nurses and doctors, and an AHG family in Texas is sewing hundreds of masks for frontline workers. An AHG family in South Carolina is grocery shopping for others who can't get to stores, and an Illinois Troop is making cards for nursing home residents."Troop SC8611 is sewing buttons on headbands for healthcare professionals for four local hospitals," Said Heather Hill, Troop Coordinator, "We are blessed that we can serve in our community."Many AHG Troops are continuing to meet virtually, working on badges at home, and are sharing service project ideas.American Heritage Girls is dedicated to the mission of building women of integrity through service to God, family, community, and country. Founded in 1995 in Cincinnati, Ohio, AHG has grown from ten Troops and 100 members to over 52,000 members across 15 countries and 50 states. Girl Members participate in Badge Programs, service projects, leadership opportunities, and outdoor experiences, all with an emphasis on Christian values and family involvement.Follow AHG on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.For more information and interview requests, contact: Marketing Communications Specialist, Coria Tucker, tuckerc@ahgonline.org , 513.771.2025 Ext: 167SOURCE American Heritage GirlsCONTACT: Coria Tucker, 513-771-2025 ext 167, tuckerc@ahgonline.org Related Links NEW YORK (AP) Bank of America is slashing the amount it charges customers when they spend more than they have in their accounts and plans to eliminate entirely its fees for bounced checks. Jose Humberto Vazquez, 93, of Laredo, Texas, passed away on April 7, 2020, peacefully, surrounded by his children. Jose was born in Laredo, Texas on December 30, 1926. He attended Laredo public schools and graduated from Martin High School in 1945. Joses high school sweetheart and spouse of 70 years, Lilia V. Vazquez preceded him in death in February 2019. He is survived by his three children, Lilia Vazquez Garcia, (Francisco L.), Carlos Vazquez, and Guillermo Vazquez. He was predeceased in death by his eldest son, Jose Humberto Vazquez Jr. He has five grandchildren, Clarisa Rhodes (Greg), Gabriel Garcia (Emily), Delia Christina Vazquez, Guillermo E. Vazquez Jr., and Christian Humberto Vazquez. He has five great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his parents Pedro and Carlota Vazquez, of Laredo. He is survived by two siblings, Edilia Morrow and Edgardo Vazquez, both of California, and predeceased by one brother, Pedro Vazquez. Jose began his career as a postal worker from 1945 through 1964 before he became a labor representative for several national unions. He founded Branch 354 of the National Association of Letter Carriers and served as President for six consecutive terms. He was later elected President of District 5 of the Texas Association of Letter Carriers. His willingness to serve the interest of working families allowed him to serve six terms as President of the Webb County Central Labor Council AFL-CIO. Throughout his career as a labor representative he led many labor struggles and strikes to ensure that workers gained recognition and representation rights. He led his largest campaigns in Laredo, Lubbock, and San Antonio, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. His passion was to ensure workers had effective procedures in place to negotiate terms and conditions of employment. In 1964, he was appointed by the Texas AFL-CIO as the Labor Representative to the Texas Partners of the Alliance for Progress to visit Peru as a part of President John F. Kennedys International Alliance for Progress Initiative. In 1978 he traveled to El Salvador and Guatemala on behalf of the US Department of Labor Bureau of International Affairs. He served in various other roles such as, member of the Joint Local Trade Union Committee and Public Information Officer for the Texas AFL-CIO. He served as an International representative of the Laborers International Union for 35+ years with over 50 years of service representing workers. After his retirement from the Laborers Union he served as a member of the Webb County Appraisal District Review Board and as a Board member for the Workforce Solutions of South Texas. In 1974, Jose also ran for City Council in Laredo with the idea that we should all work for the progress of our community. After a large labor struggle that began at Laredo AFB, he and his best friend, and union brother, David Jacobs, fought for federal legislation to secure workers rights while working on federal installations. That culminated in the passage of the Service Contract Act of 1965 which now protects thousands of workers throughout the United States. Jose also enjoyed his time with his family by making special trips abroad. His travels took him around the world to multiple countries in Europe and South and Central America. He adored Mexico and traveled there frequently with the family, especially to his father-in-laws ranch in Bustamante, Mexico as well as the family ranch near Laredo. He enjoyed cooking and hunting with the entire family by his side, killing his last buck in Dec 2019 at the age of 92. His devotion to his faith in Christ grew as he devoted more time to Sinai Presbyterian Church, his church for over 60 years, where he held several church positions, culminating in his role as a Ruling Elder, a position he held until his death. The family wishes to thank the entire staff of the Hope Kidney Clinic - Lakeview for the loving care they gave Jose over the last 6 years. His visits were often the highlight of his week as he looked forward to socializing with the technicians, nurses and doctors. The family also wishes to thank the congregation of Sinai Presbyterian Church, and their Pastor, Rev. Rafael Dominguez, the entire Vazquez and Villarreal families, and most of all, our Lord Jesus Christ for the blessing of eternal life. The family had a private service this week and will announce a memorial service to be held in the next few months so that the family can travel from out of state. The family requests that the sending of flowers be withheld until the memorial service. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 23:06:43|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BUDAPEST, April 13 (Xinhua) -- New arrival of medical protective equipment from China has landed in Budapest, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto announced on Monday. "In the early morning hours on Monday, six planes landed in Budapest, carrying 5.3 million face masks, 6 million pairs of gloves and 86,000 protective gowns from Beijing and Shanghai," the minister said on his Facebook page. "The virus does not take into account our holidays, therefore the China-Hungary air bridge must also operate at Easter, for the safe supply of medical protective equipment for hospitals, clinics and police and military units," he added. On Sunday morning, a plane from southern China's Shenzhen landed in Budapest, carrying 1,365,000 protective masks. According to official figures, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Hungary stood at 1,458 on Monday, with 120 recoveries and 109 fatalities. 1. Novel metrics suggests that electronic consultations are an appropriate and useful alternative to face-to-face medical appointments Abstract: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M19-3852 Editorial: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/M20-1320 URL goes live when the embargo lifts Using novel metrics, researchers found that 70 percent of electronic consultations, or e-consults, were appropriate based on their proposed criteria and 81 percent were associated with avoided face-to-face visits. Study authors say these metrics provide meaningful insight into practice and may provide a rubric for comparison in future studies. Findings from a cohort study were published in Annals of Internal Medicine. E-consults can improve patient access to specialists, minimize travel, and reduce unnecessary in-person visits. However, metrics to enable study of e-consults and their effect on processes and patient care are lacking. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital reviewed a random sample of 150 medical records from each of five specialties with a high volume of e-consult requests - psychiatry, hematology, dermatology, infectious diseases, and rheumatology - to assess novel metrics of e-consult appropriateness and utility. The appropriateness of each e-consult was measured by the following criteria: could not be answered by reference to society guidelines or a point-of-care resource, were not requesting logistical information, were not urgent, and were considered complex. Utility was measured by rate of avoided face-to-face visits within 120 days of the e-consult. The authors found 70 percent of e-consults to be appropriate based on their criteria, ranging from 61 percent in rheumatology to 78 percent in psychiatry. Nearly all questions were of appropriate urgency, but some were deemed too simple or too complex. Across all specialties, 81 percent of e-consults were associated with avoided visits, ranging from 62 percent in dermatology to 93 percent in psychiatry. Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF please contact Lauren Evans at laevans@acponline.org. To speak with the lead author, Salman Ahmed, MD, MPH, please contact Haley Bridger at hbridger@bwh.harvard.edu. 2. Levetiracetam may reduce anticoagulation effect of rivaroxaban Abstract: http://annals.org/aim/article/doi/10.7326/L19-0712 URL goes live when the embargo lifts Levetiracetam, a commonly used medication to prevent seizures, may reduce the anticoagulation effect of oral rivaroxaban in humans. As such, clinicians should measure direct oral anticoagulant plasma levels during treatment. A case report is published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Clinical guidelines recommend the use of levetiracetam with oral anticoagulants because animal studies suggest that the anti-convulsant acts as a P-glycoprotein inducer to reduce rivaroxaban plasma levels. However, not everyone is convinced that levetiracetam should be avoided in patients receiving rivaroxaban because there is little or no published evidence describing this interaction in humans. Researchers from the University of Prugia, Perugia, Italy, report the case of a 69-year-old man who was taking rivaroxaban for atrial fibrillation and started to experience seizures in his right frontal lobe, for which he was prescribed levetiracetam. Several months later, he was clinically diagnosed with recurrent transient ischemic attacks. The clinicians measured his rivaroxaban plasma levels to determine if low levels would explain the transient ischemic attacks and then changed levetiracetam with lacosamide, an anticonvulsive not interfering with P-glycoprotein. Repeated measurement of rivaroxaban plasma levels showed a clinically relevant interaction between levetiracetam and rivaroxaban, where the drug reduced plasma levels, with a particularly strong and long-lasting effect on trough levels. The clinicians believe that this interaction is clinically important but caution that their study was limited and they did not measure P-glycoprotein activity in the patient. Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF please contact Lauren Evans at laevans@acponline.org. To speak with the lead author, Paolo Gresele, MD, PhD, please contact Silvia Spaccini at 0755783989 or paolo.gresele@gmail.com. ### Police at the scene in Ballinahone Close in Armagh A community has been left in shock after a Co Armagh man died following a late-night altercation. The victim has been named locally as Nigel Burgess. The incident happened in the Ballinahone Close area of Armagh city at around 10.20pm on Saturday. When police officers and emergency services arrived, they found Mr Burgess, who is understood to be aged 60, lying on the ground. He was later pronounced dead at the scene. The PSNI said a post-mortem examination was due to take place to determine the cause of death. Police arrested a 49-year-old man, who is believed to be known to the victim, as part of the investigation. On Monday morning the man was released on bail pending further enquiries. Newry and Armagh DUP MLA William Irwin said the community was in a "state of shock" following Mr Burgess' death. "My thoughts and prayers are with the family of Mr Burgess at this time," he said. "Mr Burgess has lost his life in tragic circumstances. "I know at this stage a post-mortem will take place and the police are questioning one man. "The post-mortem will take place to ascertain the cause of death." Local Ulster Unionist councillor Sam Nicholson added that it was a "truly awful incident within a very close-knit community in Armagh city". "I have spoken to the police and they are investigating the circumstances of this man's death," he said. "If anyone has any information that can help the investigation about what happened I would urge them to bring it forward to the police immediately. "My sympathies go to the family, friends and the local community at this time who are affected by this tragic incident." Sinn Fein Newry and Armagh MP Mickey Brady also spoke of his shock. "There is shock in the local community following the death of a man after police received reports of an altercation in the Ballinahone Close area on Saturday night," he said. "A police investigation is now under way to determine the circumstances." Sinn Fein MLA Cathal Boylan added: "This is the most awful news for the family of the deceased to receive and they should be uppermost in our thoughts and prayers at this present moment." Detective Chief Inspector Michelle Shaw appealed for anyone in Ballinahone Close on Saturday night and who witnessed an altercation to contact police on 101 quoting reference number 2554 10/04/20. Information can also be passed to Crimestoppers by calling 0800 555 111. Nathaniel Mundle (pictured above) pleaded guilty to raping his latest female victim on September 25 A flasher-turned-rapist has been jailed for 17 years after he strangled and dragged an unconscious woman into his home and held her against her will for over an hour. Nathaniel Mundle throttled the victim, aged in her forties, before dragging her into his home in Haringey, north London. Police said the woman was 'violently attacked', but managed to 'bravely escape' 23-year-old Mundle. Mundle had previously appeared on the local police radar as a potentially dangerous sex offender when caught as a 19-year-old indecently exposing himself to five females in five days. The victims included cyclists and a dog walker, some with their young children, and resulted in a judge banning Mundle from Walthamstow Marshes, where he would go to hunt him victims. He ultimately received a non-custodial sentence, having spent time locked-up on remand. Mundle was previously banned from Walthamstow Marshes (pictured above) after he flashed at five females He has now pleaded guilty to raping his latest female victim on September 25, last year and also admitted a charge of kidnap and false imprisonment. Wood Green Crown Court heard it was approximately 4.00pm when the victim was attacked from behind by Mundle, who beat and throttled her until she passed out. He dragged her into his home and raped her while she was unconscious and forcibly detained her for over an hour. Fortunately the woman managed to escape and was helped by a neighbour and police and an ambulance were called. Wood Green Crown Court (stock image pictured above) heard Mundle detained the woman for over an hour She was hospitalised due to the brutality of the attack. Mundle fled the scene, but officers were waiting for him when he returned just before 1.00am and arrested him. Detective Constable Lydia Polydorou-Evangelou, of the North Area Command Unit's Safeguarding Team said: 'This was a shocking, pre-meditated assault in which a woman was violently attacked. 'I would like to thank the victim in this case, who showed great bravery in making her escape and contacting us. 'I would also like to thank her for assisting the investigating team, who made sure this dangerous individual was removed from the public domain and is now unable to hurt anyone else. 'I'm very happy with the sentence and I hope this case underlines how seriously we take allegations like this.' New Delhi, April 13 : Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Kushinagar MP Vijay Dubey has claimed that Pakistan may conspire to spread coronavirus in areas of India that adjoin Nepal borders. The MP told IANS: "The Nepal border runs along Kushinagar district, which can be accessed by walking trails in villages like Hariharpur, Narayanpur, Marichahwa. The forests of Susta and Parsa, villages in Nepal, are also located nearby. With the help of a Muslim cleric in Parsa, some people here are planning to spread the corona infection. There are intelligence reports and I have alerted district officer." "The infection can be spread through persons coming into Indian territory through these walking trails," Dubey said. He said that though Uttar Pradesh police have sealed the international borders, even then he had alerted the DM and the SP. "A Nepal national was caught here on Sunday." Kushinagar Superintendent of Police Vinod Kumar Mishra said: "The boundaries of the district have been sealed and the even the walking trails are under police vigil." The NYPD said three more of its officers had died of COVID-19 Monday, bringing the total killed by the virus in their ranks to 23. Detectives Jeffrey Scalf and Raymond Abear and Auxiliary Captain Mohamed Rahaman were named as the latest police victims in a tweet by Commissioner Dermot Shea. As of Sunday 6,522 uniformed members of the NYPD were out sick - 18 per cent of the Department's uniformed workforce. The force said 2,344 uniformed members and 489 civilian members have tested positive for the coronavirus. Paul DiGiacomo, the head of the NYPD's detective union, on Sunday called the coronavirus an 'invisible bullet' for officers. DiGiacomo told AM 970 The Answer: 'It's a very dangerous time for New York City detectives and all first responders.' 'The fact that you're out there risking your life every day, one, from the criminal element, and two, from what I call the invisible bullet, this coronavirus.' Scroll down for video Detective Raymond Abear, left, NYPD Queens Special Victims Squad died of COVID-19. NYPD Detective Jeffrey Scalf, right, Gang Squad Bronx died April 1 of COVID-19 Traffic Enforcement Agent William Hayes, 61, left, a U.S. Army veteran died Saturday. NYPD Auxiliary Police Captain Mohamed Rahaman, right, also died of COVID-19 The NYPD said three more of its officers had died of COVID-19 Monday, bringing the total killed by the virus in their ranks to 23 The Detectives Endowment Association president added: 'And then you are going home and possibly taking it home to your families, which is very disturbing for all first responders.' Commissioner Shea tweeted: 'In the last day, the NYPD family has suffered significant losses 3 of our members lost their battles with #COVID19. 'Devastated, we mourn with their loved ones as we vow to #neverforget our fallen.' Detective Abear, 44, is survived by his wife and two children, The New York Post reports. Detective Scalf, 46, is survived by his wife and three children. Both men had worked for the NYPD for a number of years; Abear 19 years, Scalf for 14. Just a day earlier, on Sunday, Shea had announced the death of Traffic Enforcement Agent William Hayes, a U.S. Army veteran who had been with the NYPD for 31 years. He wrote Sunday: 'With profound sadness, I announce the passing of Traffic Enforcement Agent William Hayes as a result of#COVID-19. 'William was a U.S. Army veteran & member of our NYPD family for nearly 31 years. Our prayers are with his loved ones & colleagues today and every day. #NeverForget.' The number of officers off sick is steadily improving after a peak of 7,100 last Thursday. Shea said Friday: 'There is light at the end of that tunnel. As good as it is to see members coming back, we still have a heck of a lot people in the hospital.' New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the 'worst is over for New York if we continue to be smart' as hospitalizations, deaths and ICU admissions all slowed on Monday. Cuomo also announced he and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut will decide on a reopening plan in a slapdown of President Donald Trump. While deaths continue to rise - the new death toll across the state is 10,056 - it is rising at a slower rate. On Sunday, there were 671 new deaths as opposed to more than 700, which was the figure over the last few days. As of Sunday 6522 uniformed members of the NYPD were out sick - 18 per cent of the Department's uniformed workforce. The force said 2,344 uniformed members and 489 civilian members have tested positive for the coronavirus The number of new cases across the state rose by another 6,129 to 195,031. There were 18,825 new hospitalizations on April 12 which was an increase of more than 100 from the previous day but when taken as a three-day average, shows the curve flattening. 'I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart and we can start on the path to normalcy and we can have a plan when you start to see some businesses reopening understanding the balance. 'We have to understand on the reopening, as much as we have this emotion that we want it to happen and that we can't take this anymore, it is a delicate balance,' Cuomo said. Lucknow: One hundred and forty-six hotspots have been identified in 15 districts of Uttar Pradesh, having 401 positive COVID-19 cases, the state's Additional Chief Secretary, Uttar Pradesh Home Department, Awanish K Awasthi said on Monday. During a press conference, Awasthi said, "146 hotspots have been identified in 15 districts. There are 1,71,232 houses there with 9,78,055 people. Barricading has been done in all these areas, sanitisation has been done here. 401 positive cases have been found here." "Sixty two hotspots have been identified in the other 25 districts. 1,62,664 houses have been identified here with the presence of 9,50,828 people in these areas. 80 positive cases were found here," he added. Awasthi informed that orders were given on March 29, 30 and 31 for checking in every village and house. "Now, action will be taken against all people who will be found hiding. CM has ordered that action will also be taken against the concerned district administration and Police," he added. "District Magistrates themselves had identified hotspots in 15 districts, in the first phase, and around 25 districts in the second phase. More than 480 corona cases have been found here. So, 85 per cent of the corona cases are inside the `ring-fence`", said Awasthi. He added that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed to pay attention to doorstep deliveries and sanitisation in these areas."Till now media was strictly not allowed to enter in these areas but now they will be allowed in limited numbers if required. The DM should broadcast the sanitisation work carried out in these areas," he added. Regarding the restoration of emergency services, committees have been constituted under the chairmanship of the Healthy Minister which will hand over their reports to the CM, Awasthi informed. The Chief Minister has also said that social distancing should be ensured in the vegetable mandis in various districts. Earlier, State Principal Health Secretary said that 47 people, out of the total 550 coronavirus positive cases in Uttar Pradesh, have been discharged from the hospitals after making a full recovery. By its nature, government action is a blunt instrument. The federal and state governments responses to the coronavirus inevitably select winners and losers. Most will suffer from mandated shutdowns, while a few will be overcompensated. And the states shutdown orders have been a maze of paradoxes and inconsistencies. Michigans Governor Gretchen Whitmer has become notorious nationally for her extreme shutdown order, although, to be fair, I am not sure it is much worse than the one issued by my own governor, Tim Walz. The local press has taken notice: Whitmers new stay home order blasted by critics for lack of consistency. State residents cant travel to their Up North cottages, but Illinois residents who own one in Michigan apparently can. In-store purchases of Michigan Lottery tickets are still permitted, but buying a can of paint or a bag of seeds is off limits. *** Beginning Saturday morning, previously permitted travel between two Michigan residences will end, including jumping in the car to visit a friend, or even walking across the street to watch TV with a neighbor. *** [Hal] Hughes said he cant understand how the state has imposed still more restrictions on the movement of people and the sale of nonessential goods, without shutting down in-store lottery sales. You cant go visit your friends. You cant buy seeds but you can sneak out and buy lottery tickets, Hughes said. I dont understand it, unless its hypocritical greed. Hypocritical greed is a phrase that applies, in general, to both state and federal governments. Though the new order prohibits trips from a Michigan residence to a Michigan cottage, travel between states is still permitted, and by the words of the order, only individuals currently living within the State of Michigan, but not residents living in other states, are subject to the order. That would suggest that residents of other states who own cottages Up North can continue to visit, unless banned by a stay home order in their own state. The linked article notes that two protests against Whitmers stay-home order are in the offing. I received an email this morning inviting me to participate in a Get Minnesota Working Again protest outside the governors mansion in St. Paul. The demonstration is scheduled for next Friday from noon to 3 p.m. I am not sure whether the protest is legal or not, and it might take careful study of our governors economy destruction order to figure this out. One would think that if state authorities tried to block the protest or arrest those who participate (as, in some states, people have been ticketed or arrested for attending church services), it would violate the First Amendments guarantee of freedom of assembly. Then again, maybe not. We live in a time in which very few seem to take seriously their rights as Americans. BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 13 By Matanat Nasibova - Trend: Azerbaijans Baki Insaat Senaye, one of the biggest industrial enterprises in the country producing the building and industrial materials, has increased the production of fittings by 10 percent since the beginning of this year, a source in the company told Trend. The enterprise intends to increase the production of metal channels and types of iron products, the source said. Presently, the production volumes reach 8,000 tons per month, the source said. From the second quarter of this year, it is planned to increase the production volume up to 12-13 percent while up to 20-25 percent by the end of the year. The construction fittings are planned to be exported to the neighboring countries, the source said. The production of two models of construction pipes will be launched in the second half of this year. These types of materials are expected to be developed soon." The enterprise is located in Keshla settlement and has been operating in Azerbaijan since 2004. It mainly produces steel pipes of various modifications and parameters. Advertisement Fierce winds and driving rain began pummeling New York City and the tri-state early Monday morning, threatening medical tents housing desperately ill coronavirus patients and raising the specter of widespread power outages. The National Weather Service has issued a high wind warning for New York City from 6am through 6pm, warning of damaging winds of 30-40mph, with gusts up to 70mph are expected. Heavy downpours are expected to soak the area with 1-2 inches of rain before tapering off in the late afternoon, with some flooding possible in low-laying areas. Stormy conditions, including powerful winds of 30-40mph, could pose a threat to this tent hospital in Central Park treating COVID-19 patients There were about 50 people infected with the coronavirus being cared for at the mobile facility, five of them in the ICU A view of the makeshift hospital set up in the middle of Central Park featuring 14 tents to house COVID-19 patients An ambulance drives across a nearly empty East 42nd Street in heavy rain and high winds in Manhattan during the outbreak of the coronavirus Monday Bodies are moved to refrigerated morgue trailers at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn amid the storm on Monday Monday's severe weather conditions lashing the East Coast are part of a deadly storm system that killed at least 22 across the South on Easter Sunday, which saw tornadoes and thunderstorms tear through Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Densely populated cities in the Northeast, including Philadelphia, parts of Connecticut, Washington DC and Boston, are expected to experience heavy rain and strong winds. 'People should avoid being outside in forested areas and around trees and branches,' the NWS said. 'If possible, remain in the lower levels of your home during the windstorm, and avoid windows.' New York City Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell released a statement, urging residents to secure their property and bring in objects that can be easily blown away. This map shows the direction of the winds lashing the East Coast, sparking a high wind warning between 6am and 6 pm on Monday The areas on the map colored dark-purple, including New York City, are subjected to the high win warning JFK Airport is seeing winds gusts between 35mph and 46mph, but some areas could experience gusts of up to 70mph A tornado watch has been issued for multiple counties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania Low-laying coastal areas in Long Island and Connecticut could experience flooding Before the storm pushes off, it is expected to soak the area with 1-2 inches of rain The storm comes at a time when some of New York's 195,000 coronavirus patients are getting critical care at field hospitals, including the largest one operating in Central Park. The National Weather Service warned that gale-force winds could damage the 14 well-secured tents comprising the temporary medical facility, where some 50 people were being treated for COVID-19, at least five of them in the makeshift ICU, reported NBC New York. City officials assured the public their tent hospitals are protected. The field hospital at Columbia University is said to be able to withstand sustained winds of up 60mph. By early afternoon, parts of the tri-state area, including Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn and Middlesex County in New Jersey, had already experienced the wrath of the storm in the form of downed trees and widespread power outages. As of Monday afternoon, there were 573,233 cases of COVID-19 nationwide and 22,993 deaths In Astoria, Queens, a tree came down on Crescent Street, ripping off power lines The force of the winds pulled down electrical poles and wires, shutting down this street People stand on line in the soaking rain to get supplies at the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger Food Bank A woman has her umbrella blown upside down as she walks in heavy rain and high winds in Manhattan Monday In the densely population neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, a tree came down on Crescent Street, ripping off power lines, and the powerful winds tore off construction walls in the area as rain continued soaking the city. In Connecticut, more than 28,000 homes were left without power by lunchtime, reported Hartford Courant. Gov. Ned Lamont said Connecticut National Guardsmen were dispatched to all field hospitals operating across the state to protect the tents housing coronavirus patients. Many drive-up COVID-19 testing sites in Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey suspended operations on Monday because of the hazardous weather conditions. At least seven counties in New Jersey were under tornado watch, including Ocean County, where a hurricane-strength 81 mph gust was reported around noon. Rainstorms and fierce winds are expected to push out of the tri-state area by Monday evening, to be replaced by cool and dry weather, with temperatures in the mid-50s. Severe weather swept across the Deep South on Easter Sunday, killing nearly two dozens people, including in Mississippi (pictured) A damaged trailer is seen after a tornado hit on Monday in Chatsworth, Georgia. Many people spent part of the night early Monday sheltering in basements, closets and bathroom tubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes This handout photo courtesy of the City of Monroe, Louisiana shows the aftermath of storm damage The same storm system as the one wreaking havoc on the East Coast today on Sunday swept across the Deep South, killing more than 20 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains. Eleven people were killed in Mississippi, and six more died in northwest Georgia. Three other bodies were pulled from damaged homes in Arkansas, South Carolina and North Carolina. The storms blew onward through the night, causing flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas, and knocking out electricity for nearly 1.3million customers in a path from Texas to Maine. Striking first on Easter Sunday across a landscape largely emptied by coronavirus stay-at-home orders, the storm front forced some uncomfortable decisions. In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey suspended social distancing rules, and some people wearing protective masks huddled closely together in storm shelters. Apart from the surge of COVID-19 cases, the country is already facing, Mexico still needs to address the pre-existing economic recession. At this rate, Mexico's Treasury predicted the economy would go down by 3.9%, but even this is a mild estimate. In a speech on March 16, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised to withdraw over $16 billion from the public trusts and budget stabilization fund. This move is in hopes of reducing public debt and also to avoid giving corporations tax breaks, which private analysts have predicted to reduce the country's GDP by 4 - 12 percent. Last week, he confirmed that the plan is in motion. Mexico's stagnant economy is being planned by its president to launch too many projects at once immediately after the pandemic is expected to be over. Critics argue that the direction of the funds must instead go to the debilitating health sector, which is struggling to meet increasing demands. Price to Pay Much of the value of Mexico's currency has lost a significant margin. Now at roughly 25 to the U.S. dollar, the Mexican peso is second to the Japanese yen as the most depreciated currency. Economist Gabriela Siller from Banco Base claimed this was partly due to the choice of Mexico's administration to undermine the seriousness of the pandemic and fail to come up with a plan of countermeasures. Siller adds, "The exchange rate reacted because, without counter-cyclical fiscal policy, there is no way to lessen the coronavirus' hit on the economy." Possibly the most significant economic concern Mexico must address is how to support small and medium-sized businesses like restaurants and retail stores, which account for 52 percent of the GDP in the country, within the coming months of the pandemic. "The neo-liberal model is crashing down, and coronavirus only made an already doomed model to come down even faster," Lopez Obrador said. He added that the administration would seek to expand social programs by creating 2 million jobs by creating direct subsidies for low-income workers. He adds that finances will also move to the state-owned oil company to lift debts. His speech last week included infrastructure projects for a new airport, oil refinery, and a train. One of the measures Lopez Obrador planned on arranging had been to raise the living standards of low-income citizens. He said this would be done by promising them employment in the upcoming construction projects the administration was planning in the coming months. Check these out! Easier Said Than Done Director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness Manuel Molano left no reservations for reactions towards Lopez Obrador, who he said was detached from the drastic effects of the pandemic. Molano says that to respond efficiently to the crisis, Lopez Obrador needs to take a good look at how the coronavirus outbreak affects the country from a global perspective since the administration appears not fully to understand the magnitude of the crisis. He stated the implication of the government's lack of real comprehension of the economy is "not understanding the tie between the person selling food on the corner and the person who works in a factory and buys that food." He is referring to when Lopez Obrador promised 2 million jobs in the coming months. Molano continued explaining that small to medium-sized businesses need more support than ever to lift Mexico from debt. Molano estimated more than 1.5 million people would either become underemployed, earning less than they work for or unemployed, losing jobs entirely. While it seems sensible to provide $100 to low-income families, they will likely use that money to pay their debt rather than to contribute to countering the expanding recession. Over a third of dairy farmers in Wales have been 'severely impacted' as a result of the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak, according to NFU Cymru. The union has called for 'urgent interventions' to support Welsh dairy farms due to the effects caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus has seen the almost complete loss of the food service and hospitality markets, as well as increasing price volatility in global markets, which has left farms and processors under increased pressure. This has led to some dairy farmers receiving significant price cuts, delays to payments and, in some cases, no other option but to dispose of milk on farm because the processor is not collecting it. NFU Cymru Dairy Board Chair Abi Reader and NFU Cymru Deputy President Aled Jones are involved in a dairy focus group that Welsh government has established. In meetings of the group this week, the pair have stressed to the government the urgency and gravity of the situation. Ms Reader, a dairy farmer from Wenvoe, Vale of Glamorgan, said over a third of dairy farm businesses in Wales have already been 'severely impacted, and this number is growing'. "We can envisage this number rising with more processors dropping their milk prices for May," she said. "As cows begin to go out to pasture milk production is increasing daily and we expect to hit peak production in mid-May. "We need to move fast to mitigate the impacts of this unfolding crisis on dairy farming businesses across the country." A key issue raised is that farmers and processors largely cannot access the Welsh government and UK Treasury schemes designed to help businesses through this crisis. Farms cannot furlough staff or stop milking cows, and things like business rate holidays dont apply, Ms Reader explained. Welsh government has been urged to extend the eligibility of these schemes so that they can be utilised by those businesses in the dairy sector who are losing significant income Ms Reader said: Its important for everyone that we protect the UK dairy sector so when our cafes and restaurants open normally again, we have the dairy farmers in business with the capacity to produce milk that forms the basis of healthy and nutritious dairy products which are loved by the nation. In a meeting this week with Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths, Aled Jones called on Welsh government to take immediate steps to ensure the sustainability of the dairy sector in Wales. "We need a government-backed scheme that can take distressed milk off the market for the next two months until we return to some normality in the sector," he said. "We also need specific support for Welsh dairy farmers whose businesses are adversely affected by what is happening out there in the market. What are dairy farmers' key asks? Grant scheme for Small Businesses and Economic resilience Fund to be made available for dairy farms affected by coronavirus market disruption. To engage with the EU Commission about schemes such as PSA, production reduction and market promotion to help restore confidence in the market and prevent adverse publicity related to disposal of milk. Governments across the UK to work together to help the industry through this crisis. UK government has a role to play in convening key stakeholders and helping to manage flows of milk through the supply chain by helping with measures such as competition law. Seven hundred thousand Australians could lose their job by the middle of the year as the unemployment rate reaches its highest level in 26 years, but Treasury modelling also reveals it would have been much worse without the JobKeeper program. The analysis shows Treasury had expected unemployment, which edged down to 5.1 per cent in February, to triple to 15 per cent as businesses stood down staff and closed their doors in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, it believes the $130 billion wage subsidy program that was approved by the federal Parliament last week will result in the jobless rate reaching 10 per cent in the June quarter. That would be the highest jobless rate since April 1994, when Australia was still recovering from the 1990-91 recession. Seoul, April 13 : North Korea held a session of its Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) two days later than originally scheduled, state media reported Monday without explaining why the meeting was delayed. Leader Kim Jong-un apparently did not attend the meeting held on Sunday as the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the country's No. 2 leader, Choe Ryong-hae, presided over the session. The SPA session had originally been scheduled to take place on Friday, Yonhap News Agency reported. In Monday's report, KCNA gave no reason why the session was delayed. The South Korean Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs said that the date for the SPA meeting might have been adjusted due to some unspecified "political schedules" for the country. No major decisions were announced either during Sunday's meeting, such as a message to the UA amid long-stalled nuclear negotiations between the two countries or measures related to efforts to prevent an outbreak of the coronavirus. The KCNA said that Sunday's meeting dealt with budgetary and personnel affairs issues, including electing the country's Foreign Minister, Ri Son-gwon, as a member of the State Affairs Commission, the North's most powerful decision-making body led by Kim. The SPA usually holds a plenary session every April, mostly to deal with the state budget and Cabinet reshuffle, said the Yonhap News Agency report. Last April when Kim attended an SPA session and made a policy speech, urging Washington to come up with a new proposal in their nuclear talks. This year's parliamentary session was held despite concerns over the coronavirus pandemic and Pyongyang's intensifying efforts to block an outbreak of the infectious disease on its soil. North Korea is among just a few countries in the world that claim to have no coronavirus infections. From I have flu like symptoms. Do I have coronavirus? to Can we contract COVID-19 from Made in China' products?, doctors are flooded with anxious queries that cover the serious-to-downright-silly spectrum. With physical checks out of the reckoning, except in emergencies and that too in hospitals, the telephone has replaced the stethoscope and doctors are busy attending to calls by panic-stricken patients trying to come to grips with the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe. The usual queue at clinics and hospitals might have disappeared, but doctors are as busy as ever and helplines on television, hospitals and social media are buzzing. The questions are many and bewildering in range, doctors said. The most commonly asked questions relate to symptoms and prevention -- "Will summer kill the coronavirus?", "Should outside food and non-veg food be avoided?", "Does smoking affect chances of recovery?", "Are face masks useful?", "Are hand sanitisers better than soap?", Are elders in my family more susceptible? And then the panic gives way to naivety with questions that leave doctors struggling for answers -- "Can one contract the infection through mail coming from China?", "Will sipping hot water kill the virus?", "Are Indians more immune to coronavirus than others?", Is the risk higher in homes with tiles?, Are those with beards and moustaches more prone to the disease?, Does sunbathing kill the virus? Vishal Sehgal, director at Goa-based Portea Medical, said their WhatsApp chatbot service, launched on March 3, has received over 15 lakh queries from over 16 countries. Besides, they get over 100 COVID-19 related calls on their helpline everyday. There is a lot of anxiety and doubts among people about COVID-19. They are mostly about what this virus is, how it works and what safety measures need to be taken. There are also a lot of queries on what one can do if they develop the symptoms. But sometimes the questions are simply absurd like, Is it true that drinking beer can help with coronavirus', Sehgal told PTI. As the number of cases rise, so do the levels of foolishness, said some doctors. But, as the disease claims more lives everyday, patience is the key. Globally, COVID-19 has infected more than 1.8 million people and claimed 114,000 lives. In India, the death toll rose to 308 on Monday while the number of cases climbed to 9,152, according to the Union Health Ministry. Hemant Kalra, a pulmonologist with lybrate.com (an online platform that connects patients with medical professionals), said it is natural for people to start panicking when they consume such vast amounts of information from various sources. While media reports and health advisories might be reliable, there are also random WhatsApp forwards to contend with. My advice to people is not to fall prey to fake WhatsApp forwards and rely only on information coming from genuine sources, said Vivek Nangia, director and head of department, pulmonology, at Fortis Hospital. Kalra added it is important to attend to these queries with a balanced approach. Patients call us to understand whether they are at risk of contracting the disease and our strategy is to not create panic. We ensure that we handle the queries with a lot of compassion and patience, because everyone is scared for themselves and their families, Kalra said. Rajesh Kumar, a doctor of Internal medicine at Gurgaon's Paras hospital, agreed. I try to hear them out without interrupting. One needs to be more receptive. And, then whatever I share with the patient about coronavirus, I ask him/her to share it with his/her friends and relatives." Ghaziabad's Columbia Asia hospital has been receiving about 10 calls an hour. Gyan Bharti, a pulmonologist at the hospital, listed some of the frequently asked questions -- Are antibiotics effective in preventing or treating COVID-19?, Are there any medicines or therapies that can prevent or cure?, Is there a vaccine drug or treatment?, Should I take hydroxychloroquine empirically. The hospital has started filtering the calls. Initially, the medical staff attended to all the queries but some are now being answered by the customer care desk tasked with responding to irrelevant questions, Bharti said. Does drinking alcohol kill the virus?, Should we live in a closed room with higher temperature?, Is tea a cure of coronavirus? are some of the posers. Questions on mental wellbeing in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent lockdown are also pouring in. Living in isolation or being locked up with the same set of people 24x7 is also taking its toll on many, specifically parents who want to know how to keep their children engaged. Many are anxious about what they should and should not tell their children regarding the current atmosphere, said Samir Parikh, director, Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences, Fortis Healthcare. Interestingly, the same patients who would earlier complain about not getting enough time with family and poor work-life balance are now stressed about being house-bound with their family, or facing trouble dealing with their children 24*7, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Its been a little over two weeks since Harris County issued a stay-at-home order. And one model shows that we still have two weeks to go before our areas COVID-19 cases peak. Houstonians are wondering: How will we get our lives back? To discuss that, we called Gerald Parker at Texas A&M, where he directs the Bush Schools biosecurity and pandemic public policy program and is associate dean of Global One Health. Hes also served for decades in federal government. In the U.S. Department of Defense, he was deputy assistant for chemical and biological defense. And at the Department of Health and Human Services, he led efforts to prepare for public health emergencies. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Youve said that you expect our current pandemic to have five phases. Could you explain what those are, and where Houston and Texas are on that timeline? The first phase is containment. Thats when we try to keep the virus from entering our area and try to keep it from spreading in the community. Containment really started at the end of January, when the United States declared a public health emergency, and the president imposed traveled travel restrictions and travel bans from China. That was to try to slow the spread of the virus from China into the United States. And it did. That's where our public health authorities ramped up their capability to identify patients, isolate and care for them, and also do contact tracing. But clearly, some time late February, the U.S. had an inflection point: community spread. Once we had widespread human transmission in the United States, it overwhelmed the ability of public health to do individual, case-by-case containment. So we transitioned from Phase One, containment, to Phase Two, mitigation. We are clearly in the mitigation phase now. The primary purpose of mitigation is to slow the spread of virus within our communities. What you're seeing now is a lot of activity to try to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed caring for those patients who get really, really sick from COVID. That is the purpose of the aggressive social-distancing measures, like closing schools, universities going to distance learning, asking that people avoid large gatherings, closing businesses except for essential functions. We've also seen action to mitigate the viruss economic impact to provide economic relief and keep people employed. Now Playing: 'COVID-19 in 60': Houston coronavirus news in a minute Video: Houston Chronicle Those of us stuck at home, or worrying about our jobs or the economy, are very ready to exit this phase. What are the next phases? How do we get out? How can we safely begin to reopen some schools and businesses? Phase Three would be (a second stage of) containment before we have a vaccine to deploy. Im optimistic that in three to six months well have (a better treatment for coronavirus symptoms), a therapeutic in our toolkit that can rescue those who become severely ill. But it's going to be at least 18 months, I believe, before there's a vaccine available to deploy in any meaningful way. While we wait for a vaccine, well enter a second stage of containment. During this time, we need to restart our economy -- and we need to do it safely. What's essential to go the next phase is greatly expanded lab testing both the antigen and the antibody lab testing so we can have a much better view of what's happening in our community. Despite the rapid advancement that's occurred in lab testing over the last month, we're still catching up. And without the lab testing, we're still almost blind to what's really happening in our community. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Texas A&M to launch TV series on COVID-19 I think everybody is now familiar with the epidemiology curve the curve from flattening the curve and its peak. Once were on the other side of the peak, once we're seeing a decreasing number of cases, we'll be back in a position where we can attempt to contain the virus in our communities with surgically applied social distancing measures not community-wide social distancing measures. Were going to have to target new infections more aggressively. Were going to have to isolate those and do contact tracing. It takes a lot of resources to do that. Our public health authorities don't have the manpower to do this. We need a lot more public-health soldiers. What will life be like during that phase? We're gonna have a new normal. We're all going to remember how important personal hygiene is hand sanitizers, cough etiquette, the importance of washing our hands often for 20 seconds with soap and water. We're probably also going to do more cleansing and disinfection of our public spaces, like you see in other countries our subway systems and mass transit, and things like that, where there's a lot of people. We'll seriously consider cleaning and disinfection of public places where we haven't done really that that much in the past. What does vaccine development look like now? There are three vaccines that are actually in Phase Three clinical trials already, and there's at least 20 more that are in the laboratory phase of development, waiting to go into clinical trial. I'm hopeful that one or two of those will make it all the way. So whats the next phase? Phase Four is (a third stage of) containment once we have a vaccine. We're going to get into a situation like we're used to with seasonal flu, because I don't think COVID is going away. In fact, I think we should anticipate that we're going to have a second wave in in the fall. We may see a seasonal periodicity with COVID-19, like we see with seasonal flu. Our scientific community cannot say that for certain yet. But I think that's the predominance of the scientific thinking right now. Having a vaccine to deal with this virus as it evolves is going to be important, but we know how to live like that. Coupled with our personal hygiene,well be in a much better place. And then we have to prepare for the next pandemic? We do. We do. Thats Phase Five: Making preparation for the next pandemic a national security priority. Unfortunately, we've entered a period where emerging infectious diseases are increasing with alarming frequency. Go back to the first coronavirus: Recall the major problems with SARS in 2000 to 2003. That was supposed to be a wake-up call for the world to be ready for these things. ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: The latest information on coronavirus in Houston Unfortunately, I don't I think we got the message. We got complacent afterwards. But then we had a H5N1 avian influenza We actually had a pandemic in 2009 with H1N1 influenza. We had Ebola from 2014 to 2016. We've had MERS. We've had Zika. We have Ebola again in the Democratic Republic of Congo. COVID-19 became the nightmare scenario that many of us in the community have been afraid about. Now we know we have to go into Phase Five, pandemic preparedness, with renewed vigor. Much of our national pandemic security plan dates back to 2006. To the George W. Bush White House. You were part of the large team that helped prepare that. Could you talk about that? Yes, I had the privilege and honor to work with an outstanding team of scientists and executives. There was an avian influenza, H5N1, that was very, very concerning at the at the time. We were seeing outbreaks in Southeast Asia. Whenever that virus spilled over from poultry into humans, there was 50 percent mortality. Fortunately, it was just animal-to-human and not human-to-human. But it wouldn't have taken too many mutations for it to go from human to human. That would have turned into a very serious pandemic very quickly. So under President Bush, 43, we embarked on an aggressive pandemic preparedness strategy implementation plan. Congress appropriated $7 billion through an emergency supplemental that was requested by President Bush. I was in the Department of Health and Human Services as a deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response, so I helped develop part of that. But it was a whole-government effort actually, a whole-society effort. It included state governments, local governments, tribal governments, private sector, NGOs. It was extremely aggressive. We had a national strategy, and national implementation plan that had over 300 action items. The implementation plan is still available on the web: it was a 250-page implementation plan with very detailed action items. It clearly spelled out who had lead responsibility, then who had supporting responsibility across the the federal government, state government, local government in the private sector. We made a lot of progress. When the pandemic happened in 2009, we were able to pivot that work to address the 2009 pandemic. We were lucky because the virus turned out to be not as serious as we first thought it was when we first started seeing the cases in Mexico and even in Texas. But as the virus spread around the world, we were able to pivot a lot of that work to address the pandemic in that time. That was during a period where we changed administrations, from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, but it was a seamless transition because the plans were there. The Obama administration was able to pick up the plans. What's important about that is, it was really the first time in human history that a society made a commitment to try to be as prepared as we can for a pandemic. Since then, youve thought a lot more about what we need to be doing to prepare for future pandemics. I saw a 2018 paper in which you mentioned the weakness of supply chains and the nightmare scenario that what if, say, a region in Asia that produces a lot of medical supplies suddenly was itself hit by a pandemic. Could you talk more about those supply chains? I think we are seeing the dangerous vulnerability of our supply chains. Even before COVID happened, over 80% of the active ingredients for all of our pharmaceuticals are sourced in China. Thats a dangerous dependency on one country. The same goes for personal protective equipment. Most of the world's N95 respirators the masks that medical workers are are in dire need of right now are manufactured In China. COVID-19 has been a wake-up call. Some of the pharmaceuticals that we need and the N95 masks have been nationalized by China. It's no surprise that they nationalize those stocks in their country to take care of their population. That's only natural. The same thing happened to the U.S. during the 2009 pandemic. We at HHS had a contract for influenza vaccines with an Australian manufacturer. Despite our contract delivery requirements and so forth, our deliveries were delayed until the Australian population was covered. So we've got to address this dangerous vulnerability for national security with pharmaceuticals. We should not be relying on just one country for some of our basic pharmaceuticals, like heparin. There's a lot of legislation already in Congress to begin to address this. There probably will be an increase in the prices we pay for some drugs. But we're going to have to incentivize industry in a way that they will want to make some of these things in the United States. We cannot rely on having everything manufactured in China. But we essentially are now. What are some of the other things you've worried about with pandemics? What are other issues that we need to address to prevent future ones? We have in in our grasp the technologies that can prevent an outbreak anywhere in the world from becoming a major epidemic or pandemic. I don't think we have the political will yet to do it. It will require an investment in international development. Most of these dangerous viruses emerge in low-income countries that have very little health infrastructure, very little public health infrastructure, very little animal health infrastructure to do the basic diagnostics and surveillance early detection and response to to stamp it out before it spreads. So thats going to require international development, investments global health security. We will also have to have a lot more tech investment in technologies here, so that we can have rapidly scalable vaccine development and manufacturing capabilities. Is there anything else that's on your mind now? Anything else you want to add? Yes, absolutely. We've had lessons observed over and over: SARS, the 2009 pandemic, Ebola, Zika, and so forth. I say lessons observed very purposefully. Thats different from lessons learned. We've observed things, but we haven't really turned them into lessons learned. lisa.gray@chron.com Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 12:05:27|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close YANGON, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar reported two more confirmed cases of COVID-19 on early Monday, bringing the total number of infections to 41 in the country, according to a release of Ministry of Health and Sports. An elderly woman from Bahan township in Yangon who is also a family member of COVID-19 confirmed patients tested positive as she showed symptoms of cough and tiredness on April 12 while being under home quarantine. Also, a 38-year-old man from Insein township in Yangon tested positive as he showed the symptoms of the infectious COVID-19 after attending a religious event where COVID-19 confirmed patients took part in. It was learnt that both newly infected patients have no travelling history in the past 14 days. Myanmar has reported four deaths of fatal COVID-19 disease in the country as of Sunday. Of the total confirmed patients, 34 patients are in good condition while the other one is being treated at Intensive Care Unit of Waibargi hospital in Yangon and two patients recovered from the disease, the ministry's release said. According to the recent release of the Ministry of Health and Sports, the quarantine period will be extended to 28 days which include 21-day facility quarantine and 7-day home quarantine. At present, people in Yangon region are under stay-home period during the holidays of the traditional Thingyan Water Festival which was cancelled, as part of efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic in the country. A man who robbed two people and told them he was a 'cannibal' while threatening to rape, kill and eat them has been released on parole. The 24-year-old began his terrifying attacks when he entered a Dan Murphy's store at Garbutt in Townsville, Queensland, on April 26, 2019. Townsville District Court heard the man attempted to steal a bottle of liquor by hiding it in his pants, the Townsville Bulletin reported. When an employee caught him in the act and confiscated the alcohol, he grabbed the her by the arm and pushed her against the counter. The 24-year-old began his terrifying attacks when he entered a Dan Murphy's store at Garbutt in Townsville, Queensland, on April 26, 2019. Pictured: Actor Anthony Hopkins playing the role of Hannibal Lecter, a cannibal The attacker fled to another nearby liquor store and confronted two men shopping for alcohol. Crown Prosecutor Aaron Dunkerton told the court the man grabbed one victim before stealing his alcohol and wallet. The attacker told the man he was a 'cannibal' and would rape, kill and eat him if he went to the police. A short time later the attacker was found in possession of the stolen goods and arrested. The Townsville District Court (pictured) heard how the attacker pinned the victim against a car and told him he was a 'cannibal' that would rape, murder and eat him He later pleaded guilty to one count of common assault and two counts of robbery with actual violence. Defence Barrister Travis Schmitt said his client had been drinking on the day of the incident and had a problem with alcohol. Judge Brad Farr told the man in court: 'Robbery is a serious offence and you have committed two of them. 'The female complainant suffered emotionally and psychologically as a consequence from your behaviour.' He was sentenced to 23 months in prison but was granted immediate parole, having spent 124 days behind bars. Quiz finally aired it's long-awaited first episode on Monday night, and sent fans into a tailspin with its depiction of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? coughing scandal. Along with setting the stage for how Charles and Diana Ingram formed their sinister plot to try and cheat the show out of 1 million, the first episode also revealed the formation of a secret syndicate of quizzers who would help contestants on the show. Many viewers were stunning to learn that such a wholesome show could spark such sinister plots, with many comparing the scenes to that of spy epic Mission Impossible. Shocking: Quiz finally aired it's long-awaited first episode on Monday night, and sent fans into a tailspin with its depiction of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire coughing scandal In the first episode, Diana's brother Adrian makes hundreds of desperate calls to appear on the show, but despite being a contestant on the show three times, he fails to make it to the hot seat. Another contestants suggests he call Paddy Spooner, who appeared on Millionaire in three different countries, UK, Ireland and Australia. His stint on the British version proved fruitful, as he won 250,000, and in the series he is shown meeting Adrian in a pub. Really? The first episode also revealed the formation of a secret syndicate of quizzers who would help contestants on the show by acting as Phone-A-Friends Sinister: In scenes that could have been compared to those from a crime drama, Adrian Pollock meets with ex-contestant Paddy Spooner, who tells him of the syndicate Secretive: He explains he can slip Adrian the correct answers to land a spot on the show, and have his group of quizzers act as Phone-A-Friend's for a 25% cut of the winnings What is the Millionaire syndicate? Who Wants To Be A Millionaire sparked a nationwide obsession when it began in 1998 with viewers desperately applying in their millions to appear on the show. But the series also saw many serial quizzers capitalise by forming syndicates that could help contestants land a spot in Winners Row, and answer questions by posing as 'Phone-A-Friends.' Ex-contestants Paddy Spooner and Keith Burgess were among those to form such syndicates, asking for 25% of the winnings in return. It's thought this so-called 'consortium' may have been responsible for up to 10% of the show's winnings - around 5 million Advertisement He then reveals that he can help Adrian make it onto the show by slipping him the answers to the questions used by researchers to pick contestants. Paddy then offers the help of a group of serial quizzers who can help with correct answers - but for a 25% share of their winnings, branding them 'The Syndicate.' Adrian turns down the offer and does make it onto the show, but is disappointed to only win 32,000. He then passes the baton to his sister Diana, who also falls at the same hurdle with just 32,000, meaning they cannot pay off Adrian's mounting debts. The revelation that Millionaire was gripped by something as sinister as a syndicate of quizzers sent many fans into a tailspin, with some questioning whether that element of the show was real. One tweeted: '#quiz has all gone Mission Impossible with The Syndicate,' while another posted: 'Well I've clearly been living in my own little bubble cuz I had no idea about the syndicate thing and I'm really disappointed to find out about it now!!' A third added: 'Knew there was something dodgy going on but didn't realise the syndicate were that hard core.' Stunned: Claims of a syndicate were in fact true. Paddy (pictured on Millionaire) appeared on the show in three different countries, and on the UK version scooped 250,000 Flabbergasted: Viewers rushed to Twitter to share their reaction to the so-called syndicate, with one comparing the secret plots to that of Mission Impossible One viewer added: 'Never knew there was a syndicate helping people to win on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!' A fan also posted: 'Never knew there was a syndicate helping people to win on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!' Surprisingly the idea that there were syndicates cashing in on Millionaire was true, as former contestant Keith Burgess recently revealed. Nothing wrong: Contestant Keith Burgess- who was involved in one of the so-called syndicates, recently claimed they 'weren't doing anything wrong' He told The Sun: 'We werent doing anything wrong. We were just helping people get on the show. The Ingrams cheated so ridiculously, though, and Charles didnt know anything at all.' The first episode of Quiz depicted how the show was originally created by ITV, and sparked the obsession of many viewers desperate to win the top prize. After both Adrian and his sister Diana failed to win more than 32,000, the episode ended with the revelation that Charles had landed a spot as a contestant, setting the stage of the so-called 'Major Fraud' - the title of the 2003 documentary based on the scandal. Giving the game away? In the first episode of the series Diana Ingram (played by Sian Clifford left) puts forward husband Charles to appear on the show (pictured right in real life) Man with all the answers: Tecwen Whittock is played by Michael Jibson in the drama. A contestant on the show, he would reveal the correct answers to Charles by coughing Busted: The 'Coughing Major' scandal was nationwide headlines in 2001 when Ingram (picture right in real life) was exposed for cheating his way to the top prize Legendary: Michael Sheen has also stunned viewers with his transformation into presenter Chris Tarrant (right) , who hosted Millionaire from 1998 to 2014 The second episode will reveal how Charles and Diana formed their cheating plot, and how it worked so well they left the set with a 1 million cheque. Quiz is based on a play about the scandal written by James Graham, which has been adapted to screen with the help of The Queen director Stephen Frears. Charles famously cheated his way to the top prize with the help of fellow contestant Tecwen Whittock who coughed after hearing the correct answer for each multiple choice question. They originally formed the plan after Ingram struggled to just 4,000 in the first show, and had to use two of his lifelines to get there. Really? The first episode of Quiz depicts how the series was created by ITV, making history at the time as the first to give away 1 million You're next! After Diana and her brother Adriana falter on the show, it's revealed that Charles will next appear as a contestant, setting the stage for the so-called 'Major Fraud' The coughs would not have been heard by viewers at home watching the show (which was never aired apart from during an ITV documentary) as a majority of the sound was focused on the hot seat. Ingram eventually reached won the top prize with the help of Whittock, but even then many crew members were convinced he'd cheated, and even before they announced he'd won the top prize, producers threatened to stop filming after calling the Head Of Celador with their claims. Throughout their trial and in its build-up Charles and Diana repeatedly insisted they hadn't cheated, even when they were convicted of deception. Chris famously testified against Charles during his trial, and said in the documentary that he was amazed when he learned about the crime from ITV crew members. After a four-week crown court trial in 2003, Charles and Diana were convicted of deception, and Ingram was given a 20-month suspended prison sentence. His two accomplices were given 18-month suspended sentences for their part in the scam. Quiz continues tomorrow at 9pm on ITV. Campus News Psychology major is UBs latest Goldwater winner By CHARLES ANZALONE To win a Goldwater as a psychology major is very challenging. The award typically goes to the hard sciences, so this recognition is particularly notable. A junior psychology major who hopes to research social and cognitive aspects of depression including reducing prejudice of those struggling with the disorder is UBs latest Goldwater scholar, an honor UB administrators call the countrys premier scholarship for undergraduate students pursuing research careers. The award to Cassondra Lyman, 21, is particularly notable because Goldwater awards usually go to students studying the hard sciences. To win a Goldwater as a psychology major is very challenging, says Elizabeth A. Colucci, director of the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships. The award typically goes to the hard sciences, so this recognition is particularly notable. When I first met Cassondra, we met to talk about fellowships. As a researcher, she spoke with great conviction about how psychology research was indeed a STEM discipline, Colucci says. Many psychology students go into clinical psychology, which is not an eligible field. But for Cassondra, her research is informing the field on many important topics. Obviously, Goldwater felt that her research and future graduate plans are exceptional. Lyman was one of 396 students chosen from among 1,343 students from 461 American colleges and universities nominated for the Goldwater scholarship. Established by Congress in 1986 to honor the work and memory of Sen. Barry Goldwater, the scholarship is awarded to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. Lyman will receive a $7,500 Goldwater scholarship for tuition during her senior year at UB. But UB administrators emphasize the academic prestige, networking possibilities and entry into the highest echelon of their respective research circles are more valuable than the scholarship award itself. A graduate of Maine-Endwell High School near Binghamton, Lyman plans to earn her PhD in psychology and continue researching the social/cognitive aspects of depressive disorders. She lists her academic goals as reducing prejudice and provide new insights into mental illness. Throughout the application process, I told myself not to get too excited, Lyman said shortly after she was notified she would receive the Goldwater scholarship. I knew I submitted the strongest application I could but, in all honesty, I planned to receive a rejection letter up until I read my acceptance letter. This is essentially a group of highly respected individuals saying, Yes, youre doing something right, and that has made me incredibly happy. Lyman, who wrote in her Goldwater application that her goal is to reduce prejudice and provide new insights into mental health, has worked on multiple research projects under the mentorship of John Roberts and Wendy Quinton, both associate professors of psychology, and Gregory Wilding, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics. An Advanced Honors College junior and McNair Scholar, she is completing the psychology honors program. In my 21 years of university teaching including the past 12 years that I have supervised our top undergraduates in the Psychology Honors Program I have never met a student with a more astutely curious mind than Cassondra, Quinton wrote in Lymans scholarship recommendation. She has, quite simply, the best potential to become a groundbreaking research scientist of any undergraduate I have ever known. In her scholarship application, Lyman wrote about her research interests, noting that depression is a risk factor for serious health consequences and suicide. While a number of interventions for depression have demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness, access to treatment remains limited, she wrote. She said a promising avenue for increasing access to evidence-based treatment is the development of mental health (mHealth) apps. Unfortunately, many available mHealth apps have not been subjected to empirical evaluation, she said, adding that her research project aims to establish the feasibility and efficacy of a new health apps. In her application, Lyman also discussed the great value of her university education, despite her personal financial hardships. Having been raised in a low-income single-parent household, she wrote, my mother always made it clear that should I choose to pursue a degree in higher education, I would do so without financial support as she does not possess the resources needed to contribute to my education and raise my brother. For this reason, the cost of college has always rested squarely on my shoulders, and I work year-round to finance my education. She noted that she often has less time to study and spend as much time as she would like in the lab, and has had to sacrifice valuable academic experiences as well. There were many moments, she says, when she struggled to protect her sense of academic adventure from being extinguished by the overwhelming financial burden of college. In these moments, I consider the many joys I have found while at college. I have had an enriching and rewarding experience and, regardless of the financial burden, I see college as a place to find positive role models, form meaningful relationships and receive life-changing counsel. People are still booking trips on cruise lines despite the coronavirus outbreaks aboard several vessels in recent weeks that forced passengers into quarantine. Even though hundreds of passengers contracted coronavirus while at sea in recent weeks, fans of cruise ships are apparently betting that it will be safe to board them beginning this fall. According to travel agents and industry observers, bookings for cruise trips in 2021 are up considerably. CruiseCompete.com, a web site that compares prices of cruise tickets, reported a 40 per cent increase in booking for 2021 compared with 2019, according to the Los Angeles Times. Heidi M. Allison, the president of CruiseCompete.com, said that just 11 per cent of the bookings are by people who had their trips canceled in 2020. Holland America Line ships, Zaandam and Rotterdam docked at Port Everglades in Florida on April 2 after at least nine people on board tested positive for COVID-19 Passengers wearing protective masks look out from their balcony on the Coral Princess cruise ship while docked at PortMiami on April 4 People are still booking cruises and are anxious to sail again when this is all over, she said. UBS, the large Swiss bank, issued a report on March 31 analyzing the cruise industry. It found that booking volume for 2021 was up 9 per cent in the last month compared to the same time period last year. UBS said that some of those bookings included travellers who were given credits by companies after cancelling this year. The bank said that the amount of bookings still shows a surprising resilience in desire to book a cruise. UBS found that travellers were booking the most trips to Asia and Alaska, so there is pent up demand for Asia travel next year. The banks study found that 76 per cent of those whose cruises were canceled as a result of the pandemic have opted to take a credit for a future trip instead of asking for a refund. Some cruise lines are even offering passengers credits of up to 125 per cent of the fare of the canceled cruises as well as spending money while on board. But passengers who accept credits would then forfeit on getting a refund. The first outbreak of coronavirus was in Wuhan, China. From there, it spread to neighboring Asian countries and territories before making the deadliest impact in Europe and the United States. In February, Japan forced the Diamond Princess cruise ship (seen above at Yokohama Port near Tokyo on February 26) into quarantine after hundreds contracted coronavirus. At least seven people who were on board the vessel died The American Automobile Association, which also offers vacation packages to families, also noted an increase in the number of cruise bookings. AAA Travel said that the bookings were made by people beyond those who were rescheduling canceled trips. We are optimistic that once this crisis is behind us, travel will rebound quickly, which bodes well for 2021, said Paula Twidale, a senior vice president at AAA Travel. CruiseCritic.com, an online review site, conducted a poll of more than 4,600 cruise passengers. The poll found that 75 per cent of them plan on taking cruises at the same frequency as before or more often after the coronavirus pandemic passes. The remaining 25 per cent said they plan to cruise less often or stay away from cruise ships indefinitely. Cruise lines suspended sailings worldwide on March 13. In recent weeks, several cruise ships reported outbreaks of coronavirus among passengers and crew. Most recently, two vessels were allowed to dock in Florida after weeks spent stranded at sea. The Holland America Line cruise ship MS Zaandam and its twin, the MS Rotterdam, docked on April 2 at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where medical personnel immediately began off-loading 13 severely ill passengers and one crew member for transport to area hospitals. Arrival of the ships capped a nearly three-week ordeal during which about 100 passengers and dozens of crew aboard the Zaandam reported influenza-like illness and four passengers died as numerous Latin American ports along its route refused the vessels entry. Nearly two-thirds of the Zaandams original passengers - those who cleared a medical screening - were transferred to the Rotterdam before the ships were granted passage through the Panama Canal. On April 4, the Coral Princess docked in Miami after two people on board died of COVID-19 and at least 12 others were infected. The ship, which was carrying 1,000 passengers and 878 crew, was initially refused permission to dock in Fort Lauderdale days earlier. At least one person was rushed off the boat, put in an ambulance and taken to a nearby hospital. Seven people who were aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was forced into a two-week quarantine while moored in Tokyo Bay in February died of the coronavirus. More than 700 people on board the vessel, which was carrying a total of 3,711 passengers and crew, contracted the disease in February. At the time of its quarantine in early-to-mid February, it was the largest cluster of coronavirus cases outside of Wuhan, China. Several countries, including the United States, organized special transports to Japan to evacuate and repatriate its citizens. Last week, the US Coast Guard determined that crew members on cruise ships and vessels in Galveston present a public health risk of spreading the new coronavirus and urged operators to form medical plans to care for sick workers. In letters sent Friday to Royal Caribbean Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line, Coast Guard Capt. K.D. Oditt said the vessels' crews pose 'an unacceptable risk' of spreading COVID-19. 'I have determined your vessel poses an unacceptable risk of medical emergency due to the inherent and high probability of transmission of COVID-19 aboard, which presents a risk to the safety of the personnel aboard your vessel, first responders and the port,' Oditt wrote. Two Carnival Cruise Line and two Royal Caribbean Cruises ships have been at the Port of Galveston since March 13 as they wait for business to return, the Galveston County Daily News reported Tuesday. No passengers are on the ships, but they carry thousands of workers. The companies must prepare to treat sick workers on the ships and plan to bring the critically ill to medical facilities, according to the letter. The Coast Guard also directed the companies to identify medical facilities that would take in people who get evacuated from ships. Oditt urged the companies to arrange for private, commercial resources to take sick workers and care for them. The companies confirmed to the newspaper that they received the orders, and theyre complying. Not following the Coast Guards orders could lead to fines of up to $25,000 or Class D felony charges, the letter says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday extended its no sail order for all cruise ships, as it looks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas (seen in the above undated file photo) is currently berthed in Galveston, Texas, where US authorities have not allowed its crew members to disembark for fear they can infect others with COVID-19 The new CDC order says that cruise ships have to cease operations for up to 100 days, or the expiration of the Secretary of Health and Human Services' declaration that COVID-19 constitutes a public health emergency, or if the CDC Director rescinds or modifies the order. The order, dated April 9, comes as the cruise industry takes a hit from the novel coronavirus outbreak, with trips across the globe either canceled or suspended and refunds issued to customers. Many cruise ship lines have already voluntarily suspended most of their operations. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), however, rang alarm bells after the CDC order. We are ... concerned about the unintended consequences of the order in its singling out an industry that has been proactive in its escalation of health and sanitation protocols, the industry body said. Four of the cruise lines belonging to the worlds largest cruise operator Carnival Corp said last month they would extend the suspension of all voyages by a month to May while rival Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd said it would return to service by May 12. Currently, there are about 100 cruise ships remaining at sea off the East Coast, West Coast, and Gulf Coast, with nearly 80,000 crew onboard, the CDC noted, and said there are 20 cruise ships at port or anchorage in the United States with known or suspected COVID-19 infection among the crew who remain onboard. The earlier 'no sail order' was issued on March 14. The CLIA added the potential impact of the order includes a $51billion loss to the American economy and 343,000 lost jobs, if the novel coronavirus pandemic lasts a year. Check back for more analysis and contextual updates on coronavirus throughout the day. SIGN UP: Get our coronavirus newsletter delivered directly to your inbox CDC adds symptoms The CDC has added six new COVID-19 symptoms to its list. The expansion of this symptom list is significant to increased widespread testing efforts, this Seattle Post-Intelligencer story says, as most testing sites require patients to exhibit one or more symptoms of COVID-19 before administering the test. Michael Fornabaio COVID-19 vs. the flu in New York City A preprint (not yet peer reviewed) article takes excess deaths in New York City between Feb. 1 and April 18 and estimates, acknowledging its limitations, that COVID-19 has killed 21 times more people than seasonal influenza in the same period. Michael Fornabaio Group urges Congressional action on contact tracing, isolating NPR reports that former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb is among a bipartisan group urging Congress to spend $46.5 billion on a three-pronged public health initiative to slow COVID-19. Their proposal would hire 180,000 more people to perform contact tracing, determining and contacting people who've been in contact with a COVID-19 patient. It would use hotels for self-isolation and pay a stipend to those isolating. It would also use primary care doctors as a referral source for testing and tracing. Michael Fornabaio How many tests do we need to reopen? How many tests a day would Connecticut need to re-open? About 15,000, according to an analysis by Stat News. You cant just take the national number and scale it to states by their population, said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. You have to base it on the size of the outbreak in a state. Jha, at the behest of Stat News, performed that analysis, and while Connecticut isnt in the same boat as New York which he said would have to do about 150,000 tests a day the Nutmeg State isnt where it needs to be. On Sunday, the state Department of Health said there were 2,209 tests performed the previous day, 79,811 tests in total. On average over the past seven days, the state is performing 2,700 per day, about 1/5th of what is needed, according to Jhas analysis. Stuck abroad, Dutch students sailed 4,300 miles home Twenty-five Dutch high school students on a sailing cruise through the Bahamas Sunday after the coronavirus pandemic forced them to sail, rather than fly home across the Atlantic. The students, who were accompanied by the ships crew and three teachers, were originally supposed to fly home from Cuba, the Associated Press reported. But those plans were scuttled once the pandemic hit. So instead, the 200 foot twin-masted schooner loaded up supplies and sailed East across the Atlantic, finally docking in the Netherlands at the port of Harlingen. Renee Scholtemeijer, a mother to one of the teenaged voyagers, told the Associated Press her daughter will probably wish she was back at sea. I think that after two days shell want to go back on the boat, because life is very boring back at home, she said. Theres nothing to do, she cant visit friends, so its very boring. Times analysis: millions of Americans live more than 30 minutes from a hospital With coronavirus beginning to hit rural areas of the United States, vast, largely remote, regions of the country could be at greater risk because those affected will have to travel further to reach a hospital. An analysis from the New York Times found that in California alone, nearly 800,000 people live more than a 30 minute drive away from a hospital. Even in New York state, home to the largest city in the country, more than 330,000 people live more than half-an-hour from a hospital, something health experts say prevents people from going in for medical care even if they normally would. Despite their isolation, rural communities face real problems if the virus overwhelms small, remote healthcare facilities. In the Navajo Nation, healthcare facilities are reportedly understaffed and have had to fly patients with COVID-19 to hospitals in New Mexico and Arizona. Rural communities were already dealing with a wave of hospital closures before the virus even showed up. A Pew Research study from 2018 shows on average, rural Americans live 10.5 miles from the nearest hospital nearly twice the distance of those who live in the suburbs. -Peter Yankowski Why farmers in Florida are plowing over cabbage In Florida, one farmer estimates he left around 8 million pounds of cabbage and 4.5 million pounds of green beans behind to whither. In Wisconsin, one dairy farming couple estimates they now dump out 15,000 gallons of milk each day. With restaurants and schools shuttered, farmers nationally are having a hard time finding a market for perishable food, even as food banks say more Americans will need relief. Feeding America, which runs a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 pantries and meal programs, estimated 18 million children could become food insecure, higher than the worst months of the Great Recession in 2009. The organization said it is also facing financial shortfalls due to the virus. The people we serve and the charitable food system in the United States are facing a perfect storm, with surges in demand, declines in food donations and volunteers, and disruptions to normal operating procedures, as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America. It is all of our neighbors who now more than ever need help putting food on their tables. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced it would purchase and distribute up to $3 billion in farm products. Those will go in a pre-approved box of fresh produce, dairy, and meat products, to be shipped off to nonprofits and charities for distribution. -Peter Yankowski Times analysis shows surge in prescriptions of drugs Trump praised On the day President Donald Trump said chlorquine and hydroxychloroquine had shown encouraging results in treating COVID-19, first-time prescriptions at retail pharmacies numbered 46 times that of the average weekday, a new analysis from the New York Times indicates. The prescriptions came from doctors across the spectrum, including podiatrists, dermatologists and psychiatrists, according to the report. The Food and Drug Administration issued a statement Friday cautioning against the use of the chlorquine and hydroxychloroquine outside of hospital settings and clinical trials, citing reports that some COVID-19 patients being treated with the drugs had suffered serious heart rhythm problems. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19, the FDA said. They are being studied in clinical trials for COVID-19, and we authorized their temporary use during the COVID-19 pandemic for treatment of the virus in hospitalized patients when clinical trials are not available, or participation is not feasible, through an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are anti-malarial drugs that are also used to treat Lupus, according to the website for Johns Hopkins Medicine. -Meghan Friedmann Our trust in government As recently as last fall, Ned Lamont was one of the least popular governors in the country. A Hartford Courant/Sacred Heart poll put his approval rating at just 24%. But earlier this month, a new survey from the same group showed that at 65%, approval for Lamonts overall handling of the coronavirus crisis was far higher than his general approval rating in October. Meanwhile, just under 40% of state residents included in the poll approved of how President Trump was handling the pandemic, according to Sacred Heart. Its a trend that matches nationwide data released by Democratic pollster Nick Gourevitch Saturday, which suggests a widening gap between trust in how local and state officials are handling the crisis and how President Trump is handling it. Granted, individual polls only tell part of the story. A Pew Research survey conducted in late March indicated that the vast majority of Americans viewed certain federal agencies favorably, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. (Heres why trust in government matters during a crisis, according to the U.S. News & World Report.) -Meghan Friedmann One side of the room Interesting early-release article at the CDCs Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal: After a 19-story building in Seoul, South Korea, was shut down after a COVID-19 outbreak in early March, more than 1,000 people whod been in the building over the previous two weeks were tested. There were 97 confirmed cases, and 94 of them worked at a 216-employee call center on the 11th floor, and most of those 94 worked on one side of the 11th floor. Michael Fornabaio Rates by age The states daily COVID-19 releases have included case rates per 100,000 by age group all month on Thursdays, broken down in 10-year groups. Heres how they have progressed: (The March 26 release had the actual numbers of cases for each group; a little math got us a rate. It was early, anyway.) Rates remain low in the young; theyve meanwhile all but converged for each group 40-79, with 30-39 a little lower. The 80-and-over group has a sharp separation from the pack. Michael Fornabaio Positive cases per capita The states daily COVID-19 report gives confirmed cases by town and puts the numbers on a heat map of the state (see Page 4 on Wednesday, for instance). Here's a map adding in population: positive tests as a percentage of each municipality's population (those figures here and map from here). Not dramatically different, but a few darker and lighter spots here and there. Stamfords 1.67 percent led the state, over 2,000 cases out of a population of almost 130,000, one of five municipalities over one percent. Five towns had no confirmed cases as of Wednesday. These, of course, are just confirmed cases as released by the state. Michael Fornabaio The COVID-19 toll, in newsprint If one of our newspapers ran an obituary for all 1,544 state COVID-19-associated deaths in Connecticut, the number the state released on Wednesday, how big would that newspaper have to be? Ian Mullen produced this graphic for Hearst Connecticut Media: (Hat tip to @NolaGraphicsGuy Dan Swenson for the idea.) Michael Fornabaio Times models the models The New York Times compiled five leading models of the pandemic, assuming current restrictions arent relaxed. (The one on the rise, says the graph, dates from April 13; the others are more recent.) Several epidemiologists said it was hard to expect the models to offer precise forecasts at this point because they rely on such uncertain inputs, said the accompanying story. Its like trying to repair a car while its still running, said Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine. Michael Fornabaio Racial disparities A story out of New Orleans on nola.com Tuesday night showed a sharp racial disparity in deaths in Louisiana. In the state as a whole, in each of nine state health department regions, and in nine of the 11 parishes (akin to counties here) with more than 25 deaths reported, there were more black deaths per 100,000 black residents than non-black deaths per 100,000. Connecticut hasn't broken down the data quite to that extent and has only been including race and ethnicity statistics in its daily releases since April 16. (As of Tuesday's release, 51 of the 1,423 reported deaths were of unknown race or ethnicity, and 13 percent were classified as "other," which could indicate more than one race checked.) To try to compare apples to apples with Louisiana, working backward from the per-100,000 numbers provided to get the total-population figures used, the total non-black death rate in Connecticut is something like 36 per 100,000, if our algebra is right (many) years later. Michael Fornabaio Splitting ventilators Interesting video from Dr. Rishi Desai on the safety and practicality of splitting ventilators, and how a couple of Yale students have helped it along. Michael Fornabaio Cold water and hot antibodies As news comes from Santa Clara County that their first COVID-19 death may have been a month earlier than they thought, and as that Santa Clara County seroprevalence study from last week gets a bucket of online cold water (heres one)... How about another seroprevalence study, this one from the University Hospitals of Geneva (link in French)? They estimate that 5.5 percent of people in the Canton of Geneva had been exposed to the novel coronavirus as of last week, up from an estimated 3.5 percent the week before, though they stress that the sample size makes the real percentage increase uncertain. Interpretation of these seroprevalence estimates should be done with great caution, the press release says, passed through Google Translate. Account should be taken of the still limited number of participants, the short follow-up time and the influence of the performance of serological tests. Monitoring the evolution of seroprevalence over time is particularly important for anticipating and planning the public health response. Michael Fornabaio Flu plus COVID equals... CDC director Robert Redfield told the Washington Post he's concerned about the winter and a second wave of the coronavirus: COVID-19 on top of the seasonal flu could be disastrous for the health care system. Michael Fornabaio Mass vaccine distribution There are two papers coming out people might want to read ... Mass Vaccination 2.0: A Survey of New Technologies and Strategies and Vaccine Capacity for Global Pandemics: Manufacturing and Distribution. The authors shared an overview of their findings, regarding manufacturing of vaccines, and policy guidelines for distribution. COVID-19 demonstrates a clear need for a more rapid and adaptive pandemic vaccine enterprise, their conclusion reads. Vaccine research and development programs should be designed to optimize downstream processes that permit rapid scale-up while maintaining the standards of safety and efficacy that we expect of routine vaccines. However, the safety profile of any vaccine candidate is critical and should not be sacrificed in the name of expedited industrial or public health processes. Gender identity and COVID-19 The state has been sharing more and more demographic breakdowns. We know the rate of confirmed coronavirus cases by race and ethnicity, by age range and by gender. Last week, a third gender option appeared. As of Sunday evening, there were two COVID-19 patients in Connecticut who identified as non-binary. There are people of all gender identities affected by this virus, Department of Public Health spokesman Av Harris said. Harris said the addition brings the coronavirus updates in line with the rest of the state. Earlier this year, the DMV opened up a non-binary option on drivers' licenses, denoted by the letter X For a lot of folks this is a big deal, Middletown State Sen. Matt Lesser said then, and State Comptroller Kevin Lembo said something similar last year: As a state, Connecticut values inclusion and acceptance. Birth certificates, too, now have a non-binary option in Connecticut, though a bill doing the same for every public document in the state never made it to the governors desk. Can you imagine what you would feel if your ID doesnt match your gender? Diana Lombardi, executive director of the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition said during public testimony back in 2019. For nonbinary people they face that every day, having ID that doesnt match their gender presentation creates barriers in employment, housing, education. In a host of common daily interactions it can also create a hostile environment and can also lead to verbal or even physical harassment. The cost of coronavirus A letter was sent Monday from Connecticut state budget chief Melissa McCaw to Comptroller Kevin Lembo detailing the costs and shortfalls expected as a result of coronavirus. We are projecting an operating shortfall of $530.2 million, McCaw wrote. As for a what the state is doing about it, McCaw wrote that By and large, actions are being taken to support the Connecticut economy and the businesses therein through tax filing deferments consistent with federal actions. Action have also been taken to stabilize grants to providers, services and programs at a time where demand for such programs is high. These measures are coupled with increased programmatic supports that are necessary for COVID-19 response. Read the full letter below: Cases are up, heart attacks are down There are more coronavirus cases, but fewer heart attacks, and nobody is sure why. Researchers fouind a 38 percent reduction in acute heart attacks that met criteria for immediate cardiac catheterization, and that the explanations for these findings are unclear. The the full brief below: Are you financially prepared for infection? How prepared are you, financially for a coronavirus infection. Possibly not very prepared at all. Healthcare.com and YouGov conducted a poll asking United States residents, If you were to contract the coronavirus (COVID-19), how financially prepared, if at all, would you be to deal with the healthcare-related costs of the illness? The responses were somewhat chilling. According to the results, more than half of black, Hispanic, Asian and other racial minority groups (55 percent) said they are not very to not at all financially prepared for falling ill, compared to just under four in 10 whites (39 percent). The history of face masks As of tonight, anyone out in public in Connecticut, and not able to maintain a six-foot distance, must be wearing a face mask. But cloth face masks, such as people are wearing out in the world, are nothing new. Check out the paper below, which discusses the use, efficacy and history of face masks: The first evidence of mask use can be traced to the late 19th century, when gauze masks were used by patients to protect the spread of infection. With nice weather come the park closures The head of Connecticuts environmental protection agency took to Twitter Sunday to ask hikers and other visitors at state parks to try out some new parks and to keep up social distancing while outside. Commissioner Katie Dykes of the department of energy and environmental protection asked residents to only visit parks with members of their immediate family, and to limit their groups to five people. CTDEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes with a message on how to safely enjoy our State Parks pic.twitter.com/ix0S40l8VU DEEP (@CTDEEPNews) April 19, 2020 The post came after DEEPs Twitter account started announcing park closures left and right Sunday morning, as parking lots filled to capacity. As of 4 p.m. Sunday, April 19, 18 parks were closed, including Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden, and Sherwood Island in Westport. New York City Mayor: its nice out, stay inside With temperatures in the 60s expected later in the day, New York Citys Mayor Bill de Blasio had a message for his constituents Sunday: stay indoors. It's going to be beautiful today, but DONT underestimate our enemy. We cannot let it reassert itself, the mayor said in a Tweet Sunday, April 19. In the same thread, De Blasio said nearly 600 medical personnel from the military are assisting in fighting the pandemic, and asked for people who have recovered from the disease to donate plasma. To anyone who does not understand, we will have to get tougher, the mayor said. You will get a warning first, but anyone who ignores instructions could be fined. Obituaries fill eight pages of New Haven Register As deaths from COVID-19 climbed over 1,000 in Connecticut, obituaries have begun to fill the pages of newspapers. In the Sunday edition of the New Haven Register, eight pages were devoted to life tributes. New Havens large obituary stood out from other papers published Sunday by Hearst Connecticut Media, The Registers parent company. Several of the other seven daily newspapers had only one or two pages of obituaries. As of Saturday, April 18, 17,550 people in Connecticut have tested positive for COVID-19, and 1,086 have lost their lives. - Peter Yankowski CT is still behind where it should be on testing Healthcare workers in Connecticut perform thousands of tests each day, a number thats has been steadily increasing since early March. But if the state wants to slowly reopen sometime after May 20, as Gov. Ned Lamont plans, the daily testing rate will have to nearly double, according to an analysis by the New York Times. So far, 58,213 tests have been performed statewide, according to figures from the governors office releasd April 18, and of those, 17,550 people have tested positive. In one day, 2,751 tests were performed, but that falls short of the rate of 152 tests per 100,000 people researchers at Harvard University say the country will need to safely reopen. With the states population estimated at around 3.56 million, that means about 5,419 tests statewide, every day. - Peter Yankowski Will labs have enough testing supplies? A piece in the Atlantic exploring the future of the pandemic warns that the chemical reagents necessary for the COVID-19 test are becoming scarce, and that it could take manufacturers several months to catch up with global demand. Meanwhile, New York states top 50 labs need more of these reagents if they are to double testing capacity, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a Tweet Saturday. The governor demanded that the federal government oversee the supply chain to ensure the labs get what they need. AP analysis shows racial disparities in fatality rate While black Americans make up just 14% of the population in areas that have released information on the race of COVID-19 victims, they account for nearly a third of deaths from the disease, the Associated Press reports. An AP graphic visualizes the data by region, and indicates that Connecticut is among the states where African Americans are overrepresented when it comes to COVID-19 deaths, although the disparity is not as glaring as in places like Washington, D.C., Illinois and Mississipi. Its worth noting that the data Connecticut has released does not fully detail the breakdown of the disease by demographic, with the race of many COVID-19 victims designated as unknown. Leaders and advocates have demanded increased efforts to collect data that reflects the virus impact among people of color. -Meghan Friedmann Antibodies in California A Stanford study from California suggests that less than five percent of people in Santa Clara County have antibodies to the novel coronavirus. The study recruited over 3,000 people off a Facebook ad and tried to correct for the demographics (its also not yet peer-reviewed). These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases, the study says. Thats also a very small percentage of people exposed. Michael Fornabaio Washing your phone Come for the actual suggestions; stay for the (tongue-in-cheek?) conspiracy theories. Michael Fornabaio Road Map to Reopening II: assessing activities and businesses The Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins issued a report today, Public Health Principles for a Phased Reopening During COVID-19: Guidance for Governors. It assesses businesses and activities on the number of contacts one might make there, the intensity of those contacts and the potential to mitigate the risks. This document summarizes considerations, risks, and opportunities for governors to weigh when deciding when and how to slowly reopen, it concludes. These decisions should be made carefully and thoughtfully to limit the risk of disease resurgence. Reopening of businesses is only one step among many that will need to be considered on the path to recovering from this pandemic. The authors include Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner and member of Gov. Ned Lamonts advisory board on reopening Connecticut. Michael Fornabaio State-by-state curves Venk Murthy on Thursday tweeted animations of the IHME model for each state over time, through the start of this week. It shows how the predictions of hospitalizations, ICU beds needed, ventilators needed and deaths have changed over the past few weeks. Michael Fornabaio Adjust your curves From the Associated Press, China has revised its COVID-19 statistics, adding almost 1,300 to the death toll. The reasons included the deaths of people at home because overwhelmed hospitals had no room for them, mistaken reporting by medical staff focused on saving lives, and deaths at a few medical institutions that werent linked to the epidemic information network, (Xinhua News Agency) said. Michael Fornabaio Gowns, aprons and aerosol The title almost feels rhetorical: What is the effectiveness of protective gowns and aprons against COVID-19 in primary care settings? The Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service Team at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine attempted an answer anyway, searching older trials. It seems to have been a tough go, mostly drawing information from different settings or from sturdier equipment. Still, one 2018 study concluded that the basic PPE (mask, gloves and apron) described above was inadequate for high risk settings but insufficient data was provided to interpret that in the context of low-medium risk settings. Michael Fornabaio Taking the curves The Financial Times this Friday morning (afternoon there) compiles COVID-19 death tolls and sees a dip in both Spain and Italy. There are nation-by-nation curves and more at the link. Michael Fornabaio Study: Connecticuts coronaviruses likely domestic A Yale study in Cell Press sequenced the genomes of nine coronaviruses from March COVID-19 patients in Connecticut. By coupling our genomic data with domestic and international travel patterns, we show that early SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Connecticut was likely driven by domestic introductions. Moreover, the risk of domestic importation to Connecticut exceeded that of international importation by mid-March regardless of our estimated impacts of federal travel restrictions. This study provides evidence for widespread, sustained transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within the U.S. and highlights the critical need for local surveillance. Michael Fornabaio Symptoms of various sorts Immunologist Michal Tal tweeted a series of graphics comparing some of the symptoms and timelines of four different pathogens, beginning here with the new coronavirus (in a mild infection here, with caveats that were still learning). Click on for the flu, the common cold and strep A. Michael Fornabaio More on masks Reminders from the CDC on face-mask procedure. The link has do-it-yourself mask suggestions, too. Michael Fornabaio COVID by County Combining selected statistics and everybodys favorite, a clickable map, STAT assessed readiness for COVID-19 county by county across the United States on a 1-to-100 scale. Theres a search function for more detail. The model includes demographics, hospital beds, socioeconomic factors and the IHME model for the disease, so itll be updated on the fly. Tolland County fares the best in Connecticut; New Haven and Hartford, not as well, largely, it seems, because of hospital beds and staff per capita. Michael Fornabaio High rate Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner and part of Gov. Ned Lamonts Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group, tweeted last night that positive COVID-19 test rates remain high across the nation as reported to the CDC. The numbers are for the week ending April 4; theres a seven-day reporting lag. They were down a bit overall, a 14.6-percent positive rate that week bringing the cumulative positive rate down to 16.5 percent. Still, they were up in clinical and public health laboratories. These data reflect the continued epidemic spread of this virus, Gottlieb tweeted. Michael Fornabaio Thinking about vaccines Derek Lowe compiles a bunch of vaccine links on his Science Translational Medicine blog, including talk about the different types and some of the concerns as the process moves along. Michael Fornabaio The woman who saw the corona Popular on CoronaTwitter today is the BBCs story of June Almeida, who identified human coronavirus off electron-microscope images in 1964. (Writer George) Winter says that Dr. Almeida had actually seen particles like this before while investigating mouse hepatitis and infectious bronchitis of chickens, the story says. However, he says her paper to a peer-reviewed journal was rejected because the referees said the images she produced were just bad pictures of influenza virus particles. Not so much: Almeida, says the story, was among those who gave the name to the new family. Michael Fornabaio Early infectiousness A Nature Medicine brief studying viral shedding and transmissibility at a hospital in Guangdong, China, suggests virus transmission before symptoms. We observed the highest viral load in throat swabs at the time of symptom onset, and inferred that infectiousness peaked on or before symptom onset. We estimated that 44% (95% confidence interval, 25-69%) of secondary cases were infected during the index cases presymptomatic stage, in settings with substantial household clustering, active case finding and quarantine outside the home. Disease control measures should be adjusted to account for probable substantial presymptomatic transmission. Michael Fornabaio Mortality in England Ed Conway of SkyNews charted weekly mortality data for England and Wales for 2010-19, with the range in blue on this chart; 2020s data is the red line. Weve seen a lot of these lately, but heres one more. Michael Fornabaio Bad Flu Turns out there is a bad flu out there: in South Carolina turkeys. Michael Fornabaio The Seasonal COVID Two from Science Magazine: Even as we start to talk about what comes after lockdown, theres a lot we dont know about this coronavirus and the disease it causes. This article, then, tries to assess some of the things we dont know: how this virus compares to other coronaviruses, how long immunity lasts, how relaxation of social distancing affects new infections. An interesting and kind of sobering read. Much like pandemic influenza, many scenarios lead to SARS-CoV-2 entering into long-term circulation alongside the other human betacoronaviruses ... possibly in annual, biennial, or sporadic patterns over the next five years. ... Short-term immunity (on the order of 40 weeks, similar to HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1) favors the establishment of annual SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, while longer-term immunity (two years) favors biennial outbreaks. Michael Fornabaio Visualizing models over time Recovering evolutionary biologist David Yu introduced covid-projections.com Tuesday night. Right now it's a visualization of how the IHME model of COVID-19 data has changed over time. Yu said he anticipates more features to come. Michael Fornabaio Clinical trials around the country Jordan Fenster mapped the 110 COVID-19-related clinical trials around the United States with data from clinicaltrials.gov. The darker the hue, the more trials in that state, up to New Yorks 23. There are four in Connecticut. Michael Fornabaio Hospitalizations are skewing younger than you think Scott Gottlieb Westport resident, former FDA commssioner and newly named member of Gov. Ned Lamonts commission to reopen government noted on Twitter that the majority of people in the U.S. hospitalized for coronavirus are under the age of 65. Connecticut has not provided the number of hospitalizations by age range, but the vast majority of patients with confirmed coronavirus infections are middle aged about 36 percent of all infected patients are between the ages of 50 and 70. What does the virus sound like? Turn on your speakers. Sound is created through vibration. Markus Buehler, a professor at MIT and musician, uses the vibration of proteins to learn more about their properties, and even develop new proteins. His goal is to create new biological materials for sustainable, non-toxic applications, MIT wrote, specifically trying to extend the shelf-life of perishable food. Hes worked with a silk protein made by honeybees, for example, Buehler has now turned his attention to COVID-19, deriving the sounds made by the virus proteins and turning it into music. Heres what Buehler said on the subject: Its protein spike contains three protein chains folded into an intriguing pattern. These structures are too small for the eye to see, but they can be heard. We represented the physical protein structure, with its entangled chains, as interwoven melodies that form a multi-layered composition. The spike proteins amino acid sequence, its secondary structure patterns, and its intricate three-dimensional folds are all featured. The resulting piece is a form of counterpoint music, in which notes are played against notes. Like a symphony, the musical patterns reflect the proteins intersecting geometry realized by materializing its DNA code. The virus has an uncanny ability to deceive and exploit the host for its own multiplication. Its genome hijacks the host cells protein manufacturing machinery, and forces it to replicate the viral genome and produce viral proteins to make new viruses. As you listen, you may be surprised by the pleasant, even relaxing, tone of the music. But it tricks our ear in the same way the virus tricks our cells. Its an invader disguised as a friendly visitor. Through music, we can see the SARS-CoV-2 spike from a new angle, and appreciate the urgent need to learn the language of proteins. New saliva test approved A team at Rutgers Universiy has been granted emergency approval from the FDA for a saliva-based coronavirus test. That means no deep-in-the-nose coronavirus tests, which could mean the need for less personal protective equipment, according to the team that developed the test. The impact of this approval is significant, said Andrew Brooks. It means we no longer have to put health care professionals at risk for infection by performing nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal collections. We can preserve precious personal protective equipment for use in patient care instead of testing. We can significantly increase the number of people tested each and every day as self-collection of saliva is more quick and scalable than swab collections. At the present time, the tests are only available in New Jersey. How not to wear that mask So youre wearing a mask now. The efficacy of cloth face masks has been much debated, but its safe to assume that youre wearing one when you go out to the store, or more often if your work takes you out into the world. Here one researcher shares some tips on what to do and what not to do when wearing a face mask. How Connecticut was ahead of the social distance game Connecticuts first stay-at-home order was issued on March 23, along with six other states. The first state to order some sort of stay-at-home order or to close ssential services was California, on March 21. New York followed suit the next day, after New Jersey, Illinois and Nevada. Schools are closed across the country, but seven states Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming have issued no stay-at-home orders at all. Visualizing Connecticut unemployment Theres been quite a lot written about unemployment in Connecticut and the United States. There are about 3,000 unemployment claims in the state on a typical week the last week in March there were 10 times that many. Check out the below chart showign weekly unemployment claims in Connecticut over the last 10 years. Visualizing social distancing Heres a really cool way to demonstrate the value of social distancing from the Ohio state health department. Flattening the curve in 1918 Your grandparents (or great-grandparents) were in the same boat 100 years ago. Social isolation is not a new thing. Back in 2007, the American Medical Association published an analysis of non-pharmaceutical efforts to mitigate the Spanish Flu epidemic and thei conclusion was that social distancing had an effect. These findings demonstrate a strong association between early, sustained, and layered application of nonpharmaceutical interventions and mitigating the consequences of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States, the study says. In planning for future severe influenza pandemics, nonpharmaceutical interventions should be considered for inclusion as companion measures to developing effective vaccines and medications for prophylaxis and treatment. Though New Haven was one of only three cities that did not entirely shut schools (including New York and Chicago) the data suggests that social distancing was implemented and did have an effect. During the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, all 43 cities eventually implemented non pharmaceutical interventions but the time of activation, duration, and choice recombination of these non pharmaceutical interventions appear to have been key factors in their successor failure, the study concludes. In 1918, decisions to activate nonpharmaceutical interventions were typicallytriggered by excess morbidity, mortality, or both, as well as situational awareness of other communities near and far. The Office of Principal Scientific Adviser to the government has prescribed measures such as installing 'do-it-yourself hand washing stations' for controlling the spread of COVID-19 in densely populated areas. According to a statement issued on Monday, the key goal of the proposed measures is to emphasise on sanitation and hygienic practices, and suggest key interventions that can greatly help in controlling the spread of the disease. Prof K VijayRaghavan, the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India emphasised that in the push against the COVID-19 pandemic, the country has come together to apply the most effective enabling measures appropriate in each context. Referring to Mumbai's Dharavi, the largest slum in the country that has been a hotspot of coronavirus cases, he said it needs special attention because of its population density. "Addressing the urgent need to proactively put in place more mechanisms that enable regular hand washing by residents in these communities, the guidelines propose swift installation of do-it-yourself hand washing stations that have been used worldwide to contain epidemics," said a statement explaining the guidelines. Suggesting installation of foot-operated hand washing stations, the statement said it not only reduces the chance of virus transmission by eliminating direct contact with potentially high-infection areas, but also the amount of water used by people during hand washing. The guidelines state that installing permanent such foot-operated facilities in public and community toilets encourages hand washing while reducing water use. Chlorinating the water dispensed at such hand washing stations adds additional effectiveness and should be considered, it added. The simple measures mentioned in the guidelines also include the need to always wear face covers and footwear in the toilet, washing hands immediately after use and maintaining social distancing. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Fallen Heroes Memorial Wall, commemorating New York Army and Air National Guard soldiers and airmen who have died in combat since 2001, has been dedicated at the Camp Smith Training Site, Cortlandt Manor, near Peekskill. Members of the Camp Smith garrison, Maj. Gen. Raymond Shields, state adjutant general, and families of fallen soldiers participated in the dedication. The Fallen Heroes Memorial Wall, in Building 508 at Camp Smith, displays metal lithograph photos of the 39 New York National Guard soldiers and airmen who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "Because so many New York National Guard Soldiers and Airmen pass through Camp Smith during training, we felt this would be an appropriate place to remember the soldiers and airmen who've been called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," said Lt. Col. Robert Zizolfo, training center manager. "New members of the National Guard can learn about the sacrifices of those who went before them." The new memorial wall replaces a temporary display of photographs, which was initially erected in 2011. The new memorial features a picture of each soldier or airman, along with a brief narrative of their service, mounted on a wall painted with an American flag. Navy Bell being returned to service A 100-year-old artifact has been returned to service. A bell that once signaled the time on a U.S. Navy destroyer that New York Naval Militia members trained on in the 1920s has been rededicated at New York state Division of Military and Naval Affairs Headquarters. The refurbished bell was placed in the headquarters' entryway, where it will be used for New York Naval Militia ceremonies. Rear Admiral Warren Smith, Naval Militia commander; Major Gen. Timothy LaBarge, assistant adjutant general for Air National Guard; and Maj. Gen. Ray Shields, the state adjutant general, participated in the ceremony 100 years after the ship that the bell was crafted for was commissioned. The bell marked "4 bells" to note a 2 p.m. start to the ceremony. The 40-pound bell was mounted on the destroyer USS Flusser (DD-289), which was built in 1919 by Bethlehem Shipbuilding in Squantum, Massachusetts, and commissioned on Feb. 25, 1920. Since the 15th century, bells have been used aboard ships to signal the time of day so that sailors knew when to go on duty. The bells were also used to indicate the ship's location in a fog, and they are rung to mark the moment when a captain or high-ranking officer boards or leaves a ship. The Flusser was armed with torpedoes and 4.5 inch guns. The ship was 314 feet long; it had a crew of 114 men and a speed of 35 knots. It was the third ship to bear that name. The ship's namesake was a Civil War naval officer, Lieutenant Commander Charles W. Flusser, who was killed in action on April 19, 1864, when his ship, the USS Miami, was in combat with the Confederate vessel Albemarle near Plymouth, N.C. The Flusser served with the Atlantic fleet. In 1925, the Flusser was assigned to U.S. Navy forces in Europe and toured 15 countries before returning to the United States and homeporting in Newport, Rhode Island. At Newport, the Flusser was used to develop destroyer tactics and also served as a training ship for reservists, including members of the New York Naval Militia. In 1930, the ship was decommissioned and then scrapped in order to comply with an international treaty limiting naval armaments. Somehow the bell of the Flusser made its way to New York. The bell wound up in the New York State Armory in Oswego, probably because at one time there was a Naval Militia unit located there. When the Oswego armory closed, the bell was transferred to the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga. With the Naval Militia searching for a bell for its ceremonies, the museum agreed to loan the bell of the Flusser. The bell has been cleaned and polished and mounted in a black walnut frame. The New York Naval Militia, a component of the New York Military Forces, is composed of 2,800 current and former Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard members who agree to serve on state active duty when called by the state of New York. They put the skills they've honed in federal military service to work for New York. The New York Naval Militia also operates a fleet of 10 patrol boats, which can assist law enforcement and the Coast Guard in New York's waters. These boats include a landing craft-style boat that can be used to deliver troops and supplies to waterfront locations. News of your troops and units can be sent to Duty Calls, Terry Brown, Times Union, Box 15000, Albany, NY 12212 or brownt@timesunion.com. Jammu, April 13 : One policeman was killed and another injured on Monday when terrorists attacked a police party in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district. Police sources said terrorists attacked a local police party in the Dachan area of Kishtwar district on Monday. "One policeman was killed and another has been injured in this attack. Reinforcements have been rushed to the area", police sources said. Reports from the area said the terrorists have decamped with the service weapons of the police party. The Supreme Court on Monday deferred for four weeks hearing on all the petitions seeking evacuation of Indian citizens stranded abroad amid the lockdown imposed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, while hearing several petitions in the matter, observed that this is no time to bring all people stranded abroad back to India. "People can go and request the government through proper application to seek their grievances. The government will take all necessary steps to bring back Indian people stranded abroad," Chief Justice Bobde said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Is child abuse really a problem in our culture? Absolutely, the problem is real. About 686,000 children were abused in the United States in 2012, and over 1,600 children died from abuse the same year. Approximately 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men have been sexually abused as a child. From a biblical perspective, we live in a hyper-sexual culture in which children are exposed to a repeated and perverse narrative. Pastors and church leaders who ignore this issue are disregarding one of the most dangerous problems affecting children. Does child abuse actually occur in the church? Yes. Victims of abuse are in your church. Since approximately 25% of women and 17% of men have suffered abuse at some point in their childhood, abuse victims are coming to your church every week. Though specific statistics concerning the number of cases involving sex abuse in the church are hard to obtain, insurance companies handle hundreds of claims a year in which a pastor, staff person, or volunteer is accused of sexual abuse. The problem is real in the church just as it is in the greater culture. Where is the greatest danger in most churches? Most churches have specific processes for child safety on-campus and during regular church hours. The greatest danger involves church sanctioned events and programs that are off site. In-home Bible studies and groups, in particular, are susceptible to lax controls. In fact, many of the worst cases of child abuse have occurred in home groups. Too often, I hear of home groups in which children are placed in a room with limited or no supervision. If a church threw a bunch of children in a room without supervision during Sunday morning classes, most parents would be shocked. You should not allow the same to happen with in-home groups. In fact, I suggest having even tighter controls for in-home groups. Predators often gravitate to the most trusting environments with the most lenient supervision. Unfortunately, church home groups can typify this type of environment. What should we do about suspected abusers? One of the most difficult aspects of this issue involves people whom you suspect have the potential to harm children, but may not have acted out yet. Obviously, you should not wrongly accuse someone. Spreading suspicions without facts is not helpful and can cause much damage. However, neglecting certain signs that raise suspicions is equally as dangerous. As with any sin issue, pastors and church leaders should talk to the individual if suspicions exist. Better to have an awkward conversation and keep children safe than dismiss suspicions and experience a tragedy. Are we allocating the proper resources for child protection? Proper policies and procedures are necessities for protecting children. However, you must also allocate enough resources to implement these policies and procedures. If your church must choose between adult curriculum and background checks, then the children are the priority. If your church is deciding between safer areas for children and a new choir room, then the children are the priority. Child protection is too important an issue. It should be among the top ministry priorities for churches. What if something happens at my church? Most churches will experience some form of an attack against children. Be prepared with specific policies and procedures. Also, make sure all staff and every volunteer understands the processes for reporting abuse. Report every reasonable suspicion of abuse or neglect to the proper authorities. The scandal occurs in how you handle the situation. Cover-ups cause just as much harm as the offense. Any organization with lots of children is a target for predators. Satan especially wants to attack churches. John 10:10 warns that spiritual thieves steal, kill, and destroy. Predators steal the innocence of children. Predators kill the mission of the church. Predators destroy lives of families. The issue of child protection is difficult. The problem is real. Pastors and church leaders must protect children. This piece was originally published at the Thom S. Rainer website The Mauritanian army Sunday said it arrested 7 drogue traffickers and seized a drogue shipment of 700kg during an operation near the Malian border. The traffickers according to the army statement, had been under the radar since April 10. The operation, a coordination between ground forces and the airpower, enabled the arrest of the seven traffickers and the seizure of 700kg. Forces also according to the army, destroyed two 4*4 (Toyota Land Cruiser), part of the convoy used by the traffickers. 18,000 kg of drogue caught fire in the destruction of the two cars. They also seized one Toyota Land Cruiser, 700 kg of drogue, a weapon, a Thuraya phone, 3 cell phones and 4 Kalashnikov canisters. The Sahara region, spanning mostly across Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso, is used as safe haven for terror groups and drogue traffickers. Posted by North Africa Post North Africa Post's news desk is composed of journalists and editors, who are constantly working to provide new and accurate stories to NAP readers. New Delhi, April 13 : Two weeks after its health care workers came in contact with COVID-19 positive patient, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital conducted COVID-19 tests on all 115 healthcare workers who were quarantined. According to the hospital management only three of them are found to be positive . "Only three have tested positive and rest 112 have tested negative for COVID-19, these 112 workers will be joining their respective duties from the day after tomorrow," the hospital management said on Monday. Over 100 members of the hospital's medical staff were sent into quarantine after two patients in the hospital were tested positive with COVID-19. According to the hospital management two patients who were asymptomatic and were admitted to the fever clinic of the hospital but later started to show signs of flu and were tested for COVID-19. "As soon as we got to know that the patients were tested positive we identified all the medical staff who had come into contact," a spokesperson of the hospital had told IANS. China has reported its highest number of daily coronavirus infections in almost six weeks, largely because of infected people arriving in the country from overseas. A total of 108 new cases were declared on the mainland by the national health commission on Monday, of which 98 were imported a new record for such cases, fuelling fears China could experience a second wave of infections brought in from abroad. With the lockdown now easing in the city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 outbreak began, Chinese cities and towns near the border with Russia are being seen as the new frontline in the countrys virus response. Health officials said that of the new cases on Sunday, 49 were Chinese nationals who entered Heilongjiang province from Russia and tested positive. Border checkpoints are being tightened, and cities near the border are imposing stricter quarantines in response to the influx of patients. But the news is also sparking a backlash among locals towards their countrymen returning from Russia. Our little town here, we thought it was the safest place, a resident of the border city of Suifenhe, who only gave his surname as Zhu, told Reuters news agency. Some Chinese citizens, they want to come back, but its not very sensible, what are you doing coming here for? Suifenhe has become one of the main land routes into China, after Russia stopped commercial flights in March. On 4 April, Moscow extended this to a complete ban on international air traffic including repatriation flights. The Chinese border city has now introduced measures similar to those in Wuhan at the height of the crisis in Hubei province. The streets were deserted on Sunday, while all arrivals from abroad are mandated to undergo 28 days of quarantine as well as regular testing. Separately on Monday, Chinese officials were forced to deny any discrimination against African brothers in the country, amid reports authorities in the southern city of Guangzhou have been taking additional anti-virus measures targeting Africans. Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops Show all 16 1 /16 Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-9.jpg Photos Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-8.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-1.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-4.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-2.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-5.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-11.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-6.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-15.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-16.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-14.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-10.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-12.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-13.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-3.jpg Reuters Life under lockdown: Wuhan's windows, balconies and rooftops wuhan-lockdown-7.jpg Reuters Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily news conference that the accusations were an attempt by the US to harm Beijings relations with African nations. CNN had reported that Africans in Guangzhou were among those feeling the worst impacts of a growing anti-foreigner sentiment across China due to the rising number of imported virus cases. The American news channel said that in more than two dozen interviews, Africans described being evicted by landlords and refused boarding at hotels, being subject to random testing by officials and required to undergo 14 days quarantine all despite having no symptoms, travel history or contact with known patients. The US embassy issued a cautionary notice, saying that police in the wider Guangdong province have ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients who appear to be of African origin. In a statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said the government had zero tolerance for discrimination during the outbreak, but admitted that local authorities in Guangdong were working promptly to improve their working method. Some experts have questioned the number of infections China is declaring as imported, as Beijing seeks to declare victory over an outbreak that began within its borders. Steve Tsang, director of SOAS universitys China Institute in London, told The Independent that local officials would feel incentivised to get creative when reporting the origins of cases, rather than derail the Communist Party narrative that local transmission has been brought down to near zero. Sometimes, some of the numbers being attributed to foreign travel might not necessarily have been quite as foreign as they might seem, he said. Jonathan Eyal, an associate director at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said Chinas low figures for new infections were slop[ing] out of credulity. In Wuhan, where authorities began allowing people to leave the city last week, a major mask manufacturer said it was now focussing entirely on meeting the demand for personal protective equipment in Europe and the US. Wuhan Zonsen, which makes masks and disinfection wipes, told the Associated Press it had received $50m (39m) in orders from western countries that will keep them at full production capacity until June. Demand now has increased to 10 times [what it was] before because of the epidemic, said Cynthia Ye, global marketing manager. On a media tour organised by the Wuhan government, Ye said the company was producing 200,000 masks per day but planned to increase this to 700,000. Chinese regulators have had to introduce additional checks on exports of PPE after European buyers and countries complained about the quality of testing kits, face masks and other medical equipment rushed out by China in recent weeks. Ye denied there were any quality issues with masks sent by Wuhan Zonsen to the Netherlands, one of a number of European countries to have made criticisms. Albany, N.Y. A panel of officials from New York and five other states will coordinate on eventual plans for reopening their economies. The panel will include a top economic development official, a top public health official and a representative from the governors office of each of the six states in the effort. In addition to New York, the other states are Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The governors of the six states announced the joint effort today. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been saying for weeks he wants to coordinate reopening plans with neighboring states. Could Upstate New York schools, businesses reopen sooner than New York City? The state boundaries mean very little to this virus, he said. All of these decisions affect everyone in the entire region. New York, Connecticut and New Jersey acted together when nonessential businesses shut down in March to help confront the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo said the new coalition is talking to other states as well, including Massachusetts. The new panel will develop strategies for both public health and the economy, Cuomo said. The two must run in parallel, he added. You cant have one at the expense of the other, he said. It has to be both. Cuomo didnt have a timeline for when the states might begin reopening. He did say he expected the panel to have the start of a strategy within weeks. Over 10,000 New Yorkers have now died from the new coronavirus. But recent trends indicate the virus spread is slowing. Cuomo has said moving too fast to ease the states social distancing measures would lead to a rapid resurgence in cases. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Coronavirus in NY: Deaths now over 10,000, but Cuomo says he believes worst is over Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Social distancing in CNY: Hundreds of calls, police try to teach people to obey crackdown Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598 Samsung has yet to officially announce the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite but that has not stopped retailers from listing the device in their stores. UK retailer Argos has the upcoming Samsung tablet currently listed on its website, revealing the price and full specs. The retailer has the Wi-Fi Galaxy Tab S6 Lite listed with a price tag of 339 (roughly 387 or $420). It is selling both Angora Blue and Oxford Grey color variants of the tablet. Argos isnt saying when the device would start shipping, though. Last month, Amazon Germany had listed both LTE and Wi-Fi-only variants of the tablet with an April 2 release date. That obviously didnt happen and both the listings have since been taken down. Advertisement Argos reveals Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite specifications The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite has leaked extensively over the past few weeks. Most of the tablets specs are known and the Argos listing has now more or less confirmed them. The upcoming Android tablet from Samsung features a 10.4-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 20001200 pixels and pretty large bezels. The listing says it is an LED-backlit display. The tablet is powered by the Exynos 9611 processor, which the South Korean company uses in many of its mid-range smartphones as well. The chipset is supported by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, expandable via a microSD card. Samsung might also launch a 128GB variant of the tablet in some markets. Advertisement The Galaxy Tab S6 Lite runs Android 10 out of the box, with Samsungs One UI 2.x on top. This tablet packs a single 8-megapixel rear-facing camera in the square-shaped bump at the top left corner. The front-facing camera is a 5-megapixel sensor. Connectivity options include LTE (only in LTE variants), GPS, Bluetooth 5.0, dual-band Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, NFC, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. A 7,040mAh battery reportedly fuels this tablet. It charges via a USB Type-C port and comes with fast charging support. This tablet has a dimension of 244.5 x 154.3 x 7 mm and weighs 467 grams. It comes with AKG-tuned speakers. The Galaxy Tab S6 Lite seems to be missing out on a fingerprint sensor, though. Advertisement Its not known when Samsung plans to take the wraps off the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. Support pages for the tablet have been cropping up on the companys official website in several European markets over the past couple of weeks. So it should be safe to assume that Samsung is preparing for an imminent release of this upper mid-range Android tablet. Biologist Yin Zhi holds an offspring of a genetically engineered pig, born with green patches when held up against ultraviolet light, in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China, on Jan. 11, 2008. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images) Science Forces Mankind to Grapple With Technophobia Versus Technophilia Commentary In 2003, Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. Around the same time, researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies, while at Stanford University, an experiment was being contemplated to create mice with human brains. No wonder, then, many people are worried about the ethical implications of genetic engineering. They read about cloning or harvesting embryos for genetic material, about fusing human with rabbit cells, and they wonder whether we havent started firmly down the path described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Today, we cull certain biological material from so-called dispensable embryos; tomorrow, might we not have factories for the production of children carefully segregated according to genetic endowment? Worrying About the Worriers But if many people worry about what genetic engineering portends, others worry primarily about what misplaced public anxiety about such scientific research will mean for the progress of science. Such people arent necessarily insensitive to ethical issues; but for them, the search for scientific truth is ineluctable. Public opinion might delay the march of progress. It will never entirely derail it. So (they argue) it behooves us to pursue science wherever it leads. If we dont, someone else will, and we in the West are better equipped than anyone to deploy new technologies wisely and humanely than other cultures. To oppose the application of genetic engineering (the argument goes) is to be a latter-day Luddite, railing impotently against a technology whose effects might be painful at first but ultimately liberating. Its a mistake to dismiss out of hand either side of the argument: those who worry about genetic engineering, or those who worry about the worriers. Consider the plus side. The therapeutic promise of genetic engineering is more than enormous: its staggering. No one who has seen somebody suffer from cancer or Parkinsons disease or any of the many other horrific ills that the flesh is heir to can be deaf to that promise. Of course, any powerful technology can be put to evil purposes as well as good ones. In this sense, one might say that technology is like fire. It is neither good nor bad in itself. It is good when used appropriately for good purposes, and bad when used inappropriately or for evil purposes. It would be pleasing to think that we could apply some such calculus to determine the moral complexion of a particular application of genetic engineering. It is not at all clear, however, that the moral quandaries with which genetic engineering confront us can be solved by such a calculus. Problems With No Solution Part of the problem is that the creedfamiliar to us from Marxismthat the end justifies the means seems particularly barbarous when applied directly to human reality, as it is in genetic engineering. Are all embryos potential candidates for harvesting, or only certain embryos? And what about newborns, another good source of genetic material? Are certain infants to be regarded as potential raw material for genetic experimentation? Which infants? Its easy to conjure up a nightmare world in which some human beings are raised for spare parts. Already in certain parts of the world, the bodies of executed criminals, among others, are raided for kidneys, corneas, and other body parts. Why not extend the practice? My own belief is that humanity is on the threshold of an awesome moral divide. Recent advances in the technologies of genetic engineeringcloning, stem-cell research, and the likeconfront us with moral problems for which we have no solution. Perhaps the biggest problem concerns the nature of the technologies involved. When we look back over the course of technological development, especially in the past couple hundred years, it is easy to be a technological optimist. Science and technology have brought us so many extraordinary advances that one is tempted to close ones eyes and take a leap of faith when it comes to technology. No doubt science and technology have brought us many destructive things, but who except the hermits among us would willingly do without the conveniencesincluding life-saving conveniencesthey have bequeathed us? Its impossible, I think, for any rational person to say no to science and technology. The benefits are simply too compelling. Self-Deification But can we afford to acquiesce and simply say yes? Are there lines to be drawn, limits to be respected? If so, where do we find the criteria for drawing those lines and limits? There is no simple or pat answer to such questions. Perhaps the one thing that is certain is that we are operating here in a realm beyond certainty. No one will come up with a formula that can be successfully applied to all cases. There are two dangers. One is the danger of technophobia: retreating from science and technology because of the moral enormities it makes possible. The other, more prevalent danger, is technophilia, best summed up in the belief that if it can be done, it may be done. There are many things that we can do that we ought not do. As science and technology develop, we find ourselves wielding ever greater power. The dark side of power is the temptation to forget its limitation. Lord Acton was right to warn that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. None of us, of course, really commands absolute power. Our mortality assures that for all of usrich and poor, brilliant and obscurelife will end in the absolute weakness of death. But the exercise of power can be a like a drug, dulling us to the fact of our ultimate impotence. Its when we forget our impotence that we do the most damage with the power we wield. At the end of the magisterial book Main Currents of Marxism, the Polish philosopher Lezsek Kolakowski observed, The self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression, has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or collective: it has revealed itself as the farcical aspect of human bondage. It would be a mistake to think that Marxism has a monopoly on the project of self-deification. Its a temptation as old as mankind itself. The Greeks called it hubris. And the book of Genesis warns us about such hubris with the story of the serpents promise to Eve: Ye shall be as gods. But modern technology has upped the ante on hubris. Our amazing technological prowess seduces many people into thinking we are or, with just a bit more tinkering, might become gods. The first step in that process is to believe that one is exempt from normal moral limits: that if it can be done, it may be done. It is a foolish thought, a dangerous thought. But it is one with which we will all find ourselves having to contend as we continue to surprise ourselves with our strange cleverness. Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Pollutants from vehicles using new road tunnels to be built under Sydney Harbour will be up to 26 per cent higher than the government's baseline modelling for the multibillion-dollar project unless tougher European emissions standards are introduced. The environmental report for the Western Harbour Tunnel, which was released in January, assumes the stricter standards known as "Euro 6" will be the most common emission standard for passenger and light-duty vehicles purchased in NSW from 2021. The Western Harbour Tunnel will connect to the Warringah Freeway and the proposed Beaches Link. Credit:Michele Mossop But the federal government does not plan for Euro 6 standards to be mandated for light vehicles in Australia until after 2027. And Les Johnston, a former NSW environmental regulator, said the likelihood of the tougher standards being introduced by 2027 was "even more diminished" now due to the economic hit from coronavirus, meaning that the in-tunnel emissions would be much higher than assumed. Aslam Farooqui, the so-called Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) chief who was arrested on April 4, hasnt really been singing like a canary as some expected. But he has spoken about his groups links with Pakistani deep state, given interrogators an insight into the status of power struggle in Afghanistan and admitted how his fighters had been on the run and mostly, hiding in a eastern Afghanistan district. The big picture that has emerged from days of questioning at a location outside Kabul is that the Taliban will not share the spoils of power after the withdrawal of US armed forces from the country. The Taliban, he has told interrogators in the early days of his interrogation, has neutralised 90 percent of the ISKP group in Afghanistan. This onslaught has forced his remaining fighters to seek shelter in Achin district of Nangarhar province, which shares the border with Pakistan. It hasnt helped the ISKP led by Farooqui, a Pashtun from Orakzai Agency, that the group largely comprises Pakistani nationals, right from those in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa area to Islamabad and Pak-occupied Kashmir. The Sunni Pashtun Taliban have been mercilessly battering the ISKP for trying to operate from Kandahar, Kunar, Nuristan and Nangarhar provinces. The Taliban, for the record, had promptly distanced itself from the March 25 attack on the Kabul gurdwara that killed more than 2 dozen Sikh worshippers. The attack was carried out by Farooqui group with a couple of radicalised Keralites from Kasargod involved in the massacre. The Taliban, after some hiccups, has started taking the first steps to implement the February 29 deal with the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad that paves the way for the US and other foreign forces to quit Afghanistan. This pact requires the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The Taliban, on the other hand, would free 1,000 Afghan security force personnel. The exchange was supposed to have happened by March 10. The Taliban released the first set of 20 Afghan security-force prisoners on Sunday, a development that the US special envoy described as an important step in the peace process and the reduction of violence. It is still early to predict the course of events in the volatile state of Afghanistan. But there is growing evidence that the country is heading from being a Islamic Republic to Islamic Emirate, where Sharia laws will apply and back to the days when Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996. Even though the US may have a limited footprint in the strife-torn country to manage its affairs in Central Asia, Pakistan and China, there are indications that the Taliban will not listen to its Pakistan, once its mentor, on every issue once it seizes power. The Taliban is not a monolithic body. It may be united to seize power in Afghanistan but there are elements within it that completely oppose Pakistan and some are advocates of the Durand Line being made into the new border with its eastern neighbour, said a senior analyst based in Kabul. That will complicate the situation for Islamabad. Just as Pakistan, India is also going into uncharted waters once again as it supports the current regime including its Northern Alliance friends from the past two decades, it will have to deal with Taliban when it comes to power. And that day is not too far away. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON April 13, 2020 (Morning Star News) When a convert from Islam in Iran was sentenced to two years in exile in Sarbaz last year, the judge warned him that religious extremists in the remote desert town would treat him harshly. When Ebrahim Firoozi arrived in November to southwest Iran near the border with Pakistan, though, he discovered the fear the judge had tried to instill in him was unfounded local Muslims were helpful, open and hospitable, the Christian said in a recent online interview. This discovery was all the more welcome as in March his term of exile was extended by another 11 months. Upon his arrival in Sarbaz, one person invited Firoozi to stay at his home the first night; others quickly found him a place to live. Local peoples kindness only increased, he said, when they learned he was exiled for his Christian faith rather than for a crime. I found these people to be very noble, Firoozi, 34, told Joseph Hovsepian of Hovsepian Ministries in an interview posted on YouTube in which he opened up about his conversion and his years in prison before exile. Firoozi and advocates believe this kindness was an answer to the prayers of worried friends, family and others. The reason people were nice to me wasnt because of my own character or my goodness. It was all because of God, Firoozi told Hovsepian. Released from Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj on Oct. 26, Firoozi was ordered to report to Sarbaz following a brief period to order personal matters. Shortly after arriving, though, he sought permission to leave the area to settle family affairs in Hamedan and, receiving no response, in December he departed. As a result, he received an additional eight months of exile for violating terms of the sentence and three more for failing to show for a daily check-in, according to advocacy group Middle East Concern (MEC). Besides punishment, the purpose of exile is to keep people from continuing to be an influence in their areas, a researcher at MEC told Morning Star News. He added, however, that Firoozi has been an inspiration to Christians in his desire to stay in Iran, rather than fleeing in the face of persecution, and in his attitude throughout the process. His faithfulness in the midst of persecution is an inspiration to others, he said. Firoozis lifestyle in exile is simple, the researcher at MEC added, and he spends much of his time reading Christian literature. It is unknown whether Firoozi has found work in the area, but Hovsepian told Morning Star News, He is not alone, and he will be taken care of. Prison Before exile, Firoozi had spent almost seven years in prison, starting in 2011, when agents searched his house, arrested him and presented tracts and other materials as evidence against him, he said in his online interview. The judge initially sentenced Firoozi to 10 months in prison. When Firoozi was released, he continued to share his faith, and in 2013 he was given a one-year sentence and two years in exile. Five years were added to the one-year sentence. As he was preparing to turn himself in to serve the initial one-year sentence, Firoozi said, he met with people to say goodbye, during which agents entered and interrogated them and accused him of conducting a Bible study group, and five years were added to his initial one-year sentence. He was sentenced to five years under charges of crimes against national security, participating in illegal gatherings and colluding with foreign entities. Criminal charges are given to Christian converts for involvement and fellowship with Christian groups and activities. The sentences, Firoozi said, are rarely put in writing to avoid evidence of unjust convictions. In court he was pressured to ask for forgiveness and renounce his faith in exchange for a lighter sentence, he told Hovsepian. But that was absolutely not an option for me, he said. I could never turn my back on my faith and submit to this, and by Gods grace I encountered a few years in prison in exchange for an eternity with him. Faith At the beginning of his faith journey, Firoozi said he knew that he would face this type of persecution. His journey began at age 20, when his family moved from Hamadan to Tehran. Through Christian media, he was introduced to a Christ much different than the one he had heard of while growing up. When the friends he had been staying with blocked the Christian programs, he listened to short-wave radio broadcasts with headphones on the roof of the house, Bible in hand, until he could find his own place. Through subsequent contacts with Christians, he said, I came to accept him as my Lord and Savior. After his conversion, he openly shared his faith and gave people Bibles, and even declared himself as Christian on official forms. Staying in Iran While emphasizing that his experience in prison was not necessarily like that of all Christian inmates, Firoozi said he was not mistreated. He was eventually allowed to have a Bible, to build a small library, and when all Christians were transferred to Rajai Shahr Prison in 2013, he was able to be with fellow believers. He told Hovsepian that in prison he realized the value of freedom, love and grace toward others as well as the endurance and submission required of biblical heroes like Job. While serving his sentence, his mother died. Hovsepian said the fact that Firoozis heart is not filled with bitterness is a testament to his character. In a way I would say maybe he is an icon of the young generation of persecuted believers in Iran, said Hovsepian, 46. While there is hope that in future generations Christians will not be imprisoned for their faith, Hovsepian noted that persecution often strengthens the church. I have seen that wherever there is persecution, the church grows fast, he said. The church purifies. The church unites, and the opposite also happens wherever there is no persecution. While some might use their conversion as a means to request asylum abroad, Firoozi told Hovsepian that he has no intention of doing so. Instead, he wants to stay, bring change and spread hope and the gospel to Iranian people. He asked for prayers that Iranians would be granted human rights, that those in prison would feel supported and that the leaders of the country would have a change of heart. I dont want people to be discouraged by stories of people like myself being imprisoned or other believers being persecuted in Iran or other countries, Firoozi said, but instead I want them to emphasize the fact that God is with the church in Iran and gives the church grace and strength to endure in difficult times. Iran was ranked ninth on Christian support organization Open Doors 2020 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved. If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at https://morningstarnews.org/donate/? Article originally published by Morning Star News. Used with permission. Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Naruedom Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 16:25:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close HARBIN, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has announced further postponing opening of junior high schools as it is coping with increasing imported COVID-19 cases. Heilongjiang reported 56 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Sunday, the local health authority said Monday. Among them, seven were locally transmitted cases and 49 were imported cases all involving Chinese nationals returning from Russia, the provincial health commission said. By Sunday, the province had reported a total of 247 confirmed imported COVID-19 cases and one has been discharged from hospital after recovery, it said. The municipal government said on Saturday that the date for class resumption of junior high schools, originally scheduled for April 17, will depend on the progress of the epidemic control situation. The province had planned to gradually open school campuses, as it had basically contained the local transmission of coronavirus prior to the abrupt increase of the imported cases, which triggered further local transmission of the virus. It allowed senior high schools to open campus for 190,000 students in graduating classes starting from April 7. The provincial government said the senior high schools can continue the graduating classes to better prepare the students for the national college entrance exam and urged the schools to step up epidemic prevention among teachers and students. The city of Jiaozhou, eastern China's Shandong Province, announced over the weekend to further postpone school opening for graduating classes in senior high schools, which was originally scheduled for April 15, to prevent epidemic spread. "COVID-19 has shown many states are decades behind in online learning for K-12 students," said Jim Stergios, Pioneer Institute executive director. "Having a virtual schooling trailblazer like Julie Young of ASU Prep Digital map the path forward for state leaders is an invaluable resource right now." With the shift to online education in response to COVID-19 presenting a daunting challenge, a new Pioneer Institute and ASU Prep Digital policy brief offers five important considerations for schools and districts. As of late March, at least 124,000 public and private schools affecting a minimum of 55.1 million American children had closed, said Julie Young, co-author of Shifting to Online Learning in the COVID-19 Spring, with William Donovan. An effective transition to virtual learning is needed to avoid the loss of up to a third of the current school year. 1. Understand the level of equipment and Internet access that families have. School districts should conduct a survey of the families they serve to determine who needs devices and who lacks Internet access. In Illinois, Belleville Township High School District 201 deploys four school buses equipped with Wi-Fi to serve as Wi-Fi hotspots. Between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. every weekday, drivers park the buses next to seven parks throughout the town and Bellevilles downtown YMCA, depending on the day of the week. Districts should also be aware that even families with a high-speed connection may not have enough devices for multiple children, particularly if parents are working from home. 2. Equip schools for virtual instruction. If they dont already have one, districts should purchase a learning management system (LMS), the set of tools that houses course content and provides the framework for communication between students, teachers, and parents. There are more than 1,000 LMS vendors, including Agilix Labs, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, and Pearson Learning Solutions. Many districts are sticking with basic online options they already use and that teachers and staff are familiar with. 3. Prepare your teachers. Give teachers time to acquire some of the basic skills they need to prepare their online courses and practice teaching online. Principals and school administrators can provide guidance to teachers as they select from the vast number of online lessons, videos, simulations, and activities. Assistance is also available from other online educators such as ASU Prep and Florida Virtual School, which was the first full-time online school in the U.S. 4. Most special needs students can be served. The large majority of special needs students with Individualized Education Plans, can easily be served when shifting to online instruction; however, online education often is not as effective with severely disabled students. 5. Establish daily schedules. Clear expectations should be in place for when teachers and students are expected to be logged on. Some schools choose a morning meeting and an afternoon check-in. Others spread the school day over two days, with classes in the morning and teachers holding online office hours in the afternoon. Consistency is also important for parents. Very young students may require parental assistance with online instruction, and parents are often managing their own work-from-home schedules. "COVID-19 has made clear that Massachusetts and many states are decades behind providing meaningful academic online learning for their K-12 students," said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute. "Having a virtual schooling trailblazer like Julie Young of ASU Prep Digital map the path forward for state leaders is an invaluable resource during this national crisis." To facilitate the shift to online learning, states should clarify any confusion around what counts as instruction time for funding purposes and/or instructional minutes requirements. State education departments and school districts should also add pages to their websites that provide extensive information about the transition. About the Authors Julie E. Young is Vice President of Education Outreach at ASU and Managing Director of ASU Prep Digital. Julie is passionate about students and is focused on leveraging technology to provide them with new opportunities. Prior to joining ASU Prep Digital, she was the founding CEO and president of the Florida Virtual School, the worlds first virtual statewide school district and one of the nations largest and most influential K through 12 online education providers. During her tenure, the school served over 2 million students in 50 states and 68 countries. William Donovan is a former staff writer with The Providence Journal in Rhode Island where he wrote about business and government. He has taught business journalism in the graduate programs at Boston University and Northeastern University. He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his masters degree in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C. About Pioneer Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government. Pfizer PFE is collaborating with other pharma/biotech companies as well as government agencies and academic institutions to develop different types of therapies against coronavirus infection, COVID-19. The company is developing an mRNA-based vaccine, antiviral compounds and a JAK inhibitor to fight COVID-19. Last month, the company signed a deal with BioNTech BNTX to jointly develop the latters mRNA-based vaccine candidate, BNT162, to prevent the COVID-19 infection. The collaboration aims to accelerate the global development of BNT162, leveraging the expertise and resources of both companies. BNT162 is expected to enter clinical testing by the end of this month. Both companies planned to initially develop the vaccine in the United States and Europe, and scale-up manufacturing capacity to support global supply. Per the deal, BioNTech will receive an upfront payment of $185 million, including approximately $113 million in equity investment. BioNTech is also eligible to receive future milestone payments of up to $563 million. Pfizer said they have potential to supply millions of vaccine doses by the end of 2020 if they receive the necessary regulatory approvals. Thereafter, they can rapidly scale up capacity to produce hundreds of millions of doses in 2021. Pfizer is also screening antiviral compounds and has confirmed a lead compound based on the results of initial screening assays. The company plans to start a potential clinical study of the lead molecule in the third quarter of 2020. It is also evaluating azithromycin for its antiviral properties. Moreover, an independent, investigator-initiated phase II study is being planned to evaluate Pfizers JAK inhibitor, tofacitinib, in patients with SARS-CoV-2 interstitial pneumonia in Italy later this week. The company is in discussions with other institutions about additional studies involving tofacitinib and potentially other immune modulators in its portfolio to mitigate systemic and alveolar inflammation in patients with COVID-19-related pneumonia. Story continues Pfizers shares have lost 9.7% so far this year compared with the industrys decline of 6.6%. Please note that several pharma/biotech companies are engaged in developing vaccines or treatments for the coronavirus infection. Moderna MRNA is another company developing an mRNA-based vaccine for COVID-19. The candidate is in clinical-stage development.Translate Bio is also planning to co-develop an mRNA-based vaccine in collaboration with Sanofi SNY. Pharma giant, J&J has announced plans to initiate a clinical study to evaluate its potential coronavirus vaccine candidate in September. Apart from vaccines, a few other companies are developing drugs or testing their marketed drugs in studies to treat COVID-19. These include Gileads antiviral candidate, remdesivir; Roches rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drug, Actemra; and Regeneron/Sanofis RA drug, Kevzara. While Actemra is being evaluated for severe COVID-19 pneumonia, Kevzara is being evaluated in patients hospitalized with severe infection due to COVID-19. Pfizer Inc. Price Pfizer Inc. Price Pfizer Inc. price | Pfizer Inc. Quote Zacks Rank Pfizer currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Sanofi (SNY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Pfizer Inc. (PFE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Moderna, Inc. (MRNA) : Free Stock Analysis Report BioNTech SE Sponsored ADR (BNTX) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. KEY HIGHLIGHTS: Wish-list includes a wide range of measure to revive the sector Many players are small scale family run businesses with no financial sustenance SIAM has predicted an over 20 per cent decline in sales this fiscal Dealer community already reeling under the changeover from BS IV to BS VI Automobile dealers have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention to support the industry, which is in dire straits due to the coronavirus pandemic. The wish-list includes resetting the clock for the period of lockdown for working capital limits, extension of 4 per cent interest subvention for 9 months after the end of lockdown, provision for 20 per cent additional overdraft over credit limit for 6 months, reduction on GST on vehicle to spur demand and a priority sector tag for the automobile industry to ease retail and wholesale financing woes. "The current situation can lead to an existential situation for many of our members and their employees. Majority of them are small scale family run businesses with no financial sustenance for such a crisis after already having gone through a tough period in past 15 months," Ashish Harshraj Kale, the president of Federation of Automobile Dealers Federation, wrote in the letter. "Over the years auto dealership business model has come under severe strain with increasing costs and low operating margins thereby reducing our sustenance towards any such shocks as this current corona situation and its after effects. The immediate situation is extremely bleak if not supported." Sale of automobiles declined by over 18 per cent in fiscal 2020, the worst ever in a year in over two decades. Industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has predicted an over 20 per cent decline in sales this fiscal in the worst case scenario of the GDP growing at less than 1 per cent during the year. This will put added pressure on the dealer community already reeling under the changeover from BS IV to BS VI emission norms that has led to significant losses on inventory stocks. "COVID-19 has come as a shock to all of us as the Indian Auto Industry was preparing for recovery in sales growth after 15 months of a downturn. A new normal growth rate is going to be set, post the COVID-19 which is projected to be far lower than the normal, under which we have been operating in recent times," Kale said in the letter. "SIAM has projected that the country will witness a huge drop in auto sales which could be as high as 35 percent for some segments. This is over and above the 18 percent de-growth of FY20. For the last 15 months, the auto industry has already been under an unexpected severe slow down. More than 275 dealerships had to shut down during this period and thousands of jobs were lost in the process. The suggestions that we have made if acted upon immediately, will help us remain afloat in these unprecedented times and also help save lakhs of jobs in the process," Kale added. Also Read: Coronavirus India live updates: 308 people dead in the country as active COVID-19 cases near 8,000-mark Also Read: Coronavirus: Farmers demand fair price for produce before lockdown extension kicks in What Could Be in a Post-Virus Infrastructure Plan? D ozens of climate activists have been referred to the Home Offices anti-terror Prevent programme amid fears they may become radicalised, it has emerged. Data obtained by The Times newspaper found at least 45 activists were referred to Prevent over alleged environmental extremism between April 2016 and March last year. The figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request come at a time of increased global focus on climate change and environmental issues. Extinction Rebellion has grabbed headlines for bold stunts like blocking off London bridges and has orchestrated synchronised mass protests around the world. Extinction Rebellion protesters / PA Prevent has been criticised in the past for being heavy-handed and damaging for free speech by religious organisations and human rights groups. In most cases when someone is referred to Prevent, no further action is taken. If a person is considered worthy of further attention, they are referred to the Channel police programme. One environmental activist is being monitored by Channel, the Times reported. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas hit out at the Home Office for referring climate activists to Prevent. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas / Getty Images She said: "If the police think environmentalists pose a real threat to law and order in this country, then they need to take a hard look at themselves. "The biggest risk we face is the climate emergency and bringing that to public attention through peaceful protest is not a terrorism risk, its a public service." Baroness Jenny Jones, also of the Green Party, said the news shows the Government needs to tighten its definition of terrorism. She added: I want the police to be focused on dealing with serious crimes, rather than chasing round after people who are peacefully taking part in the democratic process. Extinction Rebellion protesters earlier this year / PA Allan Hogarth, head of advocacy and programmes for pressure group Amnesty UK, described the news as "deeply concerning". He went on: "The Government must respect the rights of those peacefully protesting and ensure that the voices of those demanding action on tackling the climate crisis can be heard without fear of being labelled extremists. Mr Hogarth said the definition of "extremism" is vague and is used as an excuse to target individuals and groups. He added: This cannot go on. The Governments failure to appoint an independent reviewer to assess its dubious strategy remains incredibly concerning. We urge them to appoint an impartial and independent reviewer as a matter of urgency. Extinction Rebellion Parliament Square protests - in pictures 1 /26 Extinction Rebellion Parliament Square protests - in pictures AP AP REUTERS PA AP Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images AP PA PA PA AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images AFP via Getty Images PA PA PA PA Extinction Rebellion declined to comment. A Home Office spokesperson said: Prevent is about safeguarding people at risk from being drawn into all forms of terrorism, rather than targeting a particular ideology. Activists engaged in peaceful protest for environmental or other causes are not extremists. All referrals to Prevent are carefully assessed if an individual does not meet the threshold, the case is immediately closed. Exporters' body FIEO on Monday urged the home ministry to implement suggestions made by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) to resume limited activity in certain identified industries with reasonable safeguards. The DPIIT in a series of recommendations to the Ministry of Home Affairs has suggested to permit limited activity in certain sectors such as heavy electricals and telecom equipment, with reasonable safeguards. Welcoming the suggestions, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President Sharad Kumar Saraf said the list of industries, recommended by the DPIIT, has been carefully made to help in slowly bringing the economy on track. "Opening of all export industries, large as well as MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) including SEZs (special economic zones) and EOUs (export-oriented units), will help the exporters execute whatever little orders remain with them after huge cancellations in the last two months," he said in a statement. This will also send the right signal to overseas buyers that the situation is fast normalising in India encouraging them to further place orders, he said. He said free movement of vehicles and manpower required for such activities is the most pragmatic one and so is operationalisation of transportation throughout the length and breadth of the country. Saraf assured the government that industry will adhere to sanitisation and social distancing norms for the health and safety of workers. "The Ministry of Home Affairs should immediately issue the order to put the recommendation into practice which will be a saviour of the economy while simultaneously helping the industry as well as workers," he added. According to the DPIIT recommendations, certain industries which can be permitted to start with minimum manpower and proper sanitation and distancing norms/safeguards on a single shift basis include telecom equipment and components including optical fibre cable; compressor and condenser units; steel and ferrous alloy mills; spinning and ginning mills, power looms; defence; cement plants; pulp and paper units; fertilizer plants; paints; plastic; automotive units; gems and jewellery; and all units in SEZs and EOUs. The 21-day lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in place from March 25 in a bid to halt the spread of coronavirus and is scheduled to end on Tuesday. Five states, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, have already extended the coronavirus lockdown in their respective territories till April 30. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Express News Service BENGALURU: Dr Kala Yadav MLs day in the hospital may wrap up by 6 pm but the calls dont stop pouring in until 10 pm. But as a frontline worker at the Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, which is a designated supervised isolation centre in the city, Yadav is no stranger to this tense pace of work. Along with being in-charge of hospital infection control and biowaste management at the hospital, the 45-year-old is also a professor and in-charge of the microbiology department at Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute. Dr Kala Yadav ML Nobody thinks of it but this is a major aspect of a COVID-19 hospital. If the waste disposed of is not treated beforehand, it could lead to a major infection, or community transmission even, she says solemnly. With Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital posing as the second standby hospital in the city, Yadav explains how the facility does 20-25 screenings a day. Currently, staff members operate on three shifts, where once team is done with their duty for a week, they are quarantined for 14 days while the next team takes over. Everyone is worried. Some staff members even ask me to not assign them to COVID duty, so a rotational system works best. Each one of them is given adequate training, she explains. As in-charge of hospital infection control, Yadavs job involves many things, including immunisation of staff, ensuring the premises are disinfected and preparing an infection control manual for everyone to follow. The task doesnt get easier when she returns home. My two daughters are at my in-law's place. Since they live in a joint family, I thought this would be better since theyd have the company of their cousins. This way, I can also isolate them and my other family members from me, she says. But this doctor has managed to remain calm despite the gloom around her. You dont have time to think of this when you are in the thick of things, she shares, adding that yoga and devotional music has come to her rescue in these times. A middle-aged woman and the ex-wife of a Pastor known as Happiness aka Arab Queen who has now turned into a full time escort popularly known in Nigeria as runs girl has come out to rant over an alleged threat by an Uyo politicians wife. The former Pastors wife took to the social media networking app, Instagram to reveal how she has been allegedly getting threats from the wife of the said Politician. Happiness who is also known as Arab Queen revealed that she is formerly married but now a single mother in her videos shared on Instagrams live. She also recalled how the politicians wife allegedly slept with 3 different men in a hotel she once lodged in. Arab Queen who asked the politicians wife to leave and hustle for men like her if she is tired of her marriage, threatened to release photos if pushed further and she seemed serious about it all. Although, she refused to reveal the name of the Politicians wife who threatened her it seems like she got her message to the right person as she warned sternly. Check the video out here on YouTube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGuqye9GeEc Meeting Ha Thu Huong, very few people would think the pretty woman with a gentle voice is the co-pilot on a Vietnam Airlines Airbus A321. Her energetic style and friendly manner both add to the equation. Huong and her dog on her day off. Photo courtesy of Ha Thu Huong The young woman said she had never thought of becoming a pilot when she was studying at high school until her father suggested it to her. My father used to work as a pilot in the 919 Flight Crew Division, she said. He wanted me to follow in his footprints. The career has turned out not to be as mundane as she expected as it requires energy, creativeness and serious discipline. Working as a pilot, a career most people associate with men, I have never felt pressure though sometimes I receive strange looks from others, she said. Though a little weaker than men, women have their advantages in the job, she said. Huong at work. Photo courtesy of Vietnam Airlines "The job is detailed and requires attentive observation, something that women are better than men at. Once they are at work, there is no differentiation between women and men, only the responsibilities to share between captain and co-pilot, she explained. Huong said the important thing to becoming a pilot was that you should be intelligent and calmly deal with sudden situations on board. This would require discipline, responsibility and overall a passion for the job. Huong now flies 50 hours per month, mostly on middle and short routes. When I'm at work, I focus on the job, and when I'm at home, it's all about my family, she said. Her husband has a 9-to-5 job while she may work during the week or at weekends. Whenever we have free time, we spend it together, either going out for a dinner, to the cinema or simply doing exercise, walking the dog, she said. She said she always feel happy because although her husband cannot give her professional advice, he is always a stable shoulder for her to rely on. Rising up Unlike Huong, Brazilian co-pilot Denise Ramos de Oliveira and her husband both work as pilots for Bamboo Airways. My family has always supported me and motivated me to move forward and overcome challenges, she told Viet Nam News. Luckily, Im married to a pilot, who understands exactly what my job is, We help each other with the housework and we both understand each others responsibilities at work. Oliveira thinks women are perfect for the job. Oliveira has never regretted choosing her present job. Photo courtesy of Bamboo Airways A pilot must show discipline, self-confidence and commitment, she said. As a leader, he or she must have the ability to think quickly and make decisions in difficult situations, among other things. Oliveira said her career has given her the opportunity to witness the most memorable sunrises and sunsets. There was this time that we departed very early, she said. It was dark and rainy weather, covered by white clouds. After we took off, the clouds suddenly became daylight and we could appreciate the most amazing sun reflecting in many colours off the clouds. It was like magic. Oliveira said she can enjoy beautiful scenery in the sky as a pilot. Photo courtesy of Bamboo Airways Oliveira said she would choose the career again a thousand times if she had to choose again. Im extremely happy with my profession, I feel accomplished I cant see myself doing anything but flying, she admitted. Mentioning International Womens Day, she said she wished for empowerment, courage, sensibility and strength to all women. A life with gratitude, realisation, consciousness and connection with their inner wisdom, she added. And the knowledge that we can create our lives and rise up ourselves. VNS Le Huong Vietnamese-American woman blazes trail for female pilots Nguyen Anh Thu, founder and president of the non-profit Women in Aerospace and Aviation, plans to circumnavigate the globe solo in her single-engine LANCAIR IV-P aeroplane from May 15 to July 1, covering nearly 50,000km. Hospital bosses were forced to step in after staff were stopped by police on their way to work - and told their NHS passes were not proof of 'essential travel'. A 'small number' of staff at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge told their bosses they had been stopped by officers on their way to work, according to an internal memo. They showed their NHS ID cards but were told they were 'insufficient evidence' for needing to be outside their homes. Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has now been in touch with Cambridgeshire Constabulary and says the matter has been resolved. The police force says it has 'reminded' their officers of the appropriate action to take during routine checks. The letter to CUH bosses is dated April 3. Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge has reported members of their staff being stopped by police officers on their way to work - only to be told their NHS IDs were not proof of essential travel During the hot weather over the Easter weekend, police officers were out in huge numbers nationwide to ensure people were not out of their homes unnecessarily and keeping to social distancing guidelines. Beachfronts along the south coast and canal towpaths in London were pictured packed with people, despite the government's coronavirus regulations. Police can fine anyone out of their house unnecessarily, with 60 for a first offence and 120 for a second. Only 'key workers', which include NHS staff, supermarket workers and transport operators, are allowed to continue to go to work, besides those who cannot work from home. A Cambridge University Hospitals spokesman said today: 'Cambridgeshire Constabulary has an important role encouraging people to stay at home. 'While it is correct that a very small number of our staff were challenged, this issue was quickly resolved and we continue to welcome their efforts to support the social distancing message.' Chief Constable Nick Dean said in a statement on Sunday: 'There are reports circulating on social media that officers are stopping NHS staff on their way to or from work at Addenbrooke's hospital. 'This morning we have spoken to Addenbrooke's and have confirmed these reports date back to early April or even prior to that. 'It is inevitable that officers going about their daily business will stop and speak to our colleagues across the health service. 'We as Cambridgeshire Constabulary have had nothing but support from right across the health sector, as every police service has experienced, right across the country. 'We are all united in our support to stop the spread of the virus and to save lives. 'NHS staff carry ID cards and that is more than sufficient to show who they are and why they are travelling - we are very clear that we support our NHS. 'We have reminded our officers of the guidelines, as we have done continually throughout this evolving situation. 'I ask that you help us in saving lives and supporting our fantastic NHS by staying at home.' By IANS RIYADH: Opec producers and allies have agreed a record oil deal that will slash global output by about 10 per cent after a slump in demand caused by coronavirus lockdowns. The deal, agreed on Sunday via video conference, is the largest cut in oil production ever to have been agreed, BBC reported. Opec+, made up of oil producers and allies including Russia, announced plans for the deal on April 9, but Mexico resisted the cuts. Opec has yet to announce the deal, but individual nations have confirmed it. The only detail to have been confirmed so far is that 9.7 million barrels per day will be cut by Opec oil producers and allies. US President Donald Trump and Kuwait's energy minister Dr Khaled Ali Mohammed al-Fadhel tweeted the news, while Saudi Arabia's energy ministry and Russia's state news agency Tass both separately confirmed the deal on Sunday. "By the grace of Allah, then with wise guidance, continuous efforts and continuous talks since the dawn of Friday, we now announce the completion of the historic agreement to reduce production by approximately 10 million barrels of oil per day from members of 'OPEC +' starting from 1 May 2020," wrote Dr al-Fadhel in a tweet. Global oil demand is estimated to have fallen by a third as more than three billion people are locked down in their homes due to the coronavirus outbreak. Prior to that, oil prices slumped in March to an 18-year-low after Opec+ failed to agree cuts. Talks were complicated by disagreements between Russia and Saudi Arabia, but on 2 April oil prices surged after President Trump signalled that he expected the two countries to end their feud. The initial details of the deal, outlined by Opec+ on Thursday, would have seen the group and its allies cutting 10 million barrels a day or 10 per cent of global supply from 1 May. Another five million barrels were expected to be cut by other nations outside the group such as the US, Canada, Brazil and Norway. It said the cuts would be eased to eight million barrels a day between July and December. Then they would be eased again to six million barrels between January 2021 and April 2022. Independent oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma told the BBC that the deal agreed on Sunday was "marginally lower", compared to the 10 million barrels per day that was originally announced on Thursday. Mexico had balked at making these production cuts, which delayed the deal being signed off. Then on Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that Mr Trump had offered to make extra US cuts on his behalf, an unusual offer by the US president, who has long railed against Opec. Trump said Washington would help Mexico by picking up "some of the slack" and being reimbursed later, but he did not detail how the arrangement would work. Dr Colin Hamilton-Davies, of Barts Hospital in London, said it was 'frustrating' only a handful of patients were getting the treatment Doctors have called for more trials of a coronavirus treatment that uses blood from recovered patients to fight off the killer infection. Health regulators say the therapy - called convalescent plasma - is already approved for NHS medics to use in tackling COVID-19. But one leading doctor said it was 'incredibly frustrating' only a handful of patients were getting the treatment, first used 100 years ago. Dr Colin Hamilton-Davies, of Barts Hospital in London, told SkyNews: 'We could be administering it, not just to one or two people, but hundreds of patients. 'It's not only myself, but many colleagues are saying "why aren't we looking at this in greater depth and in a faster timeframe?" 'There is a research framework which is up and running, which it may or may not become part of.' Dr Hamilton-Davies added: 'I very much hope it does. This is something we could get up and running very quickly indeed.' MailOnline revealed last month infected Britons could get CP, which some experts say could be the difference between life or death for critically ill patients. It involves injecting patients with the blood plasma of a COVID-19 survivor who has the antibodies necessary for fighting the infection. CP was first approved for use against COVID-19 in the US and officials revealed two days later that it had been green-lighted in the UK, too. The treatment - used a century ago in the Spanish flu pandemic - bolsters a patient's own immune system to fight the virus. WHAT IS CONVALESCENT PLASMA AND WHERE HAS IT BEEN USED? Convalescent plasma has been used to treat infections for at least a century, dating back to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. It was also trialed during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza virus pandemic, 2003 SARS epidemic, and the 2012 MERS epidemic. Convalescent plasma was used as a last resort to improve the survival rate of patients with SARS whose condition continued to deteriorate. It has been proven 'effective and life-saving' against other infections, such as rabies and diphtheria, said Dr Mike Ryan, of the World Health Organization. 'It is a very important area to pursue,' Dr Ryan said. Although promising, convalescent plasma has not been shown to be effective in every disease studied, the FDA say. Is it already being used for COVID-19 patients? Before it can be routinely given to patients with COVID-19, it is important to determine whether it is safe and effective through clinical trials. The FDA said it was 'facilitating access' for the treatment to be used on patients with serious or immediately life-threatening COVID-19 infections'. It came after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that plasma would be tested there to treat the sickest of the state's coronavirus patients. COVID-19 patients in Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai are being treated with this method, authorities report. Lu Hongzhou, professor and co-director of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre, said in February the hospital had set up a special clinic to administer plasma therapy and was selecting patients who were willing to donate. 'We are positive that this method can be very effective in our patients,' he said. Meanwhile, the head of a Wuhan hospital said plasma infusions from recovered patients had shown some encouraging preliminary results. The MHRA has approved the use of the therapy in the UK, but it has not been revealed which hospitals have already tried it. How does it work? Blood banks take plasma donations much like they take donations of whole blood; regular plasma is used in hospitals and emergency rooms every day. If someone's donating only plasma, their blood is drawn through a tube, the plasma is separated and the rest infused back into the donor's body. Then that plasma is tested and purified to be sure it doesn't harbor any blood-borne viruses and is safe to use. For COVID-19 research, people who have recovered from the coronavirus would be donating. Scientists would measure how many antibodies are in a unit of donated plasma - tests just now being developed that aren't available to the general public - as they figure out what's a good dose, and how often a survivor could donate. There is also the possibility that asymptomatic patients - those who never showed symptoms or became unwell - would be able to donate. But these 'silent carriers' would need to be found via testing first. Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda is working on a drug that contains recovered patients antibodies in a pill form, Stat News reported. Advertisement The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it approved the therapy in early March, in anticipation of the crisis. Despite being approved for use in treating COVID-19 in Britain, it is unclear exactly how many doctors have already tried the therapy. It is thought it is only being used in trials. Trials of the treatment are already underway in the US, France and Germany. Doctors in China and elsewhere in Asia also used CP. Dr Hamilton-Davies said he had written to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab offering to fast-track trials. A spokesperson for NHS Blood and Transplant said: 'We have well-established plans for dealing with new diseases, including the collection of convalescent plasma. 'We are working closely with government and other NHS bodies to look at the ways in which we can best support work being undertaken to tackle COVID-19.' It comes after the Welsh government yesterday said COVID-19 patients who have recovered will be invited to donate blood. A spokesperson said convalescent plasma therapy had been used 'daily' for 'many years' for a range of different reasons. And they said it would help coronavirus patients develop immunity as it 'transfuses' antibodies against the life-threatening infection. Infusing patients with plasma has also been used to tackle the similar coronaviruses SARS and MERS, as well as the deadly infection Ebola. A key advantage to the blood based therapy is that its ready immediately and relies only drawing blood from a former patient. Leading scientists claim it could help to plug a treatment gap while pharmaceutical giants race to discover a wonder drug or vaccine. Experts have repeatedly warned an injection to protect millions against the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be 18 months away. Antibodies can only be created by people who have already been infected and learnt how to fight off an infection, such as SARS-CoV-2. Plasma is a clear fluid which makes up around 55 per cent of all blood volume and provides the liquid for red and white blood cells to be carried around the body in. Doctors in China, where the COVID-19 pandemic began in December 2019, were the first to attempt treating patients this way. Recovered patients in China, including in Wuhan, Shanghai and Beijing, have been donating their blood in hospitals since February. Special units for blood donation have been set up in hospitals in China with leading doctors claiming to have had encouraging early results with COVID-19 patients. The first wave of coronavirus survivors are doing their part to help the US get back on track by donating blood and plasma and heading back to work. Americans who fell ill with the virus in February and early March, and were in isolation well before states started shutting down, are now emerging to test drive their immunity. Former patients in Houston and New York were the first to donate, and now hospitals and blood centers are getting ready for potentially hundreds of survivors to follow. Last week the Food and Drug Administration announced a national study to help hospitals offer the experimental plasma therapy and track how they fare. The American Red Cross will help collect and distribute the plasma. It comes after a study last week on the efficacy of CP for treating COVID-19 showed that it can help patients get better within three days. Ten COVID-19 patients in China who were severely ill in hospital saw their symptoms disappear or rapidly improve within 72 hours after the therapy. As well as proving to be life-saving, the therapy appears to be safe, with no serious side effects observed in the small study group. But although experts say convalescent plasma is 'an important area to pursue', there is no conclusive evidence it is effective yet. There is still no cure for the killer coronavirus, which has infected almost 2million people worldwide and killed more than 100,000. Thousands of patients worldwide are involved in trials of promising medicines. It is also significantly cheaper than developing a new drug, which costs millions to take through trials and regulation before mass production. Coronavirus treatment approved in the UK and US which uses blood plasma from recovered patients helps the infected get better within three days, study claims A coronavirus treatment already approved in the UK and US which uses blood from recovered patients can help the infected get better within three days, a study has found. Ten COVID-19 patients in China who were severely ill in hospital saw their symptoms disappear or rapidly improve within 72 hours after the therapy. They were given a dose of plasma donated from COVID-19 survivors, which had the antibodies necessary for their immune system to clear the virus. Known as convalescent plasma therapy, it has recently been given the green light by medical regulators in the UK and US to trial on critically ill patients. The promising therapy, which was first used a century ago in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, has been used already in China and the US. As well as proving to be life-saving, the therapy appears to be safe so far, with no serious side effects observed in the small study group. It comes after a New York City mother who survived coronavirus last week became one of the first Americans to donate her blood plasma in hope of helping others. Tiffany Pinckney, 39, said she felt like 'a beacon of hope' for those suffering. But although experts say convalescent plasma is 'an important area to pursue', there is no conclusive evidence it is effective yet. There is no cure for the killer coronavirus, which has infected more than 1.3million people worldwide and killed almost 80,000. Thousands of patients worldwide are involved in trials of promising medicines. A key advantage to the blood based therapy is that its available immediately and relies only drawing blood from a former patient. It is also significantly cheaper than developing a new drug, which costs millions to take through trials and regulation before mass production. A coronavirus treatment approved in the UK and US which uses blood from recovered patients helps patients get better, a study shows. Tiffany Pinckney, 39, (pictured) a recovered New-Yorker who was one of the first to donate her blood in the city, said she felt like 'a beacon of hope' for those suffering Jason Garcia, a 36-year-old aerospace engineer from California, donated his blood on April 1 after fighting COVID-19 in March. He was humbled to potentially be saving someone else's life The treatment, known as convalescent plasma (CP) therapy, involves using antibody-rich blood plasma of those who have recovered from coronavirus, which can fight infection. Pictured, Diana Berrent was the first recovered patient to have her blood screened for antibodies at Columbia University, Irving, New York The treatment - used for around a century for other infections - works by bolstering a patient's own immune system to fight the virus. Infusing patients with blood plasma has also been used to tackle SARS and MERS, two similar coronaviruses, as well as the deadly infection Ebola. Plasma makes up around 55 per cent of all blood volume and provides the liquid for red and white blood cells to be carried around the body in. By injecting this into patients it can provide their bodies with a vital dose of crucial substances called antibodies. Antibodies can only be created by people who have already been infected and learnt how to fight off an infection, such as SARS-CoV-2. It may be the best hope for COVID-19 patients while scientists work to develop new, specific treatments for the disease. It is significantly cheaper than developing a new drug, which costs millions of dollars to take through trials and regulation before mass production. The study in Wuhan where the coronavirus pandemic began in December was led by Kai Duan of China's National Biotec Group Co. Ltd. Because it was a pilot study, which assess the feasibility of a treatment, the findings are only preliminary. However, the results were published in a respected journal called the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Ten patients at three different hospitals were enrolled to get convalescent plasma therapy. They also received other promising drugs. The researchers said all clinical symptoms, which included the tell-tale signs of a fever and cough, subsided within three days. The patients' liver and lung function as well as blood oxygen levels were also found to have improved, signs they had fought off the virus. The numbers of disease-fighting white blood cells, lymphocytes, also increased, and antibody levels remained high after CP transfusion, the researchers said. Two of three patients who were hooked up to a ventilator to assist with breathing were taken off, and given oxygen delivered into the nose. The patients' blood oxygen levels improved (top right). The numbers of disease-fighting white blood cells, lymphocytes, also increased (top centre), and enzymes produced by the liver - which indicate an infection - reduced (bottom left) The researchers published chest scans of two patients. Pictured, the lungs of a 49-year-old woman: On day seven, she showed ground-glass opacity in the lungs (A, top left), which indicated fluid or debris. On day 13 (B, top right) the fluid had been absorbed and her lungs had improved significantly A patient recovered from COVID-19 coronavirus donates their plasma used for transfusions to treat COVID-19 patients at the Policlinico San Matteo hospital in Pavia, Italy, on April 6 Plasma (pictured in the bag) is a clear fluid which makes up around 55 per cent of all blood volume and provides the liquid for red and white blood cells to be carried around the body in Blood plasma therapy - known formally as convalescent plasma - has been around for centuries. Doctors in China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began in December 2019, were the first to attempt treating patients this way. Pictured, Dr Zhou Min shows his plasma A top World Health Organization (WHO) expert said the blood-based therapy 'is a very important area to pursue', according to Reuters. Pictured, Dr Kong Yuefeng, a recovered COVID-19 patient, donates plasma at a clinic in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on February 18 The study was not designed to compare the outcomes for patients who received the antibody therapy with those who did not. That would have shown if it was the convalescent plasma that worked or the patients just recovered on their own. But the authors did create a control group from a random selection of ten COVID-19 patients treated in the same hospitals with a similar outlook. They were matched to the pilot study participants by their age, gender and illness severity. Over several weeks, there were shown to be obvious differences in how the control group patients deteriorated. Three died, six saw their conditions stabilize, and one got better during the course of the study. Of those who received convalescent plasma, none of the 10 patients died, three were discharged from the hospital, and the remaining seven were rated 'much improved' and ready for discharge by the end of the study. The authors wrote: 'This pilot study on [convalescent plasma] therapy shows a potential therapeutic effect and low risk in the treatment of severe COVID-19 patients. 'One dose of [convalescent plasma] with a high concentration of neutralizing antibodies can rapidly reduce the viral load and tends to improve clinical outcomes.' Ms Pinckney, a mother in New York City, became one of the first Americans to donate her blood plasma. 'It is definitely overwhelming to know that in my blood, there may be answers,' she said After hearing his blood would be used to treat three patients with the coronavirus, Mr Garcia told CNN: 'This can be turned into a life-saving opportunity for someone who can't fight off this disease' Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, President of the British Pharmacological Society, said the findings should be taken with caution. 'This paper reports the outcomes in 10 patients with severe COVID-19 who were treated with convalescent plasma. The authors did compare the 10 cases with a concurrent control group and showed some encouraging results. 'However, this was not a randomised trial and all patients also received other treatments including antivirals such as remdesivir which are currently in trials for COVID-19. 'It is also important to remember that there are potential safety concerns with convalescent plasma including transmission of other agents (including transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) and antibody enhancement of disease.' There were no side effects recorded in this small study, other than an unexpected red bruise on a patient's face. Sir Munir said: 'Even if shown to work, scalability to treat large numbers of patients may become an issue. As the authors indicate, there is a need for robustly designed randomised controlled trials to show efficacy of convalescent plasma.' The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the blood-based therapy in early March, meaning NHS patients can get the treatment. The Food and Drug Administration - the US version of the MHRA - approved the use of the blood-based therapy on March 23 as an experimental treatment in clinical trials, and for critical patients without other options. Ms Pinckney, a mother in New York City who survived coronavirus, became one of the first Americans to donate her blood plasma. 'It is definitely overwhelming to know that in my blood, there may be answers,' Ms Pinckney told the Associated Press. She got sick the first week of March, and when breathing deeply caused her chest pains, she remembers 'being on my bathroom floor crying and praying'. So when Mount Sinai, the hospital which diagnosed her, called to check on her recovery and ask if she'd consider donating, she didn't hesitate. 'It's humbling. And for me, its also a beacon of hope for someone else,' she said. Jason Garcia, a 36-year-old aerospace engineer from California, donated his blood on April 1 after fighting COVID-19 in March. After hearing his blood would be used to treat three patients with the coronavirus, he told CNN: 'This can be turned into a life-saving opportunity for someone who can't fight off this disease.' COVID-19 survivor Diana Berrent, 45, said those who have recovered 'can be superheroes'. The New Yorker was the first in her state to donate her blood to Columbia University, where scientists are screening plasma for antibodies and determining which ones could help fight the killer infection. Doctors in China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began in December 2019, were the first to attempt treating patients this way. Recovered patients in China, including in Wuhan, Shanghai and Beijing, have been donating their blood in hospitals since February. Special units for blood donation have been set up in hospitals in China with leading doctors claiming to have had encouraging early results with COVID-19 patients. The doctors of the latest study in China described how each patient recovered, even if they had been admitted to hospital with a poor prognosis. A 46-year-old man with high blood pressure showed up at a hospital with fever, cough, shortness of breath and chest pain. He was put onto a mechanical ventilator to push oxygen into his lungs, and still his blood-oxygen level was a dismal 86 per cent. Normal readings are between 95 and 100 per cent. On the eleventh day of his symptoms, the patient was given convalescent plasma. The next day, his blood tested negative for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. His blood-oxygen level rose to 90 per cent, and he was able to be weaned off the ventilator he had been relying on to survive for three days. Patient's liver function was also measured, because COVID-19 can cause organs to malfunction and even fail. The man's immune system and liver function, both of which were showing signs of inflammation along with his lungs, stabilised four days after the antibody infusion. Another patient, a 49-year-old woman with no underlying health conditions, received convalescent plasma on day ten of her symptoms. She had been admitted to hospital quite early on because she had shortness of breathe. By day seven, scans of her chest showed fluid inside her lungs called ground glass opacity. By day 12, she had cleared the virus from her system and her chest X-ray showed remarkable improvement in her lungs. Can't allow every person who thinks of some solution to COVID-19 to file petition: SC 'Misconceived petition': SC junks PIL against PM-CARES fund India oi-Deepika S New Delhi,Apr 13: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition filed questioning the legality of the constitution of PM CARES Fund for COVID-19 relief. "This is a completely misconceived petition", Chief Justice of India SA Bodbe said while hearing the PIL filed by lawyer M L Sharma against the setting up of the PM CARES Fund through video-conferencing. "That cause of action arose to the petitioner on March 28, upon having press release for the formation of impugned PM CARES Fund and appeal by the Prime Minister of India to donate funds in that trust to fight COVID-19 and aid healthcare in future without any ordinance and gazette notification by the Government of India," the public interest litigation (PIL) petition said. Fake News Buster The PIL, which has made all the trustees of the fund as well as the prime minister parties to it, has sought a transfer of the donations received so far in the fund to the Consolidated Fund of India, besides a court-monitored SIT probe into the setting up of the fund. On March 28, the Centre set up the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund with the primary objective to deal with any kind of emergency situation like the one currently posed by the coronavirus outbreak and provide relief to those affected. Leasing a car, or subscribing to it is a relatively new phenomenon as compared to financing a car which has been pretty much the norm up until now. We are seeing the rise in popularity of the leasing model internationally in more developed markets so does that mean that it is time for us to adapt to it as well in the coming future? And what is the car leasing service anyway and how does it work? What are the pros and cons and the conditions required to be able to lease a car in the first place? And the big question what are the advantages of leasing a car as opposed to financing one? We answer all those questions for you. But before we get to that we need to understand the current situation of the Indian automotive industry in order to get a perspective as to where it is headed. And for that, we need to take a look at some sales numbers. The story of the Indian automotive industry has not been a pleasant one for more than a year now. With sales plummeting continuously since late 2018, the Coronavirus pandemic could not have come at a worse time. It was the Diwali festival season last year which was supposed to kick the auto sales chart towards a rather unfamiliar upwards direction, unfortunately, that wasnt going to happen. Post that, it was supposed to be the turn of the calendar, the New Year, which was going to make things better. It was said that people wanted to get their hands on new 2020 manufactured vehicles and those who had not yet purchased a vehicle, were just waiting for discounts on the 2019 stock to come out. The discounts came, but the buyers did not. Also Watch: Passenger vehicle sales continued to see a year-on-year (YoY) decline in January 2020, 6 per cent to be specific. In February, it was down once again, by 7.61 per cent for domestic passenger vehicle sales, as per the data by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). In December, the sales were down by 1.24 per cent and in November, the sales were down by 3.43 per cent. This means, that for the four months before March, there has been a year-on-year decline. The only green that the industry saw was in the month before that, in October 2019, when the sales were up by a mere 0.28 per cent which was just 804 more units sold by the entire domestic passenger vehicle industry across the country. Before that, the sales had plunged 24 per cent in September - and this was the 11th consecutive month of declining sales. So in short, it had been a woeful 16 months for the Indian automotive industry. The only thing scarier at this point was what March would turn out to be like as it was the month where automakers had to suspend sales due to the Coronavirus lockdown. And it was worse than expected. German automaker Volkswagen reported a sales decline of 95 per cent after selling just 131 units last month as compared to 2,751 units sold in March 2019. Indias biggest automaker Maruti Suzuki was down 47 per cent. In fact, except Maruti Suzuki, Toyota and Hyundai (all reported a sales decline of over 40 per cent), every automaker selling passenger cars in India reported a sales decline of over 50 per cent as compared to the sales they clocked in March 2019. Image for representational purpose (Photo: Reuters) Then, theres the fact that the BS-VI emission norm came into place from April 1, 2020. And with that, there was about Rs 7,500 crore worth of inventory of BS-IV vehicles that had not been sold. Out of that, scooters and motorcycles make up for about Rs 4,000-4,500 crore, Commercial Vehicles are worth Rs 2,500-3000 crore and cars and utility vehicles are of about Rs 800-1000 crore. This means, that not only automakers are in the middle of a big financial impact, but their dealer networks are going through it too. Amongst the two-wheeler manufacturers in India, Hero MotoCorp is set to be most impacted from this transition as it is said to have the biggest concentration of BS-IV stocks. Employees work on an assembly line of Hero Motocorp. (Image: Reuters) By now, you get the idea. And this is only the tip of the iceberg as to how much of an impact the Indian automotive industry has been bearing for almost a year and a half and how grim the situation right now is. The question, then, becomes that whats next? Well, one of the things that the international and developed automotive markets are now mulling over is whether it is time to have the vehicle leasing model take over big time. And its not something that is new in India as automakers like Hyundai, Skoda, Fiat and Mahindra already have their car leasing/subscription services functioning in India. The monthly lease rental plans for Skoda cars starts at Rs 19,856 per month, for Mahindra cars it starts at Rs 13,499 per month and for Hyundai, it starts from Rs 7,673 per month. But how does leasing a car work and what are the pros and cons of it? Well, in simple words, leasing a car saves you the hassles of ownership, car maintenance, repairs, breakdown assistance, and insurance in exchange for a monthly subscription to a company via your choice of vehicle, for a fixed period of time. Lets explain it taking the example of Hyundai and answer some of the questions that you might have. WHAT IT THE ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR LEASING A CAR? Hyundai says salaried employee, self-employed professionals and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can avail the leasing service. IN WHICH CITIES CAN YOU LEASE THE CAR? Hyundai Leasing is currently available across Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru in the first phase. This will be later rolled out to other cities too. WHAT IS THE MINIMUM TENURE OF LEASING THE CAR? The leased vehicle will be available for a minimum period of two years going up to five years, depending on the city and model selected. HOW IS THE LEASE RENTAL CALCULATED? Hyundai says that the customer does not have to pay the entire value of the car. Instead, they have to pay the usage value of it. Hence, the final lease rental depends on the mileage and the duration of the leasing contract and the additional services that you opt for. HOW MUCH ARE THE LEASE RENTALS? Mentioned below are the monthly lease rentals for base variants of car models chosen for a tenure of five years in Delhi. These rentals are inclusive of GST, but insurance and other maintenance service cost are extra. -Hyundai Santro 1.1 Era (P) - Rs 7,673 -Hyundai Grand i10 1.2 Era (P) - Rs 8,936 -Hyundai Elite i20 1.2 Era (P) - Rs 9,813 -Hyundai Verna 1.4 E(P) - Rs 15,488 -Hyundai Creta 1.4 Diesel E+ - Rs 17,642 CAN YOU CHOOSE A PARTICULAR VARIANT OF THE CAR YOU WANT TO LEASE? Hyundai says the customer can choose from any vehicle, variant and colour, as long as it is in line with your eligibility criteria. WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF RETURNING THE CAR AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT? When a lease contract expires, the company says that the leased vehicle must be returned to Hyundai Leasing usually at the location where the vehicle was originally collected at the inception of the contract. Hyundai Leasing will inspect the vehicle to ensure that it is returned with all documentation and standard accessories like a duplicate key, owners manual, warranty book, original RC card and ensure that the vehicle is in a standard condition which is defined as a vehicle that has been subjected to normal wear and tear considering its age and mileage. With that being said, it is not all flowery when it comes to leasing a car. For example, every leasing service has a kilometre cap per month and if you cross that mark, you will have to spend even more per kilometre. You also cannot install accessories on your leased car until unless you take an approval from the company and if during the installation process there is some damage to the vehicle, you might have to bear that cost. If you had taken the vehicle for a particular time period and decide to return it before the said term ends, you will have to pay a penalty. Image for representation.(Image: AFP Relaxnews) On the other hand, if you purchase a car, you will have to pay for the RTO registration, insurance policies and maintenance and service charges which go up as your car gets older. This will be on top of the EMI that you will be paying after dropping a chunk of change in the form of a down payment for the vehicle in the first place. And once your car is old and you wish to sell it off, you also have to go through that process of finding a good bid for your vehicle and also take care of the fact that the owner has been transferred. And this is where the subscription models biggest downside comes to light once the subscription is over, you return the car back to the company and get nothing in return for your own self. Whereas, if you purchase a vehicle and sell it off, it does leave you with some money in hand which can be used as an investment for your next vehicle. So by now, you get the bigger picture. There is no right or wrong between the two options and there are specific cases where both of them make sense. The only difference is that, as of now, the number of cases that make sense for financing a car far outweighs the cases where leasing a car would be recommended. But given how big of an impact the recent year and a half has had on the automotive industry and the fact that we are yet to see how the Coronavirus pandemic paves the way for the future, it wont be wrong to expect companies tweaking their existing subscription models in order to make them more lucrative and being joined by new players in the coming future. This would inevitably give rise to competition and that only means one thing it will be advantageous for the end consumer. To sum it up, financing a car is definitely the better path towards car ownership as of now, but will it be the same in the future? That, we have to wait and see. Also Watch: The Pakistan government has delayed until Tuesday its decision whether to extend the nationwide lockdown or not, as the number of the novel coronavirus cases rose to 5,478 in the country. Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday chaired a meeting of the National Coordination Committee comprising chief ministers of all provinces and leader of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where he was briefed about the situation in the country in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Speaking to the media after the meeting, Planning Minister Asad Umar said that the issue of lockdown was discussed and it was decided to have another meeting on Tuesday. The government had enforced a lockdown until April 14 to curb the spread of the virus. "All provincial chief ministers will attend the meeting and the future course of action regarding the lockdown will be decided tomorrow, he said. He said the decision of reopening the businesses will also be taken in the meeting. The business owners and community will have to bear the responsibility of health of their workers, he said. Umar also said that it was important to adopt the TTQ strategy - tracing, testing and quarantining. He lauded the people for "behaving responsibly" and said that Pakistan's situation was better than most of the developed countries. Pakistan also announced to extend the closure of the Wagah border for another two weeks from April 16 to 29 due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a notification isued by the ministry of interior. Prime Minister's Advisor on Health Dr Zafar Mirza told the media that Pakistan would soon be able to produce N-95 masks locally. He said that already Pakistan was working on producing personal protective equipment. Mirza also said that the ratio of local transmission of virus 52 per cent and more than the imported cases. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the removal of Mirza from his post for failing to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. During a hearing on a suo motu case on the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan, a five-member bench of the apex court led by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed observed that Prime Minister Khan's Cabinet has become ineffective in the fight against the pandemic. The bench questioned the integrity of Mirza in tackling the COVID-19 crisis and the transparency of his work done. The judges expressed serious doubt over the eligibility of the senior doctor as Prime Minister's advisor on health. Expressing dismay over the government's performance to combat coronavirus, the apex court noted that there is a lack of leadership that could maintain unity in the country. "There is an army of ministers and advisors in place but no work is being done," the Chief Justice said, adding that "corrupt people" have been kept as advisors in the government. "The prime minister's Cabinet has become ineffective...All the provinces are doing whatever they desire," he remarked and directed the government to remove Mirza from his post. Later the court issued written orders directing the governments of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces and the Gilgit-Baltistan authorities to submit the details of actions taken by them to curb the deadly viral infection. However, the written order made no mention of Mirza's removal. On Monday, the Ministry of National Health Services reported that seven more people died in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 93. It said 1,095 people fully recovered but 44 were in critical condition. According to the reports, worst-hit Punjab province had 2,656 patients, Sindh 1,452, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 744, Balochistan 231, Gilgit-Baltistan 224, Islamabad 131 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 40 patients. So far 65,114 tests were carried out, including 3,233 during the last 24 hours, according to the official data. At least 20 more doctors were tested COVID-19 positive on Monday in Punjab, bringing the number of the medical staff infected by the deadly virus in Pakistan's most populous province to 50. The Pakistan Medical Association has said that more than 100 doctors, nurses and para medical staff have been infected so far across the country, blaming the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government for not providing them required protective gear. "The medical staff that is serving on the front line is not being provided with the N-95 masks because of which the lives of doctors, nurses and paramedics are at stake," Pakistan Medical Association President Dr Masoodur Rauf Haraj said. He threatened to go on strike if the government fails to provide the medics personal protective equipment (PPEs). Prime Minister Khan also inaugurated Tele-school education channel. The channel, launched by the state-run Pakistan Television, would run daily 10 hours transmission for students from class 1 to 12. Separately, Khan in a video message appealed to overseas Pakistanis to donate in the special fund to help those badly hit by the crisis. No government can fight this Pandemic alone. We need to work together as one nation. Please step up & help your fellow citizens in this hour of need, Khan later tweeted. Also, the World Health Organisation (WHO) donated 15 testing machines and 15,000 testing kits to Pakistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The romance between Vijay Varma and the screen - silver or not - is peaking, but the concept of love stories are not one-dimensional for the actor. Although he is yet to feature in a romance drama, Varma said relationships are more about the "not-so-good sides" of people. "I don't see romance as candy floss or white as we show in a lot of films. Relationships are about self-discovery. There is a give and take, constant exchange of power and emotions... I I get drawn to stories that represent life. I've been a great fan of writers such as Manto, Ismat Chughtai and Gulzar sahab. "That's where I find the magic and tendency to connect with one another, with all our goods and bads... It makes it much more enriching and beautiful for me than the candy floss," the actor told PTI in an interview. Zoya Akhtar's 2019 hip hop drama "Gully Boy" was said to be Varma's 'breakout' performance. The actor has gradually grown his fanbase with his turn as Sasya, the lewd, psychopathic narcotics dealer in "She" where he embarks on a complex relationship with series lead Aaditi Pohankar's Bhumika Pardesi. Co-written and created by Imtiaz Ali, "She" follows Bhumika, a timid Mumbai constable who realises the potential of her dormant sexuality after she goes undercover to expose a drug ring. Varma, who has a soft corner for grey roles, said getting so much love for such an "evil" character really stumped him. "I didn't expect this kind of a response. What happens with him in the series was like cause and effect, like 'Crime and Punishment' in my mind, it was justice in a strange way. So with the people's response I feel maybe he redeemed himself in the show. Maybe people forgave him for his menacing acts," he wondered. On the reaction to Sasya's fate, Varma teased, "I'm sure Imtiaz will give a surprise in season two or so. Trust me he has conceived this and he will do something." The actor said Pohankar and he playing off each other was more of a "conscious choice" for the both of them. "We thought there has to be some electricity between us. Even when we're not in physical proximity, there has to be a deep sense of sexual tension, a push and pull happening. Which is something that I found to be an extremely interesting process for me. "The fact that it was palpable is something that makes me very happy. I found it very gratifying to be able to transfer to the audience, something that I had not done before. That I gave myself a challenge and it worked," he said. The actor has been doing diverse roles since his 2012 debut "Chittagong" and for him it's about bringing alive that one twisted person he saw somewhere, that cousin of his or a shady peddler he saw. "Every character I do, it in itself creates so many new interests in me," he added. His latest outing is Zee5 film "Bamfaad", in which he plays Jigar Fareedi, his "most noble character who carries a certain gravitas". "Now I'm telling filmmakers that they better give me bigger roles because people really want to watch what I have to do," he quipped. Varma is also set to lead a Hotstar miniseries tentatively titled "OK Computer", which is developed and conceived by "Ship of Theseus" director Anand Gandhi. "It's a miniseries but it's grand. I play a police officer in the future. It is something that has never been attempted before in India -- it has sci-fi, comedy and mockumentary. Next up for Varma are Reema Kagti's Amazon Prime Video series "Fallen", Mira Nair's series adaptation of "A Suitable Boy" for the BBC which offers an understanding into the post colonial India and the film "Hurdang", set against the backdrop of Mandal Commission. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Veteran ad man and Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide, Ogilvy Advertising, Piyush Pandey, has come out with a short film where he is seen asking people if they would want to join his Mask Force. Elaborating on what this Mask Force is, Pandey explains that the concept germinated out of Prime Minister Narendra Modis appeal to people to don masks to protect themselves as well as others from getting infected by the Coronavirus. Besides, Modi has created several task forces to tackle the COVID-19 crisis on a war footing. With Mask Force, I thought of motivating others to not just wear masks, but also make their own masks, Pandey told Adgully. Pandey says in the film how one can also have fun while making these masks and customise them as per ones personality! For instance, talking about his wife, Nita, Pandey said that she has been hand stitching masks. A dog therapist, Nita has made a mask featuring a Labrador. As for Pandey, his wife has made him a mask that highlights his trademark moustache! Talking about his short film clip, Pandey said that it was made almost around the same time when the much talked-about film Family, made by his brother Prasoon Pandey, was released last week. A member of Pandeys Goa home staff, Bibek Rana, shot the short clip on mobile. He lauded the efforts being made by the frontline warriors fighting the real battle against the pandemic such as medics, the police and many other bodies, and added that people are already chipping in to support this fight. We all have to contribute our bit, Pandey stressed. Also Read: Epica Awards honours Piyush Pandey with Creative Leaders Tribute ZEE Entertainment appoints Piyush Pandey as an Independent Director Sudan's Ruling Government, Opposition, Military Agree to Form Parliament in May Reports Sputnik News 12:23 GMT 12.04.2020 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Sudan's ruling government, the opposition, and the military have agreed to form a parliament and appoint civilian governors by the second week of May, the Sudan Tribune news portal reports on Sunday, citing leading officials. According to the portal, representatives from the ruling government, the military, and the country's opposition coalition Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change (FFC) met on Saturday to discuss the proposals. All parties agreed to establish a parliament in the country and appoint civilian governors by the second week of May, FFC representative Siddiq Youssef told the portal in a statement after the meeting. The portal clarified that civilian governors should be appointed by mid-April, and the parliament should be formed in May. Sudanese leaders agreed on a range of measures during their meeting, the portal reported. "The meeting endorsed a (matrix) binding to the three parties that detailed responsibilities and set times for carrying out urgent tasks in seven tracks: partnership, peace, economic crisis, dismantling (the former regime), and reforming the military and security services, justice, and external relations," a joint statement read, as quoted by the portal. In late August, Sudan established the Sovereign Council, officially dissolving the Transitional Military Council, which came to power after former President Omar Bashir was overthrown in April. Abdalla Hamdok was appointed as prime minister and head of the transitional government. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address New York, April 13 : Its mission is to save lives. But Biogen, a top-notch biotechnology company in the US has today found itself in an unenviable position of being a major spreader of COVID-19 that has so far killed over 114,000 people in the world. According to a report in the New York Times on Sunday, Biogen employees carried the virus that causes COVID-19 to at least six states in the US. The first confirmed COVID-19 cases in at least two US states -- Indiana and Tennessee -- were Biogen executives. Moreover, six of the earliest cases in North Carolina were also Biogen executives, said the report. The US has become the epicentre of the disease that originated in China late last year. The virus has so far infected over 557,000 people in the US, while more than 22,000 have died. In its own words, Biogen has learned "first-hand" how quickly the COVID19 outbreak can take hold. But little did the company know that some of its executives had already got the disease when they attended the company's annual leadership meeting on February 26-27 at a Marriott hotel in Boston. Some of these executives with the disease might have unknowingly transferred it to others as they boarded flights packed with people and even met with their family and friends. On March 2, days after this leadership meeting, Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos and other executives of the company attended a conference near Boston sponsored by the investment bank Cowen. There, Vounatsos talked about a promising treatment that the company developed for Alzheimer's disease. When asked if the coronavirus which was spreading fast in China at that time would disrupt the firm's supply chains and the company's big plans, he said no, the New York Times reported. On March 18, as the disease spread fast worldwide, the company said "we cannot rule out future impact to our business as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including impact on sales, manufacturing and clinical trials. We will continue to monitor the situation closely." While some have criticised the company's handling of the annual business meeting, the company defended its response to the disease. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company which employs about 7,800 people said that it directed office-based colleagues to work from home since March 6, and it mandated virtual meetings in affected countries. "To minimize the risk of illness for our employees who need to work at our facilities, we have implemented clear protocols, including increased deep cleaning for all of our sites worldwide. In addition, we have launched an illness prevention and awareness campaign, and we are regularly updating employees and reminding them of all of the resources available to them," the company said in a statement on March 18. Find help in four steps to shed stress and anxiety, and dial in that oh-so soothing comfort in every breath. (Dreamstime/TNS) Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden for president of the United States, calling for unity in the Democratic Party less than a week after ending his own campaign. I am asking all Americans, Im asking every Democrat, Im asking every independent, Im asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, he said, appearing alongside the former vice president in a livestream broadcast. In the joint broadcast, during which the two former rivals discussed shared policy goals, the senator from Vermont described Donald Trump as the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country. We have to make Trump a one-term president and we need you in the White House, Mr Sanders added. Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Show all 15 1 /15 Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Joe Biden and Dr Jill Biden watch Barack Obama's farewell speech on 11 January. Obama called Biden his 'brother' Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years US President Barack Obama speaks alongside US Vice President Joe Biden about the Affordable Care Act AFP/Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama Getty Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years President Obama listens to Joe Biden speak of his work on defeating cancer on 18 October in the White House Reuters Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years U.S. President Barack Obama is applauded by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden while delivering his final State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in Washington Reuters Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years U.S. Vice President Joe Biden interjects as President Barack Obama delivers remarks at a reception for the 25th anniversary of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics at the White House in Washington REUTERS Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Obama and Vice President Joe Biden react after a heckler was removed for their extended interruption (Reuters) Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R) as Vice President Joe Biden looks on Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Barack and Michelle Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden observing a moment of silence outside the White House to mark the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Barack Obama and Joe Biden putt on the White House putting green Getty Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years President Barack Obama and Joe Biden in April 2013 AFP/Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years January 1, 2013: U.S. President Barack Obama winks as he arrives with Vice President Joe Biden (L) in the briefing room Reuters Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and others receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House May 1, 2011 in Washington, DC Getty Images Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Vice-President Joe Biden, right, confirmed that the US was looking at ways of taking legal action against Julian Assange - back in December 2010 GETTY IMAGES Joe Biden and Barack Obama through the years Joe Biden, left, and retired military officers watch President Barack Obama sign orders to close down the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2009 GETTY IMAGES Mr Biden said he would work with Mr Sanders to form a progressive administration that would reach out to his supporters. I believe there is a great opportunity to work together, Mr Biden said. I appreciate your friendship and I promise I will not let you down. Mr Sanders ended his campaign last week after Mr Biden put together an insurmountable lead in the Democratic primary. An early frontrunner of the 2020 campaign, Mr Sanders energised young and progressive voters by championing policies like universal healthcare and taxing the wealthy. The race was turned upside down on Super Tuesday, when the former vice president racked up big wins in delegate-rich states like Texas and Virginia. Mr Biden will now face the challenge of winning over diehard Sanders supporters who view him as the candidate of the Democratic Party establishment. Recommended Bernie Sanders ends his campaign for president In the broadcast on Monday, Mr Biden said he would establish six policy working groups with Mr Sanders to bridge the gap between their campaigns, on issues such as the economy, climate change, criminal justice and education. Addressing Mr Sanders supporters, he said: I see you, I hear you, I understand the urgency. We need to come together, we need to defeat Donald Trump. You are here: China The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has launched a campaign nationwide to tackle the sudden increase in traffic safety risks on expressways across China. The traffic flow on expressways rise rapidly as the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control situation continues to improve in China and restoration of economic and social order picks up, and the free passage of all vehicles on expressways, said the traffic management bureau of the MPS. The 100-day campaign targets traffic offenses including excessive passenger-carrying, speeding, fatigue driving, illegal use of emergency lanes, and illegal parking. The bureau also stressed fastening seat belts and keeping a safe distance while driving on the freeways, and particular warned drivers against fatigue and dangerous driving. Need to know more about coronavirus in New York? Sign up for THE CITYs daily morning newsletter. As city officials sought to pare back routine treatment of mentally ill inmates, citing the coronavirus crisis, a Rikers Island detainee gouged himself during an apparent psychotic break, THE CITY has learned. Rafael Ramos, 38, ripped out his left eye as he waited for medical care inside the Anna M. Kross center on Rikers Island shortly before noon on Saturday, internal Correction Department records show. Correction officers used pepper spray to stop him, the departments initial report says. About six hours later, the citys Board of Correction publicly announced that Correctional Health Services, which oversees inmate medical care, was petitioning for a series of so-called variances to temporarily ease rules on how mentally ill inmates must be treated. Dr. Patsy Yang, senior vice president for Correctional Health Services, sent a letter to the board on April 6. The missive was reviewed by city lawyers before it was posted online Saturday night. Yang wants flexibility in how often mental health professionals have to see certain inmates and hopes to soften deadlines for regular review of treatment plans. For example, jail psychiatrists are by law required to see and evaluate stable adults on psychotropic medication in Rikers general population every two weeks. But a variance from 2005 has already allowed them to wait as long as 28 days. Yang wants to boost that to eight weeks for non-seriously mentally ill adult inmates in Rikers general population. She also wants to limit contact between inmates allegeding sexual abuse and victim advocate counselors. The requests all intend to cut down time detainees spend with medical staff as COVID-19 spreads through the city jail system, Yang said. While there are numerous essential health care services that must continue to be provided during these perilous times, just like in the community where non-essential health care is being postponed, CHS, too, seeks to reduce services where it can without harm to our patients, Yang wrote to the boards chair, Jeniffer Jones Austin. Very Disturbing Dr. Robert Cohen, a board member and frequent critic of the Correction Department, expressed concern about possible changes. Its very disturbing, he said. Are they able to provide basic services? I dont know. The city has released hundreds of inmates from lockups in response to the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile, the share of those in custody who are receiving ongoing mental health care in jail designated Brad H. after a settlement in that name has increased. From March 11 to April 11, the population with a Brad H. designation dropped 15%, while the non-Brad H. population decreased 30%, city data aggregated by the Vera Institute of Justice shows. Yangs letter noted that some medical staffers who usually look after inmates with mental illness are now being assigned to care for detainees with COVID-19 and some have become sick themselves. All told, 86 CHS staffers have confirmed coronavirus cases and seven were in self quarantine as of Sunday, according to Jennine Ventura, a spokesperson for Correctional Health Services. As of Sunday morning, at least 319 inmates and 573 DOC staff were dealing with COVID-19, according to the Board of Correction. The coronavirus is close to overwhelming the department, said Joe Russo, president of the Assistant Deputy Wardens / Deputy Wardens Association. They are clearly stretched real thin. A Big Test On Saturday, Ramos was being moved from the Manhattan Detention Complex to a unit on Rikers known as Harts Island medical clinic. It is unclear why he wasnt initially placed there or in Bellevue Hospital, which has been hit with a deluge of COVID-19 patients. He was moved after he kept covering his face and head with his pants and refused to follow basic instructions, according to a source. Ramos was arrested on March 19 and charged with criminal mischief, menacing, harassment, and disorderly conduct outside a bodega in Bushwick, according to the NYPD. He was on parole at the time, and is also facing charges of attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance. Russo called the Ramos case another example of how the department is struggling to look after inmates during the COVID-19 outbreak. He noted that approximately 2,500 officers were out sick last week. This is a big test for the Department of Correction and we are not doing well with it, he said, noting officers werent initially given protective masks. Everyones consensus is the department has turned their backs on us, he said. We feel so rejected by the department. Want to republish this story? See our republication guidelines. SUPPORT THE CITY You just finished reading another story from THE CITY. We need your help to make THE CITY all it can be. Please consider joining us as a member today. DONATE TODAY! During the last Democratic debate Biden promised to choose a woman to become his running mate, but who will it be? With the November 3 general election in the United States less than 100 days away, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is under increasing pressure to select a running mate for his challenge to incumbent President Donald Trump. In his most recent comments on the topic, he pledged to name his choice at some point in early August. During the final debate just before the coronavirus took over the headlines and airwaves, Biden committed to choosing a woman and he has held fast to that promise since. Consequently, the list of Bidens potential running mates is exclusively women. Biden was already under pressure from Democrats to have a woman of colour on the ticket because of the outsized role that Black voters played in his road to the nomination during the primaries. The recent reckoning over racism and inequality roiling the nation following the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis has only added to that pressure. Selecting a running mate is a critical decision for any presidential candidate, but it is an especially critical calculation for the 77-year-old Biden, who if elected would become the oldest American president in history. The decision carries additional weight amid the coronavirus pandemic, which, beyond its high human toll, has devastated the US economy to an extent that will be felt well into the first term of the next president and beyond. Below are five of the women Biden is widely reported to be considering. 1. Kamala Harris Kamala Harris speaking during the fifth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season [Saul Loeb/AFP] A Senator from California, Harris is a former rival who endorsed Biden and began campaigning for him after she ended her bid in December. She has been at the centre of vice-presidential speculation since. Harris, 55, was elected California attorney general in 2010 and has been a rising star in the Democratic Party. A daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, she could help rally Black voters, a crucial Democratic voting bloc, behind Biden. 2. Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren speaking to reporters after announcing she had formed an exploratory committee to run for president in 2020, outside her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US [Brian Snyder/Reuters] Warren, 70, who also vied for her partys nomination during the primaries, is a Massachusetts Senator and an academic who specialised in bankruptcy and commercial law. Her policy proposals are much more progressive than Bidens. Picking her as his running mate might help sway some of the more liberal voters in the Democratic party in his favour. 3. Val Demings Representative Val Demings questioning constitutional scholars during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the impeachment of US President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC [Drew Angerer/Pool via Reuters] The African American congresswoman from Florida rose to national prominence after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose her as one of seven Democrats to serve as a manager in the impeachment proceedings against Trump. Before coming to Congress, she worked her way up through the ranks of the Orlando, Florida police department to become its first female chief. Demings, 63, was first elected to office in 2016. The fact that she hails from a state deemed critical in November helps, but her background in law enforcement may not please some who have been critical of Bidens track record on criminal justice. 4. Michelle Lujan Grisham New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, signs a gun control measure in February 2020 [File: Morgan Lee/AP Photo] The New Mexico governor is another unknown nationally but hails from a family prominent in New Mexico politics. Luhan Grisham, 60, served three terms in the House before being elected governor in 2018 and is also one of the highest-ranking Latina elected officials in the US. In the past, she has been a strong supporter of abortion rights, committed her state to push for lower greenhouse gas emissions, and, as a congresswoman, called for a higher minimum wage and restrictions on the sale of semi-automatic rifles. 5. Susan Rice Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice takes part in a discussion on global leadership at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee [File: Mark Humphrey/AP Photo] Susan Rice worked closely with Biden during his time as vice president, and has emerged as a favourite among some former Obama administration officials and is personally close to the former president. She has never held elected office but has extensive foreign policy experience, including as US ambassador to the United Nations. Shes also been an outspoken critic of the administration of Trump since leaving the White House and considered running for the US Senate in Maine. Rice has long been a target of Republicans, including for statements she made blaming the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya on protests spawned by an internet video. Republicans have also accused her of spying on Michael Flynn, Trumps first national security adviser, though records declassified by the Trump administration show no evidence of Rice improperly accessing any information. 6. Representative Karen Bass Representative Karen Bass questions US Attorney General William Barr during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC. [Chip Somodevilla/Pool via Reuters] A late addition to Bidens shortlist, Bass, a congresswoman from Southern California and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, would add a progressive voice to the ticket. Bass has an extensive background in police reform efforts and has spearheaded the legislative response in the House to the killing of George Floyd. But at 66, she may not offer the prospect of generational transition that Biden wants to show. 7. Senator Tammy Duckworth Democratic US Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois at the Capitol in Washington, DC. [File: Cliff Owen/AP Photo] Duckworth, 52, has a compelling personal story and would help bolster the campaigns national security credentials. The senator from Illinois is a combat veteran who lost her legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq in 2004. She went on to become the first woman with a disability and the first Thai-American elected to US Congress. Duckworth, however, has not been on the forefront of civil justice issues like Harris, Bass and others on Bidens list. The death toll from COVID-19 in British hospitals rose to 11,329 on Monday as the government - without its recuperating leader Boris Johnson - faced questions over its handling of the outbreak and the impact on the economy. Finance minister Rishi Sunak has told colleagues Gross Domestic Product could shrink by up to 30% this quarter because of the coronavirus lockdown, The Times newspaper reported, and there was little hope restrictions would soon be lifted. The British death toll is the fifth highest globally and a senior scientific adviser to the government has said the country risks becoming the worst-hit in Europe. Johnson left London's St Thomas' Hospital on Sunday after spending a week there, including three nights in intensive care, being treated for the disease. He said "things could have gone either way" for him while he was hospitalised. The government has had to defend its response to the outbreak, with complaints of insufficient testing, a dearth of protective kit for medics and questions about whether Johnson was too slow to impose a lockdown. Johnson is now convalescing at Chequers, his official country residence, with his pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds. His spokesman said on Monday he had spoken over the weekend with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who is deputising for him. It was not known when Johnson would return to work. "Any decisions which he makes in relation to when he returns to government work will be following the advice of his medical team," the spokesman said. ECONOMIC IMPACT In a video message on Sunday, Johnson thanked the public for adhering to social distancing measures, saying their efforts had created a "human shield" around the state-run health service by reducing the spread of the new coronavirus. While there was widespread sympathy for Johnson over his illness, the upbeat tone of his message could not disguise the gravity of the choices now facing his government while he is away from his desk. With Raab at the helm but lacking the full authority of a prime minister, the government faces trade-offs between the needs of the health service and of the economy, with national morale also at stake. Citing unnamed ministers, The Times reported that Sunak and others were pushing for social distancing measures to be relaxed, while others were resisting because of the risk of exacerbating the outbreak. Johnson's spokesman, asked about the reported warning of a potential 30% GDP collapse, said people should wait for official economic data to be published rather than speculate. "(Sunak) has been very clear about the significant impact which the coronavirus pandemic is having on the economy," he said. A Treasury spokesman declined to comment. A government review of the current measures, which have been in place since March 23, is scheduled to take place by Thursday. The government is expected to extend the restrictions. Responding to criticism that there has been insufficient testing for the virus, Johnson's spokesman said good progress was being made towards the government's target of 100,000 daily tests by the end of April. Over the last four days, the number of daily tests across the country has ranged from 14,506 to 19,116, figures from the health ministry show. SLOW DELIVERY The Treasury said its emergency funding for public services now totalled 14 billion pounds ($17 billion), up from 5 billion pounds announced in Sunak's annual budget before the lockdown was imposed. That includes new and previously announced funding for the National Health Service and for local authorities, who provide social care for elderly people. Working in tandem, the Treasury and the Bank of England have announced a gigantic package of measures to stop the economy and labour market from collapsing, but there have been complaints that delivery is slow and patchy. Business minister Alok Sharma has said that 4,200 small and medium-sized businesses had received rescue loans as part of the government's coronavirus business interruption loan scheme. When it was put to him during a BBC interview on Sunday that the number represented only 1.4% of the 300,000 firms that had made inquiries, he did not dispute those figures. Johnson's spokesman said the scheme had been changed to make it quicker and easier for businesses to secure loans. "We are making good progress with the latest figures showing an eight-fold increase from last week," he said. Announced nearly three weeks ago by Sunak, the scheme is designed to help small and medium-sized firms with loans of up to 5 million pounds each. Meanwhile, the daily briefing from the semi-autonomous Scottish government in Edinburgh provided a grim reminder of the outbreak's human toll. Scotland's interim chief medical officer asked the public not to delay relatives' funerals in the hope of organising them once social distancing measures had been lifted, saying that would risk overwhelming mortuaries and funeral homes. One of the state's most senior policemen has told officers that inconsistency and a lack of discretion in the enforcement of lockdown laws is eroding public confidence in Victoria Police. In internal communications seen by The Age and issued to police on Monday, Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton urged police to issue fines for only the most blatant and deliberate breaches of the state's lockdown regulations. Police have reversed a series of fines in recent days as officers and the public come to terms with extraordinary and unprecedented "stage three" restrictions on movement that prevent people from leaving their homes except for medical reasons, care-giving, grocery shopping, work and exercise. "I am concerned that there continues to be an inconsistent approach from our members when enforcing the directives of the Chief Health Officer," Mr Patton said. Prudential Financial, Inc. PRU has inked a deal with Seoul-based KB Financial Group Inc. (KB) to sell its South Korea-based insurance arm, The Prudential Life Insurance Company of Korea, Ltd. The new transaction, following the fulfillment of customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, is projected to close by the end of 2020. Per the agreement, Prudential Financial will sell 100% of its life insurance business in Korea for 2.3 trillion Korean Won or $1.9 billion. Prudential Korea, formed in 1989, provides life insurance and other insurance products through its signature Life Planner business and growing general agency channel. In the last year, it was the eleventh-largest insurer in the South Korea market, with $17.1 billion in assets. For thirty years, Prudential had an active presence in South Korea. The new deal is in line with the focus of the company on Japan and higher-growth emerging markets globally. As a result of the transaction, Prudential is projected to record an after-tax loss of about $300 million in net income. The sale proceeds are expected to be used for general corporate purposes. The agreement marks the leading U.S. life insurers exit from the South Korea market after three decades. Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) multi-line insurer have lost 42.1% in a year, compared to the industrys decline of 24.1%. Nevertheless, the companys policy to ramp up growth and solidify its capital position should continue to drive the share price higher. Stocks to Consider Some better-ranked stocks in the same space are James River Group Holdings, Ltd. JRVR, Kemper Corporation KMPR and Cincinnati Financial Corporation CINF each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks (Strong Buy) here. James River Group, Kemper and Cincinnati Financial surpassed estimates in each of the last four quarters, with average positive surprise of 12.36%, 12.38% and 17.86% respectively. Just Released: Zacks 7 Best Stocks for Today Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.5% per year. These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout. See these time-sensitive tickers now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Prudential Financial, Inc. (PRU) : Free Stock Analysis Report Cincinnati Financial Corporation (CINF) : Free Stock Analysis Report Kemper Corporation (KMPR) : Free Stock Analysis Report James River Group Holdings, Ltd. (JRVR) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Tehran (AFP) - Iran on Sunday announced 117 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, bringing the overall official toll to 4,474, even as it eased some restrictions that had been imposed to slow the spread of the illness. Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour also told a news conference that 1,657 new infections had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 71,686. Iran has carried out 263,388 tests for the virus so far, he added. Of those confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 and admitted to hospitals, 43,894 have recovered and been discharged, while 3,930 are in a critical condition. Iran announced its first coronavirus cases on February 19 and has so far become the worst-hit country in the Middle East. The new tolls come as Iran has started a gradual reopening of its sanctions-hit economy. On Saturday, it allowed small businesses to reopen outside the capital and this will be extended to the capital Tehran on April 18. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani also announced in a cabinet meeting that an intercity travel ban in place since last month would be lifted on April 20. But he repeated calls on Iranians to limit movements outside to "necessary" tasks and remain vigilant, as it remains difficult to "comment on the future" of Iran's battle with the virus. Schools and universities are still shut across the Islamic republic, as are cinemas, sports stadiums and revered Shiite Muslim shrines. A powerful storm could hit Philly today and bring soaking rain, thunderstorms, and, possibly, more 50-mph-plus winds. Forecasters told my colleague that the winds could pose a risk to some power lines. And in todays newsletter, my colleagues detailed for you whats going on inside Phillys busiest coronavirus hospital, what the economy could look like when businesses reopen, and how the region celebrated a different sort of Easter yesterday. Josh Rosenblat (@joshrosenblat, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com) Temple University Hospitals Esther K. Boyer Pavilion was an office building for the cardiology, neurology, and surgery departments just two months ago. Patients would typically come to see their doctors for routine exams. But, last month, Temple turned the building into its coronavirus hospital. More COVID-19 patients have come through Temples Boyer building than any other single hospital in Philly. The scene inside Boyer is quiet, eerie even, my colleague Lisa Gartner reports. No visitors talk, and the staff stays quiet, too. Theres just the constant mechanical whoosh of the ventilators. The sound of survival. Patients sleep on stretchers because regular hospital beds cant fit through the entries to Boyers rooms. This is what its like inside a Philly COVID-19 hospital. Frankly, its complicated, and some of that has to do with a major question: When will the economy reopen? It looks as if it might not happen for a while. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said last week that social distancing could be our new normal at least through the summer. And, because of testing scarcity and a lack of data, it might be hard for Pennsylvania to reopen certain parts of the state, whenever that may be. Theres also the matter of unemployment. While the federal government did pass a major rescue package, it wont stop unemployment from surpassing Great Recession levels, according to a Wharton analysis. And, some are reaching even further back for learning how to deal with the economic crisis. The Great Depression can offer some lessons. (Also, heres how you can make sure you get your coronavirus check direct-deposited to your bank account.) A new effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus by thinning the citys jail population led to about 235 inmates being released. Inside jails, the coronavirus outbreak was growing at a rate five times the rest of Philadelphias. Candidates for release included nonviolent offenders who had already completed their minimum sentences and people who were being held on cash bail or low-level charges. Over three days, four judges reviewed the potentially releasable inmates. In both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Govs. Tom Wolf and Phil Murphy authorized the early release of potentially thousands of state prison inmates. What you need to know today Through your eyes | #OurPhilly Hoping todays rain gives us another one of these pics. Thanks for sharing, @mattiemylo! Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and well pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout out! Thats interesting Opinions Should Leta catch this virus, her preexisting lung disease and cognitive challenges make her a highly unlikely candidate for a ventilator because not only does she have a lower chance of survival she does not have the attributes that society deems worth fighting for. In other words, this virus is a death sentence for my daughter. writes Lainey Moseley, a freelance producer, about her daughters life and how coronavirus guidelines punish those with disabilities. The Inquirer Editorial Board writes about what Joe Biden needs to do to unite the Democratic Party now that hes the presumptive presidential nominee. Though he dropped out of the race for president last week, the coronavirus pandemic has shown that Sen. Bernie Sanders was right about a number of his policies, writes national opinion columnist Will Bunch. And, if you want more Will Bunch in your life, sign up for his new weekly newsletter. What were reading Your Daily Dose of | A headless bunny A video was making the rounds on Facebook this weekend showing the wind whipping off the head of a costumed Easter Bunny riding on a fire truck on Margate. New Delhi, April 13 : It's 4 p.m. and the cook and helpers have started preparing the dinner at the SKV School in Ghazipur, Delhi, under the supervision of R. Ravi Chandran, who is acting as the warden of the night shelter. The shelter is housing 382 migrant workers, including many women, since March 28, four days after 21-day nationwide lockdown came into force. Chandran, 56, an assistant scrutiny officer in the recruitment cell of the Delhi government's Directorate of Education (DoE), is managing the shelter for migrant workers at the Government Boys Senior Secondary School and is also taking care of food for two other shelters, set up by the Delhi government last fortnight. Chandran, whose job at the DoE was to screen applications for school staff from a plush government building, now spends his day at the tin shed, equipped with table and chair and a fan, in the school. At times, he shifts his chair under a tree shed. Speaking to IANS, Chandran said, "No one has seen this kind of pandemic. I try to ensure that migrants, who are unable to reach their homes, are taken care of." On taking no leave since March 28 when this centre came up, he said: "What will I do sitting at home? Since the day the school was converted into a shelter, I have stayed here till late in night to ensure that no one slept hungry." On the daily routine of migrants at the centre, he said it was a problematic issue for them. "We have opened the playground of the school. They sit and roam around to spend time," he said. When asked if his family feared for his health, Chandran said, "In the beginning they were apprehensive. But my family now understands that what I am doing is a great service. Now they don't complain about my reaching home late." Stating that few women at the shelter are expecting, Chandran said he try to take special care of them. The Delhi government official said he had kept aside some money from his salary to help the migrants, stranded at the centre. He also showed IANS five pairs of slippers he had bought from his own money for the migrants. Last week, he arranged money to buy masks for every people at the centre to tackle fears of coronavirus spread. Chandran is helped by a Flood Department officer in running the shelter, 10 cooks to prapare food and 20 civil defence personnel to ensure safety and security. Chandran ensures that meals are served on time; rooms, toilets and bathrooms are disinfected regularly, and social distancing is practiced in all the 41 rooms of the school-cum-shelter. Soni Gautam, a resident of Hardoi in UP, told IANS, the quality of food was good. "There are women civil defence personnel as well, which maskes us feel secure. There are also other women at the shelter." She had arrived at the Anand Vihar on March 28 to get a bus to return home. As there was no bus, she with husband took refuge at the shelter. "Me and my husband started to move from our Badarpur house in Delhi for Hardoi as I was pregnant and there was no one to take care of me at the home. But when we arrived at Anand Vihar, we came to know that no bus was going to Hardoi. We had no choice but to take shelter here," Soni said. (Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in) Kavalan takes out 4 Double Golds and 6 Golds in San Francisco TAIPEI, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Kavalan distillery has added four Double Golds won at the recent San Francisco World Spirits Competition (SFWSC) to its brilliant run of awards so far in 2020. In other major contests, Kavalan also won big at the World Whiskies Awards (WWA) and World Gin Awards (WGA) announced recently. 4 SFWSC Double Golds went to Concertmaster Sherry Cask Finish -- newly released just 6 months ago Kavalan Classic Solist ex-Bourbon, and Solist Fino Sherry. 6 Golds went to Distillery Select Concertmaster Port Cask Finish Oloroso Sherry Oak Solist Vinho Barrique Podium, and Distillery Reserve Peaty Cask. World Whiskies Awards - Taiwanese single malt In the 2020 WWA, Kavalan was named category winner for its Oloroso Sherry Oak and received a Gold for the new Concertmaster Sherry Cask Finish. 2020 WGA Compound Gin - Taiwanese In the World Gin Awards, Kavalan Gin clinched Gold. It's the inaugural expression as part of an exciting new Kavalan gin series. AUISC 2020 In the Australian International Spirits Competition, Kavalan scooped the highest designation of Judges' Choice for: Kavalan Gin and Solist Port Cask Three Golds went to: Solist Sherry Cask, as well as Kavalan Gin and Solist Port Cask About Kavalan Distillery Kavalan Distillery in Yilan County has been pioneering the art of single malt whisky in Taiwan since 2005. Our whisky, aged in intense humidity and heat, sources the meltwaters of Snow Mountain and is enhanced by sea and mountain breezes. All this combines to create Kavalan's signature creaminess. Taking Yilan County's old name, our distillery is backed by about 40 years of beverage-making under parent company, King Car Group. We have collected 400 gold awards or higher from the industry's most competitive contests. Visit www.kavalanwhisky.com Media Contact information Kaitlyn Tsai +886(0)39 229 000#7164 kaitlyn@kingcar.com.tw Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1153854/Kavalan_winners.jpg And in all kinds of ways, the struggles we are all facing are the toughest weve ever imagined. Of course, our priority has to be on sheltering at home to reduce the spread of this deadly disease. Still, we recognize that students have had to give up more than just seeing their friends at school and their extracurricular activities. Nothing should diminish their accomplishments. But many of them wont get a chance to walk across the stage in public recognition of their many hard years of hard work. Theyll never have endearing memories of prom night. Its encouraging to see some districts understand what these events mean to these kids and are looking for ways to mark some of them, such as rescheduling graduation ceremonies for June or July. We pray were on the flat end of this pandemic by then. We recall the important research from psychologists who tell us that resiliency is an important key to success. Its rooted in our ability to steer through everyday adversity and rebound from bigger setbacks. Its ingredients include controlling behavior under pressure, good problem-solving and belief in yourself to help live fulfilled lives. These principles likely provide little solace for students and their parents who are missing out on these big ceremonies. But they provide essential life lessons that will sustain them for years to come. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) Finance Secretary Carlos "Sonny" Dominguez III said Monday that selected members of the middle class particularly those working for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) will receive assistance from the government's COVID-19 cash aid program. This comes amid calls from some government officials to include the middle class sector in the crisis subsidy program. "Those people working for MSMEs definitely will receive cash support... that part of the middle class, yes they will receive support," Dominguez told CNN Philippines' The Source. The Finance chief noted that the government will allocate around 35 billion to 50 billion to support millions of affected employees in the MSME sector. He added more assistance programs will be launched to help employees of smaller companies. However, Dominguez said the proposed financial assistance for all middle-class families looks to be doubtful "at this point in time." The entire of Luzon as well as other regions in the country implemented enhanced community quarantine measures until the end of April, in an effort to curb the spread of the deadly disease. The directive, which limits movement of people, has left over a million Filipinos jobless. The government's social amelioration program currently covers only the "poorest of the poor," with the low-income households expected to receive 5,000 to 8,000 worth of monthly assistance. Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla was the first to float the idea of including middle-class families in the government's emergency subsidy program. In a letter to President Rodrigo Duterte, Remulla cited how some of the families have already "depleted their savings" weeks since the imposed quarantine. The chief executive agreed with Remulla's appeal, but noted that the government is working "double time" to cater to the needs of the middle class. Dominguez, for his part, said the middle class, though without cash assistance, has already received help through the implementation of grace periods for various loan payments. From holding guns and fighting against them to stitching face masks to keep them safe during the COVID-19 outbreak, that is how life has changed for Madakam Lakha, a former Maoist Guerrilla from Sukma Chhattisgarh. These days the former Maoist fighter is busy making masks for police personnel in Sukma, one of the strongholds of the Maoists in the state. BCCL Lakha had joined the ranks of the insurgency in 1998 and fought for them before he surrendered before the police in August 2019 over differences with the group, following which has has been lodged in Sukma Police Line. Recently like most of the country the remote region of Sukma was also facing a shortage of face masks, even for those in the frontline. That is when the 38-year-old approached the cops offering his expertise. He told the cops that while he was with the insurgents he used to stitch the uniform for the Communist Party of India (Maoist) cadres. These days he is stitching around 90 face masks a day and to date has made over 15,000 of them. "Now, he is using his skills to prepare masks for fighting coronavirus pandemic for police, security personnel and others," SP Sukma Shalabh Sinha said. "Everyone is giving their contribution in this battle, but when I came to know about the lack of masks in the Sukma district, I decided to stitch masks for free of cost," Lakha told The Times of India. BCCL The Maoists who have their strongholds in what is described as the 'red corridor' that spans across Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, and West Bengal and eastern Uttar Pradesh states have been waging a war against the country for decades. Just a few weeks ago 17 personnel of the Chhattisgarh police were killed by the insurgents during an ambush in the Bastar region, in one of the deadliest strikes in recent times. However, last week as the country was in the grip of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) had announced a unilateral ceasefire and announced that they would not be attacking the security forces. BCCL In a handwritten statement issued by Kailasam, who identified himself as secretary of the Malkangiri Koraput Visakha Divisional Committee (MKVDC) on Sunday the outfit said that the party and various frontal organisations of the party have decided against carrying out any kind of attack on the security forces during this period. There is no sector that coronavirus hasn't impacted and India's premier management institutes are no exception. The lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus has led many B-schools to cancel their classes, exams and postpone internships. To make up for the lost time, IIMs are contemplating on delaying the start of the academic session by a few weeks, at least for now. "Academic calendar is attuned to a certain cycle and the lockdown has happened right at the time when institutes have exams or internships. For graduates, this is the month they enter the workforce. The timing couldn't have been worse," says Amit Karna, Associate Professor of Strategy and Chairperson Placements at IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA). IIMs are deferring the start of their academic session by a few weeks. IIM Ahmedabad is currently deferring it by two weeks, "We are taking one step at a time. For now, two weeks should be ok," says Karna. He adds that due to exceptional circumstances they have made adjustments to their credit system where they will accept six-week internship, instead of the usual eight weeks. IIM Udaipur too will delay the start of the ongoing batch and the incoming batch. "It is easier to manage the one-month delay in the ongoing batch, the closing of their session then just moves from March to April," says Janat Shah, Director of IIM Udaipur. He adds that the bigger concern is for the new batch. "A delay now will mean reduction of the duration of summer internship next year. A two-week delay is manageable though." IIM Udaipur starts new batch around 20-30 June and the second year students resume their session in 1-7 June. "We are now hoping to start both the sessions by first week of July but, we are keeping all this open," says Prof Shah of IIM Udaipur. IIM Kozhikode is prepared for a month's delay. Debashis Chatterjee, Director IIM Kozhikode says that, "it is very likely that academic year will shift by at least four weeks or even more." "We will shift some content to online so curriculum will be easy to cover as the number of physical classes will reduce. But if it is more than a month, we will have to revise the calendar for the entire year." He explains that it is not just about altering the academic calendar but also pushing for new modes of learning, pedagogy and teaching that will lead to bigger, fundamental changes going forward. IIM Calcutta is planning to start on the right time but use the initial weeks for online preparation programme to keep the students engaged. While the institute is starting the Executive MBA programme at the same time on April 20, it will first have online pre-programme preparation classes, followed by regular course sessions that are likely to commence on May 4 on campus. Similarly, for IIM Calcutta's Post Graduate Programme for Executives for Visionary Leadership in Manufacturing (PGPEX-VLM) has been rescheduled to commence on April 20 instead of April 8, with plans to conduct courses in an online mode if necessary, said Director Anju Seth. One of the key concerns for the incoming batch is that the majority of the students in IIMs are engineers, and IITs haven't yet completed their last semester. In some cases, exams are still due. That might also add to the delay, said people in the know. Different institutes are exploring varied methods to ensure the quality of education is not compromised due to the disturbances. Since most of the internships were delayed or the job roles were changed to facilitate working remotely, IIM Udaipur has created an alumni group of mentors to support the students during their internships. "Businesses at this time would be pre-occupied so this alumni mentor group is guiding and supporting the students through their internship," says Shah. They have also created a repertoire of online courses on Coursera along with the webinars from faculty to make up for the shortened duration of internships. "Besides changing our academic calendar for various programmes, we have expedited a successful transition to new models of online teaching in our programmes. We are watching the emergent situation closely and are ready with action plans for various scenarios to facilitate effective outcomes," says IIM Calcutta Director Anju Seth. The directors are likely to meet over a video conference this week to take stock of the current situation and take a collective decision on the admission cycle for this year. Also Read: Coronavirus lockdown: Auto sales crash 45% in March; commercial vehicles worst hit Also Read: Coronavirus outbreak: Which states have announced lockdown extension? Also Read: 'Help or we will die': Auto dealers send SOS to PM Modi amid coronavirus lockdown An op-ed by the Chinese envoy in Tehran published in the Iranian government mouthpiece, Iran Newspaper, on Monday may backfire and make more Iranians angry by the preferential treatment afforded to China. The Chinese ambassador's op-ed only promoted President Xi Jinping's proposal to countries affected by the coronavirus pandemic to build a "Health Silk Road", a step towards gaining a place of global leadership for China during the pandemic. But Iranians critical of the increasing influence of "Chinophiles" in the higher echelons of decision-making may find yet more proof that their government is "capitulating" to China. Buying China's support against the United States when it comes to putting Iran's nuclear file to vote in the United Nations Security Council and in other international forums is costing Iran much more than it may hope to achieve, many believe. "Even the smallest criticism of Russia and particularly China worries Iranian authorities and diplomats," Dr. Ahmad Zeydabadi, a reformist political analyst said in a commentary published on his Telegram channel on April 6. Iran has become dependent on China and Russia instead of achieving "political independence" from the West and the United States because it searches for allies against the U.S., he wrote. China has for many years been considered an ally -- and not surprisingly the biggest exporter to the sanctions-squeezed Iran. Despite the efforts of the hardliner political establishment to sell the idea that proximity to China can help Iran break the impasse of sanctions imposed by the Islamic Republic's arch-enemy the United States, many Iranians are extremely distrustful of Beijing. Iranians blame China for the countries coronavirus crisis among other things. Iran was the second country with a major outbreak of the virus Which most probably came directly via Chinese Muslim seminary students in Qom in February or possibly earlier. Not only dissidents but also many advocates of the Islamic Republic have recently been warning about the ever-increasing Chinese influence in Iran. They quote the slogan of "Neither East, Nor West, Only the Islamic Republic", a motto of the founder of the Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, that adorns the entrance to the building of the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran. Ambassador Chang Hua on April 5 took to Twitter to chastise an Iranian official, the Spokesman of Iran's Health ministry, for publicly voicing the suspicions of Iranian health officials about China's coronavirus data and saying their reporting had been misleading. Ambassador Chang Hua's authoritative tone towards the Iranian official caused an uproar in the Iranian political scene and in social media. Iran's Foreign Ministry was apologetic but not to the Iranian official. The Foreign Ministry Spokesman in fact quickly rose to the task of trying to placate China and its envoy for the Health Ministry spokesman's allegations. The Iranian ambassador in China took the same path and accused critics of the Chinese ambassador of "offending the people of China" and of not having "the interests of the country and people of Iran at heart". The revolutionary guards were more forthright in their defense of China and its ambassador. An official Guards' publication said the health official's remarks were "irresponsible and against [Iran's] national security" and "reiteration of the allegations" of Western and American media. But others kept defending the Iranian official who questioned China. "Our campaign against America was not supposed to end with our dependency on China," outspoken conservative lawmaker Ali Motahari said on April 9 in reference to what he called the "arrogance" of the Chinese envoy in Tehran. Motahari and a number of reformist lawmakers have demanded that the Foreign Ministry summons the ambassador for his remarks. Many Iranian social media users have branded the leaderships' attitude to placate Beijing as "capitulation to China". Following the lead of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his doctrine of "Looking to the East", the hardliner political and military establishment promotes China and Chinese interests probably too enthusiastically for Iranians to accept. Iran's foreign policy is directly dictated by Khamenei who has repeatedly said that it should be based on seeking allies in the East against the West. By the East he means China and Russia among the world powers against the United States and European powers. Iranian presidents are required to get his consent even before proposing a minister of foreign affairs to the parliament. An inmate at the state prison at Pheonix in Montgomery County is among the 524 Pennsylvania residents who have died at a result of COVID-19, state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said at a news briefing Monday. It marked the first death of a prison inmate in the state, according to the state department of corrections. The corrections department, which didnt name the inmate, said the inmate was a 67-year-old man who was serving a life sentence for a first-degree murder conviction in Philadelphia County. The inmate died at a hospital on April 8 and the coroner notified prison officials of the cause of death Saturday. A news release described the cause of death as acute respiratory distress from pneumonia due to COVID-19 with contributing factors of hypertensive cardiovascular disease and liver cirrhosis. At her daily briefing, Levine further said 1,179 health care workers have tested positive for the new coronavirus, along with 1,688 people living in nursing homes or personal care homes in the state. As of noon Monday, she said, 2,205 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 and 665 are on breathing ventilators. She said 44 percent of hospital beds, 38 percent of intensive care beds, and 70 percent of ventilators still available. Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. Sign of the times: A social distancing notice on a cycle track in Baldoyle, Dublin 13. Photo: Gareth Chaney In the first snapshot of the effects of Covid-19 on the population, a fifth of parents are now home-schooling their children with many saying they are struggling to balance this with their own work. A new survey, carried out by research teams at DCU and NUI Galway, gathered data from 100,000 respondents. Of those, 9,000 said they had children in pre-school and 26,000 were parents to national school children. The vast majority reported favourably about home-schooling (77pc). However, 3pc did not have access to computers and/or a reliable internet connection, making home-schooling problematic. However, Dr Akke Vellinga, epidemiologist and senior lecturer at NUI Galway, said: "A lot of parents said we had only scratched the surface. "A lot of parents are saying they're struggling with the balance of work and children. They still have to work from home and have children at home too, they have to suddenly home-school and entertain them, while working. "If both parents are working from home and a child or children are at home full-time, that's causing huge issues. "We have emails from parents saying they're frustrated, especially those parents who are both working from home. "There's pressure that doesn't ease off from work just because parents are working from home. That pressure is still there and it causes friction between parents with regards to who will do what, at what time." Almost 10pc of respondents have a child aged 15 or under in secondary school. Those parents reported schools are sending work home (30pc), setting regular home-work and providing additional online support (67pc). In the case of those aged between 15 to 17, the survey showed that in 67pc of cases schools were setting homework and providing extra support online. Meanwhile, those respondents whose children are being cared for by childminders are likely to be essential workers. Almost 90pc of pre-school children are at home with parents but 5pc are still with childminders and up to 3pc are with grandparents - a figure which surprised the team given Government directions on cocooning for the over-70s. But Dr Vellinga said grandparents can be "in the late 40s and 50s". "We did pick up in emails a lot of people have essential jobs and that has huge challenges in terms of childcare," Dr Vellinga said. Some 6,000 of the respondents reported having flu-like symptoms in recent days, a sign that Ireland could be starting to build up herd immunity, she added. Of those who had flu-like symptoms, 52pc felt they were the indicators of coronavirus and 53pc contacted their GP, of whom 36pc were referred for testing. Of those who received test results, 10pc were positive and 18pc were negative. The most common symptoms were tiredness/exhaustion (64pc), sore throat (54pc), dry, throaty cough (44pc) runny nose (42pc) and/or muscle pain (38pc). Dr Vellinga said: "If we know 80pc of the population will pick up the virus and a large number will have mild to moderate symptoms, the fact we have this data for this number showing symptoms is a good sign. "This means they didn't need to go to hospital, they just had flu-like symptoms and that we are seeing a little herd immunity building in the population." Dr Vellinga supports the introduction of antibody testing to help investigate how much of the population has already overcome the virus, as this could be an indicator of how parts of society could soon be working again. Around 10pc who responded to the survey were living alone. A third of these had not talked to anyone the day before. Dr Vellinga said: "I thought that was a figure that brought this crisis home to me. People are going through this in very different ways. "A large group of people are alone and not talking to anyone at all." The online survey will be repeated again on April 22. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange secretly had two children while inside the Ecuadorian embassy, his partner says: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images Julian Assange secretly fathered two children while living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his partner has revealed in a plea for him to be released from prison. The Wikileaks founders partner, Stella Morris, made the revelation to the courts supporting an application for bail from HMP Belmarsh in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Ms Morris said has gone to great lengths to shield the children from the climate surrounding their father, but was making the statement now because their lives were on the brink and she feared Mr Assange could die. He has been held in the London prison since being dragged out of the embassy a year ago, and is awaiting an extradition hearing on behalf of the United States, where he faces 18 charges over the activities of WikiLeaks which could theoretically amount to 175 years in jail. He has also been in poor health for months, but friends say coronavirus is now spreading through Belmarsh. One inmate is reported to have died and several others are thought to be infected. Several prison officers are off work and are suspected of having the virus, Mr Assanges friends claim. In a statement to the courts, Ms Morris reveals that she met Mr Assange in 2011 when she was a legal researcher, and was asked to look into Swedish legal theory and practice. Over time Julian and I developed a strong intellectual and emotional bond. He became my best friend and I become his, she wrote. The friendship developed, and despite the extraordinary circumstances, a close relationship began in 2015, she said. The couple now have two young children, Ms Morris said three-year-old Gabriel and Max, who is one. Mr Assange sought refuge in the London-based embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over rape allegations, which he denied and were later dropped. Ms Morris was reported to have been one of his most frequent visitors, as a member of his legal team. He and Ms Morris managed to keep their relationship and the birth of their children secret from Ecuadorian officials, according to the Mail on Sunday, which published an interview with the South African-born lawyer. Story continues Both children had visited their father in children, the paper reported, adding that Mr Assange had watched the birth of both children at London hospitals via live video link. He is now in isolation for 23 hours a day and all visits have stopped, Ms Morris said. My close relationship with Julian has been the opposite of how he is viewed of reserve, respect for each other and attempts to shield each other from some of the nightmares that have surrounded our lives together, Ms Morris said. (PA) The extradition hearing is fixed for 18 May. A Westminster Magistrates Court judge rejected calls for an adjournment until September over what his legal team said were insuperable difficulties preparing his case due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the preliminary hearings, Mr Assanges lawyers claimed Donald Trump had offered to pardon him if he said that Russia was not involved in a leak of Democratic party emails ahead of the 2016 US election. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the allegations a complete fabrication, adding: This is probably another never-ending hoax and total lie from the DNC. Campaigners and friends have warned of Mr Assanges deteriorating health for some time. His father, John Shipton, recently told the BBC that an extradition to the US would be akin to a death sentence. Additional reporting by PA Read more Tracking the coronavirus outbreak around the world in maps and charts When can we really expect coronavirus to end? Everything you need to know on supermarket delivery slots The dirty truth about washing your hands Listen to the latest episode of The Independent Coronavirus Podcast A remote early-warning system for the detection of Covid-19 symptoms amongst frontline Irish medical personnel has been hailed as a potential 'game-changer' in the battle to protect hospitals and clinics from the virus. The Covid-19 Remote Early Warning system (Crew) has been developed by Cork University Hospital (CUH), Irish software firm 8West and University College Cork (UCC) using cutting-edge healthcare technology, software applications and Sony hardware. Crew remotely identifies any healthcare personnel who may be developing a high temperature - one of the key potential indicators of the coronavirus. To date, one in four diagnosed cases of Covid-19 has involved doctors, nurses and care assistants as well as hospital and nursing home support personnel. The early detection of potential Covid-19 cases allows for people to go into precautionary self-isolation - and thereby protect other healthcare staff. Crew consists of a wearable digital thermometer sensor and a sensor platform such as an ordinary smartphone or smart watch. A cloud-based server operates the system and regularly analyses all temperature readings. The system will generate an automatic alarm if any healthcare worker exceeds temperature guidelines. Crew trials began on April 3, and the initial results have been hugely encouraging. The trial is now going to be expanded to a greater number of volunteers and, if verified, the system could potentially be rolled out to other hospitals across Ireland and the world. Emergency medicine specialist Professor Stephen Cusack said Crew was aimed at protecting the welfare of frontline medical staff. "CUH emergency department staff are delighted to have helped pioneer an innovative 24-hour monitoring device like this," he said. "We are 24 hours on the frontline of care daily, and it's good to know that efforts like this are being made to support our well-being 24 hours a day too." CUMH consultant obstetrician Professor Barry O'Reilly said it was proof of the potential offered by collaborations between hospitals, universities and the IT sector. UCC's Dr Patrick Henn said the project was very important given the level of Covid-19 detections amongst healthcare staff across the world. Google is raising cash for 5,000 San Francisco Bay Area families as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has led to an economic collapse in its backyard. The company's philanthropic arm, Google.org, and CEO Sundar Pichai are each giving $1 million to the organization GiveDirectly, which delivers cash to families enrolled in a federal nutrition assistance program SNAP, the company said Sunday evening. The collaboration has a goal of raising $5 million so that each family receives $1,000. GiveDirectly will give money to families in Bay Area ZIP codes most affected by Covid-19, according to its website. As of Monday, it had raised $2.45 million. The company said it's putting a call out to Bay Area Google employees and "others" to donate. It's a small percentage of funds and residents in the grand scope of the Bay Area, which has nearly 8 million residents in all. However, it does represent a more direct way of giving to local residents, many of whom await their government-issued $1,200 stimulus checks. Last month, after cancelling two large events that normally would draw in tens of thousands of visitors and boost local businesses, the company said it would donate $1 million to local Mountain View organizations. The fund also comes amidst the company's rapid real estate expansion in the San Francisco Bay Area, which includes plans to build its second largest campus in San Jose to house 25,000 employees. In that process, constituents have feared its growth will further contribute to displacement in the region, which is among the country's most expensive. Since then, the company has upped its contributions to the San Francisco Bay Area, including a $1 billion housing commitment. WATCH NOW: What coronavirus-related event cancellations cost The passport of Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela from Colombia. He has escaped from a quarantine site for COVID-19 in Hoi An city (Photo courtesy of Quang Nam Police Department) Leyson Smith Santamaria Orjuela, 22, came to Hoi An in late March 2020 after travelling through many localities in Vietnam. The man, whose visa already expired on February 22, was taken to a quarantine facility in Hoi An. After he tested negative for the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 for the first time, he was moved to another quarantine facility at a resort in the city on April 10, according to the provincial Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control. However, Orjuela left the resort without approval at around 19:00 on April 11. He was found again by authorities in Quang Nams Nui Thanh district early on April 13 and returned to the same resort for quarantining as regulated by the health ministry. The provincial Department for Foreign Service is contacting relevant agencies of Colombia to implement citizen protection. Quang Nam has so far quarantined 6,116 people at health centres, hotels and homes, of whom 2,603 have completed their quarantine periods. Out of the 2,608 samples taken, 2,591 have tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. Three COVID-19 patients (No 31, 33 and 57) found in the province have already been released from hospital after treatment and quarantine. Earlier, an American woman also fled from a hospital in the central city of Da Nang on March 30. She was then captured by local police and later tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. Northrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2020 -- The ongoing COVID-19 pandemicand the worldwide reaction to ithas compelled companies to radically rethink their strategies and the way they operate. We salute the industry experts helping companies survive and sustain in this pandemic. At MarketsandMarkets, analysts are undertaking continuous efforts to provide analysis of the COVID-19 impact on the Thermal Printing Market. We are working diligently to help companies take rapid decisions by studying: The impact of COVID-19 on the Thermal Printing Market, including growth/decline in product type/use cases due to the cascaded impact of COVID-19 on the extended ecosystem of the market The rapid shifts in the strategies of the Top 50 companies in the Thermal Printing Market The shifting short-term priorities of the top 50 companies' clients and their client's clients You can request an in-depth analysis detailing the impact of COVID-19 on the Thermal Printing Market: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=4699565 According to the new research report "Thermal Printing Market by Offering (Printer, Supplies), Printer Type (Barcode, POS, Kiosk & Ticket, RFID, and Card), Format Type (Industrial, Desktop, Mobile), Printing Technology (DT, TT, D2T2), Application and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Thermal Printing Market is expected to grow from USD 43.2 billion in 2020 to USD 53.5 billion by 2025; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.4% from 2020 to 2025. The growth of the thermal printing market is driven by factors such as rising utilization of automatic identification and data capture technologies for improving productivity, growing concerns regarding product safety and anti-counterfeiting, increasing use of thermal printing technology in latest on-demand printing applications, rising penetration of wireless technologies in mobile printers, and growing use of RFID and barcode thermal printers in the fast-growing e-commerce industry. Browse in-depth TOC on "Thermal Printing Market" 64 Tables 53 Figures 145 Pages Barcode printer segment to hold the largest share of the thermal printer market, by type, in 2020 Barcode printer segment will lead the thermal printer market, by type, in terms of size, in 2020. Thermal barcode printers are extensively used in small, medium, and large businesses to label and subsequently track the products to be shipped. This is one of the significant factors that has led to the leading position of barcode printers in the thermal printer market. The market for healthcare & hospitality application to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period The thermal printing market, based on application, has been segmented into retail, transportation & logistics, manufacturing & industrial, healthcare & hospitality, government, and others. Among all applications, the thermal printing market for healthcare & hospitality applications is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period. The use of smart labels helps in the instant tracking of patients and medical equipment, whenever required, especially in emergencies. Thermal printers are widely used for printing labels and tags that are compatible with various processes in the healthcare application and help to improve patient flow, bed utilization, and asset allocation. Ask for PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=4699565 North America to hold the largest share of thermal printing market by 2020 North America is expected to hold the largest share of the thermal printing market by 2020. The US leads the market in North America owing to its well-established economy that encourages government and private investments in new technologies. APAC is expected to account for the second-largest share of the thermal printing market during the forecast period. China and Japan are significant demand-generating countries for thermal printers in this region. A few key players operating in the thermal printing market are Zebra Technologies (US), SATO Holdings (Japan), Seiko Epson (Japan), Fujitsu (Japan), Star Micronics (Japan), BIXOLON (South Korea), and Honeywell International (US). About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Sanjay Gupta MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com The death toll from COVID-19 approached 100 Sunday in Oklahoma as the state reported mores positive tests for the disease. Two more coronavirus deaths were reported Sunday by health officials, bringing the state death toll to 96. The Oklahoma State Department of Health said 1,970 people have tested positive for COVID-19, with more than 450 needing to go to the hospital. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (Image Credit: AP) The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) has condemned the alleged assault of two journalists in the line of duty by soldiers in separate incidents. The first incident is said to have happened in the Greater Accra Region last Friday, April 10, and involved a TV Africa reporter, Samuel Adobah. The second incident which occurred on April 5 in the Ashanti Region involved a correspondent of Deutsche Welle, Yussif Abdul Ganiyu. A statement signed by the General Secretary of the GJA, Mr Kofi Yeboah, described the assaults as unprofessional, brutish, barbaric and a blot on the image of a military institution held in high esteem in peacekeeping operations across the world. The GJA is therefore urging the military authorities to fish out the culprits for sanction. It also called on the Ghana Police Service to investigate the two cases and bring the culprits to face the full rigors of the law. Below is the full statement Military Authorities Must Punish Soldiers For Assaulting Journalists The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) condemns in no uncertain terms the alleged assault of two journalists in the line of duty by soldiers in separate incidents, one in the Greater Accra Region and the other in the Ashanti Region. We find the actions of the soldiers unwarranted, arbitrary and barbaric. We, therefore, call on the Military Authorities to immediately investigate the two incidents and bring the culprits to book. The first incident, which happened at Olebu in the Ga Central Municipality in the Greater Accra Region on Good Friday, involved a TV Africa reporter, Samuel Adobah, who had gone to a fire scene around 10:30am on that fateful day for coverage. Upon arrival on the scene, and realizing that the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) had not arrived yet, he called a colleague reporter at Adom FM to make an announcement on air to the GNFS for help. That initiative, obviously, demonstrates that Samuel Adobah is not only a journalist interested in news but also a good citizen interested in saving life and property. According to the reporter, 15 minutes after calling his colleague at Adom FM, personnel of the GNFS arrived to fight the fire whereupon he decided to video the fire-fighting operation. He said about five soldiers arrived on the scene to disperse the crowd in line with the Presidents lockdown directives. Whilst videoing the fire-fighting operation, one of the soldiers accosted the reporter but upon showing his identity (ID) card, he (soldier) allowed him (reporter) to carry on. However, a few minutes later, another soldier approached Samuel Adobah from behind and without any provocation, slapped him, sending him sprawling on the ground. Whilst lying helpless on the ground, the soldier followed up with several kicks at the reporter and also seized his mobile phone, put it on the ground and stamped on it several times to crash the devise. Samuel Adobah said after the assault, his assailant, who he identified as Damfour, and the other military officers jumped into their Operation Calm Life branded vehicle with registration number 49 GA 68 and sped off. Samuel Adobah has since reported the matter to the Anyaa Police Station and is also seeking medical treatment, having suffered bodily harm from the assault. The second incident, which occurred at Akrem in the Asokore Mampong Municipality in the Ashanti Region, involved a correspondent of Deutsche Welle, Yussif Abdul Ganiyu, who was assaulted by a military officer on April 5, 2020. While conducting an interview outside St Patrick Hotel, Yussif Abdul Ganiyu was assaulted by a military officer identified as 2nd Lt Betrot Ampoma, for no just reason. The GJA finds the assault by the soldiers against the two journalists in the line of duty highly unprofessional, brutish, barbaric and a blot on the image of a military institution held in high esteem in peacekeeping operations across the world. It is in this light that we urge the Military Authorities to fish out the culprits for sanction in order to redeem its image from the damage caused by the unprofessional conduct of the soldiers in question. The GJA has already been in touch with the Military Authorities who have given assurance to deal with the matter. We also call on the police to investigate the two cases expeditiously to bring the culprits to face the full rigors of the law. It is unfortunate that the latest incident happened barely 24 hours after the President had delivered his broadcast to the nation on COVID-19 Update 6 in which he called on the security agencies enforcing the law on lockdown to refrain from human rights abuses. We appeal to the President, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces, to denounce the unprofessional conduct of the soldiers and ensure that they are duly sanctioned. Meanwhile, the GJA is exploring legal options to find justice for the journalists. We wish to reiterate that in a democratic dispensation, the rule of law must prevail and be upheld at all times over the rule of brute, and so under no circumstances must the latter be countenanced. Inasmuch as we appreciate the role of the security agencies in enforcing the law, particularly the lockdown directives by the President, enforcing the law in its breach is rather ridiculous. There are better and more civil ways to enforce the law on lockdown than the resort to brute. SIGNED: Kofi Yeboah (General Secretary) Source: Daily Graphic 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 DANBURY The disposition hearing of the Garner Correctional Institution employee accused of misconduct has been pushed to June. Jennie Reese, 31, is charged with two counts of conveying unauthorized items into a correctional institution for allegedly exchanging letters with an inmate and sneaking a cell phone into the maximum security prison in Newtown where she worked as a corrections officer. At least Hearst Connecticut Medias editorial praising departing Republican state Sen. Len Fasano included one statement of fact: After taking over as Senate minority leader six years ago, Len Fasano (has been) the face of the Republican Party in Connecticut. The rest of Hearsts editorial, however, constitutes a conservative farrago of fantasies, half-truths and omissions. Hearst Connecticut Media claims that GOP state Sen. Fasano is a solid moderate. Lets take a close look at the solid moderate bona fides of Sen. Fasano, whom Hearst hints would like to see run for higher office. Though Fasano served seven years in the state senate during the rampant corruption of the Republican Rowland-Rell administration, his 2017 Republican budget proposed eliminating the Citizens Election Program that provides public funding for elections, tripling the amount that corporations may contribute to campaigns, and permitting tens of thousands of dollars of corporate money to seep in through leadership PACs. Fasano was once again hanging a For Sale sign on Connecticuts politicians. Fasanos budget would have been disastrous for education. It slammed Connecticut teachers with a $95 million Teacher Tax, raising teacher pension contributions by $1,500 per teacher, though improving their woefully inadequate pension benefits not one cent. Moreover, the anti-union Fasano passed that tax without negotiating with the teachers union, an unprecedented attack on teachers right to bargain collectively. Fasanos budget slashed half a billion dollars from the states colleges and universities over the biennium, including $308 million from the University of Connecticut. UConn board of trustees chairman Larry McHugh characterized the cuts as the worst attack on public education I have seen in 34 years. University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst warned they would decimate the university for years to come. Fasanos budget also eliminated the $37 million Roberta Willis Scholarship that helps 15,000 low-income and minority youth attend college; cut $23 million from grants for the states poorest school districts, while redirecting millions to schools in the wealthiest communities; and eliminated $150 million in dedicated funding designed to close achievement gaps in poor school districts, substituting block grants instead. Hearst Connecticuts editorial states, As the son of a doctor, he worked on health care initiatives and was honored by the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance as a Childrens Champion. In fact, that doctors son voted against establishing Connecticuts ACA insurance exchange, AccessHealthCT, that today provides health insurance to more than 100,000 Connecticut residents, and demanded that low-income expectant mothers pay a new fee of $324 a year to continue receiving health care through Husky A. Fasanos most notorious act could be his blocking the nomination of openly gay Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald to be Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. Hearsts editorial claims that Fasano framed his arguments (against Justice McDonald) with research. It is unfathomable what research Fasano could have referenced against Andrew McDonald, whose career constitutes a record of excellence in service to our state without a hint of scandal: graduate of Cornell, partner with Pullman & Comley, director of legal affairs for the city of Stamford, chairman of the Stamford Board of Finance, state senator and chairman of the senate judiciary committee, chief legal counsel to the governor of Connecticut, overwhelmingly approved by the General Assembly to be associate justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. The ugly truth is that it is GOP policy that gay Americans should not have the right to marry, and Justice McDonald is married to a man. The 2016 GOP platform states, Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society...We condemn the Supreme Courts lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which...was a judicial Putsch. In blocking Justice McDonalds nomination, Fasano and his fellow Republicans voted their partys anti-gay bigotry. Period. Hearst Connecticut wrote that Fasano, distanced himself from President Donald Trump. Hearst should recall the expression: Qui tacet consentire videtur Silence gives consent. Fasano has repeatedly supported and consented to Trumps policies with his silence. When Trump and the Republican Congress targeted Connecticut and other Democratic states with the SALT cap, raising federal taxes on Connecticut taxpayers by $10 billion, Fasano kept silent; when Trump characterized White supremacists and neo-Nazis rampaging in Charlottesville as very fine people, Fasano kept silent; when Trump implemented his policy of terrorizing immigrants seeking asylum in America by ripping children and infants from the arms of their immigrant mothers, Fasano kept silent; when Trump issued a gag order forbidding Planned Parenthood of Southern New England from advising women about abortion, forcing the organization to forego $2.1 million in federal funding, Fasano kept silent; while Trump was being impeached for his criminal attempt to extort political favors from an American ally for personal political gain, Fasano kept silent; while Trump purges military officers and federal employees he deems disloyal to him, Fasano keeps silent. Far from distancing himself from Trump, Fasano, through his shameful silence, has steadfastly supported Trumps every move. This face of the Connecticut GOP is a far-right extremist who punished teachers, attacked union rights, slashed support for universities, targeted minorities, pushed racist voter suppression, and betrayed womens reproductive rights. He deserves no fans among Connecticut residents who value civilized society. He will not be missed. Sean B. Goldrick is a resident of the Riverside section of Greenwich. ARTIST IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 - Andi Snelling When art starts imitating life too well, life gets pissed off. Actress, writer and theatre-maker Andi Snelling's Happy-Go-Wrong play "is an example of what comes out of all systems being shut down". Snelling's own woes outweigh some upstart virus from Wuhan. "After being bitten by a tick and becoming very ill with Lyme disease and co-infections yes, sexy name I've discovered that the greatest thing about life is simply being alive. The more I've faced up to the possibility of death, the more alive I have become." Comedian Andi Snelling. Credit:Darren Gill Happy-Go-Wrong riffs on themes of mortality and "blends clowning, dance and storytelling, with a lot of brown butcher's paper thrown in." At Jasonmould the focus on the highest quality injection molding, as well as low volume manufacturing, and complete customization, sets the company apart in the industry worldwide. HUIZHOU CITY, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / April 13, 2020 / At Jasonmould, the leading injection molding manufacture in China, focuses on the highest quality injection molding, low volume manufacturing, and complete customization to serve the world's businesses as the best in the industry. Founded in 2010, the company specializes in injection mold production for medical equipment, household appliances, electronics, and safety equipment, along with monitoring systems. With every project, Jasonmould strives to exceed customer expectations with competitive pricing, premium quality, and timely product delivery. Jasonmould, China plastic injection molding manufacturer, is committed to full service and peak performance. The company features a 15,000 meter factory with multiple injection tooling divisions which expertly tool products from precision smart phone parts to substantial automotive parts. Jasonmould exports products to the United States, Europe, Japan, and the United Kingdom, where they have garnered acclaim at every level. With the mission to deliver the highest quality molding products and services, Jasonmould excels as the leading custom plastic injection molding service China. In order to remain at the top of the industry globally, the company is committed to the continual improvement and education of its employees, as well as the provision of safe working environment. Machinery is held to the highest performance standards through upgrades and strict maintenance as well. Jasonmould also provides exceptional low volume manufacturing services in China. This specialized service features full production-quality parts in volumes of 100,000 pieces or less, dependent on the process needed. Low volume manufacturing is growing in popularity as it allows customers to make a limited investment while quickly accessing their markets in response to short product cycles or in bridging between prototype and production. Story continues "Jasonmould sincerely hopes to be your partner for worldwide business. Our vision is to expand our company's economic growth with the links to world. Each project we complete is fully customized according to the clients' requirements. We provide time limit and rapid injection molding, which sets us apart from our competition." - James Yuan, JasonMould About Jasonmould: Jasonmould is professional plastic injection molding manufacturer in China. Established in 2010, the company offers plastic injection molding process, plastic injection mold design, custom plastic injection molding, and plastic injection molding products. Jasonmould specializes in plastic mold production for household appliances, medical equipment, electronic equipment, and safety equipment as well as monitoring systems. For more information, please contact James Yuan at info@jasonmolding.com. Contact Info: Name: James Yuan Email: Send Email Organization: JasonMould Industrial Company Limited Address: LongGang Village, LongXi Town, BoLuo County,HuiZhou City, GuangDong Province, China Phone: +86- 13352636504 Website: https://www.jasonmolding.com/ SOURCE: JasonMould Industrial Company Limited View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/584824/At-Jasonmould-the-focus-is-on-the-Highest-Quality-Plastic-Injection-Molding Changes to the distribution of protective equipment to U.S. hospitals could cause shortages at Alabamas largest medical facility, according to Laura Kowalczyk, vice president at University of Alabama in Birmingham Medicine. Two factors have slowed the flow of equipment to UAB Hospital: New policies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that send half the supply to hospitals in hard-hit areas and a slowdown in Chinese exports. Kowalczyk said China imposed new inspections on protective equipment that delays shipments to the United States. Hospitals all over the country have been struggling with similar shortages of masks, gowns and face shields. Its slowing down the amount coming to us, Kowalczyk said today during a media briefing online. Although UAB is not currently experiencing a shortage, its leaders are making plans to adapt. The hospital is stocking up on Tyvek painting suits in case its supply of isolation gowns runs out, Kowalczyk said. That would be one of the last resorts, she said. It could be at the bottom of the list of things we may have to resort to, Kowalczyk said. We would rather start with material that keeps them comfortable, is cool and provides ease of movement. But we do have a supply of Tyvek set aside in case we need them. Workers are already reusing n95 masks after sterilizing them, Kowalczyk said. Officials have also tried to identify other sources of protective gear, including donated supplies for the hospital. Kowalczyk said she expects the shortage to continue until the summer. Meanwhile, UAB is also watching how other hospitals are adapting to the shortage. So far, we have been able to sequester a healthy supply, Kowalczyk said. But we do look at inventory on hand every single day. The hospital currently has 38 COVID-19 patients, said Dr. Rachael Lee, UAB epidemiologist. The number of patients has been holding steady for several days, but Lee said it may still be too soon to know whether infections are slowing in Jefferson County and Alabama. See more about the spread of COVID-19 in Alabama Many of the patients require several days of care. That requires a lot of personal protective equipment for health care workers. Health care workers have been among the hardest hit by COVID-19, with 558 cases in Alabama alone, according to the department of public health. When we have the appropriate personal protective equipment, theres nothing to be afraid of, Lee said. If you trust in your PPE, you can take care of these patients. The Federal Reserve Thursday announced additional efforts to support the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, including providing up to $2.3 trillion in loans to households and businesses of all sizes. The Fed has taken several steps to address economic concerns and has committed to using the full range of its authorities. Of note, the Fed created the Main Street Lending Program, which will offer 4-year loans to companies with up to 10,000 workers or revenues less than $2.5 billion. Businesses that receive loans through the Small Business Administrations paycheck protection program can also apply for Main Street loans. Eligible lenders under the Main Street Lending Program are U.S. insured depository institutions, bank holding companies, and savings and loan holding companies. The program is funded with $600 billion, with the Treasury Department providing $75 billion from funds allocated by the CARES Act, and is scheduled to run through Sept. 30, 2020. The Fed will purchase 95 percent participations in the loans while lender retains 5 percent. Other terms of the Main Street loans include: Patna, April 13 : With the nationwide lockdown adding to the problems faced by the poor, many private institutions and NGOs are extending a helping hand to the needy in Bihar. Anukriti Art founder Anukriti said she along with other benefactors has so far helped 50 families in Shahkund area of Bhagalpur by providing them ration and other essentials. An awardee for Madhubani and Manjusha paintings, Anukriti pointed out that such little help from individuals across the country could make a huge difference. An NGO, Ang Madad Foundation, which has earlier helped many women get trained in tailoring, has provided ration and other help to the needy in Champanagar area in Nathnagar block. Its head Vandana Jha said that whenever they come to know about the needy or someone calls them for help, they reach out to such persons. She said her organisation has so far helped around 200 people. Ram Jansewa Samiti and area villagers came to the rescue of 50 to 60 persons belonging to a nomadic community left stranded in Hasanganj block of Katihar district. These needy persons, which included women and children, were provided ration and other essential items. A private club led by social activist Mahesh Sav has distributed ration and other items to many needy families in Shumar Harkhand panchayat area. Similar reports of help extended by villagers to daily-wagers were received from Naxal-affected areas in Jamui. HSBC and Standard Chartered said on Thursday that their top executives would waive their bonuses this year and donate part of their salaries to helping fight the coronavirus pandemic. The move came just over a week after both banks said they would cancel their dividends and not pursue share buy-backs after a request from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), an arm of the Bank of England and their chief regulator. The PRA also said it expected banks would not pay "any cash bonuses to senior staff" including all material risk-takers. Rebel shareholders, incensed at the loss of dividends, have demanded that the bank eliminate pay to top management for a year. In an internal memo released on Wednesday afternoon London time, HSBC said that its chief executive, Noel Quinn, and its chief financial officer, Ewen Stevenson, would waive their cash bonuses for 2020 and donate a quarter of their salary for the next six months to charity. The donation would equal about 159,000 (US$197,300) for Quinn and 93,000 for Stevenson. Mark Tucker, the HSBC chairman, also would donate his entire fee for 2020 " 1.5 million " to charity, according to the memo seen by the South China Morning Post. "All three of us will donate to charities supporting health care workers and vulnerable people in the UK and Hong Kong," Quinn said in the memo. On March 31, the PRA asked the United Kingdom's biggest lenders to cancel their final unpaid dividends for 2019 and not pay any dividends through at least the end of 2020 to support the economy in light of the pandemic, which has infected more than 1.5 million people worldwide. The novel coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, has disrupted daily life, with cities locked down from New York to Singapore and many businesses are asking employees to work from home. Tens of millions of people have lost their jobs as the pandemic has disrupted air travel and economic activity on an unprecedented scale and likely pushed the global economy into a recession. Story continues Cancelling the annual dividends at both banks has set off a firestorm among shareholders. As of Wednesday's close, HSBC's shares had fallen 9.6 per cent since the announcement. Standard Chartered's shares dropped 4.9 per cent in that period. A group of rebel shareholders is trying to band together enough investors to force an extraordinary general meeting and pressure the bank to reinstate the dividend. The group, which claims it has garnered support from about 3 per cent of HSBC's shareholder base, has demanded that the bank make the final interim payout for 2019 and eliminate pay to top management for the year. About a third of HSBC's shareholders are retail investors, and many of those investors depend on the regular income they receive from HSBC's dividends. HSBC was due to make its final payout of US$0.21 a share on April 14. Some shareholders have said HSBC and Standard Chartered should move their headquarters from London to Hong Kong, rather than be subject to a regulator 6,000 miles away from their largest market, Hong Kong. Both banks generate more than half of their revenue in Asia. HSBC was founded in Hong Kong 155 years ago but moved its headquarters to London in 1993 after acquiring Midland Bank. Four years ago, the bank decided to keep its home base in London after a nearly year-long review. In a stock exchange announcement early Thursday, Standard Chartered said its CEO Bill Winters and its chief financial officer Andy Halford would forgo any cash bonus for 2020 and would make "significant personal donations" to funds assisting the pandemic. Standard Chartered's chairman, directors and management team also will make personal donations, the company said. "The remuneration committee has committed to ensure that decisions regarding 2020 remuneration will be taken in the light of the group's overall performance and the challenges faced by the group's various stakeholders resulting from the spread of Covid-19," the bank said. Covid-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus. Sign up now and get a 10% discount (original price US$400) off the China AI Report 2020 by SCMP Research. Learn about the AI ambitions of Alibaba, Baidu & JD.com through our in-depth case studies, and explore new applications of AI across industries. The report also includes exclusive access to webinars to interact with C-level executives from leading China AI companies (via live Q&A sessions). Offer valid until 31 May 2020. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright 2020 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. By Kim Bo-eun Exports dropped 19 percent in the first 10 days of April, data showed Monday. The fall is seen as reflecting slowing trade amid the coronavirus pandemic. According to data from the Korea Customs Service, exports from April 1 to 10 stood at $12.21 billion, down 18.6 percent from $15.01 billion from the same period a year earlier. Exports of most key sectors saw a year-on-year decline: semiconductors by 1.5 percent, cars by 7.1 percent, petroleum products by 47.7 percent, wireless communication devices by 23.1 percent and auto parts by 31.8 percent. Exports to China fell by 10.2 percent, to the U.S. by 3.4 percent, the EU by 20.1 percent, Vietnam by 25.1 percent and Japan by 7 percent. Imports also dropped 13 percent in the same period, coming down to $14.6 billion. Imports of information and communication devices grew by 9.5 percent and gas by 4.1 percent, but imports of crude oil fell by 18 percent, semiconductors by 5.4 percent, machinery by 11.9 percent and coal by 40.7 percent. Imports from the U.S. dipped 22.4 percent, from the EU 20.9 percent and from Japan 15.2 percent. Exports in March stood at $46.91 billion, a 0.2 percent drop year-on-year. This is down from a 4.3 percent growth in February. Exports are likely to be hit further, as figures begin to reflect the supply and demand shock. "Nearly all regions will suffer double-digit declines in trade volumes in 2020, with exports from North America and Asia hit hardest," the World Trade Organization forecast in a report issued last week. "Trade will likely fall steeper in sectors with complex value chains, particularly electronics and automotive parts." The implications are dire for the Korean economy, in which exports account for about half of the GDP, with electronics and automotives being core industries. "The car industry is set to be afflicted at least in the short term, as exports of car parts fall based on halted overseas production lines," a KCS official said. "Car exports are affected as demand falls." Exports to the U.S. and Europe are likely to see a further fall, as demand contracts and supply chains continue to be disrupted in the regions, based on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Hyundai Motor decided to halt operation of a production line in in the southeastern city of Ulsan, April 13 to 17, based on a plunge in sales in the U.S. This comes after the carmaker shut down six of its overseas production bases. Kia Motors is considering a temporary shutdown of three of its productions bases later this month, based on growing inventory and falling demand. Kia's two production bases in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi Province, and one in the southwestern city of Gwangju that it is considering shutting down produce the largest amount of the automaker's exported vehicles. The KCS official said the dive in exports of petroleum products was based on the crash in oil prices. As the lockdown to curb COVID-19 spread hit businesses having an inevitable impact on their revenues that will lead to large scale job loss, retail, apparel and restaurant industries on Monday sought short-term government support to survive. The revival for the apparel and restaurant industries is estimated to be between 9-12 months and to survive these industries expect the government to help for 2-3 months, including the lockdown, the National Restaurant Association of India President Anurag Katriar said in a panel discussion. Interim support will help businesses survive and also protect jobs of people dependent on them, he stressed. The operating expenditures in the restaurant business are very high and with revenues almost down to zero, it is becoming difficult to pay salaries to employees, he added. Katriar stressed the importance of approaching the crisis from a humanitarian, people-focused approach. It is our responsibility as job providers to ensure that our employees keep their homes running. If someone loses their job during this time, it might be difficult to get a new one, at least for a while. The industry will collapse if no help comes our way soon. "We need the government to give us the tools to live to fight another day. We need a substantial stimulus package. There have been some policy changes on the anvil for a while; now would be a good time to implement them, he added. He also suggested measures such as relaxing the tax burden on businesses, allowing the withdrawal of provident fund up to Rs 3 lakh and deferring statutory payments. Meanwhile, Clothing Manufacturer Association of India Chief Mentor Rahul Mehta opined that apparel businesses could face revenue losses of up to 40 per cent and many small and medium players in the apparel industry are contemplating the closure of the business. Unless the government provides timely assistance, there could be a loss of almost a crore of jobs across the entire textile chain, he added. Mehta pointed out that almost 80 per cent of the garments industry falls under MSME business category, which is more on the micro business side than any other, and would, therefore, be impacted much harder. Wage subsidy is one possible solution to retain workers and I hope that the government will help with providing working capital and an incentive package to restart the industry, he added. Retailers Association of India CEO Kumar Rajagopalan pointed out that the shutting down of marginal businesses would have a multiplier effect on allied sectors. Rajagopalan expressed concern that, without support, many of the small apparel businesses and retailers might have to shut shop. Businesses should also explore alternate means of financing, he said adding that the government can also help the industries waiving property tax and minimum charges for electricity and easing of licensing norms. Various industry associations need to work closely as they are facing the same issues working capital and retention of people. There's a strong case for collaborating and leveraging each other's resources, both during these times and after, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gurugram, April 13 : Facebook on Monday launched an online resource guide for educational communities on how to collaborate and continue the learning process using Facebook products, tools and programmes while also providing information related to COVID-19 from authentic sources. Currently, the guide is available in English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada. In its first phase, Facebook has partnered with the UNESCO, which will support in ensuring the guide reaches learners, educational institutions and teachers across India besides supporting with the updating and curation of the guide with relevant learning resources. The online resource will help and guide education communities on how to collaborate by using Facebook's products and tools like Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Live, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, said the company. In addition, it has modules from Facebook's digital literacy programme - "We Think Digital" to help people think critically and share online thoughtfully. "Through our online learning resource guide, we want to equip teachers, parents and relevant government officials with ample resources and tools to help them stay connected and collaborate digitally to facilitate remote learning," Manish Chopra, Director, and Head of Partnerships, Facebook India said in a statement. The guide will also provide vital information about COVID-19 from authoritative and credible sources such as Government of India's advisory, WHO India Situation Report Page, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Coronavirus Resource Hub on Facebook, and Guidance from UNICEF on COVID-19 prevention and control in schools and help them in dealing with anxiety and bust misinformation surrounding the ongoing pandemic. More than 90 per cent of the world's learners are affected by the school and university closures. "In line with the global efforts, UNESCO New Delhi will focus on mobilizing the national and state-level actors and resources in order to develop an effective and unified response avoiding overlaps for maximum impact," said Eric Falt, Director and UNESCO Representative, UNESCO New Delhi Cluster Office for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. "Further, the on-ground needs will be matched with context-appropriate solutions to provide education remotely, leveraging hi-tech, low-tech and no-tech approaches with a special focus on ensuring access for women learners," Falt added. A middle-aged woman, who is reportedly mentally-challenged, has been stranded on an islet in Feni river along the India-Bangladesh border in south Tripura district since April 2, officials said on Monday. She was stranded after Bangladeshis, with help of the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), tried to push her into India, while the Border Security Force (BSF) resisted their attempts, they said. "People of Bangladesh are providing food and water to her after attempts by local Bangladeshis and the BGB to push her into India failed," a BSF official at Kathalchhari border outpost told PTI. Residents of Kathalchhari and Amtali villages along the border claimed the BGB personnel along with locals have tried to push the woman into the Indian territory from three different places since April 2. "On the afternoon of April 2, we heard a lot of noise near the river opposite our house. We saw 20 Bangladeshis trying to push a woman into India from the other side of the river and BGB personnel were encouraging them," Rupam Basak (26), a resident of Kathalchhari, told a group of journalists. Tripura shares an 856-km long boundary with Bangladesh. A 67-km stretch along the Tripura Frontier is unfenced, including three km along Kathalchhari and Amtali villages, according to BSF officials. Another villager, Sushanta Basak, said the bid to push the woman into the Indian territory took place right in front of the BGB's Ramgarh border outpost. Jharna Chakraborty, another local resident, said the woman appears to be a Bangladeshi national. "A few women from Amtali village spoke to the stranded woman by shouting out to her. Apparently, she is Bangladeshi as she calls water 'paani' whereas Indian Bengalis call it 'jol'. "Moreover, she gave a reference of Mirpur in Dhaka and said she was in love with a man named Faruk who recently married another woman," Chakraborty said. She said Bangladesh should admit the woman to a mental asylum on humanitarian grounds. A BSF spokesperson said he visited the area and conducted an extensive inquiry. "There is no doubt that the woman is from Bangladesh and the neighbouring country should take her back," he said. Meanwhile, the BSF officials said two other mentally-challenged persons, who were pushed into India on Sunday, were sent back to Bangladesh. "A mentally-challenged young woman and a middle-aged man were identified at two different places along the border. They were handed over to Bangladeshi authorities after a meeting was held between sector commanders of the border forces of the two countries," a BSF official said. The official claimed that there has been a clear pattern of Bangladeshis pushing mentally-challenged persons from their country into India. "Perhaps they want the mentally-challenged persons to be treated in mental asylums in Tripura as there are many such patients from the neighbouring country admitted to the lone mental hospital in Agartala," he said. At least 18 mentally-challenged persons from Bangladesh are being treated at Agartala's Modern Psychiatric Hospital. Such persons are handed over to Bangladesh from time to time after their recovery, Dr. Jyotirmoy Ghosh of the hospital said. One such patient, Bithi Akhter, was handed over to her family in Bangladesh after being treated for eight years in Tripura, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) You are here: World Flash A plane from southern China's Shenzhen landed in Budapest on Sunday morning, carrying 1,365,000 protective masks, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto announced on his Facebook account. These masks will be used by doctors, nurses, police officers and soldiers who are fighting the war against the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the minister. Another six planes with tonnes of protective gears will land in Budapest on Monday morning, he added. During Easter, the Hungarian government has issued stricter rules by closing down all popular natural parks from public and making the tobacco shops close as early as 3 p.m. The population was asked to stay home. According to official figures, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Hungary stood at 1,410 on Sunday, with 118 recoveries and 99 fatalities. Judge denies request to allow Easter church services of more than 10 people in Virginia Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A judge has denied a request by a Virginia man to allow for church services to take place on Easter in the state, despite a state order barring large gatherings to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. Larry Hughes, a retired teacher from Russell County, had filed legal action against the Commonwealth for its stay-at-home order, which did not exempt religious events. Judge Michael Moore denied the injunction request on Thursday, meaning that church gatherings of more than 10 people will not be permitted by Easter Sunday. The equities do not weigh in [petitioner's] favor based on this pandemic, ruled Moore, as reported by the Bristol Herald Courier. And to say that this injunction to be granted would be in the public interest is not defensible. So the court is going to deny the request for temporary injunction. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring expressed support for the injunction denial, saying in a statement that the order was a matter of public health. Science tells us that social distancing is the most important thing we can do to save lives and prevent the spread of COVID-19, and thats exactly what these orders are doing, stated Herring, as reported by the Herald Courier. We are all having to sacrifice right now to keep ourselves, our loved ones and our communities safe, and our win today maintains these crucial safety measures. Last month, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam issued Executive Order 55, which prohibited gatherings of more than 10 people. The measure contained no exemption for religious events. On Monday, Hughes filed a lawsuit in Russell County Circuit Court against Northams order, arguing in the complaint that the measure was a threat to religious freedom. EO 55 ignores the special status and protections afforded Virginians relative to their religious liberties recognized, and more clearly amplified than in the United States Constitution, stated the complaint. Article 1, Section 16 of the Virginia Constitution clearly states that the way a person discharges their religion cannot be directed by force, nor shall he be restrained in his body. T. Shea Cook, the lawyer for Hughes, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch after the Thursday hearing that he considered the injunction denial to be a dangerous precedent. Wed hoped to be able to get some relief prior to the Easter weekend, but ultimately we knew it was going to be difficult, said Cook. Were talking about a fundamental right that in a time of crisis has been eroded. Many workers, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, police, pilots, railway workers and rubbish collectors are braving grave odds every day and are working relentlessly, putting their lives at risk to treat COVID-19 patients amid the global outbreak. Twitter More recently, Cooch Behars District Magistrate (DM) Pawan Kadyan said that his main source of motivation while working in the midst of a pandemic is his sister who is facing a bigger battle on a daily basis. Before being posted as District Magistrate, Kadyan served as Joint Secretary, Finance in West Bengal. He has been actively posting updates on the way Cooch Behar is coping with the COVID-19 crisis. From making community kitchens operational for the homeless, ramping up production of hand sanitizers to spreading awareness among faith leaders and followers of different religions, about COVID-19 - Kadyan has taken proactive steps to deal with the crisis. During the #CoronaLockdown, #CoronaWarriors are providing cooked food & foodgrains to migrant labourers, homeless, and other such people who are in need of support. #CommunityKitchens have been operationalized as well. Arrangements for their accommodation are being made too. pic.twitter.com/XJO304XLnl Pawan Kadyan, DM Cooch Behar. @All: Stay Home (@PawanKadyan) March 28, 2020 Kadyan's sister is posted in AIIMS for treating patients with coronavirus and he says that her grit and will power is what keeps him going. Kadyan posted a tweet writing, 'My Daily Motivation on the field comes from her... Feeling proud of my sister Dr. Kavita Kadyan doing her duty at the AIIMS Trauma Centre COVID ICU, New Delhi'. My Daily Motivation on the field comes from her... Feeling proud of my sister Dr. Kavita Kadyan doing her duty at the AIIMS Trauma Centre COVID ICU, New Delhi.#CoronaWarriors #Doctors #Motivation pic.twitter.com/FIbcF6xjH9 Pawan Kadyan, DM Cooch Behar. @All: Stay Home (@PawanKadyan) April 10, 2020 National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), which serves as a Think-Tank for the Government, also retweeted the DMs post. 'Dr. Kavita Kadyan & countless other healthcare professionals are ensuring we emerge victorious in our fight against COVID-19', it tweeted. , #IndiaFightsCorona with passion! Dr. Kavita Kadyan & countless other healthcare professionals are ensuring we emerge victorious in our fight against #COVID__19. Share with us stories of champions using #CoronaWarriorsIndia! - @PawanKadyan pic.twitter.com/UlIMCz3M4k NITI Aayog (@NITIAayog) April 11, 2020 Soon after the tweet went viral, many started showering praises on Kadyan's sister for her dedication, 'Salute to Real Brave Warrior against Global Pandemic Corona War,' wrote another. 'God Bless her!! She is a hero'. Some others were glad that she was clad in proper PPE, a user's comment read, 'Glad to see she has ppe. Hopefully available in the numbers she needs it'. #1 Glad to see she has ppe. Hopefully availablr in the numbers she needs it. anjali mody (@AnjaliMody1) April 10, 2020 #2 Your sister is as good as my sister wish her a safe life , god bless her . Amitabha Chaudhuri (@cb89be1fc9ca477) April 10, 2020 #3 We are all very proud of our medical personnel who are fighting this pandemic on the frontline Adil Nargolwala (@adilnargolwala) April 10, 2020 #4 Our prayers with Kavita, she is angel and our prayers with her.God bless. Sunil Dhiman - (@sunildhiman6) April 10, 2020 #5 Great Job by Doctors....very Encouraging..... People like her generate hope in billions of Indian that there will be very loses of lives and good Adminstrator like you generate hope that very soon India will be Corona free. May God bless you both. IAXN Telecom (@IAXNTelecom) April 10, 2020 Another AIIMS doctor gave us an insight into just how difficult things are on the ground and at a personal level. A doctor named Ambika, posted at COVID-19 treatment ward of Delhi's AIIMS, spoke to ANI about the challenges she faces amid the coronavirus pandemic. #WATCH Dr Ambika, who is posted at #COVID19 treatment ward of Delhi AIIMS, breaks down while speaking about her professional challenges amid coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/erNNUIh7Il ANI (@ANI) April 6, 2020 "It is a challenging time for us when cases of coronavirus are increasing by the day. We all need support from our family in this type of situation," said Dr Ambika. "If anyone from the family falls sick and we are not able to treat them, that guilt never goes," she added. "We are here to treat people and also need support from our families. Everyone here supports us - colleagues, friends, staff members - but family support is different and we all need that," she said with tears in her eyes. According to the latest data from the Health Ministry, the total number of corornavirus cases in India have risen to 9152, after 796 new infections were reported in past 24 hours, The death toll in India from COVID-19 has risen to 308 while 856 patients have been cured and discharged. The Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI) on Monday urged the government to let small shops open immediately, as daily income flow of petty retailers has stopped completely since the lockdown, and sought compensation for their income losses New Delhi: The Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI) on Monday urged the government to let small shops open immediately, as daily income flow of petty retailers has stopped completely since the lockdown, and sought compensation for their income losses. Claiming to represent four crore micro, small and medium retailers from across the country with a membership of 34 retail associations, FRAI said all the capital of these small retailers is tied up in the stocks of unsold products because of the lockdown. They are now having to dip into small savings to survive in order to purchase food to support their family members. Pleading with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to "empathise with the hardships" faced by its members, FRAI President Ram Asre Mishra said they must be allowed to "open their shops immediately". Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak "We also appeal to the Hon'ble Prime Minister to immediately announce an economic package to compensate the losses of the petty retailers in their daily income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana," he added. Mishra wondered while big grocery shops selling essential commodities are allowed to operate during the lockdown, why should our small shopkeeper brothers, who also sell similar goods of daily public needs, be deprived to earn their livelihood." FRAI said the closure of such shops micro, small and medium shops during the current lockdown on account of coronavirus pandemic has completely stopped the daily inflow of the petty retailers'' income. The association further said that March to June are the important months for small retailers to earn extra money and save. Sale of all the products sold from their shops picks up during this period. "Unfortunately, this lockdown has come at the time of the peak months for them and they have already given up the hope to make extra income during the peak season. These poor individuals and their families are now facing certain poverty and survival challenges," it said. Do you run or manage a business that has employees? Then you should watch New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily press conference. Let's not get political. Let's not talk left or right, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. Let's not get into the personalities, the aspirations, the agenda. Let's just focus on why the CEO of New York State is so effective at communicating. Where he stands on minimum wage isn't important right now. How he's handling the current pandemic that's turned his state into a world hotspot is. I've been watching his press conferences on YouTube every day, usually in the early evening after work. I look forward to them. I'm not a New Yorker. I'm a business owner, and I like to see how effective leaders communicate their leadership effectively. Cuomo does that in five ways. Related: 5 Things Advertisers Should Consider Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic 1. He begins with, and then consistently refers to, objective data Someday (probably soon), we (and he) will argue the accuracy of that data. But it's all he's got, and it's prepared by big firms and smart people to help him make decisions. Successful leaders use data to help them make and justify their decisions. Cuomo focuses on the number of infections, hospital admissions, ICU admissions, hospital discharges and deaths. It's not pretty, but truthful data never is. He's not afraid to share it. We shouldn't be, either. 2. He simplifies complex problems I've learned that large problems are solved by breaking them into smaller problems and then attacking them. Cuomo's large problem is avoiding a collapse of his healthcare system. The smaller problems that make up the large problem is providing enough beds, staff and supplies. He's delegated those three smaller problems to teams to fix, and then he reports on progress, using data (see above) to the public every day. Anyone who watches his daily press conferences can get their arms around the challenges he faces, because he makes those challenges simple to understand. Good leaders do the same for their teams. 3. He repeats himself Ask any advertising executive, and they'll tell you that a typical consumer needs to see an ad something like seven to 10 times before they remember it. Cuomo knows this. That's why every press conference is organized the same, and it's why he repeats himself on a daily basis. Just watch him for a few days, and you'll be familiar with words like and "apex," "plateau" and "ventilators, ventilators, ventilators!" He'll remind us about social distancing and that "Most people will get sick. Most people will get sick and stay home and have some symptoms. Thats 80 percent. Twenty percent will get sick, need hospitalization, theyll feel better and theyll leave." He does this almost every time, repeating words. Repetition is essential in any good communication. 4. When he gives opinions, he says so During almost every press conference, Cuomo gives his opinion, but he saves it for a specific section and precedes his comments with a statement along with an accompanying PowerPoint slide that says "personal opinion." He does this because he knows that besides facts and policy, people want to know where their leaders stand on an issue, whether they agree or not. Good leaders aren't afraid to stick their neck out and say so. But there's a right time and place, so Cuomo holds back and waits for that time in the news conference. By the way, his opinion never criticizes other people. It's just his take on the situation and what needs to happen. Related: What COVID-19 Means for Ecommerce Startups 5. He makes it personal...and inspirational Anyone who watches his press conferences now knows about "Matilda's Law," a protective order for people over 70 in the state of New York in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Matilda is his mom. He frequently mentions his family, his pets, his brother (who himself was infected with the coronavirus) and his deceased father. He likes to draw parallels to history, include quotes from other famous leaders like FDR and remind New Yorkers (his primary audience) just how great they are. He does this in a very honest and relatable manner. It connects him to his audience and makes him seem more genuine, and it's also the reason why my wife threatens to divorce me and marry him! Regardless, being personal and inspiring is important for a leader trying to move his followers towards an objective. We'll have lots of memories about these trying times, but one of my biggest will be sitting down with my wife, every day, to watch Andrew Cuomo's press conferences. I don't just do it to get news about the pandemic. I do it to learn how to be a better communicator and leader. Related: Fight for Your Franchise Challenge, Week 2: Getting in the Mindset for Success Reflections While #StayingHome: The MENA's Response To The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Measured Up 4 Ways AI Is Making the World a Safer Place Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved CINCINNATI, Ohio Police have arrested a suspect in two separate shootings that left four people dead, according to reports. Alto Miles, 42, has been charged with the murders of William Bowen III, 28, Michael Eves, 47, Bridgett Carter, 56, and Tasia Mason, 35, WLWT Channel 5 reports. Miles was arrested on Sunday. Police tell WLWT that Bowen III and Eves were found dead of gunshot wounds early Friday morning. Carter and Mason were found dead in an apartment Friday evening. Fox 19 reports that police believe the victims knew Miles. The nature of their relationship is unknown, Local 12 reports. The shootings remain under investigation. These were not random victims, Asst. Police Chief Paul Neudigate tells Fox 19. For some reason this troubled individual decided to act out and take four lives. Its tragic, but we have brought closure quickly. More crime-related stories on cleveland.com: Columbus police break up large parties at Airbnb rentals Man claiming he has coronavirus spits in Ohio bus drivers face, reports say Akron sex offender faces federal child pornography charges Two people accused of stealing from Brunswick Giant Eagle, violating stay-at-home coronavirus order, police say Woman shot in officer-involved shooting in Wickliffe, police say Man killed by off-duty Cleveland police officer identified (Newser) Have plans for Fourth of July? Better make sure they're not cancelled. The News & Observer reports that at least a half dozen cities from Redwood City, Calif., to Ithaca, NY, are already nixing Independence Day events amid concerns over the coronavirus. That includes the much-loved festival in Southport, North Carolina: "The July 4th Celebration in Southport has been an iconic event for over 200 years," writes Southport Mayor Joseph Hatem on Facebook. He recommends that "this celebration of independence and freedom be canceled to assist in stopping the spread of this contagious disease. This was a difficult decision, but the most prudent one and will ... save lives." story continues below Other cancellations include St. Louis (Belleville News-Democrat); Redlands, Calif. (Redlands Daily Facts), and, in the Pacific Northwest, Portland and Fort Vancouver (Oregon Live). This jibes with a Maryland state health official's take on coronavirus numbers possibly peaking around July 4: "If that happens, that means we will have done our job because we have slowed down hospital capacity demands," said Webster Ye, per the Baltimore Sun. Similarly, the Washington Post quotes DC Mayor Muriel Bowser as saying the nation's capital expects hospitalized COVID-19 patients to peak in late June or early July. (Read more Fourth of July stories.) Hyderabad: Amid the growing number of coronavirus COVID-19 patients in Hyderabad, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao instructed the officials concerned to pay more attention to the city under the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation jurisdiction area. The Chief Minister suggested that Hyderabad city be divided into zones and each zone should be treated as one unit and each unit should have a special officer. In a high-level meeting held at CM's office Pragati Bhavan, KCR advised officials to convey people on the ground to be more cautious in the backdrop of an increase in the positive cases within the state and in the neighbouring states. He instructed the medical and health department to be more vigilant and should be ready in all aspects. At least 32 new coronavirus positive cases and one death was reported on Monday in Telangana. In the backdrop of an increase in positive cases of coronavirus, the officials informed the chief minister that all laboratories and hospitals be kept ready. The officials added that required measures were taken up and infrastructure was ready so that every day 1,000 to 1,100 tests can be done and treatment can be given any number of patients. "More cases are getting registered in the Greater Hyderabad area. In Hyderabad, there are more chances of the persons with positive cases quickly spreading it to others. Hence there should be a special strategy for Hyderabad. Divide 17 Circles in the city as 17 Units. In every Unit appoint a special medical officer, municipal officer, police officer, revenue officer. The entire Municipal administration department should involve themselves in the prevention of Corona Virus programme. As on date, there is only one DM and HO in Hyderabad City. Appoint Senior medical Officers to the 17 Circles", the CM told officials. As on today, there are 246 Containment Centres in Telangana, which include 126 Containment Centres in Hyderabad alone. "Manage these Centres more effectively. Do not allow people from the Containment Centre to go out and dont allow others to enter into these Centres. Appoint a Special Nodal Officer and Police Officer at the centres. Under their supervision maintain a strict vigil. The government machinery should supply the essential commodities to the people in these Centres, the CM added. Yes, its beginning to look a lot like Christmaswhich, for many of us, feels like a rush into chaos. Celebrating Advent during this season slows us down and helps our hearts and minds be reoriented around the coming of Christ.Yes, its beginning to look a lot like Christmaswhich, for many of us, feels like a rush into chaos. Celebrating Advent during this season slows us down and helps our hearts and minds be reoriented around the coming of Christ. Social distancing has become a fact of life in the time of coronavirus, but 4-year-old Arianna Baczynski has been doing it for longer than most. Ari, who is in the middle of being treated for leukaemia, had to adopt social distancing measures a year ago when she was diagnosed and started chemotherapy. Ari Baczynski is 4 years old, lives in Gin Gin, and is currently getting chemotherapy for leukaemia. Her mother, Bonnie, said that meant life hadn't changed too much for the Gin Gin family, whove been using masks and limiting contact with others for more than 12 months. At one stage last year I went to the shops with Ari and we both had masks on, Bonnie said. Amid a huge surge in cases nationwide, the Union government on Sunday said it was over-prepared to handle the fast-spreading COVID-19 outbreak. India reported 1,000 new cases on Sunday, taking the total number of infected persons to 8,447, of which at least 1,671 were receiving critical care in dedicated hospitals across the country. But the government said the number of patients requiring critical care and oxygen support was at 20% of the total confirmed cases across the country which was, at this stage, over-prepared to handle the outbreak. For latest updates and live news on coronavirus, click here As of today, if we need 1,671 beds for COVID-19 patients, we have over 1.05 lakh beds available in 601 dedicated hospitals across the country, Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry told reporters in New Delhi. In a presentation during the media interaction, Aggarwal said on March 29, when India had 196 COVID-19 patients under critical care, it had 41,974 beds ready in 163 dedicated hospitals across the country. Though the number of COVID-19 cases has increased, the number of patients requiring oxygen support or critical care is around 20%. The government is over-prepared in managing the situation. There is no need for panic, Aggarwal said. He said the government has also ramped up testing facilities further by roping in both private and public medical colleges, along with 14 mental health institutes across the country. Fourteen identified institutes including AIIMS, NIMHANS will mentor medical colleges and expand COVID-19 testing capacity, Aggarwal said. Providing a snapshot of preparations across the country, he said AIIMS, Delhi, had set aside 250 beds, including 50 ICU beds, for COVID-19 patients, while Safdarjang Hospital in the capital has dedicated one complete block comprising 500 beds to meet the emergent situation. Of these 500 beds, 100 are ICU beds. We have provided 1,680 beds to Andhra Pradesh. As of today, there were 148 ventilators available. We provided 444 additional ventilators. One special medical officer is appointed in every state, Aggarwal said. He also added that the military has set aside 9,000 beds across 10 towns across the country in addition to the 7,000 beds available in military hospitals. He said the Ordnance Factory Board has manufactured 50 specialised water-proof tents in Arunachal Pradesh to ensure that required medical facilities can be provided to people in far-flung areas of the country. Prime Narendra Modi on Monday held a telephonic conversation with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc, focussing on potential areas for bilateral collaboration in fighting the coronavirus pandemic including supply of medical equipment. The prime minister spoke to Phuc as part of his engagement with world leaders over the pandemic which has infected over 1.8 million people and claimed lives of around 1,10,000 besides wrecking economies in almost all parts of the globe. Vietnam's efforts to deal with the pandemic with limited resources by primarily focusing on quarantining infected people and carrying out a major contact tracing exercise of suspected cases earned praise globally. "Both the leaders agreed that their teams would remain in touch in the coming days for coordination on the pandemic response measures as well as other aspects of bilateral relations," the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement after Modi-Phuc conversation. Vietnam has reported around 270 cases of coronavirus. The MEA said the two leaders discussed the situation arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the steps being taken to address this challenge. "The leaders agreed on the potential for bilateral collaboration in fighting COVID-19, including for facilitating supplies of required medical equipment. They also committed to provide necessary support to each other's citizens present in their territories," the MEA said. It said the two prime ministers stressed the importance of the strategic partnership between India and Vietnam, and expressed satisfaction over the recent progress on various fronts. "They also reviewed regional and international developments," it added. Modi conveyed his best wishes for the health and wellbeing of the Vietnamese people in the wake of the crisis. In the last few days, the prime minister has held telephonic conversations with US President Donald Trump, Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, focusing on the need for concerted global efforts to deal with the crisis. Modi also spoke to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, King of Bahrain Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa, Sultan of Oman Haitham bin Tarik and Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven among others. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Under its water & effluent treatment business The water & effluent treatment business of L&T Construction has secured three Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) Water Management orders from the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC). The contracts are for 'Design, Build, Operate, Maintain and Transfer of water supply systems in Hubballi - Dharwada, Kalaburagi and Belagavi cities of Karnataka for cost effective and sustainable up-scaling to a continuous (24x7) pressurized water supply.' The projects are largely funded by the World Bank. The business has secured another EPC order from the Tiruchirappalli City Corporation to 'Provide an Underground Sewerage scheme to added areas of Tiruchirappalli City Corporation Phase III.' Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) TOKYO SoftBank warned investors on Monday that the value of its technology fund may have dropped by as much as $16.7 billion over the last fiscal year, as its investments have been hit hard by the fallout from the coronavirus and by big bets on unprofitable companies like WeWork. SoftBank, which had deployed a $100 billion Vision Fund to make huge wagers on young companies like WeWork and Uber over the last few years, said in a statement posted to its website that the fund would record a loss of 1.8 trillion yen for the fiscal year that ended in March due to the deteriorating market environment. While the loss will be partially offset by revenue from SoftBanks other businesses, the company said it expected to end the year with a 1.35 trillion loss, its first annual loss in 15 years. The disclosure marked another stumble for SoftBank, which upended the start-up investment world when it began the Vision Fund in 2017 but has lately been struggling. The fund was the largest pool of money ever raised for private technology companies, with backing from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, as well as Apple and Foxconn. This Easter morning the doors of my Catholic church, a large 1970s clamshell-style building situated on a leafy-green corner in a suburban neighborhood, were locked. In an admittedly subdued last-ditch effort to grasp at the remains of normalcy, we got up, got dressed, loaded the kids into the car, and went anyway. We walked the grounds, made a flower delivery to the small grotto near the churchs elementary school, and paused to watch a few cars come and go from the parking lot. Our pastor, keenly aware of parishioners needs during the pandemic and statewide lock down, had made parking lot adoration open to all. Many American Catholics have unknowingly grown accustomed to the gentle disarming breeze of an oppression that blows across our safe and peaceful church campuses. While we know that same wind roars at gale force in the direction of other faithful Catholics throughout the world, we believe we sit comfortably under the protections guaranteed by the Constitution. On a typical Sunday, after offering prayers for those weathering the storm in some far-flung corner of the world, discussion turns to work and upcoming beach trips over coffee and donuts in the vestibule. Being an American Catholic is a fairly easy thing when you ignore the encroaching darkness. Not all Catholics practice their faith so lazily. In China, the true Chinese Catholic The Church cries out desperately after being abandoned and forced underground by the Vatican in a profoundly misguided (and perhaps sinister) effort to appease the godless politburo. In Africa and the Middle East, Christians are murdered with numbing regularity. In France, sometimes called the eldest daughter of the Church, cathedrals have been burned, sacred art desecrated, and priests and laypeople attacked. While it is rarely reported by the mainstream press, or even in the pages of leading Catholic newspapers, it is nonetheless occurring with an increasing horror. Perhaps naively, I never actually thought there would be a day when I would be locked out of Mass by my mayor, my governor and, most disappointingly, by my bishop. But on this Easter Sunday, like the three Sundays before it, and for indefinite Sundays to come, it is American Catholics who have found ourselves living under a totalitarian dictate. Virtual services are comforting but do not fulfill the obligations of our faith. Catholics must attend mass. We must receive sacramental communion, especially in the face of sickness and death. It is an ancient edict that many (at times, myself included) have taken as a suggestion rather than a fundamental obligation of the Catholic faith. There is no getting around the fact that receiving the Eucharist is the reason for mass. There is no video and no diocesan-wide dispensation that can take its place. As data increasingly indicates, the threat of this virus is not what we should fear. Rather it is the ease at which many of our Catholic leaders and faithful laypeople have capitulated with little public protest. There is an unnerving void of courage in the American Catholic Church. Jesus overcame injustice and death, but not without a fierce fight. Perhaps that is the teaching that many of our clergy may have missed this Easter Sunday. Our faith is under attack. When we can once again gather in our comfortable corners of faith to pray, we should not be lulled into ignoring reality. The storm is here. Laura Walsh is a stay-at-home mother, millennial, and lifelong Catholic living in the suburban south. Police in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan detained at least eight people in an Easter raid on the homes of Early Rain Covenant Church members, RFA has learned. Police raided an online meeting of the church in a simultaneous operation targeting church deacons, ministers, volunteers and regular members in their homes Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu on . A church member surnamed Zhang said the group was in the midst of an online service of worship when the raid happened. "We haven't met in person since the raid of Dec. 9, 2018, and also because of the epidemic," Zhang told RFA. "We have been holding our services online." "The brothers and sisters of our church were taken away from their homes," she said. "Several people I knew were taken to the police station, where they took statements from them, then released." "[Police] told them not to meet in the name of the Early Rain Covenant Church, nor should they take part in their bible study program or other activities," she said. Online meeting The church had been holding an online meeting to avoid gathering in public because of the coronavirus pandemic, a church member surnamed Song said. "Everyone was meeting using computer equipment from their homes," Song said. "The two people I know about were taken away at around eight or nine in the morning of Easter ." "One of them was a pastor, and the other was a deputy deacon," he said. Song said that while some people were taken to the police station for questioning and released, others remain under investigation. "It seems that the police knew about this meeting from very early on," Song said. "They have been following church members for about a week now." Christians across China have been taking to online video conferencing apps to continue meeting amid the coronavirus epidemic. A Protestant church member surnamed Li in the southern province of Guangdong said the authorities sometimes succeed in blocking such gatherings. "Most people are now gathering online," Li said. "There's not much official interference in these online gatherings because of the epidemic." "But some live webcasts have been taken offline, or the [meeting code] gets blocked," he said. Early Rain Covenant Church pastor Wang Yi and his wife are shown in an undated photo. Early Rain Covenant Church Pastor jailed for nine years On Dec. 30, 2019, the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court jailed Early Rain pastor Wang Yi for nine years, after finding him guilty of "incitement to subvert state power" and of "running an illegal business" in a secret trial. Wang, who founded the church, was detained by police in Sichuan's provincial capital Chengdu on Dec. 14, 2018, alongside dozens of church members in a raid that prompted an international outcry. Some Early Rain Covenant Church members who were detained in raids on Dec. 9 and 10, 2018, and later released said the police had beaten them, and one detainee described being tied to a chair and deprived of water and food for 24 hours, rights groups reported at the time. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), the authorities also ransacked and sealed Early Rain Covenant Churchs properties, including offices, a kindergarten, a seminary, and a Bible college, and searched the homes of many of its members. The ruling Chinese Communist Party, which embraces atheism, exercises tight controls over any form of religious practice among its citizens. China is home to an estimated 68 million Protestants, of whom 23 million worship in state-affiliated churches, and some nine million Catholics, 5.7 million of whom are in state-sponsored organizations. The administration of President Xi Jinping regards Christianity as a dangerous foreign import, with officials warning last year against the "infiltration of Western hostile forces" in the form of religion. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. NEW YORK Christians celebrated Easter Sunday isolated in their homes by the coronavirus while pastors preached the faiths joyous news of Christs resurrection to empty pews. St. Peters Square was barricaded to keep out crowds, while one Florida church drew a large turnout for a drive-in service in a parking lot. Britains Prime Minister Boris Johnson, released from the hospital after a week of treatment for COVID-19, paid an emotional tribute to the countrys National Health Service, saying its doctors and nurses had saved his life no question. He especially thanked two nurses who stood by his bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. The strangeness of this Easter was evident at the Vatican. St. Peters Square, where tens of thousands would normally gather to hear Pope Francis, was empty. Francis celebrated Easter Mass inside the largely vacant basilica, calling for global solidarity to confront the epochal challenge of the pandemic and urging political leaders to give hope and opportunity to people whove lost jobs. Worldwide, families who normally would attend church in their Easter best and later enjoy festive group meals stayed home. Police checkpoints in Europe and outside closed churches elsewhere left the faithful watching services online or on TV. Some U.S. pastors went ahead with in-person services despite state or local bans on large gatherings. At the Happy Gospel Church in Bradenton, Florida, about 100 cars carrying 250 people gathered in the parking lot to hear Pastor Bill Baileys Easter sermon. Some sat in lawn chairs or on tailgates, but families stayed at least 6 feet apart; those in their cars occasionally honked to convey agreement with Baileys remarks. In Louisiana, a pastor who is facing misdemeanor charges for holding services despite a ban on gatherings, said people from every state and all but one continent attended his Easter service Sunday morning. My hope is not in a vaccine for a virus, but all my hope is in Jesus, Rev. Tony Spell said during the service shown online at Life Tabernacle Church in the city of Central. Worshipers could be heard clapping, singing and responding Amen during the service, though it was not clear how many attended. President Donald Trump had said he planned to watch an online service led by the Rev. Robert Jeffress of the Southern Baptist megachurch First Baptist Dallas, although the White House wouldnt confirm whether he did. The pastor, a staunch ally of the president, mentioned Trump in his remarks. We are going to get through this crisis with your continued strong leadership and the power of God, Jeffress said. In their own Easter message, Trump and his wife, Melania, paid tribute to the medical professionals, first responders and other essential workers striving to combat the pandemic. Back on March 24, at a Fox News virtual town hall, Trump had broached the possibility that the U.S. could emerge from widespread lockdowns by this weekend. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter, he said. Wouldnt it be great to have all of the churches full? Trump said in a subsequent interview. Youll have packed churches all over our country. Instead, most churches were empty, including St. Patricks Cathedral in New York City, which is the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led a televised Mass, said he was pleased congregants could have a virtual celebration. We miss you though, he added. Wed rather you be here physically. In the morning, members of churches from across New York sang Christ the Lord is Risen Today from balconies and windows. Even if you didnt hear everyone, God heard everyone, said Kathy Keller, of Reedemer Presbyterian Church, who helped organize the event online. In Europe, countries used roadblocks, fines and other tactics to keep people from traveling over an Easter weekend with beautiful spring weather. The Italian government said weekend police patrols resulted in more than 12,500 people being sanctioned and 150 facing criminal charges of violating lockdown measures. On the hopeful side, officials said Italy recorded the lowest number of new coronavirus dead in three weeks, with 431 people dying in the past day to bring its total to over 19,800. As hard-hit countries like Italy and Spain see reduced daily virus infections and deaths, economic pressures are mounting to loosen the tight restrictions on daily life. Southern Europe and the United States, whose death toll of over 22,000 is now the worlds highest, have been the recent focal points of the pandemic. But coronavirus hot spots have been shifting, with new concerns rising in Japan, Turkey and Britain, where the death toll passed 10,000. Uncertainties loomed about the months ahead, with a top European Union official suggesting people hold off on making any summer vacation plans. Some European nations started tentative moves to ease their shutdowns. Spain, which on Sunday reported its lowest daily growth in infections in three weeks, will allow workers in some nonessential industries to return to factories and construction sites Monday. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older people and the infirm, it can cause severe symptoms and become fatal. More than 1.8 million infections have been reported and over 114,000 people have died worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has the most confirmed cases, over 555,000. The numbers likely dont show the full toll, due to limited testing, uneven counting of the dead and some governments playing down the extent of outbreaks. In Britain, Johnson thanked those who treated him at St. Thomas Hospital and praised the entire National Health Service, which he called the beating heart of this country. His week in the hospital included three nights in the intensive care unit, where he received oxygen but was not put on a ventilator. I cant thank them enough. I owe them my life, Johnson said in his statement. His office said he will continue his recovery at his country home. In the United States, about half the deaths are in the New York metropolitan area, but hospitalizations are slowing in the state and other indicators suggest that lockdowns and social distancing are flattening the curve of infections. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said the economy in parts of the country could gradually reopen as early as next month. While he said theres no light switch that will be clicked to turn everything back, he told CNNs State of the Union that rolling reentry will be required based on the status of the pandemic in various parts of the country. New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that 758 people died in the state Saturday, the sixth day in a row the toll topped 700. More than 9,300 people have died in New York. ___ Winfield reported from Rome. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed. ___ Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak. Two weeks ago Alex Canal, 40, was installing tiles in a swimming pool in a country house outside Madrid. The company that hired Canal was paying him in cash at the end of each work day. Canal, like the rest of his colleagues, lived from day to day. That afternoon, when he finished work, the boss gave them the bad news about the stricter lockdown conditions. We are not allowed to work. Everyone has to go home. Canal collected his things and left. Since then, he has been living in a room that is two meters wide and four meters long. He shares this room with his wife Carmen Rosa and their two children, who are 15 and six. The four of them take up the entire space. This is where we have been spending the lockdown, says Canal. And this is where we sleep. Two up on top and two below he adds, pointing to bunk beds with old, sagging mattresses. The 40-square-meter apartment in Alcobendas, 13 kilometers north of the Spanish capital, has two more rooms which are home to two more families. In total, there are 10 people living in a space designed for two or three. At times there are so many people in one spot that they stumble into each other, but they have grown so accustomed to it that they dont even seem to take notice anymore. The hardest thing about this is not the disease. Its not being able to leave, having no space, says Canal from behind a paper face mask. And we are praying that no one falls ill, because we would not be able to isolate them. They would have to live out on the landing or by the front door. He is serious when he says this. I would go live under a bridge before infecting my children, he says. The home of Alex Canal, Carmen Rosa Garcia and their two children. Samuel Sanchez David de Miguel is the director of the Red Cross Social Intervention and Employment department in the Madrid region. He helps deliver food to the most vulnerable people in the region. Before the pandemic, every Red Cross food bank would assist around 10 people. Now we have 50 people at each one, he says. There are 45 such centers in the region of Madrid alone. This health emergency is leading to a social emergency for which we have no plan or protocol, says De Miguel. A tremendous pocket of poverty has been generated in just two weeks. And it keeps growing. In Spain, there is an entire segment of the population that lives in the informal economy and this sector has ground to a halt. It has been destroyed in just a few days. And people have been left with nothing. One of the Red Cross food centers is in the municipality of San Sebastian de los Reyes, next to Alcobendas. There, inside a large room, two volunteers named Javi and Sofia fill dozens of cardboard boxes with food and cleaning products. We are receiving 100 calls for help every day. Every single day, says Fran Rico, the head of the center. What we are currently providing is humanitarian aid. I dont remember anything like it. The hardest thing about this is not the disease. Its not being able to leave, having no space Alex Canal, who lives in a single room with wife and two children According to Sofia, sometimes they deliver food to homes where people have spent two days without eating. I dont want to imagine what this will be like within two months, she says, as she prepares to visit 10 different homes. A loud cough is heard when the Red Cross team enters the first building on the route. Mari Cruz, wearing a red dressing gown and a face mask, is waiting by the door of her apartment. She does not cross the threshold. A few days ago she tested positive for coronavirus. Javi and Sofia leave the box of food on her kitchen table. The apartment has two rooms. Mari Cruz lives in one with her two children, aged four and two. Her pregnant sister, who has cancer, lives in the other. She is isolated so that I dont infect her, explains Mari Cruz. They have not left the apartment since March 13, a day before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced a state of alarm that effectively put the entire country on lockdown in a bid to slow the coronavirus outbreak. A neighbor goes to the supermarket for us and also buys us medicine. God bless her. We bring it up in a basket using a pulley from the window, says Mari Cruz. Everyone in the apartment lives off the child support payments made by the childrens father. Its around 200 a month. But he has lost his job, so I dont know what is going to happen next month, she says. If I survive the coronavirus, I dont know if I will survive the crisis. In the home of Miriam, which is the second stop on the route, there is more space. Miriam lives in an apartment with her son and two friends, but her friends are spending the lockdown at the homes where they work. While she puts away the milk cartons from the Red Cross, she explains that the coronavirus crisis has left her with nothing. I was working as a domestic helper in four houses. They paid me by the hour. Only one continues to pay me, so we have very little. Everything goes to pay the rent, she says. Miriams son is 15 years old, and he has his own troubles now that schools have closed. We dont have a computer. To do his homework and follow classes he connects using my cellphone, and he sends a few emails to his teachers. But its difficult, she explains. Sometimes I go to the bathroom to feel for a moment that I am alone Blanca Nubia, who lives in a single room with her two sons According to De Miguel many people are being left behind by the crisis. People without resources, without internet connections, without means [] There are going to be students who will begin the next term with much less preparation than their classmates, he says. Miriams son is one example. We have also come across cases of parents who have to go to work and who are leaving their young children alone at home all day. These children are not being looked after, adds De Miguel. The Red Cross volunteers continue to deliver food packages in Alcobendas, next to San Sebastian de los Reyes. Javi is welcomed warmly by Blanca Nubia, 44, who lives with her two sons, who are 27 and 15. All three of them live inside a room she rents for 350 a month. A man rents out the second bedroom in the 50-square-meter apartment, and an entire family is living in the third. They all share a kitchen and the bathroom. The floor is covered with white tiles and there is very little light. The walls are bare and worn out. I dont even know where to go. Sometimes I come here to the kitchen and I sit down. Then I return to the bedroom. Sometimes I go to the bathroom just to feel for a moment that I am alone I am truly desperate, says Nubia, who lost her job at a cleaning company where she worked with her son. Blanca Nubia in her home in Alcobendas. Samuel Sanchez Two euros in the bank account Nubia says that she sends out dozens of job applications every day. Of all types. But only those that I cannot accept reply. A man who wants company things involving webcams... There are people who are taking advantage of those of us who are desperate, she says with teary eyes. Right now I have 2 in my bank account. I dont even have enough for a loaf of bread. I depend on this, she says, pointing to the food boxes brought by Javi and Sofia. The Red Cross volunteers end the route at the home of Abderrazak Harraz, a native of Morocco who has lived in Spain for the past 18 years. He comes to the front door of the building to collect the food package, wearing a woollen cap on his head and sandals on his feet. I am looking for employment as a seasonal farm worker. I read somewhere that they need people in the countryside, he says. Right now I dont have anything. My family in Morocco is sending me money. I need to work in something, anything. But at least I am healthy. There are people going through worse things. One shouldnt complain, he says, smiling. As Javi and Sofia are about to leave, Harraz asks if they need more volunteers. If you need help, call me please. I could lend a hand, he says, as he picks up the last bag of food and returns to confinement. Outside, the rain keeps coming down. English version by Melissa Kitson. The coronavirus pandemic in Egypt could subside in June if Egyptians comply with precautionary measures, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, said Egypt's Minister of State for Information Osama Heikal. Ramadan, which is often marked by family gatherings, is expected to start around 23 April. The unfolding of the crisis during Ramadan is worrying, but if citizens showed commitment, the epidemic situation of the coronavirus in Egypt will subside in June, the minister said in TV comments late on Sunday. The matter is contingent on peoples awareness, he added, urging Egyptians to avoid large gatherings and strictly follow personal hygiene practices. Heikal said the country's healthcare system is capable of tackling a "gradual" rise in cases, stressing that the problem lies in a sudden increase in infections. A high government emergency committee is closely monitoring the situation and citizens behaviors during the crisis, he said. Egypt has so far reported 2,065 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 159 deaths. Search Keywords: Short link: Phoenix Crawford does school work on a laptop while being home-schooled by his mum Donna Eddy in Sydney, Australia, on April 9, 2020. (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) Stay at Home, Learn at Home, Queensland Classrooms Go Online When Queensland schools return for term two on Monday, April 20, the majority of students will learn online for the first five weeks while only the children of essential workers and the vulnerable will attend in-classroom lessons. This decision provides mums and dads with the clarity they need ahead of the new school term. It also gives certainty for our hard-working teachers who will be continuing to deliver lessons in a way they might never have imagined, said Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at a press conference on April 13. The decision was announced jointly with Minister for Education Grace Grace who said the decision will be reviewed half way through the term on May 15. Grace posted on Twitter saying that Queensland schools will loan laptops and devices to students who dont have access to the technology needed to pursue their educations. Telstra will also provide 5,000 SIM cards to students who dont have internet access to help them overcome that obstacle. For children who dont have a laptop at home, schools can loan them devices. Weve worked with Telstra to secure more than 5000 sim cards to make sure students without internet connectivity can access online resources. 2/3 Grace Grace MP (@gracextwo) April 13, 2020 Victoria, the Australian Captial Territory (ACT), and South Australia have already announced similar models for their schools. Teachers will be provided with the resourcesand health and safety measuresthey need to deliver an equitable education to all students. Although most students will be absent, staff will still be on site and we are continuing to work with suppliers to bulk purchase cleaning and hygiene supplies to support schools, said Grace. Where children cannot attend in person or online, hard copy paper access will be provided. The Queensland Teachers Union (QTU), which was previously critical of the state governments approach to teacher safety during the pandemic, has announced that they are working with the state government to develop the new criteria for term two that will make teaching safer. On April 13, a media release from QTU president Kevin Bates said that there was now a clear set of guidelines for schools in term two, with an increased amount of support for the health and safety of Queensland teachers. The guidelines include limiting the number of students per classroom to 12, testing teachers who display flu-like symptoms for CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus (commonly known as the coronavirus), and allowing anyone with a medical certificate requiring them to work from home to do so without needing to take sick leave. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. DUBAI (Reuters) - Transit through Bahrain International Airport is open again for international travellers, Manama-based Gulf Air said on Saturday, though entry to the country is limited to Bahrainis and other residents during the coronavirus pandemic. "In compliance with the new regulations issued by the Bahrain Civil Aviation Authority, we are welcoming back transit passengers through Bahrain International Airport. Arrival into Bahrain remains restricted to nationals and residents," the airline said on Twitter. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Mark Heinrich) News that a deal was finalized by OPEC and other oil producing nations to cut production by nearly 10 million barrels per day is being welcomed in Canada, where provinces have suffered drastic revenue losses due to rock-bottom crude prices. This is good. We welcome any news that brings stability to global oil markets, Natural Resources Minister Seamus ORegan said in an emailed statement Sunday. The agreement between the cartel, Russia and other countries came late last week and followed a supply battle that began last month when Russia refused to cut its output amid plunging demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production and reduce its price. Video conference negotiations were held last week, which included representatives from the Alberta government. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who commented Saturday on the negotiations and the hope for their success, noted his province had not been asked to constrain production. Weve been very clear in conveying to OPEC, the United States and others around the world that Alberta has already been in curtailment of production for the past 15 months and that we cannot really affect global prices because we do not have global market access. We dont have those pipelines to the coast, Kenney told reporters during a teleconference on Albertas pandemic response. Even if we wanted to surge production, we would be capped out at about four million barrels per day that we could ship through existing pipelines plus crude by rail, he added. The deal that was finalized Sunday reportedly allows Mexico to cut only 100,000 barrels a month, which had been a sticking point after the talks last week. Mexicos energy minister tweeted that the group of nations agreed to cut 9.7 million barrels a day to begin May 1, and energy officials from other countries shared similar information Sunday. ORegan, who participated in a conference call Friday with G20 energy ministers, had refused to speculate on whether Canada might consider curtailing its production as part of the broader multilateral effort, but said its no secret that production has dropped in Newfoundland, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also wouldnt say Friday whether Canada would take measures to reduce its output, although he noted that Alberta has already curtailed production and that Canada would continue to look to make sure that other countries are doing their part. On Sunday, ORegan said Canada is committed to achieving price certainty and economic stability. The federal government is deeply concerned about oil price instability and the impact on thousands of workers in Canadas energy sector, and their families, the email stated. Kenney on Saturday chastised the reckless actions of the Saudis and Russians which he said flooded global inventories to the point that extremely low prices would continue for at least 18 months. Theres just no sugar-coating that, he said, adding he awaits news of federal plan to help the energy industry. ORegan said last week that the long-awaited bailout would contain measures to improve liquidity for Canadas energy sector and is coming soon, but he didnt say when. A Department of Veterans Affairs health adviser has emerged as a key sentinel among federal and academic infectious disease experts to sound an alarm on the COVID-19 pandemic, according to emails published Saturday by the New York Times. Dr. Carter Mecher, the VA's senior adviser to the Office of Public Health, warned as early as Jan. 28 that the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "were behind the curve," in responding to the novel coronavirus and swift action was needed to stop it, according to an email thread obtained by the Times through a Freedom of Information Act request. "You guys made fun of me, screaming to close the schools. Now I'm screaming, close the colleges and universities," wrote Mecher to the group, nicknamed "Red Dawn" for the 1984 movie that pitted actors Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen against a foreign enemy invasion. Red Dawn was hosted by Dr. Duane Caneva, chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security. Upon analyzing early data from China, Mecher said it appeared that the virus looked as transmissible as the flu, but with a greater ability to replicate and a case fatality rate comparable to the worst flu season. "This is really unbelievable ... any way you cut it, this is going to be bad," Mecher wrote. From Jan. 28 through the middle of March, the email chain grew from a handful of physicians and researchers with the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Defense, VA, academia and the private sector to a group that included dozens others in the federal government. It eventually included Surgeon General of the United States Jerome Adams and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Related: Sailor from Carrier Roosevelt Dies of COVID-19 Caneva wrote that the chain was started "to provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to COVID-19." From its inception, two of the most outspoken voices were Mecher and Eva Lee, director of the Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Health Care at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The group studied the disease spread on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, quarantined in Yokohama, Japan, on Feb. 3. They also discussed the potential for an overwhelmed hospital system in the U.S., and started calling for social distancing on Feb. 9. "[It's] over 10 to 30 times more deadly than seasonal flu," Lee wrote following an analysis of cases in Hubei. "Moreover, this is only a lower bound because the government basically shut down and isolated the entire infected zone." By mid-February, Mecher was asking about the strategy for primary care and hospital response, including isolating people at home and encouraging virtual medical appointments and telework. He also inquired about nursing home spread and the lag time of testing. "We are going to have a devil of time with lab confirmation -- it is just too slow ... that means we are going to have to fly blind early on," Mecher wrote Feb. 20. That week, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert recommending that U.S. citizens reconsider any planned travel on cruise ships, and CDC officials said they were seeing community spread of the coronavirus in some Asian countries. "If you're watching the news, you may be hearing about schools shutting down and businesses closing in countries in Asia to reduce the potential spread of this virus," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "The day may come where we need to implement such measures in the U.S. communities." President Donald Trump held two campaign rallies the same week, but did not mention the virus, which had 15 U.S. cases at the time. By Feb. 28, Mecher was forecasting total veteran deaths from the novel coronavirus, based on how the virus affected Diamond Princess passengers: more than 461,000 veterans ill and 30,736 dead across the U.S., including 221,703 hospitalized and 14,780 in VA facilities over three months. "Now you understand the challenge," he wrote. On March 2, Lee, (who has been convicted of falsifying a certificate needed for a $40,000 grant from the National Science Foundation on other research), said non-pharmaceutical interventions, or NPI, such as school closures, telework, travel restrictions, hand-washing and social isolation should be put in place. "We need actions, actions and more actions," she wrote. "Six deaths in Seattle. Seattle missed the window. It is too late for NPI," Mecher responded. Mecher helped write the 2007 White House National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza under President George W. Bush and served as director for Medical Preparedness Policy on the White House Homeland Security Council under President Barack Obama. He also has served as chief medical officer of the VA's Southeast Network, responsible for VA health services in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. By March 12, Mecher, a self-described "dufus from the VA" in his emails, was still searching for solutions: " I think we ran out of time for Seattle. But there are other cities and communities where we still can make a difference," he wrote. "I don't understand why California and NYC are not acting more aggressively." As of April 13, the U.S. had nearly 561,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 22,861 deaths. New York has been the hardest hit, with 188,000 cases and 9,385 deaths and ordered a lockdown on March 20. By contrast, California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the nation's strictest lockdown measures on March 19, has had roughly 22,000 confirmed cases and 651 deaths. Within the VA system, 3,754 veterans had tested positive for the coronavirus as of April 11, and 200 have died. It is not known how widespread the impact of the illness has been on the entire veteran population; dozens have died in nursing homes, including 37 at the New Jersey Veterans Home in Paramus, N.J. The Times story was based on several emails first obtained by Kaiser Health News and a more extensive FOIA search. Mecher, in one of his last emails obtained by the Times, penned on St. Patrick's Day, said the most difficult message to convey to government and health leaders, as well as the general public, was the need to "take action before the storm arrived and the sun was shining." "The story line of the articles written about the variation in outcomes in U.S. cities [during the flu pandemic of 1918] is now unfolding and writing itself in real time before our very eyes," he wrote. -- Patricia Kime can be reached at patriciankime@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime. Read More: One-third of DoD's hospitalized COVID-19 Patients are in the ICU Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Makassar Mon, April 13, 2020 15:27 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18ef5a 1 National COVID-19,COVID-19-Indonesian-patients,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,South-Sulawesi Free The South Sulawesi Health Agency confirmed on Sunday that 26 out of 42 crew members of KM Lambelu had tested positive for COVID-19 after undertaking swab tests in the provincial capital of Makassar. The health agency's head, Ichsan Mustari, announced the test results through a video conference on Sunday evening. From the first stage of swab testing conducted for the 42 crew members being quarantined off the coast of Makassar, the result shows that 26 people are positive while the remaining 16 are negative, he said. The second wave of the swab tests was scheduled for Monday, in which 99 other crew members of the vessel, owned by state ship operator PT Pelni, were set to be examined. The ship arrived in Makassar on Friday after sailing from Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, with 141 people on board. KM Lambelu had carried a total of 238 passengers and it was not allowed to dock at Lorens Say Port in Maumere last week by Sikka regent Fransiskus Roberto Diogo, as three people on board the vessel had reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus. Health authorities in Sikka regency took all the passengers into quarantine on Tuesday and conducted rapid tests. The ship then headed to Makassar as some passengers had tested positive. The ship is currently being quarantined about 2 nautical miles off Makassars Soekarno-Hatta Port. People on board the ship have yet to embark. The swab tests were conducted on board the ship, with KM Lambelu to sail to the port and return to its quarantine position once the tests are done, Ichsan said. Read also: Concerns rise over importing COVID-19 as hundreds of Indonesian crewmen come home Ichsan added that the crew members who tested positive were isolated on the ship, under tight monitoring by health authorities who also provided the crewmen with masks, medicines and hand sanitizer. The crew members were also given food supplies. No one disembarked from the ship, regardless of whether they tested positive or negative. They are isolated onboard so residents of [Makassar] should not worry about it, he said. On Sunday, South Sulawesi recorded 18 new cases of COVID-19, excluding those on KM Lambelu, bringing the tally of new cases to 44 in the province. At least 222 people have so far tested positive in South Sulawesi, which had also reported 16 fatalities linked to the contagious virus as of Sunday. Thirty people have recovered, while 382 people are currently patients under surveillance (PDP). Of the 382 PDP, 125 have recovered and 30 have died. The province has 2,672 people under monitoring (ODP) suspected of having been infected by the virus. According to the government's official count as of Sunday, the number of infected people in Indonesia has reached 4,241, with 373 fatalities recorded nationwide. (asp) He came off his ventilator on April 6 but since then has been confused and disoriented. His daughter said hes strong and his vital signs are good so the family is hopeful. But he tested positive again for COVID-19 and needs two negative tests before he can be moved out of intensive care, Brock said. 13.04.2020 LISTEN It is Easter Monday! I had to confirm if it really was. I have lived over twenty years right here in this town that has seen everything about Kwahu Easter; the coming, and the going. It only got intense as the years went by and there was never a day it occurred to anyone that the mountain will have a break during this occasion. Thursday morning before the Easter celebrations was for natives who tripped from outside Kwahu, within and outside the country to begin the festive occasion. The evidence of their presence was welcomed by the increased number of luxurious cars in town. For some reason, you could tell the difference between those coming for the celebrations and natives. Thursday evening was more like a home match. Welcome Bash rained in Nkawkaw, a town that appears to be the entrance to towns on the mountains. A sense of what was going to happen in the coming days was well sounded as celebrations went on till morning. People retired but not the music. The music didn't stop! It only got louder and louder as people trooped in. Friday had no space for patience, music and engines had no rest. People gave fashion its deserving desire too. One thing I still find amusing is how everyone tried to play music. In cars, on the streets and in rooms. This collective voluntary effort brought noise alive and caused everything to nod to the rhythm of music. Did I mention church on Friday morning? No I didn't. So, religious activities did not stop. You can doubt how church was still held, but in Kwahu it happens. The morning saw Easter church activities. I remember one Friday morning a truck was sharing packs of gin throwing them out to people by the street and even to us on our way to church. There were times I would think of churches trying to scream: Come O ye sinners and the Lord will save you and Easter celebrants replying: we will do this later please let us do the will of our hearts. I still remember a Church having an Easter convention at Kwahu Abetifi and the only thing that separated the church from the bash was the feet of women in headgear and guys with beer bottles. I mean the church was having a worship service and the Easter bash held the praise of celebrations. The nights had stories, stories that can not be covered on this sheet but just be sure to know the description of Amsterdam night life might have to contend to beat Kwahu Easter nights. Traffic at its best; it was wise to walk on foot than wait for the traffic to move. You could dance and have a partner without complications for the night as if you had known each other for years. I mean you may probably lose your partner to a random person only to reunite in the morning. The night slept just before morning and the morning quickly took over with a new energized company of celebrants to replace drunk and tired bodies. I should mention the mornings were nothing like the nights though. Streets went almost empty and you wonder where everyone had gone hiding. The afternoon gave strength to bodies resurrecting from the hangover to begin the work of Kwahu oo Kwahu through another night. This is how it has been for many years. There has been developments that have made the celebrations more pleasurable but the basic ways has remained the same. We can think of the Paragliding festival, the Kwahu Easter fair and a lot more by Kwahu Republic that has spiced up Easter celebrations but neither of them have altered the underlying print of this great event. Easter Mondays was the day for stories. The good and bad, funny and sorrowful. Let me begin from times past where there was no mobile money transactions. Natives got to buy everything for just the bus fare amount from Nkawkaw to the destination of the seller. Here are some funny ones. There were people who got robbed while drunk or in human traffic or to be honest while they satisfied themselves with their night lovers and woke up on a Monday morning with no money not even money to board a bus back home. Now think about this in the shoes of someone with no friend in sight and banks not operating on a holiday! You can not blame such a person in quandary if he sold a watch, slipper, shoes, shirt, trousers, phone, or even a bag to get to safety. You could get most of these items for just the price of bus fare. It was not a funny situation for these people but it was one that would end the Easter celebration with something to laugh about. The scary stories I still think were made up, but there are people who will die than agree with me. Just imagine stories like a guy following a beautiful girl home remembering clearly having a nice time with her only to wake up in the cemetery. I still laugh at these stories but hey there are ardent believers. I dont want to think of the very awful ones, like death and accidents so I will keep that out for now. All in context, Covid-19 has shaken a great event, one that was recognised as a tradition. You dont have to be told the loss of the financial contribution the Easter events gave to the people of Kwahu. Hotels were booked months before the event. House owners reserved rooms to be rented and charged on hourly basis. A virus has managed to change the course of this tradition. One that was not expected but truly historic. Kwahu rests! Mr Chen Xiaodong, Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, has held talks with a group of African Ambassadors, including Mr Edward Boateng, Ghanas Ambassador to China. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the fallout of the targeting of African nationals for compulsory testing, quarantine and eviction in the Guangdong Province. A statement issued by Ghanas Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, which was copied to the Ghana News Agency, said at that meeting, it was announced that the Government of China has taken note of the situation and was taking immediate steps to stop the targeting of and ill-treatment meted out to Africans, particularly Ghanaian compatriots in the Guangdong Province. It said the Government of Ghana has taken note of this development and was keenly monitoring the situation. On account of these assurances received from the Chinese Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration would like to entreat all Ghanaian nationals living in China and particularly, Guangdong Province to remain calm and stay in contact with our Mission in Beijing and the Consulate-General in Guangzhou and share concerns of further occurrences on the following numbers: +8618612081400 +8618612959040. The Government of Ghana values the bond of friendship, bilateral and multilateral cooperation which spans over six decades and which has waxed stronger under the leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and President Xi Jinping, and calls upon the Chinese Government to speedily and comprehensively find a lasting solution to this unfortunate issue. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Chinese Communist Party is making a great show of its humanitarian help to countries suffering from the new coronavirus. "China selflessly extends helping hand to countries around the world in global battle against COVID-19," said a March 25 headline in the English language version of the party's official mouthpiece, People's Daily. By the end of last week, Beijing had dispatched medical teams to advise 10 nations. Poor countries in Asia including Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Myanmar and Pakistan. And countries further afield including Iran, Iraq and Venezuela. A Chinese aid team arrives at Fiumicino Airport in Rome, carrying members of a medical team and several tons of medical supplies. Credit:AP And it has sent supplies of medical equipment and money to a much larger group 82 countries altogether, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. But nowhere has its aid diplomacy been more gratefully received than in Rome. When a desperate Italy called for help from its European neighbours, it initially received none as each capital locked down its own supplies, a shocking failure of European solidarity. Beijing stepped into the void and sent Italy a medical team as well as 1000 ventilators, 50,000 test kits and 2 million masks, among other essentials. A group of scientists advising Virginia's government said Monday that social distancing in the state appears to be working, and that their models show the state's hospitals have enough beds to handle the coronavirus outbreak for the next few months if current trends continue. But Gov. Ralph Northam, D, warned that the models also show lifting a stay-at-home order or other social distancing measures too soon would case a large spike in cases that would overwhelm medical resources. "We can't afford that," Northam said. His words of caution came as D.C. officials said Mayor Muriel Bowser, D, will decide this week whether to extend school and business closures beyond the current end date of April 24 and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, R, said he is talking with scientists, doctors and business leaders about how and when to safely lift Maryland's restrictions. Hogan, who chairs the National Governors Association, said in an interview on CNN that it is up to governors to decide how to move forward, despite statements by President Donald Trump that he wants to reopen the economy, possibly by May 1. "We'd love to have the president's cooperation, but governors made decisions to take various actions in their states based on what they thought was right for their state, based on the facts on the ground, talking with doctors and scientists," Hogan told Anderson Cooper on CNN Newsroom. "I think individual governors who made those decisions will have the ultimate decision about what to do with their states." Bowser's chief of staff, John Falcicchio, said the mayor is coordinating with Hogan and Northam and plans to announce by Friday "how we might safely open certain portions of District government, schools or private business, or extend the current posture." Northam told reporters he plans to extend his shutdown order for nonessential businesses, which lasts through April 23, even though his stay-at-home order extends through June 10. He said he will announce the new date on Wednesday. "Just as soon as we can get people's lives back to normal we will, but we also have to do it safely, and we know right now that the social distancing is working, it has flattened that curve," Northam said. Hogan's general shutdown orders are in place as long as there is a state of emergency, which can be extended for 30 days at a time and was renewed Friday. Maryland school officials so far have closed schools only through April 24. Northam said there needs to be "a consistent way of easing these restrictions [with] as little confusion as necessary." With only the Potomac River dividing them, "the scenario that we don't want is for Virginia to do one thing and Maryland to do another thing, as far as when for example restaurants or bars would open," he said. "And that's the case with Washington, D.C., as well." Across the three jurisdictions, 3,173 novel coronavirus patients have been hospitalized during the pandemic, according to tallies from state health departments. The number hospitalizations is up this week compared to last week, but falls short of the numbers anticipated in a surge that officials have said could begin as early as mid-April. Scientists from the University of Virginia and the Rand Corp. said Virginians have cut back on retail and recreation activities by 44 percent, according to mobility data from Google. Visits to grocery stores are down 18 percent and travel to workplaces is down 39 percent. Northam has banned gatherings of 10 or more people, urged nonessential businesses to shut down and instructed residents to shelter at home unless they have pressing reason to go out. "I think the average Virginian really needs to listen to the guidance of the state officials and try to do what they're asked because it's working," said Chris Barrett, executive director of U.Va.'s Biocomplexity Institute. Lifting the restrictions could lead quickly to a second wave of infections, the scientists said. State Secretary of Health Dan Carey said Northam's administration is studying the projections to plan for how and when to ease the state out of the current policies, which run through June 10 - looking at the data to find "triggers for when you open a certain amount." Bowser said Monday the city was on track to add an extra 1,000 hospital beds by Wednesday, adding capacity at existing hospitals and their campuses. They may not all be needed. LaQuandra Nesbitt, director of D.C. Health, said 295 individuals were currently hospitalized with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, with 94 in intensive care units and 31 on ventilators. Those figures include nonresidents in D.C. hospitals. The city has been bracing for an early summer peak in hospitalizations requiring thousands of additional beds, based on a pessimistic model that officials have said will help the city prepare for the worst. "We are a few weeks behind where the new New York metropolitan area is in terms of our new infections, so we would still have to continue to analyze our data," Falcicchio said. The number of known cases in the region climbed to 16,661 on Monday, with 464 deaths. Virginia reported 473 more coronavirus infections, about half of which were in the D.C. suburbs, for a total of 5,763. The state's total fatalities hit 149. Maryland reported 711 new infections for a total of 8,939, with 263 deaths.The District added 80 cases, for a total of 1,959, with 53 deaths. Officials also announced the first death of an inmate in the D.C. jail. Deon Crowell, 51, had been jailed awaiting trail on charges of first-degree murder. According to data analyzed by The Washington Post, Maryland has led the region in hospitalizations. Between Friday and Sunday, Maryland hospitalized more than 560 patients - the state's highest three-day total so far during the pandemic. Virginia hospitalized about 50 people within the same period. Virginia on Monday said it had 903 coronavirus-related hospitalizations throughout the pandemic, of them in the Fairfax health district. Maryland said it has hospitalized 1,975 individuals. Data analyzed by The Washington Post shows that has 11 of the 15 Maryland ZIP codes with the highest rates of covid-19 cases are in Prince George's County, a majority black suburb of about 900,000 people just outside Washington. The remaining ZIP codes in the top 15 are northwest of Baltimore and in rural parts of Frederick County. As officials begin talking about how to eventually and safely roll back restrictions, they are considering a variety of factors including the availability of testing kits and antibody testing. D.C. received its first batch of rapid coronavirus testing kits this week and expects to increase the capacity of its public health lab to 500 a day, officials said Monday. They said they are still determining how to deploy the kits. "Testing is going to be ongoing, it's going to be necessary at every stage of our response and recovery," Bowser said. Officials also said the District would be prepared to conduct antibody testing in May. Those tests detect whether a person has been exposed to the virus, but not whether they are currently infected. Nesbitt said such testing is useful for determining whether to lift social distancing requirements. In Virginia, about 85 scientists and researchers at the Biocomplexity Institute have been developing computer models to chart the possible course of the disease in the state, taking work done elsewhere and adapting it for regional differences and data around Virginia. Their projections suggest a range of possible trajectories, but have led Northam to say he anticipates the peak period of infection to occur sometime between late April and late May. The researchers found that if Northam's restrictions were allowed to expire on June 10, with business in the state resuming operations with about half their usual capacity, a steep second wave of coronavirus cases soon develop. Left unaddressed, that wave would overwhelm most hospital systems in the state by August - with Northern Virginia being hit soonest and hardest, the researchers said. Virginia also released data Monday showing a bulk of its major outbreaks are at long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes. It reported fatalities and hospitalizations at each of the state's 35 regional health districts for the first time. The Henrico health district, in the greater Richmond area, reported the most deaths: 33. That total doesn't include all of the 42 fatalities at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center, the site of one of the country's largest institutional outbreaks, because of a delay in reporting. Two new deaths were reported at Canterbury over the weekend. The District's Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department said nine more members of the department have tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing to 65 the number of firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians who have contracted covid-19. Nearly 300 emergency workers are under quarantine. - - - The Washington Post's Antonio Olivo, Ovetta Wiggins, Rebecca Tan, John Harden, Peter Hermann and Keith Alexander contributed to this report. Leading stock exchangeNSEon Monday said it has contributed Rs 26 crore towards PM-CARES Fund and a few state government funds in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic. The employees of the NSE Group are also separately contributing one day's salary towards the PM-CARES Fund for this purpose, a release said. ''NSE is committed to supporting the government in the nation's battle against the pandemic and in providing assistance to alleviate the difficulties faced by the ecosystem due to COVID 19, the release said. The Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES Fund)was set up on March 28 to raise money for combating the coronavirus outbreak and to provide relief to the affected people. Political leaders, corporates, defence personnel, employees of PSUs such as railways, and Bollywood personalities have made contribution to the PM-CARES Fund. So far, the pandemic has claimed 308 lives in India, while the number of cases has climbed to 9,152, according to the Union Health Ministry. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The School District of Philadelphia District Headquarters. (The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS) Read more Despite extended filing and payment deadlines for city, state and federal taxes, the Philadelphia School Income Tax is still due on Wednesday, April 15, 2020. The Department of Revenue for the city of Philadelphia said there is no change to the April 15, 2020, due date for filing School Income Tax (SIT) returns. Taxpayers are directed to file returns for the 2019 tax year and either pay the balance due or claim any over-payment as a refund or credit against their 2020 taxes. Taxpayers who cannot meet the deadline are encouraged to file an extension request (available online or in the SIT packet mailed to taxpayers) and to pay an amount equal to their 2018 SIT liability. For all updates on Philadelphia city tax deadlines, visit the Department of Revenues website: www.phila.gov/documents/coronavirus-tax-guidance. Forms for School Income Tax are available on the Department of Revenues website here: https://www.phila.gov/documents/2019-school-income-tax-forms. The Philadelphia School District receives 100% of the School Income Tax, spokeswoman Vicki Riley said, and needs the revenue at this time in order to meet its cash flow needs. As you know, governments like businesses are choosing among difficult options right now. We realize that doesnt make paying the taxes any easier, but delaying the deadline for the SIT hurts our public schools. In guidance available on its website, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue announced extensions for personal income tax returns and payments due April 15, 2020, until July 15, 2020, conforming to similar IRS extensions for federal income taxes. For a full list of state extensions, visit the press release website at www.media.pa.gov/Pages/Revenue.aspx. Chinas oil imports may have declined in March, a Reuters poll of 31 economists showed on Monday, while experts expect Chinas economy to have sharply contracted in the first quarter of the year due to the coronavirus pandemic. China, the worlds top oil importer and key oil demand growth driver, went in lockdown at the end of January and February to try to stop the spreading of COVID-19. As a result, demand for energy for industrial activity and for fuel sharply dropped. Chinese oil imports held up in the first two months, because volumes had been contracted weeks before the first public announcement of the virus and because Chinese refiners typically stock up on crude before the Chinese Lunar New Year, which was at the end of January this year. Chinas crude oil imports increased by 5.2 percent on the year in January-February to come in at 10.47 million barrels per day (bpd), according to Reuters calculations on data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs. In March and early April, China was said to have been building its crude reserves, thanks to the cheapest oil in years, but the rate of filling storage would be lower than in previous years because of limited storage capacity, lending less support to oil prices this time around than in previous years, Wood Mackenzie said at the end of last month. Premium: A Global Oil Cartel? Oil imports, however, are just a part of Chinas trade and economy, which as per the Reuters survey, are expected to have contracted in March because of limited demand from overseas amid lockdowns in major other economies. According to economists polled by Reuters, Chinas first-quarter GDP likely contracted sharply, for the first time in nearly 30 years, since 1992. While China reopened cities and the economy, the rest of the world started to close down to try to flatten the curve of the coronavirus cases. Despite some possible improvements in economic activity in March, first-quarter GDP growth is expected to contract by 10% from a year earlier, Tao Wang, an economist at UBS, told Reuters, referring to the Chinese economy. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on April 11 said that while Europe was facing only coronavirus, Iran has been grappling with both, COVID-19 as well as 'sanctions' imposed on it. Speaking further he said, however, both the viruses have been defeated by solidarity among Iranian people, international media reported. The virus which originated in Wuhan, China has now spiralled to infect 881,110 across Europe and kill 76,768 across the continent. The Islamic Republic has been the worst COVID-19 hit nation in the entire middle east with over 71,686 positive cases and 43,894 recoveries. The Shiite nation has till now reported a total of 4,474 deaths which had prompted the authorities to dig mass graves in the past. Speaking at the Anti Coronavirus Headquarters meetings, the Iranian leader reportedly compared the death rate in Europe with that of Iran and said that "Iran had done better". The President also announced that low risk activities, after receiving authorization code, would be allowed to resume in the capital city Tehran from April 25 after observing health protocols. Read: Donald Trump Says He Has 'no Objection' With Europe's Medical Aid To Iran Read: Donald Trump Targets Lamestream Media', Says working Hard To Expose Their Corruption 'Not bothered' On the other US President Donald Trump, which imposed heavy sanctions on Iran had expressed no objection with European countries sending medical aid to Iran. US-Iran relationship became strained after Trump imposed sanctions on the Shiite nation accusing it of developing nuclear weapons. Previously, US' Secretary of States Mike Pompeo had said that they had offered humanitarian assistance" to the Islamist republic adding that he regrets that they had declined the proposal. In another news, the Indian Navy Quarantine Facility at Material Organisation in Mumbai's Ghatkopar, on April 13 accommodated 44 evacuees from Iran and successfully completed their quarantining. All the 44 individuals spent 30 days in the quarantine facility that commenced on 13 March and concluded on 28 March with each testing negative for COVID-19. Read: 44 Indian Evacuees From Iran Successfully Complete Covid Isolation In Mumbai Naval Outpost Read: Smriti Irani Shows How To Stitch Face Masks Using Needle And Thread; Netizens Applaud It was on April 14 in the year 1891 when the champion of Dalit rights, the principal architect of the Indian Constitution Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was born. Also known as Babasaheb Ambedkar, BR Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 in present-day Madhya Pradeshs Mhow. Every year, Ambedkars birth anniversary is celebrated to honour his countless contributions in the making of the present-day independent India. Ambedkar Jayanti is also known as Bhim Jayanti and is celebrated as a public holiday across India since 2015. Ambedkar led a crusade for the upliftment and empowerment of Dalits in the country. He earned doctorates in economics from premier institutes like the Columbia University and the London School of Economics. He was a scholar in disciplines like law, economics and political science. Babasaheb became a key advocate and campaigner for Indias independence from the British rule. He published scores of journals and advocated for Dalits rights. He also made significant contributions toward the establishment of the state of India, drafting of the Constitution and giving ideas that served as the foundation of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In 1956, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism. Ambedkar suffered from diabetes and was bed-ridden for a brief time in 1954. The following year, his health worsened. Ambedkar completed the final manuscript of his book on Buddhism The Buddha and His Dhamma in December 1956. Three days later, on 6 December, he passed away in his sleep at his home in Delhi. BR Ambedkar was conferred the countrys highest civilian honor, Bharat Ratna, posthumously in 1990. Pierce Brosnan and his wife Keely shared a sweet snap of themselves with their sons on Instagram on Easter Sunday. The couple, who married in August 2001, stood with their sons, Paris, 19, and Dylan, 23, as well as Dylan's girlfriend Avery Wheless and Paris's girlfriend Alex Lee-Aillon. Keely, 56, captioned the photo with the words: 'Happy Easter (Passover ...or whatever holiday you celebrate a rebirth of our planet) from our family to yours! Making memories: Pierce Brosnan and his wife Keely shared a sweet family snap from Hawaii on Instagram on Sunday as they celebrated the Easter holiday 'Swipe right to see a close up of the handmade #Stephanotis floribunda Easter leis.' Indeed, the family were all wearing leis - the most popular concept of a lei in Hawaiian culture is a wreath of flowers presented upon arriving or leaving as a symbol of affection. The latest post comes after Paris and Keely shared heartfelt tributes to one another as they celebrated their 26th anniversary on Thursday. Sweet: Pierce and Keely shared heartfelt tributes to one another as they celebrated their 26th anniversary on Thursday The couple, who met in 1994, took to Instagram to share throwback snaps. Pierce, 66, wrote: 'My darling angel heart Keely, thank you for bringing such love and beauty into my life, for making these past twenty six years the greatest joy of my life...Happy anniversary my brown eyed girl'. He shared the sweet words alongside a photo of them beaming at one another from back in the day. Keely, meanwhile, wrote: 'Still celebrating the day we met ...on a beach in Mexico. Happy 26th my love 4/8 (1994).' The American journalist posted a throwback photo alongside a more recent one of the pair. Romantic: Pierce, 66, wrote: 'My darling angel heart Keely, thank you for bringing such love and beauty into my life, for making these past twenty six years the greatest joy of my life' Soulmates: The couple, who met in 1994 and tied the knot in 2001, took to Instagram to share throwback snaps Fond memories: Keely wrote: 'Still celebrating the day we met ...on a beach in Mexico. Happy 26th my love 4/8 (1994)' True love: Keely, 56, meanwhile, wrote: 'Still celebrating the day we met ...on a beach in Mexico. Happy 26th my love 4/8 (1994)' She also uploaded a shot on Friday of the striking similarities between their son Paris, 19 and the acting legend. Pierce and Keely met the year before he made his James Bond debut and got married in 2001 at Ballintubber Abbey in his native Ireland. He was previously married to Australian actress Cassandra Harris, herself a Bond girl to Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only, from 1980 until her death of ovarian cancer in 1991. Doppleganger: She also uploaded a shot on Friday of the striking similarities between their son Paris, 19 and the acting legend Pierce is the biological father of three sons, two by Keely - 23-year-old Dylan and 19-year-old Paris - and a 36-year-old called Sean by Cassandra. He is also the adoptive father of Charlotte and Christopher Brosnan, Cassandra's two children by her first husband Dermot Harris, whose brother was Richard Harris of Harry Potter fame. Charlotte, who like Christopher took Pierce's surname when she was adopted, died at the age of 42 in 2013 of the same illness that claimed her mother's life. He has often been vocal about how Keely saved him from depression following his personal tragedies, describing her as a ' strength I wouldnt be able to live without.' Pierce is now a proud grandfather of three - Charlotte's children Isabella, 21, and Lucas, 14, as well as Sean's four-year-old daughter Marley May. Seoul, April 13 : South Korean tech giant Samsung has announced it is finally killing the S Voice assistant after eight years that will no longer work from June 1. "Thank you for using S Voice Service. Please note that according to internal operation policy S Voice Service will no longer be available from June 1, 2020," the company said in a statement. The assistant was announced in 2012 with the release of widely popular Galaxy S III. S Voice could set reminders and make calls but wasn't able to answer user questions in a conversational way, like Siri and Google Assistant are designed to do. Samsung replaced S Voice Service with the release of Bixby in Galaxy S8. According to Samsung, the S Voice can be upgraded to Bixby on Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Active, however, update for Gear S3 and Gear Sport is on its way and will be available after June 1. All models that have the S Voice icon on the applications screen are Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5, Galaxy A7, Galaxy A8, Galaxy A9, Galaxy Note FE, Galaxy Note5, Galaxy Note4, Galaxy Note3, Galaxy Note2, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S3, Gear S, Gear S2 and more. Ive never written so many death certificates. Ive never worked this many hours, says an exhausted Issa Yacoub, a doctor working in Sodersjukhuset, one of Stockholms largest public hospitals. He and his colleagues are becoming increasingly overwhelmed with the number of patients passing through their doors. Lets just work together, pray together for all the sick... for all the families who cant meet their sick relatives, for the healthcare staff, who are out fighting hard during this hard time. But outside the hospital where Dr Yacoub works it is a very different picture. Sweden, in contrast with most of Europe, has not enforced a lockdown on its citizens. In the balmy Easter weather, people sit and soak in the spring sunshine. Im proud that Sweden is allowing us to take responsibility ourselves instead of being under lockdown, says Therese Borjlind, a 35 year old accountant, rushing to a family gathering. Despite the mounting concerns of experts both at home and abroad, Sweden continues what Anders Tegnell, the countrys chief epidemiologist, has called a low-scale approach. He insists this is much more sustainable in the long run. Primary schools, shops, restaurants and bars remain open and people are allowed to go out and exercise. But Swedens cases are rising. The country of some 10 million now has more than 10,000 cases and 887 deaths. Its total death toll is higher than that of all the other Nordic countries put together. The government has said repeatedly that the main cornerstone of their strategy is to protect the elderly. Since the beginning of the crisis, they have been asked to stay home but despite these measures, the virus has spread to one-third of nursing homes in Stockholm, which has resulted in a spike in fatalities. Prime minister Stefan Lofven recently admitted in an interview with daily Svenska Dagbladet that Sweden has not succeeded in protecting its elderly. Mr Lofven also warned citizens to prepare for possibly up to thousands of deaths. People sit at a cafe terrasse in central Stockholm (TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Ima) Dr Carina King, an epidemiologist working at the Karolinska, says: If Swedens strategy is a choice, why view these deaths as inevitable and not preventable? A lot of the strategy is based on cultural norms, the narrative that Swedes will follow the recommendations and trust the authorities. My concern is that with so many unknowns, any strategy that is not aiming to minimise the absolute number of infections is problematic. King adds that it is very difficult to assess the science behind Swedens strategy since it has not been transparently presented. There are clear examples where the Swedish guidelines do not fall in line with either WHO recommendations or available empirical evidence. A good example of this is the recommendation that household contacts of suspected Covid-19 cases do not need to quarantine. Dr Holger Rootzen, one of the earliest detractors of Swedens policy and a professor of mathematical statistics at the University of Chalmers, says that Sweden will soon be overwhelmed unless more action in taken. Time magazine recently interviewed the head doctor of a hospital in Stockholm who feared the current approach will probably end in a historical massacre. There is now increasing evidence that hospitals, especially in Stockholm which has been the city hit hardest, have had to make difficult decisions regarding which patients will be prioritised in the event of further hospital crowding. We are now part of an experiment without informed consent Cecilia Soderberg Naucler, Karolinska Institute Karolinska hospital has issued guidelines to doctors indicating that patients 80 years old and above would not be admitted into intensive care units, nor those between 60 and 80 with pre-existing conditions. The prime minister has proposed an emergency law for the rapid closure of schools, public areas and transportation if the situation worsens. Epidemiologist Tegnell said at a press conference that he is cautiously optimistic and hopeful, hoping that this is the end of the beginning of the crisis for Sweden. He said that when he talked with his counterparts in the UK, they have not been critical of our methods since we have achieved similar results. In some countries, it has been done with legal means, while in Sweden we have done it more with voluntary measures, he added. Dr Cecilia Soderberg Naucler, an expert in microbial pathogenesis at the Karolinska Institute, believes this trust is unfounded and will soon break. Im a scientist, I only trust data and the data says we are heading for catastrophe. We are now part of an experiment without informed consent. ALBANY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's love life, leadership and relationship with President Donald J. Trump were on the agenda when the governor called into "The Howard Stern Show" for a 40-minute interview on Monday morning. The governor said that he has avoided alcohol completely, exercised sparingly and cried at times because of the number of deaths more than 9,385 in New York that have been associated with COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. "I can't get over the death numbers every day, and I can't rationalize it," Cuomo said. " ... There's nothing that abates that pain." Cuomo told Stern, whose show is broadcast on SiriusXM satellite radio, that he is hunkered down at the Capitol in Albany and has largely stopped traveling the state as he deals with the pandemic. "You know I love you and I always loved you when you first became governor," Stern told Cuomo. "You're providing real leadership and your whole demeanor is, well, for lack of a better word, a real turn-on." Cuomo said he has "curtailed" his community visits and spends his mornings preparing for his daily briefing on the pandemic, and in the evenings talks to "scientists and the health care professionals about where this is going. "That's what every day looks like, and then it's Groundhog Day," Cuomo said. The governor said there will be "waves of resolution" that begin with fatalities declining and another wave will be phasing the economy into motion again. "If you're not optimistic with this it's hard to get out of bed in the morning," Cuomo said. The governor said there are now conspiracy theories emerging because the pandemic has not been as severe as had been predicted by some scientific models, including one that led the governor last month to say New York would need 140,000 hospital beds. "They all said it was going to be much much worse. ... The real variable was would people listen," Cuomo said. Stern asked the governor whether New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced over the weekend that the city's schools would close for the year, is "getting under your skin." Cuomo said he has the authority to reopen or close schools in New York. "Are you frustrated with him?" Stern asked. "Under this situation, President Trump (and) other people getting under your skin is a luxury. ... Nobody's getting under my skin. I don't operate under that level now," Cuomo said. "There's no ego in this. We don't have the luxury of ego. ... But I can't have things happen that are mistakes." Cuomo contends that no other governor in the United States has fought with Trump as much as he has, but he credited the president with "delivering for New York." "We're fighting a virus ... people are frightened ... you're at home, you're trapped, you're afraid to touch another human being," Cuomo said. "You're not getting a paycheck. ... We are going to get through this, that is the god's honest truth. ... We'll get through it in phases, and there is no light switch here where you go from darkness to light." Cuomo brushed back Stern's question about whether Trump relishes that Cuomo's brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, became ill recently with COVID-19. Trump has said he views CNN as a biased news organization that treats him unfairly, and has at times singled out the younger Cuomo for abuse on social media. "The president always makes a point of saying to me, 'How is Chris, is he doing OK?' And that's not in his usual character," Cuomo said. "We're both New Yorkers; we speak our minds." Stern said the governor, who appears on the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone, is viewed as a "rock star" for his handling of New York's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Stern did not press Cuomo on recent reports raising questions about the urgency of the state's response in the initial stages of the health crisis. "I'm scared, I'm scared. By the way, I'm frightened ... for my mother, for my brother," the governor said. "I'm doing what I said I would do." Cuomo, in his third term, said that he has handled the pandemic the way he has always governed, and has learned from his deceased father Mario Cuomo, who served three terms as governor from 1983 to 1994. "I'm going to correct all the mistakes for both of us," Cuomo said. "The eulogy of my father's administration was that he was a great speaker but didn't get enough things done. ... That was one that pained him. ... We were going to fix all of that. We were going to address all the criticism, even if unfair." Cuomo acknowledged that he is "single" and joked about his availability with Stern's co-host, Robin Quivers. "Available Gov" would be the handle of his online dating profile, he said. "I have my kids with me now, I have a great great team and I'm too busy to be lonely but there may come a time," Cuomo said. The governor also spoke about the pandemics effect on elections past and future. He defended the decision to go ahead with the March 17 primary despite the threat of infections the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners has reportedly notified some voters that they shared a polling place with someone who tested positive saying he didnt have the authority to postpone it, and that polling places took precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. New Delhi, April 13 : Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday condoled the death of former Union Minister M.V. Rajasekharan and said that he was an expert on rural development. In a tweet, Rahul Gandhi said, "I'm sorry to hear about the passing of M V Rajasekharan ji, veteran Congress leader and former Union Minister. An expert on rural development, his contribution to Karnataka and the nation was immense. My condolences to his family and supporters at this time of grief." Rajasekharan passed away on Monday at a hospital in Bengaluru. He was 91. Rajasekharan, a veteran Congress leader, was ailing from old-age-related diseases. He is survived by his wife Girija Rajasekharan, two sons and two daughters. An agriculturist and rural development consultant, the Congress leader was born on September 12, 1928, at Maralawadi in Ramanagara district. Belgium has long been written off as a dysfunctional state, yet its pandemic response has been remarkably functional. With its chronic, record-breaking inability to form governing coalitions and its crumbling federal government, Belgium has long been written off as a dysfunctional failure. Although the country is regularly described as a surreal state or the worlds most prosperous failed state in the foreign media, citizens have become increasingly resigned to the deadlock and the Byzantine machinations of the political elite, often joking that the country works better without a government. When a COVID-19 epidemic broke out in Italy and threatened to spread across Europe, there were serious concerns that Belgiums polarised parliament, fragmented government (the country has nine federal and regional health ministers) and minority caretaker government would prove ill-equipped to deal with the acute public health crisis hurtling towards the country. Despite the political crisis paralysing the country, most of the squabbling parties decided to put public health above partisanship, exhibiting the pragmatism that Belgium used to be famed for. The parliament awarded acting Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes, along with the National Security Council, enough emergency powers to tackle the looming crisis. Wilmes, who headed the caretaker government in October 2019, has been thrust centre stage of the greatest crisis for generations. Her cool-headed, understated, calming and inclusive performance, which contrasts starkly with the erratic and bombastic style of her British counterpart Boris Johnson, has won plaudits, including from the normally sober and reserved Financial Times. The Belgian response has been so decisive and, to date, effective that it has taken many by surprise, not least the Belgians themselves. So, what is behind Belgiums relative success in handling the epidemic? One important factor was the speed and timeliness of the response. Despite some early dithering, Belgium went into lockdown just in the nick of time. The unfolding calamity in Italy at the time focused minds and helped decide the undecided. Another, and possibly the most crucial factor, was Belgiums highly developed healthcare infrastructure, which, like a collective immune system, has bolstered societys ability to fight off the virus. Not only does Belgiums health sector rank among the best in Europe, vitally, it already possessed a very high concentration of hospital beds and critical care units, enabling it to handle the huge growth in patients requiring intensive care with relatively few adjustments. In fact, unlike quite a few other countries whose health systems are overwhelmed by the pandemic, Belgium still has plenty of spare critical care capacity, even as the country appears to have flattened the curve. The major weak point and failure has been nursing homes for the elderly. It is estimated that nursing home residents represent 40 percent of the death toll to date, which is currently over 3,000. Around the world, lockdowns and social distancing are proving the most challenging measures to implement. Although Belgium has implemented what has been referred to as a lockdown light, crucially, it involved the closing down of all but the most crucial economic activities, which was not the case in Italy until late into the crisis. It also allowed people some time outdoors, which appears to have been more successful than in some countries which imposed a full lockdown. This could be partly because allowing people to go out and exercise or walk responsibly is not only good for their health, but also gives them the chance to let off some steam, enabling them to stick to the other restrictions with greater ease. And this has largely been the case. Despite some early reports of occasional lockdown parties and some people escaping restrictions by crossing into neighbouring Holland, the public has generally and spontaneously abided by the social distancing rules with minimal need for policing although the Easter weekend saw a spike in violations, raising fears this could lead to a new peak. That said, the public was sometimes ahead of the government, with many businesses and shops shuttering before the government officially ordered it. Even though Belgium was already a society in which personal space was respected, seeing how quickly people have integrated social distancing into their daily routines is impressive. In the few shops that remain open, people were already standing and queuing well apart from each other before markers were put down on the floors. In open-air public spaces, people were also generally distancing themselves from other pedestrians. Employing good democratic governance, persuasion and consensus-building, rather than coercion, has helped this widespread compliance. This has also been accompanied by a cross-partisan commitment to following scientific advice. While certain politicians in other countries, such as US President Donald Trump, have tried to upstage or contradict scientists, effectively politicising the crisis, the Belgian governments measured response has not only been led by science, but also relevant experts have often been given greater prominence in the media than political figures. The daily press briefings delivered by virologist Steven Van Gucht of the National Crisis Centre have become essential viewing for ordinary Belgians. Fellow virologist and epidemiologist Marc Van Ranst has become an almost daily fixture in evening current affairs programmes, where he has explained the reasoning behind each new measure and discussed possible future developments. Another essential ingredient in the success of these restrictions was the fact that Belgium is an affluent society with a decent, albeit worsening, social security and solidarity system. The Belgian state, along with many businesses and organisations, decided pretty early on that preserving human life and preventing the uncontrolled spread of the virus was worth taking a major economic hit. Although this is causing hardship for many vulnerable people and smaller businesses, the shock is being softened by an emergency aid package that includes the deferment of tax, mortgage and bank payments, as well as giving workers in vulnerable sectors temporary unemployment benefits. These efforts appear to be paying off gradually, with epidemiologists confirming that the number of hospitalisations has stabilised, although the total number of cases continues to rise. However, success still hinges on how well the population continues to stick to the rules, experts emphasise. The situation in Belgium highlights the critical importance of investing heavily in healthcare and social safety nets in good times, not just during emergencies. One only hopes that once the pandemic is over, politicians, including in Belgium, will recall this lesson and boost investment in these increasingly neglected areas, despite the inevitable economic crisis which will follow. What the case of Belgium and other wealthy European countries also underlines is that such a robust response to the pandemic is a luxury which poorer countries cannot afford if and when they are hit by this coronavirus. This raises the urgent need for global solidarity. It is imperative that a global COVID-19 fund is established to help poorer countries deal with the medical and economic challenges posed by the pandemic, as well as a mobile rapid response army of medical professionals that can be sent to coronavirus hotspots as and when they appear. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance. One of The Bachelor contestants for Clare Crawleys upcoming season is getting a lot of attention. Fans want to know why it seems everyone is obsessed with Tyler Cameron and Hannah Browns friend, Matt James, but he hasnt been on The Bachelorette yet. Matt James and Tyler Cameron | Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Who is Cameron and Browns friend, Matt James? James is Camerons best friend, who was about to be a contestant on Clare Crawleys season of The Bachelorette until the coronavirus struck. The show was going to begin filming on March 13, 2020; however, production was paused indefinitely. Although ABC might recast the show, it seems likely that James would remain considering how popular he already is with Bachelor Nation. James works in Real Estate, providing brokerage and transaction management services, according to his profile on CBRE. He is the founder of ABC Food Tours, which takes children in New York City to tour local restaurants and learn about entrepreneurship. Over 50% of the students the company serves are homeless, while over 69% live in poverty. We believe that by surrounding students with restaurateurs, entrepreneurs, & immigrant business owners who have all overcome similar hardships, they can begin to envision these realities for themselves, according to the company website. Why is Bachelor Nation obsessed with Matt James? Fans of The Bachelor first began hearing about James through Tyler Camerons social media accounts. The real interest took hold once ABC announced that James was a contestant on Crawleys season. However, the obsession with James only grew as the coronavirus quarantine took over the U.S. in March 2020. He is consistently the most entertaining part of the quarantine crew (and this offseason as a whole for me!), wrote one fan. Hes that dude that is always getting the friend group revved up and laughing, no matter the situation. His stories actually make me giggle out loud when Im watching them. Its nice to have in days like these! Many fans also comment that he is hysterical and nice to look at. Others add that since they have not seen him on television, they do not have anything to criticize him about. Hes providing us with Bachelor-related content in the most empty off-season ever, wrote another Redditor. Plus, hes hot and brings people joy. Where are The Bachelor fans watching Matt James, Tyler Cameron, and Hannah Brown? Fans are obsessively watching the quarantine crew on Instagram and TikTok. The group of seven friends post stories, videos, and dance movies daily. Since there are no current spoilers about Crawleys season, fans need something to watch. It looks like Matt James is high on that radar. [James] may not be a part of Bachelor Nation (yet!), but hes more relevant than 90% of the past contestants, added another fan. Plus hes a total babe & has a great personality. You better get on this train because hes going to be our next bachelor! Bachelor Nation is avidly watching James on social media and ready for him to become a part of the franchise history. Its too bad we have to wait so long to see him on Crawleys season of The Bachelorette. The Hanover Insurance Group will return $30 million in auto premiums to customers as a way of providing financial relief amid the coronavirus pandemic, the company announced last week. As part of The Hanover CARES Refund, the insurance company will return 15% of auto premiums for April and May to eligible customers. The refund totals approximately $30 million in premiums, The Hanover said. The Hanover will credit April policies in May, and May policies in June. Policyholders who have pre-paid premiums will receive credits in each of the same months, the insurance provider said. "We recognize our customers are feeling significant stress, including financial pressure, as a result of this pandemic," President and chief executive officer at The Hanover John Roche said in a statement. "Our company has a long, proud tradition of being there when we are needed most, delivering for those who depend on us. We are committed now, as always, to do what we can to help our customers, partners and home communities manage through these difficult times." In addition to the refund, The Hanover is also offering flexibility on bill payment options without any penalties or fees. The Hanover has also extended auto coverage for individuals making deliveries, waived limits on additional living expenses for homeowners forced from their homes, and extended the number of days it will reimburse a customer for rental cars. The company also announced a $500,000 donation to nonprofits aimed at helping combat the coronavirus. The donations are spread out to the following organizations: $350,000 to local United Way, Boys & Girls Club and Chamber of Commerce organizations in Massachusetts and Michigan where the company employs large concentrations of employees Providing medical supplies and protective masks to local area hospitals Delivering Cheeriodicals' "gifts of thanks" to health care professionals at five hospitals in the hardest hit areas across the country $50,000 to the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation's Children's Relief Fund Implementing an employee matching gift program for donations to coronavirus relief efforts Related Content: Police in Lima on Sunday arrested a Chinese citizen for illegally conducting rapid COVID-19 tests on the public with newly-delivered kits stolen from Peru's health ministry. Tianxing Zhang, 36, was arrested in the Brena district of Lima as he was about to take samples from two women at the door of their house, police said. He "was proceeding to carry out rapid tests for COVID-19 that he had stolen" from the Lima Sur health authority where he worked, according to a police statement. Zhang was wearing a mask and a light blue medical apron at the time of his arrest by the state security police. Both women had paid him to carry out a rapid home test, without health ministry approval. "When questioned, he acknowledged he was not authorized to carry out this rapid test and that the Rapid Diagnostic Tests had been stolen from the Directorate of Integrated Health Network of Lima Sur where he had worked," the police said. According to the police, the bespectacled Zhang confessed to stealing two batches of the test to use, for monetary gain, on people who suspected they were ill with the coronavirus. Police found a backpack with 25 COVID-19 tests and other medical supplies at his home. President Martin Vizcarra said on Wednesday that 330,000 rapid tests kits had arrived in Peru and were distributed to all parts of the country. The health ministry reported it has carried out 45,272 rapid tests to April 12. The South American country has so far registered 7,519 infections, with 193 deaths. April 14 : On April 14, 2020, the Malayalam New Year will be celebrated with a lot of joy among the people of Kerala. This special day is called Vishu 2020 and it falls on the first day of the month of Medam as per the Malayalam calendar . On Vishu, the ritual of seeing the auspicious VishuKani holds a significant place in the lives of people. People welcome the New Year with prayers and happiness and believe that luck will stay with them throughout the whole year. On the happy occasion of Vishu, you can celebrate the festival at home and also send Vishu greetings, wishes and messages to friends and families. In our handpicked collection, you can find Malayalam wishes, Vishu Kani pictures, and messages, to share with all your loved ones. Image Source: Prokerala.com Happy Vishu messages in Malayalam The time to celebrate has come The time to improve has come The time to hope for the better has come Happy Vishu May God shower luck, health and happiness upon you Happy Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Special Vishu quotes in Malayalam May a New Year of dreams begin Hold hands with your family and move in happiness Heres wishing you a blessed Vishu Image Source: Prokerala.com Quotes to share for Vishu Remain blessed, happy, and positive always May your Vishu be filled with prosperity Find delight to learn new things Image Source: Prokerala.com Wish loved ones Happy Vishu in malayalam Be grateful for life has offered you Let your Vishu be blessed with our prayers Image Source: Prokerala.com Vishu Kani wishes Accept the lows in life Enjoy the highs in life Get better every day Wishing you with a lot of luck and good health this Vishu Rep. Williams Holds Phone Call With Local Businesses Congressman Roger Williams held a small business resources open-line Telephone Town Hall with Hillsboro business owners Tuesday, April 7, to answer questions regarding loan programs available during the COVID-19 pandemic. Audience questions ranged from initial steps on applying for Small Business Administration (SBA) loan programs to inquiries about loan eligibility and loan forgiveness. Congressman Williams released the following statement after the call: Todays small business telephone town hall was an invaluable opportunity to hear directly from 25th district business owners and speak about federal resources available to help them survive this pandemic. As a Main Street business owner for over 50 years, I know all too well the tough decisions that employers are forced to make right now," He continued, I encourage small business owners to contact their private lenders for more information or reach out to my office so we can assist in any way possible. Small businesses are the heartbeat of the American economy, and I will continue fighting for Main Street America throughout this crisis. Congressman Williams represents the 25th Congressional District of Texas and serves as a member of the House Committee on Financial Services. WASHINGTON - Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden's presidential campaign on Monday, encouraging his progressive supporters to rally behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in an urgent bid to defeat President Donald Trump. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/4/2020 (638 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Former Vice President Joe Biden, left, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., right, greet each other before they participate in a Democratic presidential primary debate at CNN Studios in Washington, Sunday, March 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) WASHINGTON - Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden's presidential campaign on Monday, encouraging his progressive supporters to rally behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in an urgent bid to defeat President Donald Trump. I am asking all Americans, Im asking every Democrat, Im asking every independent, Im asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, the Vermont senator said in a virtual event with Biden. The backing came less than a week after Sanders ended his presidential campaign, which was centred around progressive policies such as universal health care. There were early signs that some leading progressives weren't ready to fully follow Sanders' lead. And Trump's campaign was eager to use the endorsement to tie Biden more closely to Sanders, whose identity as a democratic socialist is objectionable to Republicans and some Democrats. Still, Sanders' embrace of Biden was crucial for someone who is tasked with bridging the Democratic Party's entrenched ideological divides. Democratic disunity helped contribute to Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in 2016. Perhaps eager to avoid a repeat of that bruising election year, Sanders offered his endorsement much earlier in the 2020 campaign. Sanders backed Clinton four years ago, but only after the end of a drawn-out nomination fight and a bitter dispute over the Democratic platform that extended to the summer convention. Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and former Vice President Joe Biden, shake hands on stage Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, before the start of a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by ABC News, Apple News, and WMUR-TV at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Biden and Sanders differed throughout the primary, particularly over whether a government-run system should replace private health insurance. Biden has resisted Sanders' Medicare for All plan and has pushed instead a public option that would operate alongside private coverage. Sanders said theres no great secret out there that you and I have our differences. But Sanders said the greater priority for Democrats of all political persuasions should be defeating Trump. Weve got to make Trump a one-term president, he said. I will do all that I can to make that happen. The coronavirus prevented Biden and Sanders from appearing together in person. But they made clear they would continue working together, announcing the formation of six task forces made up of representatives from both campaigns to work on policy agreements addressing health care, the economy, education, criminal justice, climate change and immigration. Biden, 77, has already made some overtures to progressives by embracing aspects of Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warrens policies. The day after Sanders exited the race, Biden came out in support of lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 while pledging to cancel student debt for many low- and middle-income borrowers. He's also previously embraced Warren's bankruptcy reform plan. Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and former Vice President Joe Biden gesture during a Democratic presidential primary debate Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, in Las Vegas, hosted by NBC News and MSNBC. (AP Photo/John Locher) Sanders, 78, is sure to remain a force throughout the campaign. When he ended his candidacy, he said he would keep his name on the ballot in states that have not yet voted in order to collect more delegates that could be used to influence the party's platform. He didn't say Monday whether he would continue to fight for those delegates. Still, Sanders and Biden emphasized their mutual respect for each other. Sanders referred to the former vice-president as Joe. Biden answered him repeatedly as pal. The two men asked the other to give regards to their wives, Jill Biden and Jane Sanders. Biden told Sanders: I really need you, not just to win the campaign but to govern." While Sanders campaigned for Clinton dozens of times after the 2016 primary, the rapport on display with Biden on Monday was far lighter than anything voters saw four years ago. Some progressive leaders were positive but guarded in response to Sanders' endorsement. This endorsement shows that everyone wants to beat Trump, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Committee that originally supported Warren. Our side will be increasingly energized the more its clear that progressive ideas and progressive leaders like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and grassroots organizations have strong positions of influence with Biden, Green said. But others remained skeptical. In an interview with The Associated Press just a few hours before Sanders endorsement, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Bidens overtures to progressives on health care. We need a real plan and not just gestures, said Ocasio-Cortez, a key Sanders surrogate during his campaign. What Id like to see at a bare minimum is a health care plan that helps extend health care to young people." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Trumps campaign, meanwhile, seized on Sanders endorsement to underscore Bidens embrace of some of his plans. In a statement, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said that though Bernie Sanders wont be on the ballot in November, his issues will be. Biden had to adopt most of Bernies agenda to be successful in the Democrat primaries," Parscale said. Sanders could go a long way toward infusing Bidens campaign with additional energy if hes able to bring his enthusiastic following of millions of young and progressive voters along with him to support Biden. Young voters, a key Democratic voting bloc, have long supported Sanders over his former primary rivals by huge margins. Biden and Sanders on Monday emphasized the need to address the challenges confronting young people during the pandemic, with Sanders describing a generation of young people who are experiencing crisis after crisis. ___ Catch up on the 2020 campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, Ground Game. Resigned in 2019 claiming she was bullied and was given nickname 'Panic Janet' A GP surgery receptionist was given the nickname 'Panic Janet' by her laughing colleagues because she was prone to worry at minor problems, a tribunal has heard. 'Stressed' Anthea George was mocked by her 'loud and raucous' workmates for repeatedly asking questions about how to do her job. Her female boss also told her that she needed to wear new glasses after making a mistake and joked that she wouldn't 'find a man' when she told her she was taking time off to attend a funeral wake. Ms George eventually left the family doctor's practice in central London complaining that she had been bullied. But an employment tribunal has now dismissed her claims that she was unfairly dismissed. GP surgery receptionist Anthea George was given the nickname 'Panic Janet' by her laughing colleagues because she was prone to worry at minor problems at the Clerkenwell Medical Practice The hearing was told Ms George began work at the Clerkenwell Medical Practice as a receptionist and admin worker in 2016. However, she found her colleagues' behaviour at work hard to deal with, the tribunal was told. '(She) found certain aspects of the role and working in the small administrative office stressful. 'The room was noisy because the telephones were constantly ringing and the staff often joked and laughed and talked to each other and had the radio on. They were often loud and raucous. '(She) felt that that was not appropriate behaviour in the workplace and found it difficult to concentrate in that working environment.' Within a year of starting, Ms George's manager Joanne Estabrook had offered her a different job at the surgery working in a different room. The central London tribunal dismissed Ms George's claim that she had been constructively dismissed by the surgery as well as another claim that she had been discriminated against But she repeatedly had to go back to her former office to ask questions. This led to her being dubbed by colleague Alexis Herbert 'Panic Janet'. '(She) often went into the administrative room to ask questions...and appeared to be stressed,' the tribunal heard. 'The staff felt that she made things more complicated than was necessary and worried unnecessarily over minor matters. '(Alexis) Herbert gave her the nickname Panic Janet and called her that. The others laughed when she did that and (Ms George) laughed along with them, although she did not like it. She did not complain to anyone about it. 'On one occasion when (Ms George) returned from holiday and went to ask questions, Ms Estabrook said, "Oh, you can tell Anthea's back" and everyone laughed.' The central London hearing was told that the relationship between Ms George and Ms Estabrook deteriorated as the receptionist kept making mistakes. In one instance an exasperated Ms Estabrook was accused by Ms George of telling her to 'f*** off home'. However, she and other colleagues who witnessed the incident denied she had sworn. In October 2018 Ms Estabrook told Ms George that 'it may be time to start wearing those glasses that have been prescribed for you' after finding mistakes in her work again. And later that month the pair clashed again after Ms George failed to complete some of her work on time. The surgery even brought in a mediation service to try to improve the tensions between the pair. But Ms George started to look for other work and resigned in March 2019. The tribunal dismissed Ms George's claim that she had been constructively dismissed by the surgery as well as another claim that she had been discriminated against for blowing the whistle on what she claimed was poor practice by Ms Estabrook. In its judgement the tribunal said of the 'Panic Janet' nickname: '(She) did not complain to anyone about the nickname. She laughed at it and gave the impression that she was not offended by it.' It concluded that the length of time between the row where she been told to 'go home' and her resignation meant that trust between her and her employer had not broken down to the point it could have been considered constructive dismissal. Face masks will become the norm and Covid-19 is going to stalk the human race for quite some time, the World Health Organisation has warned. The WHOs Covid-19 envoy David Nabarro also said countries are going to need to set up local Neighbourhood Health Watch schemes to defend against the disease. On BBCs Today Programme, he said everybody needs to habitually take even mild symptoms seriously and those who have them must get out of everybodys way. It is about having a whole network at the local level of being able to defend against disease. Its like having Neighbourhood Health Watches everywhere so people with symptoms can get quick advice and then rapid ambulance help. This virus isnt going to go away and we dont know when we will have a vaccine. Yes, we will wear masks. Yes, there will have to be more physical distancing. We must all learn how to interrupt transmission. It is a revolution like when it was discovered dirty water bore cholera or like when we all learned about Aids and its relationship with sex. We changed, we adapted, we learned how to live with these new realities. Weve got to learn to live with the new reality of life with Covid-19. He said three main types of people need to wear masks health workers, people with symptoms and people in frequent contact with others. The first people who need masks are health workers, he said. Secondly you need people who have got the symptoms of the disease to wear masks so they are less likely to spread the disease. Thirdly people who are in frequent contact with others and cant easily physical distance because of work. And then he said, as far as the wider population is concerned, nobody can ensure everybody can quickly access good masks. Some form of face protection is going to become the norm, not least to give people reassurance. He said the widespread use of masks will come as people learn to live with Covid-19. Health authorities here have ruled out directing people to wear masks in public. But just last week the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said people should consider wearing non-medical face masks in public. C oronavirus rates have jumped again in China, with 108 new cases confirmed on Sunday - the most for nearly six weeks. The second wave of Covid-19 cases is believed to have been driven by travellers coming from abroad. The new cases announced on Sunday are the most since the 143 that China reported on March 5. There were a further 99 confirmed cases on Saturday. Numbers of new cases have been gradually increasing after reaching a low point of just 11 on March 13. Medical staff treat COVID-19 coronavirus patients at a hospital in Wuhan / AFP via Getty Images Total confirmed cases now stand at more than 83,000, with around 3,300 deaths related to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. China began to lift restrictions gradually in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak started in December, last week after more than two months. Reuters But there are growing concerns that imported cases could lead to a second wave of coronavirus cases in the country. The 2,600-mile border with Russia to the north is reported to be a particular concern for the Chinese government. Many of the new cases are believed to have come from people returning from Russia. Congratulations, vave-shoerepair.com got a very good Social Media Impact Score! Show it by adding this HTML code on your site: Vave-shoerepair.com scored 69 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 3.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team This CoolSocial report was updated on 28 Dec 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. vave-shoerepair.com is very popular in Facebook and Delicious. It is liked by 225 people on Facebook, it has 21 twitter shares and it has 3 google+ shares. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the vave-shoerepair homepage on Twitter + the total number of vave-shoerepair followers (if vave-shoerepair has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the vave-shoerepair homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the vave-shoerepair homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the vave-shoerepair homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if vave-shoerepair has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the vave-shoerepair homepage on Delicious. Basic Information PAGE TITLE V AVE SHOE REPAIR - ONLINE SHOP AND ATELIER DESCRIPTION V AVE SHOE REPAIR is a Swedish fashion brand. The silhouette gathers a mix of draping, deconstruction and minimalism with great attention to detail and deep respect for our great heritage. View and shop our collections online. KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The title found in the head section of the homepage. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. Domain and Server DOCTYPE HTML 5.0 CHARSET AND LANGUAGE UTF-8 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Microsoft-IIS/7.0 (ASP.NET) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 Operative System running on the server. Character set and language of the site. The language of vave-shoerepair.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Type of server and offered services. Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world. Referring domains for vave-shoerepair.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines. Facebook link FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND The type of Facebook page. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The URL of the found Facebook page. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. Twitter account link TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND All of us were assured that there was a very specific plan, that there would be water on site, and that they would be using the water before, during and after to make sure that a dust cloud didnt migrate off site, Lightfoot said. Obviously, that didnt happen. My understanding is Hilco has now acknowledged that they did not follow the plan that they had told us and I think told the alderman. If we had known, obviously, that they werent going to do what they said they were going to do, we wouldnt have allowed this to go forward. KAMPALA Ministry of Heath has announced that all the 639 samples on Easter Monday returned negative for coronavirus. Good news coming in from @UVRIug today. 639 samples have been tested and all were NEGATIVE for COVID-19. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 still stands at 54 in Uganda, the Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng wrote on Monday night. Please practice preventive measures and adhere to our guidelines, she added. Three more patients who were among the confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been discharged from Entebbe Grade B hospital after completing successful treatment. The total number of active confirmed cases for COVID-19 has now dropped from 54 to 47 according to a press release from the Ministry of Health. All the 47 confirmed COVID-19 cases are in stable condition in Mulago National Specialised hospital, Entebbe Grade B hospital, case in Adjumani and case in Hoima. Uganda has not registered any COVID-19 related death. The ministry also says a total of 231 individuals are still in institutional quarantine, 1302 cumulative contacts were listed while 537 contacts to confirmed cases have completed 14 days followup. 729 contacts to confirmed cases are currently under follow up with a cumulative of 5,664 samples have been tested, according to authorities. The government has been emboldened by the rising negative cases in the test samples tested everyday, raising hope that the country is winning the battle against the virus. President Museveni is expected to announce the extension new measures including a possibility of extending the lockdown in his address on Tuesday midday announced by his press secretary, Don Wanyama. Related Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lola Shirin Wagner (The Jakarta Post) - Mon, April 13, 2020 13:32 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18940c 3 Opinion health,COVID-19,pandemic,mental-health Free International World Health Day was commemorated on April 7. Health comprises physical and mental wellbeing. However, looking after mental wellbeing, such as stress and anxiety during this disruption could be more challenging than physical wellbeing. Ever since the stay at home policy began in many nations, people started to complain and express fear of several risks; the fear of losing something of value -- resources, money and security, or fear of losing power, control, comfort zone and the most precious our life. For an indefinite period of time, you do not have to interact physically with colleagues, as your personal and professional activities take place inside the house. People worry about sustaining means of living, and worry of not being able to provide food on the table, or to pay monthly rent. Migrant workers and refugees worry about risk of returning to home countries. Alone in self-quarantine, managing difficult feelings during the outbreak could be demanding. This is an uneasy transition for everyone. The novel coronavirus is enhancing what is already inside each person. A quiet person may become more restrained. Enthusiastic types might become more optimistic. If you are careless, you could become more reckless. Suppose you are impulsive, you could become more reactive. The worrisome could be more anxious than ever. But apart from anxieties, a global solidarity movement is emerging from COVID-19. People across the world have created popular slogans spread across cyberspace, essentially saying, We are all in this together. The health professionals who cannot stay home continuously gain admiration for their dedication and hard work. The difference between the coronavirus pandemic and previous pandemics is that this is the first pandemic in the era of social media. The American Psychological Association has reported that millennials experience more stress and anxiety, and are less able to manage mental wellbeing than any other generation before them. Misinformation about the disease has spread faster than the virus. Therefore while the candidate vaccine is on the way, we need to bolster our immune system, pull ourselves together and unite to get over the COVID-19. If you are terrified of losing your competence during and after the outbreak, you can look up leaders and role models from different generations, on what their experience can offer in lessons on dealing with crises, be it crises related to personal predicament, teamwork, local emergencies or national catastrophes. Not legendary leaders, but common leaders from among ordinary people, who turned out to have extraordinary impact. When anxiety threatens to take over and enthusiasm reaches pit bottom, we might recall the quotes long ago from the explorer Ernest Shackleton. He supposedly put up an advertisement in the London Times, seeking tough recruits for his 1914 Trans-Antartic expedition team, offering Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. Constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. Shackleton lived through the influenza pandemic and later the American polio epidemic (1916-1922). His forebears were from the New World generation of emigrants to the Americas. They lived in large families, before the era of antibiotics, insulin and penicillin, which we consider essential today and are available over the counter. That generation was known to be civic minded with strict gender roles, and oriented to stability and predictability. The millennial generation emerges 100 years later digital natives and virtual global citizens. One of them is Tirta M. Hudhi, a young physician from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta. After a few years working as a general practitioner in a hospital emergency unit for two years, he decided to be an entrepreneur. Recently, he became quite popular, though controversial, with over 1 million followers on Instagram, and has raised funds to support efforts in the pandemic. Though signs are that the coronavirus is forcing cultural change and disruption, many studies have shown that human minds are resilient when coping with crises. Indonesians have proven outstanding resilience in dealing with continuous disruptions ranging from diverse natural catastrophes. Most likely Indonesians will be able to cope and thrive with this pandemic as well. Let us hope we all become well-prepared for the next stage of early recovery when this storm ends. Our survival would be our own honor and recognition in case of success. *** Anthropologist and complex systems thinking researcher; a fellow of East West Center Association and former Ford Foundation fellow on global health, gender, migration and human trafficking. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Nigerias Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, has said the Federal Government did not invite the Chinese doctors who came into the... Nigerias Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, has said the Federal Government did not invite the Chinese doctors who came into the country last Wednesday to help with the fight against Coronavirus (COVID-19). Ehanire made the clarification during an appearance on Channels TVs News at 10 on Saturday. Recall that a 15-man COVID-19 medical team was invited to assist Nigeria in efforts to contain the pandemic. I think in the first place we didnt bring them in, and I think China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) in its wisdom and probably in its corporate social responsibility thought they should bring people in to come and help us and give advice, Ehanire said. We didnt issue an invitation, but we are not unhappy that they are here because we can learn from their experience. These people have been through it, and we want to start with a video conferencing with them even while they are isolated so that we can try to learn from their experiences. There is nothing better than learning from someone who has actually suffered an event and been inflicted with an injury. Meanwhile, the total number of Coronavirus cases in Nigeria has increased to 323, according to NCDC. All but three of the coronavirus deaths in the Missouri city of St Louis have been black residents - as the mayor of Chicago says the virus is 'devastating' the African American community. In the city of St Louis, at least 16 of the 19 people who have died from coronavirus were African American. In Missouri state, black deaths account for 26 percent of the population. The death toll in the city had only been black residents until April 10 when three additional deaths were recorded, including a Hispanic woman in her 50s, a white man in his 90s and a woman in her 80s whose race wasn't identified. The grim statistics are not unique to St Louis as the disproportionate impacts of coronavirus on the African American community continue to be felt across the country. Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago where 72 percent of the deaths have been black residents, told CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday that COVID-19 was 'devastating' African American communities. African Americans make up about 30 percent of Chicago's population. 'It is devastating our community,' Lightfoot said. MISSOURI: In the city of St Louis, at least 16 of the 19 people who have died from coronavirus were African American. In Missouri state, black deaths account for 26 percent of the population (above) Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago where 72 percent of the deaths have been black residents, told CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday that COVID-19 was 'devastating' African American communities A history of systemic racism and inequity in access to health care and economic opportunity has made many African Americans far more vulnerable to the virus. Black adults suffer from higher rates of obesity, diabetes and asthma, which make them more susceptible, and also are more likely to be uninsured. They also often report that medical professionals take their ailments less seriously when they seek treatment. 'The answer that we believe is right is because of the underlying conditions that people of color and particularly black folks suffer from, whether it's diabetes, heart disease, upper respiratory illnesses, the kind of things that we've been talking about for a long time that plague black Chicago, that lead to life expectancy gaps,' Lightfoot said. 'This virus attacks those underlying conditions with a vengeance.' Some lawmakers and community leaders in cities hard-hit by the pandemic have been sounding the alarm over what they see as a disturbing trend of the virus killing African Americans at a higher rate. Among the cities where black residents have been hard-hit include Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans and Milwaukee. The release of figures from some states and cities comes as the Centers for Disease Protection and Control is under increasing pressure to be more transparent about the toll of the virus on communities of color. ILLINOIS: In Illinois, the majority of deaths - 42.8% - have been linked to black residents CHICAGO: 72 percent of the deaths in Chicago have been black residents. They account for 30 percent of the city's population DETROIT: In the city of Detroit, 76.6 percent of deaths have occurred within the black community MICHIGAN: In the state of Michigan - a hot spot for the virus - 40 percent of the death toll are African Americans The agency has not publicly reported racial or ethnic demographic data for COVID-19 tests performed across the country, though its own standardized form required for reporting COVID-19 tests and cases includes a section for indicating the race or ethnicity of those tested. Last week, the CDC did release racial data for March hospitalizations in 14 states that showed a third of patients were black. It comes as the Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, was met with outrage by the black community for using phrases like 'abuela', 'big momma' and 'poppop' when he pleaded for minorities to not drink or smoke and follow the government's guidelines to slow the spread of the coronavirus. 'We need you to do this if not for yourself than for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy, do it for your big momma, do it for your poppop,' Dr Adams said on Friday. Adams told African Americans that they needed to 'step up' to stop the spread of coronavirus, and said 'social ills' are likely a contributing factor when looking at the dire statistics that the outbreak has killed twice as many black and Latino people than white Americans. His comments prompted members of the black community to slam the Surgeon General for 'pandering' to them with his use of slang and also for his 'offensive' instruction that those specific communities should stop drinking and smoking during the pandemic. Last week, New York City released data that showed black and Latino people were twice as likely to die from coronavirus than white residents. In Louisiana, with New Orleans being a hot spot for the virus, about 70 per cent of those who have died were black. Black people only make up 32 per cent of residents in the state. 'Everywhere we look, the coronavirus is devastating our communities,' said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. NEW YORK CITY: Last week, New York City released data that showed black and Latino people were twice as likely to die from coronavirus than white residents. Data above shows that the highest number of cases are occurring in the boroughs with high black and Hispanic populations MILWAUKEE: In Milwaukee, 55 percent of the infections have been reported in black communities LOUISIANA: In Louisiana, with New Orleans being a hot spot for the virus, about 70 per cent of those who have died were black. Black people only make up 32 per cent of residents in the state This chart compiled by the Associated Press shows the death rate among the black communities in data collected the week of April 5 Johnson and other black leaders, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, were on a call Friday with Dr Adams and Vice President Mike Pence. 'So what's going on?' Dr Adams said at a White House briefing after the call. 'Well it's alarming but it's not surprising that people of color have a greater burden of chronic health conditions.' Among those are high blood pressure, which Adams said African-Americans and Native Americans see at a much younger age than their white counterparts. 'Puerto Ricans have higher rates of asthma and black boys are three times as likely to die of asthma than their white counterparts,' Adams said. Adams then pulled out his own red inhaler, used to open the airwaves during an asthma attack. 'As a matter of fact, I've been carrying an inhaler in my pocket for 40 years out of fear of having a fatal asthma attack,' said Adams, who is black. 'And I hope that showing you this inhaler shows little kids with asthma all across the country that they can grow up to be Surgeon General one day.' 'But I more immediately share it so that everyone knows it doesn't matter if you look fit, if you look young, you are still at risk for getting and spreading and dying from coronavirus,' he warned. Adams said the 'chronic burden of medical ills' among Americans of color is making those communities less resilient to the 'ravages' of COVID-19. 'And it's possible, in fact likely that the burden of social ills is also contributing,' he remarked. He mentioned trends like fewer people of color having jobs where they can work from home. He also pointed to housing trends - where many Americans of color live in urban, and thus more densely-packed, places and have multi-generational living arrangements. 'We tell people to wash their hands, but a study shows that 30 per cent of homes on Navaho nation don't have running water, so how are they going to do that?' he asked. The takeaway, Adams said, was that 'people of color experience both more likely exposure to COVID-19 and increased complications from it.' 'But let me be crystal clear, we do not think people of color are biologically or genetically predisposed to get COVID-19, there is nothing inherently wrong with you,' he said. 'But they are socially pre-disposed to coronavirus exposure and have a higher incidence of the very diseases that put you at risk for severe complications of coronavirus.' LATEST, April 13, 8:00 p.m. San Mateo County Health Officer Scott Morrow informed residents on Monday night he believes the county has identified less than five percent of the total COVID-19 infections since the outbreak began. "I hesitate to give you the following numbers, because first of all they are a guess, and secondly because some will think they are too low to take action," he wrote. "My best guess is that approximately 2-3% of the SMC population are currently infected or have recovered from the infection. Thats around 15-25,000 people and they are all over the county and in every community. I dont believe this number is off by a factor of 10, but it could be off by a factor of 2 to 3. Without the [shelter-in-place order], it could have well been over 50-75,000 by now, and that would have overwhelmed our healthcare system." The county has just 699 confirmed cases of the virus; if Morrow's numbers are correct, that would mean the county has identified just 2.7-4.5 percent of its total cases. "This virus appears to be wildly transmissible especially within households or congregate settings," he wrote. "Your risk from contracting the infection from any human you encounter in San Mateo County and outside your immediate household continues to be substantial unless you take all the recommended actions to protect yourself." However, if his numbers hold, that would place the mortality rate for the virus somewhere between .08 percent and .14 percent, well below the county's current figure of 3.14 percent. There have been 21 total recorded deaths in the county to this point. April 13, 5:00 p.m. Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke to how the nation might start to re-open during its recovery from the coronavirus outbreak, saying, its not going to be one size fits all. As we discuss and consider the public health aspects, it likely will be something I refer to as a rolling re-entry, he said. I dont know what its going to be yet, because we still have time. The data and the charts [Dr. Birx shows in press conferences] is likely going to influence some of the recommendations we will make, but I assure you they will be recommendations we make based on public health and the president will get a lot of input from others but well give the honest public health recommendation. The statement echoes those by California Governor Gavin Newsom earlier Monday afternoon, when he said the state would be pursuing an incremental release of the stay-at-home orders. April 13, 3:30 p.m. In a press conference at the White House Monday, President Donald Trump played a campaign-style video purportedly attempting to outline a timeline of his administrations response to the coronavirus outbreak. The short video included clips of news segments featuring TV show hosts discussing the onset of the virus, as well as a brief clip of New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman saying a ban on flights from China was effective as an aggressive move against the virus. (Haberman immediately tweeted that "their use of the audio is misleading," and that she went on to say "he treated that travel limitation as a Mission Accomplished moment.") The video then showed several governors, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and California Governor Gavin Newsom praising the president for being responsive. The video, played after Trump made multiple comments about the "fake news" and the New York Times, appeared to perplex many reporters in the room. When asked about why he decided to air the video, Trump responded, Because were getting fake news and wed like to have it corrected. Pressed further on whether White House staffers produced the unusual video, Trump said, I wouldnt use the word produced. All they did was take some clips and just ran them for you. The reason they did that is to keep you honest. April 13, 3:15 p.m. In a press conference at the White House Monday afternoon, Dr. Anthony Fauci clarified remarks he made earlier regarding the effectiveness of mitigation efforts. Fauci stated that had the U.S. government instituted a nationwide stay-at-home mandate earlier, more lives might have been saved. That was taken in a way that maybe something was at fault here, Fauci said, referring to reports that he may have been talking about the president. If mitigation works, and you instigate it and intimate it earlier, you will probably have saved more lives, Fauci said. If you initiate it later, you probably would have lost more lives The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I had formally gone in to make a recommendation to the president to have a 'shutdown' to have strong mitigation. We discussed it. It would be concerning to some that it might in fact have negative consequences. Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation and went to mitigation. Fauci told a reporter he did not recall the date of that meeting, or a second meeting when they doctors recommended an extension of the 15-day shelter-in-place. Fauci then rebuffed another reporter who asked if Trump prompted him to clarify his remarks. Everything I do is voluntarily, dont even imply that. Later, when asked why he retweeted a tweet suggesting it was time to "#FireFauci," Trump shrugged. "I retweeted somebody, I dont know," Trump responded. "They said fire Fauci. It doesn't matter." April 13, 2:50 p.m. Contra Costa County has instituted a new policy requiring residential care and healthcare facilities in the county to screen incoming staff and visitors for potential COVID-19 symptoms, the county announced Monday. The new requirement goes into effect Tuesday. The age and health of many county residents, particularly those living in congregate care settings, places them at higher risk of serious health complications, including death, from COVID-19, Contra Costa Health Officer Dr. Chris Farnitano said. This order is another precaution we can take as a community to protect our vulnerable residents. Specifically, the mandate means visitors and staff members must submit to a temperature and symptom check. Those facilities must not allow anyone to enter who has had a 100-degree fever or respiratory illness symptoms in the last seven days. Residents and patients are excluded from the mandate. April 13, 2:45 p.m. At a Monday press conference, San Francisco officials said the number of positive cases in the county is now 957 with 15 deaths. "I expect our numbers to climb above 1,000 soon," said Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's public health officer. "Todays numbers are significantly higher than Friday. This is in the large part due to the increased testing in the homeless population." On Friday, the city announced 68 homeless guests and two staff workers at MSC South homeless shelter tested positive. Today, the total number of cases at the city's largest shelter grew to 91, with 81 guests and 10 staff confirmed positive. A total of 182 people from the shelter have been tested and half of them were positive. "This is unfortunate, but this is the scenario we have been preparing for," Colfax said. All guests of the shelter have been relocated to hotel rooms while MSC undergoes a deep cleaning. Colfax recognized that the citys homeless population already faces health issues and this pandemic will only exploit and amplify those problems. April 13, 2:15 p.m. The number of COVID-19 patients at Bay Area hospitals held steady over the weekend. After three straight days of recorded declines, the number of hospitalizations rose 3.6% from Friday to Saturday and 0.9% from Saturday to Sunday. The number of patients in intensive care units declined 1.6% from Friday to Saturday and 7.1% from Saturday to Sunday. The data from Sunday shows that there are 234 patients in intensive care units across the Bay Area, the lowest total number since the state started recording ICU numbers by county on April 1. April 13, 2:00 p.m. San Francisco Mayor London Breed warned cannabis enthusiasts not to gather in Golden Gate Park on April 20, stating, "We will be prepared if people start to show up to make sure that it doesnt happen." She also warned prospective partiers not to seek a replacement location. San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and specifically Hippie Hill, has for decades served as the go-to epicenter for 420 celebrations every April. But this year, amidst the coronavirus outbreak, Breed said, "We will not allow this unsanctioned event to occur this year." To deter crowds, Breed said police would be patrolling the park, and would be issuing citations and making arrests if needed. She also warned prospective partiers not to seek replacement location. April 13, 1:45 p.m. Several Bay Area counties announced new cases of the coronavirus Monday afternoon: Alameda County announced 43 additional cases, bringing the total to 886, with 23 deaths. Contra Costa County announced 13 additional cases, bringing the total to 552, with 11 deaths. Santa Clara County announced 45 new cases, bringing the total to 1,666. The county also announced six more deaths, bringing the death toll to 60. April 13, 12:30 p.m. On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan is forthcoming to begin the process of lessening social-distancing guidelines as the state begins to recover from the coronavirus outbreak. Newsom has been in conversation with other West Coast governors to that end, he said, but plans to lay out California-based thinking in that effort at a press conference at noon Tuesday. We began a process of establishing more formally what it would look like and how we can begin the process of the kind of incremental release of the stay-at-home orders that advance the fundamental principle of keeping people healthy, keeping people safe, using science to guide our decision making and not political pressure, he said. [Were] continuing to do what we can do to share our best practices. Newsom added the relaxing of the stay-at-home orders would need to be part of a bottom-up plan, but did not elaborate on any specifics. "We need a process where we dont invite a second wave," he said. Newsom also announced Monday a $42 million effort of which $40.6 million would come from the state to build supports within Californias foster care system. About 86,500 children are within the system, Newsom said, with 59,000 of them specifically in foster care. This fund would support a number of programs benefiting those children and families, including resource referrals and amplification of the 211 system (a health and human services agency directory). In addition, this fund will expand emancipation efforts and provide an extra $200 per month to families at risk. Newsom gave updated numbers around the coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates in the state , noting that 22,348 Californians have tested positive. A total of 3,015 people have been hospitalized in the state, with 1,178 of those going to the ICU. That figure marks an increase of 2.9%. Newsom also noted that 687 have died. Newsom lauded Californians who have made an effort to stay at home, even during the holiday weekend, when nice weather would have tempted them to go outside. The curve is being bent because of you and your willingness to continue to stay at home, he said. Especially this weekend, Easter weekend, we did not see the surge some people were predicting. April 13, 10 a.m. San Francisco reported 85 new cases and one additional death Monday morning. The county now has 957 cases and 15 deaths. A week ago, San Francisco had 568 positive tests. Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and director of UCSF's Prevention and Public Health Group, said the large number of new cases on Monday may be the result of a backlog in reporting over the Easter holiday. S.F. continues to average about 50 new cases a day, and on Easter Sunday, the county announced only 15 new cases. That said, Rutherford added, "With 85 cases, you want to see what happens." Rutherford echoed what many experts have said in the past week, and commented, "Looking at what has been happening here, I think weve 'flattened the curve,'" meaning social distancing has slowed the rate of the virus' spread. "Were going to have to see what happens next," he said. San Francisco hasn't seen the surge in illness and hospitalizations that New York City has and the county has been lauded for its efforts in preventing an explosion of cases, but Rutherford said the region is still vulnerable. San Francisco has among the oldest populations in the state and research shows people over age 60 are at an increased risk for complications with the virus. What's more, "we have the densest housing of any county in California," he said. "We could easily have outbreaks from time to time as the virus gets introduced from time to time." When does Rutherford think it will be safe to lift the shelter-in-place order? "Thats a question for Governor Newsom," he said. My guess would be in May some time." According to the San Francisco's data tracker, 7,961 individuals have been tested in the county with 13% of the tests coming back positive. San Francisco has the second-highest number of cases in the nine-county Bay Area. Santa Clara County has the most cases with 1,621. San Mateo County updated its figures Monday morning, announcing 49 cases, bringing the total to 701. The county's death toll remains 21. April 13, 8:52 a.m. The number of coronavirus cases climbed above 23,000 in California over the weekend, with nearly 5,000 cases in the San Francisco Bay Area. Coronavirus-linked deaths in California now number more than 600, according to the Johns Hopkins database. Six hundred and thirty-four Californians have died after contracting COVID-19 as of early Monday morning. For comparison, the same database has New York at 8,650 deaths, New Jersey at 2,183 and Louisiana at 806. Santa Clara County continues to have the most cases in the nine-county Bay Area, and on Sunday health officials reported 55 new cases and three additional deaths. To date, Santa Clara has 1,621 confirmed cases and 54 deaths. A week ago, San Francisco had 568 positive tests; as of Sunday its tally was up to 872, the second-highest number of cases in the region. Alameda County trails close behind with 853 cases. Last Monday, San Mateo County had a similar case count as S.F. and Alameda counties, but it now has fallen far behind with 652 cases. San Francisco's death toll is 14, Alameda's 23 and San Mateo's 21. The COVID-19 death toll in Contra Costa County reached double-digits when two additional deaths were reported Saturday morning. As of Sunday, there were 539 confirmed cases and 11 total deaths in the county. While Gov. Gavin Newsom and state officials have said hospitalizations of coronavirus patients are forecast to peak in mid-May, a model from the University of Washington predicts peak hospitalization will happen today. The Washington model predicts deaths will peak on Wednesday. This model assumes full social distancing will continue through May 2020. California hasn't seen the surge in illness that some places such as New York City have seen, but Newsom and other experts have repeatedly warned that the state could see cases and deaths skyrocket if the shelter-in-place order is lifted prematurely. For more on model predictions, read SFGATE's story "Is California's internal coronavirus model showing a mid-to-late May peak realistic?" Click here to read more on what we can learn from the Bay Area's hospitalization data. Cumulative cases in the greater Bay Area (due to limited testing these numbers reflect only a small portion of likely cases): ALAMEDA COUNTY: 886 confirmed cases, 23 deaths For more information on Alameda County cases, visit the public health department website. CONTRA COSTA COUNTY: 552 confirmed cases, 11 deaths For more information on Contra Costa County cases, visit the public health department website. LAKE COUNTY: 4 confirmed cases For information on Lake County and coronavirus, visit the public health department website. MARIN COUNTY: 170 confirmed cases, 10 deaths Fore more information on Marin County cases, visit the public health department website. MONTEREY COUNTY: 87 confirmed cases, 3 deaths For more information on Monterey County cases, visit the public health department website. NAPA COUNTY: 34 cases, 2 deaths For more information on Napa County cases, visit the public health department website. SAN BENITO COUNTY: 38 confirmed cases, 2 deaths For more information on San Benito County cases, visit the public health department website. SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY: 957 confirmed cases, 15 deaths For more information on San Francisco County cases, visit the public health department website. SAN MATEO COUNTY: 701 confirmed cases, 21 deaths For more information on San Mateo County cases, visit the public health department website. SANTA CLARA COUNTY: 1,666 confirmed cases, 60 deaths Fore more information on Santa Clara County cases, visit the public health department website. SANTA CRUZ COUNTY: 91 confirmed cases, 1 death For more information on Santa Cruz County cases, visit the public health department website. SOLANO COUNTY: 135 confirmed cases, 2 deaths For more information on Solano County cases, visit the public health department website. SONOMA COUNTY: 147 confirmed cases, 2 deaths For more information on Sonoma County cases, visit the public health department website. In California, 723 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported, according to Johns Hopkins University. For comparison, New York has 10,056, New Jersey 2,443 and Louisiana 884. The Associated Press contributed to this report. MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE: Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here. Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com. A Border Security Force sub-inspector and his family members were booked on Sunday for travelling from Indore in Madhya Pradesh to Ahmedabad in Gujarat during the lockdown without permission, Superintendent of Police Vinit Jain said. The BSF officer did not stop the vehicle when asked to do so near Machhalia check post and was intercepted after officials relayed the information to personnel at Kalidevi police station ahead, said Jain. "BSF sub-inspector Rajkishore Choudhary, a resident of Ahmedabad, and five of his family members were in the car. On a complaint by the tehsildar, those inside the car, except a three-year-old child, were arrested under IPC, Motor Vehicles Act and Disaster Management Act. They were later released on bail," the SP informed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are imposing more controls on free expression in response to the coronavirus crisis. (Mikhail Klimentyev / Pool) Over the past two decades, three countries that were once on a path to greater openness and respect for human rights have decidedly reversed course. Leaders in Russia, Turkey and Venezuela have pioneered a new form of authoritarianism, one in which the government systematically seeks to hollow out the core institutions of democracy the court system, a free press, civil society, an autonomous legislature to the point where they become irrelevant. What also unites these regimes is a track record of using crises to accelerate the erosion of institutional checks on their power. With a global pandemic now raging, all three are signaling that they plan to exploit the current emergency. A number of other countries are poised to do so as well most alarmingly Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban was recently granted power to rule by decree indefinitely. In many ways, Russias Vladimir Putin has been a trailblazer for his peers in capitalizing on emergencies. He repeatedly used a stubborn insurgency in the North Caucasus region as a pretext to build up his authority, beginning with his first stint as prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin. In 2004, as president, he responded to a bloody confrontation with terrorists at a school in the town of Beslan by pushing through legislation that ended the popular election of regional governors. Among many other examples, he has cited the supposed threats of color revolutions and a fascist uprising in Ukraine to justify crackdowns on the media and nongovernmental organizations. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan imposed a state of emergency after a failed 2016 coup attempt. The ensuing campaign of repression featured round after round of arrests and firings that crushed the civil service, education system and military. His government also imprisoned scores of journalists and media workers, closed hundreds of associations and media outlets, and seized the assets of hundreds of businesses. The state of emergency was lifted in 2018, but only after Erdogan had secured constitutional amendments that greatly strengthened the presidency. Story continues The late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez similarly leveraged a failed coup in 2002 to gain dominance over the economy, military, media and trade unions. One post-coup measure, the 2004 Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television, introduced state censorship and allowed for the shuttering of critical television and radio outlets. Indeed, both Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, have consistently used the specter of U.S.-backed coups and imperialism to tar their domestic opponents and justify further attacks on democracy. The coronavirus pandemic differs from these previous crises in a crucial respect. It is truly global in scope, threatening more than one nation or one leaders hold on power. Practically all governments have taken extraordinary steps to protect their citizens from the contagion. This includes democracies, which have imposed unprecedented restrictions on public gatherings and economic activity, even postponing elections in some cases. As a result, the pandemic provides a particularly convincing cover under which autocrats can pursue their agendas. The regimes in Russia, Turkey and Venezuela are already maneuvering to exploit the health crisis to further entrench their rule. The Russian government has started to impose new censorship and surveillance measures. At the same time, the pandemic has diverted attention from Putins controversial plan for constitutional amendments that could extend his rule until 2036. Turkish authorities have arrested more than 400 people for provocative posts on social media about the pandemic, reflecting the governments penchant for punishing free speech. Meanwhile, Maduros regime is moving to arrest journalists and activists who question the countrys preparedness for COVID-19 cases. All three of these nations are kleptocracies and abusers of human rights. Venezuela has become a humanitarian disaster, with millions struggling to meet basic needs even before the coronavirus struck. Turkey has driven its economy to the brink of disaster by funneling cheap loans to Erdogans cronies. Russia has incurred sanctions through its international aggression and hoarded its energy wealth in state coffers, even as its people face stagnant or declining living standards. The coronavirus poses a new kind of threat to these governments, one that brute force cant easily crush. The focus on self-preservation and the gutting of independent institutions has left these regimes unprepared to confront a fast-spreading contagion, with systems designed to hide failures rather than expose them. Unfortunately, in a pandemic the whole world may pay a price for the consequences of authoritarian rule. Michael J. Abramowitz is president of Freedom House. Arch Puddington is a senior scholar at Freedom House. The World Health Organisation is urging countries across the world to close dangerous wet markets amid warnings about the risks posed by environments where humans are in close contact with animals. Wet markets in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus outbreak first emerged, have begun to reopen following the lifting of lockdown restrictions. This move comes despite the virus being linked to the citys Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But WHO, as well as other public health organisations and campaigners, have said the markets pose a real danger as pathogens can spread easily and quickly from animals to humans. Dr David Nabarro, a WHO special envoy on Covid-19 and special representative of the United Nations secretary general for food security and nutrition, said the world health body pleads with governments and just about everybody to be respectful of how viruses from the animal kingdom are rife. Speaking on BBC Radio 4s Today programme, Dr Nabarro said while WHO is not able to tell governments what to do, their advice is to close wet markets. He replied: You know how WHO and other parts of the international system work we dont have the capacity to police the world. Instead, what we have to do is offer advice and guidance, and theres very clear advice from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and WHO that said there are real dangers in these kinds of environments. 75 per cent of emerging infections come from the animal kingdom. Its partly the markets, but its also other places where humans and animals are in close contact. Just make absolutely certain that youre not creating opportunities for viral spread, added Dr Nabarro. Traders sell fresh produce, fruit and vegetables in wet markets alongside wild and domestic animals mainly for consumption in wet markets, which are common in China, South Korea and southeast Asia. Not all wet markets sell exotic meats, but poor legal controls allow for the controversial product to enter the supply chain. Last week, over 200 conservation groups across the world signed an open letter calling on WHO to force the closure of markets where wild meat is sold for consumption. The joint letter calls on WHO to recommend to governments that they bring permanent bans to live wildlife markets and to exclude the use of wildlife from the organisations definition and endorsement of traditional medicine. Dr Nabarro added: We have similar concerns about bushmeat be very very careful when youre basically eating wild animal meat or killing wild animals. All these things are higher risk and we have to be on high alert these days for these problems. The Independent is calling for global action to impose tighter restrictions surrounding the trade of wild animals, in order to help reduce the risk of diseases like coronavirus from spreading. There is some indication that Chinese authorities are heeding calls for more restrictions. Last month, Beijing banned the trade and consumption of non-aquatic wild animals, and shut down 20,000 farms raising animals such as peacocks, porcupines and ostriches. Shenzhen became the first Chinese city to ban the sale and consumption of dog and cat meat, with central authorities declaring that dogs are companions and not for consumption. Jinfeng Zhou, secretary general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, told The Guardian that a universal closure of wildlife markets was justified. However, the use of wild animal meat or byproducts are still being approved for use in medication and signs that regional Chinese authorities are not enforcing the recent ban on the sale of wild animals have emerged. Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued consolidated guidelines on lockdown measures to be taken by all Ministries/Departments of Government of India, States/Union Territory Governments and State/Union Territory Authorities for containment of COVID-19 epidemic in the country. MHA has directed States to implement lockdown guidelines in letter & spirit to ensure smooth movement of inter & intrastate cargo, trucks, workers and functioning of warehouse/cold storages, as it has come to the notice of the Ministry that in some parts of the country, the aforesaid guidelines and clarifications are not being implemented in letter and spirit. Specifically, trucks carrying essential and non-essential goods are being detained; workers needed for operation of manufacturing units of essential goods, and other exempted categories are not getting authorizations/ passes for their movement; inter State movement of goods and personnel related to above two categories is getting impeded as passes/ authorizations issued by authorities of one State/ UT Government are not being respected by the authorities of other States/ UTs; and operations of cold storage and warehouses are not being allowed. Such restrictions, with regard to activities specifically permitted by MHA, have the potential of creating shortages of essential commodities. With a view to brining in clarity at the implementation level, MHA has reiterated that the following guidelines are to be observed strictly by the authorities at various levels: Inter-state and intra-state movement of all trucks and other goods / carrier vehicles with one driver and one additional person is allowed as long as the driver is carrying a valid driver's license. This is irrespective of the nature of the cargo, whether essential or otherwise. No further permit or approval would be required. Empty trucks/ goods carriers should also be allowed to operate while on way to pick up goods, or returning after completing a delivery. Hence, there is no cause to stop empty trucks provided they have valid documents such as driving license & road permit etc. Local authorities should actively facilitate the movement of truck drivers and cleaners from their place of residence to location of their trucks. Local authorities should facilitate the easy to and fro movement of workers to workplace and back, in respect of all the permitted industrial/ commercial activities. Railways, Airports, Seaports, and Customs authorities have already been authorized to issue passes for their staff and contractual labour. This may be ensured. Regarding issuance of passes to workers engaged in the manufacturing of permitted categories, the State/ UT Governments are advised to expeditiously issue passes on the basis of authorizations issued by companies/ organizations. The State/ UT Governments shall ensure that these passes are honored both for movement within their State/ UT and in bordering areas of other States/ UTs. MSMEs engaged in the manufacture of essential items like wheat flour (atta), pulses (dal) and edible oils should be allowed to function freely, without any hindrances. Warehouses/ cold storage should be allowed to freely function with allowance for to and fro movement of trucks and without regard to the nature of the goods, whether essential or otherwise. Warehouses of companies should also be allowed to operate. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pharmacists could administer a finger prick blood test to see if someone has recovered from coronavirus by identifying antibodies in their blood. Read more An open letter to the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware about the need to prepare a large-scale program to determine who is or isnt immune to the COVID-19 virus. Dear Governors, As hospitals and health professionals brace for the inevitable surge of COVID19 cases and the rest of us hunker down at home, its not too early to begin planning for a return to normal. I propose a state-led mass SARS-COV-2 immune antibody testing program to provide public health authorities with the data they need to sound the all-clear and get the regional economy up and running as quickly and safely as possible. This will also inform individuals about their potential immunity to this coronavirus. Briefly, here are the key steps: Using local pharmacies, create a program to test people for COVID-19 antibodies that operates separately to the regular healthcare system. Many pharmacists are trained to obtain blood samples and are very comfortable with this type of testing. The state will purchase the antibody test kits directly from FDA-approved manufacturers. Provide the test for free or at low cost to anyone who wants it. No one should be forced to choose between food and a test that might let them return to work. Have your Commissioner of Health issue a blanket prescription for the test so people wont need to bother their overburdened doctors. Create a hard-to-fake card or wristband that provides proof the bearer is immune to the COVID-19 virus. This will be useful if they are stopped for violating shelter-in-place orders or even to apply for a job where immunity is an asset. Use existing vaccine registry systems to track tested people and their willingness to donate their blood for treating others. This data will be critical for public health officials tracking and predicting the outcomes of the regions epidemic. These systems are designed from the ground up with security and privacy protections. Heres why this program matters. The CDC estimates that 25% of the people who have COVID-19 are contagious but have no symptoms. As the virus spreads, an increasing number of people will contract and recover from the virus while experiencing mild to moderate symptoms that dont warrant a virus test. These people will constitute an ever-growing percentage of the population who experts believe can neither catch COVID-19 again or spread it to others. Immune healthcare workers can treat COVID-19 patients or care for at-risk people with less fear, allowing their still-vulnerable colleagues to shift to less risky duties or take a break. Immune people can begin to resume normal lives. There will be great demand for a specific antibody test by the many people who want or need to know if they can stop worrying. Businesses where work from home is not an option will wonder if they can restart operations with employees who are no longer a risk to themselves or others. Without proper testing, the return-to-work process will be more chaotic and risk reigniting the epidemic. We dont want these now-healthy folks rushing to hospitals, labs or doctor's offices demanding the test that will liberate them from government-mandated quarantine. A state-organized parallel testing system is an innovative approach that demonstrates your states commitment to opening the economy as soon as its safe to do so. As I suggested, this proposal assumes that person with a positive antibody test is truly immune and not continuing to shed the virus, so any testing program should be developing in consultation with experts in your states and at CDC before moving forward. Researchers in Germany and elsewhere are proposing similar massive antibody testing programs to track the number of people who had the COVID-19 virus and give those who test positive an Immunity Passport so they can get back to work. I appreciate that this is going to be expensive, but what better use of economic stimulus dollars than determining who can go back to work safely and getting our moribund economy going again? I would encourage pharmacies to see this as their contribution to the response effort and as a way to generate more store traffic. States must take the lead in this testing effort. The epic failures in the federal governments preparation and response to this pandemic call into question its ability to take the lead on this effort. Dont wait for them to act. Use the authority you have now. Your citizens will thank you for your leadership. Preparations for coming out of lock down must begin immediately. Until a vaccine, which provides the best immunity, is available, antibody testing is a stop-gap measure that allows us to save lives and put people back to work. Drew Harris, a population health and health policy analyst at Thomas Jefferson University, is a member of The Inquirers Health Advisory Panel. FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered. Supwal village in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district was declared a coronavirus hotspot on Monday after one of its residents, an Army jawan, tested positive for the disease here. The jawan was posted in Agra and had returned to the village on March 18 on leave. He was among the four people who tested positive for the virus in Jammu region on Sunday. The district administration declared entire Supwal village as hotspot after recording the first COVID-19 positive case from there. The district administration has sealed all the inward and outward movement of men, material and means from the village to contain the spread of virus till all contacts of the COVID-19 patient are tested negative, an official spokesperson said here. He said a designated district officer has been stationed in the village and a control room set up. The official said essential commodities have been made available and door-to-door tests are being conducted, besides other necessary measures. Deputy Commissioner, Samba, Rohit Khajuria said that 10 medical teams, revenue officials, police personnel and panchayat members would carry out door-to-door medical checkups and contact-tracing, and submit reports within three days. The complete area shall be sanitised while masks and gloves shall also be distributed among the public, he said. Meanwhile, 849 people completed their quarantine period at Chadwal, in nearby Kathua district, and were sent back to their respective districts. Deputy Commissioner, Kathua, O P Bhagat said hundreds of travellers, including students, who had arrived in Kathua from nearby Punjab were isolated and shifted to quarantine facilities as a precautionary measure. "More than 65 quarantine facilities have been established in the district for accommodating these inmates where they were provided food and shelter since March 23," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Brad Harris was my first boss after college in 1972. He was the dominant radio personality at WADS in Ansonia, a 500-watt daytime station that served Ansonia, Derby and Shelton. He was program director, music director, talk show host, chief news correspondent, play-by-play announcer, salesman, copywriter and commercial producer. And hes the first person I know who has died of the coronavirus. The community itself was very conservative. George Wallace, the former Alabama governor and the icon of racial segregation, ran for president as an independent candidate that year and garnered 6 percent of the Connecticut vote, most of those votes coming from the coverage area of WADS. And I was the bearded hippie out of UConn. Brad was a moderate Republican, and although we had different political views, we had great and respectful conversations. He always listened, treated me very well, was gentlemanly and civil, and gave me many opportunities to advance my career well beyond my skill level. I was the news director of a one-person news operation. But Brad took me under his wing and allowed me to do a music shift, a kitchen talk show and fill in for him as a host of Tell It to the Valley the most listened to WADS program, and perhaps, the most important forum for the people of the area. I always wanted to lead the news with a national story. After all, this was a presidential election year and the Vietnam War in its final throes. Back then, I thought the stations practice of reading obituaries at the end of the newscast was a farce and then, to close it with an uplifting story was ridiculous. But Brad knew the community. National news was available everywhere, but what our listeners needed to know was whether model gas-powered airplanes would be allowed in a Shelton park. He also knew that there were many immigrants in the Valley who couldnt read English (or newspapers), so broadcasting obits was the only way theyd know about their friends and distant relatives deaths. Brad, too, intuitively knew that he didnt want to leave people with sadness at the end of the newscast. So, why not lift their spirits? Brad was tireless. He was often there at dawn preparing a report on a water commission meeting he covered the night before. Hed leave the station and walk the streets visiting shops and luncheonettes shaking hands and picking up tidbits. He was a true loving-and-loved rock star in this small community. He treated me with respect, despite our political differences and my lack of professional experience. He approached my political views with a healthy curiosity and civil discourse, unlike his cutting boss. Ive always felt a kindness for him. He was a mentor and inspiration and, although I didnt know it know it at the time, he was my friend. Barry Berman was the founder and president of the Connecticut Radio Network and CRN International and has started a new digital audio company, Sounds Great! Media. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Teuku Faizasyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 15:35 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18fdd0 3 Opinion opinions,#COVID19,#coronavirus,COVID-19,coronavirus,COVID-19-in-Indonesia,international-cooperation Free As many governments announce a prolonged work from home period, I feel rather numb. I have been wondering how much more time is needed for us and the international community to put this COVID-19 pandemic to rest. One thing is sure, that to make significant progress in tackling the pandemic there is a need for close collaboration at the national and international levels. First, in times of crisis, we need cohesion and clear direction which will provide better results with greater efficiency. Within our political system, such cohesion is required at all levels national, regional and local. Second, with sound international cooperation, countries will be in a better position to mitigate the dire impacts of this pandemic and its aftermath. If we fail to sustain international cooperation, we may end up in a new era of mutual distrust where international relations are dictated by self-centered interest. There exists a close resemblance between the behavior of nation states and individuals. Although we are independent actors in our own right, we are willing to engage in cooperation or collaboration. Yet our behavior is also influenced by the uncertain, that of fear or anxiety. Nowadays, anxiety is a common currency in global discourse on COVID-19. Each day we are swarmed with news of its spread and the human death toll. Social distancing and work from home have become part of a new lexicon in the efforts to prevent contagion. Over the past few weeks, much has been discussed and written about this pandemic. Pundits have analyzed its impact through various lenses, based on their expertise. They have dwelled on how it would significantly affect the socioeconomic and political condition of any country. Sadly enough, much of their analyses present a rather bleak scenario. It would be naive to think that we can pass this turbulent time any sooner. As we look around, we have not seen any country winning completely in its fight against the virus and present a clean bill of health. As mentioned by President Joko Jokowi Widodo, Indonesia will have to develop its own model and best practices, based on the characteristics of our nation. As an archipelago, Indonesia faces a different set of challenges vis-a-vis those three Asian countries. As the government continues to perfect a strategy to confront the virus and mitigate its adverse impact, the call for all Indonesians to stand together and lend support grows louder. Indeed, this is not the time to second guess the governments intention. Instead, it would be a perfect time for the nation to unite and join hands in fighting the pandemic and all its repercussions. In the course of our history as a nation, Indonesia has been tested by numerous challenges. Some of them so severe, such as armed rebellions and the 1965 coup. Moreover, two decades ago we were struck with the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The multi-dimensional crisis that followed the financial crisis paralyzed our nation. In those days, many were skeptical about whether Indonesia would survive the crisis and remain intact. Yet, we successfully overcame the challenges and have since come back stronger. As we are about to celebrate 75 years of Indonesias independence, we should be proud of what we have achieved thus far, in terms of state building as well as our level of development and economic progress. All these are our assets as a nation. Hence, building on what we have achieved thus far, we should be able to confront the pandemic in unison. We are not alone. The global community is also facing similar challenges and it is therefore expected for us all to seek international cooperation. Needless to say, when a county is under pressure to tackle such a complex health situation with so many constraints cooperation among nations is somewhat shaken. Scholars Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman wrote on a rather concerning trend among governments to restrict foreign access to pandemic supplies (Harvard Business Review, March 23, 2020). The two referred to export restrictions imposed by some governments on scarce resources needed to protect their citizens. A question arises if this is an isolated case; an aberration from the general norms governing relations among nations. However, if this becomes a new norm, are we now witnessing a shifting paradigm in the international order? A new paradigm that is less concerned with a rules-based international order that is founded, among other things, on a states commitment to open trade and the free flow of goods across borders. It is within this international order where we can expect more predictability in interstate relations. A rules-based international order will lose its essence once countries become more self-centered and less forthcoming to international collaboration. If this trend continues then we will have to struggle in winning international commitment to deal with other strategic issues such as achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Bearing this in mind, President Jokowi and Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi continue to invoke the need for cooperation against the pandemic in conversations with international partners, including members of the G20. From all the diplomatic efforts to tackle COVID-19, Indonesia has already established cooperation with countries, among others China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India and Singapore to ensure the availability of medical supplies. Cooperation that is not limited to this immediate interest but also on how to thrive together post pandemic. Finally, both at the national and global levels we must find an effective solution and not simply a respite. We need to instill confidence among the people, ease their weariness and bring back the rays of hope. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Actor Disha Patanis good deed of the day was rescuing an injured kite. The actor took her feathery friend to the vet after finding it lying on the street. She provided the bird with food and rushed to the nearest vet clinic. The RAWW Mumbai shared pictures of the bird with Disha and wrote a long post thanking the actor for her kindness. A big shout out to Disha Patani maam for rescuing an injured Back Kite lying on the street...would like to thank Ms Patani immensely for the compassion that she has shown in such difficult times. While theres been a lot of stories around that will let you down amid the lockdown but this entire period has also brought in the best in people from all walks of life, they wrote. The distressed birds wing had two fractures leading to severe pain, trauma and dehydration. Once stabilized, the bird will be undergoing a major orthopaedic surgery to repair its wing. Disha was last seen in Mohit Suris Malang. On Saturday, the actor wrong a birthday note for Suri on Instagram. Happy bday to one of the most amazing directors and an even more amazing human, have an amazing year ahead sir, lots of love always Mohit Suri, Disha wrote along with some photographs. Also read: Rajeev Khandelwal shares casting couch horror with top director: He asked me to go to his room which I refused Malang, which released on February 7, was a commercial success. The film also stars Aditya Roy Kapur, Anil Kapoor and Kunal Kemmu. It is a romantic action thriller film produced by Luv Ranjan, Ankur Garg, Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar and Jay Shewakramani. Disha is set to work with Suri again on the sequel of 2014 sleeper hit Ek Villain. Reportedly, Disha will star in the sequel along with Aditya Roy Kapur and John Abraham, and the film, which is being directed by Mohit Suri, will have her essay a character inspired by Rosamund Pikes role in the 2014 Hollywood film, Gone Girl. Follow @htshowbiz for more WFH for Private offices in Delhi, restaurants & bars to be shut as Omicron-led to sudden rise in Covid cases Doctor tests positive, first COVID-19 case in Meghalaya India oi-PTI Shillong, Apr 14: A senior doctor here has tested positive for COVID-19 in Meghalaya, the first coronavirus case in the state, Health Minister A L Hek said on Monday. The samples of the doctor who owns a private hospital here tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Science, the minister said. The doctor has no recent travel history. "The matter has been discussed with the chief minister. The health commissioner and secretary were directed to ensure that no patient from the said hospital, where the doctor was functioning, will be allowed to come out, Hek said. As the matter is serious, the health minister said, the hospital will now be sealed and out of bounds temporarily. "The hospital will now be turned into a quarantine camp and the hospital staff, family members of the doctor and even the attendants who visit the hospital will be tested," Hek said. In a statement, the government said, This is to inform that unfortunately one doctor from Bethany Hospital, Shillong has tested COVID 19 positive today." The district magistrate of Shillong has imposed a curfew for 48 hours in the Shillong agglomeration area starting from 6 am Tuesday with the exception of essential services, it said. "All the residents are requested to kindly cooperate and refrain from coming out of the houses to enable the Health Department officials to do contact tracing and take appropriate remedial measures," it said. The government has requested all those who may have visited Bethany Hospital, Nongrim Hills, Shillong on or after March 22 to immediately register themselves by calling 108. The government is fully prepared to handle the situation and there is no need for the public to have any anxiety on this account, the statement said. The state government has strongly recommended that all residents must use a protective two-layer cotton cloth material to cover nose, mouth and chin as a mask and follow social distancing protocols, it added. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 0:19 [IST] RBC Royal Banks chief executive officer said that the federal government is holding talks with banks to potentially introduce more relief measures to help Canadians struggling with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As measures to combat the pandemic have effectively hit the pause button on the economy, the federal government revealed last week that the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 7.8% in March. While both Ottawa and the banks have already introduced several measures to help consumers deal with the fallout including rate cuts and mortgage deferral programs RBC CEO David McKay told Bloomberg that more programs are likely to come. Read more: RBC economist projects housing sector to recover from impact of COVID-19 in 2021 On testing the floor and other surfaces like computers, handrails, doorknobs, etc they found high levels of contamination of the virus. It's been four months since the first case of coronavirus was detected in China. As time passes, researchers are making new discoveries about the spread, symptoms, and prevention of the novel coronavirus. A new study, published in the Emerging Infectious Disease Journal, the official journal of the USA's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention states that the virus can travel up to four metres from patients. The study also looked at the risk health care workers are facing by coming in constant contact with infected patients as well as virus-laden floors, computer equipment, handrails, etc in hospitals. The World Health Organisation has on previous occasions said that maintaining two metres distance (social distancing) between people will decrease the risk of the transmission of the disease. However, an MIT study done by professor Lydia Bourouiba said that two metres might not work and these guidelines are outdated. She said the virus can travel much further than previously anticipated around eight metres and can linger in the air for hours. However, she and her study were openly ridiculed by Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading US government infectious disease expert during a press meeting at the White House. He said that he "was disturbed by that report because thats misleading." He also said that a very, very robust, vigorous, achoo sneeze would be needed for the droplets to travel such a distance, reported the Internation Business Times. Also read: India's pollution board issues guidelines to handle COVID-19 biomedical waste A new study, conducted by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, China might be the extra proof we need to increase the distance in social distancing. The team of researchers said, "(SARS-CoV-2) transmitted by aerosols remains controversial, and the exposure risk for close contacts has not been systematically evaluated." They tested the surface and air samples from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the general ward in a COVID-19 ward at the Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan. The ICU had 15 patients that were severely infected and 24 patients, in the general ward, has milder symptoms. On testing the floor and frequently used surfaces like the computer mice, trash cans, sickbed handrails, doorknobs, patient masks, personal protective equipment, and air outlets, they found high levels of contamination of the virus. The floor was heavily contaminated and they hypothesise that it is because "of gravity and airflow causing most virus droplets to float to the ground." The soles of shoes worn by the workers in the hospital were also positive and it could be reasoned that they might act as carriers of the virus. The floor of the pharmacy, in the hospital, also tested positive for the virus. Also read: How does a hospital prepare for coronavirus; an expert explains The Conclusion The study found that the masks used by patients have "exhaled droplets and oral secretions" and the researchers recommend that these masks are disinfected before they are discarded as the virus can spread if anyone comes in contact with it. They also recommended that the staff working in the hospital "perform hand hygiene practices" like washing their hands or using a sanitizer after they come in contact with a patient. This will ensure that they don't touch things in the hospital and increase the chance of infecting other people. Another suggestion from the study was the air in the ICU was more contaminated with the virus that the general wards in the hospital and hence extra protection should be undertaken by the hospital authorities to ensure that the contamination was kept to the minimum. Last but not the least, after tested the air around a patient's bet, the study points to the fact that the aerosol distribution of SARS-CoV-2 can transmit over a distance of four meters. Also read: What are the symptoms of coronavirus? Is there a cure? and other COVID-19 questions answered The organization made a list of the 10 most notable insurers and their auto insurance refund measures: Allstate is giving its customers up to $600 million over the next two months through its Shelter-In Place Paybacks program. American Family will refund about $200 million. Farmers will receive a 25% reduction in their April premiums. The Hanover Insurance Group will return 15% of April and May auto premiums. Liberty Mutual will rebate about $250 million to customers, on top of offering a 15% refund on two months of auto premium. MetLife Auto & Home customers will be given 15% credit for April and May based on their monthly premiums. Nationwide is giving a one-time premium refund of $50 per policy for personal auto policies active as of March 31, 2020. State Farm has revealed an up to $2 billion dividend that will go to its auto insurance customers; it will appear as credit on their policies. On average, customers can expect to receive credit of about 25% of premiums for the period March 20 through May 31 exact percentages will vary by state. The Travelers Companies is giving 15% credit to auto insurance customers on their April and May premiums. USAA will return $520 million to its members. The other $2.4 billion in refunds, discounts, dividends, and credits is an estimated amount hypothesized by the I.I.I. based on the private auto insurance industrys cumulative market share. Those discounts, according to the organization, are forthcoming. Insurers are again fulfilling their role as economic first responders by providing financial relief to customers when they need it most, said I.I.I. CEO Sean Kevelighan. If the rest of the nations private-passenger auto insurers are as generous as the companies the Triple-I knows about, we project insurers will be giving customer refunds, discounts, dividends, and credits totaling $10.5 billion. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 14:36:15|Editor: Wang Yamei Video Player Close CANBERRA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Australia's fight against COVID-19 has achieved a new progress, with fewer than 50 cases confirmed between Sunday and Monday but it is too early to decide on lifting the restrictive rules, health officials said. According to the Department of Health there had been 6,322 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia as of Monday morning, an increase of 33 cases from Sunday morning. It represents an increase of only 0.5 percent, a recent record-low for Australia. However, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy warned that the figure could be misleading because of a downtrend in Australia's testing rate over the four-day Easter weekend. Of the 6,322 confirmed cases in Australia, 61 have died from COVID-19. More than 356,000 tests have been conducted across Australia. Authorities earlier in April warned that the Easter weekend, which spanned from Friday to Monday, would be one of the most important periods in Australia's fight against the virus and reiterated the importance of social distancing rules. Murphy told Seven Network television on Monday that it could take up to two weeks for the government to know if the pre-Easter message was effective. "We won't know what happens over Easter for a week and more. We will be very clearly watching the numbers over the next week to 10 days," he said. "It is too early to relax restrictions at the moment." Earlier on Monday, Simon Birmingham, the minister for trade, tourism and investment, said it was "impossible" to know how long the government's international travel restrictions would last. 'So far, loans outstanding of around Rs 4 trillion, out of the total Rs 7.5 trillion, have been postponed.' Punjab National Bank's integration with the Oriental Bank of Commerce and the United Bank of India came at a time when the country was in lockdown to mitigate the impact of coronavirus disease. "We had planned for credit growth of 8 per cent, but because of COVID-19 it will be around 6 per cent," PNB Managing Director and CEO S S Mallikarjuna Rao tells Somesh Jha. Which sectors have been most affected by COVID-19? We have seen an impact on apparel and textiles, auto and auto components, aviation, tourism, and financial sectors including non-banking finance companies, building and construction. We do not have huge exposure to aviation, except Jet Airways, which is already a non-performing asset. The micro, small and medium enterprises segment will have a problem. In the apparel sector, the issue is that they import raw material from Bangladesh, manufacture it here and export. It will take more for them to come back to normalcy and their accounts will be under stress. What is your outlook? There can be an impact on profitability as there will be more NPAs. There will be some slippage, which will have to be accounted for and it will impact profitability. I am expecting that things will improve from October 1. So, there will be an impact of 6 months. How long can we afford a lockdown? It is not a question of affordability. We will continue to support our customers in the crisis, but there will be an impact on the credit off-take. How have your targets changed for this year? We had planned for credit growth of 8 per cent, but because of COVID-19 it will be around 6 per cent. On NPAs/slippages, we are keeping our fingers crossed to see how the first two quarters pan out. We have seen an impact of Rs 4,000 crore, majority of which are MSMEs and retail accounts, for the bank in March, which otherwise wouldn't have been there. How is the employees's morale given they have to report to work during the lockdown? There is no doubt that there is pressure to work under these circumstances. The reason is we are providing services to citizens. Footfall in branches being less, we are operating with 50 per cent staff so that we can protect their health. We are maintaining electronic channels efficiently so that customers continue to use it and switch from cash mode. We are regularly communicating with employees. I am myself boosting their morale by appreciating their efforts in these tough times. There are some sporadic incidents across the country such as crowds being high in front of the bank branch during the direct benefit transfer, which is a cause of concern for the state authorities, who call up branch managers asking for an explanation or for closing branches. But by and large, it has been extremely smooth. Can the operations of branches be rationalised during lockdown? In some parts, it can be done, but our branch operational ratio right now is 92 to 95 per cent across the country. How are you preparing for lockdown extension? As far as banks are concerned, there are no problems as we have sufficient cash; we are calibrating branch activities too. The impact is on amalgamation. Effective April 1, certain activities, such as customer and employees's outreach, human resource deployment, which we had planned to complete by April 15 to 30, will be pushed back by a month. Were some product launches also delayed? As of today, all our products have been harmonised. Even though the database is different for three banks, we have customised. For example, human deployment, changing of the name boards, which was to start from April 1, has been postponed by a month. How have many customers availed the three-month moratorium on loan repayment? We have given the facility to all borrowers, except NBFCs. Opting out is automatic if customers pay the money. So far, loans outstanding of around Rs 4 trillion, out of the total Rs 7.5 trillion, have been postponed for the merged entity. Is the bank helping its borrowers in any way to deal with the situation? We have released four new products: For farmers -- 25 per cent of their existing Kisan Credit Card limits to the maximum of Rs 50,000, we can give money to them by application. They can repay in a span of 3 years. We have also introduced Tatkal Sahayata Rin for self-help groups, under which we are extending loans to the tune of Rs 5,000 per member and Rs 1 lakh for group, repayable in 3 years. The third product is a personal loan, equivalent to three times of average monthly salary, up to Rs 3 lakh, and the fourth product is for the bigger group, additional funding to the extent of 10 per cent of working capital without insisting on margin. These will address cash flow problems. How are you monitoring slippages of good loans into bad? If borrowers categorised as Stress Mention Account-2 as of March 1 have not paid money till March 31, they are categorised as NPAs. We are impressing upon such borrowers that since additional demand for interest is not there for March, April and May, the overdue amount as of March 1 can be paid till May 31 so the account remains standard. Because of the lockdown, we are trying to reach out to such borrowers by April 30. How many such borrowers are there? The SMA-2 accounts, outstanding as of March 1, that have become NPAs for PNB till March 31 are to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore and for the combined entity, are around Rs 4,000 crore. This wouldn't have happened if the COVID-19 pandemic hadn't hit the country. But quarterly slippages would not be high. This loan amount of Rs 4,000 crore has the potential for upgrade so we are reaching out to them. Industry wants the banking system's help to pay three months's wages of employees by enhancement of working capital loans. How do you see this? Our fourth product, released three-four days ago, is actually covering wages for up to 6 months for firms. Now, we have to reach out to customers as they have to be aware of the product. By April 30, we will have a good number of customers availing it. Photograph: Saumya Khandelwal/Reuters A divided Lincoln City Council, against its lawyer's advice, narrowly agreed to meet virtually during the next two weeks rather than in person as state and local health officials brace for escalating transmission of the coronavirus in Nebraska. The four-member majority agreed to follow other local governments under an executive order issued by Gov. Pete Ricketts that waives in-person meeting requirements under state open-meetings laws provided public notice of the meeting is given and access to the meeting remains. Councilwoman Sandra Washington proposed the meeting changes because she believes the technology exists to allow transparency and retain public involvement in the meetings. "I believe the essential work of governing continues whether we are working through an emergency or not," she said in proposing the virtual meetings. "And I think it's good sense that we allow ourselves the flexibility to meet at a responsible and safe distance in order to provide ourselves and staff the same precautions we are asking of others." Asked about his brothers big cases, Booker Shaw responded, I think he just felt that every case was important to him. Booker Shaw said what affected him the most was seeing the number of young African American men who got probation for a first offense, then returned to their same neighborhoods and fell victim to the same influences. He was also bothered by the once-mandatory sentences in federal guidelines, and very angry about the harsh sentences handed out for crack cocaine and the comparatively lighter ones for powder cocaine. The guidelines were later changed to be advisory for judges, and years later, the disparity between crack and powder cocaine was reduced. Illustration of bull and bear Investors might be wondering which are the best dividend stocks to buy after this market crash. Picking the right dividend stocks in this uncertain environment is challenging for several reasons. First, you have to find those stocks that are best-positioned to survive in the current economic weakness. In the U.S. and Canada, the economy is in deep freeze. Many companies are struggling to preserve cash, and there is no visibility as to when the lockdowns will be lifted. The situation is more pronounced in Canada, where a plunge in oil prices has further affected our resource-focused economy. Analysts are expecting that many companies will announce dividend cuts or suspensions when they announce first-quarter earnings in a few weeks. This makes it difficult to choose stocks that will provide regular income. Below, I have short-listed two stocks whose dividends are safe. Royal Bank of Canada Canadian banks have long been a trusted source for earning a steadily growing stream of income. They are among the best dividend stocks in North America, thanks to their balance sheet strength and careful lending practices. Royal Bank of Canada (TSX:RY)(NYSE:RY) stock has become more attractive following the recent market crash. RBC is Canadas largest lender with a robust presence in the United States. It is also one of Canadas most diversified banks, with worldwide operations in asset management and capital markets. RBC also owns Los Angeles-based commercial and private lender City National Bank. That diversification is the key to the stability to its earnings when other small and localized banks suffer in challenging market conditions. Though RBCs current payout looks safe, investors will have to pare their expectations for future hikes, given the depth of the current downturn in the economy. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions recently loosening the banks capital requirements in an effort to help the economy. But it told banks to refrain from using the freed up money to increase dividends or buy back shares. Story continues BCE Inc. Telecom dividends are less likely to be cut in an economic crisis as these services are generally considered essential. Telecom utilities arent too volatile when markets are undergoing a period of uncertainty, as people are less likely to consider cutting utilities in a recession. That stickiness provides stability to the cash flows of utilities, making them perfect defensive stocks. Given we expect telecom revenues to remain reasonably resilient as the Canadian economy potentially enters recession, we do not foresee a scenario whereby balance sheets (including liquidity) and current dividends come under pressure or into question, RBC Dominion Securities analyst Drew McReynolds said in a March 17 note. Canadas largest telecom operator, BCE Inc. (TSX:BCE)(NYSE:BCE) is one of the best stocks to buy from this area. BCE offers diversified services, including wireless, home internet, and media operations. The company is able to add subscribers on a sustained basis and remain ahead of the competition. Going forward, that growth in subscribers is likely to pick up speed as the telecom utility prepares to launch its fifth generation (5G) of services. BCE said last year it has signed its first 5G wireless network supplier agreement with Nokia of Finland. It is also ready to deliver initial 5G service in urban centres across Canada this year, as 5G smartphones come to market. The post The 2 Best Dividend Stocks to Buy After This Market Crash appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada. More reading Fool contributor Haris Anwar owns BCE Inc. shares. The Motley Fools purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool Canadas free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. Motley Fool Canada 2020 A woman who caught coronavirus even though she was self-isolating for three weeks said she believes she caught the disease from a bag of groceries delivered to her door. Rachel Brummert was shielding herself at home in Charlotte, North Carolina, as she suffers from an autoimmune disorder that makes her vulnerable to COVID-19. Because of this underlying condition, Brummert had kept her distance from others as a precaution, including her husband who has been living in a separate room. But despite these measures she still tested positive for the virus last Thursday after beginning to notice symptoms. Brummert believes she may have caught the virus from a woman who left groceries to her doorstep while she was isolating. Rachel Brummert was shielding herself at home in Charlotte, North Carolina, when she tested positive for coronavirus Brummert in hospital after she suffered from a fever, a cough, loss of smell, fatigue, headaches and breathing difficulties She told WCNC that she did not think to wear gloves when she brought the food bags into her home from the front porch. Brummert added: 'I really thought I was doing everything right. I barely had any contact. I didn't even touch her [the delivery woman]. 'I'm absolutely terrified. This is the sickest I've ever been and it's the most scared I've ever been. 'From what I'm hearing about ventilators, it's scary stuff. I'm really hoping I can wait this out at home.' Brummert suffered from a fever, a cough, loss of smell, fatigue, headaches and breathing difficulties. Apart from the woman who delivered groceries, Brummert only had brief contact with a pharmacist when she last left her house three weeks ago. Rachel Brummert was self-isolating because she suffers from an autoimmune disorder that makes her vulnerable to coronavirus Brummert posted images on social media thanking people for their support. She believes she may have caught coronavirus from a woman who delivered groceries to her doorstep while she was isolating She is hoping her condition will not deteriorate as she is 'terrified' of going into a hospital due to her underlying condition. Brummert added: 'I've had the flu, this is not the flu. It's a whole other monster.' North Carolina has recorded more than 4,300 confirmed cases and 89 deaths. So far, more than 22,000 people died in the US after contracting coronavirus and there are more than 561,000 cases as of Sunday evening. Around 2,000 deaths a day were reported for the last four days in a row, with the largest number in the US epicenter of New York . Smithfield meat processing plant has closed its Sioux Falls pork processing plant in South Dokata after around 240 of its employees became infected with COVID-19 At least 42 states have imposed stay-at-home and non-essential travel orders in a desperate bid to halt the spread of the virus. One of America's largest pork processing plants has become the third major meat factory forced to close after 240 employees tested positive for coronavirus. Smithfield meat processing plant, which has 3,700 employees in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is closing for three days after its employees fell ill. According to Smithfield, the plant accounts for 4 to 5 percent of the country's pork production. Another major meat processor, JBS USA, also stopped operations at its beef plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, last Thursday for two weeks due to sick employees. The union representing workers at the plant said two employees have died. From Cosmopolitan Gavin Rossdale opened up about what co-parenting with Gwen Stefani is like. The exes share three sons, Kingston, Zuma, and Apollo. Gavin admitted it can be tricky trying to work out a schedule with Gwen. Being a parent is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world. And then parenting with a former spouse youve divorced? Yeah...probably even harder. But for Gavin Rossdaleaka Gwen Stefanis ex-husbandit appears to be going okay so far. During an appearance on Sirius XMs Trunk Nation, Gavin explained that figuring out a schedule for his and Gwen's three sonsKingston, Zuma, and Apollohas been a bit tricky, but he did get to spend some time with his sons before they isolated with their mother. I did the first two weeks with them, then they went to Oklahoma, he said, adding that the kids are staying at a 10,000-acre ranch with Gwen and her boyfriend, Blake Shelton. I think its okay for now, but its a real big dilemma for parents and kids with split custody. Photo credit: Jason Merritt/TERM - Getty Images Gavin also explained that hes trying to be mindful of who he spends time with during the current coronavirus pandemic to make sure he and his kids stay healthy. I know whos around me and know whos bringing the coronano onebut you send your kids out and now theyre coming back to you, and now youre prone to whoever theyre with, he continued. So, its a tricky one with all divorced parents. I miss them, and they should be back. I have them the first week and then I havent had them for 10 or 11 days, and thats a long time. Normally, I have them every five days or something, Gavin added. Although its a bit of a complicated time for Gavin to co-parent, things have still been pretty good. You know, we both manage to feed them and get them to school on time, more or less! he told Us Weekly in May 2019. They are doing really good. Theyre really happy, and thats it. Love to hear it! You Might Also Like Kildare Fire Service has warned of the dangers of forest and gorse fires due to a number of weeks of dry weather. A Orange Fire Warning the second highest level issued by the Department of Agriculture expired on Friday a week ago as rain was forecast over the weekend but a Yellow Fire Warning remains in place. High Risk Time Co Kildare Chief Fire Officer (CFO) Celina Barrett told the Leader: This time of the year is always a high risk period for forest and gorse fires. In previous years we have seen the high consequence fires that raged in Donegal and Kerry. In Kildare we also experience increased calls around this time of year. The CFO added: Given all that is going on with Covid-19 we are asking all landowners not to burn scrub during this high risk time. All Kildare Fire Stations are working and available, but like all emergency services, we are trying to ensure that our services are available when they are needed most. The public have been hugely cooperative in all that they have been asked to do and Kildare Fire Service asks for their ongoing cooperation to ensure that we are not dealing with wildland fires. After record rainfall in February, the unseasonably dry and sunny weather in recent days is leading to dehydrated vegetation such as across the Curragh. Firefighters have already had to extinguish wildfires in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains over the last few days as well as locations in Clare and Sligo. A spell of particularly dry weather at the end of February last year led to tinderbox conditions in dense undergrowth and sparked significant gorse fires in the Kildare/West Wicklow border areas of Hollywood and Blessington. Many of the fires were visible from the Kilcullen, Naas and Sallins areas. Even though there is a 'Stay At Home' restriction imposed by the Government due to the Covid-19 health emergency, people using the countryside are urged not to light fires. All countryside users are asked to be vigilant, to report any suspicious activity to An Garda Siochana and to report any uncontrolled or unattended fires immediately to the Fire and Emergency Services via 112/999 service. Last July, Kildare Fire Service battled a large bog fire in the Ballynafagh area of Prosperous. Changing wind direction resulted in smoke being blown into adjacent properties at various stages. Kildare Co Council urged people to keep windows of houses closed and to stay away from the area as smoke is an irritant and can make eyes and throats sore. Agricultural vehicles such as tractors can also overheat in high temperatures and cause fires in fields. Coillte warning Meanwhile Coillte has also urged the public to be vigilant in relation to forest fires and added that most forest fires do not start naturally and everybody has an important role to play in preventing them. Simple acts such as lighting a campfire or having a barbecue can have potentially catastrophic effects. Hundreds of acres of forest were damaged by fire last summer. It is illegal for landowners to burn vegetation on uncultivated land between March and the end of August. Coillte urged people to avoid lighting fires outdoors when there high winds or high temperatures. People should not discard cigarette ends should make sure they are extinguished. Anybody acting irresponsibly or carelessly with fire should be reported to the authorities. The coverage on this live blog has ended but for up-to-the-minute coverage on the coronavirus, visit the live blog from CNBC's U.S. team. Global cases: At least 1,846,680. Global deaths: At least 114,090. Most cases reported: United States (555,313), Spain (166,831), Italy (156,363), France (133,670), Germany (127,854). The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University as of 8:05 a.m. Beijing time. All times below are in Beijing time. 6:51 pm: The pace and spread of the coronavirus to date 6:11 pm: Spain reports 3,477 new coronavirus cases, 517 new deaths Spain has reported 3,477 new coronavirus cases and a daily rise of 517 deaths Monday, bringing the total number of fatalities to 17,489, the country's health ministry said. The number of daily deaths has fallen; the death toll the day before had been 619. The total number of confirmed cases in Spain has now reached 169,496 (including deaths and recoveries). Spain has started to lift certain restrictions, re-opening some construction sites and factories Monday. Holly Ellyatt Tweet 5:38 pm: Spain lifts some coronavirus lockdown measures; Italy records lowest daily deaths since March Construction and factory workers in Spain return to work on Monday as the government lifts some of the most stringent lockdown measures, but opposition parties caution against an "imprudent" relaxation of the rules. Spain, one of the worst-hit nations by Covid-19, has allowed some factories to reopen as well as some construction work to restart, after the sectors were ordered to stop production two weeks ago. However, the message from government officials is that the country remains in lockdown mode. Schools, bars, restaurants and other services continue to be closed to the public and Spaniards are meant to stay at home. Silvia Amaro 5:10 pm: Indonesia reports 316 new coronavirus cases and 26 more deaths Indonesia announced 316 new cases of the coronavirus on Monday, bringing the tally of infections in the country to 4,557. That's according to data provided by a health ministry official, Achmad Yurianto. There were also 26 new coronavirus-related deaths reported Monday, taking the total number to 399. Holly Ellyatt 4:35 pm: Russia reports record daily rise in new coronavirus infections Russia reported 2,558 new infections on Monday, a record daily rise that brings the total number of infections to 18,328, the country's coronavirus response center said. Russia has recorded 148 deaths from the virus so far. It says it has conducted 1.3 million tests. Holly Ellyatt A couple in face masks look at their mobile phone in a deserted Red Square during the pandemic of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Sergei Savostyanov 4:13 pm: Tokyo sees 91 new cases of coronavirus infections, Japanese media report Tokyo saw 91 new cases of coronavirus infections on Monday, Japan's media reported according to Reuters, as the number of infections in the country's capital rises. Monday's tally showed a decline in the rate of daily infections from Sunday, however, when the Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported 166 new cases. Holly Ellyatt 1:55 pm: US GDP could fall as much as 40% in this quarter, says chief of the Atlantic Council The gross domestic product in the U.S. could fall as much as 40% in the second quarter of 2020, and unemployment could spike to 30%, Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council told CNBC. "The hit's going to be extreme," he said on "Capital Connection," adding that there's not been "such a sudden stop in the economy ever." "I think the Trump administration is throwing everything it can at it," he said. "But ultimately, it's going to be much better testing and a vaccine that's going to bring the economic turnaround." Abigail Ng 1.38 pm: Trump's tariffs on China could cost the US in its coronavirus fight U.S. tariffs on imported medical equipment, particularly from China, have added to the struggle in America's fight against the coronavirus outbreak. The U.S. and China have been embroiled in an escalating tariff war since 2018. Across multiple rounds, tariffs were levied on essential medical supplies from China including medical protective clothing, personal protective equipment (PPE), CT systems and disposable medical headwear. Without tariffs, the U.S. would be in "a better position in this bidding game" with so many countries scrambling to import critical medical products from China, Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC. In a report published on March 13 by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the think tank found that $3.3 billion in imports of critical health-care products still face 7.5% tariffs, while $1.1 billion of imports which could potentially treat Covid-19 remained subjected to 25% tariffs even after the Trump administration cut and suspended some tariffs temporarily. Audrey Cher 12:45 pm: India plans to resume some manufacturing even as it mulls lockdown extension, Reuters reports India is planning to restart some manufacturing activities after April 15 when its 21-day lockdown endseven though the government is widely expected to extend movement restrictions till the end of the month, Reuters reported citing two government sources who asked not to be identified as the plans were still under discussion. One of the sources told Reuters that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had instructed some ministries to come up with plans to restart some important industries to help the livelihoods of the poor. Huileng Tan 12:25 pm: Germany reports 2,537 new cases and 126 deaths Germany's Robert Koch Institute on Monday reported 2,537 new cases of coronavirus infections, bringing the country's total to 123,016. The rise in the number of cases was lower than a 2,821 increase on Sunday. The death toll rose by 126 to reach a total of 2,799. Huileng Tan 12:20 pm: Countries risk having second waves of outbreak, if they open up too early, says professor With many affected countries under lockdown or stay-home measures, authorities are debating over when things can go back to normal. But a professor at the University of Hong Kong warned that if countries open up too early, they risk experiencing a second major wave of infections. "I think having timelines is going to be very challenging. No country is going to want to open up too early, and then be the first major country to have a big second wave," Ben Cowling told CNBC. This is because, even if they overcome their first wave, they will be susceptible to infections imported from other countries which are still into their first round of infections, or even going through a second wave, which could be starting now in China, Cowling said. "It's really going to be very difficult, I think testing is critical, but still need some social distancing in place. So it may not be a full opening up, even in June or July," he said. Weizhen Tan 11:48 am: Steps needed to ensure contact tracing tech isn't a 'mass invasion of privacy' longterm Apple and Google's joint initiative to build a contact tracing platform looks promising, but steps have to be taken to prevent it from invading the privacy of users for the long term. That's according to Josephine Wolff, an assistant professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University. To combat the coronavirus outbreak, many countries are now relying on technology to identify people who might have been potentially exposed to an infected individual without knowing a process known as contact tracing. The process includes collection of information that is deemed highly personal, like the location of every place an individual may have been to in recent weeks. Wolff explained the purpose of collecting such information needs to be clear so that people can see the benefits outweigh the costs. At the moment, data is being shared for an important public health reason, she said. But worries remain that such technologies could potentially be used in other areas like law enforcement. "That's going to be the really important question in sort of how do we limit this use of information so it doesn't turn into a mass invasion of privacy long term," she said Saheli Roy Choudhury 10:45 am: South Korea reports 25 new cases, 3 deaths South Korea reported 25 new cases and three more deaths as of Monday morning. That brings its total to 10,537 confirmed cases, and 217 fatalities, according to data from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, the country said 91 patients it thought had been cleared of the coronavirus had tested positive again. Officials said it was unclear why that had occurred, and investigations were underway. Weizhen Tan 10:00 am: Italy begins to grapple with how to ease virus restrictions With warmer weather beckoning, Italians are straining against a strict lockdown to halt the coronavirus that is just now showing signs of ebbing at the end of five weeks of mass isolation. Italy was the first Western democracy to be hit by the virus, and it has suffered the most deaths of any nation: nearly 19,000. Now it is likely to set an example of how to lift broad restrictions that have imposed the harshest peacetime limits on personal freedom and shut down all nonessential industry. A general view of a almost deserted street during coronavirus crisis on March 20, 2020 in Palermo, Italy. Tullio Puglia The official line is patience with measures that have shown success in slowing the virus spread, until there is a clear decline in the number of new cases. Still, officials have begun grappling with the question of how to manage social distancing on mass transit, re-open ordinary commerce and relaunch manufacturing without risking another peak. The so-called Phase II is being described as a cautious reopening, as society continues to live alongside the virus until a vaccine can be developed, perhaps in 12 to 18 months. AP 8:45 am: Mainland China reports 108 new cases The number of new cases in mainland China ticked up again, past the 100-mark and the highest in more than five weeks. The National Health Commission said the country had 108 new confirmed cases as of April 12, with 98 attributed to travelers from overseas. It said there were two more deaths in the country. That brings the country's total to 82,160 confirmed cases, and 3,341 fatalities. Separately, China reported 61 new asymptomatic cases, where people tested positive for the virus but did not show any symptoms. That brings its number of asymptomatic cases currently under medical observation to 1,064, the NHC said. Weizhen Tan 8:30 am: Singapore reports 233 new cases Singapore reported 233 new cases as of noon on April 12, according to its health ministry. It said 167 of those cases have no links to known clusters or cases. The Southeast Asian city-state had been praised for managing the coronavirus outbreak well as compared with other countries, and had kept daily numbers generally low well below the 100 case-mark up until around March. But in recent weeks, Singapore has seen cases spike, with a record daily high of 287 cases reported last week. Many recent cases have been attributed to outbreaks at several dormitories housing foreign workers. The country started shutting down schools, offices and shops last week. Those closures will last till the first week of May. Weizhen Tan 8:25 am: Kia Motors wants to suspend three factories as outbreak hits exports Kia Motors told its labor union that it wants to suspend operations at three of its factories in South Korea as the outbreak hits exports to Europe and the U.S., Reuters reported, citing a union official. The operations would be suspended from April 23 to April 29, it said. Shares of Kia Motors fell 3.39% in the morning. Weizhen Tan 8:15 am: Mexico reports 442 new cases Mexico reported 442 new cases and 23 more deaths, its health ministry said, according to a Reuters report. That brings its total to 4,661 cases and 296 fatalities. Weizhen Tan All times below are in Eastern time. 5:22 pm: Robert Shiller warns pandemic of fear could tip economy into a depression Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller warns a pandemic of fear could tip the economy into an undeserved depression. Shiller, an expert in how our emotions drive financial decisions, finds the sheer volume of chatter surrounding depression risks due to the coronavirus could severely hurt the economy. "This isn't the same story as the Great Depression. The Great Depression lasted ten years. They didn't have an unemployment rate under 12% until the decade was over," the Yale University professor told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Thursday. "It's a popular narrative. But this is a pandemic. It shouldn't last ten years. It should be over in one or two years." Stephanie Landsman 3:29 pm: Nursing home deaths in the US soar past 2,700 More than 2,700 deaths in the U.S. have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks, according to the latest count by The Associated Press. The latest count of at least 2,755 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago. But the true toll among the 1 million mostly frail and elderly people who live in such facilities is likely much higher, experts say, because most state counts don't include those who died without ever being tested for Covid-19. Experts say the deaths may keep climbing because of chronic staffing shortages in nursing homes that have been made worse by the coronavirus crisis, a shortage of protective supplies and a continued lack of available testing. Associated Press 1:13 pm: Italy's daily death tally lowest since March 19 Chandigarh, April 13 : Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Monday said that 1,113 people were tested for coronavirus in the hill state, of which 32 have tested positive so far. At present, there are only 15 active cases, including 13 connected to the Tablighi Jamaat. Twelve patients have been cured, four moved out of the state, and one succumbed to the virus. Interacting with his Cabinet colleagues and party's legislators and parliamentarians, Thakur said coronavirus cases have been reported from five districts -- maximum 14 from Una, Solan nine, Chamba and Kangra four each and Sirmaur one. He said representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions, and urban and local bodies have been involved to provide essential commodities to the people during the lockdown. Thakur said effective steps were taken by the state to trace the travel history of those connected to Tablighi Jamaat and their contacts to mitigate the impact of coronavirus. State BJP President Rajeev Bindal appreciated the government efforts to check the spread of the virus in Himachal. A Lisburn school that is making PPE for front line workers has raised thousands of pounds to ramp up production. Wallace High School has received more than 400 orders for protective visors. Some have already gone out to the NI Ambulance Service. The visors are manufactured by a team from the school's technology department, supported remotely by a technician. Principal Deborah O'Hare said: "As a society we are where we are and there is a clear shortage of visors. "These front line workers in the health and social care and allied sectors deserve our support as they in turn make enormous sacrifices in hospitals, pharmacies, and in a range of community settings to look after us all." Mrs O'Hare said staff had created a safe, efficient production line. The school has also released instructions and guidance for other organisations with a laser printer to make their own. She added: "Alan Monteith and his two colleagues Kylah Palmer and Stephen Calvert have the expertise and as a school we are very fortunate to have the specification of equipment needed for this specialist task. These staff members are working safely and with the remote support of our technician Sid Murphy." The production is also supported by volunteer couriers and other staff. Mrs O'Hare added: "There are many unsung heroes in this process which has significant back office support from the wider school staff. Our founder, Sir Richard Wallace was a generous philanthropist and it is only fitting that we continue in his footsteps to help wider society." Donations will go towards raw materials and any amount not used for visor production will be donated to the National Health Service. Donate here:_https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/wallace-high?utm_term=Gx46689vp The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has urged the Chinese government to speedily and comprehensively address reports of discrimination against Africans over coronavirus fears. In a statement, the Ministery said the Chinese government has met with African ambassadors on the matter. At that meeting, it was announced that the government of the Peoples Republic of China has taken note of happenings and was taking immediate steps to stop the targetting of and ill-treatment meted out to Africans, particularly our compatriots in the Guangdong province. In the meantime, the ministry has urged Ghanaian nationals living in China to remain calm and stay in contact with our mission in Beijing and the consulate general in Guangzhou and share concerns. The Ministry earlier described the happenings in China as racial discrimination and summoned the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Shi Ting Wang. Various African ambassadors in China had also written to the country's Foreign Minister to complain about the discrimination. Last week unfounded rumours in China emerged that African communities were a threat to increase spread of coronavirus in that country. Soon after, health officials in China began door-to-door testing targeting African immigrants. Landlords and hotels also began evicting hundreds of Africans. Some Ghanaians living in the Chinese capital, Beijing were reportedly evicted from their apartments. There were images from China showing hundreds of Africans homeless in cities like Guangzhou. After being the global epicentre of the novel coronavirus, China has been able to contain the disease. Most of its cases are now imported and it now has fewer cases than the US and fewer deaths than Italy and Spain. There have been some 82,000 confirmed cases in China about 3,350 deaths It currently has a temporary ban on all foreign visitors in place even if they have visas or residence permits. Find below the full statement ---citinewsroom Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 19:55:55|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close COLOMBO, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Monday urged citizens to celebrate the local Sinhala and Tamil New Year inside their homes and avoid social gatherings as the country fights to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. In his New Year message, President Rajapaksa, while wishing citizens a joyful and prosperous New Year, said that presently Sri Lanka, along with other countries, is facing a deadly virus and hence health specialists have emphasized the importance of maintaining social distancing. "I appeal to all of you who voluntarily rallied around to conquer any challenge faced by our country and nation, to commit yourselves now as well, to prevent the spread of this deadly virus by maintaining the social distance during this festival time," President Rajapaksa said. "The New Year period, nourished with beauty of nature, is a festival that human beings pay their tribute to the environment and nature. We have now entered an era where the need to integrate with the environment is much felt," the president added. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his New Year message, said this new year was being held at a crucial time when, as a nation, Sri Lanka was facing a serious health threatm, adding that the threat has compelled Sri Lanka to celebrate the new year in accordance with health advice and directions. He further urged citizens to remain indoors and practice age-old customs and traditions through simple celebrations. Sri Lanka has reported a total of 210 COVID-19 infection cases with seven deaths. A countrywide curfew imposed since March remains in place. The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Saad Abubakar, has called on Christians and Muslims in the country to work together. Abubakar, who also is the President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, noted that the union would help bring an end to insecurity, intolerance, corruption and other ills in Nigeria. The Emir stated this in his Easter message to Christians, on Sunday and was contained in a statement signed by NSCIA Director of Administration, Yusuf Nwoha. The monarch also lamented that the Coronavirus pandemic was affecting religious worship. As people of faith, were conscious of the importance of Easter in the lives of Christians, especially as it symbolises rebirth, renewal and reawakening. The significance of Easter cannot even be more compelling than now that the whole world is facing the devastating consequences of the coronavirus pandemic which impacts on our lifestyle and religious worship, he said. This is coming at the time the number of confirmed Coronavirus cases stands at 323. Share this post with your Friends on Independent internet service providers are calling for emergency relief from the rates they pay to access networks of the big telecoms as they absorb rising costs amid a spike in home internet use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chatham, Ont.-based TekSavvy Solutions Inc. in a statement Monday asked the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to lower the rates, saying it already pays inflated fees and COVID-19 has added to the pressure. The release follows a statement from PC MP Michelle Rempel Garner last week asking Industry Minister Navdeep Bains to compel the CRTC to address the issue. Rempel Garner said the CRTC could issue an emergency COVID-19 directive to the big telcos to abide by an August 2019 rate decision that set wholesale charges to access to high-speed broadband networks lower, a decision that was stayed on appeal. The CRTC could also do away with the existing billing model and move to flat-rate billing or it could request that the big telcos accept interest-free deferral of payments from ISPs on their networks until the end of COVID-19. Rempel Garner said the smaller internet service providers typically pre-purchase the amount of network capacity from the big telcos that they expect to need to serve their retail customers but since the rates are usage based, the increasing demands on the servers caused by the need to work from home mean that ISPs are now paying astronomical fees to the big telcos to use their networks. If these ISPs are forced to close shop, she said, thousands of Canadians may have to go without internet, adding the lack of competition and ineffective regulation of telecommunications are now being exacerbated by COVID-19. The government has the solution right in front of it, added Andy Kaplan-Myrth, TekSavvys regulatory affairs vice-president. The CRTC already calculated more reasonable rates in its August 2019 rate decision. TekSavvy in its statement said the CRTC must enact emergency provisions to put in place the final rates from the CRTCs August 2019 decision on an urgent basis while ongoing appeals processes play out. TekSavvy, which has more than 300,000 customers across Canada, has previously argued that rates should be lower and has appealed to its customers to urge the CRTC to act, as well as seeking a Competition Bureau investigation. The company last month said it would raise the prices on each of its internet plans by $5 per month and also announced layoffs. It cited high wholesale internet rates that it continues to pay despite the CRTC ruling that would have slashed some ISP rates by nearly 80 per cent. The Federal Court of Appeal issued a temporary stay of the regulatory ruling on final wholesale rates and its unclear how long the stay will remain in place. Matt Stein, chair of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, which represents 31 independent ISPs wholesale resellers that access their customers through rented cable and phone lines, said CNOC has petitioned Ottawa and the big carriers for lowered interim network access rates during the crisis, arguing that smaller ISPs are hamstrung by the stay ruling in August. A spokesperson for telecom giant Bell Canada, however, reiterated that the CRTC decision to set wholesale rates for resellers lower than our cost to provide will definitely impact the industrys ability to invest in advanced communications networks. Stein, who is also CEO of Toronto-based telecom Distributel, said the independent telecoms are buying more network access to meet customer demand but cannot pass on all of the costs since they have waived overage fees during the COVID-19 crisis. He said there are a number of options the CRTC could enact to provide temporary relief, adding that while the big carriers have not agreed to CNOCs request for changes hes hopeful Ottawa will act. Bains spokesperson Veronique Simard said the minister engages regularly with telecommunications and internet service providers and will continue to work to make sure Canadians can stay connected to their families and workplaces during this difficult time. CNOC has advocated a funding mechanism to subsidize 50 per cent of incremental wholesale capacity costs paid by independent ISPs to incumbent carriers for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis. It says this will allow wholesale ISPs to waive overage charges like the incumbent carriers have without incurring excessive cost. Read more about: New Delhi: To implement social distancing amid the fear of coronavirus COVID-19 spread, the Delhi government will implement its famous Odd-Even scheme in all wholesale markets in the city, under which traders will be able to sell vegetables on alternate days. In addition, the government will also stagger the timings for the sale of vegetables and fruits in these 'mandis'. As per the regulation, vegetables will be sold from 6 am to 11 am and fruits from 2 pm to 6 pm in all wholesale markets in Delhi. There are five major wholesale vegetable and fruit markets in the national capital, including the Azadpur mandi, the Ghazipur mandi and the Okhla mandi. Also, there two wholesale 'anaj mandis' (wheat markets) -- Najafgarh and Narela. Development Minister Gopal Rai told PTI that the decision were taken at a high-level meeting chaired by the development minister. "According to the odd-even rule, sheds under which hundreds of traders sell vegetables will be allowed to operate according to their numbers," Rai said. The minister also said that the Delhi government has formed four special task forces to ensure effective social distancing in the mandis in view of the COVID-19 outbreak. Police have issued more than $300,000 in fines relating to COVID-19 over the Easter long weekend with holidaymakers and residents in Sydney city, the Blue Mountains, Newcastle and Liverpool hit the hardest. NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said there had been a "significant increase" in fines issued, but the majority of the community had listened to authorities and stayed at home. I dont expect those numbers will continue, he said. But this is an example that some people just arent listening to the warnings. Mr Fuller said the majority of fines were issued to people who had already received a warning from police, but there were several fines issued to people buying illicit drugs. By Laman Ismayilova The theaters have been quarantined worldwide due to the threat of spreading coronavirus infection. The pandemic made adjustments to all spheres of theatrical life. As a result, all performances, premieres, tours, theater meetings and festivals were canceled. Coronavirus changed the lives of everyone. Although theaters are closed, they continue to delight their viewers with online shows, meetings, workshops and much more. Moreover, many virtual events are organized especially for theaters. Azerbaijani theater workers are invited to take part in virtual International Scientific Theater Conference 2020 on May 11. The event will cover a wide range of issues: how quarantine influenced the work of theaters; the pros and cons of online impressions; distance theater training and others. The organizing committee include Ph.D. Elchin Jafarov (Azerbaijan), Ph.D., Associate Professor Anara Erkebai (Kazakhstan), Doctor of Art, Professor Lasha Chkhartishvili (Georgia). The main purpose of the scientific conference is to discuss the theaters ability to preserve ideological and artistic impact on the viewer through the Internet. Theater experts, critics, cultural experts,directors, actors, playwrights, managers, stage designers, theater teachers as well as journalists are invited to participate in the conference. For more information, please contact: [email protected] --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz A man from Nagaland has tested positive for novel coronavirus, the first case reported from the state, an official said on Monday. The 33-year-old man with coronavirus-like symptoms was admitted to a hospital in Assam's Guwahati, where he tested positive for COVID-19, the official said. Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tweeted that a private hospital in Dimapur referred a patient to the Guwahati Medical College Hospital after he was found with symptoms of COVID-19. He has tested positive and is undergoing treatment. The patient is not linked to the Tablighi Jamaat event at Nizamuddin in New Delhi, Sarma said. The man arrived in Dimapur on March 24 in a flight from Kolkata, an official of the Nagaland government said. He was advised home quarantine for 14 days from the date of his arrival in Dimapur, but he fell sick and was admitted to a hospital on April 8. He was shifted to the Guwahati facility on Sunday as his health condition deteriorated. Meanwhile, the Nagaland government has sealed various locations in Dimapur, including the patient's residential area- Marwaripatti and Ghorapatti- and the hospital where he was initially admitted, the official said. Doctors, nurses and other staff of the hospital in Dimapur, who came in contact with the patient have been quarantined, he said, adding efforts are on to identify his co-passengers in the flight. Meanwhile, a special committee on COVID-19 in the district decided that the wholesale market at GS Road Dimapur and retail shops at Marwaripatti and Ghorapatti, will remain closed until further orders. The committee has appealed to citizens not to panic as it said precautionary measures are being taken to tackle the current situation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New findings published in Contact Lens & Anterior Eye provide evidence-based guidance for practitioners and patients, including 5 important facts for every contact lens wearer WATERLOO, Ontario, April 13, 2020--A new peer-reviewed paper from five prominent ocular scientists will help eye care practitioners (ECPs) instruct and reassure contact lens wearers during the global COVID-19 / coronavirus pandemic. Published in Contact Lens & Anterior Eye, "The COVID-19 Pandemic: Important Considerations for Contact Lens Practitioners" delves into multiple aspects of eye health amidst the global health crisis, with a specific emphasis on the safe use of contact lenses. The paper and related ECP and patient resources can be accessed from COVIDEyeFacts.org. "Our findings indicate that contact lenses remain a perfectly acceptable form of vision correction during the coronavirus pandemic, as long as people observe good hand hygiene and follow appropriate wear-and-care directions," said Dr. Lyndon Jones, director of the Centre for Ocular Research & Education (CORE) at the University of Waterloo and the paper's lead author. "Unfortunately, we have seen a number of erroneous reports regarding contact lenses and spectacles in recent days. Our goal is to make sure that science-backed truths are understood and shared, helping eye care practitioners provide accurate, timely counsel to patients." Based on the paper, CORE has developed five facts (also available as a downloadable infographic) for ECPs to share with anyone who relies on contact lenses or glasses / spectacles: 1. People Can Keep Wearing Contact Lenses. There is currently no scientific evidence that contact lens wearers have an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 compared with glasses / spectacles wearers. Patients should consult their eye care practitioners with questions. 2. Good Hygiene Habits are Critical. Thorough handwashing and drying are essential, as well as properly wearing and caring for contact lenses, ensuring good contact lens case hygiene, and regularly cleaning glasses / spectacles with soap and water. These habits will help wearers stay healthy and out of their doctor's office or hospital, thereby minimizing impacts on the wider healthcare system. 3. Regular Eyeglasses / Spectacles Do Not Provide Protection. No scientific evidence supports rumors that everyday eyeglasses / spectacles offer protection against COVID-19. 4. Keep Unwashed Hands Away from the Face. Whether people wear contact lenses, glasses / spectacles or require no vision correction at all, individuals should avoid touching their nose, mouth and eyes with unwashed hands, consistent with World Health Organization (WHO) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations. 5. If You Are Sick, Temporarily Stop Wearing Contact Lenses. Contact lens wearers who are ill should temporarily revert to wearing eyeglasses / spectacles. They can resume use with fresh, new contact lenses and lens cases once they return to full health and have spoken with their eye care practitioner. On April 8, the CDC issued updated guidance on contact lens wear during the COVID-19 pandemic, further supporting key findings from the Contact Lens & Anterior Eye paper. The CDC additionally points out that personal eyeglasses and contact lenses do not qualify as personal protective equipment (PPE). The Contact Lens & Anterior Eye paper also reviews why management of adverse events should be retained within optometric systems, offers guidance on sleeping in contact lenses, considers wearing modalities and lens materials, and offers areas for further study. ### Joining Dr. Jones as paper authors were four globally respected researchers, educators and clinicians: Dr. Karen Walsh, professional education team leader and clinical scientist at CORE, Dr. Mark Willcox, director of research at the School of Optometry and Vision Science at UNSW (Sydney), Dr. Philip Morgan, director of Eurolens Research at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom), and Dr. Jason Nichols, associate vice president for research and professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry (United States) and editor-in-chief of Contact Lens Spectrum. The latest findings complement and significantly expand on CORE advisories regarding handwashing and safe contact lens wear issued in mid-March 2020. About CORE The Centre for Ocular Research & Education (CORE) was established in 1988 at the University of Waterloo's School of Optometry & Vision Science. Over the next three decades, the organization evolved from a three-person operation into a thriving hub of basic and applied research, collaborating with sponsors, agencies and academia on advanced biosciences, clinical research and education. Its uncompromising independence and results of the highest quality have been at the heart of many of the most prominent advances in eye health. Today, its 50-person team serves a range of ophthalmic sectors, including medical devices, ocular pharmaceuticals, digital technology and others, with a focus on the anterior segment. For more information, please visit core.uwaterloo.ca. Human Rights Watch A transgender woman fighting on the front lines to tackle the coronavirus crisis has been hit with a fine in Panama for breaching the governments fiercely-criticised gender-based lockdown rules. Panamas government has implemented stringent new measures since the beginning of April which ban men and women from leaving the house to go shopping for essential items at the same time. The rules, which disregard non-binary people, permit women to do shopping on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Men, on the other hand, are only allowed to purchase essential supplies on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. People are also highly restricted about the times of the day they are allowed to leave their home with the time slot linked to the last digit of passports or ID cards. Barbara Delgado, who is a health outreach worker, was detained by police for three hours and hit with a $50 fine for being out on a day which the authorities have classified as a day for women to be out. Ms Delgado, a trans woman who said she had a permit letter from the medical centre where she works as a volunteer, had been distributing food near her home. Delgado was made to pay a $50 fine for violating quarantine measures and was released after three long, humiliating hours, Cristian Gonzalez Cabrera, an LGBT researcher at Human Rights Watch, said. In a country where, in contravention of international human rights law, modifying legal gender on official documents requires sex reassignment surgery, gender-based quarantine measures will almost certainly result in discrimination against transgender persons like Delgado. Panamanian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organisations have called for a gender and diversity perspective to inform measures in response to the pandemic. The National Police should also adopt a protocol affirming that quarantine enforcement measures will be sensitive to transgender peoples realities so that other trans Panamanians are spared the harassment Delgado experienced. Ultimately, Panama needs to address the draconian gender recognition procedure that inadvertently led to this incident. Story continues Mr Cabrera has documented three more cases of transgender people facing discrimination in the wake of gender-based lockdown measures which have been criticised by LGBT+ groups. Panamas president Laurentino Cortizo wrote on Twitter: The great quantity of people circulating outside their homes, despite the obligatory national quarantine, has led the national government to take more severe measures. Some 3,234 coronavirus cases and 79 deaths have been recorded in Panama as of Saturday. Peru has also imposed lockdown guidelines which force men and women to leave their house on different days of the week. Read more Tracking the coronavirus outbreak around the world in maps and charts When can we really expect coronavirus to end? Everything you need to know on supermarket delivery slots The dirty truth about washing your hands Listen to the latest episode of The Independent Coronavirus Podcast Hearing on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that two porters had died from Covid-19, the devastating illness arising from the corona virus, I sought out the news piece to accompany this reporting. Ive been married to an #NHS Estates manager for 27 years, so I know that porter means much loved person, I was hoping the news piece would too. I found an article which described two NHS workers dying and two nurses. Already the distinction was being made. These two men werent being named but their nationality, Filipino, was as well as the fact that they were married to two nurses. I remember our local trust going to the Philippines and recruiting essential workers during a national nurse shortage, and having been very ill in hospital a few years ago I remember the incredible kindness of both the Filipino nurses who took care of me. But support staff is a catch-all term for anyone in the NHS who isnt a doctor or a nurse, from ward clerks to plumbers, electricians to catering teams, admin to porters. Support staff Im sad to observe, seems to mean less than, to some people. My mother and grandmother were nurses. I know and love many doctors, I can tell you that my husbands presumed lowly status has never prevented him being liked and loved by clinicians, colleagues and grateful patients who have benefited from his work and friendship over the years. Make no mistake about it, support staff are just as dedicated and devoted and are mourned just as deeply as anyone in the NHS during this global crisis. Being a porter means being on the frontline too. Anyone going to or from theatre or to and from a high-dependency unit (HDU) or ICU, will remember the porter keeping our spirits up and being kind when were at our most frightened and vulnerable. Morale and mental health are widely misunderstood, undervalued aspects of good physical health. Everyone who does understand knows its vital. Psychology services are an integral aspect of the NHS too. Every support worker who works in the NHS and social care knows the risks they face better than the rest of us. They see that risk every day as they provide the medical care, personal care and the vital infrastructure that were all relying on. Much of this is happening behind the scenes. Support workers dont tend to be included in photo opportunities with politicians or documentaries with Ross Kemp. What a kind world it would be if he made a documentary about such NHS staff in this crisis. The issue of personal protective equipment (PPE) is simple. It should be available to everyone who needs it and that should mean everyone. Whether in acute or psychiatric hospitals & care homes, in the homes of learning-disabled young adults and elderly people, in GP surgeries, in pharmacies, in dental practices and in supermarkets. All keyworkers are people not statistics. They leave behind families devastated by grief for someone they can never replace. These arent vague support units. We should learn from the doctors and nurses who are caring for porters and domestics as tenderly and diligently as they are for their clinical colleagues and the prime minister. No one is being ignored or sacrificed, give preferential treatment or refused care. Nurses and doctors know there is no hierarchy in illness, no privilege in death. We need to learn this from them both for the crisis now and the world we need to see in the months and years to come. Hancock gives death toll update and claims enough capacity to test NHS staff The war analogy is being deployed routinely at the moment. Whilst I dont necessarily subscribe to it, I would say that the generals arent hiding in some safe bunker miles away from danger, they are facing this killer virus alongside all their NHS colleagues. From doctors to domestic workers, the NHS isnt divided by their job description, theyre united in a community of service for the nations health, standing between us and the virus keeping us safe. The fee for this piece is being donated to Feed NHS, to help provide food for NHS workers A Manila resident hands over a paper to a health worker after submitting to COVID-19 mass swab testing at a quarantine center in the Philippine capital, April 13, 2020. Updated at 1:10 p.m. ET on 2020-04-13 The mayors of Manila and other nearby cities said Monday they had started independent testing for coronavirus infections in their localities, as the national government prepared to launch mass-testing across the country, amid criticism that it was slow to take such action. The Philippine capital as well as Quezon and Valenzuela two major cities in Metro Manila have begun gathering samples from residents with testing kits approved earlier by the health department, officials said. The Manila city government is now capable of conducting more than a thousand COVID-19 swab tests a week as it begins its localized targeted mass-testing operations in the nations capital, the office of Mayor Francisco Damagoso said in a statement. Damagoso gave the go-ahead to conduct localized mass testing for the citys six district hospitals, the statement said. Facilities would collect all swab tests to be processed by the Department of Health, which said results would be known within two or three days. Quezon City and Valenzuela have also begun carrying out their own tests. On Monday, dozens of Quezon City residents with COVID-19 symptoms were tested, and those who tested negative were allowed to return home, city officials said. Meanwhile on Tuesday, the national government was scheduled to begin a mass testing program at 15 centers across the country. Government officials expressed confidence that they could conduct 3,000 tests per day for COVID-19. As of yesterday, a total of 33,814 individuals have been tested for COVID-19, said Karlo Nograles, spokesman for the interagency task force to battle the disease, referring to officials and Filipino citizens who had been tested earlier after being taken to hospitals when they displayed the flu-like symptoms associated with the virus. As the government ramps up testing and more cases are identified, the next concern is ensuring that there are adequate number of quarantine facilities and beds around the country, he said. On Monday, the government recorded 18 new fatalities from the virus, taking the countrys death toll to 315 with a cumulative 4,932 infections. On Sunday, the nation recorded 50 deaths, its highest toll from the coronavirus in a single day. Globally, more than 115,000 people have died and at least 1.8 million have been infected, according to the latest data compiled by disease experts at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. In the Philippines, people who have been tested so far represent a tiny fraction of the countrys estimated 100 million population, a majority of which live on northern Luzon Island. The government has placed the entire island on lockdown until the end of the April, and other provinces and cities in the Philippines have implemented their own lockdown orders to contain the virus. Jose Antonio Custodio, an analyst with the Institute of Policy, Strategy and Development Studies, said tests in the Philippines did not reflect the overall scenario. With that strategy, the true picture is going to be hidden from both government and the public, he said. Badly conceived guestimates and even fabrications are the obvious outcome of that, which will severely cost the people and also our healthcare workers. He said the approach should be that the government seeks out communities where people have been infected and not wait for the sick to be reported. Members of the Philippine Coast Guard patrol in southern Iligan Bay to prevent civilians on motorized boats intruding during an enhanced community quarantine order, April 12, 2020. [Richel V. Umel/BenarNews] ADB triples financial aid Also on Monday, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it had tripled to $20 billion its anti-COVID-19 measures to help the economies of member-states recover from the pandemics knock-on effects. The package expanded the banks initial response of $6.5 billion that the ADB announced last month to help its members weather the severe economic and health impacts of COVID-19. This pandemic threatens to severely set back economic, social and development gains in Asia and the Pacific, reverse progress on poverty reduction and throw economies into recession, ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said in a statement. The aid, he said, would be delivered faster to members to help them address the urgent challenges in tackling the pandemic and economic downturn. In late March, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte unveiled a package of nearly U.S. $4 billion to stimulate the economy and assist informal sector workers and people whose income had dried up as a result of the pandemic. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Norman Harsono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Mon, April 13, 2020 12:22 638 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd18082e 1 Business Indonesia,E-signature,Digisign,PrivyID,demand,social-restriction,Communications-and-Information-Ministry Free An increasing number of Indonesian businesses have adopted local electronic signature (e-signature) technology during the past month as physical distancing measures make it difficult to ink contracts in person. Jakarta-based e-signature providers Digisign and PrivyID recorded growth of 50 percent and 350 percent, respectively, in customer requests from February to March, which is when the government declared emergency disaster status and formally urged citizens to work from home, company executives told The Jakarta Post. Digisign chief executive officer (CEO) Willy Walanio said that, out of the total inbound customers, defined as those contacting the company over a request, 70 to 80 percent had been onboarded into Digisigns system. The realization is quite high, because in most of these cases there is not [just] an interest, but a need for the companies [to go digital], he said. We have been picking up the ball more often than throwing it. Digisign and PrivyID are two of just three e-signature companies certified by Indonesias Communications and Information Ministry, which gives them the upper hand in Indonesian courts. The third company, Vida, was not available for comment. E-signature providers add to a list of nascent start-up industries, including grocery e-marketplaces and telemedicine, that have seen an uptick in business activity since Indonesia embarked on a work-from-home regime to contain the spread of COVID-19. Such e-signature providers use personal identification information, big data and encryption technology to guarantee the authenticity of a signature without in-person verification. PrivyID CEO Marshall Pribadi said his company, which secured 6 million Malaysian ringgit last year in a series A funding from Malaysia, also experienced a rapid diversification of customers to include, among others, contractors, consultancies, cigarette manufacturers, law firms and telecommunication providers, due to the work-from-home policy. Initial demand for e-signature technology in Indonesia was driven by financial institutions, particularly peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders, that had to use such technology to authenticate transactions in line with Financial Services Authority (OJK) Regulation No. 77/2016. We have around 350 companies onboard right now and hope that, if just the major companies come onboard our system, wed have a minimum 1,000 companies within three or four months, said Marshall. He added that, out of the total inbound customers, the start-up immediately went live with around 25 percent of them. This translated into 20 percent growth in new corporate customers. Growth was also aided by a two-month promotion campaign launched in March that waived registration fees for new customers. With regard to international transactions, Marshall said most of PrivyIDs clients did not face legal difficulties as they generally dealt with countries whose e-signature-related laws were less stringent than those in Indonesia. We happen to be a civil law country, so when we deal with common law countries like Singapore, Australia or America, their relevant standards are below ours, he said, noting that the European Union, the worlds strictest region in terms of data privacy, was an exception PrivyID was working on. The advantage of certified e-signature providers such as Digisign and PrivyID over uncertified but popular alternatives, such as publicly-listed United States-based DocuSign, is that the former have stronger evidentiary value at Indonesian courts. Such an advantage is stipulated in Government Regulation No. 71/2019 on the implementation of electronic systems and transactions although the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law recognizes both certified and uncertified providers. Currently, there isn't enough [awareness] about the use of local e-signature providers, and therefore the use of e-signatures is not widely known, said Daniel Pardede, a partner at one of Indonesias largest law firms, Hadiputranto Hadinoto and Partners (HHP). Consequently, most MNCs or foreign investment companies still rely on well-known international e-signature providers. He added that Indonesias regulations, such as those related to notaries and stamp duties, had not been adjusted to e-signature technology and that Indonesian courts had been slow to accept such technology. However, the law firm did not have any record of a court rejecting signatures from uncertified providers. Ajisatria Suleiman, an advisor of the Indonesian Regtech and Legaltech Association (IRLA), an organization chaired by PrivyIDs Marshall, said the rise of e-signature technology in Indonesia was part of a larger, global trend toward contactless identity authentication technology. In Singapore, for example, the use of cash and debit- or credit cards has gone down, [as it is] replaced with mobile payments. Then comes even more contactless technology, like facial recognition, replacing fingerprint authentication, he said. Queensland police officers have been blasted for driving their patrol car into the middle of the pedestrian walkway at a farmers market. Organisers of the Northey Street Organic Farmers Market in Brisbane were furious when police turned up to the market on Sunday in a car rather than on foot. Organisers blasted the actions of the police officers, and argued the market was 'safe and compliant' to coronavirus restrictions. Queensland police officers have been slammed by organisers of a farmers market for driving their patrol car into the middle of the pedestrian walkway 'Police are welcome at our market to check we are complying to government regulations,' they wrote. 'What is not OK is to drive INTO our market with pedestrians and children and park in a fashion that hinders physical distancing by blocking an aisle. 'We welcome foot police back every Sunday and will offer them a take away organic coffee.' 'No fines were issued [on Sunday] as we are compliant.' The market apologised to customers who were 'shaken' by the ordeal and said they had no idea the officers were going to cause 'distress' to staff and stall holders. 'We will be contacting and working with the Queensland Police Service and our local politicians and authorities to resolve this issue in a formal avenue to keep our customers safe,' they said. Customers also posted on social media saying they were concerned about the patrol car coming close to people in the market. Video was captured of the patrol vehicle slowly driving through the middle of the market, coming close to markets and customers '[I] feel it was a bit over the top to drive through. If they had walked in, it would have made the same impact,' one customer wrote. 'It was aggressive and arrogant. People at the market were doing the right thing and there was no need for it,' another commented. 'One of the market coordinators walked over to them, and the police officers proceeded to complain about the market, drove forward into the middle of the market and parked in a way that was almost impossible to get around the car,' a third said. 'The way they carried it out was obnoxious and unnecessarily disturbing, and it left me and many other people quite shaken.' A Queensland Police Service spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the incident is being investigated. 'The Queensland Police Service is aware of the social media post and the local police district is reviewing the actions of the police officers undertaking the compliance check,' they said. It began life as a tiny emblem, something to adorn a 45 r.p.m. single or the bands letterhead. It quickly became ubiquitous and, ultimately, the most famous logo in rock n roll. Over 50 years, the legendary tongue and lips of the Rolling Stones has been emblazoned on everything from T-shirts and lighters to stage sets, appearing in countless variations throughout the decades. And while many who love it are fans of the band, the logo has in many ways transcended the Stones. But when it was commissioned in April 1970 its designer, John Pasche, had little idea how popular and lucrative it would become. The logo was to be displayed later this month in Revolutions: Records and Rebels 1966 1970, an exhibition at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris that has been postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak. But I caught up with Pasche, 74, in London by telephone last week, for a glimpse into its back story. (I included other witnesses to its history, as well.) Early in 1970, the Royal College of Art in London was contacted by the Rolling Stones head office. The band was looking for an artist to create a poster for its 1970 European tour. The art school recommended Pasche, a Master of Arts student in his final year. Pasche met with Mick Jagger to discuss ideas for the poster, and returned to the frontman with a design a week later. Jagger was not satisfied. I think it was possibly to do with the color and composition, Pasche told the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2016. In the new world of COVID-19 the body of the Other can be felt as an immediate threat, our relation to which must be observed, accounted for and managed. The medical advice warns us that the virus can enter our body in many ways, through droplets in the air which we breathe, through our nostrils, mouths, eyeballs and from the surfaces that we touch. Even though he is now at least three metres away from me, the smell of his sweat mingled with deodorant lingers in the air around me. I feel the breeze on the side of my eyes, where my sunglasses break with my face, and I have the terrifying thought that the runners breath has just entered my body via my eyeballs. I am mentally revisiting my shopping list when sounds of heavy footsteps and breathing jolt me into the present. A male runner, visibly sweating and audibly panting, is approaching me on the footpath. My chest begins to tighten, and my heart rate quickens. I glance around to find that I am unable to move off the footpath because of a parked car. The man passes me, entering and leaving the one metre orbit around my body, a space that until recently, I had rarely given much thought. Masked up, gloved up, and wearing a pair of sunglasses, I am ready for my walk to the local shopping strip. As I approach the grocery shop, I see a broken line of waiting shoppers. I stop two metres behind the last body, staking my place in the queue to become one of the four people allowed in the store. I smile at the young man managing the line and then realise that my sunglasses and mask forbid any such communication. This is the COVID-19 shopping experience, where the previously mundane act of buying food is now a choreographed mission. This new focus on the transmission of germs reminds us that our bodies are not discrete and neatly defined beings, but instead porous, open to the world and our environment. Crucially, our bodies are open to other bodies, in a number of different ways. Our body is not, as we may have felt, a safe cocoon. Instead, the lines between what is inside and what is outside are not as sharp as we would like to imagine. This heightened attention to the porous nature of our bodies has, in turn, breathed life into new experiences of disgust and violence. As cases of COVID-19 rose in Europe, a video of a commuter licking his fingers and then smearing them onto a rail in a subway carriage "went viral' (no pun intended), eventually leading to the arrest of the filmed man. This past week in Australia, news outlets have published stories of aggressive coughing and spitting in supermarkets and in altercations with police officers. The anthropologist Mary Douglas famously described disgust as a cultural construct. The object of our disgust is not inherently disgusting, instead we bestow that quality on things and persons because of our own cultural values and beliefs. She writes: There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder." As humans, she proposed, we have a universal desire to categorise, assigning boundaries on an inherently untidy experience [so] that a semblance of order is created. Where things or persons transgress our neat classifications, we are repulsed and then compelled to correct for the offending item or person. Dirt, she explained, was merely matter out of place. In the case of COVID-19, the boundaries of our bodies have been reimagined. Concern about our personal health and the healthcare system is, of course, a valid reason to establish new restrictions on what is deemed appropriate behaviour, such as the 1.5-metre social distancing rule and frequent hand washing. These new categorisations, however, also create new spaces for transgression, and new-felt forms of violence. Indeed, disgust may be weaponised. Knowing what offends another can be used to commit acts of violence, forcing a confrontation with the object of disgust. Even if this confrontation is performed without intention (as I imagine was the case with the runner of my opening anecdote) the experience may still be felt as violent. These new-felt forms of violence have been accounted for in new legislation in NSW, where coughing and spitting at front-line workers now attracts a $5000 fine. The Chief of the Police Association in NSW, Tony King, described such behaviour as despicable and vile and further announced that coughing or spitting in the presence of police people could attract jail term for up to six months. Recently, Andrew Chung of the investment firm 1955 Capital was involved in a substantial investment with Natures Fynd, one of the rising stars among startups in the alternative dairy and meat products marketplace. Using the natural resources of a microbe that can be used as a protein and food alternative, Natures Fynd manages food distribution in an ever-expanding world. The business is dedicated to finding alternative ingredients featuring all-natural and sustainable resources. Food Tech for Future Investments In order to manage the growing population and limited food resources we have here on our planet, humanity must come up with clever and cost-effective ways to mass-produce food. Simple as that. Natures Fynd is ready to help companies pave that pathway. Natures Fynd is a food technology company based in Chicago with research and development center headquartered in Montana. The company was co-founded by CEO Thomas Jonas, CFO Matthew Strongin, and Chief Science Officer Dr. Mark Kozubal. These three are joined by Chief Marketing Officer Karuna Rawal and Chief Technology Officer Jim Millis. Starring List of Investors Natures Fynd was recently rebranded from Sustainable Bioproducts. Coincident with this rebranding, Natures Fynd founders and investors raised $80 million in a Series B round. This funding comes from several notable sources. The top investment firms involved include Andrew Chungs 1955 Capital, which led the Series A; Generation Investment Management LLP, where Al Gore serves as Chairman; and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which raised $1 billion from some of the biggest investors on the planetJeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Jack Ma, Vinod Khosla, and more. According to Andrew Chung, Founder & Managing Partner of 1955 Capital, who serves on the companys board, This was a pre-emptive move to raise new capital and will allow the company to accelerate its commercialization efforts. It will start producing products at the start of this month from its new 35,000 square foot manufacturing facilities in Chicago, with plans to double the size of the team to 100 by the end of the year, in a statement to AgFunder Network. The funding is going to help Natures Fynd expand product lines and innovate new meat-free foods. CEO Thomas Jonas said, In these challenging times, securing food for our growing population under the immense pressure of climate change becomes even more urgent. We must find new solutions that can both nourish people and nurture the planet. Our innovative technology was developed by studying natures own solutions for adapting and ultimately thriving in environments with limited resources. New Products by Natures Fynd Currently, the market is waiting for Natures Fynd to reveal some of the alternative meat and dairy products developed with that funding. So, what exactly are these new meat-free products made from? The facility uses a specific microbe called Fusarium str. yellowstonensis, which comes from the geothermal waters at hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. The microbe is fully digestible, and highly complex serving that as Chung stated is a food-like substance, which gives a lot of the texture and structure of food for free. The protein extract is processed through a highly innovative fermentation technique. This helps to break down the microbe and create a digestible and palatable protein source. In an explanation about what Natures Fynd has to offer in its product portfolio, Chung said, One of the biggest reasons were so excited about this company compared to any other food tech companies and I saw many at Khosla where we were the first investors in Impossible Foods and Ripple [Foods] is that theyve really been able to develop tasty products across multiple food groups, faster and with elegant manufacturing processes at a low cost. Impossible Foods is labeled as meat made from plants and produces the popular Impossible Burger sold at fast-food chains, restaurants, and grocery stores. Investing in a Novel Protein Source Chung added, [Natures Fynd has] IP around the microbe they discovered being a very novel protein source with all those amino acids, and highly digestible. But importantly, they also have IP covering the nature of the fermentation tech theyve developed, thats so cost-effective and grows protein using a fraction of the land and water resources typically required. Choosing to support Natures Fynd in this protein source was made easier through the stellar list of investors also on board with Natures Fynd and the R&D companys commitment to finding sustainable food source alternatives. A bleak demand outlook for steel in the domestic as well as global market is also another reason Tata Steel may be looking to have additional liquidity as margins are expected to take a hit in the coming quarters. Tata Steel, the oldest steel producer in the country, is looking to raise up to Rs 10,000 crore after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last month decided to provide additional liquidity to the system hit by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The amount raised from the market would be mostly kept as additional liquidity buffer by the company and can be used to make any immediate short-term debt repayments that may arise post this lockdown, a source close to the development told Business Standard. Tata Steel is not the only company looking to raise funds to take advantage of the liquidity provided by the central bank. Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries on April 2 said its board had approved a proposal to raise up to Rs 25,000 crore through NCDs. Sources said Bharti Airtel could also be raising around Rs 10,000 crore. As a pre-emptive measure to meet any frictional liquidity requirements on account of dislocations due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the RBI decided to conduct the fine-tuning variable rate repo auctions for Rs 1 trillion, the central bank had said in a statement last month. On March 27, the regulator decided to expand liquidity in the system to sizeably ensure that financial markets and institutions are able to function normally in the face of Covid-related dislocations. The RBI also reinforced monetary transmission so that bank credit flows on easier terms are sustained to those who have been affected by the pandemic. A bleak demand outlook for steel in the domestic as well as global market is also another reason Tata Steel may be looking to have additional liquidity as margins are expected to take a hit in the coming quarters. The ongoing pandemic across globe has led to a nationwide lockdown that is likely to continue until April 30. This has impacted steel demand further. We see risks looming large for domestic steel prices in view of considerable premium to regional as well as export prices and demand uptick is expected to remain subdued in the medium term, Edelweiss Research said in a note. Tata Steel's gross debt at the end of December 2019 was Rs 1,09,867 crore while the net debt stood at Rs 1,04,628 crore. The firm made an operating loss of Rs 236.58 crore in October-December 2019. Moodys Investors Service in its report recently said the COVID-19 outbreak exacerbates the already challenging operating environment for steelmakers around the world. The macroeconomic weakness spreading in the wake of the pandemic is driving down demand for steel in core industries like manufacturing, automotive, construction, and oil and gas exploration. On the production side, Tata Steel has confirmed that its blast furnace was operating, but that could change swiftly. Tata Steel's $180-200 a tonne profit is higher than peers like JSW, which makes $120-130 a tonne. However, this year, we expect profitability to decline and credit metrics to weaken, said Moodys report. In July 2019, Tata Steel had plans to raise $600 million, partly to refinance loans and partly to fund the capital expenditure of phase two expansion at its Kalinganagar plant in Odisha. The company had also set a target of reducing gross debt by $1 billion in FY20, after Tata Steel's merger of its European operations with ThyssenKrupp fell apart following failure to meet Europe's antitrust requirements. Though the firms debt/Ebitda ratio as on FY19 stood at 3.2, it is much lower than 8.87 noted in FY17, which was the highest since FY10. The Moodys report said Indias steel consumption was expected to grow at 2-2.5 per cent in 2020, largely in line with the GDP growth forecast of 2.5 per cent. The 21-day lockdown will hurt steel sales in March and April. The 2020 figure is much less than the 7.5 per cent steel consumption growth during the year ended March 31, 2019, it said. Photograph: Babu/Reuters The enemy engaged Ukrainian positions with anti-tank grenade launchers and heavy machine guns. Russia's hybrid military forces on April 12 mounted three attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action (KIA) and another one as wounded in action (WIA). "The armed forces of the Russian Federation violated the ceasefire three times on April 12. One Ukrainian soldier was killed and another one was wounded as a result of enemy shelling," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation Headquarters said in an update posted on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on April 13. Read alsoUkraine's Defense Minister says army lacks PPE amid coronavirus The enemy engaged Ukrainian positions with anti-tank grenade launchers and heavy machine guns. Under attack came Ukrainian positions near the villages of Taramchuk, Vodiane, and Krymske. Joint Forces took comprehensive measures to suppress enemy fire, the command says. Russian-controlled forces did not attack Ukrainian positions from 00:00 to 07:00 Kyiv time on April 13. RACINE COUNTY A fifth person has died from COVID-19 in Racine County, the second death since Saturday, county officials reported Monday. As of Monday, the Central Racine County Health Department reported 74 cases with four deaths. The City of Racine Health Department reported 58 cases with one death as of Monday. That brought the total number of cases in the county to 132 as of Monday afternoon. 10 more deaths in state Statewide, 10 more people have died from COVID-19 in Wisconsin since Sunday, the Department of Health Services reported Monday afternoon, pushing the total to 154 deaths. Only 82 new cases were confirmed from Sunday to Monday, marking the first day in nearly three weeks that the states total did not increase by more than 100. Hospitalizations held steady, with 29% of confirmed cases remaining in the hospital as of Monday. And at least 52% of people confirmed to have had COVID-19 who have not been hospitalized, according to DHS. As of April 7, when Wisconsin had 92 deaths, Wisconsin had the 18th-most deaths from COVID-19 by state. New York State has the most COVID-19 deaths, with more than 10,000 as of Monday. During his Monday afternoon virtual news conference, Gov. Tony Evers continued stressing the importance of social distancing to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. When we talk about flattening the curve, we are talking about fewer people getting sick. We are talking about less of an impact on our health care system. We are talking about saving lives. We are talking about your neighbors and coworkers and friends and family. We might even be talking about you. These are the lives we will save, Evers said. I know this goes against the grain for most of us in Wisconsin ... this time is different. Except for the folks on the front lines, the most help we can give each other is to keep our distance from each other. A total of 36,769 people in Wisconsin have tested negative for the disease. Elsewhere in southeastern Wisconsin, according to the DHS, the reported totals as of Monday were: 182 confirmed cases in Kenosha County; 38 in Walworth County; 218 in Waukesha County; and 1,743 in Milwaukee County. There have been 94 deaths in Milwaukee County, the highest number in any of the states 72 counties. UW-Parkside donates PPE The UW-Parkside College of Arts and Humanities donated personal protective equipment to emergency operations centers in Kenosha and Racine counties to be used by first responders and medical personnel. Lesley Heins Walker, dean of the college, coordinated the effort with UW-Parkside Costume Lab Supervisor Darice Damata-Geiger, Associate Professor of Art Trenton Baylor, and Lightening Design Specialist Jake Bray who also serves at facility manager for the Rita Tallent Picken Regional Center for Arts and Humanities. Prompted by a request from UW-Parkside Police Chief Jim Heller to donate materials to the Robert E. Ellsworth Correction Center in Dover, the College of Arts and Humanities gathered materials from storage, including cotton cloth and elastic to sew masks for first responders. The Ellsworth facility is making fabric masks that can be used, laundered, and reused, which they agreed to provide to UW-Parksides Police Department. The college and Police Department also collected about 110 masks and two boxes of rubber gloves to donate to local authorities. This protective equipment is used routinely by theater scene shops and in sculpture studios for protection against hazardous paint fumes or dust or metal particles. Mobile Market still making stops The Racine Mobile Market continues to make stops throughout the Racine community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stops include 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Dr. John Bryant Community Center, 601 Caron Butler Drive; and 2 p.m. Wednesday at Knapp Elementary, 2701 17th St. Everyone is welcome to shop at the market its a way to avoid a trip to a grocery store and support a local grocer, Malickis Piggy Wiggly in Mount Pleasant. Hunger Task Force is observing health measures at the mobile market to ensure shoppers are kept at a safe distance. The one-aisle grocery store on wheels now takes grocery orders from individuals at the entrance, where a staff member tracks customers orders, completes their shopping aboard the mobile market and helps complete the payment transaction on the other end. Waiting shoppers are asked to maintain 6 feet of distance in line. These methods have ensured that only one individual who wears gloves at all times is handling produce, shopping carts and grocery bags before the customer receives it. Hunger Task Force plans to continue operating the mobile market during these uncertain times. The market accepts debit, credit and Quest/EBT cards, but not cash. Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. GP Global has further strengthened its international bunkering network with the addition of new delivery infrastructure, supplying the port of Hamburg, Germany. Expanding its geographical supply reach in the North Western market, GP Global will be supplying Marpol and IMO 2020 compliant Marine Gasoil, all overseen by GP Globals Rotterdam office, it said. With a global network of bunker trading offices accross London, Geneva, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, and Houston in the Americas, complemented by representatives in Lagos, Dar el Salaam, Nairobi, Delhi and Shanghai, the expansion into supplying Hamburg compliments GP Globals current portfolio of supply locations as the group continues to grow. Leading the operation in Hamburg is Peter Beelenkamp, who will be reporting directly Chris Todd, Head of Bunkers, West of Suez. Before joining GP Global in 2019 as Lead - Hamburg Bunkers, Beelenkamp headed the European Division of SK Energy focusing on their ARA operations and brings a breadth of experience to the role. GP Globals Joint Managing Director Prerit Goel said: As the bunkering landscape continues to shift into new directions, supplying for Hamburg Port is a testament to the success the company has achieved across its business units, in the face of a challenging global economic climate. The Hamburg market has long been on our radar and we are very excited about the added value GP Global will be bringing to what has long been a static market. Todd added: Being a neighbouring port to Rotterdam, the setup of our new Hamburg operation is a great fit for our further expansion into the North Western market, and the world. Our bunkering division continues to go from strength to strength as we continue to add new physical supply ports as well as new offices and talented individuals to portfolio of locations West of Suez. This announcement follows GP Globals recent expansion of their trading operations into the Americas with the appointment of Gene Owen as President of Trading. Reporting to the companys senior management in Rotterdam and based out of Houston, Texas, Owen is focusing on building a local team, establishing significant relationships and utilising his critical regional market insight to drive new opportunities for the company. TradeArabia News Service Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering bringing in the army to help tackle the coronavirus crisis after the number of confirmed cases in the country skyrocketed. Russia has reported 2,558 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, its highest daily rise yet. The country has 18,328 cases with 148 deaths from the bug so far, an overnight rise of 18. Putin today told officials at a televised meeting held by video link to consider using the army to help tackle the crisis. Moscow, the epicentre of Russia's outbreak, is under strict lockdown after 10,158 cases and 72 deaths were reported in the city alone. Addressing the rise in death toll today, President Vladimir Putin (pictured today) said Russia might need to call in the army to help tackle the coronavirus crisis Putin told officials to consider using the army to help tackle the crisis, noting how it had sent doctors and medical equipment to Italy and Serbia in recent weeks to help Moscow residents are only allowed to leave their homes to walk their dogs, take out trash and visit their nearest shop or pharmacy. The restrictions were put in place in a bid to ease pressure on Moscow's struggling hospitals as long lines of ambulances carrying coronavirus patients were seen queuing up for emergency rooms in the city yesterday. In a bid to tackle residents flouting the lockdown rules, Moscow authorities have launched a digital permit system to control people's movements. Russia has reported 2,558 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, its highest daily rise yet. Pictured: Medics in protective equipment walk outside a hospital for patients infected with coronavirus in Moscow Traffic police officers check the documents of arriving drivers on the Dmitrovskoye Highway in Moscow A driver provided their documents to a traffic police officer. Entry into Moscow is restricted to slow the spread of coronavirus At least 45 ambulances were seen queuing to deliver patients for treatment in one video as the Kremlin said Moscow's hospitals were in 'emergency mode' A website to apply for the passes was working Monday for people travelling by car or public transport. The permit system, which will be operational from Wednesday, may be expanded to monitor people going out even within their local neighbourhood, if needed, authorities said. City authorities had planned to assign bar codes to check whether people adhere to strict isolation rules, but that sparked huge controversy. Police officers were checking the documents of drivers travelling into Moscow today. The city is under strict lockdown after 10,158 cases and 72 deaths were reported in Moscow People would have had to apply for a QR code from officials online each time they wanted to leave their homes. The plan was eventually dropped in favour of the digital passes. In the meeting today, Putin noted how Russia had sent doctors and medical equipment to Italy and Serbia in recent weeks to help. A similar move to send medical aid to the United States angered the Kremlin's critics, who cast it as a publicity stunt that squandered precious resources lacking in Russia's own regions. The Kremlin denied the allegations and said Moscow could now expect help from the United States in the future. 'You need to use this experience, of course, and bear in mind that all these options, including the options of the defence ministry, if needed, can and should be involved here,' Putin said. Putin told officials that the resources displayed by the army were 'only a fraction of what the defence ministry has' and that 'the main reserves are still in reserve, so you need to keep this in mind'. In footage seen yesterday, snaking queues of dozens of medical vehicles all with patients showing symptoms of coronavirus were seen outside city clinics. There were at least 45 ambulances queuing to deliver patients for treatment in one video as the Kremlin declared a state of emergency in Moscow's hospitals. One long line was outside a hospital in Khimki suburb, close to Moscow's main Sheremetyevo airport. To escape the crisis, many have chosen to live remotely in Russia's forests. Snaking queues of dozens of emergency vehicles with patients showing symptoms of coronavirus were seen outside several city clinics in Moscow yesterday But inexperience is having detrimental effects after a grandfather died from mistakenly eating a poisonous root while camping. In another instance, parents had their children taken into care after police caught them seeking to vanish from civilisation to avoid Covid-19. Philosopher Alexander Norko, 62, said he was escaping the 'coronavirus hysteria' in St Petersburg a video. It explained that it was best 'to go into nature, where there is harmony - where the birds sing and the sun is warm.' But soon afterwards he ate a poisonous root plant which killed him. His wife Larisa, 62, who had decided not to accompany him, said: 'He phoned me and said he had found roots of water lily and would boil them. 'But according to experts, he made a mistake. It was cicuta (water hemlock) not lily. 'It smells and tastes nice - but can kill a horse.' In the Ural Mountains, and couple Andrey and Maria, both 30, took their three children aged ten, eight and four into the forest to 'flee coronavirus'. After a day they were found by police having spent one night sleeping under the stars as they headed for an abandoned wooden shack. 'My husband watched the news about coronavirus on YouTube all the time,' she said. He believed the answer was to disappear into the forest away from the risk of infection and the dangers of civilisation. On the way, he threw their mobile phones into a swamp. Despite this they were tracked by police and forced back to the village. Philosopher Alexander Norko, 62, said he was escaping the 'coronavirus hysteria' in St Petersburg by fleeing to the woods. But soon afterwards he ate a poisonous root plant which killed him Before he left for the woods, Mr Norko (pictured) said it was best 'to go into nature, where there is harmony - where the birds sing and the sun is warm' The children were removed from their care, and the parents now face fines for negligence, she said. 'It is my younger son's birthday and I could not even see him,' said Maria. Artyom Salovarov, 32, also chose to disappear with his tent to the shore of Baikal, the deepest lake in the world in Siberia. He was asleep when a brown bear found and ate the porridge he had cooked on his camp fire and gobbled his sausages. Mr Salovarov woke and fired several flares to scare away the aggressive predator then climbed the nearest pine tree, using his mobile to call emergency services. Rescuer Sergei Biryukov explained: 'We arrived at the site using the light of the scared man's torch to find him. 'He was up a tree, 30 metres (100 ft) from the shore. 'The bear was afraid of the noise from our equipment and ran away.' Artyom Salovarov, 32, also chose to disappear with his tent to the shore of Baikal, the deepest lake in the world in Siberia Mr Salovarov was asleep when a brown bear found and ate the porridge he had cooked on his camp fire and gobbled his sausages Coronavirus upends Putin's political agenda in Russia Spring is not turning out the way Russian President Vladimir Putin might have planned it. A nationwide vote on April 22 was supposed to finalize sweeping constitutional reforms that would allow him to stay in power until 2036, if he wished. But after the coronavirus spread in Russia, that plebiscite had to be postponed - an action so abrupt that billboards promoting it already had been erected in Moscow and other big cities. Now under threat is a pomp-filled celebration of Victory Day on May 9, marking the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. A nationwide vote on April 22 was supposed to finalize sweeping constitutional reforms that would allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to stay in power until 2036, if he wished, has been postponed due to the coronavirus crisis The holiday has become the most important on Russia's calendar, and this year is the 75th anniversary, with world leaders invited to a celebration highlighting the country's exceptional role in history. Every year, thousands gather in Moscow, including many elderly veterans proudly wearing their medals. Military units have already rehearsed the traditional Red Square parade, drilling outside Moscow, and leaders such as France's Emmanuel Macron and India's Narendra Modi had promised to attend. It would seem impossible to have such a gala now, with much of Russia and the world locked down to stop the spread of the virus. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week no decision has been made on whether to postpone it but authorities are considering 'options,' one of which is to hold it without the veterans, a group especially vulnerable to the virus. Peskov added the Kremlin would understand if foreign leaders decided not to come due to the pandemic and added the celebration would take place even if it doesn't happen on May 9. Initially underestimated by Russian authorities, the pandemic has posed an unexpected challenge for Putin, whose political standing now depends on whether he can contain the damage from it. On March 24, Putin was shown donning a yellow hazmat suit to visit a hospital for infected patients. Officials then indefinitely postponed the vote on the constitutional reforms that would have allowed Putin to serve two more six-year terms after 2024. The amendments already have been approved by lawmakers but the government wanted nationwide balloting to give the changes a democratic veneer. Campaigns promoting the vote had already kicked off in dozens of Russian regions. In preparation for the vote and Victory Day, Russia's state news agency Tass had begun releasing parts of a three-hour interview with Putin, with the 67-year-old leader talking about what he had done for the country in the past 20 years and what more needs to be accomplished. But Tass suspended daily extracts of the interview, saying it was no longer relevant to an audience more concerned about the coronavirus. The outbreak has completely reset the Kremlin's political agenda, said Nikolai Petrov, a senior research fellow in Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Program. 'Everything that was happening before (the outbreak) has basically been wiped out,' Petrov said. A traffic officer checks the paperwork of a driver in Moscow, the city remains under lockdown 'That whole political agenda (of constitutional reform), that had been unfolding since mid-January is over.' He added that for the moment, 'I think we can forget about the constitutional amendments.' The coronavirus crisis presents many difficulties for Putin, whose approval ratings - steadily dropping in the past two years - reached 63 per cent in March - the lowest since 2013. It comes as the prices of oil, Russia's main source of income, plummeted amid a price war with Saudi Arabia, causing a sharp drop in the ruble. The pandemic brought with it the prospects of more economic devastation. As much of Russia went into lockdown, which Putin sugarcoated by describing it as 'nonworking days,' many business operations came to a halt, prompting fears of a mass shutdown by companies and leaving millions unemployed. The Chamber for Trade and Industries, a government-backed business association, predicted 3 million companies could go out of business and 8 million people - almost 11 per cent of Russia's working population - could end up jobless. A weakening economy and worsening living conditions, widely seen by analysts as the driving force behind Putin's souring ratings, have already become the dominating fear among Russians. With the crisis still unfolding, it is likely to hurt his standing even more, said Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the independent Levada polling center. When people start fearing things getting worse 'then the ratings start plummeting,' Volkov said. The Kremlin's response to the crisis has raised questions at home and abroad. On March 24, Putin was shown donning a yellow hazmat suit to visit a hospital for infected patients Domestically, Putin has been widely criticized for paying little attention to the epidemic at first, and then for distancing himself from it by delegating difficult decisions on lockdowns to regional governments and the Cabinet. Some in the West have questioned the low number of official virus cases in Russia and dismissed its widely publicized effort to send planeloads of medical aid to Italy, the US, Serbia and other countries as a PR stunt. Putin sought to reassure the nation in a TV address on April 8, but part of his message comparing the coronavirus to invaders from the 10th and 11th centuries brought mockery on social media instead. 'Our country went through many serious challenges. It was tormented by the Pechenegs and the Cumans, and Russia got through all of it. We will defeat this coronavirus bug, too,' Putin said. Social media users pointed out that not only did Putin use this line in 2010, he might have borrowed it from an anecdote from the 19th century. 'The risks of him (Putin) looking out of touch are very real,' Samuel Greene, director of the Russia Institute at the King's College London, said. Putin used to be able to regain control of the political agenda by shifting the focus from domestic hardships to Russia's geopolitical grandeur, rallying people around the 2014 annexation of Crimea or fighting what he called terrorists in Syria. But this time, as Russia is forced to confront a truly global crisis, that tactic seems much harder. 'There can be nothing that would interest people more than the hardship they are going through and will continue to go through for a long time,' said Petrov. Environment management services provider Ramky Enviro Engineers (REEL) on Monday said it will contribute of Rs 10 crore to help combat coronavirus pandemic in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh New Delhi: Environment management services provider Ramky Enviro Engineers (REEL) on Monday said it will contribute of Rs 10 crore to help combat coronavirus pandemic in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The company will be making contributions to Chief Ministers' relief funds in the two states besides providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and additional materials, it said in a statement. The contributions are an extension of REEL''s ongoing efforts to combat the impact of Covid-19 on communities, which comprises Rs 3 crore cheque as well as a supply of Rs 7 crore worth PPEs and any additional materials/support needed for the cause, it added. The company said it has delivered the financial contributions to Telangana CM K Chandra Shekhar Rao and Andhra Pradesh CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak REEL Managing Director M Goutham Reddy said, "The coronavirus outbreak has impacted countless lives and has created an unprecedented need to band together against an invisible enemy. Containing the spread of the virus requires the active participation and mobilisation of resources from every quarter." REEL said it has developed a comprehensive plan to ensure a number of critical services continue through the foreseeable future, which include waste collection, treatment and disposal, hospital waste management and hazardous waste disposal from industries. "Furthermore, as a gesture of respect and recognition of workers'' hard work during these challenging times, REEL will provide additional benefits to its over 20,000 frontline employees and workers, including insurance and additional allowances worth Rs 10 crore," the company said. Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister cum Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat (Photo:straitstimes.com) Accordingly, 90 percent of Singaporean adults will receive a one-off payout of 600 SGD (422 USD) on April 14 through their bank accounts. The rest can provide the Government with their bank details and get the money by April 28, or receive by cheque from April 30 onward. Heng also noted that all Singaporean firms will get 75 percent of the first 4,600 SGD (3,247 USD) of each local worker's monthly wages subsidised by the Government for April, under the Jobs Support Scheme of the country. The government is also looking at "various indicators" to see how much more might be needed from the countrys reserves to help Singapore meet the fallout from the pandemic, he added. He urged businesses and Singaporeans to focus on how to make the best use of the amounts already allocated to ride through this difficult period. Singapore has announced three financial support packages totaling 59.9 billion SGD (42.1 billion USD) in just less than two months to cope with the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry of Cambodia on April 13 morning confirmed two more cases of COVID-19, raising the total to 122. An inmate at a Connecticut prison has died after contracting COVID-19, making him the first coronavirus-linked fatality among nearly 12,000 inmates, the Department of Correction reported Monday evening. The person, identified as a man in his 60s, died Monday after becoming hospitalized at UConn Health Center on April 8, and testing positive for the virus on April 9. He had underlying medical conditions, the department said. The death comes amid intense pressure and a lawsuit against the state by families and advocates seeking a wider release of prisoners in the crisis. The inmate was one year into a two-year sentence for criminal possession of a firearm. The department said he had been approved for discretionary release last month, but the offender could not locate an appropriate home sponsor. His maximum release date was March 12, 2021. My sympathies go out to the offenders family, said DOC Commissioner Rollin Cook. One death is too many. He joins the more the approximately 600 Connecticut residents who have lost their lives to this tragic disease. We will continue to do everything possible to keep the offenders and staff safe. The department did not immediately say where the inmate was serving his sentence. As of Monday, 166 inmates and 104 staff members had tested positive for the coronavirus, more than doubling the number of confirmed cases since late last week. >>SEARCHABLE DATABASE: Details about recently released or incarcerated CT inmates The department has stated it is increasing the rate of discretionary releases for inmates due to COVID-19, and activists and families of incarcerated individuals have called on Cook and Gov. Ned Lamont to begin releasing more inmates to prevent the spread of coronavirus inside the prison system. Lamont, speaking at his daily televised press briefing, said Monday the state is releasing nonviolent offenders at a faster rate than we have in a long time. My number one criterion is public health, he said. Were opening up wings of the correctional facilities, making sure those older prisoners, if we find theres not a safe place for them to be outside of the correctional facility, if we find the safest place for them to be is in the facility under close medical attention thats where theyll be. Were not resting on the status quo, were continuing to move people where theyll be most healthy and safest. A Hearst Connecticut Media investigation revealed Monday the record decline in the states prison population since March 1 has been overwhelmingly the result of fewer prisoners entering the system, not more releases. The department released 980 prisoners through Friday which exceeds the average of three similar periods in the last year by 115 people. kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt WASHINGTON A sailor aboard the COVID-19-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt died of the disease, the Navy announced Monday. The sailor, whose name was not released, pending notification of family, tested positive for COVID-19 on March 30 and was placed in isolation. He was found unresponsive in his room April 9 and moved to intensive care at U.S. Naval Hospital Guam, where the aircraft carrier is docked. He is the first active-duty service member to die of the disease. 'Sailors do not need to die': A timeline of coronavirus spread on USS Roosevelt The USS Theodore Roosevelt has been in the Persian Gulf. As of Sunday, 585 members of the 4,800-member crew had tested positive for the coronavirus. The ship's commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was fired after pleading for help, and acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned under fire for dismissing Crozier. Cost of Navy secretary's trip to Guam? $243,000, his job and isolation after coronavirus exposure Capt. Brett Crozier was fired and insulted by the Navy secretary after he called for help to fight coronavirus aboard the aircraft carrier he commanded. "The entire department is deeply saddened by the loss of our first active duty member to COVID-19," Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in a statement. "Our thoughts are with the family of the USS Theodore Roosevelt sailor who lost his battle with the virus today. We remain committed to protecting our personnel and their families while continuing to assist in defeating this outbreak." The sailor is the second service member to die of the disease, which had infected nearly 3,000 troops as of April 9, according to the Pentagon. Army Capt. Douglas Linn Hickok, 57, a drilling Guardsman and physician assistant, died March 30 in a Pennsylvania hospital. The Navy had tested 92% of the Roosevelt's crew as of Sunday and moved nearly 4,000 sailors to shore. Sailors remain aboard the ship to operate its nuclear reactors, guard its weapons and aircraft and sanitize the vessel. "This is a great loss for the ship and for our Navy," Adm. Mike Gilday the chief of naval operations, said in a statement. "My deepest sympathy goes out the family, and we pledge our full support to the ship and crew as they continue their fight against the coronavirus. While our ships, submarines and aircraft are made of steel, sailors are the real strength of our Navy. Story continues The outbreak on the Roosevelt, which began with three sailors who tested positive, has rattled the Navy, from ill enlisted sailors to the very top of its command structure. Crozier's letter to more than 20 Navy officials pleading for help angered his superiors when it leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. That led to the chain of events that reverberates today. Modly fired Crozier, who was popular with the crew. Modly then flew to Guam on a Navy Gulfstream jet, at the cost of $243,000, and delivered a 15-minute speech excoriating Crozier. Top Pentagon officials defended the expenditure. Modly stood by his remarks after they drew heavy criticism in Washington, then backpedaled hours after President Donald Trump voiced sympathy for Crozier. A day later, Modly, who is quarantined after visiting the stricken ship, resigned. The Navy continues to investigate its response to the outbreak and Crozier's response. Rear Admiral: Sailor under investigation for not following quarantine protocol This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus: Sailor on USS Roosevelt, ship hit by virus, dies The distraught family of a man who died of the coronavirus were caught on video beating a member of hospital staff in Mexico City after they were told they were not allowed to see the patient. The incident took place Wednesday after the man, whose name was not disclosed, passed away from the deadly virus after he had been hospitalized since last Monday. A worker at the San Pedro Xalpa Zone 48 General Hospital recorded the disturbing moment the family pounced on the medical staff, including Daniel Zamorano, a nurse. Daniel Zamorano was part of the medical staff that was beaten by distraught family members of a patient who died of COVID-19 at a Mexico City hospital last Wednesday. Zamorano, a nurse, said the relatives were upset because they were not allowed to see their loved one moments after he was declared dead A hospital worker at the San Pedro Xalpa Zone 48 General Hospital in Mexico City recorded the moment family members pounced on the medical staff because they were told they were not allowed to see their relative, a patient who died of the coronavirus One of the shocked family members is heard in the video screaming, 'let me get through. Police, police,' as staffers attempted to stop the melee before the hospital worker and her colleagues locked themselves up in a room. Zamorano took to Facebook early Thursday to blast the family and share how badly bruised his face looked. 'Family, friends and neighbors are always tough. Today four men and two women beat me because their relative died from Covid19,' Zamorano wrote. 'The had not seen him since Monday because he is isolated and for the same reason the patient has a protocol to follow. He can't be released like this. He has to be cremated. He is not like another deceased [person] ... You will not see him again he dies inside a hospital.' A fight broke out at a Mexico City hospital hallway moments after a group of family members were angered they were not allowed to see a relative who died of COVID-19. At least four men and two women beat a group of doctors and nurses Daniel Zamorano, a nurse at the San Pedro Xalpa Zone 48 General Hospital in Mexico City, said the coronavirus global pandemic has caused stress levels to spike at medical facilities in Mexico Hospital workers at San Pedro Xalpa Zone 48 General Hospital in Mexico City look medical staffers are beaten by the family of a man who died of the coronavirus attack Zamorano expressed his frustration with his some of fellow countrymen, who've been dismissive of the global epidemic's impact, which has left 115,286 people dead and 1,864,269 sickened as of Monday. 'This awaits us? The pandemic has just started in Mexico, a third world country, a country that does not believe in the existence of the virus, a country that criticizes medical work, a country that if the government does not do what people want, [they will] hit, shout, spit, I'm sorry Mexico.' On Friday, Zamorano took time out to apologize for his post and said his incident could serve as a perfect example of the stress brought forward by everyone who is directly and indirectly affected by the coronavirus outbreak, which has resulted in the deaths of 296 people and the infection of 4,661 in Mexico. 'I realize that my case can be an example that the stress and anxiety generated by #Covid19 can cause incredible chaos and that the security of the [hospital] is not enough for what is coming, yesterday it was my turn, I will not wait [for it] to happen to my family, friends, colleagues, bosses, etc. It is time to act, we still have time!' T he parents of a nurse from New Zealand who treated the Prime Minister as he fought coronavirus said they are "exceptionally proud" of their daughter. One of the nurses, named by Mr Johnson as Jenny from Invercargill on New Zealands South Island, has since been identified as Jenny McGee. Her mother Caroline McGee, speaking to Television New Zealand, said: "It makes us feel exceptionally proud obviously." Jenny and Luis, two NHS nurses who helped save Boris Johnson / Facebook She added: But she has told us these things over the years and it doesnt matter what patient she is looking after, this is what she does. I just find it incredible that she, any nurses, can do this for 12 hours, sit and watch a patient and twiddle away with all the different knobs and things they do to keep their patients alive, its absolutely amazing. Her father, Mike McGee, also spoke of his pride. Prime Minister Boris Johnson: The NHS has saved my life "I think over the years she has always told us that her job is one-on-one nursing with very critically ill people and that means shes there all the time for 12 hours," he said. So once wed heard that Boris Johnson had gone into intensive care it was obvious that at some stage Jenny would possibly run into him and be giving him the same level of care that she would have given anybody else the week before or next week and were really proud of her. Loading.... Mr Johnson, who said the NHS has saved my life, no question after spending seven nights in St Thomas, was discharged at the weekend. In his speech, the prime minister personally named the medics who had looked after him. He spoke particularly of two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way. The other nurse mentioned by Mr Johnson Luis from Portugal, near Porto has been named as Luis Pitarma. The priest of a traditional Catholic church in Paris was fined 135 euros for flouting coronavirus lockdown laws. Some 40 parishioners attending the Easter Vigil mass fled the scene as police arrived. Religious services and all gatherings have been banned in France since a total lockdown has been enforced on 17 March to contain the spread of Covid-19. But the traditional Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet Catholic church in the fifth district of Paris - not far from Notre Dame Cathedral - held an Easter Vigil mass late Saturday. The police had been alerted by local residents who heard music coming out from the church, known for its conservative rites and Latin mass. When the police arrived, they found the doors of the church firmly closed. At midnight, a person came out and acknowledged to the police that there were some 40 people inside. The priest was warned and booked for not respecting lockdown rules. He was fined 135. According to the police, the worshippers fled the scene and could not be cautioned. Church Livestream The Youtube channel of the Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church livestreamed the Easter Vigil mass held on Saturday 11 April. It started at 10:30 PM and went on for nearly three hours The video shows priests and choir boys celebrating the Easter Vigil liturgy in Latin without wearing any masks nor respecting social distancing rules. The worship also included the eucharist where choir boys could be seen receiving the host from the priests naked hands. The Church also published a message to its parishioners on its Youtube channel saying that watching mass online does not replace nor dispense them from physically attending the worship in church. The warning was followed by an appeal for funds. There has not been any other reports of defiance towards coronavirus restriction measures during the Easter week end. Churches were empty and worships were retransmitted on TV or through social media for worshippers staying at home to celebrate Easter Sunday. By Deepak Chopra, MD For many young people, the COVID virus outbreak will bring their first experience of fear and anxiety as a pervasive mood. As a society we are afraid of fear, and most of the time we can turn our backs on it. But this kind of denial is unworkable in a crisis. As bad news mounts daily and society becomes ever more anxious, countless people become enmeshed in the matrix of fear without knowing how to escape. Social forces can drive you to participate in the matrix of fear, but society cannot get you out of it. Escape is something each person must confront on their own. I believe that freeing yourself from fear and anxiety is possible. More than that, you can learn how to be free of fear long after the COVID crisis has passed. The key is to cultivate emotional intelligence. The term had a burst of attention some years ago, but the value of emotional intelligence never changes, and when you focus on it, you will achieve something worthwhile for life. Here are six principles to guide you through the process. Commit to never complaining, criticizing, or playing the victim. Imagine a creative, positive future for yourself. Don't regret the past. It no longer exists. Be present in every situation as it occurs. Be independent of other people's criticism or approval. Be responsive to feedback. It is fair to say that hardly anyone hits upon these principles by trial and error or through experience of life. A person can live a long time without paying attention to emotional intelligence, and among men, the word emotion too often connotes something undesirable, as if showing emotional sensitivity is a sign of weakness. But emotional intelligence is gender neutral. The fact that humans can observe their emotions is a remarkable trait, and once you begin to observe your own emotions, you can counter the power of an unwanted emotion like fear and anxiety. Whether we admit it or not, emotions fascinate us, as Hollywood well knows. Empathizing with emotions onscreen is easy and pleasurable, but we are too attached to our own emotions, and it takes very little experience of anxiety, humiliation, rejection, and failure to train us to avoid the mine field of emotions in general. So its worth saying that developing emotional intelligence isnt scary or difficult. All you need to do is notice and pay attention. By pausing and standing back a little, you can observe how you are reacting at any given moment. You can even turn the six principles into questions posed to yourself. Am I complaining, criticizing, or playing the victim? Do I see my future in a creative, positive way? Am I pointlessly reliving the past? Do I see whats going on right now? Am I afraid of someone elses criticism or craving their approval? Am I listening to what other people are trying to tell me? These are not mysterious or metaphysical questions. We can pause to ask them any time we want, and we should. But we are blocked by old conditioning and the habit of feeling uneasy about our emotions. There is a great deal of social pressure to behave with very low emotional intelligence, a kind of dumbing down on the feeling level. As a result we act in self-defeating ways. To give a few examples, We repeat the same reactions in most situations. We imitate how others behave, starting with our family. We act on impulse without a second thought. We dont really see how others are reacting to us. We let negative emotions like fear, anger, envy, and resentment have their way. We easily go into denial and seek outside distractions. A whole way of life is implied in these examples, and when collective fear mounts, as it is right now, people often have little or no idea how to escape. Denial and distraction simply become more intensified, and playing the victim is more tempting than usual. Alternatively, we tell ourselves that we need to stay in control more than ever. But what is needed isnt emotional self-control but emotional resilience. Resilience is the most important single aspect of emotional intelligence. You allow your emotions to rise and fall naturally, without trying to stop or control them. Once an emotion has passed, you feel better, and you are able to return to a state of peace and calm. The opposite of emotional resilience is seen when people are stiff, reserved, bottled up inside, censorious, aloof, proud, or remote. In all of these cases past experience has made certain emotions unacceptable. The only way to deal with them is through avoidance. One is reminded of the adage that trees can be blown over by a storm while grasses bend without breaking. Because the mind by nature is restful, alert, quiet, and at peace, that state of balance is the basis for developing emotional intelligence. You need the experience of balance in order to return to it at will. The experience comes naturally to everyone unless it is thrown off by stress and crisis. Then it takes a bit of intervention on our part, through meditation preferably. Meditation no only returns the mind to its balanced state, but it also allows you to observe what is happening, to experience it directly, and to identify with the quiet state of mind. Ultimately, this is how fear can be escaped permanently. Meanwhile, everyone can benefit from lessening the anxiety being experienced all around us. Emotional intelligence goes a very long way to expanding your awareness and making you free of stress and anxiety right now. DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century. Despite being at lower risk of getting seriously ill with COVID-19, most teenagers are worried about the coronavirus and the effect it could have on themselves and their families. Those concerns are heightened among teens of color who are reporting in larger numbers than white students that they are concerned about their families exposurephysically and economically. Thats according to a new poll by Common Sense Media , a San Francisco based nonprofit that studies the impact of technology on children and young people. Six in 10 teens overall are worried about being exposed to the coronavirus and their families ability to earn money. Eighty-seven percent of Latino teens say they are concerned about the financial fallout from the pandemic and how it will affect their families ability to earn money, while 74 percent of black teens report the same. When it comes to getting exposed to the coronaviruswhether its themselves or their family members71 percent of black teens and 66 percent of Latino teens say thats something they are worried about. By comparison, 56 percent of white students are concerned about getting exposed to the coronavirus and 53 percent are worried that it will affect their familys ability to earn money. That gap among white teens and teens of color may reflect reality: Data emerging from virus-stricken communities across the nation suggest that African-American communities are getting particularly hard hit by the pandemic. The findings also show that most teenagers80 percensay they are closely following news about coronavirus. How well teens feel they are keeping up with their schoolwork also varies significantly based on race. Overall, more than half of teens56 percentwho are no longer physically attending school say theyre worried about not being able to keep up with their schoolwork. Fifty-five percent report the same for extracurriculars. But black and Latino students are significantly more concerned than white students about keeping up with their schoolwork. Seventy percent of Latino and 62 percent of black students say they are worried about keeping up with their schoolwork compared to 49 percent of white students. Connecting to Teachers, Friends, and Family Many teens report that they are not in regular contact with their teachers. Nearly a quarter of survey respondents say theyre in touch with their teachers less than once a week while 36 percent say they are connecting with their teacher once a day or more. Forty-one percent say they havent participated in online classes since their school buildings were closed. Thats even though 86 percent said their teachers are still assigning schoolwork. As a point of comparison, teachers reported in a recent Education Week Research Center survey where 22 percent said they interacted with the majority of their students weekly. Nearly a quarter of teachers said they interacted with students at least once a week and 29 percent said they did so daily. Furthermore, while most teens report that they have a dedicated space at home to do their schoolwork, more than a quarter still lack one. Forty-two percent of teens report that they feel more lonely than usual right now. Thats especially true of girls of whom 49 percent say they are feeling lonelier compared to 36 percent of boys. Whether students are particpating in online classes didnt change how lonely they reported feeling or how worried they are about falling behind on schoolwork. So how are teens staying in touch with one another while theyre out of school? Eighty-three percent are texting, but old-fashioned phone calls are the second most popular form of contact. Seventy-two percent say they are picking up the phone to talk to family and friends. Four in 10 teens say they are feeling more connected than usual with their families. The survey was conducted between March 24 and April 1, 2020 and included 849 U.S. teenagers from ages 13 to 17. Europe's coast guards and rescue agencies were at loggerheads Monday about the fate of four dinghies and up to 85 migrants potentially lost at sea after setting off from Libya. Germany's Sea-Watch International reported that the little rubber boats had been carrying 258 people. It said it had lost contact with one carrying 85 people somewhere between the territorial waters of Libya and Malta. The UN refugee agency told AFP on Sunday it was "very worried" about the fate of those on board. Europe's coast guard service Frontex confirmed to AFP on Sunday that it was also looking for one of the four boats. But on Monday Frontex told AFP that "all four boasts have been accounted for" and there had been no shipwreck in the Mediterranean. "Two arrived in Sicily and two remain in the Maltese search and rescue area," Frontex said. "Today, Frontex received information that the missing rubber boat first spotted on Friday arrived in Porto Palo, Sicily," the European agency said. A "Frontex airplane based in Malta is currently on patrol to make sure that no other vessels in distress are in the area," it added. But Sea-Watch International stood by its report. "For days, at least 3 boats with more than 150 people are in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, a fourth sunk already," the German group said on Twitter on Monday. The Spanish rescue agency Salvamento Maritimo Humanitario said the migrants it had been in contact with came from sub-Saharan African countries. - 'Inaccurate information' - Frontex explained that there was a separate "deflated rubber boat in the Libyan search and rescue area". Italian authorities "later confirmed that this boat correlated with an old incident, where the migrants were rescued and the rubber boat was left adrift empty", Frontex said. Italy's coast guards on Monday said that Libyan authorities had "in recent days" conducted their own search and rescue mission. The Libyans had "subsequently left the boat drifting empty, rescuing the migrants who were on board," the Italian coast guards said. Italy has long established itself as the primary European port of entry for migrants seeking refuge from Africa and the Middle East. But the Mediterranean country shut down its ports and said it would quarantine any illegal migrants because of the coronavirus pandemic. Malta has also closed its ports to migrants because of COVID-19. Its foreign minister issued a statement on Facebook criticising rescue agencies' "inaccurate information". "The allegations ... come in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which has exacerbated the long-standing impasse which has governed migration within the European Union since as far back as 2008," Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo wrote. Frontex told AFP that 'all four boasts have been accounted for' and there had been no shipwreck in the Mediterranean Map of the Mediterranean locating search for migrants missing in waters off Malta and Italy Shaun Lamar Moor: Davis Police Department A California man was arrested for stealing a specimen that was going to be tested for coronavirus from a hospital. Shaun Lamar Moor, 40, was arrested by police and taken into custody after he was spotted riding a bicycle, according to a report by the Davis Police Department. The police had been searching for Mr Moor since 11 April when he allegedly entered the Sutter Davis Hospital and stole a sealed COVID-19 specimen that was awaiting testing. He then left the area on a bicycle. The hospital released a statement following the theft. Sutter Davis Hospital is committed to providing high-quality care to the Yolo Country community and beyond. We take this situation very seriously. We are conducting our own internal investigation as well as working closely with county officials and law enforcement on the matter, the statement said. Later that night, the police received a report that a sealed COVID-19 container had been found in a shopping cart outside a local CVS Pharmacy. After recovering the specimen, the hospital confirmed it was the specimen that had been stolen and that the specimen had not been compromised or otherwise opened. Davis Police Deputy Chief Paul Doroshov, speaking with FOX40 News, said the officers had no idea what Mr Moors motive was at the time of the theft. I think the concerning thing was, is somebody going to purposefully try to infect people using this virus? Mr Doroshov said. Mr Moors image was captured by a hospital security camera as he left with the specimen. A police officer found information leading to the mans identification by asking around local homeless enclaves, according to KCRA 3 News. The following day, police officers spotted Mr Moor riding his bike and took him into custody. Mr Moore was apparently taken into custody without issue and was booked into the Yolo County Jail on burglary charges. The Davis police said they had previous encounters with Mr Moore and insinuated that mental health issues may have factored into his decision to steal the specimen. Story continues Are there issues going on with this person that are not quite rational? Are there other motivations? So, it really could take a lot of different courses, Mr Doroshov said. In a Facebook post, the department suggested that Mr Moor may not have meant harm when he stole the specimen. Although the incident is very serious, Detectives do not believe he intended to harm himself or others, the post said. While the incident had the city on edge for a day, Mr Doroshov hopes Mr Moors arrest and the return of the sealed COVID-19 sample to the hospital can put peoples concerns at ease. As much fear as this may have caused in the community, we wrapped it up pretty quickly so hopefully those fears can subside now, Mr Doroshov said. Read more Parents failing to take children with serious illnesses to hospital How to help the elderly and vulnerable during the coronavirus How to feel less anxious about the coronavirus How to be productive when working from home during coronavirus Which countries around the world has coronavirus spread to? The dirty truth about washing your hands A van that was stolen last week from the All Saints Episcopal Churchs food pantry in San Leandro has been found in Oakland full of paint cans and with its catalytic convertor cut out, the churchs rector said Monday. The white van was taken early Thursday from the All Saints Episcopal Churchs food pantry and had yet to be spotted until Monday morning when it was found in Oakland, police and church officials said. The churchs rector Rev. Justin Cannon told The Chronicle the van was found, adding it was dumped somewhere in Oakland full of paint cans, catalytic convertor cut out, ignition damaged. The Supreme Court held on Monday that "Medical Oxygen IP" and 'Nitrous Oxide IP" are taxable under the Andhra Pradesh Value Added Tax Act 2005 and sub-serve a medicinal purpose. A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Ajay Rastogi said there is no doubt that they are medicines used in the diagnosis, treatment, mitigation or prevention of any disease or disorder in human beings falling within the ambit of Section 3(b)(i) of the 1940 Drugs and Cosmetics Act. The top court upheld the judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court saying the two fall within Entry 88 of the 2005 Act. "We hold that Medical Oxygen IP and Nitrous Oxide IP fall within the ambit of Section 3(b)(i) of the 1940 Act and are consequently covered in Entry 88 of the 2005 Act. The impugned judgment of the High Court, to the extent it held that Medical Oxygen IP and Nitrous Oxide IP fall within Entry 88 of the 2005 Act is upheld," the bench said. The question for consideration before the apex court was whether they are taxable under Entry 88 of Schedule IV of the Andhra Pradesh Value Added Tax Act 2005 or as "unclassified goods" under Schedule V. The classification of the two products determines the rate of tax to be levied on them. The top court was hearing an appeal filed by Andhra Pradesh government against a company Linde India Pvt Ltd, engaged in the manufacturing and trading of industrial gases as well as Medical Oxygen IP and Nitrous Oxide IP which had earlier challenged the imposition of outstanding tax liability of of Rs 5,11,062 for the August 2005. The company filed an appeal before the Appellate Deputy Commissioner who, by his order dated June 26, 2006, affirmed the assessment of the Commercial Tax Officer. Later, by an order dated November 25, 2014, the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal, relying on a judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court allowed the appeal filed by the company. The Andhra Pradesh government's appeal before the High Court for the State of Telangana and the State of Andhra Pradesh was dismissed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gregory Yee covers the city of Charleston. He's a native Angeleno and previously covered crime and courts for the Press-Telegram in Long Beach, CA. He studied journalism and Spanish literature at the University of California, Irvine. February was when I had the first inkling that something unsettling was happening. In early March, it was clear there was a major problem. And by late March, there was no question that a large segment of the population was enduring an epidemic of misinformation. As the nation girded to face its biggest challenge since World War II, much of the coronavirus coverage from right-wing websiteswebsites that you may never have heard of, but which are read by millions every daywas characterized by faulty projections, inflammatory anti-Chinese rhetoric, and over-the-top praise for President Trump. Because I read up to thirty conservative news websites every morning for my website TheRighting, Ive followed these stories. And I have found they fall into seven basic categories. Denial The denialists began in late February, led by conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh, who also posts full transcripts of his show on his websitea key fact in the spread of his ideas. In his February 24 commentary, Limbaugh called coronavirus the common cold. Limbaugh correctly said that the survival rate was 98 percent, but he omitted predictions that a third of the country could become infected. At this point, there werent many conservative stories denying the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. The influential Limbaugh set the tone. Its getting better all the time Once there was no denying that the pandemic was in and around us, the coverage shifted to its not so bad and it wont last too long. American Thinkers March 9 story Coronavirus Codswallop stated that the statistics about the pandemic should be taken with a grain of salt. A day earlier, the New York Post told its readers that the spread of the virus continues to slow. Dr. William Hazeltine, writing for FoxNews.com on March 21, predicted that the pandemic may end sooner than we expect. Trump praise Stories from right-wing websites praising Trumps handling of the crisis then came to dominate the coverage. The Daily Caller labeled Trumps much-criticized February 27 press conference, in which he presented the overall risk of the coronavirus to Americans as very low, a master class in crisis management. A few days later an opinion article on the same site stated that Trump has got the coronavirus situation completely under control. Trumps March 11 Oval Office address drew plaudits from the New York Post (Trump Passes Coronavirus Test with Flying Colors) and FoxNews.com (Trump Coronavirus Response Will Protect Americas Economy, Workers and Businesses). Writing in CNS News on March 20, Christian leader Franklin Graham gushed, Thank God we have a president who knows how to take charge. Not to be outdone, in late March, Lara Trump penned an op-ed for FoxNews.com that read more like advertising copy: My father-in-law, President Trump, is showing what leadership looks like in a time of crisis. China scorn Sign up for CJR 's daily email At least half of conservative coverage centered on the name of the virus, with right-wing journalists enthusiastically labeling it China coronavirus or Wuhan virus. Limbaugh and the American Thinker put forth the theories that somehow the virus had escaped or was deliberately released from a lab in China, and that the country was buying up stocks in the slumping market. (The headline was Did China panic the world and steal our wealth with a common cold?) American Greatness called the virus a way for China to destroy the United States. The cure is worse than the disease The first stories suggesting that the remedies to battle covid-19 were worse than the actual disease began showing up in mid-March. A number of media outlets voiced this perspective, including the Washington Times, The Federalist, and BernardGoldberg.com. The Epoch Times expressed a similar concern and added, For a disease that so far has extracted a relatively small death toll and from which a quarter of those infected have already recovered, why are we reacting as if Covid-19 is the second coming of the Black Death? Bashing the rest of the media Conservative media became increasingly critical of major mainstream media outlets and their reporters throughout the coverage of the crisis. Conservative commentator Todd Starnes wrote that NBCs Peter Alexander, whom he described as a propagandist, got what was coming to him after President Trump rebuked him for asking if he was giving Americans false hope. The Power Line blog claimed on March 24 that MSNBC and CNN have reduced covering the administrations press conferences because they were showing the administration in a positive light. Predictably, both The Federalist and American Greatness accused the mainstream media of stoking public hysteria, which correctly characterized some of the reporting without acknowledging the widespread under-reaction from the right. Bashing Democrats Theres nothing new about conservative media disparaging Democrats. But the criticism intensified as the crisis grew. A RedState article accused Joe Biden of plagiarizing Trumps plan to combat the Wuhan virus. March 13 articles on Breitbart and American Greatness stated that the coronavirus spread because the Democrats diverted the attention of the country with the impeachment effort. Community Digital News ran an inflammatory headline calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the ring leader of Dems covid-19 relief thievery. The body of the story called her a bitch who pisses on Americans [sic] collective leg. Of course, there were dozens of other coronavirus-related stories published in right-wing media that couldnt be neatly categorized. And a handful were even critical of the administrations efforts. But probably the most important and influential story coming from the right during the pandemic was Tucker Carlsons commentary published March 10 on FoxNews.com (and delivered by Carlson on the network the night before). He was virtually alone among conservative commentators in stating unequivocally that the virus will get worse, and he called upon the countrys leaders to stop lying about it. (Its worth noting that he had visited the president days before to deliver the message in person.) By March 13, President Trump had changed his tune and acknowledged the challenge facing the world. It was a watershed moment in the administrations approach to the coronavirus. Carlsons call to action was something of a miracle. Here was a controversial conservative journalist putting forth an opinion about a divisive issue that both Democrats and Republicans would soon embrace. How often does that occur? We must hope that it was not too little, too late. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Howard Polskin is the president and chief curator of TheRighting, a website that aggregates stories from right-wing media outlets on a daily basis to inform mainstream and liberal audiences. The site, which was launched in 2017, also tracks and analyzes traffic to conservative websites on a monthly basis. Trump vows to trigger 'tremendous surge' in US economy shattered by pandemic Iran Press TV Sunday, 12 April 2020 3:42 PM US President Donald Trump has claimed he will rebuild the economy, which has been shattered by the repercussions of his administration's ineffective response to the new coronavirus pandemic. Trump on Saturday night vowed to rebuild the US economy in honor of those who had lost their lives across the country due to the deadly flu-like pathogen. "We're going to rebuild it again in honor of all those who perished today," Trump said in an interview with Fox News, adding that he expects the economy to rebound like a "rocket ship" as a result of the American public's desire to get back to work and a two-trillion-dollar coronavirus economic relief from the federal government. "And I think the stimulus, coupled with this pent-up demand and everybody wanting to get out and go back to work," the US president underlined. "I think we're going to have a just a tremendous surge." Media reports speculated that the surging rate of unemployment in the US might reach near to the peak of 25 percent seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the last two weeks of March, more than 10 million Americans filled out request forms to receive unemployment salary after being laid off due the pandemic. Some economists are reportedly predicting that some 20 million jobs or even more -- could be lost in the United States. Trump went on to say that Americans have combated the coronavirus the "right way," and that the country would have experienced far greater numbers of deaths if it failed to observe the safety guidelines, such as social distancing. "There were estimates, 2.2 million people. Well, if you cut that in more than half and you said a million and cut that in half. You say 500,000, it just would have been unacceptable," he added. The latest updates showed on Sunday that the United States has recorded more than 20,000 fatalities since the coronavirus outbreak began, overtaking Italy as the country with the highest number of confirmed deaths. According to the Johns Hopkins University count, so far 20,463 people have lost their lives across the United States compared with 19,468 in Italy. The US with over 535,183 confirmed cases has the highest number, while Spain and Italy rank second and third with 166,019 and 152,271 cases respectively. Public health experts have expressed alarm that the US death toll could reach 200,000 over the summer if stay-at-home directives were lifted as they are to expire at the end of April. This is while Trump says he wants to reopen the country by next month despite concerns from both economists and health experts who assert that reopening the country prematurely could severely reverse some of the progress the country has made in battling the coronavirus. US officials have warned Americans to expect alarming numbers of coronavirus deaths this week. Moreover, the White House is seeking to deflect criticism of its own sluggish response to the COVID-19 crisis by putting too much emphasis on the virus's likely origins in China, with Trump and other US officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, referring to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus." There have been more than 1.8 million confirmed cases of infection across the world, with the death toll topping 110,000 on Sunday. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address A police inspector from Akola district in Maharashtra has alleged that the district superintendent of police used foul language against him during an official meeting. On the complaint of the police inspector Suresh Naiknawre, Inspector General of Police (IGP), Nagpur Range, Mallikarjun Prasanna has launched an inquiry into the alleged incident. The incident was confirmed by the IGP on Monday. Akola Superintendent of Police Amogh Gaonkar was not available for comments. "Although the field force is performing duties quite well even during the outbreak of coronavirus, still in a meeting held on Friday, SP Gaonkar called me idiot and **** for issuing a letter to the Municipal Commissioner about disposal of bodies," Naiknawre stated in his letter addressed to the IGP, Amravati Range. Naiknawre has been transferred to neighbouring Buldhana district. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The coronavirus pandemic on the eve of overcame the psychological threshold of 1.5 million identified cases of infection. Currently, 1,619,495 cases are known, of which 97039, or 6%, have died, and 365142, or 22.5%, have recovered. In Russia, at the moment, 11917 cases of Covid-19 infection have been identified, of which 94 have been fatal, and 795 - victory over the disease. The Vestnik Kavkaza talked with the deputy director for research at the MVU Lomonosov Moscow State University University Clinic, professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Simon Matskeplishvili, about the pandemic in Russia and the importance of restraining the regime of self-isolation of citizens. - Simon Teymurazovich, for the second week in Moscow, he has been observing a regime of universal self-isolation of citizens, and other regions have quickly joined her. In your opinion, what place does this regime take in the fight against a pandemic and, as a result, the responsible attitude of citizens towards restricting contacts with other people? - Today, self-isolation and quarantine is the only most effective proven way to significantly limit the spread of infection. All other measures we use vaccination, specific immunotherapy, or complication therapy are not always radical. The situation is also different in that we do not yet have a vaccine against coronavirus. Restrictive measures are difficult to observe, they are the most appropriate way to deal with a pandemic. It has long been established that the stricter the quarantine rules, the faster the spread of the infectious disease ends, the shorter the required period for which they should be introduced. Alas, people, and not only in our country, but in the whole world, do not always correctly respond to recommendations on voluntary self-isolation; if this is not a direct order, they can be ignored. I understand all the psychological, financial and other life inconveniences of forced self-restraint, because of which people risk losing their jobs, losing money, and most importantly, losing peace - but they cannot be compared with the benefits it brings. Yes, now its not a war, not a natural cataclysm, but the virus is not visible to the eye, and there is a feeling that it is not there, and therefore there is no threat. But he is, and there are many of him, so everyone should protect at least himself. The self-preservation instinct should work. In addition, we must protect those around us, at least, our close, older relatives, neighbors, and friends. The only way to do this is to limit yourself. Personally, I am a supporter of maximum self-isolation up to the strictest quarantine. It is especially important to understand that we can cope with a pandemic only all together. There can be no half measures when I limit myself, and the other does not. Therefore, my main message is yes, it is difficult, but it must be done, and it is better on its own, otherwise it will not make the leadership of the country or region, but life itself. And if a catastrophe begins, then, of course, everyone will say yes, we were wrong, it was necessary to observe self-isolation, but it will be too late. - How do you assess the recommendations and protective measures that are now introduced by the Russian authorities? - I fully support them! I, frankly, for tightening what has already been introduced. Now the authorities, including the president, governors and mayors, appeal to the people with an urgent recommendation "guys, calm down, do not wake up famously, while it is quiet." At the same time, unfortunately, there are many people who do not want to take the seriousness of the situation, they need to walk, chat, and lead a familiar lifestyle. Now its spring, the weather is nice, and many think that if they are alone in the territory closed to the public, then nothing will happen. Even more incomprehensible to me are references to the Constitution, in particular, to the right to freedom of movement, explanation of the illegality of the restrictions imposed. Indeed, our Constitution contains many rights, including the main thing - the right to life! I consider it absolutely irresponsible, or even morally and ethically criminal, if someone, by observing their right to freedom of movement, would endanger their health, not to mention the life of at least one person. Now scientists from many different countries have become one huge team that is fighting the infection. Of course, we will defeat the coronavirus, and quite soon. But you need to be aware that it will not be the last in the history of mankind. Now we must develop common strategies to combat pandemics, because the number of different viruses in nature reaches 100 million, and we know only 6 thousand of them. We cannot predict which of them will learn to infect people at one time or another, which means we must be prepared for the fact that sometimes we will have to voluntarily limit ourselves, otherwise nature will limit us so that it doesnt seem enough. - Why did this coronavirus spread much wider than SARS 2002-2003? - There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the real virus is quite contagious, and secondly, the disease has a rather long incubation period, during which unsuspecting and sensing, but already infected people actively spread the infection. It is also important that mortality from COVID-19 is not very high. If the disease, transmitted directly from person to person, has a high mortality rate, then the epidemic ends quite quickly - the carriers of the infection die faster than the pathogen can spread. And if the incubation period is also short, then the sick quickly find themselves in the hospital and isolate themselves from others, which also limits the spread of infection. - How do you feel about the various conspiracy theories around the coronavirus, for example, about its artificial origin or about the deliberate inflating of the danger of a pandemic in anyone's interests? - I believe that now these issues have no significance in comparison with the task of coping with the disease. We, doctors and scientists, are not engaged in conspiracy thesis, our job is to save human lives. Almost all scientists agree that this virus is natural, although today nothing can be ruled out. Talk about the Cynthia bacterium, supposedly helping the coronavirus, is outspoken delirium, as are many other versions, including its alien origin. In the same way, I do not understand people who claim from the high tribunes and in the media that this whole story with the coronavirus was simply invented, that in fact the mortality rate of the population does not change, and the so-called pandemic is nothing more than an ordinary seasonal catarrhal disease. Dissemination of such opinions is unacceptable, they are even worse than fakes, because legal liability has been introduced for fake, and for someone to say, I think you guys are just being deceived, and the virus is not at all dangerous, to punish complicated. But people can heed this opinion, and begin to doubt, for example, whether to wear masks. Why limit yourself if only a few thousand people are identified in Moscow and the likelihood of encountering them on the street or in the store is very small? - What could you say to the doubters? - I can say with a high degree of certainty that in Moscow there are now at least several tens of thousands of infected people whom the doctors have not yet identified, as they have just begun to really test people. In this sense, what our scientists are doing is creating and improving tests. In general, the current situation has led to a huge breakthrough in science. But it is much more important that an even greater breakthrough occurs in human relations and in relations between countries, so that we recognize ourselves as a single humanity that needs to come to an agreement, deal with the threat and live together. NORA SPRINGS When a neighbor posted on Facebook that the Nora Springs Care Center was in need of new gowns and masks to protect staff and residents against COVID-19, Janet Smallwood knew she could help. With a stash of sewing materials and plenty of time on her hands, the Nora Springs resident got to work in her basement, where she keeps her sewing machine and bolts of fabric strewn across the tables and floor. Despite having a vestibular disorder, which affects her vision and sense of balance, she has spent most of her days at the sewing machine for the past two weeks. While making the masks and gowns, she noticed more and more posts on Facebook about people needing masks, making it obvious that the demand was there to make more. Ive seen many posts about people making masks, she said. But, my big thing is theres a lot of people right now hurting that cant afford them. Janet decided to make her own post about making masks for people, but she would only accept donations if they were able to afford one. Its not about the money, its about protecting people and helping one another, she said. With one post, Janet was inundated with messages from people requesting masks. Even as the effects of her disorder leave her exhausted at the end of each day, Janet is determined to help out. As long as I have the material and I can handle the sewing, she said. I think each one of us need to do our part. To date, Janet said she has sent out about 200 masks and has requests for another 150, with all the donations going towards making the gowns for the care center. With time on her hands and the repetitive nature of the task, theres not much to think about after making so many masks. So, Janet spends that time praying. I pray for the people who are getting them, she said. I pray for their health, if theyre financially having trouble right now that they will be sustained and that there will be others to step forward and help. On Tuesday, Janet and her husband, Clinton, were notified that one of their three sons, Jacob, tested positive for COVID-19 by the Shapiro Developmental Center in Kankakee, Illinois, where Jacob is a resident. Housing the most confirmed COVID-19 cases of any health facility in Illinois, the state-operated center now has Jacob and other residents in quarantine, making the global pandemic hit even closer to home for the Smallwoods. Janet and her family are unable to help Jacob, who is epileptic and has other health and behavioral issues. This is the first time in 30 years that Im not able to be there for him, she said. Its very hard. Janet said she spoke with a worker at Shapiro who told her they are in need of masks themselves. So, Janet, with the help of a woman in Clear Lake who is making more masks, will soon send them to the people who are caring for her son and turns the rest over to her faith. Ive got peace about whats going on, she said. With my son over in Kankakee, I had to give him to God quite a few years ago. And I keep wanting to take him back but I cant. So, if God chooses that this is going to be the end of his life, I dont have a choice there. Ive got the peace to know that theres greater powers in control. Creeping erosion of privacy? Desperately needed technology-based solution to a global life-or-death problem? A little of both? Here is what we think we know now about the Apple/Google contact tracing technology announced on Friday. What has happened? Apple and Google are working together to develop COVID-19 contact tracing technology for both Android and iOS devices. All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the worlds most pressing problems, the companies said in a statement announcing the move. The two giant corporations have published draft technical documentation, including Bluetooth and cryptography specifications and framework documentation. Here is what they say: Across the world, governments and health authorities are working together to find solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, to protect people and get society back up and running. Software developers are contributing by crafting technical tools to help combat the virus and save lives. In this spirit of collaboration, Google and Apple are announcing a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design. And what Tim Cook said: In a Tweet, Apple CEO Tim Cook said: Contact tracing can help slow the spread of COVID-19 and can be done without compromising user privacy. Were working with [Google] to help health officials harness Bluetooth technology in a way that also respects transparency and consent. Why is this technology needed? Public health officials worldwide believe contact tracing can be used to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. Mobile telecoms, other companies and governments are using contact tracing in an attempt to mitigate its spread. What this means in practice is that mobile networks are sharing with governments the data they hold about peoples movements, something that alarms privacy advocates who see it as a potential move toward surveillance state. An ACLU paper pertaining to this is available online. Taiwan, Singapore, China, South Korea, UK and Israel are all using this kind of information. And OneZero explains some of the ways in which these technologies are being deployed. Apple and Google hope that by making useful information available in a highly anonymized form they can both boost public health response\, while also protecting end user privacy. How it works When in place, smartphones running the technology will broadcast randomly created, unique identifiers using Bluetooth Low Energy that change every 15-minutes. Any device within two meters distance will record that signal ID, which is designed to protect end user anonymity. This data doesnt get used unless other conditions are met. The identifier contains no other personal information. The list of identifiers you have interacted with doesn't leave your device unless you choose to share it. If you test positive with the virus you will not be identified to other users, Apple or Google. All matching takes place on the device, and uses relay servers which forward information to your device. That way you can see if you have been in proximity of someone suffering COVID-19 in the last 14-days. What does the technology consist of? Apple and Google's comprehensive solution will include application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology. How will this be introduced? Given the urgent need, the solution will be implemented in two steps, which Apple and Google both hope will maintain user privacy. In May , the companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. Official apps will be made available. , the companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. Official apps will be made available. In the coming months," Apple and Google will work to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into the underlying platforms. How is privacy protected? Individuals will be able to opt-in to participate in the system, and will need to do so on a large scale if it's to be effective. It is also designed to enable interaction with a broader ecosystem of apps and government health authorities. Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort, and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders. We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyze, the companies said. What about the data? The system keeps data on devices that have been near each other. Apps from officially sanctioned public health authorities will get access to the data on your device, and users who download those apps can report whether theyve been diagnosed with COVID-19. The system also alerts people by periodically checking broadcast keys to see whether anyone has tested positive. If you have been close to someone who has been infected youll receive an alert, but wont be given the identity of the person you were near. How the system works in a more personal sense In practice, the system might work like this: Two or more people spend 10 minutes of so in close proximity (within two meters) of one another. When they do, their smartphones exchange anonymous identifiers. Should one of them subsequently be diagnosed with COVID-19 the system will be updated with this news via a health authority app that uses the Google/Apple API. If the diagnosed user consents to it, their most recent identifiers will be shared to the system which uses public health data. This information is then broadcast via the app to all users, and anyone whose device identifies your anonymised identifier as a contact it has been in touch with will be alerted that they have been exposed to the virus. They will then be advised of the next step they should take according to their government health advisors: Self-isolation, medical contact or testing, for example. The process for the most part takes place on your device. Location information is not shared and data that is shared is anonymized and remains subject to your consent. Isnt this system ripe for abuse? There are two obvious forms of potential abuse: Surveillance-hungry states may use the system as a thin wedge toward deeper oversight over communities. The use of frequently changed anonymous identifiers and the need for user consent is part of the protection against this. Attention-seeking users may attempt to game the system, claiming illness to cause panic among others. This is what integration with authorized public health apps is meant to protect against, as it implies some protection against the potential for deliberate or mistaken self-identification to generate such panic (but see In the UK, below). In the UK The UK government isnt doing enough testing, many critics say. As a result of its failure to prepare, deployment of the technology in that country will allow people to self-diagnose, reports 9to5Mac. This will reduce the accuracy of the app (which depends on verified health testing) and also make it possible to create unwarranted panic among others based on an individuals flawed self-diagnosis. It will also nurture both over- and under-reporting, as people with mild symptoms dont report and those with possible symptoms do report. Criticisms of the solution There are several emerging criticisms. University of Cambridge professor Ross Anderson points to several problems, one of which is that in built-up areas the Bluetooth-based contact tracing feature may pick up false positives, such as identifying neighbors on either side of dividing walls as having been in contact. Critics also warn that the same technology could be used to monitor other forms of social contact. A government may demand its use for other scenarios, such as murder investigations or even to silence dissent. Where can I get more information? Both Apple and Google have published extensive draft APIs explaining use of this technology and how developers may be able to implement it within their apps. Apple has published the following: Googles Android Contact Tracing API is available here. You can find specifications for contact tracing with Bluetooth and its cryptography here and here. Googles explanatory document explaining privacy safe contact tracing using Bluetooth LE is here. Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. Pineapple Support, the adult industrys leading mental health nonprofit, has signed top webcam company CAM4 on as a bronze-level sponsor. The live cam site joins more than forty adult businesses and organizations in committing funds and resources to Pineapple Support. "We are thrilled to partner with Pineapple Support to build on the incredibly important work they've been doing in our industry," said CAM4's Communications Manager, Shannon McD. "It's imperative for platforms like us to get behind initiatives that provide performers with access to vital mental health and wellness resources, and we couldn't dream of a better organization to collaborate with." Pineapple Support was founded by British Performer Leya Tanit in early 2018, in response to losses in the adult industry from depression and other mental illnesses. Were thrilled to have the support of a pioneering site like CAM4, said Tanit. This sends a clear message to the entire cam industry that access to mental health resources is crucial to the success of our workers. Working alongside companies like CAM4 will help us to reach even more performers in need of support. Pineapple Support, which is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit in the United States and a registered charity in the UK, has so far connected over 1,000 adult performers to mental health services, including free and low-cost, therapy, counseling and emotional support. World has been in a tailspin since the coronavirus pandemic came to light. Matters have turned worse for India which was already going through a phase of economic slowdown. In March, employment rate fell to its all-time low, whereas unemployment rate saw an unprecedented rise to enter double digits for the first time. According to data from Centre for Monitoring Economy (CMIE), unemployment rate almost tripled in the week ended March 29 to 23.8 per cent from 8.4 per cent a week ago. The next week, which ended on March 5, it was recorded at 23.4 per cent. Unemployment has been progressively growing since January, when the first cases of coronavirus emerged. "The unemployment rate in March was 8.7 per cent. This is the highest unemployment rate in 43 months. Or, since September 2016. The rate has climbed rather steeply from the 7.16 per cent level of January 2020," the Mumbai-based think tank said in a recent report. ALSO READ: Coronavirus impact: COVID-19 may push half million people into poverty, says Oxfam ALSO READ: Coronavirus impact: Layoffs, closures to wipe out 6.7% of working hours in Q2, says ILO Employment rate in March fell to an all time low of 38.2 per cent, and the "scene gets much worse as we move into the lockdown period," CMIE said. Things have not returned to normal during the first two weeks of April. As on April 12, the 30-day moving average of unemployment rate was 13.5 per cent. India has reported double-digit unemployment rate in urban areas before, but it has never been the case in rural India. The ongoing nationwide lockdown has changed that. As agricultural activities remain suspended due to lockdown, unemployment in rural areas has reached 13.08 per cent, whereas it reached 14.53 per cent in urban areas. "What has happened between January and March is that the number of employed fell from 411 million to 396 million and the number of unemployed increased from 32 million to 38 million. So, the 9 million fall in the labour force consists of a 15 million fall in the count of employed and a 6 million increase in the count of unemployed," the CMIE report said. ALSO READ: 400 million workers in India may sink into poverty amid coronavirus pandemic: ILO ALSO READ: Coronavirus impact: Nasscom seeks govt help for IT sector's vulnerable employees Joe Biden lashed out at President Trump for 'making excuses' in an op-ed in the New York Times detailing how he would handle the coroanvirus pandemic as president. 'We are now several months into this crisis, and still this administration has not squarely faced up to the "original sin" in it's failed response - the failure to test,' Biden pointed out in the editorial, which ran Sunday. The former vice president also warned that American life may be changed permanently, with crowds being a concept of the past. Joe Biden stepped up his attack on President Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, writing in a New York Times op-ed that Trump needed to stop 'making excuses' and get the federal government's response on track Biden said President Trump (pictured) needed to make up for his administration's 'original sin' of not having widespread testing available for the coronavirus. Without mass testing it will be difficult for Americans to safely return to work, Biden offered 'People across America are stepping up to the plate. Millions are performing essential services at great personal risk, and millions more are staying at home, away from friends and extended family. In return, they want the answer to a simple question: What is the plan to safely reopen America?' Biden began. 'So far, the Trump administration hasnt supplied an answer,' he said. While the current thinking has to be about solving the medical crisis and the longterm plan needs to be the development and distribution of a vaccine, Biden pointed that 'we need to build a bridge from here to there.' The first piece of Biden's plan is to 'get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly.' This means social distancing needs to continue and Trump needs to ramp up his use of the Defense Production Act in order to get medical supplies to areas in need. 'He needs to get the federal response organized and stop making excuses,' Biden said. 'For more Americans to go back to their jobs, the president needs to do better at his job.' The second piece, is testing - both to find out if a person has the coronavirus, but also that they had the coronavirus, and thus some immunity from being infected. And third, Biden said, was readying hospitals for flare-ups when social distancing restrictions are relaxed. 'Reopening the right way will still not be completely safe,' he warned. 'As public health experts have said, we should expect activity to return gradually, with sites like offices and stores reopening before arenas and theaters,' he added. Biden said he'd gather together a group of experts from the private sector, respresenting an array of industries, in order to come up with ideas about how businesses can resume operations safely. 'Perhaps offices and factories will need to space out workers and pursue other solutions to lessen risk of spread of the virus on the job,' he said. 'Restaurants may need new layouts, with diners farther apart.' He concluded the op-ed by, again, attacking Trump's response. 'As we prepare to reopen America, we have to remember what this crisis has taught us: The administrations failure to plan, to prepare, to honestly assess and communicate the threat to the nation led to catastrophic results,' Biden wrote. 'We cannot repeat those mistakes.' Biden's tone in the editorial was more critical and urgent than he expressed previously. Last week, he talked about the good call he had with the president, where he explained to Trump how he'd handle the crisis. 'I laid out what I thought he should be doing. I laid out four or five specific points that I thought were necessary. I indicated that it is about taking responsibility, and being the commander-in-chief, taking on the responsibility,' Biden said he told Trump during an interview on CNN Tuesday. 'He asked whether or not we would not discuss the detail of what we talked about, just saying that we had a good conversation.' 'He was very gracious in his conversation. So it was - the president - I had an opportunity to tell him what I would have done, what I thought, the lessons we learned.' Like he noted in the New York Times op-ed, Biden said he pushed Trump to better utilize the Defense Production Act. Biden said he also pushed Trump to reopen the enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act - better known as Obamacare - which the president, so far, has refused, pitching the idea of giving 'cash payments' to hospitals instead to pay for uninsured Americans' coronavirus treatment. 'And he was very gracious,' Biden added. 'And that was the end of the conversation.' Biden became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee last week when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. Sanders said he would remain on the ballot and continue to collect pledged delegates, using them to push Biden further to the left. This is pretty simple. Donald Trump doesnt want voters to hear the truth and hes trying to bully TV stations into submission," said Guy Cecil, who is chairman of Priorities USA. "The truth is that Trump ignored warnings from experts and his own team and downplayed the coronavirus even as it spread unchecked across the country and the world. Americans are now suffering as a result of his inaction. We will never stop airing the facts and holding the president accountable for his actions. MINNEAPOLIS A federal judge last week dashed the hopes of Paul Hansmeier, one of three attorneys behind the porn-trolling Prenda Law firm, who had asked the court for a temporary release from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hansmeier, who is currently uninfected with the virus and is in the midst of appealing his conviction, had argued in a pro se motion that he faces a substantial risk of catching the coronavirus in prison. U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen denied his request on Friday. If released pending appeal, Hansmeier would self-quarantine at his house for 14 days and then continue to shelter in place per the Minnesota governors executive order, Hansmeier said in his unsuccessful hand-written brief. Hansmeier, 38, added in the brief that he would use the time away from prison to care for his children, ages 5 and 7, and that he was not likely that he will flee or pose a danger to the community and that his appeal raises a substantial issue. He noted that there are risks with incarceration during the pandemic, particularly at the Minnesota federal correctional institution Sandstone, where he has been housed since July 2019. Hansmeiers official release date is June 12, 2031. [A]pplication of the current death rate associated with COVID-19 suggests that 25 inmates at Sandstone can expect to die, said Hansmeier, who filed court papers three previous times for possible release. The U.S. Attorneys Office, however, cut down Hansmeiers fourth bid to be released from Sandstone, arguing that he committed an egregious crime, and he continues to argue that he committed no crime at all and that the Bureau of Prisons has implemented a COVID-19 action plan to protect the health of prisoners. Hansmeiers request to be released, to care for his children and then to return to Bureau of Prisons custody if he loses his appeal, would expose the prison community at Sandstone to a greater threat from COVID-19 than simply keeping the uninfected Hansmeier in custody as the pandemic runs its course, the U.S. Attorneys Office wrote in a brief. Prenda Law made the bulk of its revenue by filing lawsuits against those allegedly downloading porn titles online. The Chicago firm made more than $6 million between 2010 and 2013 with the scheme. Hansmeier and Prenda Law attorney John Steele created a series of bogus entities through which they obtained copyrights to scenes, some of which they filmed themselves, and then uploaded the titles to file sharing websites to lure others to download them. The Prenda Law attorneys would then file fake copyright infringement lawsuits, concealing their own roles in the distribution of the films. Steele admitted to investigators he and Hansmeier would threaten the individuals involved in the bogus lawsuits with financial penalties and public embarrassment if they didn't agree to pay a settlement fee. Another former Prenda Law attorney, Paul Duffy, who was involved with the law office's scheme, passed away in 2015 from heart-related conditions. Steele pleaded guilty in March 2017 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Hansmeier pleaded guilty to the same charges as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering. Hansmeiers unsuccessful attempt to be released from prison was unlike attorney Michael Avenattis. Avenatti, who garnered fame while representing adult star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, also sought release because of the pandemic. A judge OKd Avenattis temporary release on Saturday, requiring him to post a $1 million bond, wear an electronic monitoring device and shelter in place at a friend's house in Venice, Calif. Earlier this year, Avenatti was convicted on felony charges of transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort, attempted extortion and honest services wire fraud. A judge was scheduled to sentence Avenatti on June 17. Avenatti faces two other criminal cases in which he has charged him with stealing Daniels' $300,000 book advance and bamboozling millions of dollars from other clients. If Joe Biden weren't such a corrupt, dissolute, politically vicious man, one might feel sorry for him as he simultaneously battles irrelevance and dementia while locked away in his home in Delaware. As it is, watching Biden's public decay is the equivalent of watching someone take Dorian Gray's picture out of the attic and place it in front of a television camera. It doesn't help Biden when his campaign churns out bland, meaningless bits of political pabulum that are meant to read as profound insights into public policy during a challenging time in America. The latest example is an opinion piece in the New York Times that purports to be Biden's "plan to safely reopen America." (This link is to the same article at MSN if the Times piece is behind a paywall.) I use the word "purports" because there's nothing in the writing that echoes Biden's actual voice. It's very much the work of a staffer and not a very bright one at that. Still, it has Biden's name attached to it and the phrase "my plan," so we'll pretend he wrote it. File photo by Gage Skidmore. Here is Biden's brilliant plan, distilled, paragraph by paragraph, to its essence: Attack Trump. Work on getting a vaccine for COVID-19. Use social distancing to stop COVID-19's spread. Use the Defense Production Act. Attack Trump. Have more testing. Attack Trump. Work on producing anti-body tests. Attack Trump. Prepare hospitals for future COVID-19 flare-ups. Re-open businesses, while expecting a gradual return to normal. Talk to leaders in the private sector about ways for businesses to keep their employees safe. Attack Trump. Have OSHA work on ways to keep employees safe. Focus on the racism inherent in COVID-19's spread. Work on a vaccine. Attack Trump. It's all Trump's fault. I will do better. Once stripped of the few fancy words and phrases padding the above ideas, it's apparent that Biden (or his fine young ghostwriter) is simply parroting initiatives that are already in play under the Trump administration. Ultimately, all that's left for Biden is to say, "I would do what Trump is already doing, but I'll do it better." Biden's time as a senator and a vice president, however, gives no indication that he has any management or executive skills. It's ludicrous to believe that Biden, who's done nothing substantive over his career other than echo whatever line his party is taking, is capable of restoring America's economy after this confidence-shaking experience.. But a cross-party group of more than 60 lawmakers is pushing for Johnson to go further. They have called on the government to give foreign staff who work for the NHS and their families the right to stay in Britain indefinitely, as they believe that those who have put their lives at risk for our country are welcome to live in it. Albany, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo told radio host Howard Stern this morning that hes cried during the coronavirus crisis as the death toll in New York has mounted. "I can't get past the death numbers," Cuomo said on Stern's SiriusXM show. "There's nothing that abates that pain." Over 9,300 New Yorkers have died so far. Over 700 people have died the last six days in a row. Cuomo said dealing with that tragedy and speaking with loved ones of those who died will never get easier. But Cuomo and Stern covered a lot of ground during the interview, including the Netflix series "Tiger King," Cuomo's relationship with President Donald Trump, his brother Chris Cuomo and whether the governor is really sharing the whole truth about the virus with the public. Here are some highlights. Running for president? Cuomo has been peppered with even more questions than usual in recent weeks about whether he plans to run for president. Stern is a Cuomo fan. He told the governor several times he wished he was running and said he thought he'd win in a landslide. Cuomo has said repeatedly he's not running and has also said he's not interested in being vice president. He said he has no regrets about passing on the race. He said previously he planned to serve out his term as governor. "Im doing what I said I would do," he told Stern. On Trump Cuomo has criticized Trump harshly at times over the federal governments response to the coronavirus, but has also been complimentary at points. Overall, the president has been a help to New York during the crisis, Cuomo said. He mentioned the deployment of the Navy hospital ship Comfort to New York City and assistance from the Army Corps of Engineers in building a temporary hospital at the Javits Center. "He has delivered for New York," Cuomo said of Trump. "He has." On his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo Cuomo has been interviewed by his brother several times during the crisis, even after Chris tested positive for the virus. Stern said the banter between the two seemed comforting and genuine and asked about their history. Cuomo said he often served a dual role of father and brother to Chris. The two are 13 years apart and Chris was young when their father Mario was serving as governor. "It was a lot at one time," Cuomo said. "It was a lot to handle." When and how does this all end? The ultimate end of the pandemic is a vaccine, Cuomo said. That's probably 18 months away, he added. But there will be plenty of reasons for hope along the way. A first resolution will be fewer people dying, Cuomo said. And at some point, the economy will begin to restart. "If you're not optimistic with this, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning," he said. "There will be waves of resolution." Are you sleeping? Exercising? Drinking? Watching Netflix? Cuomo said he hasn't had a drop of alcohol since the crisis began. He said he didn't want to risk being diminished mentally at all. The job, right now, is 24 hours a day, he said. He's seen a bit of the Netflix series "Tiger King," mainly because his daughters have been helping him manage the state's response to the pandemic. They've been keeping him in touch pop culture. Cuomo also said he's getting exercise here and there, but sleeping is tough. You could get into bed and try to sleep, but your mind doesnt turn off, he said. You know that people are dying every hour in the state. On the precautions hes taking Cuomo said he was still traveling around the state earlier in the crisis, but that has stopped. He has been staying in Albany and is more isolated. He said he began taking additional precautions after his brother was infected. Are you really telling us everything? Stern asked Cuomo if there was anything the governor was holding back out of fear the public couldnt handle it. Cuomo said no. New Yorkers wouldnt accept his policies if they thought he was being dishonest, he said. "You know everything that I know," he said. "That's important that you have to believe that you have all the facts I have. If you start distrusting, the ball game is over." Is he lonely? Cuomo, who is divorced and split from longtime girlfriend Sandra Lee last year, said he has his daughters and a great team around him. He also said he's far too busy to be lonely. Stern said several times his co-host Robin Quivers wanted to date the governor. There may come a time, Cuomo said, laughing. MORE ON CORONAVIRUS Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources Will schools reopen in New York state this academic year? Its doubtful Closures, bankruptcies possible as coronavirus cripples CNY hospitals, experts warn Social distancing in CNY: Hundreds of calls, police try to teach people to obey crackdown Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598 A shuttered National Constitution Center rises over a near empty Independence Mall on March 24, 2020. Non-essential businesses had been closed and a stay-at-home order issued by the city, due to the spread of the coronavirus. Read more On Friday morning, Vince Stango, the chief operating officer of the National Constitution Center, discovered what many have wanted, many have sought, but few as yet have obtained: a check from the federal government linked to the pandemic. The Constitution Center, located on the northernmost block of Independence Mall and closed since March 14, had seen early on that there would be a need for some kind of broad federal assistance to bolster the economy, as business after business and institution after institution shut down in the face of relentless coronavirus infection. When the government announced April 3 that it would provide $349 billion in loans from the Small Business Administration part of a $2.2 trillion stimulus package the center was ready. Working with Citizens Bank, its longtime banker, the center submitted its application for a $1.1 million loan from the federal Payroll Protection Program PPP on April 7, as soon as the technical glitches were surmounted and Washingtons shifting loan requirements steadied. And on Friday, actual cash money, a phrase that former Gov. Ed Rendell likes to use, arrived in the NCCs account. That money means that the NCC is up and running for at least eight weeks. The loans can be used to cover payroll, mortgage debt, utilities, and similar essential costs of doing business. We have not laid off any of our staff, Stango said Friday. This loan will allow us to meet our payroll needs through June 30. This at least gives us a really good cushion and ability to continue doing what we can to educate people virtually in the meantime. The center has been ramping up its online presence for some time, offering online study groups, talks, and virtual learning of all kinds. While this gives the NCC an online presence, it doesnt provide the revenue stream of a functioning building. The center has lost all of its considerable rental income. Its Town Hall talks, largely paid events, are now virtual and free. The big semipermanent exhibition on the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote had been planned for a June opening. It has been postponed indefinitely. From an earned-revenue standpoint, this is probably the worst time of the year for the Constitution Center to be closed, Stango said, a sentiment echoed at cultural organizations all over the region. Over at FringeArts, which operates in normal times from a now-closed historic pumping station on Delaware Avenue, there has been no word on its loan application, no approval, no rejection a news void be filled with all the free-floating anxiety available. And there is plenty. Nick Stuccio, president and producing director, at home in Narberth, is on the phone many times a day with FringeArts finance director, Melissa E. Bridge. The conversation spins around possible scenarios. What if? What if? FringeArts is best known for its popular Philadelphia Fringe Festival, which unfolds in the fall. The Get Pegged Cabaret show has been postponed already this season. The High Pressure Fire Service, an entire series of multiple new theater and performance works, which would have run throughout April and half of May, has been postponed. The historic-building tour is gone. The Scratch Night of new in-progress works has been postponed. All of the revenue that went poof, Stuccio said. And this came on so suddenly to all of us. It was a train wreck. We had to cancel, we had to shut down, we all left the office. We shut down all of our spring programming. All of us in the sector, were coming into the heart of spring programming. Its the sweet spot of our year. All of the ticket revenue went away. Corporate festival sponsorship, programming gifts, building rentals, the restaurant rental all gone. Stuccio, Bridge and Carolyn Schlecker, senior operations adviser, realized they had to grab on to the Small Business Administration loan lifeline. Their representative from PNC the bank they had a long relationship with worked late into the night, April 3, adjusting the application after the SBA changed some requirements for PPP loans. At 1 a.m. the following Saturday morning, the application was finally complete and submitted. But the worry continues. What if the feds have allocated too little money to the loan program? What if it runs out? What if big players cut into the front of the applicant line? What if the FringeArts loan for about $225,000 is not approved? By Monday morning, Stuccio had heard nothing. What does it mean if the loan is not approved? For one thing, the organizations million-plus deficit would continue to grow, eating away at operations. Already there have been a handful of COVID-related furloughs. If the loan comes through, Stuccio said, we would bring back as many as we can. Right now, he said, cash is king and how much cash is going to determine how long were in business for. And so were trying to accumulate cash. The point, during the current period of rampant uncertainty, is to stay in operation and keep our staff employed, to keep artists working as long as we possibly can so the more loans and grants that we have access to, the better well be able to be to provide services to our colleagues. At the Please Touch Museum, approval for a $714,000 loan came late Tuesday. The museum had already furloughed 40 staff members and laid off 11 a month ago. My understanding is there is a certain amount of time you have to deploy the money, said Trish Wellenbach, president and chief executive of the childrens museum in Fairmount Parks Memorial Hall. Its a little complicated since our business is closed and the large portion of our employees who are on furlough are ones that actually cant work remotely. Earned revenue is our lifeblood and you know we bring in our earned revenue every day, Wellenbach said. Were for the most part a month-to-month business and so, particularly at this time of year, spring break, and with the potential opening of a new gallery and things like that, we had a large amount of our revenue factored into this quarter. This quarter and the next quarter are our two biggest quarters. Were running a closed business with no revenue, and so for us to achieve a PPP loan gives us also that runway, to be ready and able to open the business again. As of Monday morning, cash had not materialized. Nevertheless, Wellenbach said that the museum is presently working through the requirements of the loan and when and how people can come off of furlough and back to work. Farther south in Fairmount Park, the Philadelphia Zoo remains full of creatures, all of whom must be fed and cared for, and empty of visitors a dichotomy that Vikram H. Dewan, zoo president and CEO, is keenly struggling with every day. The zoo applied for a $3.4 million loan with its longtime banker, PNC. The loan was approved last week, Dewan said. The check has not arrived. The zoo had already been forced into layoffs and staff furloughs, Dewan said. When youre an organization that depends on both the animal collection that we have and the visitors, and there are no visitors, that will happen, yeah, he said. How many have been let go? I think that those are questions that well continue to look at. There are still so many uncertainties, all of the things that affect the zoo, when do we come back, when are we able to open. The animals, he said, are blissfully unaware of all of this. Theyre getting great care, Dewan said. Theyve been loving the beautiful weather. Theyve all been out and active in our Zoo 360 trails. It has been amazingly beautiful to see them out. The care of our animals is our number-one priority, always has been, and so to see that continuing, to see our essential staff here take good care of them, the best staff, and to keep our staff, its really quite inspiring. UPDATE: AMID CONCERNS, MTA TO ADD BUSES TO PEAK MORNING SIM ROUTES STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Monday marked the first weekday the MTA is running the off-peak reduced express bus service daily due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, and Staten Island express bus riders cited overcrowded buses and a lack of social distancing during the morning commute. Last week, the MTA announced that beginning Sunday it was suspending weekday peak period express bus service until further notice and switching to off-peak reduced service seven days a week. The drastic decrease in service means Staten Island express bus riders went from having 23 lines to choose from during their daily commute to just four -- the SIM1c, SIM3c, SIM4c, and SIM33c. All off-peak bus lines service both Downtown and Midtown Manhattan, so the cuts are lengthening the commute for many riders. Several riders in the SI Express Buses More and Better Services Not Worse and Less Facebook group shared concerns that their buses were overcrowded during the morning commute. Filippa Grisafi, an express bus advocate who created the Facebook group, said commuters who travel during rush hour and rely on express buses to get to work are struggling because the buses are running much further apart. That means they have to leave much earlier to get an earlier bus and then the problem is connecting once they get into Manhattan, she said. Either walking to work, which some of them would have a very long walk to work or connect to a cross-town bus or a subway which again are running very limited and very crowded so youre putting them in a more dangerous situation. You have many more people taking that one bus an hour and its creating an even more dangerous situation for that driver and those people on the bus. And thats exactly what happened this morning. *** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK *** She added that Staten island express buses went from one to five people on a bus to about 20 or 30 people on Monday due to reduced service. In a statement Monday, Craig Cipriano, acting MTA bus president and acting senior vice president for the NYC Transit Department of Buses, said the front rows of express buses are off-limits for seating. In a letter to MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick Foye on Monday, Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) and Councilman Steve Matteo (R-Mid-Island) requested that the MTA re-evaluate its express bus service considering reports received from commuters that the buses were overcrowded during this mornings commute. The drastic decrease in service has reduced the number of lines from 23 to just four the SIM1c, SIM3c, SIM20c and SIM33c and based on todays results, frequency must be adjusted to provide for social distancing, stated the letter. Grisafi said she understands that, due to a lack of drivers, the agency needed to come up with a plan to reduce service. She added that riders saw the same issue when the MTA first rolled out the redesign of express bus routes in August 2018. In the middle of this, I personally feel that it was the wrong way to go, she said. We are in an emergency situation. I understand the dire situation the MTA is in and the transit is in and their number one priority was to make sure we have service with the drivers that they have available and I commend them for doing that. But unfortunately, if today was any indication of what this is going to be like, its not really going to work. In reducing service, the MTA removed access to the East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan, where many hospitals are located -- something that Grisafi said she hopes is addressed. In the letter, Malliotakis and Matteo asked Foye to consider adding SIM6 bus service to the limited bus schedule to ensure commuters on the East Shore of Staten Island will have a direct connection to the East Side of Manhattan, which is critically important for healthcare workers at Manhattan hospitals. Grisafi also shared concerns that commuters arent wearing face-coverings on express buses. Malliotakis and Matteos letter said constituents are requesting the MTA require commuters to wear face coverings to board public transit after Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced essential employees who interact with the public must wear face coverings. The letter cited New Jersey Transit, which has already implemented his requirement to protect the public, bus operators and transit employees. Cipriano said in a statement Monday that the MTA and NYC Transit continue to recommend in the strongest terms all essential workers traveling with us during this time wear a face covering. I really, really hope that were able to make some sort of difference, said Grisafi. My goal is to keep everybody safe and to help everybody have a much easier commute during this time and I really hope that were able to accomplish that. According to the MTA, there will be more service Tuesday. Valid concerns were raised by customers about the rollout of a new schedule today, they have been addressed, and a better experience is anticipated tomorrow," said Shams Tarek, an MTA spokesman. There will be more service Tuesday, and MTA Bus leadership will continue to monitor and adjust service during this unprecedented crisis. Similar concerns were raised after Staten Island Ferry service was shifted to hourly due to due to declining ridership and lack of staffing during the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Commuters said remaining boats are more densely crowded, making it difficult to practice social distancing, particularly during the boarding and unboarding process. Ferry officials say they are doing the very best we can. 70 Coronavirus in NYC: Photos show the fight against the pandemic FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) After recovering from COVID-19, Senator Juan Edgardo "Sonny" Angara has donated his own blood plasma to help patients still trying to win their battle against the disease. In his Instagram post on Monday, the senator shared that his contribution immediately went to a plasma therapy for a patient with a severe case. "Gave my plasma and it went straight to a hospital in Quezon City to a man on a ventilator a severe case of COVID-19," Angara said. "My wonderful doctors say it could save his life as the antibodies of survivors in the past viruses have done," said the senator, who contracted the disease last month. Angara also urged the Department of Health, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and local government units to exchange information on the COVID-19 survivors to help others fight the virus. Angara noted that there is a protocol that each COVID-19 survivor can donate blood to one patient every 14 days. The Philippine General Hospital, one of the government's referral hospitals for COVID-19, earlier announced that the blood of patients who have recovered from the disease contain antibodies that could help others fight the infection. Three COVID-19 survivors already donated their blood to the PGH last week. COVID-19 survivors who wish to donate their blood may contact 155-200 or visit the PGH's Facebook page for more details. By Akbar Mammadov Armenia has requested Turkey for help in the fight against coronavirus, Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said on 11 April. Answering local media's questions in a live broadcast, Kalin emphasized that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed this request and the Ministry of Health coordinates the situation. "We have delivered medical assistance to many countries. This is extremely human. No political account is made here," said Kalin. "These kinds of requests (for assistance) came from Armenia. Here we did not differentiate between countries or regions, and we will not, independently from our political relations," Kalin said. In the meantime, Turkey asked China for clarification about aid packages sent to Armenia that bore a reference to Agri Mountain in eastern Turkey that borders Armenia, Turkish Anadolu News Agency said on April 12. "China's Ambassador to Ankara Deng Li said their aid packages to Armenia was prepared by a local authority and were sent by a private company to Yerevan", said Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy. "The aforementioned local authority only wrote Chinese scripts on the packs, and there was no mention about Agri Mountain. The Ambassador Deng said it was understood that referring to Agri Mountain, the statements in English were added later", Aksoy added. According to Demiroren News Agency on April 9, the following statements were written on the packages: "May our friendship higher than Mountain Ararat and longer than Yangtze River". The Chinese ambassador is currently investigating the situation, and will inform Turkey about its results. "With this incident, Deng said he has full respect for Turkey's sovereignty and unity of land," the Turkish spokesperson added. --- Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz At 14 years old, she was sent by her mother to live with a successful businessman in Beijing, who was supposed to serve as her caretaker and guardian. Instead, over the course of several years, she says, he repeatedly raped her and held her in his home against her will. Now 18, the young woman, using the pseudonym Xingxing, has gone public with her account of abuse. Her story, published in the Chinese news media in recent days, has become one of the most widely discussed topics in China, unleashing a wave of anger about the countrys patriarchal culture and the authorities reluctance to intervene in cases of sexual abuse. The episode has become a pivotal test for Chinas small but spirited #MeToo movement, which has gained traction in recent years despite the ruling Communist Partys strict limits on activism and its tight control over the courts. The man at the center of the case is Bao Yuming, a lawyer who studied in the United States and has advised some of Chinas most prominent companies, including ZTE, the telecommunications giant. Mr. Bao, who is in his late 40s, has acknowledged that he had a close relationship with Xingxing but has denied any wrongdoing. (Newser) More is coming out from the former aide to Joe Biden who has accused the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her during the early 1990s when he was a senator. Bidens campaign denies the charges. In two recent interviews with the AP, Tara Reade alleged the assault occurred in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in the spring of 1993. She filed a police report in Washington on Thursday saying she was the victim of a sexual assault by an unnamed person in 1993, a copy of which was obtained by the AP. Earlier in the Democratic primary, Biden faced accusations of unwanted touching by several women, who said they were uncomfortable with hugs, hand holding, and other actions. Reade was among the women who came forward, but she did not allege sexual assault at the time. story continues below In recent weeks, shes given a handful of interviews saying Bidens actions went further than she initially disclosed. In an interview with the AP, she detailed a 1993 encounter that she says occurred when she was asked by a supervisor to bring Biden his gym bag as he was on his way down to the Senate gymnasium. She says Biden pushed her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building, groped her, and penetrated her with his fingers. The AP spoke to five current or former Biden staffers on Sunday, all of whom worked for him at the time of the alleged incident. None recalled such an incident or a report, and neither his chief of staff nor his deputy chief of staff could recall Reade. Both said what she had described was out of character for Biden. A Biden rep says of Reade's claim, "This absolutely did not happen." (See the AP for much more.) Markets regulator Sebi on Monday directed Arohan Trustee Company to refund the amount collected from investors under the garb of an 'art fund' with interest. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has also barred the company from accessing the securities market "for a period of four years or till the payment of amount, whichever is later". Besides, it has restrained the company from raising money from investors through any Collective Investment Schemes (CIS). The order comes after the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), in March 2016, set aside a Sebi order against Arohan, which was barred by the regulator and asked to refund Rs 24.50 crore collected from investors. SAT had asked Sebi to pass a fresh order in the matter. Citing the case of Osian's Connoisseurs of Art, the firm had stated that SAT considered similar issues and remanded the matter on certain issues for reconsideration. In the matter of Osian's Connoisseurs of Art, SAT had set aside a direction of Sebi, which ordered the firm to refund Rs 102.4 crore collected from 656 investors for one of its art fund schemes and asked the regulator to decide those issues afresh after hearing the appellant and respondent. However, the tribunal had upheld the regulator's order in respect to barring the firm. According to Sebi, Arohan Trustee Company had sponsored the art fund without obtaining certificate as mandated under CIS norms. In its final order, Sebi said, "Arohan Trustee Company Private Limited shall refund the balance of the amount collected from the investors in its Indian Art Fund Scheme" with an interest of 10 per cent per annum. The balance amount collected shall be refunded within a period of six months and the interest shall be paid within a period of nine months, the regulator added. "However, in view of the exceptional circumstances emerging due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and consequential lockdown in the country, the direction shall come into force on May 1, 2020," Sebi noted. In April 2015, Sebi had asked Arohan Trustee Company to refund the money in three months along with an interest of 10 per cent per annum, from the date of investment till the date of part refunds. As many as 94 investors had contributed an amount of Rs 24.50 crore to the fund of Arohan Trustee Company, the regulator had said. Sebi conducted a probe in the matter after it came across certain media reports and newspaper articles regarding mobilisation of funds from investors under the scheme of 'art fund', with an objective to invest in works of art. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ghanaian tomato farmers are preparing for bumper harvest but, for many forced to leave their produce to rot on the farms, it could also be a time of devastation. Suicide rates among tomato farmers might be disputed but what is not disputed is that many farmers are often unable to find an outlet for their fresh produce due to a glut on the market. But it doesn't need to be this way; Ghanaian authorities could step up and put processing technologies in the hands of local farmers. Media reports highlight the experiences of farmers like Wisdom Banini, a smallholder farmer in Anloga who harvests between 600 and 1,000 kilogrammes of tomatoes each season. Until he met Mr Sena Ahiabor, a crop scientist who has found a simple technology to process tomatoes, his surplus tomatoes would be left on his farm to rot. Banani is one of thousands of Ghanaian farmers whose hard labour often goes to waste. Many farmers like Banani do not have access to simple tools to help process their produce into other forms such as tomato paste and, in so doing, reduce losses and generate additional income. Tomato is the most common vegetable used in cooking in Ghana and more than 381,015 tonnes are grown annually. At the same time, researchers estimate that farmers lose between 20 to 40 percent of their harvest because of the lack of tomato processing facilities which, in turn, pushes up prices. In the past, the government of Ghana built tomato processing factories like the Pwalugu tomato factory and Nsawam Cannery in order to cut down the losses. But these factories are expensive to set up and running costs are high. As a result, many of these factories have since shut down and tomato farmers continue to be amongst the poorest in the country. The impact of the lack of processing facilities is exacerbated by market forces. Farmers have been exploited by Market queens who buy tomatoes from Burkina Faso because it is cheaper. These market queens are powerful middle women who determine the price of tomatoes . By controlling the market price, they give farmers little choice in determining the final cost of the product sometimes at prices which do not recoup production costs, which leads to greater losses. Even though Ghana grows enough tomatoes to serve its markets, it imports $99 million worth of tomatoes from Burkina Faso, depriving farmers of this income. This has created fierce competition for tomato amongst the two countries. Ghanaian farmers are disadvantaged as tomatoes from Burkina Faso are cheaper and of better quality. Unlike Ghana, the Burkinabe government supports tomato growers with improved seeds. Farmers process dried tomato using solar dryers which are sold to generate more income. Tomato paste is a lucrative market which has attracted foreign traders. In order to gain competitive advantage, these privately owned companies most of which are foreign companies have set up tomato paste packing facilities using imported bulk raw material which they package and label as made in Ghana products. This is a cheaper way of bringing in tomato paste as import duties on bulk goods is 10 percent but 35 percent on finished goods. These activities do not address the fundamental problems of absorbing excess supply of locally grown tomatoes especially in the glut seasons. Benefits from large scale processing have not filtered down to farmers and it is time to use small-scale processing on farms with a structured plan to turn tomato into products such canned tomato paste. Simple technologies can place the power in the hands of farmers. For example, I have developed a low-cost solar dryer which does not require the use of electricity to process fresh tomato into tomato powder which can then be made into canned tomato paste. However, most farmers do not see these processing technologies as a way out because successive governments have failed to offer these options. We see processing as a large scale activity when we should see it on the farms with farmers at the helm. Small-scale processing on or around farms is crucial. Not only is it easier for the farmer to access for their harvest but also makes the final product easier to transport. And farmers, farmer organisations, civil society groups, private sector and government all have a role to play in making this work. Farmers like Banini are proof that when you put processing facilities in the hands of farmers, not only do farmers win with better harvests and greater income but consumers benefit with sustainable, cost-effective and nutritious local produce on their table. Mavis Owureku-Asare is a food scientist based in Ghana and an Aspen New Voices Fellow. Follow her on twitter @mowurekuasare . In this sense, the statesman stressed that last Monday 20,414 samples were taken and over the course of a week the amount tripled to reach 67,000, which led to an increase in the number of positive cases, as the amount of samples are larger, of course. Downward trend However, the President noted that the rate in the number of new COVID-19 cases went down from 21% to 20%. "Despite the fact that the absolute number of positive cases has increased due to the number of samples, the trend tends to decrease, as shown in the specific cases of hospitalized patients," he indicated. The Head of State explained that two weeks ago the rate of patients, who were hospitalized for coronavirus, used to grow on a daily basis by 22%. "In the evaluation made until yesterday by the team of experts (from the Ministry of Health), the daily rate of hospitalized citizens, who have been affected by COVID-19, has decreased from 22% to 14%. Thus, there is a decrease in hospitalization cases," he underlined. In addition, President Vizcarra reported that the daily rate of patients in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) also fell from 22% to 17%. Moreover, he pointed out that this same downward trend behavior was recorded in the rate of deaths, which has decreased from 29% to 14%. El presidente @MartinVizcarraC, acompanado del Consejo de Ministros en pleno, informa sobre la situacion del Estado de Emergencia en el #Dia29 y las acciones que realiza el Gobierno para contener la propagacion del COVID-19. En vivo: https://t.co/YSlA0KI1jw https://t.co/1L9IEDr9P0 A $10 million award allotted in the death of a Pennsylvania woman following a spinal surgery was voided after the court determined the amount is not in line with others granted in similar medical malpractice cases. The state ordered a Chester County judge to hold a new trial to determine the amount of wrongful death damages Sharon Kimbles husband and her estate should receive, Superior Court Judge Mary Murray issued in an opinion. A trial was held in March 2018 after Kimble died hours after undergoing outpatient surgery at the Laser Spine Institute in Philadelphia. Her death was attributed to the cocktail of opioids and depressants administered to her during the operation, PennLive reported Friday. The jury had awarded the victims husband, Robert Kimble, $10 million in wrongful death damages. He was also awarded another $10 million in survival damages but the county judge overseeing the civil trial overturned that award. Laser Spine Institute had appealed the money awarded. Judge Murray denied its plea but concluded that the amount awarded in damages is far greater than those issued in similar cases in the state. She cited examples of verdicts in other such cases that didnt exceed $2.5 million. The case now remains under the jurisdiction of the Chester County Court for a new trial focused specifically on the amount the institute must pay in wrongful death damages. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Pennsylvania Slate is making its coronavirus coverage free for all readers. Subscribe to support our journalism. Start your free trial. Drone delivery is one of the business ideas that suddenly makes a lot more sense in the age of the coronavirus, but that doesnt mean you can get pizza airlifted to your home yet. In a few limited ways, operators are stepping in to help businesses limit human-to-human contact for deliveries. Bloomberg reported recently that Wing, Alphabets drone delivery service, is seeing a big uptick in orders in the Christiansburg, Virginia, pilot program that its been running since the fall. Wing works with FedEx and Walgreens to deliver household essentials and has also added a local bakery and coffee shop to expand offerings during the pandemic. The delivery service claims that the volume of deliveries has doubled amid the crisis, and Christiansburgs Mockingbird Cafe and Bakery reports that its sold 50 percent more pastries thanks to the deliveries. The drones can complete deliveries within minutes, though theyre limited in how much they can carry per order. Heres a look at one Wing drop-off: Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Drone delivery to me & my dog at home. My 8-month-old Labrador was unperturbed by the drone, but curious and eager to go fetch the package (dog food?). The delivery was from Walgreens via @Wing, & arrived 5 minutes after placing the order. #logistics #dronedelivery #covid19 #dogs pic.twitter.com/0zPqe6TsYH Shane Ross (@RossDynamicsLab) April 10, 2020 This same phenomenon is playing out in cities around the world that are hosting drone pilot programs. Wings trials in Canberra, Australia, and Helsinki, Finland, have also seen an increase in business. The Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com also stepped up its drone program for routine last-mile grocery and consumer product deliveries to the countrys rural villages and semi-isolated islands. Advertisement Advertisement Other startups are trying to work with regulators to fast-track the launch of their services. After setting up shop in Rwanda in 2016, the medical drone delivery company Zipline says it is now working with U.S. regulators to speed up the approval process so it can help expedite supply chains in the country. The drone company Manna Aero, which began fulfilling takeout orders in Dublin at the end of March, also got permission from Irelands aviation authorities for a trial to deliver prescription medications to elderly and immunocompromised people in early April. And the Ontario provincial government classified Drone Delivery Canada as an essential workplace, allowing the company to continue normal business operations and transport pharmaceutical supplies and blood samples for remote communities, particularly Aboriginal ones. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement None of this means that drones are about to take the place of Instacart and DoorDash workers. As Inverse reports, regulations in the U.S. arent likely to loosen quickly or dramatically enough to allow drones to fill the sky and solve a lot of the transportation bottlenecks caused by the coronavirus in the near future. One of the toughest restrictions to get a waiver for is visual line of sight, which dictates that a firms drone operator must be able to see the aircraft in person at all times, thus limiting the distance that it can travel. Its possible that the coronavirus will convince the Federal Aviation Administration, which usually rejects 99 percent of applications, to eventually grant more Beyond Visual Line of Sight approvals in the long run. (Wing won approval in 2019.) In April, the FAA granted exemptions to its commercial drone prohibitions to 30 companies, including Amazon, which is still in the research and development phase for its Prime Air service. Advertisement Advertisement While contactless deliveries are a relatively benevolent application of drone technology, governments and law enforcement are also using them for less innocuous purposes. China was the first country to use drones with loudspeakers to scold pedestrians for failing to abide by public health guidelines and monitor temperature checks during traffic stops. European countries like France and Spain soon followed suit. Now cities throughout the U.S. are similarly cajoling citizens with drone patrols. Police departments in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Daytona Beach, Florida, have been flying drones that blast messages from local officials ordering people to abide by social distancing directives. The Elizabeth drones are additionally threatening, blasting warnings like Summonses HAVE AND WILL CONTINUE to be issued to those found in violation. Fines are up to $1000. You have been advised. Harrisburg police on Monday identified a man found dead Easter Sunday at an apartment complex as Joseph Ayala Maya, 20. Police were called to the Harrisburg Park Apartments, in the 1400 block of South 13th Street, about 3:30 p.m. Sunday. They found Ayalas body with visible injuries lying in between two parked vehicles. Ayala had been attacked, said Dauphin County District Fran Chardo, but Chardo would not release details about the attack or the cause of death because the investigation was ongoing. An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday. Chardo said Ayala collapsed in between the vehicles about 15 minutes before someone spotted his body and called 911. Police worked to recover evidence and shield the view of the victim's body in the parking lot Sunday afternoon. (Photo by Maria York.) Harrisburg police on Monday asked for the publics help in finding a woman who was considered a person of interest in the investigation. Police are looking for Savannah Nieves, 23, who was already wanted by Swatara Township police for unrelated drug offenses. Anyone with information about her whereabouts may call police at 717-558-6900 or submit a tip via the citys CrimeWatch website to be eligible for a possible reward. Police are looking for Savannah Nieves, 23, as "person of interest" in the death of Joseph Ayala Maya. Ayala did not live at the complex where he died, but instead lived in the Hall Manor community, which is nearby. Police are not sure whether he was out on foot before he was attacked or whether he drove, but his vehicle was parked in the general area. Its unclear why he was headed to the Park Apartments, but he knew people who lived there, according to authorities. Ayala originally hailed from Puerto Rico. It was unclear how many years had had lived in Harrisburg. His death represented the sixth homicide of the year in Harrisburg and the second this year in the same apartment complex. Brian Hall, 21, was found tied up and fatally shot Jan. 9 inside a friends apartment at Park Apartments. His killing remains unsolved, along with all of this years homicides. Police said Halls death was unrelated to Ayalas killing. After police collected evidence from Ayalas death scene Sunday, they appeared to be searching a nearby home at 13th and Magnolia streets for evidence. Investigators were at the scene until about 9 p.m. No suspect or motive information was released on Monday. READ: Heres what crime looked like in Harrisburg, York and Lancaster, before coronavirus hit READ: No homicide charges will be filed after Harrisburg police took man who swallowed crack to jail, not hospital As long as the Turkish side is well-supplied to cover its own needs, the Ukrainian side may purchase products and services, the official says Open source Turkey has allowed administering of medical aid for Ukraine within COVID-19 build-up. The procedure for acquiring permissions to export production has been defined. Andriy Sybiga, the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Ukraine in Turkey said so in his commentary for Ukrinform news agency. "The procedure of providing aid for Ukraine within COVID-19 context has been defined. If there's enough product in Turkey, particularly for covering its own needs, and it has the opportunity to export, we agreed that we can buy it", he said. According to him, after the telephone conversation between Ukrainian and Turkish leaders on April 1, Ankara allowed the export of products that are necessary for Ukraine - as long as the procedure is respected. The procedure itself is the following: the subjects of entrepreneurship activity, the Turkish producers turn to respective authority (depending on the kind of product) for permission. After that, the export of the product becomes possible. The diplomat said that the Ukrainian side passed Turkey the list of medical products that it needs to counteract the spread of the disease. The procedure of acquiring licenses for various products has been launched. Source: Xinhua| 2020-04-13 13:34:35|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming special summit of ASEAN+3 (China, Japan and South Korea) via video conference is crucial for the leaders to express their political commitment and to put forward measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodian officials and an expert said on Monday. The summit is due to be held on Tuesday (April 14), and Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen will participate in the summit from the Peace Palace, his office in Phnom Penh. Health Minister Mam Bunheng said he believed that the upcoming summit would set out measures for regional cooperation to prevent and contain the virus spread. "The summit shows the leaders' high-level political commitment to stem the virus spread, and it will provide mutual benefit for all sides," he said in a press conference here on the latest situation of COVID-19 in Cambodia. Ek Tha, standing vice-chairman of the Royal Government Spokesperson Unit, said the summit clearly demonstrated the leaders' political will to get rid of the virus. "The coming special ASEAN+3 summit plays a very important role in fighting COVID-19 disease since the Plus Three countries have much more resources in many ways, such as finance, expertise, and science, among others," he told Xinhua. Tha, who is also a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said the whole world has taken the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic as a serious concern since it partially impacts on trade, investment, tourism, health, and social development. "I strongly believe that ASEAN's cooperation with its external partners such as China, Japan and South Korea will bring about the synergy to address this pressing issue of COVID-19," he said. "Any assistance of all forms from the external partners of ASEAN will be a big plus." Sharing his view on China's role in assisting ASEAN including Cambodia in combating the virus, he said the COVID-19 virus is not anyone's problem alone, but it's a global issue. "We see China's role is a must in the fight against the virus because we believe that the greater assistance from China, in this respect, for ASEAN will help to greater-mitigate the impact of regional economic slowdown," he said. "Likewise, China's aid, along with its experiences and experts, for Cambodia has enabled the kingdom to be more well-prepared to cope with the issue." Chheang Vannarith, president of the Asian Vision Institute, said the ASEAN Plus Three Mechanism was formed after the Asian financial crisis that hit the region in 1997, and this mechanism plays a crucial role in providing regional response to regional and global issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic. "The Plus Three countries, China, Japan and South Korea, have expertise and resources to share and support ASEAN member countries," he told Xinhua. "The upcoming ASEAN+3 Summit should aim not only to show strong political commitment but also to deliver concrete measures and practical action plans to assist each other to overcome the systemic crisis stemming from the pandemic," he added. Vannarith said Cambodia has been urging international community to work closely together to defeat the COVID-19 disease. "It is a global issue which requires a global solution. Global alliance needs to be enhanced and regional cooperation needs to be further deepened," he said. He said the ASEAN+3 countries should work together to strengthen capacities to address the pandemic through exchanging technical expertise and experiences, sharing diagnostic and treatment good practices, and exploring joint research and development on medicines and vaccines. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The COVID-19 has so far infected 19,235 people and killed 797 across ASEAN, according to statistics site Worldometers. Cambodia has recorded a total of 122 confirmed cases of the virus to date, with 77 patients cured, according to the Ministry of Health. The Pennsylvania Department of Health on Monday afternoon put out a finalized set of guidelines hospitals can use to make hard decisions such as who gets an intensive care bed or ventilator if there arent enough for everyone. The latest version, dated April 12, comes about a week after people with disabilities objected to an earlier version, saying they worried their disability would count against them. It continues to use a points-based system for deciding which patients have highest priority. The process would apply to all patients brought to the hospital during the health emergency, not just those sick with COVID-19. It retains a goal of making decisions that benefit the greatest number of patients. It also seeks to maximize life years, which favors younger patients. However, rather than basing decisions on exact state, the system uses groupings which correspond to life stages, such as 12-40 and 41-60. In the event of ties, the system favors people directly involved in addressing the crisis and preserving social order. In addition to doctors and nurses, that involves anyone in the chain of the response, such as first-responders and people who disinfect hospital rooms. The guidelines state a goal that no one is denied care based on stereotypes, assessments of quality of life, or judgments about a persons worth based on the presence or absence of disabilities or other factors. Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine had previously vowed that no one would have less of a priority because of factors such as disability, race, sexual orientation or financial status. Still, people with disabilities and their advocates continued to voice concerns, saying their life experiences are filled with evidence of deep-rooted biases toward them. They said a more fair system would disregard any condition that existed before the person was stricken with COVID-19. The state health department began working on the guidelines last year, expecting it to take about 18 months, but COVID-19 has speeded up the process. While the guidelines are officially regarded as interim, the state is advising hospitals to use them in the event of a surge of COVID-19 patients and scarce medical resources. Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work. SEYMOUR A local family confronted with apparent racially motivated threats at their Asian restaurant has been overwhelmed by the community response. I didnt expect the community to react the way that it did, said Meng Zheng, whose parents Ju Zheng and Xuemei Chen own Sushi & Wok. Im glad that it did, though. The restaurant has been swamped with orders, received more than 150 messages of support on social media and got an offer of $1,000 to be used to pay for the meals of local emergency responders and health workers. The incident that put it all into motion occurred April 3 just before noon, Zheng said. It was right as the lunch rush was starting, she said. The restaurant received six calls from two different phone numbers blaming Chinese people for the COVID-19 pandemic and threatening to shoot up the restaurant in a profanity-filled rant, she said. The caller also seemed to be trying to disguise his voice, Zheng said. The calls were sufficiently alarming that her parents called Zheng at her job at Yale New Haven Hospital. She notified the police, relaying the information herself since her parents face a language barrier. Seymour police confirmed a report had been filed but did not respond to a request for further details. Later, Zheng said, she began growing angry that her family had been the target of racial bias and took to the restaurants Facebook page to vent. As we struggle to keep our business open, not only do we face the challenges of paying rent and dues, but we also deal with harassments from people who threaten to do harm to our employees and business, she wrote. Many people have no idea how difficult it is to continue operating a small restaurant with the constant fear that someone will come in and tear the place down. There is no need to spread ignorance, hatred, and destruction in our community in a time like this. The response was immediate. Im so sorry that some individuals have so much hate in their hearts and are so ignorant as to blame an entire culture for something that is a worldwide issue, wrote Alison Vance, a customer since the restaurant opened in 2013. Much love to you and your family. Julie Mary agreed. This broke my heart to read, she wrote. No one is immune to this virus; it does not discriminate. I think its fair to say its showing us all of us are equals. No one should be threatening anyone, least of all the people are working hard to continue to provide food to their community. Jacklyn Meeker was more blunt. Dont let all the (expletives) bring you down, she wrote. Though the night passed without incident, Zheng said the community support ironically caused her a brief moment of alarm. I called around 5 oclock to check in, and no one answered the phone, the line was just dead, she said. I texted and called their cellphones, and when no one replied I rushed over there. It was probably an overreaction, but I was thinking the worst-case scenario. Everyone at the restaurant was fine, just busy, she said. So many people were calling and ordering from them, I ended up staying there and working for the night, she said. After work, Zheng made a follow-up post thanking the Seymour Police Department for having a patrol car check in on the restaurant throughout the night. A few days later, the towns Board of Selectman took time in their April 7 meeting to voice their support too for her parents restaurant. These people are Seymour residents just as much as all of us, First Selectman Kurt Miller said to the board. There is no place for this negativity in town, and I love seeing all the support. Miller chalked the threats up to a keyboard warrior, a slang term generally used to describe someone who makes aggressive comments online, where he can conceal his identity. Other selectmen echoed the sentiment, referring to the threats as reprehensible and expressing their pride at the communitys coming together behind the family. Tom Haynes, owner of a local construction materials and hardware business, took note of the incident and was waiting at the restaurant when it opened the day after the selectman meeting, offering $1,000 to buy meals for health care workers and emergency responders. Zheng said the family was grateful for the offer, and was trying to think of a way to implement the donation since they currently have no way of knowing who is placing orders. Were only accepting orders through the apps right now, she said. Perhaps, when the pandemic subsides, the donation could be used to host a thank-you party for those who fought the virus, Zheng said. That would be great, she said. What does the dashboard show? The information about your school is divided into multiple panels. Here is a guide to interpreting the data: Average student performance shows the median VCE subject study score for the school since 2010, which is a good indicator of typical student achievement. Study scores are out of 50, and a 30 is the average. The horizontal line at 30 on the graph is the yardstick that shows how the typical student at this school fares against the statewide average. High achievers shows the percentage of the schools VCE subject scores that were among the best in the state. These are scores of 40 or above, which put students within the top 10 per cent of all those who completed a VCE subject. This panel also shows the subjects in which students obtained the best results. Completion rates shows the enrolment numbers in VCE, VET and VCAL over the past five years, as well as the satisfactory completion rates among year 12s. Student pathways shows what 2018s year 12 graduates were doing midway through last year whether they had gone on to further study at university or TAFE, or whether they had taken on an apprenticeship or joined the workforce. This panel does not show up if a high percentage of a schools year 12 graduates did not complete the survey. The survey has not been conducted for 2019's graduates yet, so 2018 is the latest year for which data is available. School awards shows the 10 high-gain schools that The Age judged as having shown the best improvement in their results over the past decade, following input from Nathan Zoanetti of the Australian Council for Education Research and Peter Goss of the Grattan Institute. In each panel there is an "about the data" section that provides more detailed explanations and technical information to help you understand the data. Mount St Joseph Girls' College principal Kate Dishon with senior students. The school was named the 2020 Schools that Excel winner for non-government schools in Melbourne's west. Credit:Paul Jeffers Which schools are featured in the dashboard? The interactive dashboard features data on more than 500 Victorian schools that offered VCE, VET or VCAL programs in 2018. Unfortunately, schools for which there is insufficient data, schools that exclusively offer the International Baccalaureate and adult education institutions do not show up in the interactive. There might also be gaps in the data for years in which student enrolments did not reach a certain threshold. How were the Schools that Excel awards decided? We used Department of Health and Human Services boundaries to categorise schools as metropolitan or regional and divided the metropolitan region into west, north, east and south Melbourne. One government school and one non-government (Catholic or Independent) school was chosen for each area based on their records of improvement. Of course there are many qualities in schools that cant be measured. These include a schools culture, its inclusiveness, the dedication of teachers, extra-curricular activities and that feeling you get when you walk through the school gates. Thornbury High School was named the Schools that Excel winner for government schools in Melbourne's north. Credit:Simon Schluter What are the changes from last year's interactive? In the first iteration of Schools that Excel, schools that were classified by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority as "small" were excluded from the interactive and from being considered for awards. A school is classified as small during a particular year if it does not meet a certain threshold for enrolments.